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Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

What grade would you give the Marvel Cinematic Universe? (Ever-Changing Question)

  • Total voters
    185
fireproof78 said:
Fanaticism brings passion. It's not logical, nor something easy to part from when so much time and energy is put in to it. It requires a measure of awareness to see how far is too far.
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I've never bought the notion that "fan" is short for "fanatic." When people abbreviate, they tend to focus on the stressed syllable (e.g. "refrigerator" became "fridge"), so wouldn't it have ended up being "nat"? A more plausible etymology, to me, is that it's short for "fancier," i.e. someone who fancies (likes) a thing. That's a better fit for the meaning of "fan" than "fanatic," which refers more to an unhealthy or dangerous extreme in pursuit of a cause.

In any case, you shouldn't generalize about all fans. There is no single attitude that all fans share. If they all marched in lockstep, there wouldn't be so many debates online over any given topic.
 
Christopher said:
I've never bought the notion that "fan" is short for "fanatic." When people abbreviate, they tend to focus on the stressed syllable (e.g. "refrigerator" became "fridge"), so wouldn't it have ended up being "nat"? A more plausible etymology, to me, is that it's short for "fancier," i.e. someone who fancies (likes) a thing. That's a better fit for the meaning of "fan" than "fanatic," which refers more to an unhealthy or dangerous extreme in pursuit of a cause.

In any case, you shouldn't generalize about all fans. There is no single attitude that all fans share. If they all marched in lockstep, there wouldn't be so many debates online over any given topic.
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Just going from my experience. Been there, done that, etc.
 
Christopher said:
I've never bought the notion that "fan" is short for "fanatic." When people abbreviate, they tend to focus on the stressed syllable (e.g. "refrigerator" became "fridge"), so wouldn't it have ended up being "nat"? A more plausible etymology, to me, is that it's short for "fancier," i.e. someone who fancies (likes) a thing.
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Wouldn't fans be called "cees" then?
 
theenglish said:
Regardless of what one wants to be, dictionaries state that it is short for "fanatic" and this usage dates to the late 19th century (from dictionary.com).
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Obviously I'm aware of that etymology, as demonstrated by the fact that I critiqued it. Etymology is not an exact science; it's often just a series of best guesses. Reference works are not religious dogma that we're required to follow blindly; true learning requires questioning, doubting, and drawing our own conclusions.


Mr. Adventure said:
Wouldn't fans be called "cees" then?
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Uhh, no, because the emphasis is on "fan" -- "FAN-see-er," not "fan-SEE-er." I said the stressed syllable, not the second syllable.
 
Christopher said:
Obviously I'm aware of that etymology, as demonstrated by the fact that I critiqued it. Etymology is not an exact science; it's often just a series of best guesses.
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I don't have a subscription to the OED and no library nearby, but it principally a history of English words going back to their earliest appearances. Nevertheless, I am going to trust my source on this. You can't just make up the etymology of a word to suit your preference, which seems to be basically what you just did.
 
Christopher said:
Actually I learned it from David Gerrold. It's in his 1973 book The World of Star Trek.
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So did he make it up? Or does he have evidence to back up his idea? It's a nice concept, I admit, I just don't believe it is right--I don't mind being proven wrong.
 
Tuskin38 said:
Why are you so rude? Use her name. And why are you complaining about something you're not even going to watch? What a waste of time on your part.
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I didn't feel like googling her name. She's the actor from the terrible Orphan Black show, that's all that matters. I'm surprised you didn't complain about me not googling the showrunner's name.

Also, Its not a waste of time, I was originally adding context from the comics, the interview itself didn't really matter to what I originally posted. I'm complaining in general because I want a real She-Hulk show with a good cast and written/produced by talented people, and since the MCU is doing the opposite of that I'll continue to post about it periodically. Its my favorite Marvel hero getting a treatment worse then Inhumans or Iron Fist did.

Tuskin38 said:
:rolleyes:. Then do us a favour and don't do it here.
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Tough, its not your website. Its a public forum, start your own forum or facebook page or whatever if you just want to read your own opinions repeated back at you.
 
Christopher said:
I've never bought the notion that "fan" is short for "fanatic." When people abbreviate, they tend to focus on the stressed syllable (e.g. "refrigerator" became "fridge"), so wouldn't it have ended up being "nat"? A more plausible etymology, to me, is that it's short for "fancier," i.e. someone who fancies (likes) a thing. That's a better fit for the meaning of "fan" than "fanatic," which refers more to an unhealthy or dangerous extreme in pursuit of a cause.

In any case, you shouldn't generalize about all fans. There is no single attitude that all fans share. If they all marched in lockstep, there wouldn't be so many debates online over any given topic.
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Two seconds of google, who use Ofxord Languages, confirms that its late 19th century origins are from the word fanatic.
 
Mage said:
Two seconds of google, who use Ofxord Languages, confirms that its late 19th century origins are from the word fanatic.
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You should've spent more than two seconds on it, for there are actually at least three conflicting theories of its origin.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-34298659
Baseball manager Ted Sullivan, who claimed that he invented the term in St Louis in 1883... wrote that after listening to a baseball bore reeling off facts and statistics and being told "he is a fanatic", he said: "I will abbreviate that word and call him a fan."

Some experts still believe "fancy" is the main source. If the phrase "baseball fan" was already known, perhaps coupling it with "fanatic" was simply wit.

But what about "fan", meaning something for blowing air with? That comes from the Latin word vannus, originally a shovel or basket for tossing and winnowing grain.

It has even been suggested that sports fans were originally spectators who fanned themselves - or more rudely, that they were so called because they were windbags.
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https://www.etymonline.com/word/fan
"devotee," 1889, American English, originally of baseball enthusiasts, probably a shortening of fanatic, but it may be influenced by the fancy, a collective term for followers of a certain hobby or sport (especially boxing); see fancy (n.). There is an isolated use from 1682, but the modern word likely is a late 19c. formation.
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http://medkult.upmedia.cz/2016/08/0...-movement-brief-history-of-the-first-fandoms/
The other version of appearance of the word “fan” is that it was created from the word “fancy”. “Fancy” is essentially the same word as “fantasy”, from the Greek “phantasia”, its meanings “shading through appearance, opinion, enthusiasm for something” – and sometimes delusion. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary cites William Henry Nugent’s work, asserting that the word “fan” was derived from the “fancy”, a term from England, referring to the fans of a specific hobby or sport from the early 18th century to the 19th, especially to the followers of boxing. Later the word was shortened to “fance” and then just to “fan”.

Interesting that the word “fan” itself first became popular in reference to baseball enthusiasts. But, “the fancy” was a term for sport enthusiasts long before “fan” first appeared in US baseball circles in the 1880s. Essayist William Hazlitt wrote in 1822 of a man “whose costume bespoke him one of the FANCY, and who had risen from a three months’ sick bed” to go to see a prize fight.

Although, mainly applied to boxing, ‘the fancy” were also the followers of other sports, as well as enthusiastic of other activities.
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So Gerrold apparently favored William Henry Nugent's derivation, and I agree with him. Since the evidence shows that aficionados were already called "the fancy" before the word "fan" caught on, it does seem more credible, despite the tendency of dictionaries to favor the "fanatic" derivation without listing the alternatives.

Etymology, as I said, is not an exact science. There is no magic crystal ball to give us absolute certainty about the origins of words; we just formulate hypotheses based on incomplete evidence (because there is no written record of the origins of spoken language) and what seem to be reasonable deductions. As with any science, those deductions are presented merely as plausible hypotheses pending further evidence, not indisputable dogma.
 
Dee1891 said:
Disney tried to write the 2008 Hulk movie out of existence? Yet, at the same time, allowed William Hurt to appear in three other MCU films? It seems as if Disney Studios, as usual, is constantly inconsistent with all or most of its franchises.
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Disney is not actively promoting it, and in any marketing for the MCU, the focus is on the Ruffalo version, which still makes their handling of the Hulk a mess, as Norton-Hulk characters will be in the She-Hulk series. If the PTB at Marvel/Disney had a clue, they would have planned to reshoot a couple of scenes from the Norton-Hulk with Ruffalo to permanently use as their "updated" flashbacks going forward, so at least the Hulk's filmed history would not be some blank space--then suddenly, he's in the Avengers, or using characters from a film the MCU does not acknowledge.
 
TREK_GOD_1 said:
Disney is not actively promoting it, and in any marketing for the MCU, the focus is on the Ruffalo version, which still makes their handling of the Hulk a mess, as Norton-Hulk characters will be in the She-Hulk series. If the PTB at Marvel/Disney had a clue, they would have planned to reshoot a couple of scenes from the Norton-Hulk with Ruffalo to permanently use as their "updated" flashbacks going forward, so at least the Hulk's filmed history would not be some blank space--then suddenly, he's in the Avengers, or using characters from a film the MCU does not acknowledge.
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It not a mess, though. What's messy specifically? It happened and they recast a character. But it still exists and is referenced. People were fine when Rhodes was recast, it didn't make the Iron Man franchise a mess (there were other issues with it), I'm not seeing any blatant contradictions that make this "messy" besides people trying to make a mountain out of an ant-hill.
 
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