Feelings on a Friday 38: Weathering the continuing Storm

Hello there internet people.

Been a while since I wrote one of the posts, it was last year in fact. The year has been a long slog of increasingly frustrating circumstances, punctuated by lovely moments and reasons for hope. It has been one of the hardest years work-wise in a long time and I will be honest, it’s been rough.

Outside of work, there’s been medical worries across the family, our recent addition to the family unit (Wilma the WTF Dog) has had a rough go of it, to the extent that the vets know us by sight now. The vets however have been lovely, so there’s that. Our recent trials seem to be levelling off, only fueling the belief that more shit is coming down the pipeline. What next?!? Has been the family response to almost all news we have received. It’s been a rough year and we’re not done yet.

So why post now? What prompts this little bit of time-wastage? Well I’ll tell you. I’m still here. With trips to A&E for both boy and dog as well as the MIGHTY Rosie and a dozen other things besides, I have stayed upright. There is a version of me, from not too long ago that would have buckled under all this. There’s a me that would have retreated into myself, or reacted very differently. There is that version of me, but I am not that version. At least not anymore.

I have weathered much of the storm of this year and it has been and continues to be hard. I have had moments of worry and stress that have moved towards the anxiety and panic attacks of old, but I have done alright. My son was at A&E (SuperSam is fine, but not the best day I can remember) and I was able to cope. There was a crisis with the dog (again, long story short she is also okay) but I was not only able to cope, but be the calm voice that kept my boy from freaking out. Both times I had used the phrase “It’s not okay now, but it is going to be okay.” That’s a bit of a platitude and those that know me know where I get that habit. But it was truly what I believed and truly what ended up being factual.

It’s not okay right now, but it is going to be okay.

I think I just became and optimist. When did that happen?

Maybe it was at the point where I stopped trying to survive and tried to live. Surviving isn’t enough, you have to live and that it what I want. I want to think well of myself, live in a nice place, do nice things with my family and write for pleasure, not to clear the demons out of my head. I want these things for me, I want them for the people I love, hell I suppose I want them for everyone. So how do I get them? What steps to I need to take?

I don’t know all those steps, I suppose like most people, I make things up as I go along. Fortunately for me, the MIGHTY Rosie and I are King and Queen of plan B.

This year has been hard on multiple levels and the strife isn’t over yet, but I will not give up, nor will I lose hope.

It’s going to be okay. For many of us it isn’t, but it will be. It will be better than this, we might just have to fight tooth and nail to get there.

I have been fighting for 5 years and more and I am done yet.

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Champions of S.H.I.E.L.D. part 5

There are spoilers, since the series hasn’t finished that long ago here in Blighty.

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Agent Phil Coulson – Clark Gregg

Agent Melinda May –  Ming Na Wen

Agent Leopold Fitz   – Ian De Caestecker

Agent Gemma Simmons–  Elizabeth Henstridge

Daisy ‘Quake’ Johnson  –  Chloe Bennett

Alfonso ‘Mack’ MacKenzie –Henry Simmons

Elena ‘Yo-Yo’ Rodrigues – Natalia Cordova

Zeke Shaw                      – Jeff Ward

Recurring Cast:

Grant Ward –Catherine Dent

Glen Talbot – Adrian Pasdar

Enoch         –  Joel Stoffer

Cassius       –  Dominic Rains

Ruby Hale   –  Dove Cameron

Overview: Having done the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D. in season one, it’s resurrection in two, the Inhumans in three, magic, robots and Hydra in four, there wasn’t much that the show hadn’t looked at in the Marvel Universe, with two exceptions, space and the future, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when they did it in season five. Back to being a rag-tag group of scrappy underdogs, the team found themselves in a space-station run by the oppressive Kree, who were mining the place for Inhumans to be used as weapons or slaves. The team arrives on the station thanks to one of the monoliths, last used in season three to transport people to Maveth. This one seemed only to take people 70 years into the future and it’s not a rosy one. Earth was destroyed shortly after they left and they are in an old S.H.I.E.L.D. lighthouse facility, which was part of the remains of Earth’s carcass. So we are dealing with ideas of predestination, paradox, aliens and the aftermath of the Framework and it’s lingering effects.

Initial Status Quo: Episodes 1-10 The team are in the future, the Kree are in charge, Inhumans are currency and the only hope for the team is the help of Zeke (a local to that time who is cynical to the point of sci-fi trope) and the less than coherent visions of Robin, an old woman where the team are and a little girl in the past. The team have to do whatever good they can, as well as find some way to return to their own time and maybe, prevent the destruction of the Earth.

Twist: They soon learn that not only is S.H.I.E.L.D. blamed for the Earth’s fate, but in the time they are in they had already returned home and failed to prevent it, they are in a time-loop, proved by YoYo’s existence in the future, killed and resurrected by the Kree with her arms missing and her life filled with pain and regret. They get home, now once more fugitives in an old S.H.I.E.L.D. base (the same Lighthouse from the future) determined to prevent the future they witnessed

Second Status Quo: Episodes 11-20 The team return with Zeke and start to piece together how the Earth is broken up and deal with a gravitational anomaly in the basement.

Twist 2: After hosting the Ghost Rider, Coulson is dying and the day the team come back, YoYo is maimed, losing her arms, just like her future self had done and the team have to do with the last remnants of Hydra, as well as a Coalition of alien races, including the Kree.

Twist 3: Zeke Shaw is the Grandson of Fitz and Simmons, who are married as they return.

Finale: Episodes 21-22 The team reach the point where the Earth is lost, but it’s not S.H.I.E.L.D. that will do it, it’s Graviton, the mix of the Gravitonium from season one and Glenn Talbot, who is ready to power up and save the world from the threat that the Coalition fears, the mad Titan Thanos. But Thanos isn’t the problem, Graviton is and the team has to face their former friend to literally save the world, knowing that every time this has been done, they have failed and not all of them make it out alive.

Overall: This is where you could end the series, everyone gets an arc, from Coulson accepting his fate, to everyone else trying to save him. Melinda goes from being the coldest of warriors to embracing her love for Coulson and the idea that in the future she would be Robin’s mum. Simmons and Mack only become more themselves, while YoYo strays and Fitz comes to the realisation that he is still the villain he was in the Framework, not the hero that Simmons sees him as. Even Quake and Zeke go from hostile to friends as Zeke realises he loves her, almost as much as he loves living in the green and pleasant land that is the past. It’s the strongest the series has been in regards to characterisation and still keeps the action and sci-fi flavour strong with returns from the Absorbing Man, Deathlok and Lance Hunter as well as new characters like the Kree, the Remoraks, Enoch and Noah and Flint. If this is where the series ended, that would have been a strong way to go, but it looks like ratings were strong enough to give it one more go, but we don’t get a teaser for the new series. The second life of Philip J Coulson was a five year romp through the side streets of the Marvel Universe and am glad this seeming end of his personal journey was so much fun to walk through.

Stand out Episodes:

Orientation: A cynical and almost beaten team (less Fitz) arrive in a desolate future, the odds are against them and there are many unknown dangers.

Rewind: We learn what happened to Fitz as he and Lance Hunter attempt a prison break and 75 year rescue mission.

The Real Deal: Coulson faces the idea that the whole series is just his mind coping with his death at the hands of Loki as he lies bleeding on the operating table. It’s believe that, or believe all the stuff that’s happened to him since then. Then Deathlok arrives and the series gets to episode 100.

Rise and Shine: General Hale’s life is shown to us as she realises that she isn’t going to be able to save the world on her own.

The End: Graviton is ready to save the world, he might just destroy the whole planet to do it as the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. make a desperate attempt to stop him and save lives, not all of them make it out of there alive.

Next Time: I have no idea, the only original cast members left are Simmons and Quake and who knows what the deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. is anymore.

 

House Keeping

Just to say that might be a bigger than usual gap before my next post.

I don’t know what I am going to do with the blog, for a number of reasons. It’s not going, but there are going to be a few changes.

The first is that the Trivial Calender posts may go the way of the dodo. The idea of daily posts was mainly to give me something to write every day. This was a mental health decision and when I made it in December, it was a good one. Now it’s become a chore for me to do and for the few who see it to read, so I’m going to try a little something else with that.

Am on Instagram as @keith_munky76 , which is where I’ll be putting the daily stuff.

As  for everything else, I will be doing something of a clear out at some point, but will give it a week or so before I do anything.

In the meantime any suggestions are always welcome.