My site is running slowly, and I have no idea why. Let me know if you guys have issues! I'm not sure how to resolve them, but I can complain at Dreamhost and see what's up. Usually performance improves on its own, though. I'm running kind of behind today getting this up. Very sorry! This week turned from one of those weeks where you have nothing planned into one of those weeks where you have absolutely no spare time. (Or, possibly no friends if you're unwilling to make room in your schedule to actually spend time with people. Hmm.) Malaya...is having a hell of a week, I guess. She finally got a chance to break in those crazy werewolf legs and let herself feel comfortable for a bit, and now she's back to square one. In the classic hero's journey construction, the hero is supposed to refuse the call a certain amount of times, which usually falls flat to me...because who the fuck wouldn't want to be a hero? (Even though like, sometimes your weird helmet-wearing dad chops off your arm with a lightsaber.) Ultimately, Mal doesn't have a choice. She is what she is, and there's no changing that (at least in this story). Sooooo, the biggest issue she's going to face is whether or not she pulls herself together and stands between her family and total chaos, or keeps trying to get back to her previous reality, which kind of sucked but it was livable. That's the conflict I like in the hero's journey narrative: refusing the take up the mantle isn't actually an option, and your simple past life seems attractive but is really a lie, so you need to make some choices and prove to yourself that you can handle this. Related note: I really enjoy drawing hands. Is it obvious? Whenever this comic is all done, years from now, I hope people look back and are like, "wow, she sure did tell a lot of this story just using hands." And I'll be like, "yes, I did. Because reasons." So, part of the reason my week has been nuts is that I ended up in downtown Chicago Saturday night for my friend's graduation art show thing, then I worked on the comic all day on Sunday. (ALL DAY.) Then, yesterday I worked my retail job until late afternoon, rushed to fit in all the errands I didn't have time for the last few days, then went to see Captain America. THEN I went to bed because it was late and I was sleepy. Captain America was...a movie. I think I liked it. I don't think I'll ever watch it again, but that doesn't mean it was bad. VERY OVERWHELMING. The constant long, long, long fight scenes were kind of beating up my senses along with the bad guys. I felt like for a movie that made a point about property destruction and lives lost, there was a fuck ton of property destruction and lives lost. Unless like, throwing someone into walls and down stairs and shit doesn't kill them. Or cause brain trauma. It's funny, because when you sweep past a whole room of people on the floor, I think we're supposed to assume they're all knocked out, but like, that's not the only conclusion you could draw. Frankly, it's quite hard to knock someone out from my understanding, and being knocked out isn't a guarantee you're going to wake up without some serious medical repercussions. Overall, I think the amount of fighting was meant to look cool and impressive, but it felt like that ate up most of the screen time and kind of lessened the emotional impact of the movie overall. And really, in the end I'm still on Tony Stark's side. Not necessarily for this movie specifically, but as a character overall. In the movies, in the comics...I always find myself really identifying with Tony Stark, and I kind of hate that they seem to keep shitting on his character and relentlessly retraumatizing the poor dude without any opportunity for healing. He's been blown up, operated on in a cave in the middle of some desert, been betrayed multiple times (almost all the time) by people he trusts and cares about, spirals out of control and just gets yelled at and shamed for it (after going through all that????), gets his shit together, forms the Avengers, gets more shit for that, sacrifices himself by taking a bomb into a black hole (or whatever), is super traumatized by surviving certain death again, then there's all of whatever happened in Iron Man III (so many things), then he's kind of character fucked in Age of Ultron (nothing in that movie seemed in character, idk), then he's all down and out about creating Ultron and getting lambasted for that, then like...this entire movie. Yet, he still soldiers on and makes shit and gives people fuckloads of money and tries really, really hard to be a good person and do what's right for strangers and friends alike. The path to hell is paved with good intentions, and he always has really good intentions, even if they don't always work out right. So yeah, I don't hate this movie, but I'd like Tony Stark to have one decent fucking day. I'd also like if movies weren't so dead set on destroying entire cities and blowing up cars and shit. You know what's a great fucking movie with lots of action where that kind of thing doesn't fucking happen? Star Trek IV: Voyage Home. Action, adventure, comedy, Spock communing with whales, and like...no one fucking dies. They make sure of it. And no buildings are damaged. A woman gets a new kidney and Scotty fucks with the space-time continuum and it's great. I know, you can't really compare a major tentpole action superhero movie like Captain America to Star Trek: The One With the Whales, but action doesn't have to be nonstop explosions and shit to still be engaging and fun. Okay, I gotta get my life together. Time to clean myself up, vacuum, and buy cat food. Such a thrilling life.