60 Pence of Flavoured Light.

"Until the boy wakes from his six year slumber"

2009-06-06T10:58:31Z

There's a rumour going around that the upcoming 'Captain America: Rebirth' series won't be about the resurrection of Steve Rodgers but the return to action of Isaiah Bradley.

I . . . I would like to say I'm pure glee over this because;

I love Isaiah Bradley, I love the idea of him as the first Captain America and I don't think making him so invalidates how awesome Steve is - nothing invalidates how awesome Steve is, his awesome is an intrinsic internal quality independent of whether or not he's wearing spandex on the outside. Plus the way Isaiah was written out of the way, by being reduced to a brain-damaged mute senior citizen with the mental age of a 7-year-old? Was pretty horrific.

I think it's still too early for Steve to come back, not in the least because in internal Marvel chronology I don't think he's even been dead a year.

The thing is . . . I know that this is going to be Ed Brubaker writing. I think he's a brilliant writer and his Patriot one-shot for Young Avengers Presents was excellent.

The whole 'Black Cap' thing has always been an issue that riles up the nastiest bits of comic fandom because STATUS QUO IS GOD and God forbid each time someone tries to compensate that we're working with intellectual properties that originated in more sexist, racist times. Brubaker, though, has hit this point that the majority of comic geeks will accept any changes he makes as solid canon and Marvel Editorial has learnt to just let him do whatever he wants.

Okay, all that out of the way? I think that this looks far less like "Brubaker replacing Bucky with Isaiah" and far more like "Brubaker tying up loose ends in the mythology", especially because he's also going to be dealing with Rikki Barnes.

What else?

Reginald Hudlin is no longer writing Black Panther. Reginald Hudlin is no longer writing Black Panther because he's been offered a new series.

You see where I'm going with this?

"And when the battle was done I was promised my son"

2009-06-03T22:44:31Z

I'm posting this here because a) everyone loves to rant about photo-jacking and b) Den of Angels may be up in arms about this but the com's so strictly locked and moderated it was unlikely you'd hear about it anywhere else.

Basically, Mijn Schatje is a semi-famous and very successful graphic designer and artist. You may not know her name but you will probably recognise her art. She's also been caught out straight-up tracing her art from ball-jointed doll photos. Not even photos she took herself, no, the official promotional photos from the makers' websites.

Remarkably Lame.

"Make like Helen Keller and Talk with your Hips"

2009-06-01T22:00:13Z

Spinning directly off from kaitou1412's Star Trek squee post, here is a Paper Child inspired by the Great Woman herself.

Damsel Kirk in Dangling Distress.

Also Available as a Bookmark.

flidgetjerome @ 2009-06-01T10:50:00

2009-06-01T09:58:12Z

velithya is now all sorts of married, an occasion that fills me with awe and wonder (and not just because this is going to have a galaxy-wide positive impact on at least seven alternate futures).

All the best to her and her blushing groom and all joy and happiness (and the hope that all of those prophecies they just fulfilled will go off without a hitch).

To a glorious life for both of you! (And the Pendant of Ancients Singing is accessible if you each smash your own pot at the same time. You'll know what I mean when it happens.)

flidgetjerome @ 2009-05-27T11:25:00

2009-05-27T10:28:52Z

I am all sorts of back from Boston. Also it was Thorne's birthday at some point! I celebrated by helping her acquire porn and giving her drugs.

I'm gonna let the writerly types sum up the weekend, since they already have.

flidgetjerome @ 2009-05-04T09:59:00

2009-05-04T09:00:29Z

By the way, thank you to everyone on my flist who posted as part of Poetry Month. There was some really wonderful stuff this year, I really enjoyed it.

"And I Know that We've Still Got Time but I Do Not Think We're Invincible"

2009-05-01T10:36:41Z

I need to make a number of posts regarding hole-in-the-wall concerts, impromptu on-the-tube concerts, Rome's many necropolises, the sustainability dilemma of print books and LPs versus their digital counterparts and the worrying issue that no modern superhero seems to know what contraceptives are.

However since any of that requires me to be coherent in the meanwhile - hey, look who's back!

Scans Daily's new page limits means they don't cover how he's back but you don't really want to know, anyway, it's amazingly convoluted even for comics. Just take my word for it that it actually is him and not a fake-out.

ETA: Also it is apparently Free Comic-Books Day tomorrow?

flidgetjerome @ 2009-04-12T13:04:00

2009-04-12T12:17:15Z

Hey, it's Easter! And also Passover!

There is only one way to celebrate this.

Sexy pictures of naked Archimedes in a bath-tub.

. . .

Did I mention it was also Ann's birthday? It is also Ann's birthday!

This is really not the day to be making up fictional holidays in her honour so I went to a web-comic con a couple of weeks ago and got her a drawing by Kate Beaton instead.

(I got one for myself, too.)

"I've got Friends in all the Right Places"

2009-04-11T00:38:46Z

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King is a simple strategy/city-builder simulation game that Squeenix put out as its Wiiware download offering. It costs $15 and gave me barely three days worth of gameplay but I think it may have been actually worth it because it does does exactly what it says on the tin; be a surprisingly plausible simulation of the life of a benevolent ruler of Ye Olde Standard Beloved Peasant Kingdom.

The design team seems to have put a lot of thought into what it must be like for those poor bastards forced to stay at home and wear the crown and keep their people from panicking over the fact that their entire survival rests in the hands of a bunch of random teenagers. Who by the way act almost exactly like standard RPG adventurers act. You've got a limited influence over the ones who happen to be your subjects and zero control over the visiting ones who, in standard RPG fashion, are of course way more powerful than the home-grown. All you can do is build your training halls, stock your item shops, post your bounties and hope for the best.

And then there's Clint, who's a special case all on his own.

Clint is one of my randomly-generated NPC Adventurers. He's a hometown boy who, through a combination of good starting stats, even better luck and very possibly Destiny, is at least 10 levels above any of the local kids he grew up with and completely capable of taking down Boss Monsters 10 levels above him. I'm pretty sure he could take out the Final Dungeon by himself, no problems, but he steadfastly refuses to take the bounty so for the last two game-weeks the entire Kingdom has been hacking away at the Sub-Boss while Clint's been waltzing around with his weird foreigner friends killing every over-powered Optional Boss in the Land.

I love Clint. Clint is you. And me. And every other RPG player who ever took a look at Meteor bearing down in the sky and went 'It can wait, I'm going to go race Chocobos'.

(I am pretty sure that Clint's behaviour is just an emergent property of the NPC AI trying to be sensible about levelling and not a deliberate move on the part of the game designers, as awesome as that would have been. Which is something of a relief, given that in a normal RPG the only way this all could have ended is with the Overlord torching the entire City so that Clint can angst over us and then vow vengeance. Though if that does happen, hey, massive points for making the simulation really thorough.)

"I could sit for hours finding new ways to be awed each minute"

2009-03-24T13:43:25Z

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

When I was 14 I wrote this fanfic about a sentai team of Greek mathematicians, with Pythagoras as the calm leader and Archimedes as the brash, hot-headed one and Euclid was there too but at the time I was confused by Euclidean versus non-Euclidean Geometry so I didn't really like him and he ended up being the one with no personality.

Hypatia of Alexandria was also on the team, of course, because I really wanted to have at least one female member . . . but I always felt a little disappointed in her because her mathematical work was so mundane compared to the guys.

I still have a somewhat complicated relationship with her icon because having a female mathematician classically famous mostly for her secular martyrdom is still better than having no classically famous female mathematicians at all and, really, at the time, when I was little, it was encouraging to know that at least a female mathematician could exist.

As I've gotten older and learnt more about the personal history behind Mathematics, rather than just the discoveries, I've grown to understand how badly being ostracised from the Mathematical community can hold-back a mathematician's work and that the dearth of great female mathematicians isn't anything to do with the inability of women to do maths and everything to do with so few of them ever being given a chance.

Hence the motivation behind Ada Lovelace Day, really.

"Oh, just because I'm on your side doesn't mean you're right"

2009-03-15T23:13:25Z

So I'm not ready to put up any of the pictures from Rome yet because there's about 3GB worth of them and 15 pages of accompanying notes. I rather have to whittle them down.

. . . However, I am rather wondering what the hell happened while I was away.

I store my drinking glasses upside down and when I went to pull one out of the cupboard today it seemed surprisingly short and there was this weird shiny ring sitting where I had just picked it up from.

I went "Dude, what the hell, that couldn't possibly be . . . ?!".

Yes, yes it was.

Here is the glass in question.

Here is what happened to the glass in question.

If you asked me two weeks ago I would had told you I didn't have a single roach in my flat. For all I know now I may have hundreds but I'll never notice because they are all ninjas.

"How'd I turn my shirt inside-out?"

2009-02-19T08:06:42Z

In a moment of discovery that is going to fuck my head over all day I've just learnt that Mercedes Lackey has moved into the BJD business.

Yes, that Mercedes Lackey.

Selling EGL Accessories.

The world is a very strange place.

"Let's grow old together and die at the same time"

2009-02-14T12:43:55Z

. . . I am having a strangely appropriate Valentine's Day - I just found the cursed family engagement ring (as opposed to the non-cursed one, we've got a couple) in a box with my half-finished W-Gundam Zero Custom.

Man, I thought that someone had stolen that from me years ago (something I had a good laugh over, given, y'know, it's cursed) but apparently it's still here.

Don't worry, I keep it wrapped in a silver rosary hand-made by nuns.

"You put the 'Pissed' in Philantrophist"

2009-02-13T23:07:05Z

So, having received a fresh box full of eyes today my doll is now featuring glittery brown eyes.

Damn. I was expecting something loud and tacky but they manage to be extremely pretty and yet not at all garish. Turns out that the Mary Sues have been on to a good thing all along! Who'd have thought?

Incidentally since I get most of eyes from China they tend to come with neatly labelled customs forms. I'm now mildly worried about what my Concierge thinks I'm up to.

flidgetjerome @ 2009-01-29T18:31:00

2009-01-29T19:05:29Z

Today was a horrible excuse for a Twigmas, freezing cold across the board. A few of our American students tried to hold a traditional Twigmas picnic out on the Quad lawn but their drunken cheers at the cloudy sky for the Twigsun to manifest didn't really work.

It didn't really get them down and they shared the cake out. It was good cake.

Twigmas, like Halloween, is one of those things that's less openly celebrated over here paradoxically because we take it so much more seriously. There's always a few stories, every year, of some cute girls up north or a nice boy over in Ireland standing out doors when a bright ball of light, too bright to be the real sun, suddenly appeared. When the light faded, they were gone. Everyone tries to tone down their accents on Twigmas and bake very, very good offering cakes.

"Cause holy cow, I love your eyes"

2009-01-26T11:57:49Z

A few peers in the House of Lords got caught taking bribes blah blah blah I'd be more scandalised and/or concerned but Blair gutted the House of Lords a few years ago and these days it's pretty much powerless.

As usually, whenever any obscure peers come up, my interest is in their names.

. . .

We have a Lord Snape? Seriously?!

That Bloody Mary's Lacking in Tabasco

2009-01-25T19:09:45Z

Haggis? Is delicious.

Bacon Chocolate? Is not.

flidgetjerome @ 2009-01-01T00:40:00

2009-01-01T05:41:13Z

Happy New Years.

Let's go out and conquer it.

flidgetjerome @ 2008-12-25T12:40:00

2008-12-25T17:41:15Z

Merry Christmas, my delicious ones.

flidgetjerome @ 2008-12-15T19:49:00

2008-12-15T19:58:43Z

Today is eramundo's birthday.

I have no fanciful story for this, I am too tired.

I am, you see, typing this from Boston's Logan Airport. I've made a 13 hour trip just to be in the same city as her and bask in the warmth of her radiant glory.

Alas, I in a few hours I have to go to Miami. The city is so crowded they're only allowing us to stay a few hours each before they force us to move on.

"Hair is how we take you there"

2008-12-04T11:09:32Z

Dear Marvel,

I am just writing to thank you for my early Christmas Present! I take back everything nasty I said about Secret Invasion (which wasn't much since nothing much actually happened in it and the YA/R crossover was really pretty fun).

Love,

Flidget

P.S. I know you'll eventually bring her back because you're a bastard that way but please keep her dead for a while and we can count this as my birthday present too.

P.P.S. Your new status quo is incredibly dumb but also utterly nonsensical and I'm sure in a few years they'll all turn out to also be Skrulls.

"Just a scruffy lad who remembers what he once had"

2008-11-28T19:37:57Z

It's always a bit bizarre to me when superhero comics make the mainstream news.

It's a little extra bizarre this time around since even my fanatical devotion to Batman wasn't enough to get me to stick around for the tediously complicated Batman R.I.P. event or even pay much attention to it on scans_daily and so I ended up finding out what happen from, of all places, the BBC.

"Steady your ears, steady your ears and read my lips"

2008-11-27T10:45:18Z

I would herein like to posit a General Theory of Fandoms, which states, concisely, that the Quality of the Fandom is Inversely Proportional to the Quality of the Product it's based around.

As my first example, let us look at Square-Enix's The World Ends With You. It is a very, very good game, the best game Squeenix has put out since Vagrant Story, and its fandom is tiny, with less than a handful of good authors.

Most of this is to do with the quality of WEWY itself - like all seriously good things it's hardly generic and if Japanese youth pop culture isn't for you than, man, is this game ever not for you either. The other thing is there's not really much you can do with WEWY, fandom-wise, its plot is too well written and complete in itself to offer quick and easy fic ideas, there's very little fic in the fandom that's neither PWP or multi-chapter epics for this reason, and to be frank even the fandom's not so much a fandom as a support group for people reeling from its mind-fuck of an ending.

On the other hand, there's BBC's Merlin. All right, to be fair this isn't the best example, three of the episodes aired so far were actually well written, but for the most part it falls firmly into the "so bad it's good" category.

Holy crap, I have never seen a fandom grow this fast.

Again, I think it's in large part down to the quality. The show has an approach to Arthurian mythology that, for the lack of a better description, feels very anime. All the familiar names are there and they have a vague resemblance to the characters they're based on but that's about it. It's an adorable kitten pissing on rich tapestry of the Arthurian Cycle, yes, but it's an adorable kitten and you can't help but love it. Plus it leaves mining the myths wide open to be a fandom playground. It leaves a lot of things up to the fandom, mind, including filling in some rather huge plot-holes but that sort of thing is fandom candy.

This isn't really a pimp post - both fandoms are almost purely slash fandoms, so if that isn't your thing move along.

flidgetjerome @ 2008-11-25T21:07:00

2008-11-25T21:21:22Z

Not many people know that the Cait Sith, a well known-member of the Final Fantasy series' revolving pantheon of summon figures, is based on the ancient myth of Catt, as the creature is known in the West, or soranokumo, as it is more frequently known in Asia (Catt is one of the very few mythological figures, including the dragon, the unicorn and the phoenix, which figures so widely in world mythology, leading cryptozoologists to believe there is even the possibility that a real Catt may someday be found).

In myth the creatures are often known as omens of luck but whether it is good or bad is often up to them, and numerous superstitions detail the many ways they can be placated. They are known to be especially fond of pure-hearted youths and damsels and particularly protective of any lovers in need of protection. The most powerful Catt of all is the Bard of the tribe and the gift of any story written by them brings immense good fortune to the recipient.

"You can be anyone or just some mother's wasted son"

2008-11-24T21:26:35Z

. . . People keep asking me what I want for Christmas. I'm seriously tempted to just put 'doll eyes' and only doll eyes on my list, just because I find the entire process of making other people shop for eyes hilarious.

The one problem with that is, man, doll eyes are actually kinda pricy. I'm mean but not that mean.