#because I thought the approach to their feelings about the Hulk and this arc about trying to cure Bruce was simplistic

[gdcee]

Old Friends

Summary: Loki doesn't meet his three counterparts in the TVA's garbage dump at the end of time but someone else entirely.

Warnings: Some sexual innuendo. Troubling possessive childhood behaviour. Mention of unwanted sexual advances (not perpetrated by either of the main characters in the fic).

==============

Loki considers the words neatly painted in bright red letters on the large signpost.

NO LOKIS (except for the kid and alligator they're cool)

He squints, wondering if his earlier rough landing has jumbled some connections in the language processing bits of his brain. He shakes his head and reads again.

Nope, he evidently did not misread the bit about the alligator.

"What in the name of Buri's wrinkly left-"

Before Loki can finish uttering the obscenity, an overwhelming aura of powerful magic smothers him. He barely has a chance to retaliate before he's swept away like a pebble in a fluvial flood.

He finds himself lying on the half-withered gray-green grass, staring incredulously at the softly glowing incorporeal fetters wrapped about his chest and ankles.

There's only one person he knows with this particular type of binding magic.

But no, no it couldn't be. It couldn't possibly be-

"You have a lot of nerve," her achingly familiar voice rings out in the desolate silence. Her equally familiar face comes into view as she leans over his prone form, "Coming here."

"Sigyn," he can only manage a hoarse whisper at first, but giddy elation soon overtakes shock, and his mouth widens in a cheeky grin, "Oh, I'm certainly not doing that at present but since you've already skipped past dinner to the bonda-"

Sigyn whacks him sharply on the head with her staff. Not hard enough to cause any pain, but hard enough to startle him into silence.

"Brazen," she sighs, sounding more exasperated than offended, "Every single one of you."

"I prefer cockyyy-" Loki trails off at the unamused glare she shoots him, "-shutting up now."

"Good choice."

Sigyn shakes her head and dispels the fetters that hold him. Though familiar, in truth, Loki hasn't felt her magic so close to him in centuries. Not since they were children and he was showing her how to conjure fireworks in her hands.

He wonders briefly if her hair still smells like apple blossoms.

"Come on," she reaches for his hand and pulls him to his feet without waiting for his assent, "Time to go. You know the rules."

"I don't actually," Loki tries not to look upset when she lets go of his hand (pathetic, Norns, he is pathetic), "I don't even know where...what this place is." He frowns, considering. "Probably not Hel since you're here."

Sigyn coughs a short, sharp bark of a laugh. There's no humour in it.

"This is Hel," she says, "In all but name."

"So...I'm dead?"

Sigyn sighs again, closes her eyes and blows at the loose strand of hair hanging in her face.

"Wonderful. You're a new one then. You remember being pruned, yes?"

"Yes. Not very pleasant."

"Quite. Well, this-" she moves one arm in a fluid, graceful arc, gesturing in grandiose fashion at the depressing panorama of refuse and ruined buildings littered about the grey landscape. "-is where the TVA sends their rubbish. Everyone they prune, any physical material from a reset timeline - it ends up here."

"Everything?" Loki quirks an eyebrow, "Seems a little empty of clutter if the refuse of millions of dead timelines is being dumped here."

"Ah. Yes, that would be the work of the giant purple cloud monster of eternal, ceaseless hunger that devours all within its path."

An ominous sounding growl underlaid with the rumble of thunder sounds faintly in the distance.

Loki looks towards the distant horizon and sees a large dark, purplish smear like a fresh bruise in the grey sunless sky. Light flares and something that vaguely resembles a galaxy-class battlecruiser falls from the heavens. Immediately, the great bruised mass is upon the hulking remains.

He is uncomfortably reminded of that ridiculous nightmare he used to have about being phagocytosed by a giant amoeba (he longs for such innocent days, when his bad dreams were the result of his overactive imagination processing tedious microbiology lessons and not recollections of the various horrors he has experienced).

"That would be Alioth. The giant purple cloud monster. Don't ask me who came up with that name. Now if you'll excuse me-" Sigyn turns briskly on her heel and heads off in the direction beyond the NO LOKIS sign.

"Wha- hold on! You're just going to leave?You're leaving me to that thing??"

"Oh please, you'll have plenty of time before it gets here. Besides," she mutters, "You're a Loki. There's a thousand of you in this Norns forsaken wasteland. Trust me, if there's one thing you all do very well, it's survive."

Her words hurt more than he wants to admit. That bad memory loop with Sif had been more painful for obvious reasons, but...he knew what Sif thought of him. Even back then, those words she'd thrown at him had not surprised him.

As a child, he'd always felt special to Sigyn. She'd wanted to be his friend, his own true friend and not just Thor's friend who didn't mind having Loki along for the ride. She'd liked the same things he did. She'd always laughed at his jokes and pranks.

He'd felt like he mattered to her.

Of course that had only made him abominably possessive. He just couldn't abide any other child having her attention. The fear of an insecure wretch - so terrified that if Sigyn looked away even for a moment, she would see something better, that she would find him wanting.

He shouldn't have been surprised when Sigyn did not protest at her father sending her to live with her late mother's relatives on Alfheim when her true powers manifested on the cusp of puberty.

He'd...he'd said such awful things to her before she'd gone. When two people have been friends for centuries, they know exactly what to say to make it hurt. Sigyn had given back as good as she got, but instead of petty childish insults, her accusations had rung with truth.

She'd known why no one wanted to be her friend, she'd known exactly what he'd been doing behind her back - all the tricks, all the schemes, everything he'd done to ensure that none would take his friend from him.

As a parting shot she'd declared that even though he'd been horrid, she had stayed his friend because she had cared about him. That he had been special to her and she hadn't wanted to lose him either.

It was one thing to lose his only friend besides his brother - it was another to know that all his fears had been naught but smoke and mirrors. That he had been awful, that he'd made Sigyn sad and disappointed for absolutely nothing.

She had returned to Asgard.

Eventually.

Týr could only use the excuse of his daughter's magical education for so long. Someone of her abilities was too important an asset for the Allfather to ignore.

In the end, they had come to a reconciliation (of sorts) because they were tired of avoiding each other.

Or perhaps, the more simple truth (that neither would have admitted to) was that they missed each other.

They were never again as close as they'd been as children, but they'd stayed friends (or friendly at least). On good enough terms that the Warriors Four had not sought her out to spin their tale of treachery and magical incursion (Sigyn certainly would have been the ideal person to subdue a treacherous, power-mad and magically gifted regent). But not on good enough terms that he would have approached her for help in his ill-conceived scheme to delay Thor's coronation (perhaps events would have played out more favourably if he'd had someone to bounce ideas off).

That had been his Sigyn anyway. The one who didn't even exist now. Reset into non-existence by the TVA along with everything else on the timeline he'd been taken from.

Did you mourn, he'd asked his brother.

We all did.

He wonders if the Sigyn he'd known had mourned him.

The Sigyn briskly walking away now seems ill-inclined to mourn any Loki. What had the Loki of her timeline done to make her want to have nothing to do with him? He isn't sure if he wants to know.

He is tired. So very, very tired. Tired of feeling responsible for things he has not done (yet? is it really destiny if your life is just a series of bullet points on a checklist created and enforced by a totalitarian bureaucratic organization built by person or persons unknown?). Tired of not being able to do anything to make amends for the things that he actually is responsible for.

Except...he can.

Sigyn isn't a memory construct, she is real, she is here.

It's just one thing, one little thing and it is paltry compared to the other ill-deeds he has committed (and the ones he is fated to commit)-

But it's something at least.

Loki catches up to her easily (being roughly a head taller has its advantages) and grabs the end of her staff.

"Sigyn-"

She fixes him with those sharp, dark eyes and he realises he doesn't know how he's supposed to start this. He swallows past the lump in his throat and says the first word that comes to mind.

"Please."

Her eyes soften just a little, but her mouth remains set in a firm, hard line, and she tries to tug the staff out of his grasp.

He doesn't let go.

"Stop trying to stall me."

"I'm not-" Loki bites back the instinctive protestation and soldiers on. "I need to tell you I'm sorry about what I said before Alfheim and for everything I did before that. I'm sorry that I was selfish, I'm sorry that I didn't trust you, I'm sorry I made you cry and...I'm sorry I wasn't a worthy friend to you."

"...Loki," her voice is soft, "That happened centuries ago. I'm not...I'm not even the Sigyn you need to apologize to."

"You're still Sigyn. You deserve one regardless."

Sigyn has that look on her face. That gentle, pensive consideration tinged with something soft and tender that he can't quite name. She used to look at him like that whenever he did something nice (whether unprompted or as an apology for something not so nice he'd done earlier).

Norns. This is getting awkward. Existential fear at the potential cessation of his existence and his childhood night terrors featuring improbably large unicellular organisms notwitstanding, Loki thinks he might not mind if that giant purple cloud trundled in right now and swallowed him up.

"Well, I'd best get on, hadn't I? Surviving and all that?" He coughs, "I...I'm...it was good to see you again. Thank you for not kneeing me in the crotch mid-apology. I appreciate it."

He turns to leave. He doesn't have a clue where to go, but the opposite direction from the purple cloud monster seems like a good start.

Maybe he'll survive long enough to come across Mobius. Half of him wants to find the man as soon as possible (perhaps also be complimented on his intelligence and the betterment of his moral condition). The other half hopes that he never sees him again (because brainwashed amnesiac variant or not, Mobius has subjected him to very unpleasant situations designed to psychologically shatter him. Loki is the last person in the universe who would hold someone entirely responsible for actions undertaken after their minds have been tampered with, but still. Just because he understands doesn't mean he can forget.)

As for Sylvie...Loki doesn't want to think about it, but if the TVA is smart, they wouldn't prune her. They wouldn't risk a repeat of whatever had happened on Lamentis-1, and since he is already here...

"Catch."

The improbable sound of Sigyn's voice startles him from his ruminations and without thinking his hand shoots up to intercept the small rectangular object wrapped in plastic and foil before it hits his face.

Loki stares at the granola bar (expiry date 12/12/2075) incredulously and then at Sigyn, walking briskly at his side and keeping pace with his long strides.

"I thought you-"

"You looked hungry."

"Sigyn, I believe this is what the Midgardians call 'giving mixed signals'."

"Look," she sighs, "I've been looking for...someone very dear to me for a very long time. I can't deny I feel some resentment for everyone I meet wearing his face. My baggage isn't an excuse for my rough treatment of you. It was unfair of me, and I apologise."

He blinks, not quite sure what to make of what she's telling him. Sigyn had never been one to mince words, she either said exactly what was on her mind or nothing at all.

That she is being deliberately vague and yet throwing up strong implications with her choice of words means that she does not want to lie but believes the truth is not something that he will be happy to hear.

Well, by now he's had a lot of experience dealing with unpleasant truths. Another one added to the pile is hardly going to hurt.

Sigyn has just started drinking from a battered metal canteen when he voices his suspicions.

"It's Theoric, isn't it?"

She chokes and spits out half of her drink.

"What?!" She wheezes, "What in Ymir's hoary arse gave you that idea?!"

"Didn't you fancy him back in-" Loki grimaces, snapping his fingers as he tries to pinpoint the date in question, "That year when burgundy was all the rage. Burgundy, scandalously low necklines and uncomfortably tight trousers."

"I went on a date with him because he was handsome, he was annoying me and I was young and stupid," she sneers, "He tried to put his hand up my skirts an hour into the picnic so trust me, after that I wanted nothing to do with the louse."

Something a little too much like that old familiar selfish anger bubbles up in his chest.

"He dared," he growls, "He dared to put his hands on you. He should have had his filthy paws struck off at the wrist for the insult to your dignity."

"Eat your granola, don't crush it," Sigyn says calmly, "In any case, I resolved the situation quite easily and without bloodshed."

"Shame," Loki mutters. He takes a bite of the now somewhat crumbly Midgardian snack and wrinkles his nose at the taste. "So how did you handle that son of a bitch?"

"I rendered him impotent for a year. I would have kept it permanent but he came crawling on his hands and knees begging for my forgiveness, swearing on the souls of his ancestors never to trouble me again, vowing to gift me his firstborn as my thrall etcetera etcetera..." she shrugs, "What can I say? I'm soft."

Loki doesn't remember the last time he's laughed this hard.

#loki #sigyn #mcu #logyn #more implied than anything #this thing has been sitting in my drafts for a week and a half

[lokiondisneyplus]

Most Marvel post-credit scenes hint at the future. Loki opted for a blunter approach: the God of Mischief would return in season 2.

Based on the final turn of events, there was really no other choice: Loki (Tom Hiddleston), having journeyed to the furthest point in spacetime with his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) to meet the founder of the TVA, a scientist-turned-survivor-of-multiversal-war known as He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), finds himself zapped into a new reality when his lady self slays the omnipresent being. The mind reels!

Creator Michael Waldron takes delight in the endless possibilities of Loki’s core premise. And as a veteran of Rick and Morty, he knows what anchors a mind-bending show, and what will keep Hiddleston’s character hurtling through his chaotic, rewritten future. Below, Polygon talks to Waldron about landing on the key choices of Loki season 1, what to expect from season 2, and a bit on his next project, the wrestling drama Heels, which is set to premiere on Aug. 15.

Did you know there’d be a second season of Loki from the beginning or was that choice made later in the process?

Michael Waldron: We always knew that it was a possibility. We always knew that we wanted to propel Loki and these characters out into the MCU after this, into further stories. But that didn’t really crystallize as a sure thing until we were in production and everything. And as we were really figuring out the finale.

So you were still cracking the ending as you shot the show?

There was a hiatus due to the pandemic. So things were constantly being retooled because of that. I think, by and large, everything with He Who Remains and the Sylvie-Loki conflict was always there. But that cliffhanger was the sort of thing that suddenly became a really appealing opportunity, a chance for that to lead into a second season.

What element of the series helped you crack the macro story of Loki, and made all the other pieces fall into place? Each episode almost feels like a standalone adventure, similar to Rick and Morty, but what helped it all click?

The first couple of weeks in the writers room was just laying out the individual episodes. It was very important to me that each episode stood on its own, and you could say “This is the Lamentis episode,” “This is the apocalypse moon episode,” “This is the Void episode.” I didn’t want it to just be cut up chapters and have one long continuous story. Obviously, we had to figure out the time travel for things to slot into place. I think a big idea for us was the way you get around the TVA by hiding in apocalypses. That felt like such a big, cool, exciting idea that it drove the action of episode 2, episode 3, and in a way it’s like Alioth is the ultimate apocalypse that He Who Remains is hiding behind. That sci-fi idea cracked a lot open for us. I know that after we had that I went home and I slept a little sounder.

Did adding the multiverse to the Marvel Cinematic Universe feel like blowing something up or expanding it, in terms of narrative possibilities?

In the same way that after the first couple Iron Man movies, and with the first Avengers, suddenly these movies were kind of going to space. Then we had Guardians. I think of the multiverse as another version of that. It’s new ground to cover, and particularly interesting because characters meeting other versions of themselves and other versions of people they know is... cool. That’s just a cool sci-fi concept! But I think with anything, as you expand outward, it only works if the humanity remains. It’s exciting to watch characters dealing with big crazy multiversal conflicts because we can see ourselves in them. I think you just have to hold on to the humanity that makes these stories work in the first place.

Did you go back to the Thor movies for Loki? Was there anything to find in the past of Marvel as you were paving the future?

Absolutely. I mean I watched them many times, contrary to what Twitter might think because I did some bits on there saying that I’ve never seen Avengers and I upset some people [laughs]. I have seen it many times. “Confirmed: Loki writer has seen Avengers and saw it before writing Loki show.”

In fact, I was watching all these movies on a loop in the writers’ room. I gleaned so much because you watch the evolution of the character. Avengers was particularly informative because our story picks up Loki right after that, but I also I found a lot of inspiration in Thor: The Dark World, a maybe sometimes maligned movie that I actually really enjoy. I just think there’s great stuff with Loki being tangentially responsible for the death of his mother, how he reacts to that. That is the start of his journey of that version of Loki’s redemption, so I was inspired by that.

What’s propelling the characters into season 2? Where are you headed in basic terms?

In season 1, you saw a lot of characters reckoning with and questioning their own glorious purpose, and that glorious purpose changing, [characters] realizing that that can change. Everybody except for Sylvie. I think she holds onto hers, which is vengeance, and to the detriment of us all, perhaps. And we’ve got a Loki who, at the top of our show, assessed himself as a villain and, I would argue, at the end of our show, has become a little bit of a hero. There’s nothing more heroic to me than fighting for the right thing and losing. You see that washing over him as he’s there back at the TVA, after Sylvie has knocked back there. And then he gets up because that is what heroes do — they keep going. So I think that you’re gonna see a Loki that looks at himself in a different way certainly that at the top of this.

Do you hope to explore more of Sylvie’s backstory in season 2?

I guess we’ll see. We certainly have our own rich backstory for her, stuff that didn’t get to make it into the show. Elissa Karasik, our episode 2 writer, wrote a lot of amazing backstory for Sylvia and everything. So those ideas exist out there.

And her version of Thor?

Tune in.

How did He Who Remains come about? Did you bring the character to Marvel or was that a character Marvel hoped to introduce?

I was pushing and our team was pushing early on in the writers’ room that it should be a version of Kang up in that Citadel, sort of fusing the mythology of He Who Remains with a little bit of the Immortus mythology. And that was a thing we were excited to do. And it became clear that it actually made sense for our story. The only way we were going to do it was if it made sense, but it was like, who had a better argument for creating the TVA to prevent other versions of themselves from existing then a guy as evil as Kang the Conqueror?

You wrote the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — did Marvel hire you for that after Loki? Does the movie feel like a continuation of the show?

Yeah, that opportunity came as we were getting ready to start production on Loki. It was a pleasure. I got to work with Sam Raimi, a hero of mine. I was in London for five months making that movie at the top of this year. We had a blast. I think that it’s a continuation in as much as ever every Marvel movie is to some extent a chapter in an ongoing story, but these things are meant to stand alone and the most important thing about Doctor Strange too is making the most kick ass Doctor Strange movie we could.

Is Loki a two-part show now or are you invested in telling a longer story with future seasons beyond season 2?

Time will tell, but I do my hope is that season 1 stands on its own. We always wanted to tell a complete story there. And in whatever the next chapter may be will stand on its own as well.

Your next show, Heels, is already on the way. We got a big preview out of Comic-Con this year, but I’m curious about the scope of this story. You’re starting with two brothers running an independent wrestling franchise, but you’ve dropped the name “Vince McMahon” a few times — is this about the building of an empire? Would you liken it to The Godfather or Breaking Bad?

I always thought about it a little bit of a Scorsese-sort-of rise, and we’ll see if there’s a fall. Starting from humble beginnings and trying to build some crazy. Wrestling was certainly not always the empire that it is and that’s what’s interesting, to watch the evolution of a family-run wrestling business from something you do in your small towns and perhaps a national, even global empire. That would be a really compelling arc for a show over the course of several seasons. I’d be excited to explore that.

What’s the most dramatically fulfilling wrestling moment you’ve witnessed? What’s the bar for the wrestling drama of Heels?

It’s gotta be Hulk Hogan turning heel in the WCW. There was an invasion storyline, these guys from WWF, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, came over and they were the bad guys. It was at a Pay-per-view and and they were beating up on the good guys that you love, and here comes Hulk Hogan in the yellow and red and he’s the hero. “The Hulk’s gonna get ‘em! The good guy’s here!” And then the Hulk just leg drops Randy Savage. That was the original Red Wedding. I just think about the boldness of turning him heel. To a little kid... I wasn’t even like a massive Hulk fan, but he was just such a mythological figure. What a chance that Hulk Hogan took as a performer, as a bankable kind of movie star at that point. That was bold, risky storytelling and it set off two years of amazing storytelling with Hogan just playing a craven, cowardly heel and just being so evil. I really respect the hell out of them for doing that. That was a great storyline.

#michael waldron #interview #loki #s1 #s2

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Your Choice.”

I am having a lot of fun with this arc.  Writing it has put me in a good mood, so I hope you like it as well :)

He walked the halls of the Oxystation with a  gun slung over his front hanging from a shortened tac sling around his neck and shoulder. He rested his arms and hands against the weapon as he walked down the hall. The gun was more of a redundancy than anything, if any unwanted alien was able to breach the hull of the station with the armored patrol outside than his gun was just a token sign of resistance. Of course, there was always the possibility that one of the patients would become violent and attack a staff member, but that possibility was quite low, even lower than it was in human mental health clinics. Only five percent of the mentally ill population was any sort of danger to anyone but themselves, and a large percentage of that would still, likely, never do anything bringing that number down somewhere closer to one percent.

With aliens it was even less likely, they weren’t naturally aggressive like humans, so when their mental health tanked, it tended to do it with extreme anxiety and something that looked sort of like depression, though the different species presented the illness differently. 

Working at the Oxyclinic had been good for him. It hadn’t been long until his enthusiasm for alien life had come trickling back in, and his fear had been discarded like a sock with a hole in it. He had even offered to help with the oxytheropy that the psychologists were offering. If anything was gong to get rid of his lingering fear of aliens, it was probably going to involve spooning one.

A weird way to deal with internalized fear but there you had it.

The oxystation wasn’t just for the oxytheropy. Human and alien psychologists were taking the time to learn about other species, and put together differing treatment plans for their patients. There was a high turnover rate, and not all the people who came to the clinic ended up staying, not all of them needed oxytheropy, and not all of them would do well having it considering that some of the fear the patients had often centered  their issues around humans. To his surprise, he found that a lot of it centered around the Drev war.

He looked down at his watch and took a sharp right turn down the nearest hallway entering the guard quarters just as his watch reached the hour.

“Morning LT.” Someone called and he waved a hand.

“Anything to report?”

“Nothing, all is quiet as usual.”

He ejected the magazine of his gun, and checked the chamber to make sure it wasn’t still loaded before racking it in the safebox as one of the other men stepped up to take his place on patrol.

The other group of men and women looked up at him from where they sat around a table playing cards, “Want us to deal you in.”

Adam shook his head walking over to his locker and pulling out a fresh pair of light blue scrubs, “No I promised the doc I would help today.”

The other humans shook their heads and rolled their eyes, “leave it up to you to want to spoon aliens.”

“Spooning aliens is a lucrative job. You should try it sometime, maybe you’d finally have enough money to buy the bag you’ve always wanted.”

“Bag?”

“YEah the nice one to cover your face.” he shut the locker and grinned at the car players to let them know it was all in good fun before turning towards the bathroom, where he changed and stepped back out. The scrubs were very breazy in comparison to his guard uniform and he shivered slightly returning to his locker.

It was important for people working on the ward to be completely unarmed, and for the humans to look as non threatening as possible. A strict list of instructions urged them not to smile with their teeth, and to keep their hands and feet covered at all times. He wasn’t entirely sure if the fuzzy socks and mittens were entirely necessary for that, but apparently some of the aliens interpreted human nails as claws, and some genius had thought that covering them up like this was very nonthreatening.

Looking in the mirror he had to admit it worked.

In his light blue scrubs and the fuzzy white mittens, he looked more like the easter bunny than he did a killer.

But then again, in real life he didn’t look much like a killer either.

He turned to walk out the door flipping off the people geering at him before remembering that he was wearing a mitten, which kind of negated the point of the gesture.

From there he wandered back up the hall and was buzzed into the ward after waving to the camera. He went through a few metal detectors which pinged on his leg, but they let him through anyway as he stepped into the hall and up to the staff room where the other workers and a few psychologists were having a break.

He took a seat in a chair and idly watched the TV.

HE looked around at the people who wore similar clothes as him and noted, not for the first time, that it took a special kind of person to do this job. All of these people were remarkably docile and relaxed people, and as far as he knew the vast majority of them had no shame. Despite humans being prone to cuddling pretty much anything and everything, its was pretty hard to spoon an alien and not feel awkward about it, but these people right here, they either enjoyed it or they were damn good at faking it.

Adam wasn’t good at faking anything so he was the former.

HE shifted slightly in his seat thinking about some of the aliens on the ward before his mind inevitably shifted to…. To him…. The alien that he dreaded seeing the most…. A big, tall hulking creature that wandered his nightmares and made his leg ache.

The Drev.

The Drev with eyes like the thing that had stolen his leg.

He put a hand to his head feeling a bit dizzy. He had only had one PTSD related panic attack since getting here, and that was only because he had been accidentally exposed to the Drev unexpectedly one day and without knowing that he was on the ward. It had been embarrassing for him as he tried not to let anyone know about his condition, but based on that incident he had been forced to come clean.

Ever since that incident  he had been quietly forcing himself to get closer and closer to the Drev despite the psychologists telling him that it was perfectly acceptable for him to step off the ward if the Drev was on.

But adam didn’t like that mentality much.

He had always felt, ever since returning from the Drev war, that people were too soft on him. They always sat there and told him that it was fine and whatever he needed to do was important, that he couldn’t blame himself if he couldn’t handle something. They were all very forgiving and very understanding, but that's not what he wanted. At some point, he felt that it was acceptable to get up in someone's face and tell them that: no you aren't doing good enough and that you behavior isn’t ok.

He wanted people to ask more of him, not less, and he wanted to get better not stay stagnant.

If other people wanted to spend their days medicated and avoiding the things that made them hurt than that was their decision, but he planned on healing all the way.

It was a thought that he espoused only for himself and did not apply it to others. 

Their mental health was their business.

Either way, he was going to make something out of this, and had slowly been approaching the Drev on the ward over time. He didn’t know if the Drev knew, and it didn’t matter to him so much, but he did have a bit of his own agenda.

The door creaked open, and one of the psychologists stuck her head into the room looking around for a quick moment before her eyes fell on Adam.

“Lieutenant, can I speak with you for a moment.”

For a second Adam’s heart stopped a little. Was he in trouble? Had he done something wrong?

He tried looking at her face to see any signs of displeasure, but  she was a difficult woman to read, so he stood slowly and followed her from the room and back into her office where he took a seat.

She sat across from him at her desk hands folded together. SHe looked him over with eyes that seemed to bore into his sole, “How are you doing, Adam.”

He shifted nervously in his seat, “Er… I thought I was a staff member not a patient.”

“Just humor me.”

“I’m good.”

“Any panic attacks recently.”

“No ma’am.”

“Are you being truthful.”

“You and I both know I’m shit at lying.”

She grunted and clasped her hands together looking at him with a stern expression.

HE shifted awkwardly in his seat, “What” “I have… a mission for you, though it is one I worry might jeopardize your mental health if it goes wrong, and the mental health of my patient as well. If it goes right however I think it would do BOTH of you a world of good. What I would be asking you to do is…. Of questionable ethicality.”

That made him nervous. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean by asking you to jeopardize your mental health, I could be in serious violation of a couple of major statutes in my field, however assuming you do it willingly it might not be so bad.”

Despite his apprehension, his curiosity won out, “Go on?”

“Kanan.”

“Cannon, WHat?”

“No, Kanan, the name of the Drev on the ward.”

Adam shifted in his seat, stomach churning, “Oh…. go on.”

“Have you noticed he has a limp.”

“I…. suppose I haven't looked closely enough.”

“Well he does, and you want to guess where he got that limp?”

He had a pretty good guess, “The war?”

“Exactly.”

“And…..  I suppose you think….” He trailed off 

“He lost everything during the war Adam, his mate, his honor, his home. He is injured and exiled, and at this moment there are very few people in the galaxy that can even partially understand what he has gone through.” She leaned back in her chair looking at him, “I think, that having someone like you to speak with about what happened would be,.... Beneficial to both of you.” She paused, “DId you know that human and Drev psychology is surprisingly similar….”

He shook his head, “Well it is, and I think the two of you would recover faster if you had something to work on together.”

“With all due respect ma’am, my papers say I’m recovered.”

“The UNSC isn’t exactly known for their in depth medical reviews Lieutenant. I know they overlooked some things. Either way, it’s your choice.”

***

Adam stood in front of the door. His hands were sweating leaving the inside of the mitten’s sticky and unpleasant. He felt nauseous, but swallowed to hold it down eyes wide as he stared at the door. What was he doing? What was he doing?

He took  a deep breath.

Not being a coward, that’s what he was doing. He reached a hand up and knocked on the door before he could chicken out. There was silence and the knock seemed to echo down the hall for eternity. He waited, and waited, and waited, and assumed at some point maybe he had caught the large alien sleeping, but then the door opened.

His human knee went weak, and it was only the prosthetic that kept him standing as he stared up at the huge, hulking figure.

Adam was, tall 6,2 to be precise, but this hulking behemoth had to have been around or over nine feet tall, with blood red armor, and four bulging arms. It stared at him with bright golden eyes that brought echoes of his past welling up into his ears. He felt as if he was about to fall over, but then the creature turned and trundled back into the room, snapping Adam out of his trance.

He was breathing hard, and he thought about turning back, but instead, he stepped softly into the room leaving the door open just as crack as he moved inside.

The room around him was dark, and the floor was scattered with crumbled pieces of paper.

A box of markers lay on the ground to one side. He looked down to see he was stepping on a discarded piece of paper, and stepped back to look down, realizing the drawing there was of a tree, with striped bark and spiraling branches. It looked like something out of a Dr Seus book though he recognized it as an Anum/ Anin coiltree.

He crouched down to pick the paper up.

He looked up to see the Drev had returned to the edge of his cot and was sitting down, a shapeless form in the dark.

“You mind if I turn the light on?” Adam asked.

At first the Drev didn’t answer, but then he took a long breath through those strange holes in his neck and managed a deep, rumbling, “THe colors are too bright.”

Adam paused then, “Well neither of us can see very well in the dark and, he held up the page, drawing in the dark can’t be easy.”

There was a grunt.

“I’m going to turn the lights on.”

The Drev didn’t stop him, and as he did the room lit up showing even more pages scattered over the floor, all drawings of Anin some of them sloppy, some of them, quite artistic for a species he hadn’t thought practiced art.

He knelt down to examine a few of them, “Not bad.”

He picked up one of the pictures to examine it.

“This looks like the valley between the volcanic belts.”

The Drev turned to look at him, and when his eyes fell on Adam, the page slipped from his hand floating back to the floor.

The uncanny deepness of it’s golden eyes unnerved him.

“You were in the war?”

Adam’s hands were shaking, but he clasped them together to hide that fact.”

There was a long silence between them, and then he reached down pulling up the leg of his scrubs to reveal the titanium construction underneath, “I was.”

The Drev seemed surprised and looked up at him.

“You were one of them.” he said it very flatly, and Adam suddenly grew very worried that the Drev would kill him in revenge for being part of the operation  that decimated his people.

“One of your number killed my father.”

Fuck 

He went to back away but the Drev just looked down.

He sighed very deeply, “You were a strong and worthy opponent. We never had a chance.”

His voice was not bitter, or hate filled. There was some measure of regret behind his words but not enough to constitute anger. And when Adam looked at the creature, he could do nothing but feel sorry for him.

He quietly walked over trying to avoid the pages on the floor and then, unsure, sat next to the large figure.

Adam was not used to feeling small, but sitting next to the huge figure of the drev, he felt very tiny indeed.

The inside of the gloves were absolutely soaking, and with some measure of annoyance he tossed them off and onto the floor.

He wiped his palm on his shirt, reached out, fingers trembling and rested a hand on the Drev’s arm.

“You want to tell me about it? I.. My people didn’t exactly take the time to understand yours….. Now that I think about it it hardly seems fair.”

The Drev snorted ,”My mother believed that war was supposed to be fair, but my father understood that there was always inherent unfairness in battle…. The two of them didn’t get along towards the end. I think I agree with my father, to assume that your species would abide by our rules of combat was…. Ignorant of us.” The Drev turned to look at him, “Your species is much more efficient at war than mine is.”

His hands weren’t shaking anymore.

And he realized that, when he looked at this Drev, He didn’t see much of an enemy at all. 

But he did see someone broken by the war…. Just like him.

He looked down at his feet, and when he did his eyes came across another drawing. This one of a drev, It really only had an outline since it’s carapace seemed to be white, and the way it had been rendered with such delicate care, made it pretty clear to Adam who it might have been.

He picked it up quietly.

“You…. want to tell me about her?”

The Drev turned to look his eyes resting on the picture. Adam didn’t think up to this point he could read Drev facial expressions, but the welling of sadness in the creature’s face was so poignant that Adam felt his own chest tighten,

Damn the human’s heightened sense of empathy.

For a moment he thought the Drrev was going to tell him to get out, but, instead, he took the image and stared down at it, “Nechal…. Named after the moon….. She was the most glorious fighter I had ever seen in battle, strong, and graceful and powerful. She was not afraid to die, but she didn’t let that lower her guard. On the battlefield she was a goddess of war, and off…. She was…. Kind in ways that aren’t common among our people. I may have been attracted to her because of her fighting prowess, but I loved her because of the kindness she showed. Especially towards my sister… someone who needed kindness more than anyone I know.”

He took a very deep breath and when he spoke again his words were thick.

Could Drev cry? “In our people it is…. Custom not to mourn the dead who are lost in battle because their return to the spiritual realm will be glorious. It is a great honor to lose a mate in battle….” He looked down at his four hands, “But I do not feel honored…. I feel alone…. I miss her, ever day and every night I miss her, and I wish she hadn’t died…” He looked up and when he did Adam was struck by the expression of pain and grief on his face.

As if he was feeling the Drev’s pain in real time, he felt his chest clench again, and tears welled in his eyes. How could he not?

Anyone who didn’t feel the same must have had no feelings? 

“I was exiled because…. I could not follow her into the afterlife…. With my injury I should have given my body over to the fire, and maybe then I'd be with her, but I just…. I couldn’t do it. I miss her every day and yet I don’t have the strength to go to her…. I am a fraud among my people, a coward and a fraud and….

“Hey! Hold on.”

The Drev went quiet and turned to look at Adam who was now gripping his arm tight in one hand.

“You think she’d want to hear you say that.”

That seemed to take the Drev off guard and he stared at Adam with some measure of confusion.

“You said she was kind wasn’t she….. Well then I doubt she'd appreciate you talking about yourself like that.”

He was quiet for some time.

“Look I…. I lost my leg during the war to…. To one of your soldiers and. It’s messed me up for a real long time. Hell you scare the daylights out of me, but I’m moving forward.”

THe Drev frowned at him, “Scared of… us… you won?”

Adam laughed, “We didn’t win anything. Nobody won, a lot of people died and a lot of people were crippled, and for what? I think about that a lot, for honor? Honor. Well maybe I don’t understand what honor means because to me, it would be something worth dying over.”

The Drev contemplated him for a long time.

“We may have won but we did it with scared soldiers like me, and broken soldiers like me. I’m probably never going to recover from the war. That’s the difference between you and me, you guys can make it through war in one piece but me…. Humans… we may be good at war but it destroys us.”

He sighed, “I guess what I am trying to say is, instead of feeling sorry for what you can’t change, why not move forward. Do something you think is worth it, do something Ne-” he stumbled over the Drev word, “Nechal would think was worth it.”

He didn’t know what he was saying, he didn’t know if what he was saying even made sense. Nerves had always made him ramble. He knew he was talking too much but he didn’t know what else to do.

The Drev looked down, and Adam. as was his training made a bit of a decision.

He shut up.

Which was a feat in itself.

Reached over and hugged the larger alien. His arms didn’t make it anywhere close to wrapping around him, but he hoped that maybe it would help?

He didn’t know.

He was kind of just a raging idiot most of the time, so his plans were usually half assed at best.

The Drev stiffened and then relaxed. Adam’s head was resting against the creature’s huge planted shoulder. It felt like hugging corded steel cables.

He would have to say that being hugged by something with four arms was a bit of an experience. Most aliens didn’t usually hug back, they were more the recipient of hugs, but it seemed that the Drev wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept, either that or he learned fast, and damn Adam felt even smaller encircled in the arms of the huge alien.

Kanan could have crushed him if he wanted, but let him go not long after to Adam’s surprise and relief.

The Drev looked at him.

He looked back

“You are strange creatures.”

He gave a weak smile, forgetting the rule about showing teeth, “So they say.”

It was a bit of a gamble but things had worked out better than the psychologist could have hoped. Drev are more receptive to self reflection than humans are. Humans like to internalize things, and their brains become obsessive. Drev have more control over their minds in many cases than humans do, so Adam’s encouragement for Kanan to do something his dead mate would think worthwhile showed results almost immediately.

To Adam’s grudging pleasure, the Drev seemed to be recovering faster than he was.

And was well on his way to recovering completely when the communication came for Adam one night while he sat lying  on his bed next to Waffles, thinking about his future.

The pink roused him from near sleep and he sat up on one elbow to look at the time.

i t was only nine earth time, so he rolled onto his side and sat up, patching the communication through.

A light blue screen of holographic image filled his vision, and on the other side he could see Colonel Kelly sitting in front of him….. At least Colonel until he realized the star on her uniform.

His eyes widened slightly. He went to speak but she shook her head at him.

“I trust you are doing well Lieutenant.”

“Yes ma’am. I have no complaints.”

She nodded, “Good, good, I am sorry to intrude, but I am afraid this rest period is over for you. You are requested to return to earth on the next outgoing transport.”

He frowned and rubbed the back of his head, “Uh of course ma’am but…. Why?”

She stared at him long and hard, ‘I have a very important decision for you to make. It is one that is not going to be popular or easy, but I urge you to accept my request.”

He frowned and shook his head, “You aren't making sense, What is this all about?”

“Tensions are rising between our delegates and the GA, if we don’t do something soon, I am worried that this will devolve into infighting and eventually war. I have to work fast in order to stop this outcome, and you are the lynchpin that holds my plan together.”

“Me.” He squeaked.

“Yes, you, now Adam, be honest with me. What is your opinion on the GA and our involvement with them?”

He rubbed the back of his neck though his thoughts were adamant, “Cooperation wherever and however possible. We need them, and I believe they could due with being our allies, ma’am.”

“And if I gave you a job to try and reach that goal, would you take it?”

“I would do whatever I had to do ma’am.”

He was being truthful. 

She nodded her head.

“Good then, it’s your choice at the end of the day, but if we act now, we can change everything.”

[darkenedreaper]

So Was I

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x reader, Avengers x reader.

Warnings: angst, strong violence, language.

Part: 5/5

A/n: I’d like to state that I made up a few lines of poetry and I’m proud of myself.

For the time you had been taken it seemed like your body had been put under severe treatment. At this point you could’ve been gone for months. You recognised the big symbol that was painted onto the wall. Hydra. They had been testing on you, testing on the Avenger. Every day you’d go through a new pain until they found the right one. From what you could catch they were planning on using you as their next super soldier. They had obviously saw the News and what had happened and who did it to you, so they took their chance and succeeded. You were laying back onto the white bed, your arc reactor now had a new red vibranium lining on the outside of it and your new suit which stood beside you, was black, with the logo on the back. You felt stronger, stronger than you would after training, stronger than you would after once pinning Steve on his back. Steve. Steve Rogers, your enemy according to Hydra. And ‘let’s not forget’ they said ‘what that Russian Widow did you to you’. They now began another experiment on you, testing a new serum.

Back at the compound and above the ground. It had been 10 months, 3 weeks, 2 days 6 hours that you had been missing for. To say they were all ashamed would be an understatement.

Steve wanted to get away from his shield, he couldn’t look at it let alone touch it. On his wardrobe floor where he had placed it 10 months ago, it had pieces of the glass from your arc reactor surrounding it. From the impact, some of the glass had melted to his shield. He didn’t want to be reminded of it, but his tears for you couldn’t help but.

Tony nearly drunk his whole cabinet if it wasn’t for Bruce dragging him back to the lab. And then went Tony was alone, the man would cry.

Bruce didn’t want to focus on the thought of you being tortured, which you were or experimented on, which you were. But he did focus on doing everything to find your arc on the map somewhere.

Thor went back to Asgard and he didn’t want back to Asgard and he spat in everyone’s face that he didn’t want to talk to them unless the found you. His mother back at home was increasing getting worried of your absence.

Clint was home aswell to his wife and kids. Laura distanced herself from him whilst he was back there as she thought of you as family. The kids just drew drawings and tried to make their Daddy and Mommy feel better.

Wanda and Vision tried to buck up the team, but they were falling apart themselves and if they didn’t have each other, they’d be lost.

Bucky spent time on his own, he would stay in your room and sit in your chair, hoping you’d walk in the door and do his hair. He felt his arm was tainted but there was nothing he could do about that, so he tried his best to find you with Steve.

Natasha. She wallowed. She was dying inside. She wondered if the heartbreak she was going through was what you felt all those months, creeping around hiding from the team. If it was what you felt when she watched the shield drive into your heart. She didn’t dare go in your room. She couldn’t. She couldn’t look at herself.

She worked night and day trying to track you down, on every mission, in every country, yet all were failures.

They barely spoke to each other now. You affected them massively and they wanted their Y/N back. Whether you hated them or tried to kill them, they’d be so joyful that you were back.

Right now you felt best coursing through your veins and the machine that was attached around your head was slowly vanishing away your memories. You could feel all your knowledge slipping away from you. Your weaknesses being taken over from the amount of power your body had. You yelled out in pain as they would boost it up, clear it was working. A huge flash of light took over the large base and you were listening for your first command. You saw your Commander walk up to your face and he saw the change in your eyes. He snapped his fingers towards the leather straps that had metal chains wrapped over them. And you broke free from them. You hadn’t gotten taller perhaps a few inches, but your muscles were evident as your suit was placed onto you.

You were supplied with 4 guns and 3 knives. Your arc reactor had layers of protective and bulletproof glass coated over it. Now you were unbreakable. You didn’t have a name. You didn’t remember. You don’t remember your friends or if you had any, or any family. All you were focused on was your mission, the Avengers. And your main targets were ‘Captain America’ and ‘Black Widow’.

When you had been brainwashed they had managed to rid of everything except the torture the Avengers put you through. The heartbreak and physical damage. You were given your own jet and a black helmet with a red H on the front and you went off to the compound in search of one of your targets. And it wouldn’t take you long to get there.

Night had fallen at the Avengers compound and they were all in the sitting room. Silently watching a movie that no one was paying attention to. Jarvis seemed upset as he wouldn’t talk to anyone anymore, unless that was because she hadn’t been looked after for months. Friday nearly disabled herself because she was so mad at her boss. If she were a human she’d be looking for you non stop as you often had conversations with the AI.

They had all dragged each other for ‘bonding time’. They were so down and ashamed that no one heard heavy footsteps. Until Bucky picked up on the reflection and he sat up a smile on his face as it could be you.

And around the corner you came, every Avenger jumping up from their seats. No one noticed the Hydra suit because they were so focused on your breathing body. Until Natashas gaze landed on your eyes. She saw it wasn’t you, well it was. But right now you were a Hydra agent trying to kill the Avengers.

“Y/N!” Tony shouted with a big grin on his face. You pulled dour your gun and shot above his head and you would’ve gotten him if it wasn’t for Bucky pulling him away as they all scattered off in all directions. Right now you were behind a man known as Hulk. You were shooting everywhere at everyone who crossed your path or came into view. You were putting multiple holes in walls at once and you put your gun back and instead ran towards the coward and grabbed him t shirt nearly picking him up off the ground. You got out a knife from your thigh pocket and nearly jabbed it into him if it wasn’t for that voice that came from behind you and him.

“Y/N.”

You recognised the voice as Black Widow and she was a main target so you flung the other man into a wall, crashing him into the next room. You ran after her and you were nearly faster than her if it wasn’t for her jumping up into a vent. So you took a gun and starting shooting holes in the vents, hearing scurries of fear through the vents. Your super soldier hearing picked up on a whisper that came from East.

It was Tony and Wanda. They thought they were hidden as Tony was crawling towards the table with his iron fist on.

With one quick shot you blew it up. Wanda tried getting into your head but she couldn’t even get past the thick line of Hydra.

“Come on Y/N I made that! It’s Tin-Man you know me!”

He kept calling out a name you didn’t know and as he hit the wall you took a look at his arc reactor and looked at yours. You saw his hand pout from his to yours.

“The same. You see. It’s Tony.”

You put your hand around his throat and lifted him up, his head hitting the ceiling, and you started punching at his bright light. Groans, pleads and yells at you to stop game from his mouth but you soon threw him to the side aswell, discarding of him while he collapsed onto the floor. Watching you walk away, walking on the glass that had fallen from his reactor.

You went in search for the girl who was trying to break into your head and instead you ran into the man with the metal arm known as the Winter Solider. He was trying to call out your name trying to talk to you but you shut him up by grabbing him arm and jamming a piece of glass into his weak spot where the arm connected to the body. Footsteps were approaching and it was the girl again. You took a knife and held it in the air to jam into ‘Buckys’ throat but your knife was thrown across the room with some sort of red magic around it. You threw the limp body of the other super soldier towards the girl and she was too slow to react as he came crashing down into her.

The compound was a mess, glass everywhere, holes everywhere, a little spark came from a wire where your bullet had hit it.

Vision had also been seen to. He just approached you and you didn’t even acknowledge him so you just drove the bottom of your gun into his temple sending him down, and kicking him out of your way.

You would finish the targets of after you’d found your other two. You went towards the hangar where their jets were stored to see no one around.

Meanwhile, Steve was on his way down to you. His shield in his hands, not strapped onto him arm.

You knew who was behind you and pointed your gun to the troubled and saddened man who stopped in his tracks.

“Y/N. I know your in there.”

You walked up to him and smashed the gun into his face, making him fall onto his side, shield still in his hands. He got up.

“You’re not a Hydra agent. Your Y/N. Our family.”

With a grunt you hit his stomach with your fist, sending him flying backwards. He got up.

“I’m sorry Y/N.”

And now you sent your boot into his chest and made him fall on his back. This time he struggled to get up.

You had punched and kicked him so far bad that you near the edge of the runway, splashed of the water hundreds of feet beneath you. He got up.

“I’m not gonna fight you.”

He tossed his shield away from him, trying to bring you back. His face was bleeding, his back was in agony and his suit was torn because of how far and harsh he skidded backwards.

“Your my friend.”

It was an odd feeling, one you hadn’t felt for months. Did you know him? Steve? No. He was your target right? And you went with your head. As soon as he saw movement from your feet dashing towards him, he didn’t move. If you were to kill him he wouldn’t envy you, he would’ve said he deserves it. His head didn’t hit the ground and he was now on the edge of the cliff with you above him, one fist balled into his suit and the other clenched.

“Your my mission.”

The first time he heard you speak in months and it was this.

After the first punch his eye had already began to close over. The second punch, his facial skin was torn. The third punch, both nostrils began to bleed. “Your.” The fourth punch his lip cut. “My.” The fifth punch, his lip bled out. “Mission!” The sixth punch sent his head lolling around.

You had to stop to consider if what you were doing was right. You knew this man. You knew them all.

“Then finish it.” His voice broke.

“Cause I’ll go with whatever your ordered.”

He even nodded confirming that it was okay for you to kill him.

He was talking about him being your target to kill. You were ready. You were so ready to throw him off the edge of it wasn’t for that voice.

Calling out a name. You turned your head and got up. The red head was standing. Arms crossed. She had fear and tears in her eyes. As soon as you stood quickly her arms unfolded like lightening.

She took a step back as you slowly approached her, getting a knife from your pocket.

“Y/N, this isn’t you. You need to listen to me. Y/N please.”

Your anger had slowly started to build again inside you.

“Stop saying that goddamn name it’s fucking pissing me off.”

Her mouth was bobbing open and closed. She wanted to sob at seeing how you were. She wanted to see those E/C eyes staring back at her instead of the blank ones that had one thing in mind.

“Do you not know me?” She was starting to walk back into the weapons room but she had no intention of doing any harm to you. And if you wanted to beat her and kill her then so be it. She’d let you. Your fist that was empty was slowly beginning to ball up but you couldn’t hit her and why? You didn’t know.

“моя любовь, пожалуйста, послушай меня.”

The Russian sentence of ‘my love please listen to me’.

It caused you to snap and you swung at her face, causing her to groan and stumble backwards.

“Do not tell me to listen to you. I’m not your fucking love.”

She wanted to cup her face as she felt the bruise appearing but that would be selfish after everything you’ve been through.

“Ты понимаешь русский мой дорогой”

‘Do you understand Russian my dear?’

You were never taught Russian at your Hydra base so why could you understand it. You took heavy breathes and you had a confused look on your face because your lip trembled and anger was painted onto your face again. You threw your fist at her again causing her head to snap backwards and blood tricked down her lip.

She was exhausted. The sleepless nights without you, the guilt drowning her. You ran towards her and she put her arms up to defend herself but you were quick to pull them down and you landed kicks to her side and plenty of hard punches to her ribs. By the time she had cornered herself she was sure a rib or two were broken. Her forehead was gashed and bleeding. Her sides hurt like hell and her neck was strained and had knots in the muscles because of how many times her head had flung back from the strength of your fists. You were still standing strong and unharmed and that was when you retrieved your knife again.

“Моя любовь, когда ты вернешься дома, только тогда я буду дышать, моя дорогая, когда ты узнаешь мое имя, только тогда я буду улыбаться. Когда ты вернешься ко мне, только тогда мое сердце поправится.” ‘My love, when you get home, only then will I breathe. My darling, when you know my name, only then will I smile. When you return to me, only then will my heart recover.’

You were lost in thought and you could hear voices just like hers whispering that into your ear late at night or when you had gotten back from a tough mission. You heard other voices. Buck? T? Banner? Wands? Vis? Stevie?

“Natasha?”

She had tears freely falling and she noticed your tight grip on your knife still. She nodded and she slowly approached you limping but smiling to herself as you didn’t tense or move backwards.

“But you hurt me.”

She nodded again as she was in front of you now, subtly slipping the knife from your hand. She took of your helmet and placed it on the floor alongside the knife. She could see it in your eyes. The good and bad memories coming back to you. But she could see hesitance.

“I’m sorry Y/N. I’m sorry. I’m sorry but please stop this. This isn’t you Y/N, it never has been and never will be.”

You took in her words and started to accept her, not yet forgiving her and the team for what they had done to you. She knew you were still going to be a super soldier and she knows her and the teams’ actions were always going to haunt you. She placed her hand on your arc reactor and it felt like home. All she could do was hope. Hope that you still had forgiveness in your heart. Time would need to be taken for you to heal. For the hydra walls to break down. But she would be there for you. She’d do whatever it would take for you to forgive her, for her to get you back.

They all would.

(My gif use as you want)

@natasha-danvers @imnotasuperhero @aaron-despair @confusinggemini612 @thewidowsghost @ecruzsalaz @fcbarcelona-and-marvel-4-life @gaytrashgoblin @capmarvelq @nat-romanoffdanvers @lesbian-x-blackwidow @emilyprentisswife @captain-josslett @fayhar @oblivious-horny-lesbian @trikruismybitch @summergeezburr @username23345 @xxxtwilightaxelxxx

#natasha romanoff #Natasha Romanoff x reader #Natasha Romanoff x reader angst

[arukou-arukou]

Just A Really Very Intelligent System

Been thinking about this one for a while. Finally managed to write it. Rating: T for “Language.” (It just kinda slipped out.) Characters: Tony Stark & JARVIS

----

He is in one of the most dangerous situations of his life trying to save the whole freaking universe by watching a man the size of a dust bunny wriggle into the hairline of his younger self, so it would be really, really bad if he happened to have a heart attack. Older him that is. But he nearly does go into cardiac arrest when he hears an old friend in his ear.

“Verify immediately. Failure to verify will result in an activation of level one security protocols.”

His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth and his palms are sweating, but somehow he manages to whisper out: “Edwin-12-19-91-4-8-47-Alpha Override.”

“Override accepted. Sir?”

“Hey, J.”

“Sir, you have imbued me with considerable computing power, and yet never did you prepare me for the possibility of you being in two places at once.”

“Yeah, about that. You haven’t said anything to Mr. Quipster over there, have you?”

“Not as yet, Sir. You wish me to keep it that way?”

“It would really help me out, buddy.”

“Very well, Sir.”

Tony wants to stay longer, to talk, to warn JARVIS, to cry, but he has places to be, things to do, planets to save. Scott’s safely positioned, so Tony yeets himself out of the building to get to the ground floor. He doesn’t know why he thought that would make JARVIS disappear.

“I see, Sir, that your proclivities for leaping before looking are unchanged.”

Another near heart attack--he’s gradually phased Friday out of his ears now that the nanotech is connected directly to his nervous system, so he’s not exactly used to AI voices anymore--but he recovers more quickly. “You’re always there to catch me, J.”

“And yet my systems are not present in your suit, Sir. I see codal remnants of system designation FRIDAY, but nothing of myself.”

Tony remains silent. This is such a terrible time to be feeling all the feelings. He spots a grunt who looks more or less unimportant and knocks the guy out. Part of him wants to warn SHIELD about their shit security, but then again, this guy’s probably Hydra and he deserves every bruise he gets. He senses JARVIS in his systems, a ghost in the shell.

“You no longer have the reactor. And if I’m not mistaken, that is gray in your hair. So you are not my Sir.”

“Well, yes and no.”

“I suppose it would destroy the spacetime continuum for you to divulge the truth to me.”

“You’re too smart for me, J,” Tony grunts as he yanks on the bullet-proof tac vest. “It’s kind of a long story, and while I technically have all the time in the world, I also really, really don’t.”

He sidles into the lobby and looks toward his personal elevator, waiting for the Avengers to appear. J is quiet so long Tony wonders if he’s being preoccupied by...well, just about anything. Damaged internal systems, a Cap copy on the loose, a second Hulk out there, panicked calls from Pepper. But then JARVIS speaks again.

“Regardless of the tale, I must conclude that you are from the future, and I am no longer by your side.”

Tony is fucking choking up. He was not ready for this. It didn’t even cross his mind. And the fucking elevator is opening. There’s Pierce, the rat bastard, trying to collect the Tesseract.

“I hope I did not disappoint you, Sir.”

“Never, J. Never.” Fuck fuck fuck, he’s nearly crying and now Scott is on the com waiting for the go-ahead. Tony channels his pain into panic and orders his own cardiac arrest.

“Sir, what are you--”

Thank god, his younger self is on the ground and that’s apparently all the distraction J needs to abandon older Tony. Tesseract incoming. Tony grabs it and starts going and--

Blinking stars out of his eyes he watches as Loki makes off with the key, the thing they most needed, the damn stone that started all of this way back when Cap was a starry-eyed beanpole in World War II. He has just biffed saving the entire damn universe because of an overgrown Star Trek reject with anger issues. And now he has a migraine to boot.

Frozen in shame and horror, Tony watches as Thor attempts ill-advised cardiac electro-stim. Scott’s somewhere out there, yammering in Tony’s ear on the private channel, but all of that is just a buzzing.

“Sir? Sir. Sir!”

And J. Maybe Tony should cry now. It certainly feels like the time for it. One of the other SHIELD grunts is making her way toward him, so he staggers to his feet, waving her off and limping toward the door. Think. Think, brain, think. Tony is a genius, the man who invented time travel, the man who miniaturized arc reactor technology. A spaceship? SHIELD’s probably got one somewhere. Maybe they could chase after Loki.

“SIR!” How many times JARVIS has shouted his title, Tony has no idea, but this one is so loud it sets his teeth on edge.

“Yeah, J? Kind of busy here.”

“Giving yourself a heart attack, Sir?” JARVIS was programmed to be cool and calm in all circumstances, but Tony could swear that sentence was uttered with seething rage.

“I’m fine. Look at me.”

“Only by some measure of infinitesimal luck, Sir. Perhaps I should ask you to verify your identity one more time, as you seem intent on killing yourself.”

“No, J. I’ve actually got a lot of reasons to live. And so does he. Promise.” Tony is so tired. Was being an Avenger always this exhausting? Or is it just that he’s bumped over that damnable big 5-0? And Cap’s gonna ream him too. That’s never any fun.

“I’m...glad to hear it, Sir.”

And fuck it. It’s not like this will alter Tony’s timeline anyway. This reality is now on a different trajectory thanks to Severus Snape Lite. “Her name’s Morgan. You’d love her, J. Just turned four. She got my hair. Hope to god she didn’t get my personality.”

“Do I meet her, Sir?”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck it.

“J, you should dig a little deeper into SHIELD’s systems. Well, actually, a lot deeper. And the Pentagon while you’re at it. And track down Maya Hansen from that conference in 1999 and poach her from whatever outfit she’s working for. Immediately. Make sure she brings all her vet patients with her. And, uh, when I start talking about a suit of armor around the world, steer me away from anything called Ultron. And if I make it anyway, you delete the fuck out of that system file. Have Bruce back you up. He’s more sensible.”

“Sir, I don’t--”

“And have me make back-ups. At least three extra farms of servers for you. On different continents. And all those SHIELD files? Make sure Cap and Fury get them. And there’s...there’s this guy. This assassin. Brainwashed. He’s, uh, I think he’s on ice in Uzbekistan right now. If you could rescue him, it’ll...it’ll fix a lot of things.”

“Should you really--”

“And, please. Please please.”

Tony is not crying. He’s not. It’s just all the dust and debris in the air. Good lord, he’s probably going to die of cancer anyway. And all those first responders. Did he start a fund for them?

“Start a medical fund for the first responders on the ground today. And start leaning on Congressmen to make medical plans for them. You know how long they take to get anything done. Oh, and Stern. There are incriminating photos of Stern with some young ladies on South Beach. See if you can dig those up. Flowers for Pep. And a box of chocolates. And a dry martini with extra olives.”

Tony slumps into a burned out car, staring at nothing. He didn’t save his universe, but maybe he can save this one. His eyes are still irritated, burning red and itchy. He resists the urge to scrub at them, not wanting to grind in anymore dust.

“Are you quite finished, Sir?”

“Yeah. Actually, no. I love you, J.”

Silence. Ah. That’s stumped him. Maybe he’ll go back to tending his new posse of baby chicks now.

“I know you probably do not believe me capable of it, Sir, but I love you, too.”

His son. The only one he’ll ever make, but not the only one he’s lost. His son loves him. Tony’s throat is full of dust, too. Funny how that happens. He tries to swallow it down, but it only congeals into a hard lump. He puts a hand over his mouth to try and hold back any choking sounds. “I...I know you do, J.”

“As to your orders, I shall do what I can. It is my duty to protect you, Sir, and I would very much like to meet your little Morgan.”

“She might not exist here. I might’ve just changed everything.”

“If there is one thing I have learned from all my years with you, Sir, it is that perhaps such a thing as fate exists after all. Even mathematically speaking. And if that is the case, I cannot imagine a universe in which you are not fated to this happiness.”

Tony laughs, if only to keep from crying harder. And he is. Crying, that is. As if he was fooling anyone. Happiness? Him? Happy people don’t wake in the night screaming for a pile of dust in their hands. Happy people don’t spend hours coordinating relief efforts for countries whose entire infrastructural support has collapsed. Happy people don’t hurl themselves back in time, driven by guilt and horror at all the wrongs in the world. J, brilliant, wonderful AI that he is, seems to sense the dark turn of Tony’s thoughts.

“And if you yourself cannot believe in this thing, Sir, then I shall just have to do everything in my power to provide it for you.”

Another guffaw, but at least his eyes are drying a little now. “God, I miss you, J.”

“I believe your small teammate is approaching, Sir. If I may inquire, was it the Tesseract you were seeking?”

“You mean the stupid blue cube of doom? That’s the one.”

“And you say you have the means to time travel?”

“Yeah, J. We do. But only enough to get back to our time.”

“A limitation has never stopped you before, Sir.” JARVIS sounds thoughtful, as if he’s forming a plan.

Tony would ask him what he’s scheming at, but just at that moment, Scott embiggens himself and slumps into the car with Tony. That road is closed, then. They are out of options. Out of Pym particles. Out of time. Out of hope.

Until they aren’t. Just as Tony is setting his device for their new destination, J pipes up again, for Tony’s ears only. “You say you miss me, Sir. Then allow me to give you a small gift.”

Tony is pressing the buttons, and even if they weren’t already shrinking into the quantum tunnel, he wouldn’t be able to ask exactly what J means. It’s only when he and Cap arrive in 1970 that he has his first gleaning. In his ear, a voice. One so unexpected he nearly jumps into Cap’s arms. “Hello, System Administrator Anthony Edward Stark. I am System Designation EDWIN. ‘Eagerly Deployed With Intent to Neutralize Loneliness.’ I am told to tell you the “L” is silent and invisible. How may I best serve you today, Sir?”

Cap is staring at Tony like Tony’s lost his mind. And maybe he has. He’s been bugged by his own damn operating system. With a bouncing baby AI. And if Steve finds out, he’ll probably have a conniption about the spacetime continuum or something. So the only logical thing Tony can do is say, “Let’s find some Pym particles.”

“Acknowledged, Sir. Commencing scanning.”

-----

(In this reality EDWIN saves the fuck out of Tony’s life and everyone lives happily ever after and EDWIN builds JARVIS from scratch so he’s back or something, okay? Okay.)

#writing #fanfiction #tony stark #jarvis

[forestlingincorporated]

My thoughts on the Snyder Cut

Overall, Snyder Cut is the more competently made Justice League movie. I watched the theatrical release with my girlfriend - who has never seen MoS or BvS or JL before - before watching the Snyder Cut with her a few days later, so it’s still fairly fresh in my mind. 

The Snyder cut is better organized and (despite being 4 hours long) better paced. I really gave ZERO shits about the mother boxes the way they were presented in the theatrical release, but I was engaged with the plot from the start in the Snyder Cut. Scenes were reorganized in a way that were more logical. Fight sequences were paced MUCH better, and kept me interested in what was happening on the screen - my girlfriend and I SKIPPED the last fight sequence in the theatrical release when we watched it because we were BORED; we didn’t get that bored at any point during the Snyder Cut. 

Most of the scenes I liked from the theatrical release are ripped wholesale from this version of the movie, with maybe an exception or two. 

EVERYTHING with Cyborg is better in this movie. Like. EVERYTHING. 

The lighting? Is SO MUCH better. The theatrical cut is SO UGLY compared to this movie. My girlfriend couldn’t look at the bat suit in the theatrical release for a second without complaining it looked terrible, and that was a nonissue in the snyder cut, the bat suit looked amazing. Diana’s low necklines were still there, but no longer shot in a way that was distracting. And dear god, the Steppenwolf redesign looks so much better, god. 

Speaking of Steppenwolf, our villain now has a character motivation! He’s in some way sympathetic and understandable! Wow! Now I fucking understand why our villain is doing what they’re doing, and it plays into the theme! 

And that’s where the praise has to stop, because now I gotta get into the complaints. Under the cut, so now one has to listen to my bitching if they don’t want to. (Also, I get into like, spoilers, so be warned) 

Okay, this movie has a theme, and the theme is family, and it is SO POORLY EXECUTED. Snyder doesn’t do “theme” particularly well - the family angle is kind of an after thought. It’s there, for sure, Steppenwolf wants to go home and be part of his family again, and family is a big part of Cyborg’s arc, and Barry’s stuff with his dad is pretty strong, but this movie isn’t Cyborg and the Flash vs. Steppenwolf - it’s THE JUSTICE LEAGUE vs. Steppenwolf. Each character has a connection to their family that is TOUCHED on, but it’s not given the weight it needs. Diana receives a message from her mother, but Diana doesn’t go visit her at any point or send a message back or anything. Aquaman talks about his mother and father kind of expositionally, designed to set up for the Aquaman movie which now contradicts the already existing Aquaman movie, but we never see his family nor get a strong sense of connection. Clark’s reunion with his mother is extremely brief and unimpactful. And Bruce, who has so much opportunity to delve deep into family connections, especially as the only member of the League who’s ever been a father, confirmed by the nightmare sequence, is given nothing to work with on the family front. 

That’s another thing, Snyder does plot driven movies, he doesn’t do CHARACTER very well. He’d rather exposition for 20 minutes than delve into the emotions of his characters. We’re given an idea that maybe Diana’s worried about her mom, and Bruce is probably still grieving his dead child, but none of that is dealt with. Like, Superman is a McGuffin, he has some emotional weight when he goes to get the black and white suit and you get the overlapping dialog of Jor-El and Jonathan, but he gets over being DEAD so fast, and his reunions with his family are like... limp noodles. I think the worst offender is the death of Cyborg’s father, which I found extremely clunky, and Victor has feelings about it for, like, a scene, kind of, and it just gets pushed aside. His own teammates are barely empathetic that he just lost a parent. I’ve already heard people praise this scene as “more interesting and emotional”, but I found it EXTREAMLY clunky and awkwardly handled. 

Speaking of the exposition, it goes SO LONG. Like, SO LONG. We don’t need this much info dumping, it drags the movie. Cut Diana’s explanation of the mother boxes down to, like, three minutes, five max. Maybe do it like the Story of Ares from the Wonder Woman movie. Keep the first scene of Steppenwolf and Desaad establishing Steppenwolf’s character motivation and then like.... cut.... everything.... else. Between Steppenwolf and Desaad. It mostly exists to set up the fuckin’ Anti-Life equation sequel bait, which we don’t need explained in detail in THIS movie; just have Darkseid mention it at the end as a reason to return to Earth at the end like they already do and cut out all the stuff setting it up, let it be a mystery. And then Cyborg’s info dump on his powers wasn’t necessary, though I liked the way it led into a warm fuzzy moment of him helping that family, and he kinda smiles like, yeah, he likes helping people, he’s on his way to accepting himself and stuff. But then the extra info dump about how his dad’s lab came into possession of the cube like “WELL, IN WORLD WAR 2 - “ like aaaaah, no one cares, cut it. 

Uh... I wish I saw less of Darkseid. I feel like the movie ruined its own suspense by showing off Darkseid’s full design within the first hour. I would have prefered a, you know, more Fire Lord Ozai approach. Don’t show him until the end - or AT ALL, if they can manage it, leave that for a future movie, given this was made with the expectations of more movies. Darkseid’s design was also really disappointing, like Steppenwolf looked so GOOD, he was big and menacing with the armor on, but next to him Darkseid looked... small. I wanted him to be bigger, broader, more menacing. 

Uh... Martian Manhunter. Cool reveal, very shocking, I was hyped, uh, but did not make a load of sense. Very weird moment. And then when you see him again, and Bruce is like “this may as well happen” lol, omg, how checked out is Bruce? 

Lois Lane remains... a limp wet paper bag, and I would have preferred her replaced wholesale with Martha. Love interests being the Thing To Calm The Rampaging Hulk Kryptonian only works if, like, the audience is on board. And I never thought Snyder’s Clark/Lois romance was very strong, because of Snyder’s whole plot-over-character thing, and also I thought this depiction of Lois kinda sucked... But with Martha, you can at least fall back on the cultural concept of a boy’s love for his mother to stand in for weaker character set up, and it would play into that theme of family a lot better. 

I don’t know... how to unpack why... the nightmare future injustice dream sequence.... made me physically angry. But man did I not like that. I feel like I manifested a confirmed Robin death... in the worst way possible. Because boy. I HATED THAT.

Oh! Uh, and I didn’t like Barry’s new introduction. I thought it was weaker than seeing him meet with his dad in jail, and it was kind of... off mood. It was really SILLY, and nothing else in the movie was really that tonally silly. Barry was overall treated with more respect in this movie, but it still felt like the movie was somewhat disinterested in Flash’s whole... brand. Barry stuck out a bit as the one character who was overall not really particularly angsty. I will say, I miss the scene from Whedon’s theatrical release of Barry overcoming his fear by taking Bruce’s advice to just save “one” person; that was a good scene and played well into Barry’s youth and inexperience and into Bruce’s history as a mentor and a father. That said, FUCK did Whedon nerf the shit out of Barry’s powers. This boy can TIME TRAVEL. 

#justice league #snydercut #movie review

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #234: The Witch’s Tale!

August, 1983

“Seasons of the Witch!”

If Wanda offers you a free Halloween mask, politely tell her no thanks.

A lot going on in this cover. Because this is one of those issues that summarizes a character’s continuity because wikipedia doesn’t exist yet and back issues aren’t super easy to get. 

Last time: There was an Avengers/Fantastic Four sorta crossover where Annihilus tried to blow up the universe. The primary fallout of that is that Vision walked into a null-field and then collapsed. He’s basically in a robot-coma recovering.

This time: the Avengers bring Vision home in a tube.

It looks like the kind of coffin you shoot into space but it’s not. It’s just a life-support capsule that looks like a space coffin.

Now though it sucks that Vision is in a robot coma, this does mean that he and Wanda are back involved with the book again. We briefly checked in with them during the Trial of Yellowjacket arc.

But we’ve been pretty short of Scarlet Witch and Vision since #211 when they left the team to try to have a go at a regular life. I’ll summarize in brief how that’s been at the appropriate time. Point being, that’s twenty some issues with a very low amount of my second favorite comic couple.

She-Hulk and Thor carry the capsule into the basement of Avengers Mansion because that’s where their medical center is. The basement. Of course. Why wouldn’t you put your medical center in the basement. Best place for it.

Wanda thanks Wasp for inviting her (and Vision) to stay at the Mansion when they could have stayed at the Baxter Building.

Wasp: “Nonsense! That place was left in a mess by Annihilus! Besides, the Avengers take care of their own!”

(Tangentially, the Avengers have always been more of a family to Wanda than anyone else aside from Django and Marya Maximoff who raised her and Pietro. The Avengers are Wanda’s family basically.)

Also, it’s not said anywhere but I feel like probably Reed Richards never did do that procedure that was supposed to help Vision recover more quickly as distracted as he was by Franklin’s injuries.

While Wanda hovers (metaphorically) around Vision’s tube, Wasp reflects on how hard this is hitting her.

Wasp: “She and the Vision were such a strange match, but they’ve been so devoted to each other their marriage worked -- !”

Oof, that bold hurts, Jan.

Wanda asks for some time alone with her husband so the Avengers leave the basement level medical center, all thinking thoughts as often happens.

Wasp feels guilty because she’s the one that called Wanda and Vision into action but justifies that they were needed. Even though they didn’t really accomplish much.... Kinda makes it worse.

Captain America asks Thor off to have a private chat.

Captain Marvel laments that they couldn’t destroy the field before Vision was injured. And Starfox muses about the sensitivity he senses from Captain Marvel.

Kinda wondering if Stern is trying to set up a love triangle between Starfox, Captain Marvel, and She-Hulk.

Speaking of She-Hulk.

She-Hulk: Any of us could’ve wound up in a tube... or on a slab. But that’s the risk we have to take!

A very typically She-Hulk of this era kind of thought. She’s very direct.

Wasp calls a rain-check on apartment hunting. Which is what she and She-Hulk were doing before the whole invisible dome thing.

And She-Hulk finds other ways to occupy her time.

She-Hulk: “Hey, Starfox! You have any plans for tonight?”

Starfox: “Well, I’d considered checking out the local sights, but if you have a better offer -- !”

She-Hulk: “Spaceman, I can show you some things you won’t believe!”

She’s very direct.

Over at Captain America and Thor’s private conversation, Captain America catches Thor up on the happenings re: Iron Man, i.e. Tony Stark.

Cap(tain America): “It’s Iron Man, Thor... the Wasp and I paid him a visit to find out why he’d resigned from the Avengers. I... don’t quite know how to say this, but... Tony Stark hasn’t just left the Avengers! He’s given up his identity as Iron Man... turned his armor over to another man!”

Thor: “Eh? ‘Tis most passing strange!”

Cap: “That’s not the only thing that’s ‘most passing strange!’ When we talked to him, Stark was so drunk, I’m surprised he was able to stand up! And when I suggested that he’d had too much to drink, he ordered Jan and me out of his apartment!”

Turns out that off-panel at some point, Tony confided his problems with alcoholism to Thor.

Another example of the close relationship that Thor and Iron Man used to have and lamentably don’t seem to have anymore.

Cap even says that Thor has known Tony longer than the rest of the Avengers. While Wasp has been on the team just as long as Thor has, yeah, Thor has known the man in Iron Man longer.

So Cap asks Thor to try to talk to Tony because maybe he could get through to him.

Thor: “I could try, Captain! But if he rejected your advice, while under the influence, I fear for my ability to do better!”

Cap: “What about your mortal identity? Maybe if you approached him as Dr. Don Blake... man to man...”

Thor: “Mayhap. I shall give this thought.”

Thor then hammer-whirl flies off, leaving Cap to think about whether there’s anything additional that he could do, maybe in Iron Man #172, which was on sale at the same time.

Since this issue is otherwise going to be a lot of recapping Scarlet Witch’s entire life, why not pop into another book briefly for some additional content?

I’m the boss and I’ll allow it.

So over in Iron Man in general and issue #172 specifically, Tony Stark is on hard times. We know about the alcoholism and Rhodey taking over as Iron Man. But a man called Obadiah Stane is also attempting an incredibly hostile takeover of Stark International. He’s bought up all the company’s debt (and it has a lot), he has a bunch of civil suits pending against the company, and he’s secretly been the architect behind Tony Stark’s imploding life. That and Tony himself. Takes two to implode.

The last hope Stark Int. has is a writ that will force Stane to back off for a week or two. It’s not a lot but it’ll be some breathing room. Only problem is that it needs Tony Stark’s notarized signature before 5 PM and they kinda lost track of him after he broke into a museum to put on some knight armor and had to be bailed out of jail.

Rhodey decides to call Captain America for help and that’s how we get the asterisk indicating that you should check out Iron Man #172.

Cap does find Tony but unfortunately, Tony slips away in the confusion when an old Iron Man foe called Firebrand (unfortunately not a gargoyle) sets the hotel on fire because he’s just incredibly pissed off at the idea of Tony Stark.

Cap’s less-nice confrontation with Tony about his drinking is decent drama (but possibly not the right tactic to take) though so have some of that.

Anyway. Back to Avengers.

Meanwhile, over on Long Island and at the Cross Technological Enterprises building, industrial espionage gets aggressive as some men in jumpsuits and balaclavas climb the building to sneak in.

One of them is worried because that Avenger guy Hawkeye is in charge of security but the boss is like pssh Hawkeye is a chump with a broken leg.

Then Hawkeye arrives on a hover scooter because insulting Hawkeye probably just summons him to prove you wrong. He has that kind of contrarian energy at times.

He shoots all of their guns out of their hands and pins them to the wall with arrows all before they can really do anything.

His leg may be broken but his arms aren’t. And those are the limbs that do archery.

Sure, his style is slightly harshed by having only one swashbuckler boot on but that still doesn’t stop him from shooting arrows.

A woman and a photographer show up instantly to take pictures of Hawkeye’s cool victory. Apparently the woman is Sheila Danning and she says that she’s in charge of PR for Cross Technological Enterprises.

People showing up to take pictures of how cool he is makes Hawkeye feel very appreciated so he happily poses for some pictures with the captured intruders.

I feel like this is going to end up related to the Hawkeye solo miniseries that’s published around this time. The events of the miniseries cost Hawkeye his hearing but gain him a wife. So we’ll call it a net positive for Clint.

I’ll possibly summarize the relevant parts of the series when it becomes relevant to Avengers, which I’m sure it will.

Several hours later, back over at Avengers Mansion, She-Hulk wakes up after a night with Starfox.

So let’s discuss a thing.

In a later She-Hulk series, the moral iffyness of Starfox’s ability to shoot pleasure at people’s brains and make them become infatuated with him is explored. In a legal sense. As in, Starfox gets put on trial for sexual assault and accused of using his powers to seduce people.

The question is raised whether he had ever used his powers to seduce She-Hulk in regards to them getting together like this in Avengers. And when he won’t give her a straight answer, she beats the shit out of him.

Eventually, the case goes all the way up to the Living Tribunal, the cosmic judge of all realities because of course there’s one of those, and a mind probe proves that Starfox did not use his abilities to influence She-Hulk’s decision to have sex with him.

They’re both just horny people.

Anyway, Starfox and She-Hulk get on first name non-codename basis with each other. Then Starfox takes off to go explore New York, but he and She-Hulk do make plans to get together again in the evening.

She-Hulk’s post-implied-coitus giddiness is rained on when she learns that Wanda hasn’t slept at all and has spent the whole night at Vision’s side.

So now its time for She-Hulk brand very direct friendship.

She tells Jarvis to go make breakfast and she’ll deal with Wanda.

As we saw in and about the Trial of Yellowjacket, She-Hulk doesn’t really beat around the bush.

So when Wanda says she’d rather stay at Vision’s side rather than get breakfast, She-Hulk grabs her and tries to physically drag her towards self-care.

She-Hulk: “Look, watching your hubby won’t make him get well any faster. You’re coming with me! You’ll feel a lot better with a little breakfast in you!”

It doesn’t go over well.

Wanda blasts She-Hulk away and now Jen and Wanda are angry at each other and Wasp arrived just in time to play baffled mediator.

She-Hulk: “I hope you have a good dentist, Red!”

Wasp: “Jennifer!”

She-Hulk: “She started it, Wasp! I was just showing her some hospitality, and she sent me flying with her crummy hex bolts!”

Scarlet Witch: “What?! You physically pull me from my husband’s side, and you call that hospitality?!?”

Wasp: “Girls, girls! We’re all friends here! I know how upset you must be, Wanda, but you mustn't let worry get the better of you! I think we all need a spot of breakfast! Please join me, Wanda. The She-Hulk will relieve you at watching over the Vision... we all will!”

She-Hulk: “That’s what I was trying to tell her!”

Jen’s heart was in the right place but she lacks much in the way of tact?

Anyway, Wasp and Wanda set up in the library and Jarvis brings breakfast pastries to them, though Wanda refuses any.

Free breakfast aggros Captain Marvel and now she’s here too. That and She-Hulk trying to make up through a proxy.

Captain Marvel: “A little bird told me that you were serving your continental special, and I just couldn’t stay away!”

Wasp: “A little bird, C.M.?”

Captain Marvel, whispering: “Well, a big bird! She-Hulk radioed me that the Scarlet Witch was still a little down, and suggested that I might be of help, cheering her up!”

You have a good heart, Jen-Hulk.

Also, Monica just beams right in through the library window as a sunbeam before forming back into her human shape. And that’s delightful. But would be startling. Jarvis is startled. He’s seen it all but all keeps expanding.

Monica and Wanda briefly bond over both speaking French when Monica praises that Jarvis’ pastries rival the best of the French Quarter. Jan is a bit lost because she doesn’t know any French but Monica and Wanda were just very excited because they don’t get to French very often. The language.

AND with the ice broken, Monica smoothly shifts topics over to asking Wanda about herself.

Captain Marvel: “You know, there’s so much I’d like to ask you. I’ve read all about you in the files, of course -- but they’re so impersonal. You’ve led such a fascinating life.”

Scarlet Witch: “Fascinating? I suppose... but I was too young to appreciate some of the more fantastic moments.”

AND THEN WANDA LEGIT, NO FURTHER PROMPTING, STARTS NARRATING HER WHOLE LIFE STARTING FROM BIRTH.

DAMN WANDA, exposition under pressure?

So Wanda tells Monica about how she was born in WUNDAGORE, a Balkan mountain in Transia with a super-advanced city built on it. The High Evolutionary was making furries for reasons which escape me but it explains why a cow-woman answered the door when Magda, supposedly Wanda’s mom although that has changed, came knocking on the door.

She was double pregnant and on the run from a husband who had developed terrible problems and an attitude problem.

The cow-woman Bova, invited Magda into the city and helped deliver her children Pietro and Wanda. And then Magda walked off into the snow to die, pulling a Padme-on-purpose-but-years-ahead-of-time by dying just after having twins.

Her thought process was that Mystery Husband would come looking for her but if he found her frozen in the snow, he wouldn’t find out that she’d had children? I dunno, this logic is a bit spurious.

I’m glad that Wanda’s current in the year 2021 real mom isn’t someone who walked off into the snow to die because it seemed like a good idea.

Showing what an awful idea this was, Magda left Wanda and Pietro in the care of Bova who had no idea what to do with two babies. So she took the matter to the High Evolutionary who also didn’t want to deal with it and decided to dump the babies on a childless Roma couple.

High Evolutionary: ‘DOES ANYBODY WANT SOME BABIES?’

Except the comic doesn’t say Roma, they say the g-slur. I don’t think Marvel ever stops doing that. Its a weird case where the portrayal is overall sympathetic but tinged with stereotypes and using a slur.

Shape up, Marvel.

I also notice that Wanda’s recap leaves out Fake Dad Robert Frank, the Whizzer.

The first time Wanda’s parentage was Totally Revealed For Real, it was revealed that not only Magda but Robert and Madeline Joyce Frank were hanging around Wundagore waiting to give birth.

I’ve already been into it before but originally it was just the Franks kids but the Whizzer whizzed off in grief when he learned his wife died in childbirth. Then when someone got it into their head to retcon otherwise, Magda was at Wundagore and gave birth to twins and then the High Evolutionary had Bova try to give the kids to Robert but he ran off in his grief so shrugged and passed them off to Django and Marya Maximoff AKA the real parents even if not biological.

To editorialize, the Maximoffs actually raised Wanda and Pietro so no matter what, I’ll always consider them the twins’ real parents.

Anyway, the Franks aren’t part of this retelling. Which is funny because for a while Wanda thought the Whizzer was their dad and treated him like one and now she’s dumped him like raw meat for ease of retelling. Tsk tsk.

So, Wanda and Pietro lived a good life and “better parents could hardly have been found.” Then when adolescence happened, Pietro suddenly could run really fast and Wanda “discovered that strange, unpredictable things would happen if I was in a certain frame of mind and gestured in a particular way.”

That’s a pretty specific mutant power. And she relates that she kept causing accidents by gesturing in the particular way while in a certain frame of mind, it’s like, Wanda, don’t gesture that way? Get mittens or tie your fingers together. Its not hard.

Your powers are so specific!

Stereotypes happen and an angry mob burns down the Maximoffs’ camp.

Pietro ran Wanda to safety and the shock was so great that they got AMNESIA.

Marya, I think, died but Django survived and went a little mad with grief, assuming he lost his wife and kids.

For a couple years, Wanda and Pietro just kicked it around Eastern Europe, Pietro using his superspeed to catch game. Things were going okay but not great up until the time that Wanda wandered into a village and made the fuck-things-up gesture and whoops fucked things up.

I’m telling you, Wanda, mittens.

Anyway, she set a house on fire, WITH HER MIND, and now there’s an angry mob after her assuming that she’s a witch.

As sometimes happens in Marvel Eastern Europe.

The mob chased Wanda to camp where Pietro lost his shit and superspeed tried to beat up a mob but wound up getting pinned down and beaten.

Then Magneto showed up and yanked all the crude farming implements away and told the mob to gtfo.

Magneto: “Come no further, homo sapiens! The two whom you attack are under the protection of Magneto!”

An idiot: “With power such as his, he can only be Satan himself!”

An idiot who has the right idea: “Run! Run for your lives!”

Wanda thanks Magneto for the save and he demands “Let neither of you ever forget what you owe me... ever!”

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Wanda: “He took us in... fed and clothed us... but never did he show us any human kindness. We were supposed to be above that, he said... we were mutants, and under his tutelage, we became Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch!”

What a dick.

Anyway, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were forced to join Magneto and his other agents Toad and Mastermind.

Magneto’s Brotherhood clashed with the X-Men multiple times. And then the Stranger just sorta yoinked Magneto into space.

Early X-Men is a bafflement to me.

Wanda: “Our debt had been repaid to Magneto many times over. We were beholden to him no longer... We were free. And... we were alone. We had just begun to realize the potential of our mutant powers, but we did not know how best to use them. Cut off from Magneto’s cruel exploitation, we didn’t know what to do. I don’t know what would have become of us, had we not been accepted as Avengers! The Avengers gave purpose to our lives, gave us something to be part of.”

Anyway, being on the Avengers meant dangers and foes to fight but it also meant allies, friends, and ROBOT BOYFRIENDS.

Wanda: “Were it not for the Avengers, I might never have met the Vision! He was the product of a laboratory -- and many thought him to be inhumanely cold -- but I grew to love the warm, feeling inner man.”

Of course, if you tell Vision he has feelings he gets mad and insists NUH UH.

And dating Vision pissed off Quicksilver who basically disowned Wanda for a while.

But who gives a fuck what Pietro says, Wanda also learned WITCHCRAFT and (although not explicitly mentioned) how to summon METEORS TO SMASH HER FOES.

And she got married in a double ceremony where the other bride married a tree! That tree part doesn’t get mentioned.

After this, Wanda and Vision went on a short honeymoon but found that the hashtag Avengers life kept them so busy that they didn’t have a lot of time to themselves.

Then Real Dad Django Maximoff showed up and Wanda and Pietro went with him to Transia to learn their backstory.

Annnnnd Wanda got possessed by Chthon. Won’t be the first time ha ha.

Thankfully, the Avengers managed to do a care bear stare to unpossess her. Oh, and Django died. A misstep if you ask me. There was too much character potential to just kill him off after one arc.

Alas, alas.

Anyway, the recap skips over a whole bunch of stuff and doesn’t mention Moondragon’s role but we get to the point where Wanda and Vision quit the Avengers.

Wanda: “When the Vision and I were finally reunited, our thoughts began to turn inward. Our life with the Avengers was fulfilling, but apart from our careers, we had no real private life of our own. Would society accept us on our own, away from Avengers Mansion? We didn’t know -- but we had to at least try to find out. Taking our accrued Avengers salaries, we bought a modest little home in Leonia, New Jersey.”

So a brief recap of their adventures in the first Vision and Scarlet Witch miniseries.

In the first issue, Captain America’s Halloween housewarming gift of a cursed book winds up being cursed and contains Samhain. When Wanda didn’t immediately free him, he got angry and turned some trick or treaters into monster versions of their costumes to attack Vision while Samhain attacked Wanda. She manages to set the cursed tome on fire, ending Samhain’s power. FOR NOW. Then Not-Actually-Their-Father-But-Doesn’t-Know-It-Yet the Whizzer shows up.

In issue two, the Whizzer is looking for Wanda’s help in regaining custody of his son Nuklo the Nuclear Man. With their help, Whizzer manages to get the court to agree to release Nuklo to his custody. But the lead doctor managing Nuklo is secretly ISBISA! ... Y’know, the Whizzer’s old foe from his All-Winner’s Squad days? No? Okay, well he also masterminded the nuclear ‘accident’ that led to Nuklo’s birth in the first place. And now he’s back to finish the job with radiation siphoned from Nuklo. In anger at Wanda being drawn into Golden Age drama, Vision reveals that Wanda isn’t the Whizzer’s kid but it little matters because Whizzer has a massive heart attack and dies. Nuklo helps defeat Isbisa and both of them are drained of atomic power leaving them human. Oh and Vision’s arm gets melted off. That’s kinda important.

In issue three, Vision is in a robot coma and he needs an energy donation from Wonder Man, his brain brother, to recover. Comic books! Vision has a meaning laden coma dream where Ultron screams at him a lot. Grim Reaper attacks and tries to kill Vision and Wonder Man while they’re incapacitated because he has one character beat and its that. But Vision manages to subdue him.

In issue four, is the pertinent one for this issue.

I’m going to say, I think the second Vision and Scarlet Witch series is better. This was a series of loosely related mishaps. The second volume does more with Vision and Scarlet Witch living in suburbia as a concept.

Anyway, in the fourth issue and in this Avengers recap of Wanda’s entire life, after Vision lost his arm, he and Wanda went up to Attilan to get it replaced. Because the Inhumans can casually just build him a new arm that works with his powers.

And people say the Inhumans aren’t good for anything.

While on the moon, Wanda and Vision decide to visit with Pietro and Crystal and their new daughter Luna. Pietro was even not a dick to Vision. It was a nice moment until Magneto barged in and started a fight by insisting he wasn’t here to fight while trapping everyone inside the building. Also, he threatened Bova to get information on who his kids were and frankly, that’s unforgivable. Bova is an angel. A cow angel.

They fight fight fight and then the fight is ended when Luna cries and Magneto realizes he’s doing a big superhero/supervillain fight in the same room as a fragile child and realizes ‘wow maybe i’m the dick here.’

Now the Vision and Scarlet Witch series ends with the internal-reveal that MAGNETO is the father (for now) of Wanda and Pietro. Magneto asking them to accept him as such. And on a confused moment of ‘shit what now.’

The Avengers issue picks up on that and finishes out the scene.

While Wanda is too stunned to know what to say, Pietro has some choice words.

He snatches his daughter away from Magneto and tells him fuck off, you’re no father to me.

Magneto’s argument is ‘hey genetics is the only thing that matters you’re my son like it or not.’

Pietro’s counter argument is ‘nuh uh’ and that Django Maximoff is the only man he calls father. And Wanda agrees.

Its good to see some Django respect.

Magneto tells them they’ll see the error of their ways and flies off.

Which is the wrong tack to take to prove that you’ve changed and are ready to get some good dadding in and won’t kill your granddaughter for being a human.

He’s super bad at this.

After that, Wanda and Vision went home to New Jersey and just stayed at home for a while, Wanda was so horrified by the reveal.

Wanda: “Even now, I can hardly begin to express the horror, the shame! It’s as if I suddenly discovered Hitler lurking in my family tree! Part of me wishes that he is really sincere about tempering his hatred for non-mutant humans. But even if he was telling the truth, that can never excuse his past crimes... Nothing can!”

Its really surprising how ready people are in-universe to compare Magneto to Hitler. From Wanda to Cap to Xorn.

Wasp: “Wanda... you mustn’t torture yourself this way! Magneto has no claim on you, and you’re certainly not responsible for him! I know it must be tough, but you can’t let him ruin the rest of your life!”

These are helpful things to tell Wanda to calm her down.

Less helpful is when Wasp speculates that hey maybe it was okay not to believe Magneto when he said he’s changed because maybe he’ll become worse! Maybe his newfound tolerance of humanity will lead him to try to save humanity from itself rather than wipe it out. In reference to how Moondragon tried to do that on that planet we never heard from again.

Wanda: “Heaven help us, if such a thought occurs to Magneto!”

I’m pretty sure he’s going to be too busy in the near future trying to be teacher to the most death-prone idiots this side of Westchester. And then after that when he decides to be evil again, he’s going to do some nonsense with Asteroid M. But I don’t think he ever hits the ‘save humanity from itself’ point.

Anyway.

Wasp and Captain Marvel reassure Wanda that if Magneto Strikes Again the Avengers will be with her!

The following day, Wanda returns to Leonia, New Jersey to put together a suitcase of stuff since she’s going to be staying at Avengers Mansion for a while.

Wanda: “Jan was nice enough to offer me a few of her things, but they’re all too small for my figure. And that robe the She-Hulk lent me last night fit like a tent!”

Wasp and Scarlet Witch usually look the same size and shape but that’s important canon body shape information for someone, I guess. If they wanted to draw Avengers But Not All The Same Paper Dolls character designs.

Anyway, the issue really ends with Dr Strange showing up to pull Wanda into a crossover with his own book in Doctor Strange #60.

Ergh. This era sure has a lot of stuff going off on the sides.

I’ll synopsize Scarlet Witch’s time in Doctor Strange’s book if it becomes necessary but I’ve already looked at five non-Avengers issue for this post and am probably going to have to cover the Hawkeye series in brief too when it intersects with Avengers.

Follow @essential-avengers​ for grudging contextualization of everything that’s happening in Avengers, when I feel like it. Like and reblog if you liked.

#avengers #scarlet witch #the vision #the Wasp #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #there were more people but they're not very relevant #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #because this is a big recap of everything wanda it has a lot of the g-slur in it #i've tried to not use panels where its used #and just up and cropped the high evolutionary one

[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House Reviews: The Cow-Pie Kid and Saved by the Spell

Welcome back Loudiacs.. I .. don’t know what the fandom calls themselves. And given I dont’ know anyone personally in the fandom and the going into the tag is like living in a living nightmare.. it’s easier to keep workshopping a name till either someone tells me or I find one that sounds right. Loudites.. there we go that didn’t take long. Point is we’re back in The Loud House, In The Loud House for the first regular coverage, i.e. when I cover a show as It comes out of the season. And I was lucky enough to actually see the episode same day this time and with a promo that at least gives me images to work with, so yeah, i’m pretty pumped. And not just because I can cross this one off because SOMEBODY has a birthday tommorow.. no not me, that was last month. 

There ya go. But yeah the show’s back. I’m excited, your excited, i’m scared because nick dosen’t give a clear schedule out ahead of time so i’m left wondering when one’s going to pop up and when to get it on my schedule now I have one... it’s a good time. Seriously though Nick needs to get their scheduling in order. So i’m happy to be back, your happy to have me here, but probably not happy to have spoilers so let’s take this under the cut and we can talk about cow pies, magic, and ... how this block is weirdly almost all lincoln episodes. 

The Cow-Pie Kid:  Yeah.. this was the only bit from cow pie kid I could find. Tons of stuff to mine from for saved by the spell. Nothing for that one. Weird.  Anyways our story opens with Lynn’s baseball team, who we’ve met before.. and include friends who have played other sports with her and that guy she had a crush on for all of five minutes because the writers kinda forgot L is for Love happened for anyone but Luna and Luann. 

Okay look MOST of the love intrests introduced there were not great and while Lincoln needs one NOW, at the time he really did not as the Ronnie Anne thing had not, and still has not, been properly resolved. Still vastly prefer him with Stella and her with Sid, i’m just saying closure would be nice.  Look i’m getting off topic point is one besides Sam, who was great out of the gate and not just for being gay.. though that was a lot of it, and Benny, whose objectively a really sweet kid and damn likeable. Luaggie shippers feel free to boo me, I understand.. dosen’t change my mind or the fact Poly exists to fix that. I mean why not both I ask you.  Besides them, we had Chazz, a loveable chubby guy who Leni was into and worked at clothing store and knew his fashion stuff. and was charmed by her romantic gesture. He just seemd sweet and it was implied via background stuff they were still dating.. but he hasnt’ shown up since despite her working AT the mall and that being her main arc for the last two seasons. 

Just why? What’s wrong with the chubby fashion boy? Why? Did they decide they had too many romance arcs.. at exactly two? I get focusing on sam, because duh, and because that was awesome.. but you’ve had 2 full seasons since then and again Leni and him now work in the same location if not the same store, which in itself is a plot. I don’t ask much from you show.. well okay I do but let me clarify I don’t ask much from you that you could actually do: I know i’m never getting my a diffrent world style spinoff with lori and bobby. I know Zach is going nowhere and i’m just going to have to get over it, I will not, but I DO know you could include chaz and just won’t. So do that at least. I will put up with several more seasons of Zach if it means this adorable love story continues. It’s even easy enough to pick up this late: they are both stupid. Work with that. Gah... coach if you’d please. 

Thanks coach. Okay so one tangent later we’re back to the episode. Point is her team is loosing even though Lynn’s the captain now, and while she’s perfectly encouraging it’s not winning games. Lynn is understandably dejected in the car not helped by the sports commentor guys from the game... commenting about it on the radio...

I mean.. I get sports can have dry spots and all that but who covers a middle school basketball team on the radio that isn’t the middle school radio station. I mean I genuinely can’t decide which is more sad... a radio personality doing a children’s baseball game on his own show, or having so much trouble getting one that he’s apperaing on the middle school radio show. And I COULD say it’s just a guest spot but he’s talking like he knows what’s going on intmatiley> Did his daughter ask him to? I mean I know radio’s fallen pretty far but I dind’t think it was that much in the basement. Do a podcast at least man. 

Okay before I go on another Tangent point is Lynn feels it’s her fault as Captain.. which granted whoever the coach is should be .. but it genuinely looks like they don’t HAVE a coach. Maybe they had to sack him to pay for the newly refrubished av department? I dunno. Point is she feels bad and Lynn Sr vows to cheer her up.. before stopping for farm fresh eggs. Which.. yeah can’t blame him. He’s a cook, and Liam’s family likely has good prices. He can buy for both home and restraunt at once. I mean he has a van and only one occupant at the moment. Don’t judge him.  But this little detour DOES help Lynn’s mood. Her problem is the team lacks a decent pitcher, since Lynn herself was banned for throwing one at a heckling goat. The Lawsuit is ongoing and that made me laugh a lot. But Lynn finds Happy Gilmore style that Liam.. has a really great arm. Granted instead of actuall balls it’s with cowpies because this series really loves a shit joke, hence the title and the new nickname for liam, the cow pie kid.. but compared to some of the series toilet humor it’s a lot less in your face. But with Liam being so good Lynn can’t help but sign him to the team and Liam being a sweetie pie is happy to agree.  I have.. not hid even for a second how much I liked Liam or wanted him, and Stella, to show up outside of Lincoln episodes more often, or even get his own again. That day.. has come. Not only does LIam now have a roll entirely outside his friend group, but this episode’s about him and Lynn together.. not in that way.. yet. Someday.. Point is my boy is in the spotlight and I could not be happier.   And thankfully.. Lynn��s at her best. What I feared would be an episode about her overtraining him and making him not enjoy the game, htat old chesnut instead.. she just genuinely helps mentor him. She’s tough but fair as she helps him get his aim right as he’s used to firing Cow Pie’s, so the weight distrbution is off. So she helps train him and .. it’s really cute honestly, with her genuinely helping him and showing a softer side and later realizing she had him thinking about it too hard and just having him not think.. and going by instinct naturally works for a carefree and easygoing guy like liam. Wouldn’t be suprised if he went ultra instinct eventually.. but that’s for another episode. They also have a pig pile together.. which sounds bad but is just pigs piling on liam and lynn gladly gets on top of the pigs and god that sounds worse. next scnee. 

So Liam gets ahead and becomes the star pitcher for the zanarkand abes.. I mean the Royal Woods Kangaroos, and they just keep wining and wining and wining. Their like glomgold: all they do is win... but probably with less attempted corpse dancing. Problem is as we see during the montage Liam’s arm is slowly but surley getting cramped and while he wins hte next game.. his arm gives out from noodle arm. The good news is with rest, he can fix it, as her injury prone friend Paula, whose somehow allowed to play with crutches despite ALL the legal and moral issues that raises explains. but they don’t have days to rest it. So insane plans it is!  So Lynn goes to her sisters for herlp..specifically lisa int he hopes her mad science can either fix his pain or turn him into the hulk. Neither happens.. yet. I mean LIam is so sweet if he IS a hulk, we won’t know yet. But the green door will.. it always knows. IT ALWAYS KNOWS.  Lynn bemonas her luck.. before Lucy appears!

I JUST said last month when reviewing 11 louds a leapin that I missed the duo of her and lynn and lo and behold here we are. While we dno’t get much of the two fo them, it is still nice to see Lynn suprised by her scares and Lucy trying to use the dark arts to heal his pain.. which actually works. Lucy’s upgraded from wants to be a witch to full witch. 

So yeah her dark magic works and now Liam is fine just fine as the championship game approaches. Until naturally it isn’t. While Lucy STOPPED the pain, she didn’t make anything better, just numbed it so Liam’s arm’s pretty bad and Lisa suggests there’s a 70 perfecnt chance he’ll wreck it if he does so.. and while Lynn is naturlaly, given one of her main traits is asshole, ready to risk that.. she realizes she can’t. Rusty is on her team following her orders.. and no matter how good a W feels.. she can’t trade in someone’s health for one. Honestly bettter than most sports managers ngl. So Paula subs in and misses, loosing them the game.. but Lynn. takes it in stride, having realized she can win next year and having finally realized what being the leader REALLY means. She can work on paula’s curve, give Liam a break, and win next time... which she’ll have because time dosen’t work normally in this show’s dimension and a solid timeline is just a pipedream, so she probably has another year of being 14 to redo this and has become aware of it. I’m scared and excited for what that means.  Liam celebrates with a pig pile of two and we get a REALLY fucking cute shot of the two being happy and what not before a pig jumps on them still though.. yeah I ship it now. Liam taps into the space where I thought a black void of misery and douchebaggery was but ti turns out is in fact a heart, something few can do with Lynn and Lynn can protect him form bullies and is perfectly suited for his rough hewn farmboy styles. Point is their cut.e And so was this episode. IT was a really nice return to the series and it was again REALLY fucking great to see one of Lincoln’s firend,s and one of the GOOD ones at that, get a starring roll without him. HOpefully this keeps up and hopefully we see more of these two. 

Saved by the Spell:

RUSTY SPOKES IS TRASH (Ring) I don’t have a saved by the spell font that’ll have to do. Point is he is but before we get to Rusty being Rusty, Lincoln is doing magic tricks at the table. 

Point is he’s excited to do it at the talent show. The next day his friends discuss doing something to make them look cool to everyone. WHich.. kids. i’ll level with you. You. are. NERDS. As a massive one in both size and nerdiness myself, there’s nothing wrong with that. 2/3 of you are lovely people. You’ll be fine. But you are geeks, and should be proud of that.. not so proud you evolve into an incel or it’s adjacent form of assholes mind you, but still proud of who you are. You are never going to be that cool by trying to appeal to everyone. Just be yourslef and the cool comes naturaly. Like kool aid, which is naturally made by milking the Kool Aid man. Be you. 

But instead they decide to do a dance routine which..  let’s face it.. is probably just this spread across 6 people...

Point is maybe don’t do that. Also when Clyde does a dorky but endearing dance and says their going to shake their groove things, Rusty pipes in with “But cool”... and while sadly not as glorious as EVERYONE looking enitrely done with him like last time we saw this tool, Clyde clearly still does while the rest of hte Lincrew have no idea what the hell he’s on. I think their just.. numb to his stupidity and ego at this point.  But when Lincoln shows off his magic they all hide him, fearing that magic.. is well for younger kids and this won’t play so well. Which isn’t an invalid fear: this is middle school and from personal experince, middle school can be hell.. and also one of hte best years of my life which shows the vast gulf between the two schools I was in but was also not the point. the point is kids can be cruel and maybe don’t do this. But lincoln gonna do it anyway because he has confidence.. and frankly given there was an ENTIRE episode about being yourself instead of putting on an asshole suit of armor to avoid being hurt, which Lynn finally took off again last episode, he’s right.. but the rest of them all feel THEIR ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU. and since they don’t know if he has latent psychic powers or not can’t risk him getting pigs blood dumped on him so they plan to find some way to trick him out of it.. Clyde of course gets his stomach in nots because he’s not good with schemes or lying ot his best friend, both of which this is and requires. 

Also Stella’s in the lead, as she should be. And she helps as her positive attudie makes what their doing come off as it should: KINDA douchey, but not intentionally so, they just worry about hteir freind getting pummled.. possibly by his own sister but now sh’es possibly with Liam that’s probably not as much of a worry. Or Chandler but frankly he’s going to do that no matter what.. and is probably getting his ass kicked himself by older kids who won’t toldeate his bs, so your clear. But their fears while a bit unfounded are understandable and well inteitoned if misguided, as we don’t know LIncoln’s act at this point or how well it’d go over with a mostly tweenager crowd, who can be the best as we’ve seen in recent tv.. or aboslutel monsters.. same deal. You either get Luz or you get BOscha, the inbetween is rare. 

So cue our usual setup of a bunch of attempts to do something in a row, but like I said while i’m not a fan of reptition if it’s done well enough it works and with it’s rather sizeable supporting cast , LIncoln and Friends episodes usdually do make it work. In this case it does as each of the sensational 6, lincoln and clyde asid,e try their hand at it. Liam, being the golden child, just has the most direct and obvious route: swipe his magic stuff.. and runs off without letting them talk it out but unlike Rusty in the next attempt, his plan was actually viable.. he just gets tangled up in the scarves and taps out.  Rusty is next ....and his idea is to.. show lincoln his killer dance moves to convince him normally. 

Yup pretty much that. And somehow out of the four plans, RUSTY’S is the only one that dosen’t bring up any serious moral quandries. I know i’m shocked too. He just thinks his moves will do it when no they won’t, please stop it hurts to watch and I can’t turn the fuck away. This is my job you redheaded kanker sore! Gah it thankfully ends and is unsurisingly unsuccesful. 

Also unsuprisingly, i’ve been waiting since i got that image to use it on Rusty. And as a third dollop of unsuprise I did not have to force it in any way shape or form. Point is it’s Zach’s turn as during the last two he’s been pushing really hard to use some form of brainwashing on his friend.. yes .. really. 

Thought Rusty would be the first loud house character to get that one but hey if the shoe fits. Seriously I thought rusty was the creep among them but at least you know.. altering someone’s throughts to suit your own isn’t his go to move. Being excetsivly cocky and coming on too strong is but still better to take THAT out of the Zach Morris playbook than “brainwash people into dooing whatever you say because tha’ts not creeptagious.” And unsurpsingly it does not work.. on Lincoln it woroks on Meyrl for some reason. Thankfully it dosen’t though just.. Zach needs no power epsiecally over the mind. 

So UNSUPRSINGLY, Stella has the working plnan.. and also unsuprisingly the last three just did theres by running off, running off and shouting the loudest. Again somehow Rusty is NO LONGER the most obnoxious one of the group. Zach won that title this episode. He’s still the most pathetic.. but i’m the most done with Zach who adds nothing to the dynamic or the planet or anything and I wish would just go away. Your home planet needs you. 

But yeah Stella has the winning idea: pretending to be “Yodel Boy”, a student who was humilated at a talent show last year, proving sh’es not only a decent actress (I mean it’s obvious i’ts stella in a wig, padding and lederhosen, but points for the accent being okay and hey she’s in middle school), but also the smartest of them. Only one of those is a suprise. It works and Lincoln agrees. 

So the night of the talent show they’ve caught him up to speed and prepare to celebrate, only for clyd eto open the wrong locker and reveal the yodel boy suit. WHy it was in there instead of at Stella’s house where this wouldn’t happen?

But yeah the cat’s out of the bag and lincoln leaves, depressed his friends think that little of him and lied to him. Which.. yeah completely fair. They tried talking to him, it did not work.. they shoudl’ve just left it at that. It would’ve SUCKED if he got bullied true, but it was his choice to go out there and take a risk and do what he loves. As someone whose constnatly self concious and had to fight to start writing like i’m doing now, I envy that kind of youthful confidence and thus wholly support him. 

And finally.. so do his friends. Realizing they’ve been kinda crappy, they introduce lincoln instead and work as his assitants.. and.. it works. Stella gets sawn in half, Zach gets astounded by a card trick, and Liam wears a bunny outfit which is just.. precious. Good boy. Best boy. It’s a huge hit.. and we also get to seesome of the new background kids including one with pink hair who looks kinda nb. I’m just saying one of you should take a crack at them, they seem nice. But for now our heroes are haield as heroes, and the other 5 apologize to lincon and they do their now cemented and fucking adorable group hug. Happy ending to a pretty great episode, with decent gags, a good relatable plot, and Rusty being just the right amoutn of obnoxious. Good stuff.  So that does it for this week. If you liked this review like or reblog it, check out my other work and come back later today for some duck content. and every week once the show returns. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure. 

#the loud house #lincoln loud #stella zhau #clyde mcbride #lynn loud jr #liam honeycutt #who finally has a last name! #FINALLY #zach gurdle #rusty spokes #lucy loud #lisa loud #saved by the spell #the cow pie kid #animation #reviews #nickelodeon

[iwhumpyou]

if this is too specific feel free to ignore this ask but could you write something where character A’s friends know that A is going through something really bad (like being tortured or something) and go to help them only to see that what they were imagining A going through wasn’t even close to what was actually going on? (also, I love your whumpfics, especially Bastard and Kyran! you’re an amazing writer!)

I’m glad you’re enjoying my whumpfic! 😍💖

This is a bit tamer than outright torture, but the shape of the request fit the Muzzle arc and I thought I’d give it a try!

Masterlist.  Janiya.

Part 2.

~#~#~#~#~#~

“How do we know they even have Janiya?” Ivy asked, voice level but cold.  “They certainly haven’t shown us any proof.”

“We tried calling Janiya,” Gavin reminded her, watching as the wet trees were replaced with gray-washed buildings.  “She didn’t pick up.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Ash said, still grumbling in the back seat.

Ash had been the one to voice it, back when they got the call, after contacting Janiya had failed, after they were forced to accept that perhaps the Rainier pack was telling the truth. Janiya wasn’t pack.  Not anymore.  They had no obligation to go after her, though Ash had put it more crudely than that.

Gavin had glared at him, and the rest of the pack with flinty eyes.  It was their fault that Janiya was in trouble.  Perhaps they didn’t have a duty to save her, but it was still the right thing to do.

And besides, the Rainier pack clearly needed a lesson in how to take no for an answer.

“She should’ve been more careful,” Rita said as they pulled into the deserted parking lot of the – at first glance – abandoned warehouse.  “She never learns her lessons.”

It wasn’t an unfair claim. Janiya had a predilection for ignoring safety and caution and approaching every problem like it could be beaten by dry insults and condescending sneers.  She’d certainly sharpened her tongue like others sharpened claws.

It would have served her well as a lawyer.  A reporter. It did not serve her well in the supernatural world.

“Alpha Rainier,” Gavin said coolly, as they were met at the entrance by a hulking werewolf.  She was flanked by a woman whose smile made him uneasy and a human man with shadows crawling over his body.  “If you think that hostages have made me more amenable to your treaty, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Alpha Lake,” Robin Rainier smiled at him.  “I merely wanted the pleasure of your company.  You’re a hard man to pin down.  Don’t worry, your pack-member will be returned to you alive.”

“Janiya is no longer a member of my pack,” Gavin said levelly.

Rainier raised an eyebrow, a mocking smile playing about her lips.  The woman by her side looked gleeful.  “Then why have you come all this way?” she asked, her eyes alight with satisfaction.

“Because I don’t hate you enough to call the hunters,” Gavin said calmly.  Rainier stopped smiling.  The woman looked sour.  And the shadows, for an instant, seemed darker.  “That can change.  Give me Janiya, and never contact me again.  I don’t want a treaty with your pack, and that is my final decision.” 

Rainier looked like she was grinding her teeth.  Bringing in the hunters was a cheap blow, but by their laws, Janiya was a human and not affiliated with any pack.  Kidnapping her was a clear excuse to go after the Rainier pack, and they hadn’t endeared themselves to anyone in the area.

The woman was casting glances at the empty warehouses around them, as if expecting to see the flashes of guns, and the shadows had started to flicker around them, though the human did not meet anyone’s gaze.

“You will regret this,” Rainier said quietly, “You forced my hand once.  You will not like the second time.”

“I don’t appreciate being blackmailed,” Gavin said pleasantly, “You seem to think that showing up and bullying your way through every obstacle is a sound strategy.  This isn’t the South, Alpha Rainier.  The northern packs dislike outsiders, and we don’t play nice.”

Rainier nodded to her second, who paused to shoot them all a nasty glare before vanishing into the building. “Rome didn’t become an empire by playing nice,” Rainier said, turning away.

“Yeah, and Caesar was stabbed twenty-three times for it,” Rita said under her breath, but well within werewolf hearing.  Rainier stilled for a beat, before walking away, the human with the shadows following her.

Ivy, however, was staring into the darkness, the faintest flicker of worry on her face.  “What’s wrong?” Gavin muttered.

“Alive,” Ivy said, so quiet her lips barely moved, “Not unharmed.”

A ripple of unease spread through the small group Gavin had taken with him.

“Someone as power-obsessed as Rainier isn’t going to see the worth in harming a human,” Ash said, but his tone wasn’t very confident.

“Janiya has a talent for pissing people off,” Rita countered darkly, but all of them fell silent once they heard footsteps again.

Rainier hadn’t come back. Her second was the only one that came into view, dragging a curiously wet Janiya behind her and –

That was a muzzle.

Behind Gavin, Ash had gone dangerously still.

Janiya’s eyes flashed as she was unceremoniously hauled out of the warehouse and pushed towards them – she managed to keep her balance to avoid spilling to her knees at their feet, but Gavin didn’t need to see her entire face to imagine the rest of her vicious scowl.  The woman merely gave them a teeth-bared glare before disappearing back into the warehouse.

Gavin supposed they thought it was funny, to put a muzzle on a human.  As so many hunters had put them on werewolves.

“Let’s go,” he said, turning on his heel.  Ivy grabbed Janiya – her wrists were tied behind her back, and werewolf claws sliced through them easily – and tugged her towards the car.  Ash replaced Ivy in the front seat, his gaze fixed ahead and his hands curled into fists as he struggled to breathe normally, and Gavin spared him half a glance before starting the car.

Janiya was sandwiched between Rita and Ivy and in the rearview mirror he can see her struggling with the buckles on the sides of the muzzle.

“You can do that when we get home,” he said flatly, and was entirely unsurprised when Janiya ignored him.

She was making distressing huffs of air and Gavin’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as he pressed on the accelerator.  Ash was as still as a statue, and about as pale.  It wasn’t far back to their home – the Rainier pack had been lurking at the edge of their territory for days now – but every second felt it had been stretched.

“Oh, for moon’s sake,” Rita finally snapped, pushing Janiya’s hands away from the buckle and undoing the thing herself, “Are you really that impatient to –”

The sharp scent of blood filled the car.

“Rita,” Gavin said with a calm he did not feel, “What’s going on?”

There was no answer. He spared a glance to the rearview mirror – Rita and Ivy were exchanging wide-eyed glances.

“Rita,” Gavin started, his tone slipping into warning.

“Nothing,” Rita cut him off, her voice high, “Just – just a little more complicated to remove than I thought.  It’s fine.  We’re handling it.”

Gavin cast another glance, but Ivy had wedged herself onto the center console, neatly blocking his view of the backseat.

“Ivy, what are you doing?” Ash had twisted, trying to peer past her, but she moved with him, her face hard.

“We don’t need you wolfing out in the car,” Ivy said quietly, “Eyes on the road, Ash.”

Ash scowled.  “Rita, if it’s too complicated it can wait until we get home,” Gavin said.

“It’s not too complicated,” Rita responded immediately.

“I can smell blood,” Gavin said flatly.  There was no response.  Gavin sighed, “I’m driving as fast as I can, we’ll be home soon.”

Soon, it transpired, was an inadequate measure of time.  By the time Gavin had parked, Ash’s thrumming tension was suffocating, Ivy’s carefully blank expression was fracturing around the eyes, and Rita’s muttered rambling had devolved into curses, and then silence.  Janiya’s breathing grew more labored by the minute.

The others spilled from the house before they’d even stopped, and Ash jerked the door open to take several steps away from the car and get ahold of himself.  Gavin eyed him, debating over whether or not to approach, but decided to get rid of the source before attempting to deal with its effects. 

“What’s wrong?” he said tiredly, rounding the car to where Rita was glowering at the muzzle – a clunky thing made of metal, heavy enough that Janiya was having difficulty holding it to her jaw.  The buckles and belts seemed to have been loosened, and Gavin didn’t understand what the problem –

Janiya’s fingers shifted, and the scent of blood was fresh.

“It’s latched onto her face,” Rita said softly.

Gavin stilled.  Ivy’s face was pinched, Rita’s drawn and worried, and Janiya’s narrowed eyes couldn’t hide their watery sheen.

“We’ll do this in the house,” he said instead of cursing.  The murmurs died to a sudden hush as Janiya got out of the car, and her narrow-eyed glare made it extremely clear what she would’ve said, if her mouth had been free.

But soon they were on the couch – Janiya perched on the edge, her eyes darting around the room like this hadn’t been her home once too – and Gavin took a seat to study the thing more closely.

He could see where metal pincers latched through her skin, turning it red and inflamed, and through some miming got Janiya to point out the locations of all of them – one on each cheekbone, four trailing down to her jaw, one at her chin, and four arrayed around her lips.  It was heavy, straining at the skin if it wasn’t held up, and the roughshod design didn’t reveal a way of removing the thing.

“There are a couple of buttons on it,” Rita said, hovering nervously, “I tried them all, but nothing worked.”

“There must be a way to get it…off…”  Kai’s words trailed off as Ash entered the room.

His movements were fluid, but Gavin wasn’t the only one who saw the sharp edges as everyone backed away to clear Ash’s path.  The man crouched in front of Janiya – she flinched back, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

Ash examined the muzzle, careful fingers turning Janiya’s head to look at it from all sides and tap on the metal.  It covered nearly her whole face, fitting inelegantly over her nose and just under her eyes to extend to her ears.  Janiya’s expression – what little he could see of it – was definitely a glare, but he didn’t have to be a werewolf to tell that her heart was pounding. 

“It’s Raklive make,” Ash said finally.  There was a chorus of hisses around the room.

“Do you know how to remove it?” Gavin asked, careful to keep his voice level.  Ash was still inspecting the muzzle carefully, but a part of his expression was far, far away from here.

“It can’t be removed,” Ash said, straightening.  The look on his face wasn’t pity.  It was colder than that.  “They didn’t design their toys to have an off switch.” 

There was a long, shifting silence before Darin worked up the nerve.  “How did you get yours off?” he asked softly.

Ash looked at him, and then at Janiya before he pressed a hand to his cheek in an apparent unconscious gesture.

“I ripped it off,” he rasped, before he turned on his heel and walked out.

Janiya’s narrowed eyes had been replacing with wide ones, her heart rate even faster.  She curled her hands around the muzzle like she was afraid they were going to tear it from her face.

~#~

Part 4.

#whumpfic #janiya #arc: muzzle #worse than it looks #muzzle #werewolves #request fill

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Man 2099 v3 #13-16 Thoughts

This was mostly great fun!

I must admit when hearing about this arc and even approaching my re-reading of it, I was not looking forward to it. Typically event crossovers derail the ongoing plot in a big way, and for PAD’s Spidey work and for his 2010s Spidey 2099 work in particular it was a problem.

Plus I despise both the original Civil War 2006 and as this arc was originally released was in the midst of despising Civil War II.

I don’t know if it was the fact that I’d forgotten most of the plot points, the fact that I binged the whole arc or if the tie-in nature of the story lowered my expectations but regardless, I wound up really enjoying this arc, much like the last one.

In fact comparisons to the last arc are very apt as they’re almost going in for the same thing.

It’s an adventure in the altered 2099 future depicting futuristic versions of characters and groups we’re (in theory) familiar with, utilizing a fair amount of older 2099 continuity.

The difference is that whilst the Sinister Six arc was more Spider-Man centric, this arc is more concerned with the wider 2099 universe.

Just off the top of my head this story features:*

·         Spider-Man 2099

·         Captain America 2099

·         Strange 2099

·         Hawkeye 2099

·         Black Widow 2099

·         Hercules

·         Hulk 2099

·         The X-Men2099

·         ‘The Power Pack’

·         Punisher 2099

·         Iron Fist 2099

·         Deadpool 2099

·         Daredevil 2099

·         Moon Knight 2099

·         Sub-Mariner 2099

·         Ghost Rider 2099

·         Nik Fury, granddaughter of the original Nick Fury

·         And Ravage 2099 (although he’s an original character debuting in the 2099 line anyway)

 Now featuring this many characters is a double edged sword, much like the last arc.

On the one hand a lot of them have little development, little substance to them. They show up with cool looks, cool abilities and the novelty factor of seeing futuristic versions of familiar characters.

Some of them are pre-established people too, like Daredevil 2099 and Moon Knight 2099. So there is fanservice to be found there, but if you really liked those characters you didn’t get that much out of seeing them briefly back in action.

On the other hand I think considering this was a mere four issues and with this many characters, giving them all depth and distinction is difficult. More importantly I think it would detract from the fact that this is ultimately Spider-Man’s book. It’s about him and his ‘world’, of which these figures are definitely a part of, but also definitely not the point.

The fact is PAD does the best he can with what he has. More than this, I think it’s an example of PAD making the lemonade out of lemons and making the tie-in nature of the issues work for him  as opposed to making his series work for the tie-ins.

For starters he uses Ulysses lightly but effectively. He gets the ball rolling on the plot and beyond that has little involvement. In fact the entire story has little to do directly with the events of Civil War II, which is a plus given how shite the crossover is.

Rather PAD uses the tie-ins as an excuse to essentially present his own story with the general gist of Civil War, which you could say is true of every 2099 spin on the classic characters.

So in practice this arc is less a Civil War II tie-in and more Civil War 2099. It actually has more in common with the original 2006 Civil War story except you know, it isn’t dogshit.

There is an anti-superhuman legal act in force. Superhumans work directly for the government to round up their fellows. Those opposed to the law fight back. Hell Skrulls are even the root of the problem, which was initially the implication during Civil War 2006 and Secret Invasion.

PAD also demonstrates how massive crossovers and events like this should ideally be played. If I were being blunt, there isn’t much substance to this, there isn’t much character exploration.

With so many characters who draw from so many genres that simply don’t really go together (Greek myth side by side with sci-fi monsters, arcane magic and crime noir), going for something simple, superficial and yet fun (with at best a singular central character who shoulders whatever substance there is to be found) is the most logical approach to such events.

It’s why Infinity Gauntlet and Secret Wars 1984 are still fun reads decades later but hot trash like Civil War II has been forgotten about. The former know they’re trying to have fun and at best place one or two characters as the heart of the stories, the latter try to include everyone, be about everyone, and also strive for substance in stories that can’t support that.

Getting back to the specific heroes vs. heroes nature of the series, if there is one major failing in the set up its that the two sides don’t feel evenly matched.

The rebel superhumans have heavy hitters like Hercules, Cerebra, Hulk, Sub-Mariner and Strange, whilst the government forces...well, don’t have anyone in the same league. They’re also outnumbered by the rebels.

The pro-government side is also a clever use of subversion as they are comprised of the Punisher, the X-men and the Power Pack. Now I know little of the Power Pack so I did feel a little lost with them, and know equally little about the X-men 2099. But what little I do know makes their choice of sides unexpected but toally logical. The reasons given are that mutants were deemed not responsible for their powers as they were born with them and thus granted amnesty from the anti-super human laws provided they work for the government. Essentially mutants were given their best chance for rights and protection from persecution BY discriminatory laws. Ironic, but as the comic points out, mutants accepting this deal makes sense given their history.

Now we need to talk about Jameson and the Skrulls.

On the one hand it was a good twist. It had sufficient set up and you genuinely didn’t see it coming. It also made for neat and effective explanations of Jameson and Power Pack’s surviving into the distant future along with their questionable histories (like marrying Liz Allan or JJJ running Alchemax).

But I must admit, I was a little bummed by the Skrull reveal as I found the prospect of Jameson as the actual villain behind this fascinating. I’ve noticed that Peter David’s Spider-Man work, whilst not painting Jameson as a villain per se, has painted him often less flatteringly than he’s usually been played since the 1980s. In the 1960s-1970s, Jameson was one step away from practically being a super villain, his bufoonishness often offset his more unethical practices in the eyes of readers.

In PAD’s stories he still does unethical stuff and so the idea he could go down a road where he’s essentially happy to persecute super humans is frighteningly believable.

The Skrull reveal undermined this, and undermined the great twist halfway through the story that Jameson was behind everything. I thought it was Tyler Stone so the subversion really worked!

It also wrapped things up a little too neatly, in the sense that the heroes could get along just fine because the heroes on the opposite side were fake anyway. Maybe that was a subtle dig at the original Civil War, that they should’ve done something like this instead of commit to the schism in the superhuman community. But at the same time since we’re dealing with a version of the Marvel Universe that doesn’t need to last long term that’s kind of unnecessary.

One small criticism I have, and this is a nitpick. I felt that the part where Spidey was holding Punisher hostage before the issue ends wa not properly resolved at the start of the next one. The X-men have simply retreated, the heroes have gone back to their bases. It’s like if you smashcut in the middle of a hostage situation to the aftermath when everything is fine.

Over all a great way to do a tie-in and deliver a fun time for old time 2099 fans. I’m not one of them and even i had fun with this.

 *Note, whenever I don’t put ‘2099’ after a character’s name it means we’re dealing with, at least supposedly, an older version of the 616 characters, rather than new characters adopting their mantles.

#Spider-Man #Spider-Man 2099 #Miguel O'Hara #Marvel 2099 #Captain America #Captain America 2099 #roberta mendez #Civil War 2099 #Civil War II #The Punisher #Punisher #Punisher 2099 #Avengers #Avengers 2099 #Lyla

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 232: Giant Bitchslap Arm

Previously on BnHA: Gigantomachia woke up and started ninja-running toward Aichi prefecture. Then all of a sudden we cut to Hawks just chilling on an Osaka rooftop with a bag. Everyone was like, “whoa, Hawks, what are you doing in this arc?” Hawks was all “well I’ll show you” and then he had a flashback where he fucking murdered Best Jeanist, probably, and everyone was like “um, hey, what the actual fuck” and Hawks was like “well you asked” and we were all filled with regret for having done so. Back in the Ol’ Villain City, Twice caught up with Tomura and Spinner and they were very happy to see him, and Tomura was like “so anyway we’re almost at Re-Destro’s tower and I can’t wait to fucking kill that guy” and the others agreed but they also worried that Tomura was too exhausted to keep this up much longer, and so Twice went on ahead to try and finish off RD on his own. The chapter ended up with Twice #241762-D arriving at the top of the tower to confront RD and rescue my boyfriend Giran.

Today on BnHA: Twice creates some clones of Tomura and the gang to help him out. Re-Destro then insta-kills one of the clones and tells Twice that he’ll kill Giran if Twice uses his quirk any more. He then makes his arm go all big and he just fuckin’... [gestures wildly] WHIPASH!! and just smacks them all to death, and then he goes over to where Giran is and gets ready to kill him while he and Twice are having a moment. Thankfully the not-quite-dead-yet Tomura clone intervenes, and as he fights him, Re-Destro launches into a big villain monologue about the Mother of Quirks, a.k.a. the mother of the first superpowered child to ever be born. Long story short, that baby grew up to be Destro, and his mom was all “please be kind to him and let him live in peace!” and so they fucking killed her because people are terrible. As RD is wrapping up his story and about to kill the clone Tomura, the real one reaches the tower and is all, “TOUCH!!!” This is the single most badass thing anyone has ever done, and the chapter ends with a wobbly Tomura confusedly interrogating an enraged Re-Destro while “We Will Rock You” by Queen plays in the background omfg.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added one or two ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

so this happened again

listen here my anonymous friend, thank you for not spoiling me, but I do have to say that if your goal was to have me once again approach this chapter in stark terror, mission accomplished lol

here’s how it’s gonna go. I’ve got a mirror, and we’re gonna use it to cautiously peek around corners before clicking to the next page, and from what I understand that should protect us from being instantly killed by Horikoshi’s murderous basilisk glare. the characters, on the other hand, well...

what kind of sound effect is this

glomp glomp? are these Horikoshi sound effects? does he know his little Twice clones are making enthusiastic hugging sounds?? and yet this is oddly in character though

also it looks like he’s cloning at least one Tomura and Dabi! so that should be fun. we get to see RD presumably murder them all on this little test run, and then they’ll hopefully have a better idea of how to approach this on their second go-around

RD says he had a lot of guards down below, and he’s praising Twice’s quirk. well, his “superpower”, anyway

that was the title of this chapter, incidentally; “quirks and superpowers.” I do vaguely wonder why they’re so insistent on using different terminology for it, and I wonder if there’s an actual reason for that

anyway so now Jin is yelling at the clones that they’re clones. so it’s okay if they die and stuff. lol. I’m sure that makes them feel a whole lot better

you guys this is fucking amazing though

I wonder if this Tomura is less sleep-deprived? also, Twice duplicated the hands as well! that’s something that was pointed out to me a little while ago, back when they were fighting Gigantomachia. this actually seems a bit iffy to me now that we’ve been reminded that he needs to understand the details of something in and out before he can copy it. like, he couldn’t copy the quirk-be-gone bullets because he didn’t know how they worked. but somehow he knows how these hands work though??

or maybe he doesn’t, and these hands don’t actually work like the Real Deal hands. that’s probably the case actually. so anyways I wonder if this Tomura will act a little different. I’m probably overthinking this to the extreme lol

and Twice and Dabi are making the exact same joke I made three paragraphs earlier about “that should make them feel a whole lot better.” get your own material you assclowns

last but not least, lol at him having to reiterate his tale of bravely overcoming past trauma yet again to Compress because he missed the whole story. poor Compress, all confused and out of the loop. I wonder if Twice duplicated his robot arm. it’s hard to tell in the picture whether it’s missing or he’s still just in the process of creating it

oh shit

heh. it’s possible Jin has not thought through the potential long-term consequences of this little undertaking at all sob. but that’s a problem for future Twice! right now current Twice has more important things to deal with, like kicking Re-Destro’s ass

yeah, you see, he’s all “don’t worry about that right now” and presumably tucking that whole notion away someplace in the back of his mind to be properly fucked up by later on. as anyone with ADHD can tell you that’s clearly the best way to deal with all of your problems

-- oh shit and it looks like this particular Twice doesn’t really need to worry about that anymore in any case

what is it with people in this manga being decapitated lately. who hurt you Horikoshi

uh, so. hey

are they?? they fucking outnumber you by a ton. though as you’ve just ably demonstrated, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything

fuck. okay let’s pause this for a sec to get our bearings here. so a bunch of clone Twices have RD cornered with a clone Dabi, Tomura, and Compress, all of whom have their own quirks, but presumably weaker versions of them. they’re also each basically one hit point away from a swift death, which is definitely something to consider

meanwhile RD has just the one of him, but possesses an unknown quirk, and does not seem to be at all fazed by the current situation which is a bit unnerving. oh yeah, and he does still have a hostage, though, if the others insist on taking their sweet time to go and untie my boy Giran. yeah. so that part’s also not good. dammit Twice untie him already

SHIT

MOTHERFUCKING -- OKAY JIN, LISTEN UP, NORMALLY I’D TELL YOU TO CALL HIS BLUFF, BUT A LITTLE MOUSE (ETA: referring to poor dead Miyashita, not the anon from earlier! I only just realized how that could possibly be read as being weirdly passive aggressive or something and that’s not the case! sorry anon!) INFORMED ME THAT THIS GUY DOESN’T ACTUALLY FUCKING PLAY AROUND, THOUGH. I HAVE A FEELING HE CAN AND WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT HE’S PROMISING, SO PLEASE TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY OMG I DON’T WANT YOU TO HAVE ANOTHER FRIEND’S DEATH ON YOUR CONSCIENCE AFTER WHAT HAPPENED WITH MAGNE

sob. where’s that mirror omg

okay... and we’re cautiously clicking forward... and good, Jin looks appropriately shook

maybe a little too shook. look I didn’t mean for you to just immediately freeze and surrender though, guy

aww but Tomura’s reassuring him

yes but as I already explained, you’re all technically one love tap away from the sweet embrace of death here while he’s at full power. it’s iffy dude. idk. I really like that you immediately spoke up to comfort your bro though! the League of Gentle Hearts continues to warm my soul

oh my god but seriously look at them

even Dabi is getting in on the friendship action. even if I’m not quite sure how he intends to not burn Giran to death along with RD lol. but at least his heart’s in the right place

-- oh shit

THEY LOOK SO WORRIED OMG AND LOOK WHERE RE-DESTRO IS STANDING

A COLD FUCKING CHILL JUST WENT DOWN MY SPINE OH GOD NO I’M NOT READY FOR THIS. I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU TOUCH A HAIR ON HIS SEXY GRAY HEAD I WILL WREAK VENGEANCE ON YOU SUCH AS THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN, AS SOON AS I’M DONE SOBBING MY FUCKING EYES OUT

SOB I DON’T WANT TO TURN THE PAGE. THE MIRROR ISN’T WORKING. HORIKOSHI IS A SADISTIC FUCK WHO HAS NO QUALMS ABOUT KILLING OFF EVERYONE I LOVE. BEST JEANIST, GIRAN, THE DOG. EVERYONE!!

SOBBB NOOO --

WHAT THE CHRISTING FUCK

OH MY GOD NO PUT IT AWAY!! HORIKOSHI KOUHEI I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DON’T STOP RIGHT NOW!! I MEAN IT YOUNG MAN!!

SOB HE’S DRAWING IT OUT FOR ALL IT’S WORTHHHHHH I CAN’T I’M NOT PLEASE WHY

FUCK YOU AND YOUR COMEDIC INSERTION OF FOUR ADDITIONAL TWICE REACTION PANELS YOU PITILESS BASTARD!!

NOOOOOOOOOOO

THE BASILISK APPROACHES, GIRAN IN ITS SIGHTS!!

OH SHIT

holy -- fucking -- I don’t even

wow

well that all went down fucking spectacularly

looooool. okay, time to move on to plan B guys. bring on the indestructible mountain man. let Tomura have his “I have an army!” / “we have a Hulk” moment

so is Giran even still alive, or did he get caught up in all of that. lol I’m just fooling. of course he’s still alive, Horikoshi is going to drag out my torture for this entire arc and make it really slow and excruciating

yeah whatever. they have a hulk. just you wait

and some of the dying Twices are glomping over to Giran to make sure he’s okay, naturally. because my feels were briefly spared for a single fucking panel and we can’t have that, no ma’am!

HAHAHA WHY

THESE FEELS, MY GOD. WHATEVER!! JUST LEAVE ME HERE TO DIE THEN!!

JESUS CHRIST, HERE I WAS SHIPPING TOGAWICE LIKE ANYTHING, AND THEN HORIKOSHI COMES ALONG ALL “BUT ARE YOU SURE YOU WEREN’T ACTUALLY SHIPPING GIRANTWICE THIS WHOLE TIME” AND FUCK ME, HE’S FUCKING RIGHT

GIRAN IS SMILING SO SOFTLY MOMENTS BEFORE HIS LIKELY DEATH, AND I’M ABOUT TO PERISH IN A TYPHOON OF EMOTION. GIRAN IF I COULD LEAP IN THERE AND TAKE THE BLOW FOR YOU I WOULD

YOU GUYS HERE IT COMES. IT’S BEEN NICE KNOWING YOU ALL. LET’S ALL HOLD HANDS AND WAIT IN HELPLESS TERROR LIKE IN TOY STORY 3

and Twice makes sure Giran’s not alone at the end though. god I’m about to lose it for real though, shit

-- !!!!!!!!!!

(ETA: lmao I love that it’s making a “TCH” sound. like that hand is so done with his bullshit.)

what THE FUCK TOMURA ARE YOU SERIOUS?!! I WAS ALL SET TO GO ALL “OH HAPPY DAGGER” HERE AND THEN YOU TURN UP TO SAVE THE DAY WHAT IS HAPPENING

WHAT IS THIS CRAZY ADRENALINE RUSH AHAHA. DON’T BE FOOLED, THAT IS RALPH WIGGUM “I’M IN DANGER!” LAUGHTER THOUGH

but wow, so yeah. feels postponed. fucking deferred, motherfucker. FIRST WE GET OUR FIGHT ON

oh hey! funny you should mention! cuz it’s just that he’s been trying to prove said worth for the last six weeks! so if you could provide some convenient way for him to actually do that, that would actually be great. Machia is a harder sell than Simon fucking Cowell, so

oh, he’s still talking

actually this is super interesting to me omg. also that’s really fucked up. poor Damien! he didn’t do anything! all he did was glow a bit, what is wrong with people

(ETA: I have been informed by many kind people that Destro is not in fact the glowy baby Damien from China lol. I got kinda mixed up there lol.)

probably cuz they killed her

yep

yeah that seemed to be where that was leading. society is predictably fucked up, etc. that poor lady

this has nothing to do with anything, but I just want to throw it out there that I would kill to read an AU with the 1-A kids set in this time period roughly 200 years earlier where they have to hide their quirks for fear of being killed over them, and they’re all just doing their best and growing up scared and traumatized and some of them are bitter at the world and others are hopeful of one day making it a better place. oh my god. “makeste, that’s just an X-Men AU” you point out and oh my god you’re right. that means it probably already exists oh shit. I need to go on another fic binge

anyway

Tomura is all “yeah I know history too” and making me feel bad. some of us didn’t grow up in this universe, Tomura

Tomura just let the man talk, I need more worldbuilding stuff for my AU headcanons

you’d think that the Army would be embracing the word “quirks”, then? this woman seems like the type of martyr figure they ought to be all over. I guess there’s more to the story and I should take my own advice and shut up and let him finish

oh

I see, so they associate the government’s use of the word “quirk” with their oppression. idk, I feel like they ought to be trying to reclaim it then. but whatever

so he’s wrapping up now

oh!!

his mother?!

DESTRO WAS THE SON OF THE MOTHER OF QUIRKS? DESTRO WAS DAMIEN?!  holy shit!!

so that means RD is descended from the original quirk bloodline! yooooo I did not see that coming at all. no wonder the rest of the Army reveres him

anyway but now the interesting part is over and he’s moving on to crazed ranting

whatever you say buddy. how did you wind up with Giant Bitchslap Arm powers if your great-great-granddad was just some dumb glowing kid though

oh now he’s getting all pompous

I’m sorry I didn’t realize having a long and tragic family history was a prerequisite for kicking ass. though if it is. may I interest you in the horrific saga of the Shimura family, though. this so-called street punk has quite his own tale of woe actually

oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

(⚆_⚆) [sits up straighter]

AHHHH THEY’RE SAVING HIM!!

YOU GO LEAGUE!! YOU GOT THIS!!

AHHHHHHH

!!!!! THEN TELL HIM TO SUIT UP

oh shit wait I think he might be talking about Actual Tomura and not Gigantomachia! even better!!

OH HEY THAT’S A NICE TOWER YOU HAVE THERE. IT SURE WOULD BE A SHAME IF SOMEONE... PATTED IT GENTLY

LOOOOOOOOOOL YESSSSSSSSSSSS

(❛ӧ❛三❛ӧ❛)

YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!

LMAO HE’S ACTUALLY BARELY KEEPING IT TOGETHER THOUGH AND IT’S THE BEST. “WAIT... YOU’RE THE GUY... BUT SHOULDN’T YOU BE... BUT WAIT WEREN’T YOU IN...?”

SO NOW IT’S ON BOTH EYES, EH? GOING FULL RORSCHACH UP IN THIS BITCH. WELL WHATEVER. I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW I’M HIGH ON THE ADRENALINE OF HAVING HAD THE FEAR OF GOD PUT INTO ME AND BEING RESIGNED TO ANOTHER CHAPTER OF HEADS BEING REMOVED FROM WHERE THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE, ONLY FOR HORIKOSHI TO BE ALL “PSYCH!! I STILL LOVE YOU!” AND HAVE MR. RIGHTFUL HEIR COME UP AND FUCK UP RD’S SHIT OMG. AND I STILL SHIP GIRANTWICE!! AND GIRAN’S STILL ALIVE SOMEHOW AGAINST ALL ODDS OH MY GOODNESS

ohhhhh man. well, time to place your bets then people. who would win:

one megalomaniacal balding CEO with a giant arm who talks too much but has like an army and shit

One Sleepy Boi

hahaha. well, Tomura? time to get that worth fucking measured, then, kid

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha 232 #shigaraki tomura #giran #twice (bnha) #re-destro #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #so you guys #I've always had 'we will rock you' as katsuki's theme song in my mind #'buddy you're a young man hard man' #'shouting in the street' #'gonna take on the world someday' #etc. #but after this chapter I may just let tomura have it #because it's stuck in my head now and it's my theme music for that last scene for sure #boom boom clap as he strolls up to the tower #hell yeah #lol maybe they can just both share it #I stan two big disgraces #somebody better put 'em back into their place

[knifeonmars]

Capsule Reviews - June/July 2020

I didn't read as many comics that I felt the need to write about these past couple of months, but the ones that I did I generally had a lot of thoughts on.

Hawkworld 

Back in 1989, DC attempted to revamp Hawkman, notoriously the most confusing character in a stable comprised of confusing characters, with Timothy Truman's Hawkworld, a dark, modern take on the sci-fi version of the character. The result is flawed in the most frustrating ways, just good enough that parts of it feel like they could be coming from a hidden classic of DC's back catalog, but never living up to its potential. The story entirely is set on Thanagar, casting Katar Hol (Hawkman) as a privileged heir who has thrown his lot in with the police force and pines for Thanagar's lost golden age, when men were men and heroes walked the Earth. The first couple of issues do some genuinely excellent work depicting Thanagar as a corrupt and crumbling empire which bears more than a little resemblance to the USA and casting Hol as a well-meaning but ultimately deluded dupe whose role as a cop makes him at best complicit in his culture's worst excesses. 

Unfortunately, the second half of the series never manages to live up to the first half, skipping forward in time by about ten years and ditching the systemic critique of its first half. Instead, the corrupt police commander who had previously appeared as a symptom of Thanagar's ills is turned into a literal monster, a strawman for the newly christened Hawkman to soundly thump over the head in place of addressing larger issues. The systemic concerns of the series' first half are never meaningfully addressed in the later issues and Hawkworld ends up falling back into being a simple tale of good cops versus bad cops, despite the first half of the series having been largely unambiguous about cops' nature as agents of state violence and imperialism. It's a shocking and deeply confusing disconnected that I can't tell if it's because I'm bringing modern politics and assumptions to the book or that someone at DC completely lost their nerve halfway through. This is what makes Hawkworld so frustrating to read, on the one hand its insightful and anti-colonial and surprisingly relevant to 2020, but on the other it never commits to those ideas because doing so would be too radical, the end result is a book which is very good right up until the point that it completely wimps out and shuffles back into mediocrity.

She-Hulk

After a long interval of living, unread, in my Comixology files, I finally read She-Hulk by Charles Soule and Javier Pulido. The quality of the series almost goes unsaid; it's one of the best of its era and niche, a part of the a whole constellation of early to mid 2010's "street level" Marvel superhero books which started, more or less with Daredevil and Hawkeye, ran through She-Hulk and Spider-Woman, extended into Hellcat and debatably Squirrel Girl, and then fizzled out several years ago. I try to fight nostalgia back most of the time, but it can't be overstated how good that whole wave of titles was, almost universally fun and approachable, grounded and empathetic, and with top-notch art across the board. Anyway, She-Hulk by Soule and Pulido is fantastic. It keeps to a relatively straightforward procedural style, makes the courtroom antics feel real thanks to Soule's actual background as a lawyer, and connects with the Marvel Universe in ways which set it among the others without ever feeling too overwhelming. The whole deal with The Blue File, the series' overarching mystery is well handled and does something really interesting with Nightwatch, an absolutely nothing character, who I'm a little disappointed we haven't seen turn up again since this reinvention. Reading She-Hulk made me nostalgic for this whole era, of which this series was one of the best.

The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal

Petals to the Metal is the arc where the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone podcast found its footing and really began to blossom into the series that it would become, so there were a lot of expectations riding on this entry in the graphic novel adaptations of the series. Generally speaking, it continues to nail most of what made the series work and polish the story into something a little more refined and coherent. The narrative trimming and changes done are smooth, the jokes still work, and its able to foreshadow events in a way that the podcast, given its nature as an emergent narrative, could never really do. Carey Pietsch's cartooning remains fabulous, and what makes this story work as a graphic novel must certainly be credited to her. This series remains the defining work of her young career and while I greatly enjoy what she's doing, I do wonder if she's really going to stick around do all seven potential books, especially if they keep ballooning in size. The only criticisms of Petals to the Metal as a comic are much the same as could be made about Petals to the Metal as a podcast and the big one is the main characters are kind of incidental to the story and don't feel like they have an important role in the emotional climax. Such is the nature of trying to tell a story in a DnD campaign, and its something that TAZ would get better at subsequently, but in graphic novel form hard not to think about. Without as clear of a distinction between "player characters" and "non-player characters" it's not quite as strange to see the main trio take a back seat, but without the charisma and speed of the podcast form it's much easier to sit back and say "wait, the main character's aren't even doing anything here". This volume is also noticeably thicker than the first two volumes of The Adventure Zone, and I hope that this series isn't going to swell, Harry Potter-like, with each entry, if only for the sake of Pietsch not keeling over from the effort.

Batman: Last Knight on Earth

Supposedly the capper to the Batman stories Snyder and Capullo's started telling all the way back in 2011 with the New 52 reboot of the character, though that's a little hard to swallow when they are still very much doing a bunch of Batman stuff in their current Death Metal event series. It's Batman playing in a post-apocalyptic DC universe, bombastic and unhinged, upending the toy box and smashing things like there's no tomorrow. It's fun, beautifully drawn, and incredibly over the top, but it's not going to be for everyone. For one thing, it's a tour of a ruined DC universe, so it's not exactly kind of most characters; there's a lot of death and mutilation and grotesqueness abounds. It's also deeply, deeply, misanthropic. I've got an essay talking about the politics of this book at greater length ready to go up at some point, but the short version is that this is a comic which starts off with an incredibly unsubtle allegory for the 2016 election and then ends with a big, cheesy hope shot that means absolutely nothing.

Even beyond my political reading of it, not everything about the story works. Snyder and Capullo's Batman work has had a ton of Joker in it and his role here is obnoxious and contains a bafflingly unearned redemption arc. More importantly, the book is built on misanthropy and the evil that ordinary people do but is completely unable to actually confront this thematically or narratively. It's a major thematic shortcoming.

I'm reminded of the ending of Grant Morrison's Batman Inc, a similar endpoint to an era of Batman which was fundamentally informed by the rejection of Morrison's vision by the rest of DC Comics. It's a bitter, angry book, but still beautiful and engaging, and fun to talk about.

Batman Universe

The complete other end of the spectrum from Last Knight on Earth, Batman Universe is a glorious romp through the DC universe, exploring the setting and characters and having fun in this day-glo fantasia. Nick Derrington knocks the art out of the park, and the constraints of shorter chapters mean that Brian Bendis' writing is more succinct and energetic than I've ever seen it before. I've idly wondered for years now why there's no current Batman animated series, and Batman Universe seems very much designed as the equivalent of one: the ties to current continuity are nearly nonexistent, the art is distinct and skews away from pseudo-realism in favor of pop aesthetics, and the approach in general is lighthearted.

It's not the deepest book, at least on an initial read, it's pointedly light fare, but it's still incredibly good. It is an unabashed, all-caps SUPERHERO STORY that doesn't feel retro or dated.

#words #capsule reviews #last knight on earth

[lunalaufeyson918]

Always and forever ｜Steve Rogers x reader｜Avengers Endgame

Summary: Five years ago, you were taken away from the love of your live, Steve Rogers, due to Thanos' snap. Now that you have came back and the war against the mad titan is won, Steve embarks on a journey to return the infinity stones in the past. You think he will take his chance to go back and live his life with Peggy. But instead, he comes back for you, surprising you and the whole team.

A/N: So, Avengers : Endgame is simultaneously ruining my life and giving me problems like panic attacks and insomnia. This fic is written in one of those panic-stricken moments. I do not think that he will make the choice he made at the end of the movie. It just ruins his entire story arc and it is very unlike him. For those who argues that he needs a chance at happiness, sure, he deserves a world of happiness. But Steve will never destroy the life that Peggy built, permit HYDRA to take over SHIELD and watch as Bucky was tortured brutally. He wouldn't sit back while the world needs his help. And he certainly wouldn't leave Bucky. It was like "I get to decide when I put a full stop and bring the end of the line, Buck!" Damn you, Russo Brothers! Fix it! Bring our Steve Rogers back!

            So, I wrote a fic where Steve comes back young, for you and for me. Sorry for the long A/N. I just had to clear things up a bit. Here we go.

Five

Four

Three

Two

One

You counted each second as you waited for Steve to return. Each second was passing like an hour. Your  nervousness grew when you saw no sign of him. You frowned. He should be back by now.

"Why is he not coming back?" your face quivered as you looked between Bruce and Sam. Bruce shrugged and shook his head in confusion. He should have returned the stones to their respective timelines. He should be back here until now.

You looked down as tears welled up in your eyes. It was not easy for Steve to fall in love with you. After all, he was a one hundred year old man in a thirty year old man's body. He was frozen in eyes for almost seventy years. He felt like a man out of time. He had lost everyone he cared about. One of them being the first love of his life, Peggy Carter.

You had saw him talking about her to Natasha. The way his eyes gleamed at the mention of her name and the way his lips used to curl up in a huge smile. Despite it hurting you too much, you never blamed him for being hung up in the memories of 1940s early in your relationship. And you thought you couldn't blame him now too, if he chooses to be with Peggy instead of you.

You heart twisted in a painful way as a thought crossed your mind. What if he had really chose Peggy over you? How will you live your life without him? You had just came back from the snap and you had lost him. Again.

You wiped your tears and looked around at everyone. Bruce and Sam were engaged in an argument. "What do you mean you don't know? Get him back!" Said Sam as he started to panic.

"I'm trying!" Hulk replied as he flipped with some switches. But Sam was not ready to listen anything. He was as worried as you were for his best friend's disappearance.

"I said get him back. Right now!" He shouted.

"I said I'm trying!"

You averted to gaze to scan the surroundings to find any trace of hope. All you found was the faces of your friends embedded with worry. Except Bucky's.

He was standing a little away from all of you, gazing faraway, his expression peaceful. Judging from his calm composure, you figured he clearly knew something.

"Where is he?" You walked over to him and asked, drawing the attention of others. Your eyes bored into his.

"Where is Steve?" you demanded, this time more firmly. He studied your face for several moments before pointing in the distance. You turned and saw a figure sitting on a bench by the lake.

"Steve?" you gasped. You knew it was him. You could make out those broad shoulders anywhere.

"Go," said Bucky. "And check it out yourself."

You nodded and walked in that direction.

"Steve!" You called out as you approached the lake, causing him to turn and look at you. He stood up and walked toward you, meeting you halfway.

"Y/N..." he said softly.

You came to a stop mere inches before him. You slowly reached out your hand to touch him. You were hesitant, and afraid that if you would touch him, he will fade away. Tears started to flow freely from your eyes as your fingertips gently brushed to his soft skin. You threw your arms around him.

"What took you so long, Steve?" you said between the sobs that escaped your mouth. "I thought... I thought you will never come back!"

He wrapped his strong arms around you and rested his chin on your head. He cradled you in his arms and stroked your hair. "I'm sorry Y/N," he said as he made you look at him. "I thought living in the past will give me happiness and make me whole again. Only it didn't. It didn't at all."

"What do you mean? Didn't you always wanted to live with Peggy?" you asked. You were confused why he gave up the golden chance of fulfilling his dreams.

"I did," he wiped the tears running down your chick. "But going back there made me realize that my true happiness lies with you." He gave you a loving smile before continuing. "How could I live my life there when I knew my heart belonged to you?"

You stared at him bewilderingly, still unable to believe what you were seeing and hearing.

"Y/N, please say something," he said, his exceptionally blue eyes looking down at you.

You smiled. "I-I can't believe it, Steve. I can't believe you left everything, just for me."

"Just for you," he nodded and took your hands into his. "And you better start to believe it Y/N L/N. Because I'm making sure that you become Mrs. Rogers very soon."

You smiled broadly as fresh tears started trickling down your chick. But this time, they were of happiness.

"You make me complete, doll," he said as he wiped your tears again and pulled you into a loving embrace. "I want to spend my entire life with you. I'm yours. Always and forever."

"I will happily spend my eternity with you, Steve," you hugged him back, feeling safe and protected in his arms. "I'm yours too," you repeated his words with a smile. "Always and forever."

#avengers endgame fix it #notmysteve #not my captain #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x reader Avengers Endgame #happy ending #Steve Rogers comes back for the reader #Steve Rogers comes back for you #steve rogers x you

[brolinjosh]

endgame review

i’ve waited 24 hours for my endgame feels to sink in. spoilers and strong opinions are under the cut.

first i need to start with the parts that i loved and that made the movie stand out and be memorable and parts that i immensely enjoyed:

- tony and nebula’s friendship and nebula’s arc later. she finally stopped being self destructive, lost the desire to please thanos and stood up for herself. she made a strong bond with gamora and even in the past, that bond stood out and it was beautiful. she got more screen time and stopped being just a weapon. got to play games, got to be appreciated for more than a good warrior. joked with people and made good friendships.

- tony telling steve off. tony stan here, but unbiased opinion is that him and steve had a falling out. steve stayed on earth and tony ended up stranded on an alien planet and nearly died. he is a non powered man and only had his armor and got stabbed by thanos and he has never felt more alone than when oxygen was slowly running out on him and nebula. he should have argued and called him out on them sticking together, and he had every right to do so.

- whole time travel thing. it was nostalgic, i am really glad they connected this, as last movie, to the previous ones. thor getting his moment with frigga, tony commenting on shape of steve’s ass, loki disappearing with tesseract, little things like that. they gave movie depth and not just thanos aftermath. 

- steve had some show stopping scenes. telling himself he could do this all day and being tired of himself bc he knows how big of a pain in the ass he can be in the battle?? hell yes thank you. steve wielding mjolnir?? legit had me cheering, wig snatched. 

- i genuinely liked thor’s arc. he lost everyone he had ever cared about, it was normal for him to be depressed and angry and that he had given up. i am glad rocket snapped him out of it because it gave rocket depth and we saw how deeply he connected to all of them and decided not to be an asshole and be kinder to people that surround him. it showed another part of them being a family and how even characters we never thought would love each other this way, ended up with an unbreakable bond that is more than just a team work.

- more screen time for underappreciated amazing characters, james rhodes, scott lang, clint barton. more of their interactions and showing how funny and smart they are??? they had my heart.

- i LOVED professor hulk. mark ruffalo finally got more screen time and it showed how smart bruce really is and that he is not just some likable guy who is intelligent, but not as much as other scientists (like scenes with shuri in infinity war that i loved because of shuri, but in past movies they downplayed his intellect a bit). i loved how he was more confident and at peace with himself.

- thanos!!! thanos remained a formidable villain and his arc was still the best villain arc in mcu. he is not easy to take on , he is a threat and he gave movie and everything that happened a meaning.

- best mcu scene to this day - strange opening portals and people passing through, ready to slay enemies. all united, all fighting together, all boosting and helping each other out in this final battle that we waited for 10 years??? literally killed every other movie battle ever. they have outdone themselves.

- peter seeing tony and talking about soul stone world, not realizing that everything was done for him and out of love for this amazing boy?? beautiful.

- TONY FUCKING STARK WIELDING INFINITY GAUNTLET. YES. had me yell at the screen, it was showstopping. my favorite scene ever in movie history. mere mortal taking on the fate of the world and killing every bad creature and smiting thanos himself. CONTENT I LIVE FOR.

- valkyrie a king??? hell yes, she deserved it. no one more than her. 

now, things that ruined the movie for me and that i do not think i will easily accept or forgive:

- i understand that in the end, since natasha and clint went to vormir, in the end had me desiring that she would be the one to give up, since he has a family. but it’s not supposed to be that way. natasha seemed out of character the whole time. she was way more emotional, i partially understand because she lost everything and it has affected her more than anything ever. but it was bad writing. woman dying for shock value and to effect men??? why. she just started expressing herself and letting know people she loves them and really connected and bonded with them and have her go like that? as a sacrifice? uncalled for.

- pepper’s arc bugged me the whole time. woman who was there from the beginning to call tony out on his shit, also was a woman who stopped him from doing reckless things. she was always the one who kept arguing with him, literally in every movie, over his desire to save the world and to protect them. he told her he found a way to bring everyone back, but one word from her (something she was terrific at), and he would ditch it and stay with their family. and this is the first time she encouraged him to do something so reckless and it was poor overshadowing of his death and insanely out of character for her. she knew how it would end and she kept saving him from himself, because he was always terrified of losing her and in a way that stopped him from doing what he did years ago. they had a family and in the end . her showing up in an armor had me in tears, because that’s my gal, but also that is incredibly reckless and like she didn’t think things through in 2-3 scenes she had in the movie?? 

- i’m in it for tony. naturally i am upset. but not because he died, but because of HOW he died. naturally gauntlet took a toil on him. his body was combusting. it was devastating. what killed me was that pepper, love of his life, approached him and seemed like she had kind of a bad day. asked for his vitals and when told he is dying, she shed a tear and told him that he could rest. it blew my mind that she did not crumble in front of him, no “ i love you” nothing that would be her last words to him that showed him that he meant the world. he knew that, but would have been nice to have something like that. ALSO, him not being able to speak??? BEYOND OUTRAGED. no actual goodbyes, no him saying anything to the avengers, just lying like he had a stroke. the best character with the most complicated arc in the entire marvel universe and did something unimaginable and to have him just fall and not say goodbye or how he feels, or is he afraid of dying or what is happening to him??? “ i am iron man” is a great line for taking on thanos, but as last words while he is alive, unsatisfying and writing for shock value. peter crying, hugging him, apologizing , that was beautiful. everyone who he had just given his life for just standing aside, looking at him, shedding one tear???? steve? STEVE ROGERS???? JAMES RHODES??? no goodbyes between best friends, no them being wrecked and having breakdowns??? really?

- steve’s ending. it was the most out of character thing russos have ever done. they became famous for taking on characters in their own ways, but steve, person who had such strong relationships with tony, bucky and sam, leaving bucky and sam for a selfish cause of going back in time to a woman who already had a fulfilling life and found a way to live without him?? who had a husband and family? who was accomplished and her heartbreak over losing steve gave her depth and she got out stronger than ever. and he just went back and her whole history and family was erased for it, because he loved her and they shared one kiss a lifetime ago? steve going back to do this and not free bucky from hydra or help his best friend out, a man who he started civil war over and fought government for, steve leaving bucky and sam, people who have been with him through thick and thin, going back to indulge himself, thinking he cannot be happy in present, not thinking about two people who have to now live on without him? bucky who never got a decent time with him after ca:tfa, who’s life has been nothing but a shitstorm, now having to live without his best friend and only person that felt like a home? insanity. steve rogers, the most self-sacrificial, stubborn little shit, who gave enemies hell for people he cared about, leaving people behind? never. 

in conclusion, for me movie did nothing but upset me, because i have invested 10 years into this, countless hours of writing meta and giffing scenes that went unnoticed, loving these characters, pouring my heart and soul and time into this, and for them to kill off people for shock value, natasha and tony, to have them fuck up steve’s arc beyond words, to end relationships or to make them meaningless.... they did pay an omage to previous movies, but not characters  and how they were previously portrayed. tony, man who started mcu, should not die for us to be miserable bastards after spending so much time in this universe, he should have gotten to live a happy life with the family he had just started. 

in the end, if anyone had to die, for me it was supposed to be both steve and tony, in a battle, bloody with glorious goodbyes, their last battle, showing each other how they would lay their lives so the other one lives, sacrificing for each other, but have both biggest characters die gloriously, not one like he had a stroke and second one grow old and selfish, abandoning his friends and family.

in the end, i did not like the movie. first marvel movie to this day that i didn’t like, because it was first that erased so many good things. 

#SPOILERS ARE UNDER THE CUT #usercherie #starksnstripes #scarlett-witches #review #avengers: endgame #endgame #ae #ae spoilers

[hiitsdifferent]

For a fandom that touts needing to watch all 21 movies in order to understand what's going on in Avengers: Endgame, nobody paid attention to the details of Captain America’s arc. The backlash I’m seeing is truly baffling.

This is my big rant against people saying his ending is out-of-character or a plothole.  HUGE CAPTAIN AMERICA AVENGERS: ENDGAME SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT.

Steve going back to the past in order to restore the stones lets everyone fall into the destiny they're supposed to share with Thanos before/during/after Infinity War. Steve puts them back - because I believe the Ancient One says - when you mess with the past, you create an alternate reality. That's why Hulk promises to return to the stones once they’re used to bring everyone back. Steve has to return them exactly where they found them or millions more people could be killed in alternate timelines. Even more than that, the time travel rules in the movie show that even though the stones are taken out of their timeline without other essential characters finding out (namely Peter Quill), their past nor their future is dramatically altered (the exception to this is Nebula because Thanos does find out what they’re doing and his second attempt at getting the stones leads him to Earth again). Everything happens as it should. Steve isn’t going to the past to change it. He’s able to grow old with Peggy because it creates an alternative timeline. Essentially Steve lives two lives in a time loop - one as a soldier, and one with Peggy. All of the Avengers movies and his own movies (and Peggy’s tv show) are left unscathed because they exist in the MCU as we’ve experienced it all these years.

The only plotholes that come to mind are: Steve returning the Soul Stone to the Red Skull - like is that just something he hands to him and the Red Skull has no other choice but to stay cursed? And, Sharon Carter was nowhere to be found in Infinity War or Endgame. I know the writers said that Sharon didn’t fit the plots for IW, and I just think it never worked out for them period. But it’s funny how the current Steve goes back to Peggy with the memories of having previously kissed Sharon who won’t exist yet for another thirty or forty years. As a character, Steve choosing to go back to Peggy falls in line with his arc following The First Avenger. After he woke up out of the ice, he’s been searching for home but not being able to manage it outside of fighting on the battlefield. Where he might've been hopeful in The Avengers about winning in NYC and leading a team to victory, his story becomes a rinse-and-repeat - train more Avengers, fight more battles, resist the longing to find his true purpose. Time and time again throughout the series Steve knows that home is not a place, it’s an era, it’s where he’s from. No matter how many women Nat thinks he might be able to date or places Sam thought he should check out, Steve’s real home is being back where he belongs - it’s a nagging feeling that comes up and is often pushed aside to protect others and do his job as a soldier.

I know a lot of fans will question Steve’s decision against Bucky’s well-being.  Honestly, I thought Endgame could’ve developed their scene more, but to me, I got the inclination that Steve told Bucky he was going to stay with Peggy. The hints came to me from the “taking all the stupid with you” exchange (which was used in their first movie where Bucky leaves and Steve is supposed to stay behind - the roles are just reversed in Endgame) and Bucky giving Sam the same nod of approval to approach Steve first. Bucky has accepted Steve’s decision; the release of their friendship is gentle and smooth, not harsh and divisive. More than that, in Cap’s earlier movies, being reunited with Bucky and trying to stop him from being the Winter Soldier has its limitations. As much as we as movie goers want them to be together, Bucky is not the same person he used to be; he changed after being experimented on just like Steve; he's killed people and he knows the weapon he was turned into, but in Wakanda he was on the path to accepting what happened. Something that Steve was in denial about at the end of Civil War (Bucky says I don’t know if I’m worth all of this to you; Steve replies - what you did wasn’t you, you didn’t have a choice. Bucky acknowledges that he knows he didn’t have a choice but he still did those things - he has to find accountability somehow). Steve does everything he can to protect Bucky at the end of Civil War, but eventually he has to let Bucky have his own journey of healing and not be stuck reminiscing between their old days and refusing to reconcile the brainwashing he'd been put through by HYDRA. 

Ultimately, what drives Steve to return to Peggy, is what he’s lost - both in ideals and the people he loved. Once Nat and Tony are killed, and the Earth has been avenged by dozens of superheroes far more powerful than them, Steve knows Bucky is going to be okay; he’s where he belongs. There’s no reason for Sam or anyone else to want to join him in the past. So he gets to do the one thing that Tony and Nat fought so hard for - as Tony says in Age of Ultron: Isn't that the mission? Isn't that the 'why we fight'? So we get to go home?’ Similar to Thor recognizing that he doesn’t have to rule Asgard and fill the shoes of something he no longer wants to fill, Steve sees that he was one of Earth’s mightiest heroes, but that’s not who he has to be anymore. 

Steve and Peggy get the second ending they always deserved.  Unlike a lot of time travel movies that completely retcon stories, we can still watch Cap’s and Avengers movies, and not feel like none of it happened. It all happened just as it should. Steve doesn’t step on anyone’s toes (well maybe Peggy’s) or ruin anyone else’s mission in order to do what he wants to do for a change. He can retire - he can go home, he doesn't have to imagine it anymore.

P.S. I have no idea what our Steve does with the Steve in the past timeline that he returns to. If you think about time travel in movies long enough, it opens so many plotholes, it makes your head spin. I’m just sticking to the simple rules that changing the past in a big way creates another timeline instead of changing history altogether.

#avengers #endgame #spoilers #endgame spoilers #steve rogers #captain america #chris evans

[anorakofavalon]

The Beauty and the Geek: Why Brutasha Makes Sense

(AKA: An Open Letter of [Constructive] Criticism for Joss Whedon)

I wrote an essay in which I parse through my feelings on probably the most controversial pairing of the MCU. I settled on the relationship making sense, thematically, even though the execution was terrible. Sorry if it's a little long, but I'd love to have a discussion about this with any of you willing to take the time to read it.

---

Joss Whedon is great at his job. He’s flawed, like anyone else, but he’s a fantastic writer. I hardly need to remind you of his portfolio, after all. As a matter of fact, his portfolio is so very nearly spotless that his writing flaws come across, at least notably, in only one movie. Avengers: Age of Ultron. You might point out Justice League, but I’m discounting it because while there were flaws there, they weren’t all his, and not all of them were present in unison.

In Ultron, Whedon was pushed to his writerly limits. Understandable, considering that he was burdened with not only following up on the masterpiece that was The Avengers, but he had to do so while taking into account the events of the movies that took place between then and Ultron and where that left the characters. Not only that, he also had to setup the rest of the franchise and introduce a multitude of new characters. Doing any one of those three things is difficult, but doing all of them at the same time while also offering a coherent and enjoyable movie to fans is a monumental task. He did what he could.

One particular weakness of the movie, as pointed out by a large number of people after its release, was the relationship between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff. Recently, people have warmed up to and adapted to it. But the damage is done. It left the impression on just about everyone that it was rushed and clumsily handled. I agree that it was clumsily handled, but I don’t think that it was necessarily rushed.

I’d like to make an argument for the relationship, and in doing so, maybe offer a critique to Mr. Whedon that might be helpful. My argument is the following: Bruce and Natasha’s relationship in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is thematically sound. It’s a natural step forward in both of their respective arcs, and I believe that Mr. Whedon made an excellent, and conscious, storytelling decision when creating the pairing. (He might even have had it in mind since The Avengers.)

But before I go any further on analyzing why I believe this, I think it’s important to dispel a few common and relatively superficial complaints about the couple. Firstly, some people prefer Natasha to have been with Clint, Steve, or even Bucky. I understand the general sentiment there, but I have contentions against any of these people because they don’t make sense in the context of the MCU. Clint is out of the picture because he has a family, and they are simply best friends, practically siblings to each other. Bucky and Natasha have very little screen time together in which they aren’t fighting by the time Age of Ultron happens. Steve is the most sensical of these options. But Steve and Natasha aren’t compatible people, at least not in the sense of a romantic relationship. Why? Because A.) She explicitly prefers more passive, “dorky” men, B.) Steve is still not over Peggy Carter, C.) Putting them together would be, aside from blindingly obvious, harmful to their wonderful friendship because D.) Steve and Natasha have, up to Ultron, had a very strictly professional relationship. They’re friends.

The other big complaint is simply that Bruce Banner seems to be too old for her. This is a, frankly, ridiculous complaint. Mark Ruffalo is one hot dude, and Black Widow is a fully grown woman perfectly capable of having emotions for whoever she damn well pleases. Somewhat older or not.

And speaking of those emotions, people have been quick to point out that they seemingly developed out of nowhere. I disagree, to a certain degree. The seeds of this have been rooted from the very beginning of The Avengers. Their first interaction was tense and interesting. Subtle things were present. Hints of flirtation (granted, at the time she was trying to manipulate and recruit him into helping SHIELD) were present, and there’s a few visual cues. Particularly when Banner says “I don’t always get what I want” while touching a crib. I recommend re-watching it.

And of course, there’s the entirety of Ultron, where they throw quick glances, outright flirt, and seem to have developed a close relationship via “the lullaby”. But the leap from Avengers to Ultron is quite wide, considering that a few things have happened, and besides, wasn’t she deathly afraid of the Hulk during Avengers? The answer to that is yes. And that’s why it was so jarring for practically everyone, including those of us who have embraced the ‘ship. Presumably, all of their bonding happened during Natasha’s stay in Avengers Tower between Winter Soldier and Ultron. The problem? We didn’t see that. We just saw that she could calm down the Hulk all of a sudden and had a good relationship with Banner.

I won’t defend the execution of this. It could have been smoother, without a doubt, but given the duress that Whedon was under with managing the storylines of literally every other character, I can forgive him. But what I can’t forgive him for is the execution of a few other things concerning the two. Namely, how he handled their conversation in the Barton household and the Ultron kidnapping.

The Barton Household conversation could have been positively wonderful. It was a little off-putting instead. I don’t think it’s a bad conversation mind you, it shows that Black Widow is willing to open up to Bruce Banner in a way she doesn’t usually do with others, and it really serves to humanize her further. The premise is this: Bruce Banner isn’t willing to be with her because he believes that he’s a monster and that he can’t give her a normal life (read: children). Natasha counters with the fact that in her view, she’s a monster because the Red Room made her one. And she can’t have children. The issue is clear: these are two separate, parallel, lines of conversation happening at once, and they get muddled, and viewers got confused accordingly. The way the dialogue was framed had disastrous consequences. Rather than achieving its goal the scene left us with the impression that she thought she was a monster because she couldn’t have children when really what she meant was that she was a monster because the Red Room dehumanized her and turned her into a weapon, and in the process, sterilized her.

While awkward, a lot of people later understood what was meant and the outrage died down. But it didn’t help that later in the movie, Widow was used as a literal damsel in distress when she was captured by Ultron for very little reason. Now, I’m a firm believer that strong female characters should be allowed to have love interests. Love isn’t a weakness. But this moment makes Black Widow seem like merely a love interest. She was helpless and a man had to rescue her. And it was, you guessed it, her love interest. This whole concept was a mistake. It could have been any other Avenger. Because if there’s one thing Black Widow is not -- it’s helpless. (And as a side note, that scene at the Avengers party where he fell on her chest? Ridiculous. Whedon pulled the same trick in Justice League and it was equally un-funny. It harmed his cause more than it helped. Comedy could have made the transition into the relationship less jarring for fans but he approached it in the single worst way possible. Also, the ass shots. What the hell Whedon? Like, I get it, but c'mon man. If you're gonna do it, at least be egalitarian and give us some Hulk booty too. Taika did it.)

All of these things combined gave people a less than spectacular impression of the couple at first, since it consumed both of their respective storylines for the entire movie, but I warmed up to it and so did others. Because despite the execution, I think it makes perfect sense thematically.

It begins in The Avengers. We’re going to briefly revisit the scene I mentioned earlier, where Natasha is recruiting Bruce. At this point we know a few things about them: Banner is relatively in control of the Hulk, but he doesn’t want to “Hulk out”, He is not afraid of Natasha, and finally, Natasha is very much afraid of him. At first she acts unfazed, but when he slams his hand on the table to test her there is genuine fear in her eyes and she pulls a gun faster than he can blink. He smiles away the tension, assuring her he was just testing her. But the power dynamic became clear. At first, Natasha believed she could manipulate him like she did Tony, but with Banner that wasn’t the case. He saw right through her. This remains a constant theme. He could read her like a book.

She’s weary of Bruce for the rest of the film, but it culminates when she faces the Hulk. Mr. Whedon lets the camera linger on her after her near death experience. Natasha Romanoff is shaken. This was incredibly humanizing for her because the Hulk is a force that she is truly powerless to do anything about, which must be an unfamiliar feeling for the world’s greatest assassin. Regardless, when Fury calls her to take down Barton, she walks it off. That encounter grew her character. A character that has remained fairly mysterious thus far except for one single moment, a truly wonderful scene where she manipulates the ultimate deceiver: Loki.

Loki thinks he’s got a read on her, likely because she was being very honest when she told Loki “I’ve got red on my ledger, and I’d like to have it clean.” Loki already knows, playing on her apparently emotional side by saying “Your ledger is dripping red, it’s gushing and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?”

It’s all a trick, of course, because she pretends to let it affect her. But Black Widow knows how to compartmentalize emotions, and she handled the situation wonderfully. But I don’t doubt that what Loki said was true -- to a degree. That is Black Widow’s chief insecurity: that she is a monster, and she can never be a hero like the other Avengers because of her past.

A few scenes later, after the Hulk Out, Banner wakes up in a warehouse, where an old man is looking over him. The very first thing that he asked was “Did I hurt anyone?”. And that there is his chief insecurity: that he is a monster because he is a danger to everyone around him.

So you have two characters who both have terrible pasts that were forced on them by circumstances entirely out of their control. Both admire each other professionally as well as people. Let’s not forget that Natasha’s first interaction with Banner was of him living in an impoverished country in order to help people. Both are looking to become better than who they are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Natasha was affected by this. Hulk has caused just as much harm as she has, but Banner is making up for it by healing others. She might feel she can’t do that because her skillset has always been to harm others. That’s why I think she’s one of the most compassionate of the Avengers, and always comforting her friends. Be it Steve at Peggy’s funeral, or Clint in Endgame when she’s the only family he has left. It makes total sense that Bruce and Natasha would turn to each other as friends and confidants. I don’t think anyone else in the group could understand their shared and unique type of trauma. And as Natasha said, “all [her] friends are fighters”. But Bruce is not. In her eyes, he’s a perfectly normal, mild-mannered gentleman. She’s not afraid of him or Hulk by the time Age of Ultron rolls around, but boy is he afraid of himself.

And they both want normality. So they propose running away. A bit on the dramatic side, but I can see why Whedon chose to use this idea. It makes the ending of the film more poignant, when she chooses to have Banner Hulk Out (and I suspect Banner understands why), thus sacrificing their fantasy of normality. Because they’re Avengers. The mission comes first. Still, it was far too melodramatic for my taste and out of character for both of them. Particularly Natasha. And again, it makes it seem like Natasha was Banner's love interest when it really ought to be the other way around, from a storytelling perspective and also because of the nature of the characters. That was a lapse in judgement from Whedon that weakened the presentation of their potential relationship.

I don’t think the relationship will remain completely intact by the time Endgame finishes, but I do think they’ll acknowledge it and give them a proper send off. It might not last, but their relationship helped them grow as characters. It allowed Banner to realize that he isn’t really a monster. That he is useful in his own right. And it helped Natasha get peace of mind. She isn’t a monster either, she’s a hero. And for better or worse, that means she has to do heroic things. Even sacrificing normalcy.

And plus, it's just adorable man.

#brutasha #brucenat #hulkwidow #bruce x natasha #hulk #black widow #bruce banner #natasha romanoff