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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
The thought I’ve had about Secret Invasion is that the titular Secret Invasion isn’t the plot but the reveal that a bunch of Skrulls are living on Earth is leaked causing a panic about a Secret Invasion and subsequent anti-alien fervor, not helped by that whole Thanos thing and the multiple alien invasions
I think this would probably be a fresh novel way to handle it without any painting refugees as having sinister schemes
Edited by Bocaj on May 27th 2021 at 11:44:33 AM
Forever liveblogging the Avengers@Falrinn- I was struck by a horrible thought When we last see Monica in Wandavision, she's about to go into space with some friendly Skrulls. I hope they don't start experimenting on her.
@Bocaj - That would be a good approach. I'm also reminded of how I thought that Doctor Who did a good job with the Zygons in terms of recognizing the Unfortunate Implications and presenting the alien infiltrators, including their extremist leader sympathetically.
With regards to Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Keep in mind that the Eternals don't exist yet. They are a non-entity, about to be introduced as a concept to the MCU for the very first time. This means the writers have all the flexibility in the world to come up with whatever they want as the Eternals' background and rationale for suddenly being important to the story when they never were before. They have the opportunity to introduce these characters in a way that justifies why we're only hearing about them now.
If that introduction is, "We have always been here, and we have guided and shepherded humanity, but have never interfered," then it invites questions about why they've done such a fucking terrible job of guiding and shepherding humanity. When you introduce a plot point to a story that says that history has proceeded down a course guided by intelligent beings, then you're going to have to reconcile the course of history having been guided by them.
You could also, like... not say that the characters you're introducing have been shepherding humanity through all of history and the events of the story up to this point. You could not write that, and write something else instead. The Eternals don't exist yet; they can be written however you want to write them. You're the writer; you get to decide if you want to tell your story in a way that makes your protagonists look like a bunch of uncaring assholes.
If you don't want people asking where your guiding and shepherding god-beings were during the Holocaust, don't write that they were guiding and shepherding humanity during the Holocaust.
A decision was made to tell this story in a way that raises all kinds of questions about why the Eternals felt the need to influence the course of human history but didn't feel the need to do anything about the wars, genocides, and the half-extermination of all life on the planet. Thus, the story needs to have some pretty good answers for those questions.
You cannot write a character as having always been present and having been invested in the events transpiring, then throw up your arms and go, "It's not MY JOB to explain why my character never actually helped anyone despite ostensibly having a mission statement that involves helping people!"
Edited by TobiasDrake on May 27th 2021 at 9:58:31 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.They may just have shitty standards
If Sersi is supposed to be the inspiration for Circe then at some point she took a look at Odysseus and thought “yup, that’s some premium bone material”
Of course that’s just a personal taste thing but she also turned a bunch of people into pigs and forced Batman to sing in front of an audience
Forever liveblogging the Avengerstl;dr: If you introduce a character and say that they guided the course of human history then, by definition, the course of human history becomes their fault. And most of human history is bad.
This is why the Eternals "guiding but not interfering" is so perilous. It sounds like an attempt to say that everything good that humans did is because of them, but everything bad was just us being shitty while they stood back and let us.
Edited by TobiasDrake on May 27th 2021 at 10:07:16 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Humanity's accomplishments good or bad are their own. The Eternals probably aren't that involved.
Edited by Cortez on May 27th 2021 at 2:58:11 PM
The difference between "Aliens built the Pyramids" and "Aliens taught Egyptians how to build the Pyramids" is that there is functionally no difference. Either way, the Pyramids wouldn't have existed without the aliens making it so, and thus are no longer a marvel of human engineering prowess (and extensive slave labor that we don't like to talk about).
Edited by TobiasDrake on May 27th 2021 at 10:55:06 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Honestly, at some point, you can't impose reality upon a universe that is ridiculous to begin with.
It stifles the imagination and creativity to adhere real-life history. We might as well ask where was Odin when the Nazis rose to power. Or perhaps ask if Odin is the reason we have all these human technology. Ultimately, it doesn't matter because comic books explore the absurd and tell good stories along with it.
The fact that there exist a talking raccoon and a talking cartoon duck tells me people shouldn't take these things too seriously.
I don't really think I have a lot more to say on the subject. While I do agree that some sort of explanation is warranted as to why the Eternals didn't intervene in humanity's darker chapters, the possible explanations are many and varied.
Some might just be a case of there's being only so much ground 10 people can cover regardless of what they can do. Or that they did intervene in subtle ways, which is why said darker chapters weren't even worse.
It's likely the distinction they draw is that they won't go in and do things for humanity themselves, but will occasionally approach individual humans to give advice.
And the pyramids aren't something you'd need sophisticated engineering knowledge to design. Anyone who tries stacking rocks together will quickly realize a pyramid is the most sturdy shape. It's the logistics of quarrying, shipping, and getting the stones in place that takes a large, well-run organization.
The Egyptians taught aliens well this art of pyramid building and preparing their dead to scare Abbott and Costello
Forever liveblogging the AvengersWe do actually know where Odin was during the development of human history. Odin was in Asgard sitting on his throne of imperialist gold, patting himself on the back about how cool it was that he owned those Frost Giants that one time and giving not a single solitary shit about humanity or their world.
Odin sucks and used the Earth as little more than a storage vault to dump a dangerous artifact - and, later, to dump his aggro son. He's utterly disengaged from humanity's development because he doesn't really care about the people he stepped on to claim his power, and ultimately he is not the hero of the piece.
Edited by TobiasDrake on May 27th 2021 at 11:20:36 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
This, about Odin.
It's important to remember that Odin in the MCU isn't a god. He's not, like, in charge of the Earth or anything, or particularly invested in its development. He's a ruler of another planet who happened to be on Earth one time since a pivotal battle in a war he was fighting happened to unfold there, and as a result people starting telling stories about him.
He's no more inherently involved in Earth's messes than - say - Talos is.
I think if they play it right, an evil faction of Skrulls would work better than just the Kree again. First, it's more realistic than just having Always Lawful Good Skrulls and Always Chaotic Evil Kree. Instead, they can have secret wars as a legitimately complex issue. They can still have an anti-racism aesop by having a group of people acting on nothing but race-fueled hatred only make the situation worse, maybe playing right into the evil faction's hands. Kind of a Twilight Zone "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" thing.
Edited by FGHIK on May 27th 2021 at 1:34:09 PM
Yeah, I don't think Black-and-White Morality is ever realistic. Pretty much any real world group of people, unless the category is literally defined by evil (EG Nazis), is going to have people of all shades of morality within it. Having all Skrulls be good and all Kree be evil not only seems less interesting but it's kind of racist.
And since I didn't technically mention it, on the flipside I would like to see a good faction of Kree. Real people aren't all evil. Even if the Kree empire itself is inherently evil, there should be some Kree who fight against it.
Earth is one of the Nine Realms, and Odin styles his reign and his heir as Protector of the Nine Realms, so he's taken some responsibility for it. Plus he also uses it as storage for dangerous things he won't keep on Asgard.
Also, re: the Egyptian pyramids, they probably weren't built by slaves
, but by farmers whose farms were underwater during the inundation. Besides, the pyramids were mostly built by the gods to save on costs and time.
Edited by Ayasugi on May 27th 2021 at 2:43:55 PM
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Well, we kinda had that with Mar-Vell already, but it'd be nice to see more of that.
Edited by lbssb on May 27th 2021 at 11:44:37 AM
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Sort of related to that, in light of some of the Kree and Skrull characters in the comics (and because the Fantastic Four are not yet in the MCU), I have to assume that at some point the Kree and Skrulls are going to figure out how to give themselves powers that allow them to go toe-to-toe with Carol.