I got 99 problems...actually I have only 1

[gwyn]

(Well, two sorta -- my awful foster dog is sick, most likely from eating something in the garden she shouldn't have. Blech. I'm waiting to see if I need to take her to the vet.)

My real problem is this: I'm at 8,000 words on this Bucky and Steve trying to find each other story and I have barely begun it -- and it's going to be full of flashbacks to important things between them from before the war to during the war. I have a bad feeling this is going to be another one of my why can't I fucking write short epics, but I don't know what to do about it.

So y'all helped me decide to write that Sam/Steve double date story first, now I need you to help me figure this out. Do I wait till I'm finished and post it or post it as a WIP? I have a somewhat dodgy history with WIPS -- I did manage to finish Ciudad de Estrellas, my Fast and Furious thing, but I had a tough time because my sister's death came in the middle of it. The same thing was a problem with my Buffy WIP, Measure of a Man, and I've never finished it. Not for want of trying, but it was just so fucking hard after both losing my twin and losing the show -- it was kind of a double whammy for me. I still have this hope that I may finish it someday.

I like to edit and edit and edit my stuff. It's harder to do that when you're posting in pieces, making sure one piece is in tip top shape before posting. And it's not like hurrying will make a difference, I don't tend to get a lot of hits for anything, even hot fandoms, plus next week X-Men opens, so I think everyone will move over there for the time being. So waiting might be easier. And I've been really really depressed this past week, so it's kind of a struggle to be creative.

But...if I get busy again, which may happen, my writing time will drop back down to almost nil. Don't a lot of people also not read WIPs? I don't have that problem myself but I don't know. What's the general consensus?

I gotta say, the timeline for the first movie is driving me batshit. As a WWII buff, I find everything that they're doing is so...it's like, so close and yet so far. We weren't hanging around in northern Italy in Nov. of 1943 having USO shows (the Allied invasion began in Sept. of '43; I think Anzio was Jan. of '44), and we never, even at the end of the war, got up past the Po, where it's implied they were during the rescue. And you couldn't fly back and forth to England and Italy anyway, if that war room is really back in England -- they would have had to go around the Iberian peninsula with fuckin' prop planes or ships, basically, and that would take for fucking ever. It's just crazy. I don't understand what they're thinking. And if Cap and the boys marched back from where they were held? Days. And it's winter. I just, what? Did no one actually read any WWII histories?

I know I need to just let it go and write according to the movie canon, but wow, is it ever hard.

Comments

[klia]

It always confuses me whenever fans are troubled by historical inaccuracies in superhero/supernatural/SFF movies or shows. I expect that from BoB, but not from universes with hulks or headless horsemen. ;)

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

UGH DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE HISTORICAL ACCURACY OF THE FIRST MOVIE. Like I don't have a problem with some stuff being wrong but for me emotionally it all ties in to how they were like FIGHTING NAZIS ISN'T COOL ENOUGH/IMPORTANT ENOUGH/WHATEVER WHO CARES ABOUT NAZIS let's have him fight a guy who...thinks the Nazis don't think big enough because he doesn't care about racism he just wants to rule the world with his weird under-face. They did the same fucking thing with X-Men 1st Class, Shaw is like, A DOCTOR IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP but he is NOT A NAZI. Why???????? Why not just use Nazis? It's like way to tell a story about WW2 and have ZERO INTEREST IN THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF WW2 YOU JUST THINK IT SOUNDS COOL. And it's like, THE REASON WW2 SOUNDS SO COOL IS BECAUSE WE WERE FIGHTING NAZIS. And Nazis are actually interesting and scary unlike Hugo Weaving with a CGI face. Or, y'know, Kevin Bacon. And hearing that they didn't pay any attention to ANYTHING about the reality of the war just drives that home.

Also, I never posted WIPs until recently, and...posting my Avengers series was an amazing experience, and I found that posting as a series, reader interest built along the way in a way I'd never experienced as a writer. HOWEVER I got a lot of comments that were like "when's the next part" and "are you going to finish this" and "wait this is IT??" (when it was obviously a lead-in to a future story in a WIP). So if that kind of thing and people expecting/asking/wanting you to post is going to stress you out, you might want to think carefully before going that route.

Yay, I'm so excited you're writing this!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that erasure of the Nazis really gets me going -- I ranted at Michael about this for about 20 minutes recently. It's especially weird to me when you consider how many people in the entertainment industry are Jewish. Like, how do you not see what you're doing, when your own families were so deeply affected by National Socialism in Europe from the 30s to the 40s? WTF?

And the thing is, it'd be easier for me to write the flashbacks I think if I just didn't know all this shit about the war. I keep trying to push it to the back of my brain, but then I start writing something and I'm like, wait, no Ican say that...oh never mind. Bleh.

Thanks for the perspective on the WIPs. That's really helpful. I didn't always get that on the other WIPs I did, but there was no AO3 where everyone expected to get all their fic, so.

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't really think it's fair to blame Jews in the entertainment industry, honestly, or say they "should know better"...apart from anything else, while we may be well represented that doesn't mean ultimate decision power rests with Jews...there are pressures from everywhere. I can't find a footnote for it, but I'm pretty sure Sonia told me that there are rules about showing swastikas on TV (especially in terms of programming for kids), for example, that might put pressure on creators (and I seem to remember her explaining that the rules also have to do with HOW MANY times swastikas are shown which is why so often you see, say, a Nazi armband once and then it's out of frame for the rest of the scene). Which is maybe why Earth's Mightiest Heroes literally said that THE ALLIES FOUGHT WW2 AGAINST HYDRA. As if Nazis DID NOT EXIST. ARRRRGH. Also:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoSwastikas

I have to assume that the decision to cast almost exclusively Gentiles with large noses to play major Jewish characters in big-budget movies (unless of course they are in comic roles) is also financially motivated and enforced with institutional pressure by studios, rather than just entertainment industry Jews being clueless and not WANTING to see themselves represented! (And if in fact they ARE just unable to see actual Jews as attractive and heroic, that's a really sad thing and also NOT THEIR FAULT, but I'd have to hear evidence before going with that interpretation.) Being in an industry does NOT mean having power in that industry to do particular things! Especially if they are viewed as "unmarketable." Queer people are also heavily represented in the entertainment industry and yet I haven't seen massive awesome queer representation in media because of it. Women are half the human race (maybe more!) and yet it's not like we've been able to stop misogyny.

And as a romance writer who has altered her work to make her heroes more manly due to 1) internal pressure based on oft-repeated beliefs about what is marketable backed by many years of existing in the world and also reading the comments on romance blogs, 2) negative feedback from critique partners and 3) direct requests from my agent, I can tell you that EVEN IF a creator does "know better" that is no guarantee they will be able to realize their vision in a pure way given the committee nature of filmmaking.

Jews in the entertainment industry actually HAVE consistently made movies about real Nazis, to the point that now Nazis are such a recognizable trope in movies that non-Jews want to make movies with the trappings of that trope, and reap the emotional impact that Jewish filmmakers have created over decades, without engaging with the actual events or implications.

(Sorry, this got long, but like you, it's something that's been percolating in my brain for a while until I have a LOT of thoughts and opinions about it, many of them ranty...probably starting with X-Men First Class I started noticing this stuff a LOT more, and it's just built since then.)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I had NO idea that you'd responded to this…fuck LJ man, I wonder how many other comments I'm missing. ANYWAY. These are all really good points -- i guess I just get sort of irritated about this as a topic and get overly excited. And of course you're right, just because people might be really well represented somewhere doesn't mean they have the power to effect a change, or that they aren't pressured by other things. Film studies has always been something really important to me, the history of the business, so I tend to think of what people have done in the past and not the way the business is run now (not that things aren't in some ways better, but in others, it's not an improvement).

So I haven't been able to work up the enthusiasms to see XMDOFP just because of my feelings about the first one. Will I blow a gasket in this one? I'm already pissed the Kitty Pryde's role was downgraded so Wolverine could time travel...

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how you'd feel about the movie, I don't know enough about 1973 or 4 or whatever year it was set in to know if it was accurate or not.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

But I mean, did *you* like it? My biggest issue with XMFC wasn't that it was filled with anachronisms so much as that they did what you mentioned with Kevin Bacon's character, and that they killed off the black guy so quickly. I know you were really looking forward to it. It's weird, I haven't seen the people I know best post about it; the only reviews I've seen are from people I don't know as well. I'd love to know what my friends think! These days, I have so much pain that I have to pick movies pretty carefully, though I got a cortisone shot today so maybe that will change.

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

I think it was a pretty mediocre movie, for the most part not very well written and the plot made little sense and the pacing was awful, and there was some gross stuff in it (for example, in the future world where they're doing the time travel, literally all the white people are inside with Wolverine and all the people of color are manning the battlements. And I'm never happy with what they do with Mystique! AND they still found a way for Charles to not use his wheelchair for a bunch of the flashbacks, which, WHYYYY, and I HATE that Magneto was somehow involved in the Kennedy assassination, it's just so dumb and annoying). But I really did like it and want to see it again anyway. The Charles/Erik stuff was incredible and that's mostly what I cared about, and it put me in a floaty shippy place for a couple of days.