Power Dynamics in Jessica Jones

Okay, so lots of people have talked about how amazing Jessica Jones is, and I don’t want to rehash too much of what’s been said. Like about how the Bechdel test was flipped on its head, or how this is what a female driven show looks like, or how it is an amazingly realistic portrayal of abuse survival, and how its hero doesn’t act like a perfect survivor or hero, and how awesome that realism is.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record of how absolutely amazing this show was in regards to female characters and their portrayal. I’d like to talk instead about how Power Dynamics are handled, because they are one of the leading forces of the show (and not just because Kilgrave has the power of Mind Control).

Spoilers abound

Image found on http://www.screenrant.com

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Science Fiction Today – The World of Monsters

From http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_4

It’s probably playing Fallout 4, but I’ve been thinking about how many visions of the future, and fantasy stories for that matter, are full of monsters. Monsters in the wild, monsters in space, monsters we become.

Maybe the classic is the Final Fantasy series, with people living in their defended settlements, or just towns, and the countryside, forests, oceans, and everywhere else crawling with monsters. It’s a fact of life.

My first Final Fantasy game was VIII, which is particularly science fictiony. In it, the monsters amass on the moon and actually are brought over spilling into the world in an extreme way. But even before that, you have characters working as monster hunters, protection mercenary forces, and standing armies. All for fighting monsters.

In other stories, you see things like aliens, zombies, and even mutated humans. Heck, we just finished Jessica Jones the other day… Kilgrave is a monster!

But some of my thought is… why? Why do we so expect monsters in the future? Monster aliens, from Ender’s Game  to Doom. Conflicted misunderstood aliens to evil demonspawn. And transformations from mutants to zombies. Monsters in the environment from ones we might expect like wolves, to dragons and more. And that’s before you think of all the Lovecraftian stuff out there…

Is it that monsters make sense to us, that they’re an obvious evil? That they can avoid moral relativism? And then, if you want to make it a complicated story, you just add some moral relativism back in? Black and white, gray, where do monsters fall?

They can also represent our fear of the unknown, our fear of ourselves, our fear of the future. But there are oh, so many of them, when you start thinking of it. Are we that afraid?

Like I said, new way of looking at things. I ran into Super Mutants in Fallout 4, and it got me thinking. That’s after the giant mosquitos, giant scorpions, giant crabs…

Why monsters? What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Top Five Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains

I’ve heard it said, and I’m not sure I can disagree, that Marvel doesn’t have the best or most compelling villains in the Cinematic Universe. Some of that is that some of their best – Doctor Doom, Galactus, Magneto, Spider-Man’s rogues gallery – are all locked up in movie rights.

There’s been a lot of one-off villains, with various levels of comic history. But I think that they’re getting better, now that the heroes have been more established. And hopefully Thanos is awesome… But for now, my list of top 5 MCU villains.

Problem is… I don’t know if I can put them in an order to say who’s best. For one thing, the television show villains – who have been getting good – have a lot more time to breathe, to develop. They’re not a one-off problem. They’re people. Evil, messed up people. So let’s do the list chronologically, and in the comments, you tell me who you think is the best!