Life update
So brief life updates
Last weekend I went to Columbus to see my significant other (SO). I drove down on a Saturday and came back up again on Labor Day. On Saturday, we went to the Ohio Renaissance Festival, which was a bit fun, except for two things:
1) It rained on us (boo!)
2) I also couldn't help but feel like a lot of the Ren Faire scene has become about buying things and consumerism in general. I get that a lot of life is about that nowadays, but as someone who's struggling just to pay my rent, I found that a bit disheartening.
After the Ren Faire we hit up Yellow Springs, which is always a good time, and Young's Dairy for ice cream.
Sunday rolled around, and we were unsure of what to do at first, but we eventually wound up at the Columbus Zoo, which was honestly pretty epic (although it rained on us while we were there too). But they have a great zoo there, and we had a lot of fun walking around, going on the dinosaur boat ride, and looking at some awesome animals.
I was supposed to go back home after that, but I wound up sticking around to see his family and watching the new Dave Chappelle special. I really didn't care for it, but I don't want to go too into it. I've actually heard some interesting things about how he may have stolen someone else's jokes for part of it, and I'm going to look more into that at some point.
On Monday morning, SO and I went up to our alma mater, Wittenberg University. I'm trying to stay frugal, but I did buy a college hoodie just because I was there, a tiny bit of a splurge for me. It felt weird to be back there after all these years. I've been a few times, but it's always gives me a weird feeling to be there and to see all the students going about their business. It makes me remember how I used to be, and then I wonder if I just wasted all of my potential. I often find myself wishing I could go back in time and do things right, really take advantage of the opportunities I was given instead of just squandering them.
Anyway, Monday afternoon I drove back home, and that evening we celebrated my sister's birthday with some ice cream cake. All in all it was a pretty good weekend. I did break my book fast a tiny bit, because I purchased a copy of Sandition by Jane Austen. However! I haven't purchased anything since then, and I've been pretty tempted to almost every single day. I don't know what it is about books, I just want to buy them. I think a lot of it has to do with the bookstore itself, and how comforting and nice it is.
I had a day off on Thursday, and instead of going to the bookstore I went to a library to pick up The First Fifteen Lives of Henry August by Claire North. I had heard that there was also some controversy regarding this title and whether or not Hickman was plagiarizing some of the content from it for his new X-Men series. Hickman has denied it, and I can see where some of the concepts might have been used before.
However, it does seem a little sketchy to me in terms of the specifics. Both Henry August and the new X-Men series present the various lives of the person in question in a similar fashion, and even the language itself is similar between the works. I'm sort of calling bullshit on this one as just being a "borrowed concept." I think he took heavily from North's novel, and not just as "inspiration." And I really think both he and Marvel ought to actually own up to it instead of hiding behind a smoke screen and claiming that there are many similar works out there.
The idea of reincarnation? Yep, totally present in lots of work throughout time. But the idea of coming back in this specific fashion, reliving the same life over and over again, and being involved in some sort of weird conspiracy? The language used and the presentation? Totally stolen from North. And in comics land, you can do that, because writers use the X-Men or the Avengers or whoever and just use the concept and characters and claim it as an adaptation or new version of the series. But that's definitely not how it works in literature, and I think if North wanted to, she could bring a pretty serious case against Hickman if she wanted to.
Anyway, you can read more about it here if you want:
Jonathan Hickman Replies to "House Of X" Similarities to "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August"
Stories about people living their whole lives again are not exactly new. Groundhog Day may be the most famous, one man repeating the same day again and
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