#in the way that steve/peggy is especially because there's not the tendency to make it a cheating thing except that one fic sjkdfkjs

[autumnrory]

i at least understand why stucky authors insist on including steve/peggy because they're trying to adhere to mcu canon as much as possible though i'm kind of like *bucky voice* the thing is...you don't have to

and i get it's part of the comics and all but idk why there's so much bucky/nat too when the mcu decidedly did not go that route except for a couple little hints of it like. even if nat's 80s birthday is a lie i really don't think it fits with the timeline lol not that the creators care about their timeline either but still

[abarbaricyalp]

I think this really highlights something that has been detrimentally prevalent in mcu especially but lots of adaptations/ continuations (star wars too). People creating these new medias understand that there are expected beats from the source material but then disregard the emotional or logical reasons from those expectations. The line by itself is good. It's romantic, yes. But the emotional beat isn't about it being solely romantic. It's about the history of the person saying it. "I'm with you till the end of the line" BECAUSE there's a line stretching way back behind us too. We've been walking this together. Handing that line off as JUST romantic with no history takes out all the weight of it. (Also consider that Bucky's line ends before Steve's. Him staying with Steve until the end of the line, "that kid from Brooklyn... I'm following him", is a sacrificial promise. Giving it to Peggy removes all the teeth of that aspect of it.) Also, it's just not her line! It's wrong! Steve and Peggy have romantic lines! It's a musical, they have a Canon line about dancing, and you decided to steal a different one? It also completely disregards the emotional weight of Bucky in the narrative and to fans. It's kind of silly to think fans are only invested in that line and not the character who says it.

(Personally, I think marvel knows exactly how much people (women) like Bucky and they are intentionally kneecaping him because of that attachment)

And I think the tendency to flub so hard comes from several aspects of Big (disney) Franchises and their domination in the industry right now. 1) a million people are writing these things (and not getting paid. Pay your writers) so the characterization and motivations get completely lost project to project. This is literally not difficult to see.

1b) the writers don't understand the source material. I mean, even hearing them say Bucky and Steve could have "a song" is obnoxious. Their relationship isn't worth just three minutes. Everything they do is informed by each other. Their whole tragedy and triumph is each other. (How does the musical suggest Steve was so anxious to save the 107th?) Plenty of characters get lost bc of writers who aren't interested in them. I mean look at the trio from the sequel star wars series

2) these things are cash grabs. They aren't meant to be good. No one at disney actually cares if it's good. If they did, we wouldn't be getting seventy half assed productions a year. The vfx teams wouldn't be overworked and underpaid. The writers would get paid. The actors wouldn't be suing them. It doesn't have to be good, it has to make people sign up for the service or go to the theater

2b) they can't retell the same story. Do you know the writers of secret invasion were told not to read the comics? That's absurd. Incomprehensible. Disney wants to make money on name recognition but not spend money on adapting it properly. I mean look at civil war, the maximoff twins, the costuming and makeup on star wars

3) nostalgia is such a money maker right now. People are tired of the newer things, so they brought back tfa. Again it's missing the emotional beats. It's not just the storyline people miss. They miss the real characters and actors and the relationships established in that movie. Hilariously, if they would just put the time, effort, money, and talent spent on this towards the new movies and creating those engaging characters and relationships, it wouldn't be such a fustercluck.

Anyway sorry to ramble on your post

I—

So, you agree, “I'm with you 'til the end of the line” is romantic?

[theawkwardterrier]

8+25 for a Steggy drabble

Amicus Curiae

Summary: Spending her Sunday watching high school students argue the same fake case is starting to seem like something Judge Carter might regret, until the Brooklyn Community High School team shows up. Or rather, until their teacher does...

Peggy is perfectly aware why she had volunteered for this. She knows why she should be proud and excited to be here, can mentally list through all the positives, the importance of it.

By her fourth session of the day, she has given up reminding herself of these things and is just hanging on.

It isn’t that the students are terrible - many of them are actually quite good. It’s only that listening to the same case being argued repeatedly over the course of several hours has the tendency to put a bit of strain on a person.

Perhaps it is especially grating because she had specifically only signed up to work for the morning today; she was planning on indulging in some actual relaxation over this weekend, or at least a bit of it after she had finished giving the keynote at the Women and Law conference on Saturday and spending Sunday volunteering, then finishing up on some work, and so long as her neighbors’ newborn actually took a break from indulging in a seeming undying passion for crying….

Well, not being around to listen to that was one blessing of having been begged by the very harassed tournament organizer to stay for a bit of extra time when Thompson had begun vomiting after lunch and needed to go home (Peggy can’t say she’s sorry about it, and she suspects that students will appreciate not having to put up with his tendency to pontificate).

Still, it’s hard to remember all the benefits, the meaningful logic, when the next set of teams has settled into her courtroom and she has to push back her shoulders and enter for yet another round.

“Just one more to get through. I’ll text the café and put in an order for your usual,” Rose mutters out of the corner of her mouth as Peggy passes, then raises her voice to announce, “All rise, the superior court of New York is now in session. Judge Margaret Carter presiding.”

Peggy scans the crowd absently as she gives her now-standard introductory speech. There are Zola and Schmidt, who have served as faculty coach and legal advisor for Hydra High over the past several years. She doesn’t envy the students on their team; the two might have a fairly steady winning record, but their personalities are miserable and they have a reputation for being harsh leaders.

Her gaze shifts to the other side. She’s never even heard of Brooklyn Community, guesses that they have never made out of preliminary rounds before. They are serving as the prosecution, with two young women and a young man as their attorneys. The three have their hands folded atop the table, listening to her attentively, but as she wraps up, she notices them sneaking glances toward their chaperones.

She is almost certain that they aren’t looking for reassurance from the lawyer accompanying them. She knows Howard Stark, although then again everyone does. He hasn’t argued before her, but he takes high profile cases and makes them even higher profile. If he wasn’t actually a talented and thorough attorney, she would dislike him quite a lot for how well he plays the media game, turning the law and people’s lives into sound bites and cable news clips. It’s a surprise to see him here - she would not have thought him the type to volunteer his time, especially not for something as small as a high school mock trial tournament - but no surprise at all to notice that he is glancing down at the phone in his lap, typing surreptitiously.

The thought of penalizing him for that crosses her mind, but before she can say anything, a tall student in the front row shifts and she can see whose eye the young prosecutors were trying to catch.

Their teacher is young, Peggy realizes as she directs Rose to read the name of the court case on the docket (which she already knows extremely bloody well by now). Not as young as some of the bright-eyed-bushy-tailed types she’s seen, but she’d wager that he’s in his thirties, perhaps a year or two older than she is. The smile he directs toward his students is not a flashy, movie star sort of thing but more solid than that, real and reassuring, and he meets the eyes of his charges and nods with firm encouragement toward them before sitting back to watch.

Incidentally, he is also incredibly good looking.

Peggy honors her commitments, prides herself on that, in fact, and so she takes as much care in overseeing this trial as she does with those which come before her in a more official capacity. Still, between watching the excellent prosecutorial team and noting some of the more interesting choices being made by a few of the witnesses, she manages to keep an eye on the teacher - Steve Rogers, according to the file she had glanced at.

He watches the trial carefully, making notes as he does, but it isn’t like Zola, who only jots things down when his team has made a misstep. Mr. Rogers seems as likely to mark things done right as those which could be done better. He nods along with his students, smiling especially widely at several points; Peggy would venture that those were things that they worked on particularly hard in practice. And every so often he turns to look at her before turning swiftly back toward his students. 

It’s the way his eyes widen and shift quickly away which makes Peggy suspect that his gaze isn’t entirely to do with analyzing how she is perceiving his team.

He keeps his eyes on hers, however, when she returns from her brief recess and announces that his team will be advancing to the next round. It’s only for that moment, though. The next he is turning to congratulate his team, who have all swarmed around him, patting their shoulders and speaking quietly to them, turning to shake Howard Stark’s hand.

With one last glance at Schmidt, whose face has turned sour with rage, and Zola, who is trying to calm him even as he shakes his head at the team, Peggy allows Rose to announce her exit, and goes to absorb the quiet of her chambers. As nice a distraction as Steve Rogers was, she knew that it could not be for long.

Still, she’s a bit regretful when she, divested of her robe and carrying her briefcase, returns to the courtroom to take the stairs down to the back parking area and finds it empty.

Then she hears something.

“Gotcha,” a voice says, and Steve Rogers stands from between the benches of the gallery where the Hydra team had been sitting earlier, a crumpled paper cup in his hand. He spots her almost immediately, and she can see the awkwardness come over his face even with the courtroom lights dimmed.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says. “Your Honor, I mean.”

“It’s no trouble, Mr. Rogers,” she says, walking nearer. “Have you forgotten something?”

He glances down at the cup he is holding and winces. “Oh, no. I—When we were in here before, I saw that there were a few things left behind. I figured I’d come back to clean up a little once I saw my team to the subway.”

“You don’t have to do that. Really.” They are at comfortable speaking distance now. “Tidying after other teams isn’t precisely within your job description.”

He shrugs, wide shoulders looking a little helpless. “I was here and I could take care of it. No reason that the custodial staff should have to deal with extra just because some people weren’t as respectful as they should have been.”

The response seems to make something warm and expansive trail through her chest, but she only says, “Hmm,” in return, tilting her head to one side. “Well, I should hope that you didn’t entrust the well-being of your students to Mr. Stark while you came back to take care of litter.”

“They’re city kids, they’ve been taking the subway by themselves for years. And if anything, I’d trust them to take care of Howard instead of the other way around,” he says. A smile touches at his mouth, and although she’s seen him smile many times over the course of the afternoon, it is different when it is directed at her. 

“Well, let us hope that it won’t come to that. I did wonder, actually, how you managed to convince Mr. Stark to participate. I only know him by reputation, but I wouldn’t think it his sort of activity.”

“I might not have thought so either, but I know that it never hurts to try, so I got in touch. Turns out that he got his start on a team back in high school too. He still has a soft spot.” He shrugs. “I was lucky to get him. My kids deserve the best.”

“I’m disappointed not to be asked then,” she says. His eyes widen a bit before he realizes that she’s teasing.

Still, he sounds truthful and serious as he tells her, “If you weren’t a judge, you would have been on my list. You got yourself on the bench even though you’re young, a woman, and if you’re a naturalized citizen you already have to be pretty self-directed and able to go through all that’s involved in that...I know that none of that would have made it easy. People with vision about their futures who were able to achieve their goals despite obstacles - that’s exactly who I want around my team.”

She shifts her briefcase a bit, knowing that she’s already eaten through most of the day and that the journey home will lose her even more time. But it feels so nice standing here talking to him, not just small talk, not just because of the compliments, but because it feels like the start of something. So instead she says, “I apologize, by the way. I haven’t congratulated you.”

“They did a great job,” he says, immediate, eager. “It’s our first year even offering Mock Trial and I wasn’t sure how well it would work out, but they’re doing themselves proud. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about some of them making partner one day - or making their own way to the bench. Nat, who did the cross, she—” But he cuts himself off, blushing a little. “Sorry, I know I can get carried away, and you probably don’t want to hear it - you already spent the whole day knee deep in this, after all, and I don’t want you to think I’m trying to bias you somehow.”

There really isn’t a word for the pink in his cheeks other than fetching. Well, perhaps darling would do it.

Just earlier today, she would have said that her life was quite full enough, perhaps even overfull. But somehow, she thinks that a space could open for him, for speaking with him and seeing him and more, if she wanted it to. So she takes a breath and says, “I actually won’t be judging any further rounds this season, so there can’t be any sort of conflict of interest at all. Even if you were to, for example, join me for a bite to eat sometime soon.”

For a blink, she wonders if she might have misjudged, if she has mistaken politeness for something more, but then his mouth curves back into that smile which sends warmth running through her and which she is already beginning to like so well, especially when it is being aimed in her direction.

“I’m free tonight if you are,” he offers, something a bit worried still lying beneath the offer he has laid plainly at her feet. It makes her want to take his hand, to lean her head against his shoulder and promise that he has nothing to be nervous about.

Instead she says, all thought of taking off her heels and climbing into a hot bath forgotten, “If you’ve finished neatening things up around here, I know a place nearby.”

His smile gets just that bit wider. “Let me toss this out. Then you can lead the way.”

She’s happy to.

[captainjimothycarter]

Okay but what it Steve was away on a solo mission during WW2 and Bucky is picking up Steve's duty of helping Peggy with paperwork.

No seriously its fucking a lot and hes so annoyed they expect her to do this by herself.

They get a talking and shes great conversation, even if a bit too much when she gets in her head.

She goes to do whatever, Bucky wasnt paying attention, he was focused on the silver dog tag hanging beside her.

No way Rogers gave her tag. Well, he did. That's expected and a superstition between them. He catches another one. Smaller. All he can read on the banged up thing is Micheal and an anger fills him.

Maybe hes playing the role of overprotective best friend right now but hes seething.

Carter has another guy on the hook with Steve?

He doesn't bother to look surprised when shes back and catches him with her tags. Shes immediately angry and he sees a flash of remorse, almost guilt in her eyes as she snatches it back.

"Get out," is all she says in a hard tone. "We're done for tonight. I dont require your help."

"Of course. Send me packing when i find out about your other lover. You have no right-"

Hes cut off when the mug of hot tea flies by his ear and knowing Carter and her aim, she missed on purpose.

Steve comes back at four in the morning by what his watch tells him. How does he know? Because Steve, covered in mud and smelling of horse shit is standing above him.

"What did you do?" He asks Bucky in an emotionless tone. "To Pegs. What did you do?!"

Bucky groans at the nickname. Pegs. Why is he doing everyones dirty work for Steve? Breaking up with them. First with Jackie, now Pegs.

"Nothing!" Fuck that look Steve just gave him. "Nothing much! Pegs-Carter...look Steve, she's not what you think. She's playing you!"

A look crossed Steve's face, disbelief, heartbreak. "What makes you say that?"

"Because she has another guys dog tag! Some Michael fella, couldn't read much else."

"Michael is her brother, dumbass!" Steve doesnt bother to keep his voice down. "He died shortly before she joined!"

"Her...brother...?"

Oh now hes feeling like shit. No wonder Peggy had looked terrified ans guilty. Carter carries that guilt with her wherever she goes.

"Shit," he groans, covering his face with his pillow. "Shit. Shit. Shit. Why didn't she say so?"

Steve doesn't reply and Bucky gets it. He fucked up.

"I'll go apologize," he sighed. "She still up? Nevermind, course she is. You're back. You go shower. You smell like horseshit."

"I had to hide in...some unfavorable places. Be nice. You owe her."

No amount of chocolate or coffee, especially the shit coffee they send them can make up for how much of an ass he was, Bucky knows. Its why he enters Peggy's tent near five in the morning with the last of the homemade sweets his ma sent him.

She looks like shit, shes been up all night and hasnt made leeway with any work, it seems. The dog tags are around her neck now. She looks disappointed to see him and then the anger is back.

"Dont throw anything at me," Bucky states, setting the package between them. "Its cookies - my ma made them. Theyre no Sarah Rogers cookies or toffee pudding or whatever you English eats but...you like sweets..."

He shrugs and kicks at the ground, huffing. "Im sorry. I was a jerk to assume. You don't gotta accept the sweets or apology but Steve explained. I'm...just...sorry."

Peggy nudges the box with her pen like it might open up and eat her alive. Her damp lashes flutter to look him over. "Damn right you're sorry. Next time, dont assume. For the record, Barnes, I am aware that Steve is your best friend and you're protective of him but I would never do anything to hurt him."

"I know, I just..." Bucky sighs and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. "got too defensive. It's my fault. Steve..."

"Steve is his own person," Peggy replies in a huff, taking out a cookie and breaking it in half. She offered the other half to him. "One day, he'll have to survive without you and your overprotective tendencies."

Bucky supposed its as any peace offering as any would be with her. "Not anytime soon, I hope. Are...we okay now, English?"

"As soon as you help me finish these reports for Phillips, we will be."

[seesgood]

i put it under a read more so its literally on you if you click it but back by unpopular demand: Marvel Caroline Headcanons ! 

when she starts at shield she starts in the basement and she gets a super shitty cubicle, but please don’t ever make fun of her cubicle she loves the shit out of it she gets so excited to have her own space and she feels so official and so important and like she’s going to do good in the world and then by the time catws happens she loses all of that faith and trust because she realizes all the work she’s done has gone into the wrong hands and she’s put good people’s lives at risk :’) 

i still fully maintain that she had a very minor / beginnings of a file on peter before tony brought him in in cacw because of course there were at least a dozen spiderman videos on the internet i mean come on

no but she is and will always be Team Cap because she 100% has a really stupid crush on him but to be fair so does everyone and no please don’t mention it she’ll be Mortified 

the first shield agent that actually treated her like a person was coulson and she adored him and respected him so much for that because he was always just nice and when he died it gutted her 

she has absolutely zero powers and abilities but she’s fiercely protective over every single one of the avengers and honorary avengers and anyone they care about. 10/10 will throw hands ( and lose ) for them

for the most part by the time cacw ends she’s gotten pretty okay with being around the original six without being like omgomgomgomg --- but if you leave her in a room alone with either steve or thor she’s Going To Forget Words ( and again, who wouldn’t? ) 

natasha is her favorite, she’ll just never admit it 

after endgame she literally doesn’t know what to do with herself because everything she knows and has had faith in for so long is just gone and she has no idea how to move forward and everything is so different but everyone is trying so hard to go back to normal that she just doesn’t know what to do 

like 100% the years following endgame are harder than the 5 years following the blip because she just feels like she has no purpose and the people she could always depend on are just gone 

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again but bonnie and elena were taken out in the blip and she can’t recover from that 

her tendency to get overly obsessive and slightly manic about things ( especially when it comes to fixing things ) is 100x worse in this verse than it is in any other. like she won’t sleep or eat or do anything else but try and fix something until she runs herself into the ground

when she’s still at shield in the beginning when she’s researching potential recruits and she finds someone who could help but clearly just wants to be normal, she “loses” the file or shreds it or doctors it in a way that makes sure the person never gets on shields radar 

she. is. literally. incapable. of. not. caring. about. any. one. of. these. people. you give her a .00002% of a reason to care and she will. don’t underestimate her

tony annoys her to no end and she probably perpetually glares at him

still wants to punch loki in the face 

please don’t insult peggy carter to her face, she knows she’s flawed but god damn it that woman is her hero ( tied for first with pepper potts ) 

speaking of which: pepper potts is her favorite avenger don’t start that debate with her like for real she will bring out a list of Villains You Would Not Have Defeated If Pepper Hadn’t Been There 

she wrote a paper on the legacy of steve rogers when she was in high school. again, please don’t bring it up. she’ll be mortified. 

she literally adores wanda. like she won’t deal with anyone saying a bad word of wanda. use the words “weapon of mass destruction” or “former terrorist” in front of her in regards to wanda maximoff and Feel Her Wrath 

she’s a westview apologist. like, is it irrational? yeah. does she care? no. at that rate if wanda wanted to burn the whole world down she’d hand her the match and some gasoline. 

she’s my Token Side Character Human and i love her.

[midrashic]

fandom meme, any/all: X, Y, Z?

it’s been an age & a half since i requested asks so PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE TIMESTAMP IN THE CORNER. i love & appreciate everyone who sent me an ask and am slowly getting around to it now that real life is slowly settling back into something approaching normal! 💛 

X / TOP 5-10 CHARACTERS WHO YOU WILL DIE DEFENDING. well, i answered a "top ten characters" a while ago here but the phrasing of this question makes me go in a slightly different direction! so here's five characters that fandom/canon has made me fiercely protective over, either because they got a raw deal from the writers or because fandom-at-large mischaracterizes them. (for example, in every universe matt murdock is a Very Good Boy, but because he's the pov character of a long-running title & the fandom woobie, i don't think he necessarily needs defending in a way that some other characters might.)

aki izayoi of yu-gi-oh! 5d's. i literally think the first online catfight i got into was someone on a yu-gi-oh forum claiming that aki hadn't faced any hardship in comparison to yuusei. anyway aki is my alive girl, my role model and my first crush, the best female character in the ycu (yu-gi-oh! cinematic universe) as of the time i stopped watching, an angel that has never done anything wrong in her life, and half of the only valid het couple (with yuusei). i will not be taking questions at this time.

erik lehnsherr of marvel (all verses but especially xmcu). ok in fairness he did do pretty well for himself canon-wise (original trilogy is NOT canon in this house, we don't stand for that nonsense here) but when i first got into cherik i found that overwhelmingly he was cast in the role of the oblivious asshole across from long-suffering saint charles. & there's nothing wrong with that! it just started to get a little stale when every fic i read was like that. i mean, i adore charles, he is my son, but like, he can be a saint and a trashbag!! let charles drink from a volumetric flask and say the wrong things at the worst moments. so i uh. made a tag. #Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, if you're curious.

steve rogers of marvel (mcu). okay this is like. half a fanon thing and half a canon thing which adds up to a whole injustice. that's how that works, right? so the canon thing is endgame & all the articles that were written by mainstream news sources about how steve choosing to live in a timeline branch with peggy made no sense whatsoever. and i even adore steggy!! the fanon thing is that both of the main steve pairings, stony & stucky, had a... tendency, shall we say, to only care about steve inasmuch as he could heal his love interest's emotional wounds & also fuck them. not all stucky/stony fans! not even most. but i think someone once said that steve was more like a glorified walking dildo than a character for certain writers of these tendencies, and... yeah. that was apt. i don't know if it's like that now, i haven't read mcu fic in a long time (except for whatever sabre has going on), but the two moderate irritations combine to make me massively defensive over him.

samuel chung / blindspot of marvel (616). WHY IS HE NOT A MAJOR CHARACTER IN ZDARSKYDEVIL? RACISM. THAT IS WHY.

mary winchester née campbell of supernatural. the fact that she was NOT immediately embraced by the fandom upon her resurrection is absolute garbage. i was writing garbage mary meta in like, season eight pushing back against the perception that if mary had raised sam & dean instead of john, everything would've been perfect and wonderful and canon would be solved, as though she wasn't a deeply fucked up person just from the glimpses we saw of her in seasons 4 and 5!! as though she didn't pioneer the issues that made sam girls cry over him!! anyway mary got resurrected and turned out to be kind of selfish, but still no one beats carver-era sam and dean for selfishness, and also her children were grown, how was she supposed to demonstrate unconditional love? anyway mary DID effectively utilize girl power by betraying her sons and hooking up with Bad Ianto.

honorable mentions:

wanda maximoff (616 and the good mcu version that lives in my head) & jean grey (all realities), who i love in theory but have also never had a storyline that i liked. whitney frost (agent carter), raina (agents of shield), & melinda may (agents of shield), who i straightforwardly adore but haven't engaged in enough discourse around them to like. be mad about it. they all want what izayoi aki has, which is well-written redemptive character arcs. 😔

if this looks comics/marvel-heavy to you... you're right. 😔 no one knows how to abuse a character like marvel comics/studios. even if they do right by one version of a character (xmcu erik) they will make up for it by raking another version of them over the coals (ults erik. i love him but also i love the cw show supernatural. my taste is questionable in the extreme).

Y / YOUR SECONDHAND FANDOMS in order of my personal familiarity with the source material: she-ra, various marvel runs i personally don't vibe with (avengers vol 3, new mutants, & venom come to mind), the witcher, london spy, various parts of fassbender's and mcavoy's ouevres 😔, bts (NO ONE CANCEL ME I JUST LOVE A WOMAN WITH BAD TASTE), dc comics & related fandoms, star wars esp. the mandalorian, [this is the point at which i stop enjoying the fanart and posts i don't understand], good omens, hades the game, the old guard, the magnus archives, mdzs / the untamed.

but honestly if something comes up on my dash enough that i have no familiarity with, i'll block it? there was a period of time right after the old guard came out where i couldn't throw a stone on my dash without hitting an old guard post, and i was really seriously avoiding any information for fear i might get sucked into it. so i blocked it. no shade on whatever i've blocked or its fans whatsoever (sometimes i still read the posts, for example i block "star wars" but read most of the posts anyway--what can i say i am not immune to space himbo/cgi mark hamill) & in fact i hope my use of unique tags encourages people to block my fandoms that they're not into!

Z / JUST RAMBLE this has been less of an issue lately, but one thing i used to see a lot was posts going around encouraging people not to complain that they didn't like a certain trope, or wished a fandom generally wrote a character differently, etc. the reasoning was usually "a writer--fragile beings that they are!--who does write that trope/that characterization will see it and feel bad." & while i understand that, and i have come around to the idea of erring on the side of not leaving criticism on fic when no guidelines are given, i really think that there needs to be room in fandom for people to complain about it for comletely trivial reasons without being met with snide responses of "if you want to see it, write it yourself."

it's not that i don't completely believe that it will make writers feel bad--i was a particularly sensitive writer for years and seeing those "i hate when writers ______" posts absolutely didmake me feel awful--& it's not about thinking that writers need to "grow a thicker skin" or anything like that. it's more of an appreciation that sometimes these people are also writers, & that a general "i don't like when" post is very different from going onto someone's fic and saying "fuck you specifically" in the comments. it's about the way nowhere else do we say to people with petty complaints "hey you shouldn't make this post on your blog about how you hate the sound of trumpets, it could make beginning trumpet-players really sad!" it's about the way that a rule of "only positivity in fandom please!" can quickly stifle criticism of actually important things, like racism & ableism. not to mention that, well, complaining about shared pet peeves is the foundation for many a fandom friendship.

anyway. just let me be crotchety. get off my lawn, etc.

[ the meme in question ]

[pepperony3000-archive]

Wait Endgame is your second favorite? That's surprising! No judgement though, but now I want to know how you rank all of them

Oh goodness… that is TWENTY-THREE MOVIES to rank! That’s hard! This might get very jumbly at around the midway point…

1) Iron Man 3 - Everything about it is so perfect. The Iron Fam being chaotic but also 100% supportive of each other? Tony being the first superhero in history to deal with mental disorders blatantly!!! onscreen!!! The action is top notch. The final battle needs to be taught in film school because it’s literally a metaphor for Tony’s main personal theme of feeling like he’s nothing without his armor, but then at the end he’s able to leap from one to the other because it’s not the armor itself that makes him powerful, it’s that he has the powerbravery/will to leap from one to the other.

2) Avengers: Endgame - Y’all are looking at it wrong. Pretend the Infinity Saga is a TV show and it just ended, and now the rest of the MCU is a spinoff show featuring some of the newer/recently introduced characters, but without the core group of the original show.Suddenly the most important characters getting to leave with a bang isn’t as frustrating.But I also love it because it got my two favorite characters so beautifully right! Tony and Natasha, because they are the two who are deemed worthy enough to be turned into the big talking points of the movies, got to end their TV show finale with a huge glorious heroic sacrifice that will make them remembered forever!The time travel is also REALLY clever. And this is coming from someone who has watched a LOT of time travel shows/movies. There is literally only one movie I’ve ever seen that handled time travel better, and that was Arrival. They did away with the time travel paradox by having every past even just create an alternate timeline. And really? They only asked for suspension of disbelief in service of a joke that was not even that funny and I sort of hated and because they wanted the old Steve scene to have a particular emotional resonance, and having him come back through the portal old… wouldn’t have done that. 

3) Iron Man - I firmly believe that this is the best movie in the entirety of the MCU. It was the first, and yet it has never been topped. (and yet it’s #3 on my list rofl)It gave us a very complex lead character with a supporting cast that had a lot more depth in their first outing than some of the OG6 had after four movies (*cough*Clint*cough*Thor*cough* - Thor only got good development after Ragnarok). There was also subtlety to the story that it seems hollywood writers in general (and MCU specifically) is incapable of anymore.

4) The Avengers - the very first time in history we get a massive teamup of superheroes? sign me the FUCK up!Loki was a fantastic villain, the characterization of all of them (except for Clint… sorry, pal) was absolutely amazing, and it’s just pure unadulterated fun. Not much more to say than that.

5) Black Panther - Live Action Lion King (2019) WHOMST? There was a live action Lion King in 2018 and it was called Black Panther!I have a few issues with it fuck YOU vibranium! but it’s SUCH a good movie. T’Challa is quite possibly the noblest MCU character/lead, and the supporting cast are all incredible. I also loved the idea that the villain was… actually�� right? Oh he was wrong a FUCK in deciding that the way to go about getting it was through violence, but his end goal was correct.Which is actually very subtle (and again… one of the very few MCU movies to do that) and very important message - because so often people seem to think that violence is the answer. Because the cause is “right” and “just”, excessive violence or threats of violence are considered the proper course of action. But as Killmonger proved, that wasn’t the way. Instead we all need to be like Nakia - who wanted the same thing, but worked for it through kindness, sacrificing her own desires, and making the first tiny hole in the dam.

6) Captain America: The Winter Soldier - I firmly hold that this is one of the most overrated MCU movies, and it’s what started Steve Rogers down his path to… the character he ended up becoming… but it is an excellent movie!Natasha gets amazing development, Sam Wilson is better in this movie than he has been since, and the emotional stakes are very high and very well thought out. Also I’m sorry but the bold political statement of “nazis torturing people is bad” is… not all that subtle? or bold? I don’t know why people are saying that this is the movie that addresses difficult political questions because… it doesn’t?

7) Spiderman: Far From Home - I’m sorry y’all, but I love my boy Peter Parker and if you don’t like this movie then I might just fight you.It was a terrific followup to Endgame, and Peter’s trauma was dealt with in a very realistic and unbearably painful way. Mysterio was the perfect villain for Peter to face, because he forces him to confront his trauma… even though he forces it by first torturing Peter with it, but Peter is forced to find a way to cope with his fears, his grief, and his feelings of inadequacy. Also Peter/MJ is the literal cutest and I love them so much.

8) Avengers: Infinity War - ngl this was a VERY tough battle between this and FFH, but FFH won by just a hair.Thanos is the greatest villain of our generation, quite possibly of the past 2-3 generations. The characters they chose to pair up together worked extremely well - I didn’t know how much I needed the Thor/tree/rabbit teamup until it happened. And then that ending… never before has the world held its breath together in such shared anguish as when we watched Spiderman all the characters we love so much fade away into dust. And there was a great cry in all  the world, such as never has been or ever shall be again!

9) Captain America: The First Avenger - Steve Rogers has never been better than he was in this film. Unfortunately it was all downhill after that, but it’s because of this film that he was my second favorite character for a good five years. There is a gentleness to this Steve that is utterly lacking starting in The Winter Soldier, where he becomes this machismo who obsesses far too much over anything he has one (1) emotion about because he doesn’t know how to handle it.This Steve Rogers is emotionally very intelligent, and is genuinely willing to do whatever it takes to do what is right.And I will say, I can understand why he made the decision he made in Endgame, because Peggy is such a brilliant and dynamic and interesting person, I don’t think anybody could have resisted staying with her (if she agreed to have him). @Marvel please bring back Agent Carter, because I need more Peggy.

10) Captain America: Civil War - This movie did a lot of studio mandated things, and because of that was weaker than it might have been, but I hold that it is a very good and very solid movie. Unfortunately, a big fault of the movie is that I don’t think Chris Evans believed in what he was performing, and so couldn’t give it the complexity that it needed (particularly as the Russo’s take input of their cast into consideration when making their movies… actors get to choose a lot of their own character beats unless it’s a plot-mandated beat). And unfortunately, Steve Rogers suffered for this.If The Winter Soldier is the one where he began obsessing over anything that gave him one (1) emotion, this is the movie where that tendency grew two extra heads and turned into a monster. Steve sees this argument the way a soldier who is used to following orders during wartime would, whereas Tony sees this argument the way a strategist during peacetime might. Steve thinks Tony is “trying to win a war before it starts”, while Tony thinks he’s deescalating rising tensions. And unfortunately, Steve is too blinded by his one (1) emotion to see the complexities in the situation.Which, while it frustrates me how poorly this movie did Steve’s personality, those dynamics are very interesting to watch play out onscreen. Plus, the dialogue is sharp and witty, and the emotional beats - particularly everything that has to do with Tony, is some of the most beautifully written and performed drama I’ve seen in a while.

11) Spiderman: Homecoming - This movie did such a good job of giving us a teenaged Peter Parker. All the other movies, Peter didn’t feel like a teenager. He felt like a grownup. This Pete is definitely a teenager - he’s a young kid in a big world trying to be a superhero, and because of that trying to take on problems that he is not experienced enough to take on.The journey he takes on this movie is to learn just exactly that, and by the end he probably is experienced enough now  to take on those bigger threats, but he makes the mature decision not to do that quite yet - proving exactly the kind of man he will eventually grow up to be.

12) Thor: Ragnarok - Finally Thor gets developed. Hemsworth really shows off his acting chops in this movie. He’s always been very charming as Thor, but this is the movie where we learned that he’s not just charming, but also a very talented actor. I personally found some of the clumsiness/slapstick around his character a bit much, but Hemsworth performed it perfectly.This is a movie where the story doesn’t actually matter. Honestly… who even remembers the story? The important thing about this movie are the characters, and they are all done incredibly well, except possibly Loki, and even he got some good development at the very end of it. Thor is finally an interesting character, Hela is an amazing villain, Bruce got some fun development, and Valkyrie should have been introduced five movies ago (@Marvel give me a Valkyrie movie! Why the FUCK are we reportedly getting Thor 4 when you could have had Thor stay behind as king of Asgard and giving Val her own  movie instead? Especially since all of Thor’s important relationships are dead or in the gotg movie, so he has nowhere to move on to! If we don’t have good characters/dynamics, Thor 4 will suck! It will also suck because the heart of his movies have been his relationship with his brother, and that’s gone now).

13/14) Ant Man and the Wasp/Ant Man - Honestly these movies can just be grouped together, because they’re very very similar, and all I would have to say about one I’d say about the other.

The Antman movies are very light hearted and comical, and the important thing here (like Ragnarok) is not the story, but the characters. The family relationships explored here honestly feel like real families - they just happen to live in a world with superheroes. I think AMaTW is the better of the two, but only by a little bit.

15) Iron Man 2 - This is another movie that was made lesser than it could have been due to executive meddling. Honestly, if you re-cut the movie and just take out all of Coulson’s scenes it becomes a much better movie (and would have gone higher on the list).As it is, Coulson dumps expositional world building that doesn’t really work in the context of the movie.What does work is the chaotic-yet-supportive Iron Fam (once again), and the introduction of Black Widow. I think Natasha might have had the best introduction in the MCU, because the audience was who she was fooling. Her job is to manipulate people and fool them into thinking she’s what she wants us to think she is, and only reveals the truth when she’s ready for it. And that is exactly how we were introduced to her. The underlying plot of Tony struggling with his imminent death was also incredibly well done. He wanted so desperately to not be dying, but there wasn’t anything that he could do. And when he ran out of options, he behaved in such a way to make things worse for him (health wise), because nothing was worse than sitting back and waiting for death to come. Better for it to come quickly and for the agony of just waiting for it to pass. Unfortunately Coulson takes away some of the gravitas of that by forgetting Tony was dying and threatening to taze him…All in all, a weak story but fleshed out by some of the best characters the MCU has ever created and introduced.

16) Doctor Strange - A decent movie with decent characters. There is nothing particularly memorable about it, but also nothing particularly bad about it either (beyond casting a non-Asian actress as the Ancient One).

17) Thor - Sort of like Doctor Strange, a decent movie with a charming lead but mostly terrible supporting cast. I will hold that none of the human characters are actually very good. At all. The best thing Ragnarok did was drop them all like the movie ruining load that they are.Once again, Loki is a good villain and an interesting character, and while Thor is underdeveloped he’s incredibly charming and likable in spite of that.

18) Captain Marvel - Yes I am a woman. Yes I disliked Captain Marvel. Can we move on from that please.If Thor is a decent movie with a charming lead, Captain Marvel is a decent movie with a terrible lead. I do not find Carol to be particularly interesting, and will hold that Brie Larson was incredibly miscast in the role. (if you want to hear why, you can peruse this). In general, it’s also a movie that relies a little bit too much on 90s nostalgia, and as somebody who personally hates when a movie relies on nostalgia to be considered “good”, all of that rubbed me the wrong way. The same applies to Ragnarok tbh, but I didn’t mention it up there because I wanted to rant about wanting a Valkyrie movie. (@Marvel please)Unfortunately, this movie is also not one bit subtle with it’s message. And as a woman, I do not relate to a woman whose only personality trait is “stand up to men”. Every other female character in the MCU is quite capable of standing up to men, and they all have a lot of character outside of that. And I will stop there because even saying that much risks me getting blocked right off of this hellsite…

19) Guardians of the Galaxy - I am definitely in the minority for this one, but I never liked this movie. If the 90s nostalgia in Captain Marvel rubbed me the wrong way, the 80s nostalgia in this movie was rubbing me the wrong way. with sandpaper.But my biggest problem with this movie is that Quill is not interesting enough (in my opinion) to be the central character. These characters all feel like sidekicks, and without a strong central lead for them to be sidekicks to, everything just feels very underdeveloped. I also find the humor in these movies to be very cheap and childish.However, I love that the team very much became a family. I believe in their relationships with each other even if each person as an individual character feels very weak.

20) Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - If you took GOTG1 and flipped it on it’s head, you’d get GOTG2. This is quite possibly the worst MCU movie ever, except that… somehow… it has some of the most heartfelt and meaningful emotional beats out of all of them.I felt every single emotional beat, and the fact that the characters were all sidekicks… actually worked well for this movie. They didn’t need to be more than sidekicks, because the “kick” part of sidekick stands for “kick ass”.However, the story was atrociously bad, and one of the worst the MCU has ever done, which is why it’s below GOTG1. But only slightly.

21) The Incredible Hulk - Does anybody even remember this movie? It was boring, uneventful, had the wrong guy playing Bruce Banner, and was just poorly written throughout. 

22) Thor: The Dark World - This movie is a boring, dreary, horribly written, badly directed mess. Some of the stuff up on Asgard was decent except for the fact that they fridged Frigga for no goddamn reason, and everything that happened on earth was goddamn awful, verging on embarrassing. And don’t even get me started on the dark elves. They were rightfully dropped from the MCU and never mentioned again because they are just That. Bad.

23) The Avengers: Age of Ultron - the movie where Joss Whedon fucked up Natasha’s backstory for the sake of his self-insert ship, infantilized Wanda Maximoff by insisting the woman with cleverly displayed cleavage who was clearly in her 20s was actually only 15, did not solidify the team as a family (THIS IS THE MOVIE WHERE THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN GODDAMMIT), and disrespected literally every movie that came before (including his own goddamn flick).Wow I just realized that most of the awful shit he did was done to the female characters. Can you believe this disgusting asshole has the audacity to call himself a feminist? Fucking disgraceful…Fuck Whedon. He doesn’t deserve to come within a thousand yards of a woman.

[takadasaiko]

Second Chances: Chapter Six

FFN II AO3

Summary: Steve has every intention of returning the Infinity Stones to their correct place in the timeline and heading back to his own. His problems start when he makes an impulse decision to jump over to 1946 and Peggy decides to go back home with him. It only gets more complicated from there when Howard tags along with them to 2023. Tony lives fix-it fic. Pepperony.

Chapter Summary: Steve tries to figure out how to best handle the situation without admitting to Tony that he's brought not one but two people from the past into 2024.

Chapter Six

Howard had always liked a good challenge, and convincing Steve and Peggy that he had reluctantly given up on the idea of going with them had certainly been one. Peg lived in a state of suspicion with him - especially after his fib over the vile a few weeks before - and Steve had called him on his tendency to misdirect and straight out lie more than once during the War. He had been questioning when the ruse would be up, but now the question seemed to be which one of them would take a swing first. Howard lifted his hands in defense. "It's not nearly as bad as you're thinking it is."

"No, it's worse," Steve snapped.

"How? You talk to your buddy - Tony, right? The one that set you up with that suit - and he'll be able to send me back to the same day I left. No biggie. I'll even get to deliver Peg's letter."

He glanced over to find Peggy massaging the bridge of her nose, all of the earlier joy and excitement completely washed out of her. "That's never been the issue Howard. I'm staying, but if you go back seeing all of the advancements, everything that could suddenly have Starkon it rather than whatever name should have been attached —"

"Ouch, Peg. You think I'm here to, what? Steal technology? Like I can't come up with my own?"

"You don't have to steal anything to alter your own timeline in ways that can't-"

"Like taking Peggy from it?" Howard cut Steve off, the amusement no longer lining his voice. He'd expected pushback and plenty of eye rolling, maybe even a swing in his direction, but this was rich coming from them. "Yeah, neither of you have a lot of wiggle room on that one. I'm not going to destroy time and space by being here. Not how it works. Hell, I could meet myself and three generations after me and all it'd do is make for a potentially awkward situation." He pulled in a breath, trying to reel in the burst of temper along with it. "I just want to see it. Walk through Manhattan and then I'll go home like I was never here at all. You've seen it, Peg gets to see it…. All I'm doin' is asking for a chance to peek through the curtain. That's it. No harm done, I swear."

The breeze pushing at the trees overhead was the only sound for a long moment as both Cap and Peggy stared at him. Finally Steve loosed a breath. "We'll have to get ahold of a couple of people to make it happen."

"See, not so bad," Howard responded, his tone light again.

Cap didn't look entirely convinced as he pushed forward. "C'mon."

Peggy followed immediately, falling into lockstep with him. Howard waited half a beat before hurrying to join them. Well, it hadn't been smooth, but at least he'd made it.

                                                      ___________

The first thing he did was grab a newspaper. June 2024. Okay. That wasn't…. terrible. Not great, but not terrible. He'd been gone just a little under a year then, even though it had only been a couple of weeks for him. That added complications, sure, but at least it wasn't decades this time.

Steve had no idea if his apartment would have been leased to someone else, but that was his second stop. If he were lucky - really lucky - the key would be….. there.

"Checkin' to see if the maid cleaned while you were away?" Howard popped off behind him as Steve ran his fingers along the top of the trimming around the door. He held up the key that he found there and Howard chuckled, lifting his hands in defeat.

Steve fit the key into the lock and turned, hearing the mechanisms shift and the lock slide out of place. He turned the knob and pushed inward. He was met immediately by the muted sound of the television. He was sure he didn't leave one on. Mostly because he didn't even own one when he'd left.

"Someone kept it up," Peggy said cautiously and Steve made a small sound of acknowledgement.

He was halfway to telling Howard to wait outside when the creek of the old, pre-war apartment's floor sounded a warning and Peggy shouted as Steve spun, meeting his attacker to block the blow aimed at him. Both men froze and he found a set of dark eyes on him. "I'll be damned," Sam Wilson managed. "Cap. You're back."

His lips tilted at the corners and he lowered his defenses. "Yeah, Sam. I'm back."

"With friends," the other man said uncertainly, motioning to Peggy and Howard.

Steve cleared his throat. "Yeah…. Sam, this is Peggy Carter and Howard….. Stark."

The younger man's expression inched towards amusement. "Hell, Cap. He's gonna kill you."

Steve didn't even have to ask who he was. He was well aware. "Yeah, I know. I, uh…. We're going to fix it. I'd rather let him know after we get Howard back to the past."

Sam lifted an eyebrow. "So…. she's staying?"

"She is," Peggy grumbled, obviously irritated at being talked about without being included.

"But he's not?"

Steve could feel the tension building in the room between the questions and the lack of names and the overall vagueness that wouldn't set well with anyone. Peggy had squared her shoulders next to him and Howard…. okay apparently the tension was all Peggy. Howard was halfway into the apartment. His fingers drifted over the TV that Sam must have brought with him when he'd taken over Steve's lease, dark eyes wide as he explored every inch.

The inventor crouched down in front of the entertainment center, fixated. "Is this a television?" he managed, and Steve was sure he'd never heard his old friend impressed until that moment. Great. The twenty-first century was going to give Tony's father an aneurysm and there'd be no sending him back. That'd be about the way things played out.

"Yeah…" Sam answered uncertainly.

"And these?" Howard asked, pointing at a collection of various boxes below the TV.

"Uhh… Blu Ray player and gaming systems." He turned to look directly at Steve. "Am I allowed to tell him that?"

"I'm not sure he'd give up until you did," Steve huffed and kept a wary eye on Howard as he continued to explore like a child on Christmas morning shaking gifts under the tree.

"So," Peggy cut in. "Sam, was it?"

"Wilson," Sam acknowledged, reaching a hand out to shake her. "And you are the Peggy Carter. Co-founder of SHIELD."

"Not anymore," she said tensely.

"In our timeline you are. Still makes you damn impressive. Ma'am."

She cracked a small smile at that and Steve found his friend's gaze back in him. "We thought you were gone."

"I took a detour."

"I can see that."

"And you moved into my place."

Sam looked sheepish. "We knew how long it took you to secure a place in Brooklyn that wasn't crazy expensive, and it just…. we couldn't let just anybody take it."

"We?" Steve echoed.

"You've missed a lot in the last few months."

A loud crash sounded off from the kitchen and the three vets jumped, all ready for a fight. Howard peeked around the corner from the kitchen. "Everything's good. It's fine. No irreparable harm done. You weren't attached to those big red bowls, were you, Sammy?"

Sam paled slightly. "You broke my popcorn bowl?!"

                                                     ___________

There was a shrill squeal that accompanied the five-year-old piling into the middle of the bed. Tony was halfway to sitting before his sleep-addled mind pieced together what was happening. He heard Pepper groan at his side and he reached up blindly, catching Morgan's around the shoulders with his arm and dragging her down into a hug she couldn't pull out of. Morgan squirmed and giggled, but her daddy had her locked into the bear hug, a smile tilting his lips even though his eyes were still closed

"Daddy! Let goooooo."

"Nope. I'm sleeping."

"No you're not!"

"Uh-huh."

"Nu-uh!"

"How did I end up with two kids?" Pepper groaned, and before Tony knew it there was a pillow being awkwardly smacked in their general direction.

"Pillow fight!" Morgan announced.

"Tony, I swear if you let her up —" his wife warned, but he was already loosing his grip.

"What can I say, hon? She's just too good. Regular contortionist. There's no holding her."

Morgan went after her mom first, Pepper laughing as she shielded her face. It wasn't long until she turned on her father too, and the Stark household dissolved into giggly chaos. By the end up it Tony was standing on the bed, feet sinking into the memory foam mattress, and in a standoff with his daughter.

"Drop your weapon or face Iron Girl!" Morgan announced in all seriousness and Tony had to swallow the burst of laughter.

"I thought you'd be at least thirteen before I became the villain. What'd I do?"

"Jumped on the bed and taught our daughter terrible habits," Pepper deadpanned from the bathroom that she had retreated to in order to stay as far away from the waging war as possible.

"You tried to blow up the world," Morgan told him matter-of-factly.

"Wow. I am bad. You're right," he said with a grin.

"I'm gonna beat you!" Morgan announced and threw the pillow, adding sound effects that sounded at least vaguely like the energy beams from the Iron Man suit.

The cube of fluff hit his shins and Tony made a show of going down, bouncing against the bed and flopping out. He felt Morgan creep closer and he cracked an eye open. "You saved the world. Good job, kiddo."

She grinned, showing off her newly missing tooth. "Can I have cinnamon toast for breakfast?"

"Definitely." He scooped her up on his way to rolling off the bed. "Pep, you want an omelet?"

"Just a smoothie. Do we have spinach?" she called from the bathroom.

"We do."

"With banana, please."

"I think I can manage that."

"No strawberries!"

"I know!" he chuckled as he slipped his feet into his slippers, flexing the fingers of his right hand. Stiff and a little slow, they still moved on command, even without the brace. It had been a full week since he'd had to use it, Peter's altered formula for Extremis proving to do the job without leaving his brain itching for more. The kid was good, he had to give him that. The real test would come when the nerve damage was fully repaired and he completely cut himself off from the localized doses. All he would have to rely on was the glowing ARC reactor in his chest to keep his heart beating, but that was hardly abnormal. Strangely enough it had almost been like welcoming back an old friend.

"Boss, Peter Parker is calling in," FRIDAY's voice echoed as Tony and Morgan made it down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"What's the kid doing up at this hour?"

"Fighting bad guys?" Morgan offered.

"Maybe. If so, he missed curfew and his aunt's gonna kill him."

"What's curfew?"

Tony glanced down, finding a big pair of brown eyes latched curiously on him. The questions never ended and he loved it. "When you need to be home," he explained to his daughter. "FRIDAY, put him through."

There was a click of the call connecting as Tony grabbed for the ingredients he needed, Morgan hopping from a stool to the table top and sitting there. She started to cross her legs on the table, but one look from her dad stopped that in its tracks. She gave him the most innocent grin he was sure he'd ever seen. He shot her a look. "Halo's a little crooked there, missy."

"Mr Stark?" Peter's uncertain voice echoed over the speakers.

"Good morning, Pete. You're up early."

"You too."

"If I told you I wasn't would you feel guilty?"

There was a long pause on the other end. "But FRIDAY wouldn't have…. you're joking aren't you?"

"Yup." Tony started sprinkling sugar and cinnamon on the bread. "What's up, kid?"

"Oh, uh…. hows's the new dose working out? Still lasting?"

"So far so good, but I doubt you called me at six in the morning to find that out."

"Daddy, more cinnamon," Morgan instructed and be quirked an eyebrow before dumping more on. She gave a nod of approval.

"Not that I don't like hearing from you, kid, but —"

"CaptainRogersisback."

It took a long moment for his pre-caffeinated brain to work through the run-together words, and even as he did he had trouble believing them. His hands stilled, his eyes unblinking. "What?"

"Captain Rogers is back," Peter said again, slower this time.

"Back?"

"Yeah."

"How…? And how long?"

"I don't know the details. I shouldn't even be telling you…."

"Like hell you shouldn't," Tony growled. "Where'd you hear it?"

"Uhhh….. through the Avengers grapevine."

Avengers grapevine? What did that even mean? Tony hadn't been thatfar out of the loop. "Where is he?"

"His place. In Brooklyn. From what I heard," Peter said, his voice entirely uncertain.

Tony pulled in a steadying breath. "Okay. I'll get to the bottom of it. Just…." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Peter didn't need any other pressure on him right then. "Thanks, kid. You did good."

"Really? I didn't break some kind of code or something, did I?"

"Probably, but you kept the one that mattered. I'll be in the city today. I'll drop by and we can talk after you're out of school."

"I'm… on summer break?"

"Right. Okay. Good. After I get done one Brooklyn."

"Do you need the address?"

"No, I've got it." He glanced up at the speaker. "End call."

"Is Uncle Steve in trouble?" Morgan asked from the table.

"He's got some explaining to do," her father grumbled.

"Can he explain after you make cinnamon toast?"

Tony blinked at the half put together breakfast he'd promised his daughter. "Yeah, sweetie. Uncle Steve can wait."

                                                     ___________

It was one delay after another. First breakfast, then Pepper decided she needed to go into the city that day too, so instead of hopping in the car and going, Tony was waiting on his wife and daughter to get ready. She could tell him all day long that she needed to go into the office for this or that, but she hadn't let him drive the two hours from their cabin into the city alone since they had moved back out. He had the OK from every doctor that mattered saying that he could drive again, but that didn't seem to satisfy her. What if something happened? It was a lingering, albeit unspoken fear, and as much as he would like to he couldn't quite hold it against her. Or tell her no. It was one less thing she had to worry about, even if he knew he was doing better than he had been in a long time.

"Do we get to see Pete?" Morgan asked as she bounded down the stairs, fully dressed and ready to go.

"Yep. After I talk to Uncle Steve."

"Can I see Uncle Steve too?"

"Why don't we let your daddy talk to him first? You can help me at the office," Pepper offered and she looked ready for a board meeting. Maybe she really had been planning to go in that day.

Morgan made a face at the idea and Tony reached out to ruffle her hair. "I won't be long."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"You ready?" Pepper asked as she grabbed the key fob from the ring by the door.

"Any chance you'll let me drive?"

Surprisingly enough she tossed the key his way and he reached up, thankful that his fingers chose to wrap around it rather than let it clatter to the floor. If it was a test or not really didn't matter. He felt like he'd won something in that. One more small step forward.

The trip was filled with Morgan's chatter in and around Pepper filling him in on the meetings she had scheduled for that day. Happy would meet her there and make sure Morgan wouldn't be too bored. Tony was sure that their head of security just lovedthe idea of being put on babysitting duty.

By the time he dropped them off at their New York headquarters plans had changed five times before finally settling on calling Peter to come keep her occupied. He left the situation in the best of hands before turning the Audii towards Brooklyn, his mind racing in the fresh silence. They had told him that Cap hadn't made it back, which they had all taken to mean that something had happened to him. What, they couldn't be sure, but popping back up nearly a year later didn't make any sense. Not telling Tony that he was back made even less. He had thought that, after everything, they were good. When he had left they had been good.

Tony pulled the car up to an apartment building that he'd never seen in person. It was old. Pre-war. Just the type Cap would have gone for. Sam Wilson had moved into it when Cap hadn't come back, so he must know that Steve was home. Who was next in the so-called Avengers grapevine was anybody's best guess. He still wasn't sure how Peter had found out, and he'd been too surprised that morning to press the kid on it.

A tap came at his window and Tony jumped in his seat, turning to find a patrol cop leaned down. "You lost, buddy?" he asked, but as Tony rolled the window down he watched surprise take hold.

"Nah, I'm good. Just here to see a friend."

"Holy crap. You're Iron Man."

"Used to be."

"I heard what you did…. everybody did. Are those —"

He was motioning to the scars that lined the right side of Tony's face and the former Avenger immediately opened the door. "'Scuse me, but I'm already late. You mind?"

"Oh yeah. Yeah, sure. Listen, if it's not too much trouble, my son is a huge fan of yours."

Tony offered a thin smile. "Sure, what's his name?"

A scrawled signature and photo later Tony was on his way up the flights of stairs, feeling it by the time he reached Cap's floor.

He stopped at the door, pulling in a shaky breath and steadying himself. It was fine. He'd get answers and that irritating, nagging feeling of being purposefully left in the dark would dissipate. Cap was always annoyingly consistent in having his reasons for doing things. He reached up, ready to tap against the door as it pulled open from the inside.

Suddenly Steve Rogers was standing right in front of him, a look of surprise plastered on his face. "Tony," he breathed, a little guilt around the edges of his name.

"Knew you were forgetting to tell someone something, huh?" Tony tried for a quip.

"Steve, is really like to see —" The woman who owned the voice rounded the corner and slammed to a stop. "Oh. Hello."

Steve sucked in a breath. "Tony, this is —"

"Peggy Carter," Tony finished for him, the first real smile touching his lips since that morning. "This is all making a lot more sense."

"You're not mad?"

The question sounded too small to be coming out of Captain America's mouth and Tony cracked a grin as he stepped into the apartment. "Well, you're not gonna shatter time and space, I don't think. I'm sure her new timeline will find a way to compensate." He turned to meet his friend's eyes. "You deserve a little happiness after everything. I get it, Cap."

A rush of air left the older man. "You don't know how good it is to hear you say that."

"That doesn't mean I'm not gonna hold this over your head until one of us finally bites the dust."

"Cap, did you say Tony? Your inventor friend?" a voice called out and Tony looked over. That voice sounded like —

"Holy shit," Tony breathed as Howard Stark rounded the corner.

                                                     ___________

TBC

Notes: And to think I thought this chapter was going to be on the short side... I had a lot of fun with this one. Pepperony fluff, Iron Fam, and Tony realizing that Steve not only brought one person back from the 40's, but two... the other being his dad. I've been looking forward to this chapter for a long time lol Even more so the next chapter.

Next Time: Tony tries to process what's going on and Steve asks for help.

[langxue]

Avengers Endgame Initial Thoughts

Okay. I have some Thoughts about Endgame, most of them fairly critical. Also highly subjective. So here goes. Spoilers abound, for Endgame and other MCU content.

1. OMFG they completely wasted Captain Marvel.* In her own movie, Carol is a fairly laid back, adaptable, competent, and Silly person. She has a wonderfully casual charm and sarcasm that’s really fun to watch. She’s also a powerhouse, and by the end she definitely knows it. (Like seriously, she destroyed multiple of Ronan’s ships in under a minute. In GotG, it took a whole fleet just to slow one of them down, plus a team on the inside to blow it up. And then Carol’s just like “nah, you’re done now.”) And then you hit Endgame. And we have a stoic, closed off Captain Marvel, who shows up, talks a lot about how awesome she is, and then spends fucking 80% of the movie on a shelf on the justification that she’s helping other worlds that are also in trouble. Which is a fine justification to keep her away for some of the setup. But the heroes’ main plan is time travel. Which means it’s not time sensitive, and they keep making a big deal about only having one shot. Why, in that case, wouldn’t you wait until you could get Carol on your team?? Thor is a psychological mess. Keep him on the bench and bring in Carol. OR have her on hand to use the gauntlet after all the stones are collected. But no, they just went with “eh, we’re not sure how to contact her, so we’ll just skip over that option entirely.” So they wasted her character as a character with minimal interactions with the others, and zero of those interactions actually being in character (except maaaybe with Peter at the end, but that very much felt like two actors trying very hard with very little to work with), and then also wasted her as far as plot impact, opting for a heroic re-entrance most of the way through the movie.

2. The time travel felt extremely poorly explained, which is really bad when your plot completely hinges on it, and is especially bad if you’re gonna rag on other movies with time travel. Back to the Future is paradoxical nonsense, but it’s self-consistent paradoxical nonsense. Endgame was some kind of multiverse with zero clear understanding of how different timelines/realities could and could not interact with each other. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of the possibilities and whether there actually is an internal logic, but at the very least, while watching the movie, it entirely felt like they were doing whatever they wanted to suit the plot. Which is a bad sign when dealing with time travel. (My general approach to time travel is that you either have to completely handwave it or completely explain it. And that explanation doesn’t have to be an info dump! It can just be apparent in the story itself, such as with Time-Turners. Though I personally don’t mind time travel info dump tbh.)

3. Relatedly, the secret to time travel is to model an inverted Möbius strip and get the eigenvector of that one particle there. I don’t think I’ve been that annoyed but technobabble in a long time. That’s math word salad, as far as I can tell (though I’m admittedly not a mathematician. If any mathematicians can clarify how this makes any sense, I’d appreciate it, but in the mean time, I’m going to assume it’s garbled nonsense.)

4. Still on time travel but I’m having one hell of a time figuring out Steve’s ending. Like, how can he do that within the confines of the time travel mechanics? Why wouldn’t he come back and spend that time with Bucky?? Since, you know, they’ve like barely spoken being reunited?? For Pete’s sake, don’t set up their bond like that, spend two full movies on the turmoil cause by Bucky’s return, and then just fucking drop the plot line on the floor because you wanted to stick Steve back with Peggy. What in the fuck.

5. IM. SO. MAD. ABOUT. GAMORA. (And also Natasha, though that’s a slightly different anger.) GAMORA’S DEATH WAS THE MOST BS THING IN INFINITY WAR AND WAS ALSO THE DEATH I WAS MOST CONCERNED THEY WOULDN’T CORRECT. AND GUESS WHAT. THEY DIDN’T. SHE’S STILL DEAD.** The soulstone mechanic can get Fucked, because Thanos should never have been able to get it like that (and relatedly, should Hawkeye have gotten it, since Natasha threw herself, rather than being sacrificed? I’m undecided, but mad either way).

6. Is Loki still dead? Was he ever dead? We just don’t know. If he is dead, that was an amazingly dumb end and I object. If he’s not dead, that is a dumb cliffhanger and I object.

7. I don’t love Thor + Guardians’ dynamic? It feels very off, and I can’t tell if that’s just because it’s Avengers and therefore all the characters have gotten slightly flattened or if it’s just an unappealing dynamic to me. But we already had Quill vs Rocket leadership tension. I don’t was more of that but with Thor. That’s dumb. I’m hoping that it gets more nuance/resolution going forward, but I’m not holding my breath.

8. Relatedly, why would you put Valkyrie in charge of Anything but a battle plan? Nothing I’ve seen of her makes me think she’s well suited to general leadership, and I think she’d chafe under it just as much as Thor does. She’s not the Responsible One to take things over so Thor can go have another finding himself adventure. Ffs.

9. Probably no one’s fault because actor contracts are complicated, but I’m still salty about Lady Sif being 100% absent and unacknowledged for this whole thing. Largely because I haven’t gotten to see her interact with Valkyrie OR Carol and I feel cheated.

10. Some quick minor things before I go on a big rant. It bothered me that Thor’s depression and poor coping was just a joke, basically just “Oh look he’s fat and scared now, isn’t that funny?” I’m so tired of Tony vs. Steve, and I hate that they waited until the last fucking movie to sort of kind of resolve it. You don’t get to pull on found family heartstrings and tropes when you’ve done such a bullshit job of actually showing us a family. You’ve had 20-odd movies to do so. Do better.

11. Okay. I like battle scenes. They’re fun! They’re dramatic! If done correctly, they can give a very tangible sense of odds and stakes. But. Not every movie with high stakes needs a big final battle.

Okay, to clarify a bit, I’m specifically referring to army vs. army battle scenes here. Big punch outs between titans, or scrambling to minimize damage from a disaster are different, and have their own applications and pitfalls. All clear? Great.

Battles, with two armies facing off against each other in fronts, look cool, but fundamentally make no sense in the context of Endgame. Battle lines exist so that you have not very many people actively fighting at once, and so that you can protect the people next to them. When the frontline gets tired, they rotate back and others take over. Battles are not the same thing as skirmishes and they are not mass melees. If a battle turns into a mass melee, something has gone very wrong and you should in all likelihood pull back immediately to regroup.

All of this breaks down when you have an opponent who can break up or ignore your battle lines. Historically, this was artillery and guns—things that forced battles into a cover-based issue. In superhero movies, it’s... pretty much every character of note.

Thor’s lightning —> broken battle line

Black Panther’s suit discharge —> broken battle line

Falcon attacking from above —> pointless battle line

Wanda or Carol doing... anything —> pointless battle line

All of Thanos’ many flying troops —> pointless battle line

Thanos’ warship overhead —> what are you doing pls stop this

All of which is to say that traditional battle tactics don’t apply to this conflict. But the battle we’re shown doesn’t reflect that, and it feels very... weird as a result. Where who’s winning is entirely arbitrary, rather than any kind of steady build.

This tends to lead to a very episodic battle, where you show off individual characters or small groups of characters fighting. Which is fine, though contributes to battle progress being unclear. But there’s a temptation then to give everyone equal levels of badassery in their vignettes, and I think that’s a mistake. The avengers et all are a complementary group. They have members suited to a battle field and members that aren’t. That isn’t to say that Hawkeye and Black Widow can’t hold their own, but their skill sets aren’t specialized for something like this, and so any attempt to make them seem equal in this way is going to either fall flat or cheapen the battle suited heroes’ specialty.

And this tendency to level the field of badassery can also lead to situations where Okoye is backing up Carol for a charge, and I just.... gah. I love Okoye. So much. Carol does not need her help to rush a group of enemies. Carol doesn’t need help from any of the women who showed up behind her except for maybe Scarlet Witch. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be a Girl PowerTM moment. It wasn’t. It was dumb. It was so very much the wrong time for that moment, because this was not a context where Carol needed help. She just flew through a spaceship. She can fly through some enemies no problem. And it’s probably easier if she’s not worried about her allies getting caught in the blast. And then they had to make the backup team useful, so they made Carol struggle in a moment where she just shouldn’t have. You don’t get points for Girl PowerTM if you have to de-power one of your women just to make it make sense. Give me more scenes with Gamora and Nebula helping each other through Thanos’ abuse. Give me scenes with Carol and Okoye bonding over putting up with impractical people. Don’t give me this battle scene bullshit, I don’t want it.

11. I remain pissed off that there are no actually articulated arguments against Thanos’ fucking stupid plan. What the actual fuck, this is not that hard. 

Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, some things I actually really liked.

1. Steve wielding Mjolnir was fucking amazing and I’m so pleased.

2. Any time Scott was on screen.

3. Peter Parker is a precious child and he needs to be protected.

4. I actually really like the set up for the time travel nonsense, and I liked that they seemed to be doing something other than a mass melee battle. That the group was divided into manageable teams, and sent on different kinds of missions that required them to be clever and play to their different strengths and help each other through. And then they shoved in a giant battle anyway, because fuck you that’s why.

5. I can appreciate what they were trying to do in giving all of the non-returning Avengers decent send-offs, even if I didn’t like some of those conclusions.

6. There were some genuinely funny moments, but I’m struggling to recall them right now.

7. Oh wait! “It’s an earthquake in the middle of the ocean. We handle it by not handling it.” That one was great.

Okay, that’s all for now. I might have more later, once I’ve picked apart the time travel a bit more and dined some processing.

I think it’s also worth noting that like... ensemble movies with a cast this big are *hard.* character are going to end up feeling confined, and there’s less time to grow because there’s just less time per character. But I think we could’ve had better, and I think if they focused more on group growth in the group movies instead of just drama, then they would’ve been in a better place and had a better story.

It’s probably also worth noting that I really liked Thor: Ragnarok, really like Captain Marvel and really didn’t like Infinity War. So I sort of went into Endgame feeling like it had to make up for Infinity War and live up to the higher at from the recent solo movies. And I really wanted to like it. I really wanted them to pull it off. But those are high and fairly specific standards, and so they fell quite short.

*This should be taken with a grain of salt, because I’d been dreading Endgame as an obligation to watch, and the Captain Marvel movie was the only thing that sparked my interest again. And then Endgame massively dropped the ball as far as I’m concerned.

** there was some stuff at the very end that makes me wonder if there’re plans to still bring her back in a later movie. But it doesn’t change me call bullshit on everything that Infinity War/Endgame has done to her.

[daisymondays]

if you were to rec someone five of your fics that sum you up what would they be?

Hii, i think I literally got this ask about two months ago at this point and I’m extremely sorry I never actually answered you …. but im here now !!!

The reason this took me so long to answer was because it really made me think about what kind of writer I am, how i’d advertise the kind of things I write, like what about the fics summed me up, but i’m going to try now.

1. Karma’s A Fake Orgasm

There’s another abandoned mug, festering with mould in the living room — Steve offically has the world’s worst roommates. And complains about them. Often. Bucky, tired of his lack of action, decides it’s time to avenge Steve’s sleepless nights and unsanitary conditions once and for all. They’ll pretend to be the world’s most annoying couple: excessive PDA, loud fake sex, and general repugnance. The plan sounds easy enough; it will be strictly platonic. Or will it?

Why: I think this fic sums me up in a fair few ways, but mainly the tone. It’s a fun fic at heart and I just really love making people laugh, i think all the MCU characters have such brilliant comedic potential that for someone like me is just my dream, i truly love getting to write just the very human moments of this fic where they’re joking around as friends. It’s tropey and there’s pining, and really its a self indulgent fic that I really enjoyed writing so yeah I think it sums me up quite well. Also it was meant to be 5k and is ofc now 55k which is the epitome of me and anything I do writing wise

2. Highly (in)Compatible 

Draco’s been shagging The Prat Who Lived on and off for a few months when his soul mark starts to change. Draco’s had to accept a lot of adjustments to his life, but accepting that Harry Potter could be his soulmate is one step too far. It can’t be true? Can it?

Why: at heart this sums me up because I completely made everything more difficult than it needed to be, but no, I guess it’s pretty me as while I will joke about hand waving things way in writing, I do like there to be an explanation, it bugs me when there isn’t, and so I used this fic as a chance to get to the core of how soul mates could exist and why, and how it would work, and the point of soul marks etc etc. I spent half of my childhood always having an irritating why hanging on my tongue so is my but why fic. Also it looks at mental health (ding ding ding) and has a Draco POV voice that is so close to my own speaking voice that I had friends tell me it sounded like me speaking at times so take from that what you will

3. If We Were Honest

Two years ago, Draco and Harry had a whirlwind secret romance that ended in heart-break. Since then Draco’s written a best-selling novel based on their relationship, but with one key difference—the characters get a happily ever after. Now Harry and Draco are reunited for the first time since their break-up, but can they rewrite their own ending?

Why: this fic is my inner angsty mess that I don’t show that often and here it is. I always want to write really feelsy almost poetic stuff but have a tendency to lean more to realistic and humorous character voices, that are more over dramatic in their feelings, but this was me being able to explore that side of the table and trying harder with the language and imagery. Also, a lot of queer pride in here and as i approached my first pride month as a baby bisexual that was important to me, getting happy endings and the difficulty in embracing sexuality sometimes and learning to be comfortable in who you are. Also that sometimes people fuck up (speaking from experience there LOL)

4. A Place of Learning

When Pansy returns to Hogwarts all she wants to do is keep her head down and pass her N.E.W.Ts. However, between drinking games and a new roommate, Pansy is reminded that nothing at Hogwarts is ever simple.

Why: so something that is very important to me in fandom is the fair treatment of female characters especially due to a lot of internalised misogny they’ve been shat on a lot in the past. Also there is such a disportinate amount of w/w to m/m work, and like i’ve written predominantly m/m too but i do like to try and write w/w fics too!! ((I have plans for possible Peggy/Natasha for MCU)) So this fic was me bringing fun tropes aka 8th year, drinking games and roommates to Ginny/Pansy in a hope to encourage people to read it!! its my usual and its got strong banterous friendships, a bit of pining and feels, and i think it sums me up in my just general determination to make sure femslash isn’t totally overlooked

5. Strings Attached

Draco Malfoy’s never been interested in dating, and he’ll be damned if that changes because of Harry Potter in joggers.

Why: this sums me up not so much for the content but again usual, banter and some feels, but for the reasons I wrote it. I wrote it after a conversation with some mates about being a bit tired of a few dynamics we were seeing in HD and I was bored of Drarry at this point and no intention of writing it for the joggers fest then ofc, bam sat down and cracked 15k in three days – and i really like how this fic turned out too – so i think this sums me up in the things i will do to prove a point and just how bloody fast i write sometimes, its ridiculous honestly. But yeah, i think again its a strong me vibe just in it

So here you go Nonnie, 5 fics of mine and some rambling about how i think they best represent me. Really I’m here for banter and feels, and hopefully no damp squibs. Thanks for the ask <3

[carnelianwings]

for 003 MCU Captain America, MCU Thor, and MCU Starlord.

(For this ask meme!  Already answered: 001: Vesperia, Yu Yu Hakusho, Symphonia ½ 002: Kurama/Hiei/Kurama, 003: Heero, Rokurou)

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

Tucking all of this behind a cut, since I’m answering for 3 characters mostly to save other people’s dashes, lol.

How I feel about this character:

Captain America: He’s a man out of temporal water, but he’s learning about this new world he’s been thrown into.  He’s trying his best to navigate this new world, but he’s also had his world turned upside down a few times.  I really like that he’s at least really respectful and polite to everyone, and I actually really like how at the end of the day, even though he’s a very capable fighter, his ability to care and be compassionate for others still gets a spotlight - which is important, as part of what makes him a hero in the first place is his good, kindhearted nature.  I think one of my favorite moments for him is when he’s having that one-on-one conversation with Wanda after their failed mission in Civil War, and she’s sitting there, watching the news, blaming herself for what happened, but Steve’s there comforting her and trying to keep her from taking all the blame onto herself.

Thor: Am I allowed to say he’s just adorkable?  Also, I love how he’s written to be really supportive of the women who join up with him, finding ways to encourage them and support them and recognize their achievements instead of telling them the Asgardian equivalent of “get back in the kitchen, woman, and make me a sandwich!”.  I love that moment in Thor 1 where he basically says he saw Lady Sif to be a Badass Warrior Lady and enabled her to show that to the rest of Asgard, and I love that in Dark World he never does the “but you are just a normal human, Jane, you must go somewhere and hide!” thing you’d expect for a superhero to say to his very non-powered Love Interest, but instead, lets her stay near the battlefield so she can help the best she can, and I absolutely love that in Ragnarok, he goes to the armory, and “just happens” to find a set of armor for the Valkryies for, well, Valkryie to give her the chance to wear the armor again if she so chose.  Look, I’m not usually one for the big bulky strength-based fighter types, but Thor’s pretty much won me over, haha.

Starlord: Ah yes, Starlord, the snarky, most down to earth (ha-ha I know) member of the Guardians.  He’s got a bit of a mysterious past, that got touched on in Guardians 1 and fully explored in Guardians 2, and honestly, he’s a generally nice guy, but due to the circumstances of his upbringing, has a tendency to mostly look out for number one.  I’m glad they explored this a little more in Guardians 2 especially with how he views Yondu for much of Guardians 1.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character:

Captain America: Definitely Peggy - I think the main draw for me here is that she loved him when he was still that short skinny kid from Brooklyn, saw what kind of man he is, and loved him for who he is.  And yeah, I totally see the Stucky.  I don’t actually ship it, but I do see where people are coming from.

Thor: Honestly?  No one, I mean, Thor/Jane was rather cute, in that sweet nice guy jock/nerdy science girl kind of way, but I hated how Jane got literally reduced to Living MacGuffin and had like, zero lines for all of Dark World and was literally there to be tired and sickly and just in permanent Damsel in Distress mode.  I can kind of see it with Valkyrie … but honestly, I favor (Banner and Hulk)/Valkyrie more because she seems to genuinely like both sides of him, and isn’t afraid of the Hulk - if anything, she sees him as a fun sparring partner!

Starlord: I kinda like the thing he’s got going with Gamora, which (thankfully) isn’t built on Green Skinned Alien Babe Wondering What Is This Thing You Call Love.  Gamora’s badass, he knows it, she knows it, and they both agree that he should shoot, and she should melee it up (unless they’re fighting a Dimension Beast!) and that’s perfectly fine for them.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character:

Captain America: Cap and Tony.  They’re completely opposites of each other - where Cap is generally a really optimistic guy and it takes him a little while to really see the darker side of things, Tony deliberately needles and verbally pokes at him to both get a rise out of him and to also show him that things are different now - like in Avengers 1 where Tony starts hacking into the SHIELD computers to see what other secrets Fury might be hiding.  Of course, it all comes crashing down in Civil War, but I’m sure there will be a chance for them to make up in Infinity War … I hope.  Also, bonus mention to Cap and Wanda, because he seems to have taken over for Hawkeye for being her mentor on the team since Hawkeye went into semi-retirement.

Thor: Banner and Hulk.  I just love how him and Hulk have this friendly rivalry going, and he’s genuinely happy and excited to see Hulk on Sakaar?  I’m not sure how many people would be, on top of actually seeming to enjoy their matches against each other.

Starlord: Rocket.  He’s basically Rocket’s Morality … Pet Human? lol, and he’s always trying to steer Rocket’s destructive tendencies to generally good causes.  Even if Peter Quill isn’t the shining paragon of goodness that Cap is, the fact that he’s at least trying to do generally good things (even if it’s for pay) and is trying to get his friends and (found) family on board with it says a lot about his character.

My unpopular opinion about this character: Honestly, I don’t really keep track of what is/isn’t popular opinion for MCU (like no lie, I think Zestiria’s the only fandom I really bother to keep track of these things for) so I’m not even sure what would be one, lol.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Captain America: I wish he got his chance to dance with Peggy. *sniff*

Thor: I actually like Thor as is, if there’s any complaints, it certainly not about the way he’s been written.

Starlord: Poor guy, I wish he didn’t have to go through what he did in Infinity War part 1.

Favorite friendship for this character:

Captain America: Natasha.  She just wants to help him to be happy, and he’s just kind of content to do his thing for the time being, and they’re just good partners and there’s nothing romantic about their relationship and that’s okay with both of them, and I wish we got to see more of these lovely platonic relationships between male and female characters.

Thor: Toss up between Lady Sif and Valkyrie.  Mostly because Thor is just so supportive of both women and is perfectly content to let them be badass as an equal companion, not someone to be protected.

Starlord: Him with the Guardians as a whole, to be honest.  They’re a total Ragtag Band of Misfits who manage to do generally good things, and that’s honestly one of the best things I like about them as a group.

My crossover ship:

Don’t really have any for anyone.

[beautifulwhensarcastic]

Could you elaborate on the TWS commentary? You don't have to reblog the gifs, maybe add links to them but I would like to read more of your thoughts on the Russos wrong take on steggy.

wanted to make it short, but unfortunately I failed, so... under the cut

It’s not really about steggy. I made that particular comment because they diminished Peggy’s role to being “his friend” - which isn’t wrong of course, they are friends, but I’m really annoyed with the erasure of a clearly romantic arc they had in CATFA. No sex scene onscreen doesn’t mean it’s not a romantic arc. But Russos proved to be like most male directors - denying previously introduced females and belittling their importance for the sake of selling their newest project. 

Also they clearly stated that Peggy’s Alzheimer serves directly and only as another tool to deepen Steve’s pain. 

But like I said, my annoyance with Russos isn’t about steggy, it’s about their whole approach toward Steve. He is a tragic character, but I’m fed up with piling drama and burdening him additionally just for the sake of making him suffer because that’s more interesting in their opinion. I personally like a solid dose of angst and pain, who follows me knows that. However, everything has its limits. 

I think it was the comment about Steve feeling guilty for Fury’s death that actually pissed me off. Steve tends to take a lot on his shoulders, feeling responsible for the whole world in a sense, but I disagree that he felt guilty over Fury’s death. The fact the dude was in his apartment doesn’t instantly push the guilt button in Steve. He didn’t feel guilty for the Tesseract when Fury brought it up in Avengers - quite the opposite, he was pissed as fuck at people for bringing it out. Not feeling guilty that he failed in any way. So why the hell would he feel guilty for Fury’s supposed death? Especially seconds after learning that SHIELD has been compromised. 

“The great thing about Steve is his level of guilt” - what the fuck? “As much as he was pissed at Fury, now he’s got a burden to bear for the rest of the film.” I agree with Steve taking on burden, but it’s not because of his self-blaming. I see it as coming from Steve’s tendency to take action, fighting for the right reasons, to save other people. He bears that burden because he sees himself as able to carry it, not to punish himself. CATFA introduced him as a stubborn, prone to recklessness guy who wants to fight bullies. Not for a second does it come from guilt. Then we have Bucky falling and of course Steve feels guilty for that because he was fucking there and nearly caught Bucky’s hand. I’m not gonna say that guilt didn’t play a significant part in Steve’s actions post Bucky’s fall, but the main reason is always humanity. He doesn’t crash the Valkyrie because he mourns Bucky, he does it to save people. 

In TWS he takes on the fight because Hydra reappeared, because everyone has been lying to him, because government agencies turned out to be infiltrated. He doesn’t know who to trust aside Sam and Natasha, but he trusts himself. There’s no one else to do it, because apparently everyone fit to fight Hydra IS actually Hydra. So Steve takes that bourden on his shoulders. 

I see Steve as burdened with his gold, human heart, not with guilt. 

I’m not saying everything Russos say and point in the commentary is wrong, or angers me. There are points with which I agree, but they fade next to this bullshit. 

Anyway, here are the edits with the commentary included - edits themselves are great :) 

[cogentranting]

Wonder Woman Review

Just got back from seeing Wonder Woman. DC made it’s first good movie since the Dark Knight Trilogy! Good for them.

Overall, it was very good, an upper tier superhero movie, one of the strongest origin story movies. It’s certainly not the best superhero movie, and it probably doesn’t rank among my all time favorites, but its very well done. I’m also a little less inclined toward it because I generally don’t prefer the superstrength type heroes (the supermans and the wonder womans) I prefer the less powered heroes (batman, green arrow, daredevil etc.).

Spoilers below

The Good

The opening scenes on the island (whose name I will not attempt) are really beautiful and actually have some color

All of the acting is very well done and the casting is great

Diana is sweet and likable and a good heroine

Steve Trevor. Everything about Steve Trevor. Add him to the list of excellent Steves. Steve Trevor is the best.

All of the fish-out-of-water scenes are a lot of fun. And any time she says something out of the ordinary and we get to watch Steve react.

The twist revealing Ares was actually surprising, at least to me. Not shocking, per say, but not what I predicted.

They had the guts to kill Steve Trevor (which I suspected because he’s not kicking around in 2016 so he had to go  somewhere and I got the distinct vibe that he did not grow old with Diana) but it was still a really good (really sad) move

On the same topic, I loved Steve’s sacrifice. I think self sacrifice is such a powerful thing

I also really liked Steve giving Diana sort of the lesson about people aren’t all good they don’t deserve saving but it’s not about that. The theme then got kinda vague with undefined “what you believe” but it was still strong.

The Steve/Diana dynamic was great, very sweet, a lot of mutual respect.

Diana throwing tanks is fun.

I like how compassionate and sensitive (as opposed to desensitized) Diana is, how she can’t move on without helping people

“Who will sing for us, Charlie?” is like my favorite Diana moment

The sword tucked into the back of her blue dress

Steve and Sami sneaking into the gala

everything made sense and character motivations were clear and there were no gaping plot holes or blue beams into the sky

The little BvS and Justice League tie ins were nice. And do I detect a hint of Wonderbat?

Characters other than Diana got to play an important role in the finale, however Diana was still clearly the one to save the day

The movie wasn’t sexist, which I kind of expected honestly. I suspected a strong “aren’t women so much better than men?” vibe and it avoided that nicely.

On a related note, the movie (unlike it’s advertising) didn’t pause every few minutes to pull a “look how feminist we are” move (something Agent Carter and Supergirl both suffer from). It simply allowed the story and characters to speak for themselves. And the emphasis was more on “wow she’s a magical, super powered warrior” than on “wow she’s a magical, super powered warrior who’s a woman”. It doesn’t ignore the reality of how women were viewed at the time, but it doesn’t rub your face in it either.

Diana remained the hero, clearly, but Steve wasn’t relegated to damsel in distress in order to do so

I’m jealous of Diana’s hair (her and Gamora)

The dancing scene with the snow

The main theme- I think it’s called like “is she with you” or something- is so good. Reminds me of Man from Uncle, which is weird but good.

Dr. Poison was a nice villain. I didn’t like her at first, but I liked how they handled her. And she was appropriately taken in by Chris Pine flirting with her, because really who wouldn’t be?

The Little Girl playing young Diana is super cute

I like the art style of the myth story telling

All of the howling commandos Steve’s team were likable, even if not terribly developed. So was Steve’s secretary.

I know I sort of touched on this already but the movie had strong, well-developed themes, actually supported by the narrative (some movies have confused themes, or one’s that are sort of tacked on and don’t really connect to what actually happened)

The Bad

Diana spent her entire life on a Mediterranean island, if she’s running around England and Belgium without sleeves and pants she’s gonna be COLD goddess or not

It reminds me A LOT of Captain America: The First Avenger. Not in every way, but in a lot. Switch Steve Trevor for Peggy, Diana for Steve Rogers, the Howling Commando’s for Charlie/Chief/Sami, and Dr. Poison/Her Gentleman Super General for Hydra and Red Skull... Also, Steve dramatically sacrifices himself in a plane to stop the bombing of a city- which movie am I talking about?

Slow Motion loses it’s dramatic effect the 600th time you use it. Stop using slow motion ten times per action scene.

Every time Steve and Diana disagree, I sided with Steve. Every time. I don’t think they intended you to side against the protagonist that often.

Diana is really naive. I found myself yelling at her a lot. And she has a tendency to ignore Steve that makes things worse but is never called out on such.

I don’t like driving in a skirt- no way you’d catch me going into battle in a mini skirt. Get the woman some pants. And sleeves.

On a related note, a strapless metal corset is just about the worst article of clothing I can imagine. It looks SO uncomfortable. It looks cool, but i can’t get over the fact that it seems like it would be digging into her any time she moves her arms or leans forward.

“She can never know” “shouldn’t you tell her” “doesn’t she need to know” “She can’t know” like 25 times. If you’re gonna tell us the secret, tell us. If not, don’t mention it until the big reveal at the end. Let us be surprised by the twist because once you tease it, this particular twist can be predicted in the first ten minutes and then not revealing it until the last ten minutes is just irritating

Diana developed super strength that none of the other Amazons have and thought nothing of it

Please stop using parallel language to Biblical creation accounts in your Zeus creation myth.

In the words of my mother “if Zeus made her the god-killer, he didn’t do a very good job” because Ares was wiping the floor with her

Your Greek mythology understanding is all kinds of messed up. Why’s Ares got lighting bolts for one thing?

The ending got kind of loud and explode-y

I have hard time caring in fight scenes about a character who is never in danger. Diana never had to risk anything until the final fight. Until then she’s perfectly safe.

The action was ok, but still not as varied or entertaining as the stuff Marvel does. No real moments that made me go “oh that was awesome!” No stand out moves or stunts.

Chief is a vague Native American stereotype

Charlie has ptsd. Nothing happens to change that. suddenly, “it’s the first time Charlie has sung in years”

Ares’s powers were really vague. And I personally found his existence in the story kind of stupid but that’s just me and not a valid criticism. The lasso was not nearly as stupid as I expected it to be, however.

Diana is kinda judgmental at characters for not doing things they literally could not do- How can you terrible people just stand by and not be a super powered goddess and save this village? kind of vibe at times.

After how powerful Diana is at that end fight... why does Diana need Batman or Cyborg or any of the others to help her? Even Superman? And why didn’t she kill Doomsday in BvS?

BvS and the bookend scenes in this one talk about Diana having been disillusioned with mankind and not wanting to save it so she’s been gone like a hundred years, but the movie didn’t end with her being disillusioned?? She was fine??? She was disillusioned for a bit there before Steve died, but she worked through it.

It suffers the same sort of pacing issues as Man Of Steel, though not to nearly the same extent- lots of exposition, a real slow beginning, and then at the end a long climax with little falling action or resolution.

The naked Chris Pine scene was gratuitous, uncomfortable and unnecessary. Especially considering the number of young girls in the audience.

A little bit of “making the superhero angry means they suddenly have the power to stop the bad guy” syndrome