Make This Moment Last/ Forever And A Day

So the Jake and Shane superhero novel is slooooooooowly starting to take shape in my head. It'll be awhile before I do any writing on it, I think, but I am getting there! Right now I'm mostly working on fleshing out the main characters; since this is a superhero novel, I need at least vague ideas of their powers, origins, costumes, etc! And a lot of random characterization bits like family history, jobs, that sort of thing. A few things I've figured out so far:

I don't think I'm going to make Jake an alcoholic, at least not before Shane's death (and probably not after). I'd toyed around with it a bit - it's /such/ a jaded, angry cop thing to do, but I don't think it really works for him, either because his self-control is too tight (a problem in and of itself), or because he channels that self-destruct urge into other directions (possibly into violence against the criminals he fights, which is Not Good). There will probably be a side character who is an acoholic, though, because one of the major themes of this story is Superheroes Are Fucked-Up.

Shane's power is going to be something based on force manipulation - i.e. he can generate and manipulate force fields, which he can use defensively (as a shield, duh), or offensively (on the hammer principle). He can also use them to fly by projecting a steady downward force. Because I say I want one of my boys to fly. This power is pretty strongly linked to one of the major characterization points I've got for Shane - basically that he is a very defensive, closed-off person. He is nice to everyone, everyone likes him, he has great faith in people, but he never gets close to them, always keeps him at a distance. I think the idea behind this is that he is a very idealistic person who got very badly hurt, and has decided he'd rather stay idealistic and just shut himself off a bit, rather than getting close to people and risk getting hurt again.

Jake's powers are looking to be some sort of time dilation thing - essentially the inversion of superspeed, I guess? He has the ability to stretch out a moment of time, so that he can move around in it while everyone else is frozen. This has enough variability to be tactically useful, I think; he can time-freeze ass-kick, he can use it to be several places in a short amount of time, he can use it to do things without being seen, etc. He can also bring someone in with him, as long as he is touching them when he does. But it's a limited power - he can't do it for very long periods of time, since time does not like to be going at different speeds in different places, and the longer he does it the harder it gets - when another person is involved, the difficulty is tremendous - and when it snaps back into place, the backlash is horribly painful. So that's good. And it provides extra-angst for the dead!Shane bit, and the potential for time-dilated kissing/sex. Yay!

In related but less relevant news, I realized that Jake is to all effects and purposes Sam Vimes. In the alternate universe where Things Went Badly. Conclude from that what you will.

ETA: I'm pretty sure Jake's superhero name is going to be The Watchman. I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON, OKAY?

Vice-Presidential Debates

Yes, I know everyone is already sick of hearing about this. But I just wanted to add my voice to the great many saying "McCain, what the fuck were you thinking?" Warning: I am pretty strongly in favor of Obama, I want to have Joe Biden's children, and I want to stab Palin with a rusty knife. So, you know, this may not be the most balanced interpretation of the debate. But this is the conversation hanjuuluver  and I had while we were watching it.
( cut for blatant partisanship... )

In summation: Biden was mostly articulate and awesome, and Palin was incredibly annoying and cannot answer direct questions.