#windona

[badshah-cornelius]

Sometimes I watch the opening sequence of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) to remind myself that I can still feel good things

[bedlamsbard]

Do you have any specific thoughts on drawing things in from varying different sources of canon? (Like MCU drawing from Marvel comics or animated shows not set in the MCU)

I have my own basic internal metric of being "more" or "less" canon, based partially on how well-integrated those parts of canon are with each other, both in terms of basic continuity, thematic continuity, and like...vibes. Coming out of Star Wars, and specifically coming out of the Star Wars EU (not many people remember that I actually did start in the EU! just a different segment of it than most SW Legends fen usually do), I was already pretty comfortable with having different layers of canon that tend not to be in the same vertical continuity as each other, though those layers tend to be in horizontal continuity with each other -- i.e., SW EU comics tend to be in continuity with each other, but not necessarily with the books or games and certainly not with TCW or CW, but all of them will pull things from the other as they're useful and/or interesting.

That still remains my basic approach to the different types of canon, for me as a writer. My internal metric is horizontal continuity and that's what I'll tend to stick through; once we get off the horizontal level (what I call the mainline MCU, Phases 1-3 + Black Widow), then I basically pull things from elsewhere in the MCU or MCU-adjacent as far as they're continuous with the mainline MCU, they make more sense than something in the mainline (which we know contradicts itself occasionally), or as I like them. One reason that YFNSM and What If have driven me up the wall is because they're not continuous with the mainline even as AUs (and yes! there is such a thing as AU continuity!); neither are the Marvel Netflix series (which I don't consider as part of the mainline), but they make me less crazy. The number one thing that makes me absolutely crazed is the MCU (or other fen) drawing on the comics without the awareness that the comics differ in some really, really substantial ways and you CANNOT go one to one on them. Make reasonable, sensible adaptations that make internal sense? Sure -- after all, it's an adaptation. But it's the ability to have internal continuity that's really the defining point for me.

The reason I got out of Star Wars is that it was making me too insane -- not because the fandom was making me nuts, but because I genuinely felt like I was being gaslit by Lucasfilm about what was and wasn't canon, because this was when they were still swearing up and down that the Story Group was keeping everything in the same continuity, it had always been like this, everything was fine and normal, and meanwhile they had just contradicted themselves about six times in the course of a week, and not because different teams at Lucasfilm weren't talking to each other, but because the same team had decided they didn't like their older idea anymore. (Or at least that's what it felt like from the outside.) I have no problem with dropping plot points or soft retcons as long as there's a way that it can be squared and it's thematically consistent; it's when it's not that I start clawing at the walls.

(And obviously what counts as continuous will differ for different people! I think I'm actually more generous than a lot of fen who tend to be pretty anti-MCU these days, but I've got my hardline points I won't bend on. I also benefit from really seeing Endgame as a hard reset, though sometimes I struggle with that depending on what canon is doing.)

[bedlamsbard]

MCU question: What do you think of the MCU's magic system?

I have yet to be convinced that the MCU has a magic "system," tbh.

[bedlamsbard]

Did you like the Blue Beetle movie?

I thought it was fine -- like, I get why people who really, really liked it loved it, it's very fun, I'm impressed with how much the filmmakers were willing to subtitle. (Or even not subtitle, since I think there was a fair amount of Spanish that wasn't subtitled.) Most of the characters felt really clearly drawn; I feel like the characters are where the movie shines.

For me personally, it didn't really do it for me, and that's partially a feature of how DC in general doesn't tend to work for me and partially due to the fact that it's in a couple of different subgenres of superhero stories that aren't my favorite -- I don't tend to like younger hero stories and I don't tend to like "these superpowers just happened to me and now I have to deal with them" stories, which the MCU didn't do until Phase 3.

Like, it's fun! It's a fun movie. It's very clearly in conversation with other superhero films from the last twenty years, almost to the extent that sometimes I felt like its actual story got hampered by it. (Like the Kord missile in Carapax's flashback, which may or may not be from the original comics, but today is inescapably a reference to Tony seeing the SI missile in IM1 and Wanda and Pietro seeing it in the WV flashback. Because I'm a Marvel person, that visual threw me out of the story.) I also felt like there were a lot of gaps in the movie, which is usually due to cut scenes; I don't know if that was the reason in this particular case, but that's what it felt like to me. Why was Jenny suddenly getting chased out of her apartment by people with guns? Who knows, now it's happening. There are a few places like that in the film. The movie also very much set off my embarrassment squick in the first twenty minutes, half hour or so, and that was rough for me to deal with.

But again, like, it's a fun movie, it's a beautiful film, the characters are great, the story itself is basically...whatever...but I recommend it, I'd watch a sequel.

[bedlamsbard]

For the frustration, I have recently gotten into an hour long commute both ways so city traffic is my enemy.

NO

[bedlamsbard]

What did the Russos say about CACW?

From the foreword to The Art of Captain America: Civil War

We've got to be honest: Captain America was never our favorite super hero growing up. While there was certainly something to admire in a fictional character invented to fight Hitler before his country joined the real war, the story of Steve Rogers didn't completely win us over. His strength and toughness were inspiring, but there was something about his unshakable moral certainty, his overwhelming mix of patriotism and propaganda, that left us wanting a little more complexity and a little more edge. For kids like us growing up in the '70s and '80s, the character had fallen out of sync with the times. He was a black-and-white character in a gray world. To counter that feeling, we would try to imagine him as Steve McQueen in an effort to lend him a coolness that excited us. We were kids looking for a way to love the character.

Of all the good fortune we've had in our careers, nothing tops being invited by Marvel Studios to direct Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The movie drew its inspiration from a comic run written by Ed Brubaker, and while that run missed our childhoods, it reinterpreted the character in exactly the way we had been wanting. Now we were being given the opportunity to do in a movie what we had dreamt of as fanboys: texturing and even subverting the patriot through a story that led him to question his country and break orders.

For us, Captain America: Civil War is the completion of that subversion. The film moves Steve Rogers past the flaws in his country to finally confront the flaws in himself. This is what makes him a true hero in the classical sense. Despite all the greatness he is capable of, he is flawed, and he is human. And this is a Captain America that we can love.

We couldn't have made this film without the talents and vision of our many collaborators, and we are deeply grateful to them. This book represents some of their work. We hope you enjoy it as we have.

Anthony Russo Joe Russo (signatures)

[bedlamsbard]

Annoyance Rant: I keep on ending up as the middle man in communications with my family. I have one brother who complains that the other brothers never reach out to him, but he never seems to reach out to them. My mom complained today about not seeing my oldest brother since he was in town and that I'm the only one who he talks to. My stepdad keeps on telling me to communicate it when he wants to take people out to dinner. I hate being the communications middleman.

oh UGH that is the worst. I've ended up as the middleman a few times and it is just Extremely Aggravating, though I'm usually on one of the ends for various reasons.

[bedlamsbard]

For the ask game, 1 and 24.

the character everyone gets wrong

I said Steve the last time I did this (and I do think he gets it the worst) and while Loki is the obvious runner-up, I find that the Thor films (+ A1, IW, Loki) are so inconsistent that tbh, that's more understandable. So -- Natasha. There's a huge tendency throughout the fandom to flatten Natasha out in ways that are wildly inconsistent with her actual portrayal in canon, some of which is spillover from comics, some of which is just taking her at face value, some of which is just being unwilling to pay attention to what's onscreen. Like, the number of times I see people being unwilling to acknowledge that Natasha is Clint's best friend? A lot! Or that Natasha is (minus five minutes in CACW) consistently on Steve's side, not even in a shippy way? Also a lot! Or -- this might be a more cosplay-specific one, but I've seen it in fic and edits and art as well, the idea that Natasha is very...I'm probably going to use the wrong word here, but that Natasha is very, very femme, in a "always wears bold makeup, paints her nails, red lip, has her tits out" kind of way. The only time we see Natasha do that kind of, mm, performative femininity is IM2 and the beginning of The Avengers when she's literally not being herself and I'd also make a strong argument for AoU here, though with AoU I do think she's deliberately presenting herself in that specific for PR purposes. (Besides, you know, Joss Whedon being terrible about her.) Obviously there is a certain amount that's there because this is a movie and everything is a little more exaggerated. Like, even though in all movies but one Natasha is in heels or wedges in her tactical gear it's at least partially because they have to get 5'3" ScarJo into the same frame as all their six-foot tall boys as well as being ~sexy; Natasha is probably not wearing 3-inch wedges into a fight, and we know that because none of her shoes in BW have a heel/wedge on them. (I also strongly suspect BW may be the only film where she's wearing a sports bra in the suits.) Some of it is probably spillover from comics, because comics Natasha is more femme fatale-ish than MCU Natasha.

(Obviously for cosplay purposes do whatever the hell you want, these are just trends I've noticed; I am in this community too, which is why I see it come up over and over again in the first place. This is the only time I've gone "wow, I do not have the tits for this," which is actually quite disconcerting if it's never come up as ~something to be self-conscious about before.)

Some of it is also fandom's general propensity to flatten female characters in general -- the team mom thing, the only one with the braincell thing, the femme fatale thing, etc. Like, yes, it's funny the first ten times, and then it's "...we're really not watching the same movies, huh?"

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

this is more like a "top five" topics than a single one SO in no particular order

was baby Loki kidnapped or rescued (child abandonment was and is a real thing, but in ancient/medieval cultures it is both (a) real and legal and (b) a common mythological trope, have you never heard of Oedipus)

Sokovia Accords and everything surrounding them (even canon regretted this one, which is kind of a shame because I would have liked to see the MCU treat it seriously after CACW -- only Ant-Man and the Wasp and Black Widow actually started to deal with it, and it got resolved offscreen years later in She-Hulk)

did the Asgardians deserve to be genocided (what the hell is wrong with you people, why have I been in real fandoms where this is a real question)

Loki/Sylvie (not my ship, I don't care, but hoo boy)

is Endgame good or bad (woof)