[ SECRET POST #4459 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4459 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.
[Dan Bern, WTNV, I Only Listen To the Mountain Goats, the Mountain Goats]



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02.


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03.


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04.


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05.


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06.
[The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel]


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07.
[Director James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy franchise]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 08 secrets from Secret Submission Post #638.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If I'm 100% honest, I've hated their interactions since the first Avengers movie, and no Avengers movie since has made it any better. Much, much worse, usually. So ... I'd have been fine with them never 'reconciling'? They just never worked well together, at least not in the MCU. I would have been 100% fine with them existing at opposite ends of the plot forever (if, you know, they lived that long). I thought that way back in Avengers 1 when comics-style Stony was huge and the movie just never backed it up, and then AoU and Civil War happened and just ... They're a trash fire. They have been from the start. When they're not in each other's way they're actively bad for each other (hi, Civil War, how are you).

Let Steve hang around with Nat and Sam and Bucky, let Tony hang around with Rhodey and Bruce and Stephen, let them pilot separate teams and work together on big stuff OUTSIDE each other's chain of command, with backup and input from other people. If they want to hate each other on a personal level let them do it. There are ten thousand heroes in the MCU now. They don't have to keep shoving these particular two together.

(No, I don't have strong feelings about this, why do you ask?)

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with this 100%!

Also, I went into Avengers 1 shipping Stony and came back out saying, nope, not in the MCU.

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty much.

I'm a bitter ex Stony shipper - although I still ship them in the comics - who believes that they would be much happier far away from each other. Especially Stark, whom I usually greatly dislike, who's still been treated dreadfully by Cap in Civil War.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, Civil War killed any semblance of a hope I might have had, though I freely admit that it's because Cap hit a massive trigger of mine. My sister and I were discussing it recently, in the context of video games and choice making, and we basically realised that her basis for grey-area 'moral' choices is usually personal loyalty, while mine is usually truth vs lies. Not necessarily better or worse in either case, just different priorities. The moment Tony asked 'Did you know?' and Steve said yes, he was dead to me. I would have cut him out that second. Someone makes a lie to me of that magnitude, by omission or otherwise, and there is no coming back from that. There's no way I'm trusting them again, not on any personal level.

So, yeah. That moment did not help the MCU's case any. Put it that way.

[(Anonymous)]

But Steve did that in order to protect Bucky, whom he is loyal to. He has no reason to even like Stark, considering he's been nothing but an ass to him since the beginning. Quit being a rigid autist.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, I have such hard feelings about loyalty. And by every means, Steve was loyal to Bucky over Stark, just as he should have been. To say otherwise means you don't know the definition of the word.

[(Anonymous)]

In this case my loyalty kink and my lying squick are warring with each other, and the hate I have for lying wins by a large margin.

And in the end, Steve didn't exactly help Bucky by keeping quiet.

[(Anonymous)]

So? Even if he had a reason for what he did, that doesn't mean the person he lied to has to trust him or have anything to do with him afterwards. He made his choice, he picked his loyalties. Fine. Let him have them. But he can have the consequences too.

If you hide from me the fact that my parents were murdered, that they were murdered by someone you know, I don't give a fuck what your reasons are, what the extenuating circumstances are. I am never speaking to you again. I am never having anything to do with you again. I am certainly never trusting you again. If that makes me a 'rigid autist', so be it.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Did Steve actually lie to Tony though? I mean, when would the subject have even come up?

And regarding him just not telling Tony, ok, I mean, yes, if Steve and Tony were actually close trusted friends, or even if Steve had been able to bring Bucky in before CW and Bucky and Tony would in be in a situation where they would actually be interacting with each other, then yes, I would think Steve had an obligation to tell him. But as far as MCU goes, Bucky hadn’t hadn’t been brought in yet, and Steve and Tony are “friends from work”, and that’s it. There’s no indication that I know of that they had any interaction between Avengers 1 and CA:WS, and then they were on a team together less than a year before Ultron happened and Tony resigned from the team. And then Tony again goes behind the team’s back on the Accords. (Because of course he knows better than everyone else what’s the best thing to do. Again.) I mean, if I was Steve, I would have had a hard time trusting him either with such a volitile piece of information, especially regarding my best friend who’d been tortured and brainwashed into committing said murder.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure if you find out that somebody has been murdered, you do in fact have an obligation to mention it. Pretty much as soon as you find out about it. You don't get to keep that one under your hat.

Yes, neither of them trust each other. Neither of them SHOULD trust each other. Especially not after that. Let them stay on separate teams and never speak to each other outside of necessity again. I'm perfectly fine with that.

But if someone did what Steve did to Tony to me, I don't care if they're a co-worker or a random stranger to me, that is something I am never forgiving. You don't get to hide my parent's murder, from me and apparently everyone else, and expect me to feel anything but disgust for you afterwards.

[(Anonymous)]

Considering how violently and horribly Tony reacted, I'd say Steve was right to think that the hunch/hint he got from a villain (not a direct confirmation, remember) was not something he needed to immediately share.

[(Anonymous)]

Considering how he reacted after just watching his parents be murdered in front of him, you mean? On video, sure, but still in front of him when he'd had absolutely no reason to suspect it. I'm pretty sure in all the time Steve knew he could have come up with a situation where a) Tony had some lead up, b) Tony didn't have to watch it happen and c) where the unwilling weapon the murderers used, the face he's just watched murder his mother, wasn't standing right there.

All that aside, the fact that the family of victim might react violently is not an excuse to just never mention the fact that someone was murdered. Of course they're going to react violently. Their family was murdered. You still don't get to just keep it a secret because it's easier for you if you don't have to deal with that. Steve went to fucking war once upon a time. Cowardice is not an excuse to lie and cover up a murder in order to avoid potential violence.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure if you find out that somebody has been murdered, you do in fact have an obligation to mention it. Pretty much as soon as you find out about it. You don't get to keep that one under your hat.

Legally speaking, sure. Otherwise, that is pretty rigid thinking.

If you know that telling is going to screw over someone close to you, possibly get them killed, especially someone you know is innocent, would you tell? Or would you find some other way to handle it?

Granted, two years is a long time, and I think Steve might have come up with the words to break the news to Tony, but considering both their histories, I kind of understand why he didn't.

[(Anonymous)]

Then you tell them that your friend is innocent. You show them the evidence of what was done to him. You stand up and fight for your friend, but you do it honestly. When it's other people's secrets he's fine with that. He threw all of Hydra's secrets to the wind, let the consequences fall where they would, even when doing so meant all of SHIELD's secrets and the secrets of everybody they'd ever investigated or blackmailed or protected went with them. He stood up for the truth then. But as soon as the consequences have a face he knows, suddenly he's a coward? Suddenly secrets are fine again, and murders are something we can just sweep under the rug? HYDRA's murders? Of a man who was his friend and an innocent woman? What the fuck happened, Mr I-can-do-this-all-day? Or is it just easy to be honest when it's someone else paying the price?

He lied. He perpetuated the cover-up of two murders HYDRA had committed, one of them the murder of a friend. He did so in the face of that man's son. When he could have stood. When he could have stood up for Bucky, stood up for Howard, stood up against what HYDRA did to them both. But he didn't. He fucking didn't. Because for the first time in 70 years his choices had consequences that were personal to him, and he fucking caved because of it. He said nothing. He let the murder of Howard and Maria Stark stand.

Jesus, Steve. Jesus. "Sometimes my friends don't tell me things." Jesus.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Drat. I hate it when I forget to close an italics tag. :(

[(Anonymous)]

It happens. One spiky boi without a friend can ruin your whole day. Or, well. Comment.

[(Anonymous)]

Lying is my big nope-out, too. It was like that when I was a child and it's still like that 40 years later. And people always treat me like I'm super weird because of that. It seems that to a majority of people lying is just not a big deal.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd be cool with this. As someone who never read the comics or much MCU fanfic, I've never cared about their friendship enough to care whether they even have a friendship. I find the characters entertaining individually, but have no strong feelings about how they should interact.

[nightscale]

Yeah I was hoping to see something at least similar to their comic-book relationship in the movies but it... never really got there. They didn't need to be bff's 5eva or anything, but I would have liked them at least liking one another and it just never felt that it ever got further than 'we save the world together sometimes'.

They each have their people and that's fine, but I'm over the movies trying to make me believe they mean all that much to each other or were ever 'leaders' of the Avengers team.

[philstar22]

The comic books had time, though. In the movies only Steve and Bucky and then Tony and Rhodey had that time. Friendships take time. Steve and Natasha had some side missions together and the time to get closer as friends. They couldn't really give Steve and Tony that time because Downey is a major actor and if he'd been in Cap 2, the movie would have become more about him. And Cap 2 needed to be about the Steve and Bucky friendship.

[nightscale]

Not starting by having the two of them butting heads would have helped imo, because that didn't do anything to endear me to their MCU relationship much and I'm not saying that they should have instantly adored one another but something better than that. And not just for those two but the whole core Avengers, I buy genuine friendships for a few pairs of them, but the rest just feel like co-workers at best no matter how much the films try to convince me otherwise.

It's just a hang-up I have with the MCU is all and I can still enjoy the movies despite that but... just wish they'd done that aspect better.

[philstar22]

I guess I was so sold on the Steve and Bucky friendship in the first Cap movie that it didn't bother me. I wasn't really into the comics, so I didn't have all this history. I just saw a friendship that drew me in, and I didn't really have to have another that was the same. It worked for me that they were two very different people who worked together and became work friends, but they both had these other close friendships that were more important.

[nightscale]

The Steve and Bucky friendship is fine, actually tbh I prefer the MCU version over the comics because I think the foundation is more solid(ymmv on that though, this is just me), and Steve's relationships with Sam and Natasha also work partly because his movies give those friendships more time and because the base-line interactions are overall friendlier(at least to me).

Steve+Clint, Tony and Thor are just... a lot emptier to me, and yeah part of it is definitely because I read the comics first and thus had relationships to compare them to, but even then to me it just doesn't feel as though the movies try as hard with those?

Unlike with Clint+Nat where the Avengers movies are always very good at showing how close they are and how much they mean to one another and despite my disinterest in Clint overall I really like that relationship because it's clear they've been friends for a long while.

Idk, it obviously works for enough people and that's fine, but for me the core-Avengers team friendships are lacking but I can ignore it to enjoy the rest of the movies. And tbh there are really solid friendships in the MCU so it's not like those not working for me is insurmountable. I just ignore the movies trying to tell me that Steve+Tony were 'super-close!!' when nothing ever really suggested that.

[philstar22]

That makes sense. And I agree that they weren't super close. I guess I just don't need to me. The Avengers, for the most part, to me are "work friends." Acquaintances who work together and therefore know each other pretty well, but their friendship is based on work and they aren't so likely to meet up outside of work things (apart from the occasional shawarma meal). Their is still a relationship there that gets torn in Civil War and needs repairing so they can work together again. But I don't think they are best friends in the movies, and I'm not sure the creators intended them to be.

[nightscale]

Hey no it's cool to disagree, it works for you so that's fine. :)

I guess part of me just wanted something a little closer to the more 'found family' vibe that the comics get but they never went there, which alas I suppose but oh well, I can live with the good friendships they do have in the MCU because those are great.

Tbh narritively I do get the impression that the movies think we should consider Steve+Tony closer than they are and I kind of squint at it but otherwise ignore it, it doesn't really bother me.