schneefink

March recs: four fics from the "various" section of my to-rec list that coincidentally all fall under "not too long and make me smile."

( fic recs for Critical Role campaign 2, The Untamed, Shang-Chi/Black Panther, and Spider-Man comics )

Apartment: Christina decided that she wants her own place, which suits us fine, so DD and I have started looking for apartments for the two of us, going through ads etc. My mom also sent a notice on her choir's mailing list and it turns out one of her choir colleagues knows about an apartment that recently became empty, and we went to see it today. It's on the outskirts of Vienna, with parks and green everywhere but not too far from an underground station, in a nice neighbourhood that includes a very good ice cream shop and a book store. The kitchen would need to be remodeled and the walls painted and some other details fixed, but the apartment itself is lovely, very bright too, and rent would be very cheap. Fingers crossed it works out! That would be a ton of luck. (DD looked around the apartment and said, in a tone of slow realization, "you know… we could have a cat here," and that would be the cherry on top.)

In the afternoon I had a barbecue with my family including some extended family that came to visit, that was nice, and then I went home and DD and I had a movie night with chocolate crème, that was also very nice. We saw "Doctor Strange" last week (the graphics were cool but the rest was okay at best, like, why precisely is that asshole important again) and "Spider-Man: Homecoming" today (half of a really good movie but especially the first half was frustrating because Peter Parker is supposed to be smarter than this), and "Ant-Man" is planned for next week, then I'm caught up on all MCU movies.

It was a good day :) Now all I need to do tomorrow is go for a run and tidy up a bit and study and ask about the next steps regarding the apartment, and bake a cake for a friend, we'll probably finally watch a few more Doctor Who episodes together. Or maybe on Saturday, but Saturday is the Eurovision finale. Choices, choices. Mostly good things though :)

Day 5: Getting up earlier without external pressure is really fucking difficult for me. So far, my success rate is 1/5, and on that one day I got out of bed only to immediately curl up in my reading chair in my pajamas. Doesn't help that I'm having a few bad brain days. Whatever, I'll have to get it together. Classes start this week, I got the material to prepare today and it's more than expected.

I saw "Black Panther", and it was a lot of fun. ( Spoilers )

Today I went to a new restaurant with friends I hadn't seen in weeks (Vietnamese all-you-can-eat buffet, yum), then we went to watch "Guardians of the Galaxy 2", and then we went to the gym, so I feel accomplished even though I did almost nothing else. (Tomorrow is cleaning day, ugh.)

I enjoyed GotG 2. It was fun, it was colorful, it wasn't so stupid that it distracted from the movie, and it had several scenes that made me laugh out loud. It was also very pretty at times: that one planet kind of reminded me of "Jupiter Ascending" in its opulency.

( Details & spoilers )

More fun! I already wrote some earlier episode reactions, under the cut reactions to the second half and the season as a whole.( Spoilers )

To sum up, I enjoyed the series a lot! If there's a third season that'd be fantastic, and if not there's a lot of fic I want to read and some I want to try to write.

I watched episode 4 of season 2 of "Agent Carter" tonight and it reminded me of a Tumblr post I saw today about heroes and villains. ( Includes spoilers )

In other character-related news, ( Spoilers )

Yesterday it snowed for the first time! Only very little in the evening and this morning, and there's nothing left, but it was a nice sign of the coming winter. That, and that it's freezing cold outside.

Together with mom and LB we watched Igudesman & Joo's "A BIG Nightmare Music" at the Vienna Konzerthaus yesterday, it was a lot of fun. My face literally hurt from smiling so much. Their version of "I Will Survive" was maybe my favorite (similar to this one), but I may be biased because it was also the last piece. Mozart Bond and "Kein Schwein ruft dich an" were also great, and all the others. Seeing the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra dance with them, including a Riverdancing cellist and a guy riding his tuba like a horse, and doing some sort of Ministry of silly walks thing was also great. Igudesman speaks great German (he studied in Vienna) and Joo decent, so they even had some jokes in German, which was extra nice.
Before the concert the older couple behind LB and I was surprised that the big hall was full, "they're not that famous." They kind of are. "And so many young people, young people don't like classical music." Oh please.
I told LB he should try to incorporate Igudesman's hip swing into his violin class mini concert today. I'm going to have to bake him something if he actually does xD

I watched the Captain America: Civil War trailer. ( Spoilers ) May 2016, much later than I thought.
"The Martian" seems to be almost out of cinemas here, I'll see if I'll still manage to see it.

Other random things: after a two week break because of my dental surgery I finally had hockey practice again, yay! (I love hockey practice, I don't like going to hockey practice, it's a problem.) I ate some good food in the last few days, in restaurants and by my roommate TW. I started playing Flight Rising and I already have some pretty dragons. I read Shadows of the Apt 5 because I have no self-control and I'll probably read the next one soon. I'm making good progress outlining my Yuletide fic and I'm having fun with it. I'm getting better at keeping the apartment clean but I really need to clean my room, and especially my desk. Pens won and Sid&Geno scored, nice.
Lunch now.

It's pretty much exactly like Avengers, except on a larger scale. Entertaining, but only as long as I don't think about it. ( Long review with spoilers )

Marvel movie announcements! I'm very excited about Captain Marvel and Black Panther. I only know both of them from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and fannish osmosis, but I like them a lot.

Captain America 3, Thor 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, as expected. I really hope they get the casting right for Doctor Strange (and the story, of course), and I'm not sure what to expect from Inhumans. I doubt they're planning it right now, but if Kamala Khan does have an appearance it would be fantastic. I'm also still not interested in Ant-Man, especially if they really fridge Janet van Dyne. They can't do that, right?
I'm disappointed there won't be a Black Widow movie in the next four years. But at least there'll be Wonder Woman and Aquaman. (Wow that's a lot of superhero movies.)

About the Age of Ultron trailer: I'm surprised how annoyed I am by the Quicksilver&Scarlet Witch casting. Wanda doesn't even have curly hair!
I have no idea how the pieces fit together, but that's intentional. (Also I have no idea where Tumblr gets the farm thing from.)

They announced that the subtitle of the next Captain America will be Civil War. I was surprised at fandom's negative reaction to that.

Sure, the comic event wasn't well executed, but that doesn't mean the basic idea was bad. I actually thought it was very interesting. And they've already shown that they just take the parts of comics canon that they like and adapt them for the screen.

Many people claim that they can't do Civil War in the MCU because superheroes' identities aren't secret. In my opinion that's not actually what Civil War was about. It started with superhero registration, but it was actually about government control over superheroes, and the registration was just how they wanted to do that. Superheroes vs. superheroes only happened because some superheroes were on the side of the government. And government vs. superheroes is something that you could do very well in the MCU.

You already had some of it in the Iron Man movies, with the military wanting control of the suits. You had SHIELD in the background in all of the movies, a government agency. You could say that Captain America: Winter Soldier was a big step in the government vs. superhero conflict: Steve decides that the government agency SHIELD should be dismantled, something that he has no real authority whatsoever to decide. (And we see in Agents of SHIELD that they're rebuilding it.) He makes it very clear that he is willing to go against the government for the principles he believes in. We know that the same goes for Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Thor (who's not even an Earth citizen), and Natasha, and I'm willing to bet on Sam Wilson, Clint Barton, and Rhodey (although they might be more hesitant.) We'll see about Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, but I don't think they're likely to blindly support the government either.

The prospect of seeing a superhero vs. government conflict in CA 3 is very exciting. It's easy to think of scenarios involving Bucky - does the government want to arrest him? Kill him? Use him? Or it could be something different.
Civil War as superhero vs. government also explains why Civil War will be a Captain America movie instead of an Avengers movie, which you would expect if it was superhero vs. superhero. A Tony Stark cameo, as rumored, could work very well because of all the MCU Avengers he has the most experience of straddling the line as a superhero without getting in too much trouble with the government.

Government vs. superhero is also great because it's not an easy question especially if you portray both the government and superheroes as well-meaning. We the audience know that Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are good people, but the government/general public has no guarantees. (Remember, the first test subject for the serum almost wasn't Steve Rogers, but a jerk.) There's a reason why we have a democracy.

And the directors for CA:Civil War will be the same ones as for Winter Soldier, so that's another reason for optimism. I'm really looking forward to that movie. :)