Author: toseealife

Living is Dangerous

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I spent the last two days hearing speech after speech about dangers. Here’s what I learned, everything leads to cancer, anything can kill you, and none of us are healthy.

I’m serious. Everything we use they say at some point it lead to cancer or death. The plastic straws at restaurants are killing the planet. Nevermind the billions of tons of other plastics. We end up eating this, or drinking it in our water, and you guessed it, it can cause cancer or infertility

To this I say BS. I’ve heard about so many things this week that are slowly killing me. It used to freak me out and I wished I could change. But now I am adopting a philosophical perspective.

A blog I follow, BeautyBeyondBones is fond of the quote “To live at all is vulnerable, because life is vulnerability.” I’ve got a news flash for the acturians out there who are figuring out all these statistics: Life is dangerous.

Life is both the most fragile thing we have and the strongest. There’es no real reason any of us should be alive if I go by what I’ve heard this week. We all live surrounded by toxic materials, and eating poorly, event he health food nuts don’t always know everything.l Why aren’t we all dead? Why aren’t we all weak and sick.

A lot of us have health problems, ,myself included at times, but nothing like what we should have if all this stuff was a deadly as they say.

The truth is, life is more than biology. That sounds sentimental, but it;s not. Ask a doctor who’s been in practice a long time, they will probably tell you that some patients do better than others for unknown reasons. Sometimes something int he person is just tenacious.

Case in point, my Grandpa has cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and about a hundred other serious health issues. There’s no reason he should be alive or mobile, they the man can still walk, albeit it with great difficulty. he’s close to dying, but he’s been close to it as long as I can remember. We pray for him, I think that’s all he’s living off of.

Anyone of those things can kill you, yet all of them have not yet killed him. His doctors are mind blown.

There’s no science to explain this. Sometimes life or death appears to be a foreordained thing, or a matter of willpower.

Maybe young people now are suffering more health issues because they are more depressed. Considering the teen suicide rate, have they lost their will to live?

I used to think everyone felt good all the time and only I felt sick or head-achy. Now after college term no#1, I realize that I m probably the exception. Other people deal with pain and feeling bad way more often and more intensely than I do. They just don’t complain because they consider it normal.

I got to thinking about this, and how about a hundred or two hundred years ago it seems like people didn’t deal with stress issues. And I realized, they just didn’t call it that. When I read the Anne of Green Gables series, headaches that are clearly caused by stress are spoken of as a fairly normal occurrence, frequent in some people. And other neurosis are mentioned, with humor.

In fact I think Montgomery was onto something we have missed when she treated these headaches as unimportant. To people with the right attitude, they are. People suffered then and weren’t able to drug it away as effectively as we are now, but My theory is that because they accepted it as part of life, they suffered less in a way.

Physical pain, it’s part of the human condition. It just used to be that no one was surprised by it. No one expected to escape it. Toothaches, they were normal. Headaches were common. Stomach aches were a matter of course.

Cancer, if it existed, it was just one way to die. A painful way, but there were worse.

And as for our toxic environment, I actually don’t believe we are worse off than before by much. People didn’t eat so well back then either, and they used toxic things without even knowing it, at least we take precautions.

No, ladies and gents, if we are more unhealthy now, I am beginning to think it is because of our attitude. If we have less will to live, then we will have less of a life.

I hate feeling bad, but I am not crippled by it unless I choose to be. And I find that even when I’m hurting, life is still enjoyable if I choose to focus on other things. I hope my problem will be resolved, and goodness knows,I’m not telling you to just accept suffering if you can improve your life and get rid of it.

But I am encouraging you not to sweat it over every little thing. Yes, this stuff can kill you, but you’re gonna die anyway. A short life is not a wasted one.

If you’re living in fear, trying to get as healthy in body as possible, but neglecting other things that are more important, then your health is nothing to you. And I know many people concerned with health who are sick all the time.

The skeptic may not like this theory, but sometimes I think God will cut off someone’s ability to achieve what they are obsessed with, because it’s not that important.

The Bible says the word of God and the fear of God is strength to your bones and health to your body. I feel better when I’ve read the word.

Call is psychological if you like, but the point stands. Health and life is something more than a biological equation.

You should be as healthy as you can, but avoiding health risks is impossible. I can tell you that right now. If you don’t have the industrialized ones in the Western World, you’ll have the lack of sanitation ones in the Third World. The Asian countries may eat healthier, but they have more pollution.

It doesn’t matter. Dot he best you can without being crazy, and leave it at that. Live well, and living long will either follow, or will cease to be so important. because it’s not.

Those are my thoughts for now, until next time–Natasha.

Familiarity.

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 If I understood you

and you understood me

we could speak with complete familiarity

but since I just met you

and you hardly know me

we only speak with incongruity.

How pleasant and natural it would be

if at once we could see

each other plainly.

But I don’t know you and you don’t know me

so we have no real clarity.

 

I wrote that. It came to me yesterday in ASL class because I had been thinking about how we speak to each other.

Maybe this isn’t your experience, but I’ve noticed that people who know each other really well, they can be more honest.

I say things to mys sisters I would never say to a friend. Why? Because my sisters will know what I mean.

I won’t bother to be polite to siblings all the time, since I know they won’t get super offended. But I will be polite to a stranger or a classmate because they don’t know me well enough to know when I’m not serious.

I actually sometimes get taken seriously when I’m kidding and I think it was obvious that I was kidding. I know that’s not unique to me, doesn’t it bug you when it happens?

I might tell my sister to shut up and know she won’t be that bothered by it, but I wouldn’t say that to someone else unless I had the intention of making them feel I was angry.

C. S. Lewis observed in The Four Loves that when people have affection for each other, they can say offensive things and not offend. And that the deeper the affection, the better they will know what times to say such things.

Which is not to say we can just insult each other, there’s a time for it and a time when it will be hurtful. If someone in your family is pouring out their soul or crying their eyes out, that is not the time. Or if they’re angry and venting to you.

Usually it’s when we’re in a good mood that we can poke fun at each other and feel  closer and not father apart.

Why are we so polite to strangers? People often theorize that we are scared of what they will think.

But I submit to you that not everyone is scared. at least not of being disliked. Often when someone does dislike us, we feel that they have misunderstood who we are.

“He/she thinks I’m just a—- but I’m not.” Does that kind of talk sound familiar? It does to me.

The reason we don’t speak our mind to strangers is often simply that we know they will not understand us. They don’t know us. And they have their assumptions about people with our opinions that only knowing us better would change. They won’t want to know us better if we scare them off.

The are times when that doesn’t matter and we need to speak our mind regardless. But those are fewer times than when we need to understand each other.

The better you know me, the better you understand me, the better we can communicate. Lack of communication equals lack of understanding. Even if you hate someone, you can still understand them, provided you know  them. You’ve seen movies where the hero and villain understand each other perfectly, that’s why they are at odds.

I don’t me tat we understand English, or whatever our language is. I mean that we have a knowledge of a person’s character, quirks, and feelings about things. That is what tells us what they mean.

This kind of understanding can happen very quickly between some people, especially if they are alike in opinion and character. Others it can take twenty year,s or it may never happen. Some folks lack the ability or the desire to understand each other.

I think that we wish it were different. That we could speak our mind to strangers as easily as to our closest family or friends. In a perfect world we feel everyone would be able to communicate like that. It would be great.

But we need to beware the Tower of Babel. God in His wisdom perhaps has made it hard work to understand each other. A lot of people see it as the worst part of humanity that we have so much conflict. you might want to question that person’s motive.

Conflict is what keeps us pushing forward and it keeps us from corrupting each other completely. Where there is good, there will be conflict as long as men choose to do evil. You better hope so anyway. The most dead-in-soul people never argue with each other, they just sin. We don’t want that.

IF you understand the people around you perfectly, you are either dead inside, or a saint. Because only people who have extreme wisdom, or else just don’t care, are without conflict.

I hope to be saintly, bu I fully expect to have conflict on the way. Because I will meet with the unsaintly. And I won’t always be good either.

So while it would be nice to have total familiarity with each other, perhaps it is for the best that it is hard work. I look forward to the day when evil will not be a thing, and we will all be on the same page.

Until next time–Natasha.

I Voted.

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Hello everyone, hey it’s the last week of the term before finals.

I am not slowing down though, I have VBS in two weeks and I jump back into the Summer Term, got to get those credits under my belt.

I also voted for the first time this month. I was registered and even got the little card telling me where to go, but me and my family all were somehow left off the list. It happened to a lot of people in the state. My dad sad he’s suspect an conspiracy if it hadn’t been in the more liberal areas.

Not that that guarantees anything. We’re very conservative as you can guess.

About that, I’ve got nothing against liberals as people, but their policy are so whacked out. I’ve known plenty of them, and though some of them are nice, caring, and sweet, there’s always a certain glitch int heir thinking on certain subjects. I suppose they feel the same about me.

Basically they react to me like “That Natasha, she’s just so stubborn and determined to speak her mind. We don’t agree but hey, why argue?..It’s not like it’s important.”

Except often it is important, and tat’s why it bugs me. Back off from an argument over sushi vs tacos, sure, (they don’t usually back out from those kinds of arguments actually) but from Abortion? Politics? Respect? Marriage? This stuff shapes our lives.

My state had a voter turnout that was less than a fifth of the population. And I think hardly a fourth of the registered voters. I didn’t hear anyone at my college talking about it, I don’t think the other collegiates voted, not many anyway. And I was the youngest person at the place I voted at by at least ten years, likely more.

Young folks don’t care, or don’t know how to decide who to vote for. Both alternatives are frightening.

I felt the responsibility of the country for the first time. I don’t know how effective our votes are now, but they do something, as the 2016 election showed. So I could end up changing someone’s future. Do I want to live with that?

I’d better, because otherwise I put that ability into the hands of people I don’t even know who probably don’t share my values and who’ve been destroying my state for years. I have a very blue state, just so you know.

Think about it, suppose I vote for tax cuts, and in a year or so when they go into effect (if we’re lucky) someone can afford to send their kids to a better school, or buy a car, or even more food. OR at least they can but more of what they already use. In the snowball effect that could mean less health problems, a better education, a better job, and even better relationships.

Suppose, in the dream of a dream, the money for our roads was actually used for our roads, and people have less accidents or bad dents or jolts on their car, and better tires.

Makes you wish you were in America huh?

Just kidding, though for all I know it could. Everyone seems to want to come here.

I ask you Americans, do you think about this anymore? Or do you vote just to keep the person you hate out of office? To make your life better personally. Do you think about the greater good?

Do you consider the hundreds or thousands of people affected materially by these elections.

Did the people who voted Marijuana in ever stop to think about the hundreds of deaths resulting form driving high? and the people who are going to get addicted to it? and maybe to heroin since that often comes after pot. Did those people ever ask themselves if it was right to hand the right to get high over to a bunch of 18 years olds fresh out of high school, ready to do stupid things just because it’s legal now? Pot alters your brain, it’s true. And we made it legal to do that.

We made it legal to smoke pot around kids who will grow up thinking that’s okay. We are allowing people to raise their risk of getting into accidents with equipment because their perception is affected.

That’s just three examples. My question to you is do you care? And hey, I hear Canadians vote too, so if your from Canada I ask the same thing.

If you’re not in a country with that kind of power in the people’s hands, I would just ask if you wish the government would take the needs of everyone into consideration.

Our Republic over hear in the USA is far from flawless nowadays, or even the  force for good it once was, but it remains able to effect some things for the better still thanks to the people. And call me and old fashioned Yankee, but I still believe it’s the best system, next to the Biblical one.

And I believe in independence and responsibility for my own life partly because of my American heritage, though also because of my christian one. I love our history over here and I don’t apologize for it, so take that!

I mean, sure we’ve done some bad things. So has every country, I don’t catch them apologizing for it. You think Iran is ever going to make amends to us for terrorism? No. They want us to help them.

Not to throw Iran under the bus, my point is, we don’t need to feel ashamed to be Americans just because we’ve had slaves and bigotry here, and invented the atom bomb.

As countries go that still only makes us average, and as for how we’ve used our system to end those things as much as we can, we’re a cut above almost everyone else.

But a country isn’t something you love because it’s perfect, you love it because it’s your home and you want to take care of it. It’s just that America’s whole foundation was built on understanding that the people  are the country, kind of like Asgard in Thor: Ragnarok was described.

So, voting,  as small as it seems, is our duty. Our job. Our chance to help each other.

Until next time–Natasha.I_Voted_Sticker_5

Infinity Wars–2

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There will still be spoilers, but if you read the last post,  you probably don’t care or you’ve already seen it, so we should be good.

So clearly there were a lot of deaths to talk about in this movie. My first question is if they were all necessary?

thr heartbreaking ones wee definitely Gamorrah’s, Spiderman’s, and Vision’s. Even if like me you never liked Vision, it was still pretty sad to see Scarlett Witch first kill him and then watch him die again  thanks to Thanos. That does make it seem meaningless.

But Thanos sacrificing Gamorra in order to get the soul stone that was both repulsive and emotional. Though personally, I don’t think she’s dead. I think she’s in a coma, because a fall like that shouldn’t have killed someone so enhanced, plus the whole thing felt like a cop-out of sorts. And there was that vision of her he had at the end, I think the Soul Stone has Gamorra in some sort of suspended animation. (Ask your nerd friends if you don’t know what that is, it’s a comic thing.)

Gamorra is so coming back, so it wasn’t so bad with her. And Spiderman too. Vision, probably.

But do their deaths add anything to this movie?

Spiderman’s? Not really. It adds to Tony Stark’s many issues to watch his yong protegee dissolve,a long with a bunch of other people. But it doesn’t have a lot to do with the movie’s themes.

But with the other two I have more to say. An ongoing theme in this movie was sacrifice. Thanos wants to sacrifice half of all the life in the universe just so the other half can go on to survive and thrive. he claims that when he did this, with Gamorra’s help, the planets went on to be lush and people no longer starved.

I guess Thanos has never heard that we actually have enough food for everyone on this planet, we just do not distribute it. Killing half the people is more likely to make that worse, not better. Collapsing civilization as we know it will cause more starvation as people struggle to put their systems back together. I don’t know what fantasy world Thanos is living in…one of his own device it seems. Since he can alter reality.

however, if he could alter reality, why not turn all the garbage dumps in the universe inot farms? Why not make the landscapes more fertile? Get rid of the Sahara? That’s just on Earth, but you can imagine in this world it would apply to all the inhabited planets.

Thanos is gong to live forever anyway, if he was so benevolent, he could have worked something out that wouldn’t have thrown off the balance of the universe.

It’s laughable that he blames his won planet for rejecting him, sure Thanos, that’s why the gravity and orbit was off, it had nothing to do with messing with the forces of nature. Just keep telling yourself that.

Now it doesn’t take much thinking to see the inherent problems with Thanos’es solution, but my beef with  this movie was that it’s more thinking than any of the good guys did.

In what is becoming the predictable Marvel fashion, no one in this movie had a good counter argument for Thanos. Gamorra clearly thinks what he is doing is wrong, but she only calls it murder, she does not go farther into it. Are we just meant to assume that murder makes it wrong?

And I would agree that murder is wrong, and this kind of genocide is insanely evil, but I would not just say that. I would have a reason for it.

I only know Murder is wrong becuase I know that God is life, I know that we are made in His Image, and that he forbids murder and it is never a good idea to disobey God. Because His rules govern the universe. That would be what I would say to Thanos.

But when Thanos is laying out his whole twisted philosophy, all our supposedly brilliant heroes can do is stare stupidly at him in horror, and then say they’re going to stop him. Well great, but why? So far we see no reason to think he’s wrong…other than it seems an overly complicated solutions compared to just rearranging things so there would be more resources.

Thanos’es philosophy matches that of many people in the real world, which as I said to my family, is the really carry thing about him. That he’s big purple, and powerful isn’t a problem, its that he represents real ideology.

Even scarier is that lots of people think that we are over populated. They don’t even question it. It’s not actually true. Our cities are over crowded, but the world itself still has plenty of room. Plus people are dying everyday, all the time. We kill each other so much, we don’t need some big bad guy to do it for us. We have enough of those already.

Vision tells Ultron he is on the side of life, and that is all the Avengers can seem to come up with in this movie. Never, ever, let people die.

Ironically, Vision is the first to realize that death can be necessary. Thanos is right about that, but murder is not. Self Sacrifice is not the same thing at all, to lay down your life for your friends or the greater good, that’s a noble thing to do. No one should disparage that. Gamorra tries to do this, and to his credit, Peter Quill was going to do as she asked and kill her before Thanos got the information out of her, but Thanos stopped him.

Captain America is so hesitant to let anyone die, at least since the Winter Soldier, or Ultron. Which is silly. He’s a soldier, he should understand the necessity of sacrifice to stop evil.

Then Gamorra herself fails when she sees Nebula being tortured. Now, I give her a bit more leeway since it’s just terrible to watch that, worse than a quick death scene. But then Quill later blows their chance to depower Thanos when he finds out Gamorra is dead…and Nebula didn’t whack him over the head because…?

yeah, there are some issues I have. Thanos makes his sacrifice, I agree that he didn’t really love Gamorra, but he thought he did. What he considers love, of course it was never going to be her if it came before her and the stone.

The Dr. Strange says he will sacrifice Tony ad Spiderman to protect the stone, and he doesn’t. Perhaps he has his own reasons for that, but it seems the movie is saying that the Avengers cannot let people die or else they would not be the Avengers.

That’s…stupid.

You have go consider stakes. It is not evil to let someone sacrifice themselves in a war, especially not if the whole galaxy is at stake and they can help.

There is simply no point in risking your lives as often as the Avengers do if you are not prepared to let someone lose it if they have to. You cannot live dangerously and fear death.

I am not saying we should be heartless and not care. I think on the contrary we care more when someone goes out nobly, and there is some meaning in it. Better that then the pointless carnage at the end of this film.

See, if three, or four people had laid down their lives willingly, half of the population would have been spared. Think about that.

Yet again we wonder who our real heroes are, if they cannot even make that kind of sacrifice.

Whosoever seeks to save his life shall lose it, an whoever loses it for My Sake and the Kingdom’s shall find it.

Jesus said that. And I think it fits. Int eh end if a few good guys had died for the sake of all, then more good guys would have survived.

Hopefully the second movie will clear all this up. Because life does not have true value unless it valued but  not so much that it cannot be given up.

Until next time–Natasha.

Infinity Wars!

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It’s finally time! I have it in writing that I have been anticipating this since before Justice League came out. (See Expectations for the New Justice League.)

 

HD Wallpaper | Background Image ID:909185

(Image from Google and WallpaperAbyss)

                                Infinity Wars!

Spoiler Warning. Seriously. Do not read further if you are planning to see it.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s talk.

I would like to preface this by saying I still prefer Justice League, but that is completely my own bias and I am not saying it was a better movie, I am also not saying it wasn’t. You’ll have to figure it out.

So, the Avengers movie where people finally died, right? (You were warned.)

Not that I believe for a second that any of them are staying dead. My bet is that they will all come back, and then some of them will die again just so Marvel writers can say there were lasting consequences. I mean some of these people don’t have their quota of three movies in yet, so we know they’re coming back.

But if you walked in not knowing what to expect, unlike me, since I saw spoilers, which I regret now, then the death toll of this movie would have knocked your socks off and not in a pleasant way.

I actually almost choked up when Gomorrah and Peter Parker died. I don’t like Peter so much in this new version, but he was 15, and it’s just hard to watch a 15 year old dissolve into ash even when it’s a movie.

You might wonder if I think that these deaths added stakes to it? Yes and no. I think it guaranteed we would all come back to see the sequel. Of course now we want to know what happens.

I guess MArvel has the right to market what they know will sell.

Forgive my cynicism, but I still can’t believe it really happened or that it will last. Especially with such a serious out.

But you might want a little more detail. If you aren’t going to see it, here’s the plot in a nutshell.

After Thor Ragnarok, Thanos shows up, slaughters all the Asgardian we spent the whole of that movie trying to save–including Valkyrie we presume–and then kills Loki off like a sucker and sends Thor floating into deep space, where he is later rescued by the Guardians of the Galaxy. Whoa t first aren’t sure what to make of him. but as soon as he explains about Thanos, Gormorrah is all set to do whatever it takes to keep Thanos away from the remaining Infinity stones. Thanos has two, thanks to Loki. The purple one and the blue one if I remember correctly.

Meanwhile, Dr. Strange has called Tony Stark in to tell him of their impending doom. Strange has the Green Time Stone, and he says he must keep it away form Thanos, he’ll need help, and Tony needs to assemble the Avengers. Of course since the whole mess from Civil war, Tony isn’t on speaking terms with half of them. And naturally his typical selfish behavior is to hesitate because he’s afraid to call them up. Just when he’s going to finally dial Cap’s number, Thanos’es five horsemen of the Apocalypse show up. Only, it’s just two of them for now. (Yeah, they aren’t really explained any better in the movie, they are just there, and they’re despicable.)

They fight, Spiderman hears the commotion, and dives out his bus window to get in on the action, much to Iron Man’s consternation. I was a little sad that Zendaya didn’t get even a cameo int his, but I figured she wouldn’t have been in it long enough to make it worth paying her.

Anyway, Doctor Strange gets taken by Squidworth (As Iron man dubs one of the buddies) and out into this weird acupuncture trap. Iron man goes after him, Spiderman follows, kind of by accident. Then Iron man gives him his Iron Spider suit to protect him from the atmospheric conditions. Once he realizes he’s stuck with Spiderman he says “Congratulations kid, you’re an Avenger now.” Nobody cheered by the way. Even Peter just looks happy for second then you can tell he realizes this may not be a good thing at the moment.

To make a long story short, they go to Thanos’es planet, upon Iron Mans suggestion, to face him. Eventually they are joined by half of the Guardians of the Galaxy. After getting their rear ends handed to them by Thanos and losing Gomorrah, the Guardians cam there to find him, I guess. I’m not sure they even said why.

Then back on Earth, Vision and Wanda have finally started their relationship. Not married of course, though they should be to be comically accurate. And yes, it was as out of left field as Black Widow’s and Hulk’s. But at least it had a basis in the comics first. Then the horsemen of the apocalypse show up to take Vision’s Infinity stone. The other Avengers show up, Cap, Natasha, Falcon, and they kick their rear ends. Then they all go join Rhodes, or War Machine if you prefer, to go to Wakanda and try to get the stone removed from Visions forehead without destroying him.

And if you think you’re confused, imagine watching it.

The horsemen show up in Wakanda with an army of alien drone dogs things, we find out Thanos was behind the Chitarri invasion of earth, and he’s been in Iron Man’s head for years, and presumably Loki’s too. Everyone put s up one heck of a fight. Thor shows up after a trip to a magical forge guarded by peter Dinklage (sorry, a giant space dwarf. Their words, not mine.) He’s got his ax now, and some people know he had an ax in some renditions, including the old animated movies of the Avengers, so that was a bit of eye candy for us geeks.

Rocket and Groot helped him, by the way, so now they’re on earth. I will say, when they all showed up and Thor blasted the bad guys, everyone in the theater started to slow clap. I think my family began it, but we all couldn’t help it. Thor really is awesome.

Then Thanos shows up and kills half of them. The end.

Not really, but you’ll have to read the net installment to get the rest of my take on it.

See what I did there?

Natasha will return in Infinity Wars part 2.Avengers: Infinity War, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Loki, War Machine, Vision, Scarlett Witch, Falcon, Bucky, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Spider-man, Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket, Teenage Groot, Mantis, Nebula, 4K

 

The Legends and the Myths.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Oh my gosh I feel like it’s been weeks since I posted, sorry, I have big college projects swirling around. BU tI am going to take some time to attend to this today!

Can you tell it’s my first time dealing with finals?

Anyway, I have plenty I could write about. The trick will be picking one thing. I’ve been researching superheroes of all things to write a paper on it.

Professors have come a long way; I imagine if 20 or 30 years ago I suggested superheroes as the subject of a research paper, my professor would have given me a look and said “That’s not a real subject.”

But now, it totally works. And with the Infinity War Craze of the past two weeks, and the subsequent Deadpool 2 craze, what more proof do you need that superheroes are relevant?

I haven’t seen either by the way, but look for a review of the first one sometime in the near future.

Though I think I will still prefer the cinematic inferior Justice League to all this glamour of the Avengers. At heart, I still prefer even a partially good DCU flick, to a saturated MCU one.

Enough about that, the point is, superheroes are difinitely in. And those of us who are not in the swim about them maybe should undertake to know at least a little about what fans are crazy about.

Chances are you know someone who is nuts about superheroes. Likely you know someone who is too nuts about them. IF you’re like me, you don’t buy all the merchandise or see every film in theaters, bu you keep up with the comic books world at least enough to know the context of most of the stories.

I read the original Spiderman comics, which hold up even today, and the Silver Age Superman ones, 50s-60s, and of course the 70s Mr. Miracle. I have yet to find a Wonder Woman comic, but I would love to check that out sometime.

Funny story, I remember getting a Wonder Woman comic from the Library back before I could even read. Actually I think my mom got it just because I was looking at the picture. And I started at the words and really wished I knew what they were saying. But all I got twas the vague idea that she was a kid growing up with her mom.

And I can’t believe I didn’t remember that when I read “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, since he had the same experience with Superman.

I’ve always wanted to find that comic, which I now realize had to be the original one, and read it knowing the words. SO in a strange way, comics have been a part of my reading experience almost from the beginning, and Wonder Woman has intrigued my also.

And my mom was not a superhero person, and still is not except by proxy, since she has to listen to us go on and on about it. My mom is smart, she has learned over the years to take at least a mild interest in everything we get obsessed with so that she preserves her sanity.

Superheroes will always be considered somewhat ridiculous, even by the people who love them. Not because they are ridiculous as a characters, but because the idea of one is just odd to us. A caped costumed character is funny. The whole underwear on the outside thing. By the way, did you know that they looked more like that because men used to wear suspenders that kept their pants up higher? When supers were created, that look would have been more normal and wearing nothing over that are would have been indecent. It’s not about underwear at all.

And yes Wonder Woman wore a swimsuit, but even then there were worse ones.

Still, it’s funny to dress in a flag. The pint is, they aren’t meant to be taken seriously.

That’s why we love them. You don’t have to believe they are real in order to get real ideas and emotions from them.

As I have pointed out to others, superheroes are for those who dream. They are a modern mythology. And I would have to acknowledge this even if I hated them, because there is no getting away from it. They are ubiquitous.

I think I love superheroes more than I care to admit on this blog, but I don’t love them just for their flashy fighting and quippy dialogue, though I enjoy that.

I love them because in nowhere else  in our modern world do I find so many characters held up to a real standard for good. And they challenge us to meet that standard. I love the heart behind many of them, the honest look at hardship that many of the creators had to take in writing them out. Mostly, I love myths.

And I’m a dreamer. Without fail, people who dream that I know, they like superheroes.

People who do not dream don’t, or are at best ambiguous.

I’m not kidding, I know people as old as my dad who like superheroes, but they are dreamers; and I know people who think they’re stupid, they aren’t dreamers. And those who are ambiguous also don’t dream.

IS it possible to be a dreamer without liking supers? I am sure it is. But  I do not think it works the other way. What use are superheroes with their outlandish exploits if you do not wish to accomplish things that seem outlandish to you?

Fairy tales will always be mocked by those who do not secretly wish they were true…even those who do. But as Anne of Green Gables has said, the world needs fairies, it cannot do without them.

All that means is not that we need fairies as a fantastical creature to tell stories about, but that we need fantasy. Which fairies famously represent.

We need superheroes in the same way. Whether you are a dreamer or not, you need dreamers. The ones who keep this world afloat.

They are the legends and the myths today, and they keep us linked to older myths and stories. We need that, we need to keep our imaginations alive. And if that looks like a comic spread with some speech bubbles, so be it. I’ll take that over pure realism, that stuff can be soul killing.

Until next time–Natasha.