Feige and Russos, I hate you

[miladygrey]

Two days out from seeing Infinity War, and I am still Not Okay. I was--seriously--shaking and crying in my seat in the theater for the last ten minutes of the movie, and Yeats was actively concerned.

I want to write fix-it fic, but I just keep staring at the screen and thinking that I don't know how to fix this.

Please feel free to nudge my shell-shocked muse and discuss further in comments.

Reading Log: The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso; A Seditious Affair by K.J. Charles; The Merry Spinster by Daniel Mallory Ortberg; Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym; Aftershock by Andrew Vachss

Comments

[lizbetann]

{{{hugs}}}}

The Chosen Method of Dealing (TM) that has appeared among fics on AO3 appears to be "they ain't dead, everyone who ashed was moved to an alternate universe". Then there was one that used Loki-Sue to fix everything wrong in IW, but that didn't quite work as well (IMHO...)

[rj_anderson]

I never read the original Infinity War arc in the comics, but I did spend most of my adolescence reading comics like "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and "Secret Wars" where scads of superheroes "died" and all the ones we really cared about inevitably came back in some form. So I gasped when Bucky turned to dust, but the instant T'Challa got dusted I relaxed completely because there is no way Marvel is going to get rid of him (and seeing Peter's "death" confirmed it, because also: no way). So I fully expect to see everybody who was dusted return in Part 2, but that doesn't rule out the possibility of other characters we care about dying in the fight against Thanos, and I have my suspicions about who is most likely to die for real (though I won't share them unless you want me to).

I do think all the deaths on board Thor's ship counted, though, and nobody is coming back from that, which makes me really sad because that means Thor is the last Asgardian standing (and also because I will miss both Loki and Heimdall a lot). I'm not sure about Gamora -- I suspect that there may be an exchange in Part 2 that brings her back to life and leaves Thanos dead.

Vision is also a possibility to come back, given that Shuri did work pretty hard on rerouting the connections between him and the stone before Wanda destroyed it / Thanos took it. He might be fixed and revived, but probably won't be unaffected by his experience -- I imagine he may come back with a colder, more robotic personality and have to relearn his humanity with Wanda's (eventual) help.

[miladygrey]

With a little emotional distance from it now, I know that (at the very least) all the disintegrated folks are going to come back. One does not simply render Black Panther and Spider-Man unto dust, they have sequels coming. I am also 99% sure that Gamora's going to return via some clever use of the Soul Stone, and hopefully kick Thanos in the shins as she does. I don't want to think about who's going to die for real in Part Two. I have suspicions too, but I'm not going to tempt fate by saying them out loud.

Heimdall's gone, alas. Loki's...probably gone. He looked dead, he was very definitely killed as opposed to being made not to exist, and his arc went about as far as it could in Ragnarok. That said, and being who he is, I would not be too surprised if a green-and-gold snake slithers into Wakanda at some point.

I think what really got me, even knowing that comic book characters' deaths so rarely stick, was just the horribleness of it there at the end. Watching people evaporate, and there's nothing to be done. Bucky's last word being a confused "Steve?..." Okoye watching her king vanish. Wanda looking almost relieved, because everyone she ever loved is gone and she wants to be gone too. Rocket being the only Guardian left. Tony clutching at Peter in the ruins of Titan.

On that last note, though, the last time someone left Tony Stark in a cave with a box of scraps, he became Iron Man. Now he's on an entire planet full of salvageable tech, he has some concept of what he needs to do, and he has Nebula, who will move the universe if it means she can get back at Thanos.

[rj_anderson]

I really want to see good things happen to Nebula. She's suffered so much (and caused a lot of suffering too, of course, but so have a lot of our well-intentioned heroes).