Marvel's Thunderbolts gave me a reason to live. And by live, I mean write.

Addressing the hiatus...but we're back! Marvel's Thunderbolts is a Marvel renaissance revival and a conversation in scripting relatable characters

Many of you have wondered where the latest “Doomsday or Fri-Yay” has been in your inbox. Many of you haven’t. No matter what, I appreciate the support.

I’ve spent the last few months analyzing where I want this newsletter to go. What are my career goals? What are my personal goals? How does this fit into my life which has drastically changed over the last five months?

In March, I had to challenge the goals I set for myself and lost a little direction when things didn’t go my way. It started to feel like I was losing my voice because others wanted to break it down and build it up in their image. There’s something to say about constructive criticism, but my drive to reach expected success collided with my drive to remain authentic, and soon, I couldn’t align with the people I had once admired in the writing and journalism industry. Everyone seemed to be in it to stir the pot with sanctimonious filler words.

So, Slightly Sour took a backseat while I shifted my focus back to school, my responsibilities, and the novel I’m preparing to query to agents later this summer.

After four years of blood, sweat, tears, and never-ending re-writes and edits, my manuscript finally turned into something I’m excited to slap my good name on. It’s my first-born child, Slightly Sour is my second, and for those of you who shake your head at me that I would compare 100,000 words of fiction to a child, well, I beg you to write a novel and tell me how you feel.

But as I wax poetic about a major milestone in my writing career, the guilt over abandoning this newsletter was ruthless, gnawing at me like a puppy dog with innocent round marbles for eyes because I never properly laid it to rest.

Those puppy dog eyes saw right through me, and the guilt felt oddly familiar. Where had I experienced this need to run from my unresolved feelings?

I flashed back to crashing out with Taylor Swift’s Red after I broke up with my high school boyfriend. And then I laughed at myself because that is the most melodramatic thing that has ever crossed my mind.

But I decided to bite—maybe this embarrassing recollection would lead somewhere worthwhile and allow me to figure out why my psyche compared all these feelings to a high school breakup. And after a good old break-up, it was time for some introspection.

Relationships end. We label our exes with less-than-savory generalizations and then we move on to the next stage…questioning every fiber of our beings to get to the root cause of our weaknesses.

Some learn more about themselves by taking up new hobbies. Running marathons. Throwing pottery. Swearing off alcohol. Swearing in alcohol.

I didn’t do any of these things. I just didn’t put a deadline over my head to get Slightly Sour back up. I let it be for once in my life and didn’t pick at the wound.

Soon, my introspection led to perfection paralysis— “a state of mental immobility where the fear of making mistakes or producing something less than perfect prevents someone from taking action or starting a project.”

I’m being facetious, but yes, this is a real thing.

I couldn’t bring myself to write a word of this newsletter because I’d lost my voice when I found out my heroes weren’t the kind of people I aspired to become. Never meet your heroes, a.k.a great advice. I crippled my aspirations by believing that if they can’t be perfect, how can I? So why bother to put in the time?

Before I wrote my first article, Slightly Sour stemmed from my professors’ repeated advice to play with a genre of writing outside our comfort zones to practice the craft—the art—of writing. So why not try a new genre on the opposite spectrum of fiction—non-fiction? A week later Slightly Sour was born. And I loved it. A lot of people did.

It took retracing my steps and my sole intention to get back to the heart of this newsletter. As writers, we are often told to stick in a lane. I’m a fiction writer, not a pop-culture writer. You are this. Or you are that.

That’s just life. Placed in a box until we are placed into a different one when our time ends.

Perfection paralysis told me I needed to go pro in whatever box I inhabited before I moved on to the next. Perfection was the gatekeeper of my joy and creativity.

Although embarrassing, it took a fortune cookie to snap me out of this mindset.

Our best will never be perfect. Get over yourself.

Okay, I’m paraphrasing. I barely remember the wording, but the gist was enough to slap me in the face.

So, without further ado…I got over myself.

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Thunderbolts is a Marvel renaissance revival and a how-to in scripting relatable characters

Thunderbolts has smashed the competition as a summer box office success. With a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 88%, Marvel hasn’t seen success like that since Spider-Man: No Way Home. Raving reviews supplied by online reviewers who claim to be the “end-all-be-all of superhero connoisseurs” believe that Marvel is back in action after a lull of sub-par stories.

(There were some gems. These boys can be a bit harsh on female-centric stories. But let’s save this discussion for another time.)

Marvel’s Thunderbolts follows a few familiar faces as they band together to face a new threat and the darkness lingering in their pasts. The movie tackles the conversation of mental illness in a way I have not yet seen in a mega-brand superhero movie. Granted, there have been bits and pieces of mental strife scattered throughout the DC and Marvel universes. But nothing quite like this.

Nothing that puts despair and darkness on physical display—a metaphor for what it’s like to climb out of one’s head, tearing off fingernails and skin to free oneself from a sticky mind loop.

Thunderbolts bridges the gap between “invincible” heroes and their crumbling mental health, creating real and relatable characters through their grittiness and blatant imperfections.

The heroes who came before—Captain America, Iron Man, Doctor Strange—were as close to perfect as it gets. Their flaws don’t count if they’re sharp-edged nuances to give them personality and character development. It’s not the same as what they achieved in Thunderbolts.

I left the movie theater with a theory: Everyone will relate to at least one character, and it will be the one you hate the most.

My theory is based on the human fact that we hate to look in the mirror and face our uglies. And boy, my ugly was displayed front and center when I identified closest to John Walker.

He’s not supposed to be anyone’s favorite. If an anti-hero had a poster child that wasn’t Deadpool, it would be him. He’s arrogant, bullheaded, and hides behind quips stronger than his shield.

To catch some of you up, in the post-Avengers: Engame installment of Falcon and Winter Soldier, John Walker took over as a government-appointed Captain America after the original Captain America hung up his shield. He is introduced as a good man, a decorated veteran who faces a grisly downfall after his best friend is killed.

In a press interview with Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier) and Wyatt Russell (John Walker), the actors and the interviewer poke fun at the original Captain America’s (Chris Evans) nickname— “America’s a**.” A cute little epithet for Chris Evans’s backside.

So, an obvious line of questioning by the interviewer: “What is John Walker’s nickname?”

Wyatt Russell sits on his response, eventually answering with a smile that “John Walker would be America’s a**—hole.”

When my husband and I left the movie theater, we discussed the nuances of the movie, and both of us were surprised by how much we enjoyed it. We discussed the characters and their depth of relatability.

When jokingly identifying which character reminded us of each other, my husband gave me a knowing look over pizza and beers. We both knew where this was going.

“I mean…” he says nicely. And then we laughed. He didn’t have to say it. I knew where this was going. America’s a**hole. Slightly Sour. Yep, that’s the one.

But I hated that character. Loved him for what he was—an insufferable jerk—but I still hated him.

John Walker is perfection paralysis on the big screen. Petrified to move forward out of fear of making another mistake. After the death of his friend, he is fueled by rage and kills an innocent man. Stripped of an honorable reputation, he becomes a hand for hire who self-sabotages his way into loneliness, isolating himself away from everything good in his life. J.V. Captain America as they call him in the movie. A character who will never fill the shoes he intended to.

John Walker appears to be a lost cause. Too damaged and angry for a comeback, but Thunderbolts showcases the traits that earned him his place as a decorated veteran in the first place. He resists companionship with sarcasm and a gun (that’s a Miss Congeniality reference), yet still can’t fight off this innate drive to help no matter how much he feigns his reluctance, proving that although he’s lost his celebrated reputation, there’s still a decent man inside.

To understand the weight of my Thunderbolts theory, we must acknowledge why we tell stories. It’s human nature, a tool for learning lessons within the safety bubble of a page or a physical voice. Studies have shown that reading can be used to teach empathy. Many credit stories, whether in books or television, with providing a sense of comfort, found identity, and improved understanding. We want to see characters like us overcome obstacles because it makes us believe we can overcome our own. More importantly, we need to identify with the characters we hate the most to learn how to grow.

Because if John Walker can remember his redeeming qualities, so can I.

Slightly Sour time of revival: May 23rd, 2025 at 7 pm. It’s alive!