And to start things off, a little SMS exchange from Manhattan (edited for teenspeak by my formidably talented daughter):



@Babs: OMG- i think one of the ACTUAL AVENGERS touched me!! he pulled me from a bus just before it got blown up!!!

@Tammi: WHAT!!! Was it Captain America? He’s such a babe <3

@Babs: no, smaller than cap… spiky hair, sweaty, smelled a bit, but damn good - like leather and gun powder. weird thing though – he had a bow not a gun

@Tammi: Oh, oh -- that’s the one they call Hawkeye, The Archer. There are NO GOOD PHOTOS of him out there!! I NEED DETAILS!!! Was he cute?? ;D

@Babs: cute? no. totally hot? O M F G. those arms???? i swear i almost died in those arms right there!! DIED, i tell ya!

@Tammi: Rumour has it he’s with BW though. Those guns you smelled on him must’ve been hers. Better watch out – you may die for reals … :)

Muahaha, this is so friggin funny ;D And I can totally see that convo happening!

*snorts*

This? Brilliant. And yup, can totally see it happening!

WAH OH MY GOD. My brain is post - work tired (we were switching offices and I was moving my files and stuff from one end of the building to another) buuuut .... I can see fangirl clans? Like, Steve fangirls VS Clint fangirls? Fangirls shipping Avengers? Certain group of fangirls saying Hawkeye and Black Widow are definitely a couple? OH THE POSSIBILITIES.

Excuse me, are you talking about US?! XD

Lol, almoooossstttt. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Who. Us? Shipping? Ha. Never.

But wait. Fictional fangirls shipping a fictional couple -- would that then be classified as Real People shipping? My mind boggles.

Edited 2013-02-08 03:32 pm (UTC)

May it never be said that my prompts aren't sneaky. *GGG*

If you’re like me, you’ve been following the daily explosion of prompts for the Valentine's Day Massacre Promptathon with awe and delight.

The WHAT now? Jeebus Christmas, how did I miss this?? *runs to see*

It's gonna be great! I can't wait for all the fills.

So we will see you in a couple of days.


Because that post is GLORIOUS

Filled with all sorts of lovely prompts, squee, thinky thoughts and silliness.

Or you know, everything that makes this bar wonderful.

*does gleeful dance*

As a former journo for my different school papers, I would be offended by your characterization if it wasn't absolutely true (I blame the editors!).

Did we see Clint or Natasha in any of the post-battle coverage? I think I would have remembered it if we did. That omission is telling- I don't think there's more than a whisper of their existence in the general public. But the whispers circulating around the covert intelligence community on the other hand.... it would be like Mean Girls.

Yes, I've been checking and there does not appear to be any coverage of Clint and Natasha on those screens -- but that was right after the events. YouTube stuff and people's cellphone pictures would come to light for weeks, and then there'd be the live witness testimony ... My head canon has SHIELD trying to pull as much of that stuff and prevent its publication, so they won't lose their assets' undercover potential -- there'd be a story in that ...

Re the journos: oh, the stories I could tell -- of straw men being built, evidence-free, followed by the fact that no evidence could be found being used as the basis for even more excited stories, torching said straw man with claims that CLEARLY someone MUST be hiding something ... Gah. No wonder I'm such a cynic ...

Re the journos: oh, the stories I could tell -- of straw men being built, evidence-free, followed by the fact that no evidence could be found being used as the basis for even more excited stories

Yeah, and even when journalists are acting in good faith, it's like with wikipedia- you think you read an article and you're getting the story, but then you actually study it and see everything is oversimplified to the point of being wrong. But as long as you get in quotes and do it in AP style, it's all good. Which is why we actually need experts! /preaching to the choir.

My head canon has SHIELD trying to pull as much of that stuff and prevent its publication, so they won't lose their assets' undercover potential -- there'd be a story in that

I wonder if Fury will be like "Since you had to go off an be heroes, it's your job to clean up your mess" or if rookie Agents Smith and Jones get assigned keeping Black Widow and Hawkeye out of the media.

So here is what I think how the both of them will react to being on television and it's very brief but I think it's too the point:

Clint and Natasha's line of work involves the two of them being quiet undercover and secretive....especially since well....they are both assassins. I can see them both hoping that their faces aren't shown as much as the others. If they are I can see them being extremely worried about how it will effect the successes of their missions in the near future because they are now "famous".

Absoolutely. I can see SHIELD engaging in a campaign to pull some stuff of the internet ... I certainly see no PR duties in their future! :-)

A while back I wrote a fic about the ways Tony threw money at the team, and for Natasha, he hired a PR firm to obscure her identity, because there's nothing she would want more than that, I don't think.

Also I've been pressuring a friend of mine to write a story called "#girlavenger" for AGES about the public squeeing over Natasha. She did post this the other day:

But she claims she keeps getting blocked.

That is AMAZING. /laughing way too much.

I would read that so hard...

Fear of spiders is arachnophibia, fear of #girlavenger is common sense.

*lol* This is great. I hope your friend writes more of it.

Writers block is all in the head. I had it for decades (not kidding) -- it was mostly about inhibition to share my thoughts with the world. Maybe this response (testing the waters) will help your friend! There is certainly a lot of originality here that deserves being shared with a wider audience! :-)

Those of you who have ever worked on something that attracted public interest will know that media reports and internet theories relating to stuff you are deeply familiar with are often howlingly inaccurate, badly researched, and full of “spin.”

This is soooooo true. Try watching historical/archaeological documentaries when you're an archaeologist. *headdesk*
I used to love them, but now that I actually studied archaeology, I can't watch them. I bitch and nitpick all the way through. My mother finds it rather amusing...

As for Clint and Natasha, I do see them looking for blog entries, tweets, etc. about each other to tease each other. And I think Steve would be mortified if people would tweet about his body, good looks, etc., which they definitely will do. ;)

I coincidentally wrote a snippet for a hopefully someday completed story about Clint's insecurities. The snippet I wrote today quickly in some spare time fits this topic, actually so here it is. Warning un-beta'd.

“All I’m saying is that we should consider doing some pr, show the world they don’t have to be afraid of us,” Steve offered.

“Speak for yourself,” Natasha mumbled, around her bite of a burger. The group had ventured out to a local burger joint to grab food, getting a little stir crazy in the tower.

Clint nodded in agreement with Natasha. It was one thing to join the Avengers, it was a completely another thing to promote them. He knew his anonymity had been shot that day in New York, damn cellphones everywhere, but that didn’t mean he wanted to speak out about being an Avenger.

“Maybe, we can have representatives, like you and Tony who’s surprisingly good with the public,” Bruce spoke up, always the peacemaker.

Before they could get a response, a gaggle of twenty-something females approached the table.

“It’s really you guys? The Avengers?!?” A curly brunette exclaimed.

“Why yes, that would be us,” Tony widened his arms proudly.

“Oh my God! I was just reading about you guys in this magazine. I was wondering if you could sign it?”

“Of course…” Tony trailed off.

“Tiffany. And this is Brenda, Amy, and Lyra. We are such huge fans. It was amazing what you did for the city,” Tiffany gushed, handing the magazine over to Tony who pulled a sharpie from his jacket pocket.

Nat raised an eyebrow at him. “Really?”

“Always be prepared. You know I was a boy scout.”

Tony looked down to actually see what he was signing, leaving the rest of the group to sit there awkwardly, not knowing how to handle the women. That didn’t seem to deter them.

“So where’s Thor? He’s my favorite.” Clint was pretty sure that it was either Amy or Lyra that spoke, but he couldn’t be for sure. He had zero people skills when it came to situations like this. Tell him he needed to extract a password from one of these women, he could figure that out in five minutes or less. But, sit and make idle chit chat with “fans”, he was fucked.

“He’s on vacation,” Bruce spoke up.

Tony’s laughter interrupted. “Suck on that Steve, I’m way hotter than you…well actually only 2% hotter than you.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve responded.

“This article had the readers of the magazine rate us on who was the hottest. I won out with 24% of the vote.”

Natasha snorted.

Tony ignored her. “Our dear cap got 22%. Black Widow and Thor tied with 19%. And here’s where it gets interesting. Loki received 10%, apparently they all forgot he was the bad guy. Hulk got 4% and…” Tony paused for dramatic effect. “Hawkguy got 2%. They didn’t even get your name right.”

“Your name isn’t Hawkguy?” Tiffany asked quizzically towards Clint.

Clint felt his cheeks heat up against his will and he looked down at his plate. He all of a sudden felt like he was transported back to the middle school where he was always the smallest kid in class and picked last in gym. Nobody wanted the scrawny kid that didn’t even have real parents, but had foster parents, on their team. He remembered asking Julie to the 7th grade Valentine’s day dance and getting rejected in front of all of her friends. Whoever had told him that looks didn’t matter had not been a pimply, twelve year old boy.

He felt Nat’s hand on his leg, and just like that she pulled him from his past, like she had done dozens of times before.

“His name’s actually Hawkeye,” Steve commented.

“You’ve always been my favorite Hawkeye,” said the smaller woman who had hung back. Her face turned scarlet as she spoke, but she looked determinedly forward. “You and Black Widow don’t have any superpowers. It means a girl from Brooklyn can be a superhero, maybe not in the traditional sense, but a superhero to a bunch of kids. I’m a teacher and I always tell my 3rd graders that you two are a testament that my students can grow up to be anything they want, even a superhero.”

Clint felt something stir in him at the obvious emotion of the woman. Never had a stranger, or really anybody for that matter, told him that he had a positive influence on their lives. “Maybe your students would like a visit from some real life Avengers.”

This is lovely -- don't know what I like better, the whole idea of the poll or Clint's reaction and rescue! I think the latter! Adore the teacher's response.

The only thing I would say, if there were a PR tour, that would force and end to, or redirection of, Clint and Natasha's careers with SHIELD -- no more undercover! For Black Widow especially, her life in the shadows would be over. I'd really like to see a fic dealing with that...