BC CULTURE
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Happy Monday readers, it's Dark Phoenix week! Over the next ten issues, we'll explore what is perhaps Claremont's most celebrated story that depicts the ascension of Jean Grey to the role of Dark Phoenix.

It's UXM #129-130, in which we are introduced to multiple X-mainstays!

 I warned late last week that these threads will include heavy topics, because I find it difficult to adequately discuss the D.P.S. without acknowledging its commentary on agency, sexual violence, & how privilege corrupts.

Please stay safe & mute me until Sunday if you need to!
Our first issue starts off where we left off on the shores of Muir Island following the team's defeat of Proteus!

It's incredible to think that just last issue, the team met their most dangerous opponent yet, but Proteus was only but a primer for what the team will face next.
Our team officially drops from 7 to 6, with Banshee, after many issues depowered following an injury, officially leaving the team to remain with Moira on Muir Island.

Scott's attempts to make up his membership losses are rebuffed not once- but 3 times by Jamie, Alex, & Lorna!
It's almost like Claremont was clearing the decks to make room for some new members on the team...
What feels like a throwaway bubble about Piotr's anguish over killing Proteus, actually sets an important thematic point ahead of the DPS in full.

The X-Men don't kill. Even when faced with a violence, death is not cause for celebration. What would happen if innocents died?
...and speaking of corruption, here's Wyngarde, still pulling Jean's strings and manipulating her already further into darkness.

Many of Wyngarde's manipulations center on reverse-sublimating Jean's dark desires in exchange of her adherence to social norms...
...signaling the inverse of what Freud would have called a mature defense mechanism.

After discovering that widespread sexual abuse of women was behind the trauma response then known as "hysteria", Freud quickly buried his findings and rejected its implications for society...
...all of which is pretty appropriately manifested in the ethos of the Hellfire Club, an group built on patriarchy, privilege, and the depiction of women as tools rather than individuals of agency.

Even Emma (hey queen!) is depicted as subservient, despite the power she wields.
Back on the Blackbird, we're given a moment addressing Scott's recent "just friends" dalliance with Colleen, where a sympathetic and compassionate Jean understands the extent of his trauma and the role it's played in the repression of his emotion.

Sorry, lots of Freud today...
Hey, Chuck is back from space and we're still only on #129!

I think more than any creative team at the time, the X-Office was really interested in the psychology of its characters... which as a social worker has been pretty hard to ignore.
Keeping with today's theme, it's clear here that after spending several months uncomfortably playing second fiddle and consort to his royal lover, Charles is acting, as Kitty might describe, like a jerk.

It's obvious he's projecting his own sense of inadequacy onto Scott...
...making Scott the avatar of his weakness, allowing him to say everything he wants to say to himself to another.

There's also reaction formation. I feel useless, thus I must loudly demonstrate my use to everyone.

You'd hope a psychic might have a better handle on psychology.
And now, the moment anyone familiar with #129 has been waiting for: the introduction of one Ms. Katherine Pryde, already finding ways to be iconic:

1. KISS poster
2. Kermit poster
3. Adolescent existential dread

We love to see it. Welcome Kitty, hope you survive the experience.
Over the next several years, Kitty will become *the* POV character for the book and there will be lots to unpack as we get to know her.

Rereading this reminded me of @GerryDuggan's current Marauders run- and the relationships Kitty will share with these two for years to come.
Two important facets of her identity that will play a major role in her characterization are quickly established:

Kitty is distinctly Jewish- something the team wants us to know as it places visual focus on her Star of David.

And she is a courageous, fierce hero in the making.
Ah yes, safety pins as piercings, what a way to clearly interpret this disco as ~one of those bad places~. Stop being such a square, Scott. Gosh.

(Safety pins are to Manhattan night clubs as smut shops are to Calgary neighborhoods, or something, I guess.)
Hey, it's an overtly Freudian concept again!

Thanks to Wyngarde's psychic interference, the walls of Jean's sublimation are beginning to crumble... forcing her to confront a reality, which frowned upon at the time, is true nonetheless...

...women are also... horny.
Jeez this thread is getting really long.

I mentioned earlier that the Hellfire Club is thematically built on the power of men and the objectification of women, and this exchange between Wyngarde & Shaw really captured that for me...
...Shaw is so privileged that he hasn't even considered others might be more powerful than him.

It's a level of arrogance- and an expectation subverted masterfully by Claremont & co.- that will become his undoing.

Also, this, unrelated to the above point, for your pleasure:
This is the 1st of many disgusting moments where Wyngarde psychically and literally assaults Jean.

The creation of the Black Queen is a really profound moment in looking at dissociation as a trauma response. Victimized, she builds a personality whose sexuality belongs to no man.
Which compared to these panel... is something a vulnerable Jean has done to protect herself as others have failed to do so.

It's subtle, but I noticed this parallel about the idea of using Jean as a tool. Despite his love, Scott still sees Jean as a weapon to be wielded in war.
For a final set of stray thoughts, I wanted to welcome Dazzler to the book and view her as a symbol for the privilege of passing in the mutant metaphor, which stands out against this moment with Kurt, where he describes the professor's anger about his decision to live "out".
It's one of the earliest indicators of the flaws in Xavier's dream. Assimilation requires the abandonment of identity, which for any oppressed people, is a form of erasure and genocide.

Kurt's panel is an argument for the existence of Krakoa, in case you still can't get it.
Did you know there's a max limit to the number of tweets you can post in a thread at once? Evidently it's this many.

In any case, here's another hint toward the true identity of Jason Wyngarde, and a terrible omen of what's to come for the team.

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1. Now that Stan Lee is being eulogized far and wide, it's important to remember how marginal Stan Lee and his collaborators (Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) were in the 1950s and 1960s.

2. Marvel Comics (before that Atlas) was just a cog in the machine of a bottom pulp publisher run by Martin Goodman, the husband of one of Lee's cousins. It was the lowest of the low in the publishing world.

3. Now Mario Puzo (not yet the author of the Godfather) shared offices with Stan Lee in the 1950s and 1960s. Puzo wrote for garrish men's adventure magazines and, like Lee, dreamed of writing a novel & breaking out. But Puzo looked down on Lee.

4. Flo Steinberg, 1960s secretary at Marvel: "They were always making jokes about us. They'd come in and giggle. mario Puzo would look in and would see us all working on his way to the office and say, 'Work faster, little elves. Christmas is coming.'"

5. When JFK was killed, the whole office of Magazine Management was stunned and quiet. Except Lee. He continued working. "He was still working on the comic books," Puzo said. "Like that was the most important thing in the world."
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What do you think folks, shall we do some bad book covers today?

I think we should...


"I have made some bad decisions in my life..."

Dressed Up For Murder, by Gary Brander. Fastback, 1986.


"It's not you Mr Darcy, it's me..."

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Bestseller Library, 1966.


Move along Twitter, nothing to see here...

The Star Fox, by Poul Anderson. Panther Books 1968. Cover by Bob Haberfield.


Fangs For The Mammaries, edited by Esther Friesner. Baen Books 2010. Art by Clyde Caldwell.

I see what you did there Clyde...
CULTURE
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The New York Times
The New York Times
@nytimes
Stan Lee’s fictional superheroes lived in the real New York. Here’s where they lived, and why. https://t.co/oV1IGGN8R6


Stan Lee, who died Monday at 95, was born in Manhattan and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. His pulp-fiction heroes have come to define much of popular culture in the early 21st century.

Tying Marvel’s stable of pulp-fiction heroes to a real place — New York — served a counterbalance to the sometimes gravity-challenged action and the improbability of the stories. That was just what Stan Lee wanted. https://t.co/rDosqzpP8i


The New York universe hooked readers. And the artists drew what they were familiar with, which made the Marvel universe authentic-looking, down to the water towers atop many of the buildings. https://t.co/rDosqzpP8i


The Avengers Mansion was a Beaux-Arts palace. Fans know it as 890 Fifth Avenue. The Frick Collection, which now occupies the place, uses the address of the front door: 1 East 70th Street.
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Ferris Jabr
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A thread of very good, wonderful, truly Super Bowls.

Translucent agate bowl with ornamental grooves and coffee-and-cream marbling. Found near Qift in southern Egypt. 300 - 1,000 BC. 📷 Getty Museum https://t.co/W1HfQZIG2V


Technicolor dreambowl, found in a grave near Zadar on Croatia's Dalmatian Coast. Made by melding and winding thin bars of glass, each adulterated with different minerals to get different colors. 1st century AD. 📷 Zadar Museum of Ancient Glass https://t.co/H9VfNrXKQK


100,000-year-old abalone shells used to mix red ocher, marrow, charcoal, and water into a colorful paste. Possibly the oldest artist's palettes ever discovered. Blombos Cave, South Africa. 📷https://t.co/0fMeYlOsXG


Reed basket bowl with shell and feather ornaments. Possibly from the Southern Pomo or Lake Miwok cultures. Found in Santa Barbara, CA, circa 1770. 📷 British Museum https://t.co/F4Ix0mXAu6


Wooden bowl with concentric circles and rounded rim, most likely made of umbrella thorn acacia (Vachellia/Acacia tortilis). Qumran. 1st Century BCE. 📷 https://t.co/XZCw67Ho03
CULTURE
Pulp Librarian
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Which book took you the longest time to actually finish reading?

For me: Underworld. 17 years from buying it to actually getting around to reading it, and maybe 19 months on and off to make myself read it until the end.

Still, ticked it off the list ✔


Second place goes to The Charterhouse of Parma, which Stendhal wrote in 52 days. According to the Oxfam Books receipt I used as a bookmark I bought it on 11 April 2009. Finished it last month.


Coming Up For Air was torture. It's nature's punishment for autodidacts.
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शमशान में जब महर्षि दधीचि के मांसपिंड का दाह संस्कार हो रहा था तो उनकी पत्नी अपने पति का वियोग सहन नहीं कर पायी और पास में ही स्थित विशाल पीपल वृक्ष के कोटर में अपने तीन वर्ष के बालक को रख के स्वयं चिता पे बैठ कर सती हो गयी ।इस प्रकार ऋषी दधीचि और उनकी पत्नी की मुक्ति हो गयी।


परन्तु पीपल के कोटर में रखा बालक भूख प्यास से तड़पने लगा। जब कुछ नहीं मिला तो वो कोटर में पड़े पीपल के गोदों (फल) को खाकर बड़ा होने लगा। कालान्तर में पीपल के फलों और पत्तों को खाकर बालक का जीवन किसी प्रकार सुरक्षित रहा।

एक दिन देवर्षि नारद वहां से गुजर रहे थे ।नारद ने पीपल के कोटर में बालक को देख कर उसका परिचय मांगा -
नारद बोले - बालक तुम कौन हो?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चहता हूँ ।
नारद - तुम्हारे जनक कौन हैं?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चाहता हूँ ।

तब नारद ने आँखें बन्द कर ध्यान लगाया ।


तत्पश्चात आश्चर्यचकित हो कर बालक को बताया कि 'हे बालक! तुम महान दानी महर्षि दधीचि के पुत्र हो । तुम्हारे पिता की अस्थियों का वज्रास्त्र बनाकर ही देवताओं ने असुरों पर विजय पायी थी।तुम्हारे पिता की मृत्यु मात्र 31 वर्ष की वय में ही हो गयी थी'।

बालक - मेरे पिता की अकाल मृत्यु का क्या कारण था?
नारद - तुम्हारे पिता पर शनिदेव की महादशा थी।
बालक - मेरे उपर आयी विपत्ति का कारण क्या था?
नारद - शनिदेव की महादशा।
इतना बताकर देवर्षि नारद ने पीपल के पत्तों और गोदों को खाकर बड़े हुए उस बालक का नाम पिप्पलाद रखा और उसे दीक्षित किया।
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2/ @nateliason wrote a fabulous article about this topic, which first introduced me to this concept. Everyone should read it:

3/ @alexisohanian also recently spoke about struggle porn, though referring to it as ‘hustle porn.’ (as the co-founder of @hustlefundvc, obviously I take issue with this pejorative definition of ‘hustle’, but that’s another topic)

4/ Struggling in itself isn’t necessarily bad. Let’s be real here--if you’re going to start a startup, you will struggle. Founders should expect to work harder generally than employees. You will be challenged in many ways and also be super rewarded in others. This is normal.

5/ However, if you are over-indexing on hard work without clear purpose and degrading your mental health/relationships in the process--then this is very bad and we obviously should not celebrate this behavior.
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According to psychologists, there are four types of intelligence:

- Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
- Emotional Quotient (EQ)
- Social Quotient (SQ)
- Adversity Quotient (AQ)

1. IQ is the measure of one's ability to comprehend, solve maths; memorize things & recall subject matters.

2. EQ is the measure of your ability to maintain peace with others; keep to time; be responsible; be honest; respect boundaries; be humble, genuine, and considerate.

3. SQ is the measure of one's ability to build a network of friends & maintain it over a long period of time.

4. AQ is the measure of your ability to go through a rough patch in life and come out without losing your mind. It is a new paradigm and can be used to determine who will give up in face of troubles and may abandon their families.

Now to the very interesting & analytical part👇

People that have higher EQ & SQ tend to go further in life than those with high IQ but low EQ &SQ.

Most schools capitalize on improving IQ level while EQ & SQ are played down.

A man of high IQ can end up being employed by a man of high EQ & SQ even though he has an average IQ.

Your EQ represents your character; your SQ represents your charisma. Give in to habits that will improve these three Qs but more especially your EQ and SQ.

EQ and SQ make one manage better than the other.

Try not only to have a higher IQ but also to have higher EQ and SQ.
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In Academia, people aren’t always supported when they need it. I want to share what @WesternU did when my husband died right after the pandemic shutdown. It should be shared with other uni’s as a model for empathy and proactive care when someone is in crisis.
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Nicolas Cole
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🚢 Atomic Essays Republishing Framework 🚢

1. Write Atomic Essay
2. Post image on Twitter
3. (Bonus) Copy/paste text as thread
4. Find relevant Question on Quora. Copy/paste Atomic Essay + image.
5. Copy/paste again on Medium.
6. Again on LinkedIn
7. Win

Guide below ✍️🚢👇

Step 1: Write Atomic Essay

I really enjoy writing right inside the Figma template. It helps give me a good sense of exactly how much "real estate" I have/have left before my time us up and I'm out of space.

Once finished, I export the image and send to my phone on Slack.


Step 2: Post image on Twitter

Before I publish my Atomic Essay on Twitter, I use the Edit/Photo Markup function on the iPhone to highlight standout sentences.

These are usually power-phrases: things the reader skims and thinks, "That's interesting," prompting them to read more.


Step 3: For the Ship 30 for 30 challenge, I only turn Atomic Essays into threads if...

1. The piece is SUPER actionable and lends itself well to the thread format (lots of bullets, quick points, lists, etc.)

or...

2. I'm referencing research and want to link to the pieces.

Step 4: Find relevant Question on Quora. Copy/paste Atomic Essay + image.

Search on Quora around the topic you wrote about. Find a related Question. Copy/paste the whole Atomic Essay as your "answer" (& fix formatting). Then include image so it appears in the thumbnail.
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