A couple of nights ago, I woke up very early and I decided I needed to rewatch the mainline Marvel multiverse films which I’ve only seen once, which are all likely to be important come December when “Avengers: Doomsday” is released. So I watched “Thor: Love & Thunder”, the 4th Thor film, which I’d seen once, in the theater, but never saw again. I very nearly hated it in the theater and it’s easy to see why, as it adapts 2 popular comic stories that have very little to do with one another (which seldom goes well) while failing them both IMO. I loved Jane Foster’s Mighty Thor storyline in the books, but since it’s jammed together with the Gorr the God Butcher story, is left feeling like the better b-plot in a movie about something far less compelling. I didn’t like the God Butcher story in the comics but the film version is worse because it doesn’t actually take any risks. Gorr kills many Gods in the film, just NONE that we’ve actually met before, despite there being more than a handful of those over the years, so the stakes feel very low. All of that is still true on a second watch, but when you know that’s what you’re getting, it’s a lot less disappointing, and so I definitely enjoyed it more the second time around. It also helps that we know, or can intuit that we will soon have some consequences for this story rather than the somewhat standalone nature of the plot as is. We know because Thor’s new charge, the “Love” of the title, will be returning in the next Avengers film and the character will seemingly be a big part of what Thor is returning for, as revealed in a teaser trailer that isn’t (according to the directors) actually footage from the film? I don’t really understand it. But we’re still about 6 months away from that movie + we have 1 other movie before it (“Spider-Man: Brand New Day”) + several other Marvel projects with “X-Men ’97” Season 2, “VisionQuest” & “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” Season 2. Other Marvel Multiverse films I’ve only seen once include “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”, “Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania”, “The Marvels”, “Captain America: Brave New World”, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” & “Thunderbolts*”. I should also revisit “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and I’ve never seen “Venom: The Last Dance” or “Kraven the Hunter” – but I doubt any of those Sony spin-offs will come into play in the next 2 Avengers films or even “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse”.
Thursday was meant to be all about taking photos. And it was. And I had fun. But it was a lot, having taken over 300 photos and then taking the time to delete more than 100 of them and polishing the rest, even a little took hours, and is always my least favorite part of such projects. So I got a lot done and I had a good day, but it left me feeling empty and exhausted – partly because I also started struggling into my new diet. I have often made healthy changes to my diet but the ones that are being made now are far more extreme and involve me denying myself many of my staple foods, which Aaron assures me is normal, and I don’t doubt him, but it feels horrible. And anytime I’m dealing with food, I have to be cognizant of my fucked up psyche which tries to use food as example of something it can’t possibly be responsible for, and honestly, while I seem to be arguing that point really well, I’m not sure I’m convinced or that this might not explode in a few days or even less.
He should be dead or I should be him – the nature of PTSD. But he’s in here whispering his “truth” which stems from an uneducated mind and the horrors he was subjected to.
I got outside Thursday and Friday but both trips were to keep me going outside every day and not the fulfilling walks I’d been going down recently. I just got too busy on Thursday and then Friday when I went out it was crazy hot, and clearly about to rain – and on top of all that, the elevator in our building was stuck on the 5th floor, which meant taking the stairs down and then back up again. I did walk around the block, but the odd feeling of the storm coming in left everything looking strange and nothing feeling all that comforting.
I went to bed early. Around 9pm I think. But I woke up at 1:25am, unable to get back to sleep. I knew I needed to write something up so that’s what I’m doing. I may have a smoothie to help me cool down, as it’s HOT in the apartment. For power grid and money issues we don’t use the AC in rooms we are mostly not in at night (while the bedroom is chilled at the moment, I worry that being in there might rouse Aaron and he has an even he needs to be at this morning).
So what now? I don’t even feel like sharing the pictures that I took the other day. Some of them are quite nice and if I ever update the collages in the photos section, they’ll be very useful, but I’m sick of seeing my face, no matter how healing it can be for me to see how it changes or what I look like vs. how I see myself.
Today’s journal entry song quote is from “The High Road” by Broken Bells, from their eponymous 2010 debut studio album.