I lost the USB drive that had my notes for three days. :(

[melannen]

aoifes_isle asked for: Most oddball piece of research done this year - whether it be for work, wrangling, fic or because the brain-weasels attacked ...

So, uh, is there anyone reading this who has some Russian and would be willing to look over a first-pass translation of some Vysotsky lyrics I'm trying to put into English? I think I've got a rough literal version via Google and two other not-great English translations, but given that I know, like, three words of Russian, it would be nice to have someone to confirm it's all basically right, and stuff like "Does 'в настроеньи питейном' mean 'feeling drunk' or 'wanting a drink'?"

schneefink asked: what would be your ideal next canon YA series?

SO I actually wrote up a version of this right after I got the topic, because, well, Young Avengers! I had a whole twelve-issue storyline that was both something I really wanted to see, and that centered around the Young Avengers' ongoing themes of time travel/AUs, meta and reality shifts, and questions of identity. Unfortunately the main plot hook was "trying to bring Cassie Lang back from dead". Oops.

Anyway the short version: if I was proposing a YA series to Marvel right now, I would want it to center around Loki experimenting with reality-alteration using the power of storytelling (specifically: fanfic! :P) with the help of Billy Kaplan and America Chavez and, if I'm shooting for the moon anyway, maybe Kamala Khan? And whatever assortment of other current, former, and future young superheroes I can get my hands on.

Actually I'm tempted to make it a no-boys-allowed team: there are plenty of young superheroes you could pull in - but that might take it too far away from the previous YA teams. Loki, America, Cassie, Kate, and Kamala would make a good core for a team, though. You could bring back Sylvie Lushton because it would be super-fun to see her playing against boyband!Loki. Or maybe, like, Valeria von Doom. Billy and Teddy and Eli and David wander in and out, mostly trying to keep the others from breaking reality again. Tommy figures out the time-travel aspect of his speed powers (hey if Flash can, Tommy can too) and pops in on the main team at the worst possible moments.

Also they spend at least one issue doing nothing but trying to test Squirrel Girl's meta-invincibility against Loki's mythmaking powers (IIRC she hasn't been up against Loki in canon ever...). And there's some sort of ongoing thread where this is leading up to the stuff that was predicted in the Gillen series, but very much in the background.

If I could have ANY YA series I wanted, though, and not just one there's a slim possibility Marvel would actually make, what I want is basically the Young Avengers version of Fraction's Hawkeye - 'what they do when they aren't saving the world.'

It starts with Billy and Teddy starting college and getting their first apartment together, and Kate and Tommy arranging them a surprise housewarming and inviting EVERYBODY. And then continues as Billy and Teddy's apartment, much against their intention, sort of becomes the afterschool hangout of all the adolescent and young adult superheroes in New York. Because it's safe and there's always someone there to feed you and listen to your woes (even if Billy and Teddy are both at class, you've got even odds of running into America or Tommy or David or whichever young mutant just needed a couple days' vacation from home and is crashing on their couch.)

It's much more of a sitcom than an adventure story. The only throughlines between issues are the character arcs, which are pretty low-key - Billy and Teddy maturing into their adult powers and their adult relationship with each other, Tommy and Billy figuring out 'brothers', America reconciling herself to having a home base and friends, Loki Loki-ing around, Eli figuring out who he is and how he needs to use that, and so on.

They do occasionally do stuff like fighting giant robot dinosaurs or whatever but the stakes are never much higher than the personal ones and it never interferes with their lives more than a couple days. Most of the issues are much quieter than that, though - there's the one where Kate brings them a stray dog with a broken leg even though they don't want a dog, no really, besides their apartment doesn't allow dogs, and it ends up getting passed around among half-a-dozen young heroes before David points out that it probably has an owner and then finds its owner.

There's the one where David and Tommy finally start dating and it's a three-act play of ridiculousness; there's the one where they help a young runaway figure out how to negotiate the health care and benefits system; there's the one that's just an entire issue of Loki lying on their living room carpet whining at length about her problems while Billy and Teddy carry on their daily life around her and ignore her, and then feed her sausage and bacon-flavored pancakes for dinner and call Verity to pour her into a cab.

There's an issue where Bruce Banner, Thor, Captain America, Spiderman, Iron Man, and Hawkeye all get de-aged back to toddlers and Captain Marvel drops them at Billy and Teddy's place for babysitting while the remaining adult Avengers try to fix it. (The Young Avengers fix it without them). The Squirrel Girl vs. Loki experiment happens in this one too. The twelfth issue is a sickeningly fluffy comedy of errors about Billy and Teddy both trying to surprise each other with the best one-year-moving-in anniversary they can. And then it just keeps going forever in endless issues of well-written YA fluff.

The chances that Marvel would actually make that are, like, 0%, though, if only because it's clearly aimed at a slightly older audience than Young Avengers is meant for. ...Maybe somebody will fanfic it someday.

Actually though if I could pick any one Young Avengers series to get it would be a movie trilogy. :P You didn't specify comics series, so that counts!

Because if they keep doing comics eventually they will fuck it up completely, because comics always do, but if they do a reasonably good movie, there will be enough movie fanfic for me to dine out on for years. Also, I would love to see some of these characters get a substantial incarnation with simplified/re-imagined backstories.

Set the first movie after whatever MCU does with Civil War, with a similar origin, i.e, the grown-up superheroes have fucked up big, so it's up to us kids come together to try to fix at least the small things.

I think for the initial team I'd want Billy and Teddy (both with much, much simpler backstories, possibly related to HYDRA experimentation, but with similar powers, and still adorably in love), America (America needs no backstory), Kate (who does not yet know Clint), Cassie (who hopefully will not be totally ruined by Ant-Man), and Eli (Ditch the MGH, keep Isaiah.) And maybe a Vision-like splinter of JARVIS as their on-base backup, depending on how AoU goes. Make Eli the main character and the main plot be about Eli's backstory somehow coming forward to haunt the present, because Isaiah Bradley fits really well with what they've done with Cap and SHIELD in MCU and what they're almost going to have to end up doing with Civil War. And it's a story that needs a movie adaptation. Billy and Teddy stay Billy/Teddy as ever, Kate and Eli have a will they/won't they thing going the whole time that ends with Kate kissing America and Eli/Cassie.

YA II can do a heavily-altered-to-make-more-sense version of the Nate/Iron Lad/Kang storyline, probably with more connections to the actual Iron Man movieverse. YA III is them dealing with an adolescent version of Loki who has suddenly appeared, homeless, in Manhattan and is claiming zie's different from the old Loki; super-simplify the kid!Loki backstory but have the basic dilemmas be the same; they end up having to team up with Kid!Loki to fight a big!Loki who may actually turn out to be somebody's out-of-control reality warping.

Call me, Marvel Studios, I'll throw together some spec scripts.