#but the mcu suit does such a good job of bringing back the life from the comics to the suit

[moderngeekdom]

ECHO: Was it all that bad?

OK, so it's time we talked about the latest Disney+ show for the MCU: Echo.

I wish I could say I binged the series in it's entirety, but alas, life got in the way and I had to split up viewing between two days. Not that that was difficult, seeing as how it clocked in at a mere five episodes. Still, I was able to watch the first two episodes then had to let a couple days pass before I could make time to watch the remaining three.

I'm not sure that break was all that advisable to be honest.

See, the first two episodes, while being filled with call-backs to other series, were the most well executed and it really felt like the producers and writers knew what they were doing.

Episode 1 especially had some excellent fight choreography, pacing, and story building. Episode 2 followed suit by pushing further into Maya's family and past.

But then episode 3 happened, and while I appreciate the overall story being told, the inconsistencies and poor plotting and pacing started to creep in. If I had hope that this was going to be an overall well excecuted series at the end of episode 2, those hopes were dashed by the end of episode 3.

Despite the train sequence in episode 3, and the roller rink sequence in episode 4, there wasn't much dynamic storytelling to fill out the last 3 episodes. I guess when you have to truncate six episodes down to five some things need to get rearranged and squeezed together. Let alone a good portion of the story probably got left on the editing room floor.

But here's the thing: realistically, I get it. This series was shot during the pandemic and had to deal with all sorts of mandates and limitations. THEN their budget got slashed and they had to make do. So I get it, all of my qualms with the show make sense within that context.

So lets talk about the series knowing that it's issues are completely understandable:

Overall, I liked it!

It's a nice, street-level anti-hero story. Alaqua Cox is great, she has an excellent screen presence and can be incredibly intimidating when she wants to be.

Personally I felt that Chaske Spencer's Henry worked, despite being a bit over-the-top.

Cody Lightning's Biscuits was a nice addition; a well-meaning cousin just happy to see his family after so many years. Always good for levity and a bit of comic relief.

Tantoo Cardinal was top notch as Chula, and I can't remember a single thing I haven't loved Graham Greene (Skully) in. Presumably when Echo lives on in other series, hopefully Skully will at least make an appearance!

Rounding out the main cast we have Devery Jacobs as Bonnie, Zahn McClarnon as Echos's dad, and Andrew Howard as the smarmy henchman Zane.

Of course, we can't not talk about Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin. He was spot on, per usual, and a great relief that Marvel made sure to bring him over from the Netflix series. Kingpin chews every scene he's in, even when it feels like he got shoehorned. D'Onofrio does such a great job adding gravitas to the character that you get a sense he genuinely enjoys playing him. Which is only further proven by the fact that he's publicly stated how he hopes to continue to portray Kingpin for as long as Marvel and Disney will let him.

All the better for us fans.

All-in-all I have to say the cast was excellent, especially when you consider many of the main members weren't as heavily experienced as the veterans. But those veterans helped bring everything together, and they all seemed to play along nicely with one another.

The story itself was also, I feel, a good one worth telling. It was a great way to bring Echo out of someone else's' series and into their own. Most of the elements made sense, although the obvious reworking of episode 4 kinda made some beats a bit confusing. The sit-down between Maya and Kingpin in Maya's old house for example...necessary, but forced. Still, despite it's awkwardness and what the scene did to the overall pacing, I'd say all the main beats were accomplished, and the show only got muddied due to the small details, or lack thereof, and some of the timing.

If this show hadn't been produced during a pandemic. If it had a decent budget and the proper amount of time to tell a full and complete story. If it had been taken seriously by the Disney Execs. If it hadn't had to deal with all of it's internal problems...it'd probably have been great. As it is, however, it's just adequate bordering good. Totally watchable, and I'm grateful it exists, but it's issues overshadow its quality.

Hopefully we'll get to see more Maya Lopez in future street-level MCU projects. Till then, I'd recommend watching Echo, but be sure to temper your expectations.

3/5 Stars

#television #rating: 3 #MCU #Marvel #Echo

[gritsandbrits]

I will allow one MILF and one MILF ONLY

I FINALLY got around to making another ref for my OCs! This time is a little different: instead of a main OC I'm working on "secondary" ones. So here's Mikayla's maam Norah, a supporting ally in my Loonatics AU/Reboot!

Age: Secret!

Species: Human

Homeworld: Earth

Alignment: Good

Occupation: Secretary

Role: Ally of the Loonatics, ambassador

Voice Claim: Nia Long

Physical: Norah is an adult African American with long curly hair, brown skin, and a hourglass body-type. Her common outfit consists of indigo suit and matching heels with a white collar, cuffs, and deep-magenta bow. She tends to wear golden eyeshadow and deep-cinnamon lipstick.

Personality: Norah is a kind and intelligent woman with a love for marine life. She holds herself with dignity and grace, though she can be exasperated by the people around her. She can be snarky, demanding and bossy at her worse, and sometimes can come off too strict and sardonic. A part of her is afraid of speaking out against the corruption in ACME in fear of losing her job; though she learns through the Loonatics to stick up for herself at work. Norah deeply cares for her daughter refusing to repeat the troubled relationship she had with her own parents. While compassionate and giving, Norah hates users and refuses to let others take advantage of her. She still carries some feelings for Optimatus but has no desire to rekindle their romance.

Backstory: Growing up in the slums, Norah had a turbulent relationship with her parents which ended when she ran away from home at 16. Moving in with an aunt she worked hard at her new school, quickly becoming Valedictorian and earning a scholarship to Acme University. Her childhood love of the ocean prompter her to pursue a career in marine biology. During a trip of the beach she found the unconscious form of a purple haired man....She took him in and helped him recover, eventually developing a fling that ended when the man left in the middle of the night while she slept. She was unaware that her summer love was none other than the missing Prince of Freleng, Optimatus.

Years later Norah still remembers the man she once called a friend...lover... As she had Mikayla while still in college she had to drop out to care for her, working odd jobs to support herself. While she loved Mikayla, she loathed and was confused as to why her ex left without so much as a goodbye. She eventually got a coveted job working as a secretary for the city department for ACME Labs. At first Norah was grateful to have such a high paying job - she would have the money to finish school and start her sea-life rehab venture. However upon seeing the corruption within the company she started having doubts but held back from complaining. Not yet.

S1: In the finale, Optimatus, who by now was consumed with dark power - discovered his sister Zadavia hiding among earthlings. He did not particular wish to destroy the planet he once called home, but he needed to get rid of the obstacle. He sent his robotic soldiers to the city. Norah was caught in the attacks, and upon witnessing the woman Optimatus ordered his soldiers to spare her and to bring her back to their temporary base. At the base Norah demanded to know why they've taken her when a heavily disfigured man came in. He wants to talk. Norah demands why he kidnapped her an attacking innocent people. Optimatus replies that she had no problem with him before. That was when she connected the dots; the same long purple hair, facial features, and eyes - it was him! But now he was no longer fully human. He heartbreak swelling up in her, she asks what happened to him. Optimatus revealed that he was the ruler of Freleng who had left the planet (likely to explore the galaxy without strict protocol). He was ambushed by enemy Martians and had to make an emergency landing on Earth. He wanted to tell her the truth but couldn't out of fear that his enemies might track him down and hurt her. He claimed his injury happened after a civil war on his Homeworld his sister having refused his plan to wipe out the evil Martians. Unable to believe him Norah replies that she won't help him destroy anyone regardless of their past. Angered at her bold choice Optimatus left her alone and locked up in the master lobby.

Luckily Rev managed to locate her and Danger Duck teleported into the lobby to help her escape. Before they could leave however Optimatus arrived and ordered them to stop. But then the rest of the team as well as Mikayla and Zadavia bursts in resulting in a major battle. Norah was able to escape with Mikayla, and witnessed her former lover getting defeated at the hands of the heroes.

S2 and Beyond: Norah would play a more active role: now she was the one having to familiarize with a new planet! As she is the mother of the crown princess this technically made her a member of the Court, though she declined as she had no desire to get involved in politics. However she did suggest a program to help rehabilitate former villains and criminals which later took affect. After Optimatus renounced his ways he apologized to her for leaving and kidnapping her, and vow to set things right even if it meant the past can never be rekindled again.

Powers: Norah does not possess any powers. She is knowledgeable in her field of work, able to identify multiple marine species, and chemistry. Perhaps her greatest "power" is her compassion, able to empathize with characters such as Pinkster and Weathervane. K

Character inspo: Monica Rambeau(MCU), Leah Estrogen(Osmosis Jones), Lady Juliana(Quest for Camelot), Helena Douglas(Dead or Alive series), Mrs. Trudy Proud(The Proud Family), Sailor Pluto/Setsuna(Sailor Moon)

Extra: Norah is the only oc i consider to be a true Milf. Have fun! 😉

Looney Ref: Her surname is based on Michael Jordan from Space Jam. She is also based on Honey Bosko from the very old Merrie Melody shorts without the racism

Artwork: Icon and base sketch

#fan character #looney tunes #loonatics unleashed #loonatics unleashed au #oc ref sheet #loonatics unleashed reboot #loonatics unleashed oc #she is NOT monica i just based her looks on her bc she was so gorgeous in W@nd@v1$10n #oc x canon

[in-starkestday-in-bannerednight]

The MCU doesn’t understand Peter Parker.

Civil War did a good job introducing Spiderman into the fold organically and Homecoming was a nice starting point for Peter. BUT The MCU does not allow Peter Parker to face the consequences of his actions & grow on a personal level via his own journey (unattached to others like Tony). A lot of people praised Homecoming for how accurate the teenager vibes were yet that authenticity and insecurity is limited to Peter Parker and not extended to Spiderman’s world. In Infinity War, Peter’s jump into battle with Tony makes sense due to the foster parent relationship and hero mentality, but after they save Dr. Strange on the ship, Spiderman’s confidence should start to waver. Tony warns him this is a one way trip, and Peter shows no signs of hesitation or fear despite a clear lack of experience (which for an awkward & clumsy teenager is unrealistic AF). Instead the MCU uses him as comedic fodder, throwing movie references and innocent child-like naivete to brush aside the potential for a very human and relatable situation where a kid is trying to prove their worth, in way over their head, and could experience doubt, anxiety, and embarassment over the choices made and about to be made. Consequences do not carry over the MCU for Peter and that is a huge lost opportunity. Flash forward to Peter literally DYING AND SENSING DEATH ARRIVING at the end of Infinity War. A brilliant emotional beat and twist...that in no capacity ever affects Peter in Endgame or Far From Home. Tony Stark experienced immense PTSD, nightmares, and near heart attacks from just witnessing alien invaders. PETER FOUGHT A GOD IN SPACE & DIED and never is shown to be emotionally or psychologically effected. Instead all his character’s emotional capacity is put toward Tony Stark. Again. So this comparison and idea of legacy is more important than the characters arc or journey as a superhero earning his keep? If you don’t commit to consequences, the risks or stakes lose value. Peter doesn’t want to bring his suit to Europe because of TONY’S DEATH not HIS OWN. What about the notion of a uniform that places burden on oneself (LIKE a cop, a doctor, a soldier, or other roles that require immense willpower and are associated with heroism).    There’s no exploration of how his secret identity is damaged by the actions of his public one/vice versa? Tony Stark himself faced terrorist threats because of his Iron Man displays, Steve Rogers BEST FRIEND IN LIFE was purposefully used against him as a weapon that nearly killed him, Natasha Romanoff forgave Clint Barton for killing SHIELD operatives because she made difficult decisions fighting him and surviving THANKS to him when she was a teenager.

Where is Peter Parker’s personal struggle and when does it EVER manifest in the MCU? Will it ever NOT be undercut by jokes? You’d think after dying, he would question the choice to be Spiderman at all. In Spiderman 2 (Sam Raimi version) Peter concerns himself with how capable he is at saving and helping people. This fear and indecision leads to him LOSING his powers, a huge consequence and moment for audiences to relate to those everyday anxieties or responsibility and how capable a person can be. In the MCU this never happens. Peter knows other heroes exist and can fill in the blanks as he figures out his mental well being. If what’s left of the Avengers at the beginning of Endgame could handle Earth’s problems, post Endgame why couldn’t he ask one hero to fill in for New York (like DAREDEVIL) while he deals with everything he endured? The answer is the same reason why Peter Parker and Spiderman are consistently detached from one another’s actions; Tony Stark. Tony being a father figure is fine. But the MCU’s obsession with Peter taking that role and position means there’s no room to dive deeper into Peter’s intentions and Spiderman specific journey. The comics always explored the roots of very human choices and difficulties Peter faced, both in and out of costume, and WONDERFULLY manifested his human problems into hero problems by evolving those issues. But comedy and Tony Stark disable Peter from actively carving his own path and mark on the MCU. In Far From Home, at his lowest point, instead of having to deal with all the consequences thrown his way and created by his actions, Happy Hogan shows up in a cozy private plane, he jokes about Peter renting P0rn in Germany, gives him a half-assed pep talk about TONY, and suddenly building a new spiderman suit is all Peter needs to OVERCOME his emotional, psychological, and physical betrayal by Mysterio? What. The. Fuck.

Lastly, the MCU has used any consequential story thread for Peter and Spiderman as a punchline.THREE TIMES. In Civil War post credits, Peter jokes about being bullied is given a whole UI from Tony, gazes like a kid on christmas (with no regard as to how he almost died just for Tony Stark’s benefit). In Homecoming Aunt May finding out his secret is a joke and never analyzed deeper, making it a surface level punchline gag and removing the moral and familial weight of May and Peter’s relationship. In Far From Home Peter has his identity revealed at the end of Far From Home in the exact same punchline gag way. In the end, I think a big part of why Spiderman/Peter Parker are so disconnected is the creative team behind the films (solo ones especially). Directors are a dime a dozen, and while consistency is important (specifically for Avengers films) I think fresh ideas and perspectives are more important. I’m disappointed Jon Watts is returning for Spiderman 3, I was underwhelmed with Far From Home. Please let Peter Parker be himself, stop relying on Tony, CUT BACK THE JOKES that interrupt emotional beats, and give someone else the directing reigns. Please.

#spiderman #spiderman homecoming #spiderman far from home #spiderman mcu #tom holland #spiderman 3 #sony #mcu #disney #spiderman spiderverse #peter parker #marvel comics #marvel #tony stark #avengers #avengers endgame #avengers infinity war #civil war #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #clint barton #captain america #black widow #hawkeye #disney +

[viltrumitesuperboy]

Sandman (Peter Parker x Sandman Reader)

Sorry this one’s kinda shit cause I meant to put it with the other villain request. I decided not to and ended up having no ideas for this one.

Requested by: anon Could you pretty please write a Peter Parker x Sandman!Male reader? He was always my favourite Sinister Six member growing up and for now nobody has been cast as him in the MCU, so it feels like a perfect role for reader inserts. You could make the reader straight up evil or you could make him a more sympathetic antagonist like the Sandman was in the OG trilogy.

Word count: 1617

When they told you they could make your life better, you didn't think you'd end up as a science experiment. You had just gone through the events of the Battle of New York as a child and lost your family. The first people you turned to were adults who said they could help, and they lied.

They had done testing on you after you panicked about being able to turn into sand of all things. But within a few days, you found a vent with just enough space for you to filter yourself out and back into the real world. You changed your appearance when alone in public and didn't draw attention to yourself so they couldn't find you.

There wasn't a day that went by that didn't make you think of the Battle of New York. Your whole life was there in New York City, so you couldn't leave. You saw your family dying when you fell asleep. When you woke up, your roommate would give you a sympathetic smile as she made you breakfast.

Betty Brant was understanding and had lost family in the event as well. She wasn't too close to her cousins, but it still affected her and her family. Her parents were kind enough to let you stay with them for many years, knowing how much the event affected your life. None of them had anticipated exactly how much it affected you.

The first time you used your powers in public, you stopped a car crash, but the traffic caused more damage than the initial crash. You fled immediately, and suddenly your fleeing figure was on the front page of newspapers and TV news channels. Still, you remained hidden.

The ability of changing your appearance was by far one of the best parts of your unwelcome powers. Turning into sand served as a good way to sneak around. It led you to your job working with another scientist. Sure, they weren't exactly your favourite people, but Toomes had a goal of keeping his family safe considering the dangerous lives people lived when amongst superpowered people. You knew that he was just doing what he could to keep his family supported.

Whenever he needed a hand, you snuck out of the Brant's house late at night to aid him in collecting technology from different facilities. Sometimes it was just a more difficult job, like Avengers-related items, which meant that you would have to help. Your only request was that he did not go near Midtown Tech. You had to keep Betty safe. He agreed, since his daughter was there.

Then Spider-Man came along and tore that life apart.

Toomes was sent to jail, and he had broken his promise of not going near Midtown. He let Shocker stand guard there on the night of your homecoming dance, of all times, fighting the vigilante. He had put your one, and maybe only, friend at risk for his own desires. You split from him and took your own path. It wasn't quite the best idea.

"Hands in the air!"

You mumbled a curse to yourself as you turned around, your arms up in surrender. Your appearance was that of a random person you had seen the other day. The news caught on eventually that all these random people, ex-criminals or not, were not the ones committing petty theft or, in your current case, not-so-petty theft.

"Look, I'm not just going to stand around," you called back, the new voice unfamiliar to you. "I'll escape easily."

There were a few more shouts and you stepped out of the broken glass window and onto the sidewalk. Suddenly, you were hit in the shoulder and thrown to the ground.

"Hey! What the-"

A web covered your torso, holding you down. Spider-Man.

"God, you're stupid," you grumbled.

You let yourself turn into sand and escaped his webs easily. He stood on a rooftop, and you turned back into sand to get yourself up there.

"So, we finally meet. After you took down my employer and I realised who he really was, I thought I wouldn't have to see that stupid mask in person," you said.

"H-Hey! It's not stupid!" Spider-Man whined.

"Oh really?"

You shifted your appearance to look like him, a perfect copy.

"Oh, do I really stand like that? Wow, that's so awkward," Spider-Man mumbled to himself. "Maybe I should put my arms-"

"Pay attention!" you shouted. "You don't know anything about me, and I don't want to get involved with you. You let me leave and never cross paths with me again, and life will be better for you."

"Are you threatening me? Cause that kind of sounds like one. I don't really wanna fight anyone if I don't have to," he said, quickly enough that you couldn't interrupt him.

You got closer to him until you were only a foot away, and pointed your currently red-gloved finger at his chest.

"If you stay out of my life, I'll stay out of yours. I'm sure you have loved ones you don't want getting hurt, do you?"

"You wouldn't."

"No, but information is easy to get, Spider-Man. And no one can get it quieter than someone who can turn into sand."

"You've lost someone, haven't you?"

It was quiet, and the only thing you could hear were the sirens still surrounding you, and the occasional shout from a drunk person on the street.

"It’s none of your business."

You collapsed yourself into a pile of sand and left with the night wind to blow you back home. You could still feel the crack in your voice, sounding just like Spider-Man, in the last sentence you spoke.

———

It had been a few weeks since you took any jobs. Betty was completely oblivious to anything you had done in the past year, but she knew when something was wrong. Every once in a while, she'd come to the room you shared with her with two bowls of your favourite snacks and would watch a film or show you enjoy. She knew you so well and you felt bad that you never told her about what happened to you. Still, you had to keep her safe.

It was some random day during midterms when you were just stressed about everything. You found a random rooftop in the city to hang around, wearing the face of yet another stranger. You heard a distant whooshing noise and then quiet footsteps on the roof behind you.

"The city's beautiful at night, isn't it?" you asked, leaning back on your hands. "Too bad it's the reason we can't see the stars out here."

"Uh, yeah," Spider-Man responded. "Sometimes I just like to hang around Times Square with all the billboards."

He took a seat somewhere on the edge of the rooftop near you. You turned to look at him.

"That's the same suit you wore last time. You used to have that old one with the hoodie, didn't you? Like when you were fighting Toomes," you observed.

"Yeah, I have a... sponsor?"

"You don't seem so sure about that."

Spider-Man laughed, mimicking your position leaning back on his hands.

"Hey, about last time, I didn't want to overstep any boundaries. If you have lost someone, I'm sorry," he said, just loud enough for you to hear over the nighttime city sounds.

"It was my family. Battle of New York. And now I have these stupid powers because of it."

Your voice began to break again. The first time telling anyone the truth was always the hardest.

"Let me guess: you didn't know where else to go?" Spider-Man asked. "So you took the first option and it was the worst one?"

You nodded, tears beginning to fall. He shuffled a bit closer and put a hand on your shoulder.

"You know- no, you don't know. God, that's stupid."

You let yourself chuckle at his awkward slip-up.

"Okay. When I first got my powers, I did something stupid. It got my uncle killed. But  he gave me words to live by and it's the one thing that pushes me forward. I do what I do because I have the ability to do it. It's so easy for people to give in to the money, but I guess that's the one thing that makes me different. I might not exactly be the richest person around, but what does it matter when there are people whose lives could be saved because a kid decided that he didn't want them to go through what he did?"

You took a few moments to contemplate his words as you searched his mask.

"How... how do you give so much even when you're struggling like that?"

He shrugged and stood up, offering his hand.

"Maybe another time. Mind if I swing you around? Just for fun."

You ended up going through Times Square, laughing all the while. You had him bring you home and let your disguise fall.

"Hey, this is... Wait, I know you. I-I've seen you," the vigilante stuttered.

"This is Betty Brant's house. I'm (Y/N)," you said.

The extremely stupid man pulled off his mask in excitement.

"No way! I'm Peter! From the Academic Decathalon team with Betty!" he exclaimed.

"Perfect disguise, huh? A teenage nerd who can hide his body under baggy clothes. Way better than what I can do," you joked.

He gave you a hug as he was leaving, both of you holding on longer than you had to.

"You can always talk to me. I know what it's like to lose family and get some really weird powers along with it. You aren't alone."

You smiled into his shoulder. Maybe things would be okay.

#x male reader #peter parker x reader #peter parker x male reader #peter parker x male!reader #spiderman x male reader #spiderman x reaer #peter parker imagine #male reader #peter parker #request

[friendofspidermannedleeds]

Fictober Day 2

Prompt #2: “you have no proof” Fandom: Spider-Man (MCU) Rating: Teen+  Warnings: None Characters: Ned Leeds & Peter Parker  Words: 1618 Summary: Ned gets kidnapped and does not play it cool.  

Nothing Like the Movies

Ned startles awake in a small, dingy room with crappy lighting.

All he can see is brick walls and a metal door, and all he can think is that his head is spinning and he’s horribly nauseous.

He tries to rub his eyes but find his hands tied tightly, painfully behind his back and overtop a metal chair. He takes stock of the other aches and pains that come into focus—his entire body is stiff and sore, and he’s desperate to stand and walk it off—but his feet are tied, too.

Oh.

Oh no.

Ned’s pretty sure he’s living through his first real kidnapping.

He shuts his eyes, attempting deep breathing exercises and trying not to panic.

Ned’s been awake for all of ten seconds and this is already nothing like he’d imagined a few years back when he first saw Peter in the suit. He’d thought then how cool and exciting it’d be if the bad guys realized how vital the Guy in the Chair was to Spider-Man’s operations and brought him to their evil lair with their evil cronies. He would play it just like a hero in a movie—remaining calm, cool, and collected in the face of adversity.

Yeah. He’d been an idiot.

Because this isn’t like an exciting at all, this just sucks, and he’d rather be anywhere but here right about now, and he has a college visit planned for this weekend and his family is probably freaking out, and how long has he been missing and has anyone noticed yet and Peter sure as hell had better notice because it’s almost certainly his fault Ned’s in this mess and he’d like to be rescued now before some evil mobsters come in and do that monologuing shit he assumes all villains do.

But no, he can’t start spiraling, he’ll need to have his wits about him when the cronies do come in, he has to get his story straight—but what is his story, exactly?

It’ll depend on the reason they kidnapped him, obviously, and he honestly has no idea why he’s here, unless someone figured out Peter’s Spider-Man, which, duh, of course someone has, it’s not like villains are in the habit of picking up random high schoolers off the street and tying them to chairs in random warehouses (he assumes that’s where he is, it’s always a random warehouse), and anyway, if he’s somehow been captured by a random serial killer and not an enemy of Spider-Man, at least he’ll be featured on MJ’s favorite true crime podcasts.

His heartrate increases exponentially at that thought, so yeah, okay, maybe let’s not think about the serial killer stuff…

Ned returns his focus to the breathing exercises. How do those work again? In for four, out for seven… no, hold for seven maybe? Seven seems like an awfully long time, that can’t be right, holding your breath that long would surely make it worse, at the very best it’s not helping Ned at this moment. When they taught him this shit at school to “relieve stress during exam week” he never thought he’d be using the techniques here, in the den of a killer.

Ned wiggles in his seat as much as the tight cords will allow.

He really, really has to pee. Of all the injustices, this one suddenly takes top prize. Because this is never a problem in the movies, the kidnapped hero never has to pee while tied up, and now that he’s here living this nightmare, he can confirm that is utter bullshit and who cares if it doesn’t make for great TV, kidnapped characters should have access to a bathroom dammit, this is entirely unreasonable and he’s thinking he might even try shouting into the void to see if someone will come untie him.

He’s not sure how much longer he can sit here like this—his shoulders are starting to cramp up from being pulled back so tightly, his head’s still spinning and setting in on a dull ache, he’s minutes away from pissing himself—who knew being kidnapped would be such torture?

Oh.

Oh shit.

Torture.

Ned cannot, he absolutely cannot, afford to be tortured. If the bad guys come in here and ask for information on Spider-Man he’s for sure going to tell them, he cracks under pressure on the daily for the most inconsequential of things, like his mom asking if he’s finished his homework, or MJ asking if he’s practiced his AcaDec flashcards, or Peter asking him to hack into a multi-million dollar suit.

Okay, so maybe that last one wasn’t so inconsequential—is there a possibility they know he’s Spider-Man’s hacker guy?

He hopes not, because if he’s tortured he will absolutely crack. It’s not a possibility, it’s a fact. Ned is simply not made for this kind of situation.

There’s a loud crash somewhere outside the room, then voices—angry voices arguing about something, probably what to do with the prisoner, and oh shit, Ned hasn’t even planned what he’s going to say or do yet, what if the bad guys come in and ask if he knows Spider-Man??

He has to think of something—something that won’t make him look like the weakling he is, who has more or less already thrown in the towel, who will, at this moment, gladly turn Peter Parker in for the promise of using a toilet.

He sets his teeth.

No.

No, Ned can do this. Ned has to do this.

Okay. He’ll play it cool, like it’s a scene from a movie.  

He shuts his eyes.

They’ll say: “We know you know Spider-Man, kid. And we know he’s your best friend, Peter Parker.”

And he’ll say: “You have no proof!”

Ooh. That’s good. Ned’s pretty sure he’s seen that in a movie somewhere.

But wait—that implies he thinks there is proof, and they just have to find it—shit.

He’s better off just saying he doesn’t know what they’re talking about, he’s just a kid who was walking down the street, minding his own business.

Speaking of the street, he’d do anything to be walking down a street again—anything not to be tied to this stupid, freezing metal chair in this stupid, cliché of a room.

Ned hears the voices again, louder, then shouting, then really shouting, and it sounds like maybe there’s some sort of scuffle occurring, and then—

The door busts open.

Ned’s heart beats faster than he’d thought was humanly possible. He instinctively looks at the floor, terrified of what he’ll see, unwilling to look the devil in the eye because this is not a movie, and he is not an action hero, and he sure as hell shouldn’t have to be.

“Ned?”

He looks up. The voice was the last thing he expected, and yet, the most welcome sound he could ever have hoped for.

“Peter?”

He’s wearing the Iron Spider suit, fully masked and already kneeling down to easily break the cords that secure Ned’s limbs.

“Oh my god Ned I’m so glad you’re okay—you are okay, right? You’re not hurt or anything?”

Ned winces as he bring his arms around the back of the chair and tries to rub life into his shoulders. He stands stiffly, supported by Peter’s hand under his arm.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I think. Just—that really, really sucked.”

Peter hugs him. “Ned, I am so, so sorry.”

And Ned has lots of thoughts and lots of questions, but none of them seem to matter right now, and all he can blurt out is—

“ialmosttoldthem.”

Peter’s mask retracts, and he stares at Ned. “What?”

“I don’t know what these kidnappers wanted, but if they’d come in and if they’d asked who you were or wanted to know something about you and threatened me I feel like I would’ve caved for sure and I just know I—I would’ve told them.”

He doesn’t know why he felt the need to share that information, or why he couldn’t seem to stop talking once the confession began pouring out, and he’s wishing he hadn’t said anything but he’s sure that wouldn’t have made him any less guilty, and—

“Good.”

Ned blinks. “I—what?”

“I said that’s good,” Peter says matter-of-factly. “Look Ned, I don’t know yet what these guys wanted—they were amateurs, pretty dumb actually because they didn’t get rid of your phone and that’s how I tracked you here—but honestly, if anyone ever kidnaps you or anyone else and wants information about me, you give it to them.”

Ned shakes his head. “But—but—”

“Ned, I’m a literal superhero. I don’t need protecting, I can handle pretty much anything. If you’re in a shitty situation, your job is protecting yourself.”

Ned’s shuts his mouth as he realizes it’s gaping open, and he doesn’t know why it was, because he’s really, truly not surprised.

Of course Peter would say that. Even if he wasn’t a literal superhero, he would say that. That’s just who Peter Parker is, and if being kidnapped every once and a blue moon is the price to pay for being his best friend, it’s worth it to Ned.

And the next time it happens, (hopefully an if, not a when), Ned’s not telling those kidnapper punks anything.

“Let’s go,” Peter heads out the busted metal door as Ned follows, “the police are coming for those idiots and we need to get you checked out. You need anything?”

“A bathroom,” Ned says immediately.

“Dude,” Peter nods with an empathy only someone who’s been kidnapped multiple times can share, “I am so sorry. Literally the worst. And like—they never acknowledge that in the movies!!”

“Right??”

#fictober21 #ned leeds #peter parker #spider-man #spider-man fic #my fic #fos fic

[lushthemagicdragon]

On Deadpool, WandaVision and Breaking the Fourth Wall

Hey pals, let’s talk about breaking the fourth wall / extrapolation of meta information in multiverse universes--say, the Marvel cinematic vs the xmen films vs the comics. Actually, let’s talk specifically about the Marvel multiverse. 

I wrote you an essay, just go under the cut it’s shiny.

As a general rule, suspension of disbelief works better on paper than it does on video. Heroes was an excellent example of this problem. This was the first time TV show was made directly based on a comic book format, trying to emulate a comic book format. The ship sank when they tried to keep comic book pace, and to play by similar rules. Long story short, this is because the way our brains consume literature and comics is different from how we consume photographic media like movies or tv. Video, like photography, convinces the brain that it's depicting reality even when we logically know that it isn’t. Therefore, unless the rules of the video/TV world are well established as being different from our own, we apply to it our own real-world understandings of what is possible. We are able to follow the fantastic more willingly when we're imagining it (because we’re reading it) instead of seeing it with our senses. 

Breaking the fourth wall and/or being self-referential is extremely tricky on video media because you're forcing the audience's brain to acknowledge that this is fiction, which can cause some cognitive dissonance if the goal of your show/movie is to create second world immersion. Sitcoms are good at breaking the fourth wall because, with laugh tracks, live studio audiences, and a general lack of real-world consequences, our brains understand that it isn’t real. Generally, they’re not trying to fool us into believing that they’re real. Still, if Chandler Bing suddenly turned around and made eye contact with the camera, that would be weird. It’s not established in that particular sitcom world that they understand that they’re fictional. Fresh Prince on the other hand, did that all the time. 

But we’ll get back to Sitcoms, because WandaVision. As opposed to most sitcoms, most serious dramas and adventure-thrillers are trying to create a very different vibe. In order to function, you have to be fully engaged, and have to completely believe the second world you are currently in. Otherwise, the emotional experience falls short. Tonality must be consistent, whereas sitcoms can get away with having the odd emotional moment surrounded by a laugh track. 

Marvel is very weird when it comes to second worlds and believable experiences, because Marvel films, tv, and comics are all existing in the same multiverse but with wildly different tones. If you try to wrap your head around all of it as one body, it can give you a headache. Which is why I find it so interesting whenever they try to be meta. 

The MCU as we understand it is presented as a realistic second world. Yes, it's fun action adventure with magic and superheroes, but presented in a way that feels real, and rationalizes its reality. It explains with technobabble and sciencebabble everything that it's doing. It wants to feel real. There are a few examples of comedy in the MCU (AntMan, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor Ragnorok), but their silliness can for the most part be explained away. With the latter two, they take place in space, with aliens, so our brains allow that as an explanation of wackiness outside our own reality. For Ant-Man, honestly I think it was a brilliant idea to make it a comedy because there was no way that film would have succeeded if they tried to make the audience take Ant-Man seriously on screen. I love Ant-Man, it’s a spectacularly made film. But I digress. Importantly, even though they’re funny and campy, they never lose their sense of realism, with emotional anchor points to keep them grounded.  When these characters are in an ensemble, they lose their high camp aesthetic and become part of the realism whole. 

Even when they say in the MCU, Oh look at this I am an action figure, I'm in comic books, it's presented as in-world realistic. These people are famous now, and they're real life superheroes, so obviously action figures and comic books are being produced about them. It all makes sense. Even the X-Men films, for as camp as they are, do this in their own realism bubble. I would argue the X-Men films actually do it better because you don't have to suspend as much disbelief to believe mutation as you do to believe in a super suit that shrinks people (I love you Small Rudd). 

Things get weird when the fourth wall is broken, and the multiverse is acknowledged, because the marvel cinematics have done an excellent job of creating stable second worlds. The Deadpool films, the prime example of fourth wall breaking in Marvel films/tv, are excellent because they go whole hog into breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging how ridiculous it all is. But it works for two reasons. 

1. Deadpool is the only person in the entire movie that acknowledges the fourth wall (I am pretty sure, it’s been a while since I’ve watched them but I am pretty sure). Because he alone is aware that he's a fictional character in a wider fictional universe, it's not weird when he references his actor being the green lantern or talks directly to the camera. It’s exactly what we expect from him. With Deadpool, we're in on the joke but no one else is. And that's funny. 

2. The tone of the Deadpool films is always funny and stupid. Even when it gets serious, that becomes the joke. There is no cognitive dissonance because it's consistent. See: Sitcom Logic. If the tone is light, breaking the fourth wall doesn’t jarr quite so much. 

3. Deadpool is never in the other films, and MOSTLY, the characters in Deadpool (beyond the odd brief cameo) aren't in the greater universe (I say mostly because of Colossus, but he was in one movie ages ago for like ten minutes it’s not the biggest deal). It's consistent, and it doesn't become confusing because it's contained in itself as a weird fourth wall bubble on the side of the greater universe. Anything that happens to characters in the Deadpool films will not carry over to the more serious timeline. 

There is one place in which I would say that the Deadpool films miss the mark, and make a mess of things. By making that one joke where young 90s xmen from the newest film are behind a door and shut it before he turns around, a wrench is thrown in. The weirdness of the Deadpool films suddenly is an issue because the question is asked: Where do the Deadpool films sit in the timeline? The answer is that the Deadpool films don't fit anywhere in the established XMen Cinematic Timeline, and the big mistake was having a group of characters from an xmen film on screen at the same time even as a gag. In this moment, the Deadpool films are very suddenly part of the greater universe, rather than a sidecar referencing what’s going on inside. By doing this, Deadpool is not the only character breaking the fourth wall. Now the physical world is breaking the fourth wall. And our brains will try to make sense where they cannot make sense.

But anyway for the most part, Deadpool does an excellent job of it by being a weird little fourth wall meta bubble on the fringe of existence. Wandavision though, that gets weird in a different but also very fun way.

The reason why the first 3/4ths of WandaVision work in terms of being meta-referential and also occasionally breaking the fourth wall is because 

1. genre and tone. It sets up from the beginning, this is a sitcom world, not gritty realism world. We get sitcom world, we know what to expect from sitcom world. We can laugh along with the laugh track when something odd or silly or referential happens, and accept it as truth, because a sitcom generally does not pretend to be reality. 

2. Whenever the fourth wall breaks in a way that doesn't make sense, it's intentional. Wanda reacts accordingly. Something goes weird, she fixes it. When something goes weird for someone other than Wanda (Say, the Vision), the integrity of this sitcom world is called into question in an intentional way that tracks with what is actually going on in the gritty-realism world (acknowledging that we’re in a bubble within a bubble). This camp sitcom world breaks the fourth wall within itself, not to us. Billy talking to the screen isn't talking to us, he's talking to the imagined viewer in-world. 

3. Most of the meta-references are either subtle enough to be Easter eggs (like the kick-ass reference) or exist solely as fun gaffs that have no consequences and are never acknowledged as being meta (the Halloween costumes). I say most, because there is one big meta-reference that I think was a mistake, and where it kind of starts to fall apart in my eyes. 

As much as I adore Evan Peters’ Pietro, as extremely happy as I was to see him on this show, this particular meta-reference was done in a way that breaks the second world illusion, because they pointed a big red sign at a meta reference and then tried to explain it without breaking into the multiverse. 

The thing about breaking the fourth wall and meta-referencing is that it has to be toungue in cheek to be sustainable. Our brains are accepting that this reference is for us, but to make it a serious part of the story requires an answer to the question: why? By explaining that actually, this fake Pietro was Ralph the whole time, a real person who exists in this gritty realism universe, the illusion of tongue in cheek is gone. Suddenly, there is a person who brings into question the entire structure of the second world. Because this second world does not have access to the multiverse (Into the Spiderverse is wholly its own thing), it doesn't make sense that this random guy who happened to be used to play Pietro looks exactly like Pietro from elsewhere in the multiverse. It stops being fun, and starts becoming confusing, and we start trying to find answers where there are none. 

IMO, two ways to solve that problem. 1. never explain it. If you never explain it, it's just a weird meta reference for us that also exists in Wanda's fake-world that is in itself accessing the multiverse (see: the costumes), without touching the realism world outside the bubble. 

2. What I'm now calling the Taika Waititi method. Give a nonsense explanation told with a straight face as a brush-off. Say, Wanda asks Agatha who this guy is, and she says something along the lines of, oh I don't know I just pulled some random Pietro out of the universe, I never met the guy I had to improvise. 

Anyway I still give WandaVision an 8/10 and an A for effort. Pulling off multiple tones and multiple second worlds simultaneously without even explaining it away with the multiverse is fucking hard, and they did a pretty good job all things considered. 

And if anyone is interested in wtf I'm talking about re: second worlds, I highly recommend Tolkien's essay On Fairy Stories which pretty much defines how fantastic fiction works.

#wandavision #deadpool #mcu #mcu meta #film theory #marvel cinematic #xmen cinematic #miri meta #miri writes #look ma i wrote something #wandavision spoilers #pietro maximoff #long live uncle pete #maximoff family values #wanda maximoff #wade wilson

[peppersonironi]

Batfam/Avengers Crossover Chapter Five: The Assassins’ Bond

Tagging: @the-fair-maiden-of-fandom

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Category: Gen

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types

Relationships: Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, Natasha Romanov & Damian Wayne, Clint Barton & Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tim Drake & Duke Thomas, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Dick Grayson/Wally West, Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd,

Characters: Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Barbara Gordon, Justice League (DCU), Alfred Pennyworth, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Thor (Marvel), Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Alfred the Cat (DCU), Bat-Cow (DCU), Goliath (DCU), Selina Kyle’s Cat Isis, Kate Kane (DCU), Duke Thomas,

Additional Tags: Batbrothers (DCU), Avengers Meet The Batfam, MCU/Batfam crossover, Crossover, no beta we die like robins, rated T for Jason’s language, I bleeped it out though. Just to be safe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, canon? What’s canon?, Deaf Clint Barton,Deaf Character, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Happy Batfamily (DCU), Birdflash and joyfire are implied/referenced,

Summary: Nat sets out on her assignment to gather information about the bats, and ends up talking with Damian.

Natasha couldn’t seem to find anyone to investigate, which was weird. Usually, when she wanted to find someone, she did.  Nat hadn’t seen any of the other Avengers either, which was also strange.

So Natasha wandered the halls of the manor. She had already checked the Cave, though it was also empty.

After half an hour, Natasha turned to the gardens. She wasn’t really searching at that point, only enjoying the early afternoon breeze. But soon enough, she heard sounds of laughter.

Following it, Natsha wound through a shaded path to find a large lawn occupied by the bats, as well as Peter, Banner, and Thor.

They were in the middle of what seemed to be an extreme version of capture the flag. Nat looked for someone to talk too, but they were all invested in the game. Then she noticed Damian on the sidelines, inside a clearly marked square that must have been the ‘prison’. He looked angry, and seemed to be passing the time by doing drills with his katana. Once again, Natasha was struck by how precise he was.

"Hey kid."

Damian glanced at Natasha, clearly suspicious.

"Hello Romanoff, do you want something?''

Nat smiled. “Call me Natasha. And no, not really. You looked bored, so I thought I’d offer you some company.”

Damian scoffed and returned to his drills. Natasha sat down, and was soon joined by a large dog whom she had never seen before. "Is that your dog?" She asked.

Damian nodded stiffly. "Yes his name is Titus."

Nat looked at Titus with gentle eyes. "Hi Titus." She reached out her hand for the dog to sniff. Titus obliged, and then began to nussle  her hand, quickly warming up to Nat.

Damian’s whole demeanor changed at the sight. He relaxed significantly, and even had a soft smile on his face. “He likes you," Damian said as he set his katana aside and joined Natasha on the grass.

Nat smiled right back at him as she began to pet Titus. "Titus is a great name for him. Latin right?" Damian nodded. "You know the meaning?"

Damian scoffed. "If I didn't then I wouldn't have named him Titus. An honorable dog deserves a name that literally means `title of honor’."

Nat chuckled, surprising even herself. "I like you kid, you've got spunk.” She nodded over at the now abandoned katana. Time to see what she could get out of him. “And your fighting technique is impressive."

Damian’s face became a mixture of guarded and prideful. "Of course it is, I was trained to be the best."

"Well your father sure does a good job."

Damian pursed his lips and remained silent for a moment before replying. "He didn't train me. I … was trained by my mother."

Nat looked over at him softly. “The one that Jason blames for him killing?”

Damian scowled. “Yes. My mother is responsible for bringing my brother back from the dead using the Lazarus pit which is … not quite magic. The pit induces its user with enhanced aggression, and memory loss which she utilized to manipulate Todd to her will.”

Natasha sat still for a moment. She really didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, that did partially explain Jason’s references to murder. On the other hand … the woman sounded horrible.

“Why would she do that?” Nat asked quietly.

Damian stroked Titus for a long moment before replying. “My mother is part of a group called The League of Assassins - led by my grandfather - that is dedicated to … saving the world.”

Natasha almost raised an eyebrow at that. Assassins and world-savers really didn’t seem like they would go together well.

“Not like you saved the world,” Damian continued, “But through brutal, unforgiving justice. They wish to reform civilizations across the world into total submission to my grandfather.

“So my mother took it upon herself to take in a newly raised from the dead Jason Todd, train him, and set him upon Gotham. Her point to it all was to harm my father, who is very much against League ideals.”

There was a sudden shout of triumph from the game, and the pair looked over at Tim crowing over a downed Peter Parker. They were silent for a long time, watching the game play out. Finally, Nat took it upon herself to speak.

“I never knew my parents. I grew up in a top secret Soviet-Russian training facility designed to create the perfect operatives, or assassins.” She took a breath as she looked over at Damian.

The boy had shed his smirks and scowls. His eyes were wide and innocent. There was a quality of quiet hope in his face. Like he was amazed that someone else could understand him.

“You’re like me,” he whispered. Then raised his voice slightly. “I was trained from birth. Mother and grandfather wanted me to be the heir. The perfect heir. I was taught every conceivable way to kill, to torture, to withstand any injury.” Damian was no longer looking at Natasha. His eyes showed that he was in another place. Another time.

“We were chained to the bed at night to prevent escape,” Natasha replied. “Sometimes they would make us fight to the death. To weed out the unworthy.”

“Weakness was not tolerated. The moment I made a mistake I was punished. I was to take it willingly.”

“When we trained with guns, they gave us real people to use as targets.”

“Emotions were a liability. I was to never show any, I was never to trust anyone. Not my trainors, not my servants, especially not my own mother.”

“We weren’t to trust each other either. Sometimes they would randomly order to kill your friends, and you had to. Otherwise you were killed.”

Damian sighed. “The worst part was leaving. Mother dumped me with Father - for training she said. I was to learn what I could from him. And I did, I learned a lot. But not what she wanted me to.” He looked over wistfully at his family. “I learned to trust. I had to believe I wasn’t invulnerable. I … I had to learn what it felt like to be … wanted .”

Natasha nodded at him, though he wasn’t looking at her. “Clint was sent to kill me, after I had been an operative for a while. I was the best, so people began to take notice. So S.H.I.E.L.D. sent Barton to eliminate me. But when he found me, he didn’t. He … had mercy on me. Something I had never known. He recruited me. I worked with him, and S.H.I.E.L.D. to help people instead of killing them. I had to relearn almost everything.”

They sit in a comfortable silence for a while. Neither bothering to pity the other. Just enjoying the companionship of another like them.

Then Nat spoke up again. "I'm not good with …" Natasha paused trying to find the right words. "Comfort. But, I understand"

Damian looked at her, then nodded. “I understand as well.”

They sat together for a while, looking at the game progressing. They talked about their lives, and even started to explain their families as well. Damian talked briefly about Bruce’s tragic childhood experiences, as well as Dick’s. He went into detail of Jason’s death and then resurrection. Tim’s becoming Robin. His neglectful family. Damian explained Cassandra’s past, and how Duke lost his parents. He mentioned Stephanie and Barbara, and how they joined the vigilante life as well. He didn’t go into detail, though, saying that their stories were not his to tell.

In return, Natasha talked about befriending Clint. How Steve became Captain America. How Tony built his suit. Banner’s experiments, and how he became the Hulk. How Thor found himself on Earth. What she knew of Peter, and how he became Spiderman.

“Do you trust me?” Damian asked, looking over at Nat when she had finished speaking.

Natasha smiled. “Yes. I’m assuming that’s what your goal was?”

Damian had the nerve to not look apologetic. “We may or may not have overheard your entire conversation after lunch.”

Nat nodded, she had figured as much. The Boy had been almost a bit too loose lipped in the beginning. But she could tell that as the conversation went on, he spoke freely because he wanted to, and not because he was trying to supply info.

“Did you draw the short straw?” Natasha asked.

Damian scowled. “T-t, no. Father said that if any of you were to question us or our motives, we should hold nothing back. You had the nerve to approach me first.”

Natasha laughed freely and ruffled the boy’s hair. He frowned, but didn’t push her hand away.

“Do you trust me now?” He asked, tentatively.

Natasha paused and tilted her head. “Yes, I think I do. You didn’t lie to me, I know that.” Damian rolled his eyes, and Natasha smirked a bit. “But also, you and I are similar. I don’t think I could distrust you if I tried.”

Damian nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Good, I would not want to disappoint Father.”

Natasha smiled. “I don’t think he would be disappointed if I didn’t trust you. He seems quite reasonable.”

Damian outright snorted. “Say that again when I have a slight cold and he won’t let me on patrol. He can be quite unreasonable in mother-hen mode. Not unlike Grayson, unfortunately.”

Nat chuckled. “He loves you. That’s important.” There was another shout of victory from the field, then Natasha continued. “What about me? Trust goes both ways, you know.”

Damian frowned in concentration. “Yes, I believe you have earned some trust. I don’t know about Stark though, he seems … unstable.”

Natasha couldn’t help but outright laugh at that statement. After a moment of surprise, Damian joined in.

“That,” Natasha said between huge gasps of laughter, “Is by far the best thing I have heard in a long time.”

“Do you deny it?” Damian asked.

Natasha was almost crying from laughter. “No, not in a million years.”

Damian smiled at Nat. “Thank you, Romanoff. For talking. I believe you will make a valuable ally.”

“Call me Natasha, kid. Or Nat. Or Tasha. I don’t care. But not Romanoff. Friends aren’t so formal.”

Damian furrowed his brows for a moment before relaxing. “Very well, Tasha. We are now friends?”

Natasha smiled at Damian. “If you want to be.”

The boy pet Titus for a few thoughtful moments. “Very well. I accept. Together, we shall be a formidable force.”

Nat chuckled, ruffling the kid’s hair once again. This time, he didn’t bother frowning.

Just then, a voice called from the field. They both looked over to find Dick running up to them. “Dami! I’m so sorry! I thought someone had gotten you out! Well, the game’s over. Want to join in the next round?”

“T-t. Of course you forgot. If this had been in the field, I could have been killed by now.”

Dick smiled easily at his little brother. “So, what do you say?”

Damian glanced at Nat before replying. “Very well, I shall partake once again in your childish games, Grayson.” Then he smirked. “But I demand that Tasha be on my team. Since you are clearly untrustworthy.”

Dick looked curiously over at Natasha, a small smile on his face. “Sure Lil’ D. Let’s go.”

He motioned for the pair to follow him, then turned and ran off back toward the field.

Damian looked over at Nat. “You will be on my team?” He looked like he was trying to hide how hopeful he was.

Natasha got up and offered her hand to Damian. “Together, we shall be a formidable force, right?”

Damian grinned at her and accepted her hand. “Our reign of terror shall be legendary.”

#Avengers Meet The Batfam #dc/marvel crossover #batfam #avengers #batfam shenanigans #Natasha Romanov & Damian Wayne #natasha romanoff #damian wayne #Titus

[stovetuna]

Hi, I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season first of all! Second, if you’re feeling it, maybe Blind Date AU for Steve and Tony? Ty!!💖

PEACHY!! of course, darling, anything for you. Setting this in an amorphous MCU timeline again because I’m working on stretching my 616 writing muscles on another fic ;) 

- - - 

Steve knows it’s going to be a long night the moment he receives a text from Natasha that simply reads: Carbone. 1800. Wear the blue shirt.He’s tried—countless times, in fact—to dissuade her from doing this. It’s been a running joke between them for years, ever since that first time in the back of the C-130. 

Too scared? 

Too busy.

It’s not that he’s averse to the idea of being with someone. Far from it—he craves exactly that in ways he can’t articulate, not to Natasha, not to Sam, not to anyone. Sometimes, not even to himself. But the idea of dating, especially being set up on blind dates, makes something twist and sour in Steve’s stomach. The thought of being pushed into something despite his wishes because other people think it’s what he wants, or that dating is something expected of the unattached, is deeply upsetting. 

Plus, his life is complicated enough as it is. Adding an unsuspecting stranger to the mix would only complicate more. And how would he explain it to them, his life? How could he ask for understanding when what he does is so outside the scope of the average person’s day-to-day reality? How could he ask anyone to wait up for him, not knowing if he’d make it back to them alive? In what universe would that be fair to a partner? 

It’s not. That’s the point. Nor is it the point that he’s been nursing a crush on a certain someone on the team for the past year, a man so far out of his league it makes Steve’s head spin. That’s just background noise, at this point, an asterisk at the end of a sentence: Steve Rogers is not interested in dating.* 

*Unless your name happens to be Tony Stark.

Steve’s fingers hover over the phone screen, deliberating in his head how to respond to Nat’s text. The way she’s written it is different from her previous attempts at matchmaking. No so-and-so from such-and-such is nice, you should ask her out. I met this random guy during a raid yesterday, I got his number for you. Want it? This one’s come to him like a gift of flowers, beautifully arranged and packaged, leaving no way for him to bow out of it without coming across like an asshole. 

He shudders to imagine what Nat would have to text the person she’s trying to set him up with if he did: sorry, Captain America is a huge wuss. Feel free to order something to go, on me.

On the one hand, she means well. She knows Steve is lonely for companionship in ways his friends and the Avengers can’t satisfy. She might even know about his crush on Tony and this is her way of trying to help him past it. On the other hand, Nat is a notorious troll, and she could just be doing this to him for laughs. But it has been a long time since he’s gone on a date, even if he does hate the practice pretty much on the whole. One more for the sake of a stranger’s feelings won’t kill him. 

Fine, he texts back, but you’re my sparring partner for the next two weeks. 

Natasha’s response is so lightning fast it would make Thor dizzy.  

Worth it. 

Steve wears the blue shirt. He also goes to the effort of ironing his black slacks and polishing his dress shoes, because he knows Carbone’s reputation as the kind of place one goes to make an impression and/or be impressed. Tony talks about it all the time. “Oh my God, Steve, their spicy rigatone alla vodka is so good, it’s actually sinful,” he’d told him once. Steve had watched Tony’s eyes glaze over and his tongue slowly slide out to lave his bottom lip, obviously salivating at the thought of some random pasta dish, and it had taken just about everything in Steve’s power not to launch himself across the kitchen counter and chase Tony’s tongue with his. 

“I’m sure I’ll try it at some point,” he’d replied instead, pinching his thigh hard enough to dissuade his blood from flowing further south. 

At 4:30, Steve looks himself over in the full-length mirror in his bedroom. The black jacket seems overbearing for early summer, and he wonders if it’s worth keeping on. Should he bring it just in case? Is the tie too much? It feels like too much, especially after thinking about Tony and his tongue. Now he’s hot under the collar, about to go on a date with someone else. Damn it. Steve wrenches the black silk knot loose and pulls the whole thing off. It goes on the bed, along with the jacket. He unbuttons his shirt to the clavicle and rolls up the sleeves. (Tony has visibly admired his forearms enough times for Steve to make a deliberate habit of it.)

But Tony flirts with everyone, Steve reminds himself, and then he’s out the door. He opts to walk across town and down 12th Avenue, what should be a long walk along the Hudson shortened considerably by his long legs and enhanced speed. It’s one of those beautiful New York days, long, late May sunlight lingering in the clear blue sky even as Steve turns the corner onto Thompson Street at 5:45. It’s breezy but not chilly, warm but not stifling. People are everywhere, happy, flushed and bubbling over with spring fever. Even the hardened locals aren’t immune to it—Steve spots a grizzled bar owner just down the street who’s leaning against an old brownstone, face tipped up toward the sky, lips pulled tight in a barely contained smile. 

It reminds Steve distinctly of Tony, how his eyes crease deeply at the corners when he grins.

You’re supposed to be nervous about this date, Steve reminds himself as he opens the door to the restaurant. He’s immediately enveloped in dark tones of bluish green and the smooth voice of Frank Sinatra. He’s early, but the staff brings him through immediately to an intimate but decently large corner table in the back. A waiter, bald-headed but sporting an impressive mustache and wearing the hell out of a purple three-piece suit, pours Steve a glass of champagne and another for his date, who’s starting to cut it close, time-wise. 

At 5:56, Steve glances at his watch and takes a sip of water, opting to watch the bubbles in the champagne glass rise to the surface and pop instead of drinking it outright. At 6:08, the same waiter refills his water glass. They make small talk even as Steve fidgets under the tablecloth. In all of his gearing up for this blind date, the thought had never crossed his mind that the other person might be the one to duck out. 

Averse to dating as Steve is, he can’t say the thought of being stood up on a blind date doesn’t sting a little bit, even as it drives home his rationale for avoiding the entire practice in the first place. At least he’ll have ammunition against Natasha the next time she tries her hand at matchmaking. 

By 6:20, the back room is filled and noisy with other dinner guests, many of whom are also on dates and are doing a terrible job of pretending not to glance pityingly at Steve and the two untouched champagne glasses on his table. Steve sighs and shrugs at the waiter (his name is Duncan, Steve learned during Refill Number Three), who’s come by to refill his water glass again. How many does that make? Five? Six? Duncan glances at the empty seat across from Steve and shakes his head.

“It happens,” he says, genuine sympathy (but mercifully no pity) writ large across his middle-aged face. “In any case, you probably dodged a bullet. Want something a little stronger?”

Steve remembers telling Tony he’d try the spicy rigatoni alla vodka if he ever came here. Reservations to Carbone are hard to come by, and he should seize the opportunity while he can, even if it’s bittersweet. “Thanks. That’s okay. I think I’ll just—”

A man’s flustered voice appears suddenly from behind Duncan, cutting through the noise, words spilling out in a rush. Steve notices heads whipping around to gawk, bug-eyed, at whoever’s just appeared.

“God, I’m so sorry I’m late, usually I’m never late to this kind of thing but there was a malfunction with the—with the thing, and…I…uh…”

The man’s words trail off as Duncan steps aside to let him through to his seat. Steve is standing—when did he stand up?—and realizes with a jolt (and an unmistakable, overwhelming ka-thump of his heart) that he’s looking directly at Tony Stark, whose face has gone an endearingly bright shade of red, almost the same shade as the armor. 

“Steve?”

“Uh,” Steve is too distracted by the furious blush currently working its way past Tony’s pristine white shirt collar to respond at first. “Hi, Tony. Wanna, uh, have a seat?” Nailed it. 

“Sure…” Tony sounds skeptical. That’s fair. He’s probably already sussed out that this date wasn’t Steve’s idea. 

Duncan, to his credit, says nothing as he fills Tony’s water glass. But Steve doesn’t miss the warning look the waiter shoots him as Tony tips his head back for a drink, or the way Tony’s face goes slightly pale as he sets the glass back down on the table, chastised. 

Once they’re alone, the other diners seem to quickly get over the initial shock of seeing Iron Man and Captain America on a date together and go back to their own meals. The air in the room is fragrant with the smell of four-star Italian food, but Steve’s stomach is too tightly wound now to appreciate it. 

Tony breaks the silence. He always was braver than Steve gave him credit for. 

“So,” he says, “Going by your poleaxed expression I take it you weren’t expecting me.”

It’s not a question. Steve laughs hoarsely. “Yeah, you could say that.” More like you’re the last person I expected but I am so fucking happy you’re here. He doesn’t say it, but at least Tony looks more relaxed now. Smiling, they both take a sip of champagne simultaneously.

“D’you think Nat and Clint placed bets on whether or not one of us would cancel?” Steve asks. Tony laughs outright. Not for the first time, Steve watches Tony break out into a smile and wonders if the heat he feels is a blush or the fact that looking at Tony when he’s grinning like that is like looking at the sun—bright and dangerous and so unbelievably warm. Steve takes another drink of champagne to calm himself.

“Well, since they know you and I are so stubborn we’d both rather show up for a pre-arranged blind date at one of the most-booked restaurants in the city than flake, I’d say the bet’s based on whether or not we appear in the communal kitchen tomorrow morning together or separately.” 

Steve chokes on bubbles. Tony laughs again. 

“Hickies optional, obviously,” he says gamely, winking at Steve, whose shoulders are creeping up toward his ears. “We could just muss ourselves up before we get home and they’d never know the difference.” 

“Tony, they’re literally professional spies. Of course they’d know.” 

“I have my ways, Cap. Do not doubt my ways.”

“I don’t doubt your ways, Tony,” Steve manages from behind the sudden tightness in his throat, “But we’re talking about Natasha Romanoff.”

“You mean the woman who almost gave you a hard-on when she kissed you on an escalator in D.C.?” 

Tony is still laughing gleefully (while Steve’s burning face is still buried in his hands) when Duncan arrives with two oversized menus. Steve waves at Tony when he offers to order for them, too embarrassed at having learned that Tony knows about the D.C. incident to speak for himself, at least for the moment. Besides, Tony knows everything he likes. (Well, almost everything.) 

They breeze past awkward and straight into comfortable after that. Tony apologizes for being late again and Steve shuts him up with bread. 

“Eat this and you can work it off with me later.” 

Tony waggles his eyebrows at him and says, “Promise, Cap?” with a gleam in his eye that Steve resolutely does not read into.

“In the gym, Tony.”

The food is delicious and borderline excessive, coming in wave after wave along with wine and bread and cheese and free courses compliments of the chef, and by the second hour of their meal even Steve’s increased metabolism is starting to feel sluggish. Of course, that’s when Duncan places a massive, beautiful, steaming bowl of rigatoni alla vodka on their table. The smell of it alone is enough to rouse him. 

“Holy shit,” Steve whispers as he ducks his head over the bowl to catch a bigger whiff of the red pepper-and-cream sauce, just loud enough he knows Tony will hear him. The other man giggles. It’s too fucking cute. Steve has to remind himself for the millionth time that this is not actually a date, because the words are right on the tip of his tongue.

“I told you!”

“Yeah, you did,” Steve answers, smiling at Tony as warmly and happily as he feels. This isn’t a real date, but he’s still having a fantastic dinner with his best friend and crush, so it’s a fun, memorable night for him either way. Steve dishes a heaping spoonful of rich, glossy pasta onto Tony’s plate first, too preoccupied to notice Tony glancing at his mouth before he takes another drink of light red wine (the price of which Duncan didn’t mention and at this point Steve doesn’t want to know). 

“I like the look you’ve got going on, by the way. Very devil-may-care. How long did it take you to decide against the jacket and tie?” Tony asks once Steve’s finished doling out pasta for himself. God, it’s so easy to laugh with Tony. The man is hilarious, sure, but little things like that—things that only Tony would think to ask Steve because they know each other so well and he likes making fun of Steve’s idiosyncrasies, likes making Steve loosen up and laugh at himself—make Steve feel like the champagne he drank earlier: bubbly, light, happy. 

He could spend five, six, ten more hours at this table. He could spend all of his time with Tony Stark and it still wouldn’t be enough. But there is only so much of himself and his time Tony seems willing to give, romantically or otherwise, and Steve’s made his peace with that. Mostly. 

It does help that Tony seems willing to give Steve a lot of his time anyways.

And no one—not even Tony—will know if Steve indulges himself by pretending, if only for a minute or two, that actually is a date.

“Only a few seconds. Natasha did the lion’s share of the work picking the shirt out for me,” Steve replies, blowing gently on his forkful of pasta, saliva pooling in the back of his mouth as he watches the steam trail off it before taking a bite. “Why, do you think I should have kept th—oh my god,” he groans mid-sentence, eyes rolling up into his head. Chewing slowly, Steve claps a hand over his mouth to muffle the lewd moan that threatens to escape him as bold, decadent flavors burst on his tongue. Tony was right—this stuff is sinful. 

Steve’s so wrapped up in the food he’s eating that he almost, almost misses Tony muttering Jesus under his breath. It doesn’t sound embarrassed or insulted. When he opens his eyes, Steve finds Tony watching him so avidly, it’s hard to notice anything else other than the way the man’s pupils have dilated considerably and is leaning forward, almost over the bowl. 

Tony licks his lips. Steve tries hard not to stare. 

“Sorry,” he says with a chuckle in an attempt to diffuse tension, “but that stuff is ridiculously good.” Steve’s really glad he didn’t wear the tie now, given how hot under the collar he feels all of a sudden. Tony’s looked at him a lot of ways, but never like that—like the only thing stopping him from launching himself across the table at Steve is the table, itself. “I can see why you’re always raving about it.” 

“Steve,” Tony says. He hasn’t touched his pasta. The fork is just kind of there in his hand, like he’s forgotten he’s even holding it. Steve looks at him again. 

“What? Did I get some on my face?” he asks, retrieving his napkin and wiping his mouth with it. Tony makes a rough, strangled sound in the back of his throat and, when drowning it with wine doesn’t help, puts his fork all the way down on the table and buries his face in his hands. 

“I can’t do this,” Tony whines. The conversations happening around them are loud, but not so loud Steve doesn’t hear him say it. The words cut him like a cold knife sharply through the middle. His head feels woozy, and not in the airy fun way it should be after drinking good wine for two and a half hours. How did things end up here so quickly? A minute ago Steve was having a religious experience and now Tony face is ashen and drawn. He looks like he wants to be anywhere but here. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Oh god,” Tony groans, “please, do not apologize. It’s me. It’s very much me.” 

This seems like a fork-down conversation. Steve places his on the table and tries not to glance longingly at the pasta on his plate. Steve knows when Tony is gathering himself to speak, which is exactly what’s happening now, so he waits  and doesn’t eat. He does take a drink, though. That much feels appropriate.

“Just so I’ve got it right,” Tony finally says after an unbearably quiet moment, a palm pressed against his own forehead, “you definitely had zero input vis à vis this whole blind date setup?” 

He’s deliberately not looking at Steve when he asks it. If Steve could put a word to his expression, he’d say Tony looks downright despondent at the idea, even if they’d already established earlier that yes, this thing was entirely Nat’s idea because she’s an unrepentant troll. 

The dissonance doesn’t make sense. But it does put hope in Steve’s heart where there wasn’t any before. 

“I didn’t,” he says, watching Tony’s face intently. He knows it so well at this point, he can tell when Tony’s smile is fake or real, when he’s wounded and won’t admit it, when he’s tired but can’t sleep. So Steve notices all too easily when the corner of Tony’s mouth dips down, a fraction of an inch of a frown, before he recovers with a laugh and claps his hands. 

“All good then,” Tony chuckles, but he won’t look Steve in the eye anymore. He picks up his fork and starts to tuck in, chewing so fast it’s like he’s racing toward a finish line Steve can’t see and doesn’t know how to keep from approaching, except—

“Why,” Steve blurts out, stopping Tony mid-chew, “were you hoping I did?” 

Tony’s eyes fly open but are heavily guarded when he looks back at Steve from across the table. No take-backs, Steve tells himself. 

Tony puts down his fork again. 

“What if I did?” he counters. 

“You can’t answer my question with a question, Tony,” Steve says, smirking when Tony’s expression flickers. 

“Watch me.”

“I am.” 

“Steve.”

“Tony.”

Tony huffs. Before he can cross his arms defensively, before either of them can think another thought, Steve reaches out with both hands, pulls Tony forward by the front of his too-nice shirt and kisses him, fast and firm and warm. The kiss is a point being made more than anything else, but a point nonetheless. 

Tony’s lips are yielding and taste faintly of wine and carpaccio piemontese. Kissing him feels more right than Steve could have imagined (and he’d imagined a lot, elaborately and often). One peck and he knows without a doubt he could kiss Tony for hours. But that’s all besides the point. The point is now, Tony knows. 

Before he can pull away and apologize (again) for his behavior, Steve feels more than hears Tony sigh against his lips. Then Tony tilts his head a fraction and suddenly Steve’s the one being kissed. Thoughts of anything alla vodka fly out of his head in a rush as Tony licks the closed seam of his lips and tongues him deep and slow when they open. Steve’s fingers are still grasping the front of the Tony’s shirt; he knows he should release him and stop this while things are still relatively PG. Instead Tony nibbles on his bottom lip and Steve releases that lewd moan he’d held back a few minutes ago right into Tony’s mouth. 

Steve has just enough brainpower left to remember that 1) they’re surrounded by onlookers, and 2) if they keep going like this, Duncan’s going to have to throw them out. Would that really be such a bad thing, his lizard brain supplies, unhelpfully. 

Decided, Steve lets go of Tony’s shirt with a gasp. They both fall back into their chairs with a whoosh. Between them, the steam rising off the rigatoni alla vodka swirls, disturbed by the sudden breeze, then continues curling lightly upwards like nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Like Steve’s entire life wasn’t just irrevocably changed, upended, by a single kiss. 

Picking up his fork, Steve licks the taste of Tony from his lips as he looks across the table at his date and takes another bite of pasta. Tony looks back. He looks hungry. 

“What did I tell you,” Tony says when Steve moans softly again. This time, he doesn’t miss the way Tony stares lingeringly at his mouth like he wants another taste. “Sinful.”

- - -

Send me an AU prompt! 

#stevetony #superhusbands #stony #stony fic #omg-its-peachy #prompt fill #I HOPE THIS IS OK IT'S MY FIRST PROMPT FILL OK BYYYEEEE #steve rogers #tony stark #rachel writes fic #blind date AU #steve still makes natasha his sparring partner for two weeks but then he gives her a deep tissue massage and tony buys her louboutins

[warrocketpodcast]

Is the "professor x just made a bunch of child soldiers" argument as tired as the "If Batman donated all the money it took to become Batman he'd do more good" line?

.No, but I think there’s an interesting reason why it’s not, and it has a lot to do with textual intent. 

In Batman comics, Batman IS the solution to the problems with Gotham City, which we know because WE ARE READING BATMAN COMICS AND THAT IS THE PREMISE, AND IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND FICTION. Billionaires in the real world? Terrible, inherently immoral. Billionaires in the fictional universe that has shit like Green Lantern rings and x-ray eyes? Literally the only thing keeping a crocodile man from eating your face. Bruce Wayne is a philanthropist on the side, but, as I’ve written before, writing a check to the local school district or offering comprehensive health insurance to employees of Wayne Industries does not solve the problem of A Murder Clown Is Poisoning The Water Supply Right Now. I do not understand why people claim they want to see fucking Batman meet with his accountant and figure out if construction of the Thomas and Martha Wayne Memorial Humanities Building at Hudson University is a good tax write-off for 20 God damned pages every week, which I assure you they do not actually want, but that’s not the point, really. The point is disingenuous refusal to engage with the text. The actual text of Batman comics is that Batman is a good idea.

The actual text of X-Men comics is that Professor X gathered teenagers and, in the guise of a school, turned them into a secretive paramilitary strike force that went on missions where they were sometimes killed. The argument is whether that’s the best way to go about things, which is an argument that people have within those comics. The text tends to come down on the side that he was right to do so because the alternative is getting murdered by giant purple robots made of racism, but there’s still an exploration. It’s why Cyclops is an interesting character, because he’s The Most X-Man — the guy who found out at 15 that he had to learn how to be really good at aiming the uncontrollable laser beams concussive force blasts that shoot out of his eyes because the alternative was that he and everyone he cared about was going to die. Like, that’s something that’s gonna fuck you up pretty bad, but according to the past 50 years of X-Men comics, it’s also 100% true. 

With Batman, the question is not “why doesn’t Batman provide real solutions to to the real-world root causes of crime” — because that’s an astoundingly stupid question to ask — it’s “how is Batman going to solve the problems that are presented to him in this fictional universe that is uniquely built around him?” 

With the X-Men, the question is usually “how are the X-Men going to survive this experience?” The idea of questioning whether Professor X was wrong all this time is a core component of that. 

The former is refusing to engage with the premise. The latter is asking the questions the premise invites. If you don’t like the premise, you don’t have to engage with the media. There’s a lot of stuff out there and if you don’t like Batman because that idea doesn’t make sense to you, I’m not going to hold it against you. I will, however, hold it against you if you try to break the premise to make it worse. 

Here’s a huge tangent where I just know I’m gonna get lost in the woods: 

I actually feel a similar way to opinions I’ve seen about the MCU, and how it’s built around a very militaristic idea of superheroes, which makes some people uncomfortable. And, you know, that’s fair! Those movies are built around that idea, because they were built on the foundation of a movie that was the absolute embodiment of transitioning from traditional action movies (ie, stories about loose cannon cops, spies, space marines, Kurt Thomas, and other heroes who usually have the backing of a larger organization) and superhero stories (which are almost always about heroes acting independently of, and occasionally in opposition to, those same larger forces). Those movies never really get away from the idea that Tony Stark, the guy who sets the tone for the entire roster of films to follow, is fundamentally a dude whose primary character trait and fatal flaw are that he always believes he can solve his problems by building a bigger gun. The militarized aspect of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers spins out of this as both a structural result of the action to superhero genre transition, and as a convenience to get Iron Man (former defense contractor), Captain America (literal soldier), Black Widow (spy), the Hulk (military scientist) and Hawkeye (for some reason a spy like in The Ultimates and not a redneck carny like he should’ve been). The odd man out is Thor, which, for all the problems with those first two Avengers movies, is why he first shows up as an antagonist in the first one and then completely bails on the whole thing to go deal with his own stuff on the second one. The military structure is literal plot structure.

So yeah, that gets kind of weird when it filters down to Spider-Man. A lot of that weirdness has to do with things that are beyond the control of the universe, in that Marvel’s most beloved character, the second big success the company ever had whose popularity has endured much stronger than the first one, the flagship superhero who was literally on their paychecks and has never not been popular, had to be a late addition to a universe that already had, like, the Vision in it. 

But because they had to work within those constraints, they had to work within the premise they were already given. It makes perfect sense that in that universe, Peter Parker would look up to the world’s most famous superhero nerd, and it makes sense that Iron Man would see Peter as this blank slate that he could stop from making the mistakes that had defined his life. That, to me, is a really interesting dynamic, but it’s also one that requires Spider-Man to take a lot of cues from Iron Man, which is not a dynamic that those two characters ever had in the source material. It winds up giving them different consequences.

And like, if that’s not your thing, I get it. Spider-Man being recruited by the superhero military and having a high-tech suit that talks to him is a jarring shift, even if they do a good job of bringing in most of the core tenets of the character — something about responsibility and... I wanna say... muscles? Is it muscles? — which I think they did. But, if you don’t like that setup, which is a product of the larger universe, then you don’t have to buy into the premise. Like, yeah, it sucks that you’re fundamentally not going to dig this Spider-Man movie, but how do you think I feel? I’m a Batman guy and I literally have to see these movies with their endless terrible premises for my job.

Back when Far From Home came out, I remember seeing someone talk about how the MCU Peter Parker was fundamentally flawed because he didn’t have Uncle Ben, and I don’t think that’s correct. For one thing, Spidey pretty clearly has an Uncle Ben in that movie, it’s just that the reference to him in Civil War is a little less explicit than it usually is, presumably because we’ve seen Uncle Ben die on screen like five times since 2002. Second, it actually makes it make more sense that he’d latch onto the next influential father figure who walked through his front door. Third, even if we got way more Uncle Ben in those movies, it wouldn’t change the fact that the Peter/Tony Stark relationship and the way it played out was a function of the larger universe and the way those two characters had to interact within it. I don’t want to generalize too much or claim to know what people are thinking better than they do, but I’d suspect that if you don’t like that stuff in Spider-Man, the thing you really don’t like is the larger structure of this take on the characters. And that’s fair! 

That’s not to say that a premise can’t be bad, or that a twist on a character that posits a new premise is always good by nature of including some of the stuff that works. Again, I’m a Batman guy, and the last three movies to feature Batman are bad partly because the premise is fundamentally broken (the other parts are literally everything else about those movies because they are irredeemably terrible on virtually every level). But, you know, none of them have Batman writing a check instead of fighting crime, so that’s something.

--Chris

#Anonymous

[lonelyghosts-stuff]

Avengers Infinity War-First Time Watching Reaction Play-by-Play (Pt. 2)

Part 1

I wonder how many people Gamora has killed? What made her finally snap to not serve Thanos anymore?

How DID Gamora find it? Like, who told her?

How did Thanos capture nebula?

Poor nebula. She’s literally been through hell and back.

Ohhhh she snuck on board...

Thanos you suck so much. You favor one daughter over another.

Oh. Where was said map to the soul stone?

Gosh I feel so damn bad for nebula. She was raised as his daughter too but he tortured her and tore her apart. Nebula never had the chance to be her equal. She deserves so much.

Taught groot as an elective? What about all speak?

Buckle up rocket. It’s gonna get emotional.

Thor is literally all alone. He needs a time to sit alone and cry and break a whole building.

Rocket and Thor friends? Please

1500 years old? Jane, honey, you escaped.

Gotta give it up to Hemsworth’s acting chops here. Especially talking to nobody in reality. Just a bunch of cgi

Ew ew ew eye socket

Should have washed that yikes

Snuck it out by hiding it up your? Huh? You watch too many movies rocket.

Huge title card. Thank you. I wouldn’t have known where we were despite them saying their location many times.

How is that video game battery not dead?

Perceptive rabbit

I LOVE that they used a dwarf to play a giant character!!! This is brilliant! (And that dwarves are giant for some reason lol.)

Soooo again Thanos killed everyone EXCEPT Eitri despite his “morality” supposedly being balance

Poor hands

Poor nebula

Smart nebula

Maybe should have waited to be fixed fully first

Ah crap. SOMEONE PICK UP THE SPACE PHONE

MANTIS

Love how Stark asks for peters help in steering and not Stephen lmao

Nice parking job

Peter, stop popping pop culture refs

Lmao ITS ABOUT TO BE THE ICONIC SCENE

YES PLEASE

Blanket of Death. Capey has a new nickname.

Where’s Gamora

Who’s Gamora

Why is Gamora

What master do you serve?

Jesus?

I mean, yea I do. So does Pratt lmaoo.

LMAO PARKER’S FACE WHEN QUILL SAID THOR WASNT HANDSOME

Storm breaker time baby

“In theory it could summon the bifrost” who theorized this? How do you only theorize and not know?

Oh my gosh mantis is just bouncing around

Mr. Clean lmao

Kick names, take ass

Hey now, these guys saved the galaxy and universe from Ego so lmao

Oh no I know the scene coming up

Poor quill lmao

“I’m half human. So the 50% of me that’s stupid, that’s 100% of you.” “Your math is, blowing my mind.” What’s funny is that Quill’s math was actually completely accurate lol

Stephen having a stroke or a seizure? You good homie?

Soooo if Strange looked to the future and so possible outcomes, what does that mean for the TVA? According to them, there’s ONE sacred timeline, so all other branches are erased (which again messes up what smart hulk eventually says in end game. See kids, this is why you don’t mess with time travel in stories. There’s no way to go back in time without creating a time loop). Ehhhhh I’ll let it slide. Just ignore it... sigh... I can’t help it if I’ve studied paradoxes

Hmmmm not good odds I’ve gotta say...

Watch like, outside of the millions of realities that strange saw, there were like a million or billion more he missed where they won with no casualties lol

Hey Red Skull. Long time no see. How did he get here anyways and why?

Yea you’re prepared all right...

Gotta say, Lord Elrond has seen better days

I’m not ready to say good bye to this Gamora. Gamora and Loki and Nat go down as my favorite characters, gotta say. I know that Tony does and it’s sad, but his feels more satisfying because his sacrifice directly results in them winning. Loki is murdered. Gamora is murdered. Nat died just for a stepping stone for the avengers. She has no idea whether or not they will actually win in the end.

I’m hopeful they may bring Nat back like in the comics, red room clone style.

We got back vision, Loki (kinda), variant Gamora, a new captain America, why not Nat? Yea we have a prequel, but gosh I love her so much.

“You must lose that which you love.” Couldn’t that apply to like an object or something? Could I not throw my Nintendo switch over the cliff? Or my dog? (I would hate that just as much as a person, don’t get me wrong, I’m just curious about the rules)

Yea boohoo sad for Thanos... loses his favorite daughter. I don’t care about him. He deserves suffering.

Poor Gamora doesn’t think he’s willing to do it.. GIRL RUN!!!

Thanos deserves all the suffering.

He does love you Gamora... but that love... it’s selfish. It’s blind... Thanos seems to be a chaotic vigilante who is narrowminded, tunnel vision on his goal with no regards of the cost. But he is evil. If there is ever an alternate route to an end that doesn’t result in the loss of innocent lives, and you know that but you willingly choose the once that costs innocent lives, that is an evil decision. Maybe Thanos isn’t evil, but he’s not good. Far from it. He’s obsessed with this idyllic Utopia but he rushes to one method of getting there. Yes, people suffer. It sucks... it’s unfair... it’s horrible. But it is never the right of someone else to dictate whether or not said person would be better off dead. Who lives, who dies. If Thanos truly was neutral and not selfish, he would have thrown his own life into the mix of the potential 50/50 snap. Thanos is not good. He’s not misunderstood. He’s a murderer. A genocidal cult leader. I have no tears for him. Only for those who suffered more at his hands.

Rant over, time to try not to cry about Gamora...

Her face of realization

Gamora run please

Thanos, I hate you. (Great character her, but not a good person)

Poor Gamora

Oh my gosh the emotion here is great but I’ve heard this sound used as a meme on TikTok too many times aghhhh

Gamora!

What a way to die

I’m crying again. I miss her already...

Who the hell designed this place and put the stone here???? Who did this?

Cry Thanos. Suffer. My only comfort here is that you are sad. You deserve suffering. You really do...

The TVA is laughing here and I’m not okay..

Poor Peter Quill... he’s also lost a lot like Thor, but has had the “luck” of not knowing his family too close.

Wakanda babyyyy

No, you don’t want Starbucks, you want Dutch bros

Lmao I love rhodey. Poor Bruce.

BUCKY BUCKY BUCKY

HUG

NO CMON HAVE A LONG HUG

MALE FRIENDSHIPS ARE SO IMPORTANT.

Yea Shuri show em up.

Okay quick pause, I love love LOVE how Shuri is smarter. It’s a powerful moment for females BUT it’s not done in a way that’s condescending to males! It’s not saying women power because men bad, she’s just good! (And she has had access to technology they never could have but I digress). More of this please Hollywood. Don’t let being a female be the power. I don’t want strong female characters, I want strong characters who happen to be female. Ones who hold their own, have faults like anyone else, struggle, have weaknesses and strengths, but are strong without putting down others. Just a comment, just because a woman character may not be as strong as a man character, that is not saying she’s weak. If you’re the second strongest human in the world, you are NOT weak. You’re just not as strong as the strongest human ever, but that’s nothing against you. LET WOMEN STAND ON THEIR OWN MERITS WITHOUT SEX AFFECTING THEM!

Anyways

I love Shuri

I wish they had more time. She definitely could have done it. But stupid Thanos

Ughhhghhg

I know what many scenes are upcoming... with quill and peter and vision and everyone else

Let👏🏻Bucky👏🏻Have👏🏻Peace👏🏻

Thank you Nat!!! I love that Nat is so protective and selfless.

GET THIS MAN A SHIELD

Bucky needs love please. He’s my stand in, manipulated, greasy, long haired, dark and mysterious, stabby boy. (Also I need Bucky and Loki to meet. But let Loki finish his show (and come out of it alive because if he doesn’t I will sue) and be the antihero hero we need. Please. If he doesn’t get reintroduced into the mcu as a hero I will sue.

Thor, sweetie, are you a masochist?

Back to wakanda

Oh no, bad CGI, floating head Bruce banner. I’ll let it slide... sigh....

Can’t like, you just rain bombs on them forever?

JIBARI TRIBE YEA BOYYYYY

Sorry Proxima Midnight, you look like a frog and your name sounds like a middle schooler’s OC.

How nice. Diplomatic meeting.

“Thanos will have nothing but dust and blood.” Reeeeeeally wish you didn’t say that, T’Challa...

Yay big CGI battle commence! It’s like a really expensive animated cartoon at this point

WAKANDA FOREVER!

Poor Bucky. Forgot this dude doesn’t know much about the modern world.

Ahhhh Kamikazi aliens

I just wanna say that I love that Wakanda still has the artistic culture in their clothing and tradition all the while having badass, super advanced technology.

Why can’t they just rain bombs down the whole fight lol. Rhodey has those super nice bombs, like, do that they he whole time? Please? Why do you not have a barrier around the entire king.

No M’Baku, it’s not the end of wakanda. But half of all life, yea

WAKANDA FOREVER YEAAAAAAA

They should honesty all have nano tech suits like black panther lol. Or iron man suits. Fine maybe the most powerful one with the best quality material for the king, but besides that, yknow.

Wow Steve is hot with a beard.

So much happening at once. Thor, Wakanda, Vormir, Knowhere, am I missing anything?

Okay, but what IS the full force of a star? Like in Newton’s or something? Juls? Is it heat?

What’s this metal? How does it fare with vibranium?

Get off your wooden butt, groot.

“He needs the axe” are you Thor, the god of axes?

Soooo, I thought Thor didn’t NEED the hammer, it just helped him concentrate his powers or act as a conduit. Is that retconned already?

Cmon groot, put down your game. Soooo, is Groot worthy? He technically lifted it. Or is it a technicality because it wasn’t fully finished yet?

Cmon bucky, use that fancy arm of yours.

Wow they’re getting destroyed.

They need wanda to help.

BADASS ENTRANCE BABYYYY

How did Thor know to come to wakanda?

Floaty head Bruce

“BRING ME THANOS!”

Ahhhhhahahaha yeaaaaaa

Cry Thanos. Do it. I hate you.

Much more of a purple grape nutsack.

Oh gosh... I know what Peter Quill is going to do. I still don’t hate him.

“With all six stone I would simply snap my fingers. They would all cease to exist.” Orrrr, now hear me out, I know I sound like a broken record now but... MAYBE DOUBLE THE RESOURCES INSTEAD?? That’s not mercy. That’s not up to you to decide whether or not someone’s better off dead.

Smoosh

Yea quill has experience with the power stone

AIM FOR THE HEAD

Cmon it’s basic zombie tactics

I love peter quill lmao

Go capey!!!

Magic with a kick!

Poor Peter

CAPEY NOOOOOO

Wow he’s OP

Ouch quill just got majorly clotheslined

NEBULA

“Where’s Gamora?” 😭😭😭 SHE CARES AGHHHH

Restrain him! Work it mantis!!!

Why even remove the gauntlet, just slit his throat... kill him....

Quill no... stop being cocky...

Oh no

Quill please don’t

JUST SLIT THANOS’ THROAT

Quill please....

Poor quill. Just lost the person who really really loved him

Okay, I still love star lord. Idc what others think. He reacted realistically. If you hate peter quill for how he reacted, you better also hate Tony Stark for how he reacted to bucky when he learned bucky killed his parents despite knowing for a fact that bucky was brainwashed. Yes it was annoying... yes they were so close, but quill is so human here. I don’t hate him. He gets too much hate for acting like any normal person would have. Distraught, grief filled, he lost his love. Someone who helped him open up and finally move on from his mother’s death and fathers villainy.

Spider man saving mantis gives me life

How did that power stone blast not kill them?

Clearly Thanos has played Majora’s Mask. At least he has good taste.

So close vision.... but I know... I know what happens.

YES BUCKY AND ROCKET GUN CIRCLE.

Lmao give rocket Bucky’s old arm.

“I am Groot.” “I am Steve Rogers.” Comedy gold

Cmon Thor, go after the big one first.

Cmon wanda, save them. We need some scarlet witch magic up here to stop these

Okay that was so cool. AND THEN SHE USED THE BLADES

Oh no but now Shuri is alone

So close yet so far.... Dangit... vision was almost good

Ouch. Bonk to the head

YEA BLACK WIDOW

BADASS TIME

AND OKOYE!!

LETS GOOOOOOO

BADASS WOMEN

Ouch poor vision

Cmon Thor back up vision

Please

Hulk is in his feels

Cmon hulk grow up

Ooooh smart move banner

Aaaaand he’s gone

Giant blade look oit

Corvus, screw off.

YEA STEVE

WHERE IS THOR WHEN YOU NEED HIM

CMON NAT

Oh dang. Nice one wanda. But also, sheesh. Helluva way to go. But no big.

Yea vision. Stabby time.

Now vision and Steve, kiss.

Spider man saving everyone’s lives.

YEA STRANGE

Where was this in New York???

MULTIPLYING

WHY DIDNT YOU DO THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE????

Oh no

Well then... ouch. Soooo where’s the real stone???

Hey look Tony, you have a fan.

Okay I’m just pissed odd they didn’t just kill Thanos when they had him subdued. Like, worry about the glove AFTER he’s not longer a threat

Oof

Tony is taking a beating

HE WAS STABBED

WHAT

I don’t want your respect Thanos. That’s an insult.

They will remember him. They will remember him Thanos. When he kills you.

DOCTOR STRANGE WHAT?

You really doing this??? I guess he knows what needs to unfold for them to win... dang. I wouldn’t trust him tho.

Peter Quill in berserker mode

Where’d he go?

Name dropping the second movie

Strange knows everything about to go down. Who dies, who lives, what Thanos is about to do... he’s accepting his soon dusted demise because Stark needs to live...

AIM FOR THE HEAD UGHHHHH

Stop teleporting. That’s Loki’s gimmick.

KILL THIS RAISIN LOOKING NUTSACK UGH

Homie way too OP

Poor wanda and Vis...

HER LIP TREMBLE

PHENOMENAL ACTING

SAY I LOVE YOU

I JUST FEEL YOU

AGGHHHH IM CRYING AGAIN

Poor wanda. To have to kill her love... this.. this is a sacrifice Thanos... not your murder....

Wow Steve is holding back Thanos with pure brute

WANDA IS SO STRONG

HOLDING BACK THANOS WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BREAKING THE MIND STONE

I LOVE YOU

AGHHHHHHHHH

And I know what happens next...

Poor wanda

Piss off thanos you understand nothing

You lost more than she could know? Bull crap. You are causing everyone to lose...

Cruel reality. Wanda has to see him die twice. RIP Vision

RIP half of all life...

AIM FOR THE DAMN HEAD

IF THOR KILLED HIM THEY COULD HAVE USED THE GAUNTLET TO BRING EVERYONE BACK TO LIFE. USED THE TIME STONE TO REVIVE THEM ALL.

How did that not kill Thanos tho. It may not have been a head shot but still.

Lil Gamora

What is this place?

Is this the soul realm?

Thanos, I hope you suffer forever. You deserve all the pain...

Rest In Peace: Vision, Loki, Bucky, T’Challa, Groot, Wanda Maximoff, Sam Wilson, Mantis, Drax, Peter Quill, Dr. Strange, Peter Parker (I don’t feel so good), and everyone else...

Thank you Nebula.

Thanos, you do NOT deserve to retire peacefully—wipe that smile off of your face

Oop, Rest In Peace Maria Hill and Nick Fury too... Motherfu— (so close Sammy boy...)

Yea Thanos you didn’t really think that through. Much more than half will died since other people rely on other peoples lives

Good thing he hit that button last minute huh? I wonder how captain marvel would fare in the TVA? are her powers considered magic? I mean, she clearly doesn’t know everything since she only just learned about Thanos (which is funny because she was supposedly traversing the universe to protect people)

Welp... onto movie two!

[aion-rsa]

WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series

https://ift.tt/38r7iqE

This article contains WandaVision spoilers.

After two months and nine episodes, WandaVision came to a close. One of the more unique projects to come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the show mixed mystery and horror with sitcom pastiche and understandings of grief under the superhero umbrella. The first step in both Phase 4 and Disney+’s Marvel lineup came out a success and built towards future projects.

Then again, its mysterious nature worked against it at times. Figuring out answers on a weekly basis meant trying to stay one step ahead of the show and sometimes it got viewers going in the wrong direction. There was no Mephisto or X-Men or Fantastic Four. On one hand, you can say that people are getting angry about stuff that they were never promised, but there is a feeling that when combing over the details of the show, they did cause us to ask some questions that never quite had a satisfying answer.

After all, even Agnes’ joke story about being out of town due to her mother-in-law visiting proved to be an important detail down the line.

As we sit back and wait for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to pick up where our power couple left off, here are some lingering questions we’re left with from WandaVision.

What happened to the beekeeper?

The beekeeper was the first truly haunting moment of the series. Sure, “Stop it!” and the exploding radio were creepy in their own ways, but the idea of Wanda and Vision walking outside at night to find a lone beekeeper sneaking out of the sewer and quietly looking at them was outright nightmare fuel. It was a major instance of wondering what in God’s name was going on, and that’s even before Wanda simply noped out, hit rewind, and retconned the scene from happening.

We later discover that the beekeeper is SWORD Agent Franklin and his appearance is just Wanda’s reality making sense of a man in a hazmat suit. We see him crawling out of the sewer from his point of view, but then…nothing.

While the reveal of his identity doesn’t lead us to AIM henchmen or Swarm (star of Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark), it does explain the nature of Wanda’s neighborhood. That still makes it weird that we never hear from him again.

Or do we? While it’s never made explicit on the show itself, supposedly the guy playing the ice cream man in the episode 5 intro is the same actor as Agent Franklin. Perhaps the beekeeper didn’t die, but was just assimilated into a happier role.

Who was in Witness Protection?

FBI Agent James Woo gets the story rolling by coming to Westview in search of someone in witness protection. The complete lack of anyone having any information or even memory of this person is what gets SWORD involved and Monica Rambeau sucked into Westview. In the end, the identity is just not important.

But it feels like it should be, right? Having Woo go from coast to coast to follow up on this person seems pretty major. You would think it would have come up here or there, but nope. If anything, I guess it just goes to show that Jimmy Woo is a true professional for keeping his trap shut.

Who is the aerospace engineer?

I can understand that throwing Evan Peters’ Quicksilver at us was a good way to distract us from everything Agnes was doing, but the aerospace engineer? Come on! That was definitely more deliberate than the witness protection and they know it.

Monica brings up a friend who is smart enough to get her to break into the Hex all over again. All that’s missing is a smile and wink to the camera. The writers gave us something so blatant that it would be ridiculous NOT to speculate who she was talking about. This had to be an important cameo leading to something major down the line. Would we get Reed Richards? Blue Marvel? Beast? Dr. Nemesis? NFL Superpro?

Even when Monica’s dream vehicle didn’t do the job, it was still believed that this aerospace engineer would still get a dramatic shout-out down the line or a post-credits scene. Nope. At most, this throwaway friend is like that scene in Thor when Erik Selvig was talking up his gamma scientist friend who went missing because of SHIELD.

What did the commercials really mean?

It isn’t hard to figure out that the commercials were based on Wanda’s trauma: the bomb that killed her parents, her time with Hydra, the events of Captain America: Civil War, and her inability to deal with her grief in a meaningful way that didn’t involve torturing and enslaving innocent people. While it isn’t really important to see how the sausage is made, I’m left wondering what the commercials actually were.

From the fourth episode, we do know that the commercials were part of the transmissions. Darcy was able to see the one for the watch, but was focused on something else. Otherwise, I’m sure she would have been wondering about the inclusion of the HYDRA logo. The way everyone in the SWORD collaboration just glossed over the commercials is rather weird.

One of the popular theories was that the man and woman featured in all the live-action commercials were going to be revealed as Wanda and Pietro’s parents. That turned out not to be true, so…were they also Westview citizens? That would be disturbing because to make sense of the commercial narratives and the sitcom narratives, that family would have to be forcefully separated from the rest of the town.

Did Agatha magic up the stop-motion commercial for Yo-Magic? Because that was about her too much to be something Wanda’s psyche came up with.

Is there more to “Fake Pietro” Ralph Bohner?

“Fietro” was the big red herring of the series. After all that wondering of whether he was the first true step in bringing mutants into the MCU or if he was literal Satan in disguise, we discovered he was Agnes’ hypnotized “husband” whose payoff was nothing more than a dick joke.

Then again, he was already called Peter in the Fox universe, so it’s not such a hard stretch to make him a Bohner.

Read more

TV

Will The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Become a Victim of WandaVision’s Success?

By Kirsten Howard

Movies

A Tale of Two Pietros: Explaining the MCU X-Men Problem With a Mutant Speedster

By Gavin Jasper

Monica’s ability to see energy in its various forms allowed her to figure out that Agatha was controlling Ralph with a mystical necklace. Once she tore it off, Ralph immediately gave up and that was the last we saw of him. But what does that mean in terms of his powers?

I imagine Agatha gave him the speed powers so he could play the part of Pietro in order to get intel on Wanda’s magic. Just because she no longer controls him, does that mean he’s physically back to normal as well? Because, hey, he might not be the Quicksilver from the X-Men universe, but he could totally play the role of Quicksilver if Marvel ends up doing a cinematic version of the Thunderbolts or Dark Avengers.

Where did White Vision go?

Vision’s Soul fought Vision’s Body and after we got enough lasers and explosions, the two talked out their differences. Hex Vision convinced his pasty counterpart to stand down and did him the favor of unlocking his dormant memories (that he asked permission was such a nice touch). White Vision recalled everything from the moment of his creation to Thanos pulling out the Mind Stone. Accepting who he is, White Vision flew off and was never referenced again.

I supposed the real question to ask is when will we see him next? Obviously, he has a lot to think about. He’s an emotional husk with lots of data to work through. Does he love Wanda in this form? Can he still love Wanda in this form, knowing what she’s become? As someone who was pro-government oversight, how will it affect him knowing that the government outright betrayed his wishes and memory? Where does someone like White Vision go from here?

Maybe we’ll see him in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Perhaps, when a new Avengers movie finally happens, Vision will show himself again. Or if they go in the direction of Young Avengers, he could be the wise father to the sons he’s never met.

It would be pretty wild if White Vision relearned how to convey emotions by watching Simon Williams movies.

What are the twins, exactly?

“FOR THE CHILDREN!” is what the neighbors echoed like a brainwashed cult, culminating in Wanda’s very unusual pregnancy. It could have been Wanda’s subconscious telling her to have kids. It could have been Agatha testing out her ability to create life from nothing. It also may have been the children themselves.

We never did fully get a grasp on what Billy and Tommy were. Wanda had a very unnatural birth and, outside of being able to age themselves a couple times, the boys seemed fairly down to earth and good-natured, while also still capable of questioning Wanda’s reality. There was nothing ominous about them outside of the weird nature of their very existence.

When Wanda relaxed the Hex, they started to disappear. When she ended the Hex completely, they once again vanished. Simply saying that they were two kids Wanda conjured up out of thin air would have been an acceptable answer.

Read more

TV

WandaVision: What Wanda’s Kids Mean for the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

By Gavin Jasper

TV

Will The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Become a Victim of WandaVision’s Success?

By Kirsten Howard

Instead, when Wanda fully accepted what her reality was and that it had to end, she thanked her children for “choosing” her to be their mother. She was able to explain what Vision was in the grand scheme of things, but she remained silent when it came to those kids. They were an outside force that sought her out. That’s what her final conversation certainly implies.

The post-credits scene had her studying the Darkhold while being alerted to Billy and Tommy screaming for help. They still exist, in some form, somewhere. Their true nature probably won’t be better explained until the Doctor Strange sequel.

Speculation on this one is a pain in the ass because even the comics explanation is a whirlwind of confusion.

What really happened to Agatha Harkness?

Wanda doesn’t kill Agatha, but does punish her by forcing her to be stuck in the living Hell of portraying Agnes the nosey neighbor. It’s a harsh punishment, but her intent doesn’t jibe with Agatha’s post-Hex status. People know about her. Even if the last few in-universe episodes of WandaVision weren’t on the SWORD airwaves, she was still playing the role of final boss and having magic fights in the sky. The people of Westview saw that.

Wouldn’t this mean that she can’t just go back to her “nosy neighbor” role and that she’s likely destined for a cell? She’ll be lucky if the government isn’t doing experiments on her, which is extra messed up when you imagine her acting like Ned Flanders.

At least she’ll be kept subdued for when the Scarlet Witch needs her. Or maybe she too will join whatever Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers team we may see down the line.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Just give us more Kathryn Hahn, damn it!

The post WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2OFQ8yB

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[heyhihellowhatsup0]

Dark Webs (Dark! Peter Parker x Reader) - Chapter Three

Warnings:  Topics of death, PTSD and depression,  substance abuse, angst, violence (this chapter does get a little graphic for those sensitive to gore and violence) ignoring some of the MCU timeline/AU

Word Count: 5562 (A bit longer - but I promise, it’s worth it!)

Summary: Still not giving up on Peter, you continue to try and find a way to get him back. Only to find out that Peter has other plans for you...

A/N: Thank you all so much for giving me your feedback on this series! Please continue to send me your thoughts and if you want to be added to the taglist, please Inbox me or reply to the post! Love you all!!

Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two

“Look at what we got here! Peter’s lightsaber collection,” you teased him, panning his camera towards his shelves, “Jeez, Parker. I thought you were dorky, but didn’t think this much. You even have them alphabetized,” you let out a giggle, panning over each and every one slowly before Peter grabbed the camera away from you.

He pointed it towards you, extending his favorite lightsaber at you, “If you mock the Jedi, you must fight the Jedi!” Peter exclaims as he lights it up to show off for you.

“Yup, you just got dorkier,” you tell him with a laugh. You grabbed the the red one with a maniacal look, “The First Order will seize you now…” you told him as you lit your saber up to match his.

“No!” Peter shouts for dramatic effect, slamming his lightsaber up against yours. He let out a roar of laughter, his camera falling to the bed as he begins to get into his reenactment, “You’re dead, Y/N!”

You rolled your eyes as you fall on your back on his mattress, your lightsaber pressed up against his as he hovered over you, “Not today, Parker!” you shout back. But before he’s able to finish you off, you slide his plastic lightsaber into his own chest.

“Ugh!” Peter shouted out, pretending to die. He collapsed on top of you, making you laugh as he gurgled,  “You killed me, you killed me!” He groaned as his hands went to his chest.

Peter turned his lightsaber off, sliding it into his belt loop with a confident look, “The force is strong with me. Don’t you ever forget it, Y/N,” Peter told you as he stuck his tongue out at you playfully.

You finally open your eyes, coming back to life as you sit up on your elbows, “You could never kill anyone, even if you wanted to,” you said to him, turning your lightsaber off and tossing it over to him.

“That’s a good thing, right?” Peter asked, giving you a look as he placed the lightsabers back in the organized order he had them in originally.

“I would say so. You don’t have a murderous bone in that spider-infected body of yours,” you joke, grabbing his camera and pointing it directly at him, “Am I wrong?” you tested him, zooming in on his face.

Peter inhaled, thinking about his response before he leaned forward closer to you. His face close to yours as he looked directly in your eyes instead of looking into the camera.

“Y/N, I’d never hurt anyone unless I really had to,” Peter said with seriousness in his eyes. You knew he was telling the truth right then and there and that he was certainly one of the good guys.

“Well the best part about having Spider-

“-Hey, you’ve been here a while, you okay?” Harry asked, poking his head into his office where you were sitting at his desk, trying to work on your next piece.

Startled at the sudden interruption, you slammed your laptop shut, wiping a tear away from your cheek as you tried to pretend that that video you watched wasn’t real.

“Uh, yeah. Just got a little side tracked, I think,” you told him, still feeling uneasy from the events that occurred last night, “I think I need to just finish this in the morning,” you finally decided.

Harry shuffled over, leaning his chin on your shoulder as he kissed below your ear, “Maybe you should call out from work tomorrow,” he suggested.

“I can’t, I have a deadline,” you let out a sigh, thinking about the article that needed to get done.

Late the other night when you were with Peter, some of the tech that Peter had stolen and given to Kingpin a few weeks ago was used in a local robbery from a hospital, stealing high tech medical supplies. Now you were convinced whoever was buying the tech from Kingpin was using it for further gain. This went far beyond Stark Technology and Peter.

“I may stop by the hospital and see if I can get behind the police tape too. You used to work for that hospital right?” You asked Harry, remembering he worked in the science labs there while working under his father before his passing, “Do you think maybe you could get me in there?”

“Y/N, stop!” Harry told you. He swiveled your chair around to look at you. Putting your face in between his palms, his crisp green eyes stared back at you with worry and fear, “You just came back with bruises up and down your arm and I didn’t ask what that was about. But now you want to go back out there? For what? For Spider-Man? To prove that none of this is your beloved Spider-Man? You’re going to get yourself killed, Y/N!” Harry said, trying to knock some sense into you.

“What has Spider-Man done for you in the last few months, Y/N? Come on,” Harry said a bit more aggressively.

You were silent. You wanted to be angry with him, but how could you be? Spider-Man had been missing since Tony Stark died. The remaining Avengers were doing their parts in all areas of the world, and New York was in utter chaos. In a time when the city needed Spider-Man the most, he ran away from his responsibility. And nothing that you were doing was helping.

Harry may not have been the biggest fan of Spider-Man, but many people weren’t. Especially now. And sadly, you were beginning to become one of those people.

“I know you’re trying, you want to bring Spider-Man back but,” Harry stopped, licking his lips in frustration, trying to form the words, “I don’t think he is coming back, Y/N. He’s...the one doing all of this, don’t you see?” He finally spoke the words that made you cringe.

“It’s not Spider-Man, it’s…” You trail off as tears form in your eyes as Harry continued to hold you still, swallowing the large pill stuck in your throat, “It’s just not him. I know for a fact that this isn’t Spider-Man. You have to trust me, Harry,” you told him as you felt your voice grow weaker.

Harry nodded, swiping a tear with his thumb, “I do trust you. But you have to trust me. You need a break from this,” He told you. The edges of his mouth curving to form a smile.

You knew Harry was just trying to protect you, but you couldn’t help but be annoyed at how nonchalant he was about all of this. This was your job, your career that you had chosen. Working for The Daily Bugle wasn’t exactly your dream publication, but it was a start. And you were getting really good at your job. Why couldn’t he see that?

But arguing with Harry wasn’t going to get you anywhere. If anything, it would just make him think your agitation just meant you needed even more time off. Which you didn’t, you were just agitated because Peter was making your job a living hell.

“I think I’m going to work from here tomorrow, and get this done,” You finally told him, trying your best to hide your irritation as he pulled his hands away from your face, “I’ll call the hospital in the morning to get some quotes, and then stop by my place and pick up some of my things?” You tell him, trying to ease his mind a bit, even though you were still annoyed.

You wanted to stop by your place anyway. You were running out of fresh clothes at Harry’s, and in addition, you knew you needed to get some of your notes about Peter’s plans in a safe place before Harry came snooping around. It was only a matter of time.

“How about I take you to dinner tomorrow night at that new lounge in the village?” Harry asks, pressing a gently kiss to your lips as he stands up and grabs one of his folders of paperwork from his desk.

You blink slowly, unable to process right away. You had so much going on right now, a date night was on the lowest portion of your to-do list, “Yeah. Sounds..uh, great,” You told him with a forced smile. He didn't seem to notice though.

Harry shut the door behind you, to leave you with your work again. You opened up the laptop, forgetting to X out of the video you were watching earlier. It started replaying again, and your thoughts went back to exactly how you were feeling earlier.

------

Peter tossed the bag of goods on the table. Pulling out the contents of the bag, one by one. The blasters, an older Chitauri gun, and last but certainly not least, Iron Spider. He was absolutely ready to part ways with that thing.

“This is the most powerful batch I’ve brought you so far,” Peter told Kingpin, putting a blaster on his hand and shooting it across the room, burning a hole into the wall in the blink of an eye.

Kingpin looked at the suit with a smirk, noticing it still in perfect condition, “That couldn’t have been easy to get,” He remarked, holding the suit in his hand to examine it.

“Nope. And the next heist I’m doing is going to be worse, so I’m gonna need an advance,” Peter answered back, folding his arms in front of his chest. He looked around the room, it was just him and Kingpin, surprisingly.

“Do you have any idea what this suit can do?” Kingpin asked, but it was more of him telling Peter. He looked down at it in awe, looking at the iron mask that came with it.

Of course Peter knew, he thought to himself. He wore it. He was in that thing when he died, and came back to life. He defeated Thanos in that stupid suit. He even witnessed Tony Stark, the man who made the suit for him, die while he was wearing it.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Peter answered bluntly. He looked unamused when Kingpin shot him a menancing glare, “Anyway, I’ll take my money when you’re done fucking that stupid suit with your eyes,” He told him flatly.

Kingpin glared furiously at him, shocked that he was talking to him in such a manor, “I’ll give you 150k for the suit, 25k for the rest of it. I’ll give you 5k in advance if you can get the product here in three days,” He told him, staring down at the suit.

“Whatever, not the first time you fucked me over,” Peter scoffed at him. Money was money and he just wanted to get rid of the suit, “Whose buying this trash anyway?” He finally asked.

“New guy,” Kingpin answered, handing the suit over to his subordinate to put it in storage until it was sold, “Never met him, he just wires the money and we drop it off at his shipping station on the loading docks,” He answers Peter flatly, without even looking him in the eye.

Peter wrinkled his nose as his other peers walk over with his money waiting for him. He wasn’t in the mood to talk, he just wanted his money, maybe a drink, and to go home. Typically, he’d ask what this new guy was doing with it, but honestly, who cares. It’s not like Peter was doing any better when he was Spider-Man.

He grabbed the briefcase, tucking it under his arm. He didn’t thank Kingpin because, why would he? All Peter wanted was his money and to get the hell out of this shithole.

“That damn reporter!” Someone shouted, barging into the basement. It startled Peter, making him jump as he and Kingpin saw the guy running towards them holding a copy of The Daily Bugle, “She’s saying the hospital and Stark are connected,” He screamed, slamming a copy of the paper onto the table.

Peter looked and saw your name on the byline. Tensing his jaw, he folded his arms as he took a step back, “Well, they are,” He answered wisely.

“Shut up,” Kingpin lashed out at him, staring down at the paper as he read the first few paragraphs of the article on the cover of the paper.

New York Medical Center has fallen as the most recent victim in the recent burglaries that have been taking place across the city. The hospital’s laboratory was targeted, having over $3 million in supplies stolen. Supplies including radiation injections, several DNA kits, and other drugs such as oxycodone were taken from the lab.

Police have yet to comment on whether or not this robbery is linked with the recent ones that had taken place over at Stark Tower, but a recent matchbook from “The Devil’s Pin” bar was discovered at the hospital. Possibly making these two in fact, a connection to a possible mob heist.

“Who’s the fucking moron who dropped the matchbook in the hospital, huh?” Kingpin shouted, flinging the newspaper across the room with fury. He looked over at the two men who participated in the heist, staring at each other with terror.

He walked around as more people filled the room. Peter inhaled sharply, just wanting to get the hell out of here, “Can I go the fuck home? I wasn’t even a part of this hospital shit,” he told the group.

“Weren’t you the one we asked to take care of her to begin with?” Kingpin asked, walking closer to Peter with his cane in hand, “You call this taking care of her?” He asked.

Kingpin raised his cane over his head and brought it down hard onto Peter’s back, causing Peter to hit the floor instantly. He cussed as the pain stung throughout his body, trying to get back up slowly.

“I ought to kill you right now for getting us into this mess,” Kingpin said, pointing his cane directly underneath Peter’s chin.

Peter sat up a little more, his healing powers coming in stronger than he had thought as he felt himself get some of his strength back.

He wasn’t afraid of Kingpin. He wasn’t even afraid of dying at this point. He could take Kingpin and all of these guys out right now in a matter of seconds if he wanted to.

He just didn’t want to.

“If you want to kill me, then do it,” Peter groaned out, standing back up on his feet, “But you need me. I’m the only one who can get in Stark Tower without setting off alarms and get you your product. So if you want to kill me, kill me. But let’s be honest Fisk, I’m the best you got,” he spat at him.

Kingpin looked at Peter with thoughts running through his head. He looked back down at his cane, and then back again at Peter.

“Yes, I suppose you are a good resource. And it would be a shame to waste you,” Kingpin answered, his back towards Peter as he walked towards the group, “So let’s call this next task a punishment to clean up this mess you started,” He said, pointing towards two of the other guys that Peter knew were involved in the hospital robbery.

Kingpin handed the blasters Peter had stolen for him over to the two guys, pivoting back towards Peter, “Since you three screwed up, you three fix it,” he answered, taking Peter’s briefcase off of the floor, “Get rid of her, for good this time,” he said as he walked away, slamming the basement door shut on the three of them.

------

You look at the time on your phone and realize it’s already 6 PM. You promised Harry you’d meet him at the lounge for dinner by 7, which only gave you about an hour to head back to your apartment to grab some of your things.

Barging through your front door, you almost let out a sigh of relief. You hadn’t been home in about two weeks, and sometimes with Harry, it felt a bit suffocating. You missed having your apartment to yourself. It was much smaller in comparison to Harry’s penthouse, but, it was yours.

You grabbed some fresh clothes, stuffing them into your bag as you selected your favorite cocktail dress to change into before you went to meet up with Harry for your date along with a matching pair of heels. Maybe Harry was right, and a night out would be a decent enough distraction. At least for one night.

Taking your notebook with all of Peter’s blueprints and secrets in it, you figured you had enough notes at this point where you didn’t need it right now. You went in between your floorboards where you kept a bunch of things that confirmed your connection with Peter. Evidence, if you will.

Lifting the floorboards up, you stuck the notebook beside your favorite framed photograph of you and Peter. It was one of you both when you went to Coney Island on a school trip. You remembered you and Peter laughing as Ned got sick on Cyclone and MJ refused to go on any of the rides. But she took that photo of you and Peter. You brushed your thumb against the frame, letting all of the memories flood back to you. You turned your head away from it as you slid the floorboard back into place.

After changing into your cocktail dress, you heard your phone ring from the other room. It was probably Harry wondering if you caught the subway you told him you were going to take to meet him. He was already assuming you’d be late, you figured.

Glancing down at your phone, you didn't recognize the number. But Source had told you that he wouldn’t be contacting you for a while. No way this was him?

“Hello?” You answered the phone, continuing to pack your belongings in your bag. Your heels were beginning to make it a little more difficult to walk around, so you moved slowly around the apartment, making sure you had everything you wanted before you went back to Harry’s.

“Get out of there. Now,” The deep, dark voice said on the other line, “We got an alert that they are on their way to you, and they aren’t happy,” They said.

And then they hung up. That’s all you had was a short warning before there was a banging at the door. It was already too late. You run towards your drawer where you kept your stronger taser gun, and grabbed it.

You heard the door beginning to rattle, and there was no time left to leave. The only thing you could do was hide. But these guys were professionals, and just hiding in a closet was going to be the first place they would check.

Your apartment was a tiny one bedroom, and the hiding options were very limited. In the pinch you were in, you opted towards the fire escape. Crawling as close to the edge, and away from the window as possible.Your taser clutched in your hand as tightly as humanly possibly.

Placing your hand over your mouth, you turned your taser on when you heard the voices enter your apartment. They shined a flashlight into the living room and you could see the light being cast against the fire escape.

“Not in here,” one man with a deep voice said. You heard them stomping around with their boots as they made their way from room to room, “Do we even know if she lives here right now?”

“I don’t think she’s here,” someone said, a voice that you recognized.

Peter’s voice.

Your eyes grew as you heard his voice. Sounding so matter-of-fact as the flashlights scurried throughout your apartment. He came to kill you, that’s why Source was warning you to run.

Peter walked around your apartment, looking at the things that you had left around your place. No photographs, which seemed so unlike you. He remembered your old room, how you had Polaroid pictures of him, MJ, Ned, even Flash covering your wall. He remembered all the decals of quotes about friendship you had under each and every picture. He even remembered the particular quote you had underneath a photo of the two of you.

You were the one who got him into photography in the first place so it didn’t feel like you without photographs of you and your friends and your family. But Peter changed a lot, so he wouldn’t be surprised at all if you did as well.

“What makes you think that, Delaney?” the other one asked Peter, stepping into the bedroom. He pointed at the closet, noticing the clothes have been rummaged through.

“I think he’s trying to get out of this again, what’s up with you and this reporter?” the opposing one said, pointing at Peter. He gave him a shove against his chest, “Do you know her?!”

Peter wasn’t going to take anything from these two morons and shoved him right back, forgetting how strong he actually was and pushed him into the kitchen table, “No, I don’t fucking know her. I just don’t think she’s here,” he answered back.

The blonde guy didn’t like Peter’s aggression and wrapped Peter in a chokehold, pulling him backward to knock him off balance, “You know something we don’t there, Tony?” He asked him in a calm voice.

You grabbed your taser and unlocked it. Staying as quiet as you possibly could, you saw a good shot of the bigger guy who Peter knocked over still trying to get himself back up. While Peter and the blonde guy were squabbling you took a deep breath before pulling the trigger.

Aiming directly at him, you hoped that you were in a good enough range that it would attach to him. You squeezed the trigger gently, setting it off as the electric  current ran a wire, clipping onto his neck.

You let out a sigh of relief as you unclipped the wire, watching him jolt and yell as he fell back onto the floor. The blonde guy threw Peter down, his eyes now on you as you stood still on the fire escape.

“And you said she wasn’t home,” he said as he smiled in your direction. He pulled the blaster out of his belt, and slid it onto his wrist, never taking his eyes off of you.

Recharging your taser, you tried to shoot at him, but he wasn’t close enough. Instead, it landed on the ground, right in front of Peter’s feet. You swallowed thickly, feeling a large lump forming in your throat.

I will not die today, you said to yourself as he took a step towards you with the blaster in his hand.

You looked over at Peter, dead in the eyes as he looked at the blonde guy walking towards you. He saw the look in your eyes, begging for him to help you. Begging for some sort of assistance. To become Spider-Man again and help you.

“I guess you’re not here looking for me to autograph your newspaper,” you told the blonde in a snarky tone, leaning up against the fire escape railing. You were trying your best to keep your composure, but on the inside, you were terrified.

He pointed the blaster right at you, “We gave you a warning, and you didn’t listen,” he reminded you, taking another step.

“Yeah, because I love listening to mobsters telling me how to do my job,” you leaned against the railing, with nowhere else to go but down. You took a glance at the height you were at and were beginning to regret taking the apartment on the twelfth floor.

The blonde guy had enough of you, and fired the blaster towards your foot. Your head hit the railing as you fell to the floor, your eyes still on Peter who wasn’t far behind him.

“I swear, I should’ve killed you instantly,” he told you as he stared down at you, groaning on the metal of the fire escape.

Peter froze, feeling his chest tighten…

“Karen, activate instant kill!”

All different types of armed creatures, coming after Peter. His iron arms and legs helping him out as he clawed his way through. Peter continued to web them up and fight, his abilities amplified in a way he never felt before. He observed limbs being torn off, and what he suspected was blood hit his face. He was killing, wasn’t he?

They weren’t human. But they were living, breathing things, weren’t they? They were beings and Peter was..killing them. Even if it was with the help of his suit, he still initiated it. He made the call to kill. He was the one responsible for ending their lives, regardless of whether or not they were attacking him.

He was the one who ended all of their lives. He pulled the trigger. Something he never done before...

“Ugh, I don’t got this! Help!”

Peter lunged after the blonde guy. He grabbed him by his scalp and brought his forehead down onto the railing of the fire escape. Blood sprayed out from the top of his head as Peter repeated his actions. You laid there motionless and in pain, trying to call for Peter to stop, but you could barely get your words out.

You watched as Peter took the blonde and pummeled him over and onto the ground. You tried screaming out for Peter, but still nothing. You were able to pick yourself back up as Peter pinned him down. He removed his blaster from his hand, and tossed it to the side.

“I knew it. I fucking knew it, you lying shit!” the blonde shouted at Peter. You looked over and saw someone you didn’t recognize anymore. Whoever that was, was no longer Peter, any hint of him that remained was gone now in this moment.

Peter screamed in his face before punching him right in his jaw. You could see the blood spurting out from his mouth as he kept punching. You stood there frozen, completely terrified as you watched Peter refusing to get off him.

You heard him gurgling over Peter’s wails between punches. There was already so much blood, and he was choking on it. Peter wasn’t even aware of his own strength, you thought. The sounds coming out of the both of them were some of the most unsettling sounds you’ve ever heard. Especially coming from Peter.

Finally feeling yourself coming back from the blast, you moved as quickly as you could over towards them. You pulled on Peter’s shoulders, trying to move him off of him, but he was too strong.

“Peter! Stop it! Stop, Peter!” you shout at him, realizing you called him by his full name in front of these guys.

But Peter took a sharp breath before giving him one last hit, right in his face, where you finally got a good look at him. A knot tied around your stomach when you realize exactly what Peter had done.

You managed to pull Peter off of him finally. His breathing was ragged and you could have sworn he was crying, he’d never tell you but, you could definitely hear it in his voice as he tried catching his breath. There was blood all over his knuckles, all over the metal, and his hair was drenched in his own sweat.

Both you and Peter stared down silently at the lifeless body, your hand on his shoulder as he managed to stand back up, “Fuck,” you breathed out, not sure of what you should or shouldn’t say right now. Maybe silence was the best way to go.

Peter leaned over the railing, beginning to empty his gut over the edge and onto the ground floor. You just stood there, completely helpless until you realized the two of you weren’t alone. You pivoted your head to turn back towards your apartment only to see the body was missing.

Just great, you thought.

“We need to call somebody,” You finally suggest, looking down at the body. You felt your stomach turning like Peter’s, wincing at the body that couldn’t stare back at you because it’s face was entirely deformed.

“Get out of here,” Peter finally spoke, wiping his face as he stared down at the body, “Don’t ever look for me again. Just get out of here,” he said, reaching down to pick him up.

You felt tears beginning to prick your eyes, noticing every hair was sticking up on Peter’s arms and neck, “No. Let me help you, I can figure this out,” you told him, hearing your voice quivering with fear.

“Don’t you fucking get it, Y/N?! I don’t want your help, I never asked! And because of you, look!” He practically screamed as he pointed towards the dead body lying beneath them, “So stay the fuck out of my life. I am not. Him. Anymore.  Do you understand? I came here to kill you, Y/N!” He shouted.

You shook your head, swallowing what he told you harshly, “But you wouldn’t have done it,” You tried to say, but you weren’t even sure if that was the truth anymore.

“Yes it is. I am not your fucking Spider-Man anymore! I killed him just like I killed him, okay? Just like I killed Tony, so knock if off.” he screamed, now getting in your face.

The only thing you could do was nod your head. With Peter inches away from your face, venom in his eyes, and now, with a taste of blood; you weren’t sure how to answer other than to just agree with him. You were afraid. And Peter was no match for your taser gun. You hoped deep down, he wouldn’t actually hurt you. But you also believed at one point Peter wouldn’t hurt anybody. Maybe this meant you really needed to let go of Peter once and for all.

“Good,” Peter answered as he lifted the body over his head. He stood on the railing, and you finally saw his web shooter attached to his wrist, “Because I will not hesitate to kill you if you don’t,” he said before springing up to the next high-rise.

------

Peter stood on the loading dock with the human-sized garbage bag sitting by his feet. He stared down at the bag, gritting his teeth together with anger. Not even angry that he killed him, he knew it was only a matter of time before he had to since beginning to work for Kingpin.

No, he was angry that you made him do it. If it weren’t for you, he’d be able to get away with most of the stuff he did. Was he proud of stealing Stark’s technology for who knows what? No, but he wasn’t exactly proud of killing Tony either.

If it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t have been forced to go to your place and try and kill you to begin with. But you were still alive, because of Peter. And now, that was another thing Peter had to deal with now. He killed one of his own, and you were left alive. There was no way Kingpin was going to let Peter go scot free now.

Why the fuck did he even save you? It was as if something had come over him, and he had to kill this guy to make sure you could live another day. Even if that meant risking Peter’s now. No, he didn’t want you dead, but he also didn’t want you around him either. He needed you out of his life, and was willing to do anything to push you out. But you continued to make his life worse.

The police were already on the scene due to one of your neighbors calling about a noise issue. There weren’t any bodies for them to look at. There wasn’t even blood on the scene. Peter assumed you went back and cleaned up after him before the cops showed up, but he wasn’t sure how you snuck around them so quickly.

It was only a matter of time before Peter would see a report in The Daily Bugle that you had written, calling it another break-in, poking your nose where it didn’t belong, no matter how many countless times Peter had asked you to stop. You would never quit, and he hated it.

He was done saving you. He was done saving himself. Whatever happened, happened. If Kingpin found him and killed him, so be it. Maybe he was finally ready to die.

Shoving a few more rocks into the back to make sure it would go all the way down, Peter tied a knot on the end of the bag. He really was dead, Peter noted. His skin was cold and hard, and his eyes stared at Peter with total emptiness.

Peter swallowed, picking the body up in one swift motion. He inhaled sharply as he heaved the body into the river, the excess water splashing up and hitting Peter at his ankles as soon as it hit the water.

He stayed until the bag sank down, until he couldn’t see it anymore. It was almost as if the Peter you once knew was in the bag with him, sinking down to the very bottom of the river, and the new Peter could no longer do anything to try and save them, they were cold, hard, and dead.

Chapter Four

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#tom holland #peter parker #spider-man #tom holland x reader #peter parker x reader #dark! peter parker #peter parker x you #tom holland imagine #spiderman x reader #spiderman #far from home

[rayshippouuchiha]

I came out of Endgame with tears in my eyes and my heart filled up to the brim with absolute seething rage.

Even as I write this now my hands shake with some sick mixture of sadness, rage, and bitter disappointment.

So I preface this by saying that I am emotionally compromised and some of my views might shift with time and distance.

But, for better or for worse, this is my first rage flushed take:

I am so disappointed and so angry that after all of the tension, all of the build, all of the time and sweat and tears, all of the loyalty, we were rewarded with this.

Endgame had its high points, I’m not saying that it didn’t.  There were some genuinely funny moments and some heart rending ones as well.

Every single second Tony Stark was on screen was flawless as always.  Robert Downey Jr. once again proved why he and he alone was suited for the role of Tony Stark and the task of carrying the majority of the MCU for the past 10+ years.

That’s not to say that the rest of the cast wasn’t good.  All of the actors all obviously brought their A game and then some when they were allowed to by what I loosely call a script.

So yeah, there were some highs.

But when its comes to Endgame’s low points?

Its low points were subterranean.

They lowered the bar and then they dug underneath it.

Again I’m writing this basically fresh from the theater and with my emotions still high so do forgive me if this is a bit jumbled around or if I ramble a bit as I cover some of the real issues I had with the film.

So, first thing to address was the overall tone of the film.

For this to be the much glorified Endgame, the “battle of our lives”, there was, in my opinion, a distinct lack of true tension in this film.  Instead of a fraught, nail biting, tension filled ride, Endgame is more of a ... brisk jog through some vaguely sticky situations.

Instead of playing the story straight and giving the situation the gravity it deserved, the narrative went out of its way to put humor that served no other purpose than to ruin what tension had been previously built.  And, in my opinion, the tone of the film suffered for it.

The humor and jokes were humorous, I’m not saying they wasn’t.  I genuinely laughed out loud in the moment.  But I also feel that, with the majority of the comedy that was wedged into the narrative, the film suffered for it.

Now let’s move on a bit to the actual plot of the film.  Again, forgive me if I bounce a bit:

Jeremy Renner was breathtakingly heartbreaking as Clint Barton.  Renner was finally allowed to stretch his legs a bit in this film and he proved that, had he been given the chance, he would have given us a Clint Barton to take our breath away.

Watching with Clint as his family died helped to set what should have been the tone for the majority of the film from there on while reminding us of just what was lost and just what was at stake all at the same time.

Chris Evans brought heart to his portrayal of a Steve Rogers who seems both lighter and more weighted down in this film than ever before.

Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha finally showed more emotion than “head tilt”, “lip purse”, and “arched brow” and it was beautiful.

The brief flash of friendship and affection between Nebula and Tony was perfect and heartwarming as well.  Nebula was magnificent as the “feral space cat desperately in need of softness and a friendly hand” when placed side by side with a slowly withering Tony Stark who is, even at his lowest moments, still kind to this alien cyborg he doesn’t know but to who he owes his life.  They flowed together with an onscreen chemistry in their few moments side by side that felt organic and aching.

Together Tony and Nebula embodied a truly important life/plot point of “meet kindness with kindness and kindness will be your reward”.

Moving forward in time hearing Tony vent his anger and his pain and his distrust at Steve was cathartic in a lot of ways.

As was watching Tony rip the arc reactor from his chest and slap it into Steve’s hand.

In this moment Tony is handing Steve his metaphorical broken heart and leaving someone else to, for once, try and pick up the pieces.

But then, unfortunately, things go rather steeply down hill from there.

With Tony out for the count in a hospital bed the others hunt down and execute Thanos with basically a hand wave and all hope for the stones is lost.

Until deus ex rat-ina unleashes Scott Lang from the quantum realm and the logic of the film takes a sharp left turn.

Scott Lang was missing for 5 years.

To him it was 5 hours.

To which I say, why did Janet van Dyne, age during her stay in the quantum realm?  If, according to the MCU canon, every year in our world was roughly only an hour for Scott Lang, then why didn’t Janet come out of the quantum realm only 30 hours older instead of 30 years?

I feel like the answer is probably “because” but yeah maybe I’m just fuzzy on my Ant Man so if I’m wrong then just ignore that bit please.

Also, just a side note, I adore how it’s been 5 years, Wakanda is very much an ally and still up and running, and yet Rhodey still don’t have working legs.  But alas, racism.

Moving on. 

So with the main villain dead and Tony Stark having solved time travel in his living room, because I stan legends only, we’re now subjected, and that is the very word I’d use to describe what happens next, to what is called a Time Heist.

Cute.

Also Bruce Banner and Hulk have now merged Steven Universe style despite Hulk being scared green-less 5 years ago.  But that’s all good, Bruce smoked a ton of weed, they meditated, went on a cleanse or whatever.

Either way Bruce finally did that character development that everyone had been shouting at him since Avengers 2012 and accepted Hulk as part of him and they’re now Dr. Hulk which was … something that happened?

A thing that they chose to do.  The direction in which they set their narrative wheels and then powered full steam ahead and plowed us right over in the process.

But yeah, Time Heist!  That’s the way to go, the only way apparently.

Because going back in time to stop the Snappening isn’t an option due to reasons that are explained and still look and feel paper thin but probably just honestly boils down to “Russos”

Our intrepid heroes will now split up and surf through time Bill and Ted style to collect the Stones from different points in history.

Yay.

So the rest of the film is basically that, a big old jewel hunt through space and history where the Russos attempt to fool us into thinking their plot points are cohesive and cool by donkey punching us repeatedly in our nostalgia-sacks.

We’re treated to, in no particular order, such hits as:

“Ah 2012 and the invasion of New York only not as interesting but Tony Stark is very much an ass man, but then we been done known that.”

“The Ancient One and her still very distracting skull vein coming at you right now”

“LOKI YOU LITTLE SHIT”

“The one time I envied Scott Lang because, for a split second, he got to be inside Tony Stark”

“Let’s watch Tony Stark simultaneous take a Hulk to the face and have a small cardiac event all at the same time but from different angles”

And let us not forget

“Tee Hee Hee us white bois just had to find a way to make sure Captain America say “Hail HYDRA” but it was for “spy reasons” so weren’t we clever???????”

Yeah boys, great job.

So edgy.

(Although as a side note I do agree, Steve Roger’s ass really is America’s ass and I’d like to thank him for that. Personally.)

But then, of course, Endgame would not have been complete without:

“Steve Rogers stares longingly and creepily at Peggy Carter from behind a window, further backing up his one defining character trait in the MCU which is the inability to move on.  Also she doesn’t look up at all despite being a trained spy and all around badass who probably should have noticed the 6 foot slab of American Beef staring at her from less than a foot away, dark room or no dark room.”

And then my personal favorite:

“Tony Stark sees Howard Stark, the father he described as “calculating, cold, he never told me he was proud of me, never even told me he loved me” but it’s all good cause Tony’s a dad now so looking back all he sees are the good times with his emotionally neglectful and abusive father who says there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for his unborn kid and now they awkwardly hug while I try not to scream “FOOTAGE NOT FUCKING FOUND HOWARD AND NO THAT ONE 3 MINUTE VIDEO DOESN’T COUNT YOU SHIT” at the screen and explode in pure rage.”

Joy.

Truly a scene that was necessary and fit the narrative of Howard Stark’s personality and was needed for Tony to uh get closure or grow as a man and a father or something …

It totally wasn’t yet another excuse to give a canonically abusive father screen time in a way that seems genial and sweet in an attempt to give them a bit of redemption that they neither earned nor deserve.

But yeah, whatever, moving on.

Also Rhodey remains an absolute gem and he and Nebula get shit done.

Only oops, not so fast.

Because apparently the only one who is going to run into the whole “two of you can’t exist in one place at one time without consequences” rule is Nebula who, despite her bitchin orange stripe/badge of character development, managed to like synch up with her past self?

Because she didn’t turn her bluetooth/quantum entanglement function off I guess.

Either way Orange Stripe Nebula, O’Snebula as I call her, has accidentally air dropped all her files into OG Nebula’s mental iPhone.

So yeah now big old Past Grimace knows what’s up.

Ooops??

So shit goes down and then Past Grimace is like “you need to Trogan horse this shit, least favorite daughter” so OG Nebula does because “daddy issues”.

Dr. Hulk puts on the gauntlet and Kentucky fires his arm bringing all the people lost in the Snappening back to life now, 5 years after they got dusted.

Which is … honestly a recipe for disaster in so many ways.  What about the people, like the guy in Steve’s support group, who have started to move on?

What about the people who have remarried, have built new lives?

All of that’s ruined now.

It’s fantastic all those people are alive again but jobs, housing, food, healthcare, government, all of it is back in massive disarray across the universe.

And bringing those people back does nothing to bring back the people who didn’t die in the Snappening but died from causality instead.  All the deaths caused by suicides, by car/bus/train/plane/ship/etc crashes, by a lack of first responders, by the civil/world/interplanetary wars that probably raged across the universe due to entire governments disappearing?

All of those people are still dead.

The Snappening killed half of all life in the universe.  Causality probably killed another good ¼ after that.

And Dr. Hulk’s Un-Snappening saves none of them.

This isn’t a true solution, it’s a shitty band-aid.

But yeah, Russos so….

Moving on.

Yadda Yadda Yadda, plot plot plot. OG Nebula goes undercover, Past Grimace ends up in the future, there’s some fighting (which was admittedly BAD ASS), shit happens, and Tony saves the day like we all knew he would.

YAY!

Despite the massive rambling up above I’m not gonna plot out the entire movie right here though a lot will probably get covered coming up because here’s where I get down and start talking about the various character arcs too.

Because what a wild fucking ride those were.

Okay to take it from the top Scott Lang’s arc was fine.  Beyond my questions about the quantum realm his was clear cut and fine although I do wonder at his luck at being, apparently, the only Scott Lang in San Fran to go missing.  Well either that or he was staring at some other Scott Lang’s name instead of his own and in that case “awkward”.

Bruce’s arc was … look I could have done without all of the cringy Dr. Hulk stuff that they played up for laughs.  If they were gonna brush Hulk being terrified under the rug they could have found a better way to do it besides just erasing the duality between Hulk and Banner with a hand wave.

But yeah, Russos.

Carol Danvers was beautiful and magnificent and completely brushed aside.  Yes she was out in the universe handling shit, yes I know they did that so they could focus on the core Avengers, etc etc etc.

But it’s a damn shame that Carol Danvers, and her glorious haircut, was reduced to being the sorely needed and totally badass cavalry and last minute ace in the hole when she should have, logically, been a part of the vanguard.  Honestly I have thoughts on why Carol’s entire character should have been saved completely for the next phase of the MCU instead of introduced so late in this one but I digress.

O’Snebula was a perfect shining bionic light and I love her.

Gamora is now alive in the future but at what cost?  Not that her life isn’t worth something on its own, it totally is and she deserved the loophole resurrection 10000%.

Shit’s gonna be awkward though cause she doesn’t love Quill, she doesn’t love the Guardians, doesn’t really know O’Snebula or the universe she’s been thrown into.  She doesn’t have the memories or the experiences or the character growth and even if she does go back to her family she’ll never be the same person.

Now her and Quill’s relationship, if they ever have one again, will be reduced down to Quill going “you fell in love with me once you could do it again despite us no longer having the shared experiences that bonded us together”.  Same can be said for the rest of the Guardians as well.

Guess we all know what the plot of GotG 3 is gonna be about.

And that brings us to the story lines that really and truly upset me.

Which is basically all the rest of them.

Natasha/Clint’s combined story-line, Thor’s everything, Steve’s … Steve, and then finally Tony.

Now the Natasha/Clint story-line started out promising.

Clint’s rage and pain was obvious, his heartbreak poignant.  His decision to use all of those to cut a bloody swathe through the criminal underworld was both Dramatic(™) and understandable.

Natasha’s love and grief for him, her desperate attempts to hold onto what she has left by throwing herself into her new job, was a perfect demonstration that Natasha Romanoff is very much not a robot.  She was exhausted, frayed at the edges, and she had tears in her eyes, over Clint.  And then she pulled herself together, slipped her mask back on, and pushed her way forward.  This was all excellent.

It was also a nice narrative callback/parallel to have Natasha be the one to go out and bring Clint in from the cold.

Natasha plays touch stone, plays stability, for Clint and for many of the others.  For the first time Natasha is truly portrayed as a person all the way down to the core instead of some witty quips in a catsuit.  Plus her eyebrows finally came back from the war and her hair looked good again.  So there was that.

Clint and Natasha’s arc comes to a climax on Vormir as they search for the Soul Stone and Red Skull, the Nazi cockroach that he is, gives them the same spiel he gave Thanos.

To get the Soul Stone you must give up the life of the one you love the most. A soul for a soul.

Narrative wise this is consistent, we all knew this would happen as soon as they started searching for the Stones again.  It was obvious.

It was also obvious that Clint was the perfect sacrifice.

He’s got nothing left, his family is dead, he’s already lost the people he loves the most, he’s spent five years being a borderline monster.

And he is also, without a doubt, the thing that Natasha loves the most.

Clint was ready and willing to go, ready to die for the blood on his hands, ready to sacrifice himself for the chance that his family would be saved.

Ready to lay down on the wire and let Natasha walk over him for the sake of everything.

Clint dying made sense, was narratively sound, and heartbreaking.

All of which are only a few of the reasons why Natasha’s death was such a goddamn betrayal.

Instead of following along with the narratively sound death of Clint Barton, an Avenger that’s been ignored for most of the films as is, the Russo brothers instead chose to fridge Natasha.

Clint dying would have been the perfect mirror to Gamora’s death.

Gamora was a daughter unwillingly sacrificed by her father to destroy half of all life in the universe.

Clint would have been a father willingly sacrificed by a friend to save half of all life in the universe, his own sons and daughter included.

But no, we didn’t get that, instead we got a gratuitous scene of Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, splayed angel like and bloody on the rocks below.

Instead they fridged the Black Widow, the only woman of the original Big Six, because they couldn’t bring themselves to fridge a man.

So Clint gets the Soul Stone.

Such a fitting end for the Black Widow right?  Dying in a man’s place, mourned on screen by a circle of men, but ultimately set aside rather quickly.

I understand why Natasha wanted to be the one to go, I understand that she didn’t want Clint’s family to lose their husband/father and that her true family was the Avengers. I get that.  It doesn’t mean I enjoy or agree with the decision they made any more.

It doesn’t make me any less tired of watching female characters die for the sake of men and their families.

Natasha Romanoff sacrificed herself for the universe and her family and that deserves respect even if I absolutely hate it as a narrative choice.

Oh and what about the absolute NERVE of the Russos to have that awesome Lady Power Battle Strut happen but only after they killed Natasha, one of the Big Six?

Bitter? Me? Nooo.

Now, moving on to Thor.

Thor.

Oh my actual God, Thor.

The levels of disrespect Thor, Chris Hemsworth, and the fans were shown with this character arc/story-line in Endgame is breathtaking.

The absolute, shameless disrespect.

They turned Thor into a cowardly, drunken slob who has spent the last 5 years ignoring his responsibilities to what’s left of his people and instead has spent his time drinking, sulking, and literally yelling at kids over PSN??

Endgame’s Thor has the bullshit reasoning that he needs to stop trying to be who he thinks he should be and instead be who he is.

Which flies completely in the face of literally all of his character development from Thor all the way to Thor 3 and then Infinity War.

The entirety of Thor 3 was Thor’s hero’s journey culminating in him finally being the king he was always meant to be.  Finally maturing and stepping forward to lead his people.

I am supposed to believe that Thor, depressed and guilty or not for not killing Thanos when he had the chance the first time, just abandoned his people like that?

I’m supposed to believe that Thor would piss all over everything the majority of his family and friends died for?

I’m supposed to believe that Heimdall, Loki, countless soldiers, and The Warrior’s Three and Lady Sif (I guess), all died to protect Asgard, died for the people and for Thor, and Thor just what? Turns his back on all of that to become a drunk?

No, Thor wouldn’t do that.  Thor should have been down there beside Valkyrie working those fishing vessels when Bruce and Rocket came calling.  If Thor had any hesitance to join them it should have been, “I can’t abandon my people, I am needed here.”  He should have been fiercely guarding the tiny fraction of Asgard that’s left.

Thor’s depression and guilt was valid. Don’t mistake me on that. But they played it for jokes.  They made him a caricature of depression, made him “gross” and incompetent and the butt of the jokes, and in the process diminished what should have been a painful and poignant arc for Thor.

Instead we got Big Lebowski Thor, bathrobe included, who does stand up and fight yes but, in the end, gives up his crown and just fucks off to space to have petty pissing competitions with Peter Quill so he can?? find himself?? despite finding himself in Ragnarok already???

Thor’s entire arc in Endgame was shallow, mishandled, and disrespectful to the character, to Chris Hemsworth, and to the fans.

You, we, he, all deserved better than this.

Now we get to Steve.

Steve Rogers, Captain America himself.

I’ve had a lot of salt about Steve’s character and actions in the MCU but, all of that aside, he deserved so much more than what the Russo’s did to him in Endgame.

Hell he’s deserved so much more than what’s been done to him since post-CA:TFA.

But this is about Endgame specifically soooo….

Steve’s shown leading a support group in the beginning of Endgame, is shown talking about moving on and moving forward and learning to let go. Which is wonderful.  It sounds like the exact character development we’ve all been waiting for for Steve.

Which is, of course, the exact moment when Steve goes “nah just kidding, we don’t ever move on”.

Which, given the circumstances, is pretty fair.  If Steve was only thinking/talking about Thanos and the events of Infinity War.

But of course he wasn’t.

CA:CW should have been the end of the Peggy Carter saga for Steve.  He mourned her, he was finally moving forward, he’d kissed Sharon, he threw everything away to save Bucky, he gave up his shield, etc etc.

But no.  Endgame finds him right back there, clutching that goddamn compass, and making moon eyes at a woman who we all thought went on and lived a life without him, got married, had kids, and generally existed outside of Steve Rogers.

But no.  The Russo’s had to take that away from us too.

And yes yes I know I know multiverse or whatever but still.

Steve steamrolls his way through Endgame with skill and determination.  He picks up Thor’s hammer, finally worthy, which how??? Why???  (perhaps because he’s no longer keeping secrets??? Or maybe that’s just my salt talking? Who knows? Not me?)

And then he fights Thanos head to head.

(Although him wielding the hammer brought up an entire separate set of issues cause I’m pretty sure Mjolnir doesn’t actually summon lightning. Ragnarok pretty much said that the lightning has always been within Thor.  Mjolnir was just a control accessory.  But, you know, Russos *jazzhands*)

And then, in the end, he insists on returning the Stones on his own.

Only he doesn’t come back like he was supposed to.

Instead we’re given old Steve Rogers.

Because Steve returned the Stones and then ….went and found Peggy Carter and got married and lived an entire life with her ignoring everything he would have known was going to happen to her and around the both of them or something???

Or maybe not if the multiverse thing holds up but then who knows any more???

But then how did Old Steve end up right there by that lake on that day at that right time if he’s technically from a different multiverse???

Either way Sam gets his shield and the mantle of Captain America, which was fantastic, and Bucky more than likely knew Steve’s plan all along but the best read I really got on him was basically “eh” so he might well have been happy for Steve too.

But still, instead of finally achieving peace and continuing to learn to live in the future with Bucky and Sam and the remnants of the Avengers, his family and the life he’s built there over the past years, instead of putting the shield down because he’s learned to let go in the now, Steve only puts the shield down because he chooses the past.

He chooses the past over all of that and all of the people left who love him. Sure the argument could be said that he knew they’d be alright but still.

There is a deep well of dissatisfaction inside of me as to how Steve’s entire ending arc was handled.  Why did peace only come to Steve after Tony and Natasha were both dead and then was only found in the past?

No disrespect to Peggy Carter, I adore her, but were the relationships he had in the future worth so little that the past was the only place he could find happiness?  A past with a woman that he knows loved him but still moved on and found happiness outside of him, lived a full and happy life without him?

Steve didn’t get a character arc so much as he got a character circle.  A character loop.  He went right back to where he started.

Endgame erases all of the character development Steve underwent post-Avengers.  Just brushes it all under the rug.

The Russo’s stole the character development Steve Rogers spent a decade undergoing to give him their version of a happy ending.

They robbed him and us both of every bit of growth and forward motion Steve has underwent and I will never forgive them for that.

And now we get to Tony Stark.

Anthony Edward Stark.

The Iron Man.

Tony’s arc is, was, the longest and best developed arc in the entirety of the MCU.

It’s spanned 10+ years and has been nurtured and hand fed by Robert Downey Jr.

If Endgame got one thing right, one thing at all, it’s how they handled the majority of Tony’s arc.

From him laying the smack down on Steve once he was home, finally venting his emotions and his anger, all the way to him solving time travel before tucking his kid into bed, and then building an Infinity Gauntlet on his own even though Thanos committed genocide to get the one he had.

Tony Stark’s arc was glorious and expected and sad.

I think that my one almost complaint is that Tony stopped for 5 years.  On one hand he deserved the rest, deserved the chance to find happiness.  He was hurt and tired and he’d faced his demons and been left bleeding out with the death of half the universe weighing on his shoulders.

He deserved to just stop for a while.

On the other hand stopping is not something Tony has ever been good at, just like Pepper said.  A part of me thought Tony would be working, frantically, to find something, anything, to turn back the hands of time.  To track Thanos down. To get the Stones and then to get everything else back.

To get Peter and all of the others back.

But that’s not the route they went and I’m … okay? I guess, with that.

Tony was validated and vindicated and everyone would have finally listened to him.  It only took the death of half of the universe to do it.  But he was too tired, too hurt and untrusting to keep pushing.  I can respect that.

But of course once an idea worms its way inside Tony can’t let it go.  So he solves time travel on the fly and sets out to save the world.

Again.

His one stipulation is that he will do anything, everything, he has to in order to keep what he has now.  His wife Pepper and Morgan, his sweet little daughter.

So of course he doesn’t get to do that either.

After all of the blood, sweat, suffering, and mental illnesses, Tony doesn’t get his happy ending.  Not really.

He gets to rest, yes, but he loses out on everything he wanted to do with his kid.  In the process of saving the universe he becomes the one thing he never wanted to be for Morgan, a distant father.

A face on a screen, stories, memories other people have.

No matter how many holograms or inventions or whatever Tony left to Morgan, it’ll never replace him.

Morgan got 5 years with her father.  She’ll spend the rest of her life hearing stories about him, about how much of a hero he was.  And hopefully, with Pepper and all the others behind her, Tony will remain a hero to her and will not, instead, become her version of Captain America.  An untouchable symbol that Morgan will never live up to.

So, in the end, Tony sacrifices once again.

Watches the future he wanted crumble to dust in his fingers, lightning scorching him from the inside out as infinity rips him apart.

And he dies there, surrounded by some of the people who love him best.

His best friend.

His wife.

The son he almost had.

And, despite all of that, it is very very fitting that his death was at his own hands.

Thanos could take out half the universe, he could traverse time and space, he could humble Thor, terrorize the Hulk, rip Steve Roger’s up, survive shield and hammer and so much more, but the one thing he couldn’t do?

He couldn’t kill Tony Stark.

The only thing that could kill Iron Man, could kill Tony Stark, was his own heart.

Tony Stark takes the Infinity Stones in hand knowing how this is going to end, knowing that Stephen Strange set him on this path years ago.

Because didn’t Strange warn him?  Didn’t Strange tell him outright “I’ll let the kid and you both die to protect the Time Stone”?

Tony just never expected it to take a few hours and then 5 more years for Strange’s promise to finally be fulfilled.

So Tony does it knowing that after everything he’s been through, all of the pain and the suffering and the battles, it was only enough to have earned 5 years of happiness, 5 years of his dream.

5 years of being the father he always swore he’d be.

Tony Stark takes the Infinity Stones and dies for the entire universe, for his family, for his daughter.  Dies knowing that he’ll be doing the one thing he didn’t want to do, swore he would never do.

Leaving them behind.

Tony Stark brings us full circle as he stands as both equal and mirror of Thanos once again.

Man to Titan.  Good Father to Bad Father.  Life to Death.

Tony Stark picks up the weight of the universe and then he dies making sure that it has a future free from the same fear that has haunted him for a decade.

A warm light for all mankind, sent to sleep, to rest, knowing that finally everything will be okay.

And all he had to do was die for it.

So, I’ll close this out saying this:

This was written in one solid push after my first viewing and Endgame was dissatisfying for me as you might have guessed.  I am disappointed and angry at so much they chose to do to end out this iconic decade of cinema and to close out these character’s arcs.

There were a lot of points and little details I didn’t get to cover in this and perhaps a lot of points you might not agree with me on.

That’s okay.

Because, no matter what, there is one thing I know for sure.

We, I, will always have Tony Stark and the lessons he taught me.  The pain he endured and shared with all of us.  The bravery and strength he inspired in so many of us as we watched him struggle with physical and mental illnesses on screen.  As we watched him obsess and stress and love and grow.

I have never loved a character more than I love Tony Stark.

I have never been impacted by a character as much as I have been by Tony Stark.

I’m not sure if I ever will again.

So, Tony Stark is Iron Man.

He always will be.

And he saved more than just some fictional universe.

He saved a lot of us along the way too.

And we’ll always love him for that.

#MCU wank #Avengers Endgame #avengers 4 #Avengers #Endgame #A:4

[thenexusofsouls]

Were Natasha and Steve ever a thing? The other day I re-watched Captain America the Winter Soldier and there was a lot of lip staring from Nat... maybe she simply thinks he's handsome (I mean DUHHH) but I don't know, she looked at his lips a lot.

{i am the caretaker of souls} Wow................ I never thought anybody would ever ask this, haha. I honestly never thought I would have to whip out this big, messy ball of headcanons, and I almost don’t want to, heh. Because it’s just so far in left field and I feel like hardcore Natasha fans are gonna be like what are you even doing with her? I have an admittedly weird interpretation of Nat (or at least I feel like it’s weird), and really all of my MCU muses I feel are very canon divergent from the originals. The short answer to your question is no, Natasha and Steve were never a thing... if “a thing” means anything romantic or sexual. There has never been anything, there will never be anything. And if I was smart, I would stop there. But I’m not, haha, and I’m gonna tip over the whole can of headcanon beans right now. LONG.... ahead. And crazy, heh.

My version of Natasha is MCU only, because I have not read her comics in any detail, nor have I read the surrounding comics for people who are integral in her life in the comics (e.g. Bucky). Because really any upstanding and thorough version of Natasha in my opinion should include Bucky as a major ship, if not the only major ship. So therefore my version of her is admittedly truncated and lacking in the ship department (she’s not shipped with anyone in any great detail or meaningful way in my opinion), and is MCU only. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have feelings for people, it just means she doesn’t act on them, or if she did, it didn’t go anywhere.

My Natasha feels so much more than is immediately noticeable or perceivable to most people. What I mean is, she feels a whole lot about a lot of things, events, and people, that she then recognizes needs to be left unsaid. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still feel those things with intensity, she just understands that they need to be left alone and not acted on. An example of this was her early feelings for Clint. Yes, she loved him. Yes, she loves him still. But that love has changed forms over the years from something she might have wanted to be more romantic in nature to a friendship. Despite how she felt for him, Natasha recognized that they were better suited to remain friends. Thus, she never acted on her feelings, and certainly after Clint began seeing Laura, she never mentioned them. She never will. Because it needs to be left unsaid. By the time of Endgame, she still loves Clint, but it’s changed into platonic love, a change she actively worked to accomplish within herself over the years, because that’s what it needed to be.

Her second would-be ship in the MCU was Bruce Banner. This ship was doomed from the start because Bruce and Natasha place vastly different things as their priorities. Bruce focuses on himself. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing or that he’s selfish, that’s just how his world works. He focuses on the moral, legal, and collateral damage aspects of him turning green, on the way turning green makes him feel, on the way he feels afterwards, and on what that means for him and his life going forward. Those were all major issues he wrestled with at the time of Ultron, when Natasha tried to confess her feelings for him. Natasha, on the other hand, has always and will always place other people, the world, and the collective good ahead of her own wants, needs, desires, etc. No matter what she wants and how important it is to her, she will always prioritize what needs to be done for a mission at hand, for the fate of the world, or for the safety of her comrades or innocent lives. Even if it goes against what she wants more than anything. Because, deep down, there is nothing she wants more than to be a good person and to be part of good forces in the world.

This is not a selfish thing, like oh I want fame or accolades or to be a big cool superhero, but rather it’s a nature deep down inside her that she cannot ignore and that cannot be overwritten by all the Red Room brainwashing in the world. That drive to bring about good, positive, life-preserving change in the world will always be Natasha’s compass, even if her methods and her own alignment are tilted more towards neutral than lawful. My Natasha is of Neutral Good alignment with True Neutral tendencies, meaning that on the Lawful/Chaotic scale, she is Neutral, and on the Good/Evil scale, she is Good with Neutral tendencies. So she will oscillate between adhering to laws or rules, disregarding them entirely, or skirting them somewhere in the middle, depending upon what she’s trying to do and why. That’s the Lawful/Evil scale. Then on the Good/Evil scale, she is Good the vast majority of the time, Neutral sometimes, and never Evil. A caveat to be added here is that she is never Evil as long as she is in full control of her true nature, so anything directed by the Red Room while she was still being influenced by their attempts at brainwashing might have been under a different temporary alignment.

Okay, back to Bruce now (I promise I am getting to Steve, heh, I’m just taking this opportunity to spill everything about my Nat’s ships XD, and setting all of this up makes explaining her complex relationship with Steve a bit easier). I don’t pretend to understand him very well as a character at all and I honest don’t like him very much, but in my mind, he seems to have a Lawful Neutral with Good tendencies alignment. So that means that he is far more inclined to do things lawfully or by-the-book than Natasha is, and he is skewed more Neutral than Good. He does care about casualties when he turns green, and that’s where the Good tendencies come from, but largely he’s neutral. He cares most about avoiding that terrible feeling he gets after turning green. He wants to reduce his discomfort and embarrassment and shame. That’s what most important to him. So the reason why Bruce x Natasha would never ever have worked is that he is more inwardly focused on himself than he is on the impact he could make on the world if he let go of some of that myopic focus on his own feelings. Natasha, on the other hand, is more focused on her responsibility to the world, her impact on it, how she can change it for the better, and on removing that red in her ledger by working to make herself a better person.

Take their final encounter together before Bruce makes the decision to cut ties with her and the Avengers in Ultron, at least for the immediate future... He wants her to run away with him, in the middle of a job, one that might determine the literal fate of the entire planet. He could do that, conscience-free, because to him leaving behind the battlefield and turning green in favor of having some semblance of a normal life is what matters most. Natasha respond with, “I adore you, but I need the other guy.” In other words, I have feeling for you too but right now, we have a job to do. She can put off her own wants and needs until later in favor of what she views in more important. Bruce... can’t do that for her. He realizes that if he stays with Natasha, he stays with the Avengers, and as long as he stays with them, he will never be able to leave behind the shame, pain, and guilt of turning green. So he breaks it off. And that hurt Nat... a lot.

So Clint and Bruce are past loves of Nat’s in my MCU canon of her. Since they didn’t work out she has painstakingly morphed her feelings for them into friendship, and there they will stay. Steve........ is a similar and yet different story. My version of Natasha has feelings for Steve, but she will never tell him that. Fortunately for her, he has no clue and doesn’t seem to be able to get one, haha. She thinks he’s fairly good looking but that’s not the reason why she’s attracted to him. Natasha doesn’t need looks to love someone at all. The reason she’s attracted to him is the same reason why she knows it would never work... he’s too good for her. Now I don’t mean in the self-worth, sense. Natasha has some self-esteem issues regarding what she’s done in her past, but other than that, she’s very confident in who she is. No, I mean in the very literal alignment sense. He’s literally too Good for her, heh. Even though Natasha is Good, she has Neutral tendencies, and even just that much is enough to make her incompatible with Steve.

Steve may be Neutral with regard to the Lawful/Chaotic scale (as seen in Civil War), but he has always been Good. Paladin level Good. Natasha... is not that. She can’t ever be that. But she admires it greatly. She’s attracted to it. She would love to be that herself. And let me say, Natasha doesn’t have a type, heh. If you look at the people she’s loved, Clint and Bruce and Steve... and it never happened in the MCU but I can see her still loving Bucky too... those are all really different people, personality and alignment-wise. Natasha loves the person, not the type. With Steve, she loves that he has been able to maintain the same moral compass through everything he’s been through and seen, she loves his stubbornness and determination, and she loves the lengths he goes to in order to protect others, whether they’re his best friend or some little kid he doesn’t even know. And it’s not like Steve doesn’t have his arrogant, defiant, misguided, or pigheaded moments, haha, because he does, but Natasha loves the person he is... very much.

So why hasn’t she said anything to him? Why didn’t she give it a shot with him like she did with Bruce? A couple reasons. First, yeah he’s too Good for her. She knows that he would have a lot of problems with any number of ways she handles and views any number of things, heh. They would clash too much on methods, issues, and reasons why they do things, and that kind of constant clashing would lead to an eventual animosity Natasha would never want to develop between her and Steve. Second, Steve isn’t looking, heh. Why? Because he wants Peggy. Nat isn’t Peggy. Not even close. They couldn’t be more different in a multitude of ways, and the ways in which they’re similar aren’t enough, and frankly, Nat wouldn’t want to be a Peggy-substitute. Steve is in love with someone else, and whether he can be with the one he loves or not doesn’t even enter into things for Nat. His heart lies elsewhere, and that makes him off limits. Nat respects that, regardless of how she feels. *shrugs* And that’s that, basically. It shouldn’t be a thing, so Nat makes sure it’s not. Like I said up there, my Nat has a very solid ability to wall off how she feels about a thing, situation, or person and never let it see the light of day if she thinks it ought never to be said. Does it hurt? Yes. Does she cry about this and other things sometimes when she’s alone? Yes. And then she pulls herself together and does what she needs to do. Walling off her emotions isn’t just a coping mechanism for Nat, it’s a well-honed and necessary skill she employs.

Okay if any Natasha fans are still reading at this point and haven’t torn out their hair yet, I’ll really set fire to this dumpster of headcanons by sharing... that... a strange reaction I had after watching Endgame was to write little fanfics about things that bothered me in the MCU thus far and just... not put any restraint or constraints on them, haha. What do I mean by that? Okay well usually when I write a fanfic, I put constraints on them as far as what I’m allowed to write. For example... nothing so out of canon as to be stupidly whacky. Hulk cannot suddenly read minds, Tony can’t fly without his suit, you know, nothing downright dumb. Also nothing so out of character emotionally or personality-wise as to just be ludicrous. Because the point is to write a good quality fic that, while it may deviate from canon, should still seem like it fits within the fictional world and the characters’ core personalities. Well... there’s another reason I write fanfics... or heavily inspired original works, for that matter... and that’s to get out emotion. I call them “garbage stories.” My first published book was a “garbage story,” and quite honestly, that’s why it sucked so much haha. But I digress. Garbage stories are fics or original stories that I write because I’m hurting and I need creative cathartic release. Like... I read a book or saw a movie that hurt me, haha, and I need to squeeze out the hurt through writing. After Endgame, I wrote a number of garbage stories, some as little oneshots, some as starters on here, some with friends off Tumblr, but all were to just fix or smooth over things that bothered me.

For example, I wrote something that saved Tony, heh. Basically, Wanda was able to keep him alive with her magic long enough for emergency help to get to him and stabilize him. I’m not saying he was in great shape, but if I can save Pietro from ten gunshot wounds, some of which hit major arteries and organs, I can save Tony from getting fried by cosmic energy, haha. I also wrote a thing in which Wanda basically prevents Endgame and the snap from even happening, because she chose to focus 100% of her power on Thanos instead of dividing it between him and Vision, allowing her to get the better of him long enough for her teammates to get the gauntlet off of him. It left her exhausted and actually injured (she was bleeding from her nose and ears after the effort and was unconscious), but I think she would have lived. I wrote it as a starter that could be taken up as either a Wanda or a Vision, but I think it was so outlandish that there were no takers, heh. That’s perfectly okay. The point is that it’s “garbage” writing, meant to heal the soul but not necessarily make any sense, lol. But ANYWAY... this was the mindset I was in after Endgame, just... fix my pain!

So... I wrote a garbage story about Nat and Steve. Basically... Nat does her whole sacrifice herself for the soul stone thing... and because she was actually clinically dead for several minutes, it works, but Clint recovers her body and brings her back. (Don’t think too much about it, it’s not gonna make sense, just let it go, haha.) Nat is understandably fucked up. Broken bones, spinal injury, internal bleeding, a skull fracture, the works. But she has moments where she’s conscious. During a moment in which Steve (who didn’t go back in time because I was also fixing that with this fic as well haha) was at her beside telling her that he didn’t want her to be alone, a throwback to what she said to him in Civil War when Peggy passed away, Natasha... who thinks 100% that she’s going to die... confesses to Steve that she loves him. It just one of those moments of weakness where she needed to get it off her chest. All indications were that she was not going to survive, so she felt safe in telling him. But then... she lives. And it’s awkward. It’s out of the bag now and she can’t take it back and everything between them now is going to change, likely for the worse. Everything hits her, from the pain of her injuries to the emotion of the past five years and certainly the past several days, and she just breaks down when she sees him again. In the middle of a cringeworthingly tearful and awkward apology to him, Nat stops when Steve takes her hand and gives it a little squeeze, whispering. “It’s okay, Nat.” And that’s how it ends. There’s no clear answer on how he’s going to handle it because there doesn’t need to be. He’s just... not bothered by it at all.

At the time I wrote it, it did a lot for me emotionally. I thought it was really nice. But as time went on and outrage grew over the canon MCU handling of Steve’s and Natasha’s endings, I started to think that what I wrote was just a mess, heh. It didn’t fix or help anything, it just made it worse. So... I deleted it. I regret that I did, because I’ve kept worse things I’ve written before and even if I never had any intention of showing it to anyone, I should have just kept it for myself. *shrugs* Oh well.

And. That. Was probably. More. Than you EVER wanted to hear on this topic. XD I’m so sorry. This turned into a ranting meta about nothing. Um... but hopefully I at least answered your original question? I tried! XD

[bluepluto03]

mcu spiderman rewrite/au i may or may not do

ok so first quick disclaimer! i do not hate the mcu spider man movies in any way!! i actually enjoy them quite a bit and have seen homecoming like 4 times! and i absolutely adore all the actors in the movies, especially tom, zendaya, and jacob 

but the problem w/ the mcu spiderman movies is,,, they’re just not spiderman. at least from a writing/thematic perspective, which sucks bc so much other stuff about them is great! like tom holland is the perfect peter parker, which is why it seems so close to being right, but with the way the script is actually written... it’s just. not spider-man. 

i feel the need to explain all this/my problems w/ the movies b4 i get into the actuall au idea/plot, so please bear with me for a sec

for context, I’ve loved spiderman my whole life. i’d watch the cartoons when i was younger, and then went back and watched them all again when i was a bit older and figured out how to pirate stuff lol. i didn’t really know how to get into the comics, so i just kinda read wikis and got second-hand info from fanfics and the other movies

to me, spiderman, (at least, peter parker spiderman,) was always about like... a kid, who saw the world was broken and fixed it because he could. he had the power to fix stuff, so he did. 

as a kid w/ mental illness and a not so great home life... that was something really really important to me. to see another kid out there, who’s been through some shit, but finally has the power to make stuff better, so he is! and it would make me think, maybe i can change stuff for the better, someday, if i just get my chance

but,,,,, the problem is mcu peter parker isn’t that. 

instead of becoming spiderman bc he knows there’s bad in the world and wants to fix it, suddenly his motivation is impressing tony stark?? and don’t get me wrong i don’t hate tony, but the way they wrote his and peter’s relationship basically trapped peter. he could no longer be his own hero, bc he was tony’s successor. and that's never who peter parker’s spiderman was?? he was never a follower, he was a trendsetter. he didn’t become spiderman for approval, hell he had dozens of newspapers constantly slandering him. 

honestly the following in someone else’s footsteps thing was always a miles morales thing. he had to step up to the plate and fill the shoes of a spiderman who had already existed for years and was beloved by the whole city. obviously thats not all he is and simplifying his character to that is incredibly obtuse, but i bring it up bc tbh alot of stuff w/ mcu peter parker is just straight-up ripped off from miles morales. like how peter now goes to a fancy private school, is no longer poor (which is a huge thing w/ peter parker’s character in like every other incarnation), has a living father figure, and is bffs w/ ned, who is a straight-up rip off of miles’s best friend ganke. (for the record tho i adore ned and jacob i’m def keeping him in my rewrite,,,, also i’m glad he’s in the movie bc having a plus sized poc protagonist thats not constantly mocked is incredible) 

so, i’m complaining about all this stuff lol but ur probably wondering how exactly how i wanna fix it lol,,,, 

first, give peter an arc thats more than just..... i want tony to believe in me. my idea for that is basically a type of thing where he learns to rely on others! bc like... peter isn’t good at working w/ others lol, he’d much rather do it all himself so no one else gets hurt. (like in the andrew garfield movies where he just,,,, webs his gf to a car so she can’t run into danger lmao) 

the plot would start at a similar ish position to homecoming, though tony never recruits peter for civil war. tbh not sure if it even happened but we’ll disscuss that later

peter’s been spiderman for a few months, after a trip to oscorp left him w/ a radioactive spider bite. currently no one knows about it, and he’s doing a pretty ok job of dealing w/ everything on his own. until he takes down a big bad, lets say rhino for now, and gains a ton of publicity. after stooping a hudge disaster he’s suddenly in the limelight, and catches the attention of one norman osborn, aka the green goblin 

now, quick sidenote. green goblin is genreally seen as pretty goofy, but there are comic versions of him that are legit terrifying. if im being honest i didn’t even know about that version until i read aloneintherains fic birds eating other birds so ig thats kinda ish how i’m imagining this version of norman? though alot more composed, like the man who could someday turn into that 

so norman becomes intrested in my boy peter, and starts sending ppl after him. possibly the sinister 6, but uhh maybe not bc tbh i think this “rewrite” needs to be split into 2 “movies”/works and i might wanna save that for the hypothetical pt2 (btw if i write this it won’t b for a while cause i got other stuff going on but ig if ppl are intrested i might write some snippits/make more content for it) 

so basically the main plot is peter dealing w/ all these big bads on his own, doing ok at first but later getting really fucked up, and eventually revealing himself to ned and mj which ends up being the only way he can save the day in the end. by relying on others! yay!! 

thats it for the main plot, but don’t worry y’all we got other stuff going on too lmao 

so, for one. my boy peter is realizing he has a crush and just,,,, freaking tf out. (i have yet to decide if it’s on ned or mj. or both. sue me) the crush isn’t definitely resolved in p1, but i imagine there’d be some cute thing of him suddenly realizing and freaking out and almost revealing his powers. 

thing 2! tony stark! he is still in here, and still a mentor to peter, but in a pretty drastically different way. one, he doesn't know about peter being spiderman. he doesn't even suspect it lmao. he just gets involved bc of.... some sort of reason bc peter is so smart. do i know why just yet? no. does it matter? probably but i’m writing this pretty late after i had school all day so i’m too tired to care 

bc tony basically gives peter a real internship/mentorship type thing, peter now has access to all this tech!! and all these funds!! fucking lit!! so he changes from his pajama suit to the fancy one, tho he actually built it!! which i feel like him making his suit is a really big really important part of his character. so it doesn't really have all those random things tony added, tho peter might add stuff himself. he gets Karan as a like assistant ai as part of his internship but she never gets put into the suit

for the fist part tony plays a super minor role but like,,,, the first part is about osborn taking an intrest in him, and him confiding in ned and mj. the second part norman is become progressively more dangorus and peter has to fight him and stuff, kinda proving he is strong enough to be spiderman/be trusted to the whole world, beyond just ned and mj. also him actually getting together w/ either one or both of them bc...... bc i want that. 

oh btw idk if tony finds out or not in p2? if he does it’s either at the end or in a scene like the one w/ may bc like. please imagine the shenanigans of peter and ned (who both have high intellegence but low wisdom) in tony’s lab, obviously trying to hide the fact that peter’s spiderman. like he walks in on them and peter looks all frumpy bc he’s been trying to change real fast, and ned’s shirt is messed up bc he just stuffed the mask down the front of it, and mj is just. chilling behing them. so tony just like assumes stuff and is like....aight.... have fun.... 

oh btw the last big change that i didn’t really have anyway to insert natrually into this,,,, so remember how i said ned was kinda a ripoff of ganke? well, the writers claim he’s a “composite character” so i figured, why not give him traits from other famous spiderman side character so he actually is a composite character! 

so like,,,, throughout p1 it’s referenced that ned has a kinda dickish estranged ish dad that he hates and his mom doesn't really like but kinda forces him too... theres some mentions of his dad wanting him to transfer to a private school and being kinda rich, bur he dosen’t want to bc he knows his dad is a total dickead,,,, anyway end of the movie we find out norman osborn is ned’s dad, and ned hates him even fucking more bc it’s like bitch?? u tried to get my (maybe) bf murdered?? tf?? and its lowkey bc he can’t reveal peter’s id, but then in p2 after norman takes matters into his own hands and tries to kill peter on his own ned just fucking yells at him while the man is in jail and is like fuck u lmao 

soooo thats my really messy au idea!! i’m really tired sorry if this is hard to understand or rude! for the record i have nothing against the ppl who adore these movie’s, i just think they could be better! 

#spiderman #spider man homecoming #spiderman homecoming #peter parker #tony stark #michelle jones #ned leeds #parkerleeds #spideychelle #peter x mj x ned #marvel #pls rb i worked p hard on this #my post #my writing #norman osborn #green goblin #mcu spiderman

[polarb2709]

How Marvel Destroys Character Arcs. Part One: Black Widow

*SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ENDGAME* 

Posting here and on my blog (link in bio).

It’s a long one. I’m getting to Cap and Romanogers later, don’t worry, ya’ll.  

____________________________________________

What is a good story?

When you sit down to open a novel or get a ticket for a movie, how do you know that what you read or what you watched was a "good" story? Examples often help. For me, THE STAND is a good story. LOTR is a good story. GONE WITH THE WIND. COWBOY BEBOP. HALLOWEEN. STAR WARS EPS 4, 5, and 6. They are all good stories (in my opinion). I could go on, but you get the picture.

Screenwriters, novelists -- they'll say that regardless of the context, there are common elements to a good story. The act structure is an example of this. An act ends when a character (usually the protagonist) makes an irreversible change. Think of Michael Corleone when he decides to shoot the mobsters in the restaurant in THE GODFATHER -- up to that point he had been the moral upright son in a family hindered with morality issues. Or in WONDER WOMAN when she leaves the island for the first time. Frodo when he chooses to take the ring to Mordor. I think you get the picture, right? Each of these decisions spark incredibly great character change. And remember: that change is irreversible. There is no going back then. The experiences that happen to the character -- and more importantly, the internal changes about who they are, how they see themselves, others, and the world -- cannot be undone.

Which brings us to the MCU....

From this point forward... MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!

...Okay?

...Okay.

I should pause here and say: "Before we get started, does anybody want to get out?"

This is going to be long. And this is going to be geared toward Captain America and Black Widow; there are other characters in Endgame that did not get their due (I'm thinking of the complete glossing over how Hulk turned into Professor Hulk), but for the purposes of this post, I will focus on the two characters who I felt were maimed throughout Endgame in terms of character arc. And why. I think that's really important to highlight. Why did the writers choose to do this? It's a question that I don't think has been asked from a writer's point of view.

To give some context: I am a published novelist. I wrote a little sci-fi novel that was picked up by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. Since then, I've helmed the screenplay for an upcoming neo noir psychological thriller video game. I am the sole writer and co-creator. And since I like to think I'm a writer worth my salt, I got my hands on every screenplay book I could find to make that what I was crafting made sense from a story perspective. Why? Because how you write stories for the big screen differs greatly from crafting them in paper form. It's about dialogue. It's about structure. It's about conflict. And you guessed it, it's about arcs. I am not here to say my word is the golden rule on this. Many people -- including many writers -- will disagree with what I'm about to say -- and that's fair. But the writer in me is screaming after watching some of the decisions in the screenplay, and so I do the only thing I can do: write about it.

PART ONE

Black Widow:

"I got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out."

This is the first quote (that I can think of) from Black Widow in which we as the viewers get a sense of her backstory. It occurs in a great scene between her and Loki -- the conflict in the scene couldn't be higher, which always lends to great scenes and character growth -- and ends with Black Widow "winning." But at what cost? Scarlett Johansson does a fantastic job at conveying the subtle shift when BW goes from cold assassin to letting a little part of herself through. Loki lost, but he had gotten to her. And no one gets to Black Widow right?

The problem isn't this scene. It's that it is the first scene we really get at Black Widow's capacity to solve problems her counterparts cannot, and it is the first scene we learn more about her, that we learn to empathize with her. It shouldn't have been. Her introduction was in Iron Man 2, as the seductive and sexy assistant to Pepper Potts, where she plays a character who advances the plot for the male protagonist. For most of the movie, we, the audience, wonder if she's coming onto Tony Stark or really what her purpose is in the film -- until she's side by side Nick Fury in the donut shop. She's been sent undercover to watch Tony's movements, and it's only at the end of the movie that we see her showcase her abilities. By the end of the IM2, we know two things about BW: she can kick ass and she's an assassin, madly skilled at seduction. That's it. That's not enough. Not if she's going to be part of a team which includes the God of Thunder, Captain America, Hulk, and Iron Man (Hawkeye has yet to be introduced either).

It would have been nice to see BW solve a problem her counterparts could not in IM2. That way we would have gotten an introduction to the character that allowed us to put our faith in her as having her own bonafide superhero status despite not having a robotic suit or summoning lightning from the clouds or having super serum or gamma radiation (and to show that she has more to her than advancing Tony's arc). How? Simple. Remember that scene where she and Happy infiltrated the facility, chasing after Ivan Vanko? Wonder if instead of him being gone when she busted down the door, she had to go toe to toe with him, with his armor on? The same Ivan Vanko who nearly killed Tony in his suit. We'd immediately have the impression that BW has something other superheroes don't despite any extra help. The scene would likely end with Ivan escaping, barely, and BW alerting Tony of his departure, but it would give us the lasting impression that without any armor, lightning, serum, or radiation, she can go toe to toe with the biggest baddies.

Flash forward to the "red ledger" scene. This supposedly is the arc that is completed when she sacrifices her life in endgame for her "family," the avengers. It's a good arc. We can understand it. "Hey, I have so much red the only way I can make it up to people is to give my life for others." Yeah... that arc works only if Marvel: The Avengers was followed up by Infinity War and Endgame, and did not have Winter Soldier, Ultron, and Civil War before it. It's almost as if the writers ignored the character development of those three movies for her and the rest of the OG6. Those three movies moved Natasha's arc forward and backward and forward again -- and more importantly: in a different direction.

Winter Soldier found BW paired with Cap, which centered around themes of trust and the truth. It was a perfect set up for conflict. BW fluid in truth and distrustful. Cap having an unbending moral compass and in a complete pursuit of the truth and honesty. The two have to work together, on the run. BW, however, once again becomes the character in a movie that moves the plot forward for a male protagonist. And here we still only get a fraction of her background and, of course, it centers around a description of the main villain and is used as an info dump for the viewer (the scene where Steve and her are at the candy machine).

But the "I have red in my ledger" is addressed: at the end of the movie, BW accepts that others will know the truth about her by releasing Hydra's secrets which include everything about her as well. She and Steve have an intimate moment where she says "I thought I knew whose lies I was telling..." hinting that BW wants something more than this, that she thought she was doing something more, that she was changing, only to find herself back in the same pattern. She breaks that pattern when she releases the files to the public and exposes everyone. And her and Steve move past a work relationship into something more...  

The point is, the fact that Black Widow had the emotional strength to release her secrets to the public means she had to accept them herself. The red in my ledger arc would be finished.  And we as an audience can relate to it. Everyone has dark stuff in their history, and everyone knows how hard it would be to let the world see it. It takes acceptance and strength to do that. It was brilliant. The beauty of being human is accepting our mistakes and moving past them, forgiving yourself. At the end of WS, I thought BW had.

And then came AoU. If BW's character hadn't been hit badly enough, AoU sets up the "I'm a monster" scene, in which she views herself as broken because she was sterilized. The destruction of her arc here has been beat to death by critics and feminists around so I'm not going to dig too deep into it, but I will say that we're now five or six movies in and we still have her as a foil for our male heroes. She's relegated to a prize, with a beauty and the beast metaphor crap that leaves a bad taste in our mouths. And she needed to be rescued, my goodness. How wonderful would it have been if she had fought Ultron and gotten out of there herself? See, even without her own movie, there are moments where we could have seen her be her own and not beholden to a man. Worse, we have lines like: "I'm always cleaning up after you boys..." that cement that Natasha is going to become a surrogate mother to the group. It's embarrassing for her as a character, because instead of an opportunity to come into her own, her identity will now be defined by "her boys."

Civil War finds her on this path. The only significant choice she makes is the one in which she betrays IM for Steve Rogers -- another choice to move the plot forward for a male protagonist. Good for her character arc, but still. Infinity war hits, and we are told that her and Steve have been hiding out underground. We see her take more of a leadership role, watching over Wanda and Vision, joining Steve and BP on making decisions. It's wonderful. She's not as beholden to anyone.

Which brings us to Endgame.

After the 5 year time jump we find her holding down the fort at the facility, trying to find any way to fix the snap. During that time we witness the others grieve and Hawkeye slaughter innocents. The writers firmly plant her in the motherly role, even describing them as her family. She goes out to get Hawkeye. The two are then assigned to go to Vormir to get the soul stone. We know what's going to happen: one of them has to die. Given everything I've said so far, should we really be surprised that what happened actually happened? Hawkeye, who wasn't even in infinity war and who managed to slaughter several innocent people, winds up alive at the bottom of that pool instead of Natasha. Once again, she's a foil for a male protagonist's arc. Once again, her character is depicted as LESS than the rest. And worse, she also views herself as less, citing a character regression back to the red ledger scene and the sterilization. "I'm a monster, and since I still view myself as a monster, and have red in my ledger, here's what I know I can do. I can die for my family." As if somehow Hawkeye's life is worth more than hers. Well, actually, to the writers: it is, and it always has been: BW has always been depicted as less than the other avengers -- and for no reason.

This is seen in the aftermath, after Hawkeye returns. We get the worst line ever uttered by Tony Stark: "Did she have any family?"

Seriously.

You spent years with her and you don't know that? No one knows anything about the supposed mother figure that took care of the avengers for the last 5 years, that sacrificed her life to save millions? She doesn't even get a funeral. And Steve Rogers sheds a tear but doesn't say anything else about her. This would have been a great scene for Tony and Steve to have it out. Steve who spent the last decade with her. Steve who had his butt saved by her in Civil War. Steve who was fortunate enough to have her visit him after Peggy died, saying "I didn't want you to be alone." Steve could have really let us, the audience, know how important Nat was to the avengers, instead we get an argument between Clint and Thor. The scene falls flat for a very simple reason: how can you convey to an audience how important this character is to the other characters when that said character has always played second fiddle to them?

Long story short: she was discarded, like she had been for the prior movies. And that's when you realize that BW wasn't a motherly figure at all to the rest of the avengers (and it's writers/directors): she was a glorified secretary until someone better (e.g., Captain Marvel) came along. They had six movies with BW in it. And in those six movies writers were unable to move her arc forward at all. They placed her in a motherly figure for "her boys" and like a mother, she made the sacrifice for them.

How should it have ended with Nat? Hawkeye should have died, paying for his past mistakes and a chance for his family to live again. Meanwhile, Nat should have embraced her role as a leader more (like infinity war), and viewed herself worthy enough of being alive. Picking up from Winter Soldier, it should have gone: "my secrets are out, time to live in the truth that I know who I am." And then take over SHIELD for Fury. She deserved to be at the final fight with the OG6. She deserved to see her work be paid off. She deserved so much more.  

Sigh...

You know I get it. Feige and the marvel crew were unsure of how audiences would take to Black Widow, which is why the hesitancy of giving her a standalone movie to start...well actually I don't. That argument kind of falls flat when you consider that they chose RDJ for Tony Stark and gave him an entire movie to develop his character when RDJ had been in MIA (mostly rehab and jail) for the last decade and a half. Scarlett wasn't as big as she is now, but she was still well known. With the upcoming BW movie, my only hope is they give her a movie that lets her come into her own, which is why a prequel once again would be a disservice, because it only serves a story that's already happened, and that story spent the last ten years treating her as an afterthought.

#romanogers #black widow #capwidow #captasha