The Marvel Problem

Disney Hercules

Was watching some old episodes for the nostalgia (forgot how charming this show was) and I realized that this show is actually super in line with Greek mythology in one way, it could not care less about timelines and ages making any sense.

My One Change to Star Trek (2009)

There are a good few flaws to this movie but if I were to make one change and leave it mostly alone, it would be the time skip after Kirk gets on the shuttle to Starfleet Academy, right after he meets Bones. Instead of jumping ahead to his final year as a cadet I would have it be more like 7 years, and introduce him as a new transfer to the Enterprise as a Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander.

You can still have him get off on the wrong foot with Spock because of the Kobayashi Maru, but it can be because Spock doesn’t approve of him getting a commendation for what he considered to have been “cheating” and then they just rub each other the wrong way to start. The rest of the gang are all already posted as lower ranked members. I think you could have a fun scene of Kirk reuniting with Bones and Uhura (with very different reactions going on there).

You can still have Kirk overhearing Uhura about the communication because he’s with her roommate, it’s just that the room is a ship cabin instead of a dorm. Basically, instead of the Academy stuff you just have Kirk getting adjusted to the Enterprise. Maybe have Commander Una be injured or on leave or something so Spock is the Acting First Officer at the time.

Then the distress call from Vulcan comes in and the ship get assigned to check it out. Everything else from the time they’re out of warp could pretty much be the same but it would make more sense for Pike to name Kirk as Spock’s Acting First Officer when he goes over and for the gang to be taking over for their commanding officers when they’re injured during the attack from Nero. It just would make so much more sense for already instated officers to take on the roles they do then not even graduated cadets.

(I know this thing is, like, 15 years old now but I was rewatching Beyond and it made me think)

Green Arrow

If I had a nickel for every time the CW made Oliver Queen’s love interest their tech support OC instead of his canonical girlfriend from the comics I would have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Naruto Fic Problem

There’s this kind of annoying trend in Naruto fanfic where Naruto is basically abused by the whole village, constantly getting yelled at, only being sold rotten food, his teachers purposely sabotaging him, people actively attacking him, etc. This has always bothered me because it feels like writers are taking things way too far in his treatment. Especially when they include other ninja acting that way when that’s never really shown. I mean, yeah, there’s was that one guy who threw a mask at him and no one really went out of their way to be kind besides Iruka and the Hokage but they never show evidence that he was constantly being tormented. I just can’t imagine that if things were taken to that extreme that one, the Hokage never would have stepped in or two, that Naruto would have put up with things to that degree. It makes me uncomfortably to read, and I like canon-divergent stories where someone takes him in and raises him, but I hate reading about him being treated like that, it just doesn’t seem realistic and makes me sad. It also doesn’t make Konoha worth saving, if it’s people are that bad, why bother with it? I like it having flaws and exploring its corruption is interesting, but people take it to an extreme that just makes it seem flat and dull. I’m just really not a fan of every civilian in Konoha being a fear driven, pack mind orientated monster towards Naruto.

Problem with tagging

One of the best things about archive of our own is it’s tags, it really helps sort through the frankly ridiculous number of stories on the sight for the content you’re actually looking for, mostly. The problem, of course is that some writers seem to add them all over the place even when they don’t actually apply to the story. Like, why would you tag a relationship for a fic where the two characters don’t even actually appear? It’s really frustrating if that’s the pairing you’re looking for but the tag is used where they aren’t even really the content.

Also, there is absolutely a thing as too many tags, some people could really benefit from a little more restraint.

Isekai Idea

I think it’d be interesting to have a protagonist who is an expert in medieval history get transported into the standard savior is summoned to defeat the demon king scenario. Like, even basic knowledge of that time period would make anyone super distrustful of the church and monarchy, since they are almost always just the absolute worst. So you have someone with that background and instinctive mistrust faced with exactly those kind of people claiming that they’re there to save the world. The gimmick is that the king and head priest are actually completely sincere but the protagonist just refuses to believe people in those positions could possibly be good. I’m imagining some kind of gag story with that premises, I just think it’d be funny.

Alternatively, you take the medieval history expert and have them be reincarnated in a world where everyone has complete and total implicit trust in the church and or monarchy because of divine right or something, real or imagined, and the protagonist just has to deal with their modern sensibilities of democracy in the face of classism. Or something. It’s not a fully fleshed out idea.

Comic book Geography

One of the things I like more about DC over Marvel is that every hero has their own city and they’re all spread out. It gives them plenty of space to do their own thing and they have the technology and superpowers to be in easy reach of one another if they need back up. I thought it was a really neat idea to have the Justice League in Young Justice be connected with the UN, though I also think they work as an NGO.

I’ve always found it frustrating having Marvel crammed into New York City. I understand the original appeal to have the heroes in a place where the writers were familiar, to make them more down to earth. But they’ve outgrown that, Marvel has spread them out a little but they could do more. It looks like the X-Men are going to be all over the place in their new titles, which I’m really happy about, can’t wait to read about the team that’ll be in Chicago. Aside from a handful of heroes, like Spider-Man and Daredevil, who really embody New York City, most of the Marvel heroes don’t really need to be there, Move the Fantastic Four to Pittsburg or something, have the Avengers in California or Washington, the real team not the West Coast Avengers, just somewhere that isn’t New York. It might seem a shame to separate Spidey from his friends in the FF, but Reed easily has the ability to make instant teleporters and Johnny can fly. Whatever, it’s not a big deal, just give them some space.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Headcannon

I was feeling nostalgic thinking of the show and had this thought, where did Yusei, Jack and Crow learn to ride their duel runners? The show says that the duel runner Jack stole from Yusei was the first one he built, but they already knew how to drive and do so well enough that Jack became the King of turbo duels shortly thereafter. All three do some pretty spectacular stunts while riding, and that’s not the kind of thing you learn in a day. So I was thinking, Satellite’s a dumping ground for junk and trash, and something that probably became a lot less popular after duel runners were invented are regular old motorcycles. What if the guys found some, or parts of some that Yusei and Crow then built into bikes, and taught each other how to ride. Martha’s great but there’s no way she had the time to keep constant supervision over all the kids she was raising all the time. It’s canon that Yusei, Jack, and Crow had the time and lack of supervision to get caught up in gang fights, so clearly they had pretty free reign to get up to who knows what. So we’ve got three pre-teen boys with little supervision who find and reconstruct some old motorcycles where they then teach themselves how to drive. They would have had plenty of space to run around and I imagine they probably dared each other into doing stupid stunts. They also probably taught themselves turbo duels with regular duel disks. I’m just picturing them being the adrenaline junkies that they are and doing all sorts of stupid stuff that probably eventually ended in the three beat up motorcycles being destroyed and then after they met Kyousuke and made their gang. We never got a full idea how long that stuff went in for, but I’m guessing only like a year or so. So, pre-teen trio teach themselves to drive and run their bikes into the ground over the course of a few years. Then the three, probably age 14-ish meet Kyousuke and all that stuff happens. The three split after the gang fell apart, at some point Yusei falls in with the three friends we see at the start of the show and he builds his first duel runner. This was something he probably started after their motorcycles broke and worked on off and on over the next three-ish years until Jack steals it at age 16-ish. Two years later and we’ve got the beginning of the show with Yusei at 18.

Naruto Thoughts

It’s kind of funny to go through AO3 and see how pervasive certain canon has become that has either been implicitly or explicitly contradicted by the text. Little stuff and big stuff scattered throughout.

Like, how everyone assumes Kakashi only read Icha Icha, but I’m pretty sure the implication is supposed to be that, during the bell test, it was his first time reading the series. Then there’s all this stuff about how Kakashi never taught Team 7 anything just because we never see it in the page. It’s pretty clearly implied that time has passed between the bell test and the Wave Arc, with the assumption being that training happened during that time. I think Kishimoto just doesn’t like drawing training scenes. Then there’s the bit about Sakura being super weak, like yeah, she’s not written super well and she’s definitely weaker than the boys, but her standard is still super human. Sakura, even in the first half of the manga, would be able to beat any regular person without any kind of problem. Sasuke seems to lose a lot of personality too, he didn’t get all stoic until after the time skip, he’s actually pretty expressive throughout the first half. Then there’s the idea that Naruto was outright abused by the citizens of Konoha. Okay, so we have no idea how he was taken care of between baby to kid in an apartment, but there’s nothing to indicate that he was treated nearly as horribly as a lot fic seem to write him to be. In the flashbacks it looks like he was pretty much the target of a lot of neglect and poor treatment with a lot of glares and people talking badly about him. But I don’t think there’s any evidence he was physically harmed. Not that abuse needs to be physical to be bad but people seem to really like to turn Naruto’s backstory into just the worst. The Sandaime might have made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t think even he would have allowed Naruto to be the regular target of people throwing things at him and feeding him rotten food. I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny how things got all twisted around in the fandom.

Fandom Complaint

I really hate the Marvel Superfamily trope for a number of reasons, mostly centering on the infantilization of Peter Parker and the erasure of his actual family in favor of Steve and Tony which makes me sick, I actually like that pairing but just give them their own kid, Peter’s characters is so OOC in all those stories anyway, just go all the way and make an actual OC.

But whatever, right now the thing that pisses me off the most about Marvel Superfamily is that they’ve stolen the term “Superfamily” from Superman and his actual family. How am I supposed to look up content about Chris, Conner, Jon, Kara and various related family members if Superfamily isn’t about the actual Superman Family?