(no subject)

So I did basement to 40 on Friday. Yesterday I sat down with the Hundred Pushups website to see where I was supposed to start. Apparently if you can do 25 on your initial exhaustion test, you're supposed to start at week 3, column 2. Bzuh.

Well, yesterday I did. 12, 17, 13, 13, and then 'as many as you can', which in my case was 18. I could probably have done more if I really tried to hold my form together better, but I opted to just stop there and lie on the floor for a bit, and then to get up and vow to sweep up more often, because it was a mess. Remind me, though, I need to charge up my iPod instead of just my cell phone. The 'pod has a timer function built into it and I need to be able to time my rest between sets. ETA: never mind. Android Market, whee!

a question, regarding the problematic

I'm currently plagued by a plotbunny or two in the Fallout universe, all revolving around the events that led up to the founding of the Brotherhod of Steel. Fallout is set in the 1950s scifi movie version of the future, in a world where the fifties never really ended and social change was remarkably slow- there were women and racial minorities inthe armed forces, but very few. At least, if the Mothership Zeta content is anything to go by- a squad of medics captured by aliens in 2077 contained three white men, one black man, and one black woman. The simulation of prewar military life in Operation Anchorage contains several women among the infantry as well as in the medical tent, and there is a black lieutenant serving in a logistics officer position.

This is not the problematic part. If that's what the prewar Fallout military looked like then that is what I have to work with. My problem arises elsewhere.

Roger Maxson, the eventual Brotherhood founder, is canonically the second-in-command of a unit headed by Colonel Robert Spindel. We know nothing about Spindel except that when he learns the awful truth about what his men have really been guarding all this time- biowarfare experiments on live human prisoners, for more than a year- he locks himself in his office for days and has a nervous breakdown. Eventually he shoots himself. His last words are an apology before he pulls the trigger. That's all the canon says about him.

My problem is that today I realized I was picturing him being played by Denzel Washington. I'm not sure if I should write him that way or not. I'd avoid the issue by making Maxson black instead, but we've seen Maxson's grandson in canon and John Maxson doesn't look mixed. He looks like a really old white guy with an enormous nose. I plan on making sure there are other minorities among the soldiers naamed in canon, but.... given what Spindel winds up doing, can i/should I make him a Denzel character? Or would that be grossly inappropriate?