#i mean first of all i think that a major part of tony’s arc has ALWAYS been about becoming a father | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theconstantsidekick · 10 months

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My Greatest Creation Is You

Pairings: Tony Stark x Stark!Reader (siblings), Howard Stark x Stark!Reader (best friends)

Genre: A bickering fluffy look back at the good times, with slight angst

Summary: Tony realizes he never really knew his father. Thankfully he has a box of Howard Starks's stuff and a video message from beyond the grave to help him out.

(These scenes incorporate y/n, codename—Static, into the pre-existing story as a character without making drastic changes to the plot or mythos. All the major plot points from the MCU remain in place with the addition of the reader as Static, who is not only a Stark but also enhanced. Whatever events from the canon aren’t mentioned, take place without much change.)

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Past Trauma.

a/n: read Age Of Ultron for more information on Y/n's backstory

sidenote: I just missed Tony a lot, ok?

“That thing in your chest is based on unfinished technology,” Fury tells him as they sit next to each other, listening to the sound of bird chip away at what once used to be his center table. They’re at his place, it’s pretty banged up from the party, the windows are all gone, he can hear the waves beneath them, hell, he can even hear the birds chirping.

“No, it was finished,” Tony argues. “It has never been particularly effective until I miniaturized it and put it in my—”

“No,” Fury interjects. “Howard said the arc reactor was the stepping stone to something greater. He was about to kick off an energy race that was gonna dwarf the arms race. He was on to something big, something so big that it was gonna make the nuclear reactor look like a triple-A battery.”

This is the first he’s hearing of this.

He begins pouring himself a glass of water. “Just him, or Anton Vanko in on this too?”

“Anton Vanko is the other side of that coin. Anton saw it as a way to get rich,” Fury tells him.

“I told you he got deported, what I didn’t tell you was that Howard was the one who got him deported,” Y/n chimes in from where she stands in front of them, smoking a cigarette while leaning against what used to be a wall. “Once he got back, the Russians found out he couldn’t deliver so they shipped his ass off to Siberia after which he spent the next 20 years in a vodka-fuelled rage.” She exhales letting out the smoke.

“Not quite the environment you want to raise a kid in, the son you had the misfortune of crossing paths with in Monaco,” Fury adds.

Ok, got it, he thinks. Irrelevant now, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

“You told me I hadn’t tried everything. What do you mean I haven’t tried everything? What haven’t I tried?” Tony asks.

“He said that—” Fury points towards with a glass in hand as he continues, “you were the only person with the means and knowledge to finish what he started.”

Well, fuck.

“He said that?” Tony doesn’t believe a single word of it.

“Are you that guy? Hm?” Fury leans in, resting his elbows on his knees but his eyes or well eye remains locked on Tony. “Are you? ‘Cause if you are, then you can solve the riddle of your heart.”

It takes a second for Fury’s words to settle, but when they do, all Tony can do is shake his head slowly in what would be considered something similar disagreement or even maybe shock? “I don’t know where you get your information, but he wasn’t my biggest fan.”

“What do you remember about your dad? Huh?” There’s a challenge in Fury’s words.

“He was cold, he was calculating. He never told me he loved me. He never even told me he liked me, so it’s a little tough for me to digest when you’re telling me he said the whole future was riding on me and he’s passing it down. I don’t get that.” He really fucking doesn’t. “You’re talking about a guy whose happiest day was when he shipped me off to boarding school,” he adds, as he leans back into his chair.

It’s a fucked up day, don’t you think? Tony’s being told Howard Fucking Stark bet the goddamn future on the son he couldn’t wait to get rid of.

“That’s not true,” Fury counters. His words fall out easy as if the years and years of trauma Howard gave him were not valid. As if whatever he lived through with his father wasn’t all that real. The world has always seen his father in a much different light than he ever did. He made peace with that. Howard Stark was a completely different than Tony’s dad but FUCK if it doesn’t grind his gears when he hears Fury spew this shit.

The future riding on me? Bull fucking shit!

“Well, then, clearly you knew my dad better than I did,” Tony half-concedes, wanting the topic to be over.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Fury comments, putting his glass down on the makeshift table in front of them. The moment the words fall out of his mouth, a couple agents along with Agent Coulson and Natali—fuck! No. God!—Natasha Romanoff walk up in front of them. “He was one of the founding members of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Fury says that like that wasn’t a fucking bombshell he just dropped. The asshole is all nonchalant, looking down at his watch, absolutely uncensored about how he just broke Tony’s fucking brian a little bit.

The agents drop the crate infront of him.

“What?” Tony asks Fury, confounded. “WHAT?” He looks over at Y/n, who looks even more zen than Fury. “WHAT THE FUCK?”

Fury gets up off the chair “I got a two o’clock.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait! What’s this?” He asks, pointing at the crate.

“Okay, you’re good, right?” Fury asks, ready to walk away.

Tony’s up too. “No, I’m not good.”

“You got this? Right? Right?” Fury asks, pointing over at the crate.

“Got what?” Tony’s fucking lost. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to get.”

“Natasha will remain a floater at Stark with her cover intact,” Fury informs him as he puts on his jacket. “You remember Agent Coulson, right?”

“Yeah,” is all he can say because he knows he’s not getting any more answers out of that guy.

Fury begins walking away, but stops for a second, turning to face him again, “Oh! And Tony, remember, I got my eye on you.”

That’s fucking hilarious.

Natalie/Agent Romanoff/Natasha—We will—we’ll just call her Agent Romanoff from hereon out. Anyway, so, Agent Romanoff says, “We’ve disabled all communications. No contact with the outside world. Good luck.” And with that she leaves as well.

Turning to Coulson, Tony begins, “Please. First thing, I need a little bodywork. I’ll put in a little time at the lab. If we could send one of your goon squad down to The Coffee Bean, Cross Creek, for a Starbucks run, or something like that, that’d be nice.”

“I’m not here for that,” Coulson’s reply is simple. “I’ve been authorised by Director Fury to use any means necessary to keep you on-premises. If you attempt to leave or play any games, I will tase you and watch Supernanny while you drool into the carpet. Okay?”

Fuck me! “I think I got it, yeah,” he replies instead.

“Enjoy your evening’s entertainment,” Coulson comments. He turns over to Y/n then, “Ms. Stark, good to see you again.”

She smiles then. “Hey Phill, how’ve you been?” She asks as she pulls out the cigarette from between her lips, pulling a foot up and rubbing the butt across the soul of her boots, releasing pretty yellow embers. Pocketing the now extinguished butt she walks over to the men.

“I’ve been great. You?” She just passes a pointed look over at Tony as a response and Coulson has the audacity to smile. “Fair enough. You need anything?”

“A pack of menthols would be great,” she answers with a smile.

“On it,” Coulson nods, walking off.

And Tony cannot help but stare.

“What?” She asks, looking absolutely innocent.

Rolling his eyes, he replies, “Fuck the fuck off, Stark.” And that somehow makes her chuckle.

She waves him over, “Come on,” she says pointing at the crate. Understanding her instruction, both of them pick up the damn thing and begin dragging in downstairs.

It’s a little while later when they’re in the basement that Tony is hit with the realization that he never really knew his father at all.

He’s looking through the crate, it’s all stuff that seems fairly out of place but somewhat useful? He’s not sure. There are blue prints for the arc reactor, newspaper articles, videos reels and such.

He decides to play one of the reels. It seems to be the outtakes from the video of his father that he showcased at the Stark Expo earlier.

“Everything is achievable through technology. Better living, robust heath,” his father speaks on the video tape, while Tony tries flicking through a notebook and notes down some of the calculations he thinks might come in handy. “—and for the first time in human history, the possibility of world peace. I’m Howard Stark, and everything you’ll need for the future can be found right here. City of the Future? City of Tomorrow? City of—Hang on” Dad begins to fumble on the screen, redoing the take. “I’m Howard Stark and everything you’ll need in the future can be found right here.” This is fucking stupid, Tony thinks. He’s about to turn off the damn thing when—

“Hold on,” Y/n speaks up from behind him. It startles him a little because he didn’t even know she had entered the room. “You’re gonna miss the best part.”

And yeah, that grabs his attention.

As she walks over to lean on her side against the wall opposite Tony, the video continues.

While Dad keeps talking to the camera, he reconginizes a small child pop up from behind the model and pick up a building with a mischievous smile on his face.

“So, from all of us at Stark Industries, I would like to personally—” Howard turns a little and then seems to finally notice Little Tony. “Tony, what are you doing back there? What is that?” He scolds the kid on screen. “Put that back. Put it back where you got it from. Where’s your sister? Y/n? Y/n!”

And then Y/n walks onto the screen, annoyed.

“I’m right fucking here, Howie! Okay? Can you—can you just—I don’t know, relax maybe?” She looks the same as she does right now. Maybe a new wrinkle or two, but mostly the same, except a lot more pissed. “And don’t fucking yell at him, you asshat!”

“Don’t curse infront of him, Y/n! You know how he is, he’ll pick it up and Maria will kill us both,” Howard reprimands her.

He watches as Y/n walks over to Little Tony, leaning down and dropping a kiss on his head. “Well, then don’t talk to him like that. He’s an inquisitive kid. I mean he’s your kid, what the—” she covers Little Tony’s ears with her hands. “—fuck—” she takes them off, “else were you expecting him to be like?”

His dad just shakes his head. “I’m trying to do something here,” he says, pointing at the camera that’s been rolling.

He can see Y/n rolling her eyes at Howard. “Yeah, yeah. Because this is what he’ll remember years later—not the parts where you kept yelling at him for absolute—” she covers her ears again, “—fucking bullshit—” uncovers them, “—that you seemed to care more about. A1 parenting Howie. Why don’t you write a book about it?”

And clearly, Howard feels some sense of guilt about it all because his head falls. With one hand on his waist and the other resting on the model, he revalutes his word for a few seconds and then looks up. Tony (this Tony, not Little Tony) can see he’s about to say something, wants to say something but before he can, Y/n picks up Little Tony on her shoulder.

“Come on, Stark, we’ll go have our kinda fun and not invite Dad at all,” Y/n says excitedly, making Little Tony giggle.

He watches his dad let out a sigh in defeat.

Then the footage cuts off.

The screen shows a few more outtakes of Howard talking to the camera guy while drinking whiskey or redoing takes.

Tony can’t help himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me Dad founded S.H.I.E.L.D.?” He asks.

Y/n (real Y/n, not the video Y/n) looks over, now leaning on her back, she shrugs. “Wasn’t really pertinent information.”

“Wasn’t pertinent—Are you fucking kidding me?!” Tony’s gonna loose his fucking mind.

“I told you I worked with him!”

Tony can’t help but chuckle. “Now that’s just bullshit!” He’s shouting now, “I thought you meant at Stark Industries!”

“Why the fuck would they need a goddamn spy at Stark Industries??!!” She bites back, standing straight now. She’s shouting too.

“To spy on competitive companies! I don’t know??!!”

“You think Stark Industries needed an expert spy, adept at espionage to keep an eye on their competition?!!” Her hands are flying everywhere. “Is the palladium giving you retroactive brain damage?!”

Frankly? It does seem really stupid on his part to presume that she worked as a spy for Stark Industries. But come on! He wasn’t provided the entire data.

“Oh my god, I get that you’re trying to insult me but that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,” Tony bites back regardless. “Maybe you’re the one with brain damage.”

She begins walking over to him. “I’ll show you brain damage—”

He gets off the chair, ready to throw down with her. “Yeah, fine, show me, granny—”

Both Stark sibling halt in their position, with hands around each other’s throat, ready to throw punches, when the video recording on the screen calls out to him.

“Tony.” Dad is looking into the camera, sitting atop the model behind him. His previous put together suit gone, all that’s left now is his messy tie and white shirt with rolled up sleeves. “You’re too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you. And someday you’ll realise that it represents a whole lot more than just people’s inventions. It represents my life’s work. This is the key to the future. I’m limited by the technology of my time, but one day you’ll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation is you.”

The reel runs out. Screen goes white.

Both the Starks, slowly take their hands off each other and sit down on the floor, facing each other.

After a silence that seems to stretch on for a little too long, Y/n decides to break it.

“How could you think I was a spy for Stark Industries?” She has a small smile on her face.

Tony can’t help but smile too. “I don’t know, man. You’re just… You’re like the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in my kitchen cupboard. You’re just here, you’re always here, you’ve always been here. I don’t question it.” He shrugs. “I just enjoy having it be there.”

“It's me,” Y/n says, leaning back far enough to support herself with her elbows.

“What?”

“I replace the boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

Tony laughs, “Figures.” He shakes his head. “I—I—I think—” He can’t help but laugh again, “I didn’t put much thought behind it, but I kinda just figured that Aunt Peg just handed you to Dad and that was that.”

Nodding her head slowly, she agrees. “That’s kinda exactly what happened. I was this freak of a thing she’d recued on an op, and then yeah, she basically handed me over to Howie.” Her head falls back as she looks up at the ceiling. “It helped that he was probably my best friend in the entire world.”

Tony snorts in amusement. “Didn’t really look like it on the video,” he says, pointing to the screen.

She looks at him then, “After—I guess, after you were born—I don’t know. It got complicated. I expected him to do better by you. And don’t get me wrong, he tried to… but—” Her words drop off.

“But—” He prompts, desperate to know more.

She shrugs. “But it wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t persistent. He could’ve done better, he should have. He knew that.” She shakes her head. “Like I said, it was complicated.” Her head falls back again. “Once you were born you became my favorite person in the entire world and nothing was good enough. I guess—I mean maybe he just didn’t know how to be a dad, you know? He didn’t make for a great dad, but he was still my best friend.”

And yeah, he can understand that.

This man, the man who saved her, gave her a home, founded an organisation with her, for her—opposing him on anything couldn’t have been easy for her. It all does sound fairly complicated.

I guess Howard Stark never had an uncomplicated relationship, did he?

The thought makes him smile.

But then he remembers.

“Still pretty uncool of you, you know? Going behind my back and calling mom,” he says, with a cunning smile.

She looks at him with an unimpressed look. “I called Fury because he was the only guy who could get through to you. You have a habit of overlooking my advice when shit is hitting the fan.”

He nods in understanding. “But you still called mom.”

“I saved you from dying.”

“...by calling mom.”

She kicks him gently with her leg. “Whatever, asshole.”

Read the next part here.

Find the series masterlist here. Find the Static Verse Masterlist here. Read The Avengers (ft. Static) here.

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calliopecalling · 2 years

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QOTS Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 1-7

As you can see… I didn’t do individual episode recaps for this season, largely because there are only a handful of gifsets for each episode and writing a whole-ass meta every day or two is too much, even for me 😂 However, there is a lot of ground to cover. What I’ve realized anew on this rewatch is that, wow, this season has so much plot. Like I almost wonder whether Peter backed out after the bulk of the season had already been sketched out and so they had to fill in his absence with a bunch of random extra characters and story lines that wouldn’t disrupt the main arc of the season…? I mean, who knows. That’s pure speculation. But it really feels like there are some stories that you could just cut right out on the dotted line and leave the rest of the story intact, lol. In any case, while this season definitely feels a lot more rushed and a bit sloppier (hello, major timeline issues 😒) there are still things to appreciate and characters and plot elements I really do find strong. More of My Thoughts™️ behind the cut.

First I just want to address the elephant in the room which is the absence of James and how the writers dealt with it. Like pretty much everyone else I wish it had been handled better. I watched this season live and after the first episode, the silence around his absence felt too noticeable. For the most part I still enjoyed the season--maybe because Teresa's my main girl, so I still got my eye candy all season--but I definitely was like... okay so they're just going to basically act like James no longer exists? On this rewatch, though, I'm finding more and more of her missing him obvious in her acting choices. My sense is that when the season was written, they didn't really know if Peter would return for season 5 so they were just trying to put a pause on the whole story line in any explicit way. But also, I guess it really feels in-character to me that, six months in and James still a total ghost, Teresa decide to just box him up and put him in the far corner of the attic. She decides to get the message and move on already. Which means never mentioning him again.

I mean: could there have been some kind of conversation between like Teresa and King George where she opened up a little? Sure, though I kind of imagine that would've happened off-screen in the gap between the end of season 3 and beginning of season 4. Would it have been a stronger season if they'd figured out how to weave it in? I'm not sure, though it would've been gratifying as a James and Jeresa fan to have him acknowledged. I think part of what made it frustrating was just the waiting each episode and being like ok what is happening?? Do they really think they can just leave that relationship dangling and we'll forget about it? I guess my point is: it was definitely a bummer that Peter decided not to do the season, and James and his relationship with Teresa left a big gap in the show, especially because it was in her relationship with him that we saw a lot of her humanity. But, her character would've needed to go on this darker journey this season anyway. And with the writers having no idea what Peter was going to do, I genuinely have had a hard time figuring out where I would've handled specifically the James relationship differently.

HOWEVER. I do think there are things they could've done differently, even without James, to improve the continuity of this season with the earlier ones. Rewriting canon to have Teresa present at Tony's birth is a HUGE "no" to me and that's the number one thing I would change. Second, with all the antagonists from the first three seasons having been bested by the end of season 3 (Epifanio, Cortez, Camila being the ones with multi-season arcs), it would have been wise to carry over more of the story elements from those seasons so that it didn't feel quite so much like literally everything was starting over. I've said before: Castel needed to become a main character. Devon could've been written in on some level (though without knowing what was going to happen with Peter/James, I can kinda understand steering clear of that). Keep Taza around even for minor plot developments. SOMETHING. And while I understand the expense of filming in multiple locations with multiple sets, I think that having some episodes take place back in Phoenix or even Mexico would have provided a helpful bridge. (There are a few Boaz scenes that do take place in Mexico but they're few and far between.) Any of these things would've helped this season feel less like a brand new show that's totally written all the prior characters out of existence.

AAAAAaaaaanyway, so much for the big picture what-I-think-the-writers-could've-done issues. Now I'll try to just stick to the show we actually have, lol. I'm not going to do an episode-by-episode breakdown here. Instead, I'm going to talk about each of the key story lines in turn and what its significance is in terms of Teresa's character journey.

El Gordo

When the season begins, Teresa is just about to open her bar and it seems she's taken the last six months to set up her routes into New Orleans. I THINK she's still just selling on the dark web at this point (well, and presumably in the local market in Phoenix too?) because she has no interest in selling her product in New Orleans. Instead, she wants to use New Orleans, and its port access, as her distribution hub. So where does El Gordo come in? Well, she wants to expand her business so that she can buy the waterfront property and go legit, and he sells product from his hub in Miami up the east coast. So if she can convince him to sell her product, she'll have a huge new market at the snap of her fingers.

The other thing that's in it for her is that right now, El Gordo is buying from independent farmers in Colombia. And those are cutting into Castel's market dominance. Castel showed up at the beginning of the first episode, worried that Teresa was buying from other suppliers behind her back. If Teresa can get El Gordo to buy from her, then she can prove to Castel that she's got nothing to worry about.

El Gordo is a great character in my opinion. What I like about this story line is that it connects to Castel, which means it connects back to earlier seasons, and also he's believable somehow. He's delightfully eccentric and scary but without feeling contrived. Business-wise, wanting to work with him makes sense, especially because of his relationships up the east coast (which pay off in 4x05 when he connects her to Oksana). He serves a clear plot purpose but doesn't feel like he only exists for plot. I like the unpredictable energy between him and Teresa. Basically, so far so good with respect to new characters and stories.

Javier and Boaz

Javier this season to me feels a little forced and I wish there was more Boaz somehow to play off him because it's kind of hard to understand his character without feeling like his back story is clear. He's Boaz's younger cousin, which explains some of his tension between wanting to follow Teresa's way but also having a hard time setting clear limits with Boaz (and still getting into trouble with him too). But then there's also Emilia, who we first meet in 4x06, and whose role doesn't feel totally natural to Javier's characterization in my opinion. It's also a little unclear to me exactly how Javier and Boaz play into Teresa's bigger story this season. Are we meant to understand how Javier is less reliable than James and so Teresa is more alone? Are we meant to see, via Boaz and Emilia, how his loyalties are never 100% solid? Obviously his major arc is that he gets into this trouble with Boaz at the beginning, killing the Judge's nephew which of course will come back to haunt Teresa in a major way later (and by this point in the rewatch, 4x07, Rene's death is only just surfacing). But something about this whole story feels a bit hasty and contrived to me and so this is one that doesn't totally work in my opinion.

The Judge

Speaking of the Judge, he's another big player this season. He steps into the gap created by the demise of Camila and Cortez last season and he's definitely a slimy opponent. I said in a gifset reblog that I do appreciate the way the show tries to show a more politicized antagonist than it has in the past. But, we get TOO much Judge side story in my opinion. All the stuff with his son feels like screentime that could've been spent on Teresa in more character-developing ways. Or.... on Castel or Boaz or Taza... (I'll never shut up about how those characters should've been used more this season.)

The Judge's role with respect to Teresa and her character arc, though, is to show how no matter how much she tries to play nice, she can't avoid getting caught up in the drama of people far more evil than she is. By the end of 4x07, they still have a tentative peace, but it's at the cost of $3 million/month in hush money, and he's fanned the flames between her and Dumas, too. Way more trouble than he's worth and I wish she'd just take care of him.

Marcel Dumas

I've already ranted in my gifset reblogs about Marcel. So, let me clarify here that he is one of my favorite new characters this season and I love the spark he and Teresa have on-screen. Alimi Ballard is fire. I am also glad the show didn't kill him off (the writers have said they'd planned to until they saw the chemistry between Alimi and Alice) and glad that--especially given the setting in NOLA--we get a major Black character. However.... he really makes it hard for me not to bear a permanent grudge in this first half of the season. By the end of 4x07, he and Teresa have finally struck a truce, but, as I explained in my tags on this gifset, I really don't think Teresa was the only one who owed an apology and in fact so much about Marcel and how he treated her early on really set me off.

His role with respect to her character development though is great. It really highlights how, even when she's cornered time and time again into doing things in a way she doesn't want to, she still tries to hold herself to higher standards. At the same time, the costs of her business are adding up, and she has to harden, become colder. In her relationship with Marcel, we see her transformation unfold and she definitely has a more queenpin-like energy, even when finally making peace with him.

Pote, Kelly Anne, and Tony

Alright I'll just say it: I don't really care for this side plot. I think its role is to try to be the place where Teresa's softer side can show up (especially with Tony) and where that growing divide between the life she wants and the life she has is highlighted. Without James, there needs to be some other place to show this. My problems here are (1) this story ends up making Pote's role as her bodyguard a lot murkier and I've realized on this rewatch that really... he doesn't do anything for her. He doesn't help her or save her or anything! The role of his character as someone willing to take a bullet for her really is kind of neutered. Instead, he's agonizing over how to show up for Tony. I'm guessing the idea here is to humanize Pote, complete his redemption arc, make us root for him, too, in advance of the final season. But in my opinion it ends up actually separating him too much from Teresa. Especially because unfortunately the actor that plays Tony really doesn't sell him for me. I don't find him believable. I also just... CANNOT forgive the timeline issues with Tony being almost 16 years old and Teresa was at his birth.

I know that I do like Kelly Anne's story in the latter half of the season, and as I've said, Teresa with pretty much any female character is great, so I'll have more to say about her later. And in general, the role of her family vs. her business will become a lot sharper in the back half of the season, too. It's just, in this first half, it feels like it drags.

King George and Birdie

I'll keep this short and sweet; Birdie was essentially just a plot device for the war with Marcel but I did think her scenes with Teresa were generally sweet and I loved the moment she shared with King George, not least because, as I think I said in a gifset reblog, George is one of the few threads connecting this season to previous seasons, and I love that his grief about Bilal and the trauma from s3 is still so palable, and Birdie helps him with that. Sorry, that was an extremely long sentence, I'll never do that again. Anyway, I said early on that I was meh about Birdie, but I changed my mind. She was a great character and I wish the writers had done more with her than just plot service.

Eddie

ALRIGHT Y'ALL. Want my Eddie take-down?

Look.

Eddie serves a very clear plot purpose. He's there to show Teresa that it's no use: she is no longer the person she used to be; nor can she pretend she's "normal"; nor can she pretend to care about someone she doesn't give two fucks about. He's an obvious rebound. For six months she held out hope that James would reappear, but she finally had to bury that hope six feet under and her job is stressful, I can't blame her for wanting some action. It's not like she meets a lot of eligible guys in her line of work.... so Eddie might've genuinely been what her options were. And I even didn't mind their first kiss: it was cute, huddled up at the piano like that. It felt kinda tentative on her part, like she was clearly a bit nervous (like the OPPOSITE of how she was with James--she was so steady and sure with him 😭 brb gotta watch 3x05) and a bit girlish, more like how she was with Guero in all her flashbacks, but it didn't seem unwanted, and it was slow and sweet and he wasn't pushy or annoying.

But the good stuff pretty much ends there lmao. First of all the man cannot spit out a full sentence without some godawful cliche to save his life. Literally everything he says makes me roll my eyes all the way back into my head. He's got this whole "I'm so profound" attitude that is just suuuuuuuch a man thing and it is so unattractive. He asks her limited questions and never with any sincerity, though to be sure she always kind of nervously brushes them away. She's not looking for him to be a safe place for her to bare her soul or anything, so I can't blame him solely, but it's painful to watch him treat her like an empty vessel that he can just pour himself into. Ew, sorry, I didn't intend for that to sound so euphemistically sexual, but it really does seem like he thinks of her as this blank slate that he just gets to write on or something. Like she has no past before him. He's just not curious.

On this rewatch I feel so sure that the writers did this intentionally. I know that back when the season was airing, Dailyn was on Twitter trying to drum up excitement for Eddie, but I just am going to ignore that and think maybe she was trying to just support the actor who, god help him, was probably doing his best with the trash lines he was given, but I really can't believe that the writers didn't know they were making him this cringe.

My belief--and my evidence is that the writers this season in general are not all that subtle (other examples abound though I'm blanking off the top of my head)--is that the whole point was to show she just couldn't get into him, the whole point was for him to just be a dumb cringey rebound so that no one would actually ship them accidentally and mess with Jeresa lol. YES I KNOW that's my shipper lens, but like this season's show runners wrote entire episodes of seasons 2 and 3, including some of the best Jeresa ones, and they KNEW what gold they had. The Eddie story sets Teresa up for feeling like romance is completely incompatible with this business but also sets her/us up for the OMG YES FINALLY when James finally comes back.

Because listen. Let's take episode 4x04 as an example. The episode opens with her waking up in his bed naked after having presumably hooked up the night before. She startles awake and then kinda looks around uncomfortably. She kiiiinda smiles? But it looks more like a grimace? And looks away and buries her head in the pillow a little. Call me crazy but girl looks kinda disappointed to me. She was blowing off steam but... wrong person kinda vibes. Anyway, she gets up while he's still sleeping and starts getting dressed like she's about to bounce before he wakes up. Then he wakes up and needles her until she agrees to go to brunch with him. She cleeeearly seems uncomfortable but she's like alright. I'll give this a go. Meanwhile he calls her distillery a "tequila factory" -- even after she corrects him. WINCE. Yes, she winces too, I swear to god she does.

Then at brunch he's all "I'm starting to like you" to which she responds with a forced smile and an "I'm starting to like your city." BURNNNN.

I MEAN. This is intentional, guys. Call me crazy but I think we're meant to find him awful. Maybe not THIS awful? Like I readily admit that my intense shipping of Jeresa makes my hatred of him a bit extra. But c'mon. The guy is a total tool. The same writers who were responsible for James's character development in season 3 cannot possibly have actually believed that Eddie was an interesting person or a serious love interest for Teresa.

Nope. He was not. He was so out of touch with her that when he brought her with him to Nashville, it was alllll about him, all about showing off how hot and deep he was, and he couldn't even be bothered to pry at all into Teresa's cover story about how she "slipped in the bathroom" at his show. Noooo, he could only manage to be offended that she'd missed his special song for her, and then think that her breaking up with him was because he'd confessed to her that he'd accidentally killed his friend. GOD EDDIE GET A LIFE.

When I watched this season live, I remember being just extremely puzzled by Eddie. I wasn't even perturbed by her moving on because she so clearly hadn't actually moved on, Eddie was so clearly a glorified sex toy (which, you go girl). I was just like wow Teresa you can do so much better than that. But she wasn't even trying to do better, and that's kind of the point. I feel like the whole point was that her heart wasn't actually in it. I can't even muster up being offended by the plot line, even though Eddie is so detestable, because it's just so obviously a placeholder for her. A very final nail in the coffin of whatever idea she had that she could go back to the person she'd been with Guero. A piece of candy on the arm of a smarmy guy who only cared about his own romancing. So in some ways, the Eddie story to me actually parts the seas for James to be the only possible real deal for her. It just... takes way too long for him to come back. (PETER, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.)

Just had to end this with a James gif. Sorry Eddie. James I hope you are off pining somewhere extra hard because your girl is going through a helluva lot of bullshit and a helluva lot of heartache and thinks she basically has no shot at love ever again 😭

Thanks for reading this far, see y'all again in like, a week (😂😂😂 sorry this is going so fast, there just are only like 3 gifsets per episode this season lmao) for the rest of the season breakdown.

#queen of the south #qots #qots s4 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #listen I really tried to find a good Birdie gif for this but tumblr's gif insert functionality is really weird and I couldn't #get one to show up #anyway god this is so fucking long #I'm impossible #sorry #I do try

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tonystarkstan · 5 years

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I understand the argument that Tony having Morgan right after the Snap seems out of character... except I never once thought that Tony and Pepper were like, “So, half the universe is gone and I just lost the kid who was basically a son to me... better get started on a replacement.” I’ve always assumed that Pepper was either already pregnant when they had that conversation in IW but didn’t know it, or Morgan was an accident baby (for lack of a better term) who was conceived, but not necessarily intended, right after the Snap.

That seems a lot more in-character to me. I bet a lot of mixed feelings came with finding out Pepper was pregnant. I bet there was a clash of joy and devastation and “this can’t happen” mixed with “this has to happen.” I’m sure it was an extremely conflicting time for Tony especially.

And then Morgan came and she was what helped Tony pull himself out of that pit of grief and despair, whether he wanted to or not. Because he had to step up and take care of his daughter, even in the face of his grief.

#lmao i was talking to kat about this the other day #there has been SO much talk about how ooc tony having morgan is #and like #i mean first of all i think that a major part of tony’s arc has ALWAYS been about becoming a father #so there’s that #kat and i sort of mapped it all out bc apparently im only good at meta if its with her #but idk it’s so strange to me #like of COURSE tony wouldnt just be like ‘I WANT KIDS’ right after losing one #i may be misunderstanding the posts #but i mean there’s so many???#and it’s up to anyone’s interpretation #but this is how i’ve always interpreted it #because any other way WOULD feel wrong and ooc and make me feel disappointed in tony’s character #but babies are conceived despite birth control all the time #tony stark #morgan stark #avengers #marvel #avengers endgame #no one better send me hate or talk to me rudely #this is my opinion and interpretation

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scorpionyx9621 · 3 years

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Do you think Jason Todd fandom is kinda toxic? Because it seems like NO MATTER what DC do, there'll always be complains. Forget the bad adaptation like Titans. Even Judd Winick cannot escape the criticism with how he potrayed Robin!Jason. They just never satisfied.

SORRY, IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS. I just moved from Washington D.C. to Seattle, which, for my non-American friends, that's 4442km away. And I DROVE THERE ALL BY MYSELF. And now I'm trying to find new work in a new city and trying to stay mentally healthy and positive. Life is exciting but hard and scary.

*sighs*

As someone who was a fandom elder with V*ltr*n. I've seen some of the worst when it comes to fandom behavior. I'm talking people baking food with shaving razors and trying to give them to the showrunners. I'm talking leaking major plot details and refusing to take it down unless they make their ship canon (I am looking at you, Kl*nce stans) For the most part, DC Comics has had a decades-long reputation of treating their fans like trash and not caring what they think so from what I've seen, we all just grumble and complain in our corners of the internet about how we don't like how X comic portrays Jason Todd.

The challenge with Jason Todd is that he's your clinical anti-hero, the batfamily's Draco in Leather Pants, he's a jerkass woobie, and on top of all of that, he's a Tumblr sexyman. It's a perfect storm for a very fun but frustrating character to be a fan of. It doesn't help that every writer decides to re-invent the wheel every time Jason comes up so his canon lore is confusing at best and inconsistent as a standard.

I guess starting with a general brief on who Jason is and what is uniform about him with every instance he's appeared in comics/media.

Grew up in a poor family in Gotham with a dad who was a petty-mid-level criminal, and a mother who dies of a drug overdose.

Survives on the street on his own by committing petty crimes and potentially even engaging in sexual acts to keep himself alive.

Is cornered by Batman and taken in after Dick Grayson quits/is fired

Becomes the second Robin, but is known for being the harsher, more brutal Robin.

Is killed by Joker after being tortured, but somehow comes back to life and regains senses through the Lazarus Pit

Resolves himself to be better than Batman by basically being Batman but kills people.

Where there has been a lot of conflict in the fandom is the fact that Jason Todd is not a character that is written consistently. DC Comics loves to go with the narrative that Jason was "bad from the start" and was the "bad robin" when, yes, he has trouble controlling his anger, but he also still is just as invested in seeing the best of Gotham City and trying to be a positive change for the world as any other DC Comics hero.

Where I get frustrated with the fandom is its ability to knit-pick every detail of a comic they don't like while completely disregarding everything that makes the comics great and worth it to read. My example being Urban Legends. To which most people had pretty mixed reactions to. I was critical of the comic at first but as it went along I ended up really liking it. I have a feeling DC Comics went to Chip Zdarsky and told him he had 6 issues to bring Jason back into the Bat Family, and honestly he didn't do a bad job. Did it feel rushed? Absolutely. I wish there was more development of Jason and Bruce's characters and their dynamic as a whole. However, where I see a lot of people being angry and upset with Urban Legends is that they feel Zdarsky needlessly wrote Jason as an incompetent fool who needs Bruce to save him.

Whether or not that was the intention of Zdarsky is up to debate. However, and this may be controversial, but I don't think he wrote Jason Todd out of character at all. For as fearsome, intimidating, and awesome as Red Hood is. Jason is a character who is absolutely driven by his emotions. Why do you think he donned the role of Red Hood? As a response to his anger towards The Joker for killing him, and towards Bruce for not taking action against The Joker and for seemingly replacing him so quickly after he died. Jason didn't care about being the murderous Robin Hood or for being the bloody hammer of justice against N*zi's and P*d*ph*les. He only cared originally about making The Joker and Bruce pay. It wasn't until he trained under the best assassins in the world and realized most of them were horrific criminals who trafficked children and were p*dos that Talia began to realize that the teachers that she sent Jason to train under started dying horrific and painful deaths.

The entire story of the Cheer story in Batman Urban Legends was started because it finally forced some consequences upon Jason. Tyler, aka Blue Hood's father was a drug dealer who gave his supply to his wife and kids. And when Tyler's father admitted he gave the drugs to Tyler, it immediately made him fall within the self-imposed philosophical kill-list of Jason Todd. And Jason, well, he proceeds to kill Tyler's father. When this happens, Jason is in shock. Tyler's dad fit the bill to easily and justifiably be killed by Jason. We've never seen Jason having to deal with the consequences of being a murderous vigilante on a micro-level. When Jason realizes what he's done in that he's murdered Tyler's dad, he's shocked. He tells Babs the truth. He does a rational thing because he's in shock. He doesn't know what to do, he never has had to face the consequences of his actions as Red Hood and now the gravity of befriending a child as a vigilante hero who kills people just set in when he killed the father of the same child he was just introduced to.

(Oh here's a little aside because it had to be said, Jason would not have been a good father or a good mentor to Tyler and absolutely should not have been his new Robin. Jason is a man who is in his early 20's (not saying men in their early 20's can't be good fathers at all) who is a brutal serial killer using the guise of a vigilante anti-hero to let him escape most of the law. the complications of having the man who murdered your father adopt you and make you his sidekick are way too numerous for me to explain in a long-winded already heavy Tumblr essay post. There's a reason why we don't advocate for a story where Joe Chill adopted Bruce Wayne or one where Tony Zucco took in Dick Grayson.)

The next biggest argument is that they feel that Jason is giving up his guns as a means to just be invited back into the Bat-Family. To which I will tell anyone who has that argument to go actually read Urban Legends. Already have and still have that argument? Please re-read it. Don't want to? That's okay, I will paste the images from the comic where Jason specifically says that he doesn't want to give up his weapons for Bruce and his real reasoning down below since the comic isn't exactly readily accessible.

Jason gave up the guns because he felt the gravity of what he had done and knows how it'll effect Tyler. Thankfully his mom is alive and in recovery. But Tyler doesn't have a father anymore. And Jason killed Tyler's father. It may have been in accordance to Jason's philosophy, but it was a case where it blurred the lines. Jason Todd isn't a black and white character, just very dark gray. He doesn't kill aimlessly like the Joker. If you are on Jason's list you probably have done something pretty horrific, and also just in general, being in his way or being a threat to him. Mind you, in early days of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Image below) Jason almost killed 10 innocent civilians in a town in Colorado all because they saw him kill a monster. That being said, Jason isn't aimless in his kills.

(Also can we just take a moment to appreciate Kenneth Rocafort's art? DC Comics said we need to rehabilitate Jason Todd's image and Kenneth Rocafort said hold my beer: It's so SO GOOD)

That being said, the key emphasis in the story of Cheer asides from trying to introduce Jason Todd back into the Bat Family and give an actual purpose for him being there, other than him just kind of being there ala Bowser every time he shows up for Go Kart racing, Tennis, Golf, Soccer, and the Olympic games when Mario invites him, is that Jason and Bruce ultimately both want the same thing. Jason wants to be welcomed back into the family and to be loved and appreciated. Bruce want's Jason back as his son and wants to love and protect Jason. Both of these visions are shown in the last chapter of Cheer while under the effect of the Cheer Gas. It's ultimately this love and appreciation they both have for each other that helps them overcome their challenge and win.

Jason Todd is a character who, just like Bruce, has been through so much pain and so much hate in his life. The two are meant to parallel each other. While Bruce chose to see the best in everyone, giving every rogue in his gallery the option to be helped and give them a second chance, hence why he never kills, Jason has a similar view on wanting to protect the public, but he understands that some crimes are so heinous they cannot be forgiven, or that some habitual criminals are due to stay habitual criminals, and need to be put down. But at the end of the day, the two of them both try to protect people in their own ways.

I am aware that through the writings of various DC Comics authors such as Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick, the two have had a very tumultuous relationship. And rightfully so, I am by no means saying that Scott Lobdell writing an arc where Bruce literally beats Jason to within an inch of his life in Red Hood and the Outlaws, nor Judd Winick's interpretation of Under the Red Hood where Bruce throws the Batarang at Jason's neck, slicing his throat and leaving him ambiguously for dead at the end of the comic is appropriate considering DC Comics seems to be trying everything they can to integrate Jason back into the family. That being said, a lot of these writings have shaped the narrative of Jason and Bruce's relationship and have an integral effect on the way the fandom views the two. It doesn't help that Zdarsky acknowledged Lobdell's life-beating of Jason by Bruce at the very end of Cheer by having Bruce give Jason his old outfit back as a means of mending the fence between the two of them. That does complicate a lot of things in terms of how they are viewed by the fandom and helps to cause an even greater divide between the two.

Regardless, I want to emphasize the fact that Jason Todd is a part of the family of his own accord. Yes, he's quite snarky and deadpan in almost every encounter. However, Jason is absolutely a part of the family and has been for a while of his own will. There's a great moment in Detective Comics that emphasizes this. Jason cares about his family because it is his found family. Yes, they may be warry about him and use him as a punching back and/or heckle him. At the end of the day, we're debating the family dynamics of a fictional playboy billionaire vigilante whose kleptomania took the form of adopting troubled children and turning them into vigilante heroes. Jason Todd wants a family that will love and support him. This is a key definition of his character at its most basic. This was proven during the events of Cheer and is being reenforced by DC Comics every time they get the opportunity to do so.

Now, none of this is to say that I hate Judd Winick. I do not, I don't like the fact that in all of his writings of Jason, he just writes him as a dangerous psychopath, and Winick himself admits to seeing Jason as nothing much more than a psychopath. Yet Winick is the one who the majority of the fandom clings to as the one true good writer of Jason Todd because 'Jason was competent, dangerous, smart' Listen, friends, Jason is all of that and I will never deny it. However, what I love about Jason isn't that he's dangerously smart of that writers either write him as angsty angry Tumblr sexyman bait or that they write him as an infantile man child with a gun. There's a large contention of this fandom that has an obsession with Jason Todd being this vigilante gunman who is hot and sexy and while I definitely get the appeal. It is very creepy and downright disturbing that all of you hyperfixate on his use of guns and ability to be a murderer. It is creepy and I'm not necessarily here for it.

What I love about Jason Todd is that despite all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the betrayal, and bullying, and death, and anguish. Jason Todd is one of the most loving and supportive characters in all of DC Comics. Jason has been through so much in his life, but he still chooses to love. He still chooses to see the bright side in people. Yes, he takes a utilitarian approach and chooses to kill certain villains, but at the end of the day he wants to see a better world, and he wants to be loved. It takes so much courage and so much heart to learn to love again after one has been abused or traumatized. I would not blame Jason at all if he said fuck it and just went full solo and vigilante evil. He has every right to, but he still chooses to be with the Bat Family of his own accord. That's something that I see a lot of in myself. I have been through a lot of trauma and yet I try to be a better person myself in any way that I can. It is extremely admirable of Jason to allow love back into his heart when he really doesn't need to. He kills and he protects because he has this love of society. It may have been shaped by anger and hatred, but Jason has found his place amongst people who love him and value him. I think Ducra, from Red Hood and the Outlaws put it best in the image given below.

To end this tangent, I love Jason Todd and all of his sexy dangerousness, but it's far more than that. As much as Jason may be dangerous and snarky, he loves his family without a shadow of a doubt. I look up to Jason Todd because despite all of his pain and all of his trauma, he still choses to love. Jason Todd is a character who is someone I love because despite all of his flaws and having a very toxic fandom, he still serves as a character filled with so much heart and so much passion. I wish more writers would understand that. But for now I will live with what I have. Even though the fandom may be vocal about it's hatred for his characterization, I choose to love Jason regardless because he is a character who chooses love and acceptance regardless of his pain. Jason Todd is by no means a good person in any sense of the word. He has easily killed upwards of 100 people by now. He is a character who is flawed and complex but ultimately is one who powers forwards and finds love and heart in a place from so much pain and anguish. That is what I love about Jason Todd. After all, to quote a famous undead robot superhero, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" Jason Todd chooses to love despite all of the trauma and pain and grief. Yes, he is hardened in his exterior, but inside there is a man with a lot of love to give and someone who deserves the world in my eyes.

#Long post GOD #Jason Todd #Red Hood #Bat Family #Batman #red hood and the outlaws #RHATO #RH:O #Batman Urban Legends #Red Hood Lost Days #TW Voltron #TW Death #tw murder #TW Klance #Gotta love how i am pouring my heart out onto jason AND calling out the Voltron fandom #Regardless love Jason Todd people

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cayenne-twilight · 3 years

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Professor Layton Iceberg Explanation

As I said in the tags of the original, the iceberg I made was a meme consisting of both real theories and satire/parodies/fandom memes. If anyone is interested, I can work on an unironic version that only has real theories.

Buckle in because this post is LONG and heavily saturated with lore and information.

Actual theories

Parallel universe 1960s where the world wars didn’t happen. There’s an unused file in Curious Village that shows the year as 1960 and the time machine from UF is set to 1973, ten years into the future. The series canonically takes place in an undefined time period (hence the technological inaccuracies and fantasy elements), but it’s based off the 60s. There’s more evidence but we don’t have time to go over every little thing. I linked my “no wars” theory below but TL;DR the outdated airplanes and underdeveloped medicine in the Layton series imply that the world wars may never have happened. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632205992162099200/outofcontextdiscord-timegearremix-zonosils-war

The real meaning behind the statue in Future London. In UF, the purpose of the statue is to spark Layton and Luke’s conversation about their friendship. Luke is stressing out about moving overseas and sees himself and the professor in the story behind the statue, but in the bigger picture, Clive must have been the one to commission it. Some theorize that the little boy is Clive and the man is either his father or the professor. One idea I’ve seen is that Clive wishes he could be Luke for real, while another is that he wishes he died ten years ago, and another is that he’s literally terminally ill explaining why he doesn’t care about consequence. Personally, I think “the boy succumbed to his illness” refers to his mental illness seeing as he wanted the professor to save him from his madness as he saved him all those years ago.

True location of Monte D’Or. there are no deserts on the British isles to my knowledge, so it makes the most sense for Monte D’Or to be in Southwest USA where English is the default language, they have a desert, and there exists a city famous for flashy hotels, casinos, and entertainment. What makes it odd is that nobody ever mentions overseas travel, and all the major characters are from England.

Loosha’s origins are not explicitly explained if I remember correctly, but the implication was that her prehistoric (supposedly) species was sealed away along with the garden, allowing them to survive all the way to the time of LS until Loosha was the only one left. The garden provided a good habitat and protection from predators, and it’s logical that they’d slowly die out anyways, but there’s no explanation of any specific factors that led to Loosha being the last.

Beasley is not a bee I wrote a post about this one as well, but TL;DR Beasly lacks several defining bee traits whilst having several human ones. He is not human, yet, by definition, not a bee. It’s possible that he is the result of Dimitri’s testing, but whatever his untold story is, he remains an enigma of nature. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632381715250282496/theory-beasly-isnt-a-bee

Subject 2’s identity is currently unknown. There is a subject one (parrot) and subject 3 (rabbit) so there has to be a second. For a long time, people suspected Beasly to be him seeing as he’s a bit of an amalgamation and definitely not a regular bee (see above). After the release of LMJ, though, people began to suspect Sherl, the intelligent hound who could speak to certain people but not others. That being said, it’s possible for one to be subject 4. Sherl’s memory of a bright flash matches up with subject 3’s memory of being electrocuted. They never explain why the animals were being experimented on, but it was probably Dimitri making sure the conditions of his machine were safe for humans before reliving the incident from ten years ago.

Lady Violet died from the plague from DB. There’s no evidence for this or anything, it’s just an idea. People say she died from the flu but I don’t remember them saying that in the game, at least the US version. Extending off my “no war” theory: it’s theorized that the Spanish Flu was spread by the travlelling soldiers, so if that’s true, it’s possible for the epidemic to have been averted for some decades. Maybe the Spanish Flu reached England later than in real life. The hole in this is that DB’s plague must’ve been close in time to 1918 while Violet’s death was much later, so it would’ve had to stick around.

Bill Hawks is working with Targent and Arthur Cantabella. There was a force in the shadows buying the time machine technology from Bill. Someone with a ton of money who helped him cover up a freak accident and get away with it completely, a feat that involved shady means like violence by hired thugs. Some theorize that it was Targent, seeking power over time in exchange for a little mafia magic. The Labarynthia project was sponsored by the UK government, so as the PM, Bill must’ve known about it. He probably supported dubiously ethical, high stakes (witch pun) psychological experiments like Cantabella’s and helped him stay in the shadows.

All the NPCs in St. Mystere and Folsense are dead. I make fun of this type of theory later, but they’re admittedly captivating. I’m pretty sure the canon in CV is that the villagers are Bruno and Augustus’s OCs that they made robots of and built a town around, but it’s more interesting to think that the village was there before, and the townspeople died of a plague and were replaced like Lady Violet. In Folsense, there really was a plague and they never explain the NPCs there. They’re either real people who appear way younger than they are due to hallucinations (even the ones who already look old ?), or they don’t exist at all, which is pretty spooky. This part of the story is a gaping plot hole. In a similar vein to CV, the edgy yet plausible theory is that they used to live in Folsense but died of the plague and now live on as hallucinations.

Hershel seeing everything as a puzzle is a coping mechanism for all his trauma. This was a joke but I thought about it for more than five seconds and it makes way too much sense.

Plot holes and unexplained questions that we like to overthink because it’s fun

The downfall of the Azran was vaguely explained in canon by people being so greedy that it lead to the civilization collapsing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that happening, but it would’ve been more interesting with a little more detail.

Layton and Luke are programmed to routinely forget how to walk. I didn’t know whether to list this in the joke section or not, but it’s odd that the characters actively participate in the walking tutorial (as opposed to showing a little memo to the player) as if they didn’t know how to before, especially when they go through this several times a year.

The truth behind Pavel. He’s simply a joke character who teleports, is a polyglot (sort of, at least he wants us to think he is) and is mega confused all the time. He’s a fun character to make crack theories about because of his cryptic nature that even he doesn’t seem to understand.

Miracle Mask deleted scenes. The first trailer for MM featured animations that were not in the final game. One was the Randall falling scene, except in a slightly different style than the one we know. Others were completely foreign, like Layton and Luke pacing across a theatre stage as if Layton’s about to expose someone with a dramatic point. Cut content and “could’ve beens” are always curious to think about.

Evan Barde: secret mastermind. Arianna and Tony’s dad is a mysterious character who died under mysterious circumstances. I think the canon is that his death was a genuine accident, but concept art of him making a creepy evil face suggests that maybe he originally had a larger role in the first drafts of LS than the finished game.

The secret to how Paul and Des pull off their disguises is unclear and will remain unclear. There is no plausible explanation for their shape shifting. Unless Paul is just a little dude wearing a human suit like that one Wizard of Oz species and Des is the best quick-changer ever and hides his naturally feminine legs under his cloak.

Alfendi’s mom. When LBMR came out people scrambled to piece together who Hershel had a kid with, but there’s no way alfendi is his biological son. This happened with Kat as well and her biological parents turned out to be brand new characters, so I’m sure Al will get an adoption backstory if his arc continues, be his parents old major characters or nameless, faceless NPCs.

Granny Riddleton and Stachenscarfen are omnipotent deities. Idk which section this fits best under, but these two characters have some serious power. At first introduction, they’re implied to be robots, but they appear everywhere in later games. They follow the Professor wherever he goes and assist him on his adventures, GR collecting puzzles and housing them by some odd magic, and Stachen teaches you how to walk. They both introduce and supervise the gameplay. By extension, I guess this idea could apply to Albus as well in the prequels. GR and Stachen even had the power to appear in LMJ, something no major character could do. I consider them akin to the velvet room attendants from the Persona games.

Clive’s kill count is a vague subject in the game for the sake of keeping it PG. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mathematically estimated the damage he caused, and I sure don’t want to try, but the game appears to push the idea that he didn’t kill anyone at all, saying they stopped him in the nick of time and things like that, even though we watch him raze the city. If they ever want to bring him back post-time skip, I can see them twisting it so that the mobile fortress cutscene wasn’t a linear sequence of events, but instead a compilation of scenes over the course of hours so that London neighborhoods around him could be evacuated and have it make sense. Knowing Level-5, it’s more likely that they wouldn’t think this deep and do something more lazy, though.

Memes and references

Post-time skip Flora is real references the famous L is real theory from Super Mario 64. Like Luigi in SM64, Flora was also a highly anticipated character who didn’t appear in a new game, in this case LMJ or LMDA. In the end, Luigi did become real in the DS port so hopefully Flora is real will be realized as well.

Hershel can’t read is a veteran fandom meme referring to how in the first few games, especially Curious Village, Layton asks Luke to read every document out loud for him. Perhaps this was an exercise to improve Luke’s reading skills and independent thinking, or perhaps he was just too lazy or preoccupied to do it himself, but this grew into the joke that our genius Professor was actually illiterate this whole time.

Layton’s smash invitation is hidden in PLvsAA. It’s no secret that the fandom would kill a man to get the Professor into the smash brothers franchise. In PLvsAA one of the puzzle artworks features a goat eating a familiar white envelope with a red stamp, sparking the joke that either Layton or Wright got the invitation their respective fans desired, but it got lost along the way.

The science board is the mysteriously vague organization Don Paolo got kicked out of for the crime of being evil. It’s the epitome of liberal arts majors and art school graduates trying to bs their way around not knowing any science and failing miserably. “He was very good at all the sciences, but then the CEO of science told him to stop because he was using the power of science for evil science”. They do this again when “Dr. Stahngun” describes his time machine what with the soolha coils and whatnot.

Hoogland is death cult initiation is a parody of “Mario 64 is Freemason initiation” which is ridiculous, just like the creepy human sacrifice subplot of AL.

You can see the reflection of someone watching you in Aurora’s eye references the famous, creepy Talking Angela theory. In retrospect it would’ve been funnier if I said Angela instead of Aurora.

Every copy of Professor Layton is personalized references the famous “every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized”

Clive’s fat ass in HD is a meme that originated from the announcement of UFHD, saying that half of the excited fans wanted to cry again while the other half were simply attracted to Clive. If we want to enter real bottom-section-of-the-iceberg-chart territory then let’s say Clive’s character has some sort of psychological siren properties that draw people to him like a magnet and/or Harry Styles.

Things I pulled out of my ass for shits and giggles

Infinite hint coin hack: I’m sure a tech savvy cheater could hack the game for infinite hint coins, but there’s no easy or interesting way. I don’t know why someone would do that though, considering a lot of the hints suck and there are puzzle guides on the internet.

Cringy, unused Randall villain monologue. This joke is derived from the actual scrapped MM content as well as deleted content being a popular element of iceberg charts, but it’s sadly not real. Would’ve been hilarious, though.

Last Specter Puzzle 031: Light Height tracks and records children’s intelligence level. It doesn’t, but it’s always fun to make fun of arguably THE most ridiculously difficult puzzle in the franchise. (Seriously, do they expect 7+ year olds to know trigonometry???)

Hershel struggles with tea addiction. Hershel from the games drinks tea in moderation, but the manga begs to differ. He has a tea set in the Laytonmobile, and an attempt at teatime while driving causes him to crash.

Folsense is a metaphor for Alzheimer’s. This is inspired by those edgy kids’ show theories where everyone’s in hell or something, but nobody has ever said this.

London Life is reality and the plot of the games is all in Luke’s head. That’s one way to fill every plot hole. How funny would it be if Luke made up crazy characters and stories based off his fellow townspeople Sharkboy and Lavagirl style. “This dude who lives in a castle and asks people to give him all their money for nothing in return is a vampire from 50 years ago involved in a tragic love story”.

Secret ending encoded into Tago’s Head Gymnastics. It’d be crazy if there was, and Dimitri would hound Tago for the secret to time travel. If you didn’t know, the Layton games started as an adaption of Akira Tago’s puzzle series, except they decided to add a story to make it more interesting and marketable.

Daily puzzles datamine your DS. I’m bad with technology but is it even possible to datamine a DS??? Idk, but I think my DS lite from 2008 is safe.

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anime-and-manga-rants · 3 years

Text

Why Jujutsu Kaisen’s First Episode is So Good

Today, I want to take a look at JJK’s first episode and how its structure makes it one of the best anime first episodes I’ve ever seen.

At first, I wanted to make this another installment of my The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly series, but I don’t think the way those analyses are organized would do this episode justice. I’m going to tackle this analysis in a more linear way than that series. I’ll still be giving JJK’s first episode a grade at the end, though. It’s still a first episode, after all. And it’s too fun not to.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

...

The episode doesn’t start off on a bad note:

The first character we actually see (Gojo) doesn’t appear again until the second episode, which is a little strange, but it’s nothing necessarily bad. Normally, it’d be best to first introduce us to Itadori. But it’s part of this opening scene’s intrigue, in a way.

Having Gojo be introduced first only to immediately disappear raises some questions throughout the rest of the episode. Obviously, he’s got to be important to the story to be shown first. So where the hell did he go? This, combined with the fact that Itadori’s set to be executed while clearly oblivious as to why makes for an opening scene full of questions. ‘Who are they?’ for one, of course. But more than that: ‘Why does this teacher at Jujutsu Tech want to execute a boy who seemingly has no idea what he did to get there?’ And: ‘What’s Jujutsu Tech?’

Despite this scene lacking a gripping opening line — the opening line is Gojo saying “good morning” — it still keeps us interested enough to keep watching. It raises too many questions we want answered to not do so.

The tension in this opening scene is palpable, and that’s what makes it good. Stories are all about tension.

...

Moving on... the inciting incident occurs at the end of the episode; therefore, everything before then is setup.

Before getting too deep into any breakdown of the setup in this episode, I’d like to mention that setup and backstory are often seen as one in the first episode of any show. But this isn’t so— at least, they shouldn’t be. Setup is necessary in a first episode, but backstory isn’t.

Setup is introducing us to a protagonist’s ordinary world so that we can get a sense of the difference between what they’re used to and what they’re about to face. Backstory is essentially anything that comes before the story, and it’s often what we find in lengthy info-dumps that interrupt the flow of a story. Backstory is needed sometimes, but it’s far better slipped into a story in moderation, not dumped onto a reader at the very beginning. A literary agent would take one look at a heap of backstory in the first chapter of a novel and toss it in the reject pile. If it can be done respectfully in a first episode, then I’m on board. But usually it’s not needed right up front.

Which is why it’s so refreshing to see that JJK’s first episode has not a trace of backstory anywhere. Overall, this episode is really strong, and I think the lack of backstory plays a role in that.

Furthermore, the setup in this episode is tremendously well done.

You see, before the inciting incident, we must first be introduced to our protagonist’s ordinary world. ('Inciting incident’ is the name for the event that sets the protagonist on the story’s main journey.) But their ordinary world is going to be more boring than the new world they’re going to find themselves in for the majority of the story. Therefore, we need some tension to make the setup before the inciting incident more interesting. Because if it’s too boring (or too long), chances are the audience is going to give up before the story gets anywhere.

There’s plenty of tension in this episode, and it’s almost all thanks to Fushiguro and his quest:

Every once in a while, Itadori’s POV is interrupted in the best way possible by Fushiguro on his search for Sukuna’s finger. This is where the true tension of the episode builds. While Fushiguro’s scenes focus on building the tension of the ‘curse problem’ that culminates at the end of the episode, Itadori’s scenes focus on introducing us to our protagonist. The constant trouble that we’re reminded of every time Fushiguro is on screen plus the promise of Itadori somehow being involved (it’s a story, after all—he has to be involved somehow) makes for an engaging first episode.

And we can’t forget how Itadori is plenty interesting enough to keep the audience engaged without all that promise of trouble to come. Not to say that promise is bad! But we get a great sense of who Itadori is in this episode, and he’s awfully likable and fun. We can tell he’s going to be a complex character worth following.

...

Before I start on the next section, I can’t neglect to mention how there’s no trace of forced dialogue anywhere in this episode! Not even in the setup, where it’s most common. There’s no sign of anyone mentioning anything that they know good and well just because the audience doesn’t know it. And nothing is lost because of it!

We still manage to learn that Itadori’s got some superhuman strength (which would be strange if it appeared out of nowhere later in the episode, when he fights those curses with Fushiguro). We still manage to learn that he’s in the occult club. And that he isn’t afraid of ghosts despite his upperclassmen being terrified of them, and he tags along with them when they go to haunted places for moral support. (Which is a form of specificity— it’s something that truly makes a complex and lovable character. And you bet I laughed when that image popped up of his upperclassmen cowering behind him as he strolled so nonchalantly. How could I not like Itadori’s character?)

This is how a first episode should be done. This is showing (rather than telling) at its finest.

...

Just by the way Itadori is depicted in this episode, through his dialogue and his actions, we can tell he’s going to be a complex character. (The best kind of character!) Not only through his dialogue and actions, though. His promise of complexity is ensured the moment the story-worthy problem is introduced.

(There are two kinds of ‘problems’ in stories: the story-worthy problem and the surface-level problems. The surface-level problems are the ones that are easy to spot— for example, defeating Loki in the The Avengers. There are dozens, even hundreds, of surface-level problems in a story. After all, to defeat Loki, didn’t they have to recruit each Avenger, stop Loki in Stuttgart, and take down the Chitauri army during the climax? And those are only three. But there’s usually only one (or a few if there’s a large cast of important characters) story-worthy problem. These are the problems that are associated with a character arc. Take The Avengers again— didn’t Tony Stark demonstrate how he learned to make sacrifices for others when he redirected the missile into the wormhole at the end? Tony’s story-worthy problem was being too selfish.)

The idea of Itadori’s story-worthy problem is introduced in this episode’s setup:

It’s when his grandfather tells him to help others and not to waste his life.

Now, while Itadori interprets this in his own way — I’ll discuss why this is great later — the beginning is there. His acceptance of his grandfather’s advice (with his own twist) is going to be his story-worthy problem. The episode wants you to know it, too. After all, Itadori references his grandfather’s words during his and Fushiguro’s fight with the biggest curse:

(I’m using the manga to keep everything succinct.)

He’s clearly accepted his grandfather’s advice, though he’s taken more to the idea of giving people proper deaths. Of course, this still manifests in him wanting to help people, as not helping them would very likely lead to their untimely demises. Like how he helps Fushiguro in this scene.

The development of his character will be based on this desire to fulfill his grandfather’s dying wishes and how his views of that desire change as he faces more and more surface-level problems. This is what makes it a story-worthy problem.

Every good story needs both a story-worthy problem and many surface-level problems, because a story with just the latter wouldn’t be much of a story at all. We want to see characters change, whether it’s for the better or for the worse. Your story’s surface-level problems would have to be pretty interesting to keep an audience interested for the entire duration if there’s no story-worthy problem to be seen. Even then, your audience isn’t going to leave your work with much satisfaction. The story-worthy problem is what gives meaning to your specific characters being a part of your story. Why not just any old gaggle of characters? The story-worthy problem also what holds the structure of a story together.

The inciting incident is the best place to introduce the initial surface-level problem and hint towards the story-worthy problem. Itadori saying he’s got his own curse to deal with is about as big of a hint as we could get. It’s fantastic! It’s no good when the story-worthy problem is too difficult to even pinpoint.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to determine what event is the true inciting incident of a story. But the true inciting incident will always be wherever the story is kickstarted plus wherever the story-worthy problem is hinted at. Therefore, the inciting incident of JJK occurs when Itadori helps Fushiguro take down the curse and eats Sukuna’s finger to do so. (Usually it’s not quite so obvious what the story-worthy problem is, but it certainly works in this case!) After all, the story-worthy problem is clearly there, and as soon as he eats Sukuna’s finger, he’s secured himself a spot in a world he’s never been a part of before. If he hadn’t eaten the finger, he could’ve gone back to his normal life after the curse was defeated.

Therefore, JJK succeeds in giving us an inciting incident that accomplishes exactly what it needs to do in a way that deserves nothing but praise.

...

Earlier, I mentioned that I needed to discuss why Itadori interpreting his grandfather’s words in his own way is important. Well, it all has to do with agency.

Protagonists need agency. In other words, they need to decide things for themselves. They need to be active. Passive protagonists who are simply dragged around by the plot and do anything necessary to keep the plot going are the worst kinds of protagonists. They’re the protagonists we get bored of at best, hate at worst. I mean, they can’t do anything for themselves. Who wants to follow a doormat through a story?

Itadori is certainly following his grandfather’s advice, but he gave it a meaning that suited him more. He isn’t really following his grandfather’s words blindly. Another example: when he eats Sukuna’s finger. Fushiguro didn’t tell him to do that. Fushiguro only mentioned that the curse wanted to eat it to gain power. It was completely Itadori’s decision.

Therefore, right off the bat, our protagonist is making decisions for himself, even while being thrown (unwillingly) into an entirely foreign world.

...

I can’t end this analysis without first mentioning how well everything in this episode fits together.

I mean, come on... Itadori’s in the occult club, which is how he knew where Sukuna’s finger went, and because his upperclassmen are in the occult club, they wanted to investigate a cursed object. It was mandatory to join a club, and the occult club finishes before five, which is how Itadori could visit his grandfather and hear his grandfather’s advice (which would become the story-worthy problem).

And what about the occult club’s presentation of their research project to the student council president? They theorize that there’s a dead body buried in the rugby field, and that’s why the rugby players kept falling ill and had to be hospitalized...

Then, later, when Fushiguro walks to the rugby field, he spots a curse and asks himself, “Is there a dead body buried here or something?”

This episode is fantastic!

...

Well, I believe that’s about all I wanted to cover in this post. Everything else is a bit too minor to include, and I don’t want to make this too long. So, let’s hurry up and get to the grade for this episode.

I’m giving it an A+. It absolutely deserves it. I can’t think of another anime’s first episode that I would even consider rating this high. (Even giving Dr. Stone’s first episode an A- was a bit generous, honestly.)

Good for Jujutsu Kaisen!

...

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk anime #jjk analysis #fushiguro megumi #itadori yuuji #gojo satoru #jujutsu megumi #jujutsu gojo #jujutsu itadori #manga analysis #anime analysis

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thecomicsnexus · 2 years

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FANTASTIC FOUR #1-4 BY MARK WAID & MIKE WIERINGO FANTASTIC FOUR VOL. 3 #60-70, VOL. 1 #500-524 OCTOBER 2002 - MAY 2005 BY MARK WAID, MIKE WIERINGO, KARL KESEL, MARK BUCKINGHAM, CASEY JONES, HOWARD PORTER, PACO MEDINA, KARL KESEL, JUAN VLASCO, NORM RAPMUND, LARRY STUCKER, DANNY MIKI, ALLEN MARTINEZ, PAUL MOUNTS, AVALON STUDIOS, MATT MILLA, RANDY GENTILE, RUSS WOOTON, CHRIS ELIOPOULOS, RICHARD STARKINGS, ALBERT DESCHESNE, RICHARD ISANOVE, GENE HA, MORRY HOLLOWELL, TONY HARRIS AND TOM FEISTER

Sue thinks it is time to help her brother take more responsibilities in life, so he becomes a CEO... and eventually... a herald. Reed and Doom have the ultimate fight that will put the Fantastic Four against the free world, and the Thing will have to make a very difficult choice.

SCORE: 9

Mike Wieringo is probably my favorite penciller of all time. This started in early 1996, when I found out about him in the Robin solo title. Soon after that, I started finding his art in some Amalgam, Marvel, and more DC Comics (including that Rogue mini-series).

It was a big shock when he died. I believe he was a vegetarian and he exercised often, yet he died of a heart attack. Proof that you can never be too safe. In any case, his death was really sad at the time, especially because it meant I would never see his artwork again. What I wasn’t aware until that moment, was that he was working on Fantastic Four (or he used to, this run took place during my college years, so I kind of missed on a lot comics). It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I decided to hunt down these books and read them.

I mean, they include Mark Waid, who is probably my favorite Flash writer of all time (ironically, both of them worked on The Flash). The first book also prints their first collaboration, Avengers #400, which I am not including in the score. That may be their first collaboration at Marvel, but I already saw them create Impulse back in 1994, so the two worked together before.

The only reason these volumes are not a perfect 10, is that some plot elements are not as accessible as you’d expect. Valeria’s origin in particular, which I believe happened, right before this run. It could be a small thing, but it is kind of important for the Doctor Doom plot.

Wieringo is not in charge of penciling all the issues, but I think he does the majority of them (Paco Medina and Howard Porter have small arcs each).

I think all the characters have their moments in this run, but Johnny Storm seems to have the biggest development. He is put in charge of Fantastic Four Inc. and eventually becomes Galactus Herald, helping transform him into a human.

Not only that, by exchanging powers with Sue, she gets to understand him a lot better. I would say this story really redeems his character in many ways.

The second big character I would have to say is Reed. As usual, he has a very particular cold way of doing things, but we do get to see his reasoning, and most of the time, while his actions are cold, you can see his motivations are not.

His small run as Latveria´s authority (perhaps a take on the Authority), is full of surprises, and... to be honest... his tendency to sacrifice himself is usually not very smart.

Doctor Doom goes full sorcerer in this story as well... embracing magic to finally defeat Reed... traumatizing Franklin in the process. It’s a very dark arc actually.

As a result of Reed’s machinations to free Latveria, Ben dies. This is of course another reason for Reed to obsess over something, and he takes his family to the afterlife to bring him back.

There they meet Jack Kirby (who is one part of their gods, the other one being Stan Lee, who is not in heaven... I am going to assume... because he was still alive at the time). Still... there will always be tributes to Jack Kirby, and this one was very nice. He even undoes Reed’s disfiguration... it’s kind of a magical solution to a problem, but... I mean... who better to undo the damage than one of the creators of the Fantastic Four?

The panel after this one is of kids running away from Johnny... smart kids.

Anyway, I think the Galactus story was perfect to finish this run, especially during a time when the Avengers disassembled. It was the perfect opportunity for the Fantastic Four to regain the public’s trust after their diplomatic faux paus in Latveria.

The fact that Sue’s powers could hide planets from Galactus is an interesting development... but considering that now Galactus knows this... I wonder if it ever came up again after this run.

In any case, it is a run I recommend. And even though you kind of need to know some stuff before reading it... I think it is a good introduction to the Fantastic Four. This creative team knew what made them tick.

#fantastic four #marvel comics #2002 #2003 #2004 #2005 #modern age #mike wieringo

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ghosthan · 3 years

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hello!! i saw that you made a lot of stuff for 1872 and i was wondering if 1872 tony is similar to regular comics tony?? i know mcu and comics tony are different and i want to get into 616, but if 1872 comics are more easy to read i might try those first! 😅

Hello, hello!

Thank you for asking, and sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I wanted to think about it and put together a thoughtful response because I am desperately trying to convert MCU fans to 1872. Or comics fans who just haven’t gotten into 1872.

This post will contain some 1872 spoilers, but not the Big Spoiler that you probably already know about anyways.

Anyways, let’s get into it. Yeehaw.

What is 1872? It’s Steve/Tony in the wild west.

1872 comics are very easy to read, very short, and you need absolutely no prior knowledge to get into them; I highly recommend these as a start point for MCU fans who are curious about dipping their toes into some of the other Steve/Tony universes. And 1872 is, indeed, a Steve/Tony universe. It’s really gay, (and dramatic.) Uh. So gay, in fact, that one of the comic artists who drew pages even occasionally shares Steve/Tony shipping memes. So.

Marvel 1872 is a four issue series released as a part of the Secret Wars event; you really do not need to know anything about this to enjoy 1872, because it is a self-contained alternate universe in a “pocket dimension”, meaning it’s totally separate from the 616 cannon but technically exists in the expanse of the multiverse!

Here’s the summary:

In the Battleworld zone of 1872, Sheriff Steve Rogers faces corruption and fear in the boom town of Timely. Can Anthony Stark pull Rogers' fat from the fire? Probably not, since the only thing he seems capable of pulling is a cork from a bottle. Things in Timely are bad, and getting worse — and when a stranger arrives in town, Timely will be changed forever.

Now, to compare “regular comics Tony”, or 616 Tony, with 1872 Tony.

The main difference? 616 Tony wears this sexy little under suit (or nothing) under his armor, like this:

And 1872 Tony wears dirty, stinky one-piece pajamas under his armor (not sexy):

He’s so gross, he’s a mess. I love him. You’ll love him, too.

No, okay. Being serious.

616!Tony’s backstory is a lot more complicated just due to how long the character has existed, and the decades of cannon (much of it self-contradictory at points.) Like MCU Tony, 616 Tony used to manufacture weapons, experiences something life-changing, and becomes who he is as a result of this as a catalyst. 616 Tony’s backstory has been rebooted a few times, and I’m definitely not the definitive source on Iron Man lore compared to people who have read all of his comics, but I’ll try to touch on the basics.

Originally, 616 Tony Stark is shaped by his experience in the Vietnam War. This is later rebooted and changed to war in the middle East (we see this in the MCU when Tony is held captive in Afghanistan.) In both circumstances, he is taken captive after being in the air for war technology, and then he creates the suit to save his own life (losing a beloved mentor in the process, the guilt of which stays with him after.)

Tales of Suspense #39

In 1872, Tony’s formative event is the Civil War in some ways, but in other ways, this is only half of it, because this is not the event which causes him to build armor or set him onto his “become a better person” trajectory, like in the other comics. Mainly, the Civil War functions to cause Tony to stop weapons manufacturing and throw his life away down a bottle.

We get a flashback of Tony in the year 1862 with his female companion, picnicking and about to watch a battle, (rich people from the North did this in real life. If you’re interested, read more here!) We don’t get much of his past, but we discover that he is a rifle manufacturer and that he has created something called the ‘Stark Repeating Rifle’, and it seems that he has done so with the hope of encouraging a cease-fire, more than a slaughter.

Well. We don’t always get what we ask for.

Tony vows to actually never touch a weapon ever again, and this personal oath means so much to him that he gets creative at times during 1872 when he’s being chased by baddies:

Witnessing the extreme bloodshed of the Civil War, and feeling responsible for a huge amount of deaths, Tony turns to drinking, (and presumably moves to the west to escape the Pain of his Past, but this is not shown explicitly on panel; I have assumed, though, that Tony’s weapons manufacturing company was in the East, probably Boston or New York, since he comes from family money and because the American West was still “young” at this point in time so it would be unlikely that an established business would be supplying a war from lawless territory with little infrastructure.)

In 616, it’s worth noting that Tony builds the armor to save himself from danger in a war scenario; this is not the case in 1872, things unfold a bit differently. The Civil War certainly sets in motion the chain of events that eventually lead to the creation of Tony’s armor, but he’s not in physical danger or physically traumatized by the war in this verse as he is in other verses, and 616 Tony seems to have a stronger sense of duty than 1872 Tony, but this might be a complication of the depression/apathy related to the alcoholism.

What I mean by this is that both iterations of Tony struggle with alcoholism, but differently. Mainly, while 616 Tony has several alcohol themed arcs, and hits rock bottom with his alcoholism to cope with his trauma, he is sober more than he is drunk in the comics. His drinking almost kills him, and he almost loses everything because of the drink. It’s a source of enormous shame for him.

In fact, during this time in 616, I think Tony at his lowest reminds me a lot of 1872 Tony; 616 Tony is not an apathetic person and he holds himself accountable for an obscene amount of responsibility, but during what is referred to in fandom as The Second Drinking Arc, Tony basically gives up. This is the most “like” 1872 Tony, at least at the start of his arc. Rhodey takes over the mantle of Iron Man, and 616 Tony spirals, not caring whether he lives or dies, not hero-ing certainly.

We see both versions of Tony express similar sentiments, a certain cavalier attitude about their lives (and outright suicidality at other points) with nothing left but the drink.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #182

Compare with:

And you can certainly see a resemblance between this set of panels from IM v.1 #176 and in 1872:

Iron Man Vol. 1 #176 and Marvel 1872 #1

It’s a little different in 1872, where his drinking really is purely a result of his existing despair, and it doesn’t cause enormous problems for him, (minor problems, sure. He spends a lot of time drunkenly singing to Sheriff Rogers, or bothering him from the inside of a jail cell.) But this Tony lives at rock bottom, whereas 616 Tony only stays at rock bottom long enough to get his life back together (as many times as it takes.)

This Tony really doesn’t show any outward shame about his drinking; presumably, the people he knows in Timely have only ever known Tony as a drunk, and none of the people from his old life are here to see him like this.

This is a Tony who has essentially given up on himself and has moved out West to hide from his shame and his past; this is not a Tony who is scared of letting down his friends by drinking, or scared of shirking his “duty”, because this Tony has moved away from all of his friends and has given himself no duties. He’s a bit more apathetic, but I would argue that this is not because he inherently is a less moral version of Tony, but because in this verse, he was drinking for a very long time and circumstances unfolded differently so it took him a longer time to find that sense of purpose and responsibility (beyond just shutting down manufacturing guns,) which is awakened in him by Steve Rogers.

616 Tony’s sobriety is a major part of his character, and a conscious choice that he makes, even during some lowest points:

Civil War: The Confession

He takes some amount of pride in his sobriety, and when he does fall off the wagon at times (or magic makes everyone think he did,) it absolutely tears him up because 616 Tony cares very, very much about his sobriety and does not like who he is when he’s drinking. We do not know if 1872 Tony’s father had been a drunk or not, but we know 616 Tony’s father was, and that the drink lead to him treating Tony abusively.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #285

Avengers Disassembled #1 (This was when ~magic~ made Tony drunk and it wrecked him breaking sobriety without ever having actually drank. Oof.)

616 Tony’s long struggle with alcoholism is a major part of his character and he has had relapses over the years and throughout the reboots, but in general, he does not drink.

1872 Tony starts drinking in 1862 and doesn’t stop until the last pages of the story, so in terms of the cannon we have for him, he is a current drunk, rather than a former drunk. This isn’t to say he doesn’t stop; but since it’s in the last page or so, it sets the reader up to imagine his sober future, rather than exploring his sobriety as 616 does. (Calling all fanfic writers!)

Anyways, both Tony’s are excellent. Both are damaged and traumatized, both are Iron Man in their own ways, both (eventually) find sobriety, both have some cute, quippy dialogue (though 616 Tony tends to be more reserved/polite for sure, in general).

The last thing I’ll point out, is that both Tonys’ narratives are intertwined with and influenced by their respective Steve Rogers. I’m not saying soulmates but I’m saying soulmates.

Anyways. Sorry this post got super long, and I apologize if any of it is confusing or redundant, I am not functioning at my highest capacity currently. Please read 1872. Let it rock your world. Create & consume the fanworks, I would love to see a boom of 1872 content (more than the fics and art I keep making!) And my ask-box is always open!

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sineala · 3 years

Note

Would Tony Stark be an ant-vaxxer in real life?

I’m going to hope that this question was asked in good faith! I had a very nice chat with @blossomsinthemist about it and we came up with some points that I think the wider fandom might actually want to hear about.

So, I mean, first off, the answer to your question is obviously no. Tony is a scientist. He follows the scientific method. He believes in science the way other people believe in religion, and I’m sure he is perfectly capable of reading all of the articles that use scientific fact to debunk anti-vaccine propaganda. He’d believe science, and science says vaccines are safe.

But the more interesting thing to ponder is whether there’s anything in Tony’s background that might lead him, specifically, to be pro-vaccination, and I think there is. Think about it. Canonically, Tony has had a heart transplant. Actually, he’s has more than one. Now, Tony has done a lot of things to his body over the years that are not technologically possible in our reality (artificial nervous system, Extremis, the RT node) but heart transplants are a thing we have! We know about those. When Tony got his first heart transplant in 1969, it appears to have been cutting-edge; Wikipedia informs me that the first human-to-human heart transplant was 1967.

And the thing we know about heart transplants is that, if you are having an actual organ transplanted into you, you have to take medication to prevent rejection. Now since all of his hearts, as far as I can determine, were made of extremely Comic Book Science material and it seems like if there’s nothing organic in it (like, a 100% artificial heart) there would not be a risk of rejection. (Disclaimer: am definitely not a doctor.) And since the Sentient Armor is described as cybernetic, I feel like chances are good there’s organic material in at least that heart. (It’s probably also a big infection risk, since there is an open port.) The first transplanted heart Tony gets is described as “synthetic” but I’m not entirely sure that means “inorganic;” it might mean organic material that has somehow been synthesized.

So, anyway, yes, there is a decent chance that Tony has spent a fair amount of his adult life on anti-rejection medication. Those drugs are immunosuppressants, so if that is the case, Tony has had an artificially-depressed immune system and for that reason he would almost certainly be a big personal fan of being vaccinated for literally everything there could be a vaccine for.

I think it’s really interesting to think about because I feel like thinking about the effects of everything Tony has done to his body is a thing that people in fandom like to contemplate, but until Blossom brought it up it had never occurred to me that there was a good chance that Tony had spent a long time on immunosuppressants. I mean, it’s not canon, but it sure seems possible.

(Also, in terms of things that Tony is willing to do to his body, I feel like it’s unlikely he would have any kind of personal objection to vaccination given that a fairly major series of Iron Man arcs can be summed up as: “I’m going to be the second test subject for an experimental retrovirus. The first test subject can now breathe fire but I am pretty sure I took that part out. It’s going to make me store part of my armor in my body and give me the ability to make phone calls using only my brain. Hallucinating dead people is a side effect I’m willing to deal with.” I feel like a guy who is willing to do that isn’t going to object to anything about vaccines.)

#Anonymous #replies

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rwdestuffs · 3 years

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Volume 8 is a poor man’s Infinity War.

Think about it. The main teams in both situations (RWBYJNORQ and the Avengers/GotG) are in separate squads trying to do their own thing.

Here’s our main issues:

In Infinity War, the main teams are split up because they can’t get to one another. They didn’t have a choice in splitting up, and thus, there wasn’t an opportunity in the first place to have interactions between characters like Tony and Steve. While yes, Thor goes off on his own on his own will, it is out of necessity.

And on top of which, each squad is doing something proactive.

Team Cap is trying to get the stone out of Vision so that they can get rid of it and stop Thanos. Team Iron Man is confronting Thanos directly. Team Guardians is also trying to attack Thanos and get back Gamora before the Soul Stone location is revealed. Thor, Rocket, and Groot are trying to get a weapon that can kill Thanos. They are all effectively doing something.

And Thanos’ squad are all split up trying to retrieve the stones. And they are also proactive in trying to do so.

And in the end, it is through Thanos’ direct actions that he is able to succeed.

Now, let’s compare this to Volume 8.

In Volume 8, the only one separated from the group that wasn’t by choice was Qrow, and later Oscar. Oscar gets to come back in the last quarter of the volume, so it’s very not like Thor’s reappearance in Infinity War.

Both squads are separated by choice. They actively chose to split up. This means that character interactions that were sorely needed can’t happen. There’s no Blake interacting with Yang, there’s no Nora and Ren interactions. And the few interactions that each team does have is hollow at best because it kinda comes out of nowhere. Take Ren’s resentment at the situation that they’re in for example. It’s brought up, and then dropped. There was hardly any buildup to it, and it doesn’t even go anywhere. Or take Nora’s sudden “I need some time” thing near the end. She was the one who initiated the kiss, if anything, it should be Ren who says that he needs the time to process his feelings. Especially since his semblance is literally suppressing his emotions! It would make more sense if he needed the time to process given all that he’s been through, and what his literal soul-based superpower does. Ren needs the time to process his feelings. Not Nora.

Or heck! Take Blake’s encouragement of Ruby as another. They deliberately nerfed her character to justify her belief in Ruby’s ability as a leader and a fighter. But the for a majority of the time, RWBN is in a mansion… Not even talking about what to do or about their own relationships, they’re drinking tea. At this point in time, Team Cap has gotten a plan set in place on how to get the stone out of Vision’s head and what they need to do to make sure that it works. Team Iron Man is already en-route to take the fight to Thanos, the Guardians are off to Knowhere to keep the reality stone out of Thanos’ clutches.

This is why people kinda touted JORY’s part as being better. By virtue of actually doing something, they kinda got the better arc by default. Sure, the interactions were really bland, and the discussions of what they have going on with members of the other squad are bare-bones, the fact that they actually do something is a virtue in of itself.

Salem, on the other hand, has her hands on another of the relics, but can’t access it. Emerald and Hazel are having second thoughts about the side that they are on, and Cinder is… Just being herself.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do like the Emerald defecting thing. I really do. But I kinda wish we spent more time on it, and that we got to see what she did to be trusted with her weapons when they got to the mansion.

Qrow, at this point, is trying to come to terms with his involvement in Clover’s death, and like… It was Clover’s own fault. He followed a clearly unlawful order, didn’t take a prison transport, and prioritized the “suddenly declared traitor” Qrow over the literal agent of Salem who was right there, and gave the three character a hard time, and only two of them are now conscious.

So, Robyn’s whole thing about him being the better person kinda feels like it comes out of nowhere, mainly because we never really got that interaction between Robyn and Clover to really have her make that conclusion.

Both stories also have a “Save the android who has the ability we want to keep out of the bad guy’s hands” thing going for them. But there’s a stark difference between the two deaths.

With Vision, his death comes at the hands of Wanda, his love interest. The person whom they both confide in each other with, and the person who he trusts with his life. So when Wanda kills him to keep the stone out of Thanos’ hands, it’s tragic. And when Thanos uses the Time Stone to undo all of that, and make her efforts all for naught, it’s even more tragic. Wanda had to see her soon-to=be-husband die twice.

But with Penny, her death comes at the hands of… Jaune. A character that she barely had any interaction with. Instead of it being Nora, the person who reassured her that the virus that was hurting her was only a “part” of her and that it didn’t define her, it was Jaune. Instead of it being Winter, the person whom she was effectively partnered with since Ciel was forgotten, it was Jaune. Instead of it being Emerald, the person who killed her the first time, it’s fucking Jaune. A character whose most significant interaction with her was boosting her aura so that she could fight off the virus.

Now, both endings are kinda similar too.

Except where Infinity War’s ending was done and it was blatantly clear that it was because everyone was separated and that it was because Thanos had basically already won, and the fact that it was also because the war against Thanos wasn’t over yet, this ending makes it clear that the war for Atlas was lost. And while the show does also show us that the war for Remnant is far from over, the way they did it makes it feel as if they wanted to emulate Infinity War, but had no real idea as to what made it work in the first place. It’s a lot like a lot of the other things they tried to emulate. Like the “Introduce your character by having them stop a robbery” thing. They know it works, but they don’t know why or how it works.

This overall helplessness and the idea that the bad guys win sometimes was done better in Infinity War because they knew what they were doing. And yes. I do acknowledge that it’s unfair to compare a multi-million dollar movie that was ten years in the making to a single volume that was likely thrown together with the hotpot of notes that were left behind, and that Infinity War also had more than a bunch of underpaid animators working on it, but still! It feels like they had this whole thing worked out in Volume 7. Penny had the maiden powers, Winter was in conflict with what Ironwood was doing, Qrow was feeling guilt at not being able to save Clover, the main teams had to look for Oscar again, there was a set up for team work that needed to be done, it felt like a lot of things were thrown in for the sake of the plot, only for it to not be capitalized on in later moments.

Ruby’s squad wanted to save everyone, and didn’t have a plan until Oz decided to show up again and tell them what the relic could do. At least Jaune’s squad had a plan. And given how his last few plans worked out, it’s a miracle that it actually worked.

The separate hero squads in Infinity War all also had plans of their own. Yeah, they all failed, but at least they actually had a plan. With this, only one team had a plan, and it got derailed because Oscar got kidnapped by a grimm that can only break aura in a single hit after a few in-universe minutes of being petted by Salem.

This volume tried to be Infinity War, but ended up being Dawn of Justice… And we already had that volume in the form of Volume 4. This show needs to stop trying to juggle too many things at once and start focusing on one big thing, and also needs to close up the things that they haven’t really closed up.

#rwde #writers crit

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years

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What I Thought About "What If...Captain Carter was the First Avenger" from Marvel Studios' What If...

Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Back when Marvel Studios announced the new lineup of films and shows, I was admittingly underwhelmed. Nothing we've seen so far has been poorly written, far from it, but during the announcement, nothing really popped out at me as worth getting excited for. That is, except for one series: Marvel Studios' What If... An animated series that changes the canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all through the simple question. The question being, "What if this happened instead of that."

From the get-go, I was sold on this idea. I'm a sucker for hypothetical scenarios, thinking up all the ways of how some of my favorite stories in fiction could be drastically different thanks to one tiny change. Some might call that "Fanfiction the Series," and while you're not wrong, I fail to see how that's a criticism. Because fanfiction can be fun...just as long as you ignore the sick freaks, sure, but it still can be fun! So whether Marvel Studio's What If... is fanfiction or not, it still didn't change how excited I was to watch it. Was it all worth the hype? Well, to answer that question requires spoilers, so keep that in mind as we dive deep into Marvel's most ambitious project yet.

Now, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

The Watcher: Gonna get the generals out of the way before I talk about what I specifically like about this episode. Ok? Ok.

Now, using the Watcher as the narrator for this series is just perfect. What If... already has a similar energy to The Twilight Zone: An anthology series that takes viewers to new and mysterious realities all through the guidance of an omniscient narrator. And using the Watcher as that type of narrator might just be the second-best choice...number one would be Stan Lee, obviously, but...he's dead now. May he rest in peace.

I haven't read that many comics, so there's not much that I know about the Watcher's character aside from a ten-second Google search. But something tells me that a character described as a celestial being that observes and records the events surrounding the galaxy sounds like the exact type of omniscience to guide us through the unknown. All added with Jeffrey Wright's performance, who really does convey a character that sounds like he's as old as time and wise beyond his years. Plus, it's pretty cool that such a seemingly odd character now technically plays a major role in the MCU canon. Comics are weird, and if the Watcher proves anything, it's better to embrace that weirdness than deny it.

The Animation: Looks like someone watched Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.

That really is the feeling I got when watching this. What If... doesn't look as good as Spiderverse (Nothing can be as good as Spiderverse), but the idea is still there as it combines primarily CGI animation with a few hand-drawn elements. It makes certain scenes just pop and, at times, even makes specific shots look like they're straight from panels in a comic book. Besides, while Spiderverse still looks better, that doesn't mean the animation isn't phenomenal in What If... The scenery looks gorgeous, the CGI models moderately match their live-action counterparts, the expressions are fantastic, and movements are as smooth as butter. There was definitely some money that went into this series to make it look as good as it did, and my eyeballs were more than grateful because of it. Especially when it comes to--

The Action: Holy s**t, was it a good thing that this series was animated!

The MCU has had its fair share of great fight scenes in the past, but it always felt restricted to what the big superhero fights could be due to everything needing to look "realistic." That all changes in What If... Because now that this series is animated, we can finally chuck realism out the window and allow these characters to be as epic as they were in the comics. The movements are swift, the blows look like they hurt, and best of all, you actually get to see characters fighting each other! There are no random cuts to hide the stunt doubles or weird camera angles to avoid audiences seeing how ugly the CGIed replacements are. We get to see all of the action with zero restraint, thanks to the fact that animation is limitless and allows writers to get away with literally anything. And shows like this make me wonder, "Why the hell isn't the MCU animated?"

Peggy as Captain Carter: It's here that we get into the specifics, and by golly, do I love me some Peggy Carter making a return. And what a return she made!

Seeing Peggy kick Nazi ass as Captain Carter is as awesome as it sounds as she gives a new definition of a "Strong, independent woman." She took s**t from no one and was more than willing to destroy anybody who said differently. It's a ton of fun for fans (the ones who aren't sexist, at least) and even fun for Peggy as well now that she gets a chance to wreck shop. However, that in itself could cause problems. If you watched Agent Carter (a great show, by the way), then you'll know that Peggy doesn't act as...somewhat meatheaded as she does here. As she said it herself, she's "usually more covert than this." And she is, as she was pretty much the first superspy in the MCU, who's impressive through how she effortlessly infiltrates her way to winning the day with diminutive requirements for fighting. So stripping that away gets rid of a core part of what makes her character so interesting. Although, in fairness, you could blame the fact that the reason she's acting like this is that the super-soldier serum is messing with her brain a bit. We've seen through U.S. Agent the reciprocations of the wrong person taking the serum, and while Peggy is far from the worst pick, there are hints of why Steve Rodgers was the best choice. Still, even though it's not the same Peggy Carter, that doesn't mean Captain Carter is a poor addition to the hero roster in the MCU. She's cool in all the right ways, even though they're drastically different from what made her compelling, to begin with.

Howard Stark: Another character I'm more than happy to see again!

Howard didn't leave that much of a grand of an impression in Captain America: The First Avenger, but in Agent Carter (Seriously, great show), he was a blast. You can just tell he was Tony Stark's father through all the ways he fast-talks in and out of problems and brilliantly comes up with solutions thanks to being tech-savvy. The main difference between Howard and Tony, however, is that Howard prefers to stay on the sidelines, where Tony learned to be more proactive. You get a sense of that in this episode. Because even though he goes to save the day, you can tell that he would rather be anywhere else. And, as a bonus, Howard's just funny. Probably not up there as one of the funniest characters in the franchise (Paul Rudd's Ant-Man reigns supreme), but he still cracks me up more times than not. Howard may be nothing more than a side character, but he'll always win me over no matter how small of a role he has.

Steve Rodgers in the Hydra Stomper: Don't mind me. Just admiring the fact that despite being crippled and skinny, Steve Rodgers still finds a way to fight the good fight, which is who Steve is to me. One of the best things about The First Avenger is that it fully understands the hero that is Captain America. Serum or not, he will do all he can to do the right thing and won't give up despite how many times others tell him he should. So if Steve's going to fly around in a suped-up Iron Man suit that's appropriately named "The Hydra Stomper," then Steve'll f**king soar. Because he is a gosh dang superhero, no matter what name he takes at the end of the day.

Fast-Forwarding Through Events: Some fans might take issues with this. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see all the little changes that Captain Carter makes to the story, but realistically that's not the best choice to make. Let's be honest, there's not that much to show other than what this episode did, and doing a full-on rewrite of Captain America: The First Avenger would have rubbed some fans the wrong way. Besides, from what I can tell, most of the What If... comics are one-shots that very rarely branch out into longer arcs. The primary goal is less to write this large-scale story and more of this self-contained narrative that does what it precisely delivers: Show fans a glimpse of what would happen if this happened instead of that. That's what we were given, and I can't really complain that much. I would have loved to have seen more, but I can learn to be happy with what I got.

Colonel Flynn Taking Credit: This guy is sexist and an idiot, and that's why I hate him...but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't at least chuckle when he said everything was his idea. It's such a scumbag move that I couldn't help but find the humor in it.

(Like, what even was that scene where Peggy was pissed at Steve kissing a girl. THEY WEREN'T EVEN DATING !)nd Steve falling in love inThe First Avenger, which certainly wasn't helped by how they had these dumbass misunderstandings of each thinking the other was dating someone else. Here, they at least get to interact, confiding in one another about their insecurities and offer support when needed. And while it may be a little rushed, I'm more willing to believe their romance in under thirty minutes than I did in over two hours. It could have been better, but it also could have been much, much worse.

(Like, what even was that scene where Peggy was pissed at Steve kissing a girl. THEY WEREN'T EVEN DATING AT THE TIME!)

“I won’t tell you anything.”/”He told me everything.”: That's the Peggy Carter I know and love! Added with a solid joke, too.

Steve’s Pratfall: It's nice to know that no matter what universe we see, Marvel is still funny.

Peggy’s Sacrifice: Much like Peggy and Steve's romance, I buy Peggy's sacrifice way more than Steve's. Several fans already pointed out how it makes no sense for Steve to crash the plane into the icy waters when it seemed like he had enough control to land it or could have easily jumped out after aiming for the crash landing. Here, there's a more legitimate reason why Peggy sacrifices herself. The monster was undefeatable, and the only way to stop it was to push it back through the portal. Peggy, being the only one strong enough to do so at the moment, was the only option, and there was no way where she didn't end up going through with the monster. Even her return makes more sense, as I think her being lost to time and space sounds more believable than Steve surviving being frozen in ice. Something no mortal man should live through. Peggy's sacrifice proves that while the MCU can't change its cannon past, the writers learn from their mistakes and make something better.

WHAT I DISLIKED

The Reasoning Behind Peggy Becoming Captain Carter: So, the idea that one small change can greatly alter the story we knew is a great one, and it's one of the main reasons why I was excited about this series...but how does Peggy staying in the room cause the Hydra agent to detonate the bomb early? I understand the ripples that come from the Butterfly Effect, but I feel like that's too big of a leap to reason how Peggy ends up taking the serum instead.

Colonel Flynn: How is it possible that this guy is somehow even more of a pain in the ass than the general he replaced? At least Chester Phillips had the decency to respect Agent Carter!

Red Skull is Still on the Dull Side: Red Skull isn't an awful villain, but he wasn't really a great one. It's the same here, as he's just as forgettable and wooden an episode of television as he was in a full-length movie. But at least he had a cooler death this time.

Sebastian Stan is Not a Great Voice Actor: He's not awful, but his talent really doesn't shine in this regard. Some people think that being an actor and a voice actor is the same thing, but it's not always the case. Through live-action, actors are given a chance to express emotion through their expressions, movement, and voice. With voice acting, actors still have to convey emotions, but strictly through their voice. Meaning that actors like Sebastian Stan are limited to what they're used to and can stumble a bit when trying to perform in a field of acting they're unfamiliar with. You can tell he was trying his best, but this type of thing can take far more practice for others to perfect.

“Whew. Thanks. You almost ripped my arm off.”: ...hhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHA! HA HA! Ah...oh man...I, uh...I felt the internal bleeding with that one. Wow. Just...wow.

Bucky Leaving After Steve “Died”: Ok, now that's the biggest bout of bulls**t I've ever heard. BUCKY WOULD BE WITH STEVE 'TILL THE END OF THE LINE AND WOULD NOT HAVE LEFT THAT QUICKLY!

...This episode did Bucky dirty, didn't it?

IN CONCLUSION

I'd say that "What If...Captain Carter was the First Avenger" is an A-. It's still a solid start of what I can already tell will be a great series, but some elements could have used some polishing out. I loved it, but it wasn't as bloody brilliant as it could have been.

(And I meant it: WATCH AGENT CARTER! It's pleasantly surprising!)

#marvel cinematic universe #mcu reviews #marvel studios what if #peggy carter #captain carter #steve rodgers #hydra stomper #howard stark #bucky barnes #what i thought about #what if reviews

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igonecrazy · 3 years

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seriously tho marvel should stay away from romance 😭 like first of all they’re bad at it (the only reason I watched wandavision was to write the Malec au and the first three episodes were so BORING aksjakaja) and this whole thing w sylvie and Loki feels like some forced fairytale-ish ‘true love saves the day!’ thingie which just… doesn’t fit in a superhero series?? Like no bud I’m here to watch Loki kick the tva’s asses not for romance.

EGGGXACTLY!!!

There's reading your audience wrong! There's reading your audience horribly wrong! Then there's reading your audience horribly wrong and thinking oh I have the bestest shit for them! They'd be blown out of the water!

Am facepalming soooo hard rn!

Every fucking ma*vel love story is half assed half caked just forced upon you as the holy grail! And you know what understandable coz most of the time they're crime fighting we don't really see these characters actually living so it's alright! IT WOULD BE ALRIGHT IF THEY DIDN'T FUCKING MAKE ROMANCE THE MAIN OR MAJOR PLOT IN THEIR STORIES!!

Steve Rogers went against the fucking world for Bucky....TWICE! But of course he still loves this badass woman he met and didn't have the courage to even ask out to a date!

Tony and Pepper have a somewhat okay love arc but of course then we must push her out of the picture because we don't need her! Who needs Pepper Potts when she's not driving Tony's story and being the love interest ™

Don't even at Thor and Jane! DOESN'T MAKE A LICK OF SENSE!

Nat and Hawkeye have a somewhat good and I'd risk it all relationship..which of course means Hawkeye must have wife and children otherwise you know we don't risk it all for our love interest!

Hulk......poor guy.. let's give him to Natasha because we gave Hawkeye a fam.

Wanda........love a sentient robot who was Tony's AI.....I've still not gotten over this..and this is thier peak romance thing......okie..!?

Of course Carol had a deep and emotional bond with Maria which of course means they cannot be romantic coz you know romance doesn't work like that!! Good gawd I fear what they'd do in the second part 🥴

I do like Hope and Scott.. they're......I don't think ma*vel pays too much attention to Ant-Man movies which is why they're good..

This isn't exhaustive but you get the idea!

Plus good gawd!! In what world would Loki fall in love in a day! The guy has severe trust issues! People with trust issues never fall in love in a fucking day! Who even thought of this story? Who approved it? Tom didn't question it? Like what!!!! THIS IS LOKI! THIS IS CHAOS INCARNATE! CHAOS BANGS BUT CHAOS DOESN'T LOOK AT CHAOS AND GOES THAT'S MY LOVE! IT GOES THIS IS SPARTA! AND FIGHTS TO DEATH TO CREATE MORE CHAOS!

I didn't expect much from ma*vel but gawd I didn't set my expectations low enough! 🤦🏻

They astronomically missed the mark when they confused loving yourself with being in love with yourself..

What Loki needed was acceptance, that he may have been lied to all these years but it doesn't diminish his worth.. because he is amazing as himself..he had to learn to appreciate himself..he had to learn his identity outside of what he had believed so far or had been made to believe..by Odin or Asgard or Thanos..he had to find his self worth within himself.. because there are traits about himself he loves he's just clouded by self doubt and self hate..he had to have an anime coming to power moment when they realise what they'd been trying to find from the outside world had been in them all along..that he just had to mute the hate and amplify the positive self talk..

What Loki got instead was a bastradisation of love story arc..the age old love will set you free and fix you..the still if someone can love you then you mustnt be as awful as you believe..he got made into a fucking narcissist!! He's a narcissist!? Knowing yourself to be smart and powerful because you've literally put 1000 year worth of effort and hence are obviously and naturally better than most is narcissism?? Good gawd the person who wrote this shit needs therapy man! And some schooling in writing! Because that was absolute shit!

#loki #lovi series negativity #babie laks #fk ma*vel #WHAT EVEN WAS THAT!?

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lucianalight · 3 years

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Hi, I wanted to ask what do you think about new vid by That Star Wars Girl on YT called "First Thor, then Valkyrie and now Loki to be changed to a LGBTQA character?" Ive no problem with Loki being pansexual/genderfluid as its part of his character in all incarnations. But I couldnt agree more with her abt everything else she said. I also fear his character is not really important for the creators and the story anymore, just used to get some PC points aside from milking money out of fans. Thanks

Hi dear anon. Sorry for answering late. I was on a long hiatus. This ask was sent to me on July 31, 2019.

youtube

The only thing in the whole video I could agree with, was that sexuality shouldn’t be the focus of the characters who already have an established arc. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be part of their story.

As far as Loki concerned, I don’t mind if he is shown to be genderfluid. Meaning I’d like to see him turn into Lady Loki once or twice as long as it is related to plot. But I’d like to see Tom’s Loki for the majority of series because it’s the Loki I’ve come to know and love. It’s the Loki I want to see heal, and grow and get a happy ending. I don’t mind if his sexuality is addressed but again if it’s related to plot. Generally though, I’m not interested in a romantic story for Loki. Since I think he needs a friend more than anything. What I want to see in Loki series, is that Loki comes to accept himself, his lineage and heal from his pain and mental issues.

The story of turning Jane into mighty Thor has been controversial since it was first introduced in the comics. I can agree with those who say it doesn’t make sense that Jane becomes Thor, since every other character in the comics who were able to lift Mjolnir, didn’t lose their identity including Cap and Loki. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Jane, a woman becoming worthy of Mjolnir. In fact, I like that particular story in comics. It has its flaws but I enjoyed reading it.

I also don’t see anything wrong with Valkyrie being bisexual and have a woman love interest. In fact, it was supposed to be shown in TR that, the warrior who saves her and dies in the process was her lover. But that was cut.

The thing is imo she resorts to fallacies, specifically strawmanning to explain her dislike of diverse and queer representation in the movies. She claims they turn characters queer, so people who are queer can identify with them. It’s actually the opposite. People already like and identify with these characters. That’s why they like to see themselves, part of their identity in these characters. And of course, people are more than their sexuality but representation matters. Queer/LGBTQAI+ are not boxes, or limitations. They are as normal as being cisgender and heterosexual. No one ever protests why characters are shown cis and hetero. That’s where the hypocrisy shows itself. Take phase 1 for example that she praises so much because of the focus on the good story telling. And she’s right. But she seems to forget that romance is part of almost all the stories of phase 1. Tony’s love for Pepper, Thor’s love for Jane, Steve’s love for Peggy. Have you ever heard “Why Tony/Thor/Steve is shown to be heterosexual! They are more than that!”. No, because being cis and hetero is perceived to be the default/normal. No one ever questions that. Almost all of the male MCU heroes have a female love interest in their solo movies. Have you ever heard anyone question that or claim that there is nothing else going for them than sexual orientation? Have you ever heard anyone claims by showing them to be heterosexual they are being put into a box? That it puts limitation on the character? And what does she mean by saying “just because it’s canon doesn’t mean is good”? I can accept this about story line but about sexuality??? Absolutely not. Sexual orientation is not good or bad. It just is. On one hand she says to create new characters if you want representation and on the other hand she says even if it’s canon it’s not good? I mean what? That’s totally contradictory and it means you can’t get representation at all because if you create it, even then it might not be good! Also two white dudes playing Norse gods is not diversity, just saying.

Up to now, we haven’t seen any of the movies which supposed to have queer representation. So saying sexuality is all there’s to these characters and there’s no story based on an article, or fans enthusiasm for representation, is fallacy. There’s no evidence that it’s true. Or that's the only thing Marvel cares about. Tbh what Marvel has done till today is queer baiting imo.

Since phase 3, MCU’s focus wasn’t characters or good story telling. The movies are plot driven and only try to move characters from one point of story to another without actually giving them any meaningful arc. This much is true. But queer and diverse representation is not limiting the characters or hasn't been the reason for it.

I understand that sometimes some fans are annoyed that it seems all others care about is queer representation or romantic story lines, without caring about character arcs. But here’s the thing. We can’t control and decide for people what to like and care about in their fandom. And we shouldn’t. Everyone want different things in a fandom and I think they are all valid.

#loki #queer loki #queer #mcu #thor #jane foster #female thor #valkyrie #anon #messages #back from hiatus

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cross-d-a · 3 years

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fic tag game

aaahhh @vishcount thank you for tagging me!!! These are so fun and I adored reading about your fic journey~! ೖ(⑅σ̑ᴗσ̑)ೖ ❤

OH as a note!! For the ppl I tag at the end I don’t expect you to read all of this bc it’s A Lot!!! but I figured you might want to do this game yourself? haha :)

Name: cross-d-a shortened version of my first ever username. unfortunately stuck with it now haha but i’m fond of it :p wish it was cuter tho!!

Posting the rest of this under the cut so it doesn’t eat up people’s dashes!!

(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Fandoms:

oKAY YIKES there are....honestly too many too name. I’ve got a short and obsessive attention span so it’s either all or nothing with me usually. When I can stay in a fandom for a long period of time it’s a miracle. I’ll name the bigger ones that I’ve all written fic for! Even if I’ve never posted them haha

Right now I’m very firmly into Daomu Biji (dmbj). It feels like it’s both got a crap ton of content and yet barely anything at all haha. Maybe because the English fandom is so small. But at least there are a bunch of dramas and books!!! I really, really, really adore dmbj so much!! And a large part of that is the fandom!!! It's been a really cool and unique experience! Everyone in it is truly so kind and wonderful, and I’ve made some really incredible friends because of it (looking at you vish!! ❤). I’ve got a bunch of wips, but I’ve only posted two fics for dmbj!

Before this I was very into Guardian and mdzs. MDZS was my first foray into cdramas and Guardian’s Zhu Yilong really suckered me into watching more haha I also have fics for both these fandoms!

My very first fandoms were Fullmetal Alchemist, D. Gray-Man and Naruto. My very old ffnet account has fics for these and I’ve got a bunch of newer wips on my tablet. Then Star Trek, Twilight, BBC Merlin, Sherlock, Death Note, Harry Potter, How to Train Your Dragon, Battlestar Galactica, Avatar the Last Airbender and Marvel were a few of my main ones in high school. Plus a bunch of anime (like Fruits Basket! and Kuroshitsuji and Natsume Yuujinchou).

Then college hit and I renewed my childhood love of Tolkien (mainly lotr and the Hobbit), and Star Wars. I also found Teen Wolf! Then after college it was Stranger Things.

I find myself in a cycle of mild fondness and complete obsession with these fandoms haha I go back to Star Wars at least once a year!! Then I’m in the gffa hole for a few months. Marvel also reoccurs, depending on how interested I am in new content! Star Trek I always always always go back to. TOS is my comfort show and it will never fade from my heart ❤

But for now I’m stuck in cdrama hell and I love it

Tropes:

Time travel, found family, whump+hurt/comfort, fairytale-like elements, resurrective immortality (thanks to a “Nine Lives” Hobbit fic), CROSSOVERS

I’m a slut for all these things so they often worm their way into my plots haha

I also just- love weird premises. I think that’s the anime influencing me haha

Fic I spent most time on:

My series he leaves sand and stardust in my wake (main fic is hurricane on the edge of oblivion), I have...spent five years on now. I have done so much research for this fic it’s insane.

The premise is force ghost!Obi-Wan getting shunted back into his tiny 10 year old self. I incorporate a shit ton of legends and I try to stay as canon as possible. I basically want this au to feel like it’s 1000% plausible while still getting all my gay shit. It’s chock full of whump, redemption, found family, minor characters turning into major characters, and I’ve got slavery uprising on the mind, too. It’s just- everything I could ever want to explore in the Star Wars universe basically.

It’s my first big project. I started doodling and scribbling ideas in the margins of my notebook in my Scottish History class. I adore it so so so much. But, because of my hyperfixation and fleeting intense obsession with things it makes it- really difficult to consistently update. I leave it for months at a time and I am constantly guilt-ridden about it. Because it’s my baby and I have a lot of wonderful readers. I fear I’ll never be able to finish it. Especially since I’ve written so much and I’m still only in the beginning of it. ( ; A ; )

Also, I’ve spent so much time with Xanatos, Feemor and Bruck that they just feel like mine now. I can’t read any fics that involve them, it’s too strange. Which is a damn shame because I love them so much haha OH ALSO!! I think it’s the first really big fic to include those three?? So I’m very proud about that haha (I’ve had so many ppl comment about how they actually Give A Shit about these three and are Invested bc of me haha)

Favorite fic(s) you’ve written:

hurricane on the edge of oblivion (with nowhere to go) (Star Wars)

My long-term passion project. My love-letter to Star Wars, I suppose. Reading it now I feel like a lot of it is clunky or long-winded, but I think it really shows the foundation of my writing today :) Main characters are Obi-Wan, Xanatos Du Crion, Qui-Gon Jinn, Bruck Chun and Feemor. Eventually we’ll get to Maul, Savage, Feral, Shmi Skywalker, (more!) Ahsoka, Anakin and a shit ton of clones ❤

things we hunger for (Guardian)

My Ye Zun self-indulgent fic. It’s a time travel amnesia Weilanzun! Honestly has some of my fav writing I’ve ever done. It’s so soft and really indulges in the hurt/comfort. It gives Ye Zun the friends and family I think he deserves. Also, he gets to grow into a (mostly!) functional person and I adore him.

the beast that slumbers within your soul (mdzs)

Jiang Cheng centric fic!! I feel like all my favourite fics I’ve written are love letters haha. This is one def my love letter to Jiang Cheng. This fic possessed me for two whole days. I wrote 16k in almost one sitting. I went to sleep at 6 in the morning bc I couldn’t stop writing. And when I drifted off I kept thinking of new ideas so I’d whip out my phone and write down lines and notes. I- have never ever ever felt that way about anything. It was- insane. It felt insane. It was so amazing. I’m still riding the memory of that high.

Basically Jiang Cheng actually finds Baoshan Sanren and it turns out she’s a fox demon and Jiang Cheng is descended from wolves. It’s- okay I said the fic above this had my favourite writing?? That was a lie. This has my favourite writing I’ve ever done. It’s unfinished bc I am in dmbj hell but I am still excited about the next chapter which features Wei Wuxian’s pov!!

the whispers of spirits (dmbj)

My current passion project. In a way it kinda feels similar to hurricane? Bc multiple povs, incorporating different aspects of canon (we’ll get there!! I promise!), shit ton of research, etc. etc. I really really really love it for so many reasons. I’m basically taking all the things I was unsatisfied with in Reboot and Sha Hai and running with it. Found family and whump galore! It’s also a love letter to the women of dmbj who really deserve so so so much better.

Honourable mention to:

One Day (you’ll have given more of yourself than is meant to be taken) (Marvel)

This fic also kinda possessed me. I just- couldn’t get rid of the idea of a trans!Thor. And I mean a mtf Thor! It’s just? So many people look at Thor and go “that’s a Real Man.” Full stop. They never think there could be anything more, and it really really really bothered me. So I wrote out my feelings. I’m not trans. I don’t have that experience at all. I’ve had issues and confusion about my gender but nothing like this. I just wanted to do justice to this idea of Thor in my head. And I still feel a bit nervous having posted it. But I've gotten so many comments from people who really connected with what I’ve written? So I’m very very thankful I wrote it and it has a very special place in my heart. It’s a very cathartic fic.

Fic I spent least time on:

Probably we rise (Star Wars) and I think it shows haha. I wrote it in response to Dave Filoni posting a drawing of Ahsoka and Gandalf telling her “People thought I was dead, too, and look how that turned out...” So I incorporated Ahsoka (and Din and Grogu and Ezra!!!) into the ending of Rise of Skywalker, kinda explaining how I think they could all still be alive. :)

Longest fic:

hurricane is my longest fic (159k) but I’m kinda worried whispers will eclipse that.....

Shortest fic:

Of my posted ones it’s The Five Moments it Took Tony and Scott to Admit They Were Best Friends (and the first time they ever did), currently clocks at 1.6k. It’s unfinished tho so maybe that doesn’t count.... otherwise it’s we rise which is completed and 2k.

Most hits/kudos/comments/bookmarks:

hurricane overall has the most of all these. Though I don’t think hits counts as much bc it’s multi-chapter. If you discount multi-chapter stuff, most hits goes to my obikin smutfic Homecoming, bc people are horny af haha

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on:

If I had energy I’d like to rewrite the beginning of hurricane bc it feels so so wordy. I’d want to expand on One Day bc I really would like to write a whole series with trans!Thor. And like- I’d really like the focus to finish any of my WIPs.

Share a bit of a WIP: I really wanna share my Guardian/dmbj crossover that I started back in August. Bc I adore the idea of wu xie&shen wei&ye zun triplets! Plus time travel!!! I dunno if I’ll ever finish it tho ( ; A ; ) It just feels like a lot to deal with right now.

This scene takes place during the Mountain Awl arc. Guardian crew and desperado fam run across each other at the village! Wu Xie has recently found out that he’s adopted and he’s searching for answers in the area Sanshu originally found amnesiac!toddler!Wu Xie in :) Gonna pull two snippets bc I’m v excited and this might be the only time anyone else sees this fic haha:

“Oh?” Pangzi focuses on Yunlan now, lips twisting. “You think I’ve ‘got the wrong guy,’ huh?” He laughs, but it’s not a nice sound. “That’s rich! Are you that cocky or are you just stupid?”

Bristling, Yunlan drops his hands and scowls. “Excuse me?”

“Sir,” Shen Wei tries. “I think—”

Pangzi’s eyes snap back to Shen Wei, sharp and blazing. “How dare you fucking steal his face!”

What?

Automatically, Zhao Yunlan turns to Shen Wei, but the professor looks just as shell-shocked as Zhao Yunlan feels which- is seriously something. Since everything about Shen Wei is so carefully controlled, kept to the minimum. Except for those delightful little smiles that bloom across his lovely face, or the startled little bursts of laughter that fall from his lips. Or even when anger and frustration spark across his features, cracking his calm veneer open enough that he can see a glimmer of what lies beneath, the fire in those eyes. Zhao Yunlan delights in those moments, makes a game of making Shen Wei’s control slip.

He tells himself it’s nothing more than a game. Nothing more than trying to find out what makes Shen Wei tick.

Zhao Yunlan’s always been very bad at lying to himself. Or very good. Depending on who you’re asking.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Yunlan splutters.

But before anyone can say anything else, a very familiar voice calls:

“Pangzi? What’s wrong?”

Yunlan can feel Shen Wei stiffen, and Yunlan himself is pulled to that voice like a planet in orbit, like the inevitable plummet to the ground.

Another shadow wavers in the doorway before it steps out onto the dirt. Light illuminates shaggy hair, limning it gold, sharply casting everything else in shadow. But as the figure nears, the contrast softens until Yunlan can see the newcomer’s face properly and- and—

“Wu Xie!” Pangzi growls. “We’ve got ourselves an impostor!”

The man wearing Shen Wei’s face steps up to them, brows furrowed and mouth pulled down into a sharp frown. He glances between them, eyes landing on Shen Wei. His scowl deepens. He opens his mouth, but then—

“Wu Xie?” Shen Wei breathes, all trembly and lost and hopeless.

Heart in his throat, Yunlan turns to Shen Wei again. Turns and flinches at that stricken look upon Shen Wei’s pale pinched face.

“A-Xie?” Shen Wei chokes. “Didi?”

and

Pangzi snorts. “Professor?”

“I-it’s true!”

Startled Yunlan swings his attention over to Jiajia who clenches her backpack to her chest, face screwed up in admirable determination. “P-professor Shen took me and Xiao Quan on a field trip to investigate an archeological site around here!”

“Oh?” Wu Xie drawls all slow and amused. “Well, what a coincidence. We’re archeologists, too.”

“With guns?” Yunlan bites out.

Wu Xie raises a brow, grin full of teeth. “Well, you can never be too prepared.”

“Right,” Yunlan drawls right back. “Are you a professor, too, then? You come here with your students?”

Wu Xie outright grins. “You could say that, I suppose.”

Out of the corner of his eye, one of the men rolls his eyes. He’s the one with sharp features, glasses and looped earbuds. Does he think it’s appropriate to listen to music at a time like this? Yunlan admires the man’s gall.

aahhhh vish thanks so much again for tagging me!! This was so fun to relive my fic memories!! I’m gonna tag @alwaysaslutforshakespeare @jockvillagersonly @tehfanglyfish @lichelleme @undyingsunshine @humanlighthouse @thewindsofsong I’m curious about your guys’ writing and fandom journey!! As always, no pressure to actually complete this!! I just thought it was fun ❤

Wow if you read all of this I am very humbled and impressed, thank you!!

╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

#cross talks #my fic #fanfiction #uhhh what else do i tag this as i dunno #about me #cross posts #wip fic

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idk-my-aesthetic · 4 years

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Ok. Ima say smthn really controversial. But Pls hear me out

The way MCU Spider-Man is written completely, disastrously misrepresented Peter Parker’s Spider-Man, to the point where it’s damaging to the character’s legacy

Also like the writing choices also have some lowkey racist and antisemetic undertones, which are hopefully accidental, but we’ll get to that

NOW WAIT. Before you send the hate mail please hear me out! Bc tbh I like a lot about the spider man movies!!! All the actors are like perfect choices and almost all of the scenes work really really well on their own

But there’s a HUGE problem with the portrayal of the character as a whole. Because the writers completely threw away the heart of Peter Parker’s spiderman in the name of ripping off Miles Morales’s spiderman.

We all know the “with great power comes great responsibility” line, right? Well there’s a bit more to it than just that

Peter Parker as a character is meant to embody the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olum. Translated literally tikkun olum means “repair/heal the world”. It’s a major concept in Judaism, and basically teaches that it’s everyone’s responsibility to do as much good as they are able to. Not just by being kind when the chance presents itself, but by actively seeking out things to help with. (Hey, doing the right thing bc u have the power to? Sounds familiar!!) it’s supposed to be his whole motivation, and what he represents as a cultural icon

But in the MCU movies he’s completely rewritten for his motivation to instead be to live up to Tony Stark’s legacy. A character arc that is one of the many, many things straight up stolen by the MCU writers from Miles Morales’s spiderman.

And like.... it just doesn’t work the same way guys. Not only because that’s not what Peter Parker’s spiderman is about at all, but also because there’s a lot of different connotations bc of the different characters/how it’s portrayed specifically in the movies, bc it completely erases the Jewish themes and history behind an inherently Jewish character, and bc it’s basically stealing a story meant specifically for black characters and giving it to a white one instead. (Not just miles btw- Riri Williams- the person who is actually supposed to continue the iron man legacy- is a black woman literally replaced by a white boy. That’s.... really not great)

Which is a huge issue, and greatly damages the legacy of the character. spiderman is a cultural icon. He’s just as recognizable as characters like bugs bunny or micky mouse. But unlike characters like micky mouse or bugs bunny, spiderman as a symbol is a lot more divorced from his source material. Basically anyone you ask has probably seen a loony tunes cartoon, but the amount of people who’ve read a spiderman comic or seen one of the cartoons is much much smaller in comparison

Which isn’t really an issue on its own. Ppl know what spiderman stands for in an abstract way from pop-culture, even if they’ve never necessarily seen it first hand. But there’s a big difference in being told a character stands for something and seeing/feeling it in a peice if media

But when a massively popular movie franchise completely fucking misinterprets that character and establishes itself as the definitive version? Well shit! Now everyone is told he’s a hero because it’s the right thing to do, but instead what they see is a hero fanboy. And that’s really damaging when the most popular version of a character completely undercuts it’s legacy

*for clarification, the issue is not that he is in awe of tony or looks up to him. The issue is that his primary motivation is to be cool and impressive like tony- slash like straight up impress him in the first place, instead of his motivation being doing the right thing. Peter Parker was never a hero to be cool. He was a hero bc it was the right thing to do. He was serious about it, even if he joked around he knew how dangerous it was. He was confident in his own moral code, was a leader who actively searched out things to fix. and the idea that he’d look to someone else for directions? Or let himself be limited by someone else? Is insulting.

Oof. That ended up a lot more aggressive than I intended. I don’t wanna make people feel bad for enjoying MCU spiderman. Like I really, really get it guys. The relationship between him and tony stark is really cute, and Tom Holland plays the best teenage Peter Parker in film history. You’re allowed to like it!! I’m actually really happy that y’all have found smthn you can truly enjoy

I’d just like to bring some attention to how this portrayal of the character isn’t the most faithful to the heart of the character. Which is ultimately much more important than anything else about a character, even things like their name or how they look. The heart is the most important part of them

I don’t think these movies are going to completely destroy the legacy of spiderman, or that they’re actively malicious. But I do think the way they misinterpret the character is damaging, at least in the long stretch of time until a new version takes it’s place.

I just don’t want these movies to give people an incorrect idea of what Spider-Man stands for. And I don’t want these traits that belong to other characters to be attributed to the wrong person. Like, y’all know they basically had to cut out Miles’s best freind Ganke from spiderverse bc he was too much like Ned? Even though Ned is literally based on Ganke, who’s role in spiderverse was cut down so much he literally doesn’t talk

ANYWAY. Y’all can like what you like and I’m legitimately glad u found smthn that makes u happy. I’m not gonna go get mad at ppl for writing a fic where Tony adopts Peter or enjoying the MCU movies. That would be a total dick move. But if u could please just.... share this if u don’t completely h8 me, and try to remember Peter’s true motivation is that he just wants to help ppl bc it’s the right thing to do. It would really mean a lot to me, and help preserve the inherently Jewish themes of the character’s and author’s legacy.

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annes-andromeda · 4 years

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Fanon Marvel cause they got I S S U E S

This isn’t really a fanfic thing, more or less what I envision the MCU would be in MY head. Granted not everyone’s gonna agree with these points, but that’s fine. Well all got our own opinions☺️

Q: Who survives the Snap in Fanon?

A: Steve, Thor, Bruce, Natasha, Clint, Nebula, Gamora, Rhodey, Rocket, Scott, Okoye, Shuri, Pepper, Wong, Valkyrie, Loki, and Tony

Q: Will anyone be recast?

A: Yes. Monica Rambeau is Captain Marvel instead of Carol Danvers. Make of that as you will.

Q: Are there gonna be any major changes?

A: Not for the most part, as I haven’t watched all the Marvel movies. However, these would be the most prominent ones:

* T*ny Stark is an anti-villain. His story has been changed to mostly fit the Superior Iron Man storyline. The IM trilogy would stay the same since I haven’t seen them, as well as the first two Avengers movies. However, he gets his immediate change in Civil War, where we find out that he worked for HYDRA the whole time, and wanted the Avengers to sign the Accords so the organization didn’t get found out. I feel it would’ve been interesting if we had seen Tony turn from a man who pretended to help others survive, into a man who only ever did things to help himself survive. If you don’t like this change: well then suck it cause it’s my fanon🙃

* Steve and Thor are in a relationship. This is mostly a personal preference, but I genuinely think they’d be a good couple. Their feelings would begin to come out in AOU, after the party scene. The two have a drink, slow dance, and confess there feelings. Simple, but cute (I think). Steve would think of Thor in Civil War, while Thor would have a scene in Ragnarok, in which he calls Steve and gets his opinion on everything that has happened to him (Odins death, Hela, losing Mjolnir etc). In Infinity War, they reunite and share a big kiss Pirates of the Caribbean style. As for Endgame: Steve doesn’t go to the past (I.e fucking up the timeline and Peggy’s happy life) and Thor stays on New Asgard to rule as King, with his consort by his side.

* CA:CW- People like Rhodey and Natasha don’t just immediately agree to the Accords. Instead, they go undercover and try to find out what the government is actually doing; Peter is on Team Iron Man until he finds out that Tony is HYDRA. It sucks that M*rvel really out here just making Peter iron boy instead of... ya know... Spider-Man; Civil War has a scene where Steve reminisces on his mother (his real moral compass fight me) and we focus more on him and less on Tinkie’s man pain; Instead of Tony being upset that Bucky killed both of his parents, he’d only get upset about his mother, as he actually wanted his father dead. Got this idea from a post where basically a bunch of people were talking about how Tony was probably HYDRA the whole time, which is where I got the idea. Feel free to add anything else.

* IW: Loki and Gamora don’t die. I feel like they killed off Loki a little too early since he was just getting the arc he so desperately needed. While I don’t really know what to do with him yet, I do know that he’ll be in a relationship with Valkyrie. I mean, did you see their fight scene? The sexual tension. As for Gamora, well we all practically hated it when she died and hated it even more when they brought her 2014 counterpart back from the past. Someone on Quora said that an alternative for Thanos to sacrifice on Vormir could be Ebony Maw, as out of all of Thanos’s children, he worshipped him the most. Maybe Thanos would hesitate as this was his most loyal child, but he does it cause gotta wipe out half the universe or whatever. It wouldn’t be as tragic tho, but (1) that’s the price we gotta pay for Gamora to stay alive, and (2) are we reeeaaally supposed to pity Thanos? Thanos? The guy who only ever fell in love with Death???. Anyways back to Gamora: I actually wanna do something for her. If you’ve ever seen RWBY, one of the main characters essentially loses her arm when she tried to save her friend. I know it sounds cruel for Gamora to loose a limb, but hey, sometimes you just like seeing your fav characters suffer🤷‍♀️. I was thinking it could go two ways:

- (1): Gamora loses her arm like the character in RWBY i.e, saving one of her friends like Mantis, Quill, or Nebula.

- Or (2): Thanos uses the Reality Stone to make the Guardians + Peter and Strange think that they have the upper hand. Strange uses his magic to hold Thanos down while the others try taking off the Infinity gauntlet. Once the gauntlet is nearly loose, Quill would try to strike him, as Nebula realizes that the whole thing is an illusion. But before she could warn the others it’s too late, and Gamora looses an arm to her boyfriend, leaving him and everyone in complete shock. I like this option more, as it would show not only just how cruel Thanos is, but that he never really loved Gamora. He just favored her above all his other kids. And hey, I’m a sap for angst.

* Feel free to add anything else.

* EG: So in the first bullet, I already said which characters survive the snap and that Captain Marvel isn’t Carol, but Monica. Aside from that, I haven’t really thought much of what to do with Endgame. Surprisingly, it’s difficult to write a better story for this one. What I would most like to happen, however, is more character moments. Thor’s PTSD and traumas being taken more seriously, and instead of him gaining weight he loses it (cause according to Tinkie’s dumb rant that’s what gets an audience to take your turmoil seriously. Pls don’t hate me for this decision). Bruce doesn’t turn into Professor Hulk, and his traumas are actually talked about. Also he gets closure on his relationship with Natasha (I know it’s not that great but I personally like it). Clint dies instead of Nat and we remember that Nat was the leader of the Avengers for like five years. Steve properly mourns his friends and actually acts like Steve Rogers and not a fucking imposter. We actually see what happened in Wakanda after the Snap, with Okoye and Shuri at the head of it all. Also Pepper would be stand in for Tony, cause ya know, she has a life outside of him and is actually smart. And her and Scott help with the Time machine or what other plan I or anyone can come up with. Again, feel free to add anything else.

Q: Will there be any new characters added?

A: For now just one: A robot named Iris (aka Iron Blade), created by Tony for HYDRA. I’ve made a summary of her here:

* Iris is an android created by the billionaire Tony Stark, who possesses a synthetic body made of Tungsten Carbide which is powered by the arc reactor in her chest. For years Stark worked into making Iris highly advanced, while also keeping her secret from the rest of the world until she was ready to be used by the organization HYDRA. She was trained by HYDRA in combat and artificial intelligence, transforming Iris into a dangerous, ruthless killing machine. However, she still managed to keep some essence of personality thanks to Tony, who refused to have her be simply mindless. This resulted in Iris inheriting some of Tony’s more negative traits, while even accepting his lavish lifestyle. Although she may act like him, Iris has her own traits which vary from being charismatic, eloquent, and sophisticated to privileged, arrogant and cruel. Due to HYDRA’s influence, Iris is mostly misguided and blindly follows orders.

* Iris was eventually revealed when Tony tried forcing the Avengers to sign the Sokovia Accords as a means to keep HYDRA underground. She was introduced as a new recruit of the US government, in which she had a hand in writing the Accords. When the Avengers found that Iris was created by not just HYDRA but by Tony, this caused a huge riff in the team. The people on Team Iron Man immediately turn on him once finding out that he created Iris, which in turn resulted in them finding out that not only had he been providing the organization with weapons, but was a member himself. Out of all the team members, Iris has the largest fallout with Bucky Barnes (the former Winter Soldier) and Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), as she mostly worked as their antithesis, showing what probably would’ve occurred had they never recovered from their manipulation at the hands of corrupt organizations.

* After the fight between Iron Man and Captain America, Iris went into hiding alongside Tony, who was no longer a member of the Avengers. For the next two years, Iris stayed by her creators side as he intended to carry out his boss’s plan. The titan Thanos had ordered Stark to help him eradicate half the universe. Tony agreed to the plan, as he believed that Earth had been ungrateful for his attempts at ‘saving’ the world. He would help Thanos, so long as he ensured his safety and payed him. Iris, programmed to follow orders, agreed to the plan without question.

* Once Thanos arrived on Earth, Iris would go to Wakanda to stop the Avengers from destroying the Mind Stone, all the while Stark attempted to kill the Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, and Spiderman (also the only one who knew of Tony’s true alignments). Iris, failing to retrieve the Stone, joins Tony on Titan while Thanos fights the Avengers. Despite the Avengers attempts, Thanos gets the stones and does the Snap, in which Tony and Iris survive and go into hiding once more.

That’s pretty much it. I made this cause I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I wanted to share my opinions. Feel free to add anything or give constructive criticism.

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