#Newt straight up is not the main character in this movie

[paper-star-ships]

Secrets Of Dum//bledore was SO bad y’all 😭😭

[merrock]

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: Zión Moreno

full name: Lunasota de Garcia

nickname(s) / goes by: Imp (by her Grandfather), Luna

pronouns & gender: transgender woman, she/her/hers

sexuality: panromantic, greysexual 

birth date: November 13th, 1995

birth place: Mexico City, Mexico

arrival to merrock: 13 years ago (when she was 15). 

housing: countryside

occupation: Animal Rehabilationist / Large Animal Veterinarian 

work place: Animal Sanctuary (with her grandfather who … maybe owns it?)

family: Mateo de Gracia (formerly his surname was Luna-Soto. Her grandfather/adoptive father, Merrock long-time resident) - this is the only family she will consider her own. 

relationship status: Single

PERSONALITY

She reinvented herself to fit what she needed - not what the world expected. She is bold, full of light and laughter, and a deep sadness that she will not share with many. While she loves – and loves deeply – she can be fiercely protective and quick to judge, especially if she feels that one of her animals (or heaven forbid, her grandfather) are in danger or have been insulted. She loves beautiful, soft things – but also has a passion for the outdoors and adventure. She doesn’t like maps, she loves to get lost, and when she does – it’s always with a smile. 

WRITTEN BY: Newt (she/her & they/them), est.

BACKGROUND / BIO

triggering / sensitive content: brief mention of transphobia

The time before she was eighteen can be summed up simply: she was not what her family wanted. All except for Mateo, her grandfather … who wasn’t even her grandfather, not really. He was a dear friend of the family who had looked after her father in his youth, steered him onto the straight and narrow and fostered in him a strong work ethic. Mateo had thought that he had also imparted a need to love and respect his family – but Mateo learned later that the boy he raised like a son – the man he mentored and cared for – had cast out his youngest child and cited religious reasons – oh, Mateo was heartbroken, and so angry. 

He went searching for the child, operating on hunches, searching through the streets, contacting police, anything he could do to find the child he always thought was his grandchild. It took him nearly a year - and when they were reunited, he learned why his son had cast out his child – while his son had been so proud to have had three sons born to his bloodline (as he was an orphan and had a strong desire for sons and lineage), his youngest had been assigned male at birth and had spoken to him about her desire to transition and be as she was - a girl. 

Mateo gathered his granddaughter into his arms and promised her that he would never chase her away, and he would always love her - as her father should have loved her. As her brothers should have protected her. Mateo stayed with her, getting an apartment and leaving his home in Merrock behind for a time - long enough to become her guardian and for her to come with him back to Maine. In that time, she grew to trust him. At that time, she told him about what she had been forced to do. 

(She never knew that Mateo used to be an angry man … a violent man. She only knew that after she told him, he kissed her forehead, told her to stay inside and watch a movie, and disappeared for a few hours. When he came home, it was with bruised knuckles and a promise: no one would come after her. She didn’t ask what he had done - she only took comfort in the fact that he had protected her.) 

When she was brought to her new home, and Mateo was able to formally get the adoption papers to formally make her his daughter (though she continues to call him abuelito) - he asked her if she wanted to keep her name or choose a new one. He encouraged her to think about what name was hers – and she came back with a name that surprised him. Lunasota. His last name taken and put together to then become her first name with a feminine twist. It wouldn’t do, he said - as he wanted to have the same last name as her… so, he had an idea. He changed his last name to de Garcia – which she took as her own. Together, they started a new life. He loved and mentored her through her transition, through school, through heartbreaks and relationships. 

He calls her imp - for her impish smile. She calls herself Luna. And when he’s exasperated, he calls her Lunasota in such a tone that indicates that he is trying not to laugh because she got into some mischief and she will point out that he is the one who raised her - he has no one to blame but himself. 

While Mateo encouraged her to go to college, she agreed on one condition - he would allow her to make her own decision (with no complaining) about what she wanted to do with her life. He agreed. She went to school for biology, obtaining first her bachelors (and because she enjoyed school, she then went to veterinary school) and then she returned him, pulled on her abuelito’s favorite baseball cap, and told him: I’m going to work with you - with the animals that need us. 

Mateo had saved her - and he was known for his kindness and gift for animals. She wants to continue to learn from him and carry on his legacy. 

[emeraldspiral]

Thinking about the abundance of queer themes in horror and horror being a major influence on Invader Zim.

Like, there's a lot of essays and thinkpieces discussing how the horror genre and queerness go hand-in-hand. Whether we're talking about the abundance of queer-coded villains representing a fear of queer people or the fear of discovering ones own queerness, or if we're talking about how in general, queer people have a lot to be anxious about with many very real dangers existing as part of the background noise of their lives, so it's hard to find a horror movie that doesn't draw upon a fear that resonates in some way to the queer experience.

And like, I've already made a whole post about how the core premise of Zim is inherently queer. Zim being an actual alien already makes him an other in the human world, but he's also canonically aroace and considered "defective" even on his home planet. The show is about him trying to hide his otherness and present as normal while living with the constant dread of being exposed. Meanwhile, the show's deuteragonist is driven by a quest for acceptance from a society he doesn't conform to. A society which considers his non-conformity a mental illness, and essentially gaslights him about how they all know better than him about his own experiences when they won't even hear him out or look at his evidence because it conflicts with their predetermined biases.

But I think horror being part of the DNA of the show also contributes heavily to its inherent queerness.

Body horror and gross out horror are show staples, which often resonate especially with queer people's anxieties surrounding their autonomy, unwanted physical changes and desires, or disassociation between the body and self-identity.

Then there's the fact that horror films often utilize a formula featuring male killers or masculine monsters chasing around a female protagonist because of the perception that women are more vulnerable than men and men are more threatening than women. But because the two main characters are both male, a lot of storylines end up with one or the other of them in a traditionally feminine role. In Dark Harvest, Zim plays the part of the monster, while Dib ends up being the "final girl". Episodes like Plague of Babies, GIR Goes Crazy, and FBI Warning on the other hand, have Zim being the one stalked and menaced and frequently ending up in bondage. Then there's the Halloween episode where the climax is a direct homage to a scene from Aliens where Zim and Dib are both mimicking the roles of female characters, Ellen Ripley and Newt respectively, with Nightmare Bitters as the Xenomorph Queen.

The show's only main female character however, never plays the distressed victim role. She's generally portrayed as untouchable; too scary for anyone to mess with, smart enough to avoid trouble, and resourceful enough to get out of any situation unscathed. In Game Slave 2, she is the monster stalking a boy while in Bloaty's she's the hero rescuing her brother from Zim's clutches.

Then you've got stuff like Bestest Friend where Zim recruits a beard to try to appease people who've begun to scrutinize his private life, which then becomes the set-up for jokes about Keef being a terrifying stalker, attempting to force an intimate relationship that Zim doesn't want and which he fears will lead to his exposure.

In the Halloween episode, Dib's father turns his back on him and allows him to be institutionalized for once again making true statements about his own experiences that no one wants to listen to. In his nightmare world, the three most terrifying apparitions are his father, his sister, and his teacher, whose main goal is to strap him to a table and open up his head. Meanwhile, the nightmare version of himself is in a straight jacket with a lobotomy scar across his forehead.

Hospitals and mental institutions are horror staples, and within the show's context it makes sense for Dib to be afraid of them since he's always being called crazy for believing in the paranormal. But until relatively recently, queerness has in many places been medicalized as a mental illness and queer people have been subjected to involuntary commitment in medical institutions where "treatment" included things like shock therapy and lobotomy. Even today, conversion therapy still exists as an ever-present threat to LGBT people with non-accepting families and community members, such as school teachers, who are willing to out them out of disdain or a misguided belief that it's for their own good.

The show's horror elements may not have been intended to amplify the already inherently queer themes baked into the show's premise, but it certainly doesn't detract from it.

[vibrantleeches]

I'm Angry >:( (Super long rant about absolutely fucking nothing)

I wasn't gonna put the fandom so this could be more general but fuck it. I wanna be specific about shit.

I've heard so many other people complain about this but it's MY turn. I HATE being apart of a dead fandom. Like please...! I just wanna talk about silly little characters from a stupid book, then movie adaptation, (The Maze Runner Series) and how everything clicks and works and the ideas for after the main books-

The only thing people talking about this story is the ship I enjoy but think is a bit overrated (Newt and Thomas). Sure they're cute, the actors also lowkey ship it, and the author has a lot of silly little nods about it but why not think about other ideas? Like I know everyone loves bringing up how Newt gave the letter to Thomas and not Minho his arguably closer friend, but it's not about the love between the characters. It's showing how he really is the, capital L, Leader. How he is trusted and a true person, how he is the opposite, in the eyes of the Gladers, to Teresa even though they had similar experiences. (Minus her watching her mother go insane which... God I hate that they didn't have that in the movie, but more on that later and also the whole mind reading.) I just feel like if you want romance there can be romance but you need to do it right. I saw this really good commentary about how writers need to learn how to write women because it's making their characters act gay because they are super dynamic and interactive until a women comes on and they have to "love her technically". Super funny but also that with gay/queer rep. Make the boys kiss, because they want to and not because they are two boys and that's hot or whatever.

Like, I'm having a hard time also finding queer spaces in this community, like I understand the leisurely enjoyment of gay and queer ships that needs to be normalized. A lot of women talk about enjoying it because of how men don't seem to respect women the way they do male friends and how they want that mutual respect. BUT the love feels weird when written with only the experience of straight relationships in mind, like it's not the same. Not the dynamics, or the feelings, because it is fundamentally different. Like that's how those hyper-femme twink with a super buff or hyper-masculine bear dynamics happen, which are fine i guess. But why not do more man! The ships that can be had are so gorgeous. And super fucking dynamic (god I use that word a lot) because of the complex inner world building that is done.

AND THE HATE ON TERESA-

She's not my favorite either, I have a hard time with that whole "The death of a few for the survival of the many", but GOD. She had her reason (watching her mother go insane at like 7), she was flawed, she was also A FUCKING CHILD just like the rest of them?! I don't hate her, personally, because her character is understandable and has attempts (and ultimate failures) at redemption, because she isnt meant to be redeemable! People who hate her and haven't read the books or heard about the books is excusable, because so much is explained in those pages that isn't even mentioned in the movies.

Like her and Thomas being connected psychicly! Or all the times that WICKED used her against her friends! She was so confused, manipulated, and abused that I doubt she even knew what was her or them anymore!

Anyways! I love these books (and also hate them all the same) and could go on amd on for hours-

[zer0brainc3lls]

This is probably going to sound basic but Newt is 100% my favourite

From the moment I first saw him in the first movie I loved his personality almost immediately, “for a second I thought you had the chops to be a runner, till you face planted” and I really resonate with his character as a whole, relating to him alot :)

I love how the gladers respect him as a whole, with good reason besides him being an authority figure. They respect him because he is kind but is by NO MEANS a door mat. He is kind but won’t hesitate to shut someone down or step in if need be. Also the way he cared so much about the other gladers, (especially Alby and Thomas)

Alby and Newt’s friendship in the books is honestly one of my favourite things in the first book. How when Alby sacrificed himself Newt immediately questions how they could all be so heartless, (how quickly they moved on) he clearly cares very deeply for him and doesn’t hesitate to show it.

Also how Newt sticks up for Thomas in the first movie but more so the books, even saying (in the book) that he would add Thomas to the list of people to be considered as runners if he doesn’t talk about it (he says this because whining and whatnot as he puts it a think isn’t appreciated in the glade.) and ugh my all time favourite part, Newt covering Thomas with blankets in the deadheads.

I could go on and on about his relationships with other characters but the main point is, if he cares about someone he will not hesitate to show it. Straight up telling Thomas he can tell he’s “no whimp” and also saying “I like you greenie” but also the other way around, if he doesn’t like someone he is NOT subtle. If he is angry with someone he wont hesitate to tell them (a quality I wish I had)

A lot of his character and struggles I relate to and he makes me crack up in the movies and books and also crank palace is by far one of my favourite books in the maze runner books as a whole.

His whole character is so complex and over looked so often it actually pisses me off sometimes, everything he goes through and does for all the other characters is SO important to the series and his impact on the whole story is honestly amazing to me

I could honestly yap FOREVER about his character and how important it is to me but I’ll shut up (for now.. 🤫)

so, we've know one another for some time now, tmr geeks. tell me, who is your favourite character and why? i need to know and understand it so bad it hurts— and be as LENGTHY as you want, confess your secrets, i love it.

[dumbledore-and-grindelwald]

I'm back from watching TSoD.

I went straight after 10 hours of work after having woken up at 5 a.m and I'm very sleepy right now, so this will be a general opinion and I'll be back tomorrow, analysing more things as they come back to me.

First things first, I like the movie a lot and it was visually stunning. It was both light and dark. It had humor and the beasts were cute, but at the same time there is a beast that has been woven into the plot more prominently than in any other movie and it worked thematically. We see some really dark times in the Wizarding World and the election-plot is actually interesting, if not perfectly realised. For example, during election-day we jump to the candidates and Vogel (played by Oliver Masucci) thanks the candidates for their speeches. Considering that the plot focused a lot on the politics, I wanted the speeches. I wanted to know their positions. This doesn't make the movie bad. But it could have been more.

In terms of the characters, Dumbledore is the protagonist in this movie, with Grindelwald being the second main. They are the two that get explored significantly more than any other character. The plot is build around them. The themes throughout the movie are meant to futher our understanding of them. By the end of the movie we don't know them fully, but we have a significantly better understanding of their emotional state. Their love is at the forefront. It's not platonic, it's not chaste. There is no kiss, but there is an intensity and in some occasions elegantly conveyed sensuality that is very satisfying. They got me right in the feelings and I got emotional in several occasions. Albus and Aberforth's relationship was not developed as extensively, but I liked what we got and I think it felt true to my idea of the characters, as brothers who ARE there for each other throughout their lives in one way or another while still having an unbridgeable gab between them when it comes to communicating and letting go. There's love, forever tainted by guilt and resentment and the movie manages to convey that despite Aberforth's little screen-time. There was a significant retcon when it comes to the fallout at the end of the 'three months of insanity' though. Moreover, all the information we got was told instead of shown. I still wish for them to give us actual flashbacks if we get more movies *fingers crossed*.

As for the gang, they have a mission, they interact with each other in a way that is fresh and heart-warming, but I felt that they were secondary despite having a lot of screentime. While watching, I felt that if they were fewer the plot would not have worked so well, but at the same time I wished that they had distingushable arcs.

Then, during the full hour it takes for me to get back home from the theatre I was at, I started questioning my initial disappointment on that front. This is not a standalone film. It's part of a series, many characters who were more fully realised in AWtFT and in TCoG got less development in this one and I could find aspects of the way thei were written being thematic parallels or juxtaposition to Dumbledore's emotional journey. Not all of them can be developed on the same level at the same time. Another thing is that I started realising that there was more development that I had initially noticed. For example I absolutely loved Yusuf and Credence's arcs after thinking more about certain details, which I will come back to in more focused commentary and meta. Newt mostly worked for Dumbledore's character. Theseus too got developed in ways that were subtle, and which I started seeing later. Queenie was handled exactly how I had been saying she would be since I watched the first movie. She is the one character whose arc I had pinned down from the start. Now that it has come to a close in a way, I can't wait to see what she makes of herself. Lally and Bunty were both loving and brave. I loved them. That said, I would like a little more emotional depth from Lally. I cared for her but I want us to find out more about her past or to see her connect on a deeper level with some of the characters for me to be completely invested in her.

An actual flaw for me is that I wish we'd gotten a fleshed out approach on Grindelwald's genuine followers. I'd like 2 or 3 of them to feel like actual characters, instead of being typical henchmen/women.

Overall I am satisfied. I think that the main gripe I'll always have with FB is that it's not a book. Frankly, I don't think that the development in the HP movies was THAT superior. I just had the book and I automatically filled in missing pieces. It was a combined experience. In this case, I like what I see, but without all the extra information, Iwant more. It's such an ambitious story that I'd like to revel into the themes and the politics in a way that no movie could achieve, and I think it's unfair of me to hold it up to such unreasonable standards. EXACTLY because this is an ambitious story, I don't think it's a movie that can fully appreciated WHILE watching it for the first time. It's packed. The more I think about it the more I notice things that I could not fully processed at the time. I get the sense that I'll appreciate it more as it settles and even more upon rewatching.

[megatraven]

You seem like u have good opinions, give me three of your favorite books/movies/media you’d recommend

HEHE thank you that's very sweet to say <3

I'm gonna just rec 3 books and 3 movies... and 3 TV shows >:3c

Books:

Fatal Fidelity Series (Love Kills Twice and Love Bleeds Deep) - Probably some of my favorite books right now! The third book is coming out soon and I'm SO SO excited about it. It's about this NB assassin who falls in love with one of their clients and honestly the writing is just so damn good. Pulls you in and doesn't let go until you've finished all there is to read

Bloodlines Series (Spin-off series of Vampire Academy, the first book is called Bloodlines) - Honestly I always liked this series more than the OG for several reasons. But one of those reasons is that this is a "forbidden love" romance between a human who knows of and is disgusted by vampires.... and a vampire who everyone sees as lazy and lacking in any redeeming qualities. Somehow they bring out the best in one another in every single book and they fall in love and they learn magic and topple evil organizations and all that sexy shit <3

They Both Die at the End - A story that just like. Really urges to you get out and live your life. Not in a bad way, though, really. I mean that's the whole point of the story it tells. I read it very recently but it struck such a chord with me, I don't think I'll ever get it out of my head. It ends sadly, as the title suggests, but the story leading up to it was so beautiful and well-crafted

Honorable mentions (aka other books i've read recently that i'm obsessed with): You've Reached Sam, She Gets the Girl, What If It's Us (and the sequel: Here's To Us), the Gregor the Overlander series, Daughter of Sparta, and honestly so many others but i'm spacing on the names rn so if you'd like hmu for more when i'm back in nebraska

Movies:

Kimi No Na Wa - Also called Your Name, this is THE best movie i will ever watch, it's been my favorite since I first watched it and I'm forever in love with and obsessed with it <3

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - One of my favorite movies tbh, the main character is so awkward but very real. The little reveal at the end of the film always makes me really happy. Plus there's a moment where a pretty lady sings Space Oddity and I always skip straight to watching that scene first lmao

The Kung Fu Panda trilogy - One of the BEST movie trilogies ever no lie. amazing characters AND character development across three films. Very fun times. Some sad times. Lots of humor and also Tigress is pretty

TV Shows:

Miraculous Ladybug - I mean. I have to rec it. Always. Season 5 is about to start airing and the stakes are higher than ever and it's so EXCITING i can't wait <3 superheroes, identity shenanigans, consequences relating to superhero secrets, angst, romance, friendship and more!!!!!! so good.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts - ONE OF MY FAVE SHOWS!!!!! The animation is so damn cool and it's got some of my favorite protagonists ever. The character arcs are masterfully crafted. There's giant animals and found family and family reunions and tragic backstories that are conquered through choosing to love anyways. 100/10

Amphibia - The other show I'm super obsessed with right now even though I only watched it 2 weeks ago. BETRAYALS! FOUND FAMILY! FRIENDSHIP! Forgiveness and love and traversing worlds and also FROGS, NEWTS, AND TOADS!!! Sword fights! Prophecies! SPRANNE AGAINST THE WORLD! (you'll get it if you watch it)

anyways thnk you again for htis ask i love reccing stuff :)

[introvertguide]

15 Badass Movies for a Fun Time at Home or with Friends

There is a buzz in the air as COVID-19 vaccines are rolling out and the hope of having a movie night with friends is again becoming a reality. Watching alone isn’t as fun because I want to talk to somebody about what I have just seen. A full theater does not agree with my introvert nature because somebody screaming or laughing or talking on their phone will ruin it for me. Watching with a fellow cinephile or two is perfect. But what to watch first? People have been stuck inside, so fantasy and alternative worlds have been overly popular. All I do is talk over zoom for a living. I think what I need most right now is a movie about realistic people with realistic skills that go into a situation and just wreck house. I need a badass movie. What is this “badass” movie you might say? Well, here are some basic criteria: 1) There must be a tough lead character who kicks butt while spouting one liners and doesn’t need superhuman powers (high levels of peak skill with speed, aim, or strength is OK if they are plausible in the real world), 2) most of the characters (good and bad) must be likable, admirable or at least memorable, 3) the lead must face and defeat overwhelming odds against them, and 4) extra points for memorable one liners. Also, I am only dealing with human protagonists (sorry Terminator), but slightly superhuman opposition is acceptable. This list is by no means exhaustive, it is just an example of some badass movies. So in no particular order:

1) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

To start off the list, I want to mention the most well known American badass. Indiana Jones is a smart guy with a gun and a whip. He is rugged and punches guys in the face. He has weaknesses but works through them to get the job done. Harrison Ford was in his early 40s for this role and had this tough-as-nails and seen the world kind of feel while still being young enough to fight hand to hand. Any of the first three films featuring Indiana Jones would work here, but this is the original and it started the fun. Easy to watch. Easy to cheer for. Great movie. You can’t really go wrong with any age or group with this one. 

2) 13 Assassins (2010)

This movie is extremely badass but not for everyone. This is one of the goriest films I have ever seen as 13 warriors kill off a couple of hundred soldiers and the evil leader that they guard. The movie was directed by Japanese extreme horror icon Takashi Miike if that means anything to you (hey made Audition and Ichi the Killer). The movie has gallons of blood, but also an amazing story of redemption and honor. There are tons of scenes of a single warrior taking on dozens of soldiers and managing to overcome. Not for everyone, but still very much a badass movie.

3) The Raid (2011)

This is an Indonesian action thriller with the word action in bold. The film is directed by Gareth Evans and stars Iko Uwais as part of a small police force that tries to take down an old building that houses a drug lord and his violent gang. It has a lot of what I like in badass movies: one-on-one fights between the lead and almost superhuman villains, long well-choreographed scenes, a banging soundtrack, ridiculous weapons, and ridiculous gore. The fight scenes in tight places and the use of the environment for weaponry is amazing and the sound design makes sure you can feel every punch. The lead character should have no chance, but he makes up for it with skill and being a pure badass. This movie is one of the few that I would describe as having non-stop action.

4) Jon Wick (2014)

When did Keanu Reeves become so cool? I grew up with him being part of the Bill and Ted duo. He decides to learn martial arts and play a god-like being in the Matrix movies and then becomes a one man wrecking crew? I guess he is a badass because he does it so well. Keanu plays a retired hitman who is wronged and decides to go back to work for vengeance. He just won’t stop coming and seems to constantly survive out of pure hatred alone. There are 3 films in the series and any one of them will impress. Pure fun too watch.

5) Casino Royale (2006)

When I was asking around, there were many people who thought that James Bond was the ultimate badass. I disagree in that many of the older films show Bond as overconfident with the assistance of many people. In fact, Q is more of a badass in many ways than James Bond. However, when the series was taken back to its roots with the last book that had not been made into a serious film and made darker, it reached badass levels. From the parkour chase to a poisoning to an extreme torture scene, this was not like any James Bond movie before it. Roger Craig plays a much colder lead who gives no quarter, much more like what the greatest secret agent would have to be. Heavy on violence but light on gore, this film is more for all audiences than other films on this list.

6) Desperado (1995)

What makes this movie is not all about Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek. It is that every other character is memorable and badass as well. The street standoff with Bucho’s men versus El Mariachi, Quino, and Campo is iconic. El Mariachi murders everyone in a bar with precise skill. The rogue assassin Navajas with all the knives played by Danny Trejo. Nothing but extreme shoot outs and fight scenes with a ridiculous variety of guns and explosives. I think what makes this movie so amazing is that all these amazing assassins are incognito and, when they suddenly produce an arsenal out of nowhere, it is always a pleasant surprise. Quino and Campo are amazing when they bring their guitars. 

7) Pulp Fiction (1994)

Truly the role that made Samuel L. Jackson into the ultimate badass. He and his partner Vincent are hitman that keep running into the worst situations. The thing about the film is that everybody is so cool. The characters are cool, the music is cool, the dialogue is cool, hell even the diner featured in the movie is cool. The movie only spans a couple of days (in completely separate segments shown out of order) but packs in 7 distinct situations that are all berserk. From the mind of Quentin Tarantino, this movie is dripping with the best characters traveling through the best story. Highly recommend.

8) Leon: The Professional (1994)

Also known simply as The Professional in the U.S., this film features the debut of Natalie Portman. It is directed by Luc Besson at his best period, right between La Femme Nakita and The Fifth Element. The lead is actually a quiet hitman who reluctantly takes a little 12-year-old girl on as an apprentice to become a paid assassin. Her parents were killed by a corrupt cop and she wants Leon to help her exact revenge. He is an absolute badass and somewhat of a caring surrogate father to the girl. Unlike a lot of the films on this list, the premise is not simply kicking butt in a bad situation. There is serious character growth. Apparently you can be a caring parent and a cold-blooded murderer...and that is badass.

9) Kill Bill (2003)

Being a badass is not exclusive to men and The Bride is a prime example of this. She survives a shot to the head, kills deadly assassins, slaughters a gang, and takes on a crazy school girl bodyguard. She is tougher then any lead I can think of and she has the bad attitude and sense of vengeance that makes for a badass. Combine this with the soundtrack and beautiful cinematography associated with director Quentin Tarantino and you have a beautifully violent movie in which the hits keep coming. Even on this list, the fight scene between the bride and Gogo Yubari is insane. Also note the nod to Bruce Lee with the bright yellow motorcycle suit. Beautifully badass film.

10) Aliens (1986)

In nature, there are few things more dangerous than a mother protecting their young. A mother will fight you to the death and make sure that, at the very least, you won’t be able to go after her kids. Now imagine an alien planet covered with hostile beings created in the mind of James Cameron and Stan Winston and you have a setting made to create a real badass. In the beginning, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is just desperate to survive and barely knows how to use a weapon. She meets a little survivor named Newt and then has a real reason to become aggressive. She and a group of marines fight through a station filled with super destructive xenomorph aliens made straight from nightmares to save this kid. The transformation is truly amazing and culminates in a mech suit versus a giant queen alien and it is extremely badass.

11) Army of Darkness (1992)

Far and away the funniest movie on this list, this is the third film stemming from Evil Dead and again stars Bruce Campbell taking on the deadites that were raised by reading from the Necronomicon. The opposition is the undead evil that faces the world which makes the violence very unrealistic. This was early work from Sam Raimi and features a variety of different shots done to the extreme. What really makes this film stand out is how Bruce Campbell is amazing at delivering a one liner. His classic quips have been used as fun Easter eggs in video games like Duke Nukem and World of Warcraft for decades. The quintessential horror comedy and a perfect example of a badass.

12) Die Hard (1988)

Apparently, I am a big fan of single characters that need to work their way through a building of villains using mostly intelligence and the element of surprise. Throw in some one liners and I am all for it. That is exactly what this is with Bruce Willis crawling barefoot around a 40 story building and fighting off a gang of villains. The movie also has Alan Rickman as the main bad guy and he is chewing the scenery. This is a great example of being a badass, but it is too bad that the follow up sequels were so poor. Definitely stick to the original and let the rest pass by.

13) The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)

An OG of the badass movie genre, this is some of the best of Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western. Instead of one badass, this movie has three different leads that are all amazing. You have the good, Clint Eastwood, who is an amazing shot and a heart of gold under a rough exterior. You have the bad, Lee Van Cleef, playing an conniving assassin that will kill anyone that he doesn’t have a use for. Finally, you have the ugly, Eli Wallach, as a desert rat that will do anything to survive. They all gain information about a gold stash and need to work together to get it, but this creates a vortex of cheating, undercutting, and straight up murder. Clint Eastwood is more of the classic badass with his cigar, hat, and poncho, It is an iconic look on an iconic character in an iconic movie. That is what I call badass.

14) Ong-Bak (2003)

This less of a badass movie and more houses some of the most amazingly badass fight scenes that can only be described as badass. This movie introduced the great Tony Jaa to the western world and showed the high flying nature of Thai boxing and Muay Thai in general. The main character is entered into a street fighting tournament and the moves include a flying double knee drop and a full splits kick. If the whole movie was the tournament, it would be the best movie that ever existed. The variety of opponents makes the fighting even better and the cinematography is top notch. Tony Jaa is truly badass in this film.

15) Dredd (2012)

Not the crappy version with Stallone, this movie is seriously badass. It features Karl Urban who is helmeted for the entire film (as Dredd would be) taking on a 200 story mega slum filled with residents that want to shoot him dead. There is a drug dealer high up in the building and she locks down the entire compound with instructions to kill Dredd, who only has his rookie partner to help. He takes on random resident mobs, groups of gang members, and even a trio of mini guns that have bullets that can rip through walls. He has a smart gun with a bunch of ammo that he uses judiciously to kill everybody. This movie was seriously underrated since it had not been that long since the garbage Judge Dredd came out in 1995. The 2012 is a far superior movie, being much more violent and dark instead of having Rob Schneider as the comedy relief (not badass).

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I know there will be a lot of opinions about what makes a badass film and what movies i didn’t add. Feel free to add your own movies or critique my choices. I will stand by my choices, however, and recommend any of these films for a night of cheers and badass action.

[catnippackets]

have you seen/would u recommend pacific rim 2? ive heard some things about newt and idk lol

I feel like Im in the minority that actually did think pru was fun but that being said it ended SO abruptly and with like three separate plotlines completely abandoned that I was really frustrated for days after watching it until I had processed everything and had time to think deeply about it lol it just seemed rly unfinished?? it feels like it was deliberately made as 1/2 of two sequels and there needs to be one more to tie everything up. actually I’m gonna ramble abt this bc I have a lot of thoughts (obvs spoilers under the cut)

the thing about the second one was that I genuinely was enjoying it right up until it ended because I swear to god the moment the end screen went up I yelled "what the fuck, that's it?" out loud into my bedroom bc I was so SHOCKED that THAT'S how it all ended, because it just seemed so incomplete?? Like it seemed like one half of a story, that will only be made whole if there's a third one to tie up all the plotlines that they didn't go through with in the second and if that's the case then I will be completely fine with it but if it doesn't or if they dont have a third one at all I will stay so frustrated lol. one silver lining to this is that the vibe of this movie was so different from the first that it almost feels easy to separate it and just imagine it as an AU if you prefer which is sort of nice; usually if a piece of media I like does something bad I feel all gutted and anxious and terrible that this is the canon I have to accept, but something abt this movie just made it feel like it was sort of a totally separate deal. maybe cuz only 3 of the original characters were in it idk

to start off: I felt like there were a couple of plotlines in it that were just sort of introduced and then never seen through which was very ????? Amara & Vik's weird hate-rivalry thing was one of them; Vik instantly has it out for Amara bc she’s jealous, which is a very interesting concept, and then this prompts Amara to become hostile right back at her, which is also a very interesting concept, and then it never got resolved at all? like they couldve done something really cool with those two but it just never went anywhere. and then there was sort of a weird love triangle thing happening between Jake and Nate and Jules that felt so weird bc it had no significance to the plot at all and it felt like it was only thrown in there for the sake of having ~romantic drama~ idk maybe I wasnt paying too much attention and there was more to it than that but it really just seemed like they wanted to put romance in there and didnt want to bother to put any work into it

BUT the thing about romantic sub plots is that THERE ALREADY WAAAAS OOOOOOOOONE which brings me to the biggest frustration I have w this movie because--and DISCLAIMER, this was also my favourite plot point of the movie bc it was by far the most interesting, the biggest reason for me enjoying the movie at all, and the bit I feel like should have had WAY more attention--Newt and Hermann were like legitimately in love in this movie I swear to god I was watching it and thinking “this is GENUINELY the most blatantly gay thing I’ve ever seen in a feature film and I know that straight ppl are very talented at writing gay romances completely by accident so it’s possible that they just accidentally did it this way but also it is REALLY goddamn obvious oh my gooood?” (and then I did a lot of frantic googling and found out that I was right and Charlie Day & Burn Gorman knew what the fuck they were doing and I felt so validated lol), and yet despite this, the movie had them speak for the last time almost at the halfway point of the film and then spend the entire second half apart and not talking at all and even at the post-credits scene where Jake and Newt talked for a bit Hermann wasn't there?? not even behind Jake to give Newt any searching glances?? Nothing??

dude...Newt being possessed by the precursors is a HUGELY interesting concept that actually makes sense and I wish it had had more attention. I’ve seen a lot of ppl say that pru butchered Newt’s character and I don’t 100% agree bc like...being possessed will change you lmao so while yes I’m obviously sad that he wasn’t himself, I feel like it made sense that he had a slight personality change, because it...wasn’t him anymore. we don’t really see the Newt we all fell in love with in the first movie. we THINK we’re seeing him, but halfway through we find out we’re wrong.

my critiques with that plotline are basically that I wish the reveal had happened a little bit later on, and I wish that it had been a little more obvious I guess?? like, we definitely get hints of it (when Hermann excitedly asks Newt to help him with a dangerous unorthodox project and Newt says “dude why are you doing something so risky when we’ve already got a good plan in motion? just wait for that to be done, it’s fine” and Hermann IS us, he IS the audience when he reacts, because this is a completely insane thing for Newt to say. Newt, who, in the first movie, was so obsessed with finding knowledge that he went behind the marshall’s back to literally risk his life doing something incredibly dangerous just to see what would happen? being given the opportunity to do the same kind of dangerous frivolous act and refusing? this is blatantly out of character, and Hermann is all of us when he’s shocked, “what, you mean you...won’t help me??” which means it wasn’t bad writing on their part, it was purposefully supposed to stand out as something that was wrong and something that we needed to pay attention to. that was a really good scene to hint that something was Not Right with Newt), and I wish there had been a bunch more like it. I think the reveal should have been saved for the end of the second act; I think that should have been the moment that act 2 of a story usually has, that dreadful event that happens that leaves the main characters feeling completely hopeless and unsure what to do.

I also wish that he had managed to break through more than That One Scene, I think it would’ve been more dramatic if he’d had a few moments where he managed to take control for a second to remind us that he’s still in there and still fighting, and I’m sad they didn’t do that. I saw a fan comic that touched on this idea and I think it’s brilliant, even the idea of him suddenly getting a nosebleed and acting distracted to show that that’s the Real Him trying to fight through would have been sooooooooo good.

I also feel like it didn’t make any sense for Nate to be the one to subdue him in the end, I dont even think those two interact at all so like, why was it him?? it would have been so much more dramatic and heartbreaking if Hermann had been the one to confront him so they could’ve had a little conversation on the roof where Newt could once again break through for a second before getting taken over and then Hermann could like idk have a taser hidden behind him that he uses to subdue him and THAT wouldve been a way sadder and more interesting way to do it. I also think Hermann shouldve been the one to speak to him in the post credits scene, or to have him in the background behind Jake just watching him sadly so we can get a couple shots of intense eye contact like UGH I just wish there had been more interaction between the two of them after the reveal happened!! When the movie was over and I realized they never spoke again I felt so upset!!! they're soulmates!! they're literally in love!! this has been CONFIRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and segueing in from the soulmate thing, another thing that made me sad was that nobody came in pairs anymore :( aside from Newt and Hermann, they were the only ones gjdfk but in the first one every character had another character that they were paired up with, both for drifting reasons and just for plot reasons (except Chau and Tendo but I’m pretty sure there's actually significance to that too), and in the second one it just sort of felt like everyone was drifting with each other with no strong connection needed and that made it feel way less special. granted, the movie takes place ten years after the first one so in that time maybe technology advanced to the point where you didn't need a strong neural connection to drift anymore, but for the sake of the story it would have been way better if they'd kept the whole soulmates concept from the first one, it made it way stronger and more special

so yeah in conclusion I did think pru was enjoyable and I probably would watch it again some time but also it definitely pales in comparison to the first one and I’m desperately hoping we get one more so they can tie everything together and FIX THINGS KFGH it’s not too late!!!!! I wish I could write Pacific Rim 3 I genuinely think I would do a good job I love storytelling and I’m very passionate about these characters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[nothingbutfangirlsmut]

The Maze Trials: A Gally Fanfiction

Pairing: Gally x Emi(OC)

Summary: Emi, first girl the Glade has seen. Tougher than she looks and more than ready to prove it. Since day one her and Gally have been at each other's throats. Fighting constantly and not just with their words.

(Gally fanfiction which will include smut. It also has an actual story line. Think of it as an AU to the original Maze Runner. It'll mostly follow the main story line with some changes. Mostly focusing on Emi and Gally and their relationship.)

Chapter Eight

While I was eating I felt Minho scoot closer to me. The next moment his arm was around my shoulders pulling me against his side.

"I heard what happened yesterday." He whispered.

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. I just looked up at him threw my lashes. He smiled then glanced up towards another table then back to me.

"You gave him another good beating sorry I missed it." He beamed down at me.

I chuckled while pushing on his chest to sit myself back up straight. I just happened to look up and saw Gally staring at me. Wait, no, he wasn't staring he was glaring and it wasn't at me it was towards Minho. I looked back to the runner who still had his arm draped around me. He was smirking down at his food. He didn't seem to notice Gally's look of death.

"I'm sending you back with the builders today if you promise not to kill Gally." Newt said snapping me away from the two boys.

"I promise Newt I'll behave." I said trying to finish my food.

I kept getting pulled to the side by Minho which was really starting to bug me. When he did it again I swatted his hand that was hanging off my shoulder. He pulled it back and rubbed the top of his hand I had just slapped.

I went back to my food hoping Minho had got the point. He seemed to cause he didn't put his arm around me anymore. I was able to finally eat the rest of my food in peace. When it was time to get to work I jogged over to Gally who was standing with the other builders.

"Guess I gotta try out builders again." I said once I reached his side.

"I assumed that already." He said in a low voice.

He turned on his heels towards the area we were yesterday. I guess we need to finish the job we left yesterday. The guys behind me broke off into a group of their own while I continued to follow Gally back towards the tree that still had our axes in it.

Gally pulled his free then immediately got to work chopping at the tree. I did the same staying quiet for as long as I could. Gally seemed to be chopping angrily. What could have made him mad in such a short amount of time? I kept glancing up at him as I worked. It wasn't until he said he needed a break that I finally spoke up.

We were walking deeper into the woods to grab some other materials we apparently needed. He said it would give him a break from chopping.

"Are you alright?" I asked as we walked.

"Peachy" his tone definitely sounded angry.

"Uh huh, I can hear that." I said obviously not believing him.

He sighed running his hand down his face like he was annoyed.

"It's nothing" he grumbled.

"Gally come on don't do that. We made an agreement remember?" I asked lightly trying to get him to talk to me.

"Sharing my feelings was not apart of that agreement." He stated sharply.

"Well, big bad wolf, sometimes it's good to share your feelings." I said as I continued to follow him.

He stopped dead in his tracks making me run into his back. He whipped around and glared at me. Seriously? Are we doing this again?

"Listen, princess, I don't need or want to tell you ok? So learn how to drop it and worry about yourself." He growled as he stared me down.

I put my arms up in surrender. Obviously that's a tender subject for him. Noted. He continued walking but this time I could feel the heat coming off him. What ever was bothering him he was letting it stew which was only going to lead to him blowing up.

We stopped by a pretty large mud pit that had a few buckets sitting near it. Gally grabbed one then stalked over to the mud. I did the same watching him dip the bucket in the mud then set it to the side. I did the same but Gally hadn't grabbed another bucket yet so I just sat on the grass a few feet from him. His face seemed to be getting redder by the second. Something must be seriously bothering him.

"Gally..."

All I got out was his name then he shot to his feet.

I stood up quickly ready for whatever he was about to throw at me. At least I thought I was ready. Gally faced me, his face still getting redder, then took one, two, three heavy steps to put him right in front of me. I didn't dare move. I didn't bat an eye. I knew I had to stay toe to toe with him no matter what.

"Do you have feelings for Minho?" He asked suddenly with a look of disgust.

I stepped back in surprise. That was in no way what I was expecting.

"No, why does it matter?" I asked more harshly than I meant to.

"He certainly likes you." He grumbled then turned away from me to look at the mud.

An odd thought struck me.

"Gally, are you jealous?" I questioned in pure disbelief.

His head snapped to the side to stare down at me. Instead of a glare like I was expecting he looked surprised. Did I just get it right? Was Gally jealous of Minho? I had to force back the smile that wanted to take over my face.

"I'm not jealous." He said quickly trying to recover from his surprise.

"Uh huh. Sure."

In the blink of an eye Gally had me pressed against the closest tree. I was the one in full surprise this time. His face was so close our noses were almost touching. He just stared angrily at me. I was lost for words. I had no idea what was going on with him. Would him being jealous make him act like this?

In an instant his face softened. His anger seemed to fade away. Then I was staring wide eyed at the mud in front of me while Gally's lips pressed against mine. My eyes fluttered closed as I relaxed against him. He pulled away suddenly making my head spin.

"Sorry" he said quickly then stepped away.

I watched in confusion as he grabbed another bucket and filled it with mud. He was acting like he didn't just kiss me!

"Gally" I said sternly to get his attention.

I saw him tense but he didn't stop what he was doing. He obviously wasn't paying attention to it though because the bucket was full and he was scooping mud into with his hands. I huffed as I stepped over to him. I leaned down to get close to his ear.

"I think that buckets full big bad wolf." I whispered.

He seemed to snap out of it. He placed the bucket on the grass next to his other one. Then he looked down at his mud covered hands. I stepped closer to him. Instead of saying something like I first wanted to I grabbed his shirt pulling him closer. I didn't give him time to reply before I was the one kissing him. I felt him tense under my touch for only a second. Then he relaxed as he pressed closer to me deepening the kiss as much as he could.

I burst into laughter when his muddy hands grabbed each side of my face to bring me closer to him. I couldn't help it. I was kissing him then felt cold wet mud on each of my cheeks. How could I not laugh at that.

"I'm so sorry!" He shouted realizing what he'd done.

I calmed my laughter down enough to shake my head.

"Don't apologize Gally I thought it was great. Not a bother at all." I smiled wide at him.

"Really?"

I grabbed his shirt pulling him back to me. I kissed him again this time we were both more relaxed. Gally wrapped his arms around me getting mud all over my shirt. I didn't mind a bit though. The feeling I had when Minho kissed me was nothing compared to the mess my stomach and heart were right now. Who would have thought I'd be kissing the big angry keeper of the builders in the middle of the woods?

—

[writingsbychlo]

feels like loneliness (03)

word count; 8280

summary; thomas finally comes to peace with the nameless girl in his mind, and does everything he can to help the people who are really present in his mind.

notes; this part gets a little intense, but you all know the way teh movie goes, so it’s just the memories that are a surprise.

warnings; a whole lot of angst, character death.

“love feels like loneliness”

“We can’t leave. They won’t let us.” Confusion filled Thomas at the idea of them not wanting to leave, not wanting to know what they’d found today. He sat stoic, he didn’t even flinch at the declaration, his expression unchanging as he continued to stare forward, blankly, barely acknowledging the presence of the group that had arrived to see him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I remember.” The simple statement shocked everybody in the room, eyes glancing between one another as they waited in silence, the anticipation all but bubbling over into anxiety and worry.

“What do you remember?”

“You.” Thomas could feel the eyes burning into the back of his head, he could feel Gally’s angry stare, Newt and Minho’s curious gazes along with Teresa’s worried looks. “You were always their favourite Thomas.” Voices were picking up outside, and a few tears dripped along the boy’s cheeks as he finally turned to meet Thomas’ gaze. “Why didn’t you listen to her?”

“W-What?”

“A girl. The girl Ben was talking about I saw her. For years she started to have her suspicions. She told us, she saw through it. Nobody would listen, nobody listened..” He trailed off, his eyes glazing over as he became lost in the newly found memories surrounding him, and Thomas wanted to press further, to ask what he remembered about this girl, but the panicked shouting outside was growing louder and more urgent, pressing matters needing to be attended to first.

Stumbling back on shaky feet, Thomas couldn’t tear his eyes from the boy before him for a good few seconds, knowing he now had answers Thomas did not, about who she was, and where they all came from before this. 

Twilight had fallen quickly, boys running rapidly, lighting torches for one another and bolting about with purpose, screaming unintelligible commands to one another, and Thomas stopped Winston as he made an attempt to fly past them; “What’s happening?”

“The doors aren’t closing.” He took quick strides, following them all towards the opening in the rock, that should be long closed by now. They all stood, gathering to watch, staring into the eerily still stone corridor as not even a light breeze swept through, the air dead and silent.

Suddenly, a loud cracking, the echo booming across the glade followed, the group ducking and twisting, searching to find the sound of the noise. The opposite set of doors opened, followed by another, and another, doors that from the confused looks on everyone’s faces had never yet opened, their entrances buried deep within the trees. 

Birds flew up at the disturbance, squawking and wailing loudly as they disappeared into the sky, clouds of settled dust and dirt rising up into the air as the vines and ivy that had grown between them all this time snapped and swung aggressively as they were torn apart from the unexpected movement.

“Chuck, go to the council hall. Start barricading the doors.” His hand weakly tugged at the young boy’s shirt as he grasped at his shoulder, the kid nodding in confirmation as he began running his fastest back through the field. Newt quickly assigned Winston to escort him, the older boy dashing to catch up with the younger one as they beelined for the main hall. 

Gally took command of the back of the group, instructing them all to run, to find everyone they could and warn them to go and hide. Minho left with a small group to find weapons, as many as they possibly could, as Thomas would go to get Alby. Before their plan could be put into motion, a small group from one of the other doors were screaming, running across the field, with only one word to explain their actions. Grievers.

They had barely processed the words when the sickening wails of said creatures rounded the corner, the scraping of sharp metal claws on the stone was enough to make a person’s ears bleed, as three paused to stare directly at them, before taking off towards the glade. The group bolted, everyone, running in different directions to escape, dropping their torches to the ground in hoping of blending into the darkness, the majority heading for the tall cornfields, slipping between the plants to hide as the stalks towered over them.

The screams of other boys were getting closer and closer, the whirring of mechanical engines a low hum that surrounded them all, before suddenly growing louder. From nowhere, a tail shot out, claws at the end sealing tightly around Zart’s body before he was snatched from the ground before anyone could grab him, tearing him away as the creature disappeared into the darkness again.

They were once again on the move, the predators closing in on them from all sides, cornering them like pack animals as they frantically tried to navigate their way through the glade. Thomas’ head was aching, blood pounding behind his eyes as he squeezed them shut, cursing his mind for choosing now to resurface old memories, the taste of copper in his mouth strong as he choked back the oncoming visions.

Finding themselves trapped, Teresa did the only thing she could think of in the moment. Picking up a flaming jar of moonshine, she launched the drink, the glass shattering as the liquid spread flames across the creature, and it curled around, rolling against the floor in an attempt to extinguish itself of the heat, and she clutched her hand to her chest, skin singed from the hot jar. 

As it stilled they turned, continuing to run before another one found them, narrowing in on them from the side. Thomas wasn’t sure why his body had picked now to fight, now to give him an adrenaline rush, when all he had to defend himself was a dulled knife and his fists, but he had never been more relieved when a spear, followed by a second and a third struck its side, disabling it as it desperately chewed to get the offending objects gone from its body. 

Newt, Minho and Frypan all closed the distance towards them, the group continues it’s last paces to the hall. Only one door was still stood open, a trembling but brave Chuck holding it that way so they could all get in safely. As the last one in, Thomas sealed the door, pushing it closed and blocking it with any last boxes he could find, the group backing up into a huddle in the corner, as the building rattled, door threatening to burst as growling and snarling sounded from the other side.

Blood was trickling from his nose in steady lines, his heart beating uncontrollably as Thomas gasped quietly for breath, wiping at his face to clear it of the red substance, his hands clutching his knees as he keeled over. 

“Is it happening again?” Both an accented voice and not rang out quietly in his ear and he glanced up, catching a vague sight of Minho and Newt looking at one another warily before looking back to him, and he waved them off, refusing to allow his brain to slip away from him as he focused on the moment.

As he tried, the loud cracking and splintering of wood broke the silence, the tail of a machine shooting in pulling support beams inside free as the roof caved in on them. Clouds of dirt filled the air, blinding them all as they coughed and spluttered, the creature taking the chance to attack as it grabbed at boys, pulling them from the rubble as they screamed. It was up on the roof once again, it’s body hanging in from the hole it had created in the scaffolding as the weaponised appendage moved of its own accord.

The limb was swinging about wildly, grabbing onto the first person it could find. Chuck. Without hesitation, Thomas jumped forward, his hands grabbing onto Chuck’s arms to pulling back as the others grabbed onto Thomas, stopping his body from sliding across the floor as it tried to lift them both. The animal was still winning the battle, until Alby attacked. Using a discarded branch, he knocked the stinger straight from it, the needle sliding across the floor. He smashed at the limb itself, and it dropped Chuck, moving to him but he continued it’s assault, until retreating from the gap, Chuck crawling back to safety.

It wasn’t gone for long, however, soon making its return to take Alby himself, lifting him through the roof until his fingers were barely holding on, Thomas doing his best to pull him back down but the fight was no use, and they both knew it. “Thomas. Get them out.” It was like a moment of clarity had washed over the man in his last seconds, he wasn’t the broken boy sitting in the medhut, but the leader and friend he always had been, before he was ripped away from Thomas’ grasp, the beast retreating with its real prize, at last.

He ran for the door, and by the time he could get it open to try and chase for his friend, the glade was cleared, once again laying dark and silent, but ruined. Buildings were destroyed, flames were curling up into the night sky and setting a bright orange glow across the grass, and bloodied bodies could be spotted across the field, torn limbs and shredded clothes everywhere. It was a battlefield, in a battle they lost.

From the smoke, he could see Gally, marching his way towards them as rapid speeds as the rest of the group split out around him, forcing them all into the open as the boy marched up to him, large fist closed and swinging into his jaw, the crunch of bone sounding out as Thomas collapsed into the grass, a pained grunt leaving his lips.

“This is all you, Thomas! You heard what Alby said!” The boys other restrained him, his anger seething out as Thomas rubbed at his jaw, rolling onto his back to look at the enraged man before him. “He’s one of them, he was sent here to destroy everything, and now he has!” Words blurred in his defence as the dull pounding he’d been suppressing began to make a return to the inside of his skull. Looking at the chaos and wreckage around him, he was confused, not understanding what had just happened or why. “Look around Thomas, look around! This is your fault!”

Chuck was still holding onto the snapped off needle, the item barely clasped between his fingers, ready to slip to the ground at any moment as the fighting continued in the background and he leaned over to pluck it from the kid’s hand. “Maybe he’s right..” He wasn’t sure who he was talking to, maybe just himself as he cleared his thoughts, raising the device to look at it more clearly.

“Thomas?”

Nothing was clear to him. Not who he was, where he was or why, but he knew one thing for sure. He needed to remember what he had done, and what had happened to you. “I need to remember, Teresa.” She seemed to anticipate his moves, lunging at him to snatch the object but he plunged the needle into his leg, the feeling of it tearing at his nerves and muscles was agonising, the feel of the liquid crawling in his veins was sickening. The headache he had only increased tenfold, sending him spiralling as he tumbled toward the ground, vision fading out as it became too much to bear.

He could see your face through the blue-tinted screens before them, your bottom lip clenched tight between your teeth and your eyebrows furrowed. You were writing rapidly in a notebook, scribbling down calculations and ideas, knuckles practically white from the force with which you were gripping the pen and Thomas couldn’t help but admire you. Admire the dedication you were putting into your work, admire the way you were struggling so hard to find a cure.

What he missed was that you weren’t doing it for you, or for WCKD. He missed the angry sighs that left your lips and the way you’d been crying silently to yourself in the bunks as not to disturb the dwindling number of girls left sharing it with you. That morning, another girl had been taken, he thinks you’d said her name was Ella, maybe, he couldn’t remember. 

You were doing it for Sonya, the best friend who had been given to the trials four months ago. And to her brother Newt, who’d been given to the trials a year ago. You were doing it for all of your friends, who you missed deeply, and were determined to have freed. 

He hadn’t realised just how long he’d spent watching you, lost in thought, until a manicured hand landed on his shoulder, startling him as Ava Paige leaned down beside him to inspect the work he was doing. She congratulated him, a quick mumble of how much he was contributing towards their cause muttered, followed by her quote of ‘WCKD is good’, upon noticing his screen. 

It seems those words caught your attention the most, because as they reached you ear you’d looked up, staring through your own work to look at his, eyes flicking over the cameras and monitors watching your friends, watching as they struggled to hold down a boy who was writhing and screaming in pain, vitals flashing up on the monitor beside the images as the chip in his neck fed back to them. His life was ebbing away from him, the nasty wound from the injection crawling up his flesh and worsening every time he moved. 

You didn’t meet Thomas’ eye. Instead, you snapped your notebook shut, tucking your pen inside the worn leather notebook and letting your head hand for a few seconds, your hair framing your face and hiding you from his view. When you looked up again, your face was void, clear of emotion entirely as you pushed a USB into the port on the side of your computer, setting it to back up and save all work, before slipping the gadget from the port and into your pocket.

It wasn’t until you were leaving, up and walking past Thomas’ chair that you left a note wedged under the screen diving you both, a note designed for him, that he saw you give him any kind of thought. You’d nodded to him, a hint of a smile on your face as you’d left. He was used to this act, as though the two of you meant nothing more to one another than colleagues, perhaps good friends when off duty. Lately, you had been different, and Thomas had been able to sense it in you. 

You didn’t want to look at him or kick at him under the table subtly when the guards weren’t looking. You didn’t press your hand up against the glass while you were working, so he could do the same, and you hadn’t let him sneak out to see you for weeks, which was why he was so surprised to unfold the paper and find you planned to see him this evening. 

He wasn’t sure where everything had gone so wrong for him, one minute you’d been right there, your hand in his as you guided him through the shelves of the lab to your usual spot where neither of you could be seen. 

The next, you’d been crying, frantically telling him you couldn’t do it anymore, before being dragged away from him, unconscious and bruised from the rough treatment. By the time he’d managed to gather himself, Teresa shaking some sense into him in her own broken state he’d missed the elevator to catch up with you. 

He ran the stairs two at a time, tripping and falling as he rushed to get to level three, his body crashing through the metal door as he stumbled into the pristine white corridor. He was too late, an IV drip already in your skin, your head lulled uncomfortably to the side as you sat slumped in the chair, your body still plunged into darkness.

His fists hit at the glass until wet red marks were left on the window, and yet, the doctors inside didn’t even look up, didn’t even spare him a glance to acknowledge his pain. His arm burned, from the tips of his fingers to his shoulder, he was exhausted and his eyes were stinging.

A pair of clean white heels stopped in front of his view, a blonde head looking down at him, face stoic and barren of compassion, but rage bubbled up within him. “You told us we were safe! You told us we couldn’t be afforded to be wasted in the maze trials! You promised! You promised we were safe because the work we were doing was too valuable!” His voice echoed from the walls, carrying through the halls and ringing out, loudly. Scrambling to his feet, he caught sight of your hand hanging limply from the trolley they’d moved you to, your fingers twitching as you began to slip back into a conscious state, the sedative given to stop you from fighting already wearing off. “You promised me! You promised, you promised you wouldn’t take us! You promised you wouldn’t take her!”

“I promised that if you kept up bringing our results and theories forwards that you would serve more of a purpose behind a desk than behind a wall. I never promised you would be kept from the trials, and when (Y/N) stopped working so adeptly and began to doubt what we were doing here when she began communicating with those outside of the walls, she betrayed that trust and now serves a purpose only as a test subject.” Her voice was monotone, and the words slipped into one ear and out the other as Thomas’ head felt like it was spinning.

“She won’t remember me.”

“An unfortunate side effect of necessary action.” He scoffed, his legs almost buckling beneath him as the doors hissed open, the trolley holding you being carted away from him, the wheels of the trolley squeaking as it moved. “I have decided, to allow you to say your goodbyes.”

It was almost like a shining beacon of hope had lit him up, and as he looked at the woman before him, he finally noticed the pile of clothes tucked under her arm neatly, and a pair of boots in her hand. She held the items out to him, a stark contrast between her steady hand and his shaking too much he could barely grasp the collection of clothes.

He could hear you now, sealed on the other side of the door at the end of the corridor, screaming about how you wished to die, how they were supposed to have killed you, and his heart broke. You were so ready to leave him, and he wasn’t ready to let go of you.

He could barely carry his own weight as he stumbled along the corridor, minutes passing before he had the nerve to open the door and see you. When he finally did, he could stop the questions that were spilling from his mouth, his head spinning as he tried to understand what you did and why. The clothes he’d brought in were left abandoned on the floor as he cupped your cheeks, wiping the wet trails of your tears away as he cried himself. 

Your answer brought him no comfort, you both knew what was happening, your fingers reaching for the clothes he’d brought in as the dark reality settled over the pair of you. His heart was heavy, feeling like his blood had been replaced with cement, hardening and filling his body with cold dread. 

You were leaving him. You were supposed to be in this together, in everything together, and yet here you were, abandoning him. He couldn't take it, and he slid the dropped pile of clothes towards you before standing to shaky feet, which carried him back and forth from one side of the room to the other. 

He searched his mind for a way to get you out of this, to change what was happening, but he knew there was no way back. Your memories were already beginning to slip away, and so instead, he decided to make the most of the last time he had with you. Kneeling beside you, he took the laces of the boots in his own hands, lacing them up for you himself and checking they were firmly on your feet. 

He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, rolling them up to his elbows to keep them out of the way, the thin band around his wrist catching his eye, and his gaze travelled to your own. Matching charms sat on your wrist, the black string holding the handmade metal charms on, and he quickly undid the strap on his wrist, tying it tightly around your own and taking yours from you.

He stared at the sight of a ‘T’ sitting against your skin, his hand gripping yours as fresh tears welled in his eyes. Your hand settled on his cheek, lifting his chin until his eyes meet yours, a soft smile on your face. 

“Why are you crying, Tommy?”

Your words felt like ice, stabbing at him, the breath pushed from his lungs. “What?”

“You’re crying, you doofus. What’s wrong? And where the hell are we?” He felt nauseous, bile rising in his throat and his head felt light. He was supposed to have more time, it wasn't supposed to happen this quickly, he thought he had longer with you. There was so much he needed to say, but now nothing was coming to mind, his mind felt like it was buzzing with static.

The metal door on the opposite side of the room slid up slowly, a prepacked cage with supplies revealing itself as a pair of guards stepped into the room. In a split-second decision, he tugged you to your feet, his lips meeting yours in a final kiss, your hands scrunching up the material of his shirt as you squeaked in surprise.

His feet moved on their own accord, marching the two of you towards the wall. The metal creaked when you stepped from the solid floor to the shaky metal of the cage lift. Your knees almost buckled underneath you at the unexpected change, his lips leaving yours as he finally pulled away, your face flushed and eyes sparkling when they opened to look at him. “I love you, I love you so much.”

You stepped back from him, snapping from his grasp as the bubble he’d tried to create to bring you peace popped, panic filling you as you stumbled back away from him, further into the darkness. You were mumbling, frightened and scared as he closed the box door on you, his heart barely beating anymore as he stepped away from you.

He could still hear your pleas in his ears for months afterwards every night when he closed his eyes. You haunted him, the only thing bringing him comfort was being able to watch your progress after you had arrived. 

He saw you greet the girls there on your ‘first day’, unknowingly befriending Sonya, once again meeting your best friend. He watched you flourish, change, and rebuild yourself stronger. He watched you break the rules, dashing into the maze to find a girl who had been lost, and he watched you find her and bring her home the next day, before becoming a runner. He watched you comfort a young girl, perhaps only eleven, who had been sent up, as you progressively became more and more like a big sister to her. 

He also watched as she broke her arm, getting sicker and sicker because of the infection it caused, and he watched as you mourned for her when she passed. He watched you fight to help the other girls, more determined, running longer routes in your maze and working harder.

And then, he watched you die, that day, his heart stopped beating entirely.

He went off the rails, he stormed through the corridors, throwing your belongings around the storage room as tears streamed down his face, boxes tipped out on the floors as he screamed his throat raw. It wasn’t until he collapsed on the cold concrete of the darkened room that he gave up. His hands had rubbed at his cheek so much that dust was smeared across his cheeks, things you had once owned were scattered around him, the smell of you hanging in the air and it was like a punch in the gut because he hadn’t realised he missed this much until now. 

Kicking out his leg to lay flat on the floor, the box that had been stood in front of him crumpled at the impact, a worn leather notebook flopping to the floor loudly and creating a small dust cloud around it. Reaching out, he picked it up with trembling fingers, tips smoothing over the front, opening it carefully.

Your handwriting seemed almost foreign to him now, but it also felt like home, and his eyes scanned over it. It was the same notebook you had been writing in the last day he’d seen you, before sneaking off to the lab. Flicking through the pages, it was full with scribbles and research, the research he had never seen recorded that seemed on the verge of a cure, and full of notes and locations on how to combat the virus. 

It was an entirely new approach that he’d never seen. Halfway through, red smears across the tops of pages began to show up more frequently, and after reading your notes, he realised you had been testing on finding a cure with your own blood, finger pricks for samples leaving the pages marred.

Tugging the box towards him, he found envelopes and boxes packed, locations and secured files that had been thrown away with the rest of your possessions. Letters exchanged between you and outsiders, notes and theories, and finally it all clicked.

You’d been exposing information, trying to find a way to save not only your friends, but for him and all other kids that WCKD may take. You’d been working alone to save them all, and when you’d asked him for help he’d ignored you. Stuffing the book back into the box, he picked it up, using the hem of his shirt to wipe his face and sort himself out. 

His heart was finally beating again, wildly and irrationally against his ribs as he checked the box out of storage, wild lies falling from him as he darted away down the corridor before security could check his story again. He didn’t listen to you when you were with him, but he would listen to you now.

When he jolted awake, the sunlight burned at his eyes slightly and he squeezed them shut, but the movements he’d made caused surface beneath him to shift, fingers brushing the hair on his forehead out of his eyes slightly. Cracking them open again, he squinted, looking up at the face peering down at him, surrounded by dark curls flowing around her face. 

“Hey, you okay?”

It was calm for a moment, before it all came flooding back to him, the pain, the death, the anguish of the night before. Shooting up, he sucked a desperate breath into his lungs, and another, his mind having gone from clear and calm to spinning and frenzied in a matter of seconds. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” Chuck wanted to smack him, Thomas could tell from the way the boys hand twitched by his side and he didn’t blame him, to be fair. What did confuse him, was why he was back in the slammer, Newt and Minho peering down at him from either side of the younger boy.

“Mate, you were screaming blue murder for a while, calling out for someone, then Gally hauled you off here when we wouldn’t tell him about your dream girl. He’s taken control. Said we had a choice, either join him or get banished at sundown with you.” Thomas resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the ridiculous prospect, and instead chose to turn himself around to face the other boys better, sitting up slightly on a jagged bit of rock.

“The others agreed to that?”

“Gally has everyone convinced that you’re the reason all of this has happened.” He couldn’t deny that, merely nodding in agreement as they spoke to him. Technically, he was. He had remembered exactly what he’d done, not just to everyone here, but to his friends, and to you. 

“He’s been right, so far.”

“What are you talking about?” He had expected Minho to suffix the sentence with some form of glade slang, perhaps a ‘shuck-face’, but it never came.

“This place. It isn’t what we thought it was. It’s not a prison, it’s a test.” Nobody said anything, but they didn’t need to, he could tell in the way they looked at him that they believed him. “It all started when we were kids, they’d give us these challenges, they were experimenting on us, then people started disappearing, every month, one after the other like clockwork.”

“Sending them up into the maze?” Newt said it like a question, but the unsurprised look on his features told Thomas he already knew the answer, deep down, even if he didn’t quite want to admit it.

“Yeah, but not all of us.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Guys, I’m one of them. The people who put you here, I worked with them. I watched you. For years. The entire time you’ve been here, I was on the other side of it.” His gaze finally left the boys, who had turned away from him now, all three contemplating the new information as Teresa continued to look at him, their eyes meeting now. “So were you.”

“What?”

“I-I didn’t realise until.. she said something. The girl, she stopped it. She fought so hard to get us to understand, and they sent her up here.” Newt’s harsh gaze softened as Thomas dropped his head, sighed roughly as the final images he had of you, and the memories of his own torment started coming back to him “They sent her up here to be punished, and when she started solving her own maze instead, she.. they..”

“They killed her.” He whispered the words, and Thomas let his watery gaze rise to Newt’s a single, solemn nod of the head enough to signify that he was right. Thomas’ heart was aching in his chest, barely beating as he remembered the agony he had gone through when losing you from his arms, and the fresh agony he had gone through when losing you from his life.

“They killed her. She said I would understand one day, but it was too late.”

“She’s dead?” Teresa didn’t hide her emotions the same way Thomas did, hot tears running down her cheeks slowly at the thought. The girl she had been remembering, the only friend she had arrived here with, and she was gone. “Why would they send us up, if we were with them?”

“It doesn’t matter. Any of it. Because the people we were before the maze don’t even exist anymore, these creators took care of that.” The words had a hidden meaning, and Thomas knew they were aimed at him. Some of the people themselves, don’t exist anymore. “What does matter, is who we are right now, and what we do, right now. You went into the maze and found a way out.”

“And if I hadn’t, Alby would still be alive.”

“Maybe.” Newt glanced down, the loss of his friend still weighing heavily on his soul, and Thomas knew exactly how that felt. “I know if he were here, he’d be telling you the exact same thing. Pick your arse up and finish what you started, because if we do nothing then Alby died for nothing, and I can't have that.”

“Okay, but we have to get through Gally first.”

The ground of the maze was still warm underfoot when it began to open it, the distinction between the hot and cold startling once the slimy and narrow corridors, with vines and wildlife growing between them, to the barren and clear open areas of the outer sections. The group was tired, beginning to grow slower as they ran, but Thomas could see his destination ahead when he squinted, they were so close.

The more they drew in on it, however, the more his trained ears began to pick up the subtle movements near the rock at the end. Gathering the group at the wall, he could hear their exhaustion, panting and wheezing filling his ears, and his own blood was racing in his veins from the exercise. Peering around the corner, his suspicions were confirmed. The amalgamation of flesh and metal was crawling around the end of the tunnel, effectively guarding the entrance against them as he turned back, to find every set of eyes already looking at him cautiously.

Only Chuck, actually voiced the question they were all thinking; “Is it a griever?” With only a nod for a reply, the kid cursed under his breath at the affirmation, and Thomas thought over all of their possible actions to take, and the consequences they would have, his mind running a mile a minute to find a solution.

Minho handed over the tracking key to Chuck, assigning it to him as he came to the conclusion that Thomas was trying to avoid. Realising their only option was to fight, he swallowed thickly, before announcing his plan to them all. The group charged forwards, legs carrying them rapidly as screams left their lips, weapons held out before them. 

Leading at the front, the tip of the wooden spear he held burying into the slimy flesh of the creature, followed by two or three other boys as it screeched in pain, the group pushing it towards the edge of the stone bridge as it resisted. The sound of cracking stone, metal appendages scraping against it could be heard, more crawling up the walls towards them.

“Watch the tail!” Minho screamed as it whipped around, the claws on the end grasping at air as the group ducked from it. The metal claws at the end finally grasped onto the boy, hands flying forward to pull him back but it was too late, he was rolling across the stone as it threw him, falling over the edge as his screams faded out. The group paused, watching at the spot the boy had been seconds prior and the creature took the opportunity, sharp foot slamming down and breaking the stone around their feet, splinters and cracks running along the solid ground.

 Its claws ripped marks into the ground as they finally got the upper hand over the beast, it’s body sliding inch by inch over the edge of the stone, and with one final shove, it fell, unable to hold itself up any longer as it disappeared from sight and into the black abyss. They had barely gotten rid of that one, as two more, one from either side of the passageway crawled up, their presence alerted to Thomas as the frantic cries of his name from Chuck rang in his ears. 

The small boy ran past him as the creatures advanced, Teresa following him, the key clutched in his hand as he approached the solid stone wall. The device clicked in his hand, the rock door slowly sliding upwards as it identified it’s signal. The group was being cornered, backed into the patch like it was a feeding pen, herded to the kill as they were picked off by the two, working in a team to weaken the wall the boys had all built. 

Teresa was shouting to him, but he could barely hear over the screams and roars of the threat in front of him, her jumbled words echoing in his head, something about needing numbers, his mind already clouded before finally - for a second - it cleared. “Minho! What’s the sequence?”

It took him a moment to understand what Thomas was talking about, but when he did, he began to shout the numbers over his shoulder, still fighting the grievers which were attacking. He was barely four numbers in when Newt screamed out to alert everybody, his head tilted up to the sky and Thomas wished he hadn’t looked, but descending rapidly from above was another griever, claws chipping at the rock as it slid it’s way down, body landing directly on top of Minho. 

The boy squirmed beneath it, trying to avoid snarling jaws that were snapping and growling at him, and Jeff bolted forwards, ramming the pointed end of his spear into the creatures head, with such force it went through cleanly and put under its jaw, almost into Minho’s stomach as he did. The wounded one backed off, only to be replaced seconds later by another, it’s jaws closing around his torso and dagging him backwards, away from the group. 

Thomas could see now, more and more were crawling around the walls, like an infestation, and as Minho listed off the last numbers, they began to lose the last of their weapons. More and more were piling in, the sounds of snarling and growling becoming too loud to hear, everybody’s voices beginning to drown out as they backed up, crowded into the tunnel. The light, ominous and red flashed to green, and for a second, silence took over everyone and everything. 

The stone of the walls was loud as it suddenly released, rusty gears grinding at high speeds as they began to come down, crushing and trapping the monsters that were chasing them. They each made to run forward, towards the group, to continue their attack, frenzied, like caged animals. Launching his spear, it knocked back the one closest to him, giving the weighted door above it enough time to drop down and crush it. 

As the sounds of predators finally fell away, wet slopping filled his ears as blood, guts and slime spilt across the stone at them, and he recoiled, the last to crawl into the tube as it sealed up, cutting the light off entirely. They were alone, the space around them so dark that Thomas couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face, before the wall to the side of them hissed, a hatch sliding open carefully. 

As they all took cautious steps out, bright lights began to flicker along the corridor on either side of them, seemingly stretching on for a long time as the darkness continued to be illuminated, until Thomas couldn’t actually see the end. He twisted his head, to find the group already looking at him, wide-eyed and nervous, and he swallowed thickly, realising he was going to have to make this decision, too.

Choosing a direction, he had barely taken his first steps when they were crowding around him again, following him like a pack of sheep as he guided them. Eventually, they found another door, the green light above it signalling it to be open and as he twisted the handle, the dull sound of alarms ringing rang out into the hallway from within the room.

The further open the door got, the more they could see, bodies exposed to them, laying across the floor. The further they ventured, the more the wreckage could be seen, broken glass, split blood, bodies and mangled belongings were scattered across the space, furniture was tipped upside down as wires hung from the ceiling, electricity still crackling and sparking occasionally. 

Computers around them glitched and hummed, their screens still showing whatever their latest project had been, and Newt confirmed they had been being watching, his voice ringing out clearly as he looked at all the monitors, showing different views of the Glade. He recognised that view, not from this room specifically, but Thomas recognised the monitors, displaying all areas of the glade and flicking between the maze. He recognised it, because it was the same layout used when your death had been broadcasted to him, his heart breaking at the sight, and the cracks splintering now as the wound came back to the surface. 

The desk he settled at felt far too familiar, a pang of uneasy guilt settling like rocks in his stomach as he glanced up through the glass panels, almost expecting to see your face on the other side, but instead, he was met with the sight of bodies littering a demolished workspace. A button on the screen flashed between grey and red, and with a shaky finger, he reached out to press it, the tip of his finger barely brushing it before a video was playing on the other side of the room. 

They had all slowly gathered around the monitor, watching the horrors that flicked up, the words spoken by the woman on screen, and it almost seemed understandable, all that they had been through. In the background, the massacre that had taken place here began to play out, and Thomas struggled to place why this woman seemed so familiar, why just her voice and the look on her face was making him unsettled. 

As she raised a gun to her temple, his head snapped away from the video, eyes squeezed shut and jaw clenching and her last words rang in his head. 

“WCKD is good.”

Now, he knew. He knew exactly who she was, she was the one that dragged you from his arms, that killed you before his eyes. She was the woman who had plagued his mind so badly with that very notion that you had practically given your life to save him and your friends because he couldn't see the hidden evil yet. 

He owed you his life, as did everyone in that room, and she was the reason he would never get to thank you, or hold you, or see you smile, just like he had in his dreams. 

Bay doors across the room slid open, a light at the end of the tunnel seeping in from a cracked door, and Newt’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Well, what are we supposed to do now?”

“I don’t know.” The words he had been wanting to say ever since he had been thrust into this leadership position finally fell from his lips, and it was like a weight was lifted from his shoulders. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“No.” The voice was familiar, and before them, stood Gally. He was soaked in dirt, sweat and blood, a gun clutched in his shaky hand as he looked at them, and before he could help him, he was informed that the boy had been stung. He’d missed it at first glance, but now he could see. The dark, bloodshot eyes, pulsing veins crawling along his skin. “We can’t leave.”

He shook his head, taking a ragged inhale and anyone could see the anger built inside the boy, his muscles clenched, posture stiff and Thomas stepped forward, hands raised carefully as he looked at the crazed boy. “We did, Gally, We’re out. We’re free.”

“Free?” Raising his hands, he motioned to the bodies laying around them, all lifeless and cold. “You think we’re free out there?” His finger was sitting over the trigger, gun waved around carelessly as he spoke before it was pointed at Thomas, finger on the trigger twitching unevenly. “No. No, there’s no escape from this place.”

“Gally, listen to me. You’re not thinking straight.” He took another tentative step forward, pushing the thought of you from his mind as he tried to reason with his friend. “We can help you if you just put down the gun.”

“I belong to the maze.”

Chuck tackled Thomas from the side as Minho launched his spear across the room, the weapon burying into Gally’s chest and he heaved, his lung punctured and no longer letting him take in air as blood began to filter through into his top, and he collapsed to the ground. The gun clattered against the ground, and relief flooded his system, until Chuck’s clammy little hands grasped at his arm, yanking on it harshly as the boy tumbled to the ground himself. 

Blood was pouring rapidly from the bullet embedded in his chest, and as he fell, Thomas tried to catch him, cupping his head as he lay him down on the floor. His hands were trembling so badly he could barely make a fist, but he pushed down on the wound, trying his best to put pressure on it. blood was seeping between his fingers too fast to contain, thick and hot, running along his flesh and dripping to the floor as Chuck coughed and spluttered under his grasp.

The boy’s hand grasped his upper arm weakly, his other hand barely holding the wooden carving he had been making as he lifted it from his pocket, holding it up to Thomas’ face and his hands closed around the boys, holding them tightly as he shook his head. “No, no, Chuck. You’re going to give it to them yourself, remember?” Thomas’ voice was hoarse and light, throat stinging as he suppressed the tears he wanted to release, the sobs he was pushing down as the kid’s life slipped away between his fingers, nothing he could do to stop it. 

“I saw her once. A few times, in my dreams.” 

“W-What? You saw her?” Thomas’ eyes directed up to meet Chucks, instead of looking at the wound, a hand coming up to run over the boy’s hair comfortingly as Thomas finally accepted the fate he had.

“I thought I had made her up until I heard you talking about her. She was nice, she looked after me. I missed her when I was alone at night. I missed her more than my parents.” Thomas finally let his tears flow, and he held the boy tightly, trying to reassure him it was okay, make him feel safe and loved in his last moments. That trembling hand clutching the bloody wood rose up to his face once again. “ Here, take it.”

Plucking the wood from his fingers, Thomas tucked it into his pocket safely, patting over the patch to show Chuck, a sad smile forming on his lips as the boy lay back, reassured. “Okay, Chuck. I got it, nice and safe.”

“Thank you.” His gaze pulled away from Thomas’, finding solace in the lights above his head, his features easing as everything around the boy began to slip into darkness. “Thank you.”

Thomas gripped at his shoulders, shaking him as he finally went still and silent. The taste of salt form his tears was in his mouth, his cheeks stinging and he could barely process the light flooding the room. He crawled over Chuck’s body, shaking him, hands gripping at his shoulder as he sobbed, screaming for the boy to return to them.

A set of hands on either side of him hooked under his arms, pulling him away from Chuck, dragging him into the light and he fought, he fought to get back to Chuck, but Thomas was tired. He was tired of fighting, and he was tired of losing people. His body fell slack in the strangers’ arms as they dragged him along, his boots scraping against the cement before being exchanged for rough sands. 

Looking around himself, he could barely see, heat washing over his body, more than he had ever felt as he heated up, the sun scorching him and the light burning his eyes. Twisting in the grip on him, he fell free and into the sand, stumbling in his feet as the men helped him up. He was thrown to safety, his body tumbling into a vehicle as the door was slammed shut, one of the guards climbing in with them all as the others remained outside, guns cocked carefully as they surveyed the environment.

The ground beneath them seemed to fall away as the vehicle swayed, tilting to its side as it turned and it took a moment before Thomas realised they were flying. High up in the air, as they cleared the walls of the maze, rising above it so high they could see for miles, all the way to the Glade in the centre, and the maze beyond it on the other side, too. 

He fella way, letting others lean over him to get a look out of the window at the sight and his eyes fell down to his hands, the clean white wood of the figure he held now marred with dirt and blood. Poking out from beneath the gloves on his hand, was the charm, the first initial of a name he had yet to remember coated in grime, and he rubbed it as clean as he could get it with the pad of his thumb.

His head fell back against the metal behind his head, his eyes stinging from crying but there were no more tears to come. There was only anger, now. Anger at the people who took you from him, who took his memories, his life, his friends. Broken buildings came into view as they swung side to side to weave between them, but the twisting in his stomach wasn’t nausea or guilt. This time, it was pure, unadulterated rage.

And Thomas was determined to do something about it.

[i-finally-watched-it]

Pacific Rim (2013)

dir. Guillermo del Toro

As a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse. (via IMDb)

Highlight/s: So this is where "drift compatible" comes from? I love it 🥺; Mega love-powered monster-fighting robots? Hell yeah! 🥳; Clifton Collins Jr in a bowtie & braces (suspenders), thank you!; SCIENCE HUSBANDS!!!! Newt & Hermann bickering like an old married couple straight off the bat is my favourite thing as well as that handshake fail toward the end lmaooo; Mako Mori is badass I love her sm!

Lowlight/s: I wanted more diversity in the main cast; Idk how other Australians feel about this but it really annoys me when I'm watching a cool big budget movie and Australia exists (!) and I get excited about the possibility of seeing an Aussie fave in a role where they get to keep their natural accent and not be American for once (!!) but instead we get non-Australians with a shoddy fake accent *sigh* It's so cringe & distracting particularly when the characters are in the whole damn movie not just one scene I can forget about for the rest of it. I just. I don't understand bc it's not like there's a shortage of great Australian talent in Hollywood & elsewhere, just hire an Aussie! Or at least someone who can actually do a decent fake accent (they do exist, I've heard them). Any bad fake accent is distracting (see: clone troopers in The Clone Wars series..) but bad fake Aussie accents are the WORST. 🤦‍♂️ Even friggin Sharknado had an actual Australian playing the Australian character! With a natural hybrid Aussie-American accent, no less (which was the highlight for me actually lol bc that dude sounded just like a family friend who lived in the U.S. for over a decade). And having Kick Gurry in Edge of Tomorrow was so much fun! I would've enjoyed the Hansens more if they were played by Aaron Pederson & Mark Coles Smith, for example. Just hire an Aussie, Hollywood, I beg 🙏🏻

Will I watch it again? Despite the above, yes!

Rating: 🥳

[randomfandomimagine]

Hello!♡ Could I please request a character ship (👥) for Spike (from Buffy), Pietro Maximoff (from Marvel, The Avengers) and Newt Scamander (from Fantastic Beasts) ? To be true, I'm really boring and my personality is extremly paradox. I always feel like I don't belong anywhere, that's probably why I have a soft spot for anyone and anything different. I suffer from autism and depression. I admire people who are bold and straight-forward with their feelings. Because it's hard for me to express my own and, sadly, I usually don't sense or see others. And, even though I'm not at all funny, I like people who are. My ideal day would be spent with cuddling, listening to music, watching movies, having in-depths conversations and drinking tea on a rainy day and to take a walk in the rain. I'm extremly loyal and I honestly try to be as kind/polite as possible. Music is very important and therapeutic for me, I could never live a day without it. I always try to act against injustice, even if being the center of attention makes me uncomfortable. I'm not at all dominant, but that's not a problem to me. My favorite colours are green and black. I have a big problem with authority and I'm not afraid to speak up against them (which is surprising to most people because I'm usually very shy, insecure and quiet). As a quiet person, I like talkative people because they are willing to do the talking themselves and don't expect me to keep up my end of it. I have a kind heart and I see the good in everyone. I'm only wearing black and I don't like bright colours. I secretly crave affection and attention, but I feel like I don't deserve it. I'm barely able to make eye contact and am sometimes painfully awkward. Nevertheless, I love animals and I'm more comfortable with them (they are far easier than humans). I'm a feminist and anarchist. I don't know if it's true, but I think I annoy people. I'd love to live one day in the UK (if I could choose my heritage, it would be britain). I really struggle to say what's on my mind, sometimes I can't even build the easiest sentence (and that annoys me greatly). I think that one of the best feeling is that of a hug or cuddling, but I could never ask anyone for one. I'm probably the clumsiest person. I only judge people for what I experience, so it doesn't matter to me what is said about that person or what their heritage/beliefs are.

Wow, that is pretty long! I hope that's not too much? And I'm sorry for any errors, english isn't my native language. But I would be incredible thankful if you'd do that!♡

Hi, thanks for requesting a ship! Hope you like it :)

💖 You and Spike both feel like you don’t really belong and are drawn to anything different for that very reason. For that reason as well, you ended up becoming close. You appreciated how unique the other was and you felt like you could understand each other on a deeper level.

💖 Spike doesn’t really mind being the center of attention, so he does it for you when you need it. You are quite similar deep down, but when it comes to your differences you really compliment each other like when it comes to how talkative he is and how quiet you are.

💖 It doesn’t happen often, but you do speak up when you come across injustice. When things like these happen, Spike always gives you the heart eyes. Not that he would voice out his emotions just like that, but he can’t help being impressed and enamored by you then. Even more so than usual.

💖 Pietro is so supportive of you in anything and everything you do. He loves how you’re always trying to help people and how you try to get over your timidness in order to do that. He’s also always ready to step in if you need his help and won’t have a problem if he has to talk for you.

💖 As much as he’s constantly teasing you and flustering you, Pietro adores you and isn’t afraid to show it. He’s super affectionate and is always hugging you, kissing you or at the very least putting an arm over your shoulders or around your waist. What’s great about this is he knows you love the affection too, even if he might tease you a little more and playfully say you’re blushing or something.

💖 With Pietro you don’t always need to talk. He pays attention to you, to what you do say even if you say it once, but also to your facial expressions that he knows how to read so well. If you’re uncomfortable or sad or tired, Pietro knows and will be a sweetheart about it. He will ask if you want to leave, or if you need a hug, or if you want him to do something. And 9 out of 10 times, he will know exactly what you need.

💖 In a way, you and Newt have very similar personalities. You’re both extremly shy and introverted and sometimes you struggle to even make eye contact. That was one of the reasons why you got along so well so fast.

💖 The other main reason why you’re so close was your shared love for animals and fantastic creatures. When he introduced them to you, he saw a change in you since you suddenly forgot about your shyness and became a different person, you actually were yourself. Just like this, you realized Newt was truly himself around his creatures too. And he realized then, he was also himself around you.

💖 Newt truly admires how brave you are when you speak up against authority. He might do so sometimes too, but it’s terribly hard for him, and you make it look so easy with how passionate you are to fix things and make the world a better place that you inspire him in a way.

[ginny-rose-sixx]

What the Fork? Ch 1

Story Summary:

Eva Rozlyn "Roz" Roberts accidentally time travels when she fiddles with her time turner while watching The Dirt. She ends up in 1981 in the Mötley apartment. How will the Crüe react? Will she ever be able to get back to 2020? Will Roz be able to handle their way of life? Will she ever be able to control the time travel?

A/N:

I decided to start putting my story ‘What the Fork’ on Tumblr in addition to AO3 and WattPad (11 chapters). I wanted to organize my writing some more. Since I plan on this being a very long book and I want to make it a series, I want to take notes on my chapters so that I avoid continuity errors. Also, if I find any grammatical errors that I missed I will fix those. With the notes and everything, I thought that I would start putting this up here as well. As time goes on, I may do alternate takes on chapters and stuff like that. 

Oh, and the title is a bit of a funny story. When I first was trying to come up with a title, I asked for my boyfriend’s help. I told him the premise of the story and a summary of the first chapter. The first words out of his name were, “What the fuck???” And I was like, “Ok, there we go.” Of course, I wasn’t gonna swear in the title even though I do in the story. So, I decided to make a reference to the tv show ‘The Good Place’.

Pairing: Not disclosed to reader yet

Warnings: swearing

Word count: 1886

Chapter One

Eva Rozlyn Roberts, aka Roz, was sick of waiting for her friend to pick her up. She was supposed to be going to her first ever convention. She was dressed as a Gryffindor witch. She started to fiddle with parts of her costume. First, she was twirling her Newt Scamander replica wand for a while. *Why on Earth am I still waiting for her?* Roz wondered. Roz put her wand up her sleeve, and she tried calling her friend Katy for what felt like the 100th time that day.

After the voicemail picked up again, Roz decided to start watching The Dirt again. She had lost track of how many times she had watched the movie and listened to the songs since the movie came out. As she watched the movie, she took out a time turner necklace and started twirling it in all of the different directions. *I wish I had never agreed to go with Katy. She always forgets about me or bails.* She dropped the necklace and started to braid her hair.

 About an hour into the movie, Roz had already braided her hair so that it hung over her left shoulder. Her hair was black and it had deep red highlights all throughout. When she started twirling her time turner necklace again, a faint blue tendril of light started twisting around her fingers and slowly working its way up her arms. Before she even noticed it, the light was covering the entirety of her forearms. She immediately stopped playing with the time turner and started to panic. *Time turners are NOT even real! I cannot deal with this. I just turned 19 and I have to move soon. Fuck! What’s gonna happen to Hope?* The blue light had engulfed her and no matter how hard she tried; she couldn't get the time turner out of her hands. The last thought she had before she blacked out was *I hope she’s safe and that I’m at least gonna go somewhere fun.....*

 *******************

 The guys had just finished agreeing on a name. Mötley Crüe was finally a reality. They kept drinking together and didn't pay any attention to the strange blue light emanating from under the table. After a few hours, Tommy exclaimed, "Dudes, the only thing that could make this better would be for a chick to be here!"

 After a pull from his beer Vince laughed and asked, "Where exactly do you expect a chick to come from?"

 Mick growled sarcastically, "In a ball of light ya dumbass."

 Tommy's eyes lit up with teenage enthusiasm. "Ya really think so Mick?"

 Nikki just laughed and said, "He was joking dork."

 By then the light had waned and then, all of a sudden, it flashed back out from under the table. It engulfed the Crüe and Vince screamed. Once the light was gone Mick was shocked. "Seriously, I was joking about the light. What the fuck's going on under the table?"

 Tommy ducked his head under the table and immediately popped his head back up. "Dudes, I can't believe it.  I think I drank too much! There's a fuckin chick under the table!"

 Nikki cackled "T-bone quit fuckin around! Is there even anything other than trash under there?"

 Tommy glared and pouted "I'm not joking. Just look for yourself dude!"

 Mick grunted in pain as he got down on the floor and saw the strangest thing. There was girl who was maybe in her older teens. Her sudden appearance wasn't the only strange thing. She had unnatural black and red hair that was braided. She was also in what looked to be a school uniform. She had a red and black plaid skirt, knee high socks, odd combat like boots, a black blouse, a dark grey cardigan with a lion crest on it, and oddest of all a cloak. Mick decided that they needed to at least get her out from under the table. Maybe wake her if possible. "Nikki stop your cackling and help me move her to the couch."

 "Fine, fine" Nikki said as he rolled his eyes.

 Tommy and Vince moved the table and Mick carefully lifted her head and shoulders with a grimace while Nikki got her legs. Once they got her on the couch, Vince decided to bail to his girlfriend’s place, "Sorry, but I'm not sober enough for this shit. I'll be back later."

 Tommy leaned over the girl and asked, "Where do you guys think she came from?"

 Nikki shrugged, "Fuck if I know. Wake her up and see."

 Tommy started to poke her in the cheek. She mumbled "...5 mur min mum..." Tommy giggled and then decided to poke her sharply in the side. The girl's emerald eyes flew open as she shot into a sitting position.

 She screamed and flailed her arms which resulted in smacking Tommy in the face. "What the fork? Son of a bitch! What kind of asshole jabs someone they don't know in the side? Seriously, what the fuck?!"

 The guys looked at her with wide eyes and then at each other. "Well Mick you're the one who said a chick would come from a ball of light.  What do you think we should do with her?" Nikki asked.

 Mick chuckled "Your apartment, you guys figure it out.  I'm gonna just drink more."

 Sitting up fully and looking around the room, the girl was disoriented.  "She's right here and she even has a name! She also wants to know who you guys are and where she is," she snapped at them.

 Tommy sat next to her on the couch and responded, "Well I'm Tommy, that's Nikki and that's Mick. You are in our apartment."

 "Well theirs" Mick said pointing between Tommy and Nikki with his bottle of Jack.

 "Now your turn" Nikki said pointedly to her.

 Roz nervously tucked her legs under herself and hugged her knees. Looking down at the floor Roz said, "I'm Roz, that's all you're going to get from me right now. I want to know what city I'm in and what year it is. I've learned from books, TV, and movies that fresh out of a ball of light you figure out where and when you are."

 Tommy's brow knitted and he said, "Um its 1981 and you're in Los Angeles. Uh I guess that means I should ask you; where and when are you from Roz?"

 She looked with wide eyes between Mick and Nikki before settling back on Tommy. "Please don't freak out," she said quietly. As she looked down at her boots, she mumbled, "I'm from Madison, WI, and I was in the year 2020. I was born July 1, 2001 so I turned 19 a week ago in my time.”

 Nikki snorted, and Tommy elbowed him before he interrupted, “Seriously dude?? You’re from the future AND from Wisconsin?? How the fuck did you get here? Also, why under the table?”

 “I have no clue Tommy, I was just messing around with my necklace and then POOF………” Roz trailed off and then stared wide-eyed at Mick, Tommy, and then fixed her eyes on Nikki. She had finally realized who she was with. “Holy fucking shit balls!!!!!! M-Mick Mars? T-Tommy Lee? …. A-a-an-and N-ni-Nikki S-ss-Sixx?” She continued stare at Nikki who, after a bit, narrowed his eyes at her before turning to Mick and Tommy.

 “How the hell does she know who we are?” Nikki wondered.

 Mick shrugged and Tommy laughed and said, “Wait dude, she’s from the future, right? We’re probably famous. Hey Roz is that how you know us?”

 “Shit, I shouldn’t have let that bit slip. This better not fuck up the space time continuum. I refuse to tell you guys about your futures.” She said wildly staring at Tommy.

 “Ok… ok… What should we do with her until we figure out if she can even go home?” Tommy asked turning to Nikki.

 “Well we can claim she is related to one of us,” suggested Nikki. “Hey Mick want a sister or a cousin?”

 Mick shook his head and chuckled slightly. “If she’s gonna be my cousin I wanna know her whole name.  So, lady teen, what’s your name?”

 “Seriously Mick? Lady teen? Ugh fine, my name is Eva Rozlyn Roberts. I prefer Roz though.” She looked between the guys and then around the disgusting living room. “So… um…. Where am I going to live? If I recall this place only has the 2 rooms and Vince and Tommy already share one of them.” She thought for a moment, *Honestly, I hope they say I have to share with Vince and Tommy. Sharing with Nikki would be nerve wracking.*

 “Seriously dude, it’s creepy how much you know about us. You can share the room with me and Vince. I know Nikki ain’t gonna wanna share.” Tommy said looking like a hopeful puppy.

 “I guess that works. I’m gonna need something other than my costume to wear guys. I can’t always walk around LA dressed as a character from Harry Potter.” Roz said.

 “Wait who’s this Harry guy?” Nikki asked frowning.

 Roz giggled, “He’s the main character from a series of books that started in the late 90’s. He is a wizard and goes to a magical boarding school. It’s my favorite series of books ever. Right now, I’m wearing the Gryffindor version of the Hogwarts uniform. I also have a time turner necklace and a replica of Newt Scamander’s wand.”

 Mick rolled his eyes, “ So let me get this straight. You just decided to dress like a wizarding school girl and then play with magical objects?”

 Roz’s face clouded over, “Well I was supposed to be going to a convention with my friend Katy. Bitch never actually picked me up. I was fiddling around with the time turner necklace while watching a movie. Then I was in a blue light and passed out. Seriously, magic isn’t real. At least it wasn’t until the time turner decided to spaz out and actually work.”

 Nikki smirked and asked, “Are you sure you’re not a witch? You’re already a time traveler. Why not be a witch too?”

 “Bro do you really think she’s a witch? That would be so cool!!!” Tommy turned to Roz and asked, “Do you think that your wand will work too?”

 Roz giggled, “That would be amazing, although I doubt it does. But damn is it getting late or what? Any chance we can go back over this after some sleep?”

 “Well Tommy show her to Vince’s bed. I think it would be hilarious if Vin came back while she was sleeping in his bed.” Nikki says lighting up a cigarette.

 Tommy turned to Roz, “I should have some sweatpants and a shirt for you to wear.”

 “Tommy I hope you’ve got some workout shorts because your legs are way to long,” Roz said as she followed Tommy. Tommy handed her some shorts and a t-shirt and pointed out Vince’s bed. “Thanks Tommy.”

  After Tommy left the room Roz shut the door and changed. She folded her clothes and stuffed them in the pillowcase, and she still wore the time turner and kept the wand in its sheath on her forearm. She laid down and her last thought before sleep claimed her was of how strange this all is.

[triciaisonline]

THE  GOOD,  THE  BAD,  THE  MISGUIDED  &  THE  BIZARRE.

WARNING:  THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD.  READ  AT  YOUR  OWN  DISCRETION.

THIS ISN’T A  FULL  REVIEW,  JUST  MY  IMMEDIATE  THOUGHTS  AND  REACTIONS  UPON  SEEING  THE  FILM

THE  GOOD

almost every performance in this film is well done. i felt there were a few small characters that were not the greatest, like the auror who gets the job offered to newt, the circus guy. but the main cast delivered. 

this film looks beautiful. colleen atwood’s costumes look beautiful. special notes to everything worn by leta lestrange, the woman who follows grindelwald & brings queenie to meet him ( did she get a name? i swear they never named her... but there are so many characters in this movie... it’s impossible to keep them straight ). i love tina’s Parisian haircut. it suited her really well and served as a good reminder of passing time between this and the first.

i do like seeing other wizarding cultures, even if they didn’t really show us french wizard culture as much as i would have liked. especially since fleur delacour, beauxbatons are already areas people are interested in... it would have been nice to see more but i liked what i did see.

i liked that leta lestrange wasn’t the dark bellatrix type figure / temptress people were fanoning her out to be after being mentioned in the first film. i actually liked her character so i’m really mad that she was killed. i liked she had complexity, even if some parts of her will be brought up in other sections.

i forget it’s name, but i really like that giant cat creature. it’s cute. i love it. i want 5 for myself.

i liked seeing queenie get overwhelmed on the streets, because she’s a legilimens and all those thoughts would be overstimulating to her. i just thought it was a nice touch.

bunty telling newt to take off his shirt to go swimming was a mood.

i liked how jude law incorporated the manipulative parts of dumbledore, but it wasn’t in a obvious way. it was so well done, i really love it. it showed the morally flawed nature of the man really well. basically everything jude law did was perfect. including how he was the only one that seemed to subtly implicate that gellert and albus were gay. it’s not perfect, but i think he actually read the books before hand and knew whom he was playing really well. 

i know we don’t like him, but i do like how gellert addressed the rally. how he talks to people. reasons with them. how he rarely does the horrific acts himself, its always his followers. it’s chilling and really clever. it brings to mind cults, extreme right groups, dictators trying to induct and enforce their beliefs on the mass. 

THE BAD

what the fuck was with queenie?  don’t get me wrong, i’m not against queenie turning to gellert’s side or her heart being what gets used against her... because that has the making of good conflict. what i’m against is how it was done. queenie is in a total of five-six scenes in the film. one is a plot dump for what we have missed off screen, one-two are her looking for tina but they are the same narrative thread they basically count as one scene just spliced within other scenes,  she meets the french lady whom i swear never had her name said... then grindelwald then she’s at the rally where the ending of the film happens. she turns so fast. the film covers maybe a couple days? and you don’t even see the full conversation with grindelwald. so not only does she do nothing in this film, she turns to the bad side on a dime for what feels like cheap and unearned dramatics at the end of the film, but they are overshadowed and never even really acknowledged by the other characters because leta has her sacrifice right after, and credence has his conversion and that one is more plot driven then queenie’s which just feels like an afterthought. honestly all of queenie felt like it was added in last minute. she just doesn’t fit the rest of the film. she looks for tina, never finds her, tina never even asks or wonders about her. we dont even see her REACT to her own sister JOINING GRINDELWALD. newt forgets about her, jacob talks about her a bit, but other than being funny to watch, jacob also really doesn’t have anything to do in this movie. ironically, jacob feels more validated as a component because at least he’s helping newt as he looks for queenie, over queenie the reason jacob is there in the first place...and who is meant to have this big shocking “plot”  if you told me that this was all added in a final draft, after seeing queenie and jacob be so popular, i wouldn’t be surprised at all. so really, queenie’s betrayal not only made sense, but it literally didn’t even matter to the plot of the film or any of the character arcs. 

i also didn’t like how she just essentually drugged jacob with love potion which has literally been likened to date rape drugs and everything in earlier canon and analysis but here it gets hardly any response outside of “oh that queenie.... drugging jacob again to make him marry her”. i felt at least newt should have had a stronger reaction to it. especially when a big plot point later is someone having magic used on them to essentially do the same thing and cause all this family drama for the lestrange family. i think it’s suppose to be foreshadowing, but it’s not really handled well.

this one is kind of unimportant, but i also felt like queenie’s hair colour really looked off this time. i don’t know if it was a different wig or dye or if the colouring just didn’t flatter it... but it really made alison sudol look washed out in scenes and looked the wrong shade in others. i really don’t know but it bugged me a bit. 

i’m really mad that they killed off leta lestrange, she had so much build up... and she was actually more interesting than other character plots... but then they just... killed her off. and she really didn’t need to die... like its framed like a moment for newt to finally join the war properly and he sorta starts to connect with his brother again after, but i feel the entirety of the movie was enough to get him involved. so really, we just killed off a really interesting female character ( a woc character too ) just... for the sake of a male’s plot. wonderful.

on the subject of leta lestrange, i felt that whole scene with her, her brother, credence, tina and newt to be weirdly paced and shot. like so much information dump happened and people kept revealing things and it was hard to keep straight. 

there are so many plots. too many plots. so many micro-plots, not subplots. but smaller. the whole movie is micro-plots that result in everyone at the same place for the climax of the film, which would be cool except many of these characters, places, etc get little to no explanation or build up. just “i’m here now’. and there is no resolution. 

on that note, THERE IS NO RESOLUTION. THE MOVIE JUST STOPS. it feels like this movie either was meant to have an extended ending that got cut.. or they filmed and wrote it like it was the first part in a two parter, except it’s not. its a film in a series but its only one part. so it’s just a movie that ends abruptly and awkwardly with no kind of wrap up of anything. like yeah you want plot threads to fuel the next film, but literally nothing gets any kind of ending or closure. unless you count newt and thesus hugging? but that is all relied upon throwaway lines and its really ( again ) unimportant in the long run.. so it doesn’t count. 

so in the end, credence gets a wand and grindelwald tells him he’s actually a long lost dumbledore because in 2018 joanne rowling doesn’t even know her own canon and the fact he only has two siblings. and i mean, i get its meant to be a secret surprise brother, but when so much of the deathly hallows FOCUSES on his backstory with gellert and how it intertwines with his siblings, it feels really poorly thought out. the dumbledores and grindelwald’s backstory is pretty set in stone from the deathly hallows as told by both rita skeeter’s book, aberforth and even dead dumbledore himself. how it destroyed their family, and all of that is the set up for their conflict now.. so throwing in a surprise brother after all of that feels kind of cheap and lazy at this point. and again, no build up. no set up. just... “here’s a wand. i made this bird a phoenix. you're a dumbledore. end movie’. nothing foreshadows it. just “you're a dumbledore, credence.” he’s like the worst version of the hagrid meme.

THE MISGUIDED

lets talk about nagini, i’m not the high most authority on the subject as a white female, but from my understanding of the controversy from people much more informed than i am, the fact that nagini turned out to be basically a nothing almost feels worse than when she was framed like this big controversial focal point for the film. okay so, nagini literally didn’t need to be nagini. at all. she’s a snake once, and it’s in such an obvious “look its nagini from harry potter”. moreover, she literally didn’t even need to be a snake. its such a irrelevant part of the story. which just shows how much this nagini thing was just slapped on the character to create controversy to sell tickets and get people talking about the movie. WHICH JUST MAKES IT EVEN MORE WORSE, when you factor in that nagini is a nothing character on top of this. she is essentially scenery. she does nothing contribution wise except be there with credence until he goes to grindelwald and then stands with the heroes at hogwarts at the end for some reason, she just tagged along i guess. AND ALL OF THIS MAKES THE CONTROVERSY FEEL SO MUCH WORSE, because it’s literally an insensitive & thoughtless character created for the purpose of nothing. there isn’t even a big plot reason, nothing is contingent on her. you could remove her from the film and it changes nothing. which makes this the second woc character to get the shaft.

okay so the first film set up that there was a love plot of some kind involving newt and leta that would be explored in future films. and it’s not that it wasn’t there. you saw that with leta and newt; but what isn’t explained is how 1) she ended up with his brother, 2) how she got him expelled, 3) how that affected things between them, and 4) where is his brother in all of this? and they killed leta... so are we just done with that now? because it was set up that this would matter and it really didn’t. not that i didn’t like that her whole character wasn’t around a love plot... but i also kind of want answers? but also don’t think i didn’t notice how her whole plot was related to men in her life. i liked her, but she wasn’t perfectly written.  truthfully this film is held together by amazing design and actors. zoe kravitz brought this to life.

i didn’t mind the flashbacks... but it was weird how they didn’t really do any camera or editing tricks to differentiate between present day and flashback. more for the hogwarts one, its edited so it looks like the movie just changes to another movie for like fifteen minutes ( its a long flashback you guys ) and then cuts back. it was just really weirdly edited.

so, when did we stop calling MACUSA... MACUSA? it was just called american ministry of magic this time and since it had a name that was a huge part of marketing for the first film and was used a lot in the film as well. it just felt weird that they dropped it. also, they dropped the no-maj thing except for once when grindelwald uses a bunch of terms to describe muggles in his speech. i mean, i know we all mocked it.. but once you establish a universe, its jarring when the rules of it suddenly are changed because of focus group testing not liking it. 

i briefly touched upon this with queenie’s note, but jacob really felt like he was added just because he was popular in the first one. like in the first one, he’s essential to the plot and the character arcs of the main characters as well as a good character on his own. but... he felt shoehorned into the film. like he had a good ending, and the implication that he found queenie in the end felt like a good solid ending to his story. but this time, he’s just there. he helps newt a bit, has funny lines... but again, if you cut him out... you lost nothing. actually, you could cut queenie out and the film would progress as normal. they were entirely subplot and background noise.

i know we wanted to build up tina and newt, but its been 9 months. they havent seen each other since new york... this whole bit felt forced and was essentially the “misunderstanding trope”. and again... there was hardly any reward or pay off for that time. the whole thing is dropped by the third act and become irrelevant again. because the movie just... ends.

THE BIZARRE

there were a lot of dead babies for a wizarding world film.  like two babies are killed/murdered in the plot of this film and that felt.. kind of dark for this series. its like they want to be edgy but can’t commit to it so they do it in small bursts but then the rest f the movie is madcap adventure. so it really stands out.

the cast and crew went out of their way to state that the gay stuff wouldn’t be a thing in this movie. the bullshit reason being “everyone already knows so why bother”. and yeah, this is a clear case of insincere representation  ---  but  then you have jude law over here giving lines deeper meaning with his acting... the blood pact having them entwine hands and fingers and framed intimately when shown on screen.... and i swear, while not heart shaped, the blood pin thing that newt steals from grindelwald invokes the idea of heart shaped jewelry... and even if its not.. its worn on his chest above his heart? so it invokes the idea that way. which makes me beg the question, if it was going to be subverted anyway... and EVERYONE HAS KNOWN FOR 11 YEARS.. why oh why was it being treated like a hush hush secret ‘ gay but not really gay’ thing. just fucking let them be gay. let them be shown to be former lovers / someone dumbledore used to love. even if they don’t say it to characters, there are ways to convey that visually. and the mirror scene isn’t enough. i’m sorry but its not.  like calm down. its 2018. it’s not a secret.

in the beginning, grindelwald looks a bit like haymitch from the hunger games

thesus looked like percy weasley in a lot of scenes.

I’LL HAVE MORE COHESIVE THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS LATER ONCE I PROCESS IT ALL MORE. BUT THESE ARE MY INITIAL REACTIONS AND THOUGHTS UPON JUST SEEING THE FILM FOR THE FIRST TIME. 

OVERALL, THIS FILM HAS WAY TOO MUCH GOING ON. DOESN’T FOCUS ENOUGH ON THE IMPORTANT PARTS, NEEDS TO FLESH IDEAS OUT MORE.. A LOT OF THINGS HAPPEN BUT ALSO, NOTHING MATTERS TO THE STORY. IT FELT LIKE A LOT OF SCENES WERE CUT OUT FOR TIME. THE MISMATCHED NATURE OF PLOTS FELT MORE LIKE TV EPISODES RATHER THAN A FILM. BUT THE ACTORS REALLY GIVE THE FILM SOME CREDIBILITY AND MAKE THE RIDE AT LEAST ENJOYABLE TO WATCH, BUT I’M NOT ITCHING TO SEE IT AGAIN. A LET DOWN AFTER THE FIRST FILM, BUT I HOPE FOR IMPROVEMENT. ALL IN ALL, JUST STOP LETTING JOANNE TALK  /  WRITE. SHE MAKES BEING A HP FAN IN 2018 SO HARD;  AND GOD  BLESS JUDE LAW.

[atamascolily]

Continuing with The Vein of Gold exercise, more films, more themes. I’m so predictable, y’all.

(Aka what Captain America has in common with Matilda)

9. Matilda

Nobody does montages like this film. There are at least three, and they’re all amazing.

10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (live action I, II, and III)

(I didn’t hallucinate these films, okay??)

11. The Shadow

12. Jurassic Park

13. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

This particular gif looks like it ought to be Renaissance painting or something.

14. Night at the Museum

15. Hanna

Apparently, freeway fight scenes are a thing for me? They’re a staple of CA:TWS, along with Terminator and the Matrix films. Not to mention a lot of the Inception set pieces. Basically, if a film is set in modern times and has any action scenes whatsoever, I want one on a freeway, kthanx. Maybe because I hate being stuck in traffic? Or maybe just because it looks cool?

Identity issues: boy does CA:TWS have them in spades. From Bucky’s brainwashing--”Who’s Bucky?”--to Natasha’s “Who do you want me to be?” questions abound. Natasha is constantly changing her identities--literally in the climax--and her hacking saves the day. Her final scene is very reminiscent of Sarah Connor’s in Terminator, too. For the first time, Steve faces an opponent who’s literally his equal and opposite, so the doubling/duality motif is reminiscent. And the Winter Soldier is also a slightly-more-human version of the Terminator! He even has a metal arm and programming!

Also, the film as a whole is super-suspicious of technology, and there’s the ‘80s references of the old computers in the bunker and “Shall We Play A Game?” Not to mention HYDRA’s surveillance thing is kinda like Skynet, plus they intend to target people for what they might do in the future, and not stuff they’d already done...

(NB: Both Terminator and CA:TWS are thematically reminiscent of Three Days of the Condor--which I have not seen, but have read the novelization. I fucking hate Condor, because it is such an obvious Male Fantasy, with an obvious Male Gaze, Cardboard Cutout Female Characters and a Doormat Obligatory Love Interest. Maybe the movie is better?? God, I hope so. But aside from its initial premise, Condor  is thoroughly grounded in “the real world,” lacking super-soldiers or robots to make it engaging for me.)

What can I say about the three live-action TMNT films? Um, so they tap into the “underground” theme I have going, and also “nifty puppets/sfx”, “so much the ‘80s/early ‘90s,” and martial arts mastery. April and Casey are weird foils to Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, and the Shredder and Darth Vader have a lot in common, as do Splinter and Yoda. April is inducted into the weird alterworld of mutant turtles and yakuza gangs, and the turtles get mistaken for entertainers/performers at several key points across the three films. The first two films are set in New York, with a focus on sewers and urban squalor, but also a pastoral retreat to April’s family farm during the training montage/rest and recovery sequence. Leonardo--always my favorite--communicates telepathically with Master Splinter, and the turtles stage a rescue like Luke tries in ESB and succeeds (on several occasions) in ROTJ. There’s a constant tension between maintaining the masquerade and uncovering the truth. There’s even a time-travel plot to take them back to medieval Japan, thus melding all of the themes/motifs together!

Not to mention the radioactive ooze that creates the turtles in the first place as a comment on questionable tech--it also creates some of the antagonists in The Secret of the Ooze AND GIANT MUTANT DANDELIONS.And there’s a sequence where they break into a lab full of early ‘90s computers that could be straight out of Jurassic Park. So, um, yeah, about that....

Jurassic Park:  amazing sfx and puppetry. Human interactions with the other--usually but not always negatively. Badass botanist (wish Ellie were the main character instead of Grant but still!). Ominous jungle setting. Tension between science/tech and biology. Mutations as a plot point. “Life, uh, finds a way.” A corporate museum getting trashed by a T-rex in the climax--contrast with Night at the Museum, for a more docile take on the same motif! Tension between the truth and maintaining the masquerade. The perils of corporate power--see Ian Malcolm’s speech on the importance of moral responsibility and power. (Yes, he is an asshole and the author mouthpiece, but he’s also Jeff Goldblum, so he gets away with it.) Contrast this with Cyberdyne System in Terminator, and HYDRA’s surveillance system in CA:TWS. Also, shirtless Jeff Goldblum - contrast with the male nudity in Terminator, and Captain America’s and Luke Skywalker in tank tops and short sleeves. Also, “Dinosaur eats man / Woman inherits the earth” exchange. And GIANT REPTILES just like TMNT!

The Shadow: huge Asian/martial arts influence on the hero. Rigorous training with mystics in the wilderness. Psychic powers. Secret identity, keeping up appearances, and maintaining the masquerade. Self/shadow--it’s the hero’s superhero NAME; IT’S NOT SUBTLE. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? THE SHADOW KNOWS! *ominous cackling* Fabulous fashion. Plot points involving a sarcophagus and busting into a museum (paging Night at the Museum). Amazing scenery, especially all of the hotel sequences. As always, I’m more interested in the female side character--in this case, Margo Lane--than anything else. Also, a scientist character played by Ian McKellen with questionable tech!

(I will never claim this film is good, and it has a TON of problematic elements, but even so, it made an impression on me, especially since I had been listening to a lot of vintage “The Shadow” radio dramas before I saw this, so I was familiar with The Shadow’s basic schtick. Also, even though it sounds like a cliche, The Shadow pretty much invented all the superhero tropes, so technically Batman and Dr. Strange owe him a debt and not the other way around... )

Hanna is very similar to Terminator, CA:TWS, and Matrix in that it features a protagonist being relentlessly hunted--in this case, by government agents very similar to those in the latter two films, only played by Cate Blanchett. Amazing underground lair/chase sequence, plus a fight in a German subway station; not to mention great desert sequences (hi, Star Wars!) and an abandoned theme park.

Matilda: the power of reading, a young girl saving the day because Adults Are Useless, classics references, newts, telekinesis. Like Steve Rogers, refuses to be cowed or lie, even when it would be in her own best interest to give in to tyranny. Interesting foil with Hanna, in that both are named after their super-powered protagonist, only Hanna’s powers are all based in incredible violence. Hanna is also wrestling with the question of who she is and what her purpose is in life, and she’s a survivor, just like Sarah Connor in Terminator. Also, a question of heritage and origins, as in Star Wars.

Night at the Museum: I usually don’t like Ben Stiller, and I think this movie would be stronger with a different lead actor, but Robin Williams is great as Teddy Roosevelt (mentor figure!) and it’s a natural history museum coming to life after hours with a giant T-Rex skeleton. Also, the miniatures are hysterical, and Akmenrah is great (contrast with The Shadow for their museum MacGuffin, too). Great sfx, too. Contrast with Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump in Return to Oz, too. See also Steve stealing his uniform out of the Smithsonian in CA:TWS. It’s also a Found Family (or Family Reclaiming, depending on your point of view) along with The Secret Garden, and Matilda, and Star Wars and...

Anyway, I’m pretty sure a bot armed with this information could be used to generate stories tailor-made for me, which is both hilarious and frightening to think about.

Stories: I have a type.