#littlemelly

[bedlamsbard]

btw, what are your thoughts on WandaVision? I really liked the concept and the execution of the first half but was a bit disappointed by the decision to have a Big Enemy To Fight instead of being entirely about Wanda's duality and internal conflict.

I don't mind the show having an enemy to fight, though I think WV might have complicated it a bit too much by having too many antagonists that turned up in the last couple of eps, particularly because none of them have since shown up in the MCU and explained what they were doing there in the first place. That last is really a Phase 4/5 problem, though, not a WV-specific one. (When I did my rewatch a few months ago, I also said that WV really should have had a cameo from either Ross or another Avenger -- it needed a tie to something else that was relevant to Wanda.)

I like WV a lot -- it's very rewatchable for me, and I like how playful and experimental it is. I think it's also pretty good at actually dealing with the post-Blip chaos when it acknowledges it, and a lot of the character dynamics are excellent. On rewatch I can pick out some nitpicks with it -- for example, they never acknowledge that Pietro also got Infinity Stone-kickstarted powers, despite Fake Pietro and Tommy both having superspeed in the show. And "Agatha All Along" is a bop, but like...what did Agatha actually do aside from insinuating herself into Wanda's life and enchanting Ralph Bohner.

From a two and a half years later perspective, WV's biggest problem is what I think of the as the "CATWS Problem" -- although it's individually excellent and does pretty well at building off preceding installments of the MCU, it's essentially ignored by the later installments, even the ones that depend on it (a.k.a. DSMOM; we'll see how The Marvels does with Monica, I guess). Through no fault of its own, it becomes retroactively worse just because of how it's incorporated, or not incorporated, into the rest of the MCU.

Fun fact: my department at the university was consulted for the Latin that's in Agatha's flashback scene, since the movie was filmed in Atlanta, and Jac Schaeffer's assistant e-mailed the nearest classics department to make the Latin be Not Google Translate. I've seen the request letter with the original Google Translate version, it's pretty bad. The Latin in the show is accurate now! A friend of mine did the Latin translation and Marvel Studios sent her some WV merch when the episode aired, though I don't think she's credited in the ep.

Other fun fact: the first time I watched WV I hadn't seen anything Wanda or Vision had been in, because the only three Marvel movies I'd seen since CATWS in 2014 had been Ant-Man and the Wasp, Thor Ragnarok, and Captain Marvel. So WV was actually my introduction to Wanda and Vision.

[mr---cringe]

@hueskoria : Hey, we're watching Venom... And Venom 2

@littlemelly : Hooray yaoi!

[bedlamsbard]

did you just have an entire multichapter sw fanfiction with 5000+ word count casually chilling somewhere?? i saw the notification and couldn't believe my eyes

(i'm excited to catch up on your writing)

It's other side AU! So it's not new new, but it's been edited and reorganized for AO3 from its original incarnation as tumblr concept writing, which I have been putting off doing for two years now.

And it's actually 56K. *g*

[bedlamsbard]

moven by some notion I've just reread a bit of "Yonder" and found myself tearing up by the beauty of humanity (and aliens and the writing, and the concept and-). thanks again!! xx

Aww, thank you. I'm very fond of Yonder and that whole universe, and while I'd probably do a few things differently if I wrote Yonder now, I'm very happy with where it's at. Thank you for reading!

[bedlamsbard]

hi! you've mentioned earlier you have a few star wars-themed tatoos. have you considered getting a homage to marvel? what could it potentially be?

I've considered it! After the big bad Star Wars breakup I'm wary about fannish commitment that way, since that's a little more permanent than merch I can sell (I am still doing the world's slowest destash because it takes a lot of energy that I just don't have), but if I did it would probably be Captain America's shield, probably in some artsy floral or watercolor style.

(plus I was never really happy about how any of my Star Wars tattoos turned out so at some point I'll get cover-ups, but it's not a priority because they're not very visible unless I wear a tank top. I don't have any really good pictures, but you can see the one on the right here from a casual Sabine I did a few years back at Dragon Con.)

[bedlamsbard]

congratulations on finishing "Yonder"! it's such an honour and a blessing to have you in a fandom, you're an excellent writer. i don't know if anyone has already asked you this: why have you decided to tell the story from Natasha's point of view?

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I never considered doing this story from Loki's POV. I find Natasha a relatively easy POV to slip into -- I've used her for most of the Avengers-era altverse flashbacks in Morning, and in very, very old 2012 MCU writing she was also my POV character. I could have done Steve, I guess, but I didn't actually consider that -- there was no alternative POV for Yonder at any point.

For this story, I wanted to use a relatively "outsider" POV -- it's a trick I use to replicate, as best as possible, the experience of watching a film, where the audience doesn't necessarily know what's going on in the focus character's head or their full background or the ins and outs of their world. It also lets me get really visual and cinematic in a way that's not quite as possible if the POV character is also the one doing the flashy stuff. I use outsider POVs a lot for this reason as a fic writer who's primarily working with film/TV fandoms. (This is also the same reason the Avengers-era flashback in Morning 6 is Natasha POV, rather than altverse Loki's, though of course that one is actually meant to be a video, as well as replicating the experience for the audience.)

I did also want to be careful that this still be a Natasha story, rather than a Loki one which just happens to be being told by Natasha. I'm not totally certain I succeeded, going by the number of comments that only mention Loki and not Natasha, but I always write in relatively close 3rd person so I tried to pay a lot of attention to that. (I did occasionally have to do a few contortions so that she would be present for very Loki-centric scenes -- the confrontation with Thanos and the Endgame battle are the big ones.)

I didn't settle on Loki's backstory, actually, until the confrontation with Thanos, but it did end up helping that Natasha's backstory has some similarities with Loki's so there are those points of connection and recognition that wouldn't have been possible with a different POV character or maybe even with Loki -- things can get filtered through her that wouldn't have been obvious otherwise. I can do a certain amount of leaning on pre-existing canon for that as a way to shorthand things for the audience without having to spell them out. (I don't necessarily know that this story would be different if the Black Widow film would exist -- I mean, Yelena wouldn't be in it, obviously -- but there would have been different references.)

But mostly it's the "outsider POV to replicate the film viewing experience" trick. Also, I just like Natasha.