Scott and Jean Appreciation Thread 2021

[Hizashi]

Yeah, sure. But junk is not the same as trash, right?

Right, good point.

Ugh… Then I’m definitely keeping my money.

I haven't been enthused by the MCU for a while, and while the X-Men can turn this around that won't be the case if we jump to Krakoa.

But even when they don’t… they force you to challenge/review your perspectives and that’s important. Otherwise you become mentally stagnant.

Yeah, that's another good point. First comes complacency then stagnation.

Which is why I love Matt Murdock!

Haha, and I agree.

Yeah… I mean, sure: whatever is happening, the hospitalizations are manageable. But the problem is the number of new infections. We lost the grip on that. And the danger is that the virus doesn’t need to cause symptoms to mutate. Who knows what’s the new variant we’re cooking by *refusing* to take this pandemic seriously and go for an eradication approach?

I'd hate to work at a hospital generally but definitely in this situation.

Seems like a good strategy.

Plus Christmas will be here soon, and she always makes tons of tamales in December for the holiday.

I’m only reading X-office stuff nowadays, but I’m so close to just dropping everything. It’s not just that I’m exhausted of the current BS and their lack of respect for their own era continuity. I just don’t see the point because nothing in the future seems to indicate it’s going to get better.

I’m not sure I’ll be around for the Wolverine event… I mean, do I want to see that train wreck? What are the chances Percy is going to leave Scott and Jean alone? What are the chances his portrayal of any of them won’t aggravate me to no end?

Who was it that decided feats and spectacle mattered more than characterization and narrative? And when? What motivates the lack of respect of their own continuity at editorial?

It’s even more than that. Languages have different structures.

(For instance, does Spanish have the actual Present Perfect tense?)

You have to learn how navigate them so you can express yourself. Take the verb “get”, in English. Think of how many different uses (not just meaning) it has.

I get you - understand
I’ve got your back - support
I’ll get you some water - retrieve
You don’t get to do that - allow
I’ve got a flu - contracted
She’s got three candies - have

And that’s not even talking about the multi-phrasal verbs (get out, get in, get away, get down, get up, etc…)

Ooh, do you have a Linguistics degree? These are the sorts of things most people don't consider about their own language, let foreign ones. I mean, I can't even get my friends or family to spell correctly in text messages.

So many people praise it. I really have to watch it.

I don't want to over-hype it, so I'll just let you watch it in your own time.

I think children’s animations are allowed to have “heart”, to be pure and, most especially, they’re allowed not to be cynical. That’s the difference.

After all, you can’t sell the idea of true love if you approach it through a cynical perspective. And if a person hears that and thinks “well, it’s because true love doesn’t exist”, then it becomes self-explanatory why its portrayal doesn’t work, right?

Are we living in the age of cynicism?

Nope. It's like the Hellfire Gala completely disrupted everything. They call this “style” decompressed. I call it bad pacing.

Decompression and deconstruction need to go away.

It’s been too easy for Bandages (Terunofuji).

Well, it'll have to wait until next week, Tobi's mom got the virus. Only mild symptoms, thankfully, she's on the mend. He's spending time with her over the weekend.

How do we grind XP in the real world? We can’t just go kill rats in the sewers, right?

Unfortunately the best spot is the gym. At least if the goal is physical stats; killing sewer rats might raise INT and DEX.

That’s what really annoys me.

I'm glad I was skeptical about them.

I used to have one scar for keeping a blind dog from touching a hot oven. But I’m so old even that scar has faded The one of my nose will be with me forever, though.

They won't scar, but just last week my left hand was riddled with large blisters while taking down an old parking lot light. They bubbled and bled pretty badly, stung like nobody's business.

Sure. Jean can “work” with that:



Seriously? I’d *love* them as a couple. The problem is that their power levels couldn’t be more different so, basically, she’d ruin his book.

I honestly think they’d be great friends, though. I can see Jean being *the* person who stops Matt from doing the stupid stuff he normally does. And I can see his being the person who is totally okay with the craziness of her life because of his faith, to a point even the other X-Men aren’t.

Jokes aside, while having them work together as lawyers would be really cool, I don’t think Jean would want to work as a trial lawyer because she’s a telepath and she'd know any of her trials would be appealed and overturned over and over again. Since criminal law is what Matt mostly does (though he works with civil suits too), I don’t think they’d be working together full time. So, at most, he could use his legal kung-fun to help her set a good strategy.

So back to her actual partner (the one I *want* her to be with)…

Sometimes it's funny to remember that Daredevil exists in the same universe as Jean and the rest of the X-Men.

Why? Why can’t he have fun *and* be paid to do it? Let Jean make the big bucks.

(Or do you think he’s a very ambitious guy and he wouldn’t be happy?)

They don’t even need much, anyway. Remember they’re not allowed to have their own kids? And they can't leave what they build for the kids they have? What's the point of making more money than they need to pay their bills?

I suppose if money's not an issue than it doesn't really matter; I figure Scott would occupy his time with a job and then do handiwork as well. Jean making the big bucks reminds me of a Japanese manga about a former yakuza marrying a career woman and being a stay-at-home house-husband.

Not very well. He doesn’t have the best people’s skills, does he?

And if going to university for a new degree is an option, he’d be an awesome judge, though. Most especially in appeals courts.

Good point, I guess I figured that Scott's analytical mind would be very useful in those careers. Maybe he'd need a partner more attuned to others thoughts and feelings, but who knows where he'd find someone like that.

Why doesn’t that surprise me that you’d like that sort of thing?

Well, I'm a simple man.

Nope. The virus is still circulating, but the number of new infections have somewhat plateaued. I’m telling you, it’s super weird. Just the effect of the vaccines doesn’t explain it.

I should've paid more attention in biology and my other science classes. I mean, what explains that?

Yeah. It’s really hard for everyone. Are they back to school?

They are, I've picked them up a few times after school. I spoke to a teacher and the school district has safety protocols in place so I feel good about that.

You succeed. And you’re welcome.

Isn’t because people don’t get your jokes?

So my jokes are bad. But it’s actually worse than that: most of them require a certain wavelength for people to even recognize them as a joke. Others are just very silly and those are the ones that usually land.

So we graduated to Star Trek: The Next Generation now. My partner doesn’t really like Piccard, but he’s a sweetheart and he’s watching it to make me happy. Anyway, he asked me the other day: “So you want to watch some Captain Bald?”

And I replied with my best, solemn voice: “to baldly go where no one has gone before!” I might have said: “no man has gone before” because I was still stuck in the 60s series and he always skips the intro. But anyway, that’s an example of a silly joke people - well, nerds - would get.

It’s impressive how fast my jelly can be when it’s about coming up with those silly stuff. If only it’d work as fast for more important things…

Okay, that's funny; please tell me he laughed? That reminds me of a time a coworker asked me what it was called when someone is trained to have a reaction based on a sound or something (Pavlovian response) and I answered completely straight-faced "Provolone response", because I was hungry.

My friend's wife is the easiest person to get a laugh from, she will laugh at dry-heaving sounds or just saying words like "barf". I've known her for years, she's honestly just like that.

Well, I’m the youngest. So WTH!

Maybe your parents saw how responsible or prudential you were and just decided to roll with it?

Will do. Thanks for the tip.

I've got other recommendations, but we've gotta place ourselves.