For all that I occasionally ask, annoyedly, that the universe once in a while pretend that it exists for some reason other than to annoy Brad, it looks like the universe, or at least USA TV, is giving me two really sweet birthday presents this year. June 17th is the scheduled release date for Burn Notice season 1 on DVD; I'll be pre-ordering that one pretty soon, you bet. And Burn Notice season 2 starts the actual day before my birthday, July 10th. Sweet.

---

Some time in the next couple of months, probably around the end of June, City of Villains is releasing it's first (and possibly last) really big villain-specific software release. As part of Issue 12: Midnight Hour, they're unlocking two new character classes that can only be played by someone who's already successfully leveled a regular villain to level 50. (And 20 new powersets for the 10 non-epic character classes, but that's not the point right this second.) The new character classes are highly customizable elite Arachnos soldiers: Wolf Spider infantry (who later branch out into Bane Spider special forces or Crab Spider police SWAT guys) and Blood Widow assassins (who later branch out into Night Widow elite spies or Fortunata psychic assassins):

So here's how it affects this blog: I'm thinking of an in-character writing project. My thought is that I'll be creating a Bane Spider and roleplaying him as the Arachnos equivalent of an old Soviet KGB "political officer," someone whose job is correcting the doctrinal errors of his fellow Arachnos troops, standing up for Arachnos political values, and of course spying on members of whatever unit he's assigned on for their superiors. The background I'm imagining is born in the Etoile Islands well after the 1964 Arachnos revolution, after high school one (long ago) tour of duty in the Wolf Spiders, BA and MA in History from Aeon University in New Haven, Cap au Diable, Ph.D. in Political Science from Aeon University, recalled to active duty as a Political Officer during the Battle of the Jade Spider in Siren's Call, Rhode Island, captured and incarcerated as a prisoner of war in Ziggursky Penitentiary, recently broken out by Arachnos as part of Project Destiny and returned to the Wolf Spiders as a Political Officer monitoring the so-called Destined Ones.

And, to the specific point here, I'm thinking of turning the blog over to him periodically, maybe once every week or two. Because the "good guy" politics in this game are so creepy and wrong, it's actually not all that hard for me to imagine defending a Doctor-Doom like supervillain dictatorial regime as the superior alternative, especially from the viewpoint of someone who grew up under that regime and who believes that superhero-dominated America is even worse than it actually is (although how it actually is is bad enough). Imagining playing this character, I'm finding that it's even more disturbingly easy for me to spout, or even write, Arachnos propaganda than it was for me to write the Cthulhu-universe political blog entries I was writing a while back. But I know that few, if any of you, will be interested, so out of courtesy, what I'll probably do is give those posts their own icon, the Arachnos logo, and LJ-cut them.