Cobalt Stargazer

I agree with you in principle, but in practice, the issue with the serum has always been the potential for misuse or the wrong person receiving it. That's how we get John Walker and his nonsense. A good person like Sam could probably take it with no ill effects, but I can see how he would be cautious given the evidence of things going wrong. Hell, if someone had bothered to ask Isaiah all those years ago, "Do you want this?" he'd have said no. The similarity between sci-fi and superhero stories is that people are always screwing around with stuff they don't understand, and then something either explodes or it "just" falls into the wrong hands.

From the Brave New World thread, spoilered just in case:

Responding in the Thunderbolts* thread.

Talk about failing upwards. For anyone who thought Ross seemed unlikely to be a successful politician.....

Well, we've got Thunderbolts* coming up, and it looks promising as far as that goes. But they have to start somewhere with new characters if they're going to develop them at all. If Sam does go on to rebuild the Avengers, there have to be others besides Torres. By the way, did I hear correctly? Spoiler tagging for safety purposes.

Ford's age has a lot to do with it, I think. There's a moment after Ross tells Sam that he was dying, and that's why he initially worked with Sterns, and I realized I saw Thaddeus as he is Now. Not the warhawk who sicced the military on Bruce Banner. Not the general who threw a phone book's worth of laws at the Avengers and said, Sign or else. Just a frail old man who was trying to stay alive long enough so that maybe, possibly his daughter would forgive him for his arrogance and stupidity. Yeah, he victimized Sterns just as much as he did Bruce, but Sterns turned it around on him by victimizing him right back. I admit it, it got me. Just a little bit. I would like to see more of Ruth at some point, though it's annoying how totally they sidestepped her backstory. But if she's a former Widow, she could always show up again, especially now that her former boss is in the Raft. All in all, it's not anywhere near as bad as some folks say it is. Would definitely see again while it's still in theaters.

"Yzma!" "What?!?!" (Sorry for the blurry type.)

Yes, because Spike's such an upgrade, though I could point out that none of the alleged concern for Charisma Carpenter's comfort and dignity ever extends to Sarah Michelle Gellar or James Marsters. Most of the chatter I've seen about this on FB is, "How are Angel and Spike going to fit into the reboot if there is one? Vampires aren't supposed to age, so how can Buffy possibly reunite with one of them?" Blech.

So it's not, 'Girls are yucky', it's 'Even the comics crowd doesn't think everything from the comics is relevant.' Sounds about right.

Maybe, but it's easier to go after the A lister. Lively is much more famous than Jenny Slate who was namechecked here at least once because someone asked her what it was like to work with Baldoni, since she played his character's sister in It Ends With Us. Instead of just answering the question, Slate sidestepped by saying he seems 'really intense', whatever that means. If she's also being named in this suit, I missed it, so someone with better Google-Fu can enlighten me. If she's not, then perhaps Baldoni is wanting good press for himself at Blake's expense because she's the easier target. Why bring up Taylor Swift at all, come to that? How is it relevant who Blake's friends are if they're not going to be involved here?

I don't disagree, but a key ingredient here is Kylo's idolization of Darth Vader. Did Han and Leia keep all that stuff to themselves when the boy was growing up, the two things at the top of the list being the destruction of Alderaan and Han being imprisoned in carbonite because Vader turned him over to Jabba? I mean, either Kylo never heard those stories, which seems unlikely due to an entire planet being vaporized, or he did and he....what? Thought that was cool? Yes, Luke acted rashly, and yes, it turns out Snoke was manipulating Kylo for his own purposes. But I don't think it can be discounted that the man we're initially presented with wanted to be exactly like his grandfather, which is why he kills Han and might have killed Leia if he'd gotten the chance. To sever those ties. Can't blame Luke for that.

The Skywalker Whining Gene, in other words. Though there is always the argument that it would have ended that way without Luke's mistake. No one who faults him for his actions with Kylo ever takes the next obvious step, what Kylo does in response. "Why would Luke ever think Kylo would become evil? He <i>saved</i> his father! Why would he jump to.....oh. Well. Never mind, then." Replace Luke's other students with the younglings, and it's Anakin all over again.

We don't even proportionally treat male victims the same way we treat female victims. If more people had publicly sided with Sinead O'Connor back in 1992 instead of laughing at her or acting like she was a kook, would there have been a much more serious take on the abuse allegations she was making? The accusations against Michael Jackson have followed him beyond the grave, but we may never know how many boys he assaulted. I try to stay out of this kind of thing because it all leads back to the same place, but the system not being equal applies to other things too.

Isn't that what happened to Drew Barrymore? Not being assaulted, as far as I know, but her parents were taking her to parties and clubs when she was as young as ten, and that's how she became a cocaine addict. Fair enough to say maybe the kid lied to get out of the house/into the party and the parents are totally responsible as far as providing a good upbringing, but I do wonder if there's no curfew or something involved here.

With an assist from Rudyard Kipling