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thran-duils · 3 years

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Use All of Me (P.13)

Title: Use All Of Me (Part Thirteen) Summary: Fem!Reader x Dark Mob!Steve Rogers. The Avengers are heroes saving the world but in this AU, they are also permitted by the powers in charge to have less than favorable business underneath their guise of mere superheroes. Steve and Tony are at the helm, keeping their empire’s wealth in check, both devious and perilous if crossed. Steve takes a liking to the reader at a party and it may be her undoing to her autonomy choosing to go home with him. Words: 3,575 Warnings: Dark AF, angst, emotional/mental abuse, smut, breeding, death

Part Twelve || Part Fourteen || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

A branch snapped out in the woods and you turned quickly towards the noise. It was dark outside still, the sun just starting to rise. You had been unable to sleep since 3:30am and instead of tossing and turning that could wake Yua up, you had come out onto the upper balcony with a book and a blanket.

The only sound you heard now was your heart pounding in your ears, worried that you were going to see a shadow step out from behind the trees in the shape of Steve’s broad shoulders.

But the woods were quiet, no looming figures. Slowly, you relaxed, the tension leaving your muscles. You could not see anything, so you nestled back down, opening the book again. After a few minutes, the sound was forgotten, and you were immersed in your book.

When you finally came back inside, Yua was up by then. You walked quietly by Natalie’s still sleeping form and made your way down the stairs carefully. Yua was already at the sink making herself some coffee. She eyed you as you walked into the kitchen.

“God, look how big you are,” Yua said groggily, eyeing your stomach.

“Good morning to you too. And yes, I can feel it,” you jested. “26 weeks.”

She laughed, “I mean honestly. Since this all started out… it’s like you swallowed a volleyball. It just hits me sometimes, still catches me off guard.”

“Soon to be a basketball, I’m sure.”

“Or bigger.”

“Probably bigger,” you admitted, grabbing a glass to get yourself some water.

“Well, you’re not that size yet. So, where is my breakfast? Cause you look like you’ve been up for a while. Why isn’t it ready?” Yua joked.

Yawning, you said, “Well, ma’am, I was actually going to go back to bed after I got something to drink. I’ve been up since 3:30. I couldn’t sleep. And now it’s catching all up to me. But if you would like, I could make you eggs.”

She waved you off, “I was just kidding. Go back to sleep. It’s still early enough! Do you want me to put a plate of food in the fridge for you for whenever you do wake up?”

“That would be nice,” you said before taking a large gulp of the water. You placed the half empty water glass back on the counter and said, “I’ll have that later too. Don’t want to drink too much at one time. The babies have declared a competition on who can kick my bladder the hardest.”

<><><>

Back in New York, Clint looked way too proud of himself as he strode into the room, but it caught Steve’s attention because that could mean only one thing. And that thing was going to bode well for him.

He was halfway out of his seat as Clint approached, a wide grin tearing at the sides of his mouth.

“I think I got it,” he said, throwing the few pictures he had printed out upstairs on the desk in front of Steve. Steve sat back down, pulling the photos towards him eagerly. “I saw that one of Natalie’s cousins had some photos up in the woods. I couldn’t get a location on them because I wasn’t friends with him. So, I got Shuri to make up a hack for me to gain access to an account. I chose one of the aunts, disguising it as a money scheme – she fell for it, clicked on the link. I was able to gain access to her account and was able to access more of the photos on his page. He’s got a cabin in New Hampshire.”

Steve was looking at the photos of the family outside their cabin.

“If she isn’t on the trains,” Clint said, excitedly. “Where are we now with the cameras? The west coast? We should have seen her by now if she was on the Amtrak.” He pointed eagerly at the pictures and said, “This might be it. It wouldn’t cost them anything to stay in and it’s probably secluded. It’s not too far but it’s far enough out of state.”

<><><>

Wanda was leaning back on the couch, flipping through a magazine. She had been watching the cameras for most of the early morning, but Tony had arrived around 6:30am, wanting to try different locations so she got up and left, giving him the space he needed.

The phone on the desk rang nearby, drawing her attention instantly, and she sat up, craning her neck to look at it. The phone was the number they had given out on the ads to call if anyone had any information on Y/N’s whereabouts. Tony’s gaze was locked on it too and before he could react, she was there, picking it up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, I’m calling about the missing persons ad.”

Wanda’s breath caught for a moment before she breathed, “Yes?”

“For Y/N Y/L/N.”

“Yes,” Wanda said more impatiently.

“Saw a woman like the photo at one of the cabins up here as I was on a walk real early this morning, right as the sun was coming up. She was sitting on the porch, very pregnant. I didn’t get a great look at her, didn’t want to gawk, you know. Plus, I think I was on their property, so I was probably trespassing, but I was following a doe—”

“Where was it at?” Wanda asked, cutting him off in the politest voice she could muster.

<><><>

“Steve!” Wanda called, taking the stairs by two. Steve called from the community room and she walked briskly, practically breaking into a jog. When she entered the room, she saw Clint, Sam, and him were looking at some photos on the table. Tearing her attention away from that, she said in a rush, “We maybe got something. A man named Will called about it, saying he thinks he saw Y/N.”

“In New Hampshire?”

“Y-Yes?” Wanda said completely confused at how he knew that.

Clint looked beside himself and Steve demanded, “Where at? Did you get a location?”

Wanda told him the address and Steve pulled his phone out, typing it into the maps app. He slammed his hand down on the desk in triumph, standing quickly. He thrust the phone into Clint’s hands. Sam was trying to peer over Clint’s shoulders to get a look too.

“That’s the same damn cabin,” Steve exclaimed, hardly able to contain his excitement. Wanda took notice of the pictures now, leaning over the table to look at them herself.

“Are we going now?” Sam asked just as Steve breezed past him. His eyes swept to Clint and said, “I guess so then.”

“Ha, teamwork,” Clint smiled, squeezing Wanda on the shoulder encouragingly as he walked by, rushing to follow Steve.

<><><>

The team was quick in their assemble upon arrival, Bucky and Natasha having to travel to get there which set Steve on edge because he had been ready immediately in his black suit, anxiousness coursing through him. He was pacing in front of the facility, having a hard time containing the hope blooming. His eyes were set on the tree line, wanting to just get into the car and drive to the address, scoop Y/N up and bring her back home.

He was not going to make the same mistakes he had that had let her slip through his fingers. If he could help it, she would never step foot off that property without him again. He would make sure she learned that lesson as soon as he got her home.

Tony met him at the edge of the entrance patio, not suited up. He was staying behind to monitor from there and he surprised Steve with a small drone, holding it out to him.

“You should not go in there guns blazing before you get sights on her or something to be absolutely sure. Use this. You don’t need to be barging into some random pregnant person’s cabin. Not a good look, not good press. Especially since you’ve got it out there now that you are looking for her. This drone is quiet, but it’s not silent so don’t fly too close or they’ll hear it and it’ll blow your whole covert cover.”

“You mean hovering above the place in a plane isn’t going to do that?”

“You’re not taking a plane, jackass,” Tony retorted, and Steve smirked in response. “Park down the road. You can go in on foot.” Steve thanked him, taking the drone. Tony ran his eyes up and down Steve and asked, “Was it really necessary to get up in the suit?”

“Can’t exactly show up in slacks. Just in case things get squirrelly,” Steve responded.

“’Squirrelly’,” Tony chortled. “Y/N will hardly be able to run.” Steve’s only response to that with a slight smile of acknowledgement. Tony stepped closer and said, “I got something else too. Of course, they say it doesn’t exist because the general public already has an issue with frothing at the mouth with conspiracy theories of the government tracking them. People honestly suffer from grandiosity in this country.” He noticed the impatient look on Steve’s face and apologized, “Sorry. Soap box. How do you feel about a GPS chip?” Steve’s eyes widened in surprise and Tony back tracked quickly. “Right. We can talk about that when she gets back home, safe and sound. I’ve just wanted to try out the new model and she seems like the perfect candidate, perfect circumstance. We’ll chat when you’re back. Don’t forget.”

Tony clapped Steve on the shoulder before walking back towards the door to the elevator.

<><><>

The trip up north was taking longer than Steve wanted it to, his fingers drumming impatiently on his thigh as he watched the trees go by. The thought that Y/N would somehow get tipped off and bolt before he got there was eating away at him. He was watching his phone anxiously, seeing them get closer and closer to where the cabin should be.

When Clint pulled off on the highway at what should be the end of the road that would lead to the cabin, Steve threw the door open and stepped outside. He was ready to let the drone go, flying it towards the direction of where the cabin was in a matter of a few moments, the only pause in the effort being from the drone having to start up. Steve was watching the viewing screen of the drone with intensity as it hovered over the trees, keeping an eye peeled as he followed the gravel road. The rest of the team was waiting around the SUV. Bucky leaned against the side, tapping his foot, trying to expel some of the pent-up adrenaline that everyone was garnering, knowing this needed to be executed without injury or incident.

The cabin was there at the end and Steve leaned forward in anticipation seeing the car.

“That looks like the car model,” Tony said over his earpiece. He was able to access the drone’s camera was well back at the facility. “Zoom in a bit to the license plate.” Steve did as he asked and Tony breathed, “Bingo.”

“Alright,” Steve said far more calmly than he felt. “That’s good enough for me.” He walked back towards the open back door of the SUV, walking up and placing the screen just inside. “The cabin is about half a mile away. Clint, stay here with the car and be ready to come up when we are ready to go. I don’t want Y/N to have to walk back down the driveway. Nat, Sam… you’re with me at the front. Buck, take the back of the cabin. Don’t shoot anyone unless I tell you to.”

“Taking the fun out of things,” Bucky halfheartedly joked.

<><><>

Stretching out on the bed, your toes curled. A sigh of contentment left your lips as your eyes opened, blinking away your sleep. When your vision focused, you saw the clock said it was almost 11:00am. You had managed to fall back asleep around 7:00am and you felt better now that you had gotten some more sleep. You could barely detect Yua and Natalie speaking in low tones, more than likely trying to avoid waking you up.

The serenity was shattered at the loud bang from on the first floor and you heard Yua scream in alarm. You sat up with difficulty just as the door from the balcony burst open. You jolted to the side, holding your stomach protectively.

Your heart rate slowed only for a moment upon recognizing the man who burst in was Bucky. When his cerulean eyes landed on you, gun pointed in your direction, your heart rate blew past normal, your breath quick.

“Bucky?” you got out in a gasp.

He relaxed ever so slightly, his eyes softening at the sight of you. His gun was no longer pointed at you, hanging at his side now. You did not miss the uptick of his lips, satisfaction flooding his face. But he still stayed on alert, ready to raise his weapon again if needed.

You sat up straight slowly, despite the commotion downstairs, keeping eye contact with him. Getting to your feet you tried to drown out the sounds of shouting downstairs, focusing only on him. His eyes flicked to your stomach, causing your hands to clench tighter around it and he made eye contact with you again.

“You can let me leave,” you said to him, your voice shaking.

Bucky’s laugh was humorless. “Y/N. Sweetheart, c’mon.” He was chastising you for even suggesting it with that tone.

“Buck?”

The sound of his voice rolling up the stairs made you freeze to the spot.

“I’ve got your doll in my scope. She looks good, Steve,” Bucky called back down towards the ground floor.

The sound of his foot on the bottom stair made you flinch. His footfalls were heavy, each step putting another nail in the coffin of your freedom. Your eyes flicked towards the open door and Bucky gave you a disappointed look, taking a step back towards it. He shook his head and you tore your eyes away from him, eyes fixated on the stairs.

He came into view quick, his height surpassing the staircase railing long before Yua or Natalie’s would. The same time elation flew through his features upon seeing you, you felt dread course through your veins. He was geared up, like he was going into a fight. Apparently, he did not underestimate the three of you.

Steve was a foot from you now, his gaze piercing and you were too afraid to take your eyes off him. There were a few moments of silence before he said quietly, “I admit, you have some loyal friends down there. They remind me of Buck.” You said nothing and he asked harshly now, “What did you think this was going to accomplish though, really, Y/N?”

You sucked in your bottom lip, unable to form a sentence in your frightened state about what he was there to do besides take you back.

“Answer me.”

Stammering, you said, “I… I just…” You were embarrassed he was shaking you up so bad. You had been in such a haze, hoping beyond reason that the three of you would eventually be able to settle down and it would blow over. The longer you had stayed away, the more the doubt it could work had been overshadowed by that terrible misleading feeling of hope.

Steve’s expression softened seeing you tripping over your words. He stepped closer and you instinctively stepped back. His lips formed into a thin line, stopping his advancement. “Y/N, doll, please. I want what is best for you. All I want is to take care of you. You worried me, doll. You worried me a lot. Do you know what it felt like to not know where you were? If you were safe? If the children were safe? Can you imagine how utterly upset you made me? How betrayed I felt when I realized you were gone? I leave to let you have a party with your friends, to give you space with them.” You almost flinched at the phrasing, like he had taken the words right out of your mouth. If he noticed, he did not show it. He continued on, “I leave a gift behind for you to find, something I built for you and the babies, and how do you repay me? You left. Without a word. Like I didn’t matter. Did you even see the gift?”

“No,” you whispered.

“Of course you didn’t. You didn’t care enough to look. You were only concerned with yourself. Out of everyone in the world, I didn’t think it would be you that would betray me like this. You told me you loved me.”

Heat rose to your cheeks as your eyes glistened with tears. He sounded deeply hurt, wounded. You could see it in his eyes.

“I can forgive you, Y/N. Trusting you is something else entirely. I don’t think that’s an option right now. But… I can forgive you. You just have to come back and be good.”

You averted your gaze, your chest tightening at his order.

Steve closed the space between you, and you did not move away this time. He hooked his fingers underneath your chin, tipping your head up. “It’s me…” Steve told you as his eyes hardened, and he warned gravely, “Or nobody.”

You did not have to imagine all the guns pointed at your friends downstairs. You either left with them both dead and back with Steve. Or left with them both alive and with Steve. Either way, he had you enveloped back to him. The degree of guilt is what you were choosing, that’s what he was giving you.

You were taking too long to answer.

Steve looked over his shoulder, making eye contact with Bucky. Bucky started walking towards the staircase where he could look down on the living room.

“Steve, don’t—” you choked out.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Good.”

You let out a strangled noise before you got out in between tears, “I won’t ever try to leave you again, I swear. I’ll stay home for you. I’ll take care of the twins. I’ll do what you ask, I’ll listen, like I promised. I’ll be happy.”

“Were you ever?” He asked coldly.

“I w-was,” you said shakily, nodding. Nodding to convince yourself, remind yourself that you had been. “I was, really.”

“And what changed that, hmm?”

“You… you locked me away in the house.”

His lips twitched at the accusation and you feared you had made a misstep, fearing for Yua and Natalie. He did not make a move though except to say, “And why did I do that?”

He wanted you to say what he believed. He wanted you to believe it too. The tears were fat rolling down your cheeks as you whispered, “Because… you wanted to keep me safe.”

“That’s right, doll,” Steve breathed easier, smiling. His fingers caressed your face. “That’s exactly what I was doing. And you pulling this little stunt proved my gut instinct was right, didn’t it? You need protection, especially from yourself. You are impulsive and don’t think about the long-term repercussions of your actions.” His hand came to rest on your abdomen, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me, doll. I want you to just come home and let me take care of you. That’s what’s going to happen. Right?”

“Yes,” a voice that sounded like yours said; it was like you were outside your body. “Yes, I want that.”

“That’s what I thought,” Steve said, leaning forward and giving you a long kiss on your forehead.

“My friends?” you choked out.

Steve pulled away from you and smirked at you. “Hmm, maybe you can be concerned with more than yourself. Maybe I was too harsh there for a moment… what about your friends?”

“Please don’t hurt them. Please let them leave and go back home unharmed.”

He exhaled heavily and asked seriously, “And why should I do that?”

“Bucky would help you if you asked.” Bucky turned his head towards the pair of you and you tried to pretend like you did not notice his gaze. “It’s not their fault. I asked for help. It’s my fault. They shouldn’t be punished for my mistake. Please don’t make them pay for my behavior.”

Steve looked contemplative and you waited with bated breath, hoping he would react positively to your display of holding yourself liable. He wanted you to beg and you were giving it to him.

Over his shoulder, he finally ordered, “Let the ladies grab their things and get out of here. They’re safe… as long as Y/N continues to behave.” You opened your mouth to protest but he cut you off by pressing a button on his earpiece. “Barton, we’re ready. Come on up.”

He grasped your arm and you tried to yank your arm away from him. He was far too strong and jolted you to him. “Don’t go messing this up now, Y/N. You were doing so well. Don’t make this harder for me than it has to be to get you in the damn car. You got what you wanted with your friends; you just need to uphold your side of the bargain.”

~~~

Tags: @imsonick , @alexakeyloveloki, @kvzctam, @ironlady1993, @taintedgenre, @inlovewiththefictionalcharacters @roxyfan14-blog @mrsnegan25 @coconutqueen21

#steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers #dark steve rogers #dark marvel #dark marvel fic #marvel fic #my shit

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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Essential Avengers: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1-3

May, 1984

THE WAR BEGINS

Oof, here we go.

Just gotta replicate the pace that let me do the Hawkeye miniseries in one go, three times in a row.

This is probably too much effort considering its Secret Wars (or more accurately Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars) and maybe there’s not going to be a lot of big changes from this in the Avengers book to really justify it.

But we’re getting Jim Shooter writing the Avengers and his non-consecutive runs were a lot better than I had remembered. And it continues the theme he had from the Avengers book.

It just makes sense in a nonsense way to cover this story.

Last relevant time in Avengers! Acting Completely Normal Vision warned the Avengers about some weird, possibly hostile energy surges right in time for an energy surge to surge energetically in Central Park.

When the Avengers went to investigate, they found a weird structure that looked like a techy coliseum maybe. When some of the Avengers wandered into it (apparently the most bankable Avengers? Sucks to be Vision and Wanda, shrug) they vanished.

In the next issue, after several days, these heroes returned, speaking of a secret war they fought. Weird stuff like She-Hulk taking the Thing’s place on the Fantastic Four happened. In other books, Spidey got a cool new suit.

Would you know more?

After being raptured in their various books, the missing superheroes all end up on one of those distinctive structures like the one that appeared in Central Park, except IN SPACE.

Its cool that the Avengers will have some company.

We’ve got a terrific 3/4ths of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men (including Lockheed but not including Kitty Pryde for some reason), the Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-Man, the totally Articulate Hulk, and hilariously Magneto is also here.

Maybe Secret Wars is just setting up the most awkward moment in the universe, as a prank show.

I think I’d enjoy a big event that turned out to be a prank show at the last minute. The fan discontent. Imagine.

Everyone introduces themselves to each other but mostly the audience and Ben Grimm claims his new codename as the Easter Bunny.

Checking, marvel wiki doesn’t have Easter Bunny listed as one of Ben’s known aliases. Cowards.

Looking up into space, Captain America spots another one of the totally cool constructs and Professor X scans that it contains EEEEEEEVIL.

Specifically Amora the Enchantress, Ultron, the Wrecking Crew, the Absorbing Man, the Lizard, VICTOR VON DOOOOOM, Kang the Conqueror, Doctor Octopus, and Molecule Man. Also, hilariously, Galactus is there.

I’m more convinced than ever that this is a prank show.

You know what would be more hilarious? If Punisher ended up on this construct.

The distribution of villains is kind of odd though. Galactus and Doctor Doom map to the FF. Doctor Octopus and the Lizard to Spider-Man. Ultron, Molecule Man, and Kang are Avengers foes. The Absorbing Man and the Wrecking Crew can go a couple ways but started off as Thor villains. And Amora is usually a Thor villain but supposedly has chilled out around this time or at least is less of a pain than her horny sister.

No X-Men villains. Because Magneto is chilling with them in the generally heroic pod.

Also, all the heroes were raptured from Earth while the villains were grabbed from Earth, from space, from Asgard, resurrected just to be here, or from the FUTURE.

I know marketing is wagging the dog but be consistent, secret organizer who we don’t know yet.

The Thing points out that Magnet is off-sides, re: being in the hero construct, and Magneto is like ‘hey, chill out dudes’ and denies specifically doing murders.

Magneto: “I know not what power transported me here from my secret lair, nor why I was placed among you -- but I find it more appropriate to ask why such as you were judged fit to be placed in my presence!”

Oof.

Burn.

Then the conversation is put on halt on account of the wildest shit any of them have ever seen.

An entire galaxy vanishes but probably not due to a wave of anti-matter.

Thor: “It’s gone! Gone -- ! Swept away like dust before some unseen, giant hand!”

And then around that last star left unswept, various chunks merge together to form some sort of world, perhaps for battle.

A nice touch for later is that you can definitely see that one of the chunks is a stray chunk of city.

Some of the villains start squabbling because close quarters, ego, etc.

But Ultron goes hey we’re allowed to fight? I’m the best at that.

Ultron: “I am Ultron! I do not understand the events transpiring! I do not understand how I came to be resurrected... nor how I came to be here! Nothing computes... Insignificant! I am Ultron! My purpose is to slay that which lives. You are all living things, ergo -- Ultron must destroy you!”

With the benefit of having read all the Avengers up to now, I feel that Ultron got up on the wrong side of the resurrection a little.

He’s not not like this but he’s not usually this turned on?

(Then again, maybe he just came back cranky)

DOOM grabs and shakes Molecule Man to do something about this because given enough time even the mighty DOOM might fall before Ultron.

Ultron is famously annoying to defeat, what with that adamantium.

But Molecule Man is in therapy after the Avengers kicked his shit and Tigra yelled at him for being a punk. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

So Doom with all his brilliant genius tells MM a cool way to help out that won’t hurt anyone. Directly.

Using his Molecule Man power over molecules to lightly toss Ultron into Galactus.

So that Galactus goes ‘who the fuck scuffed my boots’ and rips out all the energy in Ultron’s Ultron.

He can do that.

Why wouldn’t he? If he can do that to a planet, he can do it to a pissbaby robot. Even one apparently containing more power than an atom bomb.

Then, because this is one of those plots where things are always thenning, a rift opens in the nothingness of space and a heavenly esque light shines out. A warbly voice commands the action figures beat each other up.

I mean. Its more like

The Beyonder: “I am from beyond! Slay your enemies and all you desire shall be yours! Nothing you dream of is impossible for me to accomplish!”

But you have to admire that this toy commercial of a comic book is being honest and upfront about being a story where action figures bonk off of each other.

Galactus just hears ‘i can finally shake off these persistent forever munchies’ and flies off to demand prepayment for action figure bonking, with DOOM following behind him.

The Beyonder speaks up warning Galactus that hey, personal space. And that a guy that can effortlessly wipe out a galaxy is gonna have a sweet barrier but Galactus wants the hunger pangs gone and does not listen.

DOOM recognizes a bad idea when he sees one once in a while and hangs back but still gets blown out of space by the force of Galactus bonking off the Beyonder’s barriers.

Captain America: “They were swatted back like flies!”

Professor X: “To the Beyonder, even Galactus is less than a fly, Captain!”

Interruption dealt with, the Beyonder gets the show on the road and sends the two constructs to different parts of the patchwork planet.

The Marvel Super Heroes And Magneto land on some hill and quickly make sure that there are no villains excepting Magneto around.

With Magneto around, the non-X-Men raise an objection to Magneto being around.

He sank a Russian submarine with all hands back in X-Men #150 but he insists that it was self-defense and also they started it.

The X-Men’s position is ‘hey he’s a jerk but he’s our jerk plus we could use his help? The bad guys get GALACTUS, how is that fair?’

Well, they don’t say it but they’re probably thinking it.

And Hawkeye decides to be a little racist today.

Hawkeye: “You mutants stick together, huh? Well, sticking to a blood-soaked maniac like him doesn’t speak well of you, pal!”

Dude, Clint. Your dear old friend is Wanda.

Wait, why ISN’T Wanda here? Did the toy people really not want her? Fools. Her husband is toyetic as all get out.

Also, point of order, Wolverine? If anyone qualifies as ‘hey he’s a jerk but he’s our jerk!’ here its you.

Johnny “good life choices” Storm decides he’ll just kick Magneto’s ass and end the debate but yeah. Yeah, no. Magneto makes a fool of him.

And then Magneto decides eff this noise and flies off.

With Magneto alienated (good job, guys), Professor X decides this group needs some dang leadership and throws a nomination to Reed Richards. Reed defers since he’s thinking of Sue, left at home and not able to participate in the event.

Wasp, the cool leader of the Avengers, nominates instead Captain America.

Wasp: “We’re off in a strange land, up to our ears in a little secret war that may decide the fate of the universe! Some people don’t know me well! They might have doubts... and there’s no room for that!”

I’m baffled that there’s people here who don’t know Wasp who has been heroing since the 60s but sure. Cap(tain America) probably gets more crossovers and whatever.

I mean, heck, we’re talking a group of heroes consisting of the Avengers (who she already leads), the Fantastic Three (who she’s well acquainted with), and the X-Men (who I’m sure she’s met, although awkwardly its going to later be revealed that Wasp is in the Hellfire Club, but only the sex parts).

And I guess Wolverine’s extensive backstory with Cap doesn’t exist yet because Wolverine isn’t keen on him being the leader, describing him as the least of the assembled heroes. When Hawkeye is right there!

I kid because I love.

Meanwhile, DOOM wakes up adjacent to Galactus ankle and heads to a nearby fortress which he correctly assumes is where the villains have ended up.

Wait, the heroes get beamed down to a random hill while the villains get sent to an advanced fortress with weaponry and we later learn vehicles sold separately?

Kinda stacking the deck, the Beyonder.

You gave the villains GALACTUS and A FORTRESS PLAYSET right out of the gate.

The other villains tell Doom that they’ve (mostly) decided that he should be their leader. But Doom has bigger fish to fry than the prizes that the Beyonder is offering.

In typical Doomesque fashion, he wants the whole kettle. But the other villains what with their petty concerns think he’s too afraid to fight.

So he ditches.

He goes to steal-borrow a spaceship and even though he hates the thought, takes off to go talk to Richards. And then Kang shoots him out of the sky with a GIANT GUN THAT THE VILLAIN FORTRESS ALSO HAS? to stop him from allying with the heroes.

Said (marvel super) heroes see the distant explosion and fly as a group in the most hilarious way possible to check it out.

God, I have always loved this image. Its squished down into the bottom third of the page but its a delight.

They find Doom sprawled in the crash site, rambling that he’ll only speak to RICHARRRRRDS and about the Beyonder’s power. But Cap offends Doom mightily but offering him a hand up and because Doom sees pity in Cap and RICHARRRRRRDS eyes.

So he blasts the heroes and fucks off.

How very Bakugou of him.

And right as the heroes recover from that, a bunch of villains arrive to get this secret war started.

I have a fondness for this particular issue. For a long while, issue 1 was the only issue of Secret Wars I could find. So I just had the start of this story with all these non-Spider-Man non-X-Men heroes I barely knew cliffhangering into an attack by villains I really didn’t recognize except for Doc Ock and the Lizard.

It was a window into another side of the Marvel Universe. And for child me, this first issue worked perfectly to intrigue me. All these characters, the very straightforward conflict, all the complications that immediately pop up like Magneto, Galactus, and Doom. Alas, small child resources.

June, 1984

PRISONERS of War!

The heroes react slowly to the sudden villain attack but thankfully, the villains aren’t working together well. Unthankfully, half of the heroes were already knocked out by the first attack.

Meanwhile, over at Doctor Doom’s side of the plot, he flies back over to where Galactus just in time to see him finally rouse from being slapped down by the Beyonder.

Galactus floats to his feet and wanders off.

Doom: “He ignored me! As though I were a gnat buzzing at his feet! And so I am... Just as all of us, even Galactus himself, are but insects to the all-powerful Beyonder! Thus, the others have chosen to play the Beyonder’s simple game -- thereby, in effect, paying homage to him. Should I, too, pay homage? Should I worship at the feet of this god-like being -- or chose another path... one only Doom would dare!”

I think anyone that knows Doom knows which option he’s gonna choose.

He heads back to the villain fortress and finds Ultron’s deactivated body and decides Doom can use this.

Meanwhile, back at the first secret battle of the secret war, the heroes rally and start fighting back under Cap(tain America)’s leadership.

She-Hulk even gets a designated girl fight with the only female villain on the villain team.

I’d complain, I would. But at least She-Hulk isn’t the only heroine on the hero side.

She-Hulk: “Hiya! I’m the She-Hulk! You must be the Enchantress! Gee, I’ve heard so much about you -- ! You’re a not-nice lady!”

Enchantress: “A green woman? Is there no end to the varieties of mortals?”

The Enchantress magic slaps She-Hulk away and comments that she could crush She-Hulk physically but its beneath her.

Yeah, all Asgardians have some level of super strength, that’s right. Even the squishy wizards.

But all She-Hulk heard was, ‘someone I can really punch!’

She-Hulk: “I don’t often duke it out with someone solid enough to really unload on -- and slow enough to let me! Oh, wow! That was, like tubular, you know -- to the max!”

Uh. Jen, are you okay? Did you have a stroke? You don’t usually talk so much in Mario World secret world levels.

I think maybe Jim Shooter didn’t have a good grasp on her. I don’t think he’s ever written for her. And the other heroes mostly don’t vary too much from generic hero speaking patterns. Add some smart for smart characters, add some rude to Wolverine, and so on.

The battle wraps up with Kang, the Enchantress, and the Wrecking Crew captured and the rest of the villains fleeing when the battle didn’t go their way.

Cap sends Storm off to scout for a cool playset that they can use as shelter and she does so, noting that the winds on Battleworld are super easy to control. Like Battleworld was created to create ideal fighting conditions for everyone. Pretty neat, the Beyonder.

Storm finds a particularly rad fortress (”Bigger than fifty-four and a half Pentagons, I’d estimate!” Wow!) and the heroes move in.

I unironically enjoy how toyetic this story is with the fortresses and the vehicles and the weapons. Because I’m almost positive that Mattel barely capitalized on it.

There were only two playsets. Pitiful.

Over in their new headquarters, Reed stashes the captured villains in some form of psychostasis which “works by controlling aggression through brainwave modulation!”

He also sticks Enchantress in a healing pod to address that nasty case of being She-Hulked right in the face. Nothing will salve her ego though.

Captain America: “It’s no wonder that the name Mister Fantastic is renowned for compassion as well as courage! You give added meaning to the word hero, Richards!”

Whenever someone loudly announces that Reed is super compassionate, it makes me feel like they’re overcompensating.

Nobody ever makes note of, say, Captain America’s compassion.

With the prisoners (of war? Is that the whole reason for the title?) accommodated, Cap calls everyone for a meeting in a cool meeting dome he found which has a small waterfall for aesthetic and so everyone has to yell to be heard.

Wolverine yells that they should mop up the rest of the villains and get this over with.

Not mentioning that in order to “win it” they’d have to kill the villains, which none of the heroes have shown any interest in doing so far.

Cap(tain America) replies that A) planet big and they have no idea where the villains got to. And B) the remaining villains slash antagonists are Galactus, Doctor Doom, Molecule Man, Doctor Octopus, the Wrecker, the Absorbing Man, and Magneto. Not really people you mop up.

In a fun logistics bit, Cap sends out a patrol to make sure the area is secure but he also sends out two additional groups to find if there are any places in this fortress they can sleep and whether there's any... food.

Makes me imagine a Secret Survival War where the sides have to wrestle over limited resources.

Hours later, the villains that escaped the fracas arrive back at their fortress.

I’m sort of confused here.

Maybe it took so long because they had to make sure they weren’t followed. Or maybe because they didn’t have the sweet tripod vehicle anymore. But think about the flow of events of: everyone beamed down to Battleworld > Doom ditches the villains and gets shot down > heroes investigate and Doom ditches > villains show up for cliffhanger fight.

The villain fortress should be pretty close to where that fight took place. And then the heroes find a nearby fortress of their own so their fortress should be pretty close to the villain fortress. Maybe not in the same neighborhood but surely the same zip code.

Anyway, they find that while they were gone, Doom swanned in and renamed the place the Doombase.

If they have problems with it, they can talk to his Ultron.

Which I’m surprised he didn’t rename Doomtron.

Doom also tells them that he’s in charge now.

Absorbing Man: “Aw! Who gives a hoot! I need a meal an’ sleep! You wanna be in charge, Doom? Okay by me!”

If you think about it, this is just some steps added what the villains wanted all along.

They wanted Doom to be their leader but he told them he had bigger fish to fry and fucked off. Now he’s fucked back on and told them all that he’s their leader. They initially object before reconsidering due to Doomtron but, yeah, its all gone full circle.

Doom is a lot more cordial to Molecule Man though.

Doom: “Molecule Man... uh, Mr. Reece, I believe it is? I trust you were not inconvenienced.”

Molecule Man: “Well, being absolute master of molecules I can just assimilate molecules when I want, so I never have to be hungry, and I can just shoo away dirt molecules, so I’m always nice and clean -- but I am tired!”

Doom: “I have prepared a special chamber for you! I hope you like it!”

Molecule Man: “If not, I can always reconstruct the molecules -- !”

Heh.

Nice to see Jim Shooter able to follow up on the trajectory he sent Molecule Man on.

The rest of the villains head off but Doctor Octopus, the only other brain cell in this group, hangs back to talk to DOOM.

He wants to know what he plans to do about Galactus and then shows Doom on the biggest screen TV that Galactus is standing on a mountain glowing with an awesome power.

Doom just retorts that his plans are for his forces to triumph.

Doctor Octopus: Something tells me he’s got ambitions that dwarf merely triumphing in the Beyonder’s little contest! The question is whether he will destroy us in trying to achieve them -- or immediately after fulfilling them?!

Like I said, the only other brain cell in this group.

Meanwhile, while Magneto secretly sneaks into the hero fortress for Reasons, the heroes have a quiet moment that lets this Secret Wars biz really sink in.

Wasp: “I’d be having tea in my studio now, Jenny... And lunch on my patio tomorrow... This... um... situation we’re in... is kind of... much, you know? I feel there’s just a little thin wall inside me holding back a flood of despair!”

Its a nice touch, if intentional, that Wasp only admits this kind of thing now that she’s passed off the leadership responsibilities to Captain America. Its been a recurring character beat that she’s been keeping these sorts of worries to herself as chairwoman.

Over in another part of the fortress, Cyclops complains that he was right in the middle of his dang honeymoon when he was yanked into this event.

Cyclops: “I don’t know about you, Richards, but more than angry or afraid, I feel cheated! I -- I was on the verge of real happiness...”

Oof. This really sets the tone for his marriage with Madelyne Pryor.

Spider-Man and the Human Torch even have a little conversation.

Spider-Man: “You mean it doesn’t shake you, Torch, being here? What if we don’t get home?”

Human Torch: “The Fantastic Four have been off on space missions a couple of times, Spider-Man! We’ll get back! Believe me!”

I like when they’re friends.

So, I’m not sure what Magneto’s plan actually was. He was going to sabotage the fortress’ fusion generator as a distraction but Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense Spider-Alerts him to shenanigans afoot and he runs off to the power plant while Johnny Storm goes to get the other heroes.

Magneto decides to abandon whatever his plan was and captures Wasp as a consolation prize.

Gasp, another prisoner of war!

The Thing tries to give chase but inexplicably turns back to normal, smooth skinned Ben Grimm.

Also, Magneto escapes with the Wasp.

It’s like the aardvark says, you can get what you want and still not be happy.

Captain Marvel is holding the randomly anti-mutant ball for Hawkeye here and comments that none of the X-Men showed up to help stop Magneto.

Cap(tain America) tells her to belay that.

Captain America: “Let’s keep our minds on solving problems, not creating more!”

And they can’t even go after Magneto or rescue the Wasp right now because they have bigger problems: Galactus glowing with an awesome power and a massive storm that’s forming on Battleworld.

July, 1984

TEMPEST WITHOUT, CRISIS WITHIN!

The Beyonder has thrown in a nice stage hazard to keep things fresh in the form of a massive storm raging on Battleworld, with lighting that shatters mountains and winds that could tear someone’s limbs clean off.

Or perhaps its the unintentional result of just slapping a planet together out of random stuff you have lying around. The climate must be shot to shit.

I like it either way. Secret Wars has a lot of very toyetic collisions between groups of characters so its nice when Battleworld itself manages to be an obstacle.

Over in his giant U-shaped fortress, Magneto finally unwraps Wasp from the ball of random metal crap he has her in.

He lets her wander around until she finds him so that he can be all casual and eating a space scone.

Magneto: “Do not bother trying to attack me, my dear! My person is magnetically shielded!”

Wasp: “Well, la-de-da!”

Wasp: -blows up his space scone- “You think I have to strike at you directly to hurt you, monster?”

Hilarious spite, thy name is Janet van Dyne.

She also makes the point that magnetic shielding or no, she could bring this whole room down. Her being able to knock over a small house with her pew pew hasn’t stopped being true.

Magneto hastens to ask her not to do that because neither of them want to be out in the storm outside.

Besides, he just wants to talk! And flirt!

Magneto: “You are obviously a woman of intelligence and understanding as well as great beauty -- and I am not the monster you believe I am -- which is precisely what I wish to discuss!”

Wasp: “Oh? My intelligence, understanding and beauty or your non-monsterhood?”

Magneto: “Why... both!”

Back at the hero base (which is apparently ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF CHICAGO?? I want that playset), the storm has almost completely flooded the area, leaving just the top dome and such poking above the water.

The storm keeps dropping chunks of mountain at the base but Thor is standing on top, protecting it while grinning like a loon.

Captain Marvel even speculates that Thor could calm the storm but is whipping it up into a greater frenzy instead. Those storm gods, amirite?

Hawkeye is also standing by, with his explosive arrow, thinking to himself that if Thor fails, Hawkeye will totally save the day.

I don’t know whether that’s sad or endearing.

Mostly though he’s trying to distract himself from thinking about the new wife he left behind.

Cap, Reed, and Hulk are watching the villain base because apparently they do know where it is. The storm is keeping the villains in too but Cap figures they’ll pull one desperate attack as soon as the storm breaks.

They’ve already lost four of their dudes. Plus, Galactus isn’t a team player.

Spider-Man is just swinging around, enjoying how good for swinging the random technological pipes and tubes and whatsits are when he stumbles upon the X-Men having a secret meeting.

Professor X has decided, possibly on the basis of two (2) rude comments from Hawkeye and Captain Marvel, that the X-Men just don’t belong here and that they’d be better off going and teaming up with Magneto.

This... sure is a take.

Rogue comments that the Avengers don’t trust her because of that time she kicked their asses collectively. Which, hey, very possibly. They haven’t really had a thing to say about you though. They’ve mostly been grouchy about Magneto.

Which is kinda born out by the way he tried to blow up their base and definitely kidnapped the Wasp?? And is even now aggressively eating scones at her?

That’s the Magneto you guys want to go join because he’s more your people than the Fantastic Avengers and friends are?

You know, there’s a pattern I sometimes see with the X-Men where they loudly insist that the other superheroes don’t help them and don’t care about mutant stuff while at the same time doing shit like this.

“Should we get Reed Richards, smartest dick in the world to help with the legacy virus or the techno-organic virus Stryfe shot into Xavier? NAHHHH Beast can handle it.”

“Should we stick with the other superheroes or go hang with Magneto instead in a cool mutants only U-shaped fortress? Well, U is the coolest letter that isn’t X...”

If you squint, you can definitely see Krakoa all the way in the future.

Anyway, Spider-Man overheard all of this and goes ‘I’M TELLING!’

Wolverine tries to tell him that snitches get stitches but the thing is?

Spider-Man is ridiculous. He’s a ridiculously good combination of skills and powers which lets him make chumps out of entire groups at a time.

He’s embarrassed the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and now he’s about to embarrass the X-Men.

After making them all feel foolish, Spider-Man gets away and goes to tell Reed what that doody-head Xavier said when Xavier uses his psychic powers to just wipe the entire encounter out of Spider-Man’s memory.

Yeah, it’s to cover their imminent blowing off but also? I don’t think he wants anyone else to find out how badly his X-Men just got stomped.

Psychics are too OP, I tell you what.

In fairness IN FAIRNESS, the X-Men kind of have the right to fuck right off if they wish. I don’t even know what it had to be in secret. In fact, doing it in secret is a massive dick move of its own for reasons.

What would the Fantastic Avengers have done if the X-Men had just said ‘hey we’re heading out’? Would they have put them in stasis tube jail? I doubt it.

Professor X made the decision to handle this the stupidest way for whatever reason. That scamp.

Speaking of Magneto, he’s over at the U-Lair turning down a partnership offer from DOOM. So, hey, he has standards.

Wasp has become less ‘i’ll blow up this room and your breakfast’ about him over the course of whatever the hell they discussed in their offscreen chat.

Magneto even starts to make out with her and Wasp is like ehhhhhhhhhh what the fuck why not.

Why is this happening?

I guess he has a...................... magnetic personality?

Eh? Eh??

No, but seriously, I do have a theory that I heard someplace but it’ll have to wait.

What’s weird is that there’s a Marvel What If about some spinoff babies that come about if the heroes and villains got stuck on Battleworld and never managed to leave.

Wasp has a son with Human Torch. Which is pretty weird and comes from nowhere. I guess a lot can happen during a massive time skip. My point being though, its weird that they didn’t have a Wasp/Magneto baby instead given the weird chemistry they have here.

Meanwhile, over at DOOMBASE, DOOM has some women in giant tubes.

That’s So Doom.

Doctor Doom: “All is ready -- ! This alien technology, so rich, so subtle... so easily harnessed to serve my purpose... Energy, tapped from the raging tempest... And two mortal subjects who dare to gamble for power -- knowing that to lose is death, for truly, here I shall test the limits of power a human body can contain! With the throwing of a switch... so -- the die is cast! Hear me -- ! Power must be seized -- ! Crave it! Welcome it! Drink it in, despite the pain... or it will destroy you.”

And thus are Volcana and Titania created!

Talk about lasting effects of Secret Wars! Titania is going to be around forever! Mostly annoying She-Hulk!

Where did Doom find two random women to give superpowers?

Denver, Colorado.

No, seriously.

That city chunk we saw as Battleworld formed? That’s Denver, Colorado, USA, EARTH.

Why isn’t there a miniseries or one-shot about a normal ass civilian from Denver having to deal with OH MY GOD WHERE DID EARTH GO?

I actually read an interesting thing re: this scene. It exists because Mattel asked Marvel to introduce some new female characters so Shooter wrote in these two and a third who I’ll get to when I do.

Mattel then promptly used none of these characters for the associated toyline.

The toyline, in fact, used none female characters at all. It made toys of characters who weren’t in the story but did not have a single female character.

So its very weird that they asked Marvel to introduce some but I’m not going to knock the results.

Doom introduces these two new characters to the other villains.

Hilariously, Absorbing Man guesses that Doctor Doom just made women from scratch. Because doesn’t it sound like something he could do?

Volcana and Molecule Man immediately hit it off, her being attracted to his sensitivity and him being attracted to... positive attention at all, I guess?

He muses that he could easily stop the storm outside, because molecules, but his therapist told him to let nature take its course. “Unless Doom asks me to!”

And Titania and Absorbing Man. They don’t hit it off. She either wants to hit him or hit that and its not clear and it might be both.

(Spoilers: Its both)

Titania: “You! Absorbing Man! You look like the toughest man here! Get up!”

Absorbing Man: “Whatcha got in mind?”

Titania: “I’m going to do anything I want to you! Everything I always wanted to do to everybody who used to be bigger and stronger than me! Maybe I’ll just play with you... or maybe I’ll make you eat dirt... or maybe...”

Absorbing Man: “Woman, if you got somethin’ to prove, prove it tomorrow against the guys we’re fightin’!”

Titania: “You’re backing down?”

Absorbing Man: “Nope! I just ain’t getting up! I got nothin’ to prove... to a dame!”

Would you believe that they become one of the healthiest and most stable romantic relationships in Marvel?

Speaking of weird relationships, back over at hero base, Thor goes and pops the lid on Enchanteress’ healing tube because he’s bored and wants to talk to a peer. A god peer.

Enchantress is at first more characteristically worried about what her face looks like after being She-Hulked.

But she then creates a portal so she and Thor can go have a chat.

Later, it’s morning and Hulk has been too busy stressing over losing his Banner smarts to actually keep watch or wake up Cap for watch like he was supposed to.

So when the villains ram an airship into the hero base, the heroes are not at all prepared.

Titania hurls a giant slab of wall through the room the Terrific Three are sharing, breaking Johnny Torch’s arm and ribs and knocking out the other two. He manages to get himself and co out of danger by melting through the floor.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk is carrying a big heavy as she’s been doing since the previous night and is caught unaware by Volcana who blasts her off her feet and then collapses the room on top of her.

Doctor Octopus knocks out Captain Marvel who is in the hot springs dome but gets chased away by Hawkeye, claiming that long-range firepower is his weakness.

I’m stunned at the implication that Doc Ock is one of Spider-Man’s most dangerous foes but could be scared off by Hawkeye while Spider-Man could pretty easily drop Clint’s ass. There’s some rock-paper-scissors nonsense at play here.

Spider-Man and Iron Man are also taken unawares by Ultron but manage to hide under some rubble.

Hulk leaps into the fray at Molecule Man and Doom but Cap convinces him to fall back to a defensible position.

The villains reconvene with all the captured villains freed except Enchantress (since she fucked off to have a chat with Thor) and the heroes scattered and buried under various rubbles. How the fortunes of Secret War turn.

Sure would have been nice if the X-Men had been around to help or if they mentioned they wouldn’t be. Sure would have been.

Doom: “We have accomplished much here today! And to finish it, we shall level this place so that no stone remains on stone!”

No wonder Mattel didn’t make a playset of this base! Dammit Doom, you’re ruining the merchandising!

Follow @essential-avengers for more of Secret Wars! At this same pace! Its sustainable! This is fine! Like and reblog too!

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xb-squaredx · 4 years

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Please Don’t Sleep on Hades

2020’s…been a real year, huh? At a time when in-person gatherings aren’t much of a thing and people have to stay in, video games are suddenly a pretty attractive option. That said, few games have really grabbed me this year; in a roundabout way, 2020’s been a year of reruns, as I go through a lot of games I’ve already played or games that are just yesterday’s news (but new to me!). However, in the nick of time, the folks at Supergiant Games delivered unto us their latest title, Hades. While they’ve been working on this game for years, with it hitting Early Access on Steam back in 2018, the full version of Hades finally hit Steam, the Epic Game Store and made the leap to consoles with the Switch, which is where I picked it up. It has been a WHILE since I’ve had a game grab me so strongly so early on, and I’ve been hearing this game’s praises for years now already, so allow me to happily state why I think Hades is worthy of the hype and is a fantastic game I’d easily recommend!

DADDY ISSUES

OK, so first things first…you don’t actually play as Hades in this game, but rather his son Zagreus. Ol’ Zag has had it with his father, and tries to literally fight his way out of hell to reach the surface, and no matter what his old man puts in his way, Zagreus (and the player) will meet the challenge. And probably die, but hey, that’s OK! In the underworld, death is more of an inconvenience than anything else, so after taking a moment to dust himself off, Zagreus will head out for another attempt. For as long as it takes.

Hades is a rogue-like, meaning it’s a game based around randomization and adaptation. On any given “run” of the game, the level layouts, enemies present and the variety of power-ups Zagreus can find will be left to chance, with the player challenged to amass the best build they can to eventually break out of hell and reach the human world and if you die…start from scratch. That said, Hades is among the ever-growing sub-genre of rogue-lites, in that there IS some permanent progression, which takes a bit of a sting out of dying, but more on that later. Now, most games of this type aren’t really big on story. They have a premise that’s little more than an excuse to play. Splunkey wants you to explore a cave, The Binding of Isaac sees you escaping a basement and in Enter the Gungeon you uh…e-enter the gun—you get the point! But what separates Hades from most rogue-likes/lites is that there actually IS a very interesting story that unfolds as you play.

There’s more to Zag’s desire to get to the surface than just getting away from his father, though their strained relationship certainly doesn’t help matters, and over the course of your many, MANY escape attempts, players learn of the rather screwed-up nature of Zagreus’ family of deities, though any mythology nut could tell you to expect that. Hades has an incredibly charismatic cast, superb voice acting across the board, and some real sharp writing that really got me wanting to meet anyone and everyone and learn more about this world. You’re likely to run into Hypnos first, who always has a “tip” ready for you when you meet your end to a given enemy or hazard, or the fabled hero Achilles, who acts as a mentor to Zagreus. There’s Dusa, the adorably frazzled flying gorgon head who acts as the House of Hades’ maid, and of course…Megaera, of the Furies.

She serves as the first proper boss in the game, and will be a pretty sizable challenge for most players, but as you eventually overcome her again and again, she and Zagreus end up attempting to reconnect with each other, and her recurring fights become an excuse to flirt and test each other. I may as well say too that it’s easy to fall in love with the characters in this game because…I-I mean, just look at them! This game is a bisexual’s paradise, that’s all I’ll say.

A bit of a fun fact, but Zagreus’ voice actor, Darren Korb, is also a composer at Supergiant, so he’s a man of many talents, since Hades has a killer score. From the laid-back tunes at the House of Hades where you can unwind and recharge after a botched run, to the pulse-pounding boss theme, there’s some GREAT music on display here. And that’s before you meet Orpheus and Eurydice, two characters with amazing singing voices that, if you play your cards right, might start singing together. The game’s visuals, meanwhile, aren’t a slouch either. While the level layouts are randomized, everything manages to look well-crafted, each region of the underworld having their own distinct look and feel. The fiery pits of Asphodel end up juxtaposing well with the paradise that is Elysium. Now, character models are generally less-detailed since the camera stays zoomed out to give players a good view of the action, but the portraits for the various characters more than make up for it with their distinct, detailed designs. A-And I’m not just saying that because everyone’s hot! Now, admittedly you might take a look at Zag and think he’s nothing but an edgelord and the game itself might be taking itself too seriously, but in reality, Hades strikes a pretty good balance, and definitely carries a sense of humor. Characters love to snark at each other, the various Shades chilling in the House of Hades’ lounge have some funny conversations you can listen in on and all told, the game only gets serious when appropriate. Really, I have no real complaints with the game on a presentation level; it’s all aces so far, and thankfully the game-y part follows suit!

LIVE.DIE. REPEAT.

Hades is best described as a dungeon-crawler. You have an isometric view as you move about, avoiding hazards and fighting off enemies as you climb each chamber on your way to the surface. Defeat every enemy in a chamber and get a reward. Sounds simple enough until you factor in all of the various permutations of events; Hades aims to make sure no two runs are alike, with different enemies, power-ups and challenges awaiting you. All of this is doled out slowly, as with each subsequent playthrough you begin to have more of the game unraveled. First and foremost, Zagreus can gain various Boons from the other Olympian Gods, who are sympathetic to his plight and lend him some power if he makes contact with them. Each God has their own twist on the abilities they grant Zagreus. They can all increase his stats in some way, or affect either his dash ability or his Cast, a projectile attack. For Zeus, naturally, all of Zagreus’ moves will gain an electric effect, whereas Artemis focuses more on upping Zag’s critical hit chance. Dionysus, the God of Wine, grants you the “hangover” status effect, allowing your attacks to uh…make enemies drunk? Sure! You’ll be given a random selection of three Boons to pick from, of varying rarities. Over the course of a run, you might try to nab as many Boons from the same God as possible, or vary it up and see which abilities synchronize together. At times, you might even be granted a Duo Boon, where two Gods decide to combine their power for a special ability that plays to both of their strengths. Still, at other times, you might be forced into a Trial of the Gods, where you must choose one God’s Boon over the other, with the snubbed God lashing out afterwards. Hey, just because they’re Gods, doesn’t mean they’re nice. Of course, you’ve also got a variety of health and weapon upgrades too. In fact, let’s gush about the weapons for a second, shall we?

At the time of writing, Hades has six weapons to play with. You start with a sword, which is the all-rounder of the set, but as you gain keys to unlock more weapons, you can start to really experiment. The bow and rail cannon serve as ranged options with different approaches, while the spear is the melee weapon with the best range at the cost of pure power. The shield grants you absolute defense at the cost of range, while the gauntlets let you unleash your fisticuffs on underworld scum, though leave you with limited ranged attacks. Each weapon has specific Boons and weapon upgrades you can find as well, some of which can radically alter how a weapon works. The rail cannon, for example, fires a lot faster than the bow, but this is balanced by needing to manually reload…unless you get a weapon upgrade that gives you unlimited ammo with the only catch being that you can only do burst fire. Adding to this, players eventually unlock hidden Aspects of weapons, morphing them into different forms which can also influence their moveset. Change the shield to the Aspect of Zeus, and when you throw your shield Captain America style, it stays out and continually spins, dealing tons of damage over time and effectively forcing enemies to get sliced to bits if they want to get near you. I didn’t expect this game to have half this many weapons or to have them balanced so well. Really, just like anything else, weapons are another tool you can poke and prod and experiment with until you get a truly killer collection of Boons and upgrades that let you just demolish anything in your way. It’s very satisfying when you finally clear a run with a great build…though depending on the RNG, you WILL get some crummy builds, but that’s the nature of the rogue-like!

It’s likely that a bad build (or really, just getting hit with a new boss or enemy you aren’t prepared for) will lead to a death, but as already established, death isn’t really that much of an inconvenience in the underworld. Zagreus just spawns back at home and is free to immediately try to escape again, but this brief reprieve lets you chat up whoever happens to be around, give them gifts, advance some side-quests, pet your dog Cerberus and practice with weapons and such before you’re ready to go at it again. It’s after a run that you also get to spend a lot of the spoils of your escape attempts. While you lose Boons and weapon upgrades and the like upon death, there’s a LOT of various items you keep with you that have plenty of uses. Darkness shards are used for permanent skills that can be applied to Zagreus, like Death’s Defiance, which grants Zagreus another life upon dying, which can eventually be upgraded to give him THREE extra lives, just as an example. Precious gems can be used to fund a variety of cosmetic changes to the House of Hades. Just because Zagreus doesn’t want to live there anymore, doesn’t mean he can’t at least make it look good! Nectar can be gifted to other characters to improve your relationships with them, with bottles of Ambrosia being required later on, while special keys can be used to unlock weapons, more upgrades for your Darkness shards, or just used as a secondary currency for trade. There’s really a LOT of different items to mess around with, though admittedly if you’re the type to want to max out EVERYTHING you’ll be in it for the long haul, as there is not only a LOT of stuff to upgrade and purchase, but the random nature of things means rewards are never a guarantee. Though it’s worth noting the game’s totally beatable without going nuts with completion. Which I guess leads me to the biggest compliment I can give this game: even after “beating” it, I still can’t stop playing, and there’s plenty of reason to keep going.

REPLAYS AND REWARDS

So, full disclosure, I’ve gotten Zagreus to the surface. Several times, actually. But I haven’t quite “beaten” the game yet. In fact, at the risk of sounding pretentious, it is as if the true game begins after you’ve beaten it once. Without getting into specifics, let’s just say the game gives you a very good in-story reason to keep playing, and you won’t reach credits without several completed runs under your belt. And even then, there’s still stuff to do. I’m almost 30 hours into Hades and I’ve barely scratched the surface honestly. Every major character has their own sidequest you can undergo, but it can be slow goings when it comes to advancing them. Trying out all the weapons and boons and different combinations will easily take dozens of hours to fully experience, though the game has a handy in-game list of what you’ve done and haven’t done, as well as in-game achievements with tangible rewards that will spur you on. I was admittedly surprised at how dense of a game Hades can be. A successful run will likely take you somewhere between a half-hour to an hour, which is pretty devious. Just long enough to stay engaging throughout, and short enough that I can keep convincing myself that I have time for “one more run” and then suddenly several hours have gone by. Strangest thing.

Something that’s become a bit of a staple of Supergiant’s work is customizable difficulty, various modifiers you can flip on to make the game harder if you so desire, which in Hades takes the form of the Pact of Punishment. After a successful run, you can turn on a given pact to spice things up for subsequent runs. Maybe enemies do a bit more damage, or you give yourself a super strict time limit to clear a run. You can give enemies armor that makes them sturdier, or jack up the in-game shop’s prices. You can even be forced to give up Boons in order to advance past certain doors! Probably the most impressive Pact is Extreme Measures, which ends up greatly affecting the boss fights in the game…trust me when I say you won’t be ready for them the first time you flip that on. Activating a given pact increases a “heat gauge” that, should it reach a given level, will end up granting you various special items to help with fully upgrading and unlocking stuff. Of course, with each successful run completed with a given Pact activated, you’ll have to raise the heat more and more in order to keep getting these upgrade materials so be prepared. You can also still gain these materials (albeit at a much slower rate) playing through the game normally though, and there’s really no penalty for choosing NOT to activate a given pact. On the flip side of things, there’s also a God Mode you can toggle on that makes Zagreus a little stronger with each death, which can help those that want to see more of the story but are struggling with the game. Have your God Cake and eat it too!

All and all, this game just delivers on every level and I’ve been devouring it since release whenever I have a spare minute. You can see that Supergiant is taking all the lessons they learned from each previous game and combined it to make what is easily their best game yet. I don’t throw around words like “masterpiece” lightly, but Hades is just such a slam dunk that I’m sorely tempted to call it just that. I mean, if you hate rogue-likes, I’m not sure if Hades will really push you over the edge admittedly? You get way more rewards retained after death than just about any other rogue-like I’ve played, but if you’re the type that hates having to constantly adapt and not being able to memorize what’s coming, I can see this not working for you. But for me at least, I’ve had an absolute blast with the game and the only issue I really have with it is a small nitpick at best. When it comes to getting to know various characters, you can talk to them and give them Nectar or Ambrosia as a gift right? But what happens if they don’t show up on a given run? Or what if they DO show up, but they’re locked into a conversation with someone else? That means you can’t really advance anything with them until a given dice roll pities you. MEGAERA I THINK YOU’RE COOL, PLEASE JUST TALK TO M—oh sorry, don’t know where that came from… So yeah, that’s the nittiest of picks.

I adore this game’s cast, the voice work and music is excellent to the ear, the combat is engaging, the gameplay loop is addicting…need I say more? I mean, I’ve said almost 3000 words, but to really sum it up…I highly recommend Hades and I hope you don’t pass it up if you’re even remotely interested. You can find it on Steam, the Epic store and Switch as of right now, and I don’t think you could go wrong with any version.

Blood and darkness await you.

-B

#Hades #Hades game #supergiant games #hades supergiant #zagreus #megaera #rouge like #nintendo switch #xb-squaredx

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official-cisphobe · 4 years

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i highly admire your worldbuilding skills. can you tell us more about your OCs and their universe?

this is probably gonna be a bit lengthy so strap in! (edit: it is very lengthy)

the basics of Voidverse, like I explained earlier, is that there is a group of people tethered to each other by fate and higher forces, the purpose of the Alts is that they are a sort of keeper of balance between worlds and each of them is a sort of savour or hero in their respective timeline/universe. They weren't always aware of each other but when a great danger threatens all multiverses and all life they have to come together to defeat it—they do this with the help of someone called Katalin Huerta who has an ability called The Bridge ie she can create 'bridges' to other timelines/universes from wherever she is.

Technically the main character of Voidverse is Classic the Demon aka Classic, who is sort of a butterfly effect to get both the Alts and the end of the world running. but more about that later, I'll explain the other characters first.

anyway this ended up being super long so added a Read More to not take oevr anyone’s dash akdhsfsfg

Jojo - already explained

Leoh Yu - Leoh aka Badger is probably the most normal Alt out of all of them concidering he's not a demon or any sort of supernatural or sci-fi creature. Leoh grew up in Dazhai, China in the late 1970's to late 1980's with his mother and grandmother where they owned a farm and a bakery. His life took a turn when his mother got very sick and his family couldn't afford good doctors or treatments. at some point in the way of making money Leoh at 18-years-old was approached by a group of hitmen to recruit him, which after some time and thinking he accepted. Leoh worked as a hitman for about 30 years before retiring at age 40 to get married to his now husband Nico Mahariel as well as adopting a babygirl named Qing-Qiu. Leoh's past, however, will not let him go that easy but that's a story for another time.

Tuyja - Tuyja was a prophet of the Goddess Ghalme in an ancient civilisation called the Weykha. the Weykha lived in a sandstone kingdom and it is rumoured that they are where the legends of mermaids and Atlantis came from. Tyuja however was not of the Weykha people, instead she was born from the stars with ocean blue skin and horns made from spacedust. She was regarded as a sort of next in command from the Royal family and was basically treated as an extention of the Royal family (if not even higher than them), which infuriated the jealous Weykha prince. Tuyja had also fallen in love with a servant girl called Muza, which the Prince had used as leverage against her and turned the Weykha people against her, telling them that Tuyja would steal all their gold and jewellery and give it to a servant girl, that he had heard her say she would strip the skies of moon and star so that Muza would shine the brightest, that he had seen her tame ocean waves so that the servant girl could pick sea shells from the sand below. Tuyja had become a threat to the people who had praised her and come to her for guidance, they had banished her into the sea for 5000 years.

Quiet - named after one of my friends because I really like teir name and I've had difficulties naming this character for years, Quiet was born and raised in a lab where they were subjected to varieties of cruel and inhumane experiments going as far as getting permanent damage to their ribs and lungs. in canon Quiet only got their name after joining the Alts, Jojo who became their closest friend nicknamed them Quiet because they're,,, well,,, really quiet. ngl their story and character arc is on the undeveloped side

Lotus Draqon - Lotus is a half-human half-dragon who grew up outside his pack of origin because his mother Jupiter wasn't sure how the Matriarchs would react to Lotus' half-human trait. The dragons are an ancient people of long ago with vast magical abilities and lived in harmony with mortals, sharing their magic with them—until an evil was awakening and the Gods began to tear down entire cities. Mortals expected and begged the dragons to help them survive but the Matriarchs decided to abandon them, priotising the dragon's survival. They lived in isolation and hiding, shielded in a deep forest by magic for thousands of years. until Lotus as a young adult decided it was time for him to leave the nest and see the world. Jupiter was reluctant but Lotus was determined to never again live in fear. In time Lotus would become a very important figure to both the dragon and the mortals inhabiting the lands as dark forces began to matirialise and the Matriarchs became restless, declaring war against mortals.

Voidkeeper - demons are very hard to kill creatures, no regular blade or bullet with damage them much beyond cuts and bruises. the most efficient way to kill a demon is for one to end their own life which by Satan's rule is forbidden. It has happened technically two times but the first one was by a demon now known only as the Voidkeeper. After ending their own life as punishment their horns and tail were cut off, their magic taken away, and they were banished to the Void forever. Slyly they managed to grab some of their depleted magic and put it into a magical stone for safekeeping, it is only a very limited amount but can do very wondrous and powerful things things. The Void grants the Voidkeeper clairvoyance as to what is going on in whichever timeline and universe, they are a sort of silent watcher and will never interfere with the goingonabouts of the mortals. the Voidkeeper has a very minor but very important part to play in regards to the Alts and the saving of all life in the multiverse but for now they are patiently waiting and watching.

and finally there's our boy Class whose story is undoubtedly the most developed out of all of these so let's go through it:

Classic is a minor demon and was born at a time when the Underworld and the Human world were not so separate. He was born in a tiny demon village of about 15-20 inhabitants. His father had left him and his mother when Classic was about three years old and has not been seen since, Classic doesn't know if his father is dead or alive and doesn't really care about it either. Classic was an only child and pretty much a mama's boy, although he had a few friends in his village. Unfortunately his life changed forever at 12 years old when human soldiers pillaged his home, killing everyone—Classic would have been dead as well but his mother used her dying breath to save him with magic.

Classic had been knocked out during the raid but when he awoke he witnessed the aftermath of a bloodbath. Scared and alone and unsure of what to do he ran away from the scene and travelled days across the country until he stumbled upon a town of humans. Wrath overcoming his senses he murdered the entire town, leaving no human alive, going as far as tearing down entire houses and setting the entire place on fire.

Classic was later found in the ruins of that town crying by a group of angels. He was taken by them to a city in the sky and adopted by a family of angels. He wasn't generally liked by his neighbours but the angel child he lived with became his best friend for years to come. They grew up together, learned to use their different magicks together, Classic learned he could even materialise wings and fly albeit badly at first.

But as history has shown, wherever Classic goes, terror follows.

Classic had been having nightmares for months, very terrible ones, of dark forces beyond his understanding. They felt familiar and cruel, almost mocking.

Before he realised what he had done, the angel he spent his childhood with was dead and there was blood on his hands. Just like before, as if on instinct he ran away from the city of angels and went into hiding. Multiple years had passed by now and the human world was very different from what he remembered. It was no longer that easy to stay out of the radar of humans, since they were pretty much everywhere with cameras and police.

To say he was causing issues in the human world would be an understatement. He would steal, break into houses, even kill to survive. Random fires would start and radiation with no apparent source would appear all over.

This is where Katalin Huerta comes in—see, she is a commander of a very special branch of task force, it was her own creation. Her people dealt with supernatural oddities and threats, it was govrrment funded but entirely indepentant from their meddling albeit they can be difficult to please. Katalin was born with special abilities, a sort of family tradition—at birth her soul was bonded with that of a powerful spirit that had once been one with the soul of Katalin's mother. The spirit gave her the ability to control and create fire but her own speciality was her Bridge ability.

anyway, Katalin had taken notice of the strange indicents around town and taken some of her people to go check it out, only to find a teenaged demon crawling in an abondoned factory. She could tell the demon was just afraid and lost and decided to help him. Which is how Classic joined her task force.

Which honestly was probably the best thing that had happened to Classic, Katalin taught him to fight and better utilise his demon magic as well as taught him to use a sword (Classic has never understood guns and will never attempt to). Learning spells with a human was a difficult task but eventually they figured it out. Classic's natural abilities worked very strongly as illusion based magic as well as materialisation, although the latter has been more tricky to master even after all these years so as we speak Classic's only materialisation spells are his wings as well as his sword and teleportation.

Eventually the darkness haunting Classic began to rear its head again, Katalin catches wind of this and fortunately can help him keep it out from his head yet it still lingers in the air and grows stronger.

until now Classic had never before talked about the darkness. but at this point he was cornered and Katalin wouldn't take no for an answer.

At that point in time all Classic knew about the darkness was that it was some sort of ancient entity, it wasn't a demon because its presence felt entirely different from at least the demons Classic was used to. He nicknamed it Ash, as all he could remember from the times it has appeared are the ashes left by roaring embers.

In reality the darkness is one of the five forgotten gods of an ancient people. It was cast aside by the Creator and exiled from the land of gods. The darkness hates mortal life because of the gods' love for them, so it seeks to destroy all that is living. in its weakened state it needs a vessel to succeed and has been corrupting Classic and molding him into that vessel since that day he turned 12-years-old.

Only the Alts can defeat the darkness, whether Ash stays defeated is only a matter of time.

#äsks #konsta-nt ramble #long post

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atamascolily · 4 years

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lily liveblogs: BBC Atlantis 1x03, “A Boy of No Consequence”

Welcome back to the BBC Atlantis liveblog! Previously introduced:

THE HERO: Jason. Originally from Atlantis, raised on Earth and recently returned. Confused as hell about everything. Killed the Minotaur and now on the royal shitlist. Daddy issues and a mysterious macguffin amulet. Shirts optional.

THE LANCER: Hercules. 'Nuff said.

THE SMART GUY: Pythagoras. The triangle guy. NERD. I love him.

THE BIG BAD: King Minos and Queen Pasiphae, rulers of Atlantis. The Minotaur is supposedly Minos's fault, but so far the show has been mum about bull-fucking, so it's not clear how true the show is going to stay to the myth.

THE LOVE INTEREST: Ariadne, daughter to the above. Smitten with Jason on account of his good looks (because let's face it, they haven't had much time to talk yet). Maybe she and Jason can bond over daddy issues?

SOURCE OF CRYPTIC EXPOSITION: The Oracle. Knows more than she's telling Jason... for his own protection. Prone to cryptic utterances and killing chickens.

ATLANTIS: A city that is NOT under the ocean, despite the fact that Jason traveled there in a sub. (I really hope it was called the Argo, but I forgot to check.) Has no leash-laws for two-headed dragons, an abundance of watermelons in the marketplace, and guards with surprisingly good aim--also, hunting lions, because why not?

I had to skip episode 2, so this is going to be fun. Let's see what I missed!

In the marketplace, Herc is crushing on Medusa [introduced in the last episode] and Pythagoras and Jason are trying to bring him down gently. They stop to help an old man with an overturned cart, and an Asshole Authority Figure I don't recognize shows up and smacks the old man around for blocking his way (just in case we were wondering whether we were supposed to like him). Jason intervenes and they fight, but the other guy has guards, so Jason gets arrested. Just another day in Atlantis!

All of the credits are still backwards and I hate it, but at least there's an actual opening sequence this time!

Cut to Pythagoras and Herc standing in the jail along with Jason. Pythagoras introduces the Asshole Authority as "Heptarion" so I'm forgiven for not knowing who he is. He's Pasiphae's nephew.

Cut to the three of them kneeling in front of the throne in chains, and Ariadne's standing there watching, and I think... she finds this hot. Minos and Pasiphae are all like "You again?" because this probably is going to happen every episode.

Minos threatens Jason with a death curse. Jason yells, and it doesn't go well. Herc tries to explain Jason's a tourist and doesn't know any better, and then calls on the whole Minotaur business as a chance for mercy. So Minos claims he's going to leave it to Poseidon.

Pasiphae asks if Ariadne likes Jason. Ariadne lies, and Pasiphae calls her on it. Ariadne says "You're not my mom," and OH SNAP, this explains A LOT, ACTUALLY. Ariadne's promised to Heptarion, so this is SUPER AWKWARD. Ariadne asks if Pasiphae would intervene with Minos, and Pasiphae punts and says it's up to the gods. Ariadne says she'll pray for Jason, then.

Herc claims that was the last time he'll ever help Jason, but he is a LIAR and also a HUGE SOFTIE, so I call bullshit.

IT'S THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS. Or at least of some sort of matador thing in a ring with a giant bull and people leaping over it with epic leaps. Everybody on a "team" has to survive in order to be free. Pythagoras talks about probability, because he is, as I've mentioned before, a NERD.

Their other team members are an African warrior who gives Pythagoras the side-eye and a girl who doesn't want to eat her food, so Herc steals it. There's also a random dude who picks a fight with the warrior.

Heptarion and Pasiphae meet for plotting and gossip about Ariadne and Jason. The team practices leaping over a practice bull. Herc trips and doesn't make it over, as Heptarion and Pasiphae watch. Pythagoras says that the queen is rumored to be a witch. Jason leaps perfectly, and everyone's amazed, no less Jason. Heptarion realizes his rival is harder to kill than he thought, but Pasiphae plans to help.

The girl cuts Jason's hair while he sleeps, which the random dude on their team sees. VOODOO MAGIC TIME.

The next day, the team watches someone get killed in the practice ring. The random dude baits the warrior, and we learn he's a Nubian prince! Jason tries to play peacemaker and suggests they band together, but nobody's buying it. They go into the ring and Jason tries to strategize but nobody listens.

Jason calls the bull to him and it LISTENS. Jason does his run thing and falls to the ground. The girl yells at the bull and so do the others to keep him from a fallen Jason. TEAMWORK. Pythagoras and Herc carry Jason off the field and it turns out it was all a ruse to get the team to work together. Jason, you little schemer.

Herc hides under the table rather than let his ex-girlfriend catch sight of him. The Nubian prince says he has 3 wives and 7 kids, and he wishes he could go home. Jason tries to talk to the girl who won't eat and give her food and a pep talk. She starts to spill the hair thing and then runs away. Pasiphae does some VOODOO MAGIC.

The random dude, Cyrus, confronts the girl about the hair thing. The guy in charge interrupts before she can tell him anything. Cyrus tells the guy in charge what he saw, and gets stabbed for his trouble. So I guess there's only gonna be five people on the team?

(Note: all of the other characters have names, I just can't always understand what they are without subtitles.)

The trio know foul play when they see it. Jason goes to comfort the girl, and she confesses what she did in exchange for her freedom. (I assume they're going to double-cross her and kill her, because that's what happened to Cyrus.) Pythagoras has to explain the whole voodoo thing to Jason.

Herc mocks Jason's tase in women, specifically Ariadne. Jason protests they have barely talked, and I agree, but those long soulful gazes SPEAK VOLUMES. Herc calls Pythagoras "a fool with no knowledge of women" and this show is really not helping with the slash shipping here.

Heptarion tries to chat up Ariadne at the dinner table and it fails because Ariadne is such a killjoy and doesn't enjoy watching people die in front of her. You know, she's a weirdo like that.

Pythagoras suggests enlisting Medusa to steal the hair back. Herc objects because Love. Pythagoras has another idea, and it's Herc's ex-girlfriend! Herc chats up his ex, and convinces her to take a note to Medusa. I guess people can read in this show? News to me, but okay.

The next morning, they go out to the ring. Jason's not wearing a shirt, because... reasons? Medusa sneaks in to the queen's bedroom and there's so much furniture I'm pretty sure that's not period, only to get nearly caught by the queen. But she does spy the secret ritual room, so there's that.

Epic sandal montage/power walk into the bull ring with the Squad. No, Jason is not wearing a shirt, why do you ask? He and Ariadne make eyes at each other, as Minos makes a speech about how this is totally not rigged. They chant the ritual phrases and get to it. PLAY BALL.... or PLAY BULL, rather.

Pasiphae stabs the voodoo doll and Jason crumbles in pain. The Nubian prince does a badass leap! And he's not even the protagonist! Herc yells at the bull to keep it away from Jason and does a less badass leap... but he does make it, and the crowd cheers anyway. The girl distracts the bull and leaps! The crowd cheers. The guy in charge looks pissed.

Just as Pasiphae is about to stab Jason's head, Medusa makes a noise / sets something on fire? Pasiphae runs out, and Medusa grabs the poppet. Now Jason is better! Jason gives Pythagoras a pep talk, since he also has to leap in order for them to win. Pythagoras's leap has no grace whatsoever, but he does it... which is better than I would do under the circumstances, let's be honest. He's so thrilled!!

Of course, Jason goes last because DRAMA. His flip is the best, because he's the LEAD, but I argue that the Nubian prince is more impressive because he's actually, you know, PRACTICED, instead of being just MAGICALLY TALENTED AND ALL.

They win! Ariadne loves Jason even more! Group hug for the five members of the team! Atlantis loves them! Minos tries to put a good face on it. They're free! Medusa yells out to Hercules and waves. She saved them all and didn't get caught! Nice!

Pasiphae tries to be nice to Ariadne, and she's not buying it. Pasiphae's all like, This is why being nice never works.

The Nubian prince is going to return the girl to her village and then go home. He invites the trio to visit, so I guess we'll see him again?? I hope so, I like him. The marketplace is still full of watermelons and Herc is convinced that Medusa returns his affections because she saved their lives and... sigh. Okay, then.

Anyway, all's well that ends well (I guess), but I have so many questions. Do any of these characters actually have jobs? What do they do for money? Are they going to get hauled before Minos and Pasiphae for not paying rent in the next episode? What does the Oracle think about all this? What happened to the two-headed dragons? Where are all the watermelons coming from? Does anybody in Atlantis actually buy them or do they just sit on that one dude’s cart and that’s why it’s always so full? Are the main characters going to go back to square one by the end of every episode or will the plot actually build on something? Will Jason and Ariadne actually talk to each other, or will they continue to gaze soulfully across the throne room while Jason’s a Very Naughty Boy Who Must Be Punished?

Apparently, the preview for the next episode makes it very clear it will be A BABY EPISODE, so we’ll see how many of these questions are answered.

#lily liveblogs #bbc atlantis

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nightsinneverland · 4 years

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Aura, the Shield and the Sword

Although Aura Storms hasn’t been around that long, she was given certain skills, gifts and wisdom that could fit into several centuries of living. Along with a sword engraved with Nordic and African runes and a dog that holds more to the visible eye, can Aura take any more challenges? Maybe say a soulmate who she thought was dead? Or maybe an entourage of heroes that are constantly in her way?

Chapter Three.

4:32 am. My watch reads. Today it matches the blue polka-dotted collar that adorns Brooklyn’s neck. Eternal fireflies in various jars littered all over my apartment, keep my companion and me out of the immense dark as it is still early.

That, and I forgot to pay the electric bill this time around.

I heave out a sigh, knowing that the peace that has caressed my household ever since we had that little spider invader will be interrupted soon enough. New wards put into place after realizing the simple rune I made was only limited to two years and has been occupied by myself and Brooklyn for five.

Looking over the medium-sized pot that I’m stirring, throwing in an herb every so often, I think of how much time the little widow has left.

I wonder how much her body has deteriorated.

After the fifth or so stir from the wooden spoon engraved with small runes passed down from my mother, I look to Brooklyn, knowing he has the final ingredient of the potion.

“Alright, do your thing,” I tell Brooklyn stepping away from the stove, putting the wooden spoon in the sink for later cleansing. “Not too much though. We don’t want her paralyzed. At least not yet”.

Brooklyn snorts and levels me with a look, before he turns to the pot, easily reaching it given his immense size. He is at least two times bigger than the average Great Dane.

I lean against the counter, rubbing the random sprigs of lavender from my fingers as I watch the thick drool mixed with venom drip from his mouth like honey into the pot.

Brooklyn insisted on an antidote for the pest. I scoff.

Her death is a just punishment for breaking and entering and snooping where she doesn’t belong.

Knowing my thoughts based on the look on my face, I receive a sharp bark along with a disapproving stare. I roll my eyes, watching him grab a tincture bottle from one of the open cabinets, walking over to me and shoving it into my hand.

“Alright alright. Fucking pushy ass demon”, I grumble, bottling up the mixture from the pot. Wiping off the excess that dripped down the sides, I set it aside to get dressed and ready for an encounter with a group of annoying ass “heroes”.

6:00 am. My black leather watch reads at me. Zipping up by shiny black leather boots, giving me an extra couple inches from my 5’7 frame, I march into the kitchen, downing a shot of vodka for courage and call Brooklyn over.

“Let’s get this shit over with.”

Pocketing the antidote and seeing Brooklyn patter over to my side, I transport us straight into the common room of Tony Stark’s building.

We make it to a solid fifteen seconds before the alarms start sounding and I’m being told by a machine to address myself and why I’m here.

“Security breach. Unauthorized personnel”. A woman’s voice echos through the common room. I smirk and saunter over to the windows, taking in the great view. The sunrise looking pretty damn beautiful from here. I admire the landscape for at least five minutes while feeling the movement through the air.

Still taking in the impressive view, I hear the sound of whirring and I know it’s from one of the Ironman robots pointing a shooter at me a couple of feet away, Tony Stark’s voice coming through the machine.

“The homeless shelter is on 3rd Ave Miss,” the shooter moving over to Brooklyn, my companion baring his teeth in his own warning. “Although I don’t think they allow dogs this size.”

I turn around, giving him a short laugh, making my way over to my big puppy who is still baring his teeth, waiting for the green light to tear the tin can to shreds.

“Oh silly me! And to think I wanted to give one of ya’ll a present.” I pretend to pout.

More noises come from the machine, the shooter being pointed at us glowing brighter, the heat reaching me. I grow annoyed and irritated.

“Why are you here?”, Tony finally asks me. The tone of his voice hardened, knowing our little talking game is over with.

I level him with a blank stare, my fingers slowly curling and air casting spells, noticing the Ironman suit slowly powering off and breaking apart to reveal Stark’s face, his eyes widening in shock and slight fear as I start stepping towards him still air casting, his suit revealing more of his body, essentially kicking him out of the suit.

Stopping in front of him and invading his space, I trail my small fingers across his face making him see the runes engraved into my skin. Feeling his uncomfortableness emitting from his pores, it makes me smile.

Keeping eye contact with the Stark, I take a small step back and open my other hand in front of him, revealing the small black gadget that was left in my home.

“I’ve come to return something of your teammates. Why don’t you be a doll and fetch her for me? I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to see me as I have a present for her as well.” I tell the man in front of me, recognition showing in his eyes of who I’m talking about as he takes in the item in my hand.

I watch the rich man gulp and open his mouth, “F.R.I.D.A.Y, wake up everyone. Urgent team meeting. Common room.” I give him a fake smile in response and turn away from him, returning back to the window seeing the sun rising up in the sky.

Brooklyn still has his teeth still bared, eyes intently tracking the stranger in front of him. Ears standing straight up.

7:32 am. Not needing a clock already knowing what time it is. I look around the common room, eyes locking with the woman who had enough balls to break into my apartment.

Her red hair looked lackluster, skin sallow and lips cracked. I smile, knowing the toxins from Brooklyn’s teeth were slowly eating away at her.

Serves her right.

Walking right up to her, not even acknowledging the rest of the “team”, I ask her in a firm voice, “What were you doing in my home?”

The neutral facial expression on her face impressed me, but also made me more irritated. Silence emitted from her. I turn around, stepping into the center of the room, standing in front of a white leather couch.

“You see, I know how you’re feeling right now. And I’m going to tell you that you will die unless you have the antidote,” Seeing a tiny telltale flash of fear through her eyes let me know I had her right where I wanted her.

“Now if you want to keep up with this act which is just gonna piss me off more, go right ahead. I’m sure your buddies here will miss the pussy you throw around am I right?” Her eyes narrowed in response.

“Who even are you?” A voice from my left asked. I side-eye him, taking in his person. Short brown hair, button nose, big biceps, knowing eyes. Must be the archer. I step to him, almost reaching his chin in height.

“Why don’t you ask the little spider?” I challenge him. Not engaging any further, I make my way to the bar, picking up a bottle of very expensive whiskey and call Brooklyn over.

“This is going nowhere and this pissing match is tiring,” Looking over everyone and landing on the redhead. “I don’t lose anything if you die. But they do.” And with that, I transported my dog and me back into my apartment.

I give Brooklyn a scratch behind the ear in thanks and make my way into the kitchen to taste my new handle of whiskey. The antidote chilling in my back pocket under my protection in case we get another visitor.

“Why didn’t you just tell her Nat? Do you really want to die!?” Clint asks, his voice almost hysterical. His concern going unnoticed by the rumbling of a quinjet returning.

He looks to Tony, who is sulking over the loss of his premium alcohol.

“Who is this chick?” He asks himself, walking over to his friend, wanting to help her back to her room. Her feet shuffle tiredly. Trying not to start crying, he focuses on getting Natasha back to bed without any issues.

Last time she fainted from the fatigue and was out for two whole days.

I’ll get you that antidote Nat, I promise.

Bringing in the last box of files and pictures, Sam wipes his dusty hands on his dark denim jeans, looking around the not so empty apartment he’s helping a friend move into. As he finishes wiping his hands, he slowly looks at his left still feeling the tingle flowing throughout.

It started after he shook hands with the cute curly-headed girl with the huge dog at the park a few weeks ago and it hasn’t stopped. If he looked close and hard enough he could swear he saw colors flowing through his hand as well.

He brought his hand up to his face to inspect it more closely and wondered if he was going crazy and seeing things that weren’t really there.

A huge hand placed on his shoulder brought him out of his inspecting of his hand. He looked over his shoulder into cerulean eyes and gave them a smile.

Sam turned towards his friend, accepting and returning the hug that was offered.

“Thank you for helping me, pal. I didn’t know who else to ask.” The deep voice filled with gratitude, made Sam feel wanted and appreciated.

“Not a problem Steve. You can pay me back by getting the food bill. I ordered us some Thai” He responded. Taking in the laugh his new friend gave him.

“Sure pal”.

#aura the shield and the sword #steve rogers x reader #sam wilson x reader #avengers #mcu #marvel #au #captain america #nastasha romanoff #clint barton #tony stark

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stars-and-rose · 5 years

Text

On the Outside Looking In (Sander Sides Spiderverse! au)

so i started this before i got my notes for cursed kingdom and heart point back, got inspired by a random post, and i love emika and felt the need to finish this so here we are-

also i really just love @sugarglider9603 and @ask-spiderverse-virgil | @galaxy-lilies-main ‘s spiderverse au so that's that-

Fandom: Thomas Sanders/Sanders Sides

Pairings: Pre-established Prinxeity and Logicality, some oc action going on too

Summary: Student Council President kinda abuses her power for the sake of local superheroes, but she does it with sass

Word Count: 6,640

Trigger Warnings: Cursing, Mentions of transphobia, descriptions of wounds, blood, there's a gun but no one gets shot (this is actually really fluffy i swear-)

Emika Waters didn't exactly know when she had figured it out. Maybe it was when Logan Quinn shouted "FALSEHOOD" in the middle of class a week or so back, and it sounded exactly like Arachne. Maybe it was when she had gotten lost coming home from her boyfriend's apartment, and Love Bite had helped her find her way and complimented her dress in the same exact words Patton Foster had earlier that day. Maybe it was after hearing another playful argument between Roman Marigold and Virgil Storm, and noting that it held the same energy as when Royal Slinger and Spidergale bantered. Maybe it was when she noticed the four of them coming to school, weary and stiff, on the days she watched a reporter describe a battle between the spidermen and a supervillain. Maybe it was a subtly noting the matching color schemes and attitudes. But the pieces of the puzzle had finally put themselves together, and Emika found herself staring at the complete puzzle in shock.

It was surreal- Emika was busy playing instrumentals on her violin and dragging her poor boyfriend to take pictures of the New York City skyline, while other kids her age were risking their lives to take out adults with villainous intent. How did they do it? Sure, she knew superpowers were involved- wait a second, how did the boys gain superpowers? No, she was not going to think about that, her brain was already fried- but how did they have the time? All four boys were actively involved in clubs, Logan was the class's valedictorian, and the others were in her AP and Honors classes as well. Where did that leave time to patrol the streets of the city and keep those streets safe?

Emika rubbed her temples, a headache starting to form. She hated not having the answers, and this whole scenario left her with absolute zero. She didn't even know what to do with the information!

Thinking about it, that was actually a good place to start. She pulled out her phone, looking up superhero comics. She wanted to see what fictional characters would do in her scenario. She opened one comic, then another and another, her stomach turning and her nose scrunched up in disgust after every comic showed the same results.

It seemed that in every comic, anyone who wasn't the superhero's best friends/partners/family who found out the hero's civilian identity was hell-bent to expose the hero.

That… didn't seem right to Emika.

Why would she try to expose the boys? They were saving lives- and as she knew them as civilians, they were generally nice people. They didn't deserve media crawling down their necks and people harassing and criticizing them. The thought of slipping into a newspaper's office and outing the boys as the spidermen, it just screamed "WRONG!"

Emika's headache was starting to get worse. The comics had only led her to become more confused, and now she was questioning the morals of various comic book characters along with her previous dilemma. Emika threw her head up, staring at the starless sky above. She honestly didn't know what to do. Any form of action seemed to have a negative consequence somewhere down the line!

So what if she did nothing? If she kept the information to herself, kept her mouth shut, there would be no consequences! The boy's secret would be safe, and her own morality and sanity would stay in one piece.

Emika was startled from her thoughts as her brother's voice cut through the night "Hey, Oiseau! You coming?" As she walked to her brother's slightly-beat up, gray car, Emika made her decision. She would keep the boy's secret to herself, and let nothing change.

At least, that was her original plan.

The first time she had helped one of the SpiderBoys (as she has dubbed them in her mind) had been an impulse.

It had been a week since she had made her decision. School had started later that day due to minor villain uprising in the early hours of the morning. Emika was sitting her English class, looking over the notes she had taken for Hamlet. The teacher had surprised the class the day before by announcing that the test on the book would be the next day. Emika had used the time in the morning to study since she had been up late planning the school's next pep rally (being student council president was a challenge, but she stopped complaining about her responsibilities after her discovery). Emika traced over a swirl in silver ink drawn in the margin of her notes, hoping she had absorbed the information she needed

She was suddenly startled by the classroom door flying open. All eyes in the room fixated on Patton Foster, cheek's flushed and gray skirt swishing around his knees. "Sorry about that," He mumbled with a soft laugh, before retreating to his seat beside Emika.

Emika tried to subtly study the boy. To anyone not looking, there seemed to be nothing wrong with their positive classmate. But Emika was looking. She noticed the eyebags covered with a faint layer of concealer, she noticed the way Patton's smile seemed slightly strained, and she noticed how he kept rubbing his arm. She guessed the actions were symptoms of his morning battle as Love Bite. Emika wondered if she asked him if he was okay if he would be suspicious of her.

Before she could ask, their teacher entered the room, with a large stack of papers in his arms. "Morning class! Are you ready for your exam? With the late start we had, I hope you found the time to study!"

Emika practically felt Patton tense up next to her. She heard the whispers escape from his mouth. "Oh no... I forgot... I can't fail this!"

In the ten seconds, it took their teacher to reach his desk, Emika made a decision. "Mr. Brooks!" She called out, standing up and drawing the room's attention to her.

"Yes, Miss Waters?"

"I just remembered I have an order of supplies coming in for the rally next week, and I need to go pick them up!" She wrinkled her nose. "It's a big load, I don't think I can do it by myself unless I want to take all day." Emika pretended to look around the room, her eyes landing on Patton. "Patton, do you think you could help me out?"

Her superhero classmate stared up at her; his confusion was written on his face, but he nodded. "Of course I'll help!"

"Oh thank goodness!" She flashed a smile at Mr. Brooks. "You wouldn't mind if I took Patton with me, right? I can ask Mx Right to confirm that we're working, I'm sure they won't mind."

Mr. Brooks nodded, as Emika suspected he would. "As long as Mx Right calls me, I wouldn't see an issue. Please hurry though, since I'll still expect you to take the test."

"Of course!" Emika subtly grabbed her notebook and gestured for Patton to follow her. As soon as the door shut behind them, Emika handed Patton her notebook. "You looked like you needed some extra study time."

Patton gave her a startled look. "Um, yeah- How did you know?"

"I'm Student Council President! I feel like it's part of my job to notice any issues a student may be having."

Patton nodded, looking down at her notebook. "Wait, did you lie to Mr. Brooks? I appreciate the help but if you lied, I'm going to have to walk back in the room. I don't lie."

Emika threw up her hand in a surrendering gesture. "No, no I didn't lie! I overexaggerated a bit- there is a load I need to pick up but I can handle it myself- you can help me by keeping company while you study and I unpack."

Patton let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank gosh, I really didn't want to go back in there and fail the test. Thank you so much, Mika."

"Again, it's my pleasure." The two of them began to walk down the hallway, reaching the front office. Emika went in and grabbed the boxes- Patton offering to carry some for her, and Emika finally relenting when she realized the stacked boxes were taller than herself. They made their way through freshman hall to Mx Right's room, Emika struggling slightly with her load, and Patton carrying his with ease.

Patton opened the door while still carrying his boxes. (It had to be the superpowers, Emika was sure of it) Emika set down her boxes and flicked on the light. Patton sat on top of a desk, swinging his legs as he read over the notes. Emika sat on the floor, opening the boxes and labeling the contents to make her life easier later on.

Emika was on her second-to-last box when her's phone went off from the desk she'd set it on. She scrambled up, then proceeded to trip over one of the boxes. Patton giggled at the blonde and picked up her phone. "It's Jay." He let out another giggle. "I guess you've really fallen for him, huh?"

After laughing at the pun, Emika accepted her phone from Patton and answered the call. She was greeted with her favorite voice in the world. "Hey, Meeks, I have study hall and ran across the street to get coffee. What do you want?"

If you asked Patton, he would have sworn up and down that the student council president's eyes had become hearts. "This is why I love you." She breathed.

"Oh? It's just because I bring you coffee?"

"Oh, shh, you know that's not it, Jay. I'll have mocha frappe, large." She looked over at her companion."Patton, do you want anything? You look tired, some coffee could help you wake up?"

"Patton? Did you kidnap Patton?" Emika's boyfriend asked.

"Yes I did, I kidnapped him and I'm forcing him to help me unload my supplies because I'm so evil." Emika deadpanned, putting her phone on speaker.

Patton laughed. "She's so horrible! She's making me study while she goes through boxes!"

"Horrific!" Jay exclaimed. "But seriously, do you want something?"

"I can pay you back, but could you get me a hot chocolate? The sugar wakes me up more than caffeine." Patton mumbled something else to himself, but Emika should only catch the words, 'Taste', 'Kiss', and 'Logan'

It was safe to say she had a pretty good idea of what the last statement was about.

"Don't worry about paying me back. Meeks said something about you being tired? I getcha, so it's on me." Jay replied.

"You two are literally the best people on the planet," Patton exclaimed.

Emika smiled to herself. "It's the least I can do."

When the two re-entered the English room, Emika with her coffee and Patton with his hot chocolate, Patton handed her notebook back. "Seriously, you are the best," he whispered.

Emika only smiled.

The second time, it hadn't occurred to Emika until the situation was over.

She was in history, working with her group for their government project. Emika had her head against her boyfriend's chest, fiddling with the striped blue, white and pink pride button her boyfriend had finally felt confident putting on his bag (Emika had a matching pin on her bag, but hers was pink, yellow and blue). She was writing her script, as she would be presenting the project. Jay was sketching his idea for the poster board on a piece of graph paper. Two twin girls- Emika was positive one was named Rose and the other Lily, and Lily was the one with the tattoo on her wrist- were searching in the textbook and on their phones for the information they needed. The last member for their group, Virgil Storm, was typing away at a laptop, headphones covering his ears, working on the powerpoint.

It was peaceful- mostly. Even since the day when she had pulled Patton out to help him study, Emika had become hyperaware of the SpiderBoys physical and mental states. She kept glancing at Virgil, checking for obvious signs that something was wrong. She couldn't tell if Virgil had eyebags, due to the boy's dark eye-shadow covering where any eyebags would be. (That was probably the point. Huh. ) Virgil's collection of oversized hoodies (Emika was convinced she had seen the dark red hoodie Virgil was currently wearing on Roman before) prevented her from seeing any bruises or bumps. Therefore, Virgil was making her job very hard for her.

Emika sighed, tugging on the sleeve of her yellow sweater when she first heard the noise. It was a low rumbling sound that Emika usually associated with her brother- the sound of someone's stomach grumbling.

Rose looked up from her book. "Was that's someone's stomach?" She asked, confirming what Emika had thought she heard.

"Is someone hungry? I have a few extra bucks on me, we can run to the library and get some snacks that the yearbook committee is selling." Emika suggested.

"We just had lunch," Lily replied, gesturing to herself and her twin.

"I've got my mum's brownies in my bag if I get hungry," Jay said.

Virgil didn't even hear- or maybe he did, and he was just ignoring the conversation. Emika let it go, going back to her notes. She had dropped her pen to stretch her fingers when the grumbling started again. She looked back up, meeting eyes with the twins. Rose glanced at Virgil, mouthing a question to Emika "Is it coming from Virgil?"

Emika tilted her head, mouthing back. "Not sure, I'll keep my ear open." She went back to her notes, but this time, when she heard the noise, she stood. She walked over to Virgil and tapped her hand to get his attention. The darker haired boy looked up at her, pulling off his headphones.

"Is something up, Emika?"

"Have you eaten something today? Because your stomach keeps rumbling." Emika asked, hoping her concern carried through her voice.

Virgil shrugged. "I'm not hungry."

"That wasn't the question." Emika crossed her arms.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"Then, fine, no I haven't eaten yet. We good now?" Virgil lifted his hand to put his headphones back on, but Emika grabbed his hand and tried to pull him to his feet. "Hey, what the hell, what are you doing?"

"We're going to the library and you're eating something. That's an order as your president." Emika decided.

"You're student council president, I don't think it works that way."

"I say so, so it does. Let's go, come on, up, up let's go."

"You're causing a scene," Virgil complained. It was true; people were starting to glance at them.

Looking back at it later, Emika noted how comical the situation was. Emika was a tiny blond wearing a pastel sweater. Virgil had at least five inches on Emika, and his darker clothes made him look much more threatening than her. Plus he was Spidergale (which had slipped her mind at the time), which definitely gave him an unfair advantage. But Emika had determination and a questionable amount of caffeine on her side.

"You're dating Roman. He's much better at causing scenes than me! Oooooh, what if I go get him? I could text the theater chat- they finally added the pit kids into it!"

Virgil sighed. "If I come with you will you stop?"

"Yup."

Virgil let out a sigh, slipped off his headphones, and stood. Emika grinned at him, and started for the doorway, hoping that when she turned around, that Virgil would still be behind her. He was, to her satisfaction. They walked in silence, Virgil fidgeting with the strings of his boyfriend's hoodie.

"Why do you care so much?"

Emika turned to Virgil. "Hmmm?"

"Why did you cause a scene and force me to come with you and such?" Virgil asked, fingers still entwined with the hoodie strings.

Emika shrugged. "I feel like I gotta be helpful. There's gotta be something I can do. Even something as small as this."

The two of them fell back into silence, reaching the library. Emika walked over the desk, where a few baskets held candy and chips. She pulled out a few dollar bills and grabbed a dark chocolate bar and a box of Lemonheads. After paying, she threw the chocolate bar at the emo boy, who caught it with ease. "Huh?"

"Dark chocolate is light on your stomach, but it still gives you some energy. I live on dark chocolate during audition weeks. Jay is convinced that someone draws my blood, they'll discover that my blood has bits of dark chocolate in it. Plus, it makes you feel good and tastes great."

Virgil snorted. "Have you ever considered becoming a spokesperson for dark chocolate?"

"Oh my god! That would be the best job on the planet!" Emika popped a lemon candy in her mouth. Virgil unwrapped the chocolate bar and proceeded to stare at it as if it came from an alien planet. "You do realize you can't eat it by staring at it? You need to put it in your mouth?"

"No. I never would have guessed. Thank you so much." Virgil deadpanned, causing Emika to snort. They walked back to the classroom, and Emika reclaimed her spot next to Jay.

Later, the couple was laying on the couch of the Waters apartment when she remembered that Virgil was Spidergale and she'd managed help out another superhero. She couldn't help but let out an airy laugh at the thought.

"Is everything good?" Jay asked.

"Yup! Just thinking about something," Emika replied, laying her head in his lap.

The third time it happened, it was completely and utterly on purpose.

Emika sat in one of the music department's practice rooms, violin case at her feet, looking over the notes she'd jotted into her notebook. Yesterday, she had overheard her study hall teacher complaining to another teacher about how she was going to have to write Logan Berry up if he showed up to study hall late one more time.

That had piqued Emika's interest- and her concern. Logan Berry? The Valedictorian, obsessed with learning, Logan Berry skipping a class? That was wrong in every aspect. So Emika looked into it.

After searching through YouTube and various fan blogs, Emika learned that due to a few criminals escaping jail, the SpiderBoys and Rainbow Weaver were taking extra patrols until the crooks were caught. It seemed at Arachne (cough, cough Logan) was taking patrol at the time of their study hall.

Emika wasn't about to let Logan get in trouble for protecting the city. Nope. Nada. Not on her watch.

Emika scribbled something furiously with her pen, memorizing the bulleted list she had created. Her plan, if executed correctly, would be able to clear Logan's name and still fall in line with his boyfriend's morals.

If she messed up-

Nope. She was not going to mess up.

Someone knocked on the door. Emika looked up and saw one of the band's flutists- Alex- looking in at her. She pushed the notebook into her bag and opened the door, glancing at the blue bracelet around Ian's wrist. "Hey, Mika." He greeted. "The period is over."

"Oh, thank you for getting me. I wouldn't have noticed." Emika stood, slinging her bag over her shoulder, and grabbed her violin case.

"You looked really focused. Working on something important?"Alex asked as Emika put her violin in her locker.

"You could say that." Emika agreed, waving goodbye as they parted ways. Emika headed for the cafeteria, heartbeat thumping in her ears. She could give speeches in front of her entire class without any fear. She could play violin solos without batting an eye. But this? Her nerves were shot. Because now, it wasn't just her on the line. If she messed up, Logan would get in trouble.

She made to the cafeteria and set down her bag at an empty table. Taking a deep breath, Emika walked towards the table where Mrs. Nixon sat, playing with her wedding band. The student council president cleared her throat, getting the teacher's attention. "Oh, hello Miss Waters. Is there something I can help you out with?"

"There is. May I sit?" Emika asked.

"Of course." She sat down, cracking her knuckles, as the teacher looked at her. "What's wrong? Do you need anything?"

"I need to talk to you about how Logan Berry has been late to this class. I'm afraid it's kind of my fault."

The teacher tilted her head. "Pardon me? You're going to have to explain, Emika."

"You see, I've been swamped with a lot of the paperwork for student council. Our treasurer is terribly sick right now, and I don't want to put any pressure on them while they're under the weather. I tried to do it myself, but it happens to be that when you have a thousand things to do, putting together treasuer reports is much more difficult than it looks. So, since Logan is the smartest person I know, I asked him if he could complete them for me. He has lunch before this, I think, and he told me he would go to the library to work on the reports. So, it seems that because I gave him extra work, he's coming to this study hall late."

Emika was mentally screaming at herself, because goodness, her story sounded so fake, it could shatter with the simplest prod.

Mrs. Nixon bit her lip. "It's very refreshing to see teenagers holding themselves accountable for their mistakes. And I don't want to be the teacher that puts on a stain on Mr. Berry's record. As long as this doesn't continue, I think I can let it slide."

Emika almost jumped over the table to hug the teacher, but she managed to contain herself. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Nixon."

"Anytime." Emika walked back to her seat, slumping in it with relief. She pulled out her German notes- honestly, she should have taken French, she already was fluent, it would have been an easy hundred- and began to study when someone sat across from her. Emika looked up, and sure enough, Logan was sitting across from her.

"Oh, hi, Logan! What's up?" Emika said, attempting to keep her cool. She subtly looked for any injuries, but it seemed Logan was able to keep himself from getting hurt.

"It came to my attention that you covered for me in accordance with my constant tardiness to this class, and I was curious why," Logan asked, the question burning in his eyes.

Emika shrugged. "I knew you'd have a good reason. I've known you since, like seventh grade, even if we never really talked. You don't strike me as the type to be tardy without a good reason."

Logan nodded. "Yes, I had a reason, but it's a private one."

"Oh, I wasn't prying! I totally get it."

The two sat in silence for a moment, and Emika was considering going back to her German review when Logan spoke up again. "However, Patton will be rather upset if he learns lying was involved me getting out of trouble."

"Oh I know, I almost received a lying-is-bad lecture from your boyfriend." Emika laughed, brushing the hair out of her face.

"He informed me of that incident. I do have to thank you for helping him."

Emika smiled. "Student Council President is quite determined to do her job. As for the lying thing-" Emika dug into her backpack, pulling on a few pieces of paper. "-I told Mrs. Nixon you were helping me with these."

"Are these Treasurer Reports?"

"Haha, yeah. Millie is out sick and I didn't want to make her do it while she's out, I wasn't lying about that- so to null out the other lie, if you could add up the numbers for me? Then there's less lying involved."

"You thought this through, didn't you?"

Emika grinned. "I live to defy the dumb blond stereotype"

Logan managed to get the reports added up in minutes flat (A feat Emika never would have been capable of), and by the time the period was over, Emika had a smile on her face.

The fourth time had been a total accident.

The Spring Musical was just around the corner, meaning the pit orchestra would practice alongside the performers. Emika's arms were killing her, and if she had to play the same section one more time, she was going to lose her mind.

Finally, a break was called. Emika, her prayers answered, gratefully placed her violin back in its case. She was desperate for water, but it seemed she had emptied her bottle already. Emika grabbed the empty bottle, determined to fill it before the fountain was swamped. She started to power-walk from the auditorium, cursing her tiny legs when she collided with someone.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry." Emika scrambled to her feet, offering her hand to whoever she had run into. It just happened to be Roman, who accepted her hand and pulled himself to his feet.

"It's okay," he answered, but there was pain tainting his voice.

"Are you okay?" Oh god, what if she hurt Roman? In turn, that would have meant she'd hurt Royal Slinger, which meant New York would be down a SpiderBoy-

"Oh no, you just hit me where I have a nasty cut, I'm perfectly fine!" Roman replied, and Emika heard him mutter something that contained the phrase "stitches getting loose'.

Oh. Oh no.

"Um, I have a first aid kit in the band room- I kept it on me because sometimes I slit my fingertips on my violin strings, and I would make me feel better if I could look over it so-"

"Hey, Mika, calm down!" Roman said, putting his hands up in a calming gesture. "It truly isn't your fault for my pain, but if I will make you feel better, you can look the wound over."

Emika let out a shaky breath. "Okay, okay yeah, follow me." Emika led Roman through the maze of chairs, stands, and cases that were scattered through the pit. A few turns and a tiny set of stairs later, the two were in the abandoned band room. Emika pointed at a chair. "Sit down, I'm going to get my kit."

Emika left the actor in the band room, headed for the storage area, where, in her locker, she found the first aid kit. Jay had bought it for her after he'd noticed her fingertips bleeding from the little cuts she often found on them. She exited the storage room and found Roman sitting, with his red jacket off, and his sleeves rolled up.

Then she saw the cut.

It was stitched up, which Emika guessed meant it was deep. The wound was a bright red around the stitching, which was definitely coming undone. She could see red under the falling-apart stitches, which Emika assumed wasn't good. The wound also seemed to be oozing with what she feared was pus. She was no medical professional, but something told her that the wound would have given the school nurse a heart attack.

Emika sat down and opened her kit. She didn't bother asking how Roman had gotten the wound. She knew that it was from his escapades as Royal Slinger, and seeing the dramatic boy injured made something churn in her stomach. It wasn't fair, the boys didn't deserve to be hurt like this.

There was nothing she could do except doing the little things to help, like making sure Roman's injury didn't get worse.

Emika pulled out a rubbing wipe. "This is going to sting."

"Don't worry, I can handle a minor sting," Roman replied, but he still winced as Emika attempted to clean the cut, moving carefully around the stitches. Just as Emika finished the cleaning, Roman's phone went off from his jacket pocket. Roman moved to get it, but Emika reached over and grabbed it for him instead.

"It's Virgil," Emika announced, and she smiled at the way Roman's eyes lit up at the mention of his boyfriend. He made grabby hands for the phone, and Emika, laughing slightly, handed it over.

"Hello, my darling emo!" Roman smiled at the image of Virgil that appeared on his screen.

"Hey, Ro. What's up?"

"Local Mother Hen is looking at that cut I got on my shoulder," Roman responded. Emika flashed a peace sign at Virgil.

"You need a leash for this one, Virgil," Emika replied, rummaging through her kit, and pulling out butterfly stitching. "Hey Roman, I'm going to put butterfly stitching over the stitches, you'll have to have someone with actual medical skills fix that, okay?"

"Aye aye, captain," Roman responded, before starting a conversation with his boyfriend about Virgil's dance practice. Emika unwrapped the stitching and began to carefully apply the bandaging to the wound. She had done this before- once, Andre had split his knee open, and Emika had fixed him up enough so her dad could take him to the ER. She made sure to keep the touches gentle, not wanting to make Roman hurt more, but said the boy was caught up talking to Virgil, she doubted he would have noticed either way. As a precaution, Emika stuck a couple large band-aids over the butterfly stitching.

"Alright! Try not to aggravate the wound or pull out the stitches more than you already have. Cut back on the dramatics for the last half of practice, perhaps."

Roman gasped as if she'd suggested kicking a puppy. "Cut back on the dramatics?" He repeated. "Virgil, do you hear this insanity?"

As Virgil snickered from the other line, Emika rolled her eyes playfully. "Maybe just try not to move that arm around so much?"

"You can handle that, Princey." Virgil agreed. "If you manage not to rip the stitches- more than you already have, I might be more inclined to watch Disney and cuddle later."

Roman vigorously nodded his head. "I shall not rip the stitches or dramatically move my arm in the name of Disney cuddles." He announced.

Emika laughed, putting away her kit. Just as she was about to slip away to let the two finish talking before the rehearsal started up again, Virgil called out, "Hey, um, Mika- people call you that, right?"

"Yeah, they do! What's up? "

"Thanks for taking care of my dork."

Emika smiled. "Of course- I'm always here to help."

And help she did.

It seemed that the SpiderBoys had discovered that she really would help with anything. Patton continued to help her during unloading days, giving him more time to study. Logan asked her for the page numbers of homework assignments he'd missed. Virgil accepted the dark chocolate she threw at him. Roman had even allowed her to help with another wound he'd gotten.

But all good things come to an end eventually.

To be fair, the night Emika accidentally opened her mouth was a night meant for disaster. The usually calm student council president was enraged. Jay ran track, and sometimes he managed to convince his girlfriend (aka Emika) to go on runs with him. She didn't mind the runs; she often brought her camera along. But Jay couldn't wear his binder while they were running, which usually wasn't a problem.

But today there was a problem. Some guy had misgendered Jay and then proceeded to go off on some transphobic tangent. Jay ignored that guy, but Emika could see how upset her boyfriend was becoming, and she'd almost beat the shit out of the guy. But, she knew that would make her boyfriend upset, so she'd instead taken him home and made him rose tea and cuddled with him. But as soon as his mom came home and Emika left the apartment, the rage entered her eyes.

Everyone on the street shifted to avoid her. It was comical- the tiny girl causing grown men to step out of her way. If she lived in a cartoon, steam would have been pouring out her ears.

Suddenly, her phone began to ring. She pulled out her phone and answered the call. "Salut, Papa."

"Salut, êtes-vous sur le chemin du retour?"

"Oui, Je prends le métro." Emika responed.

"Rester en sécurité, Emika." Her dad fretted.

"Ne t'inquiète pas, ça va aller. À bientôt."

"Je t'aime."

" Je t'aime, Papa." Emika hung up and continued her way to the subway. Speaking her father's native tongue always calmed her down- the word's always sounded so pretty, and focusing on the beauty of it was a welcome distraction.

Emika managed to get into her subway without any trouble. She was sitting against the wall, earbuds canceling the noise of the crowded car and distracting her from the anger still bubbling in her chest. Everything was fine.

Until the subway stopped.

That was strange, Emika remembered thinking. The ride was usually about fifteen minutes, she had only been riding for seven. She slipped her earbuds out, listening to the confused murmurs of the other passengers. Then the sound of cracking glass filled her eardrums, and something sharp cut across Emika's face, causing the rage in her stomach to twist into pain and fear.

Someone started screaming. Emika glanced at the window dividing the subway cars- the glass was shattered, the cracks spirling from a small hole in the center. A bullet hole. Had someone gotten shot?

No, the bullet was wedged into one of the handheld poles. Emika peered into the car before them, and saw a figure with a gun, pointing it frantically from passenger to passenger.

Something dripped down Emika's face. She raised her hand and felt something wet and sticky covering her cheek. Lowering her hand, vile raised in her throat- her hand was covered in crimson, metallic-smelling blood. Her own blood.

No one paid attention to her, the blood dripping down her cheek, the pain sharp and fierce. She heard the sounds of conflict in the other car (but no more gunshots), then the sound of the door being forced open. "Is anyone hurt?"

"There's a girl by the window, I think she got cut by the glass!" Huh, someone had noticed her. Someone knelt next to Emika; it was a figure in a pink super-suit, it was Love Bite, it was Patton.

"Hey, hey you with me?" He asked.

"Mmhmm," Emika mumbled. "It hurts like fucking hell"

"You got cut on the glass, you'll be okay, but you need to stay calm okay?" Her superhero classmate muttered, looking up into the evacuating crowd. "I need someone to clot her bleeding!"

A woman handed over a scarf- Patton thanking her, before ripping it and pressing it down over Emika's cut. She winced in pain. "Sorry." He muttered and continued to press down. Soon, he lifted the bloodstained cloth. "I think you've stopped bleeding."

"Thank you, Patton, "Emika mumbled. She felt the superhero stiffen and take it a harsh breath beside her. Why-

Oh.

Emika tensed too, her thoughts racing. She had called him Patton, while he was in costume. No one was close enough to hear her, but still, she'd let it slip.

"Emika-" Patton began, his voice slightly panicked, the eyes of his suit open so wide, it would be been comical in any other situation.

Really, Emika should have stayed and simply explained her discovery to Patton. But, instead, Emika shot to her feet, ignoring the superhero's protests, and ran from the subway, losing herself in the fleeing crowd.

Emika couldn't avoid it forever. That didn't mean she wasn't going to try.

She practically ran between classes, made sure she sat with as many people as possible at lunch and drove home with her brother every day.

But one day, she was waiting after school, leaning against the same wall she had all those weeks ago when she meant her discovery, waiting for Andre to get out of work. Her finger traced over the cut on her cheek. The doctor she'd visited told her it would probably scar. She lowered her hand, and then she felt someone lean against the wall next to her. "Hey, Mika."

Emika tensed, looking over at Patton. She was just about to move from the wall when Patton placed an arm on her shoulder. "Can we just talk about this?"

Emika's shoulders sagged. "Okay." She conceited, leaning her head against the back of the wall again, watching the traffic go by.

"How did you figure it out?"

"That you're Love Bite, your boyfriend is Arachne, your best friend is Royal Slinger and his boyfriend is Spindergale?" Emika's words were quiet, her voice barely audible over the breeze. "It was a bunch of little things."

"Was it obvious?" Patton looked over at the student council president, who's night sky eyes were still trained on the passing cars.

"No, not really. It might sound like I'm full of myself, but I consider myself pretty preceptive."

"Part of your president powers?"

Emika cracked a grin. "Hey, let me have my fake superpower."

That little joke managed to dissolve the solve the tension. Both of them started laughing, and Emika finally looked at Patton.

"You guys are crazy brave," Emika muttered, meeting the superhero's eyes. "It's insane how much you four are already have done for the world and damn. I wish I could do more, you know."

Emika's eyes gazed back out the cars, the last world even quieter than when she had whispered the secret. "You know, the little things matter too. Logan has been suspicious of you after the second week of you making sure Virgil ate. After he pointed it out, I realized how right he was. Thanks for getting me more study time, and tell Jay I ow- wait, does he know?"

"I haven't told a soul," Emika replied.

"Oh thank goodness." Patton let out a sigh of relief. "That would have made things more complicated."

"Agreed, people honestly would have thought I was crazy. I thought I was crazy for a bit." Emika laughed. Suddenly, Andre's same old gray car pulled up. Emika flashed a peace sign at Patton and started to walk away.

"Hey, Mika?"

The blonde turned around, the streetlights reflecting against her short locks. Patton's eyes looked brighter in the same light. "Thanks for taking care of us- what did Roman dub you- 'Local mother hen?'" Patton grinned. "It fits."

Emika laughed, and then suddenly, a flash of dark blue on the school roof caught her attention. "Hey, Patton?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm pretty sure your boyfriend has been watching over you this whole time. You know, in case the petite French girl was actually a supervillain."

Patton looked upwards, seeing the dark blue as well, a small, slightly lovesick grin on his face. "God I love him." He mumbled, and she couldn't help but laugh as she finally entered her brother's car.

"What was that about?" Andre asked, starting the car again.

Emika leaned against the seat, glancing out her window to see Patton vanishing into the night, probably to join his boyfriend. "Mm, just seeing things from the outside, you know?"

French Translations!

Salut, Papa- Hi, Dad

Salut, êtes-vous sur le chemin du retour?- Hi, are you on your way home?

Oui, Je prends le métro- Yes. I’m taking the subway

Rester en sécurité, Emika- Stay safe, Emika

Ne t'inquiète pas, ça va aller. À bientôt- Don’t worry, I’ll be okay. See you soon.

Je t'aime- I love you

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hypexion · 4 years

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Ashes of Outland: Aluminium Reveals

With the arrival of the Rusted Legion, it’s best to keep your metals locked away. Unless you need them. In that case, you should probably take them out.

Spectral Sight is one of those Outcast cards. Not a bad top deck, since it replaces itself with two cards, but otherwise it’s not that amazing. Being a card you might not play for a while is to this card’s advantage, as it should slowly move to the left of your hand as the game goes on. Of course, holding onto cards you aren’t using can cause problems, so Spectral Sight isn’t the best option for card draw.

Imprisoned Satyr is the first of the imprisoned minions. It doesn’t look that great, since while you do get a discount on a minion, it takes a while, and the main body is only a 3/3. Probably what might save this is that paying three mana to do nothing might not sink you, and being able to drop a big minion ahead of schedule could work out for you if it’s the right one.

Tutor for Beasts with Scavenger’s Ingenuity. Probably worth testing out, since giving a minion +3/+3 can be pretty helpful. And Hunter tends to have a lot of Beasts that work better with more attack, so this could be pretty helpful.

Furious Felfin is stupid, but also probably good. Even if you use your Hero Power to activate it, a 4/2 with Rush is pretty good for three mana. Activated without having to pay mana for your attack it’s a really good deal. It’s probably something that will be pretty popular, since every deck likes a way to deal with minions in the early game.

Skull of Gul’dan is a pretty macabre topic for a card, but it’s here anyway. Absorb it’s dark energies to draw three cards at a fair price. The Outcast effect is another that’s pretty excessive, making all the cards drawn cost three less. It’s probably worth running anyway, even if you only get the discount occationally, because having more cards is generally a good thing.

Imprisoned Antaen is another minion that takes a while to do something. This is a problem, since your opponent gets two turns to make sure they aren’t taking ten to the face when this wakes up. Doing nothing on turn five is also a questionable move, since by this point, the big guns are starting to come out. Mix that with a somewhat lopsided statline, and you’ve got a minion that looks scarier than it actually is.

Soul Split copies a demon, an activity I wouldn’t expect a Demon Hunter to approve of. Has copying minions ever actually worked out? Usually you want to copy the big ones, but that’s often a an issue because you can’t play a big demon and copy it on the same turn. That leaves you only able to copy smaller demons, and at that point, you might as well just put in a card that works by itself. But hey, this card is free, so you can at mess about with it before replacing it will something more impactful.

Fungal Fortunes is like Book of Specters, but it removes minions rather than spells. This could work well in a token deck, since they generate most of their mnions via spells. And when your greatest problem is running out of steam, drawing three cards for two mana is a pretty tempting idea.

Imprisoned Observer is a new way to discourage your opponent from playing minions. When it awakens, it zaps all enemy minions for two damage, making it pointless to summon any with less than two health the turn before. With the added bonus of having more stats than the mana cost usually allows, Imprisoned Observer is a surprisingly proactive card for something that does nothing the turn you play it. Probably worth trying out, at least.

Dragonmaw Overseer is Shadow Ascendant, but more. It looks good enough, and as three mana minions go, it’s pretty useful. With Priest being shifted to a more board-focused class, this is the kind of minion that could help make that work.

What if Sap was better? Then it would be Blackjack Stunner, which costs one mana, and makes the returned minion cost more. The catch is that you need a Secret out to return a minion, but it shouldn’t be too hard to arrange that. Since this increases the cost of bounced minions, it’s a pretty strong tempo play, and can permantly deal with the most expensive ones. I’d expect to see a lot of this once Ashes of Outland drops.

Secret synergy needs Secrets, so Rogue is getting Ambush. Which is effectly just a 2/3 with Poisonous, since your opponent is probably going to be playing minions. Probably decent, especially since if your opponent spends all their on a creature, you can immediately kill it, and they’ll have little recourse.

Bogstrok Clacker is another evolver card. I have run out of words for this archetype. Reroll exhausted minons, hope for good replacements. Probably will be annoying.

Torrent is Flame Lance, except if you played a spell the turn before, it only costs two. Seems kind of awkward really, since you might not have cast a spell the turn before you need this. Plus, Hex is cheaper than an undiscounted Torrent, and deals with Deathrattles as well. Which probably means Torrent won’t see that much play.

The Dark Portal is a weird Handlock card. If you have lots of cards, you can pre-pay for the card you draw. Given that it’s not hard to have lots of cards as Warlock, this might see some experimental play.

Make spells hurt more with Mo’arg Artificer. For some reason, the effect counts as a downside. I guess because your opponent might get to respond first. Not really sure about this one, since although it provides good opportunities for board cleaning, it does apply both ways. And as an Epic, you can’t even test it out.

Warglaives of Azzinoth is just Fool’s Bane again. Sure, it scales well with extra attack, but sometimes you can’t afford to wack your face into four minons. Works well with Blur, at least, but even then you probably need to invest more cards into it to make it work. And at that point, you might as well play Chaos Nova.

Pit Commander is like Dragon Tamer except turned up to eleven. It has Taunt. It’s almost got a full statline. Shove it into a deck with only high-cost demons, and you can laugh all the wall to the bank. Or victory screen. Seriously though. This is super pushed. Did Team Five realise that nine mana minions show maybe be playable?

More evolve with Boggspine Knuckles. Big problem? When Evolve the card was in Standard, there were problems. Attacking is free, so things could be worse? How do developer learn from mistake?

Shadow Council is another one of those weird maximum random cards. Except now the new cards get +2/+2, so if you low roll you at least get some advantage from it. Honestly not sure what to think about this one, since Demon quality is still all over the place, but many of them are a lot better with +2/+2.

Teron Gorefiend is egg card of this set. The egg Legend. Sure, he isn’t actually an egg. But he can hatch all your eggs. Then when he dies, you get them all back, in a form capable of self-hatching. Outside of funky Deathrattle stuff, Teron probably isn’t as useful, but that’s okay. He’s a card with a stupid fun niche, and sometimes, that’s what you want.

Spend five mana to upgrade your Hero Power with Metamorphosis. Then after two uses it turns back. While doing five damage for one mana is pretty good, the overall mana economy on this card is less so. If you need something to close out a game, it’s probably not the worse choice, but it still doesn’t seem great.

The first of the Primes is Archspore Msshi’fn. The starting form is nothing to write home about - it’s just a simple Taunt, hardly even worth Silencing. But the second form is much more impressive. As well as a 9/9 with Taunt, you also get a second 9/9, with your choice of Rush or Taunt. That’s quite a lot of stats, and should hopefully stop a lot of decks from beating you to death. Then, hopefully, you can beat them to death with your giant minions.

The second Prime is Lady Vashj. The first form is completely generic, and will probably die immediately. The second form is... also pretty generic. All the value is front loaded in the Battlecry, which grabs some spells and makes them cheaper. Which is quite nice, I’ll admit. Depending on what spells Shaman gets in the coming sets, Vashj could be a decent choice for spell-heavy decks that want to do more during their turn. Plus, with the Quest reward, you can draw six spells, which is a little crazy.

Kargath Bladefist has a blade where his fist should be. Hence the name, I assume. He’s also the third Prime. Regular Kargath is pretty decent, as a 4/4 with Rush, for four mana. Since he has Rush, there’s a good chance you can kill him off the same turn you play him, to avoid any Silence or transform effects. Which you’ll want to, because Kargath Prime is fucking amazing. A 10/10 with Rush is pretty much able to delete any other minion on the battlefield, and at eight mana, he’s obscenely efficent. Oh, and as a small bonus, you get ten armor when he attacks and kills a minion. Which he will, because he has ten attack. Honestly, the only downside here is that Kargath Prime is so utterly threatening that your opponent will want to kill him immediately.

Oh yeah, and since Kargath Prime is a minion, Galakrond’s Battlecry can draw him. At that point, is there anything he can’t kill?

Finally, from the /r/customhearthstone pile is Bulwark of Azzinoth. It completely blocks four attacks. That’s it. That’s the weapon. Then you can bring it back with Hoard Pillager to block four more. Of course, it’s not actually that good against swarm-style decks, given that they only lose small amounts of damage. But plonk this down in front of a board of big hitters, and laugh as they can only chip away at your Bulwark. Definitely a strong choice for Control Warriors everywhere. It even stops (most) Combo kills.

Well, that was a lot of cards. But now I've caught up, just in time for a bunch more to be revealed overnight. Or at least, that's usually what happens. For now, it seems like there won't be anymore until tomorrow.

#Ashes of Outland #Hearthstone #new cards

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tonotbelionized · 5 years

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Character Allusions

The world of RWBY has many influences from our world in its world building, culture and story, and the main influence in the show is the allusion that every character has to a tale. Whether this is a fairy tale, a legend, or mythology, there’s hints to what each character represents not only in their name, but also their outfits and stories.

RWBY has many characters that you are able to figure out, even if it takes some time, and can even have a secondary allusion in regards to other characters. Volume 1 is the easiest to decide in the show, with all the characters having clear influence from their fairy tales so that the audience are able to decide; Ruby Rose is clearly Little Red Riding hood not only from her name and English inspired outfit, but her trademark red hood and the hints given in show, noticeable Roman’s nickname of her being “Little Red”.

The other characters are the same. We can see Snow White with Weiss or Joan of Arc with Jaune, but it seems that as we go further into the show, a once key aspect of the story telling has now fallen behind.

Characters With Hardly Any Allusions

Carrying on after Volume 1, we still have characters that we can determine their allusion easily enough; Neptune is clearly the Roman God of the Sea, and has a interesting secondary allusion in Zhu Bajie, the pig companion with a shared habit of hitting on every woman he saw, connecting Neptune to Sun’s primary allusion of Sun Wukong. The same can be said about Mercury with his allusion connected to the Roman God Mercury.

However, there are characters that really don’t seem to have an allusion, or at least one that can be determined. Neo’s outfit is based of a gender bent Roman cosplayer, but there’s nothing to suggest what her allusion actually is, with some thinking that she could be Mary Poppins because of her umbrella, or even Tinkerbell. The problem is that more casual viewers who don’t know about this cosplayer, would not know what Neo’s outfit means and the allusion is lost.

Another example is Maria, with her outfit and character taking heavy influence from the Mexican holiday Dias de Los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead. It’s especially seen in her heavy skull usage in her outfit, and the sugar skull mask that she wore in her younger days. However no other character has been based on an actual holiday, so actually determining if this is Maria’s allusion or not can get a bit muddled.

The most noticeable one out of the people in both Kali and Taiyang. Taiyang’s team are all based on poems; Summer Rose from Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore, Qrow and Raven are meant to be Muninn and Huginn from the poem Grímnismál, but Taiyang doesn’t have a clear poem that he’s based off. There’s nothing about him besides his obviously Chinese name that would give us a hint on where to start. We can’t even go off Yang’s Goldilocks allusion to decide because Goldilocks didn’t have a father in the tale, nor does Tai fit any of the bears.

And Kali doesn’t even have the same allusion to the Jungle Book as Ghira. Her outfit has nothing unique that could point us in the direction to figure it out, and in all honesty she just looks like an older Blake. This isn’t necessarily the problem given that Summer looks like an older Ruby, but at least Summer had the name to connect her to the poem, and the fact that the last words on her grave is directly connected to the line of the poem. There’s nothing about Kali Belladonna that could point her to be an allusion for the Hindu Goddess Kali.

She has no blue on her outfit at all, her outfit is Japanese influenced rather than Indian with her hakama pants and kimono, and nothing in her story points to the Goddess of Death and Destruction apart from the fact that Kali is also seen as a symbol for motherly love, and RWBY Kali is one of the best mothers in the cast.

This isn’t the only thing about RWBY’s allusions, as the writers have even gone the other way and made it that the allusion is all that the character is without anything new about it.

Too On the Nose Allusions

The main culprit of this problem is Leo Lionheart. It makes sense for him to be the Cowardly Lion, he’s one of the headmasters and part of Ozpin’s Inner Circle, where everyone else has an allusion that connects to Ozpin’s Wizard of Oz theme. However, the others have their allusions in subtle ways and have more to their characters than just being that allusion.

Leonardo doesn’t. He’s a turncoat yes, but we spend all of his scenes being told that he’s doing this because he’s afraid of Salem, that he feels like he can’t fight against her, that he’s a coward. I don’t hate his character, but there has to be more to Leo than just being a coward and a turncoat, the problem is that the show never show us more to him. The very first thing that is established in Volume 5 is Leonardo getting shocked by Team RNJR and Qrow, and faints in fright.

After that, he seemed to be a reasonable leader that’s doing the best he can given that Ozpin is dead and everyone is at each other’s throats, especially with James’ downward spiral mentally and Glynda being kept at Vale to help with the situation. He’s a perfect counterpart to Qrow’s impatient personality and seemed someone that the group needs to calm them all down, and then every scene afterwards throws it out of the window.

We could’ve learned exactly how Leonardo decided it was futile to fight against Salem. Did he learn by the lamp given it only had two wishes when the heroes grabbed it? Did he see what Salem could do? Does he know about Ozpin’s past if he did use the wish? Not only that, but he’s the only Faunus headmaster of the four and lives in a country that has less than favorable views on the Faunus. How did he rise so far in rank despite the disadvantages set against him? Did Ozpin help him with that? What was their relationship even like?

There’s nothing to his character, so much so that no one even cared about his death at the end of Volume 5, and it wasn’t even a fitting way for him to go. He was caught by the Seer and stabbed to death while pitifully begging for his life. All while Salem coldly calls him a coward. We know. He’s a coward, it’s all that’s ever said about Leonardo, and I wish that they had given him something more than that.

Characters Allusions to Each Other

One thing that RWBY can do well is the characters not only having allusions to themselves, but also being able to connect with other characters too. From Yang’s trailer, we have Junior who serves as an allusion to little bear from the Goldilocks fairy tale, this connects him to Yang and her character. Not only that, he also serves as the Bear Prince to Melanie and Militia Malachite’s Snow White and Rose Red. This level of detail is very well done and makes the characters feel more connected to each other, rather than just being random fairy tale characters thrown into a world with guns.

Junior isn’t even a main example, Qrow Branwen is another well done example. While his allusion to the scarecrow mostly on the surface given that he is fairly smart, compared to James’ more obvious character being a man with trust issues having to learn to let people in his heart, there’s still enough to connect him to Ozpin’s Wizard of Oz motif. On top of that, both he and Raven are connected to Ozpin as Odin’s crow and raven; Muninn and Huginn. They were given powers to turn to birds so that they could spy for Ozpin, further leading to this allusion.

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments were the show trips up. the Belladonna family is the most awkward one that comes to mind, especially when remembering that Blake’s main allusion is Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Ghira is obviously Bagheera from the Jungle Book, but that only means he’s connected to Sienna’s Shere Khan, as there’s nothing to point to Belle and Bagheera.

The exact same thing can be said for Kali. As mentioned before, we don’t even know her allusion, and if it is Kali the Hindu Goddess, then there’s nothing connecting the two. It goes even further that nothing connects Kali’s allusion to Blake’s despite being her mother. Neither of her parents share a connection to Blake, and it seems that the writers forgot this as the only person who fits into this story is Adam.

He’s the Beast who never got over his Beauty leaving and as a result was never redeemed, and he’s also the Gaston in the story with Blake and Yang. While Adam can be seen as other legends, such as the Demon Bull King in connection to Sun, his main allusion was made so that he fits in with Blake and the two feel connected. Her parents don’t have that.

This further continues on the last point.

Cultural Inspiration to the Character’s Allusion

With a character that is an allusion to a tale or a legend, the show takes care to physically connect their appearance and name to the origin of the fairy tale. Weiss Schnee is German for White Snow, as the original Snow White tale is German, and this goes further into her family as they all have a snow and a northern European theme.

Winter Schnee is based off the Snow Queen, a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen and is Danish. Jacques Schnee - Gele is based of Jack Frost, a French name with a fairy tale that is thought to come from Anglo-Saxon and Norse origins. Even Klein the butler is given a Germanic name and is based off the Seven Dwarves, connecting him directly to Weiss’ Snow White theme.

The same can be said for Ruby and her mother, with both their allusions being English and Irish in origin. While Yang’s allusion to Goldilocks is different with her Chinese influence, it also adds to another allusion for her being Fenghuang, a Chinese legend of birds coming from the union of a dragon and a raven, heavily playing into Yang’s parents being Taiyang and Raven. This means her Chinese influence makes sense, it also ties her to her parents more.

Blake’s influences are all over the place. Her fairy tale is French, and her Volume 1 - 3 outfit reflects the French aspect, with her coat tails and frills on her shirt. She loses that French aspect in her later outfits. Her pyjamas and weapon are clearly Japanese inspired, she has a katana that can turn into a kusarigama with the help of her ribbon. While this isn’t as bad before Volume 4, the inclusion of her family further muddles it. Ghira and Kali’s allusions are Indian fairy tales, but Kali’s outfit is once again Japanese inspired while Ghira’s has no cultural inspiration that I can figure out.

Then there’s the fact that Menagerie is heavily inspired by not only Australia for its deadly wildlife and past connections of criminals and undesirables being sent there, but also Pacific Countries like Hawaii because of the name of the towns and it’s plant life, like the coconut and palm trees there. However, someone did point out that the houses and architecture of Menagerie are once again Japanese inspired.

Even Blake’s name further muddles things because Blake is Old English, it’s not even French like Belle’s name, and her surname is Italian. All the other main characters have names that flow with the same language. Weiss Schnee is German, Yang Xiao Long is Chinese, Ruby Rose is English, even Team JNPR follows this, but Blake doesn’t.

Unlike the rest of the girls, this mess of different cultures being mashed together leaves the Belladonna’s lacking that same cohesion that the rest of the families have. It has the knock on effect that people who want to give face claims to Blake simply don’t know what ethnicity she would be. It’s easy to cast Yang as Chinese and White because of Raven and Taiyang, same goes for Ruby, and Weiss is clearly white, but Blake’s is just confusing and can lead to infighting in the fandom.

I feel like this could’ve been avoided if Ghira and Kali shared at least one of Blake’s inspiration, either the French or the Japanese side, and if Blake followed the same line of thought that her friends do. Give her a French name to connect her to Belle, rather than mixing it all together.

That’s all that I have to say about the show’s handlement of allusions. In all honesty, with the show carrying on, it’s not that big of a deal as it was at the beginning, but I wish that it was still given the same amount of thought because when RT gets it right, they get it really right. We see it in the latest volume with Tock, we know what she’s meant to be, her design is cool and it all connects to the crocodile from Peter Pan.

Thanks for reading guys!

#rwby #crtq #post: mine #too many people in this to properly tag jkfghfdkjghfdkjg #but yeah rwby does this topic both really well and not so well #hopefully I gave it as much fairness that I can

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glapplebloom · 5 years

Photo

Well, if the comics are gonna continue why not let these two meet?

(image by sonigoku)

Let's pretend that IDW hired me to write a script for a crossover between My Little Pony and Sonic the Hedgehog. Can this actually happen? Well on the Middle Ground we do host Ghost of the Future by Evan Stanley. But that would be like Rooster Teeth hiring me to write an episode of Red Vs Blue because I'm a researcher of Death Battle. Chances are very, VERY small. But in this hypothetical situation, what if I get that shot. For this crossover I'll be following the guidelines of how I presume what Sega allows for IDW. I'm also going to ignore the comics from both sides since I'm going with the assumption people are going to buy this because its a crossover and not because they're fans of said comics. And this will be basically the ideas behind it, nothing concrete. It'll take place after the Coordination and Sonic Forces.

Issue 1 – The Set Up

It begins with Eggman working on a portal with the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic and crew (this being Tails, Knuckles and Amy) coming in to stop him. In one last attack, Sonic knocked Eggman with Cubot and Orbot into the portal, which explodes. Sonic looks worried but Tails reminded him that he was in a similar situation way back and came back. So this isn't likely the last time they've seen him. On the other side, Eggman turns out to be in Discord's realm. Seeing his computers picking up nothing but Chaos Energy all around him, he begins his next big plan. A few moons later, Discord and Fluttershy were having a tea party. Discord doing his usual thing. But the things he creates don't seem to have the same energy they used to. Worried, Fluttershy suggest they go to see Princess Twilight. (Since Discord's realm is so big and he just teleports from his house to anywhere, I doubt he would notice Eggman.)

At the same time, Sonic has been a little restless since there's still no sign of Eggman. Tails told him to relax when Rouge comes in. She asked for their help with Shadow, who is not feeling 100%. When they get there, Shadow still acts cocky but Tails uses his technology to discover Shadow's Chaos Energy is diminishing. If it keeps going like it, he will lose everything. Sonic then makes the connection that Eggman maybe behind this. He's hiding in some dimension where he's draining the Chaos Energy and is likely planning something bigger. So they vow to find Eggman and stop his latest plan. In the Pony World, Twilight discovers the same thing is happening with Discord. And if he doesn't have Chaos Energy, he's going to disappear (like in Discordant Harmony). Discord still has enough magic (with the help from Twilight) to open a portal to his world. Twilight thinks this is something the entire crew have to take care of.

In Sonic's World, Tails manages to recreate the machine and use the Chaos Emeralds as well as a bunch of generators to open the portal to the Chaos Realm. Sonic, Shadow, Amy, Knuckles and Tails will go in to solve the problem while Rogue, Omega and Cream make sure the portal stays open for as long as it can. Because if it closes, its likely they may not come back. With the Ponies, the Main Six are gathered and Twilight and Discord opens the portal. Discord is going to stay behind because as soon as they fix it he can open it again without trouble. Twilight has delegates to keep watch of Canterlot while she's away. Because whatever is happening to Discord can possibly affect all of Equestria. So Twilight, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Spike enter into the Chaos Realm. And as soon as they get in, they are right across Team Sonic.

Issue 2 – The Fight

(Image from Amy Vs Pinkie)

Before the comic, you see a random city background. Then suddenly a big crack appeared. Back in the Chaos Realm, Applejack wonders if those creatures are normal for this world. Fluttershy, who frequently visits Discord, never seen them before in her life. Tails scans them and finds that the seven creatures have the exact opposite frequency of the Chaos Emeralds. That's more than enough for Shadow to go for an attack on them. Shadow goes for a kick but Applejack dodges. This begins the two sides fighting each other. They fight randomly until eventually the party splits up. Sonic takes on Rainbow Dash and after some impressive speed feats one is impressed with the other. Rainbow Dash is impressed someone could keep up with her and says its a shame he can't fly. Sonic then does an impressive stunt and tells her that even without wings, he can still fly.

Tails and Twilight are opponents and while they seem to have a battle of blasts, the fight eventually ends with Twilight commenting on Tails technology. To her, its all theoretical but Tails begins to talk about how it can be done. Applejack takes on Knuckles and between the two of them they're too stubborn to stop fighting each other. Fluttershy, since she's free, is the one who convinces the two of them to stop fighting. Amy takes on Rarity and Spike and she does pretty well against them. Their fight stops when Rarity begins to compliment Amy's outfit. She's flattered and even is open to having modifications done by Rarity. That leaves Shadow to take on Pinkie Pie. Between her own randomness and Shadow's weakened state, he doesn't do well against her. Luckily before he can manage to land a blow, Sonic stopped him. By this point, they got a better understanding of each other and stopped fighting. Shadow reluctantly doing so.

They begin to introduce themselves to each other and agree to work together. Meanwhile Eggman had his security system notice the newly formed team. Eggman has no real concern, but feels he should do something about it. Since he controls the Chaos Energy, he's using Discord's powers to create an army of robots instantly. Cubot and Orbot finds a journal that they think Eggman would like. In it is Discord's plans for Season 9. So with this information, he creates three Metal Versions of Chrysalis, Sombra and Tirek. He gives his three new generals a small army of Badniks and command them to destroy Sonic and his friends. Fluttershy leads the group as they continue to exchange information. Pinkie Pie wonders how one guy can control Discord's Magic and Sonic tells her that Eggman has a lot of experience with Chaos Energy. Then the Metal Villains attacked.

Issue 3 – The Mid-Bosses

(Image from @derangedhyena-art)

Before the comic, a bunch of random islands background. Another big crack appears. Back in the Chaos Realm, the three Metal Villains attack. Metal Chrysalis has her changeling powers, but its more like transformers than magic. And instead of changing into others, she changes into various parts of Eggman robots. Twilight, Spike, Amy and Tails take her on. Spike, Amy and Twilight provide cover as Tails try to hack her. Metal Chrysalis realizes the plan and tries to attack Tails. Twilight stops her with her magic. She's struggles as Tails tries his best to break through her programming. Sadly, its in a chaotic mess and he can't find any sense in it. Before Twilight could lose her hold, Amy jumps on Metal Chrysalis and decides to smash her head off her body. Metal Chrysalis is defeated.

Metal Tirek instead of absorbing Magic he absorbs life energy. Rarity, Knuckles, Applejack and Pinkie Pie take him on. He grabs Pinkie and slowly drains her life energy but a combined punch/kick from Knuckles and Applejack stopped that and restored her. Rarity notices the details of Metal Tirek's designs and instructs the two Muscles to target those parts. They happen to be weak points that help take down the machine. Metal Sombra is basically Sombra. Sonic, Rainbow Dash, Shadow and Fluttershy take him on. To deal with the smoke, Sonic and Rainbow Dash uses their speed to keep him solidified. And with a combination Light Speed Dash and Sonic Rainboom, Sonic and Rainbow destroy Metal Sombra. Shadow wanted to fight but he is growing weaker, so Fluttershy kept an eye on him.

Eggman sees the machines did their jobs: they distracted them long enough for him to complete his latest invention: the Egg Draconequus. With it, he'll finish absorbing all the Chaos Energy in the realm and use it to conquer his world. And eventually all other worlds. The others recover from the attack and try to come up with a strategy. But then they begin to notice the cracks forming around the realm. Twilight theorizes that since Eggman is messing with the Chaos Energy its affecting not only their Chaos Fueled Friends but also other worlds. If they don't stop Eggman, other worlds will be messed up or even destroyed. With this knowledge, they resolve to stop Eggman. Shame for them that they're suddenly teleported to Eggman in his now completed Egg Draconequus.

Issue 4 – The Final Boss

(Image by Combatkaiser)

Random locations, cracks shown. In the Chaos Realm, Eggman begins to show off his powers. He removes the wings and horns off the ponies and Spike, the tails off Tails, makes the hammer too heavy for Amy, Knuckles into a paper cut out (think Thanos to Drax in Infinity War) and Sonic, Shadow and the Earth Ponies stuck in something sticky. Eggman continues to boast saying he is truly unstoppable. But Twilight tells him a friendship speech that activates their Inate Elements of Harmony Powers. With those powers activated, everyone is restored to normal. But that doesn't stop Eggman. If he can't control them, he'll destroy them. This leads to a comic long fight between Eggman and the Heroes, with Eggman eventually getting the upper hand. After getting them all in one spot, Eggman goes for one last blast. But to his surprise it was stopped.

The heroes were protected by a Diamond Shield. The Equestrian Girls Seven (in their human forms) showed up to help. They're not the only ones as Blaze also arrives to attack Eggman's Machine. The comic ends with a splash page of all the Heroes united.

Guaranteed to be in it:

Equestria Girls – Seen above.

MLP Generation 1 – The original classic series. Definitely Twilight, Applejack and Firefly. Others maybe.

MLP Generation 3 – The last Generation.

Sol Dimension – Blaze specifically.

The Future – Silver specifically.

Not sure:

Classic Dimension – They got to have some representation since we're going to have the Classic Generation of Ponies. But if not...

IDW Sonic – Whisper and Tangle to represent the IDW Sonic Comics.

Not likely:

MLP Generation 2 – They don't really have a canon. They just have one PC Game. And even ignoring that, that'll give MLP one more dimension unless we include...

Sonic Boom – For some reason, Sega doesn't want to reference this in IDW. So I doubt they'll allow it.

SatAM – As in just SatAM and not Archie. Super doubtful they'll allow this to be referenced again.

Issue 5 – Endgame

(Image by Dragnmastralex)

All of them fighting the Egg Draconequus. Insert various interactions between generations and interdimensional pairings. Twilight eventually realizing that their best chance is to combine the Magic of Friendship to overcome the Chaos Energy. So the Main Six and the EQ Seven combine their Magic for one blast. But Eggman counters and the two are in a beam struggle. Tails then realize that just because Eggman's machine is absorbing Chaos Energy doesn't mean no one else can use it. So he gets Sonic, Shadow and anyone capable of using Chaos Energy to absorb as much as they can. So we get a bunch of Super Forms from the Sonic Side and Burning Blaze for good measure. With their combined power, alongside the Magic of Friendship, they defeat Eggman. The Main Six offer to give him the stone treatment, but Sonic refuses. Eggman is their problem and they should be the ones to deal with it.

It ends with each pairing giving a goodbye. Sonic saying they hope to meet again and Twilight assuring friendship will last.

And these are my ideas for a proposed IDW Crossover between MLP and Sonic. Think it would work? Do you have better ideas?

#Twist of Fate

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snugglyporos · 4 years

Text

Okay ya’ll I have to rant for a good minute about the Fate series because my stupid autistic brain has been hyper focusing on it for the past four hours and I need to put these thoughts down or I’ll never get rid of them.

I’m so... disappointed? frustrated? mad? Idk what I think. It’s all of these things to see such a great idea executed so awfully. So lazily. So incompetently.

Because I can’t help constantly engaging with it and going ‘you know, this would be really good if they just did x.’ There’s so many monumental moments of stupidity that I can’t help but go ‘wow that’s dumb as hell.’

There’s a rule in fiction where the larger the stakes are, the more complex and unwieldy it gets, because it effects more things. That’s why usually the best fiction involves low stakes overall, or personal stakes, because you don’t need to then consider the cosmological complications of your story. Having a story that involves magic, time travel, secret organizations, multiple illuminati organizations on top of those, and countless other bullshit does not make for a coherent or compelling story.

I’ve said before that one thing I hate is the idea of a ‘world organization.’ It’s lazy as hell. If Russia and China couldn’t get along when they were both communist, the idea that the entire world with all its varying ideologies and ethnic groups could be run by one group of people is nonsense. People can barely coexist with others like themselves. Furthermore, in our age of nationalism, the idea that say, China would have their top brass subserviant to western illumiati is stupid. It’s also stupid in the reverse. The idea that all of ANYTHING is ruled by one group of people is stupid and it makes you look lazy to write things like that.

Second, trying to put your story in the ‘real world’ or any image of it while claiming that all the world’s mages belong to one organization while ‘the church’ that runs all religions exists is stupid. It defies belief. It also wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t dead set on trying to explain how this goes on in the ‘real world’.

Also, apparently time travel exists. Also, all of human history was erased. Yet somehow they go back in time, and summon people from the future. You know, going back to a time that doesn’t exist, and summoning people from the future who haven’t been born yet, who also don’t exist. Time travel is ALWAYS stupid. It’s ALWAYS bad. Always. Because the core notions and questions that it brings up immediately reveal why it is stupid. Let’s say you sent one person back in time. If you witnessed it, and didn’t go with them, you should now not exist. Why? Because the act of something being somewhere that it wasn’t before creates a paradox. The only way it doesn’t is if the world you lived in is the same world where they went back in time, and that raises questions about fate and free will, and most authors simply aren’t interested in getting that metaphysical, and as such render their stories incredibly stupid.

But! Let’s try, for the sake of arguement, to put aside all this nonsense. Does the core idea of the story make sense? Are there clear, defined rules? No! Nothing makes any goddamn sense. Apparently, magic exists, but then there are magic circuts, which aren’t explained. The rules about everything is not explained and is frequently contradicted. Example. Who can be summoned, and how? Sometimes, it’s anyone. Sometimes, it’s different versions of someone. Sometimes, it requires a piece attached to that someone. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, where the person is summoned changes how powerful they are, and sometimes it doesn’t.

But they can’t even get their basic shit right. Example: is Dracula a vampire or is he not? Because the series can’t decide if it wants to allow people from history OR people from fiction to be summoned, it can’t decide if someone like Vlad III is undead or not. Are you going with the version of history where he was an insane, murderous, nationalistic king? Or are you going with the version from the story of Dracula, a work of fiction? You can’t have it both ways!

Here’s another example: can you summon gods or not? Heracles is summoned, and Heracles is a god. He was literally made into a god at the end of his own story. Even if you go ‘well, the version that people can summon is his non-god self from before the end’ he is still a demigod. Which means that you’re now getting into weird territory where it’s unclear who and what counts as someone who can be summoned.

But then you get into having to think about all the weird historical revisionism that the series plays with. Look, historical fiction can be fine. What I don’t understand is the series’ weird fixation with turning some of histories worst individuals into anime girls. You could certainly, for example, make a version of King Arthur where all the sexes are switched. Granted, a whole lot of the story wouldn’t work, because characters like Morgan Le Fay and Mordred no longer work in their story roles anymore. But you could, theoretically do it.

What I don’t get is why the series says, ‘you know who we should depict as a kind and gentle anime babe? Nero.” You know, the Nero who kicked his pregnant wife to death, castrated a man and forced him to marry him, put on plays that people were forced to attend and then executed anyone who yawned or sneezed during his performances, and who built a private lake where the Colosseum now is, put a floating house on it, and had the ceiling have an accurate replica of the starry night sky using precious gems, only to then remark that ‘now I can live like a human being.’ Yeah, that Nero. Clearly, this just screams that we need to depict them as being a kind and gentle ruler, and not say, an unstable psychopath who sees himself as a literal god walking upon the earth.

But that’s not even their worst offence. They turn Elizabeth Bathory into a pop idol. You know, one of histories worst serial killers? The person who had innocent women murdered and then bathed in their blood? Yes, clearly that is someone we should portray as an innocent girl.

And it’s not like history is lacking in great women who did fantastic things. There are scores of heroines to choose from if you want to use them. You don’t need to pick serial killers and sex change the most insane emperors.

But even some of the ones they do pick don’t make sense. Why the fuck is Marie Antoinette considered a ‘heroic spirit?’ If we go by her in popular myth, she’s best known for something she didn’t say, which is ‘let them eat cake.’ Why the fuck did that mean ‘let’s make her someone who is entirely misunderstood and loves the peasants?’ Also, why a ‘rider’ and choose her for that because of her being pulled in a cart to her execution? The fuck?

It beggars belief. It utterly confounds the mind. It’s lazy, and its shoddy. Almost as shoddy as the notion of ‘classes’ which makes no sense and apparently has a heirarchy, which itself makes no sense if the whole point of having people fight is to decide something. Having people fight where someone gets an innately better class at random makes no sense. Hell, having classes at all makes no sense. Having it be okay for the things you summon to kill those who summoned them to win makes no sense, because if all you needed to do was kill each other, you don’t need heroes to do that!

Hell, the fact that they’re fighting over the ‘holy grail’ and that it was made in japan is nonsense already. The holy grail is literally arthurian legend. I know japan gets a pass for this shit, but I don’t know why. Everyone rolls their eyes when they say that ancient egyptians look exactly like modern day japanese people, but apparently it’s also okay that they just straight up steal something from arthurian legend as a premise... and then entirely botch that premise or understanding anything ABOUT it.

Here’s an idea. If you’re going to use the holy grail as your plot device, you know the thing Jesus drank out of at the last supper, maybe don’t then say that people can just make them all over the place? That’d be like if in the last crusade, all of the cups that Indiana Jones found were all capable of being the holy grail. It’s stupid.

Why is it so hard to just do something simple? You don’t need to overcomplicate this shit. Grab some characters who each want a thing they can’t have, have them be represented by some great hero, have them fight for that thing, and you’re done! You don’t need to bring time travel, the illuminati, nonsense magical rules, and metaphysical shit into this!

Again, maybe the creators have no desire to do anything other than try and see how many awful historical people they can put boobs on. It’s starting to remind me of that book that went around a few years back where someone drew history’s greatest murderers as anime babes, so you could see guys like Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot as big tiddy anime girls. Why? Idk.

But if the series wants to do that, if all it wants to do is wallow around in its own shit, it’s taking way too much time and effort trying to make up stupid nonsense. It’s just so frustrating and disappointing to see an idea with such promise be farted away by people who clearly do not give a shit about what they’re making in the slightest. It’s a damn shame.

#ooc #rant

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a-table-of-fics · 5 years

Text

Cull Goes to Octo Canyon, Chapter 1, Draft 1

The cool blues of the shade. The muffled music coming from the Square. The dismal little drips of water. The back alleys of Inkopolis weren’t exactly fresh, and Cull knew that perfectly well. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to go out there. He wasn’t sure how he could participate in the sporting events that everyone bonded over. He was an artist, not a fighter.

Besides…Cull looked from side to side and shifted his beanie, ensuring it covered his hair.

No, he would find a different way to make a name for himself. Hopefully he would make his art stand out from the rest, and he could get respect that way. Yes. His graffiti. In a major city. In the back alleys. Unsigned.

He sighed, checking his phone. He would never live down that unsigned piece over by the studio. The angular crab was one of his worse works, and of course it would be the one publicized and praised by Off the Hook. Cull silently thanked Cod that so many others tried to take credit for it. They could have it for all he cared.

Shaking his head, Cull looked around. This alley wasn’t exactly prime canvas material. Not only was it a dead end, but it was way too cramped, and too far from where people actually were – even by Cull’s standards. Really, the only reason he came this far was so no one got hit by his Slosher. Even if it was just mashed-up plants, and not the ink that could be used as a weapon, that was one panic he didn’t want to start. Even with the respawn points everywhere, it would be a nightmare.

Well, maybe the wall over by Grizzco was cleaned by now. It was a little close to the Battle Lobby, but if he could get there unnoticed and paint over the stencil, he could get recognition for a good work of his. He already had the white and blue paints with him; all he needed was to remember the order of his stencils to make the freshest whale Inkopolis had ever seen!

Cull looked around, thinking of the quickest route there. Hopefully a discreet way, but so long as he got there quickly, it should be fine. He sprinted forward, leaping before briefly turning to squid form whenever there was an opening to the Square. So long as he moved fast enough, and shifted back before he landed, he figured he could get there unnoticed. Still, he couldn’t help but adjust his already-snug beanie; even if he wasn’t the freshest, he was certainly going to keep what looks he had.

Luckily, there weren’t too many hanging around Grizzco. Aside from that one sketchy-sounding bear radio, there wasn’t really much business for anyone back here. Still, Cull could make out some fresh art people had made with their own ink. Even if the ink would evaporate, he had to respect the detail and quality of the pictures while they lasted. He gently ran his hand against the wall, marveling at the art and having some doubt about the piece he was going to add. A reassuring piece of prose, promising all Inklings who cared to see it that they would have better days. A picture of that historical figure, that red human with the strange mark on his hat, proudly shaking hands with an Inkling. A shockingly detailed picture of the Off the Hook duo.

Almost as if on cue, the jumbotron on top of the Battle Lobby played the familiar song to announce more news from Pearl and Marina. Most people, Cull included, didn’t even bother to look up to see the stages available. Everyone enjoyed hearing the two’s quips and tips for the locales, but for many, it became background noise.

When the music skipped a beat, and there was the sound of distant yelling, however, everyone looked up, to see the top two idols of Inkopolis similarly baffled. Cull nearly dropped his stencil as Pearl hollered out to stop the show from cutting.

Marina barely contained a gasp, quickly hitting a few switches to bring the B-roll on their monitor. It was live footage of the tower above them. All the Inklings in the Square murmured to each other as they looked above the screen; something seemed to be missing.

“THIS JUST IN! The Great Zapfish has just… disappeared?!”

Cull gulped as he saw the complete absence of the giant catfish on the tower.

“Th-there’s more…?” Marina spun a record, and the image changed from the Zapfish-free tower to a picture of a young woman in a sun hat, with black hair and a playful grin, striking a forever iconic pose. The image on the screen flickered briefly but managed to stay on long enough for recognition to set into most squids. Cull, however, only recognized her vaguely. Maybe he saw her in a movie or show somewhere, but that was as far as he knew.

“Pop superstar Callie of the Squid Sisters has gone missing!”

“NOOOOO!” Pearl cried out, dashing over to her partner-in-crime. “Not Callie! Marina, do something!”

“Uh, r-right! I’ll put together a search—”

And then the jumbotron faded to black, as the sound went with it. Many of the lights and adverts around the square began to power off as well.

Cull never thought he’d hate the sound of silence this much. He looked at his stencils and shook his head. With so much happening right now, his art didn’t amount to a hill of plankton. He quietly put them away and started to head home. Maybe he could salvage some of his food before it all went bad. To say nothing about the forecasted heat wave…

He froze dead in his tracks when he had the feeling he was being watched. He tugged his hat down as he spun around just in time to see someone disappear into a grate in the ground, leaving light green droplets in their wake.

Cull blinked. He had been around Inkopolis Square for around three months, and he had never seen such a strange hole in the ground. It didn’t mesh at all with the general Inkopolis style, being a huge orange lump, and it didn’t look like it would be much good for collecting rainwater or anything.

A horrible thought occurred to him. Was someone sucked down there, to who-knows-where? If so, what, or who¸ did such a thing to some poor Inkling? He peered into the grating, but he couldn’t see much. He could hear what sounded like someone swimming in the distance. There was no way to be sure if that was the Inkling who went under. Shouting a “hello” didn’t seem like a good idea either; not only would it be a little mortifying to be caught shouting into a random drain, but if this other person was caught by someone or something, drawing its attention might cause issues of its own.

He gulped and looked around to made sure no one else was looking at him. Luckily, everyone was too focused on the energy crisis. He took a deep breath, turned into a squid, and dove in. It was slow going, but Cull found that this was a linear pipe. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to lead to any sewers, but that just raised the question: where was he going?

All he could hear was his echoed breathing as he traveled through, and the awkward chatter of the others in town faded away. It was far too dark to see anything, but the walls of the pipe felt surprisingly smooth, even when they started to get thinner and squeeze on Cull a little bit. It was almost as if they were meant to be moved through…

Finally, Cull saw a light up ahead. He breathed a sigh of relief. Not only could he breathe easy, getting out of squid form and this tight tunnel, but he could also be happy that nothing was in the sewers attacking Inklings.

Still, where did this lead…?

He emerged, swiftly turning back to kid form. He squinted in the sunlight, looking around. This didn’t look like any place he had ever been. If the floating rocks weren’t a dead enough giveaway, there was also the fact this place looked like it was carved out of a mountain over a century ago; it was a far cry from the modern comforts of Inkopolis. Mossy, mostly stone, and a lot of gargantuan tentacle statues. All this ancient architecture made the relatively new flags and somewhat beat-up shack stand out. Was that a barbeque grill over there?

His eyes settled, and he saw someone with their back to him, obscured by a green oil-paper umbrella. Slowly, the umbrella moved, and the Inkling behind it turned around. Clad in a well-kept kimono, she had a beauty mark and gold, starry eyes, not unlike Pearl, and she had grey tentacles tied into a bow.

“Hey!” She smiled slightly when she saw him, with the well-trained look of a comedy actor performing after a messy divorce. “You showed up! As soon as I saw you wandering around in the square, I knew you were the one…”

“Uhh…” was all Cull managed in response, as he took a step back.

“I’m Marie,” she said, putting a hand up. “I know you’re probably a bit starstruck, but I need you to get over it. Yes, I’m that Marie.”

She let both of her wrists go limp, in a manner not unlike Off the Hook did to conclude their broadcast.

“Y’know…from the Squid Sisters.”

After a few seconds of looking around awkwardly, Cull tilted his head.

“Wait, you’ve never heard of me?” Marie asked, eyes widening. “For eel?”

“Ah, see, I don’t really watch TV…” Cull said, idly tugging his beanie down. “Sorry…”

Marie huffed. “Well, you’re obviously not very cultured, but you’ll have to do. See, I’ve got a little… thing I need help with.”

“Not very cultured? I mean, I…do art…” Cull mumbled, trying to sound indignant.

“The Great Zapfish isn’t just lost…it was squidnapped by the Octarian menace, and--”

“Um, are you sure?” Cull asked. “It…seems unlikely that anyone could just grab the Zapfish like that…”

Marie shrugged. “Fair point. But I’m not just an absurdly talented pop star; I’m also Agent 2 of the New Squidbeak Splatoon – a secret society of heroes who save the world from Octarians!”

Cull swallowed. “O…kay, then…”

He looked down at the grate he was still standing on, and back up at Marie.

“I know this sounds unbelievable,” she sighed. “But believe me, I’ve been keeping an eye on those slimy Octos for some time, and I’m sure they’re behind this!”

If only Callie was here to back me up… she thought.

“Huh?” Cull asked.

Marie blinked, realizing she said that out loud. She shook her head.

“Ahem, as I was saying, I need your help to recover the Great Zapfish. What do you say? Are you in?”

Cull looked again at his feet. Most of him wanted nothing more than to run home and hope he wasn’t chased by a madwoman. However, the rest of him thought of Flow. She had done so much for him; given him employment, advice, a back room to hide in, a shoulder to cry on…

What kind of friend would he be to turn away from a possible lead to the Zapfish that visited her every day until recently? She absolutely adored “Miffens”. She still smiled and greeted customers warmly, but Cull noticed she was talking a lot less, and was starting to stay by the back door. Even her shrimpy companion Craymond was less zippy these days.

If Marie was right…

“…I take your silence as a ye—"

“Yeah,” Cull sighed, not lifting his head back up. “I’m in.”

#cull goes to octo canyon #chapter 1 #draft 1 #all together now #splatoon 2 #cull to adventure full chapter

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ellygoesnyooom · 6 years

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Could you do the cockroach thing, but with a mouse? They sometimes pop up and it really frightens me, to the point I'm crying, and screaming for help on top of whatever I can get on.

Oh man, I understand the fear, anon. At the riding stables I work for, we would find mice in the grain and feed bags, and I absolutely hate it. We also had snakes, but that’s a whole other story for another time. Anyways, I did it for all of the characters included in the original cockroach, I hope you don’t mind. I also made it so no mice died in this, because I really don’t like the idea of killing any animals, including mice. Enjoy!

Yoosung:

You had never had issues with mice in the house, so you never really had to worry about finding one

Which is why you nearly had a heart attack when you saw one chilling out on the kitchen floor

You had just returned from the grocery store with Yoosung, arms full of groceries. He was still grabbing some from the car when you came in

As soon as you saw the mouse, you screamed and scrambled back, dropping a few of the bags in the process

In turn, the mouse darted away, startled by your outburst

“MC?!” Yoosung came barreling into the kitchen, face ashen in fear. When he sees you are okay, some of the color returns to his face. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

When you told him a mouse was loose in the house, he had to hold in his laugh. “Oh, a mouse? Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it for you!”

He wasn’t laughing when he found the mouse, though

Neither of you quite knew what to do, but eventually, with the help of the internet, he set up some non-lethal mouse traps in the house

It took a while, but eventually, the mouse got stuck in one of the traps

The two of you (aka Yoosung) released it back into the wild, very far away from your house. Then, the two of you spent hours cleaning the house top to bottom to ensure that no mice get back in

Zen:

Zen was at rehearsal, so you were left home alone for the day. You didn’t mind, as you would busy yourself with cleaning and catching up on your different interests

You were in the living room watching TV when you spotted movement out of the corner of your eye. When you looked, a little mouse was scampering about in the corner of the room

You squealed and tucked yourself up on top of the couch, eyes locked on the little rodent, which still hadn’t run off

Thankfully, your phone was within reach, so you called Zen. He didn’t answer at first, so you kept calling until he finally picked up

“Jagi? I’m in the middle of rehearsal, is something up?” At this point, the mouse was making it’s way towards you, inching closer and closer. You were in the verge of tears, stuck on the couch

“Zen, there’s a mouse! In the house! And it’s getting c-closer-GET AWAY FROM ME!” You screamed when it got too close for comfort. As a result, it bolted

“A mouse? MC, are you going to cry? Hold on, let me talk to the director.”

You remained frozen on the couch, terrified to move. Zen finally arrived about half an hour later, wielding non-lethal mouse traps to set out in the house. “I told the director I was feeling sick and needed to go home. Let’s keep the mouse situation on the down-low from him, shall we?”

Neither of you knew where the mouse was, so you set a trap in every room and waited not so patiently

In the meantime, he distracted you with movies and cuddles, even ordering a meal out

By the end of the night, the mouse had found it’s way into one of the traps

The mouse was released back into the wild. You kept the traps up for a while to be sure there was no more mice, and after being satisfied that there are no more mice, finally could relax again

Jaehee:

You were getting ready to shower and walked into the bathroom when you found the mouse cowering next to the bathtub

You quickly yelled and got out of the bathroom, locking it in the bathroom as you went in search of Jaehee, who had conveniently took the day off

She was relaxing in the living room when you burst in

“There is a mouse in the bathroom!” You practically yelled, eyes wide and scared

She thought you were pulling a prank on her, but went along with it anyways

It was not a prank, and you could tell she was unnerved by the animal in the bathroom by the way she gasped out and slammed the door to the bathroom

“Yep, that’s a mouse,” was all she said, and you mentally facepalmed

“Well, MC, it’s locked in there for now. I have no idea how it got in here...”

Neither of you liked the idea of lethal mouse traps, so she came up with the idea of

A few hours later, when you checked, the mouse was trapped. You were unwilling to get near it, so Jaehee stepped forwards and picked up the trap with the mouse still in it and carried it outside to be set free

The next day, both of you cleaned the entire place to ensure that 1) there was no more mice, and 2) to keep mice away

Jumin:

Jumin was working in his office for the day, and you were scrolling lazily on your phone in the living room, Elizabeth lazing around next to you on the couch

You didn’t think much of when Elizabeth’s tail started to wildly flick, and still didn’t find it odd that she quickly jumped down from the couch and darted off. She would do that at random with energy spikes, so it wasn’t odd

She started to growl and mew out anxiously from one corner of the room, pacing and pawing at one certain spot beneath one of the couches, and that’s when you finally got up to see what she was so obsessed with

You had to use your phone’s flashlight to see underneath, but immediately regretted it

A mouse was cowering against the wall beneath the couch

You quickly got up and ran to Jumin’s office, barging in without knocking

He looked up, quite startled at your sudden entrance. “Oh, MC. Is something-”

“There’s a mouse in the living room!”

His eyebrows furrowed as he thought. “Are you sure it was a mouse? There has never been any issues with mice here.”

“Well, Elizabeth 3rd was chasing it for quite a bit, and I saw it underneath the couch, so I would have to say it is quite real.”

He called an exterminator to come and take care of it, asking them to not kill it in the process after you requested it

The mouse was taken care of quickly, and you were able to return back to your previous activities. Except this time, you hung out with Jumin, just in case another mouse decided to ambush you

707/Saeyoung:

He had dealt with plenty of mice in his bunker, so it didn’t come as a surprise to him when you screamed about a mouse in the bunker

You were panicking about the mouse, practically in tears as he calmly prepared a trap and set it out

“Shhh, MC. It’ll be gone before you know it!” Saeyoung tried to comfort and distract you with jokes and affection. Though you did laugh a bit, he could tell that you were still very anxious about the mouse, your eyes darting at the floor and at the corners of the room

Eventually, after jokes weren’t enough to calm you, he took you out for a while

The two of you went out for dinner and took a walk through the park. He did everything in his power to distract you from the mouse

By the time you returned home, you had almost forgotten about the mouse and were laughing at his jokes

Key word is almost

He went inside first while you stayed in the car, waiting anxiously for him to come out

When he did, he had the mouse in a container. Part of him wanted to give it to you to tease you, but the look in your eyes as you saw it had him thinking twice

He released it, and was rewarded with a long hug from you. “You’re my hero, Saeyoung~”

He could get used to that

The two of you were taking a walk together when a mouse scampered out into the path in front of you

You squealed in shock and hid behind V, eyeing the mouse up ahead with scared eyes

V didn’t know why you were so scared at first until you pointed out the mouse in front of you

He was confused about why you were so scared. “We are outside, MC. It’s in it’s natural habitat.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that it is a mouse!” You retorted. For some reason, the little mouse was still there, munching on something it found on the ground

With a sigh, he gave you a quick squeeze to try and comfort you and walked forwards

His forwards movement startled the mouse, which darted off and out of sight

“You sure can be weird, MC, but god, do I love you.” He just laughed and took your hand, continuing your walk as you gripped tightly to his hand, grateful to have him

Saeran:

He hated to admit it, but he hated mice

He wanted to seem tough and manly, especially to you, but when it came to mice - and rodents in general - he couldn’t stand them

So, when you screamed “Mouse!” from the other room, he nearly bolted out of the house

Be a man, Saeran. Save MC, he told himself as he went into the dining room

You were stood up on top of a chair, shivering like a leaf in the wind as you stared at a small brown mouse in the middle of the room

“Saeran, help! Please!” You pointed at the mouse, and he swallowed before nodding.

“Um, I can, uh...” He looked around frantically, trying to find something to help get rid of it when he spotted the closet that held the broom. “Hold on, MC.”

He grabbed the broom and quickly ran to open the nearest door leading outside.

Carefully, he reached out with the broom and coaxed the mouse forwards, towards the door

It took a long time, but he finally got the mouse out of the house and slammed the door on it, leaning against the wall to calm his racing heart

You eventually came out and wrapped your arms around him, thanking him for saving you

When he realized that he saved you, a proud smile spread on his lips. Maybe he really was a bit manly, if he could do that without fainting

Vanderwood:

As soon as the word mouse left your lips, disgust was already making his stomach churn

Mice are dirty and disgusting to him, and the thought of living with one made his stomach flip

“Where is it, MC?”

You were shivering as you pointed towards the bathroom. “I locked it in there.” Well, that makes his job a bit easier

He didn’t care about killing the mouse or not, but when he went to go buy mouse traps to kill it, you immediately stopped him, begging him to not kill it

Well, what do you want him to do then?

He eventually went online and found some ways to non-lethally capture the mouse, then set about preparing the trap

While the two of you waited for the mouse to go into the trap, Vanderwood busied himself with looking for possible sources of the mouse. Finding nothing, he busied himself with cleaning instead

After a few hours, he checked up on the mouse. He was pleased to find the mouse trapped, and released the mouse outside as quickly as possible

“There, no more mice.” You shocked him by giving him a quick hug and calling him “your hero”. He brushed it off as nothing, but had a small smile on his face as you walked away from him

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thebibliomancer · 6 years

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers #192: Steel City Nightmare!

February, 1980

Weirdly my first thought was that this could be a Superman cover. Because Wonder Man is very red and blue and I somehow overlooked Iron Man at first. And punching a big glowy guy full of kirby krackle is just the kind of nonsense Superman would get up to.

And later in this issue, Wonder Man ends up in a situation that reminds him of “an old Max Fleisher cartoon” and takes a page from the unnamed hero thereof.

So I wonder (ha!) if its a coincidence or if I’m picking up on an intentional homage.

Anyway.

Last time: the Avengers won their freedom from Agent Gyrich’s restrictions by ditching their senatorial hearing to go fight Grey Gargoyle. There’s more to it then that but basically the very short time when Gyrich had much sway on the Avengers is over.

This time: A steel city nightmare.

We actually start with Wonder Man and Tony Stark touring a steel factory.

And the narration reminds us of the easily forgotten fact that Wonder Man aka Simon Williams and Tony Stark were once competitors. Until Simon Williams got in huge amounts of trouble for embezzling money and then agreed to let a Nazi scientist experiment on him and then died.

But this steel factory belonged to Wonder Man back before all of that and Tony Stark asked him to come on the inspection to help him decide whether or not to add the factory to the holdings of Stark International.

I might be a kind of insensitive gesture if Wonder Man gave a crap about his life as a businessman, which he doesn’t. He just seems kind of amused by the blast from his past.

Meanwhile nearby, some of the workers ooh and ahh over getting to see a real superhero like Wonder Man from so close.

The foreman, Joseph Conroy, brags about seeing Thor use this very factory to repair Mjolnir a couple years back. Conroy even found a chip of Uru afterward and made a good luck charm/keychain out of it.

One of the other workers says something weirdly threatening though.

One of the other workers: “Maybe you’d better switch to rabbit’s feet, Conroy. That lucky charm don’t seem to be workin’ too good lately... does it?”

Conroy nervously excuses himself to get Wonder Man’s autograph for his daughter.

Aww, Wonder Man actually has fans. Children fans.

But later as Conroy returns from getting said autograph, another worker jumps out of concealment and smacks him with an ore spoon.

Knocking him over the railing and sending him falling right into the furnace.

Where he just. Vaporizes. Eesh.

Alas Conroy. You cameo from a Thor comic, you.

Unfortunately, in addition to the tragedy of a man being murdered, him falling into the vat of molten metal also spilled some molten metal on the cauldron operator.

Who obviously runs off screaming, suffering terrifying injuries.

But the cauldron continues on its automated way, operating on a pre-set rate of flow which pours molten metal all over the manufactory floor.

Less than good.

There’s no time to get all the workers to safety so the crucible has to be stopped.

Tony tries to slip away to become Iron Man but Wonder Man grabs his briefcase from him and throws it across the factory to hit the control panel.

Leaving Tony Stark just sadly watching and thinking “Aw, geez. My armor...!”

Its like a brief but effective example of how secret identities can backfire. I love it.

And the gambit works. The crucible stops pouring.

But the already spilled metal is still flowing towards workers so Wonder Man jumps off the catwalk to go save the day.

Wonder Man: “Somebody’s got to stop that molten steel! And since I’m the only Avenger around, it looks like I’m elected!”

I do like Wonder Man sometimes. Despite his insecurity and self-doubt, when the moment comes he almost always steps up.

Anyway, this is the moment where Wonder Man takes some inspiration from not-named-but-totally-Superman cartoons, grabs some I-beams, bends them into U-beams, and dams up the molten flow.

And it works! You’re two for two on good ideas, Wonder Man!

Then he hears someone calling for help and he rushes in.

One of the workers tripped and someone got his fool ankle stuck in the stamp press.

He begs Wonder Man to turn off the press but Wonder Man doesn’t know how to do that.

Despite once being an inventor businessman, he thinks best with his muscles. So he decides to muscle this problem.

So he jumps under the press and holds it up, gloating that he once fought Thor to a standstill!

A steelworker: “But no one can hold a stamp press back! It’s set for fifty thousand tons!”

Wonder Man: “Don’t worry, friend -- I’m Wonder Man! I once fought Thor to a standstill! And if I can *ung* do that... s-surely I can *ghk* ... can *urf* f-fifty thousand, huh? HHEELLPP!”

Thankfully Tony Stark shows up, a sentiment some would say they never thought would be expressed.

He pulls the worker free and tells Wonder Man to jump clear.

Buuuuuuuuut.... Wonder Man accidentally.... stripped the threads on the thing.

If he jumps out head first, he’ll get a flattened bottom. If he jumps out feet first, a flattened head.

Tony Stark thinks of a third option though.

Grabbing Wonder Man by the belt and pulling him out in all one go so he clears the press.

Good job, Tony Stark.

Yet another sentiment that blah blah et cetera.

So here is part of why I find Wonder Man so endearing I guess. He sure does goof up a lot, often related directly to him bragging about how strong and cool he is. He’s a very human character for a character that’s no longer strictly human.

Wonder Man: “*Whew* That’s what I get for being cocky. Guess I still haven’t had enough experience as a super hero to anticipate all the angles. Thanks, Tony.”

MEANWHILE, AT THE MANSION OF AVENGE

A man approaches Avengers Mansion and tries to gain access with a card.

REJECTED

The security tentacles grab him and then a net is dropped on him, and then laser cannons activate.

So I guess the security system is working.

Agent Gyrich bursts out of the mansion and demands to know who this guy is and why he’s skulking about.

Sid Bloat: “I-I’m Sid Bloat, sir. I-I live down the street an’ I got this neighbor who’s been playin’ his stereo real loud, y’know? My landlord won’t do nothin’ about it, but since the Avengers are good-guys, I thought, well...”

Henry Peter Gyrich: “You mean you’ve attempted to breach a top security installation to solicit some of the most powerful beings on this continent... for a noise complaint?!”

Also the card he tried to use to gain access when prompted for a clearance card was a credit card.

I’m just flabbergasted by that.

I don’t know whether the line of thought was trying to unlock the high tech front door lock like you could with a less advanced lock using a credit card. Or whether he was trying to pay an entry fee. Good lord.

The Avengers all come out to see what the fuss is and Captain America tells the guy that the Avengers are a specialized organization and don’t reeeeeeeeally handle problems like noise complaints.

Gyrich tells the guy to go to the police.

Vision floats out through the wall and says he’s heard that the huu-man method in this situation is hitting a broomstick against one’s ceiling “can be an effective mode of communication in cases such as yours.”

Sid Bloat leaves to maybe take some of these suggestions into consideration but really is thinking he should have gone to the Fantastic Four.

I’m not going to look it up because I don’t want to be disappointed but if the concurrent Fantastic Four comic this month or the following month didn’t have Sid Bloat show up with his noise complaint then comics are a failed medium.

With that little nonsense over, Gyrich is satisfied that the security on the Avengers Mansion is adequate and that some random asshole off the street can’t just walk into the place like he did that one time.

He doesn’t like their newly won autonomy but orders are orders and he’ll be checking up on them from time to time. But for now, GOOD BYE.

And the instant he’s gone, the Avengers go ‘welp time to expand our roster just because we can.’

To be fair, they’re only going to ask Hawkeye and Yellowjacket. Two additional people plus I think Ms Marvel is sticking around because Scarlet Witch is still planning to take some ‘me time.’

Falcon actually suggests Hawkeye because he thinks it might ease the bad blood between Hawkeye and himself which-

Look, Falcon. I appreciate that you’re a nice guy who would think of Hawkeye when this opportunity came up. But the ‘bad blood’ is entirely on Hawkeye’s shoulders.

He’s blaming you for a thing you didn’t want to do but were emotionally blackmailed into by Cap to fulfill restrictions set up by Agent Gyrich. But Hawkeye took the brunt of his anger out on you, the Falcon.

Fuck ‘im is what I say.

Not that it matters. The contact number that Hawkeye left with the Avengers is out of service now that Hawkeye has a better gig and better digs working at Cross Technological Enterprises.

Meanwhile, Janet calls Hank “Giant Ant-Man Yellowjacket” Pym and lets him know that he can rejoin the team as a full-time Avenger but he’s enjoying having time to do pure research.

Also some chemicals are boiling over and he doesn’t want to be the jackass that spills chemicals on himself and gains superpowers. Nope, he’s the jackass that tested chemicals on himself on purpose without doing any kind of other testing on living matter first.

But me calling back to Grey Gargoyle and also throwing my hands up in defeat at the lack of safety protocols in comic book science aside, Hank hangs up on Jan to go deal with some chemicals that are boiling over.

Janet van Dyne, aka the Wasp: “Hank! What do you -- Hank? Hello? Ooo, Henry Pym, you’re infuriating! Just wait’ll I get home! I’ll show you! Or worse, I won’t show you!

Given what I know is coming, her trying to get him to rejoin the team has a foreboding feel to it. Geez.

Its true what they say. Not all of wisdom brings joy.

Later, after Wasp has gotten out of her superhero outfit to put on a nightgown to make a phone call to Hank and then gotten back into her superhero outfit to have a house meeting, uh, there’s a kind of house meeting.

Captain America: “Terrific. When we can’t add Avengers, they’re running out of our ears. But when we can add Avengers, everyone’s busy. Makes sense.”

Hah. A common problem to many in different permutations.

Beast suggests re-inducting Wonder Man. And I’m surprised it took so long for someone to make the suggestion. He was very recently with the team and verbally regretting that he’d have to leave it soon.

I guess they didn’t want to add too many people all at once and they wanted to soothe Hawkeye’s crybaby feelings and also wanted to let Jan hang out with her husband during superhero stuff.

But after that fell through, I’m surprised someone didn’t go ‘oh hey Wonder Man’ before Beast did.

But then, they’re besties. And I hope the X-Men never takes Beast back. Only bad things happen to him there. Or happened by him. I don’t think Beast would have broken the space-time continuum just to be a petty dick if he stuck with the Avengers.

Anyway, as we’ve seen, Wonder Man is in Pittsburgh with Tony Stark so why not bop over and surprise him with the offer?

But Vision notes that not all of them would be able to make the trip, seeing that Scarlet Wanda has her bags packed for her vacation time.

Vision: “Are you certain you must leave, Wanda?”

Scarlet Witch: “Yes, Vision. There are things I have to sort out. Things I’ve got to settle... on my own. Please try to understand.”

Vision: “Your decision is perplexing, my wife, and very human. I do not understand -- but I do accept.”

Vison + Scarlet Witch: “I love you.” -kiss-

Aww.

Geez. I’m really angry at John Byrne all of a sudden for no reason. Huh. Weird.

MEANWHILE, Pittsburgh.

The steelworkers set up a memorial for Joseph Conroy.

Since there’s nothing left of anyone who falls into molten slag, its tradition that the last ingot poured from the steel someone died in is set up on the grounds as a kind of tombstone. Tombsteel. Non-grave marker.

But the steel mill owner Vince Paretta is quick to reassure prospective buyer Tony Stark that this doesn’t happen often, swearsies! This plant has an A-1 safety rating! He then drags Tony off to finalize negotiations.

As the workers and executives leave the yard, the sky fills with dark roiling clouds. The recently placed ingot begins to quake and smoke and finally

OH YEAH

A giant naked flame man bursts out from within it.

Obviously, this kind of pyrotechnic makes some noise and inside the office, Stark, Paretta, and Wonder Man have heard it and see the fire man heading towards them.

Wonder Man tells Paretta to get his security team scrambled while Wonder Man goes to slow the thing down. But he tells Tony to stay right where he is, in the soon to be abandoned office.

Which conveniently gives Tony the opening to change into his armor.

Outside, this monster gets named in the most logical way possible. Some random thing that someone shouts at it, yelling "H-holy Hannah! That thing looks like a living inferno!” and thus we will call this creature Inferno. As the caption box lampshades “The description fits.”

Wonder Man rushes forward to fight the shambling mass of man-shaped slag. He just runs right up and puts all his strength behind one mighty THRAM of a punch.

“But Inferno takes that punch, and -- almost politely -- returns it!”

FWOBOMM and also a SKABASH as Wonder Man smashes through a wall, headfirst.

Iron Man flies up from behind the creature and attempts to take it down with a blast of repulsor. But the creature shoots some of its own molten slag substance at the armored Avenger.

He’s protected from the heat by the refractory coating on the armor but the extra weight from the cooling slag throws off his balance and he SPUTCHs to the ground.

And now that both he and Iron Man have been made fools, Wonder Man concludes that this Inferno is big trouble. He decides to activate the emergency beacon he was given when he became a backup Avenger.

But as he does, Inferno ominously looms over him.

IN THE RECENT PAST AT AVENGERS MANSION.

Jarvis is happy that the loosened restrictions on the Avengers means that he is allowed to perform monitor duty now. That way the Avengers are free to do the Avengersy stuff.

Makes sense.

You don’t have CEOs personally manning call centers. You probably don’t need a superhero to watch a bunch of monitors.

But maybe we should and do.

Anyway.

Just as Jarvis has said all of that, the emergency beacon goes off. Shortly, Ms. Marvel reports to Captain America that Wonder Man has activated his top priority emergency beacon.

Captain America: “But what could possibly be in Pittsburgh that could threaten Wonder Man?”

He was knocked out by a stone man once. Hell, he was knocked out by Beast once. Lets not act like Wonder Man’s durability isn’t highly arbitrary.

But here’s an additional thing. The beacon was designed to keep pleeping until shut off at the mansion OR if the beacon itself is totally destroyed.

And Wonder Man’s signal just stopped.

DUN DUN DUN!

Next issue: Battleground: Pittsburgh!

This is a two-parter and we’re only half done so I’ll have more to say when we finish that other parter.

One thing though: if the Avengers were going to end up going to Pittsburgh because of Wonder Man’s emergency beacon then why set up the plot point that they were considering visiting him to offer him membership on the team?

One or the other would have sufficed, comic!

Either they go visit and coincidentally end up there just when he needs help with a living inferno or they decide to offer him membership when he gets back from his trip.

I don’t know why this bothered me enough to comment on but that’s the world we live in now.

Hey, follow @essential-avengers. Not only for great content like this but older. BUT ALSO: I just remembered that I’d promised to cover some alternate Avengers if I hit 20 followers and we’re at 13. Which is more than half of 20 by at least three. If we hit 20 followers you can ask that I look at one of these significant alternate Avengerses. You could even ask me to take a peep at the Mangaverse Avengers or United They Stand Avengers, you bastards.

#Avengers #Inferno #Iron Man #Wonder Man #Scarlet Witch #the Vision #they are delightful #Beast #Falcon #the Wasp #Captain America #Ms Marvel #Carol Danvers #Essential Avengers #Essential marvel liveblogging #Jarvis #so i guess the supervillain de jour is the tortured spirit of a man who died in horrific agony #y-yay comics

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inawickedlittletown · 6 years

Text

Walking The Wire (53/?)

Summary: Tony Stark always knew about Peter Parker. He didn’t know that Peter was going to get superpowers and become Spider-Man, but he always knew about Peter because Peter was his son.

This will span from pre-Iron Man up through the rest of the MCU (eventually including Infinity War) and will be for the most part canon compliant except where I’ve taken some liberties and interpreted canon a certain way.

Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Tony/Steve (endgame), Tony/Mary (past)

A/N: If you want me to tag you when I post new chapters let me know. This fic is also on AO3

I used Collider’s MCU timeline to stay canon and the title of this fic is an Imagine Dragons song that is just so fitting for Peter and Tony

Masterpost

Chapter Fifty Two

It was awkward. That was the thing about knowing that Tony Stark was his father that Peter just couldn’t shake because somehow it had been easier when he had shown up at his house and basically invited himself into Peter’s bedroom and just told him that he knew he was Spider-Man. Things hadn’t been simple then, but they had been simpler. Now it was as if this whole father thing had thrown some sort of shadow over everything and Peter felt like he was reevaluating the entire insane way that he had been basically obsessed with Tony Stark and Iron Man because he wasn’t just that hero anymore. He was Peter’s father. It was crazy to even think of it like that. His entire world had changed. Peter couldn’t even begin to deal with it. So he tried not to think on it too much. Instead he tried to focus on just how crazy it was to actually be in Avengers Tower and to be with Mr. Stark -- who despite being his father was still Tony freaking Stark.

Spending the day with Tony Stark while they just ignored the whole father and son thing was fun. Mr. Stark showed him a bit about the things he was adding to the suit and the other features that Peter had been unaware it even had.

“There’s also one more thing,” Mr. Stark said after he’d showed Peter how to put in a new parachute into the suit.

“What is it?” Peter asked.

“The suit is not fully activated. I didn’t want all of it to overwhelm you so it’s currently set for training. I want to keep it that way. You need to really know how to use this suit and really know how to integrate your powers with it and when you are ready some of those features will begin to appear. The suit itself is programmed to do so.”

Peter was excited for the features that Mr. Stark was talking about. He couldn’t begin to guess some of them but he supposed he would know eventually. It amazed him how much work Mr. Stark had put in the suit.

By the time that Mr. Stark remembered that he had to return Peter to his aunt, Peter had almost gotten comfortable with how they just ignored the whole issue altogether and Mr. Stark ranted at him about random things like a new project on prosthetics and then Mr. Stark even showed him some things about the Iron Man suit that blew Peter’s mind.

“May probably wouldn’t be happy if I brought you home late,” Mr. Stark told him as they got into the car.

It was dark out as they set out and Peter really had lost track of time. It had been funny when they were headed down to the garage and Happy jumped at the chance to drive them even though he looked tired from just getting into New York City. Still, he eyed Peter warily and it dawned on Peter then that Happy must not have known that Peter was Mr. Stark’s son.

“No, I got this, Hap,” Mr. Stark said and then pulled Peter towards a sleek looking car. The same one that had been parked outside the house the day that Mr. Stark came to see him.

Peter couldn’t believe that he was going to get to be in it. He must have looked excited because Mr. Stark laughed.

“Don’t worry, kid, you’re inheriting the cars too.”

“Why do you keep thinking that I’m waiting for you to die or something? I’m not -- I didn’t look up to you because of the money. Anyway, I can’t even drive.”

Mr. Stark stopped to stare at him for a long moment. “I guess I just want you to get used to the fact that you’re my heir, kid. But I can guarantee that you won’t be driving any of my babies for at least a year after you do get your license.”

Peter stared at him, a little surprised, but Mr. Stark just grinned. “Kidding. Sort of -- some of these are one of a kind. Anyway, come on, get in. I don’t want May to worry about you.”

Peter nodded and for a little bit he was distracted by how cool the inside of the car was and didn’t think about May and how much he wasn’t really looking forward to talking to her because May would want to talk. She wouldn’t leave well enough alone and Peter usually didn’t dislike that about her but this time -- this time he couldn’t help but not want to talk for a bit longer. It didn’t help that Tony had confirmed to him that Ben and May had known all this time that Tony Stark was his father without once trying to tell him the truth except for when Peter had confronted Ben and he’d tried to say it before he died.

Tony drove fast. He didn’t seem to care that they were in the city and that even though it was late, there were still plenty of cars out on the street but Peter didn’t even mind it because there was a thrill to it.

“I really don’t want those emails to stop, Peter,” Tony said eventually, “especially now that there’s whole other thing that we need to keep in contact for.”

“Because you happen to be my father,” Peter said.

“No, because you happen to be swinging around Queens in a suit I built you myself,” Mr. Stark said and smirked at him. “But that other thing too.”

“Oh,” Peter said.

“There are things happening that have happened because I allowed them to even though I don’t think any of it would have slowed down any even if I said no and sided with Cap,” Mr. Stark said and not all of it really made sense to Peter. “The point is, you’re a minor which I hope is enough for the UN to leave you alone and not pressure you into signing The Accords.”

Mr. Stark paused a moment and didn’t speak until they were at a stop light and then he actually looked at Peter.

“I hate to say that Steve was right. I don’t think his approach was the best, anyway, but The Accords aren’t what I wanted them to be. It didn’t -- I didn’t realize this until it was too late. Figuring out that my son is Spider-Man changed things. What I’m trying to say is that you must be careful, Peter. You must keep a low profile. I’m not saying that you have to stop being Spider-Man, just that you should stick to being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”

“But what if you need help. I mean after Germany can’t I…”

“Do you know how much — no, no, if we need you I’ll let you know. But I need you to also know that I’m here if you ever need help because I don’t want you in over your head. And, Peter, I do want to see you even when you’re not in the suit.”

Peter nodded. He still might not know exactly what would come in terms of his relationship with Mr. Stark, but that didn’t stop Peter from wanting to spend time with the man that had for so long been the person that Peter most looked up to.

When they arrived back at his house, Peter felt odd. So much had happened and changed in course of mere days ever since he had arrived home from school the other day and suddenly he was back to where he started and Peter couldn’t imagine things staying the same as before.

“Give me your phone,” Mr. Stark said after he parked the car. “I’m adding my direct number and also a way for you to contact Pepper if I don’t answer. She’s pretty great and will do anything for you.”

Peter handed it over wordlessly because he couldn’t believe it. Email had been one thing, but it was another entirely to have a direct line of contact in the form of a phone number.

“So text me. Email me. Call me. I’m here, Peter, even though I know I haven’t always been. And that’s not entirely my fault but…”

Peter watched as Mr. Stark actually called his own phone from Peter’s before he handed it back.

“I’m a little appalled that you’re using an iphone,” Mr. Stark said with a small grin.

“I--”

“We’ll fix that problem soon enough. Anyway, I guess this is it, kid. I’ll walk you up.”

Peter hadn’t expected that. A part of him had just expected for Mr. Stark to just drop him off outside, but he nodded and got out of the car and grabbed his bag and was already walking towards the door, but Mr. Stark wasn’t following. When he turned, he found him at the trunk of the car and then the case with the Spider-Man suit was in Mr. Stark’s hand.

“I -- I get to keep it?”

“I thought I made that clear already, didn’t I?” Mr. Stark said and Peter could tell that he was amused.

Peter didn’t know what he had expected — maybe for Mr. Stark to let him use it only when he wanted to. It would have been an easy way to have Peter coming and going from the tower, but then maybe Mr. Stark didn’t want that to give him any unwanted attention if Spider-Man was leaving from the tower all the time. After all, it seemed like he really wanted Peter to go unnoticed at least while he was Spider-Man.

May was waiting for them in the living room and she jumped up to pull Peter into a hug the moment he walked inside and Peter hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her. Still, Peter was also a little upset with her for hiding the secret.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Stark?” May asked after Peter pulled away.

“Oh, no. I’ll be out of here soon.”

Peter went to drop off his bag in his room and he took the case from Mr. Stark as well before May noticed it and asked about it. He listened to them from his room.

“You told him,” May said. “He seems to have taken it well.”

“Better than I expected,” Mr. Stark said. “But it will still be quite a long way away for him to take it all in.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I said the other day. Ben and I -- we wanted what was best for Peter and every time it just seemed riskier and riskier and he was so young that I didn’t know what would happen. I do regret it sometimes that he didn’t get to have you in his life earlier. But he knows now and you’ll make up for the lost time.”

Peter froze just inside his room. It was one thing to know that his aunt and uncle had known that his father was Tony Stark, but it was another to know that they had also made it so that Peter not only didn’t know about Mr. Stark being his father but also kept him from finding out earlier. Peter had heard the implication in Mr. Stark’s words earlier in the day, the way that he spoke about things being out of his control and how he had tried to meet Peter earlier. Peter just hadn’t realized that he meant multiple times and that multiple times they had found a reason for it to not happen and if May was apologizing then it had been her and Ben keeping them apart and Peter just -- it wasn’t fair.

“I’ll go say goodbye to Peter and get out of your hair,” Mr. Stark said and Peter moved away from the door. He resolved to try and stow away the suit because he knew May would probably go into the case if she saw it.

Mr. Stark knocked on his door.

“Come in,” Peter said.

The door opened, but didn’t close and Mr. Stark waited until Peter turned. He found him leaning against the doorframe.

“I’m going to head out and I know you have homework to do,” Mr. Stark said and smiled a little, “but like I said, keep me up to date on all the extra curricular activities.”

“Thank you,” Peter said. “And I will keep in touch about...about everything.”

Mr. Stark nodded and then he reached out and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze before he turned and left and Peter was left feeling warm and cold and confused and he didn’t know what to do with any of it.

Chapter Fifty Four

#peter and tony fic #peter and tony #iron dad #iron dad and spider son #iron dad fic #mcu #mcu fic #marvel #marvel fic

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