Hello, everyone! I know it hasn’t been too long since I started maintaining this blog again, but I’m going to have to back off a little bit. Between this, work, and more important obligations, I just don’t have time in my week to continue churning out new content for a handful of readers. I also feel it’s a bit of a disservice to lean too heavily on older posts I wrote years ago to carry me for entire weeks at a time. That said, I’ll still be around and probably putting out a new post and a throwback post every week. I think I can handle that better. If you are reading this, or actively reading anything on this blog, let me know. I’d appreciate engagement and feedback. This type of writing is a relationship, after all. 😉 Let’s have a conversation!
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Good day, everyone! Here is another Joker throwback to my days at Sourcerer to help carry us through the week. Remember, one bad day can make all the difference!
This has been a hell of a week, guys. Sometimes it feels like there is an unseen crowd of malcontents out to get us and bring us down, but we keep moving forward. We endure.
We got to go see Avengers: Endgame this weekend, and it was certainly worth the wait. We both loved it. I feel an internal need to begin writing some short posts on here about individual characters from the movie, their arcs, and how they wrapped up. I think that will be rewarding for me and anyone else who really enjoyed the film. I may wait a bit longer to avoid spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, though.
That said, I want to take this opportunity to thank whoever might be reading this. Thank you for coming back to this blog after it being in suspended animation for so long, or thank you for taking a chance on your first visit. I hope that my thoughts strike a chord with you and keep you coming back.
More to come.
If you’re a fan of books and hot beverages, check us out at Blue Spider Books. And check out our blog here!
Last week saw Anson Mount’s Captain Pike exit Star Trek: Discovery, to many a viewer’s chagrin. I have been a tremendous fan of Mount’s portrayal of Pike and will miss his presence in the show. I feel that Discovery has done a wonderful job expanding Pike’s character and has successfully elevated him to the same legendary level of other Star Trek captains.
Indeed, this season’s revelation that Pike was shown his eventual fate, disfigured, unable to move, and trapped in a mechanical chair only able to transmit simple yes-and-no responses, and that he embraced it was perhaps one of the most emotionally satisfying moments of the show thus far. All at once, the character’s sense of right action, of honor, and of the love he feels for those under his command become his defining traits.
I always wondered at the depth of loyalty that Spock felt for his old captain in the Star Trek episode “The Menagerie,” a bond so powerful that he would risk the ire of Captain Kirk and his crew, the end of his Starfleet career, and likely even death for visiting a forbidden planet. But it makes sense now. Spock risked everything for Captain Pike because Captain Pike once did the same for him. Let us also appreciate that Captain Pike was Gene Roddenberry’s first draft of his idealized heroic captain character, making Pike the intellectual ancestor of every other Star Trek captain we have come to love.
(And don’t forget to sign the petition asking CBS to consider a spin-off series about the adventures of Captain Pike and the Enterprise here!)
If you’re a fan of books and hot beverages, check us out at Blue Spider Books. And check out our blog here!
Don’t worry; I’m not going to try to defend the vampire sub-genre here. While some of the older, campier versions of Dracula can be fun, my favorite iteration is the one portrayed by Gary Oldman in the Francis Ford Coppola film from 1992. It also hearkens back to my favorite section of the original Bram Stoker novel, and what, for me, redeems the monster at the center of the entire story.
In the original novel, there is a scene where Dracula and Harker stay up all night just talking, and as dawn breaks Dracula has to run away to hide from the sunlight. I loved this moment. It demonstrates the lonely old immortal Dracula, and that he truly did just yearn for companionship. The novel gets really tedious after this when it swaps to Mina’s letter-writing perspective, but that one small section always gets me.
I feel that the lonely Dracula longing for a human connection (despite, you know, eating Gypsy babies) is the one best embodied in Gary Oldman’s performance. I love this movie, and I can’t recommend it enough if you have never seen it. The cinematography is fantastic, and the central story line that develops of an immortal, heartbroken being chasing a lost love throughout time is one certain to catch the attention of fans of horror, dark fantasy, and paranormal romance all at once.
If you’re a fan of books and hot beverages, check us out at Blue Spider Books. And check out our blog here!
With a new film out, and this being the 25th anniversary of the character’s introduction, this week seemed like a good time to address Hellboy.
With Hellboy, Mike Mignola demonstrates a professor’s level of knowledge of history, myth, and folklore. Synthesizing this knowledge with elements inspired by Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, Mignola has created a mythology of his own beyond comparison in comics and dark fantasy literature. And with that, nearly ever single compelling character of the story is in some way a monster, whether it be Abe Sapien the fish man, Roger the golem, or the half-demon Hellboy himself.
But it is also the heart of Mignola’s story to disregard that outward appearance and examine a character’s soul. Hellboy is a wonderful story about birth not defining a person’s worth, and outright thumbing one’s nose at destiny. Hellboy is a hero through and through, self-sacrificing and humble. Reading his comics chronologically, you can follow his incredible jaunt from one corner of the earth to another, to the bottom of the sea, and even into hell itself. And at every step along the way, moral choices follow him, and he ultimately proves his essential humanity through them.
If you’re a fan of books and hot beverages, check us out at Blue Spider Books. And check out our blog here!
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with this blog now that I’ve come back to it, and I have come up with three ideas I would enjoy that fit the theme of this, my thought collection.
First off, I want to start a new weekly column on par with my old Batman column over at Sourcerer. I’m thinking of doing cosmic characters from Marvel, especially the obscure ones, now that that side of the franchise is gaining traction in the movie universe. Who would be up for reading about a different cosmic Marvel character each week?
Second, I want to do a series of shorter, periodic posts on fictional characters exploring their appeal. This can run an endless gamut of any sort of fictional character; effectively, my mood that day will dictate who I decide to write about. These will also only run a maximum of a few short paragraphs.
Third, I’ll continue with random short short posts of my thoughts in the moment. I feel like some of my sort-of Tweet-length thoughts might gain greater expression here. We’ll keep trying that out.
Expect to see me get these off the ground this week and next week. I’ll keep to a pretty rigid publication schedule once I get back into the swing of things and knock all the rust off.
Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to keep coming back!
If you’re a fan of books and hot beverages, check us out at Blue Spider Books. And check out our blog here!
quaintjeremy's thoughts 