Cultural Crossovers #11: Age of Ultron

On we go:

• Well, this seems dramatic.
• Hydra appear to have leveled up.
• As always, it’s the junior minion who has a realistic appreciation of the situation.
• The “Iron Legion”? Nice. That’s how our legions do it, too.
• Well, aren’t you a quick one.
• VANGUARD CHARGE!
• Ah, synergy.
• Okay, how the hell did you smuggle that out of New York?
• Well, aren’t you interesting, miss vision-inducer.
• Ah, cultural differences. Although the audience relates more to the Asgardian.
• Fast and weird. *snort*
• Ah, we meet the puppetmaster inside the scepter, do we?
• And the audience screams THIS IS A BAD IDEA in unison, because they know exactly how this works.
• …is everyone about to have their brain eaten now?
• Dammit, Tony, you got JARVIS brain-raped. If you survive this mess, you’re going to hate yourself for doing that.
• Ah, the good booze.
• AND THIS IS WHY WE DON’T RUN CODE FROM MYSTERIOUS PALEOTECH ARCHIVES UNTIL WE UNDERSTAND EVERY LINE OF IT.
• I mean, he’s not wrong, and yet…
• We like you, creepy arms dealer guy. Well, a little.
• Okay, we have a resurrection seed with stepdaddy issues. This is going to go so well.
• …well, you do seem to have inherited his snarkiness. Or maybe Jarvis’s.
• Hands off the myeu-myeu!
• Guess everyone’s getting brainfucked today —
• — well, almost everyone! Nicely done.
• Hello, Veronica. We like you. You’re a clever KEW —
• — ah, that’s Veronica. And that suit looks like one of ours.
• Oh, now, that’ll just make him mad.
• I hope that transaction cleared fast.
• Ah, yes, a “safe house”. More of a “safe home”, really.
• It wants to be a real boy. Adorable. I’m guessing without giving up its universal infection-fu.
• That’d be a terrible way to build an extranet. Just sayin’.
• And there’s the seed.
• The audience applauds the Maximoffs’ heel-face turn, which they’ve been expecting for some time.
• Waters of Insight, eh? We’re just up to our asses in —
• Crap, it’s one of those.
• Yeah, cerebral bridges are slow.
• Y’know, me old perversion, evolution is perhaps the single least effective way of advancing a species. Try engineering. If you weren’t, y’know, definitionally insane.
• Nice combat drop, well executed.
• And a hierarchical command structure, too, not a peer-to-peer distributed intelligence. The Avengers are very lucky, the audience deems, to be fighting a seed AI whose imperatives prevent it from having, y’know, strategic acumen.
• I would trust Jarvis here, myself. But again, DO NOT PLAY WITH PERVERSION PARTS THAT YOU DO NOT ENTIRELY UNDERSTAND. It’s a simple rule for avoiding, you know, total Armageddon.
• Because, yes, a brawl is exactly how one should resolve decision points.
• And, Tony, just because you lucked out on try #2 DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD KEEP PLAYING WITH THEOGENIC ALGORITHMS.
• Yeah, that would be a good sign. Damn hammer’s the smartest one in the room.
• …you have a second AI, fine, but didn’t you back Jarvis up before trying the upload? Dammit. (Maybe even a little, or a lot, out of character.)
• At least you kept up the snark, Stark.
• Now that’s just ostentatious. Not that there’s anything wrong with ostentation, per se…
• Aw, how adorable and ruthless and adorably ruthless.
• Hawkeye, you are ridiculously self-aware.
• Well, that’s a rescue that she’s going to need some serious memory redaction to recover from. If they don’t have that tech in this ‘verse, we recommend whiskey, neat.
• Oh, my, a practical use for a helicarrier at last.
• Thor, don’t ever change.
• And Hulk, don’t food with your play, okay?
• …well, fuck.
• My dear Scarlet Witch, you have an admirably well-developed sense of revenge, but your timing could use just about all the work.
• I really don’t think Tony thinks of his AIs as slaves.
• Yeah, that new team looks like it’ll work.

So… what have we learnt here today, kids?

THE CORICAL CONSENSUS EXISTS FOR A REASON.

DO NOT CALL UP THAT WHICH YOU ARE HILARIOUS LUCKY TO BE ABLE TO PUT DOWN.

• And that is not a happy shiny gauntlet.