Having ranted (a bit) in a few places, I’ve decided to … well, basically do a dump-post about Steve Rogers and how he’s characterized in the MCU.

First and foremost, before anyone gets their assumptions on - I *like* Steve - well, comics/cartoon Steve anyway. I had precisely zero negative associations with him going into watching the various MCU movies he’s in. And to be completely fair - The First Avenger did a *fantastic* job of portraying Steve as, well, Steve. Then Avengers hit, and I started having problems.

First of all, Steve has NEVER been the kind of man to make a snap decision about someone sight-unseen unless they’ve done something really egregious/awesome (ie, Magneto pulling one of his big kick-all-the-normal-people-off-the-planet stunts or, say, Clint saving half a city somehow.) Then, yeah, hell at least tentatively slot them into a good guy/bad guy niche because at that point, it’s … kinda obvious that at least in THIS case, that’s what they are.

Yet, in Avengers, when he’s been out of the ice for what, a couple months MAX, he’s ‘seen the footage’ re: Tony and made the snap decision that Tony is a problem. Which, dead seriously, I want to know what fucking footage he saw.

There is just no way for Steve to have made any kind of informed decision about Tony given the circumstances. Even if Steve had done nothing but study Tony since he came out of the ice, he’d have lacked *context* for like, ninety precent of the shit he’d be seeing.

Also, Steve did the thing where he was all ‘let’s just do what Fury says’ which … *dies laughing*. No. Just no. That … isn’t Steve. At the time, I chalked both issues up to Steve being fresh out of the ice, suffering from PTSD and god alone knows what else, and trying to cling to sanity and life any way he could, and that he’d later default back to something more like First Avenger Steve.

Then Winter Soldier came out and … yeah. It seemed kinda like I was going to be right. Because he was still struggling, and the whole Bucky thing was just a nuclear bomb to the face, but he called Fury on his shit to his face and was generally acting a bit more like First Avenger Steve.

And then AoU came out and … I … I just … I don’t … what THE FUCKING HELL. Literally the only explanation I can come up with for Steve’s bullshit in this movie is that Wanda was actively mind-whammying him. We know she got to the team at least short-term, and what better way to make Tony suffer than to turn his team against him? So her actively continuing to mindwhammy everyone makes sense of … well, honestly, the whole mess.

Because I have literally no other explanation for why STEVE of all people let a HYDRA minion, supposedly reformed be damned, anywhere NEAR himself or his team. Just … that shit DOES NOT COMPUTE.

And then just to make things worse, there came Civil War. *headdesks forever*. Oh. My. Fucking. God. Seriously, that movie reduced Steve’s IQ to like, 0. Maybe into the fucking negatives. And he did shit no military man with a conscience would EVER do.

YOU DO NOT EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SAVE YOUR OWN IMMINENT DEMISE LEAVE A MAN BEHIND, WHETHER THEY BE ENEMY OR ALLY.

This shit is a tenet of damn near every military on the PLANET. For most, it’s a no-brainer to at least rescue a downed ally, if they don’t believe in saving their enemies as well. Steve leaving Tony, in a disabled suit, in a HYDRA BUNKER in FUCKING SIBERIA is so egregious it boggles the fucking mind.

So yeah. Either MCU Steve is a fucking Skrull, being mindwhammied by Wanda, or … fuck, I dunno. Whatever the fuck’s going on, he does NOT act like comics/cartoon Steve hardly at all.

I was, am, and always will be Team Iron Man where Civil War is concerned.

I’m not gonna touch the political crap - not the Accords, not Ross, none of that. It’s a quagmire and if you look hard enough, pretty much anyone can find an argument for their position.

But there are two things that happen in Civil War that are *completely fucking unforgivable*.

1) Steve (and Natasha too, so Steve doesn’t get this one in the neck solo) *not telling Tony* about Bucky killing his parents at some point between CA: TWS and Civil War.

Where Steve is concerned with this, though, it severely burns my biscuits, because Steve is actively being a hypocrite on this. That whole ‘sometimes my teammates don’t tell me things’ bullshit. Natasha ... well, she’s Natasha. The Black Widow. She’s lied to, manipulated, and shat on Tony from the word go, so it’s not entirely unexpected that she’d pull this bullshit. Steve though ... yeah. NO.

2) Siberia. Just ... in a fucking nutshell, that entire goddamned thing. But most especially the part where Steve, you know, LEFT AN INJURED MAN BEHIND IN ENEMY TERRITORY WITH NO MEANS OF ESCAPE. As a military man, this is so fucking egregious a sin I don’t even fucking know where to start. You *don’t do that*. Not even to a fucking enemy. You drag said enemy’s ass to the nearest medic (clapped in irons or otherwise tied up if you can) and let your superiors deal with that shit from there, if for no other reason than for them to interrogate the guy so they can find out how he got behind your lines and what he learned while there. You especially, for god’s fucking sake, do not do that to a purported teammate/fellow soldier on the same general side as you. Just. Fucking NO. Steve goddamned motherfucking knows that. He knows better. But he fucking did it anyway and NO. I am not and never will be okay with that shit.

Brain vs Brawn

It’s been a long time since I posted anything. Figures it’d be *this*.

The MCU has bitterly, bitterly disappointed me.

There’s been ... a theme, in the MCU. a troubling one. Basically, it boils down to ‘brawn is better than brains’.

Lemme ‘splain.

First, there’s Loki. Hellaciously smart, prefers to use his brain and/or magic rather than, say, hammer someone in the face. Gets treated like trash in Asgard *per canon*. Also (though at least in his case there’s precedent for this) any attempt to use his brain/magic gets treated as him being up to no good.

Then there’s Tony Stark. Again, hellaciously smart. Gets his character utterly destroyed in multiple ways. All attempts at using his brain to solve a problem are treated as him being up to no good, ultimately fail - or in the case of the suit, are destroyed.

Steve Rogers? Gets squished into a ‘lol, punch it!’ box when it comes to problem solving. Seriously, do NOT get me started on the bullshit that was Civil War. We’ll be here all week.

Natasha Romanoff? Again, any signs of intelligence are either buried under bullshit so-called ‘romantic subplots’ or, like with Loki, treated as her being up to no good. 

And now, we have Shuri. I haven’t seen Black Panther yet, but from everything I’ve heard, it’d awesome and win. But I’m worried. Shuri is apparently smart as fuck, and given the precedents the MCU has set ... 

Lines from the Avengers that are TEN BILLION TIMES SCARIER in light of Cap 2:

During the scepter-fueled argument aboard the Helicarrier

Natasha: Are you boys that naive? SHIELD monitors potential threats

Bruce: *Captain America* is on Threat Watch?

Natasha: We all are.

*shivers*

I mean, we all knew they targeted Tony, which ... bright idea there, Tony IS dangerous as hell. Hah, yeah right. Try PEPPER is dangerous. Tony has YET to beat a bad guy solo. Anyway, we knew they targeted Tony. I've heard noise about them having Bruce in their radar too - which, seriously, that was going to end SO BADLY. Because Bruce can Hulk out insanely fast. And Steve only makes sense because he tried his hardest to wipe HYDRA out.

But what in the name of FUCK was their plan for Nat and Thor? Natasha could go off grid and disappear in a heartbeat - if HYDRA had succeeded in their plan, but Nat hadn't been in the NYC area, she could have gone to ground and they would NEVER have found her.

But even if they HAD found her. I repeat: WTF was their plan with Thor? Thor is damn near unkillable, and even if they do manage it ... as of Cap 2, THE BIFROST IS BACK. And even Odin-as-played-by-Loki wouldn't be able to turn a blind eye to Thor being killed by HYDRA. Because I can guarandamntee that Heimdall would NOT have kept his mouth shut about that shit, and half of Asgard would have beamed down to Earth and kicked ass in the name of their fallen prince.

Avengers Headcanons, Part 5

Various S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents

Just a fast reminder - I don't include anything past the Avengers in my headcanons, so Agents of SHIELD does not factor into things at all.

Hill

Hill HATES the Avengers. Given her druthers, she'd see the group disbanded. She thinks they're dangerous and unstable and it REALLY doesn't help that she's actually right, and the Avengers tend to prove it fairly frequently with their unpredictable shenanigans

Coulson

Coulson was ... misplaced ... for six months, against his wishes once he was aware enough to protest. Unfortunately, he didn't have the strength to DO anything, and Fury wasn't stupid enough to give Coulson access to any tech - Fury knew that if he did, Tony would find out about Coulson roughly ten seconds later.

Once he came back, he realized just how much he'd meant to the group. Clint and Nat, well, he'd known THEY would throw a shit-fit about him being kept from them. Steve he knew would have objected from a sense of violated morals at least. He had NOT been expecting Tony of all people to punch Fury in the face ... nor had he expected Steve to not only not scold Tony but to step up behind Tony when Fury started to punch back (more out of instinct than any real desire to punch Tony) and glower at Fury in a remarkably unsubtle threat. Nor did he expect for Thor to return briefly to Asgard, only to return with a healing stone to completely heal him (he would have been left with limited movement in his left arm and breathing difficulties otherwise).

Fury

Fury fully intended to keep Coulson 'buried' indefinitely. The Avengers, though, made sure that didn't happen simply by being themselves. Coulson had already been the only agent who could handle Clint and Natasha - most of SHIELD was terrified of the two of them, and the few who weren't hated their guts, either because 'rules and regulations' were words neither of them comprehended, or because on their best day, most SHIELD agents couldn't equal Nat or Clint on their worst, and some folks took that with very poor grace.

Stark, of course ... well, the only people who'd ever had any kind of luck keeping Tony in line were Coulson and Pepper. Stark made a game (complete with points) out of driving the agents sent to liaise with the Avengers bonkers. He gave the ones that were scared of Bruce extra hell.

Needless to say, the number of agents who could be around Bruce without going for their guns (or the nearest door) every time Bruce twitched were few and far between.

Thor drove most of the agents to drink. He made it quite plain from the start that while he would happily follow Steve's lead, he was still a Prince of Asgard and not a SHIELD minion. Anyone that made the mistake of assuming otherwise, and tried to boss him around, got one of three reactions depending on how they tried to boss Thor. If they were polite about it, it was an emergency/something only Thor could do, he'd do it. If they were polite but it wasn't an emergency or whatever, Thor pretended ignorance of the matter in question. If they were rude or presumptuous, they got the full Prince of Asgard treatment, which generally sent the offenders running with their tails firmly tucked between their legs.

All that said, Fury had sort of half expected all those problems. He hadn't thought it would be as bad as it turned out to be, but he'd expected something of the sort. The one that really got his goat was Steve.

See, Fury, like a lot of people, made the mistake of assuming that Steve was a soldier first and foremost, and that as a result he'd follow the chain of command and obey orders. Steve accidentally helped that belief along prior to the assembly of the Avengers because he was dealing with the world's worst case of fucked-up-head ever. Once the Avengers assembled, though, Steve started to find his feet again, and his normal personality started coming out again. Meaning the guy that had spent a lot of years getting his ass beat because he refused to let bullies get away with their shit. The guy who lied to the Army four times in an effort to get in, not because he wanted to kill Nazis, but because they were bullies on a global scale and needed to be stopped. The guy who went against orders to go rescue his best friend.

The guy who did what was right, whether or not those were the orers he was given.

And Steve had not been happy with Fury even before Coulson was revealed to still be alive because Fury lied, manipulated, and bullied as easy as he breathed, and Steve had zero compunctions about giving the entire organization very short shrift because of it.

Between them, the Avengers scared off five agents in the six months before Fury finally gave up and brought Coulson back.

He's been regretting the decision to hide Coulson ever since.

His office is rigged with any of a variety of pranks at least once a week, no matter what security measures he puts in place to prevent it. Every piece of tech he touches has a 50/50 chance of glitching, and his personal computer likes to wipe itself at unpredictable intervals. He finds knives buried in his pillow, office chair, and even the toilet seat in his quarters among other places. He's fairly sure the only reason he *hasn't* gotten an arrow in his ass at some point is because they're distinctive and he'd be able to put the blame on one person in particular. Tony absolutely refuses to speak to him under any circumstances, and avoids him whenever humanly possible. Natasha likes to play with a knife while eyeing him like he's a viable target. Clint, like Tony, refuses to speak to him at all and avoids him. When that's not possible, Clint resorts to monosyllables and the ten-thousand-yard sniper stare. Bruce threatens to Hulk out every time he's in the same room with Fury. Thor glares and likes to swing Mjolnir like he's thinking of hitting Fury with it. Steve has perfected a glare that succeeds in making Fury nervous, though he'd never admit it. Steve also flatly refuses to believe a single word that comes out of Fury's mouth, and double-checks with both Coulson and at least one other Avenger, depending on what Fury talks about.

Avengers Headcanons Part 4

Bruce and Hulk

As I mentioned in my submission to AvengersHeadcanons, I do not believe that Hulk is triggered by rage. He is, in fact, triggered by fear/the need to survive.

The rage comes thanks to that fucker Ross, who has chased and hunted Bruce and Hulk all over creation, and that thanks to that all Hulk knows is violence, pain, and harassment. Which would suck for anyone. Things just get complicated because Hulk is, like, twelve feet tall and FUCKING STRONG. So when he throws a fit or tries to protect himself, shit gets broken really fast.

This also explains Hulk's lack of conversational skill. Because Betty aside, name me one person who's actually talked TO Hulk without there being violence involved. Hulk just hasn't learned that much language yet - he probably doesn't even know the NAME of half the shit he sees/deals with to talk about it.

That said, now the Avengers are involved, this will change. His vocabulary and understanding of the world is going to expand in leaps and bounds, which will help reduce the temper fits when he gets forced out ... at least he'll be a bit less confused by everything around him.

Hulk and Bruce have slightly different favorites among the Avengers. Tony, obviously, they both like. Hulk, because Tony is even less afraid of him than Betty was at the beginning, and will talk to/feed/generally Hulk wrangle without a quibble. Bruce for much the same reason, plus he enjoys having someone even smarter than he is around to bounce ideas off of.

Hulk ADORES Steve because STEVE LETS HIM SMASH. Bruce alternates between enjoying Steve's company and feeling VERY self-conscious around him because of the whole serum thing.

Hulk barely realizes Clint is even on the team for a long time, due to the fact that Clint is rarely where Hulk can see him during a battle, and seldom impinges on Hulk's awareness by shooting stuff near Hulk. That said, once he does figure it out, he just generally ignores Clint except to make sure Clint doesn't try to jump off a building without a way to stop his fall.

Bruce, on the other hand, spends nearly as much time with Clint as he does with Tony, because while Bruce is nearly as fond of Tony as Hulk is, Bruce can only stand Tony's frenetic energy levels and manic tendencies for so long before he needs a break, and Clint, while he is nearly as sarcastic as Tony, is far quieter of temperament otherwise.

Natasha is one of the ones both Hulk and Bruce agree on. Hulk isn't fond of her, but he also doesn't hate her. She makes Bruce nervous, which makes Hulk twitchy, but she never deliberately threatens Bruce or Hulk, so Hulk generally ignores her. Bruce isn't fond of her because she lied to and manipulated him.

Thor, Hulk wants to pound into paste. Hulk LOATHES thunder and lightning - At first, he confuses it for weapons going off, and later, it still has that association for him, which he doesn't like. Plus, even though Hulk has expressed his displeasure with Thor and his loud noises ... Thor neither gets smashed, nor stops, and this irks Hulk to no end. He eventually ends up taking pot shots at Thor any chance he gets. Thor learns to stay airborne or otherwise out of immediate striking range until Hulk reverts to Banner at the end of a fight. Hulk does at least wait for the fight to be mostly over before he tries to take a pot shot at Thor, generally because Hulk has more acceptable targets for smashing until then.

Bruce, on the other hand, is fascinated with Thor, because hello, Alien! Different worlds, science/magic ... yeah. Most days Bruce wants to tie Thor down and interrogate him about *everything*, and has to restrain the urge. Thankfully, Thor doesn't hold Hulk's dislike of him against Bruce, and will generally at least try to answer questions when Bruce asks.

Coulson is an interesting case. His 'death' didn't really affect Bruce all that much - he barely knew who Phil was. But it affected the rest of the team a lot more strongly, and let's just say that neither Bruce nor Hulk were happy campers when Fury brought Coulson back into the Avenger fold (after the fifth attempted 'handler' ran screaming, unable to handle the shit the Avengers put them through). But after that point, Coulson's quiet competence and lack of fear of Hulk won Bruce over, and while Bruce doesn't exactly consider Coulson a friend, he does consider him to be one of the few people Bruce is willing to trust.

Hulk on the other hand? The various villains the Avengers deal with quickly discover that there are certain things that will get them a completely unrestrained Hulk-smashing. 1) Hurting Tony, 2) Hurting Steve and 3) Getting within ten miles of Coulson. Hulk will frequently abandon the fight and rush to wherever Coulson's field command base is (on the occasions Coulson is actually on-site with the Avengers, rather than up in the Helicarrier or at the Tower) if the enemy heads for it.

See, Hulk picks up on things through Bruce, and because of that Hulk is aware that Coulson is Someone Important to people he likes/tolerates. He figured out really fast that the team got ... more than a little upset ... whenever Coulson was threatened in any way, and Hulk does not like it when his people aren't happy. So he is very, violently protective of Coulson.

Obviously, Fury is someone else both Bruce and Hulk agree on - they both REALLY don't like him. Bruce has been known to bring Hulk forward enough to deepen his voice/make his eyes go green to express his displeasure with Fury.

Thoughts on Director Fury

I am not the biggest fan of Fury in the MCU. It has nothing to do with Samuel L. Jackson ... he's a terrific actor and does a convincing job with the character. I just don't like the way the character is portrayed. He comes across as almost as bad as Dumbledore ... which given my Dumbledore is the real villain of Harry Potter' rant, should tell you something. But let's look at WHY I think this. Iron Man 1 We don't see Fury at all in the movie proper. Nevertheless, we DO see his decision making process in action, primarily through Coulson trying to get a debrief from Tony. I am willing to admit that I am not 100% certain as to how such a thing would go in Real Life, but I don't think that a CIVILIAN, even one like Tony, who at that point had military contracts for weapons, would be expected to debrief to ... ohhh, let's call it the CIA. Or even the FBI. I would think that actual military people would be in charge of finding out if the poor schmuck blabbed anything to his captors. But that is the questionable part of things, and I could very easily be wrong. So let's talk about the end-of-credits stinger. Fury broke into Tony's house. He disabled Jarvis (unless Jarvis was still fucked up from Stane). He, very possibly deliberately copied the whole 'coming at an unsuspecting Tony' thing that Stane pulled very recently. And if you don't see anything wrong with any of that ... I worry about you. Now, Iron Man 2. Putting Natasha in Tony's life ... actually a good thing. He made himself a fucking HUGE target by announcing he was Iron Man, and having backup would be a damn good thing. But. Fury had to have known what the element in the arc reactor was. There were only so many possibilites that it could be, given a 'cave full of weapons'. Even if he didn't know it was palladium specifically, he HAD to have known that whatever the fuck it was, it wasn't doing good things to Tony's body. Telling Tony they were working on a palliative might have been a good idea. Also ... holding on to Howard Stark's stuff until literally the last fucking second (Tony had DAYS to live, WTF) ... unbelievably dick move. Trying to ground Tony to the wrecked Malibu house like he's a fucking toddler? Also dick move. Having Natasha STAB TONY IN THE NECK? WTF, seriously, unbelievably dick fucking move. I mean, seriously. If they'd just TOLD Tony what the fuck it was, he probably would have been all 'shoot me up'. I don't blame Natasha for this, because she's the subordinate, she had orders, and Fury was RIGHT THERE. Making disobeying his orders impossible without facing severe repercussions. Now, let's deal with Avengers, and the shit that comes to light there. 1) He does (or has an underling do) the whole breaking-and-entering thing AGAIN. This time to Steve Fucking Rogers - 'packet in your quarters' WTF. 2) Flat out lying to Steve's face about their intentions for the Tesseract, because he had to fucking KNOW that Steve wouldn't agree with SHIELD making Hydra-esque weapons. 3) Fury flat out admits, though not in so many words, that he condones/endorses torture as an interrogation technique while talking to Thor. 4) Fury asking, again not quite in so many words, if Thor would be cool with torturing Loki to get the answers they needed. 5) STILL trying to lie to the gang when Tony, Steve, and Bruce start to confront him about the Phase 2 project. 6) THE CARDS, HOLY JESUS FUCK, THE CARDS. Even if Coulson actually HAD died for reals and was going to STAY dead, this was an unbelievably fucked-up, assholish, manipulative thing to do.