Weekly Ketchup 30 - Comic Con, Geek Life, and the Last Two Years

This week was pretty much about all the nerd news coming out of San Diego Comic Con. It's always an exciting time for the geek community, although there is that element of despair at not being there yourself, which brings me to the first thing I want to address about the past week.

I've always wondered about the average 50 hits that these blog entries receive every week. Like, who the hell is reading them? Don't get me wrong, I love the attention but it makes me wonder if I should be cautious about the things I put in here, which I am as long it doesn't compromise honesty.

Who are you?!

The reason I mention this is because apparently geek friend Jovan had strong hard-to-articulate feelings about something she read a couple of entries ago. She mentioned it to me last week but we only got to talking about it last Friday over drinks with fellow geeks Hec and Alec, who also celebrated his birthday this past week.

I mentioned in the blog how the past couple of years have just been this kind of lull, like a television series that was a couple of seasons too long for its own good. And her question was: What did that make of the people around me? The friends that I keep? And what did my sentiments mean for her when she's okay with the steady flow of things going on in her story?

Me and my friends saw The Avengers

This is how all this personal matter connect to SDCC: Had things worked out the way they were supposed to, I would've been at Comic Con this year. Or at least closer to it (I heard those tickets can be hard to come by). The thing is that I already left in 2011 but I felt like my story here wasn't done yet, so I chose to come back (my auntie and my mom wanted me to stay there). By 2012, after the first Avengers movie, which I really wanted to see with the geek friends, I was already good to go but was holding out on money that, as it turned out, I wasn't gonna get after all. So come 2013, when the opportunity presented itself again, I thought that was it. Like in 2011, I was supposed to bring my grandma home to Canada, but the difference was that I wasn't gonna book a flight back. I had already saved up enough money to start over and I wouldn't have had to pay for the plane ticket so I thought I was all set! I started posting "throwback" photos on Instagram of my last trip to the States as a tease and even declared that "this exiled Targaryen is returning to Westeros". And, yeah, I already signed up to the Comic Con website in preparation for this year's event, which I knew even then would assemble the cast of Age of Ultron (Which isn't to say that I want to leave just so I can attend SDCC. I'm just saying last year would've been the best time for me to have left).

Obviously, things didn't work out the way they were supposed to last year, otherwise I'd have been live-tweeting from Hall H a few hours ago, instead of retweeting and sharing the news from other sources who were on the scene as the cast of Ant-Man and Age of Ultron drummed up support (like they need it) and hype for next year's Marvel Studios slate.

I took this photo in an alternate reality

By the way, I just started watching The Newsroom this past week during periods of no Internet at the office and I gotta say it's effin' brilliant. And me being me, I felt like I was in a virtual newsroom while covering all the major announcements coming from Marvel Studios earlier. I even heard myself saying in my head: "Do we have anyone on the ground at Hall H?

Another segue: I should be pissed. I should nerd-rage. The Ant-Man movie, as announced earlier, reimagines the mythology of the character to almost beyond recognition. Ultron and The Vision wouldn't even be part of their universe. But I'm not even upset because the movie is just a movie. It's just a fraction, though a significant one at that, of the myriad of ways I can appreciate and experience Hank Pym, Scott Lang, Janet Van Dyne, Yellowjacket, and their little world. It would've been great if they stayed true to the material but I'm over it.

One thing I'm not gonna get over if it turns out to be true is the absence of Arianne Martell on Game of Thrones. New cast members of the show were announced this past week and her name still hasn't popped up. I mentioned in a previous blog that her and the Greyjoys were among the new characters I'm looking forward to seeing on the show, but it's beginning to look like they've been cut or maybe just not appearing yet next season. Of course, this is all just speculation.

Surprised that Rose Leslie and Pedro Pascal still made an appearance.

Now, to address Jovan's questions (and I don't know how to say this without alienating my other friends from other circles who might be reading this blog), my geek friends are the only reasons I would ever consider staying (I mentioned as much in that article I wrote about Manila) and they're the reason why I stayed as long as I have (more than lack of funding). Yeah, leaving has been on my mind for a while already - even longer than these past couple of years actually. As early as 2008, on one of those "getting-to-know-you" memes that went around Multiply, I said that had I left when I should have a long time ago, I never would've had the pleasure of their company and while nothing has changed that would make leaving them any easier now, I feel like our relationship has grown to the level that I can check in every now and then or come back and it'd be like I never left at all. Hey, it worked out well for Hec, Alec, and, to some extent, Dek, even if she hasn't come back yet. And with many of them getting married, having children, moving to new houses, and just moving on to the next stage of their lives, I feel like it's time to pursue the next chapter of my story. Like I said in a previous blog, I already know what I'm leaving behind and I'm grateful but it's time for me to unravel the unknown ahead.

As for what it means that she's content with the way things are in her life, well, considering the mess she often has to deal with, I think a little security and stability for long periods might be good for her. And since we've also established some time ago that we're not compatible travel partners (she prefers to stay in and relax; I prefer to go out and stress myself trying to take everything in at once), maybe we also differ with how we approach contentment. While she relishes in it, preferring to stay in for as long as she can, I am itching to get out and see everything else as soon as I'm settled. Of course, I can't speak for her. Again, these are all speculations.

It's so beautiful I want to cry!

Anyway, hopefully, next year I would be reporting/tweeting live from San Diego, but I want to reaffirm a vow I once made on social media that the first time I attend SDCC would be as a panelist, volunteer, or booth... babe. What? A guy can dream!