Blessed by the Megabookstore Gods

[alixtii]

Yesterday I bought:

Consequences of Prgagmatism, Richard Rorty
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Friedrich Nietzsche
The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche
X-Factor, Vol. 2: Life & Death Matters, Peter David
New X-Men: Childhood's End, Vol. 4, Craig Kyle & Chris Yost
Ultimate Spiderman, Vol. 17: The Clone Saga, Brian Michael Bendis 

I am such a college student.

I haven't read any but the Ultimate Spiderman yet, but flipping through X-Factor reminds me how awesome Layla Miller is (she's the only character who really speaks to me in that book, despite being a fan of movieverse!Theresa). Ties back into the will-to-power as a specifically adolescent fantasy, I think.

Ultimate Spiderwoman makes my femslasher's heart go crazy. Not to mention the clonecest possibilities (I was so guh-ing over some of the panels). But there is no permutation of MJ/Peter/Kitty/Jessica which is not awesome.

Would Jessica remember dating Kitty? Comic-book time is so fluid, it's hard to know for sure. She's definitely inherited Peter's crush on MJ, though, and . . . it's too easy. OMG, there is a God.

The art makes it difficult to tell the female characters apart though--at first I thought the big reveal was that Kitty was Spiderwoman. Or MJ.

The Rorty book looks fascinating too--both "Philosophy as a Kind of Writing" and "Is There a Problem about Fictional Discourse?" look like they'll prove to be incredible resources in attempting to construct a Wittgensteinian philosophy of literature, especially when I'll get to read them alongside the Kristeva (which hopefully the library will have a free circulatable copy of soon).

Comments

[booster17.livejournal.com]

Layla Miller is wondeful, and gets some of the best lines in X-Factor, though I suspect my absolute favourite line (which reduces Madrox to paranoic panic for some time) is in the next volume alas.

And Ultimate Spiderwoman really needs to come back.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

In my version of reality, Ultimate Spiderwoman never leaves. I mean, really--such a tiny AU, and all of a sudden you have MJ/Jessica/Kitty/Peter orgies as the inevitable endpoint. (And I don't have to explain just how many of my kinks Jessica/Peter hits, do I?)

I'm already busy plotting.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

I wish to read this. Pronto. Post-haste. In fact, right now.

Don't make me beg..... pls?

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I just need to decide which pairings would happen first. Kitty's bisexual in 616 (or so I am told), but there's no indication of that here (maybe Colossus stole her gay?)* YET (that's why we have fanfic). Jessica being in love with MJ is canon, and her being a lesbian makes as much sense as anything. Jess and Peter would have a lot of beautifully awkward UST living in the same house together. And Peter and MJ are dating at the point in canon.

*OMG, somebody has to icon Kitty confronting Ult!Colossus and demanding he give her her gay back.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

616 Kitty is bisexual? I suppose so... but I had to stretch my mind back a looong way to see that. Although it does explain her closeness to Illyania and Rachel a lot. Though the big one would have to be around Excaliber (original series) 25 IIRC - the subtext around her and Courtney/Saturnyne was blatant text at that point. (Soon to be traded I think).

Personally, I prefer her with Pete Wisdom.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I am so not an old school fan, so everything I know about Kitty pre-Astonishing is hearsay. And while I'd be potentially interested in Pryde/Wisdom or Kitty/Rachel (Kitty/Piotr just leaves me cold), I think the not being-an-old-school-fan thing comes into play again (I just can't get into anything pre-Morrison).

Oh well, there's always Kitty/Emma (and other Astonishing noncanon Kitty ships), and Ultimateverse, and Movieverse.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

Pryde/Wisdom and the surrounding Excaliber issues were all done by Warren Ellis, so I do strongly recommend them. Alas, I don't think they've ever been traded. *sob*

Btw, I was reminded recently that over the years a couple of X-Men have found their minds stuck in Emma's body and vice versa : Iceman and Storm (though I suspect a third one may exist IIRC). Hell of a thing if that ever happened to Kitty....

[booster17.livejournal.com]

Apparently, when I said 'soon to be traded', I meant this week.

Checking the reprint in question, it's certainly very blatent there - Courtney offering birthday cake on her finger to Kitty and her sucking it off. *raises eyebrow*

[rushin-doll.livejournal.com]

I think that Rorty will, in fact, be a great resource for such a project. I find him to be a very lucid writer, and he has this tendency to interesting structural trends within fields.

He's also rather smart, which helps.

I'm rather interested in seeing where you go with this project since my love of Wittgenstein knows no bounds.

Watching,
Ana

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm already drawing on Rorty fairly extensively--while I (like everyone., it seems) have my criticisms, his overall reading of the Wittgensteinian project is basically my own. But while I had to make the jump myself using Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Contingency, Irony, Solidarity to get to philosophy=literature, there's a few essays in this book that make the point much more explicitly and wonderfully.

[rushin-doll.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Definitely. Coming back to Mirror of Nature after reading some of the essays, especially the two you mention, is a rather interesting experience. Or it was for me.

I don't know much about your philosophical background, but have you looked much at the early American's? I've always felt that Emerson and Thoreau both approached philosophy and literature as the same sort of thing. It's a refreshing sort of approach, to me at least, probably because my own background is so fundamentally tied up in rigid analytical approaches.

With a sudden craving to reread Philosophical Investigations,
Ana

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I sort of feel like one has to have traveled through analytic philosophy to get what I really want.

[rushin-doll.livejournal.com]

Oh, I won't disagree with that. While I may sometimes think the analytical approach has its flaws. Or, more precisely, its massive blind spots. I definitely feel like it's one of the best places to start work on anything. I think it provides most of the tools needed to get outside of it.

While I may often have problems with what I take to be the common goals of analytic philosophy, I think that the tools it provides are some of the best available for thinking through ideas and then presenting them. I don't think I'd find the early Americans nearly as helpful if I didn't have the background I have.

Perhaps more clearly,
Ana

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's amazing how, once one has Wittgenstein and Derrida and the rest under one's belt, how different not only the American philosophers (Nietzsche was a big fan of Emerson, I know) but also Plato and St. Augustine and so many others suddenly seem, and what once seemed irredeemably ontological suddenly has nuances and sophistications one hasn't noticed before....

[rushin-doll.livejournal.com]

Precisely. I mean, I'll probably never pursue philosophy as anything other than a hobby, but I still think that pursuing a BA in it was one of the best choices I ever made. I feel like I think and write so much better as a result. And I also found Wittgenstein, which rocks.

Oh, Ludwig,
Ana