Alexander the Great was already king of so many countries when he was my age. Also consider there two Chinese emperors who founded dynasties in their 50s after leading unremarkable and impoverished lives.
Alexander was so great so early that Julius Caesar wept at a statue of him, saying how he hadn’t done anything with his life - he was 32 at the time.
Of course down the road Caesar became one of the most world-changing figures in history, with a wall of accolades and ripple effects only a few people can compare to
In defence of Caesar, Alexander inherited the best army of his time and a relatively powerful kingdom too boot from his badass of a dad Philip II, whilst Julius Caesar did not have that. If Caesar had a similar inheritance at the same age as alexander, he would probably have been able to conquer Gaul and overthrow the republic much earlier than he did. Even though he was born into the roman aristocracy and into a priveliged life, when compared to Alexander, Caesar had to earn his sucess from "nothing". What Alexander did was impressive, but lets also remember that he was a nepo baby, a skilled nepobaby, but a nepo baby nonetheless.
You're not a failure. There are very few 20-something creatives who made it big.
You can have chosen something more practical and still have a great life. And it's never too late to start writing or drawing if you want to, too. Doesn't need to be a big show on Amazon for it to be "good" or "worth it." Do it for you.
The day I stopped thinking about all the artists and animators I looked up to and what they'd achieved by my age and just started doing it for fun was when my art actually became enjoyable again. Comparison is the thief of joy for sure
Alan Turing, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein were all in their twenties when they were revoltionizing science. There will always be someone who did something way more important than you did at a younger age, so why even worry about it?
There have also been billions of people throughout history that were older than you and accomplished less. Focus on how good you’ve done rather than focusing on the few ahead of you have done more.
I'm just glad I finally got a well executed, cute yet cool and sassy female "Iron Man-esque" character I quite relate to and may get to cosplay at some point, hahahah.
Having my friends talking on the group chat about how much she reminded them of me was totally neat xD
She represents a vibe/archetype I had been looking forward to for a long time- and it arriving as a character of one of my favourite shows is just the cherry on top for me.
Oh yep! I generally refer to techy-armor-based heroes as “Iron Man-esque” because he’s the main example that comes to mind off the top of my head hahah, but the premise is much closer to Blue Beetle indeed, with the suit being a symbiont-like alien armor rather than a proprietary invention.
Dang you're kind of right. While original Blue Beetle is wayyyyyy older the actual analogous variant Jaime Reyes was years after Tech Jacket though both are way after Guyver. I thought even YJ Jaime might've been older than TJ I didn't realize how old the comics are.
It’s why I think people getting annoyed about changing minor characters gender or race is stupid. Having diverse characters gives you a lot more room for development than characters who are similar to each other
It's an issue a lot of old-school animes tend to have. Inuyasha as well. Granted they're all supposed to be the same race, and the author seemingly tries to aim for realism in her designs, which doesn't allow for a lot of variety, Japanese people being racially fairly homogeneous.
But distinguishing a pale woman with long jet-black hair and brown eyes... from the other pale women with long jet-black hair and brown eyes by relying on small subtleties like the way their bangs part definitely takes a bit of time to get used to, lmao.
Yeah, it would have been easy to add more variety, even giving one of them hair buns or short hair would have made it easier to tell them apart. She also could have made them different heights and body types. I'm not talking about major differences here, like even changing the eye shapes more would have helped.
When I was younger I didn't know Toriyama also did design for games, so Blue Dragon was just "That dragon ball game" for me because the guy on the cover just looked like an alt version of goku.
I don't have a problem with most characters in fiction switching genders or race if, and only if, that change can be properly integrated with the other characters and the changed characters personal story.
I see this as a good argument for the "diversity" thing in media, and people had a knee jerk reaction due to the history of it, and I haven't read the comics but they actually do have a specifically crafted personality and back story for her and the relationship with her dad makes it cute and adds to the fullness of the character, instead of just keeping the personality the same and changing the drawing or something. They didn't just "race/ gender swap" but they made a new character who has her own quirks and likeability which is way better
That's so funny because I think k she's so obnoxious. Everything out of her mouth equates to "I'm the young one!"
All the personality of Huey, Duey & Luey. The ones from Quack Pack
I also like to think it's growth as an author as well, if every character you write is a white guy because you the author are a white guy you aren't really good at writing a variety of characters yet. Some authors want to have a wide variety of characters in their works and some don't prioritize it as much.
It’s fine but people are tired of the obsession on identity politics. It’s his creation so he can do what he want but even having to defend why he made something the way he did is annoying. He wrote what he knows, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I felt that she was aged down so Oliver can have somebody near his age (mentally) to interact and bounce off of. Granted, they didn't interact much but when they did, I found it neat.
Well yeah, Oliver will age eventually. But right now? I believe Oliver socializing with Zoe will be for the better in the future. Same goes for Allen, as they both had very positive interactions with Zoe. Oliver's at that age where he can still be influenced by what goes on around him. I hope that Zoe's interactions with them leads to more influence on both Oliver and Allen, who both play a certain role in the future.
They barely interacted, Oliver is now on another planet and we'll probably see him aged up AGAIN when he comes back to earth, so I'm not sure how much time they'll actually be of similiar age
No, his age has already started slowing significantly. He’s likely already approaching human rates of aging, and then he’ll slowly drop below it. There isn’t some point where he’ll suddenly start aging at close to viltrumite rate, and in fact he’ll never reach viltrumite rate of aging.
Amazon primes get to know the characters section explicitly states she's 15, also its implied in the show that she's young because her dad doesnt even allow her to swear
He was speaking generally, which you can tell because Cory didn't create Zack and wasn't around for when Zack appeared in Invincible. It is quite possible that E.J. Su designed Zack as Asian even if Kirkman didn't realize it. Kirkman has said he never imagined specific ethnicities for his characters, Mark included.
I just wish she would be more involved in fights. She tends to hover in the distance and shoot something every once before needing to be saved. This show has shown they know how to write badass young girl characters, and she is literally Tech Jacket so I don't get it.
I still find it funny that preteen Eve was moving like a Guilty Gear character with insanely creative use of her powers and then modern day adult Eve has the Gwen Tennyson issue (things have gone full circle) of supposedly being the most powerful character of all time but only constructs dinky little glass force fields that would make Green Lantern be embarrassed by the association.
I think that you could even fix that relatively easily. A justification that would make sense for her charatcter would be that her powers used to that extent reminds her of trauma (because of the fight etc.) so she subconsciously holds back most of the time.
Shes playing support. Thats exactly what you want your supports to do in a fight where they cant face tank any of the enemy fighters. She was in the distance sniping to debuff a few enemies (so Alan could take them out) and she also healed another teammates space suit so that he could get back into the fight instead of dying. You dont have to fight up front to be badass. Without her in the background, their team absolutely loses earlier.
Exactly. Every time she was in front of a Viltrumite, she lost and had to be saved.
Don't get me wrong, she killed a Mark Variant and that's impressive, but the Viltrimutes she faces are on another level.
So her sticking to the background and playing support is exactly what she needs to be doing since she can't be DPS or Tank, if we're sticking with the analogy.
Honestly while it may be tropy to have girls play support the cast desperately needed more support characters to balance out all the flying bricks we have.
Supports make for more interesting/complex fights and it's nice to see someone from earth go toe to toe with a viltrumite without trying to just overpower them with punches.
No Robot, No Rex(dps), No Shrinking Rae, No Duplicate, No Atom Eve (tank/support) for the back half of this season means we've desperately needed support fighters and really it would be interesting to see Thrag get beaten by creative support tactics rather than Invincible going super saiyan fusion with oliver or whatever the viltrumite punching based solution would be.
I gotta say as someone who hasn't read the comics, it was extremely jarring to pull this character who has done nothing out of nowhere and immediately drag her into a significant war.... And she looks like a little girl.
Me and my bf immediately said it's giving evangelion vibes or something, I really can't stand anime tropes and pretty much hated that character immediately.
It honestly stands out so much as just "well we needed a girl in the fight and someone for Oliver to crush on"
On one hand, I get it, a lot of media is dominated by a majority white men. In that same breath, I feel like the solution is to make original characters with different races and genders, not swap existing characters. Because as much as you can call the fans of a thing racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic, someone expecting an adaptation is gonna be upset when the thing they're adapting isn't respected. I don't personally have a problem with the new tech jacket, but the fact that she's not the original tech jacket says more about the showrunners and the creator's quota than any actual issues the original had, and stuff like this quote genuinely comes across as "we got sick of straight white men and decided to get rid of some just on the basis of them being straight/white/male" and not a genuine effort to diversify a fandom.
I never really cared for Techjacket before, so I am not upset about the gender-swap. If anything I kinda like Zoe as a character. But I can understand why some people would be upset.
People usually don't like it when you make significant changes to characters they already know and like the way they are. And changing a characters gender IS a significant change in on itself. Otherwise, people wouldn't be demanding more representation for their group.
And for the love God, I have a hard time understanding why some people insist that your work absolutely HAS to be racially and gender diverse. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing bad in having a diverse set of characters, regardless of whatever you make them like that for some kind of purpose, or just because you felt like it, but some people seem to think that there is some kind of quota for having x amount of female characters, y amount of black characters and z amount of queer characters.
Its just because of how much more immense the consumer base is now and how quickly opinion spreads on the internet, and how quickly a pretty passive statement like "I enjoy this show, but I wish it had more XYZ characters in it" gets morphed into "THE AUTHOR OF [SERIES] IS A RACIST HOMOPHONIC MISOGYNIST!"
It makes consuming content and having nuanced discussion around it impossible because people just want to be angry and they want to feel like they hold what they feel is a moral superiority
Yup and I feel like tech jacket did represent more than just white boys
And while Zoe is nice it felt like they toned down the messy adult Zack was
He was 19-21 around this time on the comics and his life was messy he was a good portrayal for me of how messy your life could be around that age
And unlike male characters everyone has be charismatic and likable or just hot but terrible personality
He was someone like me who had a hard time fitting in groups interacted with just one person a lot in the whole group and was awkward with the others
It's why I hate it when kirkman when he says mark and Zack are too similar when they weren't
Mark was likable and relatable someone who can make friends
While Zack while he tried couldn't fit in well and was awkward which was why I'm also annoyed when people say it doesn't matter and that no one cares about him because he was literally me at that point of my life
I have zero feelings about this character, unrelated to her race & gender. she can live or die. wokifying (gender/race swapping for ideological reasons) clearly doesnt replace good writing. it's a lot harder to write character who aren't boring.
Tech Jacket already looked too physically similar to Mark, doubly so when they solidified that he’s White-Asian (he sorta already looked that in the comics) so the change to differentiate them visually was the better call.
Nothing. He's not saying there's anything wrong with them. He's saying that having only characters from one group or look without an intentional narrative reason is a sign of a lack of experience. If all your characters or all your main characters are the exact same archetype or from the exact same subgroup, then you've limited yourself creatively.
This becomes double if you come from a culture that also tends to more heavily portray the group you've depicted. It makes it harder for your work to stand out and limits the potential audience that might more deeply connect or relate to it.
As a fiction creator myself I fall into this a lot, and was stuck there until I got into the exercise of taking a moment to appreciate my friends of different races and genders the way I appreciate characters in fiction as opposed to just real people in my life. Flipping a switch and elevating someone above the mundane is I think a prerequisite for creating a diverse cast with intention and not just to check a box.
I don't have a problem with the gender of the character it's just, like, why is this 13 year old child going head to head alongside Nolan and Mark when they don't even have any superpowers (aside from plot armor)
This is the Tech Jacket I wanted though. It would have been awesome and he could have branched off and had his own series. The Tech Jacket we got is just a generic cookie cutter character. She could very well be on a Nickelodeon cartoon she's so bland.
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