u/TheSilverWickersnap

The comments:

Hello, I’m looking for recs of shoujo manga with canonical trans men or transmasc enbies in them.

I’ve already read
-Claudine
-To Strip the Flesh
-Boys Run the Riot
-Our Dreams at Dusk
-Yuureitou
-Sakura-chan to Amane-Kun
-Wandering Son (do not recommend)
-Tokyo Ghoul (do not recommend)
-After School Mate
-Deep-Sea Aquarium Magmell
-Level E and Heart of Diamond have trans guys from what I heard but I haven’t read them yet

For the past few days, a debate has been raging. Is or is not powerscaling an important part of fiction* ? This seems to have primarily been started in the Invincible fandom, with the argument that the inconsistencies in Mark's combat ability were a major flaw of the series (I will not remark on the redefining of powerscaling that has been taking place)

This is in my opinion, missing the forest for the trees. Invincible's writing guns itself repeatedly in the head in the most spectacular way. Atom Eve (and most women in the comic book, really) are sidelined to the extreme. Dinosaurus's entire stick consists of Baby's First Effective Altruism, and the resulting decisions Mark makes as a result of that are a far worse reflection of his character than his fight performance against Dinosaurus.

And what is probably the biggest emotional throughline in the late series, Viltrumites learning to love and care for others for their human families, is completely undercut by the revelation that Nolan is Argall's heir. The Viltrumites thus side with him because he's the heir to the fascist imperialist they all love and admire, without their human families really coming into consideration because who cares about that when you can have a shortcut. The story then proceeds to have Mark rebuild the Viltrumite Empire, monarchy and all, but nice this time.

The lack of versimilitude is a problem, I will admit, although frankly not a big one compared to most comic books which have Deathstroke win against the Flash and such things in that vein. The rest ? It's egregiously bad. There are some strong moments (notably Mark winning against Thragg while thinking of the people he loves), but overall it's not very good.

But in the face of powerscaling, all of that is naught. Instead of talking about how Atom Eve's been reduced to someone who sits on the roof and talks with Mark (and how that has a lot more to do with Kirkman's misogyny than his powerscaling), or how the Viltrum Empire later develops, we get a thousand rants about how Spacebattles.com won the culture war because Mark jobbed against Dinosaurus.

And that is why I heavily dislike powerscaling beyond doing it for the meme. Because its focus on physical force flattens and renders insipid the analysis of a story. And you can, in fact have a story with superpowers and combat and whatnot and have it be excellent (The Power Fantasy and X/1999 come to mind). But who cares about why people use power, or what effect it has on them. All it matters is that Mark can paste Dinosaurus and the fact he isn't doing that is dumb and ruins the show.

*here defined as what you read in high school English, comic books and shonen manga.

TLDR: Kirkman's writing is pretty bad and the "powerscaling" is one of the best elements by sheer dint of everything really sucking instead of kind of sucking. I'm not saying it's good though, just one of the least bad parts.

Whether it’s a magazine, a series, a character or an author, we all have something we hate. However, this doesn’t always mean it’s totally awful. Just mostly awful.

Comment below with stuff you liked about things you really hated.