#whereas Steve is going through a lot in the Avengers with mourning Bucky

[daydreamerdrew]

The Avengers (1963) #9

[leilawhittaker]

how do bucky and leila get along? how does her presence affect the way steve and bucky interact during tws and cw?

Oh, I LOVE this question. So I’ve always seen Bucky and Leila as having a sort of antagonistic relationship at first, mostly because they’re lowkey fighting over who Steve loves more lmao. At this point, though, I see this toned down a bit on Bucky’s side due to Anya’s presence. 

Without Anya, Steve is basically Bucky’s only link to the present, and seeing him building a life with someone else, moving on from their shared past, makes him feel lost, like he has nothing to hold onto. 

With Anya, though, by the time Bucky meets Steve again as himself in CW (or rather, in Under Siege, which is my replacement plotline for cw--it still achieves the end goal of splitting up the avengers, but goes about it somewhat differently), he’s gotten attached to Anya, and they’ve sort of become each others’ anchors. So Bucky is less dependent on his relationship with Steve to ground him in the present.

 I was gonna put a read more here but tumblr won’t let me...rip your dash (UPDATE! Managed a rm!)

Still, I do think there is some tension between the two because of their respective relationships with Steve, which I’ll get into in a second. First, TWS: Leila’s presence doesn’t really change anything about Steve and Bucky’s interactions, simply because Steve and Leila for most of the movie aren’t on good terms. Not only are they not together, there’s actively some bad blood between them, and Steve in particular is very distrustful of her to the point of questioning whether she’s actually Hydra. (Leila replies by implying that he’s Hydra--”someone as self-righteous as you could justify just about anything to himself, don’t you think?”--although it’s more out of spite than any real suspicion.)

This dynamic continues up until the end of the arc, where Leila risks her life by giving up her healing ability to help stop project insight. (I’m still fuzzy on the details here, but that’s the basic premise for her redemption.) Between this, and Leila telling him about her past, it’s the turning point for their relationship; they become friends again, start growing closer, they help each other grow (for example: Leila is the one who talks Steve into telling Tony that Bucky killed his parents), until they eventually, finally, get together in AoU. 

But none of that exists in TWS yet; whatever friendship they had pre-C:SW has basically been shattered, and they haven’t started repairing it. So Leila’s just not a big enough factor in Steve’s life at that point in time to impact how he relates to Bucky. That doesn’t come in until Under Siege, whether Steve and Leila are together.

I think that at that point Leila in particular has a lot of insecurity over Steve’s past life--part of her feels like she’s a consolation prize, that Steve’s life with her and the Avengers is just some fluke and he was really meant to stay in the 1940s and have a life there. And having Bucky around just compounds that for her. She’s scared that Steve’s going to realize that Leila isn’t good enough compared to what he could have had, and that he’d rather be alone than be with her. 

(It’s funny because Steve, meanwhile, by this point is pretty convinced that him going into the ice was destiny, or God’s will, or something, specifically because it brought him to Leila, and Bucky re-entering his life really only makes him more sure of that. I like Steggy a lot but I think Leila forces growth in Steve that Peggy never really did, and I think Steve is aware of that. All he’s ever wanted was to be a good man. Peggy helped him believe he could, but Leila makes him better. 

Obligatory Taylor Swift lyric: “Look in my eyes, they will tell you the truth / the girl in my story has always been you” from the Lover remix ft. Shawn Mendes)

So that’s Leila side of things that makes her vaguely cold towards Bucky. Then on Bucky’s side, it’s toned down like I said due to Anya’s presence in his life, but he still feels a sort of discrepancy about how Leila factors into his relationship with Steve--like, if Steve’s managed to move on so much, does he actually really love Bucky? (Platonically or otherwise, your choice.) Bucky knows it’s irrational but it’s a neurosis he has trouble shaking. Bucky and Steve were the most important people in each other’s lives for a long time; Bucky only broke free of Hydra because of Steve. And yeah, he’s happy that Steve found someone to ground him, that he found happiness, but it’s still hard. 

(It’s funny because Bucky has this part of him that thinks Steve stopped caring when in actuality a lot of how Leila and Steve got close in the first place was through Leila helping Steve look for Bucky. They probably wouldn’t have grown as close as they did if Steve didn’t care as much about Bucky as he does.)

Bucky could probably muscle through it if Leila wasn’t like, weirdly cold to him though, because he doesn’t know why. It never even occurs to him that //Leila// could be jealous of //him//. This tension causes them to start snarking at each other, while Steve tries to keep the peace between them, because this is the love of his life and his best friend and he wants them to get along so why won’t they just cooperate. It’s frustrating for him. 

Eventually this tension is somewhat resolved when they’re forced into hiding. A big part of it has to do with Anya. It’s a weird trait for a spy/assassin to have, but Anya’s very good at resolving tension and keeping the peace, and she’s hard not to like. She and Leila end up striking up a friendship, and from there she manages to mediate between Leila and Bucky, and they eventually reach a sort of understanding. 

I think, eventually, Leila and Bucky manage some semblance of friendship, although neither would ever admit it. They bond over having been brainwashed and feeling guilty over things they’ve done, and they have similar senses of humor as well. They keep snarking back and forth, but the malice behind it kind of disappears. 

This all happens very gradually and Steve isn’t sure how it happens or what to make of it, but he is grateful, although he still wishes they’d bicker less.  

(Plot point: I could see this mutual tension getting to the point where Bucky says something to Leila that’s way over the line, and Steve sticks up for her, which causes Bucky to storm off. Steve would also stick up for Bucky if it was Leila that went over the line, but I don’t think she would, not out of principle or anything but because she’s just that terrified of losing Steve. Bucky, for all his insecurity, knows that he and Steve will always be in each others lives, even if their roles change; whereas there’s still a part of Leila that thinks that Steve’s going to realize he can do better and leave her.

This plot point could be the catalyst for Bucky and Leila finally finding some peace, though, because there was a point where Leila did lash out like that, and she can definitely understand where it comes from, and I think, weirdly, whatever Bucky said to her ended up humanizing him to her a lot.)

By the time IW rolls around, they’re on good enough terms that Leila mourns him when he gets snapped. And by the time Steve and Leila get married after Endgame, she trusts him enough to let him be present for the wedding--the actual wedding ceremony, that is, not the reception. Plenty of people are invited to the reception; the actual ceremony itself is, at Leila’s demand, extremely small, consisting of Steve and Leila, the priest, Sam and Bucky on Steve’s side, and Tony and Anya on Leila’s. (And possibly Isabella; I’m still deciding.)

Anyways. As for how Leila impacts Steve and Bucky’s relationship in Under Siege: I think Steve’s attention is kind of split between them, whereas in cw he was pretty hyperfocused on Bucky, in US he’s also focused on trying to figure out what’s going on with Leila and why she’s acting so cold. I think there’s also already some tension between Leila and Steve bc the accords, while not as big of a factor, do exist, and while Steve is steadfastly against them under any circumstances, Leila has suggested that if the plan to sidestep them doesn’t work, they should try to negotiate a better deal out of them (not accepting them as they are, but trying to work with them). 

(I think these responses come down to this: on Steve’s side, I think the Hydra thing left him with a lot of moral injury, and that’s why he’s hesitant to operate under another organization--he’s not even thrilled about the Avengers answering to SWORD, and only really agrees to it because he trusts Leila, who helped build it. 

Part of Leila takes that personally, she feels like Steve not trusting SWORD means he doesn’t trust her, and part of her thinks that maybe he’s right not to. Leila herself has a lot of moral injury, because of the things she’s done but also stemming back to her childhood and how she was talked to and about, and ideas she internalized--and part of her still thinks she’s not capable of doing good. 

On Leila’s side, I think she’s just desperate to keep the team together because she doesn’t quite know what she’d do without it. I don’t think she’s aware that that’s her motivation, but it is a big part of it. It also goes back to the moral injury thing--Leila finds solace in the Avengers because she feels like working as a team, she’s able to do good, and she’s scared she won’t be able to be a good person without them.)

So Steve’s attention is somewhat split between her and Bucky during US, which only leads to more insecurity on Bucky’s part. 

I think? This answered your question although I know I rambled a lot lol sorry. 

Tl;dr:

-Bucky and Leila are initially threatened by each other’s relationship with Steve so they have a relatively cold, snarky relationship

-Eventually this comes to a head when Bucky crosses a line, and it weirdly makes Leila see him in a new, more sympathetic light, which helps them find some common ground. 

-Anya also plays a role in them developing a better relationship. 

-Leila doesn’t really change Steve and Bucky’s dynamic in tws, because she and Steve aren’t on good terms at that point. 

-In Under Siege (the replacement arc for Civil War), the big change is that Steve’s attention, instead of being hyperfocused on Bucky as in CW, is split between the two of them, which only causes more jealousy from both of them.

[theimaginesyouneveraskedfor]

Not Him (7)

So here’s your next Loki chapter. I didn’t intend on getting so deep with this one but it unfolded a lot more than I had expected but I hope you like a soft trickster. This is during the mission Bucky went on in part 6 so it’s backtracking in a sense but yada yada, the next part will go forward. Please, I’d appreciate any comments and if you could reblog this too :)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Loki POV

Loki waited with arms crossed. His leg shook with impatience as he sat on the metal bench inside the Midgardian aircraft. He sighed, quelling his nerves, and looked over at his brother who was half asleep already. Thor opened one sparkling eye and his mouth slanted in crooked grin.

“You really must learn to be patient, brother,” He chided, “Besides, you did insist on being about half an hour early.”

“The sooner we’re gone, the sooner this is over with,” Loki grumbled.

His lips curled as he tried not to yawn, Thor’s show of his own fatigue reminded Loki of his own. His night had been restless as he dreaded the days to come. When Stark had briefed them on their mission, a knot had formed in his stomach and had yet to untangle. A week, even two, stuck with that super soldier. Two of them actually. Not to mention his dope of a brother. He sighed and caught his toe tapping on the floor, forcing it to still.

Loki hadn’t truly planned on being so early. He would have rather kept the soldiers waiting than to be the one sitting in expectation. It wasn’t until he had seen her kissing him. Holding his hand as they walked merrily down the hall. He had hidden himself as they passed, the rage and jealousy boiling until he felt a stabbing in his chest. It wasn’t the first time he had stumbled on the pair and he was certain it wouldn’t be the last. He had been hoping a mission would be time spent away from the reminder of what he had done to Y/N; of how he had sabotaged himself yet again.

Fate had never favoured Loki.

Finally, voices neared the open door and footsteps clanked up the metal ramp. Rogers entered first followed by his right hand, Barnes. They dropped their bags in the hold as they chattered and Loki kept his head down trying not to hear them. He was a trickster, but he couldn’t truly make himself disappear.

“So, was it Y/N who kept you so long?” Steve asked with a chuckle.

Bucky shushed him but confirmed his suspicion. ���We’re still feeling things out, Steve.”

“I’m sure you are,” Steve nudged him as they neared the metal bench, “Thor,” The golden Asgardian rose to clap the super soldier’s shoulder, and then the other, as they shared quite the jovial greeting. “Loki,” Steve said stiffly to the odd fourth and the second-born prince merely nodded and prayed for his existence to end.

Steve sat beside Thor and Loki was further irritated when Bucky chose to sit beside him. The man was a plague on his person. “Hey,” He said quietly, his voice disappointingly friendly. How was Loki to despise this man when he gave him little reason to. “Ready to get into it?” Loki merely gave the super soldier the side-eye before leaning his head back against the wall of the jet. The ramp receded and the door closed automatically, signalling their imminent departure. “I’m not a big fan of heights either,” Bucky commented, “I’ve had a rough track record, you know?”

“I’m not afraid,” Loki adjusted his collar, “In Asgard, our aircraft were much more advanced.”

“Oh,” Bucky clapped his hands together, interweaving his fingers as he leaned forward on his knees, “Pre-mission jitters?”

“Annoyance. Mourning for my previous solace,” Loki answered and he felt his brother’s gaze upon him. He looked over at Thor who had ceased his own conversation and saw in him a startling resemblance to Odin. He had always been so skilled in provoking his father, too.

“Loki,” Thor said, “Try to be nice.”

“Yes, Mother,” Loki hissed.

“Cut it out,” Thor reproached, “Why are you being such an ass?”

The super soldiers looked at each other in confusion. Steve shrugged and mumbled, “Siblings,” as he leaned back. Loki huffed, his eyes flared at his brother but he quickly pressed his lips together. He didn’t need to further demean himself in front of these Asgardian mutants. He shook his head, tucking his chin against his collar as he closed his eyes.

“Do try to keep it down,” He slithered. He could at least pretend he wasn’t there.

As expected, Loki did not manage to doze on their way to the rendezvous. In fact he was tormented by the man who sat beside him. It wasn’t that Bucky said or did anything. Not to him, at least. He just reminded Loki of Y/N. Of the way he longed for her to look at him, to think of him, to touch him the way she did this damned super soldier. They were the same thoughts which had been running around in his head for the last few weeks.

He followed his brother down the ramp like a sulking adolescent. Sometimes that was how Thor made him feel. He couldn’t help but still get those twangs of resent deep down whenever he was with his brother, especially around these Midgardians known as the Avengers. They were just like him; perfect. They got anything they wanted and what did he get? Nothing, because he just couldn’t be like them. He couldn’t be...normal.

From the jet, the four of them squeezed into a small car, Loki relieved to be sat beside Thor. Well, mentally but not physically. That oaf of a god took up more than half the seat, leaving Loki to press himself against the door. It was fine, it gave him a reason to look out the window, watching the flash of random headlights and stark outlines of trees as they sped down the dark highway.

He didn’t know why he had been asked along. He rarely went along on any of these triflesome missions with anyone but his brother. They surely didn’t need all four of them. Loki supposed they needed a level-head to balance out the three brutes. Really, he was more subtle in his style, whereas the others tended towards destruction over deception. Maybe Stark just didn’t trust him without his sibling nearby to reel him in. He didn’t need to be leashed like a dog, he did just fine on his own. Why couldn’t everyone just understand that it hadn’t been him those years ago? Not truly...had it?

Thinking back on it, Loki was finding it hard to deny his autonomy in the invasion. Perhaps something deep inside of his was demented. Just look what he had done to Y/N. He could no longer blame it on his insecurity, what he had done had been entirely selfish, cowardly, and beyond all, cruel. Yet, he still couldn’t find another explanation.

The touch of her fingertips on his skin, her lips against his, her body pressed close...that was why. He wanted her. He wanted every bit of her and now he would never have it and all because of this stupid super soldier. No...all because of himself.

Loki was suddenly overwhelmed. The car felt suffocating as he felt the weight settle on his chest. That longing which never truly left him intensified and he missed his mother terribly. He wished she was here with him. He wished he was home. He needed her to tell him what to do. If she had been there, he never would have pulled such a repulsive trick. He would have known exactly how to endear himself to this Midgardian. Would have if the world had shown him any ounce of mercy in his life.

He no longer felt crowded but rather alone. Loki glanced over at Thor, his own blue eyes stared distant through his window. He should be happy he was there. They were the only family they had left. He supposed, for once in their lives, the two brothers were in much the same boat. Set adrift in the universe; refugees without a home. Perhaps Thor could help him, he had loved a Midgardian too.

Love? No, that’s not what this was. Infatuation. That was all. How foolish of him to even think of that word. Loki twiddled his fingers as he thought, a green aura rising from them in swirls. He was anxious. Thor’s eye was drawn my the magick. He knew what it meant.

“Brother,” He whispered and smiled at Loki. Loki snuffed out the lights around his hands and looked away guiltily. He clasped his hands together and leaned over just a little, so that Thor could hear him.

“Thank you, Thor,” He whispered back. He didn’t need to say what for, they both knew. Thor had always been there and always would despite all Loki’s pitfalls. He was the only one who understood that the trickster was not so smooth as he pretended to be.

“Tell me what has gotten you so down?” Thor sat beside Loki, the tight space uncomfortable for both of them. They were doing surveillance and were forced to hide in cramped bell tower of a local church. Who would ever think a cathedral would be spying on you?

“I’m not...down,” Loki protested.

“You cannot fool me, brother,” Thor tilted his head, his eyes betrayed his thoughts as they whirled, “What did the super soldier do to you?”

“Nothing,” Loki shrugged.

“Right.” He narrowed his eyes, “I’d never describe you as an overly personable individual, Loki, but I do know you do not expend the energy to hate someone unless they gave you reason.”

Loki sighed, scratching his chin as he stared out the window. One of them had to pay attention. He chewed on the inside of his lip, trying to conjure up a lie but nothing came. He just sat there in telling silence.

“Okay, if it wasn’t Bucky, what did you do, Loki?” Thor asked. Loki winced. Sometimes his brother was smarter than he let on.

“I…” Loki’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “If I tell you, do you promise not to say anything to anyone?”

“On my honour, brother.” Thor vowed.

“Thor,” Loki elbowed him, “I’m serious. And you can’t get mad at me, either. I’m already mad enough for the both of us.”

“Well, now you have to tell me,” Thor struggled to keep his voice down, “Look, I swear I won’t say a word and I’ll listen with an open mind.”

Loki nodded, willing himself to confess. Perhaps he would feel better if he did. He inhaled and steadied his hands on his knees. “I lied to Y/N. More than that I…” The guilt made his skin burn, “I pretended to be that super soldier and I-I-I tricked her.” He dared to look over at Thor but did not receive the glare he expected. He saw the empathy in his brother’s face as he listened. “I don’t know why I did it. Well, I know now why I did but I didn’t really think about it at the time. I didn’t think about how stupid it was or how hurtful it was and...I’ve tossed away my only chance with her.”

“Oh, Loki,” Thor’s hand was on his shoulder. It was a surprisingly comforting gesture and Loki hung his head. “Have you apologized?”

“Well...no, not really. I tried but I was interrupted and…” He frowned as he raised his head, “I don’t think she wanted to hear it. She doesn’t want anything to do with me and I can’t blame her.” He shook his head, pushing back his hair, “What is wrong with me?”

“Hmm,” Thor breathed, the cool night air brushing across Loki’s face as he leaned his chin in his hands. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. I just think you need to give yourself a chance and then you’ll see that others will do the same.”

Those were his mother’s words. Loki knew it. She wasn’t truly gone, she lived on through them. They each had a part of her within them and it was these rare time that Thor astounded him. He always knew what to say, just like Frigga. Loki just needed to find that piece of her hiding inside of him.

[shotfromguns]

Overall, I think Avengers: Endgame was... about as good as we were going to get, given who was involved in making the film and what had already been established (or had failed to be established) in previous films. It was for sure massively better than Age of Ultron and a noticeable improvement over Infinity War. But there were still plenty of flaws (including things they easily could have fixed) and a few things that outright frustrated the hell out of me. 

My thoughts on Endgame follow under the cut. There will obviously be spoilers. This is for @pantsvaporation, but anybody else is welcome to read/comment/etc. as well.

I was pleasantly surprised that there was a minimum of obvious “actors swinging at CG enemies that hadn’t even slightly been described to them.” And while there were definitely places the film could have been tightened up, I had been expecting the three hours to feel noticeably slack, whereas the plot never seemed to me to drag at all. In retrospect, maybe I should have been less surprised by that, given that it was directed by Russos, who were also responsible for CA:TWS, which remains the most perfectly paced action movie I’ve ever seen.

Given the length of the film, however, I am fucking furious that the only (and MCU first-ever) LGBT “representation” we got was one of the Russos as a nameless extra in Steve’s support group who was framed as a mlm through the pronouns of who he was on a date with. 181 fucking minutes, and you couldn’t find room for less than 60 seconds to show us Valkyrie with a girlfriend? Carole Danvers got that amazing (as my girlfriend often describes my current look) ‘90s dyke aesthetic after the time skip, but she couldn’t have a wife? And, of course, anybody and everybody else was given a Big Case of the Not Gays, including and especially the male characters people have enthusiastically been shipping with each other due to the historical nigh-complete dearth of women in the MCU films (Tony, Steve, Sam, Bucky... and I will have more to say about Steve).

I did cry a few times, especially towards the end, which I honestly hadn’t expected to. But it all felt very... emotionally manipulative? For example, I didn’t cry at Tony dying, per se. I did cry at Pepper reacting to his death, his daughter, Happy, etc. It felt like they sort of realized that by this point Tony had become extremely unsympathetic and that they’d probably overly telegraphed that he was going to die, so they needed to make us sad about it by ensuring we were thinking about how other characters would feel about his death, versus how we ourselves felt about it.

And we sure did get a whoooooooooole lotta time to show the audience how sad everyone felt about Tony to ensure we did, too. But there was (a) very little for Natasha, who died in this film saving the universe even more tragically than Tony did, given that she didn’t even know her sacrifice would work to get the Soul Stone, let alone whether the rest of the plan would work even if she did; and (b) almost none for the characters who died in Infinity War and didn’t get a Comic Book Death resurrection through Bruce snapping or past!Nebula breaking literally the entire premise of the film (more on that in a bit). The Vision got a two-second reference, not even by name. Loki got just a flash of a cameo, with Thor not bringing him up once that I can recall, being completely focused on their mother even in a time when they were both still alive. Heimdall didn’t even get that much, nor was he even referenced; nor were any of the Wakandans who died so that Scarlet Witch didn’t have to lose her creepy robo-boyfriend (which, whoops, she did anyway). Regardless of how obnoxious some of these character and/or their fans may have been, they still very much should have mattered to the other characters, who should have been mourning them just as much as they were mourning Tony. And yeah, sure, anybody who didn’t get Thanos’d had had five years to mourn the ones who died in Infinity War, but (a) to anybody who’d just been brought back, they were still freshly dead, and (b) even the people who were around for those five years are probably dealing with that grief all over again, not least of which because they had the others who died then returned to them, and because not everybody (especially not Thor) had even properly gone through the whole grief process in the first place.

On the topic of Thor, boyyyyyyy howdy was it frustrating how thoroughly Endgame finished off the way that Infinity War had started cutting the entire legs of his Ragnarok character development out from under him. If it weren’t for the momentary appearance of a handful of characters from Ragnarok, the movie literally might as well not have happened: Thor no longer cares about being a leader for his people, he’s back to leaning on weapons instead of relying on himself, and he seems to have completely forgotten Loki after having finally reconciled with him. And making Thor fat as a joke was not only fatphobic and unfunny but really undercut the narrative’s ability to make the viewer take his trauma seriously, because of a continuously competing tension between “you’re supposed to laugh at how he looks” and “how he looks is supposed to make you sad” that was never really resolved. There was no “you’re laughing at this, but then you realize what it actually means, and you feel like an ass for having laughed.” It was clearly set up to be, “you’re laughing at this, but then you realize what it means, and you feel a little sad, but don’t worry, there will be plenty of more times when ‘Thor is fat now’ is a punchline.”

As for the film’s humor as a whole, while there were some genuinely funny moments that were well positioned in the narrative, the movie overall felt like it frequently ran into the same problem as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where the writers were so desperate to have characters constantly quipping that they constantly undercut their own poignant moments.

Probably the biggest actual plot hole is, unsurprisingly, the time travel. They initially did an... okay job of justifying why the characters couldn’t just change the past (though it wasn’t until Bruce got to have his chat with Mx. Yellowface that it actually got in any way coherently explained). But after they did all that work of establishing that they couldn’t just change the past, for capital-R Reasons...

They did uhhhhhhh a whole fucking lot of changing the past. A few of these things could be at least fanwanked away. Maybe past!Steve forgets future!Steve telling him Bucky’s alive because he got knocked unconscious immediately afterwards. Maybe Tony’s chat with his dad had always happened. Maybe Steve had always spent decades with Peggy. But there is no way Sitwell et al. wouldn’t remember Steve pretending to be a member of Hydra, which would significantly alter the events of The Winter Soldier if they weren’t smart enough or lucky enough to verify that Steve wasn’t also a mole and therefore realize he was an “imposter” before one of those Hydra sleeper said something to past!Steve to make him suspicious. And Loki grabbing the loose Tesseract and poofing is a massive change in the timeline.

Their enemies did a whooooooole lot of changing the past when past!Nebula brought past!Thanos and The Gang through to the future, including effectively permanently restoring Gamora, i.e., someone who’d been “irreversibly” sacrificed to obtain the Soul Stone.

Once these things happened, there was literally nothing to explain why (a) the future!Avengers couldn’t at least bring back Heimdall, Loki, all those Wakandans, the Vision, Natasha, and Tony by pulling them from earlier points in the timestream, and (b) why the future!Avengers couldn’t just take their set of Infinity Stones to a point before all of this shit happened and prevent it from ever having happened. Which isn’t to say the writers couldn’t have cooked up some sort of internally consistent explanation, e.g., “this Gamora is basically stolen from the other timeline, which still exists on its own independent axis, and the Avengers wouldn’t kidnap their friends out of another timeline and leave that version of themselves without the person they want to restore just to have that person here.” But they didn’t bother, which presumably means no one involved in making the film even noticed the utter inconsistency.

Speaking of utter inconsistency... Steve. Steven fucking Rogers. Hooooooooboy. That ending was the biggest, stupidest, cheapest piece of schlock I’ve seen in a movie for a long fucking time. Let’s leave aside the fact that he chose to leave behind two perfectly good boyfriends and the fact that he barely said boo to Bucky, despite the film having reminded us how important Bucky was to him by having his name literally be the thing that so shocked past!Steve that future!Steve was able to beat him. You’re seriously telling me that Steve was still pining soooooooo badly for Peggy that he would literally risk the entire timeline so they could have their Hetero Happily Ever After? (Bucky, Sam, Tony, Angie: I’m so sorry, bbys.)

Yeah, sure, Peggy and Steve being parted was sad when it happened. But they’d been colleagues for a handful of years, then maybe sorta friends, and then kissed once, in a speeding car, just after they finally admitted they’d both been crushing on each other pretty hard the whole time because they were on the way to possibly both die. That is not “the love of your life” who you spend the rest of time sighing over. That’s, like, the guy I casually dated for a bit over a month in 2011 because, while we hit it off amazingly well, I didn’t want to get serious when he’d be moving in about a year once his postdoc was done, who sure enough moved to the east coast a year later and then abruptly died of a heart attack a few years after that. Is it tragic that he’s dead? Absolutely. Have I sometimes thought, “Gosh, I wonder what could have been”? Sure. Did I decide that I would never ever again date or even look at anyone else, because he was the only person for me in all of space and time? Lmaoooooo no. I am, in fact, deliriously happy with my current girlfriend, who I also happen to think is way better for me than he ever could have been.

It was already established that Peggy got married in the original timeline (in CA:TWS, Steve watches some footage in which she mentions that during the war he’d saved the man she eventually married). This means that either (a) Steve supplanted her original husband, which is pretty gross, especially if he didn’t tell Peggy “oh hey btw you originally married this other guy, wanna go check him out first,” or (b) Steve was Peggy’s husband all along, and she just obfuscated that. Either way, in the timeline we end up with, somehow for 50+ years this incredibly well-known woman and sometime Director of SHIELD was married to a man she kept absolutely secret and hidden, which somehow no one ever discovered the secret of or even ever commented on, apparently. It also means that, when Steve showed up on her doorstep, both of them agreed that (a) it was more important for them to play house than for Steve to ever openly use his abilities again and (b) Steve would sit on his ass and twiddle his thumbs through every major crisis he knows is coming over the next half-century. If the MCU serum slowed Steve’s aging the way the comic serum did, this might be slightly understandable, because they could justify it as, “Well, Steve will go back to adventuring after he closes the loop with his original timeline, and this will basically be an extended vacation.” But Steve did age (and they presumably had no expectation that he would not), meaning that he wasted decades of active time at most acting secretly and anonymously from the shadows. You really think that these two incredibly dedicated and driven heroes would both agree to that? Sure, I could absolutely believe they’d take the opportunity to finally get that dance. But there’s no way that Peggy wouldn’t have booted Steve’s ass out of bed and back to the 21st century, and it’s highly unlikely Steve himself would have so much as seriously considered staying for more than a more leisurely farewell and proper closure.

Steve’s Hetero Happily Ever After also further complicates the issue of that time travel plot hole I mentioned. If the stones were plucked from one or more divergent timelines (or changes made while grabbing the stones then caused the creation of divergent timelines at those points)... how did aging!Steve end up staying in the same timeline as the rest of the future!Avengers? It seems like it should be impossible for all these things to be simultaneously true, which means either I’m missing something huge or at least one of them is a huge fuck-up in terms of the plot’s internal consistency. EITHER the changes to the past happened in (or spawned) one or more divergent timelines, which is why, e.g., Gamora could be brought forward from her past and now be alive in the future without altering the past that led to her being brought forward in the first place, in which case aging!Steve would have spent his life in an alternate timeline and old!Steve wouldn’t have been able to come visit all his buds on the day young!future!Steve left to return the stones; OR everything took place in a single, unified, undivergent timeline, which would mean Steve could drop into the past and take the long way back to the exact point in spacetime he left, but the changes to the past would have altered the past events, meaning that because Thanos and The Gang skipped forward and Loki is at large with the Tesseract, the events of Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, Infinity War, etc. never happened, and we’re also back to having no reason why other dead people couldn’t be pulled forward from their past timeline, why Thanos couldn’t be stopped by time-traveling the stones to before he retrieved them and using them to stop him, etc.

Various other issues:

The “monstrous” single woman who can’t get pregnant sacrificing herself so that the virile man will have his wife and children restored to him is... not a good look. Also, it’s weird how “we don’t trade lives” when it’s about a robot coded as a white man sacrificing himself to save half the universe (though apparently even at the time a whole bunch of Wakandans was fine, whoops, remember all the Black people who died trying to stop Thanos from getting to the Vision, weird how those lives were okay to trade), but when it’s about Natasha or Clint throwing themself off a cliff, immediately they’re both all, “Yeah, it’s gotta be done for the greater good.”

Thor getting to be the one to axe Thanos’s head off instead of, you know, like, oh, I don’t know, Nebula? The woman he abused and tortured pretty much her entire life? Bad. Inappropriate. Disappointing.

Everybody kept talking about how the characters who got Thanos’d in Infinity War were their “family.” For Rocket, I believe it; one thing the GotG films actually did well was to establish that level of relationship for those characters. But the Avengers? Lmaoooooo. The MCU Avengers were not a fucking family. The MCU Avengers spent every single movie at each other’s throats. If you wanted us to believe they were even friends, you should have given us at least one film of them seriously working as a team instead of against each other.

Holy shit, do I not care about Clint Barton’s Manpain(tm). Also, if you want us to see how far he’s “fallen,” maybe do something other than giving him the worst mohawk I’ve ever seen (including one done backstage after a show and one a friend gave me in my bathroom in college) and a boring tattoo and having him badly pick up an ugly katana-esque sword to kill objectively bad guys.

Bringing Scott back was easy enough that a rat walking across a panel after five years of that shit sitting in a storage facility could do it, and yet no one else tried even once? Somebody saw all that shit set up, and went, “Welp, guess they’re all just dead,” instead of, “Hey maybe this running equipment indicates an experiment in progress that we should maybe investigate”?

The “let’s line up all the named women” shot in the final battle was the most patronizing display of pandering I’ve seen in the entire franchise. Not only did it make no sense for them all to be in the same place at the same time with no men even in the shot, but... they were utterly ineffectual? It was like, “Gosh, how will Carole ever make it through that??? Oh, she’s got US, GIRL-FRIENDS, DID WE MENTION WE’RE ALL LADIES, BUT NOT QUEER OR ANYTHING.” And then... Carole immediately blew straight past them, because her power level is so off the charts compared to almost every other named woman in the MCU, many of whom are simply very, very skilled peak human heroes versus being superhuman.

Speaking of superhuman abilities: Why wasn’t every time-travel suit an Iron Man-style suit like Rhodey’s? Obviously he needed an exoskeleton bit to walk, but since Tony took the time to build him a beefed-up full suit, why didn’t he do the same for everyone else?

Along that same line of stupid decisions made around the Vitally Important, We Only Get One Shot At Fixing This time-travel mission, why didn’t they wait until everyone was in better shape? Thor was clearly still an emotional wreck, and if Rocket hadn’t been on the ball, it would have cost them one of the stones. As soon as you’re traveling back in time to fix something, unless there’s a hard limit on how far you can go back (which there wasn’t), you literally have the rest of your lives to get ready for it, so can and should take as much time as you need to prep (and even over-prep) for that mission. A little more lead time also would have given someone the opportunity to go, “Hey, wait, why don’t we first make a quick stop to just grab more Pym Particles, so we have more flexibility with destinations and do-overs?” Or even, “Why don’t we make these suits modular? That way, they can join into a single unit for each team on the way there, thereby saving a bunch of charges, but also split off into individual suits with everyone having enough juice to get home individually just in case someone gets split off. That will leave us with a bunch of extra Pym Particles in case something goes wrong.”

Other than meta reasons like “we want there to be a big epic fight,” why was it such a struggle to fight Thanos? The Avengers very nearly beat him in Infinity War, when he had five of the six Infinity Stones. Here, he had none, and they still barely squeaked out the victory by the skin of their teeth.

Thanos’s rapid switch from “I’m gonna kill half of all living creatures to uhhh save the universe somehow” to “I guess I’ll just wipe out everything and make an entirely new universe” once again highlighted how deeply stupid his original plan was. If he has the capacity to re-create the entire universe, why doesn’t he just... make more resources, if that’s such a fucking problem? I mean, also, spoiler alert for the real world: It’s not. It’s always been an issue of distribution, not amount. People aren’t starving to death because there’s no food; people are starving to death because of capitalism. So unless you target your population elimination at capitalists exclusively, killing off a bunch of people is going to maintain exactly the same problems of unequal resource exploitation and distribution.

Speaking of which: Why is post-Thanos Earth presented as a mellow semi-paradise (except for everybody being sad about all the dead people)? The loss of half the world’s population would have been catastrophic, cascading into many more deaths. Nor would it have solved inequality... or even resource “over”-utilization. Earth hit a population of 3.85 billion (i.e., half the current ~7.7 billion) around 1972, which many people currently alive have personal memories of not actually being particularly idyllic. This also highlights once again how deeply stupid and nonsensical Thanos’s original plan was, given that his “solution” could easily become obsolete in another 50 years... or even sooner, given that Thanos also cut all non-human creature populations in half, which would have not only reduced related resources available for human consumption but devastated ecosystems worldwide.

There has been a huge official campaign to persuade audiences to not spoil the movie for others. As a general principle, I’m a fan of encouraging anti-spoiler culture, but I think it says a lot about this movie in specific that the studio has put in so much effort to try to stamp out spoilers: i.e., they’re worried that the only real draw it has is people finding out assorted plot points. If your film can be easily replaced by a bulleted list of who’s alive or dead at the end of it, it’s... not actually a good film.

ADDENDUM MAY 5, 2019:

Okay, so, per the Russos, the reason Steve's Hetero Happily Ever After DOESN'T break the entire rest of the film is that it happened in an alternate timeline, and he just jumped back to the MCU prime timeline later... somehow. I still think that's shitty, lazy filmmaking, because in three hours they absolutely should have, you know, made that more clear (or... at all indicated that's how it played out). But at least it keeps their time travel mechanics from completely breaking their own plot.

But that means that in THAT timeline there were two Steves. Which means the BEST-CASE SCENARIO is prime!Steve hooked up with that timeline's Peggy after being 100% honest about who he was, alt!Peggy... chose a different version of Steve over her own Steve, for... reasons?, and then together they found and revived alt!Steve, at which point prime!Steve was like, "lol sorry bro, she's my wife 'cause I missed my chance with prime!Peggy, but at least now you're not frozen for any longer than you already have been."

Other options include:

Prime!Steve pretended to be alt!Steve while leaving him in the ice, counting on him not getting rescued until alt!Peggy would be nearly dead.

Prime!Steve helped rescue alt!Steve, then left alt!Peggy and alt!Steve to have their personal Hetero Happily Ever After while he... married some other random person?

Prime!Steve straight-up murdered alt!Steve to take his place.

Prime!Steve and alt!Peggy rescued alt!Steve, and she married both of them. (Somehow I don't see Disney going for that option.)

ADDENDUM MAY 12, 2019

I just read another interview, this one with the writers. Buckle up, because there’s even more embarrassing shit.

McFeely: I mean, we did all of this before Ragnarok.

Markus: Yeah, initially we were writing drafts prior to Taika coming onboard. And it was once they got underway and they were off in Australia making the movie and it was clear that they were discovering new facets to Thor, Chris Hemsworth wanted to make sure that this new loosened-up Thor didn't vanish immediately upon returning to the Avengers world. And so he and Taika flew to Atlanta and we had long meetings with them and watched some footage and got a sense of the new Thor tone, and it worked perfectly with where we wanted to go.

... ... ... ... Literally WHAT FUCKING PART of Infinity War and Endgame matches AT ALL with Thor's character development from Ragnarok? I was all ready to go, "Oh, okay, that makes sense" at the reveal that this was written before Ragnarok. But then, nope, they admit that they just have no fucking idea what they're doing and think they actually integrated its changes WELL. JFC.

McFeely: So where we hit upon it was in order to become their best selves, Steve had to find a life, and Tony had to lose his.

Boring idea and poorly executed to boot. (Not to mention the extreme cringiness of “finding a life” necessarily requires “marrying a woman and having babies in the suburbs.”) How are they getting paid money for writing this trite?

Fandango: So people are asking... Does this mean an old Captain America was hanging out this whole time while another Captain America was saving the day?

Markus: That is our theory. We are not experts on time travel, but the Ancient One specifically states that when you take an Infinity Stone out of a timeline it creates a new timeline. So Steve going back and just being there would not create a new timeline. So I reject the "Steve is in an alternate reality" theory. I do believe that there is simply a period in world history from about '48 to now where there are two Steve Rogers. And anyway, for a large chunk of that one of them is frozen in ice. So it's not like they'd be running into each other.

HAHAHAHA HOLY FUCKING SHIT okay so NOT ONLY do the director and writers have COMPLETELY DIFFERENT IDEAS about what the fuck happened at the end (did they... not discuss this with each other? at all?), but the WRITERS' version is the one that is THE MOST OUT OF CHARACTER. HOLY SHIT.

McFeely: So we've always thought that the most perfect conclusion to [Natasha's] arc would be to die for her new family, or to sacrifice greatly for her new family.

GAG GAG GAG GAG GAG GAG GAG

McFeely: We toyed with not doing that, and we had another version, and several women on the crew said, "Don't you dare take that choice away from her. The heroic thing is for Natasha to do it, not for Hawkeye to do it."

these are definitely real women who actually exist

Fandango: Do you think there's a world where we see the adventures of Captain and Peggy either on the big or small screen?

Christopher Markus: Possibly. I think maybe all I did was Steve was a stay-at-home dad and Peggy went to work at S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't know that there were any adventures.

lmaoooooooooo

Imagine being this bad at knowing your own characters. Imagine thinking either Peggy OR Steve would just give up their life to play house when there's important work they could be doing.

[doux-amer]

Endgame reaction post! Scroll past if you haven’t blacklisted/Tumblr Saviored my “endgame spoilers” tag because I’m going to get spoilery. Okay first off, I had mixed feelings about Endgame. There were so many things I loved a lot and so many things I absolutely hated. Overall, I think this was a mediocre, sloppy mess of a movie when it shouldn’t and didn’t need to be (you spent that many hours making THIS? Come on); in some ways, it was worse than AoU which I thought was a miserable, bloated “meh” movie, although I can’t put it on the same level because it also did a lot of good things a hell of a lot better. Plus it was more entertaining; those three hours zipped by whereas I thought AoU would never end and suffered through it.

So good and bad! I might not remember some big things because honestly, I’m still trying to process except I don’t want to because that’ll set me off. Big plot stuff first before going into characters:

It was a bold, unexpected move to go after Thanos and kill him so quickly. I didn’t expect that! Neither did I expect a five-year jump. HOLY. FIVE YEARS. Damn. (But you telling me that Citifield was abandoned like that? Russos, Russos, Russos. Let me tell you something. Regardless of what happens, sports must go on. Listen, people still exist and want their entertainment, but hey, Mets represent. At least the support group wasn’t held at Yankee Stadium...imagine Steve, Brooklyn Dodgers fan, voluntarily going to where the Yanks used to play smh. ANYWAY, WOW THIS IS STUPID. LMAO NEXT.)

Didn’t expect him to destroy the stones either, but it made sense although...it didn’t after the Ancient One’s explanation about it affecting timelines.

Seeing the Avengers struggle to move on but be bound together so tightly regardless of location was nice.

The time travel thing was handled so disappointingly although it was SUPER entertaining and made me recall the giddy excitement I had watching The Avengers for the first time imo. Dude, I know fic writers who do a much better job for zero dollars and you got paid big bucks to make this, and I LOVE TIME TRAVEL STUFF DEARLY so this was something I was looking forward to a lot. It was just too loosey goosey and all over the place. Also, I know Steve returned all the Stones to their original timelines, but does that erase their future selves’ actions? Do the timelines that rippled out from those actions cease to exist? I assume so because the Ancient One said they needed to snip off all the alternate branches because their existence would lead to chaos, but at the same time, that makes Steve’s whole journey at the end make no sense whatsoever. But maybe that doesn’t matter because he was changing time through quantum jumps rather than using the Stones? That said, revisiting the past was a lot of fun and was a nostalgic ride; it was nice to see how far they’ve come and to say hello to the characters we started out with and fell in love with in the first place. We get to see Gamora and Nebula with Thanos which we should have seen in GotG 1 and 2, but whatever! We got to see what happened after the Avengers got Loki and the Tesseract under custody!

Seeing all these old familiar faces, many of them who are now gone, was great, but also incredibly distracting. Some of them felt shoehorned in like Rumlow and the gang. It was disconcerting. I would’ve imagined Steve’s first meeting with the Strike team to be after he went into SHIELD (like...why are they even there? The battle’s gone lol).

SEVERELY disappointed that the Big Three didn’t have a bigger fight. I guess they had to nerf Thor because the fight would be over in three seconds considering those three, aside from Wanda, were the only ones to really give Thanos a run for his money (Thor almost killed Thanos, Tony somehow went hand-to-hand in combat with him and actually hurt him too, and Steve was able to stop his fist). Seeing Steve finally wield Mjolnir was cool and I almost cheered out loud, but I also wish we got to see Tony use it because it felt like they were all worthy and united in their fervent desire to stop Thanos and save the world that it didn’t matter who wielded it, you know?

I wish they delved more into legacy, not just because that’s been a big recurrent theme for Tony since IM1, but because it would add depth to the Big Three’s farewells (although it seems like we’ll see Thor in GotG now). They can go their separate ways from the Avengers because they built a team that would live on and because more people showed up to help out (e.g., Strange and the masters, the Guardians, Wakandans, Carol, etc.). We got a bit of that when everyone made their grand entrance, but it would have been something for these three to realize...oh, this is what they’ve been working towards. This was the dream all along. This is the future Tony imagined when restarting the Avengers. This is what they’ll leave behind (and on a personal note, I wish we got to see more of that with Morgan instead of her just saying she wanted cheeseburgers. SHOW us that she’s Tony’s kid (and Pepper’s) through and through).

The callbacks were both good and hamfisted. There were some good ones and some really bad ones. It just felt really fanservice-y in a bad way when it could’ve been tastefully done. It was emotionally manipulative except it failed to manipulate me lmao? Like having Steve and Bucky share their lines from TFA? Meh. The line about cheeseburgers with Morgan and Happy? Cue the eye rolls. They went for cheap shots rather than things that would be more meaningful (LIKE REITERATING THE LEGACY THEME LOL).

I have extremely mixed feelings about the way the Big Three left. I’ll focus on that when I talk about the characters, but I’ll focus on Tony’s funeral right now. Where’s Natasha’s funeral? Where’s Tony’s eulogy? It was such a mind-boggling move to have the funeral be that short. I loved seeing that Tony, the man who had everything and nothing, the man who had no family, have so many people whom he loved and who loved him mourn him. All those people he left behind? The Russos remembering to include Harley and then choosing to end the shot with Fury, the one to bring him into the fold all those years ago because he believed in and cared for Tony from the very beginning? That gutted me. But god!!!! We got two seconds to say goodbye to a character who’s defined this entire era of the MCU and who pretty much is responsible for the MCU being a thing in the first place! I don’t need an extended service or anything, but man...it just was super quick.

Speaking of Tony and death, I loved that Rhodey was the first person to get to Tony because he’s always been that for Tony. He was there for Tony before anyone else, he’s the first person in Tony’s family we’re introduced to in IM1, and he was the one who got Tony when Tony needed him in IM1 and IM2 (found him in the desert and was there when Tony nearly collapsed from palladium poisoning). I loved that Pepper had a moment to reassure Tony and ease him into the afterlife, the way she’s always tried to make things easy for him and to make sure that he knows things will be all right because she’ll make it all right. I loved that Peter had a moment because he is, more than anyone else, Tony’s first true child (okay, Harley was his first ever, but Peter was The One). But I got pissed that none of the Avengers got to be there because the Avengers as an idea and as a family meant the most to Natasha and Tony, and considering the fallout of CA:CW, it would’ve been nice to have that moment where they were there for him. He wasn’t alone. They’re there for him until the end. It genuinely blows my mind that neither Thor nor Steve got to say even one final thing to him. LIKE!!!!! I love Peter, but why did you waste so much time with him! We’ll deal with his grief in FFH ffs! Give that time to Thor and Steve whom we’re also saying goodbye to! This is the last time the trio will be together! AHHHHHHH.

Lowkey don’t know why they wouldn’t just undo the last five years/bring them back right after they killed Thanos other than Tony having a family tbh, but whatever lol. 

The fight at the end was super cool but also stupid lol. But I did like seeing teamwork! I loved seeing the gauntlet being passed around without hesitation even when a lot of people didn’t know each other.

The thing with Nebula’s memory was....so dumb? She’s a different Nebula from a different timeline; they’re two different individuals existing, but idk I guess they tried to explain it as two computers trying to use the same hard/memory drive although really, the better comparison would be two unique computers using the same network in which case...why is there even a problem lmao. It just seemed so convenient, but oh well. 

Okay, you know what? This was super long so I’m going to write about the characters and their relationships in a separate post. This kind of ended up sounding a lot more negative than I expected, but all of the things I mentioned above I liked and disliked in equal measure. It’s just...the ideas were there but weren’t executed well imo.