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crystal-witchiness · 3 years

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***Okay so I found this in my notes from May 2021 as a reaction to the scenes in the beginning of Endgame when Captain Marvel first brings Tony and Nebula back to Earth, when they first get off the ship, and when Tony yells at Steve a few scenes later when he looks like ‘Death Warmed Over’ in his robe and i thought I’d share -

Every time someone argues with me about my ABSOLUTE 100% belief that Steve and Tony had romantic feelings for each other, I’ll just show them this scene. “And I needed YOU.” He didn’t say “You guys” or “Your help.” Tony looked at Steve with so much pain in his eyes and said, “I needed y o u.” And Steve is just as broken watching Tony. This isn’t the first time this has happened between them. They had MANY scenes like this in Civil War (but I like to pretend that movie didn’t happen cause ‘ow blow a hole in my ship why dontcha?’) I mean technically I could submit that whole movie as evidence of their feelings but there are too many negative emotions wrapped up in it and it hurts. This movie is the first time they’ve seen each other since Civil War and when Tony first gets off the ship he basically falls into Steve’s arms. First of all, Steve fricking S P R I N T S when he sees Tony getting off the ship, then Tony sighs in relief and lets Steve take his weight. AND IMMEDIATELY begins unloading his grief about losing Peter cause he knew Steve would understand and comfort him. You can SEE s e e when Pepper runs up that (Ofc Tony does another sigh of relief that the snap didn’t take her (which I wish it did sorry Pepper your character stopped being interesting in the 2nd Iron Man)) Tony has to pull himself off of Steve and pretend to have it more together than he does because Pepper immediately begins crying and Tony has to comfort her. But Steve doesn’t leave his side. Tony cradling Pepper but he’s turning his body so that Steve can cradle him and ugh. Honestly I would have accepted a polyamorous relationship. Tony NEEDED someone to be the leader. THATS LITERALLY WHAT PEPPER WAS TALKING ABOUT. Tony NEVER rests because he always thinks he has to be the one to do everything, EXCEPT for when Steve’s around. Steve is the Captain and even though they bump heads (a lot, awww couples’ squabbles) Tony ALWAYS defers to Steve when it’s important. And Steve? Steve HAS to be a leader, to be helpful, in a healthy way because he couldn’t be that for most of his life in the past. He was a scrawny defenseless guy who always had to depend on Bucky. So to be able to take care of this group of wonderful people who are so powerful and yet STILL NEED STEVE? It’s who he his. It’s who Tony is too but he doesn’t WANT to be that way, he does it because he has to. He does it when no one else can or he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. This scene right now is Tony feeling helpless and so he lashes out at the easiest person, Steve. Steve is their leader and has saved them many times. Tony saw that picture of Peter and couldn’t handle his own feelings of helplessness so he lashed out to bring down the next ‘leader figure’ of the group. Steve and Tony have always been the parents of the Avengers. Steve is the most dad-est dad ever to dad. Meanwhile, Tony invites everyone to live with him while feeding them, clothing them (armor and civilian clothes) and making sure they have top of the line protection. HE LITERALLY EVEN SAYS THIS IN AGE OF ULTRON. SUCH a mom. So he wanted to make Steve feel his pain because Steve made a promise that they would lose together and Steve wasn’t there on that moon. And OF COURSE Tony knows that Steve was on earth fighting his own battle against Thanos but he wasn’t WITH Tony. And they are always stronger together than apart. (Civil War kinda proved this too) Tony sees Steve’s absence as the reason they lost, because ‘if only they’d been together’ ‘maybe we could have won if we’d only been together.’

ALSO DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON TONY LITERALLY GIVING STEVE A REPRESENTATION OF HIS HEART. I know he did it out of anger and to make a point but he took away this piece of him, that he made SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE HE FELT VULNERABLE WITHOUT THE ARC, and gave it to Steve. Once again shedding that responsibility and giving it to Steve. Because even with the residual anger over Civil War, Tony trusts Steve. He says otherwise in this moment out of anger but that “vision” he talks about here? He literally watches Steve die (YEAH THATS RIGHT I SAID STEVE. Not PEPPER, NOT RHODEY, NOT ANY OF THE OTHER AVENGERS.) Wanda showed him his worst fear in Age of Ultron and it was the death of the Avengers, but he didn’t see THEM die. Everyone else, Thor, Bruce, Natasha, and Clint were already dead. Tony watched STEVE die and it was STEVE saying that Tony could’ve saved them that spurred him into creating Ultron. He was so scared of losing them and letting Steve down (and letting him die) that he wanted to wrap the whole world in armor to protect him. And he tries to do it again in this scene. He means it to be spiteful but he gives Steve his armor and tells him to hide from Thanos. WHICH IS ANOTHER THING UGH. Tony doesn’t know that out of all of the people who fought Thanos in Wakanda that day, Steve was the one who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with him. Everyone else had armor and suits, weapons, etc. Steve has his serum strength and he u s e d it. It didn’t help for very long but he used his BARE HANDS to fight an alien-monster wielding 5/6 of ALL POWERFUL infinity stones, and ofc he was never going to win, but even Thanos looked at Steve in incredulity at his bravery and resolve. A human (a super charged one at that but still a human) fought him with his bare hands and wasn’t going to stop. (Steve proved this again at the end of Endgame when he’s the last one standing against Thanos and his entire army and just tightens the strap on his broken shield, (and most likely broken arm, based on the flinch/hiss) and readies himself to fight alone. Steve also gave Wanda time to destroy the mind stone (unfortunately, that didn’t mean anything in the end)

AND YET Tony doesn’t know any of this. He doesn’t know how hard Steve fought, just like Tony did on Titan, to stop Thanos. And I REALLY wish we had seen Tony’s reaction to Steve standing up to Thanos at the end of Endgame OR EVEN WIELDING MJOLNIR, but anyways.

Back to the basics. Boss level stuff most people don’t remember or think about- Tony’s dad very unhealthily IDOLIZED Steve. He canonically compared everything Tony did to Steve. So Tony grew up idolizing this man that he also despised because it fueled his father’s abuse of him. Tony shows this anger in the first Avengers. When they have their argument on the quinjet. “Everything special about you came out of a bottle.” He even says something about how Steve didn’t live up to his father’s hype (I don’t remember Tony’s exact words but that’s the gist) And ofc Steve says Tony’s nothing without his armor. But then they go on the prove each other wrong multiple times, but mainly in their last moments in the MCU. Steve proves it by standing alone against an ENTIRE alien army and later by picking up mjolnir. And Tony? Tony is that ONE factor in a million that Stephen sees. Tony, a beautifully pure human-being, with no powers or serums to help, takes on the powers of the stones. KNOWING it would kill him. He had proof. It nearly killed Thanos and Bruce and they were hulking (pun intended) beings with super strength and all that.

Tony and Steve were always set up to be spoils to one another and that makes them perfect together. They balance each other out. Pepper was a boss b****, no doubt, and I loved their relationship in the first two Iron Man movies, but as their characters grew and Tony’s personality was intrinsically changed through trauma- Pepper was no longer right for him. She was good for him, no doubt, but Tony couldn’t relax with her as he did with Steve. Tony could trust Steve to take over and everything could be fine. Pepper was like that for Stark Industries but not in other ways. Tony always saw himself as Pepper’s protector. I will 100% give her props for telling Tony that he’d never rest until he tried Scott’s time travel theory, but other than that she wasn’t particularly supportive of Iron. Man. What Pepper never seemed to understand, and what Steve didn’t understand when he FIRST met Tony, is that Tony and Iron Man are synonymous. Their is no ‘man outside the suit.’ Tony Stark is Iron Man and Iron Man is Tony Stark. Steve was placed into an already created persona of Captain America. Steve didn’t create Captain America even though that’s who he was. He was literally MADE for the role. Tony on the other hand, MADE Iron Man. He was the one who built the first suit - dying in a cave in Afghanistan. He was the one who took responsibility for Obadiah and his father’s actions and became a superhero to save the countries that were affected by Stark tech. Steve may have volunteered to be a superhero because he felt like he had no one other choice but Tony DIDN’T HAVE TO. He had fame, money, power, ALL OF IT. He could’ve EASILY hidden his company’s dark underside once he found out. But instead, Tony was like “Hey um so my company has done some bad things and instead of delegating aid through my money and power, I’m going to personally handle this with a titanium alloy suit and technology that I helped create in a cave while being held captive by a terrorist cell.”

Where was I going with this? OH YEAH.

I will believe in TonyxSteve (Stony) for the rest of my life and I will use fanfiction to fill the void of their deaths. Basically, if I lost anyone in the word vomit above, what I’m trying to say is that- Steve and Tony completed each other. They provided something the other needed. Tony needed stability and protection. He needed to feel like he could let go. Steve needed an anchor in the present. Someone lively and opinionated, SOMEONE ADVENTUROUS AND FUNNY, who Steve could smile with and protect. But also. Steve trusted Tony to be a leader as much as Tony trusted him. They had their ups and downs. Trauma and the Accords didn’t help their relationship at all, but should’ve been it for each other. And I honestly believe they would have t h r i v e d.

Honestly I applaud anyone who made it this far. I don’t know where this all came from but I will not apologize✌🏻

I rest my case your honor.

#avengers endgame #steve rogers #tony stark #captain america #iron man #stony #marvel endgame #steve x tony #i will die with this ship #i ship them #rip stan lee

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takerfoxx · 3 years

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In response to JK Rowling and Joss Whedon, my (former) idols

I really didn’t want to have to do this.

So in addition to…=gestures vaguely=…all of that, the last few months have been kind of sucky when it comes to learning some really unpleasant things about artists that I looked up to, admired, and was in fact inspired by. I’ve already spoken about the Speaking Out movement revealing a lot of ugly behavior from various wrestlers, some of which I was big fans of, and then later we got Chris Jericho being a full-on MAGA. Yeah, that all sucked. But those were just performers whose work I enjoyed watching. The one that really hurt were writers who I deeply admired, whose stories I love, and who I was heavily influenced by.

The first, of course, was finding out that JK Rowling, the author of perhaps the single biggest YA fantasy series of all time Harry Potter, is a TERF. This really sucked for a number of reasons. Firstly, I really like Harry Potter! I mean, I’m not a super fan or anything. I came into it when things were kind of dying down, like the whole book series had already been released and there were only a few movies left, but I still really enjoyed it, have all the books and movies and a fair amount of merchandise swag, including a nifty wand I got at Universal Studios. Shit, I got two replicas of the Sword of Griffyindor, thanks to them screwing up my order in my favor and sending me a duplicate! They’re on my wall right across from me as I type this!

But in addition to writing a book series I really liked, JK Rowling was supposed to be one the good guys. She’s been vocally progressive, often openly comes down on British right-wing nonsense, has supported various persecuted minorities, and is on record as being one of the few self-made billionaires to actually stop being a billionaire for a time because she donated so much money to charity. And while we mock it now, her revealing Dumbledore as gay was a huge deal at the time. Plus, she cultivated this reputation as Auntie Jo, that cool, supportive aunt we all wanted.

But for a while her stock has been dropping. Her preference for confirming “representation” via tweets instead of explicitly putting it in the text of her stories has raised the question of queer-baiting, especially with a whole-ass movie with a young Dumbledore and Grindelwald to make their relationship explicit but failing to do so. The whole Nagini thing from the latest Fantastic Beasts movie was pretty gross. And re-examination of various problematic elements from the original novels has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Now, none of these really looked to be intentionally malicious, of course. Just about everyone’s early work will have problematic elements; that’s just how people work. And the later stuff smacked more of ignorance than anything. But after all this time, it’s like, c’mon. You should know better by now.

But the biggie came when her transphobic views finally came to light. Now, this one had been brewing for a while, due to some questionable likes and statements on her twitter. But then she decided to just go public and published what essentially amounts to a TERF manifesto, one with a very “love the sinner, hate the sin” condescending attitude and had a real persecution complex air to it.

Now, I’m not going to go into detail about what the manifesto was about, what the circumstances surrounding it were, or how wrong it was. It’s already been raked over the coals, dissected, answered, and debunked in detail by people far more qualified than me, so odds are, you’re already well aware of its contents and the subsequent rebuttals. But the gist of it comes down to her basically believing that transwomen are actually cis men claiming to be trans so as to infiltrate and invade female-only spaces.

Yeah.

Okay, that’s gross, but…why? Why is someone so noted for being progressive and wanting to foster an inclusive environment making this the hill of exclusion that she wants to die on?

Well, that’s where things get tricky. She mentions that prior to Harry Potter, her first marriage was highly physically and sexually abusive, and when she escaped from that, she had no place to go, leading her to be homeless for a time.

Oh.

Well, that makes sense. Someone goes through a highly traumatic experience with a member of the opposite sex, has no support structure when she escapes it, is left to fend for herself, only to suddenly get rocketed into fame, fortune, and influence, which in turn leads to a Never Again mentality. She was hurt, no one was there to help her, and now she’s afraid of men invading women-only spaces to victimize others like she was victimized. So…literally transphobic. Literally a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

Guys, this is so fucked up. Like, how do you even approach something like this? She’s a victim in every sense of the word, so of course she’s going to have physiological damage and a warped view of things. I mean, if I found out that a close friend of mine went through the same thing and had the same prejudices, I would be nothing but sympathetic! I mean, I’d still do what I can to convince her to overcome those prejudices, but I’d still show sympathy and support for what she went through.

Abuse warps people. There’s a reason why so many abusers are abuse survivors themselves. It makes you terrified of being hurt again and often causes people to adopt toxic behaviors, beliefs, and reactions to protect themselves. I’ve already talked about it at length while discussing She-Ra and its own handling of the cycle of abuse, which included franks discussions of Catra’s horrible behavior, why she was the way she was, while never losing sympathy for her and rooting for her to overcome it. So if JK Rowling is an abuse survivor, is it really right to come down on her for having warped views because of that abuse?

But that’s the problem. See, she isn’t your troubled friend that you’re trying to help. She isn’t your cousin Leslie who’s a really sweet person but unfortunately adopted some bad ideals due to trauma suffered. She JK freakin’ ROWLING, one of the most famous, wealthy, and influential women in the world. She has a platform of millions, if not billions, which means her voice lends credibility to her bigoted beliefs. Alt-righters and other TERFs have already swooped upon this for giving validation to their awful beliefs, which puts trans people even more at risk. And as horrible as Rowling’s experiences might have been, the trans community is often the victim of far worse, and they don’t have a mountain of money and an army of defenders to protect them like she does. I’ve said it time and time again: just because you’re a victim, that doesn’t give you the right to victimize others! And bringing things back to Catra, as much as I loved her redemption in the final season, she was still a TERRIBLE PERSON for a huge chunk of the show, one that needed to be stood up to and stopped.

So yeah. That’s the messiness that is JK Rowling.

Now, let’s talk about the one that really hurts. Let’s talk about Joss Whedon.

I’ve made no secret of what a huge Whedon fan I am. Unlike Rowling, I was a HUUUUUGE superfan. Seeing Serenity for the first time in theaters was akin to a religious awakening to me as a storyteller, making it one of my top three movies of all time. Firefly is my favorite show ever. And I adored Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse as well. I love Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers. The very first fanfic I ever wrote was a Firefly fanfic that disappeared along with my old laptop. I know his style isn’t for everyone, but I cannot understate how much of a personal inspiration he is to me as a writer.

And like Rowling, Joss was supposed to be one of the good guys! Buffy was monumental in pushing the needle when it came to female empowerment. Will and Tara were groundbreaking as a gay couple. He’s been outspoken for years about his feminist views and beliefs and was seen as one of the most prominent and influential feminist voices in Hollywood!

And then things started to go bad.

One day he was on top of the world, the mastermind behind the first two Avenger movies. And the next, it seemed like he was in freefall. It’s hard to really pinpoint exactly when the change took place. Some would say him being brought in as a last-minute substitute for Zack Snyder to take over on Justice League after Snyder had to leave due to family tragedy, and the subsequent awful critical reception to that film tarnishing his image, even if those were very unique circumstances that couldn’t really be blamed on him. Others might point to Age of Ultron’s less than stellar reception, as well as criticism of some questionable jokes and certain creative decisions regarding the character of Black Widow, which then led to a more critical examination of how Whedon continues to write female characters, as while his work might have been revolutionary in the 90’s, his failure to evolve with the times had meant that many of his portrayals are now woefully outdated and problematic, with his vision for a Batgirl movie getting hit with a lot of backlash as a result.

Again, I’m not going to go into too much detail, as this is all public knowledge and can be easily looked up, but overall it seemed that Whedon entered into a period where he was getting criticized more than he was celebrated, and his image of a guaranteed hit maker was now in doubt.

But all of this wasn’t the big problem. All creators go through rises and slumps, and everyone hits points where they get hit with a barrage of criticism; that’s just part of being a public creative figure, especially a progressive one. And had nothing happened after, it would have probably faded, got forgotten, and Whedon would have moved onto the next project with no fuss.

But as it turned out, it wasn’t just a minor slump in his career. Instead, it was the priming of the pump.

In 2016, Whedon divorced his wife of sixteen years, Kai Cole, and in an open letter, Kai Cole accused him of being a serial cheater, who would have affairs with a great many women, from co-workers, to actresses, to friends, to even his fans. And in addition to raising questions of him possibly abusing his position as showrunner to elicit sex from those working on his projects, there also is the ugly question of how could someone who speaks so highly of women then go and backstab the person who was supposed to be the most important woman in his life, as well as lying to her and denying her the autonomy of deciding whether or not she even wanted to continue to have a relationship with him?

Furthermore, Whedon himself has not explicitly denied these accusations, and comments made by him seem only to confirm them.

Now if you’ll recall, I reacted publicly to this news, and despite my admiration of Whedon’s work, I came down on Kai Cole’s side, and stated that while things like marriage issues and infidelity were no one’s business but that of the couple’s, it did raise a lot of uncomfortable questions about how Whedon treated the women in his life and he really needed to get his shit in order.

But hey, a messy private life and a guy falling into temptation isn’t that big of a deal, right? Plenty of creators also go through multiple marriages and have problems staying faithful and still continue making great art. We’re all human, it’s a stressful job, and this shit just happens, right? Sure, it’s gross and a shitty thing to do, but ain’t no business of ours, right?

In late 2020, actor Ray Fisher, who played the role of Cyborg in Justice League, openly accused Joss Whedon of fostering a hostile work environment, claiming that the director’s behavior was abusive and unprofessional, and that Whedon in turn was protected by DC executives.

DC and Warner Bros. came down against Fisher, claiming they had done an internal investigation that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing (yeah, sure they did), and soon Fisher was out as Cyborg, apparently for rocking the boat.

But then Charisma Carpenter, noted for her important role as Cordelia Chase in both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, then spoke up, claiming to be inspired by Fisher in doing so. She described Whedon did indeed foster a hostile work environment on his projects, that his often acted in a toxic manner, from asking incredibly invasive and inappropriate questions regarding her pregnancy to insulting her on set. She said that she made excuses for him for years, but after undergoing a lot of therapy and reading what Ray Fisher had to say, she felt compelled to speak out.

And this just open the floodgates. Other actors and actresses also came forward, some with stories of their own, others to offer support. Even Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, confirmed Carpenter’s stories and said that she no longer wanted to be associated with Whedon. Michelle Trachtenberg, who played the character of Dawn, stated that she also experienced toxic treatment from Whedon despite her being a minor at the time, and says that the set had a rule that Whedon wasn’t allowed to be alone with her again, which really raises some sickening questions of what happened the first time. Even male stars have spoken out, from words of support and apologies for not speaking up earlier from Anthony Stewart Head and David Boreanaz, to an earlier interview with James Marsters, in which he described being terrified of Whedon, mainly due to an instance when Whedon was frustrated with the popularity of Marsters’s character of Spike messing with his plans and physically and verbally taking it out on the actor. There have been many corroborating stories of Whedon being casually cruel on set, on seemingly taking delight in making his fellow show writers cry, and even the man himself admitting to enjoying fostering a hostile work environment during his director commentary of the Avengers. We’ve joked about Whedon’s supposed sadism for years, but that was in regards to how he treated the characters in his stories, not the people helping him make them!

So yeah. That’s the problem with Joss Whedon.

So, do I think that Joss Whedon is somehow some kind of sociopath who lied about his feminist principles and deliberately put on a progressive façade specifically to get into a position of power so he could torment people? No, of course not. I think he was sincere about his beliefs, and I do think he didn’t realize the wrongness of his behavior. But that’s kind of the problem. See, it’s one thing to have kind of a trollishness to your nature, a sort of sadistic side. No one can help that. But when someone with that quality gets put into a position of power in which they are protected by both the higher-ups and their legions of fans, they are allowed to mistreat and continue to mistreat people. And by never suffering any consequences, that sort of toxic behavior becomes internalized, becomes a habit, becomes their moda operandi. And when you’re constantly getting praised as a creative genius and a wonderful feminist voice, any self-criticism just gets wiped away, and you think yourself above reproach, leading to what Joss Whedon became and went on being.

And you know what scares me the most about this particular issue? It’s not that I am a fan of his stories. It’s that I can so easily see myself turning out the same way.

Look, I’ll be upfront about it: I’m kind of a sadist myself. You’ve seen it in my stories, you’ve seen me gloating after a particularly dark plot twist makes my readers freak out. That sort of stuff is fun to me. There’s a reason why I have a much easier time in the dark and violent scenes, because I’m channeling something ugly within me. We all have a dark side, and this is mine.

But UNLIKE Whedon, that doesn’t carry over to how I treat people in real life (unless Monopoly or Mario Party are involved, then it’s fair game). Maybe it’s because I wasn’t given the sort of power and praise he did so early, and I was always taught to be considerate of other people’s feelings, but if I ever find out that I hurt another person or went too fair, I feel TERRIBLE, and it just throws me off all day until I apologize. Even if I don’t notice right away that what I said or did wasn’t cool (autistic, remember?), when it’s pointed out to me and I have some time to think on it, yeah, the guilt is on and I make a point to apologize to whoever I’ve hurt. I’ve even made a point to apologize to members of my family for inconsiderate stuff I said years ago as a little punk kid because it wouldn’t stop bugging me.

So maybe Whedon got too big, too fast. Maybe putting people on these sorts of pedestals, especially progressive ones, is ultimately a bad thing.

So where does this leave us? How are we to treat JK Rowling and Joss Whedon, one who developed a lot of transphobia due to abuse suffered while the other became a toxic individual due to unchecked control and a lack of consequences? Can we still enjoy their stories despite them now being colored by their creators’ falls from grace? Can we separate the art from the artist, or do we have to do a clean split?

Honestly, I feel that has to come down to the individual. I can’t remove the influence Rowling and Whedon have had on me as a storyteller, and I still highly respect both of their talents despite taking major issue with their problems as people. And I’m not going go throw away all of my Harry Potter or Firefly stuff. Because that’s my stuff. It has value to me, it doesn’t represent the issues with their creators, and a lot of it was gifts from people who are dear to me. Though I do think it’ll be a long time before I return to either of their work, as I just don’t have the stomach for it now.

But I will be avoiding any projects they have in the future. I don’t want to put money in their pockets that might go on to support their toxic beliefs or behavior. And as for royalties for their past work that would also support the cast and crew of the Harry Potter films or those who worked on Whedon’s shows who do not deserve to lose money because we don’t want any of that money going to the creators? Er, that question is a little above my paygrade. I don’t know. You’ll have to all decide for yourselves. As for me, I still have a lot of thinking to do.

Regardless though, if I or anyone else is still able to enjoy their work, then it’s important to not divorce what these people said or did from the art they created, even if it makes enjoying that art less fun. It’s important to be critical about what we enjoy, to acknowledge the bad aspects along with the good, and open up discussion of those elements, because that’s what mature adults are supposed to do.

And as for JK Rowling and Joss Whedon, whose stories I love, whose talent I admire, and whose past good work I’ll happily acknowledge, I do hope they both experience some sort of realization and enter into a period of self-examination that leads to them getting help for their issues, for Rowling to get help in coming to terms with her trauma and realizing that she’s wrong about the trans community and a full apology, and for Whedon to also come to terms with his toxic behavior and how he treats people, for him to make no excuse for what he did and sincerely apologize to those he hurt and work on bettering himself, as well as them both examining some of the more problematic tropes still present in their works. Because despite everything, I do feel that they can still be a creative force of good, and it would be a shame if they let themselves self-destruct.

But if not, then if it comes down to choosing between Rowling and the protecting the trans community, if it comes down between choosing between letting Whedon continue to make shows and protecting actors and writers from his abusive behavior, then I know who I’m siding with, and it ain’t the two individuals this whole essay is about. No story, no matter how good, no matter how creative, is worth letting sacrificing vulnerable people in order for it to be made.

#jk rowling #joss whedon #harry potter #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #angel #firefly #justice league #ray fisher #charisma carpenter #kai cole #transphobia tw #abuse tw #toxicity tw #TERF tw #rant #TERFs don't interact I do not want to talk to you #same for abuse apologists

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mikasfangirlmodeison · 5 years

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Avengers Endgame - Let’s untangle the time travel mess! *SPOILERS AHEAD*

EDIT 1: Added some things about the Power Stone and Thanos travelling to the future.

EDIT 2: Changed some things in the diagramms. Added the missing year.

EDIT 3: A little something about Steve. (This is getting longer and longer.)

Shout out to @darth-darling for pointing out some things and telling me the missing year ;)

First things first: I have watched the movie and I loved it! It made me laugh, cry angry and happy - which is what a great movie should cause in the audience. Also I watched it only once so far - I’d like to have watched it at least 3 times by now, but I live in Germany and OV Versions aren’t that often shown in my local cinema - and I can’t stand the synchro. So yeah, they’re will most likely be some mistakes in this and I appreciate it if you guys would point them out so I can correct the diagramms and explanations along the way ;)

Also this will be a long post, but pls stay with me, as you might be less confused after reading this - no guarantees though.

Now the first thing we have to look at is how time travel works in the MCU.

I think this was pretty well explained by the conversation Bruce had with the Ancient One. Time is basically created by the infinity stones and can only be altered by using, removing or doing anything with them.

So while the original time line of 2012 looked like this:

it changed, when Bruce took the time stone from the Ancient One. But as was also explained, changing the past would not result in a change in your future but only in the future of the people in the past. Therefore, a new, diverging timeline was created, where the Time Stone wasn’t in New York anymore - directly effecting the upcoming events - of mostly Dr. Strange’s movie. Now, the original timeline, however, would still be there. So, we’d have two realities: one in which Dr. Strange’s events would happen as in the movie and one where they didn’t - nobody knowing exactly what would occur in this reality. The timeline would now look like this:

However, taking the stone back to it’s original time in the past would basically erase the alternate timeline along with anything that happened in it - only leaving the original timeline as we know it. Looking at the diagramm, this is what’s left:

It basically looks like the first one.

Now, we have to apply this logic to every infinity stone and the events in Endgame.

Therefore, let’s first look at the timeline for when every stone is where it should be. For clarity, I only included the events which were directly important and shown in Endgame - leaving out the rest like Ultron or Guardians 2.

Edit 2: The missing year is added now.

Now, let’s have a look at the events when our time travelling heroes took the stones. I’ll leave the battle of New York for last as it gets the most complicated there.

Let’s start with Thor 2. In 2013 Jane Foster came to Asgard cause she fused with the Aether - which is as we know - the Reality Stone. Taking that from her, Rocket and Thor create one new timeline directly affecting the events of Thor Dark Kingdom. Now they also take Mjölnir with them which you could see as a problem. But with the explanation from above, we know that this only affects the new timeline. In this one there’s no Reality Stone, no Mjölnir and Frigga still dies cause Thor didn’t tell her it was her death day. So, basically everyone’s fucked in this reality. The original one. however, still happens as seen in the movie.

Next is Guardians 1 in 2014. On Morag our heroes knock Star-Lord unconscious and then proceed to take the Power Stone back with them to the future - creating one new timeline. In this new timeline Star-Lord is basically fucked - which will however be reverted once the stone is brought back. However, this timeline brings a new problem, as Thanos and his crew hack into future Nebula’s brain and learn everything - resulting in them coming to the future. I heard people say they were confused about how the Snap would happen if these guys get killed there. But we have to remember that they’re alternate versions, so the original ones are still in the original timeline, doing their thing - which includes the Snap later.

Still 2014, Nat and Clint make their way to Vormir. Events happen as seen in the movie and there’s one alternate timeline in which Gamorra doesn’t die cause the Soul Stone is already taken. Here might lie a problem, but more on that later.

Sometime after Captain America, (as said above if anybody knows the exact year pls tell me) Tony steals the Tesseract, and therefore the Space Stone, from S.H.I.E.L.D. resulting in a timeline where Howard Stark met his own grown-up son. Luckily, he didn’t realize. However, this was only necassary since our heroes “slightly” fucked up in 2012.

Which leads us to the battle of New York in 2012 and the events of the frist Avengers movie. This is where things get complicated as we have 3 Infinity Stones here: Time, Mind and Space (again). If we assume that everytime a stone is taken, a new timeline gets created, we should now have a bunch of them. There should be timelines where only 1 stone is missing, where 2 are missing (depending on which stone was the first one taken) and there’s also 1 timeline where no Infinity Stone is left in New York. And some of them are branching off from the others. I’m too lazy to do the math right now, but yeah, you should get the gist of things being messy here. For convenience, I’m only including the important divergent timelines in the diagramm, which are 2: The first one being a reality where all 3 Infinity Stones are gone and the second one where only one - namely the Tesseract/Space Stone - is missing, cause our favourite trickster god took it. Which is also the reason Tony had to take the detour above in the first place.

Now, let’s take a look at the diagramm after the whole time travelling business. I present to you a whole mess of alternate realities:

Are you still with me? We’re halfway, now it’s time to get those stones back to their right times - more or less erasing the mess we created before.

While everything should theoratically be fine after Steve took the stones back, there are some issues we have to adress. But let’s start with the easy things first. Therefore, I should say that I don’t think it’s important in which order Steve travelled, although it’s save to assume that he brought the Tesseract back last.

Actually, the only EASY thing here is the Reality Stone. Bringing this one back just erases the alternate timeline and there are no other problems. Taking Mjölnir back is basically pointless since it’s alternate Mjölnir and it will get erased together with the other timeline anyways. But well, maybe Steve wanted to carry it around a bit longer.

Next thing I’d like to adress is the Soul Stone because I’ve seen questions about why they couldn’t bring Nat back. This is easily answered when looking at the explanation of the Ancient One again. Bringing back the stones erases the alternate timeline and everything that happened in it after the stone was taken. Now the important thing here is AFTER. Nat died to create the Soul Stone, so before Clint took it with him. Therefore, she died before the alternate timeline was created and there is no way to bring her back by erasing it. Now the real problem here is Gamora. As the Soul Stone was already gone in the alternate timeline she wouldn’t have died in this one. But she theoretically should be dead in the original one. The problem about that is however, that the Soul Stone is already created. Sure, it is in the hands of the guardian, but it is already made so there should be no need to sacrifice another soul. Unless the guardian is just cruel and likes to see that happen - but that would go against his whole purpose. I guess, he could just destroy the stone. But I don’t think it’s that easy to recreate it again following the procedure just the way as before, as it was obviously quite the deal when Thanos destroyed all the Infinity Stones after the Snap. So we might still have an alternate timeline here which wasn’t erased and which might affect Guardians 3 in the future.

Adding to the mystery of Gamora are also the events surrounding the Power Stone. Bringing this one back basically erases the timeline of Thanos and crew coming to the future - these guys basically never existed then - which should include Gamora. This might be underlined by the fact that the Guardians’ ship can’t determine her location at the end. So maybe she really was erased by bringing the stone back. But then again the eventual alternate Gamora from the Soul Stone timeline could still exist somewhere. However, this Gamora wouldn’t have been in the future, but should on the other hand be a part of the Guardians. It’s also unclear whether the snap would have happened in that reality, as Thanos couldn’t have gotten the Soul Stone by sacrificing her. Maybe he killed the Guardian though and took it from him? So yeah, this whole Gamora business really confuses me.

Edit 1: Regarding the confusion about Thanos learning everything and then disappearing into the future, it’s important to know the exact time he hacked into Nebula’s brain. If I recall correctly, the movie showed us this scene between Star-Lord getting knocked out by Rhodey and Nebula and them getting to the Power Stone. But I think it’s supposed to be simultaneously to Rhodey and Nebula taking the stone which would mark it the beginning of the alternate timeline. Resulting in it getting erased by taking the stone back, which means Thanos never getting to know anything. That way everything will happen as it’s depicted in the movies.

Here’s another diagramm for that:

Know that everything connected by a purple line belongs to the alternate timeline and will be erased by putting the Power Stone back.

On another note, if alternate Gamora exists, how would she get to the original timeline? She’d need to travel from another reality, another dimension, to this one. And the only way that MIGHT be possible would be using the Space Stone but oh wait, this one’s either destroyed by Thanos OR taken by Loki - which brings us to problem No. 2.

The whole reason Tony had to travel even further back in time was that Loki got away with the Tesseract after the Batte of New York in 2012, creating some of the confusing alternate timelines. While most of them - including the one where all 3 stones are gone - get erased when taking the Time and Mind Stones back there, we’re still left with that other reality where only the Space Stone is missing. So even if that whole Gamora business turns out that she’s just dead again and nothing happens after that, alternate Loki is still a thing unresolved. Which might be a problem since we’re talking about crazy Battle of New York Loki here and not precious Thor Ragnarok Loki. So this timeline might get fucked later. I hope the MCU does something with this - or else I’ll be very disappointed and slightly mad.

What’s left is the Tesseract Steve has, which he brings back as well - resulting in him staying in the past.

Well, lets look at the timeline after bringing back the stones, before we adress Steve:

As we can see most divergent timelines got erased again - only definitely leaving Loki’s, and additionally maybe Gamora’s alternate timeline. And I sure hope the MCU will do anything with that or else I’ll be very disappointed and slightly mad!

Edit 3: Now let’s adress Steve. While I loved the idea of him staying in the past and finally being able to be happy with Peggy, there are some problems with that.

As we all know, by 1970 she’s already married - to Daniel Sousa as we can see in the Marvel series Agent Carter. Now there are two possibilities:

1. Steve stays in 1970 woos Peggy again, resulting in her getting a divorce. Steve than marries Peggy herself. However, the problem with that is the end scene of Endgame where you can see Peggy and Steve dancing together. In this scene they’re both still fairly young - which shouldn’t be the case for Peggy in 1970. So this possibility is pretty much ruled out.

2. Steve leaves the Tesseract in 1970 and travels back even further to 1945 shorty after the plane crash in Cap 1. He then goes on the promised date with Peggy - resulting in the dancing scene we can see at the end of Endgame. Now, the problem with this is, that this rules out all the events of Agent Carter. Meaning this must be an alternate timeline as well. Now if that’s the case, how exactly is it possible for Steve to be on that bench later in the future as his old self? He would have to travel from his alternate dimension to the original timeline - only possible by using the Space Stone. Even leaving aside the how and when of him doing that, the usage would probably create some further alternate timelines, which would mostly likely result in some sort of mess again. Furthermore, he would have to sit still doing nothing while knowing about Hydra’s actions in the past and Bucky - making him kind of an asshole. Needless to say, I’m not that fond of this possibility either.

Which is why I thought about it some more and came up with a 3rd option. Now this is just my own assumption and there is no proof or anything for it.

But let’s say Steve goes to 1970 and leaves the Tesseract there. He then travels to 1945 and goes on that date with Peggy and they dance. But instead of staying, he leaves and disappears after that, staying in hiding. Now it’s safe to assume that Steve knows about Peggy’s family situation and her later husband Daniel - I mean he hooked up with her niece. As we find out in the movies, Daniel is already dead when Steve wakes up and Peggy is old and sick with Alzheimer’s. Now, the question is: When did Daniel die? For this theory to work out his death must have been a while before Peggy becoming ill. It would then be possible for Steve to return to Peggy after Daniel’s death, helping her through her time of grieve and marrying her way later - maybe even after her illness broke out. Of course, Steve would still be an asshole for letting things happen with Hydra and Bucky, but we shouldn’t forget that he knows it wouldn’t change anything in the future. And at least we wouldn’t have any more alternate timelines.

Let’s incorporate this option into our diagramm from before:

Now, I’m at the end! I hope I could get rid of some of your confusion - writing this surely helped me at least. As said before, I’d really appreciate you pointing out mistakes and the like. And thanks for reading this hella long post!

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thelightofthingshopedfor · 5 years

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@kiwimeringue replied to your post “I know it’s generally rude and very unwise to reply to a fandom...”

ok I'm super curious now, feel free to message me if you want to talk about it all stealthy-like~

@veliseraptor replied to your post “I know it’s generally rude and very unwise to reply to a fandom...”

i'm so curious

apparently I did want to talk about it, because this got looooong (also please do not add more discourse to this post, it’s probably kind of shitty of me but I don’t super want to have a dialogue about it, I just want to barf out my thoughts and defend my own faves on my own post, so if you want to argue with me I would really rather you didn’t and just made your own post instead)

(I also only just realized that I only put “tony stark negative” and “tony stark critical” in the tags, not anywhere before the cut, so here’s your warning now if you didn’t see the tags that this is me being frustrated with a lot things about how Tony is written)

I can't find the actual post now to screenshot or link because I just came across it on my dash, got annoyed, scrolled past, and then made my post when I couldn't stop grumpily thinking about it (so at this point I also don't remember who the OP was or who reblogged it onto my dash, which is probably just as well), but the gist was that almost all MCU title characters have storylines establishing that they're wrong about something and they show growth by accepting that and working to improve...except Steve, who never acknowledges that he might ever be wrong about anything, with the implication that this makes him a bad, self-righteous character who is basically incapable of growth. several other characters--Tony, Thor, Dr. Strange, Peter Parker--were mentioned, but the state of fandom discourse makes me assume any Steve-negative post exists at least in part to show how much better Tony is, which...may not always be a fair assumption on my part, but I do think it's fair to say that's still a relevant context. and of course Steve is one of my favorite characters, so anything even mildly Steve-negative puts me at least somewhat on the defensive right away, which again is not necessarily fair. (the other post that’s already sitting in my notes is about Ragnarok, which is probably even less surprising.)

anyway the post made me grumpy to begin with and then doubly so because I couldn't think of a good way to refute it aside from "yeah well maybe Steve's just a better person than your faves and he doesn't need a whole character arc about realizing he's been an asshole and needs to change because he didn't start out as an asshole to begin with, bet you didn't think of that huh" which is of course VERY unhelpful. but then I started thinking about how I don't think OP is right about the changed characters to begin with, given that a) it's not really fair to compare a character who's only had one solo movie (Dr. Strange) with characters who've had more, b) Spider-Man is kind of an edge case because he's a teenager and a lot of the problems in his movies stem from a combination of him being a fucking teenager and Tony dumping him with tons of dangerous tech that he doesn't have the training or adult impulse control to use safely and then blaming him when disaster inevitably results, and c) the characters who have had multiple movies and arcs focused on realizing they were wrong about something (just Thor and Tony, really) are...maybe not actually great examples because like 75% of that character development seems to reset after each movie and, actually, the narrative still operates under the premise that these characters are basically right even if some other characters don't agree. like...I mean, the only lessons Thor really, consistently seems to learn are "humans are at least not totally worthless (but lbr they're mostly silly and cute)" and "Odin is extremely wise and probably right about almost everything despite mountains of evidence--that grow with every single film he's in--to the contrary".

and Tony, well--yeah, that's his arc, in theory, and in theory I don't have a problem with flawed characters who keep making the same mistakes because let's face it, that's a very human thing to do. but with posts like this, it's like...you're effectively arguing that he doesn't really make mistakes overall, though, because it’s really just an opportunity for growth? and that when he does, the narrative shows he's wrong, he admits he's wrong, and he makes consistent efforts to change? which...again, obviously I have my own biases, but I have to see this as a weird interpretation because he's basically been the main character of the entire MCU thus far, which means he's likely to get sympathetic treatment and justification from the narrative even if he's ostensibly being called out for fucking up, and that's something I've definitely seen. his entire first movie is about him realizing how wrong he was and working to do better, definitely, but he ends up being his own worst enemy half the time and other people suffer for it. like...he wants to protect the world, okay, that's a reasonable goal. you can argue that the vision Wanda gave him made things worse, and that's possible, but I don't know how much that might be true given that I'm pretty sure he was working on Ultron before that too (and her mind-magic mostly seemed to work by emphasizing something that was already there, not planting new ideas). so he ends up creating a murderbot, with good intentions but he still does it and he keeps it secret from the other Avengers, and now-sentient murderbot immediately reaches the conclusion that humanity is awful and they won't need protecting if they're all gone, and everything breaks very bad, and then Tony...basically does the exact same thing again, without telling anybody else, in hopes that it'll work out better this time because JARVIS? and it does but that seems like mostly luck? and everybody manages to defeat the murderbot, barely, but a not-insignificant number of civilians die anyway because that tends to happen when a sentient murderbot goes on a rampage, and Tony feels really guilty about this when it's shoved in his face, so he deals with his guilt by kind of...spreading it around and allowing the possibility of other major problems down the line so they can hand over some of that responsibility and he can feel less guilty. (that’s not the most charitable interpretation, yeah, but I also don’t think it’s an unreasonable one, based on what’s there in the text.) and then of course things blow up and other problems get dragged in and it's a huge mess and half the Avengers are fugitives, and the general consensus sort of seems to be that nobody was completely right or completely wrong but Steve is the only one who actually apologizes for any of it (no wait, I guess Wanda and Vision apologized but just to each other) and Rhodey reinforces the idea that the Accords were a good idea with no major drawbacks...and then Thanos shows up and things get SO VERY MUCH worse.

and Tony is once again stricken with grief and guilt (not to mention half dead), so lashing out at Steve is understandable, but what he actually says is basically that this is all Steve's fault because he wasn't there (even though he immediately sent Tony that phone, which means Tony could have contacted him at any time but hesitated to do so even when monsters were basically falling from the sky), and he was right about the Accords and Ultron even if the latter didn't work out so well in ways that probably could have been predicted, and...that's what we're left with. nobody else has a meaningful opportunity to say "now hold on a second, you cannot possibly be arguing both for accountability and for your right to decide for the entire world that exchanging some freedom for some potential security is a good trade, and also how are you saying you were essentially right about Ultron when Ultron is what kicked off the desire for the Accords" or, like, anything. (does the world need a security blanket? going by the evidence...yeah, probably? but again. Tony. you tried that and you made a sentient murderbot instead so like, your track record is not great!!)

and then it all culminates with Tony sacrificing himself to save the universe, which I do at least think was a climactic, thematically resonant send-off for such a major character--for the final time, in the most final possible of ways, he reaches a point where there's no more clever tricks and he reacts by selflessly taking the entirety of the consequences onto himself. I can't say I'm happy with it, because I'm not a fan of character death in general even when it doesn't involve my top faves, and it absolutely would have been possible for the filmmakers to keep him alive if they hadn't gone into this with the specific intention of ending Tony's arc with his death. (ditto on all the other major character deaths, which is a big part about why they make me mad--none of them really, honestly had to happen, some even less than others.) but regardless of my feelings on whether it had to happen, it's inarguable that his entire arc from Iron Man to Endgame is that of a brilliant but selfish manchild who changes and grows until he doesn't hesitate to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the entire universe.

BUT THEN THERE'S SPIDER-MAN AGAIN.

spoilers if you haven't seen Spider-Man: Far From Home but like, the entire conflict of that movie was based on two major things: a bunch of disgruntled Stark Industries employees, at least some of whom had to have legitimate, recent grievances (and frankly that whole mess demonstrates--among other things--that Stark Industries must have unforgivably lax security around its arsenal of world-ending weapons); and Tony's decision at some point to essentially REMAKE ULTRON AND THEN DUMP THAT RESPONSIBILITY ON A FUCKING TEENAGER WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE WAY OF WARNINGS, TRAINING, OVERSIGHT, OR EVEN BASIC FAILSAFES, like holy shit my computer spends more time making sure I definitely want to delete that file than EDITH does about confirming that yes this random teenager is a legitimate target for IMMEDIATE DEATH. all the other adults involved in this clusterfuck bear a good share of the responsibility for this too, given that not one of them ever seemed to think either "hey, maybe saddling a smart and very good but basically normal sixteen-year-old boy with the power and responsibility (but not the resources or experience) of a grown-ass adult with unlimited resources is not the smartest move here, and yelling at him when he inevitably fucks up this power and responsibility we dumped on him with no training whatsoever is not actually fair or reasonable" or even "maybe before giving a piece of massively powerful and dangerous tech to a sixteen-year-old boy, we should spend at least 15 minutes going over the device's major functions and how to not accidentally kill someone, even if we figure things like ethics and privacy rights and knowing when not to use this tech aren't that important".

but, but, Tony still made the decision to give it to him, and he did so without building in any precautions at all, which is the exact same thing he did in CW/Homecoming with Peter's new suit (yes, the Training Wheels protocol was a good step, but the fact that it could just be turned off that easily--and that Tony isn't shown even trying to tell Peter to use the training programs or safely practice with the suit--shows that it really, really wasn't good enough) except even worse because EDITH is about 100 times more invasive and destructive than the suit. and he pretty much scolded Peter in Homecoming for getting ahead of himself, but then the second Peter did well in a bad situation Tony was right back to making this teenager an official Avenger and giving him all this power and responsibility he'd just decided Peter hadn't really earned, and Peter turned him down because at that point he had a better idea of his own limits and need for growth than Tony did, and then!! in what must have been one of his last acts alive!! Tony dumped an even bigger, more dangerous power/responsibility combo on him!!! way way bigger than the one he'd already turned down and maturely decided he wasn't yet experienced enough to handle!!! without even giving him a chance to say no!!!! and did not take any of that (or the mess with Ultron and the lessons he theoretically learned there, or the mess with the Accords and the lessons he theoretically learned there, or for that matter the lessons he theoretically learned in his three solo movies about treating his employees well and making sure he knows exactly what his company is doing at all times) into account when designing it, handing it off to other adults who also should have been more responsible about it, and leaving it to a teenager against that teenager's stated wishes, thereby ensuring that this teenager will follow Tony's footsteps in being unable to have a normal life!!!!!

...................but, okay, the point of the original post was that Steve is generally deemed to be Always Right and therefore he never has to change, and that makes him unrelatable at best and also not a great character. which...well, that's part of the point, that's why he was picked for Project Rebirth in the first place because he's a good dude dedicated to doing what's right; even before the serum, he was literally willing to die to protect a few people he barely knew (the grenade scene, remember). he was already starting from a point of selflessness and an understanding of responsibility that the others lacked, so it would be tough to give him a similar character arc without undermining or ignoring the whole point of the character. sure, though, even a character like Steve is imperfect and human and bound to be wrong sometimes, and when that happens he should acknowledge he was wrong and take steps to make amends, and if he's never shown doing any of that, it's true that it's not great even if part of the issue is that he's never really put in a position to do so.

except, except DID YOU ALL COMPLETELY FORGET THE ENDING OF CIVIL WAR

like, sure, if what you wanted was to hear Steve say "I was wrong about everything and Tony was right about everything, and I will humbly submit to whatever you think is best regardless of my own convictions, my very good reasons for having those convictions, and my personal concerns for my friends, or at the very least I will humbly ask for forgiveness and accept whatever you throw at me, because Tony Was Right About Everything," then...yeah, I'm sure it was a disappointment, especially if you figure Tony was right about the Accords and at least the intentions behind Ultron. it's true Steve doesn't really address any of that, which indicates he definitely still believes he’s right about those parts. but...look, the last time he saw Tony, he was fighting to save his lifelong friend from being murdered from a crime he didn't necessarily remember and really wasn't responsible for. once again I don't blame Tony for reacting emotionally and lashing out at the nearest targets instead of the people who were really at fault, but that doesn't change the facts of the situation, which are, Steve was fighting to save Bucky's life. and when he did that by incapacitating Tony, he didn't go any further; he took Bucky and left. and then he almost immediately sent Tony a letter of apology and a means of contacting him in return if an emergency comes up--and again, yes, his apology wasn't "I'm sorry for everything because I was wrong about everything," but it was a genuine, compassionate apology for the ways he'd hurt Tony even if his intentions were basically good. (this of course assumes that he really did know for a fact that Bucky killed the Starks and consciously chose to hide the knowledge from Tony, and frankly I'm not convinced that's true, but it's not really the issue here.) honestly, I thought his letter was kind of funny because it so closely followed the format of the apology-note meme--you know, "I was trying to do X, but I see now that I hurt you because Y" and everything. he didn't apologize for opposing the Accords or protecting Bucky or fighting in Germany so he could get to Siberia in time to stop what he had every reason to believe was a much bigger threat, because all those actions stemmed directly from his convictions and sense of morality and he wouldn't be Steve Rogers or Captain America if he was willing to compromise his most foundational convictions--but he absolutely did apologize for hurting Tony and recognized that he'd made at least one big mistake where Tony was concerned.

Tony...didn't. even before doubling down on the Accords and Ultron, I don't think he ever really said, hey, at least some of this was my bad; most of what he said boiled down to "okay this situation isn't ideal but I'm sure if I throw more money at it things will work out fine, more or less". in the Raft and in Siberia he got close to saying that maybe he'd been wrong about a few things, but that all went out the window pretty quick, and I don't think there's ever a point where he--just for instance--at least apologizes for trying very very hard to kill Bucky. and by Endgame, apparently he’s pretty much walked back what little he did kinda sorta think he was maybe wrong about. so.

that's...basically what I've got, OP’s interpretation is wrong because their facts are actually wrong and I was apparently annoyed enough to barf out all these words when I could’ve been doing anything else, the end

#tony stark critical #tony stark negative #I mean I think I'm being reasonably fair here but just to be safe #conversations #veliseraptor #kiwimeringue #marvel cinematic universe #steve rogers #meta #my meta #captain america: civil war #avengers: endgame #spider-man: homecoming #spider-man: far from home #avengers: age of ultron #avengers: infinity war

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imeugene · 5 years

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NKTLDK/FILM ENTRY #5

So “Nozomi Killed the Last Divine Kibou” is done. Post-production work is complete. The only thing thing left is some papers that need to be signed for liability and right to use image yaddy yaddy yadda ireallyneedtogetsomeoneelsetodothepaperworkformeeventually-type things that I dread but it’s part of the game so I’m gonna game it but something I’ve been experimenting with is the use of test audience to gauge reactions.

The hardest thing for me is to view the project objectively. I know every single nuance designed into the film. I know the story inside out, from character motivation to their often unsaid backstory, there is literally no one who knows this movie better than I do and thats simply cause the majority of the design of the project was by me. I won’t say entirety though, each actor brings their own interpretation of their role and the story and their acting is the end result of that. They’ll ask you what you think of a take and I look at it objectively and simply judge whether it works or not. They may feel like they could’ve done better but that’s simply the nature of art. There’s a lot of things about this one I feel could’ve been done better but oh well. Some of the actors and crew members have viewed the final project*. Even though I value their opinions of the short film, I don’t rely on them in the entirety because like me, they simply know too much so that’s where the test audiences come from.

Once again I called on a wide variety of people of people to view it. Some are the type that’d call themselves cinephiles, others think Avengers is the best movie ever and everyone in between. My goal was to create a project that has some artistic basis but at the same time wide reach. Someone who has mastered that is Christopher Nolan. His movies are very approachable and creative but it’s not obsessed with being so artistic that it loses viewers. It’s probably why he is one of the few directors today whose name alone will sell movie tickets, it’s why he’s able to get such massive funding for his original projects when every other studio is trying to play it safe with sequels and remakes that already have a following. I wanted to do just that. It’s a samurai/ninja type action movie and honestly who doesn’t like that?!

It is artsy. It’s black and white. I’m pretty sure I revealed it in a previous post but it’s a product of technical error than a creative decision which is actually the most common thing people who don’t do art don’t know about art. I’m ok with it. The story is a lot more vague than I wanted it to be. This is due to certain scenes not running as long as I hoped and cutting down lines. A lot of expository lines were cut and my biggest worry was that it may have been too much. I don’t want people to watch it and think “ok…” in a legit way, I hope that is arouses question and thought but about the themes and messages involved, not the entirety of the movie itself. I don’t want it to be another nonsensical art movie and I just label it “abstract”. Lines were cut, some were forgotten and I overviewed it. Filming is over so I have to work with what I got. It’s not exactly the project I imagined when I was writing the script and designing the process but it’s close enough. That’s just the process but does it stay true to what it was about. I ramble sometimes (everyone who reads this blog knows) and my ADD mind makes it hard to follow, I don’t want this movie to be a visual rambling. Once again the test audience is the only way I know if it’s successful.

The idea is that they give me honest feedback and if enough complaints were made about a certain aspect of the movie, than that aspect is a weakness. I then determine if I can fix it or not. What I showed was the most polished version of the movie. The actor and crew feedback definitely had some common points of criticism and there were small changes made here and there and suggestions were implemented. What we’ll call the control group saw was what I felt was ready to be pushed out as a final product. Asking whether it’s good or not is a terrible question in my opinion. Number one even if you put out the worst thing, people will say it’s good not to crush your feeling. Which is good cause it just means people aren’t that terrible but as a way to systematically try to evaluate the project it’s awful. The most important pieces of information to me was the specific feedback.

Firstly I asked everyone “Did they get it?” and the answers were interesting. Some people got the gist of the story but were lost in the specifics. Others implemented their own assumptions to fill in those lost spaces. Others didn’t even care for the specifics and just understood it for the bigger picture. Everyone seems to get the general idea of the movie which is a relief because I really tried to create something that was little on expositions and more on a mood. Of course the story has to be understood to attain the right mood I was going for so the fact that as minimalistic the movie is at times, it worked in that aspect.

Because a lot of the plot based elements of the story didn’t have proper exposition, I didn’t know if the non-linear storytelling method would be confusing. I tried to ante up on visual storytelling with this one but I’m still very unexperienced when it comes to proper cinematic storytelling. I work hard and study it because it’s what I love to do but it’s all theory until you give it form. This is where things got kind of weird. It seems that some people got certain key story elements and others didn’t but it’s not consistent in what they got and what they didn’t get. Like the first half of the movie was confusing to some but to others the last half. Both parties were right on their assumptions when I asked them so I know the information was there but it seemed like there is a lot of ambiguity in the story where no one is able to catch all of it. I don’t think anyone understood all the elements. Even weirder is that it doesn’t seem to matter somehow? In my personal understanding of the project, I thought that all of what I construed as the basic points of the movie would have to be understood for it to be enjoyable and feel like a coherent story but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The basic idea/message/theme is well understood and any ambiguity doesn’t seem like a let down as far as the control group perceived but just another mystery in an already rather vague story. Which is unexpected.

There were changes made to the short due to the control group’s feedback which kind of gives me a bit more confidence in the group and myself as a filmmaker. There wasn’t any common point of criticism or trend that warranted anymore change so that’s that. It’s done. This week I really need to get the paperwork done and that’s the biggest hassle. Some people might get mad that they got they got filmed but have zero screen time.. but it is what it is. They got compensated. The next project has started but it might happen slow or quick, I don’t know.

*Most of the actors and crew haven’t seen the test screen even though it’s online because I’d rather them experience it in the proper theatre format than some computer screen.

#shortfilms #nktldk #cosjournal #filmmaking

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kindly-whisper-norbury · 6 years

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Regarding Loki in Avengers 4…

There are SPOILERS ahead for Avengers Infinity War, so please don’t read on unless you have already seen the movie, or else don’t mind being spoiled.

Still here? Alrighty, then. I just put on my reading glasses, so you know it is going to be a long one. And please forgive me if the “read more” doesn’t work… Tumblr Mobile is weird that way.

I was driving home from dropping my daughter off at work, and I was listening to some random songs, and one came on (which I will name at the end of this post) and it just threw an image into my head that I could not shake. But I don’t think that I would actually be able to fic it, so I am just going to put the thought out there for y'all to do with as you will.

The main gist of it is that there are mystical, scientific, and spiritual aspects within the MCU, and we have pretty much come to expect them to work in harmony. And in that respect, I was thinking what if the Stones also have their own personalities and thoughts, and are essentially living beings in their own right? I was thinking that they do not usually work together because they choose not to—because they know what will happen if they do—but the Gauntlet basically forced them to. It enslaved them, and made them do things that were against their nature.

What if in A4, the stones seek out the remaining Avengers to try and set things right? And after they succeed, and all the dust-people are returned to themselves, the Stones prepare to go their separate ways… but before they do, they decide to work together one last time and give gifts to those that helped to right the wrongs that Thanos forced them to perform.

They give nothing of cosmic or universe-shattering import, but small things. Little rewards, in the grand scheme of things, and they will reverse no deaths (something the Time Stone scolds Strange for doing). However, there are loopholes. Vision is brought back as an actual flesh-and-blood man by the combined efforts of the Mind and Reality stones, for example, because he was never actually “alive” to begin with, and part of his psyche still resided within Mind.

But they choose the gifts on their own, and nothing is outright asked for. When they come to Thor, they look into his mind and they see how much he has lost. His family, his friends, his home, his throne. What could they do for him? They see his parents in his thoughts, but even if the Stones were willing to bring them back, they would not do so because Thor believes they are happy together now in Valhalla.

Loki, though… when Thor thinks of Loki, he does not know where he might be. He died a warrior’s death, and he was of Asgard, but he was not Aesir. Would a Frost Giant be allowed in Valhalla? Was he now with Odin and Frigga and all the other Asgardians that lost their lives with honor? Or is he somewhere else? Is he alone?

The Stones tell him that Loki is not in Valhalla, and the news breaks Thor’s heart. They tell him then that he is not in Valhalla because he is not dead. Thor is dumbstruck. He thinks that maybe Loki lied again, that he faked it. But they tell him that no, he didn’t. Nor did he fake it either when he fell from the Bifrost or when he was stabbed by the Kursed.

His body protected itself both times. The first time, he was in the cold deep of space—an environment that a Frost Giant embraces. He fell through space until he slept, and when he awoke he was in Thanos’s clutches. Thanos knew what he was, knew how to make him do what he wanted. He tortured him with heat… endless, scorching heat. But Loki’s magic protected him, protected his heart and mind with a layer of ice. Yet still, Thanos broke him, and Loki had no choice but to do as he had been told.

On Svartalfheim, after he was stabbed, Loki’s magic again protected him. It again locked his mind and heart in ice, and he healed. When he awoke there, he was confused, afraid. He did not know where Thor had gone, and so Loki returned to Asgard. He wished at that moment only to speak to Odin, to find out what Odin would think of losing him. But Odin saw through the illusion, and Loki felt he had no choice but to banish him, or else again go into exile.

And now, Loki’s magic protects him once more. He is in the deep of space, frozen and barely alive—but he is broken, too far-gone to survive for long. He will not heal this time… but for the moment, he still lives. And with that, the Stones know what to give to the King of Asgard.

The Space Stone reaches out, brings Loki to Thor’s side. Loki is unconscious, and is now Jotun—his skin is blue and icy-cold. But here on the surface of the Earth, with the sun on him, he begins to warm. His magic begins to break down, and he starts to die. Thor begs the Stones to stop his death, and the Time Stone envelopes Loki, stopping him at the moment just before he passes away completely.

Time then begins to reverse for Loki. He fades and flashes back, grows younger and younger. Again, Thor asks the Stones to stop—but by the time they do, Loki is an infant. He begins to cry, and Thor kneels beside the naked blue child. They look to one another, and Thor touches his face. Like when Odin first held Loki as a baby, the child changes. He has looked into his brother’s mind, and has seen himself as Thor remembered him, and had made himself in that image.

Thor removes his cloak and covers the baby, then he looks to the Stones and asks if Loki will remember his life from before. They tell him that no, he won’t, because infants seldom hold to memories. The Stones sense that Thor does not want Loki to forget everything, and so the Time Stone again wraps its influence around the prince. He ages again, and when he reaches what for humans would be mid-adolescence, the Stone releases him. The now-teenage Loki looks to Thor, who asks him if he remembers anything, and Loki says no—then he asks Thor who he is.

Thor tells him that they are brothers, then he places their brows together, and he tells him that he will remember for both of them. At once, memories flash in both Loki and Thor’s minds. Loki sees them as they were—both the happy times and the times when they fought; he sees the betrayals and the sacrifices; he sees the years go by in an instant, and he does not like everything that he sees.

Thor asks him once more if he remembers, because he felt the memories, as well. Loki tells him, “only pieces”. Loki asks Thor if he can forgive him for all the mistakes he made; and Thor asks Loki to do the same for him. Loki looks to the sky and smiles at the sun.

And on and on life goes, and if I can step out of the wandering thoughts for a moment and to what the future would hold…

Thor would then become Loki’s guardian and teach him the history of their people, and all of the other Avengers would play a part in his life. For example (and assuming all these people survive/return): Doctor Strange and Wanda would guide him through re-learning the mystical arts, Clint would help to administer the right kind of discipline (including self-discipline), Natasha would re-teach him combat arts, Steve would give a living example of how to live life honorably, he would learn from Bruce how to control his more violent impulses, he would find in Tony a kindred-spirit to speak to about the trauma they have gone through, T'Challa would teach him how to be a good leader, Vision would be right there with him in learning how to be “human”, Bucky would spend time with him and speak about how best to forgive themselves for the mistakes they made (even if some of those mistakes were not of their own making, but were forced upon them), and Rhody and Sam would both teach him different aspects of the military (such as bearing, and how and when to obey—or creatively disobey—the rules).

He would not only be surrounded by adults, though, as he would have peers in Peter and Shuri; as well as more “regular” people, such as Harley Keener, Cassie Lang, Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones, and Cooper and Lila Barton.

And I know this is all very far-fetched, and dripping with wishful-thinking… but what if, guys… what if even part of this happens? What if we do get Loki back, but a younger Loki? One that made the mistakes, that remembers them… but now feels that there is a chance to at least change something for the better? The things he did were not erased—they are still there. He still remembers them, but they are not who he is. They never were, but now he realizes that. What if he gets a second chance?

For the record, the song that got his thought-train rolling was “I’ll Keep You Safe” by Sleeping At Last… but now I am working on a full-fledged playlist to go along with it. Because even if this doesn’t happen (and I doubt it will), in some reality of this multi-verse I am sure it could.

#avengers infinity war #infinity war #infinity war spoilers #loki #kid loki #marvel #whisper posts stuff #whisper talks about avengers 4

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How a Forgotten Avengers Cartoon Predicted MCU Phase 4

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While it doesn’t quite stack up to its DC counterpart, the Marvel Animated Universe stretched through the ’90s and had some real bangers. Much like the modern cinematic universe, various cartoons were connected as one giant piece of continuity. X-Men and Spider-Man were the biggest hits while Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and others had less of an impact. The closest thing they had to a climactic culmination was the Secret Wars adaptation near the end of Spider-Man’s final season. After that, they kind of limped into oblivion with a few shows that didn’t catch on.

That leads to the biggest difference between the Marvel Animated Universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When it came to the latter, the real beginning came from the Avengers brand name. Nick Fury appearing at the end of Iron Man to discuss the Avengers Initiative was a sign of what these movies were promising while the first Avengers movie was not only a finish line to the movies before it, but it was also the moment that spring-boarded Marvel’s film universe into the stratosphere.

But for the Marvel Animated Universe? Avengers was the harbinger for the end.

Avengers: United They Stand first aired in late October 1999 and ended in late February 2000. It was the final Marvel animated show in this continuity to be produced and start airing, though technically Spider-Man Unlimited was the last one to air any episodes whatsoever. The quick version is that Fox aired three episodes of Spider-Man Unlimited, it bombed hard in the ratings, they shelved it, and then over a year later decided, “Listen, we have ten more episodes of this on our hands. Let’s just air it already.”

Either way, the double-punch of this Avengers cartoon and the most un-Spider-Man show possible with Spider-Man in the title ended the Marvel Animated Universe. These came shortly after Silver Surfer failed to catch on, giving us three Marvel cartoons that only went thirteen episodes before getting the axe.

It’s fortunate that Avengers: United They Stand is available on Disney+ as for the first time in its existence, the show is actually relevant! Now don’t get me wrong. It’s still not a very GOOD show. I’m not going to treat it like some lost gem. Still, people need content to watch in this lengthy pandemic and this Avengers cartoon is a great way to get ready for MCU Phase 4.

So put on your transforming armor and let’s get this list started!

THE NEXT PHASE OF AVENGERS

One of the reasons the show existed was to follow suit and compete with Batman Beyond. Although it really isn’t well-explained, Avengers: United They Stand is supposed to take place years after the other animated Marvel shows. One of the showrunners once claimed it was 25 years later and that only works if Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye have really good genes, but sure. It’s [some years] in the future.

Even though there had barely been any mention of the Avengers before this show – and keep in mind, we had freaking Force Works as a regular part of Iron Man – the time jump allows for the team to be something that may have already peaked. This Avengers cartoon is infamous for its bizarre intro where the team poses together, the shot pans up to show Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, and it cuts away after a split second. For whatever reason, these guys weren’t allowed to be starring characters on the show, so it played them up as the founders and the shoes that this team needed to fill.

For the record, while Captain America and Iron Man each showed up for an episode, Thor never did.

The basic gist of the show is, “You know how Cap, Iron Man, and Thor are the Big Three of the Avengers? Well, their time has passed. Now you have to deal with Wonder Man and Wasp. Sorry.” There are even shots in the mansion that show paintings of former team members like Hulk, Beast, and Quicksilver.

Yes, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were on different rosters. Then again, she was in Force Works and he was in X-Factor. The lack of codependency between the two is probably way healthier than how they are in other Marvel continuities.

Getting back to the point, Phase 4 of the MCU is at a time when the classic Avengers have moved on. Iron Man and Black Widow are dead. Captain America is an old man. Thor is doing space stuff. Hawkeye is about to retire. Scarlet Witch is…busy.

The MCU has a void due to the big question mark of what the Avengers even are right now. And being 13 years in, we’re due to get the likes of Tigra thrown in at some point. The MCU is naturally what the Avengers cartoon was unnaturally.

WANDAVISION ORIGINS

The closest thing Avengers: United They Stand has to a main villain is Ultron, which is good for someone checking the series out for the first time as he’s familiar enough from his movie appearance. Unfortunately, he’s pretty one-dimensional and he talks just like the “Powered by The Cheat” version of Strong Bad. Say what you will about the James Spader version of the character in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but at least he had his moments of being intimidating.

The opening two-parter has Ultron create Vision as his ultimate killing machine and sends him after the Avengers. Vision proceeds to zap Wonder Man into a coma, gets overwhelmed by the Avengers, and is reprogrammed with Wonder Man’s brainwaves as the best available option of keeping Wonder Man alive in some way. Vision’s new personality overrides Ultron’s programming and he joins the Avengers, all while Ultron captures the comatose Wonder Man and holds onto him for much of the series.

Wonder Man is essentially supposed to be the Morph of the Avengers cartoon, but he can’t go five minutes without looking like a gigantic doofus and you get the idea that the Avengers are just better off without him.

X-Men: The Animated Series – The Worst of Charles Xavier

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Since Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man already had a thing brewing between them, those feelings continue on in Vision. He spends the series gradually coming to terms with his romantic interest in Wanda. She never really picks up on it, nor does she entertain the idea of getting down with a mechanical man, but it’s definitely a love triangle we’re supposed to be invested in that would supposedly be developed more in the hypothetical second season.

Speaking of Vision, it is pretty funny how he’s easily the most powerful member of the team and he tends to politely hang out in the background so the writers can ignore his powers for the sake of the guy who shoots arrows, the guy who can fly, and the lady who does cat stuff. At least in the Atlantis episode they’re able to get around it by saying the lack of direct sunlight is causing him to fade.

Lastly, there’s one episode based around Agatha Harkness and Salem’s Seven. I’m not saying you should expect to see a delightful, sass-filled Kathryn Hahn performance, but it’s a hell of a thing seeing her in cartoon form and knowing the glow-up awaiting that witch in a couple decades.

FALCON THE REPLACEMENT

From the opening episode, the other new character to join the team (albeit without trying to kill the others beforehand) is Falcon. This is because unlike Hawkeye, Falcon is able to rescue the President of the United States from Vision’s rampage. What’s the President’s name? No idea. The show never gets around to telling us. Even Vision’s robot POV screen just calls him “President.”

Falcon – accompanied by his occasionally-green lips – is the closest thing the series has to a down-to-earth character. In other words, there are TWO moments where we see him doing normal guy things by hanging out with his nephew in public. We never do get to see Hawkeye buying groceries or Tigra returning library books or any other non-superhero stuff.

Unfortunately, despite his introduction to the series, Falcon doesn’t come off as the main character like he probably should. He fades in importance and even when Captain America pops in for an episode, they don’t spend any effort in building up the world’s most patriotic bromance. It’s instead about Hank Pym moping that he’ll never be as cool as Captain America.

To be fair, I’d also be moping about that if I was Hank Pym. I’m moping about that right now!

ANT-MAN VS. KANG THE CONQUEROR

Okay, so they didn’t really pair up Captain America with the Falcon. That’s okay, because we do get to see an episode dedicated to Ant-Man vs. Kang the Conqueror! Granted, it’s Hank Pym and not Scott Lang, but it’s still a nice enough prelude to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania!

One of the big drawbacks of Avengers: United They Stand is that the costume designs are outright terrible. The Avengers themselves have base costumes and various forms of armor depending on what kind of adventures they’re getting into (underwater, arctic weather, space, etc.). The villains, for the most part, also suffer from ugly designs.

As Kang the Conqueror has always looked hideous, his animated appearance is at worst a lateral move.

He gets his own episode, where it appears that he ruled (will rule?) the distant future, only to be kicked out of that era and the only way he can get back is with a powerful obelisk. The Avengers get their hands on the obelisk and Kang decides to threaten New York City to get it back.

Although he’s dealing with someone from centuries ahead, it’s all up to Ant-Man to outsmart him, giving us one of the better episodes of the show. Though it does include the incredibly awkward moment where Pym has to pretend that he’s all right with allowing slavery to happen while arguing with Falcon.

HAWKEYE AND THE SWORDSMAN

Watching animated Hawkeye, it really drives home how blessed we all were to get the X-Men: The Animated Series version of Wolverine. Logan was a ticking time bomb and gruff, but he also came off as badass, sympathetic, and genuinely likeable uncle figure. He’s someone you’d want to hang out and get a beer with.

Hawkeye on Avengers: United They Stand tries to be Wolverine, but is just a whiny asshole. You’d tell him good morning and he’d get in your face and clench his fists while wondering what you mean by that. He’s just the worst.

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By Vinny Murphy

But hey, Hawkeye is getting his own Disney+ show down the line and if there’s anything to prepare you for wanting to see Clint pass the torch-arrow and disappear forever, it’s this!

He does get one episode where he leaves the Avengers and reconnects with his old mentor the Swordsman. While Hawkeye is terrible here, Swordsman comes off as one of the more charming and likeable characters in the whole series. Tony Dalton is set to play him on the Disney+ show, and I welcome that.

BARON ZEMO MAKES HIS PLAY

The MCU already gave us Helmut Zemo back in Captain America: Civil War, but he was a bit restrained and sat on the sidelines while we focused on the hero vs. hero fights, Black Panther, Spider-Man, and Chris Evans’ biceps during that helicopter scene. It’s in Falcon and the Winter Soldier that we’ll get to see him in his crazy comic book glory, wearing his purple sock mask and trying a little louder to destroy superhero society.

The episode of Avengers with Captain America is all about the Masters of Evil. It’s made up of your usual villain B-listers like Absorbing Man, Moonstone, Tiger Shark, etc. Leading them is, of course, Baron Zemo, who is fairly comic accurate compared to most other characters.

The episode for the most part doesn’t work because the Masters of Evil is a villain team-up group when we haven’t even been introduced to these villains ahead of time (unless you count Absorbing Man popping up in the Incredible Hulk cartoon). They’re no Secret Society of Supervillains, is what I’m saying.

Still, other than the conflict of who should be leading the Avengers between Cap and Ant-Man, the big rivalry here is Cap and Zemo. Granted, Falcon vs. Zemo would be more fitting these days, but the classic clash will have to do. Plus Zemo blames Cap for a death in his family, which goes well with the MCU version of Zemo if you ignore that the live-action Zemo mourns his innocent wife and kids while the cartoon version mourns his Nazi war criminal dad.

The Masters of Evil – especially with Moonstone there – is a stepping stone to Thunderbolts and there’s a chance we might get that plot in the MCU sooner than later, hopefully with Zemo involved.

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Speaking of villain team-ups, the finale dealt with the Avengers fighting the Zodiac. Yeah, we…we can go a few more phases before the MCU brings in Zodiac. That’s cool.

The post How a Forgotten Avengers Cartoon Predicted MCU Phase 4 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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niamsuggitt · 7 years

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The Ides Of May 2017

Hi guys! It’s that time of the month again, time for me to write a ‘lil bit about all of the various media I’ve stuffed into my gaping eye and ear-holes over the past 30 days. I would have included mouth-holes there too, but Nintendo deliberately made Switch cartridges taste horrible so unfortunately I haven’t been able to eat one. Oh well.

This month includes the return of some Sitcom favourites, more of me slowly, ever-so-slowly playing Zelda, a Booker Prize winner and a nice heap of Marvel Cinematic Universe fun.

Let’s do it!

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Movies

Once again there’s only 2 movies this month, and whilst they are both very different, both provide quite a bit to think and talk about. Up first is Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson 2015). This may be surprising given the types of films I normally like, but before watching Anomalisa I have to admit to not liking Charlie Kaufman as a writer. I’ve seen Eternal Sunshine, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and none of them resonated with me like they do for so many others. I just find him a bit… pretentious? Like he tries too hard to do different things and in the end it just obscures what he’s actually trying to say? I dunno. But much to my surprise and pleasure, I really enjoyed Anomalisa, which is different from Kaufman’s other work in that it’s animated. This stop-motion story follows a man (voiced by David Thewlis) who is on a business trip to Cincinnati. This man, Michael, sees everyone else in the world, including his wife, a former girlfriend, as the same person. They have the same face, and the same voice (Tom Noonan). That is until he stumbles across one other person who looks different, Lisa, (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It’s a complicated, dare I say, pretentious set-up, but for me it works. The animation is fantastic, incredibly detailed, and it’s used to go to places other animated films wouldn’t. This is a truly adult film, so if after Team America you wanted to see more puppet nudity and sex… I’ve got you covered. The way the technique of having everyone except Michael and Lisa be the same person works is incredibly effective and disorientating. It took about 10 minutes for me to twig it, the unease sort of snuck up on me. I said earlier that I think Kaufman’s gimmickry gets in the way of what he is actually trying to say, but that is not the case here, I think I pretty much got what the film was saying about solipsism, and how so many other films feature a ‘manic pixie dream girl’ who shakes a depressed male protagonist out of their funk. Anomalisa flips your expectations here. Lisa is not Michael’s soulmate, she’s just a blip in his mental illness. If it even is that, he might just be an asshole. That’s not to say that Lisa isn’t a well-drawn character, because she is, and Leigh’s voice acting makes her come to life. Then again, maybe this isn’t what Kaufman and Johnson are saying at all and I’m an idiot. Either way, Anomalisa is a fascinating film that has been rotating in my head since I watched it. It’s unlike anything else I’ve seen lately, and has me reconsidering my position on Charlie Kaufman. I certainly plan on watching the other film he directed, rather than just wrote, Synecdoche New York, and maybe I’ll go back to those other, older films.

Up next, I took a step away from the esoteric puppet show towards the mainstream blockbuster and into the cinema, as I went to see Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn 2017) which is of course (of course) the third film in the third phase of the monolithic Marvel Cinematic Universe. As is par for the course when writing about these films (and some, most, of the TV projects) I feel like I have to fully lay out a bit of bias. I love these films and just seeing these characters on screen and being done justice like this takes away a lot of my critical faculties. Problems I have with other, similar movies, I can brush aside because, hey, it’s the MCU, I trust these people. But that aside, I thoroughly enjoyed Guardians 2, and whilst I don’t think it’s quite as good as the first one, I really appreciate it’s weirdness and how much crazy Marvel Universe lore it puts out there, if only just to hint at. The film of course sees all of our favourites from the first film, Star-Lord, Gamara, Drax, Rocket and Groot return for another adventure, but this time, the stakes are far more personal, as Star-Lord meets his father, Ego, who is brilliantly portrayed by Kurt Russell. Firstly, it was just awesome to be back with these characters again, they are just so much fun. The Guardians are perhaps the MCU versions that are the most different from the originals (of course, the comics have in turn, begun to reflect the movies far more) and as such I have a different emotional attachment to them. I’m not constantly comparing Gamora to the 500 Gamora comics I’ve read in my life, I’m just invested in her relationship with Nebula, and with Star-Lord. As I mentioned, the main plot here is Peter and his father, but the script makes sure that every Guardian (except maybe Baby Groot, but he’s adorable enough that you don’t mind) has their own story. Drax forms a bond with the newcomer Mantis (who is great!), Gamora fights her sister again, but even more personally, and Rocket deals with his anger driving people away. I found myself invested in all of these storylines, and it mean that, whilst the overall plot did sag a bit in the middle of the film, I didn’t mind. I will say that I am a bit sick of people dismissing Star-Lord’s story as ‘just more daddy issues’ or something like that. I think that’s reductive, and to me, the real plotline is how much Peter Quill still cares about his mother. His love for her is what snaps him out of cosmic brainwashing, and let’s not forget that, as awesome as the classic soundtracks are, they do serve an emotional purpose, as they are his only link to Earth, and to his mum. Maybe it’s just because my mother died of cancer as well (although hers wasn’t put there by an evil Celestial, at least I don’t think it was), but if anything, this is far more of a ‘mommy issues’ movie than a daddy issues one. I mentioned the soundtrack earlier, and I will say that this particular ‘awesome mix’ was a bit of step down, with the songs either being too mainstream (Fleetwood Mac, ELO) or way too obscure. Maybe I’m asking too much, but the first movie’s track selection was just perfect, hard for lightning to strike twice I suppose. The other character I want to specially highlight is Michael Rooker as Yondu, who is just amazing here. He has real pathos behind him and makes a character I never really knew into an absolute favourite. His storyline also sees the film do something I really didn’t expect and bring in more of the ‘original’ Guardians, the ones who, in the comics, were in the future. This movie has Sylvester Goddamn Stallone in it as Starhawk and I went in without knowing! I love that Gunn hasn’t forgotten the likes of Charlie-27 and Martinex, and that a major movie can feature characters as weird as them. That’s what sets this film apart from me, it’s not afraid to get a bit odd, and to use weird elements from the source material to their full potential. A few years ago, Ego The Living Planet would be considered way too goofy for a film, but not here, here he’s Kurt Russell! Some of this is pure fan-service, but as mentioned, when it comes to these films, I don’t mind that at all. The Stan Lee cameo was amazing, the teaser in the credits for Adam Warlock blew my mind (it took me an embarrassingly long time to connect Ayesha and her golden skin to that classic cosmic character). This film’s links to the wider universe are like that, more hints. I did expect some big Thanos developments, but ultimately, I don’t mind spending 2 hours just inside these goofball’s messed-up heads. I can’t wait for Vol.3, and I hope that, when the Guardians appear in Avengers: Infinity War, they don’t lose what makes them special. This film was just a blast, it delivers more of what you want, as well as surprising you with where it goes, the best kind of sequel.

Television

There’s one new TV show for me to talk about this time out, in the form of American Gods (Starz), the long-awaited adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel. This is an interesting series for me adaptation-wise because, whilst I have read the book, it was a long time ago and I don’t really remember a lot of what happened. Just the basic gist really. This isn’t like Game Of Thrones or The Expanse where the source material is fresh as a daisy in my mind and I’m constantly comparing the show to what I already know. Here, I’m kind of hazy on the details and it’s a lot of fun being surprised both by what I didn’t know, and what I forgot I knew! The basic plot has barely begun, but basically, Gods are real, they live in America, they are at war, and a man named Shadow Moon (as far as I can call this dumb-ass name does have a good explanation) is drawn into their world after the death of his wife and his release from prison (on the same day). Not only is that, to me, a great intriguing premise, but it’s really elevated by some fantastic performances and amazing visual flair. One of the show’s main producers is Bryan Fuller, from Hannibal, and the opening 2 episodes where directed by David Slade, who directed a fair few episodes of that show too, so you can really tell that there’s a link in how the series looks and feels. The dream sequences and trippier moments are straight out of Hannibal, they are brilliant. There’s a sex montage in Episode 2 with Bilquis that is just insane. The performances so far have been great as well, Ian Fucking McShane is of course stealing the show as Mr Wednesday, but Ricky Whittle is really doing well as Shadow, which must be a hard role to play as he’s kind of intentionally inscrutable and a bit blank. And, if you watch nothing else, watch Orlando Jones’ monologue as Anansi that opens Episode 2. It is one of the best single scene performances I’ve ever seen, it knocked me for a loop. It’s only been 2 episodes, but this is already a fantastic, ambitious series that’s unlike anything else on TV. I can’t wait to see where it goes, and what else I can remember.

This month also saw the return of 2 of my favourite US Comedies. Silicon Valley (HBO) is back for a 4th season of tech-based misadventures. So far this season has managed to somehow feel like more of the same, but also change things up in a lot of interesting ways, as the characters move about into new situations. At the end of Season 3 it felt like we were right back to the beginning, but that wasn’t the case, as we’ve seen multiple characters leave companies, join new ones, sell companies, and all sorts of other manoeuvring. The prospect of Richard actually working with Gavin Belson is very exciting. In amongst all of these shake-ups, the characters have continued to be as funny as ever. I love how Big Head continues to fail upwards, he’s now a Professor at Stanford! And seeing Dinesh get a girlfriend is something we haven’t seen before. I’m also enjoying the increased role for Jian-Yang. Jimmy O. Yang has always been very funny in his brief scenes, but now he’s getting actual stories, which is cool. And man, Zach Woods is still killing it as Jared. He had one moment of madness in Episode 4 that had me wetting itself. At times it does feel like Silicon Valley is in a groove, but it’s such an enjoyable groove!

One series that hasn’t been afraid to get out of it’s groove is Veep (HBO), which is now in Season 6, and is a very different show this season. Of course it changed when Armando Iannucci left, but now that Selina Meyer is out of office, it’s even more different. With the character scattered all over the place, I did feel like the first one or two episodes were a bit lacking, but after that, it’s really found it’s feet and become just as funny and scathing as ever. In the wake of Trump it was going to be difficult for Veep to be the same show as it was before, so wisely it’s pivoted, it still has a lot to say about America and politics, but really, it’s become more about seeing who these characters are in new situations. I’m particularly enjoying Dan working as a TV News Anchor and Jonah as a Congressman has just been brutally brilliant, especially with Mary Holland joining the cast as his new ‘girlfriend’. It’s also interesting that the series has started to delve deeper into Selina as a character, and her backstory. She may be a bit ridiculous, but in the world of the show, she is the first ever female Vice President and the President, she is interesting. So yes, Veep has changed, but it’s still intelligent and funny and well worth watching. When real politics is as scary as it is these days, we need this magnificent bastards to laugh at.

Now for quick hits! We’ll start with comedies. LOL! LOL indeed.

The final episode ever of Girls (HBO) was a bit of an odd one, it jumped ahead to the birth of Hannah’s baby (the horrifically named Grover, and that’s a ‘Niam’ saying that) and only featured Hannah and Marnie from the main cast, out in the middle of nowhere. In a lot of ways, it was a typical Girls way for the series to end, Lena Dunham has never really done the conventional thing. I enjoyed it, particularly Becky Ann Baker’s performance. She’s always been excellent and underrated as Hannah’s mother. I will miss Girls, it was funny, different and always provoked debate, and I can’t wait to see what projects Dunham does next. As infuriating as she can be, she is very talented. How about a Dunham/Max Landis collaboration? That could destroy the internet.

I reached the end of BoJack Horseman (Netflix) Season 3, and holy shit, that was brutal. What happened to Sarah-Lynn just fucked me up. And then it’s followed up by the sublime ridiculousness of Mr. Peanutbutter’s spaghetti strainers actually being useful! That sums up BoJack for me, it can be gloriously silly and funny, but at it’s core it’s a dark series about depression and the sadness at the core of humanity (or animality, whatever). It’s one of my favourite shows ever at this point, and I am very excited for Season 4, and just where BoJack is going to go now. It’ll be bad… but also so, so good.

The Last Man On Earth (FOX) also wrapped up its 3rd season very well. Jasper has been a fun addition to the cast, and the 2-part finale in particular was a great, as the series once again upended it’s cast. Erica gave birth to her baby, but then Nuclear Reactors started going off and they had to flee. This series continues to be brilliant at balancing comedy and real dark drama, as the consequences of a post-apocalyptic world are actually thought out. The very last moment also brought Kristen Wiig in contact with the main cast, and what a way to do it.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (FOX) has continued to be very funny and strong, and one episode in particular really surprised me, as ‘Moo Moo’ became a serious examination of racial profiling in the Police Force. It’s rare that Brooklyn Nine-Nine addresses real issues, but it did it very well here, I think it should actually do more, especially in this era where the Police, in America especially, are not so popular. I don’t want it to become propaganda for the cops, but it can certainly shine a light on some real issues. As well as being dumb and funny with great actors of course.

The ‘Dreamland’ arc of Archer (FXX) is still going strong. It’s just a lot of fun to see these characters in this setting, and the storyline by itself has actually been rather arresting, with a lot of fun twists and turns. I’ve particularly liked Eugene Mirman’s performance as Cheryl’s brother. He’s delightfully creepy. Also, is Pam just a man in dreamland? Her character isn’t meant to be a woman in drag, here, she’s just a man? I kind of love that.

Oh, and I watched one more episode of Inside No. 9 (BBC Two), ‘Tom & Gerri’. It was very good, and actually managed to surprised me with the twist at the end. It was fun to see Lord Varys himself, Conleth Hill play an actually nice person, and Gemma Arterton was good too. That’s the strength of an anthology show, they can bring in really big names for just one episode.

Bridging the gap from comedy to drama is Better Call Saul (AMC) which is having an excellent third season, as it gets closer and closer to Breaking Bad territory. Not only has Gus finally appeared (with Giancarlo Esposito just as good as ever) but the whole tone of those scenes is straight out of the parent show. Episode 4, ‘Sabrosito’ barely seemed to feature Odenkirk at all. But that doesn’t mean that the series has just become Breaking Bad-lite, as the following episode ‘Chicanery’ was all courtroom stuff, and really did a fascinating job at delving into the central Jimmy/Chuck relationship. It really needs to be said again, but both Odenkirk and Michael McKean are amazing in this show, tour-de-force performances. This stretch of episodes has been a great microcosm of what makes Better Call Saul so good and basically the perfect prequel. It has plenty of links to what came before, including themes and cameos (Huell!) and camera work, but it’s also very capable of being it’s own, separate thing. So good.

The Season 2 finale of The Expanse (Sy Fy) was another strong episode in an exceptionally strong season. It was an incredibly tense episode that brought a lot of things to a head. The central plot of the Protomolecule monster being on the Rocinante tied everything together and, perhaps most importantly, brought the central crew of characters onto the same page. It’s interesting that the show isn’t precisely following a ‘1 season = 1 book’ model, and I like that, it’s allowing for things to unfold at a different pace.

The Americans (FX) is having an… interesting season. It’s still very good and all of the performances and episodes have been good, but, maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t seem as focused as it used to, which is odd, because the writers know they only have this and next year to wrap things up. Maybe that’s actually the reason, they know they have a guaranteed 26 episodes, so can pace things differently? Either way, there doesn’t seem to be any particular driving plot, missions and side characters come and go, and whilst each individual hour has been strong, it’s not a satisfying whole. Yet. I think maybe something big is going to happen (Pacha’s suicide? Something with Pastor Tim?) that will lead to a major event in the finale. Or at least I hope so. This is a fantastic series so maybe I just have too high expectations.

Now it’s time for everybody’s favourite corner… superhero corner!

So far in iZombie (The CW) Season 3, the biggest pleasure for me has been the classic thing, seeing Rose McIver play Liv on various different types of brain. Hippie Yoga Liv, gossipy bitch Liv, Dominatrix Liv and Hot Mess Liv have all been hilarious. I really think McIver is underrated by how she manages to play so many different shades of the same person. Some of the individual cases of the week have been a bit weak, but her performance, along with the new development of Clive knowing she’s a Zombie have made it work. As for the over-arching plots, I liked the way the show revealed that Blaine had been faking his memory loss, and what that means for Major and Liv going forward. The Fillmore Graves plot has been on the back burner a bit, but you just know it’s going to explode later.

Gotham (FOX) has returned with some really great episodes and has become a show that really embraces it’s ridiculousness, and is all the better for it. Corey Michael Smith in full on Riddler mode, green suit and all, is so much fun, as is Penguin and Poison Ivy gathering an ‘Army Of Freaks’ and a goddamn clone of Bruce Wayne. I’m also really enjoying this take on the Court Of Owls, I’ve said this before, but I get an extra kick out of seeing more recent concepts like this used in other media, and so it’s awesome to see something Scott Snyder invented on TV. Gotham is dumb, but it’s the good dumb.

The Flash (The CW) revealed who Savitar was, and it was… actually satisfying. The fact that Barry (or at least a Time Remnant of him) becomes his own worst enemy is interesting, and it’s a perfect expression of the consequences of too much time-travel meddling. What I found cool was that the show followed this big, tragic reveal with a somewhat broad comedy episode where Barry lost his memories. Not only was this funny, but it showed why the show needs a bit more levity. When Barry gets too Emo, things get bad (as shown by the trip to the future, where Barry literally was Emo). I’m also really enjoying Anne Dudek’s guest role as Tracy Brand. Her chemistry with Tom Cavanaugh is a lot of fun. 2 episodes left, and I hope they continue to get the balance between drama and fun right. The Flash is one of those characters who needs to stay optimistic.

Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.LD. (ABC) has continued it’s hot-streak with more really fantastic episodes. This Hydra alternate reality arc really has been excellent. It’s allowed us to learn more about the characters, had a real impact, and also allowed the show to comment somewhat on real world political elements. It was cheap, but referring to Hydra’s ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’ was great. The performances have also gone up a gear, Henry Simmons choosing to stay in the Framework was a great, although I do think that somehow they’ll use that machine to bring his daughter into the ‘real world’. Although they might be saving that for Face Turn Grant Ward. I also want to praise Iain De Caestecker, who has taken Fitz from somewhat of a comic relief character into probably the most complex person on the show. He played the ‘evil’ Fitz so well I almost feared he would still be bad once he was back. Mallory Jansen has also been very good, whether as Aida, Agnes or now Ophelia, she has played the same person in 3 very interesting ways. I can’t wait to see how this finale ends things, and to see what Season 4 brings. It feels weird to say this after the slow start, but Agents Of SHIELD is one of the better adventure shows on the air.

And finally, I finished watching Marvel’s Iron Fist (Netflix), and whilst it does have it’s share of problems and is probably the least of the ‘Defenders’ shows, I still very much enjoyed it and am excited to see more of this version of Danny Rand, particularly alongside Luke Cage. Heroes For Hire! I’m not going to re-tread the race conversation as we discussed that last time, so instead I’ll say that, as is customary, some of the episodes did drag a bit in the middle before an exciting ending, and I do think the show’s budget was a bit too low. I think that really hurt things as we never go to actually see K’un Lun or the Dragon Shou-Lou. I wanted a goddamn dragon getting it’s heart ripped out of it, is that too much to ask? I don’t think so. I also think it took way too long for Danny to realise that Howard Meachum was a bad dude, but that naïveté is intentional, and a great character bit. The performances only improved as it went on. Finn Jones is actually very convincing, and both Jessica Henwick and Tom Pelphrey were brilliant. I actually think Pelphrey’s Ward Meachum might be one of the best performances in the MCU, as he manages to make some pretty dumb plot developments work just through his performance. I did like how, by the end, things had been twisted and it was Ward who was working alongside Danny, and Joy who had become his enemy. That was unexpected and fun. Her working alongside Gao and Davos should be interesting in a second season. I did like Davos’ role later on too, Sacha Dhawan was very good, although why does someone from K’un Lun sound so Mancunian? I admit it, I am an MCU mark, but Iron Fist really isn’t that bad, if you give it a chance, it is well worth it, and can only improve. Look, it took Agents Of SHIELD 3 years to get good, I think sometimes we need to appreciate that.

Music

There’s only one album this time out, but it’s kind of a big deal, as Gorillaz are back with their first album in 7 years, Humanz (Parlophone/Warner Bros. 2017). Now the Gorillaz are pretty significant band for me, their eponymous debut was one of the first CDs I bought from myself and I must have played that and Demon Days hundreds of times. Plastic Beach had less of an impact, and I don’t think I’ve actually listened to The Fall. So I’m kind of a lapsed fan, however this particular hype train, and the idea that this was some kind of politically vital and contemporary record brought me back in, and I bought the album, hell, I got the deluxe edition! After listening to it a few times, it’s pretty good, but a lot of that hype is way over-blown. There’s nothing here that’s particularly timely, it’s just the usual Gorillaz mix of interesting backing beats, fantastic guest contributors and Damon Albarn getting to experiment. That’s not a bad thing, but I think I went into it expecting something truly game-changing. That’s probably more on me than Gorillaz though. As I said, the guest stars on here are fantastic, I particularly like Vince Staples on ‘Ascension’, Grace Jones on ‘Charger’ and Benjamin Clementine on ‘Hallelujah Money’, those are great tracks. It’s also a lot of fun to try and spot Noel Gallagher on ‘We Got The Power’. How crazy is it that Albarn and Gallagher are on the same song? Britpop Hell has frozen over. So yeah, this album is decent, but as is probably par for the course with Gorillaz, the ideas and concepts around it are more interesting. The idea of all of these artists reacting to Trump (or not Trump, an un-specified huge event) is great, but the end result isn’t that amazing. I say par for the course, because what’s always appealed most about Gorillaz isn’t just the music, but the whole package, the artwork from Jamie Hewlett, which is fantastic. I think I like the artwork in the leaflet more than the album! Gorillaz are a unique project, and I’ll always appreciate them, but I think I want more than just cool artwork and weird samples from my music at this stage.

Books

2 books this month. I think my reading pace has slowed down a bit, not sure why. Hmm, anyway, I started the month with the last 100 pages or so of Jonathan Wilson’s Angels With Dirty Faces (2016). The history of Argentinian Football got pretty much up to date, as Wilson gets up to the current era of Messi, Aguero, Tevez, Higuain etc. It was pretty much I thought it would be, as the Argentinian domestic game has been basically ruined by all of the best players moving to Europe. What I didn’t know was the state of hooliganism and fan violence in Argentina, which was surprising, and also the continued political links in the game. The fact that the Argentinian government owns the broadcasting rights to league football and uses it for propaganda purposes is very unique, and I would have liked more exploration of that. Imagine if Theresa May was on Match Of The Day or something, At least we know Corbyn is an Arsenal fan. Overall, the end of the book lived up to the rest of it, this was a very readable, informative history of a fascinating subject and culture. Argentina’s national identity is inextricably linked with it’s football, and now, I feel like i understand that country so much more.

After this, I got my fancy literature on, as I read the winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize, The Sellout (2015) by Paul Beatty. Only this isn’t the kind of novel you’d really expect to win such a lofty, some would say wanky, prize. It’s an incredibly dark satire of American Race relations, and it’s actually very funny. The plot sees an unnamed African-American man (he’s only referred to as ‘Me’, which I think is his surname (So his name is like ‘Dave Me’ or ‘Tom Me’ or something) who somewhat accidentally brings back both segregation and slavery to the LA suburb he lives in. It’s an insane premise, but it works, and Beatty’s witty writing carries it through even the largest logic leaps. Much like with last month and ‘Get Out’, I don’t feel like I can fully parse a lot of the more caustic racial elements, being a white non-American, but it was shocking at times, and certainly made me look at certain things differently. I would be interested in reading some of Beatty’s other books, he has a unique sense of humour. I will say that I didn’t really laugh out loud at reading this, like many of the blurbs did, but then I’m struggling to think of many books that did make me LOL. I just don’t do it, even with comics. I think seeing something written down elicits a different reaction in me. More of a wry smile, or an ‘oh, that’s funny, I get that’ than actually laughing. The Sellout comes close though! Maybe literary prizes aren’t so bad…

Games

As mentioned in the intro, I’m still making my way rather slowly through The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (Nintendo Switch 2017). I need to carve more time out to play it, but video games, even ones as good as this, are still bottom of my entertainment list. I only really play it when I have nothing else to watch, read or listen to. As of now, I’ve finally got off the Great Plateau and am in the wider world of Hyrule, and man, it is intimidatingly big. That sense of freedom to do what you want can be both very freeing, but also kind of freezing. I can’t decide where to go, so in the end I don’t really go anywhere. Does that make sense? I’ve just been wandering around and not really advancing the plot. But still, this is an incredibly good game, the look of it is so beautiful, and it’s even more so after the Plateau. I think that is what’s holding me back from playing more, because it looks so good on the big TV, I’m not putting the Switch’s handheld mode to use to play when someone else is using it. The controls are just that level of intuitive that, for me, only Nintendo can reach. The Joycons on the Switch are bit flimsy, but after while, I’m used to it. I’m of two minds on what to do next video-game wise. I really want to pick up Mario Kart 8, especially because my girlfriend wants to do multiplayer, but can I justify it when I’ve barely scratched the surface of Zelda?

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That’s it! Just an addendum for you, after writing that last bit about the Switch and whether I should by Mario Kart… I went and ordered it on Amazon. So expect something about that next week. I also bought La La Land, so you’ll get to read my lukewarm take on that film on or near June 15th. I’ll probably be lame and quite like it, that’s the kind of person I am, I can never bring myself to truly hate things like the rest of the internet. Anyway, I’ll see you then! Hopefully we’ll be living under a Labour Government by then.

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thelightofthingshopedfor · 6 years

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I've got 99 problems and the Russo brothers are at least 80 of them (Infinity War spoilers behind the cut, obviously, and also discussion of That Podcast Interview if anyone would rather avoid it)

so the thing is I didn't actually listen to the podcast because I don't hate myself that much and I haven't seen a full transcript, but I got the gist and obviously it was total bullshit. obviously. (Tom is getting too old?? Loki isn't an interesting character anymore???) also obviously, the best thing for my mental health would be to take them at their word, because this whole Schrodinger's Loki thing is not great for my brain, but if I accept he's gone for good and then Avengers 4 does something really great with him, it'll be a wonderful surprise

but I am having a real hard time with that, because at this point my level of okayness with Loki's death mostly seems to depend on me being able to hope that he'll be back, which again is NOT GREAT because it means stuff like that podcast interview, and anything similar that happens during the next YEAR, and probably Avengers 4 itself, can all trigger mood spirals where I realize "wait, fuck, I'm not okay with this"

BUT THE THING IS, I honestly don't think there's any Word of God that would actually convince me of anything before the movie comes out? like, they were pretty definitive in that interview (and apparently kind of insulting to reinforce it, which uh, seems...unprofessional? although again I'm hearing all of this secondhand), but with something like this, I genuinely would not believe them if they said the sky was blue. because...quite often the sky is not blue! in fact the sky is frequently a lot of different colors that are not blue! and it is probably all of those colors simultaneously at different points around the globe! but the general statement "the sky is blue" is still not actually a lie because it doesn't specify anything like "always" or "entirely" or "right now in this exact location"!

so again, it seems pretty definitive to say Loki's permanently dead for real and he's not coming back. except, you know...these movies are based on comics in which characters can come back from death in ways that can technically be handwaved as not actually coming back from the dead? like. he was sorta dead for a few minutes and is already back but nobody knows it, so any discussion presupposing he's for real dead is incorrect to begin with. or that very specific version of him is dead and not coming back but there was time-travel stuff and an extremely similar version of him never died to begin with. or that specific version of him is dead but time-travel stuff is going to unwind things back to the first Avengers movie (because set photos) and that version of Loki is still alive, which...would be shitty but better than nothing. or that version of Loki is dead but he's going to come back as Kid Loki (also not ideal but better than nothing). or that body is permanently dead but he transferred his consciousness to something and he's going to reconstruct his body through, idk, the Reality Stone or something. there are in fact MULTIPLE possibilities that still leave room for "nope he's not coming back" to be technically true.

and then of course there's also the possibility that they're just straight-up, flat-out lying. like, lying in interviews is a little different from releasing misleading trailers or generally being misleading in pre-release interviews, and I really don't know if Marvel people have explicitly lied in pre-release interviews (I’m pretty sure there were some actual straight-up lies tossed around during the Secret Empire clusterfuck, I’m just not sure if that attitude extends to the films), but...they're happy to mislead everyone. and Infinity War is kind of unprecedented in the MCU, in that we literally can't have fully honest postmortem interviews until Avengers 4 comes out because IT'S A TWO-PART STORY. so effectively, even while doing postmortem stuff for Infinity War, we're still leaning into pre-release Avengers 4 stuff, which means...misleading audiences and maybe lying. and maybe lying harder than ever before because it's such a weird situation.

which puts me back to the whole Schrodinger's Loki thing, because...okay. there’s a lot about Loki’s death scene that was fucking weird, to the point that it’s either deliberate foreshadowing or it was an attempt at dramatic irony (combined with bad writing tbh) that was more just about rubbing salt in the wounds of Loki fans. the Russos’ recent comments have not changed this. but they’ve additionally complicated the situation, because just like with Loki’s death scene, the exact same statements could have wildly different meanings and intentions.

like--maybe they said what they said because they’re irritated because Loki’s death was suppose to be ~edgy~ and ~shocking~ and generally horrible but in, like, a heartwrenchingly tragic (and unmistakably final) way rather than a cheap and dumb way, and now people are not only going “hey, that was cheap and dumb” but also “that was really weird, and I bet he’s actually coming back, because he’s done it before and also that was really weird,” and it’s turned into...kind of a weird resentment toward Loki in general, his status as a fan favorite (how dare we love someone other than the title characters, I guess?), his fans, and even Tom Hiddleston himself for playing the character in such a way that he became so loved? so that resentment came out in the interview, the basic meaning of which was “ugh, dumb fans expecting happy fun times like Ragnarok and not understanding the obvious meaning of our deep and tragic art or daring to say our writing is bad instead of being moved, of course he’s dead for reals, he wasn’t an important part of this movie anyway, Loki sucks and so does Tom and so do you for liking Loki more than the actual main characters, so there”

which is unprofessional and shitty and...totally possible; I think @mykingdomforapen pointed out that the AtLA creators kind of went this direction with Zuko/Katara shippers. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, if--just as a wild for instance--Loki’s death scene really does Mean Something, and he’s going to play a significant part in Avengers 4 and also properly come back to life, and it’s supposed to be a huge amazing surprise for audiences because nobody would expect the non-ashed people to come back, except it turns out that people are already predicting it because this is how fandom works now, sorry, and the Russos and Kevin Feige are basically panicking all “shit wait this was supposed to be a surprise, this was supposed to be huge, we gotta throw everybody off the scent, UHHHHH YEAH WE TOTES KILLED HIM BECAUSE HE’S BORING AND TOM’S GETTING OLD, THAT MAKES SENSE RIGHT, shit do you think they bought it”--

well. again. the exact same statements could have wildly different intentions. and it does sound kind of tin-hatty, admittedly, but at the same time, they won’t even reveal the fucking name of the movie because that’s a spoiler, so obviously they’re keeping Avengers 4 stuff even closer to the vest than Infinity War was. at this point they want us to know basically nothing. and I was thinking, well, what exactly would they say that might be effective in the hypothetical scenario where they still want to keep their secrets despite people already being on the right track, and I really couldn’t come up with anything? because anything like “well we don’t want to give anything away! ;) spoilers!!” would at least confirm it’s a possibility and they might not want to admit even that much.

I don’t know. like I said, this whole Schrodinger’s Loki situation is crazy-making and not very healthy, and the best thing I can do for myself is make peace with canon as it currently exists and go hard on the fix-it AUs while knowing they’re AUs, and not have any expectations one way or another for Avengers 4, but that’s uh...a tiny bit harder to actually do than to say. >_<

#infinity war spoilers #avengers: infinity war #marvel cinematic universe #loki

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