Cobalt Stargazer

"Gee, I'm really sorry your mom blew up, Ricky."

I think this is what's drawing so much attention for those who are on the outside looking in. None of us are privy to what happened or didn't happen, why Ms. Arakawa didn't seek medical help for herself or perhaps didn't realize how ill she was until it was too late. This is likely alarming to those who have elderly relatives but not those resources.

There's a piece where, like all bullies, Biff liked easy targets. He tries it with "Calvin" too, because Marty's first intervention is to tell Biff to back off and leave Lorraine alone, but a teacher or the principal shows up and Biff backs down. Later, when he's clearly going to assault Lorraine and George knocks his lights out, he was no longer the guy who wouldn't hit back. In the altered future, George has published his first book and Biff is the guy washing his car, so finding his self-confidence propels his life onto a much more positive path than just saving the day and getting the girl. I'm gonna have to rewatch this now.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

As far as that goes, some groundwork has been laid. Yelena and Alexei - she doesn't always like him, but he's her dad, and while he's been written to be a bit of an idiot I think he does care for her. They never got the chance to make new memories as a family with Natasha, so this could be their new start. Bucky and John - they spent most of FATWS at odds, and for good reason, but with the whole Captain America thing out of the way they might be able to come to terms with one another. Yelena and Antonia(Taskmaster) - if the writers are smart, they'll expand on the tie between them, that they were both manipulated by Dreykov when they were too young to really understand what was going on. Now that they're both free of all that, a friendship developing would be interesting. Ava's the outlier here, though no longer having a body that's on the verge of disintegrating opens up the possibility for interaction beyond her being in pain. So there's stuff to work with, they just have to do that.

Wellness checks are a thing, though. Even outside of the modern technology @Blergh mentions, the police can be called to stop by an address and knock on the door if a person hasn't been heard from in a bit. 65 is not particularly old, but Gene Hackman was in his 90s. If his wife was his caregiver and not a nurse of some sort, if she's not regularly in contact with the family or a doctor who prescribes necessary medication, how does no one notice?

Sensualistic. Ritualistic. Alchemistic. Polytheistic.

Found this on Facebook. And cried.

I just saw that, and I'm literally in shock. Tractenberg underwent a liver transplant recently and may have been experiencing complications. Just.....shitting hell.

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.....