#convoswithmoystarushka

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Tolkien really said that shying away from deus ex machina was for wimps.

The Hobbit: The dragon has been defeated! But wait a second, now Thorin hates Bilbo and all the good guys are about to fight over the hoard... Hey look! It's goblins! And a giant humanoid bear! And eagles!

Lord of the Rings: Frodo and Sam have gotten to the mountain, but the Ring has taken Frodo, and the armies of Men are being overwhelmed... Hey look! It's Gollum! And Eagles!!

The Silmarillion: Literally Everything is Terrible and Everyone is About to Die....... Hey LOOK! It's the Valar! And Eärendil!! AND WOULDJA LOOK AT THAT IT'S EAGLES!!!

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A Ranking of Jane Austen Heroines, in Ascending Order of Culpability

Fanny (Mansfield Park): Has done nothing wrong ever in her life (but would never say this as she is far too humble).

Elinor (S&S): Must have scoliosis from carrying the whole weight of the Dashwood family at the ripe old age of 19. Should probably have asked for help by now, but who's she going to ask? Her mother? Unlikely.

Anne (Persuasion): Pros: is the only functioning member of her family. Cons: took some really bad advice when she was 17.

Elizabeth (P&P): So dead-set on hating Mr. Darcy that she falls hook-line-and-sinker for the lies Wickham tells her with no questions asked. Otherwise has good sense.

Marianne (S&S): Throws herself headlong into the Romantic Experience™️ and gets her heart broken by a playboy when Colonel Brandon is literally RIGHT THERE. 

Catherine (Northanger Abbey): Good-hearted, but easily led astray. So obsessed with Gothic novels that she kind of accuses Mr. Tilney's father of murdering his wife and burying her in the basement.

Emma (Emma): Tells Harriet to refuse the nice guy she likes, too prideful to see that Mr. Elton is pursuing her instead of Harriet, gossips about Jane Fairfax, feels like the rules don't apply to her, won't listen to Mr. Knightly. Is a menace.

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Hollywood seems Determined™️ to give us everything adjacent to a WinterWidow movie without actually giving us a WinterWidow movie.

Here! After waiting 10 years, have a Black Widow movie that elaborates on her history with the Red Room and the people she met there! (But that doesn't mention Bucky at all and erases any hope of WW having an MCU canon past)

Here! Have a spy thriller with Sebastian Stan playing opposite his redheaded love interest where a key plot point is him betraying her! (But the redhead isn't Scarlett and the betrayal is real because he's actually evil and not just brainwashed)

Here! Have a spy rom-com with Chris and Sebastian and ALMOST Scarlett that's wacky and exciting and morbidly funny! (But it's not Scarlett, and she would have been playing opposite Chris anyway)

HERE! Have a spy thriller romance where the protagonists LOSE THEIR MEMORY but REMEMBER EACH OTHER and go on a MISSION TOGETHER to get REVENGE on the EVIL ORGANIZATION THAT SCREWED THEM OVER! DIRECTED BY JOE AND ANTHONY RUSSO.

BUT IT'S NOT

FRICKEN

WINTERWIDOW.

Unbelievable.

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"There is happiness

Past the blood and bruise Past the curses and cries Beyond the terror in the nightfall Haunted by the look in my eyes That would've loved you for a lifetime

Leave it all behind And there is happiness"

- "happiness" on evermore (2020) by Taylor Swift

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Cute couples costume idea: fell werewolf servant of the Dark Lord and the hideous she-vampyre of Thangorodrim.

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I must not engage in the discourse. The discourse is the peace killer. It is the little disturbance that brings total rage. I will face the discourse. I will allow it to pass over me and around me, and when it is gone, I will turn to see that I have not spoken of it. Only my sanity will remain.

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A solution to the last scene in Endgame...

(taken from this longer post of mine)

Instead of an offhand comment and an awkward pat >> Steve and Bucky share a longer hug. Instead of Steve sounding like he’s brushing off Bucky’s feelings >> Bucky is the one who tells Steve “it’s gonna be ok,” reassuring him that he’s fine with Steve’s decision. Instead of Old Man Steve coming back and wrecking the previously stated Time Travel Rules >> Steve goes to return the stones and doesn’t come back at all. Instead of Bucky looking #disappointedbutnotsurprised >> while Bruce and Sam are freaking out, Bucky assures them that this was Steve’s plan. Instead of Bucky not talking to Steve and Steve handing Sam some miraculously un-broken shield >> Bucky pulls Sam aside and presents him with the pieces of the shield that Steve had all those years. Sam offers them back to Bucky, who insists that Steve wanted Sam to have the shield. Instead of us having no idea if Steve even told Bucky what he was going to do >> Sam asks where Steve went, and Bucky smiles and says he got a life. 

We still cut to Steve and Peggy dancing.

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cardigan is a BuckyNat high-school AU where they're both the loners of the school and they keep meeting each other when they take shelter from people in the same obscure places. Bucky's hiding from his childhood best friend, Steve, who's in the process of figuring out that Bucky's four year stint in another state with his mom's abusive second husband may have changed some things about their friendship. Natasha is hiding from her adoptive dad, a decorated veteran who happens to be the JROTC instructor, and who has been training Natasha to follow in his military footsteps ever since he adopted her at age 6.

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Some songs from my WinterWidow playlist on Spotify. A collaboration with moy starushka!

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Some songs from my WinterWidow playlist on Spotify. A collaboration with moy starushka!

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Some songs from my WinterWidow playlist on Spotify. A collaboration with moy starushka!

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The depth of emotion this one picture stirs in me is incredible. There is all the pain and shame and redemption and tragedy of Boromir's death of course, but then there's also the painful knowledge that this type of pure intimacy is not available for men, or even women in our society right now.

This kiss is a sign of brotherhood, respect, and a deep love that—if expressed in this way today—would be misconstrued as some cheap perversion of the true love that's supposed to be between a man and a woman.

So looking at this, I have the joy of seeing the beauty of this expression, but it's tainted by the knowledge of what so many people twist it to be.

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Spotify LotR audiobook thoughts 4/?

Hot take: book!Merry is the true mom friend of the Hobbits. Sam is protective of Frodo, but Merry’s the one who’s looking at maps and worrying about where they’ll go next and talking with Strider about what they should do. Not to mention he was the one that spearheaded the whole conspiracy to keep Frodo from going alone. I always knew I liked book!Merry.

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Spotify LotR audiobook thoughts 2/?

The sheer absurdity of Tom Bombadil’s whole character never quite struck me until listening to it on audiobook.

*pitch meeting voice*

“So then they meet this guy named TOM BOMBADIL”

“Oh yeah? What’s his deal?”

“Oh he’s fricken NUTS sir! He sings nonsense and shows up just in time to keep Merry and Pippin from getting eaten by the evil sentient tree. Then he invites the Hobbits to his house and they find out that he’s an ageless being who isn’t affected by the Ring at ALL!”

“Oh wowwowwowwow. Wow. So do they ask him to join their quest? I mean, he must turn into a pretty important character if he can control the Ring.”

“Oh no, they leave him after two chapters and never talk to him again.”

“... What?”

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The Gray Man (2022) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and composer Henry Jackman have all come together again to present Netflix’s The Gray Man. I, for one, am super pumped.

(Top right screencap is from the Russo-directed Captain America: Civil War)

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A solution to the last scene in Endgame...

So, as much as I love Endgame, and as much as I was mostly satisfied by the endings the characters got, I have to say that the last scene (where Steve leaves and comes back Old) has several problems that have never quite sat right with me.

Issue #1 Time Travel Based on my understanding of how they meant time travel to work in the movie (and just the movie. I’m not talking about anything explained in further shows or movies), going back in time and changing things meant creating a new time stream that did not affect the past of your own time stream. E.g., going back to 2012 and telling Steve that Bucky was alive would cause 2012!Steve to probably go look for Bucky, but didn’t change Endgame!Steve’s personal past. With that being the case, if Endgame!Steve went back and made a life with Peggy, that would fundamentally change things, and when he grew old and got back to 2023 (when Endgame is supposed to happen), it would be a different 2023. The only way he could access the 2023 he left would be to use the quantum tunnel, which he does not. Thus, by having Steve show up as an old man, they wrecked whatever tenuous continuity they had going.

Issue #2 Steve and Bucky’s goodbye I don’t believe that Steve’s choice to go back to Peggy was inherently selfish, but the way the scene is executed in Endgame irks me. It seems like Steve is brushing off Bucky’s feelings, and there’s no real confirmation that Steve had even talked to him about leaving. We get one flippant line from Steve, a brief hug, and an altogether depressed-looking Bucky. This makes Steve’s decision come across as extremely selfish and out of character, and it rings a false when compared to how hard Steve has fought to find Bucky.

Issue #3 The Mystery of the Unbroken Shield I don’t know if this struck anyone else, but it really bothered me that Steve gave Sam what looks like his pre-broken shield. Steve only takes Mjolnir and the stones with him into the quantum tunnel, so he couldn’t have re-forged the shield, which means that he’s either made a new one or taken it from some other point in the time line. This leads to uncomfortable thoughts about which version of himself he might have stolen it from.

Issue #4 Sam getting the shield instead of Bucky This isn’t something that ever bothered me, but I know that a lot of people felt it was another disservice to Steve and Bucky’s connection, and that Bucky got “passed over” in favor of Sam. I think there were also some feelings that Bucky deserved to become Captain America as the final stage of his redemption arc.

With this in mind, I propose an ALTERNATE ENDING that I believe alleviates or mitigates these problems. The alternate ending is this:

Steve and Bucky share a longer hug, and Bucky is the one who tells Steve “it’s gonna be ok.” Steve goes to return the stones and doesn’t come back at all. While Bruce and Sam are freaking out, Bucky assures them that this was Steve’s plan. He then pulls Sam aside and presents him with the pieces of the shield that Steve had all those years. Sam offers them back to Bucky, who insists that Steve wanted Sam to have the shield. Sam asks where Steve went, and Bucky smiles and says he got a life. We then cut to Steve and Peggy dancing.

Solution #1 Continuity (or at least one fewer disruption) Steve remains in his own separate time stream, and we don’t have to deal with all the messy questions about where he was when significant events were happening. He didn’t just hide in the shadows; he wasn’t even there. (No, Joe and Anthony, he was not Peggy Carter’s husband the whole time. That is preposterous and you should be ashamed for suggesting something so stupid.)

Solution #2 Acknowledgement that Steve and Bucky talked If Bucky explains everything, it is blatantly obvious that this was a decision he had at least some say in. It means Steve wasn’t a selfish jerk who forgot to factor in his lifelong best friend, and it means that the decision and all its possible issues were at least discussed.

Solution #3 It’s the same shield Not some mystery object of Steve’s that he may or may not have robbed from his younger frozen self.

Solution #4 Bucky doesn’t want the mantle I think there are a whole host of reasons Bucky wouldn’t even have wanted Steve to pass Captain America on to him, and this scenario would show that it was his decision too.

BONUS BENEFIT Sam getting the broken pieces of the shield would be a FANTASTIC symbol for how he’s going to have to take Steve’s legacy and rebuild it, making it his own in the process.

bonus bonus benefit Bucky saying Steve “got a life” calls back to what Tony says in AoU, and to Steve and Natasha’s conversation in Endgame (“I think we both need to get a life.” “You first.”)