Every kind of nerdery imaginable.

teatimebrutality:

girlsbydaylight:

You know… I guess I was looking at this from the perspective of a comic fan who’s all too used to fanservice being put into everything (including animal-shaped wives) and being ticked about it and not finding it sexy at all.  (The fanservice, I mean.) 

Yeah, yeah. I can completely understand that perspective. 

I’m coming at it super-invested in the specific narrative that Hickman’s been working, so I’m wide-eyed with receptivity to what-this-means-in-this-particular-story.

But, with narrowed-eyes focused on the meta-narrative of gender and sexuality in comics, I get how this looks like “Hey, dudes! Black Bolt’s got five hos on his dick.”

I don’t think that’s a thing AT ALL within the context of this story, because if it was then one of them wouldn’t look like a Dire Wraith, but yeah…when it’s generalised outwards then it totally is.

I will definitely admit that I have a hard time getting past how this appears on the surface (even though I trust your point about there being deeper meaning and themes being played with here), because I feel like I’ve seen this set-up played out before, including Dire Wraith-type wives.  Admittedly, then it’s about power, rather than fanservice, of course.  But a storyline like this still has a lot of uphill ground to cover with me before I stop giving it the side-eye.

Especially because, as much as I’d like to believe in comics writing a story like this from a truly different-than-human-perspective, it is still written by humans, who come along with all our usual human and societal views.  And I always fear there’s the element of “Look, it’s not a het dude fantasy because we’re putting in totally alien wives that aren’t traditionally attractive to human readers, so it’s obviously not about fanservice!” when that’s just a ruse to get the audience reaction off their back.

To be fair, they’re all non-traditionally-human-looking here, so I’m not trying to say that this story is rife with these elements, more that… I have a shitload of skepticism locked and loaded, so it’s going to take a lot to overcome that.

And, honestly, by this point, I think I’m getting more onto the theoretical, rather than discussing this specific storyline (which I do not feel I’m qualified to do so in pretty much any more depth than where we’ve gone here XD), so for this storyline, I will take a step back and try to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes for what’s going on beneath the surface.  :)

p.s.  Comics having a theme going on underneath the surface that’s not blatantly spelled out for the reader, so that what’s normally an icky plot point actually has something different going on?  In comics?  Surely, you jest.  *scoffs*

teatimebrutality:

girlsbydaylight:

What I cannot quite get over is… is Black Bolt supposed to be sleeping with these wives?  Does he have to have sex with his horse-wife?  Is this expected of him?  Are we supposed to be okay with this?  Because I’m okay with blue elf-wife sex (aside from, you know, barf at anyone but Medusa) but… horse-wife sex?

I think what I barf at…and I’m not talking about you or anyone else who specifically ships Black Blot and Medusa as a monogamous couple, because that investment puts you in a particular position… are readers who aren’t okay with the idea that Inhumans would be up for Xenophiliac Polygamous relationships.

Because, given the long history of the Inhumans having some pretty Outer Space attitudes to relationships, it’s only a universalisation of our norms that’d suggest they wouldn’t be.  

You know… I guess I was looking at this from the perspective of a comic fan who’s all too used to fanservice being put into everything (including animal-shaped wives) and being ticked about it and not finding it sexy at all.  (The fanservice, I mean.)  I was also ticked about Black Bolt suddenly having four more wives—half because of Black Bolt and Medusa’s relationship, but also because I really hate how it’s always the dude getting more wives and the story is always about him.  And, of course, we had pretty much zero introduction to these new characters, so there’s no emotional investment to pull me up short when reading these pages.

But when you put it this way, yeah, okay, I can definitely see the Inhumans not really looking at sexuality in the same way humans do, because they’re all about the different sizes and shapes, so what looks like a horse to me, wouldn’t occur to them in the same way, because they don’t view sexuality the same way.  So, I take back my cranky sue attitude at Black Bolt and his new wife on the visual aspect, but I still barf at the SUDDENLY HE HAS FOUR NEW WIVES BECAUSE HE’S A KING thing.  XD

(And I’d be less cranky about royalty having multiple wives as a plot point if there were more of an even balance of it happening to men vs women in fictional stories that I’ve come across.)

teatimebrutality:

girlsbydaylight:

teatimebrutality asked you:

I can’t reconcile how much I love all your posts with how wrong you are about Black Bolt marrying horses. Black Bolt should marry all the horses.

I am sticking to my guns on this one, I’m sorry.  It would be different if all of Black Bolt’s wives were horses, then I could understand.  But one of them is a blue elf-looking lady!  And one is… fuck, I don’t know, a mole-lady, I think?  THESE ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE WIVES!

I do love how fiercely horse-wife is sitting on her throne the first time we see her, though.

And that she has human-style boobs.

Of course the horse wife has human-style boobs.  Of course she does

I’m torn now, because I was a Power Pack fan and a Guardians of the Galaxy fan so I have a context for blue-elfy wives and precedent for human horse boobs.

BUT it would be better if all the Universal Inhumans were horses.

Despite the awesome Ming Doyle art, the one story I can’t get behind in Fantastic Four #600 is the conciliatory normative Black Bolt/Medusa chapter that’s all “I am still your king! And you my queen! In the eternal manner of proper couples!”

But it’d sit much better with me if it went, “I am still your king! And you my queen! Because the other four are horses!”

I am still your king!  And you my queen!  Because the other four are horses!

I’m just going to sit here awhile and bask in the perfection of this image, all the more so because it’s not that out of the realm of what we actually got.

I realize that they’re trying to go for alien-looking Universal Inhumans.  And I can even sort of understand putting human-style boobs on her, because I’m sure she’s not actually a horse, she just looks like one.  And I’m not even going to touch how the various Universal Inhumans are all of a similar look, while the more known Inhumans are all different shapes and sizes.  Maybe they’re not precisely the same thing, I didn’t read too closely.

What I cannot quite get over is… is Black Bolt supposed to be sleeping with these wives?  Does he have to have sex with his horse-wife?  Is this expected of him?  Are we supposed to be okay with this?  Because I’m okay with blue elf-wife sex (aside from, you know, barf at anyone but Medusa) but… horse-wife sex?

Blah, blah, blah, probably just a political marriage, blah, blah, blah, no!  YOU MARRY FOUR OTHER WIVES, SUCK IT UP, BLACK BOLT, AND GO LIE IN THE BED YOU HAVE MADE.