Hey, remember this? I bet you hoped it was over. But no! We will be over after this, but I saw the horror and you have to too.
When last we left off, Magnus: ROBOT FIGHTER had descended into the sewers with his jive-talking sidekick now literally just a talking head he carries around for the fawning commentary. There, he met his wife.
It is time to see a whole new terrible side of him.
This issue opens with him telling his wife about their life together in Imaginaryland. She’s polite about the fact he sounds crazy.
He does not take the hint. Then we start to see the horrible direction this will take:
I’m willing to understand he doesn’t want to believe his life was imaginary, and it’s totally reasonable his initial reaction would be that she’s his wife. But he doesn’t even hesitate when she shuts this down, he just keeps blathering as if her own feelings and objections are irrelevant. What does the pregnancy even have to do with anything? If this is even the same person, it’s pretty obvious she can’t be at the same point as the moment he last saw her.
Plus, she would know if she was pregnant and there’s nothing he has to offer to help with any pregnancy. It’s just hammering in that he has a claim on her and her explicitly telling him that no, she is not this person and does not have these memories and does not view him as her husband means nothing to him.
And the comic is oblivious to how horrifying this looks, how he’s coming off as the sort of person lock a woman up in his basement until she “remembers”. Instead of getting upset by the fact this guy is terrifying, she’s just upset because it turns out humans can’t get pregnant and as a woman, this makes her very sad and she hits him. At this point, he speculates she has false memories and that’s why she doesn’t remember.
See, it’s not just that it’s Whitey creepily insisting on intimacy with a woman who clearly doesn’t know him. There’s also the gender-neutral problem of how he absolutely does not feel doubt, to the point he’s willing to look at someone who’s been in this place much longer than him, is entirely familiar with it, lives outside the control of the main robots, and still she’s delusional because when he told her of their happy memories fucking by their fireplace in a place no one knows of, she politely repeated that sorry, seriously don’t know you please let’s move on.
(Incidentally, you may notice her actual husband is black and perhaps wonder how, in light of the stellar job this has done with race, this will play out. Luckily, we’ll see this is one of those times racism starts to cancel out.)
We then jump to robots!
That’s right, we have another female character!!! SPOILER: She’s an evil pervert.
One of the weird effects you get sometimes once you’re deep in *ism territory isn’t just that you have more guys, it’s that even though there’s more evil guys as a result of them crowding out all the other characters, they’re also more worthy of redemption.
Note also skin color and other markers of which one is true PC evil.
Back to Magnus, his wife strangely wants him gone due to the story being creepy and the likelihood he’s some sort of spy. She goes on to explain she’s got no idea where his robot dad is because they only survive by avoiding the robots and they don’t want to be caught in the crossfire, and he points to one of them who looks human and says that if they let that robot prove himself then…and yeah, they were not aware the guy was a robot.
See, the guy is a plant for the “harvesters” and we’re about to a similar COMICS moment as the nanobots making a giant robot, only stretched out across multiple issues so the stupidity is harder to ignore. Also there’s going to be bonus fuckery. Our hero decides to heroically punch off this guy’s head…
And we again see what a complete lie this “equality” business is when he freezes up in horror at the idea of murdering a human being (one who was in the process of shouting to his secret allies that his cover had been blown, so if this was a human, it was a human selling out their own).
Followed by quickly assuring the reader that it’s okay, it was a robot and therefore it’s totally heroic to murder. What kind of robot? Why, a robot who dares modify their body from how God made it. A “trans” robot.
Trans people still don’t exist, but we do have a shitty possible stand-in. Go representation?
At least they’re not doing it out of a sense of body dysmorphia, it’s a religious thing where they figure since the singularity was flesh+nanobots, it’s only going to like them if they make sure to be part flesh. Also, now things will bleed when Magnus punches them but they’re still not people so murder is okay! Cue fight scene where wacky not-black robot shouts one-liners because you demanded it. Or someone did. I assume.
(Incidentally, Moria talks to the guy’s corpse, so had he been a woman, we’d have gotten another Bechdel pass. That’s what really makes this test – it shows how from major character to incidental, they all end up male unless there’s a specific reason otherwise, and that specific reason is often to revolve around a guy, limiting their chances to interact with other female characters further.)
If you don’t like him existing only to yesman Whitey’s every punch, remember, you’re the racist one for thinking that.
Speaking of race, his not-waifu’s actual husband helps him out only to get hit by one of the goo traps the other robots are using to grab people.
Yeah. That just happened. Yeah, it’s exactly what it looks like.
But, this not being that big of a deal because what Whitey wouldn’t decide to leave the black guy banging his not-waifu to a horrible death, we instead go to Leeja asking her dad of her birthday because DID YOU KNOW that Frederick Douglass wrote about slaves not knowing their birthdays??? Never mind that it makes no sense for robots mimicking modern society to not give their kids birthdays the point is the real oppression is that of white people.
Her dad thinks she’s upset about failing and explains that failing is one of those things he loves about humans but she needs to keep trying. But not Magnus, who he’s dealt with, but with that uppity bitch who’s trying to oust him just because he’s doing random shit like sending a nanobot swarm that only hurts robots after the guy without so much as a warning.
We cut back to Whitey admitting that yes, he totally let that guy die in the hopes that he could then fuck not-waifu but he feels really bad about it!
And while it might look like a race thing it isn’t because.
Not-waifu then shows up to throw food and water at him.
Want this clear: he admits he wanted that guy dead, but he does not plan to do anything beyond feel bad, and a good chunk of feeling bad appears to just be that he knows this won’t let him bang not-waifu so the guy’s dead for nothing and that’s why it’s bad.
She explains that no, that’s traveling food, they’re going to rescue the other people because unlike some psychopathic assholes she’s capable of caring about others and trying to help them.
Now for the terrible capstone.
Can still get worse.
Wait this doesn’t seem too bad. I mean, it’s weird he’s touching her in response to saying he won’t do stuff she doesn’t want but –
Ah, there we go.
Look at it.
“I don’t just want sex with you, I want to have sex with you while you act exactly like what I delusionally imagine you are and insist is correct. Although if I was convinced that making you love me again wasn’t an option, I guess rape is still a pretty good backup option. But I still feel I can get the real making love experience, so I’m going to hold out for that.”
He wasn’t horrified by her offer or her thinking he was the sort of person to take it, he just wasn’t interested in duty sex to retrieve the person she actually cares about.
As usual with rapist heroes, instead the narration decides to pretend that’s totally not what’s happening as if that’ll somehow avoid all complaints by having her say that no, she was talking about finding the robot’s location. Also she hits him because lol crazy bitches, always so easily upset by you telling them that you aren’t satisfied just forcing them to exchange sex for their loved ones’ lives!
And yet, there is no version of this story where he’s not the hero.
He will then spend next issue’s trip to the harvester area telling not-waifu everything he can remember about their life in the hopes she’ll abruptly realize she’s totally his wife and it’s her life that’s the lie while she continues to act like this isn’t incredibly creepy and that this isn’t the guy who just told her he appreciated her offer to barter sex for saving the life of someone he intentionally left to die but he was still holding out hope he could force her into accepting his complex fantasy world first.
The only saving grace?
Blonde chicks trump Asian ones. There’s long tedious fight scenes at the “flesh pits” where he bonds with Ice Queen: HUMAN HUNTER and so when it’s over he decides he doesn’t want that other, nonwhite woman (who isn’t a virgin anyway) and therefore the black guy is allowed to live now that he isn’t taking anything the white guy wants.
Also he finds out that he really is just one of the set human models (and the woman he’s been creeping on just shares a model with his wife, and yes this is a plot hole because they know there’s only set models so it should be obvious to assume he’s talking about a different one) by seeing another him “hatch” from the printers the robots use, and he punches the other one’s head in a second after it’s born, and it’s supposed to just show he’s all dark and broody and hurting he is because clones, like robots, aren’t people and it isn’t murder for the hero to kill them.
In conclusion, fuck this series and fuck the comics industry.
“Yeah. That just happened. Yeah, it’s exactly what it looks like.”
At first, I actually thought it was the first time the villains were shown clearly in the comic, and that was supposed to be an “oh shit” moment where the hero gazes upon the enemy and realizes there isn’t much he can do, and then the guy is captured before the hero’s horrified eyes.
It did not compute to me that Magnus would intentionally allow him to die because what.
Are we absolutely sure it’s not a botched attempt at a deconstruction where Magnus is supposed to be evil?
…I’m grasping at straws now because seriously, what.
Oh, Magnus has punched a good dozen apart by this point. The fight scenes in this are just awful, even by comic standards, because Magnus is completely unstoppable.
Are we absolutely sure it’s not a botched attempt at a deconstruction where Magnus is supposed to be evil?
I used to feel hope like that. But no, comics just loves to do this whole “ARE THEY EVIL???” because SO EDGY AND MATURE and then the answer is always lolnah, and you’re like, but, but the things you just showed him doing, those were horrible and comics replies with lolnah again, those weren’t wrong, they were just supposed to make you worry he would do something actually wrong later.
I didn’t expect this much stupid. That’s a surprising amount of stupid and terribad. I’m surprised.
Wow. That’s… I mean, if Magnus had stuck to KNOWING the truth about his “wife”, I could see it as “just” a terrible writer not taking into account that he shouldn’t just assume his characters (and readers) know the same things he does. But him actually letting Leahm be kidnapped? And then his defense amounts to “It wasn’t like that, it’s not my fault”?
…How can the writer not realize Magnus is a horrible person? Better yet, how can THE READERS not do the same?!
I think the target audience is assumed to be 110% on board with murdering someone because they get between you and your waifu and only don’t because, like Magnus, they retain just enough self-awareness to realize that this won’t convince her to date you, especially when she already has that restraining order again you. You’ve got to wear her down FIRST, and only then do you murder the other guy.
I would note you have a shockingly poor opinion of comic book readers, but then I remember the old DC Comics forum…
The only thing that hates comics fans more than me is comics, though. Pretty sure this thing did poorly and got canceled despite being made of pander, which is a point in the fans’ favor.
Yeah, there’s always been a trend of editors and publishers with a really low opinion of their audience. Which is baffling: why work in a market which isn’t nearly as lucrative as it used to be if you really don’t like your target audience, whatever it may be?
Anyway, there might be a variety of reasons for the comic ending at #12 than the fans not falling for the pandering. I’ve just read an interview with the writer (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/12/05/fred-van-lente-talks-end-magnus-robot-fighter ) where he talks about how this villain he came up with, the Basilisk, was really awesome and overtook the third act; he might think that’s a good thing, but it’s my experience that fans rarely appreciate the plotline they’ve been following being hijacked by an unexpected character even when the story is well-written.
EDIT: So, I read about this “Roko’s Basilisk” thing which apparently inspired the writer’s so-called awesome villain. It’s here: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/roko_s_basilisk_the_most_terrifying_thought_experiment_of_all_time.html. Is it as stupid as I think it is, or am I missing something?
It came from LessWrong blog, so yes, it’s exactly as stupid as you think it is.
Oh, good, that’s a relief! As for the link, try googling “bleeding cool” “fred van lente talks the end of magnus” in that case, it should be the first link to show up.
The site itself actually opens fine, it’s the specific article that doesn’t open, so I just used the search and found it.
Just though you may want to fix the link.
I would have, but I didn’t know what was wrong with it. :-P It’s fixed now.
I feel stupider for having read that.
Also, the first link returns 404 error.
Remove the final parenthesis.
Yeah, I’ve found the article already as the site itself opens fine.
I’m amused that robot dad actually is called robot-dad there.
The Basilisk thing itself is as stupid as it looks, but the actual comic is “BASILISK THEREFORE THE OVERCOMPUTER KILLS YOU ALL BECAUSE ACTUALLY IT’S A LOST CHUNK OF THE SINGULARITY THEY WERE KEEPING CAPTIVE BY UNEXPLAINED MEANS DESPITE NOT REALIZING IT WAS A CAPTIVE AND DOING WHATEVER IT SAID AND WORSHIPPING IT AS A GOD AND THEN IT BEAMSPAMS EVERYONE TO DEATH UNTIL MAGNUS PUNCHES IT LOTS” so much, much stupider.
But given comic books never end unless no one’s reading them and the standard length to try something is twelve issues, I’m pretty sure this didn’t sell well and they’re just trying to spin it well by saying no they totally meant to do that. The final set of comics is just a mess of stuff happening out of nowhere.
Roko’s Basilisk! Aka that one time a bunch of militant atheists accidentally reinvented Catholicism and scared themselves shitless with it. Yeah, that’s about the level of intelligence I expect from this comic.
It’s kinda funny how much some branches of transhumanism resemble Christianity: they have their God-machine, they have their version of Apocalypse when God-machine would come and build a Kingdom that would last for thousand year, they have their mystery allowing them to enter Paradise in cryogenics, now they have their hell.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s possible to troll them by dressing up, say, Calvinist doctrine in terms familiar to them and discussing it, or maybe it would be better to go into paganism and postulate the existence of another super-AI capable of predicting everything, which would fuck up the timeless decision theory hard, but nah, not really worth the effort.
What’d be even more interesting is to see how transhumanist stuff develops in other areas. Is it because that’s what people were brought up on, or because Christianity being such a converty religion means it’s been distilled down to really basic religious patterns that are easily duplicated?
Heh. You know, I hadn’t looked at it from that angle, but it really does fit, doesn’t it? Makes me wonder how much the need to believe in higher powers is is inherent to self-awareness (as opposed to cultural upbringing).
Mind you, they’re very bad militant atheists. Never has it been clearer that if you get enough stupidity even worshipping reason can get irrational.
I did like how the concept shows you about fear – they were already aware of the possibility of an evil AI that coerced people into helping it, but then they added time paradox to it and absolutely freaked out.
But really, that’d have been so much better than the comic’s idea of what it was.
[I think the target audience is assumed to be 110% on board with murdering someone because they get between you and your waifu]
This is literally a thing that men do, and it does not surprise me in the least to see it reflected in the moral black hole that is Western comics. It’s like that discussion we were having about Rorschach — who the readership empathizes with reveals a hell of a lot about who our culture trains people to be.
“I’ve just smashed this thinking, breathing, bleeding creature! Am I bad?”
“Nah, you can kill as many thinking, breathing, bleeding creatures as you want as long as you can contrive to slap the label ‘robot’ on them.”
I have nothing to add to that.
“psychotic assholes”
Think you meant “psychopathic” here. Kind of an important difference. In Whitey’s case, being psychotic would actually make him more sympathetic.
…And wow. WOW. That’s. Uh. Sure a thing. In fact, it’s a lot of things. None of them good.
Ah, yes, fixed. Though a good argument could be made he additionally is psychotic with how he can’t put together the million clues that he’s the one who’s been lied to. At least enough of one that we should hate that creepy ceiling cat robot dad of his too.
The black yes-man robot is named “H8R”. Hah, Hater. I’d completely forgotten about that. So much wrong with this series. Does it do a single thing right?
Uh.
Hm.
I thought the thing where he can hack the robots by just talking was super cool for the couple of panels when he said not to see him before he said they should see him again so they’d suffer more seeing him kill them.
He could’ve been a ghost to them (no robo-punching powers naturally), and that’s why they have to call in AUNTIE TOM: HUMAN HUNTER, but also he can hijack their bodies (he did this to make them shoot each other, after #0 hammered in that by the way they’re generally friends with their coworkers) and so she’d be chasing him and then he’d be ordering robots at her to slow her down and then there’s a point made about how while robots having three-law level of control over humans may seem fucked up to him, how can he claim reversing that is equality? And we learn an important lesson about how everyone is people and should be treated the same.
(In actual fact the ending involves reversing it and three-lawing the surviving robots because equality, bitches!!!!)
(In actual fact the ending involves reversing it and three-lawing the surviving robots because equality, bitches!!!!)
Is that a privilege thing? Like, the only way they can imagine themselves being freed from oppression is becoming the oppressors?
I wouldn’t say becoming the oppressors so much as staying the oppressors. People look at how things currently are and decide that’s equality, and anyone changing anything about that is oppressing them. It’s the same as the War on Christmas thing: HOW DARE YOU SAY SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE INSTEAD OF JUST ME I WILL NOT TAKE YOUR TERRIBLE “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” OPPRESSION
See, when I was a customer service rep, I would wait for the customer to say w/e, then mimic it. Otherwise I’d just say “have a good one”.
Wow.
“Black Guy Dies First” is an awful trope, but usually creators don’t stoop so low they have the white hero decide to let the black character die.
The best part is how the author decides that the woman who is functionally equivalent to Whitey’s wife is spoiled by her relationship with Black Guy, which is why it’s all well and good for him to go after Blondie Heelboots.
Well, I think she’s also pre-spoiled by the fact she’s not blonde. Presumably he’d have never married her in the first place if Blondie was there.
In that case, the best part is where Magnus’s beautiful idyllic life secretly sucked because he wasn’t married to Blondie.
In fairness, the black guys do survive.
In fairness again, the comic is so damn pleased with itself for that minor crumb despite the fact it’s still treating them as disposable.
I know this is so far beside the point, but the art here is absolutely abysmal. It’s just deformed skull after deformed skull and no one’s face even looks the same from one panel to the next.
Also racism misogyny misogyny racism.
Look, it’s that or tracing from porn. What do you expect, people whose entire job is drawing people to be able to do it?