Year: 2016

Join me at 8:30.

PAD

The fact that Iron Fist is Danny Rand, a white guy, is integral to the character. As I recall, he even gets push back from Asians because it’s felt that a white man has no business acquiring the fist in the first place. To cast an Asian as Danny Rand 100% changes the character. He’s no longer Iron Fist, at least how he was created.

Basically, let’s look at it this way: We have had in more recent years another story about someone who seems incredibly unlikely to become a kung fu master who winds up mastering the traits and becomes a mighty warrior. It’s called “Kung Fu Panda.” To declare that an Asian should portray Danny Rand is like saying, “We should have a tiger portray Po.” Any reasonable individual would say, “But wait…if you cast a tiger, it’s no longer Kung Fu Panda. It’s Kung Fu Tiger.”

Exactly.

Now you can chalk up his origins to white imperialism or privilege or whatever you want. But ultimately he’s been around for nearly forty years; he is what he is. To take modern day sensibilities and layer it onto a character created in the 1970s in order to completely change the character is ridiculous. Especially when those sensibilities are so narrowly curtailed along racial cliches that the thought is, “He knows kung fu; therefore he must be Asian!” Why did no one protest when Ant-Man or Peter Quill or Doctor Strange was not cast with an Asian actor? And for the record, my sifu is Greek.

Personally, I’m hoping Iron Fist runs into Shang Chi. How cool would THAT be?

PAD

So while we were driving to the comic book store today, we were discussing how Paramount/CBS was coming down like a ton of bricks on “Axanar,” the new fan-made Star Trek film, and the circumstances that had resulted in it.

And Kath said, “Its become a major conflugration.”

And I said, “What? A what? A ‘conflugration?’ What the hëll is that? That’s not a word.”

(It’s not. I ran it through Merriam Webster and the Urban Dictionary. It doesn’t exist. So don’t tell me about some instances you found on Google because I don’t care.)

But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It’s a combination of “confluence” and “conflagration.” It’s when a series of things comes together to create a metaphorical inferno of screw-ups.

So everyone start using it because I want this to become a real word.

PAD

So it was brought to my attention on Twitter that Scans_Daily is still talking about me. Or perhaps more accurately, talking about not talking about me.

To recap: Seven years ago, someone decided to post half of an issue of X-Factor which I openly begged people not to spoil. Because it was so much of the issue, I brought it to Marvel’s attention. As a copyright defender, I felt obliged to do so (just as people inform me when they discover my books on pirate sites.) I didn’t approach the mods myself because I wasn’t the copyright holder and thus didn’t have the right to.

My expectation was that Marvel would have the pages taken down. Instead Livejournal, who hosted the site, shut down the entire thing because of copyright violation.

Did they blame themselves for causing the site to be taken down? Of course not. They blamed me. And to get back at me, once they reconstituted the site elsewhere, they declared my works were to be banned from the site forever. (They also sabotaged my Wiki page, cried out for boycotts, and flooded my website with diatribes, but that’s neither here nor there.) The ostensible reason was that it was out of respect to my wishes, even though it in fact flew in the face of my wishes. I specifically said that if they remained within the constraints of copyright, reproducing a couple panels or pages, I’d be fine with that. That if they wanted to reproduce more of something to which I owned the copyright, they simply had to come to me and ask. Nope. No go. No Peter David on Scans_Daily ever again, in order to “respect my wishes” that I never made.

So now it’s seven years later, someone asked about posting something of mine, and it’s thirty seven replies. Some people are being reasonable, and some are being dìçkš, which is pretty much the most that one can expect from the Internet.

Do I still believe I did the right thing? Of course. I did what I had to: I reported a copyright violation. If it had been ten pages of “Fallen Angel,” I’d have handled it myself, but I didn’t hold the copyright to X-Factor, so I told the folks who did. Was I expecting the site to be taken down? Good lord, no. I was quite new to it and had no idea that they were in violation of Livejournal’s term of service, which would result in them getting the heave ho.

If I’d known that they would get shut down, would I have done it differently? Yeah, maybe. I might have violated procedure and contacted the mods directly (although honestly, considering the amount of hostility that was fired off at me when I actually interacted with them, I’d have had no idea if they would’ve listened.) That’s always the oldest question, isn’t it. “If you’d known then what you know now.” It’s really a meaningless question because we all have to make our decisions based on the information we have at the time.

Do I regret anything? Yeah; I think I overreacted to the idiot who said they wanted me to die in a fire. That really pìššëd me off at the time. But I shouldn’t have let that get to me. That’s probably because the level of discourse on the Internet, and the world in general (*cough* Trump *cough*) has deteriorated so spectacularly that it’s hard to get a rise out of me anymore. I mean, when I had a stroke, one jerk declared that he was happy and hoped I’d die in a sea of my own šhìŧ. And I read that and just laughed. I’m 59 and insults from random jáçkáššëš just don’t bother me anymore.

In any event, if Scans_Daily still feels the need to keep punishing me for the actions that they took and refuse to accept that they caused, then fine. Whatever.

Hope that answers it.

PAD

ADDENDUM: Just for the record, if any of the Scans_Daily moderators wish to contact me directly at padguy@aol.com to see what can be worked out, I would be happy to speak to them. And for the record, I obviously don’t think everyone on Scans_Daily are idiots. The whole of no group could be idiots. Except Trump supporters.

This attempt to stonewall the SCOTUS for eleven months is the most blatant example of the GOP refusing to do their job since they shut down the government over a decade ago. I wonder how it would be if they had their own jobs on the line.

I wonder how they’d react if we got a petition going that said quite simply, “If you do not have a new justice on the Supreme Court within three months, then come November, and every election November after that, we, the people, will vote you out of office. We will hand Congress back to the Democrats because you are unable and/or unwilling to do your job.”

If we got a million people or more to sign it, from both parties, I wonder how that would go down?

Hëll, ten million.

PAD

So you’ve just had a meeting in which you decided that you definitely would not have ANY hearings for a new Supreme Court justice until after Obama leaves office (clearing the way for Obama himself to be nominated should a Democrat win, but never mind that.)

The excuse, given by the Majority whip John Conryn–when asked if Obama would be allowed to select the next member of SCOTUS–was: “No, after the next president is selected. That way the American people have a voice in the process.”

Please understand that I say this will all due respect:

WE ALREADY HAD A VOICE IN THE PROCESS, YOU ÃSSHØLÊ! WE ELECTED OBAMA IN THE FIRST PLACE, REMEMBER?! WE ELECTED HIM TWICE! NOW GET OUT OF HIS WAY AND LET HIM DO HIS GØÐÐÃMN JOB, YOU FÙÇKWÍT!

Thanks for listening.

PAD

Bottom line, he is a Jewish socialist. This country doesn’t elect a Jewish socialist. Most of the country doesn’t even understand what a socialist is; they think socialism is interchangeable with communism. And he’s Jewish. There’s still plenty of anti-Semitism out there.

With those two huge targets on his back, the GOP attack machine will slice him and dice him. There’s nothing more they can do to Hillary, because they’ve been doing it for twenty years and she’s still here.

What worries me is that when Hillary wins the nomination, the Bernie supporters will bail and just refuse to vote for Hillary. Unless she does the smart thing and makes him her running mate. I just hope to God that they don’t bail, because we cannot, CANNOT, have the GOP running the White House. If that happens:

Good-bye to health care. Good-bye to legalized abortion. Good-bye to environmental protection. Good-bye to sanity.

Please, folks: whatever Democrat gets the nod, VOTE FOR THEM. The alternative is unacceptable.

PAD