wikipedia

i love wikipedia for its level of detail regarding things that no one ought to care about. it is absolutely incredible that a person would take the time to sit down and type up pages-long entries about fictional characters from the marvel universe. possible sequitor into that whole fictional world the creation of which gabe and tycho set into motion being avoided here.

that being said, i'm going to weaken what i just said just two sentences ago and say that i spent about an hour and a half today (and not at school, either. this was right when i got back, which is prime time) just thumbing (not in a literal sense, of course, although that would be fun to try) through different entries on comic book characters that i had never heard of before today. i suppose if i lived in my basement and lived on a diet of mountain dew and cheetos, the idea of just one person someday reading my work would be irresisitibly attractive. anyways -

hyperlinks are just so incredible. the time it would have taken to actually find the appropriate volume of a physical encyclopedia and look up a character whose name was referenced by an article i was reading at the time, compared to how long it takes to right click and select open as new tab - i would have given up on "learning" (if you can call it that) after the first 2, maybe 3 entries.

i can now call myslf, with a reasonable degree of confidence, knowledgeable regarding the origins and extents of juggernaut's powers, which was my main reason for checking into wikipedia in the first place. from there i undertook a fantastic voyage that included such stops as onslaught - a psionic combination of xavier's repressed darker subconscious and magneto, amber hunt - a pyrokinetic one-time host of the phoenix force, nocturne - nightcrawler's daughter in an alternate reality with the ability to possess people, the house of m story arc that reduced the population of mutants from millions to nearly extinct (several hundred) because the scarlet witch used her reality warping powers, dark beast - beast from the age of apocalypse, nate grey and franklin richards - the two most powerful mutants ever, the living monolith - one of the twelve that apocalypse planned to absorb, and a ton more that i've already forgotten about. i also know a lot more about mr. sinister, apocalypse, gambit, emma frost, and magneto than i'll ever need to know. ever. emma frost just walks around all day in lingerie. i don't even know why female superheros bother designing costumes with that option right in front of them.

other tidbits that i came across - decimation technically means the elimination of every 10th person (does it only apply to people? doesn't say in this article; it's actually an entry for the comics crossover of that name). i see a screenshot of the football (soccer) star set to play juggernaut wearing a metal neck brace armor thing so maybe i was wrong about the shirtless leather jacket costume. here's hoping that i am. apparently there's a term for bosses that are so pointlessly hard as to make glitching almost essential to beating them - snk boss syndrome. also, marvel vs. capcom 2 has four "god-level" characters" - not sure what the criteria are exactly.

also, someone who writes about comics must have at some point brought up how the x-men are beautiful to a fault, while the bad guys are almost always entirely unphotogenic. if you can look at a villain without vomiting, then he'll probably turn good at least once in some story arc. and if a villainess is hot, then she's really, really evil. unless she turns good. how much must that suck for the few x-men who aren't aesthetically perfect? not only is beast a beast and does nightcrawler have a tail, but they have to stand next to jean grey and storm and, oh yes, kitty pryde. if that's not a porn star's name then i have not seen porn. two guesses whether or not i've seen porn.