Pointing out Pixel F***ery: Why it's okay to blame Marvel for what Marvel is doing wrong.

So the internet did the totally normal and not Stockholm-Syndrome-y thing this week when Vulture published this article last month describing the poor treatment of VFX artists by Marvel studios. Written by an anonymous contributor, the writer remarks that:

The response from most have been appropriate: they have called it a terrible working environment and have called on Marvel Studios to change.

Then... there are the others.

Others like this:

and this:

and this:

And look, dear thought leaders of film twitter, you're probably right. This, in broad terms probably is a much bigger, industry-wide problem. But let's not treat this like the good faith argument that it poses itself as. Yeah, it's totally okay, even right, to point the finger at Marvel here.

Let's start with the claim that this is an industry-wide thing and not just a Marvel thing: it's true, but it's true in the same way that Anti-Semitism not just being a Nazi thing is true. A problem being widespread does not mean that the most egregious offenders are suddenly not something we need to worry about (I also suspect that were this not Marvel Studios, the problem would suddenly limit in scope to these people, but that's pure speculation).

And make no mistake: Marvel is at least presented as the most egregious offender here. The writer in the article remarks that: "Where I would usually have a team of ten VFX artists on a non-Marvel movie, on one Marvel movie, I got two including myself. So every person is doing more work than they need to." They further state in their conclusion that "Not every client has the bullying power of Marvel".

And this isn't necessarily because Kevin Feige is sitting in his industrial revolution-style movie factory, beating the children who don't make the machines work and rubbing his fingerless-gloved hands in glee whenever the working class is oppressed. The writer cites the way that Marvel puts out heaps of movies with inflexible release dates and hires directors with little to no experience with effects-driven filmmaking as key components of why working with Marvel is so hard, but these are things that are VERY specific to the way Marvel does things. I'm not saying Marvel is the only one to put undue stress on the way that VFX artists do their job, but they certainly seem to be the worst at it. And why should we not focus on the ones who are doing the most damage? If I have a grazed knee and a bullet wound at the same time, I would want the bullet wound taken care of first because it would be causing the most pain. Why should Marvel not change when they are the ones with the most bullying power?

But a bigger problem here isn't that Marvel are doing the most damage- it's that they've been so successful in the process. No less than ten Marvel movies have earned over one billion dollars. Their model for filmmaking and storytelling has been one that every other studio has tried to ape over the last decade. They have been praised as industry leaders. It's safe to say that no other studio has as much influence over the industry as Marvel has- or it's at least safe to assume so.

And this is how they got that influence?

I know what some will say- that they actually got that influence from telling good stories with compelling characters- but none of those stories would be possible without the work of talented VFX artists who make Iron Man fly, Captain America's shield ricochet off of mooks and Thor's hammer crackle with lighting. Hell, they've even made hotel rooms for movies like Spider-Man: Far From Home. For a key part of Marvel's success to be thanks to these kind of working conditions sets a disturbing precedent. It says to other studios that this is what you need to do to play with the big boys, and we can't just assume that other studios won't follow that example. I called Marvel and industry leader, maybe it's time they showed some real leadership.

And this isn't some argument against VFX artists unionising, by the way. Rather, I hope that when they do unionise, they aren't afraid to take industry giants like Marvel to task. I don't really have a snappy way to end this post, except to say that when things are wrong, they are wrong- even when they're your favourites.

Falcon and the Winter Soldier- Review so far

Earlier this year, Disney+ gave us a new addition to the MCU in the form of Wandavision- a show that, despite the awful title, did something truly new with the franchise and its characters for the first time since 2012's Avengers. It was stylish, it presented an intriguing mystery and seemed to be made for fans of classic television sitcoms and serialised mysteries such as Twin Peaks.

Falcon and the Winter Soldier, by contrast seems to be made for people who retweet "Endgame says hi" every time you dare to praise another movie.

That isn't necessarily a knock. The new Marvel series makes good use of the streaming show format and maintains a good pace, but unlike it predecessor, Falcon and the Winter Soldier offers little more than "MORR MAHVEL". And at the end of the day, if "MORR MAHVEL" is what you want, this show provides in spades. Just don't expect to recommend it to anyone who isn't already in the admittedly large pool of "current MCU fan".

In a post-Endgame MCU, Sam Wilson (The Falcon, played by Anthony Mackie) has decided that, despite being given the Shield of Captain America, the mantle of the iconic hero is one that he shouldn't bear. He leaves it to the American government while joining Bucky Barnes (The Winter Soldier played by Sebastian Stan) on the hunt of a group called the Flag Smashers- renegade soldiers who seek to return the earth to the way it was before... are we really calling it the blip? I was so ready to ignore that when Far From Home tried to make it a thing.

During this time, though, the American government have called a new Captain America by the name of John Walker complete with black sidekick just like Steve had. This new Cap has all the good intentions of the original, but his methods seem... less pure. Sam and Bucky find themselves having to deal the Flag Smasher while stopping this new Cap from going completely ballistic.

Like I said earlier, this new series takes full advantage of the longer runtime a show of this kind offers. There's more room for plot and characters to develop to the point where these characters actually feel more engaging here than they ever did in any of the movies. we get glimpses into the normal life of these characters and end up having plenty of time to feel for them. But what really struck me was how little the writers and actors here depended on previous movies to do the job of characterisation. It really feels like you're experiencing these characters for the first time despite their appearance in four movies prior to this (I'm not counting Sam's appearance in Age of Ultron because would you?). In no character is this more clear than Daniel Bruhl's Baron Zemo, who was little more than an annoying diversion in Captaim America: Civil War, but here is an engaging player in the whole drama and seems to have even more control over the situation than any character could realise. This could be a point in the show's favour for doing so much with these characters or a point against the movies for doing so little. Personally, I see it as both.

Action here is also well done. The geography of each fight is clear and the character designs are distinctive enough that you're never lost as to what is happening, and the kinetic energy of each fight scene is palpable enough to make each one feel brilliantly punchy even if, as one character acknowledges in the first four episodes, there's a bit too much of a reliance of knives for bad guys.

That said, it seems like a bit of an injustice that this show follows after Wandavision. As good as Falcon and the Winter Soldier is, Wandavision's creativity and craziness might just have set expectations a little too high. Not everything can break the tried and true MCU formula, and perhaps it was unfair to expect Falcon and the Winter Soldier to do anything more than hold the line, but it's slightly disappointing that after Wandavision, all we end up getting is what is essentially a really long, segmented MCU movie. This is true right down to the visual style, which started out using light and shadow really interestingly, but by episode four (the most recently released at time of writing), we're back to Russo-style "All-the-colours-are-there-so-none-really-stand-out" blandness.

I've seen some, (Moviebob in particular), praise the show for using racial politics so much, particularly in Sam's part of the story. I'm not really sure I can praise them. Sure, the politics are there: Sam finds it hard to get a loan, is pulled over by cops for no good reason and finds out that one black veteran (Isiah Bradley played excellently by Carl Lumby) was a victim of experiments to re-create the super soldier in a way that reflects real-life experiments performed on African Americans, but at the end of the day, it feels like the racial politics and the story are acting independently of each other. If you took all the racial politics out of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the show's plot would go almost unchanged. It's not like Marvel aren't skilled at mixing politics and engaging stories- both Black Panther and Netflix's Luke Cage did this excellently- but you have to ask why the racial politics, if they felt the need to include them here, couldn't have been woven in more seamlessly. Because of this, the politics feel easy to ignore and it feels wrong as a result.

That said, there's nothing in this show that should deter the MCU-Faithful. I wish we got a show that better integrated its admirable politics and tried to break the MCU formula just a little, but what we have here is solidly entertaining nonetheless. I'm intrigued as to what Disney+ has to show us going forward.

DCeased and Batman: Last Knight on Earth (DC)

 

DCeased

Writer: Tom Taylor

Artist: Trevor Hairsine

Batman: The Last Knight on Earth

Writer: Scott Snyder

Artist: Greg Capullo

Well, DC Fandome finished last week. We got teasers/trailers for The Suicide Squad and The Batman. Just on the side, is this what DC intend to do with their properties? Put "the" at the start of the title and hope people forget what came before? I'm surprised at this stage they aren't calling it The Wonder Woman 84, the trailer for which was good, but not surprising. We got Gotham Knights- better known as The Batfamily can't have anything for themselves without neckbeards throwing a tantrum. Oh- there was also that Suicide Squad video game trailer- the squad seems to be taking on Superman again, because that seems to be how DC promotes characters; forget writing engaging stories, just have them fight Superman and-- wait a minute: Why are all these characters carrying guns. I get Harley Quinn and Deadshot carrying them, but King Shark? If I play as King Shark, I want to tear mooks apart with my mighty jaws, not wave a target over them and hold down R2. And why does Captain Boomerang have a gun? Can we notice no other long-range weapon that he might use? One that's his name for example?

You know what was conspicuously absent? Announcements about DC's comic line. The Milestone Universe is coming back, but that's outside the mainline DC imprint. On the back of constant layoffs, one can't help but think that DC stands about as much chance as American schoolchild on a weekday. With that in mind, let's review a couple of books that, appropriately are about the end of the DC universe. Let's call it The AT&T Double Bill.

First up, DCeased. This story falls in the "zombie apocalypse" school of the end of the world and to be fair, writer Tom Taylor does an admirable job working this into the DC universe. The thing that turns people into zombies is a corrupted version of the Anti-Life Equation, and it's even carried to Earth by Cyborg. My problem though is that I'm well and truly uninterested in zombies. I don't care for hordes of brainless creatures desperate to feed- I teach middle schoolers and such things always feel too much like my job. So I started reading ready to be bored to death, but by late that same night, I was still reading, which is like a vegan discovering their favourite sandwich had ham in it. So what was it, then? 

Well, firstly, the story doesn't bother with the whole "humans are the real monster" schtick, and instead sticks to saying that "actually, the real monsters are the ones mistaking your face for a violet crumble". It's nice to see a zombie story not pretend it's commenting on any moral complexity. It leaves the story to focus on the tragedy of loss. Characters have to kill their best friends, they lose their parents, they grapple with the constant realisation that they're just not going to win. It's an oddly refreshing tragedy, one that avoids one of the commen pitfalls of this kind of story. Right from the get-go, it's clear that things are completely... can we say "American-2016-election'ed"? When we know that this is going to end badly, we therefore don't end up with our hopes dashed when that's exactly what happens. Rather, what little hope remains in the story ends up all the more sweet, and that's exactly what DCeased does, so it gets four out of five violet crumble faces.

And since there's really no way to segway into this, let's move on to Batman: Last Knight on Earth. This is a slightly more complex story that DCeased: A cloned Batman wakes up to find that the entire world has gone to hell... actually it's not that much more complex, really. This is a Scott Snyder book, so expect a lot of Scott Snyder tropes to make an appearance here. There's an evil version of Batman, a new take on a fight with Superman, and Joker's here. Actually, it's just Joker's head, but Snyder's voice for him this time around is so different to his previous work, that it actually makes him the best person in the book. I haven't been made to laugh by the Joker for a long time, but here I was, chuckling every time he asked if he could be Robin, or making some pun about whatever danger Batman found himself in. Then I remembered that I'm not supposed to enjoy the Joker, because that makes me an incel or something- NO, I'M NOT EXPLAINING THAT!

Of course, the other thing that seems to happen in Scott Snyder books is that the setting becomes a character of it's own. In Batman, it was Gotham, in Dark Nights: Metal, it was the dark multiverse and here, it's the whole damn world. Snyder makes full use of this setting, letting us explore not every inch of it, but enough that it can be enjoyed. I'm reminded of Old Man Logan in many ways, and that's not really a bad thing. Both books employed a "What if we did Mad Max, but used our most popular heroes with the pointiest ears" approach, and the results have been just distinct enough to make me want to see more of it. It's been heaps of fun and, like the book before, also earns four out of five Joker incels.

What? That's not good enough? Fine. I suppose I'd better declare a winner in this double-bill. At the end of the day, I think I have to give it to Last Knight on Earth- if for no other reason than that it manages to give us all the suspense of an end of the world story without resorting to that thing that every bit of pop culture seems to be going to, but if you want one that better represents the state of DC, best go DCeased. A plague brought on the world by means of social media? Sounds like the Snyder Cut to me! Gfaw Gfaw!

Actually, that looked pretty good...

This Was Almost: Power Rangers

So... most people likely to read this are probably quarantined by now (I mean, not Australia- we're all practicing unenforced social distancing which weirdly means not closing schools for some reason?) and I figure if I even try to talk about... y'know... that... people are going to feel more than a little irked.

How about something cool about Power Rangers? You know, the show that's essentially a re-skin of the Japanese Super Sentai franchise, using all the action scenes, but somehow getting a more ethnically diverse cast right from the beginning with zero whining from alt-right whatever-gaters?

So a few weeks ago the Rangers fandom was rocked when Hasbro announced that the next Super Sentai series announced for adaptation was Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger.

Pretty cool, right?

Well, the fandom lost their collective mind because this was going to be the FOURTH dinosaur-themed Power Rangers when Power Rangers: Dino Charge (which is exactly what the name suggests) was still fresh in memory.

Now, obviously, the nostalgia factor is there. You want to hit the fanbase right in the childhood? Make them think of Mighty Morphin'. But why is that season the big deal? Why is Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers the big, first season, especially when it's popularity in Japan was only so-so at best?

Well, it wasn't always going to be like that. Today, I want to take you into what could could have been Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. We'll see what the show was about, speculate about how a Sentai adaptation would have played out, and why it didn't turn out that way.

Before going too much further, I just want to make clear that this is all based on rumour. I've research this to some degree, but can't find anything concrete that this definitely is what was going to happen, but the rumour was that when first trying to start Power Rangers, show creator Hiam Saban was interested in adapting not Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, the show that we now know as the original Power Rangers, but it's predecessor, a show by the name of Chojin Sentai Jetman, or Superman Squadron Jetman.

If you look closely at their helmet designs, it's pretty clear that they aren't Dinosaur themed. Nope, the main motiff for these rangers was birds: Red Hawk, White Swan, Yellow Owl, Blue Swallow and Black Condor. 

Do I need to spell out why this show wasn't adapted?

I do?

Okay, well, imagine you're making this show set for a 1993 release date. Do you go with birds? Or do you go with Dinosaurs in the same year that Spielberg releases Jurassic Park? Look, Jetman was a good show- unlike Zyuranger, it was regarded as some of the best Super Sentai had to offer, but you tell me which one's more instantly marketable.

Another advantage Zyuranger had over Jetman is that
Zyuranger had the sixth ranger, and without the presence of Tommy Oliver, I don't know if the show would have been anywhere near as popular.

But let's speculate: what would it look like if Mighty Morphin Power Rangers used Jetman as a base?

Honestly, it wouldn't be that different.

See, when the original American writers for Power Rangers saw the Sentai footage, they saw it with absolutely zero subtitles. They had to piece together what was going on from visuals and music with no knowledge as to the what the characters were saying.

Because of that, for the most part you could have had almost the same first season. The suits and zords would have been different, but Jason? Totally could be the red ranger again. Zack? Definitely Black. Kimberly? Tell me White Swan couldn't as easily be called the Pink Ranger. The only characters who would change costumes would be Billy and Trini and that's just because the blue and yellow rangers look like this:

And yeah, I know the yellow ranger in Mighty Morphin' was originally played by a male actor, but convincing kids that the two above aren't their original genders is something a stretch.

There would also, with no sixth ranger, be no Tommy, and no Rita. Rita would be replace by this guy:

But aside from that, the story would be basically the same. Bad guys come to Earth with intentions to destroy it because... bad guys... Zordon recruits five teenagers with attitude. Said five teenagers beat up a monster of the week until the next season, where they use the next sentai's Zords and maybe even the suits to keep the toyline healthy and the cheaply-made show continuing.

So that's what Power Rangers almost was. You can find Jetman  in some places online and on DVD if you're interested in seeing the show. Other than that? This was fun. Might do another one of these some time. Beast Wars Transformers, after all, had a very different original plan as well...

Scary Words: Plot Holes

This is going to be the last one for a while, I'm getting tired of these.

So last year, YouTuber Patrick H Willems released a video entitled "shut up about plot holes". Not long after, a range of TOTALLY rational™ and intelligent™ response videos came up mostly along the lines of "NOOOOOO, THAT'S PRETENTIOUS™!!! YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME?!? NOBODY'S BETTER THAN MEEEEEEE!"

It's a weird thing, because at no point did Patrick insist that the people who focussed on plot holes were in any way inferior, yet nobody wanted to take on Moviebob when not long after, he made a video agreeing with him, but then going further to suggest that people only look at plot holes as a backdoor into making racist/sexist statements. THAT'S someone suggesting their better than you, but it's from a bigger channel, isn't it?

So you know what, let's talk about plot holes. Not as a phenomenon that has overtaken everything in discussions about popular culture, but as a weapon. Because that's what Scary Words is about: taking words that people use a weapons and disarming them until they're as effective as whispering "boo" to take down a howitzer. So let's talk about it.

The general idea around the plot hole as a criticism is that if something doesn't make logical after being argued every which-way possible, it therefore takes people out of the moment and is "bad writing".

Is that all there is to writing, though? A logical progression of "x therefore y"? What about tension? What about character progression? What about creating a satisfying conclusion to the whole story? Are we really going to sacrifice enjoyment of a story to CinemaSins?

In fact, since so many plot hole criticisms start with "why didn't (he/she/they) just..." a lot of them can be answered with "because it would be boring."

Why didn't Superman give the spear to Wonder Woman?

Because it would be boring- seriously, are you going to rid us of arguably the only moment in Batman v Superman with emotional weight just so it can be logical FOR THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT? 

Why didn't Thanos just make more resources in the snap?

Because it would be boring- Are you telling me it would be more interesting if there WASN'T a fight with Thanos? If he just made more resources and Tony an Co just said "Right, hitchhiking home it is"?

Why did Captain America just land the plane?

Because it would be boring- as much as I hate this scene, Cap coming back heroically would have robbed us of the best scene in The First Avenger where he wakes up in modern day America.

In all of these examples though, there's another implication in the question- the critic insists that the character should act in the same way the critic does. The character, in essence has to stop being themselves. Superman giving the spear to Wonder Woman (who he doesn't actually know at this point) instead of using it himself is profoundly un-Superman. Thanos deciding to kill nobody is pretty out of character from someone who has spent most of his life turning people into Jackson Pollock paintings. Captain America... well, he certainly kept the attitude of Captain America as he went down, so there's that.

But let's entertain the idea that every plot hole makes the story nonsensical for that moment. So what? Is the character's emotional journey therefore invalid? Are the themes of the story somehow diminished? If the answer's "no," does the plot hole really matter?

Allow me to suggest a theory: see, very few people talk about the plot holes in The Dark Knight or Avengers. And that's for a simple reason. When you like a movie, you aren't looking for plot holes. You aren't looking to prove that the movie you didn't like was bad, because you liked it. People outside of joking about it don't care that Captain America didn't land the plane because oh man, we're *this* close to an Avengers movie now. If your mind is finding plot holes, chances are you don't like the movie as it is and if that's the case, why? Is the tone not connecting? Do the themes not hold true for you? Or is it just a movie made for an audience that you're not a part of?

I think, like all things, this word just boils down to insecurity. You don't like something? That's okay. Yeah, I'm not one of those people that judges morals or intelligence based on whether or you like something. The rise of the digital age means that we need to defend our religious beliefs, our political beliefs, our choice of sandwich filler, our preferred sock colour; can't we have one choice that we DON'T need to defend? Can't we just like what we like and not what we don't? It's just comics. It's just movies, TV, video games. Nobody's going to be sentenced to death if you like Zack Snyder movies, nobody is getting wrongfully put into prison because you prefer Joss Whedon. The great thing about pop culture is that it's ultimately frivolous. So let's treat it frivolously.

That's the end of scary words. I hope that no matter your opinion of any pop culture... thing... you can feel comfortable in what you enjoy. That what all of this used to be about, after all. We keep telling everyone that these things make us happy.

So let's let them.

Scary Words: Objective

So I finished marking student work, went on holiday, came back and now I'm back into it.

For a hobby so focused on fiction, we in the pop culture world certainly place a lot of emphasis on fact. I don't know if there are any other theories on why, but my theory is that unlike the "finer" aspects of culture, much of pop culture (particularly where sci-fi and superhero stories are concerned) is produced by the art crowd for the math, science and history crowd.

Now the art crowd doesn't care much for objectivity. For art, literature, film and video games, the goal is to achieve an emotional reaction more often, if not just as much as a logical one. Yet that's not the way that so much of nerd culture sees it. To nerd culture, logic is the paramount virtue, and one proves that through objective fact.

But does the term "objective fact" apply to art the way we think it does? For those who like to bandy the term around, "objective" means factual- and you don't have a problem with facts, do you!? What are you, stupid?

Okay, let's take apart this notion, because frankly, it's ridiculous. Let's take some examples: Star Wars: The Last Jedi is "objectively" a bad movie because Rey is deemed as being flawless. Batman v Superman is "objectively" a bad movie because it lacked an upbeat tone. 2016's Ghostbusters is "objectively" a bad movie because it doesn't recognize the original as canon. Are these objective statements? Well, partially. Rey is pretty damn capable, Batman v Superman is pretty dark and Ghostbusters didn't concern itself too much with what came before it. But does that make these movie "objectively" bad?

The answer lies in the person being asked. It may not matter to some that Batman v Superman is devoid of humor and levity because sweet mother of Martha every scene in that movie is beautiful. It may not matter that Rey can beat everyone, because Kylo Ren's story and character development is so compelling. Whether Ghostbusters (2019) recognizes the original may be inconsequential so long as there's a good laugh to be had occasionally. The reasons you hate may be plenty objective, but whether those things really matter? That's hugely subjective.

This is not to say that objectivity is impossible when talking about pop culture, but it's not really something you can use to beat an opponent into submission. I've reviewed a lot of comics- it's what I initially set up this blog to do. When you review something, the most objective thing you can do is take yourself out of the process. Whether you prefer Marvel or DC shouldn't enter into the equation when reviewing a Spider-Man book. You try to ask yourself; can I see someone else- even someone not like me- enjoying this too? Unfortunately, too few people in amateur and professional circles do this. They like to think of objectivity as a weapon- a thing you can use to beat down those who disagree.

And why? I think it's because we're scared of the subjective. To so many, "subjective" is synonymous with "wrong". It's something that means you're not doing enough thinking, that you're feeling too much.

And honestly? What a boring way to consume stories.

Fiction is designed to be an emotional roller-coaster. They're supposed to make people feel something. I'm not going to say there's a wrong way to interact with stories, but if you're losing the most engaging parts of fiction just to sit comfortably in the knowledge that you are "right" about something, you're missing out.

So that's objectivity. It exists. just not the way you probably think it does. Next time, let's talk about plot holes.

Scary Words: Fanboy

I've been wanting to do a series of articles like this for a while.

The point of this is to take a word that gets thrown around geek culture communities- one that's often weaponized for some reason or another and show just how... nothing... that word really is. There's a lot of negative speak in geek communities and really, a lot of it is just that: speak for speaking's sake.

Why now? Well, it seems like an ample time to start. Recently, the Spider-Man rights went back to Sony, angering MCU fans, and getting Sony fans on the defense. We also had rumors going around that Bruce Wayne was going to lose the mantle of Batman to have it taken up by an unspecified black guy. People on the internet are STILL arguing about Batman v Superman three whole years after it's release in theaters. And don't get me started on whatever happens whenever someone mentions The Last Jedi. In all of these... *ehem* highly intelligent debates... the word "fanboy" has been passed around like the last cigarette in a mass execution.

So yeah, now seems like a good time to talk about the word "fanboy" all the things it gets used for and why it probably make you look stupider than the person you're using it on. For the record, anything here could be equally applied to the way fandoms use the word "apologist"- "fanboy's" upstate cousin.

 Let's start with it's general usage, shall we? The word "fanboy" is typically taken to means someone who will only say good things about a thing regardless of the thing's imagined "objective" quality or lack thereof. I put "objective" in quotation marks because... well, it's honestly my plan for the next Scary Words article, but the short version is that what does and doesn't count as objective in art is far from cut-and-dry.

But it brings up the first problem with the fanboy argument. It is dependent entirely on the views held by the one using it. The person using it automatically assumes that his (for it is so often a "he") viewpoint is universal- that every person hates BvS or The Last Jedi or Spider-Man: Homecoming. and that this universality makes his opinion right. Though by recognizing that another person sees it differently in the first place, he proves his concept of universality immediately false. Absolute truths are true for every single person no matter what happens and irrespective of opinion- it's the reason nobody ever gets called a "gravity fanboy". If someone enjoys one thing that another doesn't, which one is the absolute truth? Opinions, even widely held ones are still opinions, so what is the fanboy argument really saying? That your subjective take on a thing is different to my subjective take on a thing and therefore... really, what are we concluding here other than that?

The next problem has to do with evidence. Because the evidence for accused fanboyism is almost always the same (that is; "I don't like a thing and you do therefore fanboy"), the burden of proof in an argument about who the fanboy is often a matter of who gets called it first. The accused then finds himself having to prove his logic, shifting the burden of proof onto the defense instead of the prosecution. The defense, after all, can't use such a weak argument a "Nuh-uh; you are!" and instead has to take the brand just because he didn't get to the keyboard fast enough.

By now it should be pretty clear that the term is often just a shopping mall of logical fallacies. In one convenient location, you have ad hominem, burden of proof, appeal to popularity and circular logic. You also have the no true Scotsman fallacy. Fanboys are often perceived as different to genuine fans. "Genuine fans", according to internet logic, would hate the thing that you like. No real fan would ever like The Last Jedi, so liking it makes you a fanboy. It is, by its nature, a weird and ironic form of gatekeeping; weird because the people it keeps out can't often be clearly defined, and ironic, as most fandoms in their early years were made up entirely of people who were those who liked things that were considered unlikable by any "normal" person.

Ultimately, though, the word fanboy is meaningless. It's attempting to associate capacity for logic with whether your personal taste matches popular opinion. If your under 25, it might be hard to imagine a time when geek culture wasn't mainstream. Today, nearly everyone male between 7 and 40 plays video games. Movies and TV based on comics are Hollywood's bread and butter. Dr. Who is popular in the US! But those of us getting to ages we never thought we'd see can remember a different time. Back then, we didn't NEED these things to be popular for us to enjoy them. Everyone else hated it? So what? We knew what it was and we knew it was good. At least, it was good for us. We were all "fanboys" back then, so why do we need to be scared of being so today?

That's all I'm going to leave you with for now. Next time, let's talk about the word "objective"- is it really as simple as Youtubers like to pretend it is?