Happy Birthday, Kalinara!

So, today is Kalinara's birthday, and I've been racking my head for a gift.

Maybe she'd like a Guy Gardner: Warrior figurine?



Hmm... doesn't look to be for sale. Ooo, how about an ice sculpture?



Naw, that might get dusty. Maybe I should be more creative. Set up an event, like a visit from a relative who hasn't lived nearby for a while.



That could backfire. Back to traditional gifts. Umm... Everybody likes guns?



On second thought, that looks complicated.

Hmm... OH! I know! She just got a new cat. I'll get her a kitty bed, just like...



Or not.


Y'know what? Think I'll buy her some ice cream next time we get together. Yeah. That's it.

In Defense of Peter Bishop

If you're not caught up on this week's Fringe episode, "Concentrate and Ask Again", don't read any further. Spoilers for the series up until the end of that episode.



There are two things that bug me about this Altlivia fallout.

One, remember back when there was a story with the Chameleon in Spider-Man, and it looked like he pretended to be Peter and slept with his roommate? And how we had a big discussion on rape and consent as a result.

Well, this is the same situation. Peter slept with Altlivia, but his consent was based on the thought that this was HIS Olivia, a woman he trusted implicently and had grown to love over the past two years. Peter didn't really give consent.

The writers, especially in the last episode, have chosen to not explore this at all. In fact, rather than treat this as a violation they have chosen to treat it as a romance and actually set it up so that they can not treat this as a violation or else an entire universe will die.

And maybe I'm in the wrong part of fandom, but few fans seem to have remarked on this at all. I mean, I even saw a few posts discussing that what happened to Olivia was a form of rape, that then go on to talk about what a self-absorbed jerk Peter is. What the hell, fans? If this were Peternate and Olivia (or a show with Patricia and Oliver?) they'd be screaming to high heaven from every blog but instead we're going to constantly talk about how Peter should have known better? Come on, fandom.

And speaking of whether or not he should have noticed, I think people are being really unfair to Peter there too.

The thing about Peter is that he's a social person, which actually puts him in the unique position of being the one to fall for this hardest. Why? Because you don't really get to understand people as well as he does without observing them and altering your judgments based on how they act differently in certain situations. He's not someone to go "Oh, this is weird behavior, she must be an imposter." He's someone to go "Oh, that's weird. Either something's going or this is something new I learned about them. What's different for this person that's causing this?"

It looks like he's stupid for not knowing what with everything that's going on, but this guy is still getting used to the weirdness. It's just not human nature to seek out parallel universes and shape-shifters as an explanation for every time someone does something different or unepected. Human beings are not consistent creatures, and they do alter their behavior from time to time.

It's second nature for Peter to observe people, take all their normal behavior PLUS the odd behavior into account when he makes judgments, and con the crap out of them based on that. Even though he knows there's shapeshifters and alternate universes out there, this is a guy who made his living based on his skill at dealing with people for the vast majority of his. The only way he can do that is to watch people, and accept what they do as part of their personalitiesAnything new with Olivia he had to rationalize away BECAUSE he's spent his entire life paying attention to people and has seen them change this way before.

His rationalization? "This is how she acts in a romantic relationship." He's never seen her in one before, let alone been in one with her. And That's not something that a couple years and conscious knowledge of weirdness will erase. And all his life this guy has had to adjust his impressions--not challenge--when someone acts differently.

Even in the setting, we're asking way too much of Peter to expect him to have figured this out earlier than he did. It's one thing for Olivia to be upset, she's got a ton to be upset about. But as awesome as she is and much as we identify with her, we're not Olivia. We didn't just come back from that shit to land into this shit. Give Peter a break, all right. Dude still hasn't worked out his issues with Walter yet.

This amuses me.

The other day Variety listed some actresses up for "the femme lead" in Superman, and specifically stated it wasn't Lois Lane.

It sounded suspiciously like a boneheaded idea of trying a romance story with Superman and some other woman.

This caused some angst for people who went "Wait.. That can't be right. What female character would be BIGGER than Lois Lane in this? Is she even gonna be IN it?" The only idea that made sense to me was that it might be a villainess (or they made a mistake, and it was just a female lead but not The Female Lead).

I'm gonna go ahead and do my "I was right" dance now at the newest rumors. Not only is it a villainess, but revealing the identity of the villainess these 3 actresses are up for seems to contradict some of the statements Snyder has said about the film. (Yeah, this is as big a rumor too but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than letting Lana fricking Lang lead a Superman movie.)

And the one who leaked it also went out of their way to say "Lois Lane will be in the film."

Does anyone else think this got into Variety, too many people went "NOOO" and they suddenly went "Oh shit, we gotta correct this one... but with some deniability so we won't spoil it"?

Place your bets, folks

By way of Let's Be Friends Again comes this bit of Brightest Day:



Well, Roy Harper is back on drugs, Wonder Woman's mother died in flames, Aquaman is short a hand and according to Chris Haley, they're planning to do Eclipso vs the DCU again. (And don't get smug, Marvel, what with offing a member of the Fantastic Four and taking us to a dystopian timeline where the X-men never existed.) So now's the time to speculate on what's next in the Brightest Day Event. Is it...

1) Wonder Woman loses her friend in a very special issue.

2) A Big Time Demon calls the crummiest villains in the universe together to offer them new power.

3) The Justice League finds that having wiped the memory of an enemy was a bad idea.

4) Hal Jordan hosts Parallax and/or the Spectre again.

5) The Flash is put on trial for murder. (ETA: Oops, they just did this one.)

6) Dark Seid versus the Legion of Super-Heroes.

7) Guy Gardner goes into a coma, and comes out with the mentality of a 14-year-old boy.

8) Supergirl sprouts wings of flame.

9) The skies turn red and a mysterious white nothingness advances menacingly on our heroes.

10) This issue: Superman DIES.

So far this year is a bit surreal

I returned from escorting the locksmith to find someone had left a NATO medal on my desk with a certificate. (My name is on the certificate, and it appears to be in French.)


I discovered that after seven years I could still explain the difference between Pulse Amplitude Modulation, Pulse Duration Modulation and Pulse Code Modulation. (I need a whiteboard and a flashlight, though.)

I put this thought out there, and am confident it will seep into someone's fanfiction and/or fanart soon.

I became one of those nerds who answers college assignments with nerdy stuff, despite having promised myself I wouldn't. Not only that, it was discussing the meaning of the term "canon", a word that makes me cringe.

I learned that the car that shares my last name has this slogan:


I learned that I am genuinely more radical than the sexual assault response coordinator on base. Also, I'm told by a coworker who attended an Army-sponsored women's rights meeting while deployed that I am WAY more radical than they were. (Among bloggers I'm pretty moderate, but in the military looks like I'm as far left as will enter a recruiter's office.)

I saw an officer give a briefing...

That last one was the same day I explained the modulation differences to a room with three Airmen and a smartass new NCO. I was constantly worrying that my communication skills would fail me and I'd be unable to properly answer the question, I'd look like an idiot, and they would conclude that I (and, by extension, all other women) knew nothing about the actual job and that that was why I was always filing stuff. I'm not great at getting my point across with my voice, I prefer writing it out. I actually managed it, though, and helped them out.

A few hours later, we all went to a mandatory briefing where they put on a video on drunk driving. We all shrugged, because driving drunk is widely considered to be the stupidest thing you can do while in the military. It causes the whole base to get in trouble, basically, and it is easy to avoid with the support network we've set up. Then he stressed that the next speaker was entire voluntary, and had suggested this himself. And I watched an officer, a man in leadership position walk to the front of his unit, in front of all of his subordinates, and calmly, smoothly tell everyone he'd done the stupidest thing you can do while in the military.

And I'd been nervous about forgetting modulation techniques I hadn't discussed in half a decade.

Rumors

There is a bad Wonder Woman TV pilot script floating around, and pretty much everything on it sounds like a checklist of "Things that will annoy Wonder Woman fans." I feel safe in ignoring this as a prank or a journalist reading the absolute worst possible interpretation of events at the moment. Even if it's real, scripts go through a shit-ton of changes before they show up on screen.

I think it's just that we've seen so much horrible shit in her comic and horrible idiocy suggested by Hollywood about her that we'll believe anything as long as it's bad enough. I expect heavy drinking on premier night, but I'm not breaking out the whiskey yet.

As long as I'm wishing for things...

I've realized recently that if Marvel were to write a comic just for me it would be an ongoing series starring Magneto and focusing on how he relates to his family. You could set stories where he's a good guy and a bad guy, because he certainly switches, is horrifying or sympathetic, and where he fights the X-men or helps them, but the main draw for me would be a promise of seeing the family ("the family" is to be referred to with Ron Howard's voice because I've watched too much Arrested Development). ALL of his children and grandchildren (even Luna now that she's got funky mind powers) qualify as super-heroes, and he is a Big Time super-villain. If you do not find that interesting, I don't understand you.

Right now in Children's Crusade, the main thing that keeps me picking it up (other than desperate hope that Wanda will do something) is watching Tommy, Pietro, and Magneto all try to out-smartass each other. (Billy and Wanda should join in once they've finished laying out the exposition.)



Marvel could easily pick this up after this series ends, and we'll have two sets of twins plus Grandpa. You already have some serious dramatic potential there, with the two sets of twins trying to become a full family again, and Magneto trying to be an X-man still. While he's trying to do the hero thing, he's also trying to rebuild those bridges now that he's got a couple of stepping stones put down again.

Bring Lorna back from space with the boyfriend, and you have another set of characters to enfold into the family. Polaris and Magneto is already a compelling interaction, Polaris plus the twins (and new twins) after House of M is so fascinating to me that I can't understand why Marvel wants to let this lie.

And while Magneto would be the central character, this would be an excuse to showcase how the family interacts with each other. We could get my Pietro-Lorna teamup here, Wanda and Lorna doing sister stuff (and fighting evil), Wanda and her children, Lorna and her niece and nephews...etc...

Along the way, natural storylines would bring in Crystal and Luna, Hulkling, the Kaplan family, the Shepherd family, Rogue and Professor X for an issue or a few arcs. Tommy could get a little robot girlfriend. Magneto could try to manipulate Pietro into dating a human or mutant woman. (I think he'd leave Wanda alone since even down to the basic "I make bad things happen" power she's not someone wise to mess with, and she's already had two mutant children.) Ideally they'd find excuses to bring back the old Vision (not the dumb emotionless one, or the admittedly nice baby one, but the Vision who married Wanda), Astra, Joseph, and--for me the Holy Grail of potential Magneto stories--Magda.

Marvel, I promise you that unless you put an absolutely DIRE creative team on it I would buy the hell out of this.