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otterskin · 11 months

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Does you actllty like odin because I thought everyone hated him.

...Why would people hate him? I struggle to understand that, even now. I have my theories, which I've spoken off in other places.

I think, and I don't like to say this, because there are certainly takes that aren't, but in general, that opinion is very juvenile. There's a desire to want to 'defend and protect' people from him, which betrays a lack of understanding of the dynamics in the films, and a tendency to side with children over adults, even grown children, and to see older people as symbolic of institutional power, as well as parental power, over them, and therefore a yoke that needs throwing off. There's a childish 'shut up, DAD!' to the criticism. More seriously, the desire to paint him as abusive reminds me of the problem of people confusing conflict for abuse, something that's a major issue in online spaces and real life. Outrage and extremism are rewarded and sought after, so everything is heightened. In that lens, a father who tried to do right by his children but who was in a unique circumstance because of his desire to challenge the status quo and fated enmity of two warrring peoples, a king who can't put the needs of his children over the suffering of his people and risk to his kingdom, now becomes a monster who delights in playing favourites and abusing them for kicks. It's disheartening.

There's precious little sympathy for characters like him, especially in this genre. Superhero fare is pretty black and white, and even characters like Loki rest pretty firmly in the 'good' side of that. But Odin is that rare character who not only doesn't play by that simple dichotomy, he doesn't get to live in a world so neatly divided. It's part of his isolation from the others. So usually, people see the gray and decide he must not be 'good', and if he's not 'good', he must be 'bad'.

The films have little time to explore him or his motivations or how he chooses to navigate his murky situation, and it's all the worse because he's a secretive person who actively disguises his motivations and goals. He's a minor character in screen time, but looms large over the plot and other characters' motivations, so most of what we see of him is what other people tell us he is. Most of which is, of course, untrue. That's the Odin that lives in their heads, and not the actual man, who is the rare character in the MCU you actually have to watch and pay attention to to understand. In universe, no-one bothers to do that - they are content with the version they've created to hate. So the audience thinks that version is also the real one, because it's easier to understand and categorize.

I love Odin, in mythology, and in the MCU. He's a much kinder person in the MCU for sure! But I'm glad that, even in a fairly straightforward world, they gave Odin no clear answers. He remains contradictory and deeply flawed, a thoroughly miserable person but with something compelling him to try and change the destined end of the world. How could I not love someone like that? How could people who say they like Loki not like a character who is so similar?

I get depressed when I encounter Odin haters. I feel like they've completely misunderstood and missed out on a fundamental part of the story, and I worry that if their sentiments infect the actual MCU, it will besmirch the efforts of those who came before and the humane story I fell in love with. Odin was not intended to be a bad parent or a bad person, and I don't think he is. He is intended to be someone that people IN UNIVERSE see as a full villain or as a full hero, but he is neither. He is a person who was faced with difficult choices, and he chose to do some radical things that many others of his kind would never do. He paved the way for a better future and better choices for others by defying the prejudices and traditions of his people, but because he was a trailblazer, he did not have the benefit of learning from others' examples, like Thor and Loki have because of him.

Comparing him to Thanos or other actually abusive parents is repellant. Never once have I seen anyone who claims to hate him actually engage with the character as depicted, nor how they would cut through the Gordian Knot of compromises the character had to contend with. They handwave away the moral questions as 'actually super easy to solve', which is something I abhor in fiction (it's also why I deeply dislike Spider-Man: NWH, which handwaves away the motivations and tragedies of villains from previous series). No, nothing was easy to solve about the choices presented to Odin, and I think the character had both logical and emotional rationale for his choices. He actually made pretty bold and forward-thinking plans, they just all tend to suffer from his fatal flaw - he thinks about them as logical, but they're really motivated by emotion that he keeps at arm's length, which leads to him showing vulnerability and being punished for it.

This is something that goes by so fast in the films, but I loved it because it is such a fundamentally male experience. Odin is someone being crushed under pretty much every expectation of masculinity, from man to warrior to father to husband to king, and whenever he tries to show regret, fallibility or vulnerability, the other characters find it disturbing and swiftly reject him, forcing him back into the performance and the misery that comes with it.

Odin may ponder what is the correct decision, but does not mistake that for what is the most moral decision. He is someone who is both logical and emotional but who hasn't integrated those two halves of himself together very well.

If you hate the character, I'd be happy to talk about it. It is okay to just not like characters! Including gray ones. But for me, I can really think about Odin, and I like that he can't be easily written up for a bland Fandom page that requires everything be spelled out or it 'doesn't count'. He exists in the between spaces of the story, and it is a very sad and lonely tale.

TL;DR : He's a complicated man in a simple story. In the Squid Game of Sugar Cookie, he got the Umbrella. I am sad that such a fundamental character to the foundation of the THOR franchise's quality and themes is so misunderstood and unappreciated by this fandom. I don't think you can love this franchise and not have some care for Odin.

#odin #Q&A #odin appreciation

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gunsandspaceships · 5 months

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FAQ

I see this post is needed.

What is the purpose of this blog?

Analysis of the MCU and its characters, with a main focus on Tony Stark. Why? Because he is the most misunderstood character in the MCU. Sometimes I write/reblog about Comics versions too. This is not a "pure fun" blog, it's a meta blog about a fictional universe. I use sources, facts, educated guesses, all that scientific stuff.

Are fandoms just for "pure fun"?

No, they are for people. People like different things, not just "fun" ones.

"Fun" varies from person to person. My fun is science.

Are Comics Universes and characters the same as the MCU and its characters?

No, they are not. See this post and this one. Examples from different comics universes: 1610 Tony had a "tumor" in his brain, which was actually an Infinity Stone. 616 Tony never had tumors or Infinity Stones in his brain. 9810 and TRN591 Tonys are Sorcerers Supreme, while 616 or MCU Tonys are not. 1610 Nick Fury is African American. 616 Fury is white. I can go on forever.

Does Comics Canon apply to the MCU?

No (see previous question), unless the traits shown in the MCU are the same as in the Comics. Example, Tony Stark has 3-7 PhDs in 616 Universe, but in the MCU he has 2 (see this post). Another example: Steve Rogers had a smoking habit in the comics, but in the MCU he doesn't smoke.

MCU canon is canon only for the MCU. 616 canon is canon only for 616 Universe. 1610 canon only canon for 1610 Universe. The canon of your favorite fanfic is the canon of that fanfic, etc.

Am I anti-Steve?

No, I am not. Do I criticize him? Yes, when there is something to criticize for. The same applies to any other character: Rhodey, Pepper, Wanda, etc. It is science. Deal with it.

Do I hate anyone?

No, I don't feel hate. Can get angry and annoyed though. In this case - sorry if I bite you.

Do I ship Tony with anyone?

I ship Tony with Happiness. If he is happy with Pepper - great. If he is happy with Steve - I ship it. If he is happy with Stephen - I ship it too, and so on. But if they hurt him - I don't like it. Do you expect me to like it? What would be weird. The ideal option is when everyone is happy, loves and cares about each other.

How to react if I wrote a comment on your post/reblog of my post?

If you're open to discussion, great, that's what comments are for. If you are overly sensitive, can't stand other people's opinions, or deliberately ignore the facts, then it is your right to ignore my comments. And it is my right to write them. Remember that. It is called "communication", and that's what Tumblr and other social networks are for. If you cannot communicate with other people - talk to yourself.

Will I come to your post to write a comment about how wrong you are?

Am I so terrifying? If I see something is wrong, like 2+2 is stated as 5, and not 4, I will probably tell you about it. But I don't do it for headcanons. Headcanon is your HEADcanon. You can have any headcanon you want. It is your right 100%. But if your statement about CANON is incorrect and I can prove it - I can come to you. Remember, it is my right to do so.

Examples:

You have a headcanon that MCU Tony is of Italian descent. I will not correct you because the MCU never mentions what his origin is.

You stated that MCU Tony has a drinking problem. I will come to correct you, because this is not true and I proved it here.

If you said 616 Tony has a drinking problem, I will not correct you because it's true.

You said that in fanfic N a kitten was saved by Clint, but it was actually Natasha. If I read that fanfic, I will come to correct you.

I think it's fair.

To summarize: if you say/write something - be ready to prove your words. That's how it works in real world, that's how it should work online. If you deliberately lied or slandered someone, even if it's a fictional character, there must be consequences.

Do you have any questions?

Ask anything - my doors are always open. And I don't block people if I don't like what they say.

#tony stark #iron man #marvel #mcu #the avengers #steve rogers

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crying-fantasies · 2 months

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No woman, no cry

Masterlist

Many of the stories I do have a specific song that is the base, the bone and the heart of the whole work.

Personally, I feel this song, and any version of the same, to be the goodbye message for a loved one made by the person that is going away, be it for any personal reason or because they are never coming back, trying to comfort the people they are leaving behind, in case of the original one made by Bob Marley a man that is saying goodbye to his little sister, as the "woman, little sister", meaning him, the man of the house, has to go away, "but while I'm gone, everything is going to be alright" and the younger sister now has to grown up, she has to be the new head of the family, be the woman that guides the family, while he reassures her that "everything is going to be alright" over and over, going straight to the "in this great future, you can't forget your past" in how the man wants his dear sister to still be herself and be her best version too, don't forget him, but don't linger in him, the sadness will pass, and she'll be okay.

Now, I'm not exactly a MCU fan, but the version of the trailer for Black Panther 2 and the movie itself destroyed my soul and heart in the most bizarre and beautiful way, and once again you all don't have to like what I do, and that's okay, The Tems version has it's own beauty, giving off vibes of a mother calling for his beloved partner and her children, at least that's how I always felt about that version, but that trailer with the two cents of KL and his "Do you hear me? Do you feel me? We're gonna be alright" in such desperate way.

Maybe that's why I liked this song for Roddy's story, I feel terrible for what I made him go through, maybe I'll always be, but given how things go in that universe and that roulette page on Google where I put it up for destiny's picking who's SO was going to die, well, I was flabbergasted when the first one resulted being Rodimus, I was like: "no me jodas, este man no tiene respiro ni en el fanfiction" but remembering how I wanted to be fair, I went with it, making one of the most sad stories I've done so far.

I feel for Roddy and his little family, he is the epitome of trophy husband if you ask me, and also the type of "he is your husband but also your kid", and given the circumstances, this song goes well with Roddy.

He gets married young, in cybertronian perspective at least, and he chooses someone everyone else asked him: "are you sure? Like, really sure?" Not because of thinking it was bad, but because they were worried for him, by that time the fact that sparks prolonged a human average lifetime for hundreds of years by different bonds (in this reality the Amica endurae and the conjunx endurae rites have this effect in organics), so Rodimus, while being a anxious ball in the inside, said proudly "of course I do!"

Rodimus, being married young, is also a young father, and in the meantime has everyone expecting him to take his title of Prime back and stop wandering in deep space, be a good creator and leader and settle down finally to do things right, he doesn't listen, and ends up going to a dangerous place that destroyed his life.

Rodimus, a young widow and single creator to a new spark that still needs his carrier, has little to no time to mourn before Cybertron is about to fall in another war and the integrity of his only family alive is in danger, full of sorrow and anger he does something he regrets even now, making his legacy as Prime as one deeply criticized and loved in equal parts, stripping Earth, the thirteenth's, Optimus' colony of all the advantages the former Prime gave to the humans, leaving them to take care for their own problems and their own fights, humanity suffers for it, of course, but while he didn't have any hatred to humanity before the incident he now has it as humans of the Lost Light were found in labs on Earth, obviously long deceased, their own people cutting them to pieces in order to know why they didn't have any negative reaction to energon or the natural radiation cybertronians have.

The fact that he left Earth, his conjunx's planet, to the mercy of other organic aliens after humanity tried to conquer and ended up being conquered, is something that haunts him but not something he is exactly judged for as the "they had it coming" comes from mechs and femmes, Rodimus ends up asking for help to the newly recovered Optimus Prime to help Earth once again, and he does, Earth is saved, but still not learning their lesson.

He made mistakes out of anger, out of his own misery, like he did before, but this time, I wanted him to have an ounce of love his beloved would have given him if only in memories, "everything is going to be alright" you would say, comforting him "while I'm gone, everything is going to be alright", as he tries to feel that little fragment of what could be your heart, you soul, something that he could relate to a spark he just swears is still deep in his own, "do you feel me?" the fragment of your soul would call, "do you hear me?" and his spark tries to spin in the same wave as yours shine just enough to find him, trying to answer back desperately, yes, yes I do, "we're gonna be alright" and all he can do is hug Sunset near just knowing his bitlet is soon gonna be a big mech in no time, he wants to cherish the feeling of his little helm above his spark chamber, repeating your words, data banks providing with the recording of your heartbeat, the way your breathing would rouse his armor, how your body is pressed against him, giving himself comfort to go on another day.

#reader insert #x reader #transformers #tf mtmte #transformers x reader #transformers idw #angst #transformers x human reader #tf rodimus #rodimus x reader #rodimus x human reader #idw rodimus #rodimus #rodimus prime

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ordinaryschmuck · 6 months

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I think the reason why you often see more game/show/movie announcements for a random Marvel character you never heard of where DC primarily focuses on Batman and Batman related characters is because...Marvel built more trust with the obscure.

All the way back when they started the MCU, Marvel didn't have the rights to its more iconic, recognizable, and, more important, marketable characters. Spider-Man went to Sony, X-Men and Fantastic Four went to Fox, and even the Hulk was technically owned Universal. By the time the MCU was being conceived, Marvel only had its C-listers and D-listers. No one even HEARD of characters like Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and ESPECIALLY the Guardians of the Galaxy before the MCU. Even characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor, characters considered Marvel's big three nowadays, characters who the MCU relied on, weren't as huge as DC's big three. Meanwhile, DC had access to ALL of its characters, relying on its most recognizable IPs like Batman and Superman...And, oh yeah, I guess Wonder Woman was there too...Sometimes.

But the biggest seller was always Batman. Because how could he not be? He looked cool, he had an impressive rogues gallery to make toys of, and is everything for DC as Spider-Man was to Marvel. Both Batman and Spider-Man could sell anything. But Marvel technically didn't have the FULL rights to Spider-Man and DC...didn't bother with its other characters. Batman made bank with his videogames, movies, and TV shows to the point where they could sell a Gotham prequel series to Fox and STILL make a lot of cash. Why bother making a movie about Aquaman or The Flash when it likely won't sell as well as BATMAN. Sure, you got a Green Arrow TV show on the same network as a Superman prequel series, but that didn't change how most of DC's other projects weren't connected to Batman in someway.

Teen Titans was a show that starred Robin, Batman's sidekick. Same with Young Justice. And the only time kids got introduced to other DC characters, it was for a campy show like Batman: The Brave and the Bold where BATMAN teamed up with a hero a week. Which would have been a smart way to bring other characters into the light, but it's still connected strictly through BATMAN. Even now, DC has what is best described as a Batman problem. The Flash was a movie that featured two versions of Batman, one of them bringing in nostalgia through a past Batman movie instead of focusing on an old Flash product. And with the last few years, the only video games were Batman related, with Gotham Knights starring Batman's sidekicks and that Suicide Squad game starring Harley Quinn, a BATMAN villain who goes to kill BATMAN that's actually the same BATMAN from an old BATMAN game.

And yeah...I love Batman. We ALL love Batman. He's the coolest character ever conceived and it's the easiest thing in the world to make a movie about him. It might not be a GOOD movie sometimes, but it's at least a movie that'll make billions. But with this over-saturation of Batman, it left DC unsure if they can make anything big WITHOUT him. Because how can they be sure it'll succeed without their signature character that gave them a shitload of money?

But let's go back to Marvel. Starting a cinematic universe without their most popular IPs was a risk. They SORT of had the rights to the Hulk, but...there was no way Hulk would have made more money than a Spider-Man movie. If they wanted to make a successful franchise, Marvel had to put more faith in its other characters, allowing to make good movies and hope that enough people would be interested to see more. And...it worked. Iron Man was a hit, Thor and Captain America got people interest, and the big pay off was the box office smash that was The Avengers. Everyone started to know these characters and it didn't stop there. Guardians of the Galaxy became popular enough to be another big franchise for Marvel, Black Panther became the most popular Black superhero after Blade (another Marvel character), and people were left BEGGING for Spider-Man and the X-Men to join this universe so they could see their old favorites interact with their NEW favorites. And that just...never stopped. Marvel kept pushing more and more characters to the spotlight, with it paying it off for them.

Before 2014, NO ONE would consider buying a Guardians of the Galaxy game. But due to the MCU's revamping of those characters, it was enough to make people willing to do so. And in a few years, we're getting games based on Iron Man, Captain America and Black Panther, and JUST Black Panther, all because the Marvel had enough faith to turn this C-listers into A-listers. As for TV shows, we've got connected MCU stuff like Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel, but also a really good and imaginative cartoon with Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

Now, to be fair, it's not paying off for Marvel, especially with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels causing the studio to lose bank. They're even thinking about cutting back on riskier stuff and focusing on their bigger franchises. Which...honestly sounds dumb to me not only because the MCU was founded on taking risks, but also because DC is exactly what you get when you focus on JUST the money makers. We're still getting nothing but Batman and Batman related characters or movies/universes that references nothing but Batman. To the point where I just want DC to retire Batman for a year, maybe TWO tops. Marvel proved that you can make a hit if you let other characters than the most marketable one. Even if it fails like The Marvels did, it's not because Captain Marvel isn't as iconic as Iron Man, it's because the movie wasn't as well-written enough. It was a fun time, sure, but not as strongly written as other MCU films. And that's what DC needs to learn and Marvel to remember: It's not about who's the most popular, it's about strong writing.

Hopefully we get more attention on lesser-known Marvel and DC characters in the future.

#marvel comics #dc comics #batman

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zerohirrotries · 1 year

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Watched Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 today!

Spoiler warning!

The movie was amazing, like one of the best mcu movies. I love how instead of treating Peter's grief like how they usually do. Instead they have every single guardian trying to help him. They all understand him and are chill with his drinking problems and grief of loss.

Everyone was so caring for Peter. But mainly Nebula was there for him. She was like another sister almost. She kept being there for him and wanting to help.

Love how Drax takes all the kids because it is how he is. He is and always will be the father. Drax with the kids just broke me, like ahhhh!! Also I love how Nebula is with the kids, wanting to save them from what she had to go through with her father Thanos. Then his relationship with Mantis, Peter kept throwing them to work together and they seem to be annoyed with it. Mantis kept Drax from doing some harsher things, yet she never could fully control him because she seem to trust him still. Mantis and Drax both seem to felt like they did not fully belong with the Guardians, yet they stayed cause they view everyone as a family, something they both love much.

The movie was telling about the backstory of Rocket. Each movie gave hints and he always tried to avoid talking about it. Yet now it had to be out for the guardians to help him. For he was dying in the movie and was out over half it. Yet those flashback we got.... They got to me, I love his friends he had. Lylla and Rocket were so cute, like ahhh!!! Then Teefs and Floor!!

All the four together in the flashbacks at least explains why Rocket was always worried of trying to save everyone. Watching how he lost all three for trying to save them. Even when Teefs and Floor told him to run, he could not leave them. I just could not hold those tears for that....

Groot, oh poor Groot. Through the movie, as Rocket was dying... He kept being worried. I could tell he was worried and more scared thought the movie. He was always listening and never goofing off much. Taking things seriously because it was Rocket's life at their hands.

Love how Cosmo and Kraglin were becoming friends. I love their friendship and how they care about everyone. Cosmo was a strong leader, yet she was playful. Kraglin wanted to be strong, yet he kept doubting himself. When he thinks about Yondu and sees him mentally, that is when he starts to become stronger. He has been slightly grieving over the lost of Yondu silently and no one knew. He was trying so much to not think about it, holding it away. That is when he finally became strong and started to master the arrow.

Love how the ravagers had now Gamora. In the movie, Peter kept talking about his Gamora, saying that she had to be the same as the future version. For they were the same person. Yet, they did my take on future and such, after a long the movie, Peter and Gamora finally come to a stand where they both know that she had her own decisions she could do. She did not need to be the future Gamora, the same person. Yet, maybe at the end it hinted that she started to have a small liking as in at least friendship with Peter now..

With High Evolutionary as the villain, it was a villain that we could not exactly sympathize much. He was actually crazy, like he killed whatever he made if it did a small mistake, he needed things to be perfect. With his creations, Adam and his mother were made. Adam had a mission to save his kind, he had to get Rocket to High Evolutionary. Yet when we see Adam we learn that he is still a kid, learning about the world and his life. Not fully understanding anything, even death fully. Until he found the ravager pet Blup. He found something he cared about, learning about love more. So when he lost his mother to Evolutionary, he still worked for him until Groot saved his life. That is when Adam repaid them and saved Peter's life. Now he is a part of the new Guardians that is lead by Rocket.

Also most people kept saying someone would die, well no Guardians did and no one has left the mcu yet!!! Star-Lord is still around, but back on Earth and trying to fix things with his Grandfather. The new Guardians still has Rocket, Groot, and Kraglin. Nebula, Cosmo, and Drax are staying at Knowhere, which seems to be the home place for the Guardians. Then the only one that I am slightly questioning about what next is Mantis. Mantis does not fully understand herself, like her brother Peter. So she sets off on a journey to understand herself better.

I am just so happy, yet I cried like at least over ten minutes of the movie!! I did not expect it to let me laugh and cry almost at the same time... All you mcu fans should go watch this masterpiece, I loved it so much!!

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pb-dot · 2 months

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Film Friday: No, Thanos is not Right, and did in fact, do Quite A lot Of Wrong

(Warning: This one is loooooooooong)

Another Essay this week, and I've chosen to go back in time a couple of years. The target year this time is the halcyon days of 2019, back when I still gave a shit about the MCU, when the ongoing energy of the Marvel movies still pushed engagement forward. You didn't have to watch all of the movies, but they were for the most part fairly well made and there were enough references and jokes that relied on them that you kinda wanted to anyway. Granted, they worked their CGI guys pretty hard, there was a certain cynical glibness to the humor, and their politics weren't great, but these problems had not metastasized into the massive fucksy-doos they are today yet. These were good days to like zoom punch action stories, and it was all leading up to something. The confrontation between Earth's Mightiest Heroes and the Objectively Scariest And Evilest Guy. The Mad Titan, Thanos who wants to kill half of the universe for... reasons.

Backstory and Adaptation, Or; You Can't Have a Big Titted Skeleton Nowadays

For the uninitiated, Thanos was a relatively big deal in Marvel Comic history. The Mad Titan, to put it plainly, LOVES Death. Now to be clear, when I say Thanos loves death, I don't mean that in the abstract "oh, motherfucker just loves killing" way. He is romantically attracted to the anthropomorphic representation of Death, who at the time was most often represented as a big-titted skeleton, although more conventionally attractive Goth Girl variants are available depending on who's illustrating.

Now how would a big purple demigod man from Saturn's moon Titan go about wooing a fundamental aspect of the universe like that? There's always dying an reincarnating a lot, but that seems risky even in a universe where the afterlife seemingly has revolving doors. No, Thanos decides that a way better way to get Death-Sempai to notice him is to kill a LOT of people. Now obviously you can't kill the entire universe because 1: that would include yourself which isn't ideal, and 2: if everyone's dead nobody will get born and thus nobody will ever die again, which one has to imagine Death would not be too chuffed about.

So, what grand gesture does the ube-colored kronian lad settle on? Why of course, gathering five artifacts of immense cosmic power, the Infinity Stones, and using their combined magic juice to kill half of the universe's population with a literal snap of his fingers, which he does. Now, thanks to some internal family politics and the appearance of one Adam Warlock this whole thing got undone, but it was a pretty big deal for the duration.

So, Thanos is one of those larger-than-life fuckers that's just hard to structure a modern story around because of the sheer byzantine bombast that surrounds him. To have a true-to-comics version, you have to introduce Mistress Death, as the big-titted skeleton is often called, and the worldbuilding implications of that, the thing that makes Thanos purple also makes him one of the Eternals so you have to introduce all of that business, the sheer cosmic vastness of the Infinity Gems (née Soul Gems) requires a bunch of explaining, and when it all comes down to it his plan is kind of shit.

Like, this isn't a joke. Thanos has one goal and one goal only and that's to clap some skeleton cheeks, and he doesn't even succeed. Notorious self-aware joke-man Deadpool starts developing a relationship to Mistress Death, which is a thing that can happen if characters meet up a lot, and few are as experienced with exploring dying and getting better than ol' Mr. Pool. Of course, Thanos curses Deadpool to never be able to truly die since he can't have this Undying Chucklefuck upstage him, but it only further underlines how entirely Thanos doesn't succeed. He's a bit of an incel, really, cooking up these grand romantic gestures for a person he isn't really in a relationship with.

Now, I don't know for a fact that there is some sort of editorial fiat in the MCU stating that villains have to be critical of one aspect of society but be Too Extreme About it as opposed to our Good Liberal Heroes Who are Just Right About Every Social Issue, but it certainly fits as an explanation for why that keeps happening. My point is, there isn't really a greater point about society being made with Thanos here, my heroic stretch to try to make it fit in the schemas of gender and sexuality politics in society as interpreted by the Profoundly Deranged notwithstanding. So, what do you do? Why, you make this lumpy space potato man an ecofascist, of course.

Ecofascism, Or; When All You Have Is A Hammer Everything is a Nail

Ecofascism is a relatively recent term, but the trend that it is built upon is as old as fascism itself. In essence, I would describe it as using enviromentalist rhetoric and buzzwords to further an agenda of authoritarian discriminatory and genocidal politics. You see this idea pop up a lot. There's too many people on earth, and just everyone can reproduce which is bad. We eat and we eat until everything is ruined. Humanity is the virus. We need a new plague, etc etc.

What's so insidious about these lines of thinking is that it exploits the hopelessness of attempting to fight for the climate and further habitability of this particular biosphere and boils it down to a very, very simple thought. There are people who are undesirable and if we could just remove them (somehow) then we would save our people the planet.

You see this most clearly here in the west when we discuss the weight of the various climate sins of various countries. China keeps popping up a lot, as the Chinese economy grows towards the point where it can supply its middle class with similar levels of excess that the middle class in the west can enjoy. Now, yes, that leads to growing un-sustainability as the excesses of conspicuous consumption are... well documented to say the least. Where the ecofascist plies his insidious trade is in framing this data in the terms of "there needs to stop being so many Chinese people because they are as bad for the environment as Western People and there's More Of Them," and not, say "the way the middle class in the west consumes is hella unsustainable and we should fucking stop it before this standard kills us all." I.E "The current System is fine as long as it only benefits the Right People" and not "The Current System is Bad And Unfair and balanced on a razor's edge over the abyss and Maybe We Should Change That Somewhat."

For further reading on the topic, I think Philosophy Tube's "Climate Grief" video covers things rather well (I should also warn that this video is from PT pre-coming out/ public transition, just in case you're unfamiliar with her earlier work.)

For a good and very relevant example of how ecofascism might be expressed in practice, look no further than the Malthusian Problem and it's originator Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus had the idea that while humanity's ability to produce food scales linearly with population, population growth is exponential. This implies that at some point it is inevitable that population growth outstrips humanity's ability to feed its teeming masses, which, if prolonged by, you know, giving a shit whether poor people die of starvation, could lead to even greater disasters up to and including total collapse of society. Intense stuff, but also not really backed by data. Part of that, of course, is that we've learned some REALLY neat tricks in agriculture in the years since Malthus famous wrongness ended with his death in 1834, but even without that, the self-interested callousness of this analysis should be self-evident.

To bring this back to Marvel Land, Thanos in the MCU is motivated by the same kind of merciless quote-unqoute altruism that lay behind Malthus ideas. There's just too dang many people, according to Thanos, there's only so many Resources (nonspecific resources) available in a finite universe. It is an act of mercy, according to this grape Koolaid motherfucker, to kill half of all people, and things will be fixed (somehow, more on that later.) All it takes, no, all it requires is a big enough, bad enough, sad enough dad.

The Rad Bad Sad Dad, or; The New Masculinity in pop culture

There's been a shift in what being a man means in pop culture this last decade. You can most easily detect it in video games, in part, I would argue, because demographic trends have lined up in such a way to shift perspectives that inform the writing, and in part because video game writing being younger and less refined, thus the most open leaving its tropes in the open. Keep in mind, this is not a diss, just an observation, the genre of text for video games is younger than its closest comparisons by quite a lot, it stands to reason there's less generational knowledge and nuance to it as a result.

You can tell this shift, I would argue, because the standard male protagonist has stopped being a white brown haired man in his late 20s who navigates worlds of wild and untamed violence with smug detachment and every-man-like charm, the kind of character one might expect a 20-or 30-something who is single and ready to mingle to write, if I may be uncharacteristically judgy for a bit.

When we now imagine a stock-standard video game protagonist, though, things have changed. Not so much demographically, no, these characters are still written by the same 20- and 30-somethings, they're just pushing 40/50 and have a family now. So, instead, we get what I call the Rad Bad Sad Dad. You know this guy. He's good at violence, REALLY good at it, the Rad and the Bad, but he's disillusioned by a cold and uncaring world, that's the Sad part, and he is the father, or father-figure of some variant of Innocent, and he is willing to burn the world to the ground for their sake if it comes to that, that's the Dad part.

Now this isn't me criticizing this trend either for the record, just pointing out that the change reflects a perspective change in the average creator. It has led to some very good stories. The Last Of Us, for whatever other flaws that game had, squeezes a LOT of pathos out of a cynical, dangerous man growing to love a young girl like she was his daughter. Unfortunately, I would argue, it has also led to Earth's Mightiest Heroes staring slack-jawed at a genocidal madman rather than rebuking him with any of the MANY readily apparent counterarguments to his bullshit.

A truncated list of the ways in which Thanos 1: Is Wrong and 2: Does Wrong

Here, I would argue, we come to what is wrong with Thanos in the MCU. It isn't bad to have a villain with genocidal goals per se, punching nazis is as important today as it was in the 40s after all, but having a villain you're supposed to empathize with in his quest to preform a genocide is generally considered a bad move. A move so bad, in fact, that one of the funniest comedies in the world, is about exactly this.

And yet, the MCU can seemingly not help itself but make an unironic Springtime for Thanos. "Isn't he sad," says Infinity War, "this lumbering purple space dad, willing to do what nobody else can do, what needs to be done?" "Look! He cries because he had to kill his own daughter on Planet Fridge to get the requisite number of Magical Space Tic-Tacs with which he plans to kill half of all life in the universe." Oh, except she's his adopted daughter because he killed half her planet's population and enjoyed her 'tude. Also, she's the last survivor of her people now (feel free to fact check me on this, Guardians Of The Galaxy 1 refers to Gamora as the last survivor of her species in the lineup), turns out killing 50% of the population had the side effect of... killing the other half also over time. Great, huh?

Now this here is what kills me about these fucking movies. There are several Doylist reasons why Thanos and his so sad and serious genocide quest is unconscionable, but even from a Watsonian perspective his shit does not make sense. But OK, maybe the Gamora thing is a plot hole. James Gunn didn't read the Lore Notes all the way through and ended up introducing a near-ironclad counterargument to Thanos' bullshit by accident. These things happen, and the most readily available fix is to pretend they never happened and/or the character who said it was Just Wrong. It doesn't end there, though, not by a long shot.

Let's talk numbers for a second. If you, today, were to halve the population of the earth. Do you know how many years that would set back the population growth, provided, of course, that the trauma of such an event didn't kill off or cripple humanity outright of course? It'd bring us back to the population level of the mid-70's! After a genocide that'd outshine even the most horrid acts of violence against humanity in sheer scope, you'd have pushed earth's theoretical kill screen back about a man's age. Good job, you Malthusian fuck. Round of applause for the Difficult Man that makes the Hard Choices, everybody clap for the edgy clown.

There is, of course, also the ethical arguments against killing functionally incalculable masses for an ill-defined goal of a thankful (and somehow sustainable?????) universe, but I'm not going to say much on that, in part because this is one the Infinity War duology mostly covers on it's own. Say what you want about Captain America, he at least knows to on occasion say Good Guy shit.

Now to be clear, my issue here isn't that the primary movers and shakers in Infinity Wars doesn't read Thanos to filth on how shit his plan is. That's fine, the main protagonists of the MCU are Moral People first and Smart People second, but what kills me is that NOBODY, and I mean ABSOLUTELY nobody comes with a single question about the practical or mathematical realities involved here. Like Spider-Man wouldn't be web-slinging around the city bus Thanos threw at him going "You are aware that earth's population has more than doubled since the early 70's right?" and making some sort of crack on the math curriculum on Titan, or War Machine or one of the more practically-minded heroes wouldn't at least ask earnestly "wait, why can't you use your functionally infinite power to create ways for life to live sustainably?"

Mais non. Nobody questions a single of the extremely rickety axioms in Thanos' plan. Not once. Not a single time. There's more time dedicated to why the Avengers, now equipped with a time machine, don't just go back to murder baby Thanos in the crib than whether the big bad space man's plan makes any fucking sense.

Breaks in formula, Or; Why Endgame kind of cocks it up

So, what's the big issue. The villain is REALLY bad and his plan doesn't make sense, big woop, right? Well, I would argue that the Thanos problem doesn't arise from how bad and wrong Thanos is, but rather how the heroes of the Marvelverse react to him, or rather should I say, how they don't.

Superhero conflict in the MCU can, I would argue, be understood as dialectic. The hero has a Thesis about the world at the outset, T'chala considers himself a righteous king in a line of righteous kings tasked with upholding the world his forefathers created for him and is then confronted with an antithesis in the form of the play's villain, Killmonger views the previous rulers of Wakanda craven isolationists content with stacking up their utopia while the world burns and people suffer. While the hero and the base kindness that informs their actions win out in the end, their perspective on the conflict is a meld of their own and the villain's, a synthesis if you will, T'chala will reign as king, but he will do what he thinks is right for Wakanda, to take her out of isolation and seek to better the world through their superior technology.

In Infinity War this doesn't really happen, neither for the overarching story with the protagonists, nor for the Thanos-headed sub-story. There's no real meaningful compromise that can be made between "Killing half of the universe is good, actually :)" and "Killing people is wrong :(" after all. This isn't a problem on its own, I'd claim, but the fact that the movie low-key presents itself as an attempt of finding such a middle ground is... disappointingly evocative of modern political discourse, let's just say.

It is jarring, is the thing, to see Steve "Captain America" Rogers be unable to say anything of moral weight against a genocidal space ube. To see Tony "The only expert on Unlimited Free Energy" Stark not even question the axiom that there's no such thing as a sustainable universe without this barbarous culling. They oppose Thanos on account of all the killing, but when it comes to the ideals side of thing they let the man win on walk-over. Part of this probably arises from how Infinity War does the whole "penultimate part is dark as FUCK bit, as Thanos' quest to attain all the Infinity Stones succeed, and not even a Hail Mary attempted murder from Thor manages to save the day. What exacerbates the problem, though, is how much of a mess the follow-up finale Endgame is. Now don't get me wrong, it's a fanservice all you can eat buffet, and in terms of honoring the legacy of the MCU and all of that it does what it's supposed to. As an answer to Infinity War, though, it is a mess. Our heroes never get their footing back in the moral department, as timeline shenanigans see "our" Thanos dead within the first 15 minutes, and a separate, but functionally identical mad titan brought over from a parallel timeline.

Now time travel bullshit in superhero media is about as old as the genre itself, but let's just look at this choice for a moment. The "new" Thanos is from a diverging timeline before he gathered all of the infinity stones. "New Thanos'" big plot is essentially, upon seeing that the universe is indeed not thankful but gearing up to kick his periwinkle ass post-snap, decides that if that's how they want to play he'll just destroy the entire universe this time around and see how they like that. Now, this works as a response to Infinity Wars Thanos only in that it confirms the very "no duh" notion that nobody will be particularly grateful to someone who killed half of their friends pretty much regardless of the quote unqoute facts they cite to justify it. The fact that this new reality isn't a lick more sustainable than the old one? Not commented on. Any meaningful consequences of Thanos' action outside of the particular ways it has touched the lives of our heroes? I guess there are signs here and there, but largely not commented on.

See this is what kills me with the New Thanos and that time travel nonsense. It's a get out of plot consequence free card. The MCU wanted to have its cake and have a larger-than-life villain with conviction, and eat it too, have a villain audiences can in part sympathize with, and even think is cool. This process leads us to such farce as Endgame having Thanos musing "You couldn't live with your failure and where did it bring you? Back to me," like he isn't throwing a fucking omnicidal tantrum at not being worshiped for being willing to kill a truly staggering amount of people make the Hard Choices. And again, absolutely nobody calls him on this. For all the quips in the wold, not even iron man notes that this is the pot calling the kettle black, because Thanos is Beyond Quipping. He is a Serious Man with a Serious Plan (a Serious Plan, incidentally, plotted by a cabal of murderous clowns, but I digress.)

Love Me, I'm a Liberal, Or; The Limits of Superhero Storytelling

I think I have been a mite charitable when it comes to describing the typical MCU plot to be dialectic in nature. The better movies, like Black Panther, Iron Man 3, and Thor Ragnarok fits this description rather well, but a lot of the time the plot follows a more mealy-mouthed liberalism of sorts. The hero represents the status quo, and the villain comes in as a radical who Might Have Some Good Ideas but Goes Too Far, requiring the hero to come in to Save The Day! It is hard to not notice that a lot of MCU antagonists are motivated by real-life problems, but just decides, usually somewhere in act 2, to just become Dumb And So Goddamn Crazy about it to justify the hero fighting them. This way, the hero can fight to uphold the Status Quo without calling their opponent a radical freak, or put any focus on how they are, indeed, upholding the status quo, warts and all.

The thing about the Infinity War duology that's so frustrating to me is that the movie clearly wants to be perceived as a dialectic kind of thing, but so transparently is one of the latter. Just look at how Cap, when discussing the topic of whether it's morally justifiable to destroy the infinity gem that powers their friend Vision states "We don't trade lives," and then goes about starting a massive bloody ground war to attempt to stop Thanos' forces from seizing Vision and the infinity gem, only to fail and they have to kill Vision anyway, except Thanos can time travel now, so he just Ctrl-Zs the entire moral choice and takes what he needs. L for the good guys, there, but more importantly, I think, this is supposed to be support for Thanos' antithesis of "some time killing is Good Actually."

The problem here is that this is a ludicrously uneven playing field. Yes, killing your friend to stop someone else from killing him AND ending the world is one of those trolley problem moments, but they're also functionally useless in this case. Thanos can control time now, so who gives a shit? If he doesn't like the outcome he'll just "Oop" a skootch back in time and never mind that. Even if the amethyst asshole didn't have time travel, what were we supposed to take away from this thing? All violence is the same? A kill is a kill? How is this a moral failure for Team Cap exactly? Like yeah it is wacky that superhero violence somehow is only lethal when someone is Dangerous And On The Edge and possibly even Dumb And So Goddamn Crazy, but you're not going to make that point in the big ol' crossover event are you because that'd make the audience feel weird about enjoying the punchman action. Never mind, I suppose, that Disney and Co here are giving the thinly-veiled fascist the "agree with him or no you have to admire his gumption" treatment like you're a fucking human interest story about the Young Hip White Supermacist in a self-declared news publication ca 2016.

In Closing, or; It's Not Real To Me Any More

So what do I want to achieve with this little essay? Do I want to hashtag cancel hashtag disney? Not so much no. Hell, my own stopping paying attention to the MCU was more recent, and chiefly motivated by the absolute hash that they made out of that Falcon And Winter Soldier show on the villain side if I'm honest. Do I want to change the way we talk about Disney or the MCU? I don't think that's within my power nor something I'm all that fussed about, either.

No, what I wanted most of all is to vent. To let off some steam that's been brewing for literal years, only further added to every time I see one of those stupid fucking "Thanos Did Nothing Wrong" memes that redditors used to love, only turned sourer every time I wondered how many actual, unironic ecofascists use these memes to make their ideas palpable, how I'd even tell the difference, and whether it made any difference who was ironic and who was not.

As anyone who's done a bit of writing might be able to tell you, there's no concept so good it can't be read into something terrible with a bad faith reading. This, I hope you agree with me, is not what happened here. The actual text has these flaws, and if it didn't end up boosting a rather insidious con from the worst political philosophy currently extant, I'd probably let it slide. When you create a story, I do not think there are all that many moral obligations on you in the act itself, but if you can not at the very least be honest and (inasmuch as you can) tell no overt lies.

Lack of resources is not what causes suffering on this planet today, nor is it likely to do so in the foreseeable future. That they do is a lie that the story of MCU Thanos tells.

Capitalism, neo-colonialism, conspicious consumption, these things cause poverty, strife and suffering. These things causes ludicrous food waste in a world where people still starve. These things causes cheaply produced medicine sold at exorbitant prices. These things cause empty housing being passed from investor to investor in some hellish shell-game while people live on the streets. These things cause famines. These things cut rainforests at an unsustainable rate. These things bleach the coral. These things cause hilariously insufficient deep water subs. These things causes stupid fucking superhero movie sequels.

The truth? We are capable of feeding the world, more than capable. There is enough room on this earth to house its every inhabitant with room to spare. Ok, maybe not everyone can have a new iPad every year on account of rare earth minerals being, well, rare-ish, so that's one of those things we may have to be a bit cost-benefit about. My point is this: Thanos isn't out here saying everyone can't have an iPad or a new phone every year, the kind of restrictions resource scarcity could conceivably bring. He keeps harping on the shit ideas of a long-dead British upper class twit like they could be used to justify his mega-genocide, so in that regard I suppose he's fulfilling a proud fascist tradition. I just wish that the superheroes we're meant to admire didn't stand by and let him, is all.

#film friday #essay #Oh boy this one is a doozy #I've wanted to write this or something very much like it for many years at this point #but I could never bring it together to a coherent enough point to not have it be a furious rant #it's still a bit of a furious rant of course #I'm not made out of stone #next week: an actual movie I think #no bee movie rant right away unfortunately #gotta space these things out a little bit

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allthislove · 2 years

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Thinking about the Namor discourse, I'm reminded of the Killmonger discourse from back when the first movie came out. Almost everyone agreed that he was right, but that his methods were extreme, and that Nakia had already suggested the same things without the violence. Killmonger's stance was... surprisingly just like Namor's. Basically burn the world, take it over (although Namor seems to have little differentiation between poor, oppressed people of the surface and the oppressors of the surface. At least that's how it seems.)

But there was also this huge rise in fans of Killmonger. He's a cool, confident character, played by a handsome actor, who was fun and cool to watch. He was definitely killed off too soon, though. Marvel had that problem of killing their villains back then, when comics heroes usually encounter their villains many times.

Now the main difference between Killmonger and Namor is that Namor isn't a villain. Killmonger comes from a straight forward villain character in the comics. Namor is an antihero in the comics. He has a long-standing feud with T'Challa and Wakanda, and they clash often for reasons similar to this movie. But Namor isn't supposed to be hated as a villain. He's coming from a completely unique perspective than everyone on the surface. Comparing Tenoch Huerta's Namor to the Namor in the comics, they're very similar in that their main goal is the safety and protection of their underwater society. Sometimes, that aligns Namor with the surface heroes. Often, he clashes with them, either because of his own extreme views (burn the world) or because they're getting up to something that puts Atlantis in harm's way (Talokan in the MCU).

So, when I'm seeing a lot of like... takedowns of people who like Namor, and who are attracted to Tenoch, and comments like "Anything for a sexy face" and "y'all wouldn't do this for a Black man" it feels very much... to me... like unfamiliarity with the character. Namor is a superhero, not a villain. We're not supposed to see him like Loki or Thanos. That's why they've been billing him as "the first Mexican SUPERHERO" in the press tour. He is an antagonist for Wakanda a lot of the time, but that's because Marvel comics are actually quite good at nuances. A lot of characters aren't strict hero/villain archetypes in Marvel comics. Look at Magneto and Professor X, as an example. You're gonna tell me Professor X is a moral good superhero and Magneto is a moral bad supervillain? Especially in the current comics where all Mutants live in Krakoa together and have a society protected from the rest of the world. You're gonna tell me Iron Man is a strictly good superhero? Like, nuance is how the comics work. That's what Coogler is actually really good at bringing to his MCU projects and it's why he's the perfect director to even handle a character like Namor.

Coogler knows how to bring the nuance. It's why everyone loved Killmonger, too, even if we didn't agree with him. (Though some of y'all did.) Nuance shows us why Killmonger wants to do what he's doing.

As far as "wouldn't do this for a Black man" takes... isn't that disingenuous when talking to fans of the Black Panther franchise? It's not like the franchise was small or didn't do well. It was one of the most successful movies of the Infinity Saga, up there with Infinity War and Endgame. Most people in these tags HAVE gone up for a Black man. T'Challa was not lacking in love. Neither was Killmonger. Or even M'Baku. How many oneshots I read about M'Baku taking care of his "vegetarian children" because of that one off, throwaway line "Just kidding. We are vegetarians." (Loved the callback to it in this movie with him eating a carrot while talking to the council!) People liking Tenoch Huerta and thinking his version of Namor is attractive has nothing to do with whether or not people find the Black men attractive. But for what it's worth, THERE'S ONLY ONE MAIN BLACK MAN IN THIS MOVIE and that's M'Baku. Unless you expect a bunch of teen and 20-something fans to go up over the elders on the council. T'Challa has passed, W'Kabi is in jail and never shown, Killmonger does show up for a cameo but that's not a main role. All we get is M'Baku. And people are going up for him, because people love M'Baku. This is a movie about a whole country of badass Black women. The only male characters of consequence are M'Baku, Namor, and Ross.

Namor is just a shiny new character and again, not a villain AND provides representation to an entirely different group of people. People are allowed to be excited to see an Indigenous character in a Marvel movie. It doesn't mean they don't love the Black characters in the movie.

As far as shipping, there's really only two choices and that's Shuri/Riri and Shuri/Namor. It's surprising that y'all are upset about Shuri/Namor, as that ship was obvious. You can dislike a ship without pretending everyone who likes it made it up based on nothing. Media literacy is understanding what a story is trying to do, and the Namor and Shuri scenes before the attack on Wakanda were trying to make you see them as a potential romance. I saw one take saying that they might possibly be switching Namor's obsession with Sue Storm into an obsession with Shuri (which is ehhhhhh and I kinda hope not, but would work with the storyline they're building).

With Riri, you get an easy ship kinda in the same grain as ScienceBros, and they are really good friends in the comics, so that ship is a pretty surefire one going forward.

I don't really like Shuri and M'Baku, but I could see it happening more than any of them in canon. I only don't like it because he reads very "older brother" with her and it would feel like an extreme left turn for them to date. But I could see the movies trying that pairing on some like... "good for Wakanda" stuff.

(Then there's Namor/M'Baku which is really funny, and I like your minds 🤣 Based on the "fish man" stuff alone.)

Anyway I'm getting off track, but basically, I think there's a lot of extreme behavior going on in the tags and I think it really boils down to this being your first introduction to Namor, because there's no reason to be angry with people for liking him. You're gonna have to get used to him, too, because he's a Problem, tm, and I fully expect him to insert himself into so many conflicts and give the Avengers grief, too. And I hope we get a main universe (I refuse to call the MCU 616) Illuminati with him and Strange and them, too.

#marvel #namor #wakanda forever #wakanda forever spoilers #Black panther #black panther spoilers #spoilers #shuri #T'Challa #Killmonger #M'Baku #w'kabi #riri williams

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fandom-gt · 3 months

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COMMISSION TYPE: Full Page + 2 Add-ons

PRICE: 95

FANDOM: MCU

CHARACTERS: Peter Parker, Pepper Potts

REQUESTED SUMMARY: ”Set in a version of the MCU where shrunken people are viewed as objects, a version of Peter Parker who just began his freshman year college of shrinks and is bought by Pepper Potts. Unaware that the tiny she bought is actually her husband's protégé or even sentient, she treats him like a mint and pops him into her mouth. After sucking on and licking him thoroughly, she spits him out and puts him away for her to use again later.”

WARNINGS: Unaware-ish, Soft Vore

——

Pepper Potts has a problem. That problem is called ‘Tony Stark’, but that’s actually not the problem she’s addressing today, exactly. Her secondary problem as a result of Problem Number One is actually something easier to comprehend and more universally known: stress. Not many people know this, but in her early twenties, Pepper used to smoke. Of course, after deep research about all the health concerns and the way it actually negatively impacts stress response, she quit the habit - but it was still a long time before she discovered a replacement habit equally soothing but with virtually no known side effects.

Tiny Mints. She’d been skeptical, at first, of both their efficacy and their use, but as time wore on and advertising became more prominent, Pepper found herself worn down to the potential appeal of them. Little oral fixation fixers, with no carcinogens, no nasty chemicals, nothing unnatural. Something she could pop in her mouth and play with, something that released a soothing dopamine fix throughout her day to help her cope with her stress.

Eventually, she was sold. She went to a little bodega near Stark tower, smiled politely at the cashier, and made her purchase. Really, nobody could blame her for not knowing better.

Peter Parker is used to being a nuisance to really rich, really weird people. Generally, the more rich and more weird they are, the more they tend to want to do bad things to non-rich people. Being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man tends to make you a lot of enemies, and a lot of those enemies happen to be scientists messing around with really weird technology.

All of this to say, maybe part of him should have been more prepared for the disconcerting flash of blinding light that assaulted his senses — more prepared, at least, than the split-second premonition of something really bad about to happen, at a time far too late do actually do anything about it. One minute he’s in an alleyway outside of a research and tech institution, the next he’s flat on his back, groaning his way back into consciousness.

It’s dark. That’s the first thing he realizes, because he has to double-check he actually opened his eyes. Not a single speck of light filters through. The second thing he realizes is that someone stole his suit, and they’ve left him completely naked on a metal slab that isn’t… actually as cold as it should be. That should probably be some kind of ominous sign, but he won’t connect those dots for another few seconds.

He’s held firmly in place not by any kind of fastenings, but by metal walls that seem perfectly contorted to frame his body in a kind of person-shape, so resoundingly strong that even his enhanced durability and strength don’t seem to do absolutely anything against them no matter how hard he shoves. And he does shove, and writhe, and squirm, for several minutes — until his ears prick beneath a sudden new sensation.

Deep, deep rumbling. A distant, droning cadence almost too low for him to fully comprehend, but there’s a rhythmic lilt and pattern that lets his clever mind identify it as some kind of speech. Bassy, booming, but definitely speech. The more he strains, the more he can almost understand what it’s saying.

He never really gets the chance. Very abruptly, gravity shifts. He’s held in place by the metal walls, but he can feel the wooshing of g-force like he’s swinging from a web. Thrust from side to side, then down a little, and then a very, very swift climb. The walls around him creek and groan, and then light pierces the very edge of his vision, yawning wider, blinding, the fast-forward dawning of the rising sun that he squints and blinks his way through.

It isn’t the sun. It’s the too-white artificial ceiling light of a business-grade bulb, and it’s blotted out rather suddenly by- by…

He’s never felt his stomach sink so low, so fast. Never felt the kind of swooping, instinctive fear as he feels right then, staring up at what is undeniably a person’s face, except that it’s dozens of feet tall, bigger than a house, bigger than that Ant Guy was that one time at that airport in Germany. A second after his brain allows him to register that, he has a second epiphany — he knows that face. He’s seen her before.

Relief floods in hot on the heels of his terror. This is Pepper, this is Mr. Stark’s assistant, and if it’s her looking down at him, it means he’s probably safe. It means that she found him somehow, and she’s going to take him to Mr. Stark. If anybody can fix whatever happened to him, it’s Tony. That’s why Peter’s not immediately all that concerned when perfectly manicured fingernails the size of city busses swoop in, encroaching on his personal space, seizing him from his person-shaped indent in his specialty mint tin.

Yes, okay, maybe it would have been better for her to just talk to him in his safe little container instead of squeezing him with her giant fingers, lifting him a mile over the ground, and raising him up before her face, but he can’t exactly blame her. This is fine. It’s probably fine.

Except, what’s not fine is the closer he gets to her face, the more he realizes there isn’t a scrap of recognition in it. There’s something distant, absent, and uninterested in the features he can see from this low angle, and she’s bringing him awfully close for this conversation.

And then she parts her lips. And she steers him not toward her ears, but toward the wide, dark opening between the perfectly painted lipstick, toward the straight white teeth behind them, toward the delicate strings of saliva that hang down from the roof of her mouth. That’s when he starts to struggle against her fingers, that’s when he nearly pisses himself, because despite the unbelievable, unparalleled denial that this could possibly be happening, it is. Pepper is guiding him unstoppably ever-forward toward her open mouth, and she’s going to put him inside it.

“No- wait- please, please, Mrs. Stark, please don’t eat me, please don’t eat me, it’s Peter, it’s Peter-!!” His voice rises, gaining pitch and volume until he’s screaming as loud as his strained lungs will allow. It does no good. He’s simply too small, and the only thing Pepper hears is the faintest, nearly-inaudible squeaking. Her perfect, petite fingers drop him. He falls two or three feet, and he lands face-first on the soft, hot, wet surface of her tongue. He grips onto it, scrambling up and around, doing his very best to bolt toward the light — but the light is disappearing.

It’s only thanks to his powers that he manages to hold his footing on her rising tongue, that he manages to ascended the steep hill at a run, trying his best to aim for the narrowing gap as Pepper’s teeth close and then, behind them, her lips seal. He has one crushing moment of defeat finding himself trapped in the dark, and then the chaos begins.

The flesh tongue underneath him slams him up to the roof of her mouth. His back hits the unrelenting flesh hard, and then the tongue underneath him begins to writhe, a never-ending assault, a muscular tidal wave of seeking, searching, soft taste buds that curiously explore his entire body. Tasting him. She’s tasting him.

After a few seconds of plush, almost-gentle exploration, her tongue slides back until the harder, firmer tip of it is pushing against his face, his mouth, his chest, in between his legs. No longer tasting, now playing. Enjoying the feel and the shape of him, rolling over his body, alternately smothering him and drowning him in saliva. Peter’s strong, but his forceful pushing at the unrelenting muscle only buys him meager pockets of breathing room. What’s worse, she seems to enjoy it, the stimulation of his movement, because her tongue begins to pointedly prod at the places that get the most reaction out of him — his face, his crotch.

Eventually, after excruciating minutes of this, she seems to get bored. Her tongue lowers, and he drops with it. It shifts, throwing him a few feet back — and through the dim light, from this angle, he can just make out the back of her throat. The pit, the empty bottomless drop, and he knows with an ache in his chest that she might actually swallow him. There’d be almost nothing he could do about it, if she took a drink of water he’d probably barely be able to survive the flood, and he’d be swept down that gullet into her enormous stomach. She could eat him.

But she doesn’t. Instead, her tongue shifts suddenly to the side, bucking him like a bronco. He’s thrown against her closed molars, ground against unrelenting enamel, each tooth easily three times his size. Without parting her lips, her molars separate, and Peter finds himself thrust between them on his back again. And then they press down, almost gently, until he’s perfectly caught between them.

It occurs to him then, what would be even worse than being swallowed whole — being chewed. But Pepper doesn’t do that, either. She just holds him there, absently increasing and reducing the pressure, playing with the resistance he brings her back teeth. Ten minutes later, her teeth part and her tongue glides over again, sweeping him absently underneath her tongue, pulling his entire body in and down until he’s tucked beneath it in a pool of her saliva. She holds him there safely while she swallows, and the forceful suction of it sweeps away all the sticky spit that had been pooling around him, soaking him.

Apparently, she doesn’t mean to swallow him. Apparently, she’d wanted to secure him absently in that space to clear her mouth, so she could then dig him back out with the tip of her tongue, slam him back against the roof of her mouth again, and begin to suck. It’s a constant, vacuous force, pulling at him, pulling everything from him, stealing his energy and his sweat and his everything, but always with the resistance of her tongue pinning him in place to fight against it.

Peter spends nearly two hours in her mouth like this, his landscape constantly changing, her tongue always nudging and playing with him — until finally, her lips part again. Light floods into his cavern, her tongue flattens out, and he lay exhausted on the flat surface of it while her pretty french manicure encroaches to capture his tiny body again.

He can’t even bring himself to protest when she lowers him absently back into his little metal container without even looking, and closes the lid.

She’ll suck on him again later. He made for a perfect fix.

#mcu #giantess #pepper potts #peter parker #pepper/peter #unaware #commission

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gildeddlily · 11 months

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side characters ONly can be gay!!11!1! yep

I could write an essay about the way Marvel is just the reflection of how mass media deals with the queer representation "problem" nowadays

(I should study for my exam but fuck it I have time)

first of all, how many queer characters actually are part of mcu's big ass cast?

Searching on the internet they'll tell you about twenty- but it's enough to read who is queer to understand that they only care about seeming all woke and you know, kind and allies and all that good shit, but the truth is that if you're queer you'll get no more than five minutes of screen time

Loki is a bisexual genderfluid god, it's canon in the comics and in the shows/film, but does he actually acts on it? like, does he ever talk about the men he had a thing with? does he talk about his gender identity? no. and you know what, I don't want a long speech about feeling accepted and finding your place in the world and understanding yourself, I'd be ok with him being like "yk what, i feel like cunt today" and poof tom hiddleston is no more man.

we have a two second shot were he's labeled as genderfluid. that's it. he has a love story arc with his female alternative version.

like saying the bar can't get lower- all the time there's a man at his side, and they're so queer coded guys. they are so fucking queer coded. they'd have all the potential to be a good couple, and they prob could since Loki is canonically attracted to males too! but no.

let's choose the female you over the dilf grabbing your waist and telling you that you're more, that you matter and have a chance to be good.

can Loki count as representation? maybe.

it's shitty representation, tho.

then there's America.

America's a lesbian, daughter of two lesbian women, and they were proud of it probably- if it weren't for the fact that America's there, she live the adventure, and she has a lgbtqia pin. a pin. all her identity is expressed in a pin.

one could say, but the film is not ab America and her non-male partner, is about the story yk?

then why does every fucking marvel film features a man and a woman being in a relationship?

i guess that when it's about man Tony Stark and woman Pepper Potts everything's ok, you can give all the minutes you want to their sweet relationship- but if they're queer I'm sorry, the best thing you'll have is a pin.

then a few gays out there.

random man in endgame missing his bf. random girl in hawkeye mentioning her wife (slay). that one sexy dora milaje who has a sexier gf. slay you too ig. that Eternals guy who kissed his bf on screen (first time ever, and they feel revolutionary. fucking 2021).

the only thing that can be saved is Thor 3/4 because of Taika Waititi. the queerness is something Taika did because he wanted to.

Ragnarok's about this dude, his bi brother, this guy who flirts with both of them and has orgies with all kind of beings, a lesbian valkyrie and a gay rock. Love and Thunder is about this guy, his bamf ill girlfriend, a lesbian valkyrie who's trying to find some girl to eat out, a gay rock that ends up having strange sex with his bf, and greek people fainting after seeing said guy's naked body. (and that weird moment between Thor and Peter? that was made to be gay guys)

while it's not perfect, it's one step above everything else.

Taika Waititi's film's queerness is not there for looking more inclusive, it's there because gay people are there, we actually exist dude, and they deserve their space, and they should have it.

and like Taika Waititi's said, the world will be healed when people will stop saying "oh you know that new marvel series? yes, there's a gay gal in there", when people will treat queer people like the people they actually are.

it's like walking around in a forest and being like "oh look, a tree!". we aren't a different species ffs

representation is good, and of course gay characters sometimes are gonna be just there on the side cheering on the main character- because that's how life goes. I'm the cheering-from-the-side girl queer friend to my straight friend, and mcu stories are told by straight people, so it's kinda natural that we're kinda useless.

the thing that really, really makes me want to cry our is how they're able to destroy any queer "lead" they put here for us, for me, and I'm starting to believe behind those scripts there are some seriously repressed gay dude who can only express themselves by writing those things.

like Steve and Bucky? the classic we're best friends and we totally didn't have sex?

or Bucky and Sam?

why was the chair scene necessary? If i see something like that happening to a woman and a man my first thought is "they're a thing", and it was the first thing I thought with Sam and Bucky too- but ofc people will tell us "y are you making everyone gay?" it's not my fault princess it's the writers'

or, again, Loki and Mobius?

"you can be good, just in case no one ever told you" WHAT THE HELL DUDE

and you know, those things can be said between two friends too, but people gets disperate. I get disperate, after watching hours upon hours of two guys eye-fucking each other and ending up being all "yeah bro i love you this is my girlfriend amy". so I wrote, I draw, I think about them being "hey dude, d'you want to be the amy to my myself?" because the alternity is writing a fic about a random man who says he misses his husband on a three second scene.

(in a fandom like good omens I don't have to worry about it. I have my queer besties, my fav lesbian couple, and a lot of representation.)

so.

mcu's representation is bad representation.

every time they write a queer characters they're all "you see that? we did that!" like they did something special- but they didn't.

they write gays for the straight, in order to feel better about themselves and make straight racist sexist homophobic ppl (the "I'm inclusive guys!!!" kind of person) watching it feel better ab themselves.

(I'm not gonna start talking about the fact that this entire post talks more than anything else about the way the mcu treats women, bc it's a rabbit hole I'm not ready to talk ab cause I've been jumping in it for too many years.)

(sorry anon ily)

10/20 edit: valkyrie is bi my bad🧎‍♀️

#lgbtqia representation #lgbtq community #queer #marvel #i hate marvel #mcu #mcu loki #loki season 2 #america chavez #bucky barnes #mobius #lokius #sam wilson #bad representation #they make me so mad

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allandoflimbo · 9 months

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My second announcement is kind of longer, but here goes.

There’s been a couple of factors that’s kept me from continuing to write aside from just my time, or lack thereof, and health complications that seem to always get in the way. Not complaints but relevant factors to those waiting on updates.

1. Getting hacked twice in a row sucked ASS.

2. I’ve started to drift a bit from Bucky in general. I still love him but the lack of content of him the MCU since Endgame, or even TFATWS, has been killer. No inspiration anymore. The fandom has changed.

3. This is one that has silently bothered me the most for quite some time even though it’s been so long but it mattered to me.

Something that has also been getting in the way of me updating Take It Back 2 has been the issues I had with the first one that I never got around to fixing or acknowledging.

If you’ve read book 2 at all you might understand this a little bit better.

Granted, I was younger when I wrote the first book and i’ve grown since then, and maybe that’s why I felt the need over time to make some certain changes or explain things in the story better. Who knows. But…

* I never liked how I made it seem like the reader (Or Riley Grace, if you’ve read the OC version) was very anti money, anti having anything material. That was never my intention. And I noticed that I made her seem that way. Yes, I wanted her to be concerned that her sister was putting those things first before everything else and also concerned that something was wrong, but not that Riley/Reader was against money or life in general. She isn’t by any means frugal or cheap.

* I didn’t make it clear enough in Book 1 that there was underlying things happening to Ashlyn that was pushing her “gold digger” tendencies, or for that to appear as so, to the forefront. There was more things happening to her.

* I didn’t like how little I let it show that her and Bucky do share this love and respect that Reader, and the actual readers themselves, haven’t seen. I feel like I made Ashlyn too cold and not as much mysterious.

* I always found Bucky and Reader a bit too self centered and conceited to themselves and what they thought was an issue and making their problems seem bigger than everyone else’s. As well as making what they thought what they thought was more important than Ashlyn herself or without considering her own life and her own emotions.

* Despite Ashlyn doing what she did and behaving the way she did, something always rubbed me the wrong way about how I made the girls view her in the story. Ashlyn might not be innocent, but I did not like how I made Reader/Riley appear like she was more supported by the other girls in the story when what she had done was also not good.

* How people let what Bucky and Reader did “let it slide.”

So they were little things, but things that always bothered me and was honestly getting in the way of me continuing the sequel. It was mostly my distaste I had on the Bucky/Reader front. I wanted them to love and love deeply, but not while disregarding Ashlyn as a human being and as a woman.

So the last few weeks, i’ve gone back and i’ve corrected some major grammatical issues in the first book, but i’ve also added some sentences here and there. I’ve also added on some dialogue to correct some of the issues I had that were listed above. So I didn’t remove anything, the story is still the same, but I did add onto it.

I’m much happier with the outcome and I think it will making going forward easier for me as a story teller.

The updated one is updated on Wattpad and AO3, the Bucky/Reader version. I haven’t posted the corrected one on Tumblr yet.

#take it back #bucky fanfic

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thepanicsquid · 1 year

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How Unmanaged ADHD Almost Killed Half the Universe: A Peter Quill Character Analysis

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a professional anything. I genuinely don’t even know how to use Tumblr but I needed somewhere to get weird about my hyperfixations where the normies can’t see. 😅 I can't diagnose anyone with anything, and I'm not saying that Peter Quill was written as an intentional representation of ADHD. I am just a person who was diagnosed in adulthood with ADHD who loves and relates to Peter Quill. This is just my interpretation of him through the lens of my own experiences. Also, this is (hyper)focused on the MCU version of the character.

Impulsivity, Risk Taking, and Emotional Dysregulation

Ok, so this is the big one. We know that Peter has massive impulsivity issues. This is how to works in an ADHD brain (from additudemag.com): "The thalamus area of the brain controls response inhibition. It works like a gate — sending signals to allow or stop behaviors. When the brain detects a red flag, its limbic-hippocampal connections relay a warning from the thalamus to the frontal cortex. That’s the control center of the brain that handles emotional expression and problem solving. In ADHD brains, the thalamus gate is broken." So let's look at some examples by movie.

Vol. 1

He goes back for his walkman when it's been stolen from him at the Kyln, even though they're currently breaking out of a high security prison because of an impulsive, emotional reaction. He also gives Gamora his mask when she's floating out in space, with the hope that calling Yondu will also save him (impulsivity involves a lack of foresight). His bragging about how selfless it was afterwards to Gamora came across as arrogant, but it was probably also him realizing himself that things could have gone very differently because people with ADHD don't tend to think ahead. Finally, he banks on his 12% of a plan being enough to defeat Ronin. Peter thinks ahead *just* enough but struggles to see things through to completion. And then at the end he just does the first things he can think to do - a dance off and then grabbing the same stone that he had just watched tear a woman apart.

Vol. 2

When he learns that Ego killed his mother, his anger completely overtakes him and he shoots his father immediately, once again reacting emotionally and impulsively.

Infinity War

This is the one that hurts, because it shows how devastating unmanaged ADHD symptoms can be. When he learns that Thanos killed Gamora, he literally can't control his emotions because his brain doesn't work that way and he's never had the tools to manage it, and he impulsively beats Thanos without any thought for the consequences. It always broke my heart to see him villainized for this because I knew it would be my exact reaction in his shoes. Peter always acts from his heart, for better or worse, and in that moment, his pain overwhelmed any logical thought. As an aside, I've found that this is one of the hardest parts of being late-diagnosed. You look back on all the times where you can't quite explain rationally why you did the thing you did and start to understand why and there’s a whole lot of shame involved in it (more on shame later!)

Vol. 3

"Kill them all" Peter spends an entire scene telling Drax they're not going to kill anyone, because that's who Peter Quill is. He's compassionate and empathetic, but once he gets angry, once he's hurt, all that goes out the window. Literally! He grabs Theel and jumps out of the window towards a dying planet! People with ADHD tend to have low frustration tolerance, impatience, a hot temper, and excitability. So, in addition to jumping into an exploding planet...

Forgetfulness, Music, and Dopamine Hunting

Because the reward center doesn't produce enough dopamine in the ADHD brain, boring tasks like cleaning are painful. Our brains don't give us any sort of satisfaction for doing it, so there's very little motivation to do it. The Milano is a mess, of course it is! Cleaning isn't interesting or rewarding and even if we want to live in a clean environment, we're constantly at war with our own brain over having to make it that way. When he gets back from Morag, he's forgotten Bereet's even THERE. People with ADHD struggle with their working memory, meaning that if a thing isn't right in front of them, they tend to forget about it. We also know that Quill's a bit of a womanizer, and that impulsive, pleasure seeking behavior is one of the ways that people with ADHD try to up their dopamine levels. People with ADHD tend to have issues with alcohol and drug abuse as well, since they stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, and we know that Peter uses alcohol heavily to cope after losing Gamora.

Speaking of the pleasure center of the brain, music triggers it, and we know my guy cannot do anything without music on. And for most of his life it was the SAME 12 SONGS (hyperfixation?). Not only that, but familiar music (or tv shows, or movies) can provide a sort of white noise that let's people with ADHD focus better. Peter loves music because it reminds him of his mom, sure, but also because it helps him get shit done because otherwise his thoughts would be all over the place in silence. Plus dancing is a great way to stim and get that extra energy out.

Masking, Rejection and Identity

People with ADHD also often deal with Rejection Sensitivity Disorder, where they are extra sensitive to real or imagined rejection. We don't see *too* much of this, but there are hints of it. Like his interpretation of the night his mother died. His grandfather carried him out of the room to protect him, but he interpreted it as getting thrown out. He took Yondu's joking about wanting to eat him literally. He panics at the idea that Gamora might be rejecting him for Thor (who is, as everyone points out to him, the real version of the person he pretends to be). He also can't accept the Other Gamora's rejection of him. Part of the way he protects himself is by creating a persona that can handle rejection.

Masking is more commonly associated with ASD than ADHD, but people with ADHD can still mask to try to hide their ADHD symptoms. And truthfully, if you're a human kid trying to survive around a bunch of aliens, the only hope you've got is to try to fit in anyway. Peter's entire persona is what he *thinks* a cool space pirate should be like. He creates this Star-lord persona based on his heros growing up. But where Han Solo is genuine in his confidence and swagger, with Quill, it's an act. He's a sensitive, emotional kid that had to develop this mask to survive being raised by the Ravagers. It crumbles when he meets Thor and sees himself next to the sort of person he's trying to be and just how insecure Peter is. And we see over and over again that he's most successful when he lets the mask drop and leads with empathy and compassion. Every single Guardian started as his enemy, but Peter, unlike Han, doesn't shoot first. At his core, he is still that little boy who got into a fight with the other kids for killing an innocent frog. A lot of people with ADHD feel stuck in arrested development and Peter Quill is still a kid playing pretend in a lot of ways.

I think Quill is a much more layered and interesting character than people tend to give him credit for because he masks TOO well. People look at him and see a boring white dude. Handsome and confident just like all of the other MCU leading men...but it's because that's what he wants you to see. Because if you saw what a mess he was underneath all of that you'd understand why his family are these other neurodivergent weirdos. He might be pretending to be "Star-lord", but there's a reason his best friends are Rocket and Drax.

I think the heartbreak of Vol. 3 is that he had started to figure out who he was with Gamora because she grounded him but he wound up tying too much of that progress to her. He can't go back to the person he was (Legendary Outlaw Star-lord) because that was never truly him, and facing the world without that safety net is too hard. So he chases the dopamine. He drinks, he tries to convince the other Gamora to be with him, he even briefly turns to Nebula, because he's never really had to face himself. Mantis says that Drax is the only one of the Guardians who doesn't hate himself, and in spite of his outward confidence, I think that includes Peter. Peter loves the Outlaw Star-lord persona, he loves the Guardian Star-lord he became with Gamora, but deep down, he's sensitive and driven by emotions he can't control and he's ashamed of that. Remember, he was raised by Yondu who constantly derided him for his sentimentality and he was blamed for the Blip because of an emotional reaction he didn't have the tools to control. The qualities that helped him create a family out of a group of criminals are the same ones that cause him to screw up and cause him shame. Which is pretty much what having ADHD can feel like.

So there is is! I'm sure I've missed stuff and some of this is just character analysis regardless of ADHD, but there it is. Also, definitely check out @peter-quill-is-so-fine ‘s breakdown of Quill's report card that inspired all this for further evidence.

#gotg #guardians of the galaxy #peter quill #chris pratt #star lord

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