RIP Stella

I’ve started getting targeted ads for my own teepublic designs.  Which makes sense since I’m the one who’s bought most of them.

I know that Star Trek’s whole thing is introducing cool stuff and then never mentioning it again, but whenever I’m watching a show with a vulcan I always think “they should make a bigger deal about how they’re ten times stronger than humans and also powerful psychics”.  As we all know in the Dominion War the Dominion (which was warring) conquered Betazed but what you may not know is that they unconquered themselves with psychic murder powers.  Scanner style I assume.

I don’t know if this is new or if I just came across it but I saw some concept art for a Justice League Dark movie they were maybe possibly considering thinking about becoming interested in exploring the idea of making.  This is the concept art for Zatanna.

It’s not the Zatanna I know, looks more like generic sexy witch #3 to me but I admit that I’ve not regularly read comics in 2 decades.  It would be some good art for Stella though.  Sometimes when I want to be a filthy wastrel I pay people money to draw pictures for me.  I’ve thought about commissioning some Stella art before.  What I would really like is a poster/playbill for Royale Fantastique.  I probably won’t do either.

A while back a bookstooge asked me why I find myself reading less than I used to.  Don’t get me wrong I still read a lot because I’m SO smart and smart people read books, but I probably read 80% less than in my reading heyday. 

I’ve been thinking more about that and I think one of the reasons is that I’m less engaged with the main characters.  To whit, in the last four books I read, none of which I loved, the main character fell into one of two categories – “the ace” someone who is ridiculously good everything and everyone knows it.  All the other characters either love them or are jealous of them.  Or the worthless sad sack who fails at everything and only accomplishes anything by dumb luck.

Neither of those appeal to me.  A common writer writing wordbarf is saying that flawed characters are good.  A lot of people either take that too much to heart and their character isn’t flawed, they’re only flaws, they’re irredeemable broken and horrible, or they go “nah” and they make Dr. Perfecto. 

I don’t know if this is a change in literature and it’s more common than it used to be or a change in me where I used to like those kind of characters and now I don’t.  What’s mildly frustrating to me is that I think I would have liked these books fine if the main character was just a little less super awesome or super horrible.  A character who occasionally fails or isn’t great at literally everything would be better.  Or a character who is a disaster most of the time but there is something they’re good at or at least they achieve something by perseverance instead.

In conclusion, I hope Loki season 2 is good.