I’m learning that you can always start over

Chasing a dream I didn’t realize I had

Aug 20, 2025

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Most people grow up just knowing the “Mount Rushmore” of superheroes— Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man. It’s always felt like they’ve just been around, so I have no clue when I truly started to like comic book characters. I do, however, remember the beginning of my obsession with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I would come home after school and instead of using my mom’s laptop for schoolwork (like I was meant to), I would watch Iron Man on Netflix. Every day. For months. As the fascination grew, and the Avengers came out, I became part of the Tumblr fandom and I never recovered. I would dig through Wikipedia trails to learn everything I could about all of these characters. I also studied characters through the 400 page, Marvel Encyclopedia: 70th Anniversary Edition, of course. It took a long time before I eventually read the comics, but I loved getting to know all of the characters this way.

Years later, I was dating a guy who would take me to the comic book store in town every week, and I ended up reading DC’s “Batgirl (Vol. 4)” issues because Babs Tarr’s covers were so pretty. I collected, and still have, about 95% of that run, but still didn’t collect many Marvel comics until recently.

I stuck with the MCU though; watching the movies on opening night, keeping up with TV shows, and finally digging into the comics this year. In May, Marvel’s new movie: Thunderbolts* came out. I left that theatre feeling a rush of hope and inspiration that I wasn’t sure what to do with. If you haven’t seen it, “It brings together antiheroes, former villains, and morally complex figures who have already been established in the MCU timeline” (Richard Craig, screenrant.com). One of the new characters in the movie is someone named Robert “Bob” Reynolds. The sole-survivor of a secret human-experiment project to create yet another Super Soldier (see this page for more on that). As we learn more about Bob, we are shown a disturbingly accurate depiction of what depression feels like through the character The Void (character profile is linked, so spoilers ahead). I don’t want to spoil it any further, but this movie truly felt like a love letter filled with encouragement and understanding to my teenaged self; someone who was so broken and scared and needed help out of the hole that depression makes you believe you’re in.

I told myself I was going to write a lengthy essay about this movie’s impact on me, but I still haven’t found the words. Jake Schreier directed this film with such grace and thoughtfulness. I will praise his work on this movie for the rest of my life. Now, imagine my excitement when there were rumors Schreier would be directing the MCU’s first X-Men film. And even more so when they made the official announcement affirming this only a month after Thunderbolts* release.

Jake Schreier did a beautiful job balancing each character in Thunderbolts*. Everyone felt well-written and paid attention to. I think having him as the director for the most complex team in Marvel’s arsenal is perfect. I truly believe the X-Men are in good hands with this choice. If you don’t know much about the X-Men, they are a team of mutants— their powers usually develop during puberty and are a result of having a mutated gene in their DNA.

If you’d like to learn more about the X-Men and their origins, check out this article on Britannica.

Like it says in the article above, the X-Men consists “of a rotating ensemble cast of mutants born with superhuman powers”. There’s never one solid team. There’s always someone new, and someone old returning. The member of the X-Men I was always the most drawn to was Rogue (real name: Anna Marie). She enters the comics as a villain, but almost immediately turns to the X-Men for help as her powers fight against her. Rogue’s mutant power is called “power drain”. When she touches another person’s skin with hers, she absorbs their life force. But if they themselves are a mutant, or have powers, those abilities come with it. After gaining all of Captain Marvel’s powers and memories in a fight, Rogue begins to lose her sense of self. Her mind is filled with a mind that is not her own, and she can’t control it. So she reaches out to the X-Men for help. Long story short, they don’t trust her for a while, but she’s eventually accepted and becomes one of the most trustworthy members.

You can read Rogue’s very brief character profile here on Marvel’s website.

Rogue wrestles with her identity, is afraid to get close to others, and is the pure definition of a loner runaway child. I related a lot to that when I was young (not the runaway part, but the desire to), and the more I’ve grown to know her, the more I feel like I’m looking in a mirror. I’m currently reading through her full list of appearances in the comics, so I’m really excited to see which version of her speaks to me the most.

Back to the X-Men film for a moment— because I’ve always been so attached to Rogue, my immediate thought when Marvel announced the movie was “I hope they write Rogue well”. I personally do not like how she was depicted in the 20th Century Fox movies (2000-2006). Her romance with Bobby (Iceman) felt forced, and the fact that she takes a cure for her powers is understandable as a teenager, but disappointing. We never got to see her become the loud and proud character she can be, and I really hope to see that in the new movies.

After seeing fan castings for the new set of X-Men, I tried to think of someone I believed could portray Miss Anna Marie well. Then I selfishly thought, “no one could do it like me, I know her too well, and I look just like her! Nonono that’s silly. I’m not an actor”. But in a coy moment, I asked my roommate what he thought, and he said “why not”? I explained I haven’t acted past a play in Kindergarten, and he shrugged, following it with “so what”?

So I let myself daydream for a month, then thought logically, and here we are. I’m going full force into preparing to audition for the role of Rogue, truly hoping they actually want to use her. I’m currently on week 3 of taking acting classes at a local studio. My next post will be an in-depth walk-through of these classes and why I’m taking them.

I never thought I’d do something like this; I wanted to be a singer and in a band my whole life. But because there’s been so much resistance against that dream for so long, I thought, “why not try something new? It wouldn’t hurt”.

I’m manifesting this opportunity and working as hard as possible to even get a foot in the door. If I miss it, then I’ll still have experience under my belt to help me look for something else. But right at this moment, I truly believe I could be Rogue, and the thought of my teenaged-self looking up to someone like that is what’s driving this forward.

I’m fighting against every doubt I have. I want to see if I can do it.

This page will serve as a place for me to info-dump about acting and Marvel stuff as I’m learning it, so I hope you’ll stick around to watch me follow a new dream.