Melting pots, “hardcore”, and fanfic

I am still processing the conclusion to “War of the Supermen” and will likely have thinky thoughts later. I can’t get over the final message being “peace will be achieved through assimilation”, right after telling us that the near-genocide of two planets was the result of two men (Lane, Zod) who could not get past their hatred of the Other. Contradictory, much? I find the white supremacist idealism of the “melting pot” myth to be an insidious message to drop into a Superman book at that moment.

Related: this article on Escapist Magazine, Stealing from the Next Generation is a good takedown of the impulse to make comics and games, among other things, more “hardcore”:

It’s one thing, once one has reached the age of legality, to prefer to drink one’s Coca-Cola with a bit of rum. It’s another thing entirely to demand that Coke henceforth only sell its beverages with rum, on the basis that this is the preference of you, the mature, hardcore soda fan… [G]eek culture does this to itself day after day, from comics to movies to gaming and back again. “I loved this as a kid, and I’ll love it now, but only if you darken it up. Make it bleak. Make it angsty. Make it hardcore! Make it so there can be no question whatsoever that it’s appropriate for someone my age because, while I’m hardcore, I’m also surprisingly self-conscious.” And what of the young of today, who might’ve enjoyed it the old way like I did in the first place? Screw’em! It’s their own fault for taking so long to get born!

While the article doesn’t make it explicit, another article on Escapist makes the obvious connection between the coded term hardcore and maleness.

Related only in the fact that published superhero comics are corporate-controlled fanfic: I’m done explaining to people why fanfic is okay is a beautiful list of published (and famous, beloved, awarded, “classic”) works that are in fact fanfic.