#(post-Nora exploding definitely to death)

[mutable-manifestation]

So Danny Fenton hates Christmas, right?

And according to one of the dpxdc fics I read Mr. Freeze also hates Christmas.

So AU where Danny runs away from Amity for a Christmas - the truce is the one time of year he can leave the town without feeling anxious and he makes some excuse to his parents, tells his sister and friends he's going to visit the Zone, and just.

Flies around.

Ofc ghosts also love Christmas. And apparently want to drag him to the party again this year.

When dodging the latest invitation, he gets slung through a natural portal.

Right into the middle of an attack by Mr. Freeze.

At first he thinks he's another Christmas nut, the way he's blowing snow and ice everywhere.

Then he notices the vandalized trees behind him.

Danny lets out a whoop and ectoblasts one of the more distant Christmas trees.

Mr. Freeze whirls on him - most of the civilians already evacuated and no police or vigilantes present yet (he'd frozen mall security in their offices before going after the rest of the building).

"Ice to meet ya," Danny says, eyes flashing blue as he holds up a hand to form an ice-sculpture in the shape of a hand flipping the bird by the nearest Santa cut-out.

Freeze nods hesitantly, and they go about destroying all of the Christmas décor together. Danny even uses an incredibly brief Wail to flatten the large tree.

They're both smiling at the destruction when Batman swings in.

Batman says something about bringing them in, but the second Freeze gloats about 'completing my objective' Danny tackle-phases the both of them out of there.

[yamaoni]

The Second Great War of Remnant has begun. Once more, Vale and Mantle are embroiled in a massive conflict, only this time, they are on the same side against Atlas.

I don't think it was a coincidence that so many people drew parallels with the last episode and WWI. We've never seen people fight that way in RWBY. Grimm don't use projectile weapons the way humans do, so the benefits of the trench are diminished; especially if you compare it to the drawbacks.

Now, I understand not everyone in the Atlas military has their aura unlocked and the squishy soldiers need some cover, but if The Long Memory didn't nuke every grimm on Atlas, the lines would have been overrun and then there would have been nowhere for them to retreat to.

You think the very real hand to hand struggles in the trenches of WWI were bad, imagine being trapped in a narrow trench with a bear. Or having this thing explode out of the ground under you.

I refuse to believe no-one in Atlas ever thought, "if we put the dirt from the trench in a box, no only can we give our soldiers cover, we can also give them an elevated position to fire from."

The top of a wall has been the primary defensive position for the people of Remnant for a long time. You can see them in the establishing shots of most settled places the team has visited. So why are we seeing a trench now?

Simple.

Show, don't tell.

RWBY has done a pretty great job, especially in the last few seasons, of showing the audience what it is trying to convey without explicitly telling them. They especially like drawing from well known folk lore to give insight into the future of the show.

Only difference here, instead of drawing the parallel between characters, they're drawing parallels between worlds.

Remnant's first Great War started with Mantle suppressing freedom of expression, the destruction of Art and Color. Ironwood always has little in the way of color, but in his first broadcast since everything started hitting the fan, he has none.

That broadcast also included evacuation ships being blown up by fighter-bombers, Dunkirk. It threatend to level a city if they didn't surrender, Battle of Brittan. All delivered by a dictator trying to scare his opponents into submission through careful use of film.

Theories

If the rest of the season is WWII, I have several theories on plot direction. Considering how well they did keeping up with both ends of the battlefield it wouldn't surprise me if they followed all of them at the same time.

Operation Dunkirk

Or, the evacuation of Mantle.

Players: Penny, Nora, Ren, Happy Huntresses

The Happy Huntresses involvement is a given. Not only has saving Mantle been their goal the whole time, they're also stuck in the middle of it right now.

Penny is the Protector of Mantle. It would be a shining moment for her character to fully throw off the virus Watts implanted and overcome Ironwood's threats to do so. Just crossing my fingers that it doesn't end like the Iron Giant.

Nora is currently Penny's tether to sanity, so she has to go with, and I doubt they would separate Ren from her for the next arc so he's going too.

Surprise twist for this plot I'm betting will be the Starwars "they aren't warships, just people" scene everyone loves to rag on. After all, the broadcast went out that they needed help and, at least at Dunkirk, it was fishing boats and pleasure crafts that retrieved the 338,000 surrounded on all sides.

Why We Fight

Or, countering Ironwoods propaganda.

Players: Robyn and Qrow

For one, these two are unaccounted for and in the heart of Atlas' military machine. If anyone has means to do so, it's them.

The film, Why We Fight, also countered the dramatic cinematography of Goebbels propaganda by painting it as ridiculous and making a folksy call to action much like Robyn has done in the past.

Operation Fortitude

Or, the deception of Ironwood.

Players: Emerald, Jaune, Oscar

This is the mission to make Ironwood think the team is going after the relic. This theory is why I actually thought of and wrote out this whole thing. Thanks @maxiemumdamage, I had things I was supposed to do tonight.

https://maxiemumdamage.tumblr.com/post/644291955872890880/willing-to-bet-my-own-soul-that-emerald-uses-her

Only difference in my theory and their's, is Jaune is going to be playing the part of Penny.

I say this for two reasons. One, Joan of Arc pretended to be a man. While we've gotten both Jaune pretending to be something he's not and him in a dress, this would pose the first time in the story he could do both. Two, it would put him on a direct collision path with Cinder. It needs to happen at some point to bring his arc to a conclusion, but man I hope we're not about to watch him burn.

With Ozpin active again, Oscar has to go along to direct them to the vault. He's also one of two backing the idea of Emerald joining the team and Jaune wouldn't be willing to work with her without him.

Operation Overlord

Or, busting down the doors of Atlas Acadamy.

Players: Ruby, Blake, Weiss, Yang

Where Operation Fortitude was the faint, Operation Overlord was the real deal. For those that aren't history buffs, this is D-Day.

I think this is the reason we've only seen the main team fighting together once since their split from Beacon. And even then, that fight was at most pairs of fighters and not all four of them supporting one another.

RWBY tricked us into thinking season 4 was the post-timeskip level up we come to expect from anime when really we ended up watching the training flashbacks as they happened instead.

We've seen hints of it with the various team ups and combinations, but are we really ready for how much ass kicking they are about to do?

I'm hoping for a One Piece level of badass entrance that can give me shivers whenever I go to watch it again like the walk to Arlong Park still does to this day.

(Aside: if you try telling me RWBY isn't anime, I'm just going to ignore you. Anime is an art movement. If you don't understand what that means, watch this video. https://youtu.be/uFtfDK39ZhI)

Now last and certainly not least

Operation Valkyrie

Or, the death of Ironwood.

Players: Winter and Marrow

The long awaited defection. Plenty of speculation has already floated around about if and when these two where going to cave to their morals and jump ship. I don't know how many of us were expecting the straw to break the camel's back to be a nuke held over Mantle, but I certainly wasn't.

What worries me, is Operation Valkyrie failed and all its conspirators were executed. As if there weren't enough death flags for Winter before.

Even if it's not Winter that kills him. I don't see Ironwood surviving this season. Even if it means he goes out like another hated dictator. It's not like it would be the first time RT had a fallen hero chose to use his own sword.

Wildcards

Or, Murphy will have his due.

Players: Cinder, Watts, Neo, Tyrian, Mercury, Clover

These players can go any which way. Three we know for sure are going to be active in the coming episodes and I wouldn't be surprised if the other three play a part as well.

Oscar made a hell of a light show for Tyrian and Mercury to see behind them. Not to mention, Salem will still need a ride home when she pulls herself back together.

Clover keeps getting mentioned even though he's hospitalized. If he was truly out of commission for the rest of the season, they would have made us think he's dead before bringing him back like they did with Penny.

Up to now, what we've seen is a three way conflict. But one of the hallmarks of Remnant's First Great War, was making temporary alliances to fight off grimm.

The grimm might be gone, but the wild cards can't complete their own objectives if they are dead. The question is who's goals better align with their own.

Two surprise twists I can see here. One, Mercury stabbing Tyrian on his way to defection. He was raised by an assassin and has not going to get a better chance than that. Two, Clover joining Operation Valkyrie. He might have accepted that sacrifice is a necessary evil to ensure Atlas' survival, but might go Schindler's List on us and find horror in what Ironwood plans to do.

TLDR

I spent way too long writing this out. All the WWI imagery means we're getting a WWII movie with RWBY characters. Major death flags for Penny, Jaune, and Winter.

Also I finally figured out how to do a readmore. Apparently it's just been a long time since I updated.

Note: kept seeing things talking about clovers death and I kind of went ???? Isn't he barely alive in medical? Went back and watched that scene and though I am 90% sure he is dead still kind of weird that they have him in his own room instead of a morgue and the initial framing made my mind instantly think he was propped up on a hospital bed. I mean, I guess we needed to have all the ACEOPs there for their reaction to Ironwood... but it definitely made me think he was alive. That and they have a bandage on his chest wound... when he's supposedly dead. Also have a phantom memory of Harriet saying something about him being in critical but I think that's my memory playing tricks on me.

Having his face exposed instead of covered by the sheet and seeing him in the same frame as Winter being treated also didn't help my gut reaction of "Oh Shit! He's alive? How?!" If I'd followed up more on the "how" might not have made the blunder of writing his return as the final twist in my theory. Oops

[qorgkq]

As story progresses in RWBY, I am more looking forward to how Ruby will be comprehending with the crisis she faces. It is also quite interesting to use this as a chance to analyze the character. 

Ruby says she wished to become a huntress because she wanted to be like the “heroes” of the story that she used to read as a child. But from what she told Blake in Volume 1, and listening to Red Like Roses, it is quite obvious that she doesn’t only fantasize of becoming a huntress. Especially that she was told her mother died on a mission as a huntress. She knows the danger she could face and she knows the circumstances. 

In Red like Roses, there is a part where it goes “Make you understand the reasons why I did it”. Clearly, Summer would not be pleased if she knew Ruby became a huntress, and Ruby knew that. Not only that, but it also implements that Summer did not know the clear reason of Ruby wishing to become a huntress. Summer was described as a caring mother, so if Ruby always looked up to the “heroes”, then Summer would definitely know of it. So either there is more reason to why Ruby decided to become a huntress, or Ruby began looking up to the “heroes” since after Summer’s death. Either way, it wouldn’t make sense if Ruby only wished to become a huntress so she could become the hero. She’s not the type who wants to be the protagonist of a story. So it is most likely that there is more to it. I’ve mentioned this in one of my previous posts before, but my guess is that she tried to take in place of her mother after her death. Especially that she saw what Summer’s death has done to her father Tai Yang and all. 

Also, I think that there is more to come of conflicts related to Ruby’s inner thoughts and emotions. Every other characters have gone through some personal problems and crisis, and is overcoming them or has overcome them. For example, Yang once suffered from depression and PTSD after she lost an arm to Adam. As of Blake, she first had this problem of her trying to hide her identity as a Faunus to her teammates, and then her encounter to Adam. Which were both overcome with each others help. Weiss has conflicts with her family members, Nora had an identity crisis, Jaune also had conflicts with his team, and even Ren burst out of anger due to the stress he was getting. If they had overcome the crisis, they made an development. If they have yet to overcome the crisis, it is their steps to making the development. That is how you further develop yourself. Face your greatest fear, and overcome the crisis that may tear you down. 

Anyhow, the current events they’re going through is quite stressful enough to mess with most of them. And yet, Ruby acts just like how she usually does. She did have a fight with Yang, but it was mostly of their disagreement on their ways to save people. Yang might have started to doubt Ruby’s position as a leader, but nevertheless, they didn’t fight because they had anything personal against each other. She did have some moments which she was feeling down, but was always back to her cheerful-self a moment later. Which is quite unusual in situations like this. 

Ruby’s the type that keeps up everything to herself. She doesn’t bother sharing her problems with her teammates and just bottle them up as if her feelings were to come last. Is not that she didn’t face any difficulties so far. She did face a lot of crisis and overcame them, but as far as I remember, we had not yet seen any of the moments where she faces her inner feelings and fears directly. Everyone had or has something they deeply fear for, and I don’t think Ruby’s greatest fear/crisis were ever directly told or shown. 

It may not be healthy for your relationship with others, but people tend to relieve their stress by letting their feelings out. They let it out and eventually start feeling better once they’re all out. But Ruby never let her out aside from the tiny frowns or worries we see occasionally in completely understandable situation. But when feelings are bottled up for too long and never released, it will eventually explode at one point, or even worse, shatter the bottle. 

So, it is only safe to assume that there will be time when Ruby will have to safely release what she’s been bottling up, or she will end up shattered. Ruby doesn’t care much of her own feelings, and considering that every one else is too stressed to take care of Ruby’s feelings for her (which is totally understandable, by the way), she will one day have to face her own fears and crisis before it completely brakes her. 

I’m just starting to wonder what that will be and when it will be. As much as I’d like to see her happy and cheery as usual, it is impossible to care for others during the hardest time and not being able to care for yourself. Maybe when she meets Salem once again, and the topic of her dead mother Summer is brought up, it will be the time. I don’t know when or what, but surely looking for more character development since Ruby hadn’t even started to face her own personal problems yet. 

Anyways, you may not agree to this, and that is totally cool. This is just a simple theory so please don’t attack on me. 

[astrid-goes-for-a-spin]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Flash (TV 2014) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Barry Allen & Iris West, Barry Allen/Iris West Characters: Iris West, Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, Zoom, Hunter Zolomon, Hunter Zolomon | Jay Garrick, Henry Allen Additional Tags: superIris, Iris has Powers, Metahuman Iris West, BAMF Iris West, Women Being Awesome, Episode: s02e21 The Runaway Dinosaur, Episode: s02e22 Invincible, Season 2, Season 2 feels, Canon Divergence, Henry Allen Lives, Everybody Lives, no Flashpoint, Iris defeats Zoom, Happy Ending Series: Part 6 of Iris Week 2020 Summary:

Iris Week 2020 Day 6! SuperIris! @iriswestallenweek

At first, Iris doesn’t even notice that something’s changed. That she has powers. That she’s no longer just a run-of-the-mill human.

Everything is overwhelming – Barry’s lost in the speed force, Jesse’s in a coma, Tony Woodward is sorta back to life and still has a crush on her. It takes her until she and Barry are standing in the cemetery before she starts to realize that all the feelings she’s been feeling…might not actually be hers.

 Iris is affected by Harry's particle accelerator explosion and gains empathy powers. Iris defeats Zoom.

__________________________________

full text for the tumblr crowd! 

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At first, Iris doesn’t even notice that something’s changed. That she has powers. That she’s no longer just a run-of-the-mill human.

Everything is overwhelming – Barry’s lost in the speed force, Jesse’s in a coma, Tony Woodward is sorta back to life and still has a crush on her. It takes her until she and Barry are standing in the cemetery before she starts to realize that all the feelings she’s been feeling…might not actually be hers.

Because Barry is talking so nostalgically about the little board book he brought his mom’s stone, and even though Iris knows that book always made her irritated and sad, she’s feeling a little teary and –

“I never really liked that book,” Iris says, and Barry turns watery eyes to her. “But, right now? I feel like I’ve loved it forever.”  

“Why?” Barry asks, and she takes his arm.

“Because neither of us had a mom,” Iris says, and feels, almost like a physical wave, the emotions coming from Barry’s body to hers: sadness, tenderness, pure and absolute love. She steps away from him and drops his arm, and his worry comes to her more slowly, like a cloud rolling in.

Iris would go wait in the car, but they ran here. Iris takes a deep breath and tries to block everything out.

“I’ll give you a minute,” Iris says finally, and gives herself space under the guise of giving Barry a moment in private. The further she moves from him, the less intensely she feels the worry, the heartbreak, the distraction. Iris takes a breath. It’s raining (her hair, oh god) and the cemetery is empty. She’s always been good at reading other people’s energy, but the room is – quite literally – dead.

When Barry takes them back to the house later, Iris waits until he changes out of his nice clothes, and then she sits him down on the sofa away from the noise of her dad and her brother in the kitchen.

“I think I have powers,” Iris says baldly.

Barry stares at her like he’s never seen her before.

“I was in the city when the accelerator went off in 2013, I was in the lab two days ago, I got mixed up with the speed force – I’ve been exposed to all the stuff that’s not supposed to exist. X-elements.”

Barry’s mouth is hanging slightly open. “Y-you mean-”

Iris takes a breath. “I can feel you. Your fear. Your guilt. Your sadness. I didn’t realize it right away because everything was so hectic, but – I’m pretty sure those aren’t my feelings.”

In less than a second Barry flashes away and back, and her hair flutters into her face. She wipes it away, and he’s fiddling with Harry’s watch. Fear and dread pouring off him, Barry silently offers the watch to her.

Iris’s hand passes over the face of the watch, and

                                                                                  everything

                                                                                                             changes.

.

 In the five-or-so minutes Cisco and Caitlin find in the next week, they confirm what Iris already knows: Harry’s oh-so-safe particle accelerator explosion that literally ripped Barry apart also washed Iris in dark matter. Her previously human DNA is different in one tiny but significant way: the metahuman gene.

Iris knows that if they weren’t facing down an army of supervillains from another world, if the CCPD weren’t operating out of a coffeeshop because their precinct is Zoom’s new HQ, if it was literally any other time, she’d be subjected to a battery of tests, be down in the basement training to learn what her powers can do and how to keep them under control.

As it is, the city’s barely surviving Zoom’s onslaught, and there’s just no time.

Barry’s new, post-speed force attitude isn’t really helping the situation, either.

Iris is still trying to get a grip on her new, fledgling powers, but she doesn’t think she’d need them to understand this. Barry is happy-go-lucky, upbeat, bursting with optimism; the speed force is with us. Iris can feel it from the moment Barry’s within a hundred yards of her, and she can’t help it: she’s slightly giddy with positivity.

On the other hand, the rest of Team Flash is terrified by the Metapocalypse and the lingering threat of Zoom, and that Barry’s optimism will be the death of him. (And the world.) Iris can’t help but notice her range for Barry is a lot farther than the others – but simply sharing a room with her dad can make her subdued and anxious.

It doesn’t make Iris feel better that the press is hardly helpful in this situation. Or at least, not as helpful as the rest of the team. She’s not exactly part of the news media producing the endless loop on TV telling citizens to stay in their homes.

Without complete solitude – an impossibility right now – it’s also hard for her to know what she’s really feeling – apart from her friends and family. If she could be sure her feelings were her own, would she still feel this worried? Or this blissfully confident? (Or both?)

Which feelings are right?

When Barry comes back to STAR Labs with blood crusting his ears and neck because an evil Laurel Lance would’ve killed him if Wally hadn’t run her over, Iris knows the majority has been right all along. No matter how Barry feels, the danger is real, and he needs to act that way.

The right ones are whatever feelings that’ll keep him alive.

Iris trails him into the medbay and plops down on the gurney. “You know you’re not invincible, right?”

Barry’s removing his gloves, but he gives her a little laugh and a patronizing sigh. “Yes. Of course I know this.”

Iris wonders how long it’ll take before it’s impossible for him to lie to her at all. His words tell her he agrees, but his heart tells her that they can survive anything.

“Joe’s being overprotective, but I get it,” Barry says, leaning against a cabinet.

Iris scoots a little on the bed, untangling her crossed legs. “Yeah, but you’re acting like nothing can touch you. Like nothing bad can get in your way.” Iris taps her heart. “And worse, I can tell you actually believe it. And it’s just not true for any of us.”

Barry seems sobered by the reminder that Iris – isn’t the same as she used to be. When he says, “What are you trying to say?” Iris thinks, He’s going to listen to me. He always listens to me. No one else has been able to get through to him, this time.

“I know you had an experience in the speed force. I saw some of it. I can still feel it on you now,” Iris starts, and holds out a hand to him, gesturing him close. “And I’m happy that you think we’re gonna win the day, but a little fear can be a healthy thing. It helps you determine which risks are worth taking.”

Barry swallows dryly, only feet away from her now. Separated by the wall from the Cortex, Iris is zeroed in on him in a way she hasn’t been since they were at Nora Allen’s grave. She can feel her words sinking into his buoyant mood.

When he nods and gets up to pass her, though, Iris can feel it all melting off, untouchable. She’s still holding her hand out.

He reaches out to rub it once in reassurance, and –

It’s like nothing Iris has ever felt before.

All of Iris’s worry, her fear, her helplessness, her terror for Wally and Barry and her father, her dim hope for a future after Zoom has ravaged the city: she’s exploding with emotion, and the moment Barry touches her, her feelings seep out of her skin and into his.

Barry staggers back as if impacted by a physical blow. His eyes flick up to hers, wide. She can feel his positivity sagging, supplanted by the caution Iris is impressing into him. Somehow, she’s actively changing the way he feels – and not the old-fashioned way.

She takes her hand away.

Barry’s eyes are slightly glazed. “Are you okay?” they ask at the same time, their words overlapping. Iris is nodding, but Barry is shaking his head.

“Is this how you’ve been feeling?” he asks, voice pitched high. “All the time? That was-”

“Really intense,” Iris finishes. “Yeah. I haven’t figured out a way to turn it off yet.” If she wasn’t so busy with Zoom’s army, she’d be afraid she never will. “And I definitely didn’t know I could – do that.”

Barry sits beside her on the bed and deliberately sets his hands on either side of her shoulders and rubs up and down. With each stroke, his optimism is tempered by her fear.

When someone calls for them from the Cortex, Iris takes his wrist once and closes her eyes, just to impress her feeling – caution! – one final time, hoping that her warnings aren’t hopeless.

This is how much we love you.

.

Maybe Barry is actually right, and the speed force is on their side. With Zoom gone and his army subdued, Iris thinks it’s high time for some family celebration.

Team Flash’s dinner party mood is almost as good as Barry’s has been for days, and Iris feels high on it – even more when Barry asks if – since he’s been feeling “extra invincible” – this would be a good time to give them a shot. (It is, it really is.)

Iris organizes people bringing food in from the kitchen while the others gossip, and she leads Henry into the dining room by an elbow and settles him at Barry’s side with a champagne glass.

And then there’s a pulse of terror, absolute and overwhelming, from the other side of the table, and she looks up to see Cisco’s post-vibe face, mouth gaping. The happiness abates. Iris can feel the tension straining across the room. People demanding answers. Cisco cries out, “Tell me I did not just see the end of the world!”

Iris can’t really imagine anything worse than an entire planet breaking, splitting in half from pole to pole, a whole world she’s never seen but has been so determined all year long to protect –

– a rush of hate and malice so cold Iris almost doesn’t recognize what it is. Sadism. A power-hungry cruelty. The bitterest spite. The fear in the room jumps; terror and helplessness all around her.

Two steps away from her, Zoom has Henry’s throat in his claws.

Barry’s fear is quickly turning into rage, a kind of rage Iris didn’t need powers to understand during all the years he hunted the Reverse-Flash. She can see him thinking, calculating how fast he needs to move in order to save his dad’s life.

Iris doesn’t think.

She feels.

Zoom never notices her hand, so fixed on Barry, the only threat, the only other speedster in the room. Barry is on the other side of her, but Iris is within arm’s reach, and her hand comes down on Zoom’s shoulder with what she knows must be suffocating force.

Iris still isn’t thinking. She isn’t calculating. She’s remembering all of the pain that Zoom has brought with him this year, with an intensity that she feels may make her heart explode.

Caitlin, hostage on another earth, at his mercy.

Jesse gone and Harry frantic with fear.

The endless lines of metahumans Zoom threw through the breaches to try to kill her family.

Larkin, who did not deserve to die the way he did, and Linda’s terror and pain – both Lindas.

Barry and Cisco gone through the breach, Barry shaking on the staircase as he confided to them the manner of the other Joe’s death.

Jesse, hanging from manacles and sleeping in her own blood and filth.

The prisoner Barry promised to rescue that they still haven’t gotten around to.

Barry’s nightmares.

Iris having to shoot a gun at another person, a person with her friend’s face.

Barry, broken like a doll, dangling from his grip on live TV, blood leaking out of him.

Her brother, helpless and in pain, a pawn in a game he was never a part of, and the reckless do-gooding he’s throwing his life away for.

Barry, white as a sheet, half his body in a brace, unconscious in a hospital bed.

Barry, screaming as they injected him with poison and the particle accelerator tore his body apart.

All of these things broke Iris’s heart, shredded it until there was nothing left but she just kept bleeding.

These things caused her to bite her nails and wake in the night with blood in her mouth, answer her phone after a single ring, have panic attacks in the bathroom at work and cry with fear as she wondered what catastrophe would befall her loved ones next.

All of these things – so…

…avoidable.

Acts of a man who hated and hated, and turned that hate into dead bodies all across the multiverse so – what?

He could feel less alone?

Zoom’s grip on Henry slackens. Lightning raises the hairs on her arm; Barry reappears on the far side of her with his father in his arms. Iris puts her other hand right over Zoom’s heart, and in slow stages they crumple to the ground.  

She’s on top of him, her flirty dress riding up, the awful wrinkly texture of Zoom’s suit vivid beneath her palms. Somewhere in the background Iris notices lines of burning moisture traveling down her face and splashing onto his.

“You’re not alone now, Hunter,” Iris says softly, sinking further onto Zoom’s body. He’s twitching, and Iris can feel the impact of what she’s doing to him starting to break something deep within him, even more than he’s already broken. “I’m here. I can feel everything you feel. I know what you want, and why. You wanted to hurt people. Well, you succeeded. You hurt my family. You hurt me.”

Pitifully, a noise that resolves itself into the words “It hurts” reaches Iris’s consciousness. She didn’t notice it at first because he’s stopped vibrating his vocal chords into that demonic voice. He just sounds like Jay.

He sounds human.

“You’re not gonna hurt anyone anymore,” Iris whispers, and Zoom lies still.

.

Barry races to STAR Labs and deposits Zoom in the anti-speedster cell: the only safe place, for right now. The whole way there and for a long while after, Zoom remains unresponsive.

“Can we inject him with the anti-speed serum?”

“He’d have to be running to take his speed away, like he did before-”

“Do you have a place you can keep metas incarcerated on Earth-2?”

All the questions – important, Iris is sure – fade into the background for her. Iris is sitting on the end of the bed again. She’s got a mug of coffee in her hands, a pair of STAR Labs sweatpants covering up her very cold, bare legs, and a shock blanket around her shoulders. Though she can tune out the questions, she still can’t manage the emotions. Her family is afraid, but hopeful. They’re in problem-solving mode. Zoom is contained, for the first time ever, and it’s extremely possible that Team Flash is gonna figure this out.

Iris jerks awake when Barry sets down next to her on the bed.

“How long was I out?” she asks, grabbing for him. He allows it, but no emotions flow from her. Iris wonders if it has to be an exceptionally emotional circumstance. Touching him now only makes her perception of his feelings stronger.  

“A while. Caitlin gave you a sedative to help you recover. Jitters’ll be opening soon.”

Morning. Iris suppresses a groan at the memory of 5AM shifts, but smiles at the reminder that things are going back to normal after Zoom’s defeat.

“Did you figure out what to do with him yet?” she yawns.

Barry’s radiating a kind of calm sureness that makes the question almost irrelevant.

“We extracted the speed force in his system while you were resting. STAR Labs on Earth-2 will publicize his identity, and he’ll spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement. He won’t hurt anyone else. The random metas he forced into his army we’re sending back a few at a time to the Barry and Iris there, to see whether they’re criminals or just – unlucky. Harry’s bringing our dampening tech, too, so any of those meta-criminals that need to be locked up can be. It’s a good day.”

Iris smiles. “I can tell.”

Barry’s feeling shifts to something serious, introspective, and almost…reverent.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been there,” he starts. “My dad-”

“He’s free, he’s alive, he’s here in the city, and he’s got his eye on Dr. McGee,” Iris laughs. “It’s okay. Maybe you were right all along. You are invincible.”

Barry takes a quick look at the rest of the team scattered through the lab, then whisks her away in his arms. Next moment they’re sitting on her dad’s front steps, and the whole world feels just as fragile as she knows it is, fresh with morning dew and sleeping as the sun is just beginning to rise.

“Not me. We’re invincible. I couldn’t have – none of this could have been without you, Iris. Believe me. You saved my dad. You saved Earth-2. Iris, Black Siren didn’t want to leave here because she insisted Zoom was going to destroy every earth with the stolen Mercury Labs tech, all in one shot. You saved the multiverse.”

Something is swelling, a depth of feeling Iris has often glimpsed, both in herself and Barry, but never had the courage to explore.

“Do I get a code name now?” Iris asks in a halfhearted attempt to play it off.

Barry huffs a laugh and sinks a hand into her hair. Somehow the fact that it’s sticky with old hairspray, pins long gone, doesn’t matter. Her smudged makeup and lab sweatpants under her fancy dress with no back and no bra doesn’t matter.

“I have never loved you more,” Barry murmurs as he gets closer.

Iris feels it like the sunrise. In response, she closes her eyes, takes his hand, and places it over her heart.

.

[ardentaislinn]

Yuletide Letter 2019

Hi! I am also ardentaislinn on AO3. Thank you so much for volunteering to write one of my chosen fandoms! I really can’t wait to see what you come up with. Most importantly, I hope you have fun writing whichever of my fandoms it is. Any suggestions I make here are optional.

Here you’ll find:

My general likes

My DNWs

And prompts for the following fandoms:

The Awakening (2011) - Florence Cathcart, Robert Mallory

Automatic (1995) - J269, Nora Rochester

Tomb Raider (2018) - Lara Croft, Lu Ren

My likes:

I love getting together fics most of all. I love almost every kind of trope (fake dating, slow burn, rivals-to-lovers, “unrequited” pining (that is really requited), found families, etc.) Also, casefic, epistolary fic, consent, forbidden pleasures, beta heroes, bed sharing, masquerades, military kink, physical imperfections, ladies being badass and female relationships (whether romantic or friendship), relationships that build tension before exploding, equal relationships, trapped together, competence, communication, U/RST, positive endings.

You may notice from the below that my ships mostly involve sweet and occasionally broken men being head over heels for awesome ladies. So that dynamic is strongly encouraged.

I also like smut, but it certainly isn’t a necessity. For smut, I’m (sadly) fairly vanilla. But I like light bondage, cunningulus, shower sex, and accidental/consensual voyeurism, (Particularly guys taking matters into their own hands when they think they can’t be with their lady, and the woman stumbling across him mid-act. Possibly my favourite kink ever? Writer’s choice whether the woman joins in or gets embarrassed)

Happy endings (or at least hopeful endings) are preferred. Like, super, super preferred. I don’t mind angst at all, but it kinda has to be on the way out of the darkness by the end.

Dislikes/DNWs:

Miserable endings. Major character death. Baby/Pregnancy/kidfic. Humiliation. Drugs use/drug mentions/addiction. Self harm/abuse. Non-con/rape. Heavy kink. A/B/O. M-Preg. Incest. Bestiality, animal harm etc. Nothing underage. Unbalanced power dynamics. 1st person POV (unless for epistolary). Not big on high school AUs or Rock band AUs.

I think that’s it?

And so, to the fandoms, in no particular order:

The Awakening

Florence Cathcart, Robert Mallory

So, I love this film, and I love these two characters. People have written them for me before but I can never get enough! I really dug the way their relationship developed through the film, right up until the slightly ambiguous ending.

This film hit a bunch of my favourite tropes, mostly in the character types it used for these two. Florence is a bit caustic in the beginning of the film, and I love that she slowly reveals her vulnerabilities. Robert, the broken former soldier, is the perfect match for her. And the slow-burn chemistry between them super worked for me.

So, basically, I just want more of them!

Florence is canon into voyeurism (both in that she liked watching Robert, and liked the idea of him watching her) - so what is the sex life with Robert like going forward? Does she like to watch and be watched? (Either way, I see her as liking to be in control of it, not so much the idea of strangers watching her, or it being done without her consent)

Post-movie, Florence and Robert are separated for a time - do they write each other letters?

Florence now believes in ghosts. Where does that leave her career? Does she still hunt down the fakes, as well as the real things? Does Robert come with her? Or do people come to her with their supernatural troubles?

Robert is nervous about proposing, but Florence is getting impatient.

On their honeymoon, they go to some of the oldest places in Europe. Surely there are ghosts lurking in every corner. What kind of trouble do they get into?

Florence Cathcart: Demon Hunter (Have fun with it! If ghosts exist, why not demons?)

A missing scene from the film with additional/bonus pining?

I do really want a happy ending here for Florence and Robert, but if you want to do something interesting with the hints that she might be a ghost herself at the end of the film, I’ll be interested if you can make it work.

Automatic (1995)

J269, Nora Rochester

I love cyborg movies. I love almost-innocent heroes that need to learn how to Person, and the heroines that see them as more human than they are. Despite the obviously low budget of this movie, it’s one of my absolute favourite versions of this trope.

I’m most interested in post-canon fic for this, but I’d really be so thrilled to read anything! I’m fairly certain there’s no fic at all for this movie.

Prompts

What happens after the movie ends? The two are now on the run. How do they survive? What do they learn about the world and each other? Are there other cyborgs out there? Are they being hunted? This is an opportunity to explore further world-building, too!

How does Nora deal with learning what she did about herself at the end of the movie? (Trying not to spoil it!) She’s probably pretty traumatised and maybe kind of angry about everything that happened.

Did they meet before the movie starts, but one or both had their memories wiped?

What’s their first time like?

J269 learning how to be a person and everything that entails. What kind of mistakes does he make that almost give the game away? What does he like and dislike about being “human”?

J269 dealing with Feelings for the first time and not knowing what to do with them. Nora wants him to make a move but he doesn’t quite Get It.

If they are on the run...bed sharing. Huddling for warmth. U/RST. Trope-y goodness.

Tomb Raider (2018)

Lara Croft, Lu Ren

I thought these two had great chemistry, and I’m bummed they didn’t get together in the film. (Hopefully they will in the sequel!) I love that he really digs the fact that she’s a badass, (“Some men like dangerous women”), but he can definitely hold his own against her. And they work really well together as a team.

I also wanted to see them go on all kinds of adventures together! I think they’d get themselves into a lot of trouble and have a lot of fun doing it.

Prompts:

What happens directly after the end of the film? Does he go with her to London? Or do they part ways?

How do they meet up again? Where do they meet up?

Lara finds herself in trouble, and calls her old friend for help. (Or, Lu Ren finds himself in trouble, and calls Lara)

They get shipwrecked together and have to survive

Lara asks for his help bringing down Trinity (Do they plot an elaborate plan to take them down? Do they go searching for a weapon/information/person that might help them defeat Trinity?)

Lu Ren comforts Lara after she finds a friend (Ana?) has betrayed her

On an adventure somewhere, Lara accidentally stumbles on Lu Ren naked.

Missing scene where they bang on the ship

All of the tropes. Bed sharing. Trapped together. Undercover as a couple. I never say no to a trope.

Thank you in advance for writing for me!

[lilacsolanum]

am I correct that you once mentioned being able to talk forever about the breakdown of Animorphs team dynamics at the end of the war? please... if so... i'd love to hear your thoughts...

YES, YOU ARE VERY CORRECT. HERE WE GO.

Cassie and Ax are the only ones whose books straight up lay down the law on this. The Sacrifice has Ax straight up talking shit about, like, everyone but Marco. Marco he’s cool with, because Marco’s clear headed and not worried about getting his hands dirty. Marco’s like “Man, drop a nuclear bomb if you GOTTA, like I don’t LOVE the idea but what’s an intergalactic war without a ‘lil nuke here and there? Makes it EXCITING.” But he starts getting disenfranchised with Jake - “I wished now not for Jake, but for an Andalite commander. An experienced soldier. Someone who better understood when to fight and when to watch.” He is OVER how Rachel is terrifyingly violent and should have been removed from fighting a while ago (the scene where Ax chooses to forgive and free a Yeerk-moprhed-bird who is just trying to become a nothlit — only for Rachel to thoughtlessly murder the Yeerk on a rampage — is one of the most chilling moments in Animorphs. I gasped and had the set the book down when I first read it, and I first read it as an adult.) While He even straight up calls Tobias out on getting trapped in morph on purpose - “He stayed in red-tailed hawk morph for longer than two hours. I suspect he did it on purpose.  It was his way of escaping the complexities of human life. Although he exchanged them for a new set of complexities.” When he finds out Cassie gave away the morphing technology, he says “I could not stop looking at Cassie. I was not exactly sure what I was feeling. But I was sure it was very close to hatred.” Later he says “Perhaps the real menace lay at the other end of the continuum - represented by Cassie. Humans who were softer. Kinder. Well-meaning. And, ironically, infinitely more dangerous.” He eventually does forgive Cassie and start to understand her choice, but it takes him a MOMENT. Ax is TIRED in this book. The Sacrifice is just Ax talking shit about everyone, it’s amazing. “My hatred for Cassie began to extend to them all. They were fools. They would never prevail. They were too soft. Too sentimental. Too childish. Too stupid and ignorant.” - Aximili in The Sacrifice, pouring out some tea.

Ax ends up in this really sad place at the end of the war where he’s resigned to dying on Earth, to dying with his human friends, and he sees honor in that but he does not want it. Ax is easily the least developed characters in the series, especially once he’s given to the ghostwriters. He’s either The Funny Alien Bro or he’s the writer’s voice of political commentary. VERY RARELY is he treated with respect. Because of this inconsistency, it’s hard to say what Ax does immediately after the war. Does he just peace out to Andalite immediately? Does he take time to decide what he truly wants? Does he decide he truly wants to stay on Earth with humans but goes back to Andalite out of duty? Does he reach out to Tobias? Does he quietly accept Tobias’s decision to isolate himself and feel secretly relieved that he no longer has to care for this neurotic bird? Does he feel guilty about being secretly relieved? Does he not care he’s relieved? There are a ton of ways to interpret Ax and view his post war decisions. The only thing we know from The Sacrifice is that he’s pretty fucking DONE.

-

Cassie talks a ton of shit, too. (”The truth was, and it hurt me to admit it, Jake just wasn’t Jake anymore.” - The Ultimate. “Rachel’s voice, on the other hand, was firm and unhesitating. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m thinking it’s time to explode a big ‘ole bomb.” “And you couldn’t be happier,” Cassie said bitterly to Rachel. “Could you?”” - The Sacrifice.) Cassie always has sweetly-snide things to say about everyone in her narration (homegurl is always like “Marco is funny, but only to cover up his own fear.” “Yeah Tobias DEFINITELY trapped himself in morph.” “Rachel is a mess.” Cassie is a southern church lady and a master at shade and I love her.)

Cassie and Ax are basically just. Done with everyone. Cassie has already realized all her friends are way too war-touched to ever be healthy, and knows, on some level, that she’ll retain enough stability be able to elevate herself past the PTSD. In her last book, she makes this sad, desperate last chance grab at retaining what was left of Jake’s humanity. After that, we don’t see many people really connecting with Cassie and honestly, it’s not because she gave away the morphing cube. It’s because the Animorphs agree to blow up the Yeerk pool. I think that is a defining point for Cassie, the equivalent of Jake losing his parents. Her fate is sealed when she is forced to participate in destroying the Pool. She doesn’t like herself and she doesn’t like these people. She completely gives up on Jake and knows they have no future, which you see plainly in her reaction to Jake’s proposal (I don’t know what I expected her answer to be, but I didn’t expect her to start crying. And not tears of joy, either. “I would like that … eventually,” she said. “ But. But what?” She sighed. “But, Jake, what are you going to be? What are you going to do?” “Guess I thought I’d go to college,” I said. “And study what, Jake? Me, I’ll go to college, I’ll become a doctor. never forget what’s happened, I’ll never even try, but I’ll be able to slip back into a normal life. But you, Jake?” ) She is straight up aggressive toward Rachel in The Ultimate (”“Why do you have to be so horrible?” Cassie exploded. “You are, you know. And you get worse every day. Your own mother can’t even stand you.””) Cassie is maybe not consciously aware that she is the only one who will truly survive the war, but she knows SOMETHING, and she starts to distances herself and gives up on her friends at the end of the war. It’s another one of Cassie’s bright clear lines.

-

Marco doesn’t really comment on things falling apart, but I also don’t think Marco approaches exactly HOW falling apart things have become in the same honest way Cassie and Ax do. Listen: homeboy has abandoment issues. Which I guess is extrapolation, as I can’t really think of any example where he’s directly like “Everyone Leaves Me Eventually Fuck ‘Em And Their Little Dog Too”, but the text DOES tell us 1. Marco’s mom died when he was 11, which is a very big thing to happen to a very tiny child; 2. His dad mentally checked out immediately after and 3. After the war, Marco awkwardly tries to keep the band together. He admits to spying on Jake in his free time in The Beginning, AND I MEAN. “Marco lived half a mile from me, in a house about seven times bigger than mine. We’d started hanging out again. And after awhile he’d given up arranging dates for me with whatever starlet happened to be willing.” (Jake, The Beginning). Some of that is Jake giving back to Marco, but one can ONLY ASSUME from Marco’s weird spying that Marco pulled every drop of Jake’s friendship out by sheer force of will. He also apparently invites Cassie AND HER BOYFRIEND to his Hollywood parties (I spoke to Cassie every couple of months. She was seeing some guy … actually, a good guy. I had met him at one of Marco’s parties.) and is in general all up in her shit. He does this crazy detailed run down of every step Cassie has made post-war in Chapter 10 of The Beginning. Like bro why do you even know Wal-mart tried to get Cassie to sign a deal with them? Because you’re not as cool as you think, and you miss the fuck out of the Animorphs. His defining character trait is also “Cares about no one unless he adopts you as as family, in which case he will walk right into hell and personally bitch slap satan to ensure your safety.” I honestly don’t think it OCCURS to him that they won’t all be friends after the war. He comments a bit on people falling apart, but I swear he thinks they’re all going to fall apart together. Marco is arguably in a better position when the war ends than when it started. He brings his mother back from the dead, his dad is functioning, he is rich and famous, everything is great (save for the inevitable trauma of his parents and the existence of Nora and the fact he deliberately put her in harm and all the other terrible realizations we’ve all had about that family). But I can’t help but feel that his abandonment issues are part of what lead him to The Rachel. He sacrifices a pretty bomb life to go on a suicide mission without question, because Marco doesn’t have much family, and he adopted the Animorphs as a family, and now the only way to get that family back for even a moment is to go on The Rachel.

Basically, at the end of the war, Marco is something close to happy and hopeful. The last book he narrates is a fucking romp with tanks and ducks and bondage jokes (”” ICONIC). He’s focused on his parents, and he’s not really seeing the looming aftermath of war.

-

Tobias is sort of in the same situation. He’s dealing with a lot. He’s got a Loren now, and he’s awkwardly morphing human for her. He has been disenfranchised with Jake ever since Jake manipulated him into volunteering himself for torture. He’s kicking it with Marco and Ax and they have this sort of unofficial club going on, but he never mentions particularly connecting with Marco on the same level he does Rachel or Ax or even Cassie. Which, don’t get me wrong, I am 100% a huge believer in Team Finesse as disgruntled roommates who care for each other deep down, but it’s ultimately not enough of a connection to keep him around after Rachel���s death. That’s the thing with Tobias. He was always sort of detached from everyone but Rachel and Ax, and Ax was somewhat circumstantial. We all love the shorms, shorms are real, but there’s definitely a reading where the two of them bonded because they had to. I also definitely think Tobias never truly believed in Ax’s love for him. That’s the thing with Tobias, he can joke and he can bond and he has a nice time with the other Animorphs but he doesn’t believe in a universe where they hang out without the Yeerks, ya feel? He can go on a tank joy ride with Marco, but underneath it he’s thinking “This hilarious class clown wouldn’t give me the time of day if it wasn’t for Elfangor.” He can listen to Ax call him shorm, but ultimately he’s going to feel “Ax is only here because he has no other option, we wouldn’t be friends otherwise.” That’s why as soon as Rachel dies, Tobias is out. When Cassie says, “He doesn’t hate you, Jake. He never did. His heart was broken, that’s all. And you know, Tobias never had anyone. No one before Rachel. No mother, really, no father he could ever know. Rachel was the first and only person who ever loved Tobias.” (The Beginning), I think she’s speaking from Tobias’s POV, because she knows of all people that Tobias was loved and loved fiercely by many. It’s just that when Rachel said it, he actually believed her. (This is a line I’ve been sitting on for a minute and will use in a fic, so anyone who reads it again later, act surprised okay?)

-

And Jake and Rachel have isolating incidents that are pretty clear on the page. Rachel’s descent into extreme violence addiction isn’t super well done, but these ARE children’s books. As dark as these books are, there’s something so incredibly disturbing about watching a child find joy in a shower of blood that it’s not really well touched upon. All we know is that she’s out of control, to the point where when confronted by an armed but currently peaceful group of soldiers, she ignores orders from Ax and attempts to ram through the human shield by physically stomping on her mother’s foot and forcing the gas pedal. No one wants to hang out with Rachel by this point, not even her family, not even Cassie. Well, we can assume Tobias is still kicking it with her, but we never get a scene of them together which is a SHAME. And Jake is, you know. I’ve rambled enough, but anyone who has read the series knows that Jake withdraws from his friends when he loses his parents in The Diversion. Marco and Tobias are too preoccupied to help, Cassie tries to the point where she hands their only leverage over to the enemy but eventually gives up on EVERYONE, and Ax is too exhausted to care. I don’t think it would have mattered much if Jake had gotten a ton of support though. He’d given up by then.

ANYWAY you asked for my feelings on the kids drifting away from each other and I gave you 2K because I am extra.

[thearabkhaleesi]

JUSTICE LEAGUE: EASTER EGGS, TRIVIA, AND THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Disclaimer: I did not find all of these easter eggs myself. I watched many Youtube videos and read many articles and gathered the best easter eggs or references I could find and I compiled them into one organized post. Also, this post will definitely contain spoilers from the movie. Enjoy!

GREEN LANTERN

Green Lantern is one of the founding members of the Justice League in the comics, and it was widely speculated that he would have a cameo in the film or in the post-credits scenes (especially since there’s a planned film in the DCEU called Green Lantern Corps); even though we didn’t get that in the film, when Diana was explaining to Bruce about Steppenwolf’s origins and the Mother Boxes, we see a Green Lantern get killed in battle. The Green Lantern we see fighting Steppenwolf also wears a cape, which could be an homage to Alan Scott, the first Green lantern in the comics. This easter egg officially confirms the existence of the Green Lanterns in the DCEU films and foreshadows Green Lantern Corps (2020).

STEPPENWOLF AND DARKSEID’S RELATIONSHIP

The villain of Justice League was Steppenwolf, who is minion to the villain Darkseid. In the comics, Steppenwolf is Darkseid’s uncle, wheras in the movie, it’s revealed that Steppenwolf is Darkseid’s nephew.

CLARK AND JONATHAN KENT’S GRAVES

When The Flash and Cyborg are digging up Superman's coffin you can see the tombstone next to his reads Kent, referencing that he was buried next to his father who died in the Man of Steel movie.

JOHN WESLEY SHIPP

When attempting to break into the Kryptonian ship, Barry’s fake credentials show the name Wesley Shipp, which is a reference to John Wesley Shipp, who played the Flash in the tv show from the 1990s.

DO YOU BLEED?

One of the many callbacks to Batman v Superman is the line “Do you bleed?”. In BvS, Batman says it to Superman during their first encounter, and now in Justice League, Superman says it back to Batman during their fight.

AQUAMAN AND SUPERMAN HAVE MET BEFORE

Jason Momoa who plays Aquaman has revealed that in the DCEU, Aquaman and Superman have crossed paths before; in Man of Steel, there’s a scene where Clark almost drowns after saving people from the exploding oil rig, and apparently Aquaman pushed him back to the surface.

RED SKY

In the final battle against Steppenwolf, the Mother Boxes are united and the sky turns red; in the DC Comics universe, a red sky symbolizes a time of crisis - this first happened in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” in 1985.

SCENES STRAIGHT FROM THE COMICS

The plot of the movie draws inspiration from DC’s New 52 Comics, with scenes in the movie taken right from the comics and put into the movie such as “Aquaman talking to fish” and Batman’s first fight with the parademon, which was from the comic story arc “Origin” written by Geoff Johns, who is also the co-head of DC Films. 

GAME OF THRONES CONNECTIONS

3 actors from Game of Thrones are in Justice League:

Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo) plays Aquaman

Ciaran Hinds (Mance Rayder) played Steppenwolf through motion capture

Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton) plays an unnamed criminal fighting against Wonder Woman

BLACK MASK

During the same fight against the parademon, there’s a rooftop with the company name “Janus” on it, which is the name of the company run by the villain Black Mask.

ARES AND ZEUS

The “gods” in Wonder Woman’s storyline and backstory are seen in the flashback battle - including Ares (played by David Thewlis) and Zeus, who zapped the Mother Boxes apart.

THE PENGUIN

During a conversation between Bruce and Alfred, Alfred says he misses the days when their biggest threats were “exploding, wind-up penguins”, which is a reference to the famous Batman villain, the Penguin.

THE SPECTRE

At the Gotham City Police Department, Alfred talks to Crispus Allen, who in the comics goes on to become the cosmic entity “The Spectre”.

ACE CHEMICALS

When Batman talks to Commissioner Gordon on the rooftop, in the background you can spot a sign for “ACE Chemicals” which is where the Joker fell into a vat of chemicals that bleached his skin (in Suicide Squad we see a clip of Harley and Joker in ACE Chemicals).

DOOMSDAY CLOCK

Bruce makes a comment about the “Doomsday clock having a snooze button”, which is a reference to the Watchmen, and “Doomsday Clock” is the title to the sequel of Watchmen, written by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank.

WAYNE MANOR / HALL OF JUSTICE

At the end of the movie, Bruce Wayne returns to his family home, Wayne Manor, and tells Alfred they’ll be needing a table and six chairs around it (or maybe more..) alluding to the fact that it could be the “Hall of Justice” aka the Justice League headquarters. 

BARRY & HENRY ALLEN 

At the end of the movie, Barry gets a job as a forensic scientist, motivated by the desire to clear his father’s name (when Barry was a child, his mother Nora was murdered and his father Henry was charged with the crime). Henry Allen is held at “Iron Heights Penitentiary”, which is where most of the Flash’s enemies end up in the comics such as Captain Cold and Weather Wizard. 

Bonus fact: In Justice League, Henry Allen is played by Billy Crudup, who played Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen movie, a DC Comics film also directed by Zack Snyder (though not a part of the DCEU).

BARRY’S HOME - BLACKPINK AND RICK AND MORTY

When Bruce goes to recruit Barry to join the League, the song “As If It’s Your Last” by K-POP band BlackPink can be heard, and an episode of Rick and Morty can be seen playing in the background (season 1 episode 9); the scene shows Rick & Summer defeating the Devil, which mirrors the actions of the League in this film, as Steppenwolf is considered an allegory for Lucifer.

GORILLA GRODD

In the same scene, Barry says he known “gorilla sign language” which is a reference to the Flash villain “Gorilla Grodd”, who is an extremely intelligent gorilla with psychic powers.

PRINCE AND DAVID BOWIE

A newspaper article can be seen remembering the deaths of Prince and David Bowie alongside Superman.

THE KRYPTONIAN SHIP

The Kryptonian ship which plays a big role in the film, is the same one that General Zod arrives in in Man of Steel, Lex Luthor created Doomsday in Batman v. Superman; we also understand from the movie that the ship has been taken from LexCorp by STAR Labs.

VICTOR AND GOTHAM CITY UNIVERSITY

Victor got his powers after suffering an accident while he was a student and football player at Gotham City University. A scene was cut from the movie that showed him in a GCU jacket and his days as a football player. Bonus Fact: In Batman v Superman: Ultimate Edition, we see a scene of a football game between Gotham City University and Metropolis, with GCU losing 58-0, and they’re doing so badly because Victor isn’t on their team anymore due to his accident.

BOOYAH

After the fight with Steppenwolf, Cyborg says “Booyah!”, which is his signature catchphrase in the Teen Titans animated series.

JOHN WILLIAMS SCORE

Danny Elfman used a bit of Superman’s classic score by John Williams but “gave it a darker twist” in the film right before Superman fights the League at his monument.

16TH ANNIVERSARY OF ANIMATED SERIES

This film was released in the US on November 17th, the same day the animated series Justice League (2001) first aired sixteen years earlier.

1978 JIMMY OLSEN CAMEO

Marc McClure, who plays Jimmy Olsen in the 1978 Superman movie has a cameo in the movie as the police guard in the jail when Barry visits his dad.

SUPERMAN V. THE FLASH - 1ST POST CREDITS SCENE

The first mid-credits scene shows Superman racing against The Flash to see who is faster; this has been a subject of many comic book stories with the answer never being truly resolved and always being “up in the air”.

LEGION OF DOOM - 2ND POST CREDITS SCENE

The second post credits scene shows Lex Luthor to have broken out of Arkham Asylum and aboard a yacht with Deathstoke (aka Slade Wilson), with Lex telling Slade they should form “a league of their own”. This is a reference to the “Legion of Doom” or the “Injustice League” , a group of supervillains from DC Comics including Lex Luthor, Deathstroke, Riddler, Braniac, Solomon Grundy, Sinestro, Scarecrow, and more. Bonus Fact: Lex Luthor’s look in this scene is more true to how he looks in the comics as opposed to how he looked in Batman v Superman.

CLARK’S FUNERAL OUTFIT

We see that Clark was buried in a navy blue suit, white shirt, and red tie - this is one of Clark’s iconic outfits from the early comics.

THE ICONIC SUPERMAN POSE

Another iconic Clark Kent outfit is the tan trenchcoat, glasses, and hat, and at the very end of the film, the first time in the DCEU, we see Clark wear this outfit and pull open his shirt to reveal his Superman outfit - an iconic Superman scene.

[bunchofbooks]

It’s Time for Kyrsten’s Opinion: Mental Illness in YA Books

Hi everyone! So as you may or may not know this week is mental illness awareness week, so I thought I could make a post about some of the books  I’ve read that deal with mental illness in books. Most of these are YA novels and I will be sure to put a trigger warning for anything that I can think of. Please be aware of these warning and take care of yourself! I have read all of these books so if you have any questions please feel free to shoot me over a message :) If you guys have read any of these books before or pick on up after my review or just want to recommend a book about mental illnesses please send me a message. Happy reading! 

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls is about a girl named Lia who is struggling with her anorexia and is struggling to keep it under control and struggling to hide it from her family who desparately wants her to get better, but Lia just wants to get thinner and thinner. Unfortunately, her former best friend, Cassie dies as a result of her eating disorder and Lia is struggling with the death of this girl who was her long time best friend at one point. **TRIGGER WARNING: eating disorder (obviously), self harm, graphic scenes involving the death of a character, and drug use**

Your Voice is All I Hear by Leah Scheier

Your Voice is All I Hear is about a girl named April who on the first day of tenth grade meets a boy named Jonah, who is new to the school district. Jonah at first seems like the picture perfect boyfriend, but April soon realizes that Jonah is struggling with what is later diagnosed with schizophrenia. Your Voice is All I Hear was definitely not my all time favorite book at all and I will be posting a review about it soon, but just because I disliked it doesn’t mean someone else won’t love it. **TRIGGER WARNING: suicide attempt**

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Impulse follows three teenagers, Tony, Vanessa, and Conner who are all in a psychiatric hospital for failed suicide attempts. The chapters alternate between the three characters as they navigate through their time at this hospital and grow closer together. **TRIGGER WARNING: graphic scenes of suicide or suicide ideation

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

All The Bright Places is about a boy named Theo Finch and a girl named Violent Markey who meet at the top of a bell tower when they are both about to commit suicide by jumping off. However, Theo talks Violet down and they both manage to make it to the ground together. Violet is part of the popular girls and Theo is more of an outcast, but the two of them have a lot more in common than they would think and when they are partnered for a history project, they develop a relationship and help each other. This is one of my all time favorite books, but I have heard that some people think this is almost like a textbook definition of what depression is. Some people have also said that they feel like this passes the message that you can love someone’s mental illness away. I don’t feel that way personally, but I can see why some people may think that. **TRIGGER WARNING: suicide ideation**

Zoe Letting Go by Nora Price

Zoe is in Twin Birch, which is a hospital for girls who have eating disorders. To keep herself from losing her mind, Zoe writes letters to her best friend Elise. However, Elise never writes Zoe back and Zoe feels completely lost without her best friend by her side. I’ll be honest, it’s been awhile since I read this book, so I don’t remember if there is any potential triggers for people other than eating disorders.

History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

Griffin’s ex boyfriend dies and his entire world seems like it explodes. Theo, Griffin’s ex boyfriend, moved to California to attend college and while he was there met Jackson, but Griffin knew that they would end up together one day. Griffin hates Jackson and feels like Jackson hates him back because they see the each other as competition for Theo. This book does have some OCD representation from Griffin, but it is not necessarily a book about OCD.

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical twins that have parents in high political positions and the all - American family on the outside, however their lives are plagued by horrors that the outside world cannot see. Their father is sexually abusing Kaeleigh and ignores Raeanne completely, even though Kaeleigh would rather him go without noticing her, and Raeanne is dying for his attention. **TRIGGER WARNING: sexual abuse, rape, drug abuse, alcoholism, and self harm**

[pierrotdameron]

‘The Leftovers’ Review: Season 3 Pushes The Best Show on Television to Evocative New Heights

A TV show that’s “ahead of its time” usually means the format’s too strange for the audience to grasp. We’d never seen TV through the eyes of an abstract and deadpan visionary before David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.” It took time to embrace comedy delivered with the rapid-fire richness of Mitch Hurwitz’s “Arrested Development.” But while Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s structure was no barrier to “The Leftovers,” this examination of what happens after 2 percent of the population disappeared — and how its survivors face the changed world — was too much weight for many viewers to bear.

And who could blame them? When the pilot debuted in June 2014, Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) said people weren’t just angry, “they’re ready to fucking explode.” But in reality, we had a stable president, the fan favorite San Antonio Spurs had just defeated LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals, critically acclaimed comedy “22 Jump Street” was rolling through the box office, and Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” topped the charts. In other words, people were doing OK.

READ MORE: ‘The Leftovers’: Damon Lindelof Explains Why Bingeing Season 3 is a Bad Idea

In April 2017, as HBO’s “The Leftovers” prepares for its third and final season, political turmoil engulfs the country, baseball is being played with an intentional walk rule requiring no pitches to be thrown, “The Boss Baby” is No. 1 at the box office, and Chris Brown played a lovable goofball in a guest arc on “Black-ish.”

People are angry. People are ready to “fucking explode.” People are ready for “The Leftovers.”

More importantly, at least for the devout followers of what I believe is television’s best series, “The Leftovers” is ready for you. Season 3 is no less than a coup, wrapping up a wild narrative with ambitious new threads and honing in on each character’s fundamental spiritual and psychological beliefs. This final round with the Garvey family is designed to evoke powerful emotional reactions; you’re as likely to startle your dog from cathartic laughter as you are from open sobbing, all within the course of an hour.

Without spoiling the deft creative touches used to introduce the final season, it’s not the narrative reset we saw to start Season 2. This is a cumulative story, and it’s designed to be a cumulative viewing experience. Standalone episodes and arcs are a glimpse of the full story’s power, but dedicated study of both prior seasons will amplify your appreciation of the new year.

READ MORE: What Makes TV ‘Very Good’ in 2017? Damon Lindelof, Aya Cash, The Cast of ‘Casual’ and More Share Insights

Taking their cue from the Gospels, co-creators Lindelof and Perrotta tell stories as grand as they are grounded. Season 1 kept us firmly rooted in the reality of the post-departure world, as these characters tried to cope with the idea they’ll never know what happens when we die. After losing loved ones, the leftovers tried to find solace and meaning in their survival. Season 2 offered audacious answers to the big questions by taking us beyond the known world. Rebirth ran rampant as we received ambiguous glimpses not into what comes next, but into why we’re here.

Season 3 goes a step further, combining the painful awareness of reality with a fresh understanding of what matters. The Garveys, the Murphys, and everyone within their chosen families feels the pressure of an impending tragedy. These high stakes play into their desires to find definitive answers, just as it forces them to focus on what matters now. The split between looking beyond this world, or finding meaning within it, also demands that the audience choose one or the other. Where does happiness lie?

In “The Leftovers,” happiness is probably too high a bar; those who accept that everything can’t be explained can only hope to be OK. They’re haunted by the mystery of death, and “The Leftovers” is a show willing to let that mystery be, longer and with more awareness than any other show would dare to do.

Season 3 does, in its own way, answer the unanswerable question: It’s the time we have here, the aspects of life we can control, that need attention. As Lindelof and Perrotta promised from the start, they don’t provide all the answers as to how and why people vanished without explanation. However, these final episodes provide resolution and understanding that’s incomparably perceptive.

Some are heart-shattering stories; others are arcs made to lift you up and carry you through. Newcomer Lindsay Duncan leaves a devastating impact in her stunning first few minutes onscreen, and Nora’s journey (played by the outstanding Carrie Coon) is heart-wrenching throughout. But moments with Kevin and his father (Scott Glenn), alongside the younger players (led by Jovan Adepo) shine light through the darkness.

READ MORE: The 7 Best Endings to HBO Murder Mysteries

In the premiere, Kevin again invokes his fear of chaos. “I can’t afford to have this place fucking explode again,” he says, his words loaded with context for the past and present. He’s afraid of what could happen. He’s afraid things won’t be OK anymore. He’s quite simply afraid. To some degree that’s the human condition, and how that awareness is reflected in the lives of these characters will shake you to your core. What Kevin doesn’t realize — and the show does, profoundly — is sometimes people need to be shaken. Pretending it’s OK isn’t the same as being OK, and people aren’t always willing to venture outside their bubbles of belief.

“The Leftovers” is here to blow up that bubble, and the people are finally ready. They’re ready not for the end, but for the moment we’re living in right now. The world has caught up to “The Leftovers.” And it’s time to fucking explode.

Grade: A+

“The Leftovers” Season 3 debuts Sunday, April 16 at 9 p.m. on HBO, HBO NOW, and HBO Go.

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/the-leftovers-season-3-review-final-masterpiece-1201801201/

[bigyack-com]

With ‘Upload,’ Greg Daniels Takes a Leap Into the Great Unknown

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The new Amazon series “Upload” was in its final week of shooting last May, and Greg Daniels was chewing on everything he could get his hands on, including his hands. Time was waning, and the set — a convincing facsimile of a claustrophobic Queens apartment — was tricky to navigate. Daniels, the series’s creator, watched a monitor as the crew worked the tight spaces and the director shouted commands.He chewed his gum. Cut! — another take, please. He chewed his fingers. Cut! — let’s try again. He leapt from his chair, consulted the crew and came back chewing his thumb. Cut! — one more time for safety.“At least I get to sit back and let her direct,” Daniels said, nodding to the episode’s director, Daina Reid, which was maybe half-true. He had complete faith in his directors, he emphasized, but this was a passion project three decades in the making. There wasn’t much actual sitting back.“It’s hard not to micromanage,” he admitted.Perhaps more than “Parks and Recreation,” which Daniels cocreated, and more than the American version of “The Office,” which Daniels developed and oversaw, “Upload” is his baby, based on an idea he conceived as a writer for “Saturday Night Live” in the late 1980s.A sci-fi dramatic comedy set in 2033, in which the souls of the dying are uploaded to a virtual afterlife, “Upload” is also Daniels’s first major creation since “Parks” ended in 2015. And when it debuts, on May 1, it will do so in the wake of several other notable series focused on similar themes and issues. The pressure was palpable.“It’s been three and a half months of go, go, go,” Daniels sighed. “It’s been a little bit crazy.”As much as anyone in television, Daniels is responsible for a successful brand of TV comedy that feels as familiar now as it felt groundbreaking when “The Office” debuted 15 years ago. His half-hour, single-camera sitcoms, with their deep ensemble casts and tonal blend of cringey awkwardness and heart, offered viewers the easy reliability of the best multicamera comedies but without the one-liners and studio audiences.“Upload,” however, is new territory for Daniels. Gone is the hand-held, mockumentary aesthetic he is best known for. He took a more cinematic approach to “Upload,” which Amazon encouraged him to write as a single contained story. It is his first creation for a streaming service (his second, the astro-political satire “Space Force,” lands next month on Netflix). The plot — told over 10 mostly half-hour episodes that will drop all at once — is tight and binge-ready. The special effects are complex.It also has action. And a murder mystery. And cursing and nudity. And competition.“There are so many good shows,” Daniels said during a car ride between sets. Audience attention is strained, he said, so he packed as many of the things he likes into “Upload” as possible.“Part of the impulse here is to kind of do a genre mash-up — to have satire but also to have romance and the mystery,” he said. “There’s a lot to look at and a lot to think about.”

Heaven, for a price

People love the characters Daniels creates and writes — as in, actually love. The way viewers talk about Michael Scott and Leslie Knope, they might as well be real people. Pam and Jim could be a real couple. Put “Ron Swanson” on an election ballot, and he’d probably do OK.Along the way, the list of actors his series have turned into stars is impressive. Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, John Krasinski, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt: All were relative newcomers before appearing in Daniels’s sitcoms. Fans of “The Daily Show” knew Steve Carell as a correspondent, but it was his role on “The Office” that catapulted his career.“Upload” has a sharper edge than Daniels’s earlier shows (including the animated “King of the Hill,” which he created with Mike Judge), but the cast has familiar qualities: charismatic, diverse, good-looking but approachable, and led by actors who have the glow of indwelling stardom but aren’t widely known.“I think that’s really exciting from a casting standpoint, is to find somebody and see how you’re going to break them,” Daniels said. “And I think there’s a pleasure for the audience in going into a show and being like, ‘I don’t know any of these people.’”One of them is Andy Allo, who plays Nora, a customer service representative at Horizen, a company that manages the virtual afterlife and its digitized human souls, known as uploads. (The reps function as the angels of this digital heaven.)In the series, Nora’s father, a religious man, is dying, and he hopes to join Nora’s deceased mother in the celestial afterlife, not some digital one.“It does bring in so many questions of your existence after death,” Allo said between takes. “Heaven, on this spiritual level, is what my dad believes in, but I work for this company that has created heaven.”Like today’s wireless companies (note the name), Horizen offers different data plans based on what families can afford. If customers exceed their limits, things get glitchy.“How darkly funny it is that you end up almost in a similar way and place that you were in real life?” Allo said. “It’s like pay-by-month” on the bottom tier, she added — heaven when you can afford it. “You get two gigs a month, and once you run out, you freeze.”Although Nora has dozens of other clients, she grows close with Nathan (Robbie Amell), a handsome young upload who took his charmed life for granted before he was critically injured in a self-driving car crash. Ambiguity surrounds the circumstances of his eventual death, drawing Nora and Nathan deep into a dangerous mystery.Meanwhile, Nathan is even more beholden to his rich and controlling girlfriend (Allegra Edwards) than he was before he died, because her family is financing his digital existence.“Being uploaded and essentially being owned as a human being, or as intellectual property, by my girlfriend throws a huge wrench in my life,” Amell said. “So although I get to continue living, it’s definitely not on my own terms.”To create the show’s complex mesh of realities, Daniels relied on multiple directors with prestigious, wide-ranging résumés. (Reid got an Emmy nomination for “The Handmaid’s Tale”; Jeffrey Blitz directed the Oscar-nominated documentary “Spellbound.”)Daniels was among them, directing two episodes including the 45-minute pilot. It is a rare role for him — “I am probably the worst director of the bunch that I have hired,” he said laughing �� and “Upload” presents its own technical challenges. Dogs talk. Heads explode. Characters and objects (and useful body parts) appear and disappear.On an outdoor set, an actor whacked a nonexistent golf ball toward a green screen, then traded barbs with a patch of grass. In the finished version, the empty space became a hologram of another actor playing Arnold Palmer, who died in 2016.“The game just keeps getting harder,” Daniels said. “I shot the pilot, and then ‘Ready Player One’ came out. Spielberg is master of special effects, and he had, like, a 20-minute opening shot with no cuts in it, zooming through this world, going in and out of VR and the real world.”Thirty years ago, Daniels likely wouldn’t have measured himself against Steven Spielberg. But in the era of streaming and prestige TV, the competition had evolved.“I was like, ‘Oh God,’” Daniels said. “‘His one shot is like 20 times the budget of my entire pilot.’”

A convincing future

TV has become highly interested in post-mortem journeys of self-discovery, in shows like Amazon’s “Forever,” TBS’s “Miracle Workers” and Netflix’s “Russian Doll.” Daniels is aware of the micro-trend but doesn’t consider “Upload” to be following an increasingly well-trod metaphysical path.Ask about “Black Mirror,” and he is quick to tell you he devised and sold the idea for “Upload” well before the debut of “San Junipero” — an episode that won two Emmys in 2017 for its story set in a digital hereafter.Ask about “The Good Place,” however, and he is thoughtful to the point of appearing vulnerable. “The Good Place” wasn’t TV’s only comedy about the afterlife, as he noted. But it was the only one put out by his “Parks and Recreation” co-creator, Michael Schur.“I couldn’t believe that Mike had the idea for ‘The Good Place’ while I was doing this,” Daniels said. “I don’t watch ‘The Good Place’ because of the similarities. I don’t want to watch it.”Given the creators’ shared history, comparisons between the shows will be inevitable. Each is a high-concept comedy set in an afterworld with design flaws and equally flawed but charming staff. But “Upload” has a detailed and believable universe all its own.Perhaps its greatest distinguishing feature is the focus on technology and class. The tone is sometimes dark, not just darkly funny, and even frightening.Daniels said he’d wanted realism, a version of the near-future that was convincing and recognizable. A Tinder-like app lets people rate their hookups. Unemployment might keep you out of heaven.“For the pitch, I was referencing Kafka and Charlie Chaplin in ‘Modern Times,’” he said. “That’s, to me, why to do it, because it feels like it says something about income inequality and capitalism.”Traditional notions of heaven are about “both living past your body’s death but also, supposedly, some sort of fairness or ultimate reward for the good and the meek,” he added. “In this version, that’s not happening — it’s just the rich and capitalistic getting it.”That pitch had traveled its own Kafkaesque journey, metamorphosing as it went. Daniels conceived an early version while brainstorming “S.N.L.” sketches but ultimately decided to table the idea, and then later tried to turn it into a short story. During the writers’ strike of 2007-8, he took a stab at making it a novel. He didn’t pitch it as a TV show until several years later, selling it to HBO in 2015.HBO spent some time developing the concept, but then the executive who bought it left. Daniels resold it in 2016 to Amazon.“There have been other shows that dealt with the afterlife, but I think the way that Greg has designed the show is truly and fully unique,” said Ryan Andolina, the head of comedy at Amazon Studios. Andolina also bought Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag,” a favorite of Daniels’s, and he viewed “Upload” as another kind of auteur comedy. “Greg is very meticulous and specific, and had a very clear idea of what the show was.”It would’ve been easy for Daniels to make another network mockumentary, but he seems determined to push himself. “Space Force” will reunite him with Carell, who pitched him the show in July 2018, not long after President Trump announced his desire to create a new military branch of the same name.The Netflix series is not quite science fiction, though there are spaceships, and the cast and cinematic production signal a significant budget. Another thing it isn’t: a network mockumentary.“Mockumentary is terrific — it’s a really fun style,” he said. “But after nine years of ‘The Office’ and seven years of ‘Parks and Recreation,’ I don’t know, I felt like I wanted to do something else.”He paused, then laughed. “After dealing with this many green screens, I could see going back to mockumentary.” Read the full article