Okay I am going to need you all to repeat after me:

"The MCU is a symptom, not the disease"

Hollywood in general has some massive problems right now, and some of them are genuinely new and unique problems (not as many as people on tumblr seem to think, but definitely not 0), and the Marvel Movies are the cause of exactly none of them

The MCU has a lot of these problems, there are MCU movies that exemplify most of the problems with modern hollywood movies, (are also MCU movies that exemplify most of the good points of modern hollywood movies, but that's a different argument), but they are not the cause of those problems. The MCU going away would not fix any of those problems.

The MCU is not the reason vfx and CGI artists are not uninionised, that's the fault of union busting efforts by AAA games companies and media conglomerates like Disney, AND it's an effect of modern global communications meaning that the work can be outsourced to teams overseas if artists within the USA demand better pay. This is a new and unique problem to this moment in time, because you can't outsource work on physical sets overseas without moving the entire movie production, but CGI artists do not need to be on set, so it's easy to hire teams in China or Vietnam to do the work for less than teams in the USA in a way that's simply never been true before.

The MCU is not the reason studios no longer invest in mid-budget films, that is the fault of falling cinema ticket sales scaring investors, and the late-stage capitalism obsession with growth at any cost leading studios to reinvent the road-show era mentality, when the entire studio's survival rests on the success of failure of one or two movies. Yes the runaway success of the Avengers played a part in investors deciding that $300,000,000 film budgets were a viable option, but a) it was that successful because it's a pretty perfect summer blockbuster, not flawless by any means, but a solid action movie that a lot of people genuinely enjoyed, b) there's nothing inherently wrong with movies that expensive existing, as long as less expensive movies also exist (a budget like that pays the wages for a fuck tonne of people), and c) so was the success of the Bayformers movies, and y'all aren't sending death threats to people online for liking the Last Knight or whatever the fuck the King Arthur one was called

The MCU is not the reason Disney is obsessed with plot twists to the point of hiding information from their actors, that's a combination of Disney has honestly always been pretty awful about IP protection, a handful of high profile leaks that made studios jumpy, and the fact that in the age of streaming and reduced cinema attendance, the easiest way to ensure people watch a movie when it releases is to make them think there's something about the movie which will be ruined if they wait a week. Short of selling film canisters with built in self-destruct mechanisms, 'this movie has a big twist and it won't be as good if you already know it going in' is the quickest and easiest way to do this, and crucially, it doesn't cost anything extra because it can be written into the movie at the scripting stage. Also a weird number of cinema-goers actually do care about spoilers, and twitter has meant that avoiding spoilers is basically impossible. There's a reason kids movies are largely exempt from the twists for the sake of twists mentality and it's that kids aren't (theoretically) on twitter.

(Also people stopped buying DVDs, so that's no longer a significant revenue stream for studios, so they don't care if people want to rewatch a movie or not, so it doesn't matter if the twist doesn't actually make sense and makes people not want to rewatch the movie because it's not like they were going to buy the DVD anyway).

Pretty much the only problem in modern Hollywood that can be traced solely to the MCU is the fixation on shared universes (and they're not actually bad in isolation as long as studios remember not everything needs to be a shared universe), but even that's just investors doing what they always do and trying to predict what made a movie successful without taking into account that it might just have been a good movie. Shared universe movies themselves can be traced to the MCU, but the phenomenon of studios just copying whatever the last thing to be success was absolutely cannot.

And the MCU not properly crediting and compensating the comics writers and artists? That's not even a Disney problem (although they have made it worse), that is a Marvel Comics problem and always has been (hey look, a thing you can actually blame Stan Lee for without needing to make up weird conspiracy theories about unsuccessful spider-man movies!). Disney is absolutely making it worse, but the Sam Raimi spider-man movies had the same problem, and so did the 1979 Captain America movie, and so did the unreleased 1994 Fantastic 4 movie. Marvel are real shitty about paying royalties, and this has been a known issue since the 60s.

You do no have to like the MCU, no one has to like any piece of media, but people liking and paying to see MCU movies is not the reason Hollywood is shit right now. The MCU is a product of the studio system, not the cause of it.

Block MCU related tags if you want to. Unfollow MCU fans. Don't go to see the movies. Advocate for a CGI union or better conditions for actors. But please stop pretending that disliking some movies is some kind of activism, or that the movies are somehow uniquely flawed, because that's not how any of this works.

(And as always, Martin Scorsesee has a standing invitation to fight me in the basement of any comic book store on earth)

3 and 20, thanks.

3--your favourite “grounding” activity (anything that involves using the hands/doesn’t involve “spacing out” or escapism - something like gardening, knitting, dancing, cooking)

I love, love, love ballet. I took recreational dance classes from ages 3 to about 14 (ballet, jazz, tap, gymnastics, baton--yes, those last two were taught at a dance studio that I can only describe as a pageant production warehouse. My family lived in the southeastern US at the time. I have also taken proper gymnastics and got to level 4-5ish before deciding it wasn't for me.). But anyway. I came back to ballet in college, spun through university BI and studio adult beg/intermed in a semester, then took university BII (intermed/adv) ~7x over the next 3.5 years to keep honing my technique as a transitioned to dancing with the studio company (think equivalent of a community theater). I spent about 6 years on the 'local pro' run, then needed foot surgery, had a few life/health cricises/moved in with DD...

And lo and behold, our son adores ballet, but the "open" class he was in when I showed up wasn't meeting him where he was. I started taking class with him as a demonstrator/companion. Now we've moved to a very nice studio that has classes well suited to both of us (he's moved up 3 levels! They teach him so well.). I take adult advanced, and it's bittersweet at times. I know I used to do better than I can currently do, but when I am able to focus all my attention on pointing my toes or sweeping a waltz step across the floor, I feel very accomplished. Also, in ballet class, if you're not paying exact attention to the combinations, you (well, I,) will look like a complete fool and have no idea what's going on. My mind is super busy, but for class time, it has to be blank and calm.

20--a skill you’ve picked up in the past few years

I'm not sure I know the definition of few... I suppose since I moved in with DD?

I'm sorry if this turns into a rant, but I have learned that if there's something I want to do (out of the house, like go to a movie, etc.), it has to be made into a big deal, put on the calendar, and checked in with every adult household member that it's ok.

To do so smoothly, I usually have to talk to DD first, then have her pose it to our housemates (who fucking sleep all day). Usually they say ok, they can hold the fort while we go out, but when it comes to day of, there's a huge fuss of 'why are you abandoning us?' and such and such... To which the best-yet-maybe-not-kindest response is to pull up the digital calendar to show the days' events and say, 'well, this is what we agreed to happen...'

I try to sometimes do things with my roommates without DD, both out of interest (like to do something DD isn't ito) and out of fairness (try to get along with everybody), and I have limited success. Maybe 50% of the time we actually do the thing and have a good time, and the other half we don't because the other person doesn't feel like it or has made a plan to override me (and not told me till morning of).

I honestly wish there was a better way to do this than to seem whiny and argumentative. I feel like I try to put my foot down and say, like, we're doing a thing, get over it, but then I feel really guilty and panicky...