#actually i just like the mythology better than the mcu's version of it really | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

elindae-writes · 3 years

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Disney MCU : not really my thing and I don’t really care Elindae writes MCU : this is mad this is bogus and I love it so much

Okay, so I only watched the first few MCU movies. I'm gonna be honest, I think the franchise peaked with only the first Iron Man movie. I read a lot of MCU fanfiction before I ever saw any MCU movies at all so I just had no clue what was going on.

There are actually a few MCU fanfics I like: In The Home , (A City Full of) Helping Hands, A Hospital Full, and Wilting Yellow Flowers, all by aloneintherain. I like the spider-man.

I still don't know what's going on. I'm only caught up to the atrocity that is the second Thor movie, the one with Padme in it and the teleporting trash? That entire movie was trash. I will try to construct the storyline of the MCU based off of what few details I know:

There is a raccoon?

The Avengers break up and the Hulk is just unfazed and immediately asks: "like the beetles?"

There is an evil purple man named Thanos with a small green child and the child grows up into a tall green woman?? who is his daughter? and they talk about resources and supply and demand.

Apparently some long-haired hot man with a metal limb shows up and Steve loses his shit trying to save this bud of his

who the hell is bucky

Harley Quinn is apparently not a MCU character and that genuinely shocked me

Thor is hot. wait is he still alive?

Aunt May is hot? like wtf? how?

There's apparently a scene where Spider-Man and his Aunt are eating Thai food and they're seeing replayed Spider-man battles on a TV and she's like. "peter. petey. pete boy. NEVER get involved in those fights! run away!"

And spider-man is just like

"t'was not me"

Spiderman then ends up homeless (and friends with karen??)

There's a fishbowl man who makes images with his hands but then Spider-Man defeats him while they're on a gondola

Steve wields mjolnir? i thought Steve turned into a villain

The new Spider-Man theme is a hot bop. Same goes for the Avengers film

Benedryl Cucumberspaz is there and he has a cloak with a stupid-looking collar

there was a cat-man movie with Bilbo in it

People cast spells via throwing orbs of light into the air

JARVIS DIES?? see, i don't like that. rip. i think? i think he's dead?

They have a big spat where there's some civil war. I remember the marketing for that movie. I was trying to buy bananas at Wal-Mart and all of the cashiers were wearing "ARE YOU TEAM IRON-MAN OR CAPTAIN AMERICA?" and this was apparently a spicy debate there. I was just like "i am team banana"

Iron Man was upset about his mom and pop for some reason whereas Steve was upset because he wanted to save his bud (the one from the 1940s) so they beat the shit out of each other in the snow.

wait i remember now. the 1940s bud mURDERED Tony's mom and pop. ohhhh. oh? oh. i don't think that got resolved.

everybody wants a magical glove and the stones for the magical glove but then they fail so they try again and win

Spider-man gets attacked by a guy with a mechanical bird suit and then also there is a ferry. Spider-man also harasses a man and his ice cream

There's a sitcom show with a boring evil witch lady with red magic (very boring) and a cool groovy purple witch lady with a very good theme song

Robert California voices a robot!! But I don't think he declares himself to be "The Lizard King." disappointing.

They're making a new movie where there is a guy with arm ring jewelry with super-powers

OH and they're making a new movie where there is a bollywood dance scene and i'm a sucker for 3 hour long Indian drama so who knows, that might be my style

There's a movie where some lady punches an old lady on a train

There was an atrocious movie about a boring shrinking ant guy. I only saw like five minutes of that movie when it was 10:30 pm at night and I just happened to be in the kitchen eating muffins when I saw the movie. Kate from Lost is in it??? the ant guy is a convict, i know that much. the fuck did he do? probably got sent to the clink for being weirdly into ants tbh. i switched it over to Antiques Roadshow and lemme tell you it was 10x more exciting okay some old lady came in with an autograph from Abraham Lincoln!! I mean my god he's dead you just can't get those anymore :(

Tony gets Peter some bling

some norse dude makes out with himself. nasty

Twilight Sparkle voices a clock that harasses people

The guy who played the cowboy in Night At The Museum is also in the show, the guy who says "wwwwoooowwww" in that way that makes me crack up

steve goes back in time??? and does not prevent any of the horrors he knows will happen? for some reason? also he turns into joe biden.

Pepper Pots marries Tony or something? wha

and he gives her a SUIT? whY? the goop lady??

tony dies (rip. i liked him. i appreciated how he was an ass to everybody. i bet he'll come back though because this is comic book logic)

DOES STEVE TURN EVIL I CAN'T TELL

Anddddd apparently the comic book industry is in the trash and is getting its ass handed to it by Japan

There you have it guys! Elindae's Hot Recollection of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Believe it or not I actually am the Resident Authority On The MCU in my house so whenever my family has MCU questions they consult me.

That's probably a mistake.

Wait, by MCU did you mean McPrime Universe or Marvel Cinematic Universe?

I am still stuck in the 2012 MCU fanfic mindset where the Avengers are all living together in the tower, Steve has a sketchpad, Hawkeye travels in the vents, and Thor likes pop-tarts. I like that era of the MCU.

#not transformers #marvel #i only really like norse mythology loki tbh not whatever in the world MCU loki is #i like batman #i also prefer real norse thor #actually i just like the mythology better than the mcu's version of it really #Iron Man was PEAK MCU everything after was just a mistake #well okay the third iron man was nice #okay well the whole avenger's live in the tower together thing is actually pretty cute so maybe that's when the mcu peaked #in my opinion the mcu movies are just the kinda thing u play on the side as u do something else #like perhaps i will turn on a movie as i type out more horrendous mcprime universe content

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lokiondisneyplus · 3 years

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Most Marvel post-credit scenes hint at the future. Loki opted for a blunter approach: the God of Mischief would return in season 2.

Based on the final turn of events, there was really no other choice: Loki (Tom Hiddleston), having journeyed to the furthest point in spacetime with his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) to meet the founder of the TVA, a scientist-turned-survivor-of-multiversal-war known as He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), finds himself zapped into a new reality when his lady self slays the omnipresent being. The mind reels!

Creator Michael Waldron takes delight in the endless possibilities of Loki’s core premise. And as a veteran of Rick and Morty, he knows what anchors a mind-bending show, and what will keep Hiddleston’s character hurtling through his chaotic, rewritten future. Below, Polygon talks to Waldron about landing on the key choices of Loki season 1, what to expect from season 2, and a bit on his next project, the wrestling drama Heels, which is set to premiere on Aug. 15.

Did you know there’d be a second season of Loki from the beginning or was that choice made later in the process?

Michael Waldron: We always knew that it was a possibility. We always knew that we wanted to propel Loki and these characters out into the MCU after this, into further stories. But that didn’t really crystallize as a sure thing until we were in production and everything. And as we were really figuring out the finale.

So you were still cracking the ending as you shot the show?

There was a hiatus due to the pandemic. So things were constantly being retooled because of that. I think, by and large, everything with He Who Remains and the Sylvie-Loki conflict was always there. But that cliffhanger was the sort of thing that suddenly became a really appealing opportunity, a chance for that to lead into a second season.

What element of the series helped you crack the macro story of Loki, and made all the other pieces fall into place? Each episode almost feels like a standalone adventure, similar to Rick and Morty, but what helped it all click?

The first couple of weeks in the writers room was just laying out the individual episodes. It was very important to me that each episode stood on its own, and you could say “This is the Lamentis episode,” “This is the apocalypse moon episode,” “This is the Void episode.” I didn’t want it to just be cut up chapters and have one long continuous story. Obviously, we had to figure out the time travel for things to slot into place. I think a big idea for us was the way you get around the TVA by hiding in apocalypses. That felt like such a big, cool, exciting idea that it drove the action of episode 2, episode 3, and in a way it’s like Alioth is the ultimate apocalypse that He Who Remains is hiding behind. That sci-fi idea cracked a lot open for us. I know that after we had that I went home and I slept a little sounder.

Did adding the multiverse to the Marvel Cinematic Universe feel like blowing something up or expanding it, in terms of narrative possibilities?

In the same way that after the first couple Iron Man movies, and with the first Avengers, suddenly these movies were kind of going to space. Then we had Guardians. I think of the multiverse as another version of that. It’s new ground to cover, and particularly interesting because characters meeting other versions of themselves and other versions of people they know is... cool. That’s just a cool sci-fi concept! But I think with anything, as you expand outward, it only works if the humanity remains. It’s exciting to watch characters dealing with big crazy multiversal conflicts because we can see ourselves in them. I think you just have to hold on to the humanity that makes these stories work in the first place.

Did you go back to the Thor movies for Loki? Was there anything to find in the past of Marvel as you were paving the future?

Absolutely. I mean I watched them many times, contrary to what Twitter might think because I did some bits on there saying that I’ve never seen Avengers and I upset some people [laughs]. I have seen it many times. “Confirmed: Loki writer has seen Avengers and saw it before writing Loki show.”

In fact, I was watching all these movies on a loop in the writers’ room. I gleaned so much because you watch the evolution of the character. Avengers was particularly informative because our story picks up Loki right after that, but I also I found a lot of inspiration in Thor: The Dark World, a maybe sometimes maligned movie that I actually really enjoy. I just think there’s great stuff with Loki being tangentially responsible for the death of his mother, how he reacts to that. That is the start of his journey of that version of Loki’s redemption, so I was inspired by that.

What’s propelling the characters into season 2? Where are you headed in basic terms?

In season 1, you saw a lot of characters reckoning with and questioning their own glorious purpose, and that glorious purpose changing, [characters] realizing that that can change. Everybody except for Sylvie. I think she holds onto hers, which is vengeance, and to the detriment of us all, perhaps. And we’ve got a Loki who, at the top of our show, assessed himself as a villain and, I would argue, at the end of our show, has become a little bit of a hero. There’s nothing more heroic to me than fighting for the right thing and losing. You see that washing over him as he’s there back at the TVA, after Sylvie has knocked back there. And then he gets up because that is what heroes do — they keep going. So I think that you’re gonna see a Loki that looks at himself in a different way certainly that at the top of this.

Do you hope to explore more of Sylvie’s backstory in season 2?

I guess we’ll see. We certainly have our own rich backstory for her, stuff that didn’t get to make it into the show. Elissa Karasik, our episode 2 writer, wrote a lot of amazing backstory for Sylvia and everything. So those ideas exist out there.

And her version of Thor?

Tune in.

How did He Who Remains come about? Did you bring the character to Marvel or was that a character Marvel hoped to introduce?

I was pushing and our team was pushing early on in the writers’ room that it should be a version of Kang up in that Citadel, sort of fusing the mythology of He Who Remains with a little bit of the Immortus mythology. And that was a thing we were excited to do. And it became clear that it actually made sense for our story. The only way we were going to do it was if it made sense, but it was like, who had a better argument for creating the TVA to prevent other versions of themselves from existing then a guy as evil as Kang the Conqueror?

You wrote the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — did Marvel hire you for that after Loki? Does the movie feel like a continuation of the show?

Yeah, that opportunity came as we were getting ready to start production on Loki. It was a pleasure. I got to work with Sam Raimi, a hero of mine. I was in London for five months making that movie at the top of this year. We had a blast. I think that it’s a continuation in as much as ever every Marvel movie is to some extent a chapter in an ongoing story, but these things are meant to stand alone and the most important thing about Doctor Strange too is making the most kick ass Doctor Strange movie we could.

Is Loki a two-part show now or are you invested in telling a longer story with future seasons beyond season 2?

Time will tell, but I do my hope is that season 1 stands on its own. We always wanted to tell a complete story there. And in whatever the next chapter may be will stand on its own as well.

Your next show, Heels, is already on the way. We got a big preview out of Comic-Con this year, but I’m curious about the scope of this story. You’re starting with two brothers running an independent wrestling franchise, but you’ve dropped the name “Vince McMahon” a few times — is this about the building of an empire? Would you liken it to The Godfather or Breaking Bad?

I always thought about it a little bit of a Scorsese-sort-of rise, and we’ll see if there’s a fall. Starting from humble beginnings and trying to build some crazy. Wrestling was certainly not always the empire that it is and that’s what’s interesting, to watch the evolution of a family-run wrestling business from something you do in your small towns and perhaps a national, even global empire. That would be a really compelling arc for a show over the course of several seasons. I’d be excited to explore that.

What’s the most dramatically fulfilling wrestling moment you’ve witnessed? What’s the bar for the wrestling drama of Heels?

It’s gotta be Hulk Hogan turning heel in the WCW. There was an invasion storyline, these guys from WWF, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, came over and they were the bad guys. It was at a Pay-per-view and and they were beating up on the good guys that you love, and here comes Hulk Hogan in the yellow and red and he’s the hero. “The Hulk’s gonna get ‘em! The good guy’s here!” And then the Hulk just leg drops Randy Savage. That was the original Red Wedding. I just think about the boldness of turning him heel. To a little kid... I wasn’t even like a massive Hulk fan, but he was just such a mythological figure. What a chance that Hulk Hogan took as a performer, as a bankable kind of movie star at that point. That was bold, risky storytelling and it set off two years of amazing storytelling with Hogan just playing a craven, cowardly heel and just being so evil. I really respect the hell out of them for doing that. That was a great storyline.

#michael waldron #interview #loki #s1 #s2

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pencilofawesomeness · 3 years

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Fics I Absolutely Adore and Would Recommend to Anyone

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long, long time, because I love reading fanworks and they deserve a lot of love and I love sharing things that I love.

Obviously this isn’t everything, and if it’s not on this list that doesn’t mean I don’t love it, it just means I forgot at this moment. I will be adding to the list and I remember things or come across it again. (Trying to sort through my bookmarks and subscriptions is like trying to catch a fish bare-handed.) I’m also gonna shy away from the one-shots, even though I adore fun one-shots, just for the sake of organization. The list would be super long otherwise, and those are best sorted by fandom. Here... Here are just some brilliant works I want to rant about.

Disclaimer: I say “recommend” because I would recommend these works, any time any place, but do keep in mind the story’s rating and tags and stuff. Not everything is kid-friendly.

There is absolutely no hierarchy to the list below. They are added as I add.

Fairy Dance of Death

by Catsy ( @fairydanceofdeath )

Fandom: Sword Art Online Word Count: 660,282 Status: ongoing

「AU reboot of the entire SAO storyline, beginning from the premise that Kayaba Akihiko was obsessed with magic and Norse Mythology rather than swords and pure melee. As a result, he created the Death Game of Alfheim Online rather than the floating castle of Aincrad—a world in which player-killing is not a crime, and the nine player races are in competition with each other to reach the top of the World Tree. Multi-POV epic following the stories of multiple canon characters throughout the game.」

If Catsy wrote the SAO light novels and anime, SAO would be among the legendary series. Fairy Dance of Death has this amazingly simple premise of making Alfheim Online, the video game from the original series’ less-than-stellar second part, the game that the main cast becomes trapped in. However, it’s so much more. They took the characters and made them characters, and everyone gets ample spotlight—even background characters that normally wouldn’t receive a second thought. It’s masterful work, and to boot, there is a lovely frame of in-game mystery and player conflict. The organization is phenomenal and I aspire to world-build the way they did. Not to mention that stakes are so much higher and this series has ripped my heart to shreds more than once.

It has also brought me great joy, and even when I was in the dumps and didn’t want to read anything, a FDOD update made me pick up my phone and read when I otherwise wouldn’t have. It has a really special place in my heart. It updates once in a blue moon, but that’s okay.

Even if you have never seen a single piece of Sword Art Online, Fairy Dance of Death is still a great read. In fact, it’s the Better Version of SAO, if we’re all being honest, so I would especially recommend it if you hadn’t seen the original. Or if you have. The characters are given so much love and detail, to the point where Fairy Dance of Death’s characterizations are More Canon to me than Kawahara Reki’s work. It is just a beautiful piece of fiction, and it makes you question the depravity of man on levels that SAO shied away from.

Poisoned Dreams

by StrangeDiamond

Fandom: Genshin Impact Word Count: 82,852 Status: Complete, with a complete sequel and more to come

「 Every night now, Diluc dreams of death. Usually Kaeya's. In between these nightmares his life is falling apart. It doesn't take Kaeya long to realize that this is something much more insidious than simple bad dreams. His brother's life and sanity are on the line and there is nothing Kaeya won't do to save him. Bonus chapter added.」

In a growing fandom from a new game, StrangeDiamond swooped in and characterized these bad boys so well I think it’s canon. It really breathes life into the video game lore, and it’s an A+ depiction of awkward sibling re-bonding post-Terrible-Happenings. Poisoned Dreams can be read alone with a basic understanding of Genshin storybuilding, but StrangeDiamond has an entire group of fics and oneshots set in the same headcanon, and they integrate them really well and subtly together. Not to mention that the narrative style is really clever with making you question what is real and what is dream (a big point in this story) and the inner voices of the point-of-view characters are very compelling.

One Word to Change the World

by AgentMalkere

Fandom: Fairy Tail Collective Word Count: 43,988 (30 parts) Status: probably never coming back

「 In just one universe, Ultear called out to her mother instead of turning away and the fate of Fairy Tail and the world was irrevocably altered. These are glimpses of a world where a single word made all the difference.

In other words, welcome to the Butterfly Effect - Fairy Tail style. 」

It’s a really cute canon-divergent, and while the series makes no attempt to re-write Fairy Tail, it addresses the major events and just snippets in between. It does a good job at giving the vast cast ample spotlight, but it’s also an easy read. It’s special to me because it was the series that made me really pay attention to Bickslow in particular, and I respect that.

Vigilantis Pretium Libertatis

by aradian_nights

Fandom: Attack on Titan Word Count: 399,226 Status: Complete

「 Five years ago, an accident freed Eren Jaeger, Mikasa Ackerman, and Armin Arlelt from an experiment that forced the most extraordinary powers onto them. After five years of separation, of being raised apart to be heroes by a set of three very different adults, they meet again. As they uncover the truth behind their captivity they realize being free and being heroes are sadly nothing but an illusion. 」

This wrecked me.

I still remember when I read it. It was the beginning of 2018, and I had the flu and a lot of time on my hands, so I binge-read this. It was simultaneously the best and the worst thing I have ever done, because I resonated with it so deeply there were times I was just staring up at the ceiling wondering what was real. I empathized with the characters to a level I rarely achieve, and I empathize easily. I laughed. I cried. It was amazing.

I refer to this story in conversation to this day. It handled themes published authors have only dreamed of achieving. Heck, if Dani (the author) took out the names of the AoT cast and replaced it with new ones, it could be its own stand alone novel. It is worldbuilding from the ground up, and any fandom knowledge you take in with you is used against you like a knife leveraged against your throat. Yet, no one is out of character. It’s phenomenal. I would say more, but this is something I daren’t spoil for anybody, because you must be as wrecked as I was. Vigilantis Pretium Libertatis is a level of writing I achieve to gain as a writer myself. It is a masterpiece in every sense of the word.

Life in Glass Houses

by blueskyscribe ( @blueskyscribe )

Fandom: Transformers (Transformers Prime, Transformers: Shattered Glass) Word Count: 119,900 Status: Ongoing (maybe, I hope)

「 No one would have thought Bumblebee and Knock Out were capable of getting along, but when they're stuck in a strange new world and their only hope of survival is cooperation . . . Yeah, they're probably doomed. 」

I could be biased because Knock Out and Bumblebee are two of my favorite characters, but it really is brilliant. Two enemies, stuck together—but not in an overly cliché way. It’s the right amount of cliché, with heaps moral conflict and inner conflict and sometimes just beating each other with a broom when no one is looking. It’s also a fascinating look into what makes a character the way they are in relation to the morals they possess, and how stalwart those morals can be. I can’t help but think of this story whenever I see or write a “role reverse” or mirror-verse AU. It does an excellent job at making all of the characters engaging and their own character, despite being in a mirror-verse.

Yesterday Upon the Stair

by PitViperOfDoom ( @pitviperofdoom )

Fandom: My Hero Academia Word Count: 424,070 Status: Complete

「 Midoriya Izuku has always been written off as weird. As if it's not bad enough to be the quirkless weakling, he has to be the weird quirkless weakling on top of it.

But truthfully, the "weird" part is the only part that's accurate. He's determined not to be a weakling, and in spite of what it says on paper, he's not actually quirkless. Even before meeting All-Might and taking on the power of One For All, Izuku isn't quirkless.

Not that anyone would believe it if he told them. 」

As a person who normally doesn’t read these kind of minor canon divergences, especially at the time of reading, I frickin’ love this fic. In fact, I think YUTS gave me a deep appreciation for canon divergence fics. It’s MHA in all of its glory but it’s so much more, and even the parts that rehash canon give new light to the characters and their points of view.

I had read Viper’s work before and saw Yesterday Upon the Stair filling my inbox, and then I finally watched My Hero Academia. It was one of the first MHA fics I read and it still has a very special place in my heart. I recommend this series to people who don’t even watch MHA; in fact, there are some who might prefer the darker tones and themes of heroism vs apathy to the main series. Not to mention the writing style is phenomenal, and I aspire to be that good. It made me laugh. It made me cry. Yes, tears streaming down my face crying. It is the best ghost story I have ever read.

the Vantage Point Universe

by Aggie2011 ( @aggie2011whoop )

Fandom: The Avengers (MCU) Collective Word Count: 1,032,651 (35 parts) Status: Ongoing (just slowed down)

「 Six months after the Loki incident, Clint isn't adjusting well. When an enemy from his days in the Army comes back to haunt him, he'll be forced to face a part of his past - and to move past Loki, if he has a hope of finding his place with the Avengers. (First of a universe created to center around Clint Barton) 」

// description taken from first installment

Have you enjoyed the MCU, especially the first-era Avengers phase, but like me, were disappointed in the fact that Hawkeye was barely there? The VP universe is for you.

I honestly have a hard time remembering what was canon and what was VP. And if it’s not canon, it should be. The VP universe gave so much life to Clint and to Natasha and to all of SHIELD and even the rest of the Avengers. It’s just...so good. It’s completely immersive. It focuses a lot on Hawkeye and Black Widow from before the Avengers team-up, as well as after, and it all flows together so beautifully. Not to mention that I can be reading a mission that happened pre-series, so I know that they are going to live with all of their limbs, and I still sit there on the edge of my seat the whole time.

The OCs, minor as they are, that are created for this are also wonderfully done. I can’t believe Dan and Phil don’t exist in canon. Every character, canon or no, is engaging and dynamic, it is a pleasure to follow each point of view. The emotional turmoil is also handled very well, and the VP universe carries the MCU trend of humanizing its heroes and takes it so much further.

Ghosts of the Future

by Evan Stanley ( @evanstanleyportfolio )

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog Word Count: comic (18 issues) Status: ongoing

「 About 200 years in the future, Silver the Hedgehog is an average kid living in San Francisco... except for his strange and terrible dreams of a dying Blue Hedgehog, a Black Hedgehog, and mysterious gems called "Chaos Emeralds". What will he do, when these "figments of his imagination" appear before him in his real life? 」

// description taken from first installment

Okay so this is the only one that isn’t an Ao3 story, but rather a comic on DeviantArt. However, it is still one of my favorite stories. Even though it takes the commonalities of Sonic canon and turns them on its head, GotF really treats the characters well. There are enough familiar world elements to create intrigue, but it is set in a completely different take of the future, so there is ample opportunity for world building and being able to engage with a completely new thing. I wish SEGA put as much love in the series (namely the games, because the comics are *chef’s kiss*) and all of its possibilities as creators like Evan Stanley do.

The friendship and family relationships in GotF are so diverse and all so fantastic to witness. It’s a keynote example of the new hero and the old veterans, and both parties are active and trying their best.

Do not be alarmed by the starting art style. Sure, it’s rough around the edges at first, but then it gets better, and then it gets gorgeous, and then you’re left there so stunned that it looks like just life canon art. And then you could be like me, blinking slowly as my small brain finally connected that this Evan Stanley is in fact the Evan Stanley. GotF is an amazing fanwork, but she also draws and writes for the Official Canon comics (the IDW ones now) and that work is also phenomenal and should be supported.

Whirlwind

by Lynse ( @ladylynse )

Fandom: Danny Phantom, American Dragon: Jake Long, Miraculous Ladybug, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja Word Count: 75,556 Status: Complete

「 Jake should be used to ominous predictions by now. Randy should know better than to blindly follow McFist. Adrien should think twice before sneaking away. And Danny really should've expected something like this when he got that phone call from Jake. (Secret Quartet fic) 」

I have to start by saying that I adore all of Lynse’s fics, and I chose this one simply because it is one of my favorites. But it’s all fantastic, one hundred percent. I also love Mirrored, the sort-of prequel to this fic, but Whirlwind just has the chaotic pure bean energy that each of the shows bring and it foils against each other so perfectly. This is the epitome of the Secret Quartet crossover, truly.

All fandoms and all characters get ample love, and the way the reader gets to see just how badly the characters’ assumptions are going is positively wonderful. It’s so easy to fall into the “I know what’s happening and so do the characters” trap, but Lynse leaps over it gracefully and lands in greatness. The fic had me smiling like a maniac one minute, and feeling sorry for my babies the next. Wonderful. Simply fantastic!

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streets-in-paradise · 4 years

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Let’s talk about the amazingly on spot social commentary on The Boys

Warning: This post contains spoilers from Season 1 and the first three episodes of season 2 of The Boys

Tags: @nehoymenyoy asked to be tagged. I don’t know if my tags are working well but if they don’t i will send you the link of the post.

I decided to make this post because i finished all the avaliable episodes of the series two days ago and, having a long talk with my sister about this topic, i tought this is too awesome to not discuss it here. We are both studying in careers of the social field, i'm in sociology and she is in social work. We watched the show together and talking with her inspired my own ideas i would like to share here.

This show was a wonderfull surprise in terms of social commentary. I haven't watched one with such a great commentary since American Gods. In that case i was expecting some degree of progressive commentary because i had read the book previously and i was aware the source material had some, the one added for the series is even better and it was great, but it wasn't a shock to find it. For The Boys i haven't read the comics first and , even when i loved the show for lots of reasons, the amazing on spot social commentary was a hell of a surprise. I have been frustrated lately in terms of the messages in entertaiment products because, even when there is a lot of intention for part of the makers to make more progressive points in their stuff, everything becomes bland marketing to me most of the time. I remember that some years ago media used to came out unintentionally with some really cool progressive messages ( like, for example, " a bug's life" and its anti capitalist message). That stuff seemed soo genuine and today i feel that everytime a product targets my demographic in that sense what they deliver it's soo bland and fake that the progressive intention of the message gets lost in the absolutely obvious intention of selling something to me using my ideals as catch. Precisely this is an important point of critic in this show. I didn't expected at all to get a genuine feeling in the social commentary of a superhero show. I'm not saying that this means i think the makers believe in this (after all, it's amazon), what i praise here is how good they did it. In a time when most productions claim to have a social commentary behind to come out as cool but result in shallow fake bullshit this series has provided me with something that feels autentic. Like American Gods, what i feel the show is trying to tell me actually gets me.

Before starting with the proper talk i want to dedicate a few línes to recommend a few scenes of the show i just mentioned. I was super dissapointed after finding out they will probably end up turning it into more bland fake bullshit for season 3 but, to anyone who likes well delivered social commentary, check on Orlando Jones's scenes as Anansi. He is my favourite character from the show and all his scenes are a blessing.

I would also want to clarify that this post and the opinions displayed on it are from an anti capitalist, intersectional feminist and latin american perspective. I know the show is very american, the issues it discusses are most of the time worlwide but it has particularities of the american context so i will try to talk only of what i feel i know enough to have a word. I'm argentinian and we have our local versions of some of this problems but i will stay in the series territory trying to be as faithfull as i can to the american reality it gets inspiration from. Also, forgive me for any mistakes on my writing and expresions. English is not my native language.

Superheros are modern mythology. How would this work in real life?

This is the basic premise of the show’s worldbuilding. The great thing is that this concept is not developed in an edgy, pretentious way. It is serious and painfully real because it’s not only a subversion of tropes, it says a lot of what superheros are to us as a modern times myth. In a superficial view, the world of The Boys feels like what the MCU could have become after the Sokovia accords if they would have been efficiently followed on a worldwide scale.

In that particular universe i use as reference, our superheros are noble and morally heroic individuals.State intervention is the factor threatening to corrupt their actions making them follow the interests of the system. The risk there, along with some very shady violations of human rights to powered people, is having superheros tied to something as unstable as political power. You can fear, for example, what a Trump-like president could do if he had power over the Avengers because, again, the heros are not corrupt, their line of command is. Now, if we strip away all the idealization we had putted on this bunch of powered persons and see them as what they truly are at the end of the day, people like everyone else. Why are we supposed to believe they are immune to corruption? If we also consider the phenomenon of strong privatization of security that has been growing worldwide . Wouldn’t they be more like security workers working for a private contractor? Less like heros and more like private military / security officers? Now, this is what we are talking about.

What feels so different from this show is that it assumes a surprisingly realistic point of view on a modern fantasy we are very used to consuming and still constructs a new power fantasy that empowers the viewer. I’ m saying this as an MCU fan, I had grown too comfortable with this optimistic fantasy and this twist from it is brilliant. To put some context on what i want to say here i will try to explain myself first on why i think that superhero fiction have this enormous popularity today and it has become such a huge thing in entertainment. Besides of the obvious reason of big companies producing big exciting action blockbusters for the genre, it’s curious to think on how much these stories gathered a lot of progressive audiences. In past decades action blockbusters didn’t felt progressive, today’s superhero blockbusters were embraced by progressive audiences and this was the start of a twist in general for the media. I think that there is a contextual social reason for this, not the only factor but one i feel is considerable.

Late Stage Capitalism crushed us, we are so used to injustice and the control the system has over us is so big that we have slowly stopped dreaming of changing it ourselves. Instead, the fantasy of a superhuman who has the power we don’t have saving us from oppression feels really comforting. Captain America becoming such a huge icon in the middle of a time where extreme facism is rising again all over the world, for example. I don’t know much about his comic counterpart but, at least from what i see in the movies, Steve’s ideals feel to me like all those aspects from French Revolution’s Enlightenment that capitalism dropped away once bourgeois defeated their feudal rivals and capitalism got consolidated, the freedom and equality that feudal lower classes fought for. Today, we feel too small to make a difference so we enjoy the fantasy of powerful persons leading the fight for us. Capitalism feels more unstoppable than ever, it is the only thing who seems strong to remain in a terribly chaotic world. The suffering this cruel system brings to this world is overwhelming, we feel only a miracle can save us now. This is what feeds the narrative of the superhero as modern myth and saviour of humanity.

The Boys tosses aside all our hopes and dreams, presenting us with the most realistic escenario. Superheros are not the miracle we are waiting for, they are humans like everyone else. They are not sacred entities existing beyond our societies, they are part of the system and they insert on it as part of the security industries. They can be corrupted and they work in corrupt institutions in benefit of the ruling class like every other security provider in capitalist societies. They become a new face of the security forces in constant tension with police and military because the myth of the superhero provides them with the public trust those other two forces lost. People lost their trust in cops but they trust sups because they are supposed to be this noble individuals mobilized by their personal feelings of injustice trying to make the world a better place … right? Police are the forces of the ruling class but superheros are supposed to be with us, or at least this is what common sense and propaganda claim, having our hopes as a base to work on.

For someone so used to the typical superhero fantasy this felt like a slap on my face back to reality. It soo accurate , the system tends to capture any revolutionary input and turn it into profit. Even if the sups could had been a revolutionary factor at the beginning, the most likely thing to happen is for them to become a profitable industry. If we add to this what we already know of the actions of police and military in our real world we have a combo for disaster. The realistic twist is so fresh and painfully real, i can totally see this happening in real life if superheros were a thing.

We have already introduced ourselves in the world of this story, let’s check on the first main character this series introduces to us. Hughie Campbell, a college age guy who works in an electronics store, lives with his dad and has the most boring average life you can imagine. This guy who is too afraid to ask his boss for a pay raise changes overnight when a superhero kills his girlfriend in front of him and the big corporation the asshole works for covers up the whole thing. The “average guy becomes a hero” trope is not new at all, but the use it has here feels fresh because it is not there only to feed the male geek power fantasy. Hughie is not a geeky average guy only so geeky average guys can identify with him in an action series full of geeky references,he is not there to be the nerdy guy from Robot Chicken. Hughie’s characterization makes a point for everyone. The smallest most unimportant person, the one who can't even stand up for themselves in everyday situations, can make a change. Remember Samwise Gamgee fighting Shelob in Lord of the Rings? Hughie killing Translucent gives me that vibe. If we consider the point i already stated about superheroes being there when we feel too small to fight back injustice, this is the exact opposite. This is a fantasy that gives us the power, makes us think in our own strengths. Hughie is standing up for himself for the first time in his life and he inspires us to fight for our rights.

Pharmaceutical,Security and Entertainment industries and their business system : Superheros as lab rats,elite security forces and celebrities.

This part of the post is the hardest to write and the most exquisite. There is so much to talk about about this system Vought shaped tying these three billionaire industries together. The first thing i want to mention, as a point to start, is Butcher’s ramble over the teddy bear with a camera inside in his meeting with Hughie. Perfect introduction for the character with a delightful moment of commentary. In our current societies people live in constant fear for hundreds of reasons. Fears over street crime had skyrocketed all over the world even when crime is not growing uniformly in every country and that accelerated the privatization of security, fears of parents over the strangers they leave they kids with when they are not home inspired products like the one mentioned in the series’s moment, fears on the effects of processed foods are an impulse for the diet industry and i could keep naming lots of other examples. Fears, and the emotional response they trigger , are the base of profitable businesses.

I had been reading some authors that describe this stage of capitalism as an emotional one. Capitalism preached science and rationality during the past century but today its base of support is an emotional one. To excite the sensations of the people as consumers, to eliminate rational criticism, to push anti popular agendas through emotional excitement and mass hysteria. To cite another example that you can consider bounded to the series, Right Realism in Criminology is now almost common sense and there are people who keep asking for harsher punitive systems. This ideology, with the help of media panic, goes straight after their feelings and fears of being victims of violent crimes. Rational thinking is not the area of discussion, the base of the argument is on fear and pain. Fear of being potential victims, pain shared with the victims thinking in solutions that sound more like revenge than justice.

Going back to my point, in the world of The Boys this type of punitivism seems to have succeeded even in a greater way than in our current world because it has superheros as backup. If real life harsh punitivism feeds on fear and a wish for social revenge, in this world it has the positive emotions supes inspire on people as a trust certificate for the persons who may not feel that way. They are loved and worshipped celebrities, their faces are everywhere, they have thousands of fans… who would see flaws in what they do? Can you imagine a world in which we worshipped cops and soldiers like we worship celebrities? This is it, people put their blind faith in them because most of them seem to be their fans. Even the people who are against brutality in the actions of security forces would end up trusting them because they are famous people. Our culture has taught us to make ourselves blind to the bullshit we see on the celebrities we love. Fans have a strong emotional attachment to their favourite celebs and this can turn into emotional manipulation in this context. If actors or singers in real life can have a fanbase that forgets to see them as human people how would these actual superhumans not end up being worshipped as gods?

There has always been military propaganda in entertainment but this marriage between the industries through superheros is far more sinister than that. It makes you think about the unfair amount of credibility we put in celebrities. The plane crash scene of Homelander and Maeve it’s even more devastating looking at it from that perspective. Those persons had their full trust in them and they were safer with the terrorists. Can you imagine being a Homelander fan and dying there? That’s horrible, the last thing you get in your life is the biggest disappointment ever from someone you trusted and stanned.

Speaking of Homelander, he is a right wing wet dream and one of the best villians i had ever seen, he makes me feel sick with how fucking despicable he is. His character is an excellent point to start the ramble on the third wheel of this corporate nightmare. Superheros are products of the pharmaceutical industry, injected with a drug since they were babies. In his particular case, he was raised like a lab rat and the series is realistic even in this detail. The lab rat kid with superpowers is another common trope that we see pretty often and here it also gets twisted. I’m thinking for example on Eleven from Stranger Things, she has been raised by abusive scientists who treated her as an experiment, yet she is this sweet kiddo who has a hard time socializing. Instead, Homelander is a monster without conscience or mercy and seems to be severely affected by his abnormal childhood. Brilliant, he is the ultimate product of this corporative triangle and depicts everything that's wrong with it.

The cycle is pretty clear: drugs create them, they play their role in security and their media notoriety justifies their actions. As it is shown in season one, the security aspect of the corporate complex represented mostly in Homelander’s actions craves to grow bigger and get supes into the military since, in the startpoint of the series, they only work with cops. Since the industry feeds on fear and Vought seems to have a monopoly in the production of powered persons there were no threats big enough to justify the intervention of superhumans in wars. Dismissing the importance of this monopoly for the company, Homelander suministrates the drug to terrorist groups in an attempt to create the first super villains. This is a perfect analogy of how the american war machine works. There is no way for terrorist groups from Third World countries to get access to sophisticated war technology without help from the ones who wield that power better than anyone. The first mentions of the supe terrorists reminded me of when i was in my course of worldwide history in college and i learned there how most of those famous names in middle eastern terrorism were actually friends with the CIA before at some point. Here in South America we have other history regarding the style of USA intervention, the Plan Condor dictatorships in the 70’s and early 80’s. I was just starting my career when I had a month of history classes about the Middle East and, being pretty ignorant on the matter, it shocked me the way in which the US villainized people they used to work with. I think the series makes a great point with this part of the plot because it hints something of this war mechanics.

Gender politics of the series: a surprisingly complex approach on the topic of sexual assault ,a realistic critic to bland white feminism and the empty cashgrabbing ways in which mainstream media adapts feminist discourse.

This topic was even a bigger surprise for me. I wasn't expecting such an interesting approach of gender issues, mostly because this is the area in which media wannabe woke messages had become more dissapointing to me lately. Specially in a show about superheros, i wasn't expecting to get very interesting points.

I will start talking of the portrayals of sexual assault. We have two sexually assaulted characters in the series, Starlight and Becca. First, i think it is great that they didn't used the "rape as character development" trope. Actually, it's cool how they mock this conceptions. When Starlight saves a woman from being raped on the streets or when she makes a public statement about her sexual assault it's the people behind her, building her public image as a character, the ones who push that trope. In the first time their great character development idea is to sexualize her outfit, after the second event mentioned they literally push her sexual assault as development. I love how the public relationships team acts oftenly in a men writing women way, serving as mirror for the most common mistakes of writers on pop culture products when they write female characters.

Going back to my point, i like the effort they putted into portraying differences in both cases. Homelander is the typical portrayal of a rapist, a narcisistic monster without remorse, a deranged son of a bitch. The Deep is also a piece of shit, but of a different kind. There is a phrase that feminists of my country had popularized " los violadores son hijos sanos del patriarcado" ( it means, the rapists are healthy sons of the patriarchy. It tries to explain they are not crazy individuals who act outside societal circunstancies), the Deep reminded me of that.

He is not crazy, he is an insecure guy with a super fragile ego who abuses women for power. Insecurity on men under patriarchy tends to become bashing of women. This is not a black and white portrayal of a sex criminal, it is surprisingly complex. Of course,his actions were unexcusable. He will never repay what he did to Starlight and other women before her but he has chances of working on his issues and, eventually if he trully wants to get better, stop being the scumbag he is. He is not a deranged criminal whose only fate is to be neutralized for the safety of others.

I think this is important because, at least in my country, i had seen people using sex offenders as an example of why countries without death penalty should implement it. I don't support extreme autoritarian security measures and it makes me sick to hear that there are people claiming those as solutions in the name of women's safety. I like the approach they took to portray The Deep as the piece of shit he is but still showing the complexity of this issue instead of going for a more traditional dichotomic way.

Back to the mocking of mainstream media's attempts of adopting a feminist approach i mentioned, the season two got even better at this commentary on the "Strong Female Character" trope with the introduction of Stormfront. She is the literal embodiment of what shitty marketing says an empowered female character must be and has the biggest "I'm not like other girls" complex ever. That interaction she had with Starlight in "pink = bad, pants = cool" mood was super annoying and blaming her for the assault?? Freaking disgusting.

Honestly, i hated her soo much even before she showed her true colours completely. Stormfront represents everything i hate in Hollywood's feminism and the crappy meaningless messages it's pushing lately. She reminds me to all the fake "woke" advertisements i had seen on tv, like a Carefree (pads brand) advertisement that pissed me off last week because with the slogan " self trust is beauty" it portrayed girls who wear make up as fake and insecure.

Now, speaking of that particular scene of her killing Kimiko's brother. I felt literally sick, even sicker than in every Homelander scene. This bitch is worst than Homelander because at least he gathers a public that serves to his views. If you ever need to provide someone with a proof of why intersectionality in feminism matters use this racist bitch. Horryfying racism hidden behind the progressive mask of a bullshit privileged version of feminism, the thing i hate the most. She has a strong nazi terf vibe. I think she absolutely applies as mirror of critic to stuff like Rowling's terf nonsense.

The introspective look this series has regarding the multiple issues on today’s attempts of gender approach on media entertainment surprised me. It’s everything i would had wished something to point out but nobody seemed to have the guts to make it happen because, as i already said, the current trend is what it’s being focus of critic here.

I will end this now, i feel there is plenty of more stuff to talk about but this post is getting very long and, if i get more ideas i want to discuss, i can always make a second post. As i said before, this expresses my humble opinions and i’m open to hear different interpretations that can enrich my views.

Thanks for reading this extra long ramble.

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thelightofthingshopedfor · 3 years

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lol okay so I dashed off most of this the day of and then kept not posting it because I kept thinking I needed to add stuff, but then I ended up adding more stuff mostly in reblogs instead (should all be under the “my meta” tag if anyone’s curious) and now episode 2 is technically coming out tomorrow night in my time zone so obviously I need to just post this. bullet points of disconnected thoughts, some of which are probably at least slightly outdated by now but whatever, here you go

seems very possible Mobius left the tape with him on purpose because he figured Loki wouldn’t be able to resist looking at it

would have to check the timing but I’m pretty sure he started looking terrified as soon as Thanos came onscreen without really knowing the context (aside from the very basic outline of “it’s been several years and he reconciled with Thor”), which at least underscores that they weren’t buddies--Loki knew something awful was about to happen the second Thanos showed up sadly this is not true, the clip he sees first is him trying to stab Thanos, so...yeah it stands to reason that he’d know it was about to end badly no matter what

other people have mentioned this but I love that we got to see Loki just like...existing?? like I know he’s never been the protagonist before and seeing him as the protagonist has always been one of the things that’s excited me most about the show, but now that it’s here I’m just kind of struck by how HE’S THE PROTAGONIST so we’re getting all these emotions and little gestures and moments when he’s alone that we only got in tiny, sadly easy-to-overlook snatches before (and it also occurred to me that I don’t think we’ve ever seen Loki eat anything, which is something else that might change)

also his projection is fascinating, and so is the fact that he explicitly turned it around on himself, which seems relevant to all the theories about a lot of his other statements (”freedom is life’s great lie,” most of what he said to Natasha, etc.) being things that were drummed into him on Sanctuary rather than stuff he just came up with on his own, so that seems to cover a lot of the stuff he says in Avengers and here

on the other hand it seems unlikely we’re ever going to get confirmation that Bad Stuff happened to him on Sanctuary aside from what we already saw in Avengers, which is frustrating, although to be fair I also wasn’t expecting to see Loki crying about his family in the first episode (and the most I’m really hoping for, still, is that nothing will explicitly contradict the idea, so...we’re good on that thus far, I guess)

so the first half of the episode was...ehhh, I don’t know, but the second half was amazing. I know some people didn’t like that part either, but I felt like...okay, I don’t love him being humiliated so I would’ve preferred different framing for some of this BUT a lot of casual viewers still see Loki as a cackling caricature without having picked up on any of the stuff that very clearly showed otherwise, and this show wants to treat Loki as a person, someone worthy of audience sympathy, so they kind of had to go in hard and fast on that aspect to get everyone up to speed. like, yes, fans who’ve been paying attention know that Loki’s a person, that he’s wounded, that he doesn’t hurt people just because it’s fun for him, that he feels things very deeply, that he loves his family, but somehow the mainstream perception of him has missed like 85% of that, and the show’s just not going to have much impact unless it gets everybody on board with those very basic ideas. in terms of story structure it probably doesn’t make sense for this to be his lowest point, but starting from the bottom and eventually getting somewhere better is fairly standard, so at this point I can imagine tons of ways things could improve for him

yeah I do hate the whole Sacred Timeline thing, see also my posts about how much I loved that Endgame canonically (I thought) established multiple timelines where everything was fine, so yeah I’m pissed about that because it means those timelines were canonically pruned

like I don’t...hate it as a storytelling device? I just hate it for fandom reasons, and I’ve hated it in other fandoms when canon did something that seemed to open things up to all this incredible possibility and then went “actually no, we’re boxing it up again into this one specific Way That Things Happened” and for fanwork purposes it doesn’t matter all that much, I don’t think it’s actually that much harder to do AUs or go “okay well in this universe the TVA doesn’t exist, whatever” (in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if AO3 quickly develops a new canonical “not TVA compliant” tag for basically all Loki fic), but it is annoying that it’s now like “canonically, every AU is Not Allowed”, and if that ends up sticking as the status quo with the TVA considered good guys or at least a necessary evil then yeah, I’m going to be annoyed

HOWEVER

I don’t think that’s inevitable for a variety of reasons

this whole show is going to deal with multiverse shenanigans and so will Dr. Strange 2, so it seems completely possible that the end result could be a status quo of “there’s a multiverse actually and that’s fine” (...although yes, I’ll be doubly annoyed if the end result of this show is a restored multiverse of some kind and the end result of Dr. Strange 2 is condensing it back down to a single timeline)

the multiverse is a long-running comics tradition, which still seems to be the case even after...whatever event it was that collided a bunch of them and tried for a Highlander thing, look I wasn’t really following it and I know some characters ended up in other universes from where they started but I’m pretty sure we still have a multiverse of some kind

almost all the recent Loki-centric comics have focused on questions of fate and agency

Agent of Asgard in particular was about Loki eventually going “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” and forging a new path (and, okay, it does seem like runs other than AoA have been the most influential here but again we’ve only seen one episode)

Loki, specifically, is an agent of chaos and change, like that’s his whole thing going way back to mythology, because sometimes stagnancy is death and chaos is healthy, and of course myth!Loki (and earlier versions of comics!Loki) is always responsible for triggering Ragnarok, which isn’t just the end of the world but is also a natural, crucial part of a cycle of renewal, and yes the MCU already did Ragnarok but that doesn’t at all mean they can’t play more with those ideas

Tom Hiddleston has brought up this specific point several times in recent interviews, that sometimes chaos is the one thing that's really needed

also, on Jimmy Kimmel the day of the episode, he kind of...planted a seed about the TVA maybe not being uncomplicated good guys because seriously what gives them the right to make these decisions for literally everyone

so at the very least I think it’s completely possible that things aren’t quite what they seem, and that for instance we’re supposed to discover that Mobius is consciously manipulating him to turn him into the type of tool the TVA wants him to be

also “the timeline wants to break free” shows up on a lot of merch, which does seem to indicate a free will vs. predestination theme

I’m not at all familiar with comics!TVA, although I understand they’re considered villains (although to be fair, so were the Skrulls, and at least thus far that’s been inverted for the MCU), but their whole thing reminded me of a few other entities in a way that could be relevant:

the tape running out was like the Norns cutting the thread of somebody’s life

Those Who Sit Above In Shadow in AoA (and also maybe whatever was below the God Quarry in Infinity Wars although I’m less familiar with that)

the gods in Cabin In The Woods, who were also kind of audience proxies in that they really just cared about the sacrifice being entertaining, which kinda seems like the only logical reason for the Timekeepers to prefer any given series of events over another

my personal hope for the series: the Timekeepers are ultimately the Big Bad and the rogue Loki variant is ultimately right in trying to wipe out the TVA (because sure I realize it’s maybe dumb of me but I still don’t want any Loki to be completely a bad guy!!); the major named TVA characters realize they’re the baddies actually and team up with a whole army of Lokis to take them down and GIVE US BACK OUR MULTIVERSE

#meta #my meta #loki meta #loki spoilers #loki series spoilers #loki show spoilers #loki show #loki #marvel cinematic universe

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dontcallmecarrie · 4 years

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My AUs, Fics, and Everything In Between

[Apologies in advance for the long post, but hopefully this will cooperate with mobile and make sure everyone’s on the same page.]

Just as a general PSA, I have quite a few AUs going on. Not all of them are full-blown fics, but they all have their own tag for if I ever have the time and energy to get around to writing it. The outline for said AU contains major spoilers for the ending of said hypothetical fic if you’re a stickler for that sort of thing [apologies in advance— sometimes I stick to them when writing, sometimes I don’t]. You’ll also notice some overall trends, such as my being bitter about the MCU’s writing from Phase 2 onwards, the MCU’s tendency to fridge moms, and the staggeringly wasted potential of Star Wars’ sequel trilogy.

Format is as follows: Outline, general description, status, link to fic [if applicable], tag on tumblr

Marvel Cinematic Universe:

The War is Far From Over Now: in which it’s Tony’s self-awareness, rather than self-confidence and/or support system, that became a cryptid sometime during Phase II. aka the Accidental World Domination AU Complete: fic on AO3, behind-the-scenes stuff on tumblr

sidefic on AO3 here, and tag for cracky post-fic thought exercises here.

Moments of a Dying World: a tragedy in which rocks fall, everyone dies, and Thanos is vaguely impressed by the carnage. Complete. fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

The Fix-It Version [I Probably Won’t Be Writing Because I Can’t Do Romance To Save My Life], aka the Inception-y Romance AU: in which it was all just a dream, which is actually far less comforting than what it sounds like. What you see is what I have— don’t really have a name for this AU, this is the tag I have for it meanwhile

Whisper of Every Waking Hour: the Hanahaki AU. Complete: fic on AO3, what I have on tumblr [including several alternate endings]

Welcome To The Family: in which Natasha is a far better friend [or, my attempt at a character study for one of the female characters whose writing got butchered] WIP: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

By Myself But Not Alone: in which time travel occurs, and fixits abound…now if only the butterfly effect weren’t a thing. aka the time travel tire fire AU WIP: fic on AO3, what I have for it on tumblr

By Dawn’s Early Light: the one where Maria Stark née Carbonell burns empires with a smile, and things go sideways from there. WIP: fic on AO3, what I have for it on tumblr.

note: this AU’s my go-to for when I’m dealing with writer’s block, by which I mean that there’s some experimental concepts that may or may not be considered canon to the fic. Heed the tags.

An Old Acquaintance Severed: in which Tony does meet up with Aldrich Kilian, but creates a monster anyway. What you see is what I have— don't have much other than a name for this AU, doesn’t actually have a tag yet, whoops

Ere The World Falls: my attempt to mix Norse mythology and the MCU in a way that doesn’t give me a headache. WIP: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

Fire At Will: in which Civil War sees a roster change with far-reaching consequences. Just an idea, don’t have much for it otherwise. tag doesn’t have much, anyway.

All It Takes Is A Spark: more of a concept than anything else, really. In which Tony’s Mexican-American, and...it shouldn’t change anything. In the great scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what his mother tongue was. [Except for the way it really, really does.] no fic idea, don’t have anything going for it other than the tag.

Watch The Power Fold: Obadiah Stane was a huge influence in Tony’s life. How about we dial that up a notch? [just a thought exercise currently.]

bonus fixit that turned into its own AU here, feat. Nick Fury taking Obadiah’s place and Tony becoming the spitting image of his father in more ways than one. Going to need to rename one of these if I ever get around to writing it— I’m currently using the same tag for both

Live Through The Rain: crossover in which Maria Stark’s hometown was Night Vale. Cue butterfly effect. Complete: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

Just Hide Behind Your Pride: Howard’s perspective of this AU. [Hint: he’s pretty damn oblivious.] Complete: fic on AO3, tag on tumblr

Only The Names Change: Tony-centric sequel to LTTR, picks up from where it left off and slated to go up to the first Avengers movie. Currently just a concept, though the tag has some ideas I’m playing with

Walking In The Footsteps: the Stark Family Reunion, which goes as well as can be expected. Also currently just a concept— tag’s mostly just me spitballing ideas

No Hero [Downward Descending]: Justin Hammer’s name wasn’t always Justin Hammer. He doesn’t really remember what it was anymore, but he knows that much. Started out a cracky thought exercise, now is something else entirely, tag on tumblr, what’s been crossposted to AO3

Dandelion -Wishes Brought To You-

Under the Same Sky: in which I, lowkey bitter about some things that went down in the game, decide to take a stab at how I would’ve written a Wizard route. Meant to be a mix of mystery and romcom tropes, in between the identity crises and questioning about one’s purpose in life that Dandelion specializes in. I...should post a fic idea, shouldn’t I? Even if it’s super-mega-spoilery for the entire AU. fic on AO3, tag on tumblr that I don’t really use

Summer is Here Again: prequel to Under The Same Sky, answer to the questions raised in the main fic... and that’s about the only thing they have in common, because UtSS is a romantic mystery and this is straight-up psychological horror and tragedy. posted to AO3, don’t really have a tag for it

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy:

The Rise of Darth Calamity/The Man Who Sold The World: the one where Ben Organa Solo inherits his grandparents’ social justice rants instead of any murderous tendencies. WIP: fic on AO3, my rambling about it on tumblr

Darth Calamity’s the main AU, but I also have the idea for a remix that has 100% less angst and 200% more shenanigans, thus the reason most of it’s also tagged with ‘The Man Who Sold The World’.

also, because I am fueled by equal parts caffeine and Spite™, the tag ‘in which Darth Calamity meets canon and absolutely no one is happy’. Is it petty? Yes. Do I care? I sat through the The Last Jedi, and Rise of Skywalker was the last movie I ever watched in theaters and finally discovered something I despised as much as MCU’s Civil War, does it look like I care?

Misc:

Blurred Lines: a Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover, wherein Martha Jones replaces John Watson. Cue divergences. [outline’s not posted, on the basis that it is a mess because it’s the very first fic I ever came up with] WIP: fic on AO3, what I have on tumblr

Twilight/Welcome to Night Vale crossover: In which Bella hails not from Phoenix, Arizona, but from a friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead on a regular basis. What you see is what I have, and I don’t really feel inspired to poke at it anymore. Doesn’t even have a tag, other than Twilight

About me:

shit keeps going down in my life, don’t ask me to update faster because that will kill any motivation I have for just about any given WIP.

My AO3

My FFN [...that I haven’t touched in years, because my writing style does not mesh with that website’s formatting]

My Dreamwidth [...that I also don’t touch and use it solely for archival purposes, because if I lose everything I ever wrote here I would not be a happy camper]

#masterpost #about me #about this blog #long post

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tripsonflatground · 4 years

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Is it just me, or is it kinda capitalist that in order to get new superheroes, people kill off or age up the old ones and then put the new heroes in the same role/identity? Like, they killed Peter Parker to have Miles Morales. Bucky Barnes and Falcon/Sam Wilson both became Captain America after the death or age & retirement of Steve Rogers, depending on whether you’re looking at the comics or the MCU. Batman goes through Robins and Batgirls like it’s going out of style (and seriously, why does Dick Grayson let other people be Robin? That was a personal nickname from his birth family, right? Why would he give something so intimate away?). Replacing someone else and living up to their legacy rather than making your own path was a whole plot point/theme in Spider-man: Far From Home!

There are exceptions to this, like X-23 and Wolverine, who have managed to have some form of a father-daughter relationship in the comics (although, if memory serves, I believe he’s been killed in recent comics and she replaced him as Wolverine - though I haven’t read anything recent, so I might be wrong, and in the film Logan they killed him off). And things like Conner/Superboy from Young Justice being created with the idea to replace Superman doesn’t count in the same way because it was a villainous plot and Con didn’t end up following through. And there’s a new Ms. Marvel now that Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel, which is a much better alternative considering that Carol wasn’t using that identity anymore.

The idea I’m trying to get at, if it isn’t clear, is that the costume identity, AKA Spider-man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. seems to me the thing that’s given value while the person behind the mask is more recently being treated as expendable/dispensable. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, because the person created the mask, and so much of themselves and who they are and what their goals are drove the reasons behind the creation of the identity and the way they behave in that identity. It’s like being a kid and trying on your parents’ clothes or getting hand-me-downs, even if it fits, you didn’t exactly choose it, and you look different wearing it. And I’m calling this capitalist because it feels like capitalism. If we equate being a superhero to a job, which in many ways it really is, especially if you are employed by an organization to do it like SHIELD, then the value is being placed on the role/job, and not with the labor. Capitalism doesn’t give a shit who’s doing the job and how they’re being treated as long as it’s getting done. Employees in the service/retail industry get treated like shit and don’t get paid enough but that will never change unless people have other options and aren’t desperate enough to accept those conditions and get something better. Recently, with the deaths and/or replacements of superheroes in order to have someone else fill the identity in comics and films, the individuals behind the mask, who are the real source of emotional connection and relatability, not the mask, seem to have become dispensable in the eyes of the creators.

And I do get that it’s a shortcut and an attempt to bring in new audiences by putting more modern characters into recognizable roles. But why does the original character have to *die*?

Yeah, superhero-ism is a dangerous occupation, sure, but doesn’t death seem like the most extreme option? It’s not as if there aren’t other possibilities:

1.Having characters be located somewhere else other than New York City or its fictional equivalent (Metropolis, Gotham, etc). There are other major cities in the US where crime happens, let alone other cities in the world. Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, Philadelphia. Who doesn’t want to imagine a Spider-man or a Batman with a Boston accent? Wouldn’t it be a cool storyline if other Kryptonians not related to Superman escaped Krypton and eventually made it to Earth and moved to different cities and took up mantles and eventually the Kryptonian race could start rebuilding on Earth? Talk about a really interesting and positive way to show a diasporic community. And also, it doesn’t make any sense statistically that the majority of the world’s superheroes are in the US. Put some in Toronto, Paris, London, Cairo, Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Rome, Athens, Rio, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Seoul, Istanbul, etc. If the Olympics happen there, then there’s probably a lot of people that need saving and crime happening. It’s especially dumb with the alien invasion stories where they show the audience aliens popping up in places other than NYC and suddenly the heroes have to get other there, like unless you got super-speed or teleportation, it’s going to take a while, and how are you even going to communicate with the civilians if there’s a language barrier?

2.Having characters be from other dimensions. Marvel and DC have a history of playing with alternate timelines and multi-verse theory. Into The Spiderverse was a super-popular movie that inspired tons of people to make their own Spidersonas, and the lesson that can be taken from it is that you can take a character and make it still feel unique or individualistic even if you’re using similar themes. Maybe instead of the dimensions having evil versions they have to fight or being fucked up in some other way, make the new version of Wonder Woman or Iron Man or whatever be from an alternate dimension and end up in the main because of science/magic, or a dimension-hopping villain they’re fighting, or an accident, or to get help from other versions of themselves, or even escaping from an apocalypse/doomsday from their own universe. It’s so easy to either send them back to their own universe when you decide you’re done playing with them or keep them around if you want them permanently. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if the Captain America we’re familiar with met a Captain America from an alternate universe where he fought in the American Revolution or for the Union in the Civil War or even in WW1 or Vietnam?

3.Having female characters take on feminine versions of the identity, or vice versa, or non-binary characters find a way to have a gender-neutral version. This has been done with Hulk and She-Hulk, Superman and Supergirl, Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel back when Captain Marvel was a dude, Spider-man’s daughter May was Spider-girl at one point, Batman’s cousin or something is Batwoman. There’s also been some adjacents, such as AntMan and Wasp or Wolverine and X-23. There are definitely ways that you can use a familiar identity to put more female and non-binary superheroes out there. I mean, military titles (the Captains) or even names like Black Panther, Green Lantern, and Flash aren’t even gendered. You can feminize names if you want to, but I’m pretty sure the female Hawkeye is just straight-up Hawkeye. People like Thor I feel differently about because Thor’s an actual mythological character, not something Marvel came up with, but you could just use a different Norse god/goddess? And yeah, Dr. Strange is the man’s actual name so that’s also a little different, but if he had a daughter or a non-binary child who also got their doctorate, they are in fact entitled to call themselves Dr. Strange rather than something lesser. Not to mention, that whole alternate universe versions point I just made? Yeah, these can be characters from gender-bent alternate universes or a universe where humans are androgynous or something.

4.Have multiple characters use the same secret identity. This would be the perfect concept for twins or friends with the same build. The bank’s been robbed but A is on a date? B can totally show up at the scene! B got really hurt in their last fight? A’s got them covered. There’s a bit of risk to it, like if people recognize they have different voices or someone notices them at two different crises happening at the same time, but that’s just what makes the challenge of pretending to be the same person interesting. And it could get even more complex if you had triplets doing it, or four college roommates, or whatever. It’s also a great excuse to be able to write deep interpersonal relationships and identity struggles. Hell, can you imagine how much scarier multiple Batmans would be? They could play even more on the “you never know where he’s going to be next or what shadow he could be hiding in” thing, like, just when the crook thinks he’s lost Batman, another comes out out of nowhere.

And if superhero writers don’t want to do any of this, there’s also the C-List and D-List heroes that maybe got introduced in like the 70′s or 80′s or whatever but didn’t take or ended up being a blip in another character’s backstory. If you want more modern superheros connected to the major ones so you can use them in the same stories, it is totally valid IMO to try revitalizing these obscure concepts. I have a vested interest in seeing if Monica Rambeau shows up as her hero identity Photon in the Captain Marvel sequel. This idea is still using what you have, but it doesn’t capitalize the lives of the characters you have or make them expendable in any way. In fact, it’s also kind of like recycling, or the opposite of capitalism, because you’re trying to use alternative resources or all of your resources instead of very specific ones to the point of over-saturation.

Look, I’m just very tired of superheroes getting killed off to be replaced by someone else using the same identity or because it’s edgy or dark or whatever. Even a debilitating injury that leaves them in a wheelchair or blind or deaf is a hell of a lot more interesting. Once a character’s dead, they’re dead, there’s nowhere else you can take them unless you bring them back to life (which admittedly happens a lot in superhero universe) or have them hang around as a ghost or something. It’s boring, it doesn’t give the audience any closure and just messes with their emotions for shock value, and it promotes toxic capitalism.

#superheroes #marvel #dc #capitalism #killing characters #alternatives to killing characters

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veliseraptor · 4 years

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I saw somewhere an idea that Loki TV should play with comics and have 2012!Loki jumping to a dimension and meeting his old evil self, so Loki would be both the protagonist and antagonist of his own show. I love the idea but I'm not familiar with comics so I don't know what/how evil Loki got but I think you do? How do you think post-Avenger Loki would react to seeing himself old, bitter and evil (I heard he was madness and destruction)? Self-reflect or laugh "so this is how it is"?

Oh, I really hope they don’t do it. And I say this as someone who is a really big fan of that storyline in comics. I just don’t think it makes as much sense in the MCU, or at least couldn’t be done as well.

The reason that storyline worked as well as it did in the comics is twofold: one is the way that it is a commentary on the nature of superhero comics and how much they resist character development - how much they tend to over time bend a character back into an “original” mode (in Loki’s case, a major Thor antagonist). If you want to read 8000 words about this, it’s here; for brevity’s sake I’ll just quote from my conclusion:

In my notes for this article, I wrote “can people change? Not in comics!” As a rule, that is true. In more recent years classic villains have been allowed to grow more complex and move out of their traditional roles – Magneto and Emma Frost, mentioned above, fit that category, though both have a longer history of sympathetic portrayal than Loki. However, the general rule over the nearly sixty years of Marvel publishing history is that characters fit a certain mold and will return to that mold.

Writing from within those limits, Gillen and Ewing confront them, challenge them, and draw attention to them. Invocations of story and storytelling, the power of writing both literal and figurative, draw attention to the fictional status of the characters, who are, furthermore, aware of the conventions of their genre and acting against – or with – them. Loki in Journey Into Mystery attempts to tear out the captions to stop his nightmare; Loki in Agent of Asgard narrates in mythological, Eddaic mode to capture the essence of the gods. Narrative, and the awareness of narrative, drives them both.

The MCU doesn’t have that same force - while it has its problems with character development, it doesn’t have the same history or weight behind them.

The second problem, though - and this is actually my bigger problem, because even without that specific thematic resonance you could probably still tell a good story - is that that particular story relies on Loki being in a specific place in his redemption arc. He is, at that point, well on the road to Working On Being a Good Person, and genuinely believing that he’s making progress and doing pretty good at it. That’s what makes the confrontation with his evil alter ego (who is...an interesting figure in his own right, but that interesting part would probably get lost in translation because it is very ~comics!~ in a way I think general audiences would be reluctant to accept*) so potent: it’s Loki thinking he’s doing better, trying to do better, suddenly being faced with his worst fears for himself.

The Loki TV series is apparently taking Loki from the point in Avengers after he’s been beaten, before going to Asgard. That isn’t a Loki who is in any way interested in trying to be or do better. That is a Loki at his lowest point, angry and bitter and lashing out at the world around him. That Loki, facing another (even nastier) Loki...it’s a very different dynamic, and without so much of that contrast, I don’t think as compelling of one. Because I do think Loki would just be like “yep, that tracks.” And maybe there would be conflict, but it would be much more likely to be the “I want something that you also want” type of conflict than the “holy shit, this isn’t what I want to be, also our desires are fundamentally incompatible with each other” type of conflict.

And that’s just not, at least for me personally, as interesting.

(YMMV, of course. But I tend to think when Loki is confronting himself as his own worst enemy, the more contrast between the two versions, the more potent the conflict and the more interesting the potential.)

Also I just trust Al Ewing and Kieron Gillen about 500x more than I trust anyone at Disney, so there’s that, too.

---

*To give you the shortest possible explanation - it is an alternate timeline Loki who went through his full redemption arc, realized that no one cared he had changed, went full evil but kind of agreeably so to recreate the status quo with Asgard where everything was back to “normal” (evil Loki, hero Thor fighting him), and then jumped timelines to try to bring up the timeline of his going dark, but also possibly to make a better timeline, it’s complicated. Maybe that was accidental, maybe not?

Again, it’s very ~comics!~ and therefore I don’t think something that Disney would be likely to put in a TV series for general audiences. They’ve done some weird stuff now, but really nothing that weird.

And if they just made it “Loki went evil because reasons” then that kind of loses all the interesting parts of that Loki as a character, imo.

#anyway this got very long and probably isn't what you wanted #sorry anon!!! i just have a lot of feelings #loki's a goddamn mess #loki trashblogging #i need a meta tag that isn't my opinions tag but for now #lise has opinions #just so i can find this again #anonymous #conversating

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featuristicfilm · 5 years

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Movies of Fall/Winter 2019 (and 2020) that I’m really excited to see

With awards season kicking in, the movie release slate is about to bring us some incredible pieces of cinema. There are many films this year that sound fun, interesting, profound and promising so here is a shortened list of the ones that get me giddy with most anticipation. TOP 5 let’s go! (and a few honourable mentions)

5. Lucy in the Sky (Noah Hawley, December 6th, 2019, UK)

Randomly stumbling upon its trailer on Youtube, I was surprised as to why I haven’t heard anything about this film at all because it actually looks super intriguing. Even though the notion of a space movie can feel fairly worn-out, and there is only so much originality you can bring to that kind of concept, Lucy in the Sky looks like it’s going to be a completely shifted take on space dynamics and exploration. In fact, it seems it’s going to be a story fully centred around one character’s individual, self-reflective, very personal journey, with space acting only as a narrative device that creates the background, rather than it being at the forefront of the film’s events. Natalie Portman seems completely in her shoes in this trope of a study of a character who’s deeply damaged and emotionally transformed by whatever trials she undergoes. The trailer is put together so perfectly as well. It tells just enough information for us to understand what is the movie’s premise while also creating a dramatic and suspenseful energy. Also, to me the imagery feels very grounded and serious but also kind of weird, daring and eccentric in some shots, so if the creators managed to balance a kind of art-house approach with some epic, grandiose visual elements it is going to be one hell of a film. To be fair, I was kind of excited just ‘cause it’s Natalie Portman but the more I think about the story the more interesting and promising it sounds. Unfortunately, it comes out October 4th which means its going to have a biiiiit of a competitor in the box-office in the form of Joker.

4. Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, January 3rd, 2020, UK)

This one exhibits several traits that make the film very enticing. First of all, of course, the subject matter. I think it’s fair to say that a little boy interacting with Adolf Hitler in the shape of an imaginary friend is as crazy and amusing an idea as it gets. And, of course, many of us have our understanding and reaction towards the people and events of the WW2 era but to have that portrayed in a comedy genre is definitely going to cast a whole new light on the subject, at least as seen on the big screen. This will most likely be a story exploring harsh realism through imagination and fantasy but also through the earnest and innocent eyes of a child and it will likely be a surprising take and not what anyone expects it to be. Due to many reasons, it is, obviously, going to be a widespread conversation piece and for that alone I have to see it. The other thing that perfectly complements the idea of this project, is the man himself, Taika Waititi. I don’t think a better combination between the material and the creator can emerge because it is hard to imagine someone else taking on such a bold proposition. He’s just the type of writer and director that is so unique in style and taste that you just believe anything he makes is going to turn out special in one way or another, and having creative will and freedom and integrity might be exactly what made this whole thing possible in the first place. Plus Waititi himself is playing Hitler which, I’d imagine, just raises the scale of humour and energy and dynamics of the whole piece.

3. Jumanji: The Next Level (Jake Kasden, December 13th, 2019, UK)

I know, a not so popular of a choice. Compared to the way every other film is awaited based on their technical and creative merits, with this one I am so genuinely eager to experience the fun. After all the amusement Jumanji: Into the Jungle brought to the franchise, I don’t see why anybody wouldn’t be excited about this next instalment. I absolutely loved that film, it was so so so funny and entertaining! The story was really great because not only did it bring that fantasy and adventure aspect once again but also the way the avatar/game player narrative approach was incorporated was so unique. So, after seeing the trailers for this sequel, it sparked even more excitement to see how else can they possibly spin that concept. With that in mind, bringing in Danny DeVito and Danny Glover, well regarded comedic figures and over all talents, to the mix is genius. Them trapped in the bodies of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart is, honestly, a hilarious thought and having old guys interact with the other teenage friends and deal with challenges in the desert, jungle, mountain tops will be no less than a thrilling journey. I think this is going to be just the right film to kind of step back from all the serious and deep dramas that will be in full motion for Oscar season at the time, and switch to some good-old light-hearted cinema. With holidays coming up during its release (December 13th) - nothing better than to go see a fun family movie. And if the playfulness and humour combined with the fond spirit of the story lands at least the same way as it did with the previous film, it’s going to win over people’s hearts and probably the box-office. Can’t wait to just fully enjoy the action and immerse myself in the wonder of this adventure all over again!

2. Joker (Todd Philips, October 4th, 2019, UK)

I have to admit, while initially I was very interested in this new iteration of Joker purely on a general movie-goer level, it was maintained and gradually piqued as time went on largely due to everyone talking about it so much. The sheer amount of hype and anticipation this announcement has managed to create is baffling. Every film coverage outlet, magazine, blog was discussing it. And maybe it’s just that I follow a lot of superhero genre loving people and maybe the idea of this film, in fact, doesn’t concern the general viewer as much, still it has kept many eagerly waiting. The thing that gives it an edge, though, is the fact that this is not simply going to be your general superhero action blockbuster but rather an intense psychological drama reflecting on certain societal issues applied to a familiar mythology. The character everyone knows as a rival to Batman here seems to be a troubled man, beaten down literally, as well as emotionally due to social injustice and his own mental complications. Therefore, this film will probably not rely on epic showdowns and comic tropes as much but actually will give the concept of an ‘origin story’ a different meaning. It’s exciting that DC took it upon themselves to make a bold and creatively charged version of their beloved character, and with Joaquin Phoenix as the lead and Todd Philips as director I think they can be confident about their vision. Whether it is going to be received well or not, that’s the question. While it did already receive heaps of acclaim, including the Golden Lion in the Venice Film Festival, the early audience reviews are quite widely mixed. Nonetheless, it is very intriguing. I have to say, it’s shaping out to be one of those films, and performances, in particular, that have the ability to stay in the minds of the viewers long after. Not long to wait now and we’ll finally see if it lives up to what it set out for. ‘Cause let me tell you, the standard’s high, for sure.

Knives Out (Rian Johnson, November 29th, 2019, UK)

For the longest, this film and Joker were up to par for the number one place on my list of the most awaited movies of the rest of year. Every trailer amped up the excitement so much more and, ultimately, when I felt that I could’t stop thinking about Knives Out, counting days ‘till it’s release, I knew which one has won me over. No surprise, though. I absolutely love whodunnits!!! There’s just a certain thrill to a mystery or a detective style film that cannot be found anywhere else. There’s always so much room for exploration of characters and narratives and the story can take so many directions. If a screenplay for a murder mystery is done right, and all the twists and turns are unexpected and smartly placed, it’s just the best. I also love the interactive aspect of it. Even though I know I can’t change the way it all plays out, I have the ability to have my own reasoning and conclusions that I can apply in my head as the events role out. So with this film I was instantly hooked. Chris Evans’ attachment to the project definitely helped me discover it, though. I’m a huge fan of his and I was curious already to see what kind of role he is about to take on next after the culmination of his journey as Captain America in the MCU. Since I find him to be a very intelligent actor, I think I can trust his judgement on what kind of material is interesting to explore and what kind of people are worth collaborating with. That in mind, this cast looks absolutely incredible! Some really experienced ‘veterans’ in Toni College, Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Plummer, a big big star Daniel Craig, as well as some less known but promising names such as Ana de Armas and Katherine Langford, for example. And that’s just to name a few… Wow. With the nature and genre of the story, given it’s a suspenseful mystery but with a comedic flare, a good ensemble of performers is crucial, as is their dynamic. Hopefully, writer/director Rian Johnson has managed to create a rich, powerful and unique film that will entertain and won’t disappoint. I do believe that will be the case, as that much talent on screen and behind the camera is usually a recipe for success.

If not for the short list… I have so many other films that have caught my attention and that will absolutely have me in the cinema seat on opening night. These include Bombshell whose team is worth an applause for that amazingly well put teaser trailer; Just Mercy, for a true story that will no doubt have an impact on me and for what seem to be astounding performances by the lead cast; and Marriage Story because it will make me cry… Stories about family, love and relationships always hit close home, this one might break my heart but there’s pain and joy in life all the time, I look forward to seeing the often difficult reality reflected on screen.

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tarithenurse · 5 years

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All’s fair in Love & War - 2

Pairing: Loki x reader Content: Angst, imprisonment, threats, slight non-con Summary: There’s an ongoing war between Midgard and Jotunheim where Loki rules. Reader has been caught by Loki during a battle as one of his outposts. A/N: This is a semi-AU in the sense that it is in a sort of medieval/fairy-tale setting, but Loki and MCU’s version of Nordic mythology still applies. I’ve taken the liberty of tagging people who’ve reposted, but if you do want a tag pls let me know.

Check my masterlist for more :)

2. Captive

You wake with your head pounding and an uncanny feeling that you are wearing less than you are supposed to. Why should you wear more? Your skull rings with echoes from a battle and then the memory returns clearly. Nonono!! Several things happen at once, but the result of it all is that you tumble out of a bed and onto a rug on a wooden floor, but at least you have also managed to reassure yourself that you are, in fact, not completely naked (never before have you been so happy to wear your old filthy breeches and tunic). More over, the only injuries you appear to have suffered are the headache and aching throat…and now your pride.

This isn’t a cell. Tilting yourself upright, you take in the room in the hopes of finding any clues of your whereabouts. Narrow windows are set deep in stone walls, granting you a blurry vision of the night sky outside, but much of the remaining surface is adorned with tapestries and even a mirror by a dresser. An oil lamp is placed on top of the furniture, spreading a decent glow over the room together with the low fire in the hearth. There are a couple of deep chairs with cushions and furs there next to a small table, and then there is the bed. It is much bigger than any you have ever been in, but what is much more disconcerting is the fact that everything is lavishly decorated (this includes the loo which is hidden in a niche behind heavy curtains, but you only find that later).

“I presume the quarters are acceptable?” A soft and all too familiar voice comes from the shadows behind you.

Jumping to your feet, you swirl to see Loki standing by the only door out of the room. The sight is far from what you had been led to expect from the tales of horror spoken by commanders and even the king the one time you witnessed him address the new recruits. There are no horns, or blue leathery skin, no sharpened teeth or black claws dripping with blood. Instead, he looks like most other men. Lie. He is taller than any man you have seen and though he is slender, the ropey muscles are still evident under the thin silk of his blouse…but what stuns you are the emeralds that stare from under the raven locks. You try to ignore a nagging truth, unwilling to even think what a part of you has noticed.

“Where am I?” You need answers.

“Jotunheim, of course.” A smirk crooks the thin lips, bringing a sparkle to his eyes. “How could I teach you the truth if I didn’t bring you with me? Welcome to my home, humble as it may be.”

Utgard. Prisoner of war? “Why am I in this…this room?”

“Would you rather be in the dungeon?” The smile remains the same, but there is a chill to his words. “Trust me, pet, you can end up locked in chains, left to rot in a prison cell if you misbehave. One wrong move and you will feel my wrath.”

No, the god may not look like the monster you have been warned about, but he is still a madman it seems. You have no interest in being dragged from this warm chamber to the cold dungeons, and still it seems like a trap to you. What does he want from me? Afraid as you are to worsen your situation, you still need to know where you stand.

“What are the…rules, pray tell?” You do not take your eyes off him.

He is at you in a single stride, the forefinger hooking under and the thumb resting on your chin while he studies your face with a scrutiny you have never experienced before. The touch is cold, but surprisingly gentle. As his gaze drifts to your neck, his brow wrinkles and mouth sets as if he is dismayed but the shift is gone just as quickly, returning Loki to the cool, charismatic persona you are starting to expect.

“It is simple, really.” Stepping slowly forward, he herds you backwards towards the bed. “You speak only when spoken to. When you do talk, you will address me as King, your Majesty, or your God.” The back of your legs bump against the bed and you struggle against gravity. “You will not try to flee…it would be in vain after all.” You lose balance and tip onto the bed, terrified of what the Trickster will do as he bends down over you. “And finally…you will obey my every order without question.” A cold hand trails along the outside of your thigh, pausing only as it reaches the knee. “Understood?”

“Yes…your majesty.” You swallow hard.

“Marvellous, my pet,” he practically purrs.

In a swift motion, he scoops you into his arms and repositions you in the bed before covering you with the linen and furs. For a moment his hand lingers on you shoulder as if he is contemplating slipping under the covers, and the thought itself makes you queasy with fear. It is only as your vision begins to darken and your consciousness slips that you realize he must be bewitching you to fall asleep.

…

It is the sound of footsteps and the click of the door that wakes you. The first thing you notice is the difference in light, the next is the scent of food, and suddenly you are hungry beyond measure. How long has it been since you last ate? It was before the storming of the keep, and of course no meal in the army is a big meal because the provisions are so limited due to the losses of resources by the hand of Loki’s armies. He is had fields burned and livestock slaughtered, left to rot near streams to pollute the water too. The entire country is suffering from it, be it directly or indirectly. Those not fighting are trying to grow crops enough to cover the damages, and almost everything they harvest is payed as taxes in a desperate hope that it will tide them over the coming winter and prevent defeat. People are starving now, yet they all know how much worse it would be if Loki were to win the war.

So yes, you are hungry, and you gobble up the piping hot porridge without barely tasting the honey it is been sweetened with and flush it down with the mulled apple cider. Only as the last drop is gone and you lean back with your eyes closed, does it strike you that maybe it is been poisoned. At least I’ll die with a full belly.

As faith would have it, you do not appear to be poisoned because even after several minutes you do not feel as though you are about to die. Maybe luck is with you. The thought kindles a flicker of hope deep in your chest, and you decide to test how fortunate you may be. Scouring the room, you only find a pair of slippers and a shawl, but it is better than nothing, so you put it on before moving quietly to the door. It is made of heavy wood, however there does not appear to be a lock, and you can hear nothing through it which spurs you to grab the handle, breathing deeply to steel yourself before you push the door open a smidgen.

Nothing happens.

Boldened, you open the door further and find that the hallway beyond is empty. There is only one way to go, and mighty oil lamps hang from the ceiling, each circle of light barely reaching the next, but still granting plenty of light to navigate the windowless area. There are few doors and those you find are locked (though you cannot find the mechanisms), keeping you on the same path much longer than you like – you will have nowhere to hide should someone come this way. Determined to find a way out, you carry on until you reach a staircase.

Which way? This may have been easier if you knew which floor you were on…still the memories of an unobscured sky. No trees or buildings in view, you reason and conclude that down is the way to go. You are just about to follow up on the decision when you hear voices from below and a door closing above. The fear roots you in place far too long and by the time you regain control of your limbs, you have to sprint back the way you came. Already the footsteps are too close, somehow growing nearer. Too soon. Whoever is coming will be on you before you have reached the potential safety of the chamber.

Desperately, you swerve for the nearest door and to your disbelief it actually gives way, allowing you to enter and close it behind you. Still holding the handle, you lean against it, forehead pressed against the polished wood as you try to listen for the footsteps over your pounding heart. They do not pass, merely grow fainter. Perhaps it was a trick of your mind that made you think the person was getting closer. Perhaps it was an echo bouncing against the hard stones of the walls. Breathing out slowly, your body slumps now that the threat is gone.

“Thank gods.” You whisper.

A hollow thud comes from somewhere behind you, not unlike the sound of something being closed or tipping over – in itself a harmless sound if it wasn’t for your current predicament. The sweat from the fear a moment ago seems to freeze on the skin, making the little hairs at the back of your neck stand on end. You haven’t even turned around and yet you know that not only are you not alone, no, you know precisely who’s in this room with you.

“How delightful to see that you have awoken.” Loki nearly purrs even with a diabolical edge to the voice. “Turn around, mortal.”

You hesitate as long as you dare, but eventually your survival instinct takes over and drags you around to face the tall god. He is sitting behind a desk laden with books and paper. Leaned back, the long, leather-clad legs protrude from under the table as an emphasis to how relaxed he must have been a moment ago with a heavy book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. It was the book, the source of the sound before makes sense now. The sunshine is slanting in through a window, broken into spears of light and illuminating dust flakes dancing in the air, diving into the deep hues of crimson and purple of the wine, adding an angelic warmth to the black tresses of Loki’s hair, and setting the green eyes ablaze. Fighting the magical pull, you lower your gaze to break the connection, favouring the floor instead.

“I trust you were not trying to escape?” Every word proves that he knows you were, and you stay silent. “Answer!”

Startled by the sudden outburst, you shake your head profusely. “I was…I wanted…wanted t’see where I was,” you blurt out before continuing, empowered by how you are bending the truth, “wanted to find out where you’ve taken me.” The silence lasts a heartbeat before you add the title, he is told you to use for him.

There is a sound of items being placed on the table, then you see his feet disappearing out of your limited view. Stealing a glance at the surroundings you take in shelves after shelves filled with reading materials, more than you have ever seen in one place. Books are near priceless and there were only very few in the village you grew up in, but it is never been their monetary value that made you love these tomes, rather their secrets hidden within them. Knowledge. Tales of faraway places.

“We both know you are not being completely honest, girl,” the god muses, “still I like the way you lie.”

What? Your head snaps up, causing the neck to crack in protest at the sudden movement. Loki’s leaning against the edge of the table with a broad grin on his face. He is staring you up and down calculatedly as if stripping you mentally which makes you acutely aware of just how little you are wearing, not to mention how filthy you are. He must have reached the same conclusion.

With a wrinkle on his nose the judgement falls in one short sentence: “You need a bath.”

With a firm grip on your upper arm, Loki brings you down several stairs and past the kitchens (which are bigger than any you have seen before) before ushering you into a new room where you are left alone. Bewildered and lost, you huddle near a wall where you are able to watch the door while taking in the new surroundings. One corner has been lowered to form a sort of basin, you suppose, although you might be mistaken as only a few puddles are on the floor. Also, which speaks against you theory, there are two very large wooden tubs in the middle of the room with little buckets hanging from the sides containing cloths, sponges, bottles and other substances that you do not recognize…and you do not dare to go nearer and investigate. Long shelves are laden with linen and stacks of a fluffy-looking fabric, the wall on the other side is covered with tiles of mirrors above a long table under which a couple of comfortable chairs have been stashed. Everything is made of polished stones, granite, marble, even something akin to jade.

There is ample time to look around, so much so that you begin to worry if you have been forgotten. And just as you decide you might as well make yourself comfortable, you hear the sound of someone approaching. Not just one…several.

The door open and there is Loki leading an army of servants who all are carrying buckets of steaming water. One by one, they pour the clear liquid into one of the tubs before leaving for more. Not a word is said while you and Loki look on…or rather: you observe the work, but the god is staring at you, unabashed, until finally the last drop has been added.

“Leave us.” None of the servants as much as raises an eyebrow at their master’s order, and when the door closes, he turns to you with a smirk. “Please,” there is a sarcastic edge to the word, “enjoy your bath.”

If you had fooled yourself into hoping he would leave then you would be disappointed because the man pulls out one of the chairs, swivels it around and makes himself comfortable in the leather seat…still watching. It is humiliating beyond belief. What else should I’ve expected from someone like him? Chastising yourself mentally has the benefit of making you angry rather than scared. Fuming, you discard the shawl and kick the slippers aside. You even go as far as to undo and remove the breeches because your tunic covers the more private parts…and then you falter. Not once has Loki looked away. The emerald eyes have darkened and for a second you think his breathing has sped up. No, it can’t be. But you know very well that it could. His kind, you have been told, are basic creatures that take what they want, use and abuse, and then abandon their “toys”. It won’t matter if there is someone more suitable for him elsewhere if he needs to quench his need now.

“Tell me, mortal,” his words audible coldness, “where you come from…is it custom to bathe dressed?”

“No…your highness.” Never “my” highness, though.

A dark smirk grows, crooking the refined lips. “Then what are you waiting for?”

Shuffling to the side of the tub, you hate to turn your back to him even though it is the only way to remain some dignity as you shed the last piece of garment before swinging a leg over the edge, quickly followed with the other so you can submerge to your shoulders without once allowing your captor to see you fully. Knees pulled to your chest, arms wrapped protectively around you to form a tight ball made of human limbs, you force yourself to breathe calmly which almost works until you hear the chuckle from behind. Do not look, do not look. But of course, you glance over your shoulder to catch a glimpse of Loki grinning.

“Well done!” He even applauds you, slowly. “You managed to defy me without breaking a rule. Quite ingenious.”

Your heart drops as he stands and rolls up the sleeves of the green silk blouse. Your fears are proven right the moment he steps towards the tub, and you involuntarily angle your back towards him as he comes to the very edge of the container. He rummages in the buckets, his hand appearing in your periphery to add a few drops of some pink liquid and moments later a handful of what looks like salt and herbs which clouds the water after the first few fingers. He’s gonna eat me! The fear is childish, illogical, and almost possible to deny especially as a scent of flowers mixes with the steam rising around you. Lavender and pine needles. Memories of summers long gone flutter alluringly in the corners of your minds, nearly within reach when you feel a sponge on your shoulders.

“No need to fret,” the maniac of a god soothes, “I’m a kind master. If you behave well then I will reward you.”

And it does feel much better than you want it to as Loki scrubs your shoulders and back gently, then one arm at a time before washing your hair with something foamy that leaves your hair softer than ever before once he has rinsed the suds out.

“How –“ You bite your tongue to stop the words from spilling out.

The big hand has frozen mid-motion on your shoulder. It feels like an eternity before he speaks. “I shall let your insubordination slide this once, but do not take it for weakness. Now ask what you wanted to.”

Swallowing thickly, it is a struggle to find your voice once more. “How does the water stay clean despite all the dirt from me? Your highness.”

“Good observation.” The sponge is rubbing circles along your clavicles, pushing you sternly backwards until you are leaning against the wooden side. “Surely you must have guessed it by now?” At his words, green and golden tendrils spread into the water only to dissolve immediately, being replaced by a rise in temperature.

The steam increases, wafting around your flushed face and making your eyelids heavy. You feel your head lolling until it comes to a rest on the edge of the bath tub. Such luxury. The closest thing you have ever come to a bath is when you have jumped into a lake or a stream…which more often than not would be a chilly affair. Somehow, the lethargic sensation means that you do not really care as Loki straightens first one leg and then the other to wash them meticulously. You barely protest as he unfolds your arms that have still been shielding your bosom. It’s just a sponge. And it is until it is not, and long fingers are tracing the curves and peaks which no man has touched for a long time, making you fight against the effect of the steam.

Swatting his hand away, your body slips on the wet wood causing you to submerge completely (with the exception of a leg that kicks water over the side of the tub) and in surprise you gasp, inhaling the perfumed water. It burns your lungs, your nostrils. It blurs your vision. Panic claws in your chest, scrambles to expel the liquid.

Something holds your tight, an arm wrapped around my waist.

A new force appears to be at work in your chest, clearing the water by pulling it out as if a hand had reaches in and grabbed the dangerous drops like beads. Your spine arches and chest rises to help push the last bit out and finally allowing you to collapse into the embrace of your saviour. In the corner of your mind, a voice is yelling that it is no hero coming to your rescue, but darkness overtakes you once more.

#all is fair in love and war #loki x reader #Loki Laufeyson #loki odinson #semi au #MCU #medieval setting #why wont tumbler let me add links to previous chapters and still allow the post to be found through search

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iamanartichoke · 6 years

Note

It kinda breaks my heart to see you’re a th*rki shipper cos I love your fics and your blog in general but then the th*rki love is just so off putting, like I find it hard to believe anyone shipping them. I’m guessing you’re an only child?

Thanks for the politeness of your message, anon. I do understand where you’re coming from, because the ship is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s totally fine. I also know that there are ships out there that, due to their general nature, can be off-putting as well.

That said, I don’t particularly feel as if I need to defend why I ship Thor and Loki. If I were to defend it, I could say, well, they aren’t blood-related, but that undermines the validity of adoption and, besides, I’d still ship it even if they were. I could say, well, consider the mythological aspect of these characters and that incest is fairly common in mythology (if you’ve read my fics, you might remember Osiris and Isis from Sanctuary, and consider that they are brother and sister as well as husband and wife, just to give an example from both Marvel comics and Egyptian mythology). There’s also Freyja and Freyr, who are married siblings and the rulers of Vanaheim. But that is neither here nor there, really, because again, I’d still ship Thor and Loki even if this wasn’t common in mythology. The MCU versions that I ship are pretty far removed from their mythological counterparts, anyway.

I ship Thor and Loki because they have an incredibly complex bond. They know each other better than anyoneelse in the universe. They love each other more deeply than anyone else in the universe.Their dynamic can be read as strictly platonic, and that’s fine. Their dynamic can also be read as romantic, and I think that’s fine, too. Ultimately, how each person chooses to interpret their relationship is up to them, but it doesn’t mean that these are relationship dynamics we wish to replicate in our own lives.

Put it another way: one of the most popular tropes in fiction – TV especially – is the“will they, won’t they” dynamic of two characters who continuously go back and forth between whether or not they’ll finally take the romantic plunge – which, usually, they do, but not without a lot of buildup, angst, miscommunications, and drawn out tension. Castle and Beckett, Ross and Rachel, Luke and Lorelai, Barney and Robin, etc etc etc – these are all couples that people get ridiculously invested in for the sake of the push-and-pull drama. We eat it up. We can’t get enough. But in real life? Nobody actually wants that. It would drive us crazy. It would be aheadache on top of our already stressful lives. Shit or get off the pot because nobody has time for that nonsense in real life. You get where I’m going with this, right?

David Foster Wallace said, “Fiction is one of the few experiences where lonelinesscan be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies …. Loud parties, all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave.” In other words, fiction (and this includes fanfiction, shipping dynamics, headcanons, meta, everything that transfixes us so completely as fans) is escapism at its finest. It fills a void, in that it allows us to step outside of ourselves and look at the world through different perspectives.

Fiction explores what it means to be human, but that doesn’t mean that it inherently defines our morality, values, or circumstances. We can feel drawn to exploring, through Thor and Loki’s relationship, for example, the complexities and highs and lows of love, the frustration of feeling inferior, the pressures of being in a position of responsibility, the sorrow of loss, and the angst of fighting, without literally wanting to experience those things in our own relationships (or, for that matter, without literally wanting to experience them with our siblings). That’s the beauty of it - that fiction gives us the outlet to explore those things while forgetting that our name’s Dave. It gives us a safe space where we can forget who we are for awhile and lose ourselves in someone else’s drama.

In response to your assumption, I’m not an only child. I have several brothers. I have not ever, in any way, shape, or form, wanted to engage with them sexually or romantically. The very idea is revolting. I’d rather shit in my hands and clap twice. My personal life circumstances and relationships have absolutely no bearing, whatsoever, on what media I choose to consume or what fictional tropes I invest myself in or what ships I’m interested in. I’m also mostly asexual, but I still enjoy reading sex scenes between two characters I’ve become invested in over the course of a story. I’m truly sorry to hear that it breaks your heart to know this about me, anon, but I’m not sorry for shipping Thor and Loki. You are more than welcome to continue to follow me for my blog content and read my fics, but if you choose not to anymore, that’s totally fine, too. If you’re someone who regularly engages with me, then I’ll be sorry to see you go, but you’ve gotta do you. I have no problem with that.

I realize that you didn’t ask for this long, rambly response and that I probably ended up defending my shipping choice when I said I wasn’t going to, but I’ll consider this a general explanation and message to any of my other followers who may feel the same way. This is where I stand, I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with it, and at the end of the day, I’m here to participate in fandom I enjoy in the most pleasant and non-dramatic way as possible. So if you’re uncomfortable with the fact that I ship Thorki, please just unfollow me and move along. I will not be offended and wish you all the best in your fandom endeavors. :)

#asks #a nonny mouse #charlotte replies #Statement #thorki #fandom

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traincat · 5 years

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so i was talking to someone and they asked me how come i love a movie that everyone hates? and i just. can understand why people didn't like TASM2? like. I feel that, you'd have to dislike Spider-Man as a whole to actively hate it

Oh man, first off, I just want to say, “how can you love a piece of fiction that everyone hates” is like, one of the worst argument of all time, full offense to whoever you were speaking with. The inner Jewish grandmother in me hears that and says, “What, and if everyone suddenly loved jumping off a bridge, you’d do that too?” There are a lot of reasons for not liking a piece of fiction but “well everyone else hates it” really isn’t one of them, to anyone who feels pressured by popular opinion. It’s totally okay to like things other people don’t, be they fiction, food, or fashion, among others.

(I have a lot of TASM asks right now and I’m working through them in a weird order, apologies to the askers.)

Which brings me to your second point, and like, obviously I love The Amazing Spider-Man 2 a whole lot, but I do think there are valid reasons why someone might personally not like the movie even beyond just personal preferences like “I like this actor’s performance/face/whatever, I don’t like this other actor’s performance/face/whatever” etc. One big thing about both Amazing Spider-Man movies is that they’re an adaptation of The Night Gwen Stacy Died, and they know what they are – it’s all set up even in the first movie. The bridge models on the Parker mantel place. Gwen’s first outfit, along with her last, are tributes to her classic Amazing Spider-Man #121 outfit, involving a coat, purple skirt, and knee high boots, with the first also featuring her iconic black headband. There’s the “I’m going to throw you out a window now” scene, not to mention the death of George Stacy, a precursor to Gwen’s death. (I’ve talked about this before on Gwen’s death, but I do think it’s fascinating how TASM exists in a pop culture landscape where 616 Gwen’s death already happened, and how that drastically alters George’s last words to Peter, going from asking him to take care of Gwen to asking him promise to stay away from her.) The movies knew what they were doing from the start. The audience, on the other hand, didn’t. And I think the experience of watching TASM2 for the first time can be wildly different depending on if you went in knowing about/expecting Gwen’s (especially brutal) death scene, and depending on your personal feelings about the story TASM/2 chose to retell and about the death of Gwen Stacy. And that’s just one reason.

And I can talk about all the things I love in TASM. I can talk about how, in my own personal opinion, it is the film series that cares the most about being faithful to the source material. (Raimi’s Spider-Man, in my opinion, does a great job creating a very specific look, and drawing on classic elements, and creating its own now classic Spider-Man mythology like the upside down kiss, but it ultimately disappoints me with how it chose to interpret the characters. MCU’s Spider-Man, any other thoughts I have on it aside, is clearly more interested in impressing modern audiences and projecting FUN in letters sixteen feet high than it is in being a faithful Spider-Man adaptation.) And it can be debated whether or not it’s a GOOD thing for a film to try and be faithful rather than doing its own thing, but it is a thing I personally love about it, then I can look at the movies and pull things out of them and go “and they got this from here, and that from there” etc. I like that they did things differently while still leaning into the source material; the mystery of Peter’s parents being a big plot of the plot, for example, is something I’ve seen be criticized, but the fact is this is a plot from the comics and when you have a character who is built on these layers and layers of secrecy, it’s a worthy exploration to see where that comes from. I love that the movies focus so heavily on Peter’s relationship with May, and TASM2′s “you’re my boy”/”I’m your boy, you’re my everything” scene is a huge part of that. I love that they’re both crying in that scene. I love how genuine the emotion in TASM2 feels. I love that the first TASM movie took Flash’s limited screen time and didn’t make him one note – aside from Gwen, he’s the only person in the school scene to try and comfort Peter after Ben’s death, and his “it feels better, right?” line is a reference to Flash’s abusive home life from the comics. I love the amount of detail put into the look of these movies – I love the set design of Peter’s room, the posters, the photos of Gwen, how it’s realistically messy and not at all an Ikea-looking cookie cutter set. I love Gwen’s evolving style between the first and second movie, trading in her sleek straight hair and sweaters for waves and jewel toned pattern pieces. In a visual medium like a movie, all of this information is used to tell you things about the characters, and I think TASM uses its environments and its wardrobe to pack as much information in as it can. I love that TASM2 filmed 90% in New York state, which as far as I know is pretty unique in a superhero film. I love that both movies are a love letter in their own ways to New York, to the dazzling heights, to Spider-Man’s iconic connection to his home city. And yeah, I love the tragedy of the movie, I love The Night Gwen Stacy Died as a story that changed the landscape of Spider-Man, I love the raw emotion of the whole thing, and I love that a version of it was made where Gwen got to save New York not once but twice before she died, and how it’s not fair, but the point of it is that it’s not fair, and I love stories that sometimes don’t have happy endings, and I love the performances that were given in retelling this particular story. And yeah, I love that TASM and the people involved in making it, including Andrew Garfield, obviously really cares about Peter Parker as an individual character, and they let him be angry, and be sharp-tongued, and physical, and weird, and not a perfect person because what mattered was the responsibility in the character. TASM’s “That’s not your job”/”Maybe it is” exchange says it best.

But I think ultimately where a lot of the hate comes from is that there’s a pattern in fandom, and we saw it with Raimi > TASM, and with TASM > Homecoming, and even a little bit with Homecoming > Into the Spider-Verse, though I do think the last one is a little difference because of the circumstances. I’d like to think that all the recent criticism of Homecoming’s blatant theft of Miles’ character and story to build up the MCU’s version of Peter Parker is genuine (and I do think most of it is) but I see this patteen whenever a new version of something comes out. There’s a tendency – and I think some of this is studio-led; they want people to throw out the old in favor of the new because it’s simply much better for their business – to trash the one that came before it. Oh, actually, it was bad, it was boring, people only liked it because of this one actor, etc. The MCU in its entirety, with all the marketing power of Disney behind it, has become incredibly good at doing this not just with other Marvel movies under different studios, but with superhero movies on the altogether, whether it be through buying review or through the pressure exerted to acknowledge the MCU as The One True Superhero Movie Franchise. (For the record, there are MCU movies I like, and ones I don’t, and ones I don’t feel anything for, but I truly doubt that the evangelical nature of the truly hardcore MCU audience sprang up completely organically.) Sooner or later, they’ll reboot Spider-Man as a live action film again. I hope they pick Miles as their lead when they do, but it’ll probably be Peter again, and even if the next one does star Miles – eventually, there will be another Peter Parker movie, and as soon as the next actor is cast, we’re going to see this pattern again. I would be willing to put money down on it.

At the end of the day, like I wrote in my big Homecoming criticism post, I’m a little tired of the idea that there can only be One True Adaptation, which is where a lot of this argument comes from, when it comes to a body of works that spans decades and hundreds upon hundreds of issues. “Oh, we already had a bunch of Spider-Man movies” is like, so? We already had a bunch of Spider-Man comics, too. There’s so many stories to adapt and retell, and I love the one TASM/2 threw itself into adapting, but there’s so many more I want to see up on screen, too. (Here’s to Sony’s announced Kraven movie project! PLEASE be a Kraven’s Last Hunt movie!)

But yeah, ultimately, popularity isn’t exactly the best metric for how good a movie is, let alone how much you’re allowed to enjoy it, and what matters is that you liked it. I love it a lot, too.

#tasm #traincat talks comics #*replies #Anonymous

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shadowsong26fic · 5 years

Text

Coming Attractions!

Hey, guess who’s on time for once! First Monday of the month, means another Coming Attractions post hurray!

Also, not fic, but my meta blog is up and running! Stuff is not super in order, as I just sort of grabbed things as I found them when I was copying stuff over from here and my personal tumblr, but every post is tagged with when it was originally posted. A lot of it is SW-related, since that’s where my head’s been for a while now, but some of it is other fandoms or my original stuff.

Anyway, moving on to fic updates!

Precipice:

As per usual, I’m not quite where I wanted to be, but I feel like I’m starting to gather some momentum now--the next chapter should be out probably tomorrow or the next day. After this arc, like I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m probably going to break off into a second fic, for reasons of length/convenience/a longer timeskip than usual/there’s a bit of a shift in pacing and tone starting with Arc Eight.

More or less: Arc 8’s working title is Escalation; and will line up with Rogue One and at least part of ANH. I have things more or less plotted out through Arc 14 (working title Endgame, though I may feel compelled to change that because MCU) which will line up with ROTJ and cover Palpatine’s final defeat. From there, I do actually have plans for further arcs/storylines relating to the aftermath of the war/rebuilding, in part to make this a Trilogy, in part because Arc 14 will leave a fair number of loose ends to tie off, and in part because I Want To, but my plans there are a lot vaguer. This is at least partly because I don’t have as many Events I can use as signposts while I’m constructing my plot, but also because I’m starting to waffle a bit on one key plot point that’s currently supposed to happen towards the end of Arc 14, which will have a major impact on events moving forward if I change it…so IDK.

Aaaaanyway. I’m hoping to get at least three chapters out in July, but we’ll see. It at least partly depends on how long the chapter after this week’s takes me. Which, on a related note, there’ll probably be at least one bonus fic (depending on how many different versions of said chapter I go through and how far I get on each one, which will probably make sense in context once said chapter is up), so keep an eye out for that.

Also, I keep getting/giving Hints about Dr. Naar’s backstory, so maybe something with him? IDK, we’ll see what happens.

Fun stuff in the pipeline, anyway!

Other SW fic:

I put up a companion to The Devoted earlier this month. There’ll probably be more eventually, but I’m not sure exactly what or when…

Also, more Valdemar AU! Specifically, Obi-Wan being Chosen. I do enjoy this AU and I should write more of the actual, y’know, Story, as opposed to these backstory bits…well, maybe I’ll get some more out this month, we shall see.

I swear I really do intend to get back to one of my AU outlines at some point, lol. The likeliest candidates at this point are continuing Ventress, or the Mask of Zorro/California Gold Rush Fusion No One One Person Asked For, or finally getting back to Let’s Go Steal a Crossover.

our faces like a mirror continues to be slow-going…I’m no longer sure that I’ll actually get any of it done/posted before the new TCW episodes come out and possibly joss large chunks of it. I have also decided that I don’t particularly care—if I do get jossed, unless the new content really appeals to me, I’m going to keep going with things the way I have them planned out and just make a note that I’m excluding things. Anyway, this project might get deferred and be my SWBB project for next year, but we shall see.

Still poking at Distaff and Auxiliaries and Phoenix!verse, I swear…haven’t made much/any progress this past month, but there will be more at some point. I genuinely plan for that, anyway. Also tentatively working on a Greek-mythology inspired piece that hat might be a Halloween fic for this year, if I can get it to work the way I want it to.

Non-SW Projects:

I didn’t get any origfic done in June, but hoping July will be better. Maybe the giant Kesshare character study saturation, if I can actually get that done, or some Lux content, or actually getting more of Untitled Intrigues Story polished and posted…or going back to one of my other projects that I haven’t posted anywhere, IDK. Something.

I’d like to say I might get back into actively writing BSG again this month, because a couple of my old AUs have been bouncing around in my brain lately, but I’m not sure I’ll actually follow through, lol. Looking at this list, I already have quite a bit up there…but who knows.

(Mainly Serenissima, which I’ve crossposted here a few times even though it’s been a couple years since there was any new content; I’ve also been considering rewriting For Sorrow Sung, because it’s super messy and I could do better now, whether I stuck with that particular premise or one of the other ones I built around Atia’s existence in an otherwise canon-aligned timeline (…look, I make AUs of my AUs, it’s a Thing even when I don’t have OCs involved); and also The Other Battlestar, which I had a few things written here and there but never really posted…anyway, to close out this month’s update, here’s a teaser snippet from that last AU (that I wrote like 5+ years ago and came across recently which maaaaay be why it’s waking up; this is unedited from where I found it) because Why Not:

She was reassembling her gun after cleaning it, calm and efficient. Baltar watched her hands, smooth, elegant; beautiful, even. Just like him, to find beauty even here.

She picked up the clip and looked up at him at last.

“You are here, Doctor,” she said, “because your expertise and experience are vital to our efforts. But there is a limit to what I can tolerate, even from you. Do I make myself clear?”

He felt Six’s arms twine around his neck, a hair’s breadth from snapping it, felt her breathing in his ear, but he couldn’t take his attention of Cain’s hands as she slid the clip back into place.

“Crystal.”

#coming attractions #miscellania

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geekns · 6 years

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I am at the point where i love the fanfic versions of my ships more than the actual canon versions of them because my ships rarely, if ever, actually get to a point where my hopes and fears and anticipation and tears are actually rewarded. Like...

Five years of Philinda for one kiss and then they’re off the team (i’m sure they’ll be back... they better be back).

Three years of Twissy to no real fruition, nowhere near enough screen time for Michelle and the tragic death of Missy with no reward, then the regeneration of my favorite Doctor.

This after getting my heart broken over Doctor/Donna and feeling like i was being forced to accept Doctor/River (i love Alex Kingston but ship her with the Doctor i do not, which sucks in a way because i love River, too).

Kylo and Rey still haven’t even kissed... they’ve got one movie left to fix things and it’s just too depressing for me to put myself through watching the Last Jedi repeatedly because they’re still not together...

...and i would love for Star Wars to actually do pregnancy right in recompense for ruining my then-favorite female character in the SW verse.

One of my first ships ever having a ~decade long separation after apparently being the shitiest parents of all time, and no happy ending.

Carter/O’Neill with the no fraternization and RDA not even being in the final episode

Roslin/Adama happening just in time for Roslin to die (just one of the ships that frustrated me to no end on this show)

Janeway/Chakotay never happening

Picard/Crusher being promised for the TNG films, never actually happening, and then we don’t even get TNG films anymore like...this is one of the best shows of all time and i don’t even get to find out what they’re up to without reading books that are not considered to be canon.

No happy endings for anyone. Like what happened to true romance? Are they even making RomComs anymore (which aren’t even my standard go-to in terms of enjoyment, like Fools Rush In being my fave because it makes fun of Rom Coms and Decoy Bride being amazing because of its witty awkwardness)? Because i can’t find anything on Netflix that isn’t old. It’s a bunch of international stuff that i don’t even want to get into, i know the K-Drama is all full of angst and pining and they apparently never pay off (at least, the one my sister got me into has driven me up a wall in this way. And she told me that no one kisses in these things, so that must be where they’re going with Reylo).

The current trend in sci fi and action films seems to be to eschew romance entirely as unnecessary or unwanted.

Hope/Scott seems to be on hold if in the works at all.

No real T’Challa/Nakia

Peter (Parker)’s a free agent

Christine doesn’t want Stephen and Stephen is too much of a coward to commit to what he obviously wants.

There’s no Thor/Valkyrie (not complaining, but what happened to Jane? not that Natalie and Chris have chemistry)

We get Agent Cap (or whatever else they call it, no idea) where they never even had a first date and knew each other for a couple of years out of four score...

...and Hulk (who is still hung up on his ex last we actually checked in?) gets Nat (but then discards her) rather than Cap or Bucky or even Hawkeye (any of which would make more sense).

Pepper doesn’t want babies and Tony does?!?

Loki, the apparent womanizer of the comics and father and mother of monsters in the mythology, never gets so much as a flirtatious look in his direction from any significant characters (yeah the tittering party-goers in the background of Ragnarok do not even count). All the ships for him are with Thor (his brother, so incest, and i know it’s not genetic incest but they grew up together and still love one another as brothers. It’s canon that Thor is abusive and dismissive towards Loki and the couple of times i’ve tried to read Thorki fanfic they were wildly OOC) or with characters he has zero screen time with (i loved TaserTricks for a while). And he’s the most popular character in the MCU but gets his abilities and redemption arc retconned repeatedly to the point that he’s just a guy with knives who doesn’t even know how to use magic.

Oh and Scarlet Vision, which is apparently in fact canon from the comic books but is just boring. And is already over.

I could go on.

I mean even in Frozen and Moana there isn’t anything going on there and this is Disney we’re talking about. Perhaps i should clarify that Anna clearly fell in love but then spent the rest of the movie with a guy who she was just friends with (are they more in the shorts???) when her fiance was only using her. And Elsa has zero chemistry with anyone. So yes, all of these films have some moments of chemistry, flirtation, but no real character development of a romantic bent, no real intention of even forming an exclusive, long-term relationship that might lead to cohabitation, marriage, babies, etc. Like even Peter and Gamora are not quite an official thing even as Infinity War did a lovely job of making it feel like Peter was meeting her dad because they are a thing.

I miss romance. So apparently shared disaster scenarios do not equal lasting love in today’s storytelling (Jurassic World, Speed, Age of Ultron, etc.)...and everyone is so busy kicking butt that who really has time for relationships? Unless they are the relationships that i do not care for in the slightest and i feel like are being forced on me. I’m not against pining, i’m reading tons of it as Reylo fic, but the pairing eventually needs to get to the point where the characters are actually together and working on doing things as partners.

I love Robin Hood, Tangled, the Princess Bride, Much Ado about Nothing (Beatrice/Benedick), and Pride and Prejudice. I want some tension there, for the man to actually pursue a woman and prove himself to her. I want verbal sparring. Even better, i’d like for the dynamic to shift to where they are fighting side by side as equals (which to be fair Philinda and Hope/Scott is working towards). And apparently i really dig it when the older couple is the one that gets to finally find love (because yeah, now i’m getting to the point where i’m the woman who’s running out of time).

But my real question is how Feige is supposed to give us Young Avengers when none of the Avengers are pairing off? The settled with a family dynamic is sadly missing in the MCU and watching Incredibles 2 has made me bitter about it. Like it feels like Pepper is nowhere near as invested in the relationship as Tony is. Thor wanted Jane but wanted to wander around looking in all the wrong places for info about the stones even more (like why didn’t he go back to his father? Odin clearly knew a little about the stones in Dark World and, result, Loki knows more than anyone else?). Nat can’t even have a family, Clint and Scott are the only ones with kids. Christine and Nakia and MJ aren’t even a shadow of a thought in IW.

Does anyone have a fandom to recommend that actually has this sort of dynamic to it? I’m hoping that Judy and Don heats up a bit in season two of Lost in Space (as my niece puts it, they need to repopulate) but that could be ages yet like post-A4 or even post IX. I am so tired of feeling like the people who i want to be happy together are doomed to be working together but never together together. Please help.

#mcu #rant #confession #meta #romance

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thenightling · 6 years

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My Fictional Character obsessions as depicted in gifs

My obsessions from age ten onward as depicted in gifs. Some of these characters have alternated in cycles over the years. The ones with the * next to them are ones that have stood the test of time or are particularly strong obsessions. I am not posting them in a particular order, that would take too long to sort out and may change depending on my mood, however the current strongest obsession is at the bottom.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my fictional character obsessions through the years... Or as Tumblr calls them... My “Garbage children.”

Note: I know only some of them count as “garbage children.” So please don’t be offended that I may have called your favorite character a garbage child.

Rumplestiltskin as depicted in the show Once Upon a Time, particularly seasons 1 through 3.

*Loki from Norse mythology and Marvel comics. Tom Hiddleston is a great actor but I felt I should note that the MCU version is slightly disappointing, I wish they wouldn’t downplay the magick and try to pass them off as “alien.”

*Dracula. There are many depictions of Dracula that I am fond of / obsessed with. Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula books for example, The Frank Wildhorn Dracula musical, and a few movie and TV versions.

I love the 90s Dracula TV series even though he’s blond in that (not to be confused with the awful NBC show version from the twenty teens) but I have no Gifs of the 90s one. Nor do I have any gifs of Rudolf Martin as Dracula in Buffy or Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula though I love that one. But here’s the most recent version to feed my obsession. Dracula of Castlevania (The Netflix series). Look at that Adorkable vampire!

*Jack Skellington of Nightmare before Christmas was one of my first truly all-consuming obsessions. I played the cassette of the soundtrack to death. I had a shelf of the toys (which were actually rare in the early 90s). I became fixated on Danny Elfman’s singing voice as well as the gorgeous and haunting visuals.

Sally, who helped kindle my first Frankenstein obsession because until then I had never seen an intelligent Frankenstein monster. I hadn’t yet learned that in the original novel he was articulate (once he learned how to speak) and intelligent, and did not have a flat head or neck bolts. Sally and later The Bride (1985 movie) eventually got me to read the novel and pointed me in the right direction.

The ORIGINAL Peter Vincent from Fright Night, as played by Roddy McDowell. I loved his character growth. I loved watching him go from cowardly pretender to being the hero he always pretended to be and still having that B movie cheese to him. Peter Vincent is my favorite vampire hunter. Named after two of my favorite horror movie actors. Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.

Lestat. Yes, I went through an Anne Rice obsession in my teens. What 90s teenager didn’t?

The Dresden Files TV series, particularly Bob The Ghost AKA Hrothbert of Bainbridge as played by Broadway great, Terrence Mann. Though short lived I loved that snarky ghost and this introduced me to the book series. It was also the first TV series I enjoyed after my mother passed away so it has a special bittersweet place in my heart.

Another ghost character I love but I have no picture for him is Captain Gregg from the novel, movie, and TV show The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And Patrick Stewart as The Canterville Ghost from 1995 (as well as the original Oscar Wilde Story).

Jareth from Labyrinth (and David Bowie). Does he need an explanation?

Morbius from Marvel comics. Because I just loved that emo SOB.

Nick on Forever Knight. I went through an emo vampire phase in the 90s, okay...

The Doctor on Doctor Who

Methos from Highlander the series. Highlander the series was a LOT better than people give it credit for. And Methos was the first fictional character with a truly dark past I had ever seen, who mostly became a decent person after years of penance and self analysis. It was through Highlander that I finally saw fiction and characters with shades of grey and realized things aren’t always black and white. When they revealed Methos’ dark past I was so worried it was an excuse to kill him off and show that he was secretly evil all along but no. They didn’t do that. Highlander taught me just how much people CAN change. And it also taught me a lot about history and inspired me to be curious about our world and its past. (It also often helped me with Social Studies tests.)

Frank Langella as Dracula.

Faust from Goethe’s Faust. (The 1926 silent film is the most faithful adaptation and actually covers Faust and Faust Part 2. Most adaptations leave out Part 2).

Thomas Jerome Newton from The Man who fell to Earth. Movie and novel by Walter Tevis. Yes, depicted in the movie by David Bowie... You’re lucky Bowie doesn’t turn up more in this list than he already does.

Maleficent. This one is kind of a guilty pleasure...

As a long time book lover (One the first books I remember reading and loving was In a Dark Dark Room by Alvin Shwartz at age four...) Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney Princess I truly related to.

Elisa and “Charlie” from The Shape of Water.

The Beast / Prince and Belle in Le Belle et la Bete original 1740 novel and the 2014 French film (even though that film isn’t all that faithful and Belle is a little cold, I love the visuals).

*Luke Goss as the Frankenstein Monster from the 2004 Hallmark mini-series of Frankenstein. The most faithful adaptation of the novel to date. Woefully under-rated. Note, this spot is for the literary character too.

*Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream AND Disney’s Gargoyles. I love that little bastard.

Mina and Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992 film)

Emily The Corpse Bride. Also pretty much anything scored by Danny Elfman gets a slight nod here. I love that man’s music. It just catches me. And I always can tell when it’s one of his scores (And no, I don’t think they all sound the same). They’re just so beautiful and haunting.

The Frankenstein Monster in Penny Dreadful. The second most accurate to the novel. They even go the eyes right.

The Real Ghostbusters animated series. Egon is what inspired me to want to study parapsychology. I loved the nerd characters in shows like this.

Barnabas Collins in the original Dark Shadows. And 1990s version. And Doctor Julia Hoffman, a surprisingly empowered character for a 1960s TV show, which is why it annoys me that more “modern” versions always make her sexually obsessed with Barnabas or a villain or both whereas in the original show she was Barnabas’ closest confidant and even the one Barnabas cried out for whenever he was in trouble. (Admittedly it took hundreds of episodes for them to develop that dynamic but they got there).

Lucifer. TV show incarnation and Sandman comics incarnation.

Cain and The House of Mystery (The House of Mystery counts as a character)

*Morpheus from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. My current biggest obsession. I’m making up for lost time. This is something I SHOULD have been obsessed with in my teens. I’m thirty-six-years-old and was thirty-five-years-old when I read it for the first time. Why the Hell did no one describe this thing well to me back in the 90s!? Yes, Sandman started when I was only seven-years-old but it was most popular in the mid-90s and I would have probably loved it if I only really knew what it was all about. Instead it was always “He’s like a Goth Jareth” (which almost worked) and “You’ll love Death! She’s so cute!” (which totally didn’t work at all...) Don’t protect me from spoilers, damn it! Tell me about his character growth, the gorgeous artwork, the horror hosts residing in The Dreaming, tell me about the mythology and Shakespeare references, the lore, tell me about the ambiance, the atmosphere, the humor and pathos. For God’s sake, I SHOULD have loved this thing a LONG time ago!

You’d be amazed how hard it is to find a gif of Morpheus- he’s never had a film or TV adaptation but there are fan films! (The gif is from The Sandman fan film, 24 Hour Diner).

________________________________

Honorable mentions:

Lydia from the Beetlejuice animated series (My mother’s best friend often compared me to her but I think I had a crush on the character...)

Xena: Warrior Princess (when I figured out I’m not entirely straight). Though I think I liked Gabrielle a little more than Xena, herself.

The mermaid in She-Creature (2001 film, not the black and white film of the same name)

The Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt.

Carmilla (vampire novella and Hammer horror film The Vampire Lovers)

Duncan Macleod from Highlander the series.

Various characters from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (TV series) including Buffy herself, Giles and Spike.

Doctor Strange (And in relation to that, Doctor Craven from the Vincent Price movie The Raven from 1963.)

Bruce “David” Banner in The Incredible Hulk, particularly as depicted by Bill Bixby. Though that was more of a role model personality type that I saw as a truly good man in a bad situation.

Dorian Gray from the Picture of Dorian Gray

Elisa in Disney’s Gargoyles but I idolized her more than obsessed about her. There is a difference.

The reason those aren’t properly on the list is because those aren’t precisely obsessions but just characters I happened to really like a lot.

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