tardis_stowaway: TARDIS under a starry sky and dark tree (Default)
Friday night I did a rewatch of the first two Captain America movies.  When Bucky fell off the train into the chasm, I made a distressed noise that caused my cat Noodles to get up from where she was dozing on a different chair and come snuggle beside me on the couch.  Thank you, Noodles. <3  I needed that comfort in a time of emotions.

Saturday night I went to see Captain America:  Civil War.  Tragically, Noodles could not accompany me to help me deal with all my feels.

-Overall, I loved it!  There are a number of caveats I’ll get to, but overall I think it was a strong movie,  about as strong as it could be given the fundamentally annoying “make the heroes punch each other” premise.


-I would watch an entire movie of Steve, Sam, and Bucky roadtripping in a VW bug. I would watch a TRILOGY about that.

-It was fun to watch the movie with an excited opening weekend crowd, including my friend L. who is kinda hilariously reactive to things she’s watching.  The most amusing moment of reaction happened when Steve and Sharon kissed.
CROWD:  general reactive murmurs, many sounding surprised or negative, but a few “awwws”.
SOME GUY:  *wolf whistle*
FRIEND L:  What the whaaat??!?  (After the movie, she said she found it really weird that Steve seemed to be having a thing with the niece of the woman he used to be involved with.  Very valid point.)
ME:  Well that was random. (By “random” I meant “obvious attempt to shoehorn in a heteronormative romantic moment to obscure the fact that this movie reads much more naturally as a love story between Steve and Bucky.”)
BUCKY AND SAM:  Quick, we have to make faces like amused, pleased, straight wingmen to cover up our jealousy.

-I HAVE SO MANY BUCKY BARNES FEELS RIGHT NOW.  (This is typical for days ending in -y, but especially true at the moment.)  Pardon me while I wordvomit, or feel free to skip to the next bullet point.  Poor sad trashpanda was just trying to lay low and deal with his shit in peace, having recovered his sense of self all on his own, then some asshole decides to frame him and Steve found him but they had no time to have a proper conversation (and certainly not reunion sex, dammit) before a lot of cops showed up and they had to have a foot chase in the car traffic and then he got arrested and strapped to a fucking chair, which must have been brutal given how many awful things he’s experienced strapped to a chair, and then said asshole REACTIVATES HIS PROGRAMMING AND FUCKS UP HIS HEAD AGAIN and made him kill more people, but Steve still believed in him and showed this by getting into a tug of war with a helicopter, and Bucky totally could have shot Steve but even through the programming he didn’t do that and instead just crashed the helicopter.  And then Steve pulled him out of a river after an aircraft crash because they are always saving each other and apparently going unconscious plus seeing Steve got him back in his head.  And then he had to fight some superheroes because he always helps Steve out in his fights and also they thought they needed to keep the asshole from taking over the world, but it turned out asshole just wanted the superheroes to fight more and decided to provoke that by using stuff that HYDRA brainwashed Bucky into doing and there was a lot of fighting that could have been avoided if Tony would have calmed down for ten minutes and considered the meaning of BRAINWASHING and then Bucky’s arm got ripped off and it’s clear that that thing was linked to his pain receptors, ack! And then everyone was finally so punched into a pulp that they calmed the fuck down at last but Bucky was so worried about his inability to control his own head that he had himself put back into cryofreeze, goddamn it.  But it’s a long way between Siberia and Wakanda, so hopefully Steve and Bucky managed to get some sexytimes in at some point.

-Steve is still very much a tiny stubborn lonely kid inside, and it hurts my heart.  I just want him to be happy, dammit.  It’s clear that he would give up pretty much anything and everything for Bucky.

-I really loved the opening Avengers mission where it’s clear that they’ve been working together and training Wanda in espionage and superhero team skills.  The followup conversation between Wanda and Steve where they discuss how to deal with having made mistakes that led to people dying was also great.

-Sam!  I enjoyed watching the badass new moves he had like using the wings as a shield. I love the further deepening of his friendship with Steve (he went with Steve to Peggy’s funeral, awww) and how he is thoroughly part of the team.  Wish he’d had a bit more of a plotline of his own, oh well. I am highly amused at the way they gave Sam a drone as a nod to comics!Falcon’s actual falcon Redwing.

-Natasha is trying so hard to do the right thing for the world while also doing right by her friends.  She gets a lot of shit from people for being morally grey but I think she’s actually a deeply moral person, she just is willing to do more dubious things in support of the larger picture.  I adored the scene where she came to the end of Peggy’s funeral and gave Steve a hug.  (This movie needed so many more hugs for Steve, and everyone else too.)  I wish the movie had more of her, but then again, that’s my complaint with every Marvel movie.  If they ever make a Black Widow film my complaint will be the ten minutes she’s not onscreen.

-Super excited to see Black Panther!  His look and fighting style were a joy to behold.  Even in this crowded movie he got a plotline of his own. It was a pretty simplistic “Grief=>Vengeance Quest=>Really Stubborn About That Vengeance=>Finally Laying Down the Need for Vengeance” storyline, but he handled it with grace and charisma.  I look forward to the Black Panther movie and getting to know him more.

-I don’t care if Vision was “worthy” to lift Mjolnir in AoU, because in this movie he was definitely the Creepy Boyfriend towards Wanda.  He walks through walls to intrude on Wanda’s conversation in her room.  He prevents her from leaving the house.  Dude, just because you’re a mystical android or whatever doesn’t make this stuff okay. Wanda, meanwhile, is maturing into a thoughtful young BAMF; she's great.

-The scene at the end with Rhodey and Tony (and the most excellent Stan Lee cameo) was lovely.  I suspect Rhodey will be calling literally everyone he knows to tell them about Tony Stank.  I do wish the movie had made a bit more focus on his friendship with Tony before the accident.  He got grievously injured to further the (white) main characters’ plotlines, and didn’t even get much character development to make up for it. :(  I hope this isn’t the end of his appearances in the MCU.

-The things I disliked most were mostly the things I already disliked going into the movie, namely the general premise that all the heroes are fighting each other and that the movie shoehorns in Ant-Man and Spider-Man instead of focusing on the already large cast of existing Avengers.  Black Panther is a cast addition that made sense, but those two were only there to pad out the fight scenes and have some one-liners.  The scenes with the Arthropod Dudes were lots of fun, but they were tangents that I felt weakened the movie as a whole.

-It felt really contrived to me how the movie had all the characters willfully refuse to calm down, listen, or compromise so it could get all of the superheroes fighting.  I dislike this whole Civil War premise and hope that future movies go back to building a team instead to fight actual evil.

-Hot Young Aunt May?  Whyyyyyyyyyyy?  I am weirded out.

-I am a super bummed that Tony and Pepper have broken up and that she wasn’t in this movie.  It explains some of Tony’s less than stellar decisions and poorer than usual emotional stability in this film, but I wish it hadn’t happened and I hope it is undone AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  Like, I want a random scene in Doctor Strange where someone is looking at the celebrity news and sees that Tony Stark and Pepper Potts have gotten back together.  That is the urgency of this situation.

-Seriously, why did Tony decide that a battle with other superheroes where various governments were just itching to arrest the lot of them was the right time to bring in the teenage kid crimefighter he’s been eying?  Pepper would never have let this happen.

-“Spider-Man WIll Return” said the end of the credits.  Of course Spider-Man will fucking return.  More Spider-Man movies are only slightly less certain than death and taxes.  I really like the character, but the number of movies he has (especially compared to all the heroes who aren't white dudes) is ridiculous.

-Personal headcanon that Clint and Natasha started fighting each other in the big brawl because they were each trying to keep the other away from the more enhanced fighters who might hurt them worse.

-When Nick Fury gets back from wherever he is, he is going to be SO PISSED OFF.

-Can the Captain America scenes in the next Avengers movies just be Steve receiving hugs and having barbecues with his friends and petting animals and generally being happy?  And the same for Bucky?  Plus lots of them tenderly making out?  No?  Well, thank heavens for fanfiction.
tardis_stowaway: TARDIS under a starry sky and dark tree (Default)
It is immensely entertaining to watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier with someone who is unspoiled about the Winter Soldier storyline.  When I was watching it in the theater for the first time, the friend I was with gasped and covered her mouth with her hands when Steve first recognized Bucky. (I was involved enough in fandom that even though at that point I hadn't read the relevant comics I already knew the Winter Soldier's identity.) Tonight, I watched it with a different friend who is good with faces, so as soon as the Winter Soldier was unmasked she said out loud, "Oh my god, is that his friend?!?"  Experiencing the reveal vicariously through unprepared non-fandom people is super fun.

Having just re-watched CATWS, I am once more awash in feelings.  All I really want to do is read fic.  Alas, I have an early start and a punishingly long work day tomorrow, so I need to go to bed.
tardis_stowaway: TARDIS under a starry sky and dark tree (Default)
Meme time!  This one is swiped from [livejournal.com profile] the_redjayat the moment, what songs remind you of your OTPs? Since usually one of the first signs that I'm going to intensely ship a couple is that I start mentally compiling a playlist, I couldn't resist this meme.  I'm forcing myself to stick to one song per ship.  Links go to some way to listen to the song, either on YouTube or a website with streaming player.  For each, I'm including some lyrics that exemplify why I think this song suits this ship.

Doctor Who

Doctor/Rose/Jack-"Forces of the Unseen," Cloud Cult.  (This song is begging for a "Parting of the Ways"-centric fanvid.)
It's not impossible, you'll see.
You've never been inside my head:
Ten billion burning suns and belief in a strength that can raise the dead.
It's the warmth when you're next to me.
It's the bright white light of a fevered dream.
It's the storm in your eyes.
It's in the roots of the tree:
The underestimated power of the forces of the unseen.

Doctor/Rose- "Run," Snow Patrol (This was so hard to choose!  I have approximately a zillon songs that make me think of Doctor/Rose, some specific to Nine or Ten or TenToo, some associated with particular fics.  "Run" is perhaps my favorite for their relationship as a whole.)
Louder, louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say...


Doctor/Jack- "The Mercy of the Fallen," Dar Williams (Yeah, I wrote a Doctor/Jack fic that shares this song's title.)

There's the weak and the strong
And the many stars that guide us
We have some of them inside us
Sherlock

Sherlock/John/Mary- "Little Talks," Of Monsters and Men (This song even mentions an empty house.)

'Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry
our bodies safe to shore

Sherlock/John- "Save Me," Aimee Mann
But can you save me?
Come on and save me...
If you could save me,
From the ranks of the freaks,
Who suspect they could never love anyone.
Marvel Cinematic Universe

Steve/Bucky- "Feel Again," OneRepublic
I'm feeling better ever since you know me
I was a lonely soul but that's the old me
It's been a long time coming since I've seen your face
I've been everywhere and back trying to replace
Everything that I broke 'til my feet went numb
Praying like a fool just shot the gun
So kiss me now
This whiskey on my breath
Feel the lives that I have taken
What little soul that I have left.
And oh, my god
I'll take you to the grave
The only love I've ever known
The only soul I've ever saved.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy/Spike- "Ghost," Indigo Girls
And I guess that's how you started
Like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me
And I start to drown
And there's not enough room
In this world for my pain
Signals cross and love gets lost
And time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits
I need you the most

Willow/Tara- "Blood and Fire," Indigo Girls (This is a S6 Willow/Tara song.  Also, it's amusing that the peaks of my obsessions with BtVS and the Indigo Girls happened at the same period of high school and early college, so that I have a lot of Indigo Girls songs mentally associated with various characters and plotlines of this show.)
You have spent nights, thinking of me
Missing my arms, but you needed to leave.
Leaving the cuts, leaving my burns,
Hoping I'd learn.
Blood and Fire
Are too much for these restless arms to hold.
And my nights of desire are calling me,
Back to your fold.
X-Files
Mulder/Scully -
"Head Over Feet," Alanis Morissette (Ah, my first OTP!  Back in high school I made an actual casette mixed tape to express my feelings about their UST and ultimate true love.  This is one of the songs that was on there.)
You're the best listener that I've ever met
You're my best friend
Best friend with benefits
What took me so long?

tardis_stowaway: TARDIS under a starry sky and dark tree (Default)
Huge news, y'all!  Marvel just released news about titles for a bunch of their upcoming films.  There is one that I'm not pleased about, but several more that fill me SO MUCH JOY.

Let's start with the amazing news.  First the one I'm damn excited about, then the one I'm so far beyond excited about that I squeed so loudly I scared the cat.

  • November 2017:  Black Panther!!!  So awesome that we're getting a black MCU superhero!!  They even announced casting for this one.  It's going to be Chadwick Boseman, who I have somehow managed not to see in anything, but he's got a good resume and people seem pleased.  I don't actually know much about the character of Black Panther/T'Challa but I'm very much looking forwad to finding out.

  • July 2018: CAPTAIN MARVEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do the dance of joy!!!


I literally started shaking with excitement when I saw the news.  (I use literally to mean literally, not just as an intensifier.) A Captain Marvel movie is all I have wanted from Marvel Studios, and really Hollywood as a whole, ever since I started reading her comics.  It's not just that we're getting a female Marvel superhero heading her own film, although that is a HUGE part of it.  Carol Danvers in particular is amazing, and a great choice for the MCU's first female-led film.  She is an aspirational character, someone that little girls can and should want to grow up to be.  Much as I wholeheartedly adore Natasha Romanoff and wish we were also getting a Black Widow movie, you don't really want to tell your eight year-old to emulate her life.  (Unless your eight year-old is already deeply damaged, in which case Natasha's story might be what she needs.)  And yes, if anyone was wondering, they confirmed that this will be about Carol, not Mar-Vell or any of the other people who have used that name.

I hope that the movie preserves the things I love about Kelly Sue Deconnick's Captain Marvel comics:  frequent Bechdel Test passes with lots of interesting female side characters (especially the theme of role models), Carol looking good without being even a tiny bit objectified, space, cats (Flerkens!), beautiful writing (like Helen's "the Lord put us here to punch holes in the sky" letter), a sense of joy as well as duty, etc.

Here's the full lineup that Marvel announced (via The Mary Sue):

  • Captain America: Civil War - May 6, 2016.

  • Doctor Strange – November 4, 2016

  • Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - May 5, 2017

  • Thor: Ragnarok – July 28, 2017

  • Black Panther – November 3, 2017

  • Captain Marvel – July 6, 2018

  • Inhumans – November 2, 2018

  • Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 – May 4, 2018

  • Avengers: Infinity War Part 2- May 3, 2019

The one I'm not so happy about is that Captain America 3 is going to be Captain America: Civil War.  I haven't actually read anything of the Civl War comics, but many comics fans whose opinions I trust hate this storyline.  Also, my personal preference is for Cap 3 to focus heavily on Bucky, and that would seem harder to do if they're doing Civil War.  But I guess Captain America:  Steve and Bucky Cuddle A Lot While Sam and Natasha Kick Bad Guys' Butts was never realistically going to be made.

About the rest of it (some of this is stuff we knew before, but I'm sharing my thoughts now):  I like Thor's franchise and the first GotG movie, so those are both things to look forward to. I have no opinion about Doctor Strange, other than that if it would get Black Panther or Captain Marvel pushed a few months closer I'd be perfectly happy if they tabled it.  I only know that character from fanfic, so I really have no hopes/opinions beyond hoping it doesn't suck.  And also hoping they cast Pedro Pascal, because he deserves to be in more things with a higher survival rate than Game of Thrones, but that's looking pretty unlikely.

I haven't read the Inhumans title, but Kamala Khan is classified as an Inhuman, so the possibility that we might get our magnificent fangirl Ms. Marvel onscreen has me very intrigued by this.  Avengers 3 will actually be two parts?  Did we know this already?  More Avengers is certainly good by me, although whether this works will depend on the script.

Anyway!  I am not yet done giddily squeeing about Captain Marvel.  Behold, many gifs of celebration and feelings!  Please feel free to add your own in the comments.

Many gifs of squee under cut to save your bandwidth )
tardis_stowaway: TARDIS under a starry sky and dark tree (Default)
You know what the world needs more of?

If you answered "Siberian tigers" or "love, sweet love," you are technically correct.  However, the answer I'm looking for today is "high-quality lady-centric fanfic set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe."

With that in mind, here are a few recs for fics I've enjoyed recently.

-Breakfast for Dinner by thingswithwings.  5,636 words.  Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) joins the MCU Avengers.  (No knowledge of Captain Marvel is required.)  This story makes me so ridiculously happy.  It's hilarious, well-characterized, and bound to give you warm fuzzy feelings.  I tried to select a favorite part to quote before realizing that the entire story is my favorite part.  However, here is one small taste that takes place while Carol and Natasha are crawling through some ducts to rescue Steve:

short excerpt from Breakfast for Dinner )

-our bruises are coming, but we will never fold by liveonthesun.  3,248 words.  Peggy Carter gets a dose of the Super Soldier serum.  This is a great what-if.  I enjoyed the author's use of parallel structures, the exploration of Peggy's changing attitude about her powers, and the ending.  I really enjoyed the appearances by the Black Widow and Pepper. Here's a sample:

short excerpt from our bruises are coming, but we will never fold )


-The B-Team by twistedingenue.  40,100 words. Natasha and Clint accidentally get sucked into a parallel universe, and at first glance it seems like the darkest timeline:  all of the Avengers in this universe are dead or permanently out of the picture, and SHIELD has been very nearly destroyed.  However, the fight is being carried on by Pepper Potts, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, and sometimes Rhodey.  Can a small team of MCU characters who aren't superpowered white dudes with films named after them cover all the work of SHIELD and the other Avengers? (Answer:  of course.  Have you seen Pepper Potts?) This story has emotional heft and an exciting plot.  The author does a great job handling a large cast, making sure every character gets an arc.  There are some tremendously fulfilling moments that i won't spoil here.

Unfortunately, this rec comes with the caveat that the fic needs a beta reader with an eye for details of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. There were numerous uses of it's when the proper word was its, plus other homonym replacements and further grammatical boo-boos.  I found these errors annoying, but they weren't quite severe enough to make me give up on a story that was fantastic in so many other ways.

There is also a sequel, For Those Who Mourn.  The sequel seems similarly good so far, but it's a WIP.  Both stories are Clint/Darcy.

Any fan works you've enjoyed recently, friends?  While lady-centric Avengers fic is my happy place, I'm also happy to receive other recs.  For example, I've been reading a fair amount of post-Winter Soldier fic with Bucky and would love to find more, and I'm always on they lookout for Sherlock fic with a sympathetic Mary.

tardis_stowaway: TARDIS under a starry sky and dark tree (Default)
I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier last weekend.  I enjoyed it quite a lot.  Steve is a character I've come to appreciate much more after reading Marvel fanfic.  I like that Steve's chief reason for being a superhero is because he's a good person who believes in doing the right thing, not because of daddy issues or personal trauma or the need to make amends or alien paternalism. Steve's fundamental decency and idealism are among his greatest strengths, even in a world that is full of betrayals, but I am also glad that the film is also sympathetic to those with a more realpolitik outlook like Natasha and Fury.


Speaking of Fury, I was genuinely worried that they'd killed him off for a little while, which just goes to show that I'm apparently still not all that genre-savvy for comics.

I was surprised by how little of the Winter Soldier there was in this Winter Soldier film.  They saved Steve's realization that it was Bucky for late in the movie, which meant there really wasn't room for a full redemption arc or more than a brief look into his character.  I would have liked to see more, but I thought what they showed worked well provided they do more with him in a later film.  Incidentally, one of the people I was watching the film with apparently hadn't known that the Winter Soldier was Bucky, so when Steve named him, she gasped and jumped.  It was pretty entertaining to watch.

Natasha is one of my favorite Avengers, so I was glad that she had a pretty big role in this.  (I still think she NEEDS a movie of her own!)  She works nicely as a foil to Steve.  I really like them as friends.  They have very different personalities, but their skill sets complement each other and they share a certain sense of being an outsider in this place and time.  It was interesting to see some of her emotions come through in reaction to Fury's apparent death.  The film's single greatest mystery centers around Natasha:  when they were holed up at Sam's house, how the hell did her hair go from damp and curly to laser-straight in the next scene?! It sure didn't look like she arrived carrying the hair care products necessary to achieve that, and Sam wouldn't have anything of the sort on hand for himself.  I guess you can say that an ex left stuff at his house (I assume ex rather than current girlfriend because earlier he was looking for Steve to help him impress a receptionist, I think), but that really was a discontinuity that the majority of women I've talked to about the movie noticed.  (It occurs to me that I don't think I've talked about it to any men other than my dad, so I don't know if there is a strong gender correlation in how bothered one is by magic hair straightening.)

I loved Falcon.  Sam is a very fun and sympathetic character, and I thought the film utilized him well. Also, Anthony Mackie seems super jazzed about the part in all his interviews, which is really entertaining and heartwarming to see.

I liked the movie's themes about the immorality of extrajudicial, preemptive killings and the fact that safety and security shouldn't be achieved at the cost of basic rights.  I do find it hard to believe that Hydra, an organization with Nazi roots, could recruit and place quite so many people within S.H.I.E.L.D., but whatever.  One of my favorite scenes was the random S.H.I.E.L.D. tech people standing up against the Hydra goons.  Meanwhile, I'd fallen about six episodes behind in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., so this movie has given me lots of motivation to catch up and see how the show is affected.  I'm not caught up yet, so please no spoilers.


And now for something completely different!

April is National Poetry Month.  I usually try to post some poems, and I've neglected that so far.  Here's one by Simone Muench I just discovered online (link.  Bizarrely enough, it's on a tattoo blog I randomly stumbled upon that is doing a month of posting poet's tattoos along with their work.)  This poem is a cento, meaning that it's composed of fragments taken from other people's works and arranged together to make a collage of a poem. Because my response to mention of wolves is predictable, it makes me think of series 1 of Doctor Who.

Wolf Cento
We: spectators, always, everywhere
with goldpinnacled hair & seascapes
of a pale green monochrome,
we wanted to be wolves:
strange animal with its miraculous elusiveness—
a step toward luck & a step toward ruin.
Old circuits of animal rapture & alarm
have stained the sun with blackened love.
The question of the wolves turns & turns.

Profile

tardis_stowaway: TARDIS under a starry sky and dark tree (Default)
tardis_stowaway

April 2019

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
212223242526 27
282930    

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios