Steve Rogers is a soldier, an artist, a not-so-closet foodie, a friend, the heart of the Avengers, and a guy whose past keeps creeping into his present and dictating his future. This results in a series of stories that, while canon compliant up to and including The Avengers, deviate into comics-influenced territory, particularly Ed Brubaker's work on Captain America and Winter Soldier pretty quickly. As a result, it's predominantly intricate Spy Fiction.
While the perspective shifts from one Avenger to another depending on the story, the predominant perspective is Steve's, focused around Steve's relationships with Natasha and Tony in particular, and later Natasha's relationship with her past and Bucky Barnes a.k.a. the Winter Soldier himself. There is also a fair bit of lovingly described Food Porn.
The series can be found here
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Tropes
- Adaptational Badass: The villains are considerably more dangerous.
- HYDRA are considerably more formidable than, arguably, even in the MCU, committing simultaneous terror attacks in New York, London, and Tokyo, controlling surprising amounts of territory in failed states (or even plain unstable areas like Detroit) and still managing to get on the ballot, even elected as part of a coalition government in Belgium (owing to the unusual nature of Belgian politics). Later, under Lukin's command, they very nearly succeed in taking over Latveria and Russia, while openly raiding Bolivia's gold reserves.
- The Red Skull is, owing to his... unforeseen change in physical circumstances, less physically dangerous than in either the MCU or the comics, but decades of experience has made him more patient and a much more skilled manipulator. With those skills, he successfully splits the Avengers for a considerable while, drives Tony into the very depths of alcoholic despair, and nearly breaks even Steve.
- Separately, the Tesseract gains the abilities of the Cosmic Cube from the comics, which it was based on.
- Adaptational Heroism: Unlike the often villainous canon version, this Andreas von Strucker is, mentally, an innocent and effectively a traumatised child in the body of an old man, one who's eager to help SHIELD and the Avengers stop 'the Man' a.k.a. the Red Skull as best he can.
- Adaptational Wimp:
- Victor Von Doom is a formidable politician and ruler, and a good deal calmer and less egotistical than his canon counterpart, but he doesn't have either magical powers or borderline superhuman intelligence, and ends up being Out-Gambitted by Alexander Lukin. However, he plays the Avengers like a harp when they come for the Tesseract, and once he's tipped off about Lukin, he's noted as wielding his considerable economic power like a master, stripping him of his assets.
- More generally, Latveria isn't an autarky like in the comics - as is pointed out, it's a small country surrounded by the EU on three sides, with Serbia (which doesn't like it very much) on the other, and most of its income comes from international finance, which the EU could spike in an afternoon.
- Andreas von Strucker is, in the comics, a relatively powerful mutant and competent fighter (though no match for Norman Osborn) in the prime of his life. Here, he's an old man with the mind of a small child, thanks to the Red Skull being stuck in his mind from his early childhood and stunting his development.
- Victor Von Doom is a formidable politician and ruler, and a good deal calmer and less egotistical than his canon counterpart, but he doesn't have either magical powers or borderline superhuman intelligence, and ends up being Out-Gambitted by Alexander Lukin. However, he plays the Avengers like a harp when they come for the Tesseract, and once he's tipped off about Lukin, he's noted as wielding his considerable economic power like a master, stripping him of his assets.
- The Alcoholic: Unlike in the MCU, Tony's drinking is treated seriously, and after the Triple Bombings he ends up falling down the bottle Demon in a Bottle style because HYDRA have steadily been pressing his buttons and that was the last straw. The results are emotionally bruising for everyone involved.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The message of using the Tesseract - you can use it as a kind of genie's lamp, but there's a kind of sentience to it, and you have to be very careful about what you're focusing on if you want to get the desired result. Not focusing sufficiently ended up discorporating the Red Skull and making him spend decades in the head of Andreas von Strucker, who was initially a small child.
- Composite Character: The MCU and 616 versions of the Winter Soldier's origins are combined - he was initially transformed by HYDRA, before being captured by Karpov (as in 616 canon) and reprogrammed as part of the Red Room.
- Cool Old Lady: Peggy Carter, who is described as being "the most badass grandma ever, and still what Nick Fury wants to be when he grows up". An entire SHIELD detail spends their time trying to impress so they'll be her favourite (and give her streaming suggestions, leading to her mainlining Breaking Bad), and she effortlessly scolds an angry and defiant Bucky Barnes into whispered submission down the phone.
- Deadpan Snarker: Snarkers are more or less ubiquitous, which is unsurprising, given the setting. Naturally, Tony Stark is a stand out example.
- Decomposite Character: Alexander Lukin's characteristic of being possessed by the Red Skull thanks to use of the Cosmic Cube is given to Andreas von Strucker - though it wasn't Andreas who used the Tesseract/Cube, but the Skull, who's mind got stuck in Andreas' head thanks to a lack of focus.
- Food Porn: Since Steve is something of a foodie, there is a lot of this.
- Fusion Fic: The series blends elements of Phase 1 of the MCU and the comics, particularly Ed Brubaker's work - though it also includes the comics version of Extremis.
- Mind Control: The Winter Soldier is under a strange form of this, having been mind-raped backwards, forwards, and sideways, after being left a Blank Slate by his accident. It takes the Tesseract to undo.
- Shower of Love: The last test of Tony's image inducer in Revenant is mentioned to have involved wearing it in a shower. Natasha inwardly notes that since Pepper was the test subject, she wants absolutely none of the details, and the testing notes are probably highly redacted.
- Spy Fiction: The predominant genre of the series, with a lot of intricate weaving and plotting that mixes canon elements like the Avengers and HYDRA with well-researched Real Life geopolitics.
- Super-Soldier: Steve and Bucky are the classic examples, as was the Red Skull ( and he's looking for an enhanced body again).
- Extremis, the nanotech comics variant, is described being the very next level of this - though, like the comics, it's only compatible with about 2.5% of the population. On the other hand, HYDRA find a way around this, with a simple genetic tweak to make their subjects compatible.
