fangirlgeek

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Bucky's Backpack of Pain-Filled Notebooks

Realization: That backpack and all its notebooks are probably still in the custody of that anti-terror whatever team. They're going to read those notebooks and they're going to use what those notebooks contain to profile him better in the hopes of catching him. People who see him only as a criminal are going to use the contents of those notebooks to justify their continued pursuit and persecution of Bucky Barnes, World War II veteran amputee PTSD sufferer.

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Captain America: Civil War Spoiler-Free Reaction This movie made me so happy. I'm not going to exaggerate and say it's the best film ever, but it's definitely on my list of top favorites. It was very well-made and compact (or should I say self-contained?) in its storytelling and, of course, fun! The action, as Winter Soldier did before it, kicked ass.

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A Universe of Dreams

I have loved the thought of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, from the moment Nick Fury stepped out of the shadows at the end of Iron Man and told Tony Stark that he was part of a bigger universe.

Of course, at that point, no one had an idea just how big and how financially successful that universe would turn out to be. Heck, it wasn’t even known as the MCU back then. It was just a glimmer of a tantalizing possibility that something wonderful was waiting to be revealed and explored. And, over the years, that possibility has become a real thing that a lot of other people have learned to love.

It hasn’t been a perfect ride. Not every movie was great and the TV shows took some time to find their footing. The interconnections aren’t always effectively handled and the presentation of diversity as well as the consistency of character development could always use more work. But then that’s what the MCU is: a giant work of fiction that’s continuously in progress.

But I never really felt the full scope of this cinematic universe until I watched Agents of SHIELD’S “4,722 Hours” episode. And it wasn’t because Jemma Simmons ended up on another planet with a super-creepy Inhuman worshipped as a god. It was because of Will Daniels, an astronaut who got stranded on that alien planet in 2001.

Here was this guy who had no idea that the planet he left behind so many years ago had changed so radically. He didn’t know that a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist now flies around in a suit of armor constantly trying to make amends for all the mistakes he made due to his ignorance and arrogance. He didn’t know that a mild-mannered scientist now has to wrestle with a terrifying monster within himself for the rest of his life because of a failed experiment. He didn’t know that somewhere in the Arctic, a kid from Brooklyn was rescued from his icy sleep only to find out that not only is he now a man out of time, he also missed his date. Will Daniels didn’t know that the skies opened up above New York and the world almost ended because a broken prince wanted to hurt a brother he both loved and envied. He didn’t know any of this until Jemma Simmons showed up and, even then, she probably only told him the barest details that she knew.

Some have criticized the MCU for not being more interconnected or integrated between its movie and television (including Netflix) properties. And while it would undoubtedly be fun to see film characters like Black Widow and Scarlet Witch go on a mission with TV’s Agents May and Daisy, or watch Jessica Jones roll her eyes at Captain America’s uniform, the thing about being part of a universe is that people tend to be the smallest parts of it.

Each of these characters may be the heroes in their own stories, but for someone else, they’re just faces in the crowd. For Will Daniels, especially, these people are all strangers that he will never know.

He will never know what Melinda May did to earn the nickname of The Cavalry and why she loathes it with all her heart. He will never know that there’s a cellist in Portland who remembers the name Phil Coulson with fondness. He will never know that a young boy who was abducted by aliens and grew up having adventures in outer space still treasures a mix tape his mother gave him. And all these people – Avengers, Guardians, Inhumans, Asgardians, and so on – will never know Will Daniels, a man who survived alone on an alien planet for years, somehow met a nice girl, was happy and hopeful for a short while, and still died alone in the end.

And the universe keeps on going.

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Star Wars, please give me a Romeo and Juliet situation here. Thank you.

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Me: ~excitedly checks Tumblr to see what everyone thought of "4,722 Hours" Me: ~finds a lot of shipping angst~ Me: ~backs away slowly~

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Yes. Yes. Yes.

I know MCU is not your primary interest, but I was wondering if you watched the extended scene with Bruce and Natasha from AoU? I personally hated "the dead" line. It felt like Natasha was willing to give up atoning for her past just to run away with Bruce, which goes against literally all her characterization so far, in both movies and comics.

I think fandom sometimes takes the scenes they don’t like in Age of Ultron out of the larger context of Natasha’s arc within the movie and also within MCU as a whole. The argument becomes, basically, that Natasha is so dedicated and so selfless and so driven by her quest for redemption that it’s impossible for her to turn anywhere left of the mission. That it’s impossible for her to even think it.

I think part of the issue is that fandom and pop culture criticism have problems evaluating female narratives without zooming in on the “female” part. We have so many lists of tropes against women, and we analyze by fitting their stories into the patterns we do not like. This is bad for feminist criticism and bad for female characters, and it intensifies whenever romance is involved: the ship war reflex these days is to argue any relationship you don’t like is problematic. So you get people insisting that Natasha being brainwashed so all the files she released in TWS are fake and she was actually born in 1929 and was trained by Winter Soldier but doesn’t know it doesn’t undermine her character agency or heroic arc, but Natasha having feelings and acting on them does. It’s how you get supposedly pro-Natasha rants that argue she’s nothing more than Hulk’s boob-trampoline. There are problems with Bruce/Natasha but they’re mostly the same problems that infect the whole of Age of Ultron, namely that it’s hard to build believable character arcs and the space for six dozen other movies at the same time.

Because Natasha wanting to run away with Bruce isn’t about Bruce, or a sudden need to be a footnote in a man’s story. It’s about Natasha. And Natasha’s storyline isn’t about total selflessness, total devotion to the mission, it’s about the dangers of putting the mission before everything. She tried to escape the Red Room by following SHIELD’s orders. She dedicated years of her life to walking the straight and narrow, but they did not make her happy and they did not make her kind. Natasha saw that in The Winter Soldier, how she was shifting parts of herself aside to follow orders, how she was protecting herself by never giving her real self a voice. She was staying alive, not necessarily surviving. Then it turned out SHIELD was HYDRA all along and she hadn’t been able to tell the difference. Let me repeat: she hadn’t been able to tell the difference.

Of course in CA:TWS, Natasha had her big good guy moment. No more secrets, no more hiding, complete and difficult transparency. By releasing those records, she takes symbolic control over all her past heroism and all her past misdeeds. But releasing the records wasn’t her idea, it was Steve’s. And she leaves that film alone, unsure of where she needs to go, but determined, I think, to figure that out for herself.

When we meet her again in AoU she hasn’t figured all of that out. She doesn’t even try to lift Mjolnir, remember, she doesn’t need to ask if she’s worthy. Then she’s forced to relive her past trauma, and it’s no wonder that she goes back to the beginning, and wonders whether any of it has been worth it, whether she’s ever been any good at all. And for a moment she stops thinking about trying to be better and wonders instead about trying to be happy. It’s not something we’ve seen her think about, before, because she’s kept that part of herself locked away. Wanting something opens you up, makes you vulnerable. But Natasha has always been vulnerable, always wanted something, and she’s learning that one mistake at a time.

Natasha has had moments of “weakness” like those in Age of Ultron in the comics before, absolutely, times when she thinks about chasing her own happiness instead of the harsh arithmetic of redemption, the weight of her ghosts. After all, carrying ghosts doesn’t bring them back. You can see this as recently as Black Widow #17, but it goes back to the sixties. (Bruce is a sort of parallel to Matt: something she deeply wants but something it would lessen her to have. Something she ultimately walks away from.) 

Like all Marvel heroes, Natasha’s suffered some imperfect stories. And like all Marvel heroes, Natasha’s power comes from her tragedy. She sharpened herself on lies and violence, and now lies and violence are all she has to fight back. Natasha hasn’t always trusted her own moral compass, and she doesn’t see herself as a hero. So she followed orders, sometimes, more than her own wants. But good is not something you are, it’s something that you choose. Natasha has to work, now, to be more than a mission. And that means she cannot kill her selfish impulses, because they’re reminders she has a self. And Natasha can choose not to follow her desires into the daylight, and in the ending that is not an end, that is what she does.

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A Fair Day in Spring

A Fair Day in Spring (fanfic) - Annwyd "She still follows some rules from her past, and one is that trespassers into her home or her heart must be greeted with the greatest of indignation." Truth.

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I am dreading seeing Bucky Barnes in Civil War next year. I am dreading it because I've read so many great fanfics that depict his road to recovery that I cannot even begin to imagine where the official MCU canon is going to take him. I am bracing myself for the worst.

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I love these covers.

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Chewie's face is the face I make when my friends start talking about stuff I really don't care about.

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I just noticed something after watching “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” for about the millionth time.

Bucky and Natasha both kick people off buildings and helicarriers the same way.

My OTP! ~heart eyes~

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Wild Wishful Thinking

At the end of the Agent Carter series, we see Peggy as she was in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. She's in a hospital, doing really badly and getting weaker by the second. She begins hallucinating, thinking that her husband and kids are with her, along with Steve, and she tells imaginary Steve that she has no regrets about her life, at all. She smiles and dies. Then someone comes in, takes out a syringe filled with some strange-looking fluid and injects it into her heart. And this person reveals himself or herself to be affiliated with Hydra and they have plans for Peggy. We see her hands twitch and, as the scene begins to fade out, her age spots slowly disappear. Bam! De-aged Peggy coming soon to a Marvel movie near you. Right. Like that's ever going to happen. I'm sorry, guys. I need to go to sleep now.

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Have I mentioned that Galavant is stupid and awesome and fun and I love it? Yeah. I just did. King Richard and Gare-Bear forever!

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Soon.

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In Which I Have A Fangirl Meltdown

I want a Peggy and Cap reunion. Even if it breaks the entire MCU, I want them together and not just for one dance. I suddenly had these feelings and there's nothing else that I want more than this.

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This was wonderful. I think I must have smiled the whole way through the movie.