#I have more important things to do than put up with Sice's stupidity

[elisaphoenix13]

Conflict Ch.2

The next few hours of hurtling through space were spent in relative quiet. Stephen made himself as comfortable as possible on some slabs of metal as Tony tinkered with something he found laying around, and at one point Peter joined the sorcerer and sprawled across his lap with a piece of alien tech of his own. The doctor leans his head back against another piece of metal, with the comforting reassurance of Peter's weight on him, not even caring that some parts of the teens suit were digging into his thigh. Stephen did notice the tech in the vigilante's hands spark on occasion though.

"You're going to--" Peter yelps quietly when the tech zaps him. "...hurt yourself." Stephen finishes lamely.

Peter grins. "You think we can take some of this stuff home?"

"I'm pretty sure I'll have to stop your father from taking the whole ship back."

"No need." Tony says from across the platform. "I don't think this rig has a self-park function. Underoos, come help. Now."

Peter rolls off of Stephen's lap and jumps to his feet in response, and the sorcerer stands and joins them at the steering gimbals. Tony suits up again to use the strength of his armor to control the mechanism with Peter, and the teen looks out the large window followed with 'Uh...we might wanna turn!' Peter repeats himself as they attempt to turn the ship, and Stephen, coming to the conclusion that they would not land safely after partially crashing into a structure, conjures a shield around the trio.

What's left of the ship crashes onto the planet, throwing the adults off their feet (and possibly Peter but he was nowhere to be seen; Stephen hoped he hadn't been thrown off the ship) and the broken vessel settles with a groan. The shield fizzles away as the sorcerer moves to his feet and makes his way over to Tony, who was halfway to his feet, to help him back up.

"You alright?"

"Yeah." Tony grunts with the effort it takes to get up. "That was close."

Stephen nods in agreement as Peter webs down from the ceiling hanging upside down. "Let me just say, if aliens wind up implanting eggs in my chest or something..." Both parents turn to regard their son. "...and I eat one of you, I'm sorry."

Okay, no more alien movies for the cub, Stephen notes to himself.

Tony points at the teen with annoyance. "I do not want another single pop culture reference out of you for the rest of the trip. Understand?"

Peter waves his free hand wildly before gesturing behind himself. "I'm trying to say that something is coming."

The sorcerer had enough time to make another note to himself to tell his psychotic family to lead with the more important details, right before something rolled at their feet and exploded, sending all three off their feet again. He hits a rounded part of the wall, tumbles to the floor, and finds other people storming the ship when he looks up.

Yay.

Stephen was barely on his feet before he had to conjure a shield to block the knives thrown at him by the one who yelled for Thanos. With a thought, he sends Levi to subdue the man and almost laughs when the cloak wraps itself around the guys head. Almost. It wouldn't be a good idea to anger these people any more. Stephen takes the chance to look around and find the other two fighting his duo, and narrows his eyes when the other man kicks Peter down. Thankfully the teen recovered quickly and jumped up into the rafters, but the man started to really test Stephen's patience when he shot at the vigilante.

Mama Bear was really fighting to get out now.

Then Mama Bear did come out when Peter lunged at his attacker and was immediately wrapped in an electrical rope. The teen yells out as the rope shocks him and Stephen rushes toward them as Tony frees himself from the magnet the main assailant placed on him and stomps on the greenish colored guy. Tony points one hand at the grounded attacker, and the other at the masked one holding Peter, and the sorcerer conjures a single shield as he joins the face off and Levi returns to his shoulders.

He waited though. The guy had a gun to his cub's head and he wasn't about to give him a reason to use it.

"Everybody stay where you are. Chill the eff out." The masked man shouts and then removes his mask before pointing his gun at Tony. "I'm gonna ask you this one time. Where is Gamora?"

Stephen blinks. Gamora? Who was that?

Tony seemed to read his mind and his helmet retracts. "Yeah. I'll do you one better. Who's Gamora?"

Then the moron under Tony's foot opened his mouth. "I'll do you one better. Why is Gamora?

The Sorcerer Supreme couldn't believe his ears. These guys were a bunch of idiots. He didn't even want to know how bad the insect woman was that was watching the whole thing carefully. If Stephen had to be honest though, she looked like she could be an idiot too.

"Tell me where she is or I swear I'll French fry this little freak."

Stephen opens his mouth but Tony beats him to the punch again. "Let's do it!" He shouts and ignores his husband's incredulous glance. "You shoot our kid and I'll blast him. Let's go!" The hand pointed at the one on the ground forms into a sort of shock cannon. "I wouldn't mind sicing my wife on you either. Mama Bear is scary."

The guy holding Peter looked confused but kept his anger. "You're not going to tell me? That's fine. I'll just kill all three of you and I'll beat it out of Thanos myself!" Stephen's heart jumps to his throat when the gun is pressed right up against Peter's head. "Starting with you."

He couldn't take this anymore. These people obviously weren't with Thanos, so they weren't the true enemy. At least they wouldn't be as soon as this guy let his son go.

"Wait...Thanos?" Stephen questions. "All right, let me ask you this. What master do you serve?"

Confusion was completely evident on the guys face now. "What master? Am I supposed to say Jesus?"

Tony and Stephen share a look that very obviously said 'Are you fucking kidding me?'

Tony looks back to the man and motions toward him. "You're from Earth."

"I'm not from Earth, I'm from Missouri."

Stephen really wanted to smack his head against the wall. Just talking to this guy made him feel like his IQ was dropping...dramatically. His poor cub had to endure the stupid right in his ear. It was bad enough that Peter looked more confused than afraid. He had a gun at his head and he looked bored.

"Yeah, that's on Earth, dipshit." Tony says. "What are you hassling us for?"

Peter finally asked the question his parents were wondering. "So you're not with Thanos?"

"With Thanos? No. I'm here to kill him...he took my girl. Wait, who are you?" The guy asks.

Something he probably should have in the first place but Stephen wasn't about to start a different argument. At least not until Peter was safe with him. Said teen's mask retracts, revealing an exasperated expression.

"We're the Avengers, man."

That was the comment that broke the ice. The other trio revealed that Thor had told them about the team, and when the other guy made a passing comment about the god not being that good-looking, Peter's nose scrunched up. It took a lot of willpower on both Tony's and Stephen's part not to smile about how adorable it looked.

Weapons were put away and Stephen dispelled the shield over his hand as they properly introduced themselves, and the sorcerer rolled his eyes when Peter and Quill bonded over having the same name. Leave it to their kid to befriend someone that was going to kill him not five minutes before. At this rate, he wouldn't be surprised if the teen won over Thanos with his puppy dog eyes. It was looking like a serious possibility.

Then again, Quill and his friends were idiots and that would be giving them too much credit.

"Hey Stark." Quill starts. "Didn't you say something about a wife?"

Tony glances at him from his survey of the planet. "Oh...right." The billionaire motions toward Stephen who was currently checking Peter for wounds...again. Mama Bear really was out for this trip. "Him."

Starlord looks between Stephen and Tony. "You guys are married? And Peter...?"

"Our kid. Adopted him after his last remaining relative died."

Drax looks at Tony curiously. "What's a Mama Bear?"

"Something you never want to personally experience."

"Strange is a guy right? Why do you call him your wife?" Quill asks.

Tony pats his shoulder. "Inside joke Quill. He's my wife, Mama Bear, and Peter's mom."

"And people think my team is weird."

"Oh...you are. We're just a different kind of weird. A smarter weird."

To Tony's surprise, Quill caught onto the jab. "Dude...did you just call us stupid?"

"Your words. Not mine."

"You're an asshole Stark. How are you married?"

"My wife is an asshole too. He's just a little nicer about it."

[cienie-isengardu]

[Rebels] Heroes of Mandalore

I’ve stopped watching regularly SW: Rebels somewhere after first season, but I keep coming back for episodes about Mandalorian. The Heroes of Mandalore aren’t exception. Though most of times I wonder why the hell I still bother to do so.

To be fair, the newest episode(s) have interesting and beautiful moments, like:

new informations about mandalorian art (though I would like know more about Tojnun and the Pre-Exile Masters)

the reversed roles with Ursa (a female character; the wife & mother) is the leader & veteran warrior while her husband is the artist who, so far, did not show any combat capabilities (”My dad fights with his art”)

Bo-Katan is showed as capable warrior and leader and she is pretty good at what she is doing for past decade(s)

Sabine - and her past - once again is important part of the story

Fenn’s “show off” and in general, the evolution of his character

the ending scene of the first episode

Mandalorian for good now are visible diverse group insted of all-white TCW!version

A scene where three main female characters (all leaders & warriors in their own way) get together to discuss future of Mandalore. That alone is something pure and beautiful in so many ways, and I wouldn’t mind to get used to such scenes, really.

But though all of those points were great and fun, there is also a lot things that are, well, stupid. As in: pointless compared to the old canon/Legends. And yes, I’m biased, I know, but then again, new canon gives me time after time more reasons to be distrustful for its content. What means, I’m going to rant about Mandalorians.

The things tha pissed me off for good:

the whole Mandalorian without armor is no more than a common soldier bullshit. Seriously. You know what was great about Legends!Mando, beside how diverse they were? The armor was preciuos thing, sure, but it meant nothing, if person wearing it didn’t deserve the title of Mandalorian warrior. Just like that. Legends!Mando had saying about it: ``A warrior is more than one's armor.``

The armor is not what makes a Mandalorian. This is one of basic thing one must understands about their whole culture. Mandalorians were taught from early age to fight without it, without technology, without weapon to be strong and capable to survive if they were deprived of such things. There were even a time(s), when mandalorian ore wasn’t available to make new armours - or, like The Bounty Code mentioned: the armours were destroyed by New Mandalorian - so the warriors used other materials, like duresteel. And it was fine, no one really cared for such details. For Force’s sake, Boba Fett used durasteel armour, and even though he screwed up almost all rules of Mandalorian Code (what, btw, had only 6! conditions), he was still seen as Mando.

In short: you may deprive someone of armor, but it will not make someone less Mandalorian. Just no.

What makes the whole Sabine’s epic talk about her armour - how its part of their identity, how “it makes us, Mandalorians, who we are” is so... odd and impractical.

I’m ranting about this not only because of my bias toward New Canon, but seriously, Ezra’s question why not change armour for something different is actually smart and pragmatic thing to do - especially since the heroes planned to attack an Imperial forces who happened to have a weapon that will kill anyone with beskar’gam. This was desperate attack, to destroy weapon before imperials figure out how to increase its reach. It’s really laughable that Mandalorians didn’t change their armors for similar to those of stromtroopers what actually would minimize the threat of the superweapon in the first place, and thus, Sabine and Bo-Katan wouldn’t even be trapped later. Seriously, tactical increase of their own chances is not synonymous with change once for all their culture.

And frankly, it would be much better to see Saxon’s priceless face when he would learn that Sabine & her warriors actually adapted themselves to the new situation, that they put the survival and freedom of their nation above own pride to wear non-mandalorian armors for this mission.

What leads me to the second stupidity, the whole let a genius prodigy child to “fix” a weapon that was constructed to kill everyone Sabine loves. Like it was totally rational thing to do, sure, w h a t e v e r.

At this point, I once again lost faith in new canon. I mean, most - if not all - Legends!Mandalorians would just set weapon to self-destruct and died with knowledge that 1) weapon was destroyed and 2) enemy was killed with it. Sure, fine, Sabine is genius, she used it against Saxon - who shouldn’t be so fucking stupid in the first place. I can’t, I really can’t anymore, it was so obviously stupid thing to do, I can’t even find a proper words for that.

The third issue, much less important but still so irritating for me - the lack of mentioning Pre Vizsla, while at the same time constant talking about Satine, like she was some goddamn freedom fighter who lead Mandalore to its independence from Republic/Jedi/Empire. I’m sorry, but as much as I agree she wouldn’t like what Empire did to her people and the whole galaxy, I don’t believe she could do much about it. For the peace, she rejected oldfashioned ways of Mandalorian warriors, their culture & heritage and frankly, I don’t think her character did much in the TCW beside dying for Obi-Wan’s angsty sake.

I don’t really waited for lofty speeches in honor of Pre Vizsla, but it would be nice to see at least Bo-Katan mention him once or twice. Especially when Sabine presented her darksaber which Maul beheaded her friend / close ally (though I think her line “I am not the leader you seek” may refer to Pre, especially since she said that after seeing darksaber for the first time in a long time). Also, it would be nice to learn what happed to New Mandalorians, because I don’t think all of them became warriors or supported of Empire.

The most minor issue: calling Bo-Katan (or any mando female character) my lady? Why she couldn’t be refered as, I don’t know, a Mandalore, clan leader or something less gendered? Even if she was part of royal(?) family, such stuff aren’t important now. Sabine chose to trust Bo, not because she is sister of dead dutchess, but becase she is wise, strong and experienced leader that is already at war with Empire for more than a decade.

[astralsword]

[adjusts her glasses, may or may not be grumpier than usual]