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blindtaleteller · 7 months

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MCU Asgard Canon Observation Research [Part 1]

Firstly and before I even start in on the subject, keep in mind that this is what it says: a collection of research into actual Canon Lore from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: not the comics, or the Nordic lore twice removed from it.

Secondly and alongside that, also keep in mind that even back at the start of the MCU as a long term project, while the MCU is based on the Marvel comics universe: the creators made a point of making it a completely different universe: for many varying reasons, including the spaces lacking continuity in the comics over the years that the MCU as a project wanted to pursue from it's first conception.

This is a large part of why there are phases and why they were numbered from it's creation. (And yes also why my tags recently mentioning counting phases are what they are elsewhere, but that's a whole other post.. or set of them.)

These are important to remember because, I would like to avoid previous iterations of people wasting their time trying to insert comics-universe lore and more excessively into or onto this requested post purely for the sake of, well; being argumentative or just trolling:as much as possible. I do try to take some time to respond to comments and reblogs as much as possible, but I can and will ignore or yes, at times point out people unable to manage these things.. and respond as necessary.

I normally wouldn't bother to mention this except yes, that has happened before so: consider this your disclaimer.. I ain't dealin' with you if you're gonna be a trolly shit disrespectful enough of the time effort and willingness to share what research and observations I have, by shitting on it or me in your pursuit of whatever flimsy excuses might be given for any inhuman reactions posted passive aggressive or worse.

More frankly: be respectful on my posts or get lost. I don't tolerate harassment on my blog whether it's aimed at me or others. Passive aggressive or otherwise. I'll discuss stuff, am happy to have any valid references I might miss added to and pointed out. Just don't be an asshat about it, and you'll get the same from me. That's how basic-bitch Karma, and I; both work: you'll get what you give along those lines, while in my space.

The necessary now out of the way... Next!

More as a side note with that mentioned; while I may mention some meta/theory in the form of the most probable (as that's how my meta in particular is formed) it is again: based on the facts of the canon lore and contexts confirmed presented in it; visually, in dialogue, and out of the mouths of the very people who made all that themselves, at the time that lore was given to us on screen: and will be mentioned as the theory and supposition that is 'meta' rather than 'canon'. I have gone out of my way as a fan of world, universe, and character building as a part of the creative process in particular: to watch, rewatch, rewatch again and again, and hunt down all this stuff (often lol purely out of my own curiosity.) All in all Meta is theory, Canon is story/film-established fact; and I do try to keep a clear line between the two of them. The early world and character building in the MCU has always been interesting enough to me alone, to do all that with my free time.

And that's especially true with Asgard in particular, as a main story driving force in one form or another as far back as 2010 when both Thor and CA: tFA's scripts were being filmed and their sets/settings picked out and created.

Final few bits before we get into it..? As Asgard lore (and even a lack of it's presence at times) is directly and appropriately attached and or in relation to the lore of several races, species, and massive events in the entirety of the MCU's first three phases.. I will be touching some of those cultures and places too, where important. Probably not in this particular part, but yeah. It's gonna happen.

As with the research post into Loki and his year of absence prior to Avengers 2012: (yes that's a link to an ask that contains a good chunk of info and years of interviews on that particular subject) this might not be an entirely complete compilation: for the same reasons. As I said, i didn't just watch, I rewatched repeatedly from differing personal mental angles: not just three or four times, but and as I wrote my own fanfiction.. I would also re-watch once or twice just prior to fleshing out an outlined story of my own to refresh my memory, seek out interviews official and otherwise from the creators and actors who made that lore and put it on screen for us to enjoy as part of the stories we enjoyed (or not, depending lol) and well.. the resulting organization of the whole outside of this post is less than comprehensive for anyone else. You can see the explanation for how that happens in the foreword of that thread if you're curious.

As a result, I may or may not exclude the actual interviews if this gets too long. Much of the visual in this first part especially are pretty self explanatory, as I did find some of my dissection pics too.

All said (I think? Gods I hope so that was a lot wasn't it? XD) and as suggested/requested recently in discord?

This one is gonna be expansive.. and hellaciously so: so grab your drinks and your snacks and still be prepared for this series of posts to be going for while (not kidding, may be compiling this properly between jobs for weeks) so yeah..

Here we go again!

The major forgotten fact of Asgard's depiction in the MCU is this:

We the audience are only shown a very tiny fragment of Asgard as another separate planet in space, and: they do show us we're missing as much, from the very first film.

That gif directly from the movie I used at the top? I'm using it again, because...

..look at that.

With topography, perspective and size in mind.

That tiny golden triangle in the middle is the Palace at the center. The little golden bar along that tiny portion to either side? Is the city attached to it proper, with the Bifrost, and as far as we've seen the 'Heroes Road' (as soem are calling it) and city walls cupping the Bifrost Bay directly facing the camera.

This is a space shot (of course,) and that tiny itty bitty moving spec that is still shrinking as it gets further from our perspective and closer to Asgard at the bottom, is the Bifrost in use.

And, they do give us a few views of that as early as five to six minutes into the first movie in 2011, as seen in the first clip below. I've set it to share at the first view of Asgard itself.

Hopefully that works. If not, the timestamp you're looking for is 2:04.

I recommend shutting off the audio, as it's a bit distracting. Trust me, we will get back to the very interesting audio from a world builder's perspective, when we get to the History and Relations section of Asgard's break down.. there are several tons, of that and in that opener alone, to examine later.

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IMPORTANT!! When looking at any of these images or videos, keep in mind and look at the scale. Not just in the scene on screen at that moment, but also in reference to previous shots. Distance is a thing. The size of trees and people are a thing. This place in the MCU is much more massive than where it's very cloistered story parts take place.

This is not a city-planet like and for comparison: Coruscant, from Star Wars... though I am very aware that some people will throw out Asgard's concept art to try and 'debunk' that (yes its' been done and proven pointless in other threads).. that does also bring us to another couple of facts that slip by in their context.

In fact, you know what? I'll throw it in here right now myself:

This concept art: does still apply, if slightly adjusted with the topography and likely under ground portions taken into account.. because Asgard is the name of both the planet AND the city as separate entities of the same locale.

In other words, the concept art is VERY valid as a map of the city itself: but not the outlying locations outside of Asgard as a Capital City Proper, of Asgard as a disk planet.

And again.. they do show us this, and not just in the first film: although that first shot going into the city says as much too, being that..

A. Asgard is established as a society greatly more advanced than Earth and most others, and;

B. there are whole swaths of land (and especially mountain they like to build into) without structure between the edge panned through and the City itself. (see still image below: not the best quality but it's also in the video.)

Which.. we'll touch again a little more in a bit (and probably the biggest lol) part of this breakdown set; digging at History, Culture, and Relations.. as the fact they do prefer to build INTO their environment much more than on top of it is also shown in the shot of the canyons and canals on which not only that city is built, but even what buildings are shown outside of it on that panning-in shot.

We can see in the one above though: that while they did redirect some of the water through canals in the lower shot; they also kept and built into the natural(?*) lay of the river canyons below.

This theme is kept even before we get into the city though with the first part of the shot above the water.

Want a more visual view of the breakdowns as I do them?

Here you go, here's one example from out of my crazy folders and docs, that I made in paint back in 2013 (LOL yes I know. XD) while once again re-watching that same scene.

I would highly suggest clicking on it, as tumblr does downsize images making text on them hard to read otherwise. Crappy in-motion quality screen cap but, it was made more for breaking down the visual elements on screen for what it told us about the land, and more; on it.

----[?*] As a set of side/foot notes to that last bit and the image..

A. the top left corner yes: does reference some of where I use certain observations of canon in my own fics; and how they would have grown or evolved depending on that story. In this case, and at the time: the pink text is making note to utilize those observations in outlining Hvedrungr (Loki from Uni 0) and Flykra's (Loki from Vesti1 Uni 14) universes in particular: both of which return to Asgard at VERY different times and in different situations: while the history and culture I've been able to glean and expand on in some cases is still part of their and the location's background. As I don't have the patience to remove the text from an old paint shop cut.. I thought I would at least explain it's presence left there. These things are, ultimately connected by the culture that originated on and created them on that planet after all.. and why there's an entire section dedicated to the varied aspects of Asgard's presented Cultural, Relations, and History lore. B. The '?' at the 'natural' mention in parenthesis above, also takes into account that Asgard is much older than Earth's culture and has to be: if only because as only three generations have come and gone over the passage of what to us is five thousand years! (see the next installment Thor the Dark World: Bor and Darkalfheim, or just watch the movie with info gathering in mind.) In other words, between Bor's War, and Odin's Asgardian Great Wars: we cannot be certain whether or not 1. those canyons are actually natural or the now aged result of one of many previous interplanetary wars, or 2. whether Asgard at this stage of it's showing timed at 2011 more than a millennia later, has even always been this size, given their advancement in technology and study of magic as presented OR left in question, either. For my part, as there's no conclusive dialogue from that era to state otherwise in the MCU or it's interviews that I know of, and knowing the context of Malekith and Darkalfheim's familiarity with Asgard itself during their raid to reclaim the infinity stone: I tend to veer towards a mixture of the two. While it's very likely at least some of the canyons are indeed natural; the great age of the culture and planet both, along with the nature of Bor and Odin's rules alone as we've seen them: leaves a HUGE and LONG period of time and opportunities for some of those nasty fights to come directly to them... or even their predecessors. Which would also explain why they had that shield for the palace too. You don't build and more importantly upkeep something like that without a very good set of reasons or examples experienced, to do so after all. Much of that is meta though, however based on canon fact it may be: and as many of the creators were not asked publicly during that era, and have been dismissed or moved on to other projects since.. it's hard to know if we'll ever see a *genuine* answer from the people who actually made it all starting sixteen years ago.

Anyway, let's look at a few more shots of Asgard with that breakdown going. Some of these are all old, from as far back as about ten years ago when I first started writing outlines for the varied universes in my Lokiverse Project: but they do still hold up. theer are some from TDW in this bunch too. I heavily dissected these scenes knowing I was going to do whole chapters in multiple differing universes, and wanted to have the presented layout and feel laid out in my head, before I started adding in locations on the planet not yet shown on film. And given my first Book was already going to be DREAMS.. where Asgard has been blown to bits post Endgame? I really wanted to get it right so I could deconstruct it as many times as I and the muses wanted to. Laufeyson (Universe 10 Loki) was pretty insistent too with the opening chapters on his end focusing partially on that chase with Abell through Asgard's blown apart ruin

Sorry for the ramble of an explanation, but that's how it is and how it works over here...? XD

..uhmmmm. Yeah lol! When I said I watch and re-watch from differing mental perspectives..? That's what I mean. I don't usually share those at all... only the unedited pics. Genrally I will take caps or take existing raw caps and pick out piece that catch my eye. I've been told they do help put your brain in the right mode for those who have difficulty processing them in that way, like I do when in that mode. Also yes, trees and fish ...bruh. lol!

It's there, has been for years in some cases; and I'm not messing with it now.

That basic bit out of the way (doesn't sound so basic does it.) Let's backtrack a bit, specifically to Asgard's shape and the placement of it's location and the locations on it.

As I first write this, I don't have the talks I had with a few wild meteorologists and geologists back then directly on hand (as this is a part I still don't focus on too much; but:) shaped as it is, those I did talk to theorized that between the shape and placement of planets as well as the nebula they're partially inside, that Asgard may be shaped and in rotation as it is because of its' placement in it's system: or because of late interference by Asgard's inhabitants to keep it stable.

^ That one scene in particular from Thor 2011 really made my eyes pop. Not because of what's going on in it so much as trying to answer the whys and hows and what the actual fricks man: because..

Can you imagine, the conversation: trying to pitch that spinning death ball to the King there OR anywhere else on the planet before Bor or even his great grandfather?

Or, trying to talk the royalty down from the idea of putting it anywhere NEAR the palace, or other people's homes?

How about testing that house sized death-by-velocity-alone gilded mess? (Yes I still laugh thinking about that. Some poor scholar/engineer type trying to dissuade Bor's grand-daddy from building what would definitely become a giant pinball of death in the canyons and canals, if that thing ever came off it's anchors even once in the city. Good gods! lol!) Who knows; maybe that was when people started moving to Vanaheim... XD! Just (mostly) kidding.

Cray-cray thoughts of high velocity gilded pinball hell that was probably somewhere way back in the Bifrost's likely development and evolution as tech/normie science boosted by magic, and or vice versa, aside:

You probably notice I've mentioned the nebulae and the planets in their rotation more than once. And with good reason.

Backing up a bit; Asgard is interesting well before you hit her shores.

Not only is she a top-shaped disk-planet: but with the way the sky is shown: Asgard has a very interesting rotation if she has any left at all. There's very little we know, but what we do know is she is not alone in her systematic rotation either way.

(Asgard's sky from Thor's personal Hall in Thor: the Dark World)

In fact and as seen in the screen caps above: Asgard has an incredibly close relation to at least three planets in her nebulous solar system. At least one of which is absolutely massive: massive enough that it's close proximity is theorized as being pretty likely to be the only way Asgard experiences night cycles as seen in Thor: the Dark World... mainly through eclipsing the nebulous sun by passing between it and Asgard as a planet.

Which is both cool -and- scary when you take things like degrading orbits, space debris and projectiles like comets and other space science into account.. but also very, very interesting.

It also begs the question either way: why didn't Asgard at their earlier establishment of a greater technological level, colonize or move to those planets sooner? Of course.. the first obvious answer is.. they probably couldn't, at first. And even more probably were past trying by the time the Bifrost was built, prior to Bor's time (I say prior because we have seen Bor use it in Thor the Dark World: and on a massive scale moving whole armies, the same as his son Odin. See some of the scenes from Bor's seizure of the Aether below.)

But yeah, Asgard is a pretty unique place even before you get to the water fall's edge: or questioning what kind of condensed mass it has to retain gravity at it's very small size.

Or, whether that gravity and the shape is in fact generated in some form or another after millennia upon millennia of just the Wars we do know about in their history.

(At current we know about Darkalfheim and the series of Wars including Jotunheim and Muspelheim that they call the Great Wars. While they are definitely aware of the extensive millennia of intergalactic war between the Xandarian based Nova Corps and the Kree Empire put front and center in GotG.. there hasn't been any actual confirmation as to whether Asgardians fought in that war on either side: only that they are at that stage at least loosely allied with Asgard.. if not a more separated protectorate being considered among the nine realms in the MCU.)

Why do I keep pointing out trees, and perspective; or teh size of the city in that first little gif again?

Because.. that is our repeated visual evidence of just how much of Asgard as a planet; the story did not take place in.. huge parts of the place we haven't seen. And that makes sense.

Power plants or generators, smithys, and even schools can be easily placed in the city proper, at this stage.

But what about BEFORE, they got to this stage.. because that is a thing in the MCU in regards to Asgard: and a major plot point for three movies of script running, from 2010 all the way to 2015 when Taika Waititi was hired (unfortunately, for those of us who know the root of what happened there.)

What about food, for thousands of 5000 year lifespans and their kids. And their grandkids. And.. the food for the livestock, or the wild game

Or the bilgesnipes and dragons--well we can guess what happened to the dragons of Asgard in particular actually. If they were anything like Muspelheim's; and on a planet that size..? It doesn't take much to figure out Odin, Bor and their predecessors probably couldn't excuse not hunting a predator big enough to swallow people to extinction: not for much longer than they absolutely had to anyway.

What about fibers and leather for clothes.

How about waste management, for both the city and suburban areas? Sewers? Water filtration? Factories or slaughterhouses to process it all, and the means to support those things. Everything man made, is grown, processed or made somewhere.

We know they have these things, because we know they have and make their own alcohol (fermentation of grains, fruits, and more); as well as other things to eat: displayed in both T1 and TDW.

(The top image is from Thor's table flip scene in Thor 2011; while the one below it is from the tavern scene in the beginning of Thor: the Dark World.)

Meat, vegetables, fruit, grain, herbs, and seasonings are all represented on the tables above. While some might be imported (I really do wonder about the platters of golden apples myself:) it's not very likely all of them are. And it wouldn't make sense for them to have been imported from off world throughout their species development either. After all and again: they would have had to have survived and developed enough to GET TO, that stage in the first place.

You're also looking at Varnish in the shine of that table; smithing and metal working and ceramics in their table ware. Weaving either plant or animal fibers in their clothes, as well as the likely production of tannin (or it's equivalent) and leather working in every leather piece on screen. Candles can be made from varied sources, whether that's actual wax of some form, or condensed animal fat.

Oh, and if you find the enlarged version of those images: you'll also notice things like fine engraving and metal sculpture to the goblets and platters on the Thor 2011 table in particular.

Either way, the images above show us directly that unsurprisingly, they have come to understand whole other sub-levels of production: before you even get to the high-tech and magic ends of any of that to be able to reproduce it in that modern era.

As another side note related to that: the booze alone is pretty telling as to how far off the "Loki" series is on this mark, as well. Creators of current content 'conveniently forgot' that this is supposed to be a space faring, technologically advanced society (even if they're the social equivalent of medieval imperialist thugs .. lol sorry not sorry! That's literally how they're depicted... and honestly that really weird twist IS some of Asgard's most interesting and strange development) whose friends, allies and other examples of places visited DO and HAVE included Earth, Xandar, and six other 'realms' as their etymology names them: for literal millennia. Even taking the other, long established cultural influences and visitations aside? For a society who 5000 years ago was still porting whole armies to other planets to kick peoples asses? The idea they never discovered honey; or sugar especially even on the inside of a fermentation barrel for wine; OR how to process it into something like candy? Is more than just a -little- dumb in the stretch. Sugar often naturally starts to separate and crystallize during the fermentation process. Ask a vintner, or look it up if you don't believe me. Just sayin'.. just on Earth alone, we know sweets were discovered more than 8000 years ago. Eight thousand. And the only reason we haven't been able to confirm people older than that finding things like bee's hives?? Is because well.. that kind of thing rarely survives even that length of time at all, to be found in archeology in order to tell us more. I'll touch that and how it's pretty damned near impossible that 'Loki doesn't know wtf candy is' being 1k+ years himself, and a guy raised as an Asgardian prince & spymaster to boot later into the culture section I think, but mmm.. that whole bit still reeks of stupid, to me And more so after their own DB Cooper scene. Gonna say candy wasn't a snack in that era either? Cause if so; I got big shocking news, for those who think so... XD

In closing.. for this part?

As far as the world of Asgard goes, we have only been allowed to see a very small part of it: and even then? It is still undoubtedly massively larger than even what's implied: and definitely capable of supporting it's comparatively small base population of less than 10k people.

(Odin's subterranean vault reference: exterior)

The only reason we don't see even more of it; is the fact that films have a limited time to give you everything, and the story focuses on the royal family from the get go. And they live, in the heart of Asgard's capital city... so we largely don't see as much of that as weirdo world building fans like me would absolutely love to see in the process... and frankly; they gave plenty enough to start us off with.

The films would have suffered for having too much more of that, rather than the stories they were trying to tell.

The same.. I would love to know more: and I do wish the current teams paid the previous ones more respect by using what was already there and expanding on it: instead of making mismatched new things up, as they went.

The early creative teams really knew what they were doing back then.

(Asgard's defensive cannons defending against the Darkalfheim air raid in Thor the Dark World.)

And no, this isn't all they showed us, in the show and tell they did manage to give us over the course of years of work... far from it.

Hope you enjoyed part one! Maybe you learned or saw something you missed.. or have been inspired to watch the older films again..?

I know I often am.

#MCU #Asgard #MCU Asgard #Lore drops #research #scene dissection #location and culture dissection #world building #universe building #Lokiverse references #writing references #writing research #Youtube #MCU Lore #part one:#about the land more than the people on it #don't worry: we'll get to that #:3

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popculturebuffet · 5 months

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Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Retrospective Part 1: Breakout (Episodes 1-7) (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Assemble all you happy people and welcome to the first of many looks at one of the greatest cartoons in marvel history, an adaptation that honors the source material while streamlining and improving it to create something impressive. One of the best adaptations and one of the last before the MCU was in full force. It's a show unlike any other, it's Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

And the timing isn't concidential. While i'm a few months off, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the avengers, the first time the team assembled and hulk was a clown for a bit because the 60s. And since I both hadn't really talked about the Avengers on this blog despite being a massive marvel nerd and because i'd rewatched this very arc a few months back, I was happy to jump on it when Kev suggested this. He won't be sticking around for the rest of the retrospective, but I plan to cover this series on and off for the foreseable future as i've only seen about half of it and hadn't rewatched it in years and it was about damn time I did. And i'm glad I am as this is one of the sharpest shows in marvel history.

For those less familiar Earth's Mightiest heroes was a cartoon that ran for two seasons from 2010 to 2012, and was a fan faviorite for most comic nerds like myself, as what I caught of it I love. It's not hard to see why either: EMH is a giant love letter to the Avengers history and Marvel in general: Ciro Nireli, Christopher Yost and Joshua fine, who developed the show, all were clearly fans and thus try to cram as many iconic foes for each of the avengers as they could into this show, from cameos to arc villians to our big threats, just about every major avengers threat you could want makes it's way into season 1.

It's also a smart remix: The show takes after the earliest days of the team, starting with the original roster of Iron Man (Tony Stark), Ant-Man/Giant Man (Hank Pym), Wasp (Janet-Van Dyne), Hulk, and Thor (Odinson), while soon adding cap as happened in the comics, as well as adding longtime mainstays hawkeye and black panther soon into the season, with many of season 1's episodes adapting early avengers tales and the art style is a very stylistic jack kirby style art, while still being it's own thing with a bit more expression and some anime styling in the eyes and how the action unfolds.

That said it's clear the crew was also aware those early tales could use a coat of paint and thus the series takes from all across the heroes histories, combining Kang's first apperance with the later epic kang dynasty for instance, or setting up Carol Danvers becoming Ms Marvel as soon as Captain Marvel debuts. It's a streamlined approach that feels like what the ultimates should've been: honoring the past but looping in the present, with the classic avengers being assembled using the breakout arc from the new avengers. More ont hat later. The result is a fresh take on the cast that feels awesome.

It also feels unique as this was before a LOT of change swept through the marvel universe and productions: the x-men and the ff still show up beofre their LONG unecessary hiatus due to marvel being dicks about not owning either's film rights, the mcu was just budding so only iron man is modeled after that version as Cap and Thor's films would air the same year as EMH, and Black Widow is a recurring character rather than part of the team, though it was hinted they might have her join up eventually.

It also happened before a lot of comics biggest events of the 2010s, which like the MCU stuff isn't bad at all, it's just neat to see just how diffrent things were: Carol Danvers wasn't captain marvel yet, next gen heroes like Ms Marvel or Miles Morales weren't around, and ideas like Jane as Thor or Sam Wilson as Cap hadn't happened. It's an intresting time capusle of a comics brand before it changed forever.

So opening this capusle is a treat. As for this batch of episodes, EMH started in a unique way: With shorts. See at the time cartoons were just starting to captalize on the concepts of minisodes, tiny shorts in continuity usually distributed via youtube. Most shows just have some skits, like Lapis trying to destroy her phone thinking Steven's trapped or Tilly Green getting buried in cats

EMH decided to get ambitious with theres: TWENTY shorts, all from what I can tell intended to be repackaged as full episodes, all setting up important stuff for the series and serving as introductions to our main cast before they all assemble properly, including later additions Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Panther.

It's an approach I respect: much like the MCU was doing around the same time, it allows the writers to set up each character, get to know who they are as a person, what their deal is and put them into place for the series proper, essentially giving them their own solo series like they had in the comics. It's a great idea and makes these feel like characters who had their own lives and plenty of adventures BEFORE we step into them, and makes the idea of them coming together all the more awesome. It also fits the avengers well: the x-men and fantastic four are largely their own spheres of the marvel universe and most members of those teams were created for them. With the avengers it's marvels' best and brightest all assembled into one massive dream team, so showing said team's adventures. We even get setup for later additions to the team: Black Panther gets a short detailing his origin story and Hawkeye is a key part of hulks before getting his own.

I have only two gripes with this setup: the first is that it's long. It's well done and important but it's still a LOT of setup, and both times i've found myself happy to get to the end: Glad I took the journey but thankful we can get to the main event.

The other is the structure: as a result of them being shorts every non-thor episode here has one segment that serves as an epilogue to the others.. but really dosen't lead as effortlessly in. It feels like the episode ended and we're now just in an extended post credit's sequence. Not a bad one, all of these are necessary and important, it just shows why this type of structure wasn't repeated: it has it's limits, and they show at the end of almost every episode. You could for instance cut out the kang bit that starts the cap one and the kang segment that ends the cap ones and have a cohesive story. Their still GOOD shorts, it's just clear they don't quite work as a cohesive episode, which woudln't be an issue if these shorts also weren't clearly part of the season order.

Still I admit these are minor complaints. They drag the presentation down slightly.. but not enough for me to not have enjoyed this episode pile. So assemble under the cut as I break down the first 7 episodes of Avengers: EMH

Iron Man is Born! (Micro Episodes: Iron Man is Born!, HYDRA Lives, Behold, The Mandroids!, and Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

So our first episode. .is third on disney+. Getting this out of the way if you watch these on disney +, start with this one, as disney mildly messed up the airing order. It isn't as bad as say Ducktales was at first, which was so bad the creators had to ask directly, but it's still very noticable disney coudln't be arsed to.. move two episodes on the list they gave people down a few slots. Then again this is the same company who won't give us the weekenders dammit, so i'm not surprised, just mildly in convinced.

Anyways this short follows Iron Man and as we go through our mightiest heroes, I thought it'd be fun to give my own personal history with each character. As I said, I really haven't gotten to dive into the avengers on this blog. I've covered Avengers #200 and Avengers Annual #10 this year but the former is more a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants story guest starring Ms Marvel and the Avengers, and the former.. is a nightmare from which there is no waking where only The Scarlet Witch and the Vision are remotely in character. Neither were really a time to talk about the team, the members of said team, or anything besides deep hurting and an antidote for said deep hurting that involves Carol Danvers verbally bitchslapping the avengers. Which is awesome, but not really a time to go "Gee this is why iron man is so great".

So starting with the cool exec with a heart of steel, I'm a pretty big iron man fan. I love Tony as a character a guy whose arrogant and overly macho at times.. but deep down is a man who just wants to make a better world after helping burn it to the ground for a profit. Someone who can be an arrogant know it all ass.. but also someone who once you've got his loyalty, he'd die for you. A man struggling with addiction, but whose also a poster boy for getting better.

I became a fan of Tony's around the movie, as before that I only really knew him as "that guy who was on spider-man once", "that weird cartoon I watched once or twice" or "That fucking asshole who ruled the superhero community with an iron fist and kicked every dog he could find post civil war".

Thankfully the movie changed that, and along with finding out his fascinating history and the utterly awesome run by Matt Fraction that launched alongside the movie, something I badly want to cover in some form at some point, I was a fan of shell head for life. My favorite runs for him aren't anything suprising: Fraction's run with invincible iron man, Dennis O'Neil's awesome epic run that sees Obdiah Stane break tony with every intention of having his enemy relapse and see's tony rebuild himself while Rhodey puts on the suit, and of course the classic Layton and Michillne run that introduced Tony's Alcholism in the first place.

The movie is important to this series as it not only launched the MCU, but said MCU incoming is likely why it happened, and while it was still young enough at the time to not impact this series heavily for most characters, that wasn't going to happen with tony. Tony, his CFO Pepper and his best friend and military liaison Rhodey, are all heavily modeled after the movie versions. That said given said versions are entirley accurate to the comics and all the MCU did to Tony was give him even more swagger.. this isn't remotely a bad thing and making sure kids had the iron man they were familiar with dosen't hurt the series. The suit's still more designed after the then current bleeding edge suit from the comic, one of my favorites. I have no issue with using stuff from the MCU, the mcu is mostly great. My issue is when latter stuff kinda.. ignores the comics except to bring in more people to punch.

Iron Man is Born gets tony down pat, in large part thanks to his VA, Eric Loomis. To my shock Loomis hasn't done a ton outside of play tony in this show and various video games but damn if few do it better. He gets the swagger, the desire to do better, and the stubborn ass refusal to let people help him down PERFECT, as does the writing. This is tony stark. Leading with him was also smart given, again the movie would be fresh on everyone's mind.

What's also neat about this one is it dosen't put tony up against any familiar foes. We'll still see some in Breakout and like the other heroes here he's already well experienced by the time the series opens up. The only thing close to it is Ultimo, a giant robot he fights in cell phone footage at the start of the episode, and even then that's just to establish Iron Man Slaps.

No instead it sells Tony's obession with his tech not hurting people by putting him up against some HYDRA robots using his tech. For those less familiar with marvel stuff, HYDRA are a bunch of snake themed nazi offshoots who are everywhere and generally the go too mook to punch in the face in the marvel universe. Who dosen't want to punch a snake nazi? Except bob. He's just there for dental. Oh bob.

The fight with said HYDRA bots is awesome: not only are they well designed, but it's classic iron man stuff: his suit running out of power, and tony having to use his brains, and hold out against his suit rapidly draining. Been used before? Sure. Helps establish how Tony fights and how his suit is both super strong and has a logical weakness in battery life? Yup.

And the best part is.. while HYDRA are his main threat... the real conflict simmering underneath this one.. is Stark vs S.H.I.E.L.D. the world's top super cops and shady assholes. Wether their being actually helpful or being obtuse and trying to obstruct the hero largely depends on the day, with the MCU making them more helpful and less greasy.

See SHIELD is mad Tony stopped making weapons. Tony is mad they won't quit bugging him about that, as he simply.. dosen't want to be an arms dealer no more. Which is fair. He made their weapons, and as he makes clear to Rhodey who also wants him to work closer with SHIELD, he's still HELPING them. He just won't build weapons. As we find out in breakout he built the Vault, one of four supervillian prisons , this one specializing in tech criminals. So he hasn't STOPPED helping them, he just wont' give them tech to go kill people with, which is fair. While they don't give his origin, at least not yet, it's very clear whatever version of it taught him the same lesson: just because someone else fires the gun dosen't mean you won't have blood on your hands.

So naturally SHIELD"S reaction to Iron Man taking down HYDRA.. is to try to arrest him

Yeah Tony has.. done ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong here.. and Nick Fury, for all his flaws we'll see in VERY short order, is not so stupid as to fire and orders them to stand the fuck down. The fuck is implied.

Tony trying to help them.. instead gets them to fire on him as the SHIELD Agents are using mandroids powered armors using tony's tech.. and unlike the comics where he BUILT the mandroids for them as a compromise, no lethal weapons but still a way to be on even foot with superheroes, here they just flat out used his blueprints to make their own weapons and expect him not to be mad. He has no right to get mad at them for doing this, he sold them the goods and clearly gave them enough legal room to do whatever, but they have no right to be mad at him for SAVING THEIR LIVES.

And they are as while Tony takes down the last hydra bot that suddenly wakes up, when he shows up at the hellicarrier, RIGHTFULLY pissed at being fired on and having them make their own iron man.. maria hill, Nick's right hand and like the comics a total asshole, PUTS A GUN TO HIS HEAD

I mean yes she has him surrounded by shield agents and if fighting them tony would half to hold back.. but he's still a man in a mostly powered armored suit that can suplex a train, while your only strategy is "hope he's really scared of a hand gun".

Fury wisely asks her to stand the fuck down, again fuck's implied, and we get a really compelling argument with him and tony: Tony has every right to not want to sell weapons, while Fury makes the point that with supervillians ont he rise they NEED this tech to compete. Tony still wins in my eyes mostly because while yes he's witholding tech and what not.. SHIELD... isn't hurting. They made the mandroid armors, they have the tech to compete with the hydra bot likely bodying them because it has the element of suprise. THey have a giant hellicarier, tons of staff, and plenty of super powered allies help keeping the various super prisons safe. Granted all four prisons are about to become paper mache, but that's not down to SHEILD being stupid. While Tony dosen't SAY it to his face, which given this is tony is a fucking achivement... the issue isn't that Fury can't handle these or the various super powered heroes out there don't have this covered for now. It's that Fury dosen't have CONTROL over it. IT's a problem inherent in most versions of Nick: it's not enoguh to be the world's top cop he has to CONTROL the situation, the info everything. He's often resonable sure but he puts control over what makes sense and antagonizes valuable allies simply by not respecting they want autonomy.

Our backup story is really just "why nick fury is badass" and "Why hydra is super dangerous". Turns out Fury has their leader, Baron Strucker. Strucker is an egotistical nazi who frequently runs hydra and is Nick's arch enemy and opposite number. So this whole mech thing.. was a smokescreen to get one of their agents, The Grim Reaper in.

The Grim Reaper in the comics is the brother of Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man. We'll get into him more next time as he has a full episode coming up, but long story short, he died, Grim blamed the avengers, and then he tried to kill his brother when Simon came back because he'd put simon on a pedestal. Here the two are pretty much detached and Grim is instead hydra's top enforcer, single handidly breaking in and wrecking up the place, only stopped, and captured alongside strucker, because Nick Fury is that badass. He also life drains fury a bit, giving him his signature white streak from the comics.

Thor The Mighty (Microepisodes: Thor the Mighty, The Siege of Asgard, My Brother My Enemy and the Isle of Silence)

As I said Thor the Mighty is the only one of these episodes that feels like a mostly cohesive 22 minute episode. I mean you can still see the seams where the shorts were, but it's one 22 minute story instead of one long story and one short one connected to the first. It's also not suprisingly my faviorite, but not just for this reason but for having some gorgeous action, great character work and a hell of an ending.

Before all that we have to talk about the god of thunder. Thor's a character I love, I mean I have a mjonr I got a yard sale somehwere around here. But he's also one i'm pickier on story wise: you either have to REALLY sell the scope and granduer of asgard, as done by Walt Simonson, god among men, and currently Al Ewing or do something fresh with it like the start of Jason Aaron' srun, Donny Cate's recent run or my all time faviorite thor story, J MIcheal Strazenzki's run. Thor's not a bad character but there is a tendency to focus on ye olde english and not on him as a person.

EMH thankfully sidesteps that. It shows thor as fucking awesome and has him do cool stuff.. but it also emphasises who the odionson is and WHY he prefers our world over his own. We start with his daily routine: finding some supervillians to punch. He fights the wrecking crew. The Wrecking Crew are villians I like, marvel's designated Jobbers. If you need someone to get their face punched in these are the guys. They CAN be dangerous, see the avengers storyline under sige where the four of them together bodied a slightly frazzled hercules, but their primary there to show up and get knocked down: their strong enough to fight thor, having asgardian enchanted construction tools.

But still not SO strong that say spidey , the runaways or whoever needs a pick me up this week can't body these jackasses. So their the perfect starter foe for thor: powerful enough to give him a good scrap, but not nearly as strong as what he faces on his home turf.

It also serves as a handy intro to Thor's love interest, Jane Foster. The film takes her from a doctor to a paramedic, ironically years before the comics would do the same, and it's a great update: Since Thor isn't spending time as mortal doctor Donald Blake here, there's no real reason for her to be at his practice as a nurse then doctor. Instead she's in the field trying to save lives just like him, and is shown to be fearless DESPITE being a squishy human, getting out to help someone the wrecking crew hurts without any hesitation while her partner cowers in the car instead of helpign. I mean .. I get it , supervillians, but yoru a fucking emt man. Your job is to save lives even at your ownr isk.

Thankfully thor provides backup. And cleans house. The Wrecker TRIES to hold jane hostage, with Thor chastising his lack of honor.. before smacking him in the back of the head with mjonir because hammer's don't respect chilvarly. Thor and Jane hit it off, and I like how even if Jane's entirely in this series to be thor's love intrest.. they give her personality and a reason he falls for her: she's just as dedicated to her job of helping people, and Thor is awed by the fact that DEPSITE not having the powers of a god and being at high risk she does it anyway. Which for us is a normal thing but for thor.. sums up why he likes Midgard so much. On asgard heroisim happens all the time, death is an endless cycle. Here humans are fragile.. but the best of us try to help each other anyway.

Thor is played by Rick D Wasserman and as you can wager i'm mostly focusing on the main cast's voice actors for this review. I"ll point out some others, for instance Jane is voiced by VA legend Kari Whagreen whose also played Charmcaster in the ben 10 franchise and Saturn Girl in the awesome Legion of Superheroes cartoon i'm bound to cover at some point, it's just EMH has a MASSIVE cast and introduces a lot of characters in the span of these 7 episodes, so adressing every single one is a lot to ask. I will try to adress the most important ones and some in future reviews as the voice cast here is positively stacked.

Which makes it weird that once again one of the main cast is a pretty low key voice actor: like with Iron Man, Thor's va did his voice for Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and Marvel Ultimate ALliance 3, but otherwise hasn't really done much else in the main roll. And given just how well Rick slides into the roll of thor as if he was born for this it befuddles me.

But we, and the god of thunder, have bigger issues..s pecifically frost giants thor writing shorthand for "We wanted something big for him to hit" I can only think of one run in recent memory that hasn't invovled thor hitting a frost giant in the face.

Turns out their invasion is being led by Loki. Loki here is another intresting time capsule as a combination of Tom Hidelston's standout performance in Thor and Avengers and character defining runs I need to read and finish respectively from Kireon Gilleon and Al Ewing placed Loki squarely in the anti hero position. As such instead of the genderfluid trickster we know and love, this is the old school loki they were for much of their run and what loki at present is deeply afraid of becomiing again: manipulative, evil and hellbent on burning down everything his dad and brother built.. if with a dope horn helmet. He at least has that.

As such this loki gets into a badass fight with thor, with Thor BEGGING his brother to reconsider.. but it falling on deaf sweet horn helmets. Loki wants to burn it all. Thankfully Thor is able to beat him and being thor does it in the most badass way possible.. gatherting a GIANT STORM above him before focusing all it's energy into a massive lightning bolt. And those horns are really good conductors.

Odin, who sat this one out as his powers are weak at the moment, more on that in a sec, punishes Loki by banishing him to thei isle of silence. It's one of his faviorite pastimes. The other is questioning his son's life choices, wanting Thor to stay to guard Asgard while Odin takes a nap. It's why he was weak: Once a year Odin enters the odinsleep for a few months, to a week to a day. Whatever's narratively convent. It's how he recharges.

Thor.. dosen't want to as he's needed on earth and the two get into a snit and what I like is it's well ballanced: Odin isn't wrong to want his son to protect the kingdom that will one day be his.. but Thor isn't wrong that the warriors three and sif, his best friends and badass warriors, can do the job and Thor is only one call away if needed. Odin bringing up Jane dosne't help as Odin comes off as being a spying dickhead which.. he is. He entirley is. So Thor leaves in a huff.

And so we get our final segment.. which unlike the others ties in directley. We see Loki in the isle of silence, which is neatly depecited as a black and white void with no sound. Loki is visited by the Enchantress. The Enchantress is a powerful sorceress whose vane as she is obessed with thor, but dosen't understand he's just not that into her for being you know.. manipulative, cruel and trying to kill his friends. Turns out, in classic loki fashion, this was ALL his plan. ALLL of it.

He set up thor to run into the wrecking crew by spying on them taking a job for the Leader, more on him later, having the Enchantress disguise herself as a regular woman , i.e. just a green dress, and point thor their way. Fun fact: She and jane have the same VA. Funner fact: Loki is voiced by Scottish actor Grahm McTavish of the Hobbit and Outlander fame. Both do a terrific job.

Loki then pretended to be Baulder, Thor and Loki's third brother and painted what Thor was doing as egocentric hot doggin and grand standing and the Jane thing as more serious than "They just met". All of this was part of a larger scheme... all going to plan.. and neither the god of thunder nor his neglectful dad have any idea they were played. Granted Loki's scheme would fall apart of Odin brought up that conversation with baulder to the brave himself, but while a risk.. Loki still wasn't TOO reckless with this: in any other thor story this would be highly stupid. Here it's risky, but with Odin going into the Odinsleep soon and Loki's plan HINGING on his dad being in the odinsleep anyway, it gives his plan a VERY small window for fuckups.

And what is his plan?

I genuinely forgot what his grand plan was other than "conquer asgard" but we'll find out as the season unfolds. For now we move on to another hero..... some call him a man, some call him a monster.. but is he both?

Hulk Vs the World ( Microepisodes: The Coming of the Hulk! , Hulk Vs the World, This Monster, This Hero!, and Beware the Widow's Bite!)

Now we talk about the strongest one there is, the man whose wrecking the town with a power of the bull, ain't no monster clown, he's that loveable and ever lovin Hulk. And sometimes immortal, grey and what have you but point is Hulk slaps.

Yeah like Tony I love me some hulk: I haven't read nearly enough of his earlier stuff but I adore the late 80's early 90's run of peter david, one i'm just one digital omnibus away from having the complete run of at the time of this writing, and Al Ewing's recent and incomprable Immortal Hulk, which I REALLY need to cover and just. .haven't. Hulk's just a good character: A man with DID who turns into the literal represntations of the emotions he represses: his rage, his childlike innocence that his abusive dad made sure he never had, his need for a father, his hornier and more traditionally masculine traits... Hulk is an endlessly fascinating character.

And the show does him good, partly by exploring a key part of Hulk's marvel history: the fact that for the vast majority of it.. he's an outsider. Oh sure Hulk will show up for crossovers if needed and what not, but most of the time people treat him as a giant monster to be put down instead of simply an angry, powerful being tired of people trying to kill him. Hulk is oft pegged as a monster, and can often turn on his own allies thorugh bad luck or simply a poopy mood. Most people in Hulk's suppporting cast care about BANNER not hulk, while Bruce is often hunted simply because.. he has a mental illness. Granted most mental illnesses can't suplex a train, but many people genuinely don't seem to CARE that Bruce isn't responsible for what hulk does. Hulk is part of bruce banner.. but he's NOT bruce. And the poor guy is constantly hunted for something he tries to cure or control but often simply can't.

EMH emphasies this as when we meet Bruce he's deshevled, in a hat, looking like the unibomber and getting harassed by the police like one. And this is a Bruce who as we learn later ACCEPTS that hulk is part of him: he dosen't LIKE turning into a rage monster, no one does, but he acknowledges the big guy can do things he can't and that curing him simply hasn't worked. He's someone trying to manage his condition: until now staying away from population centers and only going into them.. because he's worried.

This is also our intro to our second of the four supervillian prisons, the Cube. The Cube is a heavily locked down place for radiation based supervillians, mostly gamma mutates like Bruce himself. And in a fitting shift instead of being a place to stash away or rehabilitate their foes.. the cube is basically one giant lab and Bruce fears it's purpose.. is to create a hulk SHIELD can control. It gives a reason to why he runs: Sure the Cube has facilities to help.. but one hulk is already incredibly dangerous and barely managable. Now imagine if say it goes wrong and hulk ends up with no brain or concense like the current hulk, just PURE. RAGE.

Or they succed in making a super solider with gamma power.. but he simply dosen't want to do what they ask and has all the power of a hulk but none of the restraint, and all the ingellgence to misuse it.

Or you get someone with repressed issues and DID like bruce.. but you get something darker than a cranky teenager who just wants to be left alone

Granted that last one didn't turn out so bad but Bruce's point is easy to see just looking at the comics or basic logic: Making more monsters is way too big a gamble and as we saw with SHIELD in the Iron Man episode, they aren't exactly moral paragons to begin with. Fury will go to any lengths to make a safer world... so whose to say even IF best case scenario we get a she hulk style transformation... that fury can be TRUSTED with that power.

So Banner goes to get some answers. Bruce is played by Gabriel Mann, who played Alan M in the JOsie and the Pussycats film I need to cover, and also played Bruce in Wolverine and the X-Men, which shares a universe with this show. More on that later. He does a great job selling Bruce's fear but also compassion.. he wants to CURE the target he's after, Absorbing Man.

Absorbing Man, aka Crusher Creel, is another frequent Jobber of the marvel unvierse, though unlike the Wrecking Crew he's slightly less of a joke, though like them he started with Thor. Unlike them he became more of a hulk villian and a general marvel villian. If they need someone dumb and powerful, Crusher is their go too. In the comics he also has a wife Titania, also a super villian. They have an adorably healthy and happy marriage.

So naturally Crusher.. wants nothing to do with this and wants to instead punch the hulk. He gets his wish.. but then gets plenty of punches back. The Hulk here is based more on then recent Planet Hulk Storyline: Hulk is still not super smart, but isn't thuggish like say Joe Fixit or sadistic like Devil Hulk. He's just savage hulk if given the chance to learn and evolve: all the power, all the rage.. but with SOME smarts and dry quips. He eventually flattens Abosorbing Man easily after a brief fight.

Hulk himself is played by Fred Tatiscore. Much like Thor and Iron Man's VA"S, Tatiscore is marvel's go to for the hulk for adaptations, and has played him a LOTTT: Ultimate Avengers 1 and 2, Avengers Next, Avengers Assemble, Hulk Vs(Also part of this continuity), Wolverine and the X-Men, Hulk and the Agents of SMASH, Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel's Spider-Man (Cartoon), The Incredible Hulk Tie IN game, Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, All three Marvel Ultimate Alliances. If you want someone mean and green you go with Fred and that's JUST his rolls as hulk. Fred is a prolific voice actor with a WIDE list of credits. This isn't even his only roll in this SERIES, but we'll get to that. If you want a good gravely voice, Fred Tatsicore is your man.

So Hulk is no sooner done punching his daily asshole when General Ross shows up.

So for those who haven't had the distinct pleasure of meeting this twatballoon before, General Ross is one of Hulk's two main arch enemys, the other one we'll meet later. He's the old man who ruins everything, a hard nosed general who already didn't like banner and hunts him and hulk like a monster, and is LARGELY responsible for both the hulk being treated like a monster (though his earlier, far shadier versions didn't help), and for Banner being hutned like one. If someone's going to fuck a situation that could've helped the hulk up, it's this fucking guy. It's shown here brilliantly as one of his men questions WHY banne'rs here.. and ross dosen't care. He can interogate banner later, not getting that bruce wont' want to help him.

Ross charges in with a bunch of smashable robots, but is ordered to stand down by the Black Widow and Hawkeye, in their classic outfits. For Nat it's .. really the same as the movies, for Hawkeye.. he has an actual costume instead of purple spandex and maybe sunglasses... please bring this outfit back.

Thankfully Clint isn't a piece of cardboard like the MCU , though he is an agent of SHIELD since Thor was in production and the Ultimate Unvierse existed. The two plan to subdue the hulk.. yes the martial arts master who is great in hand to hand and the expert marksman... think they can take down the hulk. or at least hold him off. Hulk is less than impressed but has bigger worries as Ross FIRES A MISSLE AT TWO SHIELD AGENTS DESPITE BEING ORDERED TO STAND DOWN

Seroiusly ross you fired on two fedral agents. I'm shocked he wasn't disohnorably discharged but he's gotten away with worse in the comics.

Thankfully hulk beats missle.. and we get a heartbreaking moment as Ross's stupidity and the hulk reflecting the missle nearly downs a hellicarrier... Hulk saves it.. and is taken in anyway. Always hunted, always alone with Banner's cries of having actually made the hulk work and not wanting to be cured falling on the deaf ears of Doc Sampson, usually Hulk's therapist here just a scientest.. and an asshole. Hawkeye though buys it.. unfortuantely he thenf inds out Black Widow is seemingly a tratior and she betrays HIM, framing him for working with hydra. So yeah this one ends with our heros impreioned for doing nothing wrong, the bad guys ahead and things about to get so much worse.

And if you thought we were done with downer endings well.

Meet Captain America (Meet Captain America, The Red Skull Strikes!, If This Be Doomsday!, Come the Conquerer)

Almost forgot this till I was done with this section: So I fucking love Steve Rogers. Loyal to nothing but the dream, kind, thoughtful and a badass through and through. That said when it comes to solo stuff it's hit and miss. I've come around to Ed Brubaker's run as while the winter soldier itself has lost a little impact with the fog of ages, Bucky's turn as cap is great, what i read of Ta'Nesi Coates run is fantastic, and I love Mark Gruenwald's lengthy run. I like cap, he can just be very hit and miss for me on his own, but usually if he's in a team he slaps and there's a reason he's key to the avengers.. and getting his own episode despite not being there for the origin story.

Meet Cap is a fun WII adventure, reminding me of the First Avenger despite coming first. It's got a lot of silver age charm and pep to it as Cap breaks into a hydra castle with the Howling Commandos. The Howling Commandos are Nick Fury's WWII running buddies in the comic and his dad's friends here. The roster's mostly the same, characters I don't really know and who won't be relevant to this show so i'm not going into... except one. He's still not relevant to the show.. but it's a cameo I can't not mention. One of the commandos here is...

YUP. As one of the many subtle hints this is the same continuity as Wolverine Vs X-Men and it's prequel Hulk Vs Wolverine, Logan fucking HOwlett is on the team. He dosen't go snikit either because he dosen't have bone claws in this continuity or simply to keep that under his helmet but it's still neat to see him. THey even got Steven Blum for this tiny apperance. There's small hints like that here and there, with another in the next episode we'll get to but sadly a combination of diffrent networks and Nick screwing over WATXM meant we never got an actual crossover, and Disney screwing over this series meant we never got a fully absorbed finale either. And as should come as no shock as a giant x-men nerd, I plan to cover WATXM after this show.

Anyways, cameos aside it ventually comes down to Cap and Bucky. Bucky is cap's sidekick, and unlike the mcu he' skept to being around 17. This is also one of his first apperances in animation after the landmark winter soldier story recontexutalized Bucky from "Child sidekick who really REALLY shoudln't be fighting WWII" to "that being a propoganda and Bucky being Cap's stealth man who does the stuff too dirty for america's symbol".

As a result this version, at least as Bucky, is voiced by Robin voice actor Scott Melinville, an excellent bit of meta casting given Bucky comes off as a fairly blatant robin clone. The two's banter is genuinely heartwarming as you really get a sense of their friendship.

Cap himself is played by Brian Bloom, who like most of theset voice actors continued the roll for Marvel Vs Capcom 3, it's sequel Infinite, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and unlike the rest recently in Midnight Suns. He's awesome and plays Steve Pitch Perfectly.

So the two's target is Red Skull, Naziism incarnate. He's pure evil, one of the most horrifying villians in the Marvel Universe and one of the few most other villians will nope out of working with being a literal nazi. And not just a snake Nazi, though as he does here he will work with Hydra. He was taught by Hitler himself. Fun fact that's pretty brutal: he has in fact met Magneto, Marvel's #1 holocaust survivior, who held his contempt of the guy long as he could when forced to work with him for acts of vengeance..a nd then first chanc ehe got Erik buired the guy in a bunker with this chilling as it is awesome sequence

This is just one long fun pulp adventure as Cap punches out hydra agents and i'ts revealed the Red Skull was experimenting with the 9 realms of norse mythology and marvel comics. Well 8, he's already on Midgard. His various captured norse creatures escape from fairies to a frost giant he almost kidnapped. it's fun chaotic brawl as many a nazi is eaten and we get some really cool lighting. We also get a mention of a Baron Zemo. This will be importnat later.

The Baron himself is absent though, and rather than being the one escaping on a rocket it's the red skull. And anyone familiar with the comics just tensed up a bit and really even if you aren't.. the fact that this is Cap's origin story, he's getting a full episode, and it's WWII kinda tells you this won't end well.. and it dosen't. Steve prepares to sacrifice himself.. only for Bucky to tell him "The world needs cap more than it needs bucky" and push him off. The Skull and the boy wonder apparently die .. and seemingly so does cap.

Well.. KINDA, as our last short happens: see the cap shorts kicked off with someone watching and we find out it's Kang, the Conquerer

For those who haven't heard of him or seen him thanks to the MCU, and the less said about his actor there the better, Kang is from the 30th century, a time of peace, love and no traffic accidents. And it was BORRRRRIIINNNGGGG to him, so longing for the past he only read about he stole a time machine, and ended up in a savage post apocalypse he eventually conquered and made the bedrock of his empire, using his time travel tech, vast army and genuine stategic knowhow to conquer civlizations throughout time and space.

Here though he seems to have just conquered this future, which is still a lot... but is about to be a little as it's in danger of being erased.. thanks to Cap. Kang is puzzled since if Steve DIED.. then how is he fucking up Kang's day? We get a really cool seuqence of Kang traveling through the previous parts of the episode, trying to figure out what he missed.. and finding steve frozen. Steve lived.. and thus his future will die. He plans to go back and stop this, but his future starts deteroating already, leaving him with just one warship. He TRIES to get his girlfriend Ravona on the ship in time.. but interfernce means she comes in and thus is stuck between fading out of existance. Kang's able to put her in stasis... but to save his empire steve rogers must die.. in about half a season.

Yeah Kang... dosen't come back up for a while and while it baffled me.. the more I thought about the actual two part premire.. the more i relaized why this was there.

The Man in the Anthill (The Man in the Anthill, Enter the Whirlwind, The Big House, Welcome to Wakanda) We end our slew of origin stories with the introduction of Ant Man and the Wasp, my faviorite avengers out of this intial lineup. I love all these characters but Hank and Janet are some of my faviorites in all of marvel. I became a huge fan of Hanks after reading Dan Slott's run on Mighty Avenger where Hank, follow his ex wife Jan's death, takes up the wasp mantle. He also gets into the greatest pissing contest in all of marvel history with reed richards... though in his defense, Red started it

It was a burn so fucking awesome that the rest of Reed's team were all asking him to please, for the love of god call back and apologize. He did not and suffered the consequences. Again story for another day.

With Jan it took some more time but this series and various awesome apperances, chiefly her time in Zeb Wells uncanny avengers and what i've read of Roger Sterns avengers, sold me on the winsome wasp. For good stories for each, for Hank there's the aformentiond Mighty Avengers, Avengers Academy where he serves as headmaster, and West Coast Avengers for his redemption after his mental breakdown and abuse of Jan. For Jan I recommend Stern's avengers, The Unstoppable Wasp which follows Hank's Daughter and Jan's adopted daughter Nadia but heavily features the OG wasp, and most recently the Wasp mini series from king of awesome Al Ewing and it's currently running Followup, Avengers Inc, both things I intend to cover some day.

So for those less familiar with them or more familiar with the MCU versions, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne were founding avengers and the first Ant Man and Wasp, going in and out of the team to retire. They were in love.. but sadly hank's obession with work, undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and Janet marrying him while he thought he was someone else because Hank having a mental breakdown was the PERFECT time to marry him, the marriage fell apart, hank had a large scale mental breakdown and well.. you likely know the rest. Both would rebound with Janet finding a new indpendence and sense of self and Hank , after hitting rock bottom.. .finding the will to live on and atone for the various mistakes he made, first as just Hank Pym then as a superhero but not wearing a costume. I love these characters, their rich history, their powers just all of it. I also love these versions of them: With the baggage of his mental breakdown and the infamous and horrifying slap gone, Hank is back to his roots as a science hero, finding his work the neatest thing in the world, while Janet is back to being hank's younger girlfriend , a social butterfly, and the one helping him get to do all his science stuff by doing the promotion, the last one a clever addition. It takes her later swagger and better writing by writers who knew how women worked as opposed to silver age stan lee who while many impressive things.. could not write a woman who wasn't some form of a sexisim. Likewise Hank ignores jan but it's more "he's a workaholic" and less him ranting about her being a stupid woman and friviolus and I wish I was making this up. It takes the best of them in the silver age, mondernizes and makes it awesome

They also each get a short spotlighting them: The first has Hank researching some Vibranium near wakanda when he has to deal with Klaw. Klaw is a recurring avengers bad guy, black panther bad guy and general punching bag. He's not yet to full costumed villian here, instead just having a giant sound canon instead of having said canon as a new hand. He and some mercs break in to steal the vibranium.. and get utterly wrecked in the best way possible as Hank shrinks, easily dispatches them in a scene straight out of a hroror film as each mook goes unconcious, tehn in an awesome moment, when Klaw uses his really big gun fulla sound to try and blast hank, hank GETS BACK UP and presses a button.. shrinkign EVERYONE present. Also while again i'm not pointing out EVERY villian's va i'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Klaw's is mark fucking hamill.

As for Hanks, Hank is played by Wally Wingert, who for once for this show DIDN'T play this character again in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 because Capcom wasn't awesome enough to include an ant man. THey DID include MODOK who Wingert also plays and got to reprise so he still got a well deserved paycheck. He's also been in Bleach and is the voice of Cubot in Sonic. Who knew. I also love the ending: Jan comes in, we get her adorably just throwing her arms around hank.. and then hank casually asking his girlfriend to go save the mercinaries before his ants eat them

The next one focuses on Jan and also shows the contrast between the two. Hank has super powers.. but prefers his research and rehabilitating criminals, not wanting to fight them. In contrast Jan recognizes sometimes you gotta throw hands, action is her reward, and gladly speeds into battle. We also see that while this hank hasn't spiraled yet.. he still has control issues, showing up wot Jan's battle with Whirlwind and telling her to back down, despite her both making the vallid point they can help people and that she can handle herself. And given she stings teh fucker in the eye and beats a guy with tornado powers with just her stingers and some inginuity yeah, hank ease off there bud.

Jan is voiced by Colleen Ann O'Shaughnessey, a va I grew up with as the Voice of Sora on digimon, a role she STILL has to this day. And if that and Jan wasn't enough she's also Jazz Fenton, a characte ri'll be looking into next year. For now though she just rips as Jan, whose the best of the founding 5. I mean their all pretty great and Hank comes close, but Jan's sarcasm, energy but also her heart and talent make her hard NOT to love.

The third short and the final one focused on our duo is the big house which reveals the third of the prisons: The Big House. Focused more on rehabilitation, the Big House was made by hank, housing a LOT of characters i know. Whirlwind tries to escape. If your curious who this schmuck is, Whirlwind is the closest thing Jan has to an arch enemy: he started out fighting her and hank then started stalking Jan who didn't take it well. He's incapaciated as the big house shrink's it's prisoners. Whirlwind is put back inside.. but is insured by the Mad Thinker that they'll be out soon. It's just a matter of time. The Mad Thinker is a long time fantastic four villian, a mad genius and.. that's basically it. He does have an awesome android though

He's a very good dude.

As for Hank and Jan theyt alk to Nick Fury who wants to recruit them. Jan's all for it but Hank says no.. that being said, it's not just Hank not wanting to be a costumed superhero: he dosen't TRUST nick, dosen't think he genuinely wants to rehabilitate criminals, and dosen't trust shield. And given what we've seen.. he's right. Jan follows Hank's lead, if reluctantly while fury.. berates hank for actually carrying about reform and building villians "Comfier jailcells".

With that we get one last standalone to set up episodes later this season: we see the origin of The Black Panther as his dad dies in comnbat fighting Man Ape, whose not NEARLY as cool or nearly as fun in the comics or this cartoon. Man Ape kilsl his dad with help from Klaw while T'Challa's people.. all agree to this trial by combat bullshit.

T'Challa not taking this shit heads off, takes the Panther Mantel and plans to find Allies. To be continued next time, same as cap. I love the animation on The Black Panther as he skulks around. So damn cool. He's voiced by James C Mathis III a voice actor primarily known for playing the character in this and Marvel Vs Capcom.. infinite this time. He's fantastic. And with that it's time for the MAIN EVENT BABY

Breakout Parts 1 and 2

So here we are, the big one. The reason we're all here> the Main Event. Breakout is the proper premiere for the show, airing before the repackaged episodes above though taking place after. And like the MCU with those episodes in mind it feels like a well built up climax to almost everything in the shorts, while setting up the rest of the season, with what wasn't setup for this being setup for later in the season like Cap, Kang and Black Panther.

Part 1 has the characters still in their own corners of the marvel universe before fate assembles them: Tony breaks up an arms deal between AIM, a bunch of super scientests in neat beekeeper suits who function as world conquerers or arms dealers depending on the day, and Lucia Von Bardis, one of Doctor Doom's minons in Latveria. Iron Man easily stops the sale, especially since it's his tech their selling and warns Doom via his proxy: do not come for his stuff again. He then drops them off at the Vault, talking to Jimmy Woo who sadly isn't as in to close up magic here but has noticed it's security is off and asks Tony for help since he designed it and it's not a weapon. Tony agreees.. but also wants him to make an appointment because Tony is a lot of things.. but he's also a massive asshole no matter where in time and space you find him.

Banner is still in the cube, trying to warn Dr. Sampson of two things: the cube is not a jail but an incubator to make another hulk, and that filling a jail full of super strong gamma mutates and gamma research is a ticking time bomb... and given bruce blew himself up with one he should know.

Thor.. is having a far chiller day of stalking Jane as she does her job since as an EMT she finds trouble and he dosen't exactly have a thor signal. And because she fascinates him, not getting how creepy that sounds. Jane finds it charming, partly because he's built like a norse god and partly because she gets this is less "I need to call shield a god is stocking me" and more "He's REALLY that clueless he dosen't get this is a felony".

Finally we have Hank and Jan on the hellicarrier, with Hank doing mods to the big house and arguing with Nick and Jane sorry she can't take maria hill's offer... only to realize hank had a point when maria won't answer a simple whose that.

It's then chaos breaks out.. as does every super villian at the 4 prisons with the Hellicararrier, which houses the big house, also going offline. Oh and Nick's house just blew up, but that happens every tuesday. You can just ignore that one, don't know why I brought it up.

As you'd guess most of our heroes are soon caught in the middle of it: Iron man flies back to the Vault, getting a heads up from Pepper that SHIELD"S in chaos, but finds all his foes have already kitted up and gang up on him including Crimson Dynamo, his russian equilveant and Blizzard, a villian i've always had a soft spot for who gets a truly awesome look here

Is his look baiscally just captain cold and mr freeze smushed together now? Sure? Does it look fucking dope? yes.

Thanks to SHIELD being stupid though, Iron Man isn't the only hero there and despite nearly blasting him earlier, Hawkeye helps for a sec before fleeing to clear his name. I like this setup for hawkeye as in the comic's hawkeye also started as a costumed criminal thanks to a misunderstanding, a nice way of meshing his mcu/ultimate self with the og. Hawkeye is also one of my faviorite superheroes, and something I can gush about later when Clint properly returns to the story. For now he's just awesome as always.

So Tony decides to escape by BLOWING THE FUCKER UP with his enemies inside

Yeah the civilians have apparently evacuated and the villians scene DO come back but you'd think after a few months after this Tony's go to wouldn't be "Cave a building on them and let god sort it out". Then again this IS Tony Stark we're talking about....

Bruce is IN one of the prisons and thus has a harder time, though there is one silver lining: Dr. Sampson.. is now fully on his side, having realized from the buildling falling apart that Bruce was right about this being a powder keg and promising to help. Granted it's a bit too late but still. The radiation abound has also given the good Doc super strength

Zzzax shows up. Zzzax is an energy being the hulk fights on and off, a big zappy man made of electricty who has a name that's as fun to say as it is to type. Naturally this brings out the other guy and Hulk fights him, winning becasue of course.

In the core of the cube and it's control rooms is the Leader. The Leader is Hulk's arch enemy and polar opposite: Hulk is pure rage and strength, the Leader is a calculated super genius with the durability of any other guy. And unlike the other villians in the other prisons.. Leader has no intention of leaving, to the bafflement of Absorbing Man and Abomination. Abomination is Hulk's other arch enemy, a KGB agent who got caught in a gamma ray blast when Hulk tried to kill the hulk with.. .the same thing that makes the hulk, being almost as strong but retaining his mind.

Leader sends the two to fight hulk as a distraction but once Hulk has them down he flees with Sampson.. and the Leader has his minons back off, explaning WHY he wants to stay in prison: he's going to change the world. And impliclity, what better lair for a super genius gamma mutate than a giant gamma based lab and former prison? It's almost like putting the lab next to the dangerous criminals was a bad idea waiting to blow up in their faces.

Before we move on Leader is played by horror legend Jeffery Combs, most famous for playing Herbet West in Re-Animator and it's sequels. Combs is a large ham supreme, a true craftsman of playing hammy bastards with no morals, and is perfect casting for the Leader, and SHOULD have played him in the mcu. Then again given how little the MCU has acctually DONE with the leader thanks to universal, it's a blessing in disguise. They can use him another way. Lots of mad scientests with no morals in marvel. Leader's story will be continued later, but I coudln't just.. pass by Jeffery Combs. I'm not made of stone.

As for Hank he gets the shit beat out of him by the people he was genuinely trying to help. Which is just.. sad... the problem wasn't hank's idea, a deluxe prison with creepy robots where he genuinely tries to reform people.. it's just most of the criminals were either people he brought in, resenting him automatically, or simply didn't WANT to change. Had he tried it on like the beetle or screaming mimi or someone who genuinely had the potetial to reform who knows what he could've done. Thankfully he's backed up by Jan and the fact he can become a really big man, a GIANT man if you will.

While this goes on Thor.. has a date. Jane gladly listens to his daddy issues, Baldur the Brave had visited earlier.. and Odin hasn't let up on the "come home thing". Jane breaks down "ancient asgardian things beyond your understnading" into what it is "You had a fight with your dad" and tries to convince him to go home and patch things up.. but then thor hears the explosions in the distance and goes to help.

So the bad news is a bunch of our heroes villians are free, with the only ones who aren't.. now running the prison. The WORSE news is that there's one more prison that didn't have a superhero on duty as Thor was out to lunch: the raft, a secret fourth blacksite prison hinted at earlier, containing the highest security cases... and one of them just woke up from a ten year nap, radaiting with power and rocking the helicarrier.

This yelling bearded man is Graviton, also played by Fred Tastiscore, whose hamming it up from here to eternity. He wants Fury dead and tha'ts where part 1 ends.. with him holdling fury hostage and sinking the hellicarrier.

Part 2 opens up with the origin of Graviton: Franklin Hall was a physcist for SHIELD before Fury tried to shut him down... for good reason as while Fury was trying to do this Franklin not only refused but his experiments blew up in his face. Then rather than help Hall.. fury locked him unconcious in the raft. Even the breakout didn't let him out it turned out ot be Baron Zemo. Baron Zemo is one of my faviorite super villians, a genius tactician and son of a nazi what cap fought. Naturally he tells franklin he's been down here for a while, then skedaddles. Unsuprisingly we'll be seeing the martial artist whose so skilled and cunning he's in the same jail as the guy who can make gravity his bitch.

Graviton is distracted by Iron man, who shows up to fight.. but tony gets a refresher in Gravity and gets bounced all the way to the endless cornfields of Kansas. Trust me having been in the car as someone's driven through them, that joke is not an exageration. Ther'es plenty of towns, intresting places.. but also large stretches of corn and nothing. So much corn and nothing.

While Tony calls for a backup suit, Thor tags in, while Hank chews Fury out, especially relevant since Fury refuses to tell them anything at first calling it classified... despite the giant exploding gravity man fighting a god above them.

As for Hulk... Hulk needs a snack. Prison hasn't done wonders fo rhis appittite so he stops at a diner, asking them to get help for Sampson... when Hulk has another guest: his brain buddy bruce who urges Hulk to help as he's the only one that can. Hulk makes the valid if misnthropic poitn that if no one's helped him, why should he.. but Bruce poitns out all the good he can do.. he can be more than the monster they see him as and he knows it. SO Hulk agrees to serve as backup.. provided Bruce make one concession: Hulk becomes the dominant personality and bruce comes out , as we find out later, only once a month.

As we wait to see the results of that deal, Thor gets plumeted to the bottom of the sea and Jan decides she isn't going to stand by anymore.. while Hank is like "NO YOU'LL GET HURT. LISTEN TO ME. " because he hasn't gotten Jan dosen't CARE she can get hurt, knows the risk, and is doing the right thing comma jackass. Jan.. actually puts on a decent showing as her stingers, small lasers , aren't affected by gravity. She is.. but Hank catches her having gotten his giant head out of his ass, while Thor regains Mjonr and tony joins back up. The avengers have.. mostly assemebled.

They still can't make much of a dent though: not only are they still very new at this tea-m thing, but Graviton is still strong enough to body a god: a scientest, a fashioin icon, and billionare mass attempted murderer aren't really going to turn the tide. Unluckily for Franky he decides to get braggy.. and gives too good an intrance cue NOT for someone to stomp in and ruin his day

Graviton: I'm stronger than all of you! I'm the strongest one there is! (BOOM) Hulk: You sure about that?

Hulk is here and easily beats the stuffing out of Graviton. We get a truly EPIC moment too as Graviton tries increasing the gravity on him which only works for seconds at a time as Hulk KEEPS, GETTING, BACK UP. With the others helping, and sometims just.. rushing him, Hulk is able to land the final blow on Graviton. My faviorite moment during this is Wasp lasering a container in half, confused someone's helping him... before Janet helpfully pipes in he's the bad guy. THe two will be incredibly close after this and given they both like hitting things and impulsive desicions, easy to see why.

Well almost final, He still has time to weakly rant before Wasp shuts him up.

Naturally SHIELD"S response to Hulk saving the day, the future avengers lives, and stopping an evil they created.. is to point all their guns at him. This time though Hulk has something he didn't have back in Vegas: Friends. Iron Man refuses to let SHIELD take him and everyone else gladly joins in, Jan naturally being the second most vocal behind tony.

Fury reluctantly gives in, and admits he could use the five's help: the various prison breaks have unleashed 74 other super villians and someone needs to round them up.

Hank.. turns him down, getting one last callout and a very damming one: they CREATED this mess: while Franklin made himself into a living god instead of trying to cure him or turn him into a force for good they locked him away an dhoped he'd never wake up, and new york nearly got leveled. I forgot to mention it somehow but motherfucker LEVITATED manhattan.

Tony does concede Fury has a point:.. not about joining SHIELD, they suck dirty ass in thunderstorms. But about working as a team:

Iron Man: One on one, we can each take down a villain or two, but 74... none of us can do it alone. Together we have a chance. What we did here, it can change things. The world needs us, but not as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. As a team of our own. Together, we can avenge the wrongs caused by all these villains. Wasp: We can be Avengers. Hulk: Huh. Good name.

And thus.. a team is born. Hulk agrees to stay for now and everyone else, even pacifist hank seems excited. And even Fury, while not exastic, dosen't really poop on their parade. He is worried about one thing though: Who was behind this?

So yeah.. the first 7 episodes of EMH, the breakout two parter in paticular, are amazing. It sets up the world, fleshes out the cast, and gives us some great hooks going in: how will this team mesh? can hulk be accepted by the rest of the world? Who caused the Breakouts? What's loki's plan? How is leader going to "Change the world"? What did steve do to destroy Kang's timeline? All valid questions we'll answer another time but for now we've got 7 pretty excellent episode an da great start to one of the greatest avengers tales ever

Sometime Next Year: The avengers loose a member, gain an icon and a king and deal with their growing pains, ionic men, dougboys, ape men, living sounds, and a bunch of hulks. See you then and thanks for reading.

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l0calalien-blog · 27 days

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Stucky

I have to write this somewhere because i rewatched first avenger with my girlfriend last night and i had a thought (one of many) about steve and bucky!

first, i want to say that they are in love with each other. soulmates. i love them. they are my boys. my boyfriends. my everything.

HOWEVER, I believe that bucky is more in love with steve than steve is bucky. hear me out on this one.

1920s-30s ~ back then it was obviously illegal to be gay and would have been seen as something of the 'devils work' and we know that steve is religous as he makes comments on it in the avengers film, this would also make sense for the times. so i believe that steve was probably ignoring his feelings for bucky or telling himself that his feelings were platonic. i think steve also probably didnt believe that he was good enough for anyone, let alone bucky, which could be a reasoning for his blatent uninterest in women bucky tries to set him up with. while i think bucky also had the same feelings when it came to the religous parts of homobophia back then, i believe he had more confidence and felt safe with steve to tell him his feelings were more than platonic. i think bucky told him his feelings and steve softly rejected him saying that "it was wrong but he too loved him".

1940s ~ we learn in shehulk that steve did, infact, loose his virginity to a 'girl' in the early 40s, but steve also says in the first avenger that he never really had time for girls and had never really spoke to one before peggy. this could, could, indicate that bukcy and steve did have a secret relastionship and steve just told everyone that it was a girl??? i think at the point where steves post serium and has now been shown that peggy is clearly into him his whole heart belongs to her (as it would me too). i believe steve is too deep in love with peggy to even notice that bucky (still) has feelings for him, which we can see that bucky is from the way he looks at steve and peggy in first avenger after they return back to camp and also later in the bar. i think bucky the retaliates in fake stright with trying to flirt with peggy, being petty that shes getting all of steves attention.

2010s ~ at this point steves mourned buckys loss and has had time to get through the pain, but he would have also seen that the progression with gay rights had come along way since the 1940s and that it was a lot more acceptable. so when he sees bucky again in winter solidier his whole world shifts- his best friend is alive, peggys out the question, buckys evil, buckys beautiful (all things he must have been thinking at the time...)- after bucky and steve fight in winter solider and bucky saves steve shows steve that their love is still there even if its buried. then by civil war steves had time to process his feelings and realise hes in love with bucky and has been all along that he goes AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT and HIS CLOSE FRIENDS because they dont like his boyfriend. nearly beating tony to death because he tried to hurt bucky. even though now steve has had time to think about his feelings bucky is now heavily traumatised and needs time to process the past 70 years, he woudlnt have much time to think about his feelings for steve. while hes in wakanda and hes healed from hydras brainwashing he can MAYBE start thinking about steve but then the next time they see each other they are going into another war, in which bucky then dies leaving steve alone with the guilt of not being able to save everyone and love of his life.

2020s ~ once they get everyone back and steve and bucky are together again they are thrown into ANOTHER war so they still dont have time to talk. then they probably only get a few days or just hours to talk before steve goes back in time for peggy- because even after all of that steves had YEARS, i mean YEARS, without bucky and never really knowing how he feels about him steve probably healed (as much as he could) so his heart stayed focused on peggy because he always knew how she felt about him and him her. it was safe. comforting. and steves been through so much he just wanted something normal so thats why he went back for peggy, leaving bucky in the modern world alone. bucky clearly knew what steve was going to do with the stones from the small nod and smile he gave him, it seemed more like a goodbye than sams did, showing that bucky was letting steve go, giving him his concent to go.

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so what im saying is. marvel fucked my favourite gays over and they deserved more time together.

#marvel #avengers #captain america #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #steve rogers #stucky #bucky barnes #winter soldier #peggy carter #the avengers

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brightnote · 10 months

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Maria Hill in Secret Invasion: a classic misdirect or a classic trope, what are the odds?

A full breakdown of the Maria situation in Secret Invasion episodes 1 & 2 also clues from Cobie herself?

Secret Invasion Episodes 1 & 2 below and FYI this is a LONG one and some more wilding out Maria theories because if we can do one thing instead of mourn her which she would probably hate, let’s give her death the close attention that everyone else is getting in the series. Maybe Marvel dived into this classic trope as a trick—-they wanted to do something different so just maybe there is more to this than people are saying. Full disclosure this is mostly chaotic nonsense, it is backed by nothing just things I have seen after rewatching the episodes and some breakdown videos. It is pictures on the wall level conspiracy building. But here it is.

A lot of the Secret Invasion videos I have seen breaking down each episode really skimp on the Maria situation they are saying she’s done it’s waste of time to really dig into it and there are (this killed me) “more important things being set up” I was thinking about this after I couldn’t find anything well done one whether Maria is gone for good (in whatever capacity) and when I started to pull some threads together it actually started coming together better than I thought.

First let’s start with the outside of the series clues. Are we getting subliminal messages from Cobie about Maria revival? Cobie has said Maria is dead but this line changed after last week to “I think she’s dead I don’t know.” This is fair because in all honestly she probably doesn’t. Marvel does all kinds of things without telling the actors and films things they don’t understand. Whether Maria is or isn’t in the Marvels is still not clarified and while Cobie says she ‘doesn’t know anything about that’ this is very similar to the denials Andrew Garfield gave over Spiderman No Way Home. Likely if she does know she’s not allowed to talk about it. Additionally a good-bye Maria post Cobie made was deleted from instagram just a few days ago.

Next let’s talk about Cobie’s Secret Invasion press wardrobe choices:

First on Secret Invasion press day Cobie wears this long neon green skirt one of the Skrull colors but she only wears it as a skirt not a dress—in fact her shirt is very basic, simple, beige and white boring but underneath splash neon green sparkles. I posted her full outfit here

In addition, at the premiere Cobie is wearing black not just any black sheer black! Is she saying Maria’s death is thinly veiled? Or maybe she just liked the dress because it was pretty. Traditionally or at least lately Cobie has been wearing a lot of white! See her photos from Spider-man Far from Home, and the Impeachment premiere. (There’s more too!) When is the last time Cobie wore black at Marvel premiere—- it was actually Captain America Winter Solider, and what happened at the end of Winter Solider? Nick Fury was revealed to be alive. Full disclosure she also wore black at the first Avengers premiere and did have some sheerness to that as well so it could be a first avengers premiere throw back (i thought her dress was red but I guess that was the European premiere instead) But, I still believe it is more than nothing. Are these clues? A neon green skirt at the press day event a color associated with Skrulls that is hidden underneath a beige and white top and then a see through black corset dress. Hmm. IDK maybe these are clues. Certainly meant to drive some Cobie/Maria stans wild I bet.

Now let’s talk about the in series clues that something is going on with Maria or her death overall:

First, Skrull Ross

It has yet to be explained how Maria and skrull Ross are connected or how skrull Ross would be able to infiltrate Maria’s tech system to contact her and be extracted. In fact, when I started thinking about this it seems more likely something is up with Maria because skrull Ross was taking the plans to Maria when he called for an extraction.

Maria then sees Ross change into a Skrull and says ‘one of you’ and Talos says it’s an imposter. Maria seems surprised to see Talos we don’t know what happens next between Talos and Maria but we later learn that Talos wants Maria to call Fury.

Next Maria goes to pick up Fury, she seems genuinely happy to see him and he limps to her. We know that Maria sent an encrypted message to Fury because Rhodey talks about it to the President and this message has yet to be deciphered and we are not clued in to what it was. Maria later says the message she sent was at Talos’ request which means something in the message signaled to Fury he had to respond or Fury knew it was really coming from Talos. (More on this below when we talk about the chess game)

Next, Maria brings Fury to some safe house she is staying at but we don’t know how or why. At first I assumed this was Talos’ place because if Maria’s network had been infiltrated by skrulls why would Talos and her go back to a safe house where potential other skrulls may know where it is? I have seen mixed videos on this and have not been able to confirm if this is a safe house set up for Maria if it’s a safe place Talos is aware of. I think it’s probably Talos’ but if it is Maria’s other break down videos have pointed out that on the wall in the safe house there is a poster for a London based theater company. This could be a clue that Sonya Falsworth is involved or was working with Maria and skrull Ross and is likely a skrull herself. (On which side she falls I am unsure).

Later when Maria is left in the car by herself she also smiles when Nick leaves and she notices G’iah and immediately and follows her and she is sure to call in to Nick and Talos or G’iah may have intentionally walked by where Maria is in the car so she would notice her.

This idea that Maria is so good at her job that she can spot out a random lady with a bag as suspicious but not so good at her job she can’t defend herself from G’iah or protect herself when she willingly goes to a violent event where she knows it would be very dangerous and that she will blindly trust this G’iah’s intel is suspicious

So what if Maia following G’iah was actually a different kind of set up? For sure it is for Talos to run into G’iah to get the information from Talos to Fury … but what if something else happened here because isn’t it kind of the clear set up get Talos to G’iah so G’iah can connect with Talos and set up Fury and Friends but isn’t this too classic of a set up for these skilled vets Maria and Nick?

Something unusual/ not clear happened during the fight between G’iah and Maria and it does make some sense because I didn’t notice Maria follow Talos after G’iah to help him and she would know she that the woman she just fought was dangerous and Talos might need help because allegedly Maria just got her ass handed to her for reasons literally no one can explain. The tunnel scene is extremely dark on purpose and we don’t have a good view of the fight.

A lightened up view of Maria getting up after the fight -- Talos goes to help her up but she directs Talos to G’iah but doesn’t offer to follow or help him which is strange for her. Instead she directs Talos to G’iah and then smiles trying to get up. Is this a specific acting choice? Is this intentional did marvel not see it because the shoot was dark?

The fight leaves Maria with a highly noticeable red cut on her nose to signify to the audience that is the real Maria (supposedly and not a skrull because her blood is red and that it is the same Maria who was in the tunnel with G’iah who dies later in the episode. This type of obviousness seems like a purposeful misdirect or just exactly what it is meant as a sign to the audience to not waste time on this. But here I am doing it anyway because she deserves it.

When Maria and Nick decide to go hang out a bar instead of the safe house Gravik is already at the bar meaning he either followed Maria there or had advanced notice Fury was going there but how would Gravik know to follow Maria yet unless he already knew of her? Again for reasons we don’t understand or that make any sense since chess boards are portable and alcohol can be purchased at stores Nick meets Maria at the bar... there is no indication of who told who to meet them out for a drink. But would Maria frequent the same bar over and over again as an agent and then bring her highly sought after coworker to the same bar who isn’t even supposed to be on earth? WHAT?

When they are playing chess Maria is playing white but if she was about to die wouldn’t the foreshadowing suggest she would play with black pieces? Or white can represent her innocence in the whole thing. She moves a pawn first maybe demonstrating she is in fact just a pawn or maybe demonstrating that the Skrulls have already made their first move. Without even having moved for two seconds Maria asks Fury if he he is going to move and he says ‘I don’t know yet.’ This could be because Fury is trying to scope out the whole situation he is in.

- Maria says that’s what she is worried about he is always three steps ahead but isn’t anymore and that he was never the same after the Blip

but actually how can Maria know this because from her own account Nick has been ignoring her for years and he has been up in space. When he’s up on Saber he’s hanging out at the fake beach and went right back to work like she did. Is this some kind of skrull projection onto Fury? He has been told three times now (I think) that he has not been the same after the blip but this could be a tactic to get into his head or see where he is at.

It’s some what of an unusual conversation between Maria and Nick. Maria specifically tells Nick to stay out of this fight, something that Sonya also tells him. Maria telling Nick to back out doesn’t seem quite right as Maria’s mother later tells Fury “she would follow him to hell and back” thus telling Nick to step out of the ring is questionable. and then Maria says a classic foreshadowing line “someone is going to get hurt” Nick later tells Maria’s mother “they set the trap to hurt him.” Cobie also points out this bar conversation a lot in her interviews maybe because it was the one time Nick and Maria have some kind of conversation about anything other than work (but it’s still about work really) but maybe because it is significant in a non obvious way to the audience. Is Maria being a good friend telling Fury his head is out of the game or is this a completely suspicious behavior that she is echoing Sonya?

If Maria has been some fake out Maria this whole time that could explain why Nick was constantly ignoring her and only coming back when Talos got her to contact him instead. This also could explain that Nick has been in this game the whole time with the fake limping, no eye patch etc. He goes to meet Maria in a public place where Gravik will see him acting normal with a potentially fake Maria or the real one who knows and that he doesn’t suspect anything. It’s very suspicious that these two would go to a public place like this when Fury knows people are looking for him and apparently Maria allegedly wasn’t supposed to be in Moscow at all? -- not 100% sure on this it could just be that the government didn’t want people to know she was legitimately in Moscow for work for other reasons.

Aside from the nonsensical way that everything went down that got Maria killed —which could be a clue within itself here is another clue something is up:

False Flag?

When Maria is on the ground dying we see a Russian flag on the ground near her feet, the next time we get anything about Hill is an American flag covering her casket. This could be symbolism for senseless deaths caused by Russia and America during the cold war, it could be symbolism for a false flag that she’s dead, it could be absolutely nothing but it could actually be something. Maybe Russia doesn’t give Hill’s body back? We have not seen it and as I have been calling him lately, Nick ‘left her body in Russia’ Fury .. left her body in Russia and escaped with Talos. Leaving Hill’s body in Russia is a pretty big error and injustice by Fury which Rhodey says he had to use all his capital to get back. But this seems like something Nick would not do. (really sorry for using this photo)

The unloading of the casket scene hit hard for Maria stans like myself. The people who won’t break down the Maria situation say this scene is a clue not to waste our time on this. Why cast the actor to play her mom why do this scene at all if there isn’t something more here than (barely any) closure? But as I pointed out in my last rant Nick tells Maria’s mom that a trap was set for him but of course when you watch the episode the trap is actually set for this Maria. Is Fury so egotistical that Maria’s own death has nothing to with her or is the signal that it was some larger trap for him. I thought this scene was kind of a nothing burger but why even shoot scene if there aren’t any kind of clues there.

Rhodey then fires Nick and Nick gives out the most emotion he’s shown at all now that he is definitely on the outside and his #1 inside person isn’t there to feed him his intel since she is now probably dead. But then Fury yells in his true Fury form that “even when he’s out... he’s in” This could be a sign Nick is actually ahead of Gravik. As I discussed in my last rage filled post about this whole situation it doesn’t make sense for Gravik to kill Maria. She’s a perfect person to be a skrull plant and she already had some association with skrull Ross... additionally giving Fury an avenge her arc seems not smart from Gravik’s perspective.

Nick is way angrier about being fired than Maria dying so it would seem. Then he goes home to his skrull wife which we do not know if he knows she is a skrull and he is genuinely happy to see her and not emotionally destroyed by seeing himself murder his very close friend and colleague. Does this seem off to you? It seems off to me.

So — probably I’ll say 98% Marvel was acting in classic sexist tropes it is Nick Fury’s story and Maria was probably fridged for sure, no question, but maybe just maybe Marvel is doing something different and this is actually a misdirect to make us believe they are doing this again for the 100th time. If that’s the case I will give them some real credit, but I assume it’s not. But I wanted to give the whole Maria situation the breakdown and threads and leads it deserves and that it’s not getting in the male centric break down video circles online. The bros think it’s a waste of time but just maybe there’s at least some other Maria content coming in some form in some way we will not see coming because I think we can all agree that something does not track or maybe the writing for the series is not great. IDK Sorry for how long this is.

#maria hill #marvel #the marvels #cobie smulders #nick fury #secret invasion #mcu #emilia clarke #talos #fury #olivia colman #ben mendelsohn #g'iah #sonya falsworth #skrulls

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katatonicimpression · 4 months

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A Walk Through My Year in Media

This isn't necessarily things that came out this year, but rather things that I watched/read this year that I liked or compulsively consumed regardless of whether or not I liked them.

2023 in Films

Most of this post is going to be positivity; a sampling platter of things I've enjoyed this year. But also:

Salty Film Hot Takes:

The French Connection is uncomfortable to watch. I don't care about the racist, antisemitic, misogynist cop. He's objectively bad at his job make him go away.

None of the Next Generation era trek movies are good.

Guardians 4 would have been a better movie if Pratt wasn't in it. And I mean that in a "the script would be better structured" way.

Se7en is a really fun film and I'm not mad to have rewatched it recently but... it's undermined by 1) the writers not realising that John Doe's opinions are bog standard right wing talk radio shit, 2) the fact that they kind of agree with him and 3) they clearly, hilariously, don't know what lawyers do.

The Mummy (2017) is awful. I guess that's not controversial but still.

Robin Hood (2018) is also awful. Like, amazingly so. And, slightly warmer take, so is Prince of Thieves you guys.

I will not be answering questions on any of the above.

Positive Film Hot takes:

I went on a bit of an 80s dark fantasy kick this year. Out of films that I hadn't seen before, The Dark Crystal and The Last Unicorn really stood out. Especially the Dark Crystal. I ended up rewatching the show as well. Just so good. Bring it back. Justice for the gelflings.

I also watched a lot of Terry Gilliam this year - not all of his back catalogue but most of it. Obviously Jabberwocky is almost entirely bad, no one needs to be told, but overall yeah you get why he's beloved. The common vibe from his films is "wow there's so much to love here but it doesn't quite work". Brazil is an obvious standout - it's a classic for a reason. But I want to highlight The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Behind the scenes disaster and orientalist opening sequence aside, it really is spectatular. The sets, the details. It's so well crafted and just makes you wish they made films like this all the time. Damn you, Terry.

The 1938 Robin Hood film is the best Robin Hood film. Yes, congratulations, you noticed another theme in the shit I've watched this year. But yes, it's great, it's fun and well paced. It holds up staggeringly well. I also watched The Court Jester (1955 - with Danny Kaye and Angela Lansbury) - Also surprisingly great.

Finally, also feeling medieval, I watched Excalibur (1981). This is more "swords and sorcery" than "dark fantasy" (think: Conan the Barbarian vibes), but it's kinda great (most of the genre is not, lbr). It captures the logic of those stories, the vibes of the mythology very well, the mix of pagan and early christian beliefs, and the weird metaphysics that results. It's great. Way better than that dumb clive owen one. My lord that was bad.

2023 in Telly

Live Action Drama:

Succession

It's good. I don't think anyone needs me to tell them that. Still haven't finished it but enjoying it in a peaceful, fandom-free way.

Robin Hood (2006)

This was a terrible show, with an even worse third and final series. Did I rewatch the whole thing anyway? Yes I did. Should I have? No. (I love the first two so much though. Lily Allen's dad as the sheriff of Nottingham as tony blair? sign me up.)

Doctor Who

Am I a basic bitch who only came back to who because RTD did? Yes. But at least I'm not quite as basic as the ones who were only back for Tennant. The first one was good, if a little on the nose, the second was great, the third was good up until they get onto the stupid avengers platform for the showdown, from which point me and everyone in the room just got mad at it. The christmas special was fun though, excited for Gatwa and the new series.

Adult Animation:

Castlevania: Nocturne

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Genuinely so great. It's very clear that they're setting up a whole multi season arc with this first season, and the incompleteness that comes with that is probably its biggest flaw. But overall, fucking fabulous. The animation, fights, character design. Just a gorgeous show. Maybe not to everyone's taste; it's fantasy, but not escapist - its very much rooted in the historical injustices of the setting and has some heavy themes as a result. But if you liked the first Castlevania show, then you'll probably love this.

Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix

You might have noticed that there was a show out that featured "Rayman, but with drugs and cussing!" and, yes, this is that show. You might not have noticed that Rayman is only a small part of it, and it's actually about Dolph - a traumatised gay cyborg - and his no good, horrible, very bad breakup. Dolph is great.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

Do you like Star Trek? Do you like silly cartoons and workplace sitcoms? Then do I have the show for you. Real highlight of the year for me tbh. While the show is built on poking fun at trek canon, and can feel a little overly reliant on nostalgia sometimes, the latest season really pushed for more meaningful character moments in between the laughs. I like it. It's good.

Mononoke

This was the most mixed of mixed bags. Japanese horror with a really striking and confronting art style. At its best, it's got this visceral atmosphere that sucks you in and is genuinely fantastic. At its worst, it's got a whole storyline about "abortion ghosts", and features some art that comes across as racial caricature. Between this, and a few other things that felt uncomfortable in an unintentional way, I don't think I'd really recommend this, but it did stick with me, I'll give them that.

YA Animation:

The Dragon Prince

If you're into the whole YA fantasy adventure thing, this is an obvious rec. It's biggest flaw is how slow it's been to release, but if you're binging it for the first time, that's not a problem. It's heartfelt, it's pretty, it's clearly a kids show but is well crafted and has appeal beyond its core audience.

Star Trek: Prodigy

S1 actually originally aired like two years ago, but I only watched it this year after finding out that it was cancelled. But it was rescued! S1 is now on netflix, and s2 will air there next year. Genuinely a really fun contribution to the whole trek shebang, fitting into the universe well without ever feeling reliant on nostalgia.

I didn't include the two other treks that aired this year because s3 of Picard sucked balls (still not over it) and Strange New Worlds has stopped appealing to me... but that's a whole thing for the other blog. But the animated series are great! Also Disco. I still like Discovery.

Skull Island

This was better than it had any right to be. One season of a surprisingly funny King Kong show, also on Netflix.

Reality:

Rupaul's Drag Race UK Season 5

DRUK is good again, hooray. The dark times are over... for now.

Married at First Sight UK

Do not watch this. It will consume your entire life. Your brain will melt away as you watch someone fake cheat on their fake husband with someone else's fake husband just days into their fake marriage.

Taskmaster

It's good. It's been good. It continues to be good.

2023 in Gaming

Lol no. Can you imagine?

I did play the sims a lot. I had my guy cheat on his husband who then died.

2023 in Books

Fun fact: I only finished one of the books I intended to read this year. That's embarrassing. Anyway, it was "From Here to Eternity" by Caitlin Doughty (yes, the Ask a Mortician lady). It's great.

2023 in Comic Books

Orlando

This has really been Steve Orlando's year for me. I was thinking about what series I would include on a highlight list, and his Scarlet Witch was the only obvious answer for me. Sara Pichelli's art in that series is gorgeous - I love the way she draws Wanda. The writing is solid, compelling, tells a complete story. If I were to recommend any one series from this year, it would be this.

His Astonishing Iceman was also up there for me, and I will also repeat that the Mutant First Strike one shot he wrote was genuinely great. Kudos, Steve.

Gillen

Kieron Gillen's Immortal X-Men is easily one of the best to come out of the Krakoa era, and this year was no exception. I didn't really care about the Sins of Sinister event, and I care even less about the Fall of X event, so it really means something that I'm still including this series here despite it being dominated by these events. The issue with Piotr's narration has been my favourite, I think. But overall, still strong. I really hope he gets to continue writing these characters (especially Exodus and Sinister) in the future.

Other Positivity

Ewing's Black Panther series is really solid, Avengers (2023) has been pretty good. Dark X-Men was probably my actual favourite of the Fall of X titles.

Negativity

Lol I already said I didn't like the x-events. I also hated cold war. Such a waste of an opportunity. Speaking of, a lot of my comics-based salt and frustration this year has been about Sam. The way that he gets written out of things, ignored, then he turns up and his written badly and goes straight back to being ignored again. Then Marvel turns to the camera and is like "why would audiences do this?".

Put the fucking effort in and more people would show up for him. It's not that hard.

There's my overall annoyance with Duggan, which is a freebie, but one highlight of that has to be the bizarre direction they went with Kamala. No one wanted this, no one needed it, and certainly nobody needed the weird gleeful "killing" of this character just to launch a pointless plot beat that feels both offensive (see: Emma lecturing Kamala about not understanding real oppression) and is inexplicably happening during a whole massive event that feels like it should be about other characters.

The end...?

I don't want to keep listing things that annoyed me this year, because it'll just get repetative. If you follow me (which, if you don't, why are you reading this?), then you'll see me complaining about random crap all the time anyway.

Have a good NYE everyone!

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starkstruck27 · 1 year

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Little Harringrove ficlet set in like 2019, just before they get together

"You know, if we were superheroes, you'd be the Winter Soldier to my Captain America."

Steve had said it so casually, Billy almost hadn't paid it any mind. He was way too absorbed in cleaning up after their movie marathon, and so exhausted that he almost dreaded doing it again tomorrow night. He'd somehow thought that four to five movies a night would be no big deal, especially since Steve was letting him stay over at his house all week, but there was a lot to follow in these films, and entirely too many characters to keep track of. Still, Steve said they had to rewatch all of them before going to see the new one, Endgame or whatever, and Billy had finally let his best friend talk him into a movie marathon. He had a hard time saying no to him.

They'd started off with only four, watching Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk (which wasn't even part of the official lineup, but Steve insisted it was essential to establish the character), Iron Man 2, and Thor. The next night, they also did four, going from Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World.

Then tonight, they watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Ant-Man. They would've watched Captain America: Civil War, too, but they were both tired and had to get up early the next day, so they said they could do it tomorrow.

And now, just after he'd said it, as Billy folded the blankets and Steve swept the popcorn off the couch cushions, Billy stopped and stared at him.

"So, I remind you of a homicidal maniac with a metal arm that killed and injured numerous people without a second thought?" He asked bitterly, remembering the long-haired assassin that beat Captain America to a bloody pulp and then left him for dead on the bank of a river. "Gee, thanks."

"Well, yeah, that's part of him, too, but that's not what I meant," Steve said, tossing a popcorn kernel at Billy.

"Well, what did you mean, then?" Billy asked.

"I'm not giving you any spoilers! You'll just have to keep watching and figure it out." Steve gave him his most innocent evil smirk, and Billy only sighed. He loved his best friend, but he could be a fucking menace when he wanted to be.

The next night, they watched five movies. Starting with Civil War, then going on to Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok. Billy liked them all, but he still didn't get what Steve meant when he said he was like Bucky. And Steve still wouldn't tell him outright what he meant, because he didn't want to risk spoiling the movies, even though Billy assured him 100 times he didn't care.

The night after that, they watched the last four movies, since the next day they had tickets to go and see Endgame. Starting with Black Panther, then going on to Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and finally, Captain Marvel.

Billy hated to admit it, but he was getting just as into these movies as Steve was, and he was almost as excited for the new movie tomorrow, too. Still, he couldn't figure out what Steve had meant the other day. But he didn't want to ask again, he couldn't let Steve know it was bothering him.

But as they cleaned up the snacks and the trash, the pillows and the blankets and put the living room back together, he didn't have to.

"So, have you figured it out yet?" Steve asked as he fluffed the ugly, uncomfortable and probably really expensive throw pillows.

"Not really. I mean, I guess I get it a little. We're best friends, your name is Steve and mine starts with a B, ends in a y, and has two syllables, and even though we fight sometimes, we still stay friends or whatever. I still don't understand why I have to be the tortured cyborg and you get to be the popular Golden Boy, but it's whatever," Billy replied, shrugging as he picked up the dishes to take them to the kitchen. He could feel his heart stutter when Steve laughed.

"Actually, most of the people who like Marvel actually like Bucky more than Steve, but that's besides the point. You got part of it, but there's more to what I said than that."

He stopped fussing with the pillows then, and instead walked over to Billy, taking the plates and cups from his hands and putting them back on the coffee table. He was so close that their toes touched, and Billy could smell the pizza, popcorn and sugar on his breath. Billy almost sqeaked in surprise at the sudden proximity, and he could feel his heart start to speed in his chest.

"Soooo... you wanna clue me in then?" He asked, not quite sure where to look or what to do with his hands. Steve was taller than him, and he wasn't sure what to do with someone when he couldn't look down at them. It made him feel a little out of place, and he didn't know how to get back to the way he always felt with Steve. Like he could mess with him, be near him, talk to him and do anything with him and be perfectly happy with it. He wanted to always feel like that, but right now it felt different, like there was something hanging in the air between them that neither of them wanted to address just yet.

"Well, another thing that fans do, besides just liking Bucky more, is they like to analyze their relationship. I do that, too, sometimes, and I realized their dynamic is a lot like ours. We were friends, then some shit happened and we weren't, you beat me up a little, finally told me about all the shit you'd been through, and finally we were able to heal and get you some help. Maybe you're not 100% perfect yet, but we know we have each other and we know that we're gonna be with each other til the end of the line. Or, at least, I hope we will," Steve said, and despite how nervous Billy felt, he was a little flattered, too. Steve was one of the only good things left in his life, and to hear him say that he wanted Billy by his side through the rest of his life felt pretty amazing. Billy could already imagine it, the two of them living through thick and thin and still going to see their silly little superhero movies together 50 years later, when Marvel would release Captain America 24.

"But that's not all," Steve continued, bringing Billy out of his thoughts. "A lot of fans, myself included, look at the two of them and think they'd make a cute couple, some of us even believing that they already are one, but Marvel is just giving Steve female love interests because they're owned by Disney and are too cowardly to have any of the characters identify as LGBTQ+. But like I said, a lot of fans already ship the two of them together."

Billy felt his mouth going dry, his eyes searching Steve's face for any kind of confirmation that he meant what he was saying, that he wasn't reading this wrong. He figured it was pretty blatant what he was saying, there wasn't a whole lot of room to mistake this, but he wanted to be absolutely sure before he made a fool of himself.

"So what are you... what are you trying to tell me?" Billy asked, holding his breath.

"I'm trying to tell you that if I were Steve Rogers, and if you were Bucky Barnes, and the two of us had fought together in World War 2, been inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield, promised each other that we'd be together until the end of the line, and I'd fought an entire Civil War against 117 countries to protect you because I never gave up on you... somewhere in there, I might’ve developed a feeling a bit stronger than just friendship for you."

"And if we weren't superheroes... If we were just ordinary people watching the movies, if you were just Steve Harrington and I was just Billy Hargrove... what then?"

Steve flashed him a smile, and Billy practically melted right there as Steve took one baby step closer, his fingers gentle brushing over Billy's arms before gripping his hands tightly.

"Well, if that were the case, then I'd say I've definitely developed those feelings a long time ago, but I was just too scared to say anything about it until now. And I'd say that I definitely really want to kiss you right now."

And who was Billy to refuse a sweet request like that? He finally had an opportunity to kiss Steve like he'd always wanted to, and he wasn't going to pass that up. He didn't waste any time in crashing their lips together, holding Steve close to him with one hand in his stupid perfect hair and the other wrapped around his back, nearly crushing him into himself. Steve hummed with laughter as he placed one of his hands on Billy's shoulders, the other resting on his hip where Billy's hand came to rest, covering it. They both felt alive with an electric charge going between their bodies, and even though they'd both closed their eyes and couldn't see, they knew they were both smiling like idiots. Billy could feel his heart jack-rabbiting in his chest, as if trying to tire itself out, but it was useless. Steve had never felt more butterflies in his stomach than he did right now, no one else had made it fill up with that many cocoons that had hatched all at once.

When they pulled apart, they couldn't help but giggle a little bit. Their respective little siblings would be both proud and incredibly too smug if they knew what had just happened. Max would be glad that they'd finally quit it with the pining, and Dustin would absolutely never shut up about how they were nerds just as much as he was. But right now they didn't have to think about their siblings, all they could think about was each other.

"Y'know, I think that in all those movies, Black Widow was only wrong about one thing," Billy said, smiling stupidly as he continued to hold Steve close. "Not everyone needs practice when it comes to kissing."

Steve laughed at that, loud and carefree, and Billy wished he would never have to go without that laugh. If Steve had really meant what he said though, he wouldn't have to. After all, they were gonna be stuck with each other from now on.

They'd be with each other til the end of the line.

#now imagine steve's heartbreak when mcu steve leaves bucky behind in endgame #seriously hed be devastated #but billy would know exactly how to cheer him up #stranger things #billy hargrove #steve harrington #harringrove #harringrove ficlet #drabble

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popentertainment-moviereviews · 2 months

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DUNE: PART TWO (2024)

Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem, Souheila Yacoub, Anya Taylor-Joy, Roger Yuan, Babs Olusanmokun, Alison Halstead, Giusi Merli, Kait Tenison, Tara Breathnach and Akiko Hitomi.

Screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. 167 minutes. Rated PG-13.

I have to admit I have never quite gotten the Dune phenomenon, from when I was a teen and read the book by Frank Herbert and being kind of underwhelmed by it, or from when I saw David Lynch’s horrible 1984 movie version. Therefore, I went into Denis Villeneuve’s version of the book a few years ago, with relatively low expectations, particularly since not only was I not a huge fan of Dune, but I’ve also always felt Villeneuve was a technically proficient but rather cold director who is better at creating worlds than he is at telling stories.

Therefore, I was relatively pleasantly surprised by the 2021 version of Dune. It was gorgeously filmed (no big surprise, that is Villeneuve’s strong point), and while it was a little slow, a little too fascinated with the politics of this world and way too long, and it ended right in the middle of a scene, in general I was impressed by the movie.

However, two-and-a-half years have passed, and honestly when I was getting ready to see Dune: Part Two, I realized that I barely remembered a thing about the first film. The movie had blown away in my mind like spice in a sandstorm. I had to rewatch Dune a few days before the screening just to remember what had happened. Again I had basically the same reaction to the first viewing: stunningly filmed, but a bit slow, and way too long.

Well, Dune: Part Two is even longer than that film – just a bit under three hours long. However, no one will ever accuse it of being slow. Dune: Part Two is where the storyline ramps up (it’s basically based on the second half of the book) and while it is still occasionally a bit clunky and stiff, for the most part it’s an impressive act of sci-fi spectacle.

Dune: Part Two takes off from where the last film ended – the Harkonnen House has slaughtered the Atreides family. The two surviving members of the house – Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) – are on the run in the desert, hiding out with the local Fremen tribe. They all work together to avenge the Atreides and vanquish the Harkonnens, as well as the Emperor (Christopher Walken) who betrayed the family. In the meantime Paul befriends and eventually falls for beautiful Fremen fighter Chani (Zendaya).

Cue lots of stunning (if occasionally redundant) battle sequences. The armature of Dune is an odd mix of futuristic and old-fashioned – they have spaceships, submachine guns and atomic warheads, and yet most of the fighting is done in hand-to-hand combat with swords. (This probably can be explained by the age of the source material; the novel was originally published in 1965.)

It occasionally gets a bit overwhelming, but credit where it is due, it is often pretty spectacular. And yes, again, the film sort of ends in the middle of a fight sequence – although this film has a much more concrete climax than the last one – so no doubt we’ll have to wait another two or three years to find out what happens next. (After all, Herbert wrote six Dune novels, there is lots of story left to go.)

This time around I expect I’ll remember it a lot better when the next film comes down the pike.

Jay S. Jacobs

youtube

#Dune: Part Two #2024 #Movie Review #Timothee Chalamet #Zendaya #Jay S. Jacobs #Youtube

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geekthefreakout · 9 months

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I want to start writing again, but can't pick what to work on, so here is a list of WIPs I have going that I haven't done much with. What should I put effort into first? Poll under the cut. Also, you can suggest things! Please vote and reblog?

Coming Clean (At Least I'm Trying)- Fandom: Supernatural. Pairing: Destiel. Alternate ending to s15, where Castiel struggles with his new humanity and Dean struggles with his nascent sobriety. They both try to make their new relationship work. Features Jack and Sam in big supporting roles. Multi chapter, some already up on AO3 here. I lost half of the next chapter because my computer crashed, and I have been struggling to get back into it.

Blood Brothers- Fandom: MCU. Pairing: Winterfrost. The sequel to my fic Pieces of Me Fit Pieces of You. AU: Canon-divergent after Thor: Ragnorak, ignoring credit scene. Loki and Bucky adjust to life in New Asgard, the people who love them adjust to each other, and the shadow of the Mad Titan looms on the horizon. Features Einar, the best horse ever, and many Avengers in supporting roles. I don't have anything posted yet, but I've outlined a lot of it. Hyperfixation brain has not let me work on this in a while.

The Autobiography of Una Chin-Riley- Fandom: Star Trek. Pairing: Garashir. After Julian's augmentations are revealed, Garak comes to him with a most interesting book. Intended to be a one-shot where Garak and Bashir discuss eugenics and civil rights, and what effect the legacies of both Una and Khan had on Bashir's decision to join Starfleet. I have about 1300 words of this so far.

Killing Time and Killing Dads- Fandom: The Flash CW. Pairing: Coldflash, pre-relationship. Canon-divergent AU where after Zoom kills Henry but before Barry creates Flashpoint, Snart appears on the Flash's radar and the two discuss fathers, failures, and the things they can't change. I've been mulling this over for a while but haven't written it. It would probably be a one or two shot. If you want to know my voices for these characters, check out my other fic that also has Snart being around for Henry's death. I guess I just like the concept.

Untitled Bashir War fic- Fandom: Star Trek Pairing: none focused, but probably light Garashir because I can't help myself. I watched Band of Brothers recently, and the episode "Bastogne" prompted me to consider the toll being a battlefield medic took on Bashir, and meditate a bit on how little war has really changed through the centuries. I have 1100 words so far. I need to rewatch a few Dominion War episodes to make sure I don't have any glaring contradictions in my Star Trek medicine.

Not any particular fic, but some of my usual light stuff you might find in my "Sam Writes Stuff" tag- things like Garashir reacting to stuff, random head canons that may or may not become fics later, various fandoms. Most likely to be Arrowverse Flash, Star Trek, Dragon Ball, Supernatural, or Batfam.

Okay, so what do you think? Do any of these strike your interest? Or do you have something else you would like me to write? Vote below!

#poll #fanfics #wips #sam writes stuff #supernatural #marvel mcu #star trek #ds9 #arrowverse #coldflash #destiel #garashir #winterfrost #idk

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boysplanetrecaps · 3 months

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The Great Produce 48 Rewatch: Ep 4, Very Very Very (IOI) Challenge

Welcome back to the thing I’m doing for some reason: The Great Produce48 Rewatch Recap-ma-jig! When we left off, we saw the penultimate teams perform Twice’s Like Ooh Ah. In this post, we’ll focus on the two performances of Very Very Very, featuring many future members of Iz*one, IVE, Purplekiss, and Le Sserafim. Let’s do it!

Lee Seungki announces the next song as being “meaningful” -- and it is. Very Very Very was the song that made I.O.I. into what they were, and paved the way for IZ*one. He calls the two teams up on stage as the Avengers theme plays, I assume in the theater itself. Jeremy is like, “Wow, Sakura is in one of those teams.” Hey, Jeremy? Sakura is ranked 5th, which is respectable, but Yujin is ranked SECOND and Kwon Eunbi is ranked THIRD and I don’t see you mention either of them. And when Gaeun went up for Peekaboo, you didn’t mention her at all, even though she’s ranked FIRST. I know, I know, the filming was a little ahead of the voting, so they didn’t know what people would be ranked, and Sakura was the center, but she was the center, not like, actually Iron Man.

It’s so weird the way these shows pick a person to be the whole show. I got it when it was Sung Hanbin from Boys Planet, as he is not just perfect looking but also an excellent dancer and a great singer and someone whose tears crystalize into diamonds that could refract light itself into champagne. But Sakura, despite being a sweet, cute, hardworking girl, isn't unusually talented or charming as far as I can tell.

Anyway! To get us back up to speed, here are two teams.

Yujin’s team, which was formed second overall introduces themselves as “Mixed Fruits”.

Left to right:

Honda Hitomi, 16, the super cutey who worked her way up from C to A and is currently ranked 47th.

An Yujin, 14, future member of IVE who rose from B to A and is currently ranked 2nd overall. Wow! And she’s 14, you guys. I always forget how young she is here.

Jang Wonyoung, future Wonyoung, known for being Wonyoung but currently with her original face, who has stayed in B and is ranked 4th.

Choi Yena, 18, friendly Yena from Yuehua who kept us company for a lot of episode 1, fell from A to B, and is currently ranked 6th.

Shiroma Miru, 20, future visitor to Queendom Puzzle, who fell from B to D but is ranked 22nd.

Na Goeun, 18, future Purplekiss, A class girl, and ranked 20th.

Sakura’s team, which was formed first overall, introduces themselves a “Very Raspberry” (in English). It’s weird how many pairs of teams ended up with thematically similar names.

Left to right:

Kwon Eunbi, 22, the future soloist, fell from A to C, is currently ranked 3rd

Motomura Aoi, 21, sweet faced Aoi from Never Ending Ferris Wheel, who rose from D to B and is ranked 42nd.

Kim Minju, 17, a Very Pretty Girl, rose from D to C, ranked 17

Kim Choyeon, 16, fire-eyes girl and future Bugaboo, fell from A to C, ranked 75

Miyawaki Sakura, 20, THE SAKURA, future member of Le Sserafim who stayed in A and is ranked 5th.

Lee Chaeyeon, 18, future soloist, who stayed in A and is ranked 10th.

Clearly, both teams are pretty stacked. But Yunjin’s team is just maybe that little bit more stacked, despite being formed second. I actually don’t remember who wins, but my 2024 knowledge implies it might have something to do with Wonyoung.

Red Team’s Miru says, in Japanese, that their cute members will blend to make the sweetest juice, so bring it on! Blue team’s Sakura says that their team is the closest and that will make their performance best, and throws in a “fighting!” at the end.

We jump back to Red team’s dance practice with Dance Bae, but this will be more about Blue team. Give it a moment.

Original face Wonyoung’s cute wiggling and winking earns a smile from Dance Bae, and it looks like everyone is doing a good and cute job. Dance Bae mentions the center, then after a pause says that they chose the right girl for it.

We see Kim Choyeon, who is the center of the other team, reacting with concern to how good Wonyoung is. Poor Choyeon. Imagine having to go up against Wonyoung? In ANYTHING? It just wouldn’t go well. And the fact that Choyeon doesn’t quite meet Korean beauty standards -- despite being, in my opinion, a striking looking girl -- doesn’t help.

Choyeon interviews, “Wonyoung’s facial expressions are all so natural. She’s so pretty and she does a good job standing at the center. I’m a bit anxious.”

It’s group 2’s turn, and Dance Bae tells them that she’s happy to see all of them since this is a team with a lot of skilled members. She expresses a bit of surprise that Choyeon is the center.

Center: Choyeon Left of Choyeon: Aoi Right of Choyeon: Lee Chaeyon Behind Choyeon: Kim Minju Kneeling, left to right: Eunbi, Sakura

The editors present us with a weird-face-off between Choyeon and Dance Bae. (I mean a weird-face off, not a weird face-off, if you feel me.)

When they’re done, Dance Bae says, “Choyeon, I’m sorry, but you were overacting. You made me feel so uncomfortable, I had to look at someone else.” Choyeon nods. I think she kinda knew.

The editors keep doing that “swallowing” noise thing and I hate it nomu nomu nomu nomu much.

Bae goes on, and she really, really lets them have it. She says, “What’s ironic is, you guys dance better than the other group. You have more famous members, too. But I sense that there’s a different vibe. You guys aren’t so fresh compared to Group One. I think it could be a problem of the center member. For the team, I think it’s better to select a new center member. Girls, you have to be careful choosing a center member. Why don’t you all think rationally? Don’t be swayed by what other people think.”

Afterwards, there is a lot of crying. Motherly Eunbi holds Choyeon while she sobs. Everyone else hovers nearby, patting her vaguely.

Cut to dress rehearsal and we see that now, Sakura is in the center. Ahn Yujin voice overs that it makes sense to her that Sakura would be in the center, and really, it makes sense to all of us.

Soyou asks about it, and almost sounds angry, but that might just be her shouting to be heard from the distance. Kwon Eunbi explains that they decided to change to Sakura recently.

Side note: Doesn’t Choyeon look pretty with her hair like this?

Her face is one of those interesting faces that can go either way, and I think that’s cool. A lot of runway models are like that. She just needs, I don’t know, the right hair and the right styling and the right attitude to be like yeah, my eyes are lasers, get into it!

Cut back to the group meeting -- one of those Criss-cross-Applesauce-Crescent-Moons of Doom. It’s a CACMOD, if you will.

Eunbi asks the group who should be the center, and Aoi sweetly says, “Choyeon,” which makes Choyeon smile for a second before immediately starting to cry. Even in her interview she is overcome with sobs. She tries to smile, though. She wants to do what’s best for the group.

The group smartly decides to record themselves six times, each time with a different person in the center, and then watch the recordings. Afterward, Lee Chaeyon says she thinks that Sakura should be the center. And at that moment, a thousand ‘ships were launched! Everyone nods, and Choyeon herself speaks up to agree that yes, Sakura should be the center. Pretty Eunbi agrees, and the decision is made.

They applaud, but Sakura is full of mixed emotions about taking over her friend’s part.

She also has to learn the rap. We see that she has the rap written in katakana, the Japanese writing system designed for foreign words.

She’s learning it phonetically, basically, and it’s not going to be easy, but she sits with the others and practices the pronunciation and dance as hard as she can.

We cut back to dress rehearsal and Sakura is making a lot of mistakes with the words. When they’re done, Cheetah lets her have it, which I just think is mean.

“That wasn’t good. I can’t hear anything. I can’t make out what you’re saying. Why did you have to change positions and make the rap part horrible?”

Like, she doesn’t speak Korean, lady. It’s obvious she’s having trouble. I’d just say, “Well, it’s obvious you need a lot more work on the words. What is your plan to learn the lyrics by performance day?” And then, AND THEN, Soyou of all fucking people says, “Because of Sakura, everything was ruined. Her pronunciation was bad, and her dance was offbeat.” She goes on and on and on, and Sakura begins literally flinching as the words hit her in the face.

Ugh. I think a lot of this is production interference. They know that they want to show a lot of both of these teams, so they need as much drama as they can get, and they want a lot of it to center on Sakura so they can put Sakura’s face in the middle of people’s TV screens.

It must be so hard for Sakura. She seems to genuinely want to learn, and then she gets alternately praised and lambasted for roughly equivalently good performances. Audition offkey and with extremely simple choreo? Into A class! Not learn a 20 second rap in a foreign language in 2 days? MAKE HER FEEL LIKE SCUM YOU FOUND ON YOUR SHOE.

Thanks, judges. Thudges.

Kindly Jeremy asks, in Japanese, do you think you can do ok tomorrow? She answers, “I think Choyeon should be in the center.”

Commercial break! In the Spanish video you can see this inexplicable advertisement featuring AI idols dancing to Nekoya. (23:30 or so)

In an interview, she cries as she says that she feels bad that Choyeon missed out on her chance to be center, but I’d argue that this isn’t entirely Sakura’s fault. Choyeon couldn’t figure out how to smile naturally, Sakura. I mean, harsh, but like… true.

Now, in this interview, she’s wearing her actual performance outfit, not the outfit she was wearing in dress rehearsal, which had a blue collar. I can’t help but wonder if this interview, in which she says that Choyeon would have had more time to rehearse as center if it weren’t for her -- I wonder if this interview was recorded AFTER their performance. Because it would make sense if it were. It would put a different cast on it when she says that she thinks everything is her fault.

Side note: I wonder why Eunbi was never really floated as a center for the performance? She looks a little like Irene from Red Velvet, in my opinion, and she can sing and dance. She would have been a great center. Maybe it’s because she’s not quite as twig-thin as the other girls….? IDK.

Anyway, they decide to switch back to Choyeon, and Sakura voice overs that she feels much better about it. Eunbi voice overs that the team has gotten really close and they work well together. Minju voiceovers that she wants to make the performance perfect, and I’m like, “oh, is that what your voice sounds like, Minju? I had forgotten.”

And then it’s time for the performance.

Here’s PD48 Editing’s blessed edit.

Standing: Aoi, Sakura, Lee Chaeyon Kneeling: Minju, Choyeon, Eunbi

My thoughts:

Overall, they did great. Some of the vocals weren’t perfect, and not every facial expression exactly worked, but overall, great.

Choyeon must have practiced a lot in the mirror because she was definitely much better than she’d been in that first rehearsal, expression wise. It still was a little awkward, alas. She is a great dancer and a decent singer (though I don’t love her vocal color), but she just isn’t a gifted smiler. It’s a bummer for her because I know she really wants this.

Eunbi was flawless. No notes. She should have been the center. I don’t get it.

Lee Chaeyon was main vocal, ya’ll. Let that sink in -- the girl known for her excellent dancing was the main vocal on the team. Facial expressions, mini dance break, ad libs, all on point. Who is she, Kang Seulgi over here? I think she should have worn her hair down or curled or something maybe, and had a brighter closer to her face, but that’s the stylist unnie screwing her over. She’s just a queen when it comes to performance.

Aoi was frickin’ adorable, of course.

Smiles, pouts, finger wiggles… she gives Nako a run for her money. Dancing looked fine, and her one or two lines of vocals were fine. And the little part at the end when she blows the glitter at everyone -- seamless. She’s good at this, ya’ll. And it seems, for the record, that the audience appreciates her too, even if MNET gives her zero time or attention.

Minju just looked kind of scared a lot of the time.

Use your finger to cover up her mouth in this picture and just look at her eyes and I think you’ll see what I mean. Her rapping vocal color is kind of offputting, too. She was on beat and I think she did it correctly but it didn’t work for me. Someone had to rap I guess. But she did the thing and was pretty, and that’s what she was there for.

Sakura was super cute and had great facial expressions. She vocals were on key, though her vocal color remains unpleasant to me. Still, she did her Sakura thing and it was fine. I just don’t quite get why she’s the one that everyone is obsessed with compared to some of the others on the team. Nothing against her. I mean, it’s not just the MNET edit that makes her seem important -- when she sings her first few notes, you can hear a reaction in the live audience.

The MNET edit is about what you’d expect. There’s a cute moment when Jeremy says, “Chaeyeon is stable at everything,” which, yes, she is. The judges also praise Minju, which is their prerogative. I guess. No kind words for Eunbi or Aoi though, because MNET hates them I guess.

Afterward, it’s all smiles and applause from everyone, and we see some signs in the audience for Choyeon, so that’s great! The judges are relieved that they changed the center back.

We cut almost immediately to Team 1, and all the way back to day 1, when they’re distributing parts.

So you don’t have to scroll up, this team is made up of (left to right around the circle)

An Yujin, 14, future member of IVE who rose from B to A and is currently ranked 2nd overall.

Honda Hitomi, 16, the super cutey who worked her way up from C to A and is currently ranked 47th.

Shiroma Miru, 20, future visitor to Queendom Puzzle, who fell from B to D but is ranked 22nd.

Na Goeun, 18, future Purplekiss, A class girl, and ranked 20th.

Choi Yena, 18, friendly Yena from Yuehua who kept us company for a lot of episode 1, fell from A to B, and is currently ranked 6th.

Jang Wonyoung, 14, future Wonyoung, known for being Wonyoung but currently with her original face, who has stayed in B and is ranked 4th.

They are having trouble figuring out who could do the rap, and Na Goeun wonders aloud if the rap should be done in Japanese (at least according to the on-screen captions in Korean). Maybe if a Japanese member did the rap, she’d be allowed to do it in Japanese…..? Not sure. Regardless, the Japanese members don’t want to do the rap.

An Yujin volunteers to try, and then she does a pretty perfect job on her first try. Wonyoung teases her, “I thought she went to the back to practice first.” She ends up with the part, and is laughing about it in her interview before she adds, with mock seriousness, “I’m good at everything.”

It’s obviously a joke, and I really, really, really hope she didn’t get shit for that. But people are the way they are I guess. Also, she’s not wrong.

We join them at an early vocal/rap rehearsal, with long-hair Cheetah. Yujin gets a little in her head for the rap and messes it up a bit, but Cheetah cuts her slack for trying to do it without looking at the lyrics.

We go to dance rehearsal, where Dance Bae praises their performance and says they suit the song. They’re all happy to hear the praise.

It looks like their rehearsal is fairly relaxed and they have time to joke around.

A few of the girls interview that they think they can win.

And it’s time for the performance!

PD48 Editing’s blessed edit

My thoughts:

Well, obviously this was basically perfect.

From Wonyoung’s very first wiggle and “Sorichira!” (scream!), it was clear that this girl was born to be a Kpop girl group center. What would she have done in cave man days? Unclear. But in 2018 and 2024, she can wink at us and wiggle around cutely and voila! A star is born. Do I love her vocal color? Not really. Is she that great at dancing? The editing makes it impossible to tell. But she’s Wonyoung, and is somehow super engrossing.

Na Goeun held down the fort as sub vocal 1. A lot of the time sub-1 sings more lines than the main vocal does and kind of sets the tone for the song. Think Nayeon as opposed to Jihyo in Twice, for example. Goeun kept the overall vocals good, and also pulls off all the aegyo with aplomb.

I’m kind of surprised that Yena ended up the main vocal, with Goeun on the team, but she does a great job. I do think that her makeup doesn’t do her any favors, and I think this hair style is wrong for the shape of her face. She’s normally a super pretty girl, and I blame the stylist unnies for that. Perhaps because she was styled wrong, or maybe for some other reason, her facial expressions don’t quite work as well as those of her teammates, which is weird because she’s naturally super cute in normal life. She doesn’t do a bad job or anything, don't get me wrong, and her vocals are sweet and on key, but there was just something a little off about this.

But I live for this ending fairy.

Yujin is wasted in this concept, but she can do anything she sets her mind to, and she does this, too. I don’t think the pigtails suit her though.

Miru and Hitomi both fade into the back a little, with small parts, but they’re both cute in a super natural and straightforward way, and as far as I could tell, did the choreo well. Miru in particular has never had my favorite vocal color but they were both on key and seemed happy to be there. They both contributed in their way by bringing energy and cuteness, which is what this performance called for.

I actually don’t have any serious criticism for any of them. I’d like to have a word with stylist unnie, but that’s the main thing.

The MNET edit is in love with them. I mean, they were even left for last, even though they obviously performed before the other team. We see the audience and the other girls cheering for them. When they’re done, the judges sigh and say it’s really close because both teams did so well.

Then Dance Bae says something really foolish: “One of these groups will not receive extra votes and not make it through.” As if those 1000 votes MATTER when you’re Sakura or Wonyoung? Come on. These benefit votes only ever matter for the people on the bubble -- people within say two spots of the cut off point, plus or minus.

The girls head to the results restroom to learn whether they will literally live or literally die!

Naturally, super cute Yena beats the not preferred Lee Chaeyeon. That’s how people do.

Surprisingly, Na Goeun beats Kwon Eunbi, which just is a factor of there being so many awesome girls on both teams and people only getting one vote. Maybe Eunbi looked a little too old for the concept…? She looks like a woman in a group of girls. Not that Goeun did badly at all. In fact, I’d have wanted both of them to get more votes, but that’s how life is. Poor Eunbi is like, “I failed,” and no. No, you were great, girl.

Miru is up against Sakura, and they both do amazing. I don’t know why you’re looking unhappy, Miru-chan! You got 112 votes! That’s a lot higher than the average, which, by the way, is 69. (Wooooooooooooo!)

Hitomi wins over Aoi and Yoojin wins over Minju. So far, except for Sakura beating Miru, red has beaten blue in every match up.

At that moment, before they can reveal the results of the center battle -- Kim Choyeon versus Jang Wonyoung -- Choyeon over on blue team says, “Congratulations.” Red’s Yujin shakes her head to disagree, but Choyeon says, “Group one won. I’m not confident.” This makes everyone on red team look over sadly, shaking their heads…

…. but Choyeon just looks down at her hands.

She voice overs that this could be her last stage, as sad piano music plays.

And then bam! Bam! They quickly reveal the final points -- Choyeon got a respectable 54 votes, second highest on her team and quite a lot considering her immediate competition amongst these 12 talented and popular trainees. But Wonyoung got 90, and red team won, 440 to 356.

Red Team: Choi Yena 64 Na Goeun 42 Shiroma Miru 112 Honda Hitomi 70 An Yujin 62 Jang Wonyoung 90

Blue Team: Lee Chaeyeon 34 Kwon Eunbi 24 Miyawaki Sakura 164 Motomura Aoi 46 Kim Minju 34 Kim Choyeon 54

That’s Wonyoung hugging Choyeon.

The girls all hug and applaud each other, and Wonyoung voiceovers, “I felt bad because we all worked hard together.” They do all rehearse together in the same training room, even though they’re two different teams, and probably all get to be at least sort of friends. So in a way, this was a proto-IZ*one challenge.

Most of the blue team is crying now, including Minju. But Choyeon voiceovers that she doesn’t have regrets because she knows they all did their best.

Ok, friends! That’s about it for this post. In my next one, I’m going to finish out episode 4 and do a bit of analysis of the challenge overall, including my personal rankings and some math. After that, I think I’m going to pause the P48 recaps for a bit while I watch Build Up, but I guess we’ll see about that either way.

Also, as a side note: Here’s Kep1er doing Very Very! They do a great job, I think.

Thanks, chingus and dongsaengs, for reading! I’ll see you soon.

Xoxo BPR Unnie

#bpr recaps p48 #produce 48 #le sserafim #ive #wonyoung #jang wonyoung #sakura #kwon eunbi #purple kiss #kim minju #honda hitomi #lee chaeyeon #akb48

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sineala · 2 years

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let's talk, then :D do you have any favorite tv show lately? also, are you more of a binge-watch or one-episode-per-day type of person?

Aww, thanks for the ask, I appreciate it!

I am actually not a person who watches a whole lot of TV or movies and the fact that I have been in any TV/movie fandoms at all is a testament to how much I want to be in some fandom if it'll get me to actually watch something. I'm about three years behind on all the new Star Treks, for example. Books are great; I can read books for hours on end. (A lot of my Trek fandom was me reading the official novels.) I just have a hard time paying attention to TV/movies and I can probably watch at most two hours of anything at a time before I start getting really restless. I am trying to keep up with the Disney+ Marvel shows but have not started Ms. Marvel yet. (I did watch Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness the other day. I experienced some Madness, all right.)

(As of last year, I somehow got deeply into watching baseball on TV, which as far as I am concerned is perfect because I don't actually have to pay any attention to it and they let you know when something you should pay attention to.)

@lysimache likes watching TV more than I do and she really enjoys hitting the "Watch Something" button on Netflix and Netflix has decided that she wants to watch gay high school shows, so now we've seen Heartstopper and First Kill and we're part of the way through The Politician. Other than that, uh, I guess we watched Our Flag Means Death just like everyone else in fandom, and we're about halfway through a rewatch of the RayK season(s) of Due South.

But what I have been watching recently is actually a lot of obscure Avengers shows and movies because our 18+ 616 Steve/Tony Discord server You Gave Me A Home has been spending the week celebrating 616 Day and our server anniversary, so we've been watching some 616 Steve & Tony-adjacent... stuff. So far this week, it's been a dramatic livereading along with the YouTube video of Captain America/Iron Man: Invasion Force (which I posted about the other day) some of the 1960s Avengers cartoons (which are straight out of the early comics because they are so low-budget they mostly just animated the actual panels), Next Avengers (the direct-to-DVD movie where Tony has to raise all the other Avengers' kids in the Ultron robot post-apocalypse), and last night we watched both of the 1979 made-for-TV live-action Captain America movies (I am not sure I would call either of them good, per se, but I had a whole lot of fun watching them and I honestly would watch them again). So that's been fun.

(I'm not sure what else we're planning to watch; I think the contenders include the 1990s Iron Man cartoon, the 1944 Captain America serial, and maybe some EMH because EMH is actually good.)

#replies #doublechocolate

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kumeko · 1 year

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A/N: For the @irondadandspidersonzine! Strictly movie-verse, because that’s really where I see this type of relationship (comics…not so much). I wanted something that took place post-Endgame—I kinda wish the movies/shows would explore the characters/world picking up the pieces after everything was said and done. Maybe a series of vignettes? (but alas, action genre, so I’ll take what I get).

Also my apologies to Rhodey, you are mentioned everywhere in this story but I didn’t get to write you in. T_T

…

Every day, on her way to school, Morgan walked past her father’s statue. Not that she had to go out of her way for that; it was hard to spit in New York without hitting something celebrating the Avengers. There were murals and plaques and even a softball team (they were always second last). Houses had garden Hulks and there were at least three streets named after Black Widow. It was in fact harder to find a route that didn’t have anything.

Still, the statue that Morgan passed every day was special. It was a copper, life-sized version of her dad, of Tony Stark and not Iron Man. There was a single, long crack that along the back, and she used to imagine that bugs made their home inside, that if she cracked open the metal casing a huge butterfly would escape. Her mom didn’t like seeing it, but Morgan would stop at it every day, taking note of how the copper dulled over time, of how the moss slowly crept up the legs. Science had told her it was oxidization that made her father green. Uncle Rhodey had told her it was how Tony looked the first time he flew.

It was more out of habit than anything else that she stopped by him again today. Standing next to him, she rested a hand on her head and compared her height to her father’s. He had an inch on her, maybe two, her head almost reaching his eyes. At fifteen, Morgan had maybe a few more months left in her growth spurt, a year or two if she was very lucky. Her mother had at least two inches on her short dad, so there was a chance that she’d grow taller than him. That he’d have to look up at her.

There wasn’t a statue for that.

She didn’t want to grow.

-x-

“What did you say you were working on again?” Uncle Peter asked, his hologram walking through her messy workshop as he took in the scattered metal scraps and discarded tools. There was something uncanny by how soundlessly he moved, about the way his fingers disappeared into tables and chairs. It was ghostlike.

(In case of my untimely death, her father had started, and she had spent years watching and rewatching that hologram, memorizing the pauses between his words.)

But Uncle Peter was alive, she had seen him just last week, and the blue pallor of his skin was just the light from U’s lights. The robot followed him around, its camera fixed firmly on Peter’s figure. Its metal feet sounded heavier in comparison to Peter’s silence.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Morgan sighed and scratched her head. Dressed in a pair of overalls and smudged with oil, she looked like a proper grease monkey. Her mother wouldn’t be happy. Her lips would thin, her eyes narrow, the face of a CEO who had fought many a hostile takeover. Morgan wondered how many times her father had faced that sight, how many times they locked horns and battled. Her mother had said a few times, Peter claimed none, and Happy admitted it was all the time; the truth most likely lay in-between. Maybe it was more than how many times she and her mom fought.

She hoped it wasn’t less.

Peter coughed and she snapped back to the present. Hastily getting up, she rubbed her hands against her pants, removing any oil before she headed to the table. “A better mask for Iron Man.”

“Oh.” Peter’s breath hitched. One day, she would recognize that sound for what it was, for the pain held in it. He was only ten years older than her, a gap that felt like forever at her age. Peter was an adult, he was always an adult, but he had only been a kid when her father died. For all that he’d experienced, he was only twenty-five now. It was a young age, comparatively. It was too young for all wounds to have healed.

But right now she was fifteen and everyone over twenty was old. She hadn’t yet learned of real regret. Only of loss, of the absence that someone could leave in someone’s life. Morgan picked up her prototype of the mask. The bright red and yellow metals contrasted wildly to her grease-stained fingers. “I can’t get the chip to work.”

Peter’s voice returned to normal, not that she’d noticed. “Maybe you didn’t smoulder it right? It’s very precise after all, lots of fine-tuning is needed. Pretty easy to make a mistake there.”

“I don’t think so, but maybe.” Morgan shrugged. She leaned on the table, pointing at her design sketches. “What do you think?”

“Me? Hmm…” Peter leaned forward. His eyes widened. “What’s that you’re making?”

“Huh?” Watching as he studied a schematic, his fingers hovering over the paper, Morgan remembered just what was on the table. Idle sketches of a fanciful robot, blueprints of an idea she wasn’t sure she wanted to make. She almost tripped over her feet as she grabbed her drawings. “T-that’s nothing! Just ignore it!”

“Nothing?” Peter looked at her, raising a brow. “That’s definitely not nothing.”

“It is!” she insisted, hugging the large papers close. They crumpled in her grip, bending to the curves of her body. “Look at the real schematic. Please.”

For a moment, Peter said nothing, and she feared he would press the issue. Then he leaned against the table, crossing his arms. “If you say so—”

Only Peter wasn’t actually here, in this room. No, he was miles away in his office in New York, an office where there wasn’t actually a table there, and he let out a surprised yelp as he fell through the desk. After a few seconds, his head rose from the center of the table, a sheepish look on his face. “Don’t know how I keep doing that.”

Morgan laughed, a rough thing. She calmed, relaxing her death grip on her sketches. “Me neither. You should try leaning over an actual table or something.”

“Don’t tell MJ, okay?” Peter pleaded, rubbing his forehead. Holograph technology now was far better than it was in her father’s time, and she could see the red from the bump. “She laughs at me enough as it is.”

“That’s cause you give her a lot to laugh at,” Morgan retorted. She thought her father might have made a joke like that. Yet she was ever her mother’s daughter and she smiled. “Fine, I won’t.”

Peter sighed, his shoulders relaxing. “Thanks—”

“But only if you figure out what’s wrong with the chip,” Morgan interrupted. It wasn’t smiles that won her mother her position, after all.

“You’re a taskmaster,” Peter grumbled good-naturedly, pouring over the sketches and blueprints once more. He didn’t say anything as she carefully folded her other sketches and hid them away in a drawer.

-x-

“Morgan! It’s time!”

Dimly, Morgan registered her mother’s voice. Numbers and code swirled around her brain, a tempest of possible solutions and answers. They were all half-formed, waiting to be examined, chosen, and worked on. As she shifted through them, she subconsciously analyzed the white noise of her mother’s voice, pulling apart the tone. Her mom didn’t sound urgent. That meant it didn’t have to happen now. “I’m coming,” she uttered noncommittedly, her eyes still trained on her laptop as she adjusted the code to her chip.

Several successful brainstorming sessions with Uncle Peter and she had it, the final piece to the puzzle. All that was left was the fixes and testing. Then again, testing was always half the work in the first place. Maybe if she—

“Morgan! Hun, come on, we have to get dinner started now!”

The second time, her mother’s voice pulled out of her thoughts harder. Words filtered in, demanding to be registered. Morgan stared blankly at the clock on her laptop, at the small white digits declaring 6:35pm. Dinner. 6:35pm. Mom. The words ran through her mind several times before she comprehended them.

“Don’t make me come up there!”

“Shit!” she hissed, almost dropping her laptop as she hurriedly got up. “Coming! I’M COMING!” The last time this happened, her mom actually had dragged her down by the scuff of her neck like she was some wayward kitten. That would have been bad enough on its own, but Rhodey and Peter had been there and she was pretty sure they still had pictures.

Pictures which she still couldn’t forcibly delete, unfortunately.

As she scrambled into the kitchen, panting, Morgan yelped, “I’m here! I’m here!”

“I can see that,” her mother replied wryly, grabbing her apron off a hook. “Remember to breathe.”

Morgan shot her a dirty look. Honestly, it was nice that they cooked together once a week, a guaranteed time where they both had to be present for dinner. It was fun, experimenting with different foods, discovering just how bad they both were at cooking. Morgan was too impatient and her mom too precise, which led to mishap more often than not.

Still, there was something grating about getting pulled out of her work. Morgan grumbled, “You didn’t have to threaten.”

“Only way to get you here,” her mother replied cheerfully, rolling up the sleeves to her good mint blouse. Even though she wasn’t wearing her work clothes, she still looked nice. Morgan was convinced there was nothing in her mother’s closest that was even close to the ratty t-shirts her uncles liked to relax in. “If you don’t want me to threaten, come at the first call.”

“Fine.” Calming down, Morgan glanced at the kitchen counter, silently counting the supplies neatly organized there. 2 packages of ground meat. A 5kg bag of potatoes. 7 bottles of a variety of sauces. A plastic bag full of beansprouts. 3 containers of panko breadcrumbs. As she studied the salad supplies, she asked, “Is someone coming for dinner?”

Her mom’s face scrunched as she shook her head, her hands carefully tying her apron strings behind her back. “No, why?”

“Are we making a feast then?” Morgan pulled her own apron off the hook, slipping into it. It was slightly frillier than her mom’s, a practical blue checkered pattern mixed with pretty green lace. Unfortunately, the large sauce stain on the front marred the whole thing. “That’s a lot of food.”

“That…” Pepper trailed off as she looked at the food on the counter. Sheepishly, she giggled. “Well, it’s a hard recipe and you know how we are in the kitchen. I just wanted backups in case we made a mistake. I might have went overboard with that, huh?”

Morgan held up her hand, pinching together two fingers. “Just a little.”

“Alright, alright, no need to be a smartass.” Her mother rolled her eyes playfully. “One thing I’ve learned, it’s better to be prepared than to worry later.”

She wondered if that had to do with her father or the Avengers. “I think you might be too prepared.”

“We can always call over Peter after, he eats like an elephant anyways.” Pulling out a tablet, her mother set it down on the kitchen counter. “We’re going to make croquettes, okay? And this strange little salad this cook recommends with it.”

“That sounds fancy.” Morgan leaned forward, scratching her neck as she read the recipe.

“Nothing too bad.” Opening a cupboard, her mom started to pull out small jars of spices. There was no consistency to the different spices they owned, each bought for a recipe that would only get used again six months down the line. “Sorry we had to move this down a day, it took longer than I thought to finalize that merger.”

“It’s okay.” Morgan reached into a drawer and pulled out their plastic cutting boards. “You got it?”

“Yeah.” Her mom looked over her shoulder and winked. “Like there was any doubt.”

And her mom liked to call her cocky. Morgan snorted. “You did need extra time.”

“You can’t rush some things.” Spices found, she closed the cupboard. Reaching down into a cabinet beneath the counter, she rifled through the mess of pots and pans as she searched for a mixing bowl. “That reminds me, Peter told me you were working on something new.”

“Yeah…” Morgan hoped he didn’t mention her new invention. She’d grabbed the sketches before he could study them too deeply, but his memory was surprisingly good when it came to tech. “I wanted to make some changes to Dad’s…” The word didn’t sound quite right. Not like Mom did. She had always called him Daddy, still thought of him as Daddy, but she was too old for that childish nickname now. Clearing her throat, she continued, “Dad’s helmet. I wanted to make it more efficient.”

“You’re what?” Her mom paused, pursing her lips thoughtfully. A shadow flitted across her face, so fast Morgan almost missed it. It was the same expression she’d see sometimes when her mom stood at the threshold to the lab, her jaw tight, her eyes narrowed. At the threshold, but never crossing it. Her mom almost never entered the lab, not if she could help it. “Honey, it’s fine to tinker, but those suits aren’t to be used anymore.”

“It’s for Uncle Rhodey,” Morgan quickly lied, before her mother could shut down the project entirely. “I can’t exactly work on his helmet, right? So I’m using this one as a practice one.”

Brow furrowed, her mom stared at her suspiciously. She wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, it’s a surprise.” Morgan forced a smile. She’d heard her father was a great liar. She had inherited none of that ability. “A big one. We all want Uncle Rhodey to be safe, right?”

Her mom sighed exasperatedly and went back to work. Grabbing several potatoes, she started to wash them. “Alright, let’s pretend that’s the case. Just be careful with it, okay?”

��R-right!” Sighing with relief, Morgan slumped slightly. Tension left her body quickly. Weakly, she set a pot of water to boil on the stove. “That’s why Uncle Peter’s helping me.”

“‘Uncle’, huh? I bet he doesn’t like that.” Shifting to the cutting board, she started to carefully slice the potatoes. Her eyes were focused on the board but Morgan knew better than to trust her attention was fully on it.

“A little.” Morgan grinned slyly. “Part of why I call him that.”

“You brat.” Her mom chuckled. “You’re just like Tony, you know that?”

“I am?” Morgan stopped working, turning to her mother. This was new information, possibly. A side to her father she might not know. It was hard to know someone living, impossible to know them dead, and Morgan had to ferret out information like a predator on the hunt. “How?”

“Well, Tony also liked to give people nicknames. Some they liked and others…” Her mom sighed, shrugging her shoulders. “Well, they got used to it. Or beat him up and then got used to it. Tony was an adult brat.” She glanced at Morgan, pointing her knife. “It’s very hard to stop being an adult brat, so make sure you don’t end up like that.”

Shaking her head, Morgan replied, “What’d he call them?”

“Oh, he had so many nicknames, where do I even start? Build-a-bear, Legolas, Manchurian Candidate…oh, there was Capsicle for Steve.” Her mom giggled. “Admittedly, that one is clever, but if I ever told him that, he’d have gotten a swelled head. Besides, he overused them to the point they stopped being funny.”

Morgan was entranced. Her father gave nicknames. Terrible nicknames. Non-stop. “Is that why the robots are called Dum-Me and U?”

“Probably.” Wiping her hand on her apron, she reached over and affectionately ruffled Morgan’s hair. “And that’s why I refused to let him name you. Though I guess in the end, he actually did pick the name.”

“He did?” This she hadn’t heard before.

“Yeah, after my uncle. It was years ago; I didn’t take him seriously at the time.” Her mom’s eyes lowered, her voice soft. She wasn’t looking at Morgan anymore, but at the past, at this Tony that Morgan could only imagine.

When had her father suggested it? Why? She wished her father had recorded more than just his lab, had taken his camera with him everywhere and filmed everything. They made movies now, of his earlier exploits, movies and comic book tie-ins and even an entire novel series. Her mom liked to buy one every now and then and mark out the inaccuracies, circling them with a red pen or pausing the movie so she could retell the tale perfectly. “I like my name.”

“Me too.” Her mom smiled again, back in the present. “I guess he wasn’t entirely bad at it.”

“Mom, why don’t you like going into the lab?” Morgan asked without thinking. She almost covered her mouth afterwards; this wasn’t what she’d intended to ask. Yet…she wanted—needed to hear the answer.

Her mother stroked her chin thoughtfully. “You want to know, huh? Are you sure?” Her voice dropped an octave and she whispered. “Once you know, you can’t go back.”

“Y-yes.” Morgan swallowed. Everything about her mom’s expression screamed serious and just what was she about to hear?

“Alright then. If you’re sure.” Her mom crossed her arms and smiled menacingly. “I hate the lab because you and Tony spend all your time in it.”

Of all the answers she’d expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them. Morgan stared at her blankly, not sure how to respond aside from a few unintelligent huhs.

“You go into it, and then I don’t hear or see you for the rest of the day.” Her mom’s expression was gentle but there was a heavy, crushing weight to her words. “You don’t come out to eat, to exercise, to even sleep—it’s like the lab is the only room in the house. If I call, it takes five tries for you to even notice me. So I hate that lab.”

“O-oh.” Morgan rubbed her arm uncomfortably. Well, it was true that she wasn’t in the best shape. Maybe she could get out of her lab a little more often. “I’ll come down quicker,” she promised.

Her mother beamed, turning back to her cutting board. “That’s a start. Now, get back to work; it’s almost dinner and I’m starved.”

-x-

Morgan remembered her father like this: the scent of oil and spicy cologne wafting off his skin, the sound of his finger tapping on the table as he considered his ideas, the way his beard tickled her cheek when he kissed her. Morgan remembered her father in fragments, in bits and chunks that couldn’t make a whole. She spent hours assembling the jigsaw pieces from her family, twisting and turning her mother’s facts and uncles’ facts so that they aligned. They never did.

Sometimes she liked to sit on the floor of her workshop and watch her father’s old lab recordings. Her father aged before her eyes, the video image becoming sharper and crisper the older he got. Some videos had bits of static, the clip played over and over until bits of data were lost.

He had the mouth of a man who smiled a lot. Sharp eyes glanced at the camera, a sharper mouth making fun of himself as he worked. Her father didn’t look older than Peter did some days. How old would he look now, with grey peppering his hair? Would he even let it? Her mother said he was vain, so maybe his hair would have always been brown.

It was easy to tell the videos where her mom was nearby. Her father, usually keen on his work, was always distracted, his hands fiddling with one useless adjustment to the next. His expression was soft, so very soft, and love shone in his eyes. How did her mom miss it back then? How did her dad not realize it? Morgan couldn’t understand it, it was as clear as day when she watched them together.

Was that how he looked when he was with Morgan? When he held her hand in his big ones, his grip reassuring as he walked her to the kitchen. His eyes must have looked the same. That big love. That wry smirk.

And if she showed him her ideas, her inventions, would his expression have morphed to pride?

There were no pictures, no videos of pride. All that she had were her mother’s words and her imagination.

-x-

At the lobby to Peter’s business, the elderly receptionist looked up from his desk and smiled as Morgan entered the lobby. “Miss. Stark, it’s good to see you again.”

“Thanks, Ben.” Morgan smiled brightly, trying not to bounce. She liked the way he said her name, the little miss tacked to the front. It made her feel grownup. Professional, even.

Ben beamed back, his eyes crinkling as he gestured at the elevators. “Here to see Mr. Parker? Go on ahead, I’ll ring him up.”

It only took five minutes to reach his office, five minutes spent grasping her backpack’s straps tightly and worrying at her lip. Morgan wasn’t sure why she was here. This was pointless. They met often enough as it was virtually, she didn’t need to come here in person.

“Hey, Morgan!” Peter waved at her cheerfully as she entered his office. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms behind him. “What’s up?”

It was too late; she was here already. Forcing herself to approach his desk, she smiled nervously. “Nothing much, Uncle Peter.”

Immediately he frowned, scrunching his nose distastefully. “Uncle.” He winced. “That makes me sound old.”

Morgan giggled. This was such an old argument, it was almost like a greeting. “You are old.”

“What, want me to start yelling at you to get off my lawn? I’m not as old as you think.” Peter’s cheeks puffed and he pouted. “I’m only ten years older than you.”

“Fifteen,” she corrected, smirking. “Legally.”

“Legally.” He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t exist for five of those years. Anyways, what’s up?”

“I…I wanted to get your opinion on something.” Morgan swallowed as she took off her backpack and unzipped it. Staring inside at her father’s mask, her fingers brushed against the cool metal. It would be easier to just take this out, to pretend that this was what she wanted to show him. “I…”

When she didn’t say anything, paralyzed over her decision, Peter coughed. “That reminds me, I found something the other day.” Pulling out his phone, he tapped on it a few times before holding the screen out to her.

On it was a picture of her dad, when he was younger. Next to him was a small, beaming teenage boy, his expression a cross between excitement and nervousness. While he wasn’t wearing a mask, the costume he wore made it obvious just who he was: Spider-man.

Peter Parker. Morgan looked up at him. “You look like a nerd.”

“Takes one to know one,” he retorted, chuckling. “This was when Tony almost made me an Avenger.”

“Wait, what?” Morgan stared at the photo again. Peter looked like he had to be her age. There was no way he was any older, he looked so small. “You were going to be an Avenger as a teenager?”

Peter nodded solemnly. “I know. Probably not the best decision, so let’s just say it’s a good thing it never happened.” Pocketing his phone, he added, “You know, Tony made that suit for me.”

That wasn’t entirely new—she’d seen the logs of her father building it. Sensing a story, Morgan sat on Peter’s desk. “Yeah.”

He pursed his lips at the action but didn’t rebuke her. “I’m not sure how he knew my size, but it fit perfectly. Worked really well too. And then he took it away from me.”

Now that, that was new. Morgan’s brow raised. “Why?”

“I wasn’t ready for it at the time.” Peter shrugged, a rueful smile on his lip. “I mean, I was just fifteen. I couldn’t handle the school dance, let alone fighting crime. Still…” A wry fondness made its way into his tone. “It was tough, but I learned to manage without it. And then after that—there were no end to these tests Tony gave me. He was always pushing me, you know. To break past my boundaries, to go beyond my limits. It’s something he did all the time and he wouldn’t let me do less.”

“Mom said he liked challenges,” Morgan murmured.

“Yeah, that might have been part of it. I mean, he didn’t just train me—or, actually, train me at all, really. But he would celebrate with me and help me out…” Peter paused, his voice growing softer. There was something sad about his expression, something that she couldn’t quite place. “You know…I never had a father…but Tony…”

He trailed off and Morgan finished the sentence for him. “Was like a father?”

“Kinda…He was what I thought a father might be like, you know. I mean, I only knew him for a year. I never…that isn’t that long. I never…got to figure it out.” His voice cracked, but he didn’t cry. Morgan would never know how long it took him to get to that state, to be able to talk about Tony and not break down. “I guess we’re both alike, huh.” He looked up at her now, his face doleful. “Just searching for fragments of Tony.”

“I…” Morgan stammered, not sure how to respond. Uncle Rhodey had told her father liked to make jokes when he was feeling emotional, masking away his true feelings. She didn’t think she could do that. Slipping off the desk, she reached down and hugged Peter. “Yeah, we are.” Her voice cracked, but she didn’t cry either.

Peter wrapped his arms around her tightly, squeezing her. “Thanks.” Then, patting her back, he asked, “So what was it you wanted to show me?”

Morgan pulled away and glanced at her back. Her father never stopped pushing, inventing, finding something new. She shouldn’t settle for any less either. As she pulled out her own invention, she commented, “You know, Peter, you’re more like a brother than an uncle.”

Peter’s eyes widened before he laughed. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along!”

-x-

Every day, Morgan passed by a statue of her dad. They were a dime a dozen, each one showing a different expression, a different pose. She wondered if he’d have found them cheesy or liked the attention. She wondered if he’d have taken her to each one, taking selfies as they mapped out their locations.

Today was no different. As Morgan walked home, she glanced at the statue of her dad, with its familiar crack on the back. If she was lucky, she’d be taller than her dad. He’d have liked that, she thought. He’d have mocked himself and said he was in the company of giants.

A butterfly rested on his head, resting up before flying away.

-x-

“Alright!” Morgan clapped her hands as she entered her lab. Dum E and U started up automatically, the machines following her as she walked over to her work bench. Carefully, she rolled up her plans for her father’s mask, her ideas for improving her mother’s suit.

She’d work on them again, one day. Perhaps her greatest tribute to her father would be improving his own inventions. He’d have liked that too. But that day wasn’t today. No, today Morgan was going to start working on her own ideas.

“We’re going to start something new—create a new archive, U.”

#peter parker #spiderman #iron man #pepper potts #morgan stark #tony stark #marvel cinamatic universe #fanfic #i should have posted this a while ago #but i can say that about everything i post really

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