#MCU vs 616

[maukree]

Masterpost with all parts So, I did a deep dive into WinterIron circa 616 like (not) a total asshole—because I fully recognize that writing a hyper-specific, canonically obsessive fic about Tony and Bucky in the Marvel 616 comicverse and expecting MCU-only fans to keep up without at least a "the fuck kind of AU is this?" head scratch is a bit of a dick move. And here we are. Comics fucking deliver. I promise. But do you actually need to read them all to get and enjoy what happens in any 616 fic you come across? Nah. Honestly. You don’t have to (unless you want to, in which case, welcome to the abyss) to get through the basics. FYI, this isn’t an all-encompassing timeline of Tony and Bucky in comic books—because I don’t have a year, and you don’t have all day. Their individual stories don’t start with Civil War (which, by the way, actually deserves to be called a 'war' in 616) or end with Fear Itself. But I’m covering their key arcs—picking and choosing shit as I please that I felt was relevant through my winteriron goggles—from Captain America: Out of Time (Bucky’s baggage) and Invincible Iron Man: Extremis (Tony’s baggage), through the pre-Civil War mess, the war itself, the aftermath, their intersections, and then stopping at Fear Itself—because I respect my own need to occasionally shower or something. Anyhow, if this pops off and everyone suddenly decides to start reading comics… sure. Hit me up for more. But even if that’s not happening, feel free to click that Keep Reading button for Part 1 and appreciate my ability to cram years of comic book history into an image limit. I was even nice enough to find you some links if you want to give it a proper shot and read comic books (oh, and that Marvel Unlimited subscription they have for reading comics fucking slaps, just saying. And no, they are not paying me to say it): *links direct to marvel.com, but don't click there yet, obviously. The Invincible Iron Man (2004–2007) Captain America (2004–2011) Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) Fear Itself (2010–2011) If you read this part you will know where Tony, Bucky and Steve are just before 616 Civil War properly kicks off.

You clicked! I am so sorry for how long this is. Force-quit the app to escape it at any stage. The images are after each plot arc and I am in love with the endless scroll Tumblr does to accommodate so much visual content. So, the way I look at it, for me it really begins around the Invincible Iron Man: Extremis time, when they kicked off the The Invincible Iron Man (2004–2007) series, so lets get that shit out of the way. Not that it’s shit, but Tony’s definitely not having a good time. (And no, it’s not because Bucky killed his parents—didn’t happen in the comics—nor because he suspected his bestie Steve was about to start a rival gang just to flex at an airport for 4.5 seconds and call it a “war”.) Anyway, the point is: MCU canon ≠ 616 canon. The Marvel 616 comicverse is the gift that keeps on giving to the MCU, which picks and chooses what it likes (the rant is over in 3, 2, 1... since I adore MCU.) So, before Tony ever crosses paths with his (hypothetical, not actually canon there either) man-love Bucky in comic books I've mentioned above, here’s what’s happening with him. Extremis: #1-6 When this starts off, Tony has been out there in the comicverse pretending to be the boss of Iron Man for ages—like, “Oh yeah, I totally just fund this guy/bodyguard and lend him to S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers occasionally”. Incidentally, he was actually stuck wearing the Iron Man chest plate to stay alive for a while before that, and has complex relationship with his suit and with his ability to look at himself in the mirror. He is working himself half-dead in his garage to the background of folks hating on Stark for military contracts that he uses to fund other projects. It’s an awesome 6 comic books arc, but the gist is that a shady biohacker named Maya Hansen (Tony’s ex, because of course she is) and her equally shady colleague Aldrich Killian (yes, that guy, but way less Mandarin cosplay this time and he does peace out very quickly) cook up Extremis—a next-gen super-soldier serum for US government, yup. Maya wants to cure cancer or something, but lacks money (hence working for the military for now), the government stops paying for her program and she decides to hit Tony up, lies her ass off, and sets someone on him for show to demonstrate to the powers that be that her biotech is just this good and can take down the most advanced armor in the world (aka, Tony's shit.) Tony gets his ass absolutely handed to him by a poster child for domestic terrorism juiced up on Extremis, since Maya's shit is the bomb. His suit has been getting more and more clunky as he makes it more powerful, he can't react in it fast enough, gets very squashed under a car, breaks himself a lot, has a mid-life crisis, and decides, “Screw it, let’s put that nightmare fuel in me instead so I can chat to my tin can better and really lean into the whole Iron Man thing. Fixing all these bones I am just after breaking and a ton of internal damage wouldn't hurt either.” Maya's down to help, since Tony might've been a good fuck, and she fancies herself to be a good person, so Tony makes some modifications to how Extremis works and it... works. Fixes him right up with the promise of growing new organs should they need to be grown, makes him faster, stronger, able to mentally pilot the suit with a thought, effortlessly connect to tech using his mind and even form his under suit (flight suit) over his body and … officially way too powerful for his own good.

Execute Program: #1-6 Or, as I like to call it, “That one time Tony’s own tech betrayed him and he went, ‘Okay, maybe we do need some rules.’” This starts fresh off Tony’s Extremis glow-up, and he’s doing what he does best: building way too many suits (sooo many kickass suits called argonauts), fighting bad guys, and making Fury and the Avengers increasingly suspicious because he keeps being late to shit. (Sorry, guys, he’s busy being a futurist, obviously, and frankly, he’s kicking almost too much ass.) To be fair, their paranoia is kinda justified, since Tony’s brain is getting hacked by Yinsen’s son (huge angsty point for Tony for not saving him), who is hijacking his entire nervous system using the tech Yinsen originally implanted into Tony for the Taliban—right before waking him up and going, “Hi, you owe me your life.” So, the basic plot of Execute Program is that Tony starts assassinating some high-profile assholes responsible for Yinsen’s death—all without knowing it. For a while he's convinced it's not him and makes a big deal about it with Fury but eventually even he can't deny it, at which point Tony hits existential crisis #872, is very unhappy about being mind-fucked, and ‘paroles’ Maya out of jail by blowing a hole in a wall to see if his former gal-love will help him deal with it. At the end of this arc he manages to break free of the programming and survive, but his suits do a fuck ton of damage in the process, and he's now officially realizing that he’s become a walking, government-grade security risk—just because of how awesome he is. To quote him: “Every superhero is a potential gun (whether they act on their own or not), and last time I checked, guns require registration.” Now, this whole arc is meant to explain why Tony is firmly on the pro-registration side when Civil War rolls into town. It's a stretch, but some other shit leads up to Civil War and the 'need' for registration, but this is sorta where he's mind is at, and this is where we leave him for now before Civil War kicks into gear. P.S. Some multi-ship snacks from 'Execute Program', because 616 contains multitudes: Spidershield: Spider-Man (Avenger-adjacent, menace-certified) casually calls Cap cute during a mission while hovering over him within kissing distance. Starker / IronDad: during the same mission, Tony loses his absolute shit when Peter gets hurt and goes feral. Stony: Look, 616 is basically the Tony & Steve Show—but if you need specifics, there’s always that time at the end of this arc when Tony dramatically knocks himself out by shocking his own heart (thinking it would kill him) to stop Cap from getting obliterated by his own rogue suits. Because, you know. Normal super hero behavior.

Alright, so we’re leaving Tony where he is—on the pro-registration side, deep in his own moral and existential mess (I’ll unpack what the story is with registration more later, in the next part, because hoo boy). But now, let’s talk about Bucky. Because, wow, a lot is going on with Bucky around this time, though it's completely unnecessary to know exactly when this happens, since comic books tend to constantly contradict each other and forget some canon-points exist (on this note, Tony is actually hella tall in comic books, and he's mostly drawn with blue eyes, although sometimes it's brown eyes due to the coloring and Bucky's mostly drawn with very dark eyes, and the blue eyes is really more of a Sebastian Stan thing, for which he love him for. On another unrelated note, Dum Dum Dugan is alive and kicking and working with S.H.I.E.L.D, but it's neither here or there. I digress.) At this stage, Bucky and Tony haven’t officially ‘met’ yet, but Tony is vaguely aware of his existence, mostly as Steve's long-dead-but-actually-not-dead ex-partner/sidekick who has been doing Very Concerning Things in the shadows. And, to be fair, the dude has been busy too. So yeah, while Tony is spiraling about accountability and unchecked power, Bucky's been out there being the literal embodiment of both, working against his will for some VERY bad guys. Since Bucky is all about Steve and his storyline, he initially pop-ups in the Captain America (2004–2011), so let's talk about Steve and his feelings for a bit. Steve... has a lot of feelings by the way, so for all of your Stucky shippers, this is the comic book to read.

Captain America: Out of Time #1-6 Aka “Steve has a lot of feelings™ while occasionally punching things and still finds time for his complicated love life.” So, Out of Time starts off with Steve being… well, Steve. Which means brooding way too hard about war, his place in the world (as Captain America—again—it’s more of a title and a suit in comics, kinda, though he is the OG), and whether punching Nazis in the ’40s was somehow easier than dealing with modern geopolitics. He’s having flashbacks galore—about Bucky, WWII, and the several times he’s watched people he loves die (if you take a shot every time he stares sadly into the distance and remembers shit, you’ll be wasted by page 4). At the beginning of this run, he’s mostly juggling personal life + professional trauma, spending quality time with his ex (*Nick Fury, who he technically broke up with in the ’90s, but we don’t talk about it—Marvel also wishes those issues didn’t exist. Looking at you, Fury #1-4 (1994) and his actual ex-but-still-kind-of-current love interest, Sharon Carter (S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 13, absolute badass, we love her). Meanwhile, in the Villain Corner, Bucky is currently in deep-freeze, and Red Skull is trying to buy him (for evil purposes, obviously). But Winter Soldier is way too useful to his current owner, who calls him an ‘item’ (it’s all very gutting and transactional), and Red Skull isn’t willing to part with the Cosmic Cube (important-for-plot-reasons, reality-warping bullshit in a box)—not even for the privilege of having a brainwashed supersoldier on his payroll. Which turns out to be a bad call for Red Skull, because Bucky gets defrosted anyway and immediately blows his brains out (Winter Soldier: 1, Red Skull: 0), since his current owner wants the Cosmic Cube, and Bucky is an incredibly efficient, very sexy, and deeply tragic murder machine who follows orders. [Unlike his silent MCU counterpart, 616 Winter Soldier is chatty (ish). He’s brainwashed, yeah, but he talks, makes decisions, occasionally argues over tactics, but you can tell there’s a mind-fuckery hellscape happening behind the scenes. But he is also aware, somewhat, which is the point. Sure, he’s traumatized as hell, but in a very “this is my job, and I do it” way. He has conversations, meaning that once they fix him later, it’s less about split personality and more about remembering who he was. (Which, you know, brings a whole new level of pain to this. Yummy, yummy angst.) Quick sidenote: Bucky is younger than Steve in the comics (an army brat/orphan), and he was basically groomed (yup…) into being Cap’s teenage sidekick—gun, mask, and all—at 16.] So, all of this is happening, with Bucky out and about causing trouble, while Steve is busy having a ton of dreams about him (not the sexy kind, unfortunately—more blood and gore), which turn out to be foreshadowing (shock). Long story short, Bucky kidnaps Sharon (not for relationshippy reasons, let’s be clear), and at the moment Steve gets Sharon back and Bucky seriously considers gunning him down, it finally clicks for Steve—Bucky is alive. Steve makes a face (there you are, the real love of my life—awwww ignore me), Bucky still considers gunning him down, but the confrontation doesn’t actually happen since it’s all about the feels at this stage and the mission to save Bucky.

Captain America: Winter Soldier #1-6 In which Steve goes on a manic quest to find his buddy, Tony is devastated about capitalism, and Bucky has an identity crisis before running off to be broody and sexy somewhere else. This arc is packed. Like, really packed. Coming off the world-shattering realization that Bucky (war buddy, partner-in-justice and emotional crutch)—is alive and well (ish), Steve is a bit shook. He did actually call him “Bucky?” during that initial meet, to which Bucky, of course, replied with the iconic “Who the hell is Bucky?”—delivering both an emotional orgasm for any Stucky shippers and an immediate MCU meme template. And yet—this is the best part for me, lol—despite literally calling him Bucky, Steve proceeds to not actually believe it after it happens. Fury has to wave stacks of receipts in his face for ages (“Here’s a ton of proof that your bestie has been a brainwashed, undying assassin for decades.”) before Steve finally believes, rejoices, gets upset and very conflicted, but then goes absolutely bananas trying to find him. And because Fury is nothing if not dramatic, Steve gets a whole-ass file on Winter Soldier lore conveniently dropped at his place—and let me tell you, this thing is THICK. Pages upon pages of experiments, war crimes, and Bucky being terrifying as the Winter Soldier. It’s delicious, I want it on my wall. At this stage we have the first official Tony & Bucky intersection. Steve and Sam (still called Falcon, professional bird enthusiast, talks to them and everything) need help tracking down the Cosmic Cube, which Bucky currently has. And Tony is an absolute legend who helps them do it. Despite actively running a multi-billion dollar empire, Tony stops everything to help them track down Bucky and the Cube. But—massive conflict of interest incoming—the location they need to attack is a bit of a problem (understatement) because Tony’s company is in trouble if he goes with them. So Tony, looking like he wants to die inside (he really does, see the images), provides Steve and Sam with his jet and all the resources they need but ultimately can’t go. And you can tell he’s real cut up about it. You can. I can. Everyone can. Though at this stage he obviously doesn't know Bucky, but... it's all in the details. Anyhow, because Iron Man team-up isn’t happening for this specific epic quest to save Bucky, Steve and Sam go in alone (Sharon with S.H.I.E.L.D. at their heels and all), find Bucky, and then it’s ON. And when I say on, I mean full-blown, action-packed, ridiculously cool fight scene with Steve throwing hands and heartfelt speeches, and Bucky countering with kicks and emotional repression. Steve desperately tries to break through to Bucky, reminding him who he is, but Bucky is having none of it. (He’s definitely feeling something, though, because he’s looking a little too emotional.) [Here’s the thing: Bucky has surfaced before? The people controlling him even kept records saying not to send him on long-term missions too close to home, because when they did he tried to escape. The memories are still there, buried deep under decades of trauma, brainwashing, and whatever the hell Russian winter does to a man.]

They fight. Fight some more. And Steve pulls the ultimate “If you don’t remember me, kill me” move. At which point Bucky absolutely tries. (And I love myself a consistent man.) During the fight, however, Steve gets his manly hands on the Cosmic Cube, which, being the overpowered reality-warping bullshit box that it is, does what it was written into the comic book to do in the first place: it restores Bucky’s memories. WHOOP. Except… Bucky remembers EVERYTHING. And, uh, that’s a lot. And seems very traumatic and painful. An absolute mental overload, horror, and a whole lot of “I should be dead” vibes. Steve is hopeful, trying to reassure him, but Bucky is noping the fuck out. He's not doing well, immediately spirals into guilt, and decides the best course of action is to disappear. Which he does by fucking off to brood alone. Far away. In a sexy, tortured assassin way. My favorite six issues of Captain America pre-Civil War, hands down. There was some other shit in between Out of Time and Winter Soldier, some bad guy plays and all, some stuff about mutant registration, but I’ll get to that a bit later, in Part 2, as a general thing about what started the Civil War.

Captain America: Twenty-First Century Blitz #1-4 God, where do I even start with this one? Well, I suppose with the important shit. And what’s important is that Bucky is in the wind (sorta), but he and Steve meet up in London and spend a lot of time yelling at each other in terror, there’s a blimp involved, and also, we’re still technically on the WinterIron timeline, I swear. This arc is not my favorite. It’s not bad, but, as mentioned, it’s mostly just Steve and Bucky screaming at each other. (Which, if you ship them, is yummy. If you don’t, it’s a lot of yelling.) Bucky’s former 'owner', the one who sent him to kill Red Skull and get the Cosmic Cube is a bad dude called General Lukin. This guy is still around, and he is now fighting for control inside his own head with… Red Skull. Yes. Red Skull is not fully dead and is mind-fucking him. (Which is very ironic, if you’re into that kind of irony.) And because no villainous plot is complete without an evil megacorporation, Lukin is also deeply tied to Kronos—which just so happens to be the same shady-ass corporation Tony is having problems with on his end (and also the reason he couldn’t go and help out Steve with Bucky). So, Steve is after Lukin. Bucky is after Lukin. Everyone is after Lukin. Tony is… somewhere, likely wishing he was after Lukin. Oh yeah, and there’s a blimp. For reasons best left to comic book logic, Lukin has a blimp. And he has a bad, evil plan, because, well, comic books are full of those and it’s a Captain America story, so it needs at least one Nazi-adjacent asshole pulling some overcomplicated bullshit per issue. Honestly, this whole arc is barely worth mentioning. They win, obviously. The bad plan is foiled, and the blimp does not succeed at being evil. But Bucky gets his arm blown off, so that’s kind of an exciting bit if you want to draw parallels between this and the MCU. The art is nice too. And because this is a Winter Soldier story (as much as it is a Captain America story—oh, just wait!) and consistency is key, Bucky, being a bit of a loner, fucks off immediately after their glorious team-up. But—a bit of a loner is not entirely a loner. Bucky has actually been working with Fury in secret since getting his memories back (surprise!) and is expecting a shiny new arm for his troubles. (So this is probably where all the “S.H.I.E.L.D. working on Bucky’s arm” fics come from, but I’m just guessing here.) Steve doesn't know this is the case and is still angsty AF over the fact that Bucky keeps bailing before they can cry and talk about their deep emotional bond. I have no idea what Sharon thinks about this, but she is a grown-up badass with a flying car (think red Lola from Agents of the S.H.I.E.L.D TV show), and she seems more sympathetic than jealous.

The end of these three arcs is where Bucky and Steve are just before Civil War kicks off, while—just to remind you all—Tony is off having his big “I am pro-registration” revelations and generally making decisions that will ruin his social life for the foreseeable future. Now, if anyone knows for sure where London happens in relation to Execute Program—before? After? In a quantum state of both?—don’t tell me. I don’t care. The timeline is a chaotic mess on the best day, and that’s before you factor in the fact that there are approximately five million other comic book series running at the same time, with characters popping in and out of different issues. Spider-Man has his own stuff going on, Fantastic Four is around, Avengers are a thing, Wolverine is doing his thing too, and it would be crazy to rope all of this in here. Besides, I bet it makes way more sense to people who were reading these comics as they dropped and kept up with literally everything. For the rest of us, losers, if you REALLY want to know all the tie-ins from different superheroes and whatnot, there’s a five-hour YouTube deep dive for that. I feel asleep around hour three and blacked out most of it, even though it's good, so go forth and suffer accordingly, if you wish to know about comic books pre and during Civil War.

Okay, but why are we talking about Civil War in comic books If there’s fuck-all winteriron in it? Great question. And the answer is: because it matters. And, yes, at this stage you either had to close Tumblr to get rid of my post (I know it's long) or are into it anyway, so... Look, I know what you’re thinking—no interaction at all yet. And that’s fair. Comic book Civil War is not at all the MCU Civil War, which was essentially a Steve/Tony drama bomb with Bucky stuck in the middle like a stressed-out single child, unless you count Peter (shoutout to winterspider) and Wanda, sorta. But: the state of the Steve/Tony relationship in 616 Civil War is a direct precursor to how Bucky and Tony actually interact when they finally do meet in 616. Their first real meeting, and everything that happens after it, is soaked in the aftermath of Civil War—not just in terms of plot, but in how they act around each other (which is fascinating, by the way, but we’ll get there). To run a bit ahead here, just to keep you interested, by the time Bucky and Tony actually share a scene in comic books in this timeline, Tony has already:

Had his entire relationship with Steve imploded in the most public way possible.

Spent months (years?) being the face of an extremely controversial movement.

Lost a lot of friends, made a lot of enemies, and had his personal values challenged to hell and back.

Been through an identity crisis about a thousand times.

Had to experience Spider-Man asking him WHAT THE FUCK, TONY? (maybe not in these words exactly)

All while Bucky has been:

On the run from Steve.

Alone.

Having a Very Bad Time.

So, yeah, even though Bucky and Tony don't exactly cross paths a this stage, the emotional damage absolutely carries over into their interactions later. This is the end of Part 1 of this 'brief' recap, since I am re-reading to make this and taking screenshots as I do. I will cover the actual comicverse Civil War in the next part.

Masterpost with all parts

[gunsandspaceships]

Tony/Space

There are many differences between MCU and 616 Tony Starks. One of the most drastic distinctions is how they see space.

616 Tony sees space as his home. A safe, quiet, happy place he can always go to when he feels overwhelmed by life on Earth. Even if they don't last long, he loves the moments there and looks forward to spending more time in space and going on adventures, either alone or with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

MCU Tony had a traumatic experience when he first encountered the void of space and the dangers that resided there. And then his second visit brought even more trauma and loss.

He dreads it, and the beauty of the cosmos cannot outweigh the horror it inspires in him.

[lesbiancaptnamerica]

well that’s one way to cope with things

[batcavescolony]

Captain America #1

I definitely see why they didn't keep 'Camp Lehigh Child Mascot Buck Barnes' for the MCU but look at him ❤ he was just a baby

[ghostly-wisteria-tea]

One of the possible reasons to why I made MCU Khonshu's personality more dominant enough to "assimilate" and slowly influence 616 Khonshu's personality is that MCU Khonshu is an officially banished Deity from the Overvoid. As in, he can't enter the Overvoid and is stuck on Earth.

Now hear me out, this may sound like a bad thing, but this end up resulting in another thing for MCU Khonshu. Resilience, Adaptability and I have this headcannon that MCU Khonshu sort of, "evolved" himself to survive outside the Overvoid.

He has no followers (his Avatar don't count), no kingdom, no traditional worshipers, no active cult, or a temple, practically everything 616 Khonshu still have.

Technically speaking, MCU Khonshu is a homeless hermit, forever wandering the Earth but never able to reach home. What even is "home" to him anymore when he has been kicked out of them, both his mortal home in Egypt (the temples), and his immortal home (The Ennead/The Overvoid).

But he still survived, even on the smallest scraps, no matter how poisonous it is. Sure he may have gone a bit crazy from it, (understatement since he is basically a very unhinged batman). But he still manages to maintain his self-determination. In other words, his Form. Surviving out of sheer force of will, and even if he does need his Avatar, he can still act and think independently enough if he needs to.

616 Khonshu though, still have a following, an active cult, priest. A stereotypical god in the "glory days". I wouldn't exactly call it as a proper cult, in previous issues there used to be 3 high priest, which was probably written out. The god still have a traditional cult in other issues that still worship him. So theoretically, it should make him stronger. But another thing I noticed is now "formless" and abstract he have to be, and how spread out he have become to maintain that following.

He was put away yet still able to act like he never was away at all, as in, he can still communicate outside. In a way, existing in 2 places at once. But this results on him literally spreading out like slime.

MCU Khonshu in the other hand, was imprisoned and was never able to communicate outside of his ushabti prison. Once he is in, he is stuck. Ammit was never able to communicate outside of her prison, she never picked nor called Arthur Harrow. Arthur just decided in his own free will to make a cult for Ammit even when the man never even talked to the Goddess in the first place. Probably made stuff up just to charm people to join the cult.

So 616 Khonshu is more Space than Form, while MCU Khonshu is more Form than Space.

Both of which are a choice to survive.

By being more Space, 616 Khonshu can exist in different places at once, like being able to still communicate and affect Earth even when he is imprisoned in another planet. Like he was still able to talk to Marc in prison, in the MCU universe, that can never happen.

But for MCU Khonshu, he was banished so he had to force himself to maintain his form and whatever is left of his old self. Practically evolving to be sort-of independent from both the other gods, the Overvoid and the mortal followers. Becoming a hermit, an eternal wanderer without a home to return to.

Maybe I'm rambling again but try to compare Ice and Vapor.

Both are water, just different states of it. Ice is water when solid, when vapor is water but completely evaporated.

Ice have a more direct and physical effect, since it is concentrated and solid enough that it can be physically touched and wielded. You can stab someone with an icicle, using it like a knife. Then drop it and move on because there are better alternatives. Though you could say that it also made MCU Khonshu cold and hard, but if he wasn't he would melt and evaporate to nothing.

Vapor though is more, abstract in a way since you can't see it, but it is so spread out and thin that you can barely notice it. Until someone pointed it out or you have to really, really pay attention to the signs to things you can't see.

Harmless at face value, until you remember that it can still have an effect if it is in very, very large quantities, because you are breathing it in. It enters you and then becomes a part of you. Or you become part of it.

So what I'm saying, is that MCU Khonshu made himself more to Ice, so he can maintain some physical form and self-determination, at the expense of his following/cult.

While 616 Khonshu, made himself to Vapor to maintain the spread of his following/cult, at the cost of his physical form and self-determination.

So this is where MCU Khonshu resilient come to play. It is the result of MCU Khonshu trying to survive without his fellow gods, his worshipers while not being crushed by the elements of the changing world. This made him "hard as ice". But he made his own character by himself, without depending on anyone. He can survive without any attachments and not conform to the demands of both the immortal and mortal world.

Compared to 616 Khonshu, if you take away the cult, the followers. 616 Khonshu will eventually fade like air since he pretty much made himself dependent on all of them.

So when both characters go face to face, it is character to character alone. None of the cult, the mortal followers, nor the earthly attachments. Just them at their rawest form.

BUT 616 Khonshu doesn't have a solid Form in the first place, not as solid as MCU Khonshu. Like how a Termite Queen is vulnerable if alone since she depends on her soldiers for security.

So when it does come when for some weird shenanigans, 616 Khonshu tries to "assimilate" his counterpart to eliminate the competition and change MCU Khonshu to conform. Only to end up with a stubborn cockroach who refuses to die, and found himself adjusting to match MCU Khonshu's personality, not the other way around.

Vapor starts to finally have a Form. It's a very slow process but Vapor can turn to Liquid, then to as solid Form.

So very, very slowly. 616 Khonshu's own personality starts to conform and be more like MCU Khonshu.

[lilsoupboiii]

Marvel Easter Eggs, Notes and Other Stuff: Deadpool and Wolverine

- TVA

- Happy Hogan

- MCU is Earth 616

- Paradox

- Thor crying over Deadpool on a monitor (kinda implied to be an upcoming Avengers movie, but it’s also just the scene from Thor The Dark World when Loki “dies”)

- The Wolverine variants

- Noteably: Comic Accurate Height, Weapon Omega, Patch, Old, Crucified, vs Hulk, Cavillrine

- Half buried 20th Century Fox Logo in the void

- Johnny Storm (Fantastic Four 2005)

- Pyro (X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand)

- Sabertooth (X-Men)

- Toad (X-Men, X-Men: Days of Future Past, not the same actor)

- Deathstrike (X2, not the same actor)

- Azazel (X-Men: First Class, not the same actor)

- Juggernaut (X-Men: The Last Stand, Deadpool 2, not the same actor)

- Cassandra Nova

- Deadpool does Spider-man web thwips

- Scarlett Witch stone wall

- X-23 (Logan)

- Elektra (Daredevil, Elektra)

- Blade (Blade, Blade II, Blade Trinity)

- Gambit (X-Men Origins Wolverine, not the same actor)

- The Punisher, Quicksilver, and Daredevil were all apart of their team before they died

- Also presumably Magneto

- Elektra is indifferent to Daredevil dying (because Jennifer Garner’s Daredevil is Ben Affleck, her ex husband)

- Reference to so many Punishers

- Reference to only one Blade (there’s a new upcoming Blade movie)

- The Deadpool variants

- Noteably: Lady Deadpool, Dogpool, Headpool, Kidpool, Cowboypool, Dancepool, Nicepool

- B-15

- Captain America’s Sheild prototype from Iron Man and Iron Man 2

- Tony Stark’s Arc Reactor

- Pepper Potts Forbes cover

- The picture of Tony and Peter with Peter covered (some people argue Peter’s covered because everyone has forgotten about him, but I assumed it’s a nod about Sony’s licsensing issues)

- The kid Iron Man helmet from Iron Man 3 confirmed to be Peter Parker

- Reed Richard’s mention

- The Fantasticar

- The Ice Cream Truck (Moon Knight)

- Quill (X-Men: The Last Stand, not the same actor)

- Callisto (X-Men: The Last Stand, not the same actor)

- Bullseye (Daredevil, not the same actor)

- Psylocke (X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: Apocalypse, not the same actor)

- Arclight (X-Men: The Last Stand, not the same actor)

- The Russian (The Punisher 2004, not the same actor)

- Alioth (s1 e5 of Loki)

- A sentinel’s foot

- Asgard in the void

- Thanos Black Order Ship in the void

- Hellicarrier in the void

- Tony Stark’s Hot Rod (Iron Man and Iron Man 2)

- Deadpool’s Chimichanga Truck

Easter Egg Masterlist

[chaos0pikachu]

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as people seem to think?

(Hope I'm doing this right 🙏. I've never done this before.)

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as people seem to think?

Hmmmmmmmmmm this is a tough one cause I have to think in context of fans just making characters who are evil into woobies or characters where the narrative says they're good people but aren't.

Like, off the top of my head there's Mew from Only Friends who's positioned in narrative as the moral center of the show and the one "in the right" at the end but I find to be a thorough self righteous hypocrite.

Then there's characters like MCU Tony Stark, whom in the narrative is positioned as flawless just sad but justified in his sadness and decisions. MCU Tony fans make it out like he's had the hardest life of any mcu character (ridiculous also a silly metric to even judge characters imo). The meta that proposited Tony was the "most female coded char in the mcu" as well as suggesting Bucky & Steve sexually assaulted Tony metaphorically in Civil War is an example of this imo

I don't fully put blame on fans b/c narratively the mcu is all over the damn place, and it's pretty clear in a Doyalist pov both Disney and probably RDJ didn't want Tony to look "bad". Which is why Civil War is so lopsided towards Tony's pov and why the narrative twists itself to not acknowledge the inherent hypocrisy of Tony being scolded for a child dying in AOU whilst also recruiting a different child (Peter) into a super battle.

I can't fully blame this in a Wastonian way on Tony because the reason Peter is in Civil War at all exists outside of the narrative - Disney got the rights to Spiderman and wanted to introduce and integrate him into the MCU as quickly as possible.

The idea of putting people in supermax prisons and taking away their human rights is also one that the mcu isn't actually equipped to handle, which is another reason the narrative is so lopsided towards Tony and his "side". It's trying to both sides a human rights topic without making it a human rights topic.

This is why I also think that 616!Steve isn't as moral as made out to be at times specifically because of Avengers vs X-Men. Like, Steve and the Avengers are great at dealing with like, normal superhero problems, but they really suck at dealing with mutant problems. They've struggled with connecting the two and being allies when the X-Men have needed it. This is also an outside issue because of the different editorial dept heads, and the difficulty in combining the two franchises into a cohesive singular story. Also that a bunch of white guys don't fully understand the concepts of systemic discrimination.

So Avengers vs X-Men really showcases the holes in this divide especially where Scott and Steve are concerned. It's a frustrating event and only serves to make the Avengers look self-righteous and hypocritical rather than morally in the right.

Like, no offense but Scott is right, Steve and the Avengers can't just show up on mutant island and demand to take one of their own into their custody what the fuck? Y'all can't roll up to someone's house like a bunch'a cops and be like "no we don't need a search warrant give us the child for the good of the world".

But this is really why whether in the MCU or the comics (including other cape comics like the DCU) you can't like, expect radical politics. At best you may get like, liberal politics, but both are corporate owned and as such are subjected to corporate interests. Avengers vs Xmen and hell, Civil War the movie are both examples of this imo

So, ironically, I find both MCU!Tony and 616!Steve less "morally good" than fans make out.

Disclaimer however neither are "evil" either. I don't think MCU!Tony is evil~~ don't harass me fuckin hell.

The idea that characters are either wholly "good" or "evil" is kids cartoons stuff and I never watched Steven Universe alright?

Other characters off the top of my head include Stiles from Teen Wolf (pack mom my whole ass), Kikyo from Inuyasha (the rant in my soul about this lmao), Yusuke from Yu Yu Hakusho, WWX from MDZS, pretty much any Greek characters and that's all I can think of off the top of my head lol

Ask game: unpopular opinion edition <3

[maukree]

Masterpost with all parts Welcome back to this increasingly unhinged 616 winteriron timeline that was supposed to be a quick primer for my fic and has somehow turned into a full-blown, too-many-bad-jokes-per-paragraph alternative wiki. If you’re still reading this, you’ve either developed an unhealthy attachment to my mediocre sense of humor, or you’re just curious to see how many things I’ll get wrong, which is fine by me either way.

When we last left off in Part 4:

Tony deleted his entire brain like it was a corrupted zip file because Norman Osborn stole his job as Director of the no longer existing S.H.I.E.L.D. by shooting a dying alien queen on national television.

Bucky, now wearing the stars and stripes (and somehow making it hot—sorry, Steve), is moonlighting as “guy Tony secretly trusts with literally his entire mind.”

Steve is still dead. (But also: comic books. So, not for long.)

Peter is emotionally ping-ponging between every dad figure he’s ever had, while Nat, Sharon, and every other female is there to remind everyone that sometimes our boys do have girlfriends, which is canonically inconvenient, but somewhat relevant.

Everyone is mad at Tony, who is in a coma and technically brain-dead.

Jarvis was a Skrull. Still not over that. 

A quick note from your exhausted, ship-crazed tour guide:

This recap series has become so much larger than intended, and I am, frankly, sick of narrating Marvel events designed specifically to injure our already injured blorbos while trying to get to the fucking point. So going forward, we are skipping content unless it is:

Directly relevant to potential winteriron tension/interaction

Supremely shippy for other ships

Too sexy, sad, or stupid not to mention

So. Let’s see how far we can get in this part—from Tony's brain-melted coma to his eventual reboot, to Tony and Bucky finally working together, Steve doing his signature “surprise bitch, I’m back,” and all roads leading to Fear Itself, because Marvel can never just let anyone heal in peace, and at least I’m here for it. 

New Avengers (2004–2010) #48–#60 (ish)

While Tony is getting ready for his Sleeping Beauty arc, Bucky gathers the New Avengers crew in Steve’s old place and tries very hard to turn it into his own MCU-style Avengers compound where they all live, train, and pine for each other.

Now, since we’re aggressively cutting content unless it’s relevant to ships or breakdowns, the important thing that happens here is this: Bucky and Peter are finally in the same room. That’s it. That’s the post.

Okay, fine, a little more: those five seconds of on-screen interaction that birthed an entire winterspider ship get canon support here. Peter’s there. Bucky’s there. They talk. There are panels. They breathe the same air. I blacked out slightly from excitement, but trust—it happened.

Plot-wise, Luke and Jessica are off having the worst parenting arc imaginable, because Skrulls kidnapped their baby and everyone (and I do mean everyone) is running around 616 trying to beat intel out of any remaining lizard still in hiding. The power of friendship prevails, the baby is found (yay), and in the process we learn Bucky has allegedly never been close to a baby before (?), and Peter announces—with a lot of surprise—that babies don’t actually smell bad, which honestly makes it sound like he’s never met one either. Boys, please.

Bucky’s base officially gets named Avengers Hideout, Bronx, plot is plotting toward Siege (ugh, another Event), but the key takeaways are:

Peter keeps calling him “Bucky Cap” like it’s a cute nickname. Bucky hates it and keeps asking him to quit it.

Peter unmasks in record time—doesn’t learn from his mistakes, obviously—because he wants Bucky to see how pretty he is.

Jessica straight-up admits (in front of her husband, no less) that she was totally in love with Peter in high school on the account of him being so pretty just to point it out to Bucky, and I just… yeah.

Everyone keeps sitting down for family dinners while still wearing their uniforms, and this has so many found-family vibes it needs shit written about this group specifically yesterday. I would, but… nobody would read it.

Oh—and Issue #55 puts Peter on top of Bucky on the cover. Physically. As in: on him. And that’s the moment I briefly forgot this was a winteriron timeline and started vibrating at frequencies only my dog could hear.

But circling back: two seconds after unmasking, Peter has a small meltdown about it (relatable), doesn’t trust anyone, and wants to crawl back into the safety of full-body spandex. That said, he’s still on the team (Bucky’s real pretty too), they act as illegal Avengers, do some adventuring with Dr. Strange, fight Osborn’s evil version of Avengers, nearly die a bunch of times during cathartic superhero shit, Bucky gets to yell “Avengers Assemble,” and Peter pouts because he never gets to say it. 

The whole stretch of this is basically winterspider fanservice in disguise, and I, for one, am not complaining. But I should probably stop thinking or talking about it before I completely defect from winteriron and write 80k of Peter stammering while Bucky Cap cleans his gun.

Captain America: Reborn (2009) #1–6

Essentially the mini-run where Steve returns to Sharon through the power of eye contact with Bucky.

After all this build-up and me repeating “Steve is dead” about a hundred times, he was not so much dead as he was... time-stuck? Yeah. Marvel got tired of resurrection by cloning, so we get a super special time gun that launched Steve into his own greatest hits playlist. As the run goes on and other things are happening, Steve is bouncing around his own past like a patriotic screensaver, reliving key moments of his life on an endless loop. (It’s philosophical for like five pages and then becomes deeply boring, very fast.)

In the actual present-day plot everyone suddenly remembers that Steve was hot, important, symbolically useful, and very marketable. So, naturally, Osborn wants him, would love to slap a fresh coat of fascism on the shield, and trot him out like a rebranded action figure next to his other evil Avengers. To make this happen, Osborn teams up with Crossbones and Sin, and they start executing their weekend-at-Bernie’s plan to put Red Skull into Steve’s body.

Bucky, meanwhile, just wants his other man back. For normal, definitely not gay reasons.

What Tony is doing exactly during this specific run is a bit… unclear? Captain America: Reborn #1 dropped in July 2009, which lines up with Tony’s World’s Most Wanted, so he’s either just starting his “on the run with a dying processor” arc or already napping through it all, too medically unconscious to be helpful. If you know what happens first, congrats. I don’t care. Steve’s back by the time Tony wakes up, so let’s not split hairs.

Anyway, the bad guys get to Steve first and yank him out of the time vortex. They plug Red Skull into him like a USB drive of evil, Steve wakes up a bit wrong, throws Bucky around a little, but fear not: Stucky prevails. 

That thing happens. You know the thing. The thing where Steve sees Bucky’s pretty face and immediately has an emotional aneurysm. The Red Skull is yeeted out, Sin takes a near-fatal injury to her face (which we’re calling a literal and metaphorical facelift), and is carted off to be annoying—but now also creepy-looking and a lot less hot—in some later arc.

I am sure it will not surprise anyone to find out that Steve spends the final pages of this run brooding on the roof instead of celebrating because he’s allergic to joy and addicted to foreshadowing.

Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) Stark: Disassembled #20–24

(Tony commits medical fraud on himself while his boyfriends squabble over his coma body)

So, post-World’s Most Wanted—triggered by Secret Invasion, public disgrace, and Bucky deciding “hey, maybe I’ll just walk away from you with everyone else for dramatic effect”—we kick things off with Tony being officially, clinically, but not quite spiritually bricked. The issue opens with him lying in a bed like a hot paperweight while Bucky, Nat, Maria, Pepper, and Thor stand around—Bucky specifically looking way too emotionally engaged for someone who hasn’t been banging Tony in secret all along.

“We bring him back. We have to.”

And may I gently remind the class that, even if we set aside my unrelenting ship brain for five whole seconds, so far in the canon continuity we have:

Tony giving Bucky the shield and making him Captain America within an hour after Bucky tries to murder-kill him

Tony designing him a suit (collab-style, no less) and protecting him from the government

No joint panels for X amount of time until battle with Skrull

Tony sending the digital ghost of himself to Bucky, labeled “do not open unless you miss me”

And yet Marvel’s official stance is: nah they barely interacted, so you don't get those panels.

Excuse me?

Then why the everloving fuck is Bucky, presumably a nearly-stranger, in this arc at all and acting like he shares Tony’s pillow every night? It’s like they want you to fill in the blanks here with shippy shit just so you keep paying for their comic books in the hopes of seeing some established heroes finally come out.

Anyway. While Tony did nuke his entire brain to protect Peter (and, like, some other heroes, presumably—but mostly Peter, even though he has no clue how pretty he is at this point), Tony, being Tony, obviously left behind a reboot plan. And that plan includes a totally chill, completely medically sound procedure that requires:

Extracting Pepper’s arc reactor, which she has for reasons

Putting it in Tony’s chest (for the first time ever in 616, so this is his MCU origin finally catching up)

Zapping him with Thor’s lightning, because we’re just skipping every actual defibrillator in the hospital

Using Steve’s shield because of symbolism

Totally normal ER behavior. Ten out of ten doctors recommend rooftop resurrection. But we won’t question comic book logic, because if we did that, well, why the fuck are we here? 

The plan is solid, let’s go with that, but there is a minor hiccup with Pepper. She’s understandably cranky—her husband Happy is very dead, and Tony had to pull the plug on him during Civil War, which sucks. Still, the moment she hits us with “why does he get to be saved?” I have to step in and say: girl. He gave you this arc reactor to save your life, your own flying suit, and your CEO badge, not to mention an orgasm the last time you’ve interacted, unless you faked it, but that's on you. At least let the man be electrocuted into consciousness without sounding a bit ungrateful.

Which Pepper does, of course, but only after Steve comes back from being freshly de-time-looped and convinces her to help. One guy already sporting a suit of Captain America by Tony’s deathbed wasn’t enough, clearly, but Tony was always an overachiever.

They take Tony to the roof of the hospital (because that’s where all high-stakes neurological procedures happen), and Thor tries to zap him back to life, but this unfortunately doesn’t work immediately. Bucky is there, by the way, hovering next to his head like a sad war widow after helping carry Tony out, and is essentially drawn just about not looking down at his face like he’s memorizing it. Again I ask: why can’t winteriron be canon? Like… gimme a What If, Marvel. What If for popular fanfiction ships would slap.

So they try, but Tony, in true diva form, is like, no thanks, not waking up today, which is valid, because emotional hurt/comfort was not invented by fanfiction. 

It takes a lot of fuckery and a few comic book issues to eventually get him to wake up, and Bucky is, sadly, not there when it finally happens, but neither is Steve (suspiciously). I am going to have to assume here that they both stepped away to get a quick break before returning to his side, and possibly shared a shower to conserve some water. 

The day is saved by Dr. Strange, who rolls into town with “Trust me, I am a doctor” dialogue, which never gets old.

Boom, Tony wakes up, the arc is over, but what follows is just… devastating. The arc ends with us realizing that he doesn’t remember Civil War, doesn’t remember fighting Steve or losing him, doesn’t remember being Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Secret Invasion. And, obviously, after all of that… doesn’t remember Bucky anymore. 

Bucky, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. But listen: I believe in you. If there’s one constant in the fandom, it’s that Tony Stark will fall in love, given literally any opportunity and no matter the roadblocks. And, yay, you didn’t actually snap his mom’s neck in this one, so you’ve totally got this. Go, ruin him a second time. For love. Come on, honey, time to move in together. 

Which they do. They do move in together. I mean, okay, technically they are both using Avengers Tower as Avengers after this (or about to), and I’m not actually clear on if they both live in it, but we’re gonna assume they do. Yes? I honestly haven’t checked, as it’s been a while, but this is your golden era of heroes (fact), we have an Avengers team in the Tower again, so let’s not dig too much into whether Bucky is ‘crashing’ with Steve for old time’s sake or not. Cool? Cool. So, it’s been established—possibly in canon, and definitely in this house—that Bucky moved in, either into his own suite in the Tower or into Tony’s.

BUT before we get to the domestic vibes and unresolved sexual tension, we have to speedrun through one more crossover Event (I know, I’m exhausted too). Don’t worry, I promised lore restraint, and for once, I’m keeping that promise. Because Siege (2009) #1–4 is blessedly short and dumb in a fun way.

So here’s what happens just after Tony wakes up without Extremis, with an arc reactor and no memories of Bucky:

Asgard is hovering over some random Oklahoma field.

Loki and Osborn go full bitch collab and convince the government that Asgard is a threat.

Steve, Bucky, Peter, and some other warm bodies show up to unfuck the situation before it becomes World War Norse.

Ares and Sentry have a deeply unchill throwdown, and Sentry tears him into ribbons. It’s gross. Ares is super dead.

Tony gets invited to the fight while still running on maybe 3% battery and a single juice box. They hand him a wrench and his old suit and say, “get in, loser, we’re going to war.”

Asgard is blown to smithereens because Tony is taking his time, but we’re not going to blame it on him, for once.

Peter gets to punch Osborn for harassing him across the last six events and ignoring the restraining order.

When Tony does show up, he turns a helicarrier into a bullet to take down Sentry, who gets a bit upset that he went all murdery again (Yes, there is a panel. Yes, it’s as stupid-cool as it sounds. Shut up and let it happen.)

Sentry, over his own edgy nonsense, begs to die, and Thor respectfully flies him into the sun for a nap before he gets resurrected in some other event.

And then—most importantly—Steve gives up the shield. The basic tone of this is: “Nah, Bucky, honey, you’ve got this. I’m busy being promoted by the U.S. government to superhero dad-in-chief now that both S.H.I.E.L.D. and H.A.M.M.E.R. are gone, so keep the shield and, while you’re at it, keep Tony. I’m over brunettes and going to shack up with Sharon for a bit.” (Which we are totally cool with, since—I cannot state this enough—we love Sharon, and this is a winteriron timeline.)

So, the end of this event kicks off: Steve being in charge of them all, metaphorically blessing their union, which leads to Tony and Bucky being officially on the same team. Working together. In close proximity. In the Tower. With shared living spaces, presumably. 

Before they fully move in together to set the scene for perfect pining, we also get a pit stop in Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) #25, where we find out for sure that the backup Tony left was pre-Extremis. So, factory reset, for which the man is pretty much called lazy, because if there’s one thing you’d think you’d keep backups of, it’s your brain, but alas.

It takes only two of Marvel’s allegedly smartest men—Reed “I ditch my family for Tony during Civil War” Richards and Tony “I fucked up my brain for love” Stark—to build the Bleeding Edge suit, which now lives inside Tony, and honestly, I can’t believe Reed/Tony isn’t more of a thing as far as shippy shit goes, because they’ve got that bisexual genius mutual-respect-disaster dynamic, and it is right there. But I digress.

The rest of Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) is... not really my fave. Tony tries to fix his reputation, build Stark Resilient from the rubble of his company (idk, maybe Pepper not wanting him to wake up was because she drove SI into the ground, down to one helicopter and the logo), and revolutionize clean energy. But unless it’s relevant to Fear Itself or involves Bucky being lovingly exasperated while Tony does something reckless, I’m not covering the rest of this run. We’ve got enough emotional ruin on the itinerary already. Onward.

We make another quick stop at Captain America (2004–2011) #600–605—but first, a PSA: after issue #50, Marvel smashed the legacy renumber button. Who the fuck knows why, honestly. Timeline-wise: this specific arc happens before Bucky joins the Avengers. So, while Tony is doing his thing, re-downloading trauma into his shiny new Bleeding Edge brain, Bucky yeets himself back into solo plotlines for just a second. The plotlines happening in #600 and #601–605 are those that are too stupid not to mention.

Captain America (2004–2011) #600 is essentially Vampire Bullshit (yes, really).

This issue is a flashback inside a flashback and is set during the time when Bucky was secretly working with Fury during Civil War. Bucky sees surveillance footage of Tony and Steve’s friendship break-up, immediately decides Tony is too sexy to be such a fucking idiot, and has a sadboi spiral about a vampire mission from the good ol’ days with Steve for no reason. Because, oh yeah, in 616 we have full-ass Dracula lore, and nobody warned me about it before I got invested. I am only mentioning this because people are into vampires, and the art is fire.

Captain America (2004–2011) #601–605 is more of a filler too, but it has a ton of SamBucky vibes, and there’s some wild shit buried in the nonsense.

The plot of the arc is that Steve’s wackass clone—the one who’s been running around pretending to be the original—is back and has decided he is absolutely the real Captain America. And, logically, if you’re the Real Cap, you need two things:

Your own Bucky

Some sort of epic standoff at a historical place (in this case, Hoover Dam, which Evil Clone wants to blow up)

I’ve seen fanfic with less cracky premises, but let’s not get into that. When actual Bucky and Sam show up to put an end to the clone, they immediately get kidnapped, because of course. Clone Steve forces Bucky to dress up in his old Bucky suit (not the sexy kind of forced dress-up, tragically), and there’s a moment of “haha, look at the symbolism” before Bucky’s like “absolutely fucking not,” and some fighting happens. Sam gets his hero moment, Bucky ends things messily, and the clone gets his brains ventilated.

SamBucky shippers, you’ve got a lot of material here, so go read this. Do I personally care? Not unless they’re both thinking about Tony while it’s happening.

Now, important footnote that has absolutely no business making me feel things but does anyway: Nick Fury tinkers with Bucky’s metal arm and changes it to look and feel human. Because Natasha complained it was too cold. That’s right—this man is getting tune-ups because his girlfriend wants him to be warmer during post-mission snuggles. To which I say: boo.

I mean, sure, thoughtful gestures are fine, but the arm is iconic, and Tony would never complain about it. Tony would absolutely be into the cold-metal aesthetic. He’d imply or straight-up admit that he wants to do indecent things to it. He’d design a docking port, if needed. He’d name it. The whole “warm and flesh-colored” moment doesn’t even last too many issues, because readers (and the artists, probably) were like, “bring back the chrome daddy murder limb, thanks.”

In all seriousness, Bucky doesn’t actually spend a lot of time as an Avenger, because, let’s face it, he’s infinitely sexier as the Winter Soldier, but he does officially join the team alongside Tony, Peter, Thor, Clint, Wolverine and Spider-Woman, and dutifully, suspiciously consistently hovers around Tony in Avengers (2010–2012) #1–6. Does he do much during these issues? Debatable. Is he 100% looming like a broody protector from a soulmate AU? Absolutely.

But as it stands now, Tony and Bucky officially kick off Avengers Vol. 4 together, which means all those “Bucky is an Avenger” fanfics are comic book canon, babes. Whether those fanfic authors knew it or just manifested it through pure gay desperation, they were right. And while winteriron overlap here only lasts one arc, and it’s very sad that it is only one arc, that just means there’s more unsupervised shippy headcanon space between the panels for us to thrive in. Bless.

Plot-wise the arch is a bit… meh. Let’s speedrun it too.

Steve, now promoted to Grand Poobah of All Capes, pulls a bunch of new teams together and sticks my favorite disaster OT3—Tony, Bucky, and Peter (plus Clint, but we’re not calling it an OT4 yet, calm down)—onto one team. Then he has the nerve to tell Tony he believes in him, totally trusts him, but, like, also he’s not leading the team. That honor goes to... Maria Hill. Which. Okay. Sure. Let’s put the only non-super hero in charge here just so Tony doesn’t feel forgiven yet. 

Before Tony can spiral about it, Kang busts in from the future like a knockoff Doctor Who villain he is and starts ranting about how the team's future kids are ruining everything. Whose kids, do you ask? Great question. Tony and Bucky’s? Peter’s and literally anyone’s? No idea. But the plot is essentially a “spin the bottle of disaster lineage” situation, and Kang’s solution is to blackmail them into saving the timeline or something by using a doomsday device Tony once thought of but never built. So, pretty standard.

The arc itself includes time-travel shenanigans that I won’t pretend to understand. Something something paradox. The team splits, paradoxes paradox, battles happen, and eventually they punch the right number of problems to save the future. Yay, teamwork. Whatever.

But the shippy content is shippy as shit, for real. There is touching. There is Tony telling Peter he could kiss him while simultaneously Tony doing his “I’m the smartest bitch alive” routine while clearly trying to impress someone while showing off too much skin. 

I’m going to call out specific panels next because they’re so choice, but just know this: Avengers (2010–2012) #1–6 is short but shippy.

Okay, okay, the ones above are related to what I’ve described already in regards to Steve. A tasteful sampler for Stony shippers and to confirm the plot. And I’m not gonna post every single panel of Bucky lurking in Tony’s personal space (mostly because there’s an image limit and I do respect the platform… a little). BUT. I am gonna drop the best bits below. The hovering. The loitering. The tragic staring. 

Fine, it’s not that direct, as if, but yes, the following selection should be considered evidence_for_court_dot_png. Screenshots for the soul. Brought to you by someone who has stared at these pages long enough to astral project into the Tower HVAC system where Bucky is 1000% hiding between missions, watching Tony solder wires and trying not to feel things.

Exhibit A: They finish each other’s sentences. Yeah. I know. It’s crumbs. It’s microscopic. It’s blink-and-miss-it-tier. But when Marvel gives you nothing to work with but mutual trauma of losing Steve and two panels of syncopated dialogue, it’s not nothing. That’s foreplay. We are starving in this house, okay? Let me romanticize it in peace.

Or like—okay, maybe we’re not totally starving on the Starker front here (don’t yell at me, I contain multitudes), because at one point Tony’s suit just gives up on life, he starts free-falling like a hot brick, and someone—either Bucky or Clint, the art’s unclear but my delulu ass knows it’s Bucky—screams “TONY!” out of a hole in the wall instead of, y’know, fighting the actual villains. Priorities.

Peter, a hero that he is, immediately goes full-action scramble to save Tony mid-air while Tony, mid-plummet, casually calls him “kid” (identity porn alert), and then says, “I could kiss you.”

Sir.

Peter, to his credit, declines on the grounds of delicate skin, which: fair, but also, babe… Tony would definitely shave for you. Probably exfoliate too. I promise he could make it work.

I mean, maybe Peter refuses because deep down he knows he can’t come between one true love. He sees Bucky, sticking out from a wall hole in all that glorious anxiety, and he understands the assignment. Either that or he’s just playing hard to get. I respect the drama either way, can’t help it. I am so close to shipping all four of my boys, Clint included, in any combinations. Think about it. Winteriron (duh), Starker (must), Winterhawk (practically canon), Ironhawk (I am so tempted) and, of course, Winterspider (love). I digress again, sorry. 

This one’s more of a filler panel compilation, yeah, but it still delivers. Our boys are in sync, working together like they’ve definitely coordinated some covert tactical positions before (interpret that however you want). Bucky, once again, is framed so delicately on purpose, making sure Tony tells them what he needs from him and Peter. It’s the casual “I’ve got your back” energy from a semi-stranger, y’know. As soon as this mission’s done, they should all just—you know. Fuck.

Wait—no, sorry, wrong tab. I meant: Bucky and Tony should fuck. Peter can watch. Or, like, sit in another room and wait to be invited. Whatever works for the perverts reading this, I’m not judging and only reporting the vibes.

Obviously, I’m closing out the Avengers Vol. 4 evidence folder with this gem, because yes—it has touching. As in, Tony just got a little shaken and fucked-up (as one does), and who’s right there leaning in all concerned? That’s right: Bucky “I’ll die for him” Barnes, hand on Tony’s bicep like it’s muscle memory. He’s saying “Here,” which—okay, on paper? Innocent. But in context? It’s soft. It’s intimate. It’s “Sweetheart, you okay?” levels of tender.

Let’s assume for a minute that I’m not a full-blown ship obsessed crazy person here foaming at the mouth and reading into every panel like it’s a biblical text, but even then—what the actual fuck goes through a writer or artist’s mind when they’re like, “yeah let’s frame this with Bucky gently bicep-gripping Tony like he’s checking if the love of his life is still breathing”? Huh?

Tell me with your chest that isn’t deliberate. I dare you. I’m not going to insist it’s a declaration of love disguised as casual concern, but I am saying this is basically the comics equivalent of Bucky whispering “I’ve got you” in a fanfic and then carrying Tony bridal-style out of frame. So jot that down.

Vibration intensifies.

Alright, now that we’ve lovingly and obsessively established that Tony and Bucky were officially on the same Avengers team (canonically sharing air, a fridge full of Red Bull, and Peter), and that this blessed overlap gave us just enough panel crumbs to construct an entire alternate reality fueled by ship vibes and bicep touches, let’s look at what happens after.

While Tony remains on the team after that sweet little team-up moment in Avengers (2010–2012) #1–6, Bucky straight-up ghosts. Poof. No warning. One minute he’s leaning into Tony like a man who wants to be electrocuted back to life with him, and the next, he’s vanished.

Now, I don’t know exactly why his run as Bucky Cap-slash-Avenger was cut shorter than my will to live during Civil War and Secret Invasion re-reads. Maybe it’s because Steve not being Cap wasn't working out for the marketing team. Maybe it’s—yes—because the Winter Soldier aesthetic is just too hot to retire permanently (fair). Or maybe Marvel realized Bucky can only pretend to be emotionally stable for like six issues before the PTSD starts leaking out of the boots, and if he keeps sharing a frame with Tony, the bicep touches will get out of hand.

Whatever the reason, we pivot into something incredibly juicy.

Bucky’s got some personal shit to handle. And by “personal shit” I don’t mean repressing the urge to steal Sharon’s man in Captain America (2004–2011), but being put on trial for war crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier while brainwashed by evil communists. Not gonna lie, it’s one of my favorite arcs. Fuck, the angst is unbearable and hurts so good. 

Okay, so Captain America (2004–2011) #606–610 is not a filler arc, and I know I’ve cried wolf on that like ten times already, but for real—this one actually slaps. It’s got plot, it’s got emotional devastation, and it’s got Zemo crawling out of whatever ratty purple monologue hole he’s been lurking in just to make Bucky’s life worse.

Now, Zemo’s beef with Bucky is big. Like, giant man-child grudge levels. And this beef ends with Zemo outing Bucky as the Winter Soldier. Globally. Just absolutely fucking blows his cover sky-high. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows. And it quickly becomes a problem for many people—Tony included—who now has to defend the decision he doesn’t remember making to offer Bucky the shield. 

Captain America (2004–2011) #611–615, or The Trial of Captain America should’ve been called ‘Let’s Emotionally Eviscerate Bucky Barnes for Five Issues Straight While Tony Has a Slow-Burn Breakdown in the Background’.

I’m gonna be real with you, this arc is fucking devastating. Like, genuinely painful. Not "oh no the plot is bad", but the "I'm gonna lie face down on the floor for 20 minutes after reading this and think about metal arms and unspoken love". Bucky gets thrown in prison, Tony nerfs his arm down to “just a guy” strength levels so they don’t take it from him entirely, and everything spirals from there like we knew it would.

This arc is so good, Marvel actually dropped a whole omnibus just for it. Character deep dives. Legal drama. Violence and introspection in tasteful grayscale. The court of public opinion don’t give a single flying fuck, and as far as the media is concerned, Bucky’s guilty before he even sets foot in the courtroom, because who cares about being a weaponized trauma victim when there’s a sexy scandal headline to run.

Tony is out here defending Bucky at Avengers meetings, going toe-to-toe with Clint like “Hey maybe don’t be a bitch about my sad ex-Winter Soldier boyfriend, thanks.” And you know Clint’s only mad because he sees it too. He’s like “wow, Tony’s very emotionally involved in this, should I be jealous?” (Answer: yes, always.)

Jokes aside, while Bucky is trying very hard to rot in a jail cell with dignity, Sin is out here popping up out of the woodwork again. She picks up a new himbo sidekick, goes full daddy-issues-core and decides she’s going to be the next Red Skull. She now also looks the part and there are too many panels of her making out with no face on. Ugh. She kidnaps Nat and Sam since they are Bucky’s support humans, and lures him into escaping custody for a rescue mission.

Bucky, of course, breaks out, saves the people he loves, and then walks his pretty ass right back to jail. Voluntarily. Because he wants to face the consequences. Because he wants to take responsibility. Because he’s like “yeah I was brainwashed and had zero free will but I still feel like I deserve to be punished for it” and if you’re not sobbing yet, you’re stronger than me.

Oh, and just when the trial actually goes his way—somehow—after he literally pleads guilty, and they sentence him to 20 years with time served (read: “you can go now, sweetie”), he gets deported to Russia. Because they already ran their own shady little trial in secret and decided they want their war weapon back. So the arc ends with our boy being sent to a fucking gulag just as he finds the will to want to be free, like he hasn’t suffered enough. 

Captain America (2004–2011) #616–619 is where Bucky goes to an awful-awful Russian place, mentally dies a bit, and Tony is mentioned twice so I had to read it twice.

So, America yeets Bucky back to Russia like he’s a slightly defective product, and now he’s stuck in a gulag, getting punched for sport while slowly dissociating into the cold steel of his trauma. Fun? Hell no. It is bleak. Bucky’s not doing great. There’s blood. There’s pain. There’s soul-crushing monotony and flashbacks to violence, in addition to real-time violence. And just to twist the knife, there are not one but two separate mentions that “Iron Man” might visit—as in, “Hey, maybe your hot billionaire will come get you out?” (almost). And then... crickets. Tony, come pick up your future husband from the Russian fight club before I scream.

Tony, for reasons unknown, doesn’t visit. But Sharon and Nat, being badass motherfuckers, hop on a plane to go figure out what the fuck is happening in Russia, because someone has to. Steve, for his part, is doing his own thing in the U.S., but I’m going to go ahead and headcanon that he’s spending this time babysitting Tony, making him tea, and deleting Russian headlines from the Stark servers.

Anyway, our boy Bucky is spending most of his days getting his ass handed to him in pit fights while wearing the same sad grey hoodie of despair. He’s isolated, miserable, and yet still hot enough to make the snow in that Siberian awfulness melt. He’s also being reminded that oh yeah—he trained a handful of elite sleeper agents to infiltrate the U.S., and they’re still out there, frozen like evil murder popsicles. And if he doesn’t help stop them, someone else is gonna wake them up and let the body count begin, which he eventually will do in his Winter Soldier comic book run (which I am also not covering here, but I might do a from Winter Soldier to Revolution timeline, just for fun, because you all need to know how he gets Alpine, at some point in the future.) 

In present, however, Nat’s like “fuck this, I’m done waiting for my bestie” (and I’m using his words here, because Bucky keeps calling her his best friend every ten minutes), so she punches some bad guys, wrecks some shit, and assists Bucky in breaking himself out. The whole arc is God-tier content, cross my heart. I am here for the quiet devastation in Bucky’s eyes, the offhand Tony mentions, and the subtle, soul-shattering reminder that no matter how far he runs, the Winter Soldier still owns his nightmares.

Anyway, this arc ends with the jailbreak, and, just for drama, let's say that the real prison is the guilt Bucky carries. And the other real prison is me, in hell, because Marvel refuses to just let him be held by a certain genius. But we’ll get there. If not in comic books, then in fanfiction.

So… Fear Itself. The end of the road for this entire recap. The tragic gay crescendo. The dramatic mic drop that Marvel fucked at our collective heads just when things were getting soft.

If you’ve been here since the beginning (blink twice if you need help), you now know this whole cursed journey from Extremis/The Man Out of Time to this point is essentially two parallel, occasionally intersecting trauma arcs.

Fear Itself is the moment everything unravels again, beautifully and horrifically. It’s not just about Bucky dying (kinda) or about the ship angst that comes with that (although, hi, yes, that’s here and I’m sobbing into my keyboard). It’s about him stepping out from under Steve’s red-white-and-blue shadow, finally—not to replace him, not to cosplay patriotism—but to carry his own name and start working on his own legacy to eventually ditch being Winter Soldier and become Revolution waaaay later. It’s also about Tony breaking his sobriety for… reasons. 

To me this Marvel event doesn’t just close out a plotline, but very much closes a loop. Fear Itself is where my fic (last plug) taps out, too—because yes, obviously, I take some creative liberties and give these blorbos a happy ending. 

Gather ‘round, kids. It’s lore time. Once upon a clusterfuck, Odin locked away a spooky little number under the ocean. And then, slightly less once upon a time, Red Skull decided to help Hitler win the war the old-fashioned way, flexed a casual genocide of a thousand of Namor’s people to summon some eldritch hammer of power, which immediately crashed down to Earth in a very normal "Hi, I’m here to ruin everything" fashion.

Unfortunately for Red Skull at the time, he couldn’t lift it, so this evil hammer just sat there in Antarctica until Red Skull’s deeply unwell daughter Sin shows up, picks it up, gets a makeover that does nothing to fix her very unsettling face, becomes Skadi, the herald and unlocks the real boss of the game: The Serpent. Also known as Odin’s creepy brother, also known as the OG All-Father, also known as Evil Sea Dad. And in Fear Itself #1 Odin takes one look at this cosmic horror comeback, goes “SHIT,” slaps Thor so hard he needs therapy, packs his sparkly god bags, and hauls Asgard’s ass off the planet, leaving the rubble behind like, “Good luck, Midgard, I’m out, don’t @ me,” dipping the second things got spicy just as Tony was going to use Stark Resilient to build them a new home instead of the one destroyed in the Siege and create some jobs for hard-working Americans in the process. 

In Fear Itself #2, the Serpent chucks a bunch more evil hammers at Earth, and these babies are pure apocalyptic energy designed to possess anyone who can pick them up with unresolved rage issues. Juggernaut is like “yoink, this is mine now,” Hulk gets one too and turns into the green embodiment of a nuclear anxiety attack. Titania, bless her scary wife soul, grabs one and says “I’m built for this,” and points her hubby in the direction of his. Others follow, but you get the idea. Serpent goes full Oprah, giving out divine rage steroids: You get a hammer! You get a hammer! Fuck you, everything’s on fire! Earth is then immediately on fire, and humanity’s general response is: “Uhhh hey Avengers? Y’all up?”

Fear Itself #3 is the issue that neither I nor Tony are ready to fucking process. Like, if you’ve got coping mechanisms, good for you, but I personally had to go and hug my doggo after reading it for the recap, and I will be purging my phone of those screenshots as soon as I post this.

Here’s the quick and dirty: Odin, in peak absentee space-dad form, locks Thor off-world because he disagrees with his grand plan—to burn Earth to stop the Serpent—and I’m not even going to get into that because my blood pressure is already high. On Earth, the Thing picks up one of those evil rage-hammers, but this issue is really all about Bucky.

Bucky, fresh off his Siberian trauma vacation, is back in the field, back in the stars and stripes, trying his best to pretend he's fine and definitely not still bleeding guilt from every pore or missing Tony. He rolls up as Captain America to fight Sin, who, and I say this with my whole chest, is the worst. She goes on a rant about how it's her destiny to kill him (whatever you say, twat), and then that rotting cheeto of a fascist feral child rips off Bucky’s metal arm, guts him, and beats him to death with her hammer.

I can’t even be funny about it. I mean, I will, but just know I am heartbroken, even though the dying doesn’t stick, obviously. Tony’s not on the page when it happens, but he feels it in his soul, okay? Somewhere, wherever he is at that moment, something slips from his hand and he looks off into the middle distance, because he just knows he’s lost the one person who never asked him to be anyone but himself.

That’s where we’re at. Bucky gets murdered by a Nazi in a shitty bondage outfit. Fuck you, Sin, and fuck you, Marvel, for making me go through this.

As a side note, the evil hammer powers amplify the supers who picked them up, so there’s death, carnage and all-in-all shit all over the world, with people going crazy, dying by buckets, riots, looters, etc, the Serpent feeding on fear. But who cares, Bucky’s dead.

Okay so, Fear Itself #4 is where I throw my hands in the air, say “fuck it,” and recap it alongside Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) #503–509—because even though Bucky is dead for now, the ship goggles are still on and I refuse to take them off. Half the ship might be six feet under as far as the reader is concerned at this point, but sorry MCU, your impact was weak, and that never stopped us before.

Now, in the main event issue, we find Tony standing over Bucky’s very dead, very ruined body, and he’s got the helmet on. Which is… interesting. Because in basically every other important conversation Tony has, that helmet is off. The consensus here should be that if he takes it off, we’ll all see the tears and collapse. So yeah. He’s got it on. He’s grieving. And yes, we noticed.

Nat is openly crying over Bucky’s body too, our girl has range, Steve picks up the shield, and Thor, fresh off being grounded by his shitty space dad, shows up to help punch things. But the real butterfly effect of Bucky getting bludgeoned to death is this: Tony relapses straight after. Total coincidence. He sacrifices his sobriety as soon as he leaves the room Bucky’s in, pours a drink in the middle of a ruined world, and prays to Odin since, according to him, he’s giving him the only valuable thing he’s got left.

Eventually, Odin (who is, in fact, also the worst) transports Tony off-world to a magical forge because sure, let the sad tin man cry into the bottle surrounded by dwarves while he tries to make some weapons to help the Avengers beat the Serpent, and maybe he’ll feel better. He doesn’t. He angsts the whole time, but he does build new weapons for the Avengers, and at the end of this arc he shows up back on Earth in a new, shiny, spiky Iron Man suit, still under the impression Bucky is dead.

Next slide, please. Let’s, for the moment, stop being heartbroken because of Bucky and get heartbroken for other reasons.

Fear Itself #5–7 is three issues of watching the Avengers get their collective asses handed to them while everything explodes and hope gets dropkicked into the sun. Like, things are bad. So bad that even Peter—sweet sunshine boy, human serotonin dispenser, the kid who once tried to high-five a symbiote—starts having a crisis because he thinks they’re actually gonna lose. And when Peter loses hope, that’s when you know we’re absolutely fucked.

For a bit, Steve and Thor are out here trying to hold the line, but Steve’s shield gets smashed, and Thor takes on like five rage-hammered kaiju at once and barely crawls away with internal organs still attached. There’s a whole lotta death in these issues, and when Tony shows up, decked out in a magic-ass suit made of grief, dragging along weapons for the rest of the team, and Odin gives Thor his Ragnarok sword and armor before the final fight, Thor uses it to end the Serpent—only to go down himself like the noble himbo he is.

Technically a victory, though Sin is alive to cause trouble in some other arcs, but it’s giving zero joy. No joy to be had at the end of this event. Unless, y’know, you count Fear Itself #7.1 that—phew—confirms that Bucky is alive.

No way a babe as hot as this gets to die. Not on Nat and Fury’s watch. In a flashback, we learn that just before Tony walks into the room with his “My God… it’s true” entrance, Nat and Fury injected Bucky with a serum. In fairness, it wasn’t guaranteed to work, and they needed Steve back in the game and figured traumatizing him into reclaiming the shield was a solid strategy. Normal friend stuff.

So yeah. Bucky technically flatlined, but got better. Was it sketchy? Extremely. Did they tell Steve right away? Absolutely not. When Fury eventually spills, Steve punches him. Repeatedly. They say their goodbyes, Bucky gives Steve the spotlight back, and slinks off to his own solo title, while Tony doesn’t find out Bucky’s alive for so long. Unfair, if you ask me. Perfect shippy blind spot for fanfics, if you also ask me.

I’m not here for canon. You’re not here for canon. We’re here for the sweet, unhinged dopamine injection of winteriron endgame fix-it fanfic based on MCU anyway, okay? That’s the content we deserve. That’s the timeline we manifest. Or something. Idk, I’ve been losing the plot for the past 20k of this recap, and can’t think of anything else to say that doesn’t end up being a massive rant about how Tony and Bucky are soulmates, damn everything.

And that, folks, brings us to the end, since we are skipping that rant. I wish I could give you a chirpy little bowtie ending, but this is comics. It always gets worse before it gets rebooted. No final thoughts. Get out of here knowing that winteriron prevails either way, and in any canon/headcanon. Unless it’s some other ship, since every ship is valid.

Masterpost with all parts

[smbcky]

it's so silly but mcu sam calling bucky an old man vs 616 sam calling bucky a kid constantly is SOOOOOOO. like i know it's bc 616 bucky started working w steve as a teen + sam worked w steve for many years before bucky came back so steve's perception of him just stuck but it's still very endearing to me. analyzing all the differences under a microscope and enjoying every single one of them like it's a five course meal 🍽️

[tonybicyclestark]

Earth 2010 X Earth 616 Crossover AU Ficlet

A/N: Apparently I missed Stephen's birthday - which i didn't know was largely decided to be in Nov - so for that let me just share a snippet of THE crossover au that actually started the whole Earth 2010 world in my head. What started as a 'what if MCU tony & steph ended up in a world where they were married for YEARS pre-titan pre-14000605 time escape' idea ended up here. so here's smth from that that lives rent free in my brain. The focus is still on our E-2010 boys tho the MCU boys are there in the background.

"Steph..." Tony's voice - his Tony's voice - spoke out shakingly, cutting into the discussion Stephen was having with his alternate self about the infinity stones.

Stephen turned around to face his husband only to find him looking at him with concern etched into his every feature. "Tony?" Stephen asked, stepping away from the universe hoppers and moving closer to where Tony was in his lab. Tony put a hand out in front of him to stop Stephen in his tracks. Stephen could see the other Stark & Strange glance at each other with the same perturbed expression they'd been wearing since they got here, but he ignored them.

"What the FUCK do you mean that the infinity stones have been affecting you for years?" Tony spat out, looking directly at him.

Stephen blanched. He slipped up. He forgot that this was ever something serious and he let it slip. Now he knows that Tony won't let it go. Stephen hesitated, trying to find the best way to word it without his over-protective husband going all nuclear on him.

Tony was getting impatient so before he could shout again, Stephen sighed and relented. "I only realized it after I came back from the Dark Dimension. After I used the time stone like that the first time around."

"Spit it out Stephenie."

"Each infinity stone protects it's user to a certain degree when it's being wielded by them. Especially when wielded individually." Stephen paused.

"We're the protectors of the Time Stone and it's wielders so it protects us when we use it." The other Strange echoed immediately, as if on instinct.

"Yes. But each stone is different. That's why the Aether reacted differently to Jane Foster vs the Power stone with the Guardians and so on. I am the keeper of the Time Stone and thus, the Time stone protects me.... across all of time." Stephen finished slowly. "You're protected across all of time?" His Tony asked, his brain already forming the connections in microseconds. Stephen nodded.

"Essentially I had and have the time stone's energy around me. Always. Since always. Even when I had no clue about its existence or of the mystic arts." "So you're saying that each infinity stone emits a unique energy signal and you're implying that the different energies interact when in contact with one another?" This time the comment came from the other Stark. But before Stephen could reply, his husband finally spoke. "How long Stephen?"

Stephen didn't drag it out this time. "Since the Tesseract. In your lab. It shocked me."

"You're telling me you've been getting electrocuted by infinity stones SINCE 2010?! AND YOU DIDN"T TELL ME?"

Bonus other's reactions to this yelling match:

Clint: Shouldn't we be glad that the one civilian we had when all that mind stone, Ultron shit went down was the one civilian who was apparently immune to said magical artifact's powers? Bruce: You know I did wonder how Stephen seemed to keep his composure every time the rest of us were being affected by the mind stone.

Steve: Hmm. Makes you wonder how else Stephen's been helping us even before we knew it. Thor: Oh yes, I remember back when Mjolnir met Strange the first time. I always wondered why she tried talking to him, because I thought of Stephen as a non-magical being. She only ever reacted like that around my brother Loki or my mother. 616 Tony: You're telling me your Stark let his husband be around dangerous things like Loki's scepter? Let him be around you lot and the trouble that follows the Avengers around? 616 Stephen: Excuse me?! What are you -

Natasha (snorts audibly at 616 Tony's question): As if anyone can stop Stephen Strange from getting whatever he wants or stop him from doing whatever he thinks he should do.

Rhodey: Please, Stephen's been a part of the team since the start, even if he was just a doctor back then. There's no way Tony could stop him from getting involved. Not when he was involved.

[batcavescolony]

Captain America

Ignoring the 'literal child soldier'ness, the army really got him a little dress uniform and took him to meetings and everything?

[gunsandspaceships]

Behavioral Analysis (Navigation)

Which Tony is the real one: Good boy, Stage vs Backstage, Why we fight, Alter Ego, Kid, 16 years old, 17-18 years old, 21 years old, Big man in a suit of armor, Badass Motherfucker, Gryffindor 1, Gryffindor 2, Stealth mode, Sakaar, "Villain", Abuse, Revelation, Torture, Mary Sue?, Flaws

He is not a narcissist and his self-esteem is not high: Easy test, Lack of ambition, Not High Self-esteem, 616 Low Self-esteem, More of 616, No NPD, Quotes

He is an introvert: Jon Favreau commentary, MCU, 616, Socially awkward, Absent-minded

And didn't like to party: Big post, And he just said it himself, Why did he go to them

His natural habitat: a Lab

Details about his childhood: Facts, Own will, Inner child, Bravery, When he met Rhodey

He is actually a very strange billionaire: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Comfort, Chores, Wallet, Not a businessman, Communism

Tony's masks: Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Age of Ultron, Civil War, Homecoming, Infinity War and Endgame

Tony sometimes says things about himself that are the opposite of reality: "I'm fine", Drinking game, "Playboy", Joke about bathroom in the suit

Food, Not a vegetarian, Cooks among G6

Heavy sleeper: Proof, Nightmares, Best places to sleep, Little Spoon

Tony is a dog at heart: Why, Saint Bernard, Cat person, His animals

But 616 is a panda

Snow Man

Crisis Management 101

Fight or Flight

Old Tech, Nostalgia

Barrel of Monkeys

Space

Tony vs Thanos

[bigskydreaming]

I love your blog and I respect your opinions/reasonings in general, but Tony didn't blackmailed Peter into coming with him. This is a misinterpretation of their scene, IMO. And a lot of things in the MCU are different than in the comics; same as a lot of things in the marvel universes or different than in the 616 universe. I don't think you have to like their relationship (I'm fine with it, but it's not my favorite), however I'm not sure the reasons you gave for it being "bad" are very sound.

With all due respect, I'm not super keen on going down a MCU discourse rabbithole, so I'm going to keep this short, but Peter's literal first reaction was to say no to going to Germany and Tony's literal first response was to threaten to tell his Aunt May that he was Spider-Man. That might not rise to your personal threshold of what constitutes blackmail, but pressure was absolutely applied, and the degree of it has no bearing on the fact that it went hand in hand with how its literally illegal to take a legal minor across state lines - let alone out of the country - without their guardian's permission and yet Tony was the point person and face of the 'superheroes shouldn't be above the law' faction while cheerfully exempting himself from following any legalities he found inconvenient.

Lots of people also don't comment on the fact that the climax of the film is Tony pursuing Steve and Bucky to Siberia....without authorization from the oversight he and his side had spent all movie agreeing to submit to. At a certain point when he had the same information Steve and Bucky did, he just decided to act on his own in pursuit of them much like they decided to act on their own in pursuit of their agenda. But because Tony was NOMINALLY the head of the 'adhere to government oversight' faction, it went completely under the radar that he was doing the exact same thing he spent all movie condemning the other side for.

This all goes hand in hand for me. It exacerbates the situation with Peter, in ways where the set-up for getting Peter to Germany might not have irritated me as much without those compounding factors. But according to everything Tony paid lip service to all movie, the responsible, law-abiding reaction to being aware a minor under the legal authority of an adult guardian was engaging in risky vigilante behavior would've been.....to tell that guardian and bring them into the loop of what was happening and work out from there whether the minor joining the superhero endeavor was even in the cards, once the guardian was made aware of everything. Instead, Tony not only did the exact opposite, he used the enabling of Peter's further vigilantism vs shutting it down by alerting his guardian as leverage to help pressure Peter into assisting him with a specific endeavor.

Sorry, but to me that's blatant hypocrisy and something the script could have sold as part of Steve and his side's attempt to recruit Peter's help in that fight, but does not fit with Tony and his faction's stated goals and beliefs whatsoever. They broke the theme and messaging of their own movie just to shoehorn Peter and Tony into the dynamic they wanted, and that smacks of bad storytelling to me, which is more my issue. I genuinely don't care enough about Tony to be trying to smear him or his character with this in any way, I'm just like.....irritated that the entire MCU dynamic is built upon a foundation of shoving a narrative square peg into a round hole just to arrive at a desired end point....ie Peter as Tony's personal protege.

And I'm aware the movies don't have to follow the comics, but I'm a longtime reader of the comics, and keenly aware that the entire basis of the MCU dynamic WAS rooted in Peter and Tony briefly having a mentor/mentee dynamic during the comic book Civil War storyline. Like the MCU didn't fabricate it out of nowhere, they were directly inspired by that, and I have my issues with the comic book storyline and characterizations and so dislike that it effectively spawned the entire MCU Peter and Tony dynamic despite being only a blip in their respective overall character arcs and histories.....

But there, my biggest issue is more that just.....the MCU dynamic was inspired by and created to nominally mirror the comic book version, without ever breaking down or acknowledging that a key difference is the MCU introduced Peter as a minor under the care of an adult guardian when setting up this dynamic. Whereas in the comics, Peter was well into adulthood and no laws were actually being bent or broken or circumnavigated in pursuit of arriving at that dynamic. It couldn't directly translate onto screen as an adult and teen protege the way it existed in the comics as an adult and younger adult protege, but no attempt was made to translate the dynamic from the comics to the MCU in a way that took into account how the altered shape of their dynamic would inevitably recontextualize other elements of said dynamic in ways that had to be addressed or else....undermine their entire premise and characterization.

Which, IMO, is exactly what happened. And THAT is why it bugs me so much. I see the MCU Peter and Tony relationship and everything derived from it as a house of cards built on an inherently flawed foundation that the narrative just told people to accept as sturdy.

You certainly don't have to agree with me, but my reasons aren't really rooted in any preconceptions or pre-existing feelings about the characters that led me to look for any justification for being critical of them or their dynamic. Rather, what I perceive as shoddy storytelling that relied on the narrative just telling how the story should be interpreted even when I saw the actual events and character choices show something that was different in very key ways....this is what soured me on the MCU versions of the characters and their dynamic in the movie it was introduced in.

And so much for keeping it short. Let's just pretend what I meant by that is I'm gonna limit this to one reply instead of starting a back and forth of discourse. Cuz uh. It was. Honestly.

[lucianalight]

Loki God of Stories - A Comparison between MCU and Comics

I’ve never thought I (=Luci @lucianalight ) would say this but MCU did the God of Stories arc right. Having the whole picture after the finale you can see what they were trying to do and how the series was inspired from AoA arc. The series explores a number of themes.

(I’m along for the ride because I can’t just pass up the opportunity to faceplant into Luci’s metas -Hollow @theitcharchives ) 

Control vs Freedom

Chaos vs Order

Finding Purpose and Believing in One's Self

Science-Fiction, and Magic being a Powerful Lie: Approaches to Storytelling

Being Worthy of One’s Own Power

Breaking the Cycle and Rewriting Reality

Conclusion

Congratulations! You've reached the end of this lengthy meta. While I (=Luci) was thinking about writing it, I stumbled upon a post that had a totally different viewpoint than mine. I asked for Hollow's opinion regarding the topic, and after reading their answer I realized it is actually the perfect conclusion this meta can have. 

"God of stories as a librarian would be", as the s2 writer said, does make sense. If Loki gives life to the timelines, then he gives life to everything in them, and allows people to write their own stories, branching instead of having to follow one single "sacred" timeline. Calling him a god of fate and destiny would be counterintuitive, especially for a norse hailing deity, because norse gods’ fates are already written, unable to branch from their path to and during ragnarok. MCU god of stories does make sense, and if we really don't want that title for him in the mcu, he could be the god of choice, but that sounds reductive. God of time also sounds reductive. The writer's definition mentioning myth Loki starts wrong, but it rings true overall and in the end.

MCU loki and comics loki are just two different kinds of gods of stories. Their approach is different but their soul (as I've kept saying for years -Hollow), needs to be and remains the same across universes to keep respecting the original myth loki. Loki is a trickster figure. Tricksters bring chaos, unbalance that leads to change. Pantheons without tricksters are stagnant and never grow, and since pantheons are reflections of the humanity that comes up with them, that's impossible. MCU Loki (by some miracle after the 2017-2021 ordeal) is a trickster. He changes the equation, quite literally erases it, replaces it with chaos that keeps growing. He allows the unbalance to exist and bring change instead of the rigid timeline that constrained. Tricksters allow for stories to happen–myth Loki is the catalyst of almost everything that happens in the norse myths. Comics Loki was and is the catalyst of almost everything that happens in the comics, directly or indirectly through decades of consequences. MCU Loki is now the literal central catalyst of everything that happens in the mcu, in a more direct (consequences of 2011 and 2012) and indirect (consequences of 2023) way. He deserves that title, because he is a chaos bringing trickster, just in a different way.”

(Am I mad when I look for new comics apparitions I have to sift through endless and inaccurate MCU articles? Yes. Am I mad at the 616/19999 confusion? Absolutely. -Hollow)

Finally it is also worth mentioning that while both universes tried to follow a similar arc, AoA generally did a far better job than the Loki series. Themes like friendship, identity, self-love and validating Loki's pain and grievances either lacked nuance or were non-existent in the show. Therefore AoA remains the superior story.

Co-written by Luci and Hollow

[serialadoptersbracket]

Round 2, Match 46: Tony Stark vs. Roronoa Zoro

Submitted kids:

Tony Stark: Depending on the universe, he has many, such as Peter Parker (MCU), Kamala Kahn (AA, 616, MA), Riri Williams (616), Miles Morales (616), Nebula (MCU), Harley Keener (MCU), and Inferno (AA)

Roronoa Zoro: O-Toko, O-Tama, Rika, Michael & Hoichael & the rest of the orphanage

Propaganda under the cut!

Tony Stark:

“Tony Stark, despite his constant claims that he is a terrible influence, is amazing with children, especially Superhero Kids. No matter what universe he's in, Tony Stark is going to have a superhero mentee/unofficially adopted child. He always manages to become a great mentor and fatherly figure to them with their superheroing and other business. He listens to them, trains them, gives them tips, lovingly teases them, supports them emotionally and sometimes physically (hugging, pats on the shoulder), and most of all, ALWAYS tries his very best to keep them safe and out of harm's way (like building suits for them and showing up when they're in danger). It's difficult in the superheroing business to keep anyone safe of course, but he tries his best.”

Roronoa Zoro:

“if there is a child in the arc (of any real importance) you can bet that Zoro will bond with them (okay, usually her cause most of them are girls). Hes not the most obvious of the Strawhats for this to happen with, but there are too many instances to ignore.”