#is whether or not Sharon wanted to get married and have children in the beginning

[daydreamerdrew]

Tales of Suspense (1959) #77

[sapphire374]

Soy Sol: Chapter 12 (I'll Be There Through Every Step)

Wattpad Link

Ch.1 / Ch.2 / Ch.3 / Ch.4 / Ch.5 / Ch.6 / Ch.7 / Ch.8 / Ch.9 / Ch.10 / Ch.11 / Ch.13 / Ch.14 / Ch.15 / Ch.16 / Ch.17

Ámbar runs into her apartment with tears falling on her face. She tries to escape into her bedroom, but Simón catches her before she’s able to. “Ámbar, what happened? Why are you crying?” Simón guides her to the couch and she cries on his shoulder in the comfort of his arms. Tears smearing the mascara all over her face. “Remember when I told you I had a meeting with some students from Law school. Well, the truth is I wasn’t going to meet for any school project, I went to go talk to my biological mom,” Ámbar tells Simón. “Look I didn’t mean to lie; I just didn’t feel like hearing anyone tell me how bad of an idea it was. I felt like I owed that moment to myself, to discover more who I am before I married you.”

“Ámbar I would’ve never stopped you and you know I always support you on every decision and step you make. Us getting married means that we have to trust each other. You have to trust me that I’ll always be here for you no matter what. I know it’s tough, to try to discover more who you are. That happened when Luna was trying to discover from who and where she came from.” Ámbar nods and wipes away her tears from the tissue Simón gave her. “It didn’t even matter anyways since part of me doesn’t believe her but then the other part of me wants to. It made sense everything she said but still hurts, a lot,” Simón holds her tight as she tells him everything Sylvania told her.

“Originally I was considering on meeting Sharon as well to have some questions answered but I don’t want to end up feeling hurt again and in tears like today. Maybe I should just leave everything in the past… I don’t know,” Ámbar says. “I know this can be very hard for you but if that’s what you want, I think it’s a good idea, to speak to Sharon even just a little if you’re ready. Maybe it can tie some loose ends, and you can finally have some of those questions answered. That’s the least you deserve.” Ámbar stares to her lap and thinks about it for a second. Simón gently holds her hand and lets her know, “I will always be here, whether you decide to go talk to Sharon or not. I’ll be here every step of the way.” Ámbar holds out her arms and gives Simón a tight hug. She kisses him on the cheek and lays her gentle face on his shoulders again.

Jam and Roller

It’s the next morning and the whole gang is huddled around Delfi as she prepares their skating video. The nerves crowd the air as she finishes the project on her computer. “Done! It’s ready you guys,” she exclaims. Some are anxiously sipping their shakes while others are tightly holding on to their companions. Pedro stares in awe and shows how proud he is of his soulmate and the whole gang. “You guys this is just the first step into making this dream, the Jam and Roller, stay alive and come true. You all should be proud because we have finally came together, worked hard and did an awesome skating routine. We got this,” Luna announces. “On ready, one, two, three… Jam and Roller!!” the gang all chant.

Delfi presses the button on her computer and it’s official, the video has been sent to the competition’s organization. After sharing a group hug with Juliana, they resume to their posts. “Since today is a special day in which we sent the video, I’m willing to give you guys this day off. Enjoy it, you all truly deserve it after how hard you guys have been working,” Juliana lets the team know at the rink. Gastón heads over to where Matteo is at and says, “hmm well someone seems to be saved by the bell.”

“You’re right, speaking of which I’m so excited to finally sing that song, I’ve been working on for Luna. I spent all night practicing it hoping she forgives me, and everything can get back to normal. I hope this plan works,” Matteo chuckles. “Don’t worry amigo, everything will be fine and lately I’ve been seeing her in a much happier mood. I think she even probably forgot about the arguments and such,” Gastón suggests. “Yeah, I hope so.”

Luna rolls by Matteo and he doesn’t help but stare at her. “So, are you going to talk to her, or should I have to do it for you?” Gastón jokes around. Matteo takes his advice and heads to Luna where she is taking off her skates. “Hey Chica Delivery, are you getting ready for the concert I’m having today,” Matteo asks. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Luna giggles. “Glad you said that cause I may or may not have a surprise all planned out,” Matteo comments. Luna gasps and couldn’t help her excitement cloud the air. “Chico Fresa, I didn’t know you were the mysterious type?” Luna and Matteo begin to laugh in synchronicity. “Well, I guess there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me then.” Matteo’s phone begins to buzz. He picks it up and answers the phone call.

Once he has hung up, he lets Luna know he has to leave. “I’m sorry but I have to go now to start preparing for the concert. I would love to continue this conversation, but the surprise won’t reveal itself on its own hmm,” Matteo teases. Nina rushes to Luna after seeing him slip away. “Luna, what was all that giggling?” Nina whispers. “A special moment that truly felt like it hasn’t happened in ages,” Luna responds.

Jazmín and Delfi both sit together on the couch as they discuss their plans on how they’ll find out who the secret admirer is. “So, I was thinking we can look at all the comments of your recent video and maybe find some clues as to who the secret admirer is. I feel like they probably must have known you from your videos I’m assuming,” Delfi states. “Of course, they know me from my videos, I am the most popular on the web. Who honestly wouldn’t want to date me?” Jazmín insists.

A delivery man holding a large bouquet of flowers enters the Jam and Roller and hands them to Jazmín. Delfi stares in shock. Jazmín pulls out the card and reads “Mi amor, I chose these flowers because they represent the beautiful tones of your eyes and bring out your inner sparkle. I hope these make you feel the happiness I feel just seeing you.” Jazmín holds the card close to her chest and doesn’t help but cheer. “Oh my Jazmin, this person is head over heels in love with you,” Delfi says. “I know! Whoever this is, he already sounds so charming.” Delfi is beyond excited for Jazmín but can’t help but feel a little worried for her friend since they still don’t know who this person is. Why are they sending them anonymously? She finds this a little fishy.

Sharon’s Apartment

Ámbar knocks on the door, she shakily turns the knob when she hears the door unlock from the other side. “Come in,” Sharon states while her personal caretaker guides Ámbar to the dining room as Simón follows her in. “Don’t be shy and take a seat.” Ámbar and Simón pull two chairs and sit down in response to Sharon. She slowly takes a sip from her tea as the room fills with silence. Ámbar is beginning to have flashbacks of all the lonely nights she would have being with Sharon.

“It is a pleasure getting to see you again Ámbar, you hadn’t visited in 7 months. I was beginning to worry that maybe you have forgotten about me,” Sharon admitted. “No, it wasn’t like that, I have been just so busy with law school and managing the Jam and Roller. That’s all,” Ámbar replies. “You’ve always been busy, that’s never changed. I suppose that you’re here but not only to just meet me or stop by to say hello because you would’ve done that before. I can sense you’re here for something,” Sharon remarked. Ámbar turns her eyes towards Simón as a sign for help. “Ms. Benson, I don’t mean to intrude but Ámbar has decided to come here to ask about her past,” Simón answers. “I was wondering what made you decide to adopt me?” Ámbar asks.

Sharon takes a deep breath. “In the past, I had always wanted a kid, but it never seemed like the right time. When I heard Sylvania was planning to give her child up for adoption but didn’t know who would be fitting to be the parent of her baby, that’s when I saw it as a sign of fate. It was meant for me to be your mom,” Sharon takes another sip of her tea. “I’m a little surprised since you never seemed like the ‘loving children’ type. No offense or disrespect,” Ámbar comments. “You know I was a lot different before the fire, after that everything felt a lot stressful with life in general.” Sharon reaches out to hold Ámbar’s hand and feels the ring on Ámbar’s finger.

“You’re engaged?” Sharon questions. “Yes,” Ámbar responds. “And you never told me?!” Sharon shows her dismay and stays silent. “Well, it was pretty recent, I was planning to tell you I was just not sure when or how. It’s complicated and you know that plus you never liked Simon anyways,” Ámbar said. “I know we’ve never had such a close relationship but just know I’ll forever regret not being that loving caring parent you deserved to have. I know it’s too late, but I still care about you and love you.” Sharon begins to cry and tries to wipe her tears with her fingers. “I know madrina, I know, and I love you too mom.” Ámbar heads out with Simón since she thinks it’s for the best.

Benson Valente Mansion

Monica is seen gathering some tulle and fabric in the living room. She hears the door unlock and it’s Ámbar and Simón. “Oh, hello guys! I’ve already begun preparing some of the table arrangements for the wedding reception,” Monica states gleefully. Ámbar looks a little flushed and just nods trying to avoid crying. “Mija, what’s the matter? Is everything okay?” Monica seems concerned for Ámbar. When she notices Ámbar doesn’t say anything, she does what she knows best, she hugs her. Ámbar hugs her back.

“Well, I think I should leave you two in private,” Simón whispers to Monica. Simón leaves to the kitchen when they head to the couch as Monica gives Ambar the tissue box. “Have you ever felt empty inside? Feeling as if everyone you knew as a child and grew up lied to you. That your own story held in the hands of someone else. I feel like….. me trying to uncover the pieces are as if their edges are shattered and there’s no way on putting the puzzle together. Nevermind, this all might sound very silly to you,” Ámbar sniffed. Monica thinks for a little bit. “It’s not silly at all Ámbar, it’s normal to feel this way not being able to know your own story of how your life began. But just know it doesn’t make you who you are entirely. For example, when I look at you, I don’t see the girl who was manipulated by her madrina. I see a strong-minded, hardworking, caring young girl beside me who does an excellent job managing the Jam and Roller while attending Law school. Not anyone can pull off all those moves at once, and you do it so effortlessly. You may not know the full story and only some parts of it, but you are not your mother’s mistakes. In fact, I’m proud of you. After everything you went through, you still managed to seek the right path in life, and it worked. You gave it a second chance, you had what’s so important to have, and that is hope. So, when you walk down the aisle wondering ‘who am I,’ you’re Ámbar Smith, the one who overcame it all.”

Ámbar turns to Monica sobbing, but this time with a huge smile on her face, even showing her teeth. “How do you do it?” Ámbar asks. Monica looks at Ámbar with a confused expression. “How do you know exactly what to say at the right time?” Monica smiles back giggling alongside Ámbar. They stay wrapped in each other’s arms on the couch. Ámbar starts glancing at all the beautifully tied table arrangements for her wedding, how you can tell the amount of effort that was put in each one of them. That’s when it hits her.

When they break away from each other’s arms, Ámbar faces Monica. “Can you be the one to walk me down the aisle? You have always been there for me whenever I needed you these past couple of years and…. I don’t know how to say this, but you have showed me how it feels like having a mom. Why wouldn’t I want my mom there?” Ámbar starts tearing up again. “It would be an honor to attend it, and it truly warms my heart hearing you say that. Ever since our family reunited with you and Alfredo, it’s felt much bigger and cozier. I’ve got two daughters, Luna and you. I wouldn’t miss your dress fitting or wedding for the world.” They begin to hug again. Near one of the walls close to the living room, there’s Simón who couldn’t help but smile while spying on them. It makes him feel ecstatic knowing that Ámbar does feel like she has a family now and is not alone, not ever again.

Matteo’s Concert

All of Matteo’s fans begin to huddle up near the pit of the stage. Everyone is beyond excited to hear his collaboration with Viviana on stage for the very first time. Luna enters with Nina. Nina stays holding Luna’s arm, trying not to get dragged away by the crowd of people nearby. “So Luna, how have you been feeling about the whole thing?” Luna turns towards Nina and says, “A little conflicted not going to lie, but I’m here to support Matteo. I’m still a little bit upset at what he did calling me jealous and standing me up on our date, but I think I’ve put it past us. Today is a special day for him and I shall be here for that.” Nina nods in response.

Gastón rushes over to Matteo backstage. “Everything okay amigo?” Matteo picks up his guitar and nervously answers, “Yes. Once Viviana and I stop singing, you turn off the lights and have only the spotlight facing me. Just like old times when I had sang to her Alla Voy. I will sing this song I wrote for her, and it shall feel like we’re the only ones in the room. This night shall be perfect for her.” Gastón approaches him and smiles while patting him on the back. “Don’t worry you got this!”

The crowd starts chanting when the lights turn on as Viviana and Matteo approach the stage. They begin singing into their mics, Viviana doesn’t stop staring at him while Matteo’s eyes are fixated on Luna. He is in awe of how beautiful she looks tonight, even though he feels like Luna looks beautiful all the time.

Luna starts dancing along to the song with Nina, they don’t stop giggling and having a great time. Viviana starts noticing who Matteo can’t keep his eyes off of. She grows green with envy. She never liked Luna and was always hoping he would break up with her. She tries to get really close to him, even at times trying to have a sharing mic moment. Viviana throughout the song doesn’t stop making eye contact with Matteo and keeping him close. When she sees that this doesn’t Luna, or him she reacts quickly. Once the song ends, Viviana standing next to Matteo grabs his neck towards her and kisses him. She has her hand caress his cheek. The fans are screaming with excitement.

As for Luna, she’s speechless. It feels like the world has stopped and she has lost track of her surroundings. When Matteo pushes Viviana off him, he turns and sees Luna running out of the venue crying.

[doof-doofblog]

"It's Not Yours!"

Tuesday 4th May 2021

Hello again everyone and good morning! I'm up bright and early today to make sure I get this post up! So in the previous post I recalled everything I had caught up on, and Monday's episode ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger. Now Callum has revealed everything to Ben, are they going to be able to move on from this?! I'm really looking forward to finding out, so without further ado, lets focus on the episode!

The first thing I'm going to mention of course is Ben & Callum! Ben appears to be seething after learning the truth about Callum's betrayal to his family. Even though we all know that Callum was blackmailed into going behind the Mitchell's back, he tries his absolute best to explain himself to Ben. But the one thing that Ben wants to know is who was behind it, as he slams the dining room table in anger he demands Callum tells him truth. Realising he's going to have to come clean, Callum admits that it was Thompson who was behind everything. Ben begins to panic, asking him what he actually knows or what he's been told. But Callum swears that Thompson knows nothing and he hasn't told them anything.

As things escalate, Callum tries to persuade Ben that if they still love each other they can both get through anything together, but for Ben there seems to be no way back from this. He can't seem to fathom that he's been sharing his bed with someone who has betrayed his family and basically become a grass. Later on, as Ben takes some time to breathe and digest what he's just learnt, he take a visit to his Mum's. Kathy can see that Ben isn't looking in the best of moods considering he's due to be married soon. As Ben makes a slight comment stating that she shouldn't have bothered collecting the wedding rings, Kathy sits beside her son and demands an explanation. Ben doesn't really tell her very much, only that Callum has lied to him about something, but Kathy finds that hard to believe and questions whether her own son is has played a guilty part in any way. She actually gives her son some good advice - Callum is the best thing that's ever happened to him, if he loves him he needs to sort things out before their wedding!

As Ben listens to his Mum, he returns to the Mitchell household where Callum is anxiously waiting for him. But this time, there is no raised voices and no arguing, Ben is more quiet this time. In my opinion, it looks as if Ben blames himself for the way Callum has become. He recalls that when they first met, Callum was sweet and honest and terrible liar, but since he's been with him, Ben seems to think that he's somehow turned his fiancé into something he's not. Callum shakes his head, not believing a word that's coming out of Ben's mouth. Ben still voices his concern of not being good enough for Callum, claiming that at some point in the future he will hurt Callum, possibly more than once - not that he'll ever mean to but at some point, Callum will end up hurt. Callum refuses to listen to his partner and asks him straight out whether he loves him or not. Even though Ben admits that he does love Callum, he announces that regardless of that - there isn't going to be a wedding! Could this really be the end of Ballum? Will Ben be able to forgive his partner and actually end up marrying the one person he truly loves?!

--

The next thing I have to mention is Isaac, we saw that he flushed his medication down the drain - are things slowly taking a turn for Isaac now he's off his medication? Whilst he's sat in the Cafe, he seems to be staring at the missing poster of Bailey - but suddenly he begins to rip down every poster he finds as he realises that they've missed a digit on the phone number. Everyone seems shocked by this action, especially Lola. Even though Isaac explains why he's ripped down the posters, it looks as if Lola questions whether ripping them down was the best idea? He could've simply taken them down without ripping them or just simply penned in the missing digit?

As Keegan and Bernie continue searching the streets for Bailey, Keegan is saddened to see one of their posters ripped. Bernie tries to console Keegan by explaining that it could've been immature kids. But as they go off on their separate ways, Keegan witnesses Isaac ripping down more posters. As anger boils up inside him he rushes after him and confronts him about why he's ripping down their posters. Once again Isaac notifies him that he was doing them a favour because they missed a digit. As Keegan checks over the poster he realises his mistake, his anger evaporates and turns into worry, speculating that people might've been trying to call trying to notify them that Bailey had been seen or even found. As Keegan apologises for his outburst, Isaac is completely understanding saying that he would've reacted exactly the same way.

However as the day goes on, Lola decides to pay her boyfriend a visit, only as she walks in she can see that he's looked like he's not slept and is completely obsessed over finding Bailey. Could these small signs be the sign of a breakdown for Isaac? Lola pleads that her boyfriends gets some rest otherwise his meds won't work. However as soon as she mentions his medication, Isaac goes cold and she can see that he's hiding something from her. He realises that he can't keep this secret from her and informs her that he's stop taking his medication, but he's feeling fine! Lola seems shocked to hear this news and questions whether it's the right thing to do, to make sure that Isaac will be okay without his medication, she makes him promise to inform his doctor about coming off his meds. But even though Isaac promises, I've got the feeling that he has no intention about informing his doctor or even his parents that he's flushed his medication.

Meanwhile as the Taylor's are still fretting about Bailey, Jack decides to inform them that another way of getting the word out there about Bailey's disappearance would be to do a TV appeal. Even though Karen agrees to do it, Mitch doesn't feel that it'll make much difference and hides himself away whilst Karen tries to come up with a speech. Will Bailey be found safe and well?!

--

Now the last thing I have to mention of course is the Carter's. As Nancy prepares to open up the gym with Sharon and Zack, Frankie pays her visit trying to inform her half-sister that she completely understands Linda's worry, but also acknowledges that she's on Nancy's side. At the end of the day it's her body and she can do what she wants, she just wants to be the supportive sister. This act of kindness seems to really touch Nancy, she thanks her half-sister and invites her to take part in a trial run of the electric bike. This is the moment where I think Nancy realises that she'll always have a sister there to support her - which I found really sweet!

Only, without Nancy's knowledge, her Mum has gone behind her back and gone to the clinic and cancelled her appointment. Linda of course only thinks she's doing right by her daughter, but she needs to understand that it's not her body, she can't control Nancy's life. Only as Linda tries to explain herself to the doctor, she becomes a little light-headed and has to take a rest. As the doctor offers to check her over to make sure she's okay, Linda seems to realise what is actually happening to her - she seems to think she might be pregnant!

Returning back to the gym whilst Nancy and Frankie enjoy some sisterly bonding, Nancy receives a call and it looks as if it's not the best news. As everyone comes together back at the Vic, Nancy is raging with anger and explaining the phone call she has had to her Dad, she's learnt that her Mum has actually gone behind her back and cancelled her appointment. As Linda enters she tries to explain that she was only thinking of her daughter, but Nancy is furious, shouting at her Mum that she's the one who actually shouldn't be allowed kids! As Nancy walks out leaving Linda and Mick alone - Mick is also shocked to hear what his wife has done and claims that if it's something that Nancy really wants, hopefully she'll be able to rebook her operation.

Linda admits that all her life all she's tried to do was be the best Mum and support her children, but then she states "Maybe I'll get it right next time!" - Mick looks a bit confused and asks what she means by "Next time". But the pin suddenly drops and Mick realises that Linda is informing him that she's pregnant with her fifth child. Mick is completely over the moon, the look on his face is pure joy as he states that this is what the family has needed for a long time, a fresh start and a new little one in the family is just what they need, he joyously even thinks that Ollie would love having a little friend around, but then Linda drops the bombshell that she's actually in fact 5 months pregnant - if the dates add up correctly, it might mean that Mick isn't the father of the baby, and she could actually be pregnant with Max's child!

Oooh gosh!!! This is going to cause more sadness between Mick and Linda isn't it? Will she decide to keep the baby? Will Mick be able to stand by her if she's carrying someone else's child? We know that Kellie Bright is also pregnant herself and will be going on maternity leave at some point in the near future, but what could be her temporary exit story? I've got the feeling that maybe this could be it? Could this pregnancy come between the couple and will she feel the need to leave for a little while? Who knows? What do you guys think? I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on the recent episode! Thank you all for reading! I am so happy to be back and I can't wait to post up again very soon! Enjoy the rest of your day folks! Love you all xXx

[satanherfuckingself]

Hayley Atwell. Publicly Adored Psychopath.

Before I begin, I feel it's imperative to mention that this was not created to cause harm. Do not send anyone hatred or harassment despite what you may read. You are not a monster. Do not stoop to that level. Verbal abuse is still abuse, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether someone 'deserves' it or not.

Please, do not do that. Do not become an abuser. If you feel the need to do something, I will provide solutions for that fact, but hatred and harm will not solve anything.

Keep that in mind. And please stay tuned and read this thoroughly because it's more than just a social call out. It's more than just 'cancel culture' or someone making a big whoop over something nonsensical or even holding someone accountable for their actions. I promise there is a point to this, and it is probably far more important than the title even suggests.

Please, stick with it, and read to the end.

I also feel the need to mention that some of the behaviors discussed in this piece will undoubtedly be quite... disturbing. Proceed with caution if you find it necessary.

And. Let it be known that any claims made here are in fact alleged. Evidence and sources will be provided of course, that's simply a friendly reminder for the... legality of it.

Forgive me if you enjoy this ending because if you have any sense of a decent moral compass, this will probably shatter that enjoyment of it, and forgive me if you do not because this will only make you hate it more.

So I found this blog:

Hydra Support Blog

Really, it's a blog centered entirely around hating Sharon Carter, the very real person that was her actress, Emily VanCamp, encouraging hatred towards this same very real person and her fans for any scrounged up nonexistent reason they can find, without proof, as well as fans of the comics.

They also insult her acting, despite the fact that Emily actually has won awards for her performances while the idol they are so devoted to has not.

All for the sake of the very real bully who actively encouraged, manipulated, and even to some degree, promoted the behavior. Under the guise of promoting her own character.

Why did I call them a Hydra support blog?

Well, quite clearly, they support the Creepy Uncle Theory that Endgame made a point to reward them with, which certainly does require the support of Hydra among other things, but I won't dive into that just yet. It's also because they sound exactly like Zola. Don't worry, we'll come back to it. But they are also quite clearly overjoyed at the idea of someone losing a job for their personal enjoyment.

This is also terrible.

Allow me to remind that this harassment and hatred was not limited to these fans, or fans of Peggy or Steggy. It also existed, to some degree among Romanogers fans, Stucky fans, and Stony fans. You know who you are. And you are certainly not excused from this behavior if you in any way participated in spreading hatred or contempt for the Staron and Sharon fanbase, or actively harassing those fans.

You don't have to like it, you can even rant against it all you like in your personal spaces. But being respectful and understanding should be the common fucking courteousy here. People are allowed to like different things from you. And they are not obligated to agree with you.

Your personal enjoyment is not worth more than someone's job or life. And it never should be.

However, the only actress who encouraged this particular behavior in full, among her fans... was Atwell.

Not Emily, not Chris, not Scarlett, not Sebastian, and not Robert Downey Jr. Some may have made tasteless jokes or even gone along with the situation, encouraging 'teams' among fans for publicity. I wouldn't label complete blamelessness in this case, but it is important to recognize ignorance over malicious behavior, which is the difference here. Because it was nothing to the extent of the tantrum that Atwell threw the moment the spotlight was no longer on her.

So let's talk about Hayley Atwell, and her involvement in all of this, the alleged actions and their implications. Let's take a deep dive into the psychology of it all, and why what she did was actually very wrong. I'll touch on the lack of etiquette and class as well as blatant unprofessionalism needed to consciously do what she did.

Because her behavior is disturbing, it is disgusting, and it has gone unnoticed for far too long. Her portrayal of Peggy makes the relationship canonically abusive. And no one noticed.

People are still defending her, and respecting her, despite what she's done. She is welcome to have a life and live it how she pleases, but not at the expense of other people. We cannot simply reward this type of behavior when it is unquestionably wrong. We cannot leave her with the power to do worse.

A good starting point in understanding what she's done would be here:

Receipts

Who one lovely sweetheart of a blogger decided to compile and I am ever so grateful for, as I'm a lazy shit~. My only regret is that this wasn't seen and still hasn't been seen by enough people, especially by those that rewarded or are even promoting the behavior still. This blogger is a very good person and that is abundantly clear, send her some love and reblog that post if you can. It's necessary more people see it. Thank you, love, you are truly a blessing. So I'm a little bias, I tend to be for good people.

Allow me to expand on it though, as I do have to mention, I have just a few minor additions and concerns. However, sources are provided perfectly, along with plenty of evidence to stand on it's own for what Atwell did. That this was active, deliberate, and intentional to hurt someone's career that wasn't herself. Allegedly.

But, let's also debunk some of Atwell's claims and mention a few other things, starting with all her claims about the relationship between Sharon and Steve. Between being 'disrespectful' and 'incestuous'.

Claims easily found in these articles:

https://ew.com/article/2016/06/06/captain-america-civil-war-hayley-atwell-steve-sharon/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/peggy-carter-does-not-approve-899860

https://www.hypable.com/captain-america-civil-war-hayley-atwell-steve-and-sharon-were-disrespectful/

https://www.thewrap.com/hayley-atwell-agent-carter-captain-america-civil-war-kiss-sharon-carter-marvel-incestuous-disrespectful/

https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Hayley-Atwell-Issue-With-Captain-America-Agent-13-Kiss-Civil-War-135197.html

https://www.bustle.com/articles/165038-hayley-atwell-reveals-peggys-feelings-about-steve-sharon-which-are-just-what-youd-expect

https://www.bustle.com/articles/165194-why-captain-america-sharon-carters-relationship-does-a-disservice-to-both-fans-steve-rogers

https://www.themarysue.com/peggy-carter-does-not-approve/

Oh, and look at that last one, including a gif of the psychotic rage it takes to shoot at someone who doesn't belong to you, because you're jealous... And of course, we love a good afterthought in which a real person is less important than a fictional story.

https://screenrant.com/captain-america-mcu-ending-problem-sharon-carter-endgame/

Did I need to include all of those sources? Of course not. Are they mostly along the same lines? Absolutely. But does it make a point of how positively this was covered as the media ran with her words to give her as much press and coverage as she wanted and promote her and only her ideas?

Absolutely...

To put it all very bluntly, I disagree with her. Why?

Well, for starters, we know that 'Peggy' had initially moved on from Steve. She'd married, had a family, supposedly loved this family and even had grandchildren. The character had always, comics alike but even in the MCU, been meant to signify and aid in Steve moving on, just as she did, from the past. It was a minor role, but still vital, and quite endearing when done this way.

But according to this, these articles and Atwell herself.

Peggy never loved the husband she'd initially married, or the family she'd made.

They were only placeholders for Steve.

According to her, Steve wasn't allowed to move on from her. Wasn't permitted to find happiness, beyond her, even though her character had blatantly stated she wanted him to in 'CA:TWS'. As proven even by Atwell's feelings towards Romanogers. Seemingly any woman that wasn't Peggy was an absolute 'no' for her. Because he belonged to 'Peggy'. I didn't know... slavery was a thing for her, but as far as I know, people cannot and should not be ownable.

Under no circumstances, even with married couples, should the people involved be considered property. They are individuals and human beings. Point blank. Period.

But let's make an exception in her case and say that this is true. Well, apparently this controlled permission and ownership extends to Sharon as well?

Now I'll ask, why is Peggy's opinion, a woman Steve had previously only shared one kiss with, had never even managed to share that one date with, relevant at all?

A woman who, need I remind you is well into her 90s by the time we see her again, is Steve still supposedly all she thinks about? All she thought about all those years? Why was a picture of... him on her desk in the 70s, as portrayed in Endgame, when she should have been married, with children, well into her 50s mind you but somehow still young, and apparently, none of her family is as important as Steve?

How is that healthy?

She was tantamount to an ex-lover at that point. Even if they had slept together, as Atwell claimed, and Evans and the writers disproved. Are people supposed to consult ex-lovers before they start dating someone else? Especially ones that get married and live their lives? Is there some unspoken rule I don't know about? Or in another sense, I wasn't aware she was also his mother and could decide for him, a grown man with a right to his own decisions and autonomy, who had initiated the romance with Sharon, what he could and could not do.

Ideally, Peggy would have cared more about Sharon, a niece she had supported in her endeavors and helped raise, rather than a man she admired symbolically and had shared one kiss with, and never managed to date. Just because she didn't get dick from him. Ideally, she would have cared more about the family she'd allegedly made after moving on from this man's death. A family, Sharon would have been a part of.

Her concerns shouldn't have been cockblocking Steve and saying he couldn't have Sharon and vice versa, they should have been whether or not he's treating Sharon right. And far more protective over Sharon, than possessive over Steve.

In fact, a good great aunt who'd truly loved both of them, faced with this situation, I would have even imagined trying to set them up, and being that scandalous older woman~, who's lived her life, had fun, loved her family, and wants to see him happy with someone else.

Because that's what true love is.

Wanting to see the person you love, happy, even if it's without you, even if it can't be you that gives them that happiness, especially if you've had to move on in your own life and can't be with them.

I fail to see how Steve moving on after she has too, qualifies as 'disrespectful'. Even if you find it tasteless that he kissed Sharon after her death. Could he have asked for her permission and blessing for the relationship? Of course! Maybe he should have, I think this would have even made it better. The difference being, a Peggy who truly cared about him would have given her blessing, not withheld it.

But what about the 'incestuous' aspect?

Well, that's also a no. At least... not technically, and certainly not before Peggy was forced back into the relationship, before Steve willingly and knowing became Sharon's uncle. And Peggy's placeholders were set aside like chopped liver. Steve was certainly in a peculiar situation that maybe doesn't look the best from the exterior, and in the original version of the comics, Sharon was merely Peggy's younger sister. However, the comparison of his situation is easily explained and understood in much better lighting with some simple imagination.

Take for example, and let's even make Sharon a more direct descendant just to drive the point home, if Steve were an ancient vampire.

Let's say... this vampire Steve has a brief romantic fling with a young and beautiful Peggy. They do not sleep together. But share some feelings, some sweet passings, and a single kiss. However, Steve goes dormant, for years and years and years on end. However vampires do. Peggy is understandably sad for the moment, perhaps upset. But she moves on. She understands, she falls in love with someone new, she has children, and her children have children, and so on and so forth. She lives a normal human life.

Steve wakes up.

And he meets Sharon. A however many greats granddaughter of the woman he was once infatuated with. But he may not necessarily know this. They look nothing alike. But maybe there's something special in the bloodline that draws them together, that draws him to her.

Oh, and by the way, this is starting to sound familiar. Ever heard of the 'Vampire Diaries'? Except Elena and Katherine do in fact look exactly alike.

Yet no one bats an eye at this or calls it incestuous.

The point being, he falls in love. And she does too. And maybe this time, he decides he wants someone to be with, to hold, wholly and completely. And he turns Sharon into his immortal lover. (There's a fic idea for anyone that wants it~!)

Perhaps this was even something that under circumstance, he couldn't offer to Peggy, or she had even rejected.

This is not incest, in any way, shape, or form. This is a man, faced with a circumstance, in which he moves on. And is happy to do so. There is nothing wrong with that.

Could it be a little strange that he happens to fall for someone in Peggy's bloodline? Sure. But it's still not incest.

Unless~, he falls in love with Sharon... before deciding on takebacksies and finding a way to go back in time just to be with her however many greats grandmother. Possibly even ensuring that his own blood is part of Sharon's, or erasing her from existence along with any of the other family that Peggy had allegedly loved.

The first one is perfectly understandable. The second one is disgusting.

Peggy makes it incestuous.

But I suppose, according to Atwell, Peggy was also incapable of love.

Not just loving other people besides Steve, but love in general. Because this is called obsession, and it's sick. It's disturbing. Can't tell the difference? Here, that should help. This one too, very informative and does a good job of simplifying this concept for the average person. And what a coincidence. Oh, and look, another. And another.

Seriously, this is what Marvel, and Disney, a modern day company that should be responsible with it's messages and stories, glorified and normalized for the public.

If you're going to write a horror story, at least say it's a fucking horror story. Or take the goddamn criticism when someone tells you it is objectively bad.

So, not only did this woman completely fabricate and romanticize a crush, an unhealthy one, and blow it up to be a real relationship along with convincing everyone of the lie, she put others down to do so in order to get what she wanted, regardless of the price that others had to pay for it. Lovely. I think her claims completely undermine and disregard the legacy Peggy had left behind, and the love she would have otherwise had for her family. I think it's a gross mischaracterization of her that misses the mark on who 'Peggy Carter' was and what she represents.

Did you know that in the comics she has a relationship with Gabe Jones? One of Steve's own Howlies no less, and a wonderful representation of an interracial love fighting for what's right, together, especially for the time period?

Where's that love story, that doesn't require Steve to be a creepy uncle for her sake and is more than just an obsessive crush and single kiss?

Why does Sharon not matter to her? Why did her husband not matter? Why did her kids not matter?

And if you're under the assumption that Steve was this person the entire time, why did Hydra not matter growing within S.H.I.E.L.D.? Why did Steve's own principles and who he was not matter to her anymore, as long as she was getting dick? Why did Bucky not matter, being tortured by Hydra for the 70 years she got to get off?

Nevermind, I guess she treated him like shit anyway, even if ideally, the flirtatious little shit Bucky was would have been the best man at Steve's wedding to her, an uncle to her kids, and the best friend that Steve had in his life with her.

Why did Sharon still not matter to her? Nor her other family which she apparently lied to? Why did young Steve not matter enough to tell the truth to? And lie about Alzheimer's no less. Why did she seem to find it fitting to lie to everyone?

Let's continue.

If that's not enough, let's talk about the cry that Steve somehow 'wasn't good enough' for or 'didn't deserve' Peggy when the kiss of Civil War happened.

Okay...

How?

Because if your reasoning for the logic of putting someone down, telling them they are lesser, and 'not good enough' or undeserving of you, is because they choose to 'move on' and not be with you, or choose someone else over you?

You are a terrible person. And I would not want to be the object of your affection.

That is deliberate psychological abuse. And if you tell anyone that sort of thing, just because they don't or can't return your feelings, you are a fucked up person. Fuck you. That is disgusting.

Do not ever tell someone this just because they can't or choose not to love you. Apologize if you ever have, especially to someone you do love. Love is not always an active choice. And this is guilt tripping, manipulating, gaslighting someone into a situation where you put them down for your personal benefit, and that is nasty, unacceptable behavior that no one should tolerate.

Call out someone's own terrible behavior if they are doing something wrong, do not jump to the conclusion that this means the person is worthless. There is a difference. Harmful behaviors can be changed. People can change and get better. We should strive to be better.

However, the aforementioned? That is what psychopaths do to ensure their control over a relationship, run if someone is doing this to you. Find a way to get out of there if you can, because that is fucked up, and no, you deserve better than that. Do not let them belittle you.

And yet, this was... completely glorified by the media, even rewarding someone who committed to this type of behavior. Especially after the fact.

How many articles are there out there that critique Endgame versus those that promote this ending and actively defend it? Giving Disney good press?

But luckily, Atwell only did it with the characters, right? It's only fictional, right?

Yeah, that's why we didn't see Emily in Infinity Wars or Endgame... That's why, even though she'd been hired for a job she had earned, they kept kicking her down the road like a bent, empty can. Worthless and usable, and not a real person at all. Why did they hire her if this had 'always been the plan' as they claimed? To disgust everyone? To make the ending as fucking shitty as it is and have people praise them for it? To publicly embarrass and humiliate her, just because?

The lack of class and just... human decency necessary to commit this kind of behavior is easily seen with a hypothetical comparison, simply with another well beloved actress I will admit might not be a fully fair comparison. But that's because this actress is amazing and not many people compare to her.

But let's take a pause and also consider the actions of Atwell's coworkers, since none of them did quite what she did. None of them... did quite what she did.

You know who else would never do this, even if she'd been playing Peggy Carter and got her show cancelled? Who realistically, wouldn't have gotten her show cancelled because she actually is amazing and would be worth watching, hands down, no complaints.

Sandra Bullock.

And I'd hate to name drop like that or put her on the spot, but just consider it for a moment. Sandy B. as Peggy Carter. Already, beautiful, elegant, amazing, maybe a bit funnier, compassionate, kind, and playing the part of the loving aunt for Sharon perfectly. Even more comic accurate probably! Sandra Bullock would never take time out of her day for any reason, to put down one of her costar's characters and talk trash about this character and the relationship she's in with another character... Ever. Period.

She has class, grace. And she's a truly, genuinely good human being. In fact, I would wager to say, she'd make jokes about it to promote the relationship. As the crazy aunt who's constantly trying to set Steve up with someone new, probably her niece, and embarrassing the shit out of him. And that image is just fucking adorable.

Can you picture it? It's pretty amazing, right?

Now can you really defend Atwell's actions knowing they could have been avoided and a real person, real people, not hurt with them?

I guarantee this ending would have never happened had someone at least like Sandra Bullock been cast as Peggy Carter. Even if she did happen to 'ship' Peggy and Steve more than she did Sharon and Steve. Even if she did 'joke' about it. Especially when there's a point the jokes go too far. And I'd wager to say, she'd even focus more on helping Emily VanCamp, than putting down her character and sicking her pack or rabid bullies on her to try and get her to kill herself.

What the actual fuck has to be wrong with someone to do something like that. Even without giving the direct order.

And sure, maybe fans do ride the crazy train a bit to much. But the least we could expect from Bullock would be a public statement regarding the behavior, and letting fans know that she doesn't condone it and would want them to stop.

I challenge you to find anything along those lines that Atwell could have done. I tried.

And there was nothing.

Let's continue with the character analysis and talk a bit about the implications of this ending.

So far, we know Peggy hated Sharon, her own niece, that she 'owns' Steve and has all rights to his autonomy and decisions, doesn't care about her husband or family if Steve isn't somehow part of it, and would label Steve 'unworthy' of her if he somehow decided he loved someone else. Not just Sharon, but anyone.

Let's also not forget this is a woman who shot at him for having kissed someone else in front of her. When they weren't together. Would you want and choose to date someone who shot at you for doing that?

I mean, I suppose I don't personally know you, maybe you're into some kinky shit. But that doesn't really seem to healthy to me.

Let's talk about little Steve and Erskine, and the promise Steve made to him as well as himself. His character development over the movies and what this ending requires not just of him, but of Peggy too.

From the first movie, we know that even when Steve wasn't capable of doing more, when his body didn't permit him to, he always wanted to do more. Erskine in his dying moment asked him not to forget his heart. The man that would choose to do good above all else. To help those around him that maybe couldn't help themselves. This is an invaluable lesson I think we could all learn from, within our capacities of course.

Bucky even tried to stop Steve from hurting himself, because he worried about him. And then followed him because he admired what the little guy... had always stood for. And against.

“I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't like bullies, I don't care where they're from.”

By the end of the film, Steve has lost someone incredibly dear to him that he grew up with, Bucky, and makes the decision to save thousands of lives that would otherwise be lost over his own personal enjoyment. Because it's the right decision. And he tells Peggy it's his choice. He doesn't hesitate. He doesn't expect to survive, but he keeps his promise to Erskine above all else, and stops Hydra, or so we think.

We later discover Hydra has survived all those years through Zola. Growing in S.H.I.E.L.D., under Peggy's watchful eyes... holding Bucky for all that time.

With the addition of Endgame's Creepy Uncle Theory, that little tidbit of the story, we've been given two interpretations. There's also a lot of lines that lose all meaning, from Steve, Peggy, and Sharon.

“When I see a situation pointed south, I can't ignore it.”

“Sometimes, all we can do is our best, and sometimes the best is the start over.”

“She kept so many secrets, I didn't want her to have one from you.”

“I don't know, the guy who wanted all of that went into the ice 70 years ago, I think someone else came out.”

But let's go back to those interpretations, both of which require someone to suffer on Steve and Peggy's behalf for a minimum of 70 years. Apart from becoming a creepy uncle who apparently had been only using Sharon as a replacement for her. And of course abandoning everyone who loved him just to get laid. This may not be easily seen or understood at first glance. But it is easily explained and should be painfully obvious.

If Steve is present in the main universe that entire time, choosing to do nothing, he has:

Abandoned Sharon.

Abandoned his family, the Avengers.

Abandoned Bucky.

Abandoned the principles he lived by and thrown away promises to all those he held dear. Including his promise to Erskine, who gave him that power to do more to begin with.

Left Hydra undisturbed and even prospering under his beloved wife's organization, allowing people to die and suffer, including Bucky who we know is tortured and in and out of ice for those years.

Be perfectly happy with the sexism, racism, and just general bigotry of the time period. Something that at least comics Steve Rogers has been proven to hate so much, he actively made himself go forward in time permanently, after only saving Bucky, because he couldn't stand it. No amount of Peggy to fix the situation for him. She's also never mattered as much as any other love interest to him. Not even Blind Al, that one's obscure~.

Be perfectly happy to do nothing while a situation is pointed south, even though he has previously stated incapable of doing so? While he knows what will happen or that people are suffering and dying for him and Peggy, what he will do to Sharon, and just completely and utterly not giving a shit.

Huh... Well, none of that sounds 'good'. I guess it also means he completely regrets his decision to save all those lives and sacrifice himself. A decision... I assumed he was the type of person to be able to make more than once if necessary. Because it was who he was. And supposedly, what Peggy even respected him for. I assumed Peggy would have also respected this decision, not backtracked to make him actively do the opposite of this very thing for 70 years. Possibly even... if we're to believe Hydra is allowed to run rampant all those years, potentially thousands of lives to be killed on his behalf instead.

Huh, I guess it was a pointless decision.

“We don't trade lives.”

Right?

And we're supposed to believe Mjolnir, a tool essentially measuring 'selflessness' and humility, purity of heart, 'worthiness', would be perfectly fine with labeling this behavior as 'good' as well.

That just seems like a pipe dream for every sod who can't get laid and has a backwards moral compass, but let's not dive into that.

Despite the fact that he's also abandoning all sense of self and is nothing more than a mindless puppet at this point. Through 'Steve Rogers' choosing this ending... he is actively doing wrong, and knows it. He is actively allowing Hydra to prosper, and... essentially...

Proving Zola right.

“We won, Captain. Your life amounts to your death, a zero sum!”

Familiar now, isn't it? But I guess every message we learned about Steve, in light of everything, in light of Peggy, is meaningless so long as he's... getting laid. Or 'happy'.

That doesn't sound fucked up at all, being perfectly okay with people suffering on your behalf. But I suppose it's no surprise that the people who love Atwell so much and are perfectly okay with her behavior feel the same way...

And here's the thing, I don't think 'Steve Rogers'... the real one in context of his story anyway, would be happy in a setting he needs to let others suffer on his behalf, and ignore their suffering, in order for him to be happy. Looking at his character just over the previous movies, I'd say this would in actuality be literal torment for him.

Spidey gave a perfect rendition that completely embodied everything Steve Rogers stands for and had stood for in those movies.

“When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen... They happen because of you...”

What a coincidence. And another important message.

If you actually think a man like Steve, a first responder by nature, who always seeks out the goodness in others and wants to help people, would suddenly sit on his ass and allow people to suffer for him? When he couldn't even do this while too small to make any real impact?

You are delusional. And it is disturbing that you would somehow label that as 'good', as 'cute', as 'healthy', as 'right', as 'true love'. As 'happy' for him.

This is a man, forced into retirement, under the 'guise' of a 'choice', when in reality, it is atrociously horrible writing that disregards anything about who he was and what he stood for. That had he been real, this would have been a disservice to him and is certainly one to every important message the character has, and the history behind him. He would have been stuck in this world. Trapped, and held back from doing anything. By someone who supposedly 'loves' him?

Love doesn't hold people back or hold on possessively like a fucking parasite, it sets people free.

Why would she do that to him? Why would she sit back and assume all of those things are 'okay'? How? Why would anyone want her to??? I thought Peggy was supposed to be a good character inspired by upholding his message. Did she break the vial? Did she keep him in her basement? Did she tell him to sit on his ass and 'look pretty' while she did all the work? A fucking horrible job I might add, if she just lets Hydra run rampant and kill Howard for her sake. How is someone like that admired as a 'good' person?

Nothing about this is 'good'.

This ending is not 'beautiful'. It is a horror story masquerading as something 'pretty'. It is an abuse story being normalized to a vast and unknowing public. At best, a horribly irresponsible message to send the public... and at worst... a reflection of what's wrong with society as a whole. Possibly with ulterior and deliberate intentions.

In order for this ending to happen, Steve Rogers must cut ties with his family and abandon all he loved, loves, lives for, all sense of self... all for Peggy, and solely Peggy's, satisfaction. Seems oddly... familiar to a certain situation his best friend, who seemingly means nothing to him, happened to be in... for 70 years.

Let's reverse the roles. If Steve had been a female to do this for a man's sake? The first thing people would notice is how unhealthy the relationship is. How obsessive it is. How harmful it is. And how disgusting the normalization of it is. In a media that has a far reach and should be so much more fucking responsible with the messages they send their viewers.

Knowing that there are so many sacrifices, ones that shouldn't be made, and that every sacrifice comes from Steve's end, would you willingly call this relationship healthy? Beautiful? 'True love'?

When in reality, they'd only shared one kiss, and never dated?

Yeah. Seems legit.

On the flip side, you have that other interpretation, right? The one where he's in an alternate universe and lets his Peggy live her life with another man, but steals this Peggy both from her future husband and himself.

You'd think it gets better, right? I mean he can fix this universe in full, he might fuck something up and we might consider it a bit irresponsible to play with timelines like that, but he can always just go back if it goes too bad. He's earned it, his shot at this life, still disregarding Sharon and now... a version of himself. A Steve still trapped in the ice. Still suffering on his behalf. While he lives out his life with supposedly this Steve's girl, this Steve's Bucky, and this Steve's entire potential life.

Oh, and apparently this Peggy really doesn't care about the Steve trapped in the ice, since she's also fine with a replacement that's totally different from the one she knew~! That's not weird or fucked up at all.

Leaving him to wake up, alone, in the future having known the life he wanted was knowingly taken by someone else. Someone selfish enough to leave him in the ice. Bucky's alive and safe from Hydra, yay! Apparently... no version from this alternate universe is worth giving the shield to though. So I guess Steve ultimately didn't love these replacements as much. And of course, this is assuming Steve doesn't also just leave this universe as is for everything else terrible to happen.

This is assuming he gives a shit at all. Because if he had?

Tell me why... defrosting the alternate Steve to live out a life with his own Peggy, to at least make sure one of them got that 'happy ending', could still do good, without abandoning anyone, could kick ass, could fix everything in this alternate timeline, maybe even with a few tips from this time traveling Steve, somehow wasn't acceptable compared to 'Steve Rogers' actively and willingly doing, and allowing terrible things to happen, and abandoning everyone else who loved him.

Once again, cut off from his family and replacing them all with clones.

This is supposed to be better?

Did he ever really love Peggy, or just the way she looked since any identical twin happened to work just fine?

Tell me why, if Chris Evans just wanted to stop playing the role, Steve going back for just the dance and asking for Peggy's blessing to marry Sharon, presumably after they'd actually made an effort to develop the relationship, presumably after Peggy has made her peace with loving someone else, and then coming back to not abandon his family or any of his principles or promises he made, or just who he is in general, and proposing to Sharon with Peggy's blessing and understanding, wouldn't have been better and more respectful in all ways?

With the characters, with their history, with their messages. Tell me how it wouldn't have been better to simply have him out of the spotlight and training recruits, but still actively being who he was and doing good somehow couldn't have been acceptable?

There, I can write a better ending than those quack professionals Marvel hired. Simple, easy, done. Where's my fucking job~?

Instead of demolishing every part of who he was, using an anti-bullying character... to reward bullying no less?

Even if Evans wanted to retire or would have made a decision like this, doesn't mean Cap would have ever even remotely done something similar. At least not a good version of him. Upholding the symbolic moral message the character presents would have been easy, but they were too stupid to even try.

Tell me how this ending doesn't disrespect a previous almost 60 years of an established comic relationship, a relationship need I remind in which Sharon was pregnant with Steve's child, one sadly lost, and later shared an adopted son with him. A relationship, that should they disrespect and retcon for Peggy's sake, will only serve to make Steve Rogers seem like a terrible person with no sense of loyalty to a woman he supposedly loved and has spent a good chunk of his life with. As opposed to sharing one kiss or brief romance with. For all intents and purposes, Sharon being his common law wife.

Ironically, the very thing Atwell claimed this relationship did in the MCU, despite the fact that her character only shared a single kiss with Steve, canonically. And she lied and actively manipulated fans into believing it was so much more. When... watch the movies, it wasn't.

Tell me how this ending doesn't disrespect the characters, including Peggy, and the messages they have conveyed, the convictions they've held over the years of their history, and the symbolism which I would argue is much more important, that they represent. Tell me how it doesn't somehow disrespect and belittle Bucky, Erskine, the idea that Howard was Steve's friend, or that any of the people Steve loved actually mattered to him, beyond Peggy.

Beyond getting laid. Because deny it all you want, that is what this ending boils down to. That is the only reason it exists.

Or, actually, I'd wager it also exists to actively squash the importance of the messages the characters convey.

Here's an idea. Johann Schmidt and comics Hydra Cap both have more conviction and loyalty to their cause than EG Cap. And Schmidt post IW/EG arguably causes less harm than EG Cap actively allows to happen right beside himself, because Schmidt is incapable of doing much as the stone's guardian.

And at least Hydra Cap made sense within the context of his storyline.

Prove me wrong.

That's the sort of Cap you have to support to like this ending. Hydra complacent, bigotry complacent, and completely castrated, or at the very least, willing to replace everyone he loves with clones while he takes an alternate Steve's life. Frankly, that's not a Cap I think anyone should support. And I don't think any fans, especially Peggy or Steggy fans should be somehow proud of the fact that this is the sort of 'Steve' that Peggy gets.

I mean... I suppose it is in fact the kind of Steve that sort of Peggy, equally complacent and horrible, would deserve? But that doesn't really stop it from being gross, does it?

Is that really what you'd want as a fan?

I've mentioned that Atwell's alleged behavior is inappropriate, excessive, disturbing. And I'll also mention, this kind of obsession for fictional characters is unhealthy. So why did she do this? Why the behavior at all, why did she go out of her way to essentially hurt Emily, discreetly of course, without people noticing? Why all the manipulation?

Well... it gets worse. And this is certainly where that allegedly becomes very important.

Take a moment to think for a minute about who benefited from this ending and how.

Atwell, most certainly, at Emily's expense of course. At the expense of fans. And an actual well written product we wouldn't get immediate buyer's remorse from. And of course maybe one that doesn't insult our intelligence?

You could assume she simply wanted money. Though somehow... that doesn't really fit. Maybe spotlight? That makes a little more sense, though just as bad. It's seedy, it's spiteful, it's uncomfortably close to a bad Harlequin manga villain. If you've ever read one of those.

They're based off old trashy romance novels if that gives any reference.

Except... what if you replaced every instance of 'Steve, Sharon, and Peggy', with instances of herself and Chris? With the names, 'Chris, Emily, and Hayley'.

Except Emily is happily married now, and can easily identify the difference between a romantic interest in her work, and in real life. Can easily discern a job from her private life. Because that's what a good, stable, actress or actor can easily do.

Suddenly, the situation takes on a very different meaning.

How creepy would that have been for her to do? Along with easily dismissed by the public.

Keep in mind, this is a woman who publicly admitted to, and even in plain view, groping this man, multiple times, without his explicit consent because she 'couldn't help herself'. Okay. Big deal, right? So she touched his 'man boobs' a couple times. He laughed it off, it was all good fun. Why would he complain, it's different, men shouldn't be complaining about being touched without their permission by beautiful women. Despite the fact that they're not, nor have they ever been, in a romantic relationship together.

It's perfectly appropriate for a woman to grope a man as she pleases, whether he is in a relationship with her or even other people, or not. He can't feel uncomfortable because of this, only woman can. Why would he ever be uncomfortable about it, and if he was, he would have said so. He loves her, they're friends!

Let me know if the hypocrisy needed for that logic is falling through the cracks here, because that seems like a dangerous double standard to set.

You shouldn't be allegedly or otherwise, touching or really molesting, in her own words 'groping', anyone publicly and suddenly, especially without their consent. But let's assume he was okay with every single time it had happened. Okay. Sure. Fine. It's his body to decide with who can touch him like that, who can invade his personal space and how, right? And besides, he loves the attention and being objectified by women.

That's clearly why he'll make an effort to actually call out and put people on the spot who pretend to talk to him through a faked photoshopped encounter, right? Clearly why he absolutely hates that.

Now let's assume he wasn't.

Why would he ever admit to that if the response we can expect is that 'he's a man, so he should be okay with it'? As if men somehow don't have a right to their own bodies or can't be sexually harassed and molested, abused, raped, you name it. Objectified maybe? Why would we be suspicious of the behavior or tell someone that it's wrong, without the full story even though it's happening in our plain view?

Playfulness and comfort between friends is one thing, boundaries between them is another, and friends can still cross boundaries they shouldn't. Sometimes they do. Consider the fact of a known straight man and a woman who is attracted to him, and suddenly the implications change. The man, so far, has not shown even remotely the same attraction.

But why would we suspect her behavior would entail anything other than support for her own character that she played, and the ship she was a part of, which had been respectfully written out of the story and made to move on? It's not like she was actively dragging down a woman, a real person, another actress that essentially got in her way, and the part she wanted to play. Kissing Chris Evans.

It's not like she claimed she'd be the best choice for Sharon's actress in blonde wig before Emily was cast. Oh wait...

Was that in that little blog sourcing everything she did and claimed? I can't remember.

And this is all speculation of course. But I think it's very important speculation. And especially, is a reason to be suspicious of everything she did. But I of course can't read her mind, only look at what she did do and what there's proof of. Allegedly.

Seems like an extreme extant to go to to to get an extra kiss from an actor, right? An actor who, mind you, dated other people, not her, and seemed to ultimately choose his dog over anyone. And of course, since we're speculating.

Under the pretense that 'Peggy' gets 'Steve', 'she' got the 'man' that everyone else wanted, right? She lived that fantasy, married him, and had kids with him, and everyone else is just jealous of her. The characters are meant for each other, she can take no blame in what's done with the characters.

Except when encouraging hatred among her fans and negative press for the company and story so long as it doesn't revolve around her.

In this light, looking at the facts, her alleged behavior is extremely creepy.

When you consider the fact that Evans suddenly, and I mean suddenly wanted to quit playing the character, seemingly out of nowhere when just a year before still wanting to do so, and at the same time, he admitted to loving the idea of continuing to play Cap, and even the prospect of doing a movie with Deadpool and Wolverine. Something that would have been brilliant by the way, and I lament that it apparently won't happen every day.

Source

Yes, there is a very special relationship there, read a fucking comic~.

Let's consider the fact that Evans said this about his 'final scene of Endgame'. To sow just a little bit of discord. Of course, there's no guarantee that this scene had anything to do with that one he shared with 'Peggy'. Speculation.

Let's assume it did. Let's go beyond and say, Hayley was the entire reason Evans wanted to quit. The entire reason he wouldn't fight this, and was done playing the character. Let's assume this was the last straw for him, and that he quit just to get away from her.

Allegedly.

Let's assume for just a moment, he was no longer comfortable or happy around this woman. And she was breaking him down. Let's assume he was just tired of all the bullshit, had maybe even seen it for what it really was, was even creeped out. And decided, sure. 'I'll keep my mouth shut... as long as I don't have to deal with her'.

We can also assume he's being... strongarmed into silence somehow, either by the company or by her. Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but that man hasn't looked the slightest bit happy as of late, and it's noticeable in his interviews. Maybe there's a reason for that. But maybe this idea is pushing it a tad too far, let's take a step back for a moment and remember the simple fact that this is speculation.

Based on alleged actions and circumstantial evidence.

I could absolutely be wrong and I am willing to admit that.

If Chris Evans wanted to call me out on this, correct me about Atwell and her behavior specifically towards him in this regard, I would welcome it. Even if he managed to prove me wrong about the bullying, provide an article or interview of some kind that does in fact prove her innocence, I would be more than happy to take a look at it and retract everything I've mentioned here regarding her, and her behavior. Even delete this post, and publicly apologize to her.

I want to be wrong about this, because it is fucked up, it is creepy, it is something he should not have had to, or have to ever deal with. It is not something Emily should have ever had to deal with, let alone the fans.

Nor is it something that we should simply tolerate and accept from Hayley Atwell. From or towards anyone.

Chris Evans is a human being. Emily VanCamp is a human being. Both of them deserved the utmost respect from Atwell, along with everyone else, neither of them received this from her. Allegedly.

The messages conveyed by that rottenly horrific ending can't even begin to compare to how important this simple fact is.

Real people were hurt. Bullies were rewarded. This should not have happened. We cannot simply allow it to happen now, or in the future. We cannot simply allow more harm to be done, with the continued bullying from that Hydra Support Group I mentioned, and their continued attempts to get Emily fired and Sharon removed from the comics.

That they quite clearly don't give a shit to buy or even read.

Why is this important now, of all times, during a pandemic that is keeping us all indoors with nothing better to do?

Well for one, I'm indoors with nothing better to do than come across bullshit like this. There's also something to be publicly said about female abusers and how important it is that we start to recognize when these situations might be happening. Whether from a man or a woman. And whether to a man, or another woman. If she didn't hurt Chris, she certainly didn't hesitate to hurt Emily.

I have friends... that were living their lives off of the messages Cap taught and inspired in people. Good friends, good people. And maybe it seems silly to linger on something like that, but I can say first hand it is heartbreaking to watch those people get that same inspiration, those same moral messages ripped away, and stolen from them.

And be left struggling with trying to hold on to those messages, but try as they may, not being able to. And then come a few epiphanies, a few discoveries.

This shit. The bullying. The behavior, the fact that we as fans were given a normalized abusive relationship, and told it was somehow good, somehow just, somehow right. That that's the message we are being given in place of everything else...

I had a friend have a panic attack because of this ending, after she tried to rationalize that it was okay, that it was 'sweet', and 'cute', and understandable. Because it hit a little too fucking close to home for her, and now she just relives that, remembers it with almost any part of what her favorite thing in the world was. And that is horrifying to know...

“I helped support this. I gave them money. I dedicated years of my life to following this.”

And it goes so much more beyond regretting that decision. It goes so much more beyond being able to simply move on and somehow keep those symbols, or at least the core messages beyond them and disassociate them from the characters when you can't escape reminders of it. When you can see so incredibly clearly what it really means, what really happened, and everyone else around you just accepts that something so fundamentally wrong is something right.

Here's a question, can you sue a company that's so profoundly built an empire, so embedded itself into your day to day life that you can't escape a personal trauma being reminded of it in something you paid for and actively support for years from this company? Does that count as some form of being publicly irresponsible and projecting harmful ideologies?

Is that something someone can do, or is it just something a 'Karen' would do? Would the sheer evil it takes to become that type of person, to dawn that haircut and demand to speak to a manager be worth it in the end?

“What did it cost?”

“Everything...”

Yeah, it really fucking did.

Oh hey, by the way. Hayley Atwell is definitely a Karen. Just thought I might point that out. Why else would she throw a massive tantrum to get someone bullied out of a franchise because she's not getting her way or the spotlight on her? She's just an evolved one.

Allegedly.

I am all for people policing their own content and being respectful of creators, and understanding that fiction is different from reality. Not every concept will be stomachable or enjoyable by absolutely everyone. Horror in itself is a perfect example of that, especially psychological horror.

I can also say without a doubt that I hate knowing that the people I care about are so heavily affected by something they had initially used to make themselves a better person, that should remain fictional and symbolic but just somehow forces itself to go beyond that.

I hate knowing a corporation could be so irresponsible that this is the message they get billions of dollars for, that this is what they give to the public, that this lack of care or even noticing what they've done and who they've rewarded, and the continued behavior...

The bullying, and despite every piece of criticism screaming at them just how fucked up this is.

But no, they can't take two fucking seconds, to think 'maybe we made a bad move and shouldn't stick by this considering what it's done or is doing to fans'. 'Maybe we should be more responsible with the power and influence we happen to have'...

Except they knew.

“It might end the whole franchise.”

What kind of context am I supposed to imagine for those words. Especially in light of a franchise that had a multitude of plans to continue.

What the fuck does that mean?

And isn't that the most piss soaked cherry on top of this shit cake?

Hayley's words in the interview represent how little she cared about the character, about the franchise, about the fans, or the messages conveyed, as long as she got what she wanted.

And she did.

Publicly... adored... psychopath.

Allegedly.

Cap's core message is something so incredibly vital, I believe, to this world. Especially in these times. Especially when it comes to making progress.

“Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world –"No, you move."”

Especially in a world that will actively tell and show us that human lives aren't worth a dime a fucking dozen to the people we let control our world. Especially when we should be telling these same people.

“No, fuck you, that's wrong.”

And yeah, that fucking sucks. It fucking sucks to have family that is vulnerable to something potentially deadly, to be vulnerable to it, and have no control over that. It fucking sucks to know people you may trust will not even give a shit. And it is fucking hard to keep hope when everything around you just seems to be falling apart.

And you can't do a damn thing.

But this message teaches us just that. To not lose hope. To not lose faith. To keep fighting for what we believe in, and make things better. Isn't that the whole point of criticism? Challenging ideas, beliefs, so that we can discern right from wrong and have a better understanding of what that might be? So that we can improve? What a hell of time it would be to have this message with us. What a hell of a time for us to need this message, now more than anything... and not have it.

What a hell of a time for someone to willingly quit portraying and sending that message... Though I can't say I'd blame him, he's only human, it's a heavy burden to bear, and if Atwell really did do all of this just to kiss him... Allegedly.

Well, I'd wanna get away from her too. Provided it was willing at all. I get mixed signals from that guy. And trust him about as far as I can throw him. I am a weak bitch, so that is not very far... But... professional liar, so.

He could also be the world's biggest troll, cause I don't believe for a second he didn't know how fans would react to this. Which... biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch. But also, RESPECT.

And also, BITCH! Be serious for a goddamn second, this is fucking important!

But this message also teaches rebellion.

What a hell of a message to publicly squander in order to keep people complacent, for the sake of pretending someone gets a 'happy' horrific ending, finally getting laid. Like neither of those things were something that couldn't be found in the future while still preserving the legacy of the character.

Right?

Ironically, it was a message they had helped to represent with Sharon, and still there's the issue of her and fans being publicly bullied and disrespected, once again, a real person, people, for Atwell's sake.

If we only surround ourselves by those that tell us what we want to hear, rather than the truth, we can only stagnate our growth.

If we only care when we are finally forced to face the problems evident, can we really call ourselves virtuous?

If we do nothing knowing something is wrong, what does this say about us?

I'm just as guilty in not noticing these sorts of things as they happen until it's too late, but I'd like to hope I'm getting better and paying more attention, and that we can still do better.

What's the point of all this, and what can we do?

As I said before, I do not want to cause harm. I do not want people to go and harass anyone for alleged wrong doings or behavior of any sort. I do not want people to lose entire jobs or livelihoods over this. But it is clear something is wrong, and we certainly need to right it. I also don't believe any of the parties involved are somehow beyond redemption. Even Hayley.

If Marvel had any sense, especially now, they would retcon this, however necessary, first off. They don't even need Evans to do that, they can do something as simple as making a comic that undoes this nasty ending and saves Cap, and the other characters, from being made into an empty shell and castrated version of himself. Or at least make a solid plan to and very publicly apologize to Emily for the situation and discourage such behavior among their fandom. Hayley would do the same, not just to fans but especially to Emily, and maybe even Chris.

If you ever participated in this behavior and now understand that it was wrong, I would encourage you to go give Emily your love and support and apologize to her for this mess and what she had to deal with on behalf of fans. She deserved far better. She still deserves better.

If Hayley refused to acknowledge or even publicly address this? Or Marvel, Disney for that matter, well it would just go to show that they'd want it all swept under the rug instead of being held accountable for what happened. Something that's certainly a disrespect to Walt Disney , as he was able to make amends and admit to his mistakes publicly, and it's a stain on the legacy he left behind that the current Disney can hardly be bothered to.

And yes, believe it or not, there's a way to not let them do this without aggressive harassment.

My first suggestion is meme the shit out of it. Be an absolute troll and make a joke of this giant fucking joke of a company that can't even put two and two together for basic story elements. To an extant that will publicly embarrass them for sure, be relentless, but don't send hate.

Just show everyone the clowns they are~.

I've been told this can also be a bit mean though. And clearly, we can't simply let them forget it or forget it ourselves.

The second, ask questions. Simply ask for this to be addressed, try to get it noticed as best you can. Send them this across as many platforms as you can to as many people as you can. Or even just the smaller blogs I linked. Repost, reblog, and share this as much as you can and make it something they can't ignore without sending them direct hate and harassment. Copy and paste or just send a link to this in a concerned email to the corporation. Make sure their offices are absolutely buzzing with the news. Ask, don't demand, your favorite MCU actors to publicly speak out about this, please. Keep asking until you get some sort of response.

Without being rude.

Because it may take time, it may take effort, but it is important, and it certainly should be addressed. And never allowed to happen again.

As for Atwell and her bullies?

Well, first let me congratulate her.

She played herself. All those jokes about turning Peggy into a supervillain and that's exactly what she did. With her own wants and desires, not Peggy's.

But otherwise be kind, be courteous, and hold your grace and elegance. Treat her with the same respect you would want for yourself and do not stoop to her or their level. Do not insult her. Ask her, 'what's wrong'? Ask her why she did this, if she's okay. Ask her to stop, to speak out about it, to address the situation and to understand why she didn't do it sooner. Ask her if she's seeking help for whatever psychological issues she may have that would push her to do something like this, wish her well, and tell her you hope she finds the help she needs and learns that what she did was wrong. Let her know you're disappointed if you're a fan.

She definitely shouldn't be allowed to keep relishing in the reward and aftermath of what she did, and she definitely owes Emily, and possibly Chris, an apology for all the bullshit she encouraged and did. Her behavior, allegedly, is fucking creepy.

But she's still a human being, behaviors are correctable.

Simply address the fact that it was wrong and ask her if she understands that. Also maybe that... public molestation isn't okay? Allegedly.

Do the same for her bullies, if they are rude to you, simply tell them:

'Oh... you support Hydra... you're entitled to your opinion, but I'll have to disagree.'

And leave it at that. Just take comfort in the fact that you can recognize an abusive relationship and don't support it. You cannot force them to change their minds if they don't want to, do not antagonize them or potentially bring harm to yourself by doing so. And yes, that is admittedly a bit mean, a bit trollish~, and the reality is they probably don't support Hydra... But they also kinda have to to support this ending somehow.

The writers 'confirmed' Hydra Trash Party as canon while the directors 'confirmed' everyone in Steve's life being replaceable.

And he still becomes a creepy uncle while someone needs to suffer on his behalf for 70 years.

Fantastic~! I'm accepting neither and I give you no money until it's fixed! Because it's gross~!

If this situation is addressed by everyone involved, and any allegations and speculations I've made are in fact proven true, but let's say Atwell still publicly refuses to admit to anything she did or apologize to Emily. Even if Disney does. Well, she'll be proving exactly what type of person we suspect her to be. And only then would I consider it acceptable for the company to completely erase her from the franchise in turn and blacklist her from what they produce. Some people might consider that too nice, I think it's reasonable, you're free to disagree.

Not necessarily her character though, Peggy has actually done nothing wrong on her own, she's a fictional character best represented by good writers, and malleable according to that. And I would certainly even encourage much better character explorations and portrayals of her. But Hayley herself, who would then become pretty much a poster child for harassment and bullying, and defending psychopathic behaviors...

Allegedly.

If people try to silence you, ignore you, keep trying, keep spreading the message, keep going as much as you can, until we manage to get this addressed and the situation finally corrected.

Do not support the company, or actress that refuses to address this. Do not support people that do terrible things without holding them accountable. Do not allow them to simply get away with it, but do not lose your own humanity for their sake.

I know first hand how fucking hard it is not to lose your shit when shit like this happens. And nobody notices. But I guarantee, throwing a fit of rage will get nothing done, and they will try to use it against you.

If they manage to prove me wrong in any regards? Great! I will be fucking overjoyed! I hate the idea that evil is actively happening in the world and people do nothing about it, don't you?

And a friendly reminder.

You are not in anyway required to purchase anything from Marvel, any of the actual bullshit content and harmful ideas they refuse to take any criticism or responsibility for. You are not obligated to them just because you are a fan, and you do not owe them anything. If they want our money, they can earn it, but you can definitely get your fixes of good creative content elsewhere, and even support other artists. If this is what they provide, you do not have to support them. You can make your own. For free. And enjoy what others make for free. For any and all people part of an intricate creative community, fan fiction does not just have to be trashy romance or gay ass ships. That is a huge chunk of it, I won't even bother lying about that, I'm under no illusions otherwise.

But it can also be just simple storylines based off what canons you like, simple fan comics that maybe present a different sort of story arc you aren't seeing developed and wonder where you might go with it. It can be action, scifi, fantasy, horror. It can be any sort of fusion that you would enjoy. It can even be insanely good or horrendously bad! It can even be original fiction! And yes, you're more than allowed to publicly critique and parody the work these companies sell you, go write ahead~, and make a point of making something better. Because you can.

Or it can be shipping wars and nonsensical shit and trashy romance and smut. Again, no illusions that there's not a whole lot of that shit.

Or crack. Lots of crack fic.

But the beauty of it is that it's up to you. And you don't owe anyone anything because everything you get to make is free. But keep in mind that goes both ways in this aspect. For you and others, and I'd wager to say there are a lot of writers out there that can definitely do these characters and their messages a much better justice than the disservice and disrespect Marvel has given them and the fans. Especially as of late.

Lastly, especially in these times... do not lose hope.

Do not lose faith in the message Steve Rogers stands for, or in the hopes things may get better. For all of us. And for the character? That he may just yet be saved from quite plainly, all the bullshit. That any of your favorite characters might be given better treatment down the line. And if not?

Save 'em yourself. Make it better yourself. And make it known, no matter what happens, no matter what they do, these messages can't be squandered or destroyed. Hold them dear, and don't accept anything less than them being upheld, no matter how it's represented.

Particularly when you're paying for it. Don't harass small time writers that write self indulgent bullshit for free. Just police your content accordingly, please.

But the message?

That's what's important.

In conclusion?

'Logan' was the better movie. Hayley turned Peggy into 'Monika' of Doki Doki Literature Club. And Chris Evans chose his dog.

“I don't like bullies... I don't care where they're from.”

;)

[twentyninetynines]

empty as a car coasting downhill // self para

summary: After experiencing and investigating a sudden end to her archives, Lyla has some bad news for Miguel. Miguel is not a fan of bad news. trigger warnings: death, violence, brief implications of domestic violence and abuse featuring: miguel o’hara, lyla, brief mentions of other characters word count: 2049 (god i wish it was 2099)

“Miguel.” Lyla’s voice echoed throughout the apartment, pulling Miguel from his slumber, and he sighed as he pulled the pillow over his face to block out the dim yellow light of her hologram.

“I told you not to wake me up early on weekends,” he grumbled, swatting towards the light as if he could disperse the hologram with his hand. The light flickered and, when Lyla spoke again, her voice came from the other side of the bed --- a telltale sign that she’d grown irritated enough with his swatting to move, even if there was no physical effect of his efforts.

“It’s ten in the morning. That isn’t early.” Miguel groaned, shoving the pillow further against his face as Lyla continued. “Additionally, you told me to provide updates on the timeline as they became available. If you don’t want to hear it…” She trailed off, leaving the threat hanging clearly over his head and Miguel cursed, removing the pillow from his head and sitting up in bed.

“This is some form of emotional abuse,” he told her seriously, rubbing his eyes. His hair was sure to be sticking up at all angles. Dana always used to say his bedhead rivaled that of the messiest people. 

With Miguel upright in bed, Lyla seemed marginally more pleased. She flashed him a smile which he returned with a glare, crossing his arms over his chest to further sell his displeasure. Lyla sighed, rolling her eyes and flickering out of sight for a moment before reappearing at the foot of the bed. 

“You win,” Miguel said, leaning his head back against the headboard. “You’ve bullied me into consciousness. What’ve you got?” 

Lyla didn’t usually hesitate. She was programmed with remarkably human reactions, but the negative aspects of humanity had always been toned down as far as artificial intelligence was concerned. People liked perfection, even if it provided a poor imitation of humanity. Lyla didn’t usually hesitate, but she was hesitating now. She was staring at Miguel and sucking in her lip, as if debating whether or not to continue. It set him on edge, made him nervous. “Lyla…” His voice was steadier than he felt, but Lyla seemed to catch the nerves anyway. She offered him a tight smile before nodding.

“My archives stopped.”

A beat followed. The gears in Miguel’s head started turning, and he’d blame his sluggishness on the fact that he just woke up but he knew there was a hint of denial contributing to it as well. “Your archives stopped,” he repeated, eyeing her carefully.

“My archives stopped,” she confirmed. 

Another beat. And then, “That makes no shocking sense. Your archives don’t stop unless I fail to update them, and I happen to like knowing what the shock is going to happen in this stupid shocking decade.” Lyla shifted. Holograms shouldn’t be able to look apprehensive or guilty or upset, but Lyla was all three and Miguel narrowed his eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking…”

“There was… an article. At the end of the archive.”

“Thrilling. What was it? The classifieds? I could probably use a new job.”

“An obituary.” 

Miguel’s heart dropped to his stomach, and his mind began moving faster, anxiety working to spring it forward. “An obituary,” he repeated, throat dry. “Whose?”

And he knew the answer. He knew it before she gave him that apologetic look, he knew it before she tore her gaze from his to look down at her hands folded in front of her, he knew it before she spoke. “Yours.”

“No.” The word was out of his mouth before she’d even finished speaking. “No, because if it was mine, then who updated your archives? Who sent you back so you could upload them? No. It wasn’t mine.”

“It was yours, Miguel.”

“Bullshit.” It was harsher than he meant to be, and Lyla flinched but he didn’t care. Anxiety was replaced by rage so suddenly that it might have terrified him if the anger hadn’t drowned out everything else. “That’s bullshit, Lyla. I’m not --- I don’t die. I can’t die here, I’m --- I won’t even be born for another fifty years, and I’ve got --- That’s bullshit.” He was out of bed before he realized he was moving, was pacing around the bedroom and trembling. He picked up the only thing within reach --- a coffee mug with a cold, stale brew still settling in the bottom. The mug went through the hologram, shattering against the wall, and Lyla blinked out of sight momentarily. 

When she popped up again, she was next to the bed again. She’d changed the appearance of the hologram, gone from the mashup of every pinup Xina had ever seen all mixed together they’d set as her default as a joke because you’ve gotta have something nice to look at when I’m not around, sweetie to an old familiar face, to warm eyes and long hair and a smile that was too tight around the edges and the fire in Miguel’s chest turned to ice in an instant. “I’ve told you not to do that,” he said, choking on the words. “Don’t --- Don’t do that. Please, don’t.” 

Dana’s face smiled back at him all the same, gentle and cautious. “It’s the only thing that calms you down when you get like this, honey. You know that.”

And he did. Miguel was an angry man, had inherited George O’Hara’s temper even if he’d never shared an ounce of the man’s DNA. Some things were taught, he supposed. Some things were a part of you no matter whose blood ran through your veins, became twisted up within you, became all that you were. His anger was one of them. “Well, I’m calm now. And I don’t --- I can’t look at her and hear this.”

There was a pause, another hesitation that shouldn’t exist because Lyla was a computer program and not a person and somehow she was the only one who’d ever loved him anyways. There was a pause, and then Lyla was Lyla again, picture perfect without a hair out of place. “What do you need to hear?”

“Do you know how it happens?” His voice was quiet and defeated and he was looking anywhere but the new coffee stain on the wall, anywhere but the shattered glass on the ground.

“That’s not really the type of thing they put in obituaries in this decade, Miguel.” And that made sense. This decade was gentler than the one he was used to. It was softer. Death was a tragedy here instead of a warning. Miguel nodded, slow and uncertain.

“Maybe I wrote it,” he offered, looking for any kind of a way out. “Right? Maybe I wrote it to start us on some --- some kind of solution. To get me back to 2099. That could be, right?”

Lyla looked almost sympathetic. “But you haven’t been trying to get back to 2099, have you? Not for a long while now.” She was right, she was always right. In the beginning, he’d been desperate for a ticket home, but after a while… “You’ve built something here. Friends. Peter, Tony, Bart, Sharon… You’ve got people here, don’t you?” He nodded again, not trusting his voice enough to speak. “And you’ll have more. They were mentioned in the obituary, you know. You don’t have any family here, but they were… You have people. More than you did before.”

“I had Gabri,” he argued. “And mom, and Xina, and…” He trailed off before he could tack her name on the end, before he could pretend Dana was anything more than a name carved in granite by the time he left.

“They hated you, Miguel.”

He huffed a laugh at that, a strangled sound that was more of a gasp than anything resembling a humorous response. “Well, yeah. Of course they did. But the people here… I mean, they do too, don’t they?” 

She gave him a look at that, and she didn’t have to speak for him to know the answer but she said it anyway. Lyla always spoke, even when he didn’t need things said aloud. Miguel had never been able to decide if he loved or hated that. “You’re projecting a little bit there, Miggy. There’s only one person here who hates you. You know that.” 

Miguel closed his eyes, nodded again. There was one person in this decade who hated him, one person who despised him more than anything and he couldn’t get away from that. No one had ever hated Miguel more than he hated himself. He didn’t think it was possible. “Okay,” he said, eyes opening again. “Okay. So, I do it on my terms, then. I take out Tiberius Stone. I mean, I’m dead either way, right? So I take out Stone, and the future’s better.” She didn’t say anything. “Lyla, the future’s better, isn’t it? Do an analysis.”

“Analyzing,” she replied, voice a tinge more robotic than was typical. Her eyes went blank for a moment, program constructing a future in which Tiberius Stone died in the year 2020, a future in which Alchemax��s rise to power became stunted very early, very definitively. When she came back to herself, it was with an apologetic shake of her head.

“What happens? Just --- Break it to me quick. Alchemax?”

“Stone’s shares are bought out by another company. They go on to develop the public eye policing and build to a justice system very similar to the one you experienced in 2099. That seems to be a fixed issue, regardless of Stone’s involvement.” 

Miguel shut his eyes again, throat tight. “What about Dana?” Lyla went quiet again, and Miguel grunted lowly. “She still dies?”

“No,” she replied softly. “Dana D’Angelo marries young. She has two sons and a daughter, and she grows old. When she dies, it’s surrounded by children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. She lives a full life.”

“A happy life?”

“I don’t know, Miguel. I don’t know that.” 

Miguel swallowed, nodding numbly. “Who, uh… Who’s she marry? Shock, is it… I mean, without me getting in the middle of it, it’s probably Gabri, isn’t it?” Silence. Miguel opened his eyes, looking at her until she sighed.

“George and Conchata O’Hara have no children. Conchata dies in 2070, a few years before Gabri would have been conceived. A year after you would have been born.” 

“How?” He asked the question the moment before his mind provided the answer, and he shook his head. “No. No, don’t… You don’t have to say it. Let’s… We can move on, yeah? Where’s Xina end up?”

“Xina Kwan is employed by this timeline’s version of Alchemax shortly after her graduation. She goes missing in 2095.”

“She was never good at rules. I can’t imagine any version of Alchemax liked that.” He went quiet again, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I can’t do this, can I? Nothing’s better. I kill Stone, and the future is still shocked. I let him live, and I still die. I don’t… I don’t get a good option, do I?”

“I’m sorry, Miguel.”

And Lyla was just code. She was an old Alchemax program that he and Xina had altered in a dorm room, she was ones and zeroes and a healthy dose of teenage rebellion and Miguel loved her so much that it ached sometimes. She was his best friend, the best friend he’d ever had, and she wasn’t even real. She wasn’t even a person. What did that say about him?

“It’s okay, Lyla. It isn’t your fault. It’s probably mine, right? I mean, I’m the one who pisses somebody off enough to make them off me.” Lyla’s laugh was out of pity rather than humor, but Miguel accepted it all the same. “Look, we’ve got time. Don’t we?” He opened his eyes and she nodded, slow and careful. “We’ve got time. So I’ll… I’ll figure something out. A way to not, uh… not die. Should be easy, right? I mean, I’m great at not dying. I’ve been doing it for thirty years now.” Another laugh, soft and gentle and meant to placate, to comfort. “Yeah,” Miguel nodded. “Yeah. We’re gonna be fine, Lyla. I’m gonna be fine.”

(If he repeated it enough, it would start to sound true eventually. The alternative couldn’t be an option.)

[thesharondefenseleague]

ok not technically about sharon but like does it seem like the team cap vs team Ironman stuff is worse now? Like I remember before it came out and even sometime after the team stuff was just which set of characters you liked more. Not so much the actual issues. And after it came out it seemed like most agreed that the situation was contrived a bit to make these guys fight. Which ...you know makes sense considering the comics its based on had the same problem ( though the comics are worse) 1/2

But now I see alot more salt ( especially at Cap) for the events of Civil War. Like not in like a this was ooc and I hate the direction they went , it was more no this makes sense for Cap and Tony actually, also Tony is right and Caps being a dick. I haven't noticed as much for cap stans @ Tony they don't really talk about CW much. Like was I just unaware of that drama right after CW? Or did people actually get saltier? 2/2

It’s (for lack of a better word) upsetting that this movie gets this much level of discourse over sides. This movie isn’t worth the debate of who was right/wrong.

Straight-up, I was always leaning Team Tony in the comics, and the movie made it stronger, because of how the story treated Wanda, Clint, and Scott. I hate the “I drop my life because Steve told me to” crap every movie writes, when two of those characters have families that they sacrificed for this?? No they wouldn’t the last movies they appeared in established that they wouldn’t?????

Listen, because I’m gonna rant and put it under the read more, but TL;DR: Civil War was already a bad story, and the movie was much worse, because it missed the most important part of the battle: the middle ground.

Civil War needs a strong knowledge of Marvel to go into comic-wise. Everyone is and isn’t a player, and you need to read it all to know where every single person stands, both hero and villain. It’s icon status would not exist if it didn’t have 1) the official public unmasking of Peter, and 2) the immediate death of Steve after. But there are so many other important people tied in that you can try to read the comic, but you won’t know seventy-five percent of the characters without doing research first. It doesn’t help that this is a story with seven official issues and a hundred tie-ins.

Comic Lesson:

The Sokovia Accords? Fuck that. It was the Superhero Registration Act, and this issue was set solely in the US. Why? A group of D-List heroes on a scuzzy reality show started a fight with a group of D-List villains, and one blew himself up right next to an elementary school. Many people died, majority being young children. At a funeral service that Tony attended (don’t think many others did, if any, that were heroes), a grieving mother spat in his face, hence why he backed the SHRA from the start. When it was presented to everyone, Sam said fuck that, and officially, Falcon is the first to vocally go against it. Then Steve did it on a SHIELD aircraft to Maria Hill’s face (she was relatively new when this began). Because Steve and Tony were the most public figures on each side, they were the faces, but they were not the showrunners. SHIELD and Maria Hill ran Team Iron Man with Reed Richard’s tech. Nick Fury from an undisclosed location used his many secret hideouts and funds to run Team Captain America in secret, with Steve and Sam being the ones running as the face of the fight.

Major players include but are not limited to: Hank, the FF (mostly Reed and Sue), Hulkling, Tigra, Daredevil, Goliath (who dies in battle), clone Thor (who kills Goliath), Punisher, etc.

The one thing that was present throughout the whole story was side-switching. Every issue had someone switching sides. It was a major ordeal every time, and everyone had reasons. Peter because SHIELD was shady. Cassie Lang and YA Vision because they wanted safety and Scott had recently died (not because of CW, but Wanda was killing people). Sharon was threatened into staying with SHIELD by Maria but was a liaison to assisting Steve. Half of the heroes in the movie weren’t even in the actual book event. Wanda was in hiding. Clint was looking for her (and then banging her, because comic book Clint gets around). Scott, as mentioned, was dead. T’Challa just got married and didn’t want to be involved. This Vision was a different version using the body of Iron Lad, and his name was Jonas (adult Vision is named Victor Shade). Bucky was running missions for Fury in other countries. I’m still miffed that they got to be involved but the movie didn’t have room to include Fury and Maria, the two people actually in charge in this game.

I’ve read this comic several times. I took a class where we had to read the book, watch the film, and discuss sides. And here’s the conclusion: no matter whose side you take, you can agree with the other side, and you’re actually in the middle ground of it, but if you had to pick, this one was slightly more persuasive. It’s a very complex issue that the story went into. Tony saw unchecked heroes as a risk and didn’t want to have another incident that would cost hundreds of innocent lives. Steve saw government control as the potential unchecked risk and didn’t want heroes to be controlled by a single power. But they saw the other side as right too: Tony tried to stop SHIELD from apprehending Peter when he defected, and Steve realized that their fighting was proving the point of how dangerous heroes could be when civilians physically had to stop him from killing Tony. Because that was the point: they were both right and wrong. Superheroes could be dangerous, but government registration and control could abuse them and manipulate heroes. Didn’t help that the Negative Zone was the fucking worst thing ever, thanks Reed, Tony, and Maria.

The movie took out the middle ground, and moved this into international territory. It wasn’t one country, but 117. It wasn’t a group of unchecked heroes who caused the major conflict, but one specifically. It wasn’t dozens of heroes, but just a dozen. It wasn’t children dying, it was rulers of countries. And it wasn’t one major storyline that the movie was focused on, but several (the Winter Soldiers, Bucky, Zemo). It liked two things about the comic: two groups of heroes fighting, and Steve beating the shit out of Tony. And this story was adapted by a pair of writers and a pair of directors who don’t care about following the canon of other movies, including their own, so they just did whatever the hell they wanted and bastardized a story that was already a mess and a half to begin with. And it took a story that made you think every character’s decision and motive through and decided nah, fuck that. We’re gonna make major decisions, and you have to pick one to agree with, because the other was designed for you to hate them. Civil War was a debate, not a literal war, Russos, thank you very much.

The movie took a shit approach to the question of whether or not heroes need checks and balances, because it wasn’t interested in answering that question, it liked battle scenes because you like the paintball episodes they directed for TV. If you’re in 2020 and wanna still fight about who was right and who was wrong in the movie, the answer is: the movie is wrong, go read the comic. Cap 3 is the worst Marvel adaptation, and a strong contender for worst movie. I could rip this shit apart all day.

~Mod R

[veky1993]

Sunshine - a major crimes fic

Description: A little ray of sunshine for Sharon and Andy after a long, exhausting night.

Read it on ffnet, or since I’ve finally made an account there, on Ao3!  Otherwise, read it below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, too.  :)

It was on a groan that Andy woke up that morning. Without bothering to open his eyes, he rolled over onto his side intent on snuggling up to Sharon and getting in a few more winks, but when he only found empty, cold bed sheets, his eyes flew open and he groaned again.

Crawling out of bed, he muttered, “That kid,” then grabbed his robe on his way to go look for his wife and the child in question.

He was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when his trek down the hall to their spare room was brought to an unexpected halt by a soft humming sound. It was coming from the living room, and it wasn’t hard to guess who its source was, so on tiptoes, he redirected his feet in that direction, a small, knowing smirk already appearing on his face. His hunch was right, but as he stopped just inside the doorway of their living room, the sight that greeted him rendered him speechless. The scene in front of him was so heartwarming that all he managed was a quiet, content, touched sigh.

Slowly rocking back and forth in the chair they’d impulsively bought when they’d moved into this house, Sharon failed to notice him. Her attention lay solely with the little creature cradled in her arms, and if ever Andy wondered whether the rocking chair was a sound investment, his doubts were all but extinguished now. Not wanting to alert them to his presence, he leaned a shoulder against the doorway and simply marveled at the rare moment that was unraveling.

The song Sharon was humming seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Not that it mattered when there were plenty of other details to take in. Like the gentle sway of the rocking chair to the rhythm of Sharon’s soft humming. Or the light smile on her face as she let the baby girl curl her tiny hand around her index finger. Or the low garbling or whiney noises the baby made whenever Sharon happened to tug her finger far away enough for the little one to have to strengthen her hold, lest the finger slipped completely away. Or the way Sharon’s smile would widen, but the melody of her hum would not even hitch, when the baby did so.

It was a sight to behold, and a pleasant, absolutely delightful wave of emotion washed over him until it wrapped itself comfortably around his heart and settled there.

There were worse ways to start an early day, he decided.

That little baby girl was their youngest granddaughter. She was Emily’s first child, Mia, and she had captured the hearts of the entire family. Even Rusty was besotted, although he futilely tried to hide it.

A couple of years ago, Sharon’s daughter had finally settled down and gotten married. Not soon after, she had gotten pregnant, and much to Sharon’s merriment, felt the desire to move back closer to her mother. The move had worked out perfectly with Andy and Sharon having retired around the same time, allowing them to lend the expecting parents a hand where needed to make the move as stress-free for Emily as possible. Since then, Andy had never seen a happier Sharon, and he was certain the only thing that could possibly add to her happiness was if Ricky, too, moved back closer to home.

Four months of constant parenting had taken its toll on Sharon’s eldest, however. As absolutely taken with their daughter the new parents were, the sleepless nights they endured had started to show. More often than not, their conversations or visits started on heavy, exhausted sighs, and more than once Emily had crashed along with her daughter during her nap time despite having company over. As recent retirees, Sharon and Andy had plenty of free time on their hands now, so it was Andy’s idea to use some of it and offer them a break. Sharon had been delighted at the prospect of having her granddaughter all to herself for a night, but convincing Emily that they were perfectly capable of taking care of an infant for a single night had been slightly more challenging. She didn’t want to impose, they could handle this, they weren’t nearly as exhausted as they looked. Those were just a few of Emily’s excuses, but ultimately the mere notion of getting a full night’s sleep and some time to themselves without a baby interrupting all the time did tip the scales in Sharon and Andy’s favor, and finally both parents gave in.

The afternoon with their granddaughter was nothing short of joyous, and for every time that Andy had teased Sharon about being a typical, sappy grandmother, he had proven, to Sharon’s endless amusement, that he was an even sappier grandfather. Simply put, the baby had them both wrapped around her little finger.

Their perfect bonding time, however, had quickly deteriorated during bed time, and only gotten worse over the course of the night. They had perhaps, ever so slightly (or perhaps very much, it depended on whom you asked), underestimated how attached the child was to her mother, and the beginnings of teething probably didn’t help either. What they hoped would be a night of just a few short trips to the baby’s makeshift crib, had turned into several at least one hour long bouts of walking and rocking and snuggling and feeding and generally just trying anything short of calling Emily that would settle the baby down.

It had been an exhausting night, and they had all properly fallen asleep only a couple of hours ago, which was nowhere near enough rest for any of them, but now, as Andy watched the two, their night’s struggle seemed all but forgotten. There was only one fact that mattered. He adored those two gorgeous human beings in that rocking chair more than words could describe. If he happened to lose a little sleep because of one of them, it was definitely worth it if it also meant being graced with as blissful moments such as this one.

His ears pricked suddenly when Sharon’s melodious hum turned into softly sung words, and if it was possible, he fell in love with her all over again.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”

Goosebumps erupted all over his skin and a pleasant shiver ran up and down his spine, but his heart nearly jumped out of his chest at the squeaky little maybe-giggle the baby let out.

It interrupted Sharon, and she laughed. “Oh, yes,” Andy grinned at her low besotted baby voice, “you are.” She extricated her finger from Mia’s grasp and tapped the baby’s nose, making her scrunch it up a little, then even though she was barely past three lines of the song earlier, started it from the beginning. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” another quiet laugh interrupted her when her granddaughter latched onto her finger again, trying to stuff it into her mouth, but she went on, “you make me happy when skies are grey…”

Andy couldn’t keep away anymore. He quietly walked over to them. The few nanoseconds it took for Sharon’s voice to carry over to him was a completely made up kind of torture for him, but he told himself that was why he absolutely had to get closer to her. If possible he would bottle the sound, and open it only when he couldn’t hear the soothing notes straight from its source, and, oh, he dreaded ever not being able to hear it straight from the source.

That little miracle in Sharon’s arms called out to him as well. He wondered how it was possible for someone so little, to have such a gigantic hold over him. She had stolen his heart in a way entirely too different from the way her grandmother had. It filled him with warmth all the same though, and caused his chest to tighten in the most sweetest of ways. Although not entirely the same, he thought it felt rather a lot like his love for his children, all consuming to the point where he would do absolutely anything for them. The feeling manifested itself in a restless sensation in his hands, he was almost literally itching to reach out to that little girl, pick her up, snuggle her impossibly close to him, and hope that her innocent mind, and even more innocent heart, would somehow gather how very deeply he had grown to love her in just the four short months of her existence, and that he found it hard to name even a single thing he thought was more precious than her. And that was saying something, considering the love of his life was the one holding her.

When he reached the chair, Sharon again didn’t notice him. She was far too preoccupied with the baby to take note of much of anything, but then the baby made out Andy hovering behind them above Sharon’s head. She started kicking her legs up, her eyes went wide and she let go of Sharon’s finger so she could wave her little, chubby hands around.

Even as he grinned at the baby’s excited reaction, Andy wanted to curse himself for causing Sharon’s song to end.

Surprised and still oblivious to Andy’s presence, Sharon bent her head down to the baby and gently ran her fingers over her tummy. “What has you so excited all of a sudden?” She pecked the tip of her nose. “My singing can’t be that good.” She chuckled, but her tone was slightly self-deprecating.

Finally, Andy braced his hands against the back of the chair, careful not to move it, and leaned down. “I think it’s perfect,” he mumbled into Sharon’s ear.

“Oh, my God!” Sharon startled, a hand instinctively going to clutch her chest before she remembered she had a baby in her lap and she quickly dropped it back to the girl’s diapered bottom. When she finally turned her head, she let out, scoldingly, “Andy!”

He laughed, and repeated mockingly, “Sharon!” When she glared at him, he quickly added, genuinely, “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” In apology, he dropped a kiss to her hair, then looked up at Mia. “I see someone’s up again.”

Sharon shook her head, begrudgingly accepting the apology, then turned back to her granddaughter on a sigh. “Yes, she is.” She stilled the baby’s still excitedly kicking feet. “I didn’t want to wake you, but,” her tone deteriorated into the one reserved just for babies, “she is in a much better mood than she’s been all night,” she kissed the little feet, “isn’t that right?”

“Yeah,” he rounded the chair and crouched down to kiss the baby good morning, too, “well, I’d be in a great mood, too, if you sang to me like that.” He addressed the baby now, who was even more excited now that he was so much closer, and started reaching her hands out to his face. “You know,” it was Sharon’s turn to smile at his baby tone, “she never sings to me. She just yells, and glares,” his tone took a baby grumbling dip, and Sharon took a playful slap at his shoulder, causing him to add, “and smacks at me all the time.”

He grinned when Sharon rolled her eyes, and couldn’t resist picking up the little one when she made a giggling noise as if she actually understood what her grandparents were bickering about.

“Be careful,” Sharon warned, only reluctantly letting Mia out of her hold, “she just ate.”

He put her down onto his shoulder, and giving into at least one of his earlier desires, snuggled her close to him. When he took a breath, he wanted to groan in delight. God, he loved how babies smelled. It had been too long since last his own kids smelled so heavenly. “You’re my sunshine, too, you know,” he told her softly, and when Sharon’s lips instantly curved into an affectionate smile, he eyed her with a lopsided smile of his own, adding, “and your grandma.”

Sharon got to her feet and joined Andy at his side. In a silent thank you, she kissed his cheek he acknowledged with a quick grin, then peeked around his back to get a look at the baby. She had gone completely limp, closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his shoulder. She could have melted at the sight, but instead asked, only half-jokingly, “Should I be jealous?” She couldn’t resist tracing her fingertips gingerly over the light, thin hair on the baby’s head. “She never gets this excited to see me.”

Andy was far too proud over the very true fact to try to ease her worries. “Yes, yes, you should,” he nodded vigorously, swaying back and forth and rubbing the baby’s back, “I’m her favorite, and you’re just gonna have to learn to live with it.” To prove his point, he turned his back to Sharon, as if to keep the baby all to himself, but all that did was give Sharon an unobscured view of her, and an opportunity to place a kiss on her forehead.

She then returned to his side, and wrapped an arm around him. Her tone was deceptively sweet, almost saccharine. “Enjoy it while it lasts, honey,” she squeezed his hip playfully, “she’ll be all mine the moment she starts understanding all the nonsense coming out of your mouth.”

“Hey,” Andy said a tad loudly, moving out of Sharon’s hold, then quickly added, “sorry,” when the baby wiggled and made a disagreeing grunt. “I thought you liked my nonsense,” he told Sharon in exaggerated hurt.

Sharon pursed her lips, debating whether to give in or tease him a little more. She was, unfortunately, ever so slightly, truly jealous over the special bond her granddaughter and husband so quickly developed, and the latter idea won out. She found herself shrugging, as she said, her nose forcedly high and mighty, “I merely tolerate it.”

Andy narrowed his eyes at her, then tilted his head to the baby’s ear. “Your grandma’s mean!” he mumbled to her in a hurt, whiny, but conspiratorial tone, and his heart soared yet again, when the baby wiggled and snuggled even more into him, her tiny hands fisting his T-Shirt. “See, she agrees,” he told the grandmother in question.

Sharon very nearly burst out laughing. He had no clue just how utterly adorable he looked like that, with his hands wrapped protectively around the baby and his faux offended expression, and to top it all of, his still sleep tousled hair. She had seen him in grandfather mode with Nicole’s children, and once handling a baby, too, so this side of him wasn’t entirely new to her, but the gentleness and near infatuation with which he so completely loved Mia took her breath away, and if possible, she loved him all the more for it.

Before that love could overwhelm her and cause her to blurt out something that would make him even smugger than he already was, in half-hearted exasperation, she finally said, “You are such a grandpa.”

“Oh, yeah?” He took a couple of steps towards her, his lip curled into a smug grin. “Like you’re any better.” He looked pointedly at the hand she’d reached out to brush lovingly against the baby girl’s back.

She finally laughed, a light, bubbly, airy kind of laugh that was a sound Andy loved maybe even more than her earlier discovered singing voice. Yes, she was such a grandma, too. “Can you blame me?” she asked, dropping her hand only to gently squeeze their granddaughter’s foot instead.

He smiled. “No, I really can’t. She’s too precious.” He kissed the side of the baby’s head, and took a deep breath, for a moment savoring the distinct baby scent with closed eyes. “I can’t wait for the kids to pop out more of these.”

“Pop out,” Sharon repeated, promptly snort-laughing. “Oh, God,” she added in a thin, amused voice, her head flopping down to stifle her giggles behind the palm of her hand.

The baby wiggled against Andy again, trying to lift her head, eyes wide and curious about the unexpected and strange noise. He turned her around so she could see her giggling grandmother, then on a smirk intended for Sharon, told her, “Look, look,” he shrugged his shoulder as if to point at Sharon with her, “she’s laughing at you, kiddo, can you believe it?”

Even as she continued to laugh, Sharon swatted at him. “Oh, no,” she walked toward the baby, then gently clasped her cheeks when she was graced with a gummy smile, “I just adore you, little one.” She poked Andy in the ribs for good measure, and added with an exaggeration that was rather true, “More than anything in the whole wide world.”

Andy let out a sarcastic, and very confident, “Aha…”

His mere voice had the baby drop her head back onto his shoulder, and he laughed, turning back around to face Sharon. “See, still her favorite.” Shit-eating fell short in describing the grin on his face.

“Oh,” Sharon didn’t know what she wanted to say, and before she could even try to decide, she found herself taking the one step between them, clasping his face, and kissing him soundly on the mouth, then finally, and quite lamely, said, “you.”

Andy laughed, and kissed her once quickly, too. “What can I say,” he shrugged, and quirked his eyebrow innocently as he tilted his head, “I’m a charming guy.”

The baby was now completely alert, and she started making disagreeing noises before Sharon could respond, or most likely smack him again. When Andy turned her around and settled her into the crook of his elbow though, she quickly settled again, and he ran his fingers gently over the top of her onesie, just under her chin. “What do you say grandma continues that song of hers, huh?”

The baby just made some indiscernible garbling noises, but Andy took it for a yes, and added, flashing Sharon a quick grin, “I know, it’s like an angel singing.” When Sharon rolled her eyes at him, he added, already prepared to run away from her, “Who’d have thunk it, huh, a big bad meanie like that singing so,” he feigned a groan, “gooood?”

Yup, he had to duck quickly before Sharon could smack him again, and it made the baby clutch at his T-shirt again for his abrupt movement, but he quickly rocked her a few times and mumbled reassuringly, “No worries, I got you,” until she relaxed.

Sharon glared at him playfully. “You know what?” Her tone indicated Andy was about to get the short stick of whatever decision she just made. “How about I go get dressed for the day, and you,” she reached the baby and tickled her belly, making her squirm, “get grandpa to change your diaper in the meantime?”

Andy shot her a wide-eyed look of not horror, but betrayal. They both knew it was Sharon’s turn for diaper-duty, but Sharon barked out a laugh, studiously ignoring the fact, and said, “See, grandpa can’t wait for it!”

Before Andy could so much as think of a retort, Sharon had plopped a gentle parting kiss to Mia’s head, and was walking away, happily singing again.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”

[i-want-to-bethlieve]

Steve Rogers’ Ending and its Horrible Implications

Let me start by saying I was very disappointed with the entire Avengers Endgame movie.  I didn’t like the plot, the humor, or the action, but I feel the ending for Captain America perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with the movie; not enough thought was put into it.  This is basically all of the gripes I have with Steve’s ending.  It’s late, but I had to get it all out.

The writers (Markus and McFeely) and the directors (Russo Brothers) don’t even agree on what happened to Steve at the end of the movie.  Which is pretty embarrassing considering they worked together on this story for 4 movies.  The Russo Brothers say Steve Rogers goes back in time and creates an alternate timeline. He marries Peggy, and is free to change whatever he wants because it has no effect on the main timeline of the MCU. As for explaining how Steve was able to show up on a park bench in the main timeline at the end, their only non-answer is “maybe there is a story there”. In other words, they don’t know.  Markus and McFeely say Steve goes back in time, marries Peggy, and lives out his life in the main MCU timeline, which is why he just shows up on a bench at the end of the movie without using the time machine. To them Steve has apparently been Peggy’s husband this whole time.

The most disappointing thing about either ending is the character assassination of Steve Rogers.  Whatever scenario you choose to believe, Steve Rogers makes an incredibly selfish choice to go be with Peggy.  Steve knew Peggy had moved on and had a family. She tells him she has no regrets about that part of her life.  He saw her children and knew she was married, but he goes back to be with Peggy anyway, which shows him blatantly disregarding the life she made without him.  He makes the decision to change her life without any thought about what she wanted.  It was all about his own happiness.  Never mind that they shared only 1 kiss before being separated.  Never mind that two of his teammates just died to restore the current universe he was living in.  Never mind that his two closest friends literally came back from the dead a minute ago.  All of that was disregarded so Steve could live in his fantasy.  That is what Peggy was for Steve at that point.  She is more an idea than an actual person because they just didn’t know each other well enough. They were never a couple.  They never went on a date.  It was all speculation.  A ‘what-could-have-been’ for both of them.  I’m not saying there was no love between them.  They played important parts in each others lives, but Steve believes she is “the love of his life” and doesn’t seem to care whether she felt the same way about him.  She was happily married with no regrets. How does he know her husband (who Steve wouldn’t know was himself if you believe the writers) was not the love of her life?  Honestly, if you look at this decision from anyone's perspective other than Steve’s it is all very horrible.

When you break down both the writers and directors’ theories the story only falls apart even more.  Lets say you believe the Russo brothers and think Steve created an alternate timeline.  In this scenario Steve can do whatever he wants because he intentionally created an alternate reality to live in.  We can assume he is able to prevent many tragedies from happening (stops Bucky from becoming the Winter Soldier, stops Howard and Maria from dying, prevents Hydra from taking over SHIELD etc.) and the movie shows us he gets married to Peggy. This seems great on the surface, but the minute you start thinking about how the story would have to play out to get there, it becomes a bitter pill to swallow. In order to marry Peggy, our Steve Rogers (OSteve) had to keep alternate universe Steve Rogers (AUSteve) stuck in the ice for 70 years. That’s a pretty cold (ha) thing for OSteve to do, but it also means Peggy went along with it.  You would think Peggy would want to go find AUSteve as soon as she realizes he survived the crash, and that would mean she wouldn’t want to marry OSteve because the man she just said goodbye to is out there alive somewhere.  If Peggy marries OSteve we have to assume Peggy agreed to leave her Steve frozen for 70 years.  There is also no reason to keep AUSteve in the ice except for selfish reasons.  In this scenario OSteve prevents the events of the Captain America trilogy from happening, so Steve would not be needed in 70 years the same way he was in the main MCU timeline.  OSteve and Peggy would knowingly choose to keep AUSteve frozen in the ice even though they have every ability to save him.  That’s some skeleton in the closet.

In this alternate reality it is true Steve can save his friends, but it does not erase his friends in the original timeline, or the trauma they went through. Steve getting to "fix" everything he did not like about his life sounds great, but it is hollow if you abandon your old traumatized friends for new ones without baggage. He is really just living in fantasy land as far as anyone in the main timeline is concerned.  No matter what he does, Steve does not belong in that alternate timeline. He has a life he is leaving behind with people who care about him, and who he is supposed to care about. Steve can pretend all he wants, but the alternate timeline is not "his" life. What would AUSteve think when he wakes up and finds out a man came from some alternate universe and stole his life, keeping him frozen for years when he could have been saved?

There is also the moral dilemma of playing god.  Is creating an alternate universe for yourself okay just because you’ve been a good guy in the past?  You have to be pretty arrogant to think you are good enough to create a universe for your own happiness.  Is it okay to have the supposedly most moral character in the series do this?  Does it go against everything the character is supposed to stand for? We watched Thor and Tony speak to their dead parents without attempting to save them. Why is that?  Why does everyone except Steve have to avoid creating alternate timelines? Why are we worried about the consequences of messing with time travel when apparently there are none? The directors did not care enough to ask themselves these questions, and Steve Rogers’ character, and the movie, suffers for it. The Russos created an arrogant, and selfish Steve Rogers who is willing to change Peggy’s world to the one he wants without knowing if she would want that too.

If you believe the writers and think Steve went back in time and was Peggy’s husband all along, things still don’t add up.  First of all, Steve going back in time would change the past, meaning there would have to be an alternate timeline.  It makes no sense given the rules of time travel Endgame gave us, that Steve did not create an alternate timeline when he went back in time.  Second of all, the reveal that Steve was Peggy’s husband all along does not fit into what we saw in any of the previous Captain America movies (written and directed by the same people who made Endgame).  In ‘Captain America: the Winter Soldier’ the video at the Smithsonian shows Peggy mentioning Steve saved her husband during the war.  Why would she say that if Steve has been her husband the whole time?  She has to be lying about that, even though there is no reason for her to be saying any of this at all. In the same movie Peggy tells Steve her only regret is knowing Steve never got the chance to live his life.  This doesn’t make sense because she knows he will get the chance to live his life. Yes I know that part can be explained away because Peggy seems to be suffering from some for of dementia or alzheimer's, but this opens another plot hole.  We assume Steve was involved in Peggy’s life after he came out of the ice. How is it possible he never met her husband? In ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Steve goes to Peggy’s funeral. Are we meant to believe that Steve would not have given his condolences to Peggy’s husband? Steve being at her funeral also means Peggy’s friends and family are in on the lie too because no one mentions how strange it is that Peggy’s husband suddenly looks 50 years younger.  And last but not least of this theory’s problems, if Steve was Peggy’s husband the whole time that would mean Sharon Carter knowingly makes out with her uncle.  Yikes!  Personally I refuse to give that theory any credibility. The writers clearly did not plan this ending from the beginning. Unless of course they are just that bad at their job.

Besides breaking all of the time travel rules Avengers Endgame established, the writer’s theory also fails to keep Steve in character.  Steve “I can’t stand aside when I see a situation going south” Rogers would have to stand aside his entire life knowing Natasha and Bucky were becoming brainwashed assassins killing countless people, including Tony Stark’s parents. He knows that his wife is working with Hydra agents who will undermine everything she helped build with SHIELD and kill countless people. He has to live with knowing every horrible thing that will happens in the MCU, and do nothing to prevent it.  That life for Steve does not sound like a happily ever after ending to me.  In ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ it is established skinny Steve is constantly getting beat up because he can’t stand by and watch someone be disrespectful, or allow injustice to prevail.  So what character growth did the writers give Steve at the end of Endgame?  He has grown over these last 11 years into a man that chooses a life where he has to stand aside knowing his friends are suffering?  He leaves his friends in a present where the world is rebuilding to go live in a past where he can kick back and relax while injustice rages around him. Is that the type of character growth you want to see for Steve Rogers? 

It is a huge mess no matter which way you slice it.  And the whole thing is so contrived.  Bucky, who has been at the center of the Captain America trilogy, does not get a proper reunion or goodbye scene with Steve.  Steve does not have a moment to mourn Bucky or Sam during the entire movie. Instead we have multiple scenes of Steve looking at the picture of Peggy he keeps in the compass.  He doesn’t mention losing Bucky or Sam when speaking to a therapy group about moving on after the snap. Instead he brings up losing Peggy aka "the love of his life".  That was done not because it is true to the character, but so the audience would be more likely to accept Steve’s ending.  If we saw a movie where Steve misses his friends and desperately wants to get them back, the ending would not work.  Steve leaving them just after getting them back would feel out of place, and inappropriate.  So the writers and directors committed the ultimate story telling sin and forced the characters to fit inside their story, instead of creating a story to fit the characters.  It is a huge injustice to fans who have invested years into watching these movies. Steve Rogers’ story ends without him experiencing any growth at all. Steve’s entire journey is disregarded in a way because he has not gained anything important enough to stay in the present for.  He is still longing for the past after all this time, and if you disagree, think about this.  Even after returning to Peggy in the 1940s, Steve remains a man out of time.  He does not belong in 1940 more than he belongs in 2023.  That is some other person’s life he is living. A life he was never meant to have because he chose to sacrifice it.  Choosing to take it back undoes everything we are suppose to love about Steve Rogers.

Many people argue that Steve deserves to be selfish for once.  He has earned the right to go and live the life he wants.  I say those people are just in denial about how badly the movie screwed up Steve’s character.  All of the Avengers have earned the right to retire if they want to, and Steve could retire (though I would still argue it was out of character).  If the writers and directors wanted Steve to end with making a decision for his own self-interest, retirement would have been a great option.  But that is not what we got.  He didn’t just make a decisions for his own self interest, he literally created an entire universe where his happiness was the priority.  That is out of character for Steve.  Steve Rogers is beloved because he is not selfish.  He is beloved because he wants to do the right thing, even when doing the right thing is difficult (especially when doing the right thing is difficult).  Steve is suppose to be the character willing to do “whatever it takes” to help people. Not do whatever it takes to get his own happy ending.  So while Steve getting his dance is a lovely image to end on, the Russo brothers, Markus, and McFeely had to destroy everything you love about the character to get him there.  That is not a good or satisfying ending.

[autumnrory]

okay ik like everything’s been said about steve’s ending in endgame and i’ve made a million little posts but i’ve been meaning to write my own essay bc i’m MAD (if u liked it for him then like i’m sure u don’t wanna read so u can scroll on past) and there’s a lot of other stuff i didn’t like/that didn’t make sense about the movie but this post is about steve anyway let’s go

so from what i can tell there is not even a consensus among people who liked the ending whether it’s the same timeline or an alternate timeline but let’s talk about the possibilities here and what they mean, at least based on my understanding

option 1: same timeline

this means one of two things. either steve was actually peggy’s husband all along OR by going back and marrying her, that erases her husband and children entirely.

so if steve was peggy’s husband all along, that means that?? old steve has been walking around this entire time and nobody knew about it? this means that in 2016 sharon carter was like “you know what would be fun? kissing my great uncle when he’s young and hot” which WOW i thought it was icky before just bc she was PEGGY’S niece? marvel might have just made that worse. and hey, i’ll be fair, i’m sure in the very little time they likely took to think about this ending, they definitely weren’t thinking about sharon, considering they hardly thought about her when she was actually appearing in the movies. if steve was peggy’s husband all along, that means she was lying in the smithsonian footage, which hey, i don’t doubt her ability to lie, but the whole ass video is floating around out there and i’m just not sure you can fake that kind of emotion. when they ask her about her being the last person to talk to steve? that is a person talking about losing someone they cared for six years ago. it just contradicts so much of catws and other parts of the mcu (and the idea that people have that this was the plan the entire time? yeah fucking right the writers do not plan like that if they did there wouldn’t be so many fucking inconsistencies in this universe. i’m willing to bet they couldn’t name peggy’s husband in catws bc they were planning agent carter and thought there would be an explicit confirmation of who it was) and anyway, even if steve was her husband all along, there’s no way either steve or peggy could have KNOWN that she didn’t have a future being erased. so would either of them have really WANTED to take that chance?

the other option is of course that peggy moved on from steve, fell in love with somebody else, got married, had children, grandchildren, etc. if that’s the case, that means steve just changed her entire storyline. and who knows what marrying steve could have changed. it just........okay, agent carter was the first thing in the mcu i watched before i even knew shit about captain america (literally when they showed flashbacks i was like *maria hill voice* who’s this guy) but while we don’t know with any certainty that daniel sousa was the guy she ended up married to, i would have to guess steve went back to BEFORE she and daniel got together, meaning that like the entirety of agent carter is probably erased. her whole INCREDIBLE journey. i’ve read a million things the last week so if someone can let me know who the fuck said this, please do, but anyway someone said peggy’s story really begins when steve goes into the ice and it’s SO TRUE. “i have lived a life. my only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours.” LET THEM KEEP THE LIVES THEY WERE MEANT TO LIVE. and anyway, i just think there’s no way, going back and changing who she marries wouldn’t also alter SO MUCH of what she did, and therefore our timeline.

either way, this option goes against everything about steve. i don’t care if he IS tired of fighting, there’s still no way he would sit quietly and not try to prevent things from happening. assassinations, hydra infiltrating shield, his BEST FRIEND being tortured and brainwashed for seventy years.

steve: if i see a situation pointed south, i can’t ignore it. sometimes i wish i could. tony: no you don’t. steve: no i don’t.

again, i’ll be fair, several years have passed since steve said that, but i just don’t buy the idea that he’s gonna sit back quietly, when his character through the whole mcu has been about fighting for what’s right 

option 2: alternate timeline

i’ve seen some people say it’s because of the bracelets they used that would have allowed steve to jump back into our timeline when he’s old and be in the right place at the right time but like..........what’s the point. he ditched his friends and lived through seventy years without them so am i expected to believe that this steve (i don’t know him) even really cares about handing off the shield to sam (which, i did want, just in the form of our steve retiring and living his own life in the PRESENT) idk that last scene was just so much so fast and i was so mad watching it unfold i could hardly stand it so whatever

so okay say steve goes back to peggy and creates an alternate timeline by doing so, maybe in this timeline he rescues bucky and prevents a bunch of other things from happening

........but wasn’t the point of returning the stones to when and where they got them (which, of course we know the only reason steve was doing this alone was to get to this ending, but it’s ridiculous considering they had a whole team going to all different places in the movie WHATEVER) to PREVENT the creation of an alternate timeline? that’s why the ancient one was hesitant about giving bruce the time stone because it would create a branch or whatever IT MAKES NO SENSE.

this theory at least doesn’t necessarily screw over peggy since...our peggy would still exist and the steve and peggy we saw at the end of the movie would be in an alternate timeline

but it does go against the time travel rules as i understand them and it still fucks up steve’s characterization

whatever

everything’s fucked anyway

if they ever address it, whatever the mcu logic is, all these possibilities have flaws/leave plot holes because they really hardly gave any thought to their characters OR their time travel logic bc they wanted to force this ending

seriously all the peggy references throughout the movie like?? ofc he’s still gonna have that compass and i guess still carry it around since he’s been on the run and hasn’t a permanent place and therefore no safe place to keep it but....he looks at her picture before they go after thanos? it would make more sense if he looked at a picture on his phone of like him, bucky and sam or something. he’s at that group meeting five years later and talks about the loss of his chance with peggy which was u know like a decade ago for him (and i know i don’t like people saying ‘oh just get over it’ i don’t mean it like that i just mean like.......he was willing to move on in cacw - with her NIECE but whatever - and suddenly it’s like he’s never ever been over her and calling her the love of his life) instead of talking about the loss of bucky and sam, two of his best friends? wanda? t’challa? maria? nick? even the way he dresses is very reminiscent of the first avengers when he’s JUST woken up, but he gets away from that throughout the cap movies and gets more used to modern life. endgame does everything to force the idea that he’s still completely uncomfortable in this time. as if what? twelve years in the twenty-first century would mean going back to the 1940s makes you just as much a man out of time.

AND PEGGY. my god, i’ve loved peggy’s story though the mcu and look what this fucking movie did. peggy doesn’t even have fucking lines. we don’t even hear her talk when he stares longingly and dramatically at her through a window (it really reminded me of that jess/rory scene in the gilmore girls revival and hey that was a pairing i thought SHOULD have ended up together, but should not have had all that pining very similarly like ten years later it’s just weird the disappointments i feel in both of these things are so similar but that’s beside the point). we don’t get to see them have a conversation when he goes back to her. tony talked to howard and thor talked to frigga and we didn’t see steve talk to peggy. if she’s supposed to be The Love Of His Life (does marvel know if she could have another love of her life then so could he but whatever) and is suddenly his reason for everything or whatever they’re trying to play at, shouldn’t we get more than a longing look (not even a mutual one, like all the ones we got in catfa) and the dance? peggy carter is AMAZING and she doesn’t even really get a say. they reduced her to the object of steve’s affection and nothing more and it’s HORRIBLE.

frigga said “you’re not my thor” and i think peggy, be it 40s peggy or 70s peggy, would recognize that this is not her steve. look at everything he’s been through the last decade. he’s been through so much and yes, his relationship with peggy was a missed chance, but....the steve of now is not the steve that she lost. and i think no matter how much she might have wanted it to be whenever he came back to her, she would have known that and she would have sent him back home where he belongs, with his new family, in the present.

peggy was the one who said in catws “the world has changed and none of us can go back. all we can do is our best and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over.” steve’s whole story since waking up has been about moving on and making peace with the fact that he lost his chance at the life he could have had after the war (much as i hate aou, it does touch on that fact, he says someone who wanted family and stability or w/e isn’t who came out of the ice and he says at the end of the movie “i’m home” THIS IS HIS HOME MARVEL HERE AND NOW). the fact that the trailer used peggy’s quote about moving forward and then fucking went against the whole ass point.......wild

and i hate to say this i really do.........but not in a satisfying way, just in an it-would-make-sense way. i didn’t want any characters to die, i think after seeing characters suffer so much they deserve a happy ending (so don’t tell me i don’t want steve to be happy because i do i’ve been yelling about how he needs to rest since cacw). but. BUT. it would have made more sense if he died, if he sacrificed himself, because that was a thing he constantly did throughout the mcu, just ya know, he always survived it. going down in the plane in catfa, on the helicarrier in catws, in sokovia in aou, and so on

and lemme tell you, steve dying? that was my Big Fear for this movie, i didn’t want to believe they would go there (i never expected they would go there with tony AND NAT god i’m mad about her too but that’s not what this post is about) but i was prepared for the possibility. when i first saw the theory floating around about him going back in time to be peggy, i didn’t think it was feasible (and it’s not! truly! it makes no sense!) and i didn’t think they would do something as complicated as messing with time like that (boy was i wrong) so i wrote it off. but i think.......what happened feels worse, because character death in movies like these can p much always be fixed you know? even if canon doesn’t, fic can keep everything canon gives us and still be like ‘oh they’re not actually dead because ____’ and this....this can’t be changed. fic has to change the ending. that last five minutes. five minutes fucked up ten years of characterization. anyway.

so here’s what i was thinking about? while not exactly the same because it was ya know parents they lost, thor had a conversation with frigga, tony had a conversation with howard. imagine if it had been steve on the mission to get the soul stone. and okay as a clintasha stan (fuck you aou) i LOVED that scene until nat’s death, i loved them fighting each other to be the one to go. but if it had been steve and maybe still nat too, he could have had his own blast from the past like thor and tony did with the red skull because idt he ever even found out it was the red skull in the soul world (is that what it’s called i forget), bc iirc clint just said something about a red guy. anyway it could have made for some nice catfa parallels with steve and red skull and if he WAS with nat it could have made for a nice aou parallel when they stay to get all the citizens out of there (”where else am i gonna get a view like this?” bc both my babies are willing to sacrifice themselves to save the world). but imagine when the relationship between steve and natasha has also been such a big part of the mcu, the two of them learning to trust each other and protect each other, and save each other, imagine both of them disagreeing over who should be the one to die, maybe not in the same way as clint and nat, not with physically trying to keep the other down, but...fighting about it nonetheless. imagine natasha watching him fall, imagine her returning without him.

of course this would’ve made me mad too because that would’ve meant not just that steve died, but that he died without getting to see bucky and sam again. but at least it would’ve MADE NARRATIVE SENSE and not fucked up his character, because it’s exactly the kind of thing he would do. anyway, it didn’t even have to be this idea of mine, it didn’t even have to be death at all, i just think...it would have made more sense than chasing after this fantasy of a life that he realized (and seemed to accept) he couldn’t have years ago.

now. what i’ve been screaming for the last week. to put it simply: STEVE WOULD NEVER. steve wouldn’t take peggy’s past away from her. steve wouldn’t leave bucky and sam and his other friends behind after all the hell they’ve been through, after half the population just woke up five years in the future, something he's experienced on a much larger scale. steve could have still given up being captain america. could have said, hey i still wanna do good but i don’t wanna fight aliens and shit anymore and i wanna have a chance to actually live my life. he could have given the shield to sam (okay ik the shield was destroyed at that point but u know what i mean) and that could have been the perfect ending for him, to get his happiness with who and what he still has, to truly make peace with what he’s lost.

and i can’t say all this without getting into bitter stucky territory. the entire fucking captain america trilogy has revolved around steve’s relationship to bucky. protecting bucky, saving him, believing in him when no one else will. he went on that mission in catfa based on the hope that bucky was alive, he lost him when he fell from that train. when steve found out bucky was alive, he gave up fighting him HE DROPPED HIS SHIELD he was willing to die on that helicarrier trying to save bucky, trying to get him to remember. with sam’s help they spent two years trying to find bucky and okay i’m not gonna get into why cacw bugged me that’s not this post but he STILL was trying to keep bucky safe, still believing in bucky, just....everything it’s too much to even put into words what the two of them mean to each other, what they do for each other.

bucky and steve haven’t really had a chance to be back in each other’s lives since cacw. bucky went back into cryo and sure we can assume steve’s visited him since he woke up but steve’s been on the run with sam and nat like........they’ve had very little time together. and steve just lived another five years without bucky AND sam and ditched them immediately? for someone he had a relationship with ten years ago? for someone he obviously was not meant for BECAUSE they DIDN’T end up together because he went down in that plane and she moved on and i’m just!!!

and anyway is bucky really like okay? like i saw that vid where the fan asked about the movie properly ending their story and they totally bullshitted an answer about them being able to be separate or whatever but like they’ve hardly been able to be TOGETHER, they’ve been pulled apart over and over. and like, yes bucky has his life in wakanda and he has sam but we haven’t really seen much of those relationships so we don’t actually know how much that means! steve is the only person who can understand even somewhat what bucky’s been through (obvs other mcu characters know what it’s like to have their minds fucked with whereas steve doesn’t know what that part’s like, but bucky hasn’t interacted with those characters unfortunately) so ya know at least in terms of adjusting to a whole new life after your old one was ripped away, steve’s all he’s got. ofc now other people will get a sense of that, but still. in terms of history, shared life experience, steve and bucky are all each other have.

all bucky and steve share in this movie is an exchange that literally already happened in catfa but in reverse. they couldn’t even give us an original MOMENT. and bucky apparently knew what steve was gonna do which just makes it WORSE, like he just had to accept it and let steve go, let steve be someone else. if they wanted to end steve’s arc properly, it would’ve been about bucky because THAT’S what steve’s whole fucking story has been about, and the writers and directors who literally made steve’s arc that way fucking ignored that bc they’re homophobic (and misogynistic) goodbyeeeee like u cannot deny that tearing bucky and steve apart permanently isn’t a slap in the face to stucky shippers, they’ve been giving less and less since catws when they realized how obviously romantic their story is. it’s just fucking cruel (don’t get me started on using the song from right before steve and bucky’s first interaction in catws for the dance as soon as it started playing i wanted to SCREAM ik it’s possible they didn’t know it was an association with stucky buuuuuut with social media ppl very easily know what the fandom is saying so. who knows it just fucking sucked) to put an end to the stevebucky relationship when they haven’t had a real chance to be together, even as just friends, since catws, and it’s especially cruel to end their relationship THIS WAY

anyway this ending (JUST A FEW MINUTES REALLY) just does a disservice to steve AND peggy AND bucky and their stories and i’m just so disappointed and angry on their behalf. if anyone wants to talk about it to me FEEL FREE as long as you’re not a dick bc i obvs love to commiserate with the fandom over this MESS

[papapiusxiii]

50 Great Thrillers by Women, as recommended by 10 of the UK’s female crime writers

Sophie Hannah:

Summertime by Liz Rigbey. Follows a woman who loses her baby and whose father unexpectedly drowns. When her husband and sister close ranks against her, she begins to suspect they are lying to her.

The Spider’s House by Sarah Diamond. Also published as In the Spider’s House. When Anna Howell discovers that a 1960s child murderess was the previous resident of her old cottage, her marriage, sanity and life come under threat.

Hidden by Katy Gardner. When a young mother’s seven-year-old daughter disappears, she finds herself questioning everything in her life. Then a police officer starts asking about the murder of a woman 14 months earlier …

A Shred of Evidence by Jill McGown. DI Judy Hill and DCI Lloyd investigate the murder of a 15-year-old girl on a patch of open parkland in the centre of town.

Searching for Shona by Margaret Jean Anderson

The wealthy Marjorie Malcolm-Scott trades suitcases, destinations and identities with orphan Shona McInnes, as children are evacuated from Edinburgh at the start of the second world war.

Val McDermid:

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey. A teenage war orphan accuses two women of kidnap and abuse, but something about her story doesn’t add up.

Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer. The Booker-longlisted author of Snap follows it up with the tale of a medical student with Asperger’s who attempts to solve a murder.

The Field of Blood by Denise Mina. The first in the Paddy Meehan series sees the reporter looking into the disappearance of a child from his Glasgow home, with evidence pointing the police towards two young boys.

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine. Writing under her pen name, Ruth Rendell tells of the discovery of a woman and child in the animal cemetery at Wyvis Hall, 10 years after a group of young people spent the summer there.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. In the third Jackson Brodie book, a man is released from prison 30 years after he butchered the mother and siblings of a six-year-old girl in the Devon countryside.

Ann Cleeves:

Little Deaths by Emma Flint. Inspired by the real case of Alice Crimmins, this tells of a woman whose two children go missing from her apartment in Queens.

The Dry by Jane Harper. During Australia’s worst drought in a century, three members of one family in a small country town are murdered, with the father believed to have killed his wife and son before committing suicide.

Devices and Desires by PD James. Adam Dalgliesh takes on a serial killer terrorising a remote Norfolk community.

The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina. Heavily pregnant DS Alex Morrow investigates the violent death of a wealthy woman in Glasgow.

Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky. The inimitable VI Warshawski takes over coaching duties of the girls’ basketball team at her former high school, and investigates the explosion of the flag manufacturing plant where one of the girl’s mothers works.

Sharon Bolton:

Gone by Mo Hayder. In Hayder’s fifth thriller featuring Bristol DI Jack Caffrey, he goes after a car-jacker who is taking vehicles with children in them.

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. A murderous revenge is being plotted against the boys’ grammar school in the north of England where eccentric Latin master Roy Straitley is contemplating retirement.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. A time-travelling, murderous war veteran steps through the decades to murder extraordinary women – his “shining girls” – in Chicago, in this high-concept thriller.

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood. Two women who were sentenced for murdering a six-year-old when they were children meet again as adults, when one discovers the body of a teenager.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty. Married scientist Yvonne, who is drawn into a passionate affair with a stranger, is on trial for murder.

Sarah Ward:

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid. Journalist Catherine Heathcote investigates the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl in the Peak District village of Scarsdale in 1963.

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway investigates the discovery of a child’s bones near the site of a prehistoric henge on the north Norfolk salt marshes.

The Ice House by Minette Walters. A decade after Phoebe Maybury’s husband inexplicably vanished, a corpse is found and the police become determined to charge her with murder.

The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard. When a body is found in Dublin’s Grand Canal, police turn to the notorious Canal Killer for help. But the imprisoned murderer will only talk to the woman he was dating when he committed his crimes.

This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas (translated by Sian Reynolds). Commissaire Adamsberg investigates whether there is a connection between the escape of a murderous 75-year-old nurse from prison, and the discovery of two men with their throats cut on the outskirts of Paris.

Elly Griffiths: 

R in the Month by Nancy Spain. Sadly out of print, this is an atmospheric story set in a down-at-heel hotel in a postwar seaside town. The period detail is perfect and jokes and murders abound. This is the fourth book featuring the fantastic Miriam Birdseye, actress and rather slapdash sleuth.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. A gripping crime novel in which the detective never gets out of bed and the murder happened over 500 years ago. Griffith says: “I read this book as a child and was hooked – on Tey, crime fiction and Richard the Third.”

The Detective’s Daughter by Lesley Thomson. Cleaner Stella Darnell finds herself tidying up her detective father’s final, unfinished case, after he dies. It is the first in a series featuring Stella and her sidekick Jack, an underground train driver who can sense murder.

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid. Griffiths says: “I could have chosen any of Val’s novels, but this book, about a journalist revisiting a shocking 1960s murder, is probably my favourite because of its wonderful sense of time and place. It’s also pitch perfect about journalism, police investigation and life in a small community.”

He Said, She Said by Erin Kelly. An account of a rape trial at which nothing is quite as it seems. Griffiths says: “The story centres around a lunar eclipse, which also works wonderfully as a metaphor and image.”

Dreda Say Mitchell: 

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. The Gone Girl author’s debut follows journalist Camille’s investigation into the abduction and murder of two girls in her Missouri home town.

Dangerous Lady by Martina Cole. Cole’s first novel sees 17-year-old Maura Ryan taking on the men of London’s gangland.

The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid. Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill is asked to profile a serial killer when four men are found mutilated and tortured.

Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. A client tells VI Warshawski he is a prominent banker looking for his son’s missing girlfriend. But VI soon discovers he’s lying, and that the real banker’s son is dead.

The St Cyr series by CS Harris. Mitchell has nominated the whole of this historical mystery series about Sebastian St Cyr, Viscount Devlin – master of disguises, heir to an earldom, and disillusioned army officer. It’s a bit of a cheat but we’ll let her have it.

Erin Kelly:

No Night Is Too Long by Barbara Vine. Tim Cornish thinks he has gotten away with killing his lover in Alaska. But then the letters start to arrive …

Broken Harbour by Tana French. The fourth in French’s sublime Dublin Murder Squad series, this takes place in a ghost estate outside Dublin, where a father and his two children have been found dead, with the mother on her way to intensive care.

Chosen by Lesley Glaister. When Dodie’s mother hangs herself, she has to leave her baby at home and go to bring her brother Jake back from the mysterious Soul Life Centre in New York.

A Savage Hunger by Claire McGowan. Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire investigates the disappearance of a girl, and a holy relic, from a remote religious shrine in the fictional Irish town of Ballyterrin.

The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald. Parents Joanna and Alistair start to turn against each other after their baby goes missing from a remote roadside in Australia.

Sarah Hilary:

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin. A sleep-deprived young mother tries to stay sane while her fears grow about the family’s new lodger, in this 1950s lost classic.

Cruel Acts by Jane Casey. Leo Stone, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of two women, is now free and claims he is innocent. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwen want to put him back in jail, but Maeve begins doubting his guilt – until another woman disappears.

Sex Crimes by Jenefer Shute. A lawyer’s New Year’s Eve pick-up spirals into an erotic obsession which leads to graphic cruelty.

Skin Deep by Liz Nugent. Nugent, whom Ian Rankin has compared to Patricia Highsmith, tells the story of a woman who has been passing herself off as an English socialite on the Riviera for 25 years – until the arrival of someone who knows her from her former life prompts an act of violence.

Cuckoo by Julia Crouch. Rose’s home and family start to fall apart when her best friend Polly comes to stay.

Louise Candlish:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Christie’s classic – with a legendary twist. The best Hercule Poirot?

The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith. A conman on the run with his wife meets a young American who becomes drawn into the crime they commit.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. The author of The Handmaid’s Tale imagines the life of the real 19th-century Canadian killer Grace Marks.

Little Face by Sophie Hannah. Hannah’s thriller debut is about a young mother who becomes convinced that, after spending two hours away from her baby, the infant is not hers.

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane. Newspaper subeditor Frances is drawn into the lives of the Kyte family when she hears the last words of the victim of a car crash, Alys Kyte.

[purecamp]

Now I Just Made It; I Found You At Last

not submitting this to AQ bc it’s not like.... relevant but anyway have this

Justin stared blankly at the screen in front of him, willing the little clock on the right hand corner to tick by just a little faster. The week had been long, gruelling - a new project was in the planning stages and as the most qualified architect for the job, Justin was under pressure to deliver above and beyond his usual high standard. Of course, it was enjoyable work, and it paid well, but he was finding himself feeling… well, stagnant. He needed a change of scenery, a breath of fresh air.

New York wasn’t a source of fresh air, per se. It was the world of business, the world he had thrown himself into with reckless abandon and found himself all the better for it. At the age of thirty eight, he found himself in a spacious apartment, not quite a penthouse but near enough, and enough spare expenses to dote on himself any luxuries he desired.

It was a busy, bustling, comfortable life. Affordable luxuries, a good job, a nice home.

Admittedly it wasn’t the life Justin had expected to find himself in. He had been sure, when he was young, that at this point in his life he would be married, perhaps with a few children. Luxuries meant little to him - he preferred simplicity and experiences over the expensive pressed suits and cufflinks that mattered so much to the people around him. In a way, he felt like a marionette playing a part made for someone else. He had tailored his life this way, and was finally starting to feel like he had outgrown the role.

A change was needed, but the clock wasn’t ticking fast enough.

“Mr Honard? Sir? Your coffee.”

The timid intern nudged the door open with her foot, smiling shyly as she placed the cup onto the desk. A few moments passed, and she didn’t leave.

“Miss Michaels, is there something I can do for you?” Justin asked her, as politely as he could manage. The girl couldn’t have been any older than eighteen, and he still remembered the days of feeling like a useless asset to a company much bigger than him. Nowadays he was the big fish, but still held as much respect as possible for the new small fry.

“Is it true that this next deal could be multi-million dollars? The girls were talking and I…” She paused. “I’d love to be that good some day.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Miss Michaels. It is true, yes. I guess this weekend won’t be a weekend for me, so I can try and get all this planning done in time for the meeting on Monday.” Justin sighed, steeling himself for the remaining five minutes of his day. “Still, work is work.”

Miss Michaels - Kameron, Justin believed her name was - excused herself, leaving him to shut down his laptop and sink into the leather chair, his eyes closing against his will. A multi-million dollar deal lay in front of him, and would only take a weekend of precise work to consolidate. Why, then, did he feel so stale? Where was the passion? Why did he feel like he was just running in circles, getting nowhere?

His yellow cab was already waiting after his swift exit from the office, still unsure as to whether he wanted to take up the generous offer that resided in his emails, waiting to be picked up. He would be a fool not to do it, and he knew it well. But that didn’t stop the nagging feeling that something in his life needed replacing, or uprooting. He was stuck.

It was, unsurprisingly enough, a slight deviation from his usual habits that led to the chain events that would end that stagnant, stuck-in-the-mud emptiness from Justin’s life once and for all.

His first action upon hearing the telltale ‘ding!’ of the lift to his apartment was to check his mailbox. Normally, he’d wait and open everything on Monday; nothing of any urgency arrived through the mail, and it was usually work-related documents that he would prefer to handle at work, or useless promotions and menus from establishments he would never eat from.

But the day had left him feeling sullen and somewhat bored, and he subconsciously begged for something that would let him escape for a while. Maybe a brochure for a slightly discounted holiday would be stuffed within the bank statements and tax filings, and he could use that as an excuse for some sort of holiday. Croatia had been nice, as had Egypt.

He pulled the various envelopes out and unlocked the apartment, throwing himself onto the sofa to sift through them all.

Bank statement, bank statement, last month’s tax returns, a notice from the last build, an automated thank you letter from two months ago… and a blue envelope.

Hmm. A small stamp decorated the corner of the envelope, depicting a classically beautiful Aphrodite, rising in her nude glory from the depths of the ocean. In the middle, in black ink, unfamiliar handwriting had scrawled Justin Honard.

Curious but not yet hopeful enough to pin any excitement onto the contents of the envelope, he pulled out the paper inside. It was neatly folded in half, concealing the contents, although judging by its size, it seemed unlikely that it was a letter. Perhaps an invitation to a party of some kind, or a charity gala.

It is with sheer delight that this happy couple announces their engagement!

A date was printed underneath, and the name of a hotel that Justin didn’t recognise. Glancing up, he didn’t recognise the names of the bride or groom either - only first names were provided, under the assumption that whoever was receiving the invitation clearly knew the couple well enough to be certain of whose wedding they were going to be attending.

Briefly, he wondered if the invitation had come to him by mistake. Yet clear as day, his name was written on the envelope, and…

Justin’s heart skipped a beat. Beneath the unfamiliar hotel, a much more familiar location was listed, somewhere he knew he would never be able to return to in good conscience.

The island.

He held his breath. There was no way he could return, not a chance in Hell. God, he hadn’t thought about her in so long…

Well, that was a lie. She crossed his mind at the most inane of times, not always, but often enough that her presence remained always in the back of his mind, reminding him of the things he’d done. Her laughter still echoed in his ears, her tears still haunted his dreams. But he hadn’t properly relived that one awful, fateful day in decades. How could he go back there - her home - knowing how much he had hurt her?

Then his eyes darted down to the very bottom of the invitation, and he stopped breathing altogether.

Please come. -Sharon

She… She…

It made no sense.

Sharon hated him. She had made that clear.

It had been twenty years…

But no. He knew that girl - that woman. Their love affair may have been brief, but Justin knew more about her than he knew about the world around him, the career he had chosen, the life he had perfected. He knew that she smelt like vanilla and sea-salt and makeup. He knew that she liked short skirts and tight pleather and simple cotton sheets against her skin. He knew that her heart and soul were comprised of hellish fire, and for better or for worse, she felt every emotion that struck her with the intensity of a thousand lovers.

Sharon wasn’t a fool, he knew that. She would never carelessly forgive him for ruining her.

It made no sense. This was some cruel joke, a trick played by a god to punish him for daring to try and break free from his own life’s restraints. And yet… why had he sprung to his feet? Why were the rest of letters discarded on the floor, with only this invitation clutched between his trembling fingers? Why was he already heading towards the bedroom to pack his things?

Damn it all. Sharon hadn’t been part of his life for two long decades and yet she was still able to undo him at his very core and unravel everything he had built without her. What did any of it mean, anyway? His illustrious career and expensive apartment in a city he didn’t truly love - why did any of that matter? He had been searching desperately for any kind of whim that would allow him to escape once and for all.

Love him or hate him, Sharon’s name was signed at the bottom of the invite, and it took Justin mere minutes to fill his suitcase with clothing. Simple clothing - the kind one would wear to fall in love on a magical Greek island, rather than seal business deals in the industrial side of New York City. Anything else could be found on the way. Time, all of a sudden, seemed to be of the essence. Twenty years melted into nothing.

He dashed out of the door in disarray, his suitcase packed, his top-three shirt buttons undone and his hair mussed from raking his hands through it. A last-minute flight was booked to Athens and Justin knew that from array of taxicabs he could see from his window that making his way to the airport would be no trouble at all.

And somehow, just like that, Sharon Needles turned his whole life upside down once again, a whole twenty years after she’d done it the first time.

-

“Are you fucking kidding! Is this a joke? Is this some cosmic fucking joke?”

The man a few feet away from Justin uttered his inner sentiments perfectly as he gazed after the small red dot on the horizon.

“Hello? Fucking ferry? Come back!”

He sighed. “I need to get to that fucking island. This is fucked.”

Justin nodded in agreement. “Yeah. And the next ferry-”

“Tuesday. Bad tide or some shit like that. I can’t wait that long!” The other man complained. “I have a wedding!”

Justin’s ears pricked. “Trixie and Brian?”

“You know them?”

“No.” Justin answered truthfully. “I have an invite… I know someone on the island.”

That was as much detail as he felt comfortable providing to this total stranger. After all, how would he even begin to explain his predicament? Hi, stranger. I emailed the multi-million dollar deal company with a short email explaining that I am unavailable, turned down the biggest job of my career for a chance that I might see a girl whose heart I broke twenty years ago, and ten hours later I’m stood on a dock at the edge of mainland Greece next to you, having missed the only ferry that will take me to her, and somehow a wedding is involved in this entire convoluted mess of a story.

The other man shrugged. “Same. I’m Willam.”

“Justin.”

Willam’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if he recognised the name, but he shrugged a second time and held out his hand to shake it. Two heads were better than one, and somehow they needed to find a way across a large expanse of ocean to one of the most remote islands he had ever been to.

God, he’d missed that little pocket of paradise.

“Okay, maybe we can…” Willam trailed off. “Nope, I got nothing. Like, I have a boat, but it’s on the island and that’s not fucking useful right now. I need it here.”

“A boat? I have a boat!” A third voice chimed in. The owner of said voice smiled rakishly, gesturing to what looked like a barely seaworthy vessel bobbing in the waves a few feet away from them. Both Justin and Willam grimaced at it. “Uh-”

“Kidding!” He grinned, and pointed to a much larger boat, named The Carey. “She’s served me well, this one has. Anyway, you two gentlemen look like you need a ride and I’m nothing if not a generous Samaritan.”

Call him superstitious, it felt like a sign. The man introduced himself as Jaremi, and soon enough they were loading their things onto his boat, preparing to sail across to the island he’d missed so much. It had to be fate, for everything to align so perfectly. Someone up there was making sure, one way or another, that he would make it to this island. He was sure, tucked in his pocket, the little Aphrodite stamp was winking at him. This was her doing.

“So you’re Jaremi Carey? That guy who writes about weird places?” Willam interrogated him, the wind whipping his blonde hair into his face. Justin had taken a liking to Willam in the hour that he’d known him, and was warming to Jaremi too. He spoke little as the other two chatted away, keeping his eyes fixed on the horizon for any evidence that the island he had been dreaming of hadn’t been purely fictitious.

It seemed like one of those serendipitous moments in life where a common purpose united three total strangers. Jaremi, too, had an invitation to the wedding, and was equally as cagey about his association with the bride or groom. A more rational Justin would think on it, trying to conjure reasons for such a strange link between them, but he couldn’t.

Not once had he been able to think clearly when Sharon was around. She was all-consuming, her love encompassing him in ways he never knew love could. She had been self-professed innocent when he met her, but it was truly him who had been naive to what love could do to a man. In a matter of weeks he was completely changed, enthralled with this laughing goddess and her deep blue eyes. Her picture was as fresh in his mind as it had been twenty years ago.

Perhaps stupidly, he had dug out those photos of her and packed them into his suitcase, just to remind himself, selfishly, that she had loved him once. He didn’t deserve an ounce of her heart, not anymore, but it was a comfort to him knowing that, for a short time, she had loved him with everything she had. She didn’t need to know that his love for her had never died down, anyway. Justin was sure she was now perfectly happy with the man of her dreams.

But maybe…?

No. Justin stopped the fluttering hope in his chest as soon as it blossomed. She had asked him to come to the wedding, but that didn’t mean she had spent twenty years pining for his return. He was being ridiculous; a woman like Sharon would never allow herself to sink so low. She was strong, smart, resilient - and somebody as intoxicating as her would definitely have been treated right by now.

Whatever the situation, Justin told himself he didn’t care. He would get to see her again, and that was reward enough.

-

Oh my god, it was Sharon.

It wasn’t Sharon, but it might well have been. She was every bit Sharon, from head-to-toe she was his ex-lover, radiant and beautiful at no more than twenty years old. Standing before them, she regarded them with sparkling eyes and a nervous smile.

“Perhaps this young lady will be able to help us… Hello there! We three strangers have been invited to a wedding by Sharon, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about what’s going on, would you? I’m Jaremi.” He offered his hand for the young girl to shake, which she accepted.

When she spoke, her voice was breathless and yet - still so similar to hers. Sweeter, and higher, Justin noted. Sharon’s had more of a rasp to it, a husk that he had never been able to forget. Twenty years on, and the exact tone of her voice hadn’t escaped the depths of his memory.

“Yes, yes… Yes, we’re expecting you. You two must be Justin and Willam.”

Willam nodded and introduced himself, letting Justin go last. As each of them spoke, the young girl eyed them with a peculiar look. It seemed innocent and curious enough, but it was almost as if she was searching for something. After a few moments, she seemed to shake out of her trance and tucked a lock of her hair - golden blonde, like Sharon’s - behind her ear.

“Come with me, we have rooms for you. Well… one room. We’re a little tied up for space at the moment, with this wedding that’s happening.”

She led them, but she needn’t have bothered. Justin still remembered every step of the way, every winding path that would eventually lead to the taverna, every secret cave and cove perfect for a romantic evening or - as he tried not to dwell on for too long - a passionate embrace. It was only when they reached what used to be a rocky hill and an old wooden shack that things were new to him. The aforementioned hotel stood before them, shining white in the Greek sunshine.

She did it, Justin thought to himself, knowing he had no right to be proud and yet filled with pride all the same. She achieved her dream.

“We’ll, uh, have to go round the back of everything.” The girl told them, smiling sweetly as she took them into the lower courtyard. Her eyes seemed to be darting back and forth. “Everything’s a little hectic, so it’s easier that way.”

“Seems fair. Is Sharon around?” Justin spoke up.

God. Even saying her name was like a breath of fresh air away from his old life. It was as if at once, the stress and mundanity of his regular life dissipated. Her name on his lips had more power than he knew what to do with.

“Not at the moment, but I’m sure she will be.” She replied after a moment’s hesitation, steering them through alleys and shortcuts and clambering over boxes of hay and bottles and fresh produce. It seemed like a strange way to get to a hotel room, granted, but the three had decided unanimously not to argue with the girl. Clearly, she knew the hotel better than they did.

Maybe five or so minutes later, they arrived. All three began to settle their bags onto one of the three beds, as the girl dusted herself off to look a little more presentable for their official introduction. It had been a little bit of an arduous journey, given the morning heat, and she looked a little flustered as she smiled apologetically at them.

“Sorry if this seemed a little rushed… I’m Trixie.”

Ah. So this was the girl from the invite.

“You’re the girl getting married?”

Trixie’s face split into a beam, and she lifted her hand to reveal the silver ring on her finger. Justin’s vision tunnelled - that smile was one he had never been able to forget, practically pasted onto someone else’s face. He had known from the moment he saw her, but that smile seemed to confirm everything for him. Unknown feelings - not pleasant, but not unpleasant - bubbled in his stomach. She was talking, but Justin couldn’t understand a word of it. She… She…

“You’re Sharon’s daughter.”

Sharon had a daughter. Sharon, the love of his life, immortalised in his memory at the tender age of seventeen, had a daughter. This was undoubtedly her, stood before him. Proof that Sharon had managed to move on with her life after they had fallen apart. She had something truly marvellous to show for it.

Seemingly caught unawares, Trixie just nodded helplessly.

“I knew you looked familiar.” Justin found himself unable to stop, his mind now flooded with thoughts of her. “God, I bet she hasn’t aged a day.”

Seeing Trixie was jarring. He knew Sharon would be different now, especially given how much he had changed in their years apart, but meeting her daughter who was nothing if not the exact image of Sharon in her youth had fucked with his head. He somehow knew that Sharon would be even more beautiful than she had been before, a feat he had long thought impossible.

“I know she’s busy, but can I see her? I want to thank her for this invite-”

“No!” Trixie rushed out, her expression filling with fear. It was yet another look that Justin knew all too well; he had seen it on her mom, way back when her biggest worry was her own mother’s wrath. “I… shit. Mom didn’t send the invitations to you, I did. She doesn’t know you’re here.”

And just like that, Justin’s euphoria shattered.

“Listen.” She whispered, drawing closer. “She’s been so stressed constantly about my wedding, so I felt bad and invited you guys to cheer her up. She talks about her friends from the past all the time, I thought she’d like it.”

Friends. Friends didn’t even begin to cover what they had. Nor indeed what they had left behind. Justin was definitely something of an enemy, the way he’d broken her heart. He shouldn’t have come at all.

Trixie took a deep breath and continued. “Just… if she sees you, don’t tell her you’re here for my wedding. Make something up, a happy coincidence that you’re here. Please. She’ll freak out at having unexpected guests, I just know it, but once she gets past the stress she’ll be so happy.”

Justin sighed heavily. “I shouldn’t be here, I should go. Trixie, your mom hates me.”

Hate, too, felt like a massive understatement. He had been told in no uncertain terms exactly what she thought of his scumbag, lying self, and he had deserved every second of it. The pain it caused him bore no weight against everything that he had done to her, and he wondered if Trixie actually knew the truth about him. Surely, she wouldn’t be so kind if she knew how he had treated her mom.

“Maybe she did, twenty years ago.” Trixie countered, with that obstinate look he knew so well. “No one can hold a grudge, or any kind of feeling, for that long. You can’t just go! I want you at my wedding, all of you!”

Willam and Jaremi, slowly, began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Though his heart felt heavy, Justin cracked a smile as Trixie’s intent dawned on him. Whatever she was planning remained a mystery, but it was clear she had gleaned her persuasive skills from her mom.

Jaremi took his hat off and grinned. “You’re a firecracker, like your mom. He’ll stay, won’t you Justin?”

He sighed. “I suppose I have to. Seems like your mom’s taught you all her old tricks. There’s no way of getting out of this, is there?”

Trixie beamed, clearly relieved. “Nope! Remember what I said - lie, lie, and lie again. She can’t know I invited you, or that you’re here for the wedding. She’ll go insane.”

She paused. “And, uh, trust me when I say insane. She’s a little crazy right now, handling all this on her own.”

God, what a fucking superstar. She’s achieved so many great things.

“I need to get going…” Trixie murmured, her expression regretful. “Thank you so much for accepting those invites.”

Justin snorted, but there was no malice in it. It felt more like resignation - one way or another, he was going to have to stay here, all because Sharon’s daughter had convinced him. “It was always impossible to say no to your mother. Twenty years, and nothing’s changed.”

[unsealedpaints]

Endgame: The Tale of Two Steves

(Un)Popular opinion: Steve's ending is garbage trying to hide itself behind a candy coating of nostalgia. The mess that we got was a poorly-planned, cop-out ending arising from a combination of misplaced good intentions and multiple, non-story serving outside factors. *coughcontractscough* 

tldr: one major issue I have with Steve’s ending is that there’s a disconnect between the story that I thought they may have wanted/were planning to tell and the story they ultimately told.

I had some time to digest the movie and why I absolutely hated the ending we got for Steve.

Full disclosure: MCU!Steve Rogers is my favorite. 

I loved his through line. From the second he stood in the center of Times Square and realized he missed Peggy by an entire lifetime to his utter devastation as one of her pallbearers, I wanted so bad for him to find his peace. I loved that he was an imperfect man living in an imperfect world, just trying to do his best. I wanted him to find himself in this strange and crazy new world he’d been forced into. I wanted to see that he was going to be okay in the end.

Steve Rogers was a man out of time. He was a man who loved and lost. He found it hard fitting in to the present. Of course it was. It wouldn’t have been believable if he just slipped right into the new century without so much as a hiccup. Who wouldn’t find it hard to fit in? He slept for 70 years. He might as well have been on an alien planet for all that has changed.

But that was just the set up. The first act.

Yes, Steve’s biggest regrets were in what could’ve been, but that’s not something unique to him. We all have things we wish we could change, but as Peggy herself said, “None of us can go back.”

Steve Rogers is also a man who could adapt. He can change with the times. He didn’t fit in initially, but who is to say he never had the potential to find a place for himself eventually? He wasn’t shutting himself off from the world. He was trying. He caught up on books, watched movies and listened to the evolution of music. He was exploring his new world. He slloowwwly met new people - his heartfelt friendship with Natasha, his quick camaraderie with Sam, his going to comfort Wanda when she was doubting herself. He wasn’t close to being okay yet, but it was a start. 

Through each successive movie, they were slowly setting him up for the possibility of moving on. The complete fuck up of Sharon’s character arc aside, they were trying to move him towards the path of finding his place in the future. He said himself, “I don't know, family, stability. The guy who wanted all that went in the ice seventy-five years ago. I think someone else came out.”  And even in the inevitable scenario that he wasn’t ultimately going to be just a soldier, they were exploring his place in the world - the one he was already in. 

Headed into Endgame, I honestly thought the worst possible scenario was his death. What I got was a different kind of disappointment. 

I thought he wasn’t going to make it by the end. I walked into the theater ready for Steve Rogers to die a martyr and never get the quiet epilogue he so deserved. I was prepared to weep. I braced myself for it. I was so ready to say goodbye that when the second dusting cleared, I first felt a little hollow. He’s alive. And as the seconds ticked by and he still wasn’t dead, I felt a little hope creep in. HE’S ALIVE. The possibilities are endless. He’s got his whole life ahead of him so he still has a chance to be happy in this world. 

But then, he didn’t move on. He did the opposite of what Peggy asked him to do and he looked back on what he couldn’t have and he was not able to let it go. He couldn’t do what Peggy could. He didn’t think the things and people he actually does have was worth as much as the person he never got to have. He didn’t bother trying to find himself in his actual time line. He fucked off to play house with Peggy’s identical twin sister (who I staunchly believe is not HIS Peggy, because his real Peggy married another man, had kids and found her own happiness and has already died).

I left the theater feeling nothing. Because otherwise, the only other emotion I had was anger, but at first, I didn’t quite understand why I felt that way. It had nothing to do with shipping, because Steve has always been my fandom bicycle. I had my preferences, but I didn’t care who he ended up with as long as it made sense to the story and he was happy. I loved Peggy. I should be glad he got the happy ending he always wanted.  There are so many people who say that it’s the PERFECT ending for him, that he deserves the life of happiness with Peggy so we should just be happy for him.  

But I wasn’t. 

I eventually figured out why I couldn’t be happy for him the way everyone else seemed to be: I never got a real conflict resolution. I was following a different story.

Regardless of the original plans for Steve’s through line, his story had to end. They were obligated by contract to do so. They couldn’t do a story about him moving on because they didn’t have the time, not unless they recast Steve Rogers, but that was not going to happen lest they wanted riots in the streets. So they had to do something to end it. What was the next best thing? Certainly not a heroic death. Tony took that. Certainly not a huge self sacrifice. Natasha was tossed into that role. No, they can’t be all doom and gloom, lest they be accused of being DC dark. Somebody needed that fairy tale happy ending. So that left Steve. 

But the thing is, for me, getting what you “deserve” was never the point of Steve Roger’s story. For me, I had been following what was actually a pretty solid through line of needing to find the strength in yourself to move beyond the tragedies of your life and building your way in a future that you can grow into and be happy. 

But that’s not the story that was told in Endgame.

They were so busy cramming him into the fairy tale they were obligated to tell that they forgot the story they had been telling in the first place. They were so busy drawing rainbows and sunshine that they forgot to consider what it all would mean for the story they were already building. 

Whether intentional or not, Steve’s story ends with the implication that your ultimate happiness will never be found in the potential of the future you actually have, but that your ultimate happiness can only be in a fantasy world where you got that one prize you thought you deserved but missed out on. What happiness could Steve find that was outside of the Peggy he’s already lost and will never get back? The answer: nothing that was worth even trying to find.  

As an aside, again, whether intentional or not, I really didn’t like the subtle implication that the very real family you have now - the adopted brothers, sisters and children you collected through the blood, sweat and tears of experience over the course of your life - are somehow worth less than the pipe dream of a pretty little house you’ve never lived in surrounded by a white picket fence with a woman you’ve known for less time than your actual family and 2 and a half unnamed, faceless children whom you’ve never met. But that’s another dissertation entirely.

You can argue that this is just a comic book story and we’re getting reading too much into it and who cares? It’s not important. You can argue that there’s nothing wrong with a fantasy, people should be able to have their greatest happy ending. That’s all fine and dandy, but that’s not the point I’m making. 

Generally speaking, paying off the conflict is necessary in a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end. The conflict I wanted resolved was around dealing with personal tragedies and the struggles of moving past them, but that never actually got addressed. The “resolution” to the real pain of losing important parts of yourself was to not deal with it at all. It was a flaccid: sike, it’s all fine because *hand-wavy magical time travel*. It rings hollow because it was a cop out. Steve didn’t have to grow. He didn’t have to be stronger like his actual Peggy was. He was a good person and he deserved happiness, no one will deny that, but he didn’t actually have to deal with the loss of his actual Peggy for too long because he was given a new, younger, hotter Peggy as the trophy for all his hard work.

And don't get me wrong, if people are satisfied with a simple "and he got the toy he always wanted and he lived happily ever after", then it’s fine. No one has to think about a story beyond what they want to take out of it. There’s room in this world for fantastical, consequence-free happy endings. Nobody is obligated to interpret a story in any way other than their own.

But that’s why I’m personally not satisfied. I wasn’t following a fairy tale. 

I was following a story of a man who lost everything, a man who was broken by his loss, but a man who was also strong enough to maybe, eventually, find his own happiness in the wake of it all. What I got was the first half of the set up that was abruptly cut off by the complete 180 change to some fairy tale with a tacked on ending about getting what you think you deserved.

At the end of the day, I’m not owed anything but the story I got. It wasn’t my story to tell. I know that. No author or story teller is obligated to change his or her story because an audience member wanted a different ending. Unless they’re getting paid for a job, no storyteller is obligated to even finish a story at all. I don’t want a do-over. What’s done is done. 

I can only take the story we got for what it is, mourn for the story we never got, let go of it, and move on.

[doof-doofblog]

"He's My Brother?!"

Tuesday 16th March 2021

Part One

Hello again everyone, hope you're all doing well! I wanted to share some personal news with you, I received my first Covid-19 vaccine yesterday, we're slowly on the path on getting things back to some form of normality! Who knows, maybe soon EastEnders might be able to go back to its original 30 minutes, even though I'm enjoying it and don't care how long the episodes are, it'll just feel normal, right? Anyway, I've seen a few spoilers regarding these two episodes, I'm really intrigued to write about these episodes. Tuesday aired two episodes of EastEnders so I'll be doing two posts to review each one.

Monday's episode ended on such a cliff-hanger, it's only right that I start this blog with mentioning Lucas and Chelsea first. The episode opened right there Monday left off, Chelsea and Lucas are at the airport preparing to go to Ibiza with suitcases full of drugs. Chelsea's suitcase is currently being checked, she's stood in absolute panic about what the security guard is going to find. Only when he reveals a bottle being over the correct amount she's allowed to take, I got really confused! I was completely and utterly convinced that Lucas had given Chelsea the drugs as a way of teaching her a lesson, and not in a bad way but in a cruel-to-be-kind kind of way. But as soon as Lucas begins to walk through with his suitcase, Chelsea hears commotion from behind and Lucas is surrounded by armed guards. The interesting thing is, Lucas doesn't hesitate, calmly and willingly, he drops the suitcase, opens it up to reveal the amount of drugs stored inside it, Chelsea watches on in dismay as her Father basically gives up on the whole job. Lucas looked over at his daughter, but the look on his face, I couldn't quite tell what he was doing? Was he doing this to save his daughter?

Frantically, Chelsea later arrives home, informing her Mum that Lucas has been arrested and he plain and simply gave up the drugs as if he'd planned it. Denise is visibly shook to hear but she's more relieved to know that Chelsea is safe and no harm has come to her, as far as she's concerned, Lucas can look after himself, whereas Chelsea needs her family around her. However, Chelsea seems to think that Lucas has given up the job on purpose, and now because the job hasn't gone through, Chelsea and the rest of the family could be in danger.

Returning to the airport, Lucas has been taken to side room, there he is begging the officer to allow him one phone call. At first the officer seems to think he's part of a drug gang and is wanting a call to let his comrades know about his arrest, however when Lucas mentions that it's to do with his family and that they could be in danger, it looks as if the police officer suspects he could be telling the truth and allows the phone call. As Denise and Chelsea are at home, Jack is there trying to keep them calm and discuss what actions could be taken due to Lucas's arrest, but of course his main concern is to keep Denise and Chelsea safe, if Caleb finds out the job hasn't been done, he knows that the Fox family could be in huge danger, he instructs them to not go on their phones and don't answer any calls or answer the door to anyone but himself. It's then that he receives a phone call from Lucas, pleading to for his help. What on Earth could Lucas be asking of Jack? Will Lucas be okay? (Of course some of you may have already seen the second episode, but as I haven't, I'm going to be speculating, please no spoilers, thank you!)

--

The next thing I want to mention is Bailey and Bernadette. The sisters are still deeply saddened by Bronson's passing, but as they sit in the park with Mitch, they continue to discuss Bronson's personality and his favourite foods. Always the best way to remember a happy doggo! Unfortunately, as the family reminisce about their beloved pup, Mitch has devastating when he hears a job opportunity had fell through, which he was hoping would keep him going until the winter. Are the Taylor family falling on hard times? Are they really struggling for money so much right now?

Bailey however tries to reassure her Dad, informing him that he has to keep positive as something will come up eventually, but she also drops the bombshell that he wouldn't have to pray for Astronomy Camp for her as she didn't win her competition, both Bernie and Mitch voice their disappointment for Bailey as she begins to feel sorry for herself.  But suddenly a little surprise makes the young girl begin to smile, a little dog approaches her as she holds food in her hand, it appears to not be wearing a collar and no one is around to claim the dog, must be a stray. Happily Bailey interacts with dog and smiles to her Dad that it's a sign from Bronson.

Seeing the little pup bring a smile back onto his daughter's face, he later approaches Karen about the possibility of keeping the new found dog. I also just want to mention how adorable the new dog is, I know not many dog last for long on the Square, but it would be nice for them to fill the void of Bronson. I don't think EastEnders have ever had a better dog since Wellard. They need a pet who's going to become memorable, and with one as adorable as this new pup, it could really work. Karen unfortunately is against the idea of getting a new dog, mainly because they can't afford it. But something tells me that maybe she's just not ready to get over Bronson, maybe? I feel if you've been able to afford a dog before, there's no reason why you can't get another one after? Right?! Mitch really wants to cheer his daughter up, I'm hoping Mitch will go and find the new dog, adopt him and bring him in to their family.

--

The next thing I have to mention is Ash and Suki, after finding her daughter at home alone with Peter, Suki takes it upon herself to confront Ash about the fact that she's been suspended from work, of course she has no idea why, but we all know it's because of Peter begging her to give him pain medication whilst off duty. As the ladies begin to argue, Ash tries to reassure her Mum that everything will be fine when she attends the hearing, she'll be able to explain and she'll get her job back. But Suki begins to fret, considering how much she cares for her family, and more so their reputation, I reckon?

Peter takes it upon himself to interrupt, informing Suki that Ash wouldn't have been suspended if it wasn't for him, this makes Suki realise that it's all Peter's fault, but the devastating blow is that her daughter could potentially lose her job because of a boy! Later on, as things begin to cool off, Suki is alone at the family business as Ash visits her, without Peter in tow. She begs her Mum to not worry and let things slide as she and Peter have a plan of way of getting her job back, but Suki seems to really struggle as the realisation sinks in, she voices that the reason she's so upset is that was she so proud of her daughter for getting so far with her career, for the job role she took on in life, how she has become successful in life, and now she fears that because of Peter, everything could be taken away from her! For me, I found it interesting to see this side of Suki, we know she loves the idea of power and success, but to actually hear that she's proud of one of her children, seems that maybe she really just wants the best for her family.

--

Okay, now the main event! After hearing the news that Gavin has passed away, Kathy and Sharon are discussing whether to attend the memorial. Of course, Sharon isn't interested in sharing memories of her biological Father, needless to say she doesn't have any fond memories of him, Gavin did have a bad reputation after all. Kathy however, considering as she was married to him once - I'm assuming, we know for sure she loved him and/or dated him, is considering going, whether Sharon joins her or not. As far as Sharon is concerned he can "Rot in hell!"

However, after a few wise words from Callum about Dad's in general, regardless whether they were pigs or not, it's always best to be the bigger person, Sharon then decides to tag along with Kathy and attend the memorial. As the arrive Kathy realises that she recognises a few faces, where of course Sharon knows nobody. Sally, Gavin's sister approaches them and thanks Kathy for coming, regardless of the awful things Gavin did, she makes the valid point that she did love him once.

As they look around the room, there is one bloke in particular who seems to be downing a lot more alcohol than others, he seems to be banging to people and knocking into the bar, eventually this man decides to make a speech, but it's not one of the speeches you'd expect. But however, to Sharon's interest, he seems to be saying things which she would actually agree with. Gavin was the scum of all scumbags. This speech however doesn't sit well with other family members and the young man dashes over chairs and tables to escape the angry mob!

As Kathy and Sharon make their exit, they watch as everyone gathers in the parking lot. However Sharon seems to have somehow managed to get her hands on Gavin's urn, without a second thought she simply dumps it into a litter bin, much to Kathy's shock. Looking for the drunken, suspicious man who rudely corrupted the memorial, both Kathy and Sharon seem to notice that their car has been left un-open. Realising that the young man could be hiding in their car, they make a subtle entrance and sit in the front seats. This scene looked like something out of a comedy, the young man appears between them in the backseat, shushing them not to give away his hiding place. Unfortunately, for the young man, the angry mob begin taking their anger out on his sports car - I did find this pretty comical as Kathy and Sharon both describing the damage being made to his car as he hides on the backseat. After the angry mob seem to finish off the last of their damage and head back into the building, Kathy asks the young man his connection with Gavin, how did he know him? Why was he at the memorial? Were they business partners or something?

But then as he walks away, he drops the big bombshell, introducing himself as Zack and that Gavin was in fact his Dad! As he walks away to his damaged car, both Kathy and Sharon look at each other in their shock as they come to realise Sharon has a brother she never knew existed!

Now I just want to say, most of us recall what happened when Sharon found out about another long-lost brother, however, I have to make the valid point that Dennis was in fact an adoptive brother. Den Watts was her adoptive father, so technically Sharon and Dennis were never really blood related, which I guess is why their romance can be looked to one side, however, Zack would be Sharon's Half-Brother! People might think history will be repeating itself if Zack was to become Sharon's new love interest, but I'd hope that EastEnders wouldn't go down the route of incest. It would be interesting though to see how Sharon will come to terms with knowing about her secret brother, will she want to build a relationship with him? Will he want to know her? Could they bond knowing that they've both had such a horrid man for a Father? Who knows?

I'm really looking forward to seeing the second episode following this one, I will be posting about it tomorrow, but in the mean time please no spoilers for me. I'll look forward to blogging about it tomorrow! Thank you again for reading! Love you all xXx  

[aridara]

Verifying a list of “hateful feminist quotes”. (From S to Z + groups and anonymous individuals)

Final part of my rebuttal at all those lists that are supposed to show how feminism is evil, but in practice shows how anti-feminists rely on an extremely inaccurate (and, in some parts, deliberately lying) list.

"Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated."

Margaret Sanger

False.

"The most merciful thing a family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it."

Margaret Sanger, founder of planned parenthood

True, but extremely edited; not hateful. I’ve bolded the parts that anti-feminists didn't bother to include in the list:

"Thus we see that the second and third children have a very good chance to live through the first year. Children arriving later have less and less chance, until the twelfth has hardly any chance at all to live twelve months."

"This does not complete the case, however, for those who care to go farther into the subject will find that many of those who live for a year die before they reach the age of five."

"Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members."

(Yeah, anti-feminists cut out a LOT.)

Also: she was talking about using birth control to deal with unwanted pregnancies. Not about using infanticide to kill already-born children.

“I do want to be able to explain to a 9-year-old boy in terms he will understand why I think it’s OK for girls to wear shirts that revel in their superiority over boys.”

– Treena Shapiro

Unverifiable.

“In general, I support a girl’s right to offend any member of the opposite sex who happens to cross her path. In fact, I’d much rather see a little girl wearing a shirt that mocks boys than one that turns them on.”

– Treena Shapiro

Also unverifiable. In fact, I think it's not even hateful at all: it points out a double standard where there's a lot of men's shirts that mock women, while a lot of women's shirt are designed to look "seductive" to men - and the reverse doesn't happen.

(Small diversion: while I tried to look for this quote's source, I found this ebook. The 2-3 pages I read sound like a book version of these "List of hateful feminist quotes" lists.)

[insert literally any quote from the SCUM Manifesto]

Valerie Solanas

I won't give a different rating to each individual quote, given how these kinds of lists tend to have many, many, so fucking many quotes from Solanas. I'll only give a general rating.

Usually, in these "hateful feminist quotes" lists, all of the Solanas quotes are true and hateful, and come from the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) manifesto she wrote in 1967. However, I’m doubtful that they count as “quote by a famous feminist”, considering that:

SCUM was never founded - it stopped at its manifesto;

Feminists’ opinion of SCUM at the time was divided between “What is wrong with you, Valerie?” and “This is satire in really bad taste”;

Feminists’ opinion of SCUM today is divided between “What is wrong with you, Valerie?” and “Who the hell is Valerie Solanas?”;

Absolutely nobody, feminist or not, condoned Solanas’ attack on Andy Warhol; and

Solanas's attack on Warhol wasn't motivated by her feminist beliefs.

“We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men.”

– Elizabeth Cady Stanton

True, possibly hateful. But I want to point out something: this quote is from 1890. This is what anti-feminists believe modern feminism to be? Really? Haven’t they heard of how feminism isn’t a monolith, how there have been various discussions, schisms and revolutions during feminism's history, how there’s a lot of positions and criticism - oh, right, I forgot, feminism is evil and has always been the same since the dawn of time, duh. (# sarcasm)

“The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men.”

- Sharon Stone; Actress

Almost 100% false. It also seems that Sharon either wasn’t a feminist during those years, or chose to not display her feminist beliefs back then. In either case, Sharon Stone cannot be considered a significantly important feminist by any stretch of the word.

"If the classroom situation is very heteropatriarchal--a large beginning class of 50 to 60 students, say, with few feminist students--I am likely to define my task as largely one of recruitment...of persuading students that women are oppressed,"

Professor Joyce Trebilcot of Washington University, as quoted in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women.

Hm, this is an interesting one.

It’s unverifiable. Yes, AGAIN. No, it doesn’t count that it’s (supposedly) in Christina Sommers’ book “Who Stole Feminism” - she still needs to source the quote. As far as I can tell, Sommers mught've just made that quote up and falsely attributed it to Trebilcot.

Not only that, but the quote  looks like it has been truncated. Considering the level of this list, I’m quite suspicious every time I see some ellypsis.

By the way: Sommers? Really?

“Men are animals. Don’t you think so?”

– Ireen von Wachenfeldt, radical feminist leader in Sweden

True and hateful, apparently (given that she quoted SOOOLAAANAAASS). Here's the link to the Wikipedia page on her - you'll have to run it on Google Translate or similar, though.

On another note: of all the quotes in anti-feminists' lists of "hateful feminist quotes" that are actually hateful quotes, it's noticeable how many of those come from Solanas alone. It’s almost as if anti-feminists focus excessively on her, and use her as the base that forms their opinion of all feminists.

I wondered if the woman married to a pig had read this ... Did that mean that all over the globe, in all innocence, women were marrying beasts? ... Why are so many men really beasts? "

Jeanette Winterson "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit" 1993, pp.71 -76

Fictional. The novel is about a lesbian girl growing up in a Pentecostal community. At one point, various religious people from that same community take the main character and her girlfriend, and subject them to exorcism.

In response to a question concerning China’s policy of compulsory abortion after the first child, Molly Yard responded, “I consider the Chinese government’s policy among the most intelligent in the world”

(Gary Bauer, “Abetting Coercion in China,” The Washington Times, Oct. 10, 1989).

Unverifiable. There is no trace of the quote in the "Washington Times", but I think that I found the original source: the American Life League, an evidently anti-abortion group. You'll forgive me if I treat that source with all the respect it deserves.

...

We aren't done yet, though! Here's some more quotes from organizations or unknown individuals!

"We are taught, encouraged, moulded by and lulled into accepting a range of false notions about the family. As a source of some of our most profound experiences, it continues to be such an integral part of our emotional lives that it appears beyond criticism. Yet hiding from the truth of family life leaves women and children vulnerable."

Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women.

Unverifiable and not hateful. It sounds like they’re talking about how a lot of assumptions and myths about “proper” families have lead women to believe that abuse is a “normal” part of a relationship.

MALE: represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants...the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.

MAN: an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched...a contradictory baby-man...

TESTOSTERONE POISONING: ... ‘Until now it has been though that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning."

From 'A Feminist Dictionary; ed. Kramarae & Triechler, Pandora Press, 1985

Unverifiable. The book DOES exist. What does NOT exist, is scans of it. Nor are there extensive citations of it - the only ones around are the same ones anti-feminists uses, same ellipsis and all. And, frankly, whoever first wrote this list has done such a sloppy job fact-checking this list that, by this point, I don’t trust them if they said that the sky is blue.

"Women have their faults- men have only two: everything they say and everything they do."

Popular Feminist Graffiti

Goddammit. Yet ANOTHER joke from a collection of jokes. No indication whatsoever this was from a feminist.

"Men, as a group, tend to be abusive, either verbally, sexually or emotionally. There are always the exceptions, but they are few and far between (I am married to one of them). There are different levels of violence and abuse and individual men buy into this system by varying degrees. But the male power structure always remains intact."

Message on FEMISA, responding to a request for arguments that men are unnecessary for a child to grow into mature adulthood.

Oh, now you’re just grasping at straws - misattributed. This quote is not from the FEMISA staff; it's from an e-mail sent to FEMISA. Come on - I thought this was a list of hateful quotes from *relevant* feminists - not from any random anon down the street!

"Clearly you are not yet a free-thinking feminist but rather one of those women who bounce off the male-dominated, male-controlled social structures. Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck - and if you get in my way I'll run you down."

Letter to the editor, signed: "Liberated Women", Boronia Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia - 9 February 1996

Unverifiable. Once again, the only places where this quote pops up are lists of “hateful feminist quotes”. And judging by the quality of this list, that isn’t nearly enough.

“The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist”

(National NOW Times, January, 1988).

Unverifiable (supposedly written in 1988). There’s a lot of citations for this particular quote (many from copies of this list), but no image of the original.

“We identify the agents of our oppression as men…….ALL MEN HAVE OPPRESSED WOMEN…..We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men……The most slanderous evasion of all is that women can oppress men.”

–The Redstockings Manifesto

True, but out of context. Once again, anti-feminists have deliberately cut out various parts of the original manifesto. Here's the full quote (the bolded parts are the ones anti-feminists cut out):

"III    We identify the agents of our oppression as men.  Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination.  All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest.  All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-oriented.  Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions and backed up this control with physical force.  They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position.  All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women."

"IV    Attempts have been made to shift the burden of responsibility from men to institutions or to women themselves.  We condemn these arguments as evasions.  Institutions alone do not oppress; they are merely tools of the oppressor.  To blame institutions implies that men and women are equally victimized, obscures the fact that men benefit from the subordination of women, and gives men the excuse that they are forced to be oppressors.  On the contrary, any man is free to renounce his superior position, provided that he is willing to be treated like a woman by other men."

"We also reject the idea that women consent to or are to blame for their own oppression. Women's submission is not the result of brain-washing, stupidity or mental illness but of continual, daily pressure from men.  We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men."

"The most slanderous evasion of all is that women can oppress men.  The basis for this illusion is the isolation of individual relationships from their political context and the tendency of men to see any legitimate challenge to their privileges as persecution."

So, to sum it up:

Systemic sexism is caused by men.

All men benefit from this oppressive system.

Various people have tried to shift the blame for systemic sexism on "the institutions", which wrongly implies that both men and women are equally affected by sexism, and that men have no choice but to act as oppressors.

Various people have also tried to shift the blame on women, falsely claiming that sexism exists because women deliberately "consent" to be subjected to sexism.

Various people fail to see sexism as a systemic problem; instead, they wrongly paint it as a collection of individual acts that have no relation with each other.

When an oppressive system is challenged, the privileged group does not see that as "the dismantling of an unjust system"; instead, it sees that as "unjust persecution, and an attempt to upturn equality".

This is pretty accurate, and isn't hateful.

“We regard our personal experience, and our FEELINGS about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation. We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are all the products of male supremicist culture.”

– The Redstockings Manifesto

True, but not hateful. Oh, no, feminists dare to talk about all their personal experiences about sexism and how they feel about it; and they also dare to reject existing sexist explanations of why sexist gender roles are just "natural". How dare they.

Also, why is "feelings" in all-caps like that? Is this the usual jab that women are emotional and therefore "inferior" to the logical men? Because that jab is shit.

FMS stands for: Full of Mostly (Bull) shit; For More Sadism; Felons, Murdereres, Ssumballs; Frequent Molesters Society

From a February 1995 handout at the "Stone Angels" satanic ritual abuse conference in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The conference was supported financially by the Ontario Government

Unverifiable. And frankly too ridiculous to be true.

"All men are good for is fucking, and running over with a truck".

Statement made by A University of Maine Feminist Administrator, quoted by Richard Dinsmore, who brought a successful civil suit against the University in the amount of a $600,000.1995 settlement Richard had protested the quote; was dismissed thereafter on the grounds of harassment; and responded by bringing suit against the University..

Unverifiable. It IS true that Dinsmore sued the university due to, in his own words, “man-hating feminists”; HOWEVER, there’s no mention of the quote itself.

"Masculine sexuality involves the oppression of women, competition among men, and fear of homosexuality." "Rape is the end logic of masculine sexuality." "Male sexuality is negative."

Introductory texts for Women's Studies Courses at UCLA including: "More Power than We Want: Masculine Sexuality and Violence" by

Bruce Kokopeli and George Lakey [Cited in TNV]

Unverifiable.

And that’s it. The VAST MAJORITY of quotes are either not-hateful once we actually see the context (and paste back all the parts that anti-feminists censored behind ellypsis); or, their origin cannot be verified (and therefore we can’t be sure whether they actually came from feminists). Some quotes came from works of fiction and were spoken by fictional characters; they aren’t statements that the author personally made and supported. Of the remaining quotes that are both verified and hateful, a GIANT chunk of them is comprised entirely of Valerie Solanas - which isn’t held in much regard by modern feminists. In fact, I’m pretty sure many don’t even know about her.

[milquetoast-on-acid]

Sanctuary City pt.5, A Reactionary Post

Of Faith and Family

Major Crimes, S6xE5: Episode Review This was another episode that the more I watched the more I liked. The wedding was way to short and that frustrated a lot of us. Myself included. On the positive side it was absolutely beautiful and hands down the most emotional wedding we've ever gotten. Apologies that this is so late, life and the holidays. 

What this episode is about: Five Character Moments in Five Minutes Mending Fences FBI  (Sharon, Provenza & The Squad) The Church (Sharon & Father Stan) Moments from the Raydor/Flynn/Beck Family The Past and Present Self Sarah: Mateo, Lucas vrs Dr. Alan Redmond Sharon:  Andy, Rusty vrs Emily, Ricky (with Father Stan somewhere in the middle) Sharon & Andy's Wedding

Five Character Moments in Five Minutes

Once again we get some awesome character moments that really showcase our amazing ensemble!

Andrea had just come back from Sharon's 80′s themed Bachelorette party.

Rusty talks up some lawyer shit and Sharon looks like a proud mama.

Julio is very sensitive AF (and yeah I'm slow because I JUST realized the reason why) and expresses his displeasure about calling Mateo's death a murder/suicide. If you can recall he was this touchy right after his brother was killed. Sadly with everything that's been happening in this arc I forgot that Julio's mother died. Love seeing the squad parents rally around him. Both Sharon and Provenza warn him that he's getting testy and he needs to cool it. Andy gives him a pat on his shoulder. 

Buzz's mind starts working like Sharon's and suggest some sneaky ass bullshit to get around questioning the boys without lawyers. And Sharon looks like a proud mama. 

And Sharon talks about how small Jack was and is so happy that she's marrying Andy.

Ryan & Father Mother Lover "I want you to tell me exactly what you told Miguel. Word for Word." When this was first on, those words really struck at me. Because Andy said almost the exact same thing to Sharon in part4. Which really told me that shady Father Motherlover didn't kill Lucas or Mateo.

Questions that need answers: Here is where I am confused. I don't recall the boys ever describing what their attacker looked like. Either Dr Redmond hired someone to kidnap them or he was wearing a mask. Or the boys knew it was him all along and didn't want to tell the police/fbi what he looked like for whatever reason. 

Couldn't the LAPD charge Father Mother Lover with crossing the boarder using someone else's identity? He used his brother's passport and admits to it on camera in an interview room. I feel like they should have charged him with that. But didn't because he was part of the church.

Why does Camilla have only one facial expression? She always looks like she's eating a sour lemon. Hey, I'm going to call her Sour Patch Kid from now.  

The News Reels I've got some mixed feelings on them. I enjoyed them in the beginning. I think that at times they added to the hype, high profile and urgency in the Josephs 3. Not to mention helped push the political angles that were happening through out the case. You could really see some real life news channels, which reflect real life politics in our world. 

This guy is glorifying Marvin Garret while pushing Miguel's family to be deported back to Mexico. Fox news anyone? 

But they happen far too often and after a while I just tuned them out. Your supposed to be listening to them and absorbing all of the different view points. And then they HAD to just add that last reel after the case was over. I get why they did it to give a short wrap up to what happened to all of the suspects, victims and witness's but seriously who even cares about what happens to these people? BECAUSE no one did. They are not the characters that we are emotionally invested in.  That time could have been spent in a much better way by extending the too short wedding scene.  I mean does anyone really care what happened to Bishop Calhoun?

Mending Fences (scenes full of gold)

There is a lot of mending going on in this episode. 

FBI  (Sharon, Provenza & The Squad) "I don't normally say this to local law enforcement but on behalf of the FBI, I apologize." Quite honestly I did not expect this. Please note that it was Fay that apologized not Vega. And what else I love about is Fay has prod Vega to tell the squad they were wrong and apologize himself. Also note that Fay says "I" while vega says: "we".

What actually happened:

Mom: I apologize for being a bully. 

Son:  I didn't do anything wrong.  I'm not apologizing.

Mom: Say your sorry.

Son: mymomsaysihavetosayimsorry.we'resorry.

Sharon laughs at that pathetic excuse of Fay’s son's apology.

The Church (Sharon and Father Stan) "My worries are a lot to let go of."

I just wanted to point out that Sharon is matching both Andy and Father Stan here. She's wearing that blouse from the infamous hug scene but we only managed to see a small portion of it. It's mostly covered up with a black blazer. Buttoned up which is kind of unusual for Sharon. And the way it's only showing from the neck up makes it look like the Priest's uniform. 

I knew that there had to have been a scene between Sharon and Father Stan that would push their relationship back onto the road to recovery. I thought however that it was going to happen much earlier than it did. But it what an amazing emotional scene for Sharon. These two have had such a long history together. A very deep friendship that has lasted decades. And of course Sharon's crisis of faith during these episodes was not ever going to break. It would bend, in the way that it was supposed to but never break. 

What's interesting to me is that Father Stan says he's been Sharon's Priest for 22 years. Which means that he became her priest after Sharon separated from Jack. Which makes me wonder if Sharon wasn't as devout of a Catholic until the crisis in her marriage. She says she's been a life long Catholic but that doesn't always mean a devout Catholic. Could the breakdown of her marriage pushed her to have a deeper faith than she did before? Or could this just be a case of Sharon changing Priests? We do know from what Ricky said that Sharon turned to the Catholic Church for support after Jack left. 

"How are you feeling?" Sharon unloads her burdens onto Father Stan. We get another peak into Sharon's mind and her emotional state. And once again we are reminded of just how much Sharon really holds in. It really felt that she felt so much relief at unloading herself. And at finally coming to peace with her and Father Stan. With everything that's been going on with Sharon (emotionally and physically) these days. I'm sure it's been even harder for her to push through things without her normal councilor by her side. Father Stan has been her rock and has been with her through good times and bad. He is a definite source of support for her. He's probably one of the longest meaningful relationships she's had with someone other than her family. 

"Almost overwhelmed. Not by work or the wedding but my children are concerned about me and they express their fears to you. I can't..." Even when Sharon may die from her heart condition it is her family that is foremost on her mind. And the question that lingers there: "What will happen to them when I am gone?" And I love that Father Stan reminds her that is what faith is all about. To have faith that everything will turn out the way that it should. Whether she survives her illness or whether she dies from her illness. 

The music really added to this scene! It was soft, sad and had gradual build up. Which really reflected Sharon's emotional state in this scene. From a quiet sadness building up to a more triumphant sound. Once Sharon is reminded about the purpose of faith, she's feeling more like her self internally. 

My only nitpick about this scene is that as beautiful and emotional as this scene is. It really doesn't get a chance to breathe properly. Sharon shakes it off, goes right back to work and it's almost as if the moment didn't happen. And the scene cuts rather fast with a voice over from the next scene even before the shot is cut. I do understand that they pack A LOT in these episodes but sometimes moments (especially moments like these) really need some time to linger. In the way that I felt that the ILY scene from last week got a wonderful chance to breathe.

Moments from the Raydor/Flynn/Beck Family

I'm not sure why they filmed this scene from Rusty's perspective. It's a rather odd choice to make if you ask me because of how much we don't get to see. Their are some really awesome family moments that happen. And I love them all. Emily is an excited bean of energy, who seems to get her 'I love my family happiness' from Sharon. Not quite sure when the last time Emily came to visit (presumably it hasn't been three years). But Emily is just as excited about her mother marrying Andy as Ricky is. And I really love that. I had wondered exactly what Emily's reaction was going to be. I figured that it had to be happiness from her role in Sharon's annulment. Emily embraces Andy in a big hug and unfortunately we don't get to see it. 

And there's this...

"This Marriage is the greatest honor of my life." JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! Please Emily tell Sharon that he said this. 

And this...

One adorable sibling hug that also hits you right in the feels. Through the years this family has FINALLY come together. And their a gigantic modge podge blend but they sure are happy to all be a family. I love how much love there is for everyone in this family.

The Past and Present Self

Sarah: Mateo, Lucas verses Dr. Alan Redmond "It wasn't like that." "I don't care what it was like. I want to know who."

Amy just doesn't give a shit here and I love it.

They parallel the Raydor/Flynn/Beck Family. The difference here being that everything that Andy, Rusty, Emily and Ricky do for Sharon. It is because they love her. Unlike with Alan. Who destroyed Sarah's life and killed her family because he thought that she would come back to him if her family was gone. The parallel is how little Alan knows Sarah. Verses how Emily and Ricky don't know Sharon's present self. 

"All this trouble Doctor. Was it to get Sarah Garza back? Because Lucas freaked out when his mother brought up the idea of divorce and she left you? Do you think murdering her son and sprinkling Oxy everywhere would soften her heart?" Another little parallel. And while not in this particular episode. After Sharon divorced Jack, Jack thought that he'd get Sharon back by manipulating their son into dumping Rusty, showing up at her condo drunk, making her jealous with a french girlfriend. Manipulating information out of their daughter to later use against Sharon's boyfriend. Both men did not think of the damage they did to Sarah or Sharon's families. 

Can we end this parallel for to talk about how Andy once again is drooling over his love while she procedes to go full Darth on Alan Redmond's ass. Quite honestly I think Andy has always been turned on by this. And yes even when she had that shit turned on him.

Sharon:  Andy, Rusty verses Emily, Ricky (with Father Stan somewhere in the middle)

Look there’s a visual family divide.

The interesting thing about this scene and pretty much the rest of the episode. Is the division between Andy & Rusty vs Emily & Ricky. Someone around the fandom (and I wish I could remember who) had said that Emily and Ricky know Sharon's past. But Andy and Rusty know her now. That couldn't be anymore truer than here. 

Emily and Ricky have gone through things with their mother and can explain things that Andy and Rusty may not understand. Such as Sharon's devotion to her faith. When Rusty asked Ricky why a church wedding was so important to Sharon. Emily and Ricky think they know and understand how their mother will behave baised on how she behaved when they were growing up. And while Emily and Ricky were off living their lives and following their careers. Sharon was growing as a person and living her own life.  In that time she had a career change, adopted a kid, got divorced and fell in love. That is a lot to happen to a person in 6 years. Your life experiences and the people in them change you as a person. Even if Sharon wanted to be the same person she was when Ricky and Emily were kids. She's not. 

Which brings us to Andy and Rusty. Who know, Sharon is now. They live with her and see her every single day. They know that pressuring Sharon to deal with something is not the way to go. Whether it is Sharon's illness or whether it's her wedding.  Rusty knows this even before their plane's land which explains his "Oh damn it. When is Mom coming back?" to Buzz, when Ricky and Emily walk into the squad room. Andy catches up as soon as Ricky tells him to use him and Emily to lighten Sharon's load.

And Andy gives us this amazing look of quiet panic. Which I don't know about you but made me bust out when I saw this. 

Andy has learned through years of their friendship and romance. That letting Sharon have her time to figure things out inside of her head is a much better way to go. To watch from a far and to be avaliable for her when she needs him. And to let her come to him instead of hovering over her. Because Andy is not a patient guy it must kill him to not push her into talking to him. But he gives her the space that she needs to think things through. Because he understands that's what she needs. While Rusty has absorbed more of Sharon's personality through the years and has just figured out himself that pushing Mom to do anything is a bad idea.

"She's taking her meds, she feels a lot better. Grab a chair. The adults have this. We really do." Love this line and how much this was about the dinner AND Andy telling Ricky that he and Sharon are taking care of her illness. Andy fathering the kids in a way we'd never see Jack father his own children.

We get another big dose of it in Sharon's office the day before the wedding right as they are closing their case. Emily and Ricky pressuring Sharon into dealing with the wedding is putting more stress on Sharon. Sharon eventually puts her foot down and says all I have to do is look great and walk down the aisle. In other words she's saying that she's got faith that everything will turn out just as it should. And she's choosing not to stress about it. 

Father Stan is really the only person with a different perspective. As he as has known Sharon for decades and is still a confidant to her now. So he's got a wider perspective having known Sharon of the past and Sharon of the present. On the other hand which the very wonderful themagicm points out her podcast (seriously go check it out if you haven't) is that Sharon isn't really listening to her children. She very clearly sees that they are worried about her and that weighs heavily on her mind. But what she doesn't realize is that allowing them to help her will also help them deal with the implications of Sharon's illness. That they need to feel needed. So there is a very definite divide here and really neither party seems to be giving the other party what they need.

One thing is very clear is that every single person in that room has a massive amount of love for Sharon. And they are all doing what they think is best for her.

Sharon & Andy's Wedding

Much like everyone else it was much too short but it was absolutely gorgeous and there was so much stuff packed into this tiny little scene. Wonderful banter, lots of love (mostly happy, some not so much) and overall extremely emotional. Definitely a pretty epic moment for our couple and for the show. And also like with the proposal and the ILY, the wedding deserves it's own post. I'll be posting that soon.

What I don't like: The wedding was only three minutes long. I'm pretty sad about that. Ricky and Emily arrive at the squad room from Rusty's perspective. Now the problem isn't that it's from Rusty's perspective, the problem is that the scene starts while we are not seeing Ricky and Emily greet Andy but only hearing their voices. So we really miss out on seeing a giant smile on Andy's face at seeing them. Emily enthusiastically embracing Andy and maybe a fist bump between Andy and Ricky. At the end of the case. I think I agree with a lot of people that it dragged on for far too long. With a rather anticlimactic finish to the case.

They've really gone overboard with this fishing/whale metaphor. If you were to look around Sharon's office you'd really think the woman has a huge love of fishing. When that's something that's NEVER been mentioned about her character. I really think that one piece of whale artwork and that Moby Dick book was enough.

While we're on the subject of explaining things. Greg Lavoi can you please explain the wardrobe choice here? The shirt and the blazer -spot on. But that skirt doesn't even go with the rest of the outfit. Mixing plaid and a floral printed shirt? Could this outfit be all about Sharon's mental state and how fucked up it is right now? She's buttoned up and yet so mixed up emotionally. At this point that's where I'm going with it because it really doesn't go AT ALL.

What I like: While the wedding was very very short. What we did get was absolutely beautiful and it couldn't be more apparent that both Sharon and Andy love each other with their whole hearts. No matter how damaged their hearts maybe they are stronger together. Seeing the Raydor/Flynn/Beck family all together functioning as a family unit. I love all of the bickering, bantering, concern, love and happiness between all of them. I wasn't too crazy about the episode the first time I saw it but now that I have seen it a few times and am anaylising it. I must say that I'm seeing so many things in this episode. Particularly the personal storyline that I really love.

One thing I have yet to mention is the actor that plays Father Stan. Mark Damon Espinoza. In the instances of any extension of the main character's families. This show does an amazing job on casting family members. And I consider Father Stan a part of Sharon's family. Considering her very close relationship with him, one that she's had for decades.

Mary! Who the show may have forgotten that there's a reason why she's been nominated for Oscar's twice. But now we are FINALLY seeing the show actually use this wonderfully talented actress.

[basseyblog]

  In 1980 after her divorce Shirley Bassey decided to go to Bel Air in Los Angeles for a while with her new partner Ken Carter and her children. Below a newspaper article and an article from a magazine about her stay in the States. 

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING! By Andrew Duncun (From Telegraph Sunday Magazine 1980):

Shirley Bassey’s professionalism and personal upheavels bear out her theory that you have to experience all the emotions to move an audience. 

From the stage it was an extraordinary sight. The Welsh grandmother, dressed in a white floor lenght evening dress cut alarmingly low at bust and back, had nothing done so far except wish everyone “Good evening”. Yet in front of her, nearly all the 3,250 people who filled the theatre in Los Angeles, California, were standing to give an ovation just as exuberant as if she had just completed a faultless two-hour-concert. Shirley Bassey was back on the road, in a show which begins a tour of four British cities on November 13, and her remarkably faithful fans were determined to appreciate every second of an act which has been fine-tuned over 27 years to elicit every ounce of audience response.

During the next 90 minutes she earned her adoration by bringing subtlety, vulgarity and humour to a dozen familiar middle-of-the-road songs-from “Goldfinger” which in 1964. was her fist big international hit, to the self-mocking raunchiness she used for “Big Spender”, to “My Way” which she sang while in a silver -lined ostrich feather cape and provided a climax perhaps too predictable for some, but which had the Los Angeles audience screeching and howling for more.

Oscar A. Cohen, her longtime agent and new manager (since she separated from her second husband/manager earlier this year), fresh from the Beverly Hills swimming pool, swarmed in ecstasy as he tried to breathe new emotion into such careworn show-businesswords as “phenomenal”. Even the stage door bouncers, loaned by Muhammad Ali for the occasion, managed a faint scowl to illustrate how impressed they were as Shirley skipped, perspiring but well-satisfied, back to her dressing room and the warm appreciation of her three children, aged from 14 to 25, whose presence on this occasion had made her more nervous than usual.

“I wanted to do something extra special for them”, she explained later in the comfortable house overlooking Bel Air gold club she had rented for a month’s holiday after her four performances were over.

“Also, it was closing night, and I hate them because of all the goodbyes”.

She has had more goodbyes than most, as she is one of the only female singers to tour the world frequently. “Streisand doesn’t….who else does?     Pretty frightening isn’t it? when you think how big the world is and how many singers there are. You must love travel, and I inherited a wanderlust from my father. I can’t stay in one place too long. The longest I’ve stayed in a house without going somewhere is a month”.

The effort has made her wealthy- her Rolls was in the garage, license plate number BIRD 80, and she lives in Lugano, Switserland, unharmed by British taxes. (“The situation in England is pretty ghastly, and it’s getting worse”)- but not entirely satisfied.

“I haven’t been as good a mother as I should have been, or as the children would like me to have been, although they have been brought up far too well to let me know the disadvantages, I am happy to say. But we have all suffered, and the damage is done. There are things you remember. When they would see the suitcases coming up from the basement and they would ask, “Going away again huh?” Then they would hide in their rooms because they couldn’t bare it. My life with them has to some degree been a collection of scenes like that. In my next life I am going to come back as a mother, not an entertainer. I would get an education, work at something and concentrate on being a good mother. If I lived my life over and knew I would be in showbusiness I don’t think I would get married or have children. It is too demanding on me, and unfair to them”.

The children -25-year-old Sharon who lives in Bristol with her eight-month-old-son; 16-year-old-Samantha and her 14-year-old Mark were in the house, but she refused to introduce them or allow their photographs to be taken. “They will not be in photographs. Quite right too. They don’t like it. They say: “Mother is in show-business let her do it.”

“None of them want to follow me, not al all. Family and show-business don’t mix”.

She laughed wryly as she tried to think of someone who had a happy personal life and a successful career. “I’d like to find somebody like that. No, you can’t have both. I have decided it is impossible to have two of anything- because only one thing will work for you. You cannot split yourself in two. There are all those different emotions in my work: preparation, singing, all the things you have to do before you walk on that stage. You cannot be wondering whether you forgot to turn off the  heat under the spaghetti sauce, or whether the baby will wake up. It tears at you. An entertainer has to break himself into pieces, part for the public and part for the family. You usually wind up cheating and giving less to your family because this is a very demanding, exciting, infuriating, cut-throat business. And to do something great in takes all your concentration”.

Her voice is powerful, even in normal conversation, each word enunciated in a perculiaryBritish middle-class way: clipped, assured, almost arrogant, with her native Welshness betrayed only when she is angry or excited.

“Some people say I deliberately lost the accent. I did not. I do not read music, so I have to have an incredible ear to pick up a tune. And people with a good ear subconsciously imitate those with whom they spend the most time. She was born 43 years ago (“I will tell you my age. I don’t think there is anything everyone does not know about me”). in the Tiger Bay dock area of Cardiff, the youngest of seven children, to a Nigerian seaman and a Yorkshire woman who divorced when she was two years old. She had no ambition to be a singer.

“It was the last thing  I thought of. I wanted to become a nurse or a model. But I was always singing and someone asked me to take part in a local talent contest they ran at weekends. I was 14 at the time… but this is very old stuff. It’s been repeated 500,000 times”.

For those unfamiliar with Miss Bassey’s early life, she continued with a brief autobiography. She left home at sixteen and worked as a  waitress for two weeks in what she thought was a Greek restaurant in Queen Street, Cardiff. “There are all kind of things in Cardiff. It’s quite cosmopolitan. I was just getting the hang of carrying all the plates on one arm and six glasses in one hand when I began my singing career. I never wanted to do it, but I don’t regret it”.

In fact she regrets nothing, really. “I have learned from everything. So in the end even the bad feelings have been a good lesson. You have to experience certain emotions in your life. Every singer must have something to say, must feel his or her songs. If you don’t have a background of  experience, the superficial quality communicates immediately to the listener”.

Nowadays, except vicariously during her concerts, Miss Bassey is not keen to talk about the experiences which make her songs vibrate.

“Lets’s face it, scandal may sell newpapers, but enough has been said about my private life and not enough about my show business life, which has been really incredible. I have put a lot into it, and it always looks as if I don’t work at my art, or trade, or job and that all I do is create scandal. I wish people would find something good to say for a bloody change.”

She was married first to British television director Kenneth Hume in 1961; seven years later she married Sergio Novak, then manager of a hotel in Venice, at a two a.m. ceremony in Las Vegas, where she was appearing. They seperated in February this year, and she described the problems of het current situation.

“For women in my position it’s very difficult to find a good relationship. Male stars who are single can run around; it’s expected. No one says anything. If I were promiscuous and flitting from one man to the next, people would say all kinds of things about me. There are temptations, just as there are for succesful men. You have to be discreet, but it’s very hard when you’re a wellknown woman. I have to watch what I do, or I pay the price’.

Both husbands were also her manager. “It seemed a good idea at the time, but of course there were problems. You can’t take a contract to bed with you”‘

Between marriages she had a well published affair with the late Peter Finch, who once declared they were caught in flagrante delicto and added, “Unbeknownst to us we were being followed by the men in bowler hats. Shirley and I agreed that nothing put the candles out like a husband calling and saying, “I’m going to sue you”. Confronted with those comments, Miss Bassey became subdued and then perhaps justifiably irascible. “I never took Latin in school so I don’t know what the first part means. Is that what he said?” She paused for a long while. “Well”, she said finally, “I think, let the dead rest in peace. I know we’re in the public eye and things happen…but I’m fed up with those questions. There’s nothing new anymore”.

She has had few professional set-backs to compare with the personal upheavels in her life. The one she remembers in particular is when she sang Goldfinger in Las Vegas for the first time. “I had a terrible experience, because no one knew I was black. Everyone nudged each other as I came on stage and they asked, “What is she doing, singing that other singer’s song?” “I felt like a wave coming at me; it bothered me for several nights. Then I just told them. “It’s me. I sang this in the film”. You could feel the shock and hear the mutters. I decided five years ago never to go to Las Vegas again. It’s not my type of audience. They only go there to gamble; the show is kind if thrown in. It’s horrendous. It may be all right for Tom Jones, because he gets young girls chucking their knickers at him and screaming, but I wouldn’t want any screamers. Of course, no one believes I really don’t want to go there and they think it must be a question of money, so they keep upping it”. ‘How much?” I asked, risking once more the return of her Welsh accent. “I never discuss money. Never have. It’s vulgar for an entertainer to talk about money. That’s a manager’s job. Las vegas is not the only place to be deprived of her talents. She will never ever perform again during that pinnacle of Monte Carlo social life, the Red Cross Gala. “The audiences are just dreathful. They clap slowly because they are loaded down with jewelery; and they look to check if the Prince and Princess are clapping first. By the time everyone’s done that I’m into my next song. I did it once. That was enough. There are certain things in life where once is not enough. There are others where once is definitely enough. This year I did a private show for IBM and another in London for Datsun. The money’s great but they are killers and I won’t do them again. I can’t relate to audiences which just sit and stare at me. I’m there to entertain and when I finish I expect applause. After all, I have  put a lot into it.

Before a show my feeling depends upon what kind of day I have had and my physical well-being. Sometimes I laugh and joke right up to the end and walk on stage without a nerve in my body. Other times I need to be very quiet, everyone must leave the room while I sit and think about what I’m going to do, sort of psyche myself out”.

The setting of the Bel Air House, the Rolls, the family – unseen, yet present – a youngish, curly-haired Australian who described himself “as part of the security” and kept a watchful eyes on Miss Bassey, the luxurious travel from city to city, the home in Switserland – it was all a long way from Cardiff docks.

“You look back and you don’t think, ‘It’s unreal’, because it is real. You say, ‘Crickey, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gone into show-business. Maybe I’d be like my five sisters, married, tons of kids. Don’t ask me how many they have. It’s too many, particulary at Christmastime. I don’t see them a lot, because I only go home two or three times a year to see my mother, and I can’t work in Cardiff because there is nowhere for me to sing. Isn’t that disgusting? Wales has to do something because two of their biggest artists, Tom Jones and myself, have nowhere to play there. I used to go to the Capitol cinema, bit it’s turned into an office block or supermarket. It’s infuriating and sad”.

At present she is slowly unwinding her career, working only six months a year with no definite end in sight. “Who knows what next year will bring. I might lose my voice. I might die tomorrow. I suppose I might return to Britain when I retire, live in the country and do some gardening. Why not? That’s where I started and that’s my home”.

But her roots are no longer there. “I lost all my friends from Cardiff the moment I left to go into show-business. They all got married and moved their different ways, some to London, others to South Africa or Canada. In fact I have very few friends and none of them are in show-business: which is why they remain friends. Most of them live in London and I can count them on the fingers of one hand. They are all I need. I don’t need any more”. Well, besides them, she has the memories which are etched into all her performances . Together they make a compelling and emotional statement.

FROM THE ARCHIVE 464 -1980- In 1980 after her divorce Shirley Bassey decided to go to Bel Air in Los Angeles for a while with her new partner Ken Carter and her children.