Marvel. Bucky. Never Over The Grimy Racoon Look.

things i never expected to learn through a tedtalk but now am glad to know:

the founder of Sirius XM radio is a sapphic trans woman and is currently trying to preserve her wife’s consciousness in a digital file so her wife can be immortal in the body of a robot.

black panther au where everything is the same but instead of martin freeman it’s alec hardison pretending to be cia for a con

there aren't enough fics about steve reconnecting with his irish heritage either post-defrosting or post-endgame, tracking down his family (either in ireland or elsewhere) and exploring his roots and culture as a second-generation irish immigrant and what that meant for his values and politics growing up, and what it means for his views in the modern world now that the way irish americans are viewed has changed from since he was a kid and he and his mother were looked at like they were dirty and diseased just because they were irish

and, y'know, the events that took place in ireland in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s - steve would have learned about after he came out of the ice, and would that change his outlook or feelings about his heritage at all?

and what about finding his family? he was an only child, but what about aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins who have since had their own children and their children have had their children too, did he ever think about looking for them? does he go to ireland to reunite with them and explore his home country the way his parents surely would have wanted for him if things hadn't turned out the way they had?

there's a lot of fics about bucky reconnecting with being jewish and what that means for him post-winter soldier rescuing and reintegrating back into society, but not much focused on steve's relationship with his cultural and ethnic background and i think that's a loss tbh

sometimes writing feels less like creating and more like trying to unravel a very stubborn knot of vibes.

A small list of random ass sites I’ve found useful when writing:

Fragrantica: perfume enthusiast site that has a long list of scents. v helpful when you’re writing your guilty pleasure abo fics

Just One Cookbook: recipe site that centers on Japanese cuisine. Lots of different recipes to browse, plenty of inspiration so you’re not just “ramen and sushi” 

This comparing heights page: gives you a visual on height differences between characters

A page on the colors of bruises+healing stages: well just that. there you go. describe your bruises properly

McCormick Science Institute: yes this is a real thing. the site shows off research on spices and gives the history on them. be historically accurate or just indulge in mindless fascination. boost your restaurant au with it

A Glossary of Astronomy Terms: to pepper in that sweet terminology for your astrophysics major college au needs

tfatws outfit Bucky + Alpine

So I've finally finished Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and not only did I enjoy the last three seasons way more than I thought I would, but I was not prepared for how delightfully unhinged the show became. Some of my favourite plot points included:

The female protagonist has a long-lost sister with superpowers who becomes the key to the entire crew returning to their original timeline through the Quantum Realm. Said long-lost sister is not introduced or even hinted at until the last five episodes of the entire show.

Half of one season takes place in a dystopian 2091 where the young twenty-something scientist couple not only meet their grandson who is the same age as them but said grandson returns to the present, becomes a series regular, and calls them "Nana" and "Bobo" in some Once Upon A Time worthy family tree shenanigans. Oh he also gets stuck in the 80s and claims he wrote Don't You (Forget About Me)

Phil Coulson dies in Season 5 because in order to stop an evil AI -turned-human-turned evil because she got dumped by a small Scottish man he has to become Ghostrider. The entire season builds up to this in a way that makes it feel very much like the actor is stepping away from the show and retiring the character, only for them to cast Clarke Gregg as an evil deity from another dimension in Season 6 and as a Life Model Decoy that may as well just be Phil Coulson in Season 7

Patton Oswalt plays multiple identical characters who all work for SHIELD. This is never fully explained.

“Mata Hari Calamari”

The final season is a decade-hopping gimmick with matching genre episodes that beat WandaVision to the punch

One character is a robot anthropologist who just wants to be best friends with the same small Scottish man. He has canonically been trained to perform in alien brothels and eventually becomes a bartender in the Crazy Canoe in 1955. He is one of the absolute best parts of the show.

One plot line follows said same Scottish Man and robot anthropologist as they get stranded in outer space with their only way home being to gamble in an alien casino while their friends attempt to rescue them but accidentally take LSD instead

"I found that bluffing was much easier if you kill someone and take their skin."

Area 51 is canonically a SHIELD base

the thing about “angry chihuahua” pre-serum steve is that on a vacuum, I get why people like it? like it’s cute, smol steve being angry and sassy, it’s funny, not everything in fandom has to be 100% serious and angst-driven etc etc, i understand that

but at the same time… it bothers me so much because it’s just. so. condescending. like… “awww look at this poor disabled man thinking he can stand up to people, haha, so adorable, thank god he has bucky around to keep him alive!111!”. 

(i don’t want to get too much into how this devalues the stucky dynamic bc i don’t even go here, but bucky! respected! pre-serum steve! immensely!! he didn’t see him as a reckless idiot who needed him to survive! it’s like people take the “the little guy from brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight” quote and only remember this part and forget the rest, the most important part, “I’M FOLLOWING HIM”! bucky knows pre-serum steve was way more of a hero than some dude dressed as the american flag shooting a fake gun at movies!!! that’s the POINT!!)

it’s just so… dismissive of steve’s bravery and cleverness. people take ONE scene in the first avenger where steve gets into a fight he’s clearly not going to win, ignoring that a) the framing of the moment when the guy stands up and steve’s face makes very clear that he KNOWS he’s in trouble, he has no delusions about ACTUALLY being able to win the fight; b) the dude is being an asshole and disrespecting others in the theater and steve! gets! him! to stop!!!! The guy LEAVES to beat him up in the alley, thus accomplishing the main point of Steve’s intervention, aka to let the grieving lady watch the tribute to the troops in peace. 

and that’s like… THE ONLY TIME IN THE MOVIE where pre-serum steve does something like this. right on the first enlistment scene, some dude is clearly trying to tease him with the “makes you think twice about enlisting, huh?” talk, and steve just goes “nope” and IGNORES THE GUY AND DOESN’T TAKE THE BAIT. because it doesn’t matter! it’s just some dumbass who isn’t threatening anyone! steve doesn’t need to get into a fight because someone is underestimating him - if he did, he’d fight with everyone all the time, because guess what, as a disabled man in the 40s, steve is barely considered an actual man. there’s a LEGITIMATE scientific view in this time period that argues that people like him should be murdered at birth. he KNOWS how he’s perceived. he’s aware. when he’s talking to the doctor, he’s not brattish - he asks give me a chance and is there anything you can do?. his tone in the latter line specifically is TIRED, not defiant. 

and then!! the One Scene apparently everyone who thinks pre-serum steve was a moron with a macho complex didn’t watch: the training montage! where that hodge guy deliberately fucks with the barbed wire just to get in steve’s way and STEVE! DOESN’T! REACT!!!!!!!! he just grits his teeth and tries to keep going and the officer has to be like “rogers take this rifle out of the mud”. there’s no indication that steve EVER tried to fight this guy in the movie, despite the fact that he’s constantly shown laughing/bullying steve during the training. why? because it’d be a pointless fight to pick. it’d be a fight picked out of nothing but pride and steve can’t afford to do that. he stands up for what’s right, not for everything and anything that pisses him off.

it frustrates me that people don’t seem to get this because it’s like… the very core of steve’s character. he’s not a wannabe bully. he’s kind and polite to others (meeting peggy, talking to dr. eskrine. eskrine isn’t just impressed by the “i don’t like bullies” moment, he’s clearly also very pleased by the fact steve doesn’t show prejudice against him for being german). the only moment where he adopts a “fight me” posture that gets him in actual trouble, it’s to protect and help others who can’t stand up for themselves. i get that in theory the idea of smol bean steve fighting everything and everyone might sound fun, but in reality, a person who craves violence and sees it as a prime way to achieve their goals is the opposite of who steve rogers is meant to be.

(and that’s not even getting into when people write POST-serum steve with this “fight me” attitude which is like… how… do you think… that’d be ok… how do you not see a difference between a ninety-pound disabled man and a literal supersoldier trying to intimidate people physically… which part of “a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion” you didn’t understand…)

so imo, this characterization weakens not only steve’s character, but his arc, and even the story of tfa as a whole? the serum works on steve because he’s already a noble, brave, good man. if he was an asshole who bites off people’s hand for looking at him wrong, none of this would make sense. by this logic, eskrine might have as well picked hodge.

See, people who kidnapped Spider-man typically ran up against a problem, eventually- how do you keep him down?

The thing that far too many people know about Spider-man is that he heals fast. Like, really fast. Videos of him taking hits that kill a normal person are everywhere on the internet. Even when he gets hurt, hurt bad, he’s back in the suit within a week. He can take a hit and he can hit back. His well-documented super-strength quickly rends most restraints to shattered pieces. So how do you keep him off his game? How do you keep him?

There’s one thing that everyone needs- mutant, enhanced, basic bitch human- and that’s sleep.