It was a gap between eventful Tuesday and eventful Thursday. I didn't really do much but OH WELL.
That's okay sometimes.

Today started with my dad cooking eggs, which I couldn't eat because eggs are not good food to have in you by themselves as a breakfast on a tae kwon do day from my experience. (They're fine as a lunch albeit not ideal, but you want a breakfast bowl with them.)

After that, at work, there was free food offered!

...It was tacos!

I love tacos, but my body doesn't, so I had to pass.

Instead, I ate Subway, and it was one of the most delicious I've ever had.

Now, the drink I had no tea in and the flavor showed as a result (it had too strong of...well, every flavor), but otherwise it was really good. Then I came home and had my hamburgers. I've doubled the cheese as I did before, and while the results were rather messy, they were still rather delicious.

I feel like I had a ton more to blog about, but this is all I can remember.

​Ah well.

...By which, I mean, without a reminder I would have completely and totally forgotten to blog. Whoops. Ah well. Uhh...let's see. I had my counseling appointment, but it wasn't the most productive of things. What else? There's not much I can really think of honestly.

Tomorrow's going to be one of those long days (in that I'll be working from 8 to four and have tae kwon do after that), and after it I'll probably need to spend the day doing mafia stuff I haven't done yet. (Which will eat up all of my day.) I am basically free the whole week except for round dancing on Thursday and family night on Friday, so that means that I can stay up REALLY late tomorrow and every day thereafter, basically meaning a near-infinite amount of time on my hands.

​We'll have to see how many creative ways I come up with to waste it all!

And it wasn't my fault. It was PLUGGED INTO THE CHARGER. It somehow LOST ALL ITS BATTERY IN SPITE OF THAT. My parents did fix it while I was at work, butstill, that meant that I needed to leave for work without my phone. Which is my emergency lifeline in more than one way. A way for people to contact me, a way for me to contact them, a way for me to keep in touch while at work, a way for me to check in on things online, and also the most convenient way of clocking in and out of work. Was very annoying.

Ah well. At least work was productive! I managed to keep myself busy and I felt like I fixed a lot of stuff. Didn't quite manage to get everything, but I got enough done where I can say shamelessly that I earned my pay, and I can't really ask for much better than that.

Of course, on my break, I DID happen to think up an idea. I would never, ever, ever, EVER be able to pull this off. But basically, I thought of what I'd do if I were to be given free reign over superheroes as I know them to be. As in, not my OWN superheroes. Those I've got plenty of. I meant EXISTING, established superheroes. Spider Man, Batman, Superman, Iron Man, the like.

The idea I came up with was a comic I'd call "Shared Universe". Now I imagine that there would still be the risk of legal issues for things which aren't public domain (nobody can really stop me from having a character named Thor even if said Thor looks identical in every aspect to Marvel's version, but I imagine there'd be more issues if I used Spider Man verbatim), so I'd tweak them as necessary to make them be 98% the same but with just enough key details changed to not get a lawsuit.

But basically...the idea would be me making exactly what it sounds like--a shared universe, where I would run my own takes on characters, settings, ideas, and whatnot. Similar concepts would be combined/merged/tied together even if originally unrelated. I would simplify a lot such that many of the currently-unrelated things can be reduced down to having a much smaller explanation pool for the sake of simplicity.

However, I would still make things as incredibly diverse, interesting, unique, and consistent as possible.
There's four settings I would for sure be using: Marvel, DC, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Hellboy. I also had the idea of throwing in both Frankenstein and his monster. (Another idea of mine was to take some cues from a certain film and have Van Hellsing be a werewolf. I even thought up a way to have him have four different appearances: as an old man, he'd have his heightened senses but human strength; as a young man, he'd have heightened strength but human senses; he'd have a hybrid form and a full-wolf form.)

I'd have concepts such as the League of Extremely Gifted (dating back to the 1800s with roots in TLOEG with some Hellboy and Frankenstein later, but in more modern days being the equivalent of The Justice League)--LEG for short--PALM (haven't quite worked out the acronym there but I was thinking something along the lines of 'Protects of All Local Mankind', loosely equivalent to Defenders), and FIST (again, not with the established acronym but something along the lines of 'First Invasion Strike Team', akin to the Avengers).

LEG was formed originally to deal with supernatural threats, and still covers that area. They use the appropriate level of force to contain threats and protect the world. The members of LEG largely work individually across the world, but unite whenever they encounter a threat that they know they are incapable of dealing with on their own. All of them have one central location, but all of them are also incredibly mobile in that they travel a great deal and only return to their central location when it is necessary for their own reasons. (E.g. recharging at a secret base.)

The members of PALM work in city branches: every single branch has a team operating in a single location. Said team, similarly to LEG, works mostly as individuals, the difference being they coordinate with one another to essentially create patrols which can cover the whole city. They also operate on a lower level. Whereas LEG still primarily deals with supernatural threats (albeit now also dealing quite a bit with super-powered individuals), PALM mostly deals with every day criminals, and putting down crime syndicates and the like. PALM has a no lethal force rule; it is forbidden.

And FIST would be PALM's opposite. FIST is essentially a first responder force, mobile and operating on the move. They exclusively work as a team, not as individuals...however, membership REQUIRES that the person in question be able to operate as an individual (as you never know when you will be separated from the team). They respond to any extreme threat which the locals cannot deal with.

They are basically the equivalent of a police/army of superheroes, in that they are an organized strike force of sort. If an alien invasion were to happen, FIST would be the ones to take them on. They also deal with supernatural threats that exceed the scale LEG is capable of on their own, they largely are responsible for keeping supervillains from conquering the world, and will also respond to any large-scale crises. (For instance, while PALM might save people in their city during a hurricane, FIST would be the kind of people to stop a hurricane from devastating a city.)

I would not use any one singular source material for the characters in question. I would use as many as I could find, to get the best variety possible, and then I'd research them, give my own take on them, and make something blending the best of all worlds. Given the freedom of comic books not needing to be self-contained stories and that I'd be operating on a 150ish-year timeline, this would allow me to explore nuances of every character from their material.

I'd do my best to keep villains as villains and heroes as heroes, but I wouldn't be afraid to blur the lines a little. To give spins on villains. I'd allow myself to have a higher sense of realism (thus why I'd try to cut down on the number of supernatural sources)...but I wouldn't let this increased sense of realism kill the whimsy, the fun, the aesthetic of classical superheroes and supervillains.

Good people could and would remain unambiguously good, no justification no explanation needed; good for the sake of good. There would still be evil people evil for the sake of evil, no elaborate backstory necessary. It's just that I'd use these to emphasize and accentuate virtues and sins, in a sense, in that I'd be using them to show the strengths of both sides. A villain who is a villain for no reason, no explanation, no justification...properly utilized is the scariest thing of all.

A hero who is a hero for the sake of being good can give a much-needed sense of hope, even if they know that doing so is difficult. (A staple of some of the best supes being that doing what they do isn't easy...and it's not being easy which makes what they do be super. Superman isn't super because of what he does, so much as what he doesn't do, as it were. The choices he makes and whatnot.)

...It's an idea I would absolutely love to make of course.
But it'd never happen.
I could avoid the lawsuits or whatever easily enough. Just creatively change a little here, tweak a little bit there. Heck, the whole point of the project would be me doing my own take on these characters in the FIRST place so I'd already have changed them from their base point.

What I can't do.
Is give the research properly to pull it off.
In order to do this to the levels I envisioned, I'd need NO LESS THAN encyclopedic knowledge of AT LEAST:
-The DCAU
-The current DCEU
-Other prominent DCs (e.g. animations not part of the DCAU, shows/films like various Batmans)
-The DCU proper
-The MCU (this one's easy enough, just need to finish watching Agent Carter and watch the Netflix series for shows)
-Other Marvel films not part of the current MCU (various Fantastic 4, X Men, prior versions of Spider Man, etc.)
-The 616 Marvel Universe (that is, the main comics verse, which I'm going from memory as being 616)
-The Ultimate Marvel Universe
-Prominent alternate universes of both DC/Marvel which aren't canon yet have widely influenced works of famous superheroes/supervillains
-Hellboy comic
-Hellboy films
-The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
-TLOEG film
-Plus any other works which I'd want to incorporate into the setting. (For instance, I have in my head the idea of Dr. Frankenstein being AROUND a second-generation member of LEG, and his creation being a continued member to modern days, but I haven't actually done much reading/watching of the classics featuring him and mostly know of things from popular culture.)

...That, not even covering how this would be literally thousands of heroes/villains (probably tens of thousands), in at least ten times that many stories (so we're looking at hundreds of thousands if not millions of stories). I can cut out stories. I can merge stories. Those two would reduce things significantly. I can even cut out/merge characters. Ideally I don't make new characters...but what I'd want to do would be FROM ALL OF THAT. Making new stories, too. Not just retelling, but creating.

Most of the initial creations for stories would in fact be retellings, just mixed, mashed, and so on and so forth. Blending things together, such that what seems like something original is just two things which were unrelated being merged together into a singular thing. Yet that's what I'd want as a BASELINE. To start MAKING things.

And this would be made with comics, mind you. A webcomic or plural, webcomics. But still. Each story's not a single page yaknow. Each story is like...10-50 pages. Of art which I'd want to be top-notch, too. I couldn't pull the art off. Even if I could, I couldn't pull it off on the scale necessary. And there's no 'even if' to that. A team of like...20 devoted people might be able to manage it.

...Might.

...But even if I had that. Then I'd still need to be able to have the encyclopedic knowledge of all the sources I mentioned above--I have good retention of quite a fair number of them, I know FAR more about them than your average person, but I am no comic book nerd of any sort. I'm second-rate-at-BEST.

...And even IF it were possible for me to have memorized enough to get it done "right" as it were...there would be the matter of actually managing to WRITE all of this. To actually get it done right. To handle thousands of characters in thousands of stories and manage to tell their stories with a coherent, consistent timeline which would be similar to what we all know, and yet still have spins on them.

It's just not a viable project on any level.
Alas.

A girl can dream, right?

At least until next month that is. (Exactly next month in fact.) That means less time for me to slack off. I actually got a fair amount of stuff done today. It was mostly worthless stuff, but it is also something which will hopefully help me get in the groove better.

Basically, I'm not nearly as productive as I want to be, but I'm far more productive than I was before, so...progress!

And a fair amount happened, but my mind is a bit jumbled and scrambled up (it's a bit late so maybe that's why), meaning I can't really talk about it coherently. Still, I'll try. For some random reason, we had fresh-brewed coffee tonight. I usually eat after my dad, but today I ate before him. This being the day after Thanksgiving, our meal was leftovers.

The film we watched was The Hitman's Bodyguard. You could tell that the actors had a lot of fun making it, because none of them were really taking things too seriously. In spite of this, they were actually acting. It was a pretty standard film otherwise, but I quite liked it.

​I feel like I should be saying more, but that's all I can think of. Guess that means I need to sleep soon.

So there was lots of family night fun. We watched Atomic Blonde, which was a pretty reasonably decent film. The surprise-lesbian-sex certainly did no harm to it for me (and there was plenty of nudity even outside of those scenes), and the twist at the end was something decently clever. It was easy enough to guess part of the twist, but the whole twist I did not in fact see.

​For cleaning up dishes, there were tasks for three people, with four available. The obvious solution: a rock-paper-scissors duel to the death. You might think that with so many people, it'd be impossible to get a winner. But on the third throw, we had a decisive winner: my brother, meaning I got drafted to dry dishes. (Also of interest, our first round defied the odds by virtue of every single one of us throwing the same one.)

​That's about it as far as commentary I can think of goes. It was a good day.

Today was mostly a personal day so I don't have much to put on the more public blog.
It was a good day though, I can tell you that.

Obviously, Thanksgiving is in two days, but today marked the six-month anniversary for me and my girlfriend dating. Unfortunately, schedule conflicts prevented us from celebrating today, but we'll celebrate tomorrow instead. Today was work, then tae kwon do after that. It was a pretty standard affair.

Between the two, I had Subway as per the norm. My mom gave me some kind of coupon thingy, but I forgot to take it. Also unfortunate, the toaster was broken so no properly-made sub for me today. Ah well. It was still a good sub regardless. Messy, as usual, and spicy, not to mention a bit crunchy, but it is packed with veggies I normally don't get in my diet so I like to pretend it's some semblance of healthy.

That's actually about it. Maybe it's my tiredness kicking in (I've been utterly exhausted for about ten hours if I'm doing my math right), but I can't really think much. That's typically the calling card of time for sleep.

And mostly doing at-home stuff. I took a shower which I've been needing to do for weeks (yes I went that long without a proper one, and when I had that shower it was without shampoo/conditioner so it's been months since I used them but I did use them today), and from there, well.

Pretty much just did my normal internet activities for the most part. Didn't do as much as I probably should, but...that's nothing new! Ah well. When dinner came around, my mom offered me a storebought sub from some place. It's apparently a fairly good place, too. My opinion is a mixed one: some bites were really good. Other bites...weren't so good. No bites were terrible, it's just that the bites which weren't REALLY good were just kinda...okay, basically.

My mom seemed to interpret that as me saying I didn't like it, in spite of me multiple times clarifying that wasn't so, but oh well. (She blamed my addiction to Subway.) She also had bought some Vietnamese dessert of some kind. It tasted okay, but wasn't great. It did kinda sorta have a sweetish after-taste, but the actual thingy wasn't really the delicious delicacy I was imagining.

It might be my spoiled-sweet tastebuds, but basically...the dessert looked like it was. Well, almost green puke, but not quite. It was lots of greens and I saw some beans and there might have been something which was some sort of meat in it? I imagine that with different taste buds it very well actually could be a dessert in spite of its unappealing appearance, and yet. With mine, it was just. Food. Food, which I could eat, but only with effort. It was engaging my muscles from my jaw to my tongue a lot more than most meals for some reason so I was getting exhausted eating it.

After that, I had my normal Monday meal, meaning I've actually eaten a fair amount. This was my double-cheeseburger. This time, on a whim, I decided to double the cheese on each burger and I actually really liked the change. Prolly gonna make it permanent. I don't know if it was luck or good technique, but I was also able to keep the whole thing together (a rare feat) the entire time rather than have it fall apart after a couple of bites or so...

...Until near the very end where I'd have like three bites left. And at that point, the only reason it didn't hold together is that it slipped from a good height out of my hands, and the impact onto the plate separated the ingredients. WHOOPS. Ah well. That I got so far was impressive. It was delicious, too. (I do apologize to the blog reader who wanted burgers as I am typing this, but this is what happened, even if saying it makes them feel a little bit jealous. Much love. <3)

I also had some extra coffee at around 8 or so if I remember, since it was randomly poured into my cup for no apparent reason given that I'm supposed to get a (relatively) fresh brew tomorrow. (If I were working from 8, then I'd get up at 6 which would have the coffee still hot. I work at 10, so I get up at 8, two hours later, meaning it'll be cooled down a bit...but still REASONABLY fresh and warm, compared to my normally-stone-cold coffee that's 6-9 hours old.)

Hmm...I think that's about it for today.
Tomorrow I have work, then tae kwon do, but unlike normal, not back to back. After I finish work, I intend to stop at Subway and eat right then and there (the sooner the food's in my body,  the better), so I won't be at home for very long, but I will in fact go home if only for the briefest of times and then later leave again.

​That's the 24-hour forecast more or less, so I'll be sure to note anything else important.