Housekeeping: We are moving to DW - LJ remains open

[cap_ironman_mod]

Some exiting things are happening at cap_ironman. While the new mods are preparing to bring the daily discussions of bringing_food_to_lab_stony to Dreamwidth, some further announcements will happen shortly. So far, everyone seems to be having fun in the Friending Meme and we hope members of both communities will keep having fun together, sharing one space.

The results of the LJ/DW community poll are in. For years Livejournal has been a good home to the cap_ironman community. (We are inching close to our 10th anniversary!)

Going along with the wishes of the majority, the community will shift its main activities over to Dreamwidth. This means that from this moment on some posts might link exclusively to a Dreamwidth post in the fashion of the currently running Friending Meme. Claims for RBB and BB will happen on the c_im_bigbang community, masterposts made by participants will be required to be posted on cap_ironman - following the end of this round of the Reverse Bang, which is set to wrap up on Livejournal next week -, and the daily discussions will redirect to the Dreamwidth community.

For everyone's fanwork searching needs we have also opened the cap_im_search for your use on Dreamwidth! Please help people find the Steve/Tony things they are looking for over there and direct all fanwork searches to this comm.

We will not close the Livejournal community. As a significant number of people indicated they still preferred Livejournal. The cap_ironmancommunity will remain open for posting. All fanworks, discussions and rec posts etc made by users are welcome there at any time. All relevant mod posts and event announcements will be crossposted to both communities. All fanworks posted on Livejournal will be featured in our Monthly Fanworks Round-Up just as before.

There will be no further imports from Livejournal from now on. We encourage those who have accounts on both pages to crosspost.

We will clean up the links and sidebars on our Dreamwidth in the next few days to correctly redirect to Dreamwidth.

Now we hope everyone is as excited as we are for the future activities in the comm. The Daily Discussion will start on Monday, June 19th!!! Come and join us!

Have fun,
Your cap_ironman mods

Question for Comic Book Fans

[walmer92]

Hi comic book fans. I've been reading some essays about the Civil War that left me wondering how the writers had completely missed the point of the series. I then realised that most of my opinion - after reading - has been shaped by the Stony Fandom, so I wanted to ask your opinion.

The gist of the essay I was reading was that the Civil War was actually attempting to reconcile people - specifically Americans - to the Patriot Act. They saw the attempt to, for example, associate the pro-registration group with the anti-gun movement as a way to target liberals who might otherwise sympathise with a marginalised group - the unregistered heroes. They saw the issue as being, essentially, between authoritarianism vs liberalism, which is not essentially inaccurate (in my opinion), but then attempts to boil down every character's motivations to fit that narrative, ignoring what for me was the core of the issue - that it was complex, and so much so that people's reactions to it were not always predictable.

For me the biggest mistake was that they thought the government was ultimately portrayed as the 'good guys', and saw Cap's surrender as a win for conservatism. Personally I found it hard to approve of the government's (and Tony's) side, and I have become more sympathetic to it through reading fic than I was after I finished the comic. But even so, the majority of Stony fic illustrates the basic idea that even if Tony had a good point buried underneath what he did, the majority of actions taken were simply morally wrong. He had more of a moral foothold in his personal arguments with Steve, far less when it came to his actions for the government, unless you are able to view them in the light of being the lesser of two evils.

And Cap's surrender (again, to me), was never an acknowledgement that his point of view or side were wrong, rather that between the two sides they had damaged the people they were trying to protect, and that by being willing to surrender to prevent more violence, he regained some of the moral high ground he might have lost. His death on the steps of the courthouse then raises him up to matyr status, taking the much of the wind out of the government's sails. To me this suggests that the comics are actually making the point that wrong side won - the writer's of the essay that bother me apparently associate victory with being right, which I thought the comics were very brave for not doing.

I did wonder when reading this essay if it had been written soon after Civil War, but it was written in 2014, so it either ignored or was unaware of subsequent events. The Initiative Program followed by Norman Osborn's tenure as head of SHIELD seem to continue the theme that government breaches of civil rights - similar to the Patriot Act - are a bad thing, and Cap's resurrection in conjunction with Osborn's fall, followed by the fall of the Registration Act, supports this.

I could go on for some time about my thoughts on the Civil War, and how it ties into modern politics, but I would really like to get some other fan's opinions on the concept of Civil War as an apology for government breaches of personal rights. If anyone wants to let me know what they think I would be extremely grateful. Thanks!