#my favorite marvel movie (mostly for nat but what can i say)

[illyanapryde]

Just me talking about how much I hate the MCU and how it’s ruining the comics because bla bla bla capitalism

One very major flaw of recent comics (I’m talking about the last decade-ish) is that, in hopes to benefit from the financial success of the MCU, comics began to change the personalities, looks, backstories, costumes, and aesthetics of their characters to match their MCU counterparts.

Before an MCU fan spouts some bullshit like “Well it shouldn’t matter because it’s still the same character and if you’re a true fan you should love them anyway,” I simply can’t help but struggle to enjoy seeing everything special about my favorite characters be retconned. It’s one thing when the MCU adapts my favorite characters and changes them beyond recognition, but at least I can live with that because I can simply not watch MCU content. It’s another thing when the MCU’s same shitty changes are made in the comics, effectively ruining that character.

A prime example is the terrible jokes. Before 2008, comics would mostly have little to no humor. And if/when they did, it would usually be the focus of the story (Deadpool’s entire character for example). But following the release of Iron Man, comics began to change to mimic MCU!Tony Stark’s silly little one liners that somehow gave Marvel Studios a blockbuster hit. What I’m about to say is just personal opinion, but I honest to god hate the “comedy” in the MCU. A couple movies pull it off by making it the focus of the movie (Thor: Ragnarok and Ant-Man 1+2), but for the most part, the inconsistent dry humor is awkward and boring. I didn’t realize this until The Batman, a movie that consistently maintains its dark aesthetic, came out and my mind was blowed by the cinematography. My best friend @gothictoxicc pointed out to me that that movie was so good because it didn’t ruin every dramatic scene with a dry joke that ruins the vibe. Anyways, I fucking hate that I can’t read a new Avengers comic without finding several random jokes that ruin the seriousness of the situation at hand.

Another example of an MCU fuckup that dripped into the comics is Wanda Maximoff. Oftentimes when a character is adapted to the MCU, their 616 version is subsequently drawn to look exactly like their MCU actor, despite that character clearly looking very differently for decades prior. Now if you’re an MCU fan you may be wondering why this is so frustrating for a comic fan, and I’ll tell you. It’s because of whitewashing and lightwashing. Wanda’s been around since the 1960’s and often has a distinct look (kinky/curly hair that’s either auburn or brown depending on the illustrator, and sometimes other ethnic features such as a hooked nose, tan skin, and dark eyes) yet once Elizabeth Olsen was cast in the role, Wanda began to be drawn like this in the comics. The erasure of Wanda’s ethnic features for the sake of pale skin, straight hair, and green eyes matters because Wanda is Romani. However now, her whitewashing is more easily excusable by MCU fans because “she looks white in the comics anyway.”

Side note for paragraph above: The same thing has happened with many other characters such as Natasha Romanoff, and although it’s not necessarily bigoted in any way to draw Nat like Scarlett Johansson in the comics, it does make me want to cry every time I see it.

While we’re on the subject of things that make me want to cry, let’s talk about Clint Barton. In the comics, he’s rocked a lot of funky (honestly the best adjective for them) and colorful costumes that make him stand out and look easily identifiable in comics. However, since the MCU is goddamn boring, they put Jeremy Renner in all black and called it a day. Following that, 616!Clint started dressing like a boring loser. I personally can never forgive the MCU for stripping Clint of his camp (I’ve never used that word but it feels right) outfits.

MCU influence changing the comics: Honorable mentions:

- The entire GoTG team being changed to fit their MCU counterparts in both looks and personalities. I’m talking Gamora, Peter Quill, Nebula, Groot, etc. Literally all of them.

- A younger Black Nick Fury was introduced to the comics following Samuel L. Jackson’s popularity in the MCU (which I have no problem with because who doesn’t love Samuel L. Jackson)

- Loki is now portrayed as morally grey rather than an evil little slut

- Magneto and the Maximoff twins suffered that atrocious retcon where they were revealed not to be Magneto’s children, nor to be mutants at all. This happened as a result of the dispute between Fox (daddy company of the x-men movies) and Marvel Studios over rights to the Maximoff twins, whose terms were unclear because Fox claimed rights to mutant characters while Marvel Studios claimed rights to Avengers characters, and the Maximoff twins were both. To simplify things, the twins had their origins changed in the comics so Fox wouldn’t be able to claim them. Ultimately, the two companies agreed that Marvel Studios could include both twins but had to kill one off, and Fox could include the twin that would be killed off.

[kittenofdoomage]

Sinful Sunday: Surprise

Fandom: Marvel

Pairing: Steve Rogers x wife!reader

Word Count: 1419

Warnings: smut, fluff, awkward stripping to Pony

You’d never really been one for celebrating your birthday but it had felt rude to turn down Nat’s offer of a few drinks at a local bar. Clint and Bruce had joined you, and you had to admit, you’d had a good time, even if they’d embarrassed you with a single-candle cupcake and insisted on singing to you.

When you’d tried to make your excuses at around nine, Nat had been stubbornly insistent on keeping you there, rousing your suspicions. You conceded to another hour and another drink, watching your friend closely as she kept nervously glancing at the clock.

At ten, you grabbed your jacket, getting to your feet. “Thanks guys,” you smiled, “I had a really good night.”

“I’ll walk you back,” Nat insisted, standing beside you.

“It’s only a couple blocks -”

“I insist,” the redhead grinned, tilting her head. “Steve wouldn’t forgive me otherwise.”

You smirked. “Steve knows I can take care of myself,” you replied, sliding your arms into your coat. “But I suppose having a Russian assassin with me would be beneficial.” Nat grinned, looping her arm through yours. “Goodnight, gentleman.”

Clint smiled and waved as Bruce returned the sentiment, both of them apparently content to remain behind with their beers. Slipping through the crowd, you and Nat stepped out onto the sidewalk, walking in companionable silence towards your apartment.

“Want me to walk you to your door?” she asked as you approached the building.

You pulled away from her, shaking your head. “I’m good. I’ll see you Friday?”

“Sure thing,” she chuckled, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. “Enjoy the rest of your birthday, Y/N.” The way she spoke made you frown but before you could say anything, she turned away, heading back towards the bar.

Dismissing it as your imagination, you unlocked the door to your building and climbed the steps, looking forward to a book and a warm cup of tea. With Steve out of town, you hadn’t planned anything for the evening; mostly, you were moping that he couldn’t be there. He hadn’t text you for a few hours too, which was unlike him, especially on your birthday.

The apartment was dark when you stepped inside, which gave you pause since you had turned the lights off before you left. Flicking the switch didn’t do anything, so you closed the door quietly and reached for the knife you kept in your boot. Pulling it out, you tiptoed down the hall to the lounge, listening for any sign of an intruder.

Lingering the lounge doorway, you went for the lamp, freezing when a voice split the darkness. “Don’t.”

You lifted your head, peering into the dark, unable to see anything. “Steve?”

Your husband chuckled. “You can put the knife down.”

Puzzled but no longer on edge, you did as he asked, putting it on the table with the lamp. “What are you doing?” you asked curiously. “How are you home?”

“Mission finished early,” he replied, shuffling about in the dark, and you squinted, trying to see what he was doing. “I flew home to surprise you. Nat distracted you for me.”

“Seriously,” you giggled, shaking your head at his behavior, “what are you doing over there?”

“This,” he replied, flicking a switch. A disco ball came on, flooding the room with multicolored lights and you shielded your eyes briefly, shock covering your face as you saw what he was doing.

Every piece of furniture had been moved to the sides of the room, with a single chair in the middle. Steve was dressed in jeans and a shirt, his feet bare, a nervous smile on his face. The stereo started to emit a low beat, making you jump with the sudden sound of “Pony” and the familiarity of it made a smile spread across your lips.

“Oh my god,” you giggled, covering your mouth in surprise.

Steve’s smile wobbled and he gestured to the chair. “Would you mind?” he asked, offering you a hand.

You accepted it, allowing him to lead you to the chair. He pulled at your jacket, taking it from your shoulders to toss it at the couch in the corner. “Are you seriously gonna strip for me?” you laughed, watching him as he moved to stand a little awkwardly in front of you. “Steve -”

“I’ve been practising,” he interrupted earnestly. “I know it’s one of your favorite movies.”

Clamping your mouth shut, you gestured to the floor. “Strip away.”

He nodded, smiling nervously. The song picked up a little, and the first few small movements he made were stiff, making you grin affectionately. Steve was careful not to look at you, obviously concentrating on his well-rehearsed routine, which only made your affection for him grow.

His shirt came off, button by button, and you clenched your fingers around the underside of the chair, wondering if it was the alcohol making you feel a little warmer. Steve kept moving, his super-soldier enhanced body making every move easy, and his confidence grew as the song went on. When he finally looked at you, the intensity of his gaze made you swallow and squeeze your thighs together.

It felt like the whole world melted away as Steve pulled the white vest up over his head before dropping down to grind against the floor. You giggled as the gyrating movement was more reminiscent of his morning pushups rather than Matt Bomer making love to a stage, and when he got to his knees, he crawled towards you, moving in for a kiss.

“You can stop now,” you laughed, grabbing for him.

“I’m committed,” he replied, winking as he got up, unbuckling his belt. You shifted on the chair, sitting forward to watch intently, and when he unbuttoned the pants, shoving them down, you briefly wondered if he’d actually gone the whole way and worn a thong.

Sadly, his perky ass was completely covered by his usual white boxers, and you reached out, stopping him as he finally got his jeans off and went for his underwear. When your hands caught his, he looked at you in bewilderment before something snapped, and he pulled you out of the chair.

“Bedroom,” you hissed against his lips, wrapping your arms around his neck. Steve was quick to respond, practically scooping you from the floor to carry you out of the lounge towards the bedroom, kicking the door open. You fell to the bed with him in a hot tangled mess, trying to strip your own clothes with far less grace than he’d displayed.

“Lemme help,” he murmured, sliding down to pull your boots off, helping you with your jeans and underwear until he could haul your naked body against his own, engaging you in a passionate kiss. “You got no idea how much I missed you.”

You grabbed his ass, smirking at him. “I’ve got some idea.”

Steve chuckled, kissing you again as he finally removed his boxers, grinding into you. “Happy birthday, Mrs. Rogers.”

Your witty retort was cut off by a cry as he pressed the tip of his cock into you, sliding home with one smooth stroke that stole your breath. Wrapping your arms around his shoulders, you met his lips eagerly, lifting your knees to rest your feet against his ass. 

Sensing your need, Steve groaned as he pulled back and slammed in hard, almost shifting the bed on the wooden floor. You whined, meeting him kiss for kiss, raking your nails across his shoulders as he fucked you, clinging to you like you might disappear on him. He poured every second of the last month he’d spent missing you into his touch, whispering your name over and over.

An orgasm swept over you, but your cry was muffled by a kiss. You writhed against him, core clenching as he slowed, and he lifted his head to look at you, smiling as he cupped your face. “I’m close,” he whispered.

“Inside me,” you begged softly. “Wanna feel it.”

His smile grew; he kissed you again, picking up pace as he chased his own end. In minutes, he was pumping into you, and you broke the kiss, crying out against his mouth. He slowed again, this time to a stop, coaxing you into soft lazy kisses. Eventually, he had to pull away, and you stretched out, smiling indulgently.

“Kinda glad I didn’t make any plans,” you quipped, eyes on Steve’s bare ass as he searched for some pants.

He grinned over at you. “This night is far from over.”

[sneezy-cheeseloaf]

recounting the entire avengers: endgame movie, which i only saw once when it came out, from memory

because i just took the SAT and i want to do anything except think about that so get ready for a fun ride full of holes and my reenactments of scenes and quotes that i remember from however many years it’s been now since endgame came out. buckle the fuckle up

movie opens, clint’s whole ass family fucking dies. cue killing spree fueled by grief and anger. HashTag Relatable

tony is floating through space with nebula and teaching her how to play paper football

holy shit is this how tony dies

“pep” ouc h

oh hey he’s home, dope

The Gang (tm) learns where thanos’s farm is somehow i can’t really remember

“perhaps i judged you too harshly”

“???? thor????” “what? i went for the head”

“five” five what?? days?? weeks??? months???? oh boy i can’t wait to find ou- “years later” HUH???????

steve looks the exact same, so i guess he kept up that workout schedule even through the snap. i mean good for him honestly

and is also running a talk therapy group like sam did

a single smidgen of gay representation but it’s a good start ig

i don’t really remember what everyone else was doing, i just know that tony and pep have morgan now but idk if that gets revealed now or later

the only reason we had a movie is because of a rat. everyone say thank you to Rat for releasing scott lang, please. round of applause

scott’s daughter is all grown up and catch me sobbing over the fact that he wasn’t there to see it

somewhere in here nat is crying and eating a sandwich and honestly girl same

“hey!!! it’s me!!!! scott lang!!! ant man???? also what the hell happened???? lemme IN”

cue scott lang having a single brain cell and bringing up time travel. i think it was him that proposed the idea. maybe not. but imma give him credit

oh yeah bruce and hulk are besties now and bruce is just permanently Like That

and cue everyone being shook at the idea of time travel

time to go see Science Man at his house on the lake

“i wish you had come for anything else.” ouch

gang leaves dejectedly

peter. that’s it. and suddenly tony is all hands on deck

cue science mumbo jumbo in the middle of the night while he eats something out of a bag that i can’t remember

“shit!!” “sHiT!!!” “NO”

“i love you 3000″

Science Man reveals that he has, indeed cracked the code to literal time travel

cue nat, the only person with an umbrella, going to find clint who is busy with murder, as he does

“don’t do that. don’t give me home” stfu budapest man and get in the car.

thor has. enlargened. and is now playing fortnight with korg as a means to cope with what happened plus losing loki, as i think we all would

The Gang is back together and working (surprisingly) coordinately and throwing ideas around and it’s actually very cute. and it makes my heart very happy. and i want to cry every time i think about it because we all know what comes next

scott’s taco gets blown away. bruce gives him another. all is well in the world

and in this exhibit we see the only brain cell in the whole group, which is being used by rhodey at all times

“why don’t we just,,,, (choking motion)” “to a BABY???”

during the time tests someone gets reverted to a baby but i don’t remember who and it’s highkey disturbing

“i consider this an absolute win!!”

cue slo mo walk with the cool white time suits that everyone looks so good in

“see you in a minute” that smile. she looks so happy. sobbing

i think it’s in here that all the color go through steve’s eyes, so let’s just take a minute to acknowledge how pretty he is

“just for the record, that suit did nothing for your ass.” “i don’t remember asking you to look”

“that’s america’s ass.” yes it is scott you’re absolutely right

“i cOuLd dO tHiS aLL dAy” “yeah i knoOoOW”

time for tony to give tony a heart attack and then just stare in what i can only assume is amusement. i’m pretty sure that comes after america’s ass but maybe not

somewhere in here steve is just staring at peggy through blinds and it’s sad when you see it but when you think about it afterwards, it’s so funny for no reason

time to get whacked by a very angry hulk who was not allowed to use the elevator

“NO STAIRS”

tony goes flying. so does the tesseract. loki, in handcuffs, is like “oh bet this is mine now” and. Leaves.

i’m pretty sure it’s bruce who goes and gets schooled by The Ancient One on the multiverse, and i say it’s bruce because i think he’s the only one out of The Gang who could ever actually wrap his head around it

i don’t remember exactly how they get the tesseract but they do

thor and rocket are in asgard and thor has a panic attack, as I think we all would if we had to talk to our dead mother and pretend like we don't know what's going to happen

and remember kids, slapping someone is not the way to handle a panic attack. anyways

a mother always knows

"i'm still worthy!!!!" you always were, thor. you never stopped being worthy

and we have our hammer back

cue sobbing on vormir

“clint. it’s ok. it’s ok.” that smile.

nat’s fucking dead and i’m fucking dead inside let’s keep this party goin

other stones are recovered and i don’t really remember how but hey we got all six

“where’s nat?” cue more sobbing from me and from clint as you can see each and every team member’s heart drop to the fucking floor. especially steve

yeah maybe we’re doing this for half the universe and all the people we lost, but mostly for nat now

tony’s makeshift infinity gauntlet has entered the chat

Green Man is the only one who can physically take the power of the stones, so the fate of literally everything they have ever done up to this point is on him

snap rest in peace bruce’s arm

cue every single person in the theater holding their breath

“guys. it worked.”

cue explosion as their facility gets bombed and i am terrified that it has killed the entire gang

but it obviously has not and i am once again a Class A Idiot

i can't remember if it’s steve or tony who wakes up first but one shakes the other awake and is like “get the fuck up bitch idk what just happened but we got a problem”

everyone is mostly fine. but they’re all alive and that’s what matters

and now we have the setting for the entire rest of the movie basically

oh hey thanos. that’s uh. that’s a big army you got there

i don’t really remember everything that happened with The Past thanos, gamora, and nebula but i remember that gamora once again sees what a twat her adoptive father is and is like “oh hell na”

cue the gang fighting for their lives against Past thanos. literally

oh shit thor’s about to be killed????

OH MY GOD HE HAS THE HAMMER

cue the theater screaming as they should

hell yeah. bonk that giant space grape with the god of thunder’s hammer. you go steve. and look like a badass doing it as you should

shit’s still fucked and they eventually get their asses handed to them one by one

somewhere in here the shield breaks just like we saw in age of ultron. and like damn bro i liked that thing

steve stands up by himself because bitch. you cant kill him unless he says so. he dies on his own terms. he didn’t live for over a fucking century to die like this

our mans is standing up against a whole ass army knowing full well that he can’t win but damn if he aint ready to try

“ok listen strange. you have to open the portal to his left. his LEFT. you hear me???”

“steve. STEVE. on your left.”

cue the most goosebump-inducing scene that i have ever seen and probably will ever see. i would do anything to see that scene for the first time again. that feeling was like nothing i’ve ever experienced

the amazing symphonics are NOT helping my already-about-to-explode-from-excitement heart

now the gang’s ALL here. and we all cry because all of our peeps are back from the dead and we all missed them and highkey grieved for them after infinity war

i can’t remember if steve actually sees bucky yet but i think he does and i wanted to cry on the spot because not only did i miss bucky but man did i just want them to see each other again

cue sick pan of the whole ass marvel roster like smash ultimate, including howard duck somewhere in there

PETER OUR BOY SWINGIN ON IN

“AVENGERS. assemble.” “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

but we all know damn well that not a single person could hear him whisper that shit. like steve bro speak up a little

and the battle for the ages commences

we get to see all our favorite boys are girls fuck shit up and it’s absolutely incredible. wow it really feels like someone’s missing who could that be.

this is now a very elaborate game of keepaway

“catch” “Catch” “CATCH “CATCH”

“hey queens” he remembered. catch me cryin

“hey peter. got somethin for me?” god i love her. flew through a whole ass spaceship. no stoppin her

t'challa remembers clint's name. he did care

oh yeah scott is fucking humongous again, but third time’s the charm ig. maybe he won't pass the fuck out this time

somewhere in here, strange starts holding like. an entire ocean back and i dont really remember where it came from

we get a whole segment of marvel women kicking ass and taking names and i think i just need to take a minute. WE collectively need to take a minute

carol flies straight through a spaceship and everyone is like ???? hello????? where have you been?????????

carol gets literally headbutted by thanos and doesnt move a fucking inch. and that look of murder in her eyes. she could tell me to walk into a pit of lava and i would not question it. the power

“launch the missiles!!!” “but sir, our army-” “DO IT”

damn thanos our expectations for you were low but holy fuck

somewhere in here i think petter quill sees Past gamora and is like gamora???? and she like kicks him in the balls or somethin and is like “this is the ones i picked?????”

the fight continues and honestly a lot of it’s a blur but damn was it not the coolest thing i’ve ever seen. 

cue strange knowing exactly how this was gonna go down, and holding up a single finger

i dont think ive ever seen that look on tony's face before

oh shit thanos has the gauntlet and all the stones. fuck.

wait holdup that gauntlet looks a little funky

WAIT HOLDUP

“i am inevitable”

“and i. am iron man.”

the theater, once again holds its breath

all is lowkey calm and everyone is shook

thanos’s entire army slowly fades away. including one of those big worm things that almost eats (i think it was) rocket but like. dusts right as it hits the ground and is a really cool shot

and thanos sits down on a rock. and finally is gone. and it's so cathartic

oh joyous day!! they’ve won!! they’ve done it!!! wait holdup where’s tony. i remember what happened to bruce where the fuck is tony

wait

wait hold on

wait hold on a minute

“we did it. we won, mr stark. we won. please, mr stark”

“pep.”

“it’s ok. you can rest. you can rest.”

i have officially passed away and am a sobbing mess. you can’t do this to me. he’s gonna come back. there’s no way. tony stark doesn’t die. no.

this is a fucking funeral. i am going to combust into tears

“proof that tony stark has a heart”

i just wanted him to be able to see morgan grow up.

but him and nat are eating shawarma together in the sky now.

“i’m recording this in case something goes wrong, which it won’t.”

“i love you 3000.”

oh we’re still rolling. oh we don’t even get a minute to process

steve is leaving??? wait holdup we cant lose both. no

“are you sure about this?” “i have to”

“i’m with you til the end of the line” so that was a fucking lie

but steve deserves to do what makes him happy. so i can’t be too mad. actually, nah i aint even mad i’m just sad

bucky looks so dejected. so sad. someone please give him a hug. he desperately needs it

oh hey steve. but you’re old now. hey then, grandpa. how did you. get there

buck and sam go talk to him as they should

“you wanna talk about her?” “no, i don’t think i will”

“how does it feel?” “like it belongs to someone else”

sam has officially inhered the shield, and by extension, his very own bucky barnes. it’s a packaged deal

clint’s got his family back. and they can finally finish their picnic or whatever they were doing at the beginning of the movies

and steve finally got that dance. finally. and he looks so happy. so content.

and that’s about all i remember

i have not watched endgame since i saw it in theaters when it came out because i absolutely do not have the emotional stability to do it again. but damn the disney plus shows have been bangin

i hope you enjoyed the ride, thank you for joining me in my. whatever the fuck this is

[endless-array-of-tom]

better than any movie {marvel avengers x reader}

Pairing; Avengers x Avenger! Reader

Genre; Fluff / Comedy

Word Count; 2,169

Summary: What happens when the Avengers just can’t choose a movie and Thor suddenly arrives with Asgardian liquor? Along with Loki? 

Warning/s: Nothing besides the use and mention of alcohol, thank you... mostly involves loki x reader and natasha x reader. hope you enjoy it !! Slightly inspired by; @imaginethatalena ‘s post here

"Can we just make a decision? Please?" Natasha groaned, leaning against the armrest of the sofa as she stared at the group of males, refusing to pipe down.

"No. Not until this is over," Tony huffed out, turning to Steve. "As I was saying, tonight's movie should be--"

"Horror," Bucky intervened, walking out from the kitchen and taking a sip out of his hot cocoa. "I would love to watch something that involves a jumpscare--"

"Are you nuts? (Y/N) can't handle scary movies, you're going to give 'em a nightmare," Clint defended, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Oh yeah," Tony began, "Why are you even here? Last time I checked, you had a family on your own..."

You groaned as the group of men continued on, fighting over which movie to watch on your Sunday night.

"I swear, at this point, we won't even watch a movie," You whispered to Nat. "I'll be too out of it to even pay attention."

"They're all sucking the energy out of me, honestly," Nat replied with a small smile towards you, draping an arm around you, hugging tightly.

"They're just being idiots... all men are anyway," she joked, drawing a hearty laugh from you as you leaned back. Suddenly you were pulled from the ground, by a tall, masculine figure.

"The fun has finally arrived," Thor announced loudly, laying you back onto the couch a bit roughly, though you knew he didn't have exactly complete control over his strength. "And I've brought alcohol..." his eyes darted to the entire room staring him, down.

"For the grown-ups," Thor added, patting your head softly. "Sorry, Lady (Y/N), it seems you are still too young..."

"I'm eighteen, first-off. Secondly, I don't think I want whatever you have," you mumbled, before the seat next to you became occupied.

"You're absolutely correct," Loki began, before leaning in to whisper softly in your ear. "It's Asgardian liquor, and at least 20x stronger than their regular suit." A maniac laugh erupted from his throat, ruffling a hand through his hair as he stared at his brother pour Stark a drink.

"Whoever drinks that will probably be wasted with a sip..." Loki cackled, staring at both Nat and you. "Things might get heated, so I suggest that the three of us," he began, gesturing the three of you to come closer as he began to reveal his plan for the night.

"Oh my god, look at Tony!" You screamed as you began to laugh like no tomorrow, holding Nat's and Loki's hands to prevent you from falling out of your chair. The three of you watched as Tony stumbled throughout the kitchen, grabbing onto everything closest to him.

..

"Can I just say!?" Tony yelled at the top of his lungs, a finger raised as he stumbled over his words. "That Steve has one hell of an ass..." he finished, toppling over the couch as he fell to the ground, giggling to himself.

"I don't want it to come out the wrong way," Tony defended, slowly steadying himself up as he took another sip out of his glass. "But it's true... and I'm just amazed."

"Might want to stop while you're ahead, Tony," Banner sluggishly suggested, though, in reality, he had only taken a sip of the liquor Thor had brought along with him. Unlike Tony, who seemed to drown a bottle of it down before he began to feel the effects.

"I thank you, uh, really..." Steve replied, a bit uncomfortable as he was the only rational one who decided to just down a few beers, though he knew it had no effect on him at all. Thor was alright, though he also had the tendencies of falling here and there, stalking the kitchen as he searched for more food, or PopTarts.

Tony laughed again, cackling as he wrapped his arms around Thor.

"You have to bring more of this next time! Of course, when (Y/N) isn't around," he slurred, "We can't have them see how much of a bad influence we can be after all... I'm their father, after all!"

"You're (Y/N)'s father? Please..." Thor burped, hoisting himself up and away from Tony. "Everyone knows I'm their favorite, who else could it possibly be?"

An idea sparked in your eager mind as you grabbed both Loki and Nat's hands in yours, smirking.

"We're out of popcorn, whoever loses at rock-paper-scissors has to grab the refill..." Nat's lips tugged into a smug grin, her attention directed towards the Asgardian God.

"You're on," Loki challenged, his hand already extended out and ready, his gaze fierce and just as intimidating as Natasha's.

"It's settled then..." you smiled, joining your hand into the groups. "Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!" You screamed, all three of you staring at the set of hands in front of them.

"I win," Loki announced triumphant, leaning back against his chair.

"Loki..." you immediately clung onto desperately, knowing that you had lost. "I don't want to go down there and see them, it'll only stir up more trouble."

"Your point?" Loki questioned immediately, his eyebrow raised. "It'll only be more entertaining for the both of us--"

"What if I get hurt? They're being out of control and I don't know what'll happen--"

"You can fend for yourself," Loki interrupted, staring at you in disbelief. "If you think that your excuses will make me go you're wrong."

"I don't want to go. I don't want all of them to suddenly crowd me..." you dragged on, your arms subconsciously coming up to wrap around your chest as you glanced at the screen, seeing all of the men fight and scream about you.

"I don't want to upset them, nor answer their questions right now. I'm not afraid of them or what they'll do... it's just--"

Before you could finish the door to the security room had already shut, the popcorn bowl gone. You gasped as your eyes turned to the corner of the screen, seeing Loki's figure walk through the halls swiftly, making a beeline towards the kitchen; a smile made its way to your lips.

"You know, I don't exactly like him, or forgive him," Nat began, her eyes focused on you, as she slushed around the soda in her grasp. "But it seems he has an incredible soft spot for you, it's amazing..." You grinned up at her before turning to the screen, waiting for what was to unfold.

"And how are you (Y/N)'s favorite?" Tony spat, hands extended out though he could hardly get his eyes to focus. "You barely even see her--"

"She comes to my lab to talk sometimes," Banner countered, "I'll have you know that you're not exactly the best father figure... especially when some of the issues concerns you--"

"Like what? Huh? Name one," Tony demanded, coming closer to Banner as his adrenaline increased. "Both of you aren't ever fit of being the best father. I am!"

"Says the one who brought the alcohol, all you do is baby her," Bucky groaned, rolling his eyes. "And don't even get me started on the number of times--"

"You're not any better, Buck, you aren't even here a lot," Steve pointed out, making Bucky twist his head in anger. "Who's side are you on?"

"No ones," Steve answered plainly, downing another gulp of beer. "I think you all aren't perfect, and (Y/N) thinks of you all equally--"

"Of you all?" Clint cut short, "Does that mean you hold yourself above us all?"

"Now don't twist my words," Steve warned, "I didn't say anything like that."

"Didn't have to," Tony spoke again. "We all know you probably think you're all high-and-mighty--"

"Weren't you the one who was appreciating my ass about an hour ago?" Steve brought up. "Seems like the alcohol is getting to you--"

"Loki!" Thor's voice boomed, his footsteps loud and quick as he grabbed his brother, dragging him towards the room and away from the kitchen. Loki dropped the bowl on the counter as he was being dragged.

"What do you want?" He complained, "I have to make popcorn."

"Of course, brother, whatever you want..." Thor proclaimed, releasing his grip on Loki, who turned away.

"Thank--"

"After you answer my question!" He ended, turning Loki back around and pushed him forward into the mix, "Who do you think is the best father-figure to (Y/N)? I know you'll make the right choice!" Thor smiled.

"Tell them."

"He's biased," Banner retorted. "He's your brother--"

"Who's incredibly blunt," Thor added, walking around the room slowly. "Who will no doubt give his honest opinion, whether we like it or not. So I believe he's a credible source, he's seen us with (Y/N), has he not?"

"All right, Reindeer Games, who is it?" Tony asked, his hand twisting his glass over and over again as he sent him a glare. "Who's the best dad?"

Loki let out a choked laugh, hands raised in the air.

"I don't think I'm a reliable source. As Barnes said, I'm highly biased--"

"No, I'd like to hear what you'll say," Tony announced. "Give it to me, who's the better one? You obviously can't be it, you're more of a glorified uncle--"

"I don't want any part in this," Loki debated. "I have nothing to--"

"Funny how you're usually so talkative but now all you want to do is shut up," Clint taunted. "Why? And why can't we just ask (Y/N) about this? Where is (Y/N), anyway?"

The microwave suddenly beeped, making Loki grin awkwardly as he began to step backward. "Well, it was an absolute pleasure to see you all like this, really, you can't even imagine. But I have to return to the popcorn and then--"

"And then?" Thor quizzed, a frown settling on his face. "You don't think I'm the best fatherly figure to (Y/N), do you?"

"Brother... you know that's not true," Loki began coughing up a storm, his pace quickening as he made his way to the kitchen, before banging into a chest behind him.

Your heart lunged in your throat as you watched the scene unfold through the cameras, even Nat giving you a worried stare.

Loki turned around, face-to-face with Bucky and Tony. Gulping, a nervous laugh came over him once more, being completely surrounded.

"Gentlemen... I'm sure we can all handle this, in a civilized fashion..."

"Who's the best father? I don't think any of your tricks will work this time," Clint said. Loki turned to Steve, who only shrugged.

"I'm not drunk, but I'd genuinely want to hear your opinion."

"Well then..." Loki's voice dropped suddenly, starting everyone around him. "I think... you all fell for my... tricks, you like to call it, once again..." Loki snickered, before completely disappearing without a trace.

"Dammit!"

"Don't worry," a voice said from behind the men, making them turn. There, stood Loki, with his bowl of popcorn and other candies, grinning like a mad man.

"You all are equally incapable of being (Y/N)'s father..."

"LOKI!"

You laughed once more as all the Avengers began to chase after Loki, watching through the cameras as you recorded it all. The door swung open, sharply closing it afterward. Loki, walked in casually, his hand full of popcorn as he sat himself down, his eyes glued to the screen.

"Aren't you being chased down by them?"

"Oh yes, technically I am." Loki agreed, "It's almost sad how many times they fall for the same old illusion," he raised his head in the air, eyes moving back and forth as he metally did a calculation.

"Stark's been tricked at least a few dozen, along with the rest of them. You'd think they'd learn by now..." he judged, shaking his head before turning to you. "Just know, people are complete fools. They're blinded by anything you show them," he said as a matter-of-factly, drawing a loud laugh from Nat, as she took a handful of popcorn.

"I have to say, I slightly understand why you love to pick on them so much, it's entertaining."

"Oh, it could be more entertaining if you'd like, we have the cameras and me, after all. We could have them running all throughout the house until they just drop. Not dead, of course. What do you say? Care to join me?" He nudged your shoulder, giving Nat a glance too.

"Count me in," you said excitedly, grabbing Loki's hand and intertwining it with yours. Turning to Nat, you had your hand extended out, giving her a small pout.

"Fine," she caved in under her breath, "As long as no one dies."

"Perfect!" Loki declared. "Now, all we need is a new distraction, something to really bait them..." And just like that, the elevator had dung.

All three of you watched the elevator expectedly, anxious to see who was behind that door.

"I'm so sorry I'm late, everyone. I had to finish a project for school and Aunt May... hello? Is anyone home?" Peter said, looking around perplexed to see the main room vacant.

"Perfect," you and Loki said simultaneously.

That night was so much better than any movie...

[ravenforce]

Begin Again Pt. 1

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x OC!Daughter x Surprise!Character

Word Count: 1827

Warning/s:  Nothing? Except this will be a multi-chapter because this part is long AF, as per usual. LOL. 

A/N: Hey loves, I’m sorry for being MIA for a long time. I bled my heart and soul in this fic, and I guess I’m not really ready to end this journey. This fic is an alternative ending to See You in A minute, meaning Stardust didn’t happen. I hope you’ll like it. If you haven’t read the whole installation, I’ll put the links below. xx

Series: See You In A Minute | I’ll Never Love Again | Stardust

Alt. Ending: Begin Again Pt. 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

It’s quiet hilarious to see a room full of super powered being clamouring to have little Asya on their arms, cooing soft words of love and affirmation to the little miracle that is your daughter but it’s also reassuring. Seeing the Avengers, literally assembled for your daughter’s birth grounds Natasha in a way that she hasn’t felt in a long time since you passed. Seeing her family around your daughter gives her the strength and confidence that she can, indeed, do this because she’s not alone, not really.

***

Raising Asya as a single mother was overwhelming for Natasha. She wasn’t ready, not really. She thinks its infinitely better if you were there waking up at the middle of the night to a wailing child after putting her down only half an hour ago.

There were so many days where she imagines you in Tony’s place, offering to take over Asya so she can catch more than a few minutes of sleep. There were so many days where she wishes it’s you that’s making your daughter laugh instead of Thor. There were so many nights after she put Asya down to sleep where she breaks down and cries because she misses you.

She misses your light, your warmth, your arms around her, your steadfast belief in her ability to be good and your constant reassurance that she’s enough. She misses your undying support that even though she can do everything she puts her mind into, she doesn’t have to because she has you. You stood by her, you fought alongside her, you loved her, you carried half of her burden and God does she wish to have you back in her arms if only the world’s a wish-granting machine.

But Natasha knew a long time ago that the world is cruel. So she allowed herself to break down at nights but come morning, Natasha resolves to be the best version of herself to be the mother Asya deserves.

***

Three

Toddlers are a handful, except Asya’s not like any other kid who yells and wails and pulls a tantrum to get what they want. No, Asya is very diplomatic. Ever since she learned her words, Asya has been a very good communicator since.

How she’s talking way too straight for a three years old was beyond all of them. Except for Tony and the pediatrician and child psychologist Bruce brought in, with Natasha’s approval of course, believe that Asya may be speaking straighter than most kids her age because of the stimulus around her. Asya lives with three adults and an eleven-year-old, no one talks to her like she’s a baby. So she doesn’t talk like one either.

At three, Asya and Natasha have developed a very close bond. Even though they live and share common spaces with the Starks, she’s closest to her mother. She loves following Nat around, and Nat doesn’t complain about it. She’s a brilliant, radiant child and Nat loves being with her because Asya, amidst not meeting you, carries on so much of you in her; not just your eyes, and it makes Nat feel like she has her best friend back.

***

Nat and Asya have established a fairly good routine by now. Every morning, Nat takes her on her morning hike around the property where they sweat and soak up some sun. Asya loves hiking with Nat, where halfway she asked her mother to give her a piggyback ride. Nat doesn’t complain, Asya practically weights anything. Asya also uses this time to ask Nat questions about anything and everything under the sun. Sometimes she makes Nat tell her stories about you and Nat talks her head off until they get back to the house.

After hiking, they would shower and then have some breakfast, mostly with the Starks. Nat's lucky that Asya’s not a picky eater. Breakfast is always a joy, the Starks loves Asya especially Morgan who treats her like a baby sister. Sometimes, Peter would swing by to catch up with Iron Dad, and his adoptive siblings.

***

After breakfast, everyone breaks off to do their stuff. Nat goes to S.H.I.E.L.D three times a week to help Deputy Director Hill on things. It has been a careful deliberation and discussion with her family before everyone agreed that not being coop up in the house is good for Nat. Tony only agreed after Nat promises that she'll do solely HQ work, no mission of any kind whatsoever.

Nat brings Asya along with her. At first, Nat was hesitant but Asya knows how to behave especially when she’s in public. She stays at her mother’s side or Auntie Maria when Nat has to step away for a minute.

After Asya’s first visit, S.H.I.E.L.D gave her an official ID that allows her to enter the premises. On her second visit, Maria gave her a tailored S.H.I.E.L.D uniform with ‘Romanova-Y/L/N' embroidered on it, which she insisted on wearing every time they go to work. Asya strutting around the HQ in her uniform gave her power over all agents on duty, Director Fury included. Nat rolls her eyes lovingly every time Asya bats her long eyelashes to get everyone to scram and procure whatever she wants.

“She is truly both yours and Y/N's daughter,” Maria commented after sitting next to Nat on the command center and watching Asya interact with the other agents.

“I’m scared that she’s this good at three,” Nat said chuckling.  

***

Maria never asks Nat to stay in the HQ all day, and in the event does she does, Maria always takes them to dinner. Nat and Maria maintained a very professional relationship between them in the past but without you and before Asya, Nat became more reclusive which worried her family. So Maria took a chance at friendship the moment she heard about Asya. Nat was surprised when Maria herself, without Nick, came down with flowers to congratulate her. They’ve become really good friends since then.

If Nat's dismissed from HQ early, Nat always brings Asya to Stardust Diner – your favorite - either before or after they go to a museums, library and/or the aquarium. Asya’s sense of wonder came from you, which only makes Nat fall in love with your little miracle more.

***

At night, a part of their nightly rituals is either Nat reading one of your books or showing her the scrapbook the team made to Asya. It’s a collection of photos with you that they’re able to unearth on their camera rolls. Most of them are hilarious, especially those photos of you goofing around with the boys. Some of them are downright sweet, like the photo of you and Wanda cuddling one movie night or the photo of you on Thor's back when you sprained your ankle after a recon mission. Looking at the photos always reminds Nat that she’s not grieving alone, the whole team, the whole family lost you too.

Sometimes it’ll be overwhelming for Nat, and Asya - bless her attentiveness and empathy - would close the scrapbook herself and cuddle her mother. On nights like this, Asya always ends up sleeping over in Nat’s room.

“It’s okay mama, I miss mom too,” Asya would murmur half asleep as she lay on Nat’s chest.

Even though it still hurts, Asya’s presence never fails to soothe her aching heart and soul. With Asya secure in her arms, Nat still sleeps with some semblance of peace.

***

Five

Life will keep moving forward whether you get on it or not but life was put on hold one morning after everyone received Thor’s request for an emergency meeting at HQ. The tension in the room is so thick, one can cut it with a plastic spoon. Tony’s pacing the room, Carol’s bouncing her leg on her seat, even Bucky’s tapping his fingers on the table.

“Relax. I’m sure it’s nothing,” Nat tried to assure the team.

“I don’t know how to relax. The last time we were all in the same room the world was ending,” Tony whispered through gritted teeth. Pepper put a hand on his shoulder and he instantly stopped moving and sighed.

“Maybe I should go check on Thor?” Carol asked as she rises from her chair, unable to sit still any longer. She’s nervous too, Tony’s right the last time they were all gathered together they lost you and Vision.

Just as Carol changed into her Captain Marvel uniform, an alarm sounded in the room; signaling Thor’s spaceship landing in the compound. Their collective hearts hammered as strong as the engines of the spacecraft.

“Finally,” Scott sighed.

***

It took a couple of more minutes before the engines died down. By the time, its entrance opened the whole team has gathered at its mouth. Director Fury and Deputy Director Hill are standing a little further, watching the whole scene.

“What’s happening Nick?” Maria asked.

Nick just shook his head. “Wait for it,” he said.

Rocket was the first to board off, he is still salty as per usual. Everyone gave him high fives. When he got to Nat and Asya, he smiled. Asya ruffled his head, everyone’s shock Rocket didn’t make a fuss.

“You’re in for a surprise, kid,” he said as he handed Asya a space rock. Asya and Morgan's growing a collection, most of them are from Carol. Asya thanked his furry little uncle before turning her attention to the rock.

Before Nat could say anything, Loki and Thor walked out of ship together. Nat tried to read the Asgardians but they’re not giving themselves away. The moment Thor set foot on dirt, there’s a cacophony of greetings and questions.

“Woah! Woah! Take a breathe people, there is no threat,” Thor said.

“If there’s no threat then why haul everyone here? Even T'Challa left Wakanda for this,” Sam said a little frustrated.

Before Thor can say anything else, everyone turned at the sound of another footstep inside the ship. When the person whose said footsteps belong to emerged, every single one of them lost their breath and their tether to earth and sanity.

***

Stepping off the spaceship was none other than you.

Taglist: @natthisback @5aftermidnight

[inkriddeniris]

Twenty Question

Thank you, Lu, for tagging me! It’s always so fun to have a little something to do when I get off work! @steveswhitewolf (also we’re both February babies ayyyy)

1. what do you prefer to be called name-wise? Natalie, Natty, Steph - never “Nat”

2. when is your birthday? February 26th

3. where do you live? Near Washington D.C.

4. three things you are doing right now? Grading copious amounts of late work for Quarter 3, writing *gasp*, and building up my infinite queue on my blogs

5. four fandoms that have peaked your interest? I pretty much stick to Marvel content, but I’ll veer to Star Wars (mandalorian shit mostly), Witcher, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine periodically

6. how has the pandemic been treating you? I mean, I was pretty much a hot mess before, now I’m a hot mess with agoraphobia on top... ayyeeeee

7. a song you can’t stop listening to right now? I feel like this might give me away because I’m someone’s character anon but maybe no one will read this anyways so... boop

8. recommend a movie. I’m forever telling people to watch Bright Star

9. how old are you? I’m just over 30 and I’ll leave it at that hahaha

10. school, university, occupation, other? I have 3 college degrees and I teach world history and government 👩🏻‍🏫I’m looking into my options for another degree and possibly relocating to Massachusetts or Europe to do so.

11. do you prefer heat or cold? Cold, you can only get so naked.

12. name one fact others may not know about you. I have always had face blindness, but since my concussion I’ve had even more memory issues so I have lists and pictures for people I should know.

13. are you shy? Not really. I think people do perceive my being an introvert and a private person as shyness (or bitchiness) really I just prefer life in groups of like 10 or less humans when I’m not in a classroom.

14. preferred pronouns? She/Her

15. biggest pet peeves? Having to repeat myself to people that didn’t listen because they’re elitists, racists, sexists, phobics, and/or etc. 

16. what is your favorite “dere” type? Not a weeb but dandere I suppose.

17. rate your life from 1-10. well shit... a 4?

18. what’s your main blog? Like technically this is the main

19. list your side blogs and what they’re used for. @writermuses is my indie rp @writerwrites is my fic blog (and really where I probably am most of the time)... I have others but I’m not linking it all. 

20. Is there something people need to know about you before becoming friends? I’m wholly unreliable because of my mental health and my job. Do I want to be there for you? Absolutely. To say “people prioritize/make time for what really matters to them” is absolute bullshit. I do my best. When my head is clear I reach out after I’ve done what I need to for my job, but I’m just trying to not be homeless again and trying not to kill myself. I can’t please everyone and I can’t even please myself. It is what it is. People just kind of have to accept me in the small doses I can give myself. I am a great listener when I’m around and if something was serious, use the word ‘seriously’ and I’ll pull myself together and be there for you.

Tagging: @sunmoonandbucky @moonbeambucky @moonstruckbucky @stargazingfangirl18 ... can I call you all the space baes?

[allofthefeelings]

Uhm, Avengers is also the film with the infamous "mewling quim" line and has Nat manipulating men to give her information by playing weak not once but *twice.* If you're looking for a true interrogation of Nat's artifice and how she uses it to survive, TWS is right there. (But you don't seem to like TWS for Nat? You talk a lot more about IM2 and AoU, where she's treated in a very cliched way.)

Assuming this is about the Doylist vs Watsonian reads, and Natasha’s artificiality in Avengers vs Age of Ultron: she manipulates marks in Avengers, two characters explicitly coded as antagonists. In AoU she manipulates Ultron, in the scene with the cage (I think that was confirmed, right?), but she also seems to be manipulating members of her own team, and that is what I find noteworthy in the contrast. I probably should have been more explicit about that, so sorry for the lack of clarity!

But moving on, more generally:

First, I’m... shocked? Horrified? Ashamed? that you think I don’t like Winter Soldier. I mean, how have I been representing myself on this platform if that impression can stand? I am clearly doing something very wrong, because it’s my favorite in the MCU by far for Nat, and one of my favorites if not still THE favorite overall. I even like Natasha’s hair best in Winter Soldier, and no one likes that hair best.

If I don’t bring that movie up as much (and... I thought I did, but I guess not?), it’s partially because I feel like we’ve all analyzed it to death, and partly because the good there is obvious. Like, I don’t need to work to find Natasha’s arc there, or to see how she’s strong; the text sees it and recognizes it. (With a few exceptions, obviously- I’m never going to get over that the commentary tracks indicate they think Natasha adopted Steve’s morality, rather than that they met in the middle, but hey.)

I talk more about IM2 and AoU because they’re movies that do fail Natasha, that I want to justify- that I want to find the pieces that work in them. And Avengers, everyone started out loving, and over time we’ve flipped around and everyone talks about the places where it fails, so I’m back to looking for the places where it succeeds. (I also just really enjoy both IM2 and Avengers as viewing experiences, even as I can acknowledge the flaws in them as movies (the “mewling quim” line you mention being a great example). They feel fun for me, and less emotionally fraught than later MCU movies, and that certainly influences things, in ways that may not be fair.) Ultron, especially, I don’t really enjoy watching, and because of that, I want to do the work to bring it around for me; we get limited amounts of canon for these characters, and I am going to drag it kicking and screaming into

I think the only place I really disagree with you- besides your assumption I don’t like Winter Soldier, which again, I really do not know how I have led a life that lets this belief exist- I don’t really have a problem with Natasha manipulating men by playing weak, because it works for me narratively (like, I’m not going to say anyone’s wrong to see it as a flaw in the films because I definitely see how it is, but it appeals to me in terms of the character weaponizing others’ assumptions) and because I think that IM2-Avengers-Winter Soldier work really well as a trilogy that builds on each other in terms of Natasha’s arc.

And this is actually more Doylist than Watsonian, for once, but those three films seemed to exist in them pushing at What Marvel Thought The Audience Might Accept- each time revealing more layers of who Natasha was and what she was hiding and why it matters to her. I feel like we couldn’t have gotten Natasha’s layers in Winter Soldier- especially not the “hey sailor” and the “who do you want me to be” scenes- without having Avengers to push against, and without Avengers having successfully pushed at IM2. Marvel Studios- by which I mostly mean Perlmutter- didn’t seem to trust the audience would accept Natasha without each step, so I value the steps taken that did get us farther, and that’s part of why I was disappointed by a lot of the pieces in the middle that didn’t seem to want to push even farther than Winter Soldier did, and why I choose to find things in those movies that could be pushing farther than Winter Soldier, if that makes sense?

[ninainthetardis]

AVENGERS ENDGAME SPOILERS + MY THEORIES & COMMENTS

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It's been a week since I saw Endgame and I think it's really the time for me to write some comments about it.

The First Part of the Movie

- It was kinda smart as in a couple of minutes it foiled almost every theory ever made about it.

- It was good as they showed us our heroes humanity, the way they struggled to move on after the snap and how alone, responsible and broken they felt.

- It was too long: they could've used half - or at least a third - of that time to cover some of the plot holes left at the end of the movie, or to show us something more interesting. For example, Imagine if there was no scene about Hulk taking pictures with his fans and instead of it we'd got Steve's meeting with Red Skull. Wouldn't it be amazing? Yes.

- Thor and Hulk were destroyed. Those characters went on a journey since we first met them, and starting from Ragnarok to finish with Endgame, they ended up going backwards instead of moving forward. They were hilarious in some moments, yes, but mostly they looked ridiculous and ooc. I mean... Hulk's dab dance? WTF?! Thor spending his days playing fortnite? It looked a little excessive to me honestly.

- I loved the way Natasha and Steve kept counting on each other like the family they were supposed to be. They give each other strength and support, and love. They were amazing. Truly.

- Tony's speech almost made me cry. Of course I knew that was not his end, - it was too soon -, but I almost cried anyway. Watching him suffering pained me. I was trying to figure out how they would manage to get out that situation when Carol showed up and I almost screamed. And CAN WE TALK ABOUT TONY LETTING NEBULA WIN, PLEASE?!

The Time Travel Thing

Basically, Ant man came back to our world to find out half of the population had been wiped away, and he has this idea of time traveling because why not? Let's mess with our minds a little more.

They explained that if they went back, their past would not change anyway, but at the same time Bruce says that when they remove an Infinity stone from its timeline, they create an alternative reality. Now, sure Steve put them back to where they belonged when they were not of use to the Avengers anymore, but still, there's a Loki who fled with the Tesseract in 2012 and I don't think that Steve faced him and fixed it on his own: I mean, it took the six of them to defeat him the first time! So, didn't that create a different reality? There is an Infinity stone out of place after all.

Still, I can't see how Thanos could do the snap if his 2014 version is dead. All I'm saying is that the timeline we saw remains unchanged, but we can't actually know whether there is an alternative timeline in which IW never happened or not. I like to think there is because this would mean that there is a reality where Nat, Tony and Steve are still alive, together and maybe happy. Just we'll never see it. Unfortunately.

Plus, the soul stone. A soul for a soul, right? Given that Steve returned the stone, couldn't he get Natasha back?

Tony. I expected Tony to die at the end of this movie but seriously guys that hurt too much, I was not ready at all. He finally had the family he deserved and wanted but could not sacrifice half of the living beings on earth just to keep his happiness. WHAT A CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. He started from fighting for himself to almost sacrifice himself in Avengers 1 and to actually do it in the end. Chapeau, Iron Man.

Steve. And here the thing gets complicated. I expected Steve to die as well,though his death would have broken me, - you know, favorite character and so on. We were ready for just one of them to die, so the only way to completely destroy our hearts was to kill both of them off. They didn't, and somehow this was even worse.

It's like we were robbed of our proper goodbye to Cap. I am, of course, happy he got the love of his life back (though I can't see how this will not affect the timeline tbh), but up to Endgame, things happened. First of all, Sharon Carter. And here everything gets weird. Secondly, he made a journey during which he changed and came to accept what had happened to him. In the end, it was all thrown away. It's kind of ooc for me that he just left Bucky in the present, friends who needed him, and went back to the past. And at the same time I can't actually see him just sitting there when he could prevent shit to happen. Though he promised Nat to move on, and maybe, after losing Nat and Tony, he realized that the only way for him to move on was to go back. Because yes, I think he wouldn't have come back if they had been alive. And Bucky followed his own path after CW, so they had already gone on separate ways.

As I said, it's tricky. A lot.

It's like Tony learnt from Cap to sacrifice himself and Cap learnt from Tony to put himself first for once.

"See you in a minute".

Natasha's death. That I didn't expect. Well, actually I did, being her my second favorite character and being used to watching my favorite characters die all the time. But you know, I thought that the soul stone required the soul of the one you love the most, and there was no way that Clint loved her more than his family. So I thought he was the one better suited for the sacrifice. And instead that wasn't the case and she died. But I didn't want any of them to die anyway. And it hurt because she said "see you in a minute" and then she didn't come back. And Steve's reaction when he realized she was gone forever. My poor heart.

This movie truly messed up with me.

Random comments

- Pepper was amazing and the scene of all women fighting side by side was MARVELOUS. I wish Natasha was there though.

- Poor Morgan lost his father, they were so cute and happy, my heart can't handle this.

- Thor giving away his throne was... I don't know, that's tricky as well. His whole path was about becoming worthy and gaining the awareness he needed to be a just king. So it makes sense he didn't feel like ruling at that moment, he lost himself and needed to find the right path again, but giving the throne away? Sounds too much to me imho. But I also don't think we've seen all of Thor, so... Maybe they'll fix it later on.

- Gamora. 2018 Gamora is dead, 2014 one is alive. What. About. Her? If the past remains unchanged, does it mean that she has only four years left to live (in perfect final destination style)? Or maybe she died when Tony snapped? Or she just run away to follow her own path again, as originally in 2014 she left Thanos and changed from a bad to a good guy, doing we don't know what exactly. Maybe she's meant to do it again, (just in the future) before meeting Quill again.

- The Scarlett Witch is FIRE. Can't wait to see her show! (Also, Loki's. I wonder if it will start from him fleeing with the Tesseract or if it will be a prequel like the movie about the Black Widow)

- Ronin. It was like Natasha and Clint's position were reversed and this time it was down to Natasha to save him and she did it. She's so loyal to her friends, her family, the family she found in the Avengers. She deserved so much better.

- I expected that they had to face either Loki (the one who fled with the Tesseract, after he did it), as a sort of coming back to the start, or Thanos from the past. It was Thanos and I was happy. I still hope we'll see Loki with his character development intact again.

- The final battle was INCREDIBLE. AMAZING.

- When I was at the cinema, I was 99% sure there was no scene after the credits. I waited anyway. And it was only when I saw that black screen that I realized it was really, really over. That was the moment I had to repress other tears.

- I'm gonna stop now. I just want to say that, in spite of all the plot holes and things I don't agree with and that were done, or things that I thought could've been done better, I loved this movie. It's the end to an era that meant - and still means - a lot to me and it was AMAZING. I will bring all those characters and those stories with me forever. Nat, Steve and Tony in a special way. One day I'll come to terms with the fact that this is all. But not today.

Love you 3000.

[radioactivespidey]

So… what is the Ace Tower AU?

So. The beginning to this AU is that Tony doesn’t actually die, the Infinity Gauntlet just takes a lot out of him.

Steve and Bucky get together, there’ll be more on both of these alternate endings in the next section.

And then the Avengers all kind of go their separate ways, and it’s truthfully a rather sad goodbye because they had bonded so much and they truly are a family.

So they’re apart for a couple months.

Until Tony finally, finally is able to go out in the world again. And he realizes he misses his family. Not Morgan and Pepper, but his family of a bunch of idiots who have laughed together, cried together, and fought together.

So. He buys a building.

He calls it Ace Tower and spends the next couple weeks designing it carefully and lovingly, and then he calls up the Avengers. And he asks them to move in with him.

He even chokes up a bit when he tells them how much he misses them, and then they’re all kind of sniffling and laughing into the phone with teary eyes and Scott is the first one to speak: “I think I speak for all of us when I say hell yeah.”

The next couple weeks are busy and insane, with the Avengers gradually moving in, showing up with boxes of stuff and their family behind them (Tony made it very, very clear that family was more than welcome) and huge smiles on their faces and each of them hugs Tony tight when they see him. And in three weeks they’re all there and they get a tour of the absolutely huge building with Pepper guiding them and you can hear kids laughing and wine glasses clinking and the soft murmur of significant others conversing and Tony just grins to himself and thinks- yeah. This is home.

Below is an image of what I like to think Ace Tower looks like- maybe a little fancier and shinier and it’s in the middle of nowhere, not surrounded by other buildings.

How do Endgame and Far From Home fit into this?

Literally everything in the MCU storyline up until Tony’s snap is the same. (Actually, that’s not true. I love Loki with my whole heart so let’s just say he’s still alive and it turns out he faked his death the whole time or something. This might not even be a headcanon, I have literally no idea if he’s still alive or not but his series makes it seem as if he is?? Who knows.) This whole AU starts with Tony not dying (yay!!). He does the snap and it takes a lot out of him and he goes unconscious, and everyone seriously thinks he’s going to die, but they manage to get him to a doctor in time and his severe wounds are treated.

So he is basically shoved into bedrest for weeks, and he heals and decides to retire from being Iron Man- he just wants to spend time with his family and friends.

Steve returns all the stones but comes back and as soon as he steps out of the portal he kisses Bucky, and the latter is shocked because he totally thought that Steve would spend the rest of his life with Peggy. But they both confess their love to each other literally right in front of everyone and it’s mushy and happy and they’d be lying if they said they didn’t cry.

That’s basically it for Endgame. FFH is about the same, but Tony isn’t dead, he just is not Iron Man anymore. This keeps the whole thing in FFH about who the next Iron Man is going to be, with Peter feeling pressured and missing Tony’s advice the whole time. Tony still gives EDITH to Peter (but would it be called EDITH if he’s not dead? ERITH? Even Retired I’m The Hero?) and Peter still makes the dumb mistake of giving the glasses to Mysterio, but it’s alright because it’s all resolved in the end. Basically right after FFH, maybe a couple weeks later, Tony asks the gang to move in.

We’re gonna pretend the mid-credit scene of FFH didn’t happen because… that is a major anxiety stressor. Or if it did happen, everything got fixed in a matter of hours. I’ve heard that this happens in the comics and Dr. Strange swoops in and somehow everything gets resolved and Peter’s identity is intact- I have no idea how true this is, but let’s say that it did happen for the sake of my sanity. I just. I worry over Peter, okay? He’s been through enough.

What headcanons and ships are in this AU?

The main ships are Peter/MJ and Steve/Bucky. There’s a little bit of Thor/Bruce (because it’s an absolutely underrated ship) but it’s not central at all. There is also Tony/Pepper, but that doesn’t count because it’s already canon. To be honest, none of these ships are that important to the AU, if you take them out it would still be about exactly the same, I just really like those ships.

The headcanons aren’t that many, it’s mostly just me desperately trying to make up for the queerbaiting/lack of LGBT+ rep in the MCU lmao. I am a fierce lover of trans + bi Peter, so that is included in the story, as well as Steve being bi, Bucky being gay or bi, Nat being lesbian (why do I love that so much?), etc. Just like the ships, they aren’t central or that important to the AU, I just enjoy envisioning the characters that way. I’m just really really really hoping Marvel gives Valkyrie a girlfriend, at least.

I also headcanon Bucky, Steve, and Peter to have PTSD and/or anxiety, as well as Tony of course. I just really need my mental health rep, y’all. Peter has been through so much, you cannot tell me he doesn’t have PTSD and anxiety because I’ll sigh extremely deeply. And it might come off this way, so I just want to say that I am not romanticizing mental illnesses, I just cope with them myself and having my favorite characters share some of that burden with me would be really cool. So. Yeah. I like to think that the four of them help each other out when they’re having depressive episodes or panic attacks or such.

But yeah. Those are most of the headcanons and such in this AU. I have quite a few minor ones but I am not going to waste anyone’s time by listing them. And if you want to hop on this “I hate the Endgame ending and since Marvel isn’t fixing it by God I’ll do it myself” bandwagon with me, feel free to come up with your own ships and headcanons. This AU was made to fill in all the gaps and come up with alternate endings for the characters. It’s a place to let your imagination run wild. If you want Natasha to run away and become a world-renowned chef, go for it, you know?

Ace Tower Layout:

It’s on this huge isolated field that has plenty of backyard space for stupid shenanigans, soccer goals and balls shoved up in one corner and ten barbecue grills and a vegetable garden that Bruce takes care of lovingly. There’s even a pool where a lot of crazy things happen.

There are ten floors, and there is a very helpful and speedy elevator to take them places. It is big and strong enough that Bruce doesn’t have to take the stairs, which he is very thankful for.

- Level 1: nothing much, just a sitting area and a scanner so only authorized people can pass through.

- Level 2: the labs, where all the nerds spend time. There’s plenty of high-tech gear and lab equipment to play around with and when Peter can’t sleep and wakes up with panic attacks he and Tony go down there and just tinker with things while Aunt May sits down with a good book and watches them with an incredibly fond smile on her face.

- Level 3: the gym and training room. There’s exercise equipment and also just a huge mat to spar and train. Natasha beats almost everyone who steps on that mat with her. Sometimes they have competitions where they’re allowed to fight dirty and use their powers and that is when it gets really chaotic.

- Level 4: the living room, it’s basically like a home theater and it’s stuffed with couches and pillows and blankets. They have a projector that shows the movie on an entire wall and they have movie nights with all the Avengers every Friday. A huge stack of board games is in one corner and there are five microwaves and hundreds of microwaveable popcorn packets and when someone brings in M&Ms all hell breaks loose.

- Level 5: the kitchen. Everyone has a kitchenette in their little apartment but they like spending time in the kitchen because there’s always someone there. It’s truly gigantic and sometimes they hold actual baking competitions, where they split into teams and have like three hours to make a giant wedding cake and it is insanely chaotic but by the end all of their stomachs hurt from laughing so much. They have dinner together every night, and it’s a time that they all look forward to.

- Level 6 and on are where the Avengers live. Each floor is separated into about 2-3 apartments (depending on how many people live on that floor), each one made especially for the person/family that lives there (Tony really outdid himself).

- Level 6: Apartment #1 is occupied by Scott, Hope, and Cassie (Cassie spends time with Jim and Maggie every two weeks, they are all a very happy family and Cassie loves Hope to death). Apartment #2 is occupied by Clint and his family. The two families actually get along very well.

- Level 7: Apartment #1 is occupied by Rhodey. Apartment #2 is occupied by Doctor Strange.

- Level 8: Apartment #1 is occupied by Steve and Bucky. Apartment #2 is occupied by Sam. Apartment #3 is occupied by Natasha. They absolutely love their floormates (is that even a word) and Sam and Bucky have the best rivalry with each other. They usually end up arm wrestling with Steve and Natasha watching in the background, the former with a look of horror and the latter with a huge smile on her face.

- Level 9: This level is kind of weird. Bruce almost has the entire floor to himself since he is a very big guy, but there is also a guest room section for when Thor and Loki decide to drop by (Loki and the people of Asgard never died OKAY they just relocated). Bruce is always super happy to see Thor and eventually he becomes good friends with Loki once he stops turning himself into a snake.

- Level 10: Apartment #1 is occupied by Tony, Pepper, and Morgan. Apartment #2 is occupied by May and Peter.

What am I going to do with this AU?

Honestly? I have no clue.

To be honest, chances are that this idea is not original at all and there about a hundred other variations of this exact same AU. If there are, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I just want these characters to be happy.

I highly highly doubt that this AU will get attention anyway. The only reason why I’m making a Tumblr page for this is just to keep all my ideas in one place and to have a site to direct any friends to if they ask about this.

I might write some fics for this (shameless plug: my ao3 user is coffeebiscuits and I have only one MCU related fic up there [it’s Stucky- big surprise, right?] but I am working on others alright?) or maybe write even more headcanons. I might just never touch this AU again and revisit it in 5 years and cringe. We’ll see.

But- whether you are one of my poor friends that I dumped this AU on or some random person that stumbled upon this- if you have any ideas or suggestions for this AU or where to go with it, please please talk to me! Either on here or on insta, where I am @radioactivelatte (I gotta stop with this self promo). Just talk to me about any ideas, or just Marvel, or your day. I don’t know. My dm’s are always open, though.

So that’s it! That’s the basic information for this AU. I have a ton of headcanons and little storylines for this, and I might put them up here just for fun, who knows? Or if I ever write a fic that’s based on this, I’ll put a link for that up here as well.

Stick around for more news if you want. Or don’t. I don’t control you.

-ethan

[thesaltofcarthage]

Avengers: Endgame: Did Marvel Pull It Off?

This is a followup to my (surprisingly popular!) post “The Stakes Are Too High.” (at least, it surprised the hell out of me that it got so popular; I wasn’t expecting it to resonate as widely as it did.)

FULL ENDGAME SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I’m putting it under a cut just in case.

Also, above the cut in case you’re still dodging spoilers, tagging @kryptaria @iamanartichoke @taurileonis @hjbender @chey-tips22 @wu-the-stoic @englishontheinside  @rennemichaels @alwida10 @ladylowkeyed @saltoftheearths @mizkit @thelightofthingshopedfor @essesnceofhappiness @theravenofwynter @pinetreeparadoxx @ironhammermagicshieldedgreenbow @philosopherking1887 @waywardkansasflower @lokeanrampant @maneth985 @ilovethemallsoimconfused @bengalaas @icyxmischief @yuuki-fandoms @snailchick  @fictions-stranger  @adhdasianaroace @artherra @missmaladicta @queerfictionwriter because you specifically commented/reblogged.

So having seen Endgame, the question becomes: Did Marvel pull it off? 

My answer is: yes and no.

Did we get an emotionally satisfying ending? Did Marvel understand that closure doesn’t have to come with corpses?

There were a lot of things I loved about Endgame. There were many, many of the “small character moments” we were begging for. Marvel didn’t forget that we fell in love with people and we need to see people and their choices and how they live with the consequences of those choices... mostly.

I loved how Marvel rewarded the audience for watching 11 years of movies. It was practically wall-to-wall Easter eggs and callbacks. I loved how the time travel allowed us to loop back through some of our favorite scenes and see them from other points of view, and the additional information. (Sitwell and Brumlow taking the scepter immediately after Loki’s capture: oh, so that’s how HYDRA got the Mind Stone!) I loved the cameos upon cameos (despite how silly it is for someone like Natalie Portman to show up for literally 15 seconds and not get any lines). I appreciated that Captain Marvel was used exactly the right amount: she saved Tony and Nebula, she was established as part of the post-Snap team, she came in at the end to lend some firepower, but she did not have any part in solving the problem nor was she the person who ultimately handed Thanos his raisin ass. I LOVED THE FINAL BATTLE, HOLY FUCK. (With the exception of Loki not being present, but I’ll get to that.) There were real laughs, and real tears. I cheered when Steve summoned Mjolnir (and laughed my head off at the Cap-on-Cap fight). I loved Morgan and Cassie, and the echoes of fathers and daughters throughout.

There were things I did not love, even before we got to the final or semi-final fates of some characters. I was genuinely offended with Thor’s treatment. I was not happy with Loki. I was confused about Vision, Gamora, and Black Widow, because they are due to return for future TV shows and movies, so leaving their statuses open or cloudy (or “dead,” which I put in quotes for a reason) was just disconcerting. The time travel opened up a lot of problems.

My original post was about endings, so let’s talk about those. In approximately descending order of Satisfying to WTF:

Stan Lee: Got his last cameo in the end of the arc so he didn’t miss any, driving along, clearly having the time of his life. Excelsior, Stan, and thank you for everything.

Clint: Got his happy ending. He was deeply bitter about losing his family, but got them restored to him. He did lose Nat, but I’ll cover her in her own section.

Steve: He did get his soft epilogue, albeit with Peggy Carter, and I can’t fault that. Marvel was never going to give us the Steve/Bucky romance no matter how obvious it was, and Steve/Peggy also works. (And really, I love Peggy, so for her to get a happy ending too is a bonus.) Steve gave so much of himself over the years. I can’t object to allowing him to be selfish and re-live his life quietly, to finally put down his shield and go home from the war. He got his reward.

It basically works with the existing timeline if you squint and assume that Peggy’s Alzheimer’s was messing with her at the beginning of Civil War, or if there’s another timeline altogether. I’m slightly annoyed that whatever he got to have with Bucky all happened offscreen between the stinger of Black Panther and the beginning of Infinity War, but apparently they did spend time together. And Steve clearly told Bucky was he was planning; that’s what “I’m gonna miss you” was foreshadowing.

STEVE IS WORTHY OF MJOLNIR. YESSSSSS!

Bruce: I was okay with the “Professor Hulk” storyline (which I was told by a sharp-eyed nephew is from the comics), although I wouldn’t have minded seeing that internal struggle onscreen, but I understand it’s an IP rights issue and there isn’t going to be another Marvel standalone Hulk film.

Tony: Augh. AUGH! I get it. I know why he died, on a meta level. But still.

This, at least, we can say is mostly “heartbreaking” and not “burn.” Tony got the five-year interval to make some kind of peace with his losses. He and Pepper got married and had Morgan. He got some kind of Happy For Now. He got some kind of reward, which RDJ brilliantly conveyed even in the few minutes we saw.  

@hjbender linked @starkysnarks’s excellent post about Tony’s arc. One important part:

That’s why I think that giving a better, more positive message is so important. While other characters have flaws, it’s only Tony who has this consistent, this carefully streamlined storyline of improvement, of redemption, of self-realization and self-betterment. It’s Tony who is most often referred to (by the aforementioned mainstream outlets AND within the fandom) as the most human of the characters, and his story – as the most humane. His happy ending with a new house and young family will not feel like an opt-out, it will not feel complacent, at least not to me. It will feel like hope. It will feel like achieving, at least partially, the goal of that endless internal struggle that we all go through daily. It will feel like it’s possible to be good and be happy and be content, to know that you have done you best and your best is good enough for you to live, and go forward, and be.

He ultimately got some of this, for a while. Tony’s fatal flaw is his fear about Thanos, or the threat that Thanos represents. Prior to Avengers, Tony was happy-go-lucky because he could, eventually, beat whatever the world threw at him. But Thanos was not of this world, and would have wiped everyone out if Tony hadn’t managed to get that nuke through the portal. That trauma, that guilt, that fear, is what drives him for the rest of the Infinity Stones storyline. He is desperate to protect everyone. It’s what makes him want to put “a suit of armor around the world” in Age of Ultron, and of course the way Ultron backfires compounds Tony’s PTSD and guilt, which is what leads to his position in Civil War and the fight he picks with Steve at the beginning of Endgame.

And the worst happens in Infinity War, and the Avengers lose. Everything Tony feared ultimately happened.

Five years later, he’s managed to move forward. He has his happy ending — as happy as he can be, given their losses. He’s accepted his failure, more or less. He wants to rest, which is why he rejects Steve and the others at first.

But his tinkerer’s brain won’t let him put their proposal aside. He needs to know intellectually that there’s no chance, that he can’t fix what he screwed up. Because that’s the other part of what drives him: they lost. He lost. “I lost the kid,” he tells Steve (meaning Peter). That fear of loss, of losing people, of failing people, of disappointing people, is what keeps pushing him. If he knows that there’s no possible way he can undo his mistake, he’ll figure out a way to cope, especially since he still has Pepper and then his daughter. But now there is a way, or there might be, and he can’t let that lie, he can’t rest, until he knows one way or the other. And when the way to fix things becomes possible, there is no other outcome for Tony to choose. He wouldn’t be a hero otherwise.

It is a terrible loss, but in the end I could accept it. Tony got a Happy For Now. He was able to enjoy his life for a little while. He got the genuine closure with his father which he couldn’t in the BARF hologram at the beginning of Civil War thanks to the time travel, and he got to see Peter restored and give him the hug which they weren’t at yet in Homecoming. Tony was triumphant. He defeated his greatest, most terrible adversary. He defeated his fear. Thanos is gone, and his minions with him. The echo of “I. Am. Iron Man.” was exquisite. (even more so knowing that line in the first movie was ad-libbed! it wasn’t in the script! It was RDJ’s idea!) So his death is sad, but it’s earned.

Natasha: Meh. Just meh. The scene where she and Clint fight over who is going to die was blackly hilarious. It made narrative sense for Nat to be the one who died — she has found family, but not children; she spent the interval trying to run the Avengers and SHIELD and trying to fix things, and this allowed her to contribute in a material way; she still has a lot of red in her moral ledger — but on a meta level, we know there’s a Black Widow movie in the works. It doesn’t make sense to have a spinoff series set before Endgame when you know how the character dies. It’s not a bad ending, all things considered, but the actress herself can’t get younger. Is it supposed to be her origin/backstory movie after the character has died? Is it Multiverse Branching Timelines? Was she restored when Steve returned all the Stones to their place in the timeline? Was she restored with Tony’s Snap, or Bruce’s? Not knowing how that’s going to work with the rest of the MCU timeline blunted the emotional effect of her death for me.

Although he’s not an original Avenger, I had similar issues with Vision. There will be a Scarlet Witch and Vision TV series. Vision is still dead, according to Wanda at Tony’s funeral. So was he restored with either Bruce’s Snap or Tony’s? Was 2018 Gamora? 

And the two which completely did not work for me, the ones where I think Marvel really missed:

Thor: Of the original Avengers, he was the one I was most upset about.

I really, really did not like how Thor’s very legitimate grief, depression, PTSD, and alcoholism were played for laughs. Thor is down to a “kingdom” of a few hundred people at best (we don’t know what Asgard’s population was to start with, but Hela killed quite a few, and then Thanos killed half of them on the Statesman, and it’s entirely possible that the Snappening dusted half of whomever remained). He’s living with the murders of Loki, Heimdall, and the Warriors Three (I can’t remember if Sif was supposed to have survived the Snappening, but she doesn’t appear in Endgame). He didn’t “go for the head” in Infinity War, which clearly haunts him despite the fact that Peter Quill is just as much to blame for interrupting Strange, Tony, Peter, and Mantis, or Wanda is just as much to blame for not getting the Stone out of Vision’s head faster, etc. etc. He cut off Thanos’s head after the fact and is clinging to that — “Who else here killed Thanos?” — as some kind of cold comfort. “Look, at least I did that in the end. At least I got revenge.”

Thor is a mess. His family is dead. His dearest friends are dead. He’s in a depressive spiral, self-medicating with food and alcohol, lost in video games because they are a consequence-free way to “win.” He’s holed up with Miek and Korg because they didn’t know him before Ragnarok and they have no real expectations of King Thor, God of Thunder, Avenger, Hero. He feels he has failed at everything which has ever been expected of him.

And the script... plays this... for laughs.

We are meant to laugh at his pot belly and flabby physique. We are meant to laugh at his unkempt matted hair and wild unbraided beard. We are meant to laugh at his drunkenness, at how he passes out, at how he blearily begs and whimpers to be the one to unSnap everyone ( “Please let me do something good, something right,” he pleads), at how he returns to Asgard on the day of Frigga’s murder and tries to frat-boy off to the cellars for some of Odin’s best ale because he cannot face his failure on this day too.

None of this is funny. It’s not funny at. all. It’s horrifying.

I do understand that this is likely more Hemsworth than Marvel. The actor vocally complained that he was bored with formal, upright Thor and would have been done with the character without Taika Waititi’s more comedic take in Ragnarok. He has said in interviews that Thor in Endgame is the closest to Hemsworth himself that the character has ever been, and clearly the actor loves doing comedy. He’s good at it — I enjoyed Kevin in Ghostbusters 2016.

I don’t object to loosening up Thor. I don’t object to showing Thor spiraling into alcoholism and depression and hiding from the world in food and games. I object to using depression and alcoholism for comedy.

Thor faces Frigga, reluctantly, and she counsels her son whom she loves, telling him not to worry about living up to expectations but to be his best true self. This is consistent with both characters; Thor has accepted how hard it is to be king. Then as Thor is quantumming out she adds “And eat a salad.” Really? You had to throw that in there? She sees the wreck her son has become and she nags? She gives him some kind and loving advice, she knows there’s some weirdness going on, but she has to cap it with fat-shaming?

We are meant to mock formerly ripped Thor for being “fat and ugly,” but let’s be clear: Thor’s appearance is an outward manifestation of deep emotional issues. Thor has not been able to cope with his failure. He and Tony faced similar terrible losses. Both characters originally had sunny dispositions. Tony, who still had Pepper at least, has managed to crawl out of his hole and build something with his wife and daughter. Thor lost his brother, his other half, and has mentally, emotionally, and physically collapsed. There really is no Thor without Loki.

And speaking of, I’m going to scream for a moment:

SERIOUSLY, MARVEL, WHAT EVEN THE FLAMING FUCK WAS THAT? YOU TEE UP A GODDAMN LINE LIKE “I ASSURE YOU, BROTHER, THE SUN WILL SHINE ON US AGAIN” AND THEN IT DOESN’T PAY OFF? I FUCKING WAVED THAT FLAG FOR A SOLID YEAR BECAUSE I WAS CONVINCED YOU WERE SMARTER THAN THAT AND THIS IS HOW YOU DO ME?

Loki: I am well aware that Loki started as an antagonist, and that my perspective is skewed from the fandoms I choose to participate in. I know that he’s not an Avenger.

But purely from a narrative point of view, Marvel, ya done fucked up. You dropped the ball.

From my previous post:

Loki’s death in Infinity War was so stupid and narratively pointless that a lot of fans, myself included, believe that there’s a plan behind the scenes (since we know Endgame involves time travel) which somehow explains it and gives it meaning. Because if not, then one of the most popular MCU characters — the only antagonist to keep returning, film after film, and primarily because audiences love him — died for nothing.

And there you have it. Explaining it after the fact in Loki’s TV show doesn’t count (and we don’t know that they will). Yes, Loki grabs the Tesseract in 2012 and disappears, so you can argue that “he doesn’t die,” but all that really does is screw up the timeline. It creates another timeline branch which isn’t resolved.

Is everything now a branched universe? If Loki took off with the Tesseract, does that mean The Dark World and Ragnarok never happened? If Loki didn’t go back to Asgard in chains at the end of Avengers, that means TDW couldn’t have happened the way it did. It means that Loki didn’t sacrifice himself, but does that also mean that Malekith would have gotten the Aether/Reality Stone from Jane and killed her? (It was Loki’s plan which saved Jane, let’s recall. And killed Kurse.) Does that mean Odin is still alive and on Asgard? And Hela was never unleashed? And therefore Loki and Thor never ended up on Sakaar and Hulk and Valkyrie Brunnhilde are still there? Or worse, that Odin died and Hela was unleashed but Thor wasn’t able to stop her because he didn’t have Hulk, Valkyrie, and Loki to help him? So she’s now loose and rampaging across the realms murdering at will?

It was appropriate for the larger arc for Carol to be part of the cavalry swooping in during the final battle to pummel Thanos for a while, but I kept waiting for Loki to show up. Loki was tortured by Thanos and Ebony Maw, which is what kicked off the plot of Avengers. If 2014 Thor was willing to break Loki out of prison to get revenge for Frigga’s death, why wouldn’t either 2014 Thor or 2023 Thor be willing to tell 2012 Loki “We have an opportunity for you to get back at Thanos. Wanna help?” Because as strung out and as still cocky as he was, jauntily waving in the elevator at the beast who just beat the shit out of him, I bet Loki would have been delighted to take a few swings at Giant Purple Nutsack Face. Yes, he probably would have escaped at some point during the final battle, because that’s who he was at the time, and still is — he’s “very comfortable with chaos,” as Hiddleston notes. And that would have been consistent. Help others if it also helps him, he’s not really a hero at that point in his arc, check out after Thanos is dead because he doesn’t want to go back to prison. That all would have worked. Even if he had no more to do than Shuri or Okoye, just to show him shooting a few blasts of seidr and showing that he is in fact just as powerful a sorcerer as Doctor “I’ve only been doing this for a year” Strange.

But Loki’s death in Infinity War is for nothing. Even if I wasn’t as invested in the character as I am, from a storytelling standpoint, it was pointless. The entire heavy foreshadowing of that line was utterly whiffed. You can’t even argue that “Loki sacrificed himself for Thor” because Thanos disappeared with the Space Stone, leaving Thor behind, and Thor crawled over to his brother’s dead, broken body and crumpled there to die. Thor gave up and never recovered. The last word he expected he would ever say was “Loki....” 

Thor didn’t choose in that moment to use Loki’s sacrifice to stand up and claim revenge. Even Clint did more than that after Natasha’s death. Thor only continued on to forge Stormbreaker because the Guardians happened to pick him up in the vacuum of space after the Statesman exploded. That wasn’t a choice by the character, which is what moves a character arc forward. It was happenstance. Thor’s heart was destroyed with Loki’s death. It’s a shell of a man who eventually beheads Thanos.

Loki got an “Avenge the Fallen” poster, but he wasn’t avenged. The 2012 version of him escaped and branched off a new timeline, according to the Ancient One’s explanation of how time travel works in the MCU.

We don’t know if either Tony’s or Bruce’s Snap restored 2018 Loki. Endgame is the end of this arc. Marvel can’t patch stuff up later and claim a do-over. 

AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE MARVEL WE NEVER GOT THOR AND LOKI’S HUG.

So: did Marvel hurt us?

Not as badly as I feared. There was a ton of fanservice and moments which were so go-for-broke that I felt like we were watching wish-fulfillment fanfic. (So many jokes about Steve’s ass. Steve joking about Steve’s ass.) The script didn’t stop to explain who people were or give context; it assumed the audience knew everything and was keeping up. And that last battle, have mercy, Helm’s Deep and Pelennor Fields look like playground skirmishes in comparison.

BUT: The loose ends are deeply frustrating, and I think the Loki fandom is going to blow a collective gasket. Grotty Drunk Thor having constant My Dick Is Bigger fights with Peter Quill is not going to make me want to watch Guardians 3. (Although if Loki comes back and sneers at Quill, and Thor follows his brother off into the wild yonder with stars in his eyes, okay, call me.)  

I will watch the Marvel TV shows because I’m a masochist, but I don’t know how much I’m going to allow myself to get emotionally involved. My expectations are far lower than before IW/EG. I don’t know how the shows and movies involving “dead” characters are going to explain things. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey handwaving is kind of a cheat, and it doesn’t excuse the shit storytelling which was allowed to happen in the first place.

Do I regret the journey? I don’t. It’s been a hell of a ride, and I’m so glad to have met these characters. I could wish for some things to be better, and hoo boy is there going to be a lot of corrective fanfic, but I’m not sorry I came along. 

(and P.S.: Loki lives. :P)

[avengersmusings]

FULL NAME: Anthony Edward Stark MEANING: Highly praiseworthy, Priceless One, Flower NICKNAME: Tonio, Tony MEANING: Tonio was what his mom called him growing up (and she’s the ONLY one allowed to call him that thanks), and Tony’s just the shorten version of his name. AGE APPEARANCE: 46 BIRTHDAY: May 29th, 1973 ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini SPECIES: Human GENDER: Cis Male ALLERGIES: None SEXUAL PREFERENCE: Pansexual THEME SONG(S): Back in Black by AC/DC, Because of You by Kelly Clarkson, Bastards by Kesha, I Don’t Care by Fall Out Boy

APPEARANCE

HAIR COLOR:  Dark Brown with some grey peppered in because baby old. HAIR STYLE AND LENGTH: Honestly a mess, but like a stylish mess. It’s longer on top and always in that spikey MESS. EYES COLOR: Brown EYESIGHT: 20/20, he paid for corrective surgery when he was younger thanks. HEIGHT: 5′9″, don’t let HIM FOOL YOU WEIGHT: 190 lbs OUTFIT/CLOTHING STYLE: Tony’s probably wearing some band shirt with oil/grease stains on it and jeans. He also likes wearing tshirts, a blazer, and jeans. BUT ALWAYS THE SUNGLASSES. ABNORMALITIES: Miniaturized arc reactor in chest. DISTINGUISHING MARKS(SCARS,MOLES): Tony’s got a couple of scars from his father childhood, some old track marks along the crease of his elbow from his wilder days, and a giant ass scar on his chest from the one a half two heart surgeries that goes from the middle of his sternum down to almost his belly button. SELF CARE(MAKE UP): Tony either looks like he hasn’t slept in days or put together, there’s no in between. The only thing he really keeps maintained is his goatee. Because he’s vain about it. FIRST IMPRESSION ON PEOPLE: He’s Tony Fucking Stark okay, people either want to be his friend for his money or to hurt him so they try to impress him. SKIN COLOR: White BODY TYPE/BUILD: TINY BABY, he’s also fit but not like Steve level of muscle.  DEFAULT EXPRESSION: Tony always looks done with everything when in public. POSTURE: Oooooooof, Tony pretends to take up as much space as physically possible while keeping his back protected and everyone in the room in his sight. PIERCINGS: He has a closed up earring hole. DESCRIBE THEIR VOICE: Steve’s voice has a subtle Brooklyn accent and takes on a softer tone than you’d expect out of him. His voice hardens and deepens when he goes in Captain mode.

RELATIONS:

MOM: Maria Stark HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: Maria and Tony had a bond that was built off of both of them being abused by Howard. They’d stick up for each other when he got too hard on one of them and when Tony got older he started acting out more so Howard would take it out on him more rather than Maria. To this day, Maria is still one of the most important people in his life. DAD: Howard Stark HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: HoWARD STARK CAN FUCKING CHOKE YOU DUMB ASS BITCH. Howard was not a good father, he was not Marvel can fight me. He was abusive and cold and distant and had his son kidnapped so that he wouldn’t break when it really happened. Howard’s better off fucking dead. SIBLINGS: Isabelle St. Martin (Half-Sister) HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: Tony.........has no clue she’s his sister sorry. CHILDREN: Toni Stark, Morgan Stark, Peter Parker, and the Bots HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: Tony’s kids are hIS LIFE. His biggest fear is turning into Howard so he treats them like they’re the best thing to happen to him (which they are). OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS: Edwin Jarvis (Father Figure), Peggy Carter (Adoptive Aunt) PAST LOVER(S): so MANY ONE NIGHT STANDS TONY PLEASE. CURRENT LOVER: Pepper Potts REACTION TO MEETING SOMEONE NEW: Tony’s analyzing what they want from him and why they’re talking to him, but he’s keeping up with the conversation and probably trying to see if he can make them hate him. ABILITY TO WORK WITH OTHERS: It depends on his mood, honestly. HOW SOCIABLE(LONER,ETC): Tony can be sociable, when he wants to. FRIENDS: Elise Burke, Bruce Banner, Peggy Carter, Thor, Nat, Clint, basically all of the Avengers. PETS: Ginny, a miniature poodle (who is also a service doggo for his anxIETY) LEAST FAVORITE TYPE OF PERSON: People who take advantage of him or use his tech for evil. PARENTAL TYPE(PROTECTIVE,ETC): THE BEST, his kids want something and they get it. FAVORITE PEOPLE: Pepper, Elise, Bruce, Morgan, Peter, Toni. LEAST FAVORITE PEOPLE: Steve, Justin Hammer, most of SHIELD.

PERSONALITY:

..WHEN YOU FIRST MEET THEM: ? Distant, Sarcastic, Pushy ..AS YOU KNOW THEM BETTER(AND THEY LIKE YOU): Warm, Loyal, Giving ..AS YOU KNOW THEM BETTER(AND THEY DISLIKE YOU): Cold, Mean, Closed-Off FAVORITE COLOR: Red FAVORITE FOOD: One of his mom’s old dishes or a Potts family recipe. FAVORITE ANIMAL: Cats (?) FAVORITE INSTRUMENT: Piano FAVORITE ELEMENT: Fire LEAST FAVORITE COLOR: None of them??? LEAST FAVORITE FOOD: Honestly, nothing. LEAST FAVORITE ANIMAL: Rats LEAST FAVORITE INSTRUMENT: Maybe a kazoo? Tony’s weird. LEAST FAVORITE ELEMENT: Earth HOBBIES: building things he shouldn’t be, hanging out with his kids, annoying Pepper in her office, sciencing with Bruce. USUAL MOOD: Honestly Tony’s eager to please so he wants people around, but HE ALSO DOESN’T WANNA SEEM TOO EAGER so like.......you have to come to him first.

DRINK/SMOKE/DRUGS: Not anymore. He used to do all three and stopped when he became Iron Man. Well, drinking stopped when he got together with Pepper. DARK VERSION OF SELF: OH FUCK. AN EVIL GENIUS. The entire world is metal and humans arE GONE. LIGHT VERSION OF SELF: hello see Tony thanks. Maybe less self-doubty and more willing to work with others. HOW SERIOUS ARE THEY: Tony can be serious if he wants to be, he just doesn’t want to be most of the time. BELIEVE IN GHOSTS: Nope. Science can’t explain it so they aren’t real :) (IN)DEPENDANT: Tony likes to pretend to be independant but CANNOT REMEMBER WHAT HE HAD FOR BREAKFAST. please help him. SOFT SPOT/VULNERABILITY: anybody hurting one of his kids or Pepper, failing the team, turning into Howard, people needing help in general. OPINION ON SWEARING: Will say fuck in front of a child if needed. Morgan probably knows a LOt of swear words. DAREDEVIL VS CAUTIOUS: Both??? He’s mostly just a menace to himself and lack self-preservation skills. MUSIC TYPE: Ear-shattering rock. MOVIE TYPE: .......Tony doesn’t watch movies he doesn’t have the attention span for them. BOOK TYPE: ..........i don’t see Tony as much of a reader either. Maybe scientific journals??? GAME TYPE: Tony can kick your ass at poker without even trying. COMFORTABLE TEMPERATURE: Tony likes it a little bit warmer than comfortable. The cold reminds him of the cave and being trapped in space :( SLEEPING PATTERN: .........tony stark..........sleep???? what. CLEANLINESS/NEATNESS: Tony is the cleanest messiest person you’ll ever meet. He never picks up after himself but IF YOU PICK UP ONE OF HIS TOOLS AND MOVE IT ANYWHERE IT THROWS OFF HIS ENTIRE SYSTEM.  DESIRED PET: who needs pets when kids keep showing up at your doorstep amiright HOW DO THEY PASS TIME: Bothering Pepper, hanging out with a kid of his, building up suits for the team. BIGGEST SECRET: Tony Stark has had three “suicide” attempts in his life and only one of them was intentional. HERO/WHO THEY LOOK UP TO: Everyone because he’s short.  His mom, Pepper, Steve to an extent. WHAT ANIMAL WOULD THEY BE: A cat. FEARS: BECOMING HOWARD, losing one of his kids or Pepper, space, failing the team. COMFORTS: Pepper’s shampoo, Morgan’s childlike scent, the smell of motor oil, being utterly surround by someone he loves.

HOW DO THEY ACT WHEN THEY ARE:

SAD: Tony bottles it all up until it spills out and he can’t control it anymore. He’s getting better about opening up about when he’s sad, but he WASN’T ALLOWED TO BE SAD when he was younger THANKS HOWARD. HAPPY: Talking fast and probably waving his arms around TOO MUCH, getting up in personal space, SARCASTIC JOKES ANGRY: OOOOOFFF, the cold creeps in and Tony shuts off all other emotions. He tends to let the anger control him and doesn’t think things through. AFRAID: Tony’s not allowed to show he’s afraid because FUCK HOWARD so he keeps it to himself. If it gets too bad he has panic attacks. LOVE SOMEONE: Everything you’ve ever been in debt for is suddenly paid off and you have a nice vacation to look forward to and ANYTHING ELSE YOU NEED he’s giving you thanks. HATE SOMEONE: Tony’s cold and distant and probably wishing he could blast them with a gauntlet. WANT SOMETHING: Tony will take whatever he wants, he was raised spoiled okay. CONFUSED: tony stark doesn’t get confused HOW DARE YOU.

HOW DO THEY REACT TO:

DANGER: If Tony’s in danger it’s no big deal, but if someone else is? He’s doing everything in his power to GET THEM OUT even if it means getting hurt in the process. SOMEONE THEY HATE WHO HAS A CRUSH ON THEM: Bitch bye, Tony doesn’t have time for people he hates. PROPOSAL TO MARRY: He’s already married sooooooooooo unless it’s Pepper he’s gonna say no. DEATH OF LOVED ONE: It depends on how close they were. But he’d probably hide away until the sadness went away unless someone makes him face it. DIFFICULT GAME/MATH/ETC: Tony will not rest until he’s solved it thanks. INJURY: Yeah no, Tony doesn’t tell anybody when he’s injured. He was literally dying and didn’t tell anyone so. SOMETHING IRRESISTABLY CUTE: My guess is Tony would want to make sure it’s taken care of. LOSS OF HOURS OF WORK: .............he’s sleeping with his boss so.

KNOWLEDGE:

LANGUAGES: English, Italian, knows conversational various other langauges. SCHOOLING LEVEL: He has 3 doctorates. FAVORITE SUBJECT (S): Science, Science, and more Science. INTERESTED CAREERS: An engineer or inventor. EXPERTISE: genius level intellect, master engineer, master scientist, master buinessman, pilot of the iron man suits PUZZLES: Puzzles take him a minute but the serum helps him figure them out rather quickly. CHEMISTRY: Tony likes making things explode and probably has a good understanding of chemistry. MATH: TONY LOVES MATH. ENGLISH: Tony can speak it but has NO interest in interpreting what authors were trying to say in books thanks. GEOGRAPHY: Who needs maps when you have an AI running everything? POLITICS/LAW: Tony knows about them, and probably participates in them.  ECONOMY/ACCOUNTING: yOU DON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT MONEY WHEN YOU’RE RICH. COOKING: Tony can cook three things: scrambled eggs, spaghetti, and cereal. That’s it. SEWING: No. MECHANICS: Tony rebuilds classic cars in his spare time the fucking nerd. BOTANY (FLOWERS): lol no MYTHOLOGY: Tony knows about the different mythologies but doesn’t really believe in them? Atheism is a thing. DRAMATICS(ACTING,SINGING): besides the fact that tony is a DRAMA QUEEN, no. READING LEVEL: WAY ABOVE AVERAGE HE GRADUATED CO LLEGE AT FI FTEEN. HOW GOOD ARE THEY AT PLANNING AHEAD: no. just.......no this why he has Jarvis and Pepper.

ROMANCE:

DO THEY TAKE INITIATIVE: YES he loves bothering Pepper when she’s busy and a l w a y s gets his way. HOW DO THEY ACT(SHY,ETC): .........he’s Tony Stark.....that’s enough right there. GENTLEMAN/LADYLIKE VS KLUTZY: Tony can be gentleman like when he’s done something he’s not supposed to (or when he wants something) but other than that HE’S A DEMON. GO SLOW VS JUMP INTO: he was used to going fast and doing the one night stand thing, but with Pepper it was easier to take things slow (and then go really fast once they realized how WELL they worked together). PROTECTIVE: Yes. ACT LIKE FRIENDS OR LOVERS:  B O T H. WHAT KIND OF PRESENTS DO THEY BUY: ......tony doesn’t buy presents because he forgets birthdays and anniversaries. TYPE OF KISSER: It depends on his mood and what he wants :) DO THEY WANT KIDS: He didn’t want them, but now he has a small army of them so. DO THEY WANT TO MARRY: he’s ALREADY MARRIED. MAKE GOOD OR BAD DECISIONS: Bad decisions are unintentionally made because Tony might be a genius but he’s a dumbass. ARE THEY ROMANTIC: Y E S. HOW ARE THEY IN BED: Tony Stark literally did one night stands and one night stands only. He’s A M A Z I N G in bed he knows how to treat Pepper the way she should be and how to take car eof his WIFE. GET JEALOUS EASY: nO.  WIFE/HUBBY BEATER: nOPE. MARRY FOR MONEY: tony IS MONEY. FAVORITE POSITION: HOnestly? Pepper on top. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN ON THEIR DREAM DATE: A five star hotel while someone takes care of Morgan so Pepper can just relax. They spent as much time as possible in bed or relaxing. OPINION ON SEX: Sex was always just something Tony thought he HAD to do because people wanted it from him. And then he realized it was fun so he kept doing it because WHY NOT. But with Pepper it’s different and he could never go back to the one night stand thing. He likes the intimacy of sex with someone who cares about you beyond just getting off. 

[starkendgame]

okay so i saw endgame twice last weekend

there’s spoilers ahead y’all so i suggest scrolling on by if u haven’t watched

anyways

here are my thoughts and they’re all over the place so

- first hawkeye scene was already so sad also do i sense a kate bishop??

- tony teaching nebula how to play paper flick football was the so cute i love their dynamic

- also seeing how caring nebula was during that time oh man i am soft

- okay but how did carol just happen to come across tony and nebula’s ship???? like there’s a whole universe,,, and she just found it??

- “i lost the kid” had me ready to cry so fast

- rocket responding to being called a build-a-bear with “maybe i am” snsksjkd

- tony’s snap at cap was so valid and i think he needed to let all that out and cap really needed to hear that

- also i like that they gave him credit for his warning that the world needed a suit of armor because it shows some dummies that he created ultron with good intentions

- support group cap is a good concept and also kinda sad bc we know sam was also a support group leader

- this is an unpopular opinion and people will definitely disagree with me but carols new haircut was not doing things for her

- nat crying over clint made me big sad especially the second time around

- honestly i really liked nat in this movie more than others, her character really shows some depth

- i swear i’m going to get 3000 tattooed on me somewhere that shit HURTED

- on that note morgan stark is the most adorable little girl i’ve ever seen and dad!tony deserved to be a concept for more than 5 years (or 5 minutes from an audience point of view)

- like if you didn’t hear “define lunch or be desintagrated” and immediately melt ur a liar

- scott running around the vanished memorial in panic is :(

- okay cassie looks way to old for just a 5 year time jump im sorry someone had to say it

- hulk/banner is so fucking weird it’s so uncomfortable but also it didn’t bother me to the extent where i wanted it changed bc it was pretty funny

- also him giving scott tacos had me rolling

- thor bod is okay and i think shitting on him for it is mean we all acknowledged that he’d been through a lot after infinity war

- “shit”

- tony inventing time travel super casually? iconic.

- tony also creating a gauntlet in a hot second even though thanos had to fatty go to nidavellir and use some special ass metal to get his? even more iconic.

- all the domestic scenes where the avengers just sit around trying to figure out where to make their jumps and nat with her little notepad and bruce going “shut the front door” all of it was so good

- alright here’s the tea the thor we know and love would not just ignore loki when he went back in time he’d have exactly the same reaction as when his mother showed up

- their whole relationship that was built in ragnarok just fucking died and i refuse to accept that

- also seeing loki made me very happy and very sad i miss that dramatic little bitch

- also i love frigga

- america’s ass

- literally imagine checking out ur own ass and being like “damn,,” while ur friends also do the same

- “i can do this all day” “yeah i know” was solid fucking comedy even he’s tired of it

- “hail hydra” was also so good that bitch really took full advantage of being from the future he was so proud of himself

- i feel like nebula perhaps could have warned nat and clint about vormir but idk

- nat is so fucking important and deserved better, no memorial? no funeral? really?

- honestly and this is a problematic opinion but i wish it was clint and not nat because marvel wasnt doing enough with his character anyways and nat was such an integral part of the team in so many ways and it’s kind of terrible that i think this bc clint has a family but nat was honestly the heart of the team

- but she did so good and i’m proud of her she really died a hero’s death and she needs recognition

- the broken shield like how it was in tony’s vision is rough

- cap lifting mjolnir??????? Wack

- shuri yesssss i really hope she has a bigger role later in the avengers but im upset tony didn’t get to meet her he would’ve loved her :(

- the scene when everyone came back and it was just everyone in one place was such an experience like man the goosebumps

- also seeing peter for the first time back made my heart swell i love that boy

- tony and pepper iron couple is everything i needed thank you

- tony and petey reunion <3

- but also i felt like peters lines during their reunion were a just the slightest bit odd but that’s just the script not toms acting

- scott looking at hope when she calls steve “cap”

- the fact that cap called peter “queens” is really cute and overlooked also pepper calling him “kid” like tony does

- the girl team up WHEW chile can i tell u i was smiling so big that shit had me SHOOK at first but then it occurred to me how unlikely it is that they would all end up in the same spot and that was completely there just to make fans have the exact reaction we’re all having and so they could score brownie points i’m sorry i had to say it

- okoye is hands down the most badass woman out there no powers no armor no shield no suit no fancy tech she’s just out there kicking ass with her spear and i appreciate her

- also this might be dumb but if carol is the strongest of all of them, why couldn’t she use the gauntlet and perhaps survive

- also it’s just stupid that they acted that carol was going to be such a big part of the movie but she was there for maybe 2 hot seconds

- seeing that crusty purple small dick grape finally get dusted was all kinds of satisfying

- “we won mr stark” “i’m sorry tony” and “you can rest now” fucking destroyed me thanks

- i’m going to fucking miss tony so much i’ve cried so much

- he’s literally been my favorite superhero for 11 years Fuck

- proof that tony stark has a heart also destroyed me bitch i am GRIEVING

- who’s gonna make the abnoxious sarcastic witty comments now Bitch the mcu lost so much with the death of tony stark

- also i really hope they show peter having some issues after all this i think it’s only realistic there’s a lot of trauma he went through

- harleyyyyyyy :)

- cheeseburgers :(

- also speaking of harley can he pick up the genius invention slack in the future i think that’d be so good

- queen brunnhilde <3 ur gonna do great

- where’s gamora?? also her timeline has got to be super fucked up now

- is thor gonna be in guardians 3??

- also it’s a bit upsetting that even with the snap that brought everyone back, half thor’s people are still dead bc they died before the snap

- ned and petey reunion <3

- caps ending has me a little conflicted because yes it’s nice that he got his happy life and everything but i am gonna be one of those people who thinks it’s a bit out of character

- also if i’m being honest, tony and caps endings should’ve been switched i feel like, tony really needed to be able to have his happy ending and stop blaming himself and living with that guilt i think he deserved that closure and also having that character on standby for future movies seems super useful to push some plots forward?

- and with cap his whole thing was that he really wasn’t supposed to live past that plane crash and i felt like if his character was gonna go out it would be the way that tonys did bc i mean the man stood up in front of a whole freakin army before he knew help was coming

- that aside i think bucky should’ve gotten the shield, mostly because i think that’s only fair but also sam already has falcon, but all bucky has is the winter soldier and that has all types of bad shit attached to it so idk i think to make him captain would’ve been better

- i do think bucky knew what cap was gonna do he literally said “i’m gonna miss you” before he left even though he was supposed to have been back in 5 seconds his time and he didn’t look freaked out at all when he didn’t also he told sam to go ahead and talk to steve that bitch Knew

- also the sun didn’t fucking shine and i’m pissed they completely fucking desreguarded his entire monologue in that scene

- if tony and nat don’t get big ass memorial statues im going to sue

- also i hope peter and morgan have a cute sibling relationship please it’s what we need

- the sound of the first iron man suit being built at the end really got me and it was only 2 seconds of Sound

- but i wish we got an actual end credit scene like scenes with tony and morgan or something that teases far from home or some homage to the A6 idk it was underwhelming to not have a scene

- also i can’t watch any marvel movies now without being REALLY sad so there’s that i’m a little bit of a disaster

- i think overall this movie overlooked a lot of development that went on before hand and in that sense i think it lost a lot, but in terms of how the story went down i think it was good there was just a few things i wish they added (thor and loki ahem ahem) and honestly the movie should’ve been longer w an interlude but it was good + worth the watch i’m just a huge emotional wreck

- (also a side note: i’ve seen some people questioning why others are so upset over these fictional characters and it’s because yes we have attachments to the characters but also the actors, and after the characters die the actors won’t be in any more of these movies and we won’t see any more of their content or interaction with the rest of the cast and that shit is sad we’re gonna miss them so there are some tears)

[ghostmartyr]

Avengers: Endgame Thoughts

SPOILERS, obviously.

So I figure I’ll babble enough to keep all the genuinely spoilery content under an appropriately timed cut. Even though everything after this statement is full of expectation spoilers. The few key things that I can think about to mention are that I really appreciated the movie and enjoyed the highs and teared up aplenty.

Also that I think this is going to be a primarily negative post. Whoops.

Not because I think it’s awful. I want to emphasize that I don’t think it is awful, because I am very worried that I’m going to forget to say that.

There’s a base level of quality you can sort of expect from MCU movies, so I don’t generally feel the need to move beyond the role of passive audience member for them. Then Infinity War really impressed me, and I couldn’t wait to see how everything was going to wrap up when they really left the movie there, so my investment level piqued.

As a result, there are more thoughts than usual. About a movie I really did find to be of high quality, and probably would see again happily if planning to sit still for another three hours didn’t make me twitchy.

I liked the movie.

There are just some character decisions and plot mechanics and overall writing decisions that... really?

First thing that I don’t have much to say about but can’t rationalize having a complaint post with no mention of: Thor and Hulk.

People in charge of the movie, you had no problem including Captain Marvel when you had no earthly clue what to actually do with her. Her smile warmed my heart in every scene she graced, and while I was criminally disappointed she was not more involved, none of the material she was given made me feel like the people writing her didn’t care about her.

...

Actually, now that I think about it, this should not have just a Thor and Hulk complaint section. Like that was the idea, because I didn’t have much, because I don’t care (slightly different than the writers’ level of don’t care), but the whole...

...

Oy.

Here, once for flavor, with the knowledge that I’ll get back to it and repeatedly whine about it this whole post.

I find the fucking time skip wanting in too many ways for me to really forgive the film for.

Anyway, Thor and Hulk.

In short, no.

In less short, what are you doing.

Hulk I don’t have a serious gripe with, except my main complaint about Infinity War was how Banner (I should probably change how I name him based on which character I’m talking about, but I really just mean the entity represented by a particular actor so I can’t care that much) got used up as comedy relief. You can have comedic moments and characters. If you have transformed your character into a comedic moment, you’ve fucked up.

(See Thor in too much of this movie.)

But one of the interesting parts of Hulk’s general arc in the MCU was how Banner and Hulk were starting to negotiate for their place in their body.

Cue Endgame, cue time skip, cue completely glossing over how they make their peace with each other.

Avengers franchise, why?

I am not attached to Hulk or Banner or any of that section of the plot, honestly, but the potential of that entire element is shot and left for dead in the water. Then the floating corpse gets up and starts walking around as part of a cog of the story.

Hulk’s most interesting plot point basically happened in another movie that doesn’t now, and probably won’t ever, exist, and considering what Infinity War put the guy through as a character, my writing senses are hurt and sad all over.

Then there’s Thor.

I think he might fit into the whole thing I will soon get into about character resolutions that hit the right emotional keys solidly enough that you forget they’re playing the wrong song.

Mostly he picks up the “hole” (wrongly perceived as something that needs to be filled) left by Hulk leaving the walking gag scene party. Drinking himself into oblivion and disregarding self-care in the aftermath of an immense trauma is one of the film’s chosen humor mainstays.

My impression is that I’m the only person in my tight corner of the internet who doesn’t really like Ragnarok because its silliness felt like it was trying too hard. It’s my favorite of the Thor movies, but a bunch of the humor didn’t feel natural to me. Better than Infinity War’s handling of Hulk, and better than Endgame’s handling of Thor, just not my favorite tone.

Endgame sort of takes that element, jacks it away from its surrounding strengths, and rolls out a keg for it to drown in.

When the movie remembers to empathize with Thor instead of mocking him, there are some great moments. But he draws one of the shortest straws of the movie.

And the character resolution is...

Good fuck this is why I had to say I liked the movie. Because when I actually sit down and think about my problems with it, the rest of my brain just lounges to the side in horror, wondering what could possibly have been entertaining if such elements were included.

The very beginnings of my problems with the movie is that they kill Thanos.

I think he’s dead ten minutes in.

Then they skip five years.

Five years.

Ooooh my everything.

Okay so like, you know how you start reading something, or watching something, and your head immediately takes note that oh, this must be a dream sequence. The couple in a romance is suddenly way too hot and steamy for where the story has them in their development, a random bomb goes off, the guy who destroyed half of all life in the universe because no one can stop him in the last movie is killed in the first ten minutes of the next--

There’s like.

A rhythm. There’s a rhythm to how stories work.

When that rhythm is disrupted, the audience is left with a tangible feeling of wtf. Either that feeling enhances the other quality stuff going on, or it enhances the other Quality stuff going on, if you catch my drift.

You step into a vacuum.

It’s great for recreating that sense of absence. The world is irrevocably changed. It’s emptier. The heroes are broken. Their revenge doesn’t fix anything. They just. continue to exist, with losses they aren’t equipped to handle.

FIVE YEARS OF IT.

I have probably a longer list of things I want stories involving time travel not to do than is perhaps healthy. But maybe stories involving time travel should keep their act together better or I don’t know.

Bad Future ends are not something I appreciate, because often, they go grimdark just because they can, because they know it’s not the final future, so anything goes. You don’t have to treat it like any reality that matters, because it isn’t permanent.

This story... I would say it toes the line there, but in ways that grate on me thoroughly enough that it presses all the same buttons.

Thanos can die in the first ten minutes, and it doesn’t matter. We know it doesn’t matter, because it happens in the first ten minutes. ...Maybe twenty, to be safe. It’s early. But you have this villain who’s built up to a ridiculous degree, bizarrely succeeds in living up to his own hype, then you kill him off so that a younger version of himself gets top billing in the final battle.

Why?

I get why as far as the story is designed, but at some point in the process, this story is designed by humans. Humans who could have stopped and asked themselves if they were really telling the best version of this story they possibly could.

Thanos is defeated while his blight remains. I love saying that. I love that I can describe a story with those words.

But the initial defeat is so unsatisfying and bereft of life. All the energy of him as an external force for our heroes to unite against is bled out early, and to get it back, they really do just ship in a younger model.

Which does make sense. Younger Thanos’ motives are fine and reasonable. Just, as far as the plot design, the whole presentation of the movie’s setting feels like a dream sequence. It feels, very early on, like this will never be allowed to be forever.

Then that feeling lasts for five years.

Getting into the time travel thing.

Time travel is really hard to get right in stories. You want to change something, but the people doing the changing are products of what they’ve lived through. How do you honor that while still fixing the unspeakable evil that happened? How do you change the world while keeping the threads that made us care alive and relevant?

One thing I very much like is that Tony fights to keep what he’s gained alive. Good. The volcanic soil grew him something irreplaceable, and it’s perfectly reasonable for him to want to hold on to that, and I’m glad he does.

But then you have the other half of the story, where no one is able to move on.

My preference for time travel correcting things is for characters to either be trying to change their own future that they have yet to live through, or for them to trying to fix something that is so recent the characters are still wrangling with it as a piece of their present. I have more than a touch of “humans should not mess with these things they don’t know what they’re doing,” past a certain point.

In case it weren’t obvious, five years is pretty far past that point for me. It hits this awful uncanny valley sweet spot of people wanting to change a reality that never should have been vs. people who are willing to fuck up the world because they can’t let go.

I like superheros. I like correcting injustices. Save all the people. I like people fighting tooth and nail to fix things set in stone because these are their people, dammit.

I also hate seeing people so stuck in the past they refuse to make a future.

This movie screams both of those elements so loudly that it’s hard for me to really piece out how I feel about the story in its entirety.

I like that they don’t simply hit an undo button, and do bring everyone back in a way that lets the future that has already happened continue.

But then there’s Steve and Nat and just... fuck, dude.

Gun to my head, I’m a happy person. If everyone could be alive at the end, that would be my preference, I don’t care if it’s cheesy. But you have the choice between Hawkeye and Black Widow. The man who’s lost his family, and the woman who’s lost purpose.

Or something. I don’t do MCU meta.

The sense I get from watching is that Natasha feels like her life works better as a sacrifice. If they succeed, she doesn’t have children and a wife waiting at home. So clearly it makes sense for her to be the one to die. Her road ends to bring back the happiness of others.

Which...

I don’t know how to articulate my problem with this without moving on to Steve first.

So let’s do that.

Steve.

Steve, whose story ends with him going back in time and staying there.

Forget about how the story criticizes every movie that does time travel better than it. Forget about all the levels of not caring went into designing the time travel elements. If possible.

I do not like how Steve’s story is essentially about how there’s only one time and place for him to experience a fulfilling life.

It is the nature of writing stories that we want to encapsulate things. The perfect moment. The perfect set of emotions. The perfect time. Everything falls into place, and that’s how we want it. We’ll never get it better than that. Keep retreading that dead horse, because it was so good.

Steve and Peggy are beautiful together.

What I hate about them ending up together is that... there’s this obvious, painful belief that the world of the future doesn’t have anything left for Steve. Bucky’s there. Sam’s there. Billions of people have just found there way back. Steve’s lived in this century for years.

Reclaiming the past is more important than building a future.

Even though the story’s driving plot is about keeping their past maintained so they can have this future. Or something.

Steve doesn’t have a future. Natasha doesn’t have a future. So the story removes them from it, and calls that a clean, happy (if bittersweet) ending. They’re pieces that don’t work in this world. Their chances are gone. They can live in the past or die.

I hate that. I’m a sap who will read a million stories about someone having a single true love they can’t be without and no one else could ever compare and blah and blah and blah, but that somehow feels different from watching a character’s life play out for years, and seeing them come to the conclusion that they can never belong in this place.

Building a new home never compared to the old one.

That’s depressing as fuck.

Thor gets a piece of this as well, becoming more of a knight errant than a king. After going to so much trouble to become his people’s king and just. Geez.

I don’t think that this is a thing the movie as a whole is really trying to encourage. I think the people working on it just had different visions for what would be cool as a sendoff and so on. Tony’s insistence that they don’t undo the five years they’ve had, and Nebula’s... everything--those aren’t elements of a story that says you can’t grow and find a new place. You don’t have to keep on repeating what you know and nothing else. You really don’t.

But that feels very twisted around for some of these characters’ personal journeys, and as happy as I am for Steve getting his dance with Peggy, the idea that this is a person whose true happiness could never be in the future...

That lingers in a way that I can’t like, and colors a lot of the other resolutions.

.

.

I really enjoyed the movie?

Yay?

Even though no one cared even a little at all even once except to attempt to drag other movies about time travel.

This movie’s time travel mechanics are terrible.

They’re just bad.

When you drop the titles of that many other things that have time travel.

And say this isn’t like that.

You should. you should hope. that your thing could at least make a convincing case for making more sense.

This does not succeed in that.

How could you watch enough of those movies to know they had time travel, yet fail to learn anything about how to write time travel. How. Why did you. why. Dragon Ball Z has more internally consistent time travel.

Three hours well spent. The hours on this, maybe less well.

[scalesandredroses]

A Mental Dump Post on Spiderman Stuff

My head starts spinning whenever I try to really parse out exactly what it could mean for the next Spiderman movie to not be a joint with Marvel, just because I don't think there's any way of knowing for sure without seeing contracts or talking to someone who's seen them, so I mostly just sit here and think, "Well, I guess we've just got to be patient, because the next Spidey film wasn't even on the schedule for the next two years, so chances are negotiations are going to go on for a while, and things could change entirely from this incomprehensible mess it seems to be now."

But my brain still wants to try to do damage control by tempering expectations, so I can't help but wonder how bad this could actually be (a task not made easier by the fact that I haven't seen Far From Home yet, because chronic diseases suck). Disney/Marvel has rights to all the other MCU characters, but Sony has rights to all the Spiderman characters. So:

Peter Parker and Aunt May and all his friends should still be available

Spiderman has an insanely huge rogues gallery, so he doesn't need a villain from elsewhere

Tony is dead, so his absence doesn't have to be weird...

... Because we managed to skip over Spiderman's origin story completely, and never mentioned Uncle Ben by name, but we can still safely assume both were things just by clever implication

Happy being absent - could be a continuity problem? I don't know, I haven't seen FFH

Steve is...well, we don't talk about what happened to Steve, but needless to say that no more cameos from Captain PSA don't have to be a huge deal, even if they were funny

A Spiderman movie without any cameos from Avengers could be sad, or it could just be a perfectly good Spiderman movie

Kevin Feige didn't singlehandedly make the first two movies, so presumably the third one won't fall apart without him

Spidey could still be an Avenger by the time they make another Avengers movie, if Disney & Sony can figure out their shit by then. Nothing wrong with having a solo adventure before duty calls again in Phase 6 (or whenever - it's not even announced yet)

... Is all that right? As far as anyone can tell? It sounds like Spidey could be fine, right?

The thing I have more trouble figuring out is how much the MCU needs Spiderman. They didn't have him for all ten years, but an article pointed out that he was in five of the six best films (can't remember if that was in terms of money or critical acclaim, but the money is the only part that matters in business dealings), and he's the only character people cheered for when he came back in Endgame in my theater. It's hard to picture the MCU without him: he's like the only member of their next generation that we know right now. There's something wistful and sweet about having a little baby superhero learning the ropes and gaining his feet among this roster of older, tired, battle-weary heroes. He's adorable and snarky and fun. But...we don't know what shape the MCU roster is doing to take in the next few years anyways, so who can say that he'd be the only such character? That's more my personal concern, honestly, after Infinity War and Endgame - that it took a dark & gritty turn and it won't be able to shift back out of that level of darkness. I doubt Marvel movies are suddenly going to pull less money in for them on average after Endgame made a record-breaking amount of money for them. Which means they're going to keep coming. They aren't going anywhere.

So I guess that's really what it comes down to: I'm worried about the MCU bringing me less joy now that Steve is gone, Nat's down to her last outing, and Peter Parker might be gone, too, off in his own separate universe. Infinity War and Endgame broke my trust, ended my faves, I don't trust them with the faves I have left, and now stupid business dealings have separated another favorite - the one I was least worried about losing! - from the universe that gave him to us, and put him solely in the hands of a studio that hasn't been trustworthy in the past with his character. Potentially. And honestly those other movies were ages ago, so they probably aren't even the same people anymore. It feels like the (MC)Universe is ending, but it's just Endgame grief being aggravated.

[zirawrites]

First of all -hugs- I'm sorry it's been icky. Second, how would the companions react to finding out that the sole survivor, after traveling with them for so long, is a vampire? DUN DUN DUUUUN!! (if you wanna add romanced companions coughNICKANDDEACONcough too then that'd be cool but no pressure)

I decided to make the companions romanced because WHY NOT ya know??? Sorry this reaction has been sitting in my inbox for so long, you’re a saint xoxo

Please note I haven’t done a reaction in 5 months so I am very rusty. These will get better the more I practice :)

Cait: Cait couldn’t figure out why Sole was always able to beat her in a fight. She knew her boyfriend/girlfriend was tough, but they weren’t exactly a bodybuilder before the war. When Sole explained that every night they snuck out of bed to practice their moves, Cait felt a swell of pride in her chest.

Then Sole said the reason they couldn’t sleep was because they were a vampire. That part took a lot of convincing. While Cait is mostly cynical, she also has a superstitious part of her that is wary of both synths and folklore. Sole had to prove it to Cait by taking her out on one of Sole’s feedings… Needless to say, Cait was a believer. She just asked Sole to keep the biting to fighting and not foreplay.

Codsworth (synth): Codsworth said he would be there for Sole no matter what happened, whether it was waiting 200 years in their dilapidated house, helping raise their synth-son or standing by their side during the collapse of the Institute. But being a vampire? Codsworth didn’t even like floating by the television when Sole and Nate/Nora had a silver screen monster movie playing.

Despite his usual anxieties, Codsworth still tried to roll with the punches. He asked Curie to educate him on the history of vampirism. He installed curtains in all the Sanctuary windows. And when Sole took down enemies, Codsworth incorporated his favorite vampire puns.

“Another one bites the dust, sir/mum!” Yeah, it was pretty wholesome. After watching the world burn, there wasn’t anything left to surprise Codsworth about his master/mistress anymore.

Curie: Curie found Sole’s occult more of a medical marvel than something to be afraid of. When Curie wasn’t bombarding Sole to confirm the pre-war rumors on vampire lore, she was making sure Sole was healthy. Had they remembered to wear sunblock in case light crept through the walls of their Sanctuary home? Was Sole making sure to feed every night? Did they make sure their coffin wasn’t getting damp with mold? After awhile Curie got tired of asking Sole constant questions and just asked them to turn her. For science, of course.

Danse: If Danse had met Sole before they fell in love, he would have put them down immediately. Vampires sounded much more dangerous than ghouls; even feral ones. However, now that Danse was in a relationship with Sole and also was an anomaly of his own as a synth, he had no right to judge them. Danse didn’t really want to know much about Sole’s vampirism. He appreciated their unwavering strength in battles, and thought threatening the enemy with a bite was an impressive interrogation tactic. But whenever he voiced his disapproval in Sole’s lifestyle they would turn into a bat and chase him around the house.

Deacon: “Yeah, good one, boss,” Deacon said. “Why pretend to be a synth when you can be the boogeyman, right? I’m actually a werewolf. The ginger hair has to be from somewhere, ya know?”

Deacon didn’t believe them for months. Sole even tried to prove themselves by turning a raider. He just asked them how many caps his partner gave them for the show. When Deacon eventually realized Sole wasn’t kidding, he couldn’t imagine leaving them over something like that. Stranger things had happened in the Commonwealth. However, he then made it his mission to make Sole believe he was a werewolf. A part of Sole wasn’t sure if he was actually lying.

Gage: He loved his Overboss, but why did Sole have to be so… fucking weird all the time? It took Gage awhile to accept Sole, mostly because he was a little afraid of them. All he knew about vampires was that they sucked people’s blood and were killed by silver bullets. Well, Sole told him those were werewolves, but Gage said ain’t nothn’ surviving any kind of bullet to the head.

Gage finally feels comfortable around Sole when they embrace their vampire aesthetic. The first time Sole walked outside of Fizztop Grille in a black collared cape he knew they were about to be the most badass raider in the Commonwealth.

Hancock: Sole shouldn’t have told Hancock their big secret while he was huffing a full canister of jet. The poor ghoul nearly choked to death right there. His first question was if Sole was as high as he was. When Sole assured him they were telling the truth, his next question was if that meant Sole was immortal like him. The entire idea of living life as eternal freakshows was unbearably romantic.

MacCready: MacCready was absolutely terrified. The mercenary didn’t mind killing off a couple of raiders from the safety of a high ledge. But being face-to-face with a monster? MacCready didn’t even want to hear Sole’s explanation, and booked it to Diamond City to cool off.

After a few weeks, MacCready returned with his tail between his legs. He thought about how much his boyfriend/girlfriend had sacrificed for both Duncan and him. Leaving Sole over something they couldn’t control was unfair of him. He just asked that they please not turn him.

Preston: “I’m… fine with this?” Even Preston himself wasn’t sure if this was a statement or question. Of course he loved Sole and all they did for the Minutemen. And because they constantly proved their strength, Preston never minded the major hurdles they threw him like having a son ruling the Institute or trying to build a relationship with the Brotherhood of Steel or sometimes getting addicted to jet…

Preston had himself from spiraling into a hole of negativity. He loved Sole and they would get through this. Period.

Piper: Sole didn’t even finish their sentence before Piper had her notepad out. Sole was a complete anomaly in this world, so of course Piper believed them. Usually she needed proof, but this was her Blue they were talking about. While the professional side of Piper turned this into a story, the girlfriend part set some ground rules. Sole wasn’t allowed to bite Nat or anyone else she cared about. They could only turn into a bat outside of the house. And they had to use some of that vampiric strength to deliver newspapers every once in awhile.

Nick: Nick loved Sole, but there was no way they could convince him this didn’t have something to do with the Mysterious Stranger. He knew he had a file on it somewhere in his clutter.

X6-88: He didn’t believe them. It didn’t matter how hard Sole tried to convince their boyfriend. Vampires didn’t exist, otherwise the Institute would have found them by now.

[itsthwippingtime]

Fav bloggers and why?

dahskhkasj theres so many!! how am i supposed to,,, uhhh okay i love every one i do if youre not on this list it does NOT mean that i don’t love you

without further ado and in no particular order (okay I’ve noticed some are longer than others and if youre anything like me you’ll read way too much into that but please don’t i don’t mean anything by it i love you all so so so so much) 

im so sorry for how long this is. every person tagged in this; i love you so so so so much and thank you so much for just being there for me and just being a presence in my life i am so grateful for our friendship. that applies to everyone, no matter if we’ve talked every day or never, i love you all so so SO much!!! 

@anidiotwithapen - my first friend on this site (literally) and they live in Germany so we don’t get to talk as much as i would like cause ugh timezones but i love them so much, a walking disaster, the Clint to my Nat (wait am i Nat? have we discussed this yet?) the number of crack head canons that should be canon and ideas we’ve come up with like wow. i love them so so so so so so so so much. amazing artist like wow check out their art blog @neraidamira

@hraewordsmith - my babes my aunt i love her so much IM GONNA MEET HER ASJKDHASJKHDKASHJKA Rae is literally my rock one of the most supportive, loving people (persons?) I’ve ever met i love her so so so so so so so so muchdasjhkjajzkjashdjk 

@keep-a-bucket-full-of-stars - Leah. my babes. an angel on earth i love her so much!!!! I’m gonna meet her too!!! so supportive and loving and encouraging, an amazing writer, an amazing person i mean what else can i say about her???

@starkravingparker - my wife!!! my name twin!!! Ava May i love her so much and I’m so so so proud of her she is so strong and amazing every day she faces demons and battles but she never ever gives up truly inspirational to  me i love her so much and I’m gonna meet her one day maybe years from now but we’ll meet definitely and she’ll have to show me all her favorite places to go and things to do!! an amazing singer ( @starkravingava) an amazing writer ( @stparkerwrites) and amazing at making icons/edits/that stuff that i know nothing about ( @starkravingshuri) truly a talented wonderful person i love her to death. she deserves so much love and happiness and I’m so proud of her jsdajkdjlksa 

@loubuttons - lou. what can i say about lou. the sweetest person ever. always there to love on you and encourage you and hear you complain and be there to rant and shkjadsahjkska i love her so much literally an angel i cannot,,,, an amazing painter and writer and just deserves all the love in the world i love her so much 

@marvelbased SOPHIA I LOVE HER I LOVE HER I LOVE the Bucky to my Sam i could not live without her she’s constantly making me laugh i wish i could give her the world because its what she deserves i love her so much she always supports me and encourages me and we’re gonna meet one day too i know it ill die if we don’t!! dsjkhasjk i just love her!!!! 

@cartwheelandfaceplant - we don’t talk much but i love them!!! everything they reblog, marvel or not, is the Quality Content i signed up for and at least a third of my likes is probably posts from them amazing blog amazing person just amazing amazing amazing!!

@tonyintexas - ah Taylor. my partner in crime when it comes to a certain person i love her and her humor its so amazing Taylor is literally crazy but the best kind of crazy and she honestly has me cackling i love her so much

@smallittlebee - the sweetest ever!!! we don’t talk much but literally so so so so so sweet and um CHICKENS!!!!!

@peterparkerisntdead - literally Gwen’s tags and semi vague shit posts throw me into a fit every time i should expect it but i never do i never know what to expect from her she’s like a hurricane so unpredictable sdaljkasdakjsd i love her k so much!!!!!! just !!!!!!

@irondadgroupie - IM SORRY I HAVENT REPLIED TO OUR HEADCANONS IN SO LONG IM SO SO SO SORRY if maybe if you don’t mind waiting until May? my exams are over mid-may and I’m gonna try to have the out before then but its really getting stressful over here and I’m just so sorry for all the shitty excuses and me ignoring you you have no IDEA how sorry i am. i love you so much i love the head canons we come up with, so so supportive and has always supported me with my writing, since the very beginning and it means the world to me dsjakjhsjak i love you babes!!!!

@imveryobservant - ahhh Jessie i love her toooooo!!!!!! we don’t talk a whole lot but when we do its always so much fun!! there are two (2) things that make me think of Jessie: thank u, next and the muppets (i also think of Gwen when i think of the muppets)

@lovelyspidey - LIXI!!!!! Lixi and i don’t talk a whole lot either but i love her so much and she’s like the one person i can freak with about Spider-Man PS4 (LIXI YOU NEED TO FINISH IT HAVE YOU????) and she’s always been there and supported me from the beginning i love her. also my go-to girl for Tom fic recs ;)

@drowningfandoms - okay but literally idk what to say because i remember seeing your URL repeatedly in my notifs at the very beginning, and like sending me asks and stuff and it was so strange that one person liked me and wanted to interact with me. and look how far our friendship has grown!! i love you so so so much!!!! I’m so grateful for you and our friendship and just your presence in my life

@underoosstark - this bitch makes some of the best videos i have ever seen in my entire life!!!! please watch them!!! ugh your mind babes!! we don’t talk a lot either but always amazing and supportive and loving and so sweet and kind andjaksdhjksahdjkashjksahjkd 

@messedupfangirl05 - this bitch exposes me in the best ways i love her so so so much she is so kind and supportive and just so funny and I’m so so proud of her and everything she’s done. i love her and the way she writes and just EVERYTHINGS!!!!!

@tominhoodies - STEPH!!! BABES!!!! k i love Steph so much she’s an amazing writer and i love her so so so so so much she’s so funny sometimes she disappeared for days or weeks but i know she does it for her and its whats best for her and i respect and admire the amount of self control she had i love her so much okay don’t talk to me

@knife-wielding-tentacle - listen. if it weren’t for this bitch right here i would have never been introduced to the glorious head canon that is Winter Soldier!Peter and i love it so much (okay I SWEAR I’m gonna answer those asks soon but when have you known me to ever do anything on time) i love them so much jdsakjaskdjlaksjkaklsadjkl please never stop with the head canons they give me life

@adaisyspetals - DAISY!!!!!! i love daisy so much!!!!! she sends me pictures of her cat and dog and i love them too!!!! so sweet and so supportive and i love love love her writing!!!! agasdgjhsags just so amazing i love you so so so much babes!!!!

@mostly-marvel-stuffs - hi!!! we used to talk a lot more than we do now and thats okay but i miss you lots babes!!!!! um just an amazing person altogether i love them!!!! we once calculated how long it would be to do a Disney marathon with all most of the Disney movies so we’re gonna do that one day when we can stay up for a week straight (how long did we say it would be?)

@protecthefuckingbees - idk why they follow me cause they’re literally like the coolest and I’m like,,, not but i love them so so so much so supportive and kind and loving and sdjkhajdhjkahdajk i just love you sooooo much!!!!!!

@tomhollandswhore - we talk like every three days but i cherish those conversations, literally so sweet and kind and supportive and a New Friend cause we don’t know each other super well yet but i already know i love them!!!!! 

@tonystarkdadmode - oh my gosh okay so sweet and so amazing and so supportive and just so amazing i love love love them!!!! i love their header (its so iconic go look) and just dsjkasjkdasjkhdsjkadsajk love you so much babes!!!!! 

@spider-boiii - the creator of my icon, always has me cackling, super amazing, really nice, I!!!! LOVE!!!!!! THEM!!!!!!!!!

@spookyclooky - k amazing artist first off! also like the only person i can talk to about Detroit: Become Human and (possibly) other PS4 games (we need to play GTA online one day i feel like that’d be a lot of fun haha!!!) i love them so much they’re so sweet and very patiently put up with my incessant questions about DBH, as annoying as they were

@sup-mr-stark, @mysteryavengers, @death1by3thoughts, @tamaranianprincess, @tomhollandeu @tomhollanders2013, @ebonyheartnet, @avengvr, @anxieteandbiscuits, @theincorrectavengers, @spiderman-homecumming, @my-babies-are-ash, @she-loves-her-queens-of-whump - these blogs… we don’t talk a whole lot and i really wish we did, but we all just kinda stand by and support and love each other even tho we’ve had like 3 or less conversations BUT THEYRE STILL ALL AMAZING AND HAVE AMAZING BLOGS AND ARE JUST ALTOGETHER AMAZING PEOPLE I LOVE THEM!!!!