it's a magical world

Saw Ant-Man today. Here are my thoughts: ( spoilers, including post-credits scenes )

Have seen Age of Ultron twice. ( not particularly spoilery, but cutting anyway )

Next up: I'm trying to compile a list of LGBTQ characters in geeky genres for an upcoming trivia and I need your help! Because I don't know all of the fandoms, obvs. I'm looking for TEXTUALLY queer characters (as in, not just subtext/slash goggles) in any of the following genres: sci-fi, fantasy, horror, comics/graphic novels/manga, video games, anime/cartoons. I know sci-fi/fantasy pretty well, but very much need help in the comics/anime/gaming areas. And in particular I don't know of many trans* characters, so tell me what you've got!

( Here's what I've got so far: )

Crowd sourcing time! My Gay Geeks group is holding a Captain America 75th birthday party to coincide with Avengers 2 opening. We're trying to come up with some kind of fun theme to go along with the party -- like a contest for best shield, etc. Anyone have good geeky ideas? Or ideas for themed drink specials? Since the MCU fandom is super creative, I figured someone would have better ideas than me. :)

All right, screw it. It's begging for betas time!

First, a vid -- anyone up to date on Doctor Who willing to do a quick beta on a 3-min Danny Pink vid? I chugged this thing out in one marathon vidding session last night, and I'm gonna go back and do a round of tweaks on it now, but another set of eyes would be extremely welcome.

And second -- Steve/Bucky fic. I feel weird asking for this before the fic itself is complete, but I've been struggling with this fucker for months now, and having someone else willing to read through it and talk to me about it would be all kinds of helpful. Right now it's at about 25k words, but I'm finally in the home stretch, so I'm guessing I've only got about 5k more to write. And I am DETERMINED to finish this thing before Yuletide. It's driving me nuts. (It's also a sequel to somebody hears you. (you know that.), but you don't need to read that first -- it picks up where that fic left off, from Steve's POV, and is much more heavily focused on the Steve/Bucky relationship.)

I am always more than happy to beta your own work in exchange. Or I can write/vid you a thing, maybe. IDK.

All right, I have succeeded in remastering all three of my Winter Soldier vids with higher quality footage. Huzzah! If anyone's interested --

The Hymn of Acxiom:
someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these (mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot. A Bucky vid.

How Far We've Come:
Waking up at the start of the end of the world: Steve, not sure what he's still fighting for.

We Will Dance:
If we can be without fear, without shame, then we can dance. A Natasha vid.

And so having spent my entire day re-vidding, of course now I'm neck deep into yet another Steve-centric vid instead of working on any of the three fic WIPs I'd planned to make progress on. Um. And my time of unemployment is apparently gonna be a lot shorter than I'd expected -- with my final show of the season having closed last week, I'd pretty much planned for August to be a dead month again. But a friend is going on sabbatical from her incredibly dull office job, and she set me up to meet with her boss yesterday, so apparently I'll be taking over said incredibly dull office job for about six weeks, starting two weeks from now. Which, y'know, yay income! But at the same time -- ugh, I do not want this job at all. At least it's only for six weeks. I can do anything for six weeks, and yeah, the income will of course be good. I'd just kind of looked forward to a bit more of a vacation after how stressful the last show was. Alas.

Okay, I am not writing this, because I don't think I could handle it properly, but I'd really like to read an MCU!Captain America AU set during the Vietnam War. Because so much of who Steve becomes is forged in WWII -- which, in the end, was a just war, where it was obvious who the bad guys were and what made them bad. I want to see Steve becoming Captain America during a war that permanently tarnishes America's image in the world, and struggling with what that means.

I want to see the story where Steve has just as much heart, just as much determination to make things right, but is thrust into a conflict where there are no good guys and there is no moral imperative and he's not sure we ever should have gotten involved in the first place. Maybe Steve and Bucky enlisted early on, before anyone understood what a mess they were getting into. Maybe Bucky got drafted and Steve only tried to enlist in order to go with him. Maybe that loyalty, that determination, is what Erskine spotted in him, why Steve was chosen -- because of course the military wanted to create an army of supersoldiers to crush the Commies, but Erskine wanted someone pure, someone truly good, someone morally strong enough to turn the tide of public opinion. Someone who would be able to make the right choices in impossible situations. But as the war goes on, Steve becomes increasingly horrified by what his country is doing and Bucky (always the realist) becomes dark and cynical and angry but loves Steve too much to walk away from him (not that the army would ever let him out anyway) and the problem with this whole concept is that I can't see anyone getting out of it alive.

(Also, super problematic when it comes to figuring out who the Red Skull and Zola would be in this AU -- Viet Cong? Um, god no. Soviets? Ugh.)

Still. Steve struggling with figuring out what the right thing is in an untenable conflict. Bucky's whole unit getting captured and sent to a POW camp, and of course no one's coming to rescue them. Peggy the intelligence agent who's completely disillusioned by the war and knows there's no winning but she stays because she's trying to keep her people alive. Steve fighting on only to defend those who can't fight for themselves, but the locals don't even want him here and hell, he can't blame 'em (ugh please no horrible White Savior trope, that is not where I want this to go). What it means to be Captain America when America is forcibly shoving itself in where it doesn't belong, when Steve feels like he's becoming exactly the sort of bully he'd always hated.

Um. So that's sort of bleak. But I think it would be fascinating?

(I also think it's just as possible that Steve would've been at the head of the antiwar protests back home, would've become known as "Captain America" in a countercultural sort of way, and that story would be interesting, too. I guess he never would've gotten the serum, though. Or maybe that's when Bucky got drafted and Steve followed him because what the hell else was he supposed to do?)

HOLY SHITBALLS, AGENTS OF SHIELD.

That's gonna be all the coherency I'm capable of right now, but seriously, show, why so bad for the first half of the season when you could have been as awesome as the past five episodes the whole time?

( brief spoilers )

Okay, yes, Bucky Barnes has taken over my life, I admit it. Second viewing of Winter Soldier impressed me much more than the first, for some damn reason, possibly because I'd already become mildly obsessed with Bucky. And I badly need decent source for the vid bunny that's eating my brain.

BUT ANYWAY.

Continuity question: ( spoilers, obviously )