#this was a placeholder but honestly. maybe i should just post it without context.

[blessphemy]

charlene cameleon iguana

[muninnhuginn]

hello! for the wip ask game: 🌀🌧️☔

hi! sorry for taking ridiculously long to answer this, but thanks for asking ^^

🌀Post the fic summary for a fic you haven't written/published yet. It can be hypothetical or something you really plan on releasing...

Went for the placeholder summary of the angsty CXS-QL siblingisms fic I've been stalled on for months:

It's not that Cheng Xiaoshi wouldn't like Qiao Ling as a sister. It's just that she has her family; he has his. That's all there is to it. That's all there will ever be.

🌧️Share something angsty from your WIP.

This is from the siblingisms fic. Hopefully makes sense without much context, but tldr Cheng Xiaoshi and Xiao Li are at the store having accidental emotional (un)honesty hours:

Cheng Xiaoshi muttered, “I’m not going to make the mistake of pushing myself into somewhere I’m not wanted.” That hadn’t been what he’d meant to say. “Not that I think– Maybe when we were younger, it was one thing, but Qiao Ling has her own stuff on, nowadays.” Better. Xiao Li's expression was unreadable at that, so Cheng Xiaoshi cleared his throat and continued, “You do get that, right?” It came out more pleading than he was comfortable with. He clearly hadn't convinced Xiao Li, whose eyes narrowed. For a second, Cheng Xiaoshi thought he might leave it be, but then he moved closer. Cheng Xiaoshi resisted the urge to shy back, well aware there was a shelf directly behind him. “Look,” Xiao Li said, resting a hand on Cheng Xiaoshi’s shoulder. “You’re young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Now is the time for you to make mistakes, alright?” The grip on his shoulder tightened until it verged on painful. “Make your mistakes now so you don’t make them later.” Xiao Li looked away then, allowing the harsh lights of the store to catch his wrinkles. He seemed old, all of a sudden. “Don’t presume you know what’s going on in someone’s else’s mind.”

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

I've got two here. One Link Click (donghua version), one White Cat Legend (cdrama version specifically).

The Link Click concept is something I may attempt one day, but eh, for now it's just in my head. So, the hospital-boat loop in season two. I subscribe to the idea that Lu Guang never meant for Cheng Xiaoshi to loop back in his place at the hospital. And I'd love to explore the implications of that if you actually follow them through. Lu Guang may not have even *realised* that Cheng Xiaoshi went back at first, so in this concept, when he realises what happened (due to CXS casually referencing the phone passcode of trauma LG did not know he knew), he freaks. Thinks CXS could have seen something when was possessing him (s2 finale spoilers obviously :V). And in trying to dig to figure out *what* Cheng Xiaoshi knows from his possession that time (which is... basically nothing) Lu Guang would basically give the game away to some extent. Hadn't decided if to make it full reveal or not, but that was the gist (still not written a proper reveal in general, but at some point I should at least try rather than dancing around it).

The other concept. So, honestly, I *know* there are probably fic with this as the basis but none of it is in English so I'm stuck pawing sadly at the sidelines. White Cat Legend (cdrama not donghua) time travel fix-it with qiubing. Where they both go back and don't realise the other has also gone back and so spend the whole time suspicious of each other. I hadn't gone any further than that because I know time travel fix-it deals tend to be longer than a short one-shot which is all I trust myself to write, but their whole canon loyalty/distrust dynamic is so compelling. They're both falling on swords for each other whilst refusing to clear any of the misunderstandings up. So turbo charging that dynamic with time travel and giving them the chance to fix everything if they'd just talk *properly* to each other is like catnip to me.

[kennyrobots]

answer in the form of an answer, part 25.

Does music have a big influence on your life? Your answer: Yes Answers you’ll accept: Yes | No Importance: Very This sonofabitch app didn't let me enter an explanation alongside my answer, and I'll be damned if I let something go unexplained. (...Hmm.) ANYWAY: Yes. Not that my ambition is to be a musician or anything. (Although, real talk - I did spend an inordinate amount of time on eBay eying SP404s and MPC 1000s, because I are one.) No, I just like music, and I hope that you do as well. (Aside: I don't necessarily buy into the idea of shared musical interests being the end-all, be-all of things. While I certainly understand that it's useful in some respects (mostly functioning as a proxy in regards to the other person's general likes, dislikes, tastes, etcetera), it does have its limitations. Very specifically, if you and a potential match like all the same things, what incentive is there to explore anything new? (I'm just sayin'.) (That more people should listen to jazz.) (as of the time of this writing, i have 28 posts in my drafts. however, tumblr only lists 27 of them, and it is bothering me to NO end that i can’t get the 28th one to appear. the first time i noticed it, i legit thought i had skipped over it, and so i added the missing post to the top of my drafts, and then it automagically appeared where it was supposed to be. and yet, i remove the duplicate draft post, and the original one fucking disappears.) (wordpress is looking better and better by the DAY.) any other day, i would comment on the whole MPC thing, but i want to go a slightly different direction for tonight, so here’s a (hopefully) really brief comment: i still don’t have a musical bone in my body, still have no real interest in becoming a musician in any real capacity, and yet i still want to buy a MPC, just to fuck around with it. (in all honesty, it would probably be more productive for me to buy a pair of turntables and a mixer, and practice making my own mixes, similar to the ones that i constantly watch on youtube, since listening to mixes is probably more my speed these days, and a not-insubstantial part of me misses the days when i spent hours making mix CDs for myself.) (for the record, it’s worth watching/listening to the whole thing from the start, but the beat that starts at 15:22 has been permanently burned into my mind.) (...actually, that was pretty brief by my standards, so well done, me!) the “slightly” different direction: as i mentioned in a previous post (maybe - i no longer have any idea if the thing i’m referencing is in a published post, or in a draft somewhere, because i tend to work on those concurrently), i have a stack of these things queued up so that i can have them ready to go when it’s time to post my two for the day, so that i can keep this train chugging along. most of the time, after posting, i go through my drafts and prewrite commentary on at least two more, just so that that becomes one less thing to worry about on the subsequent days. last night, however, i found myself not as inspired to sit down and prewrite something, because...i honestly don’t know. that happens sometimes - back when i was actually taking writing much more seriously, trying to publish actual novels and shit, i’d encountered the dreaded writer’s block, as one does, and eventually found that the only way through was to sit my ass down and just power through with whatever garbage that i could pass from my mind through my hand through the pen onto the page. (despite my newfound proclivity for writing on a laptop, i’m still a longhand writer at heart - nothing gets me going more than a cute face and cute butt a yellow legal pad and my tactile turn pens..) (...i mean, also that striked-through thing, but...well, i have said to myself on numerous occasions that masturbation and writing are essentially the same thing, given a long-enough timeline, so...) ANYWAY. i thought about doing just that (the second thing, not the first thing) (i do the first thing on my own time, thank you very much - mostly when i wake up in the morning, or as part of a midafternoon break from the day job (because working from home is some other shit, my nigga), or right before i go to sleep, or basically whenever the mood strikes me, apparently) (also once in a sleeping bag during a camping trip, but we don’t talk about that), just to have something substantial to post, because...well, it kinda feels like i’ve already set a bar for myself with these things, adding an additional 800-1000 words to each question as commentary, and i felt like i would feel bad if i didn’t continue that. and yet? yesterday, just couldn’t do it. couldn’t find the motivation. instead, i jumped onto OKC to peruse profiles*, and then i came across two profiles that...well, we’ll get to that. first one goes up tomorrow, i promise. it’s...it’s a thing. and that thing was probably the most substantial bit of writing (if we can charitably call it that) outside of these individual posts that i’ve done in a long while. it actually wasn’t until today that i realized that i was putting those aforementioned 800-1000 words per post (on average) - i’ve been posting every day since february 21st, and i’ve actually made it a priority to carve out time each night to JUST** sit down at this laptop and bang out these words, and post them, for basically only me to see at this point, but even still - an audience of me is still an audience. i think i’m kindasorta taking this seriously, in other words. and i notice that things tend to happen when i take writing seriously. not just*** with the writing itself, but in other aspects of my life. the universe’s way of telling me something, i guess. the universe’s way of telling me that i should be DOING something very specific, i suppose. today, 3.4.21, two interesting things happened to me - one in my professional life, and one in my personal life. now, i’m not quite ready to talk about either one, 1) partly because i’m afraid of jinxing it, as i’m prone to do, and 2) because it honestly would be premature to talk about either before anything of substance occurred (one doesn’t start for two months, while the other just started - i’ll let you decide which is which), but my takeaway for right now is that it’s so incredibly FASCINATING what happens to me when i take writing seriously, because the last time i did so, i moved my entire life to new york, and for the most part, that worked out pretty fucking well. as i love to say, “let’s see what happens”. wish me luck. *in another post, i may or may not have mentioned that i use the word “just” a lot. (also “vis-a-vis”, as you’ve probably noticed. now that i see it, i certainly can’t unsee it.) if i didn’t: i use “just” A LOT. this asterisk marks the FIFTH such instance of me removing a “just” from a draft. there’s no real way to have known this without me telling you, or you seeing the original first draft, but good lord - i really DO use the fuck out of “just” when writing. i even accidentally used it when typing out the previous sentence, and it didn’t even make any contextual sense to be there! i just having fucking “just” on the mind! **fuck it - i’m going to capitalize, bold and italizice every single instance of “just” that i come across moving forward. not sure if i’ll learn anything from it, but i guess we’ll see if shame actually has no real effect on me, or if this JUST (...fuck) becomes another thing that i make into a very unfunny running gag, like i have a habit of doing. ***to clarify, the previous point, ONLY when it makes no contextual sense, and is just a placeholder. it makes sense in this context, so it can stay.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

Dear MCU AU Fest writer,

uh, obviously it took longer than it should’ve to put an actual letter here instead of a placeholder; sorry about that. :/ My letter is mostly the same as last year’s with a few changes, but especially considering it took me so long to post this, feel even more free to go with it if you’ve already had an idea that has absolutely nothing to do with any of the prompts I’ve mentioned.

Like last year’s letter, this one is long, but I promise it’s not long because I have really super specific ideas and I won’t be happy unless you follow them exactly. Not at all. Whatever you write, I’m grateful for it, I’m sure I’ll like it, and I want you to have fun with it. The tl;dr version of this letter is basically “prompts are just suggestions if you happen to like them, feel free to mix and match, please don’t write Loki as Just A Villain, if you hit a few of my general likes and avoid my general dislikes I’m sure I’ll love your fic”

Some general notes: I picked a bunch of different AU scenarios that interested me for one reason or another, and some of them ended up being paired with multiple ships or semi-randomly assigned to a particular ship. That’s because I care more about the prompts/scenarios than I do about the specific pairings—Thor & Loki gen is really my only MCU OTP (a literal broTP) and that relationship is very important to me, but beyond that I can enjoy seeing Loki paired with basically anyone in either a gen or romantic way as long as it makes sense in context. So, if one of the specific prompts or AU scenarios I listed interests you for a different ship, please feel free to mix and match—especially because I kind of ran out of the will to retype all the scenarios that interested me into each of my pairing requests, so in a lot of cases the pairing/AU combinations in my sign-up are almost totally random. Unless otherwise noted, these pairings and AU scenarios interest me in general, not just in the specific combinations listed, so basically, do what you want with them. This also goes for / vs & pairings—if I’ve asked for one and you’d rather write the other (i.e., you want to write Loki/Steve, or Loki & Darcy gen), go right ahead. The only real exception here is Thor/Loki, which I don’t want unless they were not raised as brothers. Incest/pseudo-incest squicks me out, sorry.

A note about Loki: I’m sure you’ve noticed that all these pairings and many of the AU scenarios include Loki. He’s one of my absolute favorite characters and I care more about him than I do anyone else in the MCU, and I also care a lot about his relationship with Thor. As you can probably tell from the Loki fics I’ve written and my Loki tag, I only read/write Loki fics with redemption arcs and/or sympathetic interpretations (until proven otherwise, I will believe that Thanos at least coerced him into attacking Earth, for instance), so if you absolutely hate the idea of writing Loki as anything but a straightforward villain…you should probably ask to be reassigned. This should be fun for both of us!

General stuff I like: I love Loki whump so feel free to beat him up to your heart’s content, physically and emotionally; however, I also need an ultimately happy/hopeful ending (make the characters work really hard for their happy ending! But give them one). But seriously, hurt/comfort is my jam. Thor & Loki’s relationship is very important and that should be reflected regardless of focus pairing, even if it’s just in a background way; family reconciliation is especially good. I’m asexual so an ace Loki (or ace anyone, honestly) could be cool. Genderfluid Loki is also interesting. Dealing with Loki’s depression and internalized racism would be awesome. Frigga is HBIC and I like AUs where she isn’t fridged for manpain. In general, ladies are great and MCU ladies are super great, so no matter the relationship you write, please involve some awesome ladies (this post is a good guideline), and please don’t erase anybody (for instance, if you pick Steve/Loki, Peggy is still very important). Other things: Characters working toward healthy relationships (romantic/sexual or gen). Angst. Family stuff (characters dealing with the fallout of coming from fucked-up families are great; found families are great, especially when combined with the former; traditional families are great, especially sibling relationships). Self-sacrifice, but without actual permanent character death (my go-to example here is Harry in Deathly Hallows—he went knowingly to his death and was absolutely certain he was going to die but didn’t actually die for plot reasons). Loki figuring out his own ways to be good/worthy (I like Loki being able to lift Mjolnir, but I also like Loki realizing he doesn’t have to be able to lift Mjolnir). Characters saving and taking care of each other, in their own ways, not just one saving the other. Steve being progressive, because he doesn’t like bullies, dammit. Also a really specific, silly thing I’d love to see: I love the McElroy brothers and if you happen to love them too, I would be super tickled to see somebody take their sibling dynamic and use it to inform Thor and Loki’s. Somehow. (I said it was silly.)

General stuff I don’t like: Incest or pseudo-incest (specifically, Thor/Loki unless it’s an AU where they weren’t raised as brothers; I’d be a lot more okay with, say, Gamora/Nebula, because their situation was weird to begin with and they never had reason to believe they were related). Abuse, dubcon, non-con, general unresolved fucked-upness in the primary supposed-to-be-healthy relationship (so, for instance, if the story involved Loki being tortured and/or raped during captivity with Thanos, I’d be okay with that, but not with unaddressed consent issues going either way in a Steve/Loki situation). PWP. I wouldn’t say explicit sex in general is a squick but I’m ace and I just really, really do not care about those scenes, so like…don’t waste your time? I’m totally fine with characters being sexual and having sex, especially if the focus of a sex scene is on emotion, I just have no interest in porn or in the specifics of anyone’s genitals. Major character death (temporary death of major characters is fine; characters dealing with a death that happened in canon is fine, although I also like fix-its; ancillary character death is probably okay). Unhappy endings in general. Infidelity (if you want to write a ship that involves breaking up a canon pairing, like Jane/Loki, just treat everyone fairly).

If you have specific questions that I somehow didn’t address, @erlkonigstochter would be a good person to ask because she’s had to put up with a lot of my Loki rambling and has a pretty good idea of the kinds of things I would and wouldn’t like.

General notes on some pairings/scenarios:

Loki wins in The Avengers: As I’ve emphasized, I’m convinced Loki was coerced (to one degree or another) into leading the invasion, so by “Loki wins” I pretty much mean “the invasion is successful and things get terrible in probably apocalyptic fashion for everyone, including Loki the second Thanos no longer finds him useful as a puppet, which is likely to happen pretty quickly”. I listed this under Loki & Gamora because I could see them working together to defeat Thanos once Loki’s been put back in captivity or whatever, but this general premise could work with any of my pairings, probably in a general “post-apocalyptic survival” and/or “character(s) taken prisoner” context.

Time loop/Groundhog Day: I don’t have any specific ideas for this; I just think it’s an interesting fic concept that could work with any pairing. Something kind of like BigSciencyBrain’s Refuge series but with an ultimately happy ending would be cool. Also, I mean, I will never say no to something that involves Loki being forced to suffer through dying over and over again.

Pacific Rim: I’m mainly just interested in this if Thor and Loki are drift compatible but Loki doesn’t really want to do it because he’s afraid Thor will see Too Much. This one might work better less as an actual crossover and more as transplanting the basic drift-compatible idea into something that makes sense in the context of the MCU, but that’s totally up to you.

Prisoner(s) of evil SHIELD: could be actual legit SHIELD, could be HYDRA within/masquerading as SHIELD, some other organization pretending to be SHIELD, whatever makes the most sense

Wanda & Loki: I kind of think canonically the Maximoffs weren’t completely willing or informed participants—like, they were angry and desperate and probably didn’t know about HYDRA’s involvement, because come on—so you could go with that or make them even more unwilling. Combining this with Loki as a test subject/prisoner of HYDRA (being used along with or instead of the scepter to unlock the Maximoffs’ powers?) could be cool, and/or with Wanda (in any context) getting visions or something of Loki’s time in the void as a side effect of having the scepter used on her. So, something with them teaming up to escape HYDRA might be fun. Also, please feel free to bring back stuff about the Maximoffs’ Jewish/Romani heritage (maybe not Magneto specifically because the various Marvel franchises aren’t necessarily compatible, but otherwise), because fuck whitewashing.

Specific prompt ideas (again, really feel free to disregard, modify, mix components, etc. if you have other ideas; these are just suggestions of a few ways these scenarios could go, so like if you have a “Loki fell to Earth” idea that has nothing to do with what’s listed here, that is totally fine, please go with whatever interests you the most; if you would prefer you can ignore this entire long-ass section—or, hell, tuck one of these prompts away for your own use at some point, although in that case I’d still be interested in seeing what you wrote):

Role reversal: I got interested in this idea in the context of Thor & Loki after seeing this picture (my commentary is in the tags); this fic expands on it in a really interesting way

Thor fell with Loki: I like Lady Charity’s ideas about this, as well as Lizardbeth’s.

Aether infected different character/worked differently: A couple different ideas here. Jane could learn to control aether and keep it, either temporarily or permanently, because she deserved better than being a damsel in distress for the bulk of TDW. Probably this would involve Loki’s help, because magic but also because if you add on the idea that Loki was under some form of compulsion from the scepter and/or tesseract in Avengers but managed to sabotage his own invasion anyway, that means he already has a bit of experience working with and subverting Infinity Gems. Different idea: Loki was infected and sickened by the aether instead, and kidnapped by Malekith to be used somehow. Lady Charity also started a fic with this premise a couple years ago and it was great.

Portal fusion: Alternate universes are marginal Portal canon (so is time travel, I guess?), so this could take place at practically any point in MCU or Portal canon and drastically change things. Mostly what I’d love to see is Loki, at some point in his timeline (having him fall to Earth near Aperature Laboratories would make sense, but really it could be made to work at any point), being used as an Aperture test subject, facing off against GLaDOS, and teaming up with a human test subject (maybe Chell, or Steve, Jane, Wanda, Darcy) to escape, thereby learning that at least some humans are much more worthy of respect than he thinks. The potential for snark-offs between GLaDOS and Loki would be amazing, but also she would probably have a lot of nasty things to say about him being adopted, and that could be great too. However Loki ends up at Aperture, his magic would probably be bound/crippled but he’d still be very durable, so he would have an easier time surviving than many of the other test subjects, and GLaDOS and/or actual Aperture scientists would be pretty interested in him.

Loki fell to Earth (or a different scenario, whatever works): There are loads of fics where Loki is on Earth after Thor (or even one of the other movies) and not doing any harm but is terrified of Thor hunting him down to drag him back to Asgard or even kill him, because obviously Thor hates him for being a Jotun if for no other reason, and of course when Thor does find him there’s a lot more “oh my god you’re okay, I mean also what the hell Loki but oh my god you’re okay, let me hug you” than actual fighting. I like these and I’ve written these. What if it did turn out the way Loki expects, with Thor crashing in to subdue him—but still in a way where Thor isn’t actually the bad guy? Heimdall or Odin probably would have to be malicious to make this work (even if it’s for theoretically good reasons, like “sure Loki’s not doing any harm right now, but he’s clearly dangerous and we need to get him back for everyone’s safety and Asgard’s general security, and Thor won’t go along with that unless he’s convinced Loki really is dangerous”), because Thor’s learned enough that he probably wouldn’t just charge in rather than talking to Loki first unless he was sure that trying to talk to Loki would just put people in danger. For his part, Loki wouldn’t want to be taken prisoner but also could be worried about collateral damage (might have ended up in some situation where he’s explicitly the protector of a group of people, which Heimdall/Odin interprets—accidentally or deliberately—as him having them under thrall, and it would especially look like that if anybody tries to defend Loki), so he would fight back probably a lot like a scared, cornered animal, giving Thor more reason to think he’s up to no good and to get even more serious about defeating him.

Frigga lives / Frigga ruled during Odinsleep: In general I will always be happy if Frigga lives, but a specific AU might be for Odin to get killed in the Dark Elves’ attack instead of Frigga, at which point she takes the throne because yeah no Thor still isn’t ready to rule. Having her rule during the Odinsleep in the first movie rather than Loki could similarly create massive changes.

Loki banished with/instead of Thor: one possible approach is based on a Norsekink prompt. Odin figures out that Loki’s to blame for the whole mess but doesn’t stop to wonder why he did it and banishes Loki instead, maybe without a built-in way of getting home like Thor had. He’s stuck on Earth, mortal, terrified, blocked from his magic, but Jane & co. take him in and he starts figuring out some cool stuff about the intersection of science and magic, probably. His knowledge dramatically accelerates Jane’s project, catching the attention of SHIELD or some even less-friendly organization, and they’re all forced to do dangerous work with the tesseract or something similar. In general, I’d be down for any variation of “Loki being banished leads to bad stuff happening to him,” because if he’s mortal and his magic is gone, that means he’s lost a lot of what he always used to protect himself (still pretty strong for a human, maybe, but not like Thor, who is still unusually strong as a mortal), and enemies—of Asgard or of Loki specifically, or people from SHIELD/HYDRA when they learn about his Tesseract knowledge—could take advantage of his relative weakness to capture him and make him do what they want (like dangerous, damaging stuff with the Tesseract). This general concept could also work well with Loki & Steve. Loki and Thor being banished together would also be cool. Awkward road trip time!

Trip to Jotunheim went differently: One possibility is this prompt I posted on Tumblr

Fairy tale: This picture is not actually of Loki but it sure looks like it, and it made me want an “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” retelling with Loki as the monster. I mean, he comes from a cold place, he has another form he considers monstrous, it’s perfect. This could be in the context of him growing up on Jotunheim, hiding on Jotunheim after any of the movies instead of what he canonically did, learning of his adoption earlier and going into hiding, or something else. It would also work with any of the pairings I listed.

Fury Road fusion: Could be the general premise of the movie transplanted into an MCU context, could be MCU characters transplanted into Mad Max (or similar) context, could be an AU that turns the MCU into a context like the Mad Max world or puts the characters on a planet where things already are that way. In any case, Thanos could easily take Immortan Joe’s role, with Gamora in a Furiosa-like role (or Natasha or Sif, although the canonical context of Gamora’s relationship with Thanos is closer already), maybe Nebula as Nux, and Loki as…I dunno, sort of some combination of Max and the wives maybe (in addition to other characters). This could be done with any of my listed pairings.

Avenger Loki: Honestly this is one of my favorite things, regardless of when or how it happens.

Thor fell instead of Loki: I nominated this because it occurred to me that it could be a really interesting concept, especially because Loki would be forced to deal with things in a very different way than in canon, and because he could end up going after Thor, either trying to find him in the Void or having to stop him once Thanos sends Thor to fetch the Tesseract. Guilt-stricken Loki frantic to fix something that was never supposed to happen could be very, very fun. Not fun for Loki or Thor, obviously, but. You know.

[gwynnew]

'Thor: Ragnarok': Inside story on the blockbuster film's improv, cut scenes, and that rumored 90-minute run time

Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Ragnarok. (Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection)

Earlier this year, a rumor circulated that the run time of Thor: Ragnarok would be 90 minutes, making it by far the shortest of any Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Tell that to editor Zene Baker, however, and he just laughs. As Baker explained to Yahoo Entertainment, there was never a chance that the third Thor film would clock in under two hours, no matter what director Taika Waititi claimed. But even at 130 minutes (credits and two bonus scenes included), Thor: Ragnarok zips along with humor and style. In the film, the superhero god Thor (Chris Hemsworth) must stop Hela (Cate Blanchett), the Goddess of Death, from destroying his glorious home world of Asgard in a prophesied apocalypse (the “Ragnarok” of the title). Before he can get there, the Avenger is imprisoned on a strange planet, where he is reunited with the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and makes unlikely allies of a warrior known as Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), a rock creature called Korg (Waititi, in a hilarious motion-capture performance), and even his mischief-making stepbrother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

Before Thor: Ragnarok, a majority of Baker’s film-editing experience was in comedy, collaborating with directors like Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (This Is the End, The Interview) and Nick Stoller (Neighbors). Since Waititi also came from a comedy background, the two of them, along with co-editor Joel Negron, were well-equipped to bring out the absurdity in Thor’s Shakespearean saga. In a conversation with Yahoo Entertainment, Baker talked about putting together the Hulk-Thor fight, how the end-credits scenes came about, and what was left on the cutting room floor.  [Beware, there are minor spoilers below.]

The Hulk (voiced by Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in Thor: Ragnarok. (Photo: Marvel Studios)

Yahoo Entertainment: This is a really fun movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Zene Baker: You’re welcome! [laughs]

What was your reaction to seeing the whole thing in one piece with an actual audience? Oh wow, it was invigorating. It was like seeing a whole brand new movie. Because at that point, keep in mind that we’re finally seeing it with all the visual effects in place, instead of the little placeholders that we have to sometimes put in.

I’d heard a rumor that this movie was going to be 90 minutes long. [laughs] Yeah, Taika started that rumor.

Did he really? Yes. He’s the one that started that rumor.

Was it ever going to be 90 minutes long? Hell no! Ninety minutes — I don’t even know where he got 90 minutes. That’s crazy! He’ll deny this when you interview him. He’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, my intention was always 90 minutes,” in that New Zealand accent of his.

That’s very funny. It is still a little shorter, I think, than most Marvel films. It is, yeah! I think story-wise, we’re like an hour and 54 minutes. Total run time is like 2 hours 10 minutes. But keep in mind there’s a lot of people who worked on the film, so there’s a lot of credits. And tags. You can’t forget about the tags.

How far in advance did Taika know what the tags were going to be? There’s one tag we knew pretty early on, and then another tag was like, “We should try this as a tag.” And that was fairly late in the process.

Was that the Jeff Goldblum one? I’ll let your imagination run wild.

Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok (Photo: Marvel Studios)

What kind of stuff had to be taken out to get that run time? There was a heavy amount of plot and humor. So there were some plot points and some little character things that, for the sake of telling a very streamlined and entertaining story, we figured were better left out, honestly.  There were maybe a couple of things explaining Val’s character a little further that we left out. [Tessa Thompson has confirmed that there was more a flashback post-battle scene that suggested she had a female partner.] Some extra things with Korg that, while they were really hilarious, in the greater context of the movie, they started to feel extraneous. And we had to ask ourselves tough questions like, “Do we need it? Nah, we don’t need it, let’s lose it and see how it plays.” And it played better.

The scene-stealing alien warrior was played by director Taika Waititi. (Photo: Marvel Studios)

That’s a tough job. It’s very tough. Thankfully Taika, Joel Negron, the other editor, and myself — we’re not precious about the extraneous stuff. Even though it’s hard, we all seemed to be on the wavelength of, “What’s going to tell a better story?”

It’s a very funny movie. Were actors encouraged to improvise on some takes? This is my first Marvel movie, so if I had to guess, this one had more improv in the shooting than most other Marvel movies. I’m definitely from a very heavy comedy-improv background for editing, so even though this had a lot of improv, it was still much farther left than what I was typically used to with, you know, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg as directors, and Nick Stoller for the Neighbors movies. So we all get in there and we all assemble the stuff. We’re trying to put as much in front of Taika as we can without veering too far into a tangent and away from story, but we still want to try to showcase the funnier bits of the improv, because always a golden moment that might surprise everybody. So that’s kind of the idea. And then it’s just workshopping the material further down and further down.

Were there other ways in which doing Thor: Ragnarok was different than doing the comedies you’re better known for? [laughs] Definitely. The biggest change, obviously, is just the sheer immense size of a Marvel project. It’s just a really giant machine. You’ve got a lot of voices in the room. And actually you’re very thankful that the voices in the room are crazy smart. So in some ways it’s challenging due to the amount of voices, but in other ways it’s really streamlined and efficient. I was delighted and surprised at the same time.

I’d love to know what it was like putting together the Hulk-Thor coliseum fight. I assume you didn’t have the final Hulk for at least some of the process, right? True. There are tricks that we’re able to use. Thankfully we live in an age of pre-visualization, so it’s an incredible toolset. Hopefully I’m not dispelling any myths or anything! The Hulk-Thor fight, thankfully, a lot of it was pre-visualized with moving images, with little representations of Thor and Hulk and so forth. It gives you a blueprint to follow, both when shooting and when initially assembling the scene. And then when you start, I call it filling in the gaps, with real footage, you’re making new discoveries as far as, “OK well, he moves faster, he moves slower, he’s got a good joke here so let’s accentuate that joke.” It’s a giant sequence, and definitely Joel and Taika and myself were kind of very much going through that.

Watch: Mark Ruffalo on how he gave voice, and body, to Hulk in ‘Ragnarok’:

How do you approach balancing the action and effects stuff with the humor? I’ll give a lot of credit to Taika for setting this very humorous tone through the shooting. It was a very light type of thing, and very easygoing. I think being able to set that tone is instrumental and it trickles down very much into the footage you’re going to get, so it kind of makes it easy. And blending humor with some action — this sounds dumb, it sounds like I’m bragging, but it’s always come easily for me. It just kind of works. I’ve always liked that sort of humor blended with action, so I was just very fortunate to be able to exercise that part on this movie.

This might sound like a very uneducated question in terms of what you do, but when you’re dealing with these effects shots that must cost so much money and require so many people to build, do you feel pressure to use more of those shots? Not to give too many trade secrets away, but because of the amount of people who work on each shot, you do have to sort of prioritize sequences, just to kind of keep the schedule going in a way that you’ll be able to complete everything. So have to kind of jump around to, “All right, this sequence is going to need the most work, so let’s try to workshop this one pretty early on.” And thankfully Marvel has resources in that, if for some reason we need to go back and tweak a sequence, we’re able to do that. But yeah, you do sort of have to follow a priority list: This is going to take the most resources, the most people in order for a digital effects artist to render and complete and really bring something to it, so you want to get those sequences out as fast as you can within reason to be able to tell the best story that you can. That sounds like a very rote answer but it’s actually true.

Before Thor: Ragnarok, you edited another demon-destroying-the-world film, This is the End. How would you compare those two apocalypse sequences? One is very, very R-rated and one is very, very not R-rated.

Thor: Ragnarok is now playing in theaters. 

Watch: Director Taika Waititi reveals origin of shirtless Chris Hemsworth scene in ‘Thor: Ragnarok’:

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