Tumblr Cross Post: Why I Love Captain America

So once again I am up later than I want to be, and I want to write something.

I'd like this something to be a story, a poem, something fictional and striking and beautiful. Sadly, whatever angry and bitter muse I got stuck with at birth doesn't feel like letting me do what I want, and seems to will that I suffer writing some thing else. Anything else, really.

So I'm going to write about responsibility and what it means to me. I'm going to write about why I so love both Captain America and Steve Rogers.

Heh, you weren't hoping this would be more serious, were you?

Alright, about Cap—if you didn't already know Captain America's mild-mannered alter ego is known as Steve Rogers—I love him more deeply and more personally than I've ever loved another human being (wow, that doesn't sound creepy at all). But, I don't mean that in a if-he-were-real-I-would-throw-myself-at-him-he-is-sexy-personified kind of way. I mean it in a you-are-the-hero-that-I-most-relate-to-and-so-I-feel-a-personal-connection-to-you-that-I-rarely-feel-for-anything way.

Captain America is pure, noble, brave, strong, the American Ideal made flesh. Steve Rogers is an asthmatic art student from Brooklyn who believes in his country. I hope you've all at least seen the movie and know how those two are connected. Steve's choice to become the super soldier was also the choice to sacrifice the right to assert his personal agendas over the agendas of Captain America. While Cap and Steve are the same man, they are not at all the same person. And this is what causes what is commonly known as conflict.

I've heard it said that people dislike Cap because he is self-righteous, stupidly idealistic, has no compelling personal conflict, is boring or is just plain unlikable. That he is a tool of the government and what he does means nothing because he is what he was created for, or worse, is nothing more than patriotic propaganda. I mean, yes he's a patriot, I mean you'd have to be to undergo huge needles and radiation treatments in the name of serving your country, but patriotism isn't all he is, not in the least. Usually I swear at such people who express these opinions, then proceed to extoll the virtues of Steve Rogers as the freaking perfection that he is. I try not to be a rabid fangirl, but I fear I don't always succeed.

The thing about Steve is that he's not a hero because the government made him one, he's not a hero because the rest of the country viewed him as one, he's not even a hero because he goes around thwarting villainous plots or saving innocent lives. He's a hero because he has the courage to own the label that was placed on him.

Getting a label put on you by another, as I'm sure many of you would agree, is not often a good thing. And the worst thing about it is not that this label might hurt your feelings or make you feel self-conscious or bad about yourself; the worst thing about a label is the obligation to live up to it. It's a stressful process, whether you're just known around tow as a “good guy” or if you are called the “successful one” out of a group, or whether you're the good sibling. Unfortunately, the way other people see us has tremendous influence over us, because one thing each and every person (barring maybe sociopaths and axe-murderers [who are probably sociopaths]) hates to do is to disappoint those he or she loves and respects.

It's not that what people think of you actually matters, it's that what people you care about think of you does matter. And we will spend our entire lives trying to unify what these people think and what we think of ourselves into a single at peace individual, with very little success. I know in my life I've yet to unify anything more significant than butter and toast.

Steve Rogers has the wisdom to realize that the people of his country think a great many things about Captain America.

I've read many of the comics, and there are several points at which Steve considers retiring Cap, considers living his life as Steve. But each and every time he realizes that Captain America is more than a mask and shield. Steve recognizes that Captain America has never been a man. He's always been a symbol that means many things to many different people. Captain America is Steve Rogers' label.

Living up to what others think of us is probably the hardest thing anyone can do. It is hard because we are human. We have flaws, and we are never as good as others think we are.

Steve Rogers has time and again made every personal sacrifice so that Captain America can be as good as the people need him to be.

I use the word sacrifice a lot, not because I lack vocabulary or access to a thesaurus, but because it is the only word that really describes the choice that Steve is always facing. Let me tell you, Steve Rogers is not exactly a happy camper in his everyday life.

He's woken up 70 years (or less depending on your medium) in the future, has lost his dearest friend, lot his love, lost everything that made him Steve Rogers. To simplify an issue, Steve is a little bit depressed.

But despite the fact that being Captain America has been the cause of his greatest pains and losses, every time the question come up, Steve acknowledges the duty and responsibility that Cap has and picks up his shield, puts on that costume. He makes the choice to embrace his label.

Unlike some heroes in this day and age, I don't think Cap and Steve are one and the same. I think that Steve is not Cap, but perhaps Cap is a conscious decision made by Steve.

And that's why I love and respect both Cap and Steve so much. I confidently say that is there is one character I would most want to be like, it's Steve Rogers.

So yeah. This fan opinion/rant/sales pitch thing is over now.  

Warning: What Follows is a Rant--Proceed with Caution

So my internet connection is lagging, and my outraged crusader personality is rising and my sleep is just not doing, so I'm gonna just take a moment to rant about a little “thing” that really bothers me.

While I was performing my daily quota of obsessive cyber-stalking the blog of one of my favorite authors (http://www.ilona-andrews.com/news/publishing-news/librarians-vs-bloggers) I was alerted to a subject that I guess in making the rounds of book-oriented blogs around the web. It's a whole whole blogger vs. librarians thing that is quite interesting and that I have lots of thoughts on, but is not actually what this post is written about.

Now, I love my blog and I love other peoples' blogs. And heck, I love librarians. I've had good and bad experiences with both sources. BUT I DON'T RELY ON ANYONE TO TELL ME WHAT TO READ AND WHAT NOT TO. I don't pay any attention to recommendations when I look for new books to read. I don't really know why. If you buy me a book, I'll read it. Give me a book, I'll read that too. That just manners. But I buy books based on personal interest and individual discovery and research. Book s are the only thing I'm like this with. Just know this so that you might understand that I am utterly and totally nonplussed by this whole thing. If there was a box marked N/A I would be checking it right about now. The following is as close to being objective as I can get. I want everyone reading this to know that I am absolutely not intending to actually talk about this bloggers vs. librarians debate. THIS IS NOT WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT. I only use this as an example.

Anywho, as I was perusing the comments and searching out more information on the matter (see, I'm sane and not creepy at all, I'm so cas' using big words my obsession isn't unhealthy...) I noticed that there seemed to exist an opinion or rather a trend really in the responses and arguments; that one side was better than the other. Both people and sides were being subjected to what I have come to think of as “quantification.”

Quantification is a name I have given to phenomena that I have observed as a grown up member of a society, where judgment and jockeying for a scrap of superiority is an accepted, and sometimes encouraged, practice. It usually goes like this:

Person A: This is this and it is good because of reasons.

Person B: I have a this, too, and it is more good because of these better reasons.

It can also go like this:

Person A: This is this.

Person B: Your this is so much good because of these reasons I don't have.

The sort of root of the argument discussed in the above blog post on author(s) Ilona Adrews site, not the root of the issue that started the argument, is that recommendations for what to read come from two different sources—blogger or librarians and that one side is the superior and deserves more.... something. I admit, I got more and more sidetracked by my brain than by the actual post and detail on what was going down. As I read I realized that what was really getting my goose about the whole issue was the need for the arguers or quantify their book recommendation source with a title and thus assign a certain amount of merit to it.

I think the end of Ilona Andrews' blog post says it all “I am so tired of this mentality of bloggers vs authors vs booksellers vs librarians vs readers. Can it just be about books?”

Why do you need to argue about which source is more valid? When did reading books become some sort of competition. Honestly, I think that behavior suggests more about your own need to be validated than the slighted honor of what you are so violently defending.

I mean, you sound like you discuss books like “I got this book recommended to me by an industry professional the librarian/an acclaimed internet book reviewer so you know it must be a superb piece of literature, regardless of whether or not I really enjoyed it”

I feel real bad for your friends if you talk to them about books like this. I have devoted two years of my life and many thousands of dollars to studying and reading books and even I don't talk about books like this. If I do, I should wonder why someone hasn't performed an act of charity and smacked me in the face by now, or checked for an alien mind control device.

Why can't you just walk up to your book buddy and say “Hey, I got this recommendation for this cool book. It was really good, you might enjoy it.”

Because honestly, where you got the recommendation doesn't matter, so long as it was a book you read and were able to form an opinion about or derive some amount of enjoyment from. Read your books, and share your joy if you feel like it.

I see this issue of quantification jump up in a lot of different areas of life. The whole “Strong Female Character” issue is another bug example of it.

Every time I see this term thrown around I think to myself—Hey, character creators, how about you stop worrying about writing a strong “female” character and just write strong characters? Why does gender need to dictate the need for strength to be emphasized or contrived? Shouldn't everyone be strong, regardless of gender? Aren't there all kinds of ways of being strong? Because I'm a girl, does that mean that I have to be “female strong?” I can't just be strong?

Or when you talk terms of success. I've been told several times in my life that I should be so proud of my accomplishments because of where I come from. Usually this is uttered in contrast to the accomplishments of another individual. It feels like a slap in the face every time.

First of all, why is someone other than myself passing judgment upon what I have done? It is or for me and me alone to determine what things in my life are worthy of pride and what are worthy for shame. I don't need you comparing my latest report card to yours or anyone else to feel good or bad about it. Do my accomplishments mean more because I'm poor? Do they mean more because I've battle my demons for them? Hasn't everyone had to battle to get what the want and need? Haven't the fought just as hard for their successes, had to suffer his or her own adversities?

Why are you telling me that my suffering makes me somehow more worthy than another? Suffering is suffering, and success is success. My business is mine, go mind yours.

Why does our society feel the need to label each and every little thing into an hierarchy of value? It is or it isn't.

If you go to a professor and hand in an assignment that's only half done and tell them “Considering my background, this is a really big accomplishment,” you are still going to be a big fat F, and probably some wired looks next class.

Or if you go to work with a presentation that is only half complete, but tell your boss that it doesn't matter that it's only half complete because the sources you drew from were really accomplished and popular personalities, so they are twice as effective as a complete presentation ever could be, you are probably going to end the day cleaning out your desk or at least taking some time off to go talk to a nice doctor who specializes in mid-life crises.

Quantification has no practical value, and really is usually a feeble and ham-handed attempt at interpersonal communication at best or a thinly veiled bullying tactic to make someone feel better than someone else.

The in-betweens do nothing, they just allow fat-headed douchebags to feel better about their own mediocrity so that they can have happy little dreams when they go to sleep at night. Assigning merit or superiority to another doesn't matter at all in the real world. Your quantification of me and my quantification of you only really matter to the person doing the quantifying and that is really kinda sad.

So yeah.

This rant is over I think. Sorry about how little sense this probably makes.

The Tragedy of the Soup: Part II

Recap: I hate vegetables and mushrooms.

The smell, the taste, the texture, the sound they make against my teeth when I accidentally bite into one... There is nothing about mushrooms that I don't despise with every fiber of my mediocre English major being. If there was a food product that embodied all the vagaries of despair, it would be the mushroom.

But that is only the origin story to our the tale. The climactic plot point in the Tragedy of the Soup was a moment when I realized the lack of fulfillment and ambition in my life. When I realized that there was no possible way $3.80 was going to feed me for six days.

So, taking into consideration my hatred for vegetables, my exceptional hatred of mushrooms, and my status as an extremely poor college student facing the end of a term and a dwindling meal plan, I got my hands on some strategically placed pity and gained possession of some canned soup.

Now, for me I have been spoiled for any soup that is not made by my mother, or other members of my family that I trust in the kitchen (which is almost all of them, as cooking is kinda of a huge deal in my family—all except my sister, she of the thrice-burnt rice). We make soup like champs, with none of this canned nonsense. But when one gets down to the state of near-starvation that awaits any student foolish enough not to budget his or her meal plan, canned soup is just dandy. Delicious, even.

Wandering back into my room after an evening of studying and friends, feeling the hungry again, I perused my food shelf and lighted upon the cans of soup. The cans looked good, or at least the labels appealed to my sense of aesthetic if not to my taste buds. One of them looked especially enticing, called “Steak & Potato.” Seriously, what is more delicious to finely chopped, beef and potatoes, smothered in a gravy-like broth? I like steak. I like potatoes. I like gravy. I had high hopes for it. But I suppose a loss of hope and the destruction of dreams is what growing up is all about.

So, after a long and arduous journey to the dining hall, I acquired a spoon and dumped my soup into a leftovers contained to eat. For those of you are of a literary inclination, this is what might be referred to as the exposition and rising action. For after I acquired my spoon and opened the can, I noticed that the soup was.... not the color I expected it to be. And it didn't smell right either.

But I was foolish, and let my stomach dictate my choices. I began to eat. It didn't taste great. In fact, it tasted kinda like crap. The potatoes were rubbery and the steak felt grainy. I thought to myself, This is disappointing, but I am hungry, and I won't let the goodwill and hard work of getting this can of soup be in vain. I took a few more bites and soon wished I hadn't.

On my fifth bite, I bit into the potato I had scooped up in my spoon and swallowed down the odd-tasting gravy-broth, when something unexpected appeared amidst the bite of soup. After a shocked pause, I delicately probed at the mysterious object in my mouth with my tongue, thinking that it was perhaps a congealed chunk of grease or something. It felt slick, slimy, with a vaguely familiar unpleasant something about it that tickled at my memory. The object slipped over the side of my tongue and the moment it settled in the bottom of my mouth against my teeth, I recognized the texture of the unexpected object.

There was a mushroom in my mouth.

I won't lie. I do this thing when I accidentally eat things I don't like. I sort of screw my face up and.... Well, no. I don't suppose it really could be qualified as a “thing.” It can't even be qualified as simply “spitting it out.” I just open my mouth and rely on gravity to remove the offending substance.

This has a rather checkered history of success for me. For example, when I was small and some cruel relation of mine would trick me into drinking coffee, I ended up walking around with a large brown splotch on my shirt and in bad need of a face wash. When I forget that there are pickles or onions or tomato on a burger, I end up getting yelled at or laughed at (depending on the depth of our personal bond) by whoever I am eating with. However, what this practice lacks in grace it makes up for in speed. It is the fastest way to get rid of something—one doesn't need to waste time performing a spitting motion.

When I discovered the espionage mushroom that had tricked it's way into my mouth, this is the technique I resorted to to get rid of it.

I ended up with reddish-brown soup broth dripping down my chin like some maddened, blood-drinking, axe-murdering psychopath as I gazed down, aghast, at the spit-bathed mushroom floating sloppily in the bowl of soup.

All the suspicious elements I had previously noted were explained—the color, the smell, the not-delicious taste.

It was no longer a bowl of soup.

It was a bowl of despair.   

The Tragedy of the Soup Part I: Vegetables

I hate vegetables.

I hate them so much. If I had to be a vegetarian I would die of starvation because there would be nothing I would eat. I would be so skinny, it would only be attractive for the few weeks it takes before my body to run through my stores of fat and start ingesting my own internal tissues for sustenance. Then I wouldn't be attractive, I would just be sad and kinda gross to look at, starving to death and all. Anyways, I hate them.

As a child, I refused to eat them. My poor mother gave up a long time ago. I remember she only ever punished me once for not eating them by making me sit at the dinner table alone until I ate them, and I just sat at there staring in sullen, silent, noble martyrdom at whatever travesty she had demanded I eat, until she got so frustrated that she just let me leave instead of trying to bargain with me into being healthy. I only remember this happening once. Now, at the age of twenty, my body just doesn't know how to process them. If I eat a veggie that is inadequately camouflaged, my body seems to go into the process of breakdown.

It goes like this:

1. What is this? This texture is unfamiliar to us.

2. Do we like this? Should we try it? Is it bad, or is it so bad it's good?
3. No. We do not like this. This is not good.
4. Stop. Now.
5. Stop chewing, dammit!
6. If you don't spit this out right now....
7. STOP IT!
8. No. You aren't swallowing it. You are not.
9. She is. She's doing it.
10. REJECT! Abort action, trigger gag reflex.
    
    
    Below is a graphic representation of how this process feels made with Microsoft Paint. In explanation, it feels so bad that my hair curls and I start bleeding from my ears, eyes, and mouth, while also crying.

And then I end up doing this awful, choking-gag thing and any further attempt to ingest vegetables is immediately met with the discovery that I am actually physically incapable of swallowing them. 

Given my hatred of vegetables and resulting inability to eat them, it figures that I don't eat them when given a choice. Unfortunately, I don't always have a choice. Polite niceties and all that. Maybe I'm at a dinner (I leave my room?) and someone gives me some salad. It would be rude to not touch it. Or maybe someone made dinner for me, and put vegetables in it, not fully understanding the depth of my disdain. Maybe my mom just didn't feel like catering to my perverse anti-vegetable wants. Whatever. That's okay. I have developed a coping mechanism for when I absolutely have to eat vegetables.

It goes like this:

1. Check to see if anyone if watching.
2. If they are play, and move around vegetables until it looks like not as much if left.
3. Slowly cut up veggies into pieces small enough to swallow without chewing, and that are too small to maintain disgusting vegetable texture.
4. Involve self in dinner conversation so I have an excuse to eat slowly.
5. Eat a small bite every three to four minutes, chewing as little as possible, and pray that different food or a socially acceptable excuse not to eat arrives soon.*
6. Continue until body realizes your deceptions and begins the above process of breakdown.

This method works about 80% of the time I am in a situation where I have to employ it. When it doesn't I usually just put on an expression of noble sacrifice and try not to ruin everyone else good time with my choking.

I used to refuse to touch them, but after maturing to adulthood I have come to terms with the fact that I have to eat vegetables sometimes. I mean, they're likes 40% of what we should eat or whatever, right? They are everywhere. It would be impossible to avoid ever eating them, no matter how revolting and unnatural they are to me, even if I end up eating them only to be nice.

Now, I've trained myself over the past two years to begin to include small dosages of vegetables in foods that I eat frequently, because I had a very scary doctors visit once. Essentially, the doctor made me believe that I would die slowly and miserably from, like, vitamin deficiencies if I continued to ignore vegetables. With muscle spasms and mouth foaming and internal bleeding and stuff. So, to avoid such a graphic and undignified demise, I started putting lettuce on my burgers. I eat a celery stick or two, maybe even a baby carrot if it happened to be in front of me.

Granted there are exceptions to every rule, and even I like green beans. There are a few foods I like, including the vegetables in them. Soup, for example, or lasagna. I can usually eat whatever vegetables come in these food, if they are cook adequately.

However, there is one vegetable-type food that I cannot stomach, no matter the disguise, no matter what it is included in: Mushrooms.

*Perhaps pretend to receive an emergency phone call from a friend that a beloved relative is in the hospital with mad cow disease or swine flu?  

A month and a half later, all I have to offer you is a hopeful little piece of despair...

I think we are all born with a hole inside of us. A gaping emptiness that we feel acutely before we can speak the words to express it to others. Babies cry for the touch of their parents, toddlers weep when they find themselves unexpectedly alone. Small children are driven utterly distraught at the possibility they won't have a friend to sit with at lunch, or to play with at recess.

They feel it before they fully understand it. And even though they don't understand it, they are looking to fill it. The thing they dread is not the dark, it's not clowns, sharks, monsters under the bed—it's being alone, and knowing it.

We feel this tremendous emptiness as we enter this world, and to the day we exit it the only thing that drives us to do anything, is to find some way to fill that void.

But as we grow, we begin to notice things about the void. We notice that no matter how old we are, a hug from a mother can make the world a little less scary. We notice that when in the company of a good friend, all the issues and problems fade a little bit into something we can manage. That a success can makes you feel so big that that the hole seems smaller. We notice love—love is the one thing the everyone around us seems to think will fill up the hold and fix the loneliness. Love is the ideal that society chases, an elusive prey that one can never quite get cornered. And as we grow, we realize that the only thing we can do if we ever hope to not feel the pain of being utterly alone forever is to run, though the prize is unsure.

And inevitably, at one point or another, we all stop running. We come to a stop and look around and realize that we don't really know what we're chasing anymore.

For those more hip to the urban life style, this is where we “settle.” Where we take an evaluation of our lives, of the current things around us, and make a decision—to keep it, or to toss it all away. If you're lucky, the person sleeping next to you makes the same decision you do.

Some of us pretend that they made a decision they didn't. They look ahead and think that a family with Mister or Miss Right Now is better than wondering lonely until they stumble into the Forever person.

Some people work, divine a meaning from their careers, and comfort themselves with that.

Some people seek out others, fill the emptiness with the animal comfort of physical contact. Something to make the nights a little less cold.

Still others fool themselves with their eyes, surround themselves with inanimate things, look at something full to feel less empty.

And sometimes, we open our eyes, face the future, and accept the loneliness. And in this become a little less frightened, a little less insecure. And realize that the way to fill the void is from within, not without.

If you're very lucky, you realize this before you become an angry bitter creature, who's forgotten about the hope in the world.

Welp. I hope you've enjoyed the melodramatic and obnoxiously rom-com introspection.

Toodles!

Comics, Thoughts on the Reading of

When I sit down, and evaluate where I stand on a lot of things comic, I have clearly defined limits and requirements for what I do and don’t like.

This is not so much because I don’t to try anything new. Quite the contrary, I need these guidelines in order to try new things. When I walk into a comic shop (which is rare as I am a poor student) I look for the familiar. I go for the new Invincible Iron Man trade, or to see if Daredevil has a new issue out that looks good. I go to see if the Hellboy on the shelf is the one I need to read next. I go to see if a used copy of Scott Pilgrim is available (because 12 bucks is a lot to pay for something you just “liked” and want to get for the symbolic value it has to you personally). Then, I look at what’s sitting next to them. 

But that’s besides the point here. What I was trying to say, was that all those pretty guidelines that stop me from just gazing around a comic shop in slack-jawed awe, looking like a complete idiot, as soon as I actually have a book in my hand, they go away. 

I’ll be looking for the next good X-men to try out, and say to myself “I don’t like Havok. I find him not to interesting, Scott is by far the better brother.” So, appropriately I look for something without Havok. I stumble upon a used copy of Chuck Austen’s run on Uncanny X-Men, think it has a quite knarly Wolverine cover, and pick it up for some lousy amount like $8. I read this book. This book features Havok. However, the story is just compelling enough that I think the next ones would be a good idea to get (please don’t judge me, I get now that it is kinda a terrible thing, these books by Austen).  

I read the sequels. Guess what? I love Havok. I love him almost as much as I love Scott. I do the same thing with Daredevil a few months later. I buy and re-watch the Fox movie, for competitive edge, and determine that Matt is not my most favorite character ever. I watch it again. And again. Marvel decides to publish a gorgeous new book for the man, and guess what? I love Daredevil.

In the words of a friend ” Is there anyone in the Marvel Universe you don’t like?”

“Why, yes, there is. Don’t be rediculous. I don’t like— Uh. Um. Er. Um… Well, I don’t like DC!”

“You liked 52.”

“52 is an anomaly. Are you determined to drive me into an existential crisis, here?”

Six months, Batman: The Killing Joke and a trade of Secret Six later, and maybe I don’t hate DC as much as I thought.

I fear that soon I will no longer be able to identify myself as Marvel, when asked that crucial question “Marvel or DC?” 

But…. that also matter less to me now. I love comics. I someday want to write them, but failing that I just want to work in the industry, so I can always be around them, and share the love with others. Comics are everything that is good in this world. And no, I’m not biased at all. 

Happy 2012! Please to Enjoy the Comet.

Be joyous, people. You were almost subjected to a piece of my original fiction as a blog post this time around...

To bring in the new year, or perhaps close out the old, I went to a party at a friend's place recently.

At this party, I read a fantastic comic, DC's Secret Six-- a trade from Gail Simone's run, to bring myself good comic karma for the new year (or it might have been a gift from my more open-minded comic friend, but hey, who's keeping track of my lack of flexibility or whatever).

I also made this thing with my friend called an “Affirmation Board.” It is the perfect expression and reaffirmation to our friendship. It is sealed to the board with glue, which I am afraid I rather waxed poetic about the metaphorical possibilities in this set-up. So sue me, I'm an English major.

Here enjoy a picture of it!

My contributions were the half-naked man and the sarcasm.

I'm still thinking up some resolutions. But I have a few ideas. What do you think of them?

1. Take up smoking and/or drinking, and therefore experience “accurate” college life.
2. Read less, do more hookah. I'll make more friends this way.
3. Bad mouth my government, but take on the mindset that I am fashionably apathetic and so have no support for my criticisms, or positive suggestions for alternatives when questioned.
4. Cease to recycle. The world's gone to hell any how.
5. Become even more hip, and adopt a cynical view on GPAs and how they don't mean anything at all.
6. Follow feminist trends as presented in modern American comics and dress promiscuously, possibly take up stripping to show that I am empowered and comfortable with my body and sexuality.

I can't even keep a straight face anymore.... My God.

Moving on. I don't actually have any resolutions I intend to keep.

And thus according to the prophecies of the great Nostradamus and also the Mayan calendar, we usher in the final year of civilization. Stockpile canned foods and TP, people, welcome to the End of Days.