Strong Female Protagonist

Strong Female Protagonist is a webcomic by writer Brennan Lee Mulligan and artist Molly Ostertag. The protagonist, twenty-year-old Alison Green, used her powers of near-invincibility, super-strength, and flight to fight super-villains, but quit her crime fighting team to go to college. Alison fought as a superhero since she was fourteen, and attempting to continue making a difference and do good things in a world where she cannot solve problems by punching them is a difficult transition for her. She is an extremely relatable character.

Currently in Issue 6, Alison is kept ludicrously busy by her job as a firefighter, her schoolwork, and her work to create Valkyrie (a network of superheroes to help provide protection and support to women leaving abusive partners). In this issue, Alison meets Max when she rescues him from a burning building, but they ultimately disagree on matters of morality. When she discovers that Max has a superpower that can help one of her friends and save many lives, she physically forces him to use it despite his resistance to her plan. Later, she feels guilty for forcing Max to use his power, but also believes that she saved many lives and helped her friend with no adverse effects to Max (beyond the issue of forcing him to act against his will). It's a complicated problem, and one that Allison and readers both do not quite know how to handle; it's a real problem, and there are no easy answers. While the comic is entertaining, it's also a platform for discussions of morality and thoughts about how these ideas still apply to our own world.

This is a comic that manages to practice realism without resorting to "grittiness," where the most significant conflicts are not solved by punching things, and sometimes not solved at all. Nonetheless, Alison has an optimistic faith in the innate goodness of humanity that is heartening, and the comic is not depressing or overwhelmingly negative in tone. Despite Alison's "Mega Girl" superhero persona, she is growing up and moving beyond a simplistic view of the world, and this is a comic about her journey. She is a "strong female protagonist"-- a female character who is realistic and flawed, but ultimately attempting to do good in the world.
You can find the comic online at strongfemaleprotagonist.com. 

Philmont Staff Summer 2016

This summer, I have returned to Philmont Scout Ranch as Mailroom staff. Because Carleton finishes so much later in the summer, I was a late arrival. I did three sessions of training over two days instead of the week-long training that most newly arriving staff undergo.
Unfortunately, the Mailroom job doesn't really get me out into the backcountry as much as News and Photo did, but on the other hand there's a lot of free time. I've been getting a lot of reading done. I've re-read several of Robin Hobb's novels, and I'm also re-reading Anne Rice's The Witching Hour now, plus I've caught up on all my reading from the Parnassus book club. The Little Red Chairs, Imagine Me Gone, and LaRose were all favorites. I've been exchanging letters with friends (I love getting mail) and painting in my spare time.
My crew from home came out for their own trek, which was cool. I attended Opening and Closing Campfires with them, and met them at Capulin Volcano National Monument. It was nice to see some familiar faces from home.
This late in the summer, we have lots of mystery packages and mail, including one I-camp addressed "To: Evan, From: Mr. Poof". We have no idea who to give it to or who sent it, so it may never make it to the intended recipient. We also get a lot of postcards returned for insufficient addresses, and since postcards don't have return addresses and cannot be forwarded, there's not much we can do. Sometimes people send mail that is simply addressed "Attn: Mailroom" or "Philmont Scout Ranch", which isn't very helpful when trying to deliver it to the correct person. Christmas in July is still pretty recent, so we've delivered several wrapped "Christmas" packages to backcountry camps. All in all, it's not too bad a job, even if it doesn't have the variety of my work last summer.

The Beginning of the End

It's about to be 10th week, and then my freshman year will really be coming to a close. I've registered for classes fall term. I'm pretty excited: French 204, Anthropology of Humor, Folk Dance, and Norse and Celtic Mythology. I've been less interested in Biology lately.
This Saturday was Rotblatt (the 150th year, too). I was in line for a T-shirt at 3am. It began to lightly rain on us, which was fun. When they started tossing our shirts around 5am, the crush of people was unexpectedly forceful. One of the barriers was knocked down, and I was pretty certain I would get lost between the groups of people pushing in two different directions. Luckily, I claimed my shirt and was freed from the mass of people. Rotblatt itself started around 5:30am, I believe. It's a softball game with an inning for every year of Carleton's existence, and must be played with a drink of some type in one hand. Mostly, it appears to be a reason for the student body to get outside during Spring Term.

9th Week Update

I've been painting a lot recently, mostly space because it's easy and doesn't need to exactly match up to something real. The stars have made a complete mess of my desk.

Room Draw was last week; I will be living in the dorm that's generally considered the worst dorm on campus, but I know a few people living on my floor, so that's good, and I'm also not on the far side of the lake from everything else, which was a possibility. I'm going to be so lost at the beginning of next year when I don't know where all my friends live anymore.

I finished reading Purity by Jonathan Franzen recently. It was a really interesting book. It was cool to see the stories of all the separate characters begin to intertwine and entangle. Strangely, I feel like every mother-child relationship in the book was definitely odd.

I've started reading Circling the Sun by Paula McLain. It's about Beryl Markham, so I suppose that makes it a form of historical fiction. I'm really enjoying it, although I'm not very far along yet.

Recently I re-watched Ant-Man, and I think I enjoyed it a lot more the second time. The first time I watched it was probably 3am in the morning and I'd been awake for 20 hours or so, which, for me, is unusual, and I was really annoyed by how Hope wasn't allowed to do anything and this random thief just becomes a super-hero for them over the course of a few weeks. I think the second time I watched it and was a little more awake, I was able to get how this conflict was an actual part of the movie that made sense within the movie, and enjoyed it more. I feel like Ant-Man worked well in part because it wasn't just a superhero movie; it was a bit more of a heist movie, that happened to have a setting full of superheroes and cool powers.