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Kind Of Like Spring
I’ve heard word that warmer weather will help put an end to COVID19. I guess that would require the warm weather to last more than a day and a half.
May Be Sun, May Be Snow
The month of May is broadly associated with Springtime but it isn’t always a given. We’re enjoying what I consider to be lovely cool weather.
I’d be perfectly happy for it never to get above 55°F, but that’s just me.
We won’t be migrating from Red to Yellow here in Schuylkill County because our Governor, who is already overreaching his authority to a criminal degree, reacted to the County Commissioners’ decree of transition in truly authoritarian style. He stated that any counties that transitioned outside of his own calendar would suffer an extensive economic backlash.
Needless to say, this sucks in the extreme. Governor Wolf has been capricious in his application of standards. No information is being disclosed on what measures he’s using to make his decisions. You’re not even allowed to ask for information on the decision-making process.
That is not transparency in governance. It needs to end. The Governor’s tenure needs to end.
If we had some rational explanation of why this nonsense had to drag out so long, we might even be patient with it. Unfortunately, the typical condescending approach you see with these power-grabbing governors across the country leaves little room for reasoning with them.
Our County Commissioners played a game of chicken with our Governor. Sadly, he didn’t blink. He’s driving a dump truck and he knows it. His equally irrational and illegal threats of economic reprisal served their purpose. The Evil Emperor is having a victory cackle at our expense.
It’s not sitting well, I can tell you.
Lance Hunt Wears Glasses
Mystery Men (1/10) Movie CLIP
Dinner Full of Bicker (1999) HD
My team is affiliated with their local police and they have DoD clearances, so secret identities are not a consideration. It’s a difficult thing to protect, particularly nowadays. Everybody has a camera in their pocket. Everybody has a tracking device in their pocket. Skulking around back alleys isn’t nearly as anonymous as it was in the days when comic book characters first came around.
Superman and Batman go back to the 30s. A lot of the most popular Marvel characters like Spider-Man and Iron Man go back to the 60s. There were fewer cameras, no GPS, no facial recognition software. Today, a secret identity would be nigh impossible to maintain.
That being said, even in days of yore, you could look at a guy’s mouth and know who he was in a mask. Superman didn’t even have a mask. He just wore glasses and a suit. The age-old question remains, how did nobody put it together?
Because it’s fiction. There’s an assumed suspension of disbelief. If people can’t see that Clark Kent is just Superman in a suit and glasses even when we can, that’s part of the story and the audience has to just roll with it.
Even Batman covers most of his face and changes his voice, but a guy who gets in as many fights as Batman is going to have distinctive chips out of his teeth from getting punched in the face. Unless Bruce Wayne is wearing veneers to cover the fight damage, even one-third of his face is enough to get you in the neighborhood of his identity.
I decided to side-step that by having my crew be publicly identifiable. They’re properly deputized and their identities a matter of are public record. Certainly, this puts their loved ones at risk (a common reason for maintaining a secret identity), but their actions so far have been exclusively in the company of the Tactical Division.
They are also city celebrities who perform promotional appearances for school children and their extended fan base. As such, most people don’t really care who they actually are. They’re generally considered to be who their public personas are.
Just as you can find out who portrays a sports mascot like the Phillie Phanatic or a corporate character like Ronald McDonald, most people don’t actually care enough to try. It’s just cool to meet a famous persona and most people leave it at that.
Superfeelz
The temple of art is built in words. ~Josiah Gilbert Holland
Although the superhero genre is most noteworthy for the bombastic battles, true fans of comics know that there’s a lot of interpersonal drama involved.
There are team dynamics involved and the Sentinels are no exception. They have friends and relatives who aren’t superheroes. They have pet peeves with their teammates and know how to push buttons when they’re feeling cranky.
As much as we want a superhero story to be a nonstop slugfest, we also need some character development. There’s a certain balance that needs to be met. I was afraid I was tipping the scales.
In fact, I could use another fight or two in there somewhere. That’s what editing is for.
Even so, part of the story is understanding the characters as people. It helps us to identify with them or to identify them with people we know. Whether it’s the witty repartee between Tony Stark and basically anybody he’s talking to or Diana getting to know Steve Trevor, superhero stories depend on the characters to seem believable.
Even Superman, who is essentially indestructible and nearly impossible to defeat, was able to be grounded as a character by virtue of his humble Midwestern upbringing. Kal-El of Krypton is a nuclear missile in spandex but Clark Kent is a basically decent guy trying to do the right thing.
Any given episode of Batman certainly concluded with a knockdown, drag-out but a majority of the episode is actually a process of solving the crime du jour while engaging in banter with ancillary characters like Commissioner Gordon, Chief O’Hara, Alfred and Mrs Cooper.
I’d like to think I’m striking the right balance of slam-bang and feelz. I guess we’ll see.
So, we’re dragging along in the Red Zone until his royal fuckin’ highness decides (rather arbitrarily) to release us to Yellow OR until the checks and balances of the government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania kick in and pull the plug on the big bad Wolf.