kiratael | Entries tagged with mcu

Framed piece of cross-stitch depicting the characters from Captain America: Civil War

Took a lot longer than I anticipated, but I finished it two weekends ago and managed to frame it in record time.

House

I'm trying out my burgeoning reno skills on my tiny second bedroom. It doesn't need anything fancy, just fresh paint and new blinds and some sort of door solution for its micro-closet. From what I saw last summer while touring houses for sale the solution of the moment is fabric curtains, but those people obviously didn't have cats.

I did purchase a new medicine cabinet a week ago and am luring my dad over with beer this weekend to get it installed. I also finally pulled the trigger on shelving for the basement, which clears the floor for Stage 2: putting the kitty litter downstairs. None of the commercially available pet doors work for the door to the basement, so I wandered around Menards gathering the pieces for a more ad hoc solution. More to come on that.

Reading

Reading has continued unabated for the second month in a row. I've given my commutes over to it, which has helped. Still managing to read more books than I add to my to-read list, which is the goal.

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Create a fanwork.

Illness kicked my butt over the weekend and the early part of this week, to the point that I didn't finish the fanwork I started. Praise be to generous sick leave policies and NyQuil.

Here is my progress on a little cross-stitch piece featuring the Avengers, circa Civil War (because it includes all of my favorites...I'll just pretend they're not fighting). Left to right, top to bottom, the outlines of Rhodey, Tony, Steve, Bucky, half of Wanda, Clint, and Nat. Sam, Vision, Peter, T'Challa, and Scott to come.

Barely started cross-stitch piece featuring outlines of the Avengers

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(I privatized my Day 1 entry.)

The challenge today is to rec at least 3 fanworks you didn't create.

Me: Damn.
Me: I always want to rec things but I'm always so far behind the curve it's like, "Hey, have you heard of this miniseries called Stranger Things? They already have two seasons out! It's on Netflix!"
B: *snort*
Me: "You like MCU? Have you heard of

cesperanza? She writes some pretty good stuff."
B: You need to go back to teaching.
B: I'm sure there are a few first graders out there who haven't heard of Star Wars yet.
Me: You're terrible.
Me: Well, I'll do some of my old favorites, maybe people have forgotten about them.
B: Sure.
Me: And I'll look in my more obscure fandoms, there are some gems in there.
An hour later...
Me: Oh no, I've got 30 tabs open.
B: I'm still not reading anything you rec from SGA. I've held out this long.

Alright, here we go; some old school recs from older fandoms that people might have missed due to timing or hey, maybe it's time for a re-read, plus a handful of newer stuff that caught my eye.

Stargate Atlantis Recs

I got into SGA by accident. I was binge-watching SG-1 at my mom's cousin's house over the summer and the ad for the SGA season one episode '38 Minutes' was playing incessantly. I was young enough that my default was 'offshoots are stupid' rather than 'give offshoots a few seconds of your time before you decide that they're stupid', so I wasn't going to watch it.

Yeah, I watched it.

I continued watching it weekly, read some fic on fanfiction.net, and then, between The Storm and The Eye, November 2004, I stopped watching television and didn't start again until January 2006. Whoops.

Anyway, I liked the show well enough (though I never caught up on season two), but it was the fandom that really made it for me. Many, many excellent writers and artists came together in a bit of a perfect storm. SGA overlapped the first strikethrough on LJ and the birth of AO3, which was reflected in the fact that back when AO3 showed the fandoms with the most works by type, SGA topped the TV Shows category. It currently has 3000 more works available than its originator SG-1, which had twice as many episodes.

So if you ever caught an episode on TV and thought it was too ridiculous to live or veered away from that section of your favorite author's works, maybe give it a try. Both

astolat and

cesperanza wrote for it, so if you like their writing, that might be a good starting point.

But just to confuse things and rope in those who might fondly remember SG-1, I'm going to rec an AU.

Retrograde by

LtLJ (aka Martha Wilson) is pretty classic post season one, early season two SGA fic, except that instead of the expedition being reconnected with Earth after a year of being alone, it takes three years. By the time SG-1 and the cavalry arrive they find a shuttered Atlantis and a ruined Athosian village...oh, and another ship from Earth, the commander of which is happy to tell Jack et al that the Atlantean Expedition was a total failure, what with all the collusion with aliens and the inappropriate sexual relationships and hell, we think there might have been...cannibalism.

Jack et al don't believe him.

LtLJ writes: an AMAZING Jack O'Neill, Teyla Emmagen as a real character, respectful relationships between Atlantis and the Athosians, edge of your seat action sequences, and a realistic look at what keeping Atlantis going without assistance from Earth would look like.

Oh, and the whole expanded series has been turned into an 11+ hour long audiobook.

The Jenny Code by Domenika Marzione (

domarzione) is another SGA classic, in which Lorne (Sheppard's 2IC by season two) and Atlantis have a little problem - the Genii have nabbed Sheppard and getting him back is going to take some planning, complicated by the fact that Caldwell is around...and technically outranks the rest of the military personnel.

Domarzione writes: 3-dimensional portrayals of minor characters, a sympathetic and realistic Elizabeth Weir, an Atlantis stocked with more than five scientists and eight marines, insightful and introspective adults who adult, and a good stab at making what we see of Atlantis' military structure work.

And if you like that, I also recommend Academic (Rodney can multitask - he talks to save his life and sabotage the Genii in one go) and a mini-suite of Atlantis: Behind the Scenes: Kalliergo (the marines can't patrol or train all the time, and somebody needs to be in charge of the cafeteria), Popcorn Theater (movie night on Atlantis), Officers Call (military professional development, Atlantis-style), Altered States (there's a paperwork code for everything), Pretty as a Picture (a memo handed down from on high requires enforcement of new regulations regarding tattoos), and finally, Five Times Atlantis Had to Send Someone Home (self-explanatory).

And now some randos:

Just We Two Against the World by

addictedtostorytelling. CSI: Crime Scene Investogation. Grissom/Sidle, Mature, canon compliant. This is the kind of thing I want out of CSI fan fiction: it's just another day at work, just another case to solve, with Grissom and Sara tip-toeing around, trying not to spill the beans about their relationship. I was always grumpy about Sara's character arc through season eight and this story gives me a little space to pretend it didn't happen for a little while.

Twenty-One Breaths by

RurouniHime. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sanders/Stokes, Mature, graphic depictions of violence. This is a slow-burn, with some hurt/comfort thrown in for good measure. Fandom loves to smack Greg around, and this story's no exception, but it's a little less gratuitous, and little more realistically handled, medically-wise, than most.

BREAKING NEWS by

sevenfoxes. The Martian (book/movie). Beck/Johanssen, Mature, unplanned pregnancy. As the summary says, a love story in headlines. Beck and Johanssen don't have the easiest time staying together with all the distractions Earth provides: news media, careers, and family. The story's from Johanssen's POV and I love how she's characterized here, smart and ambitious and absolutely sure that she's too much of a headache for someone to love her. Watney and Annie Montrose serve as excellent supporting characters.

Imperfections by

Dasha_mte. The Sentinel. Gen, crosses over with Monk, SGA, CSI, the X-Files, but none of those matter. This is the only story I've ever read in the The Sentinel fandom, it's the story that got me to watch the darn thing for pete's sake, always a good sign. The only problem? It's an AU, one so seamless that I didn't even realize what I was reading. From a quick glance, the fandom (and others, via crossovers) is rife with "there are lots of sentinels and guides" but not many with this approach, wherein there are enough sentinels that they're a well-known, well-studied phenomenon, with graduate programs for wannabe guides, sentinel-specific lobbyist group, and summer camps for sentinel children.

There's the "small" scale of Blair and Jim's relationship - Jim's aghast about aspects of Blair's upbringing and outlook and background as an anthropology graduate student fer chrissakes, and Blair's similarly aghast about Jim's upbringing and background as a member of the establishment, of the police force of all things, but it works because they're both good people who recognize the good in each other - but there' also the large scale of the world Dasha has created, the amount of detail - how different cultures handle sentinels, sentinel history in the US, treatment of sentinels in the military and civilian spheres, the list goes on. Like I said, I haven't read a single other Sentinel story, but this one is on my reading list every year, like a favorite novel.

The Semiotics of Comestibles (aka the Roast Chicken Caper) by Domenika Marzione (

domarzione ). MCU. Established Barnes/Romanov, but with Steve still playing yenta. Yes, I'm sneaking another one by Domarzione, sue me. She likes food and I like when people who like food write about food and cooking.

And finally, something actually hot off the presses:

Reports of Witches Falling by

singlecrow. An unusual fandom - the piece was written for some original artwork entitled Good Luck, Roomba Witch. Short and sweet, a British Indian witch works through some...technically difficulties, with the aid of his twin sister and his friends.

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I'm at work on the last day of the year, which is still slightly odd. Thanks to my time in Japan, I'm more used to working Christmas than I am New Year's. There are more people here than I would have expected - my supervisor's updating all of our JIRA tickets with new components and a bunch of us are filing last minute reports (even though nobody "upstairs" will be checking their email until the shutdown is over) and testing the latest release. I accidentally got myself saddled with a flu vaccine report that has been riddled with gremlins for the last year, but I think I've got them all. It's not where it should be yet, but it's getting there.

Crafting

My knitting mojo remains at a low ebb. I finished a pair of mittens, a hat (with a pompom so big that I keep losing it to snagging tree branches, whoops), and a pair of slippers (which won a blue ribbon at the state fair). Back in February I went to a pop-up class on log-cabin construction at my local LYS during a snowstorm because I wanted to get out of my apartment. I started a blanket with scraps and ended up liking it enough to knit it out to lap blanket size. It won fourth place at the fair.

I made progress on my ginormous mitered square blanket - 207 2.5" squares, plus 7 7.5" squares. I hope to finish before I'm dead.

My cross-stitch has come a long ways. I finished my Pumpkin Passport kit in time for the fair, two years after I started it.

Framed piece of cross-stitch - Let's go on an adventure - various sites from different countries are depicted.

I completed three pieces for friends, have one started for myself, another two projects in the planning pipeline and a fourth hopeful friend.

Reading

I finished my 52 book challenge by the skin of my teeth. Reading mojo came in fits and spurts this year - sometimes I was reading seven books at a time and finishing one every three days and then months would go by while I read nothing but fan fiction. I discovered Vera Brosgol and Tillie Walden, both graphic artists. There's been an explosion of graphic novels for the middle grade and YA set and while some of them have been uneven, quality-wise, some of them have been excellent. Brosgol's 'Anya's Ghost' about a Russian immigrant teenager finding a helpful (?) ghost, and Walden's 'Spinning', about growing up as a synchronized skater, were some of my favorites this year.

I devoured Martin Walker's 'Bruno, Chief of Police' series until I abruptly got tired of him banging a different woman in every book, combined with the general misogyny. This is a series that was first published in 2008 and makes all the right moves with regard to immigration and religion and anti-semitism, that examines both climate change and climate change policies and how they affect individuals and small towns and villages...and is still kind of terrible about women and writing female characters. I could barely relate to any of them, and the ones I could? Bruno and his pals mock.

From my review of the second book:

Me: I really hope men don't automatically catalog the physical attributes of every women they encounter and decide whether or not they want to have sex with them then and there.
Walker: Oh no, we do.
Me: Whelp, I'm joining a convent.

Also, Walker wanted desperately to write food/cooking porn and he hadn't gotten there even after four books. "Bruno put a spoonful of duck fat into the frying pan" definitely belongs in the drinking game for this series, however.

I also stumbled upon Connie Willis' 'Doomsday Book' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog', decades late. I finally read all of

domarzione's Freezer Burn 'verse, that should count for a whole extra novel on its own.

Writing

I literally wrote a drabble for every single episode of CSI (original flavor) and none of them will see the light of day, they're mineminemine. Same for the hundreds of pages of self-indulgent MCU fic.

Everything Else

Passed 4th-kyuu in aikido back in May. Decided to take a year to go for 3rd-kyuu, instead of cramming the days I need into 8 months. I don't like test prep, even test prep done as low-key as my dojo does it.

I bought a house because that 1) it was starting to look like I might get priced out of the metro area in the near future and 2) by 2020 my mortgage payment's going to be lower than rent for a one-bedroom apartment within striking distance of work.

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Having finished most of the MCU movies (and all of the ones I actually want to see), I'm moving on to the Marvel TV series since their future seems a little shaky. I've seen bits and pieces - my dad, who hasn't read a comic book since 1959 and was utterly bewildered by the Infinity War trailer last year when we went to see the Last Jedi, loves Jessica Jones and rates it as one of his favorite shows on Netflix. I myself am enamored of Daredevil - I'm hard-of-hearing myself and so media like Daredevil and Covert Affairs and Matt Fraction's Hawkeye comics* are like catnip to me. I stopped because while I <3 Matt and Karen and Foggy, the beatings Matt was taking as Daredevil were actually brutal enough that I found myself squirming uncomfortably.

Anyway, trying again. But I'm probably not going to make it through Iron Fist, even though I adore Jessica Henwick. There's a conversation between Danny and Colleen in the first episode that takes place at her dojo that almost word for word matches every conversation I've had with men about martial arts for over 15 years now. The flat assumption that she isn't actually in charge. The condescending, "you didn't know that?", "maybe I could help out", the almost gentle misreading of every signal she is sending out...ugh. I didn't know whether to give the writers kudos for getting it so exactly right, or to throw my laptop right out the window.

*Which I like/am annoyed by. The run is enjoyable, but Fraction's tenuous relationship with linear storytelling and Tumblr's blind (hah) acceptance of This is How it Must Be for Deaf People ruins it a little.

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It was a Good Week for movies these past seven days (we'll leave aside the fact that I am now behind on cleaning for the New Year because I've been riveted to the couch with my knitting).

Gifted - I saw the previews for this last year, but had to wait for it to come out on DVD and then for me to be in the right mood to watch it. Running out of MCU movies, however, and figuring I might as well dive down the Chris Evans rabbit hole.

I ended up really enjoying it, beyond the expected "I need something interesting to rest my eyeballs on while knitting". I appreciate a movie with a custody drama that doesn't have people physically attacking each other in the courtroom or making improbable pleas to the judge and jury (which is...uh, not a thing in custody cases). The questions asked by the attorneys, the judge's attitude, the deals offered, all hit my procedural kink. I also appreciated that Frank's attorney (who is Black) and his neighbor (played by Octavia Spencer) both have their eyes wide open to the fact that The Court Will Take Your Kid If The Court Thinks There’s Something Wrong With You, with “wrong” being synonymous with “poor” and “carrying on in a lifestyle unfamiliar to the court due to race/religion/culture.”

Evans and Duncan do an excellent job as family members that love and miss each other just a little bit, but are also low key “I will fucking stab you if you don’t cut this bullshit out.” Makenna Grace did an excellent job even with her face being all swollen up with tears for half the movie.

(2017 movie, 2018 viewing, movie obtained from the public library.)

Skyscraper - this was surprisingly disappointing. I went in with very low standards; I mean, I was hoping for San Andreas minus the earthquake, plus fire, or maybe Die Hard with better villain accents. The set up looked good: the Rock is a disabled vet working as a security consultant for a Very Tall building about to open in Hong Kong, his wife is an age-appropriate former (?) Navy surgeon Neve Campbell, there are tiny-adorable-brave children to be rescued, Chin Han as the building's owner, and several other potentially interesting characters in the form of a police inspector and his deputy.

And then it didn't gel. The danger was way too high stakes and everyone was way too good at their jobs. A half hour into the movie Johnson climbs 100 stories into the air on the outside of a construction crane and jumps from it to the burning building. Now, that kind of thing might work as the climax to an action movie, but this is the first half hour! He needs to get into the building to save his family! I'm not worried that he's going to fall to his death, is what I'm saying. Johnson does something similarly ridiculous in San Andreas, rescuing his movie wife from the top of a building while LA crumbles around his helicopter, but you find yourself thinking, shit, is she going to make it? Or is her tragic death going to push him through the rest of the movie, even more determined to save his daughter? In Skyscraper, it was too easy to figure out who was going to live.

The minor characters were completely underdeveloped. Zhao, the building owner, and Okeke, his bodyguard, came close, but not quite. Same for Inspector Wu and his deputy. They really could have added some dramatic or comedic beats to the movie, but were left to just say their lines and move the plot along. The villains were entirely unmemorable.

(2018 movie, 2018 viewing, movie obtained from the public library.)

Ant-man and the Wasp - the surprise hit of the week. I got this one because of my completionist tendencies and the appearance of a Certain Character in the Avengers 4 trailer. I fucking hate ants to the point of phobia and a 'Why I Hate Ants' Tragic Backstory. Watching the first movie was almost impossible and I don't really want to think about the part where they introduced the different species of ants. Thankfully, for whatever reason, there were fewer ants in the sequel by a magnitude of ten.

I loved this. If you watched Ant-Man and thought what the movie needed was fewer ants, Evangeline Lilly kicking ass, Paul Rudd and Michael Peña being funny, and a car chase through San Francisco where one of the cars is the size of a Hot Wheels, you'll appreciate Ant-man and the Wasp. I watched it to check it off my list and ended up re-watching my favorite bits twice and the car chase scene three times. Lilly's fight scenes were excellent, well choreographed to take advantage of the switch between tiny and regular, and frankly, her being the awesome butt-kicker freed Paul Rudd up to be better comedic relief. Laurence Fishbourne is a must-watch for me, so there's that, too.

Honestly, what I really appreciate Ant-man and this sequel for is the comedy. The situations are still high-stake, the dangers are real, but (okay, except for the villains) everyone is just so dang reasonable. People do the "okay, let's stop and think about this" thing, nobody dies for dramatic effect, Scott's family continues to be a delight (have I mentioned that I like it when step-parents get along with birth parents and the kids are safe and loved? I like that), the FBI and the villains are equally bumbling and ineffectual. I do dearly love the more dramatic MCU movies, but my favorite comics and manga have always been funny as well as intense.

With this, the only MCU movies I haven't seen are Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. At this moment in time, I don't see myself desperately seeking either of those out.

(2018 movie, 2018 viewing, rented from iTunes because I forgot to check the public library.)

Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse - my favorite of the movies I saw in the past week, but also the one I'm least coherent about. All I have are big feelings about the beauty and sheer cool factor of the animation style, the music, the humor, and the plot. I saw it the day it came out after work, in the big fancy theater, as a Christmas present to myself. Totally worth it.

(2018 movie, 2018 viewing, saw in the theater.)

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mcu,
movies

Movie night with the aikido peeps yesterday - Enter the Dragon, which is both a formative part of my childhood and terrible. The bad dubbing! The tragically dead sister! The sort of generally poor quality cinematography, including moments where the cameraman couldn’t find Bruce Lee’s face! We’ve been doing this for a few months now, getting together, chipping in for pizza, projecting the movie up on a big blank wall. So far we’ve watched Bloodsport (terrible, but familiar), Above the Law (which actually has aikido in it!), Kung Fu Hustle (hilaribad, but the at least the plot line was more coherent than the previous two), and now Enter the Dragon. At this point, K (one of the only other women besides me at movie night) and I are desperately trying to campaign for something with martial arts AND better cinematography. And maybe some women who aren’t murdered to advance the plot line, if it isn’t too much trouble.

So far we’ve tried the Karate Kid (but it’s a kid’s movie!), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (too many weapons!), and Serenity (which actually got some murmurs of approval). Surprising none of you, I’m sure, K and I keep convincing most of the group to try something new, only to find out a few days in advance that one of the older, more senior men has vetoed the selection and chosen something else that is quickly agreed to by the rest of the guys. K is too reserved to want to rock the boat, and I’m too junior. Hopefully there are a finite number of Steven Seagal movies in this universe.

Movies

Speaking of movies, I went from not knowing that there was another Spider-Man movie coming out this year to trying to find a time next weekend to see Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse in about 24 hours. I’m hoping one of the two cheap, local theaters will have it, but if I need to hike out to the AMC at the mall, I will.

Also, unless you've been living under a rock you might have noticed the Avengers 4 trailer dropping yesterday. It was the first time a trailer has dropped while I've simultaneously been engaged with MCU fandom on Tumblr and the number of gif-sets was a little overwhelming. Some of the commentary was pretty hilarious as well, in that "some types of shippers never change" kind of lolsob way.

I am...I don't even know what I am. I suspect I'll have a good time at the movie theater for a few hours some day in April or May next year. I trust the fic writers more invested and engaged than I am to write some good shit in the aftermath. I like that they didn't handwave Tony's Lost in Space predicament, I liked that Antman might be part of the solution after I made myself watch that nightmare of a film (it's fine, it's funny, I <3 Michael Peña, etc, I just really fucking hate ants). I hope Bucky's in it, I hope everyone gets some good character development moments, and I hope everyone gets a little promise of peace at the end.

(Even if they erase it with the next movie, shh, I know how comics work.)

House

Hot water availability is NOT affected by whether or not the furnace is drawing natural gas at the same time. New hypothesis: hot water availability varies with outdoor temperature, i.e. water starting at a lower temperature means it doesn't get as hot as I'd like before it hits the shower head.

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Well, this return to journaling has already proven useful. I looked at yesterday's entry and yep, it was a Bad Day.

Despite today's headache, so far it is a Better Day. A couple of cancelled meetings allowed me to get this afternoon's work done this morning, so between that and the headache, I skittered home early. Hoping to nap before aikido this evening.

House

I haven't chosen December's minor home improvement project yet. Last month was replacing the kitchen sink faucet, which liked to spray water at a 90 degree angle from the one most sink users prefer. I also used my birthday money to replace the wonky 80s-era thermostat with a Nest Learning Thermostat, which is a bit like hammering in a nail with a Patriot missile, but hey, it's made it a lot easier to get up in the morning. It'll take until January to see if it has any effect on my natural gas usage, but of course the numbers will be difficult to compare because December is typically cooler than November here.

Based on annoyance factor, the next project should be fixing the wonky shower diverter valve and/or figuring out what's going on with the hot water availability. The shower head leaks prolifically while the tub is filling, which means being rained on if you want to add a little more hot water while you're taking a bath. I'm fairly sure the hot water availability goes down when the furnace is on, though I can't imagine why?

I'm leery of tackling either of these because I only have one bathroom and there's the potential of the plumber opening up the wall and realizing it might take more than a day to fix. I can get by on bird baths for a little while, but I don't really want to. Particularly not in winter.

Crafting

After yesterday's post, I did go poking at Etsy for Captain America and MCU patterns. I've found that a lot of fannish patterns are too cutesy, too weird, or a combination of the two. I do like this one, however, and though it's quite cutesy, it's small and would be fine in my cubicle or study. I also like this one, though it's a lot bigger, calls for 87 different colors (!), and has a lot of back stitch. I suck at back stitch.

And then there's these two Captain America cat patterns, which make me feel like I'm missing the joke, somewhere. This doesn't appear in the comics or something, right? Right?

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There is no substitute for good manners...

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