I think the MCU's lack of mind control is less choice and more the fact that another studio owned the rights to the X-Men and by extension most of the mutant characters which have those powers, tbh.
i think it's a mistake to assume the avengers don't have contingency plans. they just don't make a thing of it because they assume that's a pretty normal thing to do. i mean, considering three of the most popular characters, in comics as well as movies, are black widow, the winter soldier, and loki, i think it's safe to assume that moral grays are not disparaged by the verse as a whole. and the characters who do hinge on having the moral high ground, it quite often bites them in the ass. see also: iron man's scrupulosity leaving him open to manipulation -> sokovia accords -> civil war -> captain america renouncing his national affiliation and changing his callsign to 'nomad' and all that other good stuff. because tony stark could not handle the idea that, even once he gave up making weapons and started risking his life to make up for it, he could still get a lot of people killed, there was this whole failure cascade leading to the world being unprepared to resist thanos. er. that kind of went too far into canon detail, didn't it? i'm sorry, i'm on a lot of painkillers right now. i've lost track of my point.
I mean they. They totally do have mind control in the movies. Remember Loki and Hawkeye in Avengers? But they don't have a huge stable of superjerks with grudges as just a fact of life people have to plan around, because the story structure they're working with doesn't allow the introduction and accrual of a Rogue's Gallery the way comics do. But your security's going to look a bit different if someone sent to attack your team is most likely going to be a private military contractor than if this kid you all know is regularly harassed by a team of 1) a genius scientist with four autonomous robot arms grafted to his back, 2) a dude made of sand, 3) a dude in an antigravity harness that gives him super-strength, 4) a dude who uses a combination of hologram projectors and hallucinogenic gas to make illusions, 5) a dude who can control electricity, and 6) the world's greatest big game hunter (high on weird jungle drugs that make him immortal and give him mild superstrength and speed) and his army of wild animals, and this is neither out of the norm nor even a fraction of the egomaniacs with goofy themes who he deals with on a regular basis. What emergencies you're prepared for and in what ways is going to look pretty different if the first thing you have to do when you hear that, I dunno, a US Senator robbed a bank out of nowhere or something is sigh and run down a list of immediately obvious potential culprits other than the Senator ranging from Skrulls beginning a long-term invasion plan to Zebediah Killgrave getting bored.
but anyway yeah this has gotten off-topic and I'm not even sure what point I'm trying to make anymore but "Batman beats everyone all the time because he has A PLAN(TM) (even in situations where he could not possibly have had time to develop and execute a plan or could not reasonably have assessed the situation correctly in time to implement a plan) and is also the best fighter who can beat anyone" is not a trend exclusive to crossover fanfic, and while I recognize that "normal dude who can go toe-to-toe with superpeople with his resources, skill, and intelligence" is a power fantasy that is important to a lot of people and part of why they like Batman, diminishment of other characters to show off how cool Batman is gets old regardless of whether the other character is Superman or Captain America.
i misparsed this as "he has a PLANT (TM)" and imagined batman holding a lil potted succulent like 'we gonna get em, bud, you and me together'
Honestly, the trajectory of MCU fic over the years is really interesting to me because of how the MCU Avengers are more of a counter-terrorism group than a selection of heroes with their own rogues gallery. Going back and reading pre-Avengers 1 fic is a trip, because a lot of the authors then were mostly comics fans working off the assumption that the movies were going to follow the same general trend of ever-growing rogues galleries and not something that feels occasionally more at home in, like, the Bond universe instead. And I do think that’s a strength of the MCU (I really, really love the MCU movies that go in on that angle) but it also makes for some very dissonant reading of older fics and the ideas that fans back then had about the overall tone and plot for the series.
yeah, there’s a very visible difference between mcu avengers fics that were written (or started writing) in 2012-2014 and fics that were written after 2015 or so. 2012-era fics often have the mcu avengers be a lot friendlier with each other, take up tony’s offer to live in avengers tower, stuff like that. they also, as you mentioned, assume that the avengers will accumulate a rogue’s gallery of baddies, with monthly/weekly fights/shenanigans. then the MCU progressed to the point where it was clear that stuff wasn’t happening (most obviously with Civil War), and fic started taking that into account. i honestly miss the 2012 era mcu fandom, not least because i disliked Civil War. these days i’ll stumble across a fic that says “Not Team Cap Friendly!” and i’ll be like why are you taking sides at all, the sides were dumb and so was that movie anyways, there’s a clear divide in mcu fic, which i find interesting (but i do wish there was more like, mix-and-match cool stuff from later mcu canon and some of the 2012 era fanon.)
What I wanted from MCU was basically b99 but with Avengers instead of cops. Or even Avengers but also cops.
Brooklyn 99 episode where Jake Peralta bumps into Thor in line at the bagel shop, refuses to shut up about it to everyone in the vicinity for, like, the next week.
i want this so bad now help ;_; i thought 'civil war' was brilliant because both sides were wrong. it was a tragedy in the classic sense.
There's ten (10) tarn/Soundwave fics on ao3 and all of them are bad Like, if someone out there gets subby subby Soundwave begging for mercy? It ain't gonna be Tarn. I'm so annoyed. There's so much potential fuckery to be hard in this ship and nobody is freaking going for it i don't need another fic project lined up but i'm so! Annoyed!
how do I ban an entire fandom (minus the few competent writers) from touching this one character because nobody can write her personal trauma in a proper or respectful way and it's viscerally upsetting to witness
is this about Sakura because if so can we please ban canon from touching most of the original F/SN cast
Fanart rant instead of fanfic one: if making human versions of animal characters, can we please NOT have the animals from Africa all dressed in grass skirts and loincloths? Many humans in Africa wear Western clothing these days, you know. Especially grating when the animals in question are not actually living in Africa.
