Comic Book Geography

BNHA - A Thought

I’ve noticed something of a trend in BNHA fics that kind of group all of the adult characters into being in the same peer group. This isn’t the case, there’s some pretty drastic age gaps between them all. Most of the teachers, (Eraserhead, Midnight l, Present Mic and the like) are all in their early 30s, they really aren’t that far off from being young adults themselves. I don’t know about all of the various heroes but Endeavor is 45 and All Might is 10 years older than him. All Might did not attend UA with his rival or any of his colleagues, he’s too old. I’m pretty sure he’s actually been being All Might for longer than most of his teacher colleagues have been alive. It just seems weirdly common for people to make him younger so they can have some high school romance back story in shipping fics, or just because they don’t seem to realize it. The whole point of All Might is that he’s been around a really long time, you lose some impact if that isn’t the case.

The Marvel Problem

So I know that the big thing with Marvel that differentiates it from DC was having it exist in the “real world” and not a bunch of made up cities and since the guys writing the characters were all from New York City, that’s where they put them because they knew it best. But I feel like things have grown to the point of ridiculousness, NYC is a big city but it’s not that big. I was watching a YouTube video about how it doesn’t make sense for Miles Morales to not have Peter Parker around to help him out and his points carry over to the overall hero community. Besides that, aside from Spider-Man, it really wouldn’t be a big deal to move most of the heroes out of New York, give them their own space. I know Daredevil was in California for a while, let him move back there, or maybe keep him in New York, he’s pretty small scale so it wouldn’t be a big deal to have both him and Spidey around. But I feel like the Avengers should definitely move to the west coast, and I mean the proper Avengers, not a separate team. I think Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Danny Rand could probably set up shop in, like, Chicago or something, that seems a good fit for them, maybe Felicia Hardy too. The Fantastic Four could move to, like, Albany or something, keep them in New York but give some distance. I don’t know where everyone should go but I really feel Marvel would benefit from putting distance between their heroes, give them space to act. Just a thought.

DCU

It’s probably my Superman bias, but I get really bothered by the trope that has all of the Supers being scared of the Bats. Like, sure, Batman and his kids are cool, but come on, it’s SUPERMAN, he’s the strongest superhero in the world and the rest of them are almost as strong. Superboy I, Superboy II, Supergirl, Power Girl, all of them, it’s just not happening. They respect the Bat Clan, they are incredibly intelligent and well trained heroes, but they aren’t going to seriously be able to beat the Supers, nor would they actually want to. They’re friends, they trust each other. I get that it’s short hand to show a character is bad ass by having their allies be scared of them, but I’ve never really understood why genuine friends who cared about each other would act that way. So yeah, that’s just me.

The Yu-Gi-Oh Problem

I’m going to completely ignore Zexal and on.

I really liked Yugioh 5Ds when I was younger, I don’t really know why considering it was kind of a blatant cash grab, but the English theme was really catchy and I really loved Yusei’s voice actor, I might have had a bit of a crush on Yusei in general. I guess I just totally fell for the cheap “edgy” gimmick, which is funny because it isn’t like DM and GX weren’t dark themselves, but whatever. Yusei is definitely the best protagonist of the three. Anyway, my problem.

DM anime happened in, like, the early 2000s, and GX was supposed to be 10 years later with 5Ds a couple decades after that in some nebulous future point. But all of the shows were produced in the mid to late 2000s, so all of the tech looks pretty much the same across the three shows, though 5Ds has some generic futuristic looking stuff that still manages to look out of date. This really doesn’t work with what we now understand of the progression of our tech, by the time of GX everyone should have migrated to touch screens and, like, holo decks and stuff, not still using the clunky duel disks. And who even know by 5Ds time, the digital age is making things pick up steam, fast. None of it makes sense, as driven home by Dark Side of Dimensions when Kaiba and Yugi has their ridiculous high tech VR duel, makes it look like VRAINS should be the series that comes in 10 years instead of old school GX. Whatever.

Mia Kitty

Sakura’s excitement for her team assignment had faded somewhere around the first hour mark, after all the other teams had been collected by their jounin-sensei. Sasuke has resolutely ignored both her and Naruto the whole time and even the hyperactive blond himself had run out of steam in their long wait. His stupid prank was in place and all three were staring somewhat mindlessly at the chalkboard ahead of them.

It was just as Sakura had resolved to go ask someone if they’d been forgotten that the door to the classroom finally opened. A Kunoichi stepped into the classroom, the eraser balanced on the top of the door fell neatly on top of her head with a plop, prompting a cloud of chalk dust to puff into the air and settle on her head. Naruto immediately started guffawing over it while Sakura jumped to her feet and tried to apologize while internally she was pleased at the silly prank’s success. Sasuke made no real movement.

The Kunoichi who was to be their sensei observed them silently, head tilted slightly. She was pretty, even with most of her face hidden due to the mask covering the bottom half of her face and her hitai-ate tilted to cover her left eye. She was dressed in a standard Shinobi uniform and had her long silver hair pulled back into a ponytail. With a small nod she addressed them, “My first impression of you? ... I hate you, now meet me on the roof in ten minutes.” And with that, she vanished in a swirl of leaves, leaving the three Genin gaping after her.

Superman Problem

So the one thing about the old Superman movies I’ve never liked has been the Jesus analogy. The idea that Joe-El sent his son to earth so he could guide the humans and be their savior. I think Smallville did this too and I didn’t like it then either. Why would a man from a completely different planet who has never been to Earth and has no reason to care anything about it except as the planet where his son is going so he doesn’t die on Krypton care at all about saving humanity? He was facing certain death as his planet died around him and risked a lot n the chance that his son would survive being sent away in a ship, why would he spend any time creating a plan where he ordered his son to be alone and isolated apart from the species he was being sent to spend his life around. It just doesn’t make sense.

AO3 Complaint

It’s really frustrating that AO3 conflates Past relationship tags with the overall relationship tag. If I’m trying to find fics about a specific ship, I don’t want to have to deal with stories that are actually about a different relationship and the one I want is already broken up. I wish there was a feature for just ships that are past or temporary. It’s really annoying when people tag a ship that they plan to break up or are actively writing negatively about. Everyone is free to write about whatever ship they want, I just find it kind of rude for people to tag ships they don’t actually like so that people who do like it and are specifically searching for fics about them end up having to deal with fics that are the exact opposite of what they want to read.

The same thought goes into Tumblr and other social media post where people tag ships that they’re actually against and force people who do like them to read their negativity.

Fanfic Complaint

Why is Hashirama portrayed as such a bad brother in fanfic so often? Or Butsuma being monstrously abusive? Or the Senju clan hating Tobirama because of his looks? I get wanting to garner sympathy for the character but I personally hate the idea of Tobirama having a family that can’t stand him.

Give me long suffering Senju who have long since grown used to weird explosions and odd looking experiments. Give me sappy, overprotective Hashirama who loves to spoil his only remaining baby brother. Give me a Tobirama who is loved and supported by his family and clan.

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.