DIY Eschatology DIY Eschatology - Fri, 02 Jun 2017 05:30:43 GMT LiveJournal / __marcelo 5615032 personal NOINDEX DIY Eschatology 100 100 Fri, 02 Jun 2017 05:30:43 GMT So, Wonder Woman __marcelo Non-spoilery things I liked: <ul><br /><li>They got the action scenes perfectly right. *That's* how Diana would fight. And when, and why.</li><br /><li>She's never innocent, she's a sophisticated person in a different context.</li> <br /><li>The combination of Diana's genuine smile whenever Things Are Escalating and the characteristic riff of her theme song is sheer genius.</li><br /><li>Steve Trevor: not an idiot.</li><br /></ul> <br /><br /><br />That Ares did exist, despite his downplaying of his own role in the war, and that after he died there seemed to be general goodwill etc, feels like the writers missing a beat. It shifts at least some of the responsibility for the war off people, which is something a bit iffy for a world war, and cheapens Diana's learning arc about her mission; the difficult part of stopping wars, after all, is precisely that by and large they don't just stop when you kill the right person. (Besides, it looks a bit like DC is already messing up their shared worldbuilding, something Marvel has so far managed to be relatively consistent with).<br /><br />It also leaves the time between <i>Wonder Woman</i> and <i>Batman vs Superman</i> in something of a limbo. After all, at the end of <i>WW</i> Ares <i>is</i> dead, and Diana <i>does</i> want to help humankind, yet at the beginning of <i>BvS</i> she seems to have ceased to fight actively, and of course if Ares was behind wars escalating and getting deadlier, there's that WWII thing to talk about. It's like they initially wanted to tell the story of Diana learning that our wars are sort of our fault, seeing Trevor die (maybe killed by his own people while saving them, or something like that), and deciding "fuck these guys" and going to ground until the whole Doomsday thing made her give the World another chance, but then they decided that'd made the ending to much of a downer, and put Ares back in (I'm not saying that was the Doylean process, it's more of an impression about the layers of the story).<br /><br />The other thing I didn't like is that, if Ares existed and she had to kill him, she shouldn't have killed her like she did, in a display of emotion-fueled overwhelming power. Yes, maybe the point of the movie sort of is love, but it would've been more satisfying had she defeated him in a more battle-like way. (I confess I thought Charlie would put a bullet through <strike>Magneto</strike>Ares's head while he was distracted, maybe after Ares told Diana that whoever killed him would die and be cursed to an eternity of battle in the afterlife. That'd have given closure to a character that didn't have it.) <br /><a name='cutid1-end'></a><br /><br />That was longer than I expected, but that's just because I'm a curmudgeon. I liked the movie, Diana kicks ass, and I pity whoever gets in her way.<a name='cutid1-end'></a> movie diana public 0 Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:06:05 GMT Peace is a techne __marcelo Where and how did Diana learn how to be a diplomat? Everything we've been shown of Themyscira during her life there shows the island as inhabited by a single polity, and one ruled by an immortal (mostly absolute?) monarch at that. You have the interpersonal issues inherent to, well, people, but none of the kind of conflict between social or political groups deriving from competing ideologies or sets of interests for which workable compromises must be found. <br /><br />Even worse, it's a <i>warrior culture</i>, so physical conflict, although within heavily regulated boundaries, is absolutely accepted, and perhaps even encouraged.<br /><br />So why should their Princess &mdash; who rather than a misfit was highly respected and extremely well-trained by the standards of her society &mdash; be any good as a diplomat? I don't question her desire for peace at both social and personal levels, nor her reluctance to fight given alternatives, but effective diplomacy, even when the goal is peace, isn't just about wanting it, it's a skill. It's a form of politics, and Themyscira looks like an awful place to learn politics; too immortal to have to deal with heir hairiness, too small for fights over centralization and delegation of power. And their economy, to whatever degree we know it, looks like "Ancient Greece with magic replacing slaves" (<i>I think</i>), which doesn't even give you space to the Pandora's Box of an urban commercial class or, later, a proletariat. <br /><br />Options: (1) Diana spent quite a bit of time in Patriarch's World learning the nuts and bolts of diplomacy (the Trevor timeline forbids it, but Diana could be old enough for her to have shadowed Talleyrand). (2) The Amazons have a secret school of diplomacy they trained her in before she left the island (but this only punts the problem; do they travel to keep in practice, and/or learn new tricks? that goes against the grain of Amazonian isolationism). (3) Diana is bad at it and knows it (but I've never read her say anything along those lines). (4) Diana is bad at it, doesn't know it, and neither Clark nor Bruce have been able or willing to tell her. Clark probably wishes he could approach the issues as she does, but can't due to his own standing in the world (basically, the Pope can host meetings, but he can't draft treaties). And I bet Bruce sees her directness as, most of the time, useful in the kind of negotiations he makes after scaring the crap out of people in their "highly secure" offices. In the sense of "you might possibly outflank Superman given his cultural, psychological, and geopolitical constraints, but then your options are *me* and the relentlessly idealist Superman-level highly-trained warrior with diplomatic immunity." comics diana public 7