and quite frankly even if I did try to argue about it, you'd probably be even more livid that you already are, which basically means that, as a topic, it's a conversation killer.
It'd be more than a conversation killer. Not that I'm accusing you of this- you have said yourself that it's specifically something you tried to avoid- but one reason I got perhaps overly defensive is because Jews seem to be the one minority where it's "acceptable" to tell us how we "should" feel.
Tell a Black person how they should feel about slavery and the KKK? Nope.
Tell a Palestinian person how they should feel about Israeli bombs falling on their people? Nope.
Tell a Jewish person how they should feel about the Holocaust and Nazis? Somehow acceptable.
Again, I'm NOT accusing you of this, but it is depressingly common in western society and it's very much been on my mind lately. I carried some of that baggage into this discussion. So if I implied anything like that towards you, I apologize. Sincerely, I do.
I'll say this much, I was specifically avoiding discussing your personal stake in the story because no matter what else, I cannot speak to it more than you can, so anything I'd say about the topic would be pretty hollow and vapid. Again, how you feel is how you feel, I can't argue against that.
That's why I was trying to keep my statements solely around things I could speak to i.e. what i felt the text of the story was actually trying to do and say, rather than an interpretation based on personal experience.
I think this is the double edged sword with trying to evolve some of these properties to the level of "mature" storytelling. I alluded to it before, but the giant purple griffin... what was that about?
It was a goofy Saturday morning villain plot.
But now that the kids who watched those cartoons are grown up, some of them are now writing for the property and others are still fans, and all of them want to tell "complex" and "mature" stories, and making allegories to the Soviet purges or the Holocaust or the Russian Civil War or WWII allows you to do it.
And I'm not saying parallels to IRL atrocities shouldn't be allowed, heavens no. But I do think it's worth pointing out that IF a writer is going to go there, they accept all of the historical baggage and trauma that comes with that. If you want to take these properties and go in that direction it should probably be done carefully and with a deft hand.
Clearly not everyone will be affected by the same things. I had family killed in Hitler's death camps, you didn't. It's not a shock that a comic story that hinges part of its emotional weight on a Holocaust parallel affects me differently than it does you.
But that's why I said everyone has their own personal lines, their own personal triggers where things go from "just a story" to "ok this is hitting too close to home and I have thoughts." This was that line for me. It wasn't for you, and that's ok. Chances are something else somewhere else is that thing for you.
Anyhow that's my final word on this. Again, my apologies if I crossed any lines or accused you of anything malicious. I didn't intend to.
