*3* Wanted to draw some Bruce/Tony that featured the arc reactor again! It really is super pretty…..
Also some more assertive Bruce, because as much as I like awkward and embarrassed Bruce, when he’s the one making the moves, it means he’s not tiptoeing anymore! ;0;
I’ve been doing a lot of Hulk-based reading and watching (both films. Don’t even ask) lately. Taking what I’ve seen in the comics, the old TV show (my favourite when I was 10), and the little we get of the Ruffalo-Bruce-backstory, I got to thinking about the quote above.
“I’m always angry”.
I’ve seen a lot of people who were flailing that it didn’t make sense, that if Bruce was always angry, he would always be the Hulk. But this is where Bruce’s backstory is so key. He came from an abusive household, where he was weak and he was vulnerable, and I have no doubt that he was always angry about the fact he could do nothing about it.
Bruce in the comics is made of pent-up emotion. He shows nothing. Betty repeatedly comments on it, because she can’t understand him at all. And that’s because Bruce is afraid of the anger inside him, the fact that he could become like his father, that he could and might lash out. (There’s also a whole split-personality arc apparently, but I’ve not reached that yet and whoa complicated)
Because it’s contained, it builds and builds, hidden behind the calm facade. It’s always there. People talking down at him, people calling him weak, people dismissing him. It all bothers him, but he just crushes it down. But don’t believe that for a second. Bruce Banner has no patience for idiots. He calls them on their BS all the time. He pretty much says “were you always this stupid or did you have to work at it?” when someone is blatantly dumb in front of him. He’s a man with a hell of a lot of frustration and anger seeping to the surface, just waiting for an outlet.
And then I remembered this exchange in the Avengers:
STEVE: So, this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me? AGENT PHIL COULSON: A lot of people were.
See, this makes the “I’m always angry” thing even more painful.This may only be MCU-verse, but in this context, it really makes sense.
We’ve been told way back in Captain America: The First Avenger that this serum “makes good become great, bad become worse”. So Bruce is not only affected by gamma radiation, but by a serum which takes what is at the core of him and amplifies it to the nth degree. It takes that anger, that grief, that split between placid scientist and the fury he’s contained for so long and turns it all the way up.
Everything he’s tried to hold in for so many years bursts out in the Hulk. And understandably, he hates and fears it at first. It’s everything he’s tried not to be: feral, dangerous, violent, unthinking. He only sees the surface, just like everyone else, but little by little, he comes to see that just because he’d always tried to hide those parts of him, it didn’t mean they were bad.
That wry half-smile and look back, that “I’m always angry”, is Bruce going “you know what? I am always angry, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing”. That’s Bruce seeing what he can do with these emotions that he has smothered for so long. That’s when Bruce and the Hulk are finally on equal terms.
Guys, my upcoming marvelbang fic is literally about all of these things. This awesome meta is uncannily spot on all the stuff I’ve explored in it. So wait a couple more months, and you can read my fic about Bruce and the Hulk, with amazing art by kath-ballantyne throughout.
Maria Hill irritably recruiting the latest batch of SHIELD minions interns.
“Earn $45K a year or for as long as you manage to avoid catching a bullet with your face."
"Medical and dental and the occasional accidental chemical exposure that might turn you into the next Bruce Banner! And if you think that’s a perk you should work in R&D.”
“Free housing as long as you don’t mind living in Hawkeye’s building. He’s a shit landlord but his dog is cute.”
“You get to be in the vicinity of pretty people like Captain America, Thor and me. Mostly me. Yelling at you. Occasionally Agent Carter. Also yelling at you.”
“Lower level interns may only refer to Agent Romanoff by her codename: Black Widow. Only agents with level 6 or above clearance may refer to her as She Who Doesn’t Fucking Clean The Microwave After Her Hot Pocket Explodes All Over It Jesus Fuck.”
“There’s no glamour in spying, people. Long hours. Shady missions. Morally dubious choices that will keep you up at night, eating at your soul from the inside out. On the plus side, you will be assigned a catsuit and they make your ass look great.”
"After the whole Hydra incident, everyone who was sorted into Slytherin in Pottermore is officially banned from recruitment … what do you mean that’s not a rigorous personality test."
If you could not make it to the Comic-Con in Boston, now is your chance to get these amazing T-shirts on our Facebook Store. Just click on the link in my ID profile! All orders will get a FREE Black & White signed Print for limited time!
Had I the money, I would buy this shirt. I love 2bheroes’ art.
I just suddenly made this connection. Maybe heaps of people got there before me, but if not, here it is.
In The Incredible Hulk, though it’s the Army hunting Bruce, there’s a moment where SHIELD is very blatantly referenced, which in the past I thought was a bit of a ham-fisted way of reinforcing that Hulk was taking place in the same universe as Iron Man.
But I just realised, what they’re using? It’s Zola’s algorithm.
Though the Army and the FBI (whose logo is also present in that scene, potentially placing the actual computer at an FBI base) no doubt have their own monitoring stuff, Major Kathleen Sparr, Ross’s right hand, is using SHIELD’s proprietary algorithm to skim millions of emails to find the right phrasing, the right target. To find Bruce, and make the connection to Sterns. It has to be a pretty intelligent (or even, dare I say, sentient?) piece of coding to take what on the surface are fairly generic, common words and only return one hit, the correct hit, to point Ross and his team so precisely to Bruce and Betty’s rendezvous with Sterns. I mean, it’s not like the email says, “hey, I’m the Hulk, I’m on the run and the Army is looking for me.” There’s really not much for a standard search algorithm to work with, even if you’re smart about it and use things like Boolean terms.
Bruce was one of the people Sitwell listed on the roof as a Hydra target. Maybe he’s been one for a lot longer than we realised.
knitting in the dark 