Literary Analysis is how I make sense of the world

So, Rocky and Grace being the big-shot heroes they are, their time is very much in demand. A highly-prestigious Eridian intellectual & educational institution (Grace: "Rocky INSISTS that it isn't the same thing as a human university or college, but when I try to get him to explain how it's different, we just end up bickering over specific English word meanings") invites them both to give a joint speech to their graduating class. Various social pressures/factors influence them to accept, and besides, Grace has a massive soft spot for "future generation of minds" and all that.

Except the thing is... this place is a STUFFY institution. Very formal and elite academia. The kind of place that might normally be dismissive of a "mere" teacher of younger students and an engineer whose expertise lies more in the practical-applications side of things. And not all of this institution's higher-ups do a great job concealing that.

Of course, just because the institution's leaders are snobs doesn't mean the students deserve to get short-changed. Grace is deeply sympathetic to the kind of academic pressure that this class endured to graduate from THIS kind of place.

Long story short -- Grace gathers up all his notes from years of chats with both Eridian linguists and Eridian scientists. He and Rocky put a LOT of thought and preparation into this commencement speech.

And when the day arrives, the Saviors of Erid stand up in front of Erid's next generation and speak from the heart. The first half of the speech is serious and inspiring, calling on the new graduates to go boldly out into the world with open and curious minds, etc.

The second half of the speech is the Eridian equivalent of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine, only themed around science instead of baseball.

“I’m probably not saying that correctly”/“sorry for my pronunciation” = 👍 understandable! foreign languages often have sounds that aren’t used in English and learning to correctly pronounce unfamiliar phonemes is genuinely difficult even with help

“lol I’m not even gonna TRY to pronounce that 😂” = 👎 THIS is the problem, if treats languages other than English like they are inherently ‘weird’ or ‘overly complicated’ just because you aren’t familiar with them

I had two nurses in that room with me that night, one who thought I was lying about my hip dislocation and thought I was being difficult on purpose until she actively saw my neck subluxate, and then she turned white as a ghost and ran to fill my script.

And the other who helped me up onto the bed out of the wheelchair, all but carrying my full weight as he murmured over and over again, “it’s okay, you’re okay, we’re going to help you, you don’t need to be sorry” as I kept apologizing for being difficult.

And I totally get the point they were making. Part of what we love about Steve is all the people he runs into who knew him before the ice. Those living connections are important.

I’ve written before about how most Golden Age superheroes represent specific power fantasies — Superman’s the desire to single-handedly fix the world’s problems, Wonder Woman is feminist empowerment, etc — and I think Captain America is a great example of that. After all, he was very much explicitly created as antifascist propaganda by Simon & Kirby, and since then he typically represents the fantasy of the “good American” that cares more about the welfare of the people around him than he cares about maintaining his nation’s status as a global superpower. On a political level, the United States’ involvement in WWII was suspiciously-motivated at best (after all, the US spent years avoiding joining the war in order to reap the economic benefits of selling supplies to both sides of the war), but plenty of American citizens joined the war effort simply because they believed that the Axis Powers needed to be stopped.

I’m having a hard time finding the right words for my point, but I think that it’s something along the lines of “Steve Rogers has to be a WWII veteran, because if he was a vet from any other American war, he’d come across as a thug at worst and a sucker at best”. The earnest enlistment of Steve Rogers into the military to fight the Nazis is a direct parallel to his co-creator Jack Kirby’s own experiences from the era, but translating that to any other war would just make Steve’s eagerness to serve seem either concerning or foolish.

A random influencer decided he'll listen to an anti cancer song on loop. People liked it enough times he ended up listening for 9 days.

He raised 90 million in these 9 days, and then 160 million more over the last 10 hours, for a total of 250 million.

Hundreds and thousands of people signed up to donate marrow.

Hundreds of celebrities shaved their heads in solidarity.

The Foundation receiving this money had to create a special commission to figure out how to distribute the money.

The national TV stations got highjacked to stream this for hours because it was better news than anything happening in the world.

Because we broke and DOUBLED the world record for this kind of thing.

They raised about as much as the biggest running charity event in Poland did in a whole year with three decades of tradition and a goddamn army of people.

Łatwogang refuses to collab with companies that only reached out to him now because of popularity or give interviews. He said any medals people wanna give them should go to the doctors and nurses and the cancer patients.

Someone offered to renovate that shabby little flat for him as a thank you. He refused.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/polish-nine-day-charity-stream-breaks-records-support-kids-with-cancer-2026-04-27/

Just love this headline phrasing.