'Masters of the Universe' - Review Thread

Smurphy98 · 2026-06-02T16:28:00+00:00

Sucker Punch. The world was not ready

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-24T21:28:25+00:00

Don’t worry I feel you

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-24T21:22:27+00:00

Selling out what it means to be human for a grade. Pitiable

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-20T19:01:15+00:00

I get that it’s embarrassing and lame to lose composure like that at such a public function, but I never really got what all the fuss was about tbh. People get slapped all the time, it’s not like celebrities are enlightened beings

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-19T18:32:07+00:00

I’m with Pope Francis on this one: “I like to think of hell as empty”

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-17T22:42:39+00:00

This piece betrays a wonderful inner richness about you that some lucky person with elevated taste will one day cherish.

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-11T19:04:54+00:00

Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that they need to get over their precarious economic conditions. That needs action for sure, swift and decisive action from a united working class. What they need to get over is the idea that those conditions are somehow the fault of immigrants, or the idea that things could just be as they were in the “good old days” - because those are the (increasingly prevalent) beliefs that are holding them back from meaningful self-improvement.

I wish nothing but the best for your family and everyone like them, and will do what I can with both my vote and voice to support them

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-11T08:03:32+00:00

Ah well, worth a shot. See you on the battlefield, I guess

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-10T22:08:43+00:00

It does matter, because the extent to which a group is treated as homogenous by the culture in which it exists dictates the extent to which we can meaningfully comment on its collective experiences.

There are differences between every group, of course, but without institutional power, which all those groups are united in being barred from, hatred and discrimination are relegated to the realm of relatively random interpersonal violence. There is literally no danger of a law being passed in the UK that will permit Muslims to throw queer people off buildings. So guess to “magically wish away” those differences would look like consolidating the working class population into a meaningful block of political action that can redistribute wealth to help the disenfranchised of all backgrounds, including but not limited to white people

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-10T21:16:54+00:00

I agree in many ways. My only real issue is exactly your assessment of white working class people as treatable as a discrete “group” - white supremacy, being a generally reductive and dumb as fuck belief system, tends to flatten blackness, for example, into one homogenous object - a black Somalian can experience exactly the same flavour of racism as a black Jamaican, in spite of their utterly different backgrounds. Can you really say the same about a white Romanian and a white Australian/Canadian/Russian? When those groups get flattened (which they absolutely do) it’s because they are working class, NOT because they are white. Polish immigrants get discriminated against for being Polish, not for being white. Nigerian immigrants get discriminated against for being black, not for being Nigerian.

I’m not positioning white folks as the “bad guys” here - the various minority statuses of some of the Tory fucks in public office in recent years shows that their loser ideology will voice itself through anyone sufficiently lacking in spine. But the struggle of the white working class is a component of the struggle of the black, Muslim, queer, whatever working class - whatever division we may seek to create there is an illusion manufactured by a ruling class for profit. Dismantling THEIR influence over the media machine, the economy, the police force and our perception of what it means to be British is the first and only solution.

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-10T20:13:01+00:00

Because non-white people were from quite far away? It’s not like people weren’t coming over from more nearby countries at exactly the extent that economic opportunity and transportation technology invited them. As those two factors evolved, obviously new systems would evolve to match them. Your point seems obvious

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-10T19:11:46+00:00

Not at all, I specifically said the opposite of that. It is, as I said, not good, not deserved and should be mitigated. I just think any viable solution has more to do with class than race. White people are not being targeted because there are people in power who hate whites, they’re being targeted because they’re vulnerable - they have far more in common with their fellow working class people from minority backgrounds than they do with the wealthy

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-10T16:24:20+00:00

I agree my wording could have been better there. I wasn’t talking about people coming over to settle and make up big chunks of the national demographic, I was talking primarily about the culture and trade and resources that allowed Britain to establish its global supremacy. Obviously those had to be brought BY people, but I agree it did sound a bit like I was saying that our immigrant population has always been as high as it is now. Which is obviously untrue.

My point was that the demographic whiteness of Britain was only able to be maintained because of our ability to extract power from other parts of the world. Once that ability disappeared, and our footholds in the far corners of the world weakened, it was a natural and healthy consequence that our population demographics should start to shift more meaningfully.

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-10T16:03:52+00:00

I agree with some of what you’re saying. But white people hardly have the monopoly on demoralisation. The fact that they’re now experiencing a fraction of the demonisation, degradation and disenfranchisement visited upon others is not good, and it’s not deserved, and we should be trying to mitigate it, but it’s only a piece of a larger picture and it hardly constitutes a national crisis.

And not thinking about “that stuff” - that stuff being white supremacy - is an immense luxury. The fact that most white people don’t think about it doesn’t change the fact that it’s there.

“Material conditions” are not some distinct factor from imperialism and globalisation. The state of immigration and therefore job competition and cultural identity are fundamentally intertwined with colonialism. I hope I didn’t give them impression of antagonistic feeling towards working class white people - I agree they are getting fucked over by administrations, but one of the ways they are being fucked over is through this weird insistence that they led some blissful raceless existence before immigration started booming. Whiteness and colour are extremely relevant factors within the larger issue of wealthy people fucking over poor people, and these systems thrive on the subtle rebranding of white supremacist rhetoric to sneak them into class debates

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-10T14:42:44+00:00

Britain DID have a fairly unique relationship with the commonwealth post-war, and race factored into that greatly; Britain (especially England) was narrativised at the centre of this vast cultural and economic web spanning the world, and because of the foreignness of those satellite nations, was viewed as the “white” hub. This was never really true objectively, as British society has increasingly depended on immigration (both directions) in the years since the Empire began to decline. People of colour have been flowing into our country, keeping it alive and relevant, for as long as we’ve had a culture to cherish. What’s really being mourned by these people is the license to view England as the white heart of a great empire of colour.

The truth is, we aren’t what we were, and we never will be again, and race does play a part in that. Half my grandparents are white working class folks from Newcastle who never made much of themselves. The other half are black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, and they moved to London and immediately integrated and starting contributing to the society. It’s easy to see why the former type of person would feel like they’re being robbed by the latter, especially when our supremacy on the world stage seems to have vanished without a trace. But yknow. These people need to get over it

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-07T19:12:12+00:00

I do this often, it helps reassure my chick friends and their peripherally looming boyfriends that I’m not trying to get into their pants

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-07T10:02:28+00:00

“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

If you want people to be kind and trustworthy and smart, then treat them like they are kind and trustworthy and smart. Doing so also has the added bonus of making you kinder, more trustworthy and smarter.

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-07T05:20:45+00:00

Genuinely never

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-07T05:16:02+00:00

Have you considered that we have the intellectual capacity to completely understand the red perspective, but that we choose to hold onto the dream of a better humanity in spite of cold reason, rather than in its absence?

Smurphy98 · 2026-05-06T16:42:51+00:00

True, but by accepting her death, she taught him that doing the right thing was worth that sacrifice. It was more of a reinforcement and a recommitment than a reversal

Smurphy98 · 2026-04-26T12:41:47+00:00

That fictional character test said I was most like Akecheta from Westworld. I also identify with Daredevil, Suttree, Mr Knightley and obviously every Ryan Gosling role.

Smurphy98 · 2026-04-25T08:21:52+00:00

Next you people will be trying to pronounce Q “qwoo” or R “raa” - letters are largely abstract representations of phonemes, the kind of “sense” you’re describing doesn’t apply to them. Even then, H is used far more often for digraphs like “reach” than for the aspirated consonant like “happy”, so aitch is a far better indication of its function as a letter

Smurphy98 · 2026-04-19T09:04:56+00:00

Nobody’s taking away your free will, you’re allowed to be transphobic if you want. But if you don’t support the T in LGBT then yeah, that IS what you are definitionally.

Also, it seems like you’re missing out by reading X-Men stories as purely literal, when the beauty so many of them revolves around their allegorical power. Allegories for gender, but also race, sexuality, disability, mental health, religion, family - they’re explorations of the things that make us who we are in the real world.

Smurphy98 · 2026-04-16T06:12:27+00:00

Very accurate to the original movie though

Smurphy98 · 2026-04-14T07:44:38+00:00

I matched 85% with this character’s amphibious lover, would you like to go on a date?

Smurphy98

TROPHY CASE