u/Puzzleheaded-Lab2447

There have been a couple of people who think that a wolverine with bone claws is not only more interesting but also more "effective" because he's faster, stronger and not threatened by adamantium poisoning.

Some even go as far as to say wolverine is a bland character with the adamantium claws or he's nothing without Adamantium.

This is just straight bullshit. Wolverine's bone claws are in no way more effective than adamantium, he is indeed stronger and faster and better healing because he's not burdened by the weight of adamantium but that would make him more of a punching bag here because his usual opponents are people twice his size and far more often stronger and faster than he is. The bone claws are only effective against flesh but are completely usually against strong metal or body armour. And guess what wolverine's opps often wear? Armoured gear.

Moreover since he doesn't have the adamantium, his healing factor has nothing to hold him back, this leads to his genes evolving and further mutating him. He begins to be a more feral and animalistic beast. He loses his humanity and will have no control over himself. He will become just like his arch nemesis sabretooth.

The adamantium while has a lot of drawbacks at least makes him more effective against his opponents.

The weapon x storyline is the most interesting and most iconic lore about wolverine, he's a soldier from lost time, abducted and experimented on like an animal with the sole goal to turn him into a weapon.

Watching wolverine adapt and live with adamantium is more interesting than him fighting his feral urges due to his mutation. The fighting the animalistic urges trope is kind of overplayed.

Apparently people who have seen the leaked story have said that the story was down right terrible with many of the writing completely changing the lore about the characters.

Insomniac is not good at that considering Spiderman 2, story.

I find it interesting how whenever a villain who has committed multiple crimes and violent acts can be looked in a sympathetic light once they express their vulnerabilities and insecurities.

Two major examples.

Conquest from invincible.

This guy is without doubt a bloodthirsty who has committed countless atrocities by his own admission and yet that "I'm so lonely" is enough to have people feel sorry for him and think he will change if he was sent to earth and made to live there.

Carl quest fanfics are a result of that. It's genuinely wild because the thing is, I don't think all the love on earth will ever make conquest change. This is the same guy that has other viltrumites fear him, and mind you all the viltrumites are battle hardened merciless warriors but they fear conquest the most.

Also let me remind you all that this guy canonically feasts on the corpses of aliens he decimated. General Kregg found him chomping on a dead alien he murdered while relaxing under a tree.

This guy will change for earth? Very questionable.

And for a more recent example, Bear from obsession.

Bear is the most clear cut example of how a villain can trick a lot of people into believing he's not a villain and he's "just a lonely guy who wants love". Or better yet he's a bad guy but also he didn't mean to.

Bear doesn't act like your typical villain or even the typical abuser often depicted in media. He is an extremely realistic person who has understandable and relatable issues. He doesn't take pleasure in the things that happened and reacts in horror like a normal person.

It's because of this hits so hard on people especially young men, that he got people trying to claim what he did to Nikki in bed wasn't rape or SA. That it wasn't his fault for prolonging Nikki's suffering. Everything was out of his control.

But it doesn't change the fact that Bear was given multiple clues and evidences that Nikki was suffering. When it was revealed that Nikki was indeed trapped in her own body, begging Bear to end her pain, Bear's response was "what's so bad about being with me?"

Inspite of all of that he is still thinking about himself and ignores her suffering in her own body because of his wish.

Bro also doesn't think about cancelling his wish after he was fed his own dead cat, just....alter the wish. Yeah...... completely normal dude.

You got people thinking he's unfairly being called a villain because he's "just a lonely guy who wanted to be loved". Some even claim it's misandric to hate on Bear.

Yeah.......it actually happened.

For female villains it's much rarer but it still happens especially if the female villain is attractive.

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of other examples of this phenomenon however these two are the best examples I can think of.

I think this is the reason why people are demanding for more unapologetic villains.

As with every piece of fiction, there will be a small group of people who try to justify and sympathise with an obviously evil and scummy character. Bear is no exception.

Thankfully, it is universally agreed upon that Bear was indeed the villain in the movie and the hate he gets is well deserved. But I was thinking about this group of people who decided to defend Bear.

I think those same group of people would not sympathise with Bear if Bear was a woman and Nikki was a man. They would immediately understand the message and point of the movie if the roles were reversed. The would call the intimate scenes SA because the possessed isn't in control of his body. They would demonise female Bear for not taking accountability, would make endless posts hating on her and put alongside pure evil villains in fiction.

They would not try to give the same understanding to female Bear as they would to male Bear. They would not talk about how "she just wanted to be loved" or "y'all hating on her because you all hate lonely women" etc etc.

This is just my take on the matter and how those people would react if the roles were reversed. What do you guys think?

This is probably going to be my last take on Obsession because I think most people can agree who is the clear villain of the movie and who is the real victim. Even the men agree with that take.

But of course there will be a subset of fans who will go above and beyond to have a different take that they know will piss people off.

There are a subset of people who sympathise with Bear and even go as far as to call him a victim too because the guy has relatable issues such as loneliness, a desire for love and connection and personal tragedy. After all he didn't even know the wish would work so how can he be the villain here?

I can understand why people feel that way and I don't blame them because Bear isn't your typical comic book cartoon moustache twirling villain or even the standard misogynistic man that the media portrays. He feels very real, looks very innocent and doesn't look like a guy who could harm anyone. He reacts with horror to what happens in the film like every normal person.

However I feel like all this understanding, all this sympathy would not happen if Bear was a woman.

Why do I feel like this? Because I know the same dude defending Bear, would not tolerate any understanding for female villains in media.

They don't want to hear about Anissa's Viltrumite upbringing that caused her to behave the way she did.

They don't want to hear about Stella also being forced to marry stolas in helluva boss.

They don't want to hear about Starlight being held captive by the shapeshifter and was not in the right mindset.

There were deathstroke fans who defended deathstroke all because Terra.....was a psychopath.

My point is this I doubt that these people who are trying to be empathetic and understanding of Bear while accusing others of trying to be "morally superior" would not grant the same level of understanding and sympathy if Bear was a woman and Nikki was a man.

All that loneliness, sadness and yearning for love are all ignored and they will be rants about how she is the worst human being for not taking accountability.

People are ready to call Hughie's intimate moment with the shapeshifter as SA because Hughie wasn't really consenting to the shapeshifter, he was consenting to Annie which the shapeshifter was not.

But when Nikki was trapped in her own body and Bear still went along with it despite the signs, suddenly those people want to argue it's not rape. Granted this is not most people, this is just some subset of the fanbase that I feel is somewhat hypocritical.

The above examples I gave were not to excuse the female villains either. I think Anissa and Bear are in the same category of villains, only Anissa is more upfront while Bear is more subtle. Stella is still an abuser. Starlight being mean to Hughie was bad. Only Terra is the most sympathetic from those examples.

I think most people including male fans universally agree that Bear is indeed the villain and should be held accountable.

But I did want to rant about the subset of fans trying to make the obvious villain, look like a victim.

Let's cut to the chase, Obsession was a great horror and I think everyone who watched this film agreed that Bear fucked up pretty badly and is the main villain of the entire movie. But the internet being the internet, there are a couple of people who defend Bear.

Mostly their argument is that Bear didn't know that the wish would actually work and he did everything to try and fix the issue especially at the end where he took his own life to "save" Nikki. Therefore Bear is also a victim in this situation. No one was the problem and everyone was the victim

I can understand different opinions and takes on a film. However it's worth challenging those takes because sometimes it misinterprets the media. Granted obsession is made vague in which you can form many takes. But sometimes it will get people to have questionable takes like the one I mentioned above.

Yes initially it can be said that Bear was also a "victim" in this situation because he genuinely didn't know that the wish would work for him. Besides almost every guy at some point in their lives has thought of making a wish where their crush would fall for them and they never meant it in a malicious way.

But as the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Bear was selfish and deliberately ignored all the signs that Nikki was being forced against her will and is trapped without her body. It even began the moment Bear made the wish, for a brief moment Nikki gained consciousness as noted by the "what the fuck" she uttered out of nowhere while talking to Bear.

Then while having their first intimate moment, her sudden shock at what was happening and her jumping from the bed and scaring Bear. This implies that every intimate moment they had with each other, was completely against Nikki's will which means Bear committed SA every time they were making out in bed.

"But Bear didn't know", yet he was not weirded out by the sudden random instants where she was clearly shocked and distressed about what was happening and never thought to question it? Even if he didn't know, couldn't he have reframed from being intimate or made up some excuse to reject fake Nikki's advances?

He didn't even once think the wish went wrong when fake Nikki lied about her father's cancer, taped his door shut so he couldn't leave or the fact that she fed him his DEAD CAT? Like come on dude he cannot be that dense, any normal dude would immediately try to fix the situation if this ever happened.

He even ignored how the wish was basically destroying Nikki's body where she stood in their house waiting for him for hours, not moving from her spot, urinating and defecating herself because whatever possessed Nikki didn't allow her to go to the bathroom. And the random acts of self harm she does as the movie progresses.

If he truly loved Nikki, he would have understood how the wish was destroying her and even ruining his own life and would have acted sooner. But again he thought he could brush it off.

Huge red flags there but fine granting Bear the benefit of the doubt even after all that has happened. The final nail to his coffin was two scenes. The one where he talked to customer care about the willow wish where it was revealed that Nikki was screaming through the phone implying she was trapped and the scene where the real Nikki revealed herself while fake Nikki was sleeping where she begged Bear to end her misery.

His response "What's so bad about being with me?". Yeah bro at that moment, his questionable victim status is all but revoked. Ggs bro, you now earned your spot of being in the villain spotlight.

Even his "self sacrifice" was selfish and didn't fix anything. After Nikki was finally freed from her curse, her life is a living hell and is only going to get worse from there.

Think about it.

1. She has three bodies in the house where all the evidence points towards her as the main perpetrator.

2. There is no way to prove to court that everything she did was against her will.

3. Everyone she interacted with witnessed her weird and disturbing behaviour, which means everyone would not be supporting her and would demonise her.

4. She would likely go to prison for the rest of her life and if by some miracle she escaped jail time, everyone will treat her as a monster who murdered 3 innocent people.

I don't think people understand the extreme consequences that Nikki had and now has to endure, all because of Bear's entitlement. Bear didn't really save Nikki, all he did was take her from one hell and put her in another hell.

Bear is rightfully labelled as a full on villain because he was given multiple signs and chances to get things right before they escalated. But all he could think of was him and himself. He ultimately kept Nikki a prisoner in her own body.

Another thing I was rant about is that those same people who defend Bear now, would not defend him if he was a woman.

Yeah I'm going there, I noticed a niche group of people have only two takes, either it's completely the woman's fault or it's both the man and the woman's fault. Never a man's fault even if it's clear as day that it is. They go to the ends of the earth to excuse the male character.

If it was Nikki who made the same wish about Bear and all the events that transpired, Nikki would have been labelled a pure evil villain and you would have multiple posts here in this sub about how all the intimate moments they had was not consensual and how monstrous she was.

I think the defense is coming from the fact that Bear doesn't act like the traditional misogynistic villain that is usually portrayed in films. He isn't a loud mouth and openly misogynistic or violent. He is a "nice guy", so his nice guyish behaviour coupled with his cowardice helped mask his entitlement and selfishness.

That's all I got to say. I know this is a common sense thing since everyone including majority of the men agreed that Bear universally fucked up and is the bad guy. But I just want to push back on the guys who defend Bear or try to dilute his actions.

One of the main criticisms towards the new wolverine game is that the combat in the game is similar to spiderman's combat than wolverine's combat.

Button mashing and repetitive combos apparently.

What do you guys think about this complaint?

Creating alternate storylines where you get the freedom to explore and experiment with characters by taking different routes, completely taking them in a direction that wouldn't work in the main timeline, exploring different themes through that story, creating new designs and personality traits that are both different but also maintains what made the original character special.

It should be a gold mine for writers and artists to let their vision loose and show us their creative vision. We can see this with DC's elseworld stories and the absolute DC universe.

And then we have Marvel's what if storylines and the ultimate universe. If there was a definition of wasted potential, then what if and the ultimate universe should be used as the primary example.

You would think their creativity would skyrocket with this opportunity. Nope instead we get some of the most uninteresting and unremarkable alternative storylines one could even imagine.

What if Aunt May was the herald of galactus?

What if Miles Morales was thor?

What if kraven the hunter.....lived?

Like what the fuck are all these ideas? Who even cares about all this? Is that all they could think about when it comes to making alternative storylines?

It's either mid or abysmal dogshit. Rarely peak.

And don't even get me started with the MCU what if, the less said about that second season the better. To be fair it did have a strong first season, which makes it all the more unforgivable with how they fumbled the What if series . And the fact that they knew what we want by teasing the more interesting ideas at the end of the series is a huge middle finger to fans.

The ultimate universe.......it was ok and doing great, both the original and the recent one. However the original ultimate verse was only good because of Spiderman, every other character were treated with the worst versions of themselves.

The recent ultimate universe was actually doing great but they didn't actually create anything unique, like ultimate spiderman only gave what the fans were asking for years. It didn't take Spiderman to anything new or have an original take on the character.

The recent ultimate universe was actually doing justice to other characters......but then they cancelled the entire thing.

I have to also note that in alternative universe most of the heroes are genuinely terrible people who said and did terrible things. Like ultimate verse cap, hulk, antman etc. I don't see much of the heroes being good people. Oldman logan had heroes who were more villainous than the villains themselves.

Compare that to elseworld DC, there is a glimer of their original self in that alternate verse where they are evil. They are different but something about them feels the same. My point is the elseworld DC characters are more likable than the alternate marvel characters.

Which is why I don't have any faith with marvel when it comes the marvel midnight series coming up. They want to tackle their characters through a horror lens but seeing how terrible they have been handling stuff, I don't trust them in making a difficult genre like horror to work out.

"House of ideas" title that marvel has needs to be revoked and be given to DC for actually having interesting ideas. Marvel can have the title of creatively bankrupt frauds.