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tony-starkrogers · 5 years ago

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rec week day four

For the cap-IM rec week 2019 day four: Fluffy Thursday! @cap-ironman

This list includes some classic favorites and some new works. Enjoy reading and be sure to show your authors some love!

Indecent Proposal by gyzym, Siria (T, 2.5k)

On the plus side, marriage is bound to be easier than proposing.

"death by coffee" and other search queries by @goodmorningbeloved (T, 2.8k)

In which Steve's feelings are hopelessly obvious through his Google searches. JARVIS decides to step in.

Stick With Me, Baby, I’m the Fella You Came in With by Annie D (scaramouche) (E, 10.6k)

During the final battle with Ultron, Tony kisses Steve for the first time. Afterward, he makes it clear to Steve that he was just running on adrenaline and not thinking clearly. Steve seems to accept it, but the kiss nudges open a door of possibilities, and the situation escalates.

The Trial Run by Annie D (scaramouche) (T, 13.8k)

Tony and Steve pretend to date, and enjoy it far more than they should.

A Hundred Times, Once by @festiveferret, SirSapling (E, 24.7k)

The shrill tone of his SHIELD beeper pulls Steve out of sleep and into battle. He fights robots, he fights Tony's shameless advances, he fights the exhaustion that threatens to take over him, drown him. And then the next morning, he wakes and does it again. Exactly the same.

And again.

Gained in Translation by Annie D (scaramouche) (T, 11.5k)

Steve returns to New York and meets Tony for the first time since they’d parted ways after the Chitauri incident. It’s a little awkward at first, but they gain a new rhythm, which is mainly based on their ability to surprise each other and prove those first impressions inaccurate.

Set between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

no matchmaking before breakfast by @elcorhamletlive (unrated, 3.4k)

“I don’t even find Steve attractive.” Natasha says, eyes following greedily every drop of coffee the machine pours, for once in her life genuinely unaware of the impact her words are about to cause.

Surreal, But Nice by @festiveferret (E, 26.8k)

Tony Stark never thought he'd ever meet Captain America, let alone have his underwear tumbling around in Tony's dryer mere minutes after he broke Tony's doorknob.

What even was his life?

Mister Fixit and the Mechanic by @mizzy2k (M, 40k)

An Iron Man 3 AU, wherein Steve was defrosted too early, and after a couple of lonely decades working for SHIELD, decides to retire and run a hardware store called Mister Fixit’s in suburban Miami.

Tony Stark, presumed dead, presumed not-Iron Man, needs to make some weapons to take on the Mandarin’s mansion. A non-chain store that takes cash and doesn’t ask questions is just what Tony needs.

Steve becomes intrigued by the mysterious mechanic that keeps buying things from his store, but when he becomes more aware of what Tony the Mechanic is up to, is Steve ready to be this close to the world of superheroes again?

Binary System by Annie D (scaramouche) (E, 13k)

Tony tends to be tactile with people he trusts. These days that list of people includes Steve, which is a good sign of the progression of their friendship. For his part, Steve seems to enjoy it as much as Tony does... until Tony goes a little too far.

absence makes the heart by fantalaimon (G, 4.8k)

“One night,” Tony says, and just flies himself bodily into one of the canary yellow beekeepers like a red and gold battering ram. “I ask for one measly night. One single goddamn night with my boyfriend—”

“Oh, is the boyfriend label on now?” Clint asks over the comms.

Momentary Paws (or, DO NOT WANT) by velithya (T, 16.8k)

WTF KITTEN

Get Some Now by Sineala (T, 10.3k)

Avengers Mansion has a mysterious feline infestation. Meanwhile, Steve just can't figure out how to ask Tony out on a date. And the thirteen teleporting cats sure aren't helping matters any.

Admiring the Scenery by Annie D (scaramouche) (E, 10.2k)

Steve’s used to people checking him out, but when Tony does it, it feels… different.

A Groove of Perpetual Motion by Annie D (scaramouche) @no-gorms (T, 26.7k)

Tony Stark’s pretty sure where he stands with Steve Rogers. They got off on the wrong foot on day one, and since then there’s been minimal tolerance and thinly-veiled dislike between them. Tony’s certain that this would never ever change, not even when he gains some unexpected new information that suggests that Steve’s feelings for him aren’t what he thought. Because it cannot be true. It’s impossible. Surely?

All I Want by @sineala (T, 2.5k)

Steve's not used to anyone spoiling him. But he's willing to let Tony try.

Check One by JenTheSweetie (T, 4.2k)

The important thing to know - and I mean really, the actually important thing - is that no matter what Bucky said, Steve was not flirting with Tony Stark.

(“Yes you were, you son of a - ”)

Steve has an annoying best friend. Tony has an elaborate plan. Sam has allergies. Bucky has no idea what's about to hit him.

Mandatory Fun by @captainneverever (T, 6.7k)

Steve loses a bet to Tony and has to go to Las Vegas for a fun-filled vacation. Or it was fun until people started thinking that they were married.

Tony Stark Defense Squad (Steve's Had Enough) by orbingarrow (G, 1.6k)

The Avengers are called in by the government to "discuss" recent events, but it turns into a game of Let's Bash Tony and Steve is so not cool with that.

Or, the one where Steve Rogers makes himself the President of the Tony Stark Defense Squad. Matching t-shirts to come later.

Our Personal Fairytale by pensversusswords (T, 2.9k)

In which there is a first date, a giant octopus, and Tony is scared of Ferris wheels.

Neanderthals In Tights (Also Known As a Football Game) by Wordsplat (T, 3.2k)

In which Tony supports Steve at his first big football game, with guest appearances by an exasperated Pepper and an embarrassed Bruce, because yeah, okay, maybe Tony's not really one hundred percent clear on the rules of this game. Why, exactly, are a bunch of neanderthals tackling his boyfriend again?

Aesthetic Appreciation by @theappleppielifestyle (M, 2.2k)

“Nice shirt, Stark.”

It’s Natasha, sounding strangely- smug, maybe?- for reasons Tony doesn’t much care to know.

“I know,” Tony says, not opening his eyes. He tilts his head back, lets out a satisfied sigh and rearranges himself on the chair. The sun climbs another inch of his abs when his shirt rides up with the motion.

Today’s a good day, Tony thinks contentedly, and continues sucking lazily on the popsicle.

don't know why it took me so long to see by @goodmorningbeloved (M, 11.2k)

“Oh, watch this,” Natasha says, propping her chin against her knuckles and turning a sweet gaze on him. “Tony, what’s it like dating a superhero?”

Tony bristles in irritation. “We’re not dating,” he snaps. “Captain America probably thinks he can get into anyone’s pants just ‘cause he’s got a mask, costume, and reputation, but not me, buddy. That shield? Gotta be overcompensating for something.” He adds, a bit petulantly, “Oh, and all that blue? Definitely more Steve’s color than his.”

- In which Tony is a genius in all matters except recognizing his boyfriend past a mask.

going on a ride by theappleppielifestyle (unrated, 6.3k)

"You want to take me for a ride on your motorcycle," Tony repeats, slow so he can process it as he’s saying it, "because you think my glasses are cute."

An Abundance of Heart by theappleppielifestyle (T, 14.8k)

Steve finds himself grinning, despite everything, because god, he didn't realize how much he's missed this- having someone to back him, people to fight around, getting caught and pulled to his feet.

Hell, even Stark's quips make his mouth quirk upwards slightly.

When I Think (Oh, it Terrifies Me) by celli (E, 8.6k)

Look, some mornings you wake up and little green men are invading New York City; some mornings you wake up and you can hear Captain America's voice in your head. Tony has been an Avenger long enough that he saves his freakout for important things.

Curiosity Changes Everything by @scifigrl47 (T, 6.5k)

Everyone in their life has had a little case of hero worship. A tiny crush on a celebrity. A teenage infatuation.

Dummy Stark-Rogers is not any different.

And the Mars Rover Curiosity is a stunning piece of tech.

Tony Stark Falls In Love With A Cat by shellhead (M, 6.8k)

When Steve goes missing, Tony ends up finding him at an animal shelter. Volunteering.

Like Gene Kelly in the Movies by lyra_wing (M, 11.4k)

Everything Tony Stark does is a dance. And it's super confusing for Steve.

#capimrecweek #stevetony #stony #superhusbands #stony fic rec

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

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Iron Man's Morality

by Damien F

Friday, 09 May 2008Damien F trys to figure out Iron Man's sense of right and wrong.~

This month saw the synthesised superhero Iron Man join the ever-increasing canon of Marvel characters adapted for the screen. Played Robert Downey Jr, and directed by Jon Favreau (who appears onscreen as some sort of unacknowledged personal assistant),

Iron Man refreshes Marvel's old metal-clad, commie-bashing trailblazer, who unknown but to a select few (which includes almost everyone. Iron Man has to be the least secret secret identity in the history of comic-books) is billionaire industrialist and genius arms manufacturer Tony Stark.

The best that can be said about this film is that it's not awful, raising it above the likes of Daredevil,The Fantastic Four and The Punisher, among others. It's a largely competent, if silly, two hours of Hollywood entertainment, and as the first blockbuster event-movie of the summer, it inspires hope that this season's offerings will be a significant improvement over last year's dreadful showing.

However, just as it avoids sinking to the lowest levels for this kind of film, it fails to hit the heights it aspires to. It lacks the intelligence and social consciousness that marked Batman Beyond and the X-Men series, as well as the sense of humanity that made the Spider-Man films essential for fans and newcomers alike.

Seemingly aware of this, Favreau has tried to inject Iron Man with another attribute: morality. The story, admirably faithful to the comic's origins, tells us of the playboy Stark who fails to recognise the consequences of his actions. Be they the friends left stranded at an award ceremony held in his honour while he parties with floozies at a Las Vegas casino, or the innocents killed by the weapons he produces. As he explains to a hostile reporter (shortly before bedding her), his products are essential in maintaining a global balance of power, which ultimately serves to save lives. He has a change of heart, however, when he is captured by terrorists in Afghanistan while displaying the latest Stark Industries weapon the "Jericho" to military officials. Here he sees the true effect his weapons are having on the world, as the terrorists are armed with his company's products. They demand he builds for them their own Jericho. Instead Tony builds an electric-powered suit of armour for himself under their noses and makes good his escape. Afterwards, vowing to protect the people put in harms way by his weaponry, he fashions a more sophisticated, stylish version of the suit and becomes Iron Man, flying around the world at super-sonic speed destroying the militias armed with Stark Industry weapons.

Unfortunately, his morality becomes the film's most critical malfunction. The Iron Man suit is armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers, and Tony expresses no qualms about killing those who apparently deserve being killed. Effectively, it's a weapon itself, and we're expected to accept that its presence makes the world safer when the sale of Jericho missiles represents such a threat? Perhaps the answer to this lies in who controls the weapons. Where as Stark missiles were sold on a free market, the Iron Man suit is owed and operated by nobody but Tony. However, just as he was naive to believe his weapons would only be used by forces interested in stabilising world peace, it transpires that Tony can't protect the technology for the suit falling into the wrong hands. The issue of a central a source of control of power is also belied by a scene where Iron Man confronts a group attacking an unidentified Middle-Eastern village. After killing the foot-soldiers, he delivers their leader to the villagers and invites them to do what they like with him before flying away and leaving them at it. We jump from highly central military control to mob justice in a single breath.

The confused nature of the films morality is not helped by its generic look at international conflicts. We are told that Tony is kidnapped in Afghanistan, but the true aims of his kidnappers are never fully explained. We can't write them off as the Taliban, as they seem to be a loose alliance of terrorists from all over the world. Following this the film alludes to ethnic-cleansing of regions by the same group, but we are never told why. The Marvel comics have rarely strayed from addressing real-life events such as Northern Ireland or 9/11 (the Marvel superheroes are currently being drafted to the image of the UN). These are usually discussed in a highly superficial way, but it's admirable that they have the nerve to discuss them at all. For a film that seeks to address the affects of Western military involvement in the developing world, it would have been refreshing if they referred directly to the arming of real-life militias, such as the Taliban by Western governments rather than just gutlessly allude to it.

It should be said, however, that one real-life conflict does get a look in. We are given numerous references to World War Two, as we are repeatedly told how Tony's father worked on the Manhattan Project. Presumably the building of the atomic bomb is meant to serve as a metaphor for the construction of a hyper-powered suit of armour. Prior to his kidnapping, Tony tells us that the ideal weapon is not one you never have to use but one you only have to use once. The allusion to the atomic bomb is clear. The trouble with this is that Tony is never asked to consider if the bomb was a mistake. For all the people who mention his father's role in the project, nobody asks if he regretted this or stood by the project. An internal debate over the true nature of nuclear weapons, be they war at its most corrupt and evil or the single stabilising factor in conflicts between super-states, might have serve to address the flaws in the films muddied morality. As it stands, this is just a wasted opportunity.

For those interested in seeing this film, these flaws should not dissuade you. Fans of the comics can rejoice the film's faithfulness to its source material. They even manage to fit in Iron Man's original clunky, aesthetically displeasing armour. Praise can also be bestowed on Downey's performance as Tony Stark. A few eyebrows were raised when the decision to give him the role was announced, as it was doubted the former wild-boy could handle a leading role on such a major production, and his physic could hardly be described as super-powered. However, I suspect fans were delighted with the casting, as his hell-raising antics were suitably in tune with the charismatic Stark. On screen, the choice seems inspired. Jeff Bridges also has a ball as the villain Ironmonger. However, Gwyneth Paltrow is simply annoying as the love interest Pepper Potts. And then there's that bloody reporter, who keeps turning up like a crazed stalker ex-girlfriend.

The special effects for the suit are a joy to watch, but the action sequences lack a required energy. Watching metallic men fight serves only to remind us how much more fun last year's Transformers was. Overall, Iron Man is far from essential, but enjoyable enough if you do give it a chance. I just wish they figured out the sermon before taking to the alter.

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Arthur B

at 13:15 on 2008-05-09The thing is, Tony Stark is basically a neo-con (witness his role in the recent

Civil War

storyline, which I have been glancing at from afar and tutting at), or rather a comic book writer's vision of a neo-con, so it's probably no surprise that his moral agenda is actually kind of silly and incoherent. From what you say, the film seems to bear this out. Before he's kidnapped he's a pre-9/11 neo-con, selling weapons to the world in the name of an American-dominated balance of terror. Then he has his own personal 9/11 experience, and realises that he can't let proxies do all the work, but has to go out into the world and kick ass all by himself, like George Bush rustlin' up a posse and ridin' out into Afghanistan (briefly) before tackling Iraq. The incoherent presentation of the enemy only matches the incoherent presentation of Terrorism by the Bush administration: are terrorists weak lunatics living in caves, or are they a vast international conspiracy devoted to taking over the world and imposing a global Caliphate? Are we in Iraq to fight terrorists or are we there to allow the Iraqis to choose the government they actually want (which might perhaps include a few terrorists)?

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:34 on 2008-05-21I read this with interest, having a couple of days ago been coaxed into going to see the film with a friend. I agree that it's not a terribly morally sophisticated film, and one might have wished for a bit more exploration of interesting problems. But I think there are a few things to say in its defence.

First, there's a bit of a suggestion here that the film is internally contradictory in that both Iron Man and the film itself appear to espouse a certain moral outlook but Iron Man then behaves in a way inconsistent with this outlook and the film appears to endorse this behaviour. There is an element of this, but not a great deal, I'd suggest.

For example, Damien says that "[t]he Iron Man suit is armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers, and Tony expresses no qualms about killing those who apparently deserve being killed." We need to distinguish between the two suits. The first one is certainly pretty heavily armed, and he does indeed use it to injure and kill people; but I'd say that's reasonably consistent and plausible in the context of the film as a whole, for several reasons. First, the materials from which he constructs this first suit are themselves armaments of various kinds, and the nature of the materials in such cases may tend to dictate the nature of the final product. Secondly, his main objective at this point is to escape from heavily armed captors who he reasonably believes intend to kill him, and even if we objectively don't accept that the life of one American millionaire is worth more than the lives of several dozen Afghan terrorists we can be reasonably forgiving if he takes the attitude that it's them or him and he knows which option he prefers. Thirdly, he hasn't at this stage had his full-blown epiphany, which seems only to occur with the death of the chap who helped him build the suit. So even if his behaviour at this point isn't especially moral it's at least not altogether hypocritical.

When it comes to the second suit, the criticism is much more deserved, but I would point out that the film makes some sort of attempt to deal with the problem. It's made clear that the initial idea is to make a suit that enables the wearer to fly, and that's it. What later turns out to be the main weapon is originally meant to be a flight-stabilizer, as we're told quite explicitly. He only conceives of using them destructively when, already in a state of considerable frustration, he discovers that his company is still deliberately selling weapons to terrorists. At this point he sets off to visit a terrorist camp and destroy said weapons. Arriving, he does a pretty reasonable job of destroying the artillery without undue injury to the terrorists themselves. When he finds civilians being held at gun-point he does then start killing off terrorists, but again that comes comfortably within what appear to be the film's moral rules since it's a necessary means of protecting innocent people. Where it really does fall down is the fact that he kills the hostage-takers with little shoulder-mounted rockety things that have no obvious flight-related function and must presumably have been intended as weapons when Stark designed the suit. Although that's still some distance from the suit being "armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers", it still kind of undermines the 'it's only meant to fly' defence. But I still think it's worth noting that the film-makers have at least bothered to put the 'it's only meant to fly' defence in there in the first place, which shows some awareness of the problem of Stark looking self-contradictory.

There also seem to be an implication that the film is unclear or incoherent about what its moral stance is. Again I'm not sure that this is entirely deserved. It's possible to set out in fairly straightforward terms what the moral rules in the film seem to be:

- the USA is good;

- terrorists are bad;

- killing terrorists is okay, at least when they pose a real and moderately imminent threat to civilians and / or Americans;

- killing civilians is not okay;

- killing Americans is not okay unless they are evil super-villains;

- selling weapons to terrorists is bad;

- selling weapons to the US government is probably okay in principle but only with proper controls and mechanisms of accountability to ensure the weapons are used for 'good' ends (such as killing terrorists) and don't end up in the hands of terrorists.

Those rules probably accord pretty well with what a lot of Americans believe, and Iron Man's behaviour in the film by and large follows those rules. They even accommodate Stark facilitating the probably lynching of the bearded terrorist leader (which of course is a pretty close analogy for letting the Iraqis hang the not-wholly-dissimilar-looking Saddam), who is after all a terrorist. If it looks to us as though Stark's failing to live up to his new-found pacifism, it's because he's actually not a pacifist, and never says he is. We make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people for a maker and seller of weapons suddenly stopping making and selling weapons; but his conversion is actually a much more limited one that probably makes a lot more sense to the film's target audience.

Of course that brings us straight to what I think is Damien's main point, which is that it's rather disappointing that the film, having decided to ask questions about the arms-trade, comes up with such mainstream American answers without even exploring any other options with any sort of seriousness. That's absolutely right. But even here I'd raise a very partial defence by saying that we may be asking a bit much of the film given what it is. It doesn't tell us what the terrorists' aims are (well, actually it does tell us what their immediate aims are: they've been hired by Stane to kill Stark but when they find out who Stark is they decide he's worth more than what they've been paid and so they decide to force him to build them a big rocket; but it doesn't tell us about the over-all political cause to which this is, as it were, a side-quest). But if it did, wouldn't it then risk becoming a film about "is it right to sell weapons to these particular people in view of their political agenda?" rather than "is it right to sell weapons to terrorists in general?" And it's true that it doesn't engage very meaningfully with the point about the Manhattan project (though I must point out that Stark himself does at one point say he wishes he'd asked his father how he felt about his work). But then again wouldn't any remotely serious examination of the ethics of the atomic bomb be such a big subject as to entirely hijack a superhero action movie and turn it into something quite different?

Again, I don't want to say that the film isn't rather superficial in its treatment of moral questions and rather banal and unchallenging in its answers to those questions. It is. But at least it does (1) show a very limited awareness that the questions exist, (2) come up with a reasonably coherent (if irritatingly Bush-compatible) moral framework, and (3) make some effort to make sense of the apparent paradox of a chap using weapons-technology to destroy weapons. I'm not really sure it could have done much more while still being a superhero block-buster, just like Juno couldn't really do justice to the question of abortion while still being a cute romantic / tennage-pregnancy comedy. X-Men can do more because it does it by metaphor (mutant = black / gay / foreign) and therefore doesn't have to engage with the complex details of real situations. Spider-Man can do more because it concentrates on character and issues that occur on the ordinary human level rather than the social or political level. I'm not sure that Iron Man, given what it was, could really have done much better than it did.

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Dan H

at 09:34 on 2008-05-23Jamie pretty much sums up everything I was going to say about this (although I've not seen the film, I don't see anything inherently contradictory about "it's okay to sell weapons to some people but not others" - it's the same "contradiction" you get in pretty much all movies, books, or whatever with a strong action element. Good Guys pretty much always kill a whole mess o' folks).

What I actually wanted to say was that this reminds me of something a friend of mine once said about

Batman Begins

- on the one level it's trying to be a serious exploration of the nature of fear, but ultimately it's a movie about a guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime. I think the simple fact is that superhero movies have to work with the themes which their frequently ludicrous premises allow.

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Wardog

at 16:37 on 2008-05-23Mmmm...I'm almost curious now, thanks to Damien and Jamie, but Iron Man has never really appealed to my imagination. I don't know, although I can get behind a man who wants to dress a bat and fight crime, I can't work up the enthusiasm for a guy who makes himself a robot-suit and blows up terrorists.

(I feel terrible - Jamie and Dan and Arthur have said all these insightful things and I've just made this pointlessly frivolous observation)

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Damien F

at 11:18 on 2008-05-27Jamie, I see where you're coming from. Your points on the first suit are spot on, but to be honest I really wasn't considering the first suit when writing the piece. Also, I suppose it's true it does come up with a Bush-flavoured morality (which is a trend I've noticed running through the comics for many years now). Stark arms terrorists and then takes it upon himself to disarm them. The problem I have with this is that it simply ignores the outcomes of these actions, in a pretty literal scenes. Look at your liking of leaving the beardy terrorist to civilians to the lynch-mob "justice" handed down to Saddam (which is something I admit I didn't spot myself). After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.

There was also a point I wanted to work into the piece but couldn't figure out how. At one point shortly before the fore-mention scene, Iron Man's computer-Jervis-thing distinguishes the terrorists from civilians and dispatches them accordingly. This is a horribly black-and-white approach to its subject matter.

There are two further points I wish to dispute. First, your argument that a more socially-conscious film would have spoilt its blockbuster fun. It may have been harder to make such a film, but not impossible. Since the Victorian days, good sci-fi has always been allegorical.

Second, the assertion that "we make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people". I'm Irish.

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Arthur B

at 11:43 on 2008-05-27

After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.

Are you sure that the film-makers weren't intending you to come away with the impression that Iron Man is a bit lazy and irresponsible? I've not seen the film, so it's down to those that have to make the call, but when I saw the trailers they seemed to suggest a bit of moral ambiguity on Stark's part (which would make sense given his not-exactly-clean history in the comics).

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Jamie Johnston

at 17:35 on 2008-05-27After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.

Yes, that was certainly the moment that put the greatest strain on my efforts to regard him as heroic. Arthur may be right to guess that at that point in the film we were supposed to be feeling a bit uneasy about his behaviour, especially since that's followed by what must have been quite a challenging scene for a patriotic American audience, in which a handful of US fighter 'planes try to shoot Iron Man down and he ends up (albeit accidentally) causing one of them to crash. Possibly we were only meant to come fully behind Iron Man when he saves the bailed-out pilot. It's hard to say.

Actually that brings to mind another point I hadn't thought about: the most morally problematic parts of the film are these bits in the middle, where he's engaged in his minimally thought-out anti-terrorist exercise. It gets much simpler when he comes back and gets stuck in to the 'main' plot of (1) stopping the technology falling into the hands of the clear-cut crazy villain and (2) trying not to get killed by the clear-cut crazy villain. Which I guess is one of the main things about super-heroes in general: much of the time, the thing that stops us regarding them as morally questionable is the fact that they're clearly better than whatever implausibly evil villain they're fighting. And that's a point that I suppose supports your argument more than mine, in that the least morally successful bits of the film are, as you've said, the ones where Iron Man is engaging with vaguely real-world issues like terrorism and the international arms trade.

First, your argument that a more socially-conscious film would have spoilt its blockbuster fun. It may have been harder to make such a film, but not impossible. Since the Victorian days, good sci-fi has always been allegorical.

Ah, well, yes, I wouldn't want to say it's impossible, but I think your point about allegory is important, and it links with my rather brief earlier comparison to the 'X-Men' films. The latter are genuinely allegorical, and I'd say that's what makes it easier for them to produce both moderately worthwhile moral / social commentary and super-hero blockbuster fun. What they don't do is what 'Iron Man' does attempt and, as you say, doesn't do very well, which is to have the characters get literally involved in real-world situations. The X-Men don't literally fight against homophobes or xenophobes, and they don't literally get hauled up before the Committee On Un-American Activities. If they did, then I'd say there's a good chance those films would end up just as unsatisfactory in that respect as 'Iron Man', because when you allegorize you can both simplify and dramatize much more easily and effectively.

Second, the assertion that "we make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people". I'm Irish.

Ah, my apologies! Actually so am I, at least on paper, thanks to Ireland's wonderfully welcoming rules of citizenship. My new harp-emblazoned passport is in the post at the moment, in fact. But you know what I mean. :)

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Wardog

at 16:46 on 2008-05-28I'm just going to start wildly throwing out opinions here despite not having seen the movie because, well, hey it's never stopped me before. I think the thing about X-Men which is, as you say, genuinely allegorical is that although if you were to Take It Very Seriously you could say it's about social acceptance / xenophobia, what it's most convincingly about is being a teenager, specifically the sort of clever, socially-awkward, comic-reading sort of teeanger that I and, ahem, I suspect several of us here were once upon a time - feeling different to, and excluded from, the rest of the world. And because it's very personal it doesn't strain credibility. Whereas it seems to me (from my position of total ignorance) that using comic book heroes to comment on wider social / political issues only draws attention to how necessarily and inappropriately simplistic such commentary must be.

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:28 on 2008-06-02Mmm, yes, I hadn't thought of that but you're quite right. I guess that comes out better in the films than in the comics, in some ways, because (apart from periodic returns to The Original Point) the comics have tended to forget about the teenaged and school-based part of the X-Men scenario. Not that adult characters living in secret headquarters in a volcano / on the moon / wherever can't also be metaphors for awkward brainy teenagers, but less so.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/kVNzzlR0hezU7J7swspEMkT_LFLpag--#8a2c5

at 23:00 on 2012-07-10

the true aims of his kidnappers are never fully explained

OK, I know this article isn't exactly new, but I have to point out: we find out near the end why Tony was abducted by the militia -- it's in the video Pepper finds when she's spying for Tony. Obediah hired them to kill Tony; they tried to do so with big explosives from a distance; when they failed and saw him close up, they recognized him, so they took him hostage and forced their captive doctor to patch him up so they could get some weapons out of him on the cheap before finishing the job (after extorting more money out of Obediah, of course).

If you mean the overarching aims, the stuff they want the weapons for, I don't actually think that's necessary. In fact, I think that by leaving it open, it makes it more obvious 1, how many nasty things go on in that part of the world, often aided and abetted by the US Military and 2, how little Tony really knows about what's going on with his business.

#Ferretbrain #Iron Man #Damien F #Marvel Cinematic Universe #MCU

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kierongillen · 7 years ago

Text

Writer Notes: The Wicked + The Divine 33

Spoilers, obv.

I suspect this one may ramble. Or it may not. The odd thing is always when things which have been internally discussed forever end up not needing to be discussed in public. For Journey Into Mystery and Young Avengers, I always had the idea of the essay I'd end them with... but when I got there, I shrugged and did a couple of paragraphs which covered the basics.

(There was a grace note in both, in terms of highlighting a motif – Write Your Own Happy Ending and Be A Superhero. Save The World – but that's really minor detail compared to what I presumed I'd be writing.)

Well... I know it's going to be quite long, as I'm going to include the miniature essay on plot twists I lobbed up to respond to a question, just so I can include some WicDiv specific stuff.

So, WicDiv 33. The “Everything you knew is wrong” issue.

Jamie's Cover

Jamie coloured this himself.

There was a lot of discussion over this, in terms of how to resolve the equation that we'd set up. Where to go after the maximalist nature of Dio's 32? I won't mention the other options, as at least some of them may end up being used down the line. One suggestion I quite liked was doing the equivalent of the ABC Look Of Love album...

...which is this scene of posed romance on the cover, and when you flip the album, you see all the lighting and crew. In some ways, that's what this issue does.

But black makes sense on many levels as well. I suspect the idea of the specific bleakness will confound the expectations a little, but the statement of it is very there. We did say this was our Black Parade too.

Worth noting – first cover without a quote on the back. If we were sure the readers wouldn't have looked at the back cover before reading the book, we may have put Lucifer's “Am I the only one who didn't see that coming?” on there. But we couldn't be sure of that, so we didn't.

Russell's Cover

What Russell and Matt are doing over on Thor is state of the art superheroics. I've loved seeing what Russell's done across his time with Jason, and the idea of him doing a cover was just exciting. It's meant to be the full range of the medium, after all. I was surprised Russell went quite as maximalist as he did, but also pleased. I love this kind of operatic movie poster cover, and it screams Imperial Phase, including all the cast of the main arc. Dio's the hardest one to spot – that would be the black eyes over it.

IFC At this stage in the arc, working out what on earth to put in the synopsis is tricky. You have to throw your hands up to some degree.

The tweaks to the bios are the other thing – clearly we've got to set up the information required to comprehend the issue for those who may have forgotten it, without just saying what the thing is. For the very close readers, even the fact it's changed will be a tell. It was another reason we didn't do a preview for this issue, and even if we did, we wouldn't have released that page. Velocity in reading is key here.

With Woden we restate “She had some mysterious hold over him” rather than specifically talking about the Blakes. With Minerva we remind people that she was tortured on Ananke's machine, and then distract with a :( emoticon.

Page 1

I believe the script for this page and the next is in the trade as “Making Of” material, which is fun. Chrissy tends to choose pages in terms of what's interesting, especially if we have something else to show. In this case, it's my drawing for the design of Woden's Secret Base.

My basic description for this was the Bat Cave, which is a man cave, if you squint. Having an enormous penny in it could have been a giggle. We had to have a few passes to get the lighting right on this – debating the colours on the bars of the cage was also tricky.

In terms of pulling out a detail, the suit of armour missing a head on the right would be a useful one. Balancing the “making sure it's visible” while not leaning too much into “LOOK AT THE HEADLESS SUIT” is Jamie's storytelling problem here.

The main dialogue problem was balancing the level of Cass' response here with her noise at the end of the last issue. Swearing to some degree is fine, but it has to be a specific kind of fffuuuucccckkk last issue. It couldn't be a swear that promised too much.

Page 2

And it's Pink Woden! But he's blue. Lighting, everyone.

Well... There was some debate on the colouring of Pink Woden, in various modes, and various reasons, not least the slight differences in colouring in his previous appearances.

(Issue 14 and issue 21-22, respectively.)

Have I said Pink Woden is my favourite fan name? We use it all the time internally, not least because Mimir is oddly hard to remember. Also, if we get used to saying “Mimir” we may end up saying accidentally in public.

Page 3

I had someone reach out to me wondering whether Cassandra choosing to gender someone by their voice and physical appearance was off. It's something I was thinking of at the time when writing it, and it's not exactly a line I'm happy with. But on balance, I felt it more likely that Cass would say that than Persephone would say anything.

Cass is imperfect in her language in lots of ways. I decided she's more likely to apologise about it down the line and kick herself, which I may end up working in, depending.

(You could also ask “why have anything there?” and that's only answerable in terms of the flow of information and ideas and conversation across the whole scene. Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult.)

Lovely expression by Persephone in the background of the first panel – in fact, her conflicted expressions throughout. I especially love the reflection of the arriving Woden in the reflection of Mimir's mask in panel 6.

Page 4-5

The challenge here was always choosing where to put the page turns in this issue. What are the big beats. In my original draft the LITTLE WODEN BOY interstitial was actually on page 6, which would change the rhythm in lots of ways – not least in putting the Falling God sequence on a page turn. In the end, we gravitated to this. I'm much happier with it.

(Little Woden Boy works as a creepier punchline at the end as well.)

Anyway, hello! It's David Blake.

I... I maybe should save writing for the reveals all together. In fact, fuck it. Let's drop the ask essay here and we can then talk about the stuff I don't include in it. I'm asked whether you change something when someone guesses something, or how that feels?

****

Oh, god, no. Never change anything if someone’s guessed something. Nothing good lies in that direction.

Why?

Okay, let’s talk – with no specifics – Game of Thrones. If you go into the depths of fandom, Game of Thrones is – to some degree, in some areas – a solved problem. There’s a good selection of fan theories (some of which have come to fruition) which have so much meat on them it was clear they had to happen, or the book would break its structure and become unsatisfying.

These twists are available to anyone who wishes to google for them.

The vast majority of people don’t. So… why change the direction of the story? What’s the point of fucking over the enjoyment of the vast majority of people (i.e. making your story make less sense, as you’re abandoning the already existing thread) for playing gotcha on a tiny fraction of your audience?

(As a quick aside – compare and contrast theorising in a fanbase with actual events in the text that’s being adapted. Clearly, anyone who is watching GoT could have googled the synopsis of the book. Equally, anyone who’s read the books knows the big beats. Does the adaptation change the big beats? If surprise to everyone in your audience is all that mattered, you would. We don’t.)

It’s also worth noting that, while obviously some complain on the nature of the adaptation, most fans of a book generally complain that they wish it was more like the book. In other words, things that surprised them (i.e. differed from their knowledge of the text) were less satisfying. They wanted to see the big dramatic beats, even if they’re stripped of their surprise.

Surprise only matters the first time you read something. For me, any worthwhile piece of literature exists to be reread, and will open up more upon rereading. In other words, knowing the twist should add to the rereading of the book. If it doesn’t, and renders the story less than it was, it’s probably a bad twist – which is one reason why I don’t tend to call them “Plot twists” to myself. I call them reveals. The plot doesn’t contort. It’s merely revealing something in the nature of the world the reader was unaware of.

(As an aside, this means that someone who has guessed successful the direction of the plot is actually effectively skipping to their second read of the book earlier.)

There’s the other side of this as well – not just whether a plot beat has been guessed, but the almost inevitability of a plot beat being guessed. GoT fans have had twenty years to puzzle this out. In that period, a mass communication device emerged which allowed fans to talk to one another and share ideas. This machine would have torn apart any plot.

No one individual needs to guess anything. People can make one step in a chain, and then that step is exposed to thousands of minds. If even one of them can make the intuitive leap to the next step, then it continues. No one person needs to be clever enough to see the whole thing. The internet hivemind is Miss Marple, seeing through the most contorted of machinations.

(In passing, this is one reason why Alternate Reality Games are hard to do, because the mass hive mind will figure almost anything out, almost instantly. Equally in passing, the failure to understand this is another reason why Ready Player One is bad, but that’s irrelevant.)

In other words, the reason why twists are guessable is the same reason they are satisfying. A twist that isn’t foreshadowed sufficiently to give the possibility of being guessed by someone is not a satisfying twist, as it – by definition – came out of nowhere.

To make this specific to my own work. In the case of the biggest and most intricate of my current books, WicDiv, we sell about 18k in monthlies and sell 18k in trades (in the first month of release). That’s our hardcore devoted readership. How many people of them actually read the essays in the WicDiv tags? I’d say 500 at the absolute maximum, and likely a lot less. So for a maximum of 1.3% of our readership, we’d derail a still effective twist for everyone else? No, that would be a bad call.

Especially – and this is key – the people who have chosen to engage with a fandom are aware that they may figure something out. They are trying to figure something out. Why take that pleasure away from them?

In a real way, I think, in long-form narrative, pure plot twists which no one in the world guesses are dead in the Internet age, at least when dealing with any even vaguely popular work of art. You can do them in short-form narratives (like a single novel, a single movie and perhaps a streaming TV show they drop in one go) but for anything where you give a fanbase the chance to think, it’s just not going to happen. A creator should be glad their work is popular enough to have enough fans to figure it out.

Yes, I may have overthought this.

But that’s only half the question.

How do I actually feel when someone guesses something that’s going to happen? Well, this is long enough already. Let’s put the personal stuff beneath a cut…

I’d say you sigh “Oh, poop”and shrug.

And then you get over your ass, because you know all the above is true. Writers are often megalomaniacs who think they can control everyone’s response to their work. We don’t. We can’t control everything. We can barely control anything. We really have to let go. I’ve said WicDiv is a device to help me improve as a person, yes? It would include in this area. I have to learn to let it go, and internalise all of the above. If I can make most of my readership have the vague emotional response I’m looking for, I’m winning.

I’ve mostly succeeded at this. I’m certainly better than I was two years ago.

(I’ll probably write more about spoilers and twists and stuff down the line. I’d note that setting up twists that *are* easily guessable by the hardcore is part of the methodology. Having a nice big twist foreshadowed heavily is a good way to hide another twist behind it. “Hey – pay attention to this less subtle sleight of hand while I perform the actual sleight of hand over here.” In which case, there’s less of an Oh Poop response and more of a cackling evil mastermind response.)

The sigh can occasionally be accompanied with a “Hmm. I wouldn’t have posted that” or – more likely – “I wouldn’t have posted that THERE.”

To stress, what follows isn’t about my work per se, but culture generally, and is very much personal. This is stuff which good friends disagree with me on.

As a fan, I never tweet my own fan theories. I only tweet joke ones. Even my crack theories I don’t tweet, as they’re normally so bizarre that if they actually DO happen, I wouldn’t want to take the thrill away from people. Even in person in conversation I make sure we’re going into a deep fan hole before sharing them, aware that they may be true.

In a real way, the more likely I think something is true, the less likely I’ll say it. As this is my job, I tend to see basic structural ways stories are heading way in advance of most people. I’m a composer. I know how music works. You have a vague sense of what way they’ll go.

(One day I’ll write down my crack theory for the end of the previous Game of Thrones season. Maybe after next season, as it’s not impossible that they may end up doing it, though it’s increasingly unlikely.)

If I had a really good theory I’ve gathered evidence for? You can guarantee I’d put it beneath a cut. That’s the stuff which bemuses me. It’s a cousin of posting major spoilers about any piece of culture the day it comes out. The worst is one regular twitter trope – I’m always bemused when people do a “Calling it! XYZ will happen” tweet. Which strikes me a little like standing up in the cinema 20 minutes into a film and shouting out that you’ve guessed the ending. This ties back to the stuff I wrote above about twists being less effective in the modern age, except in a place where you can control the context and conversation. People may message in movies, but they rarely message everyone in the room.

(In passing, as it’s vaguely on topic – you may remember the research from a few years ago saying people who know a twist enjoy the story more than people who don’t know a twist. Even if this is true – and a single study should always get an eyebrow raise – it strikes me as a confusion over what “enjoy” means. All pleasure isn’t equivalent, and you can only have surprise on your first time through a work of art. That’s novelty. You can have that and then gain the “not surprise” experience second time through. If you spoil a work, it means the “novelty” experience is something you will never have. You may enjoy something more if you know the twist but you can always rewatch it to get that pleasure. If you’re spoiled, the individual specific pleasure of that first watch has been stolen.)

But that’s a conversation of social mores. Really, it doesn’t change anything in terms of how we act… and sometimes, I even grin when someone gets a twist in advance. The machine is working as intended. It’s actually kind of worrying if no one is thinking something is up in an area you’ve set up to be iffy. And… the alternative is worse – hell, there’s buried twists and details in Young Avengers that no one’s managed to figure out yet.

Twist ending: oh, no, I was a ghost all along.

****

I'm pretty sure the asker was asking about the Woden/Blake/Jon twist, and I'm primarily talking in terms of balancing the various needs of the group.

The problem with this twist was less making sure that people didn't get it, but making sure that everyone understood its import. If, hypothetically, I didn't want (barely) anyone to get it, we wouldn't have mentioned Jon after we introduced him in issue 6. Problem being, everyone needs to know Jon is a person who is Blake's kid when they hit this beat. My solution was to just reintroduce Jon hard, and resolve it, knowing that most people would just accept that. Then everyone knows who Jon is, so the father/son switch makes sense.

(In other words, far better some people suspect Woden is Blake rather than everyone going “Jon who?” Especially because the real horror of the Woden/Blake reveal is in its details.)

There's the other aspect to it as well – it's the sacrificial decoy aspect that I mentioned above. Even if guessed, it's a big enough twist to distract people. I reveal this at the start of the issue, so people will probably suspect that's enough big reveals for the issue. Yet no.

(See also: issue 11's dual deaths)

In reality, I was much more worried about the relatively small leap from realising Woden Is Blake And Jon Is Pink Woden to Mimir Is A Head.

But more on that later, I suspect.

Anyway! Storytelling!

There is something incredibly instantly disturbing about Blake without the helmet on, right?

Persephone's line was tweaked a bunch. I cut it as far as I could while still existing. It's a tiny moment of Rising Action, immediately squashed.

The switch to green as the cage goes to full power, plus Matt Wilson's wonderful pixel effects.

Love the Tron-eque light-bike trails seguing into flashback...

Page 6-7

The first date is just before Ragnarock 2013, where we first saw Jon on the stage in Laura's Flashback in issue 6.

This is a “Performance” by Jon, so is presented as such, in the same manner of Persephone's performance in issue 20. Jamie's integrated circuitry design is great, and allows us to go to a limited palette. 8 panel, 8-bit glory.

And Jon Blake.

You write and discover the characters. Jon has barely been in the book – he has a couple of lines of dialogue in issue 14, and that's it. I always knew why Ananke rejects him as unsuitable, but specifically how that would be articulated was something I thought I'd discover on the page. Writing a new character this far into the book is the sort of thing which keeps it interesting.

I was worried it would be hard, or shallow, as surely all the relevant little bits of me are already taken with the rest of the cast? Within a couple of sentences of typing, I knew I had completely forgotten one Gillen archetype.

I realised Jon was a heroic take on Lloyd/Mr Logos.

I laughed. Of course. Perfect.

The 11 days later says so much about how intricate the timeline is around here. It's the day before Baal and Sakhmet made their public debut.

The “She's a fucking weirdo/language” panel is a joy.

Yeah, Ananke really does like hanging around in people's gardens.

I specifically called for Ananke to be in an outfit from a previous God-creation sequence...

Page 8-9

...so Jamie could reuse the masks and only draw Jon transforming, and pull an extra page out of the budget.

The most embarrassing bit here is that I wrote this from my memory of Mimir's legends in the early drafts, and only remembered to actually check my notes at lettering. In fact, I'd got a couple of minor details of Mimir wrong.

(Or rather, didn't grasp the complexities of Mimir – it's very hard to get a take on Mimir, because the main myths we have of him are contradictory.)

Page 10-11

Man, I want to go to Mimir's club night.

In my original draft I wrote it as Jon cutting off Ananke's “Mimir” so that the god name wasn't revealed until the last page of this whole section. As in, it would stop people putting the book down, googling “Mimir”, realising “Heads” and then possibly seeing where we were going at the end of the issue.

I decided against it, in that's only going to be a tiny fraction of readers. If people want to break the flow of their reading to look up facts, I can't control that. Even then, I also knew it would be far from certain that just because they realised Mimir is a head, that they'd then realise others could be a head before the end of the comic.

And NOT including Mimir breaks the flow for everyone else, and is a bit cheap. Better than that.

That knife gets around.

Page 12

First panel: I never get bored of modern blur photoshop to show this kind of effect.

PoV shots are something I adore in comics. The six-panel grid gives it lots of space as well.

Honestly, that last panel with Mimir's own reflection is the creepiest thing in the world, and I love it.

Page 13

Yeah, I'm much happier with the interstitial here. Horrible.

(To state the obvious: Pinocchio reference.)

Page 14-15

I just imagine the tension in this room. Ugh.

I originally had a bunch more written for Woden here, but cut it. It was much better in the silent. He may say some of it down the line, but cutting it right to the basics – the particularly creepy basics – seemed key.

We went with a normal gun. Normal guns were at the start of the story, and have sort of disappeared. Once more we return.

Lots to unpick in all this dialogue, so won't give anything else. I'll say the whole exchange about the machine was as finely picked over to imply the meaning as much as anything else in the book – that's the thing about comics. The flowery fancy stuff? That's great and fun. But the real job is the compressing of precise exact detail, especially in a book which is nothing but precise detail.

I was chatting to Jamie about issue 34 earlier, and Jamie said how much he likes drawing Mimir's helmet. Looking at page 15 makes me see it – the second and fourth panels are just excellent in completely different ways.

Page 16-17-18

Jamie chose the steady angle, I believe, with a background drop, and Matt working the colours to show the emotions.

First panel is where the last of the fun drips out of Cassandra's expletives, and we're just left with something that's really just offensive and ugly. If there's any point where the issue reaches the black cover, it'd be this sequence.

I'm glad they've got here though.

Clearly, this is a Jamie masterclass. Pick it apart, learn. delight. Like – penultimate panel on page 16. The pause, the glance aside. Perfect. Look across page 17. There's a mixture of emotion and sheer dullness and boredom and fear, and how it all pushes and pulls again.

(“And I got it” is something else)

I believe I've said WicDiv contains a recapitulation of basically everything I've ever done as a creator. Mainly the Jamie and me stuff, but basically everything. I realised Laura's arc on Imperial Phase is me reprising what I did in Generation Hope – probably one of my least remembered things, which strikes me as fair – it only landed properly as we inched towards the end of the year. The plot was basically “Is Hope Good Or Bad?” when the answer was “Her Dad died a few days before the issue started. She's fucked up.” Only in mainstream death-happy superhero comics would that work as a twist. This was a bit like that – we distance the reader from Persephone and just show the actions and see what you make of it.

“Try to be kind. You have no idea what people are going through.”

That was the stuff I'd had planned from the start, but it only got more specific as I got nearer it and WicDiv became what it was. I've talked about having mixed feelings about WicDiv's success. Laura's arc is it writ large. I hate that the definitive work of my career is this. If my Dad was not dead I would not have written this book. There is a guilt and anger that is hard to articulate directly there, and is the material I was mining for this.

On a boring technical level, we did a lot of work with Cass explicitly saying facts to ensure that no one in the readership thinks Laura is confessing to killing her family. In an issue as twisty as this, I suspect some people would have.

(The second panel on page 17 is another one – tall enough to have a bunch of half ideas.)

And Laura, after making a breakthrough, immediately crumbles to another mistake.

The “Laura” line is a nod to the song, and one of the lines in the original WicDiv document sheet.

Page 19

I was going to tweak Cass' line – in some myths he's a giant – but that she's musing gives her a little freedom to dance around what we know.

You know, I suspect one reason why Mimir was never brought up as an option connected to Woden is that he's one of the very few Norse myths who've never appeared in a Marvel superhero comic. Or at least I don't think he has.

Normally we'd put something as big as the head remove on a page turn, but it's a physically small beat, so not something you will automatically recognise out the corner of your eye when you're reading.

I love Cass' thinking face in the penultimate panel. Thinkythinkythinky.

Two major beats happening on this page, of course – it appears Mimir is a head (or a robot head, perhaps?) and Mimir thinks the machine does nothing.

And then we hard-cut to what we do, but it's worth dwelling on this a little. When thinking of plot structure, I talk about a few ways to disguise twists. Earlier, I mentioned a Big Twist can make people suspect the twists are over. This is something I tend to think of as a revealed move. As in, you create a machine of logic with a missing part. You add the missing part as late as possible, and then immediately move to what has been concealed before the audience is able to process the new information.

Hence two beats and a hard-cut...

Page 20-21-22-23

Anyway – this clearly had to be a page turn. To state the obvious.

Steady angle shot here, to have the awfulness of it there. I suspect if I’d had space I'd have had the last panel on page 19 be a third of a page, so the two removed heads could mirror one another.

As a minor detail, Minerva's running feet in the second panel of 20 are really good.

Minerva's gesture on page 21.2 is a joy. I know that feeling, Mini.

I really wanted Inanna to be talking from off panel on page 21, but that definitely would give the game away. The problem with distinctive fonts...

And 22 is the reveal on the heads. Probably best not to say much more about this, as I suspect any of the design elements will intersect with what happens in issue 34, so I'll talk a bit about it then.

Tara and Inanna's expressions really are wonderful.

Luci's line came surprisingly late. The “Talking Heads” interstitial came early. The only reason I wasn't going to use it here was in case I wanted to use it later. I decided I didn't.

Okay... twists.

In reality, for me, it's a case of once you've decided that this is the plot, the only way to do it is dovetail towards an issue like this. Any of these individual beats provide too much connective tissue to the other ones, meaning all must be revealed or none.

(You could argue about Minerva, I suspect. Maybe.)

It's been strange writing a book like this – when so much is there early on. Seeing who got what and who didn't, and how people reinforced people has been interesting. That the core WicDiv tumblr community has never really suspected Minerva was off is in some way a surprise – though I've had people talk about that directly and personally. Blake/Jon and Minerva-is-Off-In-Some-Way were the two twists I would guard, but their primary importance was in how they led to the Heads.

When Ray Fawkes told me “There's a reason you're doing all the decapitations, right?” circa issue 2, I suspected that I'd overplayed the hand by having a literal talking head in issue 3... but it turned out fine.

“Played the hand” is interesting phrasing, and telling. Writing something as intricate as this is like doing a slow-motion card trick, in public, constantly. It is a form of constant stress. I have been paranoid of fucking it up in stupid ways, and it's impacted every single conversation I've ever had about WicDiv. Like just writing one name when I mean another or something. There was a hilarious panic when I added ‘Killer Queen’ to the playlist, just thinking of it as a quite funny Ananke song... and then realised there was only one character in the cast with a connection to the band Queen, and that was Minerva. Should I take it off the playlist? No, someone may notice that, and it's against my rules anyway. I quickly added a few other things to camouflage it.

As if anyone is watching that closely, y'know?

That's an extreme example, but an entirely characteristic one. I have lost sleep over it. Even a year ago, I wished I could just get to 33 and not worry about it. When 33 dropped, it was simultaneously excellent (the response was basically what we expected) and an anticlimax (The amount of emotional and intellectual effort you put into doing this is not worth it. It could never be worth it.) I've been telling friends that I'll never write a story that operates like this again. Partially that is because I wouldn't want to repeat myself, and partially because – as I said above – I think twists are less effective in long-form serialised work in 2017, but mainly as I don't think I want to do this to myself again. I'll find some other way to torture myself.

(Spangly New Thing certainly abandons the Scorpion's-Tale narrative model in favour of an intricate character clock of woe.)

Actually, talking playlists... I have prepared something. There's a secondary WicDiv playlist which I've been using since July for songs which speak to the end of year three and the remainder of year four. I didn't want to add these songs to the main playlist in case a particularly determined WicDiv fan worked out issue 33 from them. This says a lot about the high levels of anxiety I've been running on for the last few years on this topic. It would be terrible to blow it in such a dumb way. Now, those reading in issues know secrets the trade readers don't. So it's going to be an interesting few months.

Here's the playlist. Keep it mum. I'll add it to the main list when the trade's out. Don't shoot me for the first track.

You may have seen us trying to prod people to reread WicDiv before 33. This was partially in response to a friend who read 33 before it came out who said – I paraphrase – “I wish I could tell people to reread the series now, because after they read 33, those issues are gone, forever.” She's right – it's a pure ‘everything changes’ issue, and you can't reread the comic earlier, because everything has transmuted beneath your fingers.

Which is by our design, but is still a grim thing to think about. We've destroyed all those issues on the shelves, and replaced them with a new story. On the bright side, we've given you 35 free comics. I suspect this returns to Jamie’s and my twitchiness over comic prices, and trying to make ours better value, every way we can. In this case, we want to make rereading valuable and exciting.

SIGH! This has been a journey, friends. I'm glad I no longer have to think about any of the above. There's huge stuff coming in the final year, but it's got entirely its own character and momentum. The cards we're playing with have fundamentally changed. There's so much stuff to come, but it builds from this.

Oh – I'm sort of regretting mentioning the thing about the third theme in the backmatter, as it's clearly the sort of thing that's going to drive a certain strata of reader to distraction – especially as if there's any number of other themes in the book. The one I was thinking intersects a little with pre-existing major themes, and speaks to the particular spin on them. We'll get to it eventually. Don't worry.

Anyway, to sum it all up, clearly with four talking heads, WicDiv is four times as good as Sandman. That is a FACT.

Christmas Special shortly, the trade collection in January, the 1923 Special in February and we're back with issue 34 in March, with the new arc.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #The `wicked and the divine #Writer Notes

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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How Potentially Great Movies Got Derailed By Offscreen BS

Hollywood has proved that it’s willing to turn literally anything into a movie, from children’s toys, to Reddit posts, to E.L. James novels. So, if you ever notice a film-worthy property that has remained conspicuously un-adapted, you can bet your ass that it’s not for lack of trying. In fact, some of the stories behind these non-adaptations would make pretty good movies of their own (mostly comedies, with some hints of psychological horror).

Gore Verbinski’s R-Rated BioShock Movie Is Dead Due To Watchmen

Video game adaptations tend to be utter garbage for one simple reason: It’s hard to turn a plot like “portly Italian steps on hundreds of turtles” into a coherent screenplay. If there’s one game that could break the curse, though, it’s BioShock. Why? Because it already has a more cogent story than most movies.

2K Games Not to mention, way more diving suit-wearing mutants with giant drills on one hand.

The game’s critically acclaimed storyline (centered on a utopic underwater city created by a combination of Walt Disney and Ayn Rand) is ripe for the taking — and there’s one director willing to do it. Gore Verbinski of Pirates Of The Caribbean fame is a big fan of BioShock‘s “cinematic potential” and “strong narrative,” and we’ve already talked about why he would actually be perfect for this adaptation (assuming he doesn’t succumb to the Burton Syndrome and casts Johnny Depp for every part).

Verbinski was all set to shoot a BioShock movie in 2009, and fittingly for someone named “Gore,” he wasn’t planning to shy away from the game’s violence and general fucked-up-ness. In his own words, he “just really, really wanted to make it a movie where, four days later, you’re still shivering and going, ‘Jesus Christ!'” The movie’s concept art confirms that, at the very least, this thing would have been visually amazing:

2K Games

But then, only eight weeks before shooting started, Universal Studios pulled the plug. What happened? Apparently, Watchmen did.

Verbinski wanted between $160 and $200 million to properly recreate the underwater city of Rapture, but after Zack Snyder’s dour superhero slo-mo-fest underperformed, Universal got nervous about financing such an expensive R-rated film. Verbinski wouldn’t budge on the rating or the budget, so that was it. The studio tried to keep going with another director, but the same problems came up again. Eventually, BioShock‘s creators decided they didn’t need a stinking movie anyways.

We’d love to end this entry telling you that the recent string of R-rated genre hits proved those cowardly producers wrong, but it’s not that simple: Deadpool cost only $58 million, Logan reportedly $97 million, and Mad Max: Fury Road didn’t exactly make it rain (by Hollywood standards). Shooting an underwater city probably won’t be affordable until we’re actually living in one, so cross your fingers for more climate change, gaming fans!

We’ll Never See Guillermo Del Toro’s At The Mountains Of Madness Because Of Freaking Prometheus

Like his creation Cthulhu, horror author H.P. Lovecraft has managed to indirectly wedge his face-tentacles into everything you love. He’s inspired such disparate works as Dungeons And Dragons, Evil Dead, and even Conan The Barbarian — and yet, very few of his works have been directly adapted into movies. For instance, there’s never been a film adaptation of his classic novella At The Mountains Of Madness, the lovely story of a bunch of scientists who stumble upon forgotten horrors during an Antarctic expedition, and end up getting slaughtered or losing their minds.

Guillermo Del Toro, no stranger to giant monsters from other dimensions, has been trying to adapt Mountains for decades, but the project has been cursed by the unthinkable evils that rule the universe: Hollywood executives. Del Toro had a script ready as early as 1998, and at various points the project managed to attract serious interest from Warner Bros., Universal, and Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Pictures. In 2010, Del Toro even convinced James Cameron to join as producer and had Tom Cruise in advanced talks to star (yes, we might have finally found out what Cruise looks like as an insane person).

The studios always ended up wussing out over the budget and dark tone, but Del Toro kept plugging away, convinced that this was something audiences had never seen before. That is, until he heard about a little movie called Prometheus. You know, the one about a bunch of scientists who stumble upon forgotten horrors during a galactic expedition, and end up getting slaughtered or crushed by slow-moving space donuts.

The similarities don’t end there: Both Prometheus and Mountains involve the scientists discovering an ancient alien race responsible for creating humanity, as well some ugly-ass monsters hell-bent on destroying said humanity. Del Toro didn’t want to cover the same ground as that film, so he announced that his project was on hold or dead. In 2013, he said he would give it one more try … and that’s the last anyone’s heard of it. Oh, well, at least there’s always the new Hellbo– Whoops.

Hamilton Won’t Be A Movie For Decades Because The Creator Just Said So

Chances are that you’ve never seen Hamilton yourself (tickets go from $175 to $2000 and are still constantly sold out), but you sure as hell have heard about it. It’s a freaking cultural phenomenon. The Founding Father-themed hip-hop musical won 11 of its record-breaking 16 Tony Awards nominations, largely for its ability to achieve the impossible: making people pay “could have bought fairly high-quality cocaine” money to see something pertaining to Alexander “National Debt Ain’t Nothing But A Thing” Hamilton.

Since Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is all about making American history more accessible to the masses, a movie adaptation would make perfect sense, right? So thinks everyone, except Lin-Manuel Miranda. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Miranda stated that if a film adaptation happens, it probably wouldn’t be for at least 20 years. Partially, he wants to make sure people come see it in theaters now (even though 99 percent of us will never have the chance) … but he also claims that the only good play-to-film adaptations are “all 20 years after the fact,” giving examples like Cabaret or Chicago.

The thing is, Cabaret was only made eight years after the play. West Side Story, The Sound Of Music, Oliver!, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, Guys And Dolls, Hairspray — all had acclaimed movies within five to eight years of the musical. The Grease movie was released only seven years later, and people love that retroactively creepy crap. Does Miranda think it was actually made in the ’50s because of the wardrobes?

At most, those suffering from Hamilust will have to settle for watching a filmed performance of the play, but there are two problems with that: 1) Miranda says he hasn’t decided what to do with the only recording of the original cast, joking (we think?) that he’d throw it in a vault, and 2) no one in the history of humanity has enjoyed a fixed-camera movie of a play. You might as well sneak into one of the inevitable rip-off productions that high school drama clubs will be putting on for years to come.

Steve Carell’s Real-Life Comedy About North Korea, Pyongyang, Was Shelved Because Of The Interview

North Korea has been responsible for a lot of terrible things over the years, but there was one time when they actually tried to save us from a lurking danger we ourselves didn’t fully understand: Seth Rogen’s The Interview. In what we naively thought would be the most bonkers international incident of this decade, Kim Jong-un’s regime took offense at something in the movie (presumably the part about Rogen and James Franco assassinating him, but maybe they’re just tired of stoner jokes) and allegedly hacked Sony Pictures in retaliation.

As a result, most screenings of the movie were cancelled and the film was banished to the wasteland of home video.

However, this Chinese food-fart of a movie wasn’t the most tragic casualty of the Sony hack clusterfuck: that would be Steve Carell’s Pyongyang, which was a story that actually deserved to be told.

Based on a 2004 autobiographical comic book, Pyongyang details author Guy Delisle’s experiences in the North Korean capital, where he worked as the liaison between a French animation company and a local studio. That studio’s signature creation, by the way, is an adorable propaganda series starring a squirrel and a hedgehog, imaginatively titled Squirrel And Hedgehog.

Because of his particular role, Delisle was given unprecedented access to parts of the country usually hidden from outsiders. His book is a retelling of all the bizarre things he saw and experienced in that crazy-ass regime — a concept that apparently made Gore Verbinski’s ears perk up when he heard about it. In 2013, New Regency announced Verbinski would direct a “dark comedy” based on the Delisle’s experiences, and eventually added Steve Carell as the lead. It would have been an intriguing combination of awkward situations …

… and the obligatory “creative liberties” Hollywood would have taken to make the story more like a spy thriller. Either way, expect a lot of Carell screaming in panic.

Unfortunately, thanks to Rogen shoving his dick jokes into the nuclear hornet’s nest, the movie was dead before it could really take off. New Regency didn’t think they could risk a controversial movie of their own, while Verbinski welcomed the possibility of World War III, stating, “I find it ironic that fear is eliminating the possibility to tell stories that depict our ability to overcome fear.” To which the studio probably responded: “Yeah, but nukes and shit. Right?”

The Catcher In The Rye Will Never Get A Movie Because Of A Terrible Version Of Another J.D. Salinger Story

J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye has long been considered by hipsters (and assassins) to be the greatest book against phonies ever written. Holden Caulfield’s story of self-discovery mirrors that of many a pissed-off, surly, uniquely rebellious teenager — so, all of them, basically. That probably explains why entire generations of actors, from Marlon Brando to Leonardo DiCaprio, have tried to get the movie done with themselves in the lead.

The problem is that, like his boy Caulfield, Salinger was on a bit of a crusade against the phonies of the world — and to him, no one was phonier than Hollywood (not sure how he got that impression).

Salinger didn’t always feel that way. Early in his career, he sold the rights to his short story Uncle Wiggily In Connecticut, a commentary on materialism in the post-WWII era. According to his assistant, Salinger “thought they would make a good movie,” which wasn’t an unreasonable assumption considering that the script would be written by the screenwriters of Casablanca, Julius and Philip Epstein.

So what did the Epsteins do? They changed the name to My Foolish Heart, ditched all the social commentary, and turned the story into a sappy romantic tale.

Even though the film was a commercial hit, Salinger hated it so much that he refused to allow any more adaptations of his work. Including Catcher In The Rye. Of course, there might be another reason why he turned down all those offers from famous actors: According to his one-time girlfriend, Salinger thought only he himself could play Caulfield. It’s probably a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.

Anyway, if you excitedly thought that Salinger’s death might finally bring about a Catcher adaptation, then you’re 1) a shitty person, and 2) wrong. The people who manage his trust were fully aware of his aversion to licensing out any of his works, and will continue his crusade for generations to come. On the upside, think of all the murders from illiterate would-be killers we’re avoiding this way.

Jordan Breeding is a part-time writer, a full-time lover, and an all the time guitarist. Check out his band at Skywardband.com or on Spotify here.

Behind every awful movie is the idea for a good one. Old man Indiana Jones discovers aliens: Good in theory, bad in practice. Batman fights Superman: So simple, but so bad. Are there good versions of these movies hidden within the stinking turds that saw the light of day? Jack O’Brien hosts Soren Bowie, Daniel O’Brien, and Katie Willert of After Hours on our next live podcast to find an answer, as they discuss their ideal versions of flops, reboots, and remakes. Tickets are $7 and can be purchased here!

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