We Stan!!!!

You’re the most recognised and internationally praised superhero, but you don’t fight any crime. Instead, you use your powers over stone and metal to repair the damage caused by the catastrophic fights other heroes get into.

Do you like anything that's objectively bad? Like, a guilty pleasure kind of thing?

I tend not to have guilty pleasures because I’m able to accept that I enjoy things that are badly crafted.

I’ve already said that Pacific Rim is largely nonsense but I love it anyway.

I adore Legend of Korra and Avatar the Last Airbender despite them having major flaws.

I enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn, despite me trashing the game’s story and characterization of Aloy.

Dumbest TFATWS contradictions

"Steve would never use a gun" *Storms Hydra base literally guns blazing* "But they were Nazis" >And the Flagsmashers are terrorists, next. "Steve would never kill" *Tosses henchmen off Helicarrier* *Kicks dudes out of windows* *Throws grenades at henchmen* >You'd have to be willfully dumb to think a Supersoldier throwing a Vibranium shield at people's heads is not fatal >Kills way more guys in the first Avengers, but blood only now gets on the shield somehow >Hey, maybe Cap should have, as Sam put it, "tried listening to them..." "But he surrendered" *Throws water fountain at John* >Therefore, still an active combatant. *Didn't actually surrender, but instead diverted blame* >Which makes it a heat of the moment situation, rather than a cold blooded murder situation like antis are making it out to be. >All the bad guys Sam and Bucky killed, you've never ONCE seen them fear for their lives until it was John's turn to fight back. More manipulative bullshit. >Of course, it wasn't the right decision to do it in public, but to act as if it's completely irrational makes no sense. He's a soldier, wtf do you think John and Lemar were doing in Afghanistan? Or Steve Rogers in Germany? >It isn't bad that Steve killed bad guys, but with John, it's a problem because the ominous music, the leering, villainous camera angles, blood on the coveted shield, the shocked civilians (and Karli), made it so. "He was unarmed" >He was a Supersoldier- he IS a weapon >Also, how do you go from being a Supersoldier to being helpless? They're just like John, it's not like he unlocked some new level of power after Lemar died, they didn't even really have a reason to stop fighting, other than the show setting John up. Even MORE manipulative bullshit. >Zemo kills an unarmed guy, Sam and Bucky are like, "Don't do it again, bestie", but John, they're like "This isn't you, give up the shield. No one else has to die." "I'm a Black man carrying the stars and stripes. What don't I understand? Every time I pick this thing up, I know there are millions of people out there who are gonna hate me for it." *Iron Patriot: Ceases to exist apparently* Also, missed opportunity to make Bucky the voice of reason for John after losing his best friend and partner, seeing as Bucky and Steve could have been the perfect parallel for John and Lemar. But no, tag team the shit out of an emotionally compromised man while the show acts like it was the right thing to do. In Civil War, Zemo cautioned against putting Steve Rogers on a pedestal, he can kill or have his actions result in the deaths of any number of people but as long as his intent was good, he can do no wrong, because he's a hero. Sound familiar, antis? Not saying that killing bad guys is wrong, Steve and John are soldiers, a soldier kills, but what's important is that they kill the right people. Antis conveniently omit that understanding when it comes to John though... Think for yourselves, you're ignoring reasonable sequencing of events because you're too sprung on the Steve, Sam and Bucky crew to see the show is using cheap tactics to cover up sub par writing and avoidable contradictions. You'd have to be willfully obtuse to ignore that there are more good things to say about Walker than Sam or Bucky. Antis, tell me you can't comprehend characters with depth without telling me you can't comprehend characters with depth.

credit to https://zemoscurl.tumblr.com/ for the amazing tik tok

Ukraine is diverse and embraces it

Gorgeous Frank, thank you for support!

Please you can help Ukrainian LGBT+ military by buying those t-shirts here:

I’m going to post separately because I don’t want to keep hijacking the interview quote that someone who clearly loved the show posted.

When TFATWS first ended I was disappointed, but not resentful. Sam and Bucky got where they needed and Anthony and Sebastian looked like they genuinely enjoyed the time making it. There was healing, albeit a bit awkwardly rushed in episode 5, but it got both the characters to a better place than at the start.

Then I watched interviews about the creative process and I haven’t stopped fuming since. Skogland freely admits that she had no idea about the characters or the story before she came in to pitch her idea, which was simply “this is the most important story of the century”. Which of course it is, but her wording gives a sense of how she approached the telling - she is using the characters to tell a particular story, rather than telling a story about the characters while addressing those same issues they want to convey.

Now there’s nothing wrong with writing a story around the portrayal of a social issue, particularly one as topical as TFATWS did. But crafting a story around an idea, then using established characters takes a level of finesse that neither Skogland nor Spellman had - as well as a level of love and respect for the characters’ histories that neither of them cared about.

The level of pain on Sam’s face when he heard about Isaiah being imprisoned and experimented on for 30 years is completely undermined by his lack of empathy for Bucky - who was imprisoned and experimented on for 70 years. We can meta the heck out of those scenes (and I have - check my AO3/shameless plug) but it doesn’t change the sense that the intention of the creators was to make us horrified at the the prolonged victimisation of a black man, while at the same time minimising a very similar victimisation of a white man. Throughout the series, Sam empathises immensely with Isaiah and Karli, but barely sympathises with Bucky and John Walker - while pre-TFATWS Sam definitely would because managing vets with PTSD was his line of work.

As someone who enjoys writing stories, I know how hard it is to use the "connect the dots" method of story writing, because it's always hard to connect dramatic scenes in a logical way that works within the world and for the characters. Civil War did it with some success, but here the creators were barely trying. I also know that as a writer you need to be very cautious about your biases, because it's so tempting to always keep your favourite character in the best possible light which inevitably means another character will have to do all the problematic things to push the plot along or create conflicts. This is the sense I'm getting with TFATWS and that's what irks me the most. It just reeks of lazy, biased writing, because half the time it completely broke Bucky's character and didn't make sense for his motivations. Keeping Sam "in the best possible light" also meant he avoided conflicts at all costs which ironically made him come across like a pushover who sympathised more with his enemy than his friends and allies.

I might come across sounding like I hate Sam but I don't - otherwise I wouldn't have just written 16k words from his POV. I hate what they've turned both him and Bucky into for TFATWS, by using him to sell a particular story without making the story about him, as it really should have been. And let's face it, Sam-Bucky only worked because of Stackie's amazing chemistry, because as much as Anthony waxes lyrical about the "tenderness" and "bro code" between Sam and Bucky, I definitely couldn't see it on screen for the first 4.5 episodes until they suddenly became a married couple in episode 5.

Vampires

At various points throughout humanity’s history, they had been preyed on by a species known to in modern times as the Pillar Men, a race who fed on human blood. One of these Piller Men, Kars, created a device known as the Stone Mask. His goal was to evolve himself further, into an ultimate life form, but his device lacked the final piece it needed. However, when used on a human being, the Stone Mask awakened their potential, evolving them into a state that could be considered a lesser version of a Pillar Man. This new state would be known as a Vampire. Ultimately, Kars and his companion Eisidisi would slaughter every other pillar man save for two children in their quest to obtain ultimate status, and would plague humanity until the day they sealed themselves beneath the roman coliseum, in order to await the day when they could obtain perfection. In order to feed themselves while resting, a trap was set up to ensnare humans and drain them of blood. In the Fifth century, a man named Marcus Corvinus would encounter this trap, and escape with his life. Corvinus was descended from one of the vampires Kars had created thousands of years previously, and when he escaped the trap, he was infected by a virus that had been breeding within it. This Virus activated a recessive gene within Corvinus, and transformed him into a vampire. He would then go onto found the Corvinus Clan.

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Art by Lennart Butz