Episode 249 of the Letters Page: Creative Process: Rambler Foes

A rambling man with some rambling foes

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This episode is going to be just a great dump of stuff we never knew before and I am here for it!

So the big one is Grimm, right?

Okay, so Rambler deck confirmed, right? :slight_smile:

Time for some Gallo’s humor!

This guy is me if I got cursed by a magical artifact. XD

“He’ll never need, just want.” Lines that go hard!

I wonder if they could call him Tantalus…

Hmm, lots of rambling in this episode, thinking emoji.

After this Grimm letter, I am now extremely desirous of a Grimm vs. Guise story.

But the Void’s made of jelly, not bread! D:

Honestly, I think the powerset is what makes Rambler so cool. Being able to weaponize debts, it’s just so esoteric. Like the various portrayals of faerie magic that involve hospitality or etiquette. That’s just rad!

The fakeout couldn’t work this time. We all know that Rambler gets his electricity for free - he made a deal for power, and he’s not planning to pay the price!

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I will never not read Rambler’s hero name and immediately start hearing Steve Martin singing “Ramblin’ Man” in my head. When his deck hits my table I will probably start doing this out loud, and my wife will get really annoyed with me. But that’s a me problem…

It was interesting to hear Christopher broach the topic of how they’ve created specifically problematic elements of Sentinel Comics, and do recognize that fact. I suppose since the meta-character they are creating is the comic publisher itself, they are adding character flaws and realism to it. The downside, of course, is that they then create physical stuff based on those problematic flaws that will be published in the 2020s…but he didn’t talk about that part of it.

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The idea that Rambler’s nemesis is a trickster fae that poses as various sneaky/tricky gods is a fun thing. I’m imagining Puck from Gargoyles, but more malicious. Like I’ve said in the various speculation threads, if Rambler gets a deck, I think his big thing would be moving around the various untyped cards (roles, bonds, and other dirty villain tricks), or maybe just affecting any card that isn’t native to a given play area…

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Yeah. I’m more than a little disappointed that “Black Fist” made it into the physical game. Sure, Fixer doesn’t have that many different versions, and that’s fine, but I would rather have had ANY other variant of ANY other character instead…

My expectation for a totally hypothetical Rambler deck is the ability to pull a target from the environment or villain deck to jump in front of damage to Rambler, but at a potential of leaving that target in play. Also make a deal with other heroes where they give Rambler control of an Ongoing or Item, and then get to Summon the exact card they want.

…because lots of people in the fandom thought Black Fist was cool and actively asked for a variant based on it.

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Yeah, and I was one of them, but I changed my mind after @OddballPaladin pointed it out. It’s one thing to look back at the history of something that did actually exist in the 70s and argue that it was a different time with different social mores (even if the people back then really should have known better); but it’s another thing to create something now that fits those patterns. I think it also helped change my mind that they’ve recently created stuff I have personal issues with (Aeternus, which builds on assuming-Christianity-as-default tropes), which helped me resonate more with the point about Black Fist even though I’m not personally impacted by that one. I didn’t even know about the Robert Johnson and Papa Legba folklore until C&A discussed it on the Letters Page, and I learned about the issues with those characters from others on the forum, too.

C&A did a great job for a long time building a comics multiverse that avoided many pitfalls our real world media fell into. They’ve also done some course- correcting when necessary, and I commend them for that because that’s where the hard work lies. I hope they continue in that vein. Ultimately they are the arbiters of what makes it into Sentinel Comics and they are the ones who would take heat for any issues, regardless of what fandom opinions are.

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I mean… Haka.

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So, how does Demiurge have clothes if he repels everything around him? I’ve got 2 ideas.

  1. He wears the robes he was cursed in, which never change, but they stay immaculately clean due to the curse repelling all dirt and filth.
  2. He’s actually naked, and they keep things PG-13 through camera angles and covering stuff with his overly long beard and hair.
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I vote for 2, but also that every room he enters has a freshly cleaned set of clothes.

He also can’t be clean, but not overly dirty. On the verge of being cleaned.

It’s definitely a concept you shouldn’t think too much about…

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Aeternus is just Dante’s Inferno. It’s theme park Christianity, as is the Host, not actual serious Christianity. There doesn’t seem to be a single actual serious overt Christian depiction in Sentinels thus far, only a few very indirect examples like Legacy and Archie.

Edit: Felt I should clarify that I wouldn’t view stuff like that as offensive because it’s little else but cosplay Christianity, and if anything arguably it’s Christian fans who should be mildly annoyed if it wasn’t for the fact that such cosplay Christianity is so common in media it’s just not worth the bother anymore.

Sentinels doesn’t even have an equivalent of someone like Nightcrawler or Daredevil on this front.

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I’d go with Option 1, personally; the robes he was wearing when he was cursed were magically included in the curse and never wear down or get dirty, but also it’s really annoying to always be stuck in the same clothes and he really wants to update his wardrobe…

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Completely agree on this, Trajector. :+1:t2: Thank you for articulating it so well. :clap:t2:

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I mean… Dante’s Inferno was biblical fan fiction that the author used to make pointed political commentary. My only negative feelings with Aeternus are because it was a little too much like that, so I felt they could have done more/different. But, like Pathfinder strongly linking their demons to the “seven deadly sins” theme, at least it’s done well. Besides, I look at it as the identities and various major figures could a way of Aeternus invasions, where the various personalities take on the identities of mythical figures of their targets. Bit like the goa’uld from Stargate.

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Also, I was picturing his clothes still being somewhat included in the curse’s effects, such that his robes are repelled outwards and are thus always billowing and fluttering around him.

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I think there is a lot more nuance to C&A creating and releasing things now than if they had fully directly replicated problematic things from the past.

Black Fist, for example, is a lot less problematic when removed from his stories, in my opinion. Without the actual comic books, he is a cool design that adds interesting backstory to Mister Fixer, and makes the world that publishes Sentinels comics feel more realistic.

Edit: Although it is mostly about the film side of things, I found this article about “Blaxploitation” that I found very informative.

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But nobody in modern medias treats it that way. It’s just used as cool theming.

Basically, I’d understand if you felt bothered by the Christianity depictions in Sentinels because you think they could be done more respectfully to Christianity as I’d agree, but your attitude is “I dislike Sentinels’ Christian-as-default attitude” giving me the sense you feel Christianity is given special favored treatment, so I was trying to say Christianity is Sentinels is really just superficial trappings utterly stripped of any actual religiosity or serious treatment of it as a belief system.

(Which honestly is why I have bounced off most of the criticisms along this theme as they seem to miss relevant context, and the areas where sociological criticism of Sentinels feels valid to me even with context invariably are ones where C&A end up agreeing and changeing things anyway so I’m content.)

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I think my statement came across too strong. I get the use of the “Christianity as trappings” view, because it also fits a lot of the comic history, especially if we started to get into the Vertigo stuff (John Constantine, anyone?). I guess to me I liked what they did with the Host and Aeternus and other places, but was mildly disappointed with some of the characters they started putting into the latter realm.

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