Marvel Cinematic Universe

I mean, I don't think Bucky acts feminine at all. Bucky being popular with women/AFAB fans because of the way his The Not-Love Interest characterization relies on traditionally female stereotyping (which is different from out-and-out femininity) while avoiding more noxious tropes like Hysterical Woman or Neutral Female, and Bucky being popular with queer-attracted people regardess of gender because of his Ambiguously Bi aspects, are pretty distinct in nature. Some fans just happen to be both.

Although you did sum up why I don't like the Ukefication that sometimes occurs in fics about Bucky. Him being Steve's Damsel in Distress and narrative "wife" doesn't and shouldn't have to say anything about his actual personality (which as I said earlier is pretty solidly masculine without being toxically so), nor is it even the only reason people think he's gay/bi. Though, it's not a problem exclusive to Slash Fic, as sometimes Het fic will have Natasha, Darcy, or the female self-insert being the big strong figure who helps heal his tortured heart.

On the flip side of the coin, and tying back into the aforementioned conversation about female love interests, the part of Endgame that I really despised was how Peggy, formerly a good example of how to write a compelling female love interest who averted misogynistic stereotypes, suddenly got Chickified into a passive The Lost Lenore despite having explicitly moved on several times over. It didn't kill the ship permanently for me, but it did shoot a lot of what I liked about that relationship in the foot and I know I'm not the only female Steve/Peggy fan to feel that way. What If rerailed that romance somewhat by reasserting Peggy's agency, but the damage has still been done.

Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 19th 2021 at 2:07:36 PM

I wonder if pairings also depend on if the character is colorful and dynamic enough.

Like with Steve ya got Bucky, Sam, and Nat who are plenty colorful characters being superheroes but say Nakia and Maria for T'Challa and Carol are too civilian.

Of course MJ is a popular pairing for Peter so it prolly also applies to a colorful personality too.

How chessmastery T’Challa is widely varies by author of course

The Priest run made him constantly scheming with the fate of nations and the global economy but also crucially showed that juggling act was no sustainable and tended to bite him in the butt

Often his allies would do stupid shit under the assumption that obviously T’Challa had planned for them to do stupid shit so it must be part of his plan. Which he then had to scramble to account for. It once literally killed him.

Other times T’Challa is “head empty, hand full of punches”

If he’s on the Avengers and isn’t leading he’s likely there for the camaraderie and punches

His jungle action book also tended to be “and what shenanigans will I get in and then punch my way out of today!”

I hope we get bob Hydra on the mcu's deadpool movie now that he's gonna be in a universe that has Hydra.

I think Black Panther is the one MCU movie carried almost entirely by its villains (specifically M’Baku, Klaue, and especially Killmonger).

Yes. Because no one else here watches the same right wing media commentary videos that you do.

I do recall several comments that BP was more badass in Civil War than in his own movie. Granted he was hopped up on vengeance but he was a fucking beast in that movie.

While in BP itself while it did greatly humanize him you can argue it took away some of his mystique especially with say how openly his family playfully ribs him.

Huh that’s prolly one reason why his relationship with Nakia doesn’t feel that dynamic since her able to call him out isn’t that unique when everyone is already able to freely talk back to him.

Stop watching The Critical Drinker. Boo to him.

Yesterday I was talking with a group of queer folks (mostly cis lesbians, and several non-binary folks and trans women) and the subject came around to Loki. Several of them said that they found Loki interesting because of all the “troubled angst” tropes he carries, but also because his femininity compared to the other male characters makes him a decent outlet for exploring feelings like female anger that actual women characters rarely get in these stories. Sif, Darcy, Jane, they get traits but not arcs; not until Valkyrie does a troubled woman show up. Also Loki’s a shapeshifter and trans people eat that like candy.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Sep 19th 2021 at 9:13:20 AM

You're the coolest person in the neighbourhood until you step back through your front door and your family can't go two minuets without poking fun at you.

Other MCU Femslash thoughts:

Misty Knight, Colleen Wing and Claire Temple should have been HUGE. In the netflix series they had a few sequences while they smile happily at each other while beating goons up and relating about how weird life on the fringe of superheroes are.

Pepper Pots and Jane Foster broke up with their super hero boyfriends really close in time and yet there were no fics (that I found) where they rebound on each other. For shame fandom. (I really wish the two of them had been in the Ao U house party scene. And been friends).

Valkyrie was intended to be queer and yet gets no dialogue with other women which isn't antagonist. Boo!

Wanda and Natasha lived together in the Avengers compound and both have histories as villains working for foreign powers and yet so little written about them bonding over this.

Actually, weird to think that Phase Two and Three had running plotlines where the Best Friend characters become established superheroes in their own right who got to play ball with the lager superhero community (Rhodey, Sam, Loki kind of) and yet the same was not true for the Love Interests. It looked like they were toying with the idea for Pepper but it was never commited to. Let her breath fire and melt metal with her bare hands already.

"What If Pepper Pots became Captain Extremis" episode when.

Edited by Whowho on Sep 19th 2021 at 5:28:01 PM

Pretty much the movie employs No Badass to His Valet. T’Challa may be king but his family is close, even to the point hyper loyal Okoye is willing to rib her king.

That’s the funniest thing. Okoye is normally very hyper serious but even she can’t help but get in on all the ball-busting.

It contrasts to the more dysfunctional family in the comics, where Shuri I believe attempted to kill T’Challa due to regarding him as a failure to Wakanda.

Huh Misty Knight and Colleen Wing are actually partners in the comics, even sharing a couple books.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 19th 2021 at 9:36:57 AM

I also wonder if some of that perception about T'Challa not being as badass in his own film is that his supporting cast is so varied and strong (not just in the combat way), so he doesn't shine as much as a character. In addition to the aforementioned antagonists/villains Shuri and Okoye also left good impressions on the audience. Which is not something most of the other guys can say (the Warriors Three? Ant-Man's friends not named Luis? etc).

I wish Misty and Colleen got to interact more. I like Misty a lot and would've eaten that ship up like candy.

Probably. That's how I feel about it. Black Panther is well-written enough that what would be a pretty solid protagonist for any of the other movies comes off as the safe one by comparison.

Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 19th 2021 at 12:57:37 PM

Misty and Colleen are definatly parts of the Netflix-verse I want to carry on over to the MCU proper.

Claire is great of course but I think Roserio Dawson said she was done with the character.

Yeah. She's too busy attacking Wrestlers to do Marvel.

I mean, who knows what might be going on between Jessica Henwick's and Batista's characters in Knives Out 2...

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 19th 2021 at 11:51:29 AM

I'd still like to see a Heroes for Hire show, just have Misty, Colleen, Danny and Luke fighting street level crime. Not necessarily the Big Epic Sagas of the main MCU, just a lower key, more story of the week type show.

Just to be clear, that was mostly a joke.

Dawson was on a recently airing of AEW Dynamite where Malakai Black (Formerly Aleister Black of NXT/WWE) tried to pick a fight with her, only for Cody Rhodes to start drawing his attention, and Dawson jumped on Black while he wasn't paying attention to her.

I wanted to make sure no one thought she was getting into fights with wrestlers.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Sep 19th 2021 at 9:55:01 AM

Now that I think about it, T’Challa suffers from the fact that BP’s plot is very dependent on the villain succeeding.

T’Challa starts out the film with the express goal of capturing Klaue which he fails at and is unaware of the true villain of the film until it’s too late, by which point Killmonger accomplishes his master plan. He kills Klaue, manages to sway Wakandans to his side, and successfully receives a fight for the throne which he accomplished beating T’Challa handily and sending him into a coma all the while prepping his weapons plan to the world.

Granted I haven’t seen the movie in a long while but from the looks of it T’Challa doesn’t actually accomplish much in the film proper and even his comeback at the end is rather…… general if you get what I mean.

I think that’s the issue, he suffers too much from protagonist syndrome or however you refer to that.

Prolly what we should have gotten in Defenders instead of the zombie ninja shit.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 19th 2021 at 9:56:40 AM

A little bit of news regarding the MCU, Fantastic Four #35 has now made the terms "Variant" and "Sacred Timeline" canon to Earth-616 (the Marvel Universe).

Edited by Chrononaut70 on Sep 19th 2021 at 9:55:42 AM

To be fair, most of those issues are due to factors beyond his control. He does capture Klaue at first, but Killmonger was able to rescue him (and the only reason he had that chance is because he had to play ball with Everett Ross and let the latter interogate him).

He only loses the challenge because Killmonger starts throwing off his game with his dad's death, and then kills Zuri....I think. I know the Zuri thing was the final straw, but Killmonger was losing at first and I can't remember how he turned the fight around.

And Killmonger was only able to get as far as he did because T'chaka never told anyone about him, leaving T'challa to figure things out on his own, which he only did when it was too late.

I mentioned somewhere else that I had found myself taken to using the term "Variant" in non-MCU contexts, so... neat.

Edited by lbssb on Sep 19th 2021 at 10:02:56 AM

Yes in fairness to all that but it doesn't necessarily make T'Challa that impressive.

I guess he wasn't spectacular enough. Like say The Raid 2, Rama has little control over the events of the plot due to crime bosses around him making deals he can't expect so when the shake-up happens all he can do is survive. But the end is where he cements his absolute badass credentials and fully takes his place as the PROTAGONIST by raiding the villains base alone and single-handily annihilate them. He battles a small-army of mooks, engages the 3 top assassins who are previously shown to be outright unstoppable in 1v2 and 1v1 fights immediately after the other, and succeeds in wiping out the villain organization all while completely exhausted from several days of fighting. All on his own in the darkest hour he pulled through and saved the day in the most spectacular way possible.

T'Challa's comeback though is while not bad, its not mega-fucking badass. Man we could have used better fight choreography.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 19th 2021 at 10:15:38 AM

If I could only have two Disney plus shows follow on from the Netflix-verse I'd have a Daredevil series that featured those characters and reintroduced the Punisher, gritty as you like it.

And a campier a Heroes for Hire series that had Like as the main character but Misty, Coleen and Danny as supporting team members and Jessica Jones as their informant.

Bullseye would appear in both with wildly different tones.

When and if we finally revisit the Netflix Defenders characters, there will probably be flashbacks to what Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and the Punisher were doing in-between the Snap and the Blip. Any new seasons from their shows would focus on how they're personally dealing with a post-Blip world and the rise of new criminal elements.

Misty Knight and Colleen Wing would get their own show titled Daughters of the Dragon since they were a crimefighting duo in the comics.

Edited by Chrononaut70 on Sep 19th 2021 at 10:31:48 AM