You know what, the ‘suddenly, there’s 5 more Winter Soldiers’ subplot
has gotten a lot of flack, and I don’t disagree that it could and should have been handled a lot better, but even as it is, I really really like what it says, or rather, confirms about Bucky.
me and @microbiologistmusings made a guide! we were talking about how frustrating it can be when so much (well meaning!) art of wheelchair users seems to get the chairs...not quite right. so maybe this will help :) i had a lot of fun drawing it and thank u to levi for your unending wisdom <3
In your opinion, is it okay if someone asks ChatGPT to write fanfiction for them to read, if they are NOT posting the AI-generated fics anywhere (they are just keeping these fics to themself, for themself to read)?
Yes, this is okay
No, this is not okay
Voting ended onFeb 27
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#i'm pretty sure this is an official shield vehicle that's being used by hydra#(the guards are still wearing shield logos)#which means at some point shield must have designed a set of restraints that were strong enough and big enough to hold steve#presumably specifically for steve#because which other supersoldier did they know about? ( @bulkyphrase )
not to rain too hard on the symbolism parade, but they definitely knew about Asgardians before they knew about defrosted Steve. SHIELDRA also knew about the Winter Soldier, on some levels. And you can bet they would try and put Bruce Banner in a construction like this, even if it is entirely pointless.
He might be the only supersoldier but he's not the only person with super strength.
I think one of the big strengths of fanfiction as a medium is that it can, on average, assume the reader has a way higher degree of familiarity with canon than like…canon can. If you’re in the Star Wars AO3 tag you probably like Star Wars enough to remember more things about it than the average Star Wars-enjoying-ten-year-old. Which makes it way easier for fanwriter a to get to the juicy stuff and really engage with the worldbuilding or minor characters without having to spell out like. Who Wedge Antilles is for everyone who forgot or never noticed him in the first place. You could write a book about Wedge in the old EU because EU readers could also be assumed to be serious fans, but you can’t make a new canon Disney+ show about him. Those cost money to make and are intended for a broader audience.
And all this means that like. A good fic writer can and often will surpass canon when it comes to like. Thematic resonance and stuff, because they can really dig into something. Star Trek 2009 gave Kirk a new, more generic tragic backstory because it couldn’t expect the average moviegoer to be familiar with Kirk’s old, way more interesting tragic backstory. (Frankly, I’m not sure jj abrams knew about TOS Kirk’s backstory) whereas I have read a LOT of well-written, interesting, deeply resonant fanfic examinations of Tarsus IV, and what it means for Kirk’s character that he’s a genocide survivor. Star Trek 2009 answers the question “why did Kirk cheat on the kobayashi maru?” With “‘cause his dad crashed a spaceship when he was a baby.” A close examination of TOS canon implies the answer is “because he lived through a real-life Kobayashi that did have a win option, but which wasn’t taken.” BUT—and this is significant—even the TOS canon movies can’t really assume knowledge of the full TOS tv show, so that implication is never examined or made explicit. Instead it’s fanfic (and maybe spin off novels? Idk I’ve only read 2 trek books, if there’s one out there that covers this that would be really cool) where we get dives into that thread, where Kirk gets a commendation for original thinking because he can look a testing board in the eye and say “I’ve seen what happens when someone is entrenched in this kind of thinking, and I cannot let it happen to me. I understand the lesson, but it’s not hypothetical anymore and it never will be. I did what I had to do.” And that’s interesting! That’s meaningful! That can’t happen in a summer blockbuster. But it can happen in fic, easily, and that’s a strength of fic, I think.
I hope you don't mind me adding to this very good post, but in general i think the financial supremecy of movies and (more recently) tv has lead a lot of people to assume that the best stories can be interchanged between mediums. That every book can be adapted into a movie, every light novel into an anime, every movie into a video game etc etc
and that's the same attitude that underlies all the 'the goal of fanfic is to file of the serial numbers and publish it' or 'fanfic isn't real writing because real writing is novels and fanfic is usually structurally so different from a novel' type of takes come from.
this assumption that the medium is largely coincidental to the story being told
when that's just not true.
the very best adaptations always change things, because mediums are not interchangeable, and they fundamentally shape the stories told in them.
there are things you can do in fanfic that are simply not possible in a traditional novel, because you're starting from that possition of love and knowledge, and because you aren't bound by the need to be canon compliant, so you can ask questions like 'if these characters met in other lives, under different circumstances, what would they be like? how different would they be? how much of what makes them them is tied to the circumstances they found themselves in?' or 'what was it like to not be the heroes, to not be actively involved in the cool exciting bits? what was it like to be a minor character, left behind to deal with the consequences' because your audience is already invested, they'll show up for questions like that in a way a movie or novel or tv audience wouldn't.
there are things you can do in a podcast or radio play that are not possible in visual mediums like film or tv, because you're relying on the audiences imagination. there's a reason the best radio comedy tends to be surreal, and the best podcasts tend to be horror, those are both genres that thrive when the audience's imagination is allowed to fill in blanks.
there are things you can do on TV that are not possible in a novel or a movie. the way WandaVision completely changed its visual style with each episode is something that would not work in any other genre, but it's essential to the story. TV usually exists in very defined seasons, but cannot traditionally be consumed all in one go, which is not true of almost any other medium, and that dictates a specific type of pacing. combine that with the fact that it's a visual medium, and you get something like the overarching stories of the 9th Doctor's season of Doctor Who. No other medium could have delivered the resolution to that storyline as effectively.
Video games can force the audience to consider their own part in events. No movie could do what Spec Ops did, when it gives you a button prompt to commit a war crime, and then turns around and asks you why? why did you do that? was it too easy? do you think it felt like this when the US government committed the exact same war crime within living memory? Was it easy then too? A novel or a movie could show you walker doing this terrible thing, but it could never convey the point with the same effective simplicity, and it could never make you the audience feel culpable. only the author is responsible for the actions of the characters in a novel, but in a game, it's the audience who bears that responsibility, and that allows for moral questions other mediums struggle to effectively convey.
Comics can tell stories that take three decades and ten different writers to tell. Movies can use silence more effectively than any other medium because cinemas give you a captive audience and close-ups means you can reliably assume they can see everything that's happening (unlike theatre, which can use silence, but can't assume everyone has a good view). Theatre provides real time audience interactivity and a very special and unique kind of suspension of disbelief. Professional wrestling can tell ongoing stories in real time over years or decades, and walk the line between fiction and reality. Novels can immerse you more fully in one person's view of the world than any other medium (which also allows for information to be hidden from the reader without it feeling cheap the way it can when a movie does the same thing). Live oral storytelling allows the story to be adapted on the fly to fit audience reactions, allows for infinite variations of the same story, because no two tellings will ever be identical.
Fanfic isn't a genre, not really. Fanfic has genres, but it isn't a genre in and of itself. Fanfic is a medium, and like all mediums, it offers storytelling tools that are unique to it, that it does better than any other medium. and as OP pointed out, one of the big ones is that it can assume both familiarity and love from the audience to the characters depicted. We can stray far further afield from where we started in fanfic than the original creator ever could, because our anchors are not the narrative, but the characters.
this is probably one of my favorite clarks i've ever drawn, because i showed this to my roommate and he was like "this made me realize what there is to love about superman."
and also because of this comment:
it's a simple one-off comment but as someone who has struggled with body image stuff etc. myself it really made me happy that something I made could have this sort of impact on at least one person. that's all
(Average Metropolis reader after investigative reporter C. Kent's 452nd article on yet another case of landlords/business owners/factories' continued use of lead pipes/paint/gas/glass knowingly exposing the public to dangerously toxic lead levels) what the fuck happened to this guy
One day Bruce Wayne mentions in an interview that heroes like Superman are overrated, as the most effective way to reduce crime is to provide public resources and improve local infrastructure, then cites how neighboring city Metropolis has effectively lowered their violent crime by 13% after addressing their outdated water system and investing low income housing. the reporter conducting the interview suddenly starts looking a little uncomfortable
"Who, Clark Kent? Yeah, we're pretty sure he's a Meta. Is he a superhero? Like what, "Lead-detector guy"? "Captain pipes?" Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy and it's a handy trick, but it's lead detection, not laser vision. He's not about to go running around in tights any time soon."
everyone assumes that kent is so squirrely around superheros because he’s just desperately hoping not to be conscripted to the JLA to fix their plumbing
schrodinger's chekhov's gun. a detail in a story that looks like it should have some big payoff but it's too early to tell if that's relevant or if the author just has a passion for lovingly describing guns.
schrodinger's chekov's occam's razor: you find an inconsistent or inaccurate detail in a work that would be brilliant if it was foreshadowing a plot twist later on, but it's too early to tell whether the author expects you to be smart, and the simplest explanation is that they fucked up
I was planning on having Sam say something about building community with kindness, but apparently he had other ideas.
So I guess this is instead, a cockroach moment. A "I'll be as queer and asian as I want, fuck you" moment. A "it's your turn to recognize my humanity" moment. A "I will keep asking uncomfortable questions and making you acknowledge what you're doing" moment.
TBH I almost didn't draw a comic this year, since I haven't consumed any Marvel content in over 4 years, and, well... ::gestures at everything::. But it turns out that my brain still wants to trot out these 3 dudes and make them talk about America, so I banged this out in 5 hours.
Yes, I've been doing this for 12 years. Here's the AO3 link if you want to see all 12: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1968099 (wow, look at baby me's opinions from the first Trump term!)
And here's the tumblr tag: https://potofsoup.tumblr.com/tagged/happy%20birthday%20steve/chrono
So this is mainly going to be about what Civil War did to the MCU fandom, but I want to take a bigger meta perspective as well, mainly to point out how stupid it all was and is. This is going to have spoilers for the film, as well as the broad strokes of Civil War in the comics.
This is gonna be a long rant, folks.
So, starting out with Captain America: Civil War. I often see people mentioning how bad Age of Ultron was, but I rarely see people talking about how bad Civil War was. Now, AoU killed most of the setup made by the end of The Winter Soldier, but that isn't the only issue. And I think most folks get distracted by the whole Team Tony vs Team Steve thing.
So, small side tangent, we're going to the comics. Civil War in the comics was a very large, very impressive, very impactful crossover event. It was not good.
It was an interesting subject to tackle; in a world where a mutant teenager might literally gain the power to explode like a nuke with zero warning, possibly zero control, to what extend do personal freedoms overrule public safety? I'm in favour of gun control. Now I'm sorry you were born Edward Gunhands, but it doesn't change that you have guns for hands, and those are pretty dang deadly.
To be entirely clear, there is no good answer to this dilemma. There is never a perfect solution to such complex problem. And this is not a real problem, and can't even reflect a real problem, because writers actively make decisions in the way reality does not work.
Spider-Man's webs only break Gwen Stacy's back when it's emotionally impactful, physics don't exist otherwise. That's just the nature of the medium and cannot be avoided.
The idea that keeping some record of people capable of destroying civilisation as we know it, seemed so reasonable to the writers of the Civil War comics, that they made the SHRA side a little more intentionally evil to even the scales. This was overkill, the details of the SHRA were horrible enough.
And that's not even touching the whole vigilante angle. We're all rooting for Spider-Man because he's a superhero (and my favourite example for everything), but truly think about the implication of someone with superstrength deciding to beat up people he thinks are being bad. That's not due process, friends, and it would suck if he decided you were Bad.
Now the point is, comics are not reality. Readers of the comics were rooting massively against the SHRA. We do not judge comics by the standards of reality, because it's fiction and does not work the same way.
(Even if some folks on the internet nowadays seem to have forgotten how to separate reality from fiction.)
We trust Spider-Man to do the right thing, because he's a hero. He only does the wrong thing when it's part of moving the plot forward. We trust that if someone with superpowers does bad in that universe, superheroes will stop them.
Now we're bringing this back to the MCU. From the get-go, it has tried to be more 'grounded' and 'realistic', though those terms can be taken very very loosely. At the start of Iron Man (and the Incredible Hulk), we are originally lead to believe this world is just like ours. It has lead to some inherent issues.
I strongly suggest watching the video "Superheroes in Empty Worlds" by Overly Sarcastic Productions for a more nuance take, but to put it very simply.
We don't have superheroes because we don't have supervillains. The cause of one will be the cause of the other, and the existence of supervillains calls for the existence of superheroes. Simply put, they have nothing to do otherwise.
The MCU has nothing to do for our superheroes. Iron Man films have the unfortunate tendency to kill of their villains. The setting of Earth is kind of incidental for the conflicts of Thor; he brings his own villains from offsite, and when he leaves, he takes them back with him.
Captain America is actually a much better example of this. We had the him fighting Hydra in WWII, and in The Winter Soldier it was brought to the modern day. It set Hydra up as the perfect cockroach that you keep stepping on, but somehow they always come back.
Then Age of Ultron killed off Hydra. And we had even more superheroes with nothing to do.
Now this leads into the issue of Civil War.
There is no job for our superheroes at this point. Aside from the two world-ending scenarios, they have nothing to do. There is no daily, or weekly, or even monthly, supervillain for them to fight and defend people against. So instead, the implication is that they're doing things that we have legal law enforcement for.
So we get this team of superpowered people invading South Africa to stop a terrorist with a bomb. Now, even ignoring the part where they have superpowers, this is a big no-no in the real world. Sometimes, one country will send a police force to help a police force in another country. This is heavily discussed and negotiated, until everyone is in agreement on what is going to happen.
In comics (and cartoons, and various other media where we find the classic superhero story), this is not a problem. The good guys go where they need to be to stop the bad guys. Usually, this is because they're the only ones who can; the supervillain problem, but sometimes it might be because they're the only ones who even know this is a problem. And sometimes, it's just universally agreed that this is what superheroes do, and no one really bothers them.
The MCU never really decided on what side of that line it wanted to be, and so we're never really sure how to approach it.
That brings us to: The Sokovia Accords. This is the first big blunder of Captain America: Civil War. We don't get told what they are.
Now, you might find some pretty dramatic details on an MCU wiki, but look closer at the source. Those are all added later in tv series, mainly Agents of SHIELD. Of course, that means they're canon, but I want to talk about the film Civil War here.
We have our superheroes disagreeing on... something. We're not told what it is, what it means. We get some vague arguments about collateral damage and the UN controlling where the Avengers can go, but nothing clear.
Now, with this faux-'real world' setting, we can only look to our own United Nations and the Accords they have agreed upon. And one of the main things the UN is critised for is not doing anything. That is, the UN can't do anything unless many nations agree, but more importantly, it can't do much when a nation breaks an agreement.
Moreover, the UN makes agreements by nations about nations. It is incredibly strange for it to regulate individuals, because that is outside it's jurisdiction.
Now, you might think, isn't this the divide between fiction and reality we've talked about? And it could be; except the MCU refuses to acknowledge the divide and pretends this world is like our own. And it leads to this cognitive dissonance.
I think it's lazy writing. Because, if you never define what the Sokovia Accords are, you don't need to explain why anyone would be for, or against, them.
If it's the extreme registration and restriction of personal freedom of the SHRA, Tony Stark would seem like the devil for supporting it. Particularly in a world with so few superhumans.
If it's a UN Accord regulating if teams of superhumans based in one nation need permission to invade the sovereign borders of another nation, Steve Rogers would seem like the devil for supporting it.
And in Captain America: Civil War, we do not get any information on what this supposed to be. We get distracted with a personal conflict and incited to pick sides, in a conflict that reflects poorly on both characters involved.
Now, for the Captain America vs Iron Man personal conflict: I also have a lot of thoughts and feelings on the matter, and this post is already the length of a book report.
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