Thinkwank/Yearlust 2018 and 2019 Catchup
Forgot my password for a couple of years there. Oops.
2018: Black Panther (and really the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole) Avengers: Endgame in 2019 may have been the ultimate love-letter to the fans who watched every single one of these movies since 2008 but Infinity War was a better movie, in the sense of assembled better from the sum of its parts.
2019: chi-powered martial arts*, specifically in comic-book universes, even more specifically in the Marvel Universe (and the Netflixverse), even more specifically combined with Master Of Your Domain body-mastery.
If I ever somehow get to write for Marvel, it will be a series digging into their entire mystical martial arts community. The Chaste (I am especially fascinated with Stick. It's not often that you see the grizzled Old Blind Master traveling the world and actually doing shit), The Hand (their ninja necromancy bullshit begs to be made sense of), the monasteries that trained Temujin and Shang Chi, Hector Alvarez, K'un Lun (what even is their greater purpose? What are their interactions with the larger world?), Soulstriker and many more.
Especially interested in the assorted chi techniques/jutsu we've seen over the decades in the comics (and boy are there a lot!) The Chaste can rip the life force out of their enemies (at the expense of their own) and sneak up on Daredevil(!)**, Iron Fist can do mind-melds and purge demonic possession, Shang-Chi and Elektra have both demonstrated variations of the Silent Shout (a sonic scream jutsu) and Soulstriker can literally punch people in the soul (his fist ignoring their flesh via some kind of anima-dimensional portal effect)
All that aside from the standard-issue physical boosts of course.
It would be a lot of work compiling all these instances and then ranking them both hierarchially and horizontally (which are related to which? How? Foundationally? Convergently? How are Soulstriker's soul punch, Iron Fist's demon purge and Temujin's ability to kick Living Laser in his photonic form all connected?) but that's the kind of shit I live for.
One could literally derive an entire history from these techniques, imagining the back-and-forth jutsu theft between rival sects and monasteries, the arms races of technique and counter-technique over the centuries and use that as shared history-matter for this layer of the setting.
Then you'd bring it into the present day. Between mutants, Inhumans and other sources of quicker, easier power (plus technology), a case could be made for these ancient practices to be obsolete. However, none of these guys are stupid and outdated doesn't mean outcompeted. A technique for detecting the bioelectricity of human bodies could be adapted to detect the EM activity of cameras and phones, allowing the practitioner to maintain their stealth capabilities even against modern opponents. A jutsu for rendering oneself semi-fireproof could accidentally be discovered to grant infrared invisibility (or perhaps, not so accidentally. Maybe the infrared cloaking was already ancient due to being a demon-hunter stealth jutsu) Direct spiritual attacks can easily bypass any level of enhanced physical durability or enhanced healing.
Stuff like that. Clearly, I didn't leave this one behind in 2019, huh? 😆
* to be fair, this has been a permanent fixture in my pantheon of fictional kinks since 1992 when I first read the manual to Street Fighter 2 for the SNES.
** I imagine the final exam for members of the Chaste is that they have to be able to get within 100 feet of Stick before he senses their presence. If they can do better than that, they get a higher rank.
EDIT: come to think of it, I missed 2016's. It was cryptocurrency. That's it. That's the tweet.
2018: Black Panther (and really the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole) Avengers: Endgame in 2019 may have been the ultimate love-letter to the fans who watched every single one of these movies since 2008 but Infinity War was a better movie, in the sense of assembled better from the sum of its parts.
2019: chi-powered martial arts*, specifically in comic-book universes, even more specifically in the Marvel Universe (and the Netflixverse), even more specifically combined with Master Of Your Domain body-mastery.
If I ever somehow get to write for Marvel, it will be a series digging into their entire mystical martial arts community. The Chaste (I am especially fascinated with Stick. It's not often that you see the grizzled Old Blind Master traveling the world and actually doing shit), The Hand (their ninja necromancy bullshit begs to be made sense of), the monasteries that trained Temujin and Shang Chi, Hector Alvarez, K'un Lun (what even is their greater purpose? What are their interactions with the larger world?), Soulstriker and many more.
Especially interested in the assorted chi techniques/jutsu we've seen over the decades in the comics (and boy are there a lot!) The Chaste can rip the life force out of their enemies (at the expense of their own) and sneak up on Daredevil(!)**, Iron Fist can do mind-melds and purge demonic possession, Shang-Chi and Elektra have both demonstrated variations of the Silent Shout (a sonic scream jutsu) and Soulstriker can literally punch people in the soul (his fist ignoring their flesh via some kind of anima-dimensional portal effect)
All that aside from the standard-issue physical boosts of course.
It would be a lot of work compiling all these instances and then ranking them both hierarchially and horizontally (which are related to which? How? Foundationally? Convergently? How are Soulstriker's soul punch, Iron Fist's demon purge and Temujin's ability to kick Living Laser in his photonic form all connected?) but that's the kind of shit I live for.
One could literally derive an entire history from these techniques, imagining the back-and-forth jutsu theft between rival sects and monasteries, the arms races of technique and counter-technique over the centuries and use that as shared history-matter for this layer of the setting.
Then you'd bring it into the present day. Between mutants, Inhumans and other sources of quicker, easier power (plus technology), a case could be made for these ancient practices to be obsolete. However, none of these guys are stupid and outdated doesn't mean outcompeted. A technique for detecting the bioelectricity of human bodies could be adapted to detect the EM activity of cameras and phones, allowing the practitioner to maintain their stealth capabilities even against modern opponents. A jutsu for rendering oneself semi-fireproof could accidentally be discovered to grant infrared invisibility (or perhaps, not so accidentally. Maybe the infrared cloaking was already ancient due to being a demon-hunter stealth jutsu) Direct spiritual attacks can easily bypass any level of enhanced physical durability or enhanced healing.
Stuff like that. Clearly, I didn't leave this one behind in 2019, huh? 😆
* to be fair, this has been a permanent fixture in my pantheon of fictional kinks since 1992 when I first read the manual to Street Fighter 2 for the SNES.
** I imagine the final exam for members of the Chaste is that they have to be able to get within 100 feet of Stick before he senses their presence. If they can do better than that, they get a higher rank.
EDIT: come to think of it, I missed 2016's. It was cryptocurrency. That's it. That's the tweet.