monday recs: sympathetic Maria Hill

[tielan]

I'll Be Seeing You – Captain America Movies - Steve/Maria
This is a missing scene from the movie - a brief and touching interlude, showing Maria’s concern for those who’s missions are about to be blown to hell when they take on HYDRA during the movie. This is something the movie didn't address at all: dozens upon dozens of SHIELD agents have been pretty much death-warranted by Steve's plan to throw SHIELD out the window - the baby with the bathwater. So I really liked the protectiveness she shows in trying to get word out to the operatives who'll be in danger because of the 'tell all' situation that Steve and Natasha implemented. Yes, Maria has to see the big picture and sacrifice at times, but if she can manage the little details without compromising the big picture, then I imagine she would.

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Somebody, I have no idea who, pointed out that there is absolutely no way that Natasha could have transferred everything on the SHIELD servers in the time available in the movie--no matter how much bandwidth they have, the mass of data is simply too large (and they backed this claim up by quoting the amount of data the NSA generates in a single day as an example). They also pointed out that spy agencies don't store all different kinds of data together as a security measure, so that in a report you'll have an agent's code name but you need a completely different report from a different section of the database to get the list of real agent names to match with code names. So that it would be easy, once Pierce and Nick had done their eye-scan thing to give Natasha full access to the systems, to pull out one kind of data (completed mission reports, top-level planning and reports) and not bother with other kinds of data (such as operations currently under way and agent code names/cover stories). And note that Natasha was tapping away at the computer for a while, it wasn't just "select all--copy-paste to the outside world", which makes it plausible that she could have been selecting the most damaging stuff and the stuff that most needs to be made public and not the current operational realities.

This would match up with what we see on Agents of SHIELD, where there is evidently quite a lot of stuff about secret bases and current missions and such that the military is scrambling to figure out.

But I really like that story anyway.

[tielan]

no matter how much bandwidth they have, the mass of data is simply too large

This is true. and somewhat reassuring.

I can't remember - was there a reason they gave for dumping SHIELD's secrets out, other than that they wanted to expose HYDRA?

[beatrice_otter]

I can't remember - was there a reason they gave for dumping SHIELD's secrets out, other than that they wanted to expose HYDRA?

I don't remember.