#god i love rewriting/reframing scenes

[loveinhawkins]

For the "give me title suggestions" post:

Ooh for the Nancy dive scene rewrite you could call it 'holy diver"

The other one I've got no clues so imma just shoot off some randos

Loss of our stars

Read between the lines

Silent sleepers, unlikely keepers

oh read between the lines would actually work well for the Nancy POV ‘the Dive’ scene rewrite

Made up fic titles game

-

When Steve gets dragged back under Lover’s Lake, they all reach for him simultaneously; it’s just a matter of luck who happens to get there first.

Robin gets pulled forward, almost toppling over the side of the boat, but then Steve slips through her fingers.

“I’ve got him, I’ve got him,” she says, and in barely a blink, she dives in.

Nancy stands to do the same.

“Woah, hey, hey, hey,” Eddie says, voice high and tight with anxiety, “let’s just fucking think for a second.”

Nancy feels sorry for him; she’s sure that many years ago, she might have had a similar response to his, but she’s long since learned that there’s often no time to think, she can only do.

But then, just as she’s about to take the plunge, something stops her. There’s a sudden knife in her chest, cutting through her breathing.

Maybe it’s a delayed reaction to seeing Robin dive, to hearing Steve choke right before he was dragged under.

Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s looking down at the water, dark as ink, and a thought that haunts her floats up to the surface again: that water was one of the very last things Barb saw.

She stumbles over to the other side of the boat and retches.

“Woah, hey,” Eddie repeats, but it’s softer now, and she feels him gently wrap his hand around her forearm, steadying her. “Wheeler, you okay?”

“Row back to the shore,” she says through the knife in her ribs. “Tell Dustin that—”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Eddie says with a humourless laugh.

He looks down at the water, ripples still marring the surface from where Steve and Robin once were. Nancy sees the resolve in his eyes take hold.

His hand moves until he’s gripping onto hers. He’s trying to take deep breaths, stuttering on them. She can feel him shaking.

I’m sorry, she thinks.

She squeezes his hand as tight as she can.

“I’ve got you,” she says fiercely; when she makes a promise, she means it.

He nods. “Together.”

She doesn’t once let go—not until she knows for certain that they’ve both made it through, and then they’re running to where Robin is yelling, battling with some creature, and when Nancy spots Steve on the ground, sees the blood, her heart stops, and for a moment she thinks I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him—

Then there is no time to think.

Afterwards, she’s tearing at her shirt with determination, because there is not a chance in hell that Steve Harrington is bleeding out on her watch.

She has to stop for just a second, still shivering from the coldness of the Lake.

“Nance,” Steve says quietly, “I just—thanks. You didn’t have to…”

“Shut up,” she says without looking, comes back to herself and tightens the bandages, heart aching every time Steve groans in pain.

She wants to shake him until he understands that he is worth it, worth everything—that she would never not try and save him. If she loses anyone else, she’s going to burn it all to the ground.

She tries to push back the tide as they walk through the woods. In the distance, she hears Steve thank Eddie, all awkward and quiet, and she hears Eddie spin some absolute bullshit that makes her want to shake him, too; he makes her sound so damn capable, twists everything until even his own heroics somehow sound like cowardice.

For a moment, she turns to them and finds a fleeting lightness.

“Eddie Munson, you lie like a rug,” she says, laughing, and from the glow of her torch, she sees him flush. She looks at Steve and tells him pointedly, “He dove right in with me.”

Steve smiles at her, young and hesitant. His body is slowly angling towards Eddie like he’s not even aware that he’s doing it, and Eddie doesn’t pull away, not even when their arms keep brushing against each other.

For a little while that sight is enough to spur her on, but her smile fades away as the knife in her chest returns, and she can’t find the energy to acknowledge Robin’s jokes, because all she can think is oh, Barb would have laughed at that.

And then every single thought comes back to Barb—a lancing pain, like a vine taking root in her head.

Robin gets through the Gate. Then Eddie. Then—

“No,” she says to Steve, “you first.”

“Nance, come on,” Steve says. “You already—you’ve done enough. Lemme have this.”

“That’s—that’s not how this works,” Nancy says, as the knife cuts in deeper, and the vine grows, and God, she thinks, looking at Steve’s eyes shining in distress, there’s too much, there’s too much in my head; it’s going to drown me, and I’m so worried I’ll drag you down with—

Blinding pain. She sees so much. Too much.

Everything.

And then she’s back, and she’s falling, and Steve is yelling at her hoarsely, and she’s gasping for air, and all she can say is—

“I saw her, I saw her, I saw her.”

She’s sobbing.

“Nance,” Steve whispers. He knows. And then he’s embracing her, and he’s whispering, “You’re here, you’re here,” into her hair, like he needs to convince himself, and she realises that he’s crying a little, too.

When they both can breathe a little better, they look up.

Eddie’s hanging from the rope, hand outstretched.

And Nancy knows he dove right in. Didn’t waste a second.

She takes his hand.

“I’ve got you, Wheeler,” he says.

Together, the three of them climb up, up, up into the light.

#god i love rewriting/reframing scenes #nancy wheeler #eddie and nancy #steve and nancy #robin and nancy #implied steddie #background steddie #nancy and barb #made up fic titles #nancy wheeler fic #steve harrington #eddie munson

[theliterateape]

I Like to Watch | Zack Snyder’s Justice League

by Don Hall

Mythology is fun.

As a kid I loved reading Edith Hamilton’s book on the Greek gods and the myths. Hercules, Perseus, Apollo, and Hera—this fell completely in line with my love for superhero comics. The strangely petty human traits of envy, greed, and lust combined with the power to level cities make for some great storytelling.

Zeus was basically Harvey Weinstein in the retroactive revision we’re mired in today. If Harvey could’ve changed into a golden animal and boned unsuspecting ladies looking for careers in Hollywood I’m pretty certain he would. The gods and demi-gods of the Greeks dealt with daddy issues, mommy issues, bad relationships, and fighting. Lots of fighting. Sometimes for the good of humanity but more often for the glory of winning.

Zach Snyder is in the business of tackling myths and reframing them with a style all his own. His career has become its own myth.

From Dawn of the Dead (not so much a reboot of Romero's zombie mythology but a philosophical reimagining of the genre that arguably jumpstarted The Hollywood fascination with it), 300 (a borderline homoerotic take on the myth of the Greek underdog), and Watchmen (a ridiculously ambitious attempt to put one of the most iconic takedowns on the potential fascism of the superhero legend machine ever written) to his nearly single-handed hack at answering the Marvel juggernaut with Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder is in the artistic business of subverting and re-envisioning the mythologies we embrace without even seeing them as such.

Snyder's style is operatic. It is on a grand scale even in the most mundane moments. The guy loves slow motion like Scorcese loves mobsters and Italian food. When you're tackling big themes with larger than life stories, the epic nature of his vision makes sense and has alienated a good number of audience members. With such excess, there are bound to be missteps but I'd argue that his massive take on these characters he molds from common understanding and popular nomenclature elevates them to god-like stature.

Fans of Moore's Watchmen have much to complain about Snyder's adaptation. The titular graphic novel is almost impossible to put in any other form than the one Moore intended and yet, Snyder jumped in feet-first and created a living, breathing representation of most, if not all, of the source material's intent. Whether you dig on it or not, it's hard to avoid acknowledging that the first five minutes of Watchmen is a mini-masterpiece of style, storytelling, and epic tragedy wrapped up in a music video.

Despite a host of critical backlash for his one fully original take, Sucker Punch is an amazing thing to see. More a commentary on video game enthusiasm with its lust for hot animated chicks and over-the-top violence that a celebration of cleavage and guns, the film is crazily entertaining. For those who hated the ending, he told you in the title what his plan was all along.

The first movie I saw in the theaters that tried to take a superhero mythology and treat it seriously (for the most part) was Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie. Never as big a fan of the DC characters as I have been of Marvel, it was still extraordinary to see a character I had only really known in pages to be so fully realized. Then came Burton's Batman movies. The superhero film was still an anomaly but steam was gaining. Things changed with Bryan Singer's X-Men in 2000, then Raimi's Spiderman, and those of us who grew up with our pulpy versions of Athena, Hermes, and Hades were rewarded with Nolan's Batman Begins. A far cry from the tongue-in-cheek camp of the 1966 TV Batman, Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne was a serious character and his tale over three films is a tragic commentary filled with the kind of death and betrayal and triumph befitting the grand narrative he deserved.

I loved Singer's Superman Returns in 2006 because it was such a love letter to the 1978 film (down to the opening credits) but by then, the MCU was taking over the world.

Snyder's first of what turns out to be an epic storyline involving perhaps seven or eight movies was Man of Steel. It was fun and, while I had my issues with the broodiness of Kal El, the odd take on Jonathan Kent, and a redheaded Lois Lane, I had no issue with Superman snapping Zod's neck. Darker and more tragic than any other version of the Kryptonian, it was still super entertaining.

Then came Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. By 2016, Marvel had codified their formula of serious characters wrestling with serious issues of power and responsibility peppered with lots of good humor and bright colors. Snyder's desaturated pallete and angst-filled demi-gods was not the obvious road to financial competition.

I'll confess, I hated it. BvS felt half-rendered. Lex Luthor was kind of superficial and played as a kind of Joker. The whole Bruce Wayne wants to kill Superman thing felt undeveloped and the "Martha" moment was just stupid.

When Joss Whedon's version of Snyder's Justice League came out in 2017, I was primed for it to be a turd and I wasn't surprised. So much of it didn't work on any level. I dismissed it as DC trying and failing miserably and was comforted by the coming of Thanos.

Following Thanos and the time heist was COVID. Suddenly, we were internationally sidelined and the movie theater industry caved in. Streaming services started popping up like knock-off smartphones and Hollywood was reeling, doing anything and everything to find a way back. Since Whedon's disastrous helming of Snyder's third act, fans online had been demanding to #ReleasetheSnyderCut but no one was ever really taking them seriously until all movie production was shut down for a year.

The stage was set to remedy a mistake (or at least make some bucks on a do-over of a huge box office failure). Snyder had left the production in part because of the suicide of his daughter and in part due to the constant artistic fights over executives looking for the quippy fun of the MCU but he still had all the original footage. Add to that the broiling accusations that Joss Whedon was "abusive" during the reshoots, the path seemed destined. For an additional $70 million and complete control, Snyder delivered a four hour mega-movie streamed on HBOMax.

Of course, I was going to watch the thing as soon as I could.

The Whedon version opens with an homage to the now dead Superman (including the much maligned digitally erased mustache on Henry Cavill). The SynderCut opens with the death of Superman and the agony of his death scream as it travels across the planet. It's a simple change but exemplifies the very different visions of how this thing is gonna play out.

Snyder doesn't want us to be OK with the power of these beings unleashed. He wants us to feel the damage and pain of death. He wants the results of violence to be as real as he can. When Marvel's Steve Rogers kicks a thug across the room and the thug hits a wall, he crumples and it is effectively over. When Batman does the same thing, we see the broken bones (often in slow motion) and the blood smear on the wall as the thug slides to the ground.

The longer SnyderCut is bloated in some places (like the extended Celtic choir singing Aquaman off to sea or the extended narrations by Wonder Woman which sound slightly like someone trying to explain the plot to Siri). On the other hand, the scene with Barry Allen saving Iris West is both endearing and extraordinary, giving insight to the power of the Flash as well as some essential character-building in contrast to Whedon's comic foil version.

One thing I noticed in this variant is that Zach wants the audience to experience the sequence of every moment as the characters do. An example comes when Diana Prince goes to the crypt to see the very plot she belabors over later. The sequence is simple. She gets a torch and goes down. Most directors which jump cut to the torch. Snyder gives us five beats as she grabs the timber, wraps cloth around the end, soaks it with kerosene, pulls out a box of matches, and lights the torch. Then she goes down the dark passageway.

The gigantic, lush diversity of Snyder’s vision of the DC superhero universe—from the long shots of the sea life in the world of Atlantis to the ancient structures and equipment of Themyscira— is almost painterly. Snyder isn't taking our time; he's taking his time. We are rewarded our patience with a far better backstory for the villain, a beautifully rendered historic battle thwarting Darkseid's initial invasion (including a fucking Green Lantern), and answers to a score of questions set up in both previous films.

Whedon's Bruce Wayne was more Ben Affleck; Snyder's is full-on Frank Miller Batman, the smartest, most brutal fucker in the room. Cyborg, instead of Whedon's sidelined non-character, is now a Frankenstein's monster, grappling with the trade-off between acceptance and enormous power. Wonder Woman is now more in line with the Patty Jenkins version and instead of being told about the loss of Superman, we are forced to live with the anguish of both his mother and Lois Lane in quiet moments of incredible grief.

To be fair to Whedon (something few are willing to do as he is now being castigated not for racism or sexism but for being mean to people) having him come in to throw in some levity and Marvel-esque color to Snyder's Wagnerian pomposity is like hiring Huey Lewis to lighten up Pink Floyd's The Wall or getting Douglas Adams to rewrite Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I loved Snyder's self-indulgent, mythologic DC universe.

So much so that I then re-watched Man of Steel and then watched the director's version of BvS (which Snyder added approximately 32 minutes). The second film is far better at three hours and Eisenberg's Lex Luthor now makes sense. Then I watched Zach Snyder's Justice League a second time.

After nineteen hours of Snyder's re-imagining of these DC heroes and villains, I saw details that, upon first viewing, are ignored or dismissed, but after seeing them in order and complete, are suddenly consistent and relevant. Like Nolan or Fincher, Snyder defies anyone to eliminate even one piece of his narrative no matter how long. With all the pieces, this is an epic story and the pieces left at the extended epilogue play into a grander narrative we will never see.

Or maybe we will. Who knows these days?

#I Like to Watch #Zach Snyder's Justice League

[notasdriedapricots]

The Tender Trap: The Origin Story

This is just pretty much a disclaimer for the disaster that’s coming.

I TALK A LOT OMG HOW DID YOU KNOW? Here's a TL;DR: -The Tender Trap is canon as shit, because I never intended to write a fic, and much less to publish it, but one thing lead to the other and I ended up kinda liking it. I love them so much. There's quite a lot added to it, but there's still a fair bit of the original thing in there, because again, that was the original goal. -However, if you think there's too much still there, let me know! I think I've modified it enough, but that's only my opinion. -If you catch technical mistakes, grammatical errors, weird vocabulary... let me know! English is my second language. -There's an after-villa sequel in the oven that has more angst (the game doesn't leave much space for that) and honestly is more fun. Or at least I've been having so much fun with it. I have to finish it first, though. I might hate it by the end, but we'll see. -Funny story: It was untitled for months. The day I randomly found a title while listening to Ella Fitzgerald, I kinda decided to 'fuck it, just upload it somewhere'. And so here we are. That was literally yesterday. -The first real chapter will likely be posted on AO3 on Thursday/Friday, depending on how much longer I keep messing with it :D

800 words of me rambling under the cut. How annoying is that.

I transcribed the whole goddamned game. In past tense instead of present, mind you. As one of the most popular memes in my country preaches: Why? There is no 'why'?

Well, there is. Just for clarification, that transcription is not what I will be posting. I'm not that dumb. No, I wanted to add nuances to the story without altering it, so I used what the game gives us as the skeleton. I wanted to see if I could make nonsense dialogue and the whole amnesia deal make sense by turning it into inside jokes, sarcasm, and anxiety. (Prosody is a wonderful thing). I tried my best to not contradict what has been explicitly said, regardless of how. much. I. wanted. to. change. it. That was the challenge, to reframe it so it made sense. Did it interfere with the 'creative process'? Nah, it was pretty fun, and I work well with a structure in place. The post-villa thing is way freer and oh god it's so over the place I have to put some order to that I don't even know where it's going but I found out I love writing domestic shit and I LoVe Lucas' mother.

This idea lead up to extending some scenes, adding others I felt were missing, composing internal monologues... And I ended up writing fiction again after like ten years. Which is not a "take it easy on me" card, by the way. Be ruthless, I can take it, mainly because I did this just for fun. I know I'm rusty, what's new? I know it mainly shows in the first chapters because the game forces a pace that's too fast and too slow at the same damn time and there's only so much my brain can do. I might rewrite them at some point, who knows. Also English is not my first language, so I can only hope there's something that sounds hilarious in there somewhere that you can point out so we can laugh about it. Let me know! I've loved this language since I was three, I want to use it properly. Also punctuation is sometimes different (commas and the necessity of explicit pronouns in English are a pain in the ass compared to Spanish) so you're welcome to correct that as well if you catch a mistake. So I don't intend to put myself at the same level as some of the fantastic writers in this fandom; you keep writing art, I'm just here for shits and giggles, and because this was insanely fun for me.

But going back. I started getting sidetracked, as I tend to do when I write, as you can see, so I had to get the scissors and cut those parts that weren't adding much to the main plot (telling Gary to apologize to Marisol is very nice but this chapter is already over 8000 words long, SIR) to make room for other parts that needed more depth, so amongst other things we have the emotional breakdown and apology we deserve after CA (or at least one that makes me feel bad, I don't know) and a lot of chats so these two actually get to, you know, know each other? Oh, and smut, ejem. Yeah. That.

In between I wrote half the after-villa sequel, canons for Liz, headcanons for Lucas, (head)canons for them together, pages and pages of questions and answers from both of them, fashion headcanons, families and exes, best friends; I put together pinterest folders with pictures of so (so) many people, clothes, apartments; I even wrote a musical episode where Liz has a karaoke battle with her ex in a jazz joint that's one of my favourite things because the songs are just *chef's kiss* I mean, Liz singing 'Cry me a river' is so cathartic... Anyway I started adding shit, mostly thoughts, to the game's dialogue, and it ended up in this abomination that never intended to be anything but fun. I'm not particularly proud of the first couple chapters because the cut/don't cut thing looking at the wordcount, trying to decide if I butchered the original dialogue, reduced it to a general paragraph, or pretend the scene never happened, all while having a chapter that was too short to split into two (or that would have one of them containing too little new stuff) but so long to be just one... was painful. I'm still dealing with that as I tweak the next chapters, but as soon as I have a somewhat definitive word/chapter count, I'll let you know. Just know that it's long, so do with that what you will.

SO, welcome. Take a seat, help yourself to a drink, and stay for as long as you like. When I got into this I went to the ball, so now I'm just dancing.

#TTT #dont say i didnt warn you #lets gooo

[traincat]

i just found out about the gwen and norman babies and i’m just wondering what the fuck

“What the fuck” is a pretty accurate summary, but okay, so. Story time, because while this ask refers to the developments of a story called Sins Past (Amazing Spider-Man #509-#514), in which it was revealed that Gwen Stacy had twins fathered by Norman Osborn, to grasp the full story here we’ve got to go back to a little bit to before the death of Gwen Stacy.

In Amazing Spider-Man #93, after George Stacy’s death, his brother Arthur invites Gwen to come stay with his family in England. (This is notably where The Amazing Spider-Man 2 gets its “Gwen moving to England” storyline.) Peter had been planning to propose to her, but freezes up under the knowledge that Gwen blames Spider-Man for her father’s death:

Gwen takes it as a rejection, and leaves to go stay with her aunt and uncle in England. One thing I don’t think gets touched on enough with Gwen is that she’s very empathic, and good at picking up on all of Peter’s feelings and cues – it’s just that she doesn’t have the full context to interpret them. This also isn’t the first time Peter’s been in this situation; after he graduated high school, knowing that Ned Leeds had proposed to Betty Brant, Peter also had planned to propose to her, somewhat secure in the knowledge that Betty would’ve chosen him over Ned. (She would’ve, and in fact when Betty’s marriage to Ned began falling apart much later, she and Peter briefly engaged in an affair.) But when Betty says she could never love a man who was an adventurer, “a man who risks his life each day”, Peter realizes that as Spider-Man it wouldn’t be fair to propose to her and storms out.

(He notably did not take into consideration that he was a high school graduate with a freelance job who still lived with his aunt in the “to propose or not to propose” dilemma. Typical.)

Gwen would return to New York in Amazing Spider-Man #98 – a whole five issues later. Coincidentally, this also marked the return of the Green Goblin, Norman’s memories of Peter’s secret identity as Spider-Man having returned. The Green Goblin was briefly stopped when Peter used the sight of Harry – who was suffering from a drug overdose – to shock Norman out of the Green Goblin persona. With Norman once again unaware that his son’s best friend and roommate was Spider-Man, Harry on the mend, and Gwen back from England, everything was coming up Parker and, though no specific details had been ironed out, Peter and Gwen were set to marry. (I think it’s important to note with PeterGwen how serious they were, and that they were planning to get married.)

But, famously, that didn’t last – Norman did remember, during a particularly nasty overdose of Harry’s, and he kidnapped and killed Gwen in Amazing Spider-Man #121. 

So with all that in mind, let’s talk Sins Past itself. This got long. More under the cut.

Alright, so, all that said and done – in Sins Past, the story is flipped on its head. In Amazing Spider-Man #509, Peter receives a letter from Gwen, allegedly written while she was in Paris, indicating that when she died she did so with some kind of secret. The letter arrives incomplete, the secret unrevealed.

Furthermore, two mysterious (and super-powered) shadowy figures are trying to kill Peter, but that’s just like, a Wednesday for him. Along the way, and with a stunning admission from Mary Jane, it’s revealed that the two shadowy would-be assassins are Gwen’s twin children, and that their father is Norman Osborn. 

Yeah.

The twins – Sarah and Gabriel Stacy – are aging preternaturally fast because of the Goblin serum Norman had dosed himself with. They were also born after only seven months – but the infants weren’t premature. It’s revealed that that’s why Gwen left for Europe, not, in fact, to stay with her father’s family, but to secretly have her children.

Yeah.

The twins were brought up in France by Norman, kept isolated from the world, and raised as trained fighters who believed that Peter was their father, and that he had abandoned them and killed their mother. So now they’re here to kill him.

Yeah.

So we’ll pause here to take some questions.

1) “What? Why? What?”

So initially, writerJ. Michael Straczynski wanted Sarah and Gabriel to be Peter’s children with Gwen. This was nixed by Marvel, under the belief that having two adult children would age the character too much. I mean, they’re actually like, seven years old, but okay. Denying Peter the status of fatherhood because it would “age him” too much is a frustrating pattern in Spider-Man canon: Norman notably orchestrated the murder of Peter and MJ’s baby several years before. Instead of chucking the story out of the window altogether, which you know, would have been my first pick, it was reworked so that Norman was the father of Gwen’s children, because that was so much better than Peter discovering he had children with one of the people he loved most in the world. Comics are here to be a frustrating experience for everyone.

2) “So Gwen cheated on Peter?”

This is a frustrating take on the situation I’ve seen on more than one anti-Gwen post, painting Gwen as the villain of the piece for sleeping with Norman, instead of as a vulnerable young woman taken advantage of by the father of one of her best friends, a disturbingly realistic scenario before you ever even add in the fact that Norman is a literal supervillain. When Gwen recounts her one sexual encounter with Norman to Mary Jane, she herself seems confused about how and why she ended up in the situation. While I don’t think the intent was to have the encounter be out and out nonconsensual, there’s more than enough room to wonder. 

This is a very emotional time for the cast of Spider-Man; George Stacy is dead. Gwen blames Spider-Man and Peter is dealing with that and the way he is dealing with it is making Gwen doubt his love for her. Both Harry and Norman are falling apart in very different ways. Sometimes, things happen and situations arise and there’s no planning involved; “naive young woman is seduced by the darkness inside of an older man” is a tired trope, but a prevalent one. In any event, even if Gwen did deliberately cheat on Peter (which, no matter how you read the issue of consent in Sins Past, is clearly not what Gwen describes to Mary Jane), she was taken advantage of by an older man in a position of power over her, and after she had his children he turned around, killed her, and raised and abused her children to believe that the man Gwen wanted to raise them had abandoned them and murdered Gwen. So there’s no version of events here in which Gwen Stacy is the bad guy, and using that argument to prop up one of Peter’s other love interests as a better person than her is a bad take. There are no “good people” here: these are fictional characters who have been handled by many different creators over the years. They cannot make their own choices.

3) “Wait, J. Michael Straczynski? Isn’t that the guy whose Spider-Man comics you’re always telling people to read?”

Haha yeah it sure is!! It can be rough recommending a whole run, because the longer they get, the greater the chance there is of there being that one story in there you reaaaaally don’t think is for everyone, which is Sins Past. And this is tough, because as much as I don’t think Sins Past should be in continuity, JMS’ amazing voices for both Peter and Mary Jane never falters.

There are a lot of different kinds of bad stories in mainstream superhero comics: bad plot, bad characterization; good plot, bad characterization; bad plot, good characterization – and those are just some of the possible bad story combinations. I think Sins Past is a bad plot that’s very disrespectful to a female character whose legacy was already her brutal death at the hands of a supervillain. Reframing that death so that, instead of merely being at the wrong place at the wrong time and paying the ultimate price, Norman purposefully hunted down Gwen before she could tell Peter about her twins, doesn’t help. As a fan of Gwen, I don’t like her part in this story and I personally don’t think it should exist (as the story it currently is, and I’ll touch on that later) in continuity. I think it should be explicitly retconned out in a way that brooks no argument. (JMS himself has said he wished to retcon it out, but wasn’t allowed.)

That being said, have I read this like eight times? You bet. I think the art is stunning, I think JMS’ is really an incredible talent when it comes to writing Peter, who can be, to put it simply, a difficult character to get. I find the PeterMJ scenes are beautiful, as are Peter’s melancholy-tinged memories of Gwen. Also, I love comic book garbage. Skrulls? Clones? Robots? A character’s long lost children, artificially aged to adulthood and back to kill their supposed father? Oh my God, that’s so stupid. I want twenty of it.

So my feelings here are really mixed. I don’t like the rewrite of Gwen’s history. I don’t like that this is in serious continuity (and I’ll touch on that in a moment). Additionally, I don’t think the timeline really works – I’ve never felt Gwen was abroad for quite that long, even with the sped up pregnancy, and when she does come back, there’s quite a lot of time for her to tell Peter, which was something Sins Past had made clear she’d intended to do. But whatever, retcons are retcons, they rarely if ever are perfect fits. I do like the characterization of Peter and Mary Jane, and I like it a lot. If I had to pick a story that in my own opinion perfectly highlights how Peter experiences every single strong emotion, it would be this one, which is unfortunate because, well, everything else about this. It is unfortunately totally believable to me that Norman would have slept with Gwen and then killed her, but tbh if I was picking a member of Peter’s social circle who would willingly sleep with Norman, it’d be Flash, who briefly worked for Norman and was quite enamored by him – before he waterboarded Flash with whiskey, strapped him into a semi-truck, and made him crash into Midtown High, landing him in a coma. Oh, and then, way later, also murdering him. Norman’s gonna Norman.

Like I said: mixed feelings.

3) “Wait, but is it in continuity when it’s almost never brought up again, and nobody, not Peter or Mary Jane or Norman, mentions it even when it would make sense to and also nobody wants this in continuity anymore?”

Hhhh yeah it unfortunately is, and I’ll outline why, because it would have been so easy to take it out of continuity. So Sins Past takes place shortly before One More Day, wherein Aunt May was shot following the events of Civil War, during which Peter had revealed his identity on national television and the Spider-Man cat was out of the bag. In One More Day, Peter’s offered a choice by Mephisto: his marriage for his aunt’s life. Ultimately, unable to live with himself if he says no, Peter agrees. The marriage (although notably not the long term committed relationship – in the altered timeline, Peter and Mary Jane were still together from the date of their wedding to just after Civil War) was erased from the timeline, Aunt May was saved, and Peter’s identity was once again hidden from the world and from many of the people who had already know, like Felicia Hardy, the Fantastic Four, and most notably from Aunt May. There were also some additional changes made: most notably, Harry Osborn, who died in Spectacular Spider-Man #200, the best issue of all time, was alive. Clearly, the changes to the narrative’s web, if you will, extended beyond the framework of just Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage. Like I said: basically nobody talks about this story. It shows up on lists of the worst comic book plots of all time all the time. The characters almost never bring up Gabriel or Sarah – there is a sequel story called Sins Remembered: Sarah’s Story (The Spectacular Spider-Man vol 2 issues #23-26), written by Samm Barnes, where Sarah sends for Peter’s help in Paris and he does his level best to be her dad.

But of course all is not as it seems blah blah. I won’t say it’s the worst comic I’ve ever read. 

It would have been easy, then, to retcon Gabriel and Sarah out with Brand New Day, since nobody ever talks about them or wants this story to be in continuity, including its original writer. Right?

Wrong. In the American Son miniseries, which is post-Brand New Day, Gabriel Stacy makes a prominent reappearance, although Sarah’s whereabouts are unknown.

I’ll be honest: I personally don’t consider this series of events to be canon. I never mention or include it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s extra-canon material, not to be counted. But that’s just me personally as a reader. If I was asked whether or not this was actually canon, in that it was published and not retconned back out – the answer is yes, the twins exist in canon. Not my personal canon, but the actual canon.

But we could fix that.

4) “Well, Traincat,” said nobody, “how WOULD you fix Gabriel and Sarah Stacy so that the twins could be kept in continuity without everyone screaming?”

Great question, me! I would fix it with the greatest out Spider-Man storytelling has ever given us: clones. It’s very notable that Sarah looks exactly like Gwen…

Gabriel was specifically drawn with a strong resemblance to Peter. Look at that. The Osborn hair doesn’t spare people that way. The answer then, becomes simple: keep the story. Keep Gabriel and Sarah. But have them be revealed as two of the Jackal’s Peter and Gwen clones. It’s a better explanation for why Gabriel and Sarah would be adults than “the goblin serum did it”, and planting the twins, who could fully believe they were who they said they were with the use of artificial memories, in Peter’s path as a form of psychological torment fits with many of villains – presenting Spider-Man with the children of his lost love, fathered by one of his greatest enemies, as a form of torture. As for Mary Jane’s recount of when she found out, well – the same thing: implanted memories. There are more than enough characters on the Marvel landscape who are capable of that. It’d be pretty easy to pull off, since Marvel seems stubbornly set on keeping Gabriel and Sarah on the playing field, and honestly, it makes a lot more sense. Clones! (Let me pull it off, Marvel!!)

One final note: Sins Past outright alleges that Gwen and Peter never had sex, because Peter knows from the start in the story that they couldn’t be his children. To which I would like to say: lol yeah right.

So that’s (probably more than you wanted to know about) Sins Past! 

#traincat talks comics #long post/ #*replies

[newhologram]

Glorious purpose, sacrifice, and the god who started it all

Send a heartbeat to The void that cries through you Relive the pictures that have come to pass For now we stand alone The world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate With no more to hate

- The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning by Smashing Pumpkins (because this song is 100% about Avengers)

Been on an MCU binge to put everything under a microscope, so here’s what’s been rolling around in my brain. 

Infinity War spoilers below with speculation/theories for Avengers 4 that includes A4 spoilery set leak stuff. 

**SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**

* * *

There’s a lot to talk about as far as theories as we were given some hopeful leads in IW and other films. Just to take inventory on some other speculations and fun ideas: 

Shuri may have backed Vision up

Soul World: is that where Gamora is? Is that where everyone who was dusted went?

Nebula may get a meaningful role in helping to take Thanos down

Captain Marvel’s role in all this??

The possibility of Adam Warlock coming out of his cocoon

The Eternals maybe

Hawkeye/Ronin

Thor’s Stormbreaker handle being made of Groot somehow solving something

Thanos being overcome with grief in his isolation

The possibility of a major time jump in A4 to see how Earth has moved on after the snap, which may include Tony’s future with Pepper and their child. Everyone will have lived so many years with the consequences of the snap.

It also feels like each character might have to go on their own hunt for the stones, which might lead to an interesting reversal of the loss and sacrifice they faced in IW. I wonder who gets assigned to each stone and how that’ll play out for their individual character arc? There’s one stone for each original Avenger, so that’s cool to think about 

Erasing versus dying. If you’ve heard anything about “the Event” that a lot of astrologers have been talking about lately, basically our reality is due for a cosmic event which splits us—leaving people behind and taking the rest into a prosperous new universe. Some will be “erased” from this existence. It’s been called the Rapture. Which is uh. Pretty interesting considering IW premiered on the actual date of the rapture prediction and how the Snap is absolutely a kind of sad superhero bad ending rapture. 

Rewriting everything that we’ve seen in the past 6 years in canon

I’ve also seen some talk of theories such as “Loki is Bruce Banner in disguise”. I can see why this theory is popular because Bruce acts really weird the whole movie and seems to know things he shouldn’t. But I’m not too into it because it feels like there’s a big payoff coming with the Hulk (as in, we better get a cool shot of him bursting out of the Hulkbuster armor, like the toy).

There’s also some talk about spotting Quicksilver and even Wolverine on the set but I have nooo idea what those would even mean, not just in regards to the plot but with the whole joint custody thing Sony, Fox and Disney have been working out. 

All of that said, I’ve been thinking about a few other threads in particular though, so that’s what I’ll be exploring here. Just speculation for fun. Let’s see where it leads.

☀ Undying Fidelity

The opening scene was really suspicious to me for many reasons. These directors are sharp and I believe there is purpose to everything we see as well as what we don’t see.

Let’s talk about my boy Loki.

He starts out pretty scared. The guy is sweating bullets. 

After the Hulk engages Thanos, Loki isn’t on screen for several minutes. We don’t see him reacting or hiding or anything. I don’t trust that, especially not with the Russo bros directing it. I feel as though something is being hidden from us in this moment, distracted by the Hulk just as much as the bad guys are.

When he reappears to offer himself as a guide to Thanos, suddenly his demeanor is totally different. He seems calm, resolved even. 

His choice of words is very important. The most suspicious to me are: “rightful heir to Jotunheim”, “God of Mischief”, “do hereby pledge my undying fidelity”. Loki does not want us to forget that he’s not only a Jotunn, not Asgardian by blood, but he’s a God, and a very, very cunning one. To be honest, it doesn’t feel like that last line was for Thanos at all. It honestly feels like he’s saying it to someone else—maybe himself. To his own duty in this moment. Which brings me to the next bullet point:

After that last line, dagger forming, his eyes quickly dart down. There’s a pause. A small beat there. He looks as though he’s steeling himself. That, to me, is the face of a man who very much knows he’s about to die. It’s a very Obi-Wan moment, right in front of Thor. It’s somehow even more heartbreaking if he knew it was coming, and was still so scared and small when Thanos wrapped his fist around his neck. 

Loki’s a smart cookie. He may be relatively young for a god/alien but this isn’t his first rodeo. He already knows how deadly and terrifying Thanos is without the Gauntlet/stones, so what does he think he can do right now? He knows a little dagger isn’t going to win this for them and that’s precisely the point. He isn’t dumb enough to try that sincerely, which makes me believe even more that it was strategic. I have a feeling Thanos chiding him about his choice in words (”undying”) is going to come back to bite him in the ass.

Back to Loki’s words being important. When he’s first about to surrender the Tesseract earlier in the scene, he says to Thor, "I promise you, brother, the sun will shine on us again."  He says it with so much purpose.

And his final words to Thanos: “You will never be a god.” Another reminder: Loki is a god. He’s survived a black hole, stabbing, Hulk-smashing, Grandmaster’s orgies, and likely more in his years. We’ve come to expect him to fake his own death by this point, though I’m still on the fence about whether this one was fake, or a necessary one he knew needed to happen, or somehow a bit of both. I wonder, only a little, where did Loki’s body go, is it just floating around with the rest of the dead? 

For that matter, where the hell is Valkyrie? Is there any meaningful payoff rather than just humor for Korg calling Loki a ghost in Ragnarok? I’m not too hopeful for something like that, but it’s a thought. 

Later on in the film we see Thor, another god, (barely) survive the concentrated full force of a dying star. I’m supposed to believe Loki, an incredibly gifted frost giant child trained in the arts of magic, Loki Ha Ha Duplicates of Me Everywhere Odinson, Loki I’m Right Where I Need to Be Laufeyson just has a sudden brain fart, tries to stab the Mad Titan, gets his neck snapped in front of his brother, and it’s not on purpose? 

BITCH. DID. NOT. TURN. BACK. TO. BLUE. 

Do I really think Loki is still alive? I don’t know. Loki is very, very dear to me but like I said, I’m on the fence. Because it seems like the deaths that happened before the snap, save for Gamora, might be permanent because we needed to feel that the stakes were high. On the other hand, again, Loki is very gifted. We’ve seen him “die” before and I still have a very hard time believing he’s fully dead and not god-level deep coma smacked down needing time to regenerate if he doesn’t just turn blue right after since his iconic look is an illusion too. His line about the sun shining on them again uses the word “us”, which could indicate a revival and reunion somehow. 

But I’m cry because you know he and Thor got into a lot of trouble growing up, and big brother was always there for him. But then little brother goes through some hard stuff, falls into a black hole, gets picked up by a cult, and it all comes down to this moment now: no home to return safely to, no mother to console him after Odin’s discipline, Thor unable to save him. 

♥ We Don’t Trade Lives

Before I go into A4 speculation, let’s look at how each character deals with sacrifice, just for fun: 

Loki is given a choice: his brother’s life, or the Space Stone → Loki surrenders and sacrifices himself 

Quill is given a choice: the love of his life, or Thanos getting closer to winning → Quill is hesitates and is unable to keep his promise of sacrificing Gamora

Gamora is given a choice: her sister, or the location of the Soul Stone  → Gamora surrenders to spare Nebula 

Thanos is given a choice: his favorite daughter, or the Soul Stone → Thanos sacrifices Gamora for the stone

Dr. Strange is given a choice: Tony Stark, or the Time Stone → Despite earlier warning Tony he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice either him or Peter if it means keeping the Time Stone safe, he surrenders the stone → He sacrifices his duty, his life, and the lives of everyone else who gets dusted in order to put them on the one right path he saw out of over 14 million

Wanda is given a choice: Vision, or the Mind Stone → Her struggle with this choice starts earlier on when Vision offers to sacrifice himself to destroy the Mind Stone → Cap tells him “we don’t trade lives”  → Wanda is also not willing to immediately kill him when asked → They run out of time and options, Wanda finally sacrifices Vision, which as we saw didn’t really work out the way they wanted

Our characters struggle with sacrificing something important to them in order to save the universe (remember, in the eyes of Thanos, he’s saving the universe too). Many of the characters value their loved ones above everything else and don’t want to have to make that choice. They don’t want to face the pain of a life without that person, or they don’t want another person to suffer or die painfully because of them.

Alright. Let’s talk bidness. 

♛   Reframe the Future

Yeah—remember B.A.R.F.? Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing. 

This has to be what Tony will use to look back at things. I see him replaying the events of the first Avengers over and over, trying to figure out how it all could’ve gone so wrong, what clues they missed, and how to fix it. 

Which brings us to the question of time travel. Is this where the idea of Infinite Avengers will come in, if the multiverse is explored? I don’t have too much of a lead on that, but it’s interesting to think about. If that ends up being the title of A4 it would certainly point to that.

(Note Tony’s greying hair which supports the idea that A4 will start 5-10 years after Infinity War)

Many have speculated about the devices on their wrists in these photos, as well as the fact that while Tony and Ant-Man seem to be their present selves, others are in their old costumes from the first Avengers. Doesn’t quite answer why Cap is wearing a device, unless they recruit lots of multiversal Avengers from various timelines/realities/points in history to help? (Wouldn’t it be crazy to find out that Ant-Man has been a secret tiny time traveling Avenger the whole time?) 

It’s hard to know exactly what kind of time travel shenanigans we’re dealing with. Maybe we’ll learn more when we see Ant-Man and the Wasp, since they’re going to be dealing with the quantum realm, where time doesn’t really exist. In the quantum realm, every possibility exists at the same time. 

We do have some clues though. 

Exhibit A: Loki in all his muzzled glory, as seen at the end of Avengers.

We know that this time travel plot would involve going back to where it all started. But what could be done, what is Tony’s play? 

Exhibit B: Tony Stark in S.H.I.E.L.D. gear. More specifically—

As one of Loki’s escorts.

What we don’t see in Avengers is how everything goes down when they take Loki back into custody (after grubbing on shawarma). We don’t see the discussion about what to do with him and Thor’s decision to take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard. 

So, again, what the hell is Tony’s game plan? 

If he’s disguised as a guard, there could be a chance to get alone with Loki and talk to him. Tell him everything that goes down. Get him to help. Get info from him, and make sure he knows how things need to play out in order for this all to work.

I’m not sure how yet though. It seems this could somehow involve Stark making his own Infinity Gauntlet, but that’s later down the line. Where does Loki fit into the plan beyond the time travel scene? That may be all we get of him. 

I’m so excited for the possibility of my two favorite characters working together or even having just once more scene together, however it plays out. Tony and Loki both smiled at each others’ jokes in A1 and I loved it. I feel like their dynamic would be so interesting to explore more. Tony totally clocked that Loki is a diva, because they’re both like that lol.

☮ Glorious Purpose

But what’s most interesting to me right now is the implication that if this is the closed loop kind of time travel, it would mean Loki has known about all this since the end of Avengers. 

When the Hulk was distracting everyone, was Loki hiding behind a wall, readying himself for what he knew he needed to do next? I’ve heard talk of the possibility of a duplicate since that’s what Loki does, but would Thanos have been able to tell he was killing an illusion? He didn’t have the Soul Stone then which likely helped him tell which Strange was real later. I’ve also heard talk of a Loki switchout, but I’m not too convinced because it would involve somehow transporting another Loki there. Not so sure there would be a stealthy way to do any of that. 

Did Loki die in the beginning of Infinity War fully knowing all those years that it was going to happen, that it needed to happen, in order for the sun to shine again?

Did Loki die to help save the universe?

...

If Loki knew those few weeks on Sakaar were going to be his last, do you think he was like, “Guess I better live my best life and spend my final days sipping cocktails on Grandmaster’s lap.”

My final speculation prediction REQUIREMENT from Marvel Studios is to have Avengers 4 end with a beautiful Pepperony wedding filled with superheroes. Whoever’s left, that is. 

(This also means if there’s a time jump, Tony will possibly erase the present he has with Pepper and their child in order to save everyone... Should be interesting.)

In conclusion, have this whiteboard drawing I did for @spazzeon as I tried to explain all of this

#avengers #mcu #infinity war #marvel #loki #infinity war spoilers #teku #long post