Weirdly I'd be one to scale back G'iah to just Extremis, Ghost's intangibility, and Carol's photon powers. Then modify the latter so that G'iah glows green when she goes Binary Mode, and she's capable of shooting green flames, akin to Abigail Brand (since that's who most people theorized Emilia Clarke was playing before it was revealed she'd be playing G'iah). I think the result would be a powerful but not "ludicrously overpowerful" Skrulleesi.
Edited by dmcreif on Aug 23rd 2023 at 8:39:07 AM
Okey Dokey!Wong could have broken Abomination out in Endgame and sent him back right after the battle. He already got him out to help him as a sparring partner, so doing that for a battle decisive for the fate of the universe could be acceptable too.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.Alternate ending to Secret Invasion.
- Fury: *shoots Gravik in the head during the presidential assassination shootout*
- Gravik: *regenerates*
- Fury: Hang on, is that fucking Extremis!?
- Gravik: That's just one of the abilities I now—
- Fury: You know that shit is violently unstable, right?
- Gravik: The hell are you talking ab— *explodes*
Pillar of Garbage argues that while the show has problems Gravik isn't one of them. He points out that unlike in many cases where the villain is trying to solve a problem the hero is unaware of or reluctant to deal with, there are heroic and sympathetic characters actually trying to find a home for the Skrulls while Gravik is focused on conquest.
The problem isn't Gravik (though the show does keep trying to explain/justify him), it's everyone who goes along with Gravik for no particular reason (this is most obvious in the Skrull Council, where, after making a big deal about only one of them having the moral fortitude to say no to 'let's commit genocide' she basically just vanishes from the story, leaving essentially all of our non-focus Skrulls on Team Gravik).
And of those who oppose him, only Talos does so on moral grounds. Gi'ah does for revenge. His men do because he starts murdering them for no reason. Fury's wife does because she doesn't want to kill Fury...
The problem is that the morally right solution to the Skrull dilemma is this:
- Skrulls should be allowed to just stay here and integrate with Earth society.
- And they shouldn't be forced to sacrifice their cultural identity to do it.
That's it. That's the solution. Integration of the Skrull refugees with their host planet should be what we're trying to achieve.
Instead, Talos is the only character in the entire show who even comes close to holding these beliefs, on both the protagonist and antagonist side. He's caught between NIMBY Fury who's sympathetic to the Skrull plight but keep it the fuck off my planet and the rest of the Skrulls who are totally down to genocide the humans and steal their land for themselves.
Gravik wouldn't be a problem if, like, it was just him. But he's the face of a portrayal of refugees ripped right out of the pages of an InfoWars screed.
Talos is the one good guy in this entire thing. And for that, he's portrayed as a naive fool who dies to kick off his own people's genocide.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 31st 2023 at 12:56:55 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
I know you've described Fury as being NIMBY multiple times, but I'm not entirely sure it's fair to call him that. Yes, he is constantly complaining that Skrulls can't stay on Earth, but that's only because he's scared of the persecution the Skrulls will face if they reveal themselves. It's a far cry from Ritson, who is actually being NIMBY because he's freaking out over the fact that Rhodey was a Skrull.
Now that said, the fact that Fury is written so poorly does kinda obscure that (especially when he was using Talos and his family as a personal spy network). And I 100% agree that Talos being the only good Skrull was a horrible narrative decision. If anything, there should be more good Skrulls than evil Skrulls, especially given how much of an angry, irrational man Gravik is.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Aug 31st 2023 at 1:04:10 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."The show seems to have been made with:
- Constant rewrites due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which seems to have been the original plotline for the Skrulls to trigger WW3.
- ANNOYANCE that the Skrulls were good guys and an attempt to reverse that.
- So many Right wing talking points they had to have been deliberate including Fury praising Fox news.
Yeah this does keep coming back to the show never properly justifying why the obvious solution of just giving the Skrulls their own land like the Asguardians have on Earth isn't something they could do. It's just something fans have to Fan Wank over.
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Fury praising Fox is ironic, given how the guy talking is shown to have been replaced by a Skrull. It kinda reminds me of how people said Joseph McCarthy was described as being the best asset the Kremlin ever had, or something among those lines.
What gets me is that they're not even allowed to try. Fury isn't reacting to an existing anti-Skrull sentiment among the humans. He's reacting to an assumed anti-Skrull sentiment that he's just decided will occur.
He thinks integrating Skrulls with humans will be a rocky and difficult road, and his solution isn't that we should try and do it in a way that will minimize the culture shock. It's that we shouldn't bother. Integration is hard and not worth the effort.
Stay in the closet. Stay hidden. Stay in your designated spaces while I negotiate with the people who committed your genocide to see if they're willing to take you back.
Oh, but be sure to do all this work for me while you're at it.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 31st 2023 at 1:15:58 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Right. Because while Fury's being an aggressive NIMBY, the entire Skrull race are written like Alt-Right caricatures of "refugee invasion at our borders!"
So he's fretting about how Skrulls need to leave because he doesn't want them integrating into human society, while they're all off cackling maniacally and plotting genocide. Everybody sucks here.
Except Talos. Who dies from how much he doesn't suck.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 31st 2023 at 1:23:19 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Also why does Fury need a separate fake grave just to hold his eyepatch? He couldn't put the goo and the gun and the other gun and the eyepatch all in one fake grave?
I mean, that's easily the worst thing in the show. Honestly, it was pretty much perfect until that happened.
regulation pigeonI have to agree regarding the council scene because I personally hated that scene. Gravik is summoned to be called out for his behaviour, he gives one speech, punches the one guy who hates him, turns out to have one member on his side, and the others immediately are A-okay to make a 180 and name him general in the same reunion that was meant to punish him. That's ridiculous. No clever subversion of the council, no manipulation, no Coup, no assassination of the Council; he just gets them on his side in one not even that impressive speech about how humans sucks and will probably kill themselves anyway. I mean come on, that just felt rushed!
I kept expecting the revelation that Gravik was just a catspaw for the rich and evil Council that has its designs on conquering Earth.
And he never realizes he's an Unwitting Pawn.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.It occurs to me that Talos is the all-loving, idealistic hero who keeps trying to see the best in people, and who is usually the main character in a story. That he gets constantly insulted or ridiculed by Fury and eventually killed in a senseless sacrifice does not speak very high of the ideals of that show (especially since I can't help comparing this series to the Doctor Who Zygon two-parter that had almost the exact same premise).
I hope Fury will be a background character in The Marvels or that they will revert to his previous characterisation because this series killed pretty much any interest I had for the character (which I quite liked so far). Sonya, on the other hand, is a character I want to see a lot of (and having her engaging in Snark-to-Snark Combat with Valentina would probably be golden).
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.They'll probably revert his characterization. Secret Invasion's Fury isn't the standard for MCU portrayals, to the point that there are even moments where he seems like a completely different character entirely.
"I need to handle this because we shouldn't be relying on superheroes to clean up our shit."
Excuse me, what? NICK "Avengers Initiative" FURY, Nick "There was an idea" Fury, Nicholas J. "They wanted to make Hydra weapons but I thought superheroes were a way better idea" Fury, thinks we need to dial back and stop looking to superheroes to save the day?
Excuse me?
This man agreed to torch S.H.I.E.L.D. despite firmly believing that S.H.I.E.L.D. was salvageable, purely out of admiration for Captain America. And given his history with Captain Marvel, that's the second time he betrayed his own badge because one of his favorite superheroes asked him to.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 1st 2023 at 8:52:25 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

The silliest part is that the whole Ghost and Abomination blood thing could easily be fixed. They could have just changed it from "we got the blood from the Battle of New York" to "we collected blood samples from all superhumans we could find over the course of the various movies". Admittedly that would have still left plenty of problems, such as Ghost's blood being hard to collect what with her being intangible, the various heroes whose powers aren't dependant on their DNA, the Black Council and Thanos being reduced to dust, or how the fuck Gravik and Gi'iah master these powers so fast (better than the actual owners in some cases). But it would at least be slightly less ridiculous.
Of course in my opinion the very idea of having all powers put into one/two characters instead of just making them power sets distributed among Skrulls as an infiltration tool was a mistake to begin with.