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delicatebarness · 2 months

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bring him home | chapter three

Summary: Tony finds out.

Warnings: MCU Spoilers. Captain America: Civil War & Endgame? Grief. Mentions of Murder, Death and Sex.

Word Count: I haven’t edited it just yet so not sure. I’ll update once I have.

Masterlist | Previous Chapter | Chapter Three Remaster

A/N: I wrote this chapter before even finishing Chapter Two. It broke me. Also, this was meant to be chapter four but I felt bad after not posting for a while and just letting this sit here so here you go.

Tags: @alastorsdarlingdoe | @whiminiferous | @armystay89 | @bucky-just-needs-love | @esposadomd

I DO NOT CONSENT TO HAVE MY WORK POSTED, TRANSLATED OR PUBLISHED TO ANY THIRD PARTY SITE OR APP. IF ANYONE SEES MY WORK ANYWHERE BUT HERE, IT HAS BEEN REPOSTED WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.

One Year.

Surrounded by Goats.

“How did Tony take it? You know, us being, well, us?” He questioned as he looked out to the Wakandian water, your head resting on his lap while you read. Sighing, you put your book to the side and sat up on your knees.

“He doesn’t know.” You played with a loose thread on his sling as you whispered the confession to him.

“What? Wait, you haven’t told him?” Bucky cupped your face which his hand, moving you to look at him. “Where does he think you are?” You move your hands around, gesturing towards Wakanda. “Why does he think you’re here?”

“I told him I’ve been coming here to meet up with Shuri,” You smiled remembering how grateful you were to T’Challa for opening Wakanda to the world, not only helping provide resources to other countries but also for giving you an excuse to tell your dad. “We’ve been working on a tech thing,” you move your hand over to Bucky’s armless shoulder. “Which, isn’t a lie.”

“You just left out the part that you’re sleeping in a hut, surrounded by goats, with an armless 100-year-old man?” Laughing, he shook his head at you while you just nodded at him.

It Still Wants Him.

“I lost a lot of loved ones,” you sighed as you looked around the small circle of group members attending today. “I lost a lot of friends, co workers, my brothers, I thought I had lost my dad at first and I also lost the love of my life.” You hadn’t realised your dad standing in the shadows of the entrance. His head was down as he listened to his child heartbroken over loss. The one life experience he couldn’t protect you from or heal. He wanted to see how your idea was working out, he wanted to see how you were helping people while you yourself have not yet been helped.

He was shocked to hear you say “love of your life.” He racked his brain on who you could be talking about, as far as he was aware, you didn’t care about romantic relationships. The others in group knew who you were, knew you lost friends, family, co workers and your brothers. Yet, they too were just as confused as your dad had been to learn this information. They had never seen you in any tabloids in regard to romance. Surprisingly considering who raised you.

They were asking all the same questions your dad was thinking. “What was their name?” “When did you know they had disappeared?”

“His name was James,” No, your dad thought, it can’t be. “Everyone knew him as Bucky, but, he liked it when I called him James.” He stared at you through the shadows, debating if he should storm in and demand to know the truth. He didn’t need to, you carried on speaking. Freely, opening about it all, all he could do was listen. “And, I watched him disappear after fighting Thanos.”

“I have never met anyone like him in my life. So calm and patient. It felt like a connection the second our eyes met for the first time. He was funny, charming and just all-around a nice guy. He had a lot of trauma but he worked hard to grow from it. He meant more to me than anyone could imagine.” You sighed, rubbing your left arm subconsciously. “There was a lot of tough times at the beginning, especially when you consider how we met and the complexity of us just knowing each other. But, I couldn’t imagine anyone else filling the space in my life like he did. I wished for him to be the man I grew old with, built a home with, possibly had children with.” You wiped a tear that started falling with your shelve. This was when you noticed your dad, you made direct eye contact with him and you had never felt so small under his gaze. Disappointment. That’s what you were. “Anyway,” you choked as you carried on, not dropping his gaze. “I knew us being together would have hurt so many people. That was the last thing I ever wanted to do. But, the heart wants what it wants and my heart, wanted him.” This was when you dropped his gaze and looked around at the fellow group members. “It still wants him.”

After the last member had left the sports hall of Midtown, you followed them into the schools parking lot. You lifted your head to notice your dad leaning against your car with his hood up. With a deep breath, you walked towards him.

“I don’t want to hear it.” You spat before he could open his mouth, you tried to open your car door but he slammed his hand against it. “Dad, please, I don’t want to hear it.”

“You’re sleeping with a murderer.” It was as if he hissed at you, anger spat like venom as he looked down at you.

“I’M A MURDERER.” “And in case you forgot what happened a year ago, I’m not sleeping with him anymore.”

“Y/N he killed-“

“I understand you’re still hurting, Dad. I would be too if it was you and Pepper.” He saw the pain you still carried from only ever hearing stories about them but never getting to meet them yourself in your eyes, there was also the love you had for a man you grew to know as himself and not a killer. “But, it wasn’t him. Surely, with that genius mind you’d be able to comprehend that.” His head dropped with a sigh. “He loved me, he was kind to me, he made me happy. Isn’t that enough for you as my dad? Not as an avenger or a son? Just, my dad?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Looking back up, reaching his hand out to wipe a stray tear from your cheek. “You to be happy.”

“I miss him, dad, I miss him so much.”

Pulling you into his arms placing a hand on your head, allowing you to sob into his chest.

“I know, Kid, I know.”

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x y/n #catws #dad!tony stark x daughter!reader #falcon and the winter soldier #bucky fanfic #bucky x female reader #cacw #endgame #avengers endgame #the avengers x reader #tony stark x reader

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averagewriter-inthedark · 1 year

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The Young Avengers 🦅 | Marvel Headcanon

Takes place during Phase 4 of the MCU

Link to my marvel Masterlist

Requested 📨 yes/no

Being a young former Black Widow and forming a team with Shuri, Kate, Elijah, Joaquin, and Kid Loki would look like:

To be honest you weren’t to fazed with the idea of forming a team with the younger crowd of up and coming superheroes. Sure you had been friends with Shuri since 2018 and met the others through Sam, Clint, and Thor, but the idea of creating a team like the Avengers never crossed your mind until Shuri proposed the idea. “Ain’t that Val lady forming her own team? Or Secretary Ross is, they’re calling them the Thunderbolts? Yelena was telling me about it—anyway, point is if there’s already a new team of heroes then why make our own?” “Calling them heroes is a little…far fetched if we’re being honest. They are more like the Dark Avengers—and no I was not trying to make a joke. You look at who she’s recruiting and it’s literally that. Think of us as their antithesis.”

It didn’t take much convincing after that with you literally going, “Fuck it. Let’s do it—might actually give me shit to do now that the world has gone to shit trying to get back to the way it was.” Within the hour you were pulling up to a hangar to meet the others. They all looked excited except Kid Loki. He looked rather annoyed being there—really it was Thor’s idea to have him join to keep him out of trouble. “It was either this or join him in his adventures across space. Frankly I’d rather stay in one place after escaping the Void.”

Considering you all are some of the most powerful and intelligent kids on the planet, there is bound to be some restrictions. Likely y’all would be staying at Avengers compound or create your own base camp but there would still be oversight. If Fury is not dealing with the Kree then he and Maria are who y’all report to. Other than them, the veteran Avengers tend to look after you guys—like Sam and Clint. “So since you’re now Captain America and you’re technically retired, does that make Torres the Falcon and Bishop Hawkeye?” “If that’s what they want to go by. You’re still called Black Widow aren’t ya?” “Touché”

So there you have it. Shuri: The Black Panther, Joaquin: the Flacon, You: the Black Widow, Kate: Hawkeye, Kid Loki, & Elijah: The Patriot.

As expected you’re a rambunctious group of heroes. Sometimes y’all find yourselves in trouble when you weren’t planning on it. Trouble just finds you guys 90% of the time. Agent Everett Ross has a whole supply of advil because keeping track of you all gives him a headache. “You’re job was to get it, get the intel, and get the hell out of there. What went wrong?” “Well…….as you can see um….yeah I have no explanation. Shuri you got anything?” “Nope. Torres, you?” “I can’t even remember what we were doing there.”

One time on a mission you guys actually ran into the Thunderbolts and it was quite the scene. First of all you and Yelena were like, “Hey sis! What are you doing here?” Meanwhile Bucky was scolding Elijah & Torres and Walker was getting annoyed with Kid Loki’s tricks. Kate just looked out of place while Shuri was trying to calm everyone down, “It seems there has been a misunderstanding. Unless….it was the plan for all of us to be here.” “What are you saying, Shuri?” “I believe our teams were set up, white wolf. Why else would both of us be called to the same place, for the same exact thing, on the same day?”

Having a genius like Shuri on your team meant you guys were equipped with some of the best technological advances than anyone else. Even the Thunderbolts were envious of y’all’s artillery. Not only did Joaquin get an upgrade on his falcon wings, but Kate got high tech trick arrows, Elijah a vibranium shield, kid Loki with a scepter and you got some additions to your Widow’s bite and suit. “Shit, I feel like I could take down even Thanos with these.” “Try not to show them off to much, Widow. Secretary Ross is still trying to get me to develop stuff for the Thunderbolts and i’ve given him the impression I’m not even advancing our weaponry. So..keep it on the down low.”

After some time as a team, you guys would recruit Kamala Khan, RiRi Williams and Cassie Lang as y’all’s Ms. Marvel, IronHeart & Stinger. Peter Parker would eventually join, bringing in his buddy Ned and America Chavez who were Masters of The Mystic Arts. The team grew so large y’all could actually split you guys up when multiple missions came in. With their initiation, Dr. Strange, Captain Marvel, and Scott Lang joined Sam, Clint, Fury, Ross, and Hill as ‘chaperones’.

“So what do we call ourselves?” “The Young Avengers.” “Isn’t that a derivative?” “Yeah, but it sounds less menacing than Dark Avengers or the Thunderbolts. I mean we are Avengers…just we’re young so it fits.” “True…”

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jadore-adanna · 11 months

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what could shuri be doing in haiti? a headcanon list 💜

the story of bpwf concluded with our princess and protagonist shuri settling in haiti with nakia and her nephew toussaint. having burned her funeral robes and choosing to deal with her grief in a healthy manner, i'd like to think shuri's living a quiet and relaxed life with her remaining family, finally finding her peace. after an eventful couple of years, lord knows the girl could use it. this post details some headcanons i've had on what she could be spending her time on there, as we patiently await her next mcu appearance.

• she's definitely toussaint's constant playmate and his all-around favorite person! also tutors and helps him with his school homework

• probably has a part time job teaching science and/or maths at nakia's school

• i just feel like everybody in the town they're in ADORES her but especially the children

• she's definitely cutting down on her time using her tech excessively, with or without nakia's nagging. these days, she spends most of her time hanging out with toussaint anyway

• i like to think shuri's taking up relaxing hobbies that are also useful at the same time, such as sewing and knitting. i say these hobbies in particular because shuri's very clearly a fashion enthusiast and at her core is constantly trying to make improvements to things. needlework is definitely something that i think would be in character for her to take up, as it allows for the improvement and creation aspect she loves with more of the relaxing and less of the technology (which i believe she's spending less and less time on these days)

• aside from her own self made wardrobe, i hc that she creates handmade clothes for her loved ones as well!

• as shuri is truly a creator at heart, she and toussaint probably bond over building things as well, much like she probably used to do with t'challa. some of their projects include a mini playground and a bird bath!

• she has a little safe space nestled in a little tree surrounded corner by the beach with a hammock and comfy pillows decorated with little fairy lights where she can relax and rest, especially in the afternoons

• she, nakia, and toussaint frequently have picnics and hangouts on the beach

• the three of them also grow their own food in the garden and bond over cooking (nakia does most of the cooking, though shuri's learning! shuri mostly makes vegan recipes hehe comic reference)

• she definitely tries to recreate the dishes ramonda used to cook for her for toussaint. she also sings to him and the other children much like ramonda used to. it's her healthy way of remembering and celebrating ramonda's life & legacy

• shuri likes to go to nearby markets!

• she also likes to go fruit picking and randomly snacking on it during the day

• toussaint gifts her and nakia flowers and seashells to wear in their hair! aside from wearing them in her hair, she probably sews the seashells onto her clothes too

• i've noticed shuri's fashion reflecting her current state of mind, such as bright colors when she's her normal cheerful self, and a dull color palette when depressed as seen in wf. i've also realized she shows more skin and chooses flouncy skirts and dresses when happy, while opting for comfortable wear that almost engulfs her when she's down, probably her subconscious seeking more comfort in any form she can get it in (more on her fashion and its meanings in a future post). as she's peaceful, happy, and enjoying domestic bliss with her family, as well as living by the beach, i like to think most of her fashion these days consist of loose maxi dresses/ beach dresses and short matching sets in her signature colors of purple, burnt orange, white, and of course, black

• shuri cutting her hair was symbolic of a grieving period. considering how her character is moving past that, i like to think she's growing it back out and wears it long now. visually it'll look stunning blowing in the beach's wind and i'm also kinda curious to see how she'll style long hair for the bp suit

all in all, i like to think she's enjoying a life full of only peace and happiness, connecting with family and nature, and discovering happiness outside of the life she was used to. i sure hope nothing's coming to ruin it...

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noir-renard · 1 year

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@kiwwles you sent me an ask about fics I recommend, and I was trying to save the answer as a draft and the whole ask disappeared 🥲 I don't know if it got deleted or if I answered it privately, but since it appears all traces of it are gone, I will try to recreate it here, because I worked on it for a while and I don't know why tumblr is like this

AnYwAy, I chose two fics per category, from four categories: DPxDC, DP only, Batman (+ DC), and Other. I focused on DP/DC because I figure if you like IYGABAB, you might want to read more from those fandoms.

Here are my recs:

DPxDC

Vacation Crashers by @impyssadobsessions

Batman crashes in the wilderness following up a lead in a recent case.

Meanwhile the Fenton family was having a camping trip to celebrate Jazz's last year as a "kid", but considering who suggested the location, it spelt disaster.

Now Danny and Jazz have to survive an onslaught of ghosts, take care of an injured Batman, and while worrying about their parents.

This was the first DPxDC crossover fic I ever read; I saw Impy_'s art from this fic and I just had to know more, and now I'm happily tumbling down the rabbit hole into the wonderland that is the Danny Phantom/Batman crossover verse. Vacation Crashers is the first in a series, which is the best news ever ^w^ 10/10 recommendation!

Bat Ghost by @megaerakles

Bruce is attacked by the ghost of Batman from the future. To get to the bottom of it, he pays a visit to some prominent ghost hunters, and happens to encounter a teenaged half-ghost vigilante (?), who just *happens* to resemble Damian. A lot.

On an unrelated note, Tim Drake has done nothing wrong.

I love fics where the Batfam goes to Amity Park. It's always a good time to watch them out of their element and adapt accordingly. This is a particularly enjoyable rendition, and it's still updating, too!

DP only

Exhumed by Marsalias

AU where Danny left behind half his physical body when he half-died. (AKA Corpse AU.)

Marsalias is one of my favorite DP writers, hands down. I really love the Exhumed series in particular, though; the world-building is excellent, the OCs are wonderful, and the writing is skillful.

Trust Your Instincts by @peachdoxie

A new kind of danger threatens Amity Park. With no other leads, Maddie Fenton turns to the one individual that might be able to help: Danny Phantom. Meanwhile, after a near death experience, she begins to question everything she knows about ghosts.

Excellent Maddie-centric fic where a near-death experience forces her to confront her own prejudices and misconceptions around ghosts, as well as the failings of her own scientific hubris. Currently on hiatus, but this fic was my obsession this past spring. Features cool OCs, interesting ecto-science, and lots of heartfelt/heartwrenching conversations.

Batman only

Loading and Aspect Ratio by Jube514

A world where nobody has wings, but people think they do, and that changes everything. (A Batfam Wingfic with a twist)

An excellent twist on the wingfic trope that really suits Batman. Features a Good Dad!Bruce who leans into the misconception that Batman is a cryptid because a)it's funny and b) it's convenient.

Take It Back Now, Y'all by Timthetoaster

(In which Tim finds himself in the past, and tries to do the right thing. It's more complicated than he'd like.)

Tim Drake being a bad-ass, accidental time travel, attempted fix-it. What's not to love?

Other

TAZ(Balance): All The Things You Prayed For by @anonymousalchemist and @marywhal

Taako is The Winter Soldier and Lup is Captain America AU

This is one of the best stories I've ever read, hands down. I've read it about four times *at least*. Even if you are not familiar with The Adventure Zone or The Winter Soldier (MCU), it's written so well that you can enjoy it without context.

TMA: The Magnus Institute vs the 21st Century: a series of emails and IMs by @shinyopals

What happens if the Magnus Institute gets a Data Protection Officer? What's it like to work in Tech Support? How are employee reviews conducted when your manager is Peter Lukas? This series does its best to answers these sorts of hard-hitting questions about office life at the Institute.

If you aren't familiar with The Magnus Archives it might be a bit hard to follow, but this epistolary fic has some of the best CSS coding and humor I've ever seen.

Anyway picking just a few was really difficult because I read a lot! I think every fic I've ever read has affected me in some way. But these are some of the ones most special to me. I hope you enjoy them!

#answered asks #I know this doesn't look like an ask but it is. in my heart.#fic recs #if anyone is tagged here who doesn't want to be let me know and I'll untag you <3 no questions asked #kiwwles #Batburger recs

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amarriageoftrueminds · 10 months

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Do you see Tony stark as a male version of Peggy Carter? A rich high class brat that won't hesitate to do anything and side with anyone to shine and then act like everyones protective god mother? Or do you think he is at least a bit redeemable because he might have learned bit from his mistakes.

There are certain similarities. Peggy definitely has more in common with the Starks than anyone.

In her show, all her 'friends' are not from the same SEC as her, as with the Starks. In fact, her friends are... employees. Butlers, waitresses, housekeepers... they're almost literally being paid to be friends with her. You see that with Tony, too. His 'friends' are: an air force colonel (when Tony has extremely lucrative military contacts with the air force), his PA (who gets made his CEO and... immediately dumps him), his bodyguard, his robot butler, his other robot servants... and women who benefit financially from sex with him (Christine Everhart and Maya Hansen). In Peggy's case, she's that woman to Howard Stark. 😬 (And Steve).

In AC, the only time you see a person from the same socioeconomic class as Peggy, they're a villain. Similar thing with Tony's villains in IM (Obadiah Stane, Anton Vanko, Justin Hammer, Aldrich Killian...) they're just Other Tonys.

(So you can tell that TPTB have some kind of... English fetish going on and think upper classness is definitely part of her Specialness?)

While Tony has the same 'avoidance of all consequences for his actions' wealthy white privilege that Peggy has, there are certain important differences.

Generally speaking, they share one over-arching trait, which is: if you consider whether or not the world / people around them would be better off if they didn't exist, the answer is yes.

Without Tony, there'd be no Anton Vanko, no Aldrich Killian, no Quentin Beck (which means no Spider-Mans dimensional incursion), no Ultron (which, in another universe, endangered the entire multiverse), no dead Pietro, no dead Sokovians generally (meaning probably no Scarlet Witch, no Vision, no Westview Hex, all the knock-on effects of that?), no Snap. And Hulk or Thor could have put the nuke through the wormhole in A1 (except he wouldn't because it wouldn't have been written into the story at all since Hemsworth doesn't have short man syndrome.)

With no Peggy, Steve's story in CATFA isn't altered (because she didn't matter to the plot or his life at all). But there would be no Winter Soldier programme (since she wouldn't be around to give the man who started it a job at SHIELDra), ergo no Black Widows being mind-controlled either (since that was based on Winter Soldier tech), no continued Hydra (WhatIf confirms all this by showing that a SHIELD founded by everyone else who was there originally, except her, has no Nazis in it.) Ergo no Project Insight. No Winter Soldier means no assassination of Howard Stark, so no Civil War bust up of the Avengers, if Tony still exists (unless Zemo found some other way to effect it). C.1940s her male colleagues in SSR would have handled everything she interfered with in AC, Edwin Jarvis's wife wouldn't have been sterilised by gsw in the uterus, and Daniel Sousa would have settled down with a nice girl (nurse Violet, possibly Skye) and wouldn't have been assassinated by Hydra for whistleblowing in 1955, because there wouldn't be any Hydra.

Now the differences:

First, Tony is actually above-average at some of the things he thinks he's good at, so his arrogance based on that is at least partially warranted (which Peggy's conviction of her own competence, moral integrity, etc. isn't).

His estimate of his own ability is debatable, though, since his genius (in the MCU) stems from the Grand American Capitalist Tradition of stealing other peoples' work, doing a minimal amount to hone it, and then claiming all the credit / reaping all the financial reward.

(See: Iron Man suits, AI, E.D.I.T.H., B.A.R.F., Extremis serum, time-travel, etc. Tony's only original creations I can think of in the MCU are his robot-servants and the improvised booby-traps from Iron Man 3. And for all we know these could be rip-offs, too, it's just not mentioned.)

Second, Tony may have got into MIT as a legacy admission (nepotism), but he does actually have at least some of the expertise in a STEM field to warrant a place, which Peggy lacks. (She gets an honorary degree from IIRC Oxford: ie. rewarded for doing no work. And while she claims competence in mathematics (as part of the AC retcon of her non-existent war record), outside of one code-breaking scene, her alleged mathematical ability is never shown. (And in fact Bletchley Park's concession to her leaving it mid-war suggests she wasn't a crucial employee.)

Third, while Tony may have inherited his company without earning it, he does have the necessary brains and thieving habits to create and maintain such a company if he wanted to. He has the appropriate skills; which cannot be said of Peggy in any of her unearned spying jobs.

Peggy is a nepotism baby who couldn't stomach any of the jobs she was handed, one after another, that she kept idiotically choosing to ask for despite her unsuitability for them (which she cannot recognise).

And then she flaked out on these jobs from 'boredom,' even in the middle of a crisis like a world war (failure is never her fault, always the job's, always the mens').

She is a woman who thinks she's a maths whizz and yet has to have the number of sides of a cube explained to her (and as said, Bletchley Park were apparently fine with her quitting mid-war. It's like the opposite of all those 'screenshots of my boss begging me to come back after I quit' sm stories about crucial workers).

She believes she is a brilliant, underappreciated spy, surrounded by inferiors, but cannot spot a single spy when they infiltrate her organisation or home (any one of many, many, many, many occasions: during the war and after).

She's a spy who craves attention.

Whose disguises fail in seconds, and are so inept that she cannot avoid detection by someone who barely knows her, even when photographed from the back.

(Contrast that with actual-spy Natasha, whose disguises are so good not even we realise it's her until she reveals herself!)

Peggy is a woman who thinks she is a sort of hero to other women... but is fine shunting the work which she considers beneath her off onto them... (when she reacts with outrage when men do that exact same thing to her)... or fine with letting her rich male friends get away with chauvinism.

Who interferes to prevent male feminist colleagues from taking steps that would make life better for the Other Girls whom she is Not Like and who Cannot Therefore be allowed to Become Like her.

(Because as long as White Feminist knows Her value, she's the only person that matters!)

It takes a certain level of competence to correctly gage the extent of your own competence, or relative incompetence.

It's the basis of true self-awareness. She lacks that. (Whether Tony also lacks it is... not clear. Maybe he does, too).

Peggy's continued bloody-minded belief that she is, eg. a competent spy and a feminist, directly contrary to the evidence... (because the writers aren't capable of recognising when they've written the exact opposite of what they vaguely intended) ...is the proof that she lacks the qualities necessary to actually be either of those things. And to realise that she is just not physically or temperamentally suited to spying or heroism, at all.

She does share Tony's habit of blaming anything but herself for her problems, though. 🤔

When Peggy shows up hours late for work, eats like a slob at her desk while all the men are doing their paperwork, refuses to do said paperwork (even though that's the job she's been hired for and accepted) as if it's an insult to even ask her, shunts it off onto female underlings, and then does nothing except sabotage her colleagues' work for months, then unilaterally hiring someone who cannot be trusted and who kills 40+ people... (Johann Fennhoff)

She acts as if her male colleagues' lack of enthusiasm about her ability is due to... sexism, only... and not to her being, for example, a lazy, entitled, violently bad-tempered, disastrously-incompetent dickhead and self-outing nepotism hire.

When Tony calls himself a "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist..." He is at least getting 1/4 of those right... ish.

(Is it genius to commit industrial espionage and rip off the designs of other men including employees, do 12% of the work and then patent them as your own? When it's JARVIS and FRIDAY who do everything for him, actually? Is inheriting generational wealth a flex? Does exchanging sex for favours make you a womaniser or a creepy Weinstein-esque loser? Does making money off cleaning up the very mess you caused, for Rich-White-Guy tax write-offs, count as actual philanthropy? Would an actual philanthropist list philanthropy last, of all those things on the list?)

He does appear to learn from his mistakes for a brief period...

(His Act 1 Fuck Up is usually revealed as a Plot!Coupon necessary for his Act 3 Success; the icing over of the Iron Man suit, the double-reverb attack gained from firing at Rhodey, etc.)

...But that is over-ruled at the beginning of each new Iron Man movie, when the lessons of the last one are ignored to set his personality back at 0. 🙄

In the case of the Avengers movies, though, he doesn't learn at all. Ultron tries to murder everyone, (WhatIf reveals he would have eventually destroyed the entire multiverse.) Hydra tries to enact Project Insight A.I. to kill millions...

And yet years later Tony is still claiming those two as morally correct successes, flawed only because they were made to fail (not because they were horrible fascist ideas to begin with), and redoing Insight as EDITH only giving it to a disastrous teenage boy. 🤦‍♀️

Peggy, however, is pathologically incapable of learning from mistakes, because that first requires you to acknowledge that you are capable of making mistakes, which is inconceivable to her.

She has herself up on a high pedestal, as the pinnacle of womanhood around which the world and all other women (surely?!) revolve, and cannot be knocked off its axis.

The closest she has ever come to an accurate self-assessment was when Edwin Jarvis called her arrogant and ignorant and she flippantly pretended to agree. (Inadvertently proving him right).

Tony is possibly redeemable because he at least has sensible people around him, telling him he's a fucking idiot.

He does occasionally make the obeisance of saying 'my bad,' even if he doesn't fully comprehend it.

Peggy on the other hand isn't redeemable because she doesn't think she's ever done anything wrong in her life, ever. She thinks she is practically perfect in any way. Atwell thinks she's a good enough sort of woman to fix any man! Like a lot of TERFs and white feminists, she would see the mere suggestion of any wrongdoing on her part as preposterous.

#long post #antitony #antipeggy #antisteggy #cynthia glass #p*ggy meta #mcu critical #steggy is hydra trash party #meta #mcu meta #antitony...ish?#shieldra founders #toAyourQ #dat's me #hey nonny #to quote mcu-peggy in the comics -- implying she is either corrupt or incompetent is 'insane' and will get you IMMEDIATELY attacked by her #unrelated factor: both RDJ and atwell are essentially playing themselves which is why their characters read as fresh and charismatic #but while RDJ has great acting talent on top of that to lend tony's less-RDJ-ish emotional scenes heft and verisimilitude...#atwell is not so talented (reminding me of Jennifer Saunders parodying bad actresses in French & Saunders comedy show)#and so isn't as natural in those moments as she is when peggy is being eg. violent/bossy/white-feminist/condescending etc.#my meta

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luci-j · 1 month

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Character Headcannons/Breakdown - Rook Raccoon

Okay, I'll be the first to admit this gets a little sad in some parts. I was going through it when I wrote this, what can I say?

* Her first name is supposed to invoke the chess piece. It's because she's basically used like little more than a game piece by Pyko and Gideon.

* Her last name is an homage to my dad's last name. He died unexpectedly while I was writing "Stand By Me", so I made her last name sound like his. Her taking Rocket’s last name at the end was a quiet way of me saying goodbye to him.

* She represents "found family" gone toxic. Each of the stories I do in this series is about love. "Flowers" is romantic love. "Star-Man" is the love that comes with loss. "Stand By Me" is about love and family. The Guardians are one of the best examples of found family that's done well in MCU, so I wanted to show what the inverse of that was.

* The school she goes to, Gideon university, is based off predatory colleges that were rampant during my college years. I had a friend over 150k in debt to a game design school with these practices.

* She's a sharklike alien because I really like sharks, you guys. Also I love Guillermo del Toro films, like most self-respecting weirdos and oddballs, and I think "The Shape of Water" is one of the finest love stories I've ever seen.... The more I examine my interests the less shocked I am that I ended up where I did.

* She's aro ace! The more I realized "oh. This isn't a one-off fanfic, this is going to be a personality trait of mine now" the more I wanted to be mindful of different representations. I also have a very longtime friend who is aro ace, and she keeps me really in touch with the fact there isn't a lot of rep out there. So it's a love letter to her as well.

* She's a professional V-tuber who goes under the name "Catfish".

* She's more of the software side of tech, whereas Rocket seems to favor hardware. I figured this would differentiate her skillset just enough that she'd be able to stand out as a unique character without too much overlapping skillsets from existing characters. This is something I try to be mindful of as well when creating OCs.

* Groot is one of her best friends and they do a lot of gaming together.

* Rocket DMs a game with them and a few of the other Guardians in it.

* She loves going all-in for holidays because her parents never really did.

* Her culture as a whole is very cold and very "get it yourself" from a VERY young age. Eggs take five years total to hatch and if the hatchlings struggle to get out of the egg, it's considered a sign that they aren't strong enough to survive in the outside world.

* There's a time where this would have been very relevant on their world, but modern progress has made this point moot. The harsh conditions of Icathia no longer exist, but the world has been slow to change from its harhness. Needing to rely on others is still seen as a moral failing.

* A lot of this culture comes from me remembering stories about friends getting kicked out at eighteen and being very, very angry that I was also eighteen at the time and couldn't do much to help them. Rook was my little way of being like "I'm sorry I couldn't do more to protect you. I was a kid too." I also saw a "fun craft idea" that was a "countdown" to when a kid turned 18 and would get kicked out of the house and if that didn't give me the BIGGEST anxiety attack to look at.

* Meti's first time going to jail was for Rook. He and Rocket were both arrested for brawling with her biological parents. <3

* Mara, her daughter, struggled to break out of her egg. Rook didn't think twice about helping her break out of it. She was going to break the cycle she came from

* It took her a LONG time to realize her parents and family loved her unconditionally. When she became a mother, it helped things really click for her

* She has Caldon's equivalent of a Masters in software engineering.

* Some of her favorite Earth music are things like City Pop and Future Funk. Also a huge Vocaloid fan

* Loves the beach and the water. If she isn't working she can be found hanging out by one of the ponds at the nature preserve

* She still struggles with her anxiety a LOT, but she's working towards getting better. She still didn't sleep for three days when Mara started school.

* She loves hanging out with Skye and helping her with some of her creative pursuits. This can include things like wiring LED lighting for costumes Skye makes.

* She lives in the apartment next door to Rocket and Meti. She makes enough for her own place, but she just loves being close to her family

* She's still puzzled/fascinated by mammals as a whole.

* She's always up for board game night

#rocky raccoon and the knowhere man #rocket raccoon #meti geer #dr. meti geer #rook raccoon #rook moar

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chuuyrr · 2 years

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An older reader shipped w/ geto ♡ It could take place during his time being a second year at jujutsu tech with gojo, like classmates basically! Just a super cute fic filled with fluff moments! Thank you♡

scarlet witch! reader x boyfriend! geto suguru

jujutsu kaisen x reader

masterlist of the series

╰➤ CW(s): possible spoilers for jujutsu kaisen (gojo's past arc), major themes of fluff, geto being your boyfriend 😳

╰➤ PAIRING(s): geto suguru x reader, platonic! second-years (gojo satoru & ieiri shoko) x reader

╰➤ SONG SUGGESTION(s): polaroid love by enhypen, ganadara by iu and jay park, darari by treasure, love maybe by secret number, future by red velvet

hi hello omg thank you so so much for requesting geto, please i haven't written for him in such a long time :( thank you for being patient as well!! enjoy reading some fluff ♡

before you read: this older version of reader isn't a gojo or a fushiguro at all. your uniform is inspired by nobara's uniform and mcu! wanda maximoff's attire during age of ultron ♡ lemme know if you guys noticed the 'reference' in this post :)

geto suguru still remembers the very first time he saw you, and he would be lying if he said he didn't fall for you at first sight. when yaga had informed them of the new classmate, he, along with gojo and shoko, was genuinely curious, and they were very much in awe of seeing you the moment you stepped inside the classroom.

you were dressed in a customized jujutsu uniform that was a tad different from theirs.

it was scarlet in color. it looked similar to shoko's uniform, except you had your gakuran-styled top was unbuttoned to reveal your inner white blouse that was tucked in your scarlet skirt that reached your just above your knees. on top of that, you wore black knee-high socks and black low-heeled boots and arm bracers.

"hello, everyone! my name's [surname] [name]. it is so nice to meet you all."

suguru, satoru, and shoko stared at you with interest as you introduced yourself to them. that heavenscent smile you gave them that day was something your boyfriend will always cherish. he found it difficult to breathe that day because you had ironically taken it from him.

the way your [color] eyes shone and your [color] hair bounced when you bowed and gave them your name—how can someone look like a goddess just by standing there?

"oi, suguru! close your mouth or else you'll catch a fly! don't tell me you're falling for the new student already~"

he remembered satoru slapping his back because, apparently, he hadn't stopped staring at you even after satoru and shoko had already gave you their names and he had his mouth hanging agape the whole time. that was how lovestruck he was to meet you.

there was just something so bewitching about you. you were just so different.

at first, suguru, satoru, and shoko thought you had heavenly restrictions due to your lack of cursed energy, so when you told them about your chaos magic and how you got referred to enroll at jujutsu tech by master tengen himself, they were in awe. not only were you strong in nature, but you were so friendly and kind.

you were very caring for others. as soon as one of them gets injured, you're quick to patch them up while simultaneously fending off curses. he admired this kind heart of yours so much.

suguru's infatuation with you was constantly teased by satoru and shoko. he would always run to you the moment he saw you in trouble in the middle of a mission.

suguru will be instantly by your side while you clutch your injury. he would insist on carrying you after a mission, but that would genuinely leave you confused, considering you can always patch yourself up with your magic, but you take advantage of this just because you want him to hold you ♡

suguru is so extremely nice to you. suguru would give you his notes, insist on studying with you because satoru was goddamn annoying, which is partially true because mostly it was to spend time with you, and he would randomly hand you snacks or drinks, which just so happened to be your favorites all the time.

"oi, what about me? how come [name] gets snacks from you?" satoru huffed, folding his arms across his chest as his eyes glared at the young man.

suguru raised an eyebrow, "are you [name]?"

"no?" satoru raised an eyebrow back, confused.

"then none for you." suguru would say bluntly, rolling his eyes as you snickered and boast the snack suguru gave you to satoru.

satoru would dramatically gasp, have his hands on his hip as he turns to shoko, "this bastard, can you believe him?!"

suguru is such a gentleman too. he offers his seat to you every time there isn't any available. if there is a seat available, he would be the one to pull out the chair for you. he's also the kind who would cover the edge of the table when you duck or something because he doesn't want you to get hurt or bruised and he always always opens doors for you and would always tell you "after you milady" followed by a wink.

headpats. headpats. lots of headpats. suguru would always find himself ruffling your hair.

sometimes satoru would even go, "i want a headpat too." just because he wants to tease and annoy the hell out of you two.

hanging out with you after missions was something suguru looked forward to. at first, you thought it nothing big, but that was until satoru and shoko started making excuses of being busy with something, so it always ended up just being you two, and little did you know, satoru and shoko were already setting you up with suguru.

suguru would often take you to eat at your favorite restaurant and would always pays for it.

"what do you mean you're paying? we should split the check!" you argued, trying to give your money but all suguru does is chuckle softly and pat your head.

"consider it my treat for doing so well earlier. you deserve it." suguru insisted, smiling ever so kindly at you.

out of the three, you were closer to him. apart from always being with suguru all the time because of satoru and shoko, he was so easy to talk to. suguru was approachable. you two just seemed to click the most, and thanks to you, he was able to change his mindset towards non-jujutsu sorcerers.

"i see, so you don't agree with me either like satoru, huh?" suguru's face faltered into a frown.

the two of you snuck out and were stargazing outside your dorms while everyone was in deep sleep. you and suguru would often delve into meaningful conversations while you enjoyed each other's company.

"if you put yourself in a world of violence and bloodshed, you might be able to find a reason to live. you won't find it. whether you're on the side that takes lives or the side that saves them, nothing beyond your own expectations will happen. nothing in this world can fill the hole that is your loneliness. you will wander the darkness for eternity. so, if both sides are the same, then choose to become a good person. save the weak, protect the orphaned. you might not see a great difference between right and wrong, but... saving others is something just a bit wonderful."

you didn't just open suguru's eyes like you were introducing him to a world of colors; you had opened his heart too; giving him a new perspective in life and the light and warmth that he wished to have and share with you.

it's been a year since you and suguru met and became each other's. you were now in your second-year together with him, satoru and shoko. it didn't take long for suguru to start courting you, and you two ended up being a couple sometime last year.

currently, you were at his dorm. the two of you were studying for exams together when you noticed him.

"suguru?"

you stared at suguru's gaze. he was staring at you with so much love and adoration that it made you a little concerned.

"yes, love?" he hummed in a questioning tone.

you found yourself laughing, "sugu, you've been staring at me like that for a while now."

suguru's eyes widened at that, and the next thing you know, he averted his gaze away from you for a brief moment as he softly chuckled at himself before turning his head towards you and this time held a closed eyed smile as he rested his chin on the palm of his hand with an elbow propped against the wooden surface of the table you and him were sharing.

"sorry, love. i just couldn't help myself."

you shook your head, unable to control the smile that was growing on your face.

"keep staring at me like that and my name might end up the only thing you can answer on our exam this coming week."

"i know, i know. sorry, my bad." laughter escaped his lips.

"is something on your mind? if you want, we can take a break." you insisted, closing your notes and taking a hold of his free hand that was laying flat on top of the table.

"i'm just thinking about you, that's all." suguru gently pulled your hand towards him and pecked your knuckles a kiss.

"i love you."

love might be the twisted curse of all in this world, but with you, all he could think about was how love is a blessing.

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rutadales · 1 year

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Please tell me about your superhero au IMMEDIATELY 🙏

I went to sleep right after I posted that so this was great to wake up to but YES OKAY!!

So powers are split up into two groups: psychic and physical, the vast majority of powers being classified as physical. Psychic powers are anything mental based ie conjuring items out of nothing, telepathy, ect whereas physical is anything that affects only the physical world so enhanced strength, flight, or any type of matter manipulation. The psychic to physical ratio is about 1<5, again the vast majority of ability users being physical.

There are hero agencies and then teams within those agencies. To operate as a hero you need a team, and for a team you need to work under an agency. There are some loopholes and permits but the easiest and most accepted way to to get hired by an agency and then join a team within it. Most heros essentially work as contractors, usually hired by the city but can be hired by individuals. Civilian hires mostly function as glorified PI work and tend not to pay as well so most successful heros avoid that unless they're desperate.

Dream has a team of 3 people, Dream, Sapnap, George, with only one of them (Sapnap) having physical powers. That fact alone makes them a very unique team considering most agencies only have a few psychics in total let alone several on one team. Dream works under Bad's agency Badlands, which is the largest agency in the city. Dream Team is the most successful team under that agency, and Quackity and Karl will tag along as essentially per diem heros. Sam also works with this agency but usually behind the scenes tech work. He built almost everyone's gear.

Things really start to take off story wise when they get hired to investigate a robbery of a chemical plant. They locate a warehouse where the suspects are hiding and jump in to kick some ass, where they run into another hero team, headed up by Punz.

Punz, who before this has only worked alone, is a old friend of Dream's and co who just kinda drifted away from everyone and turned more into doing solo work. He's definitely more into the hero work for the pay than helping people, but he didn't like the idea of signing onto an agency. He worked alone for years until he ran into a dry spell and needed more consistent work. This is where he ended up teaming up with independent hero duo Tina and Foolish to form a temporary team to seem more credible and get some more jobs flowing in. They did one of those afformentioned loopholes and got a temporary permit, so they aren't signed onto any agency. Foolish and Tina have worked together for about 6 years and Punz has been with them for around 2 months. They, unknowingly, get hired for the same job as the Dream team and have an MCU style meetup where they fight each other until a Dream and co recognize Punz and Spiderman point at each other.

This kick-starts the whole story, and they end up working together to solve the case and hopefully not die! Foolish and Tina have wanted to sign with an agency for awhile and this just might be there chance, Punz is looking for this big payday and hopefully get his name on the map, and for Dream, Sapnap, and George this is just another day on the job but who knows if it'll stay this way!

(This post is really long so I'll probably make another where I talk about other hero teams, everyone's powers, and character's backstory. But yeah, while I want the interpersonal conflict I also want it to be toned down enough that everyone can be friends and so no one is the villain. Self indulgent but I think we all deserve that now and then ! Main villain is going to be the crimson [the egg] so it doesn't feel like I'm just picking a dsmp character I hate and making them evil. Very very excited for this!!)

#dsmp au #dreblr #c!dream #c!foolish #c!punz #dsmp #ask #Charlie my beloved 🫶🫶🫶 ty for indulging me #root talks #superhero au

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fouralignments · 1 year

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Do you hate Shaw and Apocalypse equally or one more than another?

The X-Men Films have always created villains that could exist in real life your Senator Kellys, Trasks, William Strykers, Warren Worthington II theses motherfuckers exist. The Foxverse always tended toward realism, which isn't grimdark, it was more of mutants and a bit of advanced tech was all that was extraordinary. When compared to DC and MCU; without the distraction of aliens, other superheroes (though I got to admit Sam Ramini's spiderman could exist as it is similarly grounded; though that might just be an effect of being produced in the same decades and subject to the same trends); so mutants could be highlighted and doesn't need to justify itself as a phemameoun, so the story could focus on characters and thus be driven by them.

In a way Shaw was a twist villain, up and until that general getting exploded, again up to that point we hadn't had a true mutant villains. yes I know Magneto was the villain in X-Men, but I would the true villain US gov and the mutant registration act that forced Erik's hand.

This motherfucker could very well exist; maybe I'm just weird I took a deep dive into how and the why authoritarianism happens, read me some Robert A. Paxton; hell I even took a class on Democratic Backsliding; I'm a big fan of Hannah Arendt; so, I get the implications of his character. That's what makes him so fucking scary. I fucking hate him. Erik cannot kill this guy enough.

In my book, he's always a villain and deserves no sympathy and will be written as such.

Now, moving on to Apocalypse, what I hate about him is how he is written. I'm going to restate one of my points, I've been making about his character. En Sabah Nur should have been an outside-context type villain, it was hinted in the movie, but given enough time. It would so easy to justify, not so much the Foxverse seeming to copy off of the MCU; however, XM:A was indeed a character piece despite how deluded; this movie desperately focus and a better driving core story. I liked the outcome of Charles's character specially less the journey and the repeated plot beats for both Erik, Raven; they as characters weren't moving forward and changing.

Unlike like DP which had to break its own back in the mental gymnastics to justify itself which crap storytelling in and of itself and should not be done; like if you have break your own fucking magic system in order to make your story work, go back to the drawing broad!

Anyhow, for one ancient Egyptian did erase records by defacing monuments and images of people they perceived as traitors, and being a false god would be so, so the information to uncover is not there and lost to history. Then the children of the atom mutant hypothesis has been established from First Class not that science is wrong, however the scientific community hasn't been presented with new information that contradicts or challenges their assumptions; they have to explain something that fits within the facts of the paradigm. So given that fact, they would even consider the possibility of ancient mutant existing and let alone living until the 20th century. En Sabah Nur would be as huge paradigm shift that would leave the world scrambling for answers and how to defeat him.

One of the reasons I hate DP is that nobody fucking comments on the bloodily miracle of aliens landing on Earth!

But I can't bring myself to hate on Apocalypse. How Oscar Isaac plays Apocalypse is just so fun! Soft spoken, but yet can be so over the top and hammy. Maybe its because of Oscar Isaac and how much he was wasted in this role and the god awful make up he was in that did no favors for him.

En Sabah Nur could have easily won the movie and recruited so many more mutants.

Like I know I can write En Sabah Nur better than Hollywood. It could have been so cool if Sabah Nur actually challenged Charles and Erik on leadership and being good parents, where the stakes would matter like getting Mystique and Peter on his side. Isaac can pull of of soft dad roles. The writer's had the perfect set-up for Mystique and Peter, for Raven/Mystique she never asked to be the 'hero' of mutantkind nor does she believe the lie of a world that doesn't exist, ok cool turn her into a rouge or villain; with Peter, break into the Pentagon could have gotten him the attention of William Stryker where he was tortured and found out to be Erik's kid and learned about that and just felt betrayed by Charles and Erik who completely forgot about him and Sabah Nur is the one who saved him, Peter feels indebted to him. Also, Even Peters playing a villain and En Sabah Nur slotting himself in a fatherly figure to Quicksilver.

it would have been a great contrast to other X-Men villains and to Erik and Charles themselves, where it was a matter of survival and protecting other mutants and just the world. Now it so much more personal to the heroes, it challenging their philosophy, leadership and who they are, not really seen until First Class, which was more about finding who they are. Apocalypse is the mantle in which they must test themselves against, but also fight those that they love. Holy shit that would have made an amazing movie.

What I like about En Sabah Nur as a character is that I have so much creative freedom with him and I can take him in so many directions.

#ask four alignments #ask4align #dadneto and quickson #Dadneto #quickson #Quicksilver #Peter maximoff #Erik lehnsherr #En Sabah Nur #erik lehnsherr #charles xavier #peter maximoff #dadneto #stepdad! charles xavier #long post

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claudia1829things · 1 year

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MARVEL Television: The Conundrum of the MCU

MARVEL TELEVISION: THE CONUNDRUM OF THE MCU Sometime between the release of 2018's "THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR" and 2019's "THE AVENGERS: ENDGAME", Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige made an announcement that stunned a good number of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) fans. He claimed that the ABC series, "MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." was never part of the franchise. Not only did this news stun a good number of fans, but me as well.

Mind you, Feige not only claimed that "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." was never really a part of the MCU, but also other Marvel television shows that include the five Marvel Netflix shows, ABC's "THE INHUMANS" and the two shows that streamed on HULU - "CLOAK AND DAGGER" and "THE RUNAWAYS". The only Marvel TV series that escaped this situation was "MARVEL'S AGENT CARTER", which aired on ABC for two seasons, between 2015 and 2016. Feige and Marvel Studios also added that aside from "AGENT CARTER", the new television shows planned to stream on DisneyPlus would be considered canon. It has been almost four years since Feige made this announcement and I am still . . . well, not confused. Trust me, I am not confused. But nearly four years after Feige, I still harbor both frustration and annoyance over his announcement. My feelings increased tenfold when the pop culture media and certain fans of the MCU justified Feige's claims with a series of articles and posts on the Internet that not only declared the Marvel TV series not canon, but also accused the television shows of their failure to connect with the MCU films - especially "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.". One article, written for the SYFY website accused "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." of "breaking" the franchise, because the series' sixth season had failed to do a follow-up on Thanos' Snap from "THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR". I find this accusation ludicrous, because I found the five-year jump between "INFINITY WAR" and "THE AVENGERS: ENDGAME" unnecessary. And a part of me suspected that Disney Studios and Feige had insisted that the show stop trying to connect to the MCU films, due to their interest in setting up the DisneyPlus shows. I also do not believe the prevailing view that "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." and other Marvel television shows had failed to connect with the franchise's movies. If anything, they tried their damndest to connect with the films. I cannot speak for "THE RUNAWAYS" or "THE INHUMANS", since I have never seen them. As for the other Marvel shows, I have. In regard to those shows other than "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.", I have noticed the following: *The Chitauri Invasion from "THE AVENGERS" was mentioned in Seasons Two and Three of "DAREDEVIL" and one episode of "JESSICA JONES". In fact, Jessica Jones had an encounter with a woman who lost a relative during that particular incident. *The Raft, a prison for the super-impowered, was mentioned in several Season Two episodes and one Season Three episode of "JESSICA JONES". *Justin Hammer, one of the villains from "IRON MAN 2" was mentioned in "LUKE CAGE", along with his former company, Hammer Industries. Some of latter's tech was used against Luke Cage by his half-brother Eric Stryker aka Diamondback, including the Judas bullet, created from Chitauri metal. *Although the Roxxon Corporation was referenced in movies like "IRON MAN", "IRON MAN 2" and "IRON MAN 3"; it played a major role in both seasons of "AGENT CARTER", currently considered MCU canon by Marvel Films. Roxxon Corporation also played a major role in "CLOAK & DAGGER" and was referenced in "DAREDEVIL". *The WHiH World News, a television network, served as the main source of news for several MCU movies, including the IRON MAN films, 2008's "THE INCREDIBLE HULK", "THOR", "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER", "ANT-MAN", "THE AVENGERS", "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR" and "BLACK PANTHER". The television network also appeared in all of the Marvel Netflix shows - "DAREDEVIL", "JESSICA JONES", "LUKE CAGE", "IRON FIST" and "THE PUNISHER" - and "THE RUNAWAYS". *The Sokovia Accords, the United Nations document that regulated enhanced beings' activities, was introduced in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR" and was also used and mentioned in "SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING", "ANT-MAN & THE WASP", "INFINITY WAR" and "ENDGAME". The document was also mentioned in Season Two of "JESSICA JONES". "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." either mentioned or referenced the following from the MCU films: *The Chitauri Invasion, during which Phil Coulson was originally killed. *The Dark Elves Invasion and the Battle of Greenwich from "THOR: THE DARK WORLD". *Asgardians. *The HYDRA Uprising from "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER", which served as part of the major narrative for the series' Season One. *S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier 64, which was secretly repaired by Coulson and a team of technicians in late Season Two and used to save Sokovian citizens in "THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON". *The Kree made its first appearance as a corpse in the show's first season, before the release of "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY". The aliens also appeared in the show's second and fifth seasons. They later appeared in 2017's "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL. 2" and 2019's "CAPTAIN MARVEL". *Sokovia Accords - In "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.", Inhuman Agents Daisy Johnson aka Quake and Elena Rodriguez aka Yo-Yo were forced to sign the Sokovia Accords in order to continue working for the agency under Director Jeffrey Mace in Season Four. *The series' fourth season also mentioned the fugitive status of Steve Rogers aka Captain America and those who had joined him in his refusal to sign the Sokovia Accords. *During the S.H.I.E.L.D. team's travels through time in Season Seven, HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. ("CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER") was featured in at least three episodes. Also, two episodes focused on the Project Insight topic from the same movie. The series never mentioned Project Insight during the team's experiences in late Season One. Season One had a strong connection to both "THE AVENGERS" and "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER", thanks to Phil Coulson's resurrection and the Fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. Late Season Two had a slightly less strong connection to "THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON", due to Coulson's search for and repair of a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier used in the 2015 movie. Seasons Three and Four had only referenced events from "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR" - Steve Rogers' fugitive status and the Sokovia Accords. However, Season Five managed to form strong connections to at least three MCU movies. The Kree, who have been featured in "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY" and "CAPTAIN MARVEL", also appeared during the show's second season and played a major role in the creation of Season Three's main antagonist, Hive. But the Kree also served as the main antagonists of Season Five's first half, when Coulson and his team found themselves stuck in Earth's future. Upon their return to early 2018, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents discovered that the Kree were members of an intergalactic political group called the Confederacy and that a top HYDRA mole in the U.S. military had formed an alliance with it. Season Five also featured the emergence of S.H.I.E.L.D. ally General Glenn Talbot, who became Graviton, thanks to an atomic element from Season One called the Gravitonium. As it turned out, the Confederacy wanted the Gravitonium. And the latter wanted it for a reason that connected the series to one of the MCU's biggest films. The Confederacy wanted the Gravitonium and a handful of Inhumans on Earth (including Agent Daisy Johnson) to use for protection from extraterrestrial threats to their worlds and Earth (thanks to their alliance with the HYDRA mole). And according to the Confederacy, one of those threats was Thanos, who had targeted Earth in his hunt for the Infinity Stones. In this scenario, the events of "THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR" played a major role in late Season Five's main narrative. In the episode, (5.19) "Option Two", "Agent Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie’s old friend and former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Tony Caine, had commented on an incident from the 2018 movie, in which some of Thanos’ minions appeared in Manhattan in search of the Time Stone possessed by Dr. Stephen Strange. In the following episode, (5.20) "The One Who Will Save Us All", an empowered Glenn Talbot learned from Quovas, one of the Confederacy aliens trying to get their hands on the gravitonium, of Thanos' impending arrival on Earth. Because of this news, an enhanced and mentally unstable Talbot aka Graviton decided to mine more gravitonium underneath Chicago in order to become more powerful and face Thanos. Unfortunately, in doing so, Graviton threatened to destroy most of the Earth. Needless to say, Coulson and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents prevented Earth's destruction by defeating Graviton. They also defeated the Confederacy. And Thanos eventually used the Infinity Stones to initiate the Snap that wiped out half of the universe's population. Sometime between the series' fifth and sixth seasons, Disney Studios, Marvel Television, Mutant Enemy, and Marvel Films proclaimed that "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." and other Marvel Television productions (with the exception of "AGENT CARTER") were not part of the MCU. Mutant Enemy and Marvel Television made it clear that "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." would not mention the Snap or explore the post-Snap world on Earth. The events of the series' sixth and seventh seasons had occurred three to four years before the events of 2019's "THE AVENGERS: ENDGAME", due to the franchise's time jump. But what made these decisions even more insidious in my eyes was Kevin Feige's accusation that "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." had failed to connect to the rest of the MCU since it first aired. And many media outlets and MCU fans had simply swallowed his pronunciations like candy in some idiotic effort to give Feige and the movies a pass for failing to mention the series for several years. Not only do I find this insidious, I also find these declarations rather mind boggling. I just revealed how the series had worked harder to connect to the franchise’s films than the latter had done to connect to the series or any of the other Marvel Television productions. Film characters like Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Lady Sif, Peggy Carter, Jim Morita, Dr. List and Gideon Malick have all appeared on the series during Seasons One, Two and Three. After Season Three, I never saw one character from any of the movies during the series' remaining run. Nor do I recall any of the film characters appearing on the other Marvel Television productions, until Matt Murdock appeared on "SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY-AT-LAW". But the latter is a DisneyPlus production for Marvel and Feige. So, does that mean the three-season run of "DAREDEVIL" on Netflix is NOW considered part of the MCU? I find myself thinking about Chloe Bennet (Agent Daisy Johnson), who has angrily pointed out on numerous occasions in the past about the franchise’s tendency to ignore not only "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." in its movies, but in other MCU shows on the ABC network and on streaming television. After encountering one article after another or one forum post after another that accused "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." of failing to connect to the MCU, I had to spill my guts. I have said it once and I will say it again - I think Kevin Feige's statement about the past Marvel Television shows is full of shit. I think all of the suits from Marvel/Disney are full of shit. To me, the movies' failure to maintain a strong connection with the television shows struck me as a sign of how their bad handling of the franchise and excuses had produced a big pile of simmering shit known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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theuntitledblog · 2 years

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RANKING TOP 10 VILLAINS

10. EGO - (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2)

A slightly different choice perhaps but one that I personally feel is justified. When it comes to the first Guardians of the Galaxy film, there was really just one thing missing that would've allowed that film to soar even higher than it did; a compelling villain. Now Ego isn't a villain who's had far reaching consequences for the MCU but what he does do is elevate Guardians Vol. 2 and a large part of that comes down to casting. On first viewing it, it lulled me into a false sense of security when you consider how charming and seemingly genuine Kurt Russell's Ego was. It was a false sense of security that was helped when you consider that Taserface, Nebula and the Sovereign were also players on the board at the same time. Now while Ego's lasting impact on the grand scheme of things for the MCU is pretty much throwaway, he succeeds in helping to raise Guardians Vol. 2 above the first. Not all villains need to be judged on their lasting impact, some villains just need to do the job well enough just once.

9. MYSTERIO - (Spider-Man: Far From Home)

This is a spot that frankly could've been Vulture and Green Goblin instead of Mysterio and either would've been fair choices but I didn't want to cheat and decided to go with my gut and my gut said Mysterio. His effectiveness as villain depends heavily on how much you know about the character from the comics. Those familiar, like myself, would've seen through the deception of Quentin Beck from the off. Others would've fallen hook, line and sinker and be caught by surprise and that's no small thinks to Jake Gyllenhaal's excellent performance as Quentin Beck. Gyllenhaal's Beck is convincing for a fairly decent stretch as a friend/mentor to Tom Holland's conflicted Peter Parker. The reveal itself is played well and one of the oldest comic book villains with, lets face it, a silly design is worked perfectly into the modern MCU by the blending of Stark Tech and holographics to realize the illusion based threat of Mysterio. These are excellent mind boggling sequences. The Spider-Man MCU Trilogy is a rarity in that it nails all of its villains but it is the consequence of Mysterio's actions that have lingered the longest and cemented his place on this list.

8. ULTRON - (Avengers: Age of Ultron & What If?)

Of all the villains that the Avengers have come across, James Spader's Ultron is the one who isn't remembered with the same degree of fondness as say Loki. But I also feel that is a bit of a disservice to a villain who does makes enough of an impact to stand above many of the other villains in the MCU who haven't delivered. The visual effects are superb and Spader brings a lot of personality to a villain who gets a lot of screen time and action sequences against most of the Avengers. In hindsight yes, this a villain who required maybe a little more build up or development to be considered a lasting threat; take a look at the terrifying take of Ultron in What If? to see what potential is there. But Age of Ultron lays plenty of storytelling foundations and is more of a companion piece to the then upcoming Civil War. But Spader and director Joss Whedon manage to pull off a villain that is much better than most others in the MCU and in fact had/has more potential than most to be a lasting player.

7. ZEMO - (Captain America: Civil War)

While not the most extravagant, charismatic or powerful of foes the Avengers have faced, Zemo is by and large one of the darkest, coldest and most successful villains they've come across. Motivated by revenge but grounded in his practical understanding and acceptance that he's just a single man going up against Gods. Daniel Bruhl's quiet, calculating and it must be said brutal Zemo may not have the most memorable lines or grandest moments but he is elevated in that his revenge is understandable and there is, dare I say it, empthathy for him. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier didn't do the character too many favours by retconning his background, but Zemo deserves his place on this list as villain of one of the absolute best films of the MCU.

6. THE SCARLET WITCH - (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness)

The biggest surprise of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for me was the revelation that Wanda was the villain and initially I was ... disappointed. WandaVision had shown that the character was capable of villainous acts but it went to great lengths to provide context and backstory that elevated Wanda as a character. When you also consider Wanda's journey as a whole from Age of Ultron, then actually this does work. Rather than an outright villain as such, Wanda is a grieving being whose corruption by the Darkhold book of spells have pushed her down a dark path. Elizabeth Olsen steals the movie from right under Benedict Cumberbatch as she builds on her impressive performance in WandaVision to deliver a villainous turn that is relentless and terrifying but also compelling from a character perspective. The pain and grief Olsen is able to convey is extraordinary and makes it impossible for us as the audience to not feel totally unsympathetic to her plight.

5. XU WENWU - (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten is very mid tier Marvel and is also a movie of two halves. Featuring stunning fight choreography with a style and tone that feels different, Shang-Chi is elevated further by Tony Leung Chiu-wai's villainous turn as Xu Wenwu. First hinted in Iron Man 3, Wenwu is essentially the real version of the Mandarin that was expected in that film. Wenwu is another villain who is given as much screen time as the hero so that we may come to understand them. His treatment here much like Loki in Thor, ensures he is one of the more interesting villains and it was delightfully unexpected. The action sequences are superb but his relationship with Simu Liu's Shang-Chi is what carries the story through. A very good villain of whom I wish we had got to spend more time with.

4. KILLMONGER - (Black Panther)

Very few villains on this list can be empathized with to the extent that Erik Killmonger is in Black Panther. Orphaned and abandoned by his Uncle to then have that anger fueled by racial injustice have created a current and memorable villain. There is a painful truth to Killmonger's motivation that can't be overlooked but the brutality he is willing to inflict such as the cold way he betrays Klaue and the extreme methods he is willing to go keep him high up on this list. The only regret is that it seems unlikely that the character will return.

3. THE WINTER SOLDIER - (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

As someone who wasn't particularly impressed by Captain America: The First Avenger, I was blown away when the Winter Soldier came along. It was so different from the former with the political conspiracy story feeling refreshing at a time when there was a risk of the MCU becoming too formulaic. The film itself features a number of memorable characters and moments and chief among them is the Winter Solder himself. A skillful and silent killer whose presence is only amplified by his successful hits on Nick Fury and Black Widow. The Steve and Soldier showdown carries weight because he is established as a credible threat and they don't rush to a confrontation too early. The Steve/Bucky relationship was always under-developed but as a villain, The Winter Soldier more than lives up to his billing within this specific film and within this specific story.

2. LOKI - (Thor & The Avengers)

What more can be said about the MCU's first genuinely outstanding villain? Tom Hiddleston stole the show in 2011's Thor and his presence went along way to make The Avengers the success that it was. While I think it's fair to say that there's been little doubt of the threat Loki has posed over the years, he is a character that has endured none the less. Villains in the MCU tend to be more effective when the writers actually seem to take notice that the villain needs time too. All the villains on this list received that kind of time to the point that we understand what's driving them and it all started with Loki. Charismatic, funny, complex and also unpredictable. The arrival of 2021's Loki show on Disney Plus is further proof that there's still life in the character even if he's begun to move away from a position of outright villainy. It's an impressive feat for one of the original characters of the MCU, and a villain no less, to still be as popular and fresh now as he was back then.

1. THANOS - (Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame)

No villain in the MCU was awaited longer than Josh Brolin's Thanos. Avengers: Infinity War is the biggest and best film in the MCU and a significant reason for that is Thanos. A CG goliath who looks totally convincing but it's his powerful introduction and subsequent conviction in his ideals that stand out most. In the course of Infinity War, Thanos defeats the Hulk, kills Heimdall, Loki, Gamora, Vision and defeats the Avengers all before successfully wiping out half of the Universe. It's fair to say that no other villain has posed such a credible threat to the point that you feel any character is at risk when he's present. But what Infinity War does best of all for Thanos is given him screen time and development as a character. His subsequent defeat in Avengers: Endgame rings all the more sweeter because of the threat he poses and for me it is of no question that Thanos is the best villain of the MCU.

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redhoodie1723 · 1 year

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rant abt mcu spider-man and how it's good writing for a bad adaptation

okay so this wasnt really inspired by anything, i just wanted to put this into words. before i start, idc if u love or hate the mcu and ur thoughts on the spider-man adpatations. this is just my personal opinion and what i understood after watching the movies (numerous times). feel free to add on or respond (i do love having convos abt this lol).

for me, the difficult thing abt mcu spider-man and his supporting cast is not that they're badly written, they're just bad adaptions. for the most part, the character development of peter (and some of the supporting cast) makes perfect sense within the context of the universe and creates a compelling story that affects the viewer emotionally. that's not the issue. the issue is the story they're telling is not a story that aligns with the history and values of who spider-man is in the comics.

like for peter, a lot of his development within the mcu is all about learning to be a hero without all the fancy tech and stuff.

in homecoming, it was in the end when he became a true hero, not because of the tech, or even his powers, but his desire to do good and be good. he chose to sacrifice parts of his personal life to do the right thing, he chose to save the vulture when he could've gotten hurt, etc.

this is continued in far from home, where peter's reliance on the iron spider suit and the edith glasses prevents him from developing as a hero in his own right. only when he has to use his own intelligence and start to hone his powers is he able to see through mysterio's illusions.

even in no way home, peter tried using the fancy stark industries tech by himself to fix the villains, and failed. however, when he worked with the other peter's using just their intelligence and materials available in a school, they came up with a better plan to save the villains.

so in order, he had to separate himself from the fancy tech and tools given to him by tony stark to learn how to be good, how to use his powers, and how to work with others.

now, he had other arcs and aspects of development in the films, but that was one that continued throughout his story. this is not a badly written arc at all, in fact its very compelling (to me at least) and helps solidify peter as one of the better heroes in the mcu. if you contain his story to just the mcu, and don't consider the comics, it's good writing. in fact, the spider-man films are the only mcu films that have been consistently good since endgame (exception of wakanda forever).

however, this isn't a self contained story. spider-man is a comic book staple and his character has a few key mark traits that should be present in any variation of the character for it to be a good spider-man. the mcu was missing a lot of that.

the most prevalent of which is his financial situation. the parkers are a poor family, peter grew up with financial struggles and this continued on in his adult life. in the mcu, the parkers have lived in at least two different apartments that are fancy, in a nice area, and have no signs of financial difficulties. the only thing that even hints at that is the dumpster diving referenced in civil war, but that can be attributed to other things.

not to mention his reliance on the tech he got from tony stark. it took till the end of no way home to see peter actually sewing one of his suits. spider-man has typically been a very low-tech hero outside of his webshooters. he's smart enough to handle any tech, but he doesn't have the resources or need for it. and like i said, while a lot of his story is about learning to not be reliant on all that stuff, it makes no sense to his character that he would have access to the first place.

peter isn't as 'uwu' in the mcu as fandom makes him out to be, he's actually pretty mature for his age and a strong character. however, peter parker should be more than that, the mcu peter parker lacks spider-man's distinctive biting wit. spider-man doesn't just make bad puns and a few quips, he actively makes fun of his opponents, both superhero and personal ones. mcu peter doesn't do this.

and the complete lack of uncle ben is atrocious. i know may got the iconic responsibility line, but ben's impact on peter and his path to heroism is only vaguely alluded to. i understand not wanting to rehash spider-man's origin story for the millionth time, but the mcu didn't even include a name drop of the most important motivation for peter becoming spider-man.

(side note: some people are upset he was on team iron man for civil war. i dont really care, the accords/circumstances were a lot different from the comic and while i do think if peter knew the full extent, he would've leaned team cap, i also don't think it was a huge characterization issue in regards to the adaptation)

and there's other stuff, but the point i'm trying to make is that mcu peter is a good character. he's well-written and complex, and i know why a lot of people like him (i do too). however, the fact is, until no way home, he wasn't even close to an accurate spider-man adaptation. things can be good while still not being correct.

and then there's the supporting cast.

controversial take: i hate mcu mj. zendaya is a phenomal actress with incredible range, and i know she would've been an amazing mary jane watson, but the writers ruined it.

like at least peter had some things in common with his comic counterpart. with mcu mj, the made an OC and then slapped mj's nickname onto it, not even her full name, just the nickname.

i don't wanna go into it much because this is already so long, but it just feels like the writers don't think female characters can be traditionally feminine while still being strong characters.

with mcu peter, it at least feels like he was well written. mcu mj had little to no character development. she was written like a fully formed character but given no hints of backstory, motivations, etc. she was just pessimistic for three films, said one line in no way home about thinking more positively, and then the writers called it a day.

she shares no backstory, no personality traits, no aspirations, or anything with comic mj.

honestly, idk enough abt comic ned to speak on him, although i do know that he's essentially a ganke rip-off. however they should have used a character like harry as peter's friend smh. additionally, they did flash dirty.

i know that modern day bullies are often not jocks. like ik from personal experience that the athletes at my school are much nicer than the average student because they're held to such high expectations by the coaching staff. no one is shoving nerds into lockers or giving people swirlies (as far as i know). a guy who is jealous of someone else's academic achievements when they believe it should be theirs, and then verbally insults/talks trash abt them because of it is entirely realistic.

and for a minor, background antagonist, he still had a few referenced backstory and motivations. thats not to say flash is a particular well fleshed out character in the mcu, he's not, but considering he's a background character, thats a lot more forgivable than what they did to mj.

but like peter, hes not a bad character, just not the correct character.

once again, financials are changed. it's like the mcu is allergic to working class or poor characters. flash's parents in the comic are a police officer and a stay at home mom. they are not buying flash new cars and fancy phones like he has in the mcu. the only similarity is that flash's father seems to be a bad parent in both universes, but since we dont know much about his parents other than the references in far from home, i dont know how deep those similarities go.

anyways thats my rant. there are other issues with the spider-man adaptation in the mcu, but overall im disappointed with how it's handled. im glad no way home set up a more accurate version of spider-man, but they should've had that from the beginning.

plus, there are many significantly worse adaptations in the mcu that are not only bad adaptations, but bad writing too (cough cough mcu w*nda). in the big scheme of things, spider-man fans got lucky, the mcu has butchered characters much worse than that. and at least it seems like things are going to be better from now on.

#like i couldve gone into more detail abt how the writing for characters like peter is actually very good #but the post was already long #and i feel like what i have explains it well enough #so yeah my forever opinion on mcu spider-man is good writing bad adaptation #also justice for mary jane watson and flash thompson #mcu did them so dirty #and please before anyone says anything #my issues are not with the cast #especially not zendaya aka the LOML #but i have serious beef with the writers #its like none of them have read a single comic ever #like im no expert but even ik that broke peter parker should not be living in a fancy apartment and using multi million dollar suits #peter parker #spider man #marvel #marvel comics #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #mary jane watson #michelle jones #ned leeds #flash thompson #reds bad analysis #discourse #sorry for the rant #anti mcu wanda #like its only one line in there abt w*nda but i dont want any elizabeth slurson stans seeing this post and getting angry at me #also another unpopular opinion: they changed up civil war so much that im actually team iron man in terms of the movies #sorry not sorry #mcu team cap can call me back when they dont have a n*zi on their side

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strangeduckpaper · 2 years

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M137: Avengers Founding Members

Wasp

- Janet Van Dyne. Has major Avengers: EMH influences, but she’s definitely the leader.

- Scientist and Mutant (Classic growth/Shrink powers) who worked with Hank Pym to develop Van Dyne Pym (VDP) Particles.

- Wields her wrist mounted taser blasters and and the Ant-Man insect control helmet.

- Since my toxic trait is that I’m an EMH Hank Pym enjoyer, she had a good, if a little rocky, relationship with him. At least until he disappeared.

- Personally responsible for the Avengers’ PR, and balancing it with their actual heroism.

Iron Man

- Tony Stark obvi, but...different. You see, he’s based off his Armored Adventures incarnation.

- Yes, he is in fact a teenager here. The OG Howard Stark was his grandfather, while his father is Howard Jr.

- Major conflict stems from the Stark tech sold by his father and Obadiah Stane.

- Not sure about all the relationships, but Rhodey’s maybe a decade older and his bodyguard.

- Pretends to be a robot, I don’t know if it would be funnier if the Avengers did or didn’t know his real identity.

Captain America / Nomad

- Steve Rogers did not meet an icy entombment, but is thought dead all the same.

- In actuality, he found out about Operation Paperclip and went AWOL, with James Howlett and a prison camp escapee named Erik Lehnssher joining him.

- Spend the next few decades traveling the world with the new Howling Commandos, hunting Nazis and generally messing around.

- At present...I’m not exactly sure where he is. He is alive, but even with the Super Soldier Formula he’s feeling his years. He’s not an Avenger.

- But his shield is in good hands at least...

Black Panther

- N’Jadaka / Erik Stevens. Boom. What. Plot twist.

- Was brought back to Wakanda following T’Challa’s disappearance. More than a little resentful of that.

- Not as angry as his MCU incarnation, but still thinks Wakanda should be active on the world stage. Moonlighting as a superhero is a start.

- Pretty canny politician, all things considered.

- Pretty good friends with Jan, but at any point is hair’s breadth from ripping Iron Man’s head off.

Thor

- The big twist about him is that Donald Blake is the dominant personality.

- It’s kinda like SHAZAM. He’s a human (or least he appears to be) who proved worthy of Mjolnir, and can summon its power to become Thor.

- Still has flashes of his life as Thor.

- Redhead, thick and barrel bodied.

Groot From Planet X

- Plot twist twisted tighter. They’re not the same Groot as Guardians of the Galaxy. Is the same Groot that debuted in Tales to Astonish.

- Escapee from Area 51 courtesy of the not-so-jolly-green-giant.

- Trying to bridge the communication gap with the other Avengers. Thor’s the only one who’s made any progress.

#Marvel #Marvel AU #M136 #M137

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darthkvznblogs · 2 years

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Hey, we know about Mass Effect and Kara already, but what was the logic behind Doom and Reed including some of the other series of the Kryptonverse?

What a casual question that totally didn't keep me up at night xD

I'll preface this by saying that I just don't have reasons for all of the universes beyond "it's cool and I want it in". I don't see a reason to discuss all of the universes individually within the story, to be honest - it's not like Doom's gonna spend a few hours exposing his reasons for each to the Avengers.

Anyway, I guess this could be considered spoilery, so it'll be under the read more:

-Ben 10: the Omnitrix and Celestialsapiens as a powerful tool against Thanos and a "saving throw" mechanism in case the Snap happens.

-Big Hero 6: advancing technological development at a faster rate than MCU canon.

-Dragon Ball: the titular Dragon Balls could be a failsafe if the Snap happens. Saiyans as a buffer against the Black Order.

-Mass Effect: introducing the possibility of human biotics, potentially advancing tech development faster through the Mars Archives, throwing more species at the meat grinder.

-Miraculous Ladybug: the wish-granting mechanism from uniting the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses.

-Riordanverse (and Hades): empowering the gods to be able to defend Earth in a pinch (read: to be useful for once)

-Steven Universe: potentially convincing the Diamonds to defend Earth for Steven.

-TOA: adding more defenders to the pool, especially having Trolls who consider Earth home on our side.

-Voltron: Voltron. In human hands. 'nuff said.

If I didn't mention a franchise, you can assume I either don't have a reason or the reason is a spoiler! There's also some that just boil down to "adding defenders to the pool", which isn't as exciting of course.

#ask box #kryptonverse

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emmybliss26 · 1 year

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BLACK PANTHER FULL MOVIE

The arrival of Black Panther was like nothing before it. The effect, prompt and withstanding, was grandiose. That the film debuted during the Trump years, a tragic period in 2018 when Black life felt more tricky than expected and the call for Black superheroes more critical, gave its message an exceptional charge. It was a peculiarity multiple times over — a business, basic, and social victory.

Lord T'Challa was a trendy legend for a new, unsure time. No more peculiar to awesome jobs, Chadwick Boseman carried balance and appeal to the exhibition close by an elite player gathering that included Lupita Nyong'o and Michael B. Jordan. Dark Jaguar had teeth, and it was savvy to the point of avoiding the simple snare of portrayal in an industry starved for variety and significance. A sound representative for chief Ryan Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole, the film was about more than the supernatural occurrence of being recognized; it was a proportion of certifiable advancement. It addressed us and we replied back. New Black prospects — mind boggling and rich and free — were opening up.

Unanticipated in one of those prospects was Boseman's passing, in 2020, from colon disease. Establishments are based on star power, and without Boseman, one of Wonder's most splendid and most encouraging, Black Panther: Wakanda Always is spooky by his nonappearance, hung in the sort of distress that can't be overlooked. It's uncommon for MCU movies to station the disturbance of melancholy with such undaunted concentration (WandaVision came close in its unpredictable portrayal of spousal sorrow and its mental delayed repercussions). The situating is interested yet successful. I wonder whether or not to consider Wakanda Everlastingly another sort of superhuman blockbuster — it hasn't completely wasted time — however it's nearby. Coogler has outfitted his spin-off with a changed jargon: It talks similarly from a position of misfortune as it wins. Distress is its native language.

The lord is dead, and the eyes of the world are by and by on Wakanda. Sovereign Ramonda (Angela Bassett) has expected the lofty position, and, in the year since her child's passing, given her all to keep up with the African country's remaining as a sovereign power. The main known country to have it, Wakanda stays rich in vibranium — the supernatural metal used to make state of the art weaponry and tech — and won't impart its assets to partners (in one early scene, French fighters endeavor to take some and immediately get their butts kicked by secret Dora Milaje specialists). Voracity being the flash for every kind of contention since the beginning of time, Cooler and Cole are quick to kick off the story in such a manner. The US government starts a vibranium-following activity in the Atlantic Sea however it is bafflingly defeated by an obscure power — individuals of Talokan, a submerged domain home to the main other wellspring of vibranium on The planet.

Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) is their injured chief, and never going to budge on staying quiet about Talokan's presence. He has freak superpowers — uplifted strength, sea-going recovery, and flight (because of the wings on his lower legs) — and orders his country with a careful, if intense, hand. (In the comics, Namor is known as the Sub-Sailor and hails from Atlantis.) The mining activity takes steps to uncover his maritime perfect world so he devises an arrangement to stop it: kill the virtuoso researcher who constructed the vibranium-GPS beacon (Riri Williams, acquainting Ironheart with the MCU) and line up with Wakanda against the surface world. In any case, Wakanda declines. What's more, the two countries end up gazing intently at close to 100% conflict.

A conflict, for reasons unknown, that isn't exactly essentially as convincing as the energizing standards behind it. Like the US government's determined hunger for worldwide impact. Or on the other hand the all-consuming fury Shuri (Letitia Wright) feels from the deficiency of her sibling, and the genuine way it drives her to activity. Or on the other hand how Namor's villainy, assuming it ought to try and be called that, is established some place further, some place more human. He's cut from the material of exemplary MCU screw-ups. Like Wanda. Like Kang. Namor is amused in Catch 22 and not totally outlandish in his anger. It's all in how pleasantly his origin story is set: He is the relative of a sixteenth century Meso-American clan that escaped oppression and had to find shelter submerged. He's a survivor from a group who figured out how to make due under horrendous circumstances. His ethics have weight.

Coogler's characterizing standards are all present. He embraces the equivalent diasporic hybridity that made the first Black Panther a solitary accomplishment (creation originator Hannah Beachler and ensemble fashioner Ruth Carter both returned for the spin-off). This time, past Wakanda's emerald fields and amassing commercial centers, we are acquainted with Namor's sea-going eden. What Beachler and Carter formulated is a visual mixture that pulls from Mayan legends: the dress, discourse, and design are undeniably strung with striking Native subtleties. One of the extraordinary disappointments of the film, in any case, is that we don't invest more energy wandering through the submerged city, getting knowledge into its kin and their way of life.

I've been told before that injury freezes at the pinnacle. It requests that we temper our speed, that we check out the entirety of what's occurred, the draining throb of it. Ramonda and Shuri give a valiant effort to bear incredible despondency, to recollect what they lost. The thing is, superhuman movies — the story rationale of them — request a specific force. They need to continue to move. They glint like a comic book, sheet by sheet, never resting too well before the following scene. Sadness requests the inverse from us. It maintains that us should stop, to slow our means. This is where Wakanda Everlastingly is most in conflict: It struggles with choosing exactly what it ought to feel, what feeling it needs to arrive on. Yet, perhaps that is the more genuine film. The more fair one. It's not as perfect. It's uncalled-for yet more defenseless thus.

The focal viewpoint that makes Wakanda Perpetually a special Wonder film — melancholy as its highlight — is likewise the perspective I see as least fulfilling about it. Obviously, you can't disregard it in a film like this. You can't stay away from the haze that emerges and the aggravation that feels like it may very well won't ever leave. You need to circle it. You need to deal with it directly. Here and there, you need to make it the story.

Furthermore, what that resembles, what it flawlessly emerges into in a film like Wakanda Everlastingly, is what it has consistently resembled: able and caring People of color — moms and sisters and companions — utilizing the distress they've been burdened with and not allowing it to utilize them. Indeed, even in Afrofuturist utopias a reality of Dark life is tenaciously diligent: Not even our superheroes can outsmart passing.

Furthermore, when they don't demonstrate y — what then, at that point? The people who remain figure out how to battle, to recuperate. It's a well established story, and unfortunately excessively genuine. It's one you've presumably heard previously. One never loses meaning.

#movies #films #movie reviews #Netflix

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niannianyabao · 1 year

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

So, friends, what is going on with the MCU? We're now at the end of phase four (I think? I've lost track of that sort of thing entirely) and there's a very palpable sense of the air coming out of the balloon. By which I mean not that the movies have gotten bad—some of them are (Eternals) but most are still falling squarely within the same C-minus-to-B-plus range that has characterized this franchise from day one. And yet, without very much having changed, it's clear that something has changed. The MCU used to be something that I—and a lot of other people—enjoyed talking about, and maybe even more than that, arguing with. When it was bad, that was something that felt worth calling out. Now it's just something to shrug at.[1] What I want to do with this post, then, is not so much review the new Ant-Man movie (which is definitely at the C-minus end of the aforementioned scale but still isn't that exciting to talk about) as to try to work out what it can tell us about why the MCU feels so inessential these days.

There are several obvious culprits when trying to identify the cause of this shift. Avengers: Endgame put a period on an eleven-year film and TV project that maybe made it easier for people to hop off the bandwagon. The pandemic following soon after shook people out of the habit of going to see the latest Marvel offering in theaters two or three times a year, and it's hard to regain the sense of FOMO that made doing that seem reasonable. The Disney+ MCU shows we watched instead of the movies have fallen in an uncomfortable middle ground between the two mediums, not as compact as the films but not reaching for the classic TV virtues of building character arcs and relationships either.

To me, however, it seems as if the problem is both simpler and more profound. The reason that Marvel superhero movies aren't landing the way they used to is, well, the superheroes. Avengers: Endgame saw off Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson, three of Hollywood's most charismatic performers, who were playing three of the franchise's biggest draws. Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland have subsequently made soft exits. Other MCU stalwarts—Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen—have transitioned to TV (and in Olsen's case, had their characters killed off). And, of course, the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman has removed what was probably intended to be a central figure for this batch of movies. There's a void at the heart of the franchise, and while new characters may eventually come to fill it, right now feels not at all unlike where we were during phase one, still trying to figure out what there is here to care about. Except now the novelty of the cinematic universe concept has faded, and the star power that made that concept seem plausible is absent.

It's in the context of this void that we have to consider the decisions made with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Scott Lang is one of three MCU characters who are still standing and capable of headlining a movie.[2] It makes sense to try to make him, alongside Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel, into the core around which the next stage of the MCU can be built. Makes sense, that is, until you remember that Scott, despite starring in two previous MCU movies and having major roles in two others, has never cohered as a character. He's a tech genius who walks around with a permanent air of confusion. A self-destructive fuck-up with criminal tendencies who is also a genial dad and a bit of a fuddy-duddy. His superpowers are mostly used for gags—the franchise has never figured out how to make the genuinely awesome power of miniaturization work in a fight scene—and his heroism feels largely informed. When he rises to it, it's usually because of a risk to his loved ones—most often, his daughter Cassie—or because he's too awed by another hero to say no.[3]

In fairness, Quantumania is clearly aware of all of this, which you can tell because the movie opens with a voiceover by Scott saying everything I've said in the previous paragraph, albeit more generously phrased. The purpose of the movie is thus to reposition Scott as a genuine hero, not the heroes' comic relief. It does so, first of all, by making him not a hero at all. As the film opens, Scott is retired not just from the Avengers but, seemingly, from any other job. He's written a book about his adventures, but doesn't seem to be doing anything else except playing devoted boyfriend and father to Hope and a now-teenaged Cassie. This frustrates Cassie, who believes her father should be using his powers to help people, and has been getting arrested while using miniaturization tech to fight off cops who try to break up protests and clear out homeless encampments—a radical note that the film raises and then immediately shies away from. At the same time, Scott learns, Cassie has been developing a device that sends signals into the quantum realm, where Hope's mother Janet spent decades before being rescued in the previous Ant-Man movie.[4] Despite Janet's warnings, the device malfunctions and sucks the entire Pym-Van Dyne-Lang family into the quantum realm.

The quantum realm, as it turns out, is inhabited with all the things that make for a good adventure backdrop—there are strange and dangerous creatures to run away from and/or make friends with, a marketplace where unsavory characters haggle over dubious wares, a bar where you're as likely to be stabbed as get a drink, and badlands where mysterious nomads roam. And there's a villain, Kang the Conqueror, another variant of the character introduced in the first season of Loki. Kang arrived in the quantum realm decades ago and was rescued by Janet, who then joined forces with him to repair his ship's power cell so they could both return home. Right at the moment of their triumph, Janet realized that Kang was the perpetrator of multiple genocides, acts that he'd resume if allowed to escape. She sacrificed her own chance to get home by destroying his power cell using Pym technology, but not before he regained some of his powers. Kang then began to take over the quantum realm, rebuilding his empire in miniature. The arrival of our heroes gives him access to the kind of tech that could restore his power cell and allow him to escape, while the rebels who have been fighting him for decades hope to use that tech to defeat him once and for all.

This is, in other words, the kind of story we've seen many, many times over the years, in books, film, and TV. It goes all the way back to Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, and examples of it are as recent as Tron: Legacy. And the two things that need to be said about how Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania executes this story are, first, that it doesn't make a lot of sense for Scott Lang, and second, that the film doesn't even try to make it make sense. The standard template for this story sees the hero dropped into a long-running conflict and quickly embroiled within it. Their original goal may be simply to get home, but by the end of the story they're supposed to be emotionally invested—they've fallen in love with the leader of the rebellion, or discovered something essential about themselves in this new world with its new opportunities for heroism, or become so disgusted by the villain's perfidy that they whole-heartedly adopt the rebellion's creed. None of that happens in this movie. Scott's goals remain what they always were—to protect Cassie. He never gets particularly involved in the rebellion.[5] Right at the end he makes the same choice Janet did, to sacrifice his chance to get home in order to prevent Kang from escaping, but the emotional foundation for that sacrifice hasn't been laid (and immediately after he makes it a new way to get home appears, so it isn't even that much of a sacrifice).

There is some good stuff here. Jonathan Majors's second take on Kang is as magnetic as his first, and makes the idea of him as this chapter's ultimate villain an enticing one. The flashback in which we see Kang and Janet's friendship grow and then shatter is extremely well-done, and Janet's self-sacrifice lands incredibly well for a character we've known for less than an hour all told. The rebels are a fun motley bunch, including an enjoyably dry performance from William Jackson Harper, some zany CGI creatures, and a hopefully star-making turn by stuntwoman Katy M. O'Brian as rebel leader Jentorra. Late in the film it's revealed that the ants Hank was experimenting on, who were also drawn into the quantum realm, have spent subjective thousands of years evolving, eventually developing a hyper-technological socialist society—an idea that deserved much more space in the movie[6], but is pretty neat for what we do see of it. But as you'll note, none of these things involve Scott, who ends up feeling like a bystander in his own movie.[7]

Of course, that last bit isn't new. Scott has always felt like someone who stumbled into his own stories, all the way back to when he fell into heroism after trying to rob the wrong house. The second Ant-Man movie leaned into that by making Scott the relative straight man to an ensemble that included his semi-criminal friends Luis, Dave, and Kurt, his FBI monitor Jimmy Woo, his ex-wife and her husband, and a villain, Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost, whose story aroused more pity than disdain. The result was one of the best MCU movies for reasons that, I think, tell us a lot about why the franchise has started losing steam. It's not just about the characters. It's about the relationships.

There was a period, roughly between 2012 and 2015, when it seemed like the MCU was interested in doing the thing that creates fertile soil for a fandom—let its characters grow and change, and let the relationships between them develop. To let Tony Stark grow past his need for an armored suit. To sit with the tragedy of Steve Rogers's separation from Peggy Carter, and his determination not to let the same thing happen with Bucky Barnes. To make the Avengers friends as well as teammates. That all proved a mirage, of course. The MCU's now-famous tendency to devour itself, to end one story on a definite note of change and then roll that change back as soon as the next story starts, quickly asserted itself. But the fumes of that impression carried the fandom forward all the way to Avengers: Endgame, kept our investment in the characters going even though what was showing up on screen was flat and samey. Once that story ended, however, the fumes dissipated, and it's now easier to see that there's nothing in this franchise worth getting invested in.

There's no better encapsulation of the MCU's determination not to do the things that attract fans to stories than the fact that Quantumania discards all of Ant-Man and the Wasp's supporting cast[8] in favor of a parachuted-in "family" theme with Hope, Hank, and Janet that it then singularly fails to earn. As I've noted in the past, in the new MCU the only people who matter are the ones whose names are in the title, so it's obvious why this movie doesn't want Scott to have relationships with people like Luis or his ex anymore. But it also doesn't sell the relationships it does want us to care about. We don't feel the love that supposedly exists between Scott and Hope, or the connection that has formed between Cassie and her step-grandparents. Even relationships that should have been a slam dunk, such as Hope's attempts to reconnect with her mother after decades of separation, don't land. And despite all the emphasis the film places on it, Scott's connection with Cassie still feels generic, the standard protective dad template we've seen in a million movies rather than a relationship between these two specific people, who are starting to figure out how to relate to one another as adults.

As phase four draws to a close, it's clear that Marvel has put all its eggs in the cosmic basket. In multiverses and variants and a villain with a thousand (identical) faces. What's been left by the wayside is any reason to care about all of this. As Quantumania demonstrates, that reason will not come from the legacy characters, who are being flattened out of what little personality they had in order to suit the needs of this new, gargantuan, story. Again, I don't think this will lead to the vaunted "death of the MCU". It will take much more than that for people to stop going to see these movies. But I do think we're witnessing the death of the MCU as a fannish phenomenon—a death that, in all honesty, has been a long time coming.

[1] When you say things like this, some people start talking with great yearning about the looming death of the MCU, but I don't see any reason to anticipate that. Cultural currency is, after all, something very different from actual currency. As Avatar: The Way of Water recently demonstrated, it is possible for millions of people to spend billions of dollars watching your movie, and not have a single further thought about it as soon as the credits start rolling.

[2] Yes, I know that officially the title of the movie includes Evangeline Lilly's Hope Van Dyne, indicating that she is a co-equal hero to her male counterpart. That was barely true in the second Ant-Man movie, however, and it certainly isn't the case in Quantumania, in which Lilly gets virtually nothing to do and is repeatedly upstaged by the actresses playing her character's mother and stepdaughter. This is presumably due to her much-publicized anti-vaxxer positions, so good riddance.

[3] It's never stated outright, but between how the incident is described in the previous Ant-Man movie and this one, it seems very clear that Scott has no idea what the fight he was roped into in Captain America: Civil War was about. This is both hilarious and horrifying.

[4] Cassie has only known Hank, Janet, and Hope for a couple of years at the outside, but has nevertheless become proficient in miniaturization technology and even has her own supersuit. She also calls Hank Pym "grandpa". This all feels very awkward and like a way of shoehorning in a family theme for a character who already had another family, which goes almost entirely unmentioned here.

[5] Cassie does, but Cassie is the latest in a long line of teenage girls whom Marvel are clearly positioning as potential heroes going forward, and by far the least interesting and individualized of the bunch. Her affinity for the rebels never rises above the generic.

[6] If nothing else, in order to create the callback to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids that this film so obviously demands.

[7] One character who does interact with Scott a lot is MODOK, a cyborg killing machine who turns out to be Darin Cross, the villain from the first Ant-Man, now transformed into an enormous, floating head. This is such a weird plot element that I have no idea what to say about it, but I knew I couldn't let it go unmentioned.

[8] Jimmy Woo appears in a brief, wordless scene, but everyone else is absent. Including Cassie's parents who, again, raised her on their own during the entire five years that Scott was missing during the blip, a point that the film seems almost eager to elide.

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