Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I'm here in a Starbucks in Chicago, waiting for the SFWA Nebula Conference to wake up, so I thought I'd finally write down a few thoughts about Captain America: Civil War.  

Generally, I liked it.  There are a few things I think I can say about the movie 'above the cut.' as it were. Without spoiling, I want to talk about one of the fundamental differences between the movie and the comic book arc.  In the comic book, like the movie, there is an event that triggers a public outcry about the unchecked destruction that superheroes cause when they come blundering into situations, do their best, but sometimes civilian lives are lost.  In the comic book arc, the difference is that the destruction is caused, quite accidentally, by random "new" superheroes.  That's to say, "powered" people who have no affiliation with a superhero group like the X-Men or the Avengers.  As a result, part of what the public demands is a "superhero registration act" which not only requires any people with powers to offer themselves to the government, but ALSO requires long-standing superheroes to expose their secret identities as part of registration.

I think you can already see why, in the comic book version, someone from World War II might stop and say, "Uh... wait a minute... You gonna ask us all to wear stars next?"  (He had other really amazing observations which really resonated with everything that was happening during the time Civil War was written, which was during the Patriot Act, which DIRECTLY commented on things happening in the US.)

In the movie (and this isn't much of a spoiler, because, in many ways the movie is actually about Bucky's past), the accords only require the superheroes to subject themselves to oversight.  Now, the question is a lot more nebulous: who is in charge, what decisions do they get to make... ?  

But, what's missing in the movie is Captain America being far more articulate and CLEAR about why he, specifically, finds this situation squicky.  The thing that drove me absolutely buggy (later... because during the movie my only thoughts were: bam! crash! zap!) was that it was certainly all set up in the previous Captain America movies. All we would have needed is, during the scene where the gathered Avengers are looking over the accord (I do love that it's clear Captain America read EVERY PAGE) to have Cap say, "Guys, really? We're going to put our trust in a governing body... WHEN HYDRA WAS SECRETLY IN CONTROL OF S.H.I.E.L.D. FOR THE PAST FIFTY YEARS??"

MCU Captain America has a LEGIT reason not to want to sign something that gives away his decision making power to an organization he knows nothing about.

But, so. like, *I* thought of that, but it was _never_ said out loud by ANYONE in the movie.  

Which to me, made Captain America seem like a war-mongering vigilante.... which is... super not Captain America.

That's not to say there weren't things I loved. Again, no spoilers, but I thought Black Panther moved EXACTLY RIGHT.  I was having flashbacks to comic books I barely remember reading every time he did a jump or a four-point landing or a swipe with his vibranium claws.

Also, I loved Peter Parker/Spider-Man

Okay, a couple things I can't say without a spoiler block...
( Read more... )So, those of you who saw it, what are your thoughts?

Look, two days in a row!  Wow, if I'm not careful this whole blogging thing could become a habit again.

Yesterday, I got an early Christmas package from my pen pal in Seattle.  She's an amazing knitter, and she knitted scarves for my whole family in Hogwarts house colors!  Slytherin for me, Ravenclaw for Shawn, and Gryffindor for Mason.  Perfect!  I put mine on right away, of course, and began explaining to everyone the virtues of being a Slytherin.  I'm not sure, however, that I convinced the six year-old brother of one of Mason's classmates.  He inched away from me when I explain that Slytherin was my house. 

Sigh.

I, of course, instantly reminded him that not all villians come out of my house.  After all, let's not forget that Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor! 

At any rate, I wore the scarf again this morning, and, as I was leaving Mason's school I had a startling realization.  Underneath my coat I was wearing my Captain America sweatshirt, and on top, the Slytherin scarf.  What did that make me, I wondered... a dark paladin?  Or an ambitious superhero?



I bought this fabulous sweatshirt from "Think Geek," for myself for my birthday.  Many people are confused by it.  A woman at the grocery store thought I was especially patriotic (I wasn't, I should add, wearing the hood.)  When I explained Cap, I still got a blank look.  Again with the sighing, apparently not everyone knows who Captain America is....

What is the world coming to?

In other news, I'm still not sure what to do with myself since I don't yet have a new book contract.  I consoled myself yesterday by watching some Anime on NetFlix.  I watched the first couple of episodes of Bleach.  I'm... uncertain about continuing.  I like story, sort of, but Japanese demons freak me out.  Some of them look just a bit too much like, I don't know, twisted clowns that they trigger something deep in my psyche.  BUT, I do love the Soul Reapers.  They're cool, so I'll probably suffer through the clownish demons just to watch the awesome swordplay and such.

I'm still listening to and enjoying CINDER, but I find it impossible to listen to it while, say, writing a blog or a letter.  I lose track of words, either in the story or on the page, so I have to save listening to it when I'm doing mindless things like housework or working out. 

The lack of a regular book to read has left me feeling especially out of sorts, as well.  I have something on the Kindle I agreed to review, but the first few pages did not impress me, and, out of desperation the other day, I turned to some fan fic.  Not to disparage fan fic, because I'm actually quite enjoying what I've read of Nessuno so far, but that was meant more a comment on my severe lack of books in the house. "Nessuno" is an alternate history Buffy fan fic that's pretty unlike anything I've ever read before.  It takes place in Rome during the hieght of Papal decedence, and Spike and Angel are mercenaries in service to the Pope... and things go from there.

I guess I'm just busy being a fan, something I don't get to do when I'm so focused on writing all the time.

Last night I went to "Captain America: First Avenger" with Eleanor and seanmmurphy. I have to agree with what Laura Anne Gilman pointed out on Goggle+, which is that the movie completely fails the Bechdel Test, but, it's still an awesome superhero movie.

For my money, though I'm a huge Cap fan, "Thor" was more fun. Eleanor and I have been talking about this from the moment the credits rolled, and one of the things I decided is that Captain America's orgin story is difficult to tell partly because he was a honest-to-goodness propaganda tool when issue #1 came out. There's this whole history of him as a gosh-gee, "buy war bonds" kind of hero (which the movie found a clever way to acknowledge.) Captain America as we have come to love him really doesn't come into his own as a complicated character until he becomes "a man out of time." That's when he gets his Marvel "issues," at least.

That being said, I think that the writers did an excellent job of finding a good theme and sticking to it. As Eleanor cleverly pointed out on FB, "Thor is about a superhero learning to be a decent human being; Captain America is about a decent human being learning to be a superhero." (Iron Man, I pointed out, as a collelary, is about an indecent man learning decency.)

I ended up finding more to like about Steve Rogers as a character than I think a lot of the critics did. Part of that, of course, is that I have a long history with him, which I can't help but carry into any movie about Cap. Another thing, however, was the "movie magic" they performed by giving the 90-pound weakling so much screen time before he becomes the buff super-soldier Rogers becomes. I'd never spent much time with the "earlier" Cap in my head -- who he was, at his core, before he took the super-soldier formula. (Note: I was first introduced to Cap via the Avengers and was not a regular reader of his individual title until really, REALLY recently. Think: Brubaker's "Winter Soldier") At any rate, that meant that the grenade scene was new to me (though I understand it's canon, yes?) For me, that provided all the character I needed. Steve Rogers, before any augmentation, is that guy who is going to run INTO the burning building, instead of away from it.

Say what you will about Bendis, but I've come to appreciate his constant, unwavering, and in-depth exploration of what it means to be a HERO. That moment reminded me of one of my favorite quotable lines from NEW AVENGERS: Breakout, where Spider-Man is headed toward the prison breakout not knowing even what's going on, thinking, basically, "what new cosmic fiasco" am I running TOWARDS?

Other people, including Chris Lough at Tor.com have suggested that the saving grace of this film is it's more interesting side characters (Dr. Erskine, Peggy Carter and Tommy Lee Jones's Colonel) that carry this film. That might be true, but to be fair, I've always thought Captain America is a better ensemble player, anyway... so it worked for me.

As a side note, I love the movie-version of Bucky a lot. I totally saw Brubaker's Winter Soldier echoed there especially in the scene on the train (that's all I'll say in an effort to keep this review mostly-spoiler free. Hopefully, I've said nothing above that you haven't seen in the trailer.)

Anyway, I'm SUPER-excited that I'm going to get to talk about this with all y'all at Diversicon.

So I guess that I missed seeing the trailer for CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER because I had a dinner date with my nephew who was boycotting the big game. (First of all, *I* am extremely pleased that the Packers won. I'm a Wisconsin native and it's just kind of cool to see a team owned by the people of Greenbay do so well.) Jon and I watched the Cap trailer on his iPhone, but I thought maybe I missed something because the screen was so small, but, uh... not really.

Here's the link to the Official site, from which you can follow to the official Superbowl trailer.

I don't know. It's not that Cap doesn't look cool, because he does. But I was really hoping for an iconic shot, you know, a sheild toss or something... like they gave us with IRONMAN (the classic shot of him landing and then the repulsor ray image. Honestly, it's little bits like that which make me go: "cooooooooooool!")

I should write to the folks over at the Marvel movie studios and explain something quite simple to them. Comic book fans (or, at least THIS comic book fan,) is actually not as nitpicky as you think or worry. I'm used to reboots. I'll follow almost any storyline for a couple of hours. What I want from a superhero movie is a chance to see my hero do that cool stuff s/he does in the still frames LIVE. Like, seeing Nightcrawler's "bamf" in action totally made up (for me, at least,) for the fact that Kurt apparently did not recognize his own MOTHER, the only other blue skinned person in town.... But, you know, seriously, I even enjoyed seeing Gambit do his card trick, even though I wasn't at ALL sold on the guy they had playing him in WOLVERINE.

So I'd like to see:



or that moment right before he yells "Avengers Assemble" when he raises the sheild, like this:



That's kind of all I need.

At any rate, we had a fine weekend, despite missing the Superbowl ads. Saturday Mason had swimming class and then we went directly to the Sprawl where we met up with some friends who had unlimited wristbands to the amusment park formerly known as Camp Snoopy (now Nikolodean). Alas, I forgot to pack my computer, so I ended up having to make an emergency purchase at Barnes & Noble of a notbook and some paper, since Mason had two teenage girls to chaperone him. I got to sit with the other adult and chat at the Caribou Coffee which is nestled just inside the amusement park next to the LEGOs store. I was awfully distracted from writing, though, anyway. The Mall is the GREATEST people watching place, probably just shy of the State Fair. I discovered, for instance, that Goths still exist. I was really grateful to see that, since I just sort of assumed they did when I wrote Garnet and Ana.

I was also distracted all weekend by the most bizarrely overwhelming desire to write STAR WARS fan fic. I'm going to have to get that out of my system at some point, but it seriously has to stop descending on me whenever I realize I have a deadline swiftly approaching.

sigh-yi-yi.

naomikritzer turned me on to this awesome theory about Captain America's past. As she pointed out, it totally reads like something I'd devise. So, yeah, I think it'd be an awesome back story. Of course, I grew up singing labor union songs and "Four for the Founding Fathers... Marx, Engles, Lenin, Trotsky!" so, I might be biased.

At MarsCON, I learned that Captain America (the Steve Rogers version, as opposed to the current Bucky Barnes version,) was _not_ shot and killed by a regular bullet.

No, apparently, Red Skull being the sort of evil overlord who tells people his devious plan with exactly enough time for the hero to thwart it, decided rather than just killing Cap dead (the simple option), he’d have the brainwashed Agent 13 shoot Steve with what Brian Thao Worra called a “quantum bullet” in order, I gather, to infuse his own mind into Steve’s body (aka the unnecessarily complicated choice.) I guess Brian was wrong about that term “quantum bullet,” but I like it, so I’m keeping it. What the magic/quantum bullet did was separate Steve’s consciousness from his body, and then sent his mind on an eternal loop through his own past, Red Badge of Courage style.

So, when I was at HPB, I decided that, knowing this already, I could pick up Ed Brubaker’s:

Captain America, “Days Gone By” #50
Captain America: Reborn (4 of 5)
Captain America: Reborn (5 of 6)
Captain America: Reborn
Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield?

Of course, I managed to read them somewhat out of order (I mistakenly thought the unnumbered issue of “Reborn” was the first, not the last issue). Even having read the unnumbered issue twice, I’m still not sure I get it. I guess the take away lesson is that, despite surviving since WWII, Red Skull is the dumbest supervillain in the entire Marvel Universe. (On Facebook yesterday Jon Hansen said "It was so bad, it needed Scott Evil to go: 'Wait.. what? What are we doing? Why don't we just shoot him?'")

BECAUSE like a lot of superheroes, Captain America is a science-altered human. But, he’s not a god (not like, say Hercules or Thor.) He’s not invulnerable, like Rogue, or nearly-so, thanks to his healing factor, like Wolverine. He can’t stop bullets with an invisible or magnetic shield. His body cannot contort like rubber, is not made of stone, and cannot turn to diamond or steel at will.

If you shoot Captain America at point blank (careful to get under his adamantine chainmail shirt), the bullet rends regular old, human flesh and bone, and he dies. Dead. All the way. (Okay, this is Marvel, so he could have been a Skrull all along or some other completely preposterous plot device, but just roll with me here for a moment.)

But, apparently, Red Skull thinks using a quantum bullet is a much better idea, and even seems (I think) to have made arrangements with Dr. Doom to capture Captain America’s disembodied soul in some kind of space-age/soul-capturing magic device (Bonus, with Doom it can be both).

Because, you know, snuffing out Captain America’s consciousness would be too… what? Easy? Evil? And our insane, swastika-wearing Red Skull can’t bring himself to kill Captain America straight up….because? Because he’s the perfect example of the Aryan uber-race with his blond hair and super-soldier perfect body?

Okay, maybe. I could actually BUY that latter explanation, but not having read every issue in the series, I have no idea if Brubaker ever makes that argument in the text for Red Skull’s crazy-complicated-how-can-it-possibly-succeed “plan.”

Except my theory only serves to explain why Red Skull takes the time and effort to transfer his consciousness into Steve’s awesomely Aryan body, but not why he preserves Steve’s mind, at all. Because, what supervillain doesn’t realize that if his dark, small, evil consciousness has to battle the formidable, morally-upstanding, good soul of the hero, the hero is going to find a way to be, well, stronger!? And, you know, overpower your wicked self by sheer force of will? DUH!

Brubaker goes to a lot of contortions to explain that Red Skull couldn’t have come up with a better torture than to have Cap constantly reliving his danger-fraught life, with all of its various mistakes (the big one being the failure to save Bucky in the whole, classic Baron Zemo rocket plot.) Yet, I kept thinking, okay, yeah, Steve, this sucks for you, but wouldn’t Skull have been smarter to just kill you? You know, like the Russians seemed to have been planning when they sent the Winter Soldier/Bucky to sniper your a$$ the day Agent 13/Sharon shot you with the quantum bullet?

The worst part, IMHO, is the conclusion as it is presented in “Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield?” After all this meandering to get Cap back from the dead, Steve decides that Bucky makes the better Captain America, after all, and it’s time to hand over the shield to his protégée. Again, I ask myself: if the plan at Marvel HQ was to retire Steve Rogers as Captain America, why not let him die?

Frankly, I was pretty sold on Bucky Barnes as the new Captain America (there have been many others, after all). Plus, I’m fond of what Brubaker did to Barnes’s history. I liked that Barnes would necessarily be a darker Cap, because he doesn’t have the super-soldier formula, and so had to rely on his *one* cybernetically enhanced arm (the only way he can catch the shield) and a _gun_. He’s basically a normal guy with WWII/evil Soviet combat training. This was kind of working for me, actually. I didn’t need Steve to come back from the dead to give Bucky his blessing. In fact, it’s kind of out of character, (within Brubaker’s own storyline even).

One of the reveals in the Winter Soldier miniseries (by Brubaker) is that Captain America was complicit in using Bucky to carry out missions that would “tarnish the flag.” In other words, Cap looked the other way while Bucky assassinated Nazis (rather inelegantly, I might add. We’re talking slashing throats and ambush sniper fire.) The ugly that Brubaker asks us to accept is that Bucky is a teenager supposedly under the protection of Cap, and yet is a skilled killer, putting blood on his own hands so that the image of Captain America isn’t spattered with the hard, cold reality of war.

I would think that seeing Bucky, knowing what he knows, wearing the FLAG of his uniform would freak Captain America OUT. It seems extremely out of character that, especially given that he supposedly relived that part of his past over and over again only days earlier, Cap would be like, “Oh, look at Bucky and his Russian girlfriend all team-y; they’re doing a great job. I’ll leave them to it, then.”

It should have been a _shock_ to see Bucky holding a gun in one hand and *the shield* in the other.

I mean, WTF? It still freaks _me_ out. Every time I see a CAPTAIN AMERICA cover with Bucky in the uniform with a gun in his hand or holstered at his hip, I have a moment of, “Whoa!” Then I think, “Oh, yeah, this is Winter Soldier.” Cap hasn’t, meanwhile, had as much time to adjust to this idea as we have. Given that I’m still a little uneasy at the passing image, you’d think Cap would have a conniption fit. Cap likes to remind us that the cowl, the shield – they represent. What America _is_, is reflected in how Captain America behaves… at least, that was kind of the whole theme of why Bucky existed in “Winter Soldier.”

Well, Cap, how about that? You just handed over the shield and the cowl to a stone, cold killer, and you’re okay with that? Really.

As Spider-Man might say, “Oy.”

That being said, there were things I liked in “Who Will Wield the Shield?” Most notably, the cameo by President Obama, who implies that he thinks the superhero registration act is crap, even if it *is* law. Thus, he signs an executive order to pardon Captain America (alas, not the rest of the unregistered heroes, which is kind of Obama all over, isn’t it? Small changes, not nearly as sweeping or progressive as some of us would like…. Marvel remains surprisingly cutting edge political, and I do like that about them.)

Anyway, I’ll have to see if I can find out what’s currently happening in CAPTAIN AMERICA and decide whether or not it’s worth continuing to pick this title up when I find it used. Like I said, I like Bucky as Cap, but if Brubaker isn’t going to acknowledge the queasy of having a former assassin as Captain America, I don’t know if it can hold my interest long term, especially if I have to endure super stupid villains and their really ridiculously complicated plans.

I was a fan in the 70s and 80s, when Spider-Man grew extra arms and the plots sometimes involved vampires or the “cosmic cube,” but Civil War showed me a higher ground – one I could appreciate as a grown-up. I can tolerate references to the over-the-top past and even a nod or homage to it on occasion, but I prefer the moral ambiguity of the new hey-our-audience-grew-up-with-us renaissance in comic book storytelling of the past decade or so.

So I hope that’s where Brubaker goes, or has gone, as the case may be.

Last night I finished the last of the SECRET INVASION titles, and, looking around for a bit of light bathroom reading, I picked up one of the CIVIL WAR titles (I think it was Chronicles #1)... and suddenly, I missed the whole civil war storyline something fierce.

My reading of CIVIL WAR has been necessarly spotty. I came back into comics when CIVIL WAR was mostly wrapping up, so I couldn't read it episodically and the collections are actually somewhat difficult to navigate as an outsider, especially given how many titles the storyline straddles.

So, really, I'd never read many of the sort of major events or first moments, and only knew about them from context and what I'd gleaned from later issues. The issues I read last night collected some iconic scenes -- the whole Stampford School Incident and the moment Captain America goes rogue. The most powerful image, however, was the end piece with Spider-Man juxaposed with a story about family forced into the Japanese rellocation camps of WWII. The very last panel shows the family heading into the concentration camp on one side, the Statue of Liberty in the middle, and Spider-Man gazing at the statue saying, "With great power..."

Oh. My. God.

Where's the awesome now?

I think a lot of my disappointment of SECRET INVASION is that there's nothing, for me at least, in the new storyline that can compare to moments like that. For one, the Skrull's aren't an enemy I can understand. The powerful thing about the CIVIL WAR was that the "enemy" became us. "Who's side are you on?" was the tagline, and it pretty much summed up what was exciting for me about the CIVIL WAR. As a reader, I was engaged in the story in a much more personal way. Was Captain America's illegal resistance justified? Should a soldier follow the law, when the law is unjust? Is freedom more important than security? Or are there times when security should trump individual freedoms? What I loved about CIVIL WAR is that the answers were NEVER portrayed as simple. I think that it was pretty clear that many of the authors shared my personal politics, but that didn't stop them from making very logical and sensible arguments for "the other side."

Spider-Man never finishes his sentence. We know that his tagline is, "With great power comes great responsiblity," but we're left with our own minds blown open to what he seems to be suggesting which may (or may not) be:

...and what IS your responsiblity in the face of facism?? Facism from your own country in the name of security?? Do you do nothing and face the consequences that you may be allowing evil, or do you stand up for what's right even when popular sentiment is against you?

The Skrull invasion, for me at least, doesn't ask anything quite so difficult for me. Yeah, maybe the non-Skrull/real Captain America stepped off the "captured" Skrull ship, but... who cares? The person who won my heart -- the REAL Captain America (Skrull or not) -- stood up against facism and for civil liberties during the superhero civil war. The rest just doesn't matter.

So you can find my alter ego over at "Something Wicked..." talking about my addiction to Internet research, a topic for which I must give partial credit to swords_and_pens, since we both suffered at Cafe Amore the day the internet was down.

Tate has also been doing interviews all over "town," and if you want a fairly comprensive list, I just made one over at her MySpace site. (That, btw, is one seriously messy url. Let me know if you can't get there.)

Over the last few days, I wrote a few more pages on the prequel. For some reason, this has been slow going. Instead, I've been playing Spider Solitare, which is a complete waste of time, so I can't quite figure out why I've been drawn to that instead of a project I was initally extremely excited about. I think that part of my problem is just that. The prequel means A LOT to me, so I want it to be good. When I start worrying about the quality of my writing, my production slows to a crawl. It's not that I don't worry about writing quality on my Tate projects, but I'm more willing to have crappy first drafts. I need to remember (and embrace) the fact that that writing badly at first is just part of the process -- no matter what book I'm writing. I'm going to have to do some serious output on RESURRECTION CODE, because I plan to hand out chapters to Wyrdsmiths on Thursday.

In other news, I need to get a haircut.

I didn't go to Fourth Street Fantasy this weekend. I'll be interested in reading people's con reports (I know jiawen went, and I'm hoping to coax something out of her.) Wyrdsmiths had talked about attending, but I think most of us wanted to go for somewhat dubious reasons (think various writer/fan squabbles,) and honestly, the weekend kind of snuck up on me.

I spent a lot of time this weekend reading about fish. I learned something I might try. I've been using a product to soften the tetra's water which works pretty well, but, of course, with the heater and the flourescent bulb there's evaporation, and every time I top off I add "hardness." One of my books suggested using distilled water to top off tanks. You can't, of course, use it for water changes because, you need to have SOME minerals in the water not to mention all that organic gunk that people don't like to think they're drinking, and it would be ridiculously expensive. But, I'm thinking it might work for topping off. I'm going to give it a try at any rate. My tetra, btw, are very happy. I finally found a good bulb (another brilliant thought: why not use one of those energy efficent flourescent bulbs?? It seems to be working.) Seven of them school. I've got one that's getting bullied off to a corner, which all my books say is a bad sign -- though I don't see any evidence of illness. I've been watching him, though.

I found out too, that my White Cloud Mountain Minnow (Kenya) was described as "a poor man's neon tetra" by one of my books, which I really rather liked. The goldfish Bob[2], Joe, and Fergus all say "hello." They seem to be quite happy and healthy, though Joe is convinced I NEVER feed him. (He swims to the feeding corner of the tank every time he sees me and nearly jumps out of the tank to get my attention.)

Mason spent the weekend playing "Where is in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" with me. He's been asking to wear red (like Carmen) and will randomly announce that he's the world's greatest jewel thief and run off with various items to hide around the house (currently he has the cover to the flour bin under his bed, which I must retreive soon.) He wants us to call him Carmen and will call me Agent Shadow Hawkins (the boy ACME agent) and Shawn is Jules (the girl ACME agent, and former partner of Carmen) most times, though he's pretty fast and loose with that.

We also picked up a number of cool board games at a rummage sale this weekend, which Mason and Shawn played during breaks from "Carmen."

I also finished the last of my Secret Invasion books and so am now starting to rumminate about what I might write for Bill's Mid-Ohio Comic Con blog... Oh, and in other comic news, I found a website so devoted to news about Captain America that they pulled a very tiny quote by Tate in which she mentions the books she's reading.

I just read Captain America.... First of all, I love James Buchanan Barnes as the New Cap (also I'm glad they seem to be calling him "James" instead of "Bucky," which was always so WRONG.) I particularly loved when James/Bucky/Cap stabbed Crossbones in the leg with a knife, and then proceeded to shoot up the bad guys like James Bond. So NOT Steve Rogers! Also, his attempt at making a grand speech in front of a rioting crowd was a dismal failure, which seemed very Bucky (and really, it was a nice nod to Steve, too. Dude had charisma, 1940s-style.) But, okay, Sharon (Agent 13) is having Steve's baby. Not that we probably didn't _see_ the moment of conception in CIVIL WAR, but I don't know, does it matter? I suppose the super-soldier formula was injected into Steve's blood, thus making it transmissable through blood-related things like sperm. But, as the parent of an adopted son, I've never been terribly fond of the whole the-children-of-heros-will-be-heros crap. Spider-Man will tell you, it's how you're raised more than who your parents were that makes a hero.

Second ( Read more... ) But, I will chew off my own right arm if it/he wakes up ready to go, Captain America style. That's just not good science.

Now, on to the rest....

Well, from the research I was able to do on the internet, my best guess is that Johnny/Giant-Girl has two tumors. There’s nothing that will make them better, but at least one site seemed to imply that as long as he isn’t acting sick, he isn’t in imminent danger. Apparently, some bettas with tumors live on to a ripe old age. My only concern, of course, is how rapidly they appeared and that there’s not one, but two!

And, of course, this whole thing seems like some kind of horrible real-life metaphor for everything that’s going on with Shawn’s dad.

That just goes with my general feeling of being blindsided*, because this morning my mom e-mails me and tells me she was watching some late night show and she heard the Bucky will be the new Captain America. My mom! (At least my mom said “Bugsby” so I could still feel vaguely superior), but why am I the last to know, people?

Then on Facebook someone tells me some information *I’m* still waiting to hear from my agent.

And John Edwards dropped out of the race? He was just here in Minnesota last night. Did call me to give me a little advanced warning that was coming down the pike? No. Well, hell. Just when I was feeling all decider-y.

-----------------

*Note: I re-read this after said-Facebook friend apologized and realized that for a writer I did a piss-poor job of implying the correct tone. This whole little rant isn't meant to be taken too seriously. I figured starting with my mom spoiling Cap's secret would clue the reader into realizing that the rest of these bits made my day brighter, actually. But, I think maybe that's hard to tell since the rest of my life has been so crappy lately (Shawn's dad, sick fish, etc.) Anyway, the point of this addition is to let you know that I actually found the rest of the blindsidign things kind of funny in a "sheesh!" sort of way.

Oh, and it looks like I'll have an announcement to make tomorrow.