Rather late rambling about Endgame

I was mad about the way Endgame ended in a lot of ways, but I watched it when it came out and wasn't really doing much lj/dw, so I didn't write about it. But watching Agent Carter really made me think about how much I dislike a lot of how that movie handled things.

Leaving aside the whole issue of how it feels like so many female characters got screwed over, specifically (Natasha? Gamora? etc) and how much the manpain of Thanos irritated me*, the time travel was just terrible. Superficially, it was enjoyable to watch previous scenes like the Avengers (2012) scenes from a different angle and to see different outcomes. But I hate time travel in fiction generally because it messes up the storytelling a lot, especially in canons where the story mostly isn't about time travel, which frankly the MCU wasn't going for. Up until this very last moment, the storytelling was very linear.

1. There's a lot of speculation and contradictory information, because of canon vs word of god, plus somewhat unexplained canon, about how the time travel works. What really is sticking in my craw of course is Steve going back in time and living out his life with Peggy. When old Steve shows up on the park bench, the movie is implying that Steve got there by living through the years, and he knows to show up at that spot because he obviously time-travelled from there first, so he knows that if he shows up in year 202X at this park he'll find Bucky and Sam there. Which means it's the same universe. Which means - I don't even know. There's another Steve who is frozen in the ice until the 21st century, Peggy and Steve hide their relationship somehow?, Steve hides from the public too, Bucky's going through the Winter Soldier programming and being used as an assassin and Steve knows about it but isn't doing anything, Steve knows SHIELD is HYDRA and isn't telling Peggy or they're both complicit, just so many unanswerable, character-changing implications are being created by this time travel. Being from the future means you know things. And you want to not act on them? Not only is this refusing to engage with the time-travel question - Marvel, you open this can of worms, you need to address them - but it's also not really in line at all with Steve's personality.

2. That Steve/Sharon kiss is so weird with this implication. I don't think it's stated how Peggy and Sharon are related but - have they never met? Is he not her great-uncle?

3. Another problem with time travel and narrative is that it sucks all the urgency and timeliness out of your story. If you can go back - even if you have only one chance - to any time, then it's no longer urgent. You can get good and ready before you go back. It's all past, anyway. You could limit it like Endgame does with limited trips back into the past, but a lot of the urgent tension of fixing things just dissipates.

4. The way Steve went back and got together with Peggy just doesn't sit right with me after watching Agent Carter. I know, the team movies are tough to do because they have to integrate ALL the solo movies/shows, and historically that's not always been a priority (cf Ragnorak Thor's character journey being regressed, etc) since the priority is probably creating an enjoyable movie that fits in under 2 hours. I also know that being in fandom means I'm much more invested and probably remember more about previous movies than casual moviegoers, who make up the majority of the movie-watching population. But damn it, I hate it. So much of AC was Peggy accepting her grief, moving on, forging a path forward. The time-travel just totally stomps that theme and message.

The weird thing is I distinctly remember shipping Steve/Peggy, not blindingly hard or anything, but quite generally happy with them together and/or exploring their relationship. That was less than 10 years ago. I now cannot summon any of that feeling at all. Maybe I should rewatch CA:TFA. I think what is causing this is that they were just embarking on the relationship and then he goes into the ice and then it's another loss in the war for Peggy, who is understandably carrying around a ton of grief already.


*The main issue is he keeps being so SAD about how oh boohoo, his life is so difficult, he has to sacrifice his "daughter" Gamora and everything. Well, you are the architect of everyone's problems, including your own. I have sympathy for those who are screwed over by no or little fault of their own, I enjoy villains who are just out there cackling away and doing what they want, but kindly spare me the crying about things which you caused yourself! You brought this on yourself and moreover, you could stop this right now if you wanted. No one made you kill half the population, and your plan was unutterably stupid in the first place - if it's all life, are you aware that the way life happens on earth requires a lot of eating of other organisms, once we're past the photosynthetic layer?! This doesn't solve an overpopulation problem if you halve the resources! That's not how math or ecology works!

1 month of birding every day

Actually, 35 days of checklist streak, as defined by ebird. Because ebird is trying to collect data that is useful for science, they have birding protocols. The most valuable is a "complete checklist", where your primary purpose is birding, you try to identify all the birds that you can see and hear, and you give number counts - estimating obviously, if necessary (and it's very necessary when faced with thousands of birds at sea, I'm totally overwhelmed. Counting is hard!!)

Anyway, it's been pretty helpful, because if I've learned anything about practicing, it's that if you practice every day you cannot fail to get better. It's a very comforting thought. Piano was the first thing I did this with - my parents made me - but I've also done smaller projects like this, like carving a stamp a day for a set period of time. (THAT project levelled up my carving skills so fast, but I need to do a 30 days of drawing. Design is now the sticking point.) I definitely think I've gotten better at birding. It's forced me to not only go outside every day, which I'm actually pretty good at doing, but also makes me focus on listening and watching, being active about observing. Also, though I think I've got a pretty high tolerance for going to the same place and watching it change throughout the seasons, I do get bored, so I try to change up the locations. I usually go during lunch since I can't reliably get out of work in time before sunset; the main pond nearby has other birders reliably covering that location, but there are smaller parks and wooded patches that aren't well-visited at all, so since I'm local I try to keep a watch on those.

For lazy days, I have a feeder filled with seed that hangs on the lilac in the back yard. I call it a yard, but it's not really - it's about two meters of dirt that is at the back of the apartment block, with a concrete wall (overgrown with ivy) separating it from the alley, and a concrete path that runs through to the back door. However, there's also a reasonably tall lilac bush and I've hung the feeder from there. It gets mobbed by sparrows and I do so enjoy watching their little interpersonal conflicts and their cute little faces. Blue jays drop in too, and cardinals and mockingbirds. I'm sure the starlings will be back - I'm amazed they haven't come by yet.

Anyway, what I was going to talk about is the study that was done on avian populations in North America, and the staggering statistic that we've lost about 30% of the bird population compared to 1970. 1970 is only 50 years ago. These aren't rare birds disappearing - common backyard birds have suffered huge losses. Here is the article: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/09/nearly-30-birds-us-canada-have-vanished-1970

There's another article which I cannot find now but was talking about a physics lab (I think) in the Midwest, where to accommodate the lab, there's land set aside, and it's interestingly enough turned into a bit of a wildlife sanctuary, because it's land that's not being actively used for human purposes. The ecosystem's just been left alone. There's a scientist at that lab who also birds, and there was a quote from him saying that it was so strange (and disquieting) to walk through the property there and now hear so little birdsong, because he remembers. Older birders remember a past that had more birds in it. The change has come so fast.

It makes me wonder about my memory and the future. 2020 is when I started really observing and listening. This is my start. This is the baseline, for me - I've always liked nature but lived in cities, so Pandemic Year 2020 will probably be my earliest memories of birding. I'm a young person and life expectancy is pretty high, there are a lot of years to go. I hope I won't ever have similar thoughts, and to be saddened by the silence of the woods & meadows. I think about how common mallards and Canadian geese are and how any patch of water might have a duck or two in it, no matter how small; I think about how even when running errands, passing by some ordinary city house's shrubbery I can hear a vocal horde of house sparrows chattering away; I think about the way I can stand still in a small urban forest and hear black-capped chickadees singing their distinctive song. I hope these don't become rare experiences.