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starryknight09 · 3 years

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Unforeseen dangers ch 10

Summary: As Peter recovers from his capture by Ross, a photo of him with Tony and the Avengers leaks and is splashed all across the media. Luckily, no one can figure out who he is and everyone thinks the buzz will die down. However, the public’s interest has been ignited. While Tony worries it’s only a matter of time before Peter’s identity is exposed, Peter isn’t as concerned. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen anyway?

Read on AO3.

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“How did they figure it out?” Tony growled as soon as he walked into the conference room. He’d tampered his anger down for Peter’s sake, but now that Peter was safe upstairs, he felt it was fine to finally let it out.

Everyone made faces at each other around the table but no one answered his question. So, it was going to be like that.

“Well?” He asked, this time aiming his question at Pepper. She wouldn’t be afraid to tell him the hard stuff.

Pepper sighed but met his eyes unflinchingly. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I already don’t like it.” He snapped and sat down heavily in the empty chair at the head of the table, Pepper to his immediate right. Just like old times.

“Somehow they got ahold of the name change paperwork.”

“What?”

“I told you you wouldn’t like it.” Pepper pursed her lips. “It gets worse. They dug deeper and found the adoption paperwork as well.”

“So there’s no way we can deny this.” Tony rubbed a hand roughly over his forehead and eyes.

“No.”

“So what do we do now? Besides figuring out who leaked this and suing the hell out of them.”

“Naturally.” Pepper agreed. “That’s already being looked into as we speak.”

“Good.”

“But as to how we deal with this…” She sighed. “I’m open to ideas.”

“You’re kidding.”

Pepper stared him down. She obviously wasn’t kidding.

“We don’t have anything set up for this? No contingency plan? Nothing? It’s not like we haven’t been flirting with this exact disaster for the past two months.” He looked at all his employees lined up on either side of the table. “What do I pay you people for?”

“To be fair, you didn’t want a contingency plan.” Pepper said, tone sharp without raising her voice.

“I never said that.”

“Yes you did. When the first photo leaked I gave you options for how to deal with this and you wanted to deny it, and then later when I wanted to talk to you about putting together a contingency plan just in case, you told me ‘you didn’t want to think about it and you’d figure it out if something happened.’ Is that ringing any bells?”

“You don’t have to air quote me.” He complained as Pepper’s hands fell from doing just that back to their loose clasp on the table. He actually did remember that conversation now. It’d been about a week after the first photo leak. He’d been in a terrible mood and Pepper had wanted to talk about coming up with a plan for what to do if one of his worst case scenarios happened, if Peter’s identity leaked, and he, well, he hadn’t wanted to think about it at the time. He’d wanted to stick his head in the sand and hope for the best instead. Not one of his better decisions, clearly.

Pepper raised an eyebrow at him.

“And you listened to me?” He asked as he threw his hands up and practically jumped out of his chair. “You never listen to me. This is the one time you decide not to go behind my back and come up with something on your own anyway?”

Pepper glared at him.

“What? You know it’s true. You do do that!” He held a finger up in defense.

Melanie, his head of PR, sitting to his left, cleared her throat. “I think maybe we’re getting a little off topic here Mr. Stark.”

“Yes. Yes we are.” He broke away from Pepper’s death glare and rubbed at his eyes again before turning to her, “Melody, tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Melanie.” She corrected automatically without surprise or displeasure, more than used to his antics by now.

“Yeah yeah.” He nodded and waved his hand in a circle as an indication for her to start talking.

“We need to make a statement.”

“Yes, obviously.”

Melanie gave him a look that was such a mirror image of Pepper’s that he felt dizzy for a second.

“What I mean is, what do you suggest we say?” He tried to be civil and looked over to Pepper for her approval, but she still had her stony business face in place.

“We confirm that you adopted Peter this summer. We should give them a little bit about his background, how you got to know each other, the circumstances that led to his adoption—”

“Do they really need to know all that? I don’t really want to splash my kid’s life across the tabloids.”

“That’s what I’m trying to keep from happening Mr. Stark.” Melanie said in a carefully controlled tone. “If we give them nothing then it’ll only be worse. They’ll be relentless digging for more information on him.”

“They’re going to do that anyway.” God, they were. His poor kid’s life was going to get turned inside out.

“Yes, but this way we can control it. We set the context. We give them enough information to satiate their curiosity but not so much that they know everything about Peter.”

He hated the idea of giving the vultures anything.

“Melanie’s right Tony. This is how we need to do this.” Pepper agreed.

“Fine.” He held his palms up in defeat. He knew they were right, but he still didn’t like it.

“I would also suggest that we release a few handpicked photos of the two of you together.” A brunette to the left of Melanie piped in. Tony would’ve admired her courage if her suggestion hadn’t set his temper alight.

“No. Absolutely not.” He wanted to yell, but he grit out the refusal at a low level volume instead.

More hesitant glances amongst his employees around the table ensued.

“You should listen to her.” Natasha spoke up.

“Oh I’m sorry I thought you were here to listen, not offer up advice on how to deal with my kid and my company.” He sniped, annoyed that she was taking their side.

Nat met his anger coolly. “If you don’t, they’ll keep doing what they’ve been doing these past couple months. Photos of the two of you together and photos of just him now that they know he’s your son. If you don’t give them something they’re going to hound both of you until they get it, and you know it.”

He hated that she was right.

“Dammit.” He swore and stood, knocking his desk chair over in the process. Pepper didn’t so much as flinch. Tony grit his teeth as he turned his back on the table and took a couple steps toward the wall, where he stood facing it while he closed his eyes and took a few calming breaths.

He hated this situation with a burning anger he hadn’t felt in a long time, like a smoldering flame deep inside his belly growing white hot as more oxygen was added to it. He’d never wanted this for Peter. He loved him. He was his son but somehow he’d foolishly thought he’d be able to keep him separate from all the evil and burdens that came with that. He had to accept that it was impossible now. And he needed to stay strong and collected for Peter even if on the inside he was having a breakdown.

“I’m sorry.” He said, the words coming out strong even though he felt anything but strong at the moment.

He took another deep breath and turned back around, moving to calmly set his chair upright again before standing at his spot at the head of the table. A few of the newer employees looked a little shellshocked but he ignored it. “Fine.” He leaned forward, his hands splaying out in front of him on the table. “I’ll make a statement and release a few pictures. What else?”

“At the end of your statement, you should be sure to ask for privacy.” Joe, the wizened white-haired head of his legal team, suggested, not cowed at all by his minor outburst. He’d been on staff since pre-Ironman times.

“Of course.”

“It’s too bad you don’t still live in California.” Joe added. “Because of Peter’s status as a minor, it would give him some protections. California passed a law in 2013 that makes it illegal to intentionally harass children of celebrities, such as for the purpose of taking photos.”

“And that’s only a law in California?” He frowned.

“As of now.” Joe nodded. “But if you want, I could write up a proposal for the governor to pass a similar law here. It’s a long shot but it wouldn’t hurt, especially if you don’t want to move.”

“We’re not moving to California.”

Joe shrugged.

“But yes, do that.” A law like that sure would’ve been helpful when he’d been a child.

“Of course, sir.”

“Tony,” Cap spoke up from his seat at the opposite end of the table, “have you given any thought to taking Peter up to the compound instead of staying here? At least until things calm down?”

Tony blinked. He hadn’t.

“I mean,” Steve continued when his suggestion wasn’t met with an immediate refusal, “it’s not like he’s not going to school tomorrow, right?”

He hadn’t thought that far ahead either.

“Right.” He said with uncharacteristic hesitance.

“That’s a good idea.” Natasha agreed. “We can do the press conference here and then go to the compound. It’ll give everyone a little more room to breathe.”

He nodded absently. Sure. So apparently now he was taking his kid out of school and high tailing it to the compound. Peter wasn’t going to like that. He let out another heavy sigh and sat back down in his chair like a puppet with its strings cut.

“How long do you think this media frenzy is going to take to die down?” He asked, aiming his question at Melanie. Maybe they could wait out the worst of it at the compound.

“Hard to say.” She hedged.

“Best guess.”

“Months.” She deadpanned.

“Jesus.” He ran a hand through his hair. Definitely too long to wait it out.

“It may be even longer than that. Peter’s currently trending on every social media platform out there.” A younger guy with blonde hair dressed in a hipster suit added. Tony didn’t recognize him but figured he must be one of their social media guys. “The numbers I’m looking at are almost unprecedented.”

“Wonderful.”

“I recommend not letting him post anything until we have a chance to advise him.” The guy added. “I see he’s currently active on Instagram and Twitter.”

“Sure. I’ll take your word for it.” Tony huffed. He didn’t know what kind of social media presence Peter had. He’d never really needed to worry about it before.

Melanie cleared her throat and piped in, “I’d also like a chance to advise Peter on some things. And give him a short debrief on all of this.”

“I’ll be doing that.” He countered.

“Um,” Melanie glanced over at Pepper for some help, “I really think I should at least have a sit down with him.

“Tony.” Pepper prompted, throwing her support behind Melanie.

“Fine.” He shook his head. “But I talk to him first.”

“Of course Mr. Stark.”

“When Melanie’s done, can I schedule sit down with him as well Mr. Stark?” The blonde guy asked.

He turned to Pepper for help, trying not to feel like his own SI team was competing for his kid’s time like the media vultures out there.

“Of course Alex.” Pepper answered for him. “How about I put together some sort of schedule for Peter so we don’t all completely overwhelm him?”

Heads nodded all around the table.

“And I think we can all agree none of this has to happen today. We can at least give him a little time to let it all sink in first.” Pepper added.

Everyone nodded again.

“I’d like a few minutes with him Ms. Potts.”

“Me too.”

Tony rubbed his eyes again, feeling a splitting headache coming on. Just great. A migraine was exactly what he needed right now.

“I’d also like to reach out to a few of the more reputable media sources and set up some interviews.” Paul spoke up and then clarified, “For you. Not Peter. Obviously.” Paul was one of the longer standing workers on his PR team who dealt with managing relations between himself and various media sources, which was the reason Tony knew him by name. They’d had some good times in the past, particularly behind the scenes on Letterman back in the nineties.

“Is that really something we need to do right now? It can’t wait until tomorrow, or hell, next week?” He snapped, quickly losing his patience with the entire situation.

“No. It can wait.” Paul gave him an easy going shrug as if he hadn’t just gotten his head bitten off in front of everyone.

“Sorry.” His headache was rapidly ratcheting up in intensity. “I know we’re at defcom one right now, but can we just deal with only the things that are of immediate importance today? We have the rest of the week to sort everything else out.” He dug through his suit pockets and found the tinted sunglasses he’d put on Peter earlier. Now he slid them over his own eyes. They weren’t quite dark enough to help with the light sensitivity, but they took the edge off.

“Mr. Stark’s right.” Pepper supported him. Thank god. “We’ll draft a statement for the press and we’ll make sure Peter doesn’t post anything on social media until he talks to Melanie and Alex. Besides that, what else can’t wait and needs to be dealt with right now?”

“Security.” His new head of security, Hans something or other, said.

Tony just stared at him for a couple long seconds, the statement not computing.

“For the kid.” Hans added as if sensing his confusion.

Tony’s brow’s furrowed briefly before he realized it was a completely legitimate concern. Shit. No one knew Peter was Spiderman besides the Avengers and his two nerdy school friends. Of course Peter would need his own security detail, just like Tony had when he was a kid.

“Yeah.” He gave his head a little shake as if clearing the fog. “Of course.”

“I’ll put together a proposal for his personal security.” Hans continued. “And I’ll speak to his school about what security measures we can take there.”

Tony pulled his glasses off and tossed them onto the table before putting his face in his hands, elbows resting on the table in front of him.

“Yep.” He agreed, not sounding happy at all. “Mmhm.”

“We’ll also need to put together different protocols for when he’s ready to go back in public, and I’d like to have some time to discuss certain scenarios with him.” Hans continued.

“Tony.” Pepper prompted when he said nothing.

“I’m listening.” He said into his palms.

“I also think it’d be prudent for me to spend some time with him one on one to teach him some basic hand to hand combat moves.”

“I can do that.” Natasha spoke up.

Hans inclined his head toward her in respect. “Then I’ll leave that to you.”

“Great.” Tony dropped his hands down swiftly and squinted as he looked around the table. “Anything else?”

Everyone glanced around at each other but no one spoke.

“No? Can we be adjourned then?” Tony asked, turning toward Pepper.

“Let’s take a short break everyone. We’ll reconvene in ten minutes.”

It took everything in him not to legitimately whine to her that he wanted to be done.

Everyone gathered up their things and brusquely left at the dismissal.

“You guys can go.” Tony dismissed his Avengers team, who’d stayed behind.

“You sure?” Steve asked.

“Yeah. You need to go let everyone else know about the compound plan, so if any of them want to join they can get busy packing. I know how much luggage Sam travels with.” He tried to joke but it came out sounding flat even to him.

Steve gave him a small smile as he and Natasha both stood and left. Once the door had shut behind them, he turned to Pepper and suggested, “You don’t really need me for the rest of this, do you?”

Pepper raised her eyebrows at him.

“Come on Pep. We both know you can deal with all the nitty gritty details on your own. Draft up a statement. I’ll read it. And then we can talk about everything else tomorrow at the compound.” He rubbed at his temples and saw her eyes soften.

“Fine,” she agreed, “but only because I can tell you’re getting a migraine.”

“You know me so well.” He gave her a weak half smile.

Pepper checked her watch. “The press conference starts in an hour. Why don’t you lie down until then? And take some Excedrin.”

He hummed in agreement. That sounded like a great idea but it warred with his guilt about leaving Peter alone. He should really get back to his kid.

“Peter can wait.” Pepper continued as if she’d read his mind. “He’ll be fine. You need to take care of yourself too. Besides, this way you’ll look better for the cameras.”

“Hey! I always look great for the cameras.”

“I can give you several examples of when you did not.” Pepper smirked and gave a small shake of her head.

“Name one.” He challenged.

“Ibiza 1999.”

“Ooo ouch. Going for blood. To be fair, I was up for almost 72 hours at that point. And I didn’t know that one girl’s ex-fiance was the captain of that yacht.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Fine. I’m going to go lay down for one hour.” He held up a finger.

“Forty five minutes.” Pepper corrected.

“Ok fine. Forty five minutes then. FRI?”

“Alarm set Boss.”

He started walking out of the conference room.

“And take that Excedrin.”

“Yeah yeah.”

“I mean it Tony.”

“I will.” He said as the door shut behind him, and surprisingly, he actually meant it.

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A constant obnoxious low volume beeping, slowly increasing in volume every few seconds, woke him up.

He groaned. The pounding that’d taken up residence behind his eyes still hadn’t abated, but it wasn’t any worse than when he’d laid down so maybe the Excedrin had actually helped somewhat.

“Boss, you have thirteen minutes to get dressed and downstairs for the press conference.”

He groaned again and buried his face in his pillow.

“Boss.” FRIDAY prompted again.

“I heard you the first time.” He rasped into his pillow. “And they’ll wait. It’s my press conference, isn’t it?”

He didn’t know how FRIDAY’s silence could sound so disapproving.

After a few long breaths he finally managed to push himself up. He just needed to get this over with. Like ripping off a bandaid. He made his way to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face. It helped the headache for the brief second it was in contact with his face but then all the relief faded as quickly as the water washed away. Once he toweled off, he examined his reflection. At least he didn’t look half as terrible as he felt. The slight squint between his eyes gave away his discomfort, but that could be cured with a well chosen pair of sunglasses. He fixed his hair so it looked like its classic well manicured bedhead instead of his actual bedhead. That helped. Now all he needed was a good suit and he’d be presentable enough that not even Pepper could complain.

“You have five minutes.” FRIDAY reminded him as he walked to the closet.

“Yeah well tell them I’m going to be a little late.” He grumbled as he rifled through his clothes. “Knowing me it shouldn’t come as too much of a shock.”

“Very well.”

He donned a crisp white shirt and burgundy tie under a dark navy vest and suit and topped the look off with a pair of oversized sunglasses with black frames and blue shaded lenses. They were just borderline too dark for inside wear but they helped his headache so he refused to care.

“Ms. Potts would like to know when to expect you.” FRIDAY said.

“Tell her I’m on my way down right now.” He said, doing one last check in the mirror to make sure he looked put together. Usually he wouldn’t care so much, but he recognized the importance of this moment. This was how he was going to look when he told the world he had a son. This look would probably be memorialized on the internet and across all the newspapers of the world tomorrow. And not only that, but he knew his appearance for this moment would reflect on Peter, so he wanted to be at his best. Migraine be damned. He’d done press conferences in way worse shape than he was in now. Although this one was probably one of his most personally important. He gave his tie one last adjustment before he decided he was good.

Walking past the kitchen, he practically tripped when the smell of fresh coffee emanating from the pot stopped him in his tracks. His Rolex said he was already five minutes late. Whatever. What was another five? Besides, he was fairly certain that Pepper had been the one to brew it for him while he’d slept. That was something thoughtful she used to do when she knew he had a migraine.

“FRIDAY tell Pep thanks for the coffee.” He said as he poured it into a thermos.

“She says you can thank her by getting your ass downstairs. And that’s a direct quote Boss.”

“Obviously.” A corner of his mouth turned up in fond amusement. “Tell her, I’m coming dear.”

He pressed the lid on and took a sip. Perfect. Brewed just how he liked it, and hopefully the caffeine would help with his headache.

The elevator doors closed behind him and it dropped like a stone.

“Whoa FRIDAY. Slow it down a little.”

“Sorry Boss.” FRIDAY responded and the elevator slowed the velocity of its descent. “Ms. Potts requested I expedite your arrival in every way possible.”

“Yeah well I’m guessing she doesn’t want me to lose my lunch all over my suit in the process because that’d definitely defeat the purpose.” He grumbled and took another drink of coffee, hoping it’d help calm the background nausea that had suddenly flared up.

“Would you like me to contact Dr. Banner?” FRIDAY offered.

“No. Just…shhh.” He winced and rubbed at his temples before closing his eyes and resting his head against the wall, letting himself have a vulnerable moment while he was still alone.

“Arriving.” FRIDAY announced a handful of seconds later, although at a much softer volume than before.

He straightened up and put on his public eye mask as the doors opened and he walked out, taking an immediate left down the hallway that would lead to the auditorium they used for almost all their SI press conferences. He ducked into a side door right before the double doors at the end of the hallway.

“Is it actually impossible for you to be on time for something?” Pepper asked as soon as the door closed behind him. Her tone held no bite, so he knew she wasn’t actually mad.

“Maybe.”

She rolled her eyes, arms crossed in front of her chest as she looked him up and down. “You look hungover.” She decided.

“What? No I don’t.”

She peered closer at him. “I can barely even see your eyes. At least take the glasses off.”

“Well since it feels like a miniature miner is going to town with an icepick in my head right now I’m going to have to pass on that.”

Pepper sighed but the lines of her face softened. “Do you need me to reschedule?”

He took another long drag of coffee, half of it gone already. “No. We both know I need to do this today.”

She nodded but still looked unsure.

“Don’t worry. I’ve done these things in way worse shape than this. I think I might’ve even done one or two while I was actually asleep.”

That got a true smile out of her. “Oh, I know.”

“So this’ll be a piece of cake.” He said even though he knew the opposite was true.

“If you say so…”

“I do. So where’s this statement I’m reading?”

“Here.” Pepper handed him a piece of paper with the words typed out on it. Any other day he would’ve made some quip about how they were using paper when they were the most technologically innovative company in the world, but he just didn’t have the energy for it today.

He skimmed it over quickly and set it down on a table nearby. “Can I have a pen?”

“Oh no no. You’re not changing anything.” Pepper shook her head adamantly.

“Just a few things.” He held a hand out while re-reading the paper in front of him.

“No.”

He looked up at her. “Pep I promise it’ll be fine. Just give me a pen. If it makes you feel better you can read it before I go out there.”

She pursed her lips and let out a long sigh but acquiesced and handed him her Mont Blanc pen. “Fine.”

He quickly reworded a few phrases, cut a sentence out here and there and then added another few sentences. Once he finished, he re-read it a couple times before handing it over to Pepper along with her pen. “Here.”

The noise of the auditorium could be heard through the closed door at the other side of the room. It was the door that would lead him directly into a narrow hallway behind the podium from where he’d make his entrance. He took another long drink of coffee as he waited for Pepper to read over his changes.

“Ok.” She said when she’d finished.

“Just ok?” He prompted with a teasing grin.

“It’s good. We should be fine as long as you actually stick to the script for once.”

“You know I’m allergic.” He smirked.

“Believe me, I know.” She smiled in amusement.

“But this time, for you, I promise I will try to stick to the cards.”

“Good.” She gave him a nod and handed the paper back.

He took it, folded it, and tucked it into his suit pocket. She was right. He almost never stuck strictly to the cards, his announcement as Ironman a prime example, but actually only one of many. He had no intention of veering off script this time, though. Not with something this important. Not when it impacted his kid.

They walked toward the door of the auditorium together and paused before it. He turned toward Pepper and she gave him another quick once over, reaching out to fix a few errant hairs and straighten his tie ever so slightly before brushing down his shoulders, a well choreographed dance they’d perfected after so many years together.

“Ready?” She asked.

“As I’ll ever be.” He smiled but he knew she could see through it, that he was nervous and trying to hide it.

“Tony.” She said gently. “It’ll be fine.”

“Of course it will.” He agreed boldly. It had to be. Before either of them could say anything else, he yanked open the door and stepped out.

#unforeseen dangers #ch 10

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theabominableblogger · 3 years

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My Reaction to “Avengers Endgame”

Yes- I still haven’t seen this movie. Yes I know exactly what happens in this movie. I mainly avoided it for a while due to overhype but with some convincing from my brother, Imma sit my butt down and try to watch this.

Pressing... play!

Right off the bat, I feel like I should warn you guys and say that I have... my opinions... about stuff. Plus I’m a dumbass about Marvel so just bear with me.

I like that Disney Plus has to warn us about product placement

Clint!

Are we gonna see little Nathaniel running around- THERE he is!

We are gonna see Clint’s entire family get freaking obliterated

Is all the rumbling from the sky or are those airplanes freaking crashing to Earth in the distance?

What if they pulled a reverse WandaVision and showed the people getting snapped out of existence in a future film or show? That would be freaking terrifying.

They’re [Tony and Nebula] playing paper football...

I wanna see more of THEIR interactions aboard the Milano. The shots of them just repairing the ship are great too.

“I’m fine. Totally fine.” Everyone ever.

I also like you see the visual difference between Tony and Nebula. While he’s growing gaunt and haggard from loss of oxygen, you can still see that Nebula looks absolutely fine because she’s like 75% android

So between 1995 and now, what the heck has Carol been up to?

“Thanos wiped out... 50% of all living creatures.” So like entire ecosystems are just demolished.

*anthropology major part of my brain scrambling for answers*

“We lost. And you [Steve] weren’t there.” HE WAS IN WAKANDA!

Wait so the arc reactor ISN’T in Tony’s chest anymore?

“Where the hell have you [Carol] been all this time?” Good question!

*silently bops to opening theme*

For some reason, I just really want the ship radio to randomly turn on so you just see everyone sitting awkwardly as “Piano Man” plays over the speakers

*Thanos slowly cooks his food* Faster, all together now! COOKING CAN BE FUN!

“I [Thanos] used the stones to destroy the stones.” ...what?

“I am...[Thanos] inevitable.” *starts humming “Inevitable” from TGWDLM*

“I [Thor] went for the head.” YES YOU DID

[FIVE YEARS LATER] All righty so we’re doing this

*gasps* Is... Steve running the therapy sit downs like Sam did in “The Winter Soldier”? That’s awesome. I really like this tidbit.

I’m also really liking Alan Silvestri’s score for this so far

I’m really trying not to nitpick but I feel like it would take more than 5 years for greenery to just completely overtake a suburban neighborhood

Also wow pre COVID life looks great you guys

“There’s a part of me that doesn’t even wanna find him.” Are they talking about... Clint? Is Clint just going the full vigilante route?

DOES HE KILL PEOPLE?!?

I really like Steve and Natasha’s friendship in these movies but for some reason I don’t feel like we get enough of Natasha for me to get behind her on an emotional standpoint

Are they gonna use the quantum realm to jumpstart the multiverse for Phase 4?

Also speaking of multiverse, I honestly really don’t want Spiderman: No Way Home or Wandavision to get too cluttered by that

I like Tony’s lake house. And he got a whole vegetable garden going too. Kudos!

The little kid who plays Morgan Stark is adorable

“Not if we strictly follow the rules of time travel.” Which we obviously won’t.

“We’re gonna need a really big brain.” So where the [expletive] is Banner?

“Stranger danger.” *snorts*

“Dab!” *rolls eyes*

So is the whole Professor Hulk thing permanent? I know he’s gonna be in the She-Hulk show but I’m wondering how they’re gonna tackle that. And they’re gonna have Tim Roth too!

*smiles when Tony takes Morgan to bed*

Steve Rogers here [when they do the first time travel tests] is a Look ™

Maybe don’t let the GIANT GREEN MAN keep pressing a bunch of tiny tiny important buttons on a dashboard

*laughs at Steve shaking his head in disbelief when they finally bring Scott back*

*Tony’s car races toward the Avengers base* NYOOOMMMM

*Tony rolls down his window* It’s Britney, bitch

“And maybe not die trying.” And you definitely will.

This whole bit where Scott keeps losing his dorito only to get another one from Bruce feels like a Doritos commercial.

*jams out to "Supersonic Rocket Ship by The Kinks*

Did they just keep reducing the green pigment for Hulk or what?

*sighs when they reveal Fat!Thor*

MIEK’S ALIVE!

Please tell me Noobmaster69 is Kid Loki, whom we meet in the Loki series

“Don’t... say that name.” “Yeah we actually don’t say that name here.” I like this. I like that Thor has so much resentment for killing Thanos at the wrong time and that he felt that could have done better cause he’s A GOD. So the fact that THANOS was on equal level and BEAT HIM-

Hawkeye’s killing people

This sword fight’s great [between the Yakuza person and Clint]

WHY DIDN’T THEY BUILD ON THIS [Clint and Natasha’s connection] ???

*laughs when Rhodey suggests killing baby Thanos*

These shots of Clint going through the Quantum Realm looks like something straight out of Andy Park’s concept art and that’s awesome

“Well I [Scott] haven’t [encountered an Infinity Stone] but I don’t even know what the hell you’re all talking about.” *snorts*

“The Aether, firstly, is not a stone.” Thank you!

The little glance Nebula gives after Thor mentions the Dark Elves just make me think that somewhere down the road, she has either A) encountered them or B) has encountered other Asgardians besides Thor

“Guys if you pick the right year, there are three stones in New York.” “Shut the front door.” *laughs*

Also underrated trio: Steve, Natasha, and Bruce. Gimme more.

Wait a minute, in 2012, Doctor Strange wasn’t active yet. So are they gonna go see- OOOOOOOHHHHHH

[NEW YORK 2012] Oh here we go

*cracks up when Bruce very half-assedly smashes stuff on the street*

“I’m looking for Doctor Strange.” “You’re about five years too early.” Wait a minute.

HOW DOES SHE [the Ancient One] KNOW?!?

*giggles at Thor and Rocket sneaking in the background with a bored Loki in focus*

“That’s my [Thor’s] mother. She dies today.” I love this scene already.

Also WHY IS THOR- or the Thor films in general- have like the most well written characters in the whole canon?

It’s those movies, Guardians 2, The Winter Soldier, Civil War, aaand.... I can’t think of any more of them.

Oh yeah and WANDAVISION cause THAT HIT ME LIKE A TRUCK-

Rocket just said he thinks of the Guardians as his family I’m gonna die...

What about their [Natasha and Rhodey’s] friendship?!? I want more of that!

“Ronan’s obsession... clouds his judgment.” ...HUH

*Thanos uses his sword to lift up Nebula’s chin* Aw heck no

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s America’s ass.” *has to take a second before nodding in agreement*

Wait is that Jasper Stillwell?

“Flick me.” That bit alone could be taken out of context

“We’re in route to Doctor List.” Who’s Doctor List? Is that a code name?

“Hail Hydra.” THE BASTARDS WENT AND DID IT

Please tell me this hand off scene is gonna be the opening for the Loki show. Please tell me this is gonna happen.

*Loki takes the Tesseract again* AND HE’S GOOONNNEE!!

LET’S GET TO FREAKING JUNE ALREADY!

*ends up quoting “Yeah, I know, I know” along with Steve*

I’m really glad Tilda Swinton actually came back for this cameo

*keeps slapping my laptop screen when people keep saying Doctor Strange made a mistake when it was an explicit point in Infinity War where he encountered 14 million other AUs to find the best result*

Are you telling me that this whole plan could derail because Nebula accidentally hacked into her own WiFI network? Are you seriously doing this?

*Thanos and Ebony Maw scan Nebula’s duplicate memory bank and track her down* Are you freaking kidding me?

...I have 96 minutes left?!?

“The future hasn’t been kind to you [Thor], has it?” Frigga is underrated

So for these shots with Jane, are they just reusing different shots from Thor 2 or just footage from deleted scenes?

Can we talk about how Frigga is absolutely the best parent Thor has? Meanwhile her husband ODIN is like “oh yeah by the way you have a secret sister totes magotes i’ll die now byeeee”

*sings along with “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone*

*laughs when we cut to Quill just very badly singing along to his iPod in the distance*

I want a bonus short with just Rhodey and Nebula doing their thing

*Nebula gets her memory taken over by 2014 Thanos* Nooooooo...

Are the glasses that Tony wears here part of EDITH from “Far From Home” or are they like a prototype?

Also I haven’t seen “Far From Home” yet because Sony hates me

Doctor Zola?!?

*jams out to the music playing when we see Hank Pym’s lab*

“A little girl would be nice. Less of a chance that she’ll end up exactly like me [Howard Stark].” *gasps softly*

Oh my God, he’s [Steve] in Peggy’s office

Alan Silvestri is really killing it with this score

JARVIS!!

Wait and that’s the guy from “Agent Carter”!

Ohhh that shot’s [of Thanos’s ship coming out of the clouds] awesome...

*2014 Nebula hands Thanos the Pym particles* Oh are you kidding me...

The CGI for Red Skull is also awesome

*gasps when Natasha reveals that she never knew her dad’s name when Red Skull told it to her*

*is super bummed out when Natasha sacrifices herself*

Kevin Feige really went and said “so Phases 3 and 4 are gonna make everybody cry” and the writers went “YES”

Wait doesn’t Cap go and return the stones at the end of the movie? How’s he gonna handle meeting Red Skull on Vormir then?

“It’s like... I [Bruce] was made for this.” Please someone get Mark Ruffalo his own Hulk movie before he combusts from giving out more spoilers

So Thanos used the Pym particles to time travel then. Honestly that’s kinda genius

I just noticed that Scott shrank himself right as the explosion hit the windows

I really want someone to just drop one F-bomb somewhere in the MCU and I really hope it’s Clint because he would 100% say it

*starts singing “Hollaback Girl” when Thanos arrives*

Here’s my question; how did Thanos acquire Nebula then? With Gamora, it was with the genocide of her people.

“We [Gamora to Nebula] can stop him.” LET’S GO!

[Thor uses his storm powers to summon both Stormbreaker and Mjolnir] *softly* Ohhhhh that’s badass...

Now I’m just imagining the cast just in the green screen room just hitting Josh Brolin with a bunch of foam weapons and making all the sound effects while poor Josh is just struggling under the weight of the Thanos reference head on his mocap suit

Who does the voice for FRIDAY?

AN: Irish actress named Kerry Condon

*Steve deems himself worth to wield Mjolnir* OKKAAYY OKAAYY

Love how Thanos is like “yes, I’m gonna stab you with an AXE”

“In all my years of conquest...” Steve you suuuucckkk...

Are we getting the Chitauri again?

“On your left.” *laughs incredulously* O-ohhh my God...

*Everyone starts coming out of the portals* Oh my God I’m getting chills

I would have lost my mind in the theater

I HAVE ACTUAL GOOSEBUMPS RUNNING ALL OVER ME. This is how good this is

WAIT ARE THOSE THE RAVAGER SHIPS ABOVE THEM?!?

“Avengers... assemble.” Oh my God this is amazing!

M’BAKU!

Also “Endgame” really just said “We are KILLING FOOLS TODAY”

How are they gonna tackle Peter and Gamora’s relationship in Guardians 3?

[Horn plays La Cucaracha] LET’S GO

God I’m gonna turn feral

*has to pause to scream in excitement when Wanda touches down in front of Thanos to fight him*

*puts hands on head* OHH MY GOOOOODDDDD

They’re literally just playing Keep Away with a teenage boy. Marvel, everybody.

*Captain Marvel destroys Thanos’s ship* WELL IT TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH

OK I got mixed feelings about that [the girl power team up scene]

*Thanos unsuccessfully headbutts Carol* Oh shit!

*Doctor Strange holds up one finger* Oh my God this is it

Someone definitely tore off when Thanos pushed Tony off

It was in that moment he [Thanos] knew- he effed up

*All of Thanos’s army dissipates* Byeee...

Is it bad that I’m not crying at Tony’s death?

*gasps when Peter reunites with Ned at school*

Wait the whole time heist takes place within ONE DAY?

“I love you 3000.” I really hope we see Morgan again somewhere in one of the movies or shows. Actually a cool way to reincorporate her would be in the Ironheart series whenever they make it

Even Drax is wearing black!

It’s the “We should be getting therapy but we got a TV show instead” trio [Wanda, Bucky, and Sam]

Wait is that guy- was that guy- the little kid from Iron Man 3?

AN: Yes

So right after this funeral, Wanda’s gonna storm SWORD right?

AN: This was finished up on 2/26 so probably YES

*Thor crowns Valkyrie the new leader of New Asgard* I now cannot wait for “Thor Love and Thunder”

Wait Peter’s looking for Gamora!

Still cannot believe that the time travel suits are completely CGI

I know they had a body double for Chris Evans here but I do think it would have been cool if they used the body double’s voice for Old Steve instead of Chris trying to sound old

He [Steve] put the shield in an art portfolio bag...

*says “No, no I don’t think I will” along with Steve*

*silently jams out to “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” playing during the credits*

Wait and that was the song Fury was playing in “Winter Soldier”

Oh they even got the actual signatures! That’s awesome!

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lokigodofaces · 3 years

Text

thoughts on loki ep 3: lamentis

under cut for your convenience

my first thought when i saw C-20 at the beginning was the Framework...i might be a bit too obsessed with an aos/Loki crossover...

C-20 was sorta able to find out something was wrong. from what Sylvie said, that's pretty impressive.

i wonder if Sylvie uses magic similar to Wanda's. like if Wanda just uses it on a bigger scale. the mind illusions thing checks out. and i saw on youtube that another patron looks like Evan Peters, so maybe they're connected? but most likely they just hired a dude that happens to look like Evan Peters.

going back to that, the glitch in C-20's illusion was like the glitches in WandaVision

if this really is similar to Wanda in canon, that means Sylvie and other Lokis might be nexus beings (y'know, the very thing i shout about in tags because i want)

Okay, so Sylvie tried to enchant a minuteman, which means she must have assumed the TVA operates on the same physics as the timeline. So neither Lokis thought magic could possibly be impeded.

good action sequence with Sylvie and minutemen and Sylvie and Loki

dudes...Renslayer can't fight. she literally did a horrible job.

Sylvie really thought the TVA valued Loki and that they really wanted/needed him to stop her. so she threatened to kill him, just for Renslayer to give the go ahead. shows how little the TVA cares and it echoes Odin.

Lamentis 1 sounded cool because that is a very sci-fi-ey name. It means the star the planet orbits is called Lamentis and the planet is the closest planet. That's how we name lots of planets outside the solar system. so i appreciated that.

okay, lamentis is literally just the bi flag. but still lots of purple so i will claim it as ace as well.

teleportation! and actual magic! yay!

okay, are they setting up a Loki/Sylvie romance? the way they framed the two when Sylvie tried to enchant Loki was how it's often done with kisses

Sylvie said with strong minds she has to do what she did to C-20 to enchant them, but she couldn't even do that with Loki. Which shows how powerful Loki is and how powerful the mind stone is.

i will die for more of Loki and Sylvie being chaotic together

Sylvie she said is an alias. Does this mean she is genderfluid but is female more often than male? i'm told some genderfluids are one gender more than the other, and i've considered Hiddleston's Loki to be predominantly male. Could Sylvie be the other way around? & born Loki but haven't changed her name? or have different names for different genders? and doesn't want to be called Loki when she's female because that's not her name as a woman?

literally i can't tell if they're setting up romance or sibling stuff.

i never thought i'd hear the word "savvy" from Loki. but, hey, if Jack Sparrow can say it, i'll allow it.

the effects for the gun that woman used look similar to Daisy Johnson's quakes. for a second i hoped for an aos crossover, but then i remembered that marvel hates it's non-Disney+ series.

i like the differences between Loki and Sylvie. Loki is less confrontational and more likely to mischief his way when Sylvie is more likely to rip the bandaid off and get it over with, if that makes sense. i think that Sylvie might just be so tired from living on the run, only going to apocalypses that she just wants to get it over with.

love is a serious theme throughout this episode. again, are they setting up a Loki/Sylvie romance? or will it be platonic or familial or something else?

Loki is very clearly not okay with the fact that so many people are being left to die, and i'm here for it

so the whole thing to get on the train i think is setting those two up to be a good duo. between illusions and enchantments, they can do a lot. and Loki was able to get them part of the way, and Sylvie the rest. i think it could be foreshadowing both of them needing to use their skills to work together.

never have your back to a door, i guess

Sylvie's reaction to Loki saying he wasn't told he was adopted. man, she was worried. she knows that that is messed up and i think she feels bad for Loki. she's probably imagining how her life would be different if she didn't know she was adopted.

sounds like Odin and Frigga weren't the adopters of Sylvie. Maybe the Lushtons? i don't know anything about them, just that Lushton is Sylvie's last name in the comics. so, yay for her for not having trash parents. unless they were, then sorry for Sylvie. at least they told her she was adopted. but if the Lushtons adopted her, how did they fall across a frost giant? especially the daughter of Laufey?

i've seen suggestions that the post man Sylvie is with could be Stan Lee since a couple cameos were of him as a post man. Maybe a younger post man, but he has less of a lifespan (if he is actually human in universe. i still like to think of him as the One Above All who just really likes to see the drama of things) than Sylvie, so she could be with him for a long time. maybe that's why Stan is always cameoing. he's just trying different things to try to find his love. and maybe he has a longer lifespan (he was in First Avenger) but not as long as Sylvie's so she still was there for most his life but he's dying soon. I actually like this headcanon a lot, i think it's sweet.

YAS BISEXUAL LOKI YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY I AM! but i'm also scared my parents will find out. they're anti-queer. my siblings saw it, & they aren't supportive either but they operate on an "ignore it" policy, so they don't really care as long as it isn't a big deal.

also it is heavily hinted Sylvie is bi as well.

yes, i will continue to headcanon Loki as greyromantic and asexual. deal with it. i will change my language from panromantic to biromantic since the director specifically said he was bi.

also, it sounded like the director might be bi as well. good for her, taking a character she saw as bi and literally making it canon.

i knew Tom could sing, he was on Broadway. but i had never heard him sing i don't think. he has a good voice. petition to make a musical with Loki. watch the episode "Duet" of The Flash. i want something similar to that. can Sophia sing? throw her in too if she can!

translation of the norwegian suggests romance between Loki and Sylvie

was i expecting an "ANOTHER" reference? no. am i glad we got it? yeah, that was a nice touch.

turns out "full" means drunk in Norwegian according to a youtuber? but don't quote that. Loki says he's full, not drunk at one point.

what were they serving on that train? Thor couldn't get drunk on Earth. heck, Steve couldn't. so it must've been a heck of a drink they were serving

ok, the dagger metaphor i actually really liked. could be a shakespeare reference?

the fireworks thing with Frigga was cute

okay, i don't like Frigga much, but this has confirmed that Frigga was, maybe possibly, better than Odin. Frigga at least believed in Loki. but then her betrayal was so much worse.

wait, i just realized. Loki gets a fight scene on a train. a superhero genre staple is a fight on a moving vehicle (bonus if it's a train). yay! Loki hasn't had this trope yet in any of his appearances. off screen before Infinity War, and i don't count his attempt to murder Thanos on the Statesman. but we can add that to his list of superhero tropes.

i feel like the TVA needs to make stronger tempads...

okay, Loki threw the dagger horribly because he was drunk, right?they aren't saying he has horrible aim, are they?

falling out of a moving vehicle is also a superhero trope...at least it went better for them than it did Bucky

i relate to Sylvie screaming in the middle of nowhere

Loki being gentle with Sylvie and letting her talk to him. gosh. i love it. was not expecting to see Loki from my fics make an appearance.

Sylvie explained the enchantment to Loki, which i think was a poor decision for her.

she said C-20's mind was hard to navigate to her original memories. maybe the TVA does something to the TVA agents that join them. maybe if Loki proved useful, they'd do it to Loki.

or maybe variants lose memory over time. Sylvie says something about her memory being like blips of a dream, but I don't remember the context. maybe over time variants lose their memories and only retain a few things. Sylvie is well down that process, Loki has had hardly any change, and those working for the TVA only have a few things to remind them.

Mobius absolutely was a jet ski enthusiast in the '90's when he was arrested, and he loved Josta.

Casey liked Boku juice, a sign he was from the '90's.

whoever makes the uniforms is from whatever period that style of suit was popular ('80's?).

if anyone isn't a variant, it's Renslayer. she knows more than she should, i'm sure of it.

C-20 likes margaritas now, i'm sure of it.

Mobius has an interesting relationship with Renslayer. I wasn't sure if it was romantic or what. Maybe Renslayer looks like his lover from the '90's so he is flirty with her because of the faint memories he has.

Loki immediately catches on to the TVA agents not knowing they're variants. they think the Time Keepers created them. he knows that, Sylvie didn't. this immediately tells Loki that the Time Keepers are messed up.

possible redemptions for Mobius? B-15? C-20? when they find out they're variants?

so does C-20 know now? she kept saying "it was real" when Mobius found her in Roxxcart. maybe she had dreams of her life before, and Sylvie showed her that they were real?

the whole scene in the city was wild. so much color, lights, people, action, it was wild

Loki being protective of Sylvie, helping her up and wrapping his arm around her, i'm here for it.

loved the bit where Loki used telekinesis to stop the tower from falling on them.

there was a bit where Loki and Sylvie fought & their moves mirrored each other and gosh that was a nice touch.

Loki's reaction to the Ark's destruction. standing there in defeat while Sylvie walks away. wow. Tom. you are amazing.

and what the heck why did the episode end there?

can't wait for the next episode

more of TVA being evil being shown, loving it.

really, is Loki/Sylvie a thing? i have a hard time seeing romance some times, so let me know.

can we please get a Kang tease?

great lighting & cinematography. beautiful. lovely. also good action. shout out to the stunt doubles since they don't get enough credit.

okay let Loki & Sylvie be friends (or lovers, i'm fine with that) and let them burn the TVA down together.

aaaaaaaaaaa how are we half way through?

also, have the TVA fixed all the messed up timelines yet?

oh wait i gotta talk about this. the minutemen don't remember their names. i doubt Mobius's name was Mobius Mobius Mobius. Casey is probably not his real name. The Clone Wars fan in me was already screaming, but now it is even more.

#loki (2021)#loki (2021) spoilers #loki (2021) review #loki laufeyson #tva loki #sylvie laufeysdottir #mobius m mobius #ravonna renslayer #hunter c-20 #hunter b 15

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tibby · 5 years

Note

Can you speak more on Steve Harrington's trauma? I've never seen anyone address it, seemingly dismissing his character as just a "dumb mom friend" or whatever...

sure! i’ll stick to the show with this, because even though i have a lot of thoughts wrt steve and his life and why he acts the way he does, it’s all personal interpretation and not actual canon (though would happily discuss those more anytime.)

before i get into any specifics with regards to what steve has been through during the show, i do want to discuss a little about what we can assume of his relationships pre-nancy, and pre-everything:

canon doesn’t give us a lot to work with in regards to steve’s parents, but based on what we do know, it doesn’t seem good. we can assume that they’re somewhat neglectful and have an unhappy marriage, presumably featuring adultery. he only refers to his father as an asshole or a douchebag and seems reluctant to follow in his footsteps. it seems like he has a slightly better relationship with his mother, but we also don’t know much about her outside of her following his father on business trips because she doesn’t trust him. regardless of how people personally interpret how bad it is, at the very least, he seems lonely and uncomfortable with his family.

up until the final two episodes of season one, we know that steve is king of the school and uses this power to his advantage. but despite his clout, he doesn’t seem to have any actual friends outside of tommy h and carol (and nicole, i guess, but she appears in like three scenes and we don’t really know much about her.) and tommy and carol aren’t good people. it’s not just that they’re horrendous bullies to jonathan and nancy, but they’re not great to steve either, given how quickly tommy turns on him. how quickly he threatens him, and how scared steve is in that moment. and given that tommy participates in mocking steve with billy a year later, it clearly was never that healthy of a friendship. your only friendships being with toxic people who don’t care about you as a person is always going to be damaging, regardless of how “popular” you are.

(steve’s unpleasant family/friendships pre-nancy seem backed up by a quote from the duffers that i can’t read because it’s behind a paywall but is referenced in the wiki: “what kind of family life [Steve] comes from and maybe this girl Nancy is quiet and listens in a way that other people haven’t listened to him at this point.”)

which brings us to the show. steve finds someone, maybe the first person who’s ever really cared about him, the girl he really likes. and he’s protective of her and wants to be with her and ends up fucking up in the process (i maintain that steve had every reason to go after jonathan for the photos, but he was absolutely in the wrong for the slutshaming and the alleyway fight.)

but the fight shifts something in him, makes him want to right his wrongs, so he finally dumps his toxic friends (one of whom physically threatens him in the process) and goes to apologise. and walks right into a monster trap.

steve gets no context as to what’s happening when the demogorgon shows up, doesn’t get any explanation from jonathan and nancy (not that they’re at fault for that, given the circumstances,) and is basically just confronted with the sudden knowledge that monsters are real. and he ends up saving nancy and jonathan from it.

in an ideal world, the trio would have helped each over with their trauma together and would’ve been friends and would’ve had more natural progressions of their relationships. i don’t like reducing nancy and jonathan’s traumas to Just the monster thing, but it’s how the show tends to handle it, and i really feel like steve’s own trauma with what happened that night should have been addressed even slightly, particularly in relation to the two of them.

(quick sidenote: my issue with the way the show handles jonathan/nancy and their “shared trauma” is a whole other thing, but i really don’t understand how the show can basically reduce it to the fact they fought a monster together, and then leave steve out of the equation entirely. i wouldn’t have an issue if the show actually looked into the trauma both jonathan and nancy have outside of the monster stuff, but since it refuses to develop that, it…bothers me that steve’s role in what happened and resulting trauma is shoved aside, and they both now just ignore his existence entirely.)

but the show didn’t do that, so let’s get into season two, and steve harrington’s very rough week:

gets dumped! it should be noted that i don’t blame nancy for the breakup, nor do i think she was a bad person who set out to harm him. she’s a confused seventeen year old girl dealing with the loss of her best friend, and i don’t think she deliberately led steve on for a year or knowingly lied to him about her feelings. but it’s still going to be hurtful when your significant other reveals that they didn’t love you, they only thought they did. and steve loved nancy, cared about her, took comfort in her - she was the first person to listen to him, to care about him, to like him for who he really was, not for the mask he put on. i wish they’d gotten a proper conversation about their relationship in either season two or three, particularly as the destruction of the high school fairytale (the relationship between the coolest guy in school and the girl next door) is an important element to both their characters. i know steve says that he’s over her in season three, but i still know that that’s an incredibly heartbreaking thing to go through, even if it wasn’t a relationship based on an illusion - the kids that they were before.

gets involved with more monster hunting stuff, this time with a bunch of bratty middle schoolers! overall, i think stranger things handles the collective trauma the entire gang have like…terribly. i find it weird that it’s been three seasons and the only time the party/the teens/jopper are ALL together is in the final two episodes when it’s Boss Battle time. and i know i shouldn’t expect much from a show which barely lets separate people handle their trauma, but i feel like…maybe they should all like, sit and talk and comfort each other? keep an eye on each other? i don’t know. i think the trauma steve has is trauma he would share with all the others, especially since season two properly involves him with all the monster stuff (plus fighting them is hard enough without also having to deal with his past experiences, a big head injury, and the lives of a bunch of thirteen year olds in his hands.)

gets beat up! again! this time it’s not deserved! i really don’t understand why the fandom acts like steve’s repeated injuries each season are a joke and not like…a genuine cause for medical concern within the universe. i get that it’s basically played for laughs in the show and this incident in particular is used to once again highlight how violent billy is. i don’t have much to elaborate on here but i feel like someone needs to check in on steve and all the head related trauma he’s suffered through in the past eighteen months.

and after all of that, steve is just…left on his own to deal with it. he gave up his friends for nancy, and they weren’t particularly good friends in the first place. nancy left him. he and jonathan don’t ever talk. all he has are the kids and it’s not as if he can really talk about his trauma with a bunch of fourteen year olds. out of all the main cast, he’s the one that has the least support when it comes to this. nancy and jonathan have each other. joyce and hopper have each other. the party has each other. the byers family has each other. el and hopper have each other. but steve doesn’t have the same support system, and there’s nothing to suggest in canon that he actually interacts with the other teens/adults.

steve’s left alone in general, really. he maintained somewhat of his social status following the events of st1/st2, since he mentions being prom king to robin, but does he really…have any friends his age? he lost tommy and carol when he chose nancy, and those two latched onto billy (who, again, is someone who hurt steve and who steve does not like.) he and nancy broke up, and considering he shared about ten words with her and jonathan in st3, it’s safe to assume he’s not really friendly with them. and we don’t ever see any acknowledgment that steve has friends his age, even if it’s just…normal people who don’t know about the monster stuff.

it’s not until he meets robin that he really finds someone he can talk about any of this with, and even then it just comes with more trauma. i feel like steve’s experiences tend to get played for laughs and i really got that vibe in season 3. steve was tortured and drugged. he took another beating, arguably his roughest one yet. he and robin both thought they were going to die down there. it’s not really handled at all within the show, but it’s a lot for someone to go through, especially when combined with the past year and a half of steve’s life.

anyway. i don’t think the show will ever actually address steve’s trauma (or anyone’s, really) which is sad because like the others, he’s been through a lot and i think some acknowledgement/discussion of it would further help his character development. but i guess that just isn’t as funny as writing him off as an idiot and a loser.

#under a cut because this got long lmao #ask #Anonymous #meta

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nomadicbeard · 5 years

Note

Hi! I saw on one of your posts you said that you used to be a stucky shipper. I actually started off as a stony shipper but then absolutely fell in love with stucky but I like both . I was just wondering what made you "jump ship" on stucky lol. Sorry if this comes across as annoying or anything im just curious!

Hey! As you can see a couple of people have asked me this over the last couple of weeks and I’m really lazy and haven’t got around to responding yet, but the people deserve an answer so here we go. Before we start a quick disclaimer: I’ll only be talking about the ships themselves, not the communities or any of the discourse surrounding them. This is not a ship-bashing of any kind and please do not take it as such, it’s just my own personal experience surrounding these characters and these relationships.

Buckle your seatbelts kids, this is a long one.

I first got into Marvel c. 2015. I’m European so I’d never really watched any marvel movies before that, I watched Age of Ultron on a plane and remember being vaguely aware the Steve/Tony was a thing (what is pretty interesting is that to this day I have no clue where that knowledge came from) but was mostly just excited by the superhero stuff. I then got home and watched The Winter Soldier and fell in love. I love the Winter Soldier, it’s probably still one of my favourite marvel movies (it got kicked out of its top spot by Black Panther last year unfortunately) and to me no other marvel movie could hold a torch to it at the time. So I came onto tumblr, searched up The Winter Soldier and was just inundated with Stucky stuff, as expected. I rolled with it, got invested just from constant exposure (it was also around the height of the Stucky ship) and as far as I was concerned, that was that. I was super into Stucky for almost six months and was pretty much your average shipper, I didn’t understand stevetony, loved Steve Rogers, was close to creating a Stucky sideblog wit some ridiculous pun as my username, I was gone over this ship.

Then one day, I sat down and read the man on the bridge by boopboop on ao3. You’ve almost definitely heard of it, but it was the most popular fic in the Steve/Bucky tag on ao3 at the time (for some reason I had just never got around to reading it until then, it was long and I didn’t have the stamina I have now). It was your pretty standard Stucky fic, Steve gets Bucky back, they have to deal with his trauma which results in Steve and Bucky declaring their long lost love for each other etc. etc. What was different about this fic, was that it was all told from Tony’s point of view, and since Steve and Tony were on the same team at that point, their dynamic was a huge part of the fic. And I found myself falling completely in love with Steve and Tony’s dynamic. I went back to the fic for this post (and god it is a good fic) and pulled up the first couple of chapters and instantly just found so many instances of that dynamic

(grade A stevetony arguing over each other’s safety with a side of flirting from Tony)

(Idk why but the image of Steve and Tony not going to sleep, but rather staying up and brewing coffee together was such a vivid one when I first read this fic, I still remember it to this day. )

(Tony picking Steve flowers while trying to desperately play off that he didn’t aka. Tony caring while trying desperately not to care)

(Everyone knowing that Steve would definitely come to Tony, apart from Tony himself.)

Now obviously, this is a stucky fic and I went into it knowing this, but I found when Steve and Bucky finally got together I felt honestly a bit bored, a bit cheated. I had no idea why at the time. I remember very clearly x-ing out of the fic at the end and feeling really uneasy, I came onto tumblr, went straight back into the Stucky tag and all was well.

When I next went back onto ao3, I started out with a couple of oneshots in the Stucky tag, but for some reason it wasn’t working for me anymore. I remember sitting there, a little bored, not at all invested in this relationship and just missing something. I figured I was probably missing Tony’s presence in the fic and so filtered in Tony Stark’s character tag. I read a few of those and all was well but I realised the same thing was happening as had happened in man on the bridge, the moment that Steve and Bucky got together, the fic lost something for me. Desperate at this point, and a little annoyed at myself I conducted an experiment and went into the Steve/Tony tag on Ao3 and as they say, the rest is history. If you go onto older posts on my main blog there’s a pretty drastic, almost overnight shift c. January 2016. I have to admit, I expected Civil War to be a conversion so I enjoyed stevetony without consequence for five months, while still labelling myself as a Stucky shipper because I expected to be pulled back to Stucky after civil war, the reality was that somehow I came out of civil war shipping stevetony harder than ever before. From there, I spent two years reading my way through the stevetony tag on ao3 and finally set up this blog in 2018, with a really obscure reference as my username and it’s been stevetony til I die ever since.

I just couldn’t read Stucky anymore. That’s what I mean when I say on this blog that stevetony has ruined me for every other ship, because it has. Steve and Tony’s firecracker dynamic pulled me away from what was fast on its way to becoming my favourite ship in 2015, all because they had a bit of banter on the side in a fic. It’s kind of depressing really, the sort of hold that Steve and Tony’s dynamic has over me,

It’s strange you say you fell in love with Stucky, I fell absolutely out of love with it. I have thought a lot about how I ended up falling into stevetony and why I was so drawn to them instead of Stucky in the first place and I think it all comes down the the story itself. To me, Steve and Bucky’s relationship carries much more weight as a friendship, I still have no doubt that Bucky is one of if not the most important person in Steve’s life, but having that be a lifelong friendship is way more powerful and impactful to me, (especially since what I know I misconstrued to be Steve’s obsession with Bucky is actually Steve’s obsession over the past. I’m not saying Bucky isn’t dear to Steve and he does want to obviously rescue him, but looking back on it there’s more to Steve’s obsession with Bucky than just love, it’s a fear of change and it’s him desperately trying to hold onto a past that’s gone.)

Conversely, I feel like adding a romantic element to Steve and Tony’s relationship enriches the story being told, if you look at something like civil war (either MCU or 616 tbh) in the context of Tony being desperately in love with Steve, it makes a lot more sense, especially with things like The Confession in 616 or the stuff brought up in that strange conversation in the conference room in the MCU. There’s lines from Steve like “I’m home/you gave me a home” or even straight up “he loved you” and his tormented behaviour throughout infinity war and endgame that just really makes you wonder, not to mention lines from others like “you two still gazing into each other’s eyes/sounds like both of you got into bed with the wrong people” and they did have to share a bed at Clint’s farm after all lol. The tragedy of their story is heightened if you look at it through the context of them being absolutely in love with each other, just never having actually got around to telling it to each other’s faces. This tragedy is heavily implied in The Oath/The Confession in 616 when they confess their deepest darkest secrets to the other’s comatose/dead bodies, and apparently it’s always been that they love the other person. Actually you could easily introduce a romantic element by making relatively few changes to the MCU, but that’s a post for another time (I have a long and comprehensive list in my notes app on how little you actually need to change to make that happen, it’s literally the matter of a few lines of dialogue and one major story change at the end of IM3, an interesting thought exercise to say the least).

Finally, there’s a quote that came up on my dash the day I made that fateful venture into the ao3 stevetony tag, “your soulmate isn’t someone who comes peacefully into your life. It is someone who makes you question things, changed your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone idealized, but an ordinary person, who managed to revolutionize your world in a second” to this day, it resonates so strongly with me about stevetony. It’s everything I love about this ship just compressed into a quote.

So yeah it was basically a bunch of happy coincidences, but thank god it happened. As a writer, stevetony has taught me so much about character and dynamic, stuff that is honestly invaluable. When you have long fics that basically detail the day by day life of Steve and Tony post-civil war in rural Italy and consists of them sleeping, crying and working through their repressed feelings (looking at you @silkspectred ), it is the characters and their unique dynamic that drive the entirety of the story. Steve and Tony, in the hands of a compelling writer, can keep me hooked over a frankly embarrassing number of words. I still have a bit of a special place for Stucky in my heart really, it did start me out in marvel after all and it was one of my first ever ships, but your first love is only so good until you meet your true love, not to get all sappy but stevetony has completely destroyed my ability to ship anything else. I might get a bit flirtatious with some other ships, like sambucky (I still love Bucky, and I love Sam!), or the riverdale ships (beronica and jarchie or bust), or even the game of thrones crack ships (daensa til the day we die), but I’ll always come back to stevetony.

So yeah this escalated into a far longer post than I intended to make but I’ve never really spelled out on this blog how or why I ended up jumping Stucky to Stony when I know it’s usually the other way around. I guess it just comes down to stevetony catching me out when I least expected it, and never having let go of me since.

#and WORD #jesus this is a long post #stony #stony meta #stevetony #what i should be doing: maths. what i'm actually doing: crying about stevetony. it's an average day #ask #answered #anon #idk whether to tag it as stucky or anti stucky tbh #i'm going with neither and pray i don't get shouted at #steve rogers #tony stark #superhusbands #long post

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 5 years

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Over the years I’ve heard endless discussion about Mary Jane and more specifically how she should or should not be written. I think a very influential voice in those discussions comes from the author of ‘Why did it Have to be You Mary Jane’, a three part essay series that pretty comprehensively examines Peter and MJ’s history leading up to their wedding in order to rebuttal the anti-marriage sentiments from Marvel.

That same author in other places has even discussed how MJ works when she is written ‘correctly’. ‘Correctly’ according to him is when she is written goofy. To quote him.

MJ has always worked best when she’s a bit goofy and off the wall, needing to be brought back to the center, because that way she contrasts nicely with Peter’s overly serious nature and “I’ve got the burdens of the world on my shoulders” personality, and thus she helps bring him back to the center as well.

Someday I plan to dive into certain parts of that essay series that are…well off shall we say, but that’s for another time.

On another occasion I’ve heard a group of fans look at 2 very different 90s Spidey comics and discuss (among other things) MJ’s depiction within them. The comics in question were Spec #184 and No Adj #18. In the former MJ is loving and supportive towards Peter and in the latter she is argumentative and bickering. The individuals discussing the stories spoke about how the comics raise the question about how MJ should be written.

I’ve equally seen endless shade (from proponents and opponents of MJ, the marriag, etc) throw shade of some variety against Mary Jane ‘waiting by a window’, nagging at Peter or disliking him being Spider-Man in some variety. Hell I’ve even seen people complain about her going out dancing with during the marriage, usually with the qualifier of her dancing ‘with other men’.

As a rule of thumb I think people prefer or treat JMS’ portrayal of the Spider-Marriage as how it ‘should’ be written. And I love that portrayal don’t get me wrong, but I don’t agree that’s how it SHOULD be done inherently nor do I agree with the lowkey implication from the proponents of that take that the other takes, like in the 90s, were ‘wrong’.

I’m not going to pick apart each of these takes individually or look at the context of the specific issues they were discussing. Rather I want to take a broader approach.

The question is which of these renditions of Mary Jane work/don’t work. Or if you like, how should Mary Jane be written.

My response is…they can all work.

And by that I don’t mean in theory a writer could pick one of these renditions and commit to it as MJ’s defined personality or role, much in the way Aunt May works knowing Peter is Spider-Man or alternatively works dead like after ASM #400.

No I mean all these different ways to write MJ can all work as part and parcel of the same character. And indeed have…for 50+ years!

Mary Jane isn’t Mickey Mouse (though she is owned by him). She doesn’t have at best 2 moods at any given time, she isn’t simplistic.

This was even THE POINT of all the Marvel characters when they were created. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et al were trying (albeit not always succeeding) to create superhero characters with more dimensions, people who weren’t just good because it was the right thing to do or else paragons of virtue (or vice if you were villains). Whilst that originally just applied to the heroes with villains and supporting characters remaining fairly simplistic there were exceptions. Doctor Doom and Norman Osborn for example were villains written with at least a bit more layers to them. And as many writers (like Gail Simone) and historians (like Tim Hanley) have assessed, Mary Jane was an exception amidst Silver Age supporting characters, especially female ones.

And she grew more dimensions over the years.

And whilst I’m absolutely not saying there is no ‘incorrect’ way to write Mary Jane *glaresatSlott* there is also absolutely no singular ‘correct’ way, let alone a ‘default’ setting for her.

She’s a (relative representation of a) human being. So she has ups, downs, moods, good days and bad days, and those are going to change in response to the situations presented.

The keys to success are:

a) Recognizing the right emotion to go with regarding the situation in question. E.g. if someone is dying she’s probably not going to be cracking jokes.

b) Moderation, variety and balance. That is to say it’s not inherently bad to have Mary Jane wait by a window, or argue with Peter, or take umbrage with him being Spider-Man SOMETIMES! Those are both in character and entirely realistic human reactions for her to have.*And as much as us shippers might love portrayals more in line with Spencer or JMS’ takes on MJ or her relationship with Peter the fact is it’s similarly reductive if she was only ever portrayed that way in most Spider-Man stories. You need both, these guys are supposed to be well rounded characters!

c) Good execution. I know that’s rather easy to preach and harder to practice, but it’s nevertheless true. After all JMS’ run gets all the love when it comes to the portrayal of Peter/MJ’s relationship and it pulled MJ ‘waiting by a window’ more than once. Kraven’s Last Hunt even did this. Compare and contrast with like Terry Kavanagh though and you see the difference.

The problem with b) and c) in MJ’s broader history is that in the 90s the rule of the day was style over substance/quantity over quality; there were for example a minimum of FOUR monthly Peter Parker Spidey titles back then! So good execution and moderation suffered a whole Hell of a lot because writers were just desperately trying to generate content and do it on time. They either lacked the time to execute scenes well (this applied to non-MJ scenes too btw) and or ideas for MJ got reused in a mad dash for content, hence MJ waited by a window, or nagged Peter about being Spider-Man or wore lingerie because those were the simplest and quickest way writers could tick off including her. Plus this mad dash for content led to many unskilled writers getting gigs to plug in holes in the schedule, which is why so many Spidey minis and one shots are bad.

What I’m trying to say with all this is that all these takes, all these portrayal and all these uses of MJ are valid. They’re just part of the same multidimensional character.

*Hell Peter himself often doesn’t want to be Spider-Man or tries retiring, so why does MJ get shit for on occasion wishing he would not risk his life?

#Spider-Man #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Peter Parker #MJ Watson

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scarlettsabetlondongirl · 5 years

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Read the New Interview by Poet Scarlett Sabet and Led Zeppelin Founder Jimmy Page in Interview Magazine below or click on headline link.

JIMMY PAGE AND SCARLETT SABET ARE THE MUSIC-POETRY POWER COUPLE THE WORLD DIDN’T KNOW IT NEEDED

By Stephanie LaCava

Published October 10, 2019

Scarlett Sabet’s poetry is felt three-fold when she performs it. The written words aren’t the same when she says them; they are trance-like, told as if from memory. To call the London-based talent a poet and performer seems inadequate. She’s more so a musician, or, perhaps, a mystic. Her haunting readings have taken place at storied book shops such as San Francisco’s City Lights and Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, and she’s been invited to read at the likes of Wellesley College. She has published four collections of poetry on her own imprint: Rocking Undergound, The Lock and The Key, Zoreh, and Camille earlier this year.

Today, she debuts her spoken word album Catalyst, produced by her partner, the legendary musician Jimmy Page.

Interview sat down with the couple to talk about coming together for this project, the brilliance of the Velvet Underground, and paying to produce your own work.

STEPHANIE LACAVA: You two met in 2012, but it was two years later that your relationship started and you first talked about collaborating together. It would be five more years before today’s release of your project on all streaming platforms. Why this album now?

JIMMY PAGE: One project that I knew it shouldn’t be was poetry with music. So with the production of Scarlett’s work, I wanted to create an individual character for each poem, a sonic landscape to compliment it.

LACAVA: And with all due respect, that was also a cool move. It would have been kind of eye-rolling to do music accompaniment.

SCARLETT SABET: Yes. It feels exciting, but also like a natural progression, I think, because we live and work together every day. Literally every one of these poems, Jimmy was there when I wrote it, and he was the first person that heard it and he’s seen me perform so many times.

PAGE: It was six years ago that I first heard Scarlett read.

SABET: At World’s End Bookshop on the King’s Road in Chelsea.

PAGE: I thought, “This is really interesting. She’s really interesting. She’s definitely got something there.” And the people in attendance soaked up Scarlett’s reading.

LACAVA: Surely, you’ve read a lot of crowds.

PAGE: That’s a good point. The whole place hushed. Rocking Underground was the first poem I heard of Scarlett’s and when we started production, we began with it.

LACAVA: I think people assume the title of the poem is a music reference, but it’s actually quite literal…

SABET: I was on a train. My computer had broken. It was just one of those, ugh, kind of despairing Sunday nights. I just remember there was a guy with a backpack in my face, and I got out my notebook, and there was the rhythm of train.

LACAVA: Do you usually listen to music while you write?

SABET: It’s got to be something that’s trance-like. I can understand why you’d listen to jazz, for example.

LACAVA: That’s a place where both of your practices kind of overlap.

PAGE: Well, yeah. I did this interview with William Burroughs for Crawdaddy Magazine in 1975. We started to talk about trance music. I thought maybe he’d been to see Led Zeppelin on just one occasion. Actually, it was many times at Madison Square Garden. Anyway, we then started talking about this whole trance ethos, about the Master Musicians of Jajouka, this whole genre of tribal trance music from Morocco.

LACAVA: You learned about Jajouka from Brian Jones?

PAGE: Yes. To be fair, I know that Brion Gysin had introduced Brian Jones.

SABET: He was a painter and musician, Burroughs’s lover, and he came up with the cut-up technique with Burroughs.

LACAVA: Ah. What was your connection to Jones?

PAGE: I’d heard Elmore James songs (which Jones played a lot,) but I couldn’t quite work out how to play the music. People would say it was literally, from the neck of a bottle. I thought, ‘So, let’s see how this guy Jones does it.’ Sure enough, he gets up on stage and starts doing some Elmore James songs, and he has the equivalent of what everyone would know as a slide on his finger. I started talking to him when he came offstage, and I said, “Well you know, you’ve really got that down. What are you actually using?” You must understand that nobody that I knew played slide guitar at all. This is the first time I’d seen somebody do it—before Jeff [Beck] was doing it, before the Rolling Stones. So, he said, “Oh, have you got a car mechanic near you?” And I said, “I literally do have one not too far away.”‘ He said, “Go there and ask for a bush. It’s called a bush.” A thing used used in car maintenance. And he said, “You’ll find that it’ll just fit on your finger absolutely perfectly, and that’s what I use.” This guy was so generous.

LACAVA: Is there any young musician today who has really impressed you?

PAGE: Well, I was so impressed with the two guys that I saw with you.

LACAVA: Stefan Tcherepnin and Taketo Shimada, the New York-based Afuma.

SABET: They were so good. You said that was reminiscent of New York in the ’60s?

PAGE: Well, well, yeah. It was. It definitely had that sort of trance vibe.

LACAVA: Back to Scarlett’s start. You did your first reading at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris in January of 2015. Jimmy help set it up?

PAGE: So, when Sylvia (Whitman, owner and daughter of George Whitman) was giving me a tour after my own book signing, I saw the poetry section there, and I said, “Do you having readings here?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “Well, French as well as English?” “Oh, no. Only English.” And I thought, “I know a poet.”

LACAVA: It was Sylvia who introduced me to Scarlett years ago.

PAGE: After hosting Scarlett, Sylvia said to me, “It’s really powerful in print, but her renditions, they’re in another realm.”

LACAVA: So, Sylvia’s now the fourth person in this interview.

PAGE: That’s right. And something else funny happened when I was back at Shakespeare and Company. The man in charge of the rare book department said, “Oh, Sir, that Françoise Hardy track that you were on was absolutely amazing. That’s one of my favorite pieces of your guitar work.” I thought, “Well, wait a minute. I’m going to check, I’m going to track this down.” When I heard it, lo and behold, there’s this distortion box. It’s called a fuzz box. And I was the one who helped create this thing, and there it was on Francoise Hardy’s Je n’attends plus personne. I did it when I was a session musician. It was a session in Pye Studios at Marble Arch, downtown where all these Petula Clark hits were done. It wasn’t until you were in the studio that you’d see the artist come in. And you’d go, “Oh, I know who this is.” Or, “I don’t know who this is.” But when Francoise Hardy came in, I knew who she was. She had on one of those turtlenecks and that sort of tweedy skirt.

LACAVA: You also did some early sessions with Nico before she was part of the Velvet Underground.

PAGE: Nico came to London to record the Gordon Lightfoot song “I’m Not Sayin” with Andrew Oldham as a solo artist. So, there’s this huge orchestral session with Nico singing, and Andrew asked me to write a B-side with him for Nico, routine, play, and produce it on a separate session, which I did. It’s called The Last Mile. I was a staff producer on Immediate Records.

LACAVA: How old were you?

PAGE: 19 or 20. I was going to routine her at her apartment just near Baker Street in London with my acoustic 12-string guitar. Nico’s son with Alain Delon was there and he was holding up my guitar in the air, and I decided it was time to rescue it.

LACAVA: When did you see her again after that?

PAGE: Steve Paul’s Scene Club (Paul’s nightclub The Scene at 46th and Eighth Avenue) had been decorated by Andy Warhol. I don’t know what you’d call it here, but it’s this silver wrap—

LACAVA: Mylar.

PAGE: All the walls were covered with Mylar because Andy Warhol said that color was the color of speed. And playing down there was Nico and The Velvet Underground. I had an incredible connection with Lou Reed, and we spent lots of time talking.

SABET: Was that the first time you met him?

PAGE: Yeah, and I’d seen The Velvet Underground on more than one occasion. They were almost like a resident band. Andy Warhol was keen for them to be there. I can tell you exactly what it was like. When I heard the first album, it was just exactly what they were like. They were just like that. It was absolutely phenomenal.

LACAVA: See, that’s interesting in the context of his new project, as well. The difference between seeing someone in person versus the recording…

PAGE: The other thing about Steve Paul’s and The Velvet Underground was that it didn’t really have too many people coming to hear it, which I found extraordinary.

LACAVA: How many people were there?

PAGE: Well, hardly any people. Like, nine, a dozen people. It was so radical, such a radical band. You know, Maureen Tucker just playing the sort of snare drum. And the fact that there was the electric viola with John Cale. You just didn’t get this sort of line-up. It was really arts lab, as opposed to pop music, this wonderful glue, this synergy between them that was dark. It was very dark.

LACAVA: You mentioned Warhol. Do you remember seeing him there?

PAGE: No, he wasn’t actually there, but I met him with the Yardbirds. I don’t actually remember the hotel, but there was a reception for the Yardbirds. He came in, and he was with one other person. I was talking to him, and he said, ‘I just want to feel the band, feel the Yardbirds.’ “I want to feel their presence,” was the exact quote. We had a conversation and at the end of it he said, “You should come to the Factory, and do an audition.” But we were working, and I didn’t manage to do that. And then I saw him again in Detroit in ’67, when we were playing there. Andy Warhol was proceeding over this wedding, and The Velvet Underground were there. So, I got a chance to say hello again.

LACAVA: Something interesting that Scarlett told me once was that you steered her toward self-publishing. That legitimacy doesn’t come from a label—it comes from creating the thing you want to create.

PAGE: Yes.

LACAVA: You could have told her the opposite, based on your experience.

SABET: Jimmy was like, “Well, look. The first Led Zeppelin album, I paid for that.”

LACAVA: You produced and paid for it?

PAGE: Yes.

SABET: They had a record. He then took it to record companies. He took it to Atlantic and said, “This is what we’ve got. I’m not releasing singles. Take it or leave it.” He literally said the words, “I didn’t want to go around cap in hand saying, ‘Oh please. We’d like to write some songs.’ It’s better to do it.��

PAGE: What I’ve been producing over the last few years are Led Zeppelin rereleases and catalog items. It means a lot of listening to quarter-inch tapes, and it’s all in real time. I had to approach this project in such a way that the first album speaks for itself. The last and ninth album of the studio albums were Coda, so on every album in between, I had to make sure all of these companion discs were done and present the idea to the record company along with new artwork—that way to ensure the complete vision of the recordings were released.

SABET: With the sound engineer, Drew, Jimmy would explain how he wanted to kind of layer some of my voices. And I practiced some on cassette, so it was like a guiding track, and then I’d listen back, and I understood the timing and what we were going to do for each one. If there was a sound or there was a better take, we’d talk about that.

PAGE: The first one that I wanted to try was Rocking Underground, which opens up the whole of this work. It was recorded on a cassette tape. It was so noisy, but urgent. I said, this is what we’re going to use, but then it needed some extra work to be done to augment the base layer—

LACAVA: Oh, that’s cool!

PAGE: So, it opens, and it’s really disturbing, all this ambient noise. And I know we pulled it off. Because there’s such a variety on it, and it will be such a surprise. It’s the sort of thing that you listen to for, say, Side One, from beginning to end. The whole sequencing is there for a reason.

LACAVA: We’re living in an age of the ubiquitous podcast. Everyone has those things in her ears.

“Catalyst, a spoken word album written and performed by Scarlett Sabet and produced by Jimmy Page, is released on a special 12-inch etched vinyl via JimmyPage.com.”-Jimmy Page

Photos: Interview Magazine

#scarlett sabet #jimmy page #jimmy page girlfriend #led zeppelin #poet #poetry #rock couple #Stephanie LaCava #catalyst #interview #interview magazine #poetry on vinyl #spoken word album #poetry album #spoken poetry album

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Why I don’t like the current direction for J. Jonah Jameson

Let me start by saying I love Jonah’s character a lot so I’m not trying to make him out to be a bad character in this.

I know a lot of people like it and regard going back on it as regression but hear me out.

I do not know that Jonah hating Spider-Man is necessarily better or worse than what we have now.

My objections are that how we got to this point and Jonah’s general attitude is....really nonsensical.

Frankly one of the worst things a storyteller can do is write characters out of character. Sure there can be small missteps which can be forgiven, but in this case Spider-Man unmasking to Jonah and his genera reaction to learning that truth is simply not how these characters would ever act in the context of that situation. And we know this because in case you have forgotten...we’ve been here before.

Once upon a time before Jonah ever knew Peter was Spider-Man we could only honestly speculate on how he would react.

However anyone believed or theorised he might take that news, there was little-no stories that really gave you a hard idea about that. There was no precedence at all or anything that could maybe give us a clue to how he’d react.

And the big question at the heart of how he might react was whether Jonah’s hatred for Spider-Man was more powerful than any affection he held for Peter Parker.

In 2006-2007 as part of the Civil War event we got the answer to that question and therefore got precedence for how Jonah would react to learning Peter’s secret.

And the answer was quite clear, Jonah’s hatred for Spidey WAS stronger than his affection for Peter. Your personal headcanons prior to that story do not matter, it was established as part of actual canon Spider-Man stories that this was how Jonah felt and reacted.

There could be some leeway if Jonah’s reaction was wildly out of character, like if there were older stories heavily defining him in such a way that his reaction didn’t add up.

But the thing was...most older stories supported how he reacted. His reaction DID make sense.

I’m not saying it would have been unbelievable for Jonah to have been in some way sympathetic towards Peter, but frankly it was just much more likely that Jonah’s hatred of Spidey would win out.

If we take a look at Jonah’s history with Spider-Man it isn’t the case that over time he could be viewed as almost obsessed with him and having something of a vendetta against him. He simply WAS obsessed with him and DID have a vendetta, he had a great big Spider-Man blindspot and mental trigger that rarely ever allowed him to NOT get angry about Spider-Man and NOT slander him or contort the truth against him.

This isn’t the by-product of lazy and repetitive writing over many decades either. This is simply Jonah’s ACTUAL character. He was like that in the 1960s when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were writing him! they even went to far as to provide a basic motivation for WHY Jonah felt as he did: jealousy. Even if you wanted to say that was just zany 1960s writing that wasn’t all that realistic and as nuanced as later standards, the fact is Jonah was consistent in that portrayal in the 1970s and the 1980s. In the 1980s even when acclaimed and beloved Spider-Man writers like Roger Stern, Tom DeFalco and Peter David wrote Jameson, giving him more layers, making him more sympathetic and a core of human decency, he STILL had a great big Spider-Man hate boner.

In the 1960s for absolutely no justifiable reason he began a smear campaign against Spider-Man ruining his show business career and that was his intention. He funded the creation of super villains and spider slayers (who endangered public safety, which Jonah never seemed to consider beforehand) and continued doing so well into the 1980s. He didn’t even publicly own up to creating Scorpion until the 1980s when he was being blackmailed into keeping it quiet. Jameson funded the second Mysterio to dress up like a known criminal, drive Spider-Man out of his mind and skipped town when Mysterio was jailed to avoid any consequences. And throughout his career he near consistently smeared Spider-Man’s name deliberately engaging in libellous distortions of the truth to paint him in as negative a light as possible.

Jonah CLEARLY had serious mental issues with Spider-Man. And no one just gets over that as quickly (if at all) meaning Jonah’s reaction in Civil War made a lot of sense and his reaction Zdarsky’s run outright unbelievable for how humans simply act.

Systemically throughout all his Spider-Man hate campaigns, for all the affection he might have had for Peter he really wasn’t the best of friends he could have been to him. Even though he was a kid, even though he knew his uncle was dead and his aunt was old and sickly Jonah routinely continued to underpay Peter, insult him and scream his head off at him. True, he did this with almost everyone, but that doesn’t change the fact that he still did this. In the 1960s he put on a show of kindness towards Peter and his aunt at his graduation specifically to convince Peter to stay with the Bugle so he wouldn’t lose any money.

Yes later on in say the 1990s he secretly paid for Peter’s legal defence during the Clone Saga and offered him a staff job at the Bugle. But none of that renders his negative reaction in Civil War unbelievable. Like I said it was just a case of did he care more about Peter than he hated Spider-Man and we learned that no he didn’t. This is corroborated in Brand New Day.

During the former, Jonah got Peter blacklisted from being a photographer after Peter doctored some photos to exonerate Jonah of a crime he didn’t commit. Now it was very OOC for Peter to do that in the first place, but Jonah’s reaction wasn’t. Jonah was furious with Peter faking photos of Spider-Man and Electro being one and the same in the 1960s he intended to fire Peter and in spite of his youth intended to actually SUE him (further supporting his reaction in Civil War). Jonah very publicly humiliated and screwed over Peter, destroying Peter’s primary/only source of income. And he did this whilst knowing Peter had limited income and technically via marriage being Peter’s relative. He didn’t try to help Peter after the fact either. Indirectly due to Jonah Peter got a job at HORIZON labs but that was ONLY because Marla recognized his talent and helped get his foot in the door. Jonah after Marla’s death tried to shut down HORIZON labs and thereby by extension destroy another of Peter’s jobs. For Jonah his grief over Marla’s death along with his hypocritical journalistic ethics were MORE important than any affection he held for Peter Parker. They were absolutely not closer after their parental figures got married. IIRC Jonah even blamed Peter for his father’s death but correct me if I have got that wrong.

But lets return to Civil War.

During Civil War, Jonah slandered Peter in the presses and sued him. He didn’t care that this was his friend, a young man he’s known most of his life, who’s been through much pain and tragedy who as Spider-Man has saved his life repeatedly along with his family members, friends and staff. He was angry at being humiliated by him and felt betrayed, but amidst all this he first and foremost saw him as that menace Spider-Man who got one over on him, not as the decent kid he knew who must not actually be the menace he thought he was.

As if suing him was not bad enough, Jonah went further. He sought out Peter’s old girlfriend Deb Whitman when she was out of work and her mother was seriously ill and exploited her by providing an author to write a biased, twisted account of her relationship with Peter Parker/Spider-Man in order to further tear him down in the public eye.

When his close friend Joe Robertson called Jonah out for continuing to punch down on the now fugitive Peter Parker when his aunt was in the hospital, Jonah fired him.

Furthermore in Peter David’s final issue of Friendly Nieghborhood Spider-Man Peter and Jonah confront one another in the wake of Peter’s identity going public. Peter allows Jonah to hit him as much as he likes to get his anger out and insults him to get him to react. Jonah repeatedly punched Peter in the face! Now sure, he did admit that it was easier to hate Spider-Man when he didn’t know he was Peter, but that wasn’t him saying he DIDN’T hate him. Again...he hit him repeatedly in the face.

And on top of that the issue ends with Jonah

a) Admitting that he was only dropping his lawsuit and smear campaign because he realized Peter on some level wanted to be punished for his mistakes and Jonah didn’t like being used

b) Admitting that he doesn’t mind tearing down and humiliating Peter/Spider-Man so long as Peter doesn’t help him to do it

c) Literally saying and I quote: “I really hate that F.N. Spider-Man.”

Pretty clear cut ain’t it.

Jonah’s hate for Spider-Man>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Jonah’s affection for Peter.

So when we find ourselves at this point in time where Jonah finds out Peter is Spider-Man and IIRC pretty much immediately reacts by becoming an ally and confidant to Peter, viewing him first and foremost as his friend Peter Parker and not the menace he believed Spider-Man to be, he is very aggressively NOT in character. He is very aggressively NOT acting the way his established characetrization dictates he would act in that situation.

This stuff isn’t a minor little back up story, it was a big part of TWO concurrent ongoing event stories (Civil War-Back in Black). You can’t ignore this stuff.

There are those who would say that Jonah’s situation in Zdarsky’s run is different so his different reaction is justified. The problem with this is that you can’t just handwave any given difference in context as justifying any different reaction, they have to add up.

So would Jonah when his wife is dead, when he’s lost the Bugle, lost his major public respect, lost his father, lost his adoptive daughter and straight up admits that his hatred for Peter is ALL he has in his life REALLY react more positively and sympathetically to learning Peter is Spider-Man than he did when his fortunes were the exact opposite of all of that.*

Absolutely not! That is wholly unrealistic.

If all he has in his life IS his outright pathological hatred for Spider-Man then suddenly finding out Spider-Man is the guy he partially blames for the death of his father, didn’t like that much, ripped off for years and whom he cared so little for he took away his source of work even though he HELPED Jonah, would never ever make Jonah DROP his hatred.

If Jonah reacted the way he did in Civil War when his life was going well then he’d react WORSE nowdays when it’s going worse!

Then we come to Peter revealing his identity in the first place.

This is aggressively stupid and even more out of character than Jonah’s opposite reaction during Civil War.

Given Jonah’s pathological crusade against Peter, given how Jonah blacklisted him, tried to further destroy him during Civil War, JJJ’s funding robots and super villains and just everything he knows about Jonah, its both irresponsibly risky to his loved ones and wholly unrealistic for Peter to EVER reveal his secret to Jonah.

Consider ALL the people Peter knows who have proven themselves more friendly, trustworthy and over all loyal to him whom he DIDN’T reveal his identity to.

Flash Thompson

Betty Brant

Aunt Anna

Joe Robertson

Felicia Hardy (before she went psycho in Slott’s run)

Oh and you know AUNT MAY!

ALL of those people had proven their friendship and loyalty to Peter when they used to know his identity and for some of them even before that.

But he didn’t, and in some cases, has continued to keep them all in the dark...but he told Jonah?!

That’s incredibly out of character and nuclear levels illogical. It makes even less sense than you know...Jonah not remembering that he USED to know Peter’s identity. Remember how Slott established that unmasking in front of someone would immediately restore their memories from before the Mindwipe? Well guess what, Zdarsky et al just IGNORED that for Jonah because that’s just wonderful writing right there.

I get that Jonah going back to not knowing would be a regression. I get that this new direction is new and fresh because it’s never been done before.

But the thing is regression isn’t always a bad thing and something new and fresh isn’t always a good thing.

In the Clone Saga Peter had developed into a grimdark mentally broken anti hero which was something never done before. It was executed competently in so far as it was realistic, made sense and had a lot of thematic and psychological layers to it. And it was new, shiny and fresh!. But is anyone really going to argue that regressing him back to being the mentally stable more optimistic Spider-Man was a BAD thing?

No.

I’m not saying regressing Jonah back to not knowing would be a good thing, but I am saying his characterization after he found out was a bad thing because this is not who he is. If another story tried to better explain and justify it in some way, maybe.

But frankly I find the entire idea that Jonah would so quickly pull a 180 on his decades long attitude to Spider-Man frankly BS.

*What is worse is that the story itself outright ignores the fact that Jonah HASN’T lost everything in his life, he still has his pride and joy his son John. For years Jonah persevered thanks to and for his son John, with implications that it was because of his son John being overlooked that he hated Spider-Man in the first place. So Jonah hasn’t even lost everything as he claims!

Also Jonah hated Spider-Man back when the only relative he had was his son!

#Spider-Man #J. Jonah Jameson #Peter Parker #Betty Brant #Aunt May #May Parker #Flash Thompson #Mysterio #Civil War 2006 #Marvel Civil War 2006 #Marvel Civil War #Joe Robertson #Chip Zdarsky

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daresplaining · 6 years

Text

Daredevil Countdown: 8 Days

Trailer #1 Analysis

We barely had time to recover from Iron Fist Season 2 before Netflix started dumping Daredevil content on us, and it’s been tough to keep up! We were away minding our own business at NYCC when this trailer dropped, and we’ve only just started to pick through it. There are some major revelations in this thing, which I’m very excited about. There are also a few scenes excerpted here that we saw in their entirety at NYCC, so while I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, expect some minor ones.

Is it geeky to get a kick out of Matt saying this? Because this makes me really happy. He has spent so much time struggling with his superhero identity that just hearing him call himself Daredevil is thrilling. Also, the background seems to suggest that he’s in the church, and may therefore be saying this to Maggie... which is good, because in one of the scenes we saw at NYCC, she called him “the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” and I nearly pitched a fit.

We saw this scene, so I won’t go into details... beyond saying that it kicks off what sounds like will be an interesting (read: upsetting) relationship between Fisk and the FBI, and as well as Fisk’s manipulation of the justice system and the city as a whole this season. He is getting out of prison and aiming to reclaim his throne, and this trailer gives us hints of some of the pawns he will be using to make that happen.

Hey look, it’s Rosalie Carbone!

And we’ve mentioned it before, because it’s been in a bunch of the promos, but it’s great to finally have Fisk in his comics-accurate white suit! He looks great.

We’re also finally getting Sister Maggie! In the comics, of course, Maggie is Matt’s long-lost mother. In the show, we know that she works at the orphanage where Matt ended up after Jack’s death, and that she will be providing him some degree of emotional support (not to mention medical help...) following his near-death experience under Midland Circle. Their relationship is very strange, and in the comics they’ve spent a long time trying to negotiate their dynamic. They go back and forth on their degree of emotional closeness (depending on the writer), and while they will likely never have a parent/child relationship in the traditional sense, they do hold deep significance in each other’s lives. Whether that will become true in the show remains to be seen, but at the very least, Maggie will clearly act as a confidante for Matt during this difficult time.

This is one of several highly intriguing interactions between Matt and Fisk in this trailer. The surveillance is particularly interesting. It ties into the suggestion later in the trailer that Fisk will develop some control over media surveillance (in the comics he buys his own radio station during Chichester’s run). It also gives me a small amount of hope that we might get expert media manipulator Jonathan Powers (AKA the Jester) in the show, because that would be really cool. But why is Matt in a doctor’s office in a suit? The framing of this scene is great, and I really need to know what’s going on here.

Matt channeling that Stick vibe is something I never knew I needed. And this is another intriguing interaction between these two. What is the context here? For now, I love how cocky Matt sounds in this clip. Clearly, his spirit has not been broken (yet?) by this point.

At NYCC, there was some mention of a scene that would rival the hallway scene from Season 1. This may be it. I’m already pumped about this, because I love when Matt fights in civvies! If I were to guess what was going on here, I’d assume these are prisoners in Fisk’s pocket who have been instructed to take Matt out. This has serious “Devil in Cell Block D” (a story arc in which Matt is sent to prison) vibes, and that is very exciting. Whether or not the actual story draws from that arc, just a reference to the tone or basic concept would be awesome.

After two full seasons of teasing, we’re finally getting a Gladiator origin! Back in our Season 2 countdown, I wrote a post detailing Melvin Potter’s story in the comics, hoping that it would be adapted soon. The show has already laid down several key elements of his character: his vulnerability (particularly in regards to being manipulated by the people around him) and the tug-of-war between his gentle nature and his capacity for violence. In the comics, many of Melvin’s most compelling stories cover this struggle, as Matt and Betsy Beatty (Melvin’s social worker-turned-girlfriend) attempt to help him suppress the dangerous, out-of-control side of himself. As we see later in the trailer, Fisk is going to start using Melvin for his own ends again this season, thus pushing him to protect himself and Betsy by becoming the Gladiator.

Yet another oddly candid moment between Matt and Fisk. This is so uncanny that I almost wonder if it’s a hallucination. It’s also worth noting Matt’s lack of sunglasses in these scenes. In both the comics and the show, the glasses serve Matt as a type of mask, and his scenes are given an added layer of intimacy and exposure when he takes them off. Regardless of context, it’s clear that Fisk will be seeing Matt this season at his most vulnerable, with all facades and pretext removed. Which brings us to that quote...

Get excited, because it looks like we’re finally getting some big deal Daredevil Secret Identity Shenanigans(TM)! Matt having his secret identity exposed is a longtime Daredevil tradition; such a pervasive plot point that even Matt has begun joking about it.

Daredevil vol. 3 #7 by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, and Javier Rodriguez

Going all the way back to the Mike Murdock Saga in the 60s, Matt has struggled with keeping his double life hidden-- a surprisingly challenging task for a blind guy without outwardly obvious superpowers. Ben Urich figured it out through research and deduction, and while he has remained loyal in keeping Matt’s secret, a fellow reporter once nearly stole his notes and made them public. In “Born Again”, the Kingpin found out and used the information to ruin his life. Later, one of the Kingpin’s underlings sold the information to the FBI, which then made its way into the newspapers. Recently, with his secrets being used as blackmail, Matt decided to make his identity public. He has gone to extreme lengths over the years-- faking his death, lying under oath, creating various alternate personalities-- to protect his dual identity, and the thought of seeing him finally faced with this same challenge in the show is very exciting.

Melvin: “I don’t like it. I know who you work for, Felix. And the Kingpin is never up to anything good.”

Felix: “What is there not to like, Potter? You construct costumes. I am heretowith commissioning from yourself a costume. Said costume being one you are infinitely familiar with-- during such time frame as before you did renunciate your status as a prominent member of the criminal class to open this shop within which we now converse. Speaking of this most neatly custodiated establishment, we will summarily execute its premature demolition-- not to mention the removement [sic] of your most valued body parts-- should you perchance fail to render unto us a perfect duplicate of the uniform of a certain Man Without Fear.”

Daredevil vol. 1 #230 by Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli, and Christie Scheele

As we know, that’s going to be Bullseye’s costume. This is a combination of two plot points: one from “Born Again” (above) in which Fisk commissions a DD suit from Melvin to give to a convicted murderer, who he sends to kill Foggy, and one from Nocenti’s run in which Bullseye himself runs around causing chaos as Daredevil.

As indicated above (and just like he attempted in Season 1), Fisk is out to ruin Daredevil (and maaaaybe also Matt Murdock?)’s reputation, even more than Matt might manage all on his own.

This is a terrifying image, because it brings to mind Karen’s funeral in “Guardian Devil”. But a bunch of the people in the audience are smiling, so hopefully not...

...Unfortunately, they’re still screwed. Bullseye in the church is both a “Guardian Devil” reference and (even better) a movie reference!

We were shown this scene at NYCC, and it is awesome! I can’t wait for everyone to see it, so that I can talk about what makes it so great. It’s an absolutely killer fight scene that emphasizes just how intense Bullseye is as an opponent when handled well. And I’m not going to spoil this moment in particular... All I’ll say is that it’s something we’ve all been waiting for for two damn seasons, and when it happened at the panel, the whole room screamed.

*Cough* Don’t worry, that’s not Bullseye.

Also, there is not nearly enough Foggy and Karen in this trailer.

Bullseye: “Yup! I’m Daredevil now. I wonder-- it’s been easy to play the bad guy-- maybe too easy. Be kinda fun to play the hero. After all, I am Daredevil!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #290 by Ann Nocenti, Kieron Dwyer, and Steve Buccellato

As mentioned above, Bullseye will be prompted by Fisk to run around as Daredevil, ruining Matt’s reputation. Both actors have talked a little bit about Fisk’s manipulation of Dex, and the fact that this will play a large part in the latter’s turn to villainy. In the final arc of her run, Ann Nocenti penned a story in which Bullseye and Daredevil switched costumes, resulting in an intense exploration of villainy and heroism, and of their bizarre relationship as nemeses. In the show, it should be fun-- and probably a little horrifying too-- to see how this jumbling of identities affects how Matt and Dex see themselves and each other.

T-minus one week!

#Daredevil spoilers #Netflix Daredevil #Daredevil #Commentary #DD Countdown #Sorry this is so late! Busy day.

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kayvsworld · 7 years

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Could u convince be not to hate Steve 'Hypocrite' Rogers? I'm really trying not to hate him but whnever I think about anything to do with him I just get even angrier at him. MCU Steve is a repentless fuck up and I wanna know what u have to say about him? U don't seem like u hate him and u also love Tony so I figure u probably see stuff I'm not seeing and I wanna know what ;u; (mostly so I can stomach stony fics to widen my range of reading material) :p

steve rogers is a stubborn emotionally-constipated asshole. i also love him very very much. here are some post-cacw thoughts on why i still love him:

flawed characters are good, and the only reason we expect Perfection from This Particular Human Character is bc other people (and…the narrative….) put him on a pedestal. I can’t be mad at him for doing what he thought was the right thing, because as a fan of tony stark, i know that sometimes things that seem like a good idea at the time are maybe actually not always that great

issue: banking on the fact that your rich genius teammate and his team of lawyers will still get you and your friend out of a bad situation After you let him know that the friend in question murdered his parents a week before christmas and that you’ve lived in his house and looked him in the eye while Knowing Abt This for several goddamn years is uh. a v scary situation and potentially a bad plan for 19 reasons. prioritize the people you know are ride or die & cut ur losses

some people are emotionally constipated assholes who do their best and fail miserably,,,,To Cope™

ok but seriously have you ever had 6.3 billion Terrible Things happen to you in rapid succession, and then One More Thing comes along (to take away the only remaining thing in your life you can control and the only semblance of normalcy you have left) and you just. dig your heels in automatically and go “absolutely fucking not”

like i will personally bet you 5 canadian dollars that steve has been crossing his arms and glaring at the tv for months like “listen what else do they want us to do. we’re helping. we’re the good guys. they Have To See That we’re good people and we’re doing our best and we saved the world Come On if we just wait…maybe…….it will…..Be Fine without us having to do anything? maybe?”

he’s been fighting to keep People™ safe for a While and it’s Apparently still not enough and he is probably tired and bitter and frustrated. also, last time he was working for/with a third party they turned out to be nazis and while i get that that 100% isn’t the same as a UN Panel (noT THE SAME, STEVEN) at some point you have to take a quote out of context, plant urself like a stubborn asshole tree, and say “actually no fuck you please just let me do the only thing that is giving my life meaning right now in a way that doesn’t make me feel trapped and afraid for myself and my team”

peggy (steve’s last connection to his life before waking up in the future) had just died, and bucky (steve’s surprise Actual last connection to his life before waking up in the future) has been having a Hell Time and is being targeted. sometimes when you find out your best friend has been brainwashed and tortured for 70 years, your bullshit meter maxes out and you (steve rogers, “fight me” personified) want to give the finger to anyone who wants to do absolutely else to that person. yes, getting him help was an option (the other option being some kind of prison?) but also, it still would have been someone else making that choice for bucky, and at some point yelling “can you please just leave him alone” with ur fists becomes a default reaction

as someone who regularly avoids things when i should really deal with them, i 100% believe that there is a large part of steve that genuinely thought he was protecting tony. sure, he was protecting himself and bucky, too, and he admits that openly, but i can buy that steve had been sitting on the couch for months listening to tony talk about Processing His Grief Through Technology and screaming internally like “would it truly and genuinely make it easier on this guy to know that his parents were brutally murdered by my friend and i’ve known abt it for 2 years when he’s still this messed up over it already oh my god”

the problems i have with a lot of steve’s choices really just come down to the film not giving him room to put up a legit argument. a lot of it was banking on me assuming that captain america & the team were correct bc they’re cap & the team in a captain america movie? if they had given steve a speech instead of a shitty letter, i’m sure i would have initially understood his side a lot better

some people are emotionally constipated assholes who do their best and fail miserably,,,,To Cope™ Part 2: The Letter

steve is not great at feelings. steve is not great at processing and expressing his feelings in a healthy way. steve is an all-or-nothing prickly bitch (see: every film he’s been in) and taking these excellent canon facts into account, i do actually genuinely believe that this dude forced himself to sit down while in hiding to write 12 different drafts of this letter by hand in cursive and eventually ended up with the monstrosity tony received

he can’t apologize for the accords situation, because he doesn’t think he’s wrong, so he can only apologize for hurting tony. “i’m not sorry for what i did but i’m sorry that it hurt you” is a shitty thing to read and say but i guess at least,,,he,,,was honest? steven why didn’t you get a friend to proofread this letter

by saying that the avengers are more tony’s family than his, he probably thinks he’s acknowledging that tony cares about them and was doing what he thought was best. im personally for my own sanity choosing to believe that.

“i’ve never really fit in” aka “okay i definitely didn’t talk enough about where i was coming from at all for the past few…..years….and this was the only draft that included my ‘i’ve been lowkey struggling’ admission and didn’t sound vaguely pathetic or directly mention my friend who involuntarily murdered your parents”

this entire thing is actually imo a fairly decent “listen i know things are really messy right now and i hurt you and we’re both still upset, but here’s some effort on my part. if you ever need anything, here’s how you can contact me & i promise i will still drop everything to come help you with what you need” gesture considering the situation & time frame

anyway, steve for sure messed up with his approach to this and put a lot of people in danger, but as someone who is a fan of tony stark i have to take The Context into consideration and also understand that sometimes people do questionable things even while having the best intentions. it was a really rough situation and i think mr evans did a great job of showing steve emotionally shutting down and struggling for the past few films? i can see where he was coming from from an emotional standpoint, & bc of these and 130 other reach-y reasons including me just enjoying him as a person, i forgive him. it’s 2:30am this is so long oh my god

#kayvswords #L O N G P O S T #long post #holy shit i'm sorry i just have a lot of feelings abt steve???#seibir

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harderstateofmind · 4 years

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my story

this will be a long blog post

I've come to the conclusion that this blog is a loose collection of thoughts and feelings I’ve had through months, mostly based on my memories and how I experienced past events. so it lacks context. so this post is effectively my story, something that may or may not back up previous writings

I've been mostly an introvert ever since I could remember, but I soon realized that I had to break that chain. first real chance to do so was when I was 17/18.

at the end of my adolescence I had met this short, unruly haired girl that made my world spin around a bit. she had a lively character and was basically half French, a tad bit sassy, cute and, to be fair, well built. I got along well with her, and tried to care for her, but I was essentially an idiot with good intentions and terrible practice. it is funny to look back on that now and figure out that I could have done so much differently. at some points she deserved better from me. I got to a point where I was either fed up of waiting that she broke up with whoever she was seeing at the time or fed up with waiting that she’d notice my advances. I should have handled the situation differently, but I knew no better. I remember clearly a day where she was being really cool and lively with me, but I was so pissed I couldn’t get any further with her that I just looked at her with the worst face imaginable and she obviously sent me to hell. 200% my fault. I also had the chance to tell her how I felt. 400% my fault for shutting the fuck up. to my defense, she was seeing someone else then... someone who had texted me with threatening words back then, which was hilarious, as I did not represent any danger. I wouldn’t touch her while she was with him.

I still love her, but in a different way - she’s taught me that you can love a person in many, many different ways. there’s all sorts of love - the romantic one, the one you have for your family and the one for your friends are probably 3 of the “top” categories for that. sometimes loving someone is feeling really happy when that person is really happy, even if that implies the fact that said person is seeing someone else. that is the case now and she seems really happy with the guy. I hope he treats her well for many, many, many years. loving her is feeling happy for that, and that’s just the kind of love she needs from me, and honestly, from anyone else.

even if she was single... she’s departed so much from the style and the sort of girl she was when I loved her, in the romantic sense of the word, that I’m not sure if we’d match at all. she’s become those sort of influencer styled Insta bloggers with stories about clothes and make up. I’m not saying this in a negative way. she’s still really cool. it’s just different from the girl I used to hang out with. I wonder what she thinks of me, especially when I text her (b-day’s and such occasions) and when I react to her stories. she doesn’t always reply/react back which I perfectly understand.

I hanged out with her at school for a year, and then it was University. I spent about two more years thinking about her. We saw each other once or twice in that period, and spoke from time to time via text. and that was all. we eventually lost touch as time went by.

by that time I had realized I couldn’t keep thinking about her indefinitely. but I couldn’t stop doing so, thus I needed a little help. and I had decided that that “help” would be trying to find someone else.

I basically started forcing myself to hang out with girls from my course. I started texting them often, many of them, just trying to find something with anyone. I wanted to fix my life. I wanted a girlfriend.

eventually I met this girl who was really ‘chic’, for a lack of a better term. she was about my height and had long, straight dark hair which I loved. she was thin and didn’t have much going for her in terms of being well built. but she dressed well. she was stylish and I liked that. tried to speak with her, but I wasn’t really into her, I had my mind on the unruly haired French cutie. so I quickly got tired of that (and eventually found out that she already had a boyfriend all along, and nobody knew! weird). I also spoke with this funny girl from far away for a while, but wasn’t really into her either...

In all this process of throwing clay to the walls to see if it stuck in any of it, I found this girl that sat in the back of the class with her iPad and had that brown wavy hair, soft skin, beautiful eyes and dressed well. she was quiet, shy and only spoke to her friends, a few other girls from that class. and to be fair she was extremely well built to the point that it was a bit difficult for her to hide her attributes (please don’t call me sexist. I am being realist. I was not ill intentioned. I never was towards any girl. I’m effectively looking for a real connection before the physical part, I always have - those who know me in real life are well aware).

one day I sat next to her at the last week of a term, we had some small talk and she told me she’d be doing an exam for that class, because she had failed.

I spoke to her a couple more times and then classes ended. I had some friends doing that very same exam so I remembered her when they texted me saying how the exam was. so I texted her to ask how it went... and that was the start of a beautiful love story that ended tragically.

I spent half my summer texting her. for the first time I felt a woman was actually reading/listening to what I told her. I had learn that she was extremely cultured, she was a novel writer in her free time and was blessed with an INSANELY BEAUTIFUL and amazing voice. she was an absolute natural talent. she was also sweet and lovely.

i had fixed a date with her mid summer to go to the cinema. we watched the Steve Jobs movie (she’s a massive Apple fan just like me) and had dinner afterwards. it all went well. but it was all a bit too quiet during dinner. so I thought she wouldn’t want to see me again... until we met again about a month later. I took her to the beach. to my ‘special place’, in Gaia. I walked with her for a few km’s and it was ~2hours filled with good conversation that felt like 5 minutes. in the end, I took her home. I stopped the car near her place, looked at her and told her “I hope you had enjoyed this short bit”. time stood still as she looked at me without saying anything. a minute later she just said “yes, it was great” and left the car. according to her that was it. that sentence I said clicked on her mind. and she had already clicked on mine way before. so it didn’t take long before we kissed and that was it.

we dated for almost three years. I knew many things about her. her talents signing, and cooking. her struggles with anxiety. the absolutely insane, enticing and fun woman she turned in to when she was horny, which was the absolute opposite of her “normal” looks. the gamer that lived inside her. the witty personality and the way she won every argumentation against me using amazing logic. I met her family. she met mine.

that was it. the endgame. I was done. my life was there. or so I thought. I thought I’d be with her for life. she was my one and only, my world was her, everything gravitated around her. I woke up and texted her, I did the same before going to sleep. I tried to be with her, and talk with her constantly. I basically half lived at her place for a few months. I learned many things. how to be thoughtful towards woman, how to treat them the best way possible, how to be sweet. she taught me many things from the psychological and physical standpoint. I was unemployed, without any money, but as happy as I could be. I was never that happy ever.

one day there were no texts anymore. no calls. no nothing. radio silent. her family said all was fine, but it seems she didn’t want to meet. I wanted to go after her, but didn’t knew where she was. that was it. the end, without a closure. I lost myself in life. 6+ months went by in a heartbeat. I spent them sitting in the floor of my room listening to Hardstyle, the only thing that kept me connected to life (as it always was through the years). I had the help of two very special people who which were pretty much the only people I connected with during that period. people that Hardstyle had brought to me

after this time I got a job, a clean shave and I had to turn my life around. and when I say that, I meant it. an absolute 180 degree turn. I was 100% into Hardstyle then, so I turned it up to 110%. at that time I started meeting people that music had brought to me

but inside me there was pain. I did not understand why someone who was the world to me suddenly didn’t care (I learned later that she was hospitalized and had many issues, that I was not made aware of. I could have supported her. but that was in the past, and I couldn’t change it. I thought she got tired of me. which may be partially true, to be honest). so I had to clear that away, as I had cleared the French cutie from my mind. but it seemed impossible. I was 25 at that point and I thought for many months that I wouldn’t be able to love again.

but then life surprised me, and threw the third person that meant the world to me. she’s about my height, with a cute round face and the sweetest smile and deep, penetrating eyes. she looked sporty, and despite not being that well built, she does make a stand wherever she is.

she is (or at least was - I’ve not had contact with her for more than a year) a fun person in group, open to speak with anyone, but extremely closed in private, and not just with me. quoting someone that was at some point part of my journey, “it seems she just has a wall covering her from everything else”. there was always something dark and deep hidden behind those eyes that intrigued me. with time, I've learned that it was sorrow as well - she had been poorly treated by men.

funnily enough, she lives less than 10 minutes away from me by foot, but the first time I met her (because of Hardstyle) was due to the fact that we both attended an event 300+km away from our hometown. I did not bother much with her at first. after all, she’s not very catchy to the eye in what concerns physical attributes, and I had never seen her. but she was cute, so I gave it a shot without expectation, and what I saw surprised me beyond measure. she is extremely polite, thoughtful, an amazing woman and she listened to the same things I did.

we both were in a group that started getting together because of the love for the harder styles. one day we decided to eat out but had to leave early to drop one of us at the train station. due to the fact that I had given her a ride back and forth, and it was early when we returned, I had asked her if she wanted to grab a cup of coffee, to which she said yes. we spoke for ~3 hours and went home because it was really late. I had become attached to this girl there and then. not only she had the qualities above, she also loved to eat out and try new places, like myself. I was enticed by her presence and her charismatic personality. she’s witty as well, which I really appreciate

what happened next, neither I can really explain. it all went by so fast, and it is still so fresh in my head... but apparently this girl didn’t want anything to do with me or anyone. I chased her for months, more and more. I tried to show I cared for her. I was there every time she needed someone. I tried to text her, call her, make her feel important. sometimes she seemed to appreciate it. other times, not really

due to this, the group we were in basically broke up with me. they’ve managed to isolate me outside. I’ve lost a big friend of mine that I’ve not yet got back despite the major efforts

the truth is, someone in that group constantly humiliated me for attempting something with this girl. bottom line is, I’m impenetrable as fuck in what concerns these things, but they did got to me a bit in the end. I could withstand high amounts of pressure, but I eventually broke down when they disappeared. funny story is, I was the one accused of disappearing, which is untrue. but that’s a story for another post

I’ve spent another half a year thinking about this girl until I looked back and realized I just had to do what I’ve always done - skip it by doing the impossible mission of putting someone on top of her in my mind

that’s how my mind always worked - in order to shut up “noise” inside it, I had to find something that made MORE “noise”

so I did what I thought was right at the time, but I’m not sure now if it was the best... I basically looked for girls with the same interests on social media and texted pretty much all of them. out of this universe, I eventually kept texting more or less frequently 2 or 3 girls

I’ve come to the conclusion of 3 things. first is that I’m probably trying too hard. second is that in the process I’ve discovered good people in the community, both women and men. I’ve started being more open, and even nicer with people. so from something that probably wasn’t the best, I’ve managed to return with a positive outcome

third is that I shouldn’t force myself to find a lover. truth is, I still think a lot about my ex and a lot about the girl from my hometown. but instead of trying to fight those memories, I’ve started embracing them so that it doesn’t hurt. in addition to that, I know what I want. and if I cannot have what I really want, might as well not have anything

summing up to that I’ve recently found out that someone I consider highly is really interested in one of the girls I usually speak with and I thought... “screw it, he seems really into her, so I’d prefer seeing him with her than myself”

and now here we are. so what’s up? literally nothing. and honestly, that doesn’t really bother me as it did. yes, I’m still extremely worried I’ll be alone for life. I’m rather alone as is. no girlfriend and no friends that I truly connect with are close to me. but we’ll see what’s up tomorrow, and if tomorrow isn’t good, or brings no improvements, there’s always the next day

so you’ve went through all this and you ask... “so why is your story based on women?”. it’s simple. it was always my biggest priority. why? I have no clue. I always wanted to be a father from very early on, and build a family. maybe because I come from a destructured family I want so hard to build mine... I dunno. there’s got to be some kind of explanation I do not have the key for

this post is already too long and it highlights pretty much every reason why this blog exists. so I’ll leave it here, finishing up saying I’ve had my fair share of negative karma. yes, I’ve reacted negatively some times. but somehow I’ve built this huge pile of negative karma mostly for reasons that were not my fault... and I do worry what will happen when karma re-equilibrates in this world. those that did me wrong will get fucked up beyond measure and I don’t want that. I want everyone to be ok. I want a karma balance without the “momentum” that’s required for this balance to be restored. because someone will always be on the “bad end” of this movement. trust me, I’ve been on that way to many times, so I know how it’s like... and I don’t want anyone to go through that.

peace

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