You know there's MC in Captain America: Civil War, right?

But before I start talking about that, here's a quick announcement: I think I'm ready to start blogging and writing regularly again. My personal life has stabilized a bit and that has allowed my creative juices to start flowing again. I had to put that Transfixed CYOA aside for a couple of months, but I'm ready to pick it up again. Anyway, thanks to everyone who's expressed their sympathy for me, both here and by email. It really does mean a lot. I want you to know that.

And now on to the new Captain America movie, which I can't help thinking of as the new Avengers movie because, hell, almost all of the Avengers are in it. I won't talk about anything you couldn't infer from the commercials and trailers, so you don't have to worry about spoilers in this part of my post unless you want to go into Civil War with your eyes and ears completely virgin. You'd just better have seen The Winter Soldier first if you plan on that, because otherwise you'll be totally lost.

So anyway, as you could see from those trailers and commercials, Bucky still hasn't broken free of all his Hydra conditioning. He remembers who he is most of the time, but it turns out that Hydra programmed him with trigger words that can revive the Winter Soldier in his mind (Those triggers reminds me of the nonsensical phrases trilby else used to employ; "ammonite contraband" was one of my favorites). But in Bucky's case, it's a whole string of disconnected words, so when he gets triggered, we get to watch him scream and struggle until he inevitably but oh-so-slowly falls back into drone mode. And then, stone-faced, he chants that most perfect of slave mantras: "Ready to comply."

IMO, these scenes (Yes, there's more than one) are much hotter than the single reprogramming scene we saw in The Winter Soldier. I thought of writing about that one when the movie came out, but in the end I decided against because the process was painful and pain turns me off instead of on. However, I did like the brainwashing rig from that movie, so I'm including a picture of it here. You can make up whatever scenario you like to go along with it. Or, hell, if you are into pain, you can just fantasize about the movie scene itself. You have watched The Winter Soldier, right? I can't imagine any MC fetishist would give it a pass. Well, I'm here to tell you that Bucky's programming scenes in Civil War are things of heat and beauty. It's just a shame he got rid that faceless, dehumanizing mask. I'd love to have seen him in that again (Oops, was that a spoiler?).

But now let me switch topics and talk about the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse. I will have to drop some medium-sized spoilers here, although they're rumors and guesses that might prove false, so it's your gamble whether to bail out or keep reading. I'll be back next weekend anyway with a scorching hot new fantasy I've been toying with. But for now Apocalypse is on the front burner, and I'm hoping he'll give us plenty of heat. Already we know he collects powers by taking over the bodies of mutants with abilities he covets. We also know from the trailers that Magneto kidnaps an unconscious Charles Xavier by pulling his wheelchair toward Apocalypse and the horsemen. What you might not know unless you caught the most recent YouTube featurette is that there's a scene in the movie where Charles is lying on a slab like the one Oscar Isaac was on in the earlier trailers, and Oscar-as-Apocalypse is looming over Charles. The implications seem obvious. In fact, I've read that Apocalypse specifically covets Charles' telepathy, but you have to dig a little to find out how he wants to use it. This might be a false rumor, but I've read that Apocalypse wants to use Charles' telepathy to MC every person on the planet. Well, you can imagine how desperately I want that to be true. Unfortunately the trailers make it look like Apocalypse is more interested in killing people than enslaving them...but maybe he plans to kill the weak and MC the strong. That would make sense because in the movie, Oscar-Apocalypse was betrayed by his last set of horsemen, and I'm sure he doesn't want to risk that again (Plus, in the comics Apocalypse does MC his horsemen). So I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll see some MC action in the new movie before the X-men inevitably take him down. The premiere can't get here soon enough for me.