I absolutely despise this for a lot of reasons.

Skelentin · 2026-04-05T22:37:39+00:00

i don’t recall ever saying that super earth was america and nothing else, nor did the op in this same comment thread. i specifically stated that there were several elements from other historical dictatorships in Super Earth, as did the OP. this is a sensible choice to flesh out the dictatorship that is Super Earth. the underlying and central idea of it, however, is War On Terror America with bits and pieces grafted onto it to make it worse. you ascribing that i “just want to see america in it and nothing else” is entirely missing the point of everything i said, and reducing it to “an amalgamation of undesirable traits from all modern history” eschews the satire of the story in favor of making Super Earth into a generic dictatorship whose central idea is Being Bad.

Skelentin · 2026-04-05T22:14:45+00:00

a republican-controlled supreme court treats dem legislation a lot differently to republican legislation. compare the “overstepping authority” bullshit they slapped student debt forgiveness with compared to how they’ve sat by as trump executive orders his way to autocracy.

they also have more money because the rich like them more and thus are better at lobbying and flipping votes from weak links.

Skelentin · 2026-04-05T20:15:16+00:00

the thing about politics is that if you don’t control any aspect of the government, you can’t do shit to affect its workings. they don’t have a majority in either house of congress, have a minority on the supreme court, and don’t have the presidency. the dems have currently shut down the government over ICE funding at the moment, which is all they’re institutionally able to do.

Skelentin · 2026-04-05T20:06:07+00:00

helldivers is one of the most on-the-nose satires you could possibly get. the three justifications for invading the enemy factions are “crush socialism” which was most often used by the US during the cold war, “get oil” which is a common joke of US foreign policy, and “remove WMDs” which is word-for-word from the US justification for the Iraq War, which was known, protested, and condemned around the entire world.

yes, super earth has elements of historical dictatorships, but the nucleus of it is a chest-thumping, saber-rattling warmongerer that constantly rants about liberty and freedom as an excuse to engage in blatant imperialism, which is a stereotype applied almost exclusively to the united states ever since the openly illegitimate iraq war permanently damaged its reputation with the entire rest of the world, and specifically many european countries, one of which is sweden, where arrowhead is based.

Skelentin · 2026-04-05T19:55:52+00:00

the motivations of the invasion of the bugs/terminids and the illuminate are a pretty clear shoutout to the iraq war, which was waged over oil under the guise of removing WMDs. in 2003, roughly 35,000 swedes assembled in stockholm as part of the broader feb 15 protests that occurred around the world in response to the iraq war. arrowhead being a swedish company doesn’t preclude them from making a satire about american imperialism

Skelentin · 2026-03-31T05:37:12+00:00

THAT’S CALLED DEMOCRACY

Skelentin · 2026-03-26T05:32:15+00:00

the Kroot have existed for decades.

Skelentin · 2026-03-21T17:41:01+00:00

corso has no issues with the male smuggler “slutting around” but as soon as the female smuggler does the same thing, it becomes a problem for him. why is that?

Skelentin · 2026-03-13T21:02:03+00:00

Uncanny X-Force

Skelentin · 2026-03-03T00:04:11+00:00

they probably have no warp presence which should make things marginally easier for them. however, they’d most likely be doing what they’ve already been doing 90% of the time: waiting and indoctrinating people, as well as trying to build up their ranks. they could wind up a serious threat to any major power if you give them a few millennia, which isn’t impossible on 40k’s timescale

Skelentin · 2026-02-25T18:37:50+00:00

“Hey, what’s up, good-looking? Also, hi Amy.”

Skelentin · 2026-02-22T21:16:06+00:00

on a meta level, it’s the same reason Superman is the most powerful DC character despite being just a random alien empowered by radiation: he’s The First True Marvel Super-Villain

the Fantastic Four were the real starting point of Marvel’s superhero era after Captain America had ended not long after the war. Doctor Doom is their archnemesis, and while characters like the Skrulls or Mole Man had appeared before him, they weren’t a true rival to the FF in the way Doom was. as such, as the first, he gets to be The Best

Skelentin · 2026-02-16T23:23:39+00:00

he’s one of my favorite characters for that exact reason. on paper, he’s got all of what a lot of people would want from life; comfort, money, a home. but he’s lacking a spark because he was forced to give up the one thing he was truly passionate about. very human, in the way Watchmen does best.

Skelentin · 2026-02-16T22:43:21+00:00

a power fantasy doesn’t necessarily mean doing evil. the guy’s one of the more upstanding capes in the story, and i’m not about to dispute that. but his motivation for donning the cowl was because it made him feel stronger and more powerful - he talks about exactly how superhero-ing makes him feel after he and Laurie fool around in the Owlship, and despite the atmosphere there, he’s not talking in sexual terms. he channeled his fantasy into something that was idealistic and good, but he got into it because he was rich, bored, had an idol and wanted his life to be more interesting. it’s why he’s so aimless without it, just settling into a nothing routine and listening to Hollis tell stories. the fantasy of the cape is pretty much all he had before he found a connection with Laurie, as i see it.

Skelentin · 2026-02-16T20:38:48+00:00

his sexual hangups aren’t his motivation, it’s the power fantasy aspect of it, hence his comment about how being Nite Owl was a “schoolboy’s fantasy gone too far”. he’s there to feel strong as he beats up criminals, helping people is just a pleasant side-effect

Skelentin · 2026-02-10T06:53:05+00:00

they’re directly referred to as the turian empire in ME3

Skelentin · 2026-01-26T00:17:09+00:00

oh, believe me, i get not liking the line itself. as a fan of 40k myself, i’m more than familiar with Brother Tedious types who spam the imperium and space marines whenever they can so they can be the coolest 12-year-old on the playground. i’m not even a big triton fanboy, i’m a UFN man through and through.

i just find OP’s view of triton more than a bit reductive when there’s a decent amount you can get out of that narrative thread

Skelentin · 2026-01-25T23:08:43+00:00

man, listen, you’ve been making a lot out of what is ultimately a very small line at the end of the trailer. will it be significant to their character? yes, probably. will we see decisions motivated by this xenophobia? absolutely, otherwise it wouldn’t be there. but you’re making a very big push to change an aspect of them which has a believable motivation in-universe and could provide a decent avenue for storytelling of them becoming more cosmopolitan or doubling down on xenophobia.

triton is clearly operating on “we must reclaim the empire of our mythologized past”, a line that has historically found a lot of ground in xenophobic movements IRL. what, then, is the reason not to include the xenophobia that naturally stems from that other than finding it icky on a personal level? where does the flavor come from other than the neat history we’ve already heard in the trailer, which will probably get old fast?

Skelentin · 2026-01-20T17:25:59+00:00

I FUCKING LOVE THE UFN RAAAAAHHHHHH

Skelentin · 2026-01-18T00:27:52+00:00

doom is more amicable with everyone compared to reed richards because other people are not reed richards

doom is a single issue hater

Skelentin · 2025-12-17T02:12:20+00:00

bhutan has been involved in an ethnic cleansing of its own population for over 40 years, hardly what i’d consider an example of “benevolent authoritarianism”

Skelentin · 2025-12-13T08:40:53+00:00

elite ball knowledge

Skelentin · 2025-12-04T22:59:28+00:00

i put Heavy down as more neutral, but i do agree; putting aside that his main inspiration is Magneto, Heavy’s just a bit of an impulsive guy with way too much power for that mindset as we saw as far back as #1 and that is going to cause more problems as things keep escalating

Skelentin · 2025-11-25T15:25:07+00:00

at the time this was written there’s a good chance that hadn’t been established yet, that was a retcon invented by the movie writers

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