I love a lot of things about new Marvel movie season. Top of the list is seeing my favorite actors gleefully making idiots of themselves in every available interview and on every available surface upon which their faces can be displayed. However, the downside is that every time a big fandom event comes around, reporters and editors get this dumb, terrible, no-good idea that actors should confront the works fans make for themselves. An otherwise fine recent interview with Sebastian Stan, for instance, devotes several paragraphs up top to some verbal reaction shots to sometimes-erotic art featuring Stan and his character, Bucky Barnes. (One elicits “That’s—wow. Strong.”)

Fellow reporters, just don’t do this. It’s tired, it’s smug, it’s punching down and it can’t be fun for the people you’re interviewing. Generally it harms and humiliates the fans. Maybe you can try a different woman- and queer-shaming tactic, like talking about how gross and unnecessary Emily VanCamp’s Sharon Carter is and how bisexuality doesn’t exist. If you report on fandom without actually talking with fans and figuring out where they’re coming from, you may as well just be aggregating hot takes. Don’t be lazy. P.S. Fans are wonderful.

Anyway, for those playing along, I saw Captain America: Civil War on 3-D IMAX on Friday and loved it. Will I be writing about it? What kind of question is that?

• Actors have bigger problems than journalists playing slash chicken. In the U.K., the Guardian lays out why working-class actors are a disappearing breed, and what that means for the arts and anyone who doesn’t come out of Eton.
• Actually, as long as I’m on my high horse about newsroom standards (once a copy chief, always a copy chief), for anyone who ever wants to draw some analogies about “frivolous lawsuits,” here’s the truth about that McDonald’s hot coffee case.
• Okay, back to big problems. Pacific Standard has a beautiful piece by Eva Holland on the Northwest Passage, which didn’t exist until very recently. “Cruising Through the End of the World” looks at shipping, tourism and the Inuit people caught between changes on virtually every front.
• More essential reading, on another insidious topic: “How the Rhetoric of Imposter Syndrome Is Used to Gaslight Women in Tech.” Of course, this doesn’t just apply to STEM work, because human nature can be terrible in any field it occupies.
• Ready for some adventure? I mean, Civil War is made of emotional whiplash, so I can’t freely recommend it unless you’ve girded yourself. But “The Battle Over the
  Sea-Monkey Fortune” may be up your alley. It’s a wild ride beginning to end.

Many thanks to Kelsey for permission to use her A+ Cap Cubed fanart as the featured image of this post.