Phase 4 is Awesome So Far: Recap of Falcon and the Winter Soldider Trailer

I've been a fan of Marvel for decades, and it really is the gift that keeps on giving!  WandaVision has blown me away; it took two characters I didn't care much about and it really fleshed them out (or, in Vision's case, synthezoided them out).

As WandaVision wraps up next month, Falcon and the Winter Soldier will take its place.  A new trailer was released during halftime at the Super Bowl last week.  I'm tentatively excited, although it seems more action-based than psychology-based.  The inner workings of Bucky Barnes is definitely one of my favorite tropes to explore.  Also, Sam Wilson, brilliant counselor, continues to troll Bucky for some reason.

Nonetheless I'm excited and I wrote a quick little recap of the trailer, which you can read here (and watch the trailer for yourself!)  If Falcon and the Winter Soldier is half as good as WandaVision has been, I am THERE for it!

(Art Credit)

Heraldry and Coats-of-Arms

I recently wrote an article analyzing the meaning behind the Umbrella Academy's coat of arms through the lens of medieval heraldry.

Read it here: What Medieval Heraldry Tells Us About the Umbrella Academy and the Sparrow Academy!

I don't have much more to say because I recently cut the tip of my thumb off while mincing ginger.  Ginger is only one letter removed from "finger," has the precise consistency of a human finger, and comes in units called "thumbs," so really, I should have been more wary.  But although typing is prohibitively difficult at the moment I wanted to write a brief note on heraldry.

Heraldry has been an interest of mine for a while, probably because my own family has a coat of arms, including a crest and a motto.

The blazon of our arms is sable, two pales argent, or chief, as seen below:

The crest on top is a vert cockatrice, representing invincibility in combat, and our motto is "Dum Spiro spero," meaning, "while I breathe, I hope."  It would be easy to interpret this as a hokey "live, laugh, love" kind of phrase, but when taken in context with the aggressive military signaling of the blazon and crest, it's meant to be interpreted as more like,  "you'd better hope I'm dead or I'm gonna keep going."

(This is actually pretty much the meaning behind all Irish mottos, though.)