A pre-requiem for the 2026 Atlanta Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After Dylan Lee gave up two straight homers almost immediately after the Braves had clawed and scratched their way to a 3-1 lead going into the 8th inning, I immediately saw the writing on the wall.  As Braves fans, we’ve all seen this script before, and from this point on, it was just clenching and hoping the brutal cycle of abuse that comes with being a Braves fan would come to an end, but not be willing to put any money on it that it would happen today. 

Two innings later, the Phillies win game 2, and we’re headed to the winner-take-all game 3, later tonight.  The only series out of the four wild card matchups to have to go the distance, as the White Sox, Yankees and Padres all took care of business and won two immediate games to advance to the divisional series.

Over the last 14 hours or so, I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling in my brain, that I knew I wanted to write something about it, but wasn’t sure what angle to triangulate on and what tone to take when doing it.  Do I try and tempt fate and write something scathing and completely doom-and-gloom about the Braves’ chances tonight with hopes that I will be proven wrong, and that they’ll hang a 12-2 clobbering just so I’ll be made to look stupid but still be happy that they won?  Do I preemptively write out the post I had formulating in my head about how Philadelphia sports seem to solely exist to ruin the hopes and dreams of Atlanta sports, based on just how many times Philadelphia teams have eliminated Atlanta teams in postseason play throughout history?  Do I make an itemized list of Barves postseason failures over history?

I don’t know.  But I wanted to write something, before game 3, because, well, I don’t know why.  It’s like just my way of processing things, and maybe a combination of all of the above.  Writing something about the Braves becoming the Barves in October on an annual basis just is something that I’m compelled to do, and I hope for the best, but am prepared for the worst.

The fact that all three other matchups concluded means that for once, the Braves don’t have to play at 2 pm, and get a prime-time game that starts at around 8 or so, so more eyes can watch as the Braves will probably choke and lose to the Phillies in the playoffs, so that they will be 0-4 against them historically, with three eliminations over the span of the last five years.

It doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled the Phillies in the regular seasons throughout all these seasons, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, they just can’t seem to overcome them in the playoffs.  2022 was particularly brutal, because the Braves had 101 wins and played most of the year as the de-facto best team in the league, but they took their foot off the gas going the playoffs, had a bye, and immediately got smoked by the 87-win Phillies.  In fact, when the Braves drop to the Phillies tonight, they will have done so as the higher seed in three-straight eliminations, adding insult to injury, and at this point there’s really nothing more that can be said about the agony of constantly falling short to a common tormentor.

Dylan Lee, is a guy I hope I do not see again tonight, and if by some miraculous act of god they win and advance, is a guy I hope I don’t see again for the remainder of the playoffs, and frankly on this team ever again.  It’s nothing personal, but after his game 2 performance, that should be the nail in the coffin as far as his favor with any Braves fan should be.  Every now and then, we see the eventual winner of the World Series do some wonky things with the bullpen, and usually there are some guys who lose favor and are sparsely seen, no matter what their role was in the regular season and the journey to get to the playoffs.  Craig Kimbrel, in spite of his success as a closer was this guy for Boston in one notable year, and the Dodgers completely replaced all their back-end relief with Roki Sasaki just last year.  Dylan Lee, I hope, is the guy that Braves fans never see again, regardless of any positive contributions he may have had in the past.

In all likelihood, the Phillies will be starting Zack Wheeler, their ace, on short rest, which just adds to the feeling of dread for Braves fans.  The Braves used their two best in games 1 and 2, and got away with a split, and the Phillies, out of necessity couldn’t use Wheeler until tonight, but as it stands, we have Wheeler versus whatever the Braves have left.  Most likely Grant Holmes, who has been a fifth-starter type who has been inconsistent and does not inspire faith going into a deciding elimination game.

Needless to say, take everything all of the above, and I do not have a good feeling about tonight’s outcome.  I want to be wrong more than anything, and this is an instance where being right would bring no joy, other than to be able to sigh and say, welp, at least I was right.  The Braves’ offense is still anemic and has never been fixed at any point in the season, and has relied tremendously on the strength of their pitching, but you can’t win games if you don’t score runs. 

Wheeler will either be lights out, or succumb to the rigors of working on short rest, but knowing the Braves’ bats, I’d wager on the former, and I think the chances are way higher that we have same shit, different year, with the Braves going out in the first round, regardless of the fact that MLB added an even first-er round to the playoff field with the Wild Card – if the Braves make the playoffs, they’re destined to get bounced in whatever round comes first to them, because I’m not, and I can’t have any more kids, so I can’t produce any more babies to bless them with any more baby luck.

This shouldn’t be eating at me this much, seeing as how lackadaisical of a baseball fan I’ve been over the last decade or so, but I guess that’s the nature of being a sports fan and a fan of a team.  No matter how much you try to not let it affect you, it just does.

Prove me wrong, fate.

Baseball is the best

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I’m a pretty casual fan these days that isn’t nearly in the trenches of the minutiae of the game like I once was, this turned out to be a pretty interesting final day of the MLB regular season, that I took more notice of a lot of concurrent storylines than I probably had at any other point in the season, probably over the last few too.

So, starting with the Braves, seeing as how they had clinched the NL East last week, this final week of the season was full of games where the outcomes were basically inconsequential, but in fitting Barves fashion, Atlanta had to go 2-4 and end the season with a loss, backing into the playoffs.  Inconsequential as these last games might have been, I’m a firm believer of momentum and routine, and seeing as how the team won 92 games by playing in a certain fashion, I never like the idea of changing the way they play the game and letting off the gas, when, especially in baseball, the team that gets hot in the playoffs usually is the one that wins it all, completely regardless of records, seeding and bracket positioning.

Frankly, I don’t like the Braves’ chances in the playoffs, seeing as how for most of the second half of the season, the offense has been pretty anemic, where the wins have been mostly on the arm of Chris Sale, blowout wins were sparse, and every victory felt like they were coming from behind, instead of putting opponents away early and cruising to any low-stress wins.

There were a handful of games today that I had hopes for the outcome, and almost systematically, nearly every single one of them went contrary to what I was hoping for:

  • Wanted Phillies to lose to Rays (Phillies won)
  • Wanted Diamondbacks to beat Padres (Dbacks lost)
  • Wanted Angels to lose to Mariners (they did)
  • Wanted Astros to lose to Athletics (Astros won)
  • Wanted Rangers to lose to Twins (they did)

Getting all five would’ve been a tall order, but two out of five still kind of stinks, and there were particular reasons where I was hoping for each of these outcomes.

With the Phillies and Diamondbacks outcomes the way they happened, means that the sixth and final playoff spot in the National League belongs to the Phillies, who will play the Braves in the Wild Card round, three games in Atlanta.

I don’t think there’s any team in baseball that I have a complex about more than the Phillies, because they’ve probably been the biggest thorn in the side to the Braves for as long as I’ve been a fan.  Philadelphia sports in general, it’s my belief that all Atlanta sports fans should have a similar complex about, seeing as how the Phillies and Eagles have tormented the Braves and Falcons for decades at this point, and it always seems like they’re the ones who send Atlanta home in the playoffs.

Historically, the Phillies are 3-0 against the Braves in the playoff series, having knocked them out in 1993, 2022 and 2023; and its worth mentioning the Phillies were the lower seed in the last two, and it really doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled them in the regular seasons, there’s just something about the playoffs where the Phillies rise up harder against the Braves than anyone else, before dropping like flies immediately after dispatching of the Braves.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that the Phillies have snuck into the playoffs, and even more disappointed that they matched up against the Braves.  I genuinely would have rather have seen the Cubs or Padres over the Phillies, and I don’t have a good feeling about this year either.

The Angels’ loss today meant that for the first time in franchise history, the Angels have lost 100 games, and is generally meaningless it is to me, I always like to see ironic historical marks, and seeing as how the Braves have never dropped 100 in my tenure as fan, I’m amused to see it happened to someone else.

Now the Astros and Rangers, the only reason why I cared about their games, was the fact that speaking of ironic history, 2026 would mark the first time in history where a division winner would be have a no better than .500 record, and few things seem as amusing as the idea of a baseball team marching into the playoffs with barely 80 wins, when the Brewers and Dodgers both have 100+.

If both the Astros and the Rangers lost today, they would have ended with identical 80-82 records, with the Astros winning the division based on a tiebreaker, and we’d be witness to the first-ever sub-.500 division winner.

Unfortunately, the Astros pulled out a W against the also woeful Oakland Athletics, and finish 81-81, a cool .500, breaking the previous mark of futility of the 2005 Padres and their 82-80 record.  I’m disappointed, because .500 is still .500 and isn’t as ironically entertaining as .494 and firmly under .500.

That being said, after the Braves get bounced by the Phillies, I think I’m going to have to root for the Astros to go all the way, because few things would be great in baseball than an 81-win team going all the way, before the whole league goes on strike, and the last World Series champion of this era being a shitty 81-win Houston Astros, whom everyone already hates their franchise because of the cheating scandal of 2017.

So with the Astros in, the American League playoff bracket is something that of a slow-adult dreamed up, where an 81-win Astros get the #3 seed by virtue of winning a pitiful AL West going up against an 83-win #6 seed White Sox, where the winner of series gets go play against an 85-win Guardians squad that actually won the AL Central.

Meanwhile, on the other branch of the bracket, a 93-win Yankees squad goes up against an 87-win Red Sox squad, where the winner gets to play a 97-win Rays squad, where if you’re paying attention, all of them are in the same division, and because there’s no re-seeding after the Wild Card round, the #1 seed in the AL has to play a stronger squad in the divisional round, and it’s guaranteed that at least one sub-90 win squad is going to be in the ALCS, and keep hopes for a World Series alive.

But let’s end this post about baseball on a high note, which was the emotional Detroit Tigers game, which was the final game of future Hall of Famer, Justin Verlander, the pride of Goochland (Virginia).  I always love when professional athletes go out on their own terms, and I’m happy for Verlander doing the same, instead of milking it longer in order to pursue 300 wins (retiring with 266).  It’s not like he has anything left to prove at this point otherwise, seeing as how he’s already got two World Series rings, three Cy Young Awards, an MVP, 3,500+ strikeouts, three no-hitters, and countless all-star selections.

He goes out in a beautiful game where he’s joined by his kids with his supermodel wife Kate Upton, and I think the best part about the game was in his final inning, where legendary-bad umpire, and also-in his final game ever, Laz Diaz completely capitalizes on the Pirates’ running out of ABS challenges, and makes some hilariously bad calls in order for Verlander to end his final outing with a strikeout.

It’s been a fun regular season, but as we all know, the playoffs are a completely different animal, so let’s close out the regular season with reminders of just how awesome baseball is still capable of being.

lol MARTA #620

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: MARTA “payroll error” results in janitor making $620,000 in overtime pay in April, not flagged until July; neither janitor or employee responsible for clerical error are with company, no funds have been returned

Chalk this story up as one of the most Atlanta stories there could possibly be.  A crime that should have no right succeeding, and perpetrators who will in most likely get away with it, enjoying the spoils of their effort, before the legal system drags on and on and on before any sort of comeuppance is achieved, to where nobody’s going to even remember much less give a shit about this story by the time anything happens.

Make no mistake, there’s in all likelihood no error at all that resulted in a MARTA custodian somehow getting $620,000 bones in overtime in April, because the reality is that most payroll systems are nearly completely automated, and it most definitely required some degree of manual manipulation to suddenly make this guy’s OT hourly wage go from like $7.75 an hour to $7,750.

It’s a two-person job and everyone knows it, considering the obvious result that both the person who made the ‘clerical error’ and the custodian who received $620,000 in OT wages, peaced the fuck out of the job, and probably the country, the second after the funds hit the bank.

I think the funniest thing is that the crime happened in April, wasn’t flagged until three months later in July, and it’s now practically October that everyone is now hearing about it.  Even though MARTA is pursuing legal action and should by all rights win whatever case they have against those who stole from them, it’s not going to change the fact that the crooks who robbed them are going to be living pretty until that day of reckoning comes, if it ever does.

It’s a microcosm of the state of the legal system, not just in Atlanta, but the country, where it seems that so often times, the legal system is so slow, inefficient, and full of loopholes and trash cans to tip over to slow down the chase, where crooks are emboldened and not at all afraid to commit crimes and flagrantly steal, because it just seems like the punishments don’t outweigh the benefits and luxuries of committing the crimes in the first place, and in the end, they still win out.

The only ones who really suffer are probably the people who rely on MARTA, because the agency will probably cut jobs or worse off, implement a fare hike, to make up for the $620k that they lost, service will suffer, MARTA becomes an even larger ironic joke, and Atlanta takes more flack for being a low-rent city with a completely inefficient and incompetent transit authority, and where criminals are playing the game on easy mode.

It’s times like these where the world needs vigilantes like Batman, who don’t operate under any rules or jurisdictions, and could probably go after, apprehend and turn in the two crooks to the authorities in like two seconds.  It’s not like they probably went all Milton from Office Space, and actually managed to get out of the country and are enjoying their stolen money from some tropical paradise.

But how many colleges will he get accepted into??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox5Atlanta: 14-year old Fulton County teen scores perfect 1600 on the SAT as a freshman in high school

Just when you think #TRYHARDSZN is over, we have #TRYHARDs still #TRYHARDing over in Fulton County to prove otherwise.  Because if you’re not #TRYHARDing all year round, would you even be a #TRYHARD at all?

Anyway, this is going to be an interesting subject come next #SZN, that is if his fate isn’t already sealed by now, because we have this 14-year old little Doogie prodigy already putting up credentials to dwarf and shame all #TRYHARDs come the 2027 #SZN, what with his perfect 1600 SAT score, and already farming up college-level courses at Harvard and Rice.  I don’t know the approximate number of high school credits required for graduation, but he’s already completed 14.5 while still just a freshman at a fancy applicant-only innovation academy.

The difference is that this #TRYHARD goes to school and presumably lives in the bougie part of town, and not on the hood-ass south end anywhere remotely close to Westlake High, the undisputed champion of farming #TRYHARDs to apply to 117+ schools por gratis and to see how many times they can get their name in the news for having students getting into 89+ of them.

It’ll be an interesting scenario to see how an Indian kid from the nice part of town with at least one ace credential will stack up against underprivileged teens from the hood who leverage quantity over quality, to see which lands in the better collegiate scenario.  It’ll probably be a tale of extremes duking it out, where on one side we have a whiz-kid prodigy who will not only have socio-economic factors working against him, but the obvious (South) Asian Curve to overcome, versus teenagers from the hood who have generations of systemic racism, an unspoken affirmative action and reparative intentions by colleges across the nation on their side.

It may be worth passively following to see where this Doogie ends up versus the top #TRYHARDs of the 2027 #SZN, or whenever he decides to start applying to colleges, because I think it’s going to be interesting on many different accounts.  Primarily because I’d wager that Doogie isn’t going to have his college application fees waived across the board, and it’ll be interesting to see where he ends up deciding to go, versus the top #TRYHARDs of his graduating class.

Oh, Atlanta #614

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: Atlanta-based Sumo Championship League (SCL) to begin debuting in October

So let’s see: Atlanta has an MLB team, NBA team, NFL team, and even an MLS team.  Scattered throughout the rest of Georgia are all four levels of minor league baseball affiliates of the Braves.  USA Soccer has chosen Fayetteville, Georgia as their headquarters.  There’s an affiliated minor league hockey team in Duluth, which is as close as Georgia is going to get to the NHL after two previously failed NHL squads that have left for Canada.  The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech athletics are both reputable athletic programs in most major sports, and even Georgia State, Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern are D-I programs.

Needless to say, there’s no shortage of athletic competition to imbibe in at any point of the year for anyone who wants to watch competitive sport.  So perhaps it might not be a bad idea to start considering using dollars in the state of Georgia for maybe anything that isn’t related to athletics, no?

What’s that you say?  What about sumo wrestling?  Georgia doesn’t have sumo wrestling?  I mean, why wouldn’t Georgia, United States have an association of a sport native to the country of Japan in it?  But what’s that?  It’s going to have sumo wrestling debuting in Georgia?  In October?  What say whaaatt??

And here we are.  Some new Sumo Championship League is about to embark, and it was founded by a dude who used to be a bigwig at WCW Turner Broadcasting, so it has some sturdy Atlanta ties, and leads to believe that the SCL could be considered Atlanta-based.

Because there appears to be a belief that there is a thirst for some real life sumo wrestling in North America.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect the sport, and the athletes that make up of it.  I don’t see a bunch of fat guys crashing into each other (like in futbol americano), I see athletes who just happen to have large mass, who play a human game of chess of trying to knock down their opponents or maneuver them out of a ring.  It takes intelligence, adaptability and actual skill in order to achieve victory, and I have seen some live sumo wrestling in my life.

It’s just that it just seems like a complete, nobody-asked-for-this kind of endeavor, where the league is supposedly valued at $25M, which means it has received about as much of that in funding, and it begs me to ask the question on how many other things in this world could $25M have better gone towards other than starting up a sumo league?

I digress though.  If the SCL starts running shows in Atlanta, preferably up where I could take my dad to some live events, it seems like something that would be interesting to check out, if the price is right.  Now if they start charging $65+ up for a completely unproven commodity from the onset, they’ve got to be diluting themselves, but if they play a smart game and offer up cheap, affordable entertainment until some worth is established, maybe I’ll go check out some actual sumo wrestling.  I’m always looking for interesting things to take my dad to go see, and perhaps we can both derive some entertainment out of welcoming some live sumo wrestling to the Metro, after all.

This was never a matter of if, but when

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Stanford busted for using AI-altered student photograph for advertising, most notably swapping out Hispanic male for black female

If I’ve never put it in writing before, I’m a firm opponent of AI.  I think it serves a purpose for doing monotonous tasks that can save people a lot of time and efficiency, but obviously this was never the objective of the companies and individuals who are hellbent on advancing it, and it’s astounding how many people who work on AI seem blind to the notion that they are expediting the extinction of jobs and careers for people all across the world.

Will we see AI become sentient and ultimately take over the world, enslaving or terminating the human race, a la The Matrix or Terminator?  Probably not in our lifetime, but as all those stories have predicted, it really does seem inevitable that machines will eventually see human behavior as truly redundant and expendable, seeing as how machines are devoid of emotion and well, humanity.

For the time being, AI is primarily being used (publicly) to “inadvertently” kill my line of work, in the creative field, as hundreds of thousands of companies, businesses and individuals are churning out gojiggabytes of AI-generated “artwork” from shitty restaurant menus, billboards and signage, as well as a trillion memes and bad video edits.

Genuinely, I feel that my line of work does have an expiration date, and I have experienced multiple instances at my own job, where colleagues and collaborators have leveraged AI to haphazardly try and create rogue content, and having to be gently reminded that it’s not okay… as long as products shown aren’t necessarily from competitors.  And the faster that AI advances and lazier the uneducated and unethical become, the sooner people like me will be out of a job, forcing me to probably go into the trades and improve my life exponentially.

But anyway, this was a highly dramatic cold open to a post where I wanted to write about Stanford University getting busted using AI to create graphics, namely altering a photograph, where a poor Hispanic kid was swapped out for a black girl, presumably so that Stanford could look more diverse in advertising.

There’s a lot of different angles to approach this one, but most of it circulates around the notion that Stanford, being in northern California, simply does not have any diversity, being in Silicon Valley, so they’ve gotten to the point where they’re leveraging AI to make it look like there is, instead of, actually allowing some black students attend their hallowed institution.

But on the other hand, I’m a firm believer of merit, and that the best students should attend schools, regardless of race or gender or any other categorization.  Sure, Stanford is probably racist as fuck I mean come on, just look at them, and have as flagrant of a black people scale as big as they probably have an Asian scale, so it’s hilarious to me that instead of going out and actually recruiting some actual living black students to attend their school, they’re just using AI to pretend like they have some.

Frankly, as the subject of this post implies, this was never an if it would happen situation, it was always a when would it happen, and we’d all be blind and deaf if we believed that this was the first time that this had occurred, but the fact that an institution as reputable as Stanford was the one busted doing it is what makes it news right now.

Honestly, my reaction was similar to the victim of the shitty AI swap, at first glance, it is funny, but when you sit down and really give it some thought, it really is just sad and pitiful and actually malicious, that they’re not only deleting the actual humanity from a photograph, but replacing it with something artificial, false and completely dishonest.  Let’s not even get into the cosmetic modifications to the people that were allowed to stay in the photo.

When the day is over, Stanford, for all their academic praise and reputation globally, is no different than any other shitheads on the planet who are completely okay with the global takeover of AI.  It just sucks for all the Billy Ramirezes of the world who draw the short straw in photos that need to be modified to force in some artificial diversity by dishonest companies who are too chickenshit to accept actual diversity into their holy confines.

Comics and character assassinations

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was growing up and was really getting into comic books, like many of my time, the X-Men were the cream of the crop.  My favorite character was Gambit, and as a young romantic at heart that tried to hide behind a tough adolescent man exterior, I was all aboard the Remy x Rogue ship when reading comic books on my own. 

I would say that the peak of that comic book fandom was probably about 3-4 solid years, between grades 5 through 9, where somewhere in the middle, anime came into the picture and that fandom ramped up, while American comics phased out.  Amidst that period of time however, I enjoyed a lot of major storylines and arcs that really got me entrenched in X-fandom as well as Marvel by proximity.  X-Cutioner’s Song and Fatal Attractions were probably my favorite arcs, but I was all about large-scale crossover events like Infinity War, as well as one of the last things I really remember following, Onslaught.

Throughout all this time, I had lots of solid opinions and my mind waffling around lots of feelings about particular characters, and when it comes to one my life’s beliefs that life is way more relatable to professional wrestling than normies want to admit to, comics and wrestling overlap tremendously more than what comic fans probably want to admit to as well.

However, there was one opinion that did not waver at all, once it came to fruition: Cyclops was a pussy.

It didn’t matter if it were when he was being Cyclops, leader of the X-Men, or when he was just plain Scott Summers, the (in my opinion) unworthy main character level tier white guy with red sunglasses who seemed to always be at the center of attention when it came to a lot of my favorite storylines.

He was a big white guy dork with lame powers who shot lasers from his eyes, Gambit and Wolverine were clearly presented as better fighters, and yet all the hunnies wanted him, having all sorts of complicated romance/lust relationships with sexy telepaths from Jean Grey, Psylocke to even Emma Frost.  Mr. Sinister was obsessed with him, Apocalypse and Stryfe basically made him the center of attention in X-Cutioner’s Song, and for whatever reason, despite being the lamest X-Man of them all, Cyclops was always in the thick of things.

The cartoon didn’t do him any favors, giving him the whitest man’s voice, and presenting him as nothing but this tactical cheeser who just stood from afar using his optic blasts to fight with.  And later on when Capcom got a hold of a partnership with Marvel and Cyclops started appearing in their fighting games, I always raised an eyebrow against Cyclops and took enjoyment in beating him up, regardless if it were a human or an AI opponent.

This was all before I learned and understood what character assassinating was, but once I did, it became apparent that it seemed like few in comic book lore had dealt with such severe character assassinating as much as Cyclops has.

Bring us to present day, and a litany of writers, creators and artists have done yeoman’s work over the last decade or so, repairing a generation’s worth of character assassinating on Scott Summers.  He’s still kind of a square, but they’ve done a pretty impressive job of tightening up his general lore, clarified the specificity of his powers, shown him capable of actual combat beyond spamming optic blasts, and the kicker being that at the time I’m writing this, he’s broken kind of bad, very much coming into his own thoughts and belief systems, instead of just clinging to the dreams and ideologies of Professor X.

If there’s one consistent throughout storytelling, the most compelling antagonist-type characters, are the ones who believe what they’re doing is right, and live in a gray space, instead of just being flagrantly bad for the sake of doing supervillain shit.  I feel that that’s where Cyclops has ended up in current character development, no longer restrained to always let everyone live and save everyone, and isn’t afraid to ramp up the aggression to get shit done.

And it’s pretty great.  I don’t think the appreciation for where Cyclops is ending up today really could happen the way it is happening, if he hadn’t been dragged through the metaphorical mud for decades, and presented as the ultimate boy scout, before turning him heel.

He’s basically the Marvel Comics equivalent of Hulk Hogan turning to the dark side, and in a way, his current iteration of mutants under his charge carrying the X-Men name are kind of like the original nWo, in terms of pecking order.

However, with the rise from the ashes of one character, the scales have to be balanced somewhere, where someone has to be knocked down, and that brings us to Professor Charles Xavier, who seems to be having his character assassinated, both in actual canonical storylines, as well as general fan perception of him from the various mediums he’s portrayed in.

Like in the comics, sure, he basically destroyed the minds of a lot of his opponents, mainly Magneto, and he always does it in the name of saving the world to some capacity, but as time passes, his visions of the world inevitably fail to come to fruition because humankind is a hateful species and resent peace and unity until their dying breaths, people end up growing resentful, impatient and nihilistic when it comes to the hopes for peace by Professor X.

Characters like Cyclops begin to come to their own judgments that Xavier’s visions and hopes are pipe dreams, and after eons after eons of failures, retcons and a sheer lack of progress, eventually they evolve and move on in directions that might yield better proof than constantly being passive and playing defensively throughout life.

Also, the whole Professor X was in love with Jean Grey in spite of their controversial age difference storyline seems like a silver bullet to the heart as far as trying to assassinate his character goes, beyond any of the mind fucking and failure to progress previously mentioned.

The rebooted X-Men ’97 didn’t do him any favors, reminding everyone that he faked his own death to go live in the stars with the Shi’ar Empire, get jiggy with Lilandra and basically hand the keys to mutantkind to his greatest frenemy Magneto, and when he was busted and came back to earth to summon “my X-Men” before Bastion and his Sentinels fuck over the planet, but of course he goes and fucks Magneto in the head again, and on a long enough timeline, I can get why people begin to favor Magneto over Professor X.

The memes are pretty great, like fans pointing out how many times Xavier basically mentally makes Magneto re-live the Holocaust throughout the series, as his go-to move to neutralize Erik, and asking who really is the villain in this situation.  Also pointing out how many other guys he does the same thing, in making them re-live their biggest traumas on the spot as his most effective way of putting an opponent down, and it does seem kind of fucked up as opposed to just beating them up in physical combat, in spite of his handicap.

And kind of unrelated, I was thinking in the car, of just how ironic it is that Professor X has been rendered incapable of walking throughout the entire history of comic books, despite the fact that the Marvel Universe has probably 5-6 actively viable solutions to solve his inability to walk, from like Tony Stark making some sort of robotic replacement legs, to Dr. Strange and the mythical, maybe using Dormammu magic to give him his legs back, to when he had remnants of the Legacy Virus in his system which somehow temporarily gave him the ability to walk.

I get that Professor X is also symbolic of representation in comics, of having an extremely powerful person with a handicap to inspire readers that handicap ≠ incapable, but I don’t know why I didn’t think about it until recently that choosing to not capitalize in a universe where solutions are numerous, just kind of makes him a whiney martyr, just adding to the whole Professor X is actually an asshole narrative.

What it all really boils down to is that in today’s Marvel Comics environment, Cyclops is somehow kind of cool now, and Professor X is basically the biggest villain in the entire universe.  He released Onslaught after mind-fucking Magneto for the fifth time, nearly wiping out the Marvel Universe, and it’s taken several retcons and reboots for the jaded writers of today to run with the whole, maybe Professor X really isn’t that great of a guy narrative, and here we are today.

Funny how on a long enough timeline, the Harvey Dent line of ‘you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain’ is so applicable to the evolution of many comics out there, with the X-Men being no exception.