#The Beginning of Stormbreaker Part 2

[arshipweek]

AR Ship Week - The Four Yassen Gregorovichs

This is the third weekly post in the lead up to Alex Rider Ship Week.  Only 2 weeks to go!

This week we’ve got a fantastic guest submission by AFewBulbsShortofaTanningBed, all about the different characterisations of Yassen Gregorovich.

The Four Yassen Gregorovichs by AFewBulbsShortofaTanningBed

presented roughly in the order in which they came to be

Yassen Gregorovich is one of the most important and iconic characters of the Alex Rider series, one half of the fandom’s most popular ship, Yalex, and the catalyst to many of the series’ most important events - Ian’s death and Alex’s introduction to the spy world, as well as Alex’s being sent to Scorpia and learning of his father’s history with them. He is also, indirectly, a cause of the events of Snakehead - Alex decides to work with ASIS and Ash in part because he wants to know more about Yassen.

Thus far, there have been four official interpretations of Yassen: the original books (of which he appears in three: Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, and Russian Roulette, a Yassen-focused prequel); the 2006 movie, where he is played by a scenery-chewing Damian Lewis; the ongoing tv series, where he is played by a menacing and mysterious Thomas Levin; and the graphic novel adaptations of the books (of which there have been six thus far.) The following is an overview of each Yassen and how each is written in fic/shippiness. Spoilers ahead!

BOOK YASSEN

illustration by inkyquail

Appearance: close-cropped blond/light hair, blue eyes (which as a child look “permanently surprised”), “almost feminine” eyelashes, chiseled lips and a smooth face (what do these mean? Who knows!), appears “in his late twenties”, the body of a dancer” (there are further mentions of a “sleek dancer’s body”), said to be small for his age and shorter than John as an adult.

Scar: long and straight “as if it had been drawn with a ruler” on his neck, acquired on a mission with John Rider as depicted at the beginning of Eagle Strike; easily hidden by collar if plot demands it.

Accent: none, or a faint Russian accent, depending on the book.

First meeting with Alex: on the rooftop of Sayle Enterprises, right after killing Herod Sayle.

There were two small explosive cracks.

Alex looked down, expecting to see blood. There was nothing. He couldn’t feel anything. Then Sayle staggered and fell onto his back. There were two gaping holes in his chest.

The helicopter landed in the center of the cross. The pilot got out.

Still holding the gun that had killed Herod Sayle, he walked over and examined the body, prodding it with his shoe. Satisfied, he nodded to himself, tucking the gun away. He had switched off the engine of the helicopter and behind him the blades slowed down and stopped. Alex stepped forward. The man seemed to notice him for the first time.

“You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.

The Russian nodded. It was impossible to tell what was going on in his head. His clear blue eyes gave nothing away.

“Why did you kill him?” Alex asked.

“Those were my instructions.” There was no trace of an accent in his voice. He spoke softly, reasonably. “He had become and embarrassment. It was better this way.”

“Not better for him.”

Yassen shrugged.

“What about me?” Alex asked.

The Russian ran his eyes over Alex, as if weighing him up. “I have no instructions concerning you,” he said.

“You’re not going to shoot me too?”


“Do I have any need to?”

There was a pause. The two of them gazed at each other over the corpse of Herod Sayle.

“You killed Ian Rider,” Alex said. “He was my uncle.”

Yassen shrugged. “I kill a lot of people.”

“One day I’ll kill you.”

“A lot of people have tried.” Yassen smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “it would be better if we didn’t meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you’re still a child.”

He turned his back on Alex and climbed into the cabin. The blades started up, and a few seconds later, the helicopter rose back into the air. For a moment it hovered at the side of the building. Behind the glass, Yasen raised his hand. A gesture of friendship? A salute? Alex raised his hand. The helicopter spun away.

Alex stood where he was, watching it, until it had disappeared into the dying light.

Other key moments: The Fer-de-lance, Alex’s failed assassination attempt, and subsequent bull-fighting incident (illustrated here by the excellent inkyquail)

There was a slight tremble in the hand holding the gun and he brought his other hand up to steady it.

“You have my gun,” Yassen said.

Alex took a breath.

“Do you intend to use it?”

Nothing.

Yassen continued calmly. “I think you should consider very carefully. Killing a man is not like you see on the television. If you pull that trigger, you will fire a real bullet into real flesh and blood. I will feel nothing; I will be dead instantly. But you will live with what you have done for the rest of your life. You will never forget it.” He paused, letting his words hang in the air. “Do you really have it in you, Alex? Can you make your finger obey you? Can you kill me?” Alex was rigid, a statue… “Maybe you have forgotten what I once told you. This isn’t your life. This has nothing to do with you.” Yassen was totally relaxed. There was no emotion in his voice. He seemed to know Alex better than Alex knew himself. Alex tried to look away, to avoid the calm blue eyes that were watching him with something like pity.

Air Force One and the “I love you” speech

“He saved my life. In a way, I loved him. I love you too, Alex. You are so very much like him. I’m glad you’re here with me now… If you don’t believe me, go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny…”

Russian Roulette - the eponymous book as a whole, particularly his relationship with John (which has given rise to numerous John/Yassen fics)

Backstory: Given to us in Russian Roulette and Snakehead. Yassen grew up as Yasha Gregorovich, a young Russian boy living in a tiny village called Estrov, hundreds of miles south of Moscow. Unbeknownst to him, his parents and many of the villagers work at a factory manufacturing weaponized anthrax, and an accident at the factory leads to the destruction of Estrov and the deaths of everybody there besides Yassen. (It’s very heartbreaking.)

The whump doesn’t stop there for Yassen; he is betrayed by his parents’ friend, lives on the street for a while, and is eventually captured by Vladimir Sharkovsky, a cruel man who forces Yassen to play a game of Russian roulette for his life, and who Yassen eventually learns was responsible for the destruction of Estrov. There isn’t anything Yassen can do about it, though; he is forced work as a slave for Sharkovsky, as both household laborer and food taster who is frequently tormented by Sharkovsky and his son, Ivan. Several years later, a Scorpia assassin is contracted to kill Sharkovsky, and Yassen escapes with him, thereafter brought to Malagosto and trained as an assassin.

Though he excels in many aspects of training, he struggles with taking a life; due to his potential, he is given a second chance, this time under the tutelage of John Rider, an experienced assassin. John isn’t entirely trustworthy, but treats Yassen with more kindness than he has received in years, and saves his life during one of their missions (the scar incident.) He doesn’t think that Yassen is cut out to be an assassin, emphasizing the harshness and loneliness of the life while pointing out that he has lots of potential and can work elsewhere, have a gentler life. Yassen is on the cusp of leaving Scorpia and the world of espionage and murder behind when he learns that John works for MI6; betrayed and devastated, he plays one final game of Russian roulette (with five bullets and one empty chamber) to determine the course of the rest of his life - he doesn’t want to be a killer, but John’s betrayal has convinced him that there is no world in which he lives and can be anything else. Yassen lives, murders Sharkovsky and his son Ivan, and returns to Scorpia, vowing to become the best assassin he can and loyal to nobody but himself to spite John.

Some time after his return, Yassen and John are in Mdina where John is to be extracted by MI6, in what is staged as a capture. However, the mission goes wrong, and Yassen kills many members of the extraction team and stabs John’s best friend, Ash, in the stomach, leaving him with lifelong pain and disability and contributing to his resentment of John and his decision to agree to Scorpia’s offer to work for them and have the Rider family killed with a bomb in their plane.

Important relationships:

Alex Rider (a parallel and foil, he’s responsible for killing Ian Rider, the closest thing Alex had to a parent and his last remaining family member, and for indirectly throwing him into the world of espionage, and later on sending him to Scorpia. Though usually ruthless and unemotional, he becomes emotionally compromised when Alex comes into play.)

John Rider (mentor, saved his life, gave him the training that allowed him to survive. His lessons affected Yassen’s approach to being an assassin - someone with no attachments, no loyalty, no sentimentality. Though he is revealed to be working for MI6, Yassen still feels gratitude and loyalty towards him for the training he gave him and the time he saved his life, and still loves him over a decade after his death. This in turn leads him to spare Alex multiple times despite orders and opportunities to kill him, and to save his life with Sayle.)

Vladimir Sharkovsky (responsible for the destruction of Estrov and deaths everybody Yassen knew and loved and then personally tormented him for years, his treatment of Yassen is often interpreted as haunting him long after he escapes - often in subtle ways)

Fics: Being the original version and the one that has introduced most fans to the fandom, this is the Yassen who is written about most and who has the longest history of fics about him. You can find book!Yassen in some of the earliest fics of the fandom (though this author does not know how to use ff.net or livejournal and at this point doesn’t believe she will ever learn), and he continues to be popular in fics, in whole or in part, today. The way Yassen is written has evolved significantly, influenced by both the release of the movie (which likely led to a number of fics that favored a more sinister Yassen), and Russian Roulette (which gave us his sympathetic and whumpy backstory and likely led to increased interest in Yassen - replacing K Unit as Alex’s most popular adult companion(s).) More than any other adaptation of Yassen, the books portray Yassen and Alex as parallels and foils, emphasized by their similar appearances and histories, as well as matching scars - both have been shot in the chest and along the side of the neck.

BoldAsBrass - Christmas in Chelsea, New Rules, Exit strategy BurntWhisper - Overture in G Minor Suzie_Shooter - Lights Out series Ireliss - alone together fredbassett - Coins in the Fountain (Yassen Gregorovich/Monica Peretti, inspired by the short story The White Carnation)

MOVIE YASSEN

Appearance: Damian Lewis, red hair and all, taller than Alex (Rider and Pettyfer)

Scar: none???

Accent: heavy, Russian

First meeting with Alex: all the nonsense with the vials in the lab

Other key moments: Campy highlights include the assassination at the beginning

and of course, the rooftop scene

Important relationships

Alex (confrontation over vials, saves his life, tells Alex to forget him and shrugs knowingly when Alex says he won’t, possibly arranged for fog machines and violin music for reasons unknown)

???

No relationship with Ian that we know of, aside from killing him in the most iconic way possible

Backstory: who knows!

Fics: The second interpretation of Yassen and the first one we see onscreen, this Yassen has sadly fallen out of fic-writing favor in recent years. As compared with present-day book!Yassen, movie!Yassen is often written as more suave, confident, and sexually forward. He is also very, very Extra. Though fics tend to tone down his more dramatic tendencies, he remains the campiest of the Yassens. I hope for a resurgence in popularity someday.

RimauSuaLay - No Enemies yaseanne - A brief and tentative excursion abrandnewboom - keep you like an oath

TV YASSEN

Appearance: Thomas Levin - brunet, dark eyes, stockier build and perpetual five-o-clock shadow, long and dramatic black coat, shorter than Alex (heh)

Scar: prominent and on the side of his face, somewhat spider-webby, impossible to miss

Accent: nonspecific, non-native accent; American accent skills shown off at one point

First meeting with Alex: the “Alex Friend” scene (can be found here in a gifset by emziess)

Other key moments

Killing Ian Rider

The rooftop at the end of season 1 where he shoots Julius Grief (here)

The time he nearly shot Alex but then didn’t, concealing Alex’s identity, protecting him on Air Force one, telling him about his father (spectacular moments show in this gifset and this one)

Important relationships:

Alex (similar to the above descriptions, he’s saved his life numerous times and has shown a soft spot for him - hopefully to be explored further)

Ian (unlike the books, the encounter between Ian and Yassen at the beginning of season 1 seems to suggest that Yassen has some sort of personal history with Ian, beyond being his murderer. What that history is, we do not know!)

John Rider (not explored yet, but Yassen says that they worked together. Something that will likely be explored in season 3.)

Backstory: in general, a mystery. We get suggestions that he has a history with Ian, a history with John, and that he was thought to be dead for years. These will hopefully be explored further in season 3!

Fics: The biggest changes (aside from physical appearance and tv-specific events) that I have noticed between how tv Yassen is written in fic as compared to book Yassen is the use of the nickname “Yas” and an increased emphasis on his relationship with Ian - and concomitant increase in Ian/Yassen (aka Yian) fics. (As we saw in the post for week 1 of ship week, it is the most popular ship over the past year behind Yalex!) Numerous fics also incorporate elements of both tv and book Yassen, for instance, including both elements of book!Yassen’s backstory from RR and tv!Yassen’s possible history with Ian and encounters with Alex, or blending their appearances (i.e. a Yassen with blond hair, a facial scar, and a black coat.) He is less of a super-assassin than in the books or tv series, with abilities that seem more grounded in reality and closer to those of a normal hitman, and is less prone to dramatics.

fredbassett - I Spy series (starring Yassen/Ian!) Nanimok: i do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief; Spies and Recreation; The Alec Walker series; Just Say I do (featuring a combo of book and tv show, which seems not uncommon) kelkblr - The French Connection

GRAPHIC NOVEL YASSEN

Appearance: at a glance, I thought that his appearance was meant to be similar to Damian Lewis, but with darker red hair (closer to an auburn.) Upon closer inspection, his face is in fact quite different, as is his build. He has blue eyes and pale skin, but doesn’t look particularly feminine, and his eyelashes are not particularly notable. Taller than Alex.

Scar: Only when the artist remembers it’s supposed to be there. Usually no.

Accent: ???

First meeting with Alex: a blend of book and movie (the adaptation of Stormbreaker incorporates elements of both), on rooftop after killing Sayle

Other key moments: Pulls the same dangling-from-a-helicopter nonsense as movie version

and refusing to kill Alex followed by the “I love you” moment from Eagle Strike

Important relationships:

Alex (like the books and movie)

John (similar to the books thus far, though Russian Roulette has not yet been released)

Fics: none :(

Graphic novel Yassen has the distinction of being the most forgotten Yassen, and thus, he has no fics attributed to him, shippy or otherwise. I’m not entirely sure why this is, though I have some theories. It could be in part due to limited availability of the graphic novels, limited publicity, and slow release; that they do not add much of anything that has not already been portrayed in the books or movie, so there is no new material to grab fannish attention; and that they do not provide a visual of a book-accurate Yassen but instead create yet another version that is, unfortunately, not as pretty as the Yassen of the books and thus is not nearly as alluring. Perhaps this ship week, graphic novel Yassen will finally get recognized!

[bbygirl-aemond]

do you have any advice for planning out the story and each chapter? im trying to plan out this fic idea i have but i don’t really know how so i thought i’d ask one of the best ao3 authors i’ve seen

oh bby i'm about to go into SO much detail that i'm sure you didn't ask for but here we go! i've spent countless hours of my life on fic planning, and it usually goes entirely unseen by y'all! i'll try to use parts of my earlier planning for stormbreak as an example so as to avoid spoilers while giving you the ability to see how the plans translate into the finished product. this will also give anyone who's interested a cool behind-the-scenes look at how some of stormbreak's chapters evolved from my earliest notes!

i organize all of my planning in google drive, and i have several distinct stages i go through that increase in detail the further along you go.

at the broadest level, i have two documents that i use for brainstorming. one of them, called "snippets," is miscellaneous little half-thoughts and snippets or late-night ideas. it includes both scenes and characterizations. it's basically little notes and reminders to myself. these snippets can usually be worked into the fic at mostly any point. this document is pretty long; about 50 pages. here are some examples of the types of things i put in this doc, including something that inspired a scene later in chapter 11:

the second brainstorming document is called "scenes." this is basically a list of every single interaction and moment that i want to happen. each line of text will represent one of the povs that will end up in stormbreak, with usually 2-3 povs per chapter. each sentence is super brief, like max 10 words, and i'll usually spit them out without regard to chronology since some scenes can be worked in anywhere.

now beginning to put things together i have the document i call "chronological events." here, the scenes are all put in a specific chronological order. i'll assign chronology to certain scenes that have chronological flexibility. and each scene will be expanded into 3-4 bullet points that get at how this scene will advance the plot (through politics, characters, or relationships). here's an example of what this looked like for the scene that became alicent's pov in chapter 12:

and for the scene that became aemond and daeron's povs later in the same chapter:

the "chronological events" document is what i reference first any time i'm going through the planning process for a new chapter. it reminds me of what i need to accomplish with the chapter.

so now let's say i've looked at this document and want to proceed to the initial outline for the chapter. i write these in documents within a folder called "short chapter outlines," and each document is titled "short chapter X outline," with X just corresponding to the number in the actual fic. this will expand the bullet points from "chronological events" into an a few actual paragraphs, and add in some extra padding that isn't strictly plot-relevant but helps to build out the scenes. this is an example of what this looked like for the scene that became aemond's pov in chapter 2:

you can also see that this doesn't always end up being fully translated into the end product. in this example, i changed the events towards the end when writing the actual chapter because it made more sense to me.

okay now we go onto the last stage of planning before i write the actual chapter: the long outline. just like with the short versions, i keep these documents in a "long chapter outlines" folder and each doc is titled "long chapter X outline." it further expands upon the short outline; i'll put the short outline on the left half of the screen to look at it while i write the long outline on the right half of the screen. this is basically me stream-of-consciousness writing the chapter. the goal is to get the entire scene hammered out, pretty much paragraph by paragraph. if there are any particular descriptions, lines of dialogue, or even brief moments that i get stuck on, i write them in shorthand and don't worry about making them pretty. here's an example of this, from the scene that became aemond's pov at the start of chapter 6:

you can see that i expanded on most of these paragraphs and polished the sentences between this and the final chapter. but also that the level of detail here is really high.

lastly, we have the actual chapter, which i write based off of this long outline. i put the long outline on the left side and the chapter itself on the right side of my screen so i can see both at once. i write all of my chapters in microsoft word because that's the format i've written stories in since i was a child and it's where my creativity works best for whatever weird reason. the chapter always stays very true to the long outline, but as you'll see if you compare the long outline above to the actual chapter 6 i do add in a bunch of extra detail. the long outline is usually between 4,000 and 5,000 words and 10-15 pages, while my chapters are pretty much upwards of 9,000 words and 20+ pages. so it about doubles in length at this step.

i do most of my editing (switching certain lines and paragraphs around) as i write this first full draft of the chapter. so when i'm proofreading, i'm only ever checking for errors and seeing if i want to replace any words or phrases with a better idea. this last step usually doesn't take me more than a hour.

from there on, you guys are familiar with the end result! as a note, the "chronological events" and "short chapter outlines" are all fully completed for this story! i prefer to finish this level of planning before even beginning to seriously write. it helps me to lay the foundation for my plot twists from the very beginning of the fic!

[iamnightduchess]

Pretty please make your Marvel and RK crossover idea a reality with an HC when you have the time. PLEEEEEASE 🖤

Thank you for the Ask. Sorry for the delayed answer but I hope this fits!🧩🧩🧩

CW: Some spoilers ahead if you're yet to view the following series.

ReiKasa x Marvel Cinematic Universe Crossover Headcanon #023

Reiner and Mikasa both are very profound in terms of their raw strength and savior energies. In cross fandom universes, they would be the ultimate superhero couple. Well, Reiner very possibly would begin as an anti-hero from Marley who would eventually discover an initial kindred spirit type of camaraderie before it develops into an intense battle synergy & palpable chemistry with the all-Eldian super heroine, Mikasa Ackerman. From two opposing forces, Reiner and Mikasa would somehow find their stars aligned in the cosmos that would bind them together as each other's ride or die. With that in mind, these 3 pairings from the Marvel Cinematic Universe would best be embodied by ReiKasa in their own special ways.

1) Thor & Mighty Thor (Jane Foster)

Apart from sharing similar physique - buff and sturdy body frame and roguish facial shape and hair, Reiner embraces Thor's honor, pride and an almost fallen out of grace moment in his life as he goes through a period of lost and searching for himself. Thor finds himself allying with the Guardians of the Galaxy in order to save the remaining humanity from Thanos (which more or less had an almost similar ideal as SnK's big bad, Eren Jeager), same as what Reiner did in SnK's final arc when he allied with the surviving elite members of the Survey Corps.

Meanwhile, Mikasa would embody the Mighty Thor's relentless fight for the greater good even if she knows that by doing so, she would be sacrificing the most important part of herself all for humanity. This resonated so well in SnK's canonverse. Mikasa has a steely resolve to save humanity at all costs, the same way Jane Foster did as the Mighty Thor. If Mjolnir had chosen Jane as the one worthy enough to wield it, the Founder Ymir had chosen Mikasa to be the one who eventually eliminates the Titan curse & liberates her from her 2,000 years worth of inter-dimensional self-imposed imprisonment.

Traits: The couples shares resilience, bravery and impeccable teamwork.

And just imagine, Thor!Reiner holding Stormbreaker standing back to back with MightyThor!Mikasa wielding Mjolnir as the God & Goddess of Thunder?

💯 Fresh & Epic!

2) Iron Fist (Danny Rand) & Colleen Wing

Dubbed as the daughter of the Dragon, Colleen Wing is a martial artist and instructor. Similar to Mikasa, who's of Japanese blood (Hizuru in SnK), both are exceptional blade wielders and hardened fighters. Where Colleen used Chi manipulation, Mikasa was blessed with awakened Ackerman powers that blessed them both with superhuman strength. Both bear a strong character based on discipline, and both prefer to fight their own battles rather than have someone else do the job for them. Mikasa & Colleen uphold a specific code of conduct - loyalty, courage, veracity, compassion, and honor above all else.

Meanwhile, Reiner and Danny, were both blessed with amazing powers from a mythical legend. Both were forced to survive through a rough childhood and intense systematic training as children. Danny inherited the power of the Iron Fist through the heart of K'un-Lun's mythical beast, Shun-Lao the Undying while Reiner inherited the power of the Armored Titan through his predecessor.

Traits: The couples are very in-sync in battles with complementing styles & moves. And yes, exceptional tag team energy.

3) Moon Knight (Marc Spector/Steven Grant) & Scarlet Scarab (Layla El-Faouly)

Marc Spector (Moon Knight) is a character which is well known for his DID, whereas he has 3 identities/alters which draw similarities to Reiner's duality in the series (despite SnK's guidebook stating that it's fictional 'schizophrenia'), where it was shown that Reiner dissociated heavily that he had two sides - Warrior and Soldier. It may not necessarily be a different consciousness but it involved something as equally complex. Both Marc and Reiner's psyche began to split due to a traumatic incident when they were younger and both are/were in military. Where Marc Spector (one of the alters) was chosen as an avatar by the Egyptian Moon God, Khonshu, Reiner was chosen to wield the Armored, one of the Nine Titans in his universe.

Layla is Marc's (& Stephen) wife who works together with her husband to stop a villain & an ancient deity from unleashing judgment & destruction upon humanity, very similar to Reiner, Mikasa and the Alliance's combined efforts to stop Eren Jeager's the Rumbling through the ancient Founder's will. Layla, (spoiler alert!), is also a chosen avatar by one of the Egyptian Goddess, granting her many abilities including superhuman strength, agility, durability, stamina and reflexes, which are similar to Mikasa's Awakened Ackerman powers.

Traits: The couples have distintinctive battle prowess and deeply care about the other. Despite the challenges and separation, they persevered to protect mankind through the powers that were bestowed upon them.

----

It's a bit shorter than usual but thanks again for the fun Ask! 💕💯

[thecandywrites]

The Beginning of Stormbreaker Part 2

So cute. 

Part 2

Rhosland woke up just before sunrise, bright eyed and energized and couldn’t wipe the giddy smile off her face if she tried as she and her twin sister left right at sunrise just as their mother finished baking the overnight bread, and also conveniently just after Drad and Sarg came and delivered more “gifts” to them, Sarg gave Esri a fishing net and fishing lures and lines along with a big set of big baskets so they could keep the fish and whatever else they foraged together as Drad gave each of them the stone timber axes, and a large, thick quilt blanket, so large it would cover three bedrolls. Each square was stuffed with cotton, wool and down feathers so that each square was puffy in the quilt so that they would not get cold in their tent just in case the bitter cold of fall and winter came early, which the girls happily took and hugged those men goodbye as Drad and Sarg helped push as the girls pulled their rowboat to the biggest stream as the women rowed their little boat down the stream that cut through the village, underneath all the bridges  and soon were out to sea before they rowed it north towards Hurricane Breaker until they found the estuary between Skull Screamer Clan and Hurricane Breaker and rowed upstream, happily finding all kinds of fish and seafood in the creeks before they found the perfect camping spot right on the edge of a forest next to a fallen tree that was the perfect bench height and set up camp and ate the fish they were able to easily catch for breakfast with their bread that thier mother had sent them with. 

“So you must have had really good dreams last night, you won’t stop smiling.” Esri teased her sister even though she was in a similar state. 

“I did,” Rhos nodded. 

“Well go on, tell me about them.” Esri requested as she scooted closer to her sister as they sat on a fallen log by their camp fire since they had pulled the little row boat up on shore and the log had been covered in wild, edible mushrooms which the girls readily cut off and were in the process of drying them to preserve them while eating a few of them, cooked in their pot over the fire with their breakfast since one of their bride gifts from the clan had been a few logs of smoked and preserved fat as they had sliced off a few pieces of the cow and hog fat and fried the mushrooms in that in their pot which only made the mushrooms taste even more meatlike. 

“I had a dream that Drad came back from the raid and claimed me as his wife instead of Tar and we built the most perfect house together and we had so many kids and we were just...so happy. And it’s like my intuition is telling me that it will come true.” Rhosland whispered, afraid that if she said it too loudly it would tempt the fates and not come true. 

“That’s funny, because I had a similar dream about Sarg.” Esri beamed. 

“Oooh, and?” Rhos giggled. 

“Oh, very good, I had a dream we sailed out to sea on this big sailing ship and that rocking of the boat made the rutting so much better.” Esri giggled in turn.

“Do you think it will come true?” Rhosland asked. 

“It better! Cause my mind and heart keep telling me it will come true, plus they were both there to see us off and got us both gifts to help us on this hunting and gathering trip and just hugging Sarg this morning felt...amazing.” She insisted with a wistful sigh. 

“Me too, but with Drad obviously.” Rhosland confirmed as the girls continued to eat to their satisfaction for the first time in a long time. 

“Come on, I have a good feeling that we will kill some deer today, we should build a smoker to smoke the meat.” Rhos suggested as they used their new axes and chopped down a good stone timber tree and other kinds of trees and began building a really good smoker out of the wood before they fashioned the bigger baskets to hang off of their hips and immediately started finding all kinds of wild edible berries, cattails and other wild edible plants, edible mushrooms all around them and so many different kinds of herbs for seasoning and medicine and even an abandoned bee hive full of combs, thick with honey which they gladly took all of it that they could reach and harvest before they shot down a couple of deer and drug the deer back to camp and immediately got to work dressing them and putting their meat in the smoker and tanning their hides and then used the net and caught a bunch of fish, gutted and cleaned them and put those in the smoker too. 

It was single handedly the best day they had ever spent gathering because this spot had an overabundance for them and they quickly had to use the dried grasses to make bushel sized baskets for all that they harvested since all the baskets that they had packed were now full as they sat on the log, watching the gorgeous red sunset and just about the time they got done weaving their new baskets and organizing everything into those baskets and put it all inside the tent just as the sun went down- a very thick fog came in from the sea with a chill and settled over them as Rhos and Esri both instinctively went into their tent and rested and for dessert, dined on the honey that they dipped their wild berries into before falling into a restful, sweet sleep, curled up under the wonderfully big, thick, and supremely warm blanket that kept the cold completely off of them as suddenly the winds kept changing in the most bizarre way, blowing in different directions so that it felt like it was blowing in from all sides and picking up speed, making the smoke of their fires take up an odd pattern within the fog itself before it blew in heavily towards from the west again, inland from the sea.   

Meanwhile Tar was disappointed that “his Rosey” had already left for a hunting and gathering trip, so he couldn’t try to lay with her real quick before the raid, he was celebrating as if he had already had a successful raid and noticed that a thick fog blew in that evening but that didn’t deter him or his father or the rest of his family. The next morning, the fog was still excessively thick. So much so that they could barely see the road from their houses but Zash and his sons felt confident in their ability to still use their inner compass and that the fog would conceal them and that they would attack the Rush Fang Clan completely by surprise and it would guarentee their victory over them and set off with their men that morning and disappeared into the unusually thick fog while Orcoth had promised Sarg and Drad that he would keep a careful watch over their mother Grat and Rhos’ and Esri’s mother Shari and assured both women that they would see their children again soon as the three of them kept to themselves as Grat invited Shari to stay with her while her daughters would be away so the two would not get lonely which Shari greatly appreciated as Grat also invited Orcoth to stay as well, to play games and enjoy each other’s company since Grat’s house that Wolvish had built her was still big enough to fit all of them comfortably. 

However- Zash and his sons got hopelessly lost and turned around several times, not even recognizing their own walking paths in the tall grass in the thick fog that soon enveloped them and their raiding party as Zash and his sons were adamant that the fog would clear and that they would find Rush Fangs and ignored and rebuked and rebutted any who had left signs along their path to show that they had been walking in circles before Zash felt confident that he was turning Southeast, when in fact, he was turned Northwest and heading straight towards the much bigger and more fearsome Hurricane Breaker. 

And when the fog did partially clear, they found Hurricane Breaker, their bright golden bronze breast plates glinting in what little sunlight finally was able to push through. Whose shaman had sensed that they were coming and were ready for them and were outnumbering them twenty to one as Drad and Sarg both looked worriedly at each other when they saw that their comparatively smaller raiding party was completely surrounded before the fog quickly enveloped them all again as the clash of warriors played out as Drad did everything in his power to keep Sarg by his side after he saw Tar and everyone in Tar’s family fall to the ground dead from the fatal blows, before he smelled...smoking venison with a hint of smoking fish as the words of his new adopted father Orcoth replayed in his head but it was like he was the only one who could smell it and by this point Sarg and Drad were both injured, almost fatally so and knocked off their horses, as Drad took Sarg on his injured side while Sarg did the same, pushing their injured sides together so they could use their good sides to manage to get out of there and Drad followed his nose in the smell, as the scent itself seemed to be in a wiggly pattern but the wiggly pattern helped both of them avoid the other warriors of Hurricane Breaker as the fog itself was so thick they could barely see their hands in front of their faces but kept them practically invisible as Drad continued to slowly and as quietly as possible, follow the smells as Drad could pick up more on the scent of smoking venison while Sarg could smell the scent of smoking fish stronger as they both followed the same trail of scents until the scent led them out of the warzone and the father away they got, the lighter the fog became so that they could see more and smell more and by now, the scent was very strong and it gave them hope that they were close as they both hobbled towards it and just as the fog thinned out even more, they saw a camp sight, just as Rhosland and Esri were leaving a tent and Drad had never thought Rhosland looked more beautiful in his life. 

“Drad?” Rhos asked when she and her sister were brave enough to leave their tent when they woke up to the sounds of a battle as their instincts told them to stay in the tent because it sounded like it was very close by before the sounds faded as if the war zone was traveling farther and farther away before they ventured out, only to be met with the sight of Drad and Sarg, both trying to hold up the other and trying to walk despite their injuries. 

“Rhosland! Help me!” Drad called out to her as she and Esri quickly dropped their axes and ran towards them and helped them back into their tent as a pop up thunderstorm came and started raining and washing Drad and Sarg’s bloody trail away before moving towards the east on the western wind again as Rhosland and Esri both got to work cleaning and dressing Drad and Sarg’s wounds with the herbs that they had found and were turning them into poultices.

“What are you doing here? I thought you guys were supposed to be raiding Rush Fang.” Rhos asked worriedly as she worked on stabilizing Drad’s wounds and to stop him from bleeding out right there in their tent, calling on all of her medical knowledge she had acquired up until that point to help her do so.

“We lost our way in the fog, got turned around several times over but Zash and his sons wouldn’t listen to anyone about it and the fog was so thick, we couldn’t tell where the sun was, let alone where we were going.” Drad answered in staggered breaths. 

“The fog was so thick we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces and Zash wouldn’t hear of any objections to waiting until the fog cleared to go raiding because they were sure that the fog would help us, instead of hinder us.” Sarg added as he hissed and then grunted and whimpered as Esri set his arm back into place then used a piece of wood and a strip of cloth from her skirts to tie it off to keep it straight as she then used her fishing line to sew up the bigger wounds after cleaning them off through the poultices and their left over cleaned water that they had boiled to make tea with as Rhos was doing the same to Drad’s ankle that he had somehow rolled and twisted. 

“So how did that turn out?” Rhosland asked. 

“I watched as Zash and all of his sons fell, their heads rolling away from their bodies. It was only the smoke of your smoking the venison that I smelled that I followed that saved us, I don’t know if anyone else will survive.” Drad answered honestly as he was hissing and biting back curses as Rhos was doing her best to heal him and set his ankle right and stitch up his bloody leg that had been hacked almost to the bone as she tried to put the blood vessels and veins back together as she pushed them together and stitched it shut.  

“The venison.” Rhos and Esri both said in unison as they realized that that scent could lead Hurricane Breaker to them too before they heard hoof beats in the distance. 

“Don’t make a sound.” Rhos and Esri both breathed in a whisper to Sarg and Drad before they quickly left the tent and took the fishing net and ran towards the river to wash the blood off their clothes before they were surrounded by a group of shield maidens only moments after the blood washed away from them and their campsite and was carried downstream, the blood dissolving completely into the river. Once they saw that Rhos and Esri were unarmed but simply in water up to their chests and barely grunt sized orcs, they assumed that Esri and Rhosland were younglings, barely subadults, struggling with a fishing net as they came to the conclusion that Rhos and Esri posed no threat whatsoever and noticed the axes were purely for cutting down trees, not warfare and thus, they were unarmed which put them at ease. 

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” The captain Tilge, a shieldmaiden herself demanded. 

“My name is Rhosland and this is my twin sister Esri, we are on a hunting and gathering trip, we are from the Skull Screamer Clan, but we didn’t see any markers on this land and thought this was unclaimed and neutral land, did we miss a marker or something?” Rhosland asked innocently enough. 

“No, this is unclaimed and neutral land, because mosquitoes and malaria are thick here. So you should be careful. But are you aware that the Skull Screamer Clan attacked us?” Tilge asked them. 

“Who’s us? I assume you’re talking about Hurricane Breaker? Skull Screamer was not supposed to attack you, everyone knows you are much bigger and fiercer clan than even Typhoon Breaker, Zash and his raiding party were supposed to raid Rush Fang which is in the Southeast, that’s what Zash and all his sons were talking about in the great hall two days ago when we left Skull Screamer to come here to go on our fall hunting and gathering trip, we specifically chose this spot because it was in the opposite direction they were supposed to be headed, you can ride to Skull Screamer now and ask our mother, Shari- she is a widow and has no husband or son to raid so that just leaves my sister and I to take care of her, she lives in the mud and mud brick hut right on the outskirts of town. If Skull Screamer came against you, the only thing I can think of is that they must have gotten lost in the fog, once the fog came in from the sea, my sister and I took shelter in our tent and we’ve only come out once we heard the roar of the fight die down.” Rhos explained nonchalantly as Tilge could tell by the way Rhosland was speaking along with her body language that she was speaking truth and trusted her words. 

“We are Hurricane Breaker, and my name is Captain Tilge, and you’re correct. Skull Screamer did attack us and they were clearly lost and must have been out of their minds to do so. Have you seen any of your warriors come towards you? Because the scent of the smoking venison is what brought us to you.” Tilge answered.  

“No, only you, at least so far.” Esri answered as she and Rhosland both shook their heads no with a shrug as they focused on getting the net into position to try and catch something in the water. 

“So since we pose no threat, might we be friends? The fish that we caught earlier should be done smoking by now, would you like some?” Rhosland asked as she and her sister managed to catch a school of fish in their net before they came up on shore, dragging their catch behind them in the net so that Tilge and the other shieldmaidens could see that they were small, still developing and obviously young and far from dangerous. 

“Yes, thank you.” Tilge smiled as she and her group dismounted and let the horses graze nearby as they all took a seat on the big log by the fire as Esri and Rhosland took out the now smoked fish and the smaller pieces of smoked venison replaced them with the new fish they caught after quickly gutting them and gave the shieldmaidens the smoked fish and the smaller pieces of smoked venison as they all enjoyed a nice impromptu meal, using the big, broad leaves of a nearby plant as plates as Esri and Rhosland were sharing what they had gathered so far and casually picked up their stone timber axes and let them lean against the log, between them and the tent and sat with the shield maidens, and felt an uncommon ease and calm in their beings so as not to give any suspicion that they were hiding anything. 

As they shared a meal, Tilge and her other shieldmaidens began sharing with Esri and Rhosland more secrets about the land that they were on, about where to find good mushrooms and what they looked like and what they tasted like and herbs and especially where to find the best shellfish which was in the biggest river more north, closer to Hurricane Breaker as Tilge promised Rhos and Esri that they would tell the rest of the army and the clan that Rhos and Esri were here and to leave them alone and to give them a wide berth in order so that they could hunt successfully and take care of their widowed mother and that they meant no harm which Rhos and Esri greatly appreciated. 

Tilge even told Rhos how there was a wild rose bush nearby that should be blooming and a special group of trees that had special nuts that were very oily, that they called Butternut because once you ate the delicious fruit and found the big nut inside, and crushed and ground up the nuts into a paste and cooked the nut paste, their oil would come pouring out and once it got skimmed the oil from the paste and the oil got cold and solidified, it looked like butter and it was really great for making soap with and that they could make wild rose soap with it since that’s what Tilge and the other women in Hurricane Breaker did when they wanted to smell nice and also found the wild citronella weed and told them about the five other bee hives around them that they could get honey and then use the wax from the hives and the crushed up citronella into an oil to make a special candle that would keep the mosquitoes away too before they told Rhos and Esri about the old cursed cave made of stone that was nearby that was most definitely haunted and not to go anywhere near there and Rhos gave Tilge one of the pearl necklaces she was wearing to signify their friendship and alliance that Tilge happily accepted as Esri gave Tilge one of her carved shell totem bracelets as Tilge gave them a citronella candle to keep them safe from the mosquitos and the malaria that the mosquitos carried and agreed to the alliance as well before Tilge and her warband of shieldmaidens left in peace and happiness with full bellies as the fog soon fully lifted and cleared as they went back to the warzone to pillage from the fallen as those who didn’t fall had run home to tell everyone else the news of the defeat as Rhos and Esri came back into the tent.

“Thank you so much, you handled them perfectly, I doubt they suspected a thing.” Drad thanked Rhosland once she came back in to see him sitting there, with his weapons in hand just in case Tilge and her shield maidens had poked their noses into the tent and once he saw that it was Rhos and Esri, he and his brother put their weapons down and off to the side.  

“You’re welcome, how are you feeling?” She asked.

“Much better, those herbs are helping so much, they’re taking most of the pain away. We would have been lost for sure without you. Thank you.” Drad thanked her.

“You’re welcome.” Rhos offered as she continued to dress his remaining wounds as Drad and his brother tried to take off their broken armor and most of their clothes so that their many wounds could be attended to before Drad got into his pack and gave Rhosland the rose scented soap. 

“For you.” He said as he offered it to her as she took it and unwrapped it and smiled when the wonderful scent soon bloomed in their tent as she could clearly see the dried pink rose petals in the soap itself. 

“Rose scented soap.” Rhos smiled and couldn’t help but laugh before she used it to help clean his wounds so that they wouldn’t get dirty as the cloth it was wrapped in made the best wash cloth, soft and fine enough to wash the wounds without ripping or damaging them.  

“Thank you.” Rhos offered as she was cleaning off his back. 

“You were supposed use it on yourself though.” Drad offered even though the scent was heavenly and having her dress his wounds was surprisingly intimate this time since it was just the four of them. 

“I will, but your wounds need to be cleaned first, I can’t lose you to infection or gangrene.” Rhos gently countered.  

“If I survived an unwitting attack on Hurricane Breaker, I doubt anything can ever take me from you from now on.” Drad managed to say as Esri’s jaw was on the floor of the tent as she looked to Rhos who was frozen again, but instead of it being fear, it was just pleasant surprise before Rhos simply smiled and leaned forward and pulled him back so he was leaning against her chest and pulled his face to the side and claimed his mouth with her own as her answer as that seemed to settle the matter before she had him sit back up so she could finish cleaning him up as she brushed off any dirt or debris from the bed so he could lay back down and rest as Esri had done the same since the bedrolls were side by side before she got out and went to gather more water before she heard Esri’s giggle before Esri came back out. 

“And?” Rhos asked as they came back to the river to get fresh water and dump the now dirty water away.  

“And my dream came true, just like yours did.” Esri giggled as they got their new empty baskets and went over to the bigger river with the net and found it was teaming with giant mussels, scallops, clams, little lobsters and crabs and other shellfish as both girls used their hunting knives to knock the mussels free from where they were anchored and put them in the baskets that were now practically overflowing before they found a giant catfish in a hole in the water and caught it and killed it and dragged it towards their camp site and started cleaning them up.

When they opened the giant clams and mussels and found all of the mussels completely laden with all these huge, beautiful, bright pearls of all colors but mostly of gold, peacock, black, purple, pink and blue pearls, pink pearls were a sign of passion, but also the deeper the pink and the closer to red, meant signs for a male child, made in love and passion. Purple pearls were was a sign of prosperity and wealth of resources like food, clothing and shelter, gold pearls meant tangible wealth, like gold and other riches. Peacock pearls meant multifaceted protection and care, especially between a bonded pair. Blue pearls were a sign of wisdom and insight, black pearls meant independence and strength, as even most of the clams had pearls too as both girls happily took them and quickly put all the pearls into their pockets which were threatening to overflow before tossing the meat in the pot to cook up a seafood stew again, using what was left of the herbs as flavoring and the other smoked fish to make a good broth before they loaded up their bowls and brought it inside to Drad and Sarg gratefully ate it and sucked it down but refused to eat any more until the girls had their fill which Rhos and Esri appreciated as they did and Drad and Sarg happily ate the rest as Rhos and Esri washed all the pearls that had been in them before they each presented the biggest and finest of the pearls to Drad and Sarg so they wouldn’t have to go home empty handed which Drad and Sarg happily agreed to accept before the girls brought the deer hides into the entrance of the tent to sleep on those so that Drad and Sarg could continue to sleep on their bed rolls comfortably while the large blanket was barely big enough to fit over the four of them sleeping like that. 

“Drad?” Rhos whispered once Sarg and Esri had fallen asleep and were softly snoozing. 

“Yeah?” He answered, keeping his voice to a whisper too.  

“How did you know to follow the scent of smoking venison?” Rhos asked. 

“Rhos, I care for you enough to never lie to you.” Drad began. 

“I trust you enough to know that you never would either.” Rhos answered as Drad smiled as softly as Rhos did the same in the darkness. 

“Two nights ago, right after we parted from the marsh, an old shaman by the name of Orcoth came into the village, he was hobbling and obviously in pain as he walked and I helped him, I took him to my home and he gave me that rose scented soap and he said that it was what I had promised to give you in my heart which only a shaman with great magic could have discerned that, even though I had wanted to give you more than just one bar, I had wanted to get you a whole case but just that one bar was all I needed at the moment and he told me that the day of the raid, that it would be so foggy that I wouldn’t be able to find my way, but that the scent of smoking venison would, and that if I followed the scent, I would find salvation. And that’s exactly what happened. Zash and all of his sons were arguing and bickering the whole time and our whole party got turned around several times so that we didn’t know what way was up and the others were getting irritated by the confusing leadership and then when the fog cleared up partially, it revealed that we were completely surrounded and outnumbered at least twenty to one and then the fog closed in on us as did Hurricane Breaker. And I was just swinging blindly before I got knocked off my horse as did Sarg and once I was on the ground I just kept trying to keep Sarg at my back and when we both got partially cut down, I caught the whiff of your smoking venison and Orcoth’s words were called back to my mind and so Sarg and I followed the scent of the venison, it had the most bizarre route in the fog but in hindsight, the route kept us out of sight and sound of the rest of Hurricane Breaker and just as the scent got strongest and straightened out, we were far away from the warzone and when the fog partially lifted, we were here.” Drad confessed as Rhos remembered the wind in the fog the night before and how the wind had seemed to come in from all sides as she realized now, that it was fate, that even when Zash and Tar led their raiding party astray, that Orchoth knew how to save Drad and knew that because Drad had been so kind and hospitable, that- that, is what saved his life and Sarg’s life and led them straight to Esri and herself. And only a shaman with the gift of true prophecy would have been able to predict that. 

“Well when we get back, I’ll have to meet him and thank him for giving you a prophecy that saved not just your life but Sarg’s as well which I know Esri would be lost without him.” Rhos offered. 

“You will, we adopted each other. He said he had already lost all of his sons and readily adopted me and I- him, after he gave me the soap and told me about today.” He answered. 

“Do you think anyone else in Zash’s raiding party made it?” Rhos asked thoughtfully. 

“I don’t know, I don’t think so.” Drad answered. 

“Well I hope Shadi and Baka have sons then, because otherwise Skull Screamer will be leaderless.” Rhos pointed out tiredly as Drad realized she had a point and realized that if Sarg and himself could get back and as long as no one else in Zarsh’s personal warband had lived, since Drad was himself second in command to Tar who was first born, that he was now the highest ranking survivor and they could claim the status of Warchief and Warlord of the clan and Orcoth would be the clan’s shaman since the other had been killed since Zash had taken his own with him and had died right alongside him.  

Drad realized he could actually start a new clan, with whatever was left of Skull Screamer and whoever else wanted to join, with Rhos as his wife and warchieftess, his one and only. Even if Shadi and Baka ruled in Tar’s place until their sons grew of age. He could start his own clan. All he needed was a name. It needed to be big and grand and fill those who were part of it- with confidence. And those who weren’t, with fear. Something not at all realated to Skull Screamer but something Breaker. Hurricane Breaker was already taken. So was Typhoon Breaker. So...storm? Stormbreaker? Yes. Stormbreaker, that sounded right in his head as he smiled happily and fell asleep to a dream like fantasy of being Clan Chief or even a Warchief, of Rhos being his Clan Chieftess or even Warchieftess and felt confident that it would work, all he need to do was heal, which judging by the way his wounds were already healing faster with Rhos’ medicine than they normally would was the best sign that she would continue to heal him and care for him.

[givemeasword-callmequeen]

I just have so many questions...

Why are the zombies so smart... Hawkeye still being able to use bow & arrow. Strange being able to use his magic. Sam could still fly. I never watched a zombie movie so correct me if I'm wrong but aren't their suppose to be dumb? Like their brains are not working anymore except from: we have to walk & to eat???

You get infected when they bite you. Okay that's somethinhf I get. But does zombies really just bite & then be like: okay that enough... Would they not eat the whole human???

It's hard for me to accept the fact that Wanda turned into a zombie to, because HOW??? She could create a magic barrier or just kill these zombies soooo easily... So how???? Also zombies don't like the mind stone... So if Wanda was with vision at that time... How did they got that close? (maybe i wasn't listing well & missed a part)

Why where so many zombies in the subway? Is this a zombie thing. Oh we all should go to the subway & chill their maybe some people trying to use a train & then it's food time :)

Just imagine:

Zombie 1: bahhhahrha

Zombie2: brhaj jrjsjak???

Zombie 1: brahhh rahhha

Zombie 2: ba

*the whole gang walking to the subway*

Why is Hawkeye in New York? Did he just walked from San Francisco to New York. He just crossed the whole US. Zombies are just walking... But through a whole country???

How the fuck did Thanos got the time stone????

How become he a fucking Zombie???

Where the hell was Thor??? Infinity war still happened except from the earth part... So Thor still meet the guardians... Thor still got stormbreaker....Thor must still have to try to come to earth, right???

Why killed Vision himself??? (why could he not done that in infinity war? But no it had to be Wanda who ist killing him. If he would have done it earlier, say when their trying to make a plan & realizing that their is not enough time it could have totally stopped Thanos with his stupid plan) He could have stopped Wanda & the coming zombies... He could helped fighting zombie Thanos...

Why wasn't vision working with the rest of the team from the beginning. I get that he wanted to protect Wanda... Searching for a helping thing but... The rest could help?!?!??!?

Why didn't they killed Hope after she was bringing them to the base? It would have been mercy to kill her. But no, now she is a big zombie...

I know that I should not think to much about it... But... I do think to much about it... Because it confuse me

[corolune]

Breathing Underwater Chapter Three: Lightning

AO3 / Tumblr Alex had always known he wasn’t like other children. They didn't hear the song of the ocean in their ears, or feel the thrumming rhythm of the waves in their hearts like he did. Then he finds a silvery coat made of seal fur, glistening and calling him to slip it on — and everything he thought he knew about himself washes away like foam on the sea. Alex Rider is a selkie, and this is the story of how a seal becomes a spy. Prologue 〰 Chapter 1: Zephyr 〰 Chapter 2: Nimbus 〰 Chapter 3: Lightning

light·ning — ➀ the flashing of light produced by a discharge of atmospheric electricity; ➁ a sudden stroke of fortune

Only weeks after his fourteenth birthday, Alex woke to a dark sky pierced by a red and blue glow. Everything was still and silent, in that part of the night when everything was asleep. As he blinked his eyes open, he peeked through the soft curtains near his bed, and saw that the flashing lights came from a police car sat in their driveway. As he heard the doorbell ring downstairs, he could feel a sense of unease, the same way he felt when clouds started gathering and he was stuck outside. A sure sign of a storm to come.

Now fully awake, he could hear the soft sound of Jack’s slippers padding down the stairs to the door. Letting the curtain fall back over the window panes, his eyes fell on his fur coat, still on his desk chair from where he’d left it to dry after school. He wasn’t sure what was going on yet, but he didn’t want to leave it lying there if anyone happened to come inside. Shoving aside his sweatshirts and trousers, he pushed it into a hanger in the very back of his closet and slid the door shut.

He heard Jack open the front door with a rattle of the chain, and tiptoed down the stairs to peek into the foyer.

There was a policeman at the door, and Jack’s quiet words floated down the corridor.

“A car accident? But Ian was always so careful…”

Sitting down heavily on the bottom step, the words washed over him, and he felt the first thunders of the storm to come. Just like his parents, his uncle had died in an accident while traveling. Distantly, he found himself wondering if that was what would happen to him, too, dying on his way to somewhere else, a victim of someone else’s carelessness.

As sunlight bled into the sky, he couldn’t help but wonder what exactly happened to his uncle. Where had Ian been going so late at night? And how would he, the same man that drove like an eighty year old, forget to put on his seatbelt? The more he thought about it, the more he found things that didn’t add up.

Tom and Jack put it down to shock, but he knew there was something wrong. And like always, he was too curious to let it go.

A few days later, seated in a drab, grey office opposite an equally grey Alan Blunt, Alex was regretting that he’d indulged his curiosity.

“There’s something we’d like you to do for us,” Blunt said.

“My uncle died because of you. What makes you think I’m going to help you?” Alex crossed his arms and glared at him and Mrs. Jones.

Ever since he had woken to that bleak policeman’s doorbell, he had been adrift in the choppy waves of a stormy sea. At first, it had seemed like the storm would soon be over, but now he saw it was only the beginning of many, like the rains of the monsoons.

“You’ve already proven yourself to be quick, resourceful, and most importantly, curious.”

Curiosity killed the cat, Alex thought to himself as they went on to explain about some billionaire called Herod Sayle, and his plan to give away thousands of Stormbreaker computers.

“All you’d need to do is look around and report back to us,” Mrs. Jones said.

“I’m not doing it.”

All of a sudden, Blunt shifted, and when he spoke next, there was none of the forced friendliness from before. For the first time since Alex had walked into the office, he saw the cunning shark that lay beneath the man’s skin.

“Your uncle left the Royal and General Bank in charge of your care. Certainly, Ms. Starbright is no longer needed, especially with her expired visa. I’m sure Mrs. Jones could find a suitable institution that would handle your living and schooling.”

“Are you blackmailing me?” Alex scoffed in disbelief, yet somehow he’d known this was coming. The storm in his life had finally broken, and now he had these people on one hand, ready to pull him out from drowning in the icy waves. If he didn’t do as they said they would push him back into the water.

Mrs. Jones spoke around yet another peppermint. “Alex, if you only helped us with this, we’d be able to let you stay in your home with your housekeeper. Otherwise, there’s just nothing we can do.”

“You haven’t really left me a choice,” muttered Alex, with a resigned sigh. “It’s just to look around, you said?”

〰〰

He’d done much more than just looking around. When Alex crept back into the room he’d been given at the sprawling Sayle mansion, he snatched up the gadgets Smithers had given him. After some thought, he pulled his sealskin out of the bag and slipped it on, too. If things went badly, he didn’t want to leave it behind, and surely it was safer on him. After his night time adventure in the submerged tunnel, he was coming to realize it could be useful in more ways than he had initially thought. He shuddered, thinking of how the cold and dark water would have been much more comfortable and easier to navigate with his warm seal fur and sharper eyes.

Pulling the silver fur closer to himself, he quietly opened the door, only to come face to face with Mr. Grin — and then, with a sudden jerk backwards, his eyes slid shut and he saw only blackness.

When he woke, he was cuffed tightly to a hard metal chair that rested against the vast, glass wall of the aquarium. Left alone in the room, after Sayle and his assistant had left, he had the distinct feeling of being just as trapped as the restless jellyfish that was held captive in the deep tank behind him. The glow of coloured lamps cast the undulating form of the sea creature in flickering shadows onto the tile in front of him.

As he wrestled with the metal cuffs, he heard the click-clack, click-clack of heeled shoes. With a feeling of dread, he looked up to see Sayle’s other assistant, Nadia Vole.

Moments later, that dread turned into panic, as he was thrown into the winding passage and splashed into the cold tank, only metres away from the Portugeuse Man of War.

The salt water burned at his scraped and bruised wrists. The jellyfish drifted languidly while Alex spluttered and slapped at the water, keeping his head afloat in the small pocket of air.

“I hope you can hear me, Alex,” he heard from a speaker somewhere above him. Through the thick glass, he could see Vole’s cruel smile. “I am sure you will have seen by now that there is no way out of the tank.”

As he looked around, he saw there was indeed no path for escape — the metal structure holding everything together was screwed tightly, and the glass seemed too thick to shatter with his weight. All the while, he kept an eye on the dark, mauve tendrils ever reaching through the drifting current. When he turned his attention back towards Vole, she was still droning on. “Soon, you will get tired, Alex. You will drown. Or perhaps it will be fast and you will drift into the embrace of our friend. You see him...no? It is not an embrace to be desired. It will kill you.”

Kicking in the water to keep afloat, he remembered Sayle’s words describing the stinging cells dotted along the long mass of tentacles. In the neon coloured lights, the circular nodes glowed ominously.

An unforgettable death, Sayle had said.

There was an echoing beat, like a drum, and he realized it was his own heart hammering away in his chest. Flowing water rolled towards him as the current changed, drawing the creature closer, and with a quick push against the wall, he managed to evade it. The glass stretched behind him, some twenty or thirty feet of it, but the man-of-war itself was close to ten feet long.

Its tentacles had danced through the current, just inches away from his arms. He broke through the water, spluttering in his shock. As he gasped for breath, trying to keep still, something clattered against the artificial rocks that were set into the massive aquarium. Through the rippling water, he could see something shiny and metallic winking back at him in the flickering lights.

Vole’s blurry figure seemed to be laughing at him from beyond the thick glass. Suddenly the water shifted, a strong current making small waves and bringing the jellyfish back towards him. More water splashed into his face, and he felt himself being dragged with the flow, his fur coat heavy on his back. With a sharp breath, he ducked underwater, swimming towards the metal object.

Distantly, Alex heard the song of the ocean thrum through his blood. As the water closed over his hair, the hood of his sealskin floated over his head, and he felt himself fall to the rhythm that was pulsing in his heart.

There, he saw what had fallen out of his pockets — Smithers’ zit cream — and breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow, the pressure of the water had lessened, and his lungs had stopped fighting for air. When he reached for the tube, he realized why — instead of rounded fingers, he saw five stout claws, attached to a furry, grey flipper.

Alarmed, he looked through the rippled glass at the bottom of the tank and met Vole’s shocked, round eyes. Breathing out slowly, he shook his head — Vole knowing his secret would only be an issue if he found a way out of the aquarium, and it was easier to focus on the problem at hand. A quick look up, and he could see the tentacled creature still drifted near the top of the water. Hopefully the current would keep it there, long enough for him to spread the cream onto the metal frame keeping the glass in place.

He snatched up the tube from where it lay amongst the rough hewn rocks, and scrabbled at the cap, struggling to get a strong grip on it with his claws. A few failed attempts, and he resorted to holding it in his flippers, and twisting it open with his teeth.

The white cream burst out, and he smeared it onto the metal that was closest to him. He followed the seams, squeezing the tube firmly and rubbing the paste into the joints with his claws. Dodging the enormous jellyfish, he swam quickly to the other side, his back flippers beating the water powerfully, and spreading the cream onto the other side of the frame.

Now, he would only have to wait, and hope that Smithers’ cream would work just as well underwater as it had in his office. He floated into the far bottom of the tank, away from the tangled tentacles and the front wall that would soon shatter.

〰〰

A lean, fair haired man stood silently in front of a helicopter. Though he was irritated at Sayle’s habit of delaying, he looked just as bored and indifferent as the rest of Sayle’s staff. The breeze rustled the leafy trees nearby as the helicopter’s engine rumbled in wait. An inconvenient, and supposedly urgent, phone call had had Sayle scurrying off of the aircraft, and he could see the short man waving his left arm wildly. A thin, shrill sound screeched out of the phone, and he recognized it as Vole’s voice.

Yassen Gregorovich was starting to regret taking this job, and he found himself wondering how many more madmen he would have to look after before his employers realized he was better suited elsewhere.

Sayle was still on the phone as he hurried off the helipad. Sighing, Yassen climbed into the aircraft and switched the engine off, watching the older man’s silhouette disappear into the hedges. It looked like they wouldn’t be departing anytime soon. He might as well stretch his legs.

As he passed through the open archway of the house, he heard an enormous, deafening crash from Sayle’s office. Was this what had caused Sayle to hurry back inside? What was that man up to now?

In a few quick strides, he had a sinking feeling he knew what had happened.

A steadily growing stream of water puddled on the persian rug in front of the office door. It seemed that Sayle’s grotesque jellyfish had finally met its match.

He opened the door slowly, letting the water flow out to equalize the pressure before stepping inside to a scene of complete wreckage, like a seaside town after a storm.

Water gushed through shattered windows, escaping the house. Lavish furniture floated by in broken pieces, and ornate frames with priceless, soaked artwork hung crookedly on the walls. Everything was covered in a fine sheen of liquid, and droplets trickled down from where the spray had hit the ceiling. He spotted the Vole woman prone on the floor, the man of war clinging to her head like a monstrous wig, and couldn’t suppress a grimace.

He delicately picked his way through the debris, careful to keep away from the venomous tentacles, which floated lifelessly in the shallow water that still flooded the room. The front wall of the aquarium was in pieces, as if something had blasted its way through.

A shape in the corner of his eye moved, and he whipped around to face it.

Something dark and furry disappeared under a floating bronze sculpture. Grateful for his combat boots, Yassen made his way towards the corner. He hadn’t been in Sayle’s office in some time, and wouldn’t be surprised if the man had added a new creature to his collection. Kicking aside a toppled candelabra, he sloshed around the heavy wooden desk only to come to an abrupt stop.

He blinked. There, hiding under the remains of Herod Sayle’s desk, was a large, fat, grey seal. As he stared at it, the seal spread its mouth into a smile. Impossibly, the creature lifted its paw as if to wave hello, before shuffling forward with a small splash.

Yassen watched it come towards him with apprehension. Perhaps it wasn’t a fully grown seal, but the thing would easily weigh over a couple hundred pounds, enough to cause serious harm. Clearly, enough to break the supposedly high-strength glass that now covered the floor in broken shards. Had Sayle decided to house a seal in the same tank as the jellyfish? The man was truly an idiot.

The man of war was highly venomous and any animal in close contact with it would succumb to a painful death. Almost every rich person Yassen had had the misfortune of coming across in his life had the most peculiar tastes, and more often than not, their whims bordered on idiotic cruelty.

Round eyes stared up into his, and he found himself feeling a bit sorry for the animal. It was lost, stuck in an unfamiliar world, but it was a strong and brave creature. Instead of succumbing to its fate, the seal had somehow managed to smash its way out of the tank, and now, instead of cowering in fear, it bravely looked up at him, asking for help.

Somewhere deep down, the seal reminded Yassen of himself, but he brushed that thought away before it had a chance to fully form. He bent down, stretching his hand towards the furry animal, and was pleasantly surprised when it bumped its head against his skin. Its fur was soft and warm.

As he looked closer, he saw a shard of glass had pierced into its flank, a bright red line of blood marking it out from the rest of the silvery fur. Now he understood what the clever creature had been asking of him.

“Are you hurt, little one?” He murmured softly, looking into the seal’s eyes as he slowly moved closer. For a fleeting moment, he thought he recognized something familiar — something he couldn’t quite place — in those dark eyes.

The seal huffed quietly, a low grunting sound, in answer to his voice. Compared to Mr. Grin and Vole, he supposed anyone would seem friendly to the poor sea creature.

The glass wasn’t embedded too deeply, and would be easy enough to pull out. Glancing around the room, he saw the sheer curtains that lined the heavy brocade drapes — they were still relatively dry. Tearing them from the windows, he ripped off a wide ribbon of the white cloth, and snatched up a heavy throw from the remains of an armchair.

With a few careful folds of the knitted blanket, his fingers were protected from the sharp edges of the large shard. With his other, free hand, he gently stroked the seal’s side, carefully assessing the best angle to extract the fragment. A quick, sharp tug, and the glass was free — but drops of blood fell into the water at his ankles, blooming like ink.

The seal was breathing quicker now, and as Yassen reached over to grab the strip of linen curtain, he saw the seal watching the blood trickling out of the wound. Swiftly, he folded the cloth around the cut, pressing hard until the blood flow slowed.

That was when he realized that binding the bandage would be a problem. He could wrap it around the top of the seal but he wasn’t about to endanger himself by trying to roll the animal.

Well. He’d done his best, and that would have to be enough. He supposed he could call someone who actually knew what they were doing. Who did one ask for, to help a randomly appearing seal, anyway? This job was ticking a lot of firsts on his list.

Seals, it turned out, were much more intelligent than he had originally thought. The furry animal pressed its flipper against the cloth covering the wound, and rolled in the shallow water, before attempting to tie the bandage itself.

The seal slapped its flippers against the water, and let out a loud, indignant bark. Yassen was shocked to see it grab the ends of the cloth in its claws and wave it at him, and couldn’t hold back a startled laugh. Shaking his head, he bent down again and tied the bandage securely.

For such a clever and brave creature, he would have to find someone to take it to safety, away from Herod Sayle, even if he wasn’t exactly being paid for it. But first, he had a deadline to keep, and a billionaire to prod back onto schedule.

Later, a bewildered animal worker would arrive at the scene after receiving an anonymous tip, but by then the seal would be long gone, as if it had never been there.

← Previous Chapter

[therokoko]

“A bad attitude on set is deadly” - Interview with Alex Rider Director and Producer Andreas Prochaska 

Andreas Prochaska on adapting the books, casting Otto Farrant and the challenges of releasing the series in times of Corona

Based on a podcast interview with Austrian news outlet Der Standard titled “Schlechte Laune am Set ist tödlich”. I’ve translated the important bits. 

1. How he came in contact with Alex Rider: 

Well, that was relatively simple. I have an agent in England, and he sent me the script for the first episode as well as an outlook, a kind of series bible about how things were going to proceed, and I read this and thought: “This works for me. That’s something completely different.” 

I mean, especially … you mentioned “Das Boot” earlier, which was the production I worked on before, and which was burdensome in every way, I mean not only because of the time it took but also because of the topic, because we killed, I think, 26 characters in “Das Boot”, not counting extras, and of course that has an effect on you. And then I also filmed “Spuren des Bösen” [Traces of Evil, a German 8 part crime series made between 2010 and 2019, A/N), in which a mother jumps out of a window with her baby, and I was looking for something with a lighter tonality, and something which I hadn’t done before in this particular form, and “Alex Rider” was perfect for that.

I also didn’t know the book series at all. I read it completely unbiased and thought: “This is actually a cool, daring concept – so to speak somewhat exaggeratedly Coming-of-Age meets Jason Bourne....

[This job] was a result of “Das Boot” insofar as someone working for the distributor, Sonar, knew someone at Eleventh Hour – and it’s not just over here that people talk, and when someone says “listen, this guy has done a decent job, take a look” or something, that helps, and in this case it’s probable that the people became aware of me through these contacts.

2. How they approached adapting the books:

Well, it already started with the fact that our series is a mixture of the first book of the book series, namely “Stormbreaker”, and “Point Blanc” – I don’t remember right now whether that’s the second or a later book.

In Stormbreaker, the drama of the protagonist is established with the uncle who dies and the realization that this uncle wasn’t who he appeared to be. Stormbreaker had been made into a feature film which was produced by Harvey Weinstein and for which Anthony Horowitz had written the script, and that was pretty much a lead balloon. And because of that it was relatively clear that everything bad that had happened with that feature film needed to be avoided, namely that everything was totally over the top.

And my job was to [adapt] this material, which actually … I started reading the novel afterwards, and I stopped after 20 pages because I realized that that wasn’t helping me because they are actually books for 12 year olds, or at least Point Blanc is – when I read it I thought: “This is an English, better-quality version of the ‘Knickerbocker Gang’ [a German children’s book series about a group of child detectives, A/N] or something like that”. And the task was to just adapt this material for an older audience and to just draw the characters in a different way emotionally, to draw them in a more realistic way. When you look at the entire season it does occasionally reach into almost absurd spheres, but it was important for me to pave the way for the audience by starting out realistically with a protagonist that could just be the boy next door.

3. How he went about filming a spy series:  

Well, the most important thing for me in every story are the characters and to get as close to them as possible. I developed a sympathy for this unwilling hero quite quickly. And, as I said, I tried to make the surroundings as British as possible given my Austrian view of things, and to draw a character that you believe and for whom failure is always a possibility, because I find it incredibly boring when you have these superheroes and you already know that they are never in any real danger.

And this was very important to me also in working with Otto Farrant, who plays Alex, to guide him and direct him in such a way that you get the feeling that it’s possible for things to not turn out well, so that you go on this journey with him emotionally, and as to the rest it is … I don’t approach things mathematically. It’s not as if I feel: “Ok, in minute 10 this particular thing must happen, and in minute 20 this thing must happen.” For me, every story is a journey, and you try to make these journeys as good as possible following your instincts.

Like, for instance, the opening scene. In the script the villain was sitting on a roof manipulating some things on his laptop. And then the thing that happens with the man happens – I don’t want to spoil anything, because it’s actually a pretty nice surprise – and this was only 2 thin pages, and I thought: “Actually, to start this series off in an epic fashion, I’d rather like to introduce another character here, too, to charge this scene as much as possible so that you’re just drawn into this world.” And equally in episode two, that’s so to speak the episode of the test, where he has to pass the test designed to show whether he’s suited for this mission, and the script called for a hut in the woods and a road in which things happen, and I thought: “Ok, if we are dealing with a secret service, the military is not that far off.” And so I told the location scout to look for abandoned military bases, and we ended up on a former nuclear weapons base somewhere in the South of England, which made the producer sweat quite a bit because this was a relatively complex location compared to what had been in the script. But those are the things where I, as a director, can try to create visual appeal for a global audience. The series has been sold to a hundred countries, which comes with certain expectations, and of course you don’t want to disappoint these expectations.

4. On the circumstances of the release and viewer reactions: 

It came out in England in the beginning of June, which is sad, of course, because we had planned to have a premiere celebration at some festival, which wasn’t possible because of the current situation. And so this release on Amazon almost felt a little stepmotherly. So I just refreshed the link on Amazon.uk again and again to see how the people reacted to it, and there were actually many very positive reviews in a relatively short time. I think we are at 4.6 out of 5 stars at the moment, whatever that means, …

There are of course, again, total haters who only give one star and say: “What a bunch of crap.” But the majority of people seem to really like it. So hopefully, or it seems we have managed, at least in England, to … that the fans who read it as children watch it, so to speak, in retrospective joy and that they remember the times in which they read it, and still [feel like the series] adds something new.  

5. On the casting process: 

There was … even before I came on board, they made an England-wide, i.e. Britain-wide casting call. And in England, there are quite a lot of youth theatre projects, which were also contacted. And we received, I think, more than 3000 e-castings, which were screened beforehand. I still saw about 200 e-castings, and then this number was reduced bit by bit. In the end there were 3 people left in the room, one boy was from Game of Thrones, another one was very young – barely over 16, which would have been difficult -, and then, to be honest, there was only Otto. On the one hand, that was surprising because you think that there are loads of great actors in England, that it would be difficult to find the right hero, but in the end it was just very clear. It was an interesting casting situation: there was Anthony Horowitz, then there were the two executive producers from Eleventh Hour, then there was Wayne Garvey from Sony International Co-Productions, and also a casting agent from Sony America, and they all sat behind me like an assembly, and I just took the camera and worked with the actors and just tried to ignore the audience – I also felt like I was being cast again as well in my work with the actors, but … it was, yeah, it was very interesting and exciting.

I virtually grilled him for hours, tried again and again to draw the different scenes in different temperatures and with different emotions out of him, just to see what his range is and how much I would be able to work with him later on in terms of fine-tuning. Because carrying 8 episodes is an extreme challenge for a young actor, and it doesn’t help me if the boy is just dashing and then he carries only half an episode and then breaks apart. That is why it was so important to really test him thoroughly, also in combination with Brenock, who plays his best friend - we tried different combinations – and with Ronke, who plays his confidante in the household, just to try and find the right chemistry. And that was a very exciting and very satisfying process. What was really great was, when he had those three, there wasn’t any discussion anymore at all, we all agreed – I mean it would have been equally possible for Anthony to favour someone else or for Sony to like somebody else better, but it was really incredibly harmonious and unanimous.

6: On what made Otto Farrant stand out: 

Well, it was his perseverance. I mean, really, we had one scene which we really tried in 10 or 15 variations, and every time I felt that he understood where I wanted to go. To direct often means to change the temperature of a scene using only short adjectives, and for that you need someone who understands you and who can also implement that. And I just saw that he doesn’t give up that he really has stamina, and that was essentially – apart from the fact that he really comes across as incredibly natural and likeable – the deciding factor for me in the end.

7: On the responsibility of making Alex Rider and the first weeks on set: 

Well, I mean the … Alex Rider is, I mean to English fans, a promise like James Bond, on a different level. And you need someone who – and of course you need that with every film and with every series – you need an actor who touches the people emotionally, to whom they can connect. That is, of course, something you can’t … beforehand … I mean, of course you can, as we did, try everything out during the casting process, but you only know whether it really works out after a week of shooting.

And I really – especially in the first 3-4 weeks, in which I was still searching, too – I mean with every production you start on the first day of shooting and you want to throw away all the material you shot on the first day right away and start over on the next day – but he was searching, I was searching, and in a way I became – it sounds a little exaggerated right now – I became a little bit of a surrogate father during that time, because I noticed that he needed a certain type of attention and a certain security that only I as the director could give him. That is, he could come to me with every problem and with every decision concerning the character, and that worked out really well …

8. On the challenge of “carrying” a series as a lead: 

As for the “carrying”: on the one hand he has to, so to speak, function technically, i.e. he must be able to, so to speak, deliver every scene, i.e. to know the dialog, to have the right energy, and do that over the course of months - now, luckily, Otto is 21; I don’t think that would have worked with a 16 year old. And that meant that while we were shooting Otto had to read the other four scripts, which were still being written while we were shooting, and he had to comment on them and to learn them by heart, and the transition was seamless. I had to interrupt my shooting schedule for two weeks because we had a location that was only available at a specific time, and so I left the set and flew to Austria to start the cutting process, and on the next day the other director came in and just kept working with him. That means Otto had to adapt to the other director, and that’s a challenge for every actor, but especially for a young actor. ...

I [as a director] could only keep it together up to a certain point in time, until my episodes where done shooting. [...] And of course, when the lead actor is in a bad mood when he comes to the set in the morning, that is at least as bad as when I come to the set in a bad mood. That emanates in all directions. So the strength of character of someone, who also knows … I mean, he doesn’t know yet about the power he may have in the second or third season, when he maybe becomes executive producer or I don’t know … but [it’s important] that you, as a human being, just treat everyone with respect in such an environment.

Source: Der Standard AT 

[gdwessel]

Sakura Genesis 2021 - 4/4/2021

The traditional Spring megacard has taken place, the first one since 2018. (2019′s was overtaken by G1 Supercard in New York, 2020′s cancelled due to the pandemic.) Hiromu Takahashi made a brief appearance before the first match as well. You can see it now on NJPWWorld, but, well... read on.

Sakura Genesis 2021 - 4/4/2021, Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan (NJPWWorld)

Taichi, Zack Sabre Jr. & DOUKI [SZKG] d. Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa & Jado [Bullet Club] (Sabre > Loa, European Clutch, 10:10)

Kazuchika Okada, Toru Yano, Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii & YOSHI-HASHI [CHAOS] v. EVIL, KENTA, Yujiro Takahashi, Taiji Ishimori & Dick Togo [Bullet Club] (Yano > Togo, Urakasumi, 11:37)

Great O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & X (X = Aaron Henare) [United Empire] d. Tetsuya Naito, SANADA & Shingo Takagi [Los Ingobernables] (Henare > SANADA, Streets Of Rage, 9:51)

Hiroshi Tanahashi & Satoshi Kojima d. Jay White & Bad Luck Fale [Bullet Club] (Tanahashi > Fale, High Fly Flow, 10:05)

IWGP Juniorheavyweight Tag Team Championship: SHO & YOH [CHAOS] d. El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru [SZKG] © (YOH > Kanemaru, Direct Drive, 20:48) - Desperado/Kanemaru fail their 1st defense - Roppongi 3K are the 65th champions

IWGP World Heavyweight Championship: Will Ospreay [United Empire] d. Kota Ibushi © (Stormbreaker, 30:13) - Ibushi fails his 1st defense of the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship - Ospreay is the 2nd champion

Immediately post-match, Jeff Cobb of the United Empire flattened Ibushi with a Tour Of The Islands. I expect there to be a grudge match there soon. Ospreay now holds two titles (including RevPro’s Undisputed British Heavyweight belt), and immediately called out Kazuchika Okada for his first defense, however Shingo Takagi interrupted that, and declared he wanted a shot at it. So, I guess it’s Shingo first, probably at Wrestling Dontaku, then presumably Okada at Dominion.

There is a lot to unpack here. After all the hemming and hawing on the part of both Kota Ibushi and New Japan Pro Wrestling about “becoming God,” unifying the titles, committing to an angle that clearly was not popular, the very first defense of the new title goes to Ospreay, whom Gedo and the bookers clearly like. However, between his antics both on social media, and #SpeakingOut, and the recent angle where he gave an OsCutter to Bea Priestley to show just how much he wanted the title that didn’t even go over well with the fans in attendance, this is a wrestler that has alienated a not-small chunk of the New Japan Pro Wrestling audience. It was clear that at some point, Ospreay was going to be IWGP champion. Nobody really expected it to be now, so soon after Ibushi won and unified the titles. This show was pretty United Empire-centric, however, so maybe we should have seen this coming. The fact of the matter is, NJPW have put their brand new main title on someone that legitimately repulses a portion of the NJPW audience.

The only real positive to take from this, is that historically, brand new IWGP champions generally (GENERALLY) have short first title reigns. Recent examples would include Tetsuya Naito, Jay White and EVIL. Historically, Big Van Vader, Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu, Shinsuke Nakamura and Masahiro Chono (his only reign, cut short due to injury) all had relatively short first reigns with few defenses. It’s the exceptions that you would expect, that have had more significant first reigns -- Antonio Inoki, Keiji Muto/Great Muta, Shinya Hashimoto, Kensuke Sasaki, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada, AJ Styles, Kenny Omega. Kota Ibushi’s, frankly, is a little more inflated than it actually was, due to all the drama about unification, as well as the 2-night Wrestle Kingdom 15, making it seem longer than it actually was. I’m pretty sure Ospreay is not going to have a long reign, no longer than Dominion. They seem to be following the pattern of Tetsuya Naito c. 2016 with this storyline, so I expect Shingo to fall at Wrestling Dontaku (a la Tomohiro Ishii) with Okada once more winning this title at Dominion. 

To keep up with the United Empire line of thought, the new X member was Toa Henare (so @damascenocs​ was right again), although going back to being billed as Aaron Henare. (I can’t quite seem to locate when and where he quit going by “Aaron Henry” before going to Henare, and then Toa Henare.) There is kind of a gross subtext here, with Henare being a New Zealander, aka a former British colony, and reverting from a “more native” sounding name like Toa Henare to going by a “civilized, colonial name” in Aaron Henare. Like so many things with regard to Will Ospreay, there is a distinct lack of reading the room here. On the other hand, I don’t actually MIND Henare being part of this, they needed to do something with him after just spinning his wheels in opening tag matches and only ever getting wins over Young Lions for the last few years. He has a new finisher too, sort of a Fisherman’s Death Valley Driver, called Streets Of Rage, a name I confess I love. Post-match, O-Khan attacked Naito’s knee with a chair, so I fully expect this feud to go on for a bit.

In other news about new moves, YOH returned to in-ring action today teaming with SHO, and delivered the winning blow to get the IWGP junior tag belts back around RPG3K’s waists. This new move is called Direct Drive, looks like a butterfly brainbuster or DDT (maybe a bit like Death Rider?). YOH then immediately challenged El Desperado for the IWGP Juniorheavyweight title, which would be YOH’s first-ever I believe. I fully expected this scenario to happen, only with SHO instead. But hey, YOH is back and that’s good.

Post-match, Tanahashi put Jay White into a Texas Cloverleaf, but also finally accepted Jay’s challenge for the NEVER Openweight strap. A challenge has been made by a Bullet Club tandem (KENTA, Yujiro, Ishimori) for the NEVER Openweight 6-Man belts held by Ishii/Goto/YOSHI-HASHI. And finally, Taichi demanded NJPW return the Iron Finger from Hell, implying the office has confiscated it. Hmm.

It wasn’t all bad, but the bad taste left by Will Ospreay and the United Empire, after all the hoopla about the IWGP World Heavyweight title, shows this may in fact be a long year for New Japan Pro Wrestling.

The next show is this Saturday, the beginning of the Wrestling Dontaku cycle. No lineups are announced yet. Probably later tonight or Monday sometime. 

[bella-spil]

2 Romeos & 1 Juliet- Part 6

Part 6.  Fem reader.  Bucky, loki, Steve, Tony, Thor.

Warnings: Reader is only in the story in the beginning.  The rest, the reader is gone.  Cursing, confusion(make sure you read carefully)

Word Count: 3.8k

Taglist:  (plz join, I Love when you guys want to read my stories.  Also, feedback helps and let me know you enjoy the story)  @angrythingstarlight​ @kmuir1​ @sea040561​ @wednesday-add-em​  (also credit for this series idea goes to @kmuir1​)

A/N: this is the second to last part of this series.  Make sure you know the rest of the story before jumping into this one.  I don’t want you to get confused and not know what’s going on.  Also if it isn’t confusing, maybe it’s just me.  But enough chit chat.  Enjoy!

“HEY! GET OFF OF HER!”

“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”

Suddenly, the door burst open.  You were lying on the bed, not sure exactly what was happening or who was in the room, but suddenly, Bucky was ripped off of you.  

Then a different face hovered over yours, one that was familiar.  Steve Rogers was trying to get you to snap out of whatever daze you were in, except you were drugged.  Your mind was clouded by a strange haze, a fog that blocked you from doing anything.  Your body felt like silly putty, unable to do anything on it’s own without some help.  

“Thor!  Bring her to the medical wing, and tell Natasha to watch her.  Then come back immediately.” Steve ordered.  Steve helped lean you over the bed, and Thor lifted you bridal style to the medical wing.  

Bucky was so close, but Tony appeared out of thin air and tore him off of you.  Tony slammed Bucky to the wall, making sure he wouldn’t leave his sights.

“Barnes?”  Tony asked, confused.  “F.R.I.D.A.Y., make sure Barnes doesn’t leave this room.”

“Understood, boss,” the A.I. responded.  

“Bucky, what the fuck were you thinking?” Steve asked once you left the room with Thor.

“Why the Hell do you think you can just barge into the fucking room, punk?” Bucky answered back.

“Because we can,” Tony responded.  “And there were cameras that were watching your every move.  The little A.I. in the house, yeah, she notified me that someone was attempting to rape Y/N.  So me and Capsicle were going to stop her.”

“Bucky why would you try to rape her?” Steve asked.  “I’ve known you forever and with all the other girls, you’ve never even thought of drugging her.”

“That’s because she isn’t like other girls,” Bucky answered, licking his lips.  “She was going to be mine. Once and for all.”  

As soon as those last four words left his mouth, Steve sucker-punched Bucky dead in the face.  Blood started dripping all over Bucky’s face, and on Steve’s knuckles.  Bucky didn’t even try to fight back.  Instead, he just hissed like a snake at the sudden blow to the face.  Bucky’s hair was spread all over his face.  The blood was dripping steadily from his face to his shirt, and down to the floor.

Tony was standing there, pointing his hand, which had on part of his suit, at Barnes, making sure he wouldn’t try to escape.  

“Alright, enough chit chat.  Let’s talk.” Steve started.

“What drug?” Tony asked.

“Rohypnol,” Bucky answered calmly, careful to not give too much info.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., what’s that drug Bucky just said?” Steve asked.

“Of course, Mr. Rogers,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. began.  “The drug that Mr. Barnes listed was Rohypnol.  Known in the streets as R-2, roofies or forget-me-pills.  One of the top three rape drugs.  Used to make the user sleepy, confused, and often forget what happened while they were on it.  Kicks in 30 minutes after use and the user is in that state for more than a couple hours on end.  It lowers defenses and makes it harder to move the body to escape.”

“Where did you get the drug?” Tony asked, blaster still pointed to Bucky.

“Here,” Bucky smirked, licking his lips again to get the blood off his mouth.

“What? That's impossible, how?” Tony said, confused.

“Of course.  Bucky has the drug for medical purposes.  To help him cope with his days in H.Y.D.R.A.” Steve realized.

“You son of a bitch!” Tony shouted, landing another punch at Bucky.  This time it was right in the gut.  Bucky collapsed to the floor, clutching to his stomach and whimpering in pain.  He had to take a couple deep breaths to speak properly again.

“Ya know, without your little robot, and your stupid cameras, you wouldn’t be here right now.” Bucky said, grinning at Avengers standing in front of him.  “I would have won.”

“I thought she was your friend,” Steve said, shocked at the sudden change of behavior in his longtime friend.

“She was my mission,” Bucky said with zero remorse.

“Who was your mission?”

Bucky was standing outside of the room, his hair messed up and his eyes were tired, with tiny, almost invisible bags.  But Bucky was also in the room, bloody and talking.  Two Bucky’s.

Steve and Tony looked at each other in disbelief.  They had no clue what to believe.  Suddenly Bucky was about to rape his crush and now another Bucky was standing outside the room.  Their worlds were spinning.  Their eyes were flashing back and forth between the two of them.  Making sure that this was real and not some monitor.  But it was real alright, and everyone could see it.

“What the hell?” Tony said.

“Get in here.” Steve ordered the Bucky outside the room.  

That Bucky looked confused, seeing himself on the floor all bloody.  He had no clue what was going on, since he was out for the whole day.  It was like seeing the Winter Soldier in a completely different body.  Seeing himself as the monster the rest of the world saw him as.  Now he knew what fear was.  He could see the monster through his own eyes, not through a reflection.  The bloody, cold hearted assassin.  The Winter Soldier.

He had also never heard Steve talk to him with such authority, like Steve had no clue who he was.  It was like a nightmare, his friend for life treating him like a criminal.  Even though he was already, Steve believed in him.  But now, it was the complete opposite.

“Lean on the wall,” Tony ordered and two Buckys were standing next to each other.  

Looking at each other like they saw Satan himself.  They looked exactly alike, so much so that it was scary.  The only differences were the blood, clothes and how the bloody Bucky shaved, having no hair on his face.  The other Bucky had a little stubble, and he looked a little less messy.

Then Thor walked back into the room.  He looked at the situation and he had to do a double take at the events.  Two Buckys were standing in front of him, along with a confused Steve and a distraught Tony.

“What in Odin’s beard is going on?” Thor asked, just as lost as Steve.

“We were interrogating the bloody Bucky and then another Bucky walked into the room.” Steve explained, running his hands through his hair.

“Ok,” Tony began, turning his attention to the lookalikes.  “The Bucky that just walked in the room, yeah you, you’re Bucky #1.  Bloody Bucky, you’re Bucky #2.”  The Buckys nodded and just waited silently.

“Thor, watch them while me and Cap come up with a game plan.  If they do something, strike them.” Tony ordered.

“Good,” Thor said.  “Just as long as we’re all in agreement.”

He lifted up his hands and suddenly, Stormbreaker and Mjolnir were transported right into his fingertips.  His eyes were glowing and his outfit changed from sweats to his battle outfit.  He stared at the two Bucky’s with such intensity that Bucky #1 gulped.

“I don’t like it,” Steve said, turning his back from Thor and huddling with Tony.

“Why?  Bloody Mary giving up so easily?” Tony asked.

“I don’t remember it being this easy.  Bucky can pack a wallop,” Steve said.

“Well, you might have missed a couple things, doing time as a Capsicle,” Tony countered.

“Yeah I know, I know.  What we should be discussing is what to do.” Steve said.

“Well, you know Bucky the best, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, let’s test that knowledge,”

“Which means?”

“I mean ask the Bucky’s questions that only the real Bucky would know.  That will help give us a clearer shot of who is who.” Tony cleared.

“Understood,” Steve nodded back.  

Then the two Avengers turned back around to see Thor watching the two Bucky’s very closely.  So far, they haven’t made any attempt to get out of the room.  

“Alright.  Since we don’t know whose who, I am going to ask some questions.  The real Bucky would know the answer to all of these.  If you get one or more wrong, well, let's say Fury will have a ball with you.” Steve said.

“First question is for Bucky #2.  After the Sokovia Accords, how many years did you go back under for?” Steve asked.  

“2 years,” Bucky #2 answered without hesitation.

“Bucky #1,” Steve started.  “What military group did you serve in and what was your ranking?”

Bucky #1 smiled, the thought of all his old memories reminding him of some of the best moments in his life.  Before he answered, he cleared his throat and lifted his chin just a little.

“The one-o-seventh.  Sergeant James Barnes.” Bucky said, reliving his memory.  

Steve grinned just a little, not to make it look like he already knew who was the real Bucky.  Just to enjoy his past.

“Bucky #2, how many Avengers and/or people involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. have you harmed or killed?” Steve asked.

Bucky #2 had to think for a moment, thinking of all the people he has to remember.  There’s so many, so many innocent people, so many.  And a little amount of criminals.

“I shot Natasha.  Killed Tony’s parents.  I know I killed JFK, but I don’t know the exact number of all the others.  H.Y.D.R.A. wiped my mind so many times so I can’t remember a number, but I remember all of them.” he answered.  

The room got quiet for a minute, since the answer was very dark.  But once Tony cleared his voice for Steve to start again, then it got back to being serious.

“Bucky #1, in WWII, you saved my life.  How?” Steve asked.

“Well,” Bucky #1 began.  “We were going into a H.Y.D.R.A. base to take down the building, soldiers and whatever else.  You were walking to the building while I was waiting in the bushes.  While you were walking, you didn’t see a soldier in a window or something, so you almost were killed.  But luckily, I was able to kill him before I lost you.”

“Bucky #2, last question.  What was my mom’s name?” Steve asked.

Bucky #2 froze for a moment or so.  He had almost forgotten completely.  Steve and him never really talked about his mom, only in the 40’s, so it made it harder to remember.  But, a lightbulb went off, and he knew it now.

“Your mom’s name is Sarah,” Bucky answered, his voice a little bit raspy.

Steve knew that only a few people knew his mom's name, including Bucky.  So hearing that Bucky knew was a clear indication that Bucky #2 was the Bucky that saved his ass multiple times.

“Bucky #1, last question.  When my mom died, what did you say to me?” Steve asked, hoping he would get an answer.

Bucky #1 knew the answer by heart.  This was one of his most prominent memories.  This was how he was able to become the old Bucky.  This was how he was able to snap out of the Winter Soldier, and how he saved Steve’s life once again.

“When your mom died, you didn’t go to the funeral,” Bucky #1 began.  “You were just happy that she was next to your dad.  I tried to offer you to live at my place, said you could if you shined my shoes and took out the trash.  But being you, you refused, saying you could get by on your own.  But you nearly forgot your keys to your apartment.  I told you that you didn’t have to get by on your own.  I put my hand on your shoulder and told you that I was with you till the end of the line.  And I still am.  I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.”

Steve never heard Bucky express his feelings this much, so now, he was torn.  

His mind was telling him Bucky #2, the one drugged and that almost raped his friend, the one that was bloody all over the floor, the one that knew his mom’s name.  His mind was telling him that this was the real Bucky, the one he spent WWII with.

But his heart was telling him a different story.  It was telling him Bucky #1 was the real, true Bucky.  The one that served with him, the one that saved his life, the one that was with him till the end of the line.  

He knew Bucky never really expressed his emotions but while answering the final question, Bucky poured his heart out to let Steve know that it was really him.  Even on one of the other questions, Bucky chuckled a little bit, something that Bucky rarely did.  His heart was telling him that this was the Bucky that he spent his life with.

Steve was lost, conflicted, confused.  Should he believe the Bucky who stumbled in here only a little while ago or the one that almost raped his friend?  

“Tony, I don’t know,” Steve confessed.

“What do you mean ‘you don’t know?’” Tony snapped back.

“They both answered all the questions correctly, and my mind and my heart are telling me two different things,” Steve answered.

“Ok, Stark, why don’t you ask them a question?” Thor offered.

“Good idea, Point Break,” Tony agreed, and he cleared his throat before asking the question that would answer everyone’s questions.

“After the Airport Battle in Berlin, Steve and Bucky headed to the H.Y.D.R.A. base to find Zemo and to stop him from awakening the other Winter Soldiers.  And I followed them, to tell Steve that I was wrong.  But Bucky,” he paused, looking both Bucky’s dead in the eye.  “Bucky did something that put me off guard.  And to snap him out of it, I called him something.  What was it?”

Both Bucky’s stopped to think for a moment.  They were deep in thought, racking through their memories as if it was a library.  Bucky #1 was still thinking while Bucky #2 sighed and just gave up.

“What did you call me?” Bucky #2 asked.  “How the hell would I remember that?  That’s such a stupid thing to ask.”

“Manchurian Candidate.”  Bucky answered.  “You called me Manchurian Candidate since I didn’t lower my weapon.”

Then Bucky #2’s eyes widened.  He was shocked that the other one knew.  And suddenly, all the eyes in the room were on him.

“That’s not Bucky,” Steve said.

“No shit,” Bucky #1 said.

“Speaking of,” Tony said.  “Where is Loki?”

Everyone in the room stood like statues, trying to retrace the last time they saw Loki that day, but came up empty handed.  But Thor looked like he saw a ghost.  It all came together like a puzzle for him.  Everything fit.  Once he realized, he pinned Bucky #2 to the wall, pressing Mjolnir up to his chest.

“Thor, what are you doing?” Steve panicked.

“You’re really gonna make me do this?” Thor asked Bucky #2, whispering so Bucky #2 would only hear.

“Do what?” Bucky #2 asked.

Then Thor’s eyes started to glow and lightning was surging through his body.  He was going to strike him.  Thor pressed the hammer harder and harder into Bucky #2’s chest, causing him to yell in pain.

“I’ll see you on the other side, brother,” Thor whispered, getting ready to strike the life outta Bucky #2.  

The power was starting to grow stronger and stronger, to the point where Bucky #2 had to surrender.

“Alright!  I yield!” he shouted, moving out of the way so he wouldn’t get hit.  But he wasn’t the same person he was before.  He changed, dramatically.

It was Loki.

The whole time.

Loki tried to rape you.  To claim you, to own you, to make you his.  Once and for all.

“Surprise,” Loki grinned, cheesily.

The room was full of silence and rage and disbelief.  Steve’s mouth dropped to the floor.  Tony was frozen.  Thor was standing in front of the God of Mischief with anger written all over his face.  

Bucky was clenching his left fist.  Rage, fury, and everything like that was surging through his body, fueling his veins and his muscles like oil.  He was ready to rev up like a car and deliver a blow to knock Loki out.  He was about to punch the life out of Loki, but Steve and Tony were holding him back.

“Bucky stop!  He’s not worth it!” Steve shouted, and Bucky finally resisted the urge to smack some sense into Loki.

“Can I punch him after you're done talking to him?” Bucky asked.

“Sure,” Tony said.  “Now start from the beginning.”

Loki took a deep breath before starting.

“Everything was fine without you, Bucky,” Loki started.  “Without you in the picture, Y/N would have been mine.  My queen.”

“Yet she didn’t kiss you,” Bucky muttered.

“My plan was to get Bucky out of the picture first,” Loki said.

“So that’s why I was feeling so shitty today,” Bucky realised.  “What the Hell did you give me?”

“Same thing, roofies,” Loki admitted.

“Where did you get them from?” Thor asked.

“Bucky.  I stole them,” Loki said.

“Continue Reindeer Games,” Tony said.

“I thought if I could make Y/N believe that Barnes was a true villain, then she would be in the palm of my hand.  If I could make Bucky do something that would hurt her in unexplainable ways, I would win.  So, if I was able to transform into Bucky, while she believed he was sick, I could make her mine.  

“I was going to take her somewhere that Bucky would, for example that weird diner.  At the diner, while she was in the bathroom, I snuck a roofie in her glass.  She drank more than enough to get the job done.  But the drug takes 30 minutes to kick in, so I stalled for some time and right as we pulled in the driveway, she was done for.  I helped her to my room, and I undressed her.  Then I undressed and I was on top of her, but then you barged in and ruined my plan.” Loki said.

Everyone was appalled by his confession, Bucky more so than anyone.  He was appalled that someone could go to such extreme levels to do something that chaotic to someone.  It was worse than H.Y.D.R.A. and that was saying something.

“How did you know the answers?  How did you know my mom’s name?” Steve asked.

“Truth be told, I didn’t.  I just took a wild guess,” Loki chuckled.

“If you loved her, you wouldn’t hurt her,” Bucky said.  

He was getting emotional.  The thought of someone hurting you, raping you, was bringing tears to his eyes.  He loved you with all his heart, and he couldn’t let someone do those things to you.  

“If you loved her, you would tell her you love her.  You wouldn’t force her to love you.  You wouldn’t force her to be something she isn’t.  Hell, you wouldn’t put a relationship, my relationship with her, in danger.  I was one of the first people to meet her.  I have known her longer than you.  I know she would kill you right now if she wasn’t drugged.” Bucky said.

“I’m the God of Mischief.  I show my love through actions, not words,” Loki smirked.  “Besides, aren’t we all sinners?”  

Bucky was about to go kick Loki, but Steve held him back again.  But Bucky was too hurt, too angry, to let Captain America stop him.  He shoved Steve off of him like he was a doll and he proceeded to Loki.  Tony tried blasting Bucky, but with his new vibranium arm, he was invincible to a little blast, even though Tony promised him he could hit Loki.  He was able to throw Tony across the room, as if Tony was a pebble.  But then Thor stood in his way, blocking him from his target.

“James,” Thor started, but Bucky wasn’t hearing any of it.  Bucky just walked past Thor.  

Thor wanted to stop Bucky, but he was in this spot before.  Seeing so many people die, that he cared about, put some perspective in him.  On one hand, Thor knew stopping Bucky was the right thing to do.  After all, Loki was his brother.  But on the other hand, Thor knew he would beat up Loki to a pulp if he was in Bucky’s position.  Loki deserved to be in Hell with Hela for his actions.  So, he let Bucky proceed.

“THOR! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  STOP HIM!!” Steve shouted.

“No,”  Thor said.

Bucky was standing right in front of Loki, looking at the God with such hatred.

“You’re my mission,” Bucky said, before blowing Loki dead in the face.  

Bucky kept hitting Loki like he was a punching bag.  Bucky punched him in the face, the chest, the stomach, anywhere he possibly could.  Hitting Loki was getting all the rage, frustration and sadness out of the Winter Soldier.  Blow after blow, Loki's head kept bouncing back and forth.  But Bucky kept swinging.  Blow after blow, Bucky could feel the tears running down his face.  The emotions were pouring out of him, uncontrollably.  He was letting the tears run down his face and on Loki, and he delivered one, final, head crushing punch in the face.  

With that punch, Loki was all bloody, even worse than before.  He had two black eyes, bruises, scrapes, cuts, anything you could imagine, it was there.  Blood was rolling from the top of his head to his chest.  His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing.  

Bucky got off of Loki and started to cry into Steve’s shoulder.  Steve was taken aback.  Bucky had never done this before.  So when he did, Steve felt like he was getting a bit of the old Bucky back.  After a few minutes Bucky calmed down, wiping the tears off of his face, and standing stronger than he was before.

“Tony, you and Thor take Loki to Fury.  Fury will have a field day with him,” Steve ordered.  

Tony gave Steve a little salute and Thor nodded before obeying his orders.  Tony carried the God’s legs while Thor took his back, and they carried him out of the room, not being careful.  Bucky and Steve could hear the two of them purposefully bumping Loki into furniture.      

“Can I see her?” Bucky asked, hopefully.

“If you go now, she will still be out,” Steve reasoned.

“I need to see her, awake or not,” Bucky pleaded.

“Ok, just let me know when she is awake.  You know, she might not be able to remember what happened tonight, so if you want to explain it to her, go ahead, but you always know where to find me,” Steve said, giving Bucky a pat on the back before following Tony and Thor.

As soon as Steve left, Bucky ran to the medical wing.  He had to see you, make sure you were ok.  He had to explain what happened.  He had to tell you he loved you.  He had to make you his.

Once and for all.

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Notes on Robert McKee’s Story 30: How to Create Crisis in Your Story

Story design is broken down into five essential parts: (Clicking on 1 or 2 will take you to my previous posts about them if you need a refresher.)

The Inciting Incident

Progressive Complications

Crisis

Climax

Resolution

Today we have reached the final three parts, all put into one chapter in McKee’s book. They are all very important though, so I’ll be breaking Crisis, Climax, and Resolution into their own posts. And without further ado...

Crisis

Crisis means “decision.” Characters make spontaneous decisions each time they open their mouths to say “this” not “that.” In each scene they make a decision to take one action rather than the other. But Crisis with a capital C is the ultimate decision. The Chinese kanji for Crisis is two terms: 危機 Danger/Opportunity--”danger” in that the wrong decision at this moment will lose forever what we want; “opportunity” in that the right choice will achieve our desire.

In your story, your Protagonist has faced progressively difficult situations and decisions in order to achieve his desire, but now he has reached the end of the line. The Crisis is the "do or die" moment, the one that leaves your audience wondering, "How will this entire story turn out?"

From the Inciting Incident, the audience has been waiting with increasing eagerness for this scene. Take JAWS, for example. From the very moment we see the shark, we are all wondering whether they'll be able to defeat it or whether they too will lose their lives to it. The moment of Crisis in JAWS is that final fight on the boat. 

"The Crisis must be a true dilemma--a choice between two irreconcilable goods, the lesser of two evils, or the two at once that places the protagonist under the maximum pressure of his life.

The dilemma confronts the protagonist who, when face-to-face with the most powerful and focused forces of antagonism in his life, must make a decision to take one action or another in a last effort to achieve his Object of Desire."

The choice that your character makes in Crisis will give the audience the deepest view into their deep character yet and is the ultimate expression of his humanity. It will also express the story's most important value. If there's been any doubt about which value is central, as the protagonist makes the Crisis Decision, the primary value comes to the fore.

Take the first Iron Man film for example. The film is about Tony Stark learning to put others before himself. At the beginning, he is a narcissistic weapons dealer who doesn't give a damn about anyone around him. As the movie progresses, we see a shift in his choices, leaning closer to selfless actions. However, almost all of his "selfless actions," such as returning to the terrorist group that captured him and wiping them out, could also be seen as Tony wanting to exact revenge for himself. At the Crisis Moment, Tony makes the ultimate decision to take Obadiah so high up in the atmosphere that Tony's suit freezes and dies, and there is a strong chance that he will not survive. 

"At Crisis, the protagonist's willpower is most severely tested. As we know from life, decisions are far more difficult to make than actions are to take. We often put off doing something for as long as possible, then as we finally make the decision and step into the action, we're surprised by its relative ease. We're left wondering why we dreaded doing it until we realize that most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower."

☝ Okay, time out. This paragraph had not stop and give a good hard think about myself and my life, not just stories. Thank you, Mr. McKee. 

Crisis Within the Climax

"The action the protagonist chooses to take becomes the story's consummate event, causing a positive, negative, or ironically positive/negative Story Climax. If, however, as the protagonist takes the climactic action, we once more pry apart the gap between expectation and result, if we can split probability from necessity just one more time, we may create a majestic ending the audience will treasure for a lifetime. For a Climax built around a Turning Point is the most satisfying of all."

By the time we've reached the Climax, the protagonist has reached the limit. He thinks he knows his world and knows what he must do in the last effort. He summons the last wisps of his willpower, chooses the action he thinks will achieve his desire, but his world won't cooperate. Reality splits and he must improvise. The protagonist may or may not get what he wants, but it won't be the way he expects.

The most stunning, earth-shattering example of this that immediately comes to my mind is in Avengers Endgame when Thor swings Stormbreaker at Thanos and...well, I’m sure most people know what happened.

☝ Honestly, I forgot how to breathe when I saw this the first time.

The entire movie has been building towards this--Thor has just freaking withstood the power of a SUN to forge Stormbreaker, after having lost his brother and home world and everything he loves. Everything has been building towards him getting the justice that he and the entire world so badly deserves. We are all convinced that he's going to land that hit on Thanos and the world would be saved because this is a superhero movie and the good guys always win and Thor has worked so goddamn hard for this.

--But then the gap is opened between expectation and reality, and no one gets what they expected.

Placement of the Crisis

Generally, Crisis and Climax happen in the last minutes and in the same scene.

Here are some examples of different places you can put the Crisis, taken directly from McKee's book.

THELMA AND LOUISE: At Crisis, the women brave the lesser of two evils: imprisonment versus death. They look at each other and make their crisis Decision to “go for it,” a courageous choice to take their own lives. They immediately drive their car into the Grand Canyon—an unusually brief Climax elongated by filming it in slowmotion and freeze-framing on the car suspended over the abyss.

However, in other stories the Climax becomes an expansive action with its own progressions. As a result, it’s possible to use the Crisis Decision to turn the Penultimate Act Climax, filling all of the final act with climactic action.

CASABLANCA: Rick pursues Ilsa until she surrenders to him in the Act Two Climax, saying that he must make the decisions for everyone. In the next scene, Laszlo urges Rick to rejoin the antifascist cause. This irreconcilable-goods dilemma turns the act on Rick’s selfless Crisis Decision to return Ilsa to Laszlo and put wife and husband on the plane to America, a character-defining choice that reverses his conscious desire for Ilsa. The third act of Casablanca is fifteen minutes of climactic action that unravels Rick’s surprise-filled scheme to help the couple escape.

In rarer examples the Crisis Decision immediately follows the Inciting Incident and the entire film becomes climactic action.

JAMES BOND: Inciting Incident: Bond is offered the task of hunting down an arch-villain. Crisis Decision: Bond takes the assignment—a right/wrong choice and not a true dilemma, for it would never occur to him to choose otherwise. From this point on, all Bond films are an elaborate progression of a single action: the pursuit of the villain. Bond never makes another decision of substance, simply choices of which ploys to use in the pursuit.

The great risk of placing the Crisis on the heels of the Inciting Incident is repetitiousness. Whether it’s high-budget action repeating patterns of chase/fight, chase/fight, or low-budget repetitions of drinking/drinking/drinking or lovemaking/lovemaking/lovemaking, the problems of variety and progression are staggering. Yet mastery of the task may produce brilliance, as it did in the examples above.

Design of the Crisis

Okay, so where do you put the Crisis in your story? What works best?

Even though the Crisis Decision and climactic action usually take place at around the same time at the very end of the story, it's not uncommon for the Crisis decision to occur in one location and the Story Climax to happen later in another setting. 

The value of love in Kramer vs. Kramer turns negative in the Act Two Climax as a judge awards custody to Kramer’s ex-wife. As Act Three opens Kramer’s lawyer lays out the situation: Kramer has lost, but he could win on appeal. To do so, however, he’ll have to put his son on the witness stand and make the child choose with whom he wants to live. The boy will probably choose his father, and Kramer will win. But to put a child at this tender age in public and force him to choose between his mother and his father will psychologically scar him for life. A double dilemma of the needs of self versus the needs of another, the suffering of the self versus the suffering of another. Kramer looked up and said, “No, I can’t do that.” Cut to the Climax: a walk in Central Park and a river of tears as the father explains to his son how their life will be now that they’ll live apart.

The Crisis decision must be a deliberately static moment.

This is the Obligatory Scene.

Do not put it offscreen, or skim over it.

The audience wants to suffer with the protagonist through the pain of this dilemma. We freeze this moment because the rhythm of the last movement depends on it. An emotional momentum has built to this point, but the Crisis dams its flow. As the protagonist goes through this decision, the audience leans in, wonder: “What’s he going to do? What’s he going to do?” Tension builds and builds, then as the protagonist makes a choice of action, that compressed energy explodes into the Climax.

In Summary

When you create a Crisis, make sure that it is a true dilemma that will draw out the deepest truth of your character. 

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

[beccarooni]

Armour

(A.N: Day 2 of thorbruce week! Prompt: Armour)

Thor had never been one to partake in magic. It was never his forte, his talent. No, his strength was in battle, in his hammer, in the lightning that crackled from his fingertips. That was what Odin had said, anyway. That was what he was permitted to be talented in. Save the magic and the tricks for Loki, save being quiet and reading and books by the fireside for your brother. They are not for you to partake in. 

But, Frigga had always had different plans. She'd taught the swooping curve of the blade to Loki, where Odin had been content to let him calcify. And to Thor, she had shared the gift of magic. 

Nothing too fancy, of course. And not to the degree Loki had mastered. 

A few simple glamour spells, some light healing here and there. For when his lightning burned in his veins and singed his skin, so he could heal his flesh as fast as it was ruined. 

And the glamour spells, the illusions, for where the healing couldn't cover. For when he needed to appear strong, to mask the wounds of battle and plaster on an appearance of effortless victory. 

He was grateful for that skill. It made leaving Nivadellir much easier. 

Rocket was still worried about him, of course. After all, he'd been dead for about a minute - according to them, at least. And Tree still looked at him strangely, like he'd been told a lie he couldn't quite believe, but didn't have the evidence to dispute either. 

But, Stormbreaker was in his hand, and his burns were gone. To them, he was fine. A shining God, capable of taking on a dying star without leaving a scratch - the lone survivor of Asgard. Indestructible, immovable. To Thanos’s blade or the stinging heat of solar flares, he would stand strong. 

At least, that’s what they thought.

He would've liked to keep up that facade for longer. For the Avengers, for Bruce, for everyone. 

But he was not as skilled as Loki. The magic had to fade sometime.

He just wished he'd been alone when it did. 

He'd first noticed it in the aftermath of Wakanda. In the Quinjet ride home, back to the compound, he'd spotted the first hole in his design. A small patch of skin just above his wrist, burned raw. He’d covered it as best he could, of course. Strapped on his arm-guard just that little bit tighter, gritting his teeth against the brutal scrape of singed skin against metal. No one had noticed that - he was grateful, for the shield that grief brought him. People piled off into corners, split from the group to recover in their own sanctuaries. Silence settled across the ship, and even the hum of the engines felt disrespectful. The technology was cold and unfeeling, without Stark. It didn’t have the decency to offer it’s minute long silence for the dead of the world. No, not the world. The universe.

The death of the universe, no matter how many remained.

Bruce had sat close to him, or rather, as close as he dared. Where Thor stood against the window, staring out onto a dust-covered evening, Bruce sat close by. Leaving a space beside him on the bench, a warm hand resting just above the window-pane, a guise of a strained muscle being left to rest. 

Thor knew what it was - an invitation. An outstretched hand, as carefully laid out as any lab experiment, placed deliberately to let Thor know he wasn’t alone. That Bruce was here, and here for him no less. 

He was no more worthy of the warmth those arms would bring than he was worthy of Mjolnir. And so he stayed, cold, and bruised, and alone. 

The next wounds weren’t so easy to hide. 

The Avengers - or what was left of them - had begun to walk from the jet to the Compound. A short walk, a small matter of meters that he should have been able to make without assistance. Everyone else had. Everyone else had taken the hands that had been offered to them, hadn’t suffered from the sin of pride that he had fallen victim to.

A vain, greedy, cruel boy. Unworthy of the loved ones he had betrayed.

He shut his eyes against the memory, and took a step forward. 

It burned. Fire, from an injury that had smouldered hours ago, reignited against his torso. An incessant, pulsing pain that shot up his side, the molten tendrils seeping into his lungs, choking out what little oxygen he had left. 

One hand flew to steady himself, and for a few terrifying moments, his world turned dark and fuzzy. He wondered if this was how it felt, if there had been a delayed reaction somehow, and he was going to disappear like the rest of them. Like Vision, like Sam, like Wanda. If his own life was to join the consequences of his most spectacular failing yet. 

“Thor?” 

A hand, soothing and cold, wrapped around his wrist. Another one laid against his neck, holding him carefully, as if he was made of porcelain. 

“Thor, what’s happening? Are you ok?” 

Bruce paused, his breath shaky and fragile against his ear. 

“Come on, say something. How do I help you?” 

It took him a few long seconds to force out the next few words through bloodied lips, but he got there. 

“You don’t.” 

Thor wrenched himself upright, trying to find the effort to offer a reassuring smile, but even that fell flat. 

“I don’t need helping. I’m fine.” 

"Fine." Bruce echoed, and Thor was taken aback somewhat by the fury in Bruce's eyes. 

Not directed at him, at least, not entirely. Those hazel eyes were fixed on the sky, over Thor's shoulder, somewhere in the middle distance. 

Although, he wouldn't blame him if it was. If Bruce had to pick a time to hate him, this would be the perfect opportunity. The death of half the universe rested in his shoulders, the blood of millions staining his axe purple, if Bruce wanted to hate him then he was fine with that, he was fine. He was fine-

"Thor, I'm sorry, but no you're not." 

Bruce's fingers tightened around the collar of his armour, soft skin cool against his burns. 

"Do you...you honestly think I don't get it by now? That somehow I'll believe you when you tell me you don't need helping? After everything? Or...or what, you think I just don't care enough to doubt you? Because I do, I care. And I'm not gonna see you destroy yourself over this. So...there."

The scientists chest rose and fell, puffs of air flaring from his nostrils as he tried to get his breath back after...that. 

He looked away, wiping at his nose under the guise of removing some of the dirt of battle, and Thor began to feel something in him unwind. 

A knot that he'd carefully tied, in the confines of a dying star. Threads and fibres that he’d knitted together, each memory serving to remind him painfully of the black hair and pale skin that he’d left behind in the wreckage of the Statesman. 

Golden shimmers filled his vision, and for a moment, that was all he saw as the tight feeling in his chest morphed into something else, some feeling comprised of burning coals and choking sulfur that bloomed under his ribcage, choking the storm inside of him, and threatening to plunge him into darkness entirely. 

Golden, like the stars Odin and Frigga had left behind in their wake. Like the walls of Asgard, tainted with the blood of an empire. Like the glove that had snapped half the universe to dust and ashes. 

The last of the illusions faded, and Bruce’s grasp only got that much tighter. 

“Thor…” 

“Don’t.” 

Thor’s shoulders tensed under his hold, his eyes screwing shut against the onslaught of a different kind of heat rapidly building behind them - the faint sting of the few tears that had escaped were enough to remind him of his place, his duty. 

A statue. The Kings of Asgard are strong and brave. They do not shed tears. 

“Don’t say anything, please. Just…”

At last, he felt his body begin to give in to his minds need for rest. His legs shook, and the armour across his back was an unwelcome strain against his bruised body. 

“Just help me. Please.”

Bruce nodded, his expression unreadable. Faint green lines forced their way back under his skin, leaving him pallid and pale. 

Your fault. You did this to him. This was your burden to bear but you revealed it to him, and now he suffers. 

 “Tell me how.” The scientist’s voice was gentle, now. 

A quiet coaxing, trying to shift Thor towards movement, towards sorrow, anger - anything but this muted apathy, like the nerves that had lit up the skies had been crudely cut out, leaving behind a shell. The black backdrop of space, unlit by stars. 

 “How do I help you?”

***

It was 3 in the morning by the time Bruce had finished.

Thor had fallen asleep some time after that, in part to the stack of chamomile tea Bruce always kept in supply, but mostly thanks to exhaustion.

He ran a tired hand down his face, tapping a few more formulas onto his laptop, although the numbers were really starting to blur together at this point. Usually, he’d take this opportunity to clamber into bed with Thor. That’s what they’d done on the Statesman, anyway. The last fragile peace they’d shared together, limbs intertwined, eyes on the universe that stretched out in front of them and a foolish sense of hope fluttering in their chests. 

Hulk hadn’t seen fit to show him what had happened to the Asgardians. He’d locked that memory far away, along with himself, resigning to the back of Bruce’s mind, leaving him alone with the eerie feeling of a loud mind gone quiet. But he knew it was bad.

It just hadn’t been revealed how bad until the battle had calmed. Until he was able to see past the storm clouding Thor’s eyes, to look into them and see...nothing.

There was never nothing in Thor’s eyes. There was always a spark, an ocean, a raincloud, something for him to latch onto and never want to let go. 

And it had only gotten worse from there. Worse, Thor shied away from his touch. Worse, Thor stood alone on the plane ride back, staring out of the window with an expression etched on his face that Bruce couldn’t even fathom. 

Bruce had seen a lot of pain in his life. His own, Hulk’s, the people that he’d hurt and others that he’d tried to save. He thought by now he’d be used to dealing with it, with the tears and the anguish that came from a loss like this. 

But, then again, there hadn’t been a loss like this. A sickening unification, uniting the planets in tragedy, stretching across the outreaches of space. 

Bruce had thought he’d known pain, but the sound of Thor’s choked sobbing as he removed his armour - piece by piece, as gently as he could, whispering again and again that it’ll be over soon, I promise, you’re doing so well, just a few more pieces and then we’re done, I swear. 

The muffled whimpers as Bruce had tried to manoeuvre the now half-asleep demigod into the softest t-shirt he could find, each flinch and wince of pain when a tender spot of skin had brushed against the bedsheets. 

That had certainly disproved his theory.

He glanced down at the sleeping figure beside him, huffing a soft sigh as he allowed his fingers to trace the shorn patterns of Thor’s hair. 

The full force of a dying star. At least that’s what Rocket had said. 

The concentrated heat of a supernova, the roaring storm before the deathly quiet of a black hole. That was what Thor had subjected himself to. All for an axe that lay abandoned in the corner of the room, the faint smell of cleaning liquid clinging to it from a half-measured attempt to wipe the Titan’s blood away. 

Thor had looked at the future, looked at the burning ball of gas, at the bruised skin and the pain it would take just to get through it, and decided that it was worth it, for an axe. 

Or, the worse option, Thor hadn’t looked at the future at all. He hadn’t considered surviving - he’d just done it anyway. 

Bruce felt his throat tighten, and let his hand drop to the side of Thor’s face, still feeling a semblance of the unnatural heat leeching the cold from his fingertips. 

“You’re an idiot, y’know that?” He murmured, rubbing his thumb dutifully against the sharp line of Thor’s jaw. 

Still caught in the throes of sleep, Thor muttered some kind of half-response, lost between where half of his face was pressed into the pillow. 

“M’not.” The demigod shifted, pushing his face closer towards Bruce, chasing the cool warmth of his hand against his skin. 

“You are. And when you’re more awake, we’re talking about all of this.” 

Thor made a noise of protest, one blue eye cracking open, still somehow managing to shine through the dark with an eerie glow of leftover lightning. 

“But not now?” 

“No, not now.” Bruce shut the lid of his laptop, shifting his legs under what thin sheets Thor had been able to stand, moving to wrap his arms around his thunder god’s shoulders. 

“Get some sleep. I’ll be here in the morning.” 

“You’re not gonna leave?” 

“No. Not again.” He felt the broad shoulders begin to shake under his arms, as his nose met the freshly washed hair that still managed to retain a faint smell of smouldering. 

“I’m never leaving you again.”

[nygmobblepot-trash]

Untitled Story (part 2 out of ???)

Buckle up for this boys and girls. Apparently I had a lot of pent up anger that I just let out in this chapter. By the time I got to end I was tearing up for some reason. :)

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Strange watched tiredly as his monitors awoke from being asleep for weeks. He was constantly collecting data, reading and interpreting it was another story.

“You’re tracking the Tesseract’s energy?! That’s so smart, you can see every place he goes and for how long. You could make a map and try to figure out if there is a pattern.” Strange watched as Peter’s eyes lit up with an excitement he hadn’t seen or even felt for years. Without looking at the screen or keyboard Strange brought up the map Peter was talking about.

“Oh. Of course you already thought about doing that... sorry.” Peter then became visibly confused. “I-I don’t understand. Why would he still be in the same place? It’s been more than a week. According to your graphs he hasn’t been in more than one place longer than 3 days.”

“You’re must be reading it wrong or the machine is busted.” Strange turned back to the screen to make his own observations.

“No the boy is right. You would have missed your chance if we had not come here and dragged your sorry ass off that ugly floor. Where is the Ant Man? You said we would need him to get to Loki. We should not waste anymore time.” Now it was Thor’s turn to be excited. 

Strange spun his chair around to face Thor. “Don’t be stupid. This is obviously a trap. I know you are used to doing whatever the hell you want, but that is not going to happen while you are with me. I make the decisions here, not you. I will not allow you to make things worse, because you think you need to save that person. He’s not even your brother. He’s just an asshole from a different universe. Your Loki is dead. He is dead and he is never coming back. You cannot and will not use this one to replace what you have lost.” Stephen was not conscious of the words coming out of his mouth if he had been he would have stopped way sooner. When he finally realized what he had done he was standing face to face with the God with his finger placed on his chest.

‘Shit.’ He thought.

Peter stood up and started talking... too fast for Strange to even begin to understand. He was probably trying to talk Thor out of killing him.

Thor just stood there not saying a word. He only smiled. Stephen couldn’t see his eyes behind those stupid black sunglasses Thor wore to hide any emotion. When did he even put those on?

Suddenly Thor came to life and twisted Stephen’s shaking hand. He spoke still with a cruel smile,”Listen here, Wizard. I am not listening to person responsible for everyone who died during that purple bastards war path. You told me you keep a watch list of beings from other realms that might be a threat to this one. You said Loki was on that list and you knew the second he was on Earth. Do you honestly expect me to believe that Thanos was not on that list. You know the guy who made it know that he wanted to collect the infinity stones to kill half the universe. Loki told me there was a bigger threat. I did not listen, but Tony did and he constantly worried about it. Tony worked to fight him. What did you do? Huh!? Tell me Wizard!” With every word Thor and gripped Strange’s hand tighter and tighter then he began twisting it.

“Thor stop, you’re going to break his hand!” Peter desperately pleaded with the God. Strange didn’t think Thor could even hear the boy anymore or even feel him as Peter tried his best to pry Thor away. 

Stephen tried to answer, but the pain was too great. “...I-I.”

It became obvious Thor was not going to release his hand until he received an answer so Stephen tried again with a sharp inhale. “I didn’t think... h-he’d come... so... soon. I-I thought, I thought I had more time!” Strange yelled as the pain became too great.

“You didn’t see him coming?” Thor asked with a laugh. He let go of Stephen’s hand in favor of grabbing him by his outfit and slamming him into the wall. “You had the time stone. What do you mean that you couldn’t see him coming? So either you did not use the time stone to see future threats or you watched him kill those innocent Asgardians, my best friend, and Loki and thought that was perfectly alright because he hadn’t interfered with your precious Earth yet. Or even better you had watched the entire thing play out and only pretended to look at the possible futures for the first time with Peter and Tony.”

“...Yeah why did you wait so long to use the time stone?” Peter had stopped trying to help Strange. 

‘You’re fucked now. Why does he feel so strongly about Loki? If it had been him who died, I doubt Loki would even blink an eye let alone get revenge. He would hide and wait for someone else to take care of the issue. But that is besides the point. Why did you wait?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

“If you could see every terrible thing out there in the world and all the horrible things they could do, knowing that you had no chance in beating them, you would lock the damn thing away, and try to forget the nightmares that would soon become reality. I knew of Thanos. I knew of the Hell he would bring. I also knew we stood no chance. I decided to deal with the more beatable ones until I could figure out what to do. I didn’t tell Stark, because I knew what he would drive himself mad trying to create an armor to save himself. There was no point. Speaking of people who knew. What about Odin? I’m sure the God of Gods knew of Thanos. Why didn’t he try to stop him?” Stephen added the final blow with a smile.

‘Stop digging this hole.’

Thor spoke softer than he had all day. “My father kept a lot of secrets. It seems like everything was a lie or a secret. I thought I knew him, but now I understand I know nothing. Hel Loki knew more than I do. As much as I want to throw you through this wall for insulting him, I cannot defend him. I’m sure he had his reasons, but I do not know what they were. Maybe he was a coward like you or wanted to avoid the conflict for as long as possible. Odin is dead, but you and I are not. We must atone for our mistakes. I regret most of my past and I will do my best so that my future will not have the same fate. You on the other hand want someone to tell you that you did a wonderful job and that you made the right choices. You want someone to take those deaths off your conscience. I will not be that person, Strange. You have to live with your mistakes like everyone else. I hope eventually you will be able to live with yourself again. All the other Avengers are doing that. Quill and the Guardians were able to being Gamora back into their family. Steve lived the life he should have had in the first place. Clint has his family back. Bruce has made peace with the Hulk. Natasha, Tony, and I have not got our happy endings. You took that away. I’m going to make sure it happens and it is not selfish to do so. I do not need you, so if you are going to continue to stand in my way we can settle this here and now.” 

“I’m trying to fix my mistakes Thor. I am afraid to make more. I do not want you to make anymore either. As much as I want everyone to have a good ending, life is never so kind to allow it. There are consequences for everything we do. I do not see how you will be able to achieve all of this without making the universe suffer. I do not want to be the bad guy, but if I have to fight you to make sure the universe does not suffer I will. In one of the futures I saw you bear the gauntlet. What you wanted collapsed the universe. Please listen to reason Thor.”

“Alright then, you made your choice.” Thor said devoid of any emotion.

As Thor released one of his hands to summon Stormbreaker, Peter grabbed Thor’s arm and yelled, “H-Hey! Calm down both of you, please! Killing each other will only make things worse. You both have good points so can’t we compromise?”

“No.” Both men answered in unison not breaking eye contact.

“No shut up! You’re both Avengers why are you fighting each other?”

“As I recall the first time you met the Avengers they were fighting each other.” Stephen was quick to add.

“That’s not fair first of all. Second of all... Thor do you think Natasha or Tony would want you to do this?” Peter’s muffled voice came out from under Thor’s arm as he was still holding on for what seemed like dear life.

“Tony started that fight because Steve wanted to protect the man who killed his parents. I think Tony would be happy if I killed the man responsible for taking him away from his family.” Thor’s voice started to break. “Loki would be angry that it was me who bested the Wizard instead of him.” A sad smile came to Thor’s lips. Strange swear he could see tears start to build up behind the sunglasses. “Heimdall would tell me that I am acting like a spoiled child rather than a wise king.”

“Wait whose Heimdall?” Peter asked lifting his face above Thor’s arm.

“Natasha...” Thor now struggled to get his words out. “Natasha would tell me it is okay and to not worry about her. She would not approve of this either. Strange I will figure out a way to bring them back without damning this universe to Hel. They did not give up on us so we cannot give up on them. I will help you fix what Loki has done, but I ask you to allow me to do something good. You do not have to help me, but please do not stand in my way.”

“I suppose we can work together until what Loki has caused is fixed. After that we’ll see if we can agree on what to do next.” Strange slowly raised his unbroken hand. “Deal?”

Instead of shaking his hand, Thor dropped Strange without another word and slowly lowered the arm that Peter clung to. 

“I guess I’ll take that as a yes.” Strange sighed.

“Thank God.” Peter released the breath and stressed he didn’t know he had been holding and collapsed on the floor next to Stephen. 

“Why do you guys only call me when you’re trying to kill each other?” A familiar voice whined on the other side of the room.

Scott and Peter looked up to see Scott looking annoyed. Thor still hadn’t moved since he set Peter down. 

Scott waved his coffee around as he talked. “How come no one says, ‘Hi Scott we are going out for Tacos and we want you to come because you’re apart of the time and we like you. It’s kind of our fault that your under house arrest and all so we’d like to make it up to you.’ Don’t get me wrong I would do anything for Ste- I mean Cap. He said I could call him that. Because we are good friends and- hey is he okay?” Scott finally noticed Thor and how he still hadn’t moved. “How you doing Buddy?” Scott asked Thor like he was talking to a 3 year old and started to reach his hand out to pat Thor on the back to Peter’s horror. 

“Scott, you’re here to set up the universe travel thing for Strange... remember? Can you show me how it works?” Peter jumped up and pulled Scott away before he could make contact with the unpredictable mess Thor currently was. He didn’t want to leave Thor and Strange alone together, but leaving Scott in the room would only guarantee a fight. 

“...I guess I could.” Scott slowly made his way past Thor and to the other room where his equipment was. Before he was completely out of the room he glanced back at Thor. “I definitely need to know what is going on with that though. He’s freaking me out.”

“Yeah he’s scaring everyone today, it’s okay.” Peter shoved Scott forward out of the room. “Please behave you guys.” Peter added as he left.

Stephen directed his attention to Thor. “Are you broken or what?” When he didn’t get a response he decided it would be a good idea to throw a loose screw at Thor’s head. 

Throw grabbed his glasses and broke them. He then threw them at Stephen. “I was trying to calm myself. Bruce taught me some breathing techniques to use when I get angry. I told him of course that it was stupid and I would never use it. But now I see the point. He must use it to stop ripping people like you to shreds.” He stretched his hand out to Strange.

“You’d lose.” Strange said standing without Thor’s help.

“I’d never lose to a coward.” Thor smiled and without another word left to join Scott and Peter, leaving Strange and his broken hand alone.

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“-need to test it. I tested it last time, so I’m not doing it this time.” Scott stopped when he realized Thor had joined them. “Hey Thor you look like you’re not scared of death why don’t you test this.”

“Scott-” Peter was in the process of telling Scott of how much of a bad idea that was when Thor interrupted.

“Alright.”

“Awesome, go get your suit on and we’ll see if I hooked this thing up correctly, sound good, big buy?” Scott ran over and grabbed Thor’s suit.

As Peter heard Thor pass Strange on his way to change he heard them say some incredibly not so nice things to each other. “This is a bad idea and we should stop now.” Peter whined as he brought his hands to his face.

“It’s too late for that.” Strange yelled from the other room.

Eventually Thor came back into the room. “Alright just stand on that pad and give me a second. I need to figure out where to send you where you won’t cause damage.

Strange laughed from somewhere else in the Sanctum.

“How about...” Thor proceeded to give a very specific time.

“Why that one?” Scott asked.

“Why not?” Thor shrugged.

“Okay obviously we shouldn’t do that one.” Peter told Scott.

“What’s the worse he could do in a few seconds? It may not even work.” 

“Scott no.” Peter pleaded.

Thor smiled sweetly.

“Aw look it that face. I trust him. You got it Buddy!” Scott quickly typed in the coordinates and time and pushed the go button before Peter could stop him.

“Scott!” Peter yelled.

“Dude i’m going to listen to a God over you. Strange may have a death wish, but I do not.”

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Thor once again felt the familiar pull of being ripped from his current point in time to one that had already unfolded. 10 seconds ago Thor was sure he wanted to do this. Now he wasn’t so sure as he felt his feet hit solid ground again. He didn’t dare open his eyes. He knew the irony of his actions. He had been yelling at Strange all day for being a coward and now he couldn’t open his eyes and witness his nightmare yet again. He couldn’t change anything in the nightmare, but now he could. He just needed to open his eyes and rip off the return switch off his suit.

“Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same.” A voice pierced through Thor’s thoughts. Normally those words would be the last thing he would before he woke drenched in sweat and tears. These words would wake him up again, but instead of seeing his tv displaying a game he fell asleep during he saw a ship on fire and some rubble. 

Thor slowly stood until he could see over the rubble. He had to know. Loki threw his life away to save his. Something had to have happened that Thor missed. It happened when Thanos was giving his speech. 

Once over the rubble Thor could see that he was behind Thanos. Thanos did stand where Thor was moments ago before he dragged past Thor closer to his captive brother.

He looked past Thanos to his goons who were entranced by what their dipshit ruler was saying.

Thor remembered he didn’t have much time left and as searched for Loki he grabbed his return switch. He stopped when he realized Loki was staring right back him. Tears quickly fell from Thor’s tear ducts and made their way down his face.

He wanted to tell Loki not to worry because his big brother would protect him like he promised all those years ago. That everything would turn out okay this time. It was and still is a good idea for Loki to go to Earth.

He watched Loki’s expression change like he had a million times in his dreams. Loki then turned his head to Thanos.

Thor’s finger’s brushed up against his return switch as he felt himself be pulled away.

When he saw Strange, Peter, and Scott all arguing he screamed. “NO, I COULD HAVE SAVED HIM!”

“Thor what did you do?” Peter asked calmly as he could.

“Nothing. I could have if you just let me-” Thor dropped to the floor in defeat.

“No you could have screwed us all. We made a deal. You can’t pull crap like this anymore. I wondered what that time could be. Your lucky I figured it out and pulled you out when I did.” Strange scolded. He then turned to Scott.

“Hey sometimes the button sticks! I tried to pull him out sooner.” Scott threw his hands in the air.

“We know it works now. I would like to get this mission over as soon as possible, so everyone get ready.” Strange said as he walked out.

“Shouldn’t we get more people?” Peter asked when he realized Strange and Thor would kill each other if they went alone.

“You’re not going, kid?” Scott asked surprised.

Peter felt his stomach drop. “I-I...” The fights with Thanos and Beck popped into his head.

Scott quickly put his hand on Peter’s shoulder bring him back to reality. “Hey don’t worry about it. I need help watching and controlling everything anyways. I’m sure those two will be fine.” Scott smiled reassuringly.

Peter looked back at Thor who was still having a break down on the floor.

“I’ll go in there if things get ugly, okay?” Scott pat Peter on the head and walked over to Thor. “We’ll find a way Buddy. Just hold on a little longer.”

Thor cleared the tears from his face and nodded. “Thank you not currently tiny man.”

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[goddessofgamma]

THORBRUCE WITH NUMBER 2?? SPACE??? SPACe????? MAYBE WITH SOME SNUGGLING???/?

abjklbagrjk thank you so much i really wanted this prompt.  This is on the moon bc you know, moon landing and all that.  RIP the paragraph I had to delete for scientific accuracy

(Ao3 link)

(the prompt is from this list)

Summary:  After travelling the galaxy, Bruce is a little overwhelmed, and Thor has an idea for something that might make him feel better.

Streaks of every possible colour of light blazed all around, leaving Bruce overwhelmed and an awe all at once.  His usually heavy body was weightless, the only force he felt was his own arm clinging to Thor for dear life.  

As suddenly as it had begun, it was over.  The Bifrost had left an intricate pattern etched to the surface of where they were dropped off. Bruce looked down at his feet, eyes tracing the traditional Norse pattern.

He started to notice a few things at once; the ground was white and dusty, he still felt almost weightless, it was pitch black outside.

Looking up, the view was unmistakeable.  They were on the moon.  Our moon, Bruce confirmed to himself.  It was a sight he’s seen so many times on the news as a child, been enchanted by.  Back then he’d been full of curiosity, and that paired with the need to escape his father had made the moon seem like an ideal destination.  He’d dreamt of putting on one of those puffy space suits, bouncing on the moon’s surface, leaving footprints that would last millennia.

Panic suddenly rose in him. The moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, how am I still alive? He turned to Thor, who’s arm he hadn’t stopped clutching. Thor saw the trepidation in his eyes and set Stormbreaker down and held Bruce, trying to reassure him with the pressure.

“There’s nothing to fear, Bruce.  This part of the moon has an artificial atmosphere.”  Bruce took a deep breath, finding that Thor was right. “I apologize, I should have given you forewarning, but I thought it would make a good surprise.  You had said Hala was too crowded for you, and I thought a break from the crowds would be welcome before we return to Earth.  And I remember how proud you sounded that the man with the strong arms had landed here all those years ago.”

“Strong arms?”  Bruce was beginning to calm but his mind was still whirring.  “You mean Neil Armstrong?”

“Yes, that’s it.” Thor nodded.  “Is this alright?” He gestured to the surface all around them. “If it’s not, we can return to Earth.”

Bruce gingerly took a couple of steps forward.  Turning around, he saw the Earth hanging in the sky, half-illuminated, blue and beautiful.  It looks so small.

“Yeah,” he breathed.  “This is okay.”

Gaining confidence, Bruce took a larger step, pushing himself off the ground a little.  A small amount of force went a long way; Bruce felt his stomach flip as he lifted off the surface.  The feeling caught in his gut and tickled him, making him laugh.  My first time walking on the moon and all I can do is laugh.

It seemed that his laughter was infectious; Thor joined him, chuckling and bouncing.

“Wow, okay,” Bruce breathed, trying to catch his breath between boughts of laughter.  He still had questions, disbelieving that he had gotten the chance to go to the moon, but he was feeling a lot better about it now.  “How…?”  He shook his head “How can we breathe here? How are we not freezing and boiling all at once? You said there was an atmosphere?”

“Yes, just on these few miles.  The atmosphere was created by Asgardian sorcerers.  It’s breathable, but designed not to block the view of the stars like Earth’s atmosphere does. This moon was used as a neutral ground on which we could negotiate with warring civilisations, back when Odin ruled the nine realms.”  Thor’s explanation made sense to a certain degree, but left Bruce with more questions about how magic worked.  

The Earth seemed so small from here, so fragile. Bruce reached up to trace the shape of the Americas with his hand, only to find himself flying out of control, too high above the ground.  

Before he had time to panic, he felt Thor’s strong grip on his ankle, pulling him gently towards him. They set themselves back on the ground, Bruce out of breath and laughing a little from the ridiculousness of it all.

Thor gestured for them to sit on the moon’s surface.  For a few minutes, they just sat there, cuddled up together, the only sounds coming from their breath and from Thor slowly brushing Bruce’s shoulder with his hand.

After a while, Bruce spoke.

“I think this is the longest I’ve heard you be quiet.”  

Thor smiled.

“I thought you’d appreciate a break from it all.”  He had been right; after touring the cosmos, going on a science tour of everywhere from Hala to Kitsom, the crowds had gotten a little busy for Bruce.  It was a relief to be here with Thor, be quiet.  

Bruce drew in the dirt with his fingers, the moondust catching in his nails like sand.

“No one’s touched this dust before,” he thought out loud.  He pressed his palm down, making a handprint.  “Your turn.”  Bruce directed the god to do the same, next to where he’d left his print.  Like teenagers carving their names in a tree. “That’ll be here for a lifetime.”  

“We could stay here a lifetime, if you wanted,” Thor suggested, running a finger through Bruce’s curls.  

Bruce smiled at the sentimentality.

“It’s okay.  I think I’m ready to go back home now.”

[byeronman]

HEAVY endgame spoilers ahead, rant/review

i don’t know if it’s because my expectations for this movie were too high after infinity war, but i left the theater feeling super unsatisfied and kind of confused. there are so many incongruencies and things that i can’t wrap my head around.

1. literally 5 minutes or less into the movie, and bam! the reunion. marvel has been building up to tony and cap meeting each other again for a long time now, and in most of the trailers and teasers it’s portrayed with a sense of anticipation. except in the actual movie it basically happens in one second. they just see each other, and they’re kind of like “hey what’s up,” and then tony yells at steve, and then it’s suddenly 5 years later and they’re miraculously friends again without showing any of the stuff that happened in between.

2. carol literally appears for like 3 minutes in total. all those trailers pumping us up for captain marvel saving the day and “that’s because you didn’t have me” and then it turns out that oh the stones got destroyed and then she just disappears. like marvel was baiting us so hard by implying that captain marvel would be kind of a big part of this movie and their fight against thanos, but she literally only showed up at the beginning and the end. what the fuck?

3. cap wielding the hammer was the most fucking bizarre thing ever. i understand it was meant to be all powerful and symbolic and they kind of hinted at it in aou, but actually seeing it happen was just fucking weird. what was the point of that, even? other than some cool but also, again, weird action sequences, it added nothing to the story. besides, after seeing the hammer being used by thor for so long it just feels wrong to have someone else swinging it around. maybe if cap used the hammer to actually do something significant it would be better, but they really just put that in there for the sake of it. 

4. how is it that iron man, captain america, and thor all together couldn’t take down thanos, who did not have a single infinity stone at the time?? did they really become that weak??? tony went toe to toe with thanos in infinity war, and that was when he had 4/6 of the stones, and stormbreaker was stronger than all of the stones. but suddenly in endgame, they all somehow fall short of thanos’ raw physical power even when they’re working together and combining forces? something doesn’t add up. 

5. the way that tony died. this still feels surreal to me, and not just because he was the one person i was hoping wouldn’t die. on one hand, he deserves to wield the infinity gauntlet, but on the other i feel like there were definitely alternatives to that situation. like damn he got the glove off of thanos, just chuck it in the air or give it to someone else like carol or t’challa who probably have the physical ability to withstand the recoil of the gauntlet. they weren’t running out of time or anything, tony totally could’ve used thanos’ moment of surprise to hand the gauntlet off to someone else. i think marvel just knew they had to kill him and wanted him to die in a heroic way, but the end that they chose for him was completely unsatisfying to me, as it could have been avoided. 

anyways i think infinity war was just too good so i expected too much out of this film. i’m so deeply unsatisfied though, it did not feel like a proper enough goodbye to cap and tony or one that they deserved. the pacing was just not good. if any of you want to hit me up to talk about this movie feel free! i’m bursting with things to discuss. 

[hackedmotionsensors]

Mind if I ask you what you didn't like about Thor in IW? Or if you don't want to talk about that, what cake would be a thematic cake you'd design for Loki to go along with Thor's lemon one?

I can answer BOTH of these.  There’ll be spoilers here so I’ll tag that but be careful.

1) i can’t seem to get the cut to work so I’ll put the cheesecake thing up top 

So the cheesecake at Disneyland for Thor was a raspberry cheesecake with a chocolate Mjolnir on top. I would probably do another cheesecake but maybe with a citrus flavor to it. Like a lemon lime cheesecake with green icing on top and a little chocolate Loki helmet on top!!! But I love citrus lol

Okay spoiler filled rant beneath the cut

In Ragnarok you can tell that Taika KNEW a LOT about Thor the comic book character and cared about this character. I mean he was the first one to bring in Immigrant Song as part of his pitch for the movie which is INSANE that no one had thought …..to make Thor about a heavy metal viking in space??? because that’s EVERYTHING that made Thor appealing in the 70s-80s in a sense lol. Hemsworth was tired of playing this TOTALLY under-utilized and under-powered GOD OF THUNDER!!! And of course he’d get bored. If you go back and you look at the Thor movies on their own he’s not even really the main character in his own movies. Jane and Loki are more compelling, more story driven, given more character development and those moments you remember from Thor 1 and 2 are NOT Thor moments. (M&M wrote The Dark World which is why no one outside of die hard Thor fans really like that movie).

Taika and Hemsworth collaborated on Ragnarok. Taika’s main point was that if you’re going to have a movie about Thor he NEEDS to be the best character in the movie. A lot of people loved Ragnarok but there are a lot of people who thought it wasn’t DRAMATIC enough or MEANINGFUL enough but a man who didn’t want to be king, doing the most KINGLY things of protecting his people, sacrificing himself against a colonizing murderer even if he is a part of that family of colonizers. It shows Thor coming into his own as his own character. Taika knew how to use Hemsworth’s humor and is a great comedian on his own. All of Taika’s comedies have these really HEARTFELT moments that make the funny moments much more entertaining because you care so much about them).

Marvel gave up on Thor.  Marvel Studios gave up on Thor. M&M gave up on Thor and the Russos never knew what to do with him anyway. And in a sense I kind of see why someone would fall to the wayside when you have a cast of over thirty heroes to try and be entertaining, give the audience their scenes and have people want to care about them.

When Ragnarok came out it was so under promoted that they were sure that it would flop. It wasn’t until those screeners came back or the reviews came back that people actually cared about it. Because they made an amazing movie. 

Like when everyone’s contract was coming up to end Hemsworth wanted more and that was all Taika and Hemsworth collaborating on this character.

ALL OF THIS WAS THROWN OUT THE WINDOW WHEN THEY STARTED FILMING INFINITY WAR/ENDGAME. 

I’m not gonna spoil endgame but I’ll tag it anyway but these two films were filmed at the same time. Not counting pick ups and retakes. So everything we knew about Thor in this last movie was filmed roughly at the same time as Infinity War.

Hemsworth said in an interview that he really wanted to keep what he and Taika had worked on with Ragnarok. But what are you gonna do? you can’t fight TOO much for that last movie because its the last two movies. Eventually he was convinced on what they were going to do with Thor.

Ragnarok: Thor realizes he’s more than just a weapon. Lighting COMES and flows THROUGH him. Not the Hammer. Mjolnir is what makes him fly but not what summons the lightning. He was referred to as the God of Thunder. That’s WHO HE IS. The previous movies kept emphasizing he’s not a god. Even Odin calls the Asgardians not gods which GOES AGAINST WHAT THEY ARE IN BOTH MYTH AND THE COMICS. Thor had his own humor and it worked because Taika knew how to write Thor and Hemsworth knew what to do to make him funny.

Infinity War: Somehow Thor cannot fight without a new hammer. (Its to sell toys) So lets go on this adventure ELSEWHERE to get a new fucking hammer. And then the Hammer is used ONCE. And then in Endgame he’s completely useless without his hammer??? or Stormbreaker?? Stormbreaker can use the rainbow bridge. Why couldn’t he use it to go get Tony? Granted he didn’t know where Tony was but it makes just as much sense as Captain Marvel finding him. And I absolutely love that scene but ??? Thor has this ability and used it once??? 

Like he has a whole conversation with the guardians and rocket about having to go get a new hammer. Why? WHY? Because he didn’t defeat Thanos? 

But he’s reliant on this weapon AGAIN. Which completely defeats what we learned in Ragnarok. It just seems like they literally didn’t know what to do with Thor because Thor was so powerful. They did the same thing with Vision. That’s why Vision gets nerfed at the beginning of the movie. They LITERALLY said “We had to take Vision out early on because he’s too powerful”

Which is fucking stupid. Because if Vision is so powerful and Thanos fucking wrecks him then THANOS IS NOW MORE POWERFUL THAN VISION. The people who should be able to wreck Thanos without really any issue are Wanda and Captain Marvel because they’re BOTH birthed of Infinity Stones and so is Vision but if he can take out Vision then you have more fear for what he can do to Carol or Wanda. 

Thor is one of the most powerful Avengers in the comics and throughout most of the series he’s just sorta …..really strong.

Taika tried to fix that and the Russos and M&M erased that.

Also.

We had an entire movie that proved that Thor wasn’t a complete buffoon. Thor isn’t supposed to be a Tony Stark or a Reed Richards or even a Black Widow for that matter. But he’s not stupid. Which makes Loki that much more manipulative because he’s constantly tricking Thor (granted he’s had about a thousand years to perfect tricking Thor and a mom who taught him how to be a witch so…yknow)

And there’s nothing wrong with HOW Thor fell into a depression or dealt with trauma. But his trauma wasn’t any different than Cap or Tony really but it was dealt with as a joke. And there’s always something really uncomfortable to me (even tho I did laugh at the jokes because of course I would. They’re framed as jokes and some of them land really well like when he’s asleep in the chair or when he’s telling the tale of Dark World) where being fat is being made to look like a sign of laziness or that being fat is something that in and of itself is funny or how underneath that fat is a really buff man who can take his fat off at any time and as a card carrying fat person I don’t have that ability. 

I like Fat Thor. I do not like that on top of being Fat he was a complete idiot. They took everything he was good at and the humor that Taika and Hemsworth brought to the character and made it a three hour fat joke.

So I’m hoping if he shows up in Guardians or they do get Thor 4 (or Thfour) we get Taika’s involvement again and we get some writing on this character that isn’t belittling. 

So basically I hate that the Russos and M&M didn’t know what to do with this character that we had to wait so long to see actually get shown in a light that wasn’t just “That Blonde Dude with the Hammer”

[spacepaladinranger]

Engame Spoiler-y Review

READ THIS ONLY IF YOU WANT TO BE SPOILED. I just need to let my feelings out because I’m a nerd who has nothing better to do.

I don’t think the MC can make another movie like this. That is not to say that the MCE will never be able to make a film bigger or more spectacular than this, because they might. But it will never top the emotional impact of this film.

The MCU has been criticized (justly, I may add) to be series of “junk food” films – full of spectacle, but low on character development. This film is anything but that. The film feels more like a love letter to the characters and the fans. The spectacle was there, of course, but this time it was eclipsed by the small, minute scenes that give insight to our beloved superheroes.Before that, here are the films you probably should watch. Although the references are easy to spot, you might want to brush up on your knowledge of these films.

Avengers (2012)

Thor: The Dark World (I know. They really reminded us the worst MCU film exists lol)

Dr. Strange

Age of Ultron

Capt. America: TWS

Capt. America: Civil War

Iron Man 3

(EVERYTHING AFTER THIS IS SPOILER TERRITORY PLEASE STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED. I MEAN IT.)

The film begins before the infamous Thanos snappening, with Hawkeye. The first scene itself was telling to what the movie aims to be. It was emotional and reminded us of the stakes – of what the heroes are fighting for. It was a good mood setter and on the get go, separates itself from Infinity War. If Infinity War was Thanos’ journey of gathering the Infinity Stones, then Endgame is the journey of the original six Avengers in their goal to undo Thanos’ handiwork. Now finally, I understand why this is not called Infinity War Part 2 – because it is not. The structure of the film itself is vastly different from IW because the focus is shifted from the plot to the characters themselves.And this was a tall order. We are talking about a decade long franchise of 20 plus films, all with their own tone and structure, and weaving them together into a coherent film with a solid plot and development is difficult. The Russo brothers, luckily, shine in this kind of storytelling. There is something so enticing with the way they handle the arcs of these characters without it feeling overly dramatic or feeling like a caricature. My second favourite emotional arc was Natasha/Black Widow’s story. Arguably, she had the biggest role to play in the Avengers’ success in the film.  Her sacrifice in Vormir to get the Soul Stone was gutting. I literally cried partly because no one expected her to die – she was never in anyone’s death prediction list – and partly because you expect a spy like her to be anything but self-sacrificing. Her fight with Clint/Hawkeye on who between them should be sacrificed to get the stone was hard to watch. They are bestfriends who are willing to die for each other; but they understand the necessity of the sacrifice because they are also heroes who have to do whatever it takes for them to win. Their dialogue was the best of the film, and Natasha’s “I don’t judge people on their worst mistake” is a sober reminder that these two go way back and has been each other’s strength and support all throughout the film franchise. It’s devastating to see Natasha plummet to her death, but it served an indispensable push for the heroes to succeed.

My favourite arc was Steve/Cap (SURPRISE! Lmao). Steve’s role was noticeably reduced in IW and this film made up for it in a major way. Let me just get this out of the way, but the styling team really did god’s work in dressing up Steve this film and the Russo brothers’, bless them, choice to have every outfit of Steve showcased is the very definition of fan service. It was gratuitous but honestly, I am not complaining. There was a running joke about Steve’s butt being “America’s Best Ass”™ (Thank you Scott Lang for that) and having Steve himself recognize it was not only satisfying to watch but also the truest, realest thing that has been uttered in the film. LolKidding aside, Steve’s journey was the most important. People argue that Tony was the foundation of the Avengers but it was Steve that kept them together. And Steve kept them together. It’s more than just him giving rousing, inspiring speeches – Steve has always served as the moral compass of the group. Somehow, Steve always knew the right thing to do, but it never felt deus-ex-machina esque, instead it always felt like it was coming from a place of wisdom and compassion. It’s not that Steve knows what to do, it’s just that Steve sees that there is something that can be done, and actually does it. Steve has always been a hero. That was the journey that was set-up for him since his first outing in the MCU, and Endgame paid that off big time. When Steve wielded the Mjolnir, I tell you, I screamed loudly. It was so satisfying to see this straight-laced hero being recognized as someone worthy. His toe-to-toe with Thanos was amazing to watch and really reminds you that Steve’s physicality and fight scenes are some of the best in all of the MCU. So when Steve returns to Infinity Stones in their proper timeline and decides not to come back to the present to, in his words, “live life”, I shed a tear. It was well deserved. This man who has been fighting wars all his life deserve a life of peace. Steve doesn’t die, but he gives up his mantle and gives his shield to Sam/Falcon. It was a good way to bookend his journey. And I am excited to see how Anthony Mackie handles this huge role in the future.

Tony Stark is the first Stark casualty this April. After his rescue from deep space, we find out that Tony and Pepper got married and have a daughter. When the daughter came to the screen, I knew immediately that Tony Stark is unlikely to survive. Tony dies a hero, sacrificing himself so that Thanos is defeated. It was Tony who wielded the stones to snap Thanos and his alien army out of existence, and his death, although emotional to watch, was really not surprising for me. Tony came to us first being this selfish, brash, genius billionaire and his journey ended with him making the sacrifice that deals the final blow against Thanos. 

Scott Lang shined in this film. His funny one-liners provide a welcome reprieve from the heaviness of the film. And he was actually instrumental in the Avengers winning. Nebula was also a stand out and played an important role in moving the plot forward. Who knew a robot had so many conflicting emotions lol. Kudos to Karen Gillan for bringing complexity to her character and I cannot wait to see her in future MCU films again. All the ‘dusted’ characters come back. All of them. And not just them everyone in the MCU almost made a cameo. Hoping this film rakes in billions because it’s probably expensive having so many of the cast in the same scenes. Haha.

Some stand-out moments:

1. Thor’s beer belly 

2. Wanda/Scarlet Witch and Thanos rematch (Thanos got beat, BTW)

3. The all-female team-up of Capt. Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Okoye, Pepper Potts, Valkyrie, and Mantis

4. Thor double wielding Stormbreaker and Mjolnir

5. Stephen Strange having like one line and being a badass

6. Spider-Man being… Spider-Man

7. Peter Quill being kicked in the balls by Gamora

8. Everytime the camera pans to Steven Grant Rogers

9. The close-up of Steven Grant Rogers’ ass

There are flaws to this film. But honestly, I leave that to the actual critics. It gave me what I wanted to see and showed me things I did not expect to see. It was emotional. As a fan who has watched all the films multiple times, as someone who obsessed over the details and made theories, as someone who holds these comic book characters close to my heart, I truly enjoyed this film. It was worth it.