#and if the Disney headquarters burn down don’t look at me

[wormchandeleir]

Every time I read the words “live action remake” about an animation I lose a year off my life

[thetfchangingroom]

I know you’ve changed guys into dicks, but ever change someone into an ass?

(Check out the full, NSFW version of this story HERE!)

You know what… I don’t believe I have!

This is crazy; I’ve been around for a while now and I’ve turned guys into all sorts of shit, but I can’t name a single time I turned one of them into a butt! Which is tragic really because it can be a lot of fun (depending on who’s butt; some guys don’t know how to clean up down there).

But there’s a first for everything, right? Now, who’s ass would you like to be?

Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed that since you asked, you were the one looking to be transformed. Was this just meant to be a hypothetical question? A curious query? Well, let me walk you through some potential candidates so you can “ass”-ess your options. Perhaps I can change your mind…

First, let’s start with the classics:

Why not be any ordinary, run-of-the-mill ass when you could be America’s Ass? Yes, I am offering you the opportunity to be Captain America’s tush.

As you can imagine, Cap’s ass sees quite a bit of action—and I’m not just talking about fighting bad guys (though I must say he is one limber son of a bitch and that suit breathes like Egyptian cotton. You’re bound to have a great time either way).

No, I’m talking about the action Cap sees off the field. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think all these ridiculously hot superheroes aren’t fucking each other senseless when they’re not off saving the world. All that pent up stress, all that athletic ability going to waste… the Avengers headquarters is basically one non-stop orgy, and while Cap might dominate the battlefield, his tastes in the bedroom are a little more…

Yeah, you get the idea. As Cap’s ass, you’ll be getting real familiar with Thor’s beard, Natasha’s strap on, and the Hulk’s you-know-what (trust me: it fits). Captain Rodgers won’t be able to suit up without someone’s load leaking out of your pretty pink hole, and get ready to have bright red handprints on your cheeks 24/7. That ass sees a lot of love… tough love.

Butt wait! There’s more! If you think a real life superhero might be a bit too intense for a first time tourasst (yes, I just came up with that) why not one of the guys who plays one?

God went a little overboard when he designed Chris Hemsworth. Big biceps, big pecs, big Disney paychecks and, most importantly, a big fucking ass.

Being Chris Hemsworth’s butt means getting to sit in (or rather, be sat on) for all of his crazy Marvel workout sessions. You know what I’m talking about: those incessant instagram posts of Chris in various states of undress, sweating like a stuck pig, pumping iron as if he’s training for Mr. Olympia while some equally attractive personal trainer screams in his ear.

You’re hard just thinking about it, aren’t you? I sure as hell am.

Now: imagine being Chris’ butt. You can practically taste all that celebrity sweat dripping down your crack, your puckering hole tensing in tandem with each guttural grunt.

Just wait ‘till he starts doing squats. Chris loves those squats. He likes to go pretty low, spreading you out and stretching your muscles until you’re burning white hot.

And when he’s done? Chris likes to spend some quality “me” time in the sauna. Of course, “me” in this case includes you, so if you’ve ever wanted to get up close and personal with Chris while he beats his fat donkey cock, this is about as close as you can get (unless you wanna be his dick, but that’s another conversation).

Who knows? He may even stick a finger or two in you. It wouldn’t be the first time…

So, what do you think so far? Does being a butt sound like a good time? Well just you wait because I think our final candidate has some attractive “ass”-ets.

Meet Sam.

That’s right: I saved the best for last.

Sam’s ass is—for lack of a better word—legendary. This man has spent years and years sculpting those cheeks into two perfect globes of muscle and fat. To say they are his pride and joy would be selling it short. Guys come (and cum) from miles around to get a taste of Sam’s perfect butt… literally. Nary a day goes by when Sam’s hole isn’t filled with a dick, a dildo, or someone’s thirsty tongue.

As such, Sam runs a tight ship down there. His butt is clean and well manicured, which means if you choose to become Sam’s ass, you’ll be treated like a princess (and likely called one too).

And the best part? You’ll get a lot of sun. Sam doesn’t keep his ass hidden under suits or sweaty workout shorts like Cap & Chris. Quite the contrary; Sam seldom finds himself in a situation where his ass isn’t hanging out or on full display. You’ll be getting very familiar with his vast collection of jockstraps, singlets, and thongs.

Needless to say, he can be quite the exhibitionist.

Have you cum to a decision? Are you down for some “butt stuff” or are you gonna pass on this one?

But I already know the answer.

I can see it, flashing in your mind’s eye. I’ve gotten very good at reading people over the years, at sniffing out their deepest desires and giving voice to their unspoken wishes. I know exactly which ass you want to be, you don’t even need to tell me.

After all, it’s not like you could anyway. Your transformation has already begun!

That’s right; there’s no use for talking when your mouth is slowly becoming an asshole, when your lips start to curl into a round, flowery sphincter. You may start feel each of your cheeks inflate like those of a chipmunk, growing and growing until they’ve consumed your entire face. You feel them gently touch each other, forming a crack over your former mouth.

You want to reach up and touch the miraculous changes occurring on your face, but you no longer have any hands to touch with. Your arms are gone. Everything is gone, in fact: your legs, feet, torso, even your own ass is missing.

Because nothing belongs to you any more. You are only a part of him, one of many muscles on a big and busty body.

Ugh, you make such a cute butt, don’t you? Well, I hope you have a great time as Sam’s ass. Who am I kidding: I know you will! There’s already a big muscle stud with a 10-inch cock on his way to dump a load in you as we speak!

Just be sure to let me know once you’ve had your fill of spunk and spit (among other things).

How will you let me know, you ask? Oh don’t worry… I can just tell.

Have fun getting torn a new one!

[boldlyvoid]

Amoreena | chapter seven

Chapter Seven

main summary: Heaven is a real place and it's located exactly 14.6 miles away from the FBI, Quantico Headquarters. Off behind a small park, under a fantastical willow tree surrounded by wildflowers, in every colour young minds can imagine. Don't forget, heaven also comes with angels. Chapter Warnings: major fluff word count: 3.9k From the beginning <3

Spencer wakes up to the sound of Amoreena calling for her mother and the feeling of Y/N’s arms wrapped around his middle, finding her way to being the big spoon during the night.

“Dad? Where’s my mom?” Amoreena calls again from outside Spencer's door.

“She’s in here, but don’t come in yet, give her a minute to wake up,” he calls back, hoping she listens and doesn’t come barging in.

Y/N lets out a deep sigh as she sits up, still naked under the covers from the activities from the night before but not concerned in the slightest. She gets out of bed and grabs some fresh shirts from the closet before finding both their underwear on the floor, tossing them at Spencer and telling him to put everything on.

Once they’re finally dressed she opens the bedroom door and scoops up the little one, bringing her back into the bed with them so they can all cuddle.

“What the heck?” Is all Amoreena can ask, “why are you in here?”

“We had a sleepover,” Y/N explains softly, holding Amoreena closer to her and Spencer snuggles in too. “I’m thinking about moving my stuff into here too, so that me and your dad can share and we won’t wake you up by talking at night.”

“Is that why GG’s dress is hanging up there? Are you getting married?” She was full of questions, as always.

It makes them both laugh, “what if we already got married?” Y/N teases her, poking her side lightly.

She starts to pout, real tears forming in her eyes as she pulls away from them to sit at the foot of the bed, “why would you do it without me?” they both rush to console her, wrapping her up in a group hug.

“Not for real, we were just pretending to be married honey, I promise,” Y/N tries to explain softly, “did you want me to have a wedding?”

She nods softly, “like in Enchanted, but I’m your daughter and you marry Spencer and you can have a big puffy dress and I can get one too, can I be the flower girl?”

“Of course we’ll get married for you, just the three of us can plan something okay?” Y/N compromised, making a reference Spencer didn’t understand.

“We have to do it in New York like in the movie,” Amoreena was very serious, looking at them with a stern gaze.

There was a whole world of movies and music that built Amoreena’s personality that he was going to have to learn, he was going to be spending a lot of late nights on Disney+.

“We’ll find a way,” Y/N agreed before kissing Amoreena’s forehead.

“Okay,” she smiled nice and wide, wiping her tears away and cuddling in-between Spencer and Y/N.

She turned more towards Spencer, placing her head on his chest while Y/N spooned into her. The three of them cuddled up in one knot, and Amoreena was a snuggle bug. She cuddled right in and made a tiny home in his arms and he was going to hold her for as long as she wanted to be held.

Y/N couldn’t stop smiling at him, he’d glance to her every few minutes to see her gaze hadn’t moved; she was so content seeing the little family they made, all together and happy as they snuggled up closer and closer till Amoreena felt like she couldn’t breathe anymore and pushed them both away.

“I need to go feed the chickens,” she whispered, still on Spencer’s chest as Y/N got out of the bed, “would you like to help, dad?”

He kissed her little forehead before she sat up, “I’d love to, can I put some jeans on and meet you downstairs?”

“Sure!” She cheered, jumping off the bed and running out the door. Her feet smacking the hardwood floor, making the floor creak and pop as she marched down the cold wooden steps.

“How are you feeling this morning?” He asks Y/N with a small smile, remembering what happened the night before.

She nodded softly, smiling while she suppressed a laugh, “I feel like a teenager again, like my mom's going to know I lost my virginity the second I see her.”

Spencer laughed too, “you haven’t?”

“I said again,” she laughed again, sitting back down on the bed and laying her head in his lap, “I wouldn’t say I’ve been celibate all this time, but yeah no one’s done that with me in a while, it’s normally just me and these bad boys.”

She put both hands in the air, doing jazz hands as she raised her eyebrows, “I love you,” the words had their own agenda as he said them unconsciously.

“I love you!” She wrapped her hands around his shoulders and pulled him down into a big kiss, making the classic smooch noise as they pulled apart and smiled.

“Can I take you on a date this week? Maybe Thursday night, because you don’t work on Fridays?” he felt nervous as if she wasn’t pretending to be his wife currently like she’d reject him for some ungodly reason.

“Yeah, I’d love that, my mom won't mind doing Amoreena’s bedtime routine, she’d probably love to have a sleepover at their house,” Y/N’s eyes were gleaming at the prospect of spending more time alone with him.

He placed his left hand on her stomach softly, staring at the ring on his finger before letting his eyes trail her body. She was in just a pair of underwear and a shirt that used to be her grandma's, beautiful as ever as the sunrise cast an orange glow over her.

His wife.

“Thank you,” she cut into the moment of silence, “for last night.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

She got up and sat in his lap then, straddling his hips and holding his face in her hands so she could get a good look at his chocolate eyes, she ran her thumb over his cheeks, kissing the freckle on top of his eyebrow and the tip of his nose gently, “she has your nose.”

Knowing she saw it too made his heart physically burn, it caught fire in his chest and he felt like he couldn’t breathe “yeah?”

“My mom said she looked like a Who when she was born,” she pushed his nose up with her finger like he was a pig, “it’s so perfect and cute.”

“Thank you,” he can’t help but feel emotional.

“Hey,” she teases him again, “It was my turn to say that, so bear with me for a second before I get too emotional at 7 in the morning.”

“Okay,” he whispered, ready to listen intently to how she felt about him.

“You told me something very difficult for you, that was a secret I’m sure no one else knows about, I can tell by the way you panicked last night that this is a serious anxiety you have about never being a father,” her voice was soft as she brushed his hair behind his ears, running her fingers through the curls ever so gently. “You’re a father, hopefully of two”

It made him laugh as a tear trickled down his cheek, pressing his lips together as he listened, not wanting to disrupt all the thoughts she was going to unload on him because it was a ticket into her mind. He was finally learning her feelings and what she thought about him, not just in a fairytale glow, but in the ugly as well.

“If you ever want to talk about her we can,” she changed the subject.

“Maeve was probably a wonderful woman if you loved her enough to wish you had kids with her, she’s technically the reason I have Amoreena, you wouldn’t have donated again without what happened to her,” she made a great point, bringing a positive light to the worst day of his life.

“You’re a wonderful man and I love you very much, being open with me was really appreciated, getting to do what we did last night was very special to me, so thank you,” she smiled softly before kissing him on the lips again.

“Thank you for being the person I can talk to about this stuff, it’s been really scary,” he admitted softly about to cry when they heard the front door slam close.

“And she’s off,” Y/N smiled again, pressing their noses together. “You need to go with her, she’s very impatient.”

“I know,” he smiled. “But I need to tell you that it runs a lot deeper than what you saw last night. I’m a mess in here and it’s not going away overnight because I’ve found my family.”

“I know,” she nodded ever so softly so their noses brushed again. “I am always here to talk, or we can get you a therapist or sign you up for groups, anything you need to feel better, I’m here to assist in making this beautiful brain feel more loved.”

“Thank you,” he whispered again. “So, if I planned a big date night and requested that you wear your best princess dress and meet me at the door for 6, you’d be down?” He teases her.

She couldn’t help but laugh, “sure, cutie, any colour dress do you want me in?”

“I think red would fit the theme I’m thinking of,” saying a little of his plans and not too much, unsure exactly what he wants to do with her first.

She pinched his cheeks as he smiled, “I don’t get any hints?”

“Nope, and I have chickens to feed,” he said, moving her off his lap and getting ready for the day finally.

—

They both sent Amoreena off to school with a hug and a kiss at the bus stop, exchanging I love you’s and saying they’d see her once she got home. Then Spencer kissed Y/N goodbye as she got ready for work, heading to the main house to talk to her mother about Thursday.

He knocked on the front door, being told to come in, he was family now after all.

“Good morning Spencer, would you like some breakfast?” Linda offered with a big smile, exactly like Y/N’s.

“I’d love some,” he gladly followed her into the kitchen, taking a mug of coffee and a homemade cinnamon roll from her. Amoreena already had one this morning before the bus, leaving a single missing spot in the middle of the pan.

“Would you be able to watch over Amoreena on Thursday night so I can take Y/N out on a real date?” He asks with all the confidence in the world, knowing her mother would say yes regardless.

“Oh absolutely!” She beamed, “what were you planning?”

“Can you keep a secret?” He asked before picking up his coffee with his left hand.

“That’s her grandfather's ring,” Linda pointed it out with a smile growing on her face, it was motherly pride if he’s ever seen it, “she finally did it.”

She must have told her mom the plan, her long-time dream of marrying a good person in that field. Someone to have a family with, someone to give Amoreena siblings and all the extra love in the world, and she picked him.

He nodded softly, “last night we got pretend married, and Amoreena got very upset when she learned we did that without her.”

Linda nodded with a soft smile, “they’re attached at the hip, sometimes I think Amoreena is just a clone of her and then I met you.”

He laughed through his nose, eyes wide as he smirked, “well, actually I might be her father.”

Linda sprouted the same expression Y/N had last night when she found out, “huh?”

He sighed, “I donated sperm the month before she got pregnant with Amoreena, my friends said there should be more geniuses in the world and it’s not like I was getting married any time soon.”

Linda just smiled and shook her head with that same sigh of love that must run in the family, she walked over to him and gave him a small hug as he sat at the kitchen table.

“So, Spencer, tell me about yourself?” Linda asked as she sat down beside him with her own coffee and cinnamon roll, getting to know her son-in-law for the first time ever.

He was in there, laughing and bonding with her for over an hour, seeing Y/N drive down the driveway towards work from the kitchen window with a smile. Discussing his ideas for the date, telling her about his family and the dream he always had about running away to a place like this.

“Fate is funny like that, she knows what you need and when you need it,” Bob cut into the conversation, listening from the back door for a few minutes. “you're here for a reason, Spencer.”

He felt like he was on the set of an old movie about family love that always had a happy ending, he didn’t believe that any of it was real. For a second he wondered if he’s been in a coma for the last week, that this was all just a fever dream after crashing his bike on the way to the park, it was all too perfect.

He thanked them for breakfast with a hug, becoming a hugger to fit into her family and he didn’t even mind it. It was nice to be loved truly, not just because they were obligated to, but because they wanted him in their family.

—

His next stop of the day was Penelope’s apartment, he knocked on the door softly and waited patiently for her to answer, smiling wide at the surprise of Spencer behind her door.

“I need your help,” he says before she can even welcome him.

She was still in her robe, a sleep mask over one eye and her hair standing in every direction known to man “what did you do?”

“Nothing, I need a womanly touch for the date I’m planning,” he admitted, turning pink at the embarrassment of coming to her for this.

“What’s the plan?”

“Can I tell you on the way there?”

She raised her eyebrows, “come in and give me a few minutes, you can explain why you’re wearing a ring while I change…”

“For not being a profiler, you sure are good at this,” he avoided her question as he walked into her apartment, sitting right by her bedroom door so he could talk to her through the door.

“It’s a really long story, but essentially her fiancé died when she was 23 so she’s terrified of real weddings and wanted to just tell me she loves me and call me her husband without waiting or making a big fuss about it all,” he explained it as simply as possible. Not sure if he should tell her about the chat he had with Derek. “And we found out I might be Amoreena’s real father anyway.”

She peaked her head out the door, nothing on now and not wanting him to see. It wasn’t like she got naked when she was drunk and shown him everything before, he just laughed as she smiled at him. “If you need help tracking down any other kids, I can do it?”

He felt a little betrayed but he understood, Derek and Penelope had a bond where secrets never slipped out but they did tell each other everyone else's, “he told you?”

“No, I knew you donated because they did a background check into you at the bureau, and I was the one who had to send them the files,” Penelope admitted. “I wanted you to be the one to tell me, but I don’t think you ever would have.”

He shook his head softly, “I just wanted a family one day however I could get one, and when Rossi met Joy I knew it could bring me the same kind of happiness he has with her and Kai."

“You’re going to be a wonderful dad Spencer,” she tried to not get all teary-eyed as she stood behind the door with nothing on, “anyway continue?”

She slipped back into the room and the two of them continued to yell their gossip back and forth through the door before she finally walked out in her most Penelope outfit to date, “and we’re taking my car. It’s top-down weather, finally.”

It’s not that she was a bad driver, it’s just she barely followed any rules. She drove too fast and passed people when she shouldn’t and it stressed Spencer out, but he was too in love to really be bothered by it today. Taking an hour-long journey to Richmond, pulling into the Edgar Allen Poe Museum.

He was a member here, paying them every month to take care of the grounds and the cats, even tracking down some rare pieces from Poe’s collection to donate to them. He was their favourite customer and patron, and they were very excited for him to finally introduce his new love to one of his favourite places ever.

He rented out the Enchanted Garden for Thursday night, being trusted there alone after hours and granted a key to lock up before he left. Penelope and he picked out lights and blankets, what kind of dinner they’d have and drinks.

“So I’ll make sure your picnic basket is all ready and here waiting for you to arrive,” Penelope planned, reading through the list of things she was going to do to help on Thursday afternoon. “What kind of wine does she like?”

“Oh,” Spencer took a second to think, she might want some wine but she’s also hoping to get pregnant, it could help but it could be a hindrance, he didn’t know how to reply.

“Does she not drink?”

“Can you keep a secret?” The second time he asked that question this morning.

“No fucking way,” she whispered, smacking his arm. “Already?”

“No, I’m not sure, we only tried yesterday,” he feels the anxiety in his chest as he explains it, “It doesn’t work that fast which is why I don’t know if we should.”

“Believe me, wine is a good baby-making tool,” she smiled. “I’ll add some anyway and if she does, she does, if she doesn’t oh well, you know where I live.”

It was so easy with Penelope, she understood everything he did without questioning him. Rooting for him and his future family behind closed doors, always trying to get him with someone in the years she knew him, wanting him to get all that “sweet, sweet loving” Derek raved about.

“Do you think she’ll like this? Be honest.” His anxiety slipped back up his throat and past his vocal cords.

Penelope wrapped him up in a big hug, remembering the statistic that people with Autism and anxiety sometimes relaxing better when held with a certain pressure applied. It worked every time.

“She loves you, you wouldn’t be trying for a baby or wearing that ring if she didn’t,” reassuring as always.

“Do you know anything about Taylor Swift?”

It makes her laugh as she pulls back, “why?”

“She’s Y/N and Amoreena’s favourite person on the earth, I know nothing about celebrities, you know that, and I was thinking about getting them tickets or something this summer if she’s doing anything?” He was desperate to do anything to make his girls smile. “I need a Taylor Swift crash course, is there a new Taylor Swift fan for dummies book?”

“Spencer Reid, do I have news for you,” Penelope wrapped her arm around him once again as she rocked him back and forth with glee, “Rossi’s stepdaughter is her is a socialite in New York and one of miss Swifts friends… let's see what we can do.”

And with that, they left the museum with Penelope's arm still wrapped around him as they went back to her car, listening to Taylor Swift while she spat facts out to Spencer, helping him learn everything he could for his wife and kid.

—

He was the only one home when Amoreena got off the bus, running into his arms and giving him a big hug, “Dad!” She cheered the second he held her, kissing the top of her head as he carried her back to the house. “Where is mom?”

“She’s out buying a new dress for a date we’re going on,” he couldn’t help but over exaggerate his voice when he talked to her, it made it more magical for her little world. “How was school?”

“Awesome!” She swooned, “we started our fathers day presents early cause we won't have class after next week.”

He playfully gasps, stopping abruptly in his tracks to look at her in shock, “You can’t tell me anything about it, they’re supposed to be surprise gifts!”

“I know,” she laughed wrapping her arms around his neck and leaning against his shoulder while they walked, “I just wanted you to know one is coming, you always tell me about your gifts early, like at the museum.”

“Well, thank you for telling me,” he kissed her soft forehead softly before smiling.

She was so smart, her mother had raised her to be the most caring and considerate child. She picked up on everything, she wanted to please everyone, she was the sweetest ever.

“Do you have any homework tonight?”

“Nope! Can we watch a movie?”

He just held her cheek to his in a hug while they walked, “of course my sweet Amoreena, what would you like to watch?”

“It’s a surprise,” she whispered, struggling out of his arms and to the ground before running towards the house without him.

He walks in to see her standing in front of the tv with the remote, flipping through the channels and opening Netflix. Going to her mom's profile, down to the watchlist and clicking on the Taylor Swift Reputation Tour before taking off up the stairs to go get something.

“We made this a few months ago,” it was a piece of paper that she handed to him. “It’s the rules for when mom finally got a date, you’re her boyfriend right?”

He opened the folded lined paper, “I am,” he smiled.

Boy/girlfriend rules:

Must be royalty of some kind (or smart like a wizard)

Has to know all the words to Taylor swift’s songs

Likes to read books all the time

Have to like all the candy Amoreena doesn’t so that someone can eat the leftovers from her Halloween candy bag.

Has to be able to name all the Disney princesses

Must like cats. No if’s and's or butts.

It made him laugh, every rule was clearly Amoreena’s idea and Spencer must have ticked off all the boxes if she’s calling him dad already.

“You have to learn all the words to Taylor Swift, then you’ll be her boyfriend for real,” Amoreena informed him. “We have to follow the rules.”

“Well then, put the captions on so I can sing along,” Spencer compromised.

She hugged him with a big smile “you’re the best dad in the world.”

“You’re the best daughter,” he whispered as he held her back. “You make every day better by just being here.”

“So do you,” she replied before kissing his cheek softly and settling onto the couch beside him. “Thank you for wanting to be my dad.”

“I wouldn’t want to be anyone else’s.”

tag list: @shemarmooresfedora @spencers-dria @spookyspence @reidsfish @manuosorioh @mochionly @samuel-de-champagne-problems @jswessie187

[lilyofthestyx]

Aeipathy: Chapter Two

Disclaimer: i don’t (unfortunately) own Marvel or any of their characters, plot points, etc. so all right are to them and their our overlord Disney

AN: yeahhhh this one’s a shorty but i promise the next one will be longer and filled with plot and angst and shit so prepare yourselves <3

Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 3.1k

TW: angst, mentions of torture, mentions of murder/arson, HYDRA collectively is a prick

Chapter One is available here!

   Gnawing. 

   It claws through my body on all fours. Tearing, ripping, hacking, burning. 

   Monstrous fangs that sink into the deepest parts of muscle- I can feel it in my bones, the burning. 

  There is no noise, just the sound of whirring and the unholy screeching of demons in my ears. Faceless demons, demons whose faces have too much detail, demons that stare, demons that scream. Demons, demons, demons. 

   I have fallen. Fallen from grace. Fallen from…

   No, no. 

   I am falling. 

   Something catches me. A savior in blue. Scarlet red smeared across their chest. Blood. My blood- the blood of sinners and saints and bystanders. Of children and ancients and of rich and poor. 

   There’s white streaked between the red. Piety. Purity. Righteousness. Desperately, I cling to the stark white stripes. Indecipherable mumbles pass my lips as I stare at the white. I beg for purity, to be clean again.

   Every time I wake up, it’s always the same. 

   The immovable weight in my body. The unceasing shivering. The bite of frost. The writhing of filth in my veins. In my nerves. In every fiber of my being. Festering. Growing. Rotting. Corrupting. Remembering. 

   But why can’t I remember?

   All I can remember are the demons. Faceless, nameless but never silent. Always screaming.

   Screaming, screaming, screaming. 

   I cling to the white. The righteousness of my savior. Solidity in turbulence. Silence in cacophony. Purity. Cleanliness. Life. 

   I cling to life. 

   But life burns under my fingertips. It shrieks and squirms under my touch- tries to escape. Repelled by my presence, it retracts away from my grasp.

   Color retracts into shapes as I take in my surroundings. An almost completely empty room completely made of concrete. A single contraption behind me made of metal. Icy fog slithers out of the open door, hissing and flicking at my ankles. 

   Words, however, remain blurred. The savior holds me upright- pulls me to my feet. Everything burns and aches. I’m so incredibly cold. Frosted water paints my skin, coats my clothes to my body. A puddle gathers beneath the writhing fog. 

   This seems familiar. 

   My eyes turn up towards my savior. The blood-stained guardian. Words fall from their lips, landing on deaf ears. 

   My body trembles as the cold becomes more vicious with its fangs. The savior turns away and says something. Everything is muffled- faraway and distant and like someone has their hands clamped down over my ears. 

   “Why am I awake?” I ask, straightening up. Every inch of me quivers while every part of me wishes to stop. 

   But I was awoken for a purpose. My mission.

   And I’ll complete it. 

   Hail HYDRA.

Location: S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters

Date: 2012

   “Woah, easy, ________,” I mutter, holding her upright. Her eyes wide, they flick around the room. Her hands grip my chest as she shakes violently. 

   She’s here. She’s alive. 

   She… she died. Died on that table- how is this…

   “Steve,” Tony mutters, holding out a blanket. I take it and start to wrap it around her shoulders. 

   As her glazed eyes lock with mine, I look over her face. She’s drained of color- blue and white. Her chapped blue lips open and close violently.

   Hoarsely, she starts to speak. 

   But not anything I can understand. 

   Over and over, she repeats questions with her eyes wide and wary of every moment and movement. My eyes dart over to Tony- who watches ________, his eyebrows furrowed. 

   Russian. 

   That’s what she’s speaking. Russian. And fluently. Extremely well. Why… Why is she…?

   “She didn’t… usually speak like this, did she?” Tony asks, gesturing vaguely to her as she continues to shake in my arms. Broken words off a stolen tongue hiss past her lips. She furrows her eyebrows as she looks between the two of us. 

   “Her files told me she was-” Tony continues. 

   “She’s… she’s never spoken this before,” I mutter, adjusting my grip under her arms. “Raised in Brooklyn for most’a her life- I dunno why-”

   “V chem... moya missiya?” ________ hisses, her voice shaking. I look down and watch her straighten up on unsteady legs. “V chem moya missiya?” 

   “...why is she…?” Tony mutters, stepping in front of her. He lets his head fall back with a sigh as he taps his leg with his finger. “It’s been a long time, let’s see if I can do this.” Rolling his shoulders back and snapping his neck, he focuses back on ________. “Kto ty?”

   ________’s head tilts to the side slightly. Her eyebrows furrow further as she glares at him through them. “...Hetaerae. V chem moya missiya?”

   Tony sighs and closes his eyes as he speaks. “Ch… chto… ty. Chto ty?”

   Her eyes glaze over as she stops shaking, standing upright. “Ya HYDRA.”

   “...she’s… She died, Tony. I don’t… I don’t know what else to tell you,” I mutter, looking up from the desk. “She… she died before I even got the serum. I hadn’t even seen Doctor Erskine- Bucky… he hadn’t been shipped off to Europe yet.”

   “I may be able to help explain that,” Tony says as he gets to his feet. In his hand is a thick folder filled with papers and photos and notes and scraps of paper. He places it in front of me with a thud. “Apologies- I would opt for the digital version but, uh… you… don’t even know what... that… is.”

   “Tony,” I say sharply as I open the folder. He just shrugs and sits down across the table again. The top paper is mostly blacked-out with a few words left untouched. ________’s name. Her age. Her parents and their causes and dates of death. And other words that… don’t make sense. ‘Mistress’. ‘Replication’. ‘Improvement’. ‘Rejected’. ‘Baroness’. ‘Salbei’.

   ‘Hetaerae’. 

   Repeated over and over throughout the sea of black streaks is that word. ‘Hetaerae’. At the very bottom of the page in tiny letters are the words ‘Project Samsara- Hetaerae’. In the corner is a skull with tentacles writhing beneath it. ‘HYDRA’ is written along the curve of the skull. 

   My stomach churns. If HYDRA really is behind this then...

   I start tearing into the folder. Photos of the various angles of the steel container from when I woke up. Under it is a handwritten note. ‘Cryo-container; Vrsn: Hetaerae’. 

   Another photo- this one of a chair. On the armrests and legs are cuffs, along with another one on the back of the chair. Something metal comes around the chair. It juts off the side of a machine and looms over it like an archway. A note is written over the photo. ‘Neck brace may prematurely terminate subject. Issue logged during first programming session’.

   Another blacked-out stack of papers. The same words are repeated over and over again. ‘Hetaerae’, ‘Baroness’, ‘Samsara’, ‘Salbei’, ‘HYDRA’. My fists clench the papers before tossing them to the side. Tony watches in silence. 

   What the Hell is this? What were they doing- what did ________ have to do with it? 

   My eyebrows furrow as I manically flip through the papers. Papers fly to the side as I tear through the folder. I can feel myself getting rigid as I near the end. 

   Nothing. I’ve learned nothing. Not a single goddamn thing. There’s nothing here- 

   My hands stop as my eyes rest on the last few items. A file not blacked out. It’s completely intact. Nothing scratched, no scribbles, no hasty lines cutting through words. I snatch it and start reading. 

Project Samsara; Hetaerae

Subject Name: ________ Bishop

Subject Age: 26

Subject Info:

Daughter of Leon Bishop (deceased) and Catherine Chambers (deceased)

Resident of Brooklyn, NY

Military background

Non-combatant medic

Attempted pilot training

Worked under Doctor Akin Nachtnebel- HYDRA researcher

Personal friend of Captain Steven G. Rogers, Sergeant James B. Barnes, political activist Odessa Lily Mae Ababio

Official status: Deceased

Simplified Process Log (see file 178953 for detailed logs):

Day 1: 

Body retrieved by HYDRA. 

Blood and tissue samples taken. 

Heart/respiration rates taken. 

Note: Hetaerae seems to be semi-lucid. May require sedation. 

Day 13:

Serum incubation complete. 

Visible changes in body structure internal and external. 

Bone density increased slightly, muscle mass increased, other changes to be tested.

Day 23:

Regen. abilities test positive

Enhanced reflexes test positive

Body modifications test optimal

Note: Hetaerae seemed to negatively respond to pain. Possible weakness. Must train to not respond.

Day 68:

First programming session prematurely terminated. Hetaerae reacted negatively to programming.

Admitted to medical wing. 

Near strangulation and bruised trachea. 

Removing neck cuff on programming station and attempting again tomorrow. 

Day 100:

Programming temporarily successful. 

Hetaerae could not recall set of numbers given pre-programming for forty minutes. 

Memory wipe testing will continue.

Day 173:

Hetaerae admitted to medical wing for treatment. 

Major vocal cord damage. 

Damage not irreversible. 

Memory wipe testing will continue.

Note: Hetaerae begged for ‘Steve’ and ‘Bucky’ repeatedly during memory wipe. More research needed.

Day 234:

Three guards admitted to medical wing. 

Hetaerae had clawed at their eyes, noses, ears, and mouths

Broken nails were taken from guards’ faces.

Admitted samples for research.

Extra-long memory wipe testing done. 

Hetaerae will be allowed a day to rest after strenuous session. Cannot allow for subject’s termination.

Day 250:

Near disaster.

Hetaerae attempted escape.

Four guards killed. Two more seriously injured.

Must increase security.

Note: Hetaerae lethal before combat training. A promising candidate. Akin, in his paranoia, chose well.

Day 276:

Hetaerae broke free of restraints during memory wipe.

Too exhausted to attempt escape. 

Memory wipe has prevented Hetaerae from remembering subject name.

Will begin codeword implantation process tomorrow. 

Day 342:  

Hetaerae begins Samsara training tomorrow. 

Complete memory wipe achieved. 

Hetaerae is the only thing within subject.

Day 3658:

Samsara training complete.

Winter Soldier co-training complete.

Complete memory wipe complete.

Codeword implantation complete. 

Hetaerae to be placed in cryo to await orders.

Hail HYDRA. 

HYDRA status: Active. Ready for use.

   “Look at her track record,” Tony mutters, sliding a thick wad of papers over to me. Turning away, I shake my head. “...fine. I’ll read it for you.” He huffs, flipping through the various pages. “Uh… her first mission was to…” he scoffs, “To take out a mid-level politician that had apparently laid his eyes on something he shouldn’t have. ‘Mission: success, target: terminated’.”

   “Tony…” I warn quietly, my shoulders getting tenser with each word. 

   “A few missions later, she’s retrieving lab samples and… and destroying the lab... Fourteen people killed. ‘Mission: success, targets: terminated’.”

   “Tony.”

   “I’m skimmin’ here, Cap, but listen- an orphanage in Saint Petersburg, a… a couple in Prague, a woman in Athens, a man in Cairo...” Tony continues skimming through the pages. “‘Mission: success, target: terminated’, ‘Mission: success, target: terminated’, ‘Mission: success, target: terminated’-”

   “Enough!” I snap, turning to look at him. 

   Tony sighs and puts the papers down. Running a hand down his face, he purses his lips. “Dunno how else t’tell ya this, Cap- she’s dangerous. She has killed hundreds of people. She can speak seven languages, she can infiltrate a political atmosphere and topple it, she can... camouflage in any… social situation, she has a perfect kill record... Whoever she was before-”

   “She’s still in there,” I cut in. “She’s still in there.”

   Tony rolls his eyes. “Are… are you not... hearing what I’m telling you?” He gestures to the original folder. “They laid into her for… ten years. Subjected her to torture. Wiped her slate clean. Whatever was in there, pal, it’s long gone.”

   A huff leaves my lips. “...you don’t know what she was like,” I mumble coldly, reminiscing over what it was like to live with her, to live with her at my side like I was at hers. “She was… the most... hard-headed… stubborn dame I’d ever met. And strong, too.”

   “Rogers-”

   “She’s still in there, Tony,” I snap, my eyes flicking up to him. “She’s strong.”

   “Good morning.” I say, waving at ________ as she sits on the chair. Her breathing is steady, eyes trained on the opposite side of the room. Her wrists are handcuffed to the armests- the same with her ankles. They clink slightly as she breathes. 

   The room is completely empty except for another chair across from hers. My shield lays against the chair- ‘a precaution’ Fury called it. 

   ‘A threat’ is what I would call it. 

   I step further into the room and sit down on the chair. With glazed eyes, she watches me. “Are… those too tight?” I ask, gesturing to the cuffs. 

   She says nothing. Only blinks in response. 

   She… she looks so empty. 

   Her face was always glowing, her smile illuminating the clinic when Buck and I would walk in to bring her lunch or just to bug her. Letters would flood in every now and then from past patients or their families, thanking her for her patience and kindness. She would keep them all in a shoebox under her bed.

   And her hands. She would wrap bandages around my wounds with care. She’d always tell me to not get it in my head to fight again… and then ask where the punks lived so she could ‘pay them a visit’. Her hands were always feather-soft when checking every injury’s progress. 

   Now they look… darker. Not in color but just… darker. 

   Stained.  

   Did she know what she was doing when she killed those people?

   ________ shifts slightly, the sound of the handcuffs pulling me out of my head. I clear my throat and straighten up. “...do you know who I am?” I ask quietly. 

   No response. 

   “Do you know who you are?”

   “Haetarae.” She answers, eyes still glazed. 

   “Do you… do you know who you actually are?”

   ________’s eyes narrow for just a moment. “...HYDRA.”

   “No. No,” I mutter, pointing to my chest. “...do you know who I am?”

   ...nothing. 

   “Steve. I’m Stevie. We… we grew up in Brooklyn together. With Bucky. We, um… Buck ‘nd I, we helped you out of a fight when you were thirteen. That’s how we met… you… remember that…?”

   She blinks, eyes scanning over me. 

   Getting up from my seat, I reach into my pocket and tug a photo of the three of us out of my pocket. It was taken after she had gotten her nursing credentials. We had gone out dancing, just the three of us. We found someone willing to take our photo. A smile crosses my lips as I look down at it. 

   Colors start to fade into the black and white photo. Every detail is so crisp. ________’s chin is resting on my head as she stands behind me- a bright, red-lipped smile on her face. Her arms are wrapped around my chest as she leans over. Her hair is done perfectly- up with roses in her hair. Neat and tidy like she practiced. The skirt of her dress is the same shade of red as her lips. Black dots pattern the fabric of the skirt. The bodice was black- matching her heels. Hooked through her elbows was a creme-colored fur boa. 

   Bucky’s got his arm around her waist and he ducks down to my level. He holds a pressed black suit, wearing a red undershirt. His suit jacket is hung over his shoulder with his undershirt’s sleeves rolled up. I remember him shining his shoes that day while ________ meticulously placed roses in her hair. Bucky had sewn and hemmed my pants with pride. ‘It’s a special day, punk’, he mumbled with the needle between his lips, ‘can’t have ya trippin’ on your pant legs.’ 

   She shifts again and I’m pulled right back into now. ________ sits in front of me. No smile, no roses, no brightness. And Bucky… Bucky’s dead and gone. Lost a long, long time ago. Slowly, I hold out the photo. “...see?” I mumble, “That’s me… before I… had a growth spurt. And that’s Buck.”

   I look up to her. She’s focused on the photo, eyes slightly squinted and head tilted to the side just barely. “...Buck ‘nd you,” I laugh quietly. “He… he was… so crazy about you. He just… never realised it.”

   The door behind us cracks open. Her body snaps tightly, eyes back to glazed. Tony peeks his head into the room and tilts it back. “Eyepatch wants you.”

   I sigh. Looking back at ________, I tuck the photo into her hand. Slowly, her fingers wrap around it delicately. I nod once and start out of the room. As the door swings shut, I spare one last look. ________ looks down at the photo, her head slightly tilting once more.

   “It may be our only option,” Fury sighs. “She’s unpredictable at best.”

   “She’s still in there- if I can just… keep talking with her-”

   “That is out of the question,” he says firmly, eye flicking up to me. “...you’re too close on this one, Rogers. I’m making the executive decision to-”

   Lights start to flash overhead- red and screaming. A wailing buzz rips out of the hallway as the red light bathes us in scarlet. The door slams open, Tony standing in the doorway, panting. Fury slowly gets out of his seat, eye wide. 

   “She… She got out,” Tony mutters, gesturing outside.

   My body launches forward as I run into the hallway. People are running, an anxious chatter swarming around them as they pass just in front of me. As I push into the main hallway, elbows and chests are thrown into me. Flicking to each person, my eyes catch the room where ________ was held. The door is almost completely torn off the hinges- the wood cracked at the handle. 

   I start to push through the sea of people. Like water, they throw themselves against me- eager to leave the building and get the hell out of harm’s way. But as I make my way to the door and push out the other side of the tempest, I can see the dangling cuffs still hanging around the armrests. 

   My fingers graze the splintering wood door, tracing the ridges of where her fingers had dug into the wood- leaving grooves in the shape of her hand. The hinges look relatively new as they hang lifelessly off the wall. The debris littering the floor is kicked around, leaving a partial trail down the hallway. I follow with a solid grip on my shield. 

   “________?” I hiss, looking around the empty hallway. Everything is dimmed by the red lights and the screaming of the alarms haven’t stopped. “________!” 

   I round a corner and every adrenaline-fueled tension melts away. At the very end of the hallway is a floor-to-ceiling window. Broken glass lays at the base of a gaping hole. 

   She’s gone. 

[baymaksu]

Sunflower

Within their base headquarters, Hiro rushed into his private room to try to regain his bearings. His surroundings were spinning around him, his breathing hitched and quickened out of control.

He was glad he got there in time to help but... His mind replayed the events of this night patrol... the burning building... rescuing the little boy trapped within it... the utter helplessness and pleading from the older brother outside...

It didn’t even matter how scorching hot it was... He couldn’t see through any reasoning to not charge in, even through Karmi’s concerned protests. He didn’t even feel the heat, getting to the boy was what mattered. The only thing that mattered then...

But now it felt uncomfortably hot as the boy clutched at his head, his mind flashing before him. Callaghan. The SFIT fire... Tadashi...

Suddenly, Hiro’s left arm ignited into a brilliant yellow and orange hue as flames worked its way through his body. He screamed in horror, trying to smother the flames but it only danced across him.

Basemax’s fire alarm rang out in warning as water doused him to no avail. The flames just continued to course around him, yet there was no physical pain. But it mattered not, as Hiro cried out refusing to look at the flames. The images continued to flash through his mind.

Karmi quickly entered the room, “Hiro!” She rushed forward but the boy throw his hand out towards her, flames burst out towards her as it forced her back.

“No! Please! S-Stay back!” Hiro cried out. The flames continued regardless of the water continuously streaming down at them. “I- I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t-“ through tearful eyes he pleaded to her, “I can’t lose you, too.”

It defied all that she knew... but she noted that Hiro wasn’t burning with flames on him... they were coming from him. And then she heard a voice within her head, the voice of the man that relented his silver armor to Hiro.

“It’s time, Charles. The boy has awakened...” the man’s voice coursed through her head, “Hear me, Inhuman child. The boy fears the power that was always his. He hid it from himself at the loss of his brother. You need to help him focus, to find the point between serenity and pain. Do you understand?”

Karmi nodded knowingly, as she continued to step towards the boy engulfed in flames. He pleaded, “G-Get away from me! I don’t want to hurt you!”

“It’s okay, Hiro. You won’t hurt me. You could never hurt me...” she continued forward as Hiro reeled back towards the wall. “You’re selfless and always place yourself at risk for others. You ensure that you are that person who will always help. To bear others pain without breaking. But...”

“No!” Hiro screamed as Karmi gently held him despite the flames that emanated from him. Karmi winced but remained there holding onto him. The enhanced Chimeran nanites within her continued to access her Inhuman genealogy, exponentially triggering her healing cascade.

She hugged the boy closer, “I’m not going anywhere. You’re not alone. I’ll face your pain with you. There is power within you, Hiro. The power to protect. Tadashi’s power courses through you.”

Hiro’s mind no longer flashed to the memories of fire but rather to his older brother smiling proudly at him on the bridge. To the moments he watched over him throughout their entire life. And finally, Hiro smiled as he surrendered himself to Karmi’s embrace. And the flames receded without a trace of an ember.

Note: Yeah, thank @arctimon for making my brain go down an odd rabbit hole I never expected to go down simply by connecting parts of the Marvel universe to Disney’s BH6. I went from Arct’s latest chapter helping me connect Hiro with Magneto, and then now I wanted to do something different from everyone... It makes sense people always connect Tadashi to Sunfire. But what if it was Hiro? And he subconsciously hides away his powers from his trauma surrounding fireb Just the sad irony of it... Sorry, creative brain is a bit haywire today lol.

[gammacousin]

Okay. I’m ready to real talk Black Widow. I don’t want to but as an activist there’s an obligation I have to share and educate. I nerd to forget but I suppose it shows the power of this movie if it brings something real into the light.

*Spoiler Warning. Trigger warning for everything.*

There are some things I want to say that could potentially spoil aspect of the Black Widow film. I also would advise you to skip this post if you have a darker past, if you aren’t interested in getting serious, or wish to skim by, I’m sincerely not judging! I come on here to avoid the universe as well. You do you, I totally still love you if you don’t read this and want to move onto something nerdy or more fun. This isn’t the post for you.

It’s taken me a while to process and organize my thoughts. Skip if you don’t want to hear deep, raw stories.

3

2

Okay. Nerd review first.

The level of girl power and any and all glass ceilings… There is SO much left to do. So much that needs to still be addressed. But seeing 3 women run this show: Yelena, Natasha, and Melina was an absolute joy to observe. This isn’t the end of some hard waged war, it’s the beginning and I beg you; Disney/Marvel. Please give us more of this? It’s so important for young girls to see other girls kicking butt and winning. Quick summary of nerd feelings; Losing Nat still burns. Yelena is a boss.

Okay…Real talk.

I have to get a little deeper here now. My personal story absolutely played into how I felt about this film and I wish I saw some trigger warnings about the material covered. Do I know Black Window’s story? Yes. In and out. I can read it, I can write my FF on it. However. Little to no one knows my story and so absolutely no one is to blame for not warning me. I was not expecting to come out this shook.

I’m sharing this because it’s happening now, today. In the real world. I doubt the film makers had this mind over other social issues, but after feeling like it’s irrelevant, that my pain is somehow less than, I’m realizing through my activism it’s not.

I grew up in a cult where women are not relevant. You matter up to a point. You are useful, to a point. If you’re giving 24/7, you’re not giving enough. If you’re not smiling as you’re doing cult stuff, you’re complacent. In addition to why I’m about to share, my house growing up was not a safe space which is a story for another time. So it’s a stack…this janga-ish game that eventually just comes crashing down.

My trigger started moments after the film started the handing over of the kids. When Alexei chooses the job over the welfare of the girls. Alexei put his two “daughters” in danger to save ‘face’. To put the job ahead of two children…it hit home. In the group I’m from, fathers, mothers, grandparents, siblings will absolutely choose the group over blood. You are nothing and you mean nothing if you ‘defect’. If you break a rule. If you complain. If you say ‘no’. If you put in a bad review for a leader, if you have anything bad at all to say about the organization as a whole. You can confide something deep in someone you trust and it absolutely will come back to hurt you.

The title song shook me completely. This collage of video and images of brainwashing, treating these girls like absolute objects is disgusting in itself. But when you’re raised in this other world, there’s a level of brainwashing that is absolutely unmatched. Videos, books, quizzes, 12 hour lectures, weekly meetings.

People are unified to the point where you lose your own identity. There’s a language- a literally language- words you start to misuse. Verbiage only people in the cult use. Kids of any age will watch any rated film. Frequently the themes are about obedience and or cooperation and the consequences if you do not cooperate/obey. Death is a such a common theme that either you become petrified of your own shadow, petrified of breathing wrong, or turn completely numb. In sharing these videos, the goal is to instill this fear that you will never be enough. That you will die- turn into a charred hot dog of a figure if you do not obey 8 white men - the leaders, in New York. That your friends, classmates, neighbors, family will die if they don’t believe what you do. That you’re held accountable if you can’t bring them to your side.

The song for the credits hit me. I cannot listen to it. I have no idea what it was about.

When I watched the film, I couldn’t focus at this point at gosh barely 15 minutes in. I had already checked out. I heard keywords. “Entertainers,” “I feel stupid and contagious…”

In my world, I did not matter. What mattered was, what was presented to the public. To your group. Meeting some checklist of this perfect family at any cost. You’re not an individual, you’re a number. Literally. Your records are documented by men in the back room- your actions, your track record. But ultimately? You’re part of a numeral equation reported to headquarters. And if you’re a woman, you do not have a say in how you look, dress, act or in what you say. You are as the title song says, …“Entertainers”. You smile. You do your job, and you are ‘happy’ about it. Your job is to dedicate x amount of hours cleaning the room you gather in, and in recruitment of other members…

There’s a ‘job’ in the cult called a “pioneer”. Okay. No, we might not have been trained assassins. But you are trained to manipulate emotionally. To prey on the weak. You get books, magazines, movies, speeches, lectures- you rarely get a free Saturday. Oh and the job isn’t paid. So make sure you’re working (part time because full time secular work isn’t acceptable) at a desk job (because college and getting an education is not allowed). Don’t make friends with the people who work with you, they’re out to get you. Back at the club; You answer questions like it’s some schoolastic quiz every week and quote what your reading. It’s a brainwashing tactic. If you say something enough times, you remember it. You start to believe it. You spend hours reading these things, training… Your job is to target people who have lost- and have lost a lot because they’re vulnerable. You learn to go to cemeteries, and literally stalk people who are grieving. Like Val. If you can catch someone when they’re weak, senses are dulled. They’re desperate. And you bait them with this false promise. This idea that all THEY have to do is change all that they are, join you, and they’ll see their dead loved ones again. That they are doomed if they don’t change. Most pioneers draft 2-4 people per lifetime. If you’re a great saleswoman, you can draft more into this horrific world. And I regret the hours I spent lying, torturing people. For some cult that doesn’t give two cents about me.

I 100% believed of I didn’t convince my classmates, neighbors, to join my side they would either turn me in or they would be killed by a divine being. From 2 years old I was supposedly handing out pamphlets. The doom is not a quick painless death, no. You have visuals. You have men getting up to talk in detail about what your ‘friends’ will look like as corpses. Visually descriptive to the point where I still feel a bit numb to it all. That you will have to bury their bodies after the whole divine destruction. That you will have to “clean up” the earth. You are numb- convinced- bullied to the point where you believe this is true.

If you’re hurt as MANY WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE, and you don’t have two people to testify and say they saw it- it never happened. Abuse is the norm. And if you speak up about it? You’re called a liar. Your friends cut you off. They think you’ll die along with everyone else if you put in a ‘bad review’ or leave. You’re bullied into submission and taught from a young age that you are not in control of your own decisions. You relinquish yourself under the pretense that the men you have such reverence toward are under some divine being’s control.

Your parents hurting you is acceptable. And don’t you dare speak against your father if he’s deeply involved. Don’t even think about approaching if he’s on a phone call. If you’re hit you take it- because you “deserved” it. And you smile. You shove that pain deep down. You hide the bruise, the cut lip, the depression, the bottles of pills you’re swallowing the whatever….You’re screwed if you faint, throw up, pass out, because you’ve missed a meeting. You better be dying for that to happen…

The idea that is portrayed in the movie (IMO) is that you can forgive family who hurts you. I see people forgiving Alexei and what’s her name. Look- that’s great. It’s a fun film. Alexei is funny. Here’s what I saw; it’s a toxic man- nay- father who can’t accept responsibility. He takes pride in what the girls have become- monsters. Not in who they are at their core. He has no idea who they are. And the mom has this photo album…I’m tearing up. She remembers this a certain way, a wishful thought. I’ve confronted my own mother about our past and had an album thrown at me, “We were happy. You were happy.” The fact is I was told the smile. You’re forcing this perception that everything was normal. That it’s okay to go back. (I’m not taking away Yelena’s view that everything was real to her, that’s fine for the sake of the story, and sweet. The moment between her and Alexei..fine. Milena turns and takes their side at the end, great.) The problem with how I saw this, is that’s not how the real world works. I don’t owe my parents forgiveness when I didn’t mean shit to them. When people leave the cult they’re cut off. Treated like they’re dead. I didn’t find these moments cute, I found them horrific. Hugging me, saying he’s proud of me is the toxic sh** my father would pull. Ignoring the holes in the wall, in my skull, the phony impression he gives to the rest of the group. Hugging me…after sweeping everything he did not only to me, but countless others under the rug because the cult…because 8 men in NY will protect him. Legally. Or otherwise.

I don’t need to forgive my parents. If you’ve been mistreated, you don’t owe anyone anything. They can “try” to do the right thing, that doesn’t somehow block out years of mistreatment. Years of trauma. Sheetrock only patches the surface of the broken walls. Wounds heal but some scars stay with you forever. Metaphorically or otherwise.

‘Entertainers’ was a trigger word because if you’re high enough in the ranking system you’re asked to “testify” or share a story. It’s in front of a couple thousand. It’s an “honor”. What it really is, is a three ring circus. You will only see women on the sidelines reading from the cards while only men stand at the main podium. They’re reading what they have told them to say. Stories are manipulated, cut, changed to fit a narrative that better suits the group of a couple thousand members.

Dreykov. I hate this. But I have to go there. I’m neck deep already, might as well. I think the worst part of all of it is that you can’t touch the person who made you this way. Those 6-7-8 leaders are untouchable. It doesn’t matter what you try. What legal entities, ex groups have tried. There’s a term for us and we are considered ‘mentally diseased.’ Members are told to avoid us. And in case you were curious, no, they can’t just break their nose on a table to be free- if only it were that simple. Gosh that got me. I would cut a limb, split my skull open, if it meant I could just cut a chord. It takes years of therapy and I still have nightmares. Urges to just, go. I’m OKAY. But most escapees are not. If you manage to escape with your life and don’t end it because the pressure, guilt, abuse that comes with leaving is too much. (This is sadly the fate of MANY LBGTQ+ members.)

The only hope is either the group eventually runs out of money or they’re taken down legally. Both of which are impossible since many older members will leave all they have to the group rather than to their family. It’s a complex billion dollar publishing company that plays monopoly with people’s investments, homes, and lives.

If you speak up, you’re the liar. So you cannot free your friends, who have turned on you, already cut you off, and discarded you the day you walked out and didn’t come back.

Watching Natasha, and Yelena free their sisters made me think of every woman who is stuck in this cult. For every woman, child, currently being sexually/physically abused and can’t say sh** because they literally believe god will kill them. If I say anything to them, they block me. If I expose what’s happening they will lie in court. That’s what is happening. And it’s not in the news, it’s not talked about. Because you can’t. You’re forced into silence. There’s a block. A literal legal force field that you cannot penetrate. They have their own lawyers. You can’t break into it. You’ll lose every, single, legal battle you try to fight.

Was this a decent movie? Yes. Was I expecting to share this days after release, no. I’ve been forced into silence for so long, told that people have it far worse and that I shouldn’t talk about it. But just today I saw a grown ass couple in an escapee group, talking about how one trigger word sent them into a depressive spiral. Wondering if some god damn lightening will come out of the sky and knock them dead. And we frickin struggle in silence. People will just shrug and go “oh it can’t be that bad,” while my gay best friend can’t catch an effing break. While someone else suffers at home because god wants it that way. Someone else will bury their kid today, maybe not even hold a funeral for them if they were ‘mentally diseased.’

For people like that couple I met today, like me, if you don’t just see a fun film but a darker past or maybe it’s brought up some memories for you, I’d honestly love to chat!!! Message me! I feel like for as painful as this is to hash out not too many people know about what goes on behind a group of smiling, well dressed woman who come knocking on your door. “It’s just a religion.”

I guess I didn’t realize…the criminal aspect of what happened to me. You’re so ingrained to keep quiet. To smile. To ignore, to suppress. I can smile, joke laugh, but visualizing…inadvertently seeing this mirror was so unbelievably uncomfortable. I would always rather help someone else because it takes me out of my head. Live in a bubble where I can call my trauma a ‘fantasy’. What’s real is when someone like me has a bad day? Lol! Look, my husband literally checks his phone to make sure a conversation never touches a couple hundred trigger words that will absolutely send me into the closet with a gallon of ice cream or a bottle of whiskey. I can’t imagine what someone else, what some other traumatized individual goes through. (Maybe that’s why the Bucky stuff makes me all angry She-Hulk too..)

Look, talking people ex members of this group, out of suicide is a daily endeavor to the point where it’s borderline on autopilot. But having this, I suppose, brilliant, piece of cinema turn the camera around left me raw and writhing and angry. Not for me, but for everyone else still stuck. With every year you spend in that cult, add ten more to therapy.

If you feel like me at all, you’re not alone. Not anymore. We were raised to feel alone in the world. That the universe is somehow out to get us and that’s simply not true. You don’t need the people who raised you if they were absolute shit bags. And you DO NOT have to forgive them for keeping you in that environment. Family isn’t family if they’ve hurt you. You owe them nothing. It is healthy to feel your feelings (and you and your feelings are valid. )

Anyways! I hope to be able to talk about more fun Marvel topics soon. But this felt important so thanks for listening. I’m really not hating guys, this is just…it’s heavy. And I beg you to do your research into cults and to help out where you can.

Love and light,

-M

[spooks-and-tea]

Entangled (Spencer Reid x femReader) [Ch.2]

Summary: You don’t know how it happened. One moment you were watching Criminal Minds, and the next moment you were literally in the show. Can Spencer be the key to helping you find your way back home?

Warnings: minor character death, mentions of su*cide, bad explanations of quantum mechanics, sexual situations, the usual criminal minds-type content

A/N: 2 chapters in one day for you :)))). I plan to make this one into a few parts if people like it. If this has any relation to other fics it’s not intended. Literally just an idea that popped in my brain. I’ll also eventually add it to my wattpad .@ kittentastic

Word Count: 3,401

Chapter 1.  Chapter 2.  Chapter 3.  Chapter 4. Chapter 5.  Chapter 6.  Chapter 7. Chapter 8.  Chapter 9.  Chapter 10.  Chapter 11.

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Spencer left you laying in the backseat, finding a spare blanket in your trunk to wrap you in. He dressed in his now semi-wet clothes and you threw on yours as he drove. He didn't speak to you. You caught him looking at you through the rearview mirror, but you had trouble reading his exact emotions, some profiler you were.

Spencer parked the car and you managed to stand with his help. You threw the blanket back inside and, with Spencer's arm around your waist, you managed to make it up a flight of stairs to a familiar apartment door.

No way.

This was Spencer's apartment.

When the door opened, you stood still at the doorway, eyes wide as you scanned the room. Spencer looked back at you, curiously, as you had stopped him in his tracks.

You looked like a child visiting a Disney park for the first time.

The apartment looked exactly as it did in the show; filled with books. You felt almost giddy as Spencer placed you on the couch. This was Spencer Reid's couch! These were his things! Your brain screamed, but your pain returned and you were thrown back into reality.

Spencer sat next to you, handing you a warm cup of tea, while clutching his own. He looked down at the swirling steam rising from the cup, taking a shaky breath, and finally spoke.

"Why? Why would you do that? Why would you just- try to take your own life like that?"

You sipped at your tea, trying to think of an answer. You hadn't fully come to terms with what had just happened.

You didn't want to die, and you hated the water. The thought of what you had nearly done sent a spark of fear through your spine, but you were so sure that this had been a dream.

"I wasn't trying to end my life," you answered; truthful, but vague.

"Then please explain to me exactly what you were trying to do because I don't understand why you would even want to step foot near a large body of water." He sounded angrier now, rightfully so.

"You know I hate the water?"

"Yeah, your dad. Something to do with your Dad." Spencer narrowed his eyes, subconsciously trying to find answers in your features.

"Spencer I want more than anything to tell you why I did that, but I'm afraid anything I say will make you think I'm absolutely insane."

"Does this have something to do with your memory loss? Is it the lack of sleep?" Spencer tried to reason.

"Yes and no. I've been sleeping just fine." Your throat began to burn again as you took another few sips of tea.

"You know you can trust me. If something's been bothering you, we can find you help. This can be between us and I can get you the best treatment in the country."

"I'd like it if we just kept this between us, Spence," the nickname fell easily from your tongue, "but I don't need treatment. I'm fine, really. I'm not depressed and I'm not suicidal, I swear. I can't explain why I did it, not yet." You looked at him earnestly, hoping he could profile that your were telling the truth.

Spencer's face fell, his eyes going glassy.

"What can I do that will help you then?"

Your heart clenched in your chest. Never before had you imagined you would make Spencer Reid cry. You must be really important to him in this reality.

"Spence." You set your now finished tea down on the coffee table next to his and reached up, wiping a stray tear from his cheek.

"Please don't cry, Spencer."

He held your hand over this cheek. His touch was magnetic, you hadn't noticed the pull before, but now it was obvious. You wondered if he felt it too as he grasped your hand tighter.

"What am I supposed to do then? I-I nearly lost you today! I just want to help you get better."

"You saved my life. I can't thank you enough. And you don't have to do anything more than be your normal, amazing self."

From an outsider's perspective the man in front of you should have been a complete stranger to you, but in your eyes, you already knew him. You've watched him fight his addiction, prison, relationships. He had been through it and yet he still found it in himself to dedicate all his time and energy into saving lives and putting unsubs behind bars. The last thing he needed was someone else to worry about.

You weren't sure where you fit into the canon of this universe, or if Spencer's struggles had even played out the same way they did on the show. You only knew that you had one goal at the moment and that was to make Spencer Reid happy.

"At least- at least stay with me today. Let me take care of you," Spencer spoke, rubbing at his tired eyes.

You opened your mouth to protest despite the butterflies in your stomach, but decided it was best you stayed. Letting Spencer care for you would probably give him some much needed peace of mind. This was just as beneficial to him and, truthfully, you didn't want to leave his side. That magnetic feeling returned, pulling you to him. Before you knew it, you were hugging him close to you.

"I'll stay as long as you'll have me." This wasn't just your hopeless crush on the man talking, you had a feeling this magnetic pull could be what pulled you into this alternate reality in the first place.

************************************************************************

Loyal to his word, Spencer took care of you. He made you warm soup for lunch and spaghetti for dinner and repeatedly checked your temperature throughout the day. You even made him check his own temperature a few times.

He gave you some of his clothes to wear, changing out of his own. Thinking about his daring rescue made your stomach tighten, he really was a superhero. You told him so as you both, ironically, watched a Marvel film together.

He gave you a small smile. You were happy he was smiling again, it was one of the first things that made you love his character. Come to think of it, now that all of that adrenaline and confusion was gone, your nerves were setting in. This was the man you wanted so badly to be real and walk into your coffee shop on one of your painfully long shifts. It was one thing to daydream about it, but to actually have him in front of you was beyond nerve-wracking.

Now that you physically had him here, you didn't know how to react. Like a fan girl? He had thousands, and he didn't even know it. Were you canon in this story? Were they watching you on their television screens right now? Had they seen the way he held you in the backseat of your car?

Your vision focused as Spencer waved his hand in front of you. You swallowed, feeling dirty and guilty for the past thoughts you've had about those restless hands as they trailed down book spines. You felt guilty for ever sexualizing the kind-hearted, selfless man taking care of you.

"What are you thinking about?" Spencer asked.

Way too many things.

"How did we meet, Spence?" You could see the eidetic brain gears turning as he looked down at his wringing hands. He scrunched his nose in thought.

"I-I don't- I don't remember," he looked up at you in disbelief.

"How could I not remember? The...the only clear memory I have of you is you leaving my apartment last night." Spencer's hands started to shake.

This was his worst fear coming true. You instantly hated that you had even brought it up. This universe had somehow written you in from the time you fell asleep to now. Everything else was just planted information, it never happened. You and Spencer had never had a first meeting because you've only just started existing here. How could you explain this to him?

"Spence. I have to tell you something. It's going to be hard to grasp, and I know we've already had a hell of a day. I'm sorry I've caused you all this pain when all you've done is help me, but you have to promise me you'll keep an open mind. Please don't think I'm crazy. I can explain why you and I don't remember. I know I asked you to wait for an explanation, but I can't deal with this alone. I need someone else here to know the truth." You gently cradled his head between your hands as he looked at you with wide, fearful eyes. Not fearing you, but fearing his own mind.

He nodded, appreciating your touch grounding him to reality.

"I'm a barista and an aspiring actress. I live alone in a small apartment in L.A. The last thing I remember before waking up in the bullpen today was falling asleep on the couch of my apartment. I was watching a television show called Criminal Minds and had an audition lined up for it tomorrow." You swallowed as Spencer stared at you, unblinking.

"The show is about a team of behavioral analysts who work at the BAU headquarters in Quantico, profiling and catching criminals. The team changes, but consists of Hotchner, Garcia, JJ, Prentiss, Morgan, Rossi, Gideon," Spencer inhaled when you listed Gideon's name, "and my favorite character, Dr. Spencer Reid."

A second of total silence filled the apartment.

Spencer's hands dropped limply at his sides. He looked at you now as if you were a stranger, and you technically were, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

"I know you don't believe me. I wouldn't believe me, but think about it Spencer. You don't remember me. You remember assorted facts about me, but today was the first day we met. Last night didn't actually happen. Isn't there a scientific theory out there that explains alternate realities?"

Spencer stood up suddenly and covered his mouth with his hand, raking his other hand through his hair. He walked to his bookcase and back, pacing, while sometimes glancing down at you. You couldn't begin to imagine what was going through his head. You decided to relate it to something you knew he knew well.

"Doctor Who." You stood up on shaky legs, Spencer moving to catch your elbow before you lost balance. He looked at you, waiting, listening, wanting to believe you weren't a stranger.

"Rose Tyler gets stuck in an alternate dimension in which she previously doesn't exist, but her deceased father is alive and well there. The Doctor can't traverse to see her without threatening to rip time and space apart. This is my alternate dimension, Spencer.  Please, if you know me at all, you'd know I am not smart or creative enough to make something like this up." You pleaded with your eyes for him to understand, for that crease in his brow to disappear.

He stayed silent, looking straight through you.

I'm losing him. I've fucked up.

"Please say something, Spencer, you're the only thing that has felt real since I woke up here. I just got cleared at the hospital, my brain is functioning fine, I'm healthy."

"When you jumped into the lake. You were trying to return to your reality. You thought it would wake you up." Spencer shook his head, putting pieces together as he went back to pacing.

"Look at me, Spence. Profile me if you have to. I'm telling you the truth."

"There are plenty of unsubs that think their contrived reality is the truth, you've seen them."

You deflated, feeling your shoulders go slack. He was comparing you to delusional criminals. You should've expected that it would be too much for the analytical Spencer Reid to accept. What else could you say to prove to him you were telling the truth?

Spencer suddenly stopped pacing, staring at his bookcase.

"Quantum mechanics," he spoke.

"What?"

He turned around to look at you.

"There's an interpretation of quantum mechanics called the many-worlds interpretation, created by physicist Hugh Everett. Though many physicists call it a theory. The interpretation can be explained through the Schrodinger's Cat equation in which the cat, placed in a box, exists in two different realities. One in which it is alive in the box and one in which it is dead in the box. These realities then branch off into more realities, like tree branches. There is a consequence to this theory, as observations of events are constantly taking place, the number of possible, simultaneously existing realities, is always growing as the interpretation chooses to discard the wave function collapse process. Subsystems may exist independently, but once they interact, they become relative. Once the observation is made the observer and the object become entangled and new states are created. Every reality created is equally real, but do not interact with each other unless this entanglement occurs. It's a highly debated interpretation in the scientific community."

You stared at him, mouth open in shock, trying to process all of the information he was throwing at you. He took a step towards you, one hand in his pocket, while the other accentuated his speech.

"Essentially if multiple universes exist. If what you're saying is true, then our subsystems have somehow become entangled, yours and mine. One universe in which you exist, and one in which you never existed. We're both the observers of our own universes and you've crossed over into mine, creating another branch in the system of my universe in which you and I can exist simultaneously." Spencer licked his lips before continuing.

"The problem is this is nothing but an interpretation of quantum mechanics, an ongoing debate. There are so many theories that exist in that realm of science that all have their inconsistencies. There's no way of knowing for sure how or why this is happening to us, or what will become of it."

You weren't sure if you had fully understood his theory, but he sounded serious, he believed you. Suddenly, you didn't feel so alone.

"Oh, Spencer. Thank you!" You threw your arms around him, hugging him.

He stiffened, but slowly wrapped his arms around you. "It was my memory that made me believe. I could never forget you. Doctor Who helped too."

"What are we going to do, Spence? What if this happens to me again, where will I end up?" Cosmic fear gripped you as you imagined yourself as a character in a Twilight Zone episode, doomed to dreading the unknown.

"We're going to continue living as normal. This is real, though it might seem like a dream to you. There's something that pulled us together, a magnetic force that entangled our worlds. The possibility of you being here at all is infinitely improbable. The probability of this to happen again is just as infinitely unmeasurable. You're a physicist's dream girl, Y/N."

You blushed as he called you a "dream girl." His explanation put your nerves, and existential dread at ease. He was always better at statistics than relating to others emotionally on the show, but his info-dump in this case made you feel sane.

You felt emotionally and physically drained. This was definitely the longest day of your life. Spencer felt your weight against him and pulled away.

"It's been a long day, how about we try to get some sleep? We can talk about this more tomorrow."

You nodded, eyelids already growing heavy. You turned to collapse back on the couch.

"Oh no. You're taking my bed tonight." Spencer stated.

"I'm fine, Spence, you're too tall to comfortably sleep here. You can have the bed, it's the least I can do after all you've done for me."

"No, you said I could take care of you today. This is me taking care of you." Spencer held out his hand, leaving no room for arguments.

You rolled your eyes at his stubbornness, finding it fitting for his character. Would you ever stop referring to him as a character? Clearly if he existed here, Mathew Gray Gubler didn't. That thought made you feel a little upset.

You took his hand without further protest and he led you to his bedroom. He turned on a light and pulled back the sheets, gesturing for you to climb in.

"Try not to sleep on your back, you swallowed a lot of lake water today, there's a good chance it won't stay down. Tomorrow I'll check your temperature again. You seem to be recovering well, but there's always a chance of pneumonia." You nodded, sitting down on the bed in front of him.

"Will you stay?" You asked as you pulled to blankets up, feeling so small in the large bed. The infinite universe and its sub universes had already had you feeling tiny. 

Spencer to hesitated.

"In here? On the floor?" Spencer asked, a bit flustered.

You shook your head and pat the empty spot next to you. It wasn't a plot to seduce the man, honestly, you just didn't want to let the only other being in the world who understood your predicament out of your sight.

"Please. I don't want to be alone." You said, after he stopped to consider it. The magnetic pull gave a tug, you absentmindedly leaned towards Spencer. You didn't notice him do the same towards you.

"Okay."

He turned off the lights and crawled in. You turned on your side to face him. His face was illuminated by the moonlight, the shadows accentuating the sharp angles of his face.

If this were a dream, you would reach out and trace the lines, feel the coarseness of his stubble. If this were a dream he would reach up to leave a gentle kiss on your forehead and pull you close to his chest. If this were a dream you wouldn't feel so nervous to be close to him. You would show him just how grateful you were to have him around; just how lucky that, of all the possible universes, you ended up in the one with Spencer Reid.

"How does it feel?" Spencer whispered, not daring to clash with the stillness of the night.

"Hmm?" You hummed, meeting his eyes.

"Before today, I was nothing more than a character in a crime show. A writer created me, and an actor brought me to life on the screen. How does it feel to meet your 'favorite character?'" Spencer smirked.

"Of course you remember that. I can't believe I told you that you were my favorite." You chuckled, Spencer's own smile reflecting yours.

"I guess I accepted you as a real person when you saved my life. Although, it's strange, knowing who you are, your likes and dislikes, your characteristics, seeing your triumphs and trials. I still find myself relating the small things you do, like scrunching your nose and info-dumping, to the character I've observed."

"Why am I your favorite?" Spencer sounded genuinely curious.

You tried to think of a way to explain in which you didn't sound like a fan with a blog full of Spencer-centric gifs. Not to mention, the staggering amount of fan fiction you consumed on lonely nights.

"I-It's okay, you don't have to answer that, but it's nice to know that you think so highly of me. Don't let Morgan find out, you'd ruin his ego." Spencer laughed to himself. "Although I'm sure he's a fan favorite and you're an exception in the viewership."

"You're plenty of people's reason to watch the show, Spence. You don't even know the half of it."

"Do they like me, or the actor who plays me? Wow, that feels weird to say."

"Both. You two are alike in some ways, but I think you are different enough that it's easy to love the character while knowing nothing about the actor. I should also say, you're a bit of a teen heartthrob, they seem to really like you."

Spencer snorted out a laugh at your last comment.

"Me? A heartthrob? You really are from an alternate reality."

You rolled your eyes.

"Sometimes you can be absolutely clueless."

"What? How?" His voice raised an octave.

"Forget it. Goodnight, Pretty Boy." You closed your eyes, not trusting yourself to hold back a blush if you met his eyes.

"Goodnight, Y/N."

Next Chapter

[aforrestofstuff]

What's the heroes' morning routine to start their day before going to work? Or their night routine before they're going to sleep? (And here is sprinkle of positivity vibes for you today: 😊😉👌💕💞💗💓💝💝💖💖🌟✨🍀🍀🍀🍀💐💐 Have a nice day! ❤)

Thanks for the request, anon! ❤️❤️ sorry this took me so long to get to, hope you’re still around!

Tornado of Terror: I’ve said in a previous hc that she sleep-levitates and wakes up in the weirdest places. So, she’d probably spend 10 straight minutes prying herself out of her bathtub or some shit with hella cramps. After that, she’d spam Fubuki over text message, asking her how to make a cup of coffee for the 57th time, then manage to burn it anyway, and finally go to work salty as fuck.

Silverfang: Wakes up at the crack of dawn, mediates next to a waterfall or some shit, broods over Garou, and makes himself a nice breakfast with a cup of tea. After that, he drags Charanko’s ass up the mountain to do some training, meditate some more, drink more tea, and around then it’s gonna be like 9 AM, so he’d probably just go the fuck back to sleep for a quick nap before actually going to work. Look, he’s old. Let him vibe.

Atomic Samurai: Also wakes the fuck up at the crack of dawn and proceeds to freeload a breakfast off of Iaian, wash it down with some alcohol at 6 in the AM, and complain about the weather. Then, he’d probably run over some sorta training routine with his disciples before doing group meditation and finally, finish it off with another drink. His tolerance is so damn high at this point. He shows up to work while pretending he wasn’t ten seconds away from getting wasted that morning.

Child Emperor: Wakes up rather early (if he even slept at all), runs diagnostics on all of his machinery, does tests on his latest weapons, takes 7 decontamination showers, and then makes himself a hearty breakfast consisting of Froot Loops and choccy milk. He shows up to work early and energized, running solely on his 87th lollipop and the single shot of espresso he had that morning. If it’s a weekday, he’d wait off on going to Association headquarters and teach a few classes at the local university instead. He’d then go to work in the middle of the day, grading papers and dying internally at the dumb shit his students say. He keeps a mental tally of how many people forget to write their names on their assignments. He’s suffering.

Metal Knight: Upon slapping the shit out of his alarm clock, he rolls out of bed and commands one of his bitchbots to make a Michelin-Star quality breakfast for him, then proceeds to stalk to the bathroom. He doesn’t shave or shower. He just takes a 45-minute shit because he’s forced himself to go to the bathroom once a day to “save time” when it, in fact, does not save time. After that, he takes a decontamination shower before entering his lab (also another 45 minutes because he’d spend the whole time je— nevermind) and doesn’t show up to work at all because he’s a little bitchboy hellbent on building Skynet in his mom’s basement.

King: Wakes up, cries, plays video games, cries some more, eats some cereal, takes a shower, cries, calls Saitama over, plays video games, Saitama leaves, cries. Then, he’ll show up to work for a single meeting at 4 PM just so everyone knows he isn’t dead, have an anxiety attack, go home, and then cry (while having another anxiety attack). After that, he’ll play video games until 3 AM. Rinse and repeat.

Zombieman: He’ll wake up at 3 AM and then sarcastically open his blinds like “oh wow, what a beautiful morning”. He’ll make himself a hearty breakfast consisting of leftovers, some protein pills, and half a pack of cigarettes. Next, he’ll shower, shave, and do some routine vigilante detective work out in the town before coming back home just as the sun is beginning to rise. After that, he’ll take a thirty second nap and walk his ass to work (because his car has been in the shop for like, seven years) so he can vibe for 3 hours before throwing in the towel and isolating himself for the remainder 18 hours of the day because depression.

Drive Knight: he sleeps plugged into the wall like a Samsung. Either that, or he’s solar-powered.... or maybe he runs on AAAs. I don’t know, but his ass ain’t waking up like everyone else. He’d power on, do some routine checkups on his laboratory or whatever the fuck he’s got going on, and then show up to work for 3 seconds only to dip the fuck back out and go poach some endangered monster species for his collection or some shit. Look, he’s a robot.

Pig God: wakes up at 10 AM like a king and eats a small breakfast consisting of three rotisserie chickens, a whole pot of rice, 57 eggs, and a cool glass of milk (because calcium is important, kids). He’d spend 4 hours on the internet before he gets hungry and decides to go outside, stopping to casually devour an entire species of demon-threat monsters in the middle of the street while simultaneously traumatizing every single child living in a 3-mile radius in the process of doing so. After that, he’d do some hero work for like 30 minutes (and somehow eat like, 200 living things in that timeframe), go back home, and then indulge himself in a 17-hour food coma. He’s earned it.

Superalloy Darkshine: Homie wakes up at 5 AM, works out for two hours, takes a shower, and eats a breakfast big enough to feed a small family of 19. After terrorizing every health expert in the country with his buckwild diet (ironic considering Pig God exists), he hits up his bro Tanktop Master for another 2-hour workout. He then proceeds to take 3 seconds getting dressed in his hero uniform because it’s literally just a thong, and goes to work for a full 8 hours because he’s a good boi who takes his job seriously and genuinely wants to make the world a better place. :)

Watchdog Man: wakes up, pisses on a fire hydrant, eats dog kibble, sits on his pedestal in city Q, and then gets dressed.

Flashy Flash: wakes up in a forest somewhere because he’s probably homeless. The local birds flock around him and sing a morning song. He feeds a baby deer like a Disney princess. Then, he bathes in a waterfall and spends two hours doing his hair. After that, he buys himself a fucking bagel and takes his ass to work smelling like the inside of a Cabella’s. He vibes at HQ for like, 30 minutes, before traveling 500 miles away on his 57th quest for revenge and ends up breaking a record for “most homicides committed by a hero” on the way there.

Genos: wakes up, makes breakfast for Saitama, takes a shower, and spends half an hour doing chores while Saitama bums around with a yolk stain on his pajamas. Then, he’d hit up the professor for any news about upgrades, and go on about his day handing out justice as he sees fit until Saitama suddenly gets the urge to go buy some cabbage. It’ll be another 2 hours of walking around the inside of a grocery store while holding 2 grams of food (because it’s all Saitama could afford, broke ass) before he actually goes to hero HQ for a single meeting (while Saitama tags along), and then slaughter 87 monsters on his way home.

Metal Bat: wakes up at 6 AM because it takes him 8 years to do his hair. He’d wake up Zenko about an hour later and tell her to get ready for school while he hauls ass downstairs to make breakfast (burnt toast and 8 Flinstone vitamins). They walk to Zenko’s school together. He takes ten minutes to shower her with love, and then he turns back around to walk to his own school only to show up like, 45-minutes late to his first class. He only attends hero meetings on weekends because A. Homework and B. He doesn’t give enough of a shit to juggle official hero business and school in the same day (unless it consists of a monster/criminal [or 12] in need of a beating).

Tanktop Master: same as Superalloy. He wakes up at dawn, works out, eats enough to feed a small army, and then calls his actual army over for a meeting. He and the gang discuss ways to better represent the Tanktop ideology over tea, while also sharing workout tips and just having a good time together in general. Around then it’ll probably be 8 or 9 AM, so he’d join Superalloy at Hero HQ and do hero work for the rest of the day alongside his homies. He’s living the life, honestly.

Puri-Puri Prisoner: he’s in prison so he’d wake up at 8 AM on the clock every day, eat his nasty-ass breakfast (although, I’ve said in a previous headcanon that he gets special meals prepared for him on account of being a literal superhero, but I digress), and then he works out in the courtyard for a good hour before going to work in the cafeteria for 3 bucks a day (or the yen equivalent). During visiting hours, he and his boyfriend are inseparable. They’d make some crafts together, gossip, and just hang out. If there’s a threat in the area, Puri will waste no time busting himself out and hugging that shit to death. A true icon.

Amai Mask: he either wakes up at 10 AM or 2 PM every day, there’s no in-between. He’d spend his morning doing every self-care routine under the sun: taking a warm bath, doing a face mask, eating a good breakfast (prepared by his own personal chef, of course), listening to an audio book, you name it. If he has a concert that night, he’d spend the entire day surrounded by people as he gets ready/rehearses/prepares. If not, he’ll just patrol the streets, handing out autographs and some slices of justice. He wouldn’t really show up to any meetings or do official hero business at HQ unless he’s in the mood to cuss out Sekingar and Sitch over some stupid shit or insert himself in S-Class business.

Iaian: wakes up earlier than any of the other disciples and Atomic Samurai because he’s like, responsible or whatever. He meditates, showers, does his own personal routine, and then kicks everyone out of bed for breakfast like an angry suburban mom. After that, he’d participate in everyone’s routine training, and then take his ass to work while showing up to every meeting at HQ (sometimes tagging along with Kami) because he’s a good boi and he has no problem engaging in business. :)

Okamaitachi: She sometimes wakes up with Iaian, but sleeps in most of the time because she needs her beauty rest, obviously. After breakfast and participating in everyone’s training routine, she’d do her hair/makeup and go do her own hero work the majority of the time. She’d sometimes tag along with Iaian, but she prefers to go on her own every so often. If she has some extra time before breakfast, she’ll also do a face mask or catch up on her favorite soap operas.

Bushidrill: this motherfucker sleeps like a log and Iaian wants to kill him for it. He wakes up like, 2 seconds before breakfast and hasn’t shaven in a month. Still, somehow, he manages to get ready in time for training without Kami trying to assault him for being a doofus.

Fubuki: She wakes up hella early and texts her herd of hooligans the daily plan before dealing with Tatsumaki’s shit over the phone. Then, she showers, does her hair, and takes fifteen minutes to get her makeup done right. It doesn’t take her long to plan out her outfit because she has like, 87 black dresses. After an actual hearty breakfast (unlike the rest of these clowns) that she makes herself, she meets up with the blizzard group to discuss business and engage in hero work together as a ✨team✨. She never gets asked to participate in official business by HQ because Tatsumaki strictly forbids it.

Saitama: he brushes his hair and sits on his ass all day.

Mumen Rider: wakes up at dawn, feeds the cats outside, eats a good-ass breakfast (despite being poor, because he’s actually really good at budgeting), and goes out for a nice, morning patrol. He’ll also call his mom and make sure she’s having a good time because that’s important. If it’s not a busy day, he’ll go to the gym and treat himself to some time at the park afterwards. If there’s monsters all about, he’ll spend the rest of the day in the hospital after getting his shit rocked for the 300th time that week. They’ve basically got a bed reserved for him at this point. He’s so pure but so, so selfless. And a little dumb. But mostly selfless.

[lovetheangelshadow]

N'Pressions: Netflix' Carmen Sandiego

I will admit my past experiences with the Carmen Sandiego franchise is a mix of both enjoyment and frustration. My first encounter with the series was that my grandpa had the original black and white game installed on his Mac II and half the time me and my brother were guessing and constantly losing because who knew you needed the accompanying Almanac to go with it. Also I was like six and my brother four and we didn’t even know what an Almanac was. We did sporadically watch the game show; both the geography and history ones, when our mother let us watch TV and well as the cartoon that came up on the Fox. To memory the only other game we ever owned was the USA specific one that we played to heck out of.

 I was not even aware that there was a reboot in the making until I had gotten an email from Netflix about some shows I might like. I glanced at the trailer on YouTube and admittedly was not exactly enthusiastic about the premise. From what it appeared to be, we were following Carmen specifically and that, while she was still a thief, she stole from other thieves. Sly Cooper. They were essentially premiering a Sly Cooper type show. Why didn’t Sly get his own show?! Okay so the Ratchet and Clank movie tanked, but you have a bit more wiggle room with a show guys! Heck technically there is 2D animation in the Sly series, it would not look out of place. Well despite my disappointment, I decided to give this a fair shake.

The theme song is meh. Honestly it just doesn’t stick with me like the previous three version. And yes, as corny as it was, I still like the Where in Time theme. I get what they’re trying to do though; invoking a jazzy tone like in the James Bond series, Pink Panther, or Catch me if you Can-it just feels very generic to me. Which is an honest shame because the animation for the opener is beautiful. The black and white cut out backgrounds with the trademark red coat gliding through and the title character eluding capture is just a treat. Again it works really well with the mood and tone of the show; a spy-action chase theme traversing the world. Like I said it does feel like they’re trying to invoke that classic thief/spy films. It’s just the theme doesn’t stick with me.

And as for the reboot itself, the show decides to elaborate and remake Carmen Sandiego’s origin. Now I don’t know if people were clamoring for this, but I never really came across any howling dissent like with She-Ra or Powerpuff Girls when this news came out. Most of the reactions I’ve seen were either excitement or hesitation. And let’s face it, any time there is a reboot there is reasonable grounds for reluctance. Now with Carmen there is a bit more of a leeway here. After all, at least to my memory, a set personality or origin for her. You knew she was a thief that wanted you to know it was her, someone who enjoyed the chase, and was very crafty and intelligent. Also mysterious.

So the new concept is that Carmen, or Black Sheep as her former name, was an orphan found by one of the V.I.L.E faculty members, Ms. Blunt and raised on V.I.LE Headquarters island where she had a series of various tutors who taught her geography, history, and world culture. She also learned a few other things by osmosis from other members of the organization and was also a bit of a prankster and precocious. Eventually she is allowed to train in the next school year where only 40 thieves graduate per year (clever pun). And it’s here where we meet some of the her schoolmates who will eventually her antagonists for the season. And if I may put in aside her, this show does this SO much better than She-Ra. The show actually does take the time to make them more or less fleshed out characters so you know the kinds of threats they will eventually be later on in the show. With She-Ra they’re more like set pieces then anything else (save for Catra, but whatever). Anyway the school is run by five faculty members each with their own personality and gimmick to their methods of crime. And watching these guys is very enjoyable. The best comparison I can think of is the Kingdom Hearts series where if you compare the organization of Disney Villains and Origination XIII in terms of interaction and entertainment. The former classmates are more like Organization XIII. Sure they have their own gimmicks and personas, but they don’t stand out as much and their interaction with Carmen is more professional and serious. The only exception may be Tigress-but she’s more of a rival. Also I am convinced two of those guys are gay and it actually feels natural because it’s not their most outstanding feature. With the Faculty, it is a lot more personal. Plus their egos often clash with one another and they’ve got no qualms taunting or flaunting others’ failures and their own successes. There is someone of a sixth member, who is the bookkeeper for V.I.L.E. Fun fact, she is voiced by the original Carmen and the reboot Carmen steals her soon to be trademark hat and coat from her. That is one of the cleverest pass the torches EVER.

Anyway, Carmen is flunked from the course and is forced to take it over. However she stows away on the place heading for heist where she learns the true face of V.I.L.E. She doesn’t have a problem with theft, it’s the fact that the organization is willing to kill to get what it wants. There are other atrocities but I won’t spoil them here. So finding this out, she escapes the island with stolen data with the help of a hacker named Player and vows to destroy V.I.L.E by stealing thigs before they do and or steal back from them.

For the rest of the series, it plays itself out a straightforward heist and chase show. At the same time either Carmen or Player will drop factoids about each place they visit either to each other or to Carmen’s two assistants: Zack and Ivy. They are also perused by Interpol agents Chase Devineaux and Julia Argent. Chase is a by the book officer who is persistent in pursuit and isn’t too interested in history and cultural facts. I would not call him stupid but rather he’s focused on the hunt and will do what he has to in order to keep up the chase. Also he has some of the best comedic lines in the show. Julia is more the bookworm and slow burning patient partner. ACME is also part of the chase as well as a shadow organization dedicated to tracking down and stopping VILE. When I first heard the two agents mention Chief I was super excited to see the return of the Chief and…shrugs. And nothing against Dawnn Lewis but she doesn’t strike me with authority the same way Lynne Thigpen did. Also I am kinda sad that they went the more generic men in black look. Sure the old red and yellow coats were cheesy, but they’ve stuck in my mind more than anything. Plus with VILE’s color schemes being mostly green, black, and grey it would have made for the perfect contrast.

The show goes more for of a cutout style along the vein of shows like 6teen and Chaotix season 1 (yeah remember that show?) with coloring resembling more of a painterly style. Basically similar to the style of the opening but a bit more simplified. For the most part I don’t mind it too much; but it tends to be not always as flexible when it comes to the action sequences. This is more noticeable with it comes to sequences that involve impacts, but they’re too brief to really notice unless you’re actively looking for them. Same thing goes for other things like follow through and squash and stretch. But for a first season especially with this kind of animation, I will give them credit that more the most part its consistent and nine times out of then it doesn’t feel stiff and awkward. If I have a minor nitpick it’s more the character designs themselves. I feel like a lot of these designs I’ve seen in other shows and none of them really stand out to me. Sure the old VILE agent designs from the show and games were kooky and sometimes questionable in design choices, but they still felt a bit more individual.

And now on to Carmen herself. Honestly, she’s fine. Sure they changed her to more of a grey hero but they didn’t toss off what made people like her. She’s fast on her feet, able to use what the situation gives her, and she is a skilled thief even when pitted against members of her own class. The only ones who really give her great trouble that she has yet to really outmatch are when she’s going against facility members head on. Which makes sense as they are more experienced than her. Hell, she almost gets hugged to death in one episode. Admittedly the humor in the show is 50/50. I laughed at a few jokes, but most were minor shrugs. At least there was not anything that made me cringe or face palm.

I honestly enjoyed myself and I felt the show was in the spirit of the original series. While focusing on Carmen and making her a Robin Hood-esque character was an odd choice they didn’t forget what the core of the series was. Globetrotting heists, geographical education, and just good old straight forward action. Also thank you so much for just focusing on being good educational entertainment. For actually being something that a broad spectrum can genuinely enjoy and not feel talked down to or pandered. I am very excited for the next season. So good job guys. I’m Noctina Noir and I’m one Nox of a Nobody.

[drv3imagines]

*fan girls to death* I’m gonna do my best to make this super duper gushy and fluffy! Also Happy (late) V3 Release Date everyone! (In North America…and Europe?)

L O N G P O S T A H E A D

Rantaro Amami * This probably occurs during the earlier stages of your relationship, most likely because of a loss track of time, or Rantaro convincing you. * Either way he was convinced you couldn’t go out in the dark at this hour. * He asks if there’s anything you need to help you sleep, getting anything you requested before prepping to go to bed. * When you regroup, you find he’s already lying in bed arms wide open, waiting for you to join him. * Not wanting to keep your prince charming waiting, you climb into bed with him, feeling his arms hold you close to his chest. * He whispers to you a mixture of sweet nothings and wishes of blissful dreams, his breath tickling the back of your neck. * He was attempting to lull you with that gorgeous voice of his. * The combination of the vibrations caused by his voice and the comfort of his bed were really rocking you to sleep, on top of that, he has a really warm and cozy scent. * The last thing you feel is the light kiss on your forehead, and a slight shift as he moves to turn off his lamp light.

Korekiyo Shinguuji * You’d spent the entire day at Korekiyo’s, helping him expand his research on sleep culture, and it was honestly putting you to sleep yourself. * However, your masked boyfriend failed to notice your fight to stay awake…until you face-planted right into the book you were reading. * It was no surprise to him. This was a normal thing, perhaps the sleep study was a bit dull, but beauty in humanity~ * Even as one drifts into a deep slumber, their minds continue to race…what thoughts could be going through one’s head as they try to chase sleep? * Perhaps, he should have studied dream culture instead. * After he finished his paragraph, he placed a bookmark in between the pages before gently closing the cover. * Kore then stood to his feet, silently creeping towards your side. * Careful not to wake you, he lifts you in his arms and heads to his room. * You looked quite peaceful curled up with a half-dreamy smile on your face, he felt as though he could watch you forever. * It was a hopeful thought, but he was sure you wouldn’t appreciate waking up to him bearing his gaze down on you, so he settled for something more rational. * He climbed into bed with you, lightly caressing your arm, before lowering his mask just a bit to give you a swift kiss on top of your head. * It didn’t take long before he too drifted off.

Kaito Momota * Movie nights at your house ARE. THE. BEST! * You bet your best star that Kaito is at you place in seconds, even if it was getting late into the night. * It wasn’t long before one movie turned to two, two to four, then you ended up watching your whole box set of older Disney movies. * Yikes! Was that the sun peaking through you shutters? * Whoops. * Both of you had burning red eyes from staying up all night, but it was worth seeing Cinderella III. * Kaito looked over at you, noticing how sleepy you looked and pulled his jacket off of the arm of the couch. * Laying it across your body, he watch as you snuggled into it. * He was really tired too, but first he was going to shift around some of you movie residue (empty popcorn bowl, opened DVD cases, etc). * Finally, he yawned and curled up, practically on top of you, wrapping his arms around your waist, not even lasting a heartbeat, before passing out.

Kokichi Ouma * He kept you out all friggin day long, claiming that every day’s gotta be fun or else it’s a waste. * Your excitable, childish boyfriend never seemed to run out of energy. * The park, a stop at his “headquarters,” a few phone pranks on your classmates, a visit to Shuuichi’s, a karaoke bar? That one was a bit of a weird experience you probably never wanna talk about again…but FINALLY! * You were at his front doorstep in a really dazed state. * Another step and you were sure you’d faint from exhaustion. * “Aw, nishishishishishi~ I had no idea I had worn you out that much~” * You don’t say…zzzz * You had fallen asleep right where you stood, all according to Kokichi’s plan~ * He’d get you as tired as possible, then get you to cuddle him to death so he won’t be lonely and miss you from your day’s previous activities. * Of course, that was a lie~ * He goes up behind you and gently nudges you to half-sleep walk to his bedroom, and lay you down in his bed. * He wouldn’t care if you were still in you day clothes or not, he’d just jump in right next to you and cuddle right up to your sleeping form, admiring how cute you looked. * Eventually, he’d whine to himself because he was getting pretty sleepy too, but he wanted more time to gawk~ uwu. Maybe tomorrow, *sigh*

Shuuichi Saihara * There was no way he’d ever let this “just happen,” he was too careful to wear you out enough to let you sleep at his place. And if he was at yours he would guide you to your bedroom, close the door and leave. * Hmm…💡‼️ * Shuuichi was never going to learn to be more intimate in a relationship if you didn’t teach him, so you devised a plan that would hopefully boost his confidence to take the lead. * It was another late afternoon that you two spent a day at your house, taking notes on a TV show featuring Sherlock Holmes, one of Shuuichi’s fictional faves. * You lightly remembered your plan, and decided that now was a better time than ever to enact it. * Your eyes began to flutter and your head would droop from time to time, before snapping right back up at the screen. * This didn’t go unnoticed of course by your boyfriend. Even though he was deep into the plot of the story, he would never ignore his s/o’s needs. * Following his usual routine, he helped you to your feet and guided you back to your room. Once in, he lied you down on your bed, and covered you with your blanket. * Before he had a chance to turn on his heel, you grabbed his hand and pulled him back. * “W-wha? S/o, are you alright?!” * “Sleep with me, Shuuichi…” * Commence total M E L T D O W N. * He tries to stammer out an excuse, but you held an iron grip on his wrist…eventually he backed down from his shyness. * He crawled on top of the cover on the other side of you and did his best to relax. You let go of his wrist, and traded it for his hand, hoping to calm some of his nerves down. * Eventually he calms, and you two stare at each other before sleep really does take over and you two fall asleep hand-in-hand.

Kiibo * Hoo boi! * Kiibo is so excited to sleep with s/o! * It was one of the objectives he had printed out as reference guide to being a good companion! * You figured this would come up as a question someday, but it caught you off-guard a little when he had randomly asked you out of no where in the middle of the daytime. * Kiibo looked so elated to finally having asked you such an important question, there was no way you could turn down such a lovable robot. * You figured a nap would be good practice for you two. But how was this supposed to work? * He’s a metal boy and you’re a soft fragile human, who’s skin would definitely feel the pinch caused by robot metal shifting to “simulate human sleeping behavior.” * Hmm… a single blanket wouldn’t be enough to protect you would it? * You decided to give it a shot, it wasn’t like you didn’t have plenty of time to try new things if this was too uncomfortable. * Your good boi was already waiting with a nice wooly blanket to protect that skin you’ve grown yourself (I’m so sorry for this meme reference). * You mentally laughed at his eagerness and joined your lover. * The wool was really nice, and the pressure of Kiibo’s arms wrapped around you gave the feel some authentication. * But the thing that got you really to relax was the light warmth that came, not from the blanket, but from Kiibo.

Gonta Gokuhara * Gonta is a good gentleman. * He would always take real good care of his s/o no matter what! * So if you ever got sleepy while hanging out with Gonta, he would always make sure to send you straight to bed!~ * However, this time your weariness came at a very bad time. * The two of you were out and about in a park, quite some ways away from either of your homes, but it was the only place the two of you could observe certain species of cicadas. * The noisy insects usually made others wary, but not you or Gonta. They were just doin their natural thing to (attract mates? Sing??? Why tf do they make all that noise?!?!) their heart’s content. * There were few times Gonta would slip up on his duty to make sure you were home at a reasonable time, and that was when Gonta was having too much fun with you, his s/o. * He did not mean to get you so sleepy! And it would not be comfortable if Gonta carried you all the way back to your home… * He would look really downcast at the thought of letting you down, but you wouldn’t let your boyfriend beat himself up about this. * “It’s okay Gonta, we can take a nap here in the park! Then when we get refreshed, we can go back to watching bugs, okay?” * He seemed to really like this idea, so you rolled out your picnic blanket you were going to use to eat on during lunch. * After your set up was complete, you pat the spot next to you for Gonta, who was very enthusiastic to join you. * After getting settled, you hugged your cuddle bug and almost instantly fell asleep. * Gonta gazed at your sleeping form and gave you a light peck atop your head before nodding off himself.

Ryoma Hoshi * Goodness gracious s/o…again?! * He invited you over (more like you invited yourself) for a few hours and when he went off to prepare a lunch for you two, you’d dozed off. * It would have been okay…if you hadn’t already done this literally every time he invited you. * Hmm…maybe he should be a little more concerned about why you’re falling asleep all the time. Are you getting your full eight hours? * Even though he pretended to be annoyed with your habit, it was becoming more and more of a problem. * First, he cleared up a board game you two were recently playing in the living room. Then he approached your sleeping form, playing doctor for a second. * He didn’t see any rings around your eyes…and you definitely seemed to have a regular breathing pattern…he thinks… * For a second, Ryoma crouched down to your side, giving you a closer look over…maybe he was worried for nothing… * … * …… * “Stop.” He says to himself. “I know what you’re thinking and there’s no way they’d let you.” * But you did look so peaceful…and really snuggable…is that a word? He couldn’t believe how ridiculous he was being. * Against his better judgement, he lies down next to you, keeping only an inch of space between the two of you. At least this would be a good compromise to both of his warring sides. * He shut his eyes and smiled at your radiating warmth, passing out to a rhythmic sleep beside you.

[easyobsession]

dwts25 cast announcement (aka lo is STILL recapping this crap?)

Jesus lord help us all, the shit storm covered in glitter is back for its 25th season and while I’m highly doubtful I’ll post weekly because I’m still upset over last season and pretty fed up with a certain pro at the moment, I’m feeling generous and somewhat indebted to tradition to at least do a post on the cast reveal.

Wow, that was a long ass sentence.

 *A quick sidenote before we start- you guys, I actually know who all except 4 of these people are!! This might be a record. Good on you, ABC.

The Guys

DEREK FISHER with pro partner SHARNA BURGESS

Speaking of people I don’t know… He’s an athlete, what do you expect? He used to be a basketball player, right? Does he still play? Was he any good? They got Kobe Bryant to send a message, but is that because of Derek or just ABC’s connections? I have no clue. Instant judgment says he won’t be great.

DREW SCOTT with pro partner EMMA SLATER

Who doesn’t love the Property Brothers? When I first heard about Drew as a possible contestant, I wasn’t shocked. He and his brother seem pretty easygoing and willing try almost anything- and out of the two I think Drew is a little less likely to worry about the stereotypical possibility of looking “less masculine.”  I think Drew could be good- he’s insanely tall, which might work against him, but he seems really excited and I bet he works hard. I’m excited about him.

FRANKIE MUNIZ with pro partner WITNEY CARSON

Loved Malcolm in the Middle. And Agent Cody Banks, with Hillary Duff? AND BIG FAT LIAR, WITH AMANDA BYNES BEFORE SHE LOST HER MIND? And that Disney Channel movie (back when they were DCOMs) where he was in a kid in a wheelchair that raced in a soapbox derby? God, what a throwback. Apparently since then he’s gotten pretty into racing for real, however I don’t see us having another James Hinchcliff on our hands. Even in the 2 second intro they did on GMA he looked stiff and awkward. I don’t see this lasting long at all. Shame.

JORDAN FISHER with pro partner LINDSAY ARNOLD

Forget Hamilton, this boy is from the Disney Channel! Liv and Maddie, anyone? TEEN BEACH MOVIE? It’s Seacat, y’all! He’s gonna kill it and it’s gonna be so fun to watch. I think he and Lindsay (who shall from this moment on be known this season as LindsAY, not to be confused with fellow contestant LindsEY) will be a great team with a lot of energy. He won’t win though, due to the Disney Channel curse. In true Disney star tradition though, he will likely get second place. (Somewhere in the distance Kyle Massey, Zendaya, and Corbin Bleu are having a Disney Kid/DWTS Runners Up club meeting. Meanwhile Sabrina Bryan is nearby plotting to burn down ABC headquarters.)

NICK LACHEY with pro partner PETA MURGATROYD

First One Tree Hill, now this. The man is out to conquer the world. I don’t think he’ll be as good as Drew (his brother, not the other contestant this season) and I almost think his wife will outdo him by just a hair. That said, I don’t see him being awful. Along the lines of boyband members, I can see him maybe a little behind the others like Nick Carter and Lance Bass, and probably not nearly as good as Wanya Morris or Joey Fatone. I think Nick will start off okay and slowly work his way up, but I don’t think it’ll be a fast or easy process. But as long as he and Vanessa don’t bitch and moan about their spouses like Carlos and Alexa PenaVega did, I’ll be happy.

TERRELL OWENS with pro partner CHERYL BURKE

It’s Terrell like Cheryl, not Tuh-rell. He is (was?) in the NFL. That sums up my knowledge of this man. I assume he was (is?) pretty good from the way people talk about him? He looks pretty graceful and I doubt they’d give Cheryl anyone too shitty since it’s such a big deal she’s back. I don’t know. The only football knowledge I have is from Friday Night Lights. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t fuck it up in the ballroom.  

The Girls

BARBARA CORCORAN with pro partner KEO MOTSEPE

I actually have watched quite a bit of Shark Tank since Robert Herjavec’s season, so I know Barbara! She’s 68, so good for her, though since she’s with Keo we know she won’t last long. Though I doubt she’ll be much good, I know Barbara is very spunky and look forward to seeing her.

DEBBIE GIBSON with pro partner ALAN BERSTEN

One of the 4 I don’t know. Apparently she had a hit in the 80s that I’ve never heard of and she’s currently battling Lyme disease, which I also know nothing about. But after a quick trip to the trusty Mayo Clinc’s website, I learned that Lyme disease is basically a bacterial disease transmitted by deer tick bites (check yourself, kids!), with symptoms that can include a rash, flu-like symptoms, joint pains, and neurological problems. So Debbie has a lot going on. All of that said, I can see her being a bit like one of the higher-skilled housewives when it comes to skill- not epic, but not too bad.

LINDSEY STERLING with pro partner MARK BALLAS

I think I’m rooting for her to win. Of course we’ve all seen her- she’s performed on the show multiple times (Maks and Meryl, week 3 Foxtrot. Look it up.), She’s cute as button and apparently she and Mark have known each other for a while. I’m excited. I think she’ll do well. It’s gonna be weird seeing her dance with a person though instead of her violin.

NIKKI BELLA with pro partner ARTEM CHIGVINTSEV

I’m a WWE girl, so I know Nikki. Since the proposal at Wrestlemania in April she’s taken time off from wrestling, but she’s still around starring on the WWE reality show Total Divas as well as the spinoff Total Bellas, starring her and her twin sister Brie. Whether or not she’ll be any good is a huge question mark, because while being in amazing physical shape, obviously wrestling has a little less finesse than dancing. Fellow WWE superstar Chris Jericho competed in season 12 with Cheryl and came in 6th (he wasn’t great, and he’ll gladly tell you that himself), however I think Nikki being a woman gives her an advantage over the male wrestlers. The guys in WWE don’t have to worry about being sexy (though some are- Seth Rollins, call me) but the girls, while times have progressed and are now seen as equals in terms of talent, do have to be a little more graceful, so to speak. All of this being said, I’m not sure how well she’ll do. But I’m excited to find out.

SASHA PIETERSE with pro partner GLEB SAVCHENKO

I didn’t watch Pretty Little Liars, but I know who she is. Another one too cute for words. I hope she does well.

VANESSA LACHEY with pro partner MAKSIM CHMERKOVSKIY

I don’t really know what Vanessa has done aside from being a wife/mom and a TRL VJ back in the day. But she looks like she can shake her booty and I think she’ll do well with Maks. I can see them being a lot of fun. I also think she and Nick seem less timid than Carlos and Alexa, and I’m crossing my fingers that they understand the concept of the show is to win with your partner, not cry about how much you wish could be dancing with your husband instead (because that’s NOT HOW IT WORKS, ALEXA). So I’m pumped. I also hope the troupe is prepared to open the DWTS daycare for all of these children that will need watching while the mommies and daddies go to work.

VICTORIA ARLEN with pro partner VAL CHMERKOVSKIY

The final cast member I do not know. I looked up her story though, and I can see why Val has been so pumped about her. She seems AMAZING. For those of you also in the dark, here’s some info I’m copying from the internet:

“At the age of 11, Victoria developed two rare conditions and lost the ability to speak, eat, walk and move. She slipped into a vegetative state in which recovery was unlikely. She spent nearly 4 years "locked" inside her own body, completely aware of what was going on, just unable to move or communicate. Doctors believed there was little hope of survival and recovery was unlikely. In 2010, Victoria began the nearly impossible fight back to life. She learned how to speak, eat, and move all over again. She competed in the 2012 Summer Paralympics held in London as a member of Team USA and she won four medals: one gold and three silver. In April 2015, she made the transition from professional athlete to sportscaster and joined ESPN as one of the youngest on air talents hired by the company. In April of 2016, she defied yet another odd and learned to walk after spending nearly a decade paralyzed from the waist down.”

And she’s TWENTY-TWO, Y’ALL. Let’s all take a quick moment to examine our lives- WE’RE ALL FAILURES. LOOK AT THIS GIRL. SHE’S A REAL LIFE SUPERHERO. Also one of the ones I’m excited to see and rooting for (despite some shit I won’t get into. Check my twitter. It’s there somewhere).

The Troupe and Pro Decisions

TIME TO POP BOTTLES, Y’ALL. YOU KNOWN DAMN WELL WHY I’M CELEBRATING. However I’m also hesitantly holding back bc until the first episode airs and a little blonde man doesn’t magically come out dancing with his celebrity partner along the lines of Michelle Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, Christ himself, I won’t be 100% convinced we’ll get such a huge season without God’s Gift To Movement. (#SQUEREK- MY VALDAYA FAM CAN ENJOY THAT THROWBACK. YOU’RE WELCOME.)

On a completely different topic, Mark is back. Woot! With his creativity and LindsEY’s talent with a violin, I’m super pumped to see what he comes up with.

Also Alan has been upgraded to a pro. Yay Alan!

I’m sad Sasha isn’t a pro this season because we all love him and he’s done so great with his past partners, but I think a large part of him being a pro depends on if they can find someone that balances will with his height. So I’m sad, but happy he’ll be around at least on troupe.

On  a similar note though, who cares about height? Sasha is clearly a great teacher. Keo, however, though I’ve got mad love for the man, has proven time and time again that he needs some time on troupe to work on his teaching skills. I realize Barbara won’t ever be the next Laurie Hernandez, but regardless. I’m not happy they moved him up.

I’m also sad that a few favorites won’t be around like Karina and Tony. (dude, Karina went from this to attempting to date Chad from Jojo’s season of the Bachelorette on that new E! show. What the hell happened to our girl?)

The Judges

As far as I know they’re the same. Yippee -.- but guess what I’m pissed about y’all! SHIRLEY BALLAS IS JOINING THE JUDGING PANEL OF STRICTLY COME DANCING. WHICH IS NOT DWTS. WHY DO THEY GET HER AND WE’RE STUCK WITH CARRIE ANN AND JULES? What sick form of bullshit is this? I’ve said before I want both of Mark’s parents on the panel, plus Anna Trebunskaya (who just had a baby boy- CONGRATULATIONS ANNA!!!) and if Maks is competing and can’t judge, then Bruno, because I love his insanity and inappropriate innuendos. So damn you, Strictly!!

Predictions (in no specific order)

EARLY EXIT/THE BILLY RAY SCHOOL OF DANCE: Barb, Derek, Frankie

MIDDLE OF THE ROAD/BE GLAD YOU DON’T HAVE TO LEARN 46 NUMBERS FOR THE FINALE: Nikki, Terrell, Nick, Sasha, Debbie

GOING ALL THE WAY/STILL FINDING GLITTER IN YOUR DRAIN 6 MONTHS LATER: Jordan, LindsEY, Vanessa maybe, Victoria, Drew

For the final 3? As of lately I’m questioning damn near everything in my life, but I’ll give it a shot. Final 3 LindsEY, Jordan, Victoria. I’d normally guess Jordan for second, but with these girls I’ll guess Jordan 3rd and…. gah, this is hard. I want to say LindsEY will win, but I almost think Victoria will get it. I have a feeling this will flip-flop a lot. Okay, final guess pre-premiere is Jordan 3rd, LindsEY 2nd, and Victoria wins. But I’m not 100%.

Whew. Thank god I’m finally done writing this. If you actually read the whole thing, god love ya.

I’m still on social media @lauthom93 and love a good discussion, debate, or argument- not just about DWTS but anything at all, so hit me up there or right here on tumblr.

Back to my regularly scheduled madness. You know I’m sending love and gestures kids shouldn’t mimic.

Lo.

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: As Long As You Love Me -- Still Here

A) Felt bad about saying I’m working on ANOTHER Valice AU but can’t show you anything yet and B) my friend @dont-offend-the-bees is modding good old Kurlish Week in the Dirk Gently fandom, so let’s have an entry in spirit! Last time we saw our heroes, Alice had just slaughtered an entire gang of evil bikers! She and Victor are back on the road again -- or, rather, they were, until Victor convinced her to stop for a night in a hotel for a chance. Alice is better than Bart at figuring out how hotels work, but she’s still out of her element. . .

"You – have stayed in a hotel before, right?"

"Once," Alice said, sitting on the bed and eyeing the walls as if she expected them to start dissolving any second now. "Years and years ago. An overnight trip to the seaside, if I remember correctly." She bounced on the mattress. "Usually we just had day trips into London. Mama and Papa liked sleeping in their own beds after a day out. So did I, honestly."

Victor thought about their first night together in the car – him curled up in the back seat, her in the front. His heart twisted in his chest. How many times had she lived her half of the scene, out in the cold, completely alone except for her imaginary friends? (Who, judging by how often she argued with thin air, weren't even all that friendly. Wonderland might protect her, but he couldn't blame her for wanting another source of conversation.) "When is the last time you slept in a bed?"

"Oh, not that long ago," Alice said, waving a hand carelessly. "I'm not that far out of Rutledge." She bounced again, heedless of the stricken look on Victor's face. "Granted, I am going to have to get used to clean sheets and pillows. And a mattress that doesn't feel stuffed full of rocks."

"Right." Victor dropped their duffel bag of essentials by the TV, then ran his fingers through his hair. "So, um, did you want the shower first, or. . . ?"

Alice froze, sitting bolt-upright. "Shower?"

"Yes. Shower. The thing that sprays water on you," Victor deadpanned. "If you've forgotten what one of those is, I don't know what to do with you."

She gave him one of those looks that was half-annoyance at the teasing, half-pride at the snark. "I know what it is, I just – it has been a while since I had one of those. Rutledge was all about either freezing cold or stiflingly hot baths, and – well, you've seen how much I spend on wet wipes."

He had indeed. Victor opened the bathroom door, revealing rows of blue and white tiles forming a wave pattern, a gleaming white toilet, and a smoked glass shower stall just beyond. "Be my guest. I don't mind waiting."

Alice needed no further invitation. She sprang from the bed, shucking her jacket and dropping it on the floor before heading inside and shutting the door. Victor turned on the TV to give her a bit of extra privacy. "Police are still investigating the mysterious mass murder of the notorious Blackwing gang," a news anchor droned solemnly from behind a desk. "Nine out of the ten members of the gang, including leader Scott Riggins, were found dead on a piece of farmland the gang had purchased as headquarters two years ago. When questioned, neighbors said they'd heard a commotion roughly three days ago, including large amounts of gunfire, but declined to investigate due to Blackwing's hostile reaction toward anyone considered intruders. Indeed, upon examining the barn on the property, police found dozens of bodies, most of them burned–"

Victor switched the channel before they could show any footage of the barn. He'd already lived that particular nightmare – he did not need it on instant replay. Instead, he found a red-headed young lady looking pensively out of the TV screen. "How does she know you love her?" she crooned, over the protests of her dark-haired male companion. "How does she know she's yours?"

Ah – Enchanted. That would do nicely. Victor chuckled as Robert attempted to thwart Giselle's musical number, only to be thwarted in turn by the Jamaican fellow in the park. Poor man – one chance meeting with a girl, and suddenly your whole life is turned upside-down.

His eye fell on Alice's jacket, discarded on the rug. He picked it up and examined it. The heavy leather had seen its share of battles – he poked his finger through an old knife hole. Unwillingly, his mind went back to the news report. Riggins had killed dozens of people in this jacket. Most of them likely people just like himself – innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time. And judging by his s'mores joke, he hadn't felt squat about ending so many lives. And then Alice had come along, and. . . .

He looked back up at the movie – at everyone singing and dancing with Giselle while Robert watched in a continual state of befuddlement. It suddenly felt very appropriate for this particular flick to be on. Perhaps Alice didn't cause spontaneous musical numbers, but the universe still molded itself to suit her needs. Never any eyewitnesses (except him, now) to her crimes. Never anyone ready to question the red splattered across her clothes. Never anyone giving her a second glance for talking to nothing. It was like – she was on a different wavelength to most people, one they couldn't pick up. So she moved through the world, killing whomever she thought needed it, and no one – no one even noticed her.

Except him. Somehow, he'd become the Robert to her bloody Giselle. But why? What made him special? All he had going for him was a steady hand with a quill pen, a natural talent for the piano, and a father with a booming cannery business. And Alice hadn't known about any of that when she'd rescued him from Hugo and his men. So what on earth had made the Cheshire Cat call him –

"Ahhh!"

Victor jumped to his feet. "Alice?!"

"It's all right, just – damn, the water's cold!" He could picture her glaring at the shower head. "Do they not have any concept of central heating in this hotel?"

"Just let it run for a minute, I'm sure it'll be fine." Victor fidgeted a moment. "You – you do have everything you need, right?"

"That depends on whether or not there's enough shampoo for one head in these tiny bottles," Alice responded. "And what's – why is the soap wrapped up like a Christmas present?"

"I think it's supposed to show it's fresh," Victor said, unable to help his grin. He went over and plonked himself down against the door so they could hear each other better. "You know, so you know you're not using the same bar as the last person who stayed here."

"I don't expect this soap to last a single wash, let alone two. I could break this by breathing on it." A moment of silence, then, "Another brainteaser for you – why does the shampoo have fruit on the label? Is it edible now?"

"No," Victor said quickly, just in case she was moved to test the universe's protection of her. "'Natural botanicals' is the new trend, that's all. . .honestly, if they were going to make any of it edible, I'd vote the conditioner. It already looks a bit like yogurt."

That adorable snort that signaled Alice laughing reached his ears. "I still don't think I'd like it in a parfait! 'Natural botanicals,' hmm? Next thing you'll know, they'll be having us rub whole strawberries and lemon slices on our heads."

Now it was Victor's turn to snort. "And my mother will be first in line to waste her money on it. She'll buy anything if she thinks it's in." He looked up at the ceiling. "Usually hats."

"Which kind of defeats the point of fancy shampoos. . ." Alice was quiet for a moment. "We haven't heard any more about them looking for you."

"Er – we have been rather busy," Victor said. "Not much time to listen to the radio."

"I suppose." Another brief silence. "Do you miss them?"

Victor's first instinct was to say that of course he did, they were his parents. But then. . .well, there was something about Alice that made him want to be honest. Besides, she'd find a way to cut through his bullshit anyway. "Not as much as I think I ought. We're – they're very into appearances and climbing the social ladder, and I'm – not good at that." He twisted his hands in his lap. "I – I'm sure they love me, but we're – t-there's a distance."

"I see. I'm sorry."

Victor shrugged to the wood. "I'm used to it."

Alice hummed. "That does at least explain why you didn't run for it the moment I stepped into the bathroom."

Victor blinked. "Why would I run for it?"

He could almost hear her raising her eyebrow. "Because you were clearly considering doing so for most of our trip together?"

That was true. . .and thinking about it, this would have been the perfect moment, wouldn't it? She never would have heard him slip out over both the TV and the shower, and he had plenty of money for a taxi thanks to the cash she’d accumulated from her kills. He could have been long gone by the time she stepped out of the bathroom. Well on his way back to his normal life.

And yet – the possibility hadn't even crossed his mind. After the bikers, everything had shifted. Alice had stopped being scary and started being – comfortable. The weirdness that followed her had started feeling – normal. His eyes found the TV again. Robert was smiling now, caught up in the magic of the song despite himself. Just like he was caught up in Alice’s universe. It wasn’t strange anymore -- it was -- right.

He wasn’t sure Alice would like the comparison to a Disney movie, though. "It's – different now," he said instead. "Like I said – I get it now. I'm supposed to be with you." He paused, then added, totally on a whim, "I'm still here."

Silence stretched between them – but it was warm, and companionable. "Yes," Alice said at last, and she sounded the happiest he'd ever heard her. "You're still here."

[biofunmy]

Advice from Peter Neupert, who worked with Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates

CLOSE

Amazon faced protests on its fifth annual Amazon Prime Day. While the Seattle-based e-commerce behemoth said it is offering more than a million deals, a demonstration was seen outside a warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota. (July 16) AP, AP

Story Highlights

Peter Neupert started at Microsoft in the 1990s and late came back for a second stint to launch a health group.

When he was taking the CEO job of Drugstore.com in 1998, he spent a few days shadowing Jeff Bezos, who helped recruit him for the position.

One thing he learned from Bezos is that data matters more than opinions.

Jeff Bezos’ ambitions in health care are no longer a secret.

Between the Haven partnership with J.P. Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, his company’s stealthy work in cancer research, investments in health clinics for employees and last year’s $753 million purchase of online drug seller PillPack, the Amazon CEO is openly taking on the $3.5 trillion health-care industry.

While most of those developments are very recent, Bezos has had his eyes on this market for over two decades. Nobody knows that better than Peter Neupert, who became CEO of online pharmacy Drugstore.com in 1998, after Bezos recruited him for the job in tandem with Amazon’s investment in the company.

It was the beginning of a long relationship between the two and their effort to apply emerging technologies to life sciences. Neupert went on to Microsoft, his second stint at the company, where he led a new health solutions group. He left in 2012 and has since been a sought-after adviser for hospitals, biotech companies and start-ups.

“People are often approaching me for solutions,” Neupert, 63, told CNBC in a recent interview. “What I tell them is I don’t always have the right answers, but I do have a lot of scars and I’m happy to share those.”

Bezos stepped off Drugstore’s board in 2001, and Neupert left the company three years later. But they’re both engaged, more than ever before, in advancing health care.

Amazon is hiring aggressively at PillPack to become a major player in prescription delivery and is exploring a host of efforts to bring down the cost of care. Neupert is on the board of medical lab company LabCorp, as well as Adaptive Biotechnologies, which recently went public, and a couple early-stage ventures. He’s also on the board of trustees at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Meanwhile, Amazon is still a big part of Neupert’s life in other ways – he has two kids and a son-in-law who work at the company’s headquarters in Seattle. That’s where it all started for him 21 years ago.

Disney bought Marvel for $4 billion: It’s made over $18 billion since

Jumping to a dot-com

Neupert was working for Bill Gates at Microsoft, where he’d launched the MSNBC network as a joint venture with NBC. He was approached by John Doerr of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins about a new start-up that aimed to sell prescription medicines, beauty products and over-the-counter drugs online. Doerr, an early Amazon investor and board member at the time, brought Bezos along for the recruiting meeting.

“They were looking for someone who could take a 10-page business plan and turn it into a real business at a time when everyone was starting companies,” Neupert recalled.

Leaving was a tough call. Microsoft was on a tear and would soon surpass General Electric as the world’s most valuable company, while Drugstore was an idea on a whiteboard backed by a cash-burning dot-com darling.

So Neupert asked if he could shadow Bezos for a few days, following him around for conversations with board members, staff meetings and conference calls. Bezos agreed, and Neupert took the job. From a short time observing Bezos, he learned something that was fundamentally different at Amazon than at Microsoft.

“I learned quickly from those days that opinions don’t matter,” Neupert said. “Data matters.”

Bezos talked about A/B testing (comparing two versions of a design or project), rapid customer feedback and the importance of experimenting and failing.

In April 1999, two months after Drugstore announced the investment from Amazon and Kleiner Perkins, Bezos and Neupert appeared together on Charlie Rose. The host asked Neupert why a consumer would rather buy from Drugstore than their local pharmacy.

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‘Nobody likes to browse the Preparation H aisle’

“They don’t like waiting in line for the pharmacist up behind the glass counter,” Neupert said. “They don’t like shopping in public for very private things.”

Bezos chimed in to say, “browsing for books is fun but nobody likes to browse the Preparation H aisle.” That was followed by a momentary pause and then Bezos’s signature – some say maniacal – laugh.

Drugstore survived the dot-com bust but struggled to grow in an extremely fragmented business. Neupert left in 2004, five years before Walgreens bought the company for over $400 million and ultimately shut it down.

Along the way, Amazon learned some key lessons that would benefit the company as it pursued a deal with PillPack many years later. One big realization was that the established pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the industry middlemen, would go to great lengths to protect the status quo.

Drugstore was shut out of the pharmacy business by Medco Health Solutions, one of the largest PBMs at the time, which meant it had no real way of selling prescription drugs. PillPack more recently experienced similar resistance from Express Scripts.

Over time, Neupert saw glimmers of Bezos’s ruthless style, which investors and analysts have said is a primary driver to his success. During the dot-com crash, for example, Amazon stopped giving away its email marketing access list to Drugstore and start charging for it.

“He did what was the best thing for Amazon,” Neupert said. “I didn’t like it at the time, but I ultimately respected it.”

Hong Kong protests: Police launch tear gas, protesters throw eggs as Hong Kong protest turns violent

Second act at Microsoft

After leaving Drugstore in 2004, Neupert wasn’t quite ready to give up on health care.

Over the following months, he spent some time in Washington, D.C., paying close attention to regulators and pharmacy lobbyists. He observed how the major players had their own entrenched interests, which created a big problem for medical software.

Record-keeping inside large hospitals and doctor’s offices was still run on a combination of paper and homegrown systems. Electronic medical records systems were emerging but only a few large health systems, like Kaiser Permanente, were starting to shift over to vendors such as Epic Systems. So much critical data was siloed.

“It struck me that a few thousand people die every year because of adverse drug events, and a lot of that was down to a failure of systems engineering and software design,” Neupert said.

That thinking brought Neupert back to Microsoft, where he saw an opportunity to build a business to help the health-care system with that problem. He kick-started a health unit, launching a product called HealthVault for consumers and health providers to aggregate medical information. One former Microsoft Health colleague, Sean Nolan, said the mission was ambitious and ahead of its time.

“Peter was always drawn to big ideas,” Nolan told CNBC. “And he was never scared of challenging conventional wisdom.”

Detroit, Chicago, Memphis: The 25 most segregated cities in America

While it’s still working on that mission today under corporate vice president Peter Lee, the consumer part of the equation failed to get much traction. Microsoft announced in April that it will shut HealthVault later this year. Lee said there are 72 projects he inherited from Neupert.

“It’s remarkable how much energy he injected into the health-care space that really never left,” Lee said, in an interview. “It ranges from synthetic biology to radiology imaging. It was comprehensive. It’s surprising to me how much stuff Peter got started.”

Since leaving Microsoft in 2012, Neupert has advised numerous other health-tech companies. And he’s watching from the outside as Amazon battles the industry incumbents.

“Bezos deeply understands pharmacy and all its complexities,” Neupert said.

When he’s not sitting on boards, cycling or spending time with family, Neupert is often sharing advice with entrepreneurs.

One thing he learned from Bezos is to write down your plan or approach to the market in a document and not in a bullet-pointed presentation, because complete sentences and paragraphs don’t leave much room for assumptions and interpretations.

“In rapidly growing companies, this is essential for folks to stay on the same page,” he said.

Privacy concerns: Amazon’s pharmacy PillPack relies on patient data

‘Engage the regulators early’

He encourages entrepreneurs to be bolder and take more risks. In health care, that means not just developing software but also doing the hard work of providing insurance, improving outcomes and cutting down on costs.

“Over the years, I’ve concluded that it’s really hard to make money by just selling software to the health-care system in the United States,” Neupert said. “You have to be in the delivery side of the business, too.”

A final lesson he shared is one that, as a technologist, seems counterintuitive and took him a long time to learn. And that’s to reach out to regulators early on.

“Engage the regulators early if you are doing something they haven’t seen before,” he said. “It will save you grief later.”

©CNBC is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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The Gifted Season 2 Episode 16 Review: oMens

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The Gifted brings closure as it rides off into the sunset... forever?

Books

This The Gifted review contains spoilers.

The Gifted Season 2 Episode 16

It's hard not to view "oMens," possibly the last episode of The Gifted ever, through the lens of that news. It's obviously disappointing, as someone who's liked a lot more of this show than he's disliked, that we might not be getting more of it. It also adds a layer of meta-interference to my ability to objectively quantify what we watched - the scale goes from "was this a good conclusion to the story the show's creators have been telling this season and did it leave me wanting more?" to "well shit, I guess that's that." But really, from either angle, I think "oMens" was a success.

As a conclusion to Season 2, it's really a perfect summation. Everything comes to a head from the stories that have been bubbling up, good and bad. The gang, prepping to go take out the Inner Circle, gets dimed out by Reva and surrounded by Purifiers. Fade (or "Invisible Dave Grohl") sneaks the Cuckoos into their safehouse and helps them kidnap Andy and Lauren, and the Cuckoos use the Fenris kids to strip Sentinel Service's headquarters down to the frame, killing a whole mess of people.

John uses his superpower of "having a lot of blood" to soak up the attention and bullets of the Purifiers while Marcos, Lorna, Kate and Reed flee in their nondescript 20 year old Jeep Wrangler. He manages to get away from the main Purifier trap and birth a thousand 'ships when Erg finds him and helps him get revenge on Jace Turner. Team Underground saves Lauren and Andy when Lorna talks Esme into a face turn, then drops the kids off in the Morlock tunnels so they can go take on Reva.

There's a big fight in the garage and Reed sacrifices himself to bring down the entire Inner Circle building. Then we get quick looks at the world a month or so later - Shane Hannity "confesses" to running the Purifiers (with Esme's help); the Struckers have a quiet memorial for Reed; and the Underground plus Erg is about to reform when Blink mysteriously returns to life with her powers working the way they're supposed to from the comics, with a burning world seen through her portal.

Everything pays off. Lorna and Esme's friendship works. Badass Kate dual wielding pistols works. The Strucker family dynamic and Reed's sacrifice works great. The only thing that didn't work was Jace, which hasn't worked in a season and a half. But he wasn't a huge part of it, so his nonsense didn't ruin the episode (and it was medium-satisfying to watch the show's biggest character hole get punched a lot). The other things that really didn't work were the flashbacks - they underscored Reed's sacrifice, but they were fairly redundant for someone who's watched the show regularly since season one.

As a series wrap up, it also worked pretty well. Blink's return is a big deal, and it pays off her relationship with John, which is, as a storytelling device, a freaking miracle. Their entire relationship basically started when Clarice got love potioned by Dreamer. The fact that John and Clarice's relationship became real and legitimate over the next two years is some serious storytelling wizardry.

The Esme/Lorna relationship inversion (from the comics) and Esme's conversion to good guy are both believable over the life of the show, and to see Esme in the Underground post-Inner Circle is a solid payoff to a longer story. This also felt like a more technically proficient episode. The cinematography felt a lot bigger and more grandiose than normal - a lot of wide, iconic shots and less jumpy cutting than normal, with the best action sequences of the entire show by a large margin. If this is what they were building towards, it was worth it.

It's disappointing that "oMens" might be the last The Gifted that we ever see, but if they had to go, this wasn't a bad way to go out. It's certainly been a very good X-Men show, a worthy addition to the franchise, and it might make a nice little booster for Disney+ when it eventually hits...

LOOSE GENETIC MATERIAL

-Flashback Reed not being able to turn off the tv on 7/15 is very real. Like "I spent all day looking for India/Pakistan news on Twitter when I should have been doing my day job" real.

-This isn't really a dealbreaker, but Lorna is not a "dang" person. She's a "damn" person. Making her say "the whole dang government"...when did Lorna turn into the radio edit of a dirty south rap song.

-Best part of Andy coming back to the Underground is that he can stop dressing like a goth tryhard.

-Line of the night had stiff competition this week! John telling Marcos to "burn it all. There's nothing left to rebuild" as Marcos disposed of their Underground HQ paperwork was a touch on the nose, though I'm sure unintentional.

-Reed's "Nice shot" to Kate was great.

-But the line of the night is definitely Kate's. After Reed asks her where she got all her firearms from, she looks at him like he's an idiot and says "This is America." Well done.

-Except for John repeatedly beating him about the head and neck, the entire sequence between John and Jace was nonsense. Jace makes a big deal about having every angle on the building covered by multiple fields of overlapping fire, but the minute one dude comes running out of Underground HQ wearing war paint and carrying a machete, their response was to open fire for a bout a half a clip with one group of cops, then when that didn't work switching to an oversized chain and hockey fighting.

-I officially ship Erg and Thunderbird too.

-I don't know how I missed this, but is it possible Lorna sent Aurora off not to a Swiss boarding school, but to Wundagore Mountain (where Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were raised by a very nice lady with a cow head that didn't feel as ridiculous when I was typing it out). Wundagore Mountain was first introduced in Thor in 1966, but for a while it became an all-purpose Eastern bloc country (like DC's Kasnia)

Keep up with all of our The Gifted season 2 news and reviews right here.

5/5

Marvel

The Gifted

The Gifted Season 2

X-Men

Review Jim Dandy

Feb 26, 2019

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[theconservativebrief]

“The whole thing was actually kind of an accident, like all things are,” Bob Pranga tells me, about his career decorating rich people’s houses for the holidays. He’s otherwise known as Dr. Christmas.

He was working at the Macy’s in New York City’s Herald Square in 1984, just after he graduated from college, decorating a tree on the sales floor, when Mia Farrow walked past and said, “I wish someone would do that in my home.” Pranga said he would do it, and he did — and then themed, expensive Christmas decor exploded in 1986, as American culture steered itself into an apocalypse of gaudiness.

Pranga was decorating as “a survival job” until he met the Hiltons. Then it became a career — a bi-coastal Christmas empire, thanks to his Los Angeles business partner Debi Staron.

There’s “no ceiling” on Christmas, he says, and his clients spend between $5,000 and $200,000 on decorations for the holiday. “Sometimes it can go higher than that, but there’s a point where I ask them, “Really?” It becomes Christmas-by-the-pound at that point. Your Christmas tree becomes one big jewelry stand. You’re literally hanging jewelry on the tree.”

(Pranga can’t give me any examples of people who pay for this kind of thing, but says it’s not celebrities so much as “what we used to call the captains of industry.” Like Steve Jobs, he says, but not Steve Jobs.)

“My business always depends on the economy,” he says. “It’s a luxury item, not a necessity.” But his business is also part of a broader industry that’s growing.

The question of Christmas each year is, simply, how to get it. We’re all allowed to look at the window displays at American Eagle. We can all go to the diner to say “Hi” to a paper Santa. But that’s really just looking — what about having? What about possessing Christmas decorations that transform your home from that place where you keep your other shoes into the set of a Hallmark movie, where love interests are always sending handwritten notes and a roommate in a slouchy sweater proffers a cup of tea? How do you wake up every morning with rosy cheeks and peppermint breath?

The services industry is the biggest and fastest-growing sector of the American economy, and that means all kinds of things

For a not-insignificant number of Americans — not just celebrities, apparently — the answer is quite obvious: Rent some Christmas decorations from someone who will store them for you in a warehouse you never have to see; install them for you, maybe while you’re not even home; and then remove them when you’re tired of looking at them.

The services industry is the biggest and fastest-growing sector of the American economy, and that means all kinds of things, like the option to have a single bottle of pinot noir delivered to your apartment at 11 pm or to hire someone to take your Instagram photos for the evening — and the option to borrow decorations from someone who will set them up in or on your house.

The Texas-based Christmas Decor network, one of the largest professional Christmas decoration companies, was created in 1986, mostly as an additional service tacked onto a landscaping business, and now has 300 franchisees nationwide. Its website boasts that the average member of its network — made up mostly of landscapers looking for off-season work — brings in more than $200,000 per year.

In New York City, renting decorations looks even more appealing because of our collective, severe lack of storage space. I don’t have exact numbers on how widespread decoration rental is here, but I will say that it was very difficult to get in contact with people who build Christmas for a living, as it’s nearly December and it was incredibly rude of me to try to occupy even a small amount of their time with questions.

I will not say which local decorators hung up on me, or which said, “Are we done?” in a way that was maybe worse than being hung up on, because it’s the holidays. In the end, I was able to spend an entire weekend watching Christmas get borrowed and built in New York. I don’t know how it happened — presumably magic.

“I’m getting glitter all over your baby,” Rent-a-Christmas founder Kristen Parness says, handing a baby covered in glitter back to its mother.

New parents Byron and Karen Hagan hired Parness to set up a 6-foot fake tree in the corner of the living room in their apartment in the Riverwalk Point luxury rental complex on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. They know Parness because she got her MFA in theater with Byron at Pace University, and this is the third year she’s shown up in their home in an elf costume with two elf assistants to set up their Christmas tree for them. When Parness is not doing this, she’s a drama and English teacher at the extremely competitive Bronx High School of Science.

Parness runs Rent-a-Christmas with her husband Judah, who has a day job as a sales professional. “We had this idea one year when we were living in Bay Ridge [a neighborhood in Brooklyn], we had just started dating, we had no decorations, and absolutely zero storage space,” she says. “We went to Home Depot and bought $500 of decorations and the house looked amazing, but we were like, ‘What are we gonna do with this? This is so crazy, it would be great if we could rent this stuff.’”

This year, they’ll serve around 40 customers with the help of around 10 part-time elves before they close up shop on December 23. The business is small but legit — through research and trial-and-error, Parness has picked out two interior decorating suppliers who provide the vast majority of her wares, though she still buys stuff at Target or the bodega.

This year, she contracted a firefighter to do the more complicated lights and an electrician so she wouldn’t burn any restaurants down. She has a warehouse space in the Bronx, which is also where she met her live tree vendor, and which serves as the unofficial headquarters of the operation. The elves preassemble garlands and wreaths and complicated decorations there, in heavy coats because the heat doesn’t really work.

“It’s not only rich people,” she tells me, when I ask who the customers are. “It’s so widespread. We have people with one-bedroom apartments or who are really busy or have a baby. And then, yes, there are obviously rich people who go all out.”

Rent-a-Christmas’s services range in price, from $185 for a single wreath with lights (and installation!) to $12,000 for complicated packages in which an entire apartment is coated in garland. They also decorate restaurants, bars, salons, banks, bagel shops, and law firms, starting around $15,000.

Most residential customers spend between $500 and $5,000, and Parness says the most popular purchase is the “Feels Like Home” tree package ($499), which includes the rental of a 6.5-foot artificial tree, lights, tree skirt, tinsel, ornaments, and a star, as well as a team of elves to set it up.

Rent-a-Christmas elves Cara Weissman and Sarah King, with the Hagan family’s tree. Kristen Parness

That’s what the Hagans have ordered. Parness’s assistants for this particular job are her head elf Jingle Bell — also known as Sarah King, an actress who makes the bulk of her living as a Disney princess-for-hire — and new temp worker Cara Weissman, who typically works as a casting director for reality TV shows on TLC and MTV, but needed some extra cash this year.

They’re both wearing full elf costumes, complete with glitter-covered ballet flats, and, in Sarah’s case, a sparkly silver fanny pack full of stage makeup. Most of Parness’s hair is dyed Christmas red. They sing while they work, and it takes about two and a half minutes for the tree to go from box to standing, five minutes for Sarah and Cara to cover it in gold tinsel, and 10 more for the whole team to put about 50 generic red, green, blue, purple, and gold ornaments on it.

The Hagans are watching the Hallmark Channel and drinking red wine, chatting with Parness about her plans for the holidays and about the Josh Groban concert that Karen is going to that night. The tree barely fits in the corner of a tiny living room that looks out directly onto a basketball court — where teenagers are flopping around in five or six sweatshirts apiece — and then the East River.

There is one moment when the lights go on and “The Christmas Waltz” is playing on Sarah’s portable speaker, and the kids outside are moving real slow and clumsy … it’s really good. There’s also a creeping urge to eye-roll, at the baby’s grandparents saying, “That’s your first Christmas tree!” while someone else sets it up, but that’s my cross to bear.

When she’s done with her work, Sarah comes over to where I’m trying to crouch out of the way of both the TV and the process, and tells me she gets a real high off of dressing as an elf. Kids love it, and adults appreciate it too, especially when they’re having a rough year.

Rent-a-Christmas decorations at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. Kristen Parness

A first-time customer in Manhattan last year called them because her son had just died and she couldn’t bring herself to bring out the decorations. There are cases where people going through divorces find that their ex-partner took both the kids and the ornaments. “You have no idea the joy you’re gonna bring,” she says, “Or how hard somebody’s holidays were going to be.”

I ask her if she’s going to build a career as an elf, maybe transition it into her own business in some way. “Well, I like Christmas,” she says. “Doing it 365 might be too much.” We are in and out of the Hagans’ home in half an hour.

House of Holiday is the largest Christmas store in New York, owner Larry Gurino emphasizes to me over the phone. It’s in Ozone Park — the neighborhood of Queens best known as the stomping grounds of John Gotti. It’s also somewhat well-known as a real setting from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road — next to the Tastykake Wonder Bakery Outlet, which may or may not be closed but still features a giant mural of a Hostess cupcake. When it’s not Christmas season, House of Holiday sells Halloween decorations. And when it’s not Halloween season, it sells discount pianos.

“We’re the largest square footage. We make gorgeous displays. Our store is gorgeous,” Gurino says. “Get in the train, come down, and take pictures for your article.”

So, I do. The store is gorgeous. I don’t think I’ve ever swooned in the face of a commercial enterprise, but that’s the most accurate wording I can think of to describe the first-blush of my experience at House of Holiday.

Elf buckets at House of Holiday. the largest Christmas store in New York. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

There is a section dedicated to Christmas-themed trains and miniature villages, one of which has a working Ferris wheel. There is a whole hall dedicated to fake trees, all of which are outfitted in different styles of lights, from tiny and bright white specks to heavy, old-school multi-color bulbs the size of overripe grapes.

There are tacky things and beautiful things, Budweiser ornaments and buckets of gold poinsettias. There is an entire room dedicated to different styles of 3-foot-tall, super thin elves, which is a horrifying nightmare. There is also a display of dish towels that say things like “Dear Santa, I want a fat wallet and a thin body” and “The tree isn’t the only thing getting lit.” These items are easy to ignore in favor of an arrangement of enormous angels with fluorescent wing tips and gowns more beautiful than any wedding dress I can imagine owning.

I ask Gurino how long it took to find suppliers to fill his store, and he simply emphasizes again that House of Holiday has been open for 25 years.

House of Holiday’s decorators are completely booked for the season, which starts overnight on Halloween, and the team of 25 will have decorated (or designed decorations for) about 200 homes and 200 businesses throughout all five boroughs by Christmas Eve. Typically, residential customers order a 7.5-foot tree, “decorated where you go, ‘Wow’ when you walk in,” as well as garlands for their railings, a couple of wreaths, and a centerpiece. They spend between $1,000 and $5,000.

House of Holiday, in Ozone Park. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

Gurino points out that there’s a hole in my story: “Do-it-yourself is just exploding. Even bigger buildings and business are starting to push back a little bit [against rentals]. They’re coming in and buying all of their own stuff and then having maintenance put it up.”

That way, they get the same decorations at a fraction of the price. I ask him if this bothers him, and he says no, “We encourage do-it-yourself because we have the … largest … Christmas store.” Okay!

These customers have uncovered, in Gurino’s opinion, a con. “Most guys won’t tell you that because they only do decorating. They don’t have a retail space for people to come to. Most will tell you it’s the fad, it’s the hottest thing, but if they give you a quote for 5 grand, you can come to my store and do it for 2. That’s a big difference. If you need a crane, maybe [hiring a decorator and renting] is the way to do it…”

Most people are not renting Christmas, he says. Most people invest in Christmas, accruing it over time. “We don’t rent. It’s just taking the money from people. We don’t think it’s right. Everyone can afford a storage unit. Once you rent products from someone, they always have you over the barrel. You have to rent new stuff every year. Once you buy it, next year you have the same budget, so then you have twice as much, and before you know it you can make a beautiful scene.”

The data would seem to support most of this. The National Retail Federation reports that people are spending more than ever on Christmas — an average of $1,007.24 each — but they are still spending only about $215 of that total tab on non-gift items like food and decorations. (I don’t totally agree that “everyone” can afford a storage unit, but it doesn’t seem worth fighting over at Christmas.)

More than anything, Gurino hates the line about how everyone is too busy. “There’s always time to enjoy the season,” he says. “Make time because it’s important. At the end of it all, this is what we have. We have the seasons and the holidays.”

At the House of Holiday, which is incredibly reasonably priced, I am paralyzed with indecision. Should I try to decorate my home? I agree, the season is important because what else are we going to do, just cry until it’s spring?

Way less than 1 percent of House of Holiday’s selection of ornaments. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

I also have nowhere to store these beautiful things, and I want a tree taller than my body but I don’t think I can fit it in my living room, which has a non-functioning piano taking up 30 percent of the floorspace.

After an hour of walking in circles, alternating between adding things to my Instagram story and staring solemnly at the nativity area, where you can look at, no big deal, the face of God, I decide on one small owl with straw-and-glitter feathers ($5.99), to put next to a fake crow I bought at Target when I was in a bad mood. And a light-up Santa-and-sleigh ($14.99) to put in my front window. For the children!

I ask Larry if he can tell me about the best Christmas decorations he’s ever created. “I don’t have anything special,” he says. “Everything is special.” And then, “Are we done?”

On Staten Island, the best-known best friends in the Christmas decorating business are Vincent Nicastro and Dexter Calimquim, high school buddies who have been stringing lights up on the stoney mansions and saltbox cottages of the largely-suburban, increasingly expensive “forgotten” borough for more than a decade.

Nicastro started the business when he was 16, a sophomore in high school in Park Slope, and got 10 jobs his first year just from passing out flyers. He did them on the weekend or after school; now he works 12 hours days without a day off for the entire season.

An intimidating house on Staten Island, decorated by The Christmas Decorators earlier this month. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

I meet them after dark, for a job at a home nestled between two cemeteries and a country club on the east side of the island, where house prices hover around $2 million. They’re doing a modest installation — just $1,500 for labor, using lights that the homeowners bought from them some years before.

Nicastro drives me around the corner to a project they just finished, to the tune of around $8,500, including light rentals but not including the 6-foot-tall nutcracker on the stoop or the 8-foot inflatable teddy bear by the private basketball court. Those, the homeowner, Jennifer Bock, picked up herself, as she did with the teenager-sized elves in the side yard and the Santa-sized Santa in the driveway.

He has to ask her about a timer that stopped working on the bear, so he rings the bell and she opens the door immediately. A gush of aroma reminiscent of a vanilla Glade plug-in slaps the freezing air around us and I try not to very obviously stare at the chandelier behind her, which is the size of a Toyota Corolla and hanging from a cathedral ceiling with cherubs painted on it. “We love Vinny,” Bock says, “I found him on Ironmine [Drive], I was driving past and I said you have to come help me.”

She comes out to show him where she’d like some extra wreaths, then stands outside and chats without a jacket on. “He does amazing work,” she tells me. “And I love Dexter. He really knows his stuff.”

This assessment seems, from all the available evidence, accurate. Her house looks like the set of a Tom Ford ad. It looks like where Diane Keaton would live in a movie about how she’d made millions writing a hit book series and simultaneously raised elegant and educated children, and was now learning to enjoy the holidays without her handsome and kind husband who died. (Jennifer Bock’s husband has not died; I met him and his name is Tom.) It looks like, if you lived there, all you would do is stand in the driveway and talk to strangers about Christmas.

The Christmas Decorators’ handiwork, last year on Staten Island. The Christmas Decorators/Facebook

The Christmas Decorators do about 175 houses in five weeks. There are two vans and one truck, crews made up of roofers who are eager to take the off-season work and, as an added bonus, won’t fall off a roof. Calimquim says the only training they need is some easy electrical tips, because customers really only get mad when you blow their fuse box. A house like Bock’s will take all day, nine hours at least.

“I do enjoy it,” Nicastro says. “A lot of landscapers, companies come and go. We always see 20 percent growth every year.” Then he explains that, for the Bocks’ home, they had to glue each bulb onto the roof with a silicone gun, individually, and revises his tepid enthusiasm. “It’s 40 days of torture,” he says. But on the other hand, “I do okay.”

Calimquim and Nicastro also co-own a Halloween store in East Brunswick, New Jersey, which is open from August through February. There was a second store in Princeton for a while, but Amazon ate too many of the sales. The team decided to take part of their business online, selling on the platform as Costume Wholesalers.

Vincent Nicastro and a large wreath. The Christmas Decorators/Facebook

“I’m shipping blood to Alaska, gallons of fake blood,” Calimquim says. “A dragon to Puerto Rico.” The costume business is year-round, not confined to Halloween. They’re selling Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin costumes to schools for plays, Jesus and Moses costumes to churches.

In February — the coldest month of the year, Calimquim reminds me — they’ll work from 7 am to 5 pm taking decorations off of about 10 houses per day. He prefers working in the Halloween store primarily because he gets to be inside.

There are perks to being outside, though. He likes hanging out with the crew; he likes fresh air. He doesn’t like having to take the van to a Dunkin’ Donuts to go to the bathroom. He likes the holiday business because he gets time off to travel, and is going to the Philippines as soon as this is all over. He also hates Christmas, he says, the way McDonald’s employees hate french fries.

“Sometimes I’m like, ‘Is this what we’re doing for the rest of our lives?’” he says. It’s more a sincere hypothetical than anything resembling a complaint.

Bob Pranga, a.k.a. Dr. Christmas, makes a good living. He’s noticed an increase in demand for decorating services because people are “back on the ‘No one has time for anything’ thing.” They’re also increasingly forgetting to plan ahead, which is why he’s been called to give up his own Christmas Eve to decorate somebody else’s house.

“I did it,” he says, “For an additional cost. You have to be willing to sacrifice your holidays for this career if you really want to make it.”

Even in the most glamorous corner of this market, where the customers are Stevie Nicks and Beyoncé, there is a little twinge of a reminder: This is the six-week period during which our feelings about whose time is more important and what dismal dollar amount everyone else’s time can be bought for are spoken a little more loudly and crassly than they are the rest of the year.

“You have to be willing to sacrifice your holidays for this career if you really want to make it”

I know there is a lot of suspicious cultural and emotional goop around Christmas that makes what I’m about to say sound insensitive or delusional: I totally love Christmas, and both need and crave the “magic” of the most wonderful time of the year.

I know that Christmas, as popular culture has come to define it, is a nightmare of commercialism, a creepy propaganda tool of the Evangelical right, and a truly unfortunate time to work in any service industry — hardly a heartwarming combination of things.

At the same time, I think winter is a harrowing experience that humans are still ill-evolved to cope with, and that we deserve an elaborate charade to ease us into that and into the blinding horror of yet another year. We have chosen something with an irresistible aesthetic and wonderful set of smells, and we could have done much worse. The people who build Christmas are at least pretty into it. They do okay.

“My philosophy is always, you know, just remember to sparkle,” Pranga says, laughing. “Glitter gets you everywhere.”

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Original Source -> Why buy Christmas when you can rent it?

via The Conservative Brief

[amateurfan227]

Shitlist Reviews - Iron Man 3 - 2013

 Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m Amateur Fan 2.27 and welcome to the Shitlist, were bad movies burn... You saw the title and yeah I did finish the 1st phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so I thought it would be appropriate to dive into the next instalment towards phase 2...

Ok to be honest, I’m doing this as a request from a personal friend of mine to do a major catch up towards Age of Ultron because of the release of Infinity War which is coming out this week, though I’ve not read the comics (which is weird as the only one I have relating to the stories on the Avengers is Winter Soldier, but that’s for another day) I honestly don’t know much about some of the heroes that are on screen.

Granted I’m a fan of both franchises as I was raised with watching the cartoons (the 90’s ones anyway) and collected DC graphic novels shortly after starting college (I prefer DC over Marvel which I will get to at another time, presumably when I dive into BVS) but when it comes to Marvel, there are way more titles towards the characters as well as the Avengers that I instantly took a major fall away from.

I love the characters such as Thor, Incredible Hulk... hell, the Punisher is literally my favourite Marvel Character due to how psychologically violent he is, but Iron Man is a different story entirely, I think of him more as a rip-off version of Batman and even though that he’s proven himself useful due to his technology in the movies.

Though I think his character has taken the worst punishment of the franchise not due to his age but to his arrogance on his weapons business towards military applications, not many characters in the MCU can understand the pain as Stark could, even in the Avengers he sort of had a close friendship with Agent Coulson when he died before the attack on the Helicarrier.

Iron Man 3 however is something more interesting which both adds towards the character of Tony Stark but not as much towards the villains, hell in this movie, the villains have changed very badly... and I mean that in a very bad way. Most recognition is towards the movie is towards Ben Kingsley’s performance as the Mandarin... yeah white washing a character like they did with Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell (watch the anime for proof).

With all that said, let’s dive into the movie’s production history...

Shortly after the release of Iron Man 2, conflict grew between both Paramount Pictures (who had distribution rights to different properties of Marvel) and the Walt Disney Company (Marvel Entertainment’s corporate parent, towards timing arrangements for the third movie on the Iron Man series.  In October 2010 however Walt Disney Studios agreed to pay the amount of $115 million for Paramount for distribution worldwide leading with an announcement date of May 3rd 2013.

Jon Favreau stated in December of 2010 that he will not direct the movie but move to another project instead which is related to Disney known as Magic Kingdom, though he remained as an executive producer towards the Avengers and served the same title in the movie we’re looking at today. Robert Downey Jr reached out to Shane Black (who he worked with in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to direct the movie as well as write the script.

In 2011, Black entered the negotiations to join the project which was confirmed in March of the same year. Black also described the take on the movie similar towards a Tom Clancy thriller mixed with Iron Man fighting real-life villains. Drew Pearce added that they would avert from the traditional things relating towards Marvel making it a techno-thriller... yet they have a virus that makes people into super-humans....

The duo spent time writing the script removing themes and scenes of pure exposition making every moment propel other narrative points forward; some elements of the comics were even added and used in different connotations such as the Iron Patriot suit being worn by Rhodes and some characters were given names from people from the Marvel Universe.

Like Constantine (previously reviewed), the movie is based on a storyline written for the Iron Man comics by Warren Ellis, I’ve not mentioned before but Ellis is known for another story relating to the Hellblazer series known as Haunted. The first two acts would remain closer to the characters while the third would be more OTT action; the middle act was even compared to Sullivan’s Travels in Tony meeting various people upon his journey

I’m going to skip some more of the production as it does sicken me with the really bad idea of changing major recurring villains towards the comics and changing them like they did with Bane in Batman and Robin... even thinking about that movie makes me cringe.

In September of 2011, Marvel Studios reached an agreement to shoot the film primarily out of EUE/Screen Gems Studios (known for Dawson’s Creek) in Wilmington, North Carolina, Michigan which was in contention to land the production but the Michigan Film Office couldn’t match the tax incentives.

April 2012, Ben Kingsley entered the role as a villain which was confirmed by Kevin Feige stating that is would take five weeks to film in North Carolina basing it only on Tony Stark and not much on Iron Man as it would take it more of a damaged-based film following the events of Avengers; A few days later after the announcement Disney China, Marvel Studios and DMG Entertainment agreed to co-produce the movie in China.

The week after, Guy Pearce (Prometheus, a movie that I will be diving to) agreed to play Aldrich Killain (who was introduced in the Extremis story, Ellis’s story); Chinese star Andy Lau to play a scientist and friend of Stark only for the actors to change to Wang Xueqi (Reign of Assassins) the role of Maya Hansen was originally given to Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) but was given to Rebecca Hall (The Town), James Badge Dale (The Grey) was to play Eric Savin, Ashley Hamilton (Sunset Beach) was to play Firepower aka Jack Taggert.

And Favreau was to reprise his role as Happy Hogan, Stephanie Szostak (Motherhood) was to play Ellen Brandt and William Sadler  Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) was to play the President of the United States, hey on the bright side.

Filming began on May 23, 2012 with cinematographer John Toll working with digital cameras for the first time, as he found them more convenient for visual effects in heavy production, he used a Arri Alex camera through-out the majority of the movie which you can tell worked wonders for the film.

From June 4th to June 6th, filming took place in Cary, North Carolina at the Epic Games Headquarters as well as the SAS Institute with a Christmas tree set up on the front lawn, scenes was also shot at the Wilmington International Airport, the Port of Wilmington  which would serve as climactic battles.

From July 19th to August 1st, filming took place in Oak Island to make aerial drops over the Atlantic Ocean which was done for the scene featuring the Air Force One over Miami which would have been done via green-screen which was changed towards using actual skydivers via the Red Bull Skydiving team.

Computer graphics were only used for the essentials of the scene such as the plane and clouds; filming also took part in Rose Hill which was the setting of Tennessee, which questions such as why they didn’t just shoot the film in Tennessee.

Florida was also used for Stark’s home as well as Dania Beach which made an excellent shot for the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens as well as Miami Beach; there were scenes shot in Beijing, China in December to make the movie relate towards Stark’s associates overseas, including India as well as Manhattan Beach.

A report on the actual production costs indicated that is grossed $200 million but with a net of $178 million which is due to the tax incentives from North Carolina and Florida.

Chris Townsend served as Visual-effects supervisor for the movie which featured over 2000 effects to be done as well as the help of 17 studios; Townsend stated that the collective crew had a one day of down time due to over stepping the visuals for the movie.

Production was delayed though as Downey Jr suffered a leg injury and shots were taken with a double which was easy due to the effects which was helped with the addition of a body double. Over 3 hours and 15 minutes of footage was shot before editing which were brought down to 130 minutes, a little over 2 hours minus the credits marking it the longest from the trilogy.

Brian Tyler signed to score the movie which was a good choice as he was doing a particular score of an Assassin’s Creed game that I enjoy verily ;though others were suggested as well such as Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones) and John Debney (Iron Man 2).

The movie premiered on April 14, 2013 at the Grand Rex in Paris with Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow attending respectfully while the UK premiere was in a bit of a problem due to the funeral of Margaret Thatcher leading to the event to be pushed forward.

Iron Man 3 grossed over $400 million in North America and reached twice that amount worldwide; it’s the third highest grossing movie relating to the MCU and the set a record as well with the largest worldwide weekend of $28.6 million.

Critical response however was bland on both situations as they stated that it held true to the comics but with major complaints over that one scene that I’ll mention later on, though the angle of the film itself was creative for an entry in Marvel territory which is closer to a certain DC movie which was released a year prior.

So with that said let’s dig into Iron Man 3 and see if we can see if this movie hold’s up today.... despite it being four years old...

 The movie begins with the Iron Man suits being blown up while Tony Stark (once again by Robert Downey Jr) recaps the story on what happened... only to skip the past (1999 in particular) where Tony is at a new year’s party with Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) as well as scientist Maya Hansen, creator of the regenerative treatment known as Extremis (played by Rebecca Hall) as well as the introduction to a character from the first Iron Man film from 2008, Ho Yinsen.

Tony being an arrogant douchebag decides to be obnoxious towards Yinsen as well as a cardiologist who is introduced to Stark only for him wanting to bang Maya, while in an elevator Tony is harassed by Adrian Killian a scientist who offers Stark and Hansen a place in his company, Advanced Idea Mechanics aka A.I.M. Stark manages to persuade him that he will meet him on the roof in a few moments which Killian obliges to.

Stark and Hansen uncover the code for Extremis only to notice that it is capable of healing injuries and recovering limbs, only for it to have some severe consequences such as exploding after a short period of time.

In the present however we see Tony who looks a bit worse for the were if I’m entirely honest who is recovering badly from the fight from the Alien Invasion of New York is building more and more suits basically removing himself away from everyone he knows such as Rhodey or his girlfriend Pepper Potts...

Which begs the question, if it’s according from the last movie then why isn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. in this; after all he did work along them to stop Loki.

A string of bombings is ordered by a terrorist only known as the master of the ten rings, The Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley who is doing a very bad performance if you ask me of a terrorist, granted terrorism is no laughing matter but with this... aside from that, he places a threat that he will destroy America for... I’ve actually got no clue... he doesn’t present a motive towards it actually....

Anyway he sends a message to America via video com on the news only for the President to respond in sending Colonel Rhodes (again played by Don Cheadle) as a resort known as Iron Patriot, (think of War Machine just painted over). Rhodey and Tony meet up for information on the Mandarin, only for some kids to ask for an autograph which sends Tony into an anxiety attack causing him to leave abruptly.

At Stark Industries, Pepper is talking with Happy over his new promotion to Head of Security only for him to get into a bit of trouble with his authority status, leading for her to into a private meeting with someone she used to work with... actually this is a bigger question, where is Black Widow in all of this, in Iron Man 2 it was quite clear that she was there to observe Stark for S.H.I.E.L.D’s case.

Her visitor is actually Killian which again is a surprise as from the novel’s perspective of things to come, he’s dead... you may think I’m either harsh on that answer or having a joke but I’m completely serious he commits suicide due to his guilt on stealing the Extremis formula. Killian proposes a deal that would promote A.I.M. on the surface but Pepper refuses, leading to Happy to take a photo of an acquaintance that Killian brought along as well as the car they are driving.

At Stark’s home, Pepper arrives to see Stark in the garage doing exercises as well as controlling one of the suits via head piece, which leads to Pepper to get into an argument about his ego, this leads to Stark to breakdown stating that things haven’t been the same... remember when I stated the absence of SHIELD in this movie, a question should be rephrased as Why doesn’t SHIELD send a series of doctors to all members involved in the attack,  such as Stark in particular as he was the one they came to first.

Later that night, Tony starts having nightmares over the battle, leaving him to have another panic attack only to wake up when one of his suits attempts to attack Pepper, fortunately (or unfortunately depending on what you think of Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance in this) Tony stops it leading Pepper to scold him for his interest on how the suit was self-aware, yeah... some girlfriend you live with Tony.

Happy on his free-time, follows the acquaintance of Killain (named Savin) to a random deal in the middle of Chinatown, Savin gives a briefcase to a guy named Taggart only for Happy to intervene, this leads to a fight where Happy is brutally beaten up and Taggart drinking the Extremis virus leading him to blow up causing Happy to be incarcerated in hospital but for Savin to survive.

Mandarin leaves another message leading for Tony to make an open threat including his address which leads him to return to his garage to hold an investigation in the current attack on Happy, leading to investigate the bombings surrounding the Mandarin leading to one which involves 2 military personal in Tennessee which JARVIS (voiced by Paul Bettany) obliges to create a flight plan.

Though Maya arrives to inform Stark that he is in danger though Pepper isn’t aware of their fiasco back in 1999, which leads to another argument only for a missile sent from one of the Mandarin’s attack helicopters to blow away Stark and Potts, only for Tony to summon his new suit in order to save both Pepper and Maya, leading him to face the Copters head on.

It isn’t as successful as he thinks as the helicopter’s literally destroy his home, leading him to drown in the sea as debris falls on him, fortunately JARVIS manages to save Tony by sending him to Tennessee to Tony’s dismay only go offline due to lack of power, leaving Tony stranded in the snow and sleet.

Tony manages to find a phone to call Pepper stating that he’s going after Mandarin and then does the sensible thing while carrying around a broken iron Man unit by breaking into someone’s garage in order to fix it, it’s not like he can ask someone for a phone call or maybe INFORM SHIELD... Hell in the investigation, Jarvis literally pulls files from SHIEL D’S servers, it’s either SHIELD doesn’t care about the security (saying that what’s new) or they just don’t bother in general.

Tony manages get comfy in the garage of a strangers house only for a child to come by threatening him with a potato gun, and for a child who knows a lot of things, he doesn’t seem at all bothered that Iron Man himself is in his garage, he even states that Stark is presumed dead from the attack. (Sigh) and yes the little kid is the one who played the younger brother in Jurassic World... a movie that I’ve previously reviewed and scolded... saying that I might do a separate review on that one entirely...

Aside from bothering Stark, the kid also destroys a part of the suit as well as NOT knowing who Stark is; he also places some ideas as a stealth mode for the suit leading for stark to bribe him into getting some items to help him on his way.

Back in Miami however, Police are all over Tony’s mansion investigating the Area WITHOUT SHIELD leading Pepper to have a quiet moment alone only to put on an unit’s head leading it to reveal the message towards Tony to her. Later during the night, Pepper drives Maya down to safety (which she could have done with a certain government agency) only for Maya to state something out of the ordinary, which her boss, Killian is in league with the Mandarin.

Killian however is disappointed at the news of Stark wasn’t found in the wreckage on the mansion’s grounds only for his team to state that the Mandarin is on his way, which even though script wise Kingsley does a bad performance but when it comes to menacing appearance he’s pretty incredible at it... I sense a bit of irony from my previous criticism when I mentioned him earlier on.

Tony and the kid (the name is Harley but I prefer to call him the kid at this point) travel around the site where the bomb from the Mandarin was set off only for the kid to state that one of the military personal who set the bomb went crazy due to unknown reasons. This leads to a problem as there are only 5 shadows on the wall were the bomb went as there were 6 casualties, and the kid ends up literally breaking Tony’s mind AGAIN (thanks dumbass) by referencing the attack of New York...

Hold on, he doesn’t know who the hell Tony Stark is but he knows about the Avengers? What continuity are you making here Marvel?

The kid tells him about the military guy’s (name is Chad Davis) wife who stays at the local bar, which he agrees to do so, only for her to give Tony a file about her husband, but notices that there is a connection between her husband and a previous victim named Taggart (one who was used to blow up Chinatown).

He warns her first only for him to get arrested by one of A.I.M’s henchwomen, Brandt, she cuffs him leading a fight in the bar between several patrons as well as the sheriff who some get brutally killed in a gory fashion, thanks for that Marvel. Tony escapes with Brandt in pursuit along with Savin, whom arrives which leads to a fight in a diner between Tony and Brandt who is shortly killed off when Stark makes a home-made bomb between a leaking gas pipe and metal in a microwave.

This raises a bunch of questions because one it demonstrates that the Extremis virus can cure all ailments including cuts, bruises and lose of limbs as well the ability to increase heat rapidly to over 3000 Celsius which raises a question on burning through things such as solid concrete or more interestingly clothing, she literally walks through fire with her clothing intact even though her skin is above room temperature...

And yet again this comes towards that notion when Savin (dressed in a leather Jacket, burns through the steel support of a water tank causing it to crash through a caravan site which looks like is showing a lot of water for a short tank... even though the imagery would make Stark likely DEAD due to the water pressure rather than the drowning.

Stark is trapped however only for Savin to reappear with the id as a hostage, only for Stark to convince the kid to distract Savin with the gadget he gave them only for Stark to brutally kill him by shooting him in the face with a make-shift repulse... I don’t care if anyone says otherwise, Savin’s bloody dead.

At the end of the fight Stark grabs Savin’s car keys and prepares to leave only for the kid to arrive stating that he needs him to survive... kid, you don’t even know Tony Stark is so how do you know that he needs you, and worse, you can’t even handle yourself let alone Stark’s advice... Stark mocks him and then leaves him promising that he’ll return for the suit.

Savin surprisingly comes round from his death and comes back to life however just when the Mandarin sends another threatening message as Air Force One is in the process of watching the message as well, the Mandarin captures a CEO of a major oil corporation and states that he will kill him within 30 seconds when he calls the President (played by William Sadler) which he does on live television no doubt.

Tony however manages to find a way around the Military Personal turning into bombs and uncovers it to be a part of AIM leading him to call Rhodey who is in the middle of a mission in Pakistan for the President as redemption for the act that the Mandarin has caused only for Stark to request for his AIM password.

Shortly after Stark (with the help of a stalker/cameraman) manages to hack into the AIM firewalls and uncovers some secrets that AIM is desperate to hide, even seeing Killian perform the experiments that turned war veterans with lost limbs into his own personal army as well as living bombs, remember that consequence I made earlier on which resulted in the Extremis virus exploding, this is a part of that.

Maya and Pepper were getting into a private moment only to be ruined by Killian when he arrives and brutally manhandles Pepper by strangling her, pinning her to the wall, Maya states that they (she’s a part of this group... now that I think of it, this movie is literally turning into the Dark Knight Rises, more on that later) can use Pepper as an advantage towards Tony’s cooperation.

Iron Patr... War Machine manages to continue his mission in Pakistan only to be attacked while out of focus in the mission when an AIM Agent takes him down in use of the suit. Stark on his way home has another attack when he learns that the suit is still not powered correctly, only for the kid to ask him to build something to keep his mind focused from his anxiety which he does by making home-made lethal weapons.

He manages to locate the Mandarin’s location through the use of Jarvis and attacks the Mandarin’s hideout by killing quite a lot of guards actually, and interrogates the Mandarin who is revealed to be an actor named Trevor Slattery, the face of Aim....

(Sigh) remember when I was saying that this movie was similar to the Dark Knight Rises which most of you will disbelieve, here are the reasons why... A billionaire gets attacked by an unknown enemy who hides a secret agenda for a previous villain from the past only for the Billionaire to meet  a random woman associated with said unknown enemy who has a private agenda to eradicate the hero leading the first villain to fall into a secondary task leading to get taken down like a bitch only for the secondary agenda to turn into a primary leading the hero to stop an invasion/hostile takeover associated with past villain as the hero suffers from physical/mental strain from previous encounters that occurred in the past that harmed him greatly... Tell Me I’m Not Wrong.

Trevor states that Killian and AIM hired him for the task to act as a cover-up for AIM’s Extremis bombings, only for Tony to get captured by Savin, Tony is taken to a secret lab only to discover Maya is in league with AIM, who Tony talks down to by stating that she wanted to help people but only made things ten times worse.

Killian arrives only to give his big villain speech which in my opinion is completely worthless as it’s all be done literally to death, and even states (and shows) that he’s got Pepper as a hostage, even threatening him to Join AIM.... so his plan his to force Stark who owns the Military’s weapon programme, SHIELD’s advanced programme as well as containment suits and weaponry that can combat the freaking Hulk and Thor.... to join a minor team who are equal to Justin Hammer’s team...

Killian responds by killing Maya when she attempts to stop him, after leaving Tony he interrogates Rhodes for a moment in use of the suit, Stark manages to get the Mark 42 suit back as Rhodes is removed of the suit leading Killian to literally spit fire as Rhodey is knocked out, Tony breaks free from custody leading him and Rhodey to interrogate Trevor whom reveals that Killian has something planned for both the President and the Vice President, whom has a daughter with a missing leg.

Air Force One is about to take off as the President meets up with disguised Savin wearing the Iron Patriot suit leading a shoot out on the place in mid air, Savin reveals himself by killing majority of the President’s bodyguards which leads for Iron Man to intervene with a brutal kill by shooting a laser through Savin’s chest.... if that doesn’t kill him, then I’m pretty sure the writers who wrote this garbage will.

This leads for the scene that majority of everyone will remember watching, the falling scene, Iron Man manages to save all 13 passengers before they hit the ground by ordering them to catch each other in freefall, leading him to save their lives, though as he flies away he gets broken into pieces by an oncoming car, fortunately this is in use of another head set that Stark set up earlier. Though he didn’t catch the President, Stark tells Jarvis to start the House Protocol.

Killian however is holding Pepper hostage and in fact shows her that she is the next subject for the Extremis and is stabilizing greatly only for the Iron Patriot suit to walk in revealing it to be the President who is now held hostage in the docks which held a cargo ship that Jarvis was discussing earlier on.

Stark and Rhodes infiltrate the Docks and manages to locate the President before he is given a public execution, this leads for the pair to get spotted leading a shootout between the lot of the Extremis henchmen, fortunately for them, Tony has a plan leading all the Iron Man units to help them out and eradicate the Henchmen leading to possibly the most memorable part of the movie which is saying a lot.

Fortunately Tony suits up leading Rhodes to fend for himself as Iron Man saves Pepper but also gets in a brutal fight with Killian, the fight I’ve got to admit is quite brutal as well as spectacular with the appearances of multiple units that fend of Killian though now that I think of it, the reason it’s most popular is that it’s closer to a Michael Bay film rather than Marvel feature with all the explosions and the patriotism.

Rhodes does eventually save the President when Tony is fighting Killian which he does evade mostly only to save Pepper whom doesn’t manage to be saved by Tony in time, leading her to fall from 200 feet, believing that she is dead Tony manages to get the Mark 42 unit around Killian and blows it up leading him to use multiple units (yet again) to get to the ground level, leading Killian to state a few more villain-cliché lines, only to be killed off by Pepper who survived due to the Extremis virus, though believing that she is close to Death due to the serum, Stark states that he’ll help no matter what starting with blowing up all the Iron Man suits... which is confusing as we see him yet again in Age of Ultron but we’ll get to that eventually.

In the end, the Vice-President is arrested for associating with AIM, Bane... I mean Trevor is arrested for his terroristic plot is arrested and Tony manages to get the shrapnel our of his chest as well as Happy comes out of his Coma as well as the Kid who get s a surprise when his garage is fully rebuilt with Stark’s thanks.

At the end credits, Stark reveals that it was more of a story to tell only to tell it towards a sleeping Bruce Banner...

And that was Iron Man 3, I’ve got admit one thing, the only memorable scene that everyone nearly remembers is the ending when State blows the suits up in stating for a clean state, but aside from that, some of the movie is forgettable, saying that, I think the script was as well, seeing that is was closely resembling another movie from a rival franchise that literally dictated the same exact plot only a year prior.

The movie I think was more of a rushed version of the comic, seeing that in the comic, there was a lot of problems with the Virus than is was a biological weapon, plot wise, it’s forgettable and the motive behind the villain was boring if I’m entirely honest, hell at least with Whiplash he had a decent back-story,

Killian as a villain was just bland if I’m honest and the Mandarin was more of a waste like Rhino was in the Amazing Spiderman 2, (note to self, review the Amazing Spiderman series) but yeah to place it on publicity factor to make him feared was just boring as well with no other premise that related to the character from the Comics.

Robert Downey Jr’s performance in this was pretty much the same through-out the series but aside from that I think it’s been improved greatly when it comes down making his role serious between him and other characters, Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance was.... a little less than before, I mean the seriousness was there when it came to her character but assuming it came with fixing something that was broken was pretty harsh making her more aggressive towards it.

The script needed improvement in some sections such as the virus in general as well as the VILLAINS PLOT... seriously, what the hell?

Now is it a bad movie, it does have some parts that had me scratching my head as well as nearly raging at the screen, mainly at some of the character’s stupidity (mainly the kid) or the villain (yet again) and some of the story relating to the virus was either really stupid or just not explained fully.

Is it a good movie? Well there were some scenes that I enjoyed such as repercussions towards the events of the previous movies such as removing the shrapnel from the heart or having major anxiety attacks from the Attack of New York, as well as some psychological problems such as obsessive-ness or abstractions from reality (speaking from someone who suffers with the first symptom)

I think this one is both a good and a bad movie so it’s sort of in between, so it’s avoided the Shitlist as well as the Hitlist so I’m placing it on category 3 the Waiting List.

Join me Next week where I dive back into the mythological spectrum of Nordic Mythology, Thor: The return of the annoying Kat Dennings... followed by the Dark World.