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xistentia(no subject)
Mar. 25th, 2013 01:57 pmHe sang, "Yodelay-hee, I ain't no untarnished Galahad,
Down from Arcadia like a dream in your head
But gentle lady, lend me the true heart I never had
And I'll stain the lavenders red
With all of this good blood I shed,"
Lancelot said.
. Dave Carter
I do not think they will sing to me.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
. T. S. Eliot
The joy seclusion's savour gives
He shall discover soon who lives
In open air; and that is why
The wise prefer the open sky.
. Visuddhimagga
Down from Arcadia like a dream in your head
But gentle lady, lend me the true heart I never had
And I'll stain the lavenders red
With all of this good blood I shed,"
Lancelot said.
. Dave Carter
I do not think they will sing to me.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
. T. S. Eliot
The joy seclusion's savour gives
He shall discover soon who lives
In open air; and that is why
The wise prefer the open sky.
. Visuddhimagga
Permissions
Jun. 26th, 2012 12:37 am(is this icon too much?)
Backtagging/Late tags: Always!
Threadhopping/Threadjacking: More always!
Fourthwalling/Canon-puncturing: Go for it. Though he may decide not to process it.
Offensive subjects: Even more always!
Hugging/Kissing/Flirting with this character: Go for it! Results may vary… could go really well to really badly. Hard to predict in his state. Equally happy planning in advance or winging it.
Punching this character: As long as you don't mind that he's hard to hit and will try to hit back, go for it!
Fighting with this character: Heck yeah!
Torturing/Injuring this character: Sure! Let's talk!
Killing this character: Oh, it'll probably happen sometime, but let's talk first!
Other: Hawkeye has no defense against magic, except really hating it. He may use internalized anti-interrogation techniques to resist mental invasion—with my default setting to assume won't work. (In other words, you can read/take over his mind; he'll try but fail to resist.) One can't always think one's way out.
out of character
Backtagging/Late tags: Always!
Threadhopping/Threadjacking: More always!
Fourthwalling/Canon-puncturing: Go for it. Though he may decide not to process it.
Offensive subjects: Even more always!
in character
Hugging/Kissing/Flirting with this character: Go for it! Results may vary… could go really well to really badly. Hard to predict in his state. Equally happy planning in advance or winging it.
Punching this character: As long as you don't mind that he's hard to hit and will try to hit back, go for it!
Fighting with this character: Heck yeah!
Torturing/Injuring this character: Sure! Let's talk!
Killing this character: Oh, it'll probably happen sometime, but let's talk first!
Other: Hawkeye has no defense against magic, except really hating it. He may use internalized anti-interrogation techniques to resist mental invasion—with my default setting to assume won't work. (In other words, you can read/take over his mind; he'll try but fail to resist.) One can't always think one's way out.
Update: All this superseded by Age of Ultron; just keeping as writing exercise and for stray details that are still compatible.
"Trained by criminals and inspired by heroes…"[?]
Pancanon+headcanon history: Based on a patchwork of Hawkeye in Mainstream comicverse["Earth-616"], the Ultimate version["Earth-1610"], and the Movie version["Earth-199999"]. Headcanon glue, plus a bit of the life of "Little Houdini" Christopher Daniel Gay[Tampa Bay Times][Radiolab] thrown in for grounding.
This is the movieverse version of the character. The bits from his alternate canons were chosen for how solidly/colorfully they could lead up to that one. (And as soon as Joss Whedon reveals the backstory that was cut from the film, this'll all be superseded! Will be kept only as a writing exercise in reconciling 616 and 1610.)
For this story, substitute "Charles Eddie (Cotton)" for "Charles Bernard (Barney)"[616], and substitute "Chris" for "Clint".
The Barton boys were born in Waverly, [the Hawkeye State] Iowa[616] reading plaques about the Blackhawk War. Those were the closest to history lessons Clinton Francis Barton got, though all it left him with was the daydream to run away to the Winnebago Reservation to learn archery. (Whether or not real Native Americans did that, nor thinking about how conditions on the reservation might compare to what he'd be trying to leave at home.)
The boys didn't go to school. Their mom had left them, their dad was an abusive drunk[616], and they were rarely fed. Child services caught up to them when Barney was 10 and Clint 11. Perhaps a neighbor saw the shotgun incident behind the garage.
They lasted in foster homes for two years. They felt given up on by foster families several times over. The prospect arose that they would be separated—on top of how all foster situations had only proved to be the devil you don't know—so that does it. Clint grabbed Barney and they made a break for it.
If you ask Clint as an adult, he handily elides these 13 years with, Yeah I really did run away to join the circus.
Clint and Barney decided that if anybody was going to take care of them, it was going to be themselves. Having failed in the suicide pact, Clint thought he'd try planning and opportunity. They chose the moment to run away when they saw a poster for a visiting carnival. The poster featured the Knife-Thrower act—who looked like he might be Winnebago.
The knife-thrower turned out to be French[616]. But no matter. They managed to sneak in and find him—the Swordsman—before anyone else caught them. The boys pled their case so effectively, by the time the carnival's management caught up with them, Swordsman claimed them as nephews and had them hired as roustabouts.
Clint started helping the Swordsman's act. Swordsman's buddy Trick Shot[616] saw Clint's potential, discovered his passion for archery, and started training him too.
Some surprisingly happy years passed. In peacetime, as it were, the brothers who'd had nobody but each other for support and survival started finding others—and so, growing apart.
Barney started seeking home-schooling from any members of the carnival who'd give it to him. He forced Clint to "help" him with his reading and writing, though it was really Barney educating Clint. Clint kind of liked when they read things together, but most of the time he was too impatient. All that interested Clint were working on combat and archery with Swordsman and Trick Shot. He was obsessed with improving his skills, no matter how good he got. It wasn't so much that the goalposts kept moving: no matter where they might have been, he wanted to leave them all the further and further behind.
Barney, age 16, decided he wanted to go to college.[616] Clint thought he was absolutely crazy. How was he going to apply to a college when he didn't have a mailing address, or any formal schooling, or a past? Barney had his plans about all of that… but the real issue was: Clint didn't see why Barney would want to. Why rejoin that world that had been nothing but rotten to them? Why leave their friends at the carnival? Barney, who'd been looking past peoples' talents to their other attributes and activities—far more than Clint had—for years—argued that some of these people might be good to move on from. He said they were sucking Clint in and possibly using him. Clint grew furious. He wouldn't hear anything against his idols. Barney grew furious in turn. After so long of being betrayed and abandoned by everyone else, now they felt that of each other.
But Barney had a point. Nice as he was to the kids, Swordsman had some bad habits and drew some bad crowds. Now Clint had grown old enough, strong enough, skilled enough, and above all devoted enough, to be irresistibly useful.
[Headcanon transition from 616 to 1610] Except when one of their raids brought the police down on them. Clint knew that if the police got close enough, the carnival, to avoid charge of contributing to the deliquency of minors, would give Barney up—the most easily rectified of all the things they'd have to hide. Then… maybe Barney could still get into college, but maybe not, maybe he'd be sent somewhere awful, maybe as accessory to the crime he'd known Swordsman and Clint were about to commit, 'cause he'd tried to talk Clint out of it, but ultimately let them go…
So Clint gave up himself, the Swordsman, and their direct accomplices. Clint was just shy of his 18th birthday (not that they could quite verify when that was) so he went to juvie. As soon as he got out, Swordsman and some of his buddies came after him. In fighting them off, who's to say whether or not it was Clint who actually did it, but someone was killed. This time it was only Clint who went down for it, and as an adult.
Which is why he was on death row when Nick Fury swooped in.[1610]
Having monitored Swordsman &co. since they made parole, the last fight brought Clint onto Fury's radar as well. Though S.H.I.E.L.D. was still in its infancy, Fury already had the pull to headhunt Barton right out of jail, recruit him as black ops, and have his records falsified to erase his criminal history.
Having been betrayed by Swordsman, Barton can't quite believe how fast he fell in with Fury… but it wasn't just that he didn't have any what could be called "better" options.
He'd been searching his whole life for someone with true power—we're not talking contacts or military, we're talking about inner personal power—and though he'd been mistaken twice in thinking he'd found it, he was still able to recognize it when he saw it for real. And he was able to recognize that here was someone who really could make Barton better/more powerful, too.
Barton became a soldier/Black Ops agent in the military arm of S.H.I.E.L.D..
Potential pancanon influence on powers: (only what's consistent with what's shown in the film)
One trick Clint and Tasha have in common is a mastery of situational awareness and being able to use an opponent's surroundings against them. Clint focuses this mainly on an "uncanny knack for using miscellaneous hand-held objects as projectile weapons".[1610] They've compared notes (played like a scoring game) on most creative/unexpected/ironic things they've weaponized.
Trick Shot used to say that Clint could "fire six arrows faster than another man could fire six bullets".[1610] Whether or not this is strictly true, Barton does have extraordinary fast firing, but this is "apparently natural" (—at least, unaugmented).
His eyes, on the other hand, are not.[1610] On his military tour, Clint was all-but blinded. He woke up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility able to see again, and Fury wouldn't fully debrief him on what they'd done. All he knows is that sometimes he imagines he can refocus his eyes the way one would a riflescope, his detail recognition and distance vision shot into overdrive… and that he'd been born with hazel eyes. (But they're now blue.)
I also think he can draw. As in artistically. Strictly representational, nothing too abstract or fanciful. Just 'cause. Hey, he's got a good eye… [groan]
Headcanon CR:
In terms of someone who could make Barton better/more powerful too, Clint got it better than he hoped, and in ways he never would have expected. Nor thought he needed, and definitely hadn't wanted. But you can't be a founding member[1610] of S.H.I.E.L.D. without having a more rounded education, for one thing. The studying was far harder than the physical training. Doing a military tour was almost vacation from that. (Except of course not at all. But there are moments when he'd say so.) But it was worth it of course. Having real tangible purpose, even for a "noble" cause this time… because one lesson Barton did learn from Swordsman was to scrutinize every order, even after loyalty has been won.
…Except he doesn't actually do that with Fury and Black Widow. Only for them, though. Not even the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Don't ever suggest this to Barton, but with Fury, Clint can finally be the younger brother for a change. —Or son, if he could revalue the word.
Then there was Natasha. First woman who actually registered in his eyes. At the carnival there had been loads of women, but it was Barney who befriended and probably made love to them; Clint hadn't had the time to be interested. At best they'd be distractions from what he considered most important: becoming as much of a "man" as possible, in the company of othersuch manly men, on the theory it'd eventually lead to a sense of safety and control. Women definitely, so he was told, wouldn't help with that. At worst he found them totally alien, which he refused to find scary, so he decided to find it irrelevant.
So yeah, it took being broken in by a woman who could beat men at their own games, but between her and Fury, he's learned that women (as one of many subsets of people he needed to rehumanize) aren't another, probably hostile, species. He's still never been particularly motivated by this "sex drive" others seem to worship. Sporty combat may be his antisocial behavior of choice, but he ain't James Bond.
"Trained by criminals and inspired by heroes…"[?]
Pancanon+headcanon history: Based on a patchwork of Hawkeye in Mainstream comicverse["Earth-616"], the Ultimate version["Earth-1610"], and the Movie version["Earth-199999"]. Headcanon glue, plus a bit of the life of "Little Houdini" Christopher Daniel Gay[Tampa Bay Times][Radiolab] thrown in for grounding.
This is the movieverse version of the character. The bits from his alternate canons were chosen for how solidly/colorfully they could lead up to that one. (And as soon as Joss Whedon reveals the backstory that was cut from the film, this'll all be superseded! Will be kept only as a writing exercise in reconciling 616 and 1610.)
Down in Buckeye Bottom, on a cold night in the mid 1980s, two brothers walked out behind an old barn. They were hungry and dirty and desperate. They wore shoes held together by tape and twists of wire and stood close enough to a tire fire to feel its warmth. They held their father's .22 rifle and a tube sock full of rusty bullets. They'd need only two.
This would be their last hungry night.
Charles Eddie, 10, raised the rifle and touched the tip of the barrel to his brother's forehead, north of his brow. He would shoot his brother, then himself. This was their pact.
Christopher Daniel, 11, closed his eyes tight and waited. Then he heard a whimper, and when he opened his eyes he saw that his brother was crying.
I can't do it, Cotton said.
Then I'll do it, Chris said.
He took the rifle and put it to his little brother's forehead and slid his finger over the trigger. All it took was a pull to end their pain, a pull he couldn't muster.
~ by Ben Montgomery, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, September 18, 2011 [TBT]
For this story, substitute "Charles Eddie (Cotton)" for "Charles Bernard (Barney)"[616], and substitute "Chris" for "Clint".
The Barton boys were born in Waverly, [the Hawkeye State] Iowa[616] reading plaques about the Blackhawk War. Those were the closest to history lessons Clinton Francis Barton got, though all it left him with was the daydream to run away to the Winnebago Reservation to learn archery. (Whether or not real Native Americans did that, nor thinking about how conditions on the reservation might compare to what he'd be trying to leave at home.)
The boys didn't go to school. Their mom had left them, their dad was an abusive drunk[616], and they were rarely fed. Child services caught up to them when Barney was 10 and Clint 11. Perhaps a neighbor saw the shotgun incident behind the garage.
They lasted in foster homes for two years. They felt given up on by foster families several times over. The prospect arose that they would be separated—on top of how all foster situations had only proved to be the devil you don't know—so that does it. Clint grabbed Barney and they made a break for it.
If you ask Clint as an adult, he handily elides these 13 years with, Yeah I really did run away to join the circus.
Clint and Barney decided that if anybody was going to take care of them, it was going to be themselves. Having failed in the suicide pact, Clint thought he'd try planning and opportunity. They chose the moment to run away when they saw a poster for a visiting carnival. The poster featured the Knife-Thrower act—who looked like he might be Winnebago.
The knife-thrower turned out to be French[616]. But no matter. They managed to sneak in and find him—the Swordsman—before anyone else caught them. The boys pled their case so effectively, by the time the carnival's management caught up with them, Swordsman claimed them as nephews and had them hired as roustabouts.
Clint started helping the Swordsman's act. Swordsman's buddy Trick Shot[616] saw Clint's potential, discovered his passion for archery, and started training him too.
Some surprisingly happy years passed. In peacetime, as it were, the brothers who'd had nobody but each other for support and survival started finding others—and so, growing apart.
Barney started seeking home-schooling from any members of the carnival who'd give it to him. He forced Clint to "help" him with his reading and writing, though it was really Barney educating Clint. Clint kind of liked when they read things together, but most of the time he was too impatient. All that interested Clint were working on combat and archery with Swordsman and Trick Shot. He was obsessed with improving his skills, no matter how good he got. It wasn't so much that the goalposts kept moving: no matter where they might have been, he wanted to leave them all the further and further behind.
(Remember "Slumdog Millionaire"? It can happen like that. Older brother assigns himself the role—the entire definition of his existence—of protecting the younger brother and keeping them both alive. Now say he succeeds, but by the path he's taken to success, cannot recognize it. He becomes eaten alive by the obsession, always needing to feel he's able to fight and defend; never moves on to thinking it might be okay to lower one's guard. The behaviors and mindsets one adopts to survive can become self-destructive when you don't recognize, or trust, or believe, that the situation around you may change. Unlike SM, this story follows the older brother—the one who doesn't really get out. Not quite yet.)
Barney, age 16, decided he wanted to go to college.[616] Clint thought he was absolutely crazy. How was he going to apply to a college when he didn't have a mailing address, or any formal schooling, or a past? Barney had his plans about all of that… but the real issue was: Clint didn't see why Barney would want to. Why rejoin that world that had been nothing but rotten to them? Why leave their friends at the carnival? Barney, who'd been looking past peoples' talents to their other attributes and activities—far more than Clint had—for years—argued that some of these people might be good to move on from. He said they were sucking Clint in and possibly using him. Clint grew furious. He wouldn't hear anything against his idols. Barney grew furious in turn. After so long of being betrayed and abandoned by everyone else, now they felt that of each other.
But Barney had a point. Nice as he was to the kids, Swordsman had some bad habits and drew some bad crowds. Now Clint had grown old enough, strong enough, skilled enough, and above all devoted enough, to be irresistibly useful.
[Headcanon transition from 616 to 1610] Except when one of their raids brought the police down on them. Clint knew that if the police got close enough, the carnival, to avoid charge of contributing to the deliquency of minors, would give Barney up—the most easily rectified of all the things they'd have to hide. Then… maybe Barney could still get into college, but maybe not, maybe he'd be sent somewhere awful, maybe as accessory to the crime he'd known Swordsman and Clint were about to commit, 'cause he'd tried to talk Clint out of it, but ultimately let them go…
So Clint gave up himself, the Swordsman, and their direct accomplices. Clint was just shy of his 18th birthday (not that they could quite verify when that was) so he went to juvie. As soon as he got out, Swordsman and some of his buddies came after him. In fighting them off, who's to say whether or not it was Clint who actually did it, but someone was killed. This time it was only Clint who went down for it, and as an adult.
Which is why he was on death row when Nick Fury swooped in.[1610]
Having monitored Swordsman &co. since they made parole, the last fight brought Clint onto Fury's radar as well. Though S.H.I.E.L.D. was still in its infancy, Fury already had the pull to headhunt Barton right out of jail, recruit him as black ops, and have his records falsified to erase his criminal history.
Having been betrayed by Swordsman, Barton can't quite believe how fast he fell in with Fury… but it wasn't just that he didn't have any what could be called "better" options.
He'd been searching his whole life for someone with true power—we're not talking contacts or military, we're talking about inner personal power—and though he'd been mistaken twice in thinking he'd found it, he was still able to recognize it when he saw it for real. And he was able to recognize that here was someone who really could make Barton better/more powerful, too.
Barton became a soldier/Black Ops agent in the military arm of S.H.I.E.L.D..
Potential pancanon influence on powers: (only what's consistent with what's shown in the film)
One trick Clint and Tasha have in common is a mastery of situational awareness and being able to use an opponent's surroundings against them. Clint focuses this mainly on an "uncanny knack for using miscellaneous hand-held objects as projectile weapons".[1610] They've compared notes (played like a scoring game) on most creative/unexpected/ironic things they've weaponized.
Trick Shot used to say that Clint could "fire six arrows faster than another man could fire six bullets".[1610] Whether or not this is strictly true, Barton does have extraordinary fast firing, but this is "apparently natural" (—at least, unaugmented).
His eyes, on the other hand, are not.[1610] On his military tour, Clint was all-but blinded. He woke up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility able to see again, and Fury wouldn't fully debrief him on what they'd done. All he knows is that sometimes he imagines he can refocus his eyes the way one would a riflescope, his detail recognition and distance vision shot into overdrive… and that he'd been born with hazel eyes. (But they're now blue.)
I also think he can draw. As in artistically. Strictly representational, nothing too abstract or fanciful. Just 'cause. Hey, he's got a good eye… [groan]
Headcanon CR:
In terms of someone who could make Barton better/more powerful too, Clint got it better than he hoped, and in ways he never would have expected. Nor thought he needed, and definitely hadn't wanted. But you can't be a founding member[1610] of S.H.I.E.L.D. without having a more rounded education, for one thing. The studying was far harder than the physical training. Doing a military tour was almost vacation from that. (Except of course not at all. But there are moments when he'd say so.) But it was worth it of course. Having real tangible purpose, even for a "noble" cause this time… because one lesson Barton did learn from Swordsman was to scrutinize every order, even after loyalty has been won.
…Except he doesn't actually do that with Fury and Black Widow. Only for them, though. Not even the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Don't ever suggest this to Barton, but with Fury, Clint can finally be the younger brother for a change. —Or son, if he could revalue the word.
Then there was Natasha. First woman who actually registered in his eyes. At the carnival there had been loads of women, but it was Barney who befriended and probably made love to them; Clint hadn't had the time to be interested. At best they'd be distractions from what he considered most important: becoming as much of a "man" as possible, in the company of othersuch manly men, on the theory it'd eventually lead to a sense of safety and control. Women definitely, so he was told, wouldn't help with that. At worst he found them totally alien, which he refused to find scary, so he decided to find it irrelevant.
So yeah, it took being broken in by a woman who could beat men at their own games, but between her and Fury, he's learned that women (as one of many subsets of people he needed to rehumanize) aren't another, probably hostile, species. He's still never been particularly motivated by this "sex drive" others seem to worship. Sporty combat may be his antisocial behavior of choice, but he ain't James Bond.
