silver

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!

I was sorting through my calibre library the other day* and kinda fell into A Wizard of Earthsea. It's one of those childhood books that made a huge impact on me (my computer is still called sparrowhawk) but I never re-read, and so I actually remembered very little of the plot. Still don't really remember what happens in Tombs of Atuan and subsequent books - except of course Ged expending all his magic to maintain the equilibrium, that made too big an impact to forget. Falling into Le Guin's writing is the most natural thing, but her books really take me away into another world, in a way that a lot of books, books which I love, do not. And it is not a long book. There aren't any tricks to it. Maybe it's the prose, which makes the book almost feel like a written-down version of an oral work. It's a rare feeling and I love it, that wholesale transportation into another world.

At the end of the copy I have, Le Guin writes about the story she wanted to tell, and how she wanted to write something that was unlike the usual triumphant hero, who uses his - it's always a man, when she wrote it and even now - fists and strength to win. She writes about how while she still stuck to writing about a man's story, she quietly made him not a white man - this was subtle enough I missed it as a child, though I see it so clearly now, and it's so cheering - and more than that, she pushed back against the endless militarism and the stories that create conflict and excitement by throwing the protagonist against enemies. Faceless and featureless ones too, so there's no moral difficulty about showing off the protagonist's strength when he slaughters them. I read all this and then a day later I went to see Avengers: Infinity War.

Don't get me wrong, I like superhero movies. I've certainly seen a lot of them - all of the Marvel ones, except Spider-Man, more from other stories. But maybe my patience is wearing thin. I like the characters very much, some of the films are interesting visually, but I find them to be so samey in philosophy and theme sometimes. I don't like it when I can see the bones of the story poking through, because it's been repeated so many times, just in different upholstery. And some of the visuals are so repetitive - there's a certain style of science-fiction backgrounds that seems to pervade the whole genre (which is really sad), there's so much explosions and running away from same, etc. There's only so many ways you can play these kinds of fights. Instead of punching with a human fist, let's upgrade and punch with a bigger metal fist! But it has to be fist-shaped, otherwise how will our audience have any emotional connection? The science fiction feels so empty and imagination-less. Forget innovative biology, we can't even get different social constructs in totally alien planets.

( Infinity War spoilers )




* It's a tragic tale. I was on vacation and had packed an ereader that day into my backpack, intending first to do touristy things, and then to find a green spot and lie out in the sun and read. It was absolutely beautiful weather, and I sat down in a garden, and I took out my trusty kobo, and it simply died and factory-reset on me. Just straight up reset. I was 5,000km away from my computer and its hard drive with my 400 ebooks. AAAAARGHHH. https://xkcd.com/466/ kicks in, except replace wifi with books in this instance, and I discovered that my absurd data plan (30gb for someone who plays hard on her at-home plan of 3gb was just...mind exploding) would tether, so I tethered my kobo to my phone's wifi, got into my kobo after guessing my password a few times (I think it's been literally 4-5 years since I logged in), and...started reading The Phantom of the Opera, which was not what I wanted to read. I was in the middle of A Civil Contract! I think at one point I'd logged about 1k hours on my kobo, so it's not like I could blame it for prematurely dying, but my god, the timing. I had so many side-loaded books and I could not access any of them!

AAAAAAAAA so that was the finale!

( spoilers )

*crosses fingers for season 2*

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts later but it's been a few days and I have spent all day fighting with STATA (protip: rearranging panel data SUCKS when you can't program) and I cannot concentrate even for this. But yeah! What did you guys think?

I was originally not going to see this film, but a friend texted me to ask if I wanted to see it, so I thought why not? I'm so glad I didn't look up spoilers now!

( I liked it! I'm glad I went. )

I've had a few entries typed up in raw form for days now, and I've finally had time to clean them up a bit and post, that's why suddenly there are giant ones appearing.

I liked CA:TWS!

( SPOILERS )