#kvetching is an art form

[impishtubist]

I'm just telling you that finding your blong and works cheered me up *so much*, as a fellow person who loved Sirius back in the 2000s. Finally some food to eat!! What happened??

Well, the character assassination that Ootp unreliable narrator and the wired choices made in Hbd and Dh, of course.

Sirius being tall is mentioned a LOT in the books. He is a big scary dude and a big scary dog, and i miss punk Sirius listening to the Crush and Sex Pistols. Brilliant and wild and with a healthy tendency to question and defy authority. He clashes so hard with conformist characters like Molly and authority-respecting characters like Hermione bc he learned that questioning what you are taught and the people teaching you is important. He isn't irresponsible. PTSD up the wazoo, probably constantly triggered by being, well, imprisoned back at the site of his childhood trauma and suffering constant verbal abuse from the portrait of his original abuser, but not irresponsible or erratic.

Also, ppl who blame an older sibling for escaping abuse, wtf. As someone who's sadly familiar with how it goes, IRL, that's usually the narrative pushed by the abusive parents to divide the kids and push away the responsibility. All children in abusive homes are children, and the adults are the responsible ones. That is so ugly, as a person who has been there to see the struggles siblings like that go through.

Bonus:

Remus is gay little piece of wet tissue paper with self-esteem issues. He's a pathetic man who is very affected by social pressure, a chronic people pleaser who's afraid of genuine connections. He thinks no one can ever love his authentic self, so he will do everything to not let ppl know him, and so afraid of rejection, he will preemptively cut ppl out. He makes bad choices and then uses the guilt he feels as proof of being right. And I loved him like that. I read the coded gay when POA came out, and I called pathetic gay man with thinly vailed HIV metaphor.

You know what? I don't care, I'm putting this in the Sirius Black tag. Starting 2024 with chaos!

This is the greatest ask I have ever received. Yes, you get it! That is Sirius, not whatever is being portrayed in art and fic and headcanons these days. That is an OC who I do not know. Same with Remus! Prior to HBP and DH, yes, he was absolutely coded as a gay man and also a HIV metaphor (the latter of which is extremely fucked, but others have written tons of meta on that so I will not touch on it). But then of course JKR had to retcon that real quick when she realized what fans were writing, so of course Sirius had to die and Remus had to end up with a woman.

My first anon of 2024 is also now my favorite one, I'm not sure how anyone is going to top this 😂

[buzzdixonwriter]

agAIn

(yet another in a never-ending series of kvetchings by yrs trly on the topic of AI vs. human creativity)

 I was looking at some AI images recently when it finally dawned on my why they were simultaneously so bland yet fascinating.

Rorschach tests are random inkblots intended to gain insight into a patient’s worldview by asking them to assign meaning to forms an d colors that literally have no meaning.

In and of themselves, the tests are useless without some foreknowledge of the test subjects mental state and personality.

It means one thing if a ten year old kid who loves monster movies sees Dracula in one set of blots, it means something entirely different if a middle-age woman with no interest in horror films sees the same thing.

We’ve all seen lots of deliberately imitative human art, sometimes created as an homage, sometimes as a parody, sometimes for purely utilitarian purposes such as an artist filling in for another on a comic strip.

But in all of these cases, there is a deliberate attempt by the artist to convey some sort of information.

There is a message being projected out to the world at large.

As such, it conveys a meaning, an intent.

It may not deliver it well…

…but it delivers it.

The image -- even a highly derivative imitative one -- is composed by the human artist based on values and insights they wish to convey to their audience.

On the other hand, AI assigns no values to the images it assembles.  Oh, the prompter may have laid out explicit instructions in their prompt, but the same prompt will produce an endless stream of somewhat similar yet far from identical images.

The AI can only function with the values assigned it.

It can not “look” at something a perceive a heretofore unseen value.

Which is why humans viewing AI images are not skillfully guided to a message an artist intends for them to receive but rather are invited to cast their own interpretations on what is pretty much a random collection of images thrown together.

Mind you, this can be a fun exercise.  I’ve seen countless AI images that spark story ideas in me widdle head.

Conversely, when I see human generated art -- be it old masters or old comics or just plain old advertising -- I’m not mentally creating a new story but rather looking at one that’s already been told.

And, yeah, I’m fully aware the fictoids I post daily seem to contradict this but they don’t!

Those fictoids are created by taking the intended message and deliberately subverting it.

Trust me, a much harder task to accomplish with AI images.

It strikes me AI art is akin to the dream state.

He run a parade of hallucinations through our minds in our sleep, and out of our human desire for some sort of order, we create order out of the chaos, no matter how surrealistic it may be in the cold light of morning.

I wonder if AI is denying humans the ability to dream, not in the literally biological sense, but in the deeper, more profound spiritual one.

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” -- T. E. Lawrence

  © Buzz Dixon

[mariacallous]

(New York Jewish Week) — The corner of Ludlow and Rivington streets in New York City is now officially known as Beastie Boys Square.

The co-naming of this Lower East Side street corner — where the shop featured on the Jewish rappers’ second album, “Paul’s Boutique,” once stood — was the result of a 10-year effort spearheaded by Leroy McCarthy, an activist who has successfully lobbied for other New York City streets named in honor of rappers, including Notorious B.I.G. and the Wu-Tang Clan.  

Hundreds of New Yorkers packed the downtown intersection Saturday afternoon for the official unveiling of Beastie Boys Square. Though some kvetched about the humidity and the unexplained 80-minute delay, the Gen X-heavy crowd — plus a smattering of their offspring — was a respectful one, singing along to years’ worth of Beastie Boys songs played on loudspeakers as they waited for the ceremony to begin, and for the appearance of the two people everyone had come to see: Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond.

Horowitz, Diamond and Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died in 2012 at 47, formed their highly influential band in New York City in 1981. Though they started as a teenage punk band, they eventually pivoted to hip-hop — and after their first rap album — 1986’s “Licensed to Ill,” produced by fellow Jewish hip-hop fan Rick Rubin — produced a series of hits, the Beastie Boys became household names. 

The group followed up with 1989’s sample-heavy “Paul’s Boutique” — featuring the photograph of the Lower East Side street corner — which flopped upon its release but is now widely considered a masterpiece. Their next albums, 1992’s “Check Your Head” and 1994’s “Ill Communication” were cultural juggernauts, and four more albums followed.  

All three Beastie Boys have Jewish backgrounds: Horovitz, 56, grew up on Park Avenue, the son of playwright Israel Horovitz and a Roman Catholic mother. Diamond, 57, grew up on the Upper West Side; his father, Harold, was an art dealer and his mother, Hester, was a famous decorator and art collector. Yauch hailed from Brooklyn Heights, the only child of Frances, a Jewish social worker, and a non-Jewish architect.

In 2004, the group gave a very Jewish interview with Heeb magazine, in which Yauch disclosed he was trying to get his Uncle Freddy to teach him some Yiddish “so I could work some Yiddish lyrics on an album.” Diamond said he was raised by “a Barney Greengrass family,” referring to the famous Upper West Side appetizing shop.

Following Yauch’s death from cancer, the group disbanded. So, on Saturday, anticipation crept up alongside the mercury in the thermometer as the crowd waited to catch a glimpse of the remaining Beasties. 

But first, local politicians had things to say. Kicking off the speeches with a “mic check” or two was Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who put the Beasties’ Jewishness front and center.

“I was 16 when ‘Licensed to Ill’ came out — it was like a thunderbolt came down and struck me,” he said. “Now, I know these guys didn’t advertise it, but trust me: Every Jewish kid in America, we knew they were Diamond and Yauch and Horowitz.”

“Were you a Jewish kid in America back in the 80s and 90s?” Levine shouted to the crowd, and many — including this reporter — cheered back. “Yes you were! Personally, that was the first moment I realized there was maybe a faint hope that I could be cool. It didn’t work out, but I still have hope.”

As it happens, the Beasties have a few Jewish lyrics in their stable, including biblical references, a shoutout to Ellis Island, and Ad-Rock’s line “Well I’m a funky-ass Jew and I’m on my way/ And yes I got to say f— the KKK” on “Right Right Now Now” from the 2004 album “To the 5 Boroughs.”

Three other local politicians spoke: Assembly member Grace Lee and City Council members Carlina Rivera and Christopher Marte, the last of whom Levine credited with making Beastie Boys Square happen.

“You have no idea how hard it is to get a street renamed in New York,” Levine said of Marte. “He did it.” 

The activist McCarthy’s initial proposal for Beastie Boys Square was rejected by Community Board 3 in 2014 because the name change didn’t meet requirements. McCarthy was subsequently barred from reapplying for the name change for another five years. His renewed proposal was approved in 2022 with the support of Marte and other local politicians. In 2013, a small Brooklyn playground was named for Yauch. 

At last, it was time for the main event, and Horovitz and Diamond took to the stage while the crowd cheered. Horovitz, who said he “brought notes,” spoke first, exclaiming that he didn’t realize other people would be speaking. “Sorry if I’m saying what they said,” he said, thanking McCarthy and “everyone who loves Beastie Boys music.” 

“I don’t really understand why, but I know that I love it, so in a way that makes us kind of friends, right?” he added. “Like we bonded over these weird records, so thank you.”

He also thanked New York City, not only for the street renaming, but “for teaching us what to look at, what to listen to, what to wear, how to love, how to live.”

Next, Diamond took the mic, thanking the crowd for coming despite the heat. “Everyone is so dedicated, willing to put in the work to show the love, not only for this band, but, I think, everything we came from, coming from New York City.”

After giving a shoutout to his deceased parents, Diamond also expressed his love for New York, saying that the Beastie Boys couldn’t have come from anywhere else. “Growing up here in New York City and hearing all this incredible music, being all this incredible art, being around all these incredible people — this only in New York City,” he said. “So thank you so much, y’all.”

He concluded his remarks with moving words for Yauch, whom he described as their “brother on this amazing journey.” The crowd responded with chants of “MCA! MCA!”

But Horowitz, who appeared to get a bit verklempt as he concluded his speech, arguably summed up the meaning of the event best. 

“We walk around these streets and we don’t really think about who they’re named after, like Ludlow Street, Irving Street, Father Demo Square,” he said. “But it makes me really happy to know that some kid on their way to school 50 years from now is gonna pass by this and look up and be like, ‘What the f— is a Beastie Boy and why do they have a square?’ Just like I did when I was a kid, looking at Perry Street, Charles Street, wondering what it’s about.” 

[dyke-terra]

Tip for anyone who wants to learn more about the world or gain useful skills but struggles because it’s not their special interest or hyperfixation: tie that learning to your hyperfixation! Unironically, I’ve spent the past quarter year using my interest as comics as a jumping board to get into real world history/current events because I wanted to understand the context my blorbos were in. Not going to say I’m an expert on anything, I’m one hundred percent not, but I’m a lot more equipped to kvetch about why a comic from the 90s I was already obsessed with makes no gddamn sense (but compels me, though.)

Interested in learning about other cultures but hyperfixated on Supernatural? Maybe look into how mythological figures were/are perceived across different faiths and how the modern notion of angels evolved. If that’s too big, start with looking into specifically what a biblically accurate angel is (because it’s probably not what you think!) A fan of the DreamSMP who wants to understand systems of oppression but unsure where to start? Try looking at specific anarchist or anarchist adjacent movements. One I’m currently learning about is Rojava in Eastern Syria, but Catalonia is an interesting, exciting one too.

This works for skills too. Obviously, a lot of people get into writing because of fanfic, art because of fanart, but cosplay is REALLY useful as a jumping off point for other skills. Sewing, to start with, but 3D printing, vacuum forming, mold making, woodworking… and you don’t need to jump in the deep end. In fact, you shouldn’t! It’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed. Be intentional about gaining skills but focus on what you’re doing at the moment and also focus on your blorbo! You can become more like them, or you can gain context as to why they are the way they are.

It’s important to remember that the knowledge you gained isn’t any less useful because of why you learned it.

If you have any hyperfixations you want help connecting to real world useful information, my ask box is open. Though I’m obviously not an expert on everything.

[madtomedgar]

17 18 25

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art:

I feel like half of my posts are just "there isn't enough fic with x" but my real answer to this is LESBIAN XIYAO. LESBIAN XIYAO with plot!! Lesbian Xiyao that isn't either a g-rated sweet one-shot or pwp. More of this now please.

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

My girl Jiaojiao. To be fair I haven't done anything for her except for one big meta post but. There should be more Jiaojiao content, especially more like. long-form stories where she somehow Survives and the story becomes a comedy from her perspective.

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing:

I am so so tired of the complaints about "x characters fans" and like "how could you thing x character [thing it's pretty reasonable to expect a lot of fans to think if you've been in any fandom before or paid attention to the source material]. In general I'm a pretty live-and-let-live person in fandom, I stay in my lane and don't flip out if someone engages with a story in different ways than me, or gets something different out of it. If they're really annoying on my posts I block and move on, and if I need to kvetch I make my own post. But like... idk I find complaining constantly about how other people engage with a story or with characters to be kind of stupid. On the one hand, how is anyone surprised that villains tend to attract followings? Are you new here? Where did we lose you? On the other hand, it shouldn't be shocking that a lot of people who latched onto the protagonist and the main canon ship and don't care to explore the ways in which the antagonist also had points. And part of like "have fun and be yourself" is letting other people also do that, and if it's off-putting, which is fine, curating your own engagement rather than bemoaning that they aren't doing this to your standards. Idk. I also am sick of complaints about cql being the root of all bad takes because I think thats lazy, snobby, inaccurate, and unfair.

[viking369]

A Counter-Rant

A few weeks ago on YouTube, Mary Spender went after her "friend" Rick Beato over "Boomer Nostalgia". She started off with the strawman that Boomers think all current music is shit and all music from back in our day was gold-pressed latinum. Rlly Mary? First, there are ignorant, loud-mouthed assholes in every generation. Hells, there are MAGAt GenZeds FFS. They are the bulk of the bitchers and moaners in any group, and their opinions are a waste of ear space. Second, no Boomer with sufficient knowledge to have an informed opinion (Including Rick. And me.) thinks everything back in the day was great. We know there were bargeloads of densely packed dreck, even from big outfits (When was the last time anyone actually listened to all of Their Satanic Majesties Request?). Third, a lot of us (Including Rick. And me.) listen to current music. That's how we form our informed opinions. And that's where our problem with it kicks off.

Mary also makes the resnark that Boomers think all current music is written as quick cuts to back TikTok dancers. No Mary, no one with an opinion worth listening to thinks that. What we think is there is way too much current music that is exactly that, with a very bad result I'll get to below. For now, I'll just let Jeff Beck and Imelda May give a demonstration with a live performance of "Walking in the Sand", aka "Remember". You may think you've never heard this, but just wait until 2:12:

Yeah. You've heard that earworm six million times, electronically filtered up a fifth and with the living shit Autotuned out of it. And that's the problem. Too much of current music clogging too much bandwidth is just electronically generated pap. A snippet of a real song gets snagged, run through a machine, and shoved out there as art. Yes I know Wendy Carlos and Brian Eno (and Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman and....) used tons of electronics, but they could honestly play the shit out of their keyboards as well. And they played full-length pieces, not 30-second bugger flicks. Too much of current music isn't played, it's engineered (And to be fair, I don't like Glenn Gould, either.). If the relevant talent is the engineers and not the performers...

And the ultimate is Autotune. Nothing it generates sounds natural, but it's so effing ubiquitous, people now think that's how things sound. And that simply...

So no Mary, we're not just a bunch of kvetching geezers. We have a point, a good point, and you...

[jewishconvertthings]

Me: *joins a people described literally by G-d as stiff-necked and stubborn who are known for making arguing into a love language and complaining into an art form, in part because I am also like this; these are my people*

Also me: Why is there so much stubbornness, arguing, and kvetching??

Sometimes being in Jewish leadership at shul requires me to just take a step back, breathe, and say to myself, "you chose this."

[urlocallesbiab]

it is the devil's trap to spend more time than is necessarily wise on analysing character motivations, proposing various theoritical models of their inner worlds & considering which directions the plot could go in post-canon and which themes it could develop, and i have totally fucking fallen for it. now, having spent too much time on both the babygirlification of hugo friedkin and tinkering with s3 possibilities and headcanons, i am lost as how to being explaining to others the occult knowledge of hugo friedkin/michael assistent being fated lovers and literally perfect for each other, or mona wilder & farah black being best friends forever and impeccable foils to each other. i have dug for myself the rabbit hole/grave of obscure headcanons and rareships, and now must lie in it.

[willowcrowned]

Sorry you are so tired, feel better soon

thanks! I think I've managed my workload reasonably enough that I should be able to start getting some real rest soon, so fingers crossed

[sigmastolen]

so i've been distracting myself from reality with gargoyles the last couple weeks (before this it was x-men evolution and before that it was young justice and i gotta catch the new she-ra season but the next Nostalgia Binge might be beast wars or sailor moon... or !!  ohhhhh or the mighty ducks omg i was so obsessed) and we all knew this show was full of star trek but i just --

lexington: don't worry, i'll tell you what has to be done. brooklyn: oh yeah? you and what starfleet?

i died, i love it so much, it's still so good

[hotniatheron]

When referring to me on anon, please use the formal usted 

[augustheart]

i think that the cape comics fandom mantra of “comics suck don’t read comics” has been very detrimental to new readers and to the general state of comics fan circles online in general. criticizing something is good and it’s not exactly the death knell of the industry to go “i think this thing isn’t well written/has poor characterization/isn’t well illustrated,” far from it, but i guess it’s just… i don’t think it’s good to only ever tear down and complain about something that you claim to really love.

it’s also just not encouraging for people who want to get into comics. if comics suck and are universally terrible then why should someone read them instead of getting all their information from random comic panels referencing memes posted on twitter? consuming them that way must be inherently superior to actually reading them because comics are bad and these specific scenes are flukes in otherwise terrible issues, right? there's no point in reading comics if they're all just awful.

of course i'm guilty of this. there are definitely characters where i look at their backlog and i'm just like wow, all of this sucks, but at least more and more i'm seeing people explain why they don't like or wouldn't recommend something. and just saying "this comic sucks" can easily be shorthand for "this work has something fundamentally flawed in it like racism or misogyny or what have you" and it's good to discuss those things and call them out when they might be hiding behind a shiny exterior. but while i kvetch and moan about comics all the time i do earnestly love them. more than anything, i want people to love comics the way i do. i want them to like the characters i like and enjoy the stories i enjoy, because some of those stories are the best i’ve ever read anywhere! i want them to see this art form as something worthwhile and incredible!

comics are bad, but comics are also good. i think more people would like them if they knew that.

[brawltogethernow]

@mirrorfalls​ submitted: Came across this while searching for James Bond’s scrambled-eggs recipe (long story). Your thoughts?

~~

But did you find James Bond’s scrambled eggs recipe?

In this article, Scocca laments his inability to find accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable to read with his young son, while also demonstrating a mysterious aversion to looking at DC and Marvel’s lines of comics for children, which is where the accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable for reading with young children are. He wants his elementary schooler to be able to safely have the run of all superhero media so he doesn’t have to touch the yucky baby books.

This is not an industry-wide crisis. This is just one dude who got paid to write an article where he accidentally exposed one of his personal hangups.

The child headed toward the trade paperbacks of Marvel and D.C. superhero titles on the side wall […] a few steps in front of me. […] Is he with you? a clerk asked me. I said he was. You know, the clerk said, we have a kids’ section. The clerk gestured backward, at a few shelves near the entrance. I said, Thanks, we know and tried throwing in a little shrug, as the kid kept going.

You can’t just turn a seven-year-old child loose in a comic-book store to look at the superhero comic books. […] My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers movie […] that is, he wished it were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was, instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him—a movie actively hostile to people like him.

They have a children’s section. Because comics are a medium suitable for stories for everybody, and they are sold in comic book shops, which have sections, like bookstores. You can use this organization to find books that you know in advance are suitable for children. What goes in that category is determined by industry professionals. This area will be bigger the bigger the shop is. These comics are not lower quality that titles from the main lines. They are actually slightly better-written on average.

Your local comic book shop has considerately wrapped Empowered in a plastic bag, so your child will not be drawn in by a colorful superhero and accidentally read a graphic scene. If you think your kid might find a memoir about internment camps upsetting, it is your job to notice them picking up They Called Us Enemy and read the blurb on the back before you let them have it. This comic adults are meant to read is in a comic book shop because that is where comics are sold. Not every public place is supposed to be Disneyland.

Movies have ratings systems. If you do not want your child to watch a PG-13 movie, you will find that most superhero cartoons are for children. They are about the same characters. Some are quite good! I really enjoyed Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Your child may like Avengers Assemble. At least I think that’s right. I’m always mixing those titles around.

This is a deeply weird bias for Scocca to casually demonstrate, because he identifies in the article that real childishness is striving for empty maturity.

He compares an old comic,

[…]a 1966 Spider-Man comic in which Spider-Man meets, fights, and defeats the Rhino; participates in a running argument between John Jameson and J. Jonah Jameson about his heroism; buys a motorcycle; breaks up with his first girlfriend, Betty Brant; flirts with Gwen Stacy; and reluctantly agrees to let Aunt May take him to meet her friend Mrs. Watson’s niece, Mary Jane.

and a new comic,

[…]a 21st century comic book in which Thor, brooding in a Katrina-destroyed New Orleans, beats up Iron Man. He also yells at Iron Man a lot about some incomprehensibly convoluted set of grievances, including involuntary cloning, that he believes Iron Man perpetrated against him while he was dead(?), and then summons some other Norse god from the beyond somehow for reasons having something to do with real estate. I think. Where the 1966 comic is zippy and fun and complete, the whole contemporary one is muddled and lugubrious and seems to constitute a tiny piece of a seemingly endless plot arc—simultaneously apocalyptic and inert.

and concludes that the edgier comic is actually less mature. This is true. (This is not news about mediocre comics.)

It also has nothing to do with either comic being child-friendly, the article’s nominal thesis, except in the sense that ASM #41 (yes, I eyeballed that from that summary, yes I am just showing off now) is better written, making it more everyone-friendly. It also has practically more space dedicated to word balloons than art and is about a college student juggling girl problems and a part-time job with a tyrannical boss. But the immature one, as Scocca points out, is dour.

These are both teenagery issues, separated only by quality. It’s true that lots of new comics published by the big 2 are bad in the specific way Scocca describes here, taking themselves too seriously and hauled down by associated stories instead of buoyed by them. Some are not! Some titles from these companies’ main continuities are zippy, contained, and child friendly. Give your child The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Or if you like vintage comics so much better, why don’t you…buy some?

The books on the kid’s rack are good and fun and totally suitable for parents to read with their children without wanting to scoop their eyeballs out. Scocca cites the Batman ‘66 comics as the brightly colored, tightly written all ages solution to his problem about sharing superhero stories with his son. My local comic shop stores this title in the kid’s section. I am glad that Scocca’s does not, as he seems to have a peculiar aversion to looking for comics to read with his son there.

Scocca cites Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a superhero movie he could watch with his kids. (I was surprised when this line made it sound like he has several. I don’t want to assume the other one isn’t in this article because they’re a girl, but I very much am assuming that.) Great! Go to the kid’s section and look for Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. It’s a fun, zippy title directly inspired by ITSV where Miles, Gwen, and Peter superhero together. It’s much more tightly written than most of the various Spider-Verse comics, which are ambitiously messy ubercrossovers. You may not want to give those to children because they include murder and so on, but also you just have the choice between the two as an adult reader deciding how much continuity you want to deal with. Adventures is one of the only titles I would buy on sight before corona. The kid comic rack is a reliable place to take a break from How Comics Get Sometimes regardless of how old you are.

This article makes me feel quarrelsome. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t seem like exploration of a single idea so much as a loosely grouped bundle of things to kvetch about. Maybe it’s that the experience of getting into superheroes that Scocca describes experiencing, projects his seven-year-old son will experience, and from which he extrapolates a metaphorical microcosm of the history of the genre is completely alien to me.

Comic books [and] comic-book movies—are […] trapped in their imagined audience’s own awful passage from childhood to adolescence. A seven-year-old has a clean […] appreciation of superheroes. They like hero comics because the comics have heroes: bold, strong, vividly colored good guys to fight off the bad guys and make the world safe.

But seven-year-olds stop being seven. […] They become 13-year-olds, defensively trying to learn how to develop tastes about tastes.

The 13-year-old wants many things from comics, but the overarching one is that they want to prove that they’re not some seven-year-old baby anymore. They want gloomy heroes, miserable heroes, heroes who would make a seven-year-old feel bad. (Also boobs. They want boobs.)

Not because of the boobs line, although that does illicit an eyeroll that this gloomy thinkpiece is fretting over preserving the superhero experience of little boys who resemble the little boy the writer was while casually dismissing everyone else. I was one of those unlikable little seven-year-olds with a college reading level and the impression that maintaining it was the crux of my worth. I only read Books - distinguished media you could club someone with. I have a formative memory of pausing, enraptured, in front of a poster for Spider-Man 3, preparing to say that it looked pretty cool, and being beaten to the punch by my mother making a disparaging comment about how the movie was trash. It wasn’t out yet, but it was a superhero movie. That meant it was for loud, brainless children.

That was the total of my childhood experience with superheroes, excluding being the unwilling audience to incessant renditions of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that left me wondering why in god’s name Batman’s sidekick was named Robin. I certainly never visited a comic book shop. I got into TvTropes, which got me into webcomics, which got me following David Willis, who got me into Ask Chris at ComicsAlliance, which led to me rewarding myself for studying like a demon for the AP tests with three volumes of Waid’s Daredevil, pitched as a return to the character being colorful and swashbuckling. I was seven…teen.

This is of the same thread as Scocca’s point that immaturity is running from childish things. It leaves me baffled that he doesn’t follow that maturity is embracing them.

I will disclose here that while I think it was dumb I had to overcome my upbringing’s deeply embedded shame associated with enjoying arbitrarily defined lowbrow media and children being childish, I think it’s fine that I was allowed largely unchecked access to technically age-inappropriate content. In my limited experience, content small children are too young for is also content they’re too young to understand, so it kind of just bounces off of them, and what actually ends up terrorizing them is unpredictable collages of impressions that strike out at them from content deemed perfectly child-friendly. I would not forbid a seven-year-old I was in charge of from seeing an MCU movie unless I had a reason to believe that specific child would not take it well. These are emotionally low-stakes bubblegum films. It will probably be easier to socialize with other kids if they have seen them.

But then, when I picture being in charge of a hypothetical child, I usually imagine this being the case because they are related to me, and the pupal stage in my family strongly resembles Wednesday Addams. ALL children love death and violence, though, right?? This isn’t a joke point. I know it looks like a joke point.

The MCU thing seems especially weird in light of the article’s particular focus on Spider-Man, which is the kiddie line of the MCU, even if they refused to waver from their usual formula enough to get a lower rating. Though I am more inclined to describe it as “preying on the young” than “child-friendly”.

(MCU movies are increasingly dubious propaganda, but I would not judge them in front of a child who wanted to watch them for that reason, just in case this led to them partaking of them without me the second they were old enough to and then they grew up to run a blog about them while our relationship suffered because they didn’t feel like it was safe to talk to me about their interests…Mom.)

I tried to overcome the philosophy of letting anyone read anything while compiling this handful of mostly-newish superhero recs for the road that anyone can read. (Handily, I have been in spitting distance of being hired as a comic shop clerk enough to have thought about it before):

For actual children:

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man (the new one is reminiscent of ITSV, the old one is more like 616) any DC/Archie crossover, Archie’s Superteens The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (for bookish children who think they’re too good for comics and adults afraid of the kid’s section) Teen Titans Go (even if you hate the show) Superman Smashes the Klan

For teens:

Ms. Marvel Young Avengers (volume 2) Unbelievable Gwenpool Batman: Gotham Adventures Teen Titans Go (the tie-in comic based off the old show was also called this)

Here are a bunch of relevant C. S. Lewis quotes.

[mikauzoran]

Adrienette Drabble Twenty-Four: Request

Gabriel really wanted to akumatize someone. Honestly, he needed the stress relief because the deadlines were closing in on him, and the backers kept changing their minds, and he was about ready to tear his hair out.

He briefly considered taking up yoga or meditation. He’d read something about those being good for stress in one of the books about anxiety he’d read to help Adrien.

Gabriel looked down at his screen and sighed. He’d been working on this last-minute project for the past three hours, and he really needed a break. He couldn’t take a break if he wanted to go to sleep at a decent time. 

He really wanted to go whine at Nathalie. She would have something constructive to say.

He was also tempted to go find Plagg. Plagg had elevated kvetching to an art form, and Plagg would definitely have a snarky and poignant remark that would make Gabriel’s personal deadline hell a bit more bearable.

It was at this time that Gabriel was surprised to find himself thinking about Nooroo. The little kwami had always been so…oddly enough, supportive. Tentatively encouraging Gabriel…only to be snapped at, fussing over Gabriel’s health and well-being (to be forcibly silenced), worrying when Gabriel pushed himself too hard, hesitantly trying to comfort Gabriel when he failed time and time again…Nooroo had been unwavering in his dedication to his master. And Gabriel had treated Nooroo as a tool, a thing with no thoughts or feelings.

Gabriel had never thought of kwamis as sentient beings before meeting Plagg, and now—

There was a knock at the atelier door.

“Come in?”

Adrien tentatively peeked his head inside. “Hi, Dad. Is now a good time?” 

Adrien mentally crossed his fingers because it hadn’t been a good time the past week and a half, and now he only had two hours until he had to leave if he were going to go.

Gabriel looked down at the urgent email that required an immediate response. He pursed his lips. “Is this important?”

Adrien wilted slightly and was forced to admit, “…No. No, it’s not important. I just had to ask your permission for something.”

“Then why don’t you ask Nathalie?” Gabriel proposed, delighting in the fact that he now had an official co-parent in his fiancée to whom he could cede authority without society criticizing him for neglecting his child.

“I already did,” Adrien begrudgingly confessed.

Gabriel’s brow creased in confusion. “And…?”

“She said yes, but then she said I needed to go ask you because you would most likely say no,” Adrien informed out of the side of his mouth, reluctantly releasing the information.

“Can this wait?” Gabriel looked back down at his screen and the additional emails that had arrived that he’d need to deal with. “I’m actually quite busy at the moment, and I don’t really have time for—”

Gabriel stopped dead when he realized he was about to tell his son that he didn’t have time for him.

Gabriel closed his mouth, really looked at Adrien—hopeful yet not truly believing, battered dog wondering if he was going to get kicked this time—and sighed. “Give me ten minutes to finish this email correspondence. Can this wait ten minutes?”

“Yes, Father,” Adrien replied, brightening incrementally.

“All right. Go wait for me in the dining room in the seating area. If I’m not there in ten minutes, please come back and remind me that part of the reason I’m even running this fashion empire in the first place is to provide for my son. I get caught up in the work and forget sometimes,” Gabriel confessed with a weary sigh.

Adrien grinned, practically glowing at being reminded that he was important. “Thanks, Dad.”

It was concerning how easy it was to make that boy happy.

 “All right,” Gabriel sighed, taking a seat across the coffee table from Adrien. “What did you need to ask my permission for that Nathalie thinks I’m going to veto?”

Adrien bit his lip. “So…there’s this party.”

“Oh,” Gabriel groaned. “I see.”

“Yeah,” Adrien sighed.

“Keep talking,” Gabriel urged. “I’ll try to be open-minded.”

“Chloé’s throwing a graduation party tonight since…well, you know. We graduated high school this morning,” Adrien continued awkwardly.

Gabriel bit the inside of his cheek. “How many people are going to be there?”

“One or two hundred-ish?” Adrien guesstimated. “The people from our year mostly and their dates and plus ones.”

Gabriel nodded. “And where is this party taking place?”

“Chloé rented a boat. They’re going to do the same stretch up and down the Seine as the bateaux mouches from the Eiffel Tower to just past Notre Dame.”

“And will there be drinking?” Gabriel continued his investigation.

Adrien winced. “Well…we’re all eighteen now, so…”

“If you were allowed to go, would you be drinking?” Gabriel changed the question.

Adrien opened his mouth to vehemently deny any intention of wrongdoing, but Gabriel cut him off.

“—Don’t just tell me what you think I want to hear. How am I supposed to trust you on your own if we can’t sit down and honestly discuss expectations and guidelines and-and…I forget what else the parenting guidebooks said, but the gist of it was that you were supposed to be able to tell me you were thinking about having sex, and then I was not to overreact and forbid it and lock you in your room as would be my natural inclination, but I was instead to make sure that you were having safe sex instead of going behind my back. I assume that the same principles apply to allowing you to go to parties or karaoke or what have you.”

Adrien winced again, trying not to think too hard about this very awkward conversation they were having. “Okay. Fine. So if you let me go to the party, I’ll probably sip at a glass of wine or two depending on if there’s food to have with it, but, regardless, I’m not going to get drunk because I know being drunk in public is against the rules for very good reasons. Even if it weren’t, I can’t get drunk because what if there’s an akuma? I have to be sober enough to fight. If I’m not, who’s going to protect Ma—My Lady?”

Gabriel nodded slowly. “That’s…very mature of you.” His son seemed to be constantly surprising him now that Gabriel took the time to notice.

Adrien shrugged. “A lot of people count on me to keep them safe; I don’t have the luxury of being a stupid teenager. Besides, I’d never forgive myself if I were irresponsible and something happened to Ladybug because of it…. I love her too much to risk it.”

Suddenly, from the look in Adrien’s eyes and the expression on his face, Gabriel thought he knew who Ladybug was, and it was a very scary thought.

“Wouldn’t you do the same for Mother or Nathalie?” Adrien tried to make Gabriel understand, not knowing the truth of how far exactly his father had gone for Emilie.

“Of course,” Gabriel replied softly. “…So…I gather that I don’t need to worry about your comportment, if I allow you to go to this party?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not advertently going to get myself on the front of the gossip rags. I was just planning on dancing and chatting with friends. And, I mean, it’s been years since I’ve done a boat ride down the Seine, so that sounded like fun,” Adrien tentatively made his case.

Gabriel snickered, “So no dancing on tables or singing in public tonight?”

Adrien’s face went strawberry red. “There was no table dancing the other night either,” he protested. “I know that if I want to dance on tables, I’ll have to do so as Chat Noir because Adrien Agreste would never get away with it.”

“Is dancing on tables something you would be interested in?” Gabriel had to wonder.

Adrien pursed his lips in thought for a moment before replying. “…Yes? It looks like fun.”

“…Don’t they often dance on tables in musicals? Perhaps we could find you a suitable musical to participate in,” Gabriel offered, trying to be supportive without having a solid grasp of how one managed that.

Adrien stared at his father, wondering how the man had transformed so much in such a short amount of time and, furthermore, why. Had it been because of Adrien’s struggles as of late? If Adrien had known that all it would take to get his father’s attention would be to have a mental breakdown, Adrien would have done so years earlier.

“I…would really, really like that,” Adrien replied in a small voice that hinted at how afraid he was to believe the proposal was a genuine one, lest he wind up disappointed yet again.

“Perhaps the four of us can watch some musicals together to try to find a good fit?” Gabriel suggested. “If Plagg doesn’t mind musicals.”

Truthfully, the prospect of theatre coming back into his life without Emilie along with it was an uncomfortable one for Gabriel, but…if it was important to Adrien…if theatre was something Adrien really wanted to do…

“Could we actually?” Adrien gawked openly at his father. “You’d be okay with that?”

Gabriel shifted, unsettled. “I’ve decided to work on being okay with it. If you’re serious?”

Adrien nodded. “I’ve always loved acting. These past few years…” He swallowed down the upwelling emotion. “I’ve missed it. I would really like acting to be a part of my life again, even without…”

Gabriel took a deep breath. “…Your mother would be proud of you. She…Emilie could chatter on about plays for hours…. I’m sorry that she’s not here to share this with you. I’m sorry that I can’t…can’t talk about theatre like she could.”

Adrien shook his head and smiled softly. “It’s okay, Dad. It’s not your fault.”

Gabriel was about to reply that it really was, even if Adrien couldn’t understand that at the moment, but Plagg poked his head out of Adrien’s shirt collar and fixed Gabriel with a knowing look.

“Gabe,” Plagg intoned. “What have we been talking about? Emilie isn’t your fault, okay?”

Gabriel grumbled in dissent. “We shall have to continue our debate on the subject of what exactly I am to be held accountable for at a later date, Plagg, as we still find ourselves in disagreement.”

“I’m going to win this debate,” Plagg warned. “But not in front of the kid.”

Gabriel gave a snort, and Plagg disappeared back down Adrien’s shirt out of habit.

Adrien furrowed his brow. “Do I want to know?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel answered honestly. “You’d probably want to know but then regret knowing. I’ll tell you in a few years, though. If or when you ever decide to move out. It will perhaps be easier to tell you if you’re leaving anyway.”

Adrien’s frown deepened. “Now I’m concerned. You haven’t killed anyone, have you?” he joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Gabriel’s eyebrows inched together almost imperceptibly…because he had. All the people killed when akuma destroyed buildings. All the people drowned when akuma put Paris underwater. The people frozen when Paris was encapsulated in ice. Adrien. Gabriel had killed Adrien so many times, it made him sick to even think about it.

Gabriel needed to buy Marinette some really high-end supplies in order to thank her for handing Gabriel his own behind and reviving his son so many times.

“Dad?” Adrien eyed him warily.

“No one is currently deceased by my doing,” Gabriel finally replied. “…Where were we?”

Adrien bit his lip, studying his father for a moment longer before shaking off the odd occurrence. “I was wondering…why did I never get in trouble for karaoke last week? I deliberately misled you and did something I knew you wouldn’t approve of.”

Gabriel took a deep breath and switched the cross of his legs. “That. Is a good question. By all rights, I should have grounded you and taken away privileges. The guidebooks recommend punishing you with the natural and logical consequences of your actions, so I was thinking I should say no the next few times you asked to do something to show you that when you’re dishonest with me, you lose my trust.”

“Sorry,” Adrien mumbled, casting his eyes downward.

“That makes two of us,” Gabriel sighed softly, his words painted with remorse. “I was disappointed that you felt the need to be dishonest with me. I know we’ve historically struggled with communication, but I thought we were doing better lately.”

“I really wanted to go,” Adrien whispered plaintively at his feet. “I was having a tough day at school. I gave eating in the lunchroom with Nino and Chloé and Sabrina another shot, and…it was pretty stressful, so, later, when Nino suggested karaoke with the gang…I really wanted to go,” Adrien repeated. “And you would have said no.”

“Of course I would have said no,” Gabriel sighed. “And I would have been wrong.”

Adrien cautiously looked up, a dozen questions in his gaze. “Really?”

Gabriel nodded. “You are aware that we monitor social media for mentions of you, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Apparently, Nathalie was informed not long after you arrived at the bar that you had been sighted there. She analyzed the situation and made the decision not to inform me until three quarters of the way into the night. I was exceedingly displeased, as I’m sure you can imagine; however, Nathalie interceded on your behalf. The feedback on social media was overwhelmingly positive. There was no dancing on tables or public displays of intoxication. The song choices, while full of sexual undertones were not explicitly or inappropriately sexual. You were behaving well, and you even sang well. No disgrace brought upon the company. No stain on your own reputation. Just…you being a normal teenager. It was almost as if you were a mature young adult who could be trusted to go out in public unsupervised. Nathalie showed me the videos and pictures, and I was proud of you.”

It took Adrien a minute to formulate an answer through his shock. “Really?”

“Yes,” Gabriel insisted, meeting his son’s gaze. “I was proud of how you could go out and have fun but still make responsible choices on behalf of yourself and the company. It reflects well on how Emilie and Nathalie raised you. I was proud that, even though you’ve been somewhat more restricted than your peers throughout your life, you didn’t take advantage of your newfound freedom and go wild as soon as you were able. And while I still am not comfortable with the idea of you going out to bars and such establishments, it’s good to know that I can trust you to go and beave in a manner befitting yourself and your family. I never would have known that if you had been completely honest about your plans.”

“So that’s why you didn’t say anything,” Adrien muttered in understanding.

Gabriel nodded. “I didn’t want to condone your dishonesty by praising you for your actions, but it would have been wrong to punish you for doing something that, as a technical adult, you had the technical right to do.”

“So…the party tonight?” Adrien inquired tentatively.

Gabriel pressed his lips into a thin line. “While you have proven that you can be trusted to comport yourself appropriately in an informal social setting…I still have my reservations about allowing you to attend this event. Is Miss Dupain-Cheng going to be there?”

Adrien winced. “Maybe? Chloé said she’d invited the whole year, so I assume Marinette was invited, but it’s not like I’ve been able to ask her about whether she’s going. I haven’t spoken with her since she called me a week ago, so…” Adrien gave a half-hearted shrug.

Gabriel’s frown deepened. “Well, which friends are you going to be spending the party with? I suspect Miss Bourgeois will be busy with her hostess duties and will not be able to spend the entire evening with you. How about Miss Raincomprix?”

Adrien’s shoulders rose up to meet his ears. “Sabrina doesn’t exactly…like me. She’ll be nice and hang out with me if we’re together with Chloé, but I doubt she’d spend time with me on her own.”

“Is there a reason she doesn’t like you?” Gabriel pried, wondering if there was anything he could do to fix it for his son. “Did you two have a fight?”

Adrien gradually shrank further. “So…Sabrina doesn’t like it when other people are around Chloé. She gets kind of jealous, so the fact that I’ve been friends with Chloé longer bothers her, and now that Chloé and I are spending time alone without Sabrina…”

Gabriel raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Does Miss Raincomprix not understand that it is possible to be friends with more than one person at a time?”

Adrien averted his gaze. “Okay, so…pretend that Sabrina is Chloé’s boyfriend and Chloé is spending all this time and being affectionate with another guy—me. Does that make the situation make more sense?”

Gabriel’s eyes widened. “Does…Is…Is Miss Raincomprix Miss Bourgeois’s…boyfriend?”

Society nowadays disconcerted Gabriel at times. Emilie would have smacked him for being a homophobe, but Gabriel couldn’t help but feel that two women dating each other wasn’t quite right.

Adrien shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “Chloé isn’t interested in Sabrina like that. She likes guys…I think…and Ladybug…and maybe Kagami, if Elise is to be believed…but Chloé doesn’t like Sabrina, and I don’t even know that Sabrina actually has those kinds of feelings for Chloé either, but the situation between Sabrina and me is a similar kind of hostility.”

“I…see.” Gabriel did not, really. “So…is Miss Tsurugi going to be attending?”

Adrien kept averting his gaze. “Uh…Chloé invited her, even though she doesn’t go to our school, but Kagami’s mother said she couldn’t go.”

Gabriel nodded. “Was Miss O’Leary invited? I realize she is not a student at your school either, but I’ve noticed that you, Miss O’Leary, Miss Bourgeois, Miss Tsurugi, and Monsieur Lahiffe have been spending time together often as of late.”

Adrien nodded. “Elise was invited, but she already had plans with her dad’s family visiting from Ireland, so she’s not going to be able to make it.”

Gabriel’s brow scrunched. “Then…whom are you to be spending the evening with? Miss Césaire?”

Adrien grimaced. “She’s…probably going to be with Marinette if she’s there. I mean, I’m guessing Alya will be there because Nino is DJing, and Alya never misses one of his gigs, so if Marinette isn’t at the party I’ll hang out with Alya, but…”

“So…you’ll primarily be spending the party with Monsieur Lahiffe?” Gabriel tried to pin down the answer.

Adrien shrugged. “Nino will be busy working. Chloé is actually paying him to DJ, so he probably won’t have a lot of time to spend with me, but I can hang out near the DJ booth, and we can talk between songs.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to ask a question that had been buzzing in the back of his mind since he had seen photos of his son dancing with Nino Lahiffe a week and a half before…but Gabriel lost his nerve to ask.

“What?” Adrien’s brow creased. “What’s that face for?”

Gabriel opened and closed his mouth twice more before managing to form the words, “What exactly is the nature of your relationship with Monsieur Lahiffe?”

Adrien’s eyebrow arched. “Nino’s my best friend. Why?”

Gabriel’s eye twitched. “Well…he’s always been very protective of you…very vocal about how not a good parent I am…and I know he and Miss Césaire have been dating for some time, but…the videos of you two singing together…and the pictures of you dancing…it just…it looks a little…intimate, to put it delicately.”

“O-Oh.” Adrien blushed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “You think? Um…Well…Nino’s just a friend, so…do friends not…act like that? Nino, Alya, Marinette, Chloé, Elise, and Wayem are all really affectionate, and those are the only close friends I’ve ever had besides Kagami, and I just thought she was different because of her Japanese upbringing, so…”

Gabriel bit his lip, wondering if his son was right. Gabriel hadn’t had many close relationships himself, and he wasn’t exactly familiar with how young people interacted. “Perhaps you’re right,” Gabriel conceded. “Perhaps that is how people of your generation express friendly affection, but to someone of my age, two young men hanging on each other like that is…”

“Is…this a problem?” Adrien inquired, voice shaking with nerves, a cold panic on his face.

Gabriel thought carefully before responding. “Not…necessarily…. Adrien…do you…are you…interested in men?”

Adrien choked, spluttering, “I mean… No?” He winced. “Not…like that. I know there are a bunch of different labels; I’m not sure which one applies to me, but while I do find men attractive from the waist up, I’m not interested in sleeping with guys, so…okay?”

“…Okay.” Gabriel nodded. “Thank you…for talking about that with me.”

“Sure.” Adrien shifted uncomfortably. “You’re welcome.”

“Adrien?” Gabriel called hesitantly.

Adrien cocked his head to the side.

“I would love you anyway,” Gabriel assured. “If you did…if you were… I would still love you,” Gabriel stressed, trying to get his point across even as he tripped over his words. “I just don’t think I could…accept…your boyfriend, if you were to have a boyfriend. The parenting guidebooks say that I cannot forbid you from dating men, but…I would very much like to forbid you from dating men.”

Adrien smiled sadly. “I don’t foresee this being a problem. There’s only one person I’m interested in dating, so…”

Gabriel swallowed hard. “R-Right. Okay…. Good.”

There was an awkward beat before Adrien took it upon himself to steer the conversation back to less treacherous waters. “So…party?”

“Right.” Gabriel cleared his throat. “Adrien, I’m not so sure about this. Maybe if the party were on a stationary vessel or if more of your friend group were going to be present or if Miss O’Leary were there to supervise, but…I’m not sure that it’s a good idea for you to be trapped onboard with no way to escape as Adrien in case something happens that upsets you.”

“Please?” Adrien begged. “I’ll be fine. Plagg will be with me.”

“Kid, I’m always with you,” Plagg scoffed. “Fat lot of good it does most of the time. I’m not so sure about this party either.”

“Come on,” Adrien wheedled. “It’s probably going to be the last chance I have to hang out with all of my schoolmates before we go off our separate ways for university and life and everything. Even if it’s challenging and makes me a little anxious like eating down in the lunchroom, I still want to go.”

Gabriel reached up to run a hand through his hair. “I’m going to regret this,” he sighed.

Adrien brightened. “I can go?”

“You may go,” Gabriel groaned, taking off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose. “But you call me if there’s any kind of issue at all. I’ll be up half the night working on this project anyway, so don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Dad! You rock!” Adrien cheered, bouncing to his feet.

Gabriel reluctantly stood. “I’m not so sure about that…. You know the rules?”

“No drinking to excess, no making out with anyone in public, always be courteous and polite,” Adrien listed. “behave in a way that reflects well on the company and the Agreste name, always act as if you’re on camera because you just might be…” Adrien cocked an eyebrow at his father. “Am I forgetting anything?”

Gabriel smiled wanly. “I think that will suffice for tonight. Please be safe, and please, please have a good time.”

“I’ll do my best,” Adrien assured, secretly delighting in the fact that his father had just said “please”—a previously unheard of word—three times in the same sentence. “You know, providing Chloé doesn’t get anyone akumatized.”

“She’s gotten better about that in recent years,” Gabriel remarked, walking with Adrien out into the foyer. Lila had been picking up the slack.

“Yeah, but she’s still got a higher body count than almost anyone, and all her usual victims will be in attendance, so…”

“Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and Papillon will stay quiet a little longer,” Gabriel offered.

Adrien hummed softly. “I wonder if he’s on an extended holiday or something…. Is it totally weird that I kind of miss him?” Adrien glanced hesitantly up at his father.

Gabriel winced. “What? Are you bored? There are dozens of much safer things to do than fighting supervillains. Don’t miss Papillon.”

Adrien shrugged, making for the staircase up to his room. “Thanks again, Dad!”

Gabriel watched his son go, praying this party wasn’t a mistake.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#10yrsago A journey through my junk: happy Down the Rabbit Hole day!

As previously mentioned, today is "Down the Rabbit Hole" day, when bloggers are encouraged to post in a different style from their accustomed one. I don't think I can manage a whole day of that, but I'm willing to kick in one post, anyway.

I don't normally write much about my personal life here, partly because I'm pretty jealous of my privacy and partly because it's just not the kind of thing we do here (but that's the point of Rabbit Hole day, of course!).

Last November, Alice and I had our big, grand wedding in Toronto, and invited all my friends. Now, I haven't lived in Toronto for nearly ten years, but for most of that time, I've had a storage locker there, filled with the memories of the three decades I spent in the town of my birth before I left, first for California, then for the UK, then for California, then for the UK again. I've delved into the locker on three occasions, attempting to figure out what I had in it and what I was going to do with it all. The first time, I confronted the incredible, jammed-together mountain of junk and boxes, opened a few, and gave up (it didn't help that the rest of my family had filled all the remaining spaces with their unloved junk). The second time, I showed up with more resolve: I was going to sort through everygoddamnedthing and figure out what I was shipping to London, what I was giving away, what was headed for the dumpster and what needed to be shredded.

That was last spring, when we went back to Toronto with the baby for her first visit to meet her Canadian family, over Passover week. I spent a dusty afternoon, opening boxes, looking through them, sorting them into piles and putting them back together. It was an incredibly emotional experience. The boxes hadn't been packed very intelligently: years before, I'd come back to the warehouse loft I'd shared with my ex, and stuck all the junk I thought I couldn't part with in boxes. It was miserable. The stuff was filthy, and there was so much emotion in this stuff, which felt more like the wreckage of a past life than the memories thereof, that I just lost the capacity to be careful and discriminating, and by the end of it, I had some 80 boxes of random and assorted crapola that disappeared into the locker for most of a decade before I saw it again.

There were enormous piles of books, of course. I'd worked in libraries and bookstores from the age of 12 to the age of 23, and I'd amassed some 10,000 of the little wooden bastards. I had previously believed that these books were my identity, that you could know a man by the books he kept, that I'd be able to read their spines and find in them a palimpsest of all the people I'd been on the way to becoming the person I was. But once I'd been separated from them, I discovered that I barely missed them. Now and again, I'd need to reference something in one of them and I'd find it on Amazon, usually for less than a buck. The books went to my brother's school, where they've been integrated into the school library. Books should be read, not stored, and there's plenty there to make normal kids into happy mutants.

There were boxes of cassettes and VHS cassettes, including a trove of fantastic mixtapes that I'd exchanged with friends and as a courtship ritual over the years. Ten years before, I'd been unable to part with them. Now, it was easy: off to the thriftstore with them. I can download that stuff whenever I need it.

There were boxes of t-shirts, and these, weirdly enough, were harder to get rid of. I find myself sentimentally attached to a shocking quantity of tees. The Rocky Horror tee I wore every Friday for years to the Roxy theater in Toronto. The shirt from Grindstone Island is part of a small trove of memorabilia I have from the place (including a hammered-together chest made from old fruit boxes, and a complete run of WHOLE EARTH CATALOGs) that, to this day, is the place that I think of when I want to imagine perfect peace and happiness. Sometimes, I wonder if my life peaked at 17, there on a 12-acre island in the middle of Big Rideau Lake, listening to the loons and swinging in the hammock on Moonwatcher's Point, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and talking all night long.

There was some art, and a few wardrobe pieces from my teens and twenties, including my beat up old punk leather jacked, covered in chains, worn to shreds, with stencils on the back. Maybe Poesy will wear it someday. Angry leather jackets never really go out of style.

There were my files -- all my juvenilia, the stories I wrote in elementary school and high school (including Tommy the Toenail Tarantula, with some damned good illustrations by Toby Muller -- where are you these days, Toby?). A truly fantastic quantity of photocopied material about Disney World. A thick folder of anti-fascist material from the John Brown/Anti-KKK League in San Francisco, whom I used to send away to for stickers, fliers and other material. And correspondence -- all the letters and postcards, the lovenotes and snapshots.

The snapshots deserve their own paragraph. One thing I realized: I dressed a lot better in my teens than in my twenties. Partly that was the fact that teenagers can get away with some pretty daring fashion. Partly it was that I spent my twenties trying to figure out what someone who had suddenly found himself working real jobs for real money wore (I went from working for tiny wages in a bookstore to doing Internet work that paid as much as my parents earned pretty much overnight, somewhere around 1993). Partly it was that I gained a ton of weight when I was about 23, and kept it on until I was about 32 and I discovered Atkins.

Another thing I realized: the girls I dated in my teens were knockouts, absolutely out of my league. And not just me, either. When I look at the photos of all my pals in their couples, the teenaged boys look lumpy or gangly, unfinished, with bad facial hair (shocking realization du jour: I look terrible with giant sideburns). The girls, by contrast, look pretty much fantastic. They're put together, confident, striking. All the couples look like beauty and the beast.

What else was there? A complete set of original Star Trek action figures and an Enterprise playset with the cool-ass transporter/spinner thing. The original, absolutely fabulous Haunted Mansion board game. A pretty good selection of Disney-attraction-themed boardgames and tin lunchboxes.

Tax docs. Bags of receipts. An entire carton of dead SCSI drives that had to be sent for secure disposal.

The next time I saw my stuff was a few days before I got married in Toronto. I had movers from Hudson Movers meet me at the locker. They were fabulous -- took the charity shop donations, the school donations, the art supplies I sent to Klockwerks, and all the stuff to ship to London away. They packed the shipment, filled in the customs forms, and put it all on the proverbial slow boat.

Two weeks ago, the boxes showed up at my office here in London, and I had a much longer pass through the stuff. By this point, it had been whittled down to six boxes. The books went onto the shelves, the t-shirts went into the storage closet, and a trove of my chewed kids' books and stuffed animals went back to the flat for my daughter.

The locker in Toronto is gone (well, technically, it's still there and filled with my family's junk, but that's their problem, not mine) and the goods are sorted and put away. Funnily enough, even after three or four passes through a "do I want this?" filter, I still had three boxes of garbage and donations out of the eight boxes that sailed the sea to London.

It's liberating. I feel lighter. For years, it felt like there was a weak and persistent nagging gravity tugging at me from Toronto, a needling, wheedling kvetch from all those unregarded possessions that I had responsibility for but no use for.

There's still a locker in LA -- well, in the desert outside of LA, it's one of those outfits that forklifts a storage box onto your lawn a week before you move; fill it up and call them and they forklift it back to some remote location with zero humidity until you request it again. I only have a dim recollection of what's in there, but I'm pretty sure it's almost all framed pictures that we had no room to hang in London but couldn't bear to part with. That and a couple of really good office chairs and a Danish dining room table that Mr Jalopy rescued from the garbage and refinished. Someday, if we move back to the States, we'll have instant decor. In the meantime, there's some of that nagging gravity being exerted by the box in the desert, too.

https://boingboing.net/2009/01/27/a-journey-through-my.html

[questioningyourfate]

What You Do In the Shadows (Stays In the Shadows)

Hi, everyone. Fate again to celebrate two traditions of yours taking place early in the fifth month of some of your calendars, one about movies and one about independence. And as much as I love embracing new technology and ideas and all that, right now I’m indulging in a secret desire of mine to declare independence from the demands of being on camera by going back to the highest form of moving art there is: shadow puppetry.

Fate,

I didn’t want to be That Guy. You know, the Nice Guy. The guy who’s always going around kvetching about the Friend Zone. I have really, really great friends of all genders, and my best friend is not the same gender I am. And while I think we’d be great together romantically, we’re also great together platonically, and I’m totally cool with that!

Or at least, I was. On their birthday, we drank a little too much, and normal back-and-forth turned kinda flirty. I didn’t actually say anything then, because I didn’t want it to be brushed off as us just being under the influence, but I started wondering what if? What if they’ve been feeling the same way I have but have been putting a lid on it because they’re afraid of ruining the friendship?

The moment I decided it was time to make my move was when I got two coupons for our shared favorite taqueria in the mail. They live pretty close by, so I put the coupons in my pocket, stopped by our local liquor store to pick up a bottle of tequila, and went over to their apartment to ask them on a DATE-date. 

I don’t know how long I spent staring at their door before I finally raised my hand to knock. I also don’t know how much longer it was between the last knock and when they finally answered. I do know they seemed just as taken aback as I was: disheveled, clothes looked like they were thrown on carelessly, not exactly the most welcoming look on their face.

“I can come back later,” I said, and they smiled for the first time and whispered “thanks” before shutting the door…but not before I heard a guy’s voice coming from the direction of the bedroom saying, “Who is it?”

I’ll admit I snapped a little. I went to the occult shop on the way home. Once I was back at my place, I wasted no time in setting it all up: the candles, the book, the goat’s-blood pentagram. Security deposit be damned, I thought as I chanted the invocation. “Bring me that which is nearest and dearest to my heart!” I proclaimed to finish out the spell.

I knew the security deposit was as damned as I was when the floor burst into flames in front of me. But it would all be worth it, I figured as I beheld the glowing eyes and scaly wings in its midst. And when it leaned forward to deposit the bundle it held in its arms at my feet, I knew I would open the unusually small package up (my best friend is something like 4’10” on a good day, but…) and find…tacos?!

I don’t mean to complain, but an explanation would be very, well, nice.

You put those taco coupons in your left breast pocket, didn’t you. 

Demons, genies, Fae, computers, and all else who work in the shadows have to be exactingly literal in how they parse and fulfill requests, and even though there are good reasons for doing so, it’s always a thankless task with the recipients of their poorly articulated desires claiming they were “misunderstood.” Please tell me you at least invited the delivery agent to share dinner and drinks with you for their trouble? You never know who your real forever dining companion might be unless you take a chance and let tequila loosen your tongue…

…oh, I used to know how to make a tongue!

There’s the tongue…

…well. I’m supposed to be representing the tequila loosening YOUR tongue before the moment passes.

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