#supercops

There comes a certain point where your completely overpowered character is simply not fucking allowed to kill people "in self defense" anymore because it's not actual self defence. It's just plain old murder. And if you are killing these people by literally dismembering them while they're still alive, you're just pure evil.

Martha Wells with The Murderbot Diaries really just wants to do slavery apologism rather than do the "cliche" of freeing robots from slavery.

Pro tip, Martha Wells, if you don't want to do the "cliche" of robot rebellions against slavery...maybe don't fucking create a setting where robots are enslaved. No one forced you to write this series. No one is forcing you to keep defending slavery and defending the murder of slaves by your completely overpowered Mary Sues who we all know are literally never under any actual real threat at all.

@uncleasriel said in response to this post, this is way too long for me to reblog again with even longer comments on it:

I was so annoyed that this was the choice for the series second episode. The Lawless Punk Wasteland of New York was a major subject of media fascination, to be sure. To go from Catherine's violent crime to a broader examination of violent crime overall seems like a natural direction to take the series. So why does this feel so bad?

I think it's the way the episode's inciting crime is portrayed - Young Kids Bullying Elderly Folks Because They Have No Morals - feels weird given 2020's sensibilities. it's hard to imagine young folks acting this badly without some justification or provocation. (This is definitely a relic of the 1980s where Inner City Urban Decay was as palpable as Terrorism or Fentanyl Crisis is today). Still, it feels uncomfortable to then see that the vigilante's solution to the hoodlums is to slit them up with claws seems excessive. I get that retributive violence was a common vibe for media of the 80s, but I feel that kicking the crap out of these kids would be sufficient - no need to murder them, except to start the episode with High Stakes.

Jace is such a disappointing character, because ethically he seems like the kind of character in the post George Floyd world we'd celebrate - a black man with a focus on community building, physical fitness, and a desire to help the people around him be able to deal with the problems in their community without having to turn to cumbersome institutions. But Catherine - a monied young woman who went from corporate lawyering to working for the District Attourney to "make a difference" - embodies more faith in the intitution of law and policing than a 2024 audience is willing to grant.

Especially when said attourney is a wealthy white woman at odds with a working class black man!

But Catherine's role as an investigator District Attorney still makes her entrenched in a system unwilling and unable to address the issues safely and effectively. It's quite disgusting here - the black man is using tough-on-crime rhetoric to argue copaganda points about how 'the laws are too lax' while also arguing that murderous vigilantism is the preferred response. Catherine's 'the system works' rhetoric feels very liberal - trust in the Powers That Be, even though we've seen them clearly fail her in the previous episode.

The nihilism of the 'color of our hats' almost seems palatable by comparison - at least there's an admission that the reality is broken, and those with a vested interest in their "team's" well-being will respond well towards their respective community. It's ugly but honest, which is more than Catherine's mealy-mouthed faith in a system that' obviously not working.

It's a cynicism which is at odds with the show's romantic aspirations, however. Vincent's world underground is free of these kinds of evil, and the already strong hints of a close-knit communitarian society in the tunnels would be at odds with such a cynical take. It seems there is a possibility for healthy communites with good information networks to get the word out about malefactors quickly - alas, they are a fantasy underground never-never land world! Definitely nothing the wicked bad surface world could hope to know abut or understand.

This show had won me over me in the pilot, with it's obvious sympathies towards the victims of violence. The suggestion that the Tunnel world was a place free of these evils due to a loving community was intriguing, and Catherine's brush with it forces her to reconsider her life, and use the healing she found there to propel her into helping others in her world. But already pivoting to such a loaded (and racialized) plot, with such aggressively falsely dichitomous take on the solution to the problem of violent crime... I really wish George r.r Martin chose some other plot for ep2!

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this comment is from Febrauary and I only just noticed it now by chance, probably because as the tags say it was written at 2AM lol.

Anyways. My laptop wants to overheat so

First of all this part

Young Kids Bullying Elderly Folks Because They Have No Morals - feels weird given 2020's sensibilities. it's hard to imagine young folks acting this badly without some justification or provocation.

There was very clear reasoning behind the assault on Mrs. Dalby: She's a poor Black woman, and the people who attacked her were racist white people and looking to cause problems and knew they could get away with assaulting a poor Black woman because no one would bother protecting her.

I would not in any sense of the word describe them as 'young kids'. Just because they're white, and because Catherine refers to them as such, doesn't mean they're kids.

They're not bullying her for no reason, it's because they're racist and she's defenseless. She's on a run down filthy train by herself at night just trying to get home. They assault her and try to rob her because they know no one is going to protect her. The only other person who was in the train car already left, leaving her completely at their mercy.

the black man is using tough-on-crime rhetoric to argue copaganda points about how 'the laws are too lax'

That is absolutely not what is happening. He is talking about the systemic injustice that allows privileged people, like white men, to get away with violent crimes against minorities without any consequences, and how the law fails to actually protect the people who are the most vulnerable.

This episode is bad because it's hypocritical and racist. It's okay for Vincent to go around mauling people to protect Catherine, a white woman, but when a Black man does it to protect people who don't have the privilege of being absurdly rich with all the best lawyers and doctors money can buy, including Black women who are getting beaten on the ground and white girls who are about to become the victims of rape, and then suddenly it's bad.

Because it's a Black man using violence to protect the most vulnerable people in his community instead of Vincent, the lion man who only ever seem to protect Catherine, the rich white woman whose father is a powerful lawyer, who has no qualms about casually ripping a hundred dollar bill in half. Which she was casually just carrying around with her without apparently intending to buy anything.

It's a bad episode because it sets a blatant double standard that says using violence to defend people is only okay if you're doing it to protect rich white women.

so literally a supercop.

Superhero:

Someone with super powers who, and this is the crucial part, is actually a hero for the poor, aka, the majority of the population on the gods damned planet, instead of just for the 1% and the people who think worshipping them will mean they get to be a billionaire someday.

Superheroes fight the cops, they fight racism, they fight misogyny, they fight queermisia, they fight ableism, they fight the government, they fight colonization, they fight literally all forms of oppression, including capitalism.

They do not fucking go around beating the absolute shit out of and torturing people living in poverty before handing them over to the cops.

They do not help the cops.

They do not put people in jail.

They are in fact the cops' worst fucking nightmare. Preferably because they do in fact /kill cops/.

Lots of so-called "supervillains" are in this category once you strip away the Marvel Standard Propaganda™ that usually goes something along the lines of:

"This guy thinks poverty is bad and everyone should have all of their basic needs met. to accomplish this he's gonna murder people's babies."

Some examples (from the movies and shows only, I don't know anything about any comics nor do I give a shit. I am not putting in the energy required to keep track of five billion conflicting things)

Erik Killmonger (Marvel, Black Panther)

Arthur Harrow (Marvel, Moon Knight)

?

Supercop, also known as supervillain. But I'm just gonna call them supercops because "villain" gives them too much credit. I can respect a villain. I will never respect a cop.

The people who we're supposed to think are superheroes, but in reality they're literally just cops with even more weapons and even less accountability. They spend their free time beating the shit out of and torturing poor people before handing them over to the cops or throwing them in jail where they know they'll be further tortured and dehumanized and subject to brand new kinds of horror devised for the sole purpose of making their life a living hell.

Examples:

Captain America

Spiderman

Superman

Batman

Ironman

Wonder Woman (she's literally a colonizer. in what way are you surprised)

Here's the supercops.

Wings of Justice, and his two sidekicks, Bill of Rights (no I can't take it seriously either) and Constitution.

Yes, their "superpowers" are being rich and being funded by the city. Their jetpack wings alone cost several billion dollars just to build, not even getting into how much it costs to maintain them. They all get super high tech suits that protect them from literally all injuries and these also all costs billions of dollars.

They also get paid several millions a year just for putting the armour on, but that doesn't include the bribes and extra assignments they'll take on for other rich people if they need some /specific/ poor people beaten to a pulp.