Yays and Nays
May. 10th, 2012 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn case anyone is wondering, the reason why I haven't reviewed this week's Borgias episode yet is that I haven't had a chance to watch it. I'm currently at a conference in Rudolstadt. However, something you can do at conferences now and then is reading fanfiction.
Before I get to my recs: I think I have identified my off turn for reading fanfic in Avengers fanfic quicker than usual. You know, the part of the summary that makes me go "hell, no!" and look for another story. In Avengers stories, this is anything resembling the phrase "Loki needs a hug". I'm not against redeeming the genocidal little twerp per se on fanfic, but for me that would have to start with not only the writer but also Loki himself acknowledging he is a genocidal little twerp (and when I say "genocidal", I'm actually referring to events from Thor, not The Avengers, because if I read one more time that in Thor, Loki was the wronged party throughout, I'm tempted to aquire a tesseract and send the commenter in question to the Frost Giants, who would have been wiped out entirely, global scale, if Loki had succeeded in his plans). Not with Avenger X, or the entire team, deciding that he's really a fluffy kitten that needs to be stroked.
(A longer post is brewing on why some villains do it for me in terms of fannish love and some don't, though I can find them interesting, and ditto for some redemption stories; I think a key criterium is the willingness on the part of the villain to accept responsibilities for his or her actions instead of continuing to be an eternal 13 years old in "nobody understands me, everyone is so mean to me, anything I do is always someone else's fault" mindframe. The reason why Faith's story is arguably the best redemption story in the Jossverse isn't because she had it tough or there were extenuating circumstances but because Faith got to a point where she stopped blaming others, notably Buffy, turned herself in to the police and spent some time in prison, and that she did it not because she got a soul or because she wanted a better relationship with someone, but because she didn't want to continue as she had been and let others pay for her issues.)
The Black Widow, of course, is one of the Marvelverse characters starting out as villains and becoming heroes. Her origins were retconned repeatedly, but one of the many reasons why I want a Black Widow movie is that the hints we get there about Natasha's past make me think the version the movieverse will/would go with would include Natasha doing bad things, not simply having bad things done to her. Note that Natasha doesn't either glorify her past or make apologies for it; she owns it, it made her what she is now, and she acts on that, but not in a way of entitlement that the world owes her anything; the reverse. As opposed to certain Asgardians, she's actually an adult. And not surprisingly in most of the stories I'm going to reccommend today.
A now finished Natasha and Bruce centric series full of prickly distrust and mutual issues but also slowly accepting and letting down guards. Great to read, and the parallel transformation of the Avengers from misfits thrown together by necessity into actual friends feels very real, too.
Love is for children: this one transfers the current version of comicverse Natasha's origin story into the movieverse (which means heavy tie-ins to the Winter Soldier story, aka the most popular Captain America tale wherein it turns out his WW II sidekick Bucky was transformed into a master assassin by the KGB). Dark, with a smidgeon of hope and really well written.
The Hammer and the Ice: short but elegant AU in which Jane Foster has Erik Solvig's role in The Avengers
Choosing Anger: excellent Bruce pov throughout the film.
and now for two meta recs:
Great Natasha meta, specifically on how the script presents her. I concurr with the poster in every regard.
Meta on the various relationships between all of the characters, for which I even braved tumblr, because it's such a joy to read.
Before I get to my recs: I think I have identified my off turn for reading fanfic in Avengers fanfic quicker than usual. You know, the part of the summary that makes me go "hell, no!" and look for another story. In Avengers stories, this is anything resembling the phrase "Loki needs a hug". I'm not against redeeming the genocidal little twerp per se on fanfic, but for me that would have to start with not only the writer but also Loki himself acknowledging he is a genocidal little twerp (and when I say "genocidal", I'm actually referring to events from Thor, not The Avengers, because if I read one more time that in Thor, Loki was the wronged party throughout, I'm tempted to aquire a tesseract and send the commenter in question to the Frost Giants, who would have been wiped out entirely, global scale, if Loki had succeeded in his plans). Not with Avenger X, or the entire team, deciding that he's really a fluffy kitten that needs to be stroked.
(A longer post is brewing on why some villains do it for me in terms of fannish love and some don't, though I can find them interesting, and ditto for some redemption stories; I think a key criterium is the willingness on the part of the villain to accept responsibilities for his or her actions instead of continuing to be an eternal 13 years old in "nobody understands me, everyone is so mean to me, anything I do is always someone else's fault" mindframe. The reason why Faith's story is arguably the best redemption story in the Jossverse isn't because she had it tough or there were extenuating circumstances but because Faith got to a point where she stopped blaming others, notably Buffy, turned herself in to the police and spent some time in prison, and that she did it not because she got a soul or because she wanted a better relationship with someone, but because she didn't want to continue as she had been and let others pay for her issues.)
The Black Widow, of course, is one of the Marvelverse characters starting out as villains and becoming heroes. Her origins were retconned repeatedly, but one of the many reasons why I want a Black Widow movie is that the hints we get there about Natasha's past make me think the version the movieverse will/would go with would include Natasha doing bad things, not simply having bad things done to her. Note that Natasha doesn't either glorify her past or make apologies for it; she owns it, it made her what she is now, and she acts on that, but not in a way of entitlement that the world owes her anything; the reverse. As opposed to certain Asgardians, she's actually an adult. And not surprisingly in most of the stories I'm going to reccommend today.
A now finished Natasha and Bruce centric series full of prickly distrust and mutual issues but also slowly accepting and letting down guards. Great to read, and the parallel transformation of the Avengers from misfits thrown together by necessity into actual friends feels very real, too.
Love is for children: this one transfers the current version of comicverse Natasha's origin story into the movieverse (which means heavy tie-ins to the Winter Soldier story, aka the most popular Captain America tale wherein it turns out his WW II sidekick Bucky was transformed into a master assassin by the KGB). Dark, with a smidgeon of hope and really well written.
The Hammer and the Ice: short but elegant AU in which Jane Foster has Erik Solvig's role in The Avengers
Choosing Anger: excellent Bruce pov throughout the film.
and now for two meta recs:
Great Natasha meta, specifically on how the script presents her. I concurr with the poster in every regard.
Meta on the various relationships between all of the characters, for which I even braved tumblr, because it's such a joy to read.
