EXCHANGE INTERFACE

The Other Side Of Infinity is one epilogue shy of complete. I'll post that on Friday or the weekend. eta: I decided I couldn't be arsed waiting to put it up. Just post it, all done.

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the other side of infinity (84281 words) by tielan
Chapters: 26/26
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Nick Fury & Maria Hill, Maria Hill & Sam Wilson & Bucky Barnes & Wanda Maximoff, Maria Hill & Jane Foster, Peter Quill & Groot & Mantis & Drax, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Nick Fury & T'Challa, Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Maria Hill & Sam Wilson
Characters: Maria Hill, Nick Fury, T'Challa, Sam Wilson (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, Jane Foster (Marvel), Loki (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Hela (Marvel), Groot (Marvel), Mantis (Marvel), Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Carol Danvers, Hulk (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Thor (Marvel), Ayo (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), action-adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Infinity Gems, Infinity Gauntlet, Sacrifice, Fan theories
Summary:

On the other side of the moment, those turned to dust may no longer be 'alive', but they're damn well not helpless.

This is the story of how they saved themselves.

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And I feel like right now I need a bit of 'flop' space for my brain to recover from writing and rewriting and stressing and ARGH. It won't get much time, for that, though. I bought my ticket for Endgame, next Wednesday 5:20pm. Expect copious ranting around 9pm AEST.

Not going to look at the release. Not going to check out spoilers. On the other hand if the movie is actually about how Maria gets to save the world with all the other Snaptured people...

*crickets chirp*

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Frankly, I just want to make it out of this fandom alive.

This is mildly out of left field, but I’m starting to wonder.

What if the Steve-pairing endgame in the movies really were Maria/Steve?

( yes, yes, I know, it's ridic, but WHAT IF? Hear me out! )

Seeing as it's the week that Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out in cinemas through Australia and the US, I thought I'd pimp a couple of my favourite Maria/Steve fics.

There aren't very many of them. 118 works on AO3 under the Steve/Maria pairing tag.

And that's including all the stories in which it's a secondary pairing, or the ones which could be subtitled 'Everyone's Paired With Someone, Oh Look, There's Nobody For Steve, Let's Put In A Reference To Maria Hill' or 'I'm Writing This Slash Pairing With Steve But We Need Him To Fail The Heterosexuality Test'. And, of course, the 'Let's Infect Maria With Pollen And Have Her Throw Herself At Guys Who Aren't Interested For Laughs' story. (There's only one. Thank God.)

Of those 118 works, I've written 36. That's over 25% of the Steve/Maria fics on AO3. At one point, I'd written nearly 50%. That was a truly terrifying point in time - the realisation that I was fuelling this ship all on my lonesome.

It's gotten better since then.

Chiseled Out Of Brick – brandywine421

He was a grown man, hell, he was a superhero. Asking a girl out for a drink wasn't that hard. It wasn't rocket science or espionage or math or divine intervention - it was just asking a girl a question. Out loud.

If I had any complaint about this story, it's that the ending didn't quite finish on the strong note I was hoping for. However, the rest of the story is A-plus on the characterisation, story development, and relationship dynamic.

Basically, how Steve and Maria start off being fuck buddies and kind of fall in love along the way to managing the Avengers, rescuing Bucky, and keeping Maria from getting killed.

I have a thing for the stories where the Avengers come around to being on Maria's team; the ones where they don't trust her any more than she trusts them, but they get to it in the end. And this one is a doozy from start to finish, while showing exactly how awesome and BAMFy Maria is.

The introduction of Bucky is beautifully tense – die-hard Clintashas will have to read it through one eye squinting: it's Natasha/Bucky with a side-serving of past Clint/Coulson, but it's still pretty damn good.

She's written a sequel where Steve and Maria have a baby; which is self-confessed fluff all the way.


can't carve a whistle by irnan

Maria Hill's never found it easy to explain why she became a SHIELD agent, but she knows why she stays one.

This is the story that started it all off for me – and, I suppose, therefore started it off for a lot of other people, since I seem to have converted a bunch of people to Maria/Steve over the last two years.

I went looking for fic about Maria Hill, and this was one of the few that had her listed immediately after the pairings list. Most of the time, she appeared after all the Avengers, Nick, Phil, Darcy Lewis, and assorted other characters.

It's fairly safe to say that 'A Woman Of Edges' and 'Give A Girl A Moment' both had significant roots in this story.

I liked the idea of Maria having a family: people to ground her, to give her that anchor to why she's doing this – something personal. (And I'm tired of heroes/heroines who have no family attachments. At all. There's a rant in here about liminal heroes, but I'll leave that for another post.) The scene in 'A Woman Of Edges' where Steve meets Maria's family took a few cues from the scene in here where Maria's family meets Tony Stark. And Maria's conversation with Steve about the nature of their work is echoed in her thoughts on personal responsibility in 'Give A Girl A Moment And She'll Take You For All You've Got'.

Sadly, irnan only ever wrote two Steve/Maria fics, and the Steve/Maria was more of an incidental side thing than an actual focus on their relationship.


there is nothing like a dame by Anonymous

Very loosely based on an avengerkink prompt that wished for Steve going down on all the USO girls. Somehow it ended up being more about the road to Steve going down on all the USO girls, how he learned to pleasure a woman, and how these skills do not go unused in the twenty-first century.

First note: Not everyone will be able to read this fic, the author has restricted it – presumably only to AO3 users (there's a little padlock next to the anon'd author).

It's Steve/Maria and Steve/OFC – lots of Steve/OFC, in fact, and basically about how Steve gets his sexual education before he becomes Captain America and how he and Maria end up in a relationship. It's hot, it's pretty cute, and even if the author hasn't labelled it Steve/Maria, there's definitely an element whereby they're developing an actual relationship – even if that relationship is only 'fuckbuddies'. An excellent smutfic.

Requested by crazy4orcas:

If you could write your own movie for Marvel -- who would make up your cast and what would be a general outline of the movie? Would you set it up for sequels, or maybe go the trilogy route?

AHAHAHAHAHA!

Dangerous, dangerous topic this one! But at the end of this, I want you to remember that YOU ASKED FOR IT.

Okay, I'd go trilogy route, because, hey, TRILOGY. (Plus, we really need more stories about women. Lots more stories.

( Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Trilogy: The Director, The Cavalry, The Steel Fist )

Whew! I spent most of the day putting this together, reading up character bios in the films and working out which characters could do what...

ETA: ...and I just saw the news about the Peggy Carter TV series. Almost certainly would go a very different direction.

DW | LJ

A local paper has contacted my hockey club to let us know that there'll be a photographer along to take photos of our game this Sunday.

His name is Phil Rogers.

A scene from my fic "From A Certain Point Of View". Discarded, because Jane playing 'dead letter drop' was more fun and actually involved Steve and Maria.

( in which Jane drops the bomb, Tony is disbelieving, and Pepper makes a resolution to fail more better in future )

Oh wow. WOW.

Learning Lilith, Claiming Kali
Biological implications of being a hetero-normative homozygous-X hero – fluff, chocolate, heartache, and blood. Six stories of women of the Avengers movieverse. Betty Ross, Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster, Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff, Peggy Carter, Pepper Potts and Sif. Plus assorted heterozygous characters of lesser note.

This is AMAZING. Beautifully written, well-thought out, very female-focused, uncomfortable and complicated and poignant and sharp all at once. Natasha and Peggy's sections are particularly moving.

I admit, I had to skim Darcy's section to get to 'the good stuff' which pretty much started with Betty Ross, who I don't even know. And I would have liked a bit more in-depth Maria, but still.

It started off as a "Five Times..." and then took a sharp right towards "In The Middle Of Nowhere With Each Other" heading for "Undercover Lovers" but has now taken an about face and is firmly in "The Avengers Give Dating Advice With Expected Results" territory.

*facepalm*

Avengers fic, ~6,700 words.

I blame madjm for the bunny, although I suspect she was probably expecting the casting significance to be the other way around...

Now for betas and edits and a weekend, and then the Next Fic Of Doom. (I might have to take the month out for the atlantisbigbang. I really want to finish the AU where the Pegasus expedition comes to a Goa'uld-controlled Earth...)