Today was a sleepy Friday, in that I woke up so exhausted, I wound up taking a nap at the back half of the day that went way longer than expected. If I’m going to hit #26 in a row, it’s now or never.
Personal News
Because the nap went longer than expected, I’m going to have to make up some lost Day Job time this weekend. It won’t be that bad. I got ahead of the game on Thursday night. The stuff I’m going to do is relatively straight forward and shouldn’t take too long. But it is another weekend where I’m going to be doing some work.
I think the nap that took me today was part of the inevitable crash I mentioned a few days ago. So since I’m working some this weekend, it seems the cycle will continue.
Upcoming Events and Such
Last night, I made hotel arrangements for Norwescon, reserved the hotel for Baycon, bought the plane tickets to Seattle for Norwescon, and confirmed that we’re all set for the rest. Boskone is going to be upon us before we’re ready. It’s going to be a busy year.
This weekend, I’m heading to San Jose area to meet up with Steven Radecki and his wife.
The Topic: Some Good and Some Bad Entertainment
Today, my work’s book club was supposed to meet, but because Teams was pretty much down for everyone, we rescheduled the meeting to another time. The book we were going to talk about is The Sisterhood by Liza Mundy, and this will represent the “bad” entertainment.
It’s not a bad book, per se, but it is definitely not for me. The main thrust of this book is that there existed women patriots that served the CIA, and they faced misogyny. None of this information is particularly new or interesting to me. There were a few stand out individuals described in the book, but the overall structure is wrapped in generalization, which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe if my gender were different, I’d enjoy this more, but that seems shitty, too. The world is flooded with media that is all about my gender, but I don’t take comfort in it.
This might sound strange, but I don’t typically identify with most straight white CIS characters just because they’re straight, CIS, and/or white. I am a straight white dude, but the life experiences and personality on the page and on screen does misses me more often that it hits. Do you want to know which MCU character I most identify with? Sam Wilson. That might be a topic for a different post, though.
I started this with some criticism. Let’s move on to some praise.
Melissa and I just started watching Echo on Disney+ and I think it’s really, really good. I’m hoping all of the Choctaw content is good representation, but I don’t know. I like the main character. I’m very much into the family drama portion. It’s good! I’m not sure Disney/Marvel promoted this as much as the other stuff, and I’m guess that’s for two reasons.
- The perception of superhero fatigue and oversaturation of Marvel media on both the big and small screens
- This is following a deaf, Native American with a prosthetic leg, and the anti-representation, anti-“woke” crowd has been particularly noisy lately.
With regards to the first point… I love the superhero stuff, probably more than the next person, but I get it. Less is more sometimes, so backing off and leaving people wanting and anticipating is probably a good play.
As to the second point… I really hope I’m wrong about it. It’s important not to let ignorant people steer the ship. If Disney/Marvel is really concerned about being perceived as having a representation agenda, either lean into it or ignore it, because if it’s a good story, it will stand on its own.
That’s it! Pizza is on its way. Melissa and I will finish Echo tonight, and maybe I’ll mention tomorrow if I think they stuck the landing.