I got home an hour ago and I was thinking I might go and see Avengers again because I don't think I'm ever going to be able to make a coherent post about it, though I loved it a lot and thought it was tightly plotted and well paced with some great Jossian dialogue (with a few obvious clunkers), and how all I can think about is how AMAZING a Winter Soldier movie would be with Natasha and Steve - can THAT be the plot of Captain America 2? PLEASE?

Also, I really, seriously want Steve/Natasha now, and in a way that is not All About Bucky, which is mostly how I conceptualized it previously. Just. That look he gives her after she springboards off his shield is a look of "OH MY GOD HOW RIDICULOUSLY HOT WAS THAT!?" and that will not be denied.

I am also all for some Clint/Natasha comfort sex, because OF COURSE Natasha knows what it's like to have her mind played with (I wonder if all those references to red in her ledger were not just, you know, the blood on her hands, but also the Red Room stuff), and of course, Clint/Darcy, because CLINT NEEDS A DARCY. (I was the odd man out this weekend, because while I really like Coulson and didn't want him to die, I wasn't particularly emotionally invested in him, and better him than Darcy or Jane or Pepper or even Maria Hill, whose death would have had little to no emotional impact at all and thus, not served the purpose at all that Coulson's death purportedly serves, even though it's lazy writing and that is the part that irritates me a lot [regardless of the fact that it was apparently a Marvel mandate and not a Joss Whedon special.] Also, I might just be in denial, but I have a hard time believing that he's actually dead? If it were an actual Joss franchise, I would, but it's Marvel, so...not so much. Right now, my plan for my own writing is to keep him in the stuff I've already started where he plays a small role [the Steve/Darcy fake dating, the Impact Winter sequel, and then just maybe sub in Maria Hill. Or simply do the HANDWAVE. COULSON'S NOT DEAD thing. *hands*] My feeling is, if you can't keep on trucking when half your OTP is dead, you're just not trying hard enough. I speak from long experience there.)

Plus, as angelgazing reminded me, Natasha's "love is for children" line could TOTALLY be about her and Bucky while they were under the Red Room's control. Someone should write THAT story for me, too.

And Natasha and Bruce fic, because Natasha is shaken by him - she can't fight or mindfuck the Hulk and that terrifies her, and I loved that we saw that repeatedly, but she still gets up and gets the job done.

Speaking of Bruce, I also want ALL the Tony & Bruce: SCIENCEBROS fic - they drive off into the sunset together! I want Pepper being tentative at first about having Bruce around underfoot all the time, and then just getting more comfortable with him being there, and maybe there can be some Tony/Pepper/Bruce, because Bruce just needs some hugs and some comfort, okay?

And while I'm there, TONY/PEPPER FOR THE WIN. My god, I LOVED seeing Pepper without heels, in shorts, because that was such a great shorthand for how equal she feels in the relationship now. she doesn't have to armor up with Armani suits and 4 inch heels to protect herself because she's the employee before she's the (girl)friend. She's Tony's partner now (at least 12-15% anyway), and I LOVE THAT. ♥

That is the kind of characterization detail this movie did so well - Coulson's near-mint vintage Cap cards, all of Steve's anger and loss playing out in those punching bags and then his glance around the helicarrier, because this is a situation that feels familiar/comfortable to him (though I still want ALL the deleted scenes of him being emo about Peggy and Bucky), Clint's perch at the very beginning - his eye for patterns and his intuitive thinking in connecting the dots (a door opens on both sides), Natasha's EVERYTHING. JESUS FUCK, NATASHA. If I hadn't loved her already, I would now, but since I did, I LOVE HER EVEN MORE WHICH I DID NOT THINK WAS POSSIBLE. IF YOU DON'T LOVE NATASHA, I DON'T THINK WE CAN BE FRIENDS. I AM JUST SAYING. I WILL FIGHT YOU.

Ahem.

So you should write that for me.

In non-spoilery news, the weekend with devildoll, chicklet_girl, and girlinthetrilby was full of AWESOME FOOD AND FANGIRL CONVERSATION AND PIE FROM NORSKE NOOK AND AMAZING CUPCAKES. It was also free comic book day yesterday, and DD was volunteering at a comics shop, so we visited her there, and chicklet_girl discovered that they make STEVE AND BUCKY MINIMATES so I bought those. They also had a Peggy Carter set, but she was paired with a random HYDRA agent, as was Howard Stark. If they'd had Peggy and Howard in the same set, that I would have sprung for (and then they could have an OT4 orgy).

girlinthetrilby pointed out a big 12" Captain America action figure and I was like, "Oh, that's Bucky Cap" and she and chicklet_girl gave me a skeptical look, but it WAS. We turned the box over and it said "James Buchanan Barnes" and his non-helmet-wearing second head had brown hair. BUCKY CAP. I WILL NEVER STOP CALLING HIM THAT. ME AND PETER PARKER. (I named my iPhone Bucky and I use a Captain America shield case for it, and I was like, OMG MY PHONE IS BUCKY CAP and laurificus was just like, "your dorkiness is very cute.")

Now I guess I will get something to eat and then catch up on the TV I've missed since Thursday, even though my head is just totally still in AVENGERS space. I have tomorrow off, so I am definitely seeing it again then.

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