Comics ramblings

So I found out that DC's new Dr. Fate series starting in June is about a protagonist of color (Khalid Nassor instead of Khalid Ben-Hassin, though I wonder if it's just coincidence that they have the same first name...). Now I'm excited!


Ms. Marvel #14

I was so looking forward to this issue...but it ended up being a little disappointing for me.

I started to get suspicious that Kamran was "too good to be true," but it was still a bit upsetting to see he's a bad guy (or at least he knocked Kamala out and abducted her). I sympathize with Kamala to a painful degree—I mean, apart from the child of immigrants thing (which is a big thing), I also know what it's like to be a geek but to be surrounded by people who don't have the same enthusiasm, and meeting someone else who also shares your geeky interests is mindblowing. It's really too bad Kamran turned out not to be so nice after all.


Loki: Agent of Asgard #13

So...by this point, Loki has been killed and reborn so many times it's getting a bit difficult to keep track.

Hell of a cliffhanger at the end of this issue. Newest!Loki (what is this, his fourth incarnation, not counting his future self??) looks rather punk-ish, but the big question is how much does he have in common with his, er, previous self, and whether all the good qualities Copy!Loki / Third!Loki / OneDirection!Loki tried to save are actually still there.

I really want to know, dang.

Eternal Twilight

I've become more acquainted than I'd like to be in recent years with gradations of unhappiness. There's "I'm stressed out because things are hard and not going my way but boy do I love what I'm doing." There's "I wish things were different but I'm okay on a daily basis." On the extreme end of the scale, there's "I'm stuck in a loop where all I can think about is how sad and miserable and in pain I am all the time."

Then there's where I am now: "I'm not that happy and if I stop to think, I'll start drowning in feelings of hopelessness, but I'm just trying to drag myself through my daily routine for now."

It's the feeling that life is an eternal twilight. Constantly going to bed late not for any particular reason, but because I don't want it to become tomorrow and have to drag myself through another day of classes. Being in a constant state of gray apathy, "I'm going through the motions but I'm unable to care about things," and passive-aggressively-hostile "I just want to be left alone, stop bothering me." Watching the dying sunlight reflecting off the clouds—thinking about what I wish my daily life were like—but being unable to capture it. Feeling that life is slowly sinking into an everlasting night, and the sun might not rise again.

Maybe it's because of this "twilight" mood that I've been having abstract, mystical thoughts lately. The thought occurred to me that maybe I'm drawn to fiction writing and storytelling because I've been simultaneously burdened and gifted with an extraordinary sensitivity to life, and (to borrow an idea from Elementary's Sherlock Holmes) fiction is the way I "treat" that condition. That sensitivity has been a source of great pain and hardship, but at the same time I can't imagine living without it; it's become so integral to my perception of the world and life experience. It is an ocean of feelings and an unrelenting thirst for meaning that demands to be honed into a tangible catharsis; otherwise it's an overwhelming weight that I carry every day.