#I’m like soldier if he was a communist and was tiny B))

[ruthytwoshakes]

! ,,,,,. I pledge allegiance to the unit3d stares of SWAGmerica 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 and to the AUTISM for wich it stands 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 one nation under TWO FORRT 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 invisible, with MAN BOOBIES and GAMING for ALLL BABEEEYYEY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Made a thing in toonsquid yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Im practicing for a secret special project that might come out on Halloween if I manage my time correctly!!!!! (It’ll be so swag and SPOOOOKAAAYYYYYY)

[libraryofwar]

THE UNTOLD TRUE STORY OF MAD DOG SHRIVER: 

Mad Dog led dozens of covert missions into Laos & Cambodia until his luck ran out. By Maj. John L. Plaster, USAR (Ret.) 

There undoubtedly was not a single recon man in SOG more accomplished or renowned than Mad Dog Shriver. Mad Dog! In the late 1960s, no Special Forces trooper at Ft. Bragg even breathed those top-secret letters, "S-O-G," but everyone had heard of the legendary Studies and Observations Group Green Beret recon team leader, Sergeant First Class Jerry Shriver, dubbed a "mad dog" by Radio Hanoi.

It was Jerry Shriver who'd spoken the most famous rejoinder in SOG history, radioing his superiors not to worry that NVA forces had encircled his tiny team. "No, no," he explained, "I've got 'em right where I want 'em — surrounded from the inside." Fully decked out, Mad Dog was a walking arsenal with an imposing array of a sawed-off shotgun or suppressed submachine gun, pistols, knives, and grenades. 

"He looked like Rambo," First Sergeant Billy Greenwood thought. Blond, tall and thin, Shriver’s face bore chiseled features around piercing blue eyes. "There was no soul in the eyes, no emotion," thought SOG Captain Bill O’Rourke. "They were just eyes." By early 1969, Shriver was well into his third continuous year in SOG, leading top secret intelligence gathering teams deep into the enemy’s clandestine Cambodian sanctuaries where he’d teased death scores of times. 

Unknown to him, however, forces beyond his control at the highest levels of government in Hanoi and Washington were steering his fate. The Strategic Picture Every few weeks of early 1969, the docks at Cambodia's seaport of Sihanoukville bustled with East European ships offloading to long lines of Hak Ly Trucking Company lorries. Though ostensibly owned by a Chinese businessman, the Hak Ly Company's true operator was North Vietnam's Trinh Sat intelligence service. 

The trucks’ clandestine cargo of rockets, small-arms ammunition and mortar rounds rolled overnight to the heavily jungled frontier of Kampong Cham Province just three miles from the border with South Vietnam, a place the Americans had nicknamed the Fishhook, where vast stockpiles sustained three full enemy divisions, plus communist units across the border inside South Vietnam — some 200,000 foes. 

Cambodian Prince Sihanouk was well aware of these neutrality violations; indeed, his fifth wife, Monique, her mother and half-brother were secretly peddling land rights and political protection to the NVA; other middlemen were selling rice to the NVA by the thousands of tons. Hoping to woo Sihanouk away from the communists, the Johnson Administration had watched passively while thousands of GIs were killed by communist forces operating from Cambodia, and not only did nothing about it, but said nothing, even denied it was happening. And now, each week of February and March 1969, more Americans were dying than lost in the Persian Gulf War, killed by NVA forces that struck quickly then fled back to "neutral” Cambodia. 

Combined with other data, SOG's Cambodian intelligence appeared on a top-secret map which National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger studied aboard Air Force One at Brussels airport the morning of 24 February 1969. Sitting with Kissinger was Colonel Alexander Haig, his military assistant, while representing the president was White House Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman. During the new administration's transition, President Nixon had asked Kissinger to determine how to deal with the Cambodian buildup and counter Hanoi's "fight and talk" strategy. 

While President Nixon addressed NATO's North Atlantic Council, those aboard Air Force One worked out details for a clandestine U.S. response: The secret bombing of Cambodia's most remote sanctuaries, which would go unacknowledged unless Prince Sihanouk protested. When Air Force One departed Brussels, Kissinger briefed President Nixon, who approved the plan but postponed implementing it. Over the coming three weeks, Nixon twice warned Hanoi, "we will not tolerate attacks which result in heavier casualties to our men at a time that we are honestly trying to seek peace at the conference table in Paris." The day after Nixon's second warning, the NVA bombarded Saigon with 122mm rockets obviously smuggled through Cambodia. 

Three days later, Nixon turned loose the B-52s on the Fishhook, the first secret Cambodian raid, which set off 73 secondary explosions. A Special SOG Mission Not one peep emanated from Phnom Penh or Hanoi and there was a fitting irony: For four years the North Vietnamese had denied their presence in Cambodia, and now, with U.S. bombs falling upon them, they could say nothing. 

Nixon suspended further B-52 strikes in hopes Hanoi's negotiators might begin productive discussions in Paris, but the talks droned on pointlessly. To demonstrate that America, too, could "talk and fight," President Nixon approved a second secret B-52 strike, this time against a target proposed by General Creighton Abrams with Ambassador Bunker's endorsement: COSVN, the Central Office for South Vietnam, the almost mythical Viet Cong headquarters which claimed to run the whole war. 

An NVA deserter had pinpointed the COSVN complex 14 miles southeast of Memot, Cambodia, in the Fishhook, just a mile beyond the South Vietnamese border. The COSVN raid was laid on for 24 April. Apprised of the upcoming B-52 strike, Brigadier General Philip Davidson, the MACV J2, thought that instead of just bombing COSVN, a top-secret SOG raiding force should hit the enemy headquarters as soon as the bombs stopped falling. 

He phoned Colonel Steve Cavanaugh, Chief SOG, who agreed and ordered the Ban Me Thuot-based Command and Control South, CCS, to prepare a Green Beret-led company of Montagnard mercenaries for the special mission. At CCS, the historic COSVN raid fell upon its most accomplished man, that living recon legend, Mad Dog Shriver, and Captain Bill O'Rourke. 

Though O'Rourke would command the company-size raiding force, Shriver equally would influence the operation, continuing an eight-month collaboration they’d begun when they ran recon together. Mad Dog — the Man and the Myth 

There was no one at CCS quite like Mad Dog Shriver. Medal of Honor recipient Jim Fleming, who flew USAF Hueys for SOG, found Shriver, "the quintessential warrior-loner, anti-social, possessed by what he was doing, the best team, always training, constantly training." Shriver rarely spoke and walked around camp for days wearing the same clothes. In his sleep he cradled a loaded rifle, and in the club he'd buy a case of beer, open every can, then go alone to a corner and drink them all. Though he'd been awarded a Silver Star, five Bronze Stars, and the Soldiers Medal, the 28-year-old Green Beret didn’t care about decorations. 

But he did care about the Montagnard hill tribesmen, and spent all his money on them, even collected food, clothes, whatever people would give, to distribute in Yard villages. He was the only American at CCS who lived in the Montagnard barracks. "He was almost revered by the Montagnards," O'Rourke says. 

Shriver's closest companion was a German shepherd he'd brought back from Taiwan which he named Klaus. One night Klaus got sick on beer some recon men fed him and crapped on the NCO club floor; they rubbed his nose in it and threw him out. 

Shriver arrived, drank a beer, removed his blue velvet smoking jacket and derby hat, put a .38 revolver on a table, then dropped his pants and defecated on the floor. "If you want to rub my nose in this," he dared, "come on over." Everyone pretended not to hear him; one man who'd fed Klaus beer urged the Recon Company commander to intervene. The captain laughed in his face. "He had this way of looking at you with his eyes half-open," recon man Frank Burkhart remembers. "If he looked at me like that, I'd just about freeze." 

Shriver always had been different. In the early 1960s, when Rich Ryan served with him in the 7th Army's Long Range Patrol Company in Germany, Shriver’s buddies called him "Digger" since they thought he looked like an undertaker. As a joke, his LRRP comrades concocted their own religion, "The Mahoganies," which worshipped a mahogany statue. "So we would carry Shriver around on an empty bunk with a sheet over him and candles on the corners," recalled Ryan, "and chant, 'Maaa-haa-ga-ney, Maaa-haa-ga-ney.' Scared the hell out of new guys." Fleming says Shriver "convinced me that for the rest of my life I would not go into a bar and cross someone I didn't know." But no recon man was better in the woods. "He was like having a dog you could talk to," O'Rourke explained. "He could hear and sense things; he was more alive in the woods than any other human being I've ever met." 

During a company operation on the Cambodian border Shriver and an old Yard compatriot were sitting against a tree, O'Rourke recalled. "Suddenly he sat bolt upright, they looked at each other, shook their heads and leaned back against the tree. I'm watching this and wondering, what the hell's going on? And all of a sudden these birds flew by, then a nano-second later, way off in the distance, 'Boom-boom!' -- shotguns. They'd heard that, ascertained what it was and relaxed before I even knew the birds were flying." Shriver once went up to SOG’s Command and Control North for a mission into the DMZ where Captain Jim Storter encountered him just before insert. "He had pistols stuck everywhere on him, I mean, he had five or six .38 caliber revolvers." Storter asked him, "Sergeant Shriver, would you like a CAR-15 or M-16 or something? 

You know the DMZ is not a real mellow area to go into." But Mad Dog replied, "No, them long guns'll get you in trouble and besides, if I need more than these I got troubles anyhow." Rather than stand down after an operation, Shriver would go out with another team. "He lived for the game; that's all he lived for," Dale Libby, a fellow CCS man said. 

Shriver once promised everyone he was going on R&R but instead sneaked up to Plei Djerang Special Forces camp to go to the field with Rich Ryan's A-Team. During a short leave stateside in 1968, fellow Green Beret Larry White hung out with Shriver, whose only real interest was finding a lever action .444 Marlin rifle. 

Purchasing one of the powerful Marlins, Shriver shipped it back to SOG so he could carry it into Cambodia, "to bust bunkers," probably the only lever gun used in the war. And the Real Jerry Shriver Unless you were one of Mad Dog's close friends, the image was perfect prowess -- but the truth was, Shriver confided to fellow SOG Green Beret Sammy Hernadez, he feared death and didn't think he'd live much longer. 

He'd beat bad odds too many times, and could feel a terrible payback looming. "He wanted to quit," Medal of Honor winner Fred Zabitosky could see. "He really wanted to quit, Jerry did. I said, 'Why don't you just tell them I want off, I don't want to run any more?' He said he would but he never did; just kept running." The 5th Special Forces Group executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Norton, had been watching SOG recon casualties skyrocket and grew concerned about men like Mad Dog whose lives had become a continuous flirtation with death. Norton went to the 5th Group commander and urged, "Don't approve the goddamn extensions these guys are asking for. You approve it again, your chances of killing that guy are very, very good." But the group commander explained SOG needed experienced men for its high priority missions. "Bullshit," Norton snapped, "you're signing that guy's death warrant." 

Eventually 5th Group turned down a few extensions but only a very few; the most experienced recon men never had extensions denied. Never. "Mad Dog was wanting to get out of recon and didn't know how," said recon team leader Sonny Franks, though the half-measure came when Shriver left recon to join his teammate O’Rourke’s raider company. And now the COSVN raid would make a fitting final operation; Shriver could face his fear head-on, charge right into COSVN’s mysterious mouth and afterward at last call it quits. Into COSVN’s Mouth The morning of 24 April 1969, while high-flying B-52s winged their way from distant Guam, the SOG raider company lined up beside the airfield at Quan Loi, South Vietnam, only 20 miles southeast of COSVN's secret lair. 

But just five Hueys were flyable that morning, enough to lift only two platoons; the big bombers could not be delayed, which meant Lieutenant Bob Killebrew's 3rd Platoon would have to stand by at Quan Loi while the 1st Platoon under First Lieutenant Walter Marcantel, and 2nd Platoon under First Lieutenant Greg Harrigan, raided COSVN. Capt. O'Rourke and Mad Dog didn't like it, but they could do nothing.* Nor could they do anything about their minimal fire support. 

Although whole waves of B52s were about to dump thousands of bombs into COSVN, the highly classified Cambodian Rules of Engagement forbad tactical air strikes; it was better to lose an American-led SOG team, the State Department rules suggested, then leave documentable evidence that U.S. F4 Phantoms had bombed this "neutral" territory. It was a curious logic so concerned about telltale napalm streaks or cluster bomb fins, but unconcerned about B-52 bomb craters from horizon to horizon. Chief SOG Cavanaugh found the contradiction "ridiculous," but he could not change the rules. 

The B-52 contrails were not yet visible when the raiding force Hueys began cranking and the raiders boarded; Capt. O'Rourke would be aboard the first bird and Shriver on the last so they'd be at each end of the landing Hueys. As they lifted off for the ten-minute flight, the B-52s were making final alignments for the run-in. Minutes later the lead chopper had to turn back because of mechanical problems; O'Rourke could only wish the others Godspeed. 

Command passed to an operations officer in the second bird who'd come along for the raid, Captain Paul Cahill. Momentarily the raiders could see dirt geysers bounding skyward amid collapsing trees. Then as the dust settled a violin-shaped clearing took form and the Hueys descended in-trail, hovered for men to leap off, then climbed away. Then fire exploded from all directions, horrible fire that skimmed the ground and mowed down anyone who didn’t dive into a bomb crater or roll behind a fallen tree trunk. 

From the back of the LZ, Mad Dog radioed that a machinegun bunker to his left-front had his *(Greg Harrigan and I had been boyhood friends in northeast Minneapolis.) men pinned and asked if anyone could fire at it to relieve the pressure. Holed up in a bomb crater beneath murderous fire, Capt. Cahill, 1st Lt. Marcantel and a medic, Sergeant Ernest Jamison, radioed that they were pinned, too. Then Jamison dashed out to retrieve a wounded man; heavy fire cut him down, killing him on the spot. No one else could engage the machinegun that trapped Shriver's men -- it was up to Mad Dog. Skittish Yards looked to Shriver and his half-grin restored a sense of confidence. Then they were on their feet, charging -- Shriver was his old self, running to the sound of guns, a True Believer Yard on either side, all of them dashing through the flying bullets, into the treeline, into the very guts of Mad Dog's great nemesis, COSVN. And Mad Dog Shriver was never seen again. 

The Fight Continues At the other end of the LZ, Jamison's body lay just a few yards from the crater where Capt. Cahill heard bullets cracking and RPGs rocking the ground. When Cahill lifted his head, an AK round hit him in the mouth, deflected up and destroyed an eye. Badly wounded, he collapsed. In a nearby crater, young Lt. Greg Harrigan directed helicopter gunships whose rockets and mini-guns were the only thing holding off the aggressive NVA. 

Already, Harrigan reported, more than half his platoon were killed or wounded. For 45 minutes the Green Beret lieutenant kept the enemy at bay, then Harrigan, too, was hit. He died minutes later. Bill O'Rourke tried to land on another helicopter but his bird couldn't penetrate the NVA veil of lead. Lieutenant Colonel Earl Trabue, their CCS Commander, arrived and flew overhead with O’Rourke but they could do little. Hours dragged by. Wounded men laid untreated, exposed in the sun. 

Several times the Hueys attempted to retrieve them and each time heavy fire drove them off. One door gunner was badly wounded. Finally a passing Australian twin-jet Canberra bomber from No. 2 Squadron at Phan Rang heard their predicament on the emergency radio frequency, ignored the fact it was Cambodia, and dropped a bombload which, O’Rourke reports, "broke the stranglehold those guys were in, and it allowed us to go in." Only 1st Lt. Marcantel was still directing air, and finally he had to bring ordnance so close it wounded himself and his surviving nine Montagnards. 

One medic ran to Harrigan's hole and attempted to lift his body out but couldn't. "They were pretty well drained physically and emotionally," O'Rourke said. Finally, three Hueys raced in and picked up 15 wounded men. Lieutenant Dan Hall carried out a radio operator, then managed to drag Lt. Harrigan's body to an aircraft. Thus ended the COSVN raid. A Time for Reflection Afterward Chief SOG Cavanaugh talked to survivors and learned, "The fire was so heavy and so intense that even the guys trying to [evade] and move out of the area were being cut down." It seemed almost an ambush. "That really shook them up at MACV, to realize anybody survived that [B-52] strike," Col. Cavanaugh said. 

The heavy losses especially affected Brig. Gen. Davidson, the MACV J-2, who blamed himself for the catastrophe. "General," Chief SOG Cavanaugh assured him, "if I'd have felt we were going to lose people like that, I wouldn't have put them in there." It’s that ambush-like reception despite a B-52 strike that opens the disturbing possibility of treachery and, it turns out, it was more than a mere possibility. 

One year after the COSVN raid, the NSA twice intercepted enemy messages warning of imminent SOG operations which could only have come from a mole or moles in SOG headquarters. It would only be long after the war that it became clear Hanoi’s Trinh Sat had penetrated SOG, inserting at least one high ranking South Vietnamese officer in SOG whose treachery killed untold Americans, including, most likely, the COSVN raiders. Of those raiders, Lt. Walter Marcantel survived his wounds only to die six months later in a parachuting accident at Ft. Devens, Mass., while Capt. Paul Cahill was medically retired. 

Eventually, Green Beret medic Ernest Jamison's body was recovered. But those lost in the COSVN raid have not been forgotten. Under a beautiful spring sky on Memorial Day, 1993, with American flags waving and an Army Reserve Huey strewing flower petals as it passed low-level, members of Special Forces Association Chapter XX assembled at Lt. Greg Harrigan’s grave in Minneapolis, Minn. 

Before the young lieutenant’s family, a Special Forces honor guard placed a green beret at his grave, at last conferring some recognition to the fallen SOG man, a gesture the COSVN raid’s high classification had made impossible a quarter-century earlier. 

Until now, neither Harrigan’s family nor the families of the other lost men knew the full story of the top secret COSVN raid. But the story remains incomplete. As in the case of SOG’s other MIAs, Hanoi continues to deny any knowledge of Jerry Shriver. Capt. O'Rourke concluded Mad Dog died that day. "I felt very privileged to have been his friend," O’Rourke says, "and when he died I grieved as much as for my younger brother when he was killed. Twenty-some-odd years later, it still sticks in my craw that I wasn't there. I wish I had been there." 

There remains a popular myth among SOG veterans, that any day now Mad Dog Shriver will emerge from the Cambodian jungle as if only ten minutes have gone by, look right and left and holler, "Hey! Where’d everybody go?" Indeed, to those who knew him and fought beside him, Mad Dog will live forever. (This article is derived from Maj. Plaster’s book, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam, published by Simon & Schuster.)

[originaljediinjeans]

MCU Rewatch: “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015)

This post isn’t as long as the one I wrote for Avengers but it’s still pretty long.

In all fairness, after The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it was fair to expect Age of Ultron to be just as good, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise that it wasn’t.

But some kind of end-credit scene would have been nice.

The Bartons’ farmhouse has a very nice kitchen

The real villain of the film is the Mind Stone. The opening shot of the film is the Sceptre. The Mind Stone created Ultron and gave him his incentive to destroy the world and attack the Avengers--whether due to some scientific reaction or intentionally. Re: my theory that the Infinity Stones should be regarded as actual “characters”, AoU demonstrates it

The main characters are: the Maximoff twins, Tony Stark, and Clint Barton. 

The Avengers

By the time the film opens, the Avengers have been taking down Hydra and they’ve been unstoppable.

The team has a working relationship with JARVIS--we see at least Steve talking to him

Their teamwork is incredible. Steve is sharing his shield with Nat. I’m sure she’s not the only one but we got her doing it onscreen and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Also Clint tossing the Shield to Steve; the team throwing the robots to each other to beat up, it’s great to watch

The scene in Klaue’s hideout: the big 3 confront Ultron while Clint and Nat are waiting in the shadows

“Code Green” only happens occasionally, not every time

Does that mean Banner plays the “man in the chair” on other occasions from the QuinJet?

On their various missions, they have fought other “enhanced” people

The Avengers have their own satellite. It’s not just Veronica on there, they’ve got surveillance and stuff. It probably helps with their communications.

Wolfgang von Strucker let the other Hydra bases be found bc they didn’t concern him or his experiments. But he didn’t think the Avengers would come for them. An arrogant miscalculation.

But he’s also a coward

Hydra has always more or less wanted an army of super-humans. They weren’t satisfied with just the Winter Soldier--and how could they be?

Ulysses Klaue was in contact with Strucker and they had talked very recently

Golly these people are just disturbing

The Maximoff twins are indeed punks

Tony Stark:

By the end of the film, Steve takes Thor and Tony’s word for it that alien threats are still out there. But Steve doesn’t understand how seriously Tony takes that threat and how personally it affects him

Part of it is because no one was really listening in the scene after Ultron awakens when Tony talked about those fears. As soon as he said “Do you all remember when I went through a wormhole?” they thought he was expressing self-pity. They told him to minimize those fears at least momentarily because Ultron was the bigger issue at the moment.

Also Tony never told the rest of the team about the dream Wanda gave him. 

Probably because he didn’t think they would listen. Chances are, he was right on that count.

Steve and Tony aren’t super-close friends like the way Steve and Bucky used to be. But they were friends. They had a cordial working relationship. So those of you saying Tony in Civil War saying “So was I” was an arrogant assumption are incorrect--but those of you saying Steve at least owed Tony some personal loyalty are also correct.

Tony’s dream: Why didn’t you do more? Tony isn’t just afraid of aliens returning. He’s afraid of his own inadequacy. He’s afraid of failure.

Tony knows the team doesn’t understand what he’s been through. Tony also knows that the team doesn’t understand what the possibility of a permanent solution means: because some of them don’t have real “homes” to go to. And Tony kind of wants to end the personal hell he’s been living in for the last seven years. If he can. I think by the end of this movie Tony realizes that maybe finding something to replace the Avengers isn’t the best idea

There also is kind of something suspicious about him creating an AI that immediately attacked him and his friends. Maybe the Mind Stone tapped into Tony’s self-loathing and his...distrust of the others. IDK how that would already have been written into Ultron but remember we are dealing with cosmic forces here

It’s nice that even without an AI that Tony still has working internet in his suits

Ulysses Klaue knew Tony Stark well enough to recognize one of his catchphrases. What aren’t you telling us, Tony? (Chances are I don’t wanna know, actually)

Trying to harness forces that you don’t understand to solve your personal problems and everybody else’s problems is just a terrible way to deal with life

Watching Tony attempt that is not fun.

The Banner-to-Hulk and back transformation is painful and uncomfortable

Strucker had a chitauri slug monster in that vault. Tony’s PTSD was triggered as soon as he entered the room. Wanda just pushed him over the edge.

Thor had been looking for the sceptre since SHIELD fell. You have to assume that SHIELD had it in some kind of security--or they thought they did. All Strucker had to do was to contact the right Hydra sleepers and he had it for his personal use.

The Mind Stone created Ultron. Also Strucker created the robot bodies. Tony Stark did not create Ultron. Got it?

I like the party scene because it shows how some of the 06 have a life outside of Avenging.

Are those old vets at the party people that Steve knows/has met, or did Tony invite them?

Ultron wearing the mysterious cloak is super dope and my brother agrees

One of the weaker points of this film is that a lot of exposition happens in scenes in between the big action sequences. Like, exposition that explains tiny technical details

Fury and Hill absolutely pwned that Robot

Seeing Peggy in Steve’s dream kills me. Every time.

Natasha: 

Wanda convinced Steve to not trust Tony Stark

At the very least, Steve (A) was very aware that Tony dealing with something he didn’t understand behind everyone’s back had gotten them in the Ultron mess in the first place (B) he felt the need to tell Tony that doing so again was a bad idea, and (C) walking into the lab and seeing Tony already messing with it did not improve things

This whole thing really could have been avoided if someone else had taken Barton to the QuinJet and Thor had personally retrieved the scepter instead of letting Tony do it

Civil War really actually almost started over the cradle

But then Thor showed up and he didn’t say anything to explain stuff, he just did his thing with the hammer and the lighting

Also the tragedy at the end could have been avoided if someone had locked up the QuinJet, or even just hopped it over to the Helicarrier when it showed up--not like anybody had time but still

Thor saves a lady from falling--and she looks up and sees him--is that adoration in her face?

Laura tells Clint that he needs to look after the team and make sure they can work together, subtext: the world kind of depends on it

Helen Cho: *sass*

Clint has probably always wanted to bring the other Avengers to the farm. 

The Barton Farm probably has really great internet security. Probably the best SHIELD had to offer before it fell.

Did anybody get any real sleep while they were at Bartons?

Because it seems to me like the only time the Avengers got any sleep was during their trans-continental flights--but even then whatever jets they were flying in probably weren’t that comfy to sleep in

Ultron takes turns with each of the Avengers to pick a fight with them. He gets real pleasure out of intimidating each of them.

Sokovians hates America. They’ve been under communist rule for most of the last century so what do you expect? They hate American capitalism. They hate Tony Stark because that’s what he stands for. They hate the Avengers because that’s what they represent--or what people in an impoverished country in eastern Europe think they represent

(My headcanon is that American businesses tried to build there and they’ve made it harder for the local economy)

At some point back in the 90s, there was a war in Sokovia and one of the sides happened to be using contraband Stark Industries weapons. That’s what happened. I think Wanda figures that out sooner or later that it wasn’t directly Tony’s fault. If she doesn’t know already.

Wanda and Pietro Maximoff volunteered for Strucker’s experiments so that they could fight for their country. They joined the Avengers for the same reason. After Pietro’s death, Wanda joins the Avengers partly because she doesn’t have anywhere else to go, but she also wants to continue to fight the good fight and make the world a better place

Ultron knew about the Winter Soldier and after he had destroyed the planet I’ll bet you he would have gone to look for Bucky’s remains and then chewed on the metal arm like a drumstuck

the deleted/extended version of the Water of Sight scene was kind of better. They should have at least kept in the shot of Thor drinking the Asgardian liquor to stiffen his courage

Did his buds bring him that?

The scene with Laura and Clint in the bedroom is so tender. Screw what anybody else says, I love that Clint has a family. I’ve admitted this before, but I initially wrote Clintasha into my fanfic, but it just didn’t feel right. Laura and the little Bartons are what I needed 

(Because my Jedi OC who goes to the MCU is Clint’s adopted cousin)

Also, Auntie Nat. Clint and his family have adopted Natasha. I’m just in love with Clint taking in other orphan superheroes. ^_^

Nick Fury is basically the Avengers’ Dad and he knows it

Steve knows that the world he lives in now is different from the one he saved back in the 40s, and he knows that he’s a different person now. But that being said, his arc in this film is still heartbreaking to watch

Tony and Steve are both offended on a personal level that Vision can lift the hammer

When Wanda watches Vision coming out of the cradle, it isn’t “love at first sight”, it’s “okay the monster that Ultron created is out of the bag and it’s alive now, what’s it going to do?”

From my brother: Ultron should have known that Wanda Maximoff was going to “read” what was happening inside of the cradle

Also my brother: Ultron should have just flown off in the QuinJet

Ultron is just all kinds of unbalanced and he is scary

Overall, Age of Ultron isn’t as good quality as some previous MCU films but it still has a lot of epic action, it’s awesome and fun to watch

Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff:

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again, the only reason I haven’t accepted other people’s theories about how BruceNat was fake or tried to retcon it myself is because I have made bad relationship decisions, I’ve tried to rush into relationships with people I wasn’t compatible with or didn’t know well yet, it’s part of being human

It’s still the worst part of the movie

I didn’t take it personally, I just...ugh

It’s poorly written and it makes no sense for their characters even if they do have a certain kind of working relationship. Even if you don’t ship Natasha with anyone else it’s terrible

The Hulk responds to touch from another person and it relaxes him

The Hulk does have some kind of relationship with Black Widow: he responds to her and he tries to protect her

Bruce Banner is also pretty comfortable with Natasha

Natasha’s lines in this movie really aren’t that great

We did, however, get the Red Room Flashbacks and a lot of kick-butt Black Widow action

The fact that Natasha talks about the trial of being artifically sterilized while the actress playing her was pregnant is kind of disgusting. Really disgusting, actually. But on the other hand (I think partly because of ScarJo’s pregnancy) Natasha is kind of emotional in that scene. Her voice is choking. She empathizes with Bruce and she tries to tell him as much. 

If there is anything redeeming about BruceNat, it is the thematic value

Natasha values her superhero work and she values the team

Everyone was kind of hoping that taking out Strucker in Sokovia would be the last thing the Avengers needed to do. So Natasha was banking on the fact that after they had stopped Ultron they wouldn’t be needed anymore. She was seriously contemplating running away with Bruce. If there was any possibility for her to step away from it all and have a normal life, she wanted it. She wanted some of that happiness in her life.

“I had this dream that I was more than the assassin that they made me into.” Why does no one talk about this line? That is her best line.

But poor Bruce just goes through the mill in this movie. 

When he comes out of the witch-dream in Africa, is he seeing Banner’s worst fear or the Hulk’s worst fear? Both?

Bruce Banner may feel some guilt with how Ultron turned out.

And the Hulk had a good look at all the terrible destruction he caused.

Did anyone else notice the soldiers with the guns surrounding the Hulk before the Hulkbuster finally took him out?

Hulk just can’t deal anymore, okay? 

And neither can Bruce. So no, now is not the time to elope.

I love the Maximoff twins, okay? Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen did a great job portraying them. And I’m biased because her name is Elizabeth and I’ve been cosplaying Scarlet Witch since months before AoU came out.

In spite of its flaws, I still like how Age of Ultron still has thematic depth. Themes include: Belonging, finding home and family, misunderstanding, being a “monster” versus being “human”. All themes that tie back to the greater MCU.

But yeah, it might as well be just a giant trailer for Civil War and Infinity War.

Age of Ultron and Thor: The Dark World aren’t the best MCU movies but Stan Lee has great cameos in both of them

The way I see it, after SHIELD fell (the world was less safe w/o SHIELD). Steve Rogers learned about Hydra having all these secret bases still in operation and Hydra people who had survived/escaped/not been found yet. That was important enough to him to reluctantly leave the search for Bucky (and hope that Sam Wilson would have some luck finding a person who didn’t want to be found). He called on the other Avengers to help him. Tony Stark decided that it would be a good idea to help out...well, more than a good idea, he knew he needed to help. He may have already had a new suit ready. Pepper had to have been at least semi-supportive at the outset. I don’t know what she heard about Ultron or Sokovia but it must not have been good.