I've never seen ANYONE make a convincing case against the Blocks of Nostalgia. They always change the subject to some other PRATT and/or pull out the Chewbacca Defense and ramble about some nonsense like "the block is said to look soft", as if that somehow proves anything. (Just had some manchild who spells like a four-year-old do that yesterday).
What makes the Blocks of Nostalgia room such airtight proof against the "Paper Mario games only take place in a book" fanwankery bullshit is:
SM1, SMW, and SM64 blocks are all in here too, so any argument against the PM64 block ends up being cherry-picking.
This game came out AFTER Paper Jam. Even though it's a remake of an earlier game, you can't argue it's been retconned and they only kept this room "for consistency" because they also removed Psycho Kamek in favor of Doctor Toadley.
So. The Falcon and the WInter Soldier. SPOILERS under the cut.
It was just as problematic in its way as Wandavision, because it was Disney, and it was building on that crappy worldbuilding established by Endgame and Civil War. BUT.
BUT.
The one thing this show got right is that they let Samuel Thomas Wilson be a BLACK MAN. That was a detail that seemed to get swept under the rug even when you go back to Winter Soldier. They gave him one moment to recommend Marvin Gaye to Steve and to tell Brock “Man, shut the hell up” and then forgot that they were pretending to be diverse with their casting for the rest of the series. Until it came time to kill him onscreen in Infinity War. Yeah. Fuck that shit. I still haven’t rewatched the last two Avengers movies even though they are on my streaming channels. I was angry enough when I spent the money on them in the theater just to get dragged ass-backwards through that grimdark, misogynistic mess. If you look at the MCU-verse as a whole entity, it doesn’t treat its Black folks well. Not as characters, not as background extras (the Johannesburg scene in Age of Ultron, for example), and not its fans. There was no reason for the writers to kill Monica’s mom as soon as they divulged who her character was in WandaVision. Doesn’t matter that it happened “off-panel,” that was a strong female character and the only MCU Black female that had more than ten seconds of screen time, and they killed her. (How dare they waste Alfre Woodard in Civil War??? That grieving mom scene with Tony? Did that piss anyone else off but me?!?!) So, I didn’t have super-high hopes for how they were going to treat Sam in this show, especially not after the whole “Which one of you is the sassy best friend?” moment in WandaVision or the absolutely crappy treatment of Monica throughout the whole series. If I had to watch Monica get force-ejected out of the room one more time I was about ready to flip tables.
I like that they opened with a scene of Sam doing something as mundane as ironing his shirt. That’s a very military detail. It winks back to Sam in his townhouse in DC back in Winter Soldier. There was no clutter at all in that kitchen; it was neat and pristine. Sam is a veteran and also an educated, self-sufficient bachelor. We talk about Sam’s PTSD, but the thing is, that man can FUNCTION. He gets shit done. He’s ORGANIZED.
And Sam has a strong relationship with his family, which, for the love of God, the MCU-verse has needed so badly up til now. Not the faux-domestic bullshit of Clint and his wife and kids on the farm, or “Howard Stark’s A+ Parenting Skills,” or watching Odin gaslight and abuse all three of his kids. Not just sweeping Carol/Maria under the “just gals being pals” rug and pretending they were just roommates. The MCU finally gave a character a realistic relationship with his sister. They gave him a close bond with his late parents. They made him someone active in his community. They made him his nephews’ favorite uncle. They made him friends with Rhodey, which was glossed over and tossed aside in Civil War and just plain shit on with Infinity War.
I mean, there are some not-great bits and pieces. Always gotta be about some bullshit when you deal with Disney.
The bank scene. We KNOW why Sam and Sarah were denied that loan. You mean to tell me Sam is still jumping out of airplanes for the government, and they won’t automatically give him a VA loan? That being associated with the Avengers won’t help him pass a credit check? Naw, fam. It’s because he’s BLACK. We KNOW this. I want Sarah or Sam to speak about this at some point. I do.
Then, you have that scene when the government introduced the new Cap. That... just left me so lukewarm. Yeah. Moving on.
Anyway, the other thing they got right about Sam is that yes, he is going to be multilingual. Not just because he’s military, but because he’s educated. If y’all don’t think Sam speaking Arabic in that cafe was every bit as sexy as Steve speaking French in Winter Soldier, then I don’t even want to know you. And if Sam is working as a VA counselor, well, guess what? He probably has a PhD. I like that so far, he’s very well-rounded instead of just “I do what he does, just slower.” Sam’s definitely a soldier, but he’s not bad at being a spy, either. Maybe he doesn’t LIKE subtlety, but he can pull it off. Sam doesn’t feel like a sidekick in this show they way he did in the movies, and I’m living for it.
Now. On to Bucky.
What I like about this is that, well, Bucky isn’t just “Winter.” He’s kind of an asshole. Yeah, I said it.
Don’t get me wrong. I love me some Bucky Barnes. But I love that he’s not just... a woobified puppet or a “sad softboi.” He’s SALTY. Bucky is SALTY AS FUCK. I love him all sullen in his government-mandated therapy sessions. I love his list, which, let’s remember, winks back to Steve’s “I’ll Put it on the List” list, except... okay, Bucky, that’s not a list of things you need to try, that’s a list of people you’ve managed to DAMAGE as the WInter Soldier as some sort of weird, self-imposed twelve-step recovery program. I think the writers of this show have been reading fanfiction or Twitter fan theory, because Bucky’s nightmares of himself as the Winter Soldier were ON POINT.
I like Sebastian’s body language. As the Winter Soldier, he was stiff and menacing; as Bucky, he’s all slouchy and constantly looks like the party guest who didn’t want to come and who will end up the designated driver for the rest of his friends. The Hobbit reference was great. The Battleship game was hilarious. And... okay, the whole concept of befriending his one-time target’s dad after he took him out was cringey as hell. And did you have to date his DAUGHTER?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! DUUUUUUUUUUDE. But, hey. His life following years of brainwashing is gonna be complicated. They could have just given Bucky a show and called it “Sorry for What I Said When I Was a Brainwashed Assassin.” If this whole show is about that, I’m fine with it. Honestly, someone write that as a rom-com novel. I will throw my money at you. Take this Bucky and WandaVision’s Darcy and sit them down with some tequila shooters so they can both be all “Yeah, I did some dumb things in my youth.”
“Oh, yeah. I used to be a poli sci major and I went to school in Arizona! I was on the six-year plan until I switched my major to astrophysics.”
“Uh. Yeah. I, uh... killed JFK.”
“What?”
“What?” *tosses back shot* “Hey, and I wore bell bottom pants in the seventies before I went back into cryo. Good times, huh?”
You know what’s funny? When I watched that bit in the restaurant, I thought I was seeing a scene straight out of “Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail” in The Carp. Seriously. And it was kind of awesome. I know we automatically associate Bucky and Steve with dumpy little diners, or even Depression-era foods like “ketchup soup” or boiling everything, but if Bucky is a veteran, he has a diverse palate. We SHOULD see Bucky eating some pho or some sushi or some curry. Homeboy grew up in Brooklyn, and he’s an international spy. He doesn’t just live on pancakes.
Bucky making an old-fashioned gesture like bringing his date flowers? *chef’s kiss* I love that she gave him shit about it. It’s right up there with Nat asking Steve when his last kiss was. Bucky’s friends should be giving him just as much shit about being a fossil as they did Steve. THAT’S his path to redemption.
I like that they allow this Bucky to actually eat onscreen. And to look tired.
I like that Bucky doesn’t like having to open up and share when prompted, but he automatically does when he’s around Sam.
Let me say that again.
HE AUTOMATICALLY OPENS UP AROUND SAM.
Because let’s remember that Steve was always able to relax and be himself around Sam. Bucky and Steve are cut from the same cloth. If you think Bucky isn’t going to be pulling some “on your left” shenanigans with Sam at some point, you’re wrong. And I can’t wait.
I know this show will find some ways to piss me off, but it already beats WandaVision by a mile. I’m so ready for the rest of the series.
I don't know about anybody else but there's a whole lot of casual viewers who only vaguely know SW that think it is Boba even if it isn't. I have friends with kids who got Disney+ and they refer to it as the Boba Fett show. So maybe fandom is saying that but there's a lot of normies out there who consider him to be Boba Fett. Dunno if Disney is gonna do something to address that or not. Here's hoping the guy is still a Fett tho.
Boba Fett remains to this day one of the most recognizable Star Wars characters in the broader pop culture, so the decision to create a TV series about a Mandalorian bounty hunter that ISN’T Boba Fett is a really interesting one.
If I put on my tinfoil hat for a minute I can imagine two scenarios, one is that Boba is being saved for another Disney project and they needed to do something with the bones of the axed Boba Fett movie...or someone high up at Disney really hates Prequels!Boba. Because The Mandalorian is 100% old skool Jaster Mereel. If he meets a girl and immediately announces that he’s celibate I will take that as confirmation. ;)
The vast repositories of the library had been stripped of most archival material, electronic as well as physical. No matter how skillful and experienced a slicer he was, what remained was still far too much for one being to sift through. The library wing had once been the repository for a thousand worlds’ histories, cultures, bestiaries, and countless other data. What was left had been thoroughly disrupted by wave after wave of barbaric vandalism and looting. Entire files, together with their multiple backups, had been defaced or deleted, seemingly for the sheer pleasure of the destruction. He realized he would find nothing here to aid him in his quest.
[...]
He was standing in what had once been a long curving corridor lined with different forms of information storage: datasticks, memory chips, holoproj activators, and even a few ancient records created by layering dark images on dried plant pulp. He was holding a datastick in his hand. Its contents had been scrambled so that anyone attempting to read the contents would find themselves presented with gibberish.
-Street of Shadows
So this takes place shortly after RotS and I assume Palpatine took all he wanted and put it in a vault (I think wook says this?) and left the archives to be treated like this.
Then what? When he moved into the temple, making it the Imperial Palace and moved his stuff back into the archive from whatever vault he kept them in?
I have no plans to watch the new one, because I can only stand so much Ana Faris.
And the old film made my muses sit up and beg for me to write a possible Stucky AU. Worse, thinking about that again today, I thought about a Captive Prince AU with the same theme.
...what the hell is WRONG with ME????
I just finished a Winterhawk chapter and my brain wants to kick me into yet another story idea that I’ll never finish.
So, I see a lot of criticism on Tumblr (and not always unreasonably) for how D&D write GoT and dissatisfaction with certain elements of the show. There are - of course - things I don’t like about it, but the things I usually see people bring up are more of a personal nature: “I don’t like what they’re doing with __ character” or “___ ship.” And sometimes I think that can be really legitimate and sometimes I’m like, “Dude, they disagree with your interpretation, get over it.”
But here’s what I want to ask about: among those dissatisfied people, I see a lot of, “Well, this could happen in the show, but I don’t want it to happen in the books,” or more extreme, “The show is basically like fanfiction.”
And to me that’s just baffling. Like, condensing a series as huge as ASoIaF is really, really hard, you guys. All things considered, I actually think D&D have done it rather brilliantly. Mzt and I discussed what we wanted to cover for our epic crossover, and we came to the conclusion that we’d really have to mostly follow the show’s line, as it streamlines fairly elegantly (if at a bit of a breakneck pace occasionally).
More than that, GRRM is the executive producer of the show, and even more critically, his BACKGROUND is in television. I have a feeling he is far less anal about his canon than many of his fans are, at least partly because he gets how television works and the massive difference in writing a novel versus writing a show. Aside from some ancillary details, I don’t think anything is happening there that he either won’t have (in essence) happening in the books or that he didn’t sign off on.
But I’m also interested to hear what people think on that.
