#cwii cw

[mastcrmarksman]

@gammaragee ⸻ "You can't choose who you fall in love with."

❝ What if that person is you, Bruce? ❞

That's a loaded question as if he's been holding onto that for a while. As if it's been locked into the chamber, last bullet, and this was the perfect shot, the only shot. The guy kind of walked right into that one. Finally, this weight that he had been carrying around with him for so long has finally been allowed to lifted off.

The load is by no means gone entirely, but something that he's been able to grow around. It's something that he's dwelled on, that's followed him since the last time they were sat across from each other. Part of him woneders if that was good for him by any means. It's a little stone that's settled in his chest and he no longer has trouble with it being there.

The shape of it, the ache of it, was all too familiar to Clint. It was that feeling of when he was left alone, when suddenly there was an abscence that he wanted to run away from. Something he had run from, that followed him, and made a home. He's had long enough to brood on this, that the feeling has settled like dust.

Was it messed up that where his own peace had came from with the decision to agree, to help, to shoot Bruce Banner was resolving that he had to have; that he did do this out of love. That while the man was gone, had been dead, he realized that the scientist and him were alike more than different. The few and far talks they had when th man had just been man, they knew parts of each other's childhood that other's wouldn't. From memory, from their own stories.

Bruce's the one that had looked at him and said what other's didn't, because he knew, because he knew aabout his dad, about Jacques and Buck, and his brother. A fact of himself, he escapsed and ignored, even if right now he was wishing that he had met Bruce at a bar in the evening than a roadside diner in the afternoon. Clint pushes his fork around on the plate, he's not sad about this fact, about this reveal.

Do they really have time for this? No, but Clint's had a lot more time to think about this, think think about Bruce. ❝ I just thought you should know that I love ya, buddy. I... ❞ He's sorry it didn't work out, but then, ❝ So you know I was glad to do it. ❞ Not for the reasons he gave in court and he wasn't lying then either. he saw the green, saw the vision, saw the need to protect everyonr but every day in that jail celll, in his solitarie; he thought about Bruce Banner. His memories of him and the Hulk, of that moment.

When he hit the road with each twist of knife as people thanked him, his resolve only pushed towards torward this feeling for Banner. It's one he had before, already had been going (why else would he have kissed him). With him being dead and gone, only encouraged him to say it, to take every shot he had and this was that moment. You miss every shot you don't take.

❝ I've, uh, had time to think 'bout that. ❞ He picks up the cup of coffee to take a sip, Clint's not expecting Bruce to say anything. He'd sooner assume he'll get up and leave, or find himself looking down at the Hulk (who he really doesn't want to have this conversation with at the moment).

[wingheadshellhead]

the selective amnesia of marvel writers when it comes to major comic events makes me so insane. not only has tony been on a team with miles (all-new, all-different avengers, 2015), and has been a mentor figure to him since he crossed over from the ultimates universe (ultimate end, 2015), they somehow conveniently forgot that tony stark died in civil war II to protect miles. MILES. the kid he’s calling “newbie” and is somehow not one of his top favorite spider-people.

why is tony treating miles like they’ve never met when he went to war against carol and was punched into a coma to protect miles from being arrested for a crime he didn’t commit???? like mama let’s research before we start writing these comics

anyway yeah miles is one of tony stark’s favourite spider-people in the multiverse HE WAS WILLING TO DIE TO PROTECT HIM

[arundolyn]

ty for posting about how good condemnation wings is in that one spotify wrapped post because i had been sleeping on the blazblue soundtrack for so long and it was what gave me the push to check it out some more. as a result i have had condemnation wings in my head for the past 2 days. i appreciate this greatly.

ITS LITERALLY LIKE. i genuinely cannot pick a favorite favorite of the blazblue ost. discounting the IIs theres genuinely so few that i dislike that it's basically zero. daisuke does not fucking miss. please listen to imperial code. and memory of tears. maybe childish killer. honestly any and all tsubaki themes slap so hard justice sword and inJUSTICE are also bops in this essay i will-

[moontours]

tbh secret invasion and annihilation are some of the only marvel events that deserve rights

[oluka]

7!

hello cass! <3

Number 7 says :

"616 stony"

extremely detailed, I know. This is a plot bunny that came to me as I was busy being salty about the ending of Tony Stark: Iron Man (TSIM). My vague notes about it say that Tony, who for some reason believes he's an AI, manages to download the memories of "lil' tony", aka TonAI. Which means that suddenly Tony remembers CW! Oh no what will he do?

He will go apologize to Steve is the answer. And then they have deep conversations about everything they never talked about in canon (CW, Hickmanvengers, CWII, secret empire AND SO ON aaahh) and it will all be very philosophical and heartfelt and Tony will realise he isn't an AI and maybe Steve will realise that he loves Tony and it all ends happily :)

[starkslovemail]

Not me waking up to the audacity of D*rcy L*wis S*ucky stans whining against Rhodey future appearance in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier because "it's gonna be like Endgame or Civil War all over again" or I’m “tired of team Stark”. I'm tired of these people stanning bland folks like D*arcy and B*cky coming after Rhodey

ty for putting asterisks bc i wouldn't have answered otherwise 🤪

it's the racism.

like there's no way around it other than racism. bc there are so many other movies coming out that are also adding in large casts like arachnid the third and lightning man but 80s. heck, wendyvisor (not derogatory, just for the sake of avoiding tags) is thriving on all the characters they're adding in. that's one of its strengths.

but they wanna pick on the black man 🗿

bc here's the thing: rhodey showing up in fatws makes sense!! rhodey, the military man who was on track to be secretary of state and then president in 616 before he was murked in cwii, who almost became vice president after infinity war, is definitely involved in the government moving forward. there's a precedent for his government involvement.

now, our lovely duo are going to have to deal with the government in fatws due to us agent. there will be some against them, but they have to have someone on their side if they wanna come out triumphant with the shield back where it belongs. it's incredibly likely that in fatws, rhodey's going to be vice president or in the president's cabinet. bc he is going to be the government person on their side.

we know that sharon has been on the run all this time, so it can't be her. but rhodey??? rhodey who helped the world go round while it was in chaos? he will be in the position to give them the intel they need. why would marvel introduce someone new when he's right there??? it's just like ross being introduced in cw and then showing up again in bp instead of some rando.

(this is ofc acting under the assumption that it's not just a quick cameo. in that case, they're whining for no reason lol)

being tired of "team stark" is... idk what you want me to say lol. he was at the center of the infinity saga. marvel ended the infinity saga with the metal clinking from im1 because they know that he was the captain of that ship. it's not my fault "team stark" have crossover appeal. they're good characters 🤷🏾‍♀️

also, i find it incredibly suspicious that they’re mad that the black man who has been here from the very beginning is finally getting his due. it's like they only want one to be relevant at a time, so they can fill a quota of some sort 🤔

anyway. 

i don’t think i’ll ever understand the hype around ms. l*wis, but i think that's because she doesn't work as an easy self-insert for me. i’m not trying to be mean when i say that, just honest. however, i'll admit that i do like the cinematic version of mr. b*rnes, mostly in tfa, but i prefer the 616 version more than any other version.

but some of their stans coming after rhodey for doing what so many other characters are doing (like ms. l*wis in particular is doing so wow, hypocrisy much?) is just racism, and there's no real argument around it. they're antiblack and need to reevaluate.

i'm very much over the white stans who come after black characters that are minding their business simply bc they're black.

get a new shtick, this one's old 🗿

[hayaosmiyazaki]

12 16 22

16. if you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

mcu everything sdshdsva #1 giving steve & tony their actual relationship....., making jan a founding avenger as she shouldve been, fixing nat’s characterization bc shes absolutely nothing like herself, recasting the maximoffs, not doing cw, not throwing jane to the side, etc etc also making the bw movie actually a solo instead of this weird family story like why is alexei her father figure now when him & nat were literally married. why cant anyone @ marvel studios read

616 list would be miles long but first off not doing cwii although we can find a way to blame that on the mcu too

22. popular character you hate?

i like the.. concept.. of bucky but hes so overhyped in the mcu god like. you cant tell me there are this many stans for a character w like 40 mins of screentime total it’s just bc hes played by sebstan 

salty ask list

[tonyglowheart]

1, 5, 19, 22 for the salty fandom asks

hey, anon, thanks for playing! (….I only realized now just what a can of worms I may be opening, but hashtag yolo, I go down, I go down in a blaze of salty glory I guess)

under a read-more because this…..got long………why am I even so salty why can’t I Chill,,,,,, :’)

[send me more numbers if you want to see more of me being a messy salty windbag lmao :’)]

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

Honestly I don’t even consider this an OTP bc I’m so ??? but like….phl/int?? I just. Do not understand. And to this day. Still do not. And yet it’s sUCH a huge one in the fandom???? somehow??????

Honestly I kind of have an idea of some of the impetus but that is something I don’t even want to get into right now lmao.

5.Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

oH BOY, has it 8) 8). e.g. I literally Cannot with st*cky bc of the shit some of the nastier ppl put us (st/ony/tony fans through) back in the day. Like…..I literally had to blacklist bc I cannot even look at them 8) and every time I wanted to find Steve meta it was all st*cky stuff somehow. Plus, there was a time when the prevailing characterization (or at least that I saw) was really REALLY like……codependent and stuff? Like honestly I didn’t even hate/dislike any other ships at first, I even watched Kings just for Seb Stan?? Who I thought was great in it, he’s got a real way of angsting wordlessly that’s really effective. And also benefited him as the Winter Soldier. But like……I have him blacklisted now because I just 8) 8) when I see that/stucky stuff. 

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

the fact that canon is just so *massages temples* like all the time? Like honestly, on one hand I get the whole “ignore canon and enjoy it anyway” dealio, but on the other hand, I actually AM really resentful that I was trying to get into comics RIGHT as there was just…so much shit going on? Like I think one big moment I remember was during AXIS, which is…yikes. and then SIM, which we don’t talk about, which is more yikes? And then idk some other stuff, and incursions and prevailing grimdark culture (like it was all “hah, you thought superheroes would save you? Think again, NO ONE can save ANYONE!” like. c’mon, guys. You still WANT to make money, right?), and then whatever the heck secret wars/battleworld was. And then CWII???? and then Neo-Nazis Everywhere now. So like. y i kes.

and I wasn’t even really around during the first CW, and I’m already incredibly tired of it everywhere, including in MCU. Plus, I feel like Steve has been REALLY getting the short end of the stick with regards to everything. He’s sort of been at the mercy of whoever’s writing, and I kind of get the feeling ppl have just been sublimating their own vision of who the Captain America ideal should be (or subverting it for grimdark ~gritty~ ~realism~) and then extrapolating Steve from that, even though they COULD have done interesting stuff with juxtaposing those standards, Steve’s own moral standards, and maybe the conflict between him being a symbol for people but having his own views and stuff. I only just now in CW feel like I REALLY got a sense of who Steve is as a character, but unfortunately what coalesced is hardly flattering to the character :/

And like……honestly there’s a lot of stuff fandom-side, too. Off hand, I don’t think there’s much I hate about the Stevetony fandom? but I guess in terms of who I think about for that, it’s a specific subset of people I’ve seen around and interacted with or have followed for a bit. Like I haven’t really followed anyone new for a while now. but the marvel fandom at large….like….yike…………..the MCU fandom…… so much yike there. That specific subset of shippers who still think shipping is a great expression of LGBT allyship, who are the ones going “who do people even ship xxx??”, or just like….hating on people lmao.

Another thing I lowkey hate that isn’t necessarily directed at individual ppl is like….when non-Stevetony/tony fans are like “wow why are stevetony/tony fans so hateful/mean, they keep calling Steve a snake” or w.e Like….I get it bc they’re part of, e.g. the stucky fandom, and they’ve had the blessing of only coming into contact with nice ppl and never was on the receiving end of attacks or bullshit. But boy howdy, have Stevetony/Tony fans Been Through Some Shit. There’s a lot of, honestly, hurt there, and part of it is we spent so much time like mild about it and apologetic and we want some turnabout. It’s like that one tumblr post that’s like “fuck anyone who says forgive them ‘for my sake’ I’ve worked hard to hate them,” like for a LONG time, we were like “yes we love Tony, yes we know he’s not perfect, yes we acknowledge his flaws,” like we couldn’t just straight-up say we loved him as a character, we had to caveat it, and it was seen as a perfectly normalized part of the experience, to expect someone to come like “okay but also he’s evil because xxx” and have to be like “yeah okay we acknowledge xxxx but xxx.” Honestly I will fight for the right of ppl to their salt and try to contextualize as much as I can when I see stuff like that. bc you may not know but we haven’t forgotten :’)

There’s also a thing where I can’t tell if they’re in the stevetony fandom or they just….make posts, but those like …. “relatable” shipping posts that I sometimes will see bc mobile will rec it? Like I honestly hate those lmao. I find them cringey and painful to see. (those ones that are like “people think I’m so sweet and innocent but really I’m thinking of my gay ship fucking” or w.e like. maybe at some point I was like “omg same!” but now I’m like “please get this away from my face.” Or those ones where it’s like chat format like “isn’t xx sad?” “yeah isn’t it sad my ship isn’t canon?” or whatever like. D: D: that just makes me nnnoOOOOooooOOOOOooo inside. If you search a smattering of tumblr popular ships in tumb search You Will See Them. like, if you search johnlock destiel sterek or something like that. bc these ppl tag them with a million ship tags)

on that vein, really anyone tagging stuff with like character/ship tags that, imo, really....aren’t so much abt the ship but about themselves? Like, someone tagged their salt ask answer post with the character tags and I had to see someone say they don’t like stevetony and think comics Tony is a dick. Can You Think Before You Goddamn Tag pls and just Not. like ppl who bARELY mention Tony and still tag him in the tags........you realize it’s all going in a page right? it’s not just for your own blog? (but even then, what use is it to your blog when you mostly say “yeah I’ll be talking about him a lot!” but don’t.....actually say much about him.....in your post.............

There is still a lot of tony hating but honestly I’ve got so many ppl blocked now that I see more ppl referencing the antis in the tags (ugh) than I do actually antis anywhere. which honestly also kind of annoys me bc like. I am going into the Tony tag for content on my fave not content on the antis. 

I am just now realizing the original question said “one thing” and I went on about Many Things, so I am cutting myself off now lmao whoops

22.Popular character you hate?

I think honestly the closest is probably Coulson lmao. Like. I just. Don’t see the appeal in him as a character at all. And recently I was watching a bunch of vid compilations for Iron Man and EVERY TIME there was like “and there’s someone else you pissed off. his name is phil” i”m like “:/ :/ but did that part REALLY have to be there??” like sure I get it it’s their vid compilation. But just. What Is The Appeal.

And honestly……I’m kind of :/ about MCU Clint, too? Like, Fraction’s Hawkeye is awesome, but somehow that doesn’t really register as Clint to me. AA’s Clint is fine, but for some reason my mind tends to default to MCU Clint unless there’s further elaboration, and I just :/ :/ >:( re: him.

I also hate Howard but idk if he’s “popular” lol. I seriously hope not 8)

[moontours]

Please imagine, like all of Tony’s Tinies arrived into his orbit post CW, yeah? So they are used to Tony being, at the very least, at slight odds with other heroes and all that bullshit. So when Steve and Tony start getting all buddy buddy and “Shellhead&Winghead” again his brood is like (¬_¬) idk about this guy Tony he seems like a cop tbh. Like they respect Steve as a hero and a person well enough, but dating their collective Uncle?

I can see these kids are trying to reverse Parent Trap them out of loyalty to Tony. They know Tony’s day is like ruined if he and Steve aren’t getting along (even tho Tony is like 💯 thinking he’s hiding it perfectly, these kids can tell when someone has reapplied their eyeliner after crying in the bathroom it just rude to point it out thanks) so they are just looking out for him ok????

And then, the shenanigans commence.

IM GOING TO CRY?? oh my god also bc shortly after cwii was also secret empire so their suspicions of steve being a weirdo jus DOUBLE once they find out that it was hydra cap. BUT they also see how much tony loves steve so they try their best for him ... doesnt mean theyre not Watching though

[moontours]

Maybe there would be more nuance in marvels versus events if they’d hire more writers of colour 💀

THE EVENT WOULD ACTUALLY SLAP. like look at cw/cwii vs outlawed one was a lot better than the other and the premise was similar SOOOO

[moontours]

stop reading comics would mean giving up on seeing the plot lines resolved, the relationships being broken up in a respectful way to both characters and the readers, the relationships being repaired & changing & evolving, the blooming and characters getting their potential explored, everything good that i saw in those characters that i came to care for, to have another AMAZING book such as avengers: no surrender, but this time, long enough and character-driven to make up for the BULLSHIT. the thing is: thanks to writers like bendis and waid and the early 2000s, now marvel knows the shitting on their readers heads makes them talk about the comics louder than if they kept making good books. so we get books like hom, cw, avx, cwii, se, etc. that are purely commercial and meant to trash what the characters represent, their relationships, etc. cause it will get people to talk and the issues #1 will sell. but we choose not to give up. that's the ultimate reality of caring about a years long book franchise, any, comics are the hardest because these characters (marvel, dc, archie) are LEGENDS. and it sucks when they are being wasted, i'm looking at you too, mcu and riverdale/caos/katy keene.

THOSE SHITTY BOOKS REALLY DO SELL 😭😭 and its why they always go back to doing those kind of conflicts too like avx, ivx, etc. drama sells whether its good or bad so they always go back and like its hard for us to give up on comics bc this is like. the only way we get new content of our favourite characters and their relationships. like maybe once i stop caring ab these characters then sure ill stop reading but rn thats just not realistic 😭

[veryvincible]

some pre-thoughts about cantwell’s iron man under the cut

I think Tony’s been through a lot. I think, as someone who’s been through a lot, Tony deserves to go “back to his roots” in the same way plenty of people in the Now Times(tm) have been going back to old hobbies and interests for the sake of comfort. Like, that’s not an unimaginable desire.

I do think, though, that this is maybe less of a journey that Tony feels the need to take and more of a journey that the writers want to use to check off all the boxes with 616 Tony fans.

Of course people can relapse. Of course serious issues like dangerous thrill-seeking can resurface after traumatic incidents. But the way this is being handled comes across as kind of cheap.

To jump back just a little bit for context, I think TS:IM and IM2020 threw the drinking back into the mix kind of unexpectedly. Tony’s a character who has been through... a lot of recovery. Like, a fucking lot. I think he was a shining beacon of hope (ew, sappy, I know) for a lot of people struggling with similar issues, and the fact that he went through the entirety of CW without drinking a single drop was significant. It was a milestone, and I think it’s important for writers to remember that.

Obviously, not every writer will be able to remember every event, but this is possibly one of the most important events to familiarize yourself with as a Tony writer. 

Here’s the thing about CW: Sure, he doesn’t remember it. He doesn’t know that he struggled so much and made the note that, hey, at the very least, he didn’t drink a single drop.

But, like... That doesn’t mean his threshold for what could make him start drinking again should change so drastically.

And what happened in TS:IM could 100% cause someone to relapse- I’m not saying it couldn’t- but it was a plotline that didn’t feel earned. In terms of characterization, fiction generally has to be more realistic than reality. If something happens suddenly in reality, it doesn’t need to be framed a certain way or given a certain amount of time/thought in order to be validated as something that did, in fact, happen. It makes sense because sometimes, life happens.

But “life happens” isn’t enough of a justification when you have a character who struggled for so much of his life and found a way to cope with himself to some degree. “Oh, well, he was forced to drink in eSCAPE!” just didn’t feel like enough of a justification for the writers to force in another drinking arc. Honestly, I’d be all for another Tony drinking arc, but I think the more relapses you have, the more carefully you have to write them. One relapse? Learning curve. Two relapses? It happens; he’s still struggling. But you tack on relapse after relapse after relapse, especially after giving Tony such a beautiful recovery arc wherein he fights so, so hard to be the best man he can be for the people around him... and you’re in trouble.

The drinking, at least for now, is not a Cantwell issue. I have a tendency to ramble, so if you’re not reading at this point and you’re about to click away because I’m not actually talking about Cantwell, I get it, and you’re free to do so.

But here’s my issue with Cantwell.

More so than TS:IM (shocking, I know), Cantwell’s run seems to be hellbent on pressing every button they know works with Tony fans- especially classic Tony fans- without actually, like... giving a shit about what those things are representative of. It feels like it’s intended to be a nostalgia trip, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a particularly well-handled one.

I sent some screenshots of the issue to my girlfriend, and she asked, “Is this a young Tony flashback?”

Which I think sums it up pretty well. Be it the nuances of the characterization or the vibes this comic exudes, it just feels like... it’s a flashback. And, yes, I understand that feeling to some degree when the whole point of the first issue is “I need to get back to my roots,” but think about it.

How does it feel to rewatch the pilot of a show after seeing the finale? Honestly, even just rewinding from the middle back to the beginning can give you a similar feeling-- these characters have grown and changed, and now, looking back on the starts to their journeys, you’re like, “Ah. How far they’ve come.”

And Tony, especially, should be a character whose development is obvious. If you put early 20s Tony into a room with current Tony, you should know who’s who. They can have similar behaviors, and they can fall back on similar maladaptive coping mechanisms, but especially given how recovery-focused and progress-focused Tony is as a character, you can’t give us nostalgic content without filtering it through a lens of, “And look how far we’ve come.” It’s not entirely faithful to the character.

This, specifically, was strange to me.

He... already had this arc. And he had this arc at a much earlier point in his life, one I’m almost certain hasn’t been affected by any of the memory wipes he’s gone through. He was homeless. He was nobody. He was nobody for quite some time, and he learned from that.

I get that Tony can be a pretty cyclical character (you know the formula: he sees something awful that’ll happen in the future, he tries to stop it before it happens, this causes problems, it happens anyway, and shit goes down), but he’s never been a character who hasn’t changed and learned from his past experiences.

The most obvious example of this is his change from CW to CWII, where his attitude shifts from, “I know I’m right, and because I’m right, I need to fight,” to “I know I’m right, but Cap, I don’t want to tear the Avengers apart for something if it wouldn’t be worth it to do so, so if you think this is something I should drop, tell me and I’ll drop it.”

Tony changes his behavior based off of experiences he doesn’t even remember having. He’s aware of them, he knows he did something, and he feels the need to change for the better. That’s how he is.

I think I’ve said this before, but I just have such a huge issue with people erasing Tony’s healing and his strength. I don’t think it’s an awful idea to put Tony through another drinking period, another thrill-seeking period, or another period of severe self destruction. None of those things jump out to me as inherently bad.

But there is a nuance with which you have to handle these issues. There are realities of the character that you need to acknowledge. 

I don’t know what’s stranger-- not acknowledging Tony’s past arcs at all, or acknowledging them and still handling them in such a... weird, weird way.

That being said, I’m not going to give Cantwell too much shit for this. This is more a box of concerns for the future than a box of grievances for the pre-existing.

I hope this goes well! And I hope, by the end of this run, we settle into a nice feeling of, “Look how far we’ve come,” like Tony and the audience deserves. I’m hesitantly optimistic!!!

<:)!!!!!!