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staringdownabarrel · 1 month

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I've just seen Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. I didn't think it was violent enough basically, and the rest of this post is just me droning on and on ad nauseam about that.

My initial reaction is that I'm not entirely sure why this needed to be a two-part movie. The plot isn't any more complex than any of the previous Mission Impossibles. It's not any more thematically complex either, so it's not like it needed a slower pace to properly explore anything. It's still the same kind of "you need to stop this before the world ends" kind of plotline the other ones have had.

The action sequences weren't any more complex, either. It actually feels like Dead Reckoning was a step back from Fallout, which was trying to be as intense as you could be without being bumped up to the next rating. Instead of trying to basically be the action movie you could take your kids to when they're not old enough to see John Wick, it stepped back to being a fairly bog standard action movie with an M rating (our equivalent of the American PG-13).

So I'm forced to wonder where the $291 million budget went. Obviously some of it went towards actors' salaries, who could basically demand whatever they wanted and expect to get it at this point in the franchise, but the rest didn't go towards creating insane action sequences that couldn't have existed in the previous movies. I'm assuming a lot of it was because they kept paying the staff during the eighteen months or so they stopped filming because of the pandemic, but I don't actually know if they were still paying the staff during that period or not.

This is unfortunate because everything needed for this existed. The cast was large, and some of the sets would have allowed for truly intense action sequences. They just chose to never go as hard with it as they could have, even though this is very much the kind of movie that lives and dies by the quality of its action sequences.

To be absolutely fair here, the action sequences weren't terrible. They were mostly pretty good. It's just that there's a huge jump from the quality of these action sequences and what I was hoping for, based on the general trajectory of the series up to this point.

The other thing with this being a two-part movie is that I thought we were beyond this fad now. Yeah, the MCU did it with Infinity War and Endgame, but those were initially announced when the two-part final movie fad was still in full swing. And yeah, Dune did it, but it was in the position where it had to either be a two-part movie or a TV show in order to be a good representation of the book (and it probably should have just been a show).

This was something I was thinking about when I was wondering why the action sequences weren't as intense as they could have been. My initial assumption was that this was probably just because people aren't going wild for the kind of brutal, non-stop action sequences that you see in stuff like John Wick and The Raid anymore. Yeah, this movie was originally written in 2019, but huge blockbusters like this go through a million rewrites during production anyway even when there isn't a pandemic stopping production for almost two years.

But obviously whether or not this is currently a trend clearly wasn't the number one concern of the production team. They still wanted to do a two-part movie, even though that fad died down almost completely in 2015 or so. Plus, those brutal action sequences still have their fans; it seemed like John Wick 4 was popular enough. So they could have gone for that same vibe with this one where it was basically trying to be as violent as it's possible for an M-rated movie to be before it gets hit with an MA (our equivalent of the American R rating).

If anything, it would have made a lot of sense for them to go down that route for this one. In 2014 or so, one of the common criticisms pearl-clutchers would have was that M-rated action movies basically seemed to be rules lawyering their way into avoiding being rated MA. So if they had have gone right up to the line between M and MA, it would have made sense because they seem to want to bring back other 2014 trends too.

Just to reiterate here, I do think the action sequences in Dead Reckoning were good; it's just that they weren't as intense as they could have been. The example of this that I'd give is that partway through the movie, there's this bit where Ethan fights two bad guys in an extremely narrow alleyway while the main villain is confronted by Ilsa and Grace.

This could have been one of the most intense action sequences in the franchise, both in terms of brutal violence and emotional intensity. Really, it should have been the kind of action sequences that'd go on to become among the most iconic in the franchise, along with the bathroom fight from Fallout. Instead, it was just good enough to be interesting, but not quite the intense, balls-to-the-wall scene I was hoping for.

It also doesn't feel like it really got any emotional payoff either. Even though this was meant to be one of the most emotionally intense scenes of the series, it kind of felt like the emotional payoff wasn't there. Ethan was sad when he got to the bridge, but it didn't feel like this really informed anything he did afterwards; at least not to a point where he acted differently to how he was in previous films.

That's kinda how it was with every other action sequence in the movie, too. It just feels like there wasn't a lot in this one that hadn't been done better by any of the previous movies. It's not like there were any real budget or financial restraints. When you're talking about a $291 million movie that's two hours and forty-five minutes long and is getting a second part, those kinds of restraints are suggestions, not hard rules.

I guess that's the real trouble. This actually would have been a perfectly serviceable movie if it'd been a standalone movie. It's just that when it's the seventh or eighth movie in an ongoing franchise, you're always going to be asking if it stands up to the previous one. For me, this formula has gone stale.

Plus, as I mentioned before, what part of this plot really needed a second part? It's already a long movie. I'd at least get it if these movies decided they were gonna go hard and be these strings of non-stop action that were as hard as you could go with this rating. That way, you could make the case that this is the kind of movie you show your kids if you really want to see John Wick but they're not old enough to see it yet. As is, it just feels like most of this is probably just filler and whatever pay-off is coming in the next part probably isn't going to be worth it.

I guess the best part of this is that basically every major character gets to do something. One of the bigger problems a lot of long-running franchises like this have is sometimes they'll have characters be in certain movies because they're contractually obligated to have them there. They won't actually get to do a whole lot beyond take up space on set or in front of the green screen, but as long as they're there, the contract is being fulfilled. At least in Dead Reckoning, everyone gets to do something, regardless of whether they're a new character or they've been in the series for a while.

I think I'm just frustrated because there was a fair bit of hype surrounding this. It seems like there's a lot of people who are basically of the opinion that it's good and the only reason it didn't do well at the box office is because it was competing against Barbie and Oppenheimer. I don't really think that tracks because there's definitely people who would have just picked one of the three, but not so many that it'd skew the box office this much.

I think the truth is that this series' formula has gone stale and people are ready to move on from it if it's not going a lot further with what it does well. It's just that there's nothing about it that's terrible enough to warrant a bad review and it's perfectly serviceable if you watch it in isolation. The formula isn't stale because this is irredeemably bad, it's stale because it hasn't changed at all since the mid '00s, basically.

#mission impossible #mission impossible dead reckoning #dead reckoning #rant #spoilers (very mild spoilers)

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 2 years

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Michael in the Mainstream: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

You know, I do love Marvel superhero movies a lot. I have never made any secret about this, and I have constantly defended their artistic merits. Here’s the thing, though: I’m starting to become exhausted by the constant stream of superhero content. We have so much coming out so quick that it’s starting to make the issues of a lot of these films become far more apparent, such as the dull colors and the lack of exciting cinematography. When we were getting one of these films every year or two, it was easier to overlook, but now? It’s just exhausting. And while we are starting to see directors getting to do more within the confines of what Disney wants, even the really good stuff like Shang-Chi feels a little restricted by the style, with it feeling like a Marvel Studios film that happens to have some of the director’s flair in it (Eternals was this to an extreme degree).

Not so with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; this is a Sam Raimi movie that has a bit of that Marvel Studios malarkey in it.

I think the thing here is that Sam Raimi is the kind of director you just cannot restrain, no matter how much executive meddling you throw his way. I just watched Spider-Man 3 again recently, and even though that film is undeniably a mess, Raimi’s sense of comic booky fun shines through and the comedy is on point in a lot of places, from the Bruce Campbell cameo to, yes, the ridiculous sequence of Peter strutting down the sidewalk and scaring away every woman who glances at him with his douchey dance moves. That movie was bogged with a ridiculous amount of meddling, but even despite its (many, many) flaws, I think I’d still call it a good movie; that’s just the level Raimi operates on, where even his schlock is entertaining. Here, the meddling is less extensive; sure, he was called in to replace Scott Derrickson leaving to give Ethan Hawke another starring role in a horror film, and sure, the film had a ridiculously troubled production where so much changed on the fly, but ultimately the most meddling done by Marvel was slapping in bits of the standard Marvel fare into Raimi’s vision. Ultimately, the film is more his than anything else.

You can most tell this by the way there are things like actual clever camera angles and camera movement. Hell, there are moments where it seems like Raimi is paying tribute to Evil Dead with how the camera’s whipping around as if it’s from the POV of an unseen force. And then you have the gore; this movie is the hardest PG-13 in the entire MCU, but else can you expect from the madman who brought us the deadites? From a giant monster graphically getting its eyeball ripped out to an alternate Strange’s decaying corpse to the gruesome slaughter our main antagonist inflicts on every group that tries to stand against her, this is Raimi operating in familiar territory and giving it his all.

Speaking of the villain, it’s pretty strange that they decided to turn Wanda into an antagonist, but generally speaking I’m cool with it. They don’t string you along, revealing it towards the end of the first act, and they let Elizabeth Olsen go full ham and cheese with her performance. The woman looks like she’s having the time of her life playing a wicked witch, and it’s pretty delightful even if the turn to villainy and motivation are a bit clunky in execution. The film kind of expects you to have seen WandaVision to really understand it, and even then it’s still a pretty wonky motivation since she’s basically going through a similar thing to what happened in that show. I’d probably be less forgiving if it didn’t lead to cool stuff and give us a great slasher movie villain performance in the MCU, but I can’t exactly call this stellar and fresh villainy when it’s basically just Kingpin from Spider-Verse but a girl.

I think what’s really interesting is how in the lead up to this film, there were so many rumors floating around online about how this was going to be the biggest crossover film in the universe with twenty billion cameos from all across Marvel, with actors returning to reprise roles. You had people saying we’d get appearances from Ryan Reynolds Deadpool, Hugh Jackman Wolverine, Tom Cruise Iron Man, Nic Cage Ghost Rider, Wesley Snipes Blade, Gandalf the Grey, Gandalf the White, Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Black Knight, Benito Mussolini, the Blue Meanie, Cowboy Curtis, Jambi the Genie, RoboCop, the Terminator, Captain Kirk, Darth Vader, Lo Pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger, Bill S. Preston, Theodore Logan, Spock, the Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan in the two hour runtime of the film. Basically it sounded like a wet dream for nerds and a nightmarish mess of plotless fanservice for anyone with a functioning brain. Thankfully, the cameos are petty minor all things considered, with the Illuminati giving us some fun fanservice for a ten minute stretch by bringing back Haley Atwell and Patrick Stewart in their most famous comic book movie roles, letting Anson Mount redeem Black Bolt, and giving John Krasinski the ability to extol the wonders of his teammate’s powers rather than the wonders of the CIA as Reed “Mr. Fantastic” Richards. It doesn’t last long and it’s just kind of fun to see, and it leads to one of the best sequences in the film, and it doesn’t detract from how focused the story is. Overall, it’s way better than the asinine checklist of cameos idiots wanted the movie to be.

A lot of people think Strange was sidelined in this movie, and while he’s definitely not front and center of every action scene like your typical MCU hero, I think that’s a good thing. I kind of like how he’s more pushing the plot along and growing as a character, as well as doing stuff that isn’t something I’ve seen a million times elsewhere. I also liked his relationship with America Chavez, the adorable dimension-hopping teen he befriends; I was really worried she’d be a boring living MacGuffin a la Cassandra Cain in Birds of Prey, but while she’s not exactly super well fleshed out yet I found her really sweet and enjoyable. As always, Wong is awesome, and his banter with Strange is pretty fun, though I wish they got to do more together.

I think what it really boils down to here is how much you like campy, ridiculous, and weird movies. This is not a perfect film, it doesn’t have the strongest story or the most logical scenarios or anything like that. I can definitely see someone coming out of it and thinking it’s a mess. But as a fan of Raimi’s previous superhero films (and yes, I’m including Darkman), I think this fits right in there. It’s the sort of crazy, ridiculous schlock Raimi loves to make, injected with his typical humor and horror so that it drowns out the typical superhero junk for the most part. If you like Raimi, want to see Elizabeth Olsen let loose, or want to see dozens of people brutally murdered in a superhero film, this is the movie for you!

Oh yeah, and Bruce Campbell is here. Poor guy’s hand is giving him trouble again. God bless you, Sam Raimi.

#Michael in the Mainstream #review #movie review #Doctor Strange #doctor strange in the multiverse of madness #Multiverse of Madness #MCU #superhero movie #Marvel #Sam Raimi

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diablotraeluz · 7 months

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Beat and platted Spider-Man 2 and I have a few thoughts on the game. Overall, it was fun, the gameplay is solid, movement in Insomniac Spider-Man games is top notch, the story and writing could've used so much more room to breathe and the quest structure and pacing is so bad it's kinda silly. Still can't recommend it enough though, if you liked the first game or Miles's solo game.

Spoilers under the cut.

The game can be 100% completed and platinumed in around 25 hours if you're not rushing. Normally I'd appreciate a game not wasting my time like this but the game's really, really oddly paced and stuff isn't really given time to breathe. Harry gets revealed to have the venom symbiote, joins you for one hero adventure, randomly shows up in crimes, and then two missions later he loses it to Peter. In 20 minutes, Harry will go from being completely healthy to being on the verge of dying. Peter's corruption arc is about 3 hours long, then it's time for Venom to take over the plot. And then the plot kinda grinds. There were a few points where it felt like the ending was baiting me and the symbiote enemies that make up the entirety of endgame foes are really annoying to fight even after getting anti-venom that despite me having a lot of fun it was starting to drag on me and get me down. There are a lot of things that feel wasted or left out that I can't help but feel a little disappointed. Why did half of the Sinister Six and Shocker have to die? Why did Black Cat even have a mission at all besides an excuse to get her out of the game? Why are so many minigames introduced and then left behind immediately? You have to set up drones to get the FNSM app up in the start of the game and you never have to do anything like that ever again. There's a whole rhythm game that gets made for one 2 minute section that also never gets iterated on with different songs. It feels oddly undercooked in certain areas, which is frustrating.

Sidequest pacing is also kind of odd. There's only one sidequest in the game that requires story progression and it's the most blatant this-will-be-the-subject-of-DLC sidequest I've ever seen. Thank you Cletus, you did nothing, had the most annoying faction in the game, can't wait to beat your ass as Carnage next year when the DLC drops. The others drop every single mission at you as soon as you get them and can be completed immediately. Spider-Man becomes the hero of Brooklyn Visions in the first 20 minutes of the game, netting you a cool Puerto Rican Spider-Man suit before you even need to do anything else to get anything else. It feels like a reward that would come at the end of the game. Mysteriums are also weird, since they're just combat challenges, but Miles is the only one that can actually do them. They're also the only repeatable content in the game besides trying to optimize the various random crimes, which isn't very hard. Peter can do a bunch of experiments with the Emily-May Foundation and the reward is held off from you until the post-game, which feels jarring because you can knock out all of the EMF experiments literally the minute they become available. I thought I was missing something when I noticed there weren't any left to do. Granted, there is no EMF once Kraven attacks it shortly after getting the Black Suit but y'know. Whatever.

Other aspects of the presentation are odd. Miles has the best suit selection between the two Spider-Man games I've played but Peter's is bogged down by MCU references and movie suits. Tom Holland has like, 6 suits in the game. They decided to put two Andrew Garfield suits in. There are so many "adjusted classic suit" designs for Peter that the space feels wasted, especially since they didn't pick any of the good suits for returning suits.

Everything just needed a lot more room to breathe. It felt like the animated series from the 90s in the worst way possible.

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bereft-of-frogs · 3 years

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just my two cents/unasked for advice: if a fandom is getting so stressful that it’s to the point where it’s no longer fun, all the usual pieces of advice apply - unfollowing people / blocking tags / focusing on what you do enjoy / creating the content you wish to see -

but also, it is so worth it to have someone outside the fandom, or who participates in the fandom in a completely different way, to talk about this stuff with and just enjoy the thing. having someone who doesn’t really participate in the fandom can be so helpful in breaking out of some of the negative spirals fandoms can get into, to offer new perspectives outside of the fandom echo chambers, and honestly just have fun.

an example: it was so much fun every Friday night to finish the new episode of Wandavision, and before coming back online, text with my brother about how much we were enjoying it and how much we love Wanda and Vision, and speculating about fan theories just for the fun of it. And this week, he rewatched Infinity War and Endgame - Endgame being, as you all know, the one MCU entry I actively dislike - but hearing him talk about the things he liked reminded me of various things I did like about it. I go for walks with my friend who’s much more a comics fan and we talk about the podcast she’s been listening to that explains theories. It can just be so refreshing to share this with people who aren’t active participants in the online fandom.

It’s just nice sometimes to be able to take a step back away from all the overthinking and accumulated critiques and just...have fun.

I’m not saying that you like...can’t find enjoyment or fun in the critiques itself. I do love meta and critique and finding people who share my grievances with various creative decisions. But I just observe that...there’s been a lot of stress lately and I wanted to share one thing that has been significantly improving my mood towards fandom. And like I said at the start, all other advice still applies. But if you’re really feeling down about the MCU, or find that the only thing you ever talk or think about is the grievances, I would highly recommend finding someone who unironically enjoys these movies/shows without participating in the fandom, and just letting yourself get lost in some uncomplicated enjoyment. If all you’re doing is talking about how upset you are about things - it might help to take a step back.

I also say that as someone who has several ill-advised salty fandom posts stashed in my drafts loll. I’m not say to entirely give up on the discourse (tm) but I think having a healthy balance between criticizing and having fun is a good way to keep enjoying fandom things and not get bogged down in the negativity.

this has been my 2 cents thank you for your time XD

#i made this post mostly because i realized how happy i was texting my brother about wandavision #and how it was really helping to revitalize my mcu love when it had been stagnating for a while #and also then i saw a post about how apparently everyone has been hating the mcu since 2015 and i was like uhh speak for yourself #i would not be here if i didn't still enjoy almost all of the mcu #i just think fandom can get really bogged down in the negativity aspects and i feel super refreshed when i can talk about this stuff with #people who aren't really participating in the tumblr fandom #but also i love you guys! don't get me wrong! i do love having this community #but also having people outside it is good too XD #anyway yeah 10/10 highly recommend taking some time to geek out about things you love with people outside the fandom echo chamber #it's great #the discourse (tm)#this has been my 2 cents ok bye

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cogentranting · 3 years

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Wandavision demonstrates really clearly how good the MCU is at building in connections and using the existing context of their world, and why that’s so appealing.

Wandavision couldn’t exist in isolation because from the jump it works because we can dive straight into the sitcom setup and go pretty much three full episodes without leaving the sticom reality because there’s so much we already know about Wanda. We have 4 movies of context for who she and what she’s been through and we can hit the ground running because of that, and it automatically creates an undercurrent of tension to the show before you even get to the “breaks” in the sitcom reality.

And beyond Wanda’s context, it works building off of the general context of the world. The characters outside the Hex respond the way they do because they exist within a fairly expansive context. Because they’ve had Iron Man running around publicly for 15 years. The Avengers for over a decade. People who had to deal with The Blip, and the Sokovia Accords and everything else. So for one thing we don’t have to jump through the “superpowers! how is that possible?!” hoop every time, and it’s a refreshing level of the audience and the characters being on the same page. Wanda moving things with her mind or Vision flying around, or even the fact that Vision exists and is in a relationship with a human? not weird, we’re used to it. Wanda creating a sitcom alternate reality in a bubble? weird. And we and the characters are in that same place. But also a character like Hayward-- instead of being just a stereotypical trigger happy military guy, we can filter his reactions through the lens of his context, the things he knows about her and the things he might have experienced that he’s afraid of happening again.

Episode 4 even more clearly demonstrates all this because leaving the main character behind for almost an entire episode to focus on three new characters isn’t frustrating because we do know them. Somewhat with Agent Woo, but especially with Darcy and Monica, we start out with enough context for these characters that we are already invested in them and we have enough of a grounding understanding of them that the relatively short episode doesn’t have to be bogged down with a bunch of character introductions. And even things that are not explicitly referenced can shine through the portrayals of the characters. Darcy doesn’t mention Thor or Jane at all in the episodes we’ve seen so far. But being familiar with the first Thor movie means you’re able to see how those experiences influence her attitudes and decisions coming in to this situation. The same with Monica. Even though Captain Marvel has only been mentioned once, briefly, there’s this surrounding context that adds shades of meaning to everything Monica does.

In general, they’re just creating a world that feels lived in. We know that the Sokovia Accords are a present factor in dealing with Wanda, and that their origin is linked to her. We know that every character has some context dealing with the Blip. We know that one of the key differences between Hayward and the trio (Woo, Darcy, Monica) is that they each know an Avenger personally and he doesn’t. We know that there’s mixed public perception of “enhanced people” in general and the Avengers in particular. We know that SWORD as an organization exists alongside both SHIELD and Hydra (and much like the characters, there’s going to be a range of audience associations because of that-- when you think SHIELD do you think Winter Soldier and World Security Council? or do you think Peggy Carter, Daniel Sousa, Phil Coulson and Daisy Johnson?) . All this and I’m not even going to go into the way they called the Pietro/Peter stuff.

And it just enriches the show in such a lovely way that can really only exist because the MCU has put so much work into something so huge.

#mcu #wandavision

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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Writing tag game -- tagged by @lessattitudemorealtitude

how many works do you have on Ao3?

Discounting podfic on which I’m listed as a co-author, 24. My concept writing doesn’t go to AO3 and the vast majority of my Narnia fic was never cross-posted there. (Or reposted there, actually, I think most of it pre-dates the AO3.)

what’s your total Ao3 word count?

1,050,810. oh, huh, I didn’t actually realize I’d passed the one million word mark (probably with Crown).

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

all of these ended up being Star Wars, which is not a huge surprise. Morning will probably reach Dirt in the next couple of updates, I’d guess.

Immutable, or, Five Times Obi-Wan Kenobi Compromised His Jedi Ethics for Anakin Skywalker -- this is not the oldest Star Wars fic on there, but I think it’s the second oldest. people just really like 5 times fic.

Wake the Storm - did you know that when I started Wake I assumed it was a very niche trope in what was, at the time, a pretty dead fandom? the kudos count on Wake actually outnumbers Gambit by more than 1600 kudos, so the number of people who go from Wake to Gambit is a lot lower than you might think.

Queen's Gambit - a significantly lower kudos count than Wake or Immutable. Gambit’s such a weirdo of a story, tbh, I can’t be surprised by anything about Gambit anymore.

On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone - about 600 kudos less than Gambit, so less difference between Gambit and Backbone than between Wake and Gambit.

Dirt in the Machine - another older fic. I’d rewrite this one if I cared enough to do so, because it’s not at my current standards (Immutable isn’t either, for that matter) and I kind of wince every time I get comments on it. this is the first one of the top five to have below 1K kudos.

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I’ll usually respond to direct questions, but I very, very seldom respond to comments in general. This is an old standing policy of mine that’s now more than a decade old -- it used to be I’d wait twenty-four hours before responding, then I’d respond right before the next chapter went up, and for a while I’d only respond to comments on the first few chapters of a story. Now I just mostly do not. The reasons for this are: (1) many, many years ago, I lost my temper pretty badly at a comment on a fic of mine (this was pre-AO3, this was back in my LJ days), and after that I moved to the “wait twenty-four hours” response so I didn’t say anything without thinking about it, (2) I do go back and reread comments but I hate rereading my own responses, (3) I prefer to know the comments numbers on my fic are all from actual comments and not from me saying “thanks for reading!”, (4) I can’t take that kind of responsibility for answering every single comment, man.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Of stuff I’ve written in the past ten years? (I can’t really remember before that.) Maybe Backbone, because it ends on that pretty upbeat “yay team we’re going to be rebels now!” note. or Devil’s in the Details (other side part 1), though I don’t really want to consider it a finished fic even though it’s technically finished; it has another “yay team we’re back together (minus Ezra)” ending. I tend to end on complicated and reasonably open endings, not like...happy endings.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

probably Gambit for the “everything is super fucked up” factor and also the fact that I never wrote the sequel. plus it ended with the entire Wake trio split up in a whole new universe, plus back in the Gambitverse Amidala not able to go back to Naboo, Ahsoka shunned, Palpatine’s new empire, Rex trapped in the Gambitverse, etc.

do you write crossovers?

I did in my Narnia days. I don’t anymore. Working in widespread fandoms like Star Wars or the MCU is basically like writing crossover fic within the same universe, anyway.

have you ever received hate on a fic?

*hysterical laughter*

...yes. yes I have. it’s the reason every time I get a comment notification on Gambit or Wake I freeze in absolute terror. people HATE Wake and Gambit. I hate to say never, but I will probably never write those characters or in that series again.

do you write smut? if so, what kind?

not really? I’ve done relatively non-explicit sex but it’s not something I’m super comfortable writing, especially in recent years. I’m much more likely to do a fade to black.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think Gambit got scraped once when it was still in progress and my response was something along the lines of “good luck, bro,” given the whole “still in progress” thing.

have you ever had a fic translated?

I’ve gotten a couple of translation requests but I can’t recall if anything’s ever been translated. (Or if I responded to them...I know a few I forgot to respond.)

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, back in my Narnia days. Some SW concept writing and that ended so badly that I’ll never co-write again.

what’s your all-time favourite ship?

Kanan/Hera, of course!

what’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

gods, Dust in the Air, my Narnia Last Battle AU. Back when I started it in 2008 or so I didn’t have the self-control or discipline I do now, even if I had a lot of the worldbuilding ability and the ability to conceive of if not execute long plot arcs, and I broke off more than I could chew. If I ever went back to it I’d probably have to do a complete rewrite and it has the unique problem among my WIPs of being the last major fic I wrote in present tense -- I now write exclusively in past tense. The bones of the story are good, I’d just have to go back to the bones and not just pick up where I left off.

what are your writing strengths?

Plot, worldbuilding/environment, action. I also do genuinely think I’m very good at characterization too, but I think they’re all inter-related. (Except the action, that’s me alone. I love writing action and I generally get a lot of compliments on my action scenes.) look, I know it’s conceited, but I’m good and I know I’m good, and I’m good in a pretty well-rounded way for the genre I write.

what are your writing weaknesses?

brevity. can’t do it.

honestly, there are others, but I don’t write stories where they’d come up. I think I have a tendency to get to bogged down in dialogue in a way that I’ve never quite solved. I also let my emotions take over too much and not in the good fannish way, in the “I’m having a fucked up relationship with canon or fandom and it’s affecting my ability to work” way.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

please stop having your Asgardians speak Latin for magic, man, that’s my feeling on it.

okay, my feelings on it for me -- I’ve sprinkled bits and pieces of Huttese, Twi’leki, and tee-tiny bits of other stuff here and there in fic. I’d not be comfortable doing more than that because the only other language that I really feel comfortable doing anything significant in is Latin, and even then I’d hesitate. also, like, Latin! not a language that comes up in the fandoms I write in. even then, like -- any extended dialogue should be intelligible to the audience, and I don’t expect my audience to be able read anything other than English; I’d rather just say “they switched to Twi’leki to say” or something similar.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

like, online? Harry Potter. for things that I didn’t post online because I didn’t know what fic was yet? probably either The 10th Kingdom or The Mummy.

what’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, I think it’s the most tightly plotted, I think it’s got the best worldbuilding, I think it’s remarkably consistent thematically, and it was, at the time, a fic that I was very devoted to finishing or dying trying, because I was going through it at the time and some of it was connected to the fic.

I don’t tag people, but please go for if you want!

#meme response

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nostalgicatsea · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Interview Meme

Thank you for tagging me, Dora!

Name: sea/nostalgicatsea

Fandoms: Marvel. I’m into some other stuff as well, but I don’t know if I can say I’m in the fandom.

Two-shot:

I don’t have any unless you count a two-part series and companion fics as two-shots. I’m going to count them so I don’t leave this section blank:

All These Half-Tones of the Soul (G, MCU, 22,888 words)

In lieu of the “summary” for the series, which is just a book quote, here are the summaries for the two fics:

Multitude of One (G, MCU, 4,277 words)

Summary: "So was I," his soulmate would tell him one day, and what it would mean was that they loved him.

Leaving Promises Against Your Skin (G, MCU, 18,611 words)

Summary: “Someday, someone will choose you, Tony,” his mother had said, her hands back to cupping his. “And no one, not your father, not anyone, can ever take that from you.”

Notes: I wish I could change the name of the series because it doesn’t fit completely, but oh well! This series was grueling to write, but it was by far the most rewarding because I didn’t think I could do it. Even if there are things I wish I could fix (I think that way about almost every fic I write), I’m proud of what I accomplished. I wrote the story I wanted to write and did something I never thought I could. I felt like I was running a marathon and at the end, that level of euphoria was probably the closest I’ll get to a runner’s high. I want to feel that again.

IW companion fics:

The Great Silence of Loss (G, MCU, 1,075 words)

Summary: There was no reason to keep the phone, not when Tony didn't have his, not when Tony was gone and all keeping it would do was hurt him, but Steve held onto it anyway.

Signals Between Two Satellites (G, MCU, 2,290 words)

Summary: He hadn't allowed himself to dream of this, of Tony returning to him. Not when he had lost so much. Not when dreaming of the impossible would destroy him. But Tony was here, and for the first time since Thanos had wiped out half of the universe, Steve felt hope. Notes: After watching IW, I thought I’d have the same dry spell as I did after AoU. I didn’t think I had anything to write about, but it ended up being my most prolific era! I don’t know why or I do, but I don’t have the space to talk about it here and I’m not sure I can express myself accurately. There’s something about unspeakable loss sweeping you out to sea, making everything else before both insignificant and magnified. Every regret, every love. When you’re so lucky so as to hold onto or regain something you lost, there’s so much power in that love and hope even when you’re not sure things will ever be okay again.

I have two other fics that are companion pieces to each other but not officially so I’ll leave them off! In case you’re wondering, they’re “Thunder Hurried Slow” and “Leaving You Forward.”

Also Read On: AO3 | FF.net

Thank you everyone for the support! Unfortunately, school started again, so this update came in a bit later, but I'm definitely finishing this story! My current expectation is that it will end at 5 chapters, perhaps 4. This one turned out a lot longer than I'd anticipated, hence me coming back from my earlier estimate of 3 chapters!

I hope you enjoy!

Summary: Astrid didn't think much of the guy she bumped into just after midnight on January 1, 2010. It was just a hasty apology, a quip and a lop-sided grin from his side. It wasn't supposed to be special.Hiccup felt the same way. That was, until he locked eyes with her again one year later. And the year after that. And the next.But somehow, their destinies only seemed to intertwine that one night a year... On New Year's Eve.

Hiccstrid, New Year’s Eve Fic. Spanning the entire past decade.

Chapter 3: New Year’s Eve 2016

December 31st, 2016

Life came with a lot of difficult choices. Hiccup knew that all too well. Batman, Superman, or simply admitting that the DCEU, especially after Suicide Squad, didn't quite hold a candle to the MCU? It was a shame, really. He'd always loved Batman, had reread many of his old comics since 2014, even saw the humour in George Clooney's Batnipples. But perhaps Justice League would prove everyone wrong in 2017. Hopefully.

At least it hadn't been difficult to choose between Team Cap and Team Iron Man. As much as he adored Spider-Man, his father's opinion was simply more important. And Steve Rogers was their guy.

He felt silly to be spending energy on those dilemmas, but after all the shit he'd been through, it was a breath of fresh air to be worried about stuff that was simple. To have his life on the rails, to no longer be forced to sort through his father's will and figure out how to handle all the insurance and ownership documents. He'd even felt comfortable enough to go and study abroad, having spent the best part of the last half year in Melbourne while Gobber, Snotlout and Uncle Spite took care of what was now his house.

Uncle Spite had told him that it was fine if Hiccup wanted to sell it, that he would find a trustworthy real estate agent who got him his money's worth. It would allow Hiccup to buy an apartment in Hopeless, closer to university, and leave Berk and all the painful memories there behind.

He'd seriously considered the change of scenery, because of course it was difficult to forget what had happened when so many people around him knew. Not just the small family that remained. But also Mrs. Ack from down the street, who kept bringing him leftovers, because his thin frame had led her to assume he wasn't feeding himself properly. The Bog family, who lived a few houses away and whose eldest daughter, Camicazi, frequently stole his garbage bags long and put them at the side of the street for the truck to pick up. Everyone knew what had happened to him, and wanted to do their utmost best to support him. He didn't need it, and had told them to stop several times, painfully elated and awkward, rubbing the back of his head so hard he was surprised he hadn't gone bald yet. But Berkians were stubborn, and persisted nevertheless.

And the more time he'd spent in Australia, the more he'd started to miss Berk. He didn't know what it was about the town that had been his family's home for seven generations. But the moment he'd set foot in it again after returning from the other side of the world, it had simply felt like home. And for now, he had no intention to leave.

He didn't know what it was, exactly. Tuffnut and Ruffnut weren't around much, their band now touring the country and only returning as a service to Gruffnut, who had given them the necessary spotlight by booking them last New Year's Eve - although the way the twins told the story, it was Gruffnut who owed them, not the other way around. Fishlegs was studying at the Hopeless Institute of Technology - the name of which was a HIT with students in exam weeks - like him, so Berk wasn't where they saw each other most. Hiccup had grown closer to Snotlout however, some of his cousin's obnoxiousness having faded after his father passed away. Or it was simply being channelled into the roles he played with Berk's local musical theatre company.

Still, Hiccup felt something was keeping him in Berk. He didn't mind it, not in the slightest, it felt good, like he'd finally found a fragment of inner peace. But he didn't know what it was exactly.

And he didn't have time to think about it, since a voice snapped him out of his tragically derailed train of thought.

"What's on the menu?"

He had only heard it one time before, seven years ago. Yet he recognised it immediately.

He turned his head, looking right into the beautiful blue eyes of the woman next to him. He had to look down at her now, unlike on the first day of 2010, but felt incredibly tiny nevertheless. He'd thought he'd blown it when she'd fled from him last year, having rejected her himself the year before that one. But here she was, smiling at him with a teasing smirk on her face and making the ground underneath his feet disappear, sending him into a free fall.

"Hey - uh - hey -" He laughed sheepishly when he finally remembered how to form words, rubbing the back of his head, and her grin only widened. "Hi," he concluded more sternly, as if it would miraculously make up for his earlier stammering.

She bit her lower lip, laughing still and making his insides contract because he'd thought she couldn't look cuter, a dark blue beanie pulled over her ears, but of course she kept surprising him. "Hey."

For all the times he'd imagined spending time with her, he now realised he'd put embarrassingly little effort into what exactly he would say to her when the stars finally aligned.

There were a million thing he could say, but now that he had the chance, he couldn't come up with anything. His eyes flicked back to the wooden stall in front of him, to the choice he'd been trying to make, and he finally realised that she had already asked him a question he still had to answer.

"All of this is on the menu," he told her, widely gesturing at the space in front of him, a holiday market stall selling all kinds of New Year's treats and drinks from around the world. "I don't even know half of it, but I figured I should try something."

"How about you let me pick?" she proposed. "And I'll pay for it too, in case it's horrible."

"Only if you have it with me," he smiled, her smirk contagious. "And let me buy you a drink in return."

"Deal," she nodded, instantly stepping forward to examine the shop's showcase, her brows furrowing as she focused. Occasionally, she made an adorable sound when she not-so-silently judged the different kinds of food, and Hiccup found himself staring at her, cherishing the moment.

Because she hadn't disappeared yet.

He quickly pretended to be studying the sign that listed the available drinks when she glanced over her shoulder, shooting him another smile.

"Glühwein?" he asked, his voice shooting up as if he'd gone straight back to puberty.

"Nah." She shook her head, looking away from a moment. "I don't drink." She paused before adding: "Not anymore."

"I can respect that," he nodded, thinking back to the times he'd seen her considerably less sober. Despite only catching a glimpse of her, he was sure just last year had been one of those. And he couldn't deny that while he respected anyone enough to let them make their own decisions, she hadn't looked as well as she'd done the years before. As if there had been a little less light in her otherwise bright eyes.

She pulled up an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah," he shrugged, gesturing at his head. "Hangovers suck. Kills your brain too. And booze doesn't even always taste as good as people pretend it does."

"I'm glad you agree," she hummed.

"You make it sound like I'm special."

She took him in for a moment, as if she was seizing him up. "I guess you are. Most of my friends at university disagreed."

"Seems like you need better friends."

"Which is why I'm here." Her lips settled back into a smile. "And I think you still owe me a mug of hot chocolate."

He couldn't help but grin. "Sounds like a plan."

He ordered two mugs of hot chocolate with whipped cream on top while Hot Chocolate Girl - her name, he had to ask for her name - picked out a snack she liked. They walked away from the stall with what she laughingly informed him were called 'Dutch doughnuts' - huge balls of deep fried dough with raisins in them, covered in about a pound of powdered sugar.

He asked her if she wanted to sit down.

"Of course," was her simple answer.

They zigzagged through the crowd, her leading so he wouldn't lose sight of her - not again - until they reached one of the market's squares. He thanked the Gods Luktuk had gotten spiteful and had organised its own winter market this year. Meaning it was a lot less busy and that there were actually some free spots. He had already started to dread the prospect of having to go and sit back with Snotlout. Not that Snot wasn't good company, but from the corner of his eye he could easily see his cousin, already sufficiently drunk, draw Barney Stinson's hot-crazy scale in the air, challenging Fishlegs and the twins to determine where Hot Chocolate Girl would land.

So much for Snotlout losing some of his obnoxiousness.

They sat down across from each other at one of the wooden picnic tables, and for a moment, Hiccup felt himself caught in how unreal the situation felt. He had thought of this girl for years, imagined what she might be like, chased by the notion that seeing her every year on one specific day couldn't be a coincidence. And now he had the chance to confirm that suspicion.

He laughed at himself for his superstition. He had no idea if she even had the same ideas about him. But she chuckled, too, and their eyes met again.

"What's your name?" he asked, curling his fingers around his mug.

"Astrid. Astrid Hofferson." She - Astrid - slowly moved her spoon, mixing the cream into the hot chocolate. "You?"

He blinked, somewhere surprised that she didn't know it already. That he had forgotten that she knew as little about him as he did about her. "I'm -"

He was going to offer her the formal introduction he gave any stranger. But that didn't feel right.

"People call me Hiccup."

Astrid - such a pretty name - pulled up her eyebrow. "Hiccup?"

"It's a nickname," he shrugged. "People close to me have been calling me that for as long as I've known. I was quite small as a kid." He held out his hand next to the table, at the same height his hip would now be. "Dad called me a little Hiccup, and it stuck. First with my cousin, who was in the same class as me in elementary school… And you know how kids are."

"Assholes," she noted.

"Definitely."

She reached for her pocket, whisking out her phone. She bit her lower lip as she started to type. "Are you Hiccup on Facebook too?"

He gave her a sheepish grin. "No, I actually don't have Facebook. Nor Instagram. Or Snapchat."

"Whoa. What century did you come from?"

"I'm not much of a social media guy," he tried to explain. "Not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg getting his hands on all my data."

"Yeah, he is a bit of a creep," Astrid nodded. "Shame I can't go without Messenger."

"Call me old-fashioned, but I can give you my number instead," he proposed. "I do have WhatsApp."

She frowned. "Didn't Facebook buy WhatsApp like two years ago?"

"Just an introduction to how consistent my principles are," he quipped.

"At least you have some. I'm just a regular sell-out." She swiped around on her phone for a moment, before handing it to him. She had opened a new contact, the name already filled out.

"Fake Foot Guy?" he laughed.

"It's not much worse of a nickname than 'Hiccup'," she shot back.

She'd had a nickname for him too. "Can't argue with that."

He typed his number into her phone and handed it back to her, feeling awfully giddy at how easy it was to talk to her. Astrid tucked it back into her jeans, and pointed at the curious snack in front of her. "After you."

"Whoa, Astrid," he objected, putting his hands up in the air. "You picked it out."

"Fine, I'll be the brave one," she joked, and lifted the doughnut, making a toast with it. "Bon appetit."

She took a bite, looking pensive as she chewed calmly before finally publishing her verdict. "It's not too bad, actually."

Encouraged, he began to eat as well, taking a big bite to show he wasn't a coward.

"You're right, not as bad as it looks."

"You doubted me?"

"Not even for a second."

She shook her head at him, working the rest of the doughnut down with impressive speed. She propped her head up on her hand as she waited for him to finish, playfully cocking her head and tapping her fingers on the table while grinning to herself.

"Hey, at least I'm taking the time to enjoy my food," he defended himself.

"Oh, that's now why I'm laughing," Astrid grinned. "You just have some sugar on your face."

"Where?"

Astrid gestured to her own face, drawing a circle in the air. "Everywhere."

Way to make an impression, Haddock. He hastily grabbed his napkin, but when he looked back up he found Astrid leaning over the table, tentatively reaching out to him with hers.

He sat there, frozen when she carefully wiped the tip of his nose as if it was the most obvious, the most natural thing to do. With her so close, he could count the few freckles on her cheeks, her entire presence kissed by the sun in a way people in Berk so rarely were. His eyes fell to her soft, pink lips, slightly chapped by the cold, and he considered hooking his finger underneath her chin and finding out if she still tasted like sugar too. But he figured she always did.

It felt like it was supposed to. It felt right. As if he'd never done otherwise. As if he was lucky enough to get to gaze into her beautiful blue eyes every single day.

While the truth was that he hardly even knew her.

"What do you do?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Huh?" Astrid blinked, then looked at her hand, her eyebrows shooting up as if she hadn't realised it belonged to her. "I'm sorry -"

"No, don't be," he told her as she backed away, already missing the closeness and sheepishly cleaning the remaining sugar off his face to occupy himself. "I just meant, what do you do on, you know, other days than New Year's Eve?"

"Oh." She sat down, wiped off her hands and tucked some of her hair back behind her ear. "Mostly volunteer work, these days. Trying to help people where I can."

"That's great!"

"Yeah, it's very satisfying." Her voice trailed off, making him raise an eyebrow.

"Sounds like there's a 'but'."

She smiled slightly. "It's not exactly long-term. I need to find an actual job eventually so I can move out and become an actual adult."

"Any ideas on that yet?"

She shook her head. "That's the issue. I went to uni to become a doctor so I could help people, but it wasn't for me. So this past year, I've been trying to figure out what I want to do instead."

"I don't see how that's an issue."

"Because it's not the way it's supposed to go!" Astrid exclaimed. "I always thought gap years were a waste of time, and now here I am, doing exactly what I vouched I never would."

"Life hardly ever goes how it's supposed to," he shrugged, taking a sip. "And it doesn't seem to me like you're not doing anything."

She cocked her head at him. "What makes you so sure?"

Because I feel like I've known you all my life. "You don't seem like the kind of person to lie in bed watching Netflix all week."

"Of course not," she snorted.

"And you probably volunteer like ten, twenty hours a week…" he murmured, trying not to grin.

"Thirty. At least," she corrected him. "Fifty maybe, if there's a kickboxing tourney in town."

"Okay, public service announcement, don't pick a fight with Astrid," he quipped, painting the words in the air. "Although it's unlikely kicking your ass fits her schedule, because she works so godsdamned hard."

Astrid gave him a determined look. "I can always take time out of my day for special cases."

"Lucky me, people have been telling me I'm very special all my life," he mock-gaped. "What are the odds!"

"About the same as those of living in a town with one hundred thousand people, but nevertheless seeing the same person eight New Year's Eves in a row?"

He froze and looked at her, the way his blue eyes peered into his, searching for something. "You realised it too," he gaped, his voice suddenly a lot softer.

"Of course I did," she scoffed, rolling her eyes. "I may be a drop-out, but I'm not stupid."

"Didn't meant to imply you were, just…" he laughed at himself. "I thought I was the weird one."

"I don't think you're weird," Astrid reassured him. "Just a dork."

"Do you…" he started, his throat suddenly dry. "Do you think it's a coincidence?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

He was staring at her again, wondering if leaning across the table and kissing her would be an acceptable way of 'figuring it out'. If she would find it inappropriate, or if she would wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him back until their position inevitably became uncomfortable.

He could get up and walk to the other side of the table, sit down on the bench next to her and pull her into his lap, curl his arms around her and hold her until the clock hit midnight. So she wouldn't vanish, not this year. Ask her to come home with him, or meet him again tomorrow, because they had only barely talked and he already couldn't imagine never hearing her voice again. Because it had been enough to catch a hint of how she was brave, passionate, selfless, and smart. And he wanted to know everything else there was to learn about her.

He was snapped out of it by Astrid clearing her throat. "So what about you?"

He blinked profusely and sat back, not even realising he'd been leaning forward. "Huh?"

"What do you do?"

"Oh, I -" He took a deep breath, trying to push away the heat in his cheeks through sheer force of will. "I'm still studying. Trying to become an engineer."

"What kind?"

"For a long time, I wanted to do something with aviation," he elaborated, studying her face for a trace of boredom but finding her eyes opening up instead. "Like, my room is full of sketches of rockets, air planes, flight suits."

"Flight suits?"

"Yeah, you know, so people can fly themselves." He moved his arms, demonstrating the idea until she laughed and made him realise how stupid he made himself look. "It'd probably be a regulatory nightmare though, given that airports already aren't happy with people flying drones." He grinned. "So naturally, I got myself one for Christmas."

Astrid leaned forward, giving him a knowing look. "Does it fly yet?"

"No, but -" He continued, despite Astrid's chuckles. "That's only because I'm making some modifications."

"Sure," Astrid teased.

"It's true! Sticking to the basics takes all the fun out of it."

"Basic planes do sound a lot safer to me, you know," Astrid countered.

"Well, you're in luck, because that's what I was getting to," he explained. "I've loved planes all my life but recently, I've been giving a lot of thought to this thing. You know, what gave me my superhero name." He grinned, vaguely gesturing to his left foot. "The longer I live with it, the more ideas I get to improve it. So maybe I should do that instead." He shrugged. "Help people like me."

Astrid smiled softly. "I think that's a wonderful idea."

"Me too."

He could only smile back as a silence settled between them. It wasn't uncomfortable - on the contrary, he felt he could do this all day, simply look at her, the sounds of the busy market around them seemingly non-existent. Suppress the urge to reach out towards her, unwrap her delicate fingers from around her mug just so he could study them.

He felt like Tarzan - minus the dreadlocks, broad chest and any other kind of muscle definition - wanting to pull off just one of the gloves of his Jane. Not that she was his, of course, he barely knew her name, for years he had known nothing more than that her smile warmed his heart and that every moment they shared seemed to last forever. Besides, he was a 21st century man who didn't believe women to be his property in any way. In fact, he didn't mind a woman who looked like she could kick his ass instead.

But he cherished the thought of carefully taking her fingers in his, treat them delicately despite her obvious strength, and press their palms flat against each other. To get a sense of just how real she was, her warm skin against his, treat her as if she was the first woman he'd ever laid eyes on. Because in a weird way, it felt like it. Then again, everything about this was weird, but in a way that made his heart beat faster.

He could do it. Take her hand, wrap his fingers around it and simply hold them. He would settle for that, and not let her go for the rest of the night. Not even when the fireworks started. He wasn't concerned with those. He was just wondering if they would also go off in his head the moment he kissed her.

Or he could finally realise he was staring at her like a fool, way longer than any sane person would. He blinked profusely, and she cocked her head at him, clearly amused as she took another sip.

He cleared his throat, trying to come up with something smooth, or another topic, but he found himself speechless. "There's so much I want to ask you," he laughed, embarrassingly awkward. "But I can't think of anything."

"Really?" Astrid teased. "Nothing?"

How old are you? Do you prefer dogs or cats? Sushi: overpriced raw fish or actually quite okay? How do you feel about Brangelina getting divorced? Who is your favourite character in Friends? Will you think less of me if I admit I exercised almost every day last Summer, but that ninety-nine percent of that was walking around town catching Pok émon? What even is Brexit?

Do you feel like there 's something here too? Do you like me, even a little bit?

"I just don't know where to start," he shrugged.

"Perhaps you could Google it," she grinned, seemingly content with letting him drown.

"You know, there are actually lists for that," he pointed out, pulling another useless fact out of his repertoire. "Questions to ask on dates."

"Oh?"

He treasured the fact that she didn't ask whether this was a date. So he leapt again. "Yeah. Like a list of 36 questions that 'guarantee' two people will fall in love with each other."

She snorted. "Now that sounds like yak dung." He opened his mouth to agree, but she added: "So go ahead."

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, like a confused goldfish, not having expected to get this far. "I don't know them by heart…"

"You don't do this often?"

He liked the twinkle in her eyes, the way she consistently teased and challenged him. No, he loved that.

"But there was this one question that stuck with me, regardless," he continued. "If you were able to live to the age of ninety, and retain either the mind or the body of a thirty year-old for the last sixty years of your life…. Which one would you want?"

Astrid answered nearly instantly. "Body."

Well, if I had yours, that's what I'd pick too.

"And that's not to sound vain," she elaborated before he could comment. "It's not about that at all, but the thought of becoming so old that I can no longer move around on my own, that I'd need help to get everywhere, or that I simply don't have the energy to do the things I love anymore… I'd hate that. I would lose my independence, my freedom. I don't know what it's like to be thirty yet, of course, but if I got to live the next sixty years feeling like I do right now, but with more and more experience as time goes by, I'd sign up for that." She grinned. "And of course, not getting any wrinkles, or menopause, is an upside too."

"Not sounding vain, right?" he quipped, earning him a punch in his shoulder.

"I gave you a serious answer!"

"I know, I know!" He put his hands up in the air. "But hey, don't blame yourself for being gorgeous."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Hiccup…"

He liked the way she said his name. He hoped she would do it again. "Look, if you can't take a compliment, that's not my fault."

"Fine." She rolled her eyes. "You're not bad yourself either."

He tried not to bask in that comment, in the knowledge that she might like him, even a little bit. He did his best to wipe his grin off his face and continue where they left off. "But I get what you mean, I suppose. People say that you need three things to live a happy life." He counted on his fingers. "Time, energy, and money. If you're young, you have time and energy, but no money. When you're a proper working adult, you have energy and money, but no time. And once you've retired, you've finally got time and money, but no energy. So I don't think your choice is that strange at all. Let alone vain."

"Well, that's one way to get depressed," Astrid huffed.

He gave her a wry smile. "Leave it up to me to brighten the mood, I guess."

"No worries, it won't keep me up at night," Astrid shrugged. "So what about you? What would you pick? If you remembered the question, you probably thought about what you'd answer too."

"I did," he admitted, rubbing the back of his head. "It's… interesting, but I always thought the answer was obvious. Then you made some really good points, and -"

"And I'm interested in yourreasoning, not your backpedalling."

"Okay…" He shifted, pushing his bangs back. "I'd choose mind. I'd never thought about those things you mentioned, about the whole 'walking around with a walking frame' part of getting old. Especially with my leg and all." He vaguely gestured beneath the table. "Whenever I think about reaching those ages, my mind always goes to the documentaries, the news reports about people with dementia. Because I just find them so incredibly… scary."

Astrid nodded at him and he briefly chewed on his lower lip before he continued. "The thought of getting Alzheimer's, of digressing until you forget yourself and the people around you… I don't think it runs in my family, at least not the early version of it, as far as I know, but I know that doesn't make me immune and it's just -" He sighed. "I know we all die eventually, that's inevitable. But I wouldn't want to go like that."

"Me neither," Astrid softly said, glancing at her hands. "Can I still change my pick? No use in feeling fit if you don't remember what to do with it."

"Or we could team up," he joked, wanting her to smile again. "One preserved body, one preserved mind."

"Sounds like a plan," Astrid laughed. "When I'm old and senile, you just tell me what to do and I will carry you around when you can no longer walk yourself."

"Perfect!" he agreed, grinning. "Match made in heaven."

Astrid cocked her head, observing him as her lips settled back into a slight smile. "It'd seem that way."

Had they both just implied they'd still be in each other's life years from now? Was he reading too much into that? Into the way Astrid's eyes seemed to soften the longer she looked at him, in how he was struggling to remember the last time he'd felt both this excited and this at ease?

He should just ask her. Show that he wasn't afraid to step up and declare he liked her more than he should like anyone he'd talked to this shortly.

"Do you -"

He was interrupted by a loud crash, a shout coming from the other side of the square, the world suddenly larger than just the two of them. He twisted his head to see a guy with fiery red hair stumble backwards, reaching for his eye.

"Dagur!" Astrid jumped up, sprinting in the direction of the sound as the man - Dagur? - balled his fist.

And punched the guy Hiccup only now recognised as Snotlout right in his nose.

"Fuck," Hiccup muttered, rushing after Astrid.

Snotlout recoiled, grasping his nose, blood seeping out from between his fingers as he ran into Dagur shoulder first. Ruffnut and Tuffnut cheered as the two fell over, crashing into the bench Fishlegs had been sitting on until a second ago. What the Hel had they gotten themselves into?

Astrid reached them before Hiccup did, shouting in exasperation at the men rolling around on the ground. "What the fuck are you doing!?"

No one gave her nor the small crowd that had gathered the answer they were looking for. Astrid rolled her eyes, digging her nails into Dagur's leather jacket and pulling him off Snotlout with a show of strength that seemed to surprise Dagur too and left Snotlout on the ground, wide-eyed.

Dagur tried to rush back in, but Astrid yanked him back. "Nope, you're not ruining my night, not this year." She twisted his arm behind his back when he moved again, making him yelp. "You can go berserk in your own time!"

"It wasn't my fault!" Dagur sputtered, his left eye blue with something Hiccup didn't know was a bruise or a tattoo. "He hit me first!"

"You were asking for it!" Snotlout yelled, coughing as blood streamed into his mouth from his obviously broken nose.

"Nah." "Not really." The twins countered instantly, crossing their arms.

Hiccup rushed over to Snotlout as he got back up, and put his hands on his shoulders. "Whoah, Snot, calm down."

"Move over," Snotlout insisted. "Let me at him!"

"Dude, your nose's broken," he argued as calmly as he could, trying to use his height advantage to prevent Snot from moving.

"You know him?"

He looked back over his shoulder at a sceptical Astrid, her eyebrow pulled up, Dagur's efforts to squirm out of her hold futile. He didn't know whether to yell at Snotlout or simply stand there and be impressed with how well she handled guys two times her size. Make a bad and inappropriate joke about her handling him, sometime…

"My cousin," he shrugged, trying to make clear that he also didn't ask for this. Out of all the nights Snotlout had to be, well, Snotlout…

"Nice family you got there," Astrid snorted.

"Right back at you."

"Nope." Astrid shook her head. "Best friend's brother."

"Oh my Thor… You broke my nose!" Snotlout suddenly yelped, as if he'd only just realised it.

"Heh. You kind of sound like Hiccup, talking through your nose and all," Tuffnut commented.

"You gave me a black eye!" Dagur yelled.

"I'm gonna sue you!"

"Playing the lead role in a local production of Grease doesn't make you an American, Snot," Hiccup bit, trying to glance over Dagur's shoulder, where Astrid was trying to hold her grip. "Astrid -"

"Is there are doctor around!?" Snotlout whined.

"I hope so, cause you need one, to fix your head!" Dagur bellowed.

"Guys, fighting doesn't solve anything, please stop…" Fishlegs tried weakly.

Dagur surged forward with such force that the last thing Hiccup saw was Astrid tumbling backwards on the ground, right before Dagur collided with him and Snotlout. They landed in a pile of limbs, both real and fake, Hiccup's elbow landing right in Snotlout's stomach and Dagur's knee digging into his thigh. He cried out in pain, trying to push Dagur off him but ending up as the heavily abused third wheel, caught in the crossfire while neither Snotlout nor his assailant paid any actual attention to him.

"Alright, fine, then we'll try it this way."

His misery was interrupted by a few flashes of blond, followed by pained yelps from Dagur. Finally free, he sputtered and rolled off of Snotlout. He pushed himself up, glancing around to thank his saviour and finding Astrid next to him, perched up on Dagur, holding his arms behind his back as he was lying face down on the floor. Looking uncannily comfortable, as if she was doing this every day.

"We should probably get out of here before the cops get here," she casually remarked.

"If I didn't know better I'd think you were currently undercover," he grinned, distractingly offering Snotlout a not-so-helping hand while keeping his eyes on the most badass woman in the world. He was happy she wasn't with the police though. He didn't need the idea that she could end up like his father.

"You caught me," she laughed. "I'm trying to get a breakthrough in the curious case of cute guys who only appear on New Year's Eve."

He could feel his face change colour. Along with his hand when Snotlout gripped it, leaving it sticky with blood as his cousin hauled himself up.

"Geez, can no one hand him a tissue?" he asked, agitated. Ruffnut shrugged as if there was no other sensible option, zipped open her coat and tore off part of her shirt, handing it to Snotlout, who promptly pressed it to his nose.

"Astrid -"

"Oh Gods," Snotlout gasped, glancing at the piece of fabric and seeing how red it had gotten in mere seconds. "That's a lot of blood."

"- this is not how -"

"Am I dying?"

"- I thought this would go -"

"I'm definitely dying."

"- but thank you, and -"

"But I'm too young and handsome to die!"

"And I think you should get your charming cousin to the ER," Astrid smiled, softly patting Dagur's head when he struggled again.

"I'm sorry," Hiccup tried. So this was how it ended. His first true chance in seven years.

"I'll call you tomorrow," Astrid reassured him with yet another smile.

That phrase stayed with him as he told her goodbye, dragging Snotlout away from the crowd, the others following in his wake. It was echoing through his head when the clock hit midnight in the waiting room of the hospital and Snotlout lamented this being the worst New Year's ever, his complaints unheard because Hiccup himself simply disagreed. He was on cloud nine despite the hospital smell, despite having to explain to the twins that bringing booze into the ER to 'have a bit of a party after all' wasn't socially acceptable behaviour, despite being semi-traumatised by Fishlegs Googling every single medical condition a nosebleed could be a symptom of. No matter how often Hiccup pointed out that there was a direct correlation between the position of Snot's nose, the unstoppable force that had met it and the voluminous amount of blood.

Astrid's words were still with him when he woke up the following morning, feeling like he had a hangover despite not having drunk any alcohol. But in a good way. The best way. The kind that made him giddy and excited, anxiously glancing at his phone while he tried to go about his day.

And they didn't leave him until by the end of January, Astrid still hadn't called.

#a decade to find you #modern au #hiccstrid #hiccup #astrid #httyd #httyd fanficion #aleteia-writes #i love musical theatre snotlout #i love using all the references #it was a good refresher of 2016 to write this chapter #hiccup is such a drama queen #httyd fanfiction #fanfiction #nye #new year's eve

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bereft-of-frogs · 2 years

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2021 Writing Wrap-Up

Eureka! I found the one of these I did last year. I guess I did it earlier in December, took a bit to find in my archive.

Total number of completed stories: 20

Total word count: 111,883 Posted / 165,199 Actual

Fandoms written in: MCU, Star Wars (pre-prequels, and Fallen Order), Six of Crows/Shadow & Bone

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I think less? I was really hoping to have finished more of whumptober, but I did actually get a decent amount done. At the midway point of the year, I didn’t think I would get over 100k, but here we are!

What’s your own favorite story of the year? A tie between what follows us, which I’m quite proud of and I’m just wearing old bones, which I keep rereading.

Did you take any writing risks this year? Let’s be real, I played to my strengths this year, it was mostly space travel and ghosts (both real and metaphorical).

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?

- Write fewer, longer fics. Like, actually put more effort into writing more novel-length work even if that ends with me posting less.

- Literally just an outline for the last part of ‘the dead reign there alone’. Just an outline. Come on, brain, that’s all I’m asking for.

That’s really it, because there’s a really big question mark in the middle of the year so I’m keeping my goals pretty low because I have no idea what the second half of the year is going to look like. Hopefully I can also keep consistently writing! (And not have such a dramatic slump again like November/December oof)

Bonus Question: Reviewing Last Year’s Goals:

- Not have such a damned complex about writing. I actually think I did okay with this one, because that ended up meaning me just being like ‘fuck it’. XD Like I definitely still get a little bogged down in ‘damn, I wish this had more of an audience’ or get insecure about various fandom pivots, but I definitely feel like I got to a point where I’m less caring about what other people think about my writing. (As evidenced by plans for the digression fic).

- Write about more space ghosts. Well, I did do that. Though I never actually finished the one whumptober prompt for ‘ghosts’.

- Make progress on series. RIP, no I did not, carrying this one over. Literally just an outline for ‘the dead reign there alone’, that’s all I’m asking future!self, please-

- Write more second drafts. I did middlingly at this. Definitely most of my whumptober fics could use another pass because of course as soon as I post them and I’m reading them back myself, I find all the misplaced punctuation and spelling errors, etc etc. I think I’ll be better at this in 2022 just by virtue of the nature of my goals, which is to write fewer projects over a longer span of time, but we shall see.

Most popular story of the year? the hostage, which, despite my struggles with the MCU lately, when I do read this back I’m like....yeah this is solid. XD It’s not my personal favorite of the year, but I can see why it was relatively well-received.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: real or imagined (what does it matter), I think I have to rewrite the summary, because I thought this one was going to do a lot better, there are BEES and ANGST what more could you want? (but I acknowledge the summary is not very good)

Most fun story to write: the lake was one of those fun ‘almost all in one day’ fics, though ‘impact’ I would say tied, it took longer and I did have to do multiple drafts but it was that level of indulgent whump that is just really fun to write.

Most unintentionally telling story: I don’t think there’s anything too obvious this year...I do have a WIP that is 100% obviously me Processing Some Stuff, but that won’t be done for a while (if at all)

Biggest disappointment: I think in general moving from what was a big and active fandom to smaller, less-active ones has felt a little lonely. I obviously appreciate all of the comments and kudos (and frogs) that I’ve gotten (and oh god haven’t responded to...so many) but I can’t pretend that the drop from averaging around 150-200 kudos per single-chapter fic to 30 hasn’t stung a little.

Biggest surprise: Definitely the slide into the Six of Crows fandom? I never thought I would be here, I read and thoroughly enjoyed the duology years ago, never really cared enough to read the other books, was initially put off from watching the show by (in hindsight, really silly) fandom drama*, but then a friend got me to watch it and I was like ‘wait this is actually good? I have ideas?’ and also those fics have been getting quite a lovely response, so that was really fun.

*Not a surprise, but a victory of this year: I do not give a shit about fandom drama any more. Fuck it. Fuck it all. This was not the first time I put off something I later watched/read and was like ‘wait this is fine what is wrong with tumblr?’ and it’s just been burned out of me. I do not give a shit anymore. The more fans complain about something that seems petty the harder I’m going to watch the thing, I have been fooled for the last time. I’m just so over this attitude of ‘are you really a fan of a thing unless you actually hate it’ like no. I actually like things sometimes, as unbelievable as that sounds. But anyway, 2021 is truly the year that burned the last of the ‘caring about fandom drama’ out of me. It’s honestly very freeing.

- - -

So this was originally a tag thing, I just copied it from last year, but if you feel like using a template to sum up your 2021 writing accomplishments, please consider yourself tagged! Happy New Year!

#writing #new years resolutions and such #idk how to tag this and it seems like all tags are banned now but eh here you go

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praphit · 4 years

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BAMFs of 2019

Here's last year’s CHAMP -

THANOS

(Thanos: ”WTF did you just say?” #Mood)

Let's see if he made it back.

But, first, let’s take a look at some honorable mentions, as well as some people who were trying too hard:

Rey -

Of course she is a total BAMF. So, why isn't she on this list? 3 REASONS: 1) She looks like a racist ex that I once dated. How can someone who decided to date you (a black man) be racist? Did y'all see the movie "Get Out"? You didn't know that the story was based off one of my relationships did you? So, yeah, she ain't ever gettin on this list.

2) The force is cheating - their I said it.

3) This last movie sucked. This rap she did didn't help her cause.

ALSO - there’s this - her rapping. I repeat, she ain’t ever getting on this list.

Nic Cage - cuz he's Nic bleepin Cage

Cardi B - cuz she’s Cardi bleepin B

Hooded Justice - if only he had been in more episodes. A black man disguising himself in a hood, as well as white, to fight evil in his neighborhood, that the police force (of which he is a part of) refuses to stop. Hell yeah! I love "Watchmen".

Lupita! - her brilliantly scary performance in "Us" is def BAMF material.

The Rock - honestly, The Rock is so awesome, and has been for so long, that he needs to be extra awesome to make it.

Trying too Hard. Please STOP:

Batwoman -

I like Ruby, but she's like an elf. She's an elf model. It's not bad to be an elf model, but... If a villain in Gotham, let's say "Bane"

has me cornered, and Batwoman shows up to "rescue me", Imma start praying. He'd swing her around by that red hair of hers until her head pops off.

Rambo - He’s like 80! C’mon, Sly. Please STOP.

Dark Phoenix - a movie about her temper tantrum

Joker -

- not with all of that awkward dancing he was doing

NOW, finally, the top Bad Ass Muthas of 2019!

12) Greta -

Say what you will about climate change, but you can't deny her passion and dedication, and how inspiring it is (unless you're Prez Trump or Fox News) to see and hear a kid like her do her thing. I admit that her winning the honor of "Person of the Year" is too much. But, we all wish our kids would be this dedicated to what they believe is positive change. Plus, she has a kickass soundtrack. Gets me hyped every time!

11) Dave Chappelle

Back in the day, comedians used to be brought on stage, tasked with the difficult job of making a room full of different types of people laugh. Now, it's not just about the job of jokes, but you have to do so without offending anyone, and with clean living. When did we start holding a comedian's behavior to a higher standard than we do elected officials? Dave saw this, and kept doing what made him popular anyway. In a world where most comedians are running scared from difficult topics, Dave plunges right in. BAD ASS.

10) Linda Hamilton -

Old as bleep! We have what's-her-face here,

who is kinda badass herself, but despite being a badass cyborg (or whatever the hell she is), she still felt the need to ask for help from Linda bleepin Hamilton. LH traded her Hospice bingo card in for some guns and went to town on some machines! It'd be like if your home was being surrounded by aliens, and despite you having some fire power in your home and 911 at your disposal, everyone's first thought is to call grandma. That'd have to be one BAMF of a granny!

9) Masvidal -

Allow me to describe this brotha to y'all who might not know.

Some guy was talkin smack to Masvidal, and that guy got kneed in the face by Masvidal (fastest knock out in UFC history = 5 secs). Some guy was arrogant enough to say he was the baddest mofo around, and Masvidal scheduled a fight with this dude for a literal baddest mofo around belt. Plus, that same night of the fight, when he was talking to the media after he had won, he started mocking Conor McGregor, talkin bout Conor don't want none of this. He was talking trash, publicly, about Conor, while people were feeding him pizza. BADASS!

If there is ever a fork in the road, and on one side you see The Rock, Jason Statham, and Will Smith chasing after you, and the other you have Masvidal sitting down, eating a slice of pizza, you had better take your chances with the three action heroes over this BAMF.

8) Nunes -

If you don't know who she is, I wouldn't be surprised. The UFC botched her marketing before and after she fought and beat (badly) Ronda Rousey - yeah, RONDA ROUSEY; remember her? Nunes pretty much ended her career.

The UFC was so certain that Ronda was going to win, and so shocked when she lost, that they missed an opp to get behind a fighter who is better than Ronda (though mad respect for Ronda), and is currently holding TWO belts (first woman to do so). ALSO, she's the first openly gay UFC champ in history. She's so sweet too! - well, unless you're locked in the octagon with her, then she turns into a werewolf.

7) MANDO

I don't know about you, but all of this talk of teamwork from comic book movies can be a bit tiresome. The Avengers, The Justice League, The X-Men. Everybody wants to form a band. What happened to solo acts? What happened to lone rangers? People may say "There's no I in TEAM." Yeah, that's the prob! What about I?! Sometimes, you're Justin Timberlake, and the rest of the group is simply holding you back. That's Mando. He's Disney's updated (non-racist, unless you’re talkin drones) Lone Ranger. He doesn't need teamwork (maybe a weekly cameo, and a baby tag-along, but that's it!). He has beaten up gangs of robots, burnt people up, taken people out Jason Voorhees style, cut people in half, blown people up, blown off heads, BUT because it's Disney, we haven't seen any of that good stuff. He'd be higher on this list if they gave my man an R-rating.

6) Capt Marvel -

Captain Marvel is definitely the most powerful person on this list. She is probably also the fiercest person on this list. In Endgame, when she saw her black daddy (Nick Fury) on the screen, talkin bout Thanos snapped him away, and then something snapped inside of her, and she said "I'm going to go kill that mofo." The Avengers accompanied her, but I don't think she would have needed their help. She didn't really need their help in the final showdown with Thanos. He threw her aside, but you know she was coming back, until Tony got in her way. She is so fiery that it wouldn't surprise me if in her sequel, she goes back in time in order to rematch Thanos by herself, to prove her dominance. The reason that she's not higher on the list is because she's so damned destructive. She's just like The Hulk in the fact that she shows up to destroy everything. Now, she's a lot more focused than The Hulk, but she's so powerful that she does more damage. And she doesn't have much of a personality (so far), so it's hard to gauge her badassery of attitude, you know?? Like, if you're a villain, and you get in the way of a gorilla, that gorilla will destroy you in a very spectacularly badass way, but... it's a gorilla, you know??

I’M NOT CALLING HER A GORILLA. Don’t go snitching on me to her.

I just don’t know if she’s a hero or simply has anger management issues. Is she badass or too powerful not to do badass things?

Either way, RESPECT... or she'll come for that ass.

TIME FOR A BREAK -

Let’s break from all of this badassery with some cuteness

Look how cute it is - I CAN’T TAKE IT!

Ok, back to action.

5) Iron Man -

Look, Iron-Man started this shit! Who knows what would have become of the MCU had Robert Downey Jr. blew it. Tony Stark assembled the team (granted, he was partly the reason for the break-up), he gave us Spider-Man (with that suit) (he also gave us Ultron, but let's not get bogged down with details), he held his own against Thanos in "Infinity War",

Dr. Strange thought HIM worthy of saving, and no way time travel would have worked in "Endgame" without him. Plus, in the very end, he out-smarted Thanos, and countered Thanos' one-liner ("I am inevitable.") with his own ("And I... [five minutes later - I swear that's what it felt like] am Iron-Man.").

Paid the ultimate sacrifice. Hell yeah, he's on this list. I felt kinda bad for his wife. After IM3, she was barely around. And when Tony died, she was barely comforted... cuz nobody knew her. Oh, well.. she be aiight.

4) Thanos -

This dude saw his demise coming, and still went straight ahead towards the foes who cut his head off. BADASS! He was exceptionally crafty in playing The Avengers and blowing up their base. Then, he was just sitting around waiting for the main Avengers (Capt, Iron, and Fat Thor). He wanted to gloat a bit first. BADASS! And had Gamora not betrayed him, and had given him the gaunlet, he would have beaten The Avengers AGAIN!

He even died with a cool pose (he took a knee and got his "Thinking Man" on). BADASS!

3) Arya Stark -

This young lady scared the bleep out of me. She has my fear AND respect. I was actually scared for whomever her current target was... I was like "Run, fool! She gonna get ya! Damn, Arya, you didn't have to do them like that!"

Now, I know I talked about Ruby Rose being a ridiculous choice for Batwoman, but if Arya Stark left on a voyage to Gotham and became Batwoman, I'd buy that. I can see her killing Bane very slowly. This woman is a frickin psychopath, and I love it. She's fearless! She also went up against the top cheese of the white walkers. Y'all remember that badass move she had at the end!

YES! I only wish she had said something cool when she took him out, like... "You've been Starked." No, that's terrible, but something like that. I wish she was the one sitting on the throne, but they... you know... did what they did.

2) Capt America -

I think that it's fair to say that Capt America was the rock of The Avengers After the snap, he was the only one to keep his shit together; he actually worked to help others keep their shit together.

Meanwhile, Widow is crying in the dark every night while having a PB sandwich and bourbon dinner. And she just gave up on her hair.

Thor became an alcoholic.

And you could say Hulk was ok, but... was he?

I mean, that ain't right. This is avoidance behavior if I've ever seen it.

But, Capt kept it together. Then, that fight with Thanos at the end was one of, if not THE best one on one fight of the series. Using both Thor weapons, meaning he was both badass on a fighting level and a righteousness level - which ain't easy to accomplish. And when he straped tight his shield in that trailer, and gritted his teeth - hell yeah!

Chills. Capt to Thanos: You motha bleeper"

1) John Wick -

Three movies with no time in-between to shower, sleep, take a piss, brush his teeth, NOTHING! His life for the last few years (it seems like) has been running, lurking, hiding, beating ass.. and beating ass some more. Lord knows what this dude's kill count is up to. His nickname is "Baba Yaga" Have y'all seen what the actual Baba Yaga looks like?

Terrifying. And yet, not as terrifying as John Wick when he's angry at you.

The amount of endurance and focus that has gone into this long stint of murdering (only fueled by rage and a few shots of bourbon from time to time) is uncanny.

In JW3 he makes a guy eat a book (imagine what must be done to a person's jaw for that to happen), he gets shot, stabbed, hit my two cars (seconds within each other)... Nah, y'all ain't hear me! TWO CARS! The people in the cars were trying to kill him! He fought two super ninjas - like IP Man caliber, he beat up an army of soldiers, crawled through a desert, got shot by a friend who betrayed him, fell off of a building (bouncing around a few times before hitting the pavement), and was somehow still good to schedule a fourth movie after all of that - which I assume will pickup right there.

He doesn't have any superpowers (though you wouldn't know), but his tenacity is to be envied, and outdoes everyone else's on this list.

BAMF!!!

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microbrien · 4 years

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The Past is a Where, Not a When

“…from a certain point of view.” — Obi Wan Kenobi

(Originally posted on Medium)

If you haven’t seen Avengers Endgame and you have any interest whatsoever in watching it — even a little tiny bit of interest — or, even if you have no interest, but you expect to see it eventually and you’d be annoyed to know what happens before you do, stop reading now. A lot of this won’t make much sense unless you’ve seen the movie at least once (maybe twice, if we’re being honest), but it gives away most of the plot, so stop reading. There will be lots and lots of spoilers from this point on…

>>> SPOILER WARNING <<<

So the endgame finally happened. Doctor Strange saw Fourteen Million Six Hundred Five possible realities where the Avengers fight Thanos and only one where they beat him and it happened. The question is, did he know about all that “time travel” stuff? Did he know about Scott Lang’s savior rat? Or did he just know how to get the ball rolling on the right path, and that path started with him giving up the Time Stone to save Tony?

I’m going to go with the second option there and assume that Doctor Strange could only see past his own death in one of those scenarios (because that’s the main rule of the Time Stone) and all he really knew was in the one where they win, it starts with him doing what he did at the end of Infinity War.

Then he gets dusted, gets undusted five years later, and still things would have to play out just right.

I have a feeling Doctor Strange would be just as confused by the time traveling adventures of Endgame as I was the first time I watched the movie. It doesn’t work the way the Time Stone handles time and it didn’t seem to make sense at first and they weren’t explaining it! I was annoyed.

Then the scene between Bruce Banner and the Ancient One happened and I was slightly less annoyed. Only slightly.

Part of the problem is that we generally don’t have very good vocabulary for talking about these things without resorting to terms and concepts that first require you to take a few semesters of theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, and classical logic.

So we get stuck using words like “time” a lot when that’s kind of inaccurate. I’m not saying I’ve ever taken any courses like that. I’m not claiming to be an expert on any of this. But after watching a second time, reading way too many theories, and watching a couple of helpful videos, I finally have it all sorted out and honestly, it really does all make sense! No paradoxes, no plot-holes! Truly!

Even better, I think I’ve figured out a couple of helpful analogies to guide anyone who is still struggling to organize it all in their mind. Ready to “time travel” some more? Cool.

Back in Time… Except Not.

The first thing to keep in mind is that thing they kept trying to explain to each other in the movie: you can’t change your own present by going to “the past”. Bruce makes a point of really hammering this home to Rhody and Scott. It ends up being played for laughs, but he’s not wrong. That’s why they couldn’t go back in time and kill baby Thanos. That’s why they didn’t even try!

In a way, there’s no such thing as the “past”. There are just alternate realities that are similar to your own, except they happen to be at relatively “earlier” points in “time”. When you “time travel” to the “past,” you’re just visiting a different Universe, identical to your own except it’s just running behind.

To help visualize that, imagine you have a bunch of VHS tapes of the same movie, but these are special VHS that are impossible to rewind. So, if you want to go back and watch an earlier part of the movie, you have to change tapes.

That’s what the Avengers are doing when they “time travel”. They are switching to tapes that are still at earlier points in their run time. Yes, this means that there are four alternate realities that they travel to. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll call the “main timeline” MCU Prime and label the others based on the years they are in when the Avengers get to each one — MCU2012, MCU2013, MCU2014, and Tony and Steve briefly go to MCU1970.

If they had gone “back” and killed Thanos, that would have ended the threat for whatever tape they happened to be on, but back in MCU Prime, nothing would change. However, they found out they can cut and paste parts of those other tapes into theirs, so they go and cut out the stones. Then they jump back to their home tape, MCU Prime. That’s it. That’s the whole plan.

But! Oh no! Those other tapes are just as real and valid as the Avengers’ original VHS and by taking out the Infinity Stones, they have been ruined, right?

No. Just as Bruce says to the Ancient One, they can put back what they took away.

The Confusing Conversation with the Ancient One is Important, but not for the Reason it Seemed

In MCU2012, the Ancient One expresses worries about giving up the Time Stone and says to Bruce that yes, obviously having that stone would help him in his reality (they very specifically use that word, “reality”), but not having it in their reality would have devastating consequences. And from the Ancient One’s point of view, Bruce’s reality may as well be the alternate one. Where they are at that moment is just as real and valid as the one Bruce came from, so it would be selfish of the Avengers to sacrifice that entire Universe to save their own.

This implies that until interfered with, the only difference between any of these realities is when in time they are. Otherwise, they’re all simultaneously playing out identically.

This is the most important reveal of this conversation. It’s why the “time travel” they are doing in the movie, which is not time travel at all, is even possible. If every reality was different, they wouldn’t be able to just pick a year and go. They’d also have to be sure they were traveling to a reality that was reasonably similar to their own. It’s also important in regard to what happens with Steve at the end.

This does mean some of the Ancient One’s explanation about what could happen to their reality without the Time Stone is flawed. They oversimplified it to provide that neat orange line visual, but all they really meant is that their timeline is identical to Bruce’s and will continue to follow the same path of events unless something is changed, like removing the Time Stone from it, which would make that reality very dark in comparison. For example, Dormammu would eat all of existence if Doctor Strange doesn’t have the Time Stone to stop it.

Calling the alternate realities branches was probably inaccurate, but if we accept every reality is identical until some temporal interloper disrupts it as a basic premise of the MCU concept of “time”, it’s a useful way of describing it, both for Bruce in that moment and for an audience who isn’t interested in a crash course on quantum mechanics.

Each alternate reality already existed. We also know this is true, because of what’s happening with Ghost in Ant Man and the Wasp. Laurence Fishburne explains it during the scene when he, as Bill Foster, is lecturing to a class. He explains how it is possible to fall “out of phase” with a reality, existing in multiple realities simultaneously. That’s what’s happening with Ghost.

So, whether the Avengers had traveled there or not, each one of those alternate realities were already happening all on their own. The presence of MCU2014 Nebula in the MCU Prime and the fact that killing her doesn’t create any paradoxes proves that.

Meanwhile, each reality is changed a little just by having visitors from other realities. The goal is to change them as little as possible. Just being there probably won’t affect the unfolding of events in that Universe. Taking away an Infinity Stone on the other hand (or telling Steve that Bucky is alive before the events of Winter Soldier, or letting Loki escape captivity with the Space Stone) is a big change that could have very serious consequences for that reality and maybe many others.

Some have still asked, why? Why not just take the stones from those realities and keep them? Then Thanos wouldn’t be able to do the snap in any of them! Well, sure, maybe. But let’s say that if the options are to stick with what you know or risk infinite unknowns, many of which could lead to the destruction of life, the Universe, and everything, it’s probably better to stick with what you know.

At least by putting the stones back, the Avengers know events will basically happen just like they did for themselves in MCU Prime. (One out of Fourteen million, remember? Anything changes and Thanos eventually wins.)

So once The Avengers are done using the cut/paste stones, Cap hops back over to the other tapes and pastes them all back, so he doesn’t ruin those copies. Except he decided to go to the one still at 1940 or something and live out the tape with Peggy.

Old Steve

Which raises the question… how did old Steve Rogers get on that bench at the end of the movie? Based on everything we just talked about, he can’t have “rewound” his own tape and then waited for it to play back to the point that he left. Not possible. It’s not Back to the Future, it’s not a single timeline / reality.

The way the scene was presented, they do seem to imply that’s what Cap did, but I think they just didn’t want to bog down the scene with exposition.

That means, at some point, he did one of two things. A. He traveled back across realities to be there — which is not at all impossible. Cap shouldn’t age like regular human beings, so who knows how far in the “future” he lived in whatever timeline he was on. Maybe he lived on to 2100 and met new genius Avengers who made a new machine and sent him back to his home reality with a new shield and it would ruin the scene (and the fun of potentially having Chris Evans someday make a comeback in the role to play all that out) if they explained that there. Okay. That’s reasonable enough to quiet most annoyances about any potholes his presence on that bench created.

But I think option B. is more likely. That’s not the same Steve Rogers we’ve just watched for the whole movie and that last 10 years or so. That’s a different Captain America from yet another different “tape” (AKA reality). And if so, that implies that there are infinitely branching timelines where Cap does that same thing over and over and over. But why does he seem the same?

He might be Steve Rogers from MCU Prime 2 or MCU Beta or whatever name you want to slap on it, but this is why the conversation with the Ancient One is important. Every reality is playing out exactly the same, all at once, unless interfered with. That could be any one of infinite Steves, but it’s ultimately irrelevant. He has the same DNA and memories as the Steve who just left.

Time is a Train Track

In at least one video and some fan theories online, it’s put out there that not only should Steve not be able to go back to previously visited realities, the next Steve Rogers to make that jump and stay with Peggy should arrive to find a young version of himself already there.

I disagree on both points. That only makes sense if you believe “going back in time” creates an alternate reality based on the one you’ve just left from. I don’t see any reason to think that logically must happen. In fact, we’ve already seen hints that those realities are already there, happening, whether they are visited or not.

Explaining why no Steve will ever run into a young version of himself also helps to understand why the Avengers can move back and forth through “time”, visiting alternate realities, going home to their own, and then even going back to previously visited realities again, so I’ll address both at once.

As far as returning to already visited realities, first we have to understand how they even got “back in time” — I mean, to other realities in the first place.

How do they know which reality to target, to hit it at just the right time that they want to be in? They don’t! But it doesn’t matter, because they don’t have to.

They know when they want to be, so the where doesn’t matter. If you think of time as stationary and realities as the thing passing through it, then you just pick a point in time and hit that mark and you will necessarily hitch on to the right reality (the right “where”) when you arrive.

I don’t know why, but this reminds me of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In Quantum Mechanics, you can know roughly where something is or how fast it is moving, but you can’t know both at once.

It would be like jumping on to a moving train. Reality is the train. The track is time. If for some reason you know you need to get on at mile marker 25, but it doesn’t matter which train car you land on, why go through all the trouble to figure out the train’s schedule? Just go to mile 25 and hop on.

Now that you’re on this car, how do you get back home? And how do you get back to the same car after you’ve left to return the infinity stone you borrowed to its place? You can’t just hop off and walk back to mile 25 — it’s going to be an entirely different car.

This was the real problem and Tony solved it. Tony figures out how to get back to the right reality again. Because knowing when isn’t useful anymore. You need to know where to get back, and that’s harder. Hence the “Time GPS”. After all, a GPS helps you find where you are and where you are going, not when you are (that would be a watch).

We aren’t given as clear an idea of how (inverted Möbius Strip?), but I think he’s basically reversed the thinking again. Now time is back to being treated as the thing that moves and reality is stationary. It’s all relative anyway. The tapes analogy is back to being useful!

What Tony essentially does is put a beacon on his home reality (he marks which VHS tape they need to get on again) so when they go quantum, they can move through the quantum realm, the thing that ties all these infinite realities together, and come back.

It’s not clear how much time has passed at home, but it doesn’t matter — you logically have to come back after you left and time “works differently” in the quantum realm, so any amount of time makes as much sense as any other.

This is where Scott Lang got the whole idea in the first place. What if it wasn’t random? What if you could choose where /when to get out?

Anyway, because it’s possible to get back home, it’s logically also possible to return to previously visited realities. We can assume they’ve pinned the locations with their GPS as they were there so they can find them again. And as long as they arrive after they last left (and again, according to the rules of time, Reality, and everything, they literally must), then no paradoxes could possibly happen. Those tapes can’t be rewound, remember? They just marked all the tapes they’re watching and just switched them out as needed.

So is there a New Gamora?

She didn’t disappear once Tony’s snap happened. At least I don’t think so, unless Tony didn’t realize he shouldn’t snap her away. And she also didn’t get erased from existence once Steve returned all the stones to their respective realities (although how he did that is legitimately hard to explain — how do you put back the Soul Stone?).

If it were possible to erase her that way, then Tony’s sacrifice was for nothing. He didn’t need to snap Thanos out of existence, he just needed to use the Time Stone to undo the damage to the van, hop in the quantum tunnel, and send it back.

Of course, that would create a paradox where MCU2014 Thanos never crossed over to MCU Prime and so Tony would never have to put it back… see why this falls apart fast?

So, I think Gamora is out there. She’s alone in a new reality, ten years in the future relative to where she was, and everyone she’s ever known is gone, except Nebula, who is very different from the Nebula she knew. She’s probably freaked out and looking for something to hold on to. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will probably have something to do with finding and helping her.

Why didn’t putting the stone back erase her? The easiest way to explain that is to point out, again, that you can always visit a given reality again further ahead “in time” from where you last visited, but never further back — my tape analogy helps here.

Like when Tony and Cap mess up in MCU2012 go “further back” to 1970, they’re not going back so much as they’re switching to yet another tape set to an earlier point — one where they know they can find Pym particles and the Space stone in close proximity.

So what’s happened in MCU2014 Gamora’s timeline is done. The ink is dry. It can’t be changed. Someone visiting that reality would only be able to enter it at whatever point it’s currently at, which would have to be after Gamora left.

If you wanted to go back to that same moment again, you’d have to visit yet another reality that happens to be at that moment when you arrive.

Remember the train cars and mile marker 25? If you keep hopping off and going back to mile 25, you’d just be getting on completely different train cars each time… even if they look and seem identical, whatever you do in that train car won’t affect anything happening in any other car.

You can’t return to a time that has already passed in a given reality. So, if you want to visit the same reality again, you have to meet it whenever it is.

Infinite Captain Americas

So what about Cap? Is he just infinitely jumping sideways or should the first one be able to do it and then the next one run into himself, already there?

Well they’ve already basically hinted that time is happing all at once, everywhere. It’s not a single stream, it’s a fabric that infinite realities pass through. So “going back” isn’t really “going back” anyway. It’s moving over.

Think of the train again! If Cap hops off and walks back to mile marker 25 and gets in another car, how could he already be there? Even when the next next Cap gets unfrozen, lives his life through Endgame, then gets off and walks back to mile 25, it should still be the same thing all over again. It’s a weird infinite loop of Captain Americas, but there’s zero reason to believe he’d walk back to find himself already there.

If some Cap arrived to find himself already there, that would make no sense logically, because there has to be a start to that cycle and in that case there can’t be — a circle has no beginning.

So, it only makes sense, based on what the rest of the movie implies, that each time Cap “goes back” and stays with Peggy, he’s moving to a new reality where he hasn’t gone back yet… because in that reality, of course he hasn’t! It hasn’t happened yet, and when it does, he’ll just be moving over to yet another different reality anyway!

Remember, he’s not creating these realities, they were all already happening. Time is a train track and each reality is a car on an infinite train that never stops moving.

Did Steve Rogers Ruin Peggy’s Life?

What about that husband Peggy supposedly had all those years, that man she said Steve Rogers saved? Did Steve selfishly ignore that happy life to have what he wanted with her, ruining those possibilities?

No, I don’t think he ruined Peggy’s life. One possibility is, he may have always been the husband she referenced. Why, if she was married to someone else by the 1970s, would she still have a picture of Steve as a young man on her desk?

She’s a spy and a very good one. It’s not too hard to bend that truth and say Steve is actually someone else, someone that her reality’s Steve Rogers saved.

Is it believable that no one would recognize him? Not really, but at least it’s logically possible. Anyway, it would be a huge risk to her safety and his to reveal who he really was, so keeping it secret would keep them both safe while potentially allowing him to help out, if and when needed, anonymously. It makes sense that she might lie about who her husband is.

Or even if we believe that husband was a different man, if Steve travels to a reality and doesn’t let that life happen, it still could have happened in another reality. The fact Steve went and had a life with her doesn’t mean it’s been erased, it just doesn’t happen in MCU1940 where Steve jumped to.

On the other hand, maybe he didn’t stay with her. Maybe he just came back for the dance and then went off and lived his life doing other things with other people.

After all, a large theme of this movie is learning to let go, move on, and live life. Even how the Avengers resolve the fight with Thanos parallels this idea in its own way. They don’t return things to how they were the instant after the snap. They don’t undo it. They just bring all the dusted life forms back, to continue living.

Ah okay, but there are still other questions — did Steve sit back and do nothing for like 80 years while bad things happened in the world?

It’s messed up, but maybe. Again, what this whole movie also reveals about the MCU is that every alternate reality is identical except for what point in time it’s at and will unfold identically until an outside force (“time travelers” some other inter-dimensional something) interrupts it.

In other words, it’s literally all the same. Although I believe there are infinite realities happening simultaneously, there is MCU Prime and there are five known variants now, and they are the five “times” visited in this movie. MCU1970, MCU2012, MCU2013, MCU2014, and once Steve goes to and stays, MCU1940 (ish).

Just visiting these realities, even if little was changed, could have massive ripple effects.

So it’s possible that Steve chose to let world history happen, affecting it as little as possible, out of fear that If he changed anything, that particular reality he was living in would not be able to achieve the one scenario out of 14 million that would result in the eventual defeat of Thanos and the undoing of the snap.

That’s a painful and tortured existence to live. Part of me doesn’t believe Steve Rogers: Captain America would be able to do that.

So who knows? Maybe he tried his best to stop things like war, assassination, violence, Bucky murdering Tony’s parents, etc. only to find out that just his mere presence and his attempts to “change” things in that reality created ripple effects that meant his memory of history from his reality wasn’t reliable anymore in that one. That would be an interesting (if painful) movie to watch, wouldn’t it?

Whatever theory you favor there is equally as valid as the next, I think.

The Bell Cannot be Unrung

Changes are coming. Endgame will fundamentally change the MCU and from an outside perspective, it’s a brilliant business move by Marvel Studios and Disney if they want to incorporate all their recently re-acquired characters, reset some stories, and correct their own wonky timeline without having to reboot the last eleven years of the MCU… while also forever leaving the door open for any dead character to make a return.

First of all, everyone who died in Infinity War, Endgame, or any movie in the MCU is alive somewhere. Or sometime. Whatever.

For example, we already know MCU2014 has had Thanos and his armies defeated before the snap could happen there. So there, all the Avengers are all alive, well, and roughly the characters as we knew them around the beginning of Age of Ultron. Those events will play out the same, as well as Civil War, Black Panther, and everything else leading up to Infinity War, but Thanos never happens to them. No Snap. No dusting. No Time Heist.

In that reality, Tony could still discover inter-dimensional travel and who knows what characters could cross over from there to MCU Prime. Maybe some other unforeseen but equally catastrophic event happens in that reality and with no other options, the survivors jump to MCU Prime to warn their counterparts and help fight the coming evil. We have already been shown this is a path to a revived Gamora… sure would be a convenient way to revive some characters who we previously thought were gone forever.

Last we saw, in that MCU2014 alternate reality, Tony is alive and well. Loki is alive and will eventually become friendly with Thor. Black Widow is alive and has no reason to sacrifice herself for the Soul Stone. Vision and Wanda are both alive and last we visited MCU2014, Quicksilver would be too. Heimdall won’t be killed by Thanos.

And even though Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans have said they’re retired from their roles, after a few years when sentimentality starts creeping in and the money is too good to turn down, maybe Marvel even brings back Cap and a very much alive Tony Stark — even if it’s just for a cameo.

Those aren’t the only possibilities, though.

What if in MCU1970, Tony’s one conversation with his dad produces a much kinder, gentler Howard Stark? Maybe Tony’s parents never die. Does Tony still become Iron Man there? Who knows!

In MCU2012, Loki has escaped capture. Did he return to Thanos? Did he realize something was off and start exploring how to jump into other realities? The upcoming Disney+ series seems to indicate that yes, this might be the case.

In MCU2013, Thor almost told his mother about her own death. She seemed to know it was coming. Did she avoid it there? How does that change things for Thor, that Loki, Odin, and everyone else when Hela arrives?

Maybe each one of these little changes creates little ripples that turn into massive waves of change in those realities. Maybe someone — let’s assume Loki or some of those MCU2014 Avengers who never have to deal with Thanos — messes with reality jumping, gets a little too careless, and oops! Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker is retconned into the MCU as an alternate reality. Oops! Now there’s a reality where none of the MCU Prime heroes ever existed, but all the X-Men from all those FOX movies do. Oops! That means Deadpool is there too and he’d be painfully aware of all of this, even if he doesn’t fully understand the quantum mechanics behind it. He and Cable would have some explaining to do about the time travel in his movie though.

Hello / Goodbye

Much like the parallel metanarrative of the first Avengers movie, the narrative of this one was, “can we have our cake and eat it too?” And the answer yes.

In the first Avengers, the story was about whether or not all those heroes could work together and the metanarrative was about whether or not all those characters could work in the same movie together. The answer to the question of the story was always going to be yes, but the answer to the question of the metanarrative wasn’t as clear. Turned out, the answer was a very big yes.

In Endgame, the question of the story is “can we avenge the world without ending the world as we know it” (which is why we get a Tony who is so concerned about preserving what happened in the last five years to protect his daughter) and the metanarrative is, “can we end our eleven year story and wrap up all these character arcs without ending the whole MCU?”

And again, the answer is yes. They said goodbye without saying “goodbye forever.” They ended things with a new beginning. It’s hard trick to do.

That’s why this kind of “time travel” is the only possible way this movie works and any other ideas or theories don’t make much sense, not just from the point of view of the internal narrative, but from the outside as well.

Anything else would figuratively undo all the work Marvel has put in for the last decade plus and might literally undo all the goodwill and fandom they’ve built up in that time.

Just like Tony Stark and the Avengers, they ended the story by opening up infinite new possibilities, and they did it without erasing the past.

#marvel #mcu #endgame #timetravel

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