Still avoiding rest of comics fandom. Have figured out why.

[elspethdixon]

I've figured out why I can't participate in fandom's out-pouring of outrage. In my family, we don't talk about people's deaths.

The discussion of how/why/etc. someone died takes place exactly once, when you get/make the phone call delivering the news. After that, it's never discussed--even at the funeral, you talk about the person's life. When my grandmother died last Thanksgiving, we drank a toast to her at her graveside as if she were still alive. We've never talked about her actual death except in passing, to say things like, "If Sally were still here, she'd say/do such-and-such."

Avoidance and tacit silence is the [insert my last name here] way, because if no one talks about it, it never really happened.

And when I walked into my sister's bedroom to vacuum it (I'm at home this weekend & my parents are expecting guests), and saw my grandmother's folded military-funeral-flag in its glass case on top of Sarah's dresser, I almost lost it. I actually started crying typing this. I think I've also figured out why recent Marvel developments have affected me so badly. My grandmother was in the first class of WAVES. I had more kinds of emotional investment in Steve than I realized.

Comments

[harmonyangel.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I said this in my own LJ, which you may or may not have read, but my grandfather is a WWII vet and he's been in the hospital for the last few weeks. He's 80, and his health is fading pretty quickly. I don't know if he'll ever come home again. And I never realized, until now, how much I'd been equating him with Steve. I play Cap in an RPG, and I'd been taking cues from my grandfather on slang and personality and worldview and history to use for my version of Cap. And my younger brother and I had even made jokes to each other about how our grandfather could secretly be Captain America.

Today, my brother and I were on the phone, and he said, kind of quietly, "Jen, let's not call Pop Captain America anymore, ok?" He didn't have to explain what he meant. I want to forget the connection, but it's there in my mind, so Cap's death is making me feel worse about my grandfather's illness, and my grandfather's illness is making me feel worse about Cap. It's tough.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I play Cap in an RPG, and I'd been taking cues from my grandfather on slang and personality and worldview and history to use for my version of Cap.

*nods* I've know I've done a bit of that with my former boss and one of the local instructor pilots from my working-at-the-county-airport days (ex-boss was a hard-hat diver in WWII, instructor pilot was a military flight instructor), so going by the airport today, where they were still manifestly alive and healthy, was good (plus, I got a glider flight).

I also have huge amounts of emotional over-investment in Tony Stark, because depression and drinking problems run in my family (it probably helps that I mainlined the entire alcoholism/depression run the week a cousin of mine committed suicide), so that feeds into it too. Tony is kind of a "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God" character for me--I wish I could be that driven, that good at meeting challenges, and that good at assuming an air of confidence (personal best-case scenario), but I also know that those kind of self-worth issues and self-sabotage would be so easy to succumb to under the wrong circumstances (personal worst case scenario). Which, of course, only gives me another level of emotional investment in Cap.

And it doesn't help that the current artist on CA draws a Sharon Carter that kind of looks like a slightly older and non-glasses-wearing version of me (well, if I had bigger breasts and armed combat training).