Things We Saw Today: The Doctor and Wheately

Time And Relative Dimension In SPAAAAAAAAAAACE (Radiohamlet via io9.)

I like DC, and I love the DC Universe, it’s a source of never-ending joy to me. But I myself was not on board the relaunch at first and it caused some real friction. I had to be sold. I’ve always said my whole career that I wanted to write by the improv credo, “don’t negate,” which means, even if you didn’t care for something, you try to make it work, you don’t say, “Oh, that particular story didn’t happen.”…

Barbara’s been in my heart since I was a kid. She’s been such a part of my life. She was the main reason I created the Women in Refrigerators page. She was the reason I came to DC. And she’s been looking over my shoulder for nearly every story I’ve written at DC in one way or another. When this idea has come up before, I have fought against it. I thought it was wrong to take the person Barbara had become and put her back in the spandex.

I still think that.

— Gail Simone, on writing Flashboot Batgirl, in a very extensive interview with Jil Pantozzi on Neatorama.

This dude. This dude is very cool. (Cosplay Holic.)

I strongly suspect that unions would, in these circumstances, put strict hiring quotas on mutants (and most likely gene-wide, because how can you prove that you aren’t strong or can’t fly?) and then we’re just back to square one – and that’s before you get to the psychics, who would inevitably be barred from any number of professions, and genome-based resentment on either side of the coin would almost certainly follow. And with that, the dream of shared prosperity becomes restricted to those outliers, the mutants who don’t potentially threaten human prosperity and who can provide useful services to humans. That’s not equality, and in the real-world scenario it’s why Magneto is right.

—MightyGodKing, proving that there isn’t anything you can use the X-Men as a metaphor for.

ShopGibberish on Etsy will take Scrabble Tiles, turn them into Periodic Table entries, and then make them into, like, anything you could possibly want.

The Lie:
“A young Jedi named Darth Vader … betrayed and murdered your father.” – Obi-Wan

The Truth:
“Your father fell to the dark side, became Darth Vader, and exterminating almost all of the Jedi. By the way, I was his master and ignored the warnings of my superiors that it was a mistake to train him. Oh, and he built that protocol droid over there. Did I mention I’ve been secretly spying on you for your entire life?”

— Blastr‘s list of the most egregious lies in science fiction

I don’t think they teach this kind of stuff at Hogwarts, but maybe they should? (Neatorama.)

Suppose you are a girl that needs to stay awake to study for your — I don’t know — fashion marketing final or midwife practical exam or whatever. Should you drink a Red Bull or something? Hell no! It’s so manly! It might make you grow a penis! You’d rather fall asleep, fail your exam and go back to hairdressing or stripping, am I right?

But wait! Now there’s Go Girl — the pink energy drink just for women!

— Cracked has a list of the most pointlessly women specific products

And finally, here are all fifty-two confirmed titles in the Flashboot 52. There’s a lot of number crunching to do on whether or not DC actually met their state goals of showcasing a more diverse DC universe, but for now we’ll just point out, for your edification, that there are only two women comic creators working on the New DCU.