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beccaelizabethThe problem with being a fan of time travel shows is the eve present temptation to reimagine one's own life
to look for the single point intervention that would have changed everything
somehow.
... and then it's half past two in the morning and everything is depressing.
Because the options are
there was an off ramp and you failed to take it
or there never was any way out.
and, on the whole, sod that.
It's no bloody use living life looking backwards
and yet that's the only view we actually get.
... view of the inside of our own skull either way, but you know what I mean.
This is why I don't ship Steve/Bucky, leap of logic though that seems:
Bucky represents everything in the past that Steve lost, and while it is of course wonderful for him to get that back, it's not exactly a helpful story
because there's no amount of obsessing on what's gone that will buy you another chance at it.
... I realise now the Winter Soldier is in play that Steve and Bucky and Sam together represent the different conflicts between public image and private experience of America and war, and that's an interesting set of stories
but the bit where Steve took a time jump and then Bucky came after him?
That part seems unhelpful.
Steve/Tony is about embracing the new and bringing all the best of the old along with it
... except when it's about the military-industrial complex and all the ways it chews people up and spits them out, uses brains and soldiers and makes them both deal with their country profiting from conflict.
They've got Issues, even before Civil War. They're such a fascinating collection of archetypes to smash together.
But the time travel part, the man from the past meets the futurist, and they keep each other believing? Or the man from the past gets stuck looking for other bits of past, and tada, finds them, just in ways that kaboom anything he'd built in the present...
I like Bucky but I'm still seeing them as having a problem unless they find something just as strong outside the two of them.
... and yet am not reading their threesome fics.
... in no small part because I'm mostly reading DC now.
Len tried to change his past with a single intervention in 75, but his dad was still the same man, so it didn't work.
And that's depressing as hell.
As is the implication Len was kept on the criminal path because someone found it useful.
But the someones had all of history to choose from, so I don't reckon it worked that way around. Heroes and villains and Legends built themselves up, and thn Time Masters picked them up to move around their game board. Only after that they weren't allowed to quit the game. Until the Oculus planned to let them anyway.
... the Oculus showed Ray dying, at its own destruction. It set the whole thing up, moved the Time Masters around with incomplete information. The Time Masters would always have lost the use of it, in the Oculus' plan.
... makes you wonder if it's like the Speed Force and has a talky mind of sorts.
Random speculation about fictional characters is way less depressing than pondering the puppeteer's limits on one's own life.
There's some point in reviewing the past and looking for mistakes or missed opportunities. But only if anything vaguely like that could ever come again.
Stuff you'd really actually need a time machine for is no use to anyone.
... so why do I keep watching it...?
to look for the single point intervention that would have changed everything
somehow.
... and then it's half past two in the morning and everything is depressing.
Because the options are
there was an off ramp and you failed to take it
or there never was any way out.
and, on the whole, sod that.
It's no bloody use living life looking backwards
and yet that's the only view we actually get.
... view of the inside of our own skull either way, but you know what I mean.
This is why I don't ship Steve/Bucky, leap of logic though that seems:
Bucky represents everything in the past that Steve lost, and while it is of course wonderful for him to get that back, it's not exactly a helpful story
because there's no amount of obsessing on what's gone that will buy you another chance at it.
... I realise now the Winter Soldier is in play that Steve and Bucky and Sam together represent the different conflicts between public image and private experience of America and war, and that's an interesting set of stories
but the bit where Steve took a time jump and then Bucky came after him?
That part seems unhelpful.
Steve/Tony is about embracing the new and bringing all the best of the old along with it
... except when it's about the military-industrial complex and all the ways it chews people up and spits them out, uses brains and soldiers and makes them both deal with their country profiting from conflict.
They've got Issues, even before Civil War. They're such a fascinating collection of archetypes to smash together.
But the time travel part, the man from the past meets the futurist, and they keep each other believing? Or the man from the past gets stuck looking for other bits of past, and tada, finds them, just in ways that kaboom anything he'd built in the present...
I like Bucky but I'm still seeing them as having a problem unless they find something just as strong outside the two of them.
... and yet am not reading their threesome fics.
... in no small part because I'm mostly reading DC now.
Len tried to change his past with a single intervention in 75, but his dad was still the same man, so it didn't work.
And that's depressing as hell.
As is the implication Len was kept on the criminal path because someone found it useful.
But the someones had all of history to choose from, so I don't reckon it worked that way around. Heroes and villains and Legends built themselves up, and thn Time Masters picked them up to move around their game board. Only after that they weren't allowed to quit the game. Until the Oculus planned to let them anyway.
... the Oculus showed Ray dying, at its own destruction. It set the whole thing up, moved the Time Masters around with incomplete information. The Time Masters would always have lost the use of it, in the Oculus' plan.
... makes you wonder if it's like the Speed Force and has a talky mind of sorts.
Random speculation about fictional characters is way less depressing than pondering the puppeteer's limits on one's own life.
There's some point in reviewing the past and looking for mistakes or missed opportunities. But only if anything vaguely like that could ever come again.
Stuff you'd really actually need a time machine for is no use to anyone.
... so why do I keep watching it...?
no subject
Date: 2017-08-29 10:53 am (UTC)From a meta perspective, I like stories that juxtapose such forks, like Sliding Doors, or the much more depressing precursor Blind Chance. But forks may or may not actually change the big things. There's a Friends episode doing What Ifs, and they were going for 'it all ends up the same'. But if you think from a character development perspective, they might be doing the same things, but they are not actually the same people, they've been through very different experiences.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-04 04:58 pm (UTC)