Den of the Cyphered Wolf

Monday, February 28, 2011

Top 5 Kid's Anime Shows from the 90's and early 2000's

So back in the anime boom a lot of things happened. Some of those things I miss and some in retrospect I think were kind of stupid.

You see in order to market itself anime branded itself as adult, when that's not entirely the truth.



The difference between anime and western animation is more along the lines of, for about 30 years westerners thought of animation being only kid stuff and in a weird self-fulfilling prophesy most western animation eventually became just kidstuff for a bunch of reasons, while in Japan it was just a storytelling medium. The point is there was just more variety. For every Ghost in The Shell , Cowboy Bebop, and Akira there is also a Pokemon and Hello Kitty.












Okay now lets get to the main show my top 5 Anime Shows for kids of the Anime Boom.
The Rules
Per usual here are the rules.
1. First off the shows have to be products of the anime boom which I am defining as about 1996-2004.
2. Like the last list these shows have to be targeted towards kids younger than 14 .
3. I am going to try to keep Toonami Shonen fighting shows in check, meaning, for the most part shows like Naruto and Dragon Ball Z are out of the running. It's not that I don't like them but I have to give stuff a chance rather than this being a list of every Toonami show I watched when I was 12. ( I miss Toonami so hard.)
4. I'm defining anime as animation made in Japan, so sorry Korean stuff and American stuff that's anime influenced is out.

5. Bey Blade
2001


Sure it's a show about just spinning tops, but it's EXTREME, spinning tops, and a really really fun show.
4. Medabots
1999

Who doesn't like sentient robots who kick the crap out of each other?

3. Digimon
1999


It is not a rip off of pokemon. Digimon, in some places came out first and has the better story, so there. Nener. (Man I am reverting to my younger self. )

2. Rave Master
2004
(Note I was originally just going to put up the dub openings but the sub opening for this one is so epic I'm putting it in too.)



It's got the right combo of action and comedy. Also google the words,Punk Street Musica and Silver Rhythm Gang.

1. Zoids Chaotic Century
2000

Remember what I said about robots. Just add in the words giant and warmachines and well yeah.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Why I've been taking so long

So about a month ago after listening to Yatzee go on about his love of Minecraft I got in on the beta.



For a few weeks in January I was constantly building, but eventually did all the stuff I could think to do so went back to doing other stuff. Then about 5 days ago my save file crashed and well it's been back to Minecraft. I'm still mad that the giant flaming tower I spent 3 days building is gone. Of course to be fair the tower was so tall that I could never see the flame before the tower got out of rendering distance. All of that was just so I could show the world the beginnings of Portland my new Minecraft world, where I've figured out all of my building rules before I stared so I don't have to spend a week retrofitting everything so my floors aren't all jagged. Three blocks down forth block ceiling / floor.




Thursday, February 24, 2011

Top 5 Kid Shows That Came Out When I Wasn't a Kid

Everybody thinks that their kid shows are the best. Yep. The nostalgia filter is definitely on when it comes to kid shows. So much so that a lot of cool shows that deserve some credit get pushed to wayside. So here are the top 5 kid shows that came out when I wasn't a kid.

First of when I make lists like these I like to have some rules so here they are.

1. The show had to premiered the year I graduated high school 2005 or later.
2. The show has to be targeted towards kids younger than 14. The one isn't as obvious as the last so here goes my trying to explain it. I still have most of the tastes I did as a teenager so If I would have liked a show as a teen I probably will still like it now so I'm trying to take out shows that fall in that category to give everything else a chance. These will get a post script at the end.
3. For this list at least I'm not counting anime. I love anime but I think it would be better to deal with it somewhere else.

Also before I begin there is a major caveat that needs to be understood. ABC, and the WB (not counting 4kids) stopped with their line ups which means that yes there are less shows for me to choose from.




5 Johnny Test
2005


It's the story of a hyperactive kid whose often used as a guinea pig for his sister's wild experiments. I can dig it.

4. Chaotic
2006

Okay I'll admit it's not the best but it's the closest I've ever come to having a Magic the Gathering TV show. Two friends who to play a trading card game one day find out that the world of the trading card game is real and that there is a way they can play the game for real. Okay it's a Yu-gi-oh rip off, but it's a good Yu-gi-oh rip off.



3. Storm Hawks
2007
Alternate universe. Check. Wasteland complete with giant man eating serpents. Check. Sky knights and sky pirates complete with kick ass chase scenes and awesome aerial maneuvers. Check.
2. Huntik
2009

Think Pokemon crossed with Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiago (the cartoon not the game show) with a better plot, better animation, and kick ass fight scenes.

Huntik is about a kid and his friends trying to find talismans that allow the owner to summon monsters. They are trying to find them before another group of well bad guys do. Again did I mention the fight scenes.


1. The Epicness that is Avatar: The Last Airbender.
2005

Avatar: The Last Airbender
Tags: Avatar Episodes,Avatar,Avatar Games




Avatar: The Last Airbender
Tags: Avatar Episodes,Avatar,Avatar Games


Needs no intro. I'll just say. Save the last episode Zuko was always a better fighter as a villain. Of course he only got 8 episodes as a hero. Also I can't wait until the Legend of Korra.



Honorable Mentions
These are shows that for various reasons I couldn't put on this list.


Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.
2004


It would have been on the list but it came out in 2004, and as a point to prove how good it was it was Ned's that inspired this list, and Kid Show Week.

Young Justice
2010

I like it but it seemed like it was more aimed at teens.

Ben 10 Alien Force/ Ben 10 Ultimate Alien
2008

Same thing as Young Justice. These are the two shows that give me hope for Cartoon Network rather me than going on long rants about the glory days of Toonami. How they changed it so now it sucks. Though I do that to.

Kid Show Week

I love kids shows. Kid shows are unafraid to so something that most shows designed for adults are too afraid to. Have Fun. Most television writers take themselves and the shows they write waaay to seriously. As a result you have shows that either don't take themselves seriously at all, or are so busy being grimdark that they forget they're suppose to be entertaining. Because kid shows are suppose to be fun writers can just say screw it and write well, fun shows. rather than thinking that having a joke here or there will discredit the show in the eyes of the audience.

For the next week I'm going to do a series of top 5 lists related to kid shows.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Updates

Okay the original plan was to do video updates every week but. Well, I got lazy. So I'm just going to write up what's going on.


First off what went down last week

So last week I had a bunch of momentum, which is, sad to say dying down, but anyway here is a list stuff I worked on.

I made a vid of one of my Magic Decks. Don't worry folks I'm already working on a new one of those and should have it out by Wednesday morning.

I put up a Google graph of unemployment in cities in Southern, Michigan.

I put up opinion posts on the budget and film credits.

Here's what I didn't do. I didn't work on Game at all and while I worked a little on A Claymore is not a Rapier it's not done either. I'm not too upset about it because I worked on a bunch of other stuff.

What I'm working on now
Like I said I'm working on a Magic Vid. I'm also finding myself in a little bit of writer's laze and need to start working on my fiction again. Damn you minecraft and magic. The next Southfield City council meeting isn't until next week, but in the last one the city council pushed a crap ton of stuff into the next one. Oh yeah nearly a foot a snow to shovel is not fun.

Monday, February 21, 2011

21st Century Boy

These are my hungry years.
The years when I have nothing, yet have everything to prove.
The years of the struggle and the hunt.
Where if I don't stay to my path everything I'll lose.
If I'm gonna get what I want.
I got to force it.
Got to Punch it.
Do what I like.
Do it even when I don't like it.
I got to write
I got to move those gears.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

On The Michigan Film Credits Thing

As I said in a number of places, I don't know what I want to do, but the more I do this kind of thing the more I think I would do something involving media and communication. Now that's broad. It could be anything from blogger, to newspaper writer, to fictional script writer.

I want to move out of Michigan, but there were a couple of things making me rethink that. With the film tax credits I thought that maybe in a few years or decades Michigan would become a bit like Texas in the film industry but due to Gov. Snyder wanting to cut film tax credits it looks like it won't.

I'm big on the idea that if Michigan wants to recover it has to spend money in the right places and I thought that this was one of the right places. While not a huge part of the economy if the right moves were made it could have grown.

A lot of the companies that already cropped up because of the tax credit program are going to have to move.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Getting Meta : Minorities part I

If you write them wrong you will catch hell, and if you don't write them all you'll still catch hell.

Here are some tips.


Subtlety

The hardest thing is balancing the fact that you don't want to hide a characters minority status but you don't want to push it into stereotype or tokenism territory. A character's race, gender, or sexuality needs to be part of their identity, but not the entirety of their identity. The audience needs get the vibe that all the characters know about the diversity of the cast, but don't care about it. It should only be a factor when it's pertinent, which brings up the hard part, writing a scene where the diversity is pertinant with out looking like your trying to say something about it. In a lot of ways it's like flirting. The moment you explicitly start talking about it you have lost your audience, or have probably something stupid that you should have been smacked for. You have to write about race without seeming like your're writing about race.

Stereotypes
First off visual stereotypes are a big no no. But behavioral stereotypes are a little murkier and again you need to be subtle. There was a long time I didn't listen to rap because I was afraid of being taken as a gang banger. Then in my freshmen year in college I discovered Common. You can't be afraid of showing black people taking part of in certain activities, but if you are it has to feel organic. Again it has to be subtlety part of something the character will do. The Wire is full of drug selling gangbangers but is often regarded as one of the best handling of race on television in years. It had balls. No matter what happened the audience always knew characters came first. A character's not brandishing a weapon and slingin' coke because the writers are lazy and thought black guy = drug dealer. It's the opposite the writers deliberately mapped out the characters and the setting.



By the way the subtlety of the wire is why I can't watch Law and Order SVU with out cursing.

Artificial Stereotypes
How storytellers portrayed various minorities over time has a lot to do with what the writers thought and not what was reality. We need to break from those and try to portray reality, with acceptable breaks due to comedy.

Be careful of what you don't show
Just as important of what you write is what you don't. If you're writing a civil war epic you might want to even passingly make a mention of slavery. A picture about 1950's/60's Alabama. Maybe take a moment to show the characters talking around a newspaper. As much as I hate to admit it that's why we have Black History Month, because in a lot of the retelling of history black folks and events involving black folks gets just plain left out. It sends the subtle message that we weren't there. Same goes for other minorities. If you're doing a WWII piece make mention of the female factory workers and nurses.

Don't Have an Agenda
The thing that really pisses me of is when writers, try to use race to pass along some message to the audience. Well meaning or not it most of the time turns into horrendous writing.

On the Black History Month Thing (Hey maybe I should start doing all my editorials like that)

Some of the people who checked out my opening to my Black Rock Playlist told me it was a cop-out on me talking about black history month. Yes, Yes it was. I really don't care about black history month. I'm black so I don't have or like to believe I don't have the option of ignoring black history. For me it's a 24/7/365 thing. It colors, no pun intended damn it, my paradigm. I remember the old stories Grandma and Dad told me about racism. I remember that the first blood shed in the American Revolution was a black's.


Aside: That said though I'm glad of the result, America the beautiful, if I were living at the time I would have been a loyalist. You can't tar and feather people, throw stones at soldiers, lynch public officials, or destroy crap tons of property just because you have a few political differences with the current head of state and his legislative body. George was right to bring in the troops, damn it. )



My politics, and identity are closely tied to my being black so I don't have to wave a flag this time of year, that flag was already flying high on the mast a long time ago.

Now, there is a movement to get rid of Black history month that makes a similar argument. Black history is American history and should be integrated into the rest of it.

Just for the record I'm not part of it. I'm on the "if you don't want to deal with it don't" side which is a fancy way of saying. I really don't give a damn one way or the other. I don't like politicizing race if I don't have to.

That said whether or not we should keep black history month depends on how far you think this country has come in terms of race relations. I have a pretty pessimistic view on that.

People assume, and yes I already made this point in another essay, that just because we don't talk about race it doesn't affect society. I believe converse, that we refuse to talk about race proves that it still does affect society. And because we refuse to talk about it we end up making a bunch of blanket assumptions that wind up making everyone look like asses. Yes even in the Detroit area there is a black middle class. Yes some blacks did fight for the confederacy. And as mentioned in this post part of the point of Huck Finn is to show slavery as having been wrong.

Now as if I weren't pissed off enough I will show you clips that make me want to throw a chair. Yes despite the ehhhhggh cuteness of Heidi. The Littlest Rebel made me want to punch Shirley Temple in the face.





While I love Bones I would like to forget this episode ever happened.


Dr. Temperance Brennan: [after describing rap music as tribal] African-Americans aren't the only ones with tribal heritage.
Female Dancer #1: You sayin' we're natives of some tribe?
Dr. Temperance Brennan: Anthropologically speaking we're all members of tribes.
Female Dancer #2: You better shut your mouth.
Dr. Temperance Brennan: Hip-hop mirrors the direct visceral connection you see in tribal communication.
Male Dancer: What?
Dr. Temperance Brennan: After the Cartesians split in the 17th century we separated out mind from our bodies, the numinous from the animalistic.
Female Dancer #1: Are you callin' me an animal, fool?
Female Dancer #3: No, fool. She's using Descartes's philosophy to say she's down with the music.


But I can't. Bring the brain bleach. Bring the brain bleach!!! BRING !!! THE!!! BRAIN !!!!BLEACH!!!!! So wrong in so many ways!!. Brain Bleach.

And now for the first major feature length film in America that because of that status will never be forgotten. It's also arguably the most racist film in American history.

Yes foam at the mouth young Miles. Feel the rage. MHAAAAAA. I can feel your anger. Give in to it.



No, For I am a jedi like my father before me. Though I can do with cool black leather robes, and force lightning would be cool, and being able to choke a dude from 10 feet with my mind ...Okay I admit being a sith lord is a hell of a lot more appealing than being a jedi knight. But... I AM CHAOTIC GOOD.



My nerd is showing.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

The Budget 2.0 : Okay now I have something : Things to Keep in Mind

Okay after that last post and some thinking I finally came up with something to write. A list of things people should keep in mind, that they usually don't when looking at the budget.

5. NASA and foreign aid for the last few years have gotten about less than one percent each.

I'm going to level with you all. I am a nerd/geek. I think that NASA does improve our lives, but even if I didn't I am tired of hearing everybody say, "We should cut all that money that goes to NASA and foreign aid." Those budgets were slashed way back in the day and never really came back up.

4. Inflation
I'm not going to lie. The deficit is bad, but it's not as bad as everyone thinks due to this little economic trend that's been in effect of as long as anyone can remember. Inflation. Put simply 5 bucks next year isn't worth as much as 5 bucks today This is why all those financial experts tell you to invest rather than letting your money sit around, because by doing so you're letting it lose value. How does this affect the budget? Simple. Paying back the debt becomes easier. Think about it. Lets say back in the 90's you paid 10 grand for a car. That's still a lot of money, but its not as much as it was worth in the 90's. Of course this is why banks make you pay interest rates favorable to them.

3. The Economy Sucks and has for the last few years so the government has less revenue to work with.

I can already see it. Pundits playing the blame game on the deficit, but the truth is it's not really anyone's fault, or at least not as much of anybody's fault. The government makes money through taxes which it collects based on how much money people make. When people make less money so does the government, leading to two things, cuts and deficits.

2. Mandatory Spending
A lot of what's in the budget is money the government legally has to spend. It's stuff that they flat out can't get rid of even if they wanted to. This includes social security.

1. Tough Cuts
This goes back to 5. Everyone thinks that the government wastes crap tons of money and yes sometimes it does, but not as much as everyone thinks. If we really want to shrink the budget politicians would have to look at stuff that nobody wants to cut. For a micro example of this look at Michigan and Detroit. Of course Kwame screwed everyone over, but still.

The Budget 2.0

Part of me wanted to do something on the budget. After spending 20 minutes staring at huge excel spreadsheets I realized something. The reporters doing this have experience and probably some background in finances to understand this type of stuff. Not only that, but they will be poring over this data for the next couple weeks trying to make sense of it all. My point is I'm not really in a position to do that so I'm just going to paste some links. Yes I know it's a cheap cop-out. Maybe I will go through the data but right now I could go for some toast and bacon.

The Government Printing office which has both print and online copies of the budgets for the last couple of years.



Also here is a cool tool the New York Times put out regarding the budget.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Google Unemployment Comparison for Michigan Cities

I didn't know Google had it, but they have a tool that lets you compare the unemployment rate for various cities. I used it to compare some cities around here in Michigan.

5 Cool Ways to Use Twitter

, A lot of older people out there think twitter is stupid. I know who you are. Shaaammmmeee! Shaaaaammmmme!

Anyway here are 5 cool ways you can use twitter that aren't the "It's noon and I'm eating a hamburger."

5. Keeping up with content producers you like
The cool thing about twitter is that it has a personalized feed, so you can set it to keep up with your favorite bands, movie studios, internet video producers, vlogs, or wink wink blogs.

4. News on the go
I refuse to get a laptop because I like the power of a desktop, that and they're cheaper. The problem with that is that I feel computer withdraw when I go out, but if I subscribe to my favorite news outlets I have a quick and easy way to see the latest news on my cell.

3. Mass communication
Sometimes you need to tell a whole lot of people something really fast. "The meeting at six has been canceled" "Jodie's having a birthday party Saturday. Twitter is a quick way of doing this efficiently. You may still have to use snail mail for mass invites, but if I had a choice I would rather twitter people in 10 seconds.

4. What's going on
You can use the trending on twitter to figure out what everyone is talking about and use it to figure out what's going on before word officially gets out.

5. Emergencies
The cool thing about cell phones is that they have independent power supplies and are portable. In an emergency this makes them a pretty cool way to communicate. By combining the last four it makes twitter pretty useful in a situation where you can't get to a Tv or a computer. I know for a fact power companies use twitter when power gets knocked out from storms.

Black Rock Playlist.

It's Black History Month. I should give some sort of history lesson right now, but screw it. I'll do social responsibility later. On the other hand if you want to see me speak on the issue of race here is an old post. Right now, I just wanna rock so here is a playlist of Black rock and rollers.

Chuck Berry
:Sweet 16



Little Richard:Lucille

The Coasters:Yakity Yak

Richie Havens : All Along the Watch Tower

Jimi Hendrix : Valleys of Neptune




Fishbone
: Fight the Youth


Bad Brains
: Rise


Dead Kennedy's : Police Truck

Dead Kennedys "Police Truck" 2004

Dead Kennedys | Myspace Video


Living Colour : Go Away



Slash's Snake Pit : Good to Be Alive




Suicidal Tendencies : Institutionalized





Lenny Kravitz
: American Woman


Tamar Kali : Boot


"Boot" music video

Tamar-kali | Myspace Video


The Roots :The Seed 2.0



Rage Against the Machine : Guerrilla Radio



Street Sweeper Social Club : Paper Planes



The Dirtbombs : Broke in Detroit Again

The Bellrays : Snotgun

Saturday, February 12, 2011

On the Egypt Thing

Part of me doesn't want to chime in on what's been going on in Egypt because most of what I am going to say has been said better, but a conversation with the old man made me want to speak up. (He basically called me a man-child for disagreeing with him. I really hate it when he does that. Like I always say I write better when I'm pissed.)

I made the point that a lot of the coverage on the American Networks has been very America centric, mostly with a bunch of bullshit speculation on how this affects us. My point was that at this juncture it really doesn't. Right now it's not about us. It's about the Egyptian people.

We don't know if Mubarak's leaving will lead to war, who is going to end up in power, or what their policies will be. Nobody does. The networks were and are too afraid to say, "You know what? We don't know what's going to happen. We will get back with you when we have a better idea of what's going on. "

Furthermore as I was trying to point out, it is not about the United States. This is about the Egyptian people and before yesterday it was about their uncertainty and outrage. What the story should have been, and in certain outlets like the BBC and Aljazeera was that nobody knew if there was going to be a new government and if there was, what it would look like. Nobody still knows what exactly Egypt's new government will look like.

Instead, cable news continues to want to talk about everything but that, Twitter, Facebook, the possibility of an Israeli war, Obama, when in reality the story is that in about three weeks a populace went from knowing what its government looked like to not knowing. Right now it's a whole new world in Egypt.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Blogs and Web Projects From People I Know Vol. I

I Hate Everyone- Kristin Skaggs

Write to Overcome - Shirley Bolden

alisha-green.com - Alisha Green

esalonspace.com - Mina Morrow

The Social Entrepreneurship Exchange - Auren Kaplan

Lady Blade - Tiffany Lindsay

Meezilini - Mark Miles, Jr.

Respect

P.S. Sorry If I got any of this wrong guys. I mostly just did a facebook crawl.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Southfield Public School District Board Meeting 2/8/2011 Audio

School Board Meeting in Southfield, Michigan on February 8, 2011

Topics Include: *Student and Staff Recognition
- The closing of a program that helped parents pay for their students to attend school in another district

-The Grandfathering payment for high school students already using the program so they can stay in those schools

- A Bid for a school network equipment for roughly $27,000

-Working with the transfer management of the Magnolia early childcare program

For More Please Visit: http://cypheredwolf.blogspot.com/

Also you can download audio of this meeting here.

A packet for this meeting may be found here.



Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Southfield City Council Meeting News Brief 2/7/2011

Providence Hospital representatives told the Southfield City Council about an in progress $5 million expansion of the hospital's emergency department and a completed $2.2. million renovation of its gift shop and lobby .

The council and the hospital representatives further discussed the importance of the hospital to the Southfield community and ways the hospital can and is improving care.

The council also discussed a tax abatement for Ciber Inc. The company had previously gained a tax abatement, from the council, because of the jobs they could bring to the area, but the previous tax abatement was for a property the company is not using. Because of growth, the company decided to use another building and asked for council to transfer the previous tax abatement to the new property.
The property of the original abatement was at the First Center building on Northwestern Highway, the company is currently at 300 Galleria Officenter. According to a city council memo, the company has created 125 jobs and is expected to create 300 more.

A Neighborhood Stabilization program was also under discussion. Over time while some of the vacant homes in Southfield are sold other homes in the same areas are put up for sale. There are several aspects of the plan to stabilize these communities, including Home Ownership training, vacant home repair and demolition, and connecting possible buyers to some of these vacant homes.

On Wednesday, February 9, 2011 a draft of the plan will appear on the cities website and in public places so the city's constituency will have an opportunity to discuss and comment upon it.

During the discussion of the Neighborhood Stabilization program the members of the city council discussed how comparable value rules may be depressing the real estate market.

The City Council also discussed the possible upgrading of the cities geographic information system that can have several applications including describing the location of businesses and city infrastructure.




You may find a packet for the meeting here.

Also you can download an audio file of it here.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Getting Meta: Matter and Anti-matter Heroes and Anti-Heroes

Hero Classic
In the olden day times, a hero was the ideal. These were the guys who everyone wished they were. The best example of an American hero is Superman. He's strong, fast, brave, and just.

The way it would happen in the old Grecian tales is you would have your hero living the life then fate would fuck his shit up and the rest of the story is him trying to deal with that, because the gods are dicks.


Eris, was destroying a civilization of heroes really worth it.

What is an Antihero
In the broadest sense of the word the antihero is just a hero who isn't. A hero who the audience can and will disagree and find fault with.

What Hero Classic Says About Society
One of the codifying antiheroes is Mark Twain's good ole' Huck Finn. One of those things people forget though writers almost never do is that generally speaking the hero is always right. The hero's especially hero classic's viewpoints and ethics generally line up with society's but when the hero's viewpoints differ from society it's a way for a writer to say this is where society is wrong. The plot of Huck Finn gets kicked off because Huck thinks that society's rules are stupid and doesn't want to be "civilized". It's a fun way of Twain saying the same thing.


Bring 'em back down to normal

When your hero is near perfection you run into some narrative problems on occasion. Let's go back to superman. Sure Supes does lose on occasion, but it's so rare that the audience wonders why the baddies just don't get smart and go "You know what? I've played this game too many times. Here's my cell. Call the cops." Also it's not that hard to be brave when you're arguably the most powerful being on earth. Also a large part of storytelling is getting the audience to sympathize with your character's problems and I'm sorry but it is hard to with Hero Classics when they are living the life. Strength, money, women. Do you know how many dates Bruce Wayne gets? Sure his parents died, but he's still rich, hansom and waist deep in women. Not to mention he's the goddamn Batman, a martial arts master, techno wizard, who has a supercar. A SUPERCAR!!



This is what Marvel had going for it. Clark Kent is Superman, but Spider-man is Peter Parker. Kent is the costume. Parker is the character. Parker with all of his money and girl troubles. With a boss that hates him AND his alter ego.

The audience can relate to him.



White Black and Gray
One of the reasons why antiheroes have proliferated modern American culture so much is because they allow for moral ambiguity. Because certain wars that will not be mentioned ach cough Vietnam acch and cough Iraq people are becoming more and more aware of moral ambiguity. We used to consider ourselves the heroes in our own stories, but if we're the heroes the heroes did some damn distasteful things. Doesn't mean we aren't still the heroes of our own tale but we do have to question the heroes' actions. You end up with your Angels,William Adamas and Jimmy McNultys who have to make hard choices that are either smart and wrong or right and stupid and occasionally can just be petty because let's face it sometimes people, even good people, are like that. Putting your hero in situations where they have to choose between two evils says something about the setting their in.





Then you have the idiots who push it too far
One of these days I'm going to write a rant on Star Gate Universe, the show that took a bunch a hero classics, decided we want a bunch of antiheros and turned everyone into a bunch a backstabbing double crossing douche nozzles who undermine their own survival with their own stupid pettiness and arrogance. They're all going to die and guess what. They deserve it.

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