#also yeah I PROMISE THIS HAS GOOD CLARK ENERGY

[batarangsoundsdumb]

non context spoiler for my super cool shiny new fic

summary underneat the cut

what happens in vegas - onlydance

When has what happened in Vegas ever stayed in Vegas?

Most married couples will say they married because they loved each other, they’ll say they stayed together with hard work, determination, and love.

Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are not like most married couples.

...

“I didn’t even say something stupid.”

“Your face is stupid,” Bruce retorted immediately.

Clark frowned. “That’s no way to talk to your husband.”

[eartht137]

DEAREST HEART- Letter One

Okay, For The Better has got me at a standstill. Every time I go to write the next chapter, I get a very "bad" idea and I have to write it in to meld with what I have in mind, but as my birthday is approaching in 2 days and Halloween is quickly approaching, I have developed a very new and delicious idea. I thought up this story in the shower. Hear me out, okay? The blinds that cover the window in my bathroom fell, and I mean fell from the wall, so I had to take a shower in the dark with a candle. Well it gets pretty muggy in my bathroom, as there's not a lot of room, so I opened the window to get some air, well with the wind blowing and the leaves rustling I kinda got that weird feeling that someone was watching me (which I highly doubt). In this story the character/you are a new wife and mom and you've been unmotivated to do normal chores and upkeep due to de pression and anxiety. I kinda wanted to touch on some real topics that I felt may resonate as I've noticed there is a lot of depression and anxieties that have been major high and I just wanted to send a small message that you are seen, you are heard, you are worthy, you are loved. Even if it is in your own world, I'd rather have my own world that I can escape to and have things go my way than keep taking on the pressure of things we deal with everyday. Also this is another Dark Clark Kent. I know, I know, the idea of the man just does something to me. So with that curvies, I present to you Dearest Heart. Okay rant over for the day. Please proceed..........oh yeah MMMMMMmwwwwwwaaahhhhhhh

Dark Clark Kent x Plus Size Reader

Warnings: Non Con, somnophilia, masturbation, stalking, mentions of impregnation. Maybe other things too. MINORS DNI!!!

You were getting up and ready for work, since starting your new job, you'd found yourself a bit out of balance. Being a new wife and mom, trying to adjust, you'd found yourself falling in and out of a reel of depression and anxiety. You very rarely had the energy or drive to clean and sometimes your depression got you to a point where you didn't really want to keep up your hygiene. Finally, you'd gotten the burst of life you needed and decided to make use of it while you had the drive. You started keeping up your hygiene as you used to and cleaned your house day by day. You started cherishing more moments with your husband and son. You had noticed the more you took effort within the day, it helped you feel a bit better everyday. One day, you stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air and sunlight. As you were getting ready to head back inside, you saw a letter place neatly on the bars of you security door with small rose. You tilted you head in confusion and looked around. You took the letter, seeing that it had "Dearest Heart' written beautifully across the front. You walked inside while admiring the vintage parchment envelope.

"Baby?" Your husband asked curiously, making you look up and smile as he and your son watched you.

"Well I think the mailman left someone else's mail-again." You sighed tossing the letter down on the table by your door. You went over and spent the remainder of you free time with your husband and son before heading into your office and logging on for work.

On your first break, you rushed out of your office hoping to spend time with your loved ones. You giggled as you watched your husband and son sleep with their mouths wide open on your couch. You were about to step into the bathroom when you got the nagging urge to go back and look at the letter again. You stared at it from across the room a moment before finally giving in to curiosity and grabbing it. You studied it for a moment before your husband adjusting on the couch startled you. You quietly went to the bathroom and examined the letter. Looking at your phone, you realized you didn't have much time, and would just open it to see what it looked like inside. A very hopeful side of you prayed that in your head that it was filled with cash that some good saint just felt in their heart to give, but you knew that was a slim chance. When you opened the letter, you almost gasped, almost like a child feeling as if you if you'd just done something forbidden. The alarm on you phone vibrated and you jumped, the letter dropped from you hands. You laughed a bit at yourself, picked up the letter, tucked it away and went back to work.

One your lunch break, after making something to eat for yourself and your hungry boys, you found yourself practically lured back to the bathroom to find the letter you'd tucked away for later. You opened it and pulled out a very beautifully written letter, but the first line damn near made your heart stop. You read it over and over trying to make sure you weren't seeing things, but there it was in black in, your name. You took a deep breath and continued reading the letter.

My Dearest Y/n,

I promised myself I wouldn't try to interfere in your life, but my heart won't let my stand idly by. I know this is abrupt as you've never seen me in your life, at least you don't remember meeting me, its been so long ago; but I can't keep quiet about this anymore as my love for you has yet to subside. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I swore I'd never lie to you and I am a man of my word. You might be a little worried as to how I know you, where you live-but you'd be shocked at how much I know about you and it'd scare you to know how long I've watched over you. Little love, I've been a bit disappointed in you. You allowed yourself to get to far down and instead of talking it out, you've been bottling everything in. We both know how that ends. You can talk to me if you need to, but I was really disappointed in how you allowed things to get. You weren't getting out of bed, you weren't keeping your hygiene up, and you weren't keeping the house up; on top of that, you haven't been utilizing any of your self-care tools. You didn't leave the house for a month and you cried every night by yourself because you're too stubborn to get out of your own head for two seconds and let the people who love you in. You were also finding a new lie every week to call into to work, that was disappointing darling because you don't have to lie, just tell them you need a day for your health, you don't owe them anymore explanation than that, but I don't want you to lie again. Do you remember those 2 weeks your backside was sore and stinging and you couldn't figure out why? I'm so sorry dear heart but I had to light a fire in you some way, and I just can't allow you to behave in such a way. I also can't stand to see the woman I love not take care of herself. On another note, I do want to tell you how proud of you I have been with how much you love and care for our son. He's growing so big isn't he? Oh darling, I know you think he's your husbands, but I guarantee he is my flesh and blood, why do you think he stares at me so long when he sees my photo pass your screen. His blood is my blood, he knows who he is. I have decided dear heart, to be a bit more active in your life as I have come to realize that my standing by protecting in the shadows is not enough. It will be awhile my love, but one day we will be together. You, Me and our son. I love you both so much, I promise you we will be a family as we should one day. For now I will continue to watch from the distance and protect you when you need me. I will also be there to talk whenever you just want to talk out loud. Before I end this letter, I want to also tell you how proud I am that you've started writing. I love the stories you've been writing about me and I promise to fulfill every one of you desires as soon as the time is right. Only this time, you'll be able to enjoy it as much as I have. I will be writing again, you don't have to reply, but it would be nice. Keep up the good work sweetheart, I love you.

With All My Heart and Soul,

Kal-El

Your heart pounded in your ears, you forgot to breath and tears filled your eyes. You kept trying to convince yourself it was a prank, but the more you tried to deny it, the more you knew it was real. You sat thinking to yourself, when you'd written a story about him, you didn't know anyone named Kal-El. You immediately started walking around your house making sure every window and door was locked. You wanted to tell your husband, but once again the gut feeling told you not to, and you'd realized that your gut was really on point and that just made things scarier.

You finished you lunch break and the rest of that day unable to concentrate on anything. That night while you took a shower, you kept looking through the blinds to see if you'd see someone. On one had you wanted to see if there was someone really there and on the other you felt you'd probably shit yourself if you really saw someone. After a moment or two, you'd finally convinced yourself it was a sick prank and someone in the neighborhood was being an idiot. You laughed a bit and finished up, ready to finally get the sleep you'd been begging for all day. As you laid in bed, every noise made you jump. Every time something or someone would move, you'd go from the precipice of sleep to fully awake. You had been feeling watched for the longest time and you'd just blamed it on being crazy, but now with the letter confirming your nightmare, you really had no idea what to do. Your mind ran and ran until it finally shut itself down and you drifted off to a very peaceful sleep despite everything going on around you.

He sat in the corner of your dark room watching you breath calmly. He wanted so badly to go over and rock you to sleep as he watched you struggle to fall asleep, but he couldn't present himself to you just yet, not until everything was perfect the way we wanted it before he showed himself.

He sat there watching you from the other side of the room knowing that soon you'd throw the covers off of your plush body exposing your luscious curves that he loved feeling in his large hands. His hand stroked himself as he thought back to the first night he took you. You were sleeping so good, you didn't hardly move. His released his hard thick cock from their restraints and pumped himself as he watched your breasts rise and fall with your breathing. He thought back to the first time he tasted your nipples, how hard they got when he kissed and nipped them. How wet you got for him and how he once made you cum from playing with them only. He then thought about how delicious you were. His fist moving faster and rougher down his shaft. He remembered how tight you were when he first fucked you. How hot and juicy you were as he pumped deep into your soft pussy filling you with every inch of him. He wanted to ruin you, and he wished you could see the happiness he felt when you couldn't cum one night from yours or your husbands touches. His hand pumped faster as he remembered fucking you so good one night your orgasm woke you as you came, as disappointed as he was that he couldn't feel you cum around him, he was still proud to have your body so responsive for him. That sent him over the edge and he came hard wanting so badly to empty inside of you. He wanted to see you round with his baby again, but he wanted to allow you the time to fully heal. He used one of your husbands shirts to wipe himself clean, and he gave you a soft peck on the lips, smiling when you turned away.

"I love you so much. I promise things will be right soon. Sleep well dearest heart." He whispered before leaving. He couldn't wait until you found his next letter.

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Ya know what these self-indulgent Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow posts need? Self-indulgent banner art, that’s what.

Spoilers for issue #4!

Let’s start this off right with CREATOR CREDITS. Issue 4 of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is titled “Restraint, Endurance, and Passion.” Written by Tom King, Art by Bilquis Evely, Colors by Matheus Lopes, Letters by Clayton Cowles, and Edited by Brittany Holzherr. (w/ Assist. Editor: Bixie Mathieu & Senior Editor Mike Cotton)

THE STORY: 

Right, so this? This issue? Best one yet.

Also the bleakest of the bunch thus far; even though we don’t always see the brutality of the space pirates that Kara and Ruthye are following, there’s...the suggestion of it. The aftermath. And how Kara responds to it.

Okay, getting a little ahead of myself. BASIC PLOT SUMMARY: Ruthye and Kara continue their pursuit of Krem, who has taken up with Barbond’s Brigands.

The Brigands basically just. Murder and terrorize people, for profit.

Each planet they visit brings new horrors, as well as people who need Supergirl’s help.

And help she does.

KARA-CTERIZATION:

I yell a lot about the art on this book, and have, in fact, openly admitted that I’m primarily here for Evely and Lopes.

Well, that wily son-of-a-gun King went and wrote some of the best ‘Super’ stuff I’ve ever read and dang it, dang it, now I gotta yell about the words too. XD

Specifically, I wanna yell (in a good way!) about some words that occur towards the very end of the book.

Kara and Ruthye have Seen Some Things; things like genocide and mass grave sites and horrible violence, and upon reaching a planet where peaceful monks were slaughtered, Kara’s had enough, and needs to leave because if she screams, she’ll destroy what little is left of the monks’ monastery.

Here’s the text in full, because my gosh. It’s so good:

“What I write next I write based on my observations in those long-ago days at the side of the greatest warrior in the history of this august reality we all call home. It is important to note that my assertions do not rely on anything Supergirl said. It was not a subject we ever discussed or even approached, but nonetheless I believe it to be as true as the turning of worlds. You see, what is not well understood about the daughter of Krypton is that her power was not one of action but one of restraint, endurance, and passion. She did not choose to fire a beam from her eyes, or have breath of ice, or run faster than a speeding bullet. Or any of her other well-documented miracles. No, she held back her heat vision to look you in the face. She warmed her breath to converse with you. She slowed herself to walk by your side. Ever moment of every day, she suppressed the forces churning inside of her. All of the energy of a dead world that strained against her many barriers, eternally demanded to be released. I believe this effort hurt her. I believe she lived her life in pain. But I reiterate again, for I think it important enough to repeat--These beliefs are based on my time at her side, watching her as she moved through strife and sorrow. If you were to have asked her, I have little doubt she would have claimed that such as assertion was absurd. She would say she felt fine and well and then she’d as you if you needed any help.”

A long chunk of words, I know (this comic is DENSE!) but like. This is it. This is one of the defining attributes of the Supers--all that raw power at their disposal and they choose to help people, to be kind, to suppress that power for the benefit and safety of others.

HNNNNNNNG.

Hope, Help, and Compassion for All.

Whole lotta folks claimed at the outset of this book that King did not understand Kara, that he was a bad fit. And that may be so, I suppose--there’s a whole other discussion about like. The violence and swearing and ‘does that belong in a Supergirl book?’ But the characterization? Getting that Kara and Clark are just good people? 

King gets it. He got it in Superman: Up in the Sky and he gets it here, in Woman of Tomorrow.

Other things King gets! Kara is stubborn! Kara is passionate! Kara is going to fix things, even if the effort of doing so hurts her, physically, emotionally, and mentally!

(Fuuuuuuun fact for the crowd saying that Woman of Tomorrow is vastly superior to the CW show: TV Kara is ALSO all of those things! King isn’t pulling this stuff out of thin air. It’s almost like...gosh. I don’t know! Both the show and Tom King are pulling from the character’s comic history, or something!!!! HOW NOVEL.) 

Like, seriously. There’s a lot of overlap. Stop pitting Karas against each other!

Anyways!

I promised art, so here is art!

Oh, right, forgot to mention, Kara literally THROWS HERSELF INTO THE SUN to express her grief and anger, so as to not cause that unnecessary destruction. She gives new meaning to the phrase: Set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. 

More art yelling: GOTTDAMN, the way Evely draws Kara just colliding with the surface of the sun and then the way Kara’s hair like...becomes the flames...

I am FEELING FEELINGS. HOW DARE.

Also, props to King and Cowles; King for deciding to have that initial scream, Cowles for the way the letters burst forth from the point of impact on the sun, and then back to King who decided that it would just be...devastating silent screaming from Kara, for the remainder of the scene. 

Back to the characterization, I just wanted to highlight something I mentioned...earlier on, I think? In these posts? But haven’t brought up recently, and that is how this book has not once brought up Zor-El, and I think Superman only got a quick mention in issue 2.

Honestly, I think that’s gotta be some kind of record.

It’s so refreshing. Not because I think there should never be mentions of Clark, or anything--I love that boy--but because so much of modern Supergirl comic drama is mined from the same like, angsting over her place compared to Clark, or her crazy sometimes-a-supervillain dad. 

There is no Clark and Kara drama here, no manufactured friction, because it’s just. A cool Supergirl story! 

Gonna keep going, but let’s do it with some more...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTT!!!!

Once again, Mat Lopes is all over the dang place with his palettes, it’s marvelous.

Each new planet gives Evely the opportunity to go hog wild on the worldbuilding and design, and similarly! Each new locale is an opportunity for Lopes to set the tone with colors. Like, here, towards the beginning of the book, we’ve got a planet bathed in this warm, pale yellow/orange light. 

(Quick note: “Sure, yeah, I get it. We all have our duties. And it’s mine as a neighbor to do what I can to help you with yours. Please.” A+ Kara content. We love to see it. And then locating the remains of the alien’s daughter, so that they can go visit the grave site and have some emotional closure???? It’s just. So. Touching.)

Anyways, back to colors.

Like!!!! LOOK AT THAT JUMP. From the soft, almost pastoral feel of the delicate oranges and yellows to HARD GREEN, PINK, AND PURPLE. (Difficult colors to pull off in print, I might add.) 

(This is also an interesting scene, character-wise, because I think it helps re-contextualize some earlier stuff with Kara. Like, I’m mostly thinking that incident on the bus, where she was swearing at the passengers as the space dragon was about to destroy them. Here, we see Kara kind of...goad this alien woman into releasing her pent up emotions by yelling at her/getting her to fight, and you can clearly see at the end of it that Kara did not mean the things she said, because check this out:

She goes and gives her a hug once the woman is able to finally cry.

It’s not ‘Kara is being mean, Kara is swearing at her’, it’s, ‘Kara has an unorthodox solution to a problem, and she’s gonna FIX that problem, NO MATTER WHAT.’

Circling back to the bus thing--again, that could be an instance of ‘unorthodox approach to a weird situation that Kara is going to handle because lives are at stake.’)

But also, DIG THAT KIRBY KRACKLE, BAY-BEEEEE!

And a little Strange Adventures easter egg! The Pykkts! 

(I think those guys are unique to the Black Label series, rather than deep Adam Strange lore, but don’t quote me on that.)

Moving on to YET ANOTHER PALETTE, one I’ve dubbed, ‘Treasure Planet Purple/Grey’

Love Ruthye’s snoozing against the door, waiting for Kara.

Also, just as striking as the colors of the environment, are the colors used on Kara. 

If you compare this page with the previous one, Kara’s eyes are a paler shade of blue, and the red-rimmed look on her eyes here is not as intense as the red-rimmed look we saw back in issue one, when she was confronting Krem. 

All of which to say! There’s a pale, haunted quality to both the linework and the colors. Like. We know Kara has Seen Some Things. But she’s shoving all that stuff down to protect Ruthye, to save Krypto, and to stop these monsters, and you get all of that WITH COLORS AND LINES ON A PAGE.

I love it, I love it so much.

OTHER BOOKS WISH THEY HAD THIS LEVEL OF CHARACTER ACTING, I TELL YA! THEY WISH THEY HAD THIS BEAUTIFUL ALCHEMY OF INKER, COLORIST, AND WRITER WORKING IN SUCH TIGHT TANDEM!

Ahem. XD

Alright, last bit of art, lest I just. Post the whole issue in here. (Which I’m honestly always tempted to do but Strong Feelings about Piracy hold me back.)

JUST HECKIN’ LOOK AT THAT BLUE, MAN. JUST LOOK AT IT. S’BEAUTIFUL.

And more stunning character acting from Evely. Like. Bottom middle panel. The expression, the tilt of her head and the shadows on her eyes...

*insert silent flailing here*

Oh, also, KRYPTO LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVESSSS (for now). 

I’m never right about these things, so I’m glad the one time I’ve correctly read a thing is when it involves Krypto not, ya know. Being dead. XD

Also absolutely love that Kara’s instinct is to send Ruthye home to protect her--once more leaning into that whole, ‘I’m going to protect you, even at great cost to myself’, though of course we know that she can’t send her home, not here, not now, just halfway through our journey. 

ERRRRRRGH, so mad we’re not getting twelve issues of this! CURSE YOU, POOR SUPERGIRL TRADE SALES! CURSE YOOOOOOU!

That said, King’s pacing? Has been phenomenal. I feel like Strange Adventures and even Mr. Miracle kinda...I’m not gonna say dragged, that’s not quite right. But it is more build up, I guess. Takes a while to get to the payoff.

Here, I think King is pushing things steadily along as he doesn’t have the benefit of an additional four issues, so he has to get to the point, so to speak. Keeps everything moving.

SOME FINAL, MISC. STUFF:

I’ve sort of glossed over the darker stuff from this issue, and I just wanna note that like. This is a book that features a bad guy getting stoned (in the death sentence way, not the drug way) on panel. Like. I can’t recommend this to children.

I can’t even really recommend it to some other Supergirl fans, because I know that the King elements will be too off-putting. 

It never feels like the book is going too far, though. At least in like an...exploitative way? If that makes sense?

The violence is handled with discretion, I guess is what I’m trying to convey. This could very easily tip over into like, gross shock factor territory, if not handled well, but I think the creative team pulls it off.

...Still wouldn’t hand this book to kids, though. XD

As mentioned, we’re halfway through this series! Can’t wait to see where it goes--every time I think I have this book figured out, it surprises me. So, like. Bring on the Dinosaur planet! With no sunlight! I wanna see how Lopes handles THAT. XD

(But Oh, OooooOOooh, we gotta wait until NOVEMBER.)

(Hhhnnnnng!)

(Then again, maybe that’s good; we’ve got the TV show in the meantime, and then once it ends we can pick right up with new Supergirl content just a few weeks later.)

(...Aw. Made myself a little sad, thinking about the TV show coming to an end.)

:C

So as not to end on that sad note, here once again is tiny, smushed Kara:

Give ‘em the ol razzle dazzle.

[tired-college-student-writing]

Tim’s Secret Weapon Pt. 4

I’ve been slightly obsessed with @ozmav​ ‘s Damian Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng pairing as of late, and just saw a post that has inspired me more than anything else has in months, so I felt the need to write it

Summary- Tim has always seen the numbers floating above people’s heads, been able to perceive their threat levels with a single glance. After being a hero for so long he thought he was desensitized to seeing high numbers above people’s heads until Damian brings a new friend home.

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4 (HERE)

Part 5

_______________________________________________________________________

“Yup!” Jason popped the ‘p’ before holding up the book Tim had given him, “Who’s ready for storytime?” 

“What do you mean Tim is afraid I would throw him out?” Bruce pushed even as Jason led them towards one of the desks, “I want to help him with-”

“Yeah I’m gonna stop you there,” Jason cut him off, eyes hard as he set the book down with an uncharacteristic amount of care,“Tim was very offended by what we thought was going on with him and it just made him more sure that all of us were going to leave him behind as his shitty parents did. So let’s just cut to the chase and cool off before he seriously decides to run off before we can go talk to him because I’m pretty sure even after talking to him for twenty minutes, he’s still around seventy-five percent sure that’s going to be a better option than waiting around.” 

Jason had never seen the energy of a room shift so fast, the anger and bloodlust that had been suffocating since Dick uncovered the file on Marinette vanished into a deep rippling uncertainty. If there was one unspoken rule of the household, it was that no previous trauma will knowingly be replicated. It’s why Jason always makes a point of leaving his guns in the cave and never points them passed Bruce unless it’s life or death. Why no one touched the trapeze unless Dick was going up with them and they always used a net, no matter how good their aerial skills were. Why no one spoke to Jason in angry or stern Arabic. No one told Damian he was overreacting, especially when it was about illness or injuries. 

No one was allowed to make Tim think they were abandoning him.   

Dick looked stricken at the very idea, “Jay, why is Tim so scared?” 

“Short answer? Tim’s Meta.” 

The whole room froze, eyes flying wide, making Jason chuckle, “Yeah that was my response to.”

“How long?” Bruce asked, hand gripping the back of his chair so hard, Jason wondered if he was going to break it. 

“From what he said, he was born with his power, it’s always on and pretty impossible for him to block out.”

Damian’s face scrunched, “And father always made it clear that he doesn’t like Metas in Gotham.”  

“Fuck,” Dick swore, turning to punch the cave wall, “How the actual shit did we miss this? We’re fucking detectives goddamn it!” 

Seeing Dick lose it like that made Jason pause. It was rare to see the carefree brother truly get mad about anything, let alone for him to cuss up a storm, he always did prefer those filler cusses that make the rest of them groan. 

But then again Damian looked pained and Bruce was sinking into the Bat-computer chair looking lost as he ran a hand through his hair.

“I never meant it like this,” Bruce whispered, “I just didn’t want anyone else coming to Gotham expecting to be able to fix it overnight. Did I really come off anti-meta?” 

“I…” Jason winced, stopping to think, “I never thought so, but I can see how Tim thought you might be. We all need to talk to him, but I promised I’d explain some of this shit like Tim did to me, and look through his book so that we don’t all bombard him with questions.” 

The four shared a look before they all surrounded the table as Jason began. He told them of the numbers, the skill Tim had that he never shared. After they opened the book they found that it was more complex than just that. 

The entries started off very rudimentary, clearly written by a small child, the dates claiming that Tim began this journal when he was merely six years old. They detailed the color, font, and number of the person he had met. A few of the higher ranks having little ideas next to them on the cause, but as the list grew and the handwriting even outed, there were itemized lists on the reason for each number above a 5. 

By the time they reached Bruce’s they were pretty dumbfounded as they read through Tim’s confusion and fear at the number that broke the code he’d knew through his whole life, his reason section was filled with sentences of ideas, instead of the short bullet points, trying to ration it out. 

The most confusing part of it was he ruled things out that he couldn’t have known, insider trading and corruption would have been a logical conclusion for him to draw of the Billionaire he knew nothing about but he ruled them out instantly, not even bothering to consider they might be part of the reason. 

Not to mention when he actually put it together. 

“His power works on broadcasts as well?” Bruce mused, “I know I never saw he was never on the streets when I was out during this time period,” 

“Adding it to the list of questions,” Dick said as he typed it out into the sheet he had made when they started asking too many questions only Tim could answer.  

“Never mind that,” Damian brushed off, “Look at the traits he listed, all listed at the same time from the looks of the ink but if the date is to be believed, this is from before Todd was debuted as Robin, how did he know you had a mastery in hacking, spoke multiple languages and stunt flight?” 

All of them froze at those words, hunching over it to look at the words. 

There was no logical way Tim could know any of those things. Most of Batman’s skill set could be guessed through out the rumors and gossip that flew since the caped crusader started his reign of the city, but those skill sets still weren’t widely known to the public. 

“I…” Bruce shook his head, “Add it to the list, we have a lot more of the book to get through to worry about this now. We should try and finish the book. 

But the issue popped up again and again as the pages went on, each hero he met he knew their skills down to the littlest detail, things he shouldn’t be able to know, especially before he became the third Robin. 

He knew Clark was Superman when he met the reporter first.

He knew Diane was made of clay before the woman had ever given away that little tidbit.

He knew that Barry was a wiz when it came to criminology before the speedster had ever given up his identity. 

He knew Arthur had low-level empathic abilities that went beyond sea life before Arthur was even considered a hero. 

They were only two-third of the way through the book, arguing over how The Commissioner could possibly know their identities, let alone why it would make his number rise so quickly when not even Bruce’s number had done so when he learned the other League member’s identities, when a stern voice cut through their thought. 

 “Gentlemen, There’s a bit of a situation that Master Tim and I discovered that could use your attention.” Alfred cut in, making them turn, stopping when they saw Tim practically sprint to the Bat computer, pointily looking at the wall to avoid looking at them, his shoulders so tight they shock.

“Tim?” Dick asked, concern dripping from his words as he started towards the younger man only to freeze as Tim visually flinched away from the word, curling inward as he frantically typed away on the keyboard. 

Before any of them tried to break the silence again the giant screen lit up to show a battle play out. A young girl dressed in a red and polka-dotted outfit flipping and twisting out of the way of the pages thrown like ninja stars at her, a yoyo used to propel her, eyes filled with laughter behind her mask. Her moves were agile and practiced, as another figure, a boy her same age dressed in skin-tight black leather entered the frame. 

“I figured out why Marinette is a 15,” He finally managed out, making the bats’, minus Jason, heads snap to him.

A 15? 

The brat couldn’t just have a normal girlfriend, could he?

No, he had to have someone that shattered Tim’s power completely.

 And he had no idea why, until now. 

They really couldn’t blame him for being obsessive. 

“I couldn’t find out why Mari was so powerful,” Tim rambled on, “But Alfred helped me realize that she’s a hero too. A hero with the power of the god of creation on her side, which makes sense for why she completely broke my, uh, my power. She’s been-” 

“Tim,” 

“-fighting a supervillain,” Tim just continued as if he hadn’t heard Bruce, his voice skipping up a few pitches, “ who also uses the power of a god to help him make others into villains to do his bidding. They’ve been locked in battle for years now. Years! We really should have noticed before now, but better late then never right? Heh, she has some allies though so it’s not like she was fighting on her own or anything, and-”  

“Drake,” Damian cut in, ducking past Dick to grab Tim by the shoulder to spin him, staring into his eyes with the type of harsh determination only the demon spawn seemed to be able to, ignoring the quacking fear in Tim’s own eyes, “I am the byproduct of the daughter of one of Father’s greatest enemies drugging him. I was raised will one goal in mind, to be the ultimate weapon to take down all that stood in the way of the League of Assassins, and yet Father, Grayson, Todd, Pennyworth and you gave me safety and taught me why my grandfather was wrong. Todd was murdered by a clown with psychopathic tendencies, was brought back by the magic that my grandfather has a monopoly on, went crazy with Lazarth sickness and thought the best course of action was to become a crimelord in the very city he vowed to protect, going as far as trying to shoot Father, the man he saw as an older brother and you, the boy he was convinced Father had only brought into the circle to die as he had, and yet once the sickness faded Father welcomed back in with open arms, shedding tears for the child he thought he had lost. Father may have made it clear that he’s not a fan of metas operating in the city, but you’re a moron if you believe for a second that means he’s going to disown you or take Red Robin away from you. You’re also lost all my respect if you think this means I or any of the others that dawn the bat moniker are going to feel any different about you for having these powers.” 

Tim’s mouth opened and closed several times after Damian’s speech had come to a close as the others waited for him to break the silence of the cave. All he could feel was his hands trembling as his eyes welled up. 

Damian was still looking at him before sighing, “You really are an idiot,” 

He wanted to retort, wanted to bite out a response as he blinked back the tears but he suddenly found Damian’s arms wrapped around his waist, a tight grounding embrace, the younger boy’s chin resting on his shoulder. 

Tim wasn’t sure he was breathing, his whole body shaking like it was trying to shatter into a million pieces. The brat, Damian, the one person he thought would gladly cast him aside given the slightest of reason to was… 

“You’re family, Tim,” Damian stern voice cut through his mental frenzy, “If I’ve learned one thing since moving to Gotham, it’s that you don’t give up on family, not for anything, and certainly not for something like this.”   

Tim felt something inside him break and the next thing he knew he was sobbing into Damian’s shoulder the pair on their knees in the middle of the cave, gripping Damian back like he thought if he let go the boy would vanish. Slowly as he felt his breathing calm down and his sobs fade he could feel more arms surrounding him. The entire bat family was surrounding him, silently holding him through his breakdown. 

He pulled back, scrubbing his eyes as his family slowly untangled from around him. 

“I’m sorry,” He whispered, voice scratchy from the tears, “I guess I should have known none of you would hate me but… I’ve been so scared that I’d lose you guys too. I didn’t want to risk it, I couldn’t risk it.” 

He flinched slightly when a large hand squeezed his shoulder looking up into Bruce’s eyes, softened by a love that could destroy the world if his child was hurt. A love that none of the Waynes needed to put words to because of looks like this. 

Glancing back to his brothers he saw the love in Bruce’s eyes reflected in theirs, all of them accepting him and loving him still. 

The weight Tim had carried for as long as he knew to grow lighter as a small smile worked its way onto his face. 

His eyes burning with the same intense love for his family back at them. 

For the first time in a long time, Tim knew without a doubt 

It would be okay. 

_______________________________________________________________________

Tim couldn’t stop the whimper from falling from his lips as Marinette’s class came pouring out of the doors of the school.

All of the Wayne boys had decided to surprise Marinette by showing up at her class when it let out, in addition to not wanting to wait to reveal they knew her secret. It wasn’t hard to get all of them to Paris merely days after Tim’s secret came to light, especially since Bruce was planning on checking up on the Paris branch of Wayne Enterprises the following week before everything happened. Expanding the trip last minute to include all of them had taken little effort, and all of their suits were tucked away in their hotel suites, waiting to be dawned once they got Marinette alone. 

Tim was ready to turn back now though and for a very good reason. 

 In the normal sea of threes and fours, normally Marinette stood out with her overwhelmingly soft pink 15, but now...

The tanned girl that had hoards of kids surrounding her had an obnoxious copper 9 floating above her, the font looking like a tiger had scratched it into the very fabric of space. 

A trio of students, a bulky boy, a small pink-haired girl, and a dark-skinned nerdy-looking boy, were messing around as pale numbers circled their heads, a pair of stark white 12s over the boys and an icy blue 13 over the girl. 

A pair of girls, one blonde and one of Asian descent, were bickering as they made their way down the steps,  a canary yellow daintily drawn 14 for the blonde and deep burgundy calligraphed 13 for the more stoic girl.   

And the blonde boy Marinette was happily conversing with, looking even more softspoken and sweet than the baker girl.

He had a venomous green 15 swirling over him in it’s rounded bubble-like font. 

His brothers glanced at him warily. 

“Everything okay Timmy?” Jason asked, eyes flitting over the crowed on instinct, looking for the threat that spooked him. 

“I’ll tell you later,” He groaned back, “... but keep an eye on the girl in the orange jacket, she feels slimy from all the way over here,” 

His brothers nodded, but even so, Tim felt a migraine coming on. 

For once Tim wished for an alien invasion so he didn’t have to deal with this bullshit.

_______________________________________________________________________

Taglist: @vixen-uchiha @iggy-of-fans @mewwitch @roseinbloom02 @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @mochinek0 @royalchaoticfangirl @09shell-sea09 @mystery-5-5 @derpingrainbow @aloha-posts-stuff @hauntedfreakdeputyhero @maribat-archive @blue-peach14 @kae690 @zazzlejazzle @vincentvangoose @be-happy-every-day-please @xxmadamjinxx @celestiacq @peculiarlylostdreamer @dani-ari @melicmusicmagic @themcclan @nyctamaximoff @nataladriana9 @drama-queen-supreme @miraculousbelladonna @urbanpineapplefarmer @graduatedmelon @lexysama @hecate-hallow @ki117h3dr4g0n @vinerlover @interobanginyourmom @bluefiredemon @imanerddealwith @tinybrie @clumsy-owl-4178 @shizukiryuu @whogavemeaninternet @schrodingers25 @lunar-wolf-warrior @urbanpineapplefarmer @xxmadamjinxx @crazylittlemunchkin @littleredrobinhoodlum

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Zack Snyder’s Justice League vs. the Whedon Cut: What are the Differences?

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This article contains Zack Snyder’s Justice League spoilers.

Whether you love or hate his style, there is no denying Zack Snyder is an original. From 300 to Watchmen, and Man of Steel to Justice League, his characters often hover above the screen as much as occupy it. They’re mythic figures who’ve stepped off a Botticelli canvas, or at least Frank Miller comic book panels, and they’re imbued with such a sense of scale from their director that the aesthetic is nigh impossible to duplicate. That is only clearer now thanks to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a restored four-hour edit of Snyder’s original vision for the DC superhero movie team-up and their universe at large.

Admittedly, you’ve seen the movie’s tale before, back when Warner Bros. released a truncated, heavily reshot version into theaters in 2017. But that two-hour theatrical cut of Justice League, assembled by director Joss Whedon, really is a night and day different film. It shares many of the same scenes and story beats, but it lacks Snyder’s singular grandiosity and tonal consistency.

Comparing all the significant changes between the two versions—which we’ll hereby distinguish as the “Snyder Cut” and “Whedon Cut”—creates a fascinating juxtaposition of the different choices filmmakers can make with similar material, as well as the drastically disparate visions the directors had for these six superheroes and the larger DC Extended Universe. So join us as we contrast all the major changes (and by and large improvements) made by Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

The Opening

One of the most surprising changes made by the Snyder Cut comes immediately. Back when the ostensible Whedon Cut of Justice League opened in theaters, one thing many assumed was unchanged from Snyder’s vision was the opening credits. With imagery clearly filmed by the director—including unused footage from the Superman funeral sequence in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—the downbeat credits were edited to Singrid’s rendition of “Everybody Knows,” a cover of a song from one of Snyder’s favorite musicians, Lenoard Cohen. I’m also fairly certain only Snyder would film a homeless man with a cardboard sign saying “I tried” in a superhero movie (the destitute figure may still appear in the Snyder Cut in an overhead shot when Cyborg is later surveying the bleakness of the world).

Indeed, quite a bit of the Whedon Cut’s opening credits scenes are used elsewhere in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, including breathtaking imagery of the Superman symbol draped in black over London’s Tower Bridge. But the new edit foregoes a traditional opening credits sequence for a more restrained montage that returns to the climax of Batman v Superman, and to the moment when Henry Cavill‘s Superman dies. In pained slow-motion, we again experience the moment of Doomsday’s spike piercing Superman’s heart and see how his scream reverberates throughout the world.

The Snyder Cut is more directly linked to the previous movie with Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, complete with hair, hearing Superman’s cries from deep in the bowels of the Kryptonian ship. Meanwhile the echoes of Clark’s anguish reverberate all the way past Zeus’ magical cloak to Themyscira where the Amazons (rather impressively) have an entire army guarding the Mother Box they obtained 5,000 years ago. When the Mother Box hears Kal-El’s death rattle, it begins to crack, drawing a terrified Amazonian closer to its new glowing light.

And finally, we end with the cries being heard by Cyborg. It is on the image of a hunched over Ray Fisher that Snyder chooses to include his “directed by” title card, indicating a strong sense of solidarity with the character and the actor who plays him after Cyborg was largely sidelined in the Whedon Cut. Clearly this is going to be a different movie.

Batman

Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne remains the focal point, at least in terms of leadership, of both the Snyder and Whedon cuts of the film. But right down to how they’re introduced, these are subtly diverging interpretations of the character. In the Whedon Cut, Batman has the first scene of the movie that isn’t shot on an iPhone. It gets Affleck in costume immediately and features archetypal Gotham City imagery as Batman uses a criminal as bait for a Parademon, an alien from the planet Apokolips that Batman is already familiar with. He’s so aware of these creatures that Batman ignores the thief spelling out the subtext of Justice League’s first act: With Superman dead, where does that leave us?

By contrast, you intrinsically feel that absence in the Snyder Cut. Whereas Whedon and WB got Batman in the costume faster for a tongue-in-cheek action sequence with screaming crooks and flying aliens, Zack Snyder’s Justice League ignores the Batsuit for a clean two hours. Instead, it opens with Bruce Wayne already “north” in a remote part of Europe near the arctic. We get the impression he’s been traveling for weeks on a horse and over mountains, sporting a bushy beard as he reaches the fishing village Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) has provided supplies to.

The scene where Batman meets Aquaman is more or less the same, but tonally Snyder evokes a funereal quality by letting the scene breathe in Bruce’s desperation instead of Arthur’s flippancy. And rather than Bruce noticing an inserted mural of Mother Boxes being what upsets Arthur, it’s Bruce pulling a trick from Momoa’s on screen wife on Game of Thrones which sets Aquaman off: he reveals after his hosts have made fools of themselves that he too can speak Icelandic. (There is also no longer a joke where Bruce says, “I hear you can talk to fish.”)

This somber opening is strikingly different and a vast improvement (see the Aquaman section for more). After Arthur rebuffs Bruce’s request to team-up, Bruce’s defeated return trip home is also subtly changed. For starters, we see his journey to his private jet where Alfred is waiting. In the Whedon Cut, the pair’s conversation after Bruce has shaved is a reshot sequence with some admittedly amusing character-building dialogue, like Alfred saying, “I miss the days when one’s biggest concern was exploding wind-up penguins.” The Snyder Cut’s version is more expository and ominous. As neither has seen a Parademon yet in this version, Alfred doubts whether Bruce needs to build a team based on the ravings of a now incarcerated and visibly insane Lex Luthor. Batman says he isn’t just doing this based on Luthor.

“I made a promise to him on his grave,” Bruce broods about the Kryptonian alien he hounded to near death in the last movie.

The next time we see Bruce Wayne is in a scene that appeared in the Whedon Cut, if slightly different. It’s when Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince breaks into his “building” with million-dollar security. However, the Whedon Cut led viewers to believe this airplane hangar-like space was the Batcave (even though it visually looks quite different). The Snyder Cut confirms it is a decrepit warehouse near the docks in Gotham harbor. Gone also is the cheeky line, “Yeah, it looked expensive,” from Diana when Bruce mentions the cost of his security equipment.

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In this off-site Batcave area, it’s also established by Alfred that he and Bruce Wayne have built new gauntlets that absorb energy (they come in especially handy later when they save Bruce from Superman’s heat ray vision).

The first time the gauntlets are used occurs when Batman leads a nascent Justice League beneath the tunnels of Striker Island in Gotham harbor. Up until that point, most of Affleck’s scenes remain the same, even if they breathe or are edited slightly differently. Batman recruits Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) to join the Justice League while talking about competitive ice dancing, and looks positively exhausted when Barry sees the Bat-Signal. The early Commissioner Gordon scenes are also the same, albeit now without composer Danny Elfman’s Batman theme from 1989.

In the tunnels, Batman’s scenes diverge again though. There is more of the misterioso act when Victor Stone (Cyborg) says, “I heard about you. Didn’t think you were real.” The Dark Knight answers, “I’m real when it’s useful.” Additionally, Batman doesn’t really mentor the Flash in this sequence or in any other going forward. Gone is the Flash admitting he’s terrified at seeing Steppenwolf and Bruce advising he “save one” person and will then know what he needs to do.

Instead, the Flash says, “I guess that’s the bad guy” in the Snyder Cut, and Batman stoically responds, “Good guess.” Bruce also drops his sense of humor, losing some solid bits like “Sorry guys, I didn’t bring a sword” when the Knightcrawler starts shooting up Parademons. Now he simply says, “My turn.”

However, Bruce remains the stoic team leader, harnessing a steadier team dynamic. There are no insert shots of Commissioner Gordon telling Batman it’s good to see he’s playing well with others after the Striker Island fight, and rather than berate Wonder Woman and his team members into bringing Superman back from the dead, Bruce and the rest come to the same conclusion, silently.

During the sequence where Cyborg reveals the Mother Box can bring Superman back from the dead, no one says Kal-El’s name out loud. The Flash even asks, “Is everyone thinking it or am I going to have to say it?” The camera pans around the table and lands on Bruce, who is watching Cyborg’s projected image of Superman’s cape. It’s a nice moment for Affleck, who looks much more alert in this version than the Whedon Cut. The dialogue in the Snyder Cut can often be perfunctory and expository, but the vast four-hour running time leaves room for the actors to indulge in quiet moments. The only person who doubts the idea is Alfred who in another scene warns Bruce, “If you can’t bring down a charging bull, then don’t wave the red flag.”

Batman counters, “I’m operating on complete faith now.” Quite the about face from the last movie.

The team otherwise staying on the same page, even after the Superman fiasco (more on that below), is a stark difference with the Whedon Cut. Here Bruce invites the team into the Batcave proper after they lose all three Mother Boxes, with teammates regrouping; in the Whedon Cut there is a strained attempt to create tension. Particularly between Bruce and Diana….

Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot has spoken in the past about how she was unhappy with the Justice League reshoots. While still not knowing the full details of what occurred behind the scenes, Zack Snyder’s Justice League makes apparent why she’d be disappointed with the direction of her added scenes.

To be fair, Wonder Woman is still objectified to a certain degree in the Snyder Cut. Her non-warrior attire still revolves around several low-cut dresses, and there is still a (much more understated) flirtation between Diana and Bruce. In an early scene of her and Bruce discussing their prospective teammates in front of a computer—with an awkward stab at humor where she coaxes out of Bruce that Arthur said no—there’s a moment where their hands trip over the mouse at the same time, like they’re in a teenage rom-com. Similarly, when Barry and Victor are digging up Clark Kent’s grave, Barry asks Victor if he thinks Wonder Woman would “be into younger guys.” Victor dismisses the thirstiness by saying, “Barry, she’s 5,000 years old. Every guy’s a younger guy.”

But these moments are few and far between. In the Whedon Cut, they’re constant with Alfred teasing Bruce about Batman inviting Wonder Woman to a candlelit team-up dinner, and a gross gag where Flash saves Wonder Woman during the Striker Island fight but then awkwardly lands on top of her body and gets flustered. Perhaps most frustratingly though, her character arc is reduced to a lot of flirting with Bruce, and coming to see he is right when he chastises her for “still being hung up” on Steve Trevor. She then helps him undress from his armor and shares a drink with him, like co-workers with a forced “will they or won’t they” chemistry.

All of that is gone in the Snyder Cut, which instead focuses on presenting Wonder Woman as the most ferocious and noble of the film’s six superheroes.

Her first scene is much the same as in the Whedon Cut, although it’s another film school-ready example for what a difference post-production makes. We see a group of eco-terrorists take a school group hostage, and Wonder Woman stops them. But in the Whedon Cut, the scene is nimble and brightly colored with a tongue-in-cheek quality, right down to the way Elfman uses an orchestra to play Hans Zimmer’s previously electric “Wonder Woman” theme. In the Snyder Cut, the sequence lasts nearly eight minutes in a desaturated, gray color scheme. The sadism with which the terrorists want to kill their hostages is belabored, and Junkie XL uses a fearsome version of Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme while introducing one of his own, which relies on a haunting choral harmony.

In the new cut, Wonder Woman not only throws the bomb through the roof but jumps with it to make sure it explodes faar above the skyline. And when she returns, her power move to stop the head terrorist from killing the school children is to obliterate him into dust, with his hat blowing out the window and before the faces of shocked and unnerved London police officers. Meanwhile Wonder Woman then turns around after slaughtering this man (plus another terrorist who’s head she smashes into a wall) to rather jarringly smile at the school children. She leans down before one girl to say, “You can be whatever you want to be.” It’s actually sweeter than her saying “[I’m] a believer,” but I’m not sure it works given the new tone of the scene.

The next time we see Diana is a longer version of the scene where she discovers her mother has fired a burning arrow into the Temple of the Amazons in Greece. Snyder actually uses an impressive long one-take shot where Diana remains in focus, cleaning a statue at the Louvre, while her co-workers stay out of focus and needle her with questions. It’s a genuinely dryly funny, restrained moment, unique for this genre.

There is also an all-new scene of Diana going to Greece and retrieving the arrow from the temple. It’s one of the better additions that feels like a pseudo-Indiana Jones scene of Diana using the arrow to unlock a hidden chamber beneath the ruins, and then descending with a torch. Below she discovers a spooky room filled with spooky murals containing even spookier images of Mother Boxes and war… and a godlike monster DC fans will recognize as Darkseid.

Diana’s narration of what these images tell her is also different (more on that in the Darkseid section), with no lakeside chat with Bruce. Rather than using romantic imagery, Snyder favors to-the-point storytelling between colleagues as Diana tells Bruce in his new Batplane that the Age of Heroes defeated Darkseid. That age is over.

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While Bruce is recruiting Barry, Diana has a nice scene with Alfred about making tea before Victor Stone summons her by hacking the Bat-computer. She has no idea who he is in this scene (as opposed to having seen him earlier in the Whedon Cut), and there is no conversation where she convinces him to meet her. Instead, he designates location, summoning her. Their next scene together is more or less the same as in the Whedon Cut.

Overall, Diana has few added scenes and is honestly one of the less developed characters in the Snyder Cut despite being one-half of the team’s leadership. So the inclination of giving her more to do than discover Darkseid/Steppenwolf’s backstory was a prudent one, but all it left her with was smiling longingly as Batman drives off in the Batmobile during the third act. Ugh.

The Amazons on the other hand…

The Amazons

While Wonder Woman’s scenes in the Snyder Cut largely remain the same, the Amazons are given subtle but fierce new texture in their few added moments.

The movie opens with the Amazons tirelessly on guard when the Mother Box awakens. The next time we see them, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) is arriving to inspect the phenomenon for a prolonged build-up to Steppenwolf’s attack. When one soldier tells their Queen maybe the box will go back to sleep, Hippolyta remarks, “Evil doesn’t sleep. It waits.”

Steppenwolf eventually attacks, leading to one of the best moments in the Snyder Cut. When he says his Parademons will feed off their fear, Hippolyta calls to her Amazons, “Daughters of Themyscira, show him your fear!” In a tribal yell matched by Junkie XL’s score, they chant back, “We have no fear!” Slaughter commences.

The battle is much bigger and more reliant on slow-motion, including shots of Hippolyta flipping off walls and hesitating to bury the other Amazonians alive. Yep, when she tells her sisters to seal the cave, it’s a death trap. The door collapses, and then the whole structure also falls into the sea. There is then A. Long. Beat. of Hippolyta thinking she’s killed Steppenwolf before he and his Parademons ascend from the sea to slaughter more of the Amazons.

The Amazonians’ defeat is largely the same, although there is now a long denouement, with the Amazons having a musical prayer that grieves their dead and brings magic to the arrow they’ll fire to warn Diana. The Amazons and Wonder Woman iconography are also much more heavily featured in flashbacks to Darkseid’s first attack on Earth 5,000 years ago. We get better shots of Zeus and Ares (David Thewlis from Wonder Woman), and Amazonian Venelia (Doutzen Kroes) being filmed like she’s one of Snyder’s 300 Spartans in the ancient war. But all of that is just background for…

Steppenwolf and Darkseid

Steppenwolf is one of the most dramatically improved characters in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Beyond more spikes being added to his armor (and his chin being slightly shrunken from its ridiculous size), the Ciarán Hinds-voiced baddie’s motivations are wholly different. In the Whedon Cut, he was a generic “conquer the world” supervillain who was defeated thousands of years ago on Earth by an alliance of men, Amazonians, and Atlanteans. He then returns and refers to his Mother Boxes as “mother.”

While he still chases magic boxes he wants to use to conquer the world in the Snyder Cut, he’s at least a little more nuanced and a lot more despairing toward the whole endeavor. Steppenwolf is revealed to be a meek middle management malcontent with dreams of coming home. As we eventually learn in dialogue exchanges over BvS’ weird molten metal intergalactic telecommunication technology, Steppenwolf is a pariah back home on the planet Apokolips. Long ago, he was party to a failed coup against comic book creator Jack Kirby’s ultimate space fascist, Darkseid (Ray Porter). Think Thanos before there was a Thanos.

“I fall before you,” Steppenwolf moans during his first conversation with Darkseid’s minion DeSaad (Peter Guinness). “Let me make a plea that I may come home after I take this world in [Darkseid’s] name.” But DeSaad will not hear it, saying Steppenwolf is basically on probation for helping an attempted coup against Darkseid millennia ago, even if Steppenwolf then changed sides and killed Darkseid’s other betrayers. Now Steppenwolf has a debt of a 150,000 worlds he must conquer in Darkseid’s name if he wishes to return home.

Basically, Steppenwolf is a putz. Hence he can be both menacing and pathetic when he first attacks the Amazons and remarks of them, with a hint of resigned boredom, “Defenders? Defenders have failed a hundred thousand worlds. They always fail.” And it’s with exhaustion he decides to create his home base on an irradiated scrap of Russian land because it’s toxic.

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Darkseid, by contrast, is introduced to be Emperor Palpatine meets Sauron. Aye, there’s a real Lord of the Rings level of ambition to Diana’s flashback to the Age of Heroes. Rather than Steppenwolf, it’s Darkseid who first steps foot on Earth, turning some of the soil into the scorched cursive hellscape that Kirby fans will be intimately familiar with. We also get a better look of his foes, including an alien Green Lantern whom Darkseid personally kills by cutting off his hand. The green ring flies away before the fiend can grab it.

The sequence is filmed to mirror the opening moments of The Fellowship of the Ring, with Darkseid’s defeat harkening back to the glorious day the people of Middle-earth were victorious. However, personally speaking, it doesn’t reach that height, with Darkseid coming off like more of an overpowered Orc who’s out-flexed by Ares. Yep, David Thewlis’ villain from Wonder Woman is revealed to be the guy who whoops Darkseid’s ass in the end, planting an axe in his shoulder blade and leading the Greatest Evil to be carried from the battlefield, screaming.

Much later in the movie, Darkseid is introduced properly when Steppenwolf reveals he’s learned Earth is home to the Anti-Life Equation. It’s a pretty vague secondary MacGuffin in the context of the Snyder Cut, although Steppenwolf says it would give Darkseid power over the multiverse—it’s unclear why Darkseid did not know it was on Earth when he lost to Ares and the band of heroes, or why he never could come back for it.

However, Darkseid then appears on the telecom with Steppenwolf, causing the Spiked One to take off his armor for the first time and show his bare flesh in fealty to his space dictator. Darkseid promises Steppenwolf he can come home once he’s taken Earth and brings Darkseid the Anti-Life Equation.

We also get a glimpse of how Darkseid plans to use it. Elsewhere in the movie, Cyborg has an inexplicable vision the moment right before a Mother Box is used to bring Superman back from the dead: It’s of an Armageddon much darker than the Knightmare scene in Batman v Superman. The sequence begins with the Amazons finally off Themyscira. They’re burning Wonder Woman in a funeral pyre after putting two coins on her eyes for the boatmen. Hippolyta cries.

Elsewhere in a montage, Superman grieves over the scorched body that can only be Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Darkseid appears to place a not-so-comforting hand on his shoulder. Later we see the ruins of the Hall of Justice that diehard Superfriends fans will recognize, with an evil Superman flying over it with heat ray eyes. Finally, we see Darkseid himself murder Aquaman with his own trident…

This appears to be an inevitable future of “the Snyder Verse.”

Aquaman

But that is not the destination of the current film. The Snyder Cut, after all, has to lay a lot of groundwork that’ll make us care about these characters in the here and now.

Aquaman is the first to get that treatment in his early scene with Bruce Wayne (detailed more above). The Whedon Cut includes Arthur Curry saying, “You’re out of your mind, Bruce Wayne” as he gets into freezing cold water to swim away. In the Snyder Cut, we don’t see him shoot off. Rather Arthur disappears quietly beneath bubbles between shots. Snyder’s desire to emphasize the godlike wonder of these characters is then underlined in neon when several villagers see him off by singing a worshipful Icelandic hymn in Aquaman’s honor.

If the point is missed, after several minutes of crooning, one woman walks up to caress the sweater Aquaman took off and sniff it, savoring his undoubtedly godlike musk.

The sequence of Aquaman saving a crew from a shipwreck is almost exactly the same in the Snyder Cut, although there are no added jokes about him calling the captain “Ahab” in the bar. Additionally, there’s a really nice grace note of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “There is a Kingdom” playing when Aquaman goes to brood stoically before a raging storm. It’s exactly the same as in the Whedon Cut, but Whedon makes it generic blockbuster filler with a White Stripes song playing in the background. Snyder goes for a mournful, reflective tone that resembles the better elements of his version of Justice League.

Afterward Aquaman makes his first of two trips to Atlantis in the film—meeting Vulko (Willem Dafoe) in a scene that was entirely deleted. It turns out the effect of Atlalnteans only talking in air bubbles was always a Snyder affectation, although what was lost in the Whedon Cut (and eventual Aquaman movie) is that all the properly born Atlanteans speak with English accents. Dafoe’s Vulko is a bit hammier, seeming adjacent to Dafoe’s wonderful turn in The Lighthouse. But Amber Heard’s Mera speaking her lines in a purely Posh London accent after a whole movie of her using an American one in Aquaman is a real trip.

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By Marc Buxton

What brings Arthur back the second time is Steppenwolf diving below the waves for the Mother Box. He learns of its location (which is unexplained in the Whedon Cut) by torturing Atlanteans whom Parademons have dragged from the ocean, reading the water dwellers’ minds with some gruesome sci-fi spider robot.

Steppenwolf’s actual attack on Atlantis is much more coherent in the Snyder Cut. With action beats given time to pause, and Steppenwolf’s surprise appearance underwater less hilariously cringe-inducing. Mera also gets a cool moment where the villain has her pushed against the wall and says she can’t run away, “I wasn’t trying to,” she responds. Previously, we saw her use superpowers to suck water out of air pockets; now she uses it to suck the blood out of Steppenwolf’s face. He of course throws her back into the water and almost kills her if not for Arthur��s chivalrous, splash-page rescue of his future love interest.

Most of Aquaman’s subsequent scenes play out the same, although he is much less brutish and frat bro-y. There are at least three fewer “yeahs” and “alrights!,” and there is no scene of him sitting on Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, blurting out he’s scared and horny at the same time.

The Flash

Interestingly, the Flash is both the least developed of the superheroes in the Snyder Cut and also the most unchanged by Whedon. It appears that Ezra Miller’s seemingly improvised humor was the element of least importance to Snyder, and the most useful thing Snyder filmed for Whedon’s purposes.

Maybe that’s why the Flash’s first scene in the Snyder Cut does not occur until nearly 70 minutes into the film. It’s also a wholly different introduction scene to what we saw in the theatrical cut. In the restored sequence, Barry Allen is applying for a job as a dog groomer at a pet shop when the unnamed woman who just left—or as fans know her, Iris West (Kiersey Clemons)—is almost pancaked by a semi-truck. The driver, in a rather crude cliché, is a simpleton reaching for his food on the cab’s floor when he slams into Iris’ convertible.

Luckily, Barry sees it coming and slows things down for another somber needle drop on the soundtrack. The whole thing plays like a more wistful, alternative rock version to one of Quicksilver’s big scenes in the X-Men movies. In extreme slow-motion, Barry catches a hot dog from an exploding hot dog vendor, placing it in his pocket, and then catches Iris out of her shattered car. When time returns to normal, Iris realizes she was saved by this cute dork, who then rushes back in time for the pet shop owner to be unsure who broke her window in the blink of an eye. Barry’s feeding the hot dog to her canines.

Otherwise, by and large, the Flash’s scenes remain the same until near the end. Snyder has removed Whedon’s unfunny addition of Barry drawing glasses on the eyes of someone in line while waiting to see his dad at prison, but the Miller/Billy Crudup scene remains the same but longer. Bruce Wayne still breaks into Barry’s loft and tells Barry his superpower is that “I’m rich.”

In the Striker Island action sequence, rather than “save one,” the Flash leads an exodus of civilians to the surface. And when debris nearly falls on them, he creates a shield by running so fast he looks like lightning in the sky blocking the falling rubble. He also is wounded by a Parademon laser blast so sharp it leaves him bleeding from the side of his leg, temporarily hobbled.

The one significant change before the climax is Barry and Victor digging up Clark Kent’s grave. It’s a sincerely quiet moment that (Wonder Woman leering aside) is refreshingly earnest and hushed for a superhero movie.

“I could do this in a second,” Barry says. Victor responds, “Yeah.” The implication is they should take their time and give Superman the honor he deserves. After his body is exhumed and wrapped up, Barry says, “He was my hero.”

Cyborg

Of the main five heroes in Justice League, Cyborg turned out to be the most important by far. Whatever occurred behind the scenes between Whedon, the producers, and Fisher, the actor had reason to be frustrated simply because his character arc was removed. In its place, he was forced to say, “Booyah.”

The Snyder Cut restores Victor Stone/Cyborg’s importance from the opening credits onward. It begins by basking in what isn’t sad between Victor and his father Dr. Silas Stone (Joe Morton). Initially, we spend more time with Silas, as the father throws himself into his work at STAR Labs to better understand the Mother Boxes.

Eventually, Cyborg gets his own flashback to a time when he was more man than machine. Under an aching musical theme written by Junkie XL, it’s revealed Victor was a gifted genius (his dean even says so!) at Gotham University. Victor is so intelligent, while also being a football star, that he can get away with hacking into the school’s database and changing a friend’s grades.

We also meet his mother who defends her son’s kind heart from the dean in a sequence that’s intercut with his slow-motion football glory, plus a side of melancholy because daddy wasn’t there. Only mom shows up for the game. Afterward they argue in the car about whether Dad really cares about Victor. A car is then seen rushing (unsurprisingly) into frame, T-Boning their car.

The process of Victor becoming Cyborg is only hinted at in scenes through various other flashbacks. But we do see Silas being told his wife is dead and that he’ll soon have to let his son go, too. Hence the bad blood between the two nearly throughout the Snyder Cut’s whole four hours. When we see Silas come home to Victor at their apartment, the son will not even speak to his father. Instead he reluctantly agrees to listen to a recording his father left for him. On the tape, Silas tells his son that the fate of the entire world is now “in your hands, Vic.”

Thanks to the alien technology of the Mother Box used to resurrect Cyborg, Victor has superpowers, which we see him fumblingly try out by flying on his father’s Gotham rooftop. But that’s “just the tip of the tip” of the iceberg, according to Silas’ voiceover. Victor’s high-end computer body now gives him the ability to control the world’s nuclear arsenals and the world’s economy.

This is visualized in a CGI mind palace created in Cybrog’s digital brain. There Fisher gets to play Victor as whole, and without a red eye. Some of it is effective, like floating missiles above his head. Other bits are just ludicrous, like financial markets being personified by a CGI bear slapping a CGI bull. It’s… weird.

But there are nice elements too, like Victor choosing to use his superpowers to see folks suffering, and giving a struggling single mother $150,000 out of an ATM machine. Through it all, he remains hooded and lonely, catching glimpses of people staring at his glowing countenance. It’s why he destroys his father’s recording when Dad tries to stop talking about Cyborg’s powers and instead address Vic as a loving father.

What draws Victor out of his proverbial cave is of course his father being kidnapped by Parademons. He seeks Diana Prince’s counsel but ignores her when she says his powers are a gift—I did miss the line, “If these are gifts why am I always the one paying for them?” Still, as in the Whedon Cut, he shows up on GCPD’s rooftop to join the team.

The one big addition during all the fighting is that when Cyborg flies now, his famous comic book face armor that protects everything but his red eye is finally used on screen. Plus he gets to save his father. Silas is shocked his son came for him, but Victor only says, “You’re my father.” Nothing more needs to be said.

After the Striker Island fight, however, Victor again takes center stage when Aquaman accuses him of possibly being compromised by his alien tech body. Cyborg reveals in a visual flashback, which Victor walks through in his mind palace, that the Mother Box was acquired by the Allies during World War II, taken from the Nazis’ collection of occult goodies in 1944. For nearly a century, it sat undisturbed in the Department of Defense until his father Silas realized it was similar to the technology used by the Kryptonian ship in downtown Metropolis.

That’s how Silas discovered its power, and in a horrifying flashback, he uses it when he looks at his son’s body on a slab, Vic’s lower torso gone. When Silas uses the magic box on Victor, the son screams bloody murder.

It is Victor Stone who puts the pieces together for the nascent Justice League and gets the heroes to begin acting like a real team. He puts together for the others that the Mother Box can be used to bring Superman back from the dead, and projects an image of Big Boy Blue for everyone to see.

Vic leads the team into STAR Labs to do the deed. And when Silas sees his son, still not talking to him, walk by with Batman and other weirdos, Dad doesn’t call it in. In fact, Vic and Silas are why the heroes win in this version, because after the Superman resurrection is bolloxed up, and Steppenwolf arrives to retrieve the third Mother Box, rather than run away, Silas sacrifices himself by heating the box with a laser so hot, that Batman can conveniently track wherever it goes in the world.

One could argue Cyborg was the most crucial of the heroes in organizing a true team team. Well, him and the legacy of another…

Superman

One imagines Superman’s treatment by Snyder and screenwriter Chris Terrio in what we now call the Snyder Cut, and Batman v Superman before it, played a major role in Warners’ eventual lack of confidence in the filmmakers. The beginning of the Whedon Cut even starts by course correcting where Whedon might’ve thought Snyder went wrong. Hence the awkward smartphone video of Superman talking to some children with a big smile on his face (and mustache unconvincingly erased from it).

Honestly, though? The depiction of Superman in the Snyder Cut is at times quite heroic and sweet. Certainly sweeter than the abysmal “no one stays good forever in this world” line of dialogue from BvS. However, there are major caveats.

Someone who unequivocally benefits from the new version is Amy Adams’ Lois Lane. While she again has relatively little to do, the rare moments where she is on screen in the Snyder Cut count a hell of a lot more. For starters, there is a genuinely heartfelt sequence about grief—one that it’s fair to wonder if Snyder has added special emphasis to. We follow Lois as she begins her morning routine by getting out of bed, buying a cup of coffee, and going to spend an hour or so at Superman’s memorial in downtown Metropolis.

The soundtrack plays Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Distant Sky,” and the scene bleeds a dignified sorrow as Lois unfurls her umbrella in the rain and walks up to Superman’s memorial to lay flowers. The cop she gives her morning coffee to asks Miss Lane if she ever skips a day, and she says there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. This is the transition to the Superman flag in London.

Afterward Lois goes nearly two hours before appearing again in the film, while Diane Lane’s Ma Kent (who is seen early in the picture leaving home) vanishes for well over that amount of time. It makes their reunion scene in Lois’ apartment feel awkward and obligatory after such a long pause, but the restored scene is still better than the “Clark told me you were the thirstiest girl he ever met” in the Whedon Cut. At least until the Ma Kent of this scene is pointlessly revealed to be Martian Manhunter. (Sigh.) It’s almost as bad a bit of forced world-building as future Barry Allen warning Batman about Lois Lane in BvS.

Meanwhile the League all comes to the idea of resurrecting Superman at the same time, and there are no second guesses other than Alfred’s skepticism. Thus begins a resurrection sequence where it’s genuinely affecting to hear Zimmer’s Superman theme again as Kal-El’s body is placed into the Kryptonian ships goo-room. Similarly, Snyder achieves another grace moment when Lois sees Superman flying in the sky right after his resurrection. Before this moment, Lois made the decision in bed that morning for this to be the last time she’d visit and grieve Superman’s death at the memorial. We’re also teased to the fact she keeps a pregnancy test on the nightstand. So she made her final trip to his memorial.

And on the same day, Superman came back.

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Unfortunately, his return is much the same as it was in the Whedon Cut, with the gloomy gray cinematography and the outright sinister version of Superman who’s apparently forgotten his identity. In fact, he’s more menacing than the familiar footage of him smacking down Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Now he takes time to study his monument before still coldly attacking the other superheroes and using his heat ray vision to try and murder U.S. soldiers stationed by his memorial.

If not for the interference of Batman, Superman would’ve killed servicemen. For what it’s worth though, he tries to kill Batman too. Gone is the “do you bleed?” callback to the previou cut. Instead Superman uses his heat ray vision to try and cook Batman inside his own cowl—which is only stopped by Bruce’s special “energy absorption” gauntlets.

As with the Whedon Cut, Bruce’s death is prevented when Lois shows up, but now of her own volition, and she and Clark fly away to Smallville. And once there, Superman’s soul returns and we get nice Americana scenes of Clark Kent watching a butterfly land on his hand, and Lois joining him in the wheat field.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says of the engagement ring he planned to give her before his death, and which she keeps on her hand. Soon Ma Kent joins them and it’s a lovely moment of reconciliation with the women in his life. It’s also far more emotionally effective than the version of Lois apologizing to Clark for “not being strong” after he died in the Whedon Cut.

And yet… it’s compromised by the constant foreshadowing of another heel turn in Superman’s future. The Kryptonian ship keeps warning, pleading even, with Cyborg that there is “no turning back from this action” as he prepares to resurrect Superman. Only then does he have a vision of an evil Kal-El drifting over a smoldering Metropolis. This muddle created by these conflicting sensibilities—folksy domesticity versus foreboding doom—do not mesh. At all.

At the very least, Clark returns to the Kryptonian ship to find there was a black Superman suit hidden all along in the corner. Additionally, he hears both of his dads’ voices, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Pa Kent (Kevin Costner). Some of it is old audio about “they’ll join you in the sun” from Man of Steel. Some of it is new recordings, which don’t really make sense as both men are dead. But we hear Pa repeat, “Fly son” and Jor-El intone, “Love them as we loved you.”

Black-suited Superman then flies into the orbit, taking the same Christ pose he had in Man of Steel, visually suggesting the Lord is risen, hallelujah. Superman then flies to the Batcave and meets Alfred, who tells him where to go… for the end of things.

The Ending

It is the ending, when everyone comes together, where the Whedon Cut and Snyder Cut perhaps most definitively diverge. It’s still technically the same ending: the five main members of the League show up in a nondescript Russian town to fight Parademons. Superman returns at a desperate moment and they all prevent the Mother Boxes from becoming one ungodly MacGuffin that would destroy Earth, knocking Steppenwolf on his CG ass.

Yet how these elements are incorporated, and where they leave the DC Extended Universe, are like on different planes of existence. From the top, the gore level (as with the Striker Island fight) is just more extreme in the Snyder Cut. Batman shoots Parademons with his Batmobile and then later uses the aliens’ own plasma guns against them; Wonder Woman beheads and cripples more computer generated baddies than all the armies of Gondor combined. Even Aquaman’s trident tastes blood.

There is also a much stronger sense of teamwork in the Snyder Cut. Batman’s suicide play of driving headlong into carnage makes more sense in this version as he crashes his plane into one of Steppenwolf’s magical machines, which brings down a force field and lets the team enter beneath the villain’s dome. And instead of Wonder Woman coming alone to Batman’s rescue, the whole team fights alongside his Batmobile for a freeze frame worthy of a splash page. It really is bizarre that Whedon, who was so good at these kinds of images in his Avengers movies, took this one out.

Once inside Steppenwolf’s evil lair, things are also far more exciting. There are no civilians (or randomly shoehorned in Russian family) to save. But there are enormous stakes as Cyborg has to stop the Boxes by merging with them. In the process, he enters his proverbial mind palace to face the three boxes in the flesh, as they’ve turned into literal witch crones. At first they appear as his dead parents, promising mom is ready to be reunited with her “broken boy,” but it’s a ruse that torments Victor to an even greater degree.

Meanwhile Steppenwolf has opened a Boom Tube portal to Apokolips where Darkseid, DeSaad, and Granny Goodness are waiting to take over Earth and claim the Anti-Life Equation. It was always “save the world” stakes in both versions, but you actually feel them in the Snyder Cut, particularly since… the heroes fail.

In a development that maybe would’ve left a Flash solo movie with nowhere to go, Darkseid and Steppenwolf briefly win, the three Mother Boxes merging despite Cyborg’s best efforts. The world instantly begins being ripped apart by a CG blur which presumably will turn Earth into a hellscape. The Flash, who is further afield from the action and bleeding from a gruesome wound in the side of his stomach, knows he has only one choice: to run backwards in time fast enough to reverse the flow of time.

It’s a trick that is expected to play heavily in DC Films’ upcoming Flashpoint inspired film, and Barry executes it here to undo the heroes’ defeat. Running into a seeming tornado of blue computer generated lightning, Barry undoes the damage and gives Cyborg a little more time, with Superman’s help, to stop the boxes from combining.

The action prevents the world’s end and allows Aquaman to skewer Steppenwolf like a fish on a hook. In the Whedon Cut, Steppenwolf is slashed by Wonder Woman and unsatisfyingly undone by becoming so fearful that he triggers his Parademons’ scent, and they eat him alive. Essentially, it’s a dippy retread of The Lion King where Scar is devoured by his own hyenas.

While certainly more bloodthirsty, there’s no denying there’s a satisfaction in Aquaman stabbing Steppenwolf, Superman punching him, and finally Wonder Woman beheading him. That is justice for her fallen Amazonian sisters.

Afterward, the whole direction of the DCEU still pivots toward darkness in Snyder’s vision. The Boom Tube to Apokolips stays open long enough for Steppenwolf’s head to return home. Darkseid crushes it beneath his foot. He also accepts that, for whatever reason, they cannot reach Earth through the Boom Tubes due to this defeat. “We will do things the old way,” Darkseid hisses. He summons the armada to head to Earth, setting up a very different future for the DCEU.

Epilogue

Continuing on the divergent paths between the Whedon and Snyder Cuts, the epilogue of the latter (complete with a title card) essentially presents the road not taken in the DCEU. Many of the elements we saw in the Whedon Cut remain, such as Bruce and Diana opening up Wayne Manor to become the headquarters for the Justice League by building a table “with room for more;” we also see Barry tell his incarcerated Dad he got a job at the Central City crime lab; and of course there’s Superman’s beloved shirt rip.

However, there’s so much more added on by Snyder. Some of it is very intriguing, such as Diana taking the arrow from her mother and looking out at the horizon of the Aegean Sea by the Temple of the Amazons. The implication is she’s begun yearning to return home. Could this have once been the plot thread of Wonder Woman 2? Could it still become the plot thread of Wonder Woman 3?

The most effective element is, again, Cyborg as he reconstructs his father’s broken audio recording and hears Silas’ love as a “father twice over.” It’s bittersweet Victor never got to verbally reconcile with his papa, but just saying, “You’re my father” might’ve been enough.

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Yet the epilogue ultimately becomes a teaser for what Snyder’s original vision for a Justice League trilogy might’ve looked like. In the Whedon Cut, the sequence of Lex Luthor on a yacht with Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) comes as a post-credit sequence. In the Snyder Cut, it’s part of the body of the story. The build-up to Lex’s escape is longer, and once on the yacht he has no quippy joke about “forming a league of our own.” But he does tell Deathstroke that Batman’s secret identity is Bruce Wayne.

That captures Deathstroke’s attention and seems to set up potentially catastrophic events for Bruce’s future in Affleck’s now defunct The Batman movie. It also would appear to further set up the Legion of Doom Justice League sequel with Deathstroke and Luthor.

But that’s pittance compared to the far bigger stinger for the future. In one more “Knightmare,” and another vision of a future where Darkseid has turned Earth into a Mad Max apocalypse, we once more see Affleck’s Batman as a road warrior in a desert, this time with Amber Heard’s Mera, the Flash, Deathstroke, and Cyborg as his road trip buddies. Clearly Cyborg’s vision earlier in the film came to pass, with Mera swearing she’ll kill Darkseid in order to avenge Arthur.

The biggest bombshell here though is that this is where Jared Leto reprises his performance as the Joker. I wish I could say it was better than this grubby, grinning, awkward reshoot moment where he talks about giving the Batman a reach around. Bruce’s dialogue isn’t much better as he mumbles, “When I held Harley Quinn, and she was bleeding and dying, she begged me with her last breath that when I killed you—and make no mistake I will fucking kill you—that I do it slow.”

We’re a long way from Adam West, eh? The sequence ends with Evil Superman appearing with heat ray vision, coming to kill all of them. This clearly stands as a trailer for Justice League sequels that almost certainly will never be. It’s also a vision for the Justice League trilogy Snyder originally planned with Terrio that’s making its rounds across the internet. Part III was meant to be about Batman and the Flash in the ruins of a destroyed Earth traveling back in time so Batman could make sure that Lois Lane never died—sacrificing his life so Superman never turned to evil. Again.

I can’t say this scene adds a lot to this movie, any more than the final, final tease of Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter showing up one more random time to give Bruce Wayne a pat on the shoulder. He says your parents would be proud of you and that he wants to join his team. Affleck’s Bruce is strangely not perplexed by any of this and gives off a general “Cool story, bro” vibe.

Martian Manhunter travels into a future we will never see, setting up a sequel that has been abandoned. It’s a shame, but it is so brazenly, defiantly Snyder’s vision—and so far removed from the Whedon Cut’s goofy ending on Superman and Flash having a happy go lucky race to the Pacific—that one can at least give this to to the director: He did it his way. There’s something to be said about that.

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The post Zack Snyder’s Justice League vs. the Whedon Cut: What are the Differences? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3eTEkDF

[katherinemallory]

#5 Everyone’s got their own soft spot

Things have got quite complicated... If you want to know how, check it here: #1 #2 #3 #4

I kept shouting his name, but he ignored me. His silver Aston Martin DB10 has quickly disappeared. Great, I thought. I am soaking wet... And Bond seems to know my deepest, darkest secret. This is even worse than being out of active service.

I went up the stairs to my apartment. It turned out that I had difficulties with putting the key into the keyhole as my hands were shaking. I didn't know what I wanted to do, I didn't know anything, I was so overwhelmed. I just dreamed of taking a *really* long bath. A bath so long that it would take a week, and no one could disturb me... But before I took my wet clothes off, I searched my bag, looking for my phone. I checked on Amanda.

“Hello, this is Amanda Clarke speaking.”

It was the first time I've heard her real surname.

“Amanda, it's me, Katherine,” I uttered, feeling that my body was still shaking. Somehow I managed to keep my voice sweet. “It's good to hear you... Is everything alright? You didn't want to talk to me earlier.”

For a while there was no response.

“Yeah... I'm sorry, Kath,” she said like a person who doesn't have any hope left. “I'm really sorry I ruined everything.”

It was simply painful to hear that defeated tone.

“Hey, Amanda, you did ruin nothing. I asked how do *you* feel?”

There was a long moment of silence again.

“Honestly... I don't know anymore,” said Amanda, and then began to cry. “It was a-all my fault! I-I ruin-ned our mission and n-n-now... the whole se-e-ection is endange-e-red... it's-s... a nightmare,” she sobbed. “E-even M didn't spe-eak to me f-f-for long... H-he wa-anted me ou-ut of the-e office as soon a-as we e-e-entered...”

“Listen, it's not that,” I replied. “Surely he was angry, but believe me, not as angry as he could have been... I assume he just didn't expect us to get in trouble,” I kept wandering around my apartment, talking to Amanda as if I wanted to convince both her and myself that nothing serious has happened. “M will get over it soon. He knows the nature of our job. Just give him time,” I added in a single breath.

“T-t-thanks, Kath... it m-mea-ans a lot... and how-w are-e you...?”

I stopped in front of a mirror that was hanging on the wall next to my bedroom’s door. Hair: wet. Clothes: wet. Mood: would punch anyone who'd be standing near.

“Fine,” I sighed, “apart from the fact I just had an argument with Bond.”

“Wh-hat happene-ed??”

As soon as I realized what I've just confessed, I regretted it. From now on I had to be more cautious. No one could know the truth... or perhaps one person could, but definitely not one of the double-0s. And apart from that, Amanda’s got bigger problems on her mind than some pathetic life stories.

“Nevermind... You wouldn't believe me anyway... just some spy stuff.”

...

I took a long bath as I had planned, then changed into my pyjamas and went to bed. I felt like doing absolutely nothing, but there was one thing I couldn't take off my mind.

Despite being pretty angry at him, I tried to call Bond three times. And guess what, every single time my call went to voicemail. I quickly gave up and sent him a message instead:

James, I know you're upset, but we have to talk. I hope you’ll meet me when you're back... please take care of yourself.

KT

I looked at my phone once again (just to make sure that I have sent the message), and felt that my eyelids began to close...

...

I woke up early the next day, even though I did not set the alarm clock. Perfect, I thought just after I have woken up, I don’t have to hurry. It’s going to be a long day and I have plenty of time to prepare myself for it.

I looked at my phone to check if Bond has answered me. As there were still no new messages, I had only one option left: the smart-blood programme.

Hi Q, it’s Kath. Has James landed in Maldives already?

There was a response within a minute.

Hello Kath. I’m sorry, but I promised James that I’d not tell anyone except M. Hope you’ll have a good day.

I glanced over the message a couple of times in disbelief. Mr. Bond pretends not to care anymore... Bastard, I said to myself as I went to the bathroom.

The fact I got suspended from any field operations, didn't necessarily mean that I didn’t have to show up at the MI6 Headquarters - there was plenty of paper work, waiting there for me and Amanda... M didn’t give us any days off (unlike he did with other double-0s), and it felt like a punishment... A punishment we deserved without a doubt.

I wanted to look elegantly that day. Not only because I needed to improve my mood after recent events, but also because of my meeting with Eve. I always liked to dress-up for the meetings with my friends. I was really looking forward to our dinner, as I missed her dearly when I was in Switzerland. And, what is more, it was her whom I wanted to tell everything about my disagreement with Bond.

There was this gossip spreading in the double-0 section that Eve was head over heels in love with Bond, but I didn’t quite believe it. When we all met on my first day after promotion, I got an impression that from the whole double-0 section it was Bond himself who was most convinced of the rumours' genuineness. He assumed that Moneypenny had a huge crush on him, but Eve didn’t seem too worried about Bond taking me on a date. She didn’t try to interrupt him when he was talking to me, and, what is more, she didn’t even seem interested in our conversation. Maybe Eve was a good actress after all, but my instincts told me something weird was going on there.

I have chosen one of my least favourite suits - a bottle green one (I was never a big fan of that colour, but I guess I’ve changed my mind a bit after realizing *someone’s eyes* were green...) - and a white shirt. Simple, but not too classic. Ideal to make a statement, I thought as I took the last sip of my morning cup of Earl Grey.

...

Both me and Amanda were quite busy with all the paper work we had to do that morning, but we didn't complain. We obediently accepted the "punishment", even though it took its toll... After a few hours of intense work, I decided to take Eve for lunch as I had promised her the day before.

I went through the long corridor on the last floor that led to M’s office. It was a lovely, sunny morning and the walls were *radiant* because of the sunshine that was coming through the windows. Even the colour of the door at the end of the corridor appeared to be a bit more brighter that day.

When I came in, M was standing next to Moneypenny’s desk. He was holding a few pieces of paper, probably some important documents, and it looked like he was telling her a story. M stopped talking, and they both looked in my direction. Eve was a bit astonished, but Mallory smiled at me mildly, almost imperceptibly.

“Good morning, sir,” I said, feeling both uncomfortable and excited to have met Mallory unexpectedly. “Hi, Eve.”

“Morning, 002,” replied Mallory. “Did you come here to see me or Miss Moneypenny?”

His voice sounded warm and gentlemanly. I could tell he was in a good mood.

“I came to see Eve, sir. Forgive me, if I’m intruding, I can come back later...”

“No, it’s fine. Miss Moneypenny can take some time off,” he looked at her, and then at his watch. “It’s time for lunch after all.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Eve, then stood up and walked around her desk. "Hi, Katherine," she added, touching my right arm.

M gave us a glance and put his hand on the doorknob. He was just about to go inside his office.

“Oh, sir,” I said shyly, but loud enough for him to notice. “I actually wanted to ask you something...”

“Yes, 002?” he responded as he turned his head towards me.

Damn, today he’s more hot than ever, I thought. He was wearing a very dark (definitely not black) suit, and one of his blue shirts, but I couldn’t take my eyes off his hair. It looked a little different than usual as Mallory was standing in front of the room's window. The sunlight highlighted his receding hairline and made me focus on the colour of his hair. His magnetic green eyes were observing my face, while he was waiting to hear my question. It was a wonderful moment. I wanted it to last forever.

“Katherine, I’ll wait for you outside,” announced Eve and left us alone.

I followed her with my eyes and then looked directly at Mallory. So hot... if only I could... Damn, Kath! Stop it. Don’t forget that he is your supervisor. And you’ve got a question to ask.

“Sir... has 007 reported to you already? Has he landed in Maldives safely?”

Mallory raised his right eyebrow. The questions surprised him.

“No,” he said calmly, “not yet, but I’m sure he’ll do that soon.”

He glanced at me suspiciously.

“Are you really *that* worried about him?” he asked in his most kind manner, putting the documents on Eve’s desk. Then he leaned against the wall next to the door to his office.

“No, sir,” I lied. “But we had an argument yesterday and I wanted to make sure he’s alright.”

“And do you think I know if Bond’s alright better than the man himself? Try to contact him.”

“I tried many times, sir,” I blurted, “but he ignores me... it seems like he has disappeared...”

Mallory was still very polite, but acted indifferent.

“It’s the fate of glass to break... well maybe it’s the fate of spies to just disappear,” he said slowly.

“Perhaps, sir, but he was really furious...”

At first, Mallory seemed like he really tried to understand my point of view. But I was dead sure he wouldn’t agree with me. He looked through the window and sighed while I was still explaining my concerns. The light hit Mallory’s eyes. He interrupted me, sounding semi-friendly.

“002, please behave like a professional,” Mallory instructed me in his deep, dry voice, as he picked up the documents from the table. “Private business between you and Bond is not a concern of mine. Save your energy for your main objective for today. There's plenty of paper work to deal with.”

Harsh. He went from being understanding to uncompromising very quickly. I looked down and blushed.

"I promise we’ll get the work done, sir.”

I noticed him smile as I lifted up my face to meet his eyes.

“Bond will be fine. Don’t worry,” said Mallory dryly. “Is that all...?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“See you later then, 002. And please remember your lunch with Miss Moneypenny shouldn’t take longer than half an hour.”

...

I agreed to meet Eve outside the MI6 Headquarters, so I took the elevator and went the way down. I couldn’t stop to think about Mallory... I’ve been analyzing the way he spoke to me just a few minutes ago. He sent me a lot of mixed signals. At first he was so understanding, and then he just *had* to remind me of my professionalism... Clearly he wasn’t satisfied with some private stuff going on between me and Bond. And I don't blame M - I can’t imagine myself as the Head of MI6 who has to deal with some conflict, or worse - romance, between my two double-0s...

I went outside and saw Eve, who was wearing a checkered coat and looking more adorable than ever.

“I’m sorry, Eve, I just *had* to talk to M for a while,” I said, being ashamed of myself that I made her wait for me.

“Please, don’t apologize, Kath,” she replied as she took my arm. “Now I’ve got you all for myself. Let’s go!”

“Now we look like a proper couple!” I said, as I turned my head to her and we burst into laughter.

...

We didn’t have unlimited time for our dinner, so we stopped at an Italian restaurant just around the corner. We could have eaten together in one of the cafes in the MI6 building, but we didn’t want to. It was safer to go somewhere more private. Obviously, leaving the SIS building couldn’t guarantee not being eavesdropped by one of your colleagues, but without a doubt it reduced the probability.

“So, Eve, how are you?” I asked, just after we both ordered our meals. “How was the life in the MI6 recently? Tell me everything.”

“Oh, it was nothing special. All the fun has gone together with you!” Eve giggled. “I had a lot of paper work to do, as usual, because nearly the whole double-0 section was away... and Bond kept coming to me and repeatedly asked about your reports to M...” she rested her left hand on the table and placed her head on the hand. “Of course I didn’t inform him of anything. He was convinced that I was aware of the content of the reports, but it’s not true. All the reports always go directly to M. And M forbids me from reading them. I'm sure Bond knows that as a double-0...”

She paused for a moment when the waiter came to our table with her glass of still water.

“And M... he has been quite nervous since you and Amanda left for Geneva...”

She gave me a glance and took a sip from her glass.

“... I don't know why, but he has been kind of irritated all the time,” she continued, looking directly at me. “And it all culminated when the Chief of the Swiss intelligence informed him of the planned kidnapping. It seemed like he was very concerned about that mission. He reacted immediately..."

“Yeah, I noticed his immediate reaction," I laughed, looking at the table. "You probably shouldn’t be telling me that.”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t,” added Eve. “But when you work with him every day...” she hesitated, “... you get a bit tired. It's not because of him, but rather all the stuff that is always going on... It can be really stressful sometimes, and after a few intense weeks in a row you feel exhausted... I have *no idea* how M is still capable of leading this whole organization... those emotions can drive you *crazy* if you let them... at the end of the day you have to vent to someone.”

"I get it," I replied, scratching my right hand. "You can vent to me whenever you feel like venting. I wouldn't want you to go crazy."

"Thanks, Kath. It feels good to know someone cares for your own sanity.”

The waiter came again, this time bringing our dinner.

“Speaking of M,” I trembled, “there is something I *have* to tell you.”

"I'm all ears."

“I know that... we don’t know each other for long, but... you’re the only one I trust with this...”

And I told her *everything*. How I left the double-0 section meeting with Bond, how he confessed his feelings for me, and how he accused me of having a crush on M.

"So, what's your opinion on this?” I asked when I finished the story.

“It’s no big deal,” said Eve. “Everyone’s got their own soft spot.”

“I do not follow you.”

“Oh, Katherine,” she replied. “It’s obvious. You’re Bond’s soft spot. And... it seems like M’s yours.”

I looked her straight in the eye, but quickly moved my sight to the flowers in a little vase that was standing on our table. Eve continued to talk.

“Yeah, I remember exactly what you’ve told me *that* day: ‘I’m not interested in men at my age’... And the look on your face when you left his office... I could tell there was something more in your eyes than just the excitement before the mission. Something more... private,” said Eve, looking at my shocked face. “Then this Christmas present.... and Bond’s jealousy. It all fits together.”

She left me speechless for a while.

“I just... I just hope it’s not too obvious...”

“I have no idea, Kath. But perhaps Bond noticed your behaviour because he’s interested in you,” she speculated. “Do you think he really had his reasons to figure it all out?"

“I’m not sure... but probably yes,” I confessed with a worried look on my face. “I told him how M let me chose my double-0 number, how he reacted to the present... Do you think for Bond it was enough?”

“Judging by the way you stared at M earlier today, I think it might have been enough.”

“Hey, I wasn’t staring at him...”

Eve smirked and started to shake her head.

“Right...” I said. “Thanks for being honest with me, Eve.”

I felt really embarrassed.

“Do you think it’s wrong?” I asked, sounding pretty concerned about my romantic feelings.

“Wrong? There’s always some excitement associated with a love triangle!” quipped Eve.

“No, Eve... I’m serious,” I insisted, while looking at the other tables, making sure no one observed us. Even though we were at some random restaurant, I was scared that there might have been someone from the SIS. “Is... is it wrong that I fell for M?”

She smiled at me mildly.

“No. It’s not wrong,” she assured me. “But you'll have to be very careful with what you do about it. Anything you do right now might make things very much complicated.”

...

After the dinner we came back to the MI6 Headquarters, as we both had a lot to deal with. We said goodbye in the main corridor. Eve left for M’s office and I left for the paper work.

“Thanks so much for listening to me, Eve. I just... I just hope that talking about Bond didn’t bother you...”

“No, it’s perfectly fine. You were right to assume it’s just a stupid rumour.”

“It is?”

“Yeah,” said Eve. “It used to be true, but it’s not true anymore... I have to go, Kath. I’m already three minutes late and M’s going to kill me!” exclaimed Eve, and then gave me a hug. “And don’t worry much. We’ll come up with the solution.”

“Thank you, Eve. You’re the best,” I replied, as I placed my head on her shoulder and returned the hug. I closed my eyes for a moment.

“Miss Moneypenny,” said a male, stern voice, “would you mind coming back to work?”

I opened my eyes and saw Mallory who has just appeared in front of me out of nowhere.

“I’m s-s-sorry, sir... I’m coming,” said Eve quietly.

Mallory didn’t reply and they headed towards the elevator. I watched them until the elevator’s door have closed.

Eve’s such a great person, I thought. What a relief... I’ve told her everything and now I feel a lot better. But should I feel any better...? I’m in the middle of some stupid love triangle and there is nothing to be proud of. It’s not even a triangle since it’s only Bond who is interested in me.

How is it possible what whenever Bond leaves, I miss him dearly, but when he is close I can’t think of anyone else but Mallory? And when I see Mallory I can barely think straight?

Time to get back to work.

***

To be continued.

[meandmypagancrew]

okay so now i need ur six as watt so i can compare it with the one i did in december xx

Okay! I totally forgot you sent this to me earlier but I am ON IT NOW!! I am not married to any of these because a lot of the girls seem a bit older and I do like younger looking people playing teenagers, but working with what I have... Also I promise I know there are characters besides K. Howard just like I said I like younger people playing teenagers and a lot of Howards seem younger

Eva - Megan Leung

Okay, so, maybe I haven’t, like, technically heard much outside of about thirty seconds of Megan singing, but I’m in love with her. I think she’s one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen and she has amazing tastes in musicals. Also, while Eva is (usually, though according to her casting call she can be any minority) Hispanic (fun fact, in LA there was a line specifying that she was a quarter Puerto Rican), the only Hispanic I can think off of the top of my head from Six is Sam, and I love her but... she’s not my Eva. But I think Megan could NAIL it.

Clark/Clara - Collette Guitart

My past few days have been very Collette filled, from the cameo to with the new boots there’s pretty much footage of her in every role except for the beheaded cousins (I think, don’t quote me on that) so I have been thinking much about this woman, whom I adore, and there’s just something about her that makes me think she would be best suited for it. I think with all of her versatility it would be easiest for her to slip into the most different role and then back into herself.

Farrah - Alicia Corrales-Connor

Didn’t Alicia have an instagram story however long ago where she actually wore her hair in braids? That was important. But, I like Alicia, and I think that Howard has similar vibes in putting on a brave face but actually being deeply vulnerable, and I know she would do an amazing job.

Chess - Courtney Mack

Chess does have different vibes from Farrah, but not, like... too different. Like she’s a little less chaotic, and while I’m not super familiar with Courtney outside of the cameo, from that I think that she could do it wonderfully, and while it would hurt my soul to watch her get murdered, and I wish I could give her a role with more stage time, but alas. I think this is where she sits best.

Mattie - Courtney Monsma

I know that every single time someone has done this they’ve put the same person in this role. But I don’t really love that person so I was not going to choose them. Courtney just strikes me as one of the babiest of all the casts and Mattie is the youngest member of the team!

Annleigh - Caitlin Tipping

You knew this was coming. Maybe you didn’t know when and you didn’t know where, but you knew it was going to happen because you know me and I have a one track mind and that one track is always headed to Caitlin Tippingville. 

But in all seriousness, I think that a Jane was the most obvious choice for a Jane, they have such similar vibes, and was I ever even going to consider a Jane that was not my main lady?

Reese - Courtney Bowman

So with this completing my Courtney hat trick, that means I win a prize, right?

I mean, I think this is a pretty agreed upon choice. We all like Courtney and unfortunately there is a dearth of pluz-sized queens to choose from, but we already know she can rock the space buns!

Kate - Georgia Carr

So, Georgia is definitely different physically from any other Kate I’ve ever seen. They’re more dark and sullen whereas she is radiant- but while we don’t have too much content of her, we do have her roast, which means we have her being very sarcastic which I think is an important element to Kate’s character, and I think it would be fun to have this girl who looks like more of a Karen Smith and then have her turn out to be this completely deadpan, no-nonsense serious, deep young lady.

Cairo - Zara Macintosh

I mean, do I need to go on another rant about how much I love Zara? Zara is maybe one of the most talented women on the West End right now (or was, when the West End was still a thing) and I would love to see her put that energy into a role like Cairo, who has the steadfastness and dominant personality of Aragon, but the pettiness and willing to make a joke at someone else’s expense of Howard.

Riley - Sophie Isaacs

This one I’m the least married to, but we know I need Lauren Zakrin as Howard like I need to breathe, so Howards seemed like a good place to start looking for my Riley. (And yes, I did exclude Mallory from the running, just because as a friend of Preston’s who’s done demos for Tigers she seemed too obvious) 

And here’s a fun fact about Riley, the previous captains I’ve seen have been the most stereotypical looking cheerleaders you could imagine, and while Lauren still fits some of those boxes she doesn’t fit all, and Sophie does more, so it would be, in a way, a return to my roots to see someone like this- also, she’s like 4′10 so she looks like the most harmless and innocent and sweet baby angel, so the switch when it turns out that she orchestrated all of this? I would like to see it.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! You didn’t think I would leave you without swings, did you?

Caroline’s swing track - Vicki Manser

I’m not entirely sure exactly which tracks which girl covered, we only know for sure that Vicki covered Farrah and Cairo and Alexia covered Eva and four other tracks, but I have such complete faith in Vicki Manser that I would follow her wherever she led with no questions whatsoever. She can do it all.

Alexia’s swing track - Courtney Stapleton

Hey, let’s get the swing sisters (sans Grace, sorry Grace!!!) back together, yeah? I have the same amount of faith in Courtney that I do in Vicki and so I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that whatever was thrown at her, she could handle.

Clark standby - Danielle Steers

I would just like to see it. I’m not as confident in her as Clark as I am in Collette, but I think she could do it, and I think I would have a lot of fun watching it. Plus, we’ve never had a Clark of color before, so that could be a very refreshing change.

[lilacmoon83]

Lightning in a Bottle

Also on Fanfiction.net and A03

Chapter 23: Whatever it Takes, Pt 1

David entered the kitchen that morning, after he finished getting ready for work, only to see his wife at the stove.

"Wow...omelets on a weekday?" he asked, as he put his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.

"Well...you have a busy day ahead being a sleuthing accountant. You need your energy...especially after last night," she purred.

"Yeah...it was pretty amazing," he agreed, as she put the eggs on five plates and then turned around in his arms, so they could kiss properly. They slowly swayed together and then pressed their foreheads together once their lips parted.

"Besides...you don't know how much it means to me that I have my husband and my son back and how much I love taking care of my family," she said, as he kissed her again.

"I know...and I promise we're not going anywhere ever again, my love," he promised, as Emma and the kids came into the kitchen.

"It's way too early for romance, you two," she grumbled, as she went for the coffee.

"You just hate mornings," Margaret mentioned, as she delivered the plates to everyone at the table.

"Ohh omelets...you're forgiven," Emma said, as she started eating with the kids, while David and Margaret sat down with them.

"So...how was date night?" she asked.

"Wonderful...but it was sort of a working date night," David replied.

"What does that mean?" Emma asked.

"Well...when I was digging at my new job, I learned that Unified Dynamic Systems is one of the clients at JP Williamson. UDS is funding something known as the Singularity Project, which is the research of this woman," David replied, as he showed her an image on his tablet.

"A passenger?" Emma asked.

"Yes...one that was studying something called mirror neurons. It's a fringe study that believes there are ways for human brains to link up collectively," Margaret explained.

"Uh...that sounds familiar," Emma said.

"We thought so too...so we cornered her after her symposium and questioned her about the missing passengers. But I don't think she knows anything about that," David replied.

"And you believe her?" Emma asked skeptically. He shrugged.

"She agreed to try to find out more information about her funding source, especially since it looks like they may be using her research to experiment on unwilling victims," David replied.

"I believed her too...trust me, she would be in bad shape if I thought she had anything to do with the plane's disappearance," Margaret assured. Emma snorted in amusement.

"Yeah...she'd be in a body cast right about now," she teased.

"Well…I'm protective of the people I love," Margaret said, as she kissed her husband, before gathering their plates.

"What about you? I heard you made a big arrest. It's all over the news," David mentioned.

"Uh yeah...we got that guy that killed the brother of the owner of Darkstar Pharmacy," Emma replied.

"Good...that was so sad and a little too close to home," Margaret mentioned quietly. It was not lost on any of them that Ruth had been killed in a similar type situation.

"Yeah...something else happened too. It was a Calling," she mentioned. Margaret turned off the water and sat back down with them.

"You didn't tell us that part," she said.

"It just happened," she pointed out.

"Anyway...when I was around the store owner, I kept hearing this heartbeat. Long story short...I found out that Tom Clark had a heart transplant almost six years ago…" Emma said, as she looked them in the eyes.

"It was Lily's," she said, causing Margaret to gasp and David looked at his son.

"Hey buddy...where's that drawing you were working on?" David asked. Henry dug through his backpack and produced the illustration of a man with a heart on his chest.

"That...looks like Tom Clark," Emma replied.

"And you helped catch his brother's killer," Margaret said in amazement.

"That's not all I helped him with. He was going to take justice into his own hands...but I convinced him not to, identify the killer, and let the justice system take over," Emma replied, as Margaret squeezed her hand.

"Then that's more confirmation that these Callings are doing something good," she said.

"I don't know MM…" Emma replied.

"I mean...even if they are good…" she said.

"I mean...what is this?" she added in frustration.

"I don't know...but we will figure this out. All of it," David assured them both. With that, they quickly cleaned up and started the day.

~*~

Emma arrived at the station and sat down at her desk, only to look up and see Killian standing there with a bakery sack in his hand.

"Picked up an extra bear claw," he mentioned.

"Uh...thanks," she replied, as she accepted the bag and he leaned against her desk.

"So...how's Henry?" he asked.

"He seems to be fine for the moment. We're keeping a close eye on him," she replied.

"But you don't think this is over?" he asked.

"Do you?" she asked, with a raised eyebrow.

"Honestly Emma...I have no idea. I mean...it's pretty out there," he mentioned.

"Yeah...that's what I thought too at first. But then it happens to you and it gets real, no matter how out there it seems," she said.

"I mean...last night, our victim's brother in this latest case just happened to be the recipient of Lily's heart? That's some out there stuff, but it happened," she reasoned. He sighed.

"Yeah...that was pretty wild," he agreed.

"Which means, whether I like it or not, these things that are happening to passengers are real and something," she said. He nodded.

"Fair enough...so what now?" he asked. She shook her head.

"I'm not sure...my brother is playing his own version of detective at his new job, so I guess we wait to see what he turns up and pray he's not discovered," he replied.

"Ah…I knew there had to be more to that. Your brother is way overqualified for a low level accounting clerk," he said.

"Yeah and from what I've heard his boss probably has an IQ that's half my brother's, so it shouldn't be too hard for David to find whatever he's looking for," she replied, as he sat down at his desk and they worked on the recent paperwork from the previous night's case.

~*~

After dropping Henry off with her father-in-law, Margaret arrived at her classroom that morning.

"Ms. Nolan?" a voice called, as a man peered into her classroom.

"Yes, can I help you?" she asked.

"I'm Sidney Glass...from the New York Times," he replied. She sighed.

"A reporter," she muttered.

"Yes...and I'm sure that doesn't make you feel comfortable at all," he said.

"You mean because a dozen other reporters at your paper have run hit pieces on me and my family for the last week?" she asked. He nodded.

"I understand that...but that is not my intention. No one has really told the story from your side," he replied.

"And why should I trust you?" Margaret replied, as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"You have no reason to...I get that. But this would be an opportunity to tell yours and your husband's story. I'd even let you read it before I publish," he offered.

"David and I don't care what people think of us...we never have," she said.

"Fair enough...but in case you change your mind, here is my card," Sidney said, as he set it on her desk and quietly left. She scoffed, as she looked at the card and then stuffed it in her purse, forgetting about it.

~*~

Upon arriving at work that morning, David sailed through the stack of work left for him on his desk with ease. This job was not challenging at all, but then that wasn't really the reason he was there. He took the stack and walked into his boss' office and he wasn't sure what Doc was doing on his computer, but he doubted it was work.

"Oh hey...828," he greeted, as David put the stack on his desk.

"Done already?" he asked and David shrugged.

"What can I say? Numbers are my thing," David replied, as another man stuck his head inside the door.

"Hey...are we still on for the game tonight?" he asked.

"Of course...hey Billy, this is David. You know, the guy from that plane," Doc said, as David shook hands with the tall African American man.

"Nice to meet you...man, what a story," he said.

"Yeah…I get that a lot," David replied.

"This is Billy from IT," Doc said.

"Nice to meet you," David replied.

"Hey numbers guy...do you play poker?" Doc asked.

"Yeah...we could use one more tonight," Billy agreed. While he loathed the thought of not going home to his family the moment the day was over, he knew how valuable it could be to persuade an IT guy to unknowingly let him in the backdoor and straight to the files on the Singularity Project.

"Sounds great," David agreed.

"Great," Doc said, as he patted him on the shoulder.

"Until then...maybe you can help me out with these, but don't tell anyone," Doc said, as he gave him another stack and his own badge since these had a higher clearance. David smirked.

"Don't worry...I'll get these done and you can have all the credit," he replied, as he returned to his desk. He didn't know what else he could find, if anything, but he knew that accessing the backdoor through the IT guy might yield even more results.

~*~

Mr. Gold entered Vance's office, only to interrupt him with another man, whom Gold recognized as one of his senior agents.

"Mr. Gold...please join us," Vance said.

"This is Special Agent Arthur King. He was just delivering some very interesting Intel," Vance said. Mr. Gold ignored the agent, but nodded curtly to Vance.

"You mean the Intel where David Nolan has just been hired on at an accounting firm for a job that he is ridiculously overqualified for?" Gold asked.

"How do you know that?" Agent King asked suspiciously.

"I have my ways, Agent King...but I do not think Mr. Nolan has ill intentions," Gold replied.

"More hero talk?" Vance questioned.

"He seems to be taking that role...yes and he may be the keystone to breaking all of this wide open," Gold replied.

"Or he could be committing corporate espionage," Arthur countered.

"David Nolan is not our enemy. In fact...I believe our enemy is within," Gold said.

"Are you accusing a government agency of being behind the disappearance of this plane?" King questioned with an edge in his voice. Gold smirked.

"Oh no, Agent King...but I am pointing out that there are those within that may not have the passenger's best interests at heart," he added.

"These people may be a threat to National Security," Arthur pointed out.

"They don't know what happened to them, Agent King. They are in the dark as much as we are. Locking them up will yield no answers," Gold warned.

"This guy is a crackpot," Arthur hissed to his boss.

"Mr. Gold's insight is valuable...but we will monitor Mr. Nolan's activities. Bug his phone," Vance ordered. Arthur seemed appeased by that and quickly left.

"He's a hothead...and not in a good way," Gold mentioned.

"He's a good agent," Vance countered.

"If Nolan does commit espionage...I can't ignore it," Vance warned.

"Perhaps not...but arresting him will get you nothing. In fact, it may cost lives if you do," Gold warned in return. Vance was silent at that, contemplating his words.

~*~

"It's okay, baby...this sounds like an opportunity you can't pass up," Margaret said, as she put the groceries away while talking to him on speaker phone.

"I know...I just hate getting home late. But if I can get a way into this account through the backdoor, I might be able to get a location or something," David said.

"I hate it too...but I know you're doing this for Henry. I'll feed the kids and wait to eat with you," she said.

"Thanks...but you don't have to do that," he replied.

"I know...but I want to," she said.

"Then I can't wait. I'll see you soon and I love you," he replied. She smiled.

"I love you too," she gushed, as they hung up and she saw their son come into the house with her father-in-law.

"Hey sweetie...did you have a good day with Grandpa?" she asked.

"Yeah...we had lots of fun," Henry replied, as she hugged him and she and Robert shared a smile.

"But I was wondering…" Henry said.

"Wondering what?" she asked.

"When can I go back to school?" he asked.

"Oh...well, we want to make sure you're out of the woods from that most recent scare, honey," she replied.

"I know...but I feel fine now and Dad is trying to find out where those missing passengers are, right?" Henry asked. She smiled.

"He is...and we can talk about school more later, I promise," she replied, as he went upstairs.

"I know David is doing what he needs to...but corporate espionage is no joke if he gets caught," Robert said in a worried tone.

"I know...I'm worried too, but David thinks this might be the only way to save Henry and those missing passengers," Margaret replied. He nodded.

"And there will be no stopping him," Robert said. She smiled softly.

"You know David...always the hero," she said fondly.

"That's our David," he agreed.

"Do you want to stay for dinner and eat with the kids?" she asked. He smiled.

"You know I'd love that," he replied.

~*~

David entered the conference room, which had been turned into an after hours poker game. He was not looking forward to this at all, but he put a smile on and was introduced to the other players that he had not met yet.

"So 828...were the aliens at least hot?" one guy asked and the others busted up laughing. David forced a chuckle and shook his head.

"No...but then there's only one woman for me and she's right here on Earth," he replied.

"Dude...your wife isn't here. You don't actually have to say that stuff," Doc said.

"I say it because it's true," David replied.

"Don't mind Doc...he can't get a woman to save his life," Billy joked, as he dealt the cards.

"Very funny," Doc said.

"So David...he tells me you're a numbers guy?" Billy asked.

"A Master's in mathematics. I did a bit of coding in college, but ultimately decided to teach instead," David replied.

"So you know some coding?" Billy asked.

"It's been a long time...I probably need a refresher," David replied.

"I could help with that...if you're interested. Doc says that you're bored," Billy said.

"Actually yeah...that would be great," David replied.

"After you finish tomorrow's work load," Doc instructed, as they picked up their cards.

"So...that should be about nine in the morning," David said, as they all laughed. Getting in with the IT guy had been easier than he thought…

~*~

As Margaret waited for David to get home, the kids watched a movie and she found herself walking down memory lane in the form of one of her many photo albums. She flipped the page and smiled at the photo of them on their wedding day. She remembered that day so well, for it had been one of the happiest days of her life.

~*~

Flashback

"Wow...you look like a fairytale Princess for sure," her friend and one of her bridesmaid's, Ruby, said.

"Well…I'm marrying my Prince Charming so I should," Margaret replied, as Abigail adjusted her veil.

"Are you ready?" Emma asked, as she stepped forward. Her future sister-in-law and best friend was her maid of honor, of course. Margaret smiled.

"I've wanted to marry David since we were eight. I can't wait…" she replied. Emma smiled.

"Neither can he. He's been telling everyone he was going to marry you since then too, so let's finally make it official already," Emma said, as Robert poked his head in.

"Ready?" he asked. Emma nodded, as he came into the room.

"You look beautiful, Margaret and I already considered you my daughter," he said, making her smile.

"I know that I was a terrible father to my kids and you were what helped them both get through some very rough times. I can never repay you for that and when you asked me to walk you down the aisle, I was blown away," he admitted.

"You made mistakes and struggled with your own demons, but you got better and we forgive you. Even at your worst, you were more of a father to me than my own ever was," she said, as he offered his arm and she hooked her hand on his elbow.

By then, the music had intensified. Her bridesmaid's and Emma were already at the altar and everyone stood, as they exited the small garden house and outside into the beautiful garden where they had chosen to have their wedding. It was near the wooded area and the bridge they had frequented for years. They had played in this garden and park for years, so getting married here seemed perfect.

David was in awe, as she floated toward him like an angel, carrying a bouquet of snowdrops, much like the ones he had picked for her when they were children. Even then, the idea of marrying her was firm in his young mind and now that the moment was finally here, he knew that his life was complete with her by his side. The ceremony was a mere formality, for they had bonded their lives together long ago…

~*~

"That was an amazing day," he mentioned and she looked up, finding him leaning over her.

"You're home...I was so absorbed by the memory of this day that I didn't hear you come in," she mentioned, as he kissed her tenderly.

"It was one of the best days of my life," he said, as he squeezed into the chair with her.

"Mine too," she agreed, as they shared another kiss.

"Did you find anything?" she asked.

"Not yet...but the IT guy promised to show me some coding. If I can manage to get in the backdoor to the account of the Singularity Project, I'm hoping I can find something like a location or more names," he replied. She smiled and kissed him again.

"I know you will...you're our hero, after all," she said, as she rested her head on his shoulder and they gazed upon their kids fondly.

[singeramg]

Midnight: Chapter 5

A/n: Here is chapter 5! Its getting better and honestly I am hella excited! Once again this follows Justice league with the addition of my OFC. Better explanation of how it would go if she were there.

Pairing: Clark Kent- Superman/ Metahuman! Black! OFC

Rating: M

In case you missed it:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Midnight: Chapter 5

 “Superman is in the wind and Steppenwolf has the third box.”

 Aquaman was pissed off, tossing what I was sure to be valuable pieces of equipment around, meanwhile I was sitting with an ice pack on my head, dosed with painkillers and waiting for Bruce to pull this mess together. Better yet I was waiting on a car to pick me up and take me home. I wanted no parts of this craziness. I wanted to go home and hug my son. Protect him from all the chaos and figure out how I could convince Ms. A to come with me. 

 “And you. I thought you were here to make sure he didn’t kick our ass!” Aquaman growls at me. He is hostile but I also sensed nervousness under all of that. I turned to look at him.

 “I promised to make sure he didn’t kill you. That ass whoopin’ was self-inflicted. Batman knew that going in. Don’t be mad because you got your asses handed to you. Newsflash I did too!”

 “She saved my life and yours too Diana. She threw force fields up between us and Clark. To the detriment of herself. She didn’t even have enough time to protect herself as evidenced by her neck. So just calm down!”

 Bruce says firmly, leaving no room for argument.

“That being said I am going home. My job here is done.”

 I could hear my head ringing, and I really just wanted to go home and cry. There was a reason I stayed away from Metropolis. I stormed off, determined to just take a taxi to the train station. I made it to the front of Batman’s hideaway when someone ran toward me.

 “Please wait!”

 It was Diana or should I say Wonder Woman.

 “It’s obvious that I am just on the way here. I’ve got someone else that needs my protection.”

I said in reference to my son.

 “Midnight. I know it may seem that running away is the best option but you know as well as I do that the world needs you.”

 “Aquaman doesn’t think so.”

 “Arthur is...he’s a little hot headed at times.”

 “You think?” I said full of sarcasm, Diana just smiled at me and touched my arm.

 “I promise you his heart is in the right place. With Superman gone, we need you even more now. You won’t have anything left to protect if we can’t stop Steppenwolf.”

 “Clearly I am not strong enough I couldn’t even handle Clark.”

 She looks at me, a knowing look behind her eyes and a smile on her face.

“That was a strong force field you held over me and an even stronger blast of lightning you shot at Steppenwolf. Something tells me you could have handled him just fine. You just didn’t want to, just like he didn’t want to hurt you.”

 I laughed, and pointed to my neck, his fingerprints still very visible. 

“Oh yeah sure he didn’t want to hurt me. You know besides the whole confusion, choking the shit out of me thing.”

 “ The way he sat you down...” I cut her off.

 “Was because he heard Lois’s voice. It had nothing to do with me.”

 Eager to change the subject I stomped back inside.

“Come on. We’ve got a world to save.”

She laughs behind me as we head back inside where she leaves me to check on Bruce. I walked over to the Cyborg man I had yet to meet properly.

“Glad you stuck around. We could use someone else to calm down the Fishboy over there.”

I giggled and he smirked back, then went to focus on the task Batman had assigned before leaving out the door. 

“Seeing as I have decided to stay I want to be of use. How can I help?”

“You can manipulate energy correct?”

“Among other things but basically yeah.”

“Do you think you can help me find these boxes-you know the change engine?”

 “From what I can tell from having been its proximity, it radiates an enormous amount of power and energy.  The amount it would put out with all three of them especially once Steppenwolf starts them up should be enough to track. I could try to sense them or boost your receptors so you can find them seeing as you share its energy.”

 He smiles at me and turns back toward one the many screens in front of him. 

“My name is Victor by the way.”

I touch his shoulder blade and say

“Nice to meet you Victor. I am...Gia.”

I didn’t know what would possess me to tell him my real name if I planned on getting away from these people as soon as possible. I focused on the task at hand, taking a few moments then began pushing energy into Victor. He seemed to seize up for a moment as he adjusted to his new power and range. The fast kid came back in the room with an arm full of snacks, sitting in a chair next to where we were standing. 

“By the way, I am Barry but everyone calls me The Flash. Ummm... no they don’t I just wanted to sound cool. It’s Barry! Glad to meet you or should I say nice to meet you? I’m glad you’re here. Ummm. Just forget the rambling.”

I laughed and stuck my hand out for him to take, thankfully he offers the one without Cheeto dust on it and I shake it.

“It’s Gia. Nice to meet you Barry.”

 I called him a kid in my mind but honestly we weren’t that far apart in age.

“Wanna chip?”

He offers the bag and I smile taking one...

 *Later*

Victor found the boxes rather quickly, and Batman readied the jet. I took the time to call home and check in with Kalen. I tried not to cry as I heard his voice, he had no clue the danger I was walking into. I knew from the moment he was born I would walk into it a million times just to save him. I told him I loved him, wiping stray tears from my eyes in the back of the plane. I thought I was alone until I heard.

“I take it, that was your little one?”

A gruff yet familiar voice from behind me. I turned to find Arthur standing in the doorway. I straightened up my stance trying not to appear weak in front of the man who basically questioned my worth earlier.

“Yes That was my son.”

 “You left him behind to come fight with us?” He questions and I have to decide if I should take offense at his words, or just at face value as that gruff behavior was how he always was. 

“I came because I have to protect him. The world is just a nice additional prize.”

 He nodded in understanding. He offers his hand and I shake it. 

“I think we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Arthur Curry.”

“Gia.”

“So Gia you ready to kick some Alien ass?” I smirked.

“Of course! It’s time to fuck some shit up.”

“I knew I liked you.”

 He says at my use of foul language, and leads us back to the group that was waiting...

 The plan was simple as we made it to where Steppenwolf was keeping the motherboxes. Fight off the bug-like creatures, while Diana and Arthur took on Steppenwolf. Victor would work on separating the boxes so that they didn’t destroy the world as we knew it. Even when Batman decided to sacrifice himself (like an idiot I might add) I focused on destroying as many as I could.

 I was using a combination of my blade and Kinetic pulses to keep them at bay and off of cyborg. Arthur and Diana were giving Steppenwolf a run for his money, but he was still stronger. Batman sent Barry off to help civilians and soon after Cyborg had his leg ripped off. While slightly grateful it could be fixed, I was pissed off and I attacked Steppenwolf with the strongest blade I could muster. He was matching me blow for blow, I was infinitely stronger as he didn’t realize I was feeding off of his energy. I would say arrogance was powerful and I could use all of what I could get. In an effort to spin around, he grabbed me before I could get away, one large hand around my neck. All he had to do was tighten his fist and I would be a gonner. I was gathering enough energy to throw him off but I didn’t know if I had that long, when the pressure was suddenly gone. 

I dropped to the ground coughing from being choked for the second time in a day. I looked up as Superman had basically torn him off of me and was beating him, tossing him to Diana and Arthur. He was in front of me a moment later, helping me to my feet. 

“Gia?”

He questioned as if he had forgotten who I was. I half expected him to.

“I’m fine. Let’s end this.” I leaped, landing from the ground up to the metal platforms that Cyborg and Batman were standing on. Superman landed next to me.

“How can I help?”

Victor spoke up at my request. 

“I can use some help here.” I looked at him.

“Superman can you pull boxes apart? In a few moments you will see your opening.”

“Any Blow back?”

  “Some, but I think we can take it.”

        “Good I rather like living.”

 “You two better get clear.” Victor says thoughtfully. I knew I couldn’t let the world or at least this part of it be in danger if I could help it. 

 “What if the field is too big? I can contain the blow back.”

“Gia you are not strong enough...” 

 Clark started, the concern was obvious but I honestly didn’t care what he thought I could handle. I had moved from under his wing a long time ago. 

“Clark not now! You have no clue what I am capable of anymore! You are wasting time, I’m doing this!”

I could feel him looking at my face but I wasn’t looking at him. I used all the rage I felt in the moment and focused it on building a shield.

“Now!” 

Victor yells and Superman reached into the blinding light, with me tossing up the strongest shield I had, as the two Superheroes were thrown backwards against it and as predicted was strong, but I kept it contained, turning the energy back on itself and forced it back into the boxes. 

 “Oh I take that back. I want to die.”

 Clark starts rolling around on the ground. 

“My toes hurt...” says Victor

 “Children. Gia we work with actual children.” Diana yells up to me and we laughed, I leaned over the railing, mild relief over me. Barry came running back in, but I only had a moment to register Steppenwolf’s energy, before he grabbed him and tossed him into the nearest wall he could. 

Barry was knocked out but not dead thankfully and Arthur and Diana began fighting him again. I shot out a bolt of energy striking him in the chest and he yelled, distracted enough that Superman was able to freeze his weapon and Diana destroys it with one blow of her sword. 

His fear was palpable as he realized he had lost. I turned away as his minions turned on him, destroying him. 

“Now that’s what the fuck I am talking about.” 

 I fist pumped and breathed a sigh of relief...

 One look from Clark in my direction and I knew my battle was far from over...

~~~~~~~

A/n: Thanks for reading!  If you would like to be added to the tag list for this or any of my stories, please let me know.

Tag list: 

@bloodyinspiredfuck 

[theprinceandagcd]

when you’re holding onto someone that you gotta let go

warning: if you do not like Echo, this story isn’t for you. This was written from her perspective entirely, by someone who is 100% the trashiest bellarke, but that doesn’t necessarily hate Echo. Is she my fave? Def not. But I don’t hate her and I honestly feel like something resembling this could be feasible.

Either way, the idea wouldn’t leave me alone, so here it is :)

also on ao3  words: 2001 

——

I don’t regret it the time we had together I won’t forget it, but we both ended up where we belong

——

If she’s being honest, Echo is surprised when they don’t immediately go back to Sanctum after Octavia disappears. Instead, they find themselves at Gabriel’s tent with an unconscious girl with tattoos on her face who still hasn’t woken up. Gabriel’s eyes are wide with some mixture of intrigue and worry, Bellamy’s only with frantic fear, and she’s still having trouble keeping up with everything that just happened.

Bellamy asks Gabriel a million questions, his voice strained and Octavia’s blood dried on his hands. Gabriel doesn’t seem to have any answers for him, which only increases the panic in his voice, on his face. She isn’t sure of anything herself, but when she tries to reach a hand out to Bellamy when his own start shaking, he moves away from her and continues to interrogate Gabriel.

Her heart tugs painfully in her chest, but she gives him his space while they try a few things to wake the girl—Hope, right? —up from her slumber. Gabriel and Bellamy spend time looking at a computer screen with a bunch of numbers on it, voices low. She tries to offer suggestions here and there, tries again to offer Bellamy some comfort with a hand on a shoulder, his arm, whatever is within her reach. More often than not, he shrugs her off, unintentionally she thinks, when moving to a different spot in the tent or following Gabriel. There’s once where he turns, acknowledging her, but the weight of his sister bleeding out in his arms and then vanishing is heavy, and it seems that no matter what she does, it doesn’t help.

And she knows why.

The realization aches, of course, but it’s abundantly clear.

She isn’t what he needs anymore.

Hasn’t she always known, though? Hasn’t she understood since they came back from space and a small girl spoke the name that Bellamy cried in his sleep for years after Praimfaya? Didn’t she realize, in that moment that she was returned to them, to him, that her own time with Bellamy was limited?

There’s something deep in her gut, a twinge of jealousy and heartbreak that she knows she’ll have to process at some point as the truth settles further and further into her being. Bellamy continues to fret here and there, sweat on his brow and an ever-present tremble in his body, and nothing she does offers any semblance of comfort. Still, seeing him hurting, so hellbent of figuring something out and wearing himself thin in the process, hurts her, too.

He can’t keep doing this, she knows. He’s spiraling, blaming himself, diving further and further into a darkness that she can’t rescue him from.

It’s why, only a few hours later, she excuses herself, says she’s going for a walk to get some air. She trudges the few miles toward Sanctum, right through the barrier that is no longer up, and finds Clarke Griffin in one of the rooms of the palace, sitting beside an unconscious Madi.

Clarke still looks tired, but when their eyes meet, she stands almost immediately, eyes wide with worry.

“Echo?” Her voice cracks. “What happened? Is Bellamy—”

“He’s okay,” Echo assures her quickly. “For the most part, but… something happened to Octavia.”

She does her best to explain, recounting her version of the events, everything from the strange stone underground to Hope stabbing Octavia, to Octavia disappearing from Bellamy’s arms. There’s so much uncertainty, so much she doesn’t understand, but she does her best to fill in any gaps. “He and Gabriel are trying to figure it out now, but, I have never seen anything like it.”  

Clarke listens, but once Echo is finished speaking, she tilts her head, expression wary. “So why are you here?”

A beat passes, her throat feeling tight. It takes her a moment to manage getting the words past her lips, and she’s proud when her voice doesn’t shake. “Because he needs you, not me.”

To her credit, Clarke’s eyes only widen slightly. “What do you me—”

“Don’t, Clarke. I know he loves me.” The statement feels heavy on her tongue, her stomach uneasy. She ignores it. “But he loves you, too. I don’t know what it means for all of us right now, but I do know that at this moment, I am not what he needs. He needs you.”

Clarke glances over her shoulder at Madi, who sleeps on peacefully. Echo can feel Clarke’s hesitation before she even speaks. “I… I don’t want to leave her.”

Echo nods, understanding. Each word burns when she says, “I’ll stay, I’ll watch her. I promise.”

“Really?”

“You take care of him. I’ll take care of her. We can… figure out the rest later.” The words sound stronger than she feels, but she knows that this is right. The ache in her chest is dull, mourning more the loss of an idea, of a faraway time where there was only seven people in a big space and nothing was this complicated. She puts those feelings aside—they aren’t what is important right now. “He’s at Gabriel’s tent.”

Clarke takes a deep breath, but she nods. She takes a moment, bends down to whisper something to Madi. The girl’s eyes peek open for just a minute and she smiles, just a little. Her eyes meet Echo’s from where she lies, and her head nods once before her eyes drift back closed.

Echo sits down in the spot where Clarke was when she arrived. Clarke has put her jacket on and is wringing her hands together. “I… I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

The smile that Echo gives her is weak, she knows, but she feels genuine when she says, “Don’t be. I know you love him, too. That is nothing to be sorry for.”

“Yeah.” Still, Clarke lingers by the door.

“Go, Clarke. Be what he needs.”

And so she does, disappearing out of the room. Echo’s shoulders fall as she sighs, glancing over at the bookshelf to her left and skimming the titles that she sees.

“That was very big of you.” Madi’s voice is quiet when she speaks, a sign of her tiredness.

“You think so?” Echo asks, turning back to the child and watching as one of Madi’s eyes pop back open.

“Yes. You did something that would be good for others even though it hurt you.”

Echo leans back in the chair, picking up one of the books and glancing at the cover for something else to focus on as the corners of her eyes sting. “Yeah, well, that’s probably my limit for good deeds today, so watch your back, kid.”

A bout of breath falls past Madi’s lips, and it takes Echo a moment to recognize it as a weak laugh. It makes her smile, just a little. There’s a silence, and Echo opens the cover of the book and glances inside a bit, figuring Madi will just fall back asleep. So, she’s surprised when the girl speaks again.

“I’ve always wondered how others see them,” she says softly, and Echo gets the sense that she is treading carefully. “I have stories from Clarke, but not from anyone else.”

Echo bites down on her lip a moment, the pain in her chest blossoming. No, she pushes back against it. She did do the right thing. She knows that. She’ll be okay.

Madi is just curious, that’s all. She means no harm.

The words still feel a little strange when she speaks. “Would you like to hear some stories about them? From me?”

Madi nods, a little more energy in the action, though Echo can tell she is trying to bite back her smile. The girl rolls over onto her back, twining her fingers together over her stomach, eyes fully open now as she waits.

It’s easier than Echo expected for the stories to flow. “Well, there was one time, right after the City of Light was destroyed. Mind you, I was on what you would probably call the wrong side of things here, but…”

And that’s what she does. She tells Madi stories, some that she saw herself, some that she remembers Bellamy telling while they were on the ring. It’s cathartic, almost, to recount all those moments where she could see how much he adored Clarke Griffin, how often she realized that Clarke felt the same. She knows she’ll never regret the time that they shared there, up in space, with no other problems with the exception of how terrible Monty’s algae was.

So, somehow, she finds comfort in the stories that spill from her. Madi offers a few of her own in turn, spinning stories that Clarke had shared with her in their years together. They do that until there’s a sound from outside, until she peeks out the window and sees Bellamy, Clarke, and Gabriel walking up the path into Sanctum.

The two are leaning on each other, each with an arm around the other. They both look absolutely exhausted, but even so, they each look like they’re holding the other up. When she goes out to greet them, they both hug her without removing the arms they have around each other, and their expressions are both heavy.

Bellamy goes to speak, but she stops him, glancing between the two of them. “It’s okay, we can talk later. Did you figure something out?”

Clarke gives a half shrug. “Maybe.”

She finds out later, from Gabriel, that Bellamy had broken as soon as he’d seen Clarke, that he’d cried into her shoulder for quite some time, Clarke holding him tightly with her own face pressed into his neck. She learns that Clarke had actually managed to get Bellamy to lie down, for just a little while, as she and Gabriel talked a bit, trying to make sense of everything.

She isn’t really surprised.

Plans are made, and it’s one week later, with Octavia returned to them but officially on bed rest for a few weeks, that she finally pulls Bellamy aside and, like she knows she should, lets him go. He hugs her, arms tight around her shoulders.

“I’ll never regret you,” he says, and she nods into his shoulder.

“I know.” Her voice sounds dry. “Me, either.”

It’s another week and a half later that she sees the two of them taking a walk around the fields, hand in hand. Their smiles are bright, bodies as close as they can be without getting in the way of each other’s steps. When Bellamy stops and tugs Clarke into his body, pressing a kiss to her lips with his hand tangled into her hair, Echo watches for only a moment before she looks away. They seem happy, like maybe this is how it was meant to be.

(She knows now, it was.)

Even though it takes her some time, she winds up being more okay than she thought she would be. Life goes on, Bellamy and Clarke stay together, she works with Raven in the mechanic shop and ends up enjoying it, and eventually, everything feels normal. Sooner than she expects, she’s sitting beside Clarke at a big fire, Bellamy on Clarke’s other side, as everyone sits around, passing flasks and trading stories.

It doesn’t feel strange at all. Instead, with Raven on her other side and everyone else they love gathered around or within talking distance, it feels like home.

Clarke passes her a flask after she’s taken her own sip, brows raised. The liquid burns in her throat when she tips the container up, but Bellamy grins at her when she shoves it back at him.

So, she smiles back before returning her attention to Murphy, who is recounting a tale of deserts and land mines with extremely too much grandiose.

Everyone laughs at his theatrics, loud and happy, and she does, too.

(This is definitely how they were meant to be.)

[wajjs]

  There's this pull, this unnamed drive, that is pushing him closer so subtly he can barely tell. Like an energy no one dares to acknowledge, borderline otherworldly, tiptoeing the limit of super and natural. There is this pull and the pull is within a range of all things, wickedly divine.

  But perhaps divine is not quite the right word, because it might not adhere to those that believe there is no place for anything holy among all this humanity, among all this mess. Perhaps the word he's looking for is inevitable, maybe undeniable, maybe overbearing, all-encompassing. 

  Inescapable.

  He longs to fight this force, to resist the pull, and yet the harder he tries the more violently this centripetal energy drives him in, coils him (tight, tightly, tighter) around the very center. And right there, at its core, it is bleeding, it is breathing, it is shining away life and shadows.

  If Gotham's a force of nature, so much akin to gravity itself, then he is the very apple succumbing to its rules and desires. He's quick to discover that here, designations are different, expectations unknown, successions unquestioned. He discovers that here there is little sense in trying to stop the fine things set into finer motions, even with his otherworldly strength, even with all his power, here he is nothing but a man brought upon his knees. A man with a heart that beats and skin that is warm. A man that yearns the sight his eyes see. A man starving, yet still clinging onto a frail little semblance of control due to sheer pride.

  When his fingertips find themselves feeling the not untouched, far from pristine, skin of sharp hips, it's like the very universe is slowing down, like he's coming down in one too many levels. The contact is the kryptonite of his thoughts. His touch is reverential and firm, yet unafraid to pull the body closer to his, to bring their point of union fully to him. To settle deep inside.

  The whine that earns him is the sweetest sound he's ever heard, the rarity of a delicacy, the ghost of a promise in the dusk of fulfillment. A smile dances upon his lips and he shifts again, grinds himself home, sheathes in and pushes out in a practiced motion, one ingrained in his very bones. The young man is on his knees and hands, legs spread open, eyes ajar. The curve of his spine is that of pleasure, the hitch of his breath is the one of fire. Of desire so deep it runs black, red and blue. So deep it runs to never end. And he's a starved man, a denied one, and he's developing an ever growing addiction.

  Maybe it's half as much about the innate pull as it is about these moments, in many beds, with always the same bodies, with desperation that varies in degree of intensity. Maybe it's half as much about the gravity innate to Gotham, that impressive force always driving his wandering steps back to this point, point one - or point zero - out of a hundred to come; maybe it's half as much about this gravity as it is about the yearning that goes without name, the pain that is too fresh, the love that binds and knows no end.

  So he shifts his hips till they are still inside, pulses hot and sticky, brings back to chest and feels against him that wonderful shudder that always wrecks the other, always so sensitive, always so eager and such a breathtaking work of art. It makes his name come out as a whisper, a needy utterance of the sounds of each syllable, the one thing that makes him consider: what if I had you, what if you allowed me, what if we were to keep entangling ourselves until it's just the two of us, until you forget.

  Lois said his love knows no limits.

  He's unsure whether this is truly that.

  A third pair of hands snaps him out of his hold, makes him remember to lay the spent body back down atop the disarray of blankets, sheets and fluids. One of them then reaches out, touches his cheek, trickles across his jawline, reminds him that he should breathe, perhaps, breathe and accept what comes with breathing: the scents, the return of each and every sensation. Clear eyes meet clear eyes, no cloud of storm or rain, only the mist of want. The thin lips on a pale face stretch into the semblance of a smile and he's stricken by the undeniable rush of being known. The experience of seeing his reflection in irises shrouded by knowledge and years of silently watching, eagerly seeing, always registering.

  "Give me a moment," the one between them, face partially smudged against a stray pillow, speaks then, making the two of them look down and smile, "and I'm good to go again. Wait. Maybe five."

  "That's alright, Jason," he says, chest feeling broader, and can't quite stop himself from redirecting his sight to their point of union as he begins pulling out - he misses the heat immediately, wants to be wrapped up in it again, yet he knows it is too early in the dawn for them to fall into overstimulation. That will have to wait. Perhaps this might also be one of those encounters, too. "You were wonderful."

  From where they are kneeling on the bed they cannot miss the way the tips of Jason's ears grow red. His honest reactions to praise will never grow old, unlike them. He is heaven and the promise of time in their hands.

  "You always are," the other's voice is barely above a whisper, still so loud it drives them into silence, one charged with so much care, such deep longing...

  Clark can't help but think, when the three of them are in these moments, how can they not see? How can they lose sight of this, of their hearts and minds, whenever they stray two steps too far from the doors to the many bedrooms they've been in? If every instance carries vulnerability and every day there is gravity pulling them closer, how can they damn each other when they both feel so much devotion and so desperately?

  "Bruce," Clark finds his lips moving before he's even finished thinking his words through and through in an attempt to be clear but also be mindful of the sensibilities the two men before him have, "you are always watching."

  Your eyes are on him, always, is what he manages to swallow down before sound hits the air. You are devouring him with your sight.

  He doesn't say what he means and halfway means what he says. The stilling of Jason in the grasp of his hands lets him know that this too hasn't gone unnoticed. It's to be expected when he's in bed with two over analytical minds.

  "Does it feel good?" he asks and smiles to soften the blow, sky-clear eyes glinting. "To watch?"

  "Clark," Bruce pushes out the name like a warning. Jason laughs a little, a rattled sound, lifts his head just enough so that his eyes meet Bruce's from underneath his lashes. A look both Bruce and Clark have been confronted with enough times to know clearly what it means: got you.

  It's clear in the relaxed line of Jason's shoulders. In the way his heartbeat stays even, a companion and steadying drumming to the widening of Clark's smile. Because many times it has been said his smile is a superpower on its own, yet there aren't enough odes about the leverage Jason's eyes have on Bruce - the way one look can make the mightiest of them all crumble down to their knees. And here is the evidence, the two of them, with him, always looking for him.

  "Allow me," Clark breathes out, gives Jason's hips one last squeeze. "Let me feel that pleasure."

  Jason rises from between them, slow and sinuous, a perfect flow of movement. He rests a hand on Bruce's left thigh, squeezes, and leans closer with no mercy, armed with a killer smile.

  "Yeah, B," he chuckles, eats up the little suppressed groan Bruce lets out when Jason's other hand goes straight for the gold and wraps around that delicious heat, so hard and wet, "let's give him a show."

[jereviendrai]

||| ooc; does every character on this blog have bpd symptoms? is this problematic, considering they’re all villains or would-be villains? is there a way to give a villain a mental health disorder without stigmatizing the disorder? well--

OH AND BIG TRIGGER WARNING FOR A WIDE RANGE OF MENTAL HEALTH TOPICS SUCH AS: eating disorders, mental illness, stigmatization of mental illness, self harm, suicidal tendencies, and a fuckload more. I don’t go into detail. There are just mentions. I’m not gonna say a bunch of graphic shit, I promise! If I went into graphic detail, this would turn into a PhD thesis proposal, and that’d be WAY too long to be worth writing. Also I have BPD, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on the subject. I’m not. My word is not law, but it’d be nice if my word was taken into consideration.

this post got so fucking long and disorganized jesus christ

The answers are: yes, not inherently, and absolutely.

I want to get into the mental health of all three characters in a second, but I think it’s important to talk a little about the other two points first. That said, though -- yes, they’re all borderline. All three of them! And they all experience it differently! I will come back to that. Anyway--

I feel like it’s important to talk about villains, mental illness and stigma. There’s a really common (and insanely lazy) tendency for writers to explain a villain’s villainy by simply saying, “oh, well they’re a psychopath,” or, “they’re just crazy.” This is not only lazy and offensive, but it contributes to an unfair stigma against the mentally ill.

Mental illness might, say, compel someone to steal a chocolate bar or snap at someone out of anger. It might make a person’s emotions volatile. It might make someone unreasonable. They might suffer delusions of abandonment, of some plot against them, of people’s secret intent to humiliate them, etc. They might suffer and handle their suffering poorly. They may cause harm. But that doesn’t make them... evil. It makes them complex. And how they react to and handle their negative actions says more about them than any diagnosis could.

When you have a villain with a mental illness, you need to examine how the illness is hurting them. Write about how it hinders their progress. Write about how isolating it can be for them. Write about the impact and struggle. Not how the illness makes them so evil or so irredeemably awful. The illness should be what humanizes them and helps to make them relatable. No matter how untouchable and powerful your villain is, they have some personal struggle that is independent of their villainy. When done correctly, it can go a long way in fleshing out your villain and adding interesting inner conflict!

I know, I know. You might be asking, “yeah, but don’t people with mental health issues sometimes cause harm directly related to their symptoms?” To which I say: yeah, duh, of course. Just like a depressed person might say something mean when they’re having a bad day. Just like someone with ADHD might make someone feel like they aren’t being listened to. Just like someone who has social anxiety might make a friend feel unloved. Just like mentally healthy people also occasionally cause harm.

I’m not saying mental health issues don’t cause problems and maladaptive behaviors. I’m just saying it doesn’t... make someone inherently bad -- real or fictional. And I need people to internalize that.

ANYWAY ON TO THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR BPD

(i know, you’re probably like, “dude oh my god shut up and get on with it” sakjlfdkjsa)

I’m going to be referring to the four subtypes. I know these are controversial to some people. Some really don’t like these labels, others feel comforted by them, etc. They’re just to make it easier to talk about this whole thing. No one fits neatly into any one subtype! Some people don’t resemble any particular one! Everyone is different! Don’t box people into these subtypes if you haven’t been given consent, thanks!

Mr. A / Clark Donovan Mr. A is a classic example of the Quiet Borderline. Someone with quiet BPD mostly directs their symptoms inward. It’s harder to detect than other types, as the symptoms that are most prevalent are mostly expressed, well, inwardly. Self-esteem issues, self-blame, insecurity, withdrawing emotionally, pretending you’re not angry when you are, self harming tendencies, suicidal thoughts, etc. He’s also kind of clingy. Mr. A is an extremely loyal person to a fault. He is a people pleaser and will go to the ends of the Earth to make his loved ones happy, even if it hurts him. This is of detriment to him, as he often finds himself getting hurt on behalf of people who might not care as much as he does. He’s let a lot of bad people into his life solely because they made him feel loved, wanted and useful. He views everyone he loves through rose-tinted glasses and only takes them off long after he’s been laid to waste by them. He has terrible issues with self-image and has thus developed an eating disorder. He also has severe depersonalization/derealization disorder, which is a result of how his mental health interacts with his reality-warping powers. It creates a lot of anxiety with him, watching himself phase through things and bend the world around him on a whim. His motivations in life are connected to this, but his motivation to do evil things is not. He wants to bring other superpowered people together as a united front against humanity, as he feels that humanity is a threat to their continued existence. This has nothing to do with his mental health issues. The part of it that does tie in is that he’s painfully lonely and has chronic feelings of boredom, so being surrounded with a shit ton of different people mitigates that. It’s a motive for him bringing people closer to him, but it is not a motive for him to launch an attack on all humanity. He’d be really offended if you tried to accuse him of doing this on the basis that he’s just a bit ill. His illness literally just makes him crave contact with other living beings just like him. He sometimes does bad or stupid things because of this, but it literally has nothing to do with his motives as a villain. As an addendum of sorts, Mr. A’s alias and reluctance to use his given name (Clark Donovan) are a result of identity issues he suffers due to his BPD. He finds it hard to maintain a stable sense of identity, so he just... doesn’t.

Ivan Chanteur Ivan closely resembles what we like to call an Impulsive Borderline, comorbid with ADHD. He is an impulsive person, as the name of the subtype suggests. He’s a thrill-seeker who suffers from extreme levels of chronic boredom, which he desperately tries to combat by any means necessary. Staying still and doing repetitive tasks is literal torture for him. If he cannot get up and move and do whatever it takes to keep himself feeling fulfilled and occupied, he is probably going to fucking lose it. When he is actively vocalizing his boredom on a regular basis, this means the chronic feelings of boredom have reached critical mass. It’s not just boredom. It’s anxiety, it’s agitation, it’s existential dread, it’s an inability to focus, it’s pent-up energy that needs to go somewhere and can’t just stay in him anymore. If he can’t get it out in healthy ways, he usually resorts to self-harm or less-than-healthy pursuits. He’s been known to dabble in drugs, self-harm, occasional promiscuity on a bad night. While therapy’s helped him get a handle on it, there’ve been a lot of stressful and traumatic things going on in his life have have made it a lot harder to keep himself in check. Ivan is pretty charismatic, able to cast a wide net and catch all sorts of people in his social web. He has a sort of natural magnetism that, on a superficial level, should make him quite popular. But underneath it all, he has difficulty trusting people long enough to actually let them into his life. He’ll act like an open book, only to slam himself shut and reshelve himself before anyone can get anywhere near the end. He’s easy to befriend, but difficult to get close to. This has caused him to feel lonely and frustrated. He wishes he could easily form deep connections, but it’s hard and it hurts him. In addition to all of this, he engages in a wide variety of attention-seeking and risk-taking behaviors. He often spends time with people who are not good to him, simply for the thrill of it. This has often gotten him hurt, but he finds it hard to cut this habit in spite of everything. This leads to a lot of frustration and self-hatred, as it makes it hard for him to protect himself. Every time someone hurts or betrays him, he beats himself up over it and tells himself he should know better by now. All that said, though, he’s come a long way in therapy. He’s not quite able to keep a handle on all of it all the time, but he’s managed to secure one or two decently stable friendships along the way.

Eve Laurier Eve is particularly difficult to talk about, but I’m going to try my best. Eve is what happens when you make a conscious decision to be bad. He knows beyond a shadow of doubt that what he’s doing is wrong, but he feels so wronged by the world that he just cannot seem to motivate himself to care. This... again... has nothing to do with his BPD. If anything, it’s his struggles with this disorder that keep him at least somewhat... grounded in reality. Eve suffered a personal tragedy -- the loss of his twin sister in a housefire. Though ruled an accident, he cried foul play. Consumed with grief at the loss of the only person he felt could truly understand him, he vowed to find the culprit and make them pay. This set him down a path of vengeance that would make John Wick blush. Eve grew up as the heir to his family’s criminal enterprise. This put him in a position of power the very moment he was born. This also left him exposed to a lot of terrible, violent crimes from a very young age. Because this was normalized by his family, he internalized and compartmentalized any misgivings he had about violence. By the time he was ready for university, he had been thoroughly trained to carry out hitjobs on behalf of the family. He was a weapon from the moment he left the womb. He was groomed to do terrible things, and it’s because of this ongoing and continuous trauma that he developed his particular cocktail of mental health issues. He mostly fits in with the label of Petulant BPD. Repeated and violent trauma did a number on him, leaving him angry and hurt over what his parents let him fall victim to. He also experiences feelings of self-loathing over the part he feels he played in his own trauma, despite the fact that it started in early childhood. He is self-defeating and self-blaming. He has a difficult time expressing his feelings and has angry outbursts fairly regularly, often resulting in self-harm and suicidal ideation. He’s been known to reach for the nearest mind-altering substance just to get out of his head for a bit. His mood swings are intense and leave him feeling fatigued and anxious. He has severe social anxiety that sometimes manifests as cold indifference. He also has issues with control, has paranoid delusions about the people in his life and doesn’t often believe it when people say that they care for him. He will find any and every piece of evidence that points to the contrary, even if he has to make it up himself. This usually ensures that he’ll end up alone again. He doesn’t have very many close relationships, if any at all. His BPD is not the reason he hurts people. Any hurt caused by his BPD is directed at himself, not at others. His BPD is a direct result of what actually has primed him to hurt people. It’s a direct result of trauma. He’s traumatized. And no, trauma is no excuse for what he’s done -- but his BPD didn’t make him kidnap and torture Ivan while he waited for Ivan’s parents to send in the ransom. That was all Eve. That was his conscious decision to make, in spite of everything in his head telling him how awful and wrong he would be to do such a thing. He knew it was wrong and ignored it, as he was under the impression that Ivan’s family had a hand in his sister’s death. If anything, his BPD aggravates his feelings of shame and self-loathing when he does precisely what his parents had been training him to do his whole life.

Anyway-- I hope this was helpful or at least interesting.

The point I’m trying to make here is that mental illness isn’t some kind of ultimate litmus test of good and evil. A disorder doesn’t make you good or bad. It’s just another facet of who you are.

So... to that end... please for the love of fuck stop using personality disorders as the reason for someone’s villainy. Please. I am begging.

I wrote a bunch of BPD villains in various stages of villainhood because I have BPD and this disorder often makes you feel like you’re evil, a monster, etc. Honestly, on good days I feel like an inherently bad person who consciously chooses to do good. That’s very flawed and I know that logically I’m not inherently bad, but that’s kind of what stigma does. It makes you feel like you’re inherently bad. And that feeling influenced how I write all three of these characters.

This is an incoherent mess but today’s the day I find out if I have coronavirus and I’m so fucking stressed out and hopped up on DayQuil. Thanks for reading any of this, I guess?

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 21: The 100 2x11 Coup De Grace

It’s late, my computer’s more tired than I am (and hardcore hates me and very well may decide to eat this entire post who even knows), and this is probably a bad idea but I’m gonna do it anyway.

Or at least start.

Another episode, or partial episode, of The 100.

This opening torture sequence makes me so uncomfortable. Which like I get is the point but tbh I’m just not into ‘look how unflinching we are at the realities of Bad Stuff.’ Especially when my tired computer is skipping and the sequence becomes, like...trippy. Trippier.

This is probably a super bad idea because my computer literally cannot handle video lol. I am going to restart it.

It’s actually kind of nuts that Monty’s been missing for 2 days and Harper even longer and Jasper and Maya are like ‘this is weird and upsetting but I guess we’ll find them somewhere!!’ Well, Maya more than Jasper. Mount Weather isn’t THAT big.

“You have to look like nothing’s wrong. Like everything’s okay” is so sad. I think it’s situations like that that make S2 my favorite, just b/c I’m a sucker for scenarios of enclosed tension. Like, forget war and blah blah blah, I want this, like... secretive, spying, being spied upon, uncertainty. That’s the real horror in a satisfying way.

Gosh his haircut is awful though.

When does Clarke learn to ride a horse?

I have literally no idea what’s happening bc I rewatch these eps so infrequently.

Clarke just got “yes ma’amed.” I find that semi-hilarious, not because she’s 18 but because you knew Grounders used words like “ma’am.”

I love Clarke’s single-mindedness. “We can’t stop for water. We can’t stop for anything. We’re on a mission. And Bellamy might have called!” AWWNH!Clarke is so OOC lol but she has a different background okay?

I’m not really in the mood to trust Abby about anything. Does she... actually make good decisions? I feel like you’d have to track her through all of the seasons but I am inclined to say...perhaps......not.

So the Mountain Men tried to assassinate Clarke and Lexa. Completely forgot about that.

The introduction of Echo. I just... I just have no opinions on her, I guess. Literally my only opinion is that she should have been the Ice Queen and, not being the Ice Queen, she’s just not interesting to me. I will say, she couldn’t have been in Mount Weather long if she knew who the Sky People are, as they’ve only been on the ground about a month. But also...why does she hate them? They were only fighting with Trikru, and Azgeda territory isn’t even, like, in the vicinity.

I love Dante but he has some major balls looking Jasper in the face and saying he doesn’t know where his friends are. I mean, he doesn’t, because Cage stole them, but how do you just MISPLACE people in a 600,000 square foot bunker? Where COULD they go?

I’m sure I’ve said this before but as someone who went to a high school with a uniform I find it HIGHLY unrealistic that all these teenage boys tuck in their shirts and keep them tucked in all the time without exceptions.

Jasper being protective of Monty <3<3<3.

So it was MW that told them there were no Ark survivors. Did I know that? Did I forget that? Not that it matters as my Clarke/Maya fic is done lol.

Dante is the most Hilarious and Wonderful of all of the attempted father figures on this show I said what I said--they’re all terrible but at least he bring the Weird Father Figure energy to 11. I’ll lie to you but it’s to protect you, call you son (always weird), super good at self-defense--ah-ha! sword at at your neck!

“This is not a toy.” If the sword is in MW it’s probably Important and Famous.

IMO and I completely stand by this assessment, it’s harder for Jasper to be brave than it is for other people, and he was really brave, and it worked, and I’m proud of him.

I realize this is also a problem with the literal world but we actually do know that torture isn’t effective so Indra being all upset that she’s not allowed to torture Emerson is just so....exhausting to me. Like Clarke isn’t suggesting not torturing him bc she loves the high ground and must walk it at all times. She’s suggesting not torturing him bc the last time she tortured someone, she got 0 good information. And even though neither of them know it, it was the shit information garnered from torture that led Finn to TonDC! Also if they had let Emerson die, the Grounder would have also still died--it’s not that they chose to use resources on one and not the other. They had two different types of wounds. I mean I guess if they’d brought them in faster without patching up Emerson in the field? That’s probably what she meant. However the Grounder Death Cult and their complete willingness to declare their fight over at the merest papercut makes me again less sympathetic to this point of view.

I’d literally already forgotten that someone tried to assassinate Clarke like an hour earlier. Abby doesn’t need to be concerned about that, lol, Clarke’s used to it!

Okay first I did have a longstanding headcanon that Echo had a crush on Bellamy going way back--I mean that’s practically canon, yeah?--but now I’m super convinced because in their second scene together, he sacrifices himself for her using information she gave him (that MW takes the loud/strong looking ones), even though she greeted him by spitting in his face, and actually, that was very heroic and selfless of him. I’d fall in love too.

Second, I thought she had no tattoos because she’s a spy or w/e but I CLEARLY see tattoos on her legs. And they are not white either.

I don’t think I ever realized that Maya found Bellamy because she was in the infirmary/harvest chamber looking for Harper and Monty. I do not have a good memory for each scene leading into the next. AND she think she’s found them when she sees how fast the random patient’s treatment is working, because that has to be a Sky Person and she would never guess Bellamy.

They really do just talk about their little torture machine casually all the time. “I need to go over the treatment schedule so I know how many cages to clear.”

Hey so like how did Maya get in if she’s not cleared for this facility?

What a wonderful time to remember yet again that if Bellamy knows who Maya is from her reference to Jasper, Clarke, who saw Maya and Jasper flirt like ONE TIME, must have told him about them, which is cute and funny all at once.

Maya: “I wanted to see what was so special about him, but... he’s dead.” Bellamy: Ah yes! I’m dead! * immediately closes his eyes * Why am I laughing so hard at this?

Good thing they take dead bodies down slowly instead of just thunking them on their heads.

Maya, Bellamy, and Echo v. Lovejoy is a pretty satisfying fight. Also, what did Clarke just say about Emerson talking b/c they saved his life? Echo helps Bellamy because he saved her life. Sometimes you get more flies with honey.

I tend to forget that Bellamy literally strangled this guy with his bare hands. Like it was self-defense to some degree, in that this had to be a fight to the death, but it was also just pure fucking rage. Like he said, he (like Clarke for a while) wants to kill everyone in the Mountain.

And then he thanks Echo and asks Maya if she’s all right. A True Catch. Tbh I could see something forming out of Echo and Bellamy here, but not after some of the later twists and turns in the later narrative.

Honesty, I’ve always loved Maya but... let’s just appreciate her, shall we? That was horrific, seeing someone she knew killed in front of her--and helping, because she knew he was on the wrong side, even though that was the same side she’d been on her whole life. Is she completely in the moment, or is she already seeing that there’s no way out for her here? That the people they’ve brought into the Mountain are really going to destroy it?

Bellamy coming out in Lovejoy’s clothes looks like a kid trying on new clothes at the mall before the new school year. Except he’s just dumped a body down a trash chute.

Like “I’ll come back for you, I promise”--I can see a basis for a ship in that. So far it is 100% built on how Echo would have to be dumb not to fall in love with Bellamy but still.

This Maya and Bellamy scene is amazing. I love every aspect of it.

Lemme just...watch that Jonty hug on repeat.

Honestly they even ended the scene with them walking out the door together even though there’s no way anyone could have moved Harper that fast and there’s also no indication of who moved her or how. Guess she’s...not that important...?? LOL??

Kane has only two modes: fairly ineffectual bastard or utterly ineffectual neo-hippie. “You’re not grasping the situation! We’re nice! Be nice to us!” I probably shouldn’t mock him bc he is me lol, I also would not know what else to say to Emerson other than ‘please????’ but still. Common sense and peace and love would be great but those aren’t shared values I guess.

And then he goes 180 to ‘let’s torture him then?’

What you should be doing is good cop bad cop. Or like, wearing him down with repeated questioning? I heard that’s an effective interrogation technique, although here Emerson has a certain advantage of time and that his interrogators are way more easily annoyed than he is easily worn down or confused.

Anyway I remember now. Clarke ultimately solves this problem with that ultimate BDE moment, sending him with a message and 6 hours of oxygen. She really is just the Smartest.

At least Kane acknowledges that the Chancellorship is a completely random title since Abby literally just kinda stole it? Like Jaha is the rightful Chancellor and Kane is the second-most-rightful Chancellor and she’s just sorta...there? But it also doesn’t matter because as established, Clarke is the one actually in charge.

This Bellamy and Maya elevator scene is also the kind of tension that I like. Is Bellamy...legitimately considering shooting him? In the elevator? That would end badly lol. He has this idea to just start randomly offing people in public/enclosed places, while Lexa is all like ‘we can’t save TonDC bc it would blow Bellamy’s cover!’ like the irony.

I wonder if the MW classes are like...to some end, like, mandatory schooling that must be completed, or if they’re just like for funsies? I think the second, partially because it’s an “Expressionist class” which doesn’t seem like the Three Rs and partially because this dude doesn’t seem upset that Maya didn’t show, like he’s just vaguely wondering where she was.

“We’ve accomplished great things” in that tone is like the MOST American thing I have ever heard. (I can say this because I’m American.)

“We’ve been bleeding people to stay alive for generations. That’s our legacy” is true in the sense that Dante’s line in the sane is...truly in the sand. But also has it been ‘generations’? I’m not sure you understand how time works, show-as-a-whole. I mean maybe this is technically true? They probably discovered Grounders like....50 years ago? Which is sort of “generations.” But when you say it like that it makes it sound way longer.

You wanna root for Dante over Cage because he’s on the side of our heroes but in terms of like bitter logic Cage has the advantage. What they’ve already done and what Dante has managed to rationalize to himself is bad enough. They’re already Doing Bad Things, doing yet more bad things isn’t going to bother anyone. Especially when these extra bad things (1) come out to the same--torturing/killing people and (2) lead them to a permanent home on the ground.

I wonder if Dante/MW justified what they did to Grounders with stories of them being like...irradiated mutants. Like literally inhuman. So it ‘doesn’t count.’ I mean objectively they’re wrong of course but I mean in their heads. And then for Dante the line is so obvious between killing radiation casualties and killing just normal humans like themselves, whereas for Cage--who sees the Grounders more because of Cerberus, and knows they don’t look that much different, that they are also just people underneath the masks and big clothes--sees no difference between the Grounders and the Sky People, and if he’s already sullied himself by using one set, he can continue sullying himself, for a greater cause, by using the other set. It’s just a question of which story you’re telling yourself and how much you’re willing to lie.

The plotting of this season is, overall, very good. Especially in the second half.

I think Clarke’s default mode when stressed is order giving. It’s part of the control thing. She’s okay if she has everything under control, and if she knows everything, and when she has all that knowledge and control it just...spills out of her, directing people with what they need to do and where they need to go.

Whereas Raven’s in full ‘falling out of love with Clarke’ mode.

Also I think Clarke is very quick to comfort people and she is genuine in this but because she ALSO has her agenda and her strident tone and her controlled demeanor, it can look like manipulation. Or at least, if I were her friend, I would always wonder if she really cared or if she just wanted me to calm down so my emotions weren’t in the way of The Plan.

My 15 second Raven, Clarke, and Octavia scene. Lemme just rewatch this a bunch of times too.

“Jackson found genetic marker anomalies that can only come from someone born on the Ark.” Remember when people were theorizing that this was a big deal in some way? The Arkers were genetically modified to withstand space? I remember that being a theory. Anyway in retrospect, it’s just a Plot Device. Possibly a Pseudo-Science Plot Device I would not know.

Never mind. “We were genetically engineered. They weren’t.” So it is in fact canon, just meaningless canon. HOW IS THIS SOME RANDOM THROWAWAY LINE?

Clarke’s feral moments are the best.

It’s cute how Abby continues to think Clarke isn’t in charge.

Having Bell run into Lovejoy’s son is cheap but effective. I still remember that scene and I can really feel the full effect on him through Bob’s acting and the music. I also always remember that line “What did you expect you’d find here?” Because the answer is obviously ‘monsters.’ They had their simple narrative too: about how MW were the bad guys and thus they could destroy them all and it would be vengeful and feel good. But it’s more complicated than that: everyone in the Mountain is complicit in terrors. But many of them passively so. Bellamy was ready to kill all of them, and so was Clarke, but he changes his mind based on this encounter, tells her about it over the radio, and makes HER change her mind and in fact change her entire plan, by the time she explains it in 2x15.

And it’s sad for Maya too because Bellamy is being aided by her but she is still a Mountain Person. It’s easy to say ‘she’s an exception, she’s Jasper’s friend, she’s our friend.’ But she’s done everything he hates the Mountain for. If the whole Mountain is evil, she’s evil. And to the extent you can’t be both pro-MW and pro-Sky People, she’s put in this impossible position of choosing sides, or trying to switch sides abruptly. Bellamy sees that, and it’s like yet one more additional layer to his guilt over what he did, because he sees a new angle to how it affected Maya,  without whom he’d be dead.

Jonty the leader couple. And Jasper’s face when Monty says “We’re not safe here.”

S2 is my favorite bc of plotting like this episode: just as the 47 are about to leave, Cage stages his coup. Just as Bellamy is about to see his friends, the doors lock and they’re trapped. The moment when Jasper sees Bellamy--with absolutely no reason to believe this could even be possible. In trying to plan fics that use S2 I tend to get confused about the plot bc it goes back and forth and circles around a lot, but in actually watching it, it’s quite effective, and I think part of the circling confusion is just bc there are so many moving parts, people need to be in the right places at the right times, meet and separate at the right moments, so it can read awkwardly in summary. But they did a good job ultimately, I think.

Another thing about S2 generally is that even though it’s much more expansive than S1 in terms of locations and number of characters and groups of characters, ultimately almost everything revolves around one story (except for the CoL setup stuff), and 2 main locations that have meaning, with various points in between. So it is more concise and more centralized and more meaningful than later seasons, which become increasingly spread out and disjointed. Or so I try to explain to myself at 1am.

Yaaaay emotional Princess Mechanic and then Bravenlarke. I live for these moments when characters are just like...emotional together.

I don’t know if I find it realistic that Clarke would be like ‘it’s over’ so fast but nevertheless I like Raven and Bellamy picking her back up.

Clarke’s relieved face...she’s in love.

Bellamy: I’m fine. Me: He’s a liar!!! But I guess they can talk about his emotions later.

When they’re all together, they’re all better. Like immediately. Even Clarke’s “Raven’s going to help you” with a little look to her, like, this isn’t an order, and Raven nods....

I love that Bellamy took Maya’s expression to mean “It’s not a problem” when it quite obviously meant “It’s a huge problem.” But also Clarke smiled for .05 seconds so I think she knew he was a-lying. This could be a sitcom if it were a totally different show.

Weirdly, I watched part of 2x15 again for a fic I decided not to write atm and...they don’t actually use the Grounders as a Trojan Horse army. Their plan NOT to kill everyone including the kids meant basically that they used their real army as a distraction and then just took the inside-Grounders out the back way. Or that was the idea. Which in retrospect is actually kind of disappointing.

Clarke’s power walk through the hallway with her Grounder Entourage is just so....satisfying. This is the emotional payoff that got me into this show.

Clarke just literally staging a coup against her own mother, using the Grounder force that sees her as a leader, is so.... I feel like I have never appreciated it before this rewatch. I think in the past I found it kind of annoying tbh. But this time I like it a lot more. I like Clarke’s just insane levels of confidence and self-assurance. It is a good look.

First of all the parallel to the Wallaces. But more importantly, I always wanted this big story line of Delinquents Versus Arkers that never fully came as I wanted it, but this is pretty close, where she’s just used to being in charge by now, so you know what, she is. And the only thing she needs to make her desire for power real is muscle, which she has, thanks to Lexa, so she uses it. It’s also very satisfying. And should ultimately have been the groundwork for the delinquents to form a separate community but WHAT DO I KNOW?

All that said, and this isn’t contradictory, but Clarke picks like the MOST inflammatory way to go about her plan. She just does it, she gives no explanation, she stages a showdown at the gate with her own Mom the Chancellor. There is a subtler way of doing this. But I like that she didn’t do subtle because it’s IC for her. It’s IC for her age (who is more Dramatique than a teen?) and it’s IC for her place in her hero’s arc: under L’s influence, she’s becoming big-headed, leaning into the sin of pride, here in the form of “I do can do no wrong,” and by 2x16 in the form of “I can do no right, no one has ever been more wrong than I, no one has ever been more sorrowful than I, let me perform penance in the woods.”

Pride: the most annoying deadly sin.

Anyway.

And Kane, who always bows to the Alpha Female in the room, immediately enables Clarke’s Drama.

“Let our people go and we’ll let you live. It’s just that simple.”

“The Grounder army is bigger than you think and the acid fog can’t hurt them” is honestly a bluff though? Because again, they do not use or even PLAN to use the inside Grounders and they DO plan to take out the acid fog so??? I guess the point, if she was protecting Bellamy, WAS the bluff, WAS the distraction.

I think it was unnecessary to take out his O2 but I guess she’s really just showing off, which again is IC and I guess has the purpose of showing MW she means business and is Not To Be Fucked With. Still, it is important that her message make it to MW since it’s the distraction Bellamy asked for, so it seems like something of a risk to make it hard for the messenger to arrive home safely.

I do like that she gets to use that classic retort “That sounds like a you problem.”

And so.... I meant to go to sleep like 3 hours ago, and my power is flickering. Time for bed. The end, goodnight.

[that-shamrock-vibe]

TV Review: Crisis on Infinite Earths (Spoilers)

Part One: Supergirl

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the day after the episode airs in the U.S. so if you have not yet seen the first part of the crossover or are waiting for the entire crossover to become available then don’t read on until you have.

Overview:

We have SO MUCH to discuss! So much so that my Easter-Egg section which is usually more or less a minor tag-on at the end of these reviews is possibly going to be the same size as a lot of these other sections we are going through because, as promised by Marc Guggenheim, Easter has come early and we were treated to quite a few very tasty Easter-Eggs, one of which had me cheering at the screen.

But with Part One of this 5-episode crossover already giving us so much action, drama and emotion, it’s not only a question on how the Multiverse survives, but how the rest of the crossover does as well.

In the Beginning:

I love a good theory of evolution story, and we have heard in Arrow over the past season that The Monitor has been around for eons so it stands to reason he was around at the start of creation itself.

I just the sentiment of “In the beginning there was one singularity that soon spawned a multiverse”. It’s a lot like Doctor Who’s first rock theory from “The Runaway Bride”. I don’t know enough about the beginning of all life to actually determine what created the universe, I am more inclined to believe evolution than creationism, but I do like this idea of one reality spawning many.

I wasn’t so crazy about the visuals of this, especially considering in the past whenever we have viewed the Multiverse it’s always been within the Speed Force so we’re used to that blue energy rather than this red darker energy but it seems to be in-keeping with the theme of the crossover so I’m going with it.

Also LaMonica Garrett, who deserves some sort of award recognition not only for appearing as a series regular in both Arrow and The Flash this season but also wearing what I’m sure is the heaviest outfit created, but selling it very well, even the cheesy prophet of doom voice he has down rather well.

Multiverse Annihilation:

Alright so this was obviously to be expected that we would see some if not a lot of Earths be destroyed during this crossover, but my god they don’t pull punches in starting by letting you know “Yeah we’re killing off a lot”.

Now the Earths we see erased during the opening of this episode are Earth-9, Earth-66, Earth-89 and Earth-X. Of those four, we have only ever seen Earth-X which was the Nazi-ruled Earth from two crossovers ago.

Now while there was a great and uncredited cameo here from it and we’ll discuss that further down, would anyone really be sad if a reality where the Nazis won and ruled was wiped out? I know there are inhabitants on that world and for the most part they are innocent and good people, but you would think just maybe find a way to evacuate them like they do on Earth-38 later and then if it goes extinct then fine because it’s not exactly a good reality.

Both Earth-66 and Earth-89 also has great Easter-Eggs just in the name and we’ll discuss that also further down but it is interesting that both Earths-66 and 89 only focused on Gotham City whereas this was the Supergirl episode of the crossover.

Rallying the Team:

Okay so Harbinger, who either was Lyla Michaels but is now an emissary of the Anti-Monitor or simply likes using her Task Force X codename, appears to all the major heroes just as we saw her do in last week’s episode of Arrow and summons them all to Earth-38 aka Supergirl’s Earth.

I have to say as well, I know they’re on a TV budget and can’t really afford to have as many characters in one scene as say Avengers: Endgame did, but the fact they cheapened out and only gave us two Legends (Sara and Ray), rather then also showing Nate, Constantine, Mick and Charlie as well does seem a tad unfair especially considering they’ve been absent from screens the longest, some may say for the better considering the way their show is going.

Also, I will probably talk about this more with the Batwoman episode tomorrow, but they need to clarify the timeline of her show. When we first met her in Elseworlds last year she was Batwoman, but the start of her season saw her become Batwoman, and now she’s still hunting for Alice? How long has it been?

Also, as expected, Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman and his Lois Lane join the party after Argo City is destroyed and they send of their newborn son in a pod to safety. Argo City’s destruction also sees the death of Kara’s mother Alura played by Erica Durance but because I know who’s coming in tonight’s episode and the possibly jokes they’ll make about it I am okay with that as a Smallville fan.

I do always like it in these crossovers when the heroes either first meet or reunite, this time Oliver’s daughter but from the future Mia Smoak and Batwoman are officially introduced as Batwoman reveals herself as Kate Kane, to Oliver’s bemusement.

I do wish also that there was more time spent on character interaction because that is usually what I enjoy most about these crossovers, we had a little bit of that with Brainy and Ray, but Elseworlds I felt established a great repour for Batwoman and the Trinity yet that wasn’t really seen here.

My biggest complaint in this Supergirl episode though is that both Brainy and J’onn were never seen in their natural forms. I know it’s costly and timely to have them look like Brainiac 5 and the Martian Manhunter, but when they just look like Jesse Rath and David Harewood, no matter how great these guys are it’s a comic book crossover event and I would love to see more comic-booky character looks.

Alright so, Harbinger sits down the newly formed or reformed or updated team because they’ve come together now four times to help save a world or multiple worlds or now reality itself and just need to be called the Justice League and get it over with, but anyway I digress.

She instructs the team that the tower that randomly appears was one of many placed by the Monitor on Earths he thought were at risk...why he didn’t just place them on every god damn Earth if he could see the future is beyond me but that’s what we’re getting.

I did like a couple of interactions before going into action where Oliver seamlessly interacted with Barry, Sara and Mia without making it seem forced.

My favourite was the interaction with daughter Mia when he effectively passes on the mantle of Green Arrow to her despite the fact she’s not ready to lose him. I don’t know whether or not the spin-off series focusing on Mia as New Green Arrow has been confirmed yet but we know she will become Green Arrow in the near future.

So Oliver, Mia, Ray and Kate go off and battle the Shadow Demon army that are swarming the tower trying to destroy it for the Anti-Monitor, while Barry, Kara and Clark are off trying to save the people.

I will admit Ray didn’t annoy me quite as much as he has done in recent seasons of Legends during this episode. I did love his interactions with Kate about her suit getting an upgrade and then her asking him to upgrade her batarangs, when Brandon Routh is good he is good and he is pulling double duty in this crossover so let’s hope he’s very good.

Also at this time Lois, because she needs something to do, has gone to Earth-16 with Brainy and Sara to retrieve baby Jonathan who wound up going through a wormhole and ending up on a parallel world...in the future...2046 to be exact.

This was, I feel, there for two reasons. 1) Another Easter-Egg appearance but this time in-house as it references Legends Season 1, but also 2) To still keep the events of “Star City 2046) canon despite the fact that in that episode Connor Hawke was actually John Diggle Jr. and in present day they are not only two separate people but also adoptive brothers...and also we know Oliver is supposed to die so how is he alive in 2046? Well it’s an alternate reality version who apparently can’t remember meeting Earth-1 Sara before.

Our two other teams rallying really only serve to give the rest of the Supergirl cast something to do as Alex enlists Lena to help either build or activate portals to get the inhabitants of Earth-38 to safety while Dreamer and Kelly help get those inhabitants onto ships including the Legion Cruiser that J’onn is piloting because apparently Brainy was given it by the Legion before they left with Winn despite the fact they left in the Legion Cruiser. It doesn’t really make sense but I enjoy seeing that ship again so I am letting it slide.

Saving the Multiverse, Take 1:

This may be quite cynical for me to say but this is what the remainder of the episode was, the first attempt at saving the multiverse because Earth-38 is where The Monitor wanted the heroes to make their stand against the Anti-Monitor.

The Anti-Monitor does not appear in this episode and his army of Shadow Demons are 1) Poorly rendered compared to the likes of the Time Wraiths and 2) Quite easy to defeat when you consider Darkseid has Parademons and even Thanos with his legion of horribles.

In any case while the Supers are trying to fix the tower to make the sky not red which works margingly well before they exhaust themselves, the other heroes are on the ground battling the Shadow Demons. I would have maybe liked if Ray had to cover the Supers while they were doing what they do because it seemed slightly daft that the Shadow Demons wouldn’t try and stop them but that’s what we got.

It was a very small-scale battle and I know we’re only in part 1 and usually it’s the final episode we get the big battle but this was still small scale considering what is at stake here.

The biggest surprise of the battle was Kelly Olsen, who I haven’t really liked all season as she seems pointless other than just being Alex’s girlfriend who always needs saving, apparently has the Guardian armour left to her by James who retired from vigilantism to take over a newspaper in his old hometown and that’s why he left despite never actually being part of these crossovers, his dopplegangers were.

This was also a very low-powered battle. Think about it, the Supers, Flash and Atom all have CGI powers or tech yet we didn’t really see much of it, aside from the Supers trying to fix the tower. Maybe they’re saving the budget for later episodes but it better pay off.

The Monitor comes in as the prophet of doom to basically tell them that they’ve lost this battle but the war still rages, so transports everyone aside from Oliver to Earth-1 Star City.

Oliver refuses to leave and makes one of the most poignent comments I have ever heard him say when The Monitor says “It’s time” and Oliver asks “Has everyone been evacuated” The Monitor responds with “No” so Oliver responds “Then it’s not yet time”. From the trailer I thought this to mean it was time for his death, but actually this was something The Monitor was trying to prevent as he did not see him dying this way, but he does.

Stephen Amell delivers both this line and scene very well. I have never been the biggest Stephen Amell fan and do feel as if he goes to the corny side a little too much but here, given the interactions he had with Barry, Mia and Sara in the episode, and knowing that Arrow is ending and he is supposed to die, it was minorly emotional which is the most emotion he’s ever got out of me.

Fallen Arrow:

The Monitor returns a battered and bleeding Oliver to the Arrowcave in Star City Earth-1 where the rest of the heroes have returned to. Along with the news that they were somewhat successful at evacuating Earth-38 before it was destroyed, it seems that Oliver does actually die in this episode.

First of all, the fact that Supergirl is disheartened to know they didn’t save everyone is stupid because they only worked to evacuate one city compared to the entire planet. Secondly, we know that the episode of Arrow after this crossover will not include Stephen Amell...but to lose him on part one of the crossover does seem like a red herring.

Also I do not think he would die on any other show but his own and that part isn’t until January 14, so I don’t think this is the last of Oliver we’ve seen.

However, out of nowhere, Pariah appears. Pariah is Harrison “Nash” Wells who is the latest Harrison Wells to appear on The Flash and was the main focus of the Crisis teaser at the end of every Arrowverse show over the last two weeks.

I have to say 1) His suit makes him look like Doctor Doom and 2) I haven’t had the time to be as invested with this Wells as I was with Harry Wells or H.R. Wells or even Sherloque Wells to supposedly feel bad for him that he has become Pariah as his penance for freeing the Anti-Monitor.

He is however another harbinger which sounds stupid to say as there is a character literally called Harbinger but not only is Lyla one but so is the Monitor and now Pariah. I’ll be curious to see where this leaves him after the crossover because, unlike almost every crossover before, this is the one that promises ramifications across the multiverse.

Easter-Eggs:

Alright here we go, as I said in the opening Multiverse Annihilation alone, there were multiple Easter-Eggs that not only connect the Arrowverse to various other DC properties but also just have some very cool cameos.

I do have mixed feelings on what they’re doing, as it does look like they are actually trying to combine every DC TV property and possibly movie into the same multiverse which is crazy but it could possibly work.

Titans:

This is the one I cheered at my screen for in a similar way to when they played the Smallville theme while showing their version of the Kent Farm in Elseworlds last year.

As mentioned before, one of the Earths wiped out by Antimatter is Earth-9. On this Earth we focus on San Francisco and two costumed heroes as Antimatter obliterates everything, Hawk and Jason Todd’s Robin. These characters are portrayed by Alan Ritchson and Curran Walters who are the actors portraying these characters in these suits in Titans over on DC Universe.

It was rumoured some time back that Titans would appear in this crossover but never confirmed, I know because for my job I’ve reported on everything to do with Crisis.

Now clearly there’s nothing to say these are the same characters from Titans, particularly as the end of Titans Season 2 saw Jason Todd leave the Titans and we don’t see Nightwing, Dove, Starfire, Raven or Gar, but considering Black Lightning is joining the Multiverse it stands to reason that Titans can as well.

This does also mean that Titans is now on Earth-9, while Arrow, The Flash, Batwoman and Legends are primarily on Earth-1 and Supergirl is on Earth-38.

Batman ‘66

Speaking of other Earths, we have two others that are wiped out in the opening and both focus on Gotham City, why? Well we have Earth-66 which features an elderly gentleman in red walking his dog and seeing the red skies exclaims “Holy Crimson Skies of Death!”.

This gentleman is portrayed by Robin veteran Burt Ward and the character is confirmed to be Dick Grayson of the Batman 1960s series.

This is wrapped up very nicely and honoured in the fact that the Earth is numbered 66 to pay homage to the fact that 1966 is the year the Batman series begun.

Batman ‘89

Similarly, the other Earth we see obliterated is Earth-89. Here we see another Gotham City with a man reading an edition of the Gotham City Gazette that shows a distorted image of Batman with the headline “Batman Captures Joker”.

The man reading the paper is revealed to be Alexander Knox portrayed by Robert Wuhl, reprising his role from the 1989 Batman movie starring Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight and Jack Nicholson as The Joker.

It has also been rumoured before that Michael Keaton would reprise his role as Batman in this crossover, while I still choose to debunk these rumours, it’s official that the 1989 Batman is now canon within the Arrowverse. This takes the Arrowverse from simply being the DC TV Universe to an actual Multiverse spanning TV and Film, something the MCU hasn’t properly managed to do yet.

Star City 2046:

So as mentioned before, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’s first season had an episode titled “Star City 2046″ where the Legends arrived in a dystopian Star City where Deathstroke’s son Grant Wilson was the new Deathstroke and Connor Hawke was the new Green Arrow and revealed as John Diggle Jr, Diggle’s son which at the time was crazy because Diggle had a daughter Sara before Barry created Flashpoint and replaced Sara with John Diggle Jr...keeping up?

So in the future of this Post-Flashpoint timeline that this universe is now in, we see that Connor Hawke and John Diggle Jr. are two separate people with Connor being the biological son of Ben Turner aka Bronze Tiger and John Diggle Jr now being the leader of the Deathstroke Gang.

This of course caused conflict with that episode of Legends, but because Legends never really follows the rules anyway I think everyone simply let it slide but now we have a loophole way of explaining things.

It turns out that when the Legends travelled to Star City in the year 2046, they also travelled to a parallel Earth, Earth-16. Now this is still in the future so I don’t think they’re saying it’s set, but what they are saying is it still happened and they didn’t overwrite their own lore basically.

We do only see Oliver here, who still has a cybernetic arm from before which Sara remembers and uses to her advantage, but Oliver doesn’t seem to remember that this Sara is not his Sara despite them having a rather candid conversation in that episode.

Also Joseph David-Jones portrayed Connor Hawke of that Earth in “Star City 2046″ so of course it makes sense for him to return as the Connor Hawke of Earth-1 in the future, but why didn’t he appear in this episode if he is already part of the cast of Arrow this season?

The Ray:

Briefest of cameos and unfairly uncredited in my opinion but we see a brief glimpse of Ray Terrill aka The Ray portrayed by Russell Tovey flying through the skies of Earth-X before being obliterated. Tovey first portrayed The Ray in “Crisis on Earth-X” two years ago and was part of the first openly gay male relationship in comic-book history with Wentworth Miller’s Leo Snart.

He then went on to voice the character in his own short-lived animated web series Freedom Fighters, but to see him return in live-action even for a brief uncredited cameo shows how much Tovey respects both the character and this universe and I love him even more for that.

Jonathan Kent:

Alright so I’ve mentioned baby Jonathan a couple of times because we knew Lois was pregnant at the end of Elseworlds last years however now seeing Jonathan Kent Jr. I am excited for what this could mean going forward.

In the comics, Jonathan is the son of Superman and Lois Lane given the full name Jonathan Samuel Kent to honour both his grandfathers and is a Kryptonian-Human hybrid who becomes the new Superboy and teams up with Damian Wayne, the Teen Titans and the Legion of Superheroes.

So when Brainy mentioned him going through a wormhole and time-travelling I thought they may be setting up that he’ll be taken in by the Legion, Mon-El may return with a grown-up version of him later in the season or something, but no he’s safe and Lois has him back.

The one thing I will say about him is I hope the writers don’t relegate Tyler Hoechlin’s already minimal Super-Antics into simply being Super-Dad. The odd dad line is funny but I hope that’s not all he is.

I am going to wait until Part 5 to rank the entire crossover but if they keep the momentum that Part 1 managed to accelerate then this could be the greatest TV accomplishment ever and could even rival Avengers: Endgame in how they literally bring worlds together.

So that’s my review of Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part One, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more DC TV Reviews as well as other TV Reviews and posts.

[my-status-single]

Tony’s Daughter Part 14

Character Pairing: Steve Rogers x F!Reader

Word count: 1100

Warnings: Reader is Tony Stark’s daughter, Slow burn. mentions of infertility.

Synopsis: Part 14 in a series. The beginning of the Iron Man 3 arc.

Authors Note: This is a canon compliant AU. I’m not entirely sure how long this arc will last. 

Start from the beginning

Side Stories

Autumn

You’ve never had a bad relationship with your father. But there were definitely times in your life where you weren’t as close as you are now. For example, when you were nineteen.

Your father had gone missing. No one had any idea where he would be. Or if they’d be able to get him back.

And you finally realised what you had to lose with him.

Since then, since Iron Man, you’d been as close as a father and daughter could be.

You never thought you’d have to live through the pain and fear of losing him again.

And then he happened.

You jolt awake next to Steve, who sleeps light and wakes up immediately when he feels you stir.

“Doll?” He slurs sleepily.

You pant softly and whimper a little as you pat his chest. “I’m okay. Just a bad dream.” You whisper.

He hums and cuddles up to you, nuzzling into your belly. “They say vivid dreams are a symptom of pregnancy.” He mumbles against your skin.

You pet softly through his hair. It’s coming up on the six month mark of the two of you actively trying to get pregnant. And it turns out that your worry over the serums making you both hyper fertile were unneeded because they seemed to be causing the opposite effect. Bruce thought that perhaps the super serum had left Steve sterile or partially sterile, or that your mother’s experiments may have left you with your own fertility issues. Or perhaps your body was viewing any potential pregnancy as a threat to you and would…take care of the issue. He had also said that perhaps none of that had happened. That the two of you didn’t need to worry yet. These things take time.

You’re sure that the amount you’re stressing about it isn’t helping matters.

You’re also sure that the amount you’re stressing is what’s caused your period to be late.

Which is why you haven’t mentioned it to Steve yet.

“I think I’m gonna call dad.” You whisper, the nightmare had been about him after all.

Steve just hums softly, already falling back asleep.

“JARVIS.” You say softly.

“Yes, Ms. Clarke?” He replies.

“Is dad awake?”

“Indeed, miss.” He sounds a bit exasperated.

You grab your tablet and have JARVIS call Tony.

He answers fairly quickly, his face showing app on the tablet. “Olive? Everything okay?” He asks, concern riddled on his face.

You nod. “Yeah, dad. Everything’s fine. I missed you.” You say softly, his eyes light up and he gives you a soft smile. “Why are you wearing your shell? What’s going on?.” You ask as you realise he has the shell of the Iron Man suit on.

He hums and waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry baby. Daddy’s just running some tests.”

You frown and look at the time. “Dad, it's almost 3AM there.” You say softly. “When was the last time you slept?”

He just hums again.

“72 hours ago, miss.” JARVIS answers.

Your eyes widen. “Dad.”

He sighs. “No rest for the wicked. I’m fine, sweet pea.” He says. “What about you? Why are you up at this hour?”

You shake your head. “It’s 6AM here. Not exactly the same thing.” You say softly.

Steve groans a bit and sits up, resting his head on your shoulder, eyes still closed.

“Who are you talking to?” He mumbles and kisses your neck softly.

“Hey Cap.” Tony says. “You two try again last night?”

Your face heats up and Steve’s eyes snap open.

“Dad.” You hiss. Steve’s mouth is slightly agape as he searches for words.

Tony laughs and shrugs. “I’m just saying, I put a lot of time and energy into developing that birth control and I’m a little offended that you aren’t even using it. Not that I’m not thrilled at the idea of being a grandpa. I mean I’m a little young for that. I guess that’s what happens when you have a kid at 18.” He says.

You groan and Steve chuckles softly and kisses your neck.

“18?” He asks softly and looks at the screen. “Didn’t know you were so young when she was born.” He says.

Tony sighs. “Yeah, well. Freshly graduated Tony didn’t think anything in the world could touch him so he wasn’t a big fan of protection.” He says and shrugs. “There could be a few more Olive’s running around somewhere.” He teases.

You roll your eyes. “I’ve always wanted siblings.” You say.

He’s the one who rolls his eyes then.

“I’m disinviting you to Christmas, I’m inviting one of your bastard siblings instead.” He says. ��Cap, you’re still invited.” He says.

You and Steve both laugh at that.

“I appreciate that, Tony.” Steve laughs softly.

“Speaking of Christmas, when are you two flying out here?” Tony asks. “I can send the plane.” He says.

You hum and look at Steve. “We were thinking the 23rd?” You answer.

Tony nods. “Sounds good. I can set that up. And we’ll be flying back out to New York on the 28th?” He says.

You nod. “So we can all go see the ball drop, yes.” You reply.

He nods. “Which I agreed to under the pretense of not having to watch you two kiss.” He says.

“Can’t promise that Tony.” Steve says, his tone light and teasing.

“Darling, this man is trouble and I forbid you to see him anymore.” Tony deadpans.

You grin. “He is trouble. I quite like him though.” You say and kiss Steve’s jaw.

Tony gags dramatically.

Steve hums and tugs you closer. “We should go back to sleep love.” He says softly.

You nod. “And so should you dad. You look exhausted.”

He hums. “Eh, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Besides I need to run diagnostics on Mark 42.” He says.

Your eyes widen. “42.” You say.

He grins. “I love you, Olive.” He says and hangs up.

You blink a few times. Steve laughs.

“I see where you get your workaholic tendencies now.” He chuckles.

You laugh and swat his chest. “Hush you.” You say. He smiles and kisses you. You hum contentedly.

“Are you sure you’re okay with going to Malibu for Christmas?” You whisper.

He smiles fondly. “Baby, I love you. You are my family, we’re trying for a baby.” He whispers. “That means Tony is my family too. And I’m more than happy to spend the holidays with my family.” He whispers and kisses you softly.

You kiss back and cuddle closer.

“Speaking of babies..” He whispers against your lips. “Ready for another round?”

You laugh and straddle his hips.

Taglist

@winchestergirl907 @samros95 @booknerd-and-fangirl @boxofteenageideas @sunnyshoes @yougottalovefandoms @peregrinestook @tealeaves-and-witchythings @beckastark @clockblobber @nenabeg111 @the-fangirl-sent-by-cyberlife @shadowsndaisies @spideysbl0g @musicals-n-chill @appreciating-chase-brody @dreambutdontsleepx @deartomholland @moli1497 @meghanannexx @daybreakseventeen @catherinecmctiernan @willowbowie @carebaredanvers @capsiclesdoll

[girlobsessed21]

The 100 season 6 predictions #2

As promised, here’s another prediction post. I checked my previous one and most of it occurred or might still play out in some way. This time I’m not so confident but I try. My mom vetoed only two of the theories I discussed with her and she’s brutally honest, so that’s something, at least.

That said, I’ll start with the basics. 

The Episode guide

6x09 - What you take with you

UNLIKELY COMPANIONS - Bellamy must venture out into enemy territory with an unlikely companion. Meanwhile, Octavia is forced to confront her past.

This is also the title of the biography of Therese Greenwood about wildfires that destroy an entire community in Canada causing its inhabitants to flee to safety.

A snippet from Rich Malloy’s article ‘What’s In There? Only What You Take With You’ about Yoda’s teachings to Luke Skywalker in the cave. “As we move through life, facing challenges, enjoying moments, getting excited, or being calm, how we are in that moment depends on what we take with us. Did you get blindsided by a difficult conversation? You faced it with only what you took with you. Did you prepare for the meeting? You faced it with only what you took with you. Each day we have new caves to enter with unknown challenges to face, and we do so with only what we take with us.”

6x10 - Matryoshka

REUNITED – Russel seeks justice. Meanwhile, Gabriel must make a difficult choice. Lastly, the Blake siblings reunite

The following was taken from Kerry Kubilius’s article: The Origin of the Matryoshka, Russian Nesting Dolls

A matryoshka (plural: matryoshki) is a Russian nesting doll, and they are often simply called nesting dolls. It's pronounced mah-tree-YOSH-kah. These dolls open to reveal increasingly smaller versions of the same doll, one within another. The dolls can be pulled apart in the middle to reveal the next smallest doll, with the smallest doll being made of a solid piece of wood.

6x11 - Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to Ashes is a British crime drama series, serving as the sequel to Life On Mars. The series tells the story of Alex Drake (played by Keeley Hawes), a police officer in service with the London Metropolitan Police, who is shot in 2008 by a man called Arthur Layton and inexplicably regains consciousness in 1981.

"Ashes to Ashes" is a song written and recorded by David Bowie. Described as "containing more messages per second" than any single released in 1980, the song also included the plaintive reflection:

I've never done good things

I've never done bad things

I never did anything out of the blue

Instead of a hippie astronaut who casually slips the bonds of a crass and material world to journey beyond the stars, the song describes Major Tom as a "junkie, strung out in heaven's high, hitting an all-time low". 

'Ashes to ashes' derives from the English Burial Service. The text of that service is adapted from the Biblical text, Genesis 3:19 (King James Version):

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

6x12 - Adjustment Protocol

Adjustment - a small alteration or movement made to achieve a desired fit, appearance, or result

Protocol - the official procedure or system of rules governing affairs of state or diplomatic occasions

6x13 - The Blood of Sanctum

Fire. Blood. Romance. Death. A glorious return. A shocking end that will change everything forever.

Blood Sanctum is a combat anomaly that can be found in null security space with Blood Raiders presence.

Blood globally represents life itself, as the element of divine life that functions within the human body. ... Blood and WINE are interchangeable symbols; in Chinese symbolism, blood and WATER are associated as complementaries, as THE YIN AND THE YANG. The term cold blood refers to unfeeling.

I’ll get into more details below but what I take from all of this is that the primes cannot continue to cheat death and that time dilation will play a big part in the series. Either in the current season or the next. 

Aboard the Eligius ship

Indra is back! Yes! I’ve called out to this awesome warrior in almost every analysis and finally, someone heard me. Kane will most certainly be less than pleased with his new body, but while he has it, he might as well put it to good use.

We’ve seen Abby’s downward spiral season after season, episode after episode, yet Kane’s transformation might be an all-time low. It’s known of drug addicts to purposefully re-invent themselves after hitting rock bottom. Abby Griffin stopped the pills and then focused all her energy on saving the man she loves, whose death was ultimately a subject of her addiction. 

He will certainly try and find a way to punish her for the selfishness and simultaneously rescue her from the compulsive behavior - he does still love her. How? By finding a way to undo what she did. They do not know how the mind-wipes work exactly. Kane would want to give Gavin his body back. So, if there’s a way, he’d want Abby to find it.

I don’t know if I’ll get used to Kane II. When I see Kane, I see Henry Ian Cusick. That body looked pretty dead to me but there might be a minuscule chance to save him. 

Kane’s new peaceful outlook will not involve killing the primes, but saving their hosts and protecting Sanctum. This is probably what he will conspire with Indra and Raven. Yeah, I doubt that plan will play out as they hope. Simone is still on that ship and will make life hard for them. 

Leaning on the Matryoshka themed episode, with the last of the dolls being a simple piece of wood. They’ve lived so many lives and come to see themselves as superior, that they’ve become cold and hollow through the centuries. Willing to do whatever it takes to maintain their immortality and power. Another fact, the dolls are all replicas, meaning Josephine must have matured into who she is by some sort of example from her parents. 

Daytrip 2.0 featuring Bellamy and Josephine

Bellamy is in for a bumpy ride in the woods. The sociopath will break him down and torture him to break free. My guess, she’ll use the betrayal tactic. Telling him that Clarke never really loved him, that she has always used him. That he wasn’t even in her mind when she took a peek. Only Lexa, Finn and Madi. She’ll try to make him believe that he’s not important to Clarke and that he should let her go.

We’ve seen some guy kill himself for Josie and Gabriel can’t shake her either, she’s clearly a master seductress. As a last resort, she might use these tactics to try and win Bellamy over. Make him fall for her using the body of the woman he loves? I’m not saying he’ll give into it, but hell it might be hard to resist. This will all be while watching her deteriorate.  

Reverting to the ‘what you take with you’ theme, how will he act in lieu of this information? Clarke apologized but does she really care? In season two she told him he should risk his life and go into Mount Weather, then left him in the end. In season three she chose to stay in Polis when he begged her to come home. In season five she left him to die in a fighting pit. They’ll have to sleep somewhere in the woods, perhaps Clarke finds another way to reach out to him.

When they reach their destination, Gabriel’s tough decision will obviously be Clarke or Josephine and when he saves Clarke, does he destroy Josephine? I doubt it. It won’t be the last we see of her. Octavia will beg him to save Clarke for her brother’s sake. This will somehow lead to peace between the siblings. She has A LOT to make up for, but it’s a start.

The Anomaly

A temporal anomaly is a disruption in the spacetime continuum which can be related to time travel. Temporal anomalies can take many forms and have many different effects, including temporal reversion, the creation of alternate timelines, and fracturing a vessel into different time periods.

The Octavia that returned looks like a younger version of herself. She may have lost her memories and be attacked by them once she takes a nap in the same way Clarke took a trip down memory lane. That is surely a night of terrors, reliving the Bloodreina phase. How will Bellamy react to this? 

Gabriel might see this as an opportunity to save both Clarke and the original Josephine. If it reversed Octavia’s age, won’t it do the same for them? They’re both in there, perhaps they can come out as younger versions of themselves? It fits into the Matryoshka theme.

The anomaly also picks up the soundwaves, implicating that they might have a way to contact the Eligius ship to collect them.

The synopsis of the finale states there will be a glorious return. I believe this is Diyoza coming back from the future, with Hope. Both her child and the abstract noun. If we’re going full-on time travel in season 7, she might contain the secret of how to stop the first Apocolypse. This is crazy, I know, if it’s where they’re headed, it will only happen in the series finale.

Sanctum’s blood

Russel will find Madi guilty for her attack. Maybe Jordan will explain that it’s not her actions, but the dark commander in her head which will lead to a painful exploration of the flame and perhaps even the destruction thereof. Although it seems like the writers are hesitant to let go.

Like I said in my previous analysis, Jade will turn on them and team up with Echo and Ryker to take them down from the inside. Unfortunately, there’s no way to communicate with the ship. Russel already said they’ll save Jordan’s life. If Ryker and Jordan can convince Priya, she might switch sides as well. 

Murphy is a bit of a conundrum. I still think those chips exist for a reason, yet Emori, the hero of the previous episode, convinced him that dying is an option. That she’ll love him forever even if the end is near. 

Anyway, Bellamy will most likely follow Kane’s plan with a bit more force aka guns and manpower. They’ll enter Sanctum to take out the primes but will ultimately walk into a war and have to fight it. 

Who’s on my deathdar?

Madi - Russel wants revenge. If he tries to take out the flame without the necessary knowledge, it might result in Madi’s death

Murphy and Emori - Their story is trudging dangerously close to happily ever after and that’s never a good sign on this show. Emori has also shown some great strength and character development. This might be the end for one or both of them if they don’t co-operate with Russel.

Gaia - She’s been outcasted to the dangerous woods, not sure how this will end when another eclipse appears.

Russel, Simone, and the other prime chips - Bellamy and his army might have to face countless tribulations to succeed but I believe they will eventually take them out.

Kane - If Abby doesn’t find a way to save his original body, I think he’s a goner.

The romance section

Right now there’s not much romance except for Memori, and that one scares me because it’s bittersweet. Remember the Marper moment in 5x08 where Monty asked Harper if she’ll still love him even if he’s just a farmer? This is following right in their footsteps.

Is Becho dead or alive? I’ve been called misogynistic and typical based on my Becho views but I’m not blind. I do not watch this show with shipper goggles. For a long time, I even thought Becho to be endgame. What in this season so far has broadcasted their relationship except for a sweet moment after Bellamy apologized for calling her an emotionless spy. 

What I think we might get a hint of is Jade and Echo based on what Tasya Teles said. Apparently, her favorite dynamic is between Echo and a new character. On another occasion, she said that Echo is bisexual. What would be better than this lesbian, mixed race pairing? They’re two badass female spies who will diminish the false gods from within. Who knows, we might see a spark.

Early on I saw a subtle hint of Raven and Ryker, but that’s on hold for now. It might turn in the future now that we’ve learned Ryker is on Gabriel’s side.

Xatavia or Gatavia - There was a momentary connection. I wrote about it last week, then some people told me they saw it too. I like it. I ship it. Okay, Octavia still has a long way to go within herself before she can pursue relationships with others but she’s making progress and I’m loving her this season. 

Jordan and Delilah/Priya - Perhaps Abby (and Gabriel) can find a way to bring the hosts back. If they can’t, Priya defended him, it might turn into something.

Mackson’s still going strong, I don’t see anything breaking them up.

Kabby is dead, by all means.

Bellarke - I wish I could be as positive about them as I was in my previous posts. What I see on screen, what I’ve watched for six seasons straight is the two of them within every romantic trope in the book. Now, once again, Bellamy is risking everything, leaving everyone behind to save her. People call him out on only caring about her. Bellamy is the one thing in Clarke’s mind she cannot face. He’s also her biggest regret. 

I never thought they’ll go the romantic route with Bellarke this season, Becho is still a couple, yet I banked on a confession of some sorts. I’ve read articles and seen tweets about misinterpretations on-screen which means they’ll remain platonic soulmates, for now. On the other hand, it’s bs. While discussing this with my mom, who does not ship, at all, she asked, “I’m waiting for the Bellarke theory...”

And all I had was Bellamy might head into the anomaly in the end and see this cute kid who makes his debut in the finale. He has the freckles and the hair, maybe it’s Bellarke’s child. But it could just be a young Bellamy. Or not related to him at all. What do you think? If it is, they won’t say it is but he’ll have a role to play in season seven.

Argue with me, I know I’m often wrong. Tell me about your theories, I’d love to hear them. Okay, until next week, bye.