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#please i need friends who have read the young avengers comics
starlightgen · 2 years
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gonna put this under a readmore since it's gonna be kinda long. also as a note, this is gonna be pretty critical towards the mcu and mcu stans, so if you're not up for that, don't read
i genuinely cannot understand why superhero comics are the only media where fans aren't allowed to complain about accuracy in adaptations. like this isn't even fans complaining about some minor thing being done differently in the comics vs the mcu (and this entire post is gonna be about the mcu since i dont read dc comics). this is about the mcu making major changes to characters, comic fans being, rightfully imo, upset about that, and mcu stans saying stuff like "it's an adaptation"
the mcu being an adaptation doesn't mean that those are good decisions. like holy fuck adaptations can be bad! and people complain about adaptations being bad! but apparently, i'm not allowed to be mad about marvel ruining my favorite characters for their generic superhero movies
it's espeically notable that the changes we're complaining about range from marvel basically changing every single thing about a character other than their names and skills/powers (example: Clint Barton) to marvel changing core aspects of a character (example: changing Kamala's powers, which were integral to her character arc to make her fit better with their plans for the captain marvel sequel) to marvel's horrible treatment of some of their minority characters in the mcu (ex. whitewashing the Maximoffs and America, aging down the queer young avengers, or just not including them in the mcu at all, while keeping the straight ones the right age, erasing Clint being deaf for like 10 years, etc).
that last point is honestly why i'm making this post in the first place. like i came across this tweet earlier
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and all of the replies and quote tweets are people being "it's just an adaptation" and pretending like because the characters are kids in the mcu that it somehow erases the fact that they're canonically queer in the comics. like jesus christ. Billy, Tommy, Kate, and America are all the same age in the comics! Tommy and Kate literally dated at one point and Kate and America are constantly flirting with eachother, on top of being explicitly best friends. keep in mind that on top of this, there are 3 other queer young avengers who aren't in the mcu at all (while the other two who are, are a) not aged down to be literal children, and b) straight), AND none of them are confirmed as not being straight (or cis in Loki's case) in the mcu other than Loki, and even then it's a single line.
it's so hard not to see this as a deliberate attempt to not have to portray members of the first predominantly queer superhero team as such in the mcu, and as someone who happens to be a huge fan of these characters, it really fucking sucks having to see them adapted so horribly, and that's saying nothing to my complaints on how they adapted Kate and America's personalities or my complaints about how the mcu decided to portray Clint and Kate's relationship
furthermore, the whole "it's just an adaptation" thing gets at another huge problem i've noticed with mcu stans and the mcu in general: there seems to be this distain for the comics, as if these people's favorite big budget, cgi-fest of a movie would exist in the first place without the comics. i'm not saying that mcu stans need to read comics to be fans of the characters or anything, like i'll joke about wanting to gatekeep characters from the mcu but in general i don't think we should gatekeep people from being fans of stuff, rather i think that mcu stans should at the very least show some basic respect for the comics and the people who are fans of it. and i'm trying not to say that in some gatekeepery "i'm a real fan of these characters and you're not" kind of way, but moreso in a "please aknowledge that the version of kate bishop you like is not the original character and that there are people who were fans of her as a character before she was put in the mcu and some of those people don't like how she was adapted"
just please stop acting like comic book movies are perfect and let those of us who are upset with how our favorite characters are portrayed in the mcu complain about it
also maybe actually listen to comic book fans when we talk about the mcu adapting minority characters horribly for once
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candyfloss-esophagus · 6 months
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heyo hope I'm not too late about the headcanon ask game! (if I am just ignore this <3)
I honestly would love to read your headcanons for all the subjects but I've tried to limit myself to a few:
These are all for Hobie btw ^^'
💔 (angsty headcanon cause I can never get enough angst)
🧸 (childhood headcanon)
😭 (the worst thing that's ever happened to them)
😶 (and a random headcanon)
okay I actually wanted to do a lot more but I'll stop myself here!
It is never too late to participate in an ask game! If I'm a little late in replying, don't worry about it too much, I've probably forgotten or am wondering how to answer it, and you're more than welcome to send long ones in!
Now I'm gonna do these a bit out of order because I'm interconnecting them a little so I hope that's okay!
To preface, I have almost no knowledge of comics canon, I take canon when and where it pleases me. So if you don't vibe with that then this probably ain't the right spot for you kjdshkj
Alrighty
Childhood headcanon: I think he grew up with a very loving community-oriented family which had sort of been scraped together with people that came and went as the times progressed. This means that he had the whole 'fight the power, but never forget who you're fighting for' mentality down pat from a very young age. The thing about Hobie is that he loves. This guy clearly loves his work and life deeply. Perhaps not all the time, but overall. Which leads me onto the next point.
Worst thing headcanon: toss up between a couple of scenarios that were put on the chalkboard in the noirpunk server.
Firstly, that family that was mentioned earlier? That loving family that lifted him up and cared for him as he was growing up? That one? Gone. Dead. Scattered. Disappeared. He's one of the only ones left. And it wasn't gradual either. I think Hobie was perhaps fourteen and not yet bit when Karl grabbed him and hid him in the rafters of the place they were currently occupying, and they watched as riot police systematically murdered everyone that hadn't managed to get out in time. I think that only made him angrier after quite a long period of depression, and he fights every day -- not to 'avenge' them (because that's heroic bullshit and Hobie Brown is not a hero) but to lift up their memories and carry on what they started.
Putting the second scenario in the angsty headcanon because first you need to see the random headcanon to make sense of it (I am running on four hours of sleep and one mug of tea this makes sense in my head I promise)
Random headcanon: There is a Peter Parker in -138. He's Hobie's inside man for the police force/Oscorp and they've been friends for a while. They've had a casual relationship that Hobie knew in theory couldn't last because of Peter's alignment with the government. Peter's a little baby cop that Hobie has been trying to coax out of the government that he knows will destroy him in the end, but Peter comes from That Kind Of Money and is very hesitant about following in Hobie's footsteps (this is when they were 15/16 btw if we're going on that Hobie is around 19 in atsv). To keep the rebellion's efforts up, Peter passes information along to Hobie that he can scrounge up but withholds anything that might be of potential actual use because of his wavering loyalties.
Angsty headcanon: I lied in the last headcanon. There was a Peter Parker in -138. Not anymore. Hobie earned his blue laces the day Peter died. He's not ashamed about it but he doesn't like thinking about it. When he goes to the Society and sees all those Peters walking around he can't help seeing -138 Peter again, which is part of (but not the whole) reason that he avoids the Society even before the whole fiasco with Miles.
Many thanks to the noirpunk server that implanted these headcanons directly into my personality, and thank you for the ask! You're welcome to send as many in as you want, as long as you're alright with a bit of a wait before I answer them! Here is the masterpost for anyone who wants to participate <3
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saltedbreadstick · 3 years
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WANTED: cool mutuals/blogs to follow
Hello! I was a longtime tumblr user from 2012-2017, I was fairly active but can’t get back into my old blog. Since I’m essentially starting from scratch now, I’m looking for some nice mutuals to chat with, and to find some blogs with content I enjoy. 
PLEASE INTERACT WITH THIS POST IF YOU CURRENTLY:
are over 18 (no minors please, no shade i just want mutuals more my age)
want to be mutuals/would like me to follow you :)
post ANY of the following:
marvel comics content
mcu content
art content!!! can be fanart or oc, i love art/artists and wanna see more of y’all!!!
jojo’s bizarre adventure content
content about reading/recommending books
the witcher franchise, the game the books or the show i love all 3 
pokemon
DC comics ive been wanting to get more into DC stuff lately just not the movies
fitness, i know this ones randomly thrown in here, but i love working out and i just want people to talk about it with that aren’t toxic :) it’s not a must though dw about this one lol
pirate content, what i wouldn’t give to abandon all my troubles rn to sail the seas taking gold
sewing/cosplay content, or really anything creative i love seeing fellow creatives posting i think it's absolutely neat
If you don’t post all of this, or only one thing from the list please still interact! I just want more friends with similar interests.
A bit more about me, I’m currently 20 years old. I don’t have a pronoun preference, they/them is best but she/her and he/him are okay too!!! I’m a full time student (any other engineering major knows my struggle) and live in the Western half of America. Thanks for taking the time to read all this, have a nice day!!!
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parkers-gal · 3 years
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masterlist
requests | closed to complete current requests <3
last updated | aug 5th, 2021
do not repost my work anywhere !! respect this please. | fics are not ordered in any particular way. these headers are mine so pls don’t use/take them
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tom holland
insomnia - reader can’t get to sleep; tom finds out why
driving in the rain - fluffy dinner date and rainy drive back home
workouts and warmth - when all tom wants is some after-workout cuddles
from across the living room - announcing your engagement to your families
the one - you want to move out and get your own place as a couple, but tom doesn’t. nikki talks to him. 
anything for the twins - tom massages reader’s boobies during her period
moms, makeouts, and mishaps - nikki walks in during your makeout sesh
simple acts of intimacy - a fluffy 3.1k words worth of blurbs
silver surprises - the reader surprises tom at a premiere
twenty questions - questions ensue after tom & reader get stuck in an elevator
my gut - spinoff of twenty questions with claustrophobic!reader (tw/ anxiety + attacks)
stealth mode - tom & reader scaring each other
unicorns vs pegasuses - tom shuts the reader up by kissing them
a good story - tom meets reader at a meet & greet — friendships blossom to lovers
deal breaker - tom wants kids, but the reader does not
his lap - reader asks for help in overcoming an insecurity; tom misreads the situation
pool day - pool day w/ tom + the boys
hot - the reader picks a certain song that reminds her of tom - the boys go wild
grounded by rocks - tom talks about you in an interview for cherry
your hands - when all he wants is a simple head massage
late flights - in which tom takes too much time with the fans
nobody wanted to - where only one person makes it out alive
way more than 50 - the hollands trick the reader into thinking they did something they weren’t supposed to 
why [ pt ii ] - sweet cupcakes, and a not so sweet breakup
what looks suspicious - nikki doesn’t exactly approve of tom dating the reader
something sweet - reader drops off small gifts while tom’s on set
he remembers - when tom finds the letter
missed you - reuniting w/tom after four long months
soft gangsta - tom tries to dress edgy; the reader is unconvinced
the shoe game - reader & tom play the shoe game at their wedding
too much - when the reader has a rough time with work, tom comforts them
losing grip [ pt ii ] - a losing battle between the reader and a hereditary disease causes heartbreak
your captain america - protective!tom holland of young reader (age gap)
sexy genius - reader is a fan of (and meets) jake gyllenhaal
teddy bear cuddles - tom wears an oversized hoodie
nonsense - the boys think the reader is meddling with tom’s work
circles before yourself - rule #2 - osterfield!reader gets caught with tom
seventeen times - when the reader is having a hard time in lock down, tom tries to help (TW // depression)
pixie dust hair - tom assures insecure!reader that the pixie haircut looks good <3
a few more months - reader passes out during a run; tw // excessive exercising
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tiktok au’s
body ody ody - tom gets a little jealous over a few social media comments 
sweats in the supermarket - getting tom hard when he wears sweats
put your records on - trying not to kiss each other first
mood killer - saying dirty things into tom’s ear
say it back - pranking tom by not saying ily back to him
two different ways - tom choking the reader to get two different reactions 
brutal - doing the “did you mean to post this?” trend on tom 
worst thirty minutes of my life - playing a drinking game with tom to see who gives into cuddles first
my girl’s cuddles - crawling into tom’s lap 
even - buying hot leggings & taping tom’s reaction 
goofball - a silly way to reveal reader’s pregnancy to tom 
end the debate - “i found out why my boobs are small” trend
slam the car door - doing the car door prank on tom 
water bottle wars - the boys ask you and tom questions about each other. wrong answers result in sprayed water 
get you back real good - you & the boys prank tom after watching a scary movie 
peachy - sighing / moaning in front of tom playing video games to get his reaction
my princess - tom does a tiktok where he guesses all your answers to everyday questions
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dad!tom
needles and needs - when scarlet has to get shots, you realize she may not be the only one that needs comforting
all my girls - scarlet meets her baby sister for the first time (dad!tom)
everything i love about u - tom is afraid baby red might hate him for leaving home too much
a little extra help - stepdad!tom being the best dad to your daughter
through the tears - pregnant!reader goes into labour, and baby holland meets the family
first feed - tom watches you breastfeed for the first time
warmth from the love - baby holland’s first Christmas
first words - baby holland speaks for the first time
breaking the internet - when your pregnancy announcement crashes multiple apps/websites (pregnant!reader)
breaking the internet... again - when baby holland breaks the internet
boyfriends and brunch - when jade brings home her boyfriend (aged!up)
big sister + how are babies made - telling scarlet about the baby on the way (pregnant!reader)
too many kids - the reader’s dad has some commentary about the twins
mumma’s girl - tom gets jealous when scarlet isn’t a daddy’s girl
angels - a little skin to skin time with his best girl
family man - after a nasty breakup, tom finds out you had his child
cheesy uncles - telling paddy he’s going to be an uncle
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ag!reader (more to come !!)
y’all really get nasty - tom and the fans discuss ag!reader’s songs
my favorite things - ag!reader performs in front of the mcu cast at the grammy’s
34 + 35 - the boys react to reader’s new song(s)
34 + 35 remix - the boys reacting to the remix
his remedy - the boys react to positions deluxe
neglected - AG!reader breaks up w tom because of their job; tom searches for answers
low-key wants him - reader talks about how much nonna (+ her fam) loves tom
see u soon - reader interacts with tom while on stage for the swt
a few spilled secrets - AG!reader performs on jimmy fallon’s show.. tom and her confess a few secrets
for the first time - when the reader breaks down crying while singing about her ex, tom is there to comfort her
dance with me, rain on me - reader has a hard time on set, tom to the rescue
every tomorrow - the first album release night after your breakup
here we go again - introducing tom (+ the boys) to your celebrity friends
condoms or safety nets - the boys react to AG!reader’s song “safety net”
we’re not engaged - AG!reader announcing to the world why they no longer have a fiance... (fluffy)
the late late show - AG!reader & tom do spill your guts or fill your guts
pain from pleasure - dad!tom goes through a birth simulator — controlled by the reader
never have i ever - tom & the reader play a game on the late late show
fluffy hair - ag!reader has a zoom interview with zach sang. tom makes an appearance
fighting off the haters - ag!reader and older!tom holland (age gap) attend an award show after going public
run your hands thru my hair - tom reacts to ag!reader’s song “my hair”
stick to acting - tom tries to make a beat for ag!reader
practically twins - reader meets sebastian & anthony at comic con
damn lucky - black!reader wears her hair naturally during an interview
what a piece - reader talks about tom related songs & tattoos
flip it - tom talks about reader in an interview
at the door - older!reader & tom fight off haters
a headcannon of ag!reader being a marvel cast member
a headcannon of tom & the reader attending the avengers endgame premiere
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styles!reader (more to come !!)
bathroom kisses - makeout sessions with tom and styles!reader in the bathroom
yeah, he is - tom holland x styles!reader meet the styles family; protective older brother harry makes an appearance
unparalleled love - older brother harry styles makes a speech at reader’s wedding
grilled - date night for tom & styles!reader is a bit difficult with two kids; older brother!harry to the rescue
baby showers and brothers - dad!tom & styles!reader are going to be parents
potential boyfriend - tom has a crush on the reader when they first meet
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ts!reader (more to come!!)
trust me - tom & the reader defend her after nikki doesn’t approve
your london boy - tom & co. + the world reacts to “london boy”
boy of my dreams - tom being proud of the reader for winning a grammy
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rapper!tom
tom records your sounds during sex for his music (hc)
tom talks about you in an interview
concepts: one , two , three
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professor!tom
my pretty girl - tom gets jealous when reader gets many valentines
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other reader tropes
cherry - reader is a screenwriter for tom’s upcoming movie
no shouting - singer!reader needs some help after paparazzis are too much (based on a video of tom)
pregnancy belly - actress!reader has to wear a pregnancy belly for her role, and the boys tease tom about when it’ll be real
we march - actress!reader being a huge feminist
passions & pediatricians - pediatrician-to-be!reader meets tom
politics - reader’s granpa is joe biden (requested) and tom meets him
extra support - psychiatrist!reader helps tom on the set of cherry
you made it big - tom holland x actress!reader at the after party
partition - the boys react to famous!reader singing partition
senorita - singer!reader makes a music video with shawn, who’s tom’s new best friend
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miniseries 
boomerang: one , two , three , four [completed]
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peter parker
making amends
➢ enemies to lovers ; college!peter x super soldier!reader ; 30k words ; sorta slow burn
cheeky guy, favorite thighs - college!peter doing a tik tok challenge — between the reader’s thighs [tik tok au]
a little nicer - doing the prank on peter (”you could’ve been a little nicer to me today”)
start searching - first make out sessions with our best boy :)
hidden hickeys - the avengers think innocence of peter, until they’re proven wrong
the team - part two of hidden hickeys; reader meets the avengers
all of you - late night talks about your future with peter :’)
like you wouldn’t believe - reader tells mj about her & peter’s awesome sex
slip from my hands - roommate!peter comforts the reader after a nightmare
i’d wait for her - college!peter parker needs to come to terms with you and your boyfriend
shut up and kiss me - soft make out sessions with peter :)
all the good things in the world, and i get you - insecure!reader needs a little reassuring 
modern chivalry - peter being a gentleman on the subway
eggnog and mistletoe - peter helps you love the holidays
the force awakens? it sleeps - a little extra comfort & care from our favorite baby boyfriend 
a prince - wonder woman!reader meets spider-man (& avengers) in a mission
steve rogers fics - peter finds you reading fanfiction abt steve rogers
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fanboy!peter
fanboys and bracelets - fanboy!peter parker goes to famous!singer!reader’s meet and greet
fanboys and phone numbers - fanboy!peter parker continuation 
showing around - fanboy!peter gets VIP access; some dancing ensues
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stark!reader + avengers!reader
if you knew feelings - the avengers want you & peter to break up
sleeping - peter misinterprets a few important questions
the may to your ben - college!best friend!peter parker x stark!reader fluff
race ya - peter confesses his feelings for rogers!reader after a mission — on comms
frat bathrooms - stark!reader joins the avengers where she sees college!peter, the boy she slept with at a frat party
rainy days - reader doesn’t like rainy days, a certain wall-climber changes their mind
already got her - jealous!peter makes a public confession
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flustered!peter
a nervous one - flustered!peter parker sees cheerleader!reader in her uniform
one day soon - flustered!peter parker x affectionate!reader
all better - flustered!peter parker does some lab flirting with reader
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dad!peter + pregnant!reader
unplanned  [ part ii ] - reader gets pregnant... breaks up with peter to avoid it all
burrito wraps - reader worries that baby parker might be cold
a name to remember - latine!reader & peter give their girl a special name
you’re magic - a certain wall crawler hears two heartbeats
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sgt. bucky barnes
first cuddles - bucky asks to cuddle for the first time
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harry holland
golden light, the love of my life - the boys tease harry —on a live video— for being whipped
it won’t f^cking open - harry lends a helping hand
how much i - those three magical words are exchanged for the first time
cuddly koala moments - time the reader just needed harry’s warmth
anything for hands - the reader cuts harry’s hair on instagram live
your other best friend - the reader is sam’s new friend, but harry thinks they like tom instead
you’re my anchor - harry has an anxiety attack, but the reader knows what to do
what’s his [ pt ii ] - when everything thinks the reader should date tom instead, harry snaps
whipped fries - harry brags about the reader winning the pub quiz for them
tell me, show me - the reader makes harry flustered by playing w/the strings from his sweatpants
keep your cool - tom setting u up with his brother // nikki being wary
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ag!reader
you’re such a dream to me — ag!reader writes r.e.m. about harry
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harry styles
intoxicating - soft bubbles baths with long haired!harry 
frayed braids - reader braids long haired!harry’s hair
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others:
harrison osterfield
not anymore - when harrison comes back from filming, he’s determed to win the reader’s heart
irreversible - when relationships fall apart, people fall apart. (infidelity)
circles before yourselves - rule #1  - harrison x osterfield!reader (sister) when brothers talk, bad things begin
think of her - harrison asks your family for their blessing [holland!sister]
steve harrington
together not never - steve discovers the reader is pregnant
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maxwell-grant · 2 years
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Jumping off from my previous question/suggestion, might I please ask if there are any superheroes you think would make fine Pulp Villains and any Supervillains you think would make convincing Pulp Heroes?
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I'm gonna go ahead and remark that I'd personally suggest to anyone who's trying to create pulp characters inspired by superheroes (which would be probably about 90% of you who may want to do that sort of thing) to flip the script around a little. As in, don't try to create pulp analogues to the Justice League/Avengers upfront, but play around with some of the lesser-known icons and filter those through your idea of what “pulp” means (which is gonna be quite different than my own or anyone else’s). 
I’m not gonna really mention characters I’ve already talked about before like Vandal Savage or Namor, instead I’ll pick new ones and see what can be highlighted about them.
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Regarding “Superheroes who could make fine/convincing Pulp Villains”, even though he’s a character I've read basically nothing on, Martian Manhunter definitely leaped out to me as an obvious option. He’s a Sci-Fi Superman who takes the first half of the name to an extreme that borders on comical, except he’s not a square-jawed white man, he’s a 1.000 year old green alien from Mars with shapeshifting powers who can look as monstrous as the artist desires. He’s the product of an advanced civilization and genetic modification, and on top of the Flying Brick powerset and shapeshifting, he also has incredibly powerful and extensive telepathic abilities, he can become invisible, phaze through matter, use telekinesis and other weird abilities. A lot of pulp stories closer to sci-fi were based around the idea of taking one of these abilities and extrapolating horrific consequences for them, and J’onn has those by the dozens. He also has an extremely mundane weakness that would allow him to be beaten by Macready with a blowtorch if that’s where the story ended.
He was also a law enforcement officer from Mars who became a police detective and it’s even right there in his name, and again, I have never read anything he’s in (I should probably pick the Orlando mini), I know he’s for all intents and purposes a generally nice man who tends to job a lot in crossovers and cartoons, but the idea of taking all those great vast and horrifying alien powers, combining all of them into a single character who also happens to be the last survivor of a doomed planet (and one who actually lived through it’s collapse), and then making that character a former cop trying to resume his work on Earth? 
That is a Pulp Supervillain begging to happen, and a particularly horrifying one at that. And hey, speaking of The Thing-
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Now, Plastic Man’s potential for horror has already been explored quite a bit in some of the darker DC continuities like Injustice and DCeased, and it’s quite funny seeing a lot of these turn Plastic Man into The Thing because there were quite a handful of Wold Newton pages that ran with the idea that Macready from the original story was Doc Savage, and that the secret chemicals that Eel O’Brian was hit by that gave him his powers were actually samples of The Thing contained in one of Savage’s labs. Regardless, the idea of a former street crook suddenly gaining bizarre shapeshifting abilities that allow him to reign terror on his gangster associates could make for a great premise as a pulp crime story that veers into horror as the gangsters gradually figure out what is Eel O’Brian’s deal, and then the story can take a more tragic turn.
The thing about Jack Cole’s Plastic Man that modern takes on the character neglect is that, while Plas was a lively roguish anti-hero (arguably the first of it’s kind in comics), he’s still for intents and purposes “the straight man” (HA, right, Plastic Man being “straight”). He’s the relatively sane hero who plays off Woozy’s wackier misadventures and the imaginative madness that Jack Cole paints his adventures with, and it makes for an interesting contrast considering Plastic Man is already a weird character, having to ramp up the strangeness of the world around him so that he still remains the sane man. There are ways to twist this into something quite horrifying, even tragic for Plastic Man as he either struggles to maintain coherency, or embraces the shifting chaos the world’s spiraling into for better or worse (and definitely for the worse towards those on the receiving end of his vengeance, or even his humor).
Now, onto the flipside, regarding Supervillains that could become Pulp Heroes -
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Normally I’d not mention the Batman villains here, because I already have a lot to talk about in regards to them as is, they comprise some of my favorite comic characters, but I pretty much have to make an exception for Two-Face in this topic, as not only a pretty obvious option but one with even case studies to prove it, as not only do we have The Black Bat, a 1930s costumed pulp hero with an identical origin story and several other conceptual overlaps with Batman, as well as The Whisperer, a young hotshot police commissioner who dresses up as a disfigured vigilante to kill criminals without consequence (and who’s somehow less of a maniacal asshole in his secret identity than in his regular one), but it turns out that there actually was a 1910s pulp hero called The Two-Faced Man:
Crewe was created by “Varick Vanardy,” the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey (Nick Carter, Doctor Quartz), and appeared in three short stories and two novels and short story collections from 1914 to 1919, beginning with “That Man Crew” (The Cavalier, Jan. 24, 1914). 
Crewe is “The Two-Faced Man.” 
He is in his forties and has gray hair and a “sharply cut and handsome profile—until one caught a view of the other side of his face and saw the almost hideous blemish that nearly covered it, and which graduated in corrugated irregularity from a delicate pink to repulsive purple.” 
Crewe is two-faced in another way. Crewe is a saloon owner in below Washington Square. But he has another identity: Birge Moreau, portraitist and socialite hanger-on. Crewe uses both his identities to solve crimes as an amateur detective.
The only person to know about both of Crewe’s identities is a police inspector who is also Crewe’s friend and who Crewe helps in pressing cases - The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heores by Jess Nevins
And speaking of obvious picks for Supervillains turned Pulp Heroes,
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Assuming I even need to make a case for Kraven the Hunter other than just presenting this cropped panel from Squirrel Girl and in particular the art painted on the Kra-Van, or even just telling you to read Squirrel Girl and it’s take on “The Unhuntable Sergei” (I had no idea most of the people saying “Kraven’s arc in Squirrel Girl is as good if not better than Kraven’s Last Hunt” weren’t actually joking in the slightest and I speak as someone who has Kraven among their absolute favorite Marvel characters, it had no right being that good), I’m going to quote the brilliant Rogue’s Review from The Mindless Ones that lays down in painstaking detail why Kraven could make a killer protagonist in that horrifically over-the-top pulp fashion
One thing that strikes me writing this, is how well Kraven could hold his own comic. There’s always room for a book spotlighting a ruthless, hardcore, gentleman bastard, and Kraven’s raison d’etre makes him supremely versatile, so well suited to any genre, any environment. It’s odd that more writers haven’t jumped on the fact that in a universe where off-world travel is possible – indeed, common – a hunter like Kraven would have a field day. 
I can just imagine the opening scene – herds of weird cthuloid bat creatures grazing in the gloomy green nitrogen fields, bathed in lethal, bone splintering fog, when, suddenly, LIGHT! from above and an unholy bellowing: “CTHGRGN fthgrgnARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGN!”
They look up in fear and then they start to run – ploughing into and over each other, tentacles flailing, as from the space-ship’s docking bay Kraven silently plummets, barely dressed for the cold, a glowing knife smothered in elder signs jammed between his teeth. 
You should have seen him one night previous, sipping alien tokay around the Captain’s table with the other guests, discussing the morning’s hunt; and the way he insulted the Skrull dignitary by forgetting himself and accidentally sporting his favourite piece of formal wear: his boiling unstable dinner-jacket of many colours, fashioned from the hide of one of the Ambassador’s super kinsmen.
Whoops!
Midway through Kraven explaining how the best way to irreparably damage a symbiote is to wait until its bonded with you and then seriously maim yourself, the Skrull decided it might be a good idea to simmer down, while his beautiful Inhuman lover hung on every word.
The deeper I get into this the more convinced I am that the MU’s hunter-killer extraordinaire wouldn’t limit himself to bloody planet Earth. And neither would he limit himself to this dimension, or universe or timeline. The guy’d be just as at home leaping, sword raised, onto the back of a T-Rex in the Savage Land, as he would be ploughing through werewolves in the graveyards of Arkham or tracking a howling Demon across Mephistopheles’ realm. 
He’d work perfectly in all these environments because he has a damn good reason to be casting a bloody swathe through them: wherever there’s big game, you’ll find Kraven.
The next choice I guess is an oddball, but not that much of an oddball if you know already what is my main frame of reference towards Marvel
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I don’t think people appreciate enough that the main reason Shuma-Gorath has anything resembling a fanbase has nothing whatsoever to do with the comics he was in, but entirely because, when Capcom designers had a list of Marvel characters to pick from to work on Marvel Super Heroes, they took a look at the diet Cthulhu and went “gimme THAT one”, and then went all-in in giving the alien squid monster a funky personality along with a great stage and music and animations and all that great fighting game character stuff, and now he’s maybe the most popular Dr Strange villain along with Dormammu and Mordo, despite having ZERO film appearences or major showings in comic sagas.
Capcom's designers redefined Shuma-Gorath from a nebulous cosmic evil into a comically smug cartoon bastard who can rant about devouring all dimensions and souls horrifically while also cracking poses and zingers like “How do you expect to win a fight with only two arms?” and having dinners with Dhalsim or hosting Japanese game shows in his endings, and it kills me that none of this ever made it’s way into any depictions of the character outside of MvC. 
So that’s kinda what I’d go with. I’d take Capcom’s Shuma-Gorath, depower him a bit obviously from his canonical power, and run with the premise of his MvC3 ending where he decides that, well, if he's the unlikely savior of this pathetic planet and these wretched human dogs like him so much, and he’s clearly having a much better time here among them than he ever had drifting among the stars cealessly consuming life, then maybe he can take a break from all that eldritch business and keep up hosting the Super Monster Awesome Hour and maybe fight whatever PITIFUL villains think can take HIS planet. I mean, he’ll probably still end up destroying the planet by the end, but why not give this hero business a try?
Just until he gets his full powers back of course. 
I mean you can’t deny he DOES look pretty good in that bowtie, surely The Great Shuma-Gorath wouldn’t be so unmerciful as to deny these vile wastes of flesh something good to look at in their brief and miserable lives.
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aelaer · 3 years
Note
Hi friend! You seem vast in your knowledge of Stephen and willing to share so please enlighten me as I don’t read the comics but I do watch the mcu movies, and do love Stephen.
I know he’s erratic and impulsive and reckless sometimes but didnt we already complete this arc in his first movie? Especially since we’ve watched him deal with the consequences of his actions for the entirety of the film and end of the movie Stephen was a different Stephen from the beginning of the movie.
IW Stephen seemed like a more mature version of the man we’ve met at the end of his first movie, a linear progression of the character, more responsible.
The spider man trailer is just a few minutes so I’ll further reserve judgment till I see the film, but he seems.. silly almost? I’m aware he has his funny moments but I’m just nervous they’re gonna make him the joke instead of having him make the jokes.
Do you notice anything weird about how the adults act in these newer marvel projects.? (I’m thinking of loki specifically) they all have a silly undertone to them? I cant put my finger on it but it’s definitely new and ..off
Is this a constant characterization for Stephen in the comics? Is this what he’s like all the time?
Regardless, thank you for your time if you see this xx
Oh yeah, Stephen's my favorite subject at the moment so I'm happy to give my thoughts!
Note that my answers apply to MCU!Stephen and what we've seen in the four films he's been in.
I know he’s erratic and impulsive and reckless sometimes but didnt we already complete this arc in his first movie? Especially since we’ve watched him deal with the consequences of his actions for the entirety of the film and end of the movie Stephen was a different Stephen from the beginning of the movie.
In my experience of just living, there are personality quirks that can be tempered out and made better, but not entirely eliminated, even if it's undesirable. In my opinion, Stephen's need to push himself and prove that he can Do A Thing is a trait that won't ever go away--especially as that trait has helped him more than hindered him. Examples would include the more mundane such as getting through a combined MD/PhD program and inventing surgical procedures at what is still a really young age for a neurosurgeon. We don't have a canonical age for Stephen, but Benedict was 40 when Doctor Strange was filmed and released; even if he's canonically in his mid-40s, that's still very young for him to be at his caliber after the necessary years of med school and residency in the United States. He's young and nowhere near the end of his career when he gets in the car crash. So with that information in mind, we know that he's very ambitious and throws himself into doing difficult work with gusto. That doesn't even go into everything he did as a sorcerer.
Why get into all of this? Because while we, the viewer who has seen the multiverse open at... some point (possibly, in a rewritten timeline, it's always been open now with what happened in Loki!), we have seen just how nuts it gets. We have seen the consequences. Stephen's smart, but I don't think it's a matter of strictly recklessness and more a combination of ignorance on this specific subject (erasing memories across the world or slightly rewriting time-- we don't know how he's doing it, but a memory spell makes more sense to me), hubris (of course), and the real desire to help Peter out. The latter two traits combined in intelligent people have proven bad in both fiction and reality.
The reason I don't think it's pure impulsiveness is because in the trailer, we see Stephen doing some meditation type thing in the underground area before the spell. He's also always doing research and as he tells Peter he'll help him, he clearly knows of a spell already and has some working knowledge of how it works. The conversation with Wong wouldn't have happened otherwise. But I personally get the vibe off him that he'd not do it without being very confident that he can do it -- and his history in the films has shown 0 failures in any of his spells once he's past novice-level, so in that aspect, his confidence makes sense. If he *should* do the spell due to the risks of failure, and lack of practicing precaution in the face of his confidence, is where his flaws lie, IMO. And in that sense people could say he was reckless for deciding to perform a complicated, dangerous spell, but that follows his M.O. completely -- he performed a very complicated, dangerous spell consistently with the Time Stone again and again, from how the sorcerers spoke about the Infinity Stone (and he casually just... throws himself into a time loop, then to look through time. He takes calculated risks, but they are very much risks).
One last thought on this statement - the biggest, biggest lesson that Stephen learned in his first film was that it was not about him. There was more to the world than his glory and his brilliance and even his happiness. He started doing things for the greater good rather than himself. And he started doing things for others -- fighting for the Sanctum in his own film, and protecting the Earth. Serving something greater than himself. But that doesn't make him suddenly humble, and it doesn't suddenly take away his strange (hah) sense of humor.
IW Stephen seemed like a more mature version of the man we’ve met at the end of his first movie, a linear progression of the character, more responsible.
He was more serious in that film. So was Tony. They still had some quips and arguments, but they were very serious. And it makes sense as to why -- it was the end of the world. So the mood of the setting would change anyone's demeanour. But he had very little chance to unwind in that film, considering that he was trying to protect one of six items that would destroy the universe, and also got freaking tortured in the middle of the film with little time to recover. But nearly every Avenger was super serious in that film, and for good reason.
It's a completely different setting from what is now Stephen's life which, from what little we've seen in the trailer, is weird enough that he got a magical snowstorm in the Sanctum. It's safe enough that Wong's off on vacation. It's been nearly a year since he returned from the dead. He's either figured out how to move on in the last year or, as some prefer, has gotten good enough to put on a facade and bury the trauma so far down that he's putting on a normal act - but that's up to debate until MoM. And we have no idea if old traumas are going to be brought up there or if it's just the new things.
I think the point is that it's possible to be both a responsible person and also to make colossal mistakes due to either emotional connections or hubris (or both - we don't know which way the film will go, if they'll explain it at all). They're not mutually exclusive. He can be protecting reality fantastically, while also believing that he's skilled enough to pull off the ability to pull off a dangerous spell which he did in his own film and in IW. He's guided the timeline down a specific path in IW/Endgame, after all - what's a little identity item compared to the fate of the universe, after all? Removing the Spider-Man/Peter association is, in comparison, child's play I imagine to a man like Stephen.
The spider man trailer is just a few minutes so I’ll further reserve judgment till I see the film, but he seems.. silly almost? I’m aware he has his funny moments but I’m just nervous they’re gonna make him the joke instead of having him make the jokes.
Do you notice anything weird about how the adults act in these newer marvel projects.? (I’m thinking of loki specifically) they all have a silly undertone to them? I cant put my finger on it but it’s definitely new and ..off
He was definitely silly in his own film. He was constantly trying to get Wong to laugh and there was a banter between Stephen and Christine after he gets stabbed. He's always been a bit awkward and a bit jokey--I think Thor showed that combination of humorous snark and good research rather well, though he was flippant in a way that didn't get to show his kinder side that is better established in his film. And now we get to see that sympathy in his agreement to help Peter (at least, in my opinion).
Because he was doing an amazing awesome spell not once, not twice, but *three* times in the trailer alone, I am not worried about Stephen just being a joke. He seems just as powerful as he was in IW and Endgame. The rest of the world is just getting reminded that he's definitely a bit of a socially awkward duck at times (or, if you prefer, Putting On a "I'm Fine" Front And It's Coming Across As Weird). So him being a big joke is not something I am personally worried about.
Situational humor has been a staple of Marvel films since Iron Man. I watched the films casually before 2016 when I fell head deep into Stephen Strange (or well, 2018/9 is more accurate as that's when I *really* went nuts), and my viewings before that time and after that time was a lot more analytical. And it's very easy to see where the silliness started, all the way back when Tony crashed into his own car and Dum-E sprayed him with a fire extinguisher. Thor was the butt of the joke in the "fish out of water" scene in a good, good chunk of the film. Even Captain America had some situational humor. And remember that Guardians of the Galaxy was back in 2014, which was halfway through the MCU's time thus far. The stars of these films are almost always the butt of some joke a couple times and do things that could be viewed as childish.
I don't know your age at all, but if you were born after 1990, what might be happening, rather, is that they are not getting sillier, but that you may be getting older. I was an adult (legally, at least) in 2008, but the way I view the adults of the films throughout the early 2010s as compared to now is night and day. It's just come with my own life experience, and wider understanding to media tropes. The jump is even more significant if you were younger in Iron Man/Avengers days and are an adult now. If you're an older adult than me, then I'd argue it's the matter of life experience adding to your overall knowledge of media plus, potentially, rose-tinted glasses giving you a better vision of the older movies while forgetting that the older movies had plenty of their own flaws (and silliness). Could be a lot of things- it's too individual to really say why your perspective has changed. But I don't think the MCU's largely changed their comedy formula since 2012/2013.
Is this a constant characterization for Stephen in the comics? Is this what he’s like all the time?
Oh the comics are a mess of characterizations. It's very difficult to find full consistency across writers, and some writers did him much better than others. At the moment, Jason Aaron's 2015 run is viewed as very good by a large amount of fans, while Waid's 2018 run is viewed with mixed reviews. It's largely a matter of preference as you'll see traits that are just so uncharacteristic in an arc and then it never happens again. He takes on secret identities, he kills billions to save trillions (along with the other Avengers!), he sells his soul, he's in a steady relationship for 30 years, then he's sleeping with a new woman every arc he co-stars in-- it's just so dependent on the writer over the decades. What Marvel thinks will sell. Right now Marvel thinks his death is gonna sell issues, so yeah :P You pick and choose with the comics and build a personality from there.
Thank you for the thoughtful ask. I hope this wasn't too much of a drag to read through; I get rambly on my favorite subjects. Or anything, really.
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foxybananaaaz · 2 years
Text
I WANNA POINT OUT BEFORE POSTING I HAVENT HAD READ THE COMICS……. SORRY BUT I HAVE NOT HAD THE ABILITY TO ACTUALLY READ THEM.
I've just watched the new Hawkeye episode, and my friends haven't yet. I need to talk about it with someone but have no one to talk to.
This post contains SPOILERS for Episode Four of Hawkeye. This is your Only Warning.
ALSO DO NOT CLICK THE NOTES UNLESS YOU WANT SPOILERS.... I had to reblog to continue. So spoilers will be in the notes.
So below the Keep Reading button, is where you wanna be if you wanna see me nerd out.
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You're here? In the spoiler area? Cool! Means you watched the episode, or don't care about getting spoiled.
Either way, I'm not taking blame for spoiling you.
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JOKES JOKES!
I wouldn't give you the finger!
But now this is your final warning.
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Okay okay. Anyway, I usually mainly only talk about ACOTAR and Elucien, and rarely stray away from it, but I need to talk about Hawkeye.
Okay, so like Kate Bishop, Hawkeye has always been my favourite of the six Avengers. Obviously not for the same reasons, because, well, I didn't have a giant metal looking alien coming towards me, and watch as Hawkeye himself stopped it and saved my life directly. Kate Bishop did.
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No, I have always favoured Hawkeye because he's always been the underdog. He may not be superpowered, but he has a damn good and accurate shot.
He brought Natasha into Shield. He calmed Wanda down when she was panicking, and told her that he would understand if she was to scared to fight, but also told her he knew she was strong enough to fight if she chose to. He was the one who stayed back and found the young boy still on floating Sakovia, and was ready to risk his life before Pietro did, to get him to safety. Clint Barton felt so guilty that he tried his hardest to sacrifice himself on Vormir.
So many cant stand him. I love him. He's my favourite.
Me at Clint:
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NOT Clint cause he does't know how to accept appreciation from fans:
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More than likely Clint's reaction:
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Now, that I'm done with the gushing of Hawkeye, it's onto the episode four from today.
HERE IS YOUR REALTIME FINAL LAST NO JOKING AROUND SPOILER WARNING
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So, we start sketchy. Jack's got sword at Clint's neck. There's no way he doesn't know it's Clint. Clint is easily recognizable as an Avenger. Without hesitation. How Kate's own mum walked in, and within half a second, she asked why there was an Avenger in her house.
And this isn't just any Avenger. You would think the guy who is going to marry into a formed family, would learn that this is a guy that is soon-to-be step-daughter has idolized since 2012, when this guy directly saved her life.
As soon as Clint leaves, Kate's mum talks about it. So why would Jack hold the sword at Clint's neck. And why wouldn't Kate's mum find it at all suspicious, when she came in the room AFTER Kate came in?
Acting real suspicious Jack. Real suspicious there.
But he isn't the only one acting suspicious. Kate's mum does, when she leads Clint to the elevator out, she acts cincerned and motherly, and Clint gets it. But then she fucks up like "so you'll drop this case?" Instead of the normal thing a concerned parent might say like "so you'll keep Kate away?" This, Miss Kate's mum(I'm a fan of Marvel I swear. I just forgot her name, and I don't really wanna go find it?), was a fuck up. Cause Clint is a parent, and he knows the proper way to go about it.
He answers like "I can't do that. But I will make sure Kate isn't hurt or harmed, and stays completely safe." And then leaves. And then Kate's mum knows Clint's onto something and she's fucked up, and calls someone and then calls someone like "help, we're screwed I think."
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Anyway, Kate doesn't wanna do Christmas with her mum and Jack and goes to do Christmas with Clint(honestly, Same), and goes to the hideout with Clint. They have fun, and cute Christmas planning time, and honestly, I love it. I love their dynamic.
And Jeremy Renner, you can step down as Hawkeye, but you better make some appearances in the MCU still, because the dynamic between Clint and Kate? The chemistry?
I believe the familial, bind between Clint and Kate more than Kate and her mum. More than Clint and his children. They're building this up so much, they need to have more between these two beyond this show. Please.
They have such a nice bonding moment. After seeing Clint try and keep his distance, it's nice to see him embrace the bonding moments in this episode. Really heartwarming.
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He better fucking NOT is all I gotta say.
Now, Clint is telling Kate about when he met Natasha, and it's sad. It's sad and it's just, my heart okay. My heart hurts. And Kate learns the truth that Clint lost his family during the blip, and how he's actually Ronin, and just, all the pain. So much pain.
Before Kate goes to he'd, Clint tells her that he's thankful for what she did that night and it means a lot to him. And then he goes to sleep, and just pain. We see Ronin flashbacks. We see Natasha on Vormir. We see Clint and his daughter from before the blip. (The blip is a stupid name. Who decided on the Blip?)
I can't add more gifs so I need to continue in a reblog
Blahhh
Stupid
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ghosthan · 3 years
Note
hello!! i saw that you made a lot of stuff for 1872 and i was wondering if 1872 tony is similar to regular comics tony?? i know mcu and comics tony are different and i want to get into 616, but if 1872 comics are more easy to read i might try those first! 😅
Hello, hello! 
Thank you for asking, and sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I wanted to think about it and put together a thoughtful response because I am desperately trying to convert MCU fans to 1872. Or comics fans who just haven’t gotten into 1872.
This post will contain some 1872 spoilers, but not the Big Spoiler that you probably already know about anyways. 
Anyways, let’s get into it. Yeehaw.
What is 1872? It’s Steve/Tony in the wild west.
1872 comics are very easy to read, very short, and you need absolutely no prior knowledge to get into them; I highly recommend these as a start point for MCU fans who are curious about dipping their toes into some of the other Steve/Tony universes. And 1872 is, indeed, a Steve/Tony universe. It’s really gay, (and dramatic.) Uh. So gay, in fact, that one of the comic artists who drew pages even occasionally shares Steve/Tony shipping memes. So.
Marvel 1872 is a four issue series released as a part of the Secret Wars event; you really do not need to know anything about this to enjoy 1872, because it is a self-contained alternate universe in a “pocket dimension”, meaning it’s totally separate from the 616 cannon but technically exists in the expanse of the multiverse!
Here’s the summary:
In the Battleworld zone of 1872, Sheriff Steve Rogers faces corruption and fear in the boom town of Timely. Can Anthony Stark pull Rogers' fat from the fire? Probably not, since the only thing he seems capable of pulling is a cork from a bottle. Things in Timely are bad, and getting worse — and when a stranger arrives in town, Timely will be changed forever.
Now, to compare “regular comics Tony”, or 616 Tony, with 1872 Tony.
The main difference? 616 Tony wears this sexy little under suit (or nothing) under his armor, like this:
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And 1872 Tony wears dirty, stinky one-piece pajamas under his armor (not sexy):
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He’s so gross, he’s a mess. I love him. You’ll love him, too. 
No, okay. Being serious.
 616!Tony’s backstory is a lot more complicated just due to how long the character has existed, and the decades of cannon (much of it self-contradictory at points.) Like MCU Tony, 616 Tony used to manufacture weapons, experiences something life-changing, and becomes who he is as a result of this as a catalyst. 616 Tony’s backstory has been rebooted a few times, and I’m definitely not the definitive source on Iron Man lore compared to people who have read all of his comics, but I’ll try to touch on the basics.
Originally, 616 Tony Stark is shaped by his experience in the Vietnam War. This is later rebooted and changed to war in the middle East (we see this in the MCU when Tony is held captive in Afghanistan.) In both circumstances, he is taken captive after being in the air for war technology, and then he creates the suit to save his own life (losing a beloved mentor in the process, the guilt of which stays with him after.)
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Tales of Suspense #39
In 1872, Tony’s formative event is the Civil War in some ways, but in other ways, this is only half of it, because this is not the event which causes him to build armor or set him onto his “become a better person” trajectory, like in the other comics. Mainly, the Civil War functions to cause Tony to stop weapons manufacturing and throw his life away down a bottle.
We get a flashback of Tony in the year 1862 with his female companion, picnicking and about to watch a battle, (rich people from the North did this in real life. If you’re interested, read more here!) We don’t get much of his past, but we discover that he is a rifle manufacturer and that he has created something called the ‘Stark Repeating Rifle’, and it seems that he has done so with the hope of encouraging a cease-fire, more than a slaughter.
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Well. We don’t always get what we ask for.
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Tony vows to actually never touch a weapon ever again, and this personal oath means so much to him that he gets creative at times during 1872 when he’s being chased by baddies:
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Witnessing the extreme bloodshed of the Civil War, and feeling responsible for a huge amount of deaths, Tony turns to drinking, (and presumably moves to the west to escape the Pain of his Past, but this is not shown explicitly on panel; I have assumed, though, that Tony’s weapons manufacturing company was in the East, probably Boston or New York, since he comes from family money and because the American West was still “young” at this point in time so it would be unlikely that an established business would be supplying a war from lawless territory with little infrastructure.)
In 616, it’s worth noting that Tony builds the armor to save himself from danger in a war scenario; this is not the case in 1872, things unfold a bit differently. The Civil War certainly sets in motion the chain of events that eventually lead to the creation of Tony’s armor, but he’s not in physical danger or physically traumatized by the war in this verse as he is in other verses, and 616 Tony seems to have a stronger sense of duty than 1872 Tony, but this might be a complication of the depression/apathy related to the alcoholism.
What I mean by this is that both iterations of Tony struggle with alcoholism, but differently. Mainly, while 616 Tony has several alcohol themed arcs, and hits rock bottom with his alcoholism to cope with his trauma, he is sober more than he is drunk in the comics. His drinking almost kills him, and he almost loses everything because of the drink. It’s a source of enormous shame for him.
In fact, during this time in 616, I think Tony at his lowest reminds me a lot of 1872 Tony; 616 Tony is not an apathetic person and he holds himself accountable for an obscene amount of responsibility, but during what is referred to in fandom as The Second Drinking Arc, Tony basically gives up. This is the most “like” 1872 Tony, at least at the start of his arc. Rhodey takes over the mantle of Iron Man, and 616 Tony spirals, not caring whether he lives or dies, not hero-ing certainly.
We see both versions of Tony express similar sentiments, a certain cavalier attitude about their lives (and outright suicidality at other points) with nothing left but the drink.
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Iron Man Vol. 1 #182
Compare with:
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And you can certainly see a resemblance between this set of panels from IM v.1 #176 and in 1872:
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Iron Man Vol. 1 #176 and Marvel 1872 #1
It’s a little different in 1872, where his drinking really is purely a result of his existing despair, and it doesn’t cause enormous problems for him, (minor problems, sure. He spends a lot of time drunkenly singing to Sheriff Rogers, or bothering him from the inside of a jail cell.) But this Tony lives at rock bottom, whereas 616 Tony only stays at rock bottom long enough to get his life back together (as many times as it takes.)
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This Tony really doesn’t show any outward shame about his drinking; presumably, the people he knows in Timely have only ever known Tony as a drunk, and none of the people from his old life are here to see him like this. 
This is a Tony who has essentially given up on himself and has moved out West to hide from his shame and his past; this is not a Tony who is scared of letting down his friends by drinking, or scared of shirking his “duty”, because this Tony has moved away from all of his friends and has given himself no duties. He’s a bit more apathetic, but I would argue that this is not because he inherently is a less moral version of Tony, but because in this verse, he was drinking for a very long time and circumstances unfolded differently so it took him a longer time to find that sense of purpose and responsibility (beyond just shutting down manufacturing guns,) which is awakened in him by Steve Rogers. 
616 Tony’s sobriety is a major part of his character, and a conscious choice that he makes, even during some lowest points:
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Civil War: The Confession
He takes some amount of pride in his sobriety, and when he does fall off the wagon at times (or magic makes everyone think he did,) it absolutely tears him up because 616 Tony cares very, very much about his sobriety and does not like who he is when he’s drinking. We do not know if 1872 Tony’s father had been a drunk or not, but we know 616 Tony’s father was, and that the drink lead to him treating Tony abusively.
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Iron Man Vol. 1 #285 
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Avengers Disassembled #1 (This was when ~magic~ made Tony drunk and it wrecked him breaking sobriety without ever having actually drank. Oof.)
616 Tony’s long struggle with alcoholism is a major part of his character and he has had relapses over the years and throughout the reboots, but in general, he does not drink.
1872 Tony starts drinking in 1862 and doesn’t stop until the last pages of the story, so in terms of the cannon we have for him, he is a current drunk, rather than a former drunk. This isn’t to say he doesn’t stop; but since it’s in the last page or so, it sets the reader up to imagine his sober future, rather than exploring his sobriety as 616 does. (Calling all fanfic writers!)
Anyways, both Tony’s are excellent. Both are damaged and traumatized, both are Iron Man in their own ways, both (eventually) find sobriety, both have some cute, quippy dialogue (though 616 Tony tends to be more reserved/polite for sure, in general). 
The last thing I’ll point out, is that both Tonys’ narratives are intertwined with and influenced by their respective Steve Rogers. I’m not saying soulmates but I’m saying soulmates.
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Anyways. Sorry this post got super long, and I apologize if any of it is confusing or redundant, I am not functioning at my highest capacity currently. Please read 1872. Let it rock your world. Create & consume the fanworks, I would love to see a boom of 1872 content (more than the fics and art I keep making!) And my ask-box is always open!
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chuuulip · 3 years
Text
Another Earth
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Pairing: August Walker (werewolf) x Female Reader (red ridding hood)
Warning: 18+, PWP, Oral (M and F receiving), Unprotected Sex, Multiple Orgasm, Slightly ABO Universe, Rough Sex
Words: 7434
Summary: After a failed attempt to sign up for the Halloween haunted house to meet your Superman, the last minute ticket turned your night upside down as you were stuck in another earth.
A/N: Unbeta! Any grammar mistake will be on me. Divider by me 😆 This is for @jtargaryen18​ Halloween challenge, and I’m pretty late! Sorry for that life has been busy xD I still have another one in progress (the Andy barber one) and hopefully can post it soon! Thanks to @navybrat817​ and @venusdemonroe​ for giving me the idea for this story and help me discuss what a werewolf August Walker would do in this lol. Actually I wanted to mention a lot....of things but I guess it would be too much for a one shot lil but anyway Happy reading!!!
***
This year's Halloween event was mental. Several big haunted houses are hosted by celebrities. To name a few, there's an Avengers Tower haunted house, The Hall of Justice League, The X-Mansion, and even Walking Dead one. 
 You knew it wasn't easy. All of them have a huge fandom. The ticket was sold out immediately when it was open for sale, like 3 months before Halloween, and you were terribly upset. You were whining for a month straight to your boyfriend. Or more like your sugar daddy. He was patient and wealthy, but he knew he can't satisfy you enough, so he usually did everything he could for you. But that time, you just have none of it. The relationship, if you could ever say that, fell out immediately because you were unreasonable.
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 You really wanted to go to The Hall of Justice League and maybe meet Clark Kent. The obsession started because he always visited your dream and mostly engaged in the steamiest dream ever. It's been your wildest dream, really, to have that body blanketed yours, in a really not innocent way.
 Just one day before Halloween, you finally secured one ticket for The Hall of Justice League haunted house. Of course, the first thing you did was scream. You had been on their waiting list since the ticket sold out, but you really lost hope since last week. But now, you celebrate it with a bit of a jump and constant scream.
 "What the fuck?" Your only housemate barged into your bedroom. Face annoyed.
 You stopped your silly jumps and looked at your housemate. With a broad smile, you hug your housemate and shake her body, "I got it! I got the ticket for The Hall of Justice League haunted house! Can you believe that?"
 The redhead hugged you, and both of you jumped in a circle. "Oh my gosh...I can't believe it! Congrats!!! I really hope you will meet your Kryptonite." she gave you her suggestive smirk.
 "I mean...a girl can only hope. But this is a charity event. I don't think he will be available. What if it's all a decoy and I only meet his wax figure?" you pouted at your friend.  
 "Well, at least you have the opportunity to see it yourself. But remember, behave, young lady, don't let him if he's there, I mean, witness your brattiness."
 "Aye...aye Captain!" you giggled but immediately gave your housemate a military saluted.
 That night you dreamed of those big blue eyes and his firm, fantastic arms on yours.
 ***
 Dress in your red riding hood costume, you patiently sat in the backseat of the Uber car. Well, maybe a little bit impatient, since it's already 11pm. 
 Everything just went down the hill since morning. You can't seem to find your Poison Ivy costume. Not to mention that you were late for work that morning. Your boss was a bitch since she seems annoyed at you every time the male employee or investor became too friendly with you. 
 Who can blame you? You were just good at acting all cute to them, and it's not your fault that they mostly thought you were a cute little employee. 
 You check your wrist. The expensive rose gold watch from your ex sugar daddy elegantly pointed at 11.30 pm. You sighed, "do you know how long I will arrive at my destination? It will close soon."
 "Hopefully, in 10 minutes. Dunno why it's jam-packed." Said the Uber driver.
 You huffed in exasperation, but there's nothing you can do. You arrived very last minute, like 15 minutes before the haunted house closed. Wearing black stiletto boots, you carefully made a small run into the stairs. The booth was stationed to the far left of the building. 
 "Good night, little red riding hood; you are lucky because we are almost closed. Can I see your ticket, please?" A man dressed as Edwar Scissorhands greeted you at the far left of the building. 
 You fished out your smartphone from your small basket bag and showed him your barcode. He scanned it and looked at the monitor in front of him. "Hmm, here for a kryptonite, aren't you." He eyed you up and down and smirked at you. "I hope you have a spooky night, little girl." 
 You smile at him and sashay your way to the entrance. Apparently, they makeover a warehouse into a vast real-life Justice League Hall. Like in the comic. A white half-circle exterior completed with two giant pillars at each side imitated the picture you only seen in comic books. It looks so magnificent. 
 You entered the door after you scanned your barcode at the scanner next to it. The whooshing noises startle you a bit, but you were too excited and step in immediately. 
 The inside was bright with a black marble flooring that shone bright; you even can see your reflection. There's a different section of the silvery door like in most sci-fi, alien invasion movies. So futuristic, so clinical. 
 You darted your eyes and found where you needed to go. A small rectangle monitor with a very digital clock font in it showed you 'Krypton' words. Without hesitation, you did a little run and waited in front of it. The small rectangle monitored turned to green, and it shone. It startled you, but you let out a sigh of relief when it just scanned your body from your head to toe. 
 "So much for a haunted house." You muttered. 
 When the door opened, you stepped in. It was a glass elevator. You circled your eyes and found everything was dark. When the elevator ran, bringing you down several floors, the surrounding changed. 
 Once, the darkness engulfed you like you were being shipped to the deep ocean, but it changed dramatically. Your eyes darted in awe as you drank on the scenery. The scenery of what you would call the imitation of Planet Krypton. So beautiful yet so harsh. 
 When the elevator stopped, the ding noise pulled you to the present. With excitement, you grabbed your smartphone and took several pictures of the scenery. It was just so surreal that a haunted house would make something like this. But you remember how expensive the ticket was.
 "This three grant haunted house better give me a chance to fuck a real-life Clark Kent." you cackled. 
 There's a weird tower with a green light on top of it. You assumed some futuristic objects were supposed to be 'kryptonite' as it floated sparsely in most parts of the supposed Krypton. A bit further, you could see a white crystal-like triangle building. Oddly enough, it reminded you of the Louvre Pyramid. This one just full of crystal-like pillars crisscrossed it. 
 Didn't want to waste your time, you decided what path you should choose. It wasn't easy. Your stiletto pierced to the weird substrate like mud but also crystal-like as if it's ice. Carefully, you mind your footing while again stayed alert. There's this odd feeling of being watched. But you reminded yourself that you were in a haunted house, so it's understandable.
 You let out a loud scream when suddenly a mummy appeared behind one of the floated crystals. "Holy shit, I didn't see that coming." you try to slow down your breath as you clutched the white ruffle shirt under your red corset.
 When you feel that you can walk again, you try to do it faster. Several times it looks like the Krypton had shifted in its light as if the sun rose and shone, but the next five minutes, it set. Made the scenery look like it was illuminated by the crystal alone, like a lamp.
 When many ghost-like mannequins showed up, it got scarier and scarier, and you immediately lowered your hood to shield you from some view. Your eyes perked up when you finally saw the path to the Fortress of Solitude. It was more like an icy bridge with a dark pond surrounding it. 
 As your right foot stepped onto the bridge, a loud noise of a clock surprised you. It struck once and counted until it stopped at the twelfth. It was so loud it's voice echoed. You can even feel it under the sole of your boots. 
 Stunned for a moment, your mind suddenly set on alert mode when the water from both ponds on each side of the bridge rippled. A dinosaur-like head appeared from both ponds. It has a single protruding horn. It opened its mouth and let out a loud growl. A blast of wind came out of it like a thunderstorm. It has sharp teeth like sharks that you assumed could quickly rip your body apart if it sank on yours. 
 "Holy shit. This is— this is a joke, right? It's not real?" Body trembled in fear; you ran your life out to the Fortress of Solitude. The monsters crawled up out of the water. Its slithered movement mimicked a snake, but it didn't have any problem crawling up without things to latch on. 
 You screamed as both of the monsters chased you. Run as fast as your legs allow you. This haunted house event might be too much for you. When you can see an oval object that looks like it can be a big mirror or a huge door, your gloved palms immediately bang on it. "Open the door!" You screamed. When the door finally opened, the two snake-like monsters that chased you suddenly disappeared.
 "Oh— oh my god. Oh my god…," you chanted as you let yourself drop down on the floor. 
 "I see you finally make it." 
 Your face turned to the left. In front of you, stood up tall and proud, Clark Kent with his superman costume. He's just so big. If you compared your tiny body to him, you definitely, nothing.
 You replied to Superman's bright smile with a scowl. Slowly you got up from the floor and cleaned your skirt. "Isn't that just too much? What if I fell to the pond? I can't swim, you know?"  
 He seems surprised, "apologized my lady. It was something the organizer will handle. I don't think they mean any harm."
 "Yeah...yeah… right." you walked closer to the hero and already fished out your mobile phone. "So… what did I need to do now I meet you, Superman?"
 "Hmm… most attendants ask for pictures. Some of them spent time just talking with me. Since you are the last one, you can take as many pictures as you like and of course. If you have any questions about my protection for the earth, I will gladly answer it." The tone in his voice was more soft than authoritative. 
 Think of not sabotaging your Halloween any longer; you tried to forgive the silliness of the whole new level of scary from this haunted house. It's hard not to show off your brattiness in this kind of situation. Still, you reminded yourself that he was someone you weren't familiar with—practically a stranger.
 Gave him a sweet smile, you took several pictures with him. At one time, you tried to bat your eyelashes at him and asked for a picture where you sat on his lap. You spent a solid 15 minutes talking to the handsome alien. Your fingers touched his biceps here and there. You knew that he knew what you were implying, but he didn't refuse you either. At least not blatantly.
 "I apologized, my dear, but I think it's already time." Superman gently put you back on your feet. You gave him an upset face, but you knew it's time to go home. You bid the handsome man goodbye and sneaked a kiss on his cheeks. There's a twinge of pink on his cheeks, and you jump triumphantly at that reaction. Of course, behind his back.
 Following the word of 'exit' behind the piles of the crystal-like shape props, you opened the door. The scenery in front of you caught you off guard. The harshed white tundra scenery was replaced by now dark, almost jungly like one. Unconsciously you stepped back and turned your body to come back to the exit door. How shocked you were when it vanished. Disappear without a trace.
 As far as your eyes could see, it's only darkness and mist. Only the full moon aided your visions. The exhalation of your breath came out like a plume of white steam. It's definitely colder here than the fake Krypton one. The cold air seeped into your skin quickly as if you were actually in the deep of a forest. 
 With a loud sigh, you walk straight. You tumbled and fell down on your knees as your boots got caught with something: either roots or a massive branch. 
 Tired and frightened, you screamed loudly. You weren't sure if this was the continuation of the haunted house or not, but what you want right now just to be back in your apartment and soaked in a warm, relaxing bath. 
 "Get me out of here!" you yelled again. There's a lot of sounds as if a lot of people stepping on branches. A screeching sound of an owl surprised you, but you tried to follow its direction with your ears. 
 There's no way you will wait here and do nothing. Oh...my phone! You fished out your smartphone, but it showed no signal. "Shit!." you muttered. 
 The sounds from a far away crept closed, and you knew it. "You can do it! There's nothing more frightening than that monster snake." tried to encourage yourself; you stood up and slowly navigated. You followed the noises that now closer, like an animalistic growl. It was so intense you can feel all the goosebumps rise up your skin. 
 You weren't sure how long you have been walking, but you stopped suddenly when there's not only a pair but like 7 pairs of reddish eyes glowed in the dark. 
 "Come here, little lamb. Don't follow that voice." a vaguely familiar voice distracted you from stepping forward. 
 "Who the fuck are you, and why you get in my way just now." your voice came out hoarse. There's a twinge of fear in it, and you knew it. You felt like backed down wasn't the best option you had right now.
 "I said, come here, or else I can't even save you when they get you." 
 You stilled as if you didn't hear him talking to you. "Wasn't this still one of the tricks from the haunted house? To let the people scramble in fear?" 
 "Are you out of your mind? Come here right now, or I left you to death. They will either rip you apart or play your body like a ragdoll before one of them eats you." 
 You screamed in horror as one pair of red eyes slowly came out. It's huge. Almost four feet of canine shook its fur. 
 You were hyperventilating right now. Body rooted to the ground as you were surrendered. Welcoming your fate. 
 "Fuck!" 
 You heard a curse from behind your back. Maybe the stranger gave up and left you alone to be eaten by the wolves. 
 The scrunched sound of leaves crushed was loud. Suddenly you felt strong arms hauled you upside down. 
 Your eyes faced the skin of someone's back. You craned your neck a little bit to get a better view of the wolf. Screamed escaped your lips when you saw not only one but all of them, in a pack, chased both of you. 
 "Stay still." The stranger yelled. 
 Did the best thing to not get thrown out by his weird, fast speed, you secured your thumbs in his belt loops. He ran, escaped the pack inside the deep of what looked like a pine forest. 
 You weren't sure how long you ran with him, but you felt that he's finally slowed down. 
 When the thud thud sound reached your ears, you opened your eyes and saw that the stranger walked up a stair.  
 You felt nauseated when he suddenly put you to sit on something that was apparently a countertop. The rushes of blood that circulated through your body made you regain your sense of surroundings. 
 "Where am I?" you didn't mean to add an ungrateful tone in your sentence, but it was too late.
 The stranger eyed you like you were some sort of ungrateful bitch, which maybe you are. "At my cabin," he said flatly.
 You haven't had time to look at him in the forest, but now, under the actual lighting inside his house, what you saw might instantly make you drooled, which you already did right now. Stand up in front of you, a shirtless beefy tall man that's definitely more than six feet tall. He has short dark brown hair with a somewhat thick mustache that's complemented by a stubble. The front strands of his hair were loose and slightly curled. Looks likely due to all the running.  
 The sudden chill of air made you shiver, and he didn't miss your reaction. He left you for a minute and came back with a rug. The sudden heat from it, when he draped the fabric on your shoulder made you let out a gasp of satisfaction. 
 But the next thing you know, he ripped your stocking. You were shocked, eyeing him in horror. "What the fuck are you doing?!" You threw whatever things that's on your reach. The loud sound of glass hit the wall, and the strong grip on your wrist instantly made your stop.
 "Be still!" His azure irises left no room for confrontation. When you felt a sting on your knees, that's when you realized that he just pressed some gauze on it. Likely soaked with alcohol first. There's quite a prominent stain of blood on your legs, and it almost made you nauseated. 
 "If you stop acting like a brat, you'll heal faster." He looked at you with that cocky smile of confidence. "Understood?" 
 You just nodded at him. He continued to clean the blood and inspect the wounds. The position where you were sitting right now made it easier to study him carefully. 
 Although you felt the temperature decreased significantly, the beefy stranger in front of you appeared very sweaty. 
 Immediately your gaze ran down to his neck and continued its way to his chest and his abs. The unmistakable bulge under his pants made you squirm unconsciously. You were in a haze of fear and lust; you definitely insane. 
 "Wha— what's your name, sir?" 
 His strong gazed felt as if his eyes alone can subdue you. Maybe he has these laser eyes like Cyclops, your inner thought buzzed with speculation.
 "August. My name is August Walker. What's your name, little lamb?" 
 How dare this man call you a little lamb? You cleared your throat and told him your name and where you were from.
 "New York? It's pretty far from here." He patched you up nicely. The water-resistant gauze looked really neat pressed on your knees and some on your shin. You were impressed.
 When your eyes returned to August, you gave him a smile that you hoped looked like a smile of gratitude. Not the kind of smile you always presented to any potential partner in bed, sultry, and flirtatious.  
 "I— I haven't said anything but— thanks. Thank you for saving my life." Your left fingers instinctively pat his right arms. The feeling of his skin startled you. It's warm; in fact, it felt like he had a very high fever.
 "Are— are you alright? Your temperature feels off." 
 "Don't mind me. Just take care of yourself." 
 You knew there's something off with him, but you weren't sure if you had a clear mind to think right now. Not with the wolf pack outside and his words on New York being far away from here. Where the fuck am I? 
 "I… I have a—,"
 "I suggest you stay here if you don't want to meet them."
 "But I…,"
 "You can use the bedroom there," his hand pointed to the door on the far end. "Feel free to use anything you want. Just don't come to the basement. I will meet you after a couple of days, and we figured things out." 
 His authoritative voice and dominant persona immediately made you want to counter his suggestion. The funny thing was, looked like he sensed it.
 He approached you, face just inches away from you. Your eyes immediately glanced away from the delicious plane of his sweaty chest. His fingers drew your chin up, so both of your eyes were at the same level. "Do what I said, understand?. Thrust me; you don't want to know the consequences if you violate my suggestion."
 Suggestion, my ass! Your inner mind ready to throw insults at him, but you quickly held it back. In the end, you nodded at him obediently.
 —
 That night you were restless. But in a weird sense, you felt comfortable staying in that cabin. The first night after August left you to your own devices, you had been pretty careful. Not touched a lot of things except food and items that help you with your long bath. 
 His cabin was quite spacious. The interior was a mix of something slicked and modern with an equal touch of classic. Tried to look homey. Not to mention his bathroom, it's super luxurious and made you feel at home instantly. Reminded you of your ex (sugar daddy's) bathroom. 
 Since you couldn't find another bedroom in that cabin and you don't feel like sleeping on the couch, you slept in his bed instead. After all, he said you can use the bedroom there. Still wearing your red riding hood costume, you slipped under the soft comforter. 
 After that, you woke up feeling a bit groggy. Aimlessly wandered around the kitchen, you weren't sure what to do first. Tried collecting your bearing, you tried to make a coffee. Or any equivalent things of it. Everything felt different; you just knew it. When the only thing you could find was several jars that you assumed were granules of tea, you brew it. You sat on the sofa that faced up a lake. The wall was made of glass, making everything well seen. 
 You walked closer and gazed at the vast pine forest in front of you. The trees were tall and big, so majestic. Somewhat it's different from the pine trees you usually see. The lake in front of you looked like it had two different colors, fusion together with weird looking fishes and plants that should grow on the land instead of water. Where the fuck am I? 
 The next day, you woke up feeling a little bit refreshed. You changed your slutty costume into one of the clothes you found in his closet. It was so soft and comfy. You knew when things were from high-quality material.  
 You continued your days by drinking your tea, ate whatever breakfast you can munch, and read a book that has these unusual fonts. You were sure it wasn't in the alphabet, but one day you absentmindedly swipe your fingers on some of the pages, and the font changed. Hell, it even translated into English in an instant. You were definitely impressed. 
 One thing you are sure of was, this place was strange. Wherever you were right now, it didn't look like it's on earth. Or the earth that you knew. Why were you so calm? Because you already freak out. After you freak out, you also wondered, did the haunted house event organizer realized that they were the culprit behind what the fuck happened to you right now? Did your housemate recognize that you weren't home for days? Or maybe she thought you fuck the Superman or perhaps found another sugar daddy? It was so absurd yet so real.
 The last two nights, you were struck in awe as your eyes were spoiled by two moons. Two fuckin moons. It was always quiet at night, but you heard all the howls that you suspected likely from the pack of those giant wolves.   
 It was pretty late, almost midnight. You finally found your small bag hindered under the sofa that evening. Now…, now you had some time to check it. The first thing you checked was if there's a signal. Definitely no signal at all. 
 You curled up on August bed while swiping the pictures on your phone. When you scrolled your pictures with Superman, you realized why August seems familiar. It was none other than August having quite the same face, the same build, even somewhat similar voices with Superman. 
 "Fuck...maybe I should ask August if he would like to be my Daddy while I'm here." Imagining him spoiled you with gifts and other physical attention made you chuckled at yourself. 
 Your fingers instinctively crawled under the gray long sleeve shirt you borrowed from his closet (again). Your brain projected an image as if it was August's hands that ran on your upper thigh. Find its way quickly to your wet core. Two fingers slipped under the black lace panty. The panty that you need to wash daily due to no other replacement available. Left you a couple hours with only his buttoned-up shirt without anything underneath. 
 The sound of a loud howl startled you. It was as if it circled you in close range. Moved as fast as you can, you snatched the oversize robe on you. Your eyes tried to creep behind the curtain in the bedroom. 
 You knew the owner of this cabin stated that you can't go to the basement. You wouldn't be so lucky if that giant wolf found you first and broke in. Although you haven't been really out of the cabin, you tried to inspect a little bit and found it odd that this cabin was apparently a treehouse-style cabin. How come there's a basement in the house.
 You exit the bedroom and go to the kitchen when you last saw August a couple nights ago. Next to the slick wooden cabinet was a particular thing that looked like a door. The surface of your palms works like a stethoscope, felt as if something with pressure from your hands. You tried not to get disturbed by the nonstop howl outside. When you hear something as if the door was shifted, you immediately step back. 
 "Oh my, finally…," you slipped inside the small door when it opened automatically. It was a small narrow corridor-like, and it was dark. Walk inside carefully, you follow the path that leads you to another door. The metal door let out a weird creaked as you pushed it open. 
 "Didn't I tell you not to come down here?" 
 Shocked was evident in your face when you heard his rather gruff tone. You step over, closer to where he sat, that looks more likely an even bigger size of the bed than the one he had upstairs.    
"Don't —,"
 He warned you, but you being you, could never obey orders. Although challenging, your eyes finally adapt to the only natural light from the glass wall. That said, you were totally confused as you can see the lake parallel to your eyes. 
 "What the… wait, how there's even a basement down here? Last time I checked, the cabin is a treehouse?"
 "It's camouflage. No one can't see it or enter from outside."
 "Holy… why there's a three moon?" you switched your gaze from the moon to August. Curiosity got the better of you when you saw his irises were now pale blue. You can still see the outer form that is August, but something was off. 
 A gasp escaped your lips as August rose up from the bed. The powerful moon shone his feature. He was taller, bulkier, and dangerous as he stalked towards you slowly. Your heart thumped erratically as you were cornered. Back supported by the glass wall as now you can see August in his other form. 
 "Holy shit. Wha—what are you?"
 "Told you not to go here, and you just can't listen, little lamb." his smirk turned maniacal as he looked at the fear on your face. His white fangs, longer than usual. His fingers also look unusual, claw-like. 
 "Are you— are you a werewolf?" 
 "Well...you can say that. I'm half human half wolf if you are curious." 
 "So why— why did you save me?"
 The tip of his nose inched closer to yours. You held your breath when his warm skin touched you. It moved to your left cheek and stopped near your ear. "I'm curious," he whispered.
 "I haven't really met a pure human in the same age range. So I have followed you since I saw you step out of that door. I follow you until you meet the other wolf pack, and I decide to help you instead of fulfilling my need." 
 "What need?" you asked him, dumbfounded.
 "This," he pulled away from you, his claw-like finger pointed out below his hip. Focusing on the long and hard appendage that was unmistakably, his cock.
 "Oh—I- I'm sorry?" you gave him your best apologetic face. Eyes seemed eager to stare longer, but you gazed away quickly. Wait, why did you apologize to him? You cleared your throat, "I— I actually not sure what I should do to help?" tilted your head to the right, you looked him in the eyes, almost challenged him.
 Despite almost getting eaten by wolves, August's menacing presence didn't really scare you. Maybe the fact that he was still human and less scary made it easy for you. Not to mention he's hot too, with all his glory. 
 His somewhat evil chuckled sent shivers down your spine. "If you really wanted to help, I think you know what to do, don't you?"
 "W-wait—is—does this mean we 'mate'?" you gave him a somewhat weird expression. "And—and you bite me, give me marks that I'm yours? And knot me, and I will have a litter of puppies, and I become your omega—,"
 His pale blue eyes stared at you as if you grew two heads. It softened immediately as he smiled. Broad one showed you a set of white teeth with extra long fangs. 
 "Oh, my little lamb...what have you read?"
 "Err— Omega verse? Fanfic?"
 He blinked. Gave you a quizzical expression.
 "It's— it's erotica. Where mostly the character you know—," you darted your eyes away from August. "—mate, err have sex. Mostly was written very explicitly."
 "Go on." He said.
 "They are wolves, scenting, imprinting. An alpha mates with omega, and it's been told in a variety of plots possible. Sometimes two alphas fight too." You were breathless. You didn't realize you explained it to him in a quick, incoherent way. 
 You staggered backward as he came closer, forgetting that you already cornered. His long fingers reached out to the white robe you put on you. Although his fingers had claws that looked alarming to you, his hand still skillfully unfastened the robe.
 "That's a bit of an exaggeration, I think. Pack and hierarchies usually form just for a mating season; they hunt together for food and shelter in the winter. We might be scenting people, I guess. After all, we have a very sensitive sense of smell. But no, we don't bite our mate." He took off the robe from your body, left you only with his grey buttoned-up shirt.
 "Well...I love that you are wearing my shirt as if you are mine already."
 You purse your lips at him. "Why aren't you in a pack? Isn't it a mating season?" 
 "I mostly can control myself during the full moon. That's the advantage of being half-human. I don't need to transform myself into a wolf and be in a pack. But I am an alpha if that's what you are curious about."
 "Can-can you turn back to your human form? Not like—you know, you aren't in your human form, bu—," your words were cut off by his thumb on your lips. 
 "You talk too much, aren't you, little lamb…," August leaned down and touched his lips to yours. Your first reaction was to freeze since you were afraid of his fangs. But his surprisingly soft lips coaxed you relentlessly, making you surrender as you closed your eyes. Opening your mouth, his tongue sneaked past your lips easily. His fangs poke at your lower lips, but it didn't hurt.
 The non so innocent kiss became more desperate. Your once shied tongue now dances together with August. Your once clasped palms that were situated on top of your chest now scraped at his shoulder. 
 Your eyes fluttered open as August nipped down from your jaw to your neck. Forgotten, you even close your eyes in the first place. His claw-like fingers unbuttoned his shirt on yours without difficulty, left you only in your black lace panty. 
 The feeling of temperature as if dropped significantly made you glued your body to August. Smooth skin of your chest pressed to his hot hairy one, seeking warmth. One hand secured behind your back while the other palm on your ass. Massage the globe there. 
 "Ohh…" you gasped as you felt his finger on your clothed core. 
 "Hmm… wet already, I see." he let the pad of his finger move up to your clit, while the movement of the claw added sensation to your already. Seeing your reaction, he repeated it a couple times. Made you a mess with only one of his fingers.  
 Arched your body a little bit, you were thrilled to see his expression. Traveled your hands down from his hairy chest; your eyes still focused on his face, while your palms found their way to his hard cock. 
 "Oh, so big…," slowly at first, you ran your hands at the tip of his cock. Even without looking at it, you knew it's definitely bigger than any cock you've ever seen. 
 Eyes widened as your hand slid down to the base. The other weighed his balls. "Holy…," your eyes looked down, stared in awe at his cock. 
 "Careful little lamb, you drooled on it."
 "Who's not?" You eyed him in disbelief.
 August let out a weird laugh, "I expect you to worship it, then." He looked at you with a bemused expression as you quickly worked on his length. Stroked it up and down repeatedly. 
 You go down on your knees, eyes crossed as you focused on his slit that oozed pre-cum. Unconsciously, you stuck out your tongue and brushed it on his slit. Wrapped your right hand at the base of his cock, your gaze rose up to meet his. Left handheld on his upper thigh for support as your lips covered the heat of his cock. You bobbed your head calculatedly as you accommodate him halfway. 
 "Such a good little lamb for your wolf, aren't you." August's right hand was at the back of your head as he nudged you none too gently. Made you choke at his cock, and pulled it out from your mouth. You gazed at the mix of your saliva and his precum in awe. But it didn't last long as August pulled you to your feet and picked you up. 
 He climbed up on the bed with you and laid on his back. He situated your hips and pulled it closer, so your opening was hovering on top of his face. On all four, for him. August was rewarded with a yelped and a moan as his tongue licked your clothed core. 
 The sound of fabric being ripped made you turn your head to the right. "That's my only pa— ohhh," your protest died right away as his tongue lapped your opening. The feel of his claws as he spread your ass cheeks added wonder to your pussy. 
 Trying to keep yourself busy, you swallowed the head of his cock for a starter. His cock was too big for you; your mouth can only allow half of it. Diligently, you tried to move your tongue while you suck on his cock, hands slid up and down. Feeling all the veins that encircled his length made you shuddered.
 August bucked his hips as you put one of your hands to massaging his balls. The action made you gagged as his cock entered further than before. But it didn't take a long time for you to stop due to his sudden attack on your pussy. 
 His tongue was not lapped at you anymore; it rammed inside your wet core like a starved man. You squealed as the end of his fangs scrapped at your now wet pussy. The pressure on your clit as the pad of his fingers made a circular motion left you breathless. It drove you to your high faster than you ever experienced. A surprised scream left off your lips as his tongue scraped your most sensitive part. Your body quivered as your inner walls spasm, hands held on his cock as you ride your high. 
 "Ohh— my god, ohh—my god—," you can still feel the kitten licked as August feasted on it. 
 "Ahh—that' s—that's good." You let your head rested on his left thigh. 
 "Now, for the main course." August's gruff tone pulled you back from your hazy state. His hard cock was evident on your right hand. 
 You felt your body shifted position, and now you were on your back. August spread your legs wide and shifted his position. The feeling of his heavy cock on top of your pussy made you nervous but also excited. Unconsciously you nibbled your forefingers while eyes traveled down to his long and hard cock. It made an up and down motion on your opening. You can feel your wet pussy clenched in frustration, ready to be filled. 
 "August please…," still nibbled at your fingers, you gaze at the wolf on top of you, one elbow supporting your upper body. He's so big, literally and figuratively. If you can't come back to your world, so be it. You didn't mind staying and being his plaything as long as he wanted you. 
 "Please, what my little lamb?" You pouted at that. You definitely weren't a little lamb. If anything, you should be the succubus. 
 "Please put that in me—," you writhed underneath him. 
 "Please put what?" His big body tower over you. His pupils dilated and only left a small ring of pale blue irises. His clawed fingers move up and down your thigh.
 "Ple—please, ohhhh, put that cock inside me! Fuck me, my wolf— nhhh—," your plead was answered when August suddenly pushed the head of his cock on your opening. 
 The back of your head fell to rest on the thick pillow as the intrusion of August's cock sent a surprising jolt on your body. You knew he's big. But when his cock finally spread your lips open and entered you, the overwhelming sensation was something you still didn't expect. 
 "Ohh— so big—," your pussy clenched immediately when August tried to push deeper but also slowly. The noticeable ridge of his vein scraped at your inner wall deliciously. With closed eyes, you gripped the edge of the pillow as you mumbled about how full you feel right now. 
 "Work your clit for me. Yes...make that tight pussy cream on my cock."
 "Oh—like this?" Your fore and middle fingers slowly pulled the hood and made a circular motion as August asked. 
 "Yes… Just like that…."
 It didn't take you long enough to feel the fast buildup on your lower belly. Something that never happened before. "Ohh—yes—I'm going to cum, my—ahhh," you work your clit faster as August cock made a shallow fuck inside you. 
 "Yes, cum on my cock, my little lamb. I want to see your pretty face when you cum for your wolf." His wolf tone deliciously affected your body. His growl sent an extra twitch on your clit. And you lose it when he thrust all the way inside your wet pussy. 
 You scream in ecstasy as your pussy quivered uncontrollably on his hard cock. You feel so full. The feeling of his cock all the way inside you made your brain feel as if it was submerged. Forgotten that you ever closed your eyes, you were rewarded by a sly smirk on August werewolf's face. His eyes were now all dark. His hair loosened, made the curls of it fall to his forehead. 
 "I see you enjoying yourself, my little lamb." His claws caressed your thigh gently.
 "Nnn—of course, I ahhh—I am." A little movement from August made you aware that his cock still inside you. Hard as a rock. 
 August lifted up both your knees and secured it with his hands. You lifted your upper body with your elbows as he retrieved his cock from your wet core. You gasped when you witnessed August pulled it out, inches by inches. Left only the head inside you.
 You moaned when he pushed again. Stretched you like no one else ever had. He did it slowly, knew that you still adapt to his girth. But the feeling when the tip of his cock scraped your most sensitive part every time he thrust inside you, you were tripped to your high even faster than before. 
 The moan of pleasure became incoherent as August sped up his pace. Repeated syllables of ahhh and ohhh accompanied your plead for him to fuck you like you were a female wolf. Released his pent up frustration to mate. 
 Both of you fuck like an animal who just needs to reproduce. Lust clouded the atmosphere in the room. Moaned and growled were sung like a prayer under the moonlight that shone its way to the basement. 
 His balls slapped against your ass every time he plugged in inside you. Sweats trickled down your body, and it looked even animalistic in August. His werewolf form was so majestic that you just wholly let him own you. 
 His feracious fucking looked like almost to its limit. The buzzed on your lower belly was ready to explode, but you held it.
"Fuck!" He growled.
 "Uhh—uhh—uhh—cum in me. Yes—cum in me, my wolf— filled me up with your thick hot cum!" You pleaded like a bitch in heat. 
 August slammed his cock deep inside you as he screamed and let out a long howl. The feel of his warm cum inside you triggered your orgasm. You wail as your inner walls contracted and squeezed his cock. Spurt and spurt of his cum filled your womb to the brim. Something that you never allowed any of your partners to do in the past. 
 You didn't realize that you lock both your ankles behind August ass. But also you sensed something changed. August was draped on top of your body, head sneaked at the crook of your neck. Still, in a haze caused by the release of oxytocin in your bloodstream, you missed the way August kissed turned into something more. He bit you. 
 The still clouded brain of yours pop-up an image of you becoming August omega. His only mate. Bear a litter of pups for him and live happily ever after in his house, in his world. Your pussy unconsciously clenched at his cock that was still inside you. You never really said this to anyone, but you imagine you live in another world since the first time you ever read a story about omega verse. 
 You mewled when the biting stopped. Maybe August bit you just for fun. When he craned his head up to look at you, something was different. His eyes turned back to his azure color. His fangs now short, back to its regular human teeth, and his body wasn't as hairy as he's before. He's practically not in his werewolf form anymore. 
 "You changed? Why?"
 He looked at you with his quizzical expression. "You wanted me to return to my werewolf form?" 
 You glanced away from him and kind of embarrassed to declare that his werewolf form was way hotter than his human form. Not that his human form wasn't hot either. Damn, you definitely bang him every time you can, but his werewolf form just made you curl your toes in an instant. 
 You cleared your throat and looked him in the eyes, "I like it very much."
 "Well...the full moon is still in the sky for quite some time. Are you ready for the next round, my little lamb?"
 "Yes, my wolf." You purred seductively at him and witnessed in delight his transformation before your eyes.
***
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popculturebuffet · 3 years
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Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review
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“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “ 
Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock
This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III.                                                        Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe. 
See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big  companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers. 
As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point. 
While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while  in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing.  This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome. 
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As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast. 
First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list. 
His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title
Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend. 
Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome. 
Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows. 
Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again. 
Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up. 
Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4. 
So with our major players out of the way,  let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming  story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?
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Shock to the System:
This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands.  Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off.  Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain. 
The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a  kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more.  The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him
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Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself  this is the design he had in the comics
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It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...
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But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have.  This show is just great  at costume design. 
So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback. 
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We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious. 
This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working.  Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant.  Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time. 
So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up.  F-STOP
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That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B
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So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly. 
On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly.  At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in. 
Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do. 
As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?
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I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense. 
Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room. 
So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...
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Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda. 
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Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian. 
And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”
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So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?
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Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go. 
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Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it. 
At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior. 
Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances. 
Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included. 
Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.
That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her.  It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag. 
Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you. 
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Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him.  Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t.  It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to.  So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight. 
However at home Virgil points out it was  Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends
Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow. 
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m4st4rd · 3 years
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i would die for you, clint barton (clint barton x oc)
a/n: HI I’M BACK with a stupid little drabble. the talented @obwjam has reignited my love for comics!clint barton so i wrote a fic of him and an oc. i haven’t proofread it and the ending super sucks but i still managed to churn out about 1900 words so enjoy!!!
i’ll proofread/edit in the morning lol
brig is nb; they/them pronouns pls 
They’re scared, and Clint gets it. He’d be scared, too, if there was some weird giant searching for him. He’s no stranger to the feeling of fear. But when he’s the one causing it, it feels terrible. 
   Brooklyn is in shambles. A new supervillain group tests their weapons on a bank in Bushwick, the Avengers are on the case, a city block is engulfed in chaos and violence. And Clint Barton is searching for a 3-inch-tall person who’s hiding in the alleyway of a Dunkin Donuts.
   He sighs and kneels down, peering under the dumpster. Huddled in the dark is the shaking borrower, who stares back with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. They look like crap: covered in dried blood and dirt, their clothes torn and ratty. But the little guy is stubborn as hell, and hurls a pebble in his direction. They miss by a long shot. He would’ve laughed if the city wasn’t on fire.
   “C’mon out, bud,” he says. A faint boom! rattles the world behind him. “It’s not safe under there. Are you lookin’ to be caught? A rat, an alley cat… God forbid, there might be a human who ain’t as nice as I am.” With a nervous glance behind him, he sees Kate dart past, notching an arrow and letting it fly. “Not to mention that the city’s comin’ apart.”
   They shout something back, and Clint can barely piece together the words leave and alone. It’s not helpful, though, that they’re so small and covered in shadow. And the fact that he can see their teary eyes in the dark is not helping his conscience. Another explosion shakes the earth, and the borrower lets out a wail that he does hear. 
   They’re both getting frantic. He softens his face, puts a pleading look into his eyes. “Please,” he calls. “I can keep you safe.” 
   The borrower doesn’t get to respond. A scream rips through the air, and he’s made up his mind. He jumps to his feet and drags the dumpster back, only getting a glimpse of the sheer terror on their tiny face before he scoops them up in a fist and tucks them into a jacket pocket. It’s not ideal, but if it means they won’t be crushed or eaten, he’ll take it. 
   They’re writhing, and he ignores it. The feeling of them shaking against his chest forms a pit in his stomach. They’re scared, but at least they’re safe.
   The rest of the battle zips by like a blur. Clint spends it shielding the borrower, dodging rubble, and praying to whatever gods present for this little guy to not be so terrified of him. Their shaking has stopped for now, but they’re stiff as a board and flinching with every move he makes. When the fight dies down, he’s left nursing a wound on his shoulder and cupping his hand around his pocket. He’s gotta get out of there, and fast.
   His free hand finds his comms, and he sends a quick farewell message to Kate. She responds quick, familiar beeps filling his ears: Get home safe. See you soon, Hawkeye.
   The message brings a smile to his face, but it disappears when he remembers his job. His day isn’t over yet. 
   He runs his way home. 
   The apartment greets him with blinding fluorescents and a mess on his coffee table. Things that are normally hangover-induced nuisances are now pushed to the far corners of his mind as he limps to his counter. 
   His fingers dive into his pocket, and he does his best to be gentle, but with the little guy swerving away from his hand, he ends up tangled around their limbs, pulling them out in a quivering heap. They’re a pitiful sight; their tiny face is tear-stained, and once they lock eyes, the poor kid flinches back into their protective huddle. 
   They’re speaking, and fast. That much he knows. Their voice is buzzing away. But he can’t understand anything that's coming out. He gets the gist of what they might be saying: there’s a pleading look in their eyes, and their lip is quivering. He doesn’t like this feeling.
   “Hey,” he whispers, cupping his hands closer around the tiny body. “Hey. Look at me.” He nudges their shoulder. They’re practically humming with anxiety. “C’mon, calm down, buddy. You’re okay.” 
   They aren’t making any progress like this. Clint lowers his hands to the countertop and the borrower stumbles off, clutching their chest and scrubbing the tears from their eyes. “Look,” he says softly. “Not touching you anymore, see? You’re fine. You’re okay.”
   He watches with a pang in his heart as they cry for a bit, hugging their knees to their chest, and takes the time to look them over. Their hair is dark and matted, their clothes patchy, their face young, but thin and gaunt. This isn’t the same stubborn little guy he’d met an hour ago; this is someone who is absolutely-fucking-terrified of him. He can barely deal with crying people at his own height; he can’t even begin to comfort someone who’s three inches tall.
   Reasoning sets in as they clear their eyes of the last of their tears. Even if he was well-intentioned, he did sorta… take them. Grab them up and stick them in a pocket. If some giant had done that to him, he’d be pretty scared, too. 
   “Do you understand me?” he tries. The tiny head snaps up, and the kid babbles something that vaguely sounds like sorry and don’t hurt. “No, no, I promise I’m not gonna hurt you… Fuck. I was — I was just tryna keep you safe!” It’s hard to read lips on such a small face, but he gets the gist of it, and it hurts like hell.
   This isn’t working out so great. “Let’s start over, okay? I’m Clint. Clint Barton. And I — I can’t hear you all that well.” 
   That gets them to shut up. The fear disappears from their face, replaced by sheer bewilderment.  (Yeah. As if they’re the one that should be surprised.) They scrub their eyes and stare at him in awe, and Clint can’t help but chuckle. “Weird, I know. But we can figure somethin’ out, alright? You okay to talk? Or just… shake your head, yes or no.” 
   That gets a timid nod. “Great. Good. Not hurt, are you?” A shake. “Thank God for that.” Now we’re getting somewhere. But Clint needs to ask them questions, and he needs to get answers. How is he supposed to talk to someone smaller than his finger?
   His mind is racing. Sign language! It’s a long shot, but just maybe he can get through to them.
   “Do you understand this?” His hands move slow, just in case. But it doesn’t go the way he’s hoping. The borrower shrieks and falls back, and they’re both back to square one. “No, hey, wait! It’s okay!” He signs while he speaks, and the kid watches every move he makes with terrified eyes. “Look — it’s a language! My name is Clint. C-L-I-N-T.” Each letter is deliberate, and with each second, the little guy uncurls from their protective ball. “Now that I’ve told you my name, will you tell me yours?”
   They both fall silent. He holds his breath and watches the tiny face with a furrowed brow. It’s small, almost impossible to see, but there’s a hint of hope in their eyes. He’s so overcome with joy that he doesn’t notice them open their mouth.
   “...ig.”
   He freezes. “Sorry, what?”
   They wither back. “Brig,” they say, louder this time. Their voice is muffled and nervous, but it’s there. And Clint can’t stop himself from smiling. 
   “Brig,” he repeats. “That’s B-R-I-G. See?” He grins. They’re still cautious, but they watch his hands with curious eyes as he signs their name. “It’s nice to meet you, Brig.”
   Good! This is good. Clint can see them coming out of their shell, little by little. They look unsure, but their hands twitch in time with his. “There’s so much you can say with just your hands! This is hello, and this is goodbye. Yes, no, please and thank you— I can teach you, if you want!”
   The magic is gone, and Brig snaps back into their defensive huddle. “T-teach me?” they squeak. “But… would mean…” They glance around the kitchen, eyes widening as they take in the sight. They’re so small compared to everything else. “What about… home?”
   He’s overstepped his boundaries. He kneels to get closer to their level. They reel back, a gesture that goes unnoticed in his concern. “Was that where you live?” he asks. “Near where the fight was?”
   They’re quick to nod. “Left… a bit,” they say. “Rats.” The last syllable is loud, clear, and bitter. “Got caught… the fight.” Brig shrugs, looking nervous and embarrassed. “And by you.”
   Clint frowns. A place like that is dangerous for someone of their size, but he’s in no place to argue. “Is there anyone you stay with? Any family or friends you can go back to?”
   Now they’re silent. His heart plummets when they grimace and look away, a sadness creeping into their eyes. Realization crashes over him when they shake their head.
   He hadn’t thought of that. 
   “You don’t have to stay,” he says gently. Guilt lingers in his chest as he leans back, too, suddenly self conscious about his hands. “I-I can get you back home if you need me too — I can’t imagine it’s all that safe, but if that’s what you want…” The borrower is tense, and Clint is cursing himself for being so hopeful. 
   Finally, after a minute of mulling it over, he gives a resigned sigh. “Damage Control is cleaning the place up,” he tells them. “They should be done in a week or two, okay? You can stay with me, but when they’re done… I’ll bring you back.” Every word hurts more than the last. “Only if you want to. How’s that sound?”
   The kitchen falls silent. Clint’s heart is beating fast, and he bites his tongue as conflicting emotions flicker across the tiny face. “I-I can bring you back now, if you like,” he stammers. “Ya don’t have to stay. A-and you don’t have to tell me exactly where you live, but I can just drop you off and you can be on your way and we’ll b —”
   “I’ll stay.” 
   This time, the little voice comes out strong. “You — you will?” he says.
   They nod shyly in response, and he can piece together what they say next: “Just… back… my feet.” Just until I’m back on my feet. 
   He can live with that.
   Clint’s heart swells with triumph. He can’t remember the last time he was this happy. There’s no explaining why he feels this way. “O-Okay. Awesome. Welcome home, Brig.”
   He glances back at the mess in his apartment, then to the mess of his clothes, too. They’re both covered in dust and blood, but neither care about it as Clint laughs. “We should probably get cleaned up first, though. What do you say?”
   He’s smiling. And for the first time all day, Brig is smiling, too.
   They’ve got a lot of work to do.
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katierosefun · 3 years
Text
back on my w: two worlds bullshit but also make it star wars and obi-wan and anakin angst, because in typical caroline fashion, i’ve wondered about like. au? au. like, lowkey a canon divergence but also not a canon divergence au, i don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s really fucking meta--
anyways. thoughts under the cut, because i don’t want to burden anyone with ‘caroline what are you talking about why don’t you just write/don’t you have things to do’ shhhHHHHhh at this point i’m just a miserable pile of half-written docs and ideas but let me word-vomit for a second  (but also please do indulge me in this because i need to scream and i lowkey am into this idea but also i have too many things to write but also)
okay, so i’ve already rambled a bit about w: two worlds, but basically, the actual kdrama’s premise is that a young woman accidentally is dragged into the world of the comic/webtoon her father writes--essentially, this young woman saves the comic protagonist’s life, and she keeps accidentally slipping into the world, and it’s just. it’s so fucking meta and so fucking good and so fucking smart, and even though i think this is the kind of story that you.....can’t really mimic just because of how fucking smart and unique it is, it still got me thinking about star wars but make it “w” and uh--
disclaimer: i don’t think i’d ever actually write this because it would be so niche and also so incredibly convoluted, idk man i’m just kinda going off here: 
- so, the events of rots do happen. (note how i said that this is still slight canon-divergence au but also not? yeah, it’s about to get super complicated) 
- and of course, at this point, the galaxy like....no one except like obi-wan and yoda and bail actually know that darth vader is anakin, right? i think that’s what the situation is? 
- anyways, i think that’s where the story picks up: obi-wan’s in the middle-of-nowhere tatooine, and no one knows where/what the fuck happened to anakin skywalker, but we know that anakin skywalker was a pretty well-respected/public figure (because war propagandaaaaa) 
- anyways, thinking about obi-wan kenobi coming into town one day and realizing that people are shadily passing around a data pad to look at hey, this story just updated!!! this story just updated, and obi-wan realizes that there’s a rebelling artist somewhere out in the galaxy making comics about a young man who just so happens to Look Like and Act Like and also is named Anakin Skywalker, except he’s not a jedi, he’s just a regular guy making an honest living in the galaxy (and also on the hunt to avenge his friends’ and his family’s mysterious deaths) 
- i know, really fucking meta at this point 
- things are harmless enough: obi-wan tries to ignore this comic’s existence (if anything, he’s a little insulted by it because how dare you use his face and his name and turn it into...whatever this is), but like. 
- the thing is, grief is a funny thing, and sometimes you start to look for your person everywhere. 
- so obi-wan winds up reading along. he reads, and sometimes he thinks that things are a little too eerie--like, apparently, obi-wan is one of the people who was mysteriously killed / anakin’s mom was mysteriously killed / the dialogue is way too fucking real-- 
- anyways, the comic updates one day: obi-wan sees that the author has somehow decided to basically almost kill off anakin--bleeding out in the middle of nowhere, and obi-wan just watches and it’s painful because this isn’t actually anakin, this is just a comic character-- 
- and that’s when obi-wan gets pulled in. 
- obi-wan kenobi--our obi-wan kenobi--staring at this anakin skywalker-but-not-really-anakin-skywalker, who is bleeding out at his feet-- 
- obi-wan saves anakin’s life because what else is he gonna do, it doesn’t matter if this guy is a comic book character or not--he’s still going to save this person who has his best friend’s face 
- obi-wan gets transported back into his world. he looks down at the comic to find a drawing of himself saving the comic-anakin and promptly freaks tf out because that just happened why did that happen how the fuck did that happen 
- anyways, lots of other things happen. obi-wan now sometimes gets randomly pulled into this comic, and the comic-anakin skywalker is freaking out a little too because he’s like “you look exactly like my best friend, only my best friend was murdered”. and our obi-wan’s just like “yeah. i know the feeling--” 
- meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, imagine darth vader/anakin walking past a bunch of stormtroopers/former clone troopers and discovering this comic (lol this is kinda funny but also kinda not, because vader’s going to be like “find this artist and kill them”) 
- but who is the artist? who is the author? do we know? (we do not. at least, not right away.) 
- but anyways, back to obi-wan and comic-anakin: holy shit, okay, it seems like i’m getting a little invested now oh no, but anyways, in the comic, obi-wan still meets others: he meets a comic-padme (who is Not Married to comic anakin but there’s obviously some flirting there), and he meets a comic-ahsoka and a comic-rex, and it’s utterly painful for obi-wan because. because in this world. in this world, things are kind of okay. 
- comic-anakin still doesn’t know where obi-wan’s come from though--comic-anakin doesn’t know that he’s just a comic character. (which makes for Bad Realizations later.) 
- uh now there are other details i want to work out and an Actual Storyline in the process here in this what started as a joke to now what is turning into a brainstorm, but like-- 
- the actual plot? idk probably something to do with comic-anakin slowly realizing that he is. actually. just some grieving author’s fantasy / darth vader in real-time tracking down obi-wan and whoever tf is writing this comic / obi-wan constantly being yanked into this world against his will. 
- angst? so much angst. 
- just thinking about how our obi-wan decides to help comic-anakin.....comic-anakin being like “who are you?” / obi-wan: “me? i’m someone who wants you to have a happy ending. at least in this life. in this world.” / comic-anakin: ??? 
- kind of a bittersweet ending ngl-- 
- comic-anakin learns the truth: everything, from the fact that he. he is but someone’s imagination, to the fact that obi-wan comes from the Real World and that the Anakin Skywalker of the Real World turns into a villain/is the real killer of everyone he’s ever loved. 
- sad. so sad. 
- but ends with comic-anakin giving our obi-wan one last hug. (”i’m sorry that you never got to save your anakin.” / obi-wan trying really, really, really hard not to cry because a part of him doesn’t want to leave this world. this world where everyone’s safe and alive, but he has to go. in the end, he always has to go.) 
- as obi-wan leaves, comic-anakin smiles at him. (”i’m someone who’s rooting for you to have a happy ending.”) 
- anyways. uh. oh god. 
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doorsclosingslowly · 3 years
Text
Hell is just a beat away (3/9)
Despite early promise, young Maul has turned out to be a disappointment, willfully delaying his training with secret attempts to make himself friends from scrap metal. He must be properly motivated, and so Darth Sidious sends him to a slave market on an impossible mission. It backfires. Star Wars: Darth Maul (2017) comic AU | 5.2k | warning for slavery, sexual assault of a teenager (non-graphic)
Ten to doomsday, moving fast
Eldra does not sleep. She refuses. If she has to bite her fingers bloody when her eyelids threaten to drop, then so be it. Master Fyaar would have chastened her for it—she always insists that Eldra be at her best regardless of circumstance, and staying awake for what must be more than one or two entire standard days now will help with neither her innate distractibility nor her willful emotions. Her secret inadequacy, unknown to all but Fyaar, who chose Eldra when she was ten and had yet to develop the mind that is, and she has rarely admitted to those fears even in the privacy of her own brain, the mind that is perhaps fundamentally unsuited to the noble path of the Jedi. Sure, she does well enough in her classes, though she drives her teachers to frustration with her incessant fiddling with any trinket at all within her reach and her doodling and her daydreams. Sure, she mostly behaves acceptably among people, though she does not pick up on the right cues to be a diplomat and she vacillates too often between excited talking and secret loneliness, when she, once again, finds her peers more interested in each other than in whatever she has wanted to share. Her one friend in the Order is Bayro who’s two years older, though now she’s not even sure if Bayro would see her as more than a friendly, clingy acquaintance, and—
Will Bayro even miss her? They’ve made plans to watch a holovid after Eldra’s back from Teth and Bayro aces the Advanced Test on Coruscant Sublevels 6665 through 7900. Vague plans, though, and since Eldra didn’t know how long she’d have to guard Mayor Woobudg… Bayro will probably notice in a few months that Eldra hasn’t returned to the Temple, and then watch the holovid with one of her many other friends. She’ll—
Watch your feelings, Eldra, she remembers. It hurts. The memory of Master Fyaar hurts worse than even the imaginary indifference of Bayro does, but it’s necessary. As ever, Master Fyaar’s warning is right, even if it’s only the ghost of Fyaar living on inside Eldra’s grief. Eldra almost lost her calm over a scenario of her own imagination, yet another reminder of her unsuitable mercurial temperament. Yet another reminder of why she needs Fyaar, needs her constant watch, if she wants to remain on the path of the Jedi.
And Master Zalandas Fyaar is dead.
Fyaar’s dead.
Eldra watched her murder, and the murder of everyone she was supposed to protect on this mission. Eldra watched her murder and did not reach for the dark side of the force to avenge her. Eldra watched and held still.
Eldra allowed herself to be abducted.
She does not sleep in her tiny cell, just as she didn’t sleep on the freight ship that carried her to an unknown planet far away from bloodied Teth. She didn’t sleep then as stubbornly as she does now, but even before her wide-open burning eyes the pictures will not stop. The blood. The touch. The grin of her vile captor when he said that she would fetch a tidy sum, despite being a blue twi’lek (“A dime a dozen, they are, and this one’s not even a trained dancer! She hasn’t even… look!” Her captor had pulled her upper lip away then, and she had snapped for his fingers. “She’s still got those awful sharp teeth! Who the hell lets a twi’lek girl walk around with sharp teeth? She could tear a guy’s throat out, with these!”) she would still be worth a quick sale to her captors but only because she is (was) a Jedi padawan, and apparently there are quite a few pieces of shit out there who’d like to hurt a Jedi. Or—she keeps her eyes open, open, open till tears threaten to drop, and yet the thought comes. Or fuck one. Same difference.
A toy that’s padawan-shaped. That’s why they let her keep her own robes. But at least they did.
Watch your feelings, but still, Eldra shakes to her very core. She’s never thought of herself as being anything but a person, slightly inadequate perhaps in all ways that matter to her but a person; a luminous being, a small conduit for the very force to act through in the material galaxy; but now she’s been caught and taught that what she is is actually just a twi’lek girl. Cheap. Interchangeable. Nothing but her species and her gender, nothing but her flesh: a pretty dancer, never mind she hates dancing and if she ever makes it out, if the Jedi find and rescue her, please, please, she will never ever dance not even a single one of those silly novelty dances ever again even if Bayro does it first. She’ll go to whatever lengths needed to never be appraised, judged, looked upon, perceived as anything but a luminous dutiful Jedi ever again.
To these people, she’s not a person. Not a Jedi, unless the fetish counts, not really, not to the slavers and—watch your feelings, but still, the seething disgust returns and she wants nothing more than her lightsaber through her captor’s hearts or their hands torn off by her teeth—perhaps, maybe, please no, not truly anymore either to herself.
Maul wakes up to insistent beeping. He’s never heard the noise before, except—somewhere behind the headache and the nausea he remembers—except roughly five minutes ago, and five minutes before that, and five minutes before… He’s read about those periodical noises. Snooze button on an alarm clock, they’re called. He’s never used them before. He’s never used—Master teaches that a slothful tool is a tool broken, useless, and he’s never before dared to oversleep, even with his throat swollen and filled with mucus he didn’t, but now—it is a mercy he does not deserve, that Master was not here to witness Maul fail so deeply on this mission and just because something beats a booming drum inside his head and stuffed his stomach full of eels twisting up languidly through his esophagus.
Not real eels, though. He checks his vomit after throwing up. No eels. No animals hatched inside him; it’s just an inconvenient illness. And he feels better already, after spewing out the clear oily water and half-digested bread and no eels whatsoever. He does feel much better. Definitely. Illness during his mission would be inconvenient.
He has ample time to travel to the palace of Xev Xrexus before the padawan is sold there. Time he is grateful for, because Master’s ship will not let him in, so he has no access to his stilts or anything else he prepared apart from his cloak and the vocoder mask he carried in his satchel to the convenience store like a talisman of ingenuity and pretense. He doesn’t have his finest Sith robes that he left safe inside, only to be worn in the moment of Darth Maul’s triumph, and most of his weapons, too, apart from one anonymous knife strapped to his shin, are still tidied away in the ship Master gave him that will now pulverize anyone who dares approach.
Luckily, Maul is both incredibly clever—he figured out the location of the padawan! Despite Master giving him a wrong date and location! Solely by his own superior Sith cunning!—and he is within another sucker’s ship now—he sliced the lock in minutes! Because he is Darth Maul!—and the ship is full of new tools for improvisation.
Such as the large pair of black sunglasses that helps guard him at least slightly against the sun’s sickening poking and poking and poking of his cerebral cortex. Such as the trio of black shirts that, belted with a strange deltoid strip of fabric, bulk up his frame considerably and also make him feel toasty warm. Nar Shaddaa is cold, but Maul isn’t. Yet another victory to add to his tally.
With the gloves and the vocoder mask and the Sith cloak added on top, every square centimeter of Maul’s flesh is covered, and as he struts in front of the berth mirror he decides: he looks both incredibly dignified and scary, not to himself obviously but to those forcenull denizens of the underworld who will yet learn to tremble before the almighty Sith. He looks almost as impressive as Master. He doesn’t have the pale chin lurking under his cowl, obviously the most Sithly of looks, but in a pinch the black leather covering his cheeks and the opaque gridded speaker over his mouth should do almost as well.
Before he leaves, he ransacks the ship. No point in abandoning tools he might yet use. Everything he can carry, he stuffs inside his satchel.
Then, he begins the long pedestrian march to the palace of Xrexus. As usual, while he walks, he seethes in the Sithly anger of how much faster he could go if only he had a decent speeder bike. Soon, he reminds himself. Soon. After the oncoming awesome success of this mission, Master will be impressed enough to bestow the title of Darth and gift him a CK-6 swoop bike tuned up to the limits of terrestrial speed. Soon. Besides, with how slow the nausea is to settle, it’s perhaps a tiny bit useful that he is forced to take this brisk long walk in the Nar Shaddaa morning air. Although his coat and shirts fluttering with the speed of his bike would look very cool… He loses himself in his daydreams, and before long, he spies a duo of falleen in white dress shirts and black pants before the palace that belongs to Xev Xrexor.
The most adventurous part of his mission has just begun.
“Greetings,” Maul growls haughtily with the handsome baritone of his vocoder. “I have chosen to purchase a Jedi slave today. I trust this is the location for these sorts of errands?”
“Are you on the guest list?” the left falleen asks.
Guest list? Yet another complication. But Maul must not fail. “I am Ma Goweelr,” he says, borrowing the name of the man whose ship he ransacked. He found an identification card with his name on it and wisely brought it with him. He pulls it out now.
“You don’t look like Goweelr, friend,” she says.
“Unfortunately, I had… an accident.” Blast. They cannot see his face, so tt’s the height issue again. If Maul had his stilts, he could have made his way through easily, but because Master saw fit to lock the ship—no, it’s not Master’s fault. Because Maul was stupid enough to leave his tools aboard the ship, he now falters. What to do. What to do. What to—
“He’s slow,” the other bouncer whispers to his partner, but loudly enough that Maul heard it without issue. He stares intently at Maul, almost if he was expecting a specific reaction.
The left falleen winks. “All right. A little grease in the palm goes a long way, friend.”
Grease? Necessary for the function of machines. Cooking, apparently, also. Often a type of fat, either animal or plant-based, though hydrocarbons mined on certain planets or synthesized in labs such as Corellia’s X-Tech Max nowadays are a far more affordable and controllable—
“He’s dumb, Brighta. We don’t care whether you’re on the guest list. We want a bribe.”
A… Maul’s certain he read about bribes somewhere, but—
“Cash. Money. Credits.”
Credits! Maul found some on the ship. Since they were light enough, he put them in his satchel. The force is with him! He pulls out the chits he found, rummaging in a perhaps less than dignified way—the falleen exchange a look over his head that he’s too busy to try to read, but it doesn’t seem hostile—and when he hands over five thousand credits their vague non-hostility turns to genuine excitement.
“House Xrexus is honored to host you for this auction, sir,” the male falleen says when he opens the door.
“As am I,” Maul replies with a bow. When he walks past, the female bouncer taps him on the shoulder and then bends down to whisper in his ear.
“The Jedi’s auction’s in two hours, but the preview starts in one and she’ll probably get snapped up then, so. Might wanna hurry.”
“Thank… you?” Maul rumbles and winces at the vocoder turning his slight surprise into a question, but the falleen does not laugh this time.
“Appreciative customers are rare. Come back anytime,” and she winks and pushes him with her—warm, strong, startling—hand the rest of the way through the door and then slams it shut.
Presale. Other customers. Complicating factors Maul would not even have known about if it wasn’t for the bouncer—and for the force, therefore, willing him to succeed—because he didn’t… He did not actually expect any competition. After all, there are no other Sith but the Master and his apprentice. Who, then, would have need of a Jedi padawan? Who has need of Xrexus’ auction at all when they are not sent by their Master? Their… Master. Master might compete with Maul at this sale, both as a test of Maul’s readiness and as a failsafe, should Maul not manage to succeed in his mission. Master is incredibly smart after all, and foresees any number of possible twists and turns of a scenario, as unlikely as they might be. Even such unlikely eventualities as Darth Maul not completing in his mission. Master considers everything. It’s why he’s the Master.
Luckily, Maul was forewarned, and so when he passes a fire exit plan of the palace that’s nailed to a wall in the empty entrance hall he looks for any possible… There. A server room. A small bureau. Two places where Maul might gain access to the databases of Xrexus and convince the filing system that he has already bought the Jedi, before the first competitor has even placed their bid. It’s the only surefire way of preempting a person as thorough and prompt as Master is, and besides… Maul understands machines. He can charm and bend them to his will. His confusion at the bouncers’ hints and the tip the falleen gave him when he would never have expected anything of the sort based on the way the previous part of the encounter had passed—never mind the blasted lack of his carefully constructed stilts—were a sore reminder that in the field of people Maul does not yet excel to the standard of a Sith. Something he must remedy, but perhaps not on a mission as important as this. (Perhaps not among people who are oily and stare too hard.)
Laughter peals in a room straight ahead, but the server room is one floor down a side staircase. It’s sectioned off by a dangly gold chain that Maul needs to barely duck to pass under, and no-one passes through either the main corridor he left or the dusty unlit staircase while Maul hops down, thinking I am Sith alternating with I am shadow on every step.
The hallway leading to the server room is just as deserted. The door is locked, but Maul has sliced the access pads of twelve ships now and has refined his technique to under three minutes of elegant fiddling. This lock takes two seconds.
A datapad is already hanging inside right next to the door, from the cable with which it’s plugged into a socket there. Maul picks it up. Its screen is thrice-cracked and fixed up with clear tape. The touchscreen is incredibly sluggish to react, but as much as he might love the challenge of repairing it he only has less than an hour to spare. If he must, he will, but—gloves. He removes the right one, and the datapad responds.
A login screen.
Thus-far, the security has been abysmal. Worse than what he improvised for the secret hiding space of the first functional droid he built, and so he enters root, root. It works.
Pathetic, Maul thinks. Disappointing. Embarrassing. Horrendous. Useless. Awful. You deserve this. You deserve worse. It almost takes off some of the giddiness at how well Maul has been performing on his mission, thus far. His opponents are veritable morons. It is no great feat, to succeed against people as unprepared for basic survival as these, and it does not take a Sith’s cunning—it’s not worthy of the great Darth Maul who learns under Darth Sidious the greatest creature in the galaxy—to fight them.
In the central database he changes the status of the Jedi padawan to Sold and the buyer to Ma Goweelrand types in 666666666 for the winning bid. It’s a large number, and Jedi means valuable. It should pass muster. Probably. Money: yet another area where Maul requires further instruction. There was another card Maul stole with information on Goweelr’s account with the InterGalactic Banking Clan, and he enters it in the respective field. As to the user listed as making these changes, he picks the fifth-most appearing in the database. If he wanted to arouse no suspicion at all, he would need to research Xrexus’ organization in total, but—he’d really rather not. Even glancing at some of the entries of the database reawakened the eels in his stomach.
He pettily changes the admin password and wipes the screen carefully before he logs out.
Mission almost complete.
Half an hour left until the beginning of the presale, a clock tells him, and that’s most likely when they will check the padawan’s entry and approach Goweelr as her legitimate buyer. Everything is going according to plan, as long as he is not caught down here.
Since Maul is Sith and shadow and incredibly silent and deadly, he isn’t.
He sneaks back up and then strides, with as much power and dignity as he can muster when he wants to skip giddily to celebrate a job well done, into the room where the laughter comes from. It’s—
It’s bright. Loud. Full. But more than any other adjective, it’s huge, a room that is a thousand times bigger than anything Maul has ever set foot in, with a domed ceiling rising so far above that he can’t make out any details there. Can’t see whether there are any cameras, or snipers—can’t see anything but the luster and wealth on display. Plants growing on floating bowls of silver, plants he has never seen anywhere but in holos (Most plants are plants he’s only ever seen in holos. Almost all of them. Master rarely makes him train off-planet, and there is nothing but fire on Mustafar.), plants and waterfalls. Delicate staircases that appear to hover in the air just like the tree-bowls are. It looks like something out of a dream, if Maul’s dreams were able to imagine impossible worlds and not just impossible people who’ll save him.
Below it all, there are throngs of people in various kinds of festive garb, chatting and sipping on dainty glasses. People of most species he’s ever read about. Even…
Even a zabrak. There’s a zabrak over in a corner, not an Iridonian zabrak like the ones Maul finds often in his research but a zabrak who looks startingly close to him, hairless and bright and black-marked, only he’s much taller than Maul—he’s tall! Maul always worried that his species was doomed to remain as small as he is right now but he’s tall! He won’t need stilts forever!—and he’s yellow.
Idly—or trying to appear idle but actually shivering with curiosity—he saunters closer. The zabrak, it’s quickly obvious, is not here as a buyer. He’s chained up, both manacles connected to the neck cuff, though the bonds look so flimsy that Maul could have snapped them. He’s almost naked except for a pair of trousers that barely reaches his thighs and, moreover, is made of a fabric far too flimsy and tight to fight in. His skin is weirdly shiny as well, as if he was sweating but that is unlikely, given Maul’s not too hot under his three shirts and a cloak (in fact, it gets colder the closer Maul comes to the strange zabrak), and the yellow zabrak’s not exercising either but standing completely still, feet slightly apart and arms raised in a poor imitation of a fighting pose. The claws on his hand and feet would be called neatly trimmed if Maul didn’t know intimately that this length means they’re cut so close to the bed that it irritates several internal nerves. The horns are filed too close as well, and they look blunt.
A fighting slave.
No. A pretend fighting slave.
Everything about him might look fearsome to one who does not know what to watch for, but he does not stand or dress or groom himself like a fighter.
It’s—it’s difficult for Maul to sort out his reaction. This is a zabrak, the first person like him he’s ever seen, but he’s also a mockery of the warrior he trains so hard to become. Are all other zabraks like this? Does Maul look like this to other people? Flimsy and fake? It is almost enough to be ashamed of the association, and Maul is glad that with his clothes no-one else here can guess at their shared species.
“Welcome,” the unchained human next to the zabrak shouts, and Maul cranes his neck but apparently it’s addressed to him. “What are you looking for? A nightly companion? A gladiator? A—”
“This is not a gladiator,” Maul growls.
“Ah, well, he’s versatile,” the slaver says. “Do you see his muscles?” He squeezes the other zabrak’s biceps. The zabrak does not react. “He is excellent at bearing pain as well,” and alright, Maul will give him that. From this close, he can see the faint network of scars.
“He’s truly a wild beast when you want him that way,” and if to contradict him—the first time Maul feels anything approaching pride at their kinship—the zabrak refuses to bare his teeth, even when the human slaps him in the face twice and then prods him with something bearing electric sparks. Still, the zabrak will not relent. He’s breathing and moving but somewhere deep in his eyes he looks nothing short of dead.
“I have business elsewhere,” Maul stutters out and the vocoder smooths it into a low growl. The queasy pit in his stomach must be the return of the eels, or else the force aims to reveal to him that he might be being observed by fleets of holodroids, a technological wonder he should research immediately upon completion of his mission, when he will never think of the scar-covered zabrak and his empty eyes ever again. He won’t even remember his face or his color. No, Maul will attempt to engineer holodroids and present them to his Master, who will be proud.
That’s what he thinks about, while he wanders the huge room at random. Holodroids. He doesn’t think about zabraks. In fact, he’s forgotten every fact he ever heard about that species. No zabraks exist but Maul. That’s the way it goes.
He doesn’t think of zabraks at all for several more minutes, and then a tannoy system message calls out for Ma Goweelr and his time of floating is over.
Thus far, the boy’s little adventure has been a disappointment. There were moments of fear and shame and misery, but mostly, what Sidious receives from him is bright giddy elation at being entrusted with this mission. It should have figured that Maul is not intelligent enough to see through his Master’s true plans, and yet—it was folly on his part, Sidous is prepared to admit that, but he expected more of his little zabrak.
Well. More agony, mostly.
He’ll have to be a little more patient. Someday soon, Maul’s luck will have to run out.
“This is her, Sir. Opening the cell now,” a woman says in front of the suddenly-bright cell, and Eldra’s hard-won, tattered, wide-eyed serenity dissipates.
It’s Dilar. Dilar, self-loathing traitor of a twi’lek slave. Eldra’s only known her for a day and enjoyed exactly zero seconds of it. The old woman’s hatred and revulsion at what she is forced to do, preparing slaves to be sold on, crowds out the very air. For the slavers, her utter loathing might be imperceptible—Dilar is a grudging, but polite tool—but it’s everywhere in the force, and Eldra cannot breathe. It’s hard enough keeping herself calm—keeping herself Jedi—when she knows that any time now a lecher with a Jedi fetish will come to her cell.
A lecher, or her rescuer.
Watch your feelings: do not give in to despair, Eldra, as Fyaar would say if she could. Maybe a Jedi will come.
It’s a war inside her, equal parts of hope and terror, and without her Master’s guidance how will Eldra find the strength to make herself calm again? Calm, serene, like the Jedi she was supposed to be.
A Jedi is better than this.
There is no emotion. There is peace.
There is no hatred, especially. Eldra should not hate Dilar. She shouldn’t hate every single slaver in the entire world, with even deeper depths of seething odium reserved for anyone selling or buying her. She shouldn’t. She does.
She isn’t wearing a force-suppressant collar, but that doesn’t matter. There are things far more binding than chains, than collars, in this world: Eldra promised her Master that she would be strong. She promised. She promised, and she hates these slavers. If she reached for the force now, she wouldn’t be able to call herself Jedi anymore. She would fail her Master and lose herself.
She would use her hatred to kill her tormentors. She would tear their throats out.
She would Fall.
Fear, raging and cold, has been her only companion for uncounted waking days now, that and bitter loathing. Master Fyaar died in front of her. Eldra’s been stripped of everything she thought she was and turned into a commodity, and now the only bright spot in her life is the fact that Martrey Woobudg the slaver, slaver, slaver who brought them to Teth is also fucking dead. Hopefully, it hurt.
The sudden hope is new, fragile and staggering and still too volatile to make reaching for the force safe. Hope: maybe the new arrival isn’t one of them. Eldra’s Master was in constant contact with the Temple, after all, and they must know about the ambush by now. They must have sent someone to save Eldra. (She tries very very hard not to remember that they don’t, sometimes, search for missing padawans, because of deferring to a higher purpose and the will of the force and being instruments of the Galactic Senate and not privileging attachments, including to their padawans, over the greater good et cetera et cetera, which is a code of conduct that Eldra, too, had always believed in. Until she got thrown in this cell, at least.)
Please, let it be a Jedi. Even if she gets thrown out for her hatred. Please, let it be a Jedi.
“Get up, girl,” Dilar says.
Eldra struggles onto her feet. She almost loses her balance, and that would kriffing hurt, because she’s got little chance of breaking her fall. Her hands are cuffed in front of her, encased in thin manacles she could easily break out of if it wasn’t pointless. If she wasn’t watched at all times. If she could use the force without Falling. If there was any way off this planet she doesn’t even know the name of. She could break them, but she can’t. They’re tight, and her shoulders ache from the forced immobility. (Almost, she’d told the slavers that restraining someone like this for days on end was a sure way of causing muscle damage, that they were lowering her value—were hurting her, by treating her like this, but she’d reconsidered. It would probably count as ‘helping slavers’. She hopes instead that they lose all their captives to their own bad practices. Eldra will not help them, if it kills her.)
If her visitor is a slaver, they’ll probably enjoy the sight of her helplessness. If they’re a Jedi, there may be compassion, pity, judgment—they’ll feel how scared she is, and how close to breaking—and that’ll be even more embarrassing to deal with afterwards, but at least there will be an afterwards for her.
For a second, the force floods with pain. Anger. Then, the presence hides itself again. Doesn’t matter. She’s felt it.
A force user.
A… Jedi, then?
Would a Jedi… Eldra herself would be angry, if she saw anyone else treated the way she is now, no matter how hard she tries for serenity. Eldra isn’t a good Jedi though. She’s too scared for that.
She looks up. If the visitor is a Jedi, Eldra doesn’t recognize them. But that means nothing: they’re covered head-to-toe in layers of black fabric. They’re wearing some sort of mask that covers their lower face, too, and oversized mirrored-glass sunglasses, and gloves, and a cowled cloak and what looks like at least two shirts, one over the other. They look like a black ball with legs sticking out. They look like someone decided to dress up as the platonic concept of shady. They look ridiculous.
They’re very short as well. They’re about twice the height of Grandmaster Yoda, and shorter than pretty much everybody else that Eldra knows. Well… they could be Master Piell. Would Master Piell dress up like this, though? Would he come to rescue her? Would he… well, he wouldn’t feel like the visitor in the force. Even Piell is a Master of the High Council. He wouldn’t fall prey to emotions as easily as Eldra did. He would not fail the light.
The only bit of skin that Eldra can make out is the bridge of the nose, between the jaw-mask and those sunglasses. Red.
Whoever it is isn’t human.
It might give hope, but—whoever it is has already paid and they own Eldra now, they tell the slavers, in a deep and slightly mechanic voice.
Paid.
Own.
Not a rescue, then. The Jedi wouldn’t reward a slaver for abducting a padawan.
Eldra will not cry. Not because if does not befit a Jedi, because the Jedi didn’t come for her. Eldra remained faithful—barely—she didn’t give in to her hatred and fear, didn’t Fall… and no-one came to rescue her. She will never see the temple again. She’ll never watch those holovids with Bayro, and Bayro—will she even notice? Will she mourn Eldra? Or will she be relieved that the clingy kid is gone?
She won’t cry. She will not give Dilar or this new buyer the satisfaction.
The shielding of Eldra’s cell opens. Dilar attaches a chain to Eldra’s manacles and her buyer ties the other end to their belt. They barely look at her, at least—in the nightmares she refused to allow herself to grow into images they always looked at her, excited and hungry, but this buyer seems curt and weirdly business-like.
Without another word, they start walking.
Eldra has no choice but to follow. The Jedi didn’t come. She is alone. Whatever awaits her outside, though, it can hardly be worse than this cell.
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the-littlefangirl · 3 years
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TFATWS episode 1 rewatch commentary
The first scene was so beautiful. I loved that we didn't start directly with the fight sequence. It feels way closer to the quiet beginning of CATWS and I love it so much.
The title is also SO NEAT, music's on point too but hey it’s Henry Jackman the one thing I’m sure it’s going to be great overall is the score.
The choreography is AMAZING, really well shot. Sam shielding himself with only one wing was MA-JES-TIC.
“WHAT'S UP” EXACTLY SAM EXACTLY
I did feel so uncomfortable in regards to the military aspect of it. Not that I was expecting anything else, but both here and in Captain Marvel the military we're good guys < 3 propaganda is so blatant and ugh:/ At least there wasn’t a literal recruitment spot like with CM. 
The yellow filter in the Tunisia scene BYE please stop with the yellow filters 2k21
"I've been working with the Air Force for six months now" So, did Sam even catch a break at all after Endgame? Or did he just throw himself to work like SOMEONE did after being iced for 70 years. Hmmm? Sam????
"Essentially, these people, they want a world that's unified without borders" OH NO! HOW AWFUL, how evil of these bad guys smh
Joaquin: SO about Steve
Sam: :)))))) nope
"Moon stuff" SAAAM
#1 cry with Sam's speech, full on chills.. Fuck. Me. His voice about to break before saying thank you bYE.
Shady politician: "It was the right decision" (FUCKKKKK YOUUU)
Rhodey: *press any key to doubt *
I need someone to analyze the different curation of the two exhibits pretty please
NOT THE PHOTO POST-AZZANO JFC. That photo is my weakness, Bucky sweetie (also I find hilarious that usually when there are articles about Stucky and/or #givecaptainamericaaboyfriend they aaaalways use that photo LMAO)
In case someone wants to read the transcription of the texts about Bucky: "In 1944, while on a mission to thwart a Hydra weapon transport in the Alps, Barnes was thrown from a train and believed to have been killed in action. It wasn't until 2014, over seventy years later, that it was revealed that Barnes was alive, having been found by Hydra operatives. Captain America himself (i can't read) the effort to bring Barnes in only to later aid in a escape from custody having been convinced of his innocence. Steve's loyalty to his old friend, coupled with his refusal to sign the Sokovia Accords, led to the dissolution of the Avengers and drove the Captain into hiding with other like-minded Avengers including Natasha Romanoff, Wanda Maximoff, and Sam Wilson. The current whereabouts of Barnes remains unknown, habing been labeled a fugitive following his escape from custody."
"current wherabout unknown" but not the government, interesting. Also, pretty good summary of CACW from the public's perspective, although one of the things I always wanted to see explored was the public's reaction of the fallout of them going into hiding after Civil War (which I'm hoping we'll get to see a little bit of in Black Widow).
Interesting point about the 70 years without having Captain America. Clearly the sacrifice play wasn't enough this time to fuel the nationalism so they went with a squeaky clean John Walker instead.
Sam saying the shield belongs to Steve I'm going to cry now excuse me. Sam. Sam sweetie.
The No. 1 Captain America comic in the display ugH fuck yes
See this is how you do a cameo that has actual meaning. Thank god for Malcolm Spellman being a competent writer. That scene was so well written.
HAVE YOU PRAISED ANTHONY MACKIE'S PERFORMANCE TODAY?? Holy shit that last shot fucked me up.
I'm loving the use of the wide shots, especially in the flashback. The camera movements are in synch with The Soldier's state of mind and mission focus, so good.
EVERYONE STAND UP FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM aka The Winter Soldier theme composed by Henry Jackman.
Without a doubt the most brutal TWS fight scene there has been, People involved in Punisher and John Wick are involved in this and it SHOWS. 
For the record, still stands that the only time we've seen him chocking someone with his right hand instead of the metal arm remains the Maria Stark assasination. I know it's probably because of blocking and the way the shot was composed but the implications are still bone chilling. God.
Uhhmmmm I'm very ambivalent about the "Hail Hydra". On one hand, it was 100% fanservice and the internet is probably going to go insane over it, and the dead way Sebastian Stan delivered the line. Good shit. Buuut what I love about CATWS is the way Bucky never, ever ever, mouths Hydra rethoric, and even when Pierce tries to gaslight him with it, it's just an empty effort. The Winter Soldier isn't doing anything because of ideological loyalty to Hydra, even if it's product of brainwashing, it's just sheer dehumanization. They don’t need him to say the words because he’s just An Asset. There are people who have put it more eloquently but yeah, I rather go with the fanon interpretation of that aspect.
The music growing louder with the shot of the keys. GOD.
I'm fine this is fine.
#2 cry with the therapy scene of fucking course.
The government monitoring Bucky is noooot going to end well lmao.
"We need to know that you're not gonna * slowmo stabbing motions *
Bucky: * nodding along slowly * 
I laughed out loud.
"It's passive agressive" I love him.
The way this scene just sucker punched me in the face, made me weep and then had me cracking up. Amazing.
Therapist: You can't do anything illegal
Bucky: yup yup check checkity check. What IS considered illegal tho?
*aggresive tablet finger pressing *
"Then why isn't it rule number one?" Bucky your Steve is showing.
I love the close up shot. I'll keep saying it. It's so good.
"I'm James Bucky Barnes" yeah you are🥺
That smile is nightmare fuel LMFAO I love it.
Uhm the way I'm kinning Bucky it's not funny anymore damn
That whole “are you lashing out at me” rambling is really reminiscent of the bar scene in CATFA and how he lashed out at Steve after Peggy left. Uhm yeah fuck.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" "Peace"
"That is UTTER BULLSHIT" "You're a terrible shrink"
yeah ugly crying to ugly laughing speedrun for me
"You're free" "To do what?" jesus. That entire scene. #3 and #4 and #5 cries for moi.
Ugh that Brooklyn shot. Someone needs to do a gifset compairing it to the one in CATFA asap.
"It's like Monique but it's got a "U" in there for uniqueness" "That's absurd" LMAO
"You can't keep fighting with your neighbors" uHM * redacted redacted i'm shifting into 1940s mode abort abort *
"Nobody passed 90" "So young. Such a shame" FGADHGA
🥺🥺 yes flex those flirting skills good for you
"It's a dance to this things. You can't… you gotta warm up and I haven't danced since 1943. Feels like." #6 cry I completely broke down into tears with that.
This Yori storyline is going to punch me in the face with a metal fist. Great!
The TWS theme when he looks at Yori fuuuuuck.
GREAT LET'S GO TO LOUISIANA THAT WAS GETTING HEAVY.
Those shots of Sam in the car. Immaculate. Showstoping. Yes.
Marvel, what if instead of promoting the military industrial complex you put a lot of publicity about cars?
"Uncle Sam!" LMAO subtle.
Everyone trying to have the wings lmao same.
I've only had Sarah for a day but etc. Brooklyn 99 meme
Good mirroring about Steve and Sam family's legacy. Good shit. Goooood shit.
Sam is trying so hard ouch my heart. I can't imagine how painful the scene with them reuniting must have been. He 100% still feels a lot of guilt about being gone for those 5 years (and even longer before that).
"Maybe it is time for us to move on" uuuuuuuuuuh
"To the rescue" "Always" 🥺🥺 i love them so much already
That shot outside the restaurant is so beautiful. Can't wait to see the night scenes in Madripoor tbh.
"I tried the whole online dating thing. It's pretty crazy". Uhm well that is something that Bucky Barnes has now said. In canon. Damn.
"It's a lot" "You sound like my dad" LMAO
Every Bucky fanfic trope speedrun with this scene
"Wow you really can drink" OH you have no idea
Just realized we don't even know her name, well.
"You have any siblings?" "I have a sister" THE WAY I SCREECHED. We're definitely getting Becca
Well that escalated quickly. The important thing is to try?
I can't deal with this BUCKY SWEETIE #8 cry right there fuck
The wardrobe department is KILLING IT, there's such a difference between the outfits of the shows vs how ugly and generic it usually is.
"ThEre is NO such thiNg as on time. You're either EARLY or LATE . picK One" lmao the way he delivered that line
At first I thought the flag smashers had thrown two cars out of a window LMAO
"I don't know how jurisdiction works here, but I'mma have to place you under arrest" uhm yikes. The way they changed Joaquín Torres backstory to just random army nice guy #1 is not sitting well with me, what can I say.
Sam's wings motions I LOVE HIM YOUR HONOR
Fuuuuck this guy.
"Funny how thing's always thighten around us" "Look, I'm on your side. After all, he's a hero". This script is C R I S P as hell, great fucking job.
"I don't care, I'm not gonna quit" "What are you trying to prove? And who you trying to prove it to" SHIT HSIT SHIT!!! UGH amazing. Look it's not necessary to say the show's questions out loud but how they flow between the conversations is still very satisfactory without feeling in your face about it. Inner conflicts have been set up fucking perfectly everyone * claps *
Ugh here we fucking go.  I knew this was how the episode was going to end but my stomach still dropped like a rollercoster. God.
The score is on point. Damn. Damn.
God, Sam.🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺
The captain america franchise's visuals in the credits are always so amazing.
Also, does anybody know why Mackie isn't first in the billing?  Uhm what's that about?
ANYWAY CONCLUSION THAT EPISODE WAS SO FUCKING GOOD LIKE HOLY SHIT. I love them so much. The balance between the personal conflicts and the political aspect (although the military aspect is still very much yikes) was on point and it was overall a joy to watch.
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Note
how many wips do you have? like what are they all, and not the number of wips in a fandom? what are all the names?
okay. fuck you. fuck you so much. fuck you.
i’m putting this under a read more cut no one else deserves to see this shit. a lot of these are requests, and for those i will just write out the request itself
Shadowhunters:
domestic polycule fluff with tem, jessa, and will because im not a coward
Supernatural
- hehe hoho i request destiel hehehe
- request 61/? cai cai cai cai i need you to rewrite the destiel scene but yk. GOOD. not like i'm in the know about the spn fandom or anything, it's been years for me. but DO IT
Bright Sessions
- caleb/adam grisha AU
- mark bryant vs. united states aka sue the AM
- caleb/adam college fluff
Umbrella Acaademy
- request 31/? i want a ben and klaus drabble please spare me some brotherly bickering
- AND SO BEGINS NIGHT 4 with request 13/? oooh oooh can i get a raymond and allison playlist??? i think their vibes together would SLAP
- hi there night 2 is technically morning 3 but who's counting not me anyway request 5/? can i get a ben moodboard? gotta rep my tua bb
Percy Jackson
- request 9/? can i get a percabeth moodboard or quote edit?? like god they're the og couple goals take me back to high school cai
- For the 100 follower things :D Jercy getting caught in the rain
- request 29/? a drabble about literally anything to do with pjo. i’ll be happy with anyone and anything i’m love these children
- *somersaults in like I’m a real fancy acrobat* hello ello ello may I request some camp half blood chaos possible involving *does a flip* ✨side characters✨ <3
Penumbra Podcast 
- request 52/? drabble about the penumbra podcast. this is for ren bc ren likes it and i don't actually know anything about it. juno? i think? that's the one ren likes. write it for ren
- Tpp ghost hunting / buzzfeed unsolved au
- sad juno smut
- final resting place fic go brrrr
Marvel
- request 6/? i'm going to my roots y'all can i get a spider-man playlist? if not a playlist then i'd honestly be happy with literally anything involving spider-man
- request 15/? i'm going crazy this is recorded evidence of me actually losing it ANYWAY can i get a quote edit for something from iron man? literally anything that man says is gold so cai's choice :D he deserved better in endgame i'm still bitter
- request 42/? do another spidey thing that differs from the other spidey thing
- request 73/? you have Opinions. rant about infinity way and/or endgame. go.
- request 74/? quote edit for deadpool!!
- spideytorch relationship character study
- peter parker as a tired grad student monitoring the young avengers (send help)
Six of Crows
- okay listen i wasn't going to request anything bc i worry about you but also? if you want to/have the time hit me with a playlist for our girl nina zenik
- request 43/? fuckin give me the ending anya should have had. she is alive and with her new son and having a great time
- request 45/? inej moodboard?
- request 47/? will you make literally any meme of your choosing for six of crows?
- request 48/? write a drabble for kaz, my favorite bastard
- okay so i don't actually like nina or mattias that much but i still wanna hear about your thoughts (and also see if you'll change my mind)
- kaz brekker turning 18 fic. birthday party, everyone singing, whole shebang. i need it stat
- religious trauma fic aka i started shipping kaz/alina/inej and i can’t stop
- kaz trauma soup (he has D.I.D. and you can’t prove me wrong)
- my two redacted fics for @grishaversebigbang​
- wesper fake dating
- six of crows bright sessions crossover: everyone gets therapy
TMA
- uhh... s1 gang having a nice time? melanie getting to have some Pride™️? some "fun" horror thing?
- request 7/? spare steph and jason bonding? please sir? spare some for a humble child such as myself?
- okay so this was meant for night 3 but i had midterm shit SO this is honorary night 3 let's DO THIS request 8/? i want a moodboard of extremely out of context magnus archives shit like i mean confuse the FUCK out of me i don't go here i know Nothing about it
- request 11/? OKAY so i need tim stoker meeting tim drake now i need my timmy to meet your tim plus i want to see character differences no i'm not trying to create a tim stoker in my head so i can read a's fic while NOT thinking of tim drake whaaaaaat you're crazy
- request 18(i think)/? i need a quote edit of every time within the first like. 15 eps of tam where jon is like “sounds fake but go off” thank u bb
- request 40/? i challenge you to write a tma drabble based only on the episodes i've heard. i'm currently halfway through episode 23
- Jon being lovingly bullied into taking a break. I'm aware this has been written a million times but it is one of my favorite things.
- spiral!sasha AU
- extinction martin go brrrrr
- high school era timsasha. they've both been friends for years, and everyone always asks when they will be a couple. they decide to fake date, to prove everyone wrong and show what a bad couple they would be. turns out that's a bit trickier than they thought
- after sasha comes back, tim is broken. he can't let go, scared that if he looks away for even a minute he'll lose her again. sasha suggests shibari as a way for him to give up control
- sasha pov mag 19 au, sacrificing herself to save the others, knows that if she gives herself up to the not!them it will let the others live
- this is the "tim finds a polaroid of sasha" trope
- early archives days,, long nights in research,,, clothes sharing,, somft. late nights and falling asleep at their desks warm and safe in the other's presence
- two parts: timsasha as kids, each picking a constellation that is "theirs". just soft kid antics. tim at sasha's grave glancing up to see their constellations
- continuing your job’s a joke (you’re broke)
DC Comics
- TIMSTEPH HADESTOWN AU,,,
- my redacted fic for @batfam-big-bang​
- request for you to get a decent amount of sleep? serious answer, dickkori, SAL's Venus
- request 4/? timsteph morning after 👀 mayhaps?
- a concept: nonbinary stephanie brown
- teehee hi mom, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but can i request damian angst for your accomplishments 100 followers?
- hi you can ignore my first request if you want, or you can ignore this one. but bls possibly write some bikini ra’s? -the bikini bitch
- request 27/? jay is asking through me for a jondami playlist but tbh i also want it so win win yk?
- "I don't know how to help you but I can help you find someone who does" with bruce and jason? im just craving bruce being a good day to jason for once
- “I am putting you in time out because you need to understand the consequences of your actions.” with steph and jason as dumbass disaster bi best friends pretty please?
- request 32/? timsteph patrol date!!!
- request 33/? timsteph *gala* date? mayhaps??
- request 37/? tim drake drabble but make it Edgy cai
- request 39/? drabble of a prank war between tim and damian
- joyfire cuddly fluff please? or like just any outlaw fluff if joyfire isnt your thing (feel free to add every member of the outlaws, dont feel like u gotta stick with jason, kori, roy i love them all)
- barbara and robin! jason fluff? bonding over books or something?
- request 62/? i need a drabble about the chaotic trio jason, tim, and steph i'm love them ty
- request 63/? batfam x mcu crossover. batfam meets ironfam. give me ALL the cliches. ALL OF THEM
- request 64/? young justice x young avengers - jay cuz idk SHIT about the young avengers
- request 66/? jondami moodboard pls and ty
- request 67/? timsteph moodboard!!!!!!
- request 69/? HEHEHE kinky 😏 i would v much like a timsteph drabble of the almost first time. does that make sense? like i don't want you to go all the way NSFW cuz i know that's against the rules and i'm a rule follower. but like they *almost* go all the way. this could be fade to black or some shit i don't care just make it a lil steamy and have Fun
- i request damian angst! all of it
- hmm... maybe i request? jondami?
- mayhaps,,,,some batfam,,,,,committing crimes? ily be gay do crime <3 - lu
- How about a ficlet with Steph and Cass?
Found Family Bingo Prompts
- no powers au
- tunnel
- first day
- join the club
- hurt/comfort
- experiment
- playing favorites
- hold on
- possession
- 10 o’clock
- singing
- road
- snitch
- curfew
- timer
- fantasy au
- zombie au
- dreams
- campfire
- are you okay
- movie night
- games
- scared
Miscellaneous
- a request: Write A Drabble, Coward
- is it too late to request a moodboard for me?
- request 20/? i’m going off book because i’m in a Chaotic Mood™️ can you just absolutely vibe check me like go off cai demolish me
- request 21/? i formally request that you pick a favorite cai. i don’t care what that favorite pertains to, just pick a favorite something
- request 23/? roast me
- request 24/? can i have a buzzfeed unsolved spoopy playlist but spoiler alert it’s not spoopy bc shane doesn’t believe does this make sense it has been a Day™️
- request 25/50 i want a jake and amy fic make it Soft cai i’m love them b99 is so good
- request 28/? i know nothing about the lord of the rings so make something that will confuse the shit out of me
- request 34/? malvie and jaylos moodboards 😈
- request 35/? a moodboard for the bbb mods!! perceive all of us!!!
- request 36/? moodboard for the tua mods too???? mayhaps??
- request 41/? doctor WHO? idk but i want a drabble of him and the one character i know from doctor who which is rose
- request 46/? make an alignment meme with our group, have fun!!!
- request 49/? i want you to kin assign me a character from every fandom you can/want to. go feral
- request 50!!!!/? this is a special request. the most special request. can you make a bastards tbh playlist? i want our vibes encapsulated. i want us in music form. i want to hear those songs and be like "that's me and cai" and smile.
- requests 51/? i know jack shit about good omens. explain it to me in the most confusing way possible. make me know less by the end than i know now
- request 53/? can you write a mel aesthetic? i'm Curious
- request 54/? give me a list of book recs cai i want some good book recs pls
- request 56/? edit a picture of US together too
- request 58/? oooh can i have a disney edit? like. hm. i just really love disney and i want anything to do with disney. like a quote or an aesthetic or an aesthetic edit i just want disney.
- request 59/? i would v much like a recipe for carbonara. i've never had it but it sounds fucking delicious
- request 60/? ooh hey can i get a makeup tutorial? i know you like makeup, i'm shit at doing makeup. teach me
- request 65/? i need the most emo playlist you can make that vibes with dear evan hansen thank you
- request 68/? i want a superwholock moodboard. this can be serious, with the actual fandoms in mind, or literally what the era felt like. the insanity. the horror.
- request 70/? ooh ooh ooh do you have a good bread recipe?? i wanna get that bread
- request 71/? i want a playlist with the vibes of summoning a demon. please don't ask questions. i don't have answers. and if i do, no i don't.
- For the requests, how about writing something based on a friend?
- request 75/? MMMM i want literally anything to do with natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812
- request 76/? i want some healthy recipes. help a girl out
- a feral bbb quote or two?
- you perceive my plant but now I dare thee to perceive mine own visage
- okay this is a two for one request. 1. you did the bee movie script so now we need a shrek two script edit 2. sleep please
- Pansexual mb for my lil queer soul?
- my (probably) final request is just for you to ramble about something, i don't really care what
- HI ILY CONGRATS AS WELL CAUSE IM LATE BUT CONGRATS. could i request a pirates of the caribbean (or just pirates) or whatever you what to do, free range.
- mood board for the beluga whales who got brought to the animal sanctuary in Iceland please?
- 100 follower request: Moodboard for my stuffed cow Oaky?
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charcubed · 3 years
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i was wondering if you could share some of your favourite wlw/sapphic ships? i really enjoy your queer content in general and so id love to hear some of your takes on sapphic subtext etc :)) hope you’re doing well!
Hello anon! It’s 2AM and I should be asleep but instead I’m going to answer this ask. Partially because I tend to be perpetually behind on messages / asks (shout out to everyone I have yet to answer, I am so sorry), both because I’m often busy and incapable of brevity. I do not want that to happen to you, so here I go!
Thank you for the kind words 🥺 I appreciate you wanting to know my thoughts and enjoying my content!
Here are some wlw/sapphic ships I love!!
• Carol/Maria from Captain Marvel. As far as I am concerned, they are canonically wives. It’s not subtle! I wrote a meta thread about how the themes of the movie are enhanced if you read it as a story about Carol as a gay woman. Also, every time I remember that “Kiss Me Deadly” is the song they sing together in karaoke, I freak the fuck out. I firmly feel like Stevebucky and Carolmaria are the 2 greatest love stories of the MCU movies and it’s astonishing how similar they are, too. I’ll never forgive the Marvel fandom for sidelining Maria in favorite of shipping Carol/Valkyrie because of insidious colorism. I wrote a mini fic about Maria feeling insecure when Carol meets Valkyrie to work out my frustrations about that too!
• Nomi / Amanita from Sense8. (In all ways but physical, Amanita is MY wife, actually.) I feel like they’re one of the coolest, healthiest, and most badass relationships on screen :’) They make me so fucking happy and I will never get over how ride or die they are for each other.
• Andy / Quynh from The Old Guard. I am crossing ALL of my fingers that they expand on them in the sequel, because I felt there was very strong subtext (that was barely subtext) there, and as far as I know they were together in the comics. Big shout out to Andy wearing Quynh’s necklace, for example. (I’d need to rewatch the movie to get lost back in the sauce and discuss them more because it’s been awhile)
• I have ships from Black Sails that I enjoy discussing in depth, but those are spoilers! (I tend to only talk Black Sails spoilers on @freedom-in-the-dark or my side twitter gaypiracy)
• This is fairly new, but I am eyeballing Katy / Xialing from Shang-Chi. There was subtext there too, I feel. Katy definitely seemed to have a crush on Xialing, and there was tension in the moment when Xialing saved her. I’m hoping they expand on that dynamic in future movies!
• I never finished this show (even though I meant to), but Cosima / Delphine in Orphan Black were near and dear to my heart a long time ago, so I can’t not mention them. It’s been a very long time since I’ve thought about them but they were a big deal.
• In the “fuck the CW” category: YEARS ago, back when I watched Arrow, Nyssa/Sara was extremely important to me. I adored them, and then of course they killed Sara (and later forced Nyssa to fake marry Oliver). I was also into Lexa/Clarke from The 100 during that era—because who wasn’t, though I didn’t love them as a ship as strongly as many people did—and we all know where that went.
That’s it for main ones, I think. Sorry if that disappoints! I’m especially sorry that I don’t have much meta to offer, unfortunately, simply because most of what I’m mentioning is either explicit canon so it didn’t involve subtext hunting or I watched it before I got super involved in media analysis. I’m planning on watching Killing Eve when it’s complete as long as it sticks the landing, and I know that show is going to eat my brain hahaha. Some of my friends are super into it and have sent me a couple clips here and there and I’ve unintentionally written meta off the cuff and they lose their shit. I’m looking forward to devouring it eventually.
As for ones I’m just sort of casually into... I never finished Legend of Korra (not yet anyway), but I loved and appreciated Korrasami because again, who doesn’t. Similarly, I could get behind Kate Bishop / America Chavez in my Young Avengers days, and Peggy / Angie from Agent Carter. From very far away, I salute the Supergirl fandom, because I know Kara/Lena would make me foam at the mouth if I was at all into watching it and I’m rooting for those crazy kids.
My last humble offerings...
Movie recs:
Portrait of a Lady On Fire (which I know most people have seen by now), though warning that it’s very bittersweet or sad. Please, PLEASE watch Colette if you have not; that movie is very important to me, and it is both sapphic and gender. Likewise, please watch Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which is based on a true story and involves an m/f/f polyamorous relationship.
Niche fic recs because people deserve to read these:
Sharon/Natasha fic that is vastly underrated and I love it, and Eleven/Max fic from Stranger Things that lives rent free in my brain. (I think Will/Mike is endgame in that show and the parallels between Will and Eleven do make me wonder if they’ll make her gay too.) These are literally the only fics for either of these ships I have ever read. And of course, this genderbent f/f 1950s Johnlock case fic which will kick your ass. You’re welcome in advance.
Thank you again for asking! 💜
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