Thursday Threesome: Marvel Lovebirds

Welcome to our new weekly series, the Thursday Threesome. All of us at Fruitless Pursuits will be taking it in turn to discuss three points on a topic of our choosing, and with the diversity in interests among our gang, it's sure to be an interesting read each week.

I'll be kicking us off with a special Valentine's Day edition, where I'll be looking at some of my favourite Marvel pairings. There's a lot of crazy timelines going on in the comics that make following relationships difficult at the best of times, but it's even harder when you don't, er, keep up with what's been going on. I do my very best to make sense of it all under the cut!

Winter Soldier & Black Widow

Bucky and Natasha first hooked up when he was one of her instructors at Russian Badass School, and you can’t blame either of them really. That’s a good-looking pair, right there. I tried to do a bit of research regarding their origin and the start of their relationship, but most of what I came up with was extremely dodgy fanfiction. I’m now mentally scarred and really none the wiser as to what went down in those early Russian days, but I know for sure that their relationship hasn’t been an easy ride, what with having to deal with actual human emotions while being kickass supersoldiers and spies. The confirmation of the inclusion of Black Widow in the upcoming Captain America movie suggests that this pairing is going to get some attention from the Marvel movie-verse, which I am very much looking forward to. Partially for the fact all the Clint/Natasha ‘shippers on Tumblr are going to lose their tiny minds, but also because Sebastian Stan is looking like this these days. Golly.

Gambit & Rogue

As a 90s kid who grew up with the X-men animated series as one of my favourite shows, it would be remiss of me to not include these guys. Any girl who watched this as a kid and said they didn’t have a crush on Gambit is a big ol’ liar. I loved these two as a youngster because they were both so sassy and had great accents, but as I got a bit older I realised how tragic this pairing was. If she touches him, he dies. That’s a hell of a boner-killer right there. I’m kind of hoping for an X-men movie reboot in the future that puts these guys in the same timeline, but I’m not exactly holding my breath, chere. They’re one of Marvel’s most popular pairings, and if they were tackled by a filmmaker and done wrong I think the nerd army would be out in force.

Tony Stark & Tony Stark

There is no greater love story in the Marvel universe than narcissist playboy Tony Stark’s infatuation with, well, himself. You just know that he’s the kind of guy who would have a mirror on the roof of his bedroom to get the best view of himself while he’s banging supermodels. Sure, sure, under all that bravado he’s an emotionally crippled softie who just wants to be loved and needed, but thinking along that train of thought would just kill off the relevance of me including him in this! So I won’t! Do you think Tony Stark would watch Iron Man news items instead of porn? If you believe the rumours it would probably be some Captain America news clips too, but there’s no room for that weird ‘Stony’ crap here. It’s not as bad as ‘Thorki’ but still, no.