Because the sum total of her appearances gives that picture? Seriously though, it's accurate afaIk, and it doesn't say that she is currently; a Complete Monster; somebody simply got the Moral Myopia Protagonist-Centered Morality idea of stating that her father was one, without considering that she herself used to be even worse, so I modified it. She did use to torture, mindrape, dehumanise, enslave, or make people kill themselves for kicks, remember? She simply looks good to men and powerful to women, so the most genuinely evil part of our natures have a tendency to applaud her for it.
Well, she's not evil since... 1992. And all the Character Development she had since then says something about her. Then, there's also X-Men: Manifest Destiny #2...
Edited by Ryudo33
No, she still largely thinks the way real world style genuinely evil people do, and change doesn't work like that (sudden switch) for such ridiculously extreme cases. She's simply more ambiguous about it, and isn't Complete Monster material anymore.
Edited by antvasima
I'm sorry, but what is "real world genuinely evil people"? You know, people are people, and there's no such thing as "Good vs. Evil" in Real Life... Anyway, I don't think it's a Moral Myopia case. She's not "evil" since 1992 or 1993, and had spent more time as a heroine than as a villain, so...
Edited by Ryudo33
It's a bit more complex than that, as I don't subscribe to absolute What Is Evil? amorality. There are definitely plenty of people who are downright ridiculously evil existing in Real Life, and hopefully an even greater number of genuinely good ones, although the thing is that the majority are "just people" as you say, whereas the genuinely evil or genuinely good ones generally tend to be mixed together on all sides.
If you want my full analysis regarding the true nature of ridiculously extreme evil, then the room here is far too limited, but a absolutely entitled, and incredibly petty, casual serial-torturer, rapist, and murderer driven by an intense feeling of supremacism definitely qualifies.
If you wish a far more in-depth exploration, please free to read the entirety of my story if you wish. It's where I originally started to process all of my impressions.
Still she has grown more ambivalent. It's just that I can't really make a coherent picture out of what the writers are trying to sell, or more fairly, the odd cards they are attempting to deal with /retcon here and there into some semblance of sense.
It's like they are trying to synch together two or more different characters that have almost nothing to do with each other, and repeatedly contradict, including regardign her history. On the one hand there are her established origins, on the other she is shown to strongly oppose rapists and slavers, on the third she does equivalent things with a sarcastic One-Liner pretty regularly. And nobody finds anything odd with it, or even applaud her as a great role model... Well, somebody with quite typical The Sociopath ruthless and sadistic social-Darwinian supremacist perspective, and who has raped, tortured, broken, or murdered lots of people, but that's supposedly a great role-model simply because she makes it look sexy, witty, and dominant?
Then again, I obviously also do very much like the idea of allowing people the chance to turn nicer, but she still does the old habits frequently enough, somehow without anybody caring, that it turns very hard to take as something natural. If she struggled with herself NOT to mind-rape, torture, or othervise traumatise people for life rather than actually DOING it over and over, while sounding like a completely arrogant Jerkass, that would be much easier to swallow. However, as it is I just see it in a the real world context of cheeering on Silvio Berlusconi (Italy's biggest mob-boss, most corrupt businessman, major Benito Mussolini-admirer, and the closest thing to a tyrant in western Europe) mixed with a deviant date-rapist. Celebrating true premeditated and extremely proud "evil as an expression of sanity" has never been something that I can intuitively understand.
I haven't quite managed to come to terms with/wrap my head around it/finished processing this weird tendency in popular culture, or even society, yet. Too much of a lingering Wide-Eyed Idealist perhaps, but I suppose that I'm slowly getting into the acceptance stage.
But again, Emma sends far more conflicted signals and seems to swing from one approach to the next Depending on the Writer. Matt Fraction does seem like a reasonably nice and levelheaded fellow though, so I suppose that he may be able to straighten it out somewhat. As I understood it Chris Claremont considered even Mystique as considerably more redeemable than the White Queen, so maybe they could simply talk in-depth about it to straighten it out as well as possible?
Edited by antvasima
Whoa. You got me. Thanks.
I like Matt Fraction's vision of Emma, anyway. To him, Emma Frost clearly isn't a villain anymore, and I think other writers should maintain it.
Edited by Ryudo33
I don’t think Emma is overtly evil (or at least she hasn’t been since her Hellfire Club days), she’s just a person who comes from a really hard place whose moral fiber has been frayed. She has a set of beliefs that many others would consider flawed or skewed, and she defends these beliefs with a ruthlessness born of a difficult past.
Emma frequently means well, but she often has problems with the means she uses to get to an end. The best example of this that I can think of was the abandonment of the depowered mutants following M-Day. Some of these folks had a long history and deep attachments to the X-Men, and considered them family, but were cast aside coldly nonetheless. Emma defended her decision by saying that she did it to protect those that were depowered (as she thought that being around the X-Men would prove dangerous to them). I have no doubt that she actually believed this, but there’s also no doubt that there were other options available, and that the whole thing could have been handled both differently and better. Emma may have meant well, but all she managed to do was add insult to injury, and wound up damaging these folks far worse than they already were. (Personally, I really hope this comes back to bite her in the ass someday.)
I have to be honest, I haven’t been a fan of Emma Frost since Generation X, but I’ve known a couple of folks like her in real life, and I think I can try to look at her objectively (every character deserves that) and figure out what makes her tick. She honestly tries to get to the same place as the other X-Men, but the path she chooses often takes her off the moral map. That’s the way she’s wired. At least until a different writer comes along.
As stated above, a regular person wouldn't inflict ridiculous amounts of creative supremacism-motivated torture, rape, dehumanisation, brainwashing, enslavement, and murder, simply due to having crappy, although "poor little rich girl" family situation, and that was all that motivated her before becoming a villain. Heck, even I have suffered considerably worse trauma than that, and I'm extremely averse to hurting anybody. If you compare it to the ridiculous trauma level of X-23, Wolverine, or Magik, it turns downright silly.
Lecturing a class (in how to smugly mentally violate the personal integrity of random celebrities) while a massacre was going on does somewhat qualify, but happened much later than her main sins, and as far as I remember she seemed mostly unfaced by it. Traditionally speaking she does read as an extreme (as opposed to the far more common harmless)-level sociopath after all. Extreme filters (along with creative sadism, extreme manipulation, derogatory supremacism, lack of conscience-restrictions, etc), is commonly their thing, although as in most cases, likely far more due to assuming, or being memetically infected by, this type of ideology than actual brain disorder.
As I see it, the manner in which you rewrote the page is extremely biased in the other direction, whereas the former included both views.
Consider that the sum total of her past actions literally makes her into a mixture of the inventive torture of Jeffrey Dahmer, the Corrupt Corporate Executive supremacist applauded celebrity mafioso Silvio Berlusconi, a casual serial-date-rapist, along with at least "My Sweet Sixteen" level vanity, and then that the current profile does almost everything in its power to excuse and justify that, and it turns extremely Unfortunate Implications disturbing.
And no, by real world standards a hardcore supremacism level ego serial-torturer, murderer, and casual rapist, doing all of the above in full control of her own actions without any mental illnesses, handicaps or similar whatsoever, and strictly motivated by her own sadistic supremacist mindset somehow getting away without any served time whatsoever, and then played as a "tragic, sympathetic strong female role-model" is not "paying hard", not remotely. "Paying Hard" would be "an eye for an eye", which admittedly, is technically impossible at her level, but regardless simply occasionally feeling bad and continuing much of the transgressions in the meantime definitely qualifies as Karma Houdini, not subverted in the least.
However, Fraction (who I like as a person due to his handling of Iron Man) has at least acknowledged the issue that in real-world terms her type is probably one of the most impossible to redeem, as it isn't due to handicaps, confusion, bad options, lack of direction, extreme trauma, etc, but of pure systematic calculation. They are that way because it is more advantageous, and that's pretty much it.
Not to mention that naming her father a Complete Monster strictly due to Protagonist-Centered Morality perspective, but ignoring that she really was at least as bad during her partnership with Shaw, seems like Moral Myopia. Ditto for calling it Character Derailment to return her to her roots rather than ignore all the past sins and characterisation completely as was the Generation X case (and as such true Character Derailment and extremely Unfortunate Implications).
Also, you're directly implying that anybody who is extremely uneasy with/dislikes what she represents in terms of narrative message wants to torture and murder her/is somehow automatically "even worse", which isn't remotely true either. That's not the way I think at all (although I have encountered the extremely disturbing "traumatise and rape the uppity female" tendency in anime fanfiction, just not in relation to Emma, in fact going by my experience people who write that kind of thing simultaneously tend to identify with her type of character in the same breath as they long for torturing people who are simply immature and obnoxious, but othervise harmless, preferring the world-vise/pragmatic absolutely ruthless creatively intensely sadistic sociopath untoppable Villain Sue approach). I simply tend to get stuck on sufficiently pervasive tendencies/impressions that feel extremely wrong.
It's the onesided automatic glorification/idolisation/identification, and naming her "the best female character" (role model) in comics (no, seriously, check her Wikipedia page) over plenty of Pillars of Moral Character alternative such as Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Kitty Pryde, Storm, She Hulk, etc (or for that matter the multitudes of compelling but ignored manga or othervise non-American characters), itself that I dislike.
Hence, I'd appreciate if you made an effort to reinsert much of the cut out text, and tone down the adulation. The previous version actually represented an effort to include both views/be neutral, considering the full context of exactly what we are talking about, but it is very possible that there should be further additions. Cutting the rest out as you just did is definitely not the way to go though. Compromises on the other hand, are.
Edited by antva
Lack of arguments leading to typical off-topic nonsense diversion, and founded on Completely Missing The Point. Try making a fanwank case for the "alas, poor supremacist serial-rapist, One-Liner torturer, with the direct opposite of insanity pleas, so let's embrace her as an cool ideal to strive for" apologism that is highlighted in the current version.
I didn't mind the previous reasonable dose of that for a "to be fair" approach, but this type of tendency in fiction in total comes across as intense reverse-morality Moral Myopia, so the current ridiculous extreme of it, not so much.
Edited by antva
Guy, you're comparing her to Silvio Berlusconi, an amoral sadist racist homophobic son of a bitch. It's not even fanwank anymore, it's unjustified hate for a comic book character. Show me a post-1994 issue where she rapes someone, gladly kills with no remorse (except her sister), blah blah blah. Thanks.
Edited by Dedars1
It's a Literal-Minded matter-of-fact impression actually. Amoral, sadist, supremacist, rapist, torturer, murderer, Corrupt Corporate Executive, manipulator, extreme sociopath, strong Magnificent Bastard The Hedonist tendencies, etc... yeah, I think that the two seemed similar. Homophobia (not to mention that Berlusconi is a racist) is an odd one out, but Politically Incorrect Villain doesn't really come up to the scale of much of the rest, and she did use to be a supremacist, although a fictional version.
So Yeah, she started out as a female and much better looking version of Silvio Berlusconi, and I can neither stand endorsements of that type, nor see much matter-of-fact conceptual difference between real-world or fictional concepts in terms of memetic propaganda. There has never been much of a social line of influence between the two going by my experience, and as such idealisation or vilification in one context tend to automatically influence the other in terms of social influence. As Frank Miller almost outright admitted of the movie Three Hundred, it was a piece of propaganda, and it has had an enormous roar-inducing effect on neo-supremacist groups both online, and, yes, in Berlusconi's Italy.
Also, it's not about hatred towards a character, it's hatred towards a narrative moral/idealisation itself, and a dislike for embracing and idolising that, while simultaneously condemning far less genuinely evil types of people (in real world terms). The sum impression comes across as an extremely annoying itch to me.
However, yes, most of it is due to gaining an impression from what she has actually done in the past, and then seeing patch-on justifications for it. She also continues to invade and violate others to extremes in a very offhanded manner, so it's lots of little pieces fitting together into a whole for me. The whole "erase your every happy memory" speech she gave to Elixir does of course stand out in memory, but she recurrently invades, belittles, and plays with people like toys.
For the most recent example (which means that I remember it outright rather than more diffuse blends of thousands of impressions) is when she traumatised the criminal Mandrill for life by making him see all women as monsters along with a trademark Smug Super Hannibal Lecture One-Liner, rather than simply turn him over to the police with a mental block for using his powers or somesuch. I mean the guy already was severely disfigured, so he had it bad enough already, and she could easily have done it in a less traumatising fashion.
Edited by antva
Yeah, I know. Sorry.
It's just when I encounter some really really extreme trend that I then see a sufficient amount of people respond to it eventually gets stuck to me, and I can't seem to get rid of it until I've managed to fit it into some kind of pattern, and barely even then.
I mean, my own distinction between fiction and reality has never been that strong in the first place (standard autism disclaimer), which is why I tend to apply regular ethics when judging the characters, unless it is a blatant comedy setting, and I've read various studies about how easy it is to affect the way people think, had extensive experiences with people online who are ridiculously extreme sociopaths from being influenced by this kind of media, assorted interviews and leaked reports about soldiers who simply like to kill people and giggle about it, civilian or othervise, army recruitment drives focusing on gaming community snipers.
And in the centre of all this there's this huge enormous twisted around memetic cancer of glorifying "Unite for glory against the other! Waaaaaaar! Kill and die for us, you weak-kneed milksops!" casual Catchphrase mass-murderers with personalities matching what in real world terms would be the most genuinely evil/in-control malevolent beings on the planet, against very convenient non-existent threats as the epitome of human achievement.
In reality it's just us, here, alone, with each other, and yet almost all stories focus on is that we should kill, torture, and condemn each other, rather than fight together against nature. Narratives turn slaughter into the inescapable status quo towards which we should always strive, and without which all society would stagnate, "as social-Darwinistic cleansings wouldn't be fulfilled, and everything would get booring if tranquility, harmony, and benevolence ever prevailed, so let's embrace the chaos"...
Matter-of-fact analysed to its parts it's all such a horrible mess of absolute evil lauded as something good beyond approach, and anybody who objects in the slightest is somehow distorted into a wanton sadistic mass-murderer, regardless how pacifistic and compassionate despite severe damage, or in real world terms completely harmless, mentally ill/handicapped or victimised people twisted into convenient catch-all scapegoats, even though they don't remotely tend to be the actual problems in the real world.
Berlusconi's type on the other hand actually is, but as long as anything whatsoever, no matter how intensely malevolent, feels empowering it is deemed automatically good by memetic values systems in media, whereas anybody who is broken from too much damage or torture and just dies away from it is deemed the worst threat to humanity ever (tm)... and the thing is that this isn't just me. It's much of the impression that North American media in large doses gives an impression to a large part of the rest of the world... as absolute evil painted in gold, then deemed beyond reproach. Its influences eventually drown, and destroy us all into gaining a Knight Templar Social Darwinist Acceptable Hard Luck Targets Sadist Show Dead Baby Comedy Blood Knight Diproportionate Retribution eternal torture-fetischism "morality" that is the absolute opposite of any genuine morality. It's very Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy Brain Bleach depressing after drowning in it for a sufficiently long run. The Internet has obviously made the effect even more intense.
Hence, it's definitely not about a single character. It's about being extremely uncomfortable with what she and plenty of others represent, and the tendency to applaud that in combination with writing ridiculously overboard and inaccurate distortion- torture- ridicule- and condemnation- The Power of Hate orgies on almost exclusively completely harmless types of people in Completely Missing The Point mergers with completely opposing types of mentalities, whereas the in real world terms genuinely evil are mixed together with benevolent aspects that just aren't connected to that type of personality in reality. It's very confusing, and I can't make any sense of it.
Gosh knows that I've tried (read my story), but it doesn't seem to help, as writers who read it simpyl assume that I'm thinking like one or the other of the characters (well, technically there are pieces of me in Ryoga and Peorth, and to a lesser extent Nabiki's raw need, if none of her expressions, direction, or extremes). It's a side-effect of makign an excruciating effort attempting to pattern both sides of extremes that I've been ridiculously exposed to I suppose. Each side assumes that I'm part of the other. Oh well.
Going off track again. I'm tired.
Edited by Antvas
So, I see that the Frost entry is still pretty flame baity, anyone want to do something about it. For something like Depending on the Writer, I'd be inclined to just change it to something like "Her relative malevolence is highest under writer X, lowest under writer Y and somewhere in between under writer Z".
Also, I might as well put it out there that I'm rather suspicious that Pupu is Antvas based on their recent edits concerning the character.
Hodor
Why is Emma Frost portrayed as a complete amoral monster on this page?
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