mondayortuesday

Hello Spain, Christian, Trace, and Pooka!

Whit must have been following this forum for a time, while claiming to be new, as she seems to understand the socio-cultural heritage here. Being with Jesse has exposed her to the new culture, apparently.

I periodically (well pretty often) hear comments from Jessie about who's doing what on the forum, so I've gotten a bit of a three-year roadmap about people here prior to joining. :D

Hey, Whit.

 

5 days for LA Noire? Niiiiice.

Yup, 5 days! Had a lot to do with playing LA Noire when I was visiting my brother, and I had only a few days to finish it up before I left. So we basically sat there most of the day for several days playing and running people over and playing and shooting people with the uncomfortable aiming system. I wouldn't advise beating the game that quickly, though.

I'm completely made up — also conveniently located in Can-AY-da.

Unfortunately, there is also (somewhat awkward) photographic proof of my existence:

Hello, A. Heathen!

Looks like there's a lot of established couples on this forum. Christian and Avaunt? Soulmates! :D

Hello Malin, Mark, Lou K!

We should form a club, Malin. STH Couples FTW. I love the bow in your hair (or is it a tiny top hat, as your title would have me assume?). Jessie and I were talking about tiny fashionable hats just yesterday.

As for Brian K. Vaughan (Mark): I've really enjoyed a lot of BKV's work mainly because he seems to be very aware of minorities. It's been really refreshing to read his work if only to see racial minorities and sexual minorities being presented in a human, not-stereotyping ways — Y: The Last Man had two very strong lead female characters, both of whom were women of color and queer (two things I don't find very often in comics, period — it's often a startling and profound thing for me to really be able to identify with characters in any kind of media, and Dr. Mann, a queer Asian individual, was amazing to read about as a strong main character). I also enjoyed Runaways because its core group included individuals of color (one was black, another Asian), one lesbian individual, and also some inter-racial relationships. Runaways directly dealt with race and sexuality by having dialogue that actually discussed stereotyping, which was great to read.

Honestly, though, it could just be that mainstream comics are so starved of any kind of awareness of gender roles, sexuality, and racial diversity that I'm praising BKV because of his small bit of insight in a field where there's little insight at all (Tom Breevort, a big-deal Senior Vice-President of Publishing at Marvel, has some small-minded things to say about minorities in comics in this article http://www.racialicious.com/2011/04/29/race-comics-when-is-diversity-contrived/ ). I can't say that BKV's plots are amazing, either, as I agree that some of them can fall apart and not end up as grandiose as his beginnings (Y: The Last Man: All the men are dead! --> Oh now, Babies Up in Space! There's a boy baby. Everything is fine!). His characters, though, are the driving force in a lot of his writing, and his effort to include minorities is something I really appreciate and enjoy reading.

Hello! I'm Whit — comic enthusiast, nerdy individual, lover of video games and books. I've been covertly following this forum for a while now since Jessie is my long-time partner (hello Jessie!). I remember when she started off in this forum three-plus years ago. With her very gentle prodding I decided to start up an account on the forum. So hello! I hope you are doing well.

Some graphic novels I've been reading lately: Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon (Gabriel Ba worked on Umbrella Academy, strangely written by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance — UA was pretty good, to my surprise), the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman (I'm working on volumes 9 and 10 after having read all the others in chronological order), and The Cardboard Valise by Ben Katchor (I've read his work in a graphic novel collection and since then happened across his book. Haven't been able to read it in its entirety yet).

In terms of serial comics, I've been reading Chew by John Layman (absolutely amazing comic about a federal agent who eats things, including people, and gets psychic information about what happened to them), Morning Glories by Nick Spencer (who described MG as "Runaways" meets "Lost" — I really enjoyed Runaways, but I haven't actually watched much of Lost).

I have a soft spot in my heart for the X-Men, as Grant Morrison's New X-Men run got me started actively reading comics at age 13. His run was amazing. Jessie isn't a huge X-Men reader, so I've been slowly getting her to read GM New X-Men arcs from time to time. Weirdly enough, when I first started subscribing to X-Men I started with Ultimate X-Men, which was ... interesting. I started subscribing at issue #1, with Mark Millar heavily on board. I read now that he had no clue about X-Men history and based everything he wrote about in the X-Men movies. While his take on the outfits, ages, etc. might have been refreshing to the franchise, I remember myself getting completely bored with Ultimate X-Men at around issue 24, after two years of subscription. If only I'd have held on longer — I would have made it to Brian K Vaughn's run (I love BKV, and read the crap out of Y: The Last Man).

Video game-wise, I beat LA Noire in a period of five days (pretty groundbreaking game), and I'm currently trying to play my way through most of the Legend of Zelda games. I'm currently knee-deep in Link's Awakening, A Link to the Past, and Spirit Tracks (simultaneously) and playing through Ocarina of Time again. I'd like to beat Oracle of Ages and Seasons and the Minish Cap soon. Anyway. I'm a huge gaming nerd, so if there's anything you'd like to chat about, we should.

Anyway, that's quite a lot of rambling. It's nice to meet you all finally, as Jessie talks a lot about you guys and about this forum. :D