Sink Your Teeth Right Through My Bones, Baby

So, Empire Online posted this thing about how Captain America: Civil War is a love story but Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are not boyfriends (Which I found out via this Tumblr post originally by YouNeedToStrut). For those of you who aren't into links, the Empire post by Phil De Semlyen talks about how director Joe Russo refers to Civil War as a brotherly love story, saying:

"These are two guys who grew up together, and so they have that same emotional connection to each other as brothers would, and even more so because Bucky was all Steve had growing up."

Now, I made my own post about that whole 'Brotherly' thing back in February, generally going on the assumption that the Russos were madly trying to avoid a mass homosexual freakout. And then Sebastian Stan said this:

"I think it’s easy and generalising [sic] it to say that they’re lovers, when you’re forgetting that one has a lot of guilt because he swore to be the protector of the other, the father figure or older brother so to speak, and then left him behind." Adds the actor: "I have no qualms with it but I think people like to see it much more as a love story than it actually is. It's brotherhood to me."

Here's the thing. He's not wrong, and the Tumblr post I mentioned above has some thoughtful discussions on that fact. I know for myself that even way back in my Star Trek: Enterprise fandom days, I would occasionally wonder if we slashers were devaluing male friendship by interpreting the male characters' chemistry as romantic so much of the time. And I'm certainly aware that friends can love each other platonically.

And yet, I'm just so freaking disappointed.

It doesn't matter to me that the Russos' Word of God is that Bucket and Steeb are only friends. I'm used to creators overlooking or blindly ignoring aspects of their own work, especially when it veers towards territory they're uncomfortable with. Given what I've seen of Disney properties, it seems reasonable that even if the Russos were all over the Stucky like Red on Johann Schmidt, the mouse paying them would never, ever go for it.

But this is Sebastian Stan, who has played gay characters before and is actually playing Steve's long-lost whatever now. And if the actual actor who made Bucky Barnes live for us says Bucky and Steve are bros, not lovers, then...Then it's true. Then my wanting to see their relationship as anything other than that feels wrong. Illegitimate. Not a reinterpretation of canon, but a desperate scrabbling for something that never existed.

It's weird. I shipped Danny Williams and Steve McGarrett even when Hawaii 5-0 kept throwing women at Steve like spaghetti at a wall. In Stargate: Atlantis, I happily wrote around the cannon Rodney McKay/Jennifer Keller relationship to keep him with John Sheppard. I love Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton shacking up even though they were both with other people in Age of Ultron (then again, I ignore a lot of things about Age of Ultron). But Sebastian Stan calls No Homo and suddenly I feel like a kid sneaking porn.

I wanted his approval, damn it. Not for me or my fic, because that's pathetic and creepy. But for the possibility that went into the fic. I wanted him to say, 'sure, that's cool,' and instead I got condemnation.

Maybe it is overly facile to see romance where there's only deep affection. Maybe we (female) writers are just picking out nonexistent subtext for all the same varied reasons we enjoy slash in general. Maybe we're just seeing what's not intended to be there, because we've been trained to (I urge you to read this brilliant essay on that subject). Maybe an actor's opinion about the character he plays shouldn't carry more weight than my own, but it feels heavier all the same.

This issue is that, as a writer who also writes fanfic, I'm always fighting the sense that my hobby is illicit; that I'm furtively dabbling where I don't belong. Allowing myself to do what I do is hard enough, without the knowledge that one of the actors who inspired it wouldn't accept my perception of his work. The fancy of tacit approval, no matter how spurious, is far more liberating than the certainty of its opposite. And honestly, I was expecting the guy who made his career playing troubled, gay sons to not reject the thought of a gay romance out of hand. Maybe seeing a romance in every love story is generalizing and easy, but that didn't mean he had to make it difficult.

Back in September, the YouTube Channel Honest Trailers did an 'honest trailer' for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I didn't know about it because I never really know about anything until it appears on my Tumblr dash (yes, I have a Tumblr account! Come be my friend!), but I saw the fake trailer and read the nifty Daily Dot article that went with it.



The nifty part is how the Russo bros are not only fans of Honest Trailers, but specifically made sure the movie wouldn't have any plot holes for Screen Junkies (who run the channel) to make fun of. Now, HT found a couple anyway, because that's what they do. But mostly, because of the Russo's diligence and paying attention to their own goddamn script, the parody actually praises the film.

For comparison, Age of Ultron didn't come off nearly so well, though the Screen Junkies were admittedly sympathetic with all the different threads Joss Whedon had been forced to pull on when he made it.

The thing is, though, why don't more producers and directors (and studios, for that matter, since they all ostensibly work together) do this? Making sure your film doesn't have enough plot holes to give a parody channel much to work with seems like a no-brainer. Hell, I try like hell to avoid plot holes whenever I write anything, and I'd love to be famous enough for my work to be parodied to thousands of viewers.

Well, okay, maybe not. But the point is that one of the big things I worry about with my own plots is what I call 'internal logic', which is just making sure that all the elements in the story make sense. I know that some films have that harder than others, especially when, say, setting up three different future plots at the same time the way AoU had to (Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War, though I still could've done with less Hulk fighting Iron Man and more justification for his out of the blue relationship with Black Widow).

But that's Age of Ultron. I don't think, for example, that Green Lantern necessarily had that issue. But it's internal logic was so poor, it ended up with a lot of other issues.



A lot of other issues.

I tell ya, O, best-beloveds, sometimes I think that Americans have a hell of a lot of trouble with the metric system.

Now, I readily admit that the basis for my hypothesis is pretty thin (compelling argument though it is, the loss of NASA's Mars Orbiter due to engineers using imperial units instead of metric happened way back in 1999). But when I come across conversion errors, they tend to be kind of mind-boggling.

Like the sci-fi book I read some years ago, where the narrator was describing that 18 degrees Celsius was cold enough for his breath to mist. That's around 64 Fahrenheit, which is definitely too warm for ice crystals. Unless the author actually meant 18 degrees kelvin, which is -255 C or -427 F, in which case, yes. Definitely breath misting. And a much shorter novel due to the protagonist instantly freezing to death.

Admittedly, that novel was also published in the 90s, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and you couldn't just type '18 degrees C in F' and get an instant answer. But in 2012, there was no excuse for messing up the metric versus imperial thing. And yet, the sci-fi novel I'm currently reading was first published in 2012, and messed it up within the first few pages.

Overall, I've been enjoying Gravitational Attraction by Angel Martinez immensely. Unlike loads of other M/M novels, there are very cool female characters in it, and the main character isn't white. And so far the plot's compelling with H/C in spades (which, you may remember, I love like kittens).

Pictured with his girlfriend Nicole Alexander, who is 5' 2" (1.57 m). She can literally climb him like a tree.

But--and you knew there was one--the love interest is described at being "well over" two meters tall. Well over two meters, people. And yet, somehow, the crew of the space courier that rescues the guy can find pants long enough for him. Though really, as a reader that was the least of my concerns.

Here's the thing: Two meters is 6 feet, 7 inches. "Well over" that is getting into Shaquille O'Neal territory (He's 7' 1", which is 2.16 meters).

Unfortunately, so far the novel hasn't said how tall the protagonist is, but he's clearly of Japanese descent and described as slender and obviously smaller than his giant boyfriend. So I'm going to guess not much over 5' 10" or 1.78 m (As of 2004, the average height in Japan was 5' 6" or 1.59 meters, so I'm being generous).

This is close to what it would look like, as demonstrated by Peter Meyhew, who is 7' 2" (2.19 m) and Harrison Ford, who is a mere 6' 1" (1.85 m):

You gotta admit though, it is kind of adorable.

I'm not sure if that discrepancy is what the author intended, especially if his or her slender, small protagonist is shorter than Harrison Ford. Which he probably is. Especially as I'm fairly certain the size difference wouldn't end at height, so to speak.

Because, if the apparently seven-foot tall love interest is, shall we say, proportionate everywhere (and there was specific mention made of him being lucky to find a pair of boots that fit. And you know what they say about men's foot sizes), then, well. I just hope he goes for a lot of preparation, that's all I'm saying. I mean, sure, Shaq is obviously not pulling a Vlad the Impaler on Nicole every time they knock boots (which they can't, because he's too tall). But, you know, babies come out of there; there's a certain amount of leeway.

Not quite so much with the menfolk, I'm thinking. And ass-babies only exist in fanfic.

So, either the author is going with the reverse meaning of 'size doesn't matter' (that's a myth, for all my SGA homies), or 'two meters' doesn't mean what he or she thinks it means. Either way, like a hapless NASA orbiter in the hands of Lockheed Martin engineers, there's going to be a lot of crashing and burning. Or at least burning.

Definitely a lot of burning.

You guys know what I'm talking about--that episode where normally competent, logical and sane characters lose their collective minds in order for a plot to happen. My personal favorite (and by 'favorite' I mean 'most hated') is the Stargate: Atlantis season two episode The Long Goodbye, where the same people who were nearly blown up by a starship commander with an alien entity in his head the episode before, decide to let alien entities into the heads of the military commander and leader of the entire expedition. Naturally this goes just as badly as you'd expect. Hyjinks ensue.

And this kiss, which made all the McKay/Sheppard shippers cry.

There were even worse violations of logic and sense that season (::cough, Michael, ::cough::), but I know SGA is far from the only series of any genre which has given the characters collective brain damage when convenient. A more recent favorite of mine is another second season episode (and is there something about year two?) of Arrow, where despite constant and deadly hijackings, aid trucks continue to be sent into a destroyed and lawless part of the city with no protection and their logos clear on the vehicle sides.

If only we could do something about that!

But nowhere, nowhere, is this example of joint idiocy more prevalent than in any plot requiring a normally intelligent character to somehow not recognize another character in a flimsy disguise.

Arrow, of course, is a perfect example of this. And while I know that the whole show would collapse if Officer Quentin Lance ever noticed how very similar Arrow's height, breadth and the lower half of his face was to Oliver Queen, or if Laurel Lance ever recognized the enormous cleft in The Canary's chin as belonging to her sister, the absolute impossibility of this lack of recognition is both hilarious and irritating as hell.

I mean, we're not talking Batman-esque cowls here. We're talking teeny little eye masks with a wig and/or a hood. As an example, I made a hero of my own:

My husband by day...

And as a badass superhero! Let's call him, 'The Engineer'.

I know that none of you know him as well as I do, but seriously. How long would it take you to recognize him after speaking to him face-to-face day after day for several minutes at a time? And his nifty steampunk goggles actually make his eyes harder to see than the characters' eyes in the show. Quentin is a cop, for Pete's sake. His daughter Laurel is a hotshot lawyer. Presumably they'd be good at noticing stuff, like how similar those two vigilantes are to people they've known for decades.

"I can't help but feel I'm missing something."

Or if that's too much to ask, what about the fact that The Arrow and The Canary only appeared shortly after Oliver Queen and Sarah Lance returned from the dead?

And yet, the selective idiot ball keeps getting passed around. Maybe one day, Starling City's finest (former) Detective will actually detect that that Arrow guy is awfully familiar...

And hopefully he'll deal with it better than these guys.

Tell me, my dear ones, what would you do if, on Halloween, your child came home with this note in her treat bag?

All that yummy fat shaming!

Oh yes, that is real. It's also everywhere on the internet, though to check its legitimcacy I found it here at USA Today and here at Global News in Canada.

The woman, who probably regrets sending the letter to her local radio station, apparently sees it as her duty to solve the problem of childhood obesity by refusing to give the lil' chunky monkeys candy one night a year. Not only that, but by informing the obviously ignorant parents that their child is too fat to deserve candy. On Halloween.

You can probably tell what I think about this, but the first thing I thought when I saw this wasn't 'that's mean', but 'that's stupid'. How can this woman purport to know which child is 'moderately obese'? And what, exactly, is her criteria? Unlike adults, determining the BMI range for children is far more complicated. Worse, it's not even terribly accurate. If you can't tell if a child is at a healthy weight by measuring, how can you tell just by looking? And who or what gave her the right anyway?

I'm not sure how she thinks this is going to help. First of all, it's pretty damn likely that the parents already know. Second, telling a kid that they're too fat for candy isn't motivating, it's humiliating. And--which I'm sure comes as a big surprise to absolutely no one--fat shaming doesn't work. And it certainly won't work if some person the child likely doesn't even know shoves a note into their treat bag.

As other people said in comments on the sites carrying this story: if you don't want to contribute to childhood obesity, then don't give candy. Give stickers, or raisins, or pencils. Or turn off the porch light and don't give anything at all.

Personally, I'd much rather be known as the stingy neighbor who's never home on Halloween than the bitch who humiliated someone else's child. Though she might end up known as the house everybody toiletpapers or eggs. After all, it takes a village to do some serious pranking.

Tuesday night I watched Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with my darling husband. The episode started with a Big Climatic Fight Scene, only to immediately switch to Coulson and Skye discussing job perks over the subtitle of "19 Hours Earlier".

I hate that trope, but what made me really notice it in MAoS was that I'd already seen the time-jump twice already. The week before, DH and I had watched a CSI ep that started with a funeral, then jumped back two days to show us who died. And the week before that, the season premier of Revolution started with the main characters in the midst of personal vendettas, before jumping back six months to show where they'd been.

(I don't actually watch CSI and Revolution, but my husband does and I like staying in the living room in the evenings. Yes, that was important to me to mention.)

And for some reason, this has been a thing for years. Hell, "Sunday" (otherwise known as The SGA Episode That Launched a Thousand Fix-its) used the time-jumping trope, though IIRC it was more original because it jumped back by increments, rather than just hauling ass to the very beginning.

I also remember a show called Fast Lane from 2002, which in no way capitalized on the Fast and Furious movies, but did use the "____ hours earlier" trope for every single show.

These completely logical poses are indicative of a typical episode.

I didn't mind the jumping in Fastlane because it was their thing, like putting pretty boys in ridiculous circumstances. But I really, really mind it everywhere else. It reminds me a lot of some of the SGA fanfic back in the day, where it would start with Team Sheppard being chased by the requisite villagers with torches and pitchforks... And then the next scene would be how they got to that point. Which was inevitably boring and, given the nature of the show, completely unnecessary.

I don't like the back jumping because it feels cheap and lazy: Trying to hook the audience with the most exciting part first, in the assumption that they'll be willing to find out how the heroes got there. It seems to me that, if you only have one really good part in your story, the answer is to make the rest good too--not blow your wad and only then go for the foreplay.

Or, in the case of MAoS, blow something up and then make us go back 19 hours to find out why. Just begin at the beginning, guys; we'll get to the end if you take us with you.

I had the lovely experience of being able to share Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy with my son last week. I hadn't watched any of the movies since The Return of the King came out in 2003 (It's been ten years? Really? Wow), so I had almost as much fun as the Jav reacquainting myself with the story and the beautiful actors production design.

Beautiful production design (Actor Karl Urban)

But--and there always is one--watching the movies reminded me of some of the things that had confused me the first time.

( I still think the eagles should have given Frodo a lift to Mordor. Just saying. )

Yes, oh best beloveds, I am now on Twitter. You can find me there either via Aundrea Singer or Taste_is_Sweet. I haven't tweeted anything yet in terror of it disappearing into the ether with a deafening and humiliating silence. Because I'm assuming that, like LJ, if you follow someone you can read their tweets, but no one will read your tweets unless they follow you, right?

I feel like the new kid in the high school cafeteria, here. Does anyone want to be my twitter friend? I promise I don't pick my nose in public and I bathe regularly.

For some reason, back around 2006 I decided to write everything in present tense. Why, brain? Why? This is the second WIP I've had to put into past tense before I could continue it. My present tense sounds so pretentious sophomoric silly strange now. I just can't get into it. Weird.

As many of you may remember, such is the social whirlwind that is my life that I'm occasionally plagued with messages from people I've never heard of. This hasn't happened via my phone for awhile (the email doppelganger in New York is having quite the academic career however, considering how many university mailing lists she seems to have signed me up for), but I was reminded of how particularly dumb some of the local young men can be with this morning's thankfully brief conversation:

::Phone rings; I pick up::

Me: Hello? ::Silence:: Hello?

Random guy who thinks he knows me: You motherfucker! (He sounded pretty happy, so maybe that's just how he greets his really good friends.)

Me: You have the wrong number, dude!

Random guy who thinks he knows me: ::Hangs up::

I can only hope that he hung up so quickly out of deep embarrassment that he was so rude to a total stranger, but an apology would have been nice. At least my son didn't pick up the phone, especially as he was expecting a call about a play date.

What is it with College Station guys? This is the second time that a male with my city's area code has made an ass of himself by calling me by accident (the previous young man refused to believe that I wasn't his girlfriend), then not even being nice enough to apologize before they hung up.

I suppose I could always call this guy back and demand an apology; I do have his number. Heh.