#Moon knight primer

[luxshine]

Moon Knight Primer, Part Fourteen

Moon Knight (2016) #188 - 193

Prologue, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII

Ok, so… the Bemis run.

This one is complicated. It is not as abysmally bad as Bendis, or Dixon, or Huston, but it still has some very, very problematic stuff regarding both mental health, violence, class and sexuality. On the other hand, it is the run that gave us “Dad” Khonshu and “Daddy Issues Khonshu”. It’s one of the very, VERY few runs where Khonshu is an active positive presence in the guys’ lives, and they are acting together as a system for the whole thing.  So… half full glass.

It also reintroduces the worst girlfriend ever -although this time they remember that she used to have a spine and was a cool lady when not dealing with her boyfriend and his alters- and Jean Paul as a constant presence in the guys’s lives.  Not only that but, while putting Khonshu directly in the guys’s headspace in a way that some think he’s another Alter, just one very unattached to the others’ lives in a way, he also introduces MORE Egyptian gods, in particular, Ra, Khonshu’s father and the Sun God, who has a present-day avatar -and whose avatars fought against previous Khonshu’s avatars for centuries- so, yeah, we get the possibility of the gods being real, or it all being in someone’s head given the reason why Ra resurfaces -which is part of the problematic stuff because of course it is. Oh, and it also gives us Diatrice Spector who is an adorable ball of light and joy. Again, it’s very hard to hate Bemis for this.

It’s just that the bad stuff? At least in my opinion? Is really bad.

Once again, I am going through generals because we’re back to the “Most everything happens in the real world so we don’t need three pages of symbolism explained”.

So let’s start with the really, really bad.

Besides the title of the first arc which is “Crazy runs in the family”.

SIGH.

This run introduces two new villains: the Sun King and The Truth. The Truth is mostly used as a first disk boss, and a punchline as his powers are a bit uncontrollable and anyone within his effect area will start revealing all the truths that they hide, their true thoughts. This, of course, makes Marc at some point start saying that he doesn’t really believe in Khonshu and that all is in his mind, but he manages to get out of it quite fast. The fact that Moon Knight is somewhat immune to The Truth if he concentrates. Will come up again later.

The Truth, by the way, is not exactly a villain. He’s more on the nihilistic scale where he just thinks that everyone’s true feelings will end up in violence.

HOWEVER, the problematic stuff comes when, recruited by the Sun King, The Truth comes into contact with Bushman who is alive AGAIN, and that causes Bushman… to constantly declare his love for Marc, to the point of annoyance from Sun King, The Truth, and Bushman. It starts somewhat ok, and interesting: The Truth’s powers start by making you face the Truths you don’t want to admit to yourself so people start blurting things randomly as The truth’s powers sometimes leak. BEFORE he meet the Truth? Bushman had admitted that after all that has happened between him and Marc? Well, he’s terrified of facing Moon Knight again so he tries to keep his drug dealing under the radar. And given that in Marvel, no matter how many times they ret-con details, at the same time EVERYTHING still happened (Something that becomes interesting given the fact that they just tried to whitewash Marc’s time with Bushman), this means at least two deaths, the infamous face removal, and three other random encounters. So yeah, healthy fear of Moon Knight? Understandable. Him letting himself go a bit because he started eating a lot of junk food and delegating action to others? Kinda iffy especially as he’s drawn fatter than bigger, and he’s made into sort of a comic relief which is… kinda fatphobic to be honest.  But once he gets in contact with the Truth, we find out that the junk food eating is a full on ED -he is constantly eating junk food- because, and I quote “I eat because I feel powerless. I feel powerless because I’m obsessed with the handsome dirtbag who tore my face off.” And later on, while they’re trying to interrogate Marc? We get the line “When Marc talks, We Listen! HE’s all I really have in this world!”

And then he idiotically tries to fight Moon Knight one on one again, and of course loses and almost sets Moon Knight free from Sun King if it wasn’t for the Truth FINALLY being able to get into Marc’s head just in time for plot reasoning.

Bushman’s confession is never, EVER, mentioned again. (Also, what WAS going on in that merc camp? Because with this we have TWO ex-mercs who worked with Marc in that particular mission who were in love with him. Which granted, it isn’t much, but it’s weird it happened twice.)

We will talk more about the Truth in the next arc, but interestingly, while their first encounter  is as violent as every supervillain fight is -and we’re going to talk about that because it’s part of the demonization of my man Jake Lockley- after that? Every encounter with the truth in the arc is just them… talking. Sometimes the Truth convinces Moon Knight, but at the end? Because Marc beats Sun King The Truth just goes “Oh. So truth is not black and white. Uh. I need to be put in the system so I can start thinking about this. Thank you so much, Mr. Moon Knight.”

Which, to be frank? Is a very healthy way to deal with defeat that I hadn’t seen in Marvel since the days of the Mad Thinker (who actually went on to change his name to Thinker because HE was far ahead on the “why are we demonizing mental health issues” train)

But then there’s Sun King.

On paper? Sun King is a great idea. He is the literal reflection of Marc Spector: A former soldier, with a dubious backstory as he can’t really remember his past, who got a little bit scrambled during the war and became convinced he is the Avatar of the God Ra and thus decided to change the world under his flag. Given that Ra is Khonshu’s father, and Bemis added the idea that for centuries the Avatar of Khonshu -always dressed in a variation of Moon Knight’s costume- and the Avatar of Ra -always looking like the Sun King- have fought over the idea of how to protect the world, with Ra going far, FAR down the “kill everyone who doesn’t agree with me” scale.

He even goes on to create a tiny colony/cult on an island, with people going voluntarily as they’re convinced that Ra will bring out a better world. And if that sounds a bit like Series!Harrow? Is because yes, Series!Harrow has a lot more in common with Sun King than with the ACTUAL Harrow character (Who we’re STILL waiting for to come back with his plan on revenge against Moon Knight since… 1989. Man is taking his time I guess).  He even kinda looks like Sun King, what with the long hair and his clothing.

The problem is, as almost everything Bemis did? With the execution.

Because see, the origin of Sun King is tied directly to our favorite worst psychiatrist ever: Dr. Emmet.

The very first issue of Bemis run has NO Moon Knight at all, not really. Instead we focus on the Real Dr. Emmet (remember, the one we saw originally, the avatar of Ammut, was only Marc’s reflection of how he saw her. And boy, he was very generous with her since she was nowhere as smart as he saw her), who has become a tiny bit obsessed with what she perceives her greatest “Failure”, Marc Spector. Why is he a failure? Because he LIVES with his condition, thrives as a superhero with DiD, and didn’t take to her attempts of integration.

Seriously, this “doctor” sees the Moon System living a perfectly balanced life and being successful in every Alter’s life, and thinks “MAN, why couldn’t I make him stay miserable and medicated in a padded room? I SUCK as a doctor.”

It also brings a strange new status quo, regarding HOW much the rest of the world knows about Moon Knight’s condition. It seems that now Steven, Jake and Marc’s real names are no longer common knowledge, but Moon Knight having DiD and believing in Khonshu are still so widespread that he is still “That crazy superhero”.

Anyway, for some reason Dr. Emmet is still allowed to have patient, and Patient 86 -Sun King’s only identification name- lands on her lap after a tiny incident of Arson in which he killed two people, who had been torturing him as a form of hazing (I will NOT say what they did to him, but man, it was extreme). And the Dr, instead of say, wondering where the man got the matches to create the fire in the first place, try to find out his clinical history even if it’s a challenge as Patient 86 is a John Doe with no memories of his past, or anything a real dr. would do? Decides to introduce him to Egyptian Mythology and Moon Knight with the EXPRESS desire to see if she can replicate what she calls the Moon System’s “coping mechanism” in this patient whom, in her words, “is almost pleasant and coherent”. She SPECIFICALLY chooses to introduce him to Ra, given his obsession with fire, and is congratulating herself on how calm and nice the Patient is… until said patient bits a nurse’s nose off for her “lack of faith” and then proceeds to prove that he HAS pyrokinetick powers (a thing that should’ve been checked BEFORE he was admitted to the hospital) and, claiming himself to be Ra’s Avatar, proceeds to burn the building down with everyone inside.

There are survivors, of course. Including Dr. Emmet who is badly burnt and now driven insane herself. Last time we see her? Is in the cult island, holding a cat, and proclaiming her faith in Moon Knight’s gods.

Worst Psychiatrist ever for the Boys, and that’s counting Dr. Elsa “I want to steal your God’s powers for my own goals” Warsame.

By the way, in the “Are the gods real or not” department, there’s a fight in Moon Knight’s mind where both Ra and Sun King get into their mindspace to fight. Did I mention Khonshu ALSO had daddy issues? Well, here’s where they come into place. And that’s when Jake, who always has been the most aware of Alters, comes to ask “HOW are they here, if THIS is all in Marc’s mind?” (Ok, so the Marc’s mind remark is wrong and should’ve been “Our” minds, but again, Bemis is not the best when it comes to writing Plurality. Not the worst, as he at least acknowledges the Alters’ existance, but not the best) and Steven of all people answers with a metaphysical theory.

I love Series!Steven who is incredibly booksmart. But Comic!Steven has always been more of a himbo when it comes to anything that is not money and investments so it’s REALLY weird to hear him talk about metaphysical realities and how everything is real as long as Marc believes it is, which brings the CRINGIEST line in the whole arc which is when they declare that “Crazy is their superpower” RIGHT after Jake says that the only thing HE really has faith in? Is Diatrice, his daughter… Oh, yes. We’re going to talk about Diatrice soon.

I mentioned that the Bemis’ run was a bit of a let down, didn’t I? I mean, that line alone is incredibly regressive given that we had JUST come from an amazing run whose whole message was “No, the Moon System is not Crazy. It just IS. Yes, they have what is considered a mental illness, but that doesn’t mean they’re crazy, nor that their reality is not real, nor that they can’t have a normal life” and while Bemis SEEMS to want to continue with this idea, nope, we still have “Oh, but we’re insane! Lol!” moments.

Which brings us to Jake, who here suffers the biggest and worst character assassination that any character in the Moon Knight comics has suffered. YES, worse than when Khonshu went from Justice God to “I look like Bushman and want Marc to kill everyone around” because at least that one had a flimsy excuse in the form of real mythology.

What Bemis did to Jake? Has NO Excuse.

See, I pointed out before that Steven was the man Marc WANTED to be: Rich, suave, completely untouched by violence. However Jake is the man Marc WOULD have been: Down to earth, with good friends and only using violence when strictly needed to defend said friends. Of the trio, no matter if the slipt happened before or after Khunshu, Jake was always the moral compass of them.

Consider this: Steven wanted NOTHING to do with Marc’s past or memories, and yet, all his money CAME from Marc’s past. Sure, he made it far, far more with investments, but the original source was always the blood money Marc made as a mercenary (Which may be also why he never hesitated on buying Marlene whatever the hell Marlene wanted: part of that money had her father’s blood on it) Jake, on the other hand, understood Marc’s past (there are examples of monologues I’ve posted about how he has more stomach than Steven to remember the things Marc did, back in the Moench era, and yet a killer goes so vicious that Jake has to switch to Marc as not to puke), but doesn’t take any from it. He has a paying job as a Cabbie, is presumed in some eras to have his own place away from both the Grant and Spector mansions (that everyone seems to have forgotten exist after the 2006 era), and he’s the only one who is shown having real friends: sure, Crawley and Gena ended up also working for Moon Knight, but they started as his friends. And we know some Cabbies also got worried when he disappeared, so again, friends. Jake was always the social one.

But then, we get to Bemis. Who suddenly decided that Jake was what happened when Marc, already disturbed, took “The worst parts of himself and let them fuse into a living person.”

I have to remind you that in the literal previous run? It was established that Jake manifested when the kids were TEN.  I REALLY wonder what Bemis thinks is “the worst parts” of a 10 year old, whose actions in the past are SO bad, SO terrible, that the frigging TRUTH is horrified when they first meet and the only way he has to escape is to threaten Jake to tell Marc “the things he’s done”.

This is what brings us, ironically, to one of the most beloved panels of the whole Bemis run: The guys fighting in their inner space while Khonshu consoles Steven and assures the pacifist Alter that no, Marc and Jake fighting is not his fault. THAT? That is adorable.  Also the brief look at how said fight looks from the outside: The body meditating in Central Park, suddenly shouting both as Jake and Marc and startling an old lady who is walking her dog.

Jake and Marc’s fighting? Not so much.

Jake once again claims that Marc “sliced me off your personality and sent me to live among freaks, addicts and criminals” and that he knows how to “strip and dress a human body” and do you HEAR how Classist this is? Upper middle class Marc cannot be a horrible violent monster (Despite the fact that the one who ACTUALLY WORKED with criminals, and WAS a criminal himself was Marc, and the one who most CERTAINLY know how to strip a body in every sense of the word), but lower class cabbie Jake? Oh, he must certainly is and must be drawn as deranged as possible (Seriously, the faces they make Jake have are disgusting. Right out of Garth Ellis “Crossed” which is a comic I can’t tell you to stay away from ENOUGH, and well, was also drawn by Jasen Burrows, the artist of the Bemis issues which explains a lot. But SERIOUSLY, AVOID Crossed like the plague). And even then? Even within his own narrative of “Look how terribly violent and unhinged Jake is”?  the one who pulls out the ACTUAL weapons during the fight is MARC, who makes Jake bleed using a giant moon crescent -and even with Marc, military trained Marc who at some point was said to be trained to be as good as Nick Fury, cheating? Jake wins the fight. While pointing out that their work as a system is as follow:  “Steven is the wealthy benefactor. Khonshu is our connection to the bigger picture. You’re our voice of reason. And I deal in the grimy leftovers. You Built us this way.”

Leaving aside the fact that this makes Khonshu a fourth alter, when even this arc itself treats him more of as an outsider, given that he has a long, long history older than the system’s body, and with a second character that Marc didn’t meet until now? This has NEVER been true for the System’s dynamics. Not in any Moon Knight comic, not even in his brief time in teams like the West Coast Avengers? Would anyone call Marc “The voice of reason”. JAKE was the voice of reason, the one who went “Ok, uhm, we fight drug dealers and street criminals. What the HELL are we doing going against Dr. Doom?” The one who tried to keep them alive not by fighting, but by being smart and hiding and not, say, have a huge mansion with a moon shaped helipad. The one who, again, had friends he trusted enough to bring into the secret of their lives and condition without them having been affected by it directly first, as Jean Paul and Marlene had.

I mean, not two pages after that? MARC in a flashback tells Marlene HE blew up Randall with a grenade -because Randall killed Marc’s then girlfriend but still, and that’s the only time we’ve mentioned Randall since before the Lemire run! Wow.

Oh, and the secret that Jake was SO desperately to keep from Marc? That FIVE years ago, he went to Marlene, DESPITE The fact that we have CANON evidence that Jake TRIED to keep Marlene and Steven together and happy because he thought Marlene was a fine dame, Despite the fact that Jake NEVER once had any romantic interest in her at all, and had an illicit relationship with her behind Marc’ (and probably Marlene’s husband, if Bemis even remembered that Marlene was married by then) back which resulted in Marlene getting pregnant and giving birth to an adorable girl who is CURRENTLY named Diatrice. I will talk more about Diatrice later.

EVEN WORSE? When Marlene retells this to Marc? Even if she points out that she was never forced, she claims that “There’s no warmth in him. There are things inside of him that.. HE’s not you, Marc. He could never be you. I had to lean that the hard way.” Oh, and when SHE stopped the relationship, he kept coming around, because he “had her where he wanted him, as she couldn’t do ‘it’ alone.” Meaning, raising Diatrice. And yet? Diatrice doesn’t call JAKE her dad. She knows Jake as “Uncle” Jake, because her REAL dad is a “superhero”.

Once again, this goes completely against not only the Guys’s characterization until now, it ALSO goes against Marlene’s! I mean, I can’t believe I’m defending her but she’d NEVER have a relationship with Marc in the first place, as she loved STEVEN.  

And when Bemis could have taken the right path, by making Jake realize that since the one thing he believes in is his daughter -even if no one lets him call her his daughter, oh, no, Diatrice is MARC’s daughter- then it means that the power of the System IS the power of family and being together? Oh, no, they have him utter the horrible line “Holy %$#@ we have the power of crazy!”, while, again, drawing the body as unhinged an violent as possible.

And YES, Lemire ALSO used that line at the beginning of his arc. But the context was different, as that time? The one who SAID that Marc’s power was madness was Khonshu, who we have established was, at the time, not the God, but Marc’s mental manifestation of the idea that his condition made him somewhat “Wrong” and thus “mad”.

So yeah, Bemis in many ways is stepping back almost as far back as the horrible Huston run regarding Moon Knight’s mental health.

But then… there’s the good.

And I have to give the man credit? The Good? Was VERY Good.

Because Bemis is the only one besides Lemire to portray the guys’s life AS a System. It’s not Marc fronting and giving lip service to the others as many, many other runs, nor Steven and Jake trying to keep things together to keep Marlene happy as in the Moench runs. Sure, it has Khonshu narrating -again, really weird choice- but also giving the boys advice against the evil they’re going against, supporting each in different ways. It gives us Marc, Steven and Jake talking to each other, not just in the inner world as the Body Meditates, but also outside as they get ready for the day. Yes, some of the language used is outdated, and Khonshu’s opinions of the trio are weird, especially if you come from the series: Here, he likes Marc, but thinks of Steven as Narcissistic and Decadent, and a “tolerable annoyance” at best, while Jake… sigh, Jake gets an “anything is better than… the other guy”.  Bemis writes Jake horribly, but he still manages to write the communication between the guys as a conversation, and not as Marc trying to repress everyone so I can’t help but give him credit for that. Khonshu ALSO tries to convince Marc not to go back to Marlene given, well, how it has never, ever worked between the two of them, which, if we ignore the fact that it wasn’t Marc who dated Marlene, is weirdly protective.

Bemis also brings Jean Paul Duchamp back, while giving Marc an extra layer of mental health issues since he sees Frenchie first as a zombie because, well, last time he saw Jean Paul  was in his mindspace and Frenchie got half eaten by a Crocodile man, but, after Jean Paul and Marc talk, Jean Paul literally rips off the zombie skin and is seen normally. The boys admit that they needed to see Jean Paul die so they could understand how important their friend really was. There’s no mention about Jean Paul’s husband Rob -and well, Marlene’s husband was literally erased from reality- but I hope that he’s still around. Our favorite gay French pilot deserves to be happy.

And well, finally there’s Diatrice. Lovey little Diatrice. As I pointed out, she’s Jake’s and Marlene’s daughter, even if Jake was introduced to her as her “uncle” and seems ok with that. She’s five years old, and was allowed to choose her own name, and all her life was told her father was Jake’s brother and a superhero -and she’s not that impressed by Marc, to be honest. Oh, and she prays to Khonshu for her daddy’s safety, once Marc explains to her who he is. I will be honest, I am not a fan of child characters in comics, but Diatrice is an exception and a very bright spot despite her birth being used to demonize Jake, and you can see that, despite all the lip service to Jake not being emotionally able to care for people? Jake dotes on his daughter.  I really hope a much better writer retakes this relationship (The current status quo is… sad and complicated. But she still exists)

And this is the first arc of the Bemis run. The second is a little bit more controversial, so I will give it its own part. But hey, we’re getting closer and closer to the present day, and TODAY there’s finally a new comic out! Moon Knight #21 by McKay is out and we’ll see if there’s any synergy with the series as we had a year long hiatus there! And join me next time when we deal with the most controversial version of WHY the boys split.

#moon knight #moon knight primer #moon knight comics #the bemis run #steven grant #marc spector #jake lockley #this is the run that tried to ruin jake #this is where jake is a killer meme came from #marlene alraune #diatrice alraune #jean paul duchamp #khonshu #ra #classism #ableims #Jake was never violent until this man Bemis tried to ruin him #also ugly art #sorry but... The Crossed was the worst comic ever #and seeing Crossed art in Moon Knight makes me sick

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Make the Fire Burn

Bones in the Ocean Masterlist

Kira had gone through a phase, during her apprenticeship, where all she read were swooning, brainless romance novels. Her days, after all, were spent filling her mind with magic, learning symbols and their combinations. The silly stories of beautiful women and handsome men were the only things she’d found that held off the worst of the headaches. 

She had traded the precious few copper coins she had to spare for these tales, damsels in distress or troubled lovely lads with torn bodices and breeches rescued by the strong prince or princess, knights in gleaming armor sweeping them off their feet. The blood that must have stained them during the floridly described battles against wicked villains was never mentioned but implied, somehow deliciously implied. She’d stayed up too late many times reading by candlelight and magic the way these heroines would come undone and then… well, she would usually stop reading before the final chapter.

She often lost interest before the books could make it to the happily ever afters. The final cooing happiness was so much less important, to her, than the breathless ways they got there.  

Now, though, Kira was beginning to realize the books - many of which featured captivity, thrilling references to bonds both real and magical - had left out one very important truth. Perhaps the most important descriptor of them all.

None of them had ever made it clear how deeply, achingly, excruciatingly boring being held captive would be. 

This room, with its portraits of the dead who had suffered her fate before her staring down at her from the walls, was a very pretty cage, but it wasn’t a very entertaining one. The servants brought her meals but refused to answer her questions, only giving her sad smiles. Occasionally she woke up in horror to find herself wearing different clothing than she had gone to sleep in. At least there had been no more breakfasting at the dining table - melting the silver in her hands despite having had her magical tools taken from her had apparently made an impression on the loathsome Lord Wentworth.

That, she had to admit, was a little satisfying.

Still, she hadn’t been able to make it happen again, and so she was trapped here in this room torn between hours of lying on the bed and staring sightlessly at the ceiling and frantic attempts to discover some sort of secret here she could use to free herself.

So far… no such luck.

She had found some dust-covered books shoved between the back of the bed and the wall, but they appeared to simply be old primers for some long-dead child learning to read. The pages, scrawled in childish loops and swirls, had nearly crumbled under her fingertips. 

In the wardrobe there were out-of-date dresses, ribbons for her hair, even shoes that didn’t fit. She had… eventually tried on the shoes. It was something to do, it used up at least a few seconds of her otherwise eventless existence.

No wonder the damsels in her romances had been so desperately grateful to their dashing rescuers. She’d rip her bodice off herself just to have someone to talk to.

She wasn’t even entirely sure how long she’d been trapped here. It had to have been a month, right? The full moon had come and gone, waned day by day back to a sliver of itself lit like silver, with the rest only barely implied in the shadowy sky.

The sliver was widening again, working itself back to fullness. Perhaps six weeks, then, and had no one come looking for her? Did Kiraya Losna’s life matter so little, in the scheme of things, that not even her landlady had come looking for her when rent was due and she was gone? Had they sold off her clothes and books to make back a little bit of what she owed, or simply tossed it all in the gutter with the trash, to be torn apart for any hint of value by strangers?

Her heart twisted if she thought about it too long.

Her diaries might make an entertaining night’s read for some scoundrel who wanted to amuse himself with the pain of a girl who must learn on her own how to make herself a woman, when her body wasn’t correct without some help. The life of a girl with too much magic but no mother must make for quite the tale, indeed, for someone who did not care about the real person behind the pen-marks on the pages.

Would whoever had found her diaries in the refuse laugh over her joy when she had unlocked the secrets to the spell that made her reflection match her inside and out? Would they mock her dreams, even if they’d been fulfilled?

It didn’t matter. Not really.

She was never getting those diaries back. Hells, she was never even going to leave this place, and she knew it. She would be held here, and then die here, and have no choice in how it happened. Guilford Wentworth had declared her the betrothed to himself - or his son, she still didn’t quite understand - and her fate was to be the tame magician-wife for a lord whose demands would be great. And still, another would have to be taken to bear him children, which Kira could never do. 

So even in her captivity, she would damn someone else to the same fate. She felt very like the siren, in that way - trapped as a way to trap others in her same prison, this labyrinthian hell. If only she could have spoken to him again, she might have felt less lonely, more able to bear the boredom.

Some nights, at least, her restless attempts to sleep were broken by the siren’s mournful song winding up through the walls, a mourner’s wail of wordless melody, but he didn’t try to talk to her again, or even to control her.

He was trapped in his own lovely prison.

Although, honestly, at least he could have a swim in his.

Kira had resigned herself to her third read-through of the only genuine book she’d found in this room - hidden under some lovely scarves in the wardrobe, it was a story about pirates that absolutely had been written by someone who had never so much as seen a ship or an ocean and was more or less simply inventing how it might work as they wrote. It was absolutely worthless, and yet it was the only thing she thought might be keeping her sane here.

At some point, she blinked out of her stupor and realized she could hear the sound of horses’ hooves, the rattling of carriage wheels. Kira shot to her feet, the book dropping to the floor immediately and thankfully forgotten. She raced to the window, curving her fingers around the cold iron bars, listening.

She couldn’t see much from here, but-... yes, that was definitely a carriage. Had someone come to look for her, finally? Had someone realized she was still here?

Had someone noticed she was gone?

There were voices she didn’t recognize, pitched just too low for her to hear. Men’s voices, maybe one woman. She pushed her face between the bars, listening as hard as she could. Babbage was definitely one of the voices, and Wentworth, but she didn’t know the others. Wentworth and Babbage seemed perfectly chatty and friendly, setting Kira’s teeth on edge, but there was something to the other voices that didn’t sound the same.

The voices faded and were replaced by the stablehands moving the carriage horses to the stables, she assumed, and she slumped against the window, staring down at the topiary maze that led to a small fish pond below. Her heart had briefly raced - now it shuddered back to its usual slow beat. Even her heart could not find a reason to either fear or hope in this endless repeating nothing.

How long she stayed like that, she didn’t know. Her brain and body seemed simply to… pull away from the larger world around them. She was here and not-here, despair and absolutely nothingness warring within her. 

She had been an idiot to feel even that single bright spot of hope.

She had gone back to pick up the pirate book when there was a knock at the door. It wasn’t time for any of the meals brought to her, nor was it early enough to be the washbasin needing refilled. Kira swallowed, slowly standing up straight. She kept her eyes on the door as she slowly backed up, until she bumped into the wall and nearly knocked down one of the portraits that watched her sleep.

She said nothing.

They would come in or not - she knew by now it had nothing to do with whether she wanted it to happen. At least she would be awake this time. She lifted her chin, crossed her arms in front of her, and tried for all the world to look like she could do anything at all if they decided to drag her down to the siren and rob her of her mind right here and right now.

The door swung open, and there stood a man she had never seen before, but she knew immediately just looking at him that he was Guilford Wentworth the Fifth, here in the flesh. He had the same sort of look to his face, but so much younger, with a thick head of hair and wider eyes he must have gotten from his mother. He was tall and lanky where his father’s waistline had thickened over time. The family look was there, yes, but the young man was clearly his own person, too.

The lord himself stood behind his son, with a hand on his shoulder. “Here she is,” Lord Wentworth said, his voice thick slime as he gestured, stepping inside and pulling the younger Wentworth with him. “Your bride.”

Kira lifted her chin just a little more, so she had to look down her nose at the two of them. “We will see about that.” She kept her posture loose, unbothered, even as she felt her fingernails dig into her skin and her heart start to race. “I have my own thoughts on that,” Kira said, voice flat. “And you are…?”

The younger man swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly as he shifted, working himself out from under his father’s hand. He turned cold eyes on her. “Guilford Wentworth the Fifth,” He said, hostile and sharp. Only when the lord shoved at his back did he stumble forwards, brushing imaginary wrinkles from his waistcoat and pants before reaching out for her hand, bending forward at the waist with a straight spine.

He intended to kiss the back of her hand.

“Absolutely not,” She said, and did not move an inch.

The young man dropped his hand, one lip curling in a sneer. “Rude.”

“Oh, I am ever so, especially when held against my will. You’ll find my impolite instincts much harder to suppress without the siren to silence me.”

The young man snorted. “You find yourself terribly clever, don’t you?”

“Maybe. Could anyone think more of themselves than your father? Doubtful. Now, is there anything I can call you besides your father’s son?” She asked, tipping her head to one side. Her hair fell slightly against her cheek - she hadn’t bothered putting it up in at least a week and it hung in a riot of tangles down past her shoulders. She tried not to feel the Lord Wentworth’s eyes as they moved over her, and focused instead on the clearer, cleaner feel of his son’s dismay and hostility. “You must go by something, and I assume only the one man allows himself to be known as the lofty lordship here.”

To her surprise, she caught a slight twitch at the corner of the young lord’s mouth, as if he very nearly smiled before he got himself back under control. He had to duck his head just a little so that his father didn’t see it. “Ford,” He offered her, voice softening - just a little. “I go by Ford, where I live in the Colonies.”

He offered his hand again.

“Ford, then,” She acknowledged, hesitantly. This time, she allowed him to take her hand, felt his warm, dry lips press against her knuckles. She wiped her hand on her dress when she took it back, and watched his mouth twist again at the sight. “I am Kiraya Losna.”

“I know,” Ford said, and his eyes flickered towards the looming, smug presence of his father and then back to her. There was something to the look on his face she struggled to read. “I have been… told about you.”

“In preparation for our wedding, I imagine,” She said, dryly, and then turned abruptly away to look outside again. “For the sake of honesty, I should say I don’t intend to go through with it.”

“It won’t matter,” He answered, and she glanced back at him, eyebrows furrowing a little. He didn’t sound smug, like his father, but instead a little… battered. Perhaps he had witnessed rebellions before, or at least their aftermath. She wondered if he had ever rebelled, himself. “I will be… kind to you, Miss Losna, if I can-”

“I think that’s enough,” Lord Wentworth said, and clapped his hands together, just once. Ford flinched at the crack of palm on palm, even though Wentworth was all the way across the room. Her chest went cold as she saw how he hunched over himself, and then just as suddenly straightened his spine and set his shoulders back, jaw locked at a harsh angle. “Come, Ford. You and your sister need to see to your rooms, unpack your things… get settled in. The twins will be here within the week, as well, after all-”

“The twins?” Ford’s head shot up, and he turned on his heel, moving back to his father with a sudden burst of energy and speed. “The twins are away at school, Father, why-”

“For the wedding,” Guilford said, smooth as a snake’s belly soundless along the ground. “I thought you were fond of them, Ford. Was I mistaken…?”

“No, not mistaken, just-... I wouldn’t-... want to interrupt their studies, is all-”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. In any case, Miss Losna, you’ll be joining us this evening, won’t you?”

Kira’s eyes moved from one to the other. “I… suppose that’s… your prerogative, Lord Wentworth,” She managed, her voice seemingly speaking with perfect polite without her consent. “I will… see you at dinner, I suppose, Ford.”

“Right.” Ford rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. As he walked out the door, he slunk past his father, his steps hurrying him past the man as quickly as he could go. “At dinner, Miss Losna.”

He was gone. 

Guilford lingered in the doorway, looking back at Kira, his eyes moving over her body in a way that held entirely too much possession. It made her want to show up to dine with a bag on her head, draped in the comforter until no piece of her could be seen at all. Not that she thought it would make any difference. He would lust over what was beneath whether he could see it or not. 

She wondered if she could melt his bones with the wild magic that had worked on the silver, if he hurt her badly enough. If she only could become angry enough. It was only with effort she kept her voice calm and seemingly careless. “Will you be sending Nadette to help me prepare, Lord Wentworth? These dresses here were made for a woman with servants, I cannot do them up myself.”

He smiled at her, and it brought no warmth to his expression whatsoever. Only seemed to freeze her further. “A lovely image to hand to me, my dear.” 

“I am not your dear,” Kira sneered, leaning back against the wall, her hands pressed against its gentle texture, her palms somehow freezing and burning right to the tips of her fingers. Her heart raced within her, trying to run from the confines of her imprisoned body. “And I will never be your anything. I will not be your son’s, either. No matter how he must hate you.”

Wentworth paused, framed by the door, and chuckled, shaking his head. “You will, Miss Losna, be the loving wife to my son at the end of the next month. You will adore him wholly and utterly. And the both of you will adore me just the same.”

She pressed her palms back harder. The feeling of the wall made them ache but it was the only thing that kept her voice steady. “And his feelings on this marriage? He didn’t seem to agree-”

“What does that matter?” Wentworth blinked, as if surprised by the question. “My children do as I bid them, Miss Losna. They always have, and they always will. Or they cease to have a reason to be alive. Much like you.”

He closed the door and left her there.

The key turned in the lock.

She could hear him humming a jaunty tune until his voice faded entirely, and she was - once again - alone in her gilded prison cell. 

Kira stepped away from the wall, panic making her nerves spark and muscles jump under her skin, with no way to run, nothing to run away to. She took one step, and then another. Somewhere down below, the siren began his song again. There was no magic in it. He was only crying, in the way of his kind, and his despair echoed hers.

Kira ran, flinging herself onto the bed and burying herself beneath the heavy covers, pulling her pillow over her face with its lavender scent and screaming into it until her throat was raw. Her lungs burned for air and her throat ached, but still she kept screaming. 

At some point, screams became heaving sobs, hot tears that soaked into her hair, her pillow, and seemed to boil their way down her cheeks. 

She wept until there were no tears left. Then, she lay in silence and simply waited for the next step in what felt like an inexorable slide off a cliff into the darkness below. The siren's song rose higher and higher, slipping underneath her skin.

Sleep, He must have sung to her. Sleep now and dream of better things.

She drifted off, and knew only that his voice felt not like chains, now, but like a hand on her head, arms around her, the way her mother had once held her after nightmares.

If only this had been one.

If only she were able to wake up from this.

Where she had been standing, two handprints had burned black into the wall. Magic smoked, sparked embers, and then faded to soot unseen.

-

Taglist: @grizzlie70 @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @theelvishcowgirl @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @bloodinkandashes @squishablesunbeam @mj-or-say10 @apokolyps @wildfaewhump @shrimpwritings @there-will-always-be-blood @latenightcupsofcoffee

#bones in the ocean #original writing #fantasy writing #original fantasy #fiction writing #my writing #writing #whump #captivity #reluctant whumper #magic whump #magic whumpee #captured #captive

[cabezadeperro]

Fic Stats Meme

Rules: Give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and your fic with the least amount of words. (edit: i misread this and did whatever i wanted skhdghkdgkh and i can't be arsed to change it so. well.)

@brigittttoo and @elwenyere had open tags, and i have stuff i don't want to do, so here i am ♥️

most hits

a room with a view - Star Wars - Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi - 143k - 28654 hits

Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi is trusted with his first solo mission: escorting the Neimoidian ambassador and her niece in her luxury cruise across the Core, and making sure that the mysterious assassin after her doesn’t add her name to their already lengthy list. Madam Netrith is old, clever and arrogant: she doesn’t believe herself to be in danger, and regards Obi-Wan’s presence as more of an annoyance than anything else. The already hard job becomes harder once Obi-Wan discovers he’s supposed to share a cabin with one Jan Naasade, Concordian Journeyman Protector, for the trip's duration.

second most kudos

a good man is hard to find - Star Wars - Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi - 112k - 886 kudos

Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and his padawan Anakin Skywalker travel to the mining colony of Tchuta-1, a small moon in a system in the middle of nowhere. Their mission is to mediate a conflict between the owners of the rhydonium mines and its workers: something easy and on the safe side of boring, the perfect mission for teams like theirs. However, once they get there, their shuttle is shot down, and they find themselves caught in a vicious gang war… and hunted by the most dangerous bounty hunter in the galaxy, the Mandalorian Jango Fett.

third most bookmarks

apocrypha - Star Wars - Rex/Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi - 7.6k - 127 bookmarks

Cody duels Pre Vizsla and wins. The hard part comes after.

fourth most words

dead men walking - Star Wars - Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi - 63k

It was supposed to be an easy job: prisoner transports are always quick money. Three years after waking up from cryo, Cody—formerly known as ICC-2224—finds himself working as a bounty hunter for one of the guilds. He has a body that doesn’t feel his, a memory full of holes, and little else. When the man he’s guarding escapes, Cody finds himself following one Obi-Wan Kenobi across a war-torn galaxy and into the most dangerous job of all: stealing a mysterious artifact from the heart of the New Republic.

least words

el comienzo de una hermosa amistad - Marvel 616 - Teddy Altman/Billy Kaplan - 102w (2012 fic........)

Billy/Teddy en un AU donde es su primer día de universidad y les toca vivir juntos en la misma habitación de la residencia

#maría writes #writing meme #i'm am an insane person.

[age-of-moonknight]

“Marvel Legacy Primer,” Moon Knight (Vol. 8/2016), #188.

Writer: Robbie Thomson; Penciler and Inker: Germán Peralta; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

#Marvel #Marvel comics #Marvel 616 #Moon Knight vol. 8 #Moon Knight 2016 #Moon Knight comics #Moon Knight #Marc Spector #Jake Lockley #Steven Grant #Khonshu #yeah one criticism of this run is the reversion back to using “multiple personality disorder” instead of DID so there’s that #but I do like the attention to detail in the different eras’ costumes (i.e. the different hood shapes #and if you look closely you can even see the cestus Marc used in his fight with Werewolf by Night)

[mtridactyla]

I do want to get into Moon Knight and Gwenpool though, they are definitely on my to read list

i would probably recommend the 2021 run to get into moon knight <3 it's a good primer. no frenchie which is unfortunate but it's got all three boys while still being like... readable without context? a lot of mk comics lean really hard into ambiguity and mindfuckery which is Really Cool but also can be intimidating to get into. and for gwenpool the unbelievable gwenpool is a perfect starting point !

#do i have an ask tag. #bingis

[owlixx]

Comic Todo List

So the sky is the limit now that I’ve got Marvel Unlimited access and I’ve maybe already bit off more than I can chew, but I wanted to go through the series I’ve added to my library on MU and state my interest in them so I don’t forget what I was thinking.

And to be clear, my attention span is super short right now since I just got the app. I like the idea of reading 500 xmen comics in a row…but not yet. So my balking point for issue counts is incredibly low right now but that will change after the first pass of reading a bunch of short series.

Also addendum to my last post: I read like 25 issues of Agent Venom and he’s my blorbo, that was pre college

Man Thing ‘74

22 issues is a bit much for my lack of strong interest here, but I’d like to see some old spooky stuff sometime

Black Panther ‘77

A bit long for how old it is and my current interest but I’ll get around to it.

What If ‘77

44 issues, but some real classics. I wish they had them all in one place.

Contest of Champions ‘82

3 issue crossover, no brainer

Secret Wars ‘84

Short, sweet, never read it all the way

Kitty Pryde and Wolverine ‘84

Short xmen primer

Scarlet Witch and Vision ‘85

12 issues for some classic avengers

Beauty and the Beast ‘85

Seems like a small hidden gem

Strange and Doom ‘89

One shot, easy

Infinity Gauntlet ‘91

Always surprised by how small these crossovers are lengthwise on the core story

Spiderman 2099 ‘92

Long but I want to remember to check out all of 2099

Inhumans ‘98

Short primer on them

Contest of Champions II ‘99

Too funny not to read

Garth Ennis Punisher ‘00

Not a big Garth fun but I want to give it a shot

Daredevil: Yellow ‘01

Recommended to me

Ultimates ‘02

I wanna know a little bit about ultimates

Spiderman: Blue ‘02

Recommended to me

X-Statix ‘02

Reccommended to me

Hulk: Gray ‘03

Recommended to me

1602 ‘03

It’s Neil Gaiman, Cmon

Runaways ‘03

A modern classic

Fantastic Four Origin ‘03

Curio

Warlock ‘04

Hidden gem

Loki ‘04

Website recommended it

She Hulk ‘04

App reccomended

House of M ‘05

Easy, vital read

Young Avengers ‘05

Kind of curious

Son of M ‘05

Short, seems interesting

X-Factor ‘05

Circle back to later

Nextwave ’06

Love a self contained story

Dr. Strange: The Oath ‘06

Seems like a succinct strange story

Blade ‘06

Gotta have one blade

Civil War ‘06

Never actually read the original

World War Hulk ‘07

And same here

Guardians of the Galaxy ‘08

App recommended

Punisher ‘09

App recommended

Tron ‘10

I love tron

Uncanny X-Force ‘10

Recommended to me

Deadpool Kills ‘11

Short and oft referenced

Wolverine and Xmen ‘11

Recommended to me

Infinity ‘13

Short, could be fun

Age of Ultron ‘13

Gotta know the source material

Silver Surfer Parable ‘88

One shot

Moon Knight ‘14

More good look knight

Silver Surfer ‘14

I’ll give him one run

Ms Marvel ‘14

Her origin

She Hulk ‘14

Comes recommended

Black Widow ‘14

App recommended

Elektra ‘14

App recommended, says it’s painted

All New Wolverine ‘15

Recommended to me

Vader ‘15

Gotta try one star wars

Captain America: White ‘15

Recommended to me

Scarlet Witch ‘15

App recommended

Jessica Jones ‘16

Recommended to me

Gwenpool ‘16

Recommended to me

Mockingbird ‘16

Self contained story

Civil War II ‘16

Morbid curiosity

Thanos ‘16

A bit long but could be fun

Old Man Logan ‘16

Recommended to me

Black Panther ‘16

App recommended, I’m iffy

Rocket ‘17

App recommended

Black Bolt ‘17

Recommended by everyone

Immortal Hulk ‘18

Recommended to me

Jessica Jones ‘18

Recommended, short

Venom ‘18

Apparently the best venom

Deadpool ‘19

App recommended

House of X ‘19

Short, recommended

Black Widow ‘19

App recommended

Dazzler ‘19

Recommended to me

Guardians of the Galaxy ‘20

App recommended

Empyre ‘20

App recommended

Xterminators ‘22

Recommended to me

#comics #comic books #marvel #marvel unlimited #marvel comics

[elmuroinvisible]

El Muro Invisible T1E16. Final de temporada, naturalmente

El podcast transparente del videojuego independiente. Con Ariadna Álvarez (@ariadnaltos), Pablo G. Freire (@Pablogfreire) y Pablo Jurado.

En el episodio de hoy despedimos la primera temporada por todo lo alto con un repaso de todos los logros que nos propusimos en nuestro primer episodio hace justo un año. Hacemos una maratón para intentar completar in extremis aquellos que se nos han quedado a medias y ponemos la vista en el futuro para imaginar cómo será nuestra segunda temporada.

Puedes encontrarnos en Twitter e Instagram como @Muro_Invisible, escribirnos a [email protected] o visitar nuestra página web.

Feed RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/69536934/podcast/rss

Enlaces de interés: (¡Ojo! Incluyen spoilers del episodio)

-Lista completa de nuestros logros

-Small Life (PC)

-A hat in time (PC, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation)

-Mortadelo y Filemón y la banda de Corvino (PC)

-It Takes Two (PC, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation)

-Portal 2 (PC, Switch)

-We Were Here (PC, Xbox, PlayStation)

-Hollow Knight Silksong Gameboy Demake (PC)

-Yuppie Psycho (PC, Switch)

Créditos:

Podcast producido por: Ariadna Álvarez, Pablo G. Freire, Pablo Jurado

Edición: Pablo G. Freire

Diseño de portada: Pablo G. Freire, con ilustración de fondo de Digital Moons

Tema del podcast: Pixel War 2, de Abstraction

Logro conseguido: Stinger_Victory_1_Master (Rest!)

Otros temas utilizados: Angelic Forest (Doug Maxwell), Stinger Success 1 (Andrea Baroni), Stinger_Victory_1_Master (Rest!)

#Spotify

[espanolnews]

La nueva serie de Disney+ presenta a los superhéroes como elementos cotidianos, y su blah-ness crea una nueva emoción en la MCU. estudios de maravilla Por Brad Gullickson · Publicado el 18 de agosto de 2022 Marvel Explained es nuestra serie en curso en la que profundizamos en los últimos programas, películas, avances y noticias de Marvel para adivinar el futuro de la franquicia. Esta entrada revisa los primeros cuatro episodios de She-Hulk, la última entrada en la MCU, pero la primera que realmente se siente como un cómic de Marvel. Sin aguafiestas. ¿Fatiga de superhéroe? No. He perdido la cuenta de cuántas películas y programas de Marvel Studios hay, pero Ella–Casco es el que he estado esperando. El espectáculo es encantador, irreverente, tonto y seguro de sí mismo. Nada de lo cual tiene nada que ver con mi adoración absoluta por él. Mirando Ella–Casco es lo más cerca que hemos estado de leer un cómic moderno de Marvel, un universo donde los superhéroes que se estrellan contra una sala de audiencias son una molestia mundana en lugar de una tragedia cataclísmica. El primer episodio está mayormente preparado pero hecho con velocidad en lugar de reverencia. Bandera de Bruce (marca ruffalo) y su prima no mencionada anteriormente Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) conducen por la calle, discutiendo si Steve Rogers era virgen antes de caer al hielo. Una nave espacial de Sakaaran aparece repentinamente ante ellos, haciendo girar el automóvil fuera de la carretera. Dado que Bruce lleva puesto un prototipo de regulador de radiación gamma, es vulnerable y desprovisto de Hulk. Herido, su sangre de Hulk se filtra en la herida de Jen, y BOOM, llega She-Hulk. Ella–Casco no es una serie que regodea su tiempo de ejecución en una historia de origen. La única persona que podría estar decepcionada es Bruce. Pasó las primeras cuatro fases de la MCU luchando por controlar al tipo grande dentro. Después de quince minutos como She-Hulk, Jen lo tiene todo resuelto. Como le cuenta a su prima, su paso por esta Tierra como mujer ya la convirtió en una experta en el manejo de la ira. Los tipos tontos brindan una práctica interminable todos los días. El resultado es un superser que no requiere numerosas secuelas y spin-offs para controlar su habilidad. Ella tiene esto. Jen rechaza la invitación de Bruce al mundo de los superhéroes. Ella no pasó su edad adulta estudiando derecho simplemente para renunciar a su tiempo en la sala del tribunal. Hay suficientes Vengadores y aspirantes a Vengadores en el mundo que ya dedican su tiempo a salvarlo. No necesitamos que She-Hulk luche contra Thanos; necesitamos a Jen Walters luchando por la gente desesperada. sin embargo, el Ella–Casco La serie revelará que luchar en la sala del tribunal puede ser más difícil para Jen ahora que tiene algo de gamma en ella. Con superseres apareciendo en el registro, el debilucho promedio en la calle se resiente de su presencia. La súper gente está empezando a tener problemas con la ley y el público, y Jennifer Walters se convierte en su aliada de confianza. Cuando Tony Stark se declaró a sí mismo Iron Man en 2008, el campo de batalla de spandex no albergaba ni siquiera a un puñado de oponentes y socios. Marvel Studios ya ha rebuscado en las mejores partes de su baúl de juguetes, raspando el fondo. No estamos hablando de Moon Knight o Namor. Son A-listers ahora. Estamos hablando de Titania (Jameela Jamil). Los antecedentes en Ella–Casco están llenos de estrellas invitadas y cameos. El Los Ángeles de Jennifer Walters está repleto de experimentos científicos que salieron mal e invasores extraterrestres. Si Howard el Pato entrara en la oficina de Jennifer, sus compañeros no se inmutarían, ni tampoco los que están viendo el programa. El MCU finalmente ha llegado a un punto en el que los dioses y los semidioses hacen cola en Starbucks no es gran cosa.

Con tanta banalidad, Marvel Studios puede soltarse y pasar un buen rato. No todas las historias deben presentar un rayo de luz azul brillante en el cielo. los Ella–Casco La serie debe su ambiente a dos cómics en particular: Juan ByrneComedia de acción de los 80 y castilloLa búsqueda secundaria de la comedia de situación de los primeros años. de John Byrne, Ella–Casco obtiene sus rupturas de la cuarta pared y la sátira salvaje. De Dan Slott, Ella–Casco obtiene su “Show de Abogados!” A lo largo de la continuidad del cómic de She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters se ha enfrentado a los desastres habituales del fin del mundo. Puede enfrentarse cara a cara con su prima, sin problema. En su mayor parte, la comunidad de películas de superhéroes trafica con puñetazos y apocalipsis, pero los cómics de superhéroes con frecuencia se deslizan hacia otros géneros. She-Hulk está en su mejor momento cuando aborda lo absurdo de su situación y el planeta aún más loco que habita. Con Byrne y Slott, She-Hulk es una delicia, y esa es la vibra del escritor principal de la serie. Jéssica Gao está persiguiendo. Aquellos que buscan peleas ultra serias entre titanes deben buscar en otra parte o prepararse para examinar a sus personajes favoritos a través de una lente más clara. Si no quieres reírte de la Abominación (Tim Roth) o descubre los hábitos televisivos de Wong, el Hechicero Supremo (Benedicto Wong), podrías retroceder ante lo que Gao y su equipo están ofreciendo. No se permiten gruñones en Disney+ esta semana. Sí, Ella–Casco ofrece algunos golpes burlones en "Smart Hulk" / Bruce Banner, pero metidos en esos golpes también hay golpes tristes. Echamos un vistazo a lo que Bruce y Tony Stark estaban haciendo durante el Blip, y somos testigos del dolor aún presente en Bruce debido a la ausencia de Tony. Ella–Casco otorga un lado más caprichoso a la lucha de los superhéroes, pero la lucha permanece. Veinte años después de Sam Raimi Araña–Hombre (que estoy considerando retroactivamente como el comienzo de la MCU), las audiencias de películas están tan versadas en la experiencia de los superhéroes como los lectores de cómics. Estamos listos para historias y tonos más allá de las patadas, los puñetazos y los rayos de luz azul. A través del extremismo de los superhéroes, los narradores pueden capturar las alturas emocionales intensas que todos encontramos durante el día a día de la misma manera, pero diferente, que las mejores películas de terror logran de manera tan experta. En Ella–Casco, Jennifer Walters se ha encontrado en un infierno que se ha vuelto dolorosamente común para quienes la rodean. Para sus colegas, espectadores y extraños, ella es simplemente otra Howard the Duck. Para nosotros mirando, ella somos nosotros, navegando los ridículos obstáculos que los idiotas ignorantes parecen estar muy decididos a plantar en nuestro camino. Todos somos expertos en la ira en estos días, pero nos vendrían bien unos cuantos héroes más a los que seguir en términos de regular y armar dicha ira. She-Hulk es el modelo como Superman, probablemente más. Ella–Casco El episodio 1 ahora se transmite en Disney + Temas relacionados: Explicación de Marvel, Marvel Studios Brad Gullickson es columnista semanal de Film School Rejects y curador sénior de One Perfect Shot. Cuando no está divagando sobre películas aquí, está divagando sobre cómics como coanfitrión de Comic Book Couples Counseling. Cazarlo en Twitter: @BocaDork. (él/él) Lectura recomendada

[luxshine]

Moon Knight Primer, Part 8

Moon Knight (2014) #1-17

Prologue, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII

Ok, so… I am going to do the whole vol. 7, misnamed the Ellis arc because Warren Ellis only wrote the first six issues, which have art by Declan Shalvey, in one part because, writer issues or not, the art is gorgeous and I want to give you guys as many examples as I can from them.

THIS is the actual run who gave us both Mr. Knight and Dissected Bird Head Khonshu dressed smart and every artist here did their A game when it came to working with both. THAT alone? Makes this run worth it although I can’t recommend buying the first six issues, the ones that Ellis actually wrote, because I don’t want that man getting more money from royalties.

Hell, I kinda hate he created Mr. Knight, because I adore Mr. Knight but Ellis? Ellis is trash.

And I don’t mean this as a writer. In fact, and credit where credit is due? His six issues are amazingly good and have very little problematic stuff.  Unfortunately? The man is a sexual predator, who hurt and coerced and manipulated a lot of women, having sexual relationships with some of them at the same time without the other’s knowledge or consent. He helped ruin the career of one of the strongest woman in comics I know, a woman who has fought for women in comics her whole career, and emotionally abused and gaslighted her (and many others) while pretending to be her friend. More than 100 women have come forward with their accusations, and , as always, most of the industry went “but he’s so talented!”. So yeah. Despite the fact that I do work in the comic book industry professionally, despite the fact that I want to work in the big leagues? I can’t not point out that Warren Ellis is a creep and shouldn’t be working anymore in any capacity with strong properties. Wanna read these six issues of Moon Knight, because Death of the Author and all that? Pirate the shit out of them.  And then donate the equivalent of the cover price to the HERO initiative, or to the women who were hurt by Ellis. THAT is what Mr. Knight would do. (Also, as a parenthesis, while yes, Ellis gave Moon Knight this new identity? The writers who followed gave him a lot more depth so here, yeah, we can do Death of the Author. Hell, Oscar Isaac gave more depth to Mr. Knight by the mere choice of making sure we knew that it’s ALWAYS Steven the one who fronts when the guys are wearing the white dress suit, something that is not clear in the comics)

Ok. Sorry for interrupting the primer with that. But it was kind of important.  Because I seriously don’t want to give the wrong impression about what kind of person Ellis is. I mean, he did some good writing, but he is a horrible person… and he was a bit ableist as a writer too, only not on the “every single person in the room calls Marc crazy” variety.

So the first thing we have to address, and the first thing Ellis addressed, was exactly how much the general public knows about Moon Knight’s mental issues. And his choice was to make every single person in the Marvel Universe aware that Moon Knight, who is an illegal vigilante, also has DiD. Well, “is rumored to have DiD”.

Because the video Echo took in the Bendis run? Well, it went public and everyone saw him yelling at invisible people.

Now, I know that in OUR world seeing someone talk to someone who is not there? Sign that they may have mental health issues and need help…. Unless we notice they have airbuds on, in which case, they’re just having a very heated phone conversation. But in the Marvel Universe? Invisible Woman is a world famous superhero, model and adventurer! And an Avenger! Not only that, it is general knowledge that there are mutants who can turn invisible, who can turn other people invisible, who can make illusions that are not recorded, oh, and that every army in the world has cloaking technology that rivals Sue Richard’s powers.

What I mean to say is… Moon Knight yelling at an Invisible Captain America should not make people jump to “Oh, he hears voices”. But they do.

And that’s how this series start, with everyone and their dog knowing that Moon Knight is the “Crazy” superhero, while there’s a new consultant in town, the elegant Mr. Knight, whom on occasion can be called by Det. Flint to help in cases.

Absolutely NO ONE who sees Mr. Knight is fooled into thinking that is not Moon Knight in a fancy dress, but as Det. Flint points out: He’d be forced to arrest Moon Knight if he saw him, but he’s not seeing Moon Knight, he’s talking with his new friend Mr. Knight, so no one has to get arrested and the crimes can get solved.

Here we see a very different Mr. Knight from the one we met back in Secret Avengers. He’s a lot more talkative, more methodical, and very strategic. His first scene? He could’ve been Sherlock, from the BBC series, the way he analyzed every clue. Where he got that skill, and who is fronting at the time? We have no idea but he’s hot.  He also doesn’t like to fight. While he faces the issue villain? He makes sure to not throw a single punch in his direction, just avoiding getting hit until his actual plan can work out. Later writers will undo this a bit, but I personally like the idea that Mr. Knight just doesn’t like to get his hands dirty (and this makes him the perfect Super Hero identity for Steven, the one who doesn’t like the violence of their job, even when in the comics? It’s almost always Marc who fronts as Mr. Knight). This changes later, as soon as issue 4 when Mr. Knight does punch the villain, but it seems that he reserves that violence to really horrible people (The guy whom he punched was a man who killed a homeless man accidentally as part of a scientific research… then wrapped him up and buried him in the building where the research was made just to hide the problem. So yeah, I’d have punched them too). At some point he drops at helicopter to a bad guy, but the bad guy survives. Also, he has a very dry sense of humor, which I love.

This run also introduces the Black with Silver Plate Armor suit, the one we see in the Sailor Moon Memes.  And the… uh… Ghost hunting Special Khonshu Armor which… you have to see to believe.  I put it in the “Good” part just because I am 100% sure that it helped inspire the cool details of the TV show suit.

But then… the bad.

While The guys seem to be more stable than ever? Ellis made the puzzling choice to declare, through a psychologist character who is treating Marc officially, that Marc doesn’t have DiD. No, you see, he is brain damaged.  How Warren Ellis thinks this is a better thing, or that one cancels the other? I dunno. In any case, the doctor declares that Marc was indeed revived by Khonshu, who is NOT a God, but an Other dimensional creature (and again I wonder why Odin, Zeus and co are allowed to be Gods but the Egyptian Pantheon have to be Other Dimensional creatures and the only reason I can come up is not very patient with the writers) , but that in order to keep their connection, Khonshu had to made changes to his brain and now Marc reflects Khonshu’s personality, which happens to have four aspects: The Pathfinder, the Embracer, Defender and Watcher of the Overnight Travelers  AND the “Secret” aspect that is “the one who lives on hearts” which is Ellis’s excuse for the blood thirsty Fake-shu we have been tolerating for years. (By the way, Oxford comma man. The first time I read that? I thought that the four aspects were Pathfinder, Embracer, Defender AND then Watcher of the Overnight travelers, which makes SENSE, but then adding the evil one, which again, damn it Ellis, way to play the stereotype, would make FIVE aspects, not four. Then I checked Wikipedia, and apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought the four aspects were Pathfinder, Embracer, Defender, and Watcher, as that’s how they’re listed and “the one who lives on hearts” is completely ignored. As it should be. But again, then Ellis fails at math because those are five!). On the other hand, we will learn that the doctor is full of shit so, I feel free to ignore “the one who lives on hearts” as soon as we’re done with this run. Khonshu is Egyptian, not Aztec -and I am Mexican, I can make this joke.  The doctor claims that Marc’s brain was “colonized” by an alien entity and that is what created the Alters, which prompts Marc to later hallucinate/see Khonshu calling him “my son” for the first time. It also explains that the cycles we’ve seen between when Marc fronts, when Steven fronts, when Jake fronts and when Moon Knight goes off his rocker in the violence scale is because of the cycles of the Moon and Khonshu’s own personality, not really because of DiD, since the “alters” are the result of the human brain adapting to the changes made to it. Of course, Lemire’s run will destroy this idea, but I find it… kinda offensive in ways I don’t have the words to express. Any Systems reading this may feel different, and are welcome to correct me or add to it in the replies or reblogs.

Marc also has no support system anymore. No Crawley, no Gena, no Ray, no Marlene, no Frenchie. In fact, al lof his vehicles are now self-driven, including the Spktor-licenced limo, which I am sure makes Jake cry inside because we know Jake likes to drive. His only living contacts are the occasional conversation with Det. Flint, which is pretty much just shop talk, and his doctor. In fact, in the last Ellis’ penned issue we see a cop (who is stupidly trying to become the new Black Spectre because he feels offended that Moon Knight is more respected than him), we do see Marlene, now Fontaine as she went back AGAIN to her ex-husband and refuses to talk about Marc, and Frenchie, whose restaurant is back in track, and is now married to Rob so not having to deal with gay bashings every five issues DID wonders to his life, but Frenchie is back in the “Everyone who goes near Marc gets hurt”. He also posits the idea that Marc can’t actually die, that he was made immortal by Khonshu. And Marc’s self esteem is so,so low? That he thinks that the reason why he’s good as a hero Is because he knows no one can love him. In fact, the lack of support extends to Steven and Jake, as they NEVER talk to Marc during the Ellis penned issues. They just glare at him in judgment.

There’s also the insinuation that Khonshu KEEPS getting control of the body whenever he feels like it, because Marc realizes he has bought like, a TON of Egyptian relics, including Mummies down at his mansion/apartment/wherever he’s living at the time, and he DOESN’T remember buying any of those. And then Khonshu (Who I think may be finally real Khonshu, as he’s no longer in the blood train) replies with “perhaps you weren’t supposed to remember” which… not good.

This is it for the six Ellis issues. The rest of the series followed his steps, and had some consultation from him, but it was not written by him, so, in order to keep some semblance of who did what? I will separate now into the next writer, from issues 7 to 12 with Brian Woods. He did some damage to Marc, but nothing that was too bad.  Issues 7 to 12 also have some of the best art, as it’s Greg Smallwood (Whom we later will see in the amazing Lemire run) so yeah, at least it looks very, very, very pretty.

So where Ellis was building off a story through pretty much one shots, Wood goes all out with a single story that is actually seeded in the Ellis run. See, the Psychiatrist that Marc is seeing, Dr. Elisa Warsame, tends to be drawn as an incredibly creepy woman when she talks to Marc. This comes to an end when Marc stops an assassin from killing a former mercenary and general from a country named Akima,  and discovers that the one who paid said assassin was the Doctor, who, in a very weird trip through both Marc and hers mindscape, explains that she was a poor girl in one of the countries the man, General Lor  had destroyed, and she wanted vengeance for her slain parents. She insists that Khonshu would want that, while Marc argues that killing the man 20 years later, AFTER he had done a lot to repent and beg absolution for his sins was not vengeance but pity revenge and murder. And then she reveals that she wasn’t telling him her story to convince Marc, but to convince Khonshu to get a new avatar, namely, HER, and she manifests the, still really ridiculous, Dream Armor, leaving Marc alone in his mind. And when I mean alone in his mind? I mean it. Not only Khonshu is gone, but so are Steven and Jake, proving the doctor’s theory that they were only created due to his link to Khonshu.

(I will mention that this is stupid, as the doctor doesn’t develop three alters to go with Khonshu’s changing moods, nor she speaks outloud to him, but I digress)

The doctor also manages to blame Marc not just for the attempted murder but also for blowing up her house (which was her attempt to kill him), and apparently, tell Det. Flint about Jake Lockley while Steven tells Det. Flint to call him Mr. Grant whenever he’s in the Mr. Knight suit, which is incredibly odd as they are usually more careful about their secret identity. In fact, this series pretty much blasts that to outer space because after what the doctor did, it seems that every single person in the Marvel Universe knows that Marc is Moon Knight, that he has DiD and that he worships Khonshu.

Marc manages her second attempt to kill her target, by literally stepping in front of the new killer (an hypnotized cop who really doesn’t want to kill anyone), in front of cameras without a mask on. See what I mean about no secret identity anymore? And then gets arrested in the least possible legal way and put in a flying prison without real charges made because if there are no charges, there’s no trial and if there’s no trial, he can’t go free.

By the way, THIS is the run that gives us “Jake Lockley is the violent personality” idiocy, and it does it in a single LINE by Dr. Warsame: “The Lockley persona, I think. That WAS who I saw breaking limbs on the 88th floor of the World Trade Center, yes?” And that was IT.

So we finally know who is to blame for falling into the “Systems must have an evil Alter” stereotype after almost 70 years of the character existence, Brian Wood. On the other hand… well, it’s a relative early addendum, so better writers who hopefully do their research can undo it (I am not holding my breath, as I know what comes after Lemire for the guys and… is not pretty, sorry to say this.  On the other hand, Maybe TV synergy will make things better. I’ll just say right now that Marc’s last appearance in the comics is not a good one for system representation… or for Moon Knight fans in general)

In fact, the only good thing about all this is that Khonshu goes back to talk to Marc, who states that he is not worried that much about the doctor’s target, as he is worried about Khonshu. Yes, the man is worried for his god, because he fears that the doctor is manipulating the old bird.

Here I make a stop to point out that the whole message of this mini is really damaging as it is “don’t trust psychiatrists”. Which… uhm… terrible message to be giving? In general, I mean, not just for neurodivergent people.

The only “good” thing about this, in case you were wondering why I hadn’t pointed out how problematic it is to make a victim of war for profit become an immoral psychiatrist who wants to murder a man who has repented for his crimes? Is that the doctor is not a victim of war. In the very last issue, as a saving throw, is revealed that she was in fact the daughter of the REAL dictator who had destroyed her native country, that the man she was trying to kill was a revolutionary who helped free her native country, and that the only reason she was trying to kill him indirectly at first was because she knew her assassins would fail and so she would kidnap him to force him to reveal where her father’s money was. Oh, and create enough chaos to re-start the war in her native country and profit from it.

Still problematic and racist, but in a different way.

By the end of the Wood run, the new sort of status quo is that now every person in the Marvel universe knows about Moon Knight’s secret identity, even if most don’t believe about his connection with the “fake” god (and again, I wonder why Egyptian gods are considered fake when frigging ARES was an avenger by this point, and Earth has an ambassador in Aasgard  as it is recognized as part of the 12 realms! (Said ambassador, in case you’re wondering, is all around badass Jane Foster)

With six issues left on this particular volume, we get Cullen Bunn in writing duties, and art by Ron Ackins.

Here, the status quo goes weird. Marc abandons both Grant mansion and the apartment he was keeping in New York for an abandoned building that is filled with ghosts who are begging for his help. Once again, people know who he is, so the mask becomes more a matter of Marc feeling comfortable with it rather than him needing it, and he is talking to the STATUE of Khonshu, rather than Bird head Khonshu. He also seems to have some powers now because not only he can see ghosts clearly, even if others can’t (A thing that happens in the MU, sometimes Ghosts are just people who happen to be dead and may or may not be intangible, sometimes they are invisible to the normal human beings), but he can also see the trail of their suffering in the form of bloody footprints.  Unfortunately, he can’t talk to them. Khonshu also fluctuates between calling Marc his son, and calling him his Priests.

This series works more on the Pathfinder, Embracer, Watcher and Defender roles, as we see now OTHER gods, such as Anubis, come to ask for help so that Marc will free their followers, and it would be all nice and good, and a return to form of Khonshu working as a god of Justice and Protection rather than vengeance, until of course we get the issue where child killing monsters ALSO pray to Khonshu and Khonshu retires Marc’s protection when fighting against them because Marvel can’t just let Khonshu be a good god, just as they can’t let the System be a non-stereotypical neurodivergent character who doesn’t go horribly violent for no reason.

And then… the Cult of Khonshu reappears, this time masquerading as one of those religious cults that “help” the homeless but are in fact hiding that they pick some of them up to be sacrificed to Khonshu. The guys find out, go and fight the scantly clad priestess who swears she is Marc’s destined wife, and it would be a lackluster issue if it didn’t end with Khonshu helping Marc walk out of the building that he just set on fire to destroy the cult that was also mind controlling everyone inside.  Classic Khonshu, the one who wore the cape and MAY, I repeat MAY not be a pigeon head god since we only see him from the back so we may hope the old Killing Khonshu days are over. We will be wrong. While the very worst of Khonshu is far behind us, as we will never see cartoon blood thirsty pigeon again, he still will do some very bad things once we get back to pigeon head. But that is for part 8 as we finally, FINALLY, reach the amazing Lemire’s run.

#Moon Knight #Moon knight primer #Moon Knight comic #Marc Spector #Jake Lockley #Steven Grant #Jake Lockley was done wrong by Brian Woods #Mr. Knight #Khonshu was done wrong by... everyone #Khonshu

[tvsotherworlds]

[why-i-love-comics]

Moon Knight: Infinite Comic Primer #1 (2021)

written by Robbie Thompson art by German Peralta & Rachelle Rosenberg

#moon knight #marc spector #marvel #wednesday spoilers #spoilers #comic spoilers #comics spoilers

[aeonborealis]

Movies/Shows Spectra

Cowboy Bebop FLCL Neon Genesis Evangelion Princess Mononoke Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Adaptation Being John Malkovich Minority Report Waking Life 2001: A space Odyssey Parika The Matrix Blade Runner Alita Battle Angel John Wick 1, 2, & 3 Inception Clock Work Orange Good Will Hunting Apocalypse Now The Godfather The Dark Knight The Green Knight Pulp Fiction Fight Club The Empire Strikes Back Se7en Interstellar Spirited Away Leon: The Professional Alien Momento Django Unchained Joker Synecdoche Jurassic Park Akira The Grand Budapest Hotel World War Z The Big Lewbowski Logan Terminator Back to the Future Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse Dune PK Her Donnie Darko 12 Monkeys Ghost in the Shell Soplaris Elysium Cowboy Bebop: The Movie Children of Men Brazil Rogue One Big Hero Six Moon Serenity Predator E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Fantastic Planet Gravity The Girl Who Leapt Trhough Time Ex Machina The Fifth Element Guardians of the Galaxy Watchmen 28 Days Later Robo Cop Close Encounters of the Third Kind Godzilla: Shin Source Code Doctor Strange Contact Total Recall Tenet I Origins Cloud Atlas Looper Limitless K Pax 2046 Pi The Shape of Water Black Panther I Am Legend A.I. Artificial Intelligence Treasure Planet Starship Troopers The Andromeda Strain Robot and Frank Dredd 9 A Scanner Darkly Blade Oblivion The Adjustment Bureau Passangers Independence Day Starman Finch Another Earth Primer Flight of the Navigator Repo Man Altered States Chappie Cypher eXistenZ Spring HarcoreHenry Venom The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Resident Evil Short Circuit The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Idiocracy Titan AE Ad Astra Space Jam Lucy Alien: Covenant The Cell Dune Solaris World on a wire Le Jetee Kamikaze 89 Liquid Sky Aeon Flux Reign the Conqueror Megazone 23 Neo Tokyo Class of 1999 Crime zone AD Police Files Circuitry Man Cyber City Oedo 808 Hardware Megaville 964 Pinocchio Until the End of the world Wax, the discovery of television among the bees Fortress Freejack Nemesis Machine Girl Mimbo: The Subtle Art of Japanese Persuassion Prototype Shadowchaser Split second 8 man After American Cyborg: Steel Warrior Ghost in the Machine TC 2000 Crystal Fortune Run Cyber Tracker Cyborg 3: The Recycler Armitage III Automatic Cyber Bandits Cyber-Tracker 2 Cyberjack Hackers Johnny Mnemonic Nemesis 2: Nebula Screamers The City of Lost Children Virtual Combat Nemesis 3: Death Angel Omega Doom Rubber's Lover Gumo My Own Private Idaho Full Metal Gokudo Gattaca Andromedia The X Files Webmaster The Thirteenth Floor I.K.U. No Maps for These Territories Thomas in Love Vritual Nightmare Avalon Electric Dragon 80.000 V Reboot: Daemon Rising Reboot: My Two Bobs Xchange Dead or Alive: final Resurrection of the Little Match Girl Returner Teknolust Natural city Paycheck The Animatrix Appleseed Casshern Cyber Wars The Bottled Fools Immortal Malice Doll Automatons Puzzlehead Chrysalis Vexille Sleep Dealer Technotise: Edit & 1 Tetsuo: The Bullet Man Tokyo Gore Poilice

#cyberpunk #scifi #anime #movies

[nekoniniart]

Moon Knight Ep 1 Doodle 🌙

Me gusto mucho el primer episodio

#nekoniniart #moon knight #moon knight steven #procreate #doodle #Ep 1

[thesecondbatgirl]

Final Fantasy XIV: A Fandom Primer

I was going to do a really long post complete with pictures in the style of the old livejournal crack_van fandom primers, but you know what, fuck it, I am bad at that, so have a giant wall of text instead.

Except for this meme:

So have you tried the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which once again has a free trial that includes the first expansion and unlimited playtime? No? Well, I’m about to tell you why you should try it. (Minor spoilers through the most recent expansion)

One: The characters

Look, if I tried to list every single character this would be way too long, so instead I will just say that there is a character type for everyone. Do you like found family? Have so much found family it is ridiculous. Do you like gay dads adopting a teenage girl? Check. One of the best redemption arcs since Prince Zuko where the dude is basically “I am well aware that the things I did are unforgivable, nobody should forgive me, but I will dedicate the rest of my life to being a better person?” Also a thing. Smug teenage asshole learning that maybe he doesn’t actually know everything in the world and becoming a better person. Woobie cat boys who need a hug? That one villain who just wants to fight you because his life is boring and the only thrill he gets is in searching for the ultimate fight? Handsome knights who bring you hot chocolate when you’re sad and then (spoiler) die tragically in your arms? 

Two: The worldbuilding

Endwalker (the most recent expansion) brought the main story over a decade in the making to its inclusion, and the worldbuilding was just… amazing. I am (once again) replaying the game, because little details from the base game pay off in a big way later on. And you know, all three starting cities are run by women, so you have your choice of hot pirate woman who can totally step on me (... we totally get a female villain who does step on people later), immortal(ish) child (kinda) leader of the forest nation, and a very young sultana who leads the desert city and also eventually gets an arc where she’s basically like “fuck capitalism” and I love her. Not to mention all the places you go to in later expansions, which include the fucking moon (which is haunted). And there is so much lore that they’re literally going to have to put out a third encyclopedia to keep it all straight. Oh and all the pixies are canonically non-binary, they are great.

Three: The tropes

Look, name it and it has shown up in ffxiv. Bodyswap. Time travel. Alternate realities. You can literally bartend at one point so your coffee shop AUs can exist if you want.The tv tropes page is ridiculously long for a reason because I swear everything that could possibly exist does.

Four: the themes

FFXIV is really, when it comes down to it, based on one thing. The arc words of the story are “for those we have lost and those we can yet save.” The last expansion especially has been a rebuke of nihilism and an embrace of hopepunk. There is a textual acknowledgement that yes, life is incredibly hard and filled with pain, but life itself is worth living and that we together can fight for a better future, instead of giving into despair. Oh, and also fuck imperialism, let’s go destroy the colonizers, but let’s also get into why these sorts of things happen, and how do people move on after. 

Five: The gameplay

You can be every single class without having to be a new character. That is 19 combat classes (20 if you count the limited job), 3 gathering classes, and 8 crafters. Plus, they are about to make it so that you can basically do this single player if the idea of playing with others scares you. But the community is overall fairly friendly! There is still the tank/healer/dps (damage dealer) breakdown and I am not the person to talk to about healing, but even if you want to only choose one class and play that you can! Or you can keep trying things until you find something you like, there’s a class that will probably appeal to you.

Six: The music

Is a bop. The end. There’s a reason I have played literally 7500 hours of this game since 2015. Highly recommended, you should join.

Also if you like the Jedi, I swear it's one of the best portrayals of Jedi philosophy I’ve ever seen and why I’ve spent a lot of time yelling that the woman who wrote the last two expansions should write Star Wars.

(Oh, and if you RP, there is a VERY active RP scene.)

Download the free trial here: https://freetrial.finalfantasyxiv.com/na/ and you can find me on Crystal Data Center. (Although data center travel is coming soon!) And seriously, if you have questions about the game message me, I’ll answer, and make up a FAQ post if necessary. I love this game so much, and it has gotten so many of my friends through the pandemic.

#final fantasy #final fantasy xiv #seriously everyone should play this game #final fantasy 14 #ffxiv #ff14

[mylifeinfiction]

Moon Knight, Vol. 1: From the Dead by Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey

The Disney+ Moon Knight series premieres at the end of March. He's a Marvel character that I'm mostly unfamiliar with, so I decided to read some comics to prepare myself. The internet seemed to praise this one pretty universally, so I grabbed it from my library. (I would've rather read the Lemire run, but it wasn't available.)

This didn't work as a whole the way said online praise made me believe it would. However, it does give some great, entertaining insight into who this character is at their core; a guardian of night travelers, a tortured psyche, a violent mercenary, a man possessed by an Egyptian god and the sins of his past. Ellis's stories are brutal, and continuously interweave Moon Knight's soldier roots and psychological fragility. It's the artwork that really takes this collection to the next-level, though. Declan Shalvey's work is stunning, and drowns the reader in atmosphere, bringing the blood and violence to vivid life while also effectively visualizing Moon Knight's shattered psyche.

In the end, I wasn't left with as deep a connection/understanding of the character as I'd expected from the reviews I'd read, but it was an effective and entertaining primer that left me wanting more of this character. I may continue with Volumes 2 + 3 of this run, but I'll more likely work to get my hands on the Lemire run to complete my Moon Knight crash-course.

Writing: 5.5/10 Artwork: 6/10

Total: 6/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

#booklr #comic books #marvel #moon knight #book review #warren ellis #books #graphic novels #comics #superhero #book reviews

[nomadasdigital]

Moon Knight es la mayor apuesta de Marvel Studios en Disney+ hasta el momento. Sí, es la primera de estas costosas series protagonizada por un personaje completamente nuevo en el MCU, pero ese personaje también es complejo y, a menudo, francamente impenetrable, amado por sus fans de Marvel Comics y ocasionalmente burlado por aquellos que lo consideran ser la versión mucho menos genial de Batman.

Bueno, tenemos exactamente cero vibraciones de Batman en este primer episodio del nuevo programa de Disney+, donde conocemos al dolorosamente poco cool Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac), un tímido empleado de la tienda de regalos del museo británico que aparenta tener un trastorno del sueño. Steven se ata a su cama todas las noches y sella la puerta para comprobar que no ha estado deambulando por las calles de Londres durante su sueño. Sin embargo, todavía está exhausto y regularmente se mete en problemas en el trabajo por llegar tarde y tener ideas por encima de su puesto.

Steven es un apasionado del antiguo Egipto y parece ser un hombre encantador a punto de comenzar un romance con una bella compañera de trabajo a la que ni siquiera recuerda haber invitado a salir. En un momento, Steven expresa sus preocupaciones en voz alta: “Si voy a tener una novia en algún momento, obviamente no puedo tener ataduras de tobillo en mi cama, ¿o sí? Esa es la definición de una bandera roja”, lo que provocó nuestra primera gran carcajada. 

Por supuesto, no pasa mucho tiempo antes de que Steven se levante de la cama y se meta en problemas. Habiendo viajado de alguna manera inexplicable de repente se encuentra en peligro inminente. Parece haber estado en una misión para robar un escarabajo dorado de la posesión de Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), el líder de un culto que está repartiendo castigos mortales en nombre de la diosa egipcia Ammit. Aparentemente, ella puede decir si tus maleza supera a la bondad dentro de ti. ¿Y si esa maldad es parte de un futuro turbio que aún no ha ocurrido? Ella lo cortará de raíz. (En la mitología si se juzgaba que un corazón no era puro, Ammit lo devoraba, y no se permitía a la persona sometida a juicio continuar su viaje hacia la inmortalidad)

Harrow se establece como nuestro “villano” cuando juzga a un par de sus seguidores usando un bastón misterioso y un tatuaje, y parece bastante tonto a pesar del enigmático representación de Hawke, incluso antes de que la perturbadora secuencia se convierta en una payasada. De hecho, hay muchas cosas realmente geniales en este episodio que terminan un poco manchadas por su decepcionante CG o por la peculiar actuación central de Isaac como el inestable Steven, lo cual es algo desafortunado.

Este es también el punto del episodio en el que las cosas inevitablemente se vuelven muy confusas, ya que Steven, presa del pánico, alterna entre su propia identidad y la de Marc Spector, un mercenario que parece estar trabajando con el dios egipcio de la luna Khonshu. Los fans de Moon Knight que tenían curiosidad acerca de cómo la MCU manejaría el brutal estilo de lucha de Spector probablemente se sentirán molestos al descubrir que este primer episodio utiliza principalmente cortes entre estas dos identidades para pasar por alto los momentos más sangrientos de Marc en lugar de mostrarlos por completo.

La segunda mitad episodio se ocupa de ayudar a Steven a comenzar a comprender que su vida ha sido una farsa a través de sus interacciones reflejadas con Marc, tiempo durante el cual Khonshu lo acosa. No en vano, nos encanta la forma en que Khonshu ha sido diseñado para la serie, ¡realmente se ve perfecto! Elegir a F. Murray Abraham como la voz del dios de la luna es un golpe maestro.

Steven también se entera de que una mujer llamada Layla (probablemente podemos suponer que esta es la versión de MCU de Marlene de los cómics) ha estado buscando a Marc durante mucho tiempo, antes de que el villano Harrow le dé a Steven una charla tranquila y expositiva sobre Ammit, de cómo si ella estuviera cerca, habría matado totalmente al bebé Hitler/Pol Pot/lo que sea, justo como Rhodey hablo de un bebe Thanos.

Eventualmente, podemos ver una acción breve y totalmente equipada de Moon Knight cuando Steven permite que la identidad de Marc se apodere de su cuerpo para lidiar con uno de los chacales conjurados de Harrow, y algunas instalaciones del museo terminan luciendo como un baño público promedio en el Reino Unido. 

“The Goldfish Problem” es una introducción bastante sólida al mundo de Moon Knight, pero parece se le ha otorgado la libertad de interpretación al nivel de “Johnny Depp en Pirates of the Caribbean” cuando se trata de la representación de Steven específicamente y su recorrido puede variar según lo bien que funcione para la audiencia. Aunque es probable que el acento británico de Isaac sea una montaña rusa para cualquiera que viva en el Reino Unido, se dan pistas de que tendremos más de Marc en el próximo episodio.

Hay límites perceptibles para contar una historia de Moon Knight, sin importar el medio, y generalmente hay tres opciones principales disponibles al acercarse a uno: puedes ponerlo en medio del MCU a pie de calle, puedes profundizar en la mitología egipcia de todo, y puede intentar un estudio de su viaje de salud mental. En un escritor valiente el que intenta los tres, ¡porque son muchos ángulos para incorporar! Aquí, el equipo de redacción ha elegido las opciones dos y tres, pero todavía hay mucho por discutir, y quizás hacer malabarismos con todo dadas las limitaciones de una serie de seis episodios en una plataforma familiar como Disney+, es todo un desafío. De todos modos, es difícil no imaginar lo que una versión más lenta de esta serie podría habernos ofrecido en Netflix.

Diremos que es refrescante ver un programa ambicioso de Marvel que no está lleno de huevos de pascua (para los fans de los cómics, hay un vistazo rápido del nombre "Duchamp" en el teléfono plegable de Marc). Moon Knight no tiene que preocuparse por dejar migas de pan en el camino, y puede seguir contando su propia historia desde cero. Es cierto que la versión MCU de Steven Grant es bastante irritante, pero al menos es un protagonista muy diferente. Estamos interesados en saber cuanto del buen corazón amable de Steven podría estar en desacuerdo con la brutalidad mercenaria de Marc más adelante.

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