The Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Avengers, etc.

[Perfect Xero]

2 hours ago, Vera said:

Te tie-in comic makes it as Hydra masquerading as S.H.I.E.L.D.

So ... Wanda and Pietro hate Tony Stark and the Avengers so much that they ... joined the organization that brought the Avengers together and whose auspices the Avengers operated under at the time?

[Cobalt Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Wynterwolf said:

Absolutely.  None of them are without (realistic) flaws and it's as much about how they handle and move forward from their mistakes that makes them heroic. 

I agree with you, but I don't think Steve's fixation on Bucky is ever really portrayed as a flaw. What I see as him losing his luggage every time Barnes even comes up in conversation is portrayed as the depth of their lifelong friendship, that Bucky is simply that important to him. It certainly isn't perceived as a flaw within a good chunk of the fandom, which is all too happy to recite chapter and verse of everything Tony does wrong and "gets away with", yet goes strangely quiet at the suggestion that maybe it might not be awesome that Cap is capable of forgetting that he's in the middle of a fight just because someone who has every reason to want to kill him says, "Oh, by the way, your pal knew who you were before we wiped his mind again."

[shireenbamfatheon]

17 hours ago, VCRTracking said:

She thought she was joining SHIELD. Hydra hadn't been outed yet.

 

She thought she was joining SHIELD by working alongside people who wanted to kill the Avengers, allies of SHIELD, after Hydra had already been outed? 

 

15 hours ago, stealinghome said:

Given the fandom’s general reaction to Loki, who is far worse than Wanda, I’m not sure I agree that fans give Wanda a pass because she’s a girl.

Fandom loves Loki because he's a "complicated villain", sure, and Hiddleston has his share of female fans, but it's still acknowledged that he's been a villain up till Ragnarok. And no one besides Thor gives him a pass in-universe. Loki didn't get Clint's spot on the team after mind controlling him. The world didn't let himjoin the Avengers. The other Avengers didn't go on to pretend he'd driven team members off the team. With Wanda and Pietro, the discourse always centers around whether they were even bad guys to begin with (some of the replies to my comment serving as examples), even though no one's arguing that Zemo was just a poor victim of the Avengers, despite his goal being the exact same as the twins. 

 

13 hours ago, stealinghome said:

Yes, AoU makes explicit that Wanda and Pietro volunteered for HYDRA’s experiments. That said, they were deeply traumatized orphaned teenagers, so probably very easy pickings for Strucker, and I doubt they fully understood what they were signing up for before HYDRA sunk their claws in.

Did AoU make it explicit that the bombs that killed their parents were sold on the black market, though? I thought the movie didn’t touch the question of whether they were black market or aboveboard one way or the other, so I was actually kind of assuming it WAS an aboveboard, legal sale.

 

I feel like you're just making my point for me when I say that there's a tendency to infantilize Wanda in fandom just because Steve keeps insisting she's a kid. I once saw someone point out that the reaction to the twins is similar to how real-world media tends to infantilize young white people when they commit crimes, and I thought it was a spot on analysis. The brown people in IM1 didn't do anything different to what Wanda and Pietro did, killing innocent people in their goal to hurt Western powers because they'd been former victims and grew up with notions of revenge, and there's zero doubt what we think of those people. But Pietro and Wanda were just traumatized kids who should get a pass for committing acts of terror in their mid-twenties. 

Tony manufactured weapons for the US military. Unless they'd been at war with Sokovia, the weapons must have been sold on the black market.

 

2 hours ago, Vera said:

She's not at his house. She's at the compound. The New Avengers facility was set up for the Avengers. Steve, Sam, Nat, Rhodey, Vision, and Wanda aren't living there for free (Wanda and Vision aside, do we know that the rest of them live there? or taking money from Tony? ). They regularly put their lives on the line. They work from there, they train there. It's a job. 

Tony's PTSD is always an excuse for his actions. But Wanda and Pietro were little kids who spend three days trapped in rubble wondering if they were going to die or not. They are then living and surviving in a war-torn country before being recruited into Hydra to serve as experiments. Tony's a 40-something billionaire who can get help a dozen times over. What were the twin's options? 

 

The compound which he runs. He's the one in charge of upgrading their armor and weapons, as we saw in AoU. They're neither financed by SHIELD or the US government, so that only leaves Tony as an option.
 

Yes, they were, and it sucks, but those little kids grew up to deliberately kill innocent civilians in their quest for vengeance, directly orphaning who knows how many kids in the process. Tony has never intentionally sought out to kill people because he wanted revenge against someone else unrelated ny manifactured  weapons for the US military.Unless they'd been at war with Sokovia, the weapons were sold on the black marketto those civilians. That's the main difference. 

I see now that people refuse to believe Wanda new Hulk would head towards Johannesburg, like the whole point of it wasn't for the Avengers to be too busy trying to stop him from hurting people to pay attention to them, but that's what happened and it's something that's never mentioned again. Maybe if that had been the turning point for the twins, I could believe it was unintentional and that they didn't mean to hurt innocent people, but they literally didn't spare a single line to Johannesburg and went on fighting alongside Ultron. The fact that it's world destruction that was the first and last straw for them says enough. I can't quote everyone, but one of the replies to my comment was that the twins were just fighting against Western powers to proteny manifactured  weapons for the US military.Unless they'd been at war with Sokovia, the weapons were sold on the black marketct their home. Sorry, but those two white people terrorized another third world country and got innocent black people killed in Johannesburg, and that doesn't even warrant a mention in CW, because that means actually addressing what Wanda did. Instead she got to join the team with no protest from any of the Avengers.

Anyway, I didn't mean to derail this thread. I finally got around to watching Ragnarok the other day and learning what happened to Bruce just reignted my hatred for Wanda. People say Zemo was successful at tearing the Avengers apart, but no one was as successful as Wanda, who was rewarded for it.

[Wynterwolf]

9 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

but I don't think Steve's fixation on Bucky is ever really portrayed as a flaw.

I agree that Steve's support for Bucky, as he realized what had happened to him, isn't portrayed as a flaw and I don't think it is, but in the instance you quoted, Steve allowed his personal feeling to interfere with his work, and that was a mistake and people died.  And I thought his conversation with Wanda about that afterwards was a good illustration of how he feels about handling those kinds of mistakes.  He understands the stakes, and he accepts the responsibility of his actions, but unlike Tony, he doesn't let the guilt over what happened rule his subsequent choices the way that Tony does.  

[VCRTracking]

38 minutes ago, shireenbamfatheon said:

I see now that people refuse to believe Wanda new Hulk would head towards Johannesburg, like the whole point of it wasn't for the Avengers to be too busy trying to stop him from hurting people to pay attention to them, but that's what happened and it's something that's never mentioned again. Maybe if that had been the turning point for the twins, I could believe it was unintentional and that they didn't mean to hurt innocent people, but they literally didn't spare a single line to Johannesburg and went on fighting alongside Ultron. The fact that it's world destruction that was the first and last straw for them says enough. I can't quote everyone, but one of the replies to my comment was that the twins were just fighting against Western powers to proteny manifactured  weapons for the US military.Unless they'd been at war with Sokovia, the weapons were sold on the black marketct their home. Sorry, but those two white people terrorized another third world country and got innocent black people killed in Johannesburg, and that doesn't even warrant a mention in CW, because that means actually addressing what Wanda did. Instead she got to join the team with no protest from any of the Avengers.

Miraculously I don't think anybody got killed. I mean they make it a point to show the building that collapsed was empty.

 

38 minutes ago, shireenbamfatheon said:

Anyway, I didn't mean to derail this thread. I finally got around to watching Ragnarok the other day and learning what happened to Bruce just reignted my hatred for Wanda. People say Zemo was successful at tearing the Avengers apart, but no one was as successful as Wanda, who was rewarded for it.

Hulk went away because of Natasha. Having Hulk on the team in general was always a bad idea. It's the reason he wasn't on the team for very long in the comics. You don't have a highly destructive and volatile that can only be calmed down by one member with a "lullabye" on your team. Banner was always uneasy about it. So the Avengers share just as much responsibility for his actions.

It probably would have been better if Wanda went to prison at the end of AOU and then Cap recruits her to be part of the team to get her sentenced shortened and that would have satisfied people. For me though having her sent to prison after her brother was killed would have been too harsh. Bringing her onto the team makes sense. Here's someone who genuinely wants to make amends and do good, that needs a nurturing environment, with a power that can be a great asset and who still needs training and guidance and unlike the Hulk can be controlled. Sorry if that doesn't sit well but it's just practical and it's not "coddling" or "babying".

Edited January 28, 2018 by VCRTracking

[Kel Varnsen]

1 hour ago, Perfect Xero said:

So ... Wanda and Pietro hate Tony Stark and the Avengers so much that they ... joined the organization that brought the Avengers together and whose auspices the Avengers operated under at the time?

Did they join SHIELD though? I assumed that Hydra had their claws in pretty much every intelligence agency their is. Bucky has a giant red star on his arm, which makes me think Russia, but he was being controlled by Hydra. So Hydra at least had probably taken over Russia's intel agencies too.

44 minutes ago, shireenbamfatheon said:

 

Tony manufactured weapons for the US military. Unless they'd been at war with Sokovia, the weapons must have been sold on the black market.

The US military bombs countries they aren't at war with. Just last year it was Syria. Plus even if Stark didn’t sell the bombs, the US military selling stuff to other countries is a thing that happens. I just figured that US bombs dropping on Sokovia was like a MCU verision of NATO during the  Yugoslavian wars.

[stealinghome]

25 minutes ago, shireenbamfatheon said:

Fandom loves Loki because he's a "complicated villain", sure, and Hiddleston has his share of female fans, but it's still acknowledged that he's been a villain up till Ragnarok. And no one besides Thor gives him a pass in-universe. Loki didn't get Clint's spot on the team after mind controlling him. The world didn't let himjoin the Avengers. The other Avengers didn't go on to pretend he'd driven team members off the team. With Wanda and Pietro, the discourse always centers around whether they were even bad guys to begin with (some of the replies to my comment serving as examples), even though no one's arguing that Zemo was just a poor victim of the Avengers, despite his goal being the exact same as the twins. 

But that’s because Loki (apparently up until Ragnarok, which I can’t comment on because I haven’t seen) didn’t switch sides and help the Avengers at great risk to his own life. Nor did Zemo. Wanda and Pietro actually switched sides, which the other two villains didn’t. Wanda and Pietro also thought they were signing on with Ultron to save the world, while Loki and Zemo never had any motivation other than self-interest and destruction (this can’t be emphasized enough); Wanda and Pietro could have stayed with Ultron and saved their own skins, which they didn’t; Wanda and Pietro also could just not have come back to help the Avengers and lived for at least a while, but they came back because it was the right thing to do. I don’t really see it as a flaw that the twins are rewarded for reforming and working to do the right thing and Zemo and Loki are punished for not reforming and actively rejecting doing the right thing; I don’t feel like that should be an objection. That’s kind of how things are supposed to work. If Loki and Zemo saw the error of their ways and then put their lives on the line to atone, we’d be more sympathetic to them too, and would work harder to understand how their backgrounds led them into villainy but also offer the hope for redemption (though as far as I can tell, Loki’s only “trauma” is that he’s not king material and deep down he knows it, and he resents Odin for seeing it too. Zemo  would be a much better comp here).

Also, it’s not like the Avengers rolled out the red carpet for the twins initially. They needed them in the fight against Ultron. Big difference. Had they not needed them, the Avengers would have been more than happy to throw the Maximoffs out a window (as is stated by several team members), and in no way did the Avengers welcome them with open arms and coo over them like babies. And then after Ultron, well, Pietro was dead so it was a moot point for him, and the team did the calculations and thought Wanda would do more good (and would, frankly, probably be less of a public threat) doing her penance with the team as opposed to who knows where being used for who knows what/in jail/dead. I do agree that AoU could have handled that transition better.

also, I’ve seen fans argue that Loki is a poor misunderstood little lamb and it’s Odin (and sometimes even Thor) who are the REAL bad guys. So we must be looking at different corners of the fandom, but at least based on what I’ve seen, I’d argue that there IS debate over whether Loki is even a villain...and his case is imo more clear-cut than Wanda’s.

25 minutes ago, shireenbamfatheon said:

I  feel like you're just making my point for me when I say that there's a tendency to infantilize Wanda in fandom just because Steve keeps insisting she's a kid.

I guess I just don’t see it as infantilizing the twins to say that in joining up with HYDRA, they made bad decisions in part because they were hugely traumatized children who had no access to anything remotely resembling therapy or overall care. I think that’s just a fact. Hugely traumatized people often make bad decisions because they’re just not in a frame of mind where they can make a good decision, and hugely traumatized children who don’t receive proper care grow up to be hugely traumatized adults. There’s a difference between explaining and excusing someone’s actions. I don’t see the twins’ backstory as an excuse for what they did. But I do think their history helps explain them, and makes it easier for me to think that they (well, Wanda, Pietro is dead) deserve a shot at redemption by working with the team to actively save lives instead of moldering away in a jail cell and losing the potential lives she could save.

and that doesn't even warrant a mention in CW, because that means actually addressing what Wanda did. I

This I actually agree with—one of the ways in that CACW was a weak movie was that it shied away from ACTUALLY exploring the complexities of superheroing. But then the whole team would’ve come to a commonsense agreement with the UN and there would be no movie.

The brown people in IM1 didn't do anything different to what Wanda and Pietro did, killing innocent people in their goal to hurt Western powers because they'd been former victims and grew up with notions of revenge, and there's zero doubt what we think of those people.

But isn’t the whole point of IM1 that *the brown people are right*? Isn’t that what Tony has to figure out? It’s been a while since I saw that movie but I thought the big humbling moment for Tony, when he really opens his eyes, is when he realizes that his weapons *are* being pointed at innocent civilians in the Middle East and that their hatred—of him, of his company, of the US—isn’t entirely misplaced. Now, obviously the kidnapping and torturing of Tony aren’t acceptable—in the same way that the Maximoffs’ actions pre-turn to the Avengers aren’t acceptable—but for Tony they suddenly become a lot more understandable, and color his actions moving forward, just as Wanda and Pietro’s realization that Ultron is the REAL danger change their actions going forward.

put differently, after Tony had that realization, had the terrorists in IM1 come to Tony and said “we’re sorry for what we did, we see it was wrong, let us help you to make a better world for all of us,” I don’t think Tony would have turned them away (though I doubt he ever would have wanted to work with them directly, which I find totally reasonable), and I think we’d have a similar reaction to them as we do the Maximoffs. Ditto for Zemo.

[Wynterwolf]

4 minutes ago, stealinghome said:

Hugely traumatized people often make bad decisions because they’re just not in a frame of mind where they can make a good decision,

What's interesting to me is that this statement can apply equally to Tony and to the twins.  

[Cobalt Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Wynterwolf said:

He understands the stakes, and he accepts the responsibility of his actions, but unlike Tony, he doesn't let the guilt over what happened rule his subsequent choices the way that Tony does.  

Except that both Natasha and Sam, who are both reasonable people as well as far more well-adjusted than Tony, have cautioned Steve about his unfailing "OMG, I need to go rescue Bucky now!" instinct. In WS, Sam tells Cap "He'd have saved you in 1945. The guy he is today? I don't think he's the kind you save. I think he's the kind you stop." And Barnes was in the process of beating him to death because Steve said, "I'm not going to fight you. You're my friend." Nice that he didn't end up dead, sure, but being willing to die rather than fight back to save yourself because you might hurt the person attacking you is not entirely sane.

And of course, in Civil War Natasha advises Steve to stay out of the attempt to capture Bucky because it would only make a bad situation worse. Which it does, but somehow that ends up being Tony's fault too, and how dare anyone think that the brainwashed killing machine would do what he'd been accused of doing. That Rogers has proven that he isn't even willing to punch Bucky hard enough when Barnes was trying to kill him makes a lie out of the idea that he could bring him in without incident. Would he have taken responsibility if somehow Bucky had escaped from his custody, or would he have brushed it aside, the way he brushes aside all previous concerns that he's able to think objectively about the issue?

Edited January 28, 2018 by Cobalt Stargazer

[Cobalt Stargazer]

2 hours ago, shireenbamfatheon said:

I feel like you're just making my point for me when I say that there's a tendency to infantilize Wanda in fandom just because Steve keeps insisting she's a kid.

Well, Steve's ninety years old. To him, they're all kids, with maybe the exception of Thor.

[Wynterwolf]

15 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

Except that both Natasha and Sam, who are both both reasonable people as well as far more well-adjusted than Tony, have cautioned Steve about his unfailing "OMG, I need to go rescue Bucky now!"

One of the things I think was hardest for the present day Avengers to grasp, for obvious reasons, was who Bucky was before he was taken.  Steve knew that intimately, but neither Sam nor Natasha trusted Steve's judgement, because they ALSO didn't know who STEVE was before.  So you had both Nat and Sam being concerned, and rightly so given what they knew, but they didn't have the full picture.  And it was entirely possible that Steve might not have been able to reach Bucky, but that was a risk (to himself) that he was willing to take, but it didn't stop him from completing his mission on the helicarrier.  

 

15 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

because it would only make a bad situation worse

But he didn't, he stopped an innocent (of that charge) man from being killed.  And his original intent was to stop Bucky, if he had gone over the edge, because he knew he had the best chance of doing it since he was intimately aware of how dangerous the Winter Soldier was.  

Edited January 28, 2018 by Wynterwolf

[stealinghome]

53 minutes ago, Wynterwolf said:

What's interesting to me is that this statement can apply equally to Tony and to the twins.  

Oh, I absolutely agree. My issue with Tony in the MCU is that post-Iron Man (which did a pretty job of dealing with his trauma), the writers keep having him go through the same cycle of "is traumatized, makes horrendously bad decisions because of it, gets his shit together, but then his trauma is set off again and he once again makes bad decisions." That's his character arc in IM2, IM3, AoU, and CACW. At this point, I'm beyond over the cycle--both because it's now incredibly tired and repetitive as a character beat and therefore boring to watch, AND because at this point I feel like Tony should recognize the warning signs of the cycle and seek help so that he doesn't make bad decisions, if not for himself then for the sake of the people around him. Poor Pepper got the brunt of it in IM2 and IM3, but most of the team has felt the repercussions of Tony making bad decisions at this point.

[Wynterwolf]

2 minutes ago, stealinghome said:

the writers keep having him go through the same cycle of "is traumatized, makes horrendously bad decisions because of it

Yeah, that's why I was really hoping for something in Spiderman: HC (and didn't get it), and it's interesting that in the IW Prelude comic Tony specifically mentions his actions in Spiderman

Spoiler

as a "distraction" to explain it.  Heh.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Wynterwolf said:

But he didn't, he stopped an innocent (of that charge) man from being killed. 

That's not entirely what happened, though. When the strike team arrived, Barnes started swinging for the fences fighting with men who weren't wearing weaponized suits, which is used as his defense during his (and Steve's) fight with Tony, that Stark's suit makes him a lethal threat. It's been established that Bucky can more than hold his own against T'Challa, Natasha, Sam, and even Steve when Rogers isn't doing his best to fight back, that in hand to hand combat he doesn't even have to be in Winter Soldier mode to defend himself, but that against the Iron Man technology he's vulnerable. Okay, fine. But he was also pretty determined not to be arrested, much less shot on sight, and even Cap ends up having to tell him to stop hitting people before he kills somebody. Then he and Steve and Sam end up arrested, and then Cap wonders why Tony's so aggravated. It makes me snort that he tells Stark he was sorry he was making things difficult after Nat tried to inject some sanity into the situation, only to be ignored.

[Wynterwolf]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

That's not entirely what happened, though

Heh.  You and I remember [Budapest] very differently.  And we've had this conversation before, so... 

[Dee]

4 hours ago, Wynterwolf said:

One of the things I think was hardest for the present day Avengers to grasp, for obvious reasons, was who Bucky was before he was taken.  Steve knew that intimately, but neither Sam nor Natasha trusted Steve's judgement, because they ALSO didn't know who STEVE was before.  So you had both Nat and Sam being concerned, and rightly so given what they knew, but they didn't have the full picture.  And it was entirely possible that Steve might not have been able to reach Bucky, but that was a risk (to himself) that he was willing to take, but it didn't stop him from completing his mission on the helicarrier. 

My problem with CA:CW is that it really underwrites Sam's POV.

Sam implicitly trusts Steve, and Steve's judgement, but he also knows, many times over by then, that Steve will forgo everything when Bucky is involved. Yet he's never given an opportunity to express anything beyond extremely mild misgivings to Steve, before immediately following Steve into battle. Which makes his eleventh hour decision to sacrifice himself, and the rest of the team, for Bucky, rather inexplicable.

Yeah, the film tries to give Sam some individual space by having him disagree with the Accords before Steve voices his own feelings & learning about the Hydra Super Soldier Program with Steve, but what should essentially be an in-depth, character based film focusing on the All Caps Trio (Steve/Sam/Bucky) is subsumed for an excess of Tony/RDJ scenes, which really belonged in their own separate film.

[Wynterwolf]

15 minutes ago, Dee said:

Yeah, the film tries to give Sam some individual space by having him disagree with the Accords before Steve voices his own feelings & learning about the Hydra Super Soldier Program with Steve, but what should essentially be an in-depth, character based film focusing on the All Caps Trio (Steve/Sam/Bucky) is subsumed for an excess of Tony/RDJ scenes, which really belonged in their own separate film.

Well, the Accords were problematic on the face of it so that made sense to me outside of anything related to how Sam felt about what Steve was doing.  And yeah, Tony was afforded a lot of screen time for what was billed as a Cap movie.  I wish CW had been an Avengers movie, and that we would have gotten a separate Cap 3 (either before or after CW), then go into IW, but... it wasn't to be.  

 

15 minutes ago, Dee said:

Which makes his eleventh hour decision to sacrifice himself, and the rest of the team, for Bucky, rather inexplicable.

That wasn't for Bucky, though, if you mean springing Steve and Bucky to go after Zemo at the airport... ?

Edited January 29, 2018 by Wynterwolf

[Dee]

I know Sam's decision wasn't for Bucky, per se, but it was a huge sacrifice that deserved way more than to be treated as an afterthought in both Tony & Bucky's psychodramas.

Sam volunteered to shoulder much of the blame & give up his entire life because of Steve (and because he felt it was the right thing to do) yet even out of all the stuff with the Raft his felt the most impersonal.

To then further relegate him to a wordless epilogue, after Steve & Bucky share several OTT scenes post-Liepzig battle, when Sam had also sacrificed, and lost, a LOT felt REALLY off to me.

[stealinghome]

Quote

but what should essentially be an in-depth, character based film focusing on the All Caps Trio (Steve/Sam/Bucky)

Don't forget Natasha!

[Perfect Xero]

12 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Did they join SHIELD though? I assumed that Hydra had their claws in pretty much every intelligence agency their is. Bucky has a giant red star on his arm, which makes me think Russia, but he was being controlled by Hydra. So Hydra at least had probably taken over Russia's intel agencies too.

I'm just going off what I quoted Vera saying, that the IW prelude comic said that the twins thought they were joining SHIELD (I've not read it myself).

Edited January 29, 2018 by Perfect Xero

[ChelseaNH]

11 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

being willing to die rather than fight back to save yourself because you might hurt the person attacking you is not entirely sane

You're not the first to decide that love is insanity, and you won't be the last.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

1 minute ago, ChelseaNH said:

You're not the first to decide that love is insanity, and you won't be the last.

Please don't give me Spike flashbacks at 2:30 in the morning,. :-)

[Bruinsfan]

22 hours ago, VCRTracking said:

Miraculously I don't think anybody got killed. I mean they make it a point to show the building that collapsed was empty.

The collapse of that under construction skyscraper may not have killed anyone directly (though they did show dust-and-debris-covered people with apparent injuries being helped away, so I'd imagine there might have been people who didn't make it to safety), but the Hulk was smashing and throwing occupied vehicles and slamming the Hulkbuster armor into occupied buildings. The chances of that resulting in no casualties is essentially zero IMHO.

[ChelseaNH]

56 minutes ago, Bruinsfan said:

the Hulk was smashing and throwing occupied vehicles and slamming the Hulkbuster armor into occupied buildings. The chances of that resulting in no casualties is essentially zero IMHO.

Previous movies have amply demonstrated that deceleration injuries aren't a thing in the MCU...

[Dandesun]

I would assume that people died in the AoU Hulk rampage because, hell, Civil War was all about the fact that, as hard as the Avengers worked to protect civilians as much as possible, collateral damage happens. But, again, that's one of the weaknesses about CA:CW from jump. Blaming the Avengers for people dying when the oversight committee (the World Security Council) was seconds away from detonating a nuclear bomb in Manhattan is absolutely fucking stupid. The World Security Council also had a member of HYDRA in it and Pierce was also HYDRA. The hellicarriers crashing onto the greater DC area was still a better option than what HYDRA had been trying to do... which, again, was to assassinate the President of the United States in that first round as well as Tony Stark.

And also, shut the fuck up General Ross! You're the reason the Abomination exists!! The very idea that that shithead was going to be 'overseeing' the Avengers was ludicrous.

I don't know about Wanda and Pietro thinking they were signing up with SHIELD. If it's part of the tie-in comic than I guess it's canon. And if that's the case, then Steve was out of the ice for all of two weeks before Fury tagged him for the Avengers. Besides there is that bit in AoU when Fury comes in with the Hellicarrier and Pietro says 'This is SHIELD?' and Steve says 'It's what SHIELD is supposed to be.' So it does stand to reason that Pietro and Wanda were suckered in. HYDRA was pretty good at that kind of thing over the years.

In regards to Steve and his bad Bucky decisions... well, okay. First, he totally BSOD'd when he saw Bucky in Winter Soldier and that's understandable. The person who meant the most to him, who he believed he watched plummet to his death, was suddenly right there in front of him, fighting him, trying to kill him and not knowing who the hell he was. I think it's understandable that a) Steve would shut down and b) want to get to Bucky asap and try to figure out what the hell happened. Sam may have been right about about the Winter Soldier being the guy you stopped rather than saved but that was way too simplistic a view to take regarding Steve and Bucky and their history together. And Steve didn't put the mission at risk to try to talk Bucky down. He tried to talk to him, he got nothing, 'please don't make me do this' *blank stare* and they fought. And Steve finished his mission and then told Maria to open fire. We've discussed Steve's death wish ad nauseum and it was pretty clear that he was happy to die trying to get through to Bucky than do anything else. HYDRA was exposed, Project Insight was stopped, for Steve, all that mattered after that was Bucky. And it ultimately worked...

His lapse fighting Crossbones... well, Steve copped to that. He acknowledged his mistake and he apologized to Wanda for it because his mistake led to the detonation of the bomb that Wanda funneled up out of the marketplace but into the building. And he went after Bucky to bring him in because he was the one who could do it. It just so happened that Bucky was framed and wasn't responsible for the big bomb that killed T'Chaka and a bunch of extras. In that regard, finding the truth was certainly better than Steve 'behaving' himself.

One last thing, I do think it's interesting that Tony's PTSD is acknowledged in the movies. IM3 is all about it. But no one notices that Steve is suffering from it too. He makes comments about everyone he knew being dead, having no plans the next week when they talk about not surviving a fight, jumps out of planes with no parachute, puts himself behind everyone else he can possibly save, is told not to do the thing and then goes and does the thing and NO ONE seems to see how fucked up he is. He was defrosted after 70 years, after he crashed a plane in the middle of World War 2, and was put back in the field two weeks later, he's still isolated and lost however long Winter Soldier is after that, the guy is in need of help and Sam is the only one who might recognize it but it never really gets addressed.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Dandesun

[HunterHunted]

11 hours ago, Perfect Xero said:

I'm just going off what I quoted Vera saying, that the IW prelude comic said that the twins thought they were joining SHIELD (I've not read it myself).

I think it was the Age of Ultron prelude comic because it wouldn't make any sense to be in an Infinity War prelude.

[Wynterwolf]

6 minutes ago, Dandesun said:

But no one notices that Steve is suffering from it too. He makes comments about everyone he knew being dead, having no plans the next week when they talk about not surviving a fight, jumps out of planes with no parachute, puts himself behind everyone else he can possibly save, is told not to do the thing and then goes and does the thing and NO ONE seems to see how fucked up he is. He was defrosted after 70 years, after he crashed a plane in the middle of World War 2, and was put back in the field two weeks later, he's still isolated and lost however long Winter Soldier is after that, the guy is in need of help and Sam is the only one who might recognize it but it never really gets addressed.

Another thing too, I've been thinking about, particularly with how Steve uses and abuses his body (and also in conjunction with his response to Sam when Sam asked him what he wanted to do and he couldn't even fathom an answer...) and I have a feeling that he doesn't really see his body as belonging to him anymore.  Like the shield, his body is basically a US government asset (parallel city to Bucky, the only difference is he did it by choice, for a purpose, and it was done TO Bucky, not by his choice... but their bodies are still both 'assets').   If he did anything other than fight, he'd be taking something that he doesn't think belongs to him out of action.  I don't know... I'm still pondering this, but I feel like this informs a lot of Steve's actions.  

[Dandesun]

The parallels between Captain America/Winter Soldier are very interesting. They are both super soldiers but one volunteered and one had it done to him against his will. Steve did everything he could to enlist and, based on his serial number, Bucky was drafted. Bucky was turned into a weapon with no memory of his life or even his name because of what HYDRA did to him and Steve became an icon more than an actual human man. "It's hard to find someone with shared life experience..." And then Bucky reappears.

I still go by the ideas that Steve never expected to reach the age of thirty before the serum and after he got it he went to war and engaged in wildly reckless plans because even though he had finally become useful, he still probably didn't expect to survive the war. There were men laying down their lives, who was he to do any different? I think one of my favorite fics also brought up the fact that Steve's father died in the first Great War so he grew up sickly and weak with a perfect, heroic, dead father and, ultimately, he wanted to be like his father... heroic and, ultimately, dead. But, at least, dead for a cause.

[Wynterwolf]

3 minutes ago, Dandesun said:

I think one of my favorite fics also brought up the fact that Steve's father died in the first Great War so he grew up sickly and weak with a perfect, heroic, dead father and, ultimately, he wanted to be like his father... heroic and, ultimately, dead. But, at least, dead for a cause.

Yeah, with a mindset like that, there is no reason to consider an 'after'.  You fight the good fight until you're used up.  But he's having a harder and harder time finding that 'good fight', so then what does he do?  But this is why I love the idea of Nomad, and Steve walking away to just be able to help people anonymously for as long as his body lets him, and it's something he and Bucky could do together to allow them both to feel... worthy.  

[scriggle]

1 hour ago, Dandesun said:

But, again, that's one of the weaknesses about CA:CW from jump.

Especially since by T. Ross's own powerpoint presentation, there were a total of 274 deaths in the incidents he showcased:

• Avengers battle in NYC = 74 casualties
• Winter Soldier Battle in D.C. = 23 casualties
• Battle in Sokovia = 177 casualties

That's pretty damn good considering what the body count would've been without the Avengers.

35 minutes ago, Dandesun said:

The parallels between Captain America/Winter Soldier are very interesting. They are both super soldiers but one volunteered and one had it done to him against his will.

The winter soldier is the exemplar of what the Accords could lead to: Enhanced individuals stripped of all autonomy, completely controlled by government and used as weapons whenever the government wants for whatever the government wants.

[Dee]

5 hours ago, Wynterwolf said:

and it's something he and Bucky could do together to allow them both to feel... worthy.  

Except Steve & Bucky are at two totally different places in their lives.

Before the Civil War debacle Bucky was content living alone while trying to piece his own current life together rather than engaging in endless war.

Steve has no dea what to do with himself other than 'doing good,' which usually means fighting.

So in that regard, Sam is a much better fit for Steve than Bucky, at least as everything currently stands imo.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Dee

[Wynterwolf]

5 minutes ago, Dee said:

Before the Civil War debacle Bucky was content living alone while trying to piece his own current life rather than engaging in endless war.

I think "content" might not accurately characterize what he was, but we don't have much canon to give us a lot of direction there yet.  He was friendly with the food vendor when he was getting his plums, but he was living like a fugitive/ghost.  And he was on high alert enough to immediately sense it when the newspaper vendor started giving him undue attention, and his apartment was strategically set up to help fend off an attack and allow him to escape.  His resigned, "It always ends in a fight" didn't really say 'content' to me.  Plus, with his words to Steve about not deserving "all this", like the rest of them, he feels a LOT of guilt for what he was made to do and I think part of him wanting to go after Zemo was him looking for a way to wipe out at least some of the red in his ledger.  I think he'd welcome the chance for more of that.

But I agree that Sam would also be someone who would fit really well with Nomad!Steve and...

Spoiler

that's exactly what he, Steve and Nat were doing in the IW Prelude comic.

[Dee]

1 hour ago, Wynterwolf said:

I think "content" might not accurately characterize what he was, but we don't have much canon to give us a lot of direction there yet.  He was friendly with the food vendor when he was getting his plums, but he was living like a fugitive/ghost.  And he was on high alert enough to immediately sense it when the newspaper vendor started giving him undue attention, and his apartment was strategically set up to help fend off an attack and allow him to escape.  His resigned, "It always ends in a fight" didn't really say 'content' to me.

  Reveal hidden contents

that's exactly what he, Steve and Nat were doing in the IW Prelude comic.

I actually think Bucky was quite content, if not comfortable.

He was on his own for the better part of two years, reconciling his past life while quietly living his current one (similar to Bruce's time in Brazil); and one of the first things he tells Steve, in Romania, is that he doesn't do 'that' (engage in terrorism) anymore.

The fact that he was living as a ghost/fugitive speaks to him simply not wanting to be bothered. If he had an overwhelming desire to do 'good,' he could've very easily done so while in exile (ala Bruce's time in India), but he chose to keep as low a profile as possible. It was far from an ideal life, but it was a suitable one, given the extenuating circumstances imo.

When Bucky tells Steve 'it always ends in a fight' it's because he accepted his current situation as a byproduct of who he used to be, and because he literally had soldiers ready to attack him, not because that was necessarily the choice he himself would make. Even when the soldiers move in to attack Bucky, he's more concerned with fleeing than fighting.

The only reason he likely doesn't disappear into the wind during the skirmish in Romania is because he's attacked by T'Challa midway through his escape.

I'm not sure Bucky really wanted to go after Zemo. He never really speaks much about how he feels about anything, beyond telling Steve that he feels undeserving of TeamCap's efforts, which Steve dismissively handwaves.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Dee

[Dandesun]

I don't know that he necessarily wanted to go after Zemo. He just knew what Zemo was after and was willing to go with Steve to shut down whatever Zemo was trying to do with the other Winter Soldiers and prove his own innocence. The latter might have been more for Steve's sake than his own. There are a lot of arguments that can be made in regards to what Bucky's motivation was for staying away so long. He wasn't going after Hydra cels that we know of. The only mention in between Cap movies was Sam's 'cold leads on our missing person's case.' I mean, after he pulled Steve out of the Potomac the first time we see him is staring at his image in the Smithsonian so we can make assumptions that he was trying to figure out who the hell he was and what had happened to him. We know he had a lot of notebooks (and pictures of Steve in said notebooks) and I know that Seb Stan had talked about his own ideas regarding what was in those notebooks. Stan also suggested that the only reason that Bucky didn't kill himself after his memories started to come back was that he didn't want to cause Steve any more pain. (*sob*)

So while he seemed... okay in Romania while he was buying plums he was very much living as quietly as possible. I don't know if I'd call him content. I'd say that as his brain healed and his memories came back he'd be anything but. Hence the 'I'm not sure I'm worth all of this, Steve...'

[Wynterwolf]

14 minutes ago, Dandesun said:

I don't know that he necessarily wanted to go after Zemo. He just knew what Zemo was after and was willing to go with Steve to shut down whatever Zemo was trying to do with the other Winter Soldiers and prove his own innocence. The latter might have been more for Steve's sake than his own.

That's probably true, he knew Steve was going after them with or without him and he wasn't going to let Steve go alone.  

That's an interesting comparison to Bruce too, and while we have no indication what Bucky was doing in those 2 years, Bruce had been able to find a way to help people while (mostly) maintaining his anonymity (with the help of Natasha/Shield).  It didn't appear that Bucky had anything that would compare with either of those things that acted as Bruce's supports, but it's interesting to ponder.  

Edited January 29, 2018 by Wynterwolf

[anna0852]

3 hours ago, Dandesun said:

The parallels between Captain America/Winter Soldier are very interesting. They are both super soldiers but one volunteered and one had it done to him against his will. Steve did everything he could to enlist and, based on his serial number, Bucky was drafted. Bucky was turned into a weapon with no memory of his life or even his name because of what HYDRA did to him and Steve became an icon more than an actual human man. "It's hard to find someone with shared life experience..." And then Bucky reappears.

I still go by the ideas that Steve never expected to reach the age of thirty before the serum and after he got it he went to war and engaged in wildly reckless plans because even though he had finally become useful, he still probably didn't expect to survive the war. There were men laying down their lives, who was he to do any different? I think one of my favorite fics also brought up the fact that Steve's father died in the first Great War so he grew up sickly and weak with a perfect, heroic, dead father and, ultimately, he wanted to be like his father... heroic and, ultimately, dead. But, at least, dead for a cause.

I haven't read the fic you are referencing but I've believed since First Avenger that Steve is on some level sucidal/death seeking and has been since before the serum. What clinched it for me was the scene in boot camp, when he threw himself on the fake grenade. There was no reason for him to do that, even before he found out it was fake! The other recruits were well clear within seconds. He wasn't shielding anyone with that move, only risking (and would have lost had the grenade been real) his own life. For all that Steve was talking about serving his country, at the first opportunity he was throwing his life away. Not to mention his inability to accept that in his pre-serum condition he would have been a liability to his unit no matter how noble his intentions. He couldn't keep up physically in boot camp. He just couldn't. It's not his fault and he certainly wasn't doing it on purpose. But on the battlefield he *has* to meet physical standards or he's going to get himself killed, probably along with many others.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

3 hours ago, Dandesun said:

One last thing, I do think it's interesting that Tony's PTSD is acknowledged in the movies. IM3 is all about it. But no one notices that Steve is suffering from it too. He makes comments about everyone he knew being dead, having no plans the next week when they talk about not surviving a fight, jumps out of planes with no parachute, puts himself behind everyone else he can possibly save, is told not to do the thing and then goes and does the thing and NO ONE seems to see how fucked up he is. He was defrosted after 70 years, after he crashed a plane in the middle of World War 2, and was put back in the field two weeks later, he's still isolated and lost however long Winter Soldier is after that, the guy is in need of help and Sam is the only one who might recognize it but it never really gets addressed.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the other characters not realizing that Steve is as screwed up as Tony is is the flip side of "Tony is a fuck up who can't get out of his own way while Steve lectures everybody on how they're supposed to act and ends up being right." Yes, Steve is deeply troubled and for good reason, but he also acts outwardly not only normal but as if he's completely okay with his life the way it is in the present. Only someone who's desperate to prove that he's "just fine" with things as they are would jump out of an airplane without a parachute rather than discuss his potential dating possibilities under the pretense that he's too busy for a social life.

[Dandesun]

27 minutes ago, anna0852 said:

I haven't read the fic you are referencing but I've believed since First Avenger that Steve is on some level sucidal/death seeking and has been since before the serum. What clinched it for me was the scene in boot camp, when he threw himself on the fake grenade. There was no reason for him to do that, even before he found out it was fake! 

It's the 4 Minute Window series on AO3. It's tremendous. But you're right... Steve was all too willing to fling himself into danger. Hell, those first fifteen minutes of The First Avenger are all about Steve stepping up and getting knocked down for it. The jumping on the grenade was stupid but it was there to prove to Phillips that Steve had guts and that Erskine was right. Plus, we also got his Mulan moment when he figured out how to get the flag which showed he was smarter than the average bear. He got all of those 4Fs for a reason but he kept trying. (Steve, don't do the thing. I'M DOING THE THING!!) You read the list of ailments on his form in that first scene of him and it's a wonder he can even get out of bed. He's probably in constant chronic pain so suddenly he gets this big, strong, healthy body... can you imagine the mental switch that has to take place? I have shitty knees. I mean, unbelievably crap knees and I'm at the age now where they just hurt on the regular and if I ever got them fixed (seriously, it would take Tony Stark bionic knees to fix them) I have no idea how I'd mentally handle that. I am constantly prepared to dislocate my knee doing the most mundane thing, crossing the street, hell, I've have my knee go out on me lying in bed. It sucks to but suddenly switch from 'you have to be careful of every step you take' to 'you can do whatever you want' is absolutely alien to me. Steve wanted to help and he got the body to do it but it says a lot about his mindset that the absolute happiest we see him is on the front lines of the biggest war in history.

And then his heroic sacrifice? Didn't take. So now he's in a world without his best friend, without his best girl, without anyone he knew and possibly wondering if he can die.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Dandesun

[tennisgurl]

Really, its just so obvious that Tony is a mess in the head, because his screw ups and meltdowns are so big and public. He gets drunk at parties and plays with the Iron Man suite, he creates killer death bots that threaten humanity, he has press conferences about his parent issues, his problems are very much out in the open.  Of course, thats just how Tony is about most things (the guy is the definition of Extra), and thats why he gets most of the help for his issues, and the blame for his screw ups. Steve, by nature, is more quite and introspective, and tends to internalize his problems more. He can be a great leader, but he tends to prefer getting to the point, instead of showmanship. Even when he was a publicity stunt, he never really took to it, and only came into his own when he was actually out in the field. He just doesn't make a "thing" of himself when he doesn't have to. Part of that is probably just his personality, and a part of that is probably him being from the 1940s, where men were supposed to just suck it up and be strong. While he has made some progress in opening up, he is still very much a "I am totally fine dont worry about me" kind of guy, who plays things closer to the vest. It means that people are not as aware of his issues, but also means that he doesn't have people calling him out for his mistakes as often. 

Of course, another factor behind all that is that he is an actual Living Legend,and people feel weird telling him that he messed up, or that he is clearly in a bad way and needs some help. Its probably weird to tell Captain America himself that he needs to see a therapist because he might have a death wish or at least serious depression. Even his closest friends like Sam have a bit of that Captain America block, even if it isn't on purpose. Tony, on the other hand, isn't any kind of Legend. He is a hero, but one who is very much in the public eye, so there isn't that feeling of being untouchable to him. 

[Dandesun]

3 hours ago, scriggle said:

Especially since by T. Ross's own powerpoint presentation, there were a total of 274 deaths in the incidents he showcased:

• Avengers battle in NYC = 74 casualties
• Winter Soldier Battle in D.C. = 23 casualties
• Battle in Sokovia = 177 casualties

That's pretty damn good considering what the body count would've been without the Avengers.

The winter soldier is the exemplar of what the Accords could lead to: Enhanced individuals stripped of all autonomy, completely controlled by government and used as weapons whenever the government wants for whatever the government wants.

274 deaths? That's it?! In three separate occasions?! SERIOUSLY?

How did I not know that before?

Go fuck yourself, General Ross! You too, Tony! Or get some therapy and deal with your shit. But a million billion fuck yous at Ross. 

[frenchtoast]

FWIW, I got the feeling watching CA: CW that Bucky was avoiding people as much as possible and laying real low so as to avoid being triggered again. He says to Steve something along the lines of, "All it took were the godamned words..." And he chose to freeze himself at the end so he wouldn't be a danger or found. He did not want to get on folks radar who might try to use him. But yeah, Bucky's got issues. He and Jessica Jones could have a good drinking session, that's for sure.

[Wynterwolf]

3 minutes ago, frenchtoast said:

was avoiding people as much as possible and laying real low so as to avoid being triggered again.

Which is another interesting parallel with Bruce I hadn't really considered before.  Hmmm.

[Wynterwolf]

1 hour ago, Dandesun said:

And then his heroic sacrifice? Didn't take. So now he's in a world without his best friend, without his best girl, without anyone he knew and possibly wondering if he can die.

Yeah, he sincerely believed he had fulfilled his purpose, and fulfilled what he had promised to do when he agreed to the serum but then... "oh no, you're not done yet."  And I think Sam is really the only one that gets it from that perspective.  

[tennisgurl]

31 minutes ago, Dandesun said:

Go fuck yourself, General Ross!

General Ross is an absolute garbage person and the whole gang should have told the government to shove it the second they said he was heading the Accords. To me, the whole Accords lost credibility when that asshole was put in charge. This is a guy who created a super villain due to his own stupidity and obstructionism, and referred to poor Bruce as "US property" on more than one occasion. I can 100% see what would have happened if Ross has been granted control over the Avengers. They would have been his personal army who were treated more as weapons than people (he referred to Bruce and Thor as walking WMDs), and he would have eventually started going after other enhanced humans, vigilantes, aliens, magic users, and anyone else who could be used and abused, and eventually stripped of their own rights and opinions. Then, its the Winter Soldier all over again. 

I dont think the Accords are an awful idea in and of themselves, and I think Tony (and probably other people involved) had good intentions, but with a guy like Ross in charge? It would have been a total debacle at best, a horrific violation of person hood at worst. I think Steve saw that, and its why he said no right away. 

[Dandesun]

Yeah, I would have liked to have seen General Ross attempt to treat Thor like an object. Especially after seeing Ragnarok. Yeah, Ross, try telling the dude with lighting coming out of his eyes that he's under your control and has to do what you say. That'll go over well.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

18 minutes ago, Wynterwolf said:

Yeah, he sincerely believed he had fulfilled his purpose, and fulfilled what he had promised to do when he agreed to the serum but then... "oh no, you're not done yet."  And I think Sam is really the only one that gets it from that perspective.  

He did fulfill his purpose in that he became healthy and strong instantaneously, but Dr. Erskine's murder meant that the serum couldn't be recreated except through probably more years of study and research. "I was promised an army. What I got was you, and you are not enough." Then he was reduced to being the equivalent of a circus attraction instead of being allowed to fight, and had Barnes and the other Commandos not been captured he might never have seen actual combat.

[Wynterwolf]

1 minute ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

meant that the serum couldn't be recreated except through probably more years of study and research.

December 16, 1991.

Though I was talking about after he had put the Valkyrie down in the ice, he thought he'd fulfilled his obligation, but then 70 years later... 

[wingster55]

On 1/28/2018 at 1:19 PM, VCRTracking said:

Having Hulk on the team in general was always a bad idea.

It's odd, because in the first Avengers, didn't Banner say that he could control the Hulk because he was always angry? When and why did that change?

[Dee]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

Of course, another factor behind all that is that he is an actual Living Legend,and people feel weird telling him that he messed up, or that he is clearly in a bad way and needs some help. Its probably weird to tell Captain America himself that he needs to see a therapist because he might have a death wish or at least serious depression. Even his closest friends like Sam have a bit of that Captain America block, even if it isn't on purpose. Tony, on the other hand, isn't any kind of Legend. He is a hero, but one who is very much in the public eye, so there isn't that feeling of being untouchable to him. 

Steve's modern day best friends, Sam & Nat, regularly confront Steve about his issues. The problem is that because Steve believes in 'doing the right thing' 24/7, there's rarely any downtime for him, or them, to do anything about said issues. Which is why they both heavily encourage him to reacclimate to the modern world instead of being stuck in a cycle of perpetual war.

And Steve does somewhat heed their advice, but it's difficult to reconcile their particular line of work with a 'normal' life (just ask Clint). It isn't until Steve meets Sharon, that he actually finds someone that is compatible with both sides of his life.

Ideally, that description also fits Sam, Bucky and Nat (way more than Sharon), but the studio/screenwriters were never gonna greenlight two of those ships (in any formation), and the third they were happy to leave as a pseudo-sibling bond.

Whereas Tony, by definition and nature, is a coddled trust fund baby. Playboy is essentially his job description. So his best friends (Rhodey/Pepper/Happy) indulge his excesses as a byproduct of their love for him. Whereas Steve's best friends are united by dogged determination & an incessant need to 'do the right thing,' Tony's best friends are united by unconditional patience & infinite forgiveness.

[Lugal]

7 hours ago, Dandesun said:

And also, shut the fuck up General Ross! You're the reason the Abomination exists!! The very idea that that shithead was going to be 'overseeing' the Avengers was ludicrous.

Talk about failing upwards.