#Lee! Anti-cosmo

[mediauser325]

Anti-Cosmo tk HC's!

Idgaf if someone doesn't like this. After seeing @tickletails post about Anti-Cosmo, I had SO much inspiration! I luv the well dressed genius guy <3

Ler: 60% This guy is ruthless. He will use his magic to hold you still while he wrecks the life out of you. He won't use teases or baby talks though, nono, he'll do something much worse, instead, he'll use complex words to monologue to you while you're laughing and giggling your head off. Anti-Cosmo tickles baby Foop sometimes either to tire him out for a nap, or just to follow his job as a dad “My my! Your predicament is quite amusing! Such a weakness is unbefitting of someone such as yourself”

Lee: 40% Quite the ticklish not so gentleman. Worst spots are his wings and sides. He’ll threaten, squirm, kick, but won’t try to get away. His melt spot is the tiny crown, just a few scratches and he’ll burst into giggles. Expect him to get you back after tho. I feel like Anti-Wanda has goosed his sides once or twice for fun. “Stohop right nohow! Yohou wihill rue the dahay you met me!”

[nevermorgue]

Nevermore the Musical Concepts PART 3

I'm picturing how some of the character's solos/more personalized songs would sound. Firstly, I imagine the majority of the musical to be in minor keys. Major keys sound a bit too happy/not as catchy. Everything being in a minor key gives it a more eerie vibe, reminding us that everyone is dead. Maybe at one point one song is in a major key to throw off the overall sound. Maybe Merry and Mourn prefer major chords, or Montresor switches between the two to emphasize how he is "not like the rest of them". Imagine Eulalie's using the sounds of traditional Japanese instruments such as the shamisen, the koto, and the shakuhachi to name a few. The notes blend together, nice and soft like lullabies with eerie vocal scoops and enka sounds. Her melody occasionally is a nod to the Itsuki lullaby, the one she sang to the children before dying. Some of the notes repeat themselves throughout her vocals depending on the song/lyric choice. Berenice has a jazzy, faster paced influence. Her voice is rough, scooping and using vibrato as much as she can. I'm sure her vocal growls are fantastic too. I think her and Eulalie singing as a pair during the Ring the Bell song could be a really nice blend between a fast paced, jazzy percussion and softer tones of Japanese instruments. And do not even get me started on Will. He matches vocal style with whoever he is singing with. Most of his parts have a country sort of twang to them as a nod to Montresor, but he doesn't get anything unique on his own. The other characters' instrumental styles blend together and he just sings on top of it, contributing nothing special to the song. If he did get a song on his own (A lament of some sort, questioning his friendship with Montresor) I would assume it would start more country rock sort of vibe in reference to Monty, but slowly goes into something a bit more unique; classic rock. Classic rock with light guitars and a beat that feels much more upbeat, rather than the creepy/catchy vibe that Nevermore songs give. Not only is he "breaking away" from his previous manipulation, but in a way he's also stepping up as he too is now performing in a major key, which the other proper antagonists do. Annabel Lee and Prospero match each other a lot. Classical strings and a LOT of harpsichord usage. For Annabel Lee I specifically think of "ANTI THE HOLIC" by cosMo@Bousou-p in terms of vibes. Just imagine something fast paced and classical, matching her energy. Prospero I picture in a similar light, slower but still with the same elements of classical instruments pushing his voice forward and making them come across as ethereal; in charge. "Gothic and Loneliness" by Narushima Takashi has a fantastic instrumental that I envision a lot of the songs to have a similar vibe to. Fast paced but still classical and orchestral. The hints of electric sounds being nods to more modern characters. It all depends on who is singing and what the song is. Ada has a similar thing to Will where her instrumentals try to copy Annabel's but always seem to be missing something whether it be another instrument or a note goes up instead of down. Almost there, but not quite right. Morella having a Celtic influence and plenty of harp and violin. Imagine the other voices drowning her out, leaving her trapped in between a mess of voices and unable to choose what melody to sing along to, so she shakily creates her own. And lastly to end off for now, Duke is the only baritone in the misfits and tends to be the support, the foundation when they are all together. Lenore balances out in Alto, keeping the higher voices grounded with mainly harmonies and the occasional melody line. Normally, the main character sings melody always, but I think when all of the misfits sing together her going to harmonize makes more sense. She is the backbone; the one keeping them all together. Pluto is a tenor, Berenice is a mezzo, and Eulalie is a soprano. Morella is also a soprano, and she and Eula tend to harmonize a bit in group songs.

[justalilgiddybibs]

We don't have a lot of Lee!Anti Cosmo,he has Lee leaning Switch vibes,Anti Wanda needs to tickle him and for him Not be so serious all the time~🤭

Ouuhhhh I don't actually know a lot about Cosmo and Wanda's Anti-Fairies. Sorry if this was a fic rq!

[theuniverseawakens347]

ZUIR FUCKRD PRESTON WILLINGLY HE WITH THE WEIRD FUCKING UNDER AGE.. PREDATOR SHIT TO GET LIFE ADVANCES THAT DIDNT GET HIM FAR .. the night he fucked ZUri .. 17 .. white cherry dress ( drinking skit on YouTube ) REASON FOR ASS SHOTS OR PAYMENT FOR IT .. KEVIN SOACEY WATCHED LIKE INDIA LOVE TO GET HER BBL.. “wet” PHOTOSHOOT .. Preston a ANTI MASON DARKSKIN SEX SLAVE .. ZURI INDIALOVE DANI LEIGH COI ALL COLORIST FUCK DARK MEN LIKE A WHITE WOMAN W JUNGLE FEVER OR A ASIAN … DITA PHAWN ON YOUTUBE FILIPINO ASIAN CUPPLE W TWO KIDS.. AT KRISTY SCOTT PREFER DARKSKIN WOMEN.. fuck the “darker the berry” THE “FATTER THE PAYOUT” PYRAMID SCHEME .. based on personality test results DETERMINES WHEN N HOW YOU “claim your prize” …

YOU BASTARDS ARE FUCKING SICK MY NIGGA.. KILLING YOH.. #FEDERALSTYLE.. at Malcom Askari can attest … STOP TELLING ME YOU GON GET ME BITCHES. IM KICKIJG YOU IN THE BALLS LIKE I DID FUCK ASS WAYNE FROM 54th WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER RYAN RIZZO?? THEN GOT IT TATTED LIKE A “woe is me my brother my real nigga” AT KIISHANE KNOWS I AM ME AT BRANDI OFF WESTERN N 62* ..APARTMENTS LIVED W YA .. TOLD AT VIDAL SASSON INTERVIEW TO PRETEND SHE AINT KNOW ME OR GONTO 54th w me .. AS A SET UP FOR COSMO SCHOOL $$$ to SACRIFICE RYAN N ARIEL FROM TCS JOINED AND FUCKED PRESTON TAYLOR AND LEE BE WRITING IAN MCDOWELL NAME ON PAPER WHEN REALLY ITS FUCKTARD SPECIAL MENTAL CASE PRESTON TAYLOR .. another one who gon lie and say “I don’t wana live this lif3” LIKE HE DID IN VEGAS ON SOME NARCISSISTIC SHIT THROWING A DUFFLE BAG AT ME KNOWING IM THE TRAL ONE AND HED GET IN TROUBLE .. us being sugar babes to Doug n Sandra was him “getting advancements” like a new car n the home Lee n Sandra bought him .. HE A VICTIM TURNED WILLINGLY LIKE CHRIST WHITE N AJA MILES ADDICTED TO THE FUCK SHIT / DONT BELIVE IN CHRIST. …Preston Taylor brother Philip Taylor sugar Kane lane Texas .. them chains.. WHITE LADY WHO WAS SOOO OBSESSED WITH ME Kristen? Husband owned* Camarillo HOTELS .. u HAPPY TO BREAK UP “married” WHITE WOMEN N FUCK LIL COLORED GIRLS .. NARCISCO .. RETETÈ SYCOPHANTIC!

[glxtch-bxtch]

So I got bored and decided to make a playlist of songs that have vibes the egos give off

(Thank you to the gc, they helped a lot💚)

I'll update this whenever I find more songs for the egos and add new egos to it!

Dark:

Emperor's New Clothes - Panic! At The Disco

Choke - I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THE FOUND ME

House of Memories - Panic! At The Disco

Miss Jackson - Panic! At The Disco

Yancy:

I Don't Wanna Be Free - Markiplier & The Gregory Brothers

Demons - Imagine Dragons

D Is For Dangerous - Arctic Monkeys

My Demons - Starset

Partners In Crime - Set It Off

Wilford:

Bubblegum Bitch - Marina and the Diamonds

Girls In Bikinis - Poppy

Material Girl - Madonna

Mercenary - Panic! At The Disco

I Don't Care - Fall Out Boy

American's Suitehearts - Fall Out Boy

Unus Annus:

Hey Brother - Avicii

Dead! - My Chemical Romance

Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance

(yes, I had the audacity to add those last two songs)

Damien:

Nicotine - Panic! At The Disco

Actor:

Take Me To Church - Hozier

Kill The Lights - Set It Off

Anti:

Kismet - XIX

Chase Brody:

Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day

Mockingbird - Eminem

Illinois Jones

Come Along - Cosmo Sheldrake

East of Eden - Zella Day

Whatever It Takes - Imagine Dragons

Stolen Dance - Milky Chance

Soldier, Poet, King - The Oh Hellos

Cast of WKM:

Love Me Dead - Ludo

Playing With the Big Boys (feat. Caleb Hyles & Lee Albrecht) - Johnathan Young

Ghosts - Jacob Tillberg

Victorious - Panic! At The Disco

Pit of Vipers - Simon Curtis

We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monáe) - Fun.

I Can't Decide - Scissor Sisters

Judas - Lady Gaga

[multiverseforger]

In a January 2011 interview with Newsarama, Flash Thompson was revealed "by accident" as the new host of Venom.[19] Marvel confirmed Flash was to have his own comic using a military style version of Venom. Despite previously seeming to come to terms with the loss of his legs, Flash jumps at the dangerous offer of being bonded to the Venom symbiote, as the alien will be able to replace his legs with its own bio-mass, allowing him to walk again. He was written as a hero working for the military, and encountered many heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe.[20] He made his premiere as Agent Venom in The Amazing Spider-Man #654 (Feb. 2011), and continues in his own Agent Venom ongoing series following the special The Amazing Spider-Man #654.1.

He cannot stay bonded to the Venom symbiote for more than 48 hours at a time, or the symbiote may gain complete control over him. The consequences of this are first seen when the suit causes Flash to go berserk and brutally slaughter a group of enemy operatives during his second mission, and again during a brawl with the Jack O'Lantern, ending with the suit putting a grenade in Jack O'Lantern's mouth.[21] While on a mission in the Savage Land, Flash finds himself being hunted by Kraven the Hunter who mistakes him for Spider-Man.[22]

During the 2011 "Spider-Island" storyline, Agent Venom is sent in to capture a spider-like beast that is fighting Firestar and Gravity. Agent Venom manages to capture the Spider King who he later discovers is Steve Rogers enslaved. Venom disguises himself as the Spider King in order to track the infestation to its source.[23] The Queen and Jackal send him to kill Anti-Venom because he is curing people who have gained spider-powers, but his superiors order him to take him to Mr. Fantastic to help develop a cure. Flash and the Venom-symbiote fight each other because Flash wants to bring Anti-Venom to Mr. Fantastic and the symbiote wants to kill Anti-Venom for previously rejecting it. This leads to Venom and Anti-Venom fighting. Venom wins the fight and delivers Anti-Venom to Mr. Fantastic.[24] Venom teams up with Red Hulk, X-23, Ghost Rider, and Johnny Blaze to fight Blackheart.[25]

He joins the Secret Avengers as Agent Venom.[26] As an Avenger, Flash apprehends the Human Fly,[27] but the Human Fly escapes via a prisoner transport to the Raft when the new Hobgoblin attacks the transport trying to kill the Human Fly for stealing money from the Kingpin.[28] Flash tries to assassinate the third Crime Master for threatening his family, but Eddie Brock attacks him as he is about to fire. This causes the Crime Master to have his new Savage Six attack Flash and Betty Brant.[29] While trying to protect Betty from Jack O'Lantern he reveals his identity to her.[30] Thunderbolt Ross recruits Venom to be part of his Thunderbolts team.[31]

Flash relocates to Philadelphia after fighting the U-Foes there.[32] While trying to capture a serial killer infected with some of the alien technology the U-Foes were trying to sell, so Beast could try to cure the man, he is attacked by Toxin.[33] While in Philadelphia, he adoptes a protege in his teenage neighbor Andrea "Andi" Benton, who upon bonding to a duplicate of the symbiote becomes the antiheroine Mania.

Flash returns to New York when Betty Brant contacts him with information that the Crime Master has resurfaced. Flash infiltrates and attacks Crime Master and his men until the Superior Spider-Man (Otto Octavius' mind in Spider-Man's body) and his Spiderlings intervene. Crime Master then reveals himself to be a small-time hood who had purchased the name and mask from Hobgoblin and turns himself in. Superior Spider-Man then turns his attention to Agent Venom with the intent on destroying him.[34] Flash escapes in a puff of smoke and hides in a hospital before going to Peter's apartment. Seizing opportunity, "Peter Parker" invites Flash to his company to give Flash prosthetic legs. After doing so, Superior Spider-Man detains the symbiote in a cage from which it soon breaks free and bonds to Superior Spider-Man, becoming the Superior Venom.[35] The symbiote tries to flee back to Flash, but Superior Spider-Man keeps it for himself, even going as far as to injure Cardiac when Cardiac tries to separate them.[36] Iron Man arrives to Parker Industries to assist both Cardiac and Flash in order to take him to the battle-zone and reunite him with the symbiote. The Avengers are starting to fall against the power of Superior Venom who boasts about his superiority until Iron Man arrives to distract him allowing Flash (wearing Iron Man's armor) attack from behind and attempt to retake the symbiote. With the unexpected assistance from Spider-Man's conscience, the Venom symbiote finally leaves Superior Spider-Man's body and reunites with Flash, bonding together again. The Avengers are still in disbelief about Superior Spider-Man's argument until they ask Flash to check his mind-link with the symbiote to see anything wrong about Superior Spider-Man's motives. Flash replies that he sees "two different radio stations playing in the same frequency".[37]

Following the conclusion of The Superior Spider-Man and the return of Peter Parker as Spider-Man, he learns that his friend Flash is Venom and became angry at the Avengers that they did not tell him. The Avengers confess that because Flash was a good soldier and the secret identities in the Avengers' rules goes both ways.[38]

Seeking to maintain a connection with the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Avengers placed Venom on said team as their new envoy.[39] At a point the Symbiote began to act strangely considering anyone as an enemy as something was tapping into its mind signalling it. Flash became extremely worried and, since he was left behind when the other Guardians were captured, he began to try to find a way back to Earth which the Symbiote encouraged. However, in its fear it killed people if they refused. Eventually Gamora found them but they attacked her thinking her as an enemy. Star-Lord manages to subdue the Symbiote but Flash goes into a coma.[40] The Symbiote breaks out on the ship and takes the ship to its planet of origin.[41] The planet of Symbiotes explains to the Guardians their origins of the Klyntar. However, Flash and the Venom Symbiote have created the perfect savior the Symbiotes want. This heals the Symbiote and allows Flash to tap into the full potential of the Symbiote.[42]



Flash Thompson's debut as Agent Anti-Venom on Amazing Spider-Man: Venom Inc. Alpha#1 (Oct. 2017). Art by Ryan Stegman.

Venom then becomes the new intergalactic ambassador of Earth and an Agent of the Cosmos.[43]

During the 2016 "Civil War II" storyline, Flash is called back to Earth along with the other Guardians, during which he comes into conflict with Spider-Man, and repeatedly subdues him for not being the Spider-Man he knows. Prompting Miles to electrocute him with the Venom Blast, which blasted him into the open.[44] Andrea, who is host to the Mania symbiote, becomes more ruthless in her actions to the point of killing everyone she encountered. Venom manages to separate the symbiote from Mania, and absorb it into the Venom symbiote, though Andrea is corrupted by a demonic sigil called the Hell-Mark. Flash resolves to remain on Earth to care for Andi until he can find a way to remove the Hell-Mark permanently.[volume & issue needed]

Venom is later shown to have been somehow separated from Flash and it finds a new host in Lee Price.[45] It is eventually revealed that Flash was separated from Venom during a fight with an FBI agent outfitted with high-tech battle suit. The agent used a special weapon that agitated the Symbiote and sent it into a crazed state, which led to it fleeing into the city, where it eventually encountered Price, then reunites with Eddie Brock.[46][47]

Agent Anti-Venom and deathEdit

During the "Venom Inc." arc, Flash talks to Mania through her crimefighting, before she is taken down by Lee Price and a gang of thugs. Price is making good on his promise to re-take the Venom symbiote as he forcibly separates Mania from her symbiote and takes it himself. Meanwhile, Brock struggles to cope with the symbiote which has become increasingly violent and difficult to control. He turns to Alchemax to make a serum to help him out, but the medicine being created there is still experimental and may have some side effects. As Flash attempts to find Brock and get the symbiote back, Spider-Man is attempting to get rid of the symbiote once and for all, bringing the three together in a fantastic showdown as both Brock and Flash attempt to convince the symbiote to bond to them. As they struggle, Spider-Man chooses to douse them both with a vat of the Anti-Venom Serum. Instead of destroying the symbiotes, a new Anti-Venom arises: Flash Thompson. After Flash, Mania, Spider-Man, Black Cat, and Venom defeat Price, Flash entrusts the Venom symbiote to Eddie and goes back to heroics as Agent Anti-Venom.[48]

In the Go Down Swinging storyline, Norman Osborn returns with the Carnage symbiote bonded to him, making him the Red Goblin. He attacks New York City, and Silk, Clash, Spider-Man, Human Torch and Agent Anti-Venom tried to stop him.[49] Flash uses his Anti-Venom to heal any of Peter's friends and family that were infected by the Carnage symbiote, and discovers Spider-Man's secret identity in the process. Norman critically wounds Flash, who can no longer heal due to using the Anti-Venom to save the others. Peter offers to use the Venom symbiote to heal him, but Flash refuses, worrying that it would die with him and knows Peter needs an edge over Norman's new powers. He dies in Peter's arms and is honored by Peter and his friends at his funeral.[50]

Maker later obtains a piece of the symbiote taken from Flash's time as Agent Venom, which contains a copy of his consciousness. The sample is dubbed as a codex by the Maker. The brain dead symbiote absorbs the sample during Venom's escape from Project Oversight, and with Eddie Brock's permission the copy takes control and transforms into Agent Venom. Flash's consciousness burns out shortly after.[51]

King in BlackEdit

It was later revealed however, that Flash still existed within the Symbiote hive-mind. He joined Rex Strickland's army of former symbiote hosts when the dark symbiote god Knull started invading Earth, recovering his Anti-Venom symbiote replica. When Eddie Brock died and joined Rex's army, Flash was there to greet him.[52] When Thor and Eddie's son Dylan began freeing hosts from their symbiotes and fighting Knull, a red gash appeared - formed from the dissolved symbiotes of the recently freed hosts - and Flash followed Eddie and Rex through it into the core of the Hive-Mind, the place where they were before having been a "purgatory" for codices. The three of them noticed that the symbiotes freed from Knull's control were being imprisoned and formulated a plan to bond to them the way Flash once had the Venom symbiote. Despite Eddie's protests, Flash volunteered to free the imprisoned symbiotes and "download" himself into one of them, acknowledging this was his mission from the beginning and that Eddie was a hero too. Their plan worked, and Flash was incarnated in the world of the living as a symbiote dragon resembling his Anti-Venom symbiote.[53] Informed by Eddie of what had happened when Cletus Kasady's corpse had bonded to a symbiote-dragon, Flash flew to the cemetery where his body had been buried and reanimated himself, bursting from his grave in a recreation of his human form

[wumblr]

I spent hours working on this. I'm looking at it as more of a journal entry describing where I'm at with these concepts. It could be riddled with misconceptions, I guess. I would caution you against assuming it's profound, and encourage you to figure it out for yourself.

There is an urge among a certain subset of physicists to derive a fundamental theory from dimensionless constants. This means you would theoretically be able to calculate any salient value by deriving it from other fundamental constants, without requiring any frame of reference, or standard ruler... An even more specific subset of physicists believe that these fundamental dimensionless constants should be "natural" and not "fine tuned," meaning when you derive them from each other, you could multiply or divide something by quantities like 2 or 5 or 10 without too much trouble, but as soon as you find yourself working with values such as 1/137th, you lose "naturalness." Unfortunately, experimental observations of electromagnetic interactions are the origin of the value 1/137.

This does not necessarily mean dimensionless constants are a fool's journey, but I think naturalness might be. I don't see a reasonable expectation at its base -- why should absolutely nothing be fine tuned in a 14 billion year old cosmos? Do you think the laws of physics are timeless and unchanging, or did they evolve over the history of the universe out of the available materials? I could believe that timeless laws require naturalness, but I can't believe in unchanging laws. Experiment shows fine tuning -- perhaps there is a deeper mechanism at play that will explain this in naturalistic terms, but until that mechanism is found, we have to accept the results of experiment at face values.

For contrast, I do see a reasonable expectation for dimensionless constants. It should be possible to define the universe using only pieces of it, without invoking anything exterior to it, including clocks and rulers, i.e. absolute measurements. (This is a multiverse-agnostic stance -- it doesn't matter whether anything outside our universe exists, assuming "outside our universe" means it cannot bear any causal relation to us. If there is a multiverse where gravity pervades the bulk, and exerts influence on our universe due to mass not located in our universe, that would be a different story, because there would be a theoretically detectable causal relation.)

This pursuit is relationalist, and background-independent -- all things ought to be able to be defined in relation to each other and nothing else, without having to invoke a background of aether, or absolute space, or a timeless block universe, or a notion of time that keeps ticking when nothing is happening. Somewhere near the logical conclusions of relationalism, there is a white rabbit. Let's find him.

The thing about dimensionless constants is that you can't have them without scale invariance. If everything is interior to the theory, and you invoke no external absolute ruler unaffected by the circumstances of the experiment -- which seems to me a sensible approach until we can physically experimentally place a ruler outside the universe -- then the fundamental constants are invariant under conformal scale transformations. Things could change size, as a whole or in relation to distant objects, without changing the relationship between them. Drink me.

We can't know whether we're, at present, as the planet travels through space, traversing a rabbithole that will leave us, in comparison to ourselves in the past, a vastly different size. If there was a direction of travel which would change your size as you travel along it, then we would need to come up with a clever way to detect it. If every direction of space is identically warped in this manner, we may not be able to detect it.

Of course, the universe doesn't have to be scale invariant just because the theory allows it, and if I were to pursue this idea on that basis alone, I would be vulnerable to the same error in thinking as outlined for naturalism above. (The universe does not need to be natural just because you can imagine a naturalistic set of constants. The universe does not need to be scale invariant simply because you can imagine how cool it would be.)

True, we seem to have no anomalous experimental results to indicate that scale is varying... Unless we've already seen this indication and interpreted it as something else.

The generally accepted interpretation of general relativity is that, across distances, you must discard the possibility that events can be simultaneous, and objects (and distances) must remain consistent in size. If you discard the possibility that size is immutable, you can reintroduce simultaneity. The theories are dual, meaning they match experiment equally well. We can have a linear conception of time with a notion of simultaneity, or we can have a linear conception of space with a notion of consistent scale. They are interchangeable, but mutually exclusive. Relativity was a choice to preserve the consistency of objects, and so we lost the consistency of time. But time or size could be relative. The two theories imply indistinguishable results.

The generally accepted interpretation of the redshift of distant galaxies is that the universe is expanding, and they are accelerating away from us. But consider the possibility that distant galaxies are increasing in mass -- would this theory produce a similar observable to the expanding interpretation?

Perhaps, and perhaps not. Shouldn't changes in mass under true scale invariance be impossible to detect, if they're changing in a relationally consistent way? Expansion is not a scale transformation -- the distance between objects is expanding, but the objects themselves are not. The relationships among the objects, and the distance between them, are changing. This is not the same as the fundamental values changing in concert. Any true scale transformation preserves the relation.

This would, I suppose, require a caveat that scale invariance applies at fundamental scales, but at scales such as galaxies, invariant processes might provide emergent, scale-variant properties. Particles that gain mass in concert cannot be detected in relation to each other, but collections of particles as large as stars or galaxies might experience additional effects from this increase in mass. Chemical reactions within stellar furnaces may subtly deviate from the predictions governed by the standard model because of this. Perhaps Rubin's observations of anomalous galactic rotation, which led to the theorization of dark matter, are in fact ordinary matter performing ordinary processes in a way that is categorically different from our standard model.

Since I am a pragmatist and a believer in Bohmian mechanics, this caveat works for me. In the historical development of pilot wave theory, de Broglie started from the assumption that wave/particle duality is a little bit of both. I see a similarity in the duality which scale-invariance/relativity can exhibit, so I suspect it's likelier to be a little bit of both scale invariance and relative interactions, depending on which effective theory is relevant to matters at hand.

The generally accepted interpretation of the very early universe is that there was a brief period of uncharacteristically fast expansion we call inflation. This could also be re-envisioned in scale-invariant terms. This is the most dubious assertion I have today, but perhaps the Higgs mechanism was not part of the early universe, and when circumstances arose allowing it to suddenly come into being, all mass in the universe simultaneously changed -- seeming, from our distant perspective, to be indistinguishable from exponentially quick inflation. (The change from "all particles having no mass" to "particles having various masses" is not scale invariant, because the relationships between particle masses change. The change is noticeable because everything didn't change exactly the same amount in relation to each other. Particle mass progressed from "all the same" to "diverse," which is not an invariant transformation.)

People that have written about this include Juan Maldacena, Roger Penrose, Lisa Randall, and Lee Smolin. Each of them took a different direction.

Maldacena developed Anti de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory Correspondence in the 1990s, proving that boundaries of higher dimensional shapes can be theoretically dual to the shapes themselves (AdS/CFT is where "the universe is a projection" comes from, although it's a misconception, because we are not in an Anti de Sitter space). Some of Maldacena's students developed Shape Dynamics in response, where size doesn't matter at all, and difference of shape is the only defining feature for objects (particles don't interact directly with galaxies because they are different shapes, not because one is vastly bigger than the other).

Penrose developed Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, where at the end of time, the universe is indistinguishable from the beginning and thus it "rescales" and restarts the big bang cycle.

Randall noticed a variability inherent to Einstein's equations while looking for testable predictions for the LHC, and developed Warped Geometry in response, positing compactified extra dimensions that only fundamental particles can access.

Smolin is the only one who tries to use the idea to develop a central theory and philosophy of physics, but in order to resolve nonlocality he presumes 1) space is quantizable, 2) networked in a spin-foam, and 3) nonlocal interactions are nonadjacent networking of the quanta of space. I don't like assuming that motion is non-continuous, although that's little more than a hunch, and there are a few other reasons Smolin's work leaves me doubtful, but I might have to finish the book before I can put my finger on them.

Out of these four, I tend to trust Maldacena's conclusions most of all, because he doesn't seem to take them as anything other than mathematical constructs. The other three try to explain the universe.

If I'm going to dip my toe into the philosophy of science, it will be to say this and nothing else: Science does not need to explain the universe, it should merely predict the results of experiments. If we find an explanation for the universe along the way, that's great, and not even entirely implausible -- but this explanation must grant us deeper predictive power, or else it isn't physical science.

In the 2015 physics conferences at LMU in Munich, discussions abounded on how to proceed with regards to naturalness. David Gross put forth an operational definition of scienctific progress in the absence of empirical verification: "Will I continue to work on this?" I think this is a fantastic distinction with great clarifying power, and it's helpful to develop a rubric to admit when you're following unempirical ideas. My concern about this distinction is that it's not distinct enough -- a mathematician might take this idea to vastly different conclusions than a physicist might. Mathematics contain (and should contain) a freedom that physics don't (or at least, shouldn't): the freedom to work without tying that work to reality. Internally consistent mathematics bearing no relation to reality possess a utility not present in internally consistent but unreal physics. Thus the same operational litmus test produces different results in each field.

If time and distance under lightspeed are interchangeable (because distance is defined by the time it takes light to cross it), why assume time is the relative quantity? Does relativity of scale resolve issues that are intractable for relativity of time, or does it create new intractable issues unique to itself? Are the two distinguishable at all, or do they produce exactly the same intractable problems?

In order to unify spacetime, either space or time must become relative, and I'm thinking we might have gone in the wrong direction here. In order to determine this, we might need to go as far in developing relativity of scale as we have for relativity of time. If they produce the same paradoxes, they are dual and indistinguishable. If one produces more, it is wrong.

[riddledeep]

LIST OF GEN 2 PIXIES

Offspring of Fergus Whimsifinado (Head Pixie the First) from Sanderson to Southmark. Most are interchangeable, but notable characters are bolded and marked with an asterisk.

Alternatively, click HERE to view a Google Sheet that lists the Gen 2 pixies, their ages during the frozen timestream, ages compared with Anti-Cosmo, and age difference from Sanderson (Basically a prettier and better organized version of this post).

This is a quick reference tool I made for author purposes and ages are not 100% exact to the year (H.P. doesn’t have his pixies exactly on the 500 year mark, after all).

*Fergus Whimsifiando - Head Pixie the First (Gen 1)

*Ennet Sanderson - Vice president of customer service; head of complaints department; H.P.’s personal assistant; Ivorie brand cowlick

*Cecil Hawkins - Sucks his thumb; has a bad hand; does budgeting work

*Alapin Wilcox - Fagigglyne addict; runs emergency response team

*Markell Longwood - Vice President of Pixies Inc. and H.P.’s heir

*Mitchell Caudwell - Foop’s therapist at Wish Fixers

*James Bayard - Kind of a goofball; marketing team

*Luke Madigan - H.P.’s personal secretary; likes birds; especially sneaky; needed glasses early

Oliver Graham - Pixie neotype in Eros Nest

Walter Keefe - In-vitro baby; has dysolfactya; manages the Labyrinth

Hunter Springs - Had a surrogate father

*Elliot McKinley - Extremely religious

Ralston - Emergency response team; annoying suck-up

Walters - Puts everyone else first; rooms with Caudwell/Bayard/Madigan

Thane - Tinkers with mechanics; texts smiley faces

*Charlie Palomar - H.P.’s favorite child; works at Wish Fixers (Born at the end of H.P.’s midlife crisis; represents healing in his mind)

Cinna - Architect; appears in “Make You Proud” and “Rain Dance”

Kaufman - Known for his short temper

Saddler - Works with the Big Wand in Fairy World; Ivorie brand cowlick

Abernathy - Does concept test work; chronic scapegoat

*Darius Smith - Gyne; Chief Pixie of PixieCo (in Hawthorn Haven)

Tindall - Works in retail

Butler - Personally attends to big-name visitors like ambassadors

Keight

Scott

Clark

Phillips

Richards

Ross

*Newman - Security; large “bouncer”; fastest; Ivorie brand cowlick

*Hamilton - Security; large “bouncer”; strongest; Ivorie brand cowlick

*Faust - Security; large “bouncer”; dumbest; Ivorie brand cowlick

Roberts

Wolfram

Carmichael - Judged diving competition in “Fairly Oddlympics” (“Make You Proud”)

Lee

Wright

Fisher

Brown

Middleton

Ward

Lloyd

Shaw

Cox

Powell

Chapman

Walsh

Dalton

Jones

Taylor

Matthews

Thomson 

Miller

O'Neil

Walton

Burns

Perry

Hayes

Baxter

Johnson

Atkins

Colby

Higgins

Bates

Skinner

Marconi - Works on Sanderson’s floor (“Terrible Timing”)

Ford 

Wilkes

Hanson

Devlin

Rawlings

Lovell

Heaton

Collier

Stanton

Bowman

Carey

Aldred

Cummings

Beaumont

*Herman Jardine - Gardener; likes Batman; POV guy of “Name”

Hirschi - Born under elephant statue at the golf course (Baby, You’re a Rich Man)

Wainwright

Devine

Conway

Edmonds

Hackett

Fielding

Knott

Manson

McKay

Duckley

Plume

Calvert

Hale

Dowling

Pike

Beck

Millburn

Ryans

Pemberton

York

Westing

Redmond

Proctor

Squires

Penn

Sahlberg

Moore

Humphrey

McAdams

Jensen

Webber

Brooks

Iyer

Kinsley

Martel

Craven

Polluck

Rothwell

Booth

Candless

Hobson

Oldfield

Gallowey

Dougal

*Jackie Cresswell - Pixie/Anti-Pixie relations; gyne

Haddock

Alderson

Windsor

Clough

Ohara

Jackson

Keane

Lewin

Crowley

Marr

Benfield

Stanford

Wale

Emmerson

Prescott

Montague

Kipling

Howe

Milford

Foulkes

Clifton

O'Donell

Tipping

Saville

Sherry

Ashby

Lawther

Carnegie

Purnell

Dover

*Rudyard Chidlow - Pixie-Human relations; gyne

Kilmurry

Fallon

Thomas

Dallas

Merrick

Oak

Yardley

Levett

Cahill

Beckett

Peake

Haker

Patchett

Ellerby - Demoed preening with Longwood in Frayed Knots

Hartshorn

Cawley

Wilmot

Vale

Henley

Astley

Cunliffe

Walling

Hatsfield

Parkins

O'Halloran

Craddock

Rogan

McFarlene

Southam

Wilkshire

Marland

Colebrook

Kimber

Starnes

Cobb

Rackham

Enright

McAlpine

Dunne

Draper

Mansell

Monroe

Cowan - Marketing (“Solo”)

Larson - Thematic maps of magic usage (“Solo”)

Woolley

Preece

Glenn - Got H.P.’s coffee wrong once so H.P. pretends he’s dead

Dickinson

Steadmon

Dawe

McDaniel - Appears in the Origin chapter “Mother’s Touch”

Lomas

Thatcher

Hutchings

Adamson

Wilkes

Lenninger

Meadows

Dalby

Birch

Travers

Tierney

Driscoll

Stamp

Ingram

Winters

Cottrell

O'Leary

Sampson

Royle

Whitaker

Caton

Laycock

Steel

Ricci

Carter

Pierce

Harris

Feldman

Brunet

Rush

Hinckley

Partington

Gillett

Hyde

Stretton

Darter

Banner

Orchad

Xanders

Haywood

Shipley

Chalmers

Groves

Milward

Ansell

Boulton

Quikley

Lockwood

Keating

Marlowe

Samuels

Cowdery

Orme

Leith

Lander

Court

Foley

Rixon

Toland

Lomax

McCall

Chatton

Wakefield

Tyrer

Mistry

Ricketts

Bower

Peck

Hartman

Swales

Woodford

Blakey

Grant

Kimball

Raeburn

Tailor

Holt

Rowlinson

O'Dell

Benson

Coburn

Rutherford

Winstanley

Lancer - Lancer and above are taller than Sanderson as of “Name”

Torres - Sanderson is taller than Torres and below as of “Name”

Pinnock

Bristow

Lilley

*Flint Spicer - Gyne

Worrall

Archer

Oates

Matheson

Fairburne

Rutter

Nicholls

Shand

Mallinson

Harker

Farnsworth

Mears

Tweddle

Falconer

Milett

Stout

Rasborne

Alpert

O'Malley

Baldwin

Featherstone

Bloom

Whitway

Bensigner

Fitton

Shackleton - Last pixie born before War of the Angels (Fae Wars)

Kingston - Born during war

Sterling - Born during war

Sweeny - Born during war

Andrews - Born during war

Gilbey - Born during war

Markham - Born during war

*Weskar - Deceased

*Dayflower Commelina - Flower child

Burton

Kerridge

Otten

Pattel

Bleeker

Norcross

Jake

Newberry

Hemming

Oxley

Dodds

Nelms

Steward

Hatton

Sunley

Imsodon

Noidees

Trying

Hartford

Klever

Ness

Hayles

Spoons

Kettel

Avery

Brookfeld

Keywood

Highridge

Skene

Elliston

Orritt

Lincoln

Sheldon

Lovett

Conrad

Killock

*Nathaniel Lambton - Gyne

Fernley

Sellers

Aherne

Tidmarsh

Stammers

Briggon

Harrows

Gammon

Knowler

Ketley

Rodwell

Beresford

Sorrell

Handcock

Geary

Kinch

Ainsworth

Lendon

Houlton

Danby

Chaser

Applebee

Blushden

Kerby

Patton

Locke

Gann

Somerville

Jericho

Markwell

Porter

Penham

Linley

Quinton

Jasper

Langford

Dolan

Underwood

Cunningham

Littlefield

Klein

Lifsey

Jeffreys

Dell

Sewell

*Mullins - Tolbert’s older twin

*Tolbert - Mullins’ younger twin

Lake

Rivers

Carey

Docker

Collinson

Shepherd

Drew

Ianson

Lindstrom

Dunmore

Wellman

Calderwood

Kinnison

Dyerson

Burrow

Chance

Downey

Carlile

Sumner

Willetts

Shuttleworth

Lendon

Castel

Slattery

Godwin

Buckland

Shannon

Leeding

Dowler

Wheatcroft

Birkett

Stokes

Briden

Crossan

Varley

Leeson

Percival

Dimmock

Milton

Sawden

Lillfell

Davy

Elphick

Peterson

Michaels - Born under elephant statue at the golf course (Baby, You’re a Rich Man)

Reid

Marland

Everton

Winfer

Simmons

Norgate

Kysel

Richter

Truman

Walsh

Branting

Derrien

Swanson

Burlinson

*Melvin Kettingham - Gyne

Teal

Kress

Pendleton

Roper

Brace

Showell

Dymott

McKeller

Strauss

Roman

Marshfield

Scammell

Cortes

Swatton

Green

Morse

Spearing

Steeper

Grayson

Cane

Sherwin - Last pixie mentioned in Origin of the Pixies

Stockdale - Born post-Origin of the Pixies

Zachman

Bell

Cooper

Carson

Putnam

William Snow - Scored 10/10/9 in gymnastics (“Make You Proud”)

*Addison Rosencrantz - Local screw-up

Marcus Verona - Skilled for his age and smug about it

*Gavin Finley - Poof’s, Foop’s, and Sammy’s roommate; gyne; tomte

Jordan Southmark - H.P. babies him since he’s his youngest

.

Click HERE for my Fairly OddParents worldbuilding masterpost

[mediauser325]

As a Sadist,Anti Cosmo would be 60% ler,40% lee~

Actually, I agree with that! Please come off anon so I can follow you! I wanna see who you are!

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #173: Threshold of Oblivion!

July, 1978

What the heck is up with Hercules’ shoes.

Oh also I guess Yellowjacket, Black Widow and Hercules are going to get kirby krackled? Maybe to death but considering the recent trend, its more likely that they’re going to get disappeared.

And though he has vanished, stern Vision is still with us in our hearts and also in the logo and in a picture in the background.

So last time: quite a bit of things. We’re in the middle of a saga so plot points are piling up. The Avengers met up with the future raccoon-less Guardians of the Galaxy who were afraid a cyborg named Korvac was going to kill Vance Astro when he was just a kid. So they’ve set up shop watching him. Meanwhile, Korvac has far grander plans like marrying a supermodel and chilling in short shorts in Forest Hills. He still killed but then resurrected Starhawk when the one who knows found him.

The Avengers have also been dealing with some disappearances. At first it was just people nobody would miss like Two-Gun Kid and Quicksilver but then beloved characters like Vision, Captain America, and Jocasta have vanished as well.

On top of all that nonsense Peter Henry Gyrich has taken away the Avengers priority status with the US government because of their shitty security. When it rains, it pours. And then it floods because you have consistently failed to plan for flooding in one-hundred and seventy-two issues of precipitation. Which is to say that in a large way the Avengers brought this on themselves and needed this kick in the ass.

But the most immediate threat is the vanishing Avengers so that’s where we start. With Iron Man assembling the best of the what’s left to try to figure this out.

And by best I mean the Whizzer, Captain Marvel, and Black Panther. Two out of three ain’t bad.

But more help is on the way. Black Widow and Hercules arrive in New York via commercial airline (did they not repair the Champscraft after Iron Man broke it?). Black Widow and Hercules are Avengers adjacent characters so were called in by Yellowjacket and the Wasp.

Hercules is being an ass, flirting with a crowd of admiring women instead of disembarking, so Black Widow demonstrates the leadership skills that put her in charge despite being the non-powered person on a team with Hercules, Ghost Rider, Angel, and Iceman.

She shoots Hercules in the head.

That’s her leadership style.

Hercules then shows why he’s not in charge of anything when he tears through the plane rather than go around the terminal and then smashes a helicopter when the pilot refuses to give them a ride since the Avengers priority status has been revoked.

That pilot is now destitute and will starve in the streets without his livelihood.

Anyway.

Hercules and Black Widow arrive at Avengers Mansion and join Iron Man’s round table from the opening splash page.

Iron Man still has no clue what technology might be behind the disappearances so he decides to work with SHIELD scientists to figure it- oh, nope.

Avengers are no longer authorized to contact SHIELD.

So Iron Man decides to do something perhaps a little sketchy and go over SHIELD’s head and contact Nick Fury directly using super secret emergency frequencies that he knows as Tony Stark.

But Nick Fury isn’t any help either (and Tony Stark is probably going to get an angry call in his future for sharing the frequencies (with himself)).

Nick Fury: “I don’t know how ya wormed this frequency outta Stark, Shellhead -- but it won’t do ya any good! As long as Agent Gyrich considers the Avengers a security risk, SHIELD is severin’ all ties! Nick Fury -- out!”

Dang.

Even Nick Fury won’t help them. And he’s as amoral and screw the rules as you can reasonably expect from the boss of an international spy organization. And this whole saga started off with them saving his satellite from a bigger satellite that was no threat to it.

No gratitude.

Anyway, in Forest Hills, Korvac spies on the Avengers.

Perhaps he’s bored.

Or rather, its part of an overall observation to make sure nobody is onto him, as he tells Carina when she comes in to offer him some cocoa.

And by the way, he turns her down. HE CAN JUST MANIFEST COCOA FROM NOTHINGNESS so screw your kind offer.

Kind of rude, Korvac.

Anyway, he also spies on the Guardians of the Galaxy, showing Karina through a kirby krackle viewing hole that they’re fully invested in guarding young Vance Astrovik with no thought to any other possible course of action.

Korvac: “And none even suspect that they are acting on my will, as one of the myriad adjustments I must make in the cosmos to prepare it for my... proprietorship!”

I also want to note that its an incredibly bad idea for Nikki Gold to hide in a tree. Her hair is made of fire and trees are flammable.

But back to spying.

There are others that Korvac must spy on who are slighly less oblivious than the Avengers and Guardians so Korvac tells Carina to gtfo because he needs all his manly concentration and with none of her womanly distractions. Presumably.

So she leaves to go to her bedroom and cries because of Korvac’s cold indifference. Or perhaps because she’s secretly a spy and must now betray Korvac’s trust.

But as she goes to do... something? all with the crackling of energies, she stops.

Carina: “No! I - I can’t do it! I can’t! Michael may be mad to think he’s a god, that he’s the rightful owner of the universe! But father help me -- i’m starting to believe him!”

It is perhaps my more modern sensibilities that has a problem with this. Korvac and Carina’s relationship has been almost entirely off-panel and in suggestion. One of the few times we’ve seen them relaxing together and he’s callously dismissive of her presence and her cocoa offer.

And yet their relationship and love for one another is a key facet of events going forward. So we have to take it on faith that these two love each other enough to motivate actions to come.

Even though Korvac is a typical example of emotionally unavailable take take take no give toxic masculinity.

So for this among other reasons, I will disagree with Korvac that he’s the rightful owner of the universe.

Mankind ills needs a savior such as him.

Anyway. I’m venting, somewhat. Hopefully this will make more sense to you later.

So. Korvac.

Using his PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER he reaches out and watches the unbeknowst Watcher, peeps on Odin and Zeus, and spies on Mephisto’s brunch.

And satisfied that those great powers remain unaware of his schemey plans, he checks on Eternity. The big space weirdo that is actually the entire universe. Because comics are weird and so are Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Korvac: “It is good! None yet guess that I even exist! But there still remains the most important entity to be observed! The celestial vastness of -- ETERNITY HIMSELF! Eternity! He who is the universe personified... within whom all the stuff of this reality exists. He’s so confident, so serene in his omnipotence! He would pay little heed to a mote such as I, even had I not shielded myself from his sight! But one day -- one day soon -- I will take what is rightfully mine!”

Korvac, you’re such an anime villain in so many ways. Scheming to usurp the universe and all...

However, with his senses outstretched or however you describe senses - like trying to hear harder? Senses are weird - Korvac feels something. A ripple in the cosmic fabric.

Coming from disturbingly nearby.

And he marches to Carina’s bedroom, slams the door open, and confronts her over her treachery.

But as he’s physically manhandling her, he looks into her eyes and sees only love.

Remember: this is a love story.

Of sorts.

Anyway, back to the titular characters and their problems.

Captain Marvel flies off from Avengers Mansion to scour the world with his cosmic senses.

And since there’s nothing that Black Widow and Hercules can actually do at the moment (not even using her spy connections? Geez, Natasha. Geez), they go off to get their luggage from the airport.

On their way to the airport, Natasha and Hercules have Real Talk which is probably more relevant to the Champions book.

Basically Hercules says that since mortals live only a wink in the eye of a god “‘tis of little import how long one lives -- how well is what really matters!”

Which makes Natasha realize a thing or two about how Hercules sees her.

Anyway, back at the mansion again, Whizzer declines to help. After the Count Nefaria fiasco where his Old Man Nihilism helped save the day, he’s realized that he’s too old for this line of work.

And Hawkeye is not an ass for once. Instead he uses his bouquet of flowers arrow to try to cheer Scarlet Witch up. But with Vision and Quicksilver among the missing, she’s feeling some young woman nihilism. A simple trick arrow won’t be cheering her up.

Although ‘simple’ is underselling it. How did he fit a bouquet of flowers in an arrow? WHAT ARROW SORCERY IS THIS?

I mean, he also invented anti-gravity to make an anti-gravity arrow that one time. Its possible that Hawkeye is actually a scientific genius who also happens to be a garbage fire. Or an actual arrow wizard. Who also happens to be a garbage fire.

Also, a Russian steamer slowly approaches New York carrying a weird old man who carves a doll of Scarlet Witch and is just reeking of foreshadowing. What is this guy’s deal? You’ll have to wait and see. Or just google it. Up to you.

Meanwhile Thor returns from one of his Thor trips. But weirdly he doesn’t recognize Wonder Man. Or remember the battles against Graviton or Count Nefaria.

Something weird is going on, Thor-wise. He doesn’t even accept half of Wonder Man’s sandwich.

Although the sandwich wasn’t cut in half before Wonder Man started eating it so its kind of a weird offer.

Meanwhile, in the Avengers laboratory. Yellowjacket is starting to feel like a character in an Agatha Christie novel. Perhaps like a giant bee alien that has been programmed to follow murder mysteries in times of stress.

The Avengers’ equipment isn’t sensitive enough to track the disappearances and none of the people they’ve reached out to have been willing to help them because of Peter Henry Gyrich taking away their priority status.

I have to wonder why they didn’t reach out to the Fantastic Four, honestly. Not even a call that ends with ‘sorry we have our own troubles.’ They just didn’t even try. Nor the X-Men nor the Defenders and their magic guy Mr. Weird.

Although in fairness, the Defenders are dicks. But why not the Fantastic Four?

Oh shared universe, sometimes you’re not so shared after all.

But Black Panther hits upon an obvious idea.

They’re in good with the Guardians of the Galaxy, right? And their Drydock space station is just hanging around not doing anything, right? With technology a thousand years in advance of the Avengers’? Why not just get in touch with them and get them to sort it out?

This idea is so good that Black Panther and Yellowjacket spontaneously cease to exist.

Or maybe they’ve been disappeared by the mysterious adversary.

And Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man were also taken, as Hawkeye and Thor run in to report.

Is it targeted? Or opportunistic?

Black Panther just came up with a good idea and Yellowjacket was about to put it into action when they were vanished. But nothing stops the non-disappeared members from just doing what Black Panther suggested.

And they do do that. Iron Man contacts Vance Astro aboard Drydock and he tells them that he has traced a radiation trail to an object three cubic meters in size orbiting Earth. Which Astro directly compares to the size of a phone box.

Curious and also more curious.

Was Doctor Who the villain all along?

Probably... probably...

Anyway, now that they know where has been causing this trouble, Iron Man asks Astro to teleport the Avengers to it.

He questions the sense of squeezing so many people into a phone box (he would have hated the 50s) but goes ahead and does it anyway.

Inside the bigger on the inside phone box shaped object with a function that allows it to go unnoticed, a chameleon circuit if you will, the mysterious shadowy foe from the end of last issue is gloating over his collection of Avengers in tubes.

Mysterious shadowy foe from the end of last issue: “It is fortunate that his attention was focused elsewhere. Otherwise, I would have been forced to continue acquiring Avengers in the same sporadic manner as before -- in order to avoid detection!”

We also see that in addition to the ones explicitly yoinked (Wonder Man, Yellowjacket, Scarlet Witch, Black Panther) the mysterious shadowy foe from the end of last issue also snagged Black Widow, Hercules, and Captain Marvel.

Geez. Letting them go off unsupervised really didn’t pay off.

Anyway, the four remaining Avengers (Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, and the Wasp) loudly announce their presence instead of trying to keep the element of surprise. And by that I mean it was all on Hawkeye.

But the mysterious shadowy foe from the end of last issue isn’t upset to see the Avengers storming his not-TARDIS. In fact, he’s thrilled

The Collector: “‘Cowering’? But my dear fellows, I’m absolutely delighted you’re here! After all, you’ve just saved me the considerable bother of fetching you! For I am -- THE COLLECTOR! And you, my hapless friends, have just completed my collection! Ah hah ha ha ha ha!”

Oh hey its this nerd again!

Good twist, good surprise villain! I love the Collector. Always with the attempted collecting of the Avengers for reasons. Always with being a huge nerd.

And this time he actually managed a scheme that wasn’t dumb. Instead of pretending to be Tom Fagan, he just kidnapped the Avengers with teleportation while invisibly hiding out in orbit in a not-TARDIS. And he would have and might still get away with it if it weren’t for that meddling Vance Astro!

Of course, this isn’t a typical the Collector story. Its part of the Korvac Saga and that leaves open the question of why. We have to assume that the distracted ‘he’ the Collector spoke of was Korvac and his inattentiveness scanning the great powers and yelling at his wife was what allowed the Collector to step up his kidnapping game.

But why? I guess we’ll find out

Next: Captured by the Collector!

Please follow @essential-avengers if you like these posts. Or even if you’re benevolently indifferent.

[f4liveblogarchives]

Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #48

Fri Nov 7 2016 [19:28:26] <Wackd> Okay so [19:28:40] <Wackd> Turns out Maximus' Destory All Humans machine didn't work [19:28:48] <Wackd> Because he set it not to destroy Inhumans [19:28:53] <Wackd> But Inhumans are also humans [19:28:56] <Wackd> Therefore no one died [19:29:17] <Wackd> And since Maximus' anti-human rhetoric is predicated on humans and Inhumans being different races [19:29:24] <Wackd> He's basically got no leg left to stand on [19:31:18] <Wackd> HOLY SHIT MAXIMUS' BACKUP PLAN [19:31:28] <Wackd> MAXIMUS JUST CREATED THE FUCKING NEGATIVE ZONE [19:31:33] <Bocaj> ! [19:31:36] <Wackd> AND TRAPPED ALL THE INHUMANS IN IT WITH HIM [19:31:40] <MousaThe14> Nope [19:31:55] <Wackd> ...nope? [19:32:05] <MousaThe14> I will never be called the negative zone again [19:32:07] <Mukora> You heard him [19:32:15] <Wackd> That's weird [19:32:17] <Wackd> But okay [19:32:19] <Mukora> Positive Zone from now on [19:32:23] <MousaThe14> It's not the actual negative zone we know about [19:32:26] <Bocaj> Hrm [19:32:33] <Wackd> Sure [19:32:34] <MousaThe14> With Annihilus and whatnot. [19:32:36] <maxwellelvis> That doesn't come up until "This Man, This Monster", right? [19:32:56] <Wackd> Anyway that's the Inhumans all squared away [19:33:04] <Wackd> Kinda weird to resolve a plot halfway through the issue like that [19:33:07] <Wackd> But sure [19:33:17] <Wackd> Reed's just like "well there's nothing we can do about THAT" [19:33:36] <maxwellelvis> "Well, that's the end of that, I guess. Who wants chili dogs?" [19:33:52] <Wackd> Johnny is of course distraught [19:33:55] <Wackd> But whatever [19:34:15] <maxwellelvis> "But Crystal's in there!" "CHILI DOGS!" [19:34:25] <Wackd> Nah it's not that harsh [19:34:30] <Wackd> Everyone's trying to console him [19:34:40] <Wackd> And thinking "man, he's...actually being kind of mature about this?" [19:35:13] <Mukora> Wait the Inhumans are a thing already? It feels like the X-Men were introduced like. Two issues ago. Unless I've missed liveblogging sessions [19:35:24] <Wackd> You may have [19:35:39] <Wackd> But I'm only like four years into FF [19:35:47] <Wackd> So yeah it's still shockingly early [19:36:05] <Wackd> "Somewhere in the deep vastness of outer space, an incredible figure hurtles through the cosmos! A being whom we shall call the SILVER SURFER, for want of a better name!" [19:36:15] <MousaThe14> 48 issues, of approximately monthly comics, I think we're in year uh... what, 4 of the Lee-Kirby run? [19:36:16] <Wackd> meanwhile in the bullpen jack flips stan off [19:36:51] <Wackd> Yeah this is issue #48 [19:36:55] <Wackd> So exactly four years in [19:36:58] <maxwellelvis> Stan does the "crank-the-bird" gesture back at him. [19:37:07] <MousaThe14> Besties [19:37:13] <Wackd> "Sorry, I didn't...I didn't know how this machine works" [19:37:41] <Bocaj> Its not discussed quite yet but Stan and Jack had wildly different ideas for the Surfer's origin. Jack wanted the Silver Surfer to be someone that Galactus created from nothing. So he would discover humanity on Earth. Stan decided instead that he sacrificed his autonomy to save his home planet and only rediscovered his humanity on Earth [19:38:06] <Wackd> I mean. Both are good [19:38:14] <Bocaj> Yeah [19:38:24] <Wackd> I do think it's maybe sadder if Surfer had a home he had to abandon [19:38:29] <Wackd> Stan's got a decent eye for drama [19:38:46] <Bocaj> Zenn-La has given a lot of good mileage, story wise [19:39:09] <Wackd> The Skrulls see the Surfer flying by and are like "oh shit" [19:39:23] <Wackd> "Black out the planet black out the ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET. HIDE. FUCKING HIDE" [19:39:36] <Bocaj> Fuckin skrulls [19:39:44] <Wackd> Which is a good way of establishing exactly what level of menace we're dealing with here [19:39:46] <Wackd> I like that a lot [19:40:11] <maxwellelvis> That's a good variation on having your previous big bad getting worfed by the new one [19:40:24] <maxwellelvis> this one man on a board has an interstellar empire running scared. [19:41:01] <Wackd> I mean I like it better than Worfing because it's scarier if the existing threat knows they'd lose [19:41:07] <MousaThe14> @Wack'd his eye for drama is part of what made this all popular regardless of his other qualities [19:41:14] <maxwellelvis> True [19:41:22] <maxwellelvis> To you both. [19:41:24] <Wackd> It's honestly scarier than the big dude charging into battle and immediately getting his ass whooped, because you can chalk that up to bad tactics [19:41:45] <maxwellelvis> I'm trying to think of some other time it happened. [19:41:47] <MousaThe14> Perfect way to establish threat level [19:42:12] <MousaThe14> I can't help but find it funny and frightening that the Skrull's first response is "TURN IT OFF! TURN IT ALL OFF!" [19:44:24] <Wackd> Johnny is getting beat up because people think he set the sky on fire [19:44:35] <Wackd> So Ben did the Superman flick on one of Johnny's assailants [19:44:38] <Wackd> That's pretty great [19:44:43] <Mukora> Wait sorry [19:44:48] <Mukora> Set the sky. On fire [19:45:20] <Wackd> Yeah Mukora the sky is just filled with fucking fire [19:45:26] <Wackd> It's a miracle people aren't melting in the streets [19:45:29] <Wackd> But yeah [19:45:35] <Bocaj> Does the sky fill with rocks? [19:45:40] <maxwellelvis> The Surfer's coming. [19:46:09] <Wackd> YEP [19:46:14] <Wackd> THERE ARE THE SKY ROCKS [19:46:26] <Bocaj> WHATS NEXT? SKY WATER? SKY AIR? ... wait [19:46:57] <Wackd> GALACTUS: why the fuck did you set the planet on fire and cover it in boulders [19:47:04] <Wackd> SURFER: i thought it'd be fancier this way [19:47:13] <Bocaj> SURFER: #aesthetic [19:47:26] <Wackd> GALACTUS: well nope it's ruined *scrapes earth off his plate into the garbage* [19:47:35] <Bocaj> hah [19:47:37] <MousaThe14> SURFER: Well HOW ELSE were they supposed to know the world was ending? I couldn't just go down there and tell them individually! [19:48:53] <Wackd> Sue is getting increasingly frustrated with Reed not taking care of himself and so barges in on him [19:48:59] <Wackd> Only to find the Watcher's stopped by [19:49:21] <Wackd> Turns out the fire and the sky holders are NOT Surfer’s doing [19:49:42] <Wackd> Watcher is trying to shield the Earth from Galactus [19:49:50] <Wackd> He turned off the fire because it was freaking everyone out [19:50:12] <Wackd> And replaced it with space rocks [19:51:21] <Wackd> Watcher is afraid Galactus is more powerful than him [19:51:24] <Wackd> And he's right [19:51:31] <Wackd> Surfer penetrates the shields with incredible ease [19:51:55] <Wackd> Anyway then Thing punches him in the face and knocks him off a building, thus beginning a rivalry that will last for decades [19:51:58] <Mukora> Please tell me he uses the pointy end of his surfboard to do it [19:52:14] <Wackd> His surfboard doesnt have a pointy end [19:52:49] <Mukora> What the fuck is even the point then [19:54:20] <Wackd> And so our issue ends with a hearty HO HO HO! MEEEEERRY CHRISTMAS! [19:54:43] <MousaThe14> Merry ol' Saint Galactus

[thearabkhaleesi]

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 2. - EASTER EGGS, TRIVIA, AND THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

DISCLAIMER: I haven’t found any of these easter eggs on my own, I did a bit of research and gathered the many easter eggs I found from multiple sites. I know there are definitely more easter eggs that I didn’t include because I either didn’t spot/know about them or didn’t think they were important enough. If you noticed that I missed an easter egg that you would like me to include, please feel free to tell me and I’d gladly add it! I also apologize that this list isn’t as long as my other easter egg posts, it’s just been a hectic few days and I haven’t had much time to do more research. Also please let me know if i made any mistakes.

QUICK FACTS

Matthew McConaughey passed on the role of Ego to star in The Dark Tower.

The first poster for the movie is based on the cover art for The Ramones’s album Rocket to Russia.

The phrase "I am Groot" appears eight times in the end credits, before changing to an actual name and title of someone involved with the film. This symbolizes the eight main heroes of the film: Star Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket, Groot, Nebula, Mantis, and Yondu. As the very last credit rolls, David Hasselhoff says "We are ALL Groot."

You could fit about 1,600 baby Groots on a normal movie screen and about 17,000 on a normal IMAX screen.

Groot says "I am Groot" 17 times throughout the entire film.

When shipping out promotional material, such as posters and banners, for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), it was given the code name "Level Up" to discourage theft.

The ironic thing about Gamora not enjoying dancing is actress Zoe Saldana actually has a deep background in dancing, with Ballet being her first passion.

The movie is Kurt Russell’s first superhero and Disney movie since Sky High.

HOWARD THE DUCK

Marvel’s Howard the Duck (voiced by Seth Green) makes his second appearance in the MCU in GOTG 2, partying it up with the Ravagers on Contraxia. We last saw him as part of The Collector’s collection in Guardians of the Galaxy 1.

COSMO THE SPACEDOG

We first see Cosmo the spaced as a dog wearing a spacesuit shown in the previous Guardians film as a part of the Collector’s collection, and we see a portrait of him during the end credits of Guardians 2.

CELEBRITY CAMEOS

David Hasselhoff (obvious if you’ve seen the movie) but he also sings on a song in the film’s soundtrack called “Guardians Inferno”.

Miley Cyrus is Mainframe, an artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark, and tasked with guarding and administrating an entire planet in the 31st Century. We see her along with the original Ravagers during one of the post credits scenes.

Sylvester Stallone as Starhawk, a member of the original Ravagers and Guardians (continue reading for more details).

THE RAVAGERS/ORIGINAL GUARDIANS

In one of the post-credits scenes we see Sylvester Stallone’s character Stakar assembling the original Ravagers. In the comics, Stakar is a Marvel anti-hero known as Starhawk and a member of the original Guardians of the Galaxy from the comics, who are from an alternate future in the 31st century. The other members are Martinex (Michael Rosenbaum), Charlie-27 (Ving Rhames), Mainframe (voiced by Miley Cyrus), Krugarr (a CG character), and Aleta (Michelle Yeoh). Yondu was also a member of the original Guardians.

ETERNITY

When Peter Quill is being manipulated under Ego’s spell, he whispers that he can see “eternity”. Besides its literal meaning, Eternity is a character from the Marvel comics who shows up whenever the Infinity Stones are collected.

The concept of all time and reality within the universe is embodied by Eternity, one of a number of beings existing before and beyond all creation.

This shows the greatness and strength of Peter’s cosmic powers as he might have had a glimpse of reality (the figure of Eternity) rather tan just being under Ego’s spell. While some might think this is a throwaway word, in the first Guardians movie we see a temple mural depicting the characters Eternity, Infinity, Entropy, and Death surrounding the six Infinity Stones….

ADAM

During one of the Marvel’s post credits scenes, we see Ayesha with a golden cocoon containing an artificial being she created and with whom she plans to destroy the Guardians, and calls it “Adam”. In the comics, Adam Warlock is a genetically engineered perfect human being with an Infinity Gem in his forehead; Adam was the key to defeating Thanos in the Infinity Gauntlet comic and has strong ties to both the Guardians and the Avengers. But James Gunn confirmed that in the MCU, Adam will not be in Infinity War but he will be a big character in the future alongside the returning Ayesha, so we’ll definitely see them as a super villain duo in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. There was also a golden cocoon in the Collector’s collection in the first Guardians movie, and while people suspected at the time that it contained Adam, it didn’t and the first official Adam teaser/easter egg is in this movie.

STAN LEE AND THE WATCHERS

One of the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’s post credits sense confirms a major MARVEL fan theory! One of the post credits scenes of the movie shows Stan Lee talking to a group of aliens (known as The Watchers) about all the things he has witnessed on Earth and his time as a FedEx man (his cameo in Captain America: Civil War). Therefore, this credits scene basically confirms that Stan Lee plays the same character in every Marvel movie he’s been in, and that he is sent or tasked by the Watchers to observe the events happening on Earth. Stan Lee is even credited in the movie as “Watchers Informant”. In the comics, The Watchers are an ever-present part of the comic universe spread across the galaxy, observing lifeforms and preserving their knowledge. It’s very possible that we will see them again in the MCU so keep an eye out!

PETER’S SHIRT

For a while in the film, we see Peter wear a shirt with some sort of Asian-language inspired script. The letters on the shirt match those used in the first film’s Kyln Prison, and a Reddit user quickly deciphered the space brand as “GEARS SHIFT.” The other words on the attached molecules on the shirt read “dust, cement, stone, and ash” with the bottom subtitle reading “A TenEyck Galaxy Invention” - Karen Teneyck is a graphic designer in the Art Department Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. (and Captain America: The First Avenger).

THOR 3 GLADIATOR PLANET

When Rocket, Groot, Yondu, and Kraglin decide to go to Ego’s planet, they mention that they had to several “jumps” through different pockets of the universe; during one of these jumps we see them interrupt a gladiator match, which is reminiscent of the scene of Thor having to fight The Hulk during the Thor: Ragnarok trailer.

THE GRANDMASTER

We see Jeff Goldblum’s character from Thor: Ragnarok, The Grandmaster, dancing along with the other character’s during the film’s end credits.

NEBULA IN INFINITY WAR

At the end of the movie, Nebula leaves the Guardians on a mission to kill Thanos. We already know for sure that in Infinity War we will see Thanos try to attack Earth (the Avengers), and Nebula’s role in the movie might be of utmost importance as it is most likely that she will be the one to call on the Guardians of the Galaxy to join the Avengers’ fight against Thanos. After all, she was the one who is responsible for Thanos’ undoing in the comics.

GROOT IN INFINITY WAR

Even though we got the adorable Baby Groot in the movie, one of the post credits scenes shows Groot as a teenager, which implies that he will be a full grown adult in Infinity War (just as he was in the first Guardians movie).

Fun fact: James Gunn has confirmed that Baby Groot has no memories of his past life as Groot (he doesn’t have any memories of Guardians 1) :(

JAMES GUNN’S PARENTS

During one of the flashbacks of Ego on Earth with Peter’s mom, we see a confused older couple.. James Gunn’s parents!

EGO THE LIVING PLANET

In the comics, Ego is a living planet. As Rocket, Baby Groot, and Yondu descend onto another side of Ego’s planet, we see that Ego’s face is actually on his planet, making it a living entity, just like in the comics.

TASERFACE’S ORIGINS

In the comics, Taserface is a warrior from the cybernetically enhanced race known as The Stark. The Stark are a race that found Iron Man technology that accidentally crashed on their homeworld and as a result, worship Tony Stark (a.k.a Iron Man) as their god.

YONDU’S LAST ARROW

As the Guardians mourn Yondu death, his cosmic ashes spread out in a stream of rainbow-colored particles in the air. As the fireworks and music occur, the particles condense into an intense pink/red hue in the shape of an arrow.

GROOT AND ROCKET DISCLAIMER

Just as with the first Guardians movie, at the end of the film’s credits, we see a disclaimer saying: “No raccoons or tree creatures were harmed during the making of this feature. The same cannot be said for handlers of said raccoons and tree creatures.”

[pastordorry-blog]

Called to Be Neighbors and Witnesses

Lent Week 3

Matthew 5:43-48

March 24, 2019

           We’ve been talking the last several weeks about God’s will.  Since we pray for it every week as we recite the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it seemed like a good idea for us to get some clarity about what we are really praying for, and be sure we really mean what we are saying!  In the gospel of Matthew, right before Jesus gives his disciples the Lord’s prayer, he tells them, “When you pray, do not keep babbling like the pagans.”  Matthew 6:7 has also been translated, do not heap up empty phrases, or do not repeat vain petitions.  We do not want the Lord’s Prayer to be a bunch of empty phrases, or babbling, or vain repetitions.  We want to leverage the power of this prayer!  When we end the prayer with the word, “Amen”, which means, I agree, or more accurately, this I vow—I know the people of Lima mean it.  We are vowing to do God’s will every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.  

But, if you haven’t noticed already, God’s will is a mystery that we can only partially understand. It is not easy to define and articulate!  I was particularly thinking about this a couple weeks ago, reading yet again another news post about anti-Semitism in America.  I knew I wanted to address God’s will for us as it relates to our dealings with people of other religions, because this is a real-life issue for us.  Our key verse on the front of the bulletin this week is one we probably all have memorized:  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)  We call this the Great Commission, and it is our marching orders as disciple of Jesus Christ.  Yet despite two thousand years of evangelism and witness, only about 1/3 of the world’s population identifies as Christian.

We know God’s ultimate will is that, one day in the future, Christ is going to come again, and according to the book of Revelation, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord. But for now, we live in a religiously diverse society.  What is God’s circumstantial will for us?  Given the reality of so many other competing religions, what should we do?  One strategy is to move toward isolation. Some communities, such as the Amish, do this in an extreme way.  Another strategy is to water things down and conclude, “We’re all the same.”  Most Christians reject both of those pathways, at least in theory.  We want to love others as neighbors and friends, even as we retain our distinct beliefs.  Our United Methodist Social Principles contain a resolution detailing this commitment, to be both neighbors and witnesses.

The resolution is important, because, we have, inadvertently, become somewhat isolationist.  I have had many conversations over the years with church members, encouraging them to invite their friends to worship—and the response I get is, “But Pastor Dorry, all my friends already go to church!”  What could I say to that?  I’m glad people have Christian friends!  But maybe we should be trying to make some new friends.  Maybe it would do us good to intentionally befriend some people who are quite a bit different from us.  Not only would that help us build community, I think it might help us better define and articulate what it is about our faith that matters so much.  One of the boys in my son’s cub scout troop was Jewish, and one time he told me, “My faith has served me well over the years.”  Then he proceeded to tell me what he valued most about being Jewish.  It really impressed me, and made me wonder how many Christians could do something similar.  

Christianity was born in to a religiously diverse world. Its immediate roots of course are Judaism.  But get out of Jerusalem, and right away there were other faiths, and of course, as the gospel spread throughout the Roman empire, it was one option among hundreds of religions.  This has always been a source of difficulty.  In the early church, violence and hatred and persecution were a part of things from almost the very beginning.  Later, it was the Christians who took up the sword, mostly against Muslims, in the Crusades. It would take an historian hours to name for us all the religiously inspired wars over the years.  Violence and hatred in the name of God continue, in heartbreaking ways, in our world today.

That any person of faith would think that hatred is God’s will is pretty troubling.  And especially that any Christian would think hatred is God’s will.  If there is anything we know about God’s will, it is this:  It is God’s will that we love one another (John 13:34).  This the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples on the night he was arrested and is the reason we call Holy Thursday, “Maundy Thursday”, from the Latin word mandatum, or commandment.  Jesus’ command, God’s will, is that we love one another.  The two central obligations of our faith are to love God with our whole beings, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And Jesus did not mean just the nice neighbors!  It is laid out very clearly for us in this gospel lesson, that we are called not only to love the neighbors we agree with, the ones who are easy to get along with, or the ones who love us.  We are called to love ALL our neighbors.  Even our enemies.  

But what about people who aren’t our enemies exactly, but they aren’t our friends, either?  Can you picture someone like that?  Maybe a family member whose choices you don’t agree with, who consumes more than their fair share of resources or commands more than their fair share of attention. Or maybe you have a co-worker like that, or even someone with you in this room right now!  You want to love them—but they are WRONG about so many things. Can you picture a person like that?

I sure hope so, otherwise I’m preaching a sermon that only I need to hear!  There’s a country song by Lee Brice, “I’m Hard to love, hard to love, I don’t make it easy.  I couldn’t do it if I stood where you stood.”  We can all imagine a hard to love person, and if we’re honest, we know it’s true of ourselves at times, too!  I think we can get some comfort from verse 45.  “I cause the sun to rise on the evil and the good.  I send the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  God’s love and provision extend to all people.  Not just the ones who agree with us or who like us! Thanks be to God for being all good, all the time!  

But after those words of comfort, Jesus goes on to challenge us to love better.  To love perfectly. Whew! Talk about a tall order. But loving God and neighbor perfectly is God’s will. That is God’s intentional will for us—what God wanted for us from the very beginning.  That is God’s ultimate will for us—what we will one day be able to do.  And it is God’s circumstantial will that we be working on it!  Or as John Wesley would say, we are “going on to perfection”.  We are called to be growing closer to God so we can love ourselves and our neighbors the way God loves us.  

It’s interesting how many people have fought wars for PURITY, so that a whole people would love and worship the same way.  But what God really wants is PURITY in each of our hearts, an ability to love that not only tolerates differences but blesses them!  Pray for your enemies.  We are called to transcend our conflicts, in part by respecting and even celebrating differences.

Have you heard that line, “God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”? It’s true!  The gospel of John says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son.” The world—the whole world!  The Greek word there is ha cosmos.  The entire creation, the entire population, the good, the bad, the ugly is loved by god. Everyone.  God loves all people, and that is why God sent his son Jesus.  

I grew up singing, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world.”  But I want to tell you that, this week I realized that somehow along with that, I also absorbed the idea that God loves some people more than others, and that means it is okay for me to love some people more than others, too. Not that anyone ever said it so explicitly.  I learned it because that is how people acted.  I got the idea that God’s love has a hierarchy:  God loves Christians the most, and then Jews, and then maybe people of other faiths. And then there are probably some bad people God doesn’t love at all.

This may sound shocking to you, but I don’t think it’s uncommon.  When someone in my little dairy farming community bought a Japanese car in the early 1970’s, that was very controversial!  On paper maybe God loved everyone equally.  But the assumption was that everyone stilled hate the Japanese for what they did to us in World War II.  Many people thought it was okay to be mad at them, we certainly didn’t want to help them profit and flourish, and that seemed to me the prevailing “righteous” view.  

Here’s another example.  A few years ago I went to a preaching workshop the required staying in a college dorm with shared bathrooms.  I met a woman from Canada with beautiful red hair; all of us in the ladies’ room admired it.  But the woman from Canada said, where I come from, it’s not a source of admiration. It’s a source of shame.  Being a ginger gets you picked on.  She hated her red hair and felt terrible for passing it on to her children.  In theory she knew God loved her.  But her lived experience was, God loves red heads less than other people; it’s okay to pick on or treat certain people as less than because of some arbitrary characteristic.

This has given me a lot to think about.  I admit to you today that I do not have a single Muslim friend.   One-fourth of the world’s population identifies as Muslim, and I don’t know a single one. There is an Islamic Center in West Chester, and when I did some reading this week on their website, I was really impressed.  I am going to reach out to them.  I admit to you today that, although I don’t want this to happen, I sometimes have unkind immediate thoughts about certain groups of people.  That is racism.  That is sin. I admit to you today that I have had an unconscious belief, that God loves certain people more than others.  I admit to you today that I feel called to sort through the remnants of that belief, and see how it continues to influence me today.  

I like to plan worship well in advance, but honestly, I never really know where a sermon is going to take me until I sit down and write it.  As I anticipated this week, I thought I would feel convicted to draw my circle wider and get to know some “non-church” folks.  But as I worked on the sermon, I got convicted in an even bigger way.  I felt like God was holding a mirror in front of me and I could see things this week that I never saw before, and it was scary. Kind of like trying on a swim suit at the mall.  Do I look as bad in real life as I do in this dressing room?  I saw ugliness in my heart.  Maybe you are seeing some in your heart, too.  

So let me use this opportunity to assert one of our distinctively Christian beliefs:  God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!  Nothing can separate us from God’s love for us, including our sin.  God is here today to give us a fresh start.  We call that fresh start grace.  It is what makes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous, and the sun to shine on the good and the evil.  This grace is available to us in its most potent form in the person of Jesus Christ.  This grace turns us from God’s strangers into God’s friends, and calls us to go and do likewise.  Amen.

[offpier33]

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[marvelloussynergy]

COMIC BOOK REFERENCES & EASTER EGGS - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

James Gunn has packed Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 with plenty of references to the comics. The following is a guide to all the ones I’ve spotted along with any deviations from the source material (I will update this as more come to light). Note that owing to the convoluted and complex nature of comic books, I’ve tried to include only the most essential information regarding a character’s history and backstories. Additionally, anything I’ve covered in the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) chapter of my book won’t be repeated here. Let’s start with the characters returning from the first film. The Groot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn’t appear to grow as fast as his comic book counterpart—he’s still a baby after two months, whereas in the comics he can grow from a splinter to his adult form in a relative short amount of time. Yondu acquires a new larger fin in the film; reflective of the one he has in the comics. To confuse matters, the comic version of Yondu with the large fin is actually from an alternate reality, Earth-691. After the release of Guardians of the Galaxy another Yondu was introduced into the mainstream Marvel Universe in Star-Lord #1 (2016), this one being the leader of the Ravagers.

Early on we’re introduced to the golden-skinned Ayesha. In the source material the character has also gone by the names Kismet, Her, and Paragon. She was created by the Enclave as a genetically perfect life form—a status that’s bestowed upon the entire Sovereign race in the movie. In one of the mid-credits scenes, Ayesha reveals that she has created something that could defeat the Guardians, dubbing him “Adam.” This is a reference to the character Adam Warlock, an artificial creation designed to be the perfect human. He can encase himself within a cocoon, allowing him to heal (hence the gold sarcophagus). Adam was actually created by the Enclave first, with Her/Ayesha coming about after Adam escaped. In the comics Ego is known as the Living Planet, and as his name implies is a planet with sentience. He was created by the Stranger, his consciousness not having developed naturally as previously believed. Unlike the cinematic version, Ego is not a Celestial, with the biggest deviation being his status as Peter Quill’s biological father (in the comics it’s J’son, Emperor of the Spartoi Empire). Among other powers, Ego can create humanoid anti-bodies, communicate using telepathy, and has control over every one his molecules. In the film Ego wishes to transform other planets to be like him. A similar event has occurred in the comics: when Tana Nile bonded a part of Ego to another planet in an attempt to terraform it, Ego-Prime was created. Ego-Prime—a human-shaped entity with its own consciousness—attempted to merge himself with all the life on Earth and become a single entity. On a side note, the Guardians properly meet Ego on a planet called Berhert, which in the comics is home to the Sagittarians.

Mantis’ background in the film deviates greatly from the comics. In the source material she’s a human of Vietnamese and German decent, the daughter of Gustav Brandt and Lau Nguyen Brandt. She grew up under the care of the Priests of Pama (exiled pacifist members of the Kree race) who believed she would grow up to be the Celestial Madonna, who would give birth to the Celestial Messiah. As such, they trained her in martial arts and taught her emphatic abilities. Other powers Mantis possesses include telepathy, limited precognition, and astral projection. She first joined the Avengers before becoming a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy in Guardians of the Galaxy #1 (2008). The cinematic incarnation of the character has flesh-coloured skin in keeping with the comic book version’s early appearances. Though she appears green nowadays, she can change her skin colour as she pleases.

Believe it or not, Taserface is an actual character from the comics, though bears no resemblance to his comic book incarnation who is a cyborg and scout for the Stark (though both versions do come to blows with the Guardians). Other ravagers with names taken from the comics include Brahl (a member of the Minions of Menace) and Tullk (a galactic bounty hunter). Though we see the individual characters throughout the film, in a mid-credits scene we witness Stakar Ogord assembling other Ravager leaders together. This is a reference to the original Guardians team of the comics. The characters present are Stakar (also known as Starhawk, generates light energy and possesses a vast intellect), Krugarr (Doctor Strange’s successor in Earth-691), Charlie-27 (possesses enhanced strength and durability; Caucasian in the comics), Aleta Ogord (Ogord’s adoptive sister, merged with him to become Starhawk), Martinex (has a body made of silicon crystal, can emit blasts of heat and cold from his hands), and Mainframe (an alternate version of the Vision). It’s worth noting that the original Guardians lineup in the comics was initially composed of Charlie-27, Martinex, Vance Astro, and Yondu.

Stan Lee appears in the film talking to a bald figure with a large head. The character is known as a Watcher (we see more of them in the post-credits scene) with his species observing and recording the events of the universe, vowing to never interfere. The most well known watcher is Uatu, who keeps an eye on Earth and its solar system.

In terms of MCU Easter eggs we have Howard the Duck once again making an appearance (he can be seen on the ice planet Contraxia—an actual planet from the comics), and during the credits themselves an image of Cosmo can be spotted as well as a dancing Grandmaster (a character from the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok).