WHO SAID IT WAS OK TO POST SOMETHING THIS HORRIBLE!??!??
hahah wow brb straddling a fencepost
My first reaction was ‘Nice thought but there’s no way, Coulson is much younger than…’ and then I stopped mid-thought.
Because you know what.
You know what.
After Steve, the US government had to keep trying to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum.
And who
andwho
would be the FIRST DAMN PERSON IN LINE to volunteer?
They told us it never worked again. And that was kind of true. They never again recreated the super-strength or the gleaming pecs. But other things, they got right. They got the vastly delayed aging. And the kind of reflexes that make a man able to take out two armed thugs with a bag of flour. And the talent for leading through example. And they got the most important part, Erskine’s favorite part: the magnification of moral fiber, taking the loyalty and selflessness of a loyal and selfless man and making him into something spectacular.
god, tony stark and his COMPLICATED BEHAVIORAL REWARDS SYSTEM, OH MAN
okay, i promise that one day i will learn to control the tony feelings, but the thing is, i have been trying to put my finger on this one for such a looooong time. because, see, tony stark is weird about stuff, isn’t he? and i don’t mean like, the existential version of stuff, i don’t mean “stuff” in the most general sense (although, let’s be honest, TONY STARK: WEIRD ABOUT STUFF is true in pretty much every context)—i am talking PHYSICAL stuff, INANIMATE stuff, i am talking stuff that a person can possess.i am talking things. i am talking tony in IM springing a lavish personal plane party on rhodey, clearly both because he felt like it and to prove that he could; i am talking tony in IM2 giving pepper the company out of the blue, clearly both because he knew she was the best choice for CEO (UGH PEPPER I LOVE YOU) and because he genuinelywanted her to have it. i am talking tony at the middle of the avengers offering to fly coulson to portland, i am talking tony at the end of the avengers with plans pulled up to build everyone on the team their own FLOOR—you see what i am saying here. tony stark expresses a considerable amount of emotion through gestures like this, and that in and of itself shouldn’t be enough to give me pause. i mean, canonically extraordinarily wealthy emotionally repressed genius expresses affection with cash? it’s not a stretch. fine. done.
ONLY THE THING IS, it’s…really so much more complicated than that, because there is also the shit in the above gifs, and there’s the thing he has about being handed things (seen in IM2 and in the avengers), and it really came together for me during that scene with bruce and the blueberries. because the thing is that quirks, no matter how random they are, COME from somewhere—even if you don’t remember the impetus of an unusual behavior, you did, at some point, learn to do it/find comfort in it/become dependent on it/get so used to it that you hardly notice it. that’s just how quirks work. and if you’re tony stark, and you put a valuation on everything because that’s been literally your entire life experience, there’s a certain amount of implied cost/benefit analysis that has to go into the way you look at emotional interactions, right?
so look at what this shit says about the way tony looks at himself. people who tony doesn’t completely, 100% trust emotionally (this is why pepper is the exception) can’t even hand him things, because on some level tony associates the exchange of physical goods with the exchange of emotional response, and he won’t be capable of giving it; people who have showed tony affection or friendship deserve these lavish, over-the-top gifts, because putting up with tony is such a struggle. and tony himself? well, for surviving a kidnapping and the insertion of car battery, and then an arc reactor, in his chest, he has earned an american cheeseburger. for fighting off an invading army and making the sacrifice move neither he nor steve believed he would, he has earned himself some shawarma. because that is totally what he’s doing, when you really think about it—tony stark doles out physical rewards for behavior, without even noticing it, and the best he ever honestly thinks he deserves is something delicious when the carnage is over.
and this is what makes that blueberry scene with bruce (shut up i know calling it the blueberry scene is ridiculous, I KNOW IT IS IN FACT A SCENE ABOUT THE AVENGERS NOT TRUSTING NICK FURY, i can’t help that i look at the world through stark-tinted glasses) so interesting, in that it’s that behavior-reward system on a much smaller scale. first bruce is offered the blueberries, clearly as a reward for making a point that supported tony’s argument; then steve, clearly as a TEST, is offered those same blueberries along with tony’s admitting to hacking the SHIELD system. and it’s when steve doesn’t even acknowledge the offer that tony goes from “hey look I’m trying to explain this to you and get you onboard” to “who’s in a spangly outfit and not of use?” because he’s got all these emotional cues tangled up with all these physical ones and always has, and because on some level this is just how he does relating to human beings, because stuff is so much easier and everything always has a price and just, augh, tony.
Thisssss.
Also, notice that every time we see Tony with food in the MCU there is some emotional tie to it. He rewards himself with food (cheeseburger, donuts, shawarma) after traumatic experiences; he brings Pepper strawberries when he attempts to confess his feelings; he offers Bruce and Steve blueberries when courting their allegiance/friendship. Also I think it’s HUGELY telling that he invites all the Avengers along for shawarma instead of wandering off to get it alone. Tony’s big on the grand gestures, sure, but when he’s trying to make a big emotional play? he does it with food.
Logistically because each of the Avengers will go off and have their own solo movies again they all need to be separated before they can be brought back together, so it makes sense to split the band up.
But Thor and Loki fly off to Asgard together.
Clint and Natasha wander off to undoubtedly fuck somebody’s shit up on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s behalf, together.
Tony, and his new science bro Bruce get in a convertible and drive off, together.
I’ve had this conversation at least a dozen times now with various people and apparently it’s not enough because I am STILL HAVING STEVEFEELS.
I mean, I knew going into this movie that Steve was going to be in a bad place for all the above reasons. I just thought there’d be more of a turnaround by the end of the film because he’d have his shiny new team, or at least his new friend and future bestest friend ever Tony. But noooo. Instead we get a nice little “sorry I acted like a bag of dicks the first time we met but we can totally be bros now” handshake and then Tony drives off with his new science BFF Bruce. I gather from Steve’s expression as he’s cruising off at the end that he’s a little more at peace with his situation, but there’s still a ton of pain for him to deal with, and the fact remains that he is alone.
Because none of them care about Steve Rogers, they all just care about Captain America and what he can do (or can’t do) to save the world.
ffffff can I just, THIS. Because it’s this awful cycle in the movie, of everyone seeing the legend instead of the man. The only one who doesn’t bother to be starstruck is Tony, who openly mocks him (which I honestly think is beneficial to their friendship later on because Steve just wants to be treated like anyone else, but obviously creates a number of problems in the film). The one time we see Steve’s personality poke out (“I understood that reference”) he’s met with silence and eyerolls, and frankly it’s no wonder this is the only time we see him not act like a soldier around the team; Captain America is a leader of men, but Steve Rogers? is a dork.
Being Captain America is frankly just the easier option, not just because he’s being chucked back into battle, but because SHIELD is the most familiar thing in the future. There’s structure and order and rank. He’s literally just come from a war, and now he’s being given orders and an enemy to fight. He’s given something to focus on, which he desperately needs.
There’s that scene where he’s talking to Tony and he asks “Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?” and Tony gets pissy about how they’re not soldiers, and doesn’t even seem to register the fact that Steve has lost men.
I have a lot - a lot - of feelings about this exchange. Because yeah, Tony’s got his own truckload of shit going on here (“we are NOT soldiers” is probably my favourite line in the entire movie) and he’s trying (badly) to deal with a kind of loss he’s never had to face and not at all registering the implications of what Steve’s saying. Steve’s choice of language is really telling - he’s talking about soldiers and laying down on wires to a guy he knows isn’t a soldier, but it’s the only thing he has. And he’s kind of screwing himself over with this, because he’s not doing anything to dispel the notion that he’s just a stuffy out of touch soldier, that he’s living legend Captain America. Not just to Tony, but to everyone.
It’s no wonder he’s on his own at the end of the film. And I know it’s necessary, I know he needs to be in order to move on to Cap 2, but it gets under my skin, the way he’s the only one who isn’t afforded the opportunity to really heal, to end the film in a better place. Steve is a guy who needs people, and he has no one.
Misters Stark and Banner are reminded that although we have allowed them personal use of one of the helicarrier labs, this does not make it their “Super Secret Fort of Science.” It is not improved by pillow structures. Your IQ does not have to be over 140 points to enter. And it has no secret password.
An onslaught of melancholia prompts Steve to hoist himself on a long vacation to a quiet town in Maine for much needed peace and quiet. There he meets a psychotic hatmaker involved in a bitter custody battle with his next door neighbors. The hatmaker finds Steve hilarious and jests at his expense at the local bar, while Steve sinks further into his own brand of insanity after realizing that the Mad Hatter is none other than his Bucky reborn into a loveless world.
I feeeel like villain portrayed giant looms over heroes is a common type of comic book cover but I don’t believe I’ve seen it in Avengers in a hot minute.
Anyway.
Last time on West Coast Avengers: some dick called Master Pandemonium attacked a woman called Firebird, who crashed down near West Coast Avengers Compound. Then he attacked the Thing while the Thing was hanging out with Wonder Man, which made it a West Coast Avengers problem.
Also, Tigra has been struggling with the disunity between her human and cat souls so went to cat world to talk to the cat king who agreed to help her if she’d do a murder on Master Pandemonium. So its doubly a West Coast Avengers problem but Tigra hasn’t told the others because of that ‘heroes don’t kill’ thing.
But last last time on West Coast Avengers, Firebird got tired of waiting around for her invitation to the West Coast Avengers and inspired by god, decided to reunite her old team, the Rangers.
Except they were all possessed by a demon who was pretending to be Shooting Star. Or rather, the demon claimed that she was always Shooting Star and Shooting Star has never not been a demon. The demon also had a lead on Master Pandemonium and Master P is on the cover so I’d bet the Avengers (West Coast) have convinced Shooting Star the demon to share the deets.
Or maybe Shooting Star completely escaped between issues.
