6. Consistent decay.
When I was a kid, one of the questions I always had about Sailor Moon was if their sailor suits got ripped in battle, how did they get fixed? Was it magic or did they have to sew them up or what? (Neptune totally stitched Uranus’ for her. Being the ladylovers they were.) Live-action stuff is better about that kind of thing, but I still get excited when destruction to supersuits or people is actually lasting. I love that when the large metal cylinder fell on Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johansson) leg, she managed to get out from under it but she was still running with a tiny bit of a limp until she had that few minutes to sit down before fighting more. I love that Iron Man’s (Robert Downey Jr.) suit got all scuffed up, then he took it off when he got back to Stark Tower, then he put on another one and it got scuffed up too, in different ways but ways that didn’t go away after a few minutes. Etcetera.
5. Steve (Chris Evans) is so polite.
I love that he calls people “sir” or “ma’am” even when he’s been introduced to them. He calls Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who I cannot just call “Nick,” sir all over, he ma’ams Natasha. (And then everyone Captains him right back; aside from the Hulk [Mark Ruffalo], the others don’t really get callsigned to their faces, so I choose to believe it’s manners and fanboying and just general niceness.) And I adore it.
4. Tony’s pop culture nicknames for everyone.
Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is Legolas. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is Shakespeare in the Park and also my personal favorite, Point Break. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is Reindeer Games. Tony is the quippy pop cultural voice of the bunch, making all sorts of jokes about things that the others may not even understand, but the nicknames are my personal favorite.
3. Clint has normal nicknames for Natasha.
He calls her “Tasha,” he calls her “Nat.” It is the bitsiest detail and probably not surprising if I knew my source material, but I just… nicknames. As evidenced by my use of them for everyone ever, I am a huge fan of affectionate diminutives, particularly when actually canonical. And I am seriously legitimately obsessed with Clint’s nicknaming proclivity regarding Tasha. See, I’m doing it too.
2. Natasha has no sense of humor.
She casts the odd smile, this is not to say she’s a humorless person. She’s just very literal, which is something I assume is a product of her background and also just a natural predilection to think that way. “I’m bringing the party to you guys,” Tony says; “I really don’t see how that’s a party,” she replies. But literal though she may be, it’s never once used as a source of humor at her expense. It’s just a fact of her personality and they go with it and sure, I personally chuckle at it, but that’s because I have my literal moments too and I enjoy them in fiction.
1. The second after-credits scene.
As before mentioned. And it just gets more perfect the second time; it’s how people, even larger-than-life, superpowered ones, react to a larger-than-life, superpowered situation in a normal fashion.
–your fangirl heroine.
