“I want to speak to a manager,” the middle-aged woman said in her stern I-used-to-be-a-soccer-mom-ten-years-ago voice, looking down at me over the top of her Gucci reading glasses.
A wicked grin split across my face and the gates of Hell opened up behind me, releasing a gust of hot wind that whipped my apron around my body and forced the woman to shield her face. Demons came forth, dancing around in flames with songs of, “She wants to speak to a manager. Did you hear that? She wants to speak to a manager!” before erupting into earsplitting shrieks of laughter, none louder than my own cackling.
I took in the woman’s look of utter horror before my eyes rolled back into my head and I growled,
As another agent hits the ground, Steve steps back, an arrow grazing his nose and hitting the person coming up the stairs, guns raised. Steve lifts a hand, signals up at the rooftop out of pure habit, then pops the shield up off the ground. Strapping it back to his arm, he jogs across the rooftop, slipping over the edge and down the fire escape, back to where he should have been in the first place.
“What the hell Steve?” Nat’s voice crackles through the comm, quieter than usual, and Steve shoves the earpiece back into it’s proper position before joining back up with Nat and Thor.
“Hydra on the rooftop,” he explains quickly, slamming his shield against an agent’s head before pulling it off his arm and throwing it. ”Any sign of them slowing down?” he asks as he catches the shield and punches another guy in the face.
“Nope” Tony answers for her, as the man himself flies into sight, avoiding the gunfire of the quinjet tailing him. “They’re like rats. Or rabbits. Or-” He’s cut off as he’s forced to throw himself backwards to avoid another barrage.
Steve grits his teeth, not liking how this was looking one little bit, and opens his mouth to speak when he hears Clint’s “Uh..?” Steve looks up, concerned, but sees nothing. Then he ducks as a fist comes flying at his head, holding back an undignified yelp.
“Clint?” Nat picks up, unfazed as she tases someone. “Do you need support?”
Just as Clint goes to answer, the agent Steve’s fighting drops, and then the one sneaking up on Nat follows. Shot after shot rings out, and agent after agent falls, with only a few of them boasting Clint’s arrows.
None of them have time to question it as a new wave of agents appears, but whoever was firing was damned good, and fast as hell. with the added backup, they manage to take control of the fight, killing or capturing the last of the hydra agents. Steve only has to say “Clint,” before they can all hear the sound of Clint running, the thud of him landing on the next rooftop, and then him yelping “What the hell?”
Then there’s quiet. Steve looks at Nat. Nat looks at Tony. Tony nods, ready to take off, when Clint’s voice comes over the comm, sounding confused.
“Hey, Cap, there’s some guy up here with a big ass gun and a shiny as fuck arm saying he’s giving- no, he’s brought the stupid back for you, but he doesn’t think you need it.” Steve doesn’t hesitate, grabbing his shield and running for the building Clint had been positioned on. “Cap? does that mean anything to you?”
Steve doesn’t answer, just pushes himself faster, then hears Tony’s “Hold on” and hears Tony flying towards him. He doesn’t think, just holds up his hand, latches on to Tony’s, and feels himself be lifted off the ground.
The trip doesn’t take long, ten, maybe twenty seconds, but the whole time Steve’s telling himself not to hope, not to expect, that it couldn’t be, but it had to be, because only one person alive would know what that meant.
His feet hit the rooftop, and Tony lands behind him, but Steve’s not paying attention to him anymore, or to Clint, standing awkwardly to the side. His eyes are locked on the raised eyebrow, the familiar tilt to lips he knows better than his own. His voice is soft when he speaks, but he knows the other can hear him fine. Knows he has hearing almost as good as Steve does now.
Steve could hear the clamouring of voices over the comm, could hear Clint saying something, Tony replying, but all he could think about was the fact that, after all this time searching, Bucky had found him. Bucky had found him after Steve had given up looking.
He takes a step forward, then another, and Bucky just watches him, waits for him, little smile not leaving his face. Steve had no idea what the others were thinking, didn’t care at all as he reached out. His touch was hesitant, fingers brushing against Bucky’s cheek, like he was expecting this whole thing to be a dream. But when all he encountered was warm skin, his fingers slid down, off Bucky’s jaw to grip at his jacket. His knuckles were white as he clung to the material, and he hesitated, gaze flicking over Bucky’s face.
Bucky’s smile grew slightly, and he stepped in when Steve wouldn’t, one arm wrapping around Steve’s waist, pulling him into a hug. And Steve all but fell into it, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and just holding him tightly. “Buck,” he started, but Bucky hushed him, knowing what the next words out of Steve’s mouth were going to be and cutting the apology off before it had begun. Steve dropped his head, rested his cheek against Bucky’s and did as he was told for once.
“Sorry to interrupt this touching scene-” Tony began, and Clint poked him with the butt of an arrow before taking over.
“But we’re on a rooftop in the middle of New York, can we move this inside maybe? Away from the news cameras?” Clint looked up pointedly, and Steve reluctantly followed his gaze to the CNN helicopter flying around them. Steve dropped his arms, went to step back, to break contact, but Bucky wrapped his fingers around Steve’s wrist. He didn’t do anything further, just kept his hand there loosely, and Steve looked at him, eyebrows drawing down.
Bucky just shrugged with one shoulder, grabbed the case Steve assumed had his rifle in it, then slid his hand down to link their fingers, as though he knew Steve needed something to hold on to. But, Steve realised, looking at Bucky as they headed for the door into the building, maybe Bucky needed the same thing.
One of the things that is really notable about Moscow and yet not many people outside Russia know about, is how gorgeous the Moscow metro is.
These photos? That’s what the metro stations look like.
Yeah.
They’re called the “People’s palaces of Moscow” or else “Underground palaces,” and they were built during the Soviet era on the Communist idea that art and beauty should belong to the people rather than only being available in the houses of nobles.
These photos show just some of the metro’s attractions. There are many more mosaics, statues, etc, placed throughout.
And the metro is always this clean.
In addition to being beautiful, it is incredibly functional. It gets you pretty much everywhere in Moscow, and the trains run at intervals of every three minutes or less. At peak times, they run every 90 seconds. You never have to worry about missing a train, because the next one will come almost immediately.
Not always of course. In the late evening or early morning hours, you may have to wait as long as five whole minutes for a train. They’re also super easy to navigate.
1. I have not been on the computer as much as normal recently because my roommates have figured out how to lure me out of my room and trick me into being social. They’ve appealed to my competitive nature (that I try to deny having) by loudly playing board games in the common area which I then feel obligated to join to prove my board game prowess (it usually doesn’t end with me winning, so then we end up playing again and again and again…).
2. I am completely addicted to chocolate. When I run out I usually sit around and pout until one of my roommates nags me to go to the store to buy more.
3. Last semester our apartment was adopted by a cat in exactly the same way that you see in all the “this is not my cat” posts. She is a tuxedo cat and we named her Bullet because of how she sounds when she purrs. Unfortunately we started calling her Cat, so now she doesn’t respond to or know her actual name.
4. I bounce around fandoms a lot in part because my favorite character-of-the-month varies depending on what’s happening in my life. I’m subconsciously drawn to a trait or story arc or piece of character development (usually story arc or character development) I identify with, and I’ve started using it as a litmus test for my current mental state.
5. In contrast to point 4, I have a weakness for male characters with shoulder length hair that is so incredibly shallow I don’t like to admit to it (see: Gokudera from KHR, G from KHR, Yomo from Tokyo Ghoul, Eliot from Leverage, and Bucky from the MCU). I’m also kind of baffled by it, since I’m gray-ace and am not actually attracted to any of the characters/actors. I just like to sit their and look at them and my brain smiles and says “yes, this is good” and I’m just like “??????? well, okay, I guess.”
6. I dislike sitting in chairs properly and will take the opportunity to perch whenever it is socially acceptable (and sometimes when it’s not). But I also like to fidget, so I end up shifting around on my perch a lot.
It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?
I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.
Totally.
A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.
(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise – female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)
Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship – and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios – this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:
Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36
TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66
Thus, assuming – again, for the sake of simplicity – that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.
The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom – and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women – for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?
And these are the numbers without even taking into the effect plot allocations have on story appeal!
Beyond being categorized by recurring speaking roles, I’m pretty sure the numbers would look even more grim if one were to quantify plot importance and character agency and developments. Who are the leads? Who are the deeply developed characters? Who is provided with a wealth of character traits and backstory?
With that in mind, why is anyone surprised that people are, for instance, more compelled to write stories about Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, than they are Sherlock and the side character Molly? Or about Dean Winchester and angel of the Lord Castiel than Dean Winchester and the yoga teacher from a few episodes Lisa? Or Kirk and Spock rather than Kirk and random episode lady? That’s not internalized misogyny…that’s people preferring to write about characters with real meat.
Zynn's Exodus 