beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/15/hulk-actor-smashes-pms-attempt-at-incredible-metaphor


I am spending so many hours a day lately reading the news
and my ability to do a damn thing about it has not expanded
so this is not in fact fun.



But finding out our prime minister thinks it's good to be the Hulk
kind of explains a lot.

I went with mum to see subtitled showing of Captain Marvel
:-D :-D <3

That was excellent
I was looking forwards to it for years
and now I want to go again :-D

I do not have particularly complex thoughts on the movie righr now
just like whoosh! boom! Higher further faster!
which is awesome
but I think it will reward further thought.

Also the time it was set was fun.

Also, cat!



So I had an excellent evening
even if it took between 1545 & 2200 to go see one film.

tired now
but, whoosh! boom!

My usual thing being hung up on the possibilities of time travel to just hit undo and fix it
meets current canon that I'm refusing to watch until the other half is out.

Time travel seems likely to be useful around then.

So I keep wanting to rewatch everything and figure out what exactly needs tweaking to end up in a better place for that one Really Bad Day.

( Read more... )



Another approach to fic is to bring the massive crossover and have, say, the Legends crash land in the MCU. How would they fix it?

... a speedster is like a multitool of fixing. I mean, the time travel is even built in.

Marvel speedsters don't time travel, do they? Or do they? I know there's mutant time travel powers in the X movies but...

... that's another xover, bring all the Marvel parts back together.




Thing is, while I do go over and over things in my head, I also do know the drama is why we cared in the first place. Just making it all not happen wouldn't be sufficient preparation for the day anyway. I mean a time traveller could keep Tony out of that cave in the first place but that's only good for Tony. Which kind of sucks. Except then the trick is to imagine circumstances where Tony could be his best self without his worst day.

Mostly though, imagining bits I would fix, it's always more drama to fix things right after they've gone wrong. The problem is exposed, now everyone can work on it.

Only many everyones have a different idea of what both problem and solution is from what I do.




I like my recruiting the bad guys bit.


And the whole regulation and oversight and... Hydra using 'into the light' was a bit annoying, because SHIELD was all scuttling around in the shadows and it wasn't good for it.


Just figuring out how to treat people better and that brings together more people to be stronger when the really unavoidable stuff turns up.





But I haven't really been reading much fanfic since Civil War, except for AUs, because... mess. Big mess. Everywhere. And such conflicting ideas on how to de mess it.

... also because Steve/Bucky got way more plausible than Steve/Tony just when the Steve/Tony turned into my favourite thing where fixing the world in microcosm is required. But that's a whole other thing...



Okay, incoherent thoughts not helping, onwards with my day...

I have been reading spell descriptions in Pathfinder and have concluded Loki is a Bard.

Which seems appropriate for a god of stories.

But all the magic we see him do, the illusion stuff, that's possible in the relatively limited Bard spell list. The spell descriptions are spot on for some of his favourite tricks, like being in his cell but actually invisible. Or projecting himself into an illusion to speak to someone. That's high level for Bard magic though. But also at high level there's spells to find the most direct route to anywhere, or to walk in an adjacent dimension and get anywhere fast. Which would explain a lot.

So now I a bit want to figure out his spell list.

Seems like a bad idea to imagine he'd be so restricted though.

But characters in superhero stories always are? Like, compared to the breadth of possible magic spells even in any given game system. Superheroes have a couple of good tricks and really work them.


Is interesting the contrast in what we want out of game rules and stories. If a game stops letting us learn new things we get cranky, but we get super cranky if every story challenge gets solved with a new trick.

Still. Bard. Can be epic.

I was reading an AU where it felt like only Tony was in character. Steve was just this pretty guy in a bar. Didn't even keep the art.

The hook for the relationship was that Steve didn't recognise him, started out communicating in a format where they didn't see each other, so initially he treated him like any other human. Which was the foundation even after they figured out who they were.

And then Tony asked what he wanted from him.

And you know, with that as a start, the answer has to be stuff he could get from anyone else on the planet, to treat him like an ordinary guy, and definitely not want to use his money.

Except... that's not the foundation of Steve and Tony.

( Read more... )




Also? I get frustrated at the idea that romance is entirely separate from the complex business of daily living together. A partnership works together, even if it's just to arrange food or furnish a flat. With much bigger resources around the idea it's actually superior to just stand back and let him deal with it all seems... unequitable. Impractical. Kind of exhausting. A good partner might not be good at your job, but they're good at some part of the life you're going to share, or what's the point?

Being an amusing conversationalist is not the half of it.

But what do I know, people stuff is ever baffling to me.

I have watched Agents of SHIELD season three up through Singularity.
I'm still not having as many feels for the characters as I used to. They're having big emotional stakes, I'm watching plot. It's annoying when you fall out of feels with a show.

( Read more... )

I watched a bunch more of Agents of SHIELD season three
and this whole 'HYDRA is secretly older than nazis' bit is just... ridiculously stupid.
( Read more... )

I am trying to watch Agents of SHIELD
and I am kind of aggressively bored.
I started fast forwarding through specific subplots and now I'm just going through whole episodes.
I know I've seen these eps before but I don't remember where I left off and also things ought to have some rewatch value.
But this set of characters aren't giving me feels any more.
Don't know why.
Possibly it's the thing where they aren't allowed to make their world better and things always turn out worse.
Maybe it's that team how about we treat people like people is not synonymous with team good guy in this world
and the whole human rights rule of law thing is... really not happening.
Dystopia with supervillains isn't grabbing me.

I know I quit because of the racism with all the dead black guys, but I used to care about the characters, and that seems to have worn off.

Even though Melinda May is dreamy and wonderful and kicks all the arse.
Not sufficient.



It's sad and annoying.


Maybe if I watch more it'll get me again?

... probably not.

That was... thin. Or perhaps flat. For something that talks so much about dimensions...

( Read more... )

Empty signifiers and no roots.

Too busy to no good effect.





I'd rather watch The Librarians.

I watched three more episodes of Agent Carter season two.
I dislike when they give team evil the speeches about equality. I mean, where's the percentage? Then they turn out to be hypocrites who hire because the people at the bottom of the ladder are desperate and easily manipulated, and they shoot people to further their plans without caring about gender etc. Well wow, who could have seen that coming? So it makes the equality speech all hollow. Except team good is a little short on diversity. I mean sure, plural women, a disabled guy, but the only black guy is a person of interest, not an employee.
I'm also really missing Peggy talking to women. She had a whole conversation with Dottie, but she's mired in this stupid romance subplot and talking to men all the time now, and all her friends like from her building or Angie, they're all gone. Wonky balance.
Also I couldn't care less who she kisses, I want to see her found SHIELD.

why they not do best stuff with awesome ingredients?




I also have now played with all the basic picture settings and still it looks peculiar. I'll just have to get used to it.
New is difficult.

The s in vision started to bother me.

… I’m reading Avengers fic, it came up.

But it’s not quite like other s sounds, so I just kept looking at Viz or Vis as abbreviations and they’re not quite right.


So I looked it up

http://teflpedia.com/IPA_phoneme_/%CA%92/

wait, does that work? It’s a sort of curly z. ʒ

It says other words with the s-in-vision include

equation, usual, seizure, luxurious, genre and beige

which by my count means spelling it with an s, t, z, ge and half an x.

Unless it’s a translation, then it’s zh.

English!

So now Viz, Vis and Vision will continue to bother me

but in a more informed way.

Today Sunday was swapped out for See Movie With Subtitles
yes
SUBTITLES
:-D
... yeah I maybe look overenthusiastic about that, but, it is a new movie, and the subtitles are on at a time of day I can get to, and it isn't even the only subbed showing this week.
*basks in the awesome*

... actually when is the other one? is tempting to go back...

So, I liked Civil War. And it would be really, really easy for me to not like Civil War, because see icon for whose side I'm usually on. But having seen the movie, I am actually mad at Tony, but not mad at the writers for what they did with Tony. Which is a tough balance. They did it plausibly. I'm disappointed in Tony, but I see what they did, and it worked.

I'm not best pleased with Steve either though.

And I did like the plot, I liked where the story went, which characters did what.

The gender balance is still ridiculous. I mean if you've got less than parity it's bad, but the more people they put on screen, the more they filter for which characters they want to still have around, the fewer women there are. That is unacceptable and I'm proper fed up of it.

I think they did okay by black men, in a movie with three superhero black men, but if the only speaking black woman in the movie had a name I did not learn it. Not cool. And having said they did okay, read a spoilers if you're worried: ( Read more... )

There was a lot of stuff in this movie and honestly I could have lived with there being much less characters, but I think they juggled them pretty well. There were several characters with an emotional arc driving the story, there were several with emotional arcs that nudged the story around, there were some that turned up to fight but still had a personality and some interpersonal stuff going on while they did that. Nobody was wasted.

Also it managed to be very funny at appropriate times and super tense at other times. I held my breath at one point, I just, like, forgot to breathe until we saw how that worked out. And yet, other times, much laughing.


SPOILER goes under the cut, where I start going on about actual plot and details and stuff, plenty SPOILERS here :
( Read more... )


I am super tired and I forgot to eat today. I mean, I bought food, but then there was a movie, and the food went all soggy in the bag instead of being eated, and then it was three hours later and it went straight in the bin. So my brain just sort of ground to a halt just there.

I'm too tired to squee... but I'm not sure it's a squee sort of film. I'm mostly thoughtful.



Oh, one other thing I bought today? They had Civil War cups. With a teeny tiny Black Widow figure on teh top.
... so yeah, I bought another Black Widow, for £2
but you can buy the cup without the drink
so I have a nice clean cup.

And a tiny Natasha.

*puts her carefully where I can see her*

*grins*




I will very probably write more about this film later, but that's it for now.
Need food.

I'm reading a long fic and Stark just gave Fury a 'suck it, boss' speech, after smashing through a SHIELD base and kidnapping/freeing someone, where the punchline was the Avengers are going independent
and
as long as they do less damage than the Chitauri they can do as they damn well please because the world needs them.

I stalled right there, because that? That is a supervillain origin speech. And I don't think the fic knows it.

( Read more... )



A world that needs superheroes so much they'll let them smash all the things is a world with some pretty major problems, many of them now superheroes.

And yeah, sometimes it's as clear as aliens pouring through a portal or a robot overlord crashing a flying city, so someone's got to do something. The story really pumps up the contrast so you can't exactly argue for pacifism. Diplomatic solutions don't work when you don't even know the enemy exists or acknowledge their sentience/sapience/rights.

Not cool. Don't think there's RL equivalents. Not pretty ones, anyways.

But as I understand it the whole law and courts and trials thing is there to see if the actions taken were reasonable, proportionate, vaguely legal. So why shouldn't a superhero be subject to those same processes of law?

... the usual comic book answer is their utter corruption, but if the story stops there it's pushing a morally bankrupt rule by titans that I want no part of.




... so basically I just sat down and wrote out which side of the superhero civil war I'd be on.

Accountability is a necessary prerequisite of civilisation.



Freedom's necessary too, but not to the extent you can stand there and go You Can't Make Me over laws about if you're allowed to hit people and never answer for it.

Bad laws need fixing, but bringing down civilisation and letting rip with the might-makes-right is not the way to do it.



(ugh, okay, so my Chaotic Neutral tendencies are all D-:< right now)


Bad law needs fixing, bad systems need protesting, bad regimes even need replacing, but people just standing there saying they're outside of law and beyond judgement because they've got the biggest weapons? Are the problem. Never the solution.



... why am I reading superhero stories if...
*sigh*