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Have some random self-reflective musings, I'm gonna go veg for a while?
Musings on my shipping patterns in Avengers:
You may have noticed that aside from the odd pairing fic here or there, I'm still largely focused on gen cast interactions in this fandom. Why, I'm not completely sure, though I have to say there are so many character combo options that I still haven't actually run out of people I want to see interact together, so there's that.
There's also the fact that I write a lot of AUs, so there's worldbuilding to take focus as well. So. *shrugs sheepishly*
I do ship in this fandom. Sort of. A bit. I like a lot of the canon het ships (Thor/Jane, Bruce/Betty, Tony/Pepper), and tend to write them (mostly the last one) here or there. I also have written a few non-canon ships, mostly Tony/Loki, Steve/Natasha, and Nick/Phil. Also that Tony/Pepper/Bruce/Rhodey fic, the Steve/Maria ficlet, the myriad pairings involved in the Prohibition AU, and Loki/Mystique.
There are quite a few ships and shipping possibilities that I'm interested in, and just haven't gotten around to writing yet. *grins a little* I just keep getting distracted by all the gen combos I want to examine first. *shrugs*
Part of the problem, I guess, is that shipping is sort of second-string priority for me. My focus is on favourite characters, not favourite ships, so most of what I'm doing is looking for interesting interactions between my favourites. Sometimes those interactions are shippy, most of the time they're genshippy. And sometimes, much as I love gen interactions between a certain set of characters, romantic/sexual ones go wonky places for me.
Ships I'm flirting with the idea of, that I haven't gotten around to writing yet, would be:
Tony/Rhodey - I adore them madly as friends, and as a trine with Pepper, and in that foursome with Bruce, and I'm circling around to just them, not-so-platonic, because I just have this massive thing that Tony feels safe with Rhodey, and Rhodey once risked his entire career to search hopelessly in a desert for his most-likely-dead friend, and there was the whole thing with MIT back in the day, and the big scary toys, and the having each other's backs thing, and the fact that Tony once shoved an untested element in his chest because he needed to go save Rhodey ASAP (well, also Pepper and New York and the Expo, but Rhodey was in a Hammerised armour, so), and also, um, the suit Rhodey 'borrowed'? Look at how close the Iron Man fits to Tony. You're gonna tell me Tony didn't have to size Rhodey up a few times, to get the future-War Machine to size? It was fairly obvious from the fact that it had a self-contained reactor (so not intended for Tony's use) that Tony always meant Rhodey to have it. So. Um. Sizing, yes. *grins faintly*
They have some major problems to work through (like, oh, Tony not telling Rhodey that he was dying, for a random example), and I adore them as friends, and they make a lovely trine with Pepper, but I'm sort of investigating the ship on its own, because Tony's a bit fluid like that for me. However ...
Rhodey/Maria - I also randomly have a yen for this pair now, too. And this is pure happenstance, because I happened to rewatch IM1 and Avengers in close conjuction, and somewhere in my head, Rhodey's casual appreciation for fast-moving machinery crossed with Maria Hill in that jeep in the opening, and now I have a random backstory in my head where they met once while Rhodey was between assignments, and Maria needed a back-up codriver for an amateur rally, and Rhodey said yes because Rhodey hangs out with Tony Stark and has some small problems with adrenalin, and Maria subsequently took him on the ride of his life, with Rhodey in the passenger seat calling out route-notes with the calm, cool collectedness of a man who flies really expensive aircraft for a living and, again, hangs around with Tony Stark.
Which history they use to troll Tony badly once he finally sees them together (also most of SHIELD), because there are so many double entendres you can get out of describing a rally event ('ride of his life', 'getting dirty', going towards the kinky end with roll-cages and jesus-handles, or Rhodey doing an imitation of the route-notes with things like 'hard right, 90 degrees, tightens' - for those curious, my dad used to rally, and listening to him and his old mates was ... educational. *grins sheepishly*).
Add in both of their genuine dedication to their respective uniforms, the shit they regularly put up with that's good for a drink or twenty ... I could honestly see them, whether as a relationship or just as drinking/rallying buddies who have a good time now and then. Heh. (Also, I think I just basically want Maria Hill driving. Anything. Sorry). I keep meaning to write this one, and keep getting slightly sidetracked -_-;
Nick/Phil - technically, I have written this one, I just want to ramble about it for a second because of the difficulties of shipping Nick Fury. Because Nick is badass and awesome, and needs to wear black turtlenecks with shoulder holsters more often (by which I mean, take off his coat), but he's also in a really really unfortunate position within the cast, in that he's in charge of half of them officially, and weirdly connected to the other half. Which is only a problem if you have an aversion to commander-subordinate relationships, but, um, I sort of do.
Which means I (personally) can't really ship him with Maria, Clint or Natasha. Well, not to write. Maybe to read, if it was done well.
Definitely not Natasha, because given Natasha's history, that would really ping both the 'abuse of power' and the 'spy manipulation' alarms in my head. Which would be fine if they were on opposite sides (hence Tony/Loki, by the by), but I kinda want mostly healthy relationships for my favourites -_-; Though I have a massive love for Fury-and-Natasha gen, because of the scene with the sceptre (they stand alone in a room full of superhumans+Tony, and when Bruce goes for the sceptre they react in unison) and the scene in IM2 (one, Nick appears to micromanage like nobody's business, and two, he seems to be plenty willing to personally be an agent's backup/extraction), and the fact that when Clint was taken, Natasha stayed with SHIELD. Whatever the circumstances of her coming to SHIELD, it's obvious that by the time of Avengers, she both trusts and is comfortable in the organisation, and believes they will value her life and the lives of those she cares for (she trusts them to get Clint back, so she doesn't go alone to get him).
I also feel weird pairing Fury with Bruce (for the same reasons as Natasha), Steve (because for a bit there, Fury was Steve's main connection with the modern world, via SHIELD and the people who brought him back, and, um, abuse of power, just a little - same problem I have pairing Tony/JARVIS romantically, actually), and with Tony (because Howard). Which doesn't leave a lot of people to pair Nick with, which is bad, because ... um. Badass and shoulder holsters and morally ambiguous, and willing to walk into hell, and yes.
So. Phil. Who should ping the exact same buttons as Maria and Clint and Natasha, but doesn't. Mostly because, for some reason, Phil gives the impression that he views 'orders' as 'suggestions' at the very best of times. Unlike Maria (who would absolutely punch Fury in the face if he tried anything, mind, but that involves a lot of careful negotiation to get past that, and I'm not up for that just yet in fic). Plus there's a lot of suggested history between Nick and Phil, Phil is the go-to guy in SHIELD, that whole scene on the Helicarrier, where Phil gives Nick a tool to use with his last breath ... There's the slight problem of, you know, his last breath, but if fandom can collectively ignore Phil's death, dammit, so can I. Or not, if we're going towards the more tragic end of things, but mostly I think I'm going with 'cheerfully ignoring'.
And um, yes. That had maybe nothing to do with anything, it's just been frustrating me lately. I'm beginning to really appreciate Phil/Nick, but ... Um. Is there anyone in any canon who is Fury's genuine, honest equal? Who's father he didn't work with once upon a time? (I'll actually take the fathers in question, but if I ship Nick with Howard, then wow does Nick and Tony in the present get complicated and weird). Because if there isn't Nick must be really goddamned lonely, a lot of the time.
(As a random sidenote, Nick/Sif seems like it might be interesting, but it also seems wholly unsafe. *smiles faintly* I'm not sure if that's a warning or an incentive).
Anyway. Those are the pairs I'm currently nosing at. Other pop up as they occur to me or are prompted at me. Heh. My problem is that I also have a whole bunch of gen combos that I adore, or want to try, and they keep ...
I mean, I want Tony & Natasha, on the myriad issues of trust and history they have between them, and also them running infiltrations together (apparently, I have a thing). I want Natasha & Nick. I want Rhodey and everyone (working on it, Rhodey and Bruce, plus Door Knockers, when it stops balking at me, should have a nice few combos for me). The whole random thing in Interlude, Tony-Rhodey-Nick-Natasha (which is what kickstarted the whole Tony/Rhodey interest, by the by, because it let me pin down the 'Tony feels safe' thing - you would not believe how much of a thing that is for me in pairings). I keep cycling back to Phil-and-Pepper, but I need to form a consistent consensus on whether or not I think he's dead (mostly, I waffle, but it seems to fall out that in gen I prefer to have people react as if he's dead, and in Nick/Phil I prefer that it was all a (very close run) bluff on Nick's part).
I'm currently hung up on Maria behind the wheel of a vehicle, and want any other cast member who's ever driven a car to appreciate it (Steve, for example, Rhodey, as stated above, Natasha, Tony, Happy Hogan). I want more JARVIS-and-Nick, and need to manufacture an excuse to manage it. I want to do just more Steve and Thor in general, but they've always been the slipperiest for me. For some reason, in action and AU fics, I've been putting Steve and Clint together, because for some reason I really like the way they could work together in the field. I want more of the Tony-Pepper-Rhodey trine. I want Tony Stark to meet Jane Foster, and the science foursome (Tony, Bruce, Betty, Jane). Also, more Thor-and-Dummy.
For some reason, I also want more Thor-and-Tony, but the way I want them keeps skipping around on me. I kinda want to strand them somewhere together, possibly on the other side of a portal, and see how they survive together, but that would be a lot of work, and I have way too many stories as it is. *shrugs sheepishly*
But. Um. Anyway. I think my point is, Avengers isn't really a shipping fandom for me at the minute. This might change as more movies are added, but as it stands, not so much. I have passing whims, and some ideas I'm actively working on, but I keep ... I want the characters to interact every which way among the cast (with weighting towards the Casa de Stark and SHIELD), but ... gen. All the gen. All the friendship and teamfics and complicated trust issues and badassery and family and devotion and protectiveness and hard choices and ...
I'm hung up, is what I'm saying. Also, this cast needs to stop being awesome in too many directions at once (okay, no, that's a lie, but they could try makes things easier for me, couldn't they?).
And yes, I'm writing this instead of writing a story, because I need a bit of a break, but I still want to ramble about the characters. *grins sheepishly*
You may have noticed that aside from the odd pairing fic here or there, I'm still largely focused on gen cast interactions in this fandom. Why, I'm not completely sure, though I have to say there are so many character combo options that I still haven't actually run out of people I want to see interact together, so there's that.
There's also the fact that I write a lot of AUs, so there's worldbuilding to take focus as well. So. *shrugs sheepishly*
I do ship in this fandom. Sort of. A bit. I like a lot of the canon het ships (Thor/Jane, Bruce/Betty, Tony/Pepper), and tend to write them (mostly the last one) here or there. I also have written a few non-canon ships, mostly Tony/Loki, Steve/Natasha, and Nick/Phil. Also that Tony/Pepper/Bruce/Rhodey fic, the Steve/Maria ficlet, the myriad pairings involved in the Prohibition AU, and Loki/Mystique.
There are quite a few ships and shipping possibilities that I'm interested in, and just haven't gotten around to writing yet. *grins a little* I just keep getting distracted by all the gen combos I want to examine first. *shrugs*
Part of the problem, I guess, is that shipping is sort of second-string priority for me. My focus is on favourite characters, not favourite ships, so most of what I'm doing is looking for interesting interactions between my favourites. Sometimes those interactions are shippy, most of the time they're genshippy. And sometimes, much as I love gen interactions between a certain set of characters, romantic/sexual ones go wonky places for me.
Ships I'm flirting with the idea of, that I haven't gotten around to writing yet, would be:
Tony/Rhodey - I adore them madly as friends, and as a trine with Pepper, and in that foursome with Bruce, and I'm circling around to just them, not-so-platonic, because I just have this massive thing that Tony feels safe with Rhodey, and Rhodey once risked his entire career to search hopelessly in a desert for his most-likely-dead friend, and there was the whole thing with MIT back in the day, and the big scary toys, and the having each other's backs thing, and the fact that Tony once shoved an untested element in his chest because he needed to go save Rhodey ASAP (well, also Pepper and New York and the Expo, but Rhodey was in a Hammerised armour, so), and also, um, the suit Rhodey 'borrowed'? Look at how close the Iron Man fits to Tony. You're gonna tell me Tony didn't have to size Rhodey up a few times, to get the future-War Machine to size? It was fairly obvious from the fact that it had a self-contained reactor (so not intended for Tony's use) that Tony always meant Rhodey to have it. So. Um. Sizing, yes. *grins faintly*
They have some major problems to work through (like, oh, Tony not telling Rhodey that he was dying, for a random example), and I adore them as friends, and they make a lovely trine with Pepper, but I'm sort of investigating the ship on its own, because Tony's a bit fluid like that for me. However ...
Rhodey/Maria - I also randomly have a yen for this pair now, too. And this is pure happenstance, because I happened to rewatch IM1 and Avengers in close conjuction, and somewhere in my head, Rhodey's casual appreciation for fast-moving machinery crossed with Maria Hill in that jeep in the opening, and now I have a random backstory in my head where they met once while Rhodey was between assignments, and Maria needed a back-up codriver for an amateur rally, and Rhodey said yes because Rhodey hangs out with Tony Stark and has some small problems with adrenalin, and Maria subsequently took him on the ride of his life, with Rhodey in the passenger seat calling out route-notes with the calm, cool collectedness of a man who flies really expensive aircraft for a living and, again, hangs around with Tony Stark.
Which history they use to troll Tony badly once he finally sees them together (also most of SHIELD), because there are so many double entendres you can get out of describing a rally event ('ride of his life', 'getting dirty', going towards the kinky end with roll-cages and jesus-handles, or Rhodey doing an imitation of the route-notes with things like 'hard right, 90 degrees, tightens' - for those curious, my dad used to rally, and listening to him and his old mates was ... educational. *grins sheepishly*).
Add in both of their genuine dedication to their respective uniforms, the shit they regularly put up with that's good for a drink or twenty ... I could honestly see them, whether as a relationship or just as drinking/rallying buddies who have a good time now and then. Heh. (Also, I think I just basically want Maria Hill driving. Anything. Sorry). I keep meaning to write this one, and keep getting slightly sidetracked -_-;
Nick/Phil - technically, I have written this one, I just want to ramble about it for a second because of the difficulties of shipping Nick Fury. Because Nick is badass and awesome, and needs to wear black turtlenecks with shoulder holsters more often (by which I mean, take off his coat), but he's also in a really really unfortunate position within the cast, in that he's in charge of half of them officially, and weirdly connected to the other half. Which is only a problem if you have an aversion to commander-subordinate relationships, but, um, I sort of do.
Which means I (personally) can't really ship him with Maria, Clint or Natasha. Well, not to write. Maybe to read, if it was done well.
Definitely not Natasha, because given Natasha's history, that would really ping both the 'abuse of power' and the 'spy manipulation' alarms in my head. Which would be fine if they were on opposite sides (hence Tony/Loki, by the by), but I kinda want mostly healthy relationships for my favourites -_-; Though I have a massive love for Fury-and-Natasha gen, because of the scene with the sceptre (they stand alone in a room full of superhumans+Tony, and when Bruce goes for the sceptre they react in unison) and the scene in IM2 (one, Nick appears to micromanage like nobody's business, and two, he seems to be plenty willing to personally be an agent's backup/extraction), and the fact that when Clint was taken, Natasha stayed with SHIELD. Whatever the circumstances of her coming to SHIELD, it's obvious that by the time of Avengers, she both trusts and is comfortable in the organisation, and believes they will value her life and the lives of those she cares for (she trusts them to get Clint back, so she doesn't go alone to get him).
I also feel weird pairing Fury with Bruce (for the same reasons as Natasha), Steve (because for a bit there, Fury was Steve's main connection with the modern world, via SHIELD and the people who brought him back, and, um, abuse of power, just a little - same problem I have pairing Tony/JARVIS romantically, actually), and with Tony (because Howard). Which doesn't leave a lot of people to pair Nick with, which is bad, because ... um. Badass and shoulder holsters and morally ambiguous, and willing to walk into hell, and yes.
So. Phil. Who should ping the exact same buttons as Maria and Clint and Natasha, but doesn't. Mostly because, for some reason, Phil gives the impression that he views 'orders' as 'suggestions' at the very best of times. Unlike Maria (who would absolutely punch Fury in the face if he tried anything, mind, but that involves a lot of careful negotiation to get past that, and I'm not up for that just yet in fic). Plus there's a lot of suggested history between Nick and Phil, Phil is the go-to guy in SHIELD, that whole scene on the Helicarrier, where Phil gives Nick a tool to use with his last breath ... There's the slight problem of, you know, his last breath, but if fandom can collectively ignore Phil's death, dammit, so can I. Or not, if we're going towards the more tragic end of things, but mostly I think I'm going with 'cheerfully ignoring'.
And um, yes. That had maybe nothing to do with anything, it's just been frustrating me lately. I'm beginning to really appreciate Phil/Nick, but ... Um. Is there anyone in any canon who is Fury's genuine, honest equal? Who's father he didn't work with once upon a time? (I'll actually take the fathers in question, but if I ship Nick with Howard, then wow does Nick and Tony in the present get complicated and weird). Because if there isn't Nick must be really goddamned lonely, a lot of the time.
(As a random sidenote, Nick/Sif seems like it might be interesting, but it also seems wholly unsafe. *smiles faintly* I'm not sure if that's a warning or an incentive).
Anyway. Those are the pairs I'm currently nosing at. Other pop up as they occur to me or are prompted at me. Heh. My problem is that I also have a whole bunch of gen combos that I adore, or want to try, and they keep ...
I mean, I want Tony & Natasha, on the myriad issues of trust and history they have between them, and also them running infiltrations together (apparently, I have a thing). I want Natasha & Nick. I want Rhodey and everyone (working on it, Rhodey and Bruce, plus Door Knockers, when it stops balking at me, should have a nice few combos for me). The whole random thing in Interlude, Tony-Rhodey-Nick-Natasha (which is what kickstarted the whole Tony/Rhodey interest, by the by, because it let me pin down the 'Tony feels safe' thing - you would not believe how much of a thing that is for me in pairings). I keep cycling back to Phil-and-Pepper, but I need to form a consistent consensus on whether or not I think he's dead (mostly, I waffle, but it seems to fall out that in gen I prefer to have people react as if he's dead, and in Nick/Phil I prefer that it was all a (very close run) bluff on Nick's part).
I'm currently hung up on Maria behind the wheel of a vehicle, and want any other cast member who's ever driven a car to appreciate it (Steve, for example, Rhodey, as stated above, Natasha, Tony, Happy Hogan). I want more JARVIS-and-Nick, and need to manufacture an excuse to manage it. I want to do just more Steve and Thor in general, but they've always been the slipperiest for me. For some reason, in action and AU fics, I've been putting Steve and Clint together, because for some reason I really like the way they could work together in the field. I want more of the Tony-Pepper-Rhodey trine. I want Tony Stark to meet Jane Foster, and the science foursome (Tony, Bruce, Betty, Jane). Also, more Thor-and-Dummy.
For some reason, I also want more Thor-and-Tony, but the way I want them keeps skipping around on me. I kinda want to strand them somewhere together, possibly on the other side of a portal, and see how they survive together, but that would be a lot of work, and I have way too many stories as it is. *shrugs sheepishly*
But. Um. Anyway. I think my point is, Avengers isn't really a shipping fandom for me at the minute. This might change as more movies are added, but as it stands, not so much. I have passing whims, and some ideas I'm actively working on, but I keep ... I want the characters to interact every which way among the cast (with weighting towards the Casa de Stark and SHIELD), but ... gen. All the gen. All the friendship and teamfics and complicated trust issues and badassery and family and devotion and protectiveness and hard choices and ...
I'm hung up, is what I'm saying. Also, this cast needs to stop being awesome in too many directions at once (okay, no, that's a lie, but they could try makes things easier for me, couldn't they?).
And yes, I'm writing this instead of writing a story, because I need a bit of a break, but I still want to ramble about the characters. *grins sheepishly*
