holli

Had a conversation yesterday about how Sam Wilson and Maria Hill should be BFFs, because ( reasons )

Additionally, I have decided that I am cool with Natasha's ( spoiler )

Had the day off work, made Good Life Choices and wrote a 7k Peggy Carter story that is chock-full of Winter Soldier spoilers. Anyone want to beta?

Having seen it three times in four days (yeah, you heard me), I am having a LOT of thinky thoughts about Cap 2. I may manage to discuss them at length, at some point; right now, I mostly seem to want to write fic. But I am curious about ( spoilers )

So, today was pretty good. I went to Marshall's and they had a style of shoe that I bought three years ago, LOVED, wore to death, bought again when I managed to find them online, wore to death AGAIN, and despaired of ever finding a third time. I guess they re-issued them? WHO CARES WHY, they were $25 and I bought two pair.

And then I was walking back to my car and a bunch of people in Captain America t-shirts went past in the other direction, towards the movie theater. Some were carrying plastic shields. I stopped dead and said "Wait, is there an advance screening of Cap 2 tonight?"

And they said "Yeah! Want to come with us? We've got an extra ticket."

SO THAT WAS AWESOME. I am having a lot of feelings about Steve Rogers right now, y'all. A LOT. IT WAS REALLY MAGICAL, for a value of magical that involves huge explosions and terrible things happening to Bucky Barnes.

More tomorrow, when I am more awake. SUCH A GOOD DAY.

I am super proud of myself for finishing this before Winter Soldier comes out.

persistence of memory

Steve/Bucky/Natasha, explicit.

I haven't been to Woodlands in ages, and their lunch buffet is especially good on the weekends. Anyone want to join me on Saturday at, say, 12:30, for large piles of delicious vegetarian Indian food?

Taking the girls I babysit to the comic shop on Thursday. They love the Marvel movieverse (the 11-year-old adores Loki), the 13-year-old likes the volume of Runaways she's read. If the John Rogers Blue Beetle run wasn't out of print I'd have already gotten it for them. Suggestions? Stuff they can't find in trade I am willing to hunt down in digital format, but if there's anything we can easily pick up in a comic book shop right now I'd love recs.

Should note: they have read Smile and Drama, they have read Bone, they REALLY like superheroes. All the comics I would like to recommend are older than they are, out of print, or both-- Young Justice, 90s Superboy, Impulse-- and I don't really have my finger on the pulse of current comics anymore.

So, the fashion show I am co-running for June is... kind of expanding? Exponentially? We haven't done any promotion off Facebook yet and the event is three months away, but there's already nearly 50 people signed up to attend on Facebook and I have an email list of potential participants that just broke 40. What even.

So I emailed the folks who handle booking for St. Stephen in Mount Pleasant last night, because we're already pretty much at the limit for what we can fit at the vintage shop, and we haven't even, like, made fliers yet. I think it's a pretty ideal space-- we can fit close to a hundred attendees, plus have a small vendor area, and we can actually afford to book it. That does mean we can't hold it on the planned Sunday, because church, but moving it back a day shouldn't be a problem.

I am super glad there is so much interest, but also kind of terrified because I have never run an event on this scale before. SO MANY CATS TO HERD.

In the comments to this article at the Atlantic (which is stunning, and heart-rending, and you should go read it) people were talking about empathy, and how it fails, and why, and how that leads to tragedies like this. How tribalism blinds people to the humanity and worth of those they do not perceive as belonging to their tribe. How the toxic narratives we are fed-- have been fed, for centuries-- reduce people to rough sketches of stereotype and make it easy to treat them as threats. How the people who do that are not punished-- are even rewarded-- and how that reinforces and entrenches this brokenness in our society.

And I was reading along, and nodding along in agreement, and a strange thought popped into my head. I thought, out of nowhere, Thank God I'm Jewish, and thank God I grew up a reader. And after I had that thought, I had to sit there and pick it apart for a minute, because on the face of it that was a weird thought to have.

But this is what I meant: I was lucky to grow up in privileged circumstances. Some people who grow up privileged have a hard time with empathy, because there's no cost to them for lacking it. I'm lucky because my circumstances were such that I learned empathy early, and it stuck. Which is not to say that I am without prejudice, that I am not the product of a biased and broken society. But I was given opportunities to understand that people who are different from me are still people with as much humanity as me.

I grew up with the knowledge that my family came to privilege later than some, that people with my name and my genes and my tendency to freckle were treated as lesser because of traits they had no control over. I grew up with stories about the monstrousness that results when empathy is eroded, when people are taught not to feel for those outside their particular tribe.

I was a weird, lonely kid whose closest ties were to fictional people, who made friends with difficulty. If I'd had the wrong role models-- if I'd been fed the wrong narratives-- it would have been frighteningly easy for me to grow up without empathy, or with less of it. But I was lucky.

It sounds silly, but it matters that I grew up with Matilda Wormwood, who believed in using her gifts to seek justice; that I grew up with Meg Murry, whose greatest strength was her ability to love. I grew up with Sara Crewe, who knew that all girls are princesses, every one of them; I grew up with Mary Lennox, who didn't learn that she was worth loving until she learned how to love others.

I am so, so lucky to have had the role models and circumstances and stories that I have had. I am trying really hard to feel pity for the people responsible for Jordan Davis' death and the miscarriage of justice that followed, instead of hate. I am trying really hard to empathize. Empathizing with Jordan and his family is easy, for me: I have been blessed with a set of eyes that don't have to work to perceive their humanity and goodness.

For me, in my circumstances, it is easy to empathize with people who have the cards stacked against them, for whom the very structure of our society has been built to exclude and diminish. Empathizing with those who our culture has taught all the wrong lessons, who are blinkered by prejudice, who do monstrous things with no expectation of censure because they don't see their victims as people: that's really hard. I'm not very good at it yet.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. Jordan's story is not about me or my feelings, even a little bit. If you haven't read the article yet, please do that now, because it has a lot more important things to say than I do.

Just-- I had that moment, that moment of Thank God I know enough to be on the right side in this, and I was surprised by what I found when I looked closer at it. I am lucky. My eyes are open. I hope that doesn't come across as self-congratulatory. But I do feel this way, about all of us who struggle against the brokenness in our culture, against the pervasive narratives which tell us that some people are fundamentally worth less than others. We have been given a gift.

I don't envy the people living without it.

And, uh, now seems like a good time to mention that I am, in fact, co-organizing a 'geek chic' fashion show at the vintage shop for early June. We're doing it in conjunction with Fantom Comics, and it's going to be SO GREAT. Anyone interesting in modeling, styling models, or even just attending should get in touch.

Also, if you have any ideas for outfits, I'd love to hear 'em! We're going to do a mix of 'street style' outfits that incorporate geeky t-shirts and prints, casual cosplay (so, dressed-down version of iconic costumes), steampunk-inspired looks, and if we can find people to sew them, some dresses sewn from vintage patterns and made from geeky prints. Right now I have a list in a gdoc that reads:

--RIOT GRRL LUNA AND 70s PUNK BELLATRIX
--lady holmes and watson, but the victorian versions probably?
--marion ravenwood, pending appropriate blouse
--some classic who companions
--alternate era versions of costumes: steampunk star wars, 1920s superheroes, etc (Buffy as interpreted by 1950s Archie Comics y/n?)
--LATE 30s LOIS LANE

If you have additional suggestions for this list, they would be very welcome.