And in that moment, Vivian knew she fucked up.

Small* post today because I 1) am tired and 2) have other things to write before the lights go out for the night, but that was the most productive Saturday I’ve had since January, probably in ages holy wow.
_{*By my standards, based on what I’ve been posting here. I’m not holding myself to a weekly update post or anything, but if the timing fits...!}

One of two new library reads of the day was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, because I’ve read some scattered praises of her method and did not realize she has a book. While I can’t quiiite follow Kondo’s tips as much as I’d like to (she emphasizes discarding by category for your entire house, not one room at a time, and I very much do not own the house I live in so that’s not an option), it did prompt me to clear out every book I own. I actually have a free shelf now! And a big donation pile for the library or local charity or wherever!! Also reclaimed my gosh dang bedroom after various circumstances shoved my work area to a less ideal room from which there is minimal respite from background noise!!!

Anyway, library-work and tidying-work took up a majority of the day. So far so good. And while I could have done some assignment work, the load ain’t bad this week so I treated myself to the second book, Marvel’s The Vision.

I am not a big Marvel/DC fan, to be clear. I don’t dislike them, per say, but there’s so much got dang history and my interest in most* superhero stories isn’t big enough to overcome that intimidation factor. Mostly. I mean, I read and enjoyed Watchmen, but its DC tie-ins are like... absolute bare minimum.
(*By which I mean “mainstream,” which I know makes me sound like a pretentious prick but it’s true! Can not get into the movies and the comics don’t usually catch my eye either.)

Point is, Vision looked comprehensible enough as a standalone, I liked the Incredibles-esque premise, so what the heck. There goes my evening.

Not sure if I’ll write up a more comprehensive review or leave it at this, but my thoughts in sum are:

• Pacing was pretty good, especially at the beginning. What a foreboding tone! As the forward states, this story takes itself pretty dang seriously, diving into ~the big questions~ about humanity and all that jazz. If anything, I found it a bit too far up its own ass at times, but I’m the last person to complain about pretentiousness. The unnatural dialogue also makes sense coming from sorta-not-really-robots.


• As expected, there were heavy ties to larger Avengers lore from the getgo. I can’t really complain about this because it’d be like ranting about people with powers in superhero stories, but it nonetheless wasn’t my cup of tea. The story could still work if you swapped out the Avengers for $genericHeroTeam, but it doesn’t care to try. So like, solid addition to the franchise, probably, but it doesn’t work as a standalone as well as I’d hoped.


• Having said that, my interest faltered when problems with the Avengers and Ultron’s family and all that lore connection started coming to the forefront about midway through. Until then they were more expositional matters than anything. Again, don’t really have the right to complain, but. The wife and daughter deserved better. as they usually do.


• Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the reading experience as a whole, but by the end my thoughts are It Was Okay. It’s like an angstier Incredibles if you swapped out “supers” for synthetic people and threw in a bunch of corporate tie-ins. I was particularly not thrilled by the pitch letter (which, among other process work, takes up like half the book), which at the end pretty much says “yeah, we’re writing this to sell a new franchise,” which sorta puts a damper on the Serious Humanity-Questioning Work thing. Insert conversation about the artistic merit of commercial work here.


• Anyway though, reviewing the story on its own merits and pretending they totally weren’t doing callbacks for like an entire issue: cool story. Genuinely surprised me at moments and the interplay of narrative and panel imagery is interesting. “How far people will go for family” is a neat theme to take in this direction even if it leaves a bit to be desired in favor of Doomed Super Antics. Is Virginia okay. Jesus christ, the neighbors deserved better, but I really like how they were characterized at the beginning—other side characters, with extensive biographical anecdote dropping, less so. Overall tightly-plotted with neat character motivations. I’m not sold on the franchise but I gave it to a relative, who’s a bigger Marvel/DC fan, to check out.

Anyway, for the shortest month of the year, February has felt long >:V Progress on [redacted] and today’s cleaning/reading spree have been the big highlights. I know it’s a bit early for an end-of-month roundup, but that’s pretty much all I have to report and I dunno if I’ll write again within the next five days, so... here’s to March clearing the lower bar!!