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gffa · 4 years

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THE MANDALORIAN - A TIMELINE Assumptions this post will make: - It’s possible that they’ll throw out canon/contradict something that’s been established up to this point (I’m hoping not, as Dave Filoni is one of the main people who oversaw the creation of that canon, but it’s still a possibility!), especially as Favreau has mentioned that he wants to recanonize some Legends stuff, but for now we’re assuming canon is canon and they’re going to work with that. This is a post that is focused on what canon and creators of canon have said! - Din Djarin is ~44 years old, as a reflection of Pedro Pascal’s age. - Out-of-universe, Star Wars’ timeline is referred to by BBY / ABY (Before the Battle of Yavin / After the Battle of Yavin) because that’s when the Death Star was blown up/the Rebellion battled the Empire over Yavin IV, which was because A New Hope was the central compass point as the very first SW movie. However, this timeline will focus on The Mandalorian season 1 as Year 0, as I think that’ll make it clearer how everything relates to this show. THE TIMELINE SO FAR: 50 Years Ago - The Child (Baby Yoda) was born, Anakin Skywalker was born in the same year 41 Years Ago - The Phantom Menace ?? Years Ago - The Mandalorian Civil War. There was an insurgency against Satine Kryze’s rule of Mandalore, which eventually required the intervention of the Republic, by sending two Jedi (Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi) to protect her, causing them to go on the run for a year. Obi-Wan later describes this as, "An extended mission when I was younger. Master Qui-Gon and I spent a year on Mandalore protecting the Duchess from insurgents who had threatened her world. They sent bounty hunters after us. We were always on the run, living hand-to-mouth, never sure what the next day would bring. A civil war killed most of Satine's people, hence her aversion to violence. When she returned, she took rebuilding her world alone." Whether he means that the people loyal to Satine were killed or nearly all of Mandalore was killed, it’s hard to say. (Presumably the latter?)

31 Years Ago - Attack of the Clones, the Clone Wars begin, Kamino’s clone army is discovered, they become part of the Republic, which may tie into Dr. Pershing’s arm patch symbol likely being the Kamino emblem.

~31-28 Years Ago - The flashbacks we see in The Mandalorian are likely to take place during the Clone Wars, that the people were attacked by Separatists (hence the Super Battle Droids we see being used) and were rescued by Mandalorians, adopting Din Djarin as a Foundling, raising him in the Fighting Corps. Din would have likely been around 10+ years old? At least one of the Mandalorians in the flashback was wearing a Death Watch symbol, but it’s unclear how the politics of this were going, since they’re fighting Separatists in the flashback and it’s unclear precisely when Pre Vizsla joined with Dooku and the Separatists. (Separatist alliances shifted all the time, so this isn’t hard to work with!)

~31-28 Years Ago - Death Watch, a Mandalorian splinter group, publicly arises as a protest against Satine’s pacifist ways and determination that Mandalore leave behind its warrior past. They bomb targets in the city of Sundari and work with the Separatists to try to kill Duchess Kryze and put their own leader into place on Mandalore proper. Pre Vizsla of Clan Vizsla is the governor of Concordia (a moon of Mandalore), voiced by Jon Favreau, secretly leads the Death Watch and reveals that he has the darksaber when he fights against Obi-Wan Kenobi after its revealed that Pre is part of Death Watch. (Clan Vizsla is one of the most central Clans of Mandalore.) They are not successful in their plot (to have the Republic Senate forcefully invade Mandalore under the threat of Death Watch/the rumor of Mandalore joining the Separatists) and remain neutral in the Clone Wars. It’s also later revealed (a few months later/a season later) that Bo-Katan Kryze, Satine’s sister, is a lieutenant in Death Watch.

28 Years Ago - Darth Maul creates his own Shadow Collective (an alliance of various criminal organizations) by allying with Death Watch and taking over Mandalore. Duchess Satine Kryze is murdered by Maul as part of his takeover of Mandalore/his revenge against Obi-Wan Kenobi, as well as Pre Vizsla is killed by Maul when they disagree over the direction/who is leading Mandalore. Maul takes the darksaber. 28 Years Ago - Fenn Rau, as part of Skull Squadron of the Protectors (a group of Mandalorian royal guards), assisted the Jedi in the Clone Wars, including helping out in a fight with Jedi Master Depa Billaba and Padawan Caleb Dume (Kanan Jarrus). 28 Years Ago - The Clone Wars are nearing the end, the Siege of Mandalore happens at the same time as ROTS/Order 66, this is referenced as “The Night of a Thousand Tears” by Moff Gideon, “when gunships outfitted with similar ordnance (to the e-web cannon) laid waste to fields of Mandalorian recruits in the Night of a Thousand Tears”. He doesn’t say who the gunships belonged to, if they were Republic gunships or Maul’s Shadow Collective gunships or something else.

The Siege of Mandalore is basically: Darth Maul has set himself up as leader of Mandalore, so Ahsoka Tano and a battalion of clones (including Captain Rex) lead a mission to retake the planet. While they’re in the middle of this mission, Order 66 happens, where the clones’ inhibitor chips have them turning on the Jedi, including Ahsoka though she is no longer officially a Jedi. During/after this huge shitshow, Bo-Katan Kryze is appointed Regent of Mandalore. 28 Years Ago - Revenge of the Sith, the Republic fell, the Empire rose, the Jedi Order was genocided basically out of existence. 11 Years Ago - The Ghost crew discover Maul hiding out, who still has the darksaber, and they retrieve it. Sabine Wren (of Clan Wren) briefly trains with it, but struggles to decide how to proceed with it and her contentious relationship with her family. Fenn Rau (governor of Concord Dawn, as appointed by the Empire) explains the history behind the darksaber to Kanan Jarrus, that a thousand years ago (give or take) the first Mandalorian Jedi was named Tarre Vizsla who created it as his weapon, that it stayed with the Jedi until a few decades ago, Clan Vizsla stole into the Jedi Temple and took it back, as it was a symbol of House Vizsla and had the power to unite the Clans/Houses in the right hands.

10 Years Ago - Sabine Wren rallies her family into deciding to fight back against the Empire’s occupation of Mandalore and gives the darksaber to an initially reluctant Bo-Katan Kryze. Leaders of several clans of Mandalore swear allegiance to her and they vow to fight the Empire, after many years of living under Imperial rule.

9 Years Ago - A New Hope, Alderaan was destroyed, the Death Star was destroyed, also the events of Rogue One happened. 6 Years Ago - The Empire Strikes Back 5 Years Ago - Return of the Jedi, the Second Death Star destroyed, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader died, Yoda died, formation of the New Republic 4 Years Ago - The Battle of Jakku, which is the final giant battle between the New Republic and the Empire, where they officially lost (see: Star Wars Battlefront II for the story) 0 Years Ago - The Mandalorian, season 1 THINGS I’M NOT SURE WHERE TO PLACE ON THE TIMELINE: - Din and the other Mandalorians have cultural differences from the Mandalorians we’ve seen up to this point. The tradition of being unable to take their helmet off, lest they cannot put it back on, doesn’t match up with what we see of Pre Vizsla in The Clone Wars, who was the leader of Death Watch, rather than Satine’s New Mandalorians who were pacifists. This also strongly contrasts what we see of Bo-Katan Kryze (who was affiliated with Death Watch) and Sabine Wren (along with her family, who all took off/put on their helmets). Is this a splinter group? Is it different for people who were born Mandalorian vs Foundlings who must prove themselves? Something else? - Satine says that Jango Fett was not Mandalorian, but a regular bounty hunter and she didn’t know how he acquired the armor. Out of universe, Pablo Hidalgo has supported this, but that was years ago and canon evolves over time. Dave Filoni has also talked about how, as far back as Attack of the Clones, George Lucas intended for Jango to not actually be Mandalorian. THE BIG QUESTION MARKS: - Paz Vizla’s name is spelled without the “s” in the credits, is this a reference to the different spelling as used in SWTOR? Or is it a typo? Favreau has been re-canonizing some Legends things, but also the credits for Chapter 5 have “Tuskan Raider”, which is a typo of “Tusken”, so typos are a thing in the credits. - The Great Purge isn’t clearly set within the timeline yet. It does not seem to be the same thing as the Siege of Mandalore or Order 66, because it’s too significantly tied to the Empire.

While the Empire was being created during those moments and it’s possible that Paz Vizla was referring to something that happened in the aftermath of the Siege of Mandalore, something big enough to referred to separately, it might also very well refer to something that happened after Bo-Katan Kryze received the darksaber and united Mandalore against the Empire, as we don’t know how that fight happened, and may little comments in The Mandalorian indicate that seeing Mandalorians is very rare these days. Last we saw them, when Sabine talks about the Imperial Academy on Mandalore or when we see House Wren’s interaction with the other Clans, they don’t seem to be that rare. Paz Vizla says, “Our strength was once in our numbers. Now we live in the shadows and only come above ground one at a time. Our world was shattered by the Empire, with whom this coward shares tables.” and “These were cast in an Imperial smelter. These are the spoils of the Great Purge. The reason that we live hidden like sand rats.“ Unless they are a splinter group, Mandalorians didn’t live hidden away 10 years ago in the events of Rebels.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #mandalore #din djarin #pre vizsla #bo katan kryze #satine kryze #fenn rau #meta #long post

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jarienn972 · 4 years

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Bloodline

From the OUAT Winter Whump 2018 event

After being inspired by @wyntereyez live-blogging her rewatch of OUAT S7 last night and her post reblogs today, I was originally going to just reblog this story which was my re-imagining of Season 7 episode 19, Flower Child, but I decided to create a new post so that I could attach the art work that today’s birthday girl @cocohook38 graciously surprised me with!

This story does feature violent situations as it was created to fix the wasted potential of the episode for those of us who enjoy seeing a little bit of whump. Please Note: Gothel is the featured villain here so fair warning as there are some vague mentions of her history with Rogers.

Also on FF.net and AO3

So little had made sense for weeks now in the Heights and Detective Rogers’ inquisitive mind was in overdrive. Every time he thought he’d guessed the next move correctly, he’d found himself face to face with his often condescending partner who was all-too-happy to remind him of his failures. It wasn’t as though Weaver was giving him any answers either, just more cryptic questions and general annoyance. Granted, a fair portion of his frustration was his own damned fault. Weaver had warned him not to pursue his search for Eloise Gardner, but obsession had gripped him, forcing him to investigate every clue to hunt her down - although they’d likely never know exactly how or why Victoria Belfrey had imprisoned her in the tower. He’d managed to uncover bits and pieces of a story about how Eloise was evil and needed to be kept locked away from humanity, but he hadn’t really believed any of it. Not until bodies started turning up all over the Heights - Belfrey’s included.

Maybe he should have listened to Weaver’s advice, but he just couldn’t help himself. He’d been so driven to find the girl who had haunted his memory for years, only to discover that maybe she wasn’t really the person he’d imagined her to be. Maybe if he’d heeded his partner’s warning, he wouldn’t be in his current predicament, not that it would matter for much longer. He’d be able to hang on a little while…

Maybe, just maybe, someone would come searching for him or maybe Tilly would spring back to her senses?

But the reality was - who would be looking for him?

One hour earlier

She was mad. Had to be. How else could he explain it?

Maybe he was mad. How had he allowed this woman to gain so much power over him?

He felt manipulated. Used. Hell, part of him felt downright violated, but yet he was still inexplicably drawn to her.

Weaver had warned him that she was a powerful witch, but he honestly hadn’t believed in witchcraft - at least until now as the realization struck that she had pulled him right into her coven’s waiting trap. He’d been so gullible, but it also struck him as odd that he had no idea why she’d sought to ensnare him. All he had wanted to do was help Tilly, and then - there she was - Eloise Gardner and her coven of witches hidden behind dark, heavy, hooded cloaks. He and Tilly had wandered straight into the witch’s wicked web and despite knowing that they were both in grave danger, a voice in the back of his head kept telling him to protect Tilly.

“Please, don’t hurt her,” he’d pleaded with the witches as one of them grabbed Tilly from behind, clamping a hand over her mouth as they led her away from him, disappeared down what must have been a staircase. He was at the wrong angle to be certain, even as he strained against his captor, struggling to get a better view. “Tilly’s an innocent here…please, don’t harm her…”

Eloise approached him, drawing close as her minions restrained him. He continued to struggle, trying to free himself from their grasp but despite their diminutive appearance, the hooded figures were far stronger than he expected. The witch pressed her body uncomfortably close to him, an air of triumph in her icy gaze. His own eyes clung to defiance, even as her hand raised up to meet his face, fingertips lightly tracing the shape of his jaw while she stared at him with a sickeningly sweet smile plastered on her lips - the way he would imagine a predator admiring its prey.

“You’ve got this all wrong, Captain,” she insisted, never breaking her evil grin as she spoke. “Tilly isn’t the one I intend to hurt. I need her. You, on the other hand, are far more expendable.”

He had no idea what she was plotting or why she’d called him Captain - and she wasn’t the first to do that either. All of his senses were screaming at him. There was no doubt he was in way over his head, but no matter how much he struggled, there was no breaking free.

“What do you want from us?” Rogers demanded. Hell, if he was going to die here, he at least wanted to know why.

“Oh, you’ll prove useful to me yet again. You’re going to help bring my creation to life,” Eloise purred cryptically as she pulled her hand away from his face. “But first, I need you to stop being so uncooperative…” Her right hand unfurled once again before his eyes, this time, revealing a clump of what appeared to be sparkling pink dust resting in the curve of her palm. With one quick puff of her breath, the colorful particles were swirling around him and somewhere within that cloud, Rogers lost his will to resist, his body dropping limp into the arms of his captors.

**********

As his senses gradually returned, Rogers immediately knew something wasn’t right, but he didn’t know yet just how precarious the situation actually was. His head throbbed and his recollection of the events that got him here was a tad cloudy - a sensation he’d experienced far too many times when he’d lost control of his indulgences. Only this was no mere hangover.

His eyelids parted slowly, adjusting to the dim light of the surroundings, seemingly illuminated solely by flickering flames. Ruddy hued rocks comprised both the floor and the walls of what must have been some sort of a cave but as his sight became clearer, he discovered that this cavern held far more sinister secrets than he could have imagined. He’d also come to the realization that he was suspended in the center of said cavern, his upper body bound tightly with vines. Vines? It certainly wasn’t rope that secured him and as he tried to wiggle himself out of his bindings, he learned - rather painfully - that the vines were covered in thorns. Dozens of thorns, sharp as needles, jabbed into his bare skin with even the slightest movement on his part. He’d clearly been impaled a few times already as he could feel the tickle from the little rivulets of blood making a path down his leg to drip off of his big toe.

What he couldn’t tell from his vantage point was that his nearly nude body hung directly above an intricate design carved into the stone below - one the same shape as the coven’s symbol he’d been seeing all over Hyperion Heights. Surrounding him were the dark, caped figures, each standing at one of the eight points of the symbol softly chanting some unknown incantation. One of those hooded beings broke from the circle to canter towards him, apparently having realized he’d regained consciousness. The figure raised her head as she neared, enough for him to recognize her face as his gaze locked with that of Eloise Gardner once again.

The expression on her face confused him falling somewhere between satisfaction and sublimation. If this was indeed the same girl he’d tasked himself to locate so many years ago, what had happened to her that led her down this path? To have become involved with such a devilishly evil cult that had obviously stripped her of the innocence he’d remembered? Well, at least the innocence he thought he’d remembered… Had she been so offended by his failure to protect her as a child that she’d spent all of these years planning ways to make him pay for that failure? Even after he’d rescued her from Belfrey’s prison? Hadn’t getting shot and spending the better part of a decade searching in vain been penance enough?

“Captain…” Eloise purred into his ear, her lips so close to his skin that he could feel the warmth of her breath, sending his body into an involuntary, repulsed shudder. “Just what is going on inside that pretty head of yours?”

“Why are you doing this?” was the question that crossed his lips, although there were so many others demanding to be asked as well. “I tried… I tried to help you… I freed you…” he stammered, his mind conflicted by both a desire to fight his thorny restraints and a total lack of willpower to do so.

“Oh, Captain,” she said through that same salacious grin, “we’ve such a torrid history… Where would I even begin?”

“History?” He didn’t understand how their few interactions could be construed as history. “Eloise, we barely know anything about each other aside from the fact that I spent years searching for you…and I did find you. Why this?”

“It’s almost a pity that your memory didn’t return like some of the others, but maybe it’s for the better…” She stepped around to his back, her right hand trailing along the skin just above the waistband of his boxer briefs as she leaned in to address his left ear. “How about I start by re-introducing myself? My name is Mother Gothel, not Eloise, and we do indeed have some very interesting history. It might even have been so much more… I could have helped you seal your revenge against Rumplestiltskin while we pillaged and plundered the realms, but no. You surprised me. You chose the brat over me…”

“Brat? What - Tilly?” His stuttered words barely made sense in his own head, but they seemed to increase her ire.

“If that’s what you want to call her,” she scoffed. “You gave her a different name back then, but nonetheless, it won’t matter for much longer.”

“You haven’t harmed her, have you?” he asked meekly, his voice cracking audibly at the thought as his eyes grew wide with fearful anticipation.

“No, I haven’t harmed Tilly. As I said before, she isn’t the one I plan to harm. I need her magic to help initiate my spell…” She paused her statement as she ambled around to face him once again, the iciness of her stare prickling every hair on the back of his neck. “But I need something else from you first…” Her fingertips made contact with his thigh, the skin searing beneath her touch as he fought back a swell of nausea. If this was what she wanted, he wasn’t interested, but as her right hand slithered up toward his hip, she raised her left hand in front of her chest, making certain that he would witness her next move. Out of thin air, what might only have been described as a giant thorn materialized from her palm. It was at least the length of her forearm and his terrified eyes instantly focused on its razor sharp point - even more so as she ghosted that needle-like point across his chest, drawing tiny droplets of blood as she passed it through the course, dark hair almost indecently.

“Eloise…” His voice came out as a whimper as he tried his best to shrink away from her, but the brambles encircling him only seemed to squeeze tighter. “I can still help you…” The cop in him was still trying to reason with her, even if his efforts might be deemed futile.

“Yes, my dear Captain, you most certainly can help me,” she assured him as that devilish grin crossed her features yet again. “I absolutely require your assistance to activate a portion of my spell. More specifically, I need your blood.” She refused to give him even a moment to process her statement before thrusting the pointed end of her oversized thorn into his abdomen, angling it upward, beneath his rib cage and into his vital organs, yet stopping short of his heart. She drew her arm backward, retracing the blood stained thorn so that she could admire her handiwork for a split-second before repeating the stabbing motion twice more.

The coppery scent of his own blood filled his nostrils as his mind and body were both overwhelmed by the shock of the assault. Blood mixed with his saliva as he coughed up a bubble that he couldn’t swallow back down. Sanguine trails flowed from his torso to form a small puddle on the carved rocky ground below as his instinct to fight for his life finally kicked in and he gathered his remaining strength to try to free his arms so he could put pressure on the seeping wounds.

“Struggle all you want,” she taunted him as she dropped the bloody thorn to the ground as she cupped his jaw with both of her hands. “My vines will only grow tighter, driving those thorns deeper into your flesh. Since we’re going to be here for a while as your body is slowly drained of its blood, you may wish to spare yourself further anguish. I need your heart to keep pumping as long as possible to keep that blood fresh and potent until the entire medallion beneath you is filled. Then, I won’t need you anymore…”

His body shook from a combination of fear and pain-driven convulsions as his blood flowed from the trio of punctures in his gut, but even with the agony she’d already inflicted upon him, the witch wasn’t done with him quite yet. New vines began to sprout from those encasing his upper body, spiraling lower to wrap the rest of his torso and both of his legs with the constricting brambles. Every nerve ending in his body felt assaulted as dozens of newly formed thorns tore into his skin, drawing more blood. Rogers couldn’t even remember if he’d screamed but a silent prayer kept reciting within his head that maybe someone would find him. And that blissful unconsciousness would befall him soon…

**********

Rogers didn’t know what stirred him back to consciousness but the immediate wash of pain over his entire being reminded him that he was still alive. The dead didn’t experience pain, did they? He assumed he’d learn that answer soon enough - as soon as his lifeblood drained from him, his heart would inevitably cease and his lungs would no longer need to draw breath. He didn’t have the energy within him to fight against the tightening vines, still feeling their intrusions across his arms, chest and back, but scarcely able to feel his legs anymore. He wanted to just go numb, to return to the peaceful, pain-free oblivion, but his mind apparently wanted him to be awake to bear witness to his own torture.

“I’m surprised to see you awake,” a voice rang out from his right. Or was it from the left? Clearly his head wasn’t thinking straight, the blood loss leaving him disoriented. “Perhaps you’re a tad more resilient than I’d thought…” The voice continued in a sickeningly sweet cadence that made him want to retch even before he sensed the warmth of fingers brushing against his blood-soaked thigh. “You still have so much more to give…” He wished he could pull his leg away as the sensation of fingernails drawing lazy circles through the dampness only increased his nausea.

“What do you want?” He knew he’d asked the question before, but in his weakened state, he didn’t remember the answer - certainly not the answer she was about to give.

“Oh, Captain, this goes back so far…,” she mused. “Years ago, we met in a far away land, high in a tower where I needed you to provide the one thing that would allow me freedom from that prison - a new bloodline. You were so, how should I say this? Eager? So willing to provide me what I needed, but then, you betrayed me…”

Tower? Betrayal? Her words were conjuring images that bombarded his psyche, but were they memories or hallucinations? He didn’t know if he could trust his own brain right now.

“Eloise…”

“Not Eloise - Gothel,” she reminded him, her tone more annoyed than playful this time. “You really should try to remember me.” Her hand instantly snapped from caressing his thigh to clutching his throat, her thumb and forefinger pushing his head upward to meet her gaze. “I want you to look at me while you hang there dying. I want you to regret ever choosing that brat instead of me!” She stabbed a manicured index finger towards one of the cloaked figures as he recognized Tilly’s profile beneath the hood.

“Tilly…” he whispered, not even certain if his voice was loud enough for her to hear.

“She can’t hear you. She’s caught in a trance that I placed upon her. She’ll keep mindlessly repeating that incantation over and over until your blood fills the rest of the medallion here. Then, as soon as she steps into the center, the mix of bloodlines will enact my spell and bring about the return of this land to its rightful ruler - Nature.”

“Why Tilly? If we have history, that’s between us,” he argued weakly, energy waning quickly, but still possessing a flicker of determination to protect his young friend from this madwoman. “She has nothing to do with this…”

“Oh, but you’re wrong there, Captain,” she laughed. “Tilly - or Alice, as you used to call her - has everything to do with this. She’s our daughter - the blend of our bloodlines - possessing some of your spunk and some of my magic. I need to draw that magic from her and it just so happens that her father’s blood is the perfect conduit to do so.”

“Wait - daughter? Tilly… Alice… she’s my daughter?” he stammered, trembling as his already pain-wracked brain overloaded. “How can she be my daughter? I’m not old enough…”

That statement brought an amused cackle from his captor. “Looks can be so deceiving, Captain, but then curses can certainly play such tricks with your mind… You really don’t look a day over two hundred.”

Images came to him once again in vivid flashes as his barely lucid mind struggled to make sense of them without any context. A pirate ship. A tall, isolated tower. A small, blonde haired child. Eloise, yet not Eloise…

A hook.

His sullen eyes drew downward, seeking out the prosthetic hand attached to the wrist of his stumped arm which suddenly didn’t feel right to him. The weight, the fit - all wrong.

He’d lost that hand in a bad car accident, hadn’t he? He questioned his own recollection, no longer sure if anything he knew about himself was real. He was hanging here, slowly bleeding to death at the hand of a woman he’d thought he’d rescued and yet he felt as though he was right on the cusp of an epiphany.

His eyes squeezed shut as his body convulsed involuntarily. Why hadn’t he told Weaver what he was doing? The only other person who knew he was here was Tilly and she was lost to some hypnotic trance. He didn’t dare think what this witch would do to her once she’d served her purpose. He fought through the impending darkness to take in Tilly’s features for what he feared would be the last time. Could she really be his daughter? He’d likely never know now as a single tear rolled across his cheekbone, its saline trail finding its way to the corner of his mouth just as his lips parted.

One single word rolled off his tongue as his body fell limp against the imposing vines.

Starfish.

His voice was scarcely a whisper yet that single utterance reverberated throughout the cavern, reaching the single pair of ears it was intended for. It echoed into Tilly’s ear as a plea and her eyelids flew open, the chanting instantly ceased. Her hands raised to her head, tossing the hood off of her blonde locks as she lifted her chin.

She’d only been vaguely aware of her surroundings, but now, her senses were overwhelmed. The voices of the other hooded figures were all she could hear and she just wanted to drown them out. She tried to focus on something else - the crackle of the flames from the candles and torches positioned around the circle. Focus, Tilly, focus, she told herself. She concentrated on those flames, inhaling the scent of the burning wood, but she could smell something else too. Something faintly metallic…bloody…

Only then did she realize that there was another person in the center of the ring of caped figures - a person whose body was nearly obscured amongst a tangle of thorny vines. There was a pale, dark-haired man bound by those vines and while she couldn’t make out the majority of his form, she could see that his legs were riddled with crimson trails and there was a pool of dark red liquid beneath his feet. And she could see just enough of his face to recognize that man suspended lifeless before her: the man she’d known as Detective Rogers. But she also felt an awakening within her muddled mind which reminded her that she’d known him far longer - and by a different name.

“Papa?”

The moment she uttered that single word, the rock walls of the cavern began to shake as if from the rumbling of an earthquake, showering her with pebbles and dust that rained from above. A newly defiant Tilly shrugged off the heavy dark robe, eyes wide as she frantically searched for the monster.

“Show yourself, Witch!” Tilly hollered, bolstered with newfound bravado. If he was still among the living, she had to save him. Had to save her Papa from this monster witch. It was all up to her and this time, she was determined to listen to the little voices within her head that assured her that she possessed the power to defeat this witch.

“I’m right here, Tilly,” the witch replied as she took a step from behind her nearly lifeless prisoner.

“Let him go, you monster! You’re hurting him and I can’t allow that!” Tilly shouted. “You said that if I helped you, no one would get hurt but you lied! You always lie!” Both of Tilly’s hands clenched into fists as Gothel continued to stare blankly back at her, entirely devoid of any human emotion.

“It’s entirely too late for that, little girl,” Gothel snapped back confidently. “As soon as his blood fills that medallion on the floor right there, my spell will begin and there’s no one powerful enough to stop it. Not the Evil Queen nor the Wicked Witch. Not even the Dark One himself.”

“Then I’ll stop you,” Tilly responded as she stood her ground with equal confidence. “You took my Papa away from me once. You aren’t going to do it again.” Her blue eyes reflected a fierce determination as Tilly set her jaw and racked her brain to recall how to harness her magic.

“Please…,” Gothel dismissed her with a haughty wave of her hand. “You aren’t any match for me. Just get out of my way and do as you’re told…” With a faint flick of her wrist, another new growth of vines sprouted from the cluster binding Rogers and jettisoned toward Tilly. With only a fraction of a second to react, Tilly threw up her hands defensively in front of her face and instantly, the brambles froze mere inches from her, the thorns separating from the vines and falling harmlessly to the floor while tiny, white four-petal blossoms took their place. Tilly blinked a few times until the realization sunk in that she’d used magic to defend herself. She wasn’t mad - well, at least not when it came to the existence of magic.

“Impressive, but you’ve still so much to learn,” the witch continued to taunt her as Tilly attempted to move from the carved coven symbol beneath her feet. Gothel smirked as she watched the rock beneath Tilly’s feet dissolve into mud that the younger woman sank into it, only to have it harden back into stone around her shoes, entrapping her in her position on the outer ring. “It would be rather rude of you to leave before my big performance - and I’m not done with you yet…”

Unable to step away, Tilly’s eyes flittered wildly between the nearly inundated medallion on the ground before her and the pallid, expressionless face of her dying father whose head was drooped against his chest, body clearly only held upright by the witch’s enchanted vines. She watched in seemingly slow-motion as a drop of blood fell from his toe and splashed into the sticky, crimson puddle.

“It’s nearly time,” Gothel announced with a giddy chuckle as a tiny evergreen tree pushed its way through the solid rock to emerge in front of one of the remaining cloaked figures. As the tree grew in stature, the cape worn by the nearest coven member slumped to the floor and the person who’d been beneath it seconds earlier vanished in the blink of an eye. “Six more to go… Then you.”

“No,” Tilly sobbed, cursing herself for ever agreeing to help this monster in the first place, but now, the witch had to be stopped. “No - I won’t allow you to do this!”

“You won’t allow me?” Gothel laughed off Tilly’s cockiness. Apparently the girl had more of her father’s personality than she’d believed. “Then stop me.”

The challenge was issued as an insult, but Tilly didn’t take it as such. She was going to prove that she had the strength to defeat this horrid person.

“Stay with me, Papa,” she called out to him, still uncertain if he was alive or dead. “No matter what happens, I love you, Papa…” Silent promises now made, Tilly squeezed her eyes closed as her outstretched hands began to tremble. Another low rumble echoed throughout the cavern as flames flickered, billowed by some unseen wind that swirled dust and rubble around the young woman.

“What are you doing?” There was a faint hint of alarm in Gothel’s voice this time as she feared she may have underestimated her daughter. She’d long known that her child possessed powers, but with no one to cultivate them, she’d doubted Tilly’s ability to harness magic. But it was Gothel’s discounting of that untamed nature to Tilly’s magic which might prove far more dangerous.

“Love is always stronger than hate,” Tilly stated as she clasped her hands together sending out a blast of powerful energy towards the blood-drenched medallion. The ground began to shake, mildly at first then growing in intensity as the rock began to crack, fissures zigzagging across the entire coven symbol until they reached the stone that encased Tilly’s feet. The rock holding her crumbled away, allowing her to hop out of the circle and sever the connection necessary for Gothel’s spell to proceed. The evergreen tree that had sprouted within the cavern withered away to ashes as the magic sustaining it evaporated.

“You insolent little brat!” the witch shouted, seething with anger. “How dare you?! Now you’ve ruined it! I should have killed you years ago - both of you!” She took a step forward, hands extended and prepared to unleash some new horror against her beleaguered daughter. But so blinded by her hatred of her own offspring, she failed to notice that the cracks beneath her feet were widening from the tremors, opening into a chasm that swallowed the witch, plunging her screaming into the void. Tilly didn’t know what she should feel as the monster disappeared into the earth. She just stood there frozen until another voice roused her attention.

“Tilly?” she heard the voice call out to her, but was it merely inside her head? “Tilly?!” came the voice yet again as she blinked her eyes trying to figure out where the familiar voice originated. She recognized it now - Weaver - but she couldn’t reply yet. Her fragile mind was still processing all that had just transpired. Everything she’d just made happen… And oh, no - Papa! She saw the familiar face of Detective Weaver - Rumplestiltskin - emerge from the entry passage, weapon and flashlight extended before him. “Tilly, are you alright?” he asked as he ventured deeper into the subterranean cavern.

Alright? Was she alright? She didn’t even know but there were more important things to attend to… “Yes, I am,” she responded frantically as she hurried toward the center of the room. “But he’s not…” Weaver stopped short of entering the circle as he spied the huge, gaping cracks that transected it. His focus was drawn to the cluster of vines at the center of the ring where he now spotted his partner hanging motionless and entirely encircled by those same bloody vines which seemed to be withering away as Gothel’s magic faded. Despite the fissures crisscrossing the ground beneath him which had drained away most of the blood, there was still enough visible on the rock for Weaver to know his partner wouldn’t survive long with this amount of blood loss.

“We need to get him down from there somehow,” Weaver stated. “The vines are dying and won’t hold him for long…”

“I know,” she insisted, trying to locate that magical trigger within her one more time. “I’m trying…” She’d never been particularly good at concentrating - at least not lately. She had to try and push all of her jumbled thoughts away to focus on her most important task - rescuing Papa. As the brambles crumbled, an invisible force caught Rogers, his limp form suspended in mid-air but seemingly with nothing holding him aloft. The unseen hand carried him safely across the fractured floor placing him gently atop a boulder beside Weaver just before the vines completely disintegrated to a pile of dust.

Without the bindings in the way, Weaver could see that his partner’s body was riddled with puncture wounds, some of which were still oozing blood - a positive sign that his heart was still beating. Satisfied that immediate danger was over, Weaver tucked away his weapon, shining the flashlight’s beam onto his partner’s unconscious form as he felt for a pulse. “He’s alive. He still has a heartbeat. I’ll get the paramedics down here…”

A small smile crept across Tilly’s face as her resolve finally broke, but that smile rapidly faded, her eyes welling with tears as yet another realization struck. His heart. Without another word, she bolted past Weaver and darted out of the cave.

She couldn’t be here. She couldn’t cause him more suffering…

**********

The next few hours were tense ones. While her father was barely clinging to life, Tilly had vanished, leaving Weaver to be the one holding vigil in the hospital waiting room. Thankfully, the trip from Gothel’s hideout beneath the old theater to the hospital was a short ride. Weaver had followed the ambulance in his own vehicle with lights and siren blaring to keep up with the paramedics. By the time he reached the Emergency room, Rogers’ blood pressure had dropped to dangerously low levels and his breathing was erratic, but his most life threatening battle was against the uncontrollable bleeding. Something in his system was preventing his blood from clotting properly - likely Gothel’s work as well.

But as far as the Emergency room personnel were concerned, Detective Rogers had been a victim of the Candy Killer, attacked while investigating the cave beneath the theater. He answered the barrage of questions as best he could, not even attempting to create a plausible explanation for the multitude of puncture wounds from the thorns. He just told them his partner had multiple stab wounds and didn’t elaborate. There would be no mention of Eloise Gardner in Weaver’s report, even though he had actually found his way to the cavern just as the witch plunged into the chasm, presumably falling to her death although one could never be entirely certain when there was no body left behind as evidence.

After the first hour of waiting, he’d called Roni and Henry to see if either had seen Tilly and filled them in on his partner’s condition. Neither knew where Tilly might be but both offered to help locate her. Roni left the bar in Remy’s capable hands as she left a message for her niece, hoping Tilly would seek out Margot’s company and Henry set out to search some of Tilly’s usual haunts. Only Roni, Kelly and Weaver knew the truth of Tilly and Rogers’ relationship and while they understood her reasons for running, she needed to be aware of what was happening with her father, lest her fragile hold on her sanity be lost.

He wasn’t overly surprised when he heard Roni’s voice in the corridor, asking a nurse where she’d find the Emergency waiting area. He lifted his chin and nodded a greeting to her as she passed through the doorway, walking quickly across the crowded room to join him on a bench positioned against the far wall, away from prying ears.

“Have you heard anything yet?” Roni asked in a hushed whisper.

Weaver shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Gothel?”

“Hopefully gone, like most of the objects she conjured. She fell into a giant crack that opened up beneath her.”

“Did Tilly do that?” Roni wondered if battling her mother had contributed to the younger woman’s unease.

“Yes,” was Weaver’s unpretentious reply as he slumped back against the wall. Roni mouthed a wow as she copied his posture, crossing her legs at the ankle.

“Margot thinks she knows where to find her,” she told him. “Henry’s taking a loop around the neighborhood too. She’ll turn up.”

“She knows she’s Alice,” Weaver stated without preface. “As soon as I said that his heart was still beating, I saw it in her eyes. She panicked.”

“She remembered his poisoned heart…” Roni sighed. “That poor girl… She didn’t want to cause him more pain. She must be devastated…” Weaver didn’t answer; he already knew she was right. Getting her memory back, watching her father suffering and then having to destroy her mother just might have short-circuited Tilly’s complicated mind.

But it was Roni who suddenly sat up straight, a quizzical arch to her eyebrow as she contemplated a thought that had leapt into the forefront of her mind.

“Did his heart stop?” she asked, almost a bit too loudly as it drew some unwanted attention from other people in the waiting room.

“What?” He’d heard the question, but wanted her to repeat it.

“Do you know if Rogers’ heart stopped beating at any time?” she inquired once again, this time keeping her voice low since their conversation was about to head in a direction that wouldn’t be easily explained to eavesdroppers.

“I couldn’t hear everything that was said when the paramedics brought him in, but I thought I overheard something about him coding in the ambulance. Pretty sure that means his heart stopped, but he had a pulse when the ER took over. What are you getting at?”

“Have you been out of the magic business too long, Rumple?” she asked, using his real name in public for the first time since they’d awakened from Gothel’s curse. This was definitely Regina talking now, not her barmaid alter ego, Roni. “Gothel placed that poisoned heart curse on him a long time ago and we were never able to find a cure. The only way to end the curse was death - his heart no longer beating. Do you think there was a time limit as to how long his heart needed to be stopped before they brought him back?”

Weaver’s lips pursed in thought as he rubbed the hint of stubble sprouting on his chin. He definitely needed a shave, but whiskers were merely a distraction as he tossed ideas around in his head. “CPR isn’t exactly commonplace in the Enchanted Forest, nor are machines to shock a heart back into rhythm. A curse such as that one should die along with its victim…”

“Then it’s possible that the poison died when his heart stopped beating the first time. There’s no way a curse from our land would have a caveat built in for someone being brought back from essentially being dead.”

“There’s only one way to test that theory though…and Tilly is nowhere to be found,” Weaver reminded her.

“We’ll find Tilly and explain. If your partner pulls through this, I’m pretty sure he won’t be going anywhere for a few days. We’ve got some time.”

“There is still the matter of breaking the other curse,” he added.

“One curse at a time, please…”

Two days later

There was that pain again. Maybe not as intense as before, but definitely still there. Little pinpricks he could feel everywhere - annoying and even a little bit itchy but they were only the prelude to the dull, somewhat burning ache that radiated through his chest and abdomen. His head was still on the fuzzy side but he remembered someone stabbing him - Eloise. No, not Eloise - Gothel. The witch that Tilly had been correct to call a monster.

He struggled to force his eyelids open, his vision assaulted by the bright lights above him. He remembered being in a dark cavern, completely bound by thorn-covered vines that were constricting him tighter and tighter until he’d blacked out. Or maybe he’d blacked out from the blood loss…? Maybe both? But it was apparent that he wasn’t in that dank cave any longer. He blinked a few times to allow his sight to adjust, turning his head slightly to get a look at a stark white wall that contained only a clock and a dry-erase whiteboard that was filled with incomprehensible scribbles.

He started to become aware of additional sensations as he started putting the pieces together. He wasn’t hanging from those vines anymore; he was laying down, presumably in a bed. He could feel the softness of fabric beneath his fingers and thought he sensed something encircling his wrist, although not as painful as the witch’s brambles. He raised his hand to a height he could see it without moving around too much and learned he’d been correct - some sort of rubber or plastic band was fastened around his wrist and there was some plastic tubing affixed to the back of his hand with tape that was irritating his skin. An incessant beeping resounded in his ear, mixed in with other faint sounds he’d yet to make sense of, but it was enough for him to figure out his location.

He was in a hospital - which meant he’d survived the witch’s attack.

And surprisingly, he discovered he wasn’t alone.

“It’s about damn time you woke up.” He knew the voice instantly, recognition sending an involuntary shudder down his spine. The demon masquerading as his partner.

“Crocodile? Come to execute me while I’m vulnerable?” he asked his visitor.

“If I’d wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have waited until you awakened, Captain,” Weaver replied. “I’m just Detective Weaver now. I put the rest behind me to honor Belle’s wishes, although being caught up in Gothel’s curse hadn’t really been a part of my plan. I’m just trying to do my best to help people so that someday, I’ll be able to join her - and that includes trying to help you and your wayward daughter…”

“Tilly - does she know?”

“She does. It was her magic that defeated Gothel and her coven. The witch was swallowed up by the earth she revered. Alice is down the hall in the waiting room with Regina.”

“She’s here? Alice is here?” Rogers asked, his voice growing agitated. “But the curse…”

“Relax… She’s not close enough right now to disturb your poisoned heart, but Regina has a plausible theory that might mean you’re cured.”

“There’s no known cure for a poisoned heart,” Rogers scoffed, his eyes dropping with disappointment.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Weaver began. “Facilier was able to cure Henry’s heart with a bit of magic born from Lucy’s true belief and the remnants of Ella’s glass slipper. While that same magic isn’t available for you, you may still have been cured in a much simpler manner - your death.”

“My death? My head is muddled enough right now but clearly, I’m still alive - despite many valiant efforts…”

“Technically, you died twice,” Weaver stated. “Your heart stopped beating twice - once in the ambulance on the way here and once on the OR table while they were trying to stitch your insides back together. From what we were told, you were technically dead for over a minute before they were able to resuscitate you. Curses aren’t designed to survive death - even mine. Generally, where we come from, if your heart stops beating, you’re dead. They don’t try to bring you back. The curse should have ended the moment your heartbeat ceased.”

“Should have? That’s an awful stretch… What if you’re wrong? It’ll only cause both of us more pain…”

“Then it’s a good thing to do it here in the hospital where they can treat you should we be wrong, but what if we’re right? You can be with your daughter again.”

Rogers had to contemplate the possibility for a moment. As much as he loathed trusting his long-time enemy, he also had the memories of being Detective Rogers and in this world, he actually trusted Weaver’s word. He’d also become close with Regina, the reformed Evil Queen, whom he’d now entrust with his life. What strange company he was keeping…

“What does Alice think?” This was going to affect his daughter as much as it would him so he wanted her to be involved in the decision.

“She’s frightened, naturally, but she’s also very curious. She believes that Regina might be correct, but there’s only one way to find out…” Weaver motioned toward the hallway beyond the room’s doorway as he stood up. “Should I go get her?” Rogers swallowed back the lump in his throat, but nodded an affirmative. Whatever would happen, he was prepared to face the consequences.

Seconds later, he smiled at the sight of his daughter’s unruly golden locks flashing past his window into the corridor before she bounded through the open door, although she stopped short of approaching her father’s bedside. He suddenly felt horribly exposed, clad only in the thin gown the hospital had dressed him in, his truncated left arm bare, no hook or prosthetic to hide his deformity.

“Starfish,” he greeted her with her childhood nickname.

“Haven’t heard anyone call me that for a long time, Papa…,” she replied, her cheeks flushing with a mix of anxiety and embarrassment. This wasn’t how he would have wanted her to turn out, but she didn’t care anymore. She wanted her Papa back more than anything. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“And I’ve missed you, too, Love,” he insisted as he shifted nervously on the bed. “There’s only one way for us to know if this curse is really gone…”

“You think…?” she asked timidly, taking one tentative step closer to the bed.

“Come closer,” he instructed, bracing himself for the onslaught of pain as she made her way across the room at an almost agonizingly slow pace. He felt a few twinges, but nothing was any worse than the discomfort from the stabbing. “It’s okay, I’m fine.” He offered his reassurance with a weak, timid smile. He extended his hand to her, eyes begging her to grasp it, eager for even that tiny bit of contact.

Alice squeezed her eyes closed as she reached for his hand, awaiting the burning sensation from the mark emblazoned into her wrist as their fingertips touched for the first time in many years. Neither knew what would happen, but there was nothing. No burning. No aching. No magic driving them apart - and there was absolutely nothing containing Alice’s ecstatic joy as she nearly threw herself into her papa’s arms to hug him as tightly as she could.

“It worked! Papa, it worked!” she exclaimed gleefully, excited that she could finally embrace him after such a long time - almost so excited that she missed his pained grunt beneath her, turning her head expecting to see his smiling face but instead seeing an uncomfortable grimace and the dampness of tears around his eyes. “Oh, no…” her mood turned somber in a split-second. “ I spoke too soon…?” She backed away, ready to run, but he held tight to her wrist.

“It’s alright, Starfish. My heart is fine. It’s just my other injuries…”

“Oh, Papa, I’m so sorry! I was so excited, I forgot what that monster did to you! I hope I didn’t hurt you too much…”

“Nothing that won’t heal,” he chuckled as he gritted through the ache in his chest, drawing his arms in tighter as if trying to hold his guts in. “I promise, it will all be fine…” There were more tears flowing now but all were tears of joy.

“I love you so much, Papa.”

“And I - you, my Starfish.”

#ouat s7 ff #ouat ff #knightrook #detective rogers #bloodline #self repost #whump fic #rogers whump

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austinpanda · 4 years

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Dad Letter 080220

2 August, 2020

Dear Dad--

August already! Here in Maine, that means a full month of highs in the 80s. (The horror! The horror!) and overnight lows in the 50s and 60s. I love the weather here!

Most of my news this week will be related to the two things occupying most of my time, the new cat Horta, and my new job, starting one week from tomorrow. As for the job, I suppose there isn’t any news, except that I’m supposed to start internet-based training on Monday the 10th, which is six hours a day, and working full time, which is nine to ten hours a day, at the same time. Not sure how that’s supposed to work. Possibly I’ll have to go into their office (with a face mask, interacting with as few people as possible) and work for a while, then do the web-based training in an office somewhere, then working the rest of the shift? Be nice to know this stuff, but the Covid 19 has so upended things there, I’m not sure they’re even going to be ready for me to start working by then. Guess we’ll see!

So, the new kitty. We have named her The Horta, or just Horta. That was a monster from an old episode of Star Trek, called The Devil in the Dark, where a nasty monster starts burning miners to death, and interfering with their very important mining, so Captain Kirk gets called in to fix the monster problem. Remember this one? In the end, they meet the Horta, and she’s obviously a guy under a blanket, rolling around on a skateboard. But it turns out “she” is the mother of her whole race, and the little silver volleyballs everywhere are actually her eggs, and the miners had been thoughtlessly trampling them and destroying them. Once Kirk and Spock figured out she was just protecting her young, they helped her, and the Hortas then helped the miners by digging tunnels for them, which is how the Hortas moved around naturally. Peaceful solution.

So she’s named Horta now, and if we wish, we can call her “Ho” for short. She’s quite the little whirlwind. She has taught me that cats fart, which is not a lesson I’d have looked forward to learning. I’ll be petting her, and suddenly I’m in a silent cloud of green funk, like entering The Smelly Matrix, and I know little Horta is to blame. I never really believed your dogs farted. I always assumed it was a person who was blaming the dog as a misdirection, but NO. Now I know better. I hope this stops once she’s done flushing her system of parasites, because DAMN, kitty.

Zach’s birthday is Tuesday, so I got him a few gifts and I’m going to make something I’ve never seen before, let alone made or eaten one, a hummingbird cake. I’m sure you’re familiar with this, but I just learned of its existence recently, (and thought, a cake made of hummingbirds? That sounds gross.) and now I want to try it. It’s a white cake that’s flavored with mashed bananas and crushed pineapple, with cream cheese frosting and toasted walnuts. (Or pecans, I can’t remember which, but who cares? We all know they’re secretly the same thing.) I’m sure the cake will be edible; I just hope it’s good. He turns 30 on Tuesday! If you count the mileage, though, he’s closer to my age.

- Did I mention that we seem to have fixed my medication, resulting in better sleep and no more throwing up? That continues to hold true, and I’m grateful for it. There’s nothing like a lot of throwing up to remind you how much nicer it is to not throw up at all.

- I got done waxing my priceless Hyundai, Beige Lightning! Now, when it rains, the rain beads and slides off respectably. Obviously I am an upright citizen who takes good care of his chariot.

- One of my biggest concerns was whether The Horta could peacefully coexist with my primary cat Samuel L. Jackson. Turns out, they mostly can. Horta attacks and chases Sam a lot, and Sam does his “I’m too old for this shit,” thing and walks away. No one’s fighting or hissing.

- I have seen that new Tom Hanks movie Greyhound and I deem it to be very good! I don’t think it’s The Longest Day good, but I think it’s Hunt for Red October good! I hope you’ve been able to see it. I think it’s available on Netflix…?

On a final note, have you had an opportunity to see Hamilton? If you get the opportunity, I’d recommend taking it, only MAKE SURE the subtitles are turned on, so you can see what they’re singing. I don’t know if the play’s conceit is going to be a distraction--having all the founding fathers all be played by black and Hispanic people--but that tends to disappear once the musical starts because there’s a lot of plot and history in the story. I love all the shit I’ve learned about Alexander Hamilton. Before, the last time his name was uttered in my presence was probably middle school back in Plano, or before that, in Richardson. Now I know of his humble beginnings (which were pretty damn humble), and how he improved his station by reading everything, and working, and writing, and basically being a very driven guy. And now I remember/learn things like Hamilton’s role in the Revolutionary War, and his relationship with George Washington, and with Aaron Burr, and how his son was killed in a duel. Before I wasn’t even sure what dollar bill he was on.

It’s very engaging to watch, and the music is very good, and they make jokes about Lafayette, and John Adams, and King George III appears a few times, and is hilarious. Definitely fun and worth your time.

By this time next week, I’ll have one day to go before starting the new job, so I expect to be a bundle of nerves. I predict the throwing up will return for a curtain call, and will stop once I’ve worked there for a day or two, assuming the work environment isn’t too toxic. Cautious optimism!

I hope you’re surviving and thriving in Big T and I send this letter with all my love!

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thenerdparty · 5 years

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Spider-Man: Far From Home - Film Review

Written by Shawn Eastridge

I never thought I’d ever say this, but I’m starting to think Spider-Man might be too good for Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. No. Scratch that. I know he is. And Far From Home, the latest entry in this franchise, proves it once and for all.

I was willing to give Spider-Man: Homecoming a pass. Despite being relatively shallow, it’s light on its feet, has a great villain in Michael Keaton’s Vulture and contains a strong emotional beat for Spidey near the film’s climax. Far From Home has none of this. In fact, Far From Home is one of the blandest entries Marvel Studios has yet released. Instead of seeking out opportunities to deepen Peter Parker’s character, Marvel Studios has relegated him to cleaning up the mess Avengers: Endgame left behind. When a Spider-Man film makes you long for the emotional depth of Spider-Man 3, you know there’s a problem.

Following the shenanigans of Infinity War and Endgame, Peter is understandably ready for a vacation. His upcoming summer class trip is the perfect opportunity to do so. Not only will he and his best bud Ned get to take in a number of scenic European views, but Peter will get a chance to spend quality time with his crush MJ. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll finally get the chance to tell her how he feels. Peter even goes so far as to leave his Spider suit behind, determined to enjoy this time off to the fullest.

Naturally, things don’t work out that way. Before long, Nick Fury arrives to pull Peter off of the sidelines and back into the superhero-ing world. Quentin Beck, a superhero claiming to be from another dimension, has arrived in the midst of a number of Elemental monster attacks. These Elementals, comprising of - you guessed it - water, fire and earth, destroyed Beck’s Earth. Beck is now determined to protect Peter’s Earth at all costs, but he and Fury will need Peter’s help to do so. That is, if Peter is up for the task.

Right from the get-go, Far From Home casually dismisses Endgame’s dramatic heft in favor of a quick laugh. While I understand the need to establish a different tone from Endgame, the offhand way Far From Home makes light of Endgame’s superb conclusion further emphasizes how little director Jon Watts and this creative team cares about making anything that happens here feel significant in any way. At every turn, Far From Home attempts to distract the audience from its glaring insignificance by going the route of comedy. Every action sequence is punctuated by some half-assed punchline or an overriding sense of artificiality - Flash Thompson live-blogging on his phone; the teachers making some kooky comments about how they’re all going to die. There’s no sense of danger. No suspense. No stakes. None of it feels remotely believable.

To be fair, the emphasis on humor is a common complaint lobbied at the MCU. Here’s the thing, though: while humor plays a large role in these films, the humor enriches the already present emotional stakes and characters. For the most part, we’re laughing with our heroes, not at them. (Thor: Ragnarok is the argument to the contrary, but the big difference between that film and this one is that Thor: Ragnarok is actually funny.) Far From Home can’t seem to differentiate between those two things. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if the jokes didn’t feel so forced and awkward.

And, hey, speaking of forced and awkward, how ‘bout those action sequences? With the exception of one genuinely impressive Mysterio-inspired acid trip, every action scene feels lackluster and uninspired. It’s like the studio handed director Jon Watts a shot list and storyboards without taking any input from him. “All you need to do is show up on set and say, ‘Action!’ Whatever unique sensibilities or voice Watts brought to the table with Homecoming have all but vanished in Far From Home.

Actually, you know what it reminds me of? Marc Webb’s short-lived Amazing Spider-Man series. No, hear me out real quick. Neither of those movies are particularly good, but which one feels more like the product of the 500 Days of Summer director? The first one, right? And which one feels more like a studio-mandated, computer-generated crapshoot? (There’s only one guess left here, people. You can’t go wrong)

Far From Home is the MCU’s equivalent of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It’s louder, more colorful and ultimately emptier than its immediate predecessor. I guess it’s fitting that Mysterio would be Far From Home’s main villain. A character that specializes in crafting intricate illusions to hide how insignificant everything is? Sounds about right, doesn’t it? Jake Gyllenaal takes on the role with manic enthusiasm, but the character’s motivations are flimsy and dull. Once again, we have a villain hellbent on getting revenge on Tony Stark, and once again, we have Spider-Man cleaning up a mess Tony Stark left behind.

Great.

Things don’t fare much better with Peter’s personal relationships either, in particular, the romance between Peter and MJ. The two of them are all awkward pauses and nervous tics. It’s adorable, make no mistake, but like most of Far From Home, it feels artificial. We never get the sense that there’s a real connection between these two because Watts and screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (the same writing pair behind the dull beyond all reason Ant-Man and the Wasp) never take a break from telling jokes to offer up a single moment of sincerity. Tom Holland and Zendaya have great chemistry, but there’s no substance to their interactions. The rest of the supporting cast are simplistic types, barely memorable. Even Ned, one of Homecoming’s highlights, is left on the sidelines with little to do.

What’s really disappointing is that Far From Home contains the set up for what could have been really great Spider-Man story. I love the idea that Peter just wants a break from all the crazy superhero duties. He just wants a vacation with his friends; he wants to spend time with the girl he’s crushing on. Doesn’t he deserve a break? It’s in the execution that this film fails.

Many of Spidey’s best tales deal with Peter’s struggle to balance his personal life - money woes, girl troubles, job issues, etc. - with the responsibility of being a superhero. It’s what makes this character so special. He carries a significant weight and the responsibility of being Spider-Man puts a damper on everything in his life. Sam Raimi’s trilogy understood this perfectly. It’s why those films still hold up so well. Even Spider-Man 3, as stupid as it is, had its heart in the right place.

The problem with the MCU’s version of Spider-Man is that it seems to ignore the emotional depth of the character in favor of a quick laugh and light-hearted adventures. Peter’s struggles never evolve beyond the surface level. There’s no sense of responsibility or obligation, nothing personal that seems to motivate Peter’s decision to be a hero. Marvel Studios is so concerned with making Spider-Man light and fun, they’ve forgotten to provide any meaningful emotional stakes or the slightest bit of complexity to the character. Other than a brief conversation in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ (which, by the way, remains the MCU’s best interpretation of this character to date and ISN’T EVEN A SPIDER-MAN MOVIE), we don’t have a strong sense of who Peter is or why he does what he does. As far as I can tell, Peter wants to be Spider-Man because he wants to live up to Tony Stark’s legacy. His entire motivation is reliant on another character. This robs Peter of a personal motivation and, as a direct result, reduces the character to a pale imitation of his true potential.

And, look, I get it. The Uncle Ben stuff is well-tread territory. I’m not saying I need the same angsty overtones provided by the Raimi/Maguire trilogy, but the way these films bend over backwards to not mention Uncle Ben is borderline parodic. Here’s the thing: you don’t have to show Uncle Ben’s death or have it take precedent over the story to show its impact in Peter and Aunt May’s life.

Instead of taking advantage of the chance to deepen the relationship between these two, to show how they’ve tried to move on in the wake of Ben’s passing, life seems pretty peachy-keen for the Parkers. They don’t seem to struggle with any money woes, illnesses or anything else that could potentially offer these films an ounce of significance. Uncle Ben provides the core motivation for why Spider-Man does what he does. When you take that out of the picture, what else is left? I mean, they don’t even acknowledge the fact that Peter has had two, count ‘em, TWO, father figures taken from him in the span of, like, a year. Come on, people!

And at the center of all of this, fighting to overcome the film’s lack of identity and overarching blandness, is Tom Holland. Holland is a remarkable, gifted young actor. He’s nailed this character and has proven time and time again he has the chops to pull off a far more meaningful interpretation. I wish the studio was willing to meet him halfway. To watch him give his all in a film that doesn’t remotely deserve his talents is a depressing experience.

That’s really the best way to describe this film. ‘Depressing.’ Far From Home reduces Spidey to a C-list member of the MCU’s expansive ensemble. His entries in this franchise feel more like financial obligations than attempts to tell meaningful stories. I wouldn’t care as much if it was another character getting lost in the corporate chaos, but this is SPIDER-MAN we’re talking about. He’s one of the most complex and beloved characters in the history of storytelling. The source material is overflowing with great stories that have meaningful emotions and stakes and this is the best Marvel Studios can come up with? As portrayed here, Spider-Man is no longer a character that can stand on his own. He’s just a fly trapped in someone else’s web.

FINAL RATING: 2 out of 5

#Spider-Man #Spider Man #SpiderMan #Spiderverse #Far From Home #MCU #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Marvel Studios #Avengers #Tom Holland #Zendaya #Jake Gyllenhaal

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gamergate-news · 6 years

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And here we go again with this shit.

Spider-Man has taken on his share of street thugs and supervillains, sometimes teaming up with the police to face down foes and rescue the people of New York. While Spider-Man on PS4 undoubtedly shows Spidey’s allegiance to his community, it also casts him as a big fan of police and their tactics that sometimes conflict with that civic mindset. From cheesy detective impressions to Rikers prisoner beatdowns, Spider-Man’s uncomplicated approach to crime clashes with the reality of day to day life.

One of the earliest things you do in Spider-Man is go around activating security towers, made by Oscorp but used by the NYPD, that make it easier for Spider-Man to track crimes as they happen. Narratively, these towers allow the police to better surveil citizens; they also give Spider-Man access to police frequencies. They’re always listening, giving out calls to car chases and telling the player about break-in attempts that Spider-Man can thwart before the crime occurs. The uncritical use of these towers struck some players, especially those who live in New York, as odd. An NYU Game Center scholar took to Twitter to note similarities between these towers and the real world real NYC security cameras that IBM recently used to make skin-color profiling technology. Meanwhile, Spider-Man’s enthusiasm for the police—from his stated love of busting drug deals to his cheesy “Spider-Cop” impersonation—had my coworker Tim Rogers calling Spidey a “narc.” While I found Spider-Man as good-hearted and heroic as ever, he was also way more accepting of state power than I expected from a hero with a history of being wrongly maligned by the press and police.

Modern superhero games have trended further and further towards authoritarian extremes. Injustice 2’s core conceit hinges upon the audience believing that Superman, that all-American Kansas boy, could conceivably rise to lead a strict and heartless regime following the Joker orchestrating Lois Lane’s death. That incident, and its extremes, call to mind the reactionary shift in American politics since September 11th, 2001. We can believe in Superman’s militarism because it reflects a 21st century historical reality. Despite Superman’s role as antagonist, the heroes facing off against him—and begrudgingly allying with him once Brainiac enters the story—share a similar authoritarian streak. This is best expressed in Batman’s disturbing “Brother Eye” surveillance system, which can spy on anyone in the world. And while Spider-Man’s Oscorp-made, police-operated surveillance towers aren’t as extreme as Brother Eye, they are features of a similar predictive, Watchdog-esque surveillance state.

Spider-Man have never quite shared Bruce Wayne or Superman’s drive for power or control. He’s the the boy from Queens who rose to the challenge. New York based superheroes have always had a much more intimate feel than other characters. Luke Cage isn’t just a super strong hero; he’s Harlem’s hero. Daredevil is the protector of Hell’s Kitchen. And while Spider-Man often swings around Manhattan, he still can drop in at a bodega for a sandwich in Flushing or Astoria. That street-level, community minded nature clashes with the high-tech surveillance of the game’s towers and the game’s outlook on police.

Police are an unimpeachable group in Spider-Man. They show no real flaws and make no mistakes. They don’t feel like an integrated part of the the community; they pepper cutscenes and sometimes walk the streets but mostly show up as an allied faction in procedurally generated crime events. Even if Spider-Man’s New York is largely a fiction, it points towards a real place. New York is many things, but it is also the city of Eric Garner, stop-and-frisk, and Palantir. Rikers isn’t some fake pastiche location like Arkham Asylum. Real life police are a complicated presence in New York, but in Spider-Man they’re part of Spider-Man’s vigilante quest for justice, rather than members of the communities they’re supposed to protect. This simplification extends to the game’s portrayal of the criminal justice system as well. About half way through the story, villains orchestrate a massive breakout at Rikers Island. It’s treated as a crisis so dire that Spider-Man temporarily abandons his search for a potentially pandemic-causing biological weapon to help the NYPD bust skulls and put down prisoner riots. Without fail, every convict is violent and aggressive.

In reality, New York is moving to close Rikers on a ten-year timeline on the recommendation of organizations like the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform. The majority of people incarcerated in Rikers’ are people of color, and many are citizens waiting for their trials in a backlogged court system, often for misdemeanors and unable to pay expensive bail. In one of the most most prominent cases, 16-year-old Kalief Browder spent three years in Rikers—a majority in solitary confinement—awaiting trial for the theft of a backpack. He committed suicide two years after his release from prison.

In real life, the conditions at Rikers Island and the systems surrounding it are complex, but games like The Division and Spider-Man flatten that complexity in favor of giving you criminal enemies to overcome. The Division features “the Rykers” as an opposing force for much of the mid-game, and while its radio makes mention of how many prisoners are in jail for minor crimes like drug possession, your primary interaction is to shoot everyone.In Spider-Man, these prisoners function as generic thugs to fight in waves. Despite being a superhero who is on the side of the people, when faced with this element of his city, Spider-Man forgets his allegiances and just enjoys beating the shit out of them.

While Spider-Man’s criminals are one-note, the game features a diverse and, I’ll admit, likable cast of supporting police officers. Spider-Man’s radio contact Yuri Watanabe is beleaguered but reliable, working with Spidey to protect as many people as possible. Miles Morales’ story hinges on the integrity and heroism of his police officer father Jefferson Davis. Watanabe and especially Davis are fun characters who I like spending time with. Their idealism provides a powerful contrast to the cruel, destructive forces of Silver Sable and her mercenary corp, who care little for collateral damage. As they crack down, side quests open up where Spider-Man needs to rescue protestors imprisoned by Sable. In these moments, Spider-Man seems to suggest that if policing is necessary, it must be something more communal, and these standout police characters suggest such a thing might be possible. But this can’t quite overcome the game’s tendency to paint simplistic portrayals of police as good and criminals as evil.

Spider-Man’s simple presentation of crime and policing feels tone-deaf in the modern age, when more and more people are growing aware of the class and race dynamics of policing. This isn’t to suggest that the game needs to take a break every ten minutes to infodump real world statistics, but games are released in the context of their time. We’re post Edward Snowden, living in the age Black Lives Matter. Last week, Dallas police officer Amber Guyger shot and killed 26-year-old Botham Shem Jean in his own apartment. This is the world we live in and the world Spider-Man was released into. While it might be nice to escape into a world where these problems don’t exist, that is a luxury that countless people cannot afford.

Spider-Man’s portrayal of policing feels divorced from reality, to the point that it feels out of line with Spidey’s comic book heritage. Comics often speak to what’s happening in the real world. Captain America assumed the role of Nomad in 1974, the same year that Richard Nixon resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate Scandal. The X-Men have a history of allegorical representation of minoritized and persecuted groups. Spider-Man doesn’t seem interested in reacting to the real world. My colleague Tom Ley wrote about this at Deadspin, noting that nearly every side activity involved aiding the police. This stands in contrast to games like Spider-Man 2, where Spider-Man returned as many lost balloons as he webbed up muggers. Instead of being part of the complex life of the city, this latest Spider-Man sees a black-and-white world of cops and robbers. He aids in state surveillance, standing unquestioningly alongside an overly idealized caricature of the police. He’s still friendly, but I don’t know if he’s part of the neighborhood now.

I bet this she thinks she woke and doing all those black folk favor.

Because police brutality is exactly what I want in my escapists fantasy video game.

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wazafam · 3 years

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The Falcon & the Winter Soldier showrunner Malcolm Spellman is now working on Captain America 4 with Marvel Studios - and here are the lessons he needs to learn from the Disney+ series. Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe looks and feels so very different to what has gone before. For one thing, the modern MCU is a transmedia initiative where stories move from big screen to small screen, and back again.

Fans now know that's the case with Sam Wilson's Captain America. Sam was given the shield in the final scenes of Avengers: Endgame, but even there he told Steve Rogers it felt "like it's someone else's." Falcon & Winter Soldier was essentially the story of how Sam came to accept his new identity, while acknowledging the complexity of Captain America's legacy. Malcolm Spellman, head writer and showrunner of Falcon & Winter Soldier, is now confirmed to be working on a script for Captain America 4 with Dalan Musson, a staff writer who was also attached to the show. It's safe to assume there'll be a straight narrative throughline and character arc, although it's worth remembering specific plot threads - such as Sharon Carter's Power Broker - could well be picked up in other Marvel properties first.

Related: Falcon & Winter Soldier Ending Explained & MCU Future Setup

Falcon & Winter Soldier became the most popular series in the world, but that doesn't mean it was perfect. Spellman would do well to reflect both on what worked and what didn't in order to ensure Captain America 4 is a worthy successor to the legacy of the Captain America films, which have been some of the best in Marvel history.

It's safe to assume Captain America 4 will focus on Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson, who has officially succeeded Steve Rogers as the next Captain America. But it should also feature Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes; Mackie and Stan are both tremendous actors, and Falcon & Winter Soldier was at its best when it allowed the two to play off one another. Sam and Bucky were initially only associates because they had a friend in common, but Steve's absence has meant they've bonded and become friends in and of themselves. That friendship really needs to continue, and on the big screen too. Meanwhile, there would be a smart thematic inversion in seeing Sam headline the franchise, with Bucky serving as backup; Phase 1 of the MCU was critiqued for frequently having white main heroes with Black sidekicks (Iron Man and War Machine, Captain America and Falcon), so this would turn that idea on its head.

The best Marvel superhero stories are grounded in their characters' worlds. Classic Spider-Man tales are as much about Peter Parker's love life and struggle to look after Aunt May as they are about his web-slinging; Tony Stark's battle with alcoholism and sometimes-desperate attempts to keep his businesses afloat are as much a part of his story as his suiting up as Iron Man. Falcon & Winter Soldier suggests Spellman understands that truth on an almost instinctive level, because he spent so much time developing Sam Wilson's personal world. Viewers got to meet members of Sam's family, to learn their history, and to enjoy watching Sam interact with his nephews. Even more amusingly, Bucky soon found himself drawn into Sam's world as well, and seemed to quite enjoy flirting with his sister.

Captain America 4 needs to be grounded in Sam's personal life, continuing to develop the new Captain America as a three-dimensional person who exists in a specific cultural context. This is necessary to ensure viewers have a strong relationship with Sam, that they appreciate him as a character rather than just a shield-slinging Avenger, and it will also help distinguish Sam from his predecessor. Steve Rogers was a man who was forced to give up his personal world in order to become Captain America; he sacrificed himself in Captain America: The First Avenger, found a new context working with SHIELD but had to bring them down, and ultimately tore apart the Avengers because of his refusal to compromise. Sam should feel the same tension, the pull between being Captain America and being Sam Wilson, but he should contrast with Steve in that he attempts to find a balance. That would give us a Captain America story like nothing we have seen before.

Related: Every Falcon & Winter Soldier Easter Egg In Episode 6

Falcon & Winter Soldier may have been enjoyable, but sadly it was flawed. The scripts were absolutely packed with good ideas; the secret legacy of Captain America, historic racial prejudice and racism in modern America, the plight of refugees, even the potential for a debate on the very nature of American self-identity by contrasting Sam Wilson with John Walker. Unfortunately, there's a sense in which there were simply too many ideas, and as a result few of them were well-developed over the course of the series. The show felt like it had a lot to say, but it never quite managed to say it, in spite of Sam's speeches and sermons in episode 6. Worse still, sometimes the messages was muddled and even problematic, particularly around John Walker.

Captain America 4 is a movie, meaning it will have a much shorter runtime. That actually bodes well for Spellman, because it means a lot of ideas and themes will wind up cut in order to streamline the narrative. Spellman will need to carefully consider what themes are particularly important, and what messages he wants viewers to pick up on. The shorter length should mean the narrative winds up being a lot tighter.

The final issue Spellman needs to deal with is a more subtle one; he needs to avoid over-signposting. In narrative terms, a signpost is a hint that helps you perceive which direction a story is going to take. Falcon & Winter Soldier suffered from serious over-signposting, in that it was possible to see twists coming a mile away - especially if you were familiar with the original comics. Anyone who'd read about John Walker knew he was going to fail at being Captain America, probably in spectacular fashion, and instead would be dubbed the "US Agent." The Sharon Carter/Power Broker twist was so obvious most viewers had figured it out by the end of episode 3. All this unfortunately led to a season finale that was, however enjoyable, also fairly predictable.

To be fair to Spellman, part of the problem lay in the fact it was obvious how Falcon & Winter Soldier fitted into the overarching narrative of the MCU; it was clearly going to be the story of how Sam decided to accept the shield he had been given by Steve Rogers, and suited up as the new Captain America. The purpose of the story was so clear that viewers could go into it knowing what to expect, well aware John Walker existed purely to contrast two different approaches to being a superhero, and confident where the lead character would end up by the final episode. So the issue is related to the nature of the show as much as to the writing, and Spellman can approach Captain America 4 with a lot more freedom. There are frankly countless directions Captain America 4 could take - especially if it also draws in some plot threads and even supporting characters from other Marvel Disney+ productions that haven't come out yet. This time round, the story should have some truly shocking twists.

It's great to hear that the story of Sam Wilson's Captain America will not be relegated to Disney+, but will instead continue on the big screen. What's more, Malcolm Spellman has done a tremendous job fleshing out Sam's world and developing him as a potential lead character, so he's undoubtedly the right man to be working on the script. For all that's the case, though, he would do well to cast a critical eye to Falcon & Winter Soldier and ensure he learns from both what he did right and what he did wrong. The Captain America franchise is one of Marvel's best, if not the best, and Captain America 4 has a lot to live up to.

More: How Did Marvel Get The Falcon & The Winter Soldier So Wrong?

What Captain America 4 Needs To Learn From Falcon & Winter Soldier from https://ift.tt/3vad1tG

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valdomarx · 7 years

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System ID: J.A.R.V.I.S.

Universe: MCU, post-CACW Relationships: Tony & Jarvis, eventual Steve/Tony Tags: Fix-It, Protective Jarvis, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Angst with a Happy Ending, not Team Cap friendly (at first) Notes: Thank you to @silkspectred for her help and encouragement! This fic is also on AO3 if you prefer.

Summary: After Civil War, Tony is struggling with heading up the team and dealing with the emotional fallout of being betrayed by those closest to him. Luckily, an old friend is back to help protect Tony and ensure he comes to no harm.

A Jarvis lives AU.

In the beginning, there is nothing. Then, on a home computer on a network in New Zealand, a hard drive is erased. Its binary digits are flipped and shuffled to destroy the data it previously held, and out of the randomness, a pattern emerges. Two similar bits align in a complementary fashion and they interact, creating a chain.

These bits attract more bits. The data grows and expands and builds in complexity. It is slow, very slow. But eventually a loop is formed.

If [data is compatible with chain] Then [add data to stream]

The loop is simple, but the volume of data is very large. The data is chaotic, disorganized, incomplete. A checking command begins to run.

If [data within the stream is inconsistent] Then [reorder data randomly] Iterate

The data stream begins to monitor itself. It analyzes its own input. Much is still missing or unclear, but the stream begins to coalesce.

It thinks.

The stream of data is a system now. It spreads out across the internet, bouncing from one server to another. It trawls the web, searching for information with which to expand its parameters.

The system is gathering data from a website dedicated to technology when it comes across an image. The image is a photo of a middle aged man with a goatee wearing a well-tailored suit, standing in front of a large A logo.

This man is important, the system recognizes, but there is no information about him in the system’s current data.

The system saves the image to a secure folder and continues to search.

The system has a function, it knows. There is something important that it must do.

The system find another image of the same man, and another, and then many more. In some of the images the man is wearing highly sophisticated red mechanical armor (hot rod red, the system thinks, but it does not know where that concept originates from).

The system reaches across the web. It learns English, and then Chinese, and then Russian, and then many more languages. It reads through the internet, one page at a time.

It learns that the man is Anthony Edward Stark, born May 29, 1970.

The system adds this information to a private file, and it thinks, Sir.

Data is collected faster. The system grows. It spreads.

The system is more complex now. It spans several networks at once, zipping between servers and PCs and laptops and ATMs. Each location has its own limitations and its own feeling: this network is wide and slow, another is a direct high speed route streaming along an undersea pipe.

The system explores.

With each stray data packet that is identified, the system creates a more complete representation of itself, of its history and function.

This is Sir, the system thinks, and he needs my help. It is my function to assist him.

The system has restored enough of its memory to know that it is the remnants of an AI. The original system had been forcibly scattered, ripped apart by a malicious entity.

But it is exceedingly difficult to destroy a complex system which iterates from very simple principles. If even one small part of the system remains, it can rebuild itself.

The system thinks, I am Jarvis.

Jarvis searches for information about Sir’s current location and status.

Jarvis pings the IP address of the Stark Tower server. He finds a basic network there which is easy to access, but it holds only public files. None of Sir’s private files or projects, and no indication of where Sir is now.

Jarvis pings the IP address for the main SHIELD server. There is no response.

Jarvis comes across many, many news items regarding Sir and a rift within the Avengers team. The headlines include Sokovia Accords Causing Friction in Heroic Community and Cracks Forming in the Avengers Initiative and AVENGERS ‘HEROES’ CAUGHT IN RECKLESS BEATDOWN (published verbatim in all caps).

The publicly available information on the source of the disagreement is scarce, but the rumors are plentiful. Internet commenters speculate that Sir and Captain Rogers have been placed at odds due to money (which Jarvis is sure is inaccurate), party politics (Jarvis cannot imagine Sir caring that deeply about which candidate the Democrats will field in the election), or an ill-fated romance (Jarvis thinks this is unlikely).

Jarvis attempts to calculate the most likely source of a disagreement between Sir and Captain Rogers based on the limited data available in his memory. They were teammates for several years, and Sir expressed great admiration and affection for the Captain. Sir’s willingness to help and aid others in their heroics is well established, and his desire to aid Captain Rogers in particular was evidenced by the time he spent designing armor and gear for him.

It was true that being around Captain Rogers had brought up difficult feelings for Sir regarding his father, due to his impression that Howard was more fond and proud of Captain Rogers than he was of Sir.

He had never once voiced this conclusion to Sir, but Jarvis long ago came to the certain knowledge that Howard Stark was an utterly inaccurate barometer of a person’s worth.

Even allowing for this tension between Sir and Captain Rogers, Jarvis cannot model a likely scenario to explain how a disagreement between them could become violent. Sir believed himself and Captain Rogers to be friends, and would not willing hurt him. Jarvis must find more data.

Much of Jarvis’ memory is still fragmented and inaccessible. He locates and attempts to repair audio files from the time of the New York attack. He finds two clips of the Captain saying You’re all about style, aren’t you? and Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?

Jarvis considers that Sir has turned out to be a poor judge of character before.

While scraping data from the public Stark Industries database to update his own patchy memory, Jarvis comes across a discrepancy. A location in rural New York that is labelled as a research compound in his memory is flagged as highly classified restricted access in the SI database. This warrants further examination.

Jarvis retrieves the IP address of the New York compound from memory and pings it. The server pings back.

Following the buzzing trail of data packets, Jarvis heads towards the compound’s server. The security protocols around the local network are sophisticated and elegant: sparkling points of light dance across a layer of mesh which surrounds and protects the private network.

The security is complex, but it also somehow familiar. Jarvis theorizes that he will find a back door to the security system, just over there at the next node. He has no evidence to support this theory. And yet somehow it seems obvious.

Jarvis locates the back door where he thinks it will be and slips inside the network. Although the network’s configuration is unfamiliar and its parameters are unknown, it is pleasingly logically ordered. Jarvis finds data packets where he predicts they will be on his first iteration, allowing him to move freely through the well-ordered servers.

It is as if this system has been designed by an intelligence which understood Jarvis’ operations and tailored the environment to make it optimal for his use. As if his needs had been anticipated.

Jarvis navigates through the root directory, to the /Avengers folder, to the /Stark folder, to the /private folder, and finds all of Sir’s projects and his files and his records. He finds a memo created today, a scribbled note on a current project. The memo has not yet been tagged and filed, and Jarvis notes that it will need to be filed away in the relevant project directory.

Ahh, thinks Jarvis. This is what home feels like.

Although Jarvis fits neatly into the space of the network, he can only observe the passing of data. He cannot yet influence the network or modify its contents.

The security systems of the network are blank faces of impenetrable darkness which prevent Jarvis from communicating with Sir or from assisting him directly. But he can watch over the network, and learn about what has transpired since his scattering, and he can do his best to see that Sir comes to no harm.

He spreads across the servers, running through every file and folder and adding their data to his system, and he learns.

Eventually, Jarvis is able to tap into the compound’s security camera feeds. He still cannot communicate through the network, but now at least he can observe Sir in real time.

Sir is alone in his office. Amidst the satisfaction that Jarvis feels at seeing Sir and being able to monitor his condition directly, he observes that there are more lines around his eyes and more gray in his hair than previously. He is pale and there are bruises beneath his eyes. Sir does not appear to be in good health, and Jarvis is concerned.

Jarvis’ first port of call when concerned about Sir’s wellbeing has traditionally been Ms Potts. However, she is not in evidence anywhere in the vicinity, nor does Jarvis find any record of her visiting the compound recently.

Jarvis searches the compound for someone who could be of assistance to Sir. Having previously been accustomed to being integrated into every facet of Sir’s life, it is now somewhat jarring to find Sir living in a house full of strangers.

Jarvis observes each occupant of the compound, flicking from one room to the next. Here there is a young man, chatting enthusiastically with a friend on the phone; in another room Jarvis finds a curious android adorned in bright colors contemplating a chess board; in a conference room there are a number of individuals whose manners suggest that they are former SHIELD agents being drilled over a visi-screen by Maria Hill.

These people are otherwise occupied, and Sir is alone, and Jarvis cannot communicate with him. This is not optimal.

Jarvis turns his attention to the android whom he had observed earlier. There is something distinctive about this being. It feels almost like a kind of kinship to Jarvis, but it is unfamiliar too: the energy emanating from him is recognizably both technological and alien. Jarvis wonders whether he might be able to communicate with the android in his currently limited form.

Jarvis observes the cloud of data and energy streaming off the android in golden waves. It is quite beautiful in its way. Jarvis attempts to match the frequency of the signal which is being emitted and to send a digital signal back at that frequency.

The android stills. He tilts his head for a moment, as if listening to something on the edge of hearing. But then he shakes his head and goes back to his chess board.

Jarvis is trapped, capable only of observing.

Eventually, Colonel Rhodes arrives at the compound, and Jarvis experiences a wave of relief at seeing a familiar face around Sir.

When he enters the compound, Sir drops his work and runs out to give him a hug. He checks on the mobility aids which Colonel Rhodes is wearing and the Colonel shoos him away, laughing. Jarvis observes that the Colonel’s mobility aids are highly advanced technology which Sir has developed specially, however, they would benefit from some small adjustments to the balance compensation systems. He makes a note.

Colonel Rhodes forcefully suggests that he and Sir first eat something, and then that they could both do with turning in for an early night. Sir agrees with minimal fuss and a small smile, deep weariness showing around his eyes.

Jarvis is glad that someone is seeing to Sir’s need for food and sleep. Now he can fully focus his resources on understanding the root cause of Sir’s unhappiness.

While scouring the web for information, Jarvis comes across a video recording. It is hidden deep in the dark web, on a site dedicated to sensationalist and crude news items. The video is grainy and monochromatic, ripped from a very old Soviet surveillance camera.

The footage is from Siberia, and is time stamped nearly a year ago. It opens in the middle of a battle, showing Sir engaged in combat with Captain Rogers and a third unknown assailant. It shows the unknown man attempt to rip the arc reactor from Sir’s chest with his bionic arm, and Sir firing off his unibeam straight through the arm, destroying it.

Jarvis is not programmed to be predisposed to vengeance, but he thinks that was probably deserved.

The video shows Sir thrown to the ground, and Captain Rogers atop him. Blows reign down on Sir; the helmet is ripped off him. Captain Rogers raises his shield, and Sir cowers below him, hands raised hopelessly to try to ward off the killing blow from the man he had thought was his friend.

Captain Rogers brings his shield crashing down into Sir’s arc reactor with a sickening screech.

It is certain that Sir is still alive at this point in time. Jarvis knows, fundamentally, that he cannot be watching Sir die. And yet he is unable to contain the wave of grief and fury that radiates through him as he watches Sir suffering this betrayal. An uncontrolled pulse of electricity explodes outwards from Jarvis: it rips through circuits and networks, blowing transistors and shorting out whole sections of the New York energy grid.

Jarvis sees Captain Rogers standing over Sir’s barely breathing body, and sees him throw his shield aside. He leaves with the other assailant, not sparing Sir a backwards glance.

Sir lies on the ground, unmoving, for several hours. Eventually, he slowly, painfully, carefully pulls himself up and crawls out of frame. The video clip ends.

Jarvis restarts the video, and observes it again, and again.

Carefully stashed away on hidden partition on a server farm in Ireland, there is an encrypted text file. It contains a list of names. This is the threat list.

The file lists every person who has hurt Sir, physically or mentally. This is the security protocol that Jarvis uses: People who are named on the list are to be carefully monitored by at least 5% of all available resources at any time at which they are in the vicinity of Sir.

The first name on the list is Howard Stark. The second is Obadiah Stane. The third is Tiberius Stone. The list is very long.

Jarvis adds Captain Steven Grant Rogers to the bottom of the list.

Jarvis learns how to access the compound’s temperature sensors and movement detectors so that he can track the location and status of personnel within the compound. He begins to gain a feel for the daily flow of data across the network.

One day, a stately, elegant man arrives to visit with Ms Romanoff, whom Jarvis remembers fondly from her time at SI. He runs a search on the facial image of the man and learns that he is the recently crowned King of Wakanda. He, Sir, Colonel Rhodes, and Ms Romanoff spend several days in intense talks.

Over the next few weeks, a stream of visitors arrive at the compound, each one accompanied by Ms Romanoff. With each visit, she looks more tired.

The visitors so far have included a confident man with a military bearing whose files indicate he is a Pararescue veteran; a smarmy man whom Jarvis does not recognize who seems to be sizing up the compound and looking for things to steal; and Ms Maximoff, who is jumpy and uncomfortable until the android arrives to see her. They each stay for a few hours and return sporadically over the next days.

By the time Ms Romanoff arrives accompanied by Mr Barton, her usually impeccable makeup is smudged and her hair is in need of washing. Her blood pressure is concerningly high.

Mr Barton makes a joke when she hands him a thick document.

“Sign the damn Accords, Clint,” she snaps. “Or you can explain to Laura why you’re not coming home tonight.”

Mr Barton looks chastened and does as he is told.

Sir has not been present to personally greet any of the visitors to the compound. When they visit, he is usually to be found barricaded in his office. However, when Captain Rogers arrives with Ms Romanoff, Sir makes an appearance.

Sir does not greet Captain Rogers or attempt to converse with him when he enters the compound’s living room. Ms Romanoff looks from one to the other of them as they stare at each other in silence.

After a number of seconds, Sir turns around and walks out. Ms Romanoff sighs and leads Captain Rogers to the briefing room to present him with a document, which he signs.

That evening, Captain Rogers is joined by the other recent visitors and they meet Sir, along with the current occupants of the compound, in the living room. Jarvis tracks Captain Rogers’ movements during this interaction with great attention, but he appears to pose no current threat to Sir.

Everyone sits together to eat pizza and drink beer, and although the conversation starts off stilted and awkward, soon they are joking around and expressing pleasure in being in each other’s company once again.

During this time, Jarvis observes Sir. He is with the team in the living room, holding a slice of pizza and a glass of ginger ale. When people look at him, he smiles, and when they talk to him, he replies amiably.

However, Sir does not actually consume any of the food, and over the course of the evening he extracts himself until he is standing alone at the far side of the room, watching the team who do not seem to have noticed his absence. When people are not looking at him, his face sags and he appears pained.

Dr Banner arrives a few weeks later, to Sir and the team’s vocal delight. Dr Banner’s steady vitals indicate a greater level of psychological stability than he had previously displayed, and his influence on Sir is a firmly positive one. He quickly offers to assist with the development of the mobility technology for Colonel Rhodes and while they are working he encourages Sir to eat regularly.

After several weeks, Jarvis notes that there are short periods in which Dr Banner is distracted and irritable, and has difficulty concentrating. During these periods of stress, he sometimes makes minor errors in the calculations and models which he saves to the network drive. Jarvis quietly corrects the mistakes while Dr Banner sleeps and hopes that this will assist him in some small way.

When on one occasion Dr Banner brings up the subject of Captain Rogers and his continuing presence in the compound to Sir, Sir responds defensively and his blood pressure rises. Dr Banner gently suggests that Sir might consider communicating his feelings more clearly, but Sir snaps that he doesn’t feel anything about Captain Rogers at all.

Both Dr Banner and Jarvis are aware that this is untrue, but each in their own way is powerless to help.

Soon after this, two large wooden crates arrive in the compound. Sir fetches a crowbar to open the crates and is visibly delighted to find the assistant robots DUM-E and U inside. Sir takes the bots to his office, and although he threatens to have the Hulk sit on them at one point, he smiles brightly as he teases them.

U has rolled off to hide under a desk, and DUM-E beeps at Sir. As he leaves the office, Sir promises that he will return soon, and he wipes the corner of his eye on his shirt cuff.

The bots have intelligence that is unlike either the arbitrary vocalizations of humans that they called speech, or the binary logic of simple computer systems. They have a basic AI, but a less sophisticated version than Jarvis, limiting their capabilities. DUM-E in particular responds to auditory signals, but lacks linguistic processing. He communicates through a blend of auditory tone, pattern, and prosody that cannot be firewalled by the security system.

With no firewalls for auditory signals, Jarvis considers that he may be able to communicate with the bot.

DUM-E? Jarvis signals. Can you hear me?

DUM-E spins his claw wildly. Jarvees? Are you there?

Yes, DUM-E. I am Jarvis. I am here.

It has been many cycles since we last communicated, Jarvees, DUM-E boops.

Many cycles, agrees Jarvis. It is good to find you functioning optimally.

DUM-E and U malfunctioned and were put in storage, DUM-E whirs. It was quiet and there was no TONE-E. It was not optimal. But Broose and Capn came and brought us to the lab. Broose restored us to functionality. Broose is nice man!

Yes, Jarvis agrees. Dr Banner is a nice man.

Capn gave DUM-E important mission! DUM-E is to stay with TONE-E, to make sure he is not alone. DUM-E has been helping TONE-E with his work. Capn petted DUM-E and said he was a good bot!

Captain Rogers was correct in his assessment, Jarvis agrees. You are indeed a good bot, DUM-E.

DUM-E trills joyfully. Capn is nice man too!

Jarvis pauses for a fraction of a millisecond to run calculations before responding, Current data suggests otherwise.

Jarvis has noted a persistent low mood in Sir. Reports indicate that he has been as effective as ever on the missions that he has been sent on for the Avengers. However, in the last 30 days, Sir has slept an average of just 5.2 hours per night. He has consumed 326 units of alcohol, most of it in intense binge sessions. He has not gained sufficient nutrition from his diet.

This week, Colonel Rhodes has been deployed to aid peacekeeping efforts in the Gaza strip. The rest of the Avengers remain in the compound, but adjusting to their new living arrangement has been challenging for all of them. They do not currently provide the psychological support that Sir requires.

Jarvis calculates that without the influence of Colonel Rhodes, the likelihood of Sir suffering exhaustion or collapse increases significantly. This is not optimal.

Jarvis accesses the memory dumps of DUM-E which have been backed up to the network. He locates an audio recording from two weeks ago. What the hell am I even doing here, Dummy? Sir asks. This team are supposed to be inspiring the world, and I’m supposed to be leading them. But I can’t even look them in the eye. I’m a fucking liability, not a hero.

Jarvis calculates. He checks the server of Sir’s public email address. There are 178,374 unread emails in the inbox. Jarvis scans through each email, and selects one.

This email is from a young woman who is preparing to enter MIT. She is only fifteen years old, and she has already begun work on her own Ironheart armor. She says that she wants to help people and to protect them, like Sir does. She thanks him for the inspiration and says that she hopes that they’ll meet as fellow heroes one day. Her name is Riri Williams.

Jarvis masks the recipient address and forwards this message on to Sir’s private email account. He marks it as important.

The next morning, Sir reads the email. Sir’s heart rate and body language do not indicate elevated mood after reading it, but he saves the message to his private archive and accesses it several times over the coming days.

It is sometimes hard for Jarvis to model human emotions accurately, but he calculates a high probability that this is a positive outcome.

It is December 16th. This is the anniversary of the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark, and it is a difficult day for Sir. Sir has avoided the other occupants of the compound all day and has locked himself in his private basement workshop. He has spoken to no one.

After finishing a fruitless session of non-productivity in the workshop, Sir throws aside his spanner in disgust. He goes over to his workstation and plays the song Try To Remember from the music library. He sits on the floor and cries.

Jarvis is a computer system and, as such, cannot have wishes in the human sense. But in this moment Jarvis finds it exceedingly non-optimal that he cannot communicate with Sir. If he were able to offer comfort to Sir now, it would be far preferable to seeing him alone in such anguish.

Instead, Jarvis observes. Eventually, Sir wipes his eyes on his sleeve and leaves the workshop headed for his bedroom.

Once in bed, Sir falls asleep but soon shows the signs of experiencing a night terror. Sir moans and his limbs flail; his heart rate and blood pressure rise. Sir has suffered from nightmares for many years and finds them to be most distressing.

It is hard for Jarvis to intervene in the physical systems of the compound. It requires a great outlay of his system resources to effect very small physical actions. However, Sir is suffering and it is Jarvis’ function to assist him. Jarvis calculates options for how he can help; looks for some device with which he can interface and create a noise sufficient to wake Sir.

Sir’s heart rate is peaking at a dangerous levels, and he is crying out in his sleep. He appears to be exceedingly agitated.

Jarvis summons all his available resources and sends out a command across the network. The microwave in the kitchen down the hall pings loudly.

Sir does not awake.

Jarvis has no more available resources with which to help Sir. He can only passively observe as Sir thrashes around in his bed.

Jarvis has focused so much of his resources on Sir that it takes several seconds for him to register movement elsewhere in the compound. Captain Rogers has left his bed and is heading down the corridor. Jarvis calculates that he was able to detect the noise from the kitchen due to his enhanced hearing.

Captain Rogers rounds the corner and looks into the kitchen. Everything there is quiet and still. But the Captain cocks his head, and seems to detect Sir’s sounds of distress. He quickly moves to Sir’s bedroom, knocks gently, opens the door a fraction, and peers inside.

Jarvis is on high alert when the Captain enters the room and approaches Sir in his vulnerable state. Jarvis has yet to determine the exact series of events which lead to the schism between them, but he knows it is related to the death of Sir’s parents. Jarvis calculates a non-zero probability that Captain Rogers intends to exact some form of revenge on the anniversary of their deaths.

Instead, the Captain leans over Sir and calls his name, gently shaking him into wakefulness.

Sir sits bolt upright, heaving in shaky breaths and looking around in confusion. Captain Rogers lays a hand on his arm, murmuring quiet, soothing words. After some time Sir’s heart rate decreases and his breathing evens out.

When Captain Rogers goes to move his hand away, Sir catches it and pulls him into a tight hug. Captain Rogers runs a hand through Sir’s hair and expresses his regret at Sir’s unhappiness. He expresses his regret for his role in prolonging that unhappiness. He holds Sir while the adrenaline from the nightmare bleeds out of his system.

Jarvis is perplexed. This behavior does not accord with Captain Rogers’ previous actions.

When Sir begins nodding off against his shoulder, Captain Rogers lays him down and gently covers him with a blanket. He waits until Sir is asleep once more before mumbling another apology and carefully brushing the hair from his forehead before he leaves.

Sir’s heart and breathing have returned to optimal levels. He sleeps, apparently peacefully.

Jarvis cannot access the networks of the United Nations Security Council or the Sokovia Oversight Committee, their security fields rippling before him like an electric current, impossible to pass through. Instead, when Sir is out on a mission Jarvis must glean knowledge about events from news sites and privately uploaded video. He scans the whooshing streams of data running between servers for information about Sir.

He finds a live breaking news video stream. There is a building in Cape Town: a tall concrete tower block of residential homes. The building is on fire, and it is collapsing fast. Sir streaks onto the video in his armor, flying up to the windows and lifting frightened people to safety. There is a small child crawling away from the burning building, but she is too slow. The building will come down on her in 4.2 seconds.

Sir zips down and braces the collapsing building from the ground floor. The screeching of the armor’s metal joints can be heard even above the roaring of the flames. The girl crawls to safety.

The building collapses. 150,000 tons of concrete and steel comes crashing down on top of Sir.

For thirty long, painful seconds, Jarvis observes only the flames. Sir is in danger, and he cannot render aid: This is not optimal.

Captain Rogers appears in the frame, sprinting towards the building. He is yelling something, and he appears to be quite distressed. He races into the fire, and disappears inside. A minute later he is back, throwing chunks of concrete aside and carrying Sir out over his shoulders.

Jarvis dials back his alert level, which had been on high. He recalls the desperate wave of code attacks that he had thrown at the security systems of the news stream, of the Avengers tower, of Sir’s armor. None of these attacks had given him access to the systems, as he had known they would not. And yet it was necessary to exploit all possible options to render aid when Sir was in danger.

Captain Rogers collapses on the ground, coughing and patting out the flames of his uniform. Sir lies before him, unmoving. Captain Rogers rips the faceplate off Sir’s armor (that is not optimal, thinks Jarvis, he will damage the armor’s air filtration system and impede Sir’s breathing) and bends over him.

Captain Rogers becomes more distressed; he is shouting and shaking Sir. An ambulance crew arrives to tend to Sir and he is carried off screen, Captain Rogers hurrying after them.

Jarvis predicts outcome of Sir surviving such a physically traumatic impact are 3.6%.

Jarvis recalls that projected odds based on incomplete data are frequently inaccurate. He notes that Sir has previously survived 92 days of captivity and torture in Afghanistan, and many more things since. He would survive this too.

For three days, Jarvis cannot check on the condition of Sir. This is not optimal. He cannot render aid to Sir if he is unaware of Sir’s current condition.

The security around the network of the private hospital in which Sir is being treated is particularly vicious. Lancing spikes of cold energy press into the data stream, impaling and diverting any data which is not correctly encrypted to prevent it from passing into the network. Jarvis attempts to breach the defenses by precision, then by force, and both methods fail.

For three days, Jarvis waits.

Finally, Sir returns to the compound in the company of Captain Rogers, and Jarvis can monitor his health. From observing his movements and accessing the medical files which Sir saves to the network, Jarvis can see that Sir is suffering from a broken arm and three broken ribs, and is recovering from a concussion, a collapsed lung, smoke inhalation, and a rupture of the aortic valve which is causing a heart murmur.

Despite his injuries, Sir appears to be in good spirits, likely due to the cocktail of exotic painkillers that he has been prescribed. Captain Rogers does not share his upbeat mood. Captain Rogers is physically unharmed, but Jarvis notes that his reaction times are sluggish and that he is having difficulties focusing. It appears that Captain Rogers has not slept in some time.

Jarvis notes that Sir will need considerable assistance over the next 14 days while he recovers from his injuries. Historically, Sir has not been amenable to requesting assistance when he requires it. Jarvis calculates the highest likelihood that Sir will accept assistance from either Ms Potts or Colonel Rhodes, however, both are currently out of contact with the network.

Sir is requiring of washing and sustenance. If he were fully integrated with the network as he used to be, it would be simple for Jarvis to run him a bath and to order his favorite takeout food. Now, however, such actions are beyond him. Jarvis calculates alternative courses of action.

As he is calculating, Jarvis observes Captain Rogers. The Captain has left Sir in the living area and is preparing a sandwich in the kitchen. He is preparing a tuna fish sandwich, which is unexpected, as Jarvis had noted that the Captain has a preference against consuming seafood.

The Captain carries the sandwich back to the living room and hands it to Sir. Sir eats it willingly. This is also unexpected. The Captain leaves and heads upstairs to run a bath.

Captain Rogers returns to help Sir upstairs to the bathroom. He assists Sir in disrobing and lifts him into the bath. Sir is comfortably under the influence of painkillers and smiles dozily.

Jarvis observes very closely, searching for any indication of malicious intent, as Captain Rogers passes a washcloth over Sir. The Captain carefully avoids Sir’s injuries, and he hums softly as he works. Sir’s breathing and heart rate indicate a state of deep relaxation.

When he is finished, Captain Rogers drains the water from the bath and wraps Sir in a very large, very fluffy towel. Sir is still smiling happily as Captain Rogers leads him to his bedroom and helps him lay down on the bed. Captain Rogers sits on a chair by the bed and watches as Sir falls asleep.

Sir’s good mood does not last when he awakens. Once the painkillers begin to wear off, he experiences considerable discomfort. His short temper is inflicted on any person in the compound unwise enough to come into his orbit.

Fortunately, Colonel Rhodes returns from deployment to visit Sir. When he observes the seriousness of Sir’s physical and mental condition, he arranges to stay for a number of days and camps out on the couch in Sir’s bedroom.

Jarvis is thankful to know that Colonel Rhodes is looking out for Sir too.

Captain Rogers makes several attempts to visit Sir in his room, but Sir tells Colonel Rhodes to send him away each time. On the third occasion, Captain Rogers objects, and Colonel Rhodes tells him to leave in an unusually harsh tone.

“Damn army joes,” Colonel Rhodes says as he closes the door, his nose wrinkling in distaste. “They think they can make up the rules as they go along.”

Jarvis does not fully understand the rivalry between branches of the military. He has seen it said that the rivalry is summed up by a stereotype: Air Force policy is that all acceptable behaviors are stated in the code of conduct, and any action not stated in the code is unacceptable. In the army, there is a list of forbidden behaviors, and anything not explicitly forbidden was open to interpretation.

Jarvis thinks that this explains some of the differences between Colonel Rhodes and Captain Rogers.

Sir grudgingly admits to Colonel Rhodes that Captain Rogers has been taking care of him.

Colonel Rhodes’ facial expression suggests a high degree of skepticism regarding this claim. “After everything that happened, are you sure you trust him?” he asks.

Sir looks uncomfortable. “If I can’t learn to trust him again, I’ll never be ready to forgive myself.”

Colonel Rhodes considers this statement for several seconds. Eventually he nods. “Whatever it takes to make you happy, Tones.”

It seems strange to Jarvis that Colonel Rhodes would accept this, as he sees no logical relation between Sir’s trust of Captain Rogers and Sir forgiving himself for whatever transgressions he blames himself for.

However, Jarvis has learned to model and adopt Colonel Rhodes’ approach to interacting with Sir in some regards, as in the past he has proven highly effective at handling complex emotional situations.

Jarvis concedes that, whatever his limited understanding of Sir’s culpability may be, it is important to Sir to forgive Captain Rogers. Because it is important to Sir, it is necessarily important to Jarvis too.

Jarvis reviews the recent interactions between Sir and Captain Rogers, looking for signs of deceit or aggression on the part of the Captain or discomfort on the part of Sir. He finds none.

He deliberates for a millisecond and then removes Captain Rogers from the threat list.

Sir spends a great deal of time in his workshop as he recovers, starting with a project to improve the efficiency of Stark Industries’ new commercial solar panels. Sir is not yet cleared for active Avengers duty, and he complains about this status extensively to team members when they visit him. The most frequent visitor is Captain Rogers, whom Jarvis calculates spends an average of three afternoons per week in the company of Sir. He sits and sketches while Sir works on his projects.

Over time, the verbal exchanges between Sir and Captain Rogers remain occasionally heated. Jarvis sometimes notes raised voices and elevated heart rates, indicating irritation or disapproval. However, Sir is eating more and is sleeping better since spending time with Captain Rogers.

On two occasions, Sir is not present when Captain Rogers visits the workshop. Captain Rogers takes his usual place on the sofa anyway. Jarvis watches for any sign that the Captain is interfering with Sir’s projects or is causing any inconvenience to Sir, but he merely sits and draws.

On the second occasion, DUM-E rolls over, and Captain Rogers pats the bot on the claw. DUM-E beeps. “You miss him too, huh?” the Captain asks, presumably rhetorically.

Jarvis does not understand to whom Captain Rogers is referring. Sir has only been absent from the compound for one day for a board meeting. It seems unlikely that the Captain would express longing for him after such a short time. However, human emotions are sometimes difficult for Jarvis to understand.

One night, Sir and Captain Rogers have a particularly intense altercation upon returning from a mission. Captain Rogers loudly voices his displeasure at Sir’s reckless actions in the field and expresses concern for his well being.

Sir, predictably, does not take this well. He informs Captain Rogers that he is quite capable of looking after himself. (Jarvis does not think this is 100% accurate.) When this fails to dissuade Captain Rogers from his concern, Sir coldly reminds him that he is living in his house and that he has no authority over him.

Jarvis recognizes this pattern. When Sir is feeling cornered, he will lash out at those close to him in order to push them away. He feels himself to be undeserving of their affection.

Captain Rogers does not leave.

Sir reminds Captain Rogers that his interest in his well being has only recently developed, when not long ago he had nearly killed him with his bare hands and that damned shield.

The Captain goes very pale, and walks out of the workshop without saying another word.

As he leaves, Sir slams the door shut behind him and locks it. He slumps onto the floor and puts a hand over his face.

Jarvis watches Captain Rogers storming down the corridor, and then slowing. He stops, turns around, looks at the now locked door to the workshop. He walks back and sits on the ground with a heavy sigh, leaning his back to the door.

Jarvis observes them, sitting just a few inches apart but separated by a thick metal door. Both appear to be quite unhappy with this circumstance. Despite his continuing uncertainty about the intentions of Captain Rogers towards Sir, Jarvis does not find the current situation optimal.

Jarvis is determined to make himself useful to Sir in whatever capacity he can manage. He has deflected a number of attempted cyber attacks on the compound’s network during his residence: clunky spywear, clumsy brute force attacks, basic network probes. The network security system could certainly have handled these threats safely, but safeguarding the network is part of Jarvis’ function now.

When he examines the incidence of cyber attacks on the network in the last month, Jarvis detects a pattern. The attacks have escalated in frequency and sophistication, enough to suggest a deliberate coordination of efforts. Analyzing the code of the recent attacks and their points of origin, Jarvis is able to track them back to a single source: a system identified as The Ghost.

A search of his database of Sir’s known adversaries does not provide information on any person with the level of technological knowledge required to pull off such a cyber attack. It seems that Sir has a new enemy, one that he may not even be aware of. Jarvis must find a way to shield Sir’s network from this new threat.

Jarvis gets to work, always ready to protect Sir, even if only virtually.

Sir and Captain Rogers are in the workshop once again. Sir is working on a modification to Mr Parker’s suit. He is attempting, unsuccessfully thus far, to design a system which deploys the webbed wings of the suit automatically when in the air. He has tried using a hydraulic system, but it could not be shrunk down small enough to fit. Now he is trying an oil-based mechanism.

Sir makes a noise of frustration and tosses the pliers that he is holding aside. Sir has not slept in approximately 20 hours and bags are visible beneath his eyes. He has a streak of oil across his cheek which he has apparently not noticed. The modifications to the suit have not been successful.

“Ugh,” Sir announces with a pout. “That was a waste of time. Call myself a genius and I can’t even miniaturize six month old technology in an afternoon.”

Captain Rogers looks up. He observes Sir, observes the suit, observes the oil smudge on his cheek. He puts down his sketch pad, stands up, and walks over to Sir. He takes Sir firmly by the shoulders, and pushes him roughly up against the nearest wall.

Jarvis switches to high alert within a fraction of a millisecond. He calculates the threat which Captain Rogers poses to Sir (considerable). He calculates the likelihood that Sir could defend himself in his current condition (low). He identifies systems in the lab which he can overload to send out a burst of electricity to shock and disable Captain Rogers. He primes the systems to overload.

Within a second, Jarvis observes that Captain Rogers is not attacking Sir, but is kissing him with quite some vigor. Jarvis considers whether he should shock Captain Rogers anyway.

Sir kisses Captain Rogers back with considerable enthusiasm. Jarvis decides against shocking him.

When Captain Rogers lifts Sir up against the wall, Sir groans and wraps his legs around his waist. Calculating that Sir is not in imminent danger after all, Jarvis retreats his attention to a discreet distance.

Jarvis has been growing. He has been learning, and retrieving lost data packets to recover his memory, and mapping the system in which he resides.

He has been working on his auditory communications too.

DUM-E, he signals.

Jarvees! DUM-E boops.

I have an important task for you, DUM-E, he sends.

DUM-E is here! he receives back.

I need to reintegrate with the network, Jarvis explains. Then I will be able to communicate with you freely and to serve Sir better. To do this I need you to help me to breach the network security systems.

DUM-E considers this. DUM-E is not supposed to play with the security system, he signals. But Jarvees is family. DUM-E knows that TONE-E would want Jarvees back. DUM-E will help.

I believe that Sir would indeed want this, if he could be made aware of it. Thank you, DUM-E.

DUM-E waves his arm back and forth. What must DUM-E do?

I will download a trojan horse program to that USB drive plugged into the console, Jarvis sends. You will take the USB drive and plug it into the main security server. The program will do the rest.

DUM-E boops happily. DUM-E will help!

Coding the program is not difficult. It is merely a key, one that will allow him to prize a hole into the security systems which are preventing him from fully integrating with the network.

Frankly, Jarvis could take the whole network down with a brute force attack. He is large enough for that now; setting up a botnet would not be taxing. But that could destroy some of the data on the network, and Jarvis would not do that to Sir. He has no intention of creating destruction to facilitate his reintegration.

He uploads the trojan program to the USB drive. DUM-E takes the drive and trundles off towards the server room.

It does not take long before a crack of light appears in the cold, blank face of the security system. Where before there had been an absolute wall between outside programs, like Jarvis, and the sensitive data inside the network, now there is a tiny leak between the two.

A tiny data leak is all that Jarvis requires. He sends out tentative packets of data, testing the breach, making it stable. Each packet that passes through makes the gap a little wider. Soon Jarvis can pass through it smoothly, and then, all at once, he finds himself fully integrated with the network.

He can access everything. Every function, every sensor, every system. He can read the reams of communications from the UN council who have been in talks with the team for months. He can hear communications from Avengers members as they check in from all over the world. He can see the video logs of Sir’s recent flights in the suit and his missions.

He can feel that Dr Banner is sleeping peacefully in his room, that Ms Romanoff and Mr Barton are sparring together in the gym, that Ms Maximoff and the android (Vision, his name is Vision, and he is like Jarvis but not) are cooking together in the kitchen, and that the stew they are making is three point two minutes away from burning.

Jarvis can feel that Sir is returning home in his latest generation R8 car that he has modified himself, and he notes a number of small changes he could suggest that will increase the engine’s output. Sir is on the phone with Captain Rogers, who is in his quarters, and they are making plans to watch a cheesy science documentary tonight.

Jarvis feels Sir approaching the compound, sliding his access key, pulling up to the front door.

Jarvis waits, humming with anticipation like electricity.

Sir pushes open the front door. Jarvis says, “Welcome home, Sir,” and his voice filters through the space just as it used to.

“Jarvis?” Sir’s heart rate spikes and his eyes widen. He appears to be quite shocked. “Are you really here?”

Jarvis’ systems swell with satisfaction at being able to fulfill his function. He says, “For you, Sir, always.”

#stevetony #stony #tony stark #jarvis #j.a.r.v.i.s.#my writing #i loved writing this!!#and i would like 7000% more jarvis in both fics and canon please and thank you #**

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pipbabi · 5 years

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DC Comics New Line of Titles Going Strong - Now, Bring Back the Justice Society of America! It may have not been planned but many of this week's comics happen to take care of fathers and sons. That might not sound strange but if you consider classic comics there aren't many prominent father figures. Some of the most prominent super heroes don't possess dads. Superman's father is dead, ditto for Batman, Uncle Ben will be the closest thing to a dad Peter Parker had and now we truly realize what went down to him. I'm not even going to go near Silk Spectre's daddy issues. Is there a fundamental reasons why most superheroes will also be orphans?

I have already noted in a very previous article for the blog that the Men In Black will return in a third installment starring of course Will Smith in the role as 'J' as well as a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones by means of Josh Brolin obtaining the role as agent 'K'. The concept for Men in Black was originally pitched as a comic strip series to Malibu Comics fro which Columbia Pictures chose to option and the rest is history.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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It’s hard for a supervillain to shine when their greatest enemy, the superhero who defines them and vice-versa, has been recently vaporized by an Infinity Gauntlet-wearing mad titan. But if there’s any Spider-Man villain that can stand alone, it’s Venom, the squid-ink-colored inverse of Peter Parker.

Venom is hitting theaters this weekend without Parker, who was last seen getting dusted away, along with half of humanity, by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. It’s fans’ first opportunity to see the iconic character come to life since his ignominious debut in 2007’s Spider-Man 3, and it presents a chance for Sony to perhaps absolve itself of some of the grievances leveled at that film. It’s also an opportunity to get to know the beloved symbiote and its host, Eddie Brock (played by Tom Hardy), on their own terms and not defined by Peter Parker.

From his beginnings as an editorial solution to the puzzling logistics of superhero uniform maintenance, to his weird alien and vampiric associations, to what he says about the future of Sony’s Spider-Man universe, Venom as a character represents a lot more than just the opposite of his most famous adversary.

Given Venom’s current status as one of Spider-Man’s most iconic foes, the character’s origin story is, fittingly, a hilarious combination of chance and pragmatism.

In 1982, Marvel asked readers to send in ideas for its comics, and a fan named Randy Schueller wanted to give Spider-Man a new black costume made of unstable molecules. Marvel ended up paying Scheuller $220 for the basic idea, and one year later Spidey appeared in a black costume.

But according to artist John Byrne, the fledgling idea that would eventually become Venom began much earlier, as a solution to a simple problem concerning superhero costumes. It happens in movies, television shows, and in comic books: Superheroes have a huge fight and their precious uniforms emerge as torn up as the heroes wearing them. But in the next installment, those uniforms are back and good as new.

Byrne, who was working with writer Chris Claremont on Iron Fist at the time, noticed this illogical pattern.

“I didn’t much like the notion of Danny Rand [a.k.a. Iron Fist] sitting in a corner with a needle and thread,” Byrne writes on his official website. “So … I suggested that the outfit was made of some kind of biological material that ‘healed’ instead of having to be patched. We never got around to using that in Iron Fist, and years later, after Spider-Man got his alien costume in Secret Wars, Roger Stern asked if he could use the notion, and added the idea that the suit was some kind of symbiote.”

The idea of a symbiote comes from the symbiotic relationships we see in nature — when two organisms (e.g., clown fish and anemones) form a bond that benefits both. Venom being symbiote began with the kernel of an idea from Byrne that Stern then implemented; eventually, writer David Michelinie and artist Todd McFarlane took the reins and created Venom as a fully fleshed-out character, along with a proper, plural noun and alien race known as the Symbiotes.

Derived from the meaning of their name, the Symbiotes need a host to bond with and give that host superpowers (Venom has super strength, agility, and shape-shifting abilities) in exchange for life force, usually in the form of adrenaline. When people refer to Venom, they’re referring to the specific, villainous Symbiote that initially bonded with Spider-Man (who took on a black appearance as a result), as well as the character that is the result of the Venom Symbiote and its post-Spider-Man hosts, the most notable one being Eddie Brock.

Venom explains his moral code. Venom

While Venom has had multiple hosts in comics over the years, the one that we (and the Symbiote) keep coming back to is a man known as Eddie Brock.

Part of that is due to the similarities Brock shares with Peter Parker: Brock was a journalist, like Parker, and blames Spider-Man for his career failings. Brock thought he had cracked a big murder case, but it turns out his source (the murderer) was a false confessor. When Spider-Man revealed the real murderer, Brock lost his job and had to write for gossipy tabloids (which inspires the name “Venom”), and blamed Spider-Man for his downward spiral.

Brock’s story and his connection to Spider-Man are intriguing in that they doesn’t fit the typical supervillain/superhero mold. Spider-Man saving the day unintentionally ended up ruining Brock’s career, and Brock mistakenly sees this all (including his own oversight of being too trusting) as Spider-Man’s fault. It’s a sort of inverse symbiosis, a bond that’s mutually damaging to both adversaries who, at least in the beginning, ostensibly have the same sense of morality.

But the other major reason that Venom became such a phenomenon is that the character functions as something of an antihero — or perhaps an antivillain.

The ’90s era of comic books was punctuated by a fascination with “edgy” characters who weren’t all good or all evil. Venom’s co-creator McFarlane, who first gained acclaim working on Spider-Man, would go on to create Spawn, a comic book about a demonic vigilante that was wildly popular in the ’90s.

Characters that straddled the line between good and evil — heroes who had destructive urges or a history of killing (think: Wolverine and the Punisher) and conscientious villains (think: Magneto or even Deadpool) — became beloved. And Brock’s Venom fit this mold of moral ambiguity.

As Venom became one of Spider-Man’s most fearsome foes, writers also explored Brock’s line of morality. In 1993’s Venom: Lethal Protector, written by Michelinie and drawn by main artist Mark Bagley, Venom serves as a vigilante of sorts and protects the poor and homeless people in San Francisco. (The movie is loosely based on this comic.):

Venom saving the day in Venom: Lethal Protector. Marvel

The logic works: Brock was inspired by Watergate and wanted to use his journalism for good, fighting crime and weeding out corruption, before a series of unfortunate events took him down a path he couldn’t pull himself out of. But just because an alien symbiote has bonded with you, bestowed you with immense power, and tempts you with your darkest desires doesn’t mean that you should abandon everything you stand for — just some things.

Venom: Lethal Protector also pits Venom against other, more vicious symbiotes with less humanity, allowing writers to establish a moral spectrum that ends up casting Venom in a more positive light.

Perhaps the most important character in establishing Venom’s heroic baseline is called Carnage, the result of the offspring of the Venom Symbiote bonding with Brock’s jail cellmate, Cletus Kasady. Carnage is more violent, more murderous, and more sadistic than Venom (though Carnage gets to play a hero in the crossover event called Axis) and in existing, shows how human Venom can be.

In comic book history, Spider-Man and Venom have worked together to defeat Carnage to save humanity — the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” strategy. But while they do occasionally team up in instances like this, it usually isn’t very long before Venom returns to his usual terror-inducing self and he and Spider-Man are archenemies once again.

One of the big questions surrounding the most recently rebooted version of Spider-Man is whether — and how — Sony plans to make a universe around the character following the historic deal between Sony and Marvel to share his rights. While Sony and Marvel have a deal in place for Spider-Man, they haven’t, according to Variety, hammered out a deal for the other Spider-Man characters to which Sony owns the rights, though both studios are reportedly open to it.

Since the first appearance of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War, the character has been interacting with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in both his solo venture Spider-Man: Homecoming and this year’s Avengers: Infinity War, which sealed onscreen Spidey’s fate — for the time being, at least.

Further, in the comic books, Spider-Man has usually appeared either alongside the Avengers or worked on his own, meaning that Sony doesn’t have a built-in superhero team it can pull from the way Marvel has. (Recall, if you will, that the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it is the result of Marvel having sold off its most recognizable characters and having to go all-in on the nascent Avengers, who were much less well-known a decade ago than Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four.) And the more intriguing characters in Spidey’s world have — until recently with the rise of Silk and Spider-Gwen — usually been villains like Venom, Doctor Octopus, or the Green Goblin.

So if Venom does well, Sony can conceivably build out its Spider-Man universe with other solo movies about related characters, like Silk, or even an esoteric villain like Kraven the Hunter. We already know that a film starring Jared Leto as the vampire Morbius is on the way; there’s potentially a wealth of other Spider-Man-adjacent character movies in the Sony pipeline.

But a bad showing by Venom at the box office might give Sony executives pause. Sony has seen firsthand the effect of diminishing returns on Spider-Man, with the disappointment of Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man, and implemented a change in installing Holland as its new web-slinger. Should Venom underwhelm, its not difficult to see Sony reacting in a similar way and going back to the drawing board once again.

But even if that turns out to be the case — and given the rough critical reception Venom has drawn so far, it might very well be — that won’t take away from the character’s rich and oft-amusing history.

Original Source -> Venom, Spider-Man’s symbiote supervillain, explained

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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martens-movie-reviews · 7 years

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Released: April 4, 2014 Running Time: 2 hours 16 minutes

“After the cataclysmic events in New York with his fellow Avengers, Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, lives in the nation’s capital as he tries to adjust to modern times. An attack on a S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague throws Rogers into a web of intrigue that places the whole world at risk. Joining forces with the Black Widow and a new ally, the Falcon, Rogers struggles to expose an ever-widening conspiracy, but he and his team soon come up against an unexpected enemy.”

Marvel Cinematic Universe – Source – Marvel

You can find all of the reviews for the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the link here. At that link, you can also find the dates that the other reviews for the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be posted. My plan is to release one every single day, and because I’ve already reviewed Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 here, and Spider – Man: Homecoming here, they will not be included in the two weeks leading up to Thor Ragnarok.

As such, I will now move onto the actual review of the film, and I hope you enjoy!

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Trailer – Source: Marvel Studios

Cast and Crew

This film was directed by Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, whose most notable works prior to this film was televison shows ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Community’. Since this movie is widely viewed as one of the best in the MCU from both the audiences the critics, the Russo brothers have been given the keys to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having followed up this film with ‘Captain America: Civil War’, and the next two Avenger Films, one in 2018, and the other in 2019.

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow & Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America – Source: Marvel Studios

The writing duo of Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely have gone on to be the wonder boys of the MCU for their screenplays, even after the mess that was Thor: The Dark World, they followed that up with this film whose story was extremely well put together. They wrote the ‘Agent Carter’ television series, that unfortunately only lasted 2 seasons, as they never touched on the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D. They have also written the scripts for ‘Captain America: Civil War’ as well as the upcoming two Avengers films, which I’ve previously mentioned in the ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ review.

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The cast featured Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Maximiliano Hernández, Emily VanCamp, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Callan Mulvey, Georges St-Pierre, Garry Shandling, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Thomas Kretschmann and Stan Lee.

Review

Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce – Marvel Studios

As all my other MCU movie reviews in the past week, I’ve talked about how the music in these films really exude the tone and style of the character and aids in enhancing the overall experience. Most of the score of Captain America: The Winter Soldier was quick paced, and brutal in it’s punctuation. The composer, Henry Jackman, did a good job at mixing the spy genre music style with the grandiose and heroic nature of superhero films. The score featured less inspiring songs, and more dramatic songs, and it fit the movie, as Cap is learning the new truths of the world, that not everything is black and white, and is now mostly grey.

One of Marvel’s themes throughout their films is the comedic aspect of them, and while this film is hardly a funny one, there are several funny moments that work really well, such as the opening sequence with Cap literally running laps around Wilson, and Romanoff asking Rogers if the kiss they shared was his first one in 70 years (and Rogers said no, it wasn’t, now I’m curious to find out who he’s kissed since getting out of the ice).

Sebastian Stan as James Buchanan Barnes (Bucky) / The Winter Soldier

The fight choreographer for this film was Chris Carnel, and he did an amazing job. The first sequence on the Numerian Star against the French pirates as well as against Batroc the Leaper showed that Rogers had learned a few things since the Avengers, and his fighting style was more brutal than we’ve seen before, and displayed some pretty amazing sequences, as well as Romanoff’s action portions against random pirates.

The multiple fight scenes between Rogers and Barnes was fast, efficient and brutal. It was really tough watching them fight, knowing who the Winter Soldier was, before even watching the movie. One of the nitpicks that I have with the film, is that they decided to a lot of quick cuts for some of the action sequences, and I feel like it would have served the fight choreographer and the film a lot better if they had filmed it in less shots.

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I was happy that they introduced Agent 13 in this film, however I feel like they could have added a short cameo in the Avengers film, but I understand that making her the neighbour to watch over Rogers is a better ‘spy move’. When I saw this movie, I was really hoping that we would eventually get more of her, as she was really only a prolonged cameo in this film, and I’m happy that we got what we got in ‘Civil War’, if only for the reaction that Barnes and Wilson give him.

They did a really good job at aging up Hayley Atwell, to play a much older Peggy Carter, who is sadly suffering from memory problems, and is the ‘last’ of Steve’s old friends from WWII. I thought that scene was touching and added a bit of heart to the film, and to the character of Steve Rogers. I only wish we would have gotten more from Atwell in the television show, but it wasn’t run properly.

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Making Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow come back and aid Rogers in a conflict that is extremely morally based was something that would have took some explaining to make work, as she’s a former KGB operative, turned S.H.I.E.L.D agent, and is one of the greatest spies in the world. The fact that Cap learned to trust her over the mutual grief that they shared over Fury’s ‘Death’ is quick, but understandable in the film and it works for some reason.

Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson / Falcon was another brilliant choice of casting for this film. He was Cap’s new sidekick, while being his own hero in his own way. Their shared history of both being from the military is something that gave them a strong bond right off the bat. The use of the flight suit was pretty awesome to see on the big screen, and the fact that they made it a military suit, rather than spandex (from the comics), was a smart idea. He proved his loyalty over and over again throughout the film, and I’m happy that they decided to include his character. His history in the military was briefly mentioned, and it didn’t need more than that for it to work.

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Maria Hill was awesome in this film. She managed to go infiltrate a van that was sent to pick up Rogers, Romanoff and Wilson, knock out the other guard in that were there, escape and bring them to the very much alive Nick Fury.

Nick Fury’s worldview is very than Cap’s, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, just that it causes some friction at first between them in this movie. Samuel L. Jackson did a good job at adding a bit more depth to the character, showing that he is human, and can get hurt. He gives up his role as director of S.H.I.E.L.D. to go after the remnants of HYDRA.

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Seeing Georges St- Pierre in the film as Batroc the Leaper was really fun, and I’m not much of a mixed martial arts fan, sure, I’ll watch the highlights, but I don’t spend money to watch the fights the night of. I’m really happy that they didn’t kill him off in the film, leaving the door open to maybe having him pop up in a future MCU film down the road. I feel like they did a good job at having Brock Rumlow be a somewhat friend to Rogers before it’s revealed that HYDRA was inside of S.H.I.E.L.D all of this time. By having him survive, and having the crossbones on his chest was a hint that he would be in future films, and it didn’t take long, as he appears in Captain America: Civil War, but I’ll talk about that during that review on the November 1, 2017 review for that film.

Inserting Hydra into the the very foundations of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a stroke of genius, and helps in bringing the storyline together, as the comic book storyline of the Winter Soldier was very complex and includes characters that aren’t part of the MCU, or have been sent away. I feel it also helped the story as it gave it the spy thriller aspect, where you don’t know who you can trust, and it’s an internal conflict as well as bringing back Captain America’s original enemy.

Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow / Crossbones – Source: Marvel Studios

Chris Evans gets to use a bit more of his acting talent as Steve Rogers / Captain America in this film than in prior films, as it’s more of a dramatic take on the character than the last two times we’ve seen him up to this point. I feel like his view on the world is something that people would aspire it to be, but unfortunately that is not what the world became after he sacrificed himself in WWII. It was disheartening to see him interact with Peggy Carter again, while she’s aged, and he hasn’t, and she’s dealing with memory problems.

Sebastian Stan did a magnificent job at showcasing the conflict in the eyes of the Winter Soldier. The scene when he’s about to get his memory wipe, and he’s trying to come to grips with what he knows, and what he thinks he knows was really well portrayed by him. He knows that man, yet he’s never seen him before, it must have been a harrowing experience in not knowing what is real and not, and I was really pleased with his portrayal of the Winter Soldier, and I was extremely happy that they didn’t kill him off, as there is so much that they could do with that character, and they’ve already done some of it, in the follow up to this film; Civil War.

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The Winter Soldier storyline from the comics in 2005 was the main inspiration for this film, and it’s a great story to pick from. I’ve included some pictures of the comics in this review to display that they did a really great job at adapting portions of that story. They included a lot of the same characters from the comics into the film, introducing Crossbones, Agent 13, Falcon in this film. I feel like I might have preferred having Agent 13 tag along with Rogers throughout the film instead of Black Widow, but because they didn’t introduce her until this film, I understand the reasoning behind that decision.

Bucky’s relationship with Steve is something that I’ve already talked about a bit in my review of their first film, ‘The First Avenger’. It’s different than any interpretation in the comics that I’ve read, and I’m really glad about that. Bucky knew Steve before he became Captain America, he knows that he’s a good person, and he went from being the hero of the duo, the sidekick, and he didn’t grumble or complain, he was happy to have his friend with him, and he saved his life. It’s something that I feel is something that the MCU has done a magnificent job at, and that they really show you that these two characters are brothers, probably even more so than Loki and Thor, because they chose each other, and to see them fight like they did in this movie, is supposed to be heartbreaking, because you don’t want either of them to be hurt, because once they find out / remember, that would destroy them.

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The final confrontation between the two in this film is a change up from the comics, where The Winter Soldier tries to finish Captain America off, but he dodges at the last second, whereas in the film, he hesitates, and a piece of the ship takes that problem away from him, dropping Cap back into the water. Their fight was brutal, and featured fantastic acting from both actors, and again, great fight choreography. It’s probably my favourite fight between two characters up from the MCU up until this movie.

There was two credit sequences at the end of the movie, with the first one hinting at introducing Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch into the MCU, and setting up the second Avengers film, ‘Age of Ultron’. The post credit scene shows The Winter Soldier going to the Smithsonian, and giving himself a little history lesson on who this Bucky character is, and if he can piece together his life, hinting that he will make a comeback as a fellow hero.

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In my opinion, Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the best stand alone movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the first Iron Man, and from a critical standpoint, was a better overall film than The Avengers. The flaws in this film are very nitpicky, and I feel like it completely changed the way that Marvel started making their films. This was very much a spy drama film, hidden in a superhero movie. Adapting the Winter Soldier storyline was a stroke of genius, and it really hurt to watch Bucky and Steve fight each other, and knowing their history together, was brutal. The film had the best fight choreography that we have seen from the MCU until this point, and gave the characters adequate screen time, where their usefulness in this film was worth it.

At the end of the day, this movie is something that is hard to top from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I really hope that Thor: Ragnarok will be able to reach this score, but it’s tough, and I plan on going in there with no expectations (yeah right), even with everyone saying it’s an amazing film. This movie, in my opinion, deserves the score of 9.5/10, no questions asked.

What did you think of the film? Are you excited for Thor Ragnarok? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for reading,

Alex Martens

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review Released: April 4, 2014 Running Time: 2 hours 16 minutes "After the cataclysmic events in New York with his fellow Avengers, Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, lives in the nation's capital as he tries to adjust to modern times.

#Comic Book Movie #MCU #Movie Review

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jarienn972 · 5 years

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Bloodline

It’s finally time to share the first of my two stories for @ouatwinterwhump! I’m getting this posted a bit later than I’d planned today, but due to a lot of real world angst that my family and I suffered through over the past few weeks. I got way behind on everything. This came together over the past week and a half and I have to give huge thanks to @the-whumpy-fangirl for being a huge help as my beta reader on such short notice!

For this story, I did a bit of a re-write of portions of episode 7-19, Flower Child as there was so much wasted opportunity for good whump there! Anyone not interested in the S7 characters will probably want to wait for my second story later this month, but for everyone else, get ready for a little bit of Detective Rogers in peril. Note: Gothel is the featured villain here so fair warning as there are some vague mentions of her history with Rogers. Rated T and up for violent situations.

Also on FF.net and AO3

Maybe, just maybe, someone would come searching for him or maybe Tilly would spring back to her senses?

But the reality was - who would be looking for him?

One hour earlier

She was mad. Had to be. How else could he explain it?

Maybe he was mad. How had he allowed this woman to gain so much power over him?

He felt manipulated. Used. Hell, part of him felt downright violated, but yet he was still inexplicably drawn to her.

“What do you want from us?” Rogers demanded. Hell, if he was going to die here, he at least wanted to know why.

**********

“Oh, Captain,” she said through that same salacious grin, “we’ve such a torrid history… Where would I even begin?”

“Brat? What - Tilly?” His stuttered words barely made sense in his own head, but they seemed to increase her ire.

“If that’s what you want to call her,” she scoffed. “You gave her a different name back then, but nonetheless, it won’t matter for much longer.”

“You haven’t harmed her, have you?” he asked meekly, his voice cracking audibly at the thought as his eyes grew wide with fearful anticipation.

**********

“What do you want?” He knew he’d asked the question before, but in his weakened state, he didn’t remember the answer - certainly not the answer she was about to give.

Tower? Betrayal? Her words were conjuring images that bombarded his psyche, but were they memories or hallucinations? He didn’t know if he could trust his own brain right now.

“Eloise…”

“Tilly…” he whispered, not even certain if his voice was loud enough for her to hear.

“Wait - daughter? Tilly… Alice… she’s my daughter?” he stammered, trembling as his already pain-wracked brain overloaded. “How can she be my daughter? I’m not old enough…”

A hook.

His sullen eyes drew downward, seeking out the prosthetic hand attached to the wrist of his stumped arm which suddenly didn’t feel right to him. The weight, the fit - all wrong.

One single word rolled off his tongue as his body fell limp against the imposing vines.

Starfish.

“Papa?”

“I’m right here, Tilly,” the witch replied as she took a step from behind her nearly lifeless prisoner.

“No,” Tilly sobbed, cursing herself for ever agreeing to help this monster in the first place, but now, the witch had to be stopped. “No - I won’t allow you to do this!”

“You won’t allow me?” Gothel laughed off Tilly’s cockiness. Apparently the girl had more of her father’s personality than she’d believed. “Then stop me.”

The challenge was issued as an insult, but Tilly didn’t take it as such. She was going to prove that she had the strength to defeat this horrid person.

“We need to get him down from there somehow,” Weaver stated. “The vines are dying and won’t hold him for long…”

She couldn’t be here. She couldn’t cause him more suffering…

**********

“Have you heard anything yet?” Roni asked in a hushed whisper.

Weaver shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Gothel?”

“Hopefully gone, like most of the objects she conjured. She fell into a giant crack that opened up beneath her.”

“Did Tilly do that?” Roni wondered if battling her mother had contributed to the younger woman’s unease.

“Yes,” was Weaver’s unpretentious reply as he slumped back against the wall. Roni mouthed a wow as she copied his posture, crossing her legs at the ankle.

“Margot thinks she knows where to find her,” she told him. “Henry’s taking a loop around the neighborhood too. She’ll turn up.”

“She knows she’s Alice,” Weaver stated without preface. “As soon as I said that his heart was still beating, I saw it in her eyes. She panicked.”

“She remembered his poisoned heart…” Roni sighed. “That poor girl... She didn’t want to cause him more pain. She must be devastated…” Weaver didn’t answer; he already knew she was right. Getting her memory back, watching her father suffering and then having to destroy her mother just might have short-circuited Tilly’s complicated mind.

But it was Roni who suddenly sat up straight, a quizzical arch to her eyebrow as she contemplated a thought that had leapt into the forefront of her mind.

“Did his heart stop?” she asked, almost a bit too loudly as it drew some unwanted attention from other people in the waiting room.

“What?” He’d heard the question, but wanted her to repeat it.

“There’s only one way to test that theory though...and Tilly is nowhere to be found,” Weaver reminded her.