Marvel Cinematic Universe

A lot of interesting choices. Though I think Leonardo would be a waste of a good actor, yet I don't know if he would want to play a bigger part or hero. And Jason Alexander is a fun choice (and clearly can be May's type considering Happy),but I believe fans would be sad he isn't part of a vague evil council with contessa and the other cast from Seinfield.

For myself, I would go with Ben Affleck.

Brad Pitt famously did his Deadpool cameo for a cup of coffee

OK, I got curious, here is the list when searching through the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" tag:

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 18th 2021 at 7:18:11 AM

Wait, what happened with Rob Lowe? I just looked him up after reading Diana1969's comment and I didn't see anything about any recent pedophilia allegations. Things seemed to look pretty normal all things considered. Did this literally just happen or something?

Edited by lbssb on Sep 18th 2021 at 4:51:52 AM

He had sex with a 16 year at the age of 24 in 1988. It wasn't illegal due to age of consent laws, but it was still scummy.

He also filmed it and the tape leaked out, which is how it became well-known in the first place. And the taping was the illegal part.

...Yikes.

So, uhhh... those AO3 ships! Crazy, right?

Edited by lbssb on Sep 18th 2021 at 4:59:04 AM

I had rewatched Avengers a bit back and there actually are a couple instances where Whedon seems to be seeding the two being compatible with each other. Like it's telling that in the same movie where she keeps her cool with Loki and Clint she gets visibly shaken up any time the Hulk comes up.

Looking up the most popular femslash Marvel pairing on AO3, it seems it's Peggy and Angie from Agent Carter, with about 2066 fics. Following them is Jemma/Daisy (with 1669), Natasha/Maria Hill (with 1490), Wanda/Natasha (with 1195), and Pepper/Natasha (with 1001).

It seems Natasha's a popular choice for femslash.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Sep 18th 2021 at 8:38:31 AM

Even aside from the wonky premise the bad execution drove away most of the fans Bruce/Nat might've had otherwise. The small handful of folks I know who liked the ship before AOU wound up hating it anyway because they felt it reeked of a particular androcentric form of self-insert wish fulfillment fantasy. And of those who I do know who liked the ship, they're all cis straight/bi men with serious insecurity issues who liked it specifically because of that aspect and the message that even a "beast", a man who does not possess the kinds of traits that are normally considered appealing, is still worthy of love and affection from a beautiful woman.

Most of the defenses I see of the Bruce/Nat romance comes from, well, places like Reddit which we know has no shortage of such folks, with varying degrees of self-awareness. And now that we know more about Whedon and his love of Author Appeal, it's pretty revealing about his mindset. In more gynocentric social circles, defenses of the ship have more to do with defending the idea of it against those who accuse it of being inherently immoral due to having pedophilic elements (due to being an age-gap ship, which can be wildly controversial), but they still disparage its execution in AOU and prefer that content made of it not follow that outline if possible.

Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 20th 2021 at 1:37:32 PM

Why would it be pedophilia? Their both adults...

Their age gap isn't even that off as I have several relatives in real life who have the same amount.

DON'T START THAT ARGUMENT IN HERE.

Not the place or time for such a debate

Fandom purity discourse and the rise of "anti-shipper" culture, mostly.

Awwwwww poor T'Challa won't be able to develop a popular ship now.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 18th 2021 at 5:52:24 AM

His successor,whoever they happen to be will get new ships in time don' worry

Where the hell is Carol?

she's in space beating up Kree spaceships

Why not? He does have a few really popular ones, even if they're not very big in the West due to fandom discourse strangling them and driving them underground.

T'Challa/Erik is the big Fan-Preferred Couple for him and enjoys a healthy presence in East Asian fandom despite being hated for being incestuous and/or identified as an abusive ship due to being hero/villain ship. T'Challa/Bucky and T'Challa/Natasha started to grow in popularity after Civil War but got quickly shouted down due to their interracial (and in the former, gay) aspects, which were perceived as insulting to black women and black female characters like Storm and Monica Lynne. Of the T'Challa ships deemed acceptable in the West, T'Challa/M'Baku does have a decent amount of fans on both sides of the Pacific, but efforts to push T'Challa/Sam as a morally acceptable M/M slash ship in place of T'Challa/Bucky didn't get very far for obvious reasons. While T'Challa/Nakia wasn't hated, it's also not particularly well-loved or seen as inspirational to make fic and art out of.

To be fair, Kissing Cousins is a very YMMV trope and not the kind of relationship that is easy to slap an objective morality label onto, especially in Asia where it's subject to a high amount of Values Dissonance (especially if said cousins didn't really interact it's not seen as much of a big deal), and geneticswise, being M/M it's vastly unlikely to produce inbred offspring anyway.

Combination of newness and maybe that her fans just aren't the fic-writing kind? Carol/Maria has a ton of fans, but the low content might have something to do with the large amounts of pushback it gets on social media whenever it's brought up, usually due to baggage from those who are anti-shippers against Steve/Bucky and thus hate Carol/Maria due to seeing it as its Distaff Counterpart in many ways. Both ships receive a lot of anti-shipper discourse in the form of accusations of the ships being incestuous in nature due to being presented as brotherly/sisterly bonds where the two originally met at a young age before reaching majority. Carol/Valkyrie, her other popular ship, has a lot of outspoken fans but seemingly not a lot of fan content due to being a Crack Ship.

Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 18th 2021 at 2:21:29 PM

Looking up T'Challa really quick, his most popular ship is with... Killmonger at 519 fics.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

As for Carol, her most popular ship is with Maria Rambeau at 925 fics.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Sep 18th 2021 at 9:01:28 AM

I'm very glad that I don't actively ship or pay much attention to shipping

Going by purely archive listings up there none of his ships appear in the top 41 for some reason and said 41 includes fucking Jane/Thor

I don't think anyone here does either, its just fun to look at which ones the most popular.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 18th 2021 at 6:01:51 AM

I like shipping. It's fun. Shipping + fandom though is not.

I'm surprised T'challa/Nakia isn't in conversation; there was at least more effort put into it than, say, Steve/Sharon.

It always amuses me how the "canon" comics relationships are basically paid either a token effort or total dust in the MCU

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 18th 2021 at 8:02:15 AM

Well T'Challa's most maj- scratch that, only romantic relationship for the past 20 years is with Storm and for obvious reasons she hasn't appeared before either.

T'Challa/Nakia's issue is that it's largely seen as forgettably So Okay, It's Average. It's both too safe and unexciting to make for good Fanfic Fuel or fan discussion and meta, yet too baseline competent to inspire people to try to "fix" the relationship either, the way some folks have attempted with Steve/Sharon. Although that also gets low numbers because their idea of fixing it often involves turning it into platonic friendship, and because the ship is just that hated by so many factions, to the point that supposedly even the writer of the zombie episode of What If had Sharon killed off in a messy way that was originally going to be even messier because he was a hardcore Steve/Peggy shipper (which if true, then cool misogyny bro?).

Shuri tends to get a bit more engagement due to having a more colorful personality and being in a more tantalizing position for self-insertion (before the anti-shippers got to it, Shuri/Bucky had a lot of popularity for the same reason Bucky/Reader does, being that but for young black girls with a crush on him).

Ah, T'Challa/Storm shipping fanatics are a veritable wankstorm in their own right, and a large source of the anti-shipping against the other T'Challa ships on this list. Fans of said ships will often describe the more vocal ones as proghets because many of them had an unfortunate tendency to lace their womanist rhetoric with undertones of or sometimes even overt homophobia.

Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 18th 2021 at 12:58:01 PM

Reminds me how astounded I am that T’Challa and Storm have been divorced for years yet he still regularly calls her up on booty calls and how to run the kingdom.

She’s neither a queen or Wakandan anymore yet it seems like Storm is the only woman T’Challa is allowed to be interested in, essentially being a major constant and supporting character throughout the Coates run. Even the end of the series is Storm narrating and the final scenes has her by his sides

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 18th 2021 at 9:00:08 AM

I'll be honest, I'm not really much of a shipping guy. I might think about potential fictional relationships once in a while, but it's not really something I think about often.

That being said, What If's second episode made me realize that I actually want Sacred Timeline Nebula to have some sort of romance in the future. She's been through so much tragedy that I think her finding someone to be close to that isn't Gamora would be kinda sweet. I don't know who it would be with though.

Edited by MatthewWayne on Sep 18th 2021 at 9:01:19 AM