Methinks Fury is a bit too used to dealing with 'his kind' as it were, I.E. people involved in the super-spy community, or just the wider superhero community in general really. Noah's basically just a civilian with a few extra bells and whistles, and what might be considered a 'softball' introduction for someone part of that community instead was practically trauma-inducing for Noa. And I do feel like this was a miscalculation on Fury's part, as while terrifying Noa into toeing the line can be considered something of a 'win', he's also succeeded in ostracizing her to the point where she's going to be incredibly reluctant to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. in any capacity without a really DAMN good reason. Which further sucks because he absolutely could have had his cake and eaten it too with just a bit more legwork, but decided to cut corners instead and wound up terrifying a civvie with no real malevolent intentions. Which just goes to show that for all his hyper-competence at certain parts of his job, others have definitely atrophied over the years.
Not really no. Like theoretically I could, but in practice it is a hard no. I've tried, in fact I've been lurking on Spacebattles without an account for at least a year before I made an account on Sufficient Velocity.
You're assuming I have the same priorities and/or upbringing you do. Don't. I've spent my life living in a gray economy of a country that is the remnant of a remnant of one of the smaller empires of the cold war that fully sank into fascism a little before I was born, broke up in an ugly protracted civil war and then the imperial remnant of that conflict broke up into three pieces on top of that after the democratic reforms were starting to get implemented and the piece I'm in, Serbia, which consider itself to be the heir to that old empire that was Yugoslavia went right back to sinking into fascism and the only reason it is not fully a fascist country already is because of the military reforms that were done just a little bit before the fascists went for their takeover.
Must be nice to be able to trust that the country you live in isn't spying on you to the point you don't find each and every password you use online an onerous ponderous necessary task to create and keep distinct from every other one.
Methinks Fury is a bit too used to dealing with 'his kind' as it were, I.E. people involved in the super-spy community, or just the wider superhero community in general really. Noah's basically just a civilian with a few extra bells and whistles, and what might be considered a 'softball' introduction for someone part of that community instead was practically trauma-inducing for Noa. And I do feel like this was a miscalculation on Fury's part, as while terrifying Noa into toeing the line can be considered something of a 'win', he's also succeeded in ostracizing her to the point where she's going to be incredibly reluctant to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. in any capacity without a really DAMN good reason. Which further sucks because he absolutely could have had his cake and eaten it too with just a bit more legwork, but decided to cut corners instead and wound up terrifying a civvie with no real malevolent intentions. Which just goes to show that for all his hyper-competence at certain parts of his job, others have definitely atrophied over the years.
Granted, I can sort of see where he'd want to take the safer option - the gain from doing what he did in the worst-case scenario where she's malicious probably outweighs the downsides from doing it in other scenarios if she's not - but yeah, probably not the best idea when he could have researched a bit more and figured out he didn't in any way need to.
"Now, when I tell the lawyer for a third time, like the faeries of old, that we are having a friendly chat, I expect her to believe me." He tilted his head slightly. "Hoover's old gang isn't in the room with us, Ms. Schaefer."
Yup, this explains it - this Nick Fury is J. Edgar Hoover's contemporary and is still around because he got his own version of the super soldier serum. During Hoover's time all sorts of things were allowed and possibly even expected. E.g. segregation and casual racism - it was considered to be a huge step forward to allow black soldiers and pilots to fight in WW2, and there were separate fountains whites and non-whites. I am not saying this Nick Fury is a racist, but he is still the product of his time and is perfectly ready and willing to do stuff that is both stupid and shitty from a more modern perspective.
It is way past time for this guy to either get with the program or retire. Or at least to take a back seat to everything. I would say that Noa should be the catalyst at some point why Nick Fury goes away, and somebody like Phil Coulson takes over. Phil Coulson (at least the MCU version) would not act like such a smug dick to somebody who is not a threat - and likely to somebody who is a threat. He would be polite and unassuming, which would go over much better in this situation and would get him much further in the long run. If Phil needed to have a private chat with Noa and couldn't get an appointment, at worst he would have shown up at her door and knocked.
But it is a failure of omission rather than commission. His only fault here is ignorance, and while that is no small fault, it makes his reaction a little more understandable.
No, that's the first and honest mistake. The second is being an unempathetic asshole that has the emotional reaction of a rock to a woman who trusted him showing up at his door in tears. Unless he goes into immediate damage control mode as soon as the most recent emergency is over, he has lost her as a friend, student, potential ally, etc.
Following the rules does not work. Marvel is a world of big bullies who do as they will.
Only way to survive is with a bigger stick.
You neither want nor are able to stand against evil. You just bend. So you'll be just another skull for the pile. Having horns doesn't make that meaningfully more interesting.
In this comment are you saying that Fury is evil, or that he is perfectly justified in not following the rules and therefore being a complete asshole as well as a moron who has just antagonized a very powerful and resourceful individual for no actual gain?
Not really no. Like theoretically I could, but in practice it is a hard no. I've tried, in fact I've been lurking on Spacebattles without an account for at least a year before I made an account on Sufficient Velocity.
You're assuming I have the same priorities and/or upbringing you do. Don't. I've spent my life living in a gray economy of a country that is the remnant of a remnant of one of the smaller empires of the cold war that fully sank into fascism a little before I was born, broke up in an ugly protracted civil war and then the imperial remnant of that conflict broke up into three pieces on top of that after the democratic reforms were starting to get implemented and the piece I'm in, Serbia, which consider itself to be the heir to that old empire that was Yugoslavia went right back to sinking into fascism and the only reason it is not fully a fascist country already is because of the military reforms that were done just a little bit before the fascists went for their takeover.
Must be nice to be able to trust that the country you live in isn't spying on you to the point you don't find each and every password you use online an onerous ponderous necessary task to create and keep distinct from every other one.
I must be missing something - out of curiosity, what does making an account on Spacebattles have to do with trust that the country isn't spying on you? Let's say that they are and that they find out about your Spacebattles account and password - now what? Unless that account contains some sort of information that they would consider subversive, I don't see why they would hypothetically care.
Staff Notice: This has nothing to do with the topic of the thread. Please avoid going off topic like this in the future, and keep affairs of other boards out of this thread.
I must be missing something - out of curiosity, what does making an account on Spacebattles have to do with trust that the country isn't spying on you? Let's say that they are and that they find out about your Spacebattles account and password - now what? Unless that account contains some sort of information that they would consider subversive, I don't see why they would hypothetically care.
Because living in the grey economy in Serbia is in and of itself subversive. The current government has the means of getting/taking taxes from both the white and the black market, but the gray market is outside their ability to actually get under control and has been for decades so just participating in it is seen as subversive.
I nuked my own Twitter the moment it was announced that it was going to be sold to Elon Musk because Musk is a white market conman who keeps trying to make himself a new generation of nobility.
Why the fuck would I even have an account on Spacebattles whose writing and poster culture reminds me of the local black market toughs?
The topic is, as far as I am aware, among other things about security and how much power, paradigms and perspectives affect one's feeling of being secure.
Since you made this post I got something wrong, but I can't see what. Could you clarify your post please?
I think the point is, this is not the thread for discussing whether or not it's any safer to have both an SB and an SV account rather than just one, or how the political situation differs in Serbia compared to the US. That topic has nothing to do with Noa and her lawyerly adventures and should go into a different place.
Fuck this version of Stephen Strange. I get that he's busy. I get that he trusts SHIELD. He set up a security alarm for Noa and then didn't tell her that there were exceptions built in. If Noa never trusts him ever again, that would be completely reasonable.
"Oh yeah. I forgot to tell you that anyone with the correct access in SHIELD can completely bypass your security. And since you are both a mutant and a sorceress, they will definitely want to terrorize you but that's okay because they are totally the good guys™"
Modern Strange is an asshole, but OG Strange was also kind of a misogynist. I mean... I guess most of the OG characters had that issue too, but still. If Noa went and lived with Magneto just to feel some semblance of safety, that's 1000000% on Strange and Fury.
Methinks Fury is a bit too used to dealing with 'his kind' as it were, I.E. people involved in the super-spy community, or just the wider superhero community in general really.
I have been reading fanfiction for a long, long, long time. Since '93-'94, beginning from when I was a snot-nosed brat to now as best as I can tell, and across a wide variety of Fandoms. Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, Ranma, Worm (obviously), Harry Potter, DC comics, Tenchi Muyo, Naruto, Evangelion, Warhammer 40k, and so many more that if I tried to list them all, I'd be at it for at least an hour at best.
I honestly have no idea how much fanfiction I've read over the years. Hell, it's been almost ten years since I've stopped counting just the books that I own (my partner is still stubbornly trying to get me to get rid of some of them and I just as stubbornly keep digging in my heels because you don't just 'get rid of' any portion of something like 500 books). I still fondly remember one of the very first fanfics that I've ever read: Earth Siege by Rain Fletcher, which is still hosted on 6th Dimension of Time, which is somehow still around and kicking after all these decades.
I remember when some of the legends of fanfiction as well as some of the... let's say 'infamous,' started making the rounds (I still fondly think of Racewing and wish I'd kept copies of their fics, but I'm also hoping that it's not a case of me looking back on something with rose-tinted glasses). Innortal, BurgerBecky (before she transitioned), Krista Perry, Ozzallos, Gabriel Blessing, the late Durandall, Trimatter, Fire, WFROSE, David Anez... and those are just the names that I can remember off of the top of my head. No disrespect to those fanfic writers that have made a rep for themselves lately or in the past 10-15 years, especially those who's writing I've taken a liking to. I'm merely doing my best to give an appropriate sense of scale to just how long I've been devouring what other people have written.
My point is, I've read a lot of fanfiction across nearly thirty years. Some of it good. A lot of it bad. A surprising amount genuinely fantastic.
So it is with no exaggeration that I say that 'Pound the Table' may very well be the best goddamn fanfic that I've ever read to date. 🧐
That is not a statement that I make lightly, and I am genuinely a little embarrassed that it took me this long to discover this fic, but I've no shame in admitting that I have spent the past three days binging my way through this story.
My point is, I've read a lot of fanfiction across nearly thirty years. Some of it good. A lot of it bad. A surprising amount genuinely fantastic.
So it is with no exaggeration that I say that 'Pound the Table' may very well be the best goddamn fanfic that I've ever read to date. 🧐
That is not a statement that I make lightly, and I am genuinely a little embarrassed that it took me this long to discover this fic, but I've no shame in admitting that I have spent the past three days binging my way through this story.
I have no words that can accurately describe the full breadth of my reaction reading this. I was grinning, and blushing, and giggling, and probably reduced to a pile of happy mush aglow with endorphins.
Thank you, Geas. I only hope that I can keep this story's quality worthy of the high bar at which you've judged it.
If the sanctum is breached, it's likely from the other side. And in that case Strange wants SHIELD + whoever else is on the list there, if only to fight off whatever chaos god/30 ft column of ectoplasm/new writer's pet VERY DANGEROUS villain got in, without worrying about technicalities. And from his perspective, Fury is...well, not certain if Strange knows Fury can be a dick, doesn't think about it, or doesn't consider it relevant. Considering he's probably been rather busy lately, it's no surprise...but he's still a dick.
I wonder if Fury gained anything from breaking into her apartment he wouldn't from say, breaking into her office. I don't know much about 616 Fury, so i don't know if this kind of manipulative tactics are normal for him or not. Also, he seems to have a very good spy network; wonder if he knew exactly what Noa's powers are. Because "show up and piss off a mutant" is a quick way to get oneself defenestrated in the Marvel universe.
Which raises another legal question: what's the state of Castle Doctrine in this setting, and does it apply to the use of supernatural powers?
Which all sums up to say that Fury could have gotten all the same things by breaking into her office and waiting there for her instead, without causing nearly as much panic as he did.
Which all sums up to say that Fury could have gotten all the same things by breaking into her office and waiting there for her instead, without causing nearly as much panic as he did.
But why would the sneaky spymaster want to wait at the place which would cause the most panic in the person he wants to do a power move on to establish the power dynamic he desires??? Truly a mystery.
Strange has power, both personal and professional, that make him one of the most powerful out there, he and Fury are on the same general side, and he's got a personality that can handle the sort of casual being a dick that Fury would be bringing.
That's all going to come together to give him a much different experience with Fury. He doesn't need to be unaware of what kind of guy Fury is. He just needs to not put himself in Noa's shoes.
This is a big side-note / off-topic divergence because I got curious and went googling after October's earlier response, but Mauser actually sold a bunch of stock in Haifa in 1938 / 1939 to the Electrical Company of Palestine that later wound up being sold privately to Israeli collectors and officers. There was also individual purchases that the Haganah and Irgun factions made, probably from Austrian, Czech and Slovakian agents who would have had access to the Austrian-originating Luger. Which makes sense, early Israel couldn't afford to be picky about gun-types when facing an existential crisis. But anyway, by 2005 there was still a private collection of Luger pistols in Israel that got sold to a foreign enthusiast.
A spherical gun in a vacum may be perfectly morally neutral, however I'm not going to try and argue that to people who feel extremely hurt by a gun that was symbolic of a group that commited mass genocide.
Some epistemologically true things just aren't worth arguing. And their feeling aren't invalid.
I have some good memories of the Luger, because it was satisfying to kill Nazis in Wolfenstein.
Tbh the diffused fascination for Nazi uniforms and/or weapons in media/weraboos is, like, weird.
Yeah, they are the uncontroversial bad guys the protagonist is always justified killing but they need to not look too too bad/pathetic or the conflict isn't satisfying, but eh, it spread so many stupid mythos of them ackshually having a chance of not severely harming their country in long ass wars against every nation, of being super mega engineers or that if you just took out Hitler the others were actually overly cunning...
It's not their 'cold logic' or 'brilliant minds' that made them go so far, it was irrational fear, hatred and conviction that lead to a will to bring down war while most countries thought a second WW was a crazy idea.
I have some good memories of the Luger, because it was satisfying to kill Nazis in Wolfenstein.
Tbh the diffused fascination for Nazi uniforms and/or weapons in media/weraboos is, like, weird.
Yeah, they are the uncontroversial bad guys the protagonist is always justified killing but they need to not look too too bad/pathetic or the conflict isn't satisfying, but eh, it spread so many stupid mythos of them ackshually having a chance of not severely harming their country in long ass wars against every nation, of being super mega engineers or that if you just took out Hitler the others were actually overly cunning...
It's not their 'cold logic' or 'brilliant minds' that made them go so far, it was irrational fear, hatred and conviction that lead to a will to bring down war while most countries thought a second WW was a crazy idea.
I don't think talking up WWII German weapons started as 'make our fictionalized villains look tough'. Though I do not know what it did start as. I would expect this to be a well-studied matter of historiography though, if one knows how to find it, it's such an obvious question.
Which is not to say their equipment was generally especially good, though much of it was at least adequate.
The 'blame Hitler for all the bungles' thing I have heard originates directly from memoirs written by...the exact people who would be blamed for the bungles if it wasn't all Hitler. Hmm.
I don't think talking up WWII German weapons started as 'make our fictionalized villains look tough'. Though I do not know what it did start as. I would expect this to be a well-studied matter of historiography though, if one knows how to find it, it's such an obvious question.
Which is not to say their equipment was generally especially good, though much of it was at least adequate.
The 'blame Hitler for all the bungles' thing I have heard originates directly from memoirs written by...the exact people who would be blamed for the bungles if it wasn't all Hitler. Hmm.
I want to be clear I am not referring to the people in this thread, it was in general in fiction, and I admit it was too off-topic. But another trope I dislike is that the horrible 'experiments' they were doing were going to give them super-weapons/super-soldiers. It's this fascination with the enemy making them different from the horrible people they were.
Thanks for reminding me of who started that myth, but still it's way too common to be only shared from actual Nazis or neo-Nazis.
I want to be clear I am not referring to the people in this thread, it was in general in fiction, and I admit it was too off-topic. But another trope I dislike is that the horrible 'experiments' they were doing were going to give them super-weapons/super-soldiers. It's this fascination with the enemy making them different from the horrible people they were.
Thanks for reminding me of who started that myth, but still it's way too common to be only shared from actual Nazis or neo-Nazis.
Oh, sure - there are apparently a lot of areas of history that have a 'and at this point, there was a really influential book which has been misinforming people ever since', and the downstream effect is the same whether the original source made good faith mistakes or was intentionally inaccurate - lay people learn it as just 'legit history facts' and pass it on as such.
I want to be clear I am not referring to the people in this thread, it was in general in fiction, and I admit it was too off-topic. But another trope I dislike is that the horrible 'experiments' they were doing were going to give them super-weapons/super-soldiers. It's this fascination with the enemy making them different from the horrible people they were.
Thanks for reminding me of who started that myth, but still it's way too common to be only shared from actual Nazis or neo-Nazis.
