A Geek History of Time - Episode 62 - Superheroes and Hogwarts Part II

Episode Date: July 4, 2020

BELLS Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere. You are destroying the Constitution of the United States may God have mercy on your souls. Good day. Yes. It's a very sad thing. We could be sad if we just elected the right white man to power. That's creepy but that's a different category of creepy. Zizuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and find out what the fuckin' truth that man was trying to get at. Like with most episodes I can bring him back to wrestling. Oh, right. Well, he's got other people who work for him who also do things.

And they can get new tape, and he can get human size into smaller worlds after all. Fuck you. I still don't give a shit about getting fake property in a fantasy game. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect in order to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I am a newly free for the summer world history teacher currently doing, well, currently not doing any teaching. I'm seasonally unemployed at the moment,

but for the last month and a half, two months now, doing distance learning here in the plague, riddled waste lands of Northern California. And I am the father of a two-year-old little boy who has now gotten into the habit of spotting dragons regularly when we are out and about, which makes me quite proud. So how about you, sir? I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher. I am also no longer distance learning, but I kind of am because I'm running a bootcamp for the summer for kids who want to get into the AP class. So yes, the plague has hit our lands. My daughter has just turned 8. My son is 10 and a half. My daughter is, she has her own bow and arrow now. And we have

the hay set out out back, and I'm refusing to let her fire any arrows until she can pass certain tests with her bow. And so she's really been working her form. One is you have to be able to draw your bow seven times in a row with good form. You also have to be able to hold the last draw for 10 seconds. If you can do all those things, we can trust you with an arrow because what if someone runs in funnier? All right, conditioning. Yes. And so the hema, the hebaist in me approves of this. Yes. So she's getting a lot of reps in.

And she's also already painted her bow. Yeah. Saw that. It was matte black and she is like, I'm going to paint stuff on it. So she painted the draconic word for bow and arrow on it, I think. It's nice. Yeah. She's all about that.

So, and my son is just really enjoying learning Latin, actually. arrow on it, I think. Nice. Yeah, she's all about that. And my son is just really enjoying learning Latin, actually. Yeah, I've started teaching Latin. So. All right. Yeah, all right. It's good luck. It's blocks.

All right. Awesome. So, okay. When last we spoke, we were sorting Marvel superheroes into Hogwarts. And we ran into the problem that the Avengers, we kept a short team, the Guardians of the Galaxy, it's usually only limited to five or six anyway. But then we ran into the X-Men and there's too many of them for too long that you kind of have to cover them.

So we're sorting them into different houses. We've already spoken to JK Rowling and her shittiness and her turfulness. So I'm just going to mention that if you want to hear it, again, go back to the previous episode. But yeah, so there's four houses, Griffin Dorsts, Litheran, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. In other words, fire, water, air, and earth. And we've already kind of set the parameters. So one sentence on each house so that we can get this ball move and go.

All right. So Griffindor is courage to the level of foolhardiness, the flip side, courage versus foolhardiness. Slytherin is drive and ambition. Flip side is amorality in the service of drive. Ends justifying means. Ravenclaw is the pursuit of truth with the flip side, the downside, the dark side being obsessiveness and or getting locked up in your own head paralysis by analysis.

And then Hufflepuff is a loyalty community. Family parts. Oh, yeah. Probably. Yeah, I mean, let's be real. I mean, there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're not wrong. Yeah. community, downside is codependency, darkmatism, stasis, stasis, grudge holding. Yeah, good, all right. That just gave me the idea for another show. We should Kinsey scale Hogwarts. We should not, we should not.

But, no, dear God, no. No. No. The world of no. Yeah. We should not we should know but no dear God know Your world of know yeah, all right, you know, and I think if yeah, okay, no, the lesson about that because I'm already getting all like okay to get a first position of each house, you know Well, you know, I was about to go on record saying you know I'm pretty sure that Ravenclaw would have the highest, highest percentage of arrows of the four. It's true. I'm sorry.

I'm too locked up in my own intellect. I don't want to fuck anybody. What? I know. Yeah. They'd be masturbating to their own like writings. To their own to their own. That's their preferred position.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, meanwhile, Slytherin is going to have absolutely the best dungeon. Best equipped, you know, you do whether you're whether you're whether you're dumb or sub, you're going to find your your best counterpart in Slytherin because they're there two sides of the same counterpart in Slytherin because they're two sides of the same coin that Slytherin just bought. They'll do the actor care better than anyone will. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I hate to say it, but Hufflepuff is, you know, Ozzy and Harriet, kinda, you know. Hufflepuff is the 69 house? They're just gonna be taking care of each other all day long. And only for playing. Oh, yeah, yeah, the ziplos fuck.

Whereas Griffithor is gonna have a mirror across from the bed and insist on doggy style. Well, yeah. Yeah. What? Play it that that at me. So, all right. Well, this was gross. This was, yeah. And we're not editing this out. So, tell me, this is gold. Wolverine, what house does he belong in? You know, okay, so this is where we come up against the fact that Griffin, Doran, Slytherin are two sides of the same coin.

On the one hand, he is the quintessential berserker. He is. Of like everybody in the X-Men universe. He is the, no, I don't think think you understand you can't kill me. Right. Like I can literally do this all century. I can yeah, I can keep going I can keep going endlessly. Mm-hmm You know and and so the you know ghost-rate atom thing is is very much in his wheelhouse. And, and let's talk about somebody with, you know, a hot head no impulse control. Good point.

And also, it should be noted a very strong internal personal code of honor. And ethics. Very true. All of which militates very hard toward Gryffindor on the other hand. I'm the best at what I do and what I do ain't very nice. That's a very slithering thing to say. And he is a killer. Like it is made very clear repeatedly that he is He is anti heroic He is he is not scots like he and Scott Summers are are Held up by the writers repeatedly as being the the you know, he and Yang

the, you know, Yin and Yang of Dinazion. Yeah, there you go. Yep. And, and he is all dionisus to two scots Apollo. And, and so that, you know, I'm gonna, you know, when you get his attitude is, when I get into a fight, the rules go out the window.

There are no rules. The only rule is if you win, you get to walk away. Right. And, you know, ninja and all of that Yakuza stuff in his background and all that other stuff, points very strongly toward Slytherin. Okay. The length of time he's capable of holding a grudge is to us. Super natural. Super

natural. And it and that that as a trait militates toward Hufflepuff and he is very intensely loyal to those people he cares about. There's no raven claw in this guy like it all. He is not a creature of his intellect. He's a creature of his senses and his being. Yes. Oh, man. I'm going to go as a Gryffindor and a Wolverine Stan. I want to claim him for Gryffindor, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to say my read goes with Slytherin because on the best at what I do and what I do isn't very nice. Okay, that's very compelling. I'm going to go far afield and say that he is actually

Hufflepuff. And people are usually surprised at this because he's so damn violent. So just think of like the militant arm of Hufflepuff. And you've got him, like look at his colors, first of all. Well, all right. Look at his name and what animal is similar to a Wolverine that was actually possibly a name for him in the beginning.

All right, son of a bitch. All right. And he has a tremendous sense of loyalty. Okay. In fact, the grudges he he has a tremendous sense of loyalty. Okay. In fact, the grudges he bears are people who broke that loyalty. He just expresses his loyalty very violently. Like, but ultimately it comes down to whom is he protecting and how forcefully. Here's a quote by him.

A death isn't like losing a job or expresses, I'm sorry, or getting divorced. You don't get over it. You have to integrate it into your life, learn to live with it, but life does get better. He's taking care of people. Yes. And, you know, as you talk about that, then we get into his mentoring role as he mellowed out, cuddled, or spent more time around the X-Men, and, you know, a Xavier kind of rubbed off on him. I can, okay, that comes more to the forefront.

He's really old, so he has a longer view. He's got a fatalistic view in some ways because he's old. But his friendships and relationships defined who he was. Here's a quote that he gives on on night crawler. He says, Kurt was the only guy that ever looked me in the eyes like a man and spoke to me like one and treated me like one. No matter what I did or where I was or how I felt.

He was my best friend and he treated, he never treated me like a damn animal. And now he's gone. And for what? You better be worth this. I swear to God. And that's somebody that he's, you know, making sure, you know, they, they earn Kurt sacrifice. This is why he was in many ways the heart of the X-Men. And it was just like such a counter-typical,

because like he was so violent. Like he was the extremity of violence. An anti-social. Yeah, and yet he is the core of what draws that dysfunctional family together. He hears the thing. He is your mom friend. If your mom friend was unkillable,

had an unbreakable skeleton, and like literal swords that popped out of their hand. Right, exactly. Like mama bear to the poppah wolf is the spear version of that trope. But, you know, poppil wolf to the ends degree. Yeah, okay, and the more I think about it him and his relationship to Kitty pride. Yep. And Jubilee later on. And Jubilee later on. And how he was toward Colossus and like pretty

much everybody. He's the big brother friend to like a generation of X-Men. Yeah. And then he ends up being headmaster. Like sets aside his violent ways. And he runs it because it has to be done, you know? Yeah, well he winds up, he winds up going from the lone wandering samurai trope to the gunslinger whose hung up his gun's trope.

Yes. You know, the old gunslinger trope. He's a more lethal version of Hawkeye in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and, and, and he has the advantage over Hawkeye in that. I'm trying to figure out how to verbalize this and advantage might be the wrong way of putting it, but, but the, the, the kind of the dividing line between them is that. Hawkeye. I love Hawkeye to death, but he's kind of a fuck up. Like they even highlighted, they kind of highlighted in the book.

Like, okay, wait a minute. There's a great panel that shows up on Facebook every so often. He's playing a video game, and somebody else is looking over his shoulder. It might be Nat. I don't remember, but she's saying, okay, so wait, you're being chased by the army in this game. You're falling out of helicopter. You're on fire Clint it's a fishing game. How did you do that? You know Really good

That's like taking that trope of, sir, this is a Wendy's, like, and just turning it on his head. Yeah, turning it on his head. I like it. And his response is just, I don't know. Yeah, that's him. All right, so tell me about Professor X. Give me one sentence for why he is in the house

that you've put him in. World's most powerful telepath, okay cool. I say he's Slytherin because of what he's willing to do with that. He uses it willingly to control other people and to invade their thoughts and take advantage of their mental weaknesses. He manipulates people on the regular. Here's a quote from him, nor do I have his powers, though I trust I simulated them convincingly. I regret this distasteful charade,

but a bit of misdirection was necessary to protect my true identity. That was early, early on. That's like in the 60s when I'm reading it. He's resourceful with those abilities. He's part of a family of very wealthy people, elite, extremely rich, and he uses that wealth to a good end. He knows the right way, and he insists that all who follow him do things the same way. And when he's raising the event of the X-Men, he says, we have awesome powers, my X-Men. It is our birthright and perhaps our burden. But as Valerie said, with that power comes responsibility and also accountability.

I owe it to the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, to everyone who is injured by onslaught to go on now. Or to go now. It's the right thing to do and it's the best thing to do. So he's like, this is how it has to be. And that's ultimately brings him at Loggerheads with Scott, who is the bad version of Gryffindor. And when you have the good version of Slytherin and the bad version of Gryffindor, someone's going to die. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Magneto.

So, all right. Magneto. Okay, so you've thrown me repeatedly. So, I'm, you know. But I'm going to say, he is the mustache twirling stereotype of Slytherin given comic book form. He is a racialist. He is an elitist. It literally means supremacist. As we discussed talking about the X-Men and Civil Rights movement

because those are the tropes that he was built around. He is brilliantly intelligent. He is a fifth-dimensional chess player. And he is absolutely 100% convinced of his rightness and is ruthless in what he is willing to do to anybody who gets in his way. That's true. Um, so that's that's pretty much my my take on it. Yeah. I'm going to guess here. I'm going to I'm going to take a risk here and I'm going to say I think you're going to go with saying he is a dark side huffle puffer because of his determination, his loyalty to his own people and to mutant kind with, with, you know, stuff being built out from there, but that's, okay, that's my guess. I would say if we took him only on his early run stuff, you are absolutely right. He's bad guy

helpful puff. But I'm going to say he's Slytherin. Okay. And for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned, normally, here's what's interesting to me, when two people are in direct opposition to each other, like he and Xavier, it's because they're opposite sides of the same coin, where one's Gryffindor, one Slytherin, right? Cap had the red skull, who's clearly a slither ring. But in the case of mutants, it's really just good slither ring versus bad slither ring who later redeems himself. And Magneto's redemption arc is very powerful. And he was very much about the ends just fine the means, saw mutants, like you said, a

superior to humanity. And ultimately, this is his mission to save mutants from humanity. It has to be my way, right? Professor X had the same goal, just a different method. Here's a quote from from Magneto. If you know who I am, then you know what I am capable of. The actions I am willing to take to protect my people. And you know why I have come. Earlier in life, he was just as driven, but far more willing to exploit others to do so. And I would say that that's what pulls him away

from Hufflepuff in some ways. If he just did it himself, I'd be down. But he manipulates everyone around him all the time while he's a bad guy. So I'd say that brings him more to bad guy Slytherin. But here's- Just dimensional chess player. Right. whereas Hufflepuff, they don't do that. Like he, yeah. Um, so here's another quote, how they despise each other. It is only my will, my power that keeps them working together as a team, but I ask not for friendship or for love. All I demand is fear and blind obedience

for I am magneto, mightiest of all the mutants. I mean, that's really early over what wrought stuff, but it's still part of his canon. Yes, he's deadly. Perfect. Is there a kidney me twirling my mustache? He's snidely whiplash. Yes. Interestingly, Cyclops actually outstrips him in ruthlessness, but not in resourcefulness. That's why I said Cyclops was bad guy, Gryffindor. All three of these guys, Magneto, Professor X and Cyclops, all have this martyrdom complex though.

So here's another quote, to live amongst the stars, to rule jungle kingdoms, to guide entire nations, only to find oneself here. A self-loathing man might see this as deserved punishment. A vain man might compare this to the Christian devil's fall from heaven. Me? I think the coffee is not terrible. I have been known by many names. Max Eisenhart, Eric Lenscher, Magnus, Magneto. Each name marks its own sin, and one day I'll answer for those offenses. But not today. Only my actions, what I do in the name of all mutants, hold any real meaning.

You don't get much more redeemed and accepting of your badness as a slither in than that. Yeah, yeah, and he, what you say about the the martyr complex, I think is interesting, because I think that speaks to the self-directness of both archetypes, both slither in a hand and griffin door. You can't have a martyr complex if it's not all about you. Yeah, that's 100% true. And that's what keeps him out of Hufflepuff, by the way.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, that's what actually keeps Wolverine from being Gryffindor or Slytherin because he doesn't care about himself. He cares about his communities. All right. He's the only constant and he's cursed with himself. But, you know, and he accepts that, but he is very different than that.

Okay. All right. So, let's look at Nightcrawler. I grew up as Nightcrawler's my favorite guy. Oh, Erbbane, Charming, has a sword. You have a sword. You have a sword. No, I don't.

I have many. Still can touch you about that. Yeah, okay. Oh, God. Yeah, not only is it a sword, it's a cup-hilt, I mean, everything artist doesn't know what he was trying to draw. He was going for Swashbuckle. He was going for Swashbuckle, but it's the wrong kind of help for Swashbuckle. But anyway, sorry, sorry, the sword nerd. I like that you're like really pedantic about the sword thing, but like he's

a blue guy with like half his many fingers and has a tail, but you're like, that sword is the problem. Okay, well, here's the deal. God damn it. We get hit over the head, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. I mean, if you're in Marvel comics, you're in New York, right? New York is a real place. New York has a real history. And all of the artifacts, all of the physical culture of Earth, 61616 is ours, right? Okay. So people with people with preter natural powers are the suspension of disbelief thing. Okay. So I'm called on to

suspend my disbelief about the fact that this guy has, you know, three fingers and and blue hair Yeah, and and you know can teleport at a tail You know, I mean I'm called on to suspend my disbelief about that. Okay, I can do that fine But you got to pick about what it is that you're going to make me do that about. And I know enough about real world history and how those things came to be that it just bugs me. So that's my explanation of why instinctively I wind up choosing to be pedantic about that, even though it's not really a conscious choice. It's just that one thing that like, errr, wrinkles.

Okay. So anyway, yeah, no, he literally has essentially a cutlass. Yeah. I guess I would have the same kind of problem if like, Rich Rider came home from school and said, I got expelled for the day. I'd be like, that's not expulsion. What's wrong with you? I get you. I get you.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so anyway, going back to the list, literal splash bug layer, is Errol Flynn without the rapiness. And so we kind of have to go with Griffin door. I agree completely. If there is a single X man who embodies the fun side of Griffin door, it is him.

He looks before he doesn't look before his leaps at all because he can trust his ability to leap so beautifully and land so gracefully anyway. Yeah. Well, and if he winds up getting into, you know, really serious trouble, he doesn't even have to leap. He just bans. BAM.

Yep. By the way, I really want to know which of their writers or letterers or who it was who came up with that sound effect. Just because it means badass motherfucker. Well, one. But no, it is just such a perfect description of that kind of rushing air. Yeah, the clapping of all the pink.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's also another one I favor. It's a shocking a blue guy. Yeah. Here's a quote. You must be confused.

Beast is a friend of mine. He's blue though. I'm surprised we don't get confused more often. He's courageous beyond most others because he has a zest for life. Here's another good quote of his, I dare say I was born for this, raise the flag, X-Men, and let's go be amazing. Like, he's just all about it, right? And he also has so little chill, uh, quote,

Oh, none. He said that he, he said that my coming there had compromised them. It had become too dangerous. These people were no longer worth the risk. He was going to kill them. Well, that was when it started. His callousness, his disregard, I snapped. I had the power. I had the ability, so I used it. Can't be a swashbuckler. Yeah, can't be a swashbuckler if you're not a graphic door. Yeah, yeah. My brother. Yeah, right there. You Yep. All right, Colossus

Hufflepuff. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't even have to. He is, he is, he is the mom friend. Mm hmm. Very much so. Yeah. He's, he's literally the big brother of magic.

Yeah. And, and, you know, and the kind of doding jock boyfriend for Kitty Pride. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's, it's really, he's one of those ones that's, that's a really straightforward. And I, and I think that's, that's also part of what makes him a hufflepuff is he is so, you know, like, no, literally what you see here is what you get.

He is, he is, he is the big, strong guy with the heart of an artist. And, and, you know, he is the gentle giant with, with a sensitive soul. Yep. And the iron clad, moral compass. Yeah. He cares about fairness above all else, right? Like you said, he's strong, he's durable, he's patient as a mountain, unless somebody's at risk. Like you said, he's especially susceptible to threats to his sister,

Ilyana, or to Kitty pride, or the rest of the X-Men. So here's a quote, I'm sorry, doctor. I hope you will understand why I must do this. I have battle living islands. I have fought sentinels whose sole purpose was to kill mutants. I have helped to save the universe more than once. I have done all this and more, and yet the hardest thing I have ever done was watch helplessly as my sister's life was taken by the legacy virus.

Someday there may be a cure that does not require sacrifice. Someday the violence will end. Someday children like Ilyana will not be victims of a war they are not a part of. But I cannot stand by for even one hour knowing someone's somewhere else's, knowing somewhere. Someone else's little sister is dying from this disease. Snowflake I'm coming home. Just absolutely throwing himself across the wire so the other men can march over. Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going

to say he's the gentle version of what Wolverine is. Yeah. He's friendly. Wolverine's cranky. Wolverine's cranky. Cranky is such an understatement. And he has that wonderful, wonderful, wonderful speech that we see the page, it's not just a panel, it's a full, it's a splash page. That's to him and I don't remember who the two younger mutants are, but it's a full, it's a like splash page. That's to him, and I don't remember who the two younger mutants are, but it's the wonderful speech about no-no children. You need to understand. And it's about racism and about prejudice and about hatred. But these things are always jokes.

It always starts out as just a joke. Oh, right, I remember that. Yeah. And, and, and it is one of the best bits of social justice warrior writing. Um, anybody in recent years, I think, has done at Marvel. Yeah. Um, and, and yeah, uh, and, and like, I cannot imagine cannot imagine that speech coming from anybody else and not seeming corny.

Yeah, but with him you, you expect it and believe it. Yeah. Yeah. Here's, here's a quote, you know nothing. She is our friend, our comrade in battle. She could be dead and you act as if you do not even care well colossus cares Like just yeah, yeah, all right heart unsleeve. Yeah, I was thinking that exact thing actually. Yeah, so finally gene gray Ravenclaw

She literally gets stuck in her own head as a telepath and a telekinetic. Yeah. She's thoughtful more than she's a story arc about it. Oh yeah. She's thoughtful more than she's a genius, but she is also plenty smart. In many ways, she's the one who cares about people enough to think about them. So she's like the best version of a Ravenclaw. Yeah. Here's a quote, life doesn't make sense in isolation. We need to be free to make mistakes and to make those mistakes together. So while that speaks to community, it also speaks to that search for truth. You know, you know, well, and speaking of truth in the recent plot line where her and Iceman and Cyclops wind up getting transported from the 60s to the present day.

And so you have, you know, old exclamation point Jean Grey and young exclamation point Jean Grey and a young explanation point Jean Grey. Right. Uh, she's the one who puts two and two together as a telepath and tells Bobby. Mm-hmm. Basically tells Bobby. I mean, like, out of Bobby, but he's, he's, to himself. Yeah. Because he's so busy, you know, suppressing all of that. Right. That, that she, she looks at him and goes, you're that. Right. That that she she looks at him and goes, your day. Right. And she doesn't mean and she doesn't mean to do it either. That's the thing. She gets so lost in her search for truth. She got lost in someone else's head. Yeah. Yeah. Not not even her own head. Right. Somebody else's head. Yeah. Yeah. And and and I think the important thing of that is it wasn't something that she like

Wolverine if it were Wolverine that was the one that was put in that narrative position Wolverine would do it by you know sense of smell and is gut and you know all of all of that kind of stuff and it would be this intuitive thing. She calculated it out. It was it was a process of deduction. And then once you've gotten to the end of the deduction it just came out of her mouth because that's what happens when you finish deducing something that you say it. You share that truth? Yeah. You share that truth, even if it's unwelcome, you know. And yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, here's a, you know, like you said, she's logical, she's reasonable. She's trying to contain the damage of the world-rending spirit that inhabited her. She argues unassailably that she needs to be killed not saved. Like she maths it out and she says quote Scott am I worth it? I destroy the world in my mind. I can still hear the screams of the dying and it felt good. I don't want that feeling ever again and yet I do. And she's like I have to die. Yeah, she begs him to kill her. And he has the hardest time doing it. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah.

All right. You know, Scott fucking summers. Yeah. So there's a lot more that I wanted to tackle, but I saved the most interesting for last. So what superhero has been left off this list? Conspicuous by their absence. Oh man, well, a few come to, I mean, like everybody on the Fantastic Four of course is not being here. Well, Spider-Man. Yeah.

Do you wanna, should we run through the Fantastic Four? I don't have any quotes, but I bet you we could, we could probably agree. We could, we could, we could, we could agree. 75% at least. Yeah, at least. Ben Graham is definitely a huff of puff. Yes. So is Susan storm. And Susan storm is definitely a huff of puff. Yeah. Um, Johnny storm. Johnny storm is clearly. Yeah. Griffin door. Like, like full stop. Yeah. I guess we we may end up disagreeing or needing to convince each other on on read. I say that he's slithering. No, you don't need a convince me. Okay, there you go. So maybe that's why I didn't do them. They were

just so damn easy. Yeah, well, but what an interesting team. You don't have the four houses represented by the fantastic four. No, indeed you don't. Yeah, you have, yeah, um, because because the the intellect, the brain of the bunch of them is morally, I mean, you could, you could make an argument for him being a Ravenclaw. He's too fluid, literally fluid. Yeah. So he's water. Yeah. It isn't, it isn't ever a matter of him just getting locked up in his own head and

forgetting about morals. It's him having something he thinks is more important. I think the one closest to being Ravenclaw in that dynamic would be Sue Storm, but I think she's too much the Dormat Hufflepuff. Yeah, the other flip side, the other dark side of Hufflepuff is just being a Dormat. And too often, yeah, the codependency thing is just, yeah, too strong.

Yeah. So Spider-Man. Well, is he Hufflepuff? Is he Griffin Dora? Is he Ravenclaw, is he Slytherin? Tell me why. Okay, I'm going to rule Slytherin out simply because his moral compass is a defining trait. Okay. And ends versus means is not a conversation, not a conversation you get into. Okay.

So I'm going to take slither and off the table. All right. Now that you've eliminated to that, let me read to you a couple quotes. Okay. We're not just our failures as much as they hurt, we learn from them. Then we go out there and do our best to make up for them, even though we never will. We save people, we save as many as we can to make up for the ones we couldn't. That's all we do. Here's another quote. But it's not the same thing. All these years I've done my best to make up for that. I wore this suit, gone out there and put my life on the line again and again, but no matter how

hard I try, people die. Yep. You say you don't want responsibility. Guess what? People like us, we don't get a choice. Yep. All right. So here's the deal. Yeah. Here's the deal. I've got more. You say you're okay. No, I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure you do. I'm sure he did. He beats himself up over the stuff. He carries this guilt, like as a thing. And he is immensely self-sacrificing, in part because of the slip-ups that he made. Yes. When he made the mistake of being selfish, his uncle died, right? And so that

Turned him being basically a good kid, but you know a dumb kid into being this Apollonian, you know You know, I have to do like cannot not do the right thing, right? kind of figure. And I'm torn because on the one hand, there is a very strong kind of hufflepuff drive there for looking out for others and being the guardian

and the caretaker and all of that. By the same token, he's very rarely a member of a team. As a defining characteristic, he's very much, he is that dude. And he is in many ways like he has the same kind of character drive as cap. Yeah. In that, this is a sense of duty and it is a very personal sense of duty. And he's the only one who can do it sometimes. I am, I am, the only one with 308 rule. I'm the only one here who could do this. And so that that pushes me in the direction of and then we have when he puts on the mask and he becomes spidey, he is a smart ass and he has a lot of fun with his powers.

Yep. And he's very, very smart, but he has to work really hard to force himself to come up with a plan a lot of the time. All right, so here's a couple quotes to help muddy those waters back up everything you said basically. Here's one, you're the creep who's going to pay. I'm going to get you Goblin. I'm going to destroy you slowly and when you start begging for me to end it, I'm going to remind you of one thing.

You killed the woman I love and for that you're going to die. Dark side Griffin door. Oh I was thinking dark side Hufflepuff you killed the person I loved. All right here's another one. Fate gave me some terrific superpowers and I realized now it's my duty to use them without doubt without hesitation and that means spider man is going into action again. I'll fight as I've never fought before. Nothing will stop me now.

For I know it lasts that a man can't change his destiny. I was born to be Spider-Man. Yeah, there's some notes there that come off as kind of slithering or asking. Yeah, I was born to this, that out of the... You know, I think... think you're still got though. Yeah. Okay.

Go ahead, go ahead. I think we have to keep in mind, you know, what era of the comic did that particular long come from? That was early 60s. And that kind of flowery language was just a, it was just part of the art form. Oh yeah, yeah. Here's another one that will throw some mess

into the fire for you. I should really redesign my web shooters so this won't happen again. Either that or sew a change pocket into my costume so I can carry bus fare. No, with a costume this tight, people might think I had cellulite. Yeah, well, that's Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.

Yeah, you know, and the thing is, as Hermione Granger has shown us, you can be smart and be a Gryffindor. That's true. You know, I'm going to say that he is a case of somebody who made a choice in the hat and the choice that he made. You know, Harry was not slither and not slither and not slither. Right. That's lither and I think I think Peter Parker, if the hat started to be lowered down on his head, he would hear the hat saying, oh, you're a nerd. Oh, my boy, are you a nerd? He's such a raving claw.

And he'd be like, you're such a rave but you've got this drive about doing the right thing, and I can see in you that there's this trade of, you want to cut loose and be this other swash buckling guy in your own head. But at the same time, you've got this loyalty to family. Here's another quote real quick. I blew it strange. I did the one thing I promised myself I would never do. I put my family in the crosshairs and no matter how many times I go over it and my head, I keep coming back to the same thing. I need the world to forget that I'm spider-man. Because he suffers greatly with his secret

identity and goes through so much to keep people safe. That whole thing is about the other, not about him. Yeah. Yeah. I think it comes back around to a sense of duty and I think it comes back around to having made one terrible, terrible, terrible mistake at the very, you know, in his origin story. And I, and in what I was coming around to is, I think based on that one mistake and wanting to make up for that one mistake, what he told the hat was, I want to be in the house cap

is in. Because because so much of his internal dialogue and so much of what you see him saying to other characters, echoes so much of what you hear out of Cap's mouth about doing the right thing and sense of duty and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, and so he's really, he's really, really hard to pin down, but canonically Harry was really hard to pin down. True. Even Harry chose where he would. And Harry and Harry chose to go. Okay, here's another one. I'm done accepting things the way they are.

I swear to you from now on, whenever I'm around, wherever I am, no one dies. He's tilting back to Slytherin. Because I'm the one that's gonna stop that. But then here's the final quote, I'll kick your way. Anyone can win a fight when the odds are easy. It's when the goings tough, when there seems to be no chance, that's when it counts. Griffin door. So, so I think I will tell you I never put him into a house by the way. Oh yeah, I could not on my own. I absolutely need this to be done

dialogically. And I wonder if he's the one character that you can't put into a house. Because he's actually the most fully fleshed out character. He's archetypical and yet he is so thoroughly human. Well, you know, here's the deal. His archetype is the every man. You know, from the very beginning, the whole conceit of creating him wasn't, sorry. Ah, for those of you listening, that noise you may have just heard in the background since

Damien reacted to it. I'm sure you all did. My family has adopted a 10-week-old kitten who is prowling around here in the living room and just managed to get herself into trouble by knocking over a chair. Anyway, I'll have have this this you know Racknid themed superhero All right, sorry about that. It's okay. Got a little bit of a literacy primer there for everybody Anyway It's okay. Got a little bit of a literacy primer there for everybody. Anyway.

Are you quite done? Okay. But the conceit was I'm gonna take a high school kid and I'm gonna make a high school kid into a superhero. I'm gonna write stories about what would that look like? And so the core of the character like Bruce Wayne is the appendage to Batman. Yes. Narratively, narratively speaking, Batman as the character Bruce Wayne is the alter ego. Right. That's not the case with Peter Parker. That's not that's not how Spider-Man That's not how Spider-Man's genesis. And so the archetype is one that winds up being fully fleshed out because the source

of the drama in his life isn't, you know, we're part of a subspecies of humanity that's being hunted down and persecuted. And it's not, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, this guy who became a super soldier through, you know, scientific experimentation or whatever. Right. His defining characteristic is I'm a junior in high school and I have to figure out how to get my homework done when I'm also the guy who can stop the rhino from robbing a bank. Yeah.

I have to pay the rent still. Yeah. I got to pay the rent after graduate's high school. I got to get a job. You know, later honey becomes a science teacher. He's got a grade papers, which makes him my favorite forever for that, you know, and and you know, it's it's so so he is the most fully fleshed out character while simultaneously being archetypal because that's his archetype. Yeah, you know, and so yeah, I think it's I think it's really hard to pin him down. I'm in the end, I think if you, you know, if Victor von Doom, you know,

strapped him down to a machine and forced the hat onto his head, I think he'd wind up, you know, choosing Gryffindor. I agree. Cause he chooses it every night. Cause he, cause that's the guy that is, that is the mantle he takes on all the time. And I think that conscious choices is a really, really important part of his character.

And a really important part of what makes him admirable and compelling and really makes him heroic. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you got me my full agreement there. I think he is a chosen griffin door. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. You know, now that we're thinking about it, I realized that I left out heroes that I really wanted to get in there and I didn't get to.

So I'm not going to do them here. What I want people to do is to reach out to us on the social medias. So you can hit me up at duh harmony, either on Insta or in the Twitter verse. And let me know what superheroes you think should be sorted. And tell me what, what, what house you think and why? Where can they tell you this? If they want to pass this along to me, I can be found on Instagram at Mr. Blalock, MR Blalock. Instagram at Mr. Blalock, MR. Blalock, and on the Twitter, I'm at EH Blalock. And of course, you can send this to both of us simultaneously at on Twitter at Geek

History Time. Yes. So, do we have anything that we recommend to people to read this week? I know I got those a little out of order, but it seemed fitting. Yeah, no, it makes sense. No, I think just I'm going to say go back and go back and pick any one of a number of really great time periods from, you know, especially to X-Men, but I think the Avengers as well, and just go back and take a look at the ways in which these characters manage to embody these archetypes, I think, is worth thinking about. I agree. I think that that's a pretty good way to go about it. I would recommend that you look into some of the

later Spider-Man versus Venom stuff. Oh, cute kitty. But some of the later Spider-Man versus Venom stuff, because he really gets into the, I created this guy problem. And the responsibility that comes with that on top of all the other responsibility that he has. I think that's really good. I think Spider-Man has always been a more exciting comic book to read than Captain America, despite them both

choosing the same kind of determinator, Gryffindor aspect because Spider-Man has problems. So I'm gonna keep my recommendations, Spider-Man centric, to this time. Yeah, yeah, Spider-Man actually has a day-to-day life. He's gotta worry about through his apotheosis cap, kind of moved out of a world in which he needed to worry about that stuff. Well, Cap isn't Steve Rogers. He's cap

Yeah, Spider-Man's Peter Parker and that's far more fascinating. So Yeah, I think that's that's about as far as I'll go with that so And we already talked about where people can meet you out in the streets catch these hands. That's good and you fight you I catch these hands. That's good. And you fight you. I will. I will. Because because I'm a Griffin door. Right. I won't. I will hook you. Because it's part of a greater plan. Let's be honest. I will pretend to be a full buff. But we all know that I'm quite. Yeah. No, you're way, way, way, way to and level your own cleverness. Yeah, that's not wrong. So. Cool. Well, for Geek History of Time, I'm Damien Harmony.

And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, keep rowing 20s. Cute, kitty. you