I mean, I voted for him and I'll continue to jockey for what he represents through the convention (Deborah Parker on the committee drafting the party playform! Suddenly I'm very proud of my state) but a sense of humor and perspective never hurt anyone.

Good for you, Arya.

Yeah, the one who was hot when it started and looked like a guy who possessed some child porn by the end.

Spencer was saying something about WW2 buffs being able to talk your ear off about internal power struggles in the Nazi party. A three-way struggle for ideological control of Hydra with Zemo as the Hydra establishment, Skull as the even more extreme insurgency and Steve as the true believer could be fascinating.

Silver lining, maybe now I won't have to hear people praise his Sweeney Todd anymore.

Make sure to watch at least the episode that narrows its focus in on Nora, "Guest." If "Guest" doesn't grab you, the Leftovers might not be for you. If you that episode speaks to you at all, the show really takes off from there.

All that ultimately matters in these deviations from the status quo (because the status quo always returns whether we like it or not) is whether it makes for a good story in the meantime. And my reaction to this is "Sam Wilson's going to have a hell of a year."

Pretty much (they were representatives of countries like Iran! North Korea! Syria! Russia! …China. ….France?), though there was kind of a general sense throughout Ultimates that you shouldn't like the Ultimates all that much.

Yep. The infamous "You think this letter stands for FRANCE???" line was Ultimate Captain America, and 616 Cap meta-textually responded to it with a monologue about the bravery of the French Resistance a few months later.

I would post the image of her and White Jenny from the final page of Power Man and Iron Fist #1, but I don't think it would help.

If Steve Rogers: Captain America and Sam Wilson: Captain America turn out to be two sides of one mega-story where Steve tries to gaslight Sam and Sam ends up trying to figuratively save America's soul, I'm on board. That just amps up the story Spencer's been telling with Sam in a compelling way. It's like Brubaker's…

Hey, the audience I was in groaned loudly when Cap and Sharon Carter kissed in Civil War. Maybe people are onto something.

Once in a while you get an American Horror Story though, where they pitched both Seasons One and Two at the same time, and the executives (rightly, to my mind) responded "well, we hope people like Murderhouse, because Asylum's the one we're excited about."

Yeah, I very much took part of the difference between Margaery and Loras's relative states to be largely about "Margaery's been imprisoned for lying about her brother being gay, and is getting mentally prodded by the Sparrows to try to get her to break. Loras is being fucking tortured."

People seem to have such trouble liking two different characters if they come into conflict at all, and I really don't get it. Ferris is fun, but Jeanie's pretty easy to relate to and sympathize with too. It's not some insight to say you like one and the other sucks, it's just refusing to deal with the entirety of…

There's wiggle room in his previous tangles with Emma Frost though—enough to actually plant story seeds. She (especially given her backstory with her brother and father) might have quite a few things to say to him now that he's ready.

I thought she had the standout performing moment (though probably not standout performance as a whole) in DofP; her body language in the live-footagey sequence after she went out the window with a bullet in her leg was super evocative.

Wait, I thought cats got that what they do with their mouths, we do with our hands. So a cat perceives just being fucking brushed or petted as socially equivalent to you licking them, were you also a cat.

I still maintain that Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is a perfectly likable musical when it's performed by children. It's only once the average age of the cast is over eighteen that it becomes a creepy fucking descent into candy coated Hell.

I think you make a great point about closed system vs. open system black markets.