Revenge of comic book geekery
Aug. 9th, 2011 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielThe big DC reboot is imminent, and I gotta say, I got the jitters, and for a couple of reasons. First, at this point, I'm primarily a Marvel fangirl. My only connections to the DC-verse are through the always-awesome Linkara, general pop culture osmosis (seriously, if you don't know who Superman and Batman are, what rock have you been living under? And is there any extra room down there?), and, of course, my poor dear Authority (much more on this later), so I'm anticipating it taking a bit of time before I can really get my bearings. Second, this is my first "event." I know, primarily from the aforementioned Linkara, that gigantic events like this take place across the entire 'verse, so it's quite probable that happenings from Comic A will influence Comic B, that Character X from Team 1 will appear in a major role with Team 2, and as I've mentioned before, this kind of thing bugs the crap out of me. I like to get the whole story; I don't like the feeling that things are flying over my head, and it just isn't humanely possible for me, a newcomer, to know everything.
The third and final reason I'm so worried about this reboot is the very idea of the "reboot." I've gotten used to quite a few comic concepts that, as a prose fiction reader, I wasn't originally comfortable with. I've gotten used to the storytelling format of issues and story arcs. I've gotten used to the idea that there isn't just one creatively omnipotent Writer who can lay down the word of God and that's the end of it. Stuff like this, I can handle. But it's just such a completely alien concept that a group of writers can collectively unmake an entire universe and reshape it any damn way they please. I'm having some trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that entire lives are being erased, families torn apart, the entire damn universe is being retooled, and this is called a good thing. When this happened on Doctor Who, it was called the Crack in Time and they spent the entire season trying to get rid of it and/or run the hell away from it. I guess that it's just the idea that nothing up until now necessarily matters that gets me. To quote Midnighter in what is fast becoming one of the scariest and most depressing parodies of all time, I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice Authority!, "What's the point of specifics if next month they will never have existed?"
Speaking of Midnighter, my invisible possibly-theoretical Internet audience might be asking, "You just said you're a Marvel fangirl! What does the DC reboot have to do with you?" The answer, dear invisible possibly-theoretical Internet audience, is that my first real superhero love(s), The Authority, will be folded into the DC multiverse, and that has me nervous as hell. When I first heard that the WildStorm 'verse was going to be integrated into the DC multiverse, I was actually pretty excited. In both the DC and Marvel 'verses, they're discovering new dimensions and alternate realities all the time, so the storytelling structure is already in place. A number of WildStorm characters, the aforementioned Midnighter and his husband Apollo in particular, are expies of popular DC characters, so there's some true comedic potential in Batman meeting the Midnighter and going, "Wait, you're married to who?"
But no, the DC folks apparently intend to completely erase the WildStorm 'verse and just pretend that they've always been hanging out with Wonder Woman and Superman. This goes back to that problem I mentioned earlier, where we're just asked to go along with this great collective lie that things have always been this way. When the Crack in Time ate Rory on Doctor Who, the audience was never asked to just forget that he ever existed. We were supposed to be horrified and heartbroken that Amy has not only lost her fiancé and best friend, but that she doesn't remember losing him in the first place. But now, instead of the audience, we're asked to be Amy, to completely put the entire histories of our favorite characters out of our heads. And yes, there are some truly horrendous stories that I wouldn't mind being written out, but there were some good times too, some great, amazing, fantastic times that made me fall in love with these guys, and they're getting tossed out along with everything else.
Mainly, I'm worried because Word of God is that, not only will Apollo and the Midnighter not be a couple in the reboot, they won't even have met! This means that every moment I've seen these two in, their entire lives together, will be gone. No more missing memories. No more training as Bendix's super-soldiers. No more five years on the lam. No more evil blue alien armadas from alternate Earths. No more "'You'll die.' 'I wouldn't dare."" No more fight to free baby Jenny Quantum (does the reboot mean that Jenny Sparks will never have existed?!). No more solar wedding. No more anything. And that, to me, is scary as hell.
A plot bunny was spawned from this train of thought, and is currently gnawing on my toe, trying to get me to write its fic. In it, the WildStorm/DC merging starts out as more of a crossover. The two verses become aware of each other (not important how. The Doctor meets Doctor Strange on an astral wandering? Angie and Reed Richards accidentally tear simultaneous holes in the time-space continuum through SCIENCE? idk) and send ambassadors to feel each other out. At first, things go fairly harmoniously. Of course, there are a few snags (the aforementioned Midnighter-Batman thing should definitely be one of them), but overall, people get along really well. Soon, the two verses are connected on a permanent basis. Friendships form as they get comfortable with each other. It looks like, for once, a major multidimensional event has occurred without significant strife or bloodshed.
But then, the Martian Manhunter (who, apparently, is going to be a member of Stormwatch along with A&M once the reboot goes down), slips Jack, with whom he has become good friends, a note: "You are all in terrible danger. Meet me in the Garden. Tell no one." When Jack (and the Doctor, of course) arrive in the Garden of Ancestral Memory, they meet an obviously agitated J'onn, accompanied by his own magician buddy, Mister Miracle. J'onn warns Jack of the upcoming merge, and the accompanying erasure of Jack's world. As a veteran DC character, the Manhunter has been through enough reboots and retcons that he can see them coming, as well as remember some of the changes that take place. He warns Jack to not make this knowledge public and not to try and fight it openly; the Editors are a force to be feared and can quite easily just write either of them out if they become a threat. The reason J'onn contacted Jack in the first place was to try to help him create a "backup" of his memories, so that at least some remnant of his Earth would remain.
But of course, Jack can't just let his friends lose their memories, and maybe be erased entirely, so he brings them, alone or in small groups, to hear what J'onn has to say. This is when Apollo and the Midnighter find out that they won't be married, or even have met yet, which means that they'll probably also lose their daughter, Jenny. When everyone is up to speed, a lot of different plans of action are tossed around. Some want to fortify their Earth to stop the Editors from getting to them. But J'onn explains that the Editors are already there; in fact, the Editors are already everywhere. The Garden of Ancestral Memory is one of the few safe places, due to it's constantly-shifting nature, which interferes with the Editors' omnipresence, so that plan is shot down. Others *cough*Midnighter*cough* want to take the fight directly to the Editors, to kill them once and for all so that reboots and retcons need never happen again. But again, as J'onn tries to explain, the Editors are omnipotent and omnipresent. The instant that anyone outside the Garden even thought of going on the offensive, the Editors could simple remove that thought, depower the person who thought it, or even remove them entirely, if they so chose. On top of that, they have no weapons capable of harming the Editors, or means of reaching them even if they did. Trying to achieve a victory through force, the Martian Manhunter patiently repeats, is like an amoeba taking on a tank.
The solution they finally agree on is everybody recording a short snippet of their personalities, their memories, themselves, and hiding it in the Garden. These time capsules, as people have taken to calling them, will then slowly seep back into their corresponding consciousnesses, which will hopefully trigger the true, underlying memories, allowing them to overwrite the false memories that the Editors will have implanted. This has to be done slowly and carefully, so that the Editors won't know what's going on until too late.
But space, even dreamspace, is limited, and each person can only record about 30 seconds of their own memories. This leads to one of the few scenes I actually have hammered out, where each character decides what they have to keep, and what they can stand to lose. Each of them is asked the impossible question: if you could only remember thirty seconds of your entire life, which thirty seconds would you choose? Would you use it all on one particularly happy or important memory, or would you split it up, with five seconds here and ten seconds there?
Finally, the day comes for the Earth that Stormwatch, The Authority, Gen13, Wild C.A.T.S, and all the rest have known, to die. By this point, pretty much everyone has stopped pretending that they don't know what's going to happen. Even the Editors have stopped playing dumb, and have even told people the exact day and time the merger is going to take place. This leads to one of the *other* few scenes that I actually have hammered out, in which the Authority gathers in the living room (well, one of the living rooms, anyway) of the Carrier to say their goodbyes to each other. It's a very poignant scene, where each member says what will, in all probability, be a very final goodbye to the people they've trusted with their lives for more than a decade, reminiscing quietly about memories that will soon not have existed at all. This is especially bad for Apollo and the Midnighter, since they know that, in a scant few minutes, their marriage and their daughter, along with the entire life they've shared, will be erased. Eventually, the alarm sounds, everyone's eyelids get unbearably heavy, and they slump to the ground. The next morning, they wake up to their "normal" lives on Earth-One.
Skip forward to post-reboot. Apollo is just cruisin' along, defending the world from the Forces of Evil as a longtime member of Stormwatch, and maybe flirting with that cute new guy, the Midnighter, when he gets a chance. But as time goes by, he begins to realize that something is wrong. Very wrong. He remembers growing up in northern California with hippie parents and a bratty younger sister. He remembers his powers first manifesting, on a blazing-hot Midsummer's Day when he was 12. He remembers wondering whose bright idea it was to serve ice cream cake at his prom, which was held in 105-degree heat. He remembers not finishing his PhD in Astronomy because he had to go stop an alien invasion instead of taking a final exam, and he remembers being recruited by Stormwatch almost directly after. He can remember his entire life, and yet it seems that the dreams he's begun to have are so much more real.
The dreams start out as just snippets. A baby girl wrapping both of her tiny hands around one of his fingers. A blonde woman sitting at a kitchen table, smoking like a chimney and asking "You in?" A guy with what looks like about ten pounds of tech affixed to his bald head intoning gravely "And may God go with you" as he disappeared in a burst of golden light. And through it all, Midnighter, Midnighter, always Midnighter. He's in the baby dream, smiling down at the little girl in a way that might otherwise be terrifying but now is just adorable. He's in the blonde chick dream, glaring skeptically at her, arms crossed, sans costume (it turns out that he's a redhead under that mask). He's in the bald guy dream, standing next to Apollo and and flexing his hands in their new black leather gloves. And then there are others: Midnighter's coat at his jumpsuit thrown carelessly across the same chair in a darkened room, Midnighter asleep, buck-ass naked and looking probably as peaceful as he's ever going to get, Midnighter in a silly-looking silver version of his usual uniform, smiling a strange smile and saying, "I do."
But that's just the beginning. These dreams seem to spark a whole host of others, until he's dreaming an entire other life. In these dreams, which are increasing both in their frequency and their disturbing sense of realism, he's a member of a team called The Authority that stepped in to protect Earth after Stormwatch was destroyed. The leader of The Authority, somebody called Jenny Sparks, recruits him and his boyfriend, his hot new coworker Midnighter. They run around saving the world from a clone army, evil blue aliens, and stuff like that. He and the Midnighter get married, of all things, adopt some kid who's also called Jenny, and continue to save the world on a regular basis. Eventually, the extremely worrying idea occurs to Apollo that his dreams might be a gateway to the real world, and what he thinks is the "real" world is just some sort of elaborate hallucination, or maybe a dream itself.
He makes an oblique reference to these thoughts while talking with Dr. Angela Spica, who he trusts more than he should, considering he's never met the woman before in his life, and it turns out that he isn't alone. Angela (he barely restrains himself from calling her "Angie," which is way too familiar for a near-stranger), that Dutch weirdo called the Doctor, and a few others admit to having similar dreams, even dreams that feature each other. One of those "few others" is the Midnighter who refuses to tell the others what his dreams have been, save that they concern this Authority thing. However, later on, he pulls Apollo aside and they compare notes. It turns out that they, more so that the other dreamers, share dreams, although Apollo is fast becoming convinced that these are memories, not dreams.
From there, the dreamers find their way into the Garden of Ancestral Memories, where they can fully access their memories. Through this, they find out that there were more superheroes than just them in wherever these dreams are taking place. They eventually get ahold of people like Jackson King and Christine Trelane, although it was a bit awkward, sidling up to a stranger or near-stranger and demanding to know if they'd been having weird dreams lately. But after a lot of furtive hissing and weird looks, it becomes apparent that a lot of people have been having these dreams, to one degree or another, and these dreams have only been gathering momentum.
I'm going to leave it open-ended from here on out, mostly because I suck at writing endings. Basically, this is my rage-against-the-machine-esque, reactionary revenge/fix-it fic for the upcoming DC reboot, and i jotted it down to get that plot bunny off my toe.
In other, less crazy-sounding news, I'm moving out in (ohgod) just over two weeks. The Registration Block of Doom has been lifted, and I'm now in touch with my soon-to-be roommate, Amanda. Next up is to go out and buy stuff, I guess. Thanks to a (somewhat worryingly, actually) generous late birthday gift from my grandad, money shouldn't be a problem, but if I remember correctly, textbook prices seem to be set by Ebenezer Scrooge or similar, so ya never know.
Also, things are Getting Tense between my mom and my dad and stepmom. Of course, there's always a sort of simmering, low-level animosity between the two camps, but it seems to be flaring up recently. This is partially, I think, due to money. Cal is certainly not cheap, and none of us are exactly wealthy, so I know there has been at least one veiled, subtle accusation that payment responsibilities aren't being divided evenly. Also, they seem to have re-started the old one-upsmanship Being Supportive contest, which is weird. I thought they'd outgrown trying to prove themselves more Involved In My Life and Caring About My Happiness than the other team, but I guess not. I mean, I can see where it's coming from. My dad works about 370 days a year, and I know that he feels bad for not being around that much, and not having that much energy when he is. My stepmom knows that, while she and I get along okay, I'm not crazy about her. And my mom feels that my dad and stepmom are judging her for staying single, and thus presumably unhappy and unfulfilled, while the two of them are blissfully joined in Holy Wedlock, so she has to prove herself more competent on her own than the two of them together.
But the thing is, I get it. I really do. I harbor no resentment towards my dad for working a lot. He's doing something he loves, and he always makes sure to be there when I really need him. And no, I'm not wild about my stepmom, but my dad is, and that's what counts. He's crazy about her and she genuinely makes him happy, and the world could always use a little more happiness. And finally, my mom doesn't have to prove jack to me, or to anyone else. When you get right down to it, she did most of the day-to-day work of raising me, my brother, and my sister, and she did a damn good job. She's happy with her life, and has no reason to apologize to anyone. I wish that they all could just see this, instead of going the long way around.
Whew, that went on for waaaaay longer than I expected it to! I came on to note that I'm not all that jazzed for the DC reboot, and now here I am, four hours later! For the next couple of weeks, I probably won't be on LJ as much as I dive back into Life, but I'll do what I can!
The third and final reason I'm so worried about this reboot is the very idea of the "reboot." I've gotten used to quite a few comic concepts that, as a prose fiction reader, I wasn't originally comfortable with. I've gotten used to the storytelling format of issues and story arcs. I've gotten used to the idea that there isn't just one creatively omnipotent Writer who can lay down the word of God and that's the end of it. Stuff like this, I can handle. But it's just such a completely alien concept that a group of writers can collectively unmake an entire universe and reshape it any damn way they please. I'm having some trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that entire lives are being erased, families torn apart, the entire damn universe is being retooled, and this is called a good thing. When this happened on Doctor Who, it was called the Crack in Time and they spent the entire season trying to get rid of it and/or run the hell away from it. I guess that it's just the idea that nothing up until now necessarily matters that gets me. To quote Midnighter in what is fast becoming one of the scariest and most depressing parodies of all time, I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice Authority!, "What's the point of specifics if next month they will never have existed?"
Speaking of Midnighter, my invisible possibly-theoretical Internet audience might be asking, "You just said you're a Marvel fangirl! What does the DC reboot have to do with you?" The answer, dear invisible possibly-theoretical Internet audience, is that my first real superhero love(s), The Authority, will be folded into the DC multiverse, and that has me nervous as hell. When I first heard that the WildStorm 'verse was going to be integrated into the DC multiverse, I was actually pretty excited. In both the DC and Marvel 'verses, they're discovering new dimensions and alternate realities all the time, so the storytelling structure is already in place. A number of WildStorm characters, the aforementioned Midnighter and his husband Apollo in particular, are expies of popular DC characters, so there's some true comedic potential in Batman meeting the Midnighter and going, "Wait, you're married to who?"
But no, the DC folks apparently intend to completely erase the WildStorm 'verse and just pretend that they've always been hanging out with Wonder Woman and Superman. This goes back to that problem I mentioned earlier, where we're just asked to go along with this great collective lie that things have always been this way. When the Crack in Time ate Rory on Doctor Who, the audience was never asked to just forget that he ever existed. We were supposed to be horrified and heartbroken that Amy has not only lost her fiancé and best friend, but that she doesn't remember losing him in the first place. But now, instead of the audience, we're asked to be Amy, to completely put the entire histories of our favorite characters out of our heads. And yes, there are some truly horrendous stories that I wouldn't mind being written out, but there were some good times too, some great, amazing, fantastic times that made me fall in love with these guys, and they're getting tossed out along with everything else.
Mainly, I'm worried because Word of God is that, not only will Apollo and the Midnighter not be a couple in the reboot, they won't even have met! This means that every moment I've seen these two in, their entire lives together, will be gone. No more missing memories. No more training as Bendix's super-soldiers. No more five years on the lam. No more evil blue alien armadas from alternate Earths. No more "'You'll die.' 'I wouldn't dare."" No more fight to free baby Jenny Quantum (does the reboot mean that Jenny Sparks will never have existed?!). No more solar wedding. No more anything. And that, to me, is scary as hell.
A plot bunny was spawned from this train of thought, and is currently gnawing on my toe, trying to get me to write its fic. In it, the WildStorm/DC merging starts out as more of a crossover. The two verses become aware of each other (not important how. The Doctor meets Doctor Strange on an astral wandering? Angie and Reed Richards accidentally tear simultaneous holes in the time-space continuum through SCIENCE? idk) and send ambassadors to feel each other out. At first, things go fairly harmoniously. Of course, there are a few snags (the aforementioned Midnighter-Batman thing should definitely be one of them), but overall, people get along really well. Soon, the two verses are connected on a permanent basis. Friendships form as they get comfortable with each other. It looks like, for once, a major multidimensional event has occurred without significant strife or bloodshed.
But then, the Martian Manhunter (who, apparently, is going to be a member of Stormwatch along with A&M once the reboot goes down), slips Jack, with whom he has become good friends, a note: "You are all in terrible danger. Meet me in the Garden. Tell no one." When Jack (and the Doctor, of course) arrive in the Garden of Ancestral Memory, they meet an obviously agitated J'onn, accompanied by his own magician buddy, Mister Miracle. J'onn warns Jack of the upcoming merge, and the accompanying erasure of Jack's world. As a veteran DC character, the Manhunter has been through enough reboots and retcons that he can see them coming, as well as remember some of the changes that take place. He warns Jack to not make this knowledge public and not to try and fight it openly; the Editors are a force to be feared and can quite easily just write either of them out if they become a threat. The reason J'onn contacted Jack in the first place was to try to help him create a "backup" of his memories, so that at least some remnant of his Earth would remain.
But of course, Jack can't just let his friends lose their memories, and maybe be erased entirely, so he brings them, alone or in small groups, to hear what J'onn has to say. This is when Apollo and the Midnighter find out that they won't be married, or even have met yet, which means that they'll probably also lose their daughter, Jenny. When everyone is up to speed, a lot of different plans of action are tossed around. Some want to fortify their Earth to stop the Editors from getting to them. But J'onn explains that the Editors are already there; in fact, the Editors are already everywhere. The Garden of Ancestral Memory is one of the few safe places, due to it's constantly-shifting nature, which interferes with the Editors' omnipresence, so that plan is shot down. Others *cough*Midnighter*cough* want to take the fight directly to the Editors, to kill them once and for all so that reboots and retcons need never happen again. But again, as J'onn tries to explain, the Editors are omnipotent and omnipresent. The instant that anyone outside the Garden even thought of going on the offensive, the Editors could simple remove that thought, depower the person who thought it, or even remove them entirely, if they so chose. On top of that, they have no weapons capable of harming the Editors, or means of reaching them even if they did. Trying to achieve a victory through force, the Martian Manhunter patiently repeats, is like an amoeba taking on a tank.
The solution they finally agree on is everybody recording a short snippet of their personalities, their memories, themselves, and hiding it in the Garden. These time capsules, as people have taken to calling them, will then slowly seep back into their corresponding consciousnesses, which will hopefully trigger the true, underlying memories, allowing them to overwrite the false memories that the Editors will have implanted. This has to be done slowly and carefully, so that the Editors won't know what's going on until too late.
But space, even dreamspace, is limited, and each person can only record about 30 seconds of their own memories. This leads to one of the few scenes I actually have hammered out, where each character decides what they have to keep, and what they can stand to lose. Each of them is asked the impossible question: if you could only remember thirty seconds of your entire life, which thirty seconds would you choose? Would you use it all on one particularly happy or important memory, or would you split it up, with five seconds here and ten seconds there?
Finally, the day comes for the Earth that Stormwatch, The Authority, Gen13, Wild C.A.T.S, and all the rest have known, to die. By this point, pretty much everyone has stopped pretending that they don't know what's going to happen. Even the Editors have stopped playing dumb, and have even told people the exact day and time the merger is going to take place. This leads to one of the *other* few scenes that I actually have hammered out, in which the Authority gathers in the living room (well, one of the living rooms, anyway) of the Carrier to say their goodbyes to each other. It's a very poignant scene, where each member says what will, in all probability, be a very final goodbye to the people they've trusted with their lives for more than a decade, reminiscing quietly about memories that will soon not have existed at all. This is especially bad for Apollo and the Midnighter, since they know that, in a scant few minutes, their marriage and their daughter, along with the entire life they've shared, will be erased. Eventually, the alarm sounds, everyone's eyelids get unbearably heavy, and they slump to the ground. The next morning, they wake up to their "normal" lives on Earth-One.
Skip forward to post-reboot. Apollo is just cruisin' along, defending the world from the Forces of Evil as a longtime member of Stormwatch, and maybe flirting with that cute new guy, the Midnighter, when he gets a chance. But as time goes by, he begins to realize that something is wrong. Very wrong. He remembers growing up in northern California with hippie parents and a bratty younger sister. He remembers his powers first manifesting, on a blazing-hot Midsummer's Day when he was 12. He remembers wondering whose bright idea it was to serve ice cream cake at his prom, which was held in 105-degree heat. He remembers not finishing his PhD in Astronomy because he had to go stop an alien invasion instead of taking a final exam, and he remembers being recruited by Stormwatch almost directly after. He can remember his entire life, and yet it seems that the dreams he's begun to have are so much more real.
The dreams start out as just snippets. A baby girl wrapping both of her tiny hands around one of his fingers. A blonde woman sitting at a kitchen table, smoking like a chimney and asking "You in?" A guy with what looks like about ten pounds of tech affixed to his bald head intoning gravely "And may God go with you" as he disappeared in a burst of golden light. And through it all, Midnighter, Midnighter, always Midnighter. He's in the baby dream, smiling down at the little girl in a way that might otherwise be terrifying but now is just adorable. He's in the blonde chick dream, glaring skeptically at her, arms crossed, sans costume (it turns out that he's a redhead under that mask). He's in the bald guy dream, standing next to Apollo and and flexing his hands in their new black leather gloves. And then there are others: Midnighter's coat at his jumpsuit thrown carelessly across the same chair in a darkened room, Midnighter asleep, buck-ass naked and looking probably as peaceful as he's ever going to get, Midnighter in a silly-looking silver version of his usual uniform, smiling a strange smile and saying, "I do."
But that's just the beginning. These dreams seem to spark a whole host of others, until he's dreaming an entire other life. In these dreams, which are increasing both in their frequency and their disturbing sense of realism, he's a member of a team called The Authority that stepped in to protect Earth after Stormwatch was destroyed. The leader of The Authority, somebody called Jenny Sparks, recruits him and his boyfriend, his hot new coworker Midnighter. They run around saving the world from a clone army, evil blue aliens, and stuff like that. He and the Midnighter get married, of all things, adopt some kid who's also called Jenny, and continue to save the world on a regular basis. Eventually, the extremely worrying idea occurs to Apollo that his dreams might be a gateway to the real world, and what he thinks is the "real" world is just some sort of elaborate hallucination, or maybe a dream itself.
He makes an oblique reference to these thoughts while talking with Dr. Angela Spica, who he trusts more than he should, considering he's never met the woman before in his life, and it turns out that he isn't alone. Angela (he barely restrains himself from calling her "Angie," which is way too familiar for a near-stranger), that Dutch weirdo called the Doctor, and a few others admit to having similar dreams, even dreams that feature each other. One of those "few others" is the Midnighter who refuses to tell the others what his dreams have been, save that they concern this Authority thing. However, later on, he pulls Apollo aside and they compare notes. It turns out that they, more so that the other dreamers, share dreams, although Apollo is fast becoming convinced that these are memories, not dreams.
From there, the dreamers find their way into the Garden of Ancestral Memories, where they can fully access their memories. Through this, they find out that there were more superheroes than just them in wherever these dreams are taking place. They eventually get ahold of people like Jackson King and Christine Trelane, although it was a bit awkward, sidling up to a stranger or near-stranger and demanding to know if they'd been having weird dreams lately. But after a lot of furtive hissing and weird looks, it becomes apparent that a lot of people have been having these dreams, to one degree or another, and these dreams have only been gathering momentum.
I'm going to leave it open-ended from here on out, mostly because I suck at writing endings. Basically, this is my rage-against-the-machine-esque, reactionary revenge/fix-it fic for the upcoming DC reboot, and i jotted it down to get that plot bunny off my toe.
In other, less crazy-sounding news, I'm moving out in (ohgod) just over two weeks. The Registration Block of Doom has been lifted, and I'm now in touch with my soon-to-be roommate, Amanda. Next up is to go out and buy stuff, I guess. Thanks to a (somewhat worryingly, actually) generous late birthday gift from my grandad, money shouldn't be a problem, but if I remember correctly, textbook prices seem to be set by Ebenezer Scrooge or similar, so ya never know.
Also, things are Getting Tense between my mom and my dad and stepmom. Of course, there's always a sort of simmering, low-level animosity between the two camps, but it seems to be flaring up recently. This is partially, I think, due to money. Cal is certainly not cheap, and none of us are exactly wealthy, so I know there has been at least one veiled, subtle accusation that payment responsibilities aren't being divided evenly. Also, they seem to have re-started the old one-upsmanship Being Supportive contest, which is weird. I thought they'd outgrown trying to prove themselves more Involved In My Life and Caring About My Happiness than the other team, but I guess not. I mean, I can see where it's coming from. My dad works about 370 days a year, and I know that he feels bad for not being around that much, and not having that much energy when he is. My stepmom knows that, while she and I get along okay, I'm not crazy about her. And my mom feels that my dad and stepmom are judging her for staying single, and thus presumably unhappy and unfulfilled, while the two of them are blissfully joined in Holy Wedlock, so she has to prove herself more competent on her own than the two of them together.
But the thing is, I get it. I really do. I harbor no resentment towards my dad for working a lot. He's doing something he loves, and he always makes sure to be there when I really need him. And no, I'm not wild about my stepmom, but my dad is, and that's what counts. He's crazy about her and she genuinely makes him happy, and the world could always use a little more happiness. And finally, my mom doesn't have to prove jack to me, or to anyone else. When you get right down to it, she did most of the day-to-day work of raising me, my brother, and my sister, and she did a damn good job. She's happy with her life, and has no reason to apologize to anyone. I wish that they all could just see this, instead of going the long way around.
Whew, that went on for waaaaay longer than I expected it to! I came on to note that I'm not all that jazzed for the DC reboot, and now here I am, four hours later! For the next couple of weeks, I probably won't be on LJ as much as I dive back into Life, but I'll do what I can!
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Date: 2011-08-10 03:58 pm (UTC)I was a Marvel and DC fan a long time ago, and the interest is still there, albeit somewhat buried under my other concerns and hobbies. Appollo and Midnighter are strangers to me, apart from what I've read on your LJ, but they're two hot guys in a gay relationship, so that makes me interested in them. However, I hear you about the constantly shifting basis of the DC universe. That would drive me crazy, too.
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Date: 2011-08-10 06:29 pm (UTC)One of the (many) reasons I love Apollo and the Midnighter so much is that they're two of the very, very few gay characters in mainstream superhero comics. These days, its more or less unacceptable to have an all-white or all-male superhero team, but I can count the number of teams with openly gay members on one hand, and still have fingers left over. And the numbers go waaaay down if I look for gay couples. I find this very interesting, because these days, comics seem very interested in being diverse, and yet A&M are two of the dozen or so gay or lesbian comic book characters I can think of AT ALL (even more interestingly, the majority of those gay/lesbian characters, aside from A&M, are teenagers or young adults).
One of the big problems I have with the portrayal of gay/lesbian characters in superhero comics is a phenomenon called "bury your gays" where, when gay characters do show up, they either die off, fail to form stable relationships, or just generally are miserable, all out of proportion to their heterosexual counterparts. So out of the dozen or so GLBT superheroes I mentioned above (keep in mind, this is out of all of DC and Marvel), there are only about three stable, happy relationships, one of which takes place mostly offscreen. What mostly happens is that DC or Marvel decides that they need a gay or lesbian superhero in order to stay PC, so they have an existing character come out as gay/lesbian/bi, and then pretty much forget about it. They never have any same-sex relationships or anything, because apparently just stating that one is gay is enough. Show, not tell, people! One of the things that makes Apollo and the Midnighter special is that they're actually allowed to do things like kiss, worry about each other, and argue like the old married couple they are.
Wow, that kind of turned into a rant really fast. XD 'pologies for my excessive wordiness!