#I guess??? is that a tag???

[treasure-mimic]

Okay, I feel like I have to get these thoughts about Deadpool and Wolverine out or they're gonna drive me crazy. I saw the movie last Thursday and it's not left my mind since then and I kinda wish I could just blurt it all out in response to the dismissal of the movie but like it's so specific to me that I don't even know if it's a valid rebuttal to that kind of thing so I just. I'm just gonna say it now as its own thing and we're gonna run it. Okay? Alright.

Major spoilers for Deadpool and Wolverine, btw.

It's kind of hard to know exactly where to start on this thing that D&W does that really captivated me, so like, bear with me, this is gonna start in a weird place.

I have a mild fascination with the concept of continuation in fiction. On its face that's not so strange, most fiction, especially nowadays in an age where the goal is almost always to become an ongoing franchise, one of (not necessarily the) central goals of a fictional work is to immerse the viewer into its world to the point where they believe that it exists within context. There is the work itself, there is backstory which establishes the context of its setting and characters, and barring situations where the ending of the work is that the world ends, something of it is presumed to continue to exist after the fact whether that be the characters or the world in context of the characters. While the band of fictionalized time composing the work itself strictly "exists" in the same sense that the pipe in Treachery of Images "exists", the before and after periods don't even under such loose definitions of existence, they are pure implication under the notion that events tend to have context, a gap that the brain intuitively fills in. At least until the work has a sequel, which itself will have an implied context of before and after which itself will vary in its level of existence depending on the distance between it and the previous work and if it too has a sequel.

That's a really long and complicated laying out of a concept that I think most people intuitively get, right? It's one of (again, not necessarily the) founding motivations behind fanfiction. When a work ends with "and the adventures continue" we seek out ideas of what those adventures could be and some people will naturally be drawn to filling it out with their own ideas. If I can be allowed a quick plug here, I'm currently writing a novel that's partially about the after of a character trying to bring about the end of the world. But, like I said, I think most people intuitively get the appeal of that, what I find most interesting about this subject isn't just exploring the surrounding context of a work of fiction, that can be done with a sequel or a prequel or a spin-off.

What fascinates me most, what I'm just enamored with, is the implied continuation of existence in bad media.

How many godawful movies have ended with a "To be continued..." even til today. And how many times has the predominant criticism to that decision been, "who cares?" We, the consuming public, are uninterested in the continued investment in this world and these characters and whatever conflicts may remain. But, the work still exists, it was made and cannot be unmade, and in that is the implication that no matter how you feel about it, through implication, so too exists a continuous existence in both the directions of before and after.

A few years ago I wrote a massive crossover multiverse fanfic which had a really complicated selection process for what characters would be involved that isn't relevant to my point, but one of the flourishes at the very end was replacing the intended inclusion of Lancelot with a hypothetical version of the character from Guy Ritchie's ill-conceived and incomprehensible attempt to kickstart a King Arthur Cinematic Universe in 2017, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (seriously, this is one of my favorite bad movies of all time, it is a bizarre combination of elements from superhero movies and gangster heist films and loose, untethered understandings of English antiquity). To be clear, this character does not exist in the work itself, Lancelot never appears or is even implied to appear in the work itself, likely planned for an eventual sequel or spin-off that never occurred due to how much the movie underperformed financially. But the eventual existence of a Lancelot is nonetheless an implication by the very nature of the work's existence, regardless of how little anyone actually wanted to see it. I find that fascinating, and seemingly I'm not the only one, considering I wasn't even the first person to write fanfic of this hypothetical non-existent version of Lancelot.

Let's bring it back, shall we? The promise of the Marvel multiverse as of right now, regardless of whether you like it or not, is not (at least wholly) an exploration of the cascading effects of character choices and outcomes of natural chaos, but an exploration on the notion that every story has continuation. The turning point, in my opinion, was Spider-Verse, not the 2018 animated film, but the 2014 comic series it's loosely adapted from. That's not to say the concept had never been applied before, the run itself took inspiration from Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and the finale episode of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, but 2014's Spider-Verse was what ultimately codified the concept of a multiverse of adaptations rather than variant outcomes. It was an exploration on if 616 Spider-Man met 1610 Spider-Man met Noir Spider-Man met 2099 Spider-Man met cartoon animal Spider-Man met animated Spider-Man met video game Spider-Man met manga Spider-Man, pre-existing works which were created by disparate creators whose only intentions were only to make standalone entertainment, recontextualized by interaction with one another and by the newfound confirmation of their continued existence. Spider-Ham didn't stop being when the run of Marvel Tails ceased, he continued to exist in the same context and continued consistency of that appearance and now he's capable of talking to a version of himself that kills people.

But Spider-Verse also showcases the other end of that concept, the continued existence of bad media, the "who cares" mentality. Quick primer if you're unaware, the original comic book Spider-Verse run was not predicated on a well-meaning Kingpin using the multiverse for personal reparation but a race of interdimensional energy vampires who feed on the souls of Spider-Man variants. This is where most of the bad media Spider-Men are sent, killed by these Inheritors, in many case in comedic fashion, with their mere existence as the source of comedy, contrasted against such dark themes.

For example, here's the Spider-Man that only exists in custom print ads for Hostess sponge cakes.

Killed unceremoniously because, nobody's favorite Spider-Man is the Hostess sponge cake ads Spider-Man, but by bringing him back decades after these ads quit running it implicitly asks the reader to understand that this Spider-Man and his context and his consistency continued even when the ads don't.

Now, this is a reason why I honestly, personally really dislike the original Spider-verse run, dark comedy is obviously the tone Dan Slott is going for, but I think the overall effect is so much more grim than I ever wanted because, like, I do care. Even if I don't like the story, I do care about this version of Spider-Man being killed while on his way to a date with MJ. I care about the implication of continuation of bad media.

To finally, finally bring it back to the ostensible subject of this post, what I find so enticing about Deadpool and Wolverine's story is that it's able to explore both sides of this concept. Within the framework of the movie, the Void is a very implicit metaphor for discontinuation, both in the sense of corporate media distribution rights but also want for continuation. Rather than the victory lap of Avengers: Endgame, rather than returning to the Captain America and Hulk of of 2012's Avengers or the Gamora and Nebula of Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool and Wolverine asks us to remember and revisit bad media. Tim Story's Fantastic Four, X3, the Elektra not of the Netflix adaptation, but of the delightfully edgy Daredevil and Elektra films (another of my favorite bad movies of all time). Deadpool explicitly asks, hey, can we get help from the cool character that people like, and gets told no. They aren't here. You get us.

Now, obviously this has some qualifications, because it's not all that. While Blade 3 is universally reviled, Blade is obviously the point of reference for this depiction as evident from the visual and textual callbacks, it is ultimately a Disney product, nostalgia is still a major driving force.

Still, this depiction allows the film to explore both ends of it. The Void as a metaphor for discontinuation and lack of interest, similar to the killing of pointless Spider-Men that nobody likes in Spider-Verse, their existence within the context of their stories is over and cannot be returned to. But it also implicitly asks the viewer to consider their continued existence, to process that they didn't just go from the existence we saw to the non-existence of now, that regardless of how much people cared about these products at the time, the characters do still exist and can't not exist in the context of an all-canon multiverse that Marvel has now. That all-canon is not exclusively composed of that which is still profitable and endearing to general audiences.

This paratextuality comes to a head with the credits sequence, a surprisingly loving tribute to the entire breadth of Marvel properties under Fox. Not just the ones universally liked, not even just the ones brought in for this film, not even just the ones in the band for newly forming 00s nostalgia, but films like Fant4stic and Dark Phoenix. You can't pick and choose, you must acknowledge everything. And by showing behind-the-scenes footage rather than finished film, it asks the viewer to understand these movies, these universes, this whole completed fiction with implied context, not as the product of a studio simply deciding to put something out but of the effort of hundreds, sometimes thousands of individual people. There was an attempt, failed or no, to create a story here, and inarguably, it succeeded.

That is why I've been enamored with Deadpool and Wolverine since seeing it several days ago, beyond the jokes and the homoerotic subtext and the excitement of seeing new things from the source material brought to the big screen in the last moments that they're still possible to bring back, it struck at me specifically because it shares my fascination with the continuation, the irreversible existence, of bad media.

[robyn-i-guess]

liking someone platonically is so embarrassing like. yeah i admire you. yeah i think about you all the time. yeah i look forward to every time i see you even if it's only for a minute. yeah it's all platonic and yeah i couldn't explain this because it'd sound romantic. fucking hell

[12neonlit-stage]

you're allowed to discuss and work together, reblog for a higher sample size or something

You have 1 week, good luck!

[daisyofwaterdeep]

had a dream I went to a hozier concert and mr. hozier stopped singing and pointed to me in the crowd and asked me to go get him some extra crispy tofu and a blueberry shake for after the show and then the crowd passed his debit card to me and when I got it I could see his real legal name was Horace Bob-omb

[arttuff]

bruce wayne becoming nightwing reminds me of those mums that are like 'im sooo skinny, i can fit into my preteen daughter's clothes!!!' but like. with vigilante personas

[noddynods]

Story of my life

[helpimstuckinafandom]

I'M FUCKING CRYING LMAOOO

[pillowspace]

GIRLY JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT CYERCE ELEGANS

If Cyerce nigricans is a butterfly, then this is a fairy... Cyerce nigricans for comparison:

[bacchuschucklefuck]

couldnt draw my thang for mid-autumn so treated myself to a calne redesign instead

[hawberries]

this is the chilchuck situation . to me

(a reference to twelfth night (2009) ft anne hathaway)

[autistickaitovocaloid]

Today in vc we discussed the concept of a gmod funeral so I drew my interpretation.

[goldensunset]

a real blorbo is someone you can both write a lengthy and serious/sad analysis on yet also constantly and i mean constantly make stupid jokes about

[endrae]

Also worked on @bg3zine 's cover for the nsfw side of the zine! This is the final picture without any cover elements, just everyone chilling in good company!

[sanjiaftersex]

Honestly, no one is doing it like Vinsmoke Sanji. He's royalty. He's homeless. He's a convicted criminal. He is a damsel in distress. He's a knight in shining armor. He takes down the Government at 10 am then makes a Bouchée à la reine from scratch at 11. He has the empathy of a buddhist monk in the Himalayas. He will beat up a 90 year old. He has never given a fuck, he cant sleep at night cz of how much he cares. He is a ballerina. He sets his legs on fire. He is a slut. He is a virgin. He is a feminist He is a pervert. He's a fashion icon. He wears Alexander McQueen suits to the beach. He has never known happiness. God has personal beef with him.

[samgiddings]

@staff @support @engineering @music @books

Have you ever considered this is a really stupid layout to have when there’s no way to easily get your account back if you accidentally hit the wrong button???

[nicecrumbart]

Keep thinking about that one scene in secret life