SIEGE comes from a few places, at least part of is the realisation that due to my workload this year, I won’t be taking on any more work in the Marvel Universe for a while. As in, I won’t be doing a new MU book after Secret Wars. There’s simply not enough hours in the day, with Vader, WicDiv, et al being ongoing. It’s going to be well into 2016 before I can even consider anything else.
In which case, I wanted to do something that could act as my swansong in case I never actually do anything else in the MU. Not that I’m retiring or anything, but a year is a long time and you never know where you’re going to be. At the absolute least, it’ll be the end of a stage of my career as a writer of work-for-hire superhero comic books, and I’d like to mark that with a party.
(My career at Marvel basically started with S.W.O.R.D. so to bookend this stage with a return to it, in a very different mode, struck me as fun.)
And so, we have SIEGE, which is basically my love song to the frenzied excess of the Marvel Universe and everything in it, everything I’ve done with it and everything I’ve loved about it, with all my fave characters and artists involved.
Bar a tiny splash of my usual meta, I have absolutely no ulterior motives in Siege other than to have an awesome time and to make you all have an awesome time. It’s a tragic book, but it’s a party of a tragic book, if you see what I mean.
If you’ve liked anything I’ve done, I suspect you’ll like this.
“A Tokyo municipal official, the first openly transgender person to seek or win elected office in Japan. She was elected in April 2003. Kamikawa, then a 35-year-old writer, submitted her election application papers with a blank space for “sex.”
She won a four-year term as an independent under huge media attention, placing sixth of 72 candidates running for 52 seats in the Setagaya ward assembly, the most populous district in Tokyo. Despite an announcement that the government would continue to consider her male officially, she stated that she would work as a woman. Her platform was to improve rights for women, children, the elderly, the handicapped, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
In April 2007, she was re-elected to her second term, placing second of 71 candidates running for 52 in the same ward assembly. She is the only openly transgender official in Japan at this point.” xx
Ai Haruna (はるな愛)
Ai Haruna is a singer, actress, and businesswoman. Growing up she experienced a lot of pain and hardship due to the ignorance of her parents and Japanese society as a whole. However, this didn’t stop her from living out her childhood dream of becoming an idol and tv-personality. xx
Kayo Satoh (佐藤かよ)
She is a fashion model and particularly famous in the fighting game community. She was born in Nagoya and after she graduated middle school she ran away from home because of the pain she experienced in a society that didn’t understand her. That night, she went to her childhood friend’s house, who lent her clothes that suited her. She then worked at a convenience store, and 4 years later she got a job as a clerk at a women’s clothing store. Soon after, she was scouted by a modeling agency which she still works for. x
“a Japanese pop singer-songwriter, as well as being an author and actress. She is most recognised for her song ‘Tomodachi no Uta’, which was used as the theme song for the drama Watashi ga Watashi de Aru Tame ni (in which she also appeared as an actress). She’s also known for being one of the few openly [transgender] celebrities in Japan, having been [assigned male at birth], and has spoken of the struggles she underwent with issues of identity before transitioning. In 2006, she signed to popular record label avex trax, and in 2010 moved to Yamaha Music Communications.” xx
I’m not sure I’ll actually have time to take any today, but here are some more pictures for tdov.
These are a few weeks old but this is actually really important to me because Loki was a pretty big part of me figuring out my own relationship with gender and realizing that I’m also genderfluid. Loki’s a very personal and important character to me, and they’ve made me really love myself and my gender. 🙂
This is why canon LGBT characters are so important. Representation is so important.
Seriously, though. I’m sure all my co-workers are lovely and interesting people, deep down.
It’s just that, so far, the vast majority of my attempts to participate in conversation as an equal have resulted in me getting patted on the head and told, basically, “that’s nice, but the grown-ups are talking”. I am the office pet, which I suppose is better than being the office bitch, but it’s a liiiiiittle bit discouraging as hell, too.
Because I’m ten years younger than all of these people. And while I highly doubt that they had their life together to the degree that I currently do at 22, they’re not the sort of adult who can muster up the degree of self-awareness it would take to care.
Seriously, though. I tried to share one of my standard “funny work stories” from my last job, and some of the weird shit I had to process shipping for. Like the $900 tank top.
And my technical supervisor goes “$900? Bah, that’s nothing. People pay way more than that for clothes.”
I mean, either you’re just trying to make the story all about you. In which case you’re an asshole. Or you really believe that and that it’s a sensible way for the world to work. In which case, you’re still an asshole.
Bah. It’s too early for this shit. I’m sure I’ll feel more charitable after caffeine and actually getting to work unobstructed for an hour.
Hooray, you’re another thirty-five year-old who makes twice what I do and has lived a perfect, American-dream life while being desperately out of touch with anything outside it. We have less than nothing in common. You’ll be gone within six months. Can I stop smiling and nodding at your pointless rambling and get back to work?
Also, you’re in sales. You described our sales supervisor as “a genius who has the skills to back up his ambitions”.
It is not fair to expect me not to laugh like a braying donkey at that this early in the morning.
Can we talk about this scene for a sec? Because I did not quite expect it to unfold like this (mind the spoilers).
Manolo loses the handle of both sword and guitar; he reaches out and, after some hesitation, picks up the guitar — alright, most people probably called it. So we know he’s going to sing to the bull.
Maybe I was naive and/or short sighted, maybe I underestimated the script, I don’t know. But I expected Manolo to pull a Hiccup and say he was not like the others, that he wasn’t going to hurt the bull. Or to tell the bull to just let go of its anger because it wasn’t worth it. Or even to explain about the whole bet thing and his love for Maria and say he didn’t mean any harm. Whatever the case, it seemed he would somehow get the bull to cooperate by surrendering, because he had already learned the lesson about not killing the bull earlier in the film and thus would be shielded by protagonist privileges (as in, no matter what he chose to do it would be okay because he was noble for refusing to kill).
I did not, however, expect Manolo to downright apologise. It caught me completely off guard. He acknowledged both the unfairness of the bullfights — I think possibly on an even higher level than earlier, because this time he had to confront the sheer number of animals killed by his family — and that the bull’s anger was justified; he basically understood his opponent(s) had been wronged and validated their feelings. So he showed compassion, established himself as an ally and protector, and therefore offered the bull(s) a chance to intimately heal.
And maybe it’s just me, but the song somewhat resembles a prayer in lyrics, wording, and melody, and as such adds a spirituality that contributes to the overall sentiment of the scene. So it goes right to your core. There were even some sniffles around the audience when I was watching the movie. I actually had a lump in my throat right then and there but shhhh don’t tell my friend.
That’s something we don’t see that often in media, in my opinion, specially if aimed at children. In a different movie such scenario would probably have been solved by the “hero is noble and thus always right” device I cited above; as it is, I think The Book of Life displayed more sensibility than usual, because it not only added layers to the main character, but also took the time to actually focus on the part that was mistreated.
yeah, a huge dead burning cow was the part of this movie that made me cry.
The creator is very against bullfighting, which is a controversial stance given its cultural importance, but the practice is pretty heinously cruel.
Probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire movie.
And beautiful enough that yeah, I did totally cry.
I'm really not that boring, I'm headstrong and annoying 