#but he’s a fun power maniacal supervillain and that’s really all we want | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

maxwell-grant · 3 years

Note

You've talked quite a bit about Shiwan Khan, would be OK with talking about the other villains who show up more than once, Benedict Stark and The Voodoo Master?

The Voodoo Master tends to get overshadowed by Khan by virtue of being less prominent and because, in a lot of ways, Mocquino does feel a bit like a prototype for Khan. Like Gibson was testing the waters of what kind of major supervillain he wanted the Shadow to have, and was gradually figuring details like the hypnotic traps and unique henchmen and mystic background and a fraudulent dark magician figure with Mocquino, before Khan blew it all up to bigger proportions. Twice already we’ve had instances where Mocquino was set to appear in a Shadow adaptation after Khan, and said adaptations got canned before he could show up (and I don’t think it does either character a favor if Mocquino comes after Khan). And of course Mocquino has the problem of being an ethnic supervillain whose identity and name are tied up to grotesque prejudice that twists cultures and beliefs into Hollywood boogeymen, and the novels sadly treat vodou beliefs far less charitably than how the other novels approach tibetan/asian mysticism. It’s definitely a problem, but not without it’s solutions.

Putting that aside, The Voodoo Master trilogy is very fun, the first novel in particular was the number one rated Shadow novel in a fan poll back then. Personally, my favorite is City of Doom because of it’s blend of gothic, urban and industrial settings, great battles even for a Shadow novel, and a spectacular finale, but they all have very strong points. And I do like Mocquino himself as a character. He is historically significant as the first true supervillain of Shadow Magazine (if you don’t count other odd criminals like The Black Master or The Cobra). He is different from Khan personality-wise in the sense that he is more of an old-school supervillain, who likens his conflict with The Shadow to a “game” they play, who likes to boast and brag about his powers and whose goals largely revolve around extortion. He has a vendetta against industrial society (although he himself employs industrial tactics, because he is a hypocrite), and said vendetta being largely just him trying to destroy it so he thinks people will fall in line with his cult more easily. Unlike with Khan, there’s no delusions or aspirations of grandeur and greater purpose here, it always comes down to crime and profit with Mocquino and he barely bothers to pretend otherwise.

He is resourceful and insidious and racks up a bigger body count than Khan on City of Doom alone, and there’s a real creepiness to his zombie minions as they are regular people stripped of all identity and forced into becoming walking meat shields. I think one way to make him work better on his own could be by playing up his ruthlessness and charm, and focus on the mind control/cult leader aspect. Make him the Jim Jones of Shadow villains.

Justice Inc redesigned him to look like Boris Karloff, divorced him of racist trappings, played up his dark magician persona and ballooned up his abilities into outright superpowers, all of which worked quite well as the closest he's ever had to an update And interestingly, there’s some odd Joker-esque aspects to him in his final appearence in Voodoo Trail:

Though almost silent, the explosion was forcible. The tank disgorged a greenish gas that spread like an expanding monster, filling the entire room that the trio had just left.

There was something parched and withery in his face, particularly noticeable when The Shadow saw the Voodoo Master's profile. Mocquino bore the scars of flame, not only on his face, but upon the scrawny arm he extended from his robe. Those burns showed like livid brands: a fitting mark for a supercriminal.

That hissing sound in the zombi cave! It was gas, leaking from underground pipes that led into Manhattan. Filtering through the porous stone, it gathered other chemical elements. Mocquino must have discovered that leakage and noted its effects. He had put the discovery to his own use.

...lips formed a grin so jagged that it was difficult to note where his mouth ended and his scar began.

Mocquino's shrill laugh told that he expected his men to overwhelm The Shadow through force of numbers.

Honestly, “Doctor Mocquino” I think is a better name for him than Voodoo Master. A Rogues Gallery isn’t complete without a major Doctor in there, and divorcing Mocquino of “Voodoo Master” and all that implies could be the better way of making this character work again. Play up the fact that he’s exploiting Caribbean religions and citizens for personal gain and roping them into his crime ring, maybe even have him use similar theatrics as The Shadow to paint himself as this great master of voodoo, but in the end, he’s always just Doctor Mocquino, an evil, rotten shyster who puts his knowledge to use for evil and evil alone.

Responsible for the first and only cliffhanger of Shadow Magazine with the kidnapping of Rutledge Mann, Benedict Stark is easily the single worst scumbag out of all Shadow supervillains. Just this completely horrible, wretched monster who ends up being somewhat dissappointing and frustrating of a villain in my view. Despite having quite a bit going on for him, Stark is not really interesting enough to warrant the 4 novels he gets, and where as Khan and Mocquino usually escape The Shadow thanks to prior planning and last-minute escape and strokes of luck, Stark seems to get away with it only because the narrative says so, not nearly as impressive as the other two despite being far, far worse, which makes it you don’t want The Shadow to match wits with him, so much as you just want The Shadow to kill him as soon as possible. In fact, here’s what Stark gets away with in the first ten pages of The Prince of Evil alone:

He gaslights a man named John Harmon into thinking he was developing amnesia

Gets Harmon to sign away enough money to be bankrupted for life, and no one, not even his wife, believe him when he says he was conned

Causes Harmon to commit suicide.

Then, while Cranston's talking with a friend of Harmon named Jackson who wanted to help him, the two go to Jackson's house to find it completely destroyed, his priceless belongings acid-ruined.

Then, they find Jackson's dog dead, with it's throat slit, and a Bible scattered nearby with the story of the good Samaritan marked, making it clear that this all happened because Jackson tried to help Harmon.

And then, as Cranston tries to stop one of Stark's goons from brutally assaulting a boy who was just paid by Cranston to watch his car, he gets attacked and knocked unconscious.

And THEN, the henchman gives the kid a brain concussion and then hauls him in front of a coming truck, with Cranston just barely saving the kid in time as the henchman escapes.

This is just the first 10 pages. Not even Spider novels usually start with this many atrocities happening all at once. Whatever problems Tinsley has as a Shadow writer, I’ll give him this: He definitely knows how to go from 0 to 100 in ways Gibson never would. The book obviously doesn’t keep this up forever (thank goodness), but The Prince of Evil is really all about building up Stark’s presence as this new ultimate Shadow villain, and I think the build up is quite solid up to a point.

He’s established as possibly the richest man in America. Where as Cranston is a millionaire, Stark is a billionaire, who owns “ailways and steamships, factories and mills all over the United States". Nobody knows what he looks like, nobody’s ever seen a picture of him, and Cranston, who knows everyone and everything, has never once laid eyes on the man. We also know in advance that he uses drugs delivered by chewing gum to turn his thugs into bloodthirsty savages who desire only terror and torture and inflict those at his beck and call, and we get a passage where Clyde Burke ingests one of these gums, experiences it’s effects, and ends up chasing down a mouse and killing it, for no reason other than it was the only living being nearby, much to his horror. And it very nearly develops into something even worse:

He could hear the snoring of a man sleeping inside a cellar apartment. Clyde halted. His fingers tightened on his iron bar. He guessed that the man asleep inside was the building janitor. He fought against a hot impulse that flared anew in his blood.

He wanted to kill that janitor! He wanted to smash at him with the iron bar until the man was battered and dead! Murder seemed so exciting. And so easy! Clyde could picture the terror of his victim as he struck at him. It would be sheer delight to maim the fool before he killed him.

The thing that saved Clyde was the thought of the chewing gum. He knew that the savage whisper that urged him on to murder was not his own brain talking, but the voice of a powerful drug.

Laying the bar on the concrete floor, he ran for the cellar exit. He didn't glance back. He was afraid that if he did, he'd be tempted to pick up the bar and commit a senseless and brutal crime.

The cold bite of the breeze was like a draft of cooling water against his parched lips. He began to get a grip on himself. Once more he was Clyde Burke, a normal human being who would go out of his way to avoid hurting a fly.

Stark has weaponized and mass-produced a drug that creates an army of Mr Hydes at his beck and call, that can turn even one of the kindest and most heroic characters into the series into a sadistic maniac itching to main and murder anything that’s in front of him, and that alone is not just a much more viscerally horrifying kind of mind control than what Khan and Mocquino use, it’s also got a an edge to it more suited for gritty urban drama. It’s an idea I definitely would have liked to see used again even after Stark’s out of the picture.

And then we actually get to see Stark for this first time, and he’s described as a grotesquely deformed baboon man leering at his beautiful secretaries, who deliberately employs the most attractive people to make his own deformities stand out further, and who is cartoonishly vile everytime he opens his mouth. He never really displays exceptional cleverness, compared to other Shadow villains, except for the fact that he keeps suspecting Cranston is The Shadow, and sometimes just seems to get really lucky. Stark tends to get much, much less interesting as the build-up evaporates and he has to stand on his own feet as a character, I barely remember anything he did in the following books. At the time, I thought Stark’s characterization was weak, and I still do.

This text blurb here was used on a promo S&S did for Prince of Evil, and it starts by talking about incredibly well-liked people who are kind and how Stark is the opposite because he's evil. Of course, as we all know, evil and well-liked are not opposites.

Stark may have been a tad more interesting had they went with the angle of him being a horrible monster who's also incredibly popular and beloved and friendly. About 70% of The Shadow’s villains are already middle-aged to elder rich businessmen pretending to be good, so maybe Stark being young and attractive and initially sympathetic-looking, atop being the richest and cruelest of them all, could also help set him apart. Sort of an evil Harry Vincent maybe.

But instead he's so obviously and viscerally awful all the time he shows up, so incapable of restraining himself, that it's impossible to buy him as a deceiver who’s pulled the wool over society’s eyes. At the time, I thought to myself that he was just painfully obvious of a villain and too brutish and stupid for me to buy that he’s supposed to be the richest criminal genius in America.

But then again, nowadays I’m well aware that wealthy and respected figures of society, who are cartoonishly horrible even openly in public, is just what billionaires are like, so maybe Tinsley had a point here.

#replies tag #the shadow #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #shadow magazine #dr mocquino #the voodoo master #benedict stark #the prince of evil

7 notes · View notes

anika-ann · 4 years

Text

Ground Rules (for Love and War) - Pt.1

Of War and Peace

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader Word count: 3860

Type: Two-shot, reader insert

Summary: Steve Rogers always has been a bit of a mystery – always polite, with a little bit of foot-in-mouth syndrome, unbelievingly kind and definitely good-looking – but a mystery anyway. He treated you differently from his friends. Why?

You would never expect the ongoing prank war between Bucky and Sam to shed light on the matter.Of course, Tony Stark is also to blame. Whenever he isn’t? You are his assistant – you would know.

Warnings: silly pranks, blackout, attempt at humour, swearing… fluff and way too shy Steve

A/N: Loosely based on a request from AO3 from Call_Me_Mrs_Rogers: awkward flirtatious Steve and Tony’s-Assistant!Reader, Sam-Bucky prank war and a power-cut. Whole request in the notes under the first chapter.

Sam Wilson was a brave man, you thought.

An undoubtedly handsome, considerably capable, loyal to a fault, but first of all, an incredibly brave man.

That was the only logical explanation of him declaring a prank war to James Buchannan Barnes; and it started by the Falcon himself reminding everyone who followed his Twitter that Bucky’s middle name was indeed Buchannan and he loved to be called that.

The truth was that calling Bucky that name was bordering with dangerous. Pulling out a stunt like Sam had, now that was like singing up his own death sentence.

“Wilsoooon!” Bucky howled through the corridors and you jumped in your seat before smirking into your second cup of coffee that day.

You wondered what Sam had done this time. Ever since the first Twitter event, both Sam and Bucky were stepping up their game.

Social media pranks. Sugar-salt switching. Soaped door handles. Hair dye in shampoo. Itching powder. Glue on a mug. You name it.

They were like infants. Worse even. As if the Tower needed more men-children in it. As if Tony wasn’t enough.

Now, Tony Stark was a brilliant man; distracted, sarcastic, a maniacal scientist and a hero, whom you were honoured to call your boss. Except Pepper Potts was the one in charge, pulling the strings and hiring you after she had become the CEO of Stark Industries, because she could no longer be his assistant.

Because Tony Stark was a genius of a man-child who needed constant supervision. He needed a girl Friday and F.R.I.D.A.Y. sometimes wasn’t enough. Enter you. A glorious secretary with an engineering degree and enough patience to deal with him. Hand-picked by Virginia Potts herself, sometimes being chosen to go to a meeting with her to represent Tony’s intentions rather than him, since you were less likely to piss people off, being able to keep cockiness in check.

But damn, weren’t you proud.

Your train of thought was cut short as the former Winter Soldier strode into the communal kitchen with a stormy look on his face and sneezed on its way; four times. Loudly.

Your face twisted in sympathy.

“Haven’t seen him,” you answered before Bucky could collect himself enough to ask.

Another wall-shaking sneeze was his response.

Now that one was just cruel; as far as you knew, supersoldiers couldn’t get sick. So it was just the sneezing itself, whatever it was caused by. Still, you guessed it must have been horrible to go through that after so many years of blissful germ-freedom. Honestly, if you sneezed like after seven decades, you’d lose your shit. Why did it feel like your lungs were about to leave your body through your nose at the mere thought of it? Scary shit, alright.

Bucky growled and stalked away. Not before he nodded in thanks.

He left the room with another sneeze.

“Bless you,” you muttered under your breath and eyed your tablet.

Tony was asleep as he had stayed awake until two a.m. working on the newest upgrade for the security of the Tower, so technically, you had time to enjoy your coffee in relative peace.

Naturally, peace was a short supply in the Tower, the home to the Avengers.

When Pepper had first offered you to simply move in since you spent the most of your time there, you had been reluctant. It had only been a week in and while you met some of the team members, finding out they were far less intimidating than they presented themselves to the press, it sounded… overwhelming to stay there 24/7. However, you had been quickly persuaded after you nearly passed out, because your sleep schedule was a mess, consisting of either passing out on the couch in the Tower or making it home only to fall asleep before your head hit the pillow, and being woken up by an urgent call from the Ironman himself two hours later.

Living in the Tower had its downsides and its upsides.

Downside was that it rarely got quiet and it was the perfect target for any supervillain as it had all of the Earth’s mightiest heroes in one place. Constant supervision from an artificial intelligence was as reassuring as concerning.

As for the upsides… you hadn’t expected to actually… befriend the Avengers. You certainly wouldn’t guess that once Natasha Romanoff warmed up to you, she was a great friend, a female element alongside Pepper that the Tower and the team sorely needed. The times you bonded over the aforementioned men-children were one of the best in your life.

Clint was a lot of fun, though you had soon adopted the habit of making a pot of coffee just for him, since you were usually the one to get up from bed before him and talking to him pre-coffee was the risk equivalent to touching Sam’s snacks.

Bruce… kept for himself a lot. But when he came out of his shell, either liberated by alcohol or when discussing science with Tony, he would radiate an aura anyone would be happy to bask in.

Sam was the ray of sunshine, gentle with a lot of fun stacked behind the chocolate eyes of his, but once he got into the same room and Bucky… oh boy.

The silently charming grumpy supersoldier added to the team in a way you wouldn’t see coming – perfectly. Except that he and Sam were always in each other’s hair. Always bickering; one that sometimes resulted in a war. Occasionally funny; other times utterly annoying. Rright now, you felt like it was something in between.

“Good morning,” sounded pleasantly from the door, where the last member of the peculiar household stood, seemingly hesitant.

Oh. Steve Rogers. That was right. Your biggest guilty pleasure. That man was a pure eye-candy, a body perfected by the serum only to protect the great man hiding in it. You didn’t have many opportunities to truly know him; but whenever you saw him, he had an air around him, greatness and kindness, yet somehow fogged by modesty.

At times, he appeared sheepish almost, but always polite. To you anyway. His friends were a different story; it saddened you occasionally, that he didn’t consider you a friend, not really giving you a chance, treating you differently. You suspected it was because you weren’t a fighter; while assisting Tony nearly 24/7, it was obvious that the billionaire tried his best to keep you away from the danger zone as much as possible.

The arms-long distance Steve Rogers kept you at was causing you a heart-ache at times, yet you had a feeling he didn’t have any particular dislike for you; only that he treated you differently. Always polite. Always a pleasant interaction.

You couldn’t help but smile at him, his usual running outfit and tousled hair giving away he was coming back from his everyday morning routine of what was probably like thirty miles or something.

“Good morning, Steve. Had a nice run?”

Looking himself up, slightly guiltily, he scratched the back of his neck. It occurred to you that he was embarrassed at not being the most cleaned-up version of himself in front of you – a woman –, which you found adorable. His forties-man was showing.

“Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Did you… sleep well?” he queried, shifting by the door.

“Yes, actually… are you going to stand there all day?” you teased him lightly and the corners of his lips twitched as his gaze fell to the floor, his shoulder finally bouncing off the door-frame.

“I just didn’t want to disturb your moment of peace…”

Your chest felt warmer at such admission. What a sweet thought.

“That is very kind of you,” you praised him as he gestured to the coffee pot, checking with you if it was for everyone’s use. You nodded and chuckled at the tinniest flaw in his thoughtfulness. “Except you were beaten about a minute and half by a much grumpier and louder supersoldier.”

Steve groaned and leaned onto the counter. “Let me guess: Sam proceeded with another prank.”

You made a finger gun at him, grinning. “Exactly. I don’t know how he did it, but I don’t think I ever heard a person sneeze that loud. And that often. Poor Bucky.”

“Bucky brought this upon himself. He deserves it,” Steve grumbled, sipping at the coffee, his eyelids sliding shut blissfully. You were pretty sure that something resembling a moan resonated in his chest, which… didn’t do a thing to you. Didn’t bring thoughts that were not about caffeinated beverages, but something slightly dirtier. Nope. Nothing. Like… at all.

You stood up from you stool and gathered your stuff, ignoring the way your heart suddenly sped up.

“Well, I just hope we can all keep sane before this particular battle of their war is over,” you hummed, every word honest and hopeful. “These two might bring the Tower down. As if Tony wasn’t enough…”

“Very true. I’ll try and keep an eye on them… try,” he emphasized when your nose scrunched with a bit of doubt and you made a so-so motion with your free hand.

“Bold move. I hope you don’t get caught in the middle. Though I’m sure you could pull the blue-hair look unlike Bucky…”

Why did I just say that?

Smiling softly into his cup despite his eyes going wide in horror, he took a deep breath and looked you straight in the eye. The brightness of his irises had your breath caught in your chest.

“So am I. You… uhm, you look beautiful today, by the way,” he complimented you sweetly, his gaze swiftly glancing over your outfit and casual hairstyle. And for a good reason; having to assist Pepper on a meeting today, you had been chosen to wear a pink ladies suit and a white shirt. You had expected to look like a ridiculous copy of cotton candy – you had not anticipated to… actually look presentable. Feminine even. You.

Your cheeks matched the colours of your jacket at the praise; Steve’s shoulders straightened.

“I meant… not that you usually don’t. I was… uhm, I like the… the look on you. The one you have today,” he stumbled over his words and suddenly your whole body felt warm, pleasantly and yet embarrassingly.

“Thank… thank you. Have a nice day, Steve,” you nearly squeaked, threw a quick smile over your shoulder and rushed from the kitchen.

Oh yeah.

Steve… he would often utter a compliment, like a proper gentleman he was, treating women right. Except you never heard him say such thing to Natasha, who was far easier on the eyes. Or to Pepper. He would open the door for you, reached the top shelves when you needed it, always offering a helping hand, shy and gentle smiles, so… diverse to how he was when with the Avengers.

No, Steve Rogers didn’t treat you like his friend.

And god knew that the day you figured out if that was a good thing or a bad thing would be the day of solving the biggest enigma of the new millennium.

Unknown to you, Steve melted into the counter, putting down his cup of coffee and groaned at his utter inability to flirt.

“I swear, man, before you manage to give her a normal compliment without putting your foot in your mouth, someone else will snatch her,” Sam commented, having just sneaked into the kitchen to grab a three protein bars, cautiously scanning his surroundings.

Steve shot him a glare. “Thank you, Sam, you’re being very helpful. Has Bucky found you yet?”

“Shh! Don’t say his name! Do that two more times and he will app-“

“Wilson! You- ACHOO- fhakhin’ bird- ACHOOO-brain!” Bucky’s voice thundered through the whole floor and Steve smirked with satisfaction.

Sam’s body turned to stone, his eyes horrified and yet endlessly amused.

“Sorry, Cap, gotta go! But for God’s sake, just ask her out before we all go insane here…”

“Says the guy who cursed a supersoldier with sniffles!” Steve called after the disappearing figure exasperatedly, only to hear Sam’s laughter in the distance.

༻༺༻༺༻༺༻❁༺༻༺༻༺༻༺

“Silly circuit! What’s wrong with you? Do you have no decency? Just work…” you mumbled under your breath, eyes glued to the interface from a way too short distance, but you didn’t care for your health at this point. You just wanted to fix this.

“Is it talking back?” a hesitant and yet teasing voice asked, making you nearly jump out of your skin. Your head snapped up in surprise.

“Steve. Hey,” you welcomed him briefly, shocked at the vision of the supersoldier in the workshop. “What brings you to our dungeon?”

“Coffee break,” he wiggled two coffee cups in his hands pointedly and beckoned towards the clock that… read ten in the evening. Oh. You didn’t realize you had been down here for so long. “Something tells me you didn’t have one in a while. Am I… overstepping?”

Your cheeks flushed similarly to his as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, reluctant to cross the distance between you.

Coffee honestly sounded heavenly now. And with delivery and perhaps some company? Not bad, not bad at all…

“Oh. No! No, that’s just… I’m surprised,” you admitted. “I mean, you’re always nice to me, of course, but… eh, sorry, my people skills are lacking at this time of day. Remind me how to tell-- gosh, I can’t even word, I mean speak-- you really do have a point about that coffee break.”

You chuckled, a palm over your forehead, fighting the urge to run it down your face in embarrassment at you babbling.

Steve, ever the gentleman, tried to hush his laughter at least partly, the sound coming out subtle and cute. He held out one of the cups for you and you instantly sipped at it reverently with your eyelids fluttering close, barely registering his soft: “Well, here you go.”

“Thank you, Steve.”

“You’re welcome. What are you working on?”

Surprised once more by his query, you took another vehement sip of coffee before placing the cup in safe distance and answering.

“Eh, just some glitch in Natasha’s Bites. I think she fried it, using the electromotive units too much during the last mission and now the interface is misbehaving and we would rather avoid her accidently electrocuting people, god forbid, herself.”

“…that we would,” Steve agreed, blinking at you, seemingly a bit dumbstruck, but a twinkle of mischief reflected in his irises. “Looks like the coffee is kicking in pretty quick. You have no problem with wording now.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle self-depreciatingly. He wasn’t wrong.

What threw you off balance was that he was… having a conversation with you, a playful one, so atypical of him – at least as far as it was concerning you – and… it felt truly nice. It did things to your stomach, a pleasant fluttery sensation and you quickly downed the rest of your cup, wondering if it was the shot of caffeine. You were about 97% sure that it wasn’t the cause.

“Har, har, Captain Rogers. I’ll have you know that it’s only my human skills that gets progressively pathetic with my caffeine levels running low, not my ability to say big words. Anyway, what’s got into you tonight? There’s something different about you… not that I’m complaining!”

Once more, his reaction took you aback. He flashed you a quick smile before lowering his gaze, holding up both of his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Guilty as charged. Sam might have found me making coffee for two and decided to give me a pep talk. He told me, and I quote, to suck it up and just spit it out. … And then made me take a sip from Thor’s flask.”

Your heart started beating its way out of your chest, a mixture of panic and excitement at his admission.

“Sounds like he’s a good friend then. Is there something on your mind? That you need to… spit out?”

“Yeah,” he confessed, peeking at your from under his rich eyelashes, shy but determined gaze settling on you as he leant onto the counter behind him. “I feel like… things I want to say tend to come out wrong. I… I’d like to know you better. If that would be alright with you.”

You felt endlessly grateful that moment, that the words ‘my jaw went slack’ were only a figure of speech, because otherwise you would have looked very comical and very much stupid. Still, your lips parted, the flutter in your stomach growing in intensity.

“…oh,” you breathed out intelligently, only to realize he had actually asked a question. Kinda. And he was waiting for you to answer. “Uhm… yes. Yes, I’d love to do the same. I… I admit I thought that maybe you just weren’t interested in further interaction, because I’m not on the team-“

“No! That’s not it at all, I swear,” he rushed to reassure you, sending a tiny pleased smile at your approval. “It’s just… like I said. I’m always tripping over myself around you, putting my foot in my mouth and- and things I want to say sound less awkward in my head.”

Tripping over himself around me? That sounded… nope, that couldn’t be it. Right? Except your heart was now hammering against your ribcage in excitement at the possibility, turning more real every second he was looking at you and dammit, do not give into the silly hope that Steve Rogers might actually like like you.

“Steve, you’re literally the nicest guy I’ve ever met. I like to think about you as sweet, not awkward.” Now wow, really, sweet? That was way too much, dummy. Except he smiled shyly, his eyes lightening up at the compliment and your fingertips tingled at the sweet display of delight. He relaxed further, settling more comfortably against the counter. “Now, what do you want to know?”

“Anything,” he shrugged, the corners of his lips still up in invitation, an encouragement to share with him anything you were willing to.

“Well, you clearly already know how I take my coffee…”

Hint of darker pink coloured his cheeks, much to your glee.

“How did you end up working for Tony?”

“First of all, we all know I’m working for Pepper…”

He laughed at that, but listened patiently after, watching you work as you told him about your mum always being away on business trips and your father taking you to his workshop to keep your child’s mind occupied, teaching you stuff that was way too complicated for a little girl, but fascinating at the same time, showing you direction when you turned the age of making the big career decisions.

“Applying for this insane position wasn’t a spur of the moment. Pepper sent out e-mails to candidates she picked – I didn’t even know about the position opening, she simply used some of Tony’s searching tools and wrote people of whom she thought might handle the job. It was a little scary, to be honest. First, I thought there was no way for me to sign up for that; it would mean basically no personal life and I never wanted to be like my mum, never home…. But then it occurred to me how proud she would be of me, much like dad is and… I thought that it doesn’t have to be forever, you know. I can work here now and switch to something else when I decide to be a mum. Of course, I can see now, unlike when I was a kid and teenager, that she tried, but… I realized lots of that stuff only after she died and it’s just… I’m sorry she wasn’t there and that I didn’t try harder to appreciate her.”

You couldn’t fathom when you started pouring your heart to him or when your eyes started burning, but suddenly his hand was there, gently squeezing yours, his wide shoulders as if shielding you from the rest of the world simply by standing by your side and your eyes closed of their own account, your body strangely comfortable in Steve’s huge presence.

“I’m sure she knew,” he whispered warmly.

You smiled at him through the tears you had failed to keep at bay. “Sorry. Now whose mouth is loose. I bet you didn’t expect me oversharing when you said you wanted to know me better.”

“No, I didn’t,” he confirmed, observing your face with a mixture of laughter at your joke and compassion at your outburst. “I appreciate that you’re willing to share something so big with me. Thank you.”

“It’s that eyes of yours. They made me spill my guts.”

He didn’t point out that your focus was on the device on the table and not his eyes, pulling out a handkerchief from his pocket instead. He gave it to you, never letting go of your other hand.

“Oh wow,” you only commented, no more words needed. Who the hell still carried-

Steve groaned silently. “Please don’t make any old man jokes.”

“I was about to compliment your chivalry.”

“Sure you were,” he grumbled, but his mouth was curled up in a grin, so you assumed he wasn’t too offended by your reaction.

Staring at the dazzling display of perfect teeth, you missed another person coming in; until their shocked voice snapped you from your trance.

“Whoa, what’s happening?” Bucky blurted out, bewildered at the scene in front of him.

You jumped away from Steve as if you got burned, your hand slipping from his. To be fair, so did he.

When had you got to standing in such intimate proximity anyway? Christ, something must have got into the air vents. You’d blame the Barnes-Wilson war for that… not that you complained. Having Steve standing so close, offering comfort without a single word of complaint after listening to you pouring your heart to him… you weren’t entirely joking when saying you were about to commend his chivalry.

Steve cleared his throat, his voice hoarse as if he had been the one crying. “Bucky? What can I do for you?”

Bucky frowned first at his best friend and then at you, his gaze flickering between the two of you before settling on you, a worried wrinkle appearing on his forehead.

“You alright, dollface? Do I need to punch Captain Foot-in-the-Mouth in his face?” he beckoned his chin towards Steve and you instantly shook your head, still too caught off guard to find your voice.

“Buck, please…”

“It’s a relevant question, Steve. And I’d do it if she asked.”

A surprised chuckle escaped your lips and you offered Bucky a grateful smile, only to grin up at Steve before wiping the rest of your tears.

“You seem to have very supportive friends, Steve,” you remarked.

“You have no idea. What did you need?”

“Nothing from you, punk,” Bucky smirked and shifted his attention fully to you. “FRIDAY told me you needed me in here? Something about an upgrade for my arm? Which I don’t need-”

“… which is why I’m not working on such thing,” you said, baffled. Should you be working on Bucky’s arm?

The former Winter Soldier had an utter confusion written all over his face.

“Huh? Then why-?”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence.

The workshop was suddenly swallowed by darkness, stunning him into silence.

༻༺༻༺༻༺༻❁༺༻༺༻༺༻༺

Part 2 ༻༺༻༺༻༺༻❁༺༻༺༻༺༻༺

Tags: @mermaidxatxheart @cxptain @smilexcaptainx

༻༺༻༺༻༺༻❁༺༻༺༻༺༻༺

Original request: Basically, the reader is Tony's assistant and she's in and around the tower 24/7. Steve really likes her and in the rare times that she's able to get away from her work, she really likes him. They're always flirting with each other in the slightly awkward old-man way Steve has but they never actually get together. Bucky and Sam decide to get creative and start a prank war. The only problem is that they cause a power-cut and because of Tony's high-tech stuff, Y/N, Steve and Bucky are trapped in a room together with a bit of food, a board game (monopoly?) and some candles. Maybe Y/N just finished training and was in her small, tight outfits and Steve couldn't keep his eyes off her. Could the whole thing be full of sexual innuendos but NO SMUT PLEASE! Anyway, Bucky does something (maybe he sticks his foot out and Y/N trips over it into Steve's arms? Idk, I'm not good at this...) and they end up kissing or whatever?

Sorry for not completely following the script requested, I focused more on what my keyboard dictated O:-) I did say I was terrible with given scenarios. Hopefully you’ll enjoy at least a bit anyway. I can’t see myself filling any other request in my life, but I did have fun with this ;)

༻༺༻༺༻༺༻❁༺༻༺༻༺༻༺

Thank you for reading!

#marvel #fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #steve rogers imagine #captain america #captain america imagine #steve rogers #steve rogers fanfic #captain america fanfic #steve rogers x you #captain america x you #mcu #avengers #prank war #ground rules for love and war #anika ann

258 notes · View notes

snowdice · 4 years

Text

Illusions of Grandeur… Or Perhaps Just Illusions (Part 2) [A part of the Illusory Records Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Remus & Janus

Characters: Remus, Janus

Summary: Remus is training to be an undercover super-agent, but training is boring. So, being Remus, he… finds some “fun” (read trouble) with the city’s resident vigilante Deceit.

Janus is confused as to why this toddler dressed as a traffic cone won’t leave him alone.

This story is set in the Labeled Universe and takes place about 4 years after Sometimes Labels Fail, but runs pretty adjacent to Virgil, Logan, and Patton’s story.

Notes: Superhero AU, mind manipulation

AO3 Part 1

Stupid superheroes, Deceit thought to himself as he strode down an alley towards his secret base. Since when had superheroes gotten effective. Back in his day, superheroes were blundering idiots who were only good for punching things and creating property damage. When had all of these young brats decided to come out here and be good at things like subtlety and undercover investigation? When had they started caring about actual fundamental problems in the system instead of just showing up when some supervillain tried to make a death ray? That was Deceit’s job. They were stepping on the toes of vigilantes everywhere. Just because one of them lived cloaked in shadows and mystery did not give their little preschooler team-up the right to perform covert ops.

Janus had been doing surveillance on the Riddlon family for months now trying to figure out just what they were doing, and those two heroes had the audacity to show up at the exact right moment, clearly already well-aware that it would be the exact right moment, and tore down their entire smuggling operation a moment before Janus had planned to. How dare they?

He blamed the bloody bird.

Setting a good example and being a mentor to the younger generation. Who did he think he was? Deceit grumbled to himself and started putting his gloves on as he walked. He wouldn’t need to use his powers any time soon and, while he didn’t strictly need them as he was going back to base, it felt weird to be without them.

He paused at the end of the alleyway to use his powers to scan for any missed onlookers before opening the secret entrance to his base. He paused, eyes narrowed and turned his head to look behind him when he felt a presence.

“Halt villain!” a grandeurs voice said when he saw him looking. He put on a show at looking heroic, but it was a hard sell considering his costume.

Deceit wearily turned around. “You’ve got to me kidding me,” he almost groaned. Speaking of young superhero brats. It was Traffic Cone. Ever since the man, no child, had first seen him that day with Brigs, he’d been trying to track Deceit down. One would think that after seeing what Deceit had done to Mr. Penguins that the boy would get the message not to mess with the vigilante who’d been working in the city for probably decades before he was even born. Yet, the kid must have a chip on his shoulder or something, because he’d been persistent in following him around ever since. Deceit had managed to avoid him up until now, but he’d been tired and apparently had a lapse in vigilance.

“Fight me!” Traffic Cone insisted, shucking off his hero stance and tone to replace it with a slightly maniacal grin. Stupid idiot hero with delusions of grandeur. Did he really think he’d even get close to winning against Deceit?

“Look, kid,” Deceit ground out. “I don’t feel like kicking your ass today.”

“Well I do! And I finally caught up with you, so you’re not getting away from me without a fight!”

Deceit arched an eyebrow. “You do?” he clarified with a smirk. “You do feel like you want me to kick your ass today?”

Instead of getting all stuttery or angry and arguing that, no he’d meant he felt like kicking Deceit’s ass, he just stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry.

Deceit gave him an irritated look, feeling his already steaming agitation boil over. “Fine,” he snapped.

“Really?!” he looked almost excited, like a puppy wagging its tail. “So, ho- where did you go?”

Deceit rolled his eyes and took a step towards him, feet light even if they didn’t have to be since the illusion that Deceit was no longer in the alley that he’d just placed in the kid’s mind would supersede his natural senses. Traffic Cone’s eyes bopped around the space in confusion.

“Oh, I see,” Traffic Cone said after a brief moment of confusion, causing Deceit to pause a few feet away from him. “This is part of it. You’re still here, you just are making me think you’re not.”

Deceit hummed. Astute. Most people were panicking by now, but Traffic Cone was calm and accurately able to piece together what had happened.

“Alright then,” the man said cheerfully. He put his hands up in a typical boxing stance. “Let’s go!”

Deceit just shook his head, unwillingly amused with him and side stepped him. He positioned himself so the kid wouldn’t be able to lash out and hit him with his super-strength in the split second between when he’d feel Deceit’s touch and when the illusion would take hold. Then, Janus stripped off one of his gloves. He didn’t need to touch someone to activate his powers anymore. He was long past that. Yet, physical contact still gave Deceit more precise control over what he did to someone, and he didn’t want to accidently shove the dumb toddler into a nightmare if he resisted too hard.

Gentle, he reminded himself as he reached out. He’s an annoyance not an enemy. His fingers descended on his forearm, and the boy went still.

“Oh,” he said, blinking fast as though trying to remove something from his eye. Deceit made the alleyway around them fold and spiral away from his perceptions. “T-that’s weird.” There was a spike of fear, but it was more instinctual than anything real and was easy to bat away. It was surprising, actually, the lack of real fear. Most of the newbie cops and baby supers that came after him were doing so because they considered him a threat. So, most panicked when they felt themselves slipping under his power. Yet, Traffic Cone was steady under it. Deceit didn’t even sense any embarrassment about being taken out so fast. “It’s like a tilt-a-whirl,” he breathed.

Deceit arched an eyebrow. They were usually too trapped in their own minds at this point in the process to speak. That was strange, but what was even stranger was how the boy’s mind held steady in the transitional phase of fuzzy white and black that rippled like TV static across all of his senses. Usually one’s mind would start filling in the gaps automatically, grappling for some sort of calm in the storm, and Deceit would just push it away from anything dangerous. Yet, Traffic Cone seemed to be oddly be content to rest in the nothing. Deceit didn’t know what to make of it.

Despite his curiosity, Deceit still shoved at him gently until he teetered off the edge into what Deceit thought was the memory of three different locations. Most of the space Deceit saw was a childhood bedroom with cheery aquatic animals on the walls and a colorful rug, but what tipped him off to the fact that it wasn’t just one location was the out of place full sized bed with the dark green comforter and the matching nightstand with a murder mystery novel on it’s top. It was an adult bedroom, likely his current one, familiar and comfortable but not sentimental. The last location bled through only in the structure of the walls and a fireplace. It seemed to be based off a cabin in the woods if the view of the sun setting over a lake outside the large window on one wall was anything to go by. It was probably a place he’d visited a few times and had a good time at.

Even though it was a mixture of locations, the memory seemed strong. Nothing was fuzzy around the edges and the inclusions from each place were logical in its construction. It was tidy and calm. The fireplace gave off waves of warmth and it smelled vaguely of cedar. He imagined the blankets on the bed were soft to the touch and all was quiet except for the crackle of the fire. Deceit was impressed. He’d expected a mess of a mind from how he’d seen the boy act, but this was decidedly not.

After a pause, Deceit drew away, leaving him inside that illusion. “Let’s get you back to Brigs.” His eyes flickered to Janus to Janus’s surprise. He shouldn’t be taking in any external stimulus yet with the attack so recent and Deceit still so near.

“Okay,” he agreed, voice distant. If Janus didn’t know any better, he’d say that the kid must have some sort of mental power. The problem with that conclusion was that he’d already read up on him when he’d started following Deceit around, and his power was reportedly super-strength. He shook the idea of the boy having a mental power away. Surely, he would have met at least some resistance if that were true, and Deceit had met less than normal.

“Come on, Traffic Cone,” Janus said, physically and mentally nudging him back towards the street. Deceit threw up a small field around them to keep passersby from seeing them and then checked the hacked security cameras on his phone. As expected, Brigs was sitting in his car in one of his usual spots. It wasn’t too far, and they could walk there easily.

It was a few minutes of walking later that the boy looked up slowly. “I told you I didn’t choose the costume,” he grumbled.

Deceit blinked at him but didn’t comment on his unusual lucidness.

Upon Deceit allowing the man to see him and Traffic Cone, Brigs laid his head briefly on his steering wheel. If Deceit cracked a smile, there was no one around to see it.

Brigs exited his car and looked Traffic Cone over with a sigh. “I told him not to.”

“You always do.”

“This was fun,” Traffic Cone said with an out-of-it giggle. “We should do it again some time.”

“Is he always like that?” Deceit asked tiredly.

Brigs looked over at the man with annoyance and maybe an iota of affection. “Unfortunately.”

#sanders sides #janus sanders #remus sanders #platonic demus #tsss #labeled universe #illusory records #adriana writes #superhero au #mind manipulation

69 notes · View notes

turtletimewriting · 4 years

Text

TickleTober Day 11: Death Spot

Summary: There’s a new villain on the streets, and despite his friendly manner, he has found the most effective weapons!

Note: This is inspired by fluffymary piece about a supervillain Patton! Just in case, this is shockingly a tickle fic! Not written as platonic or romantic so read either way! Ler Patton and Lee Roman, Logan and Virgil.

_._._

Night fell upon Sanders City. The lights peering from the few windows did little but exaggerate how cold and dark the streets truly were. Streetlights had just flicked off. Families were now all settled into bed, waiting to fall asleep. The roar of an occasional car was the only sound that rumbled through the city. Yet, there was one man walking confidently through the streets. Clearly he had been doing this for years.

This was Roman Prince, or simply just the Prince. The stark white of his hero costume looked a dark blue in the night, but his reflective red sash made him clear. He’d been protecting this city for going on two years now. His summoning abilities proving effective against any foe that dared set his sights against the city.

But little did he know, there was another man walking around as well.

The Prince paused once he circled round back into the town centre. He had only been circling around for fifteen minutes but somehow, someone had vandalised the entire main square.

Toilet roll was flung pretty effectively to cover every inch on the place, there was chalk messages scrawled across many surfaces and there was one figure standing in the direct middle of the carnage.

He was dressed... very casually. In a grey cat jumper with the hood drawn over his head, which perfectly showed off the jumper’s floppy grey cat ears. He was wearing a cat mask and seemed to be shivering in the cold a little. His hands sat in his hips. Everything about his pose screamed confidence but everything else screamed tired dad who wanted to go back to bed.

Roman felt his stomach tighten. He couldn’t deal with fans at the moment. There had been rumours of another villain planning to run amok and he had to keep his eyes peeled. He was about to greet the man when the words died in his throat. What if this was a distraction! He stepped closer but now with his hands cupped in front of him, already summoning a perfect orb of water to protect himself.

“Hello there! It’s a bit late to be out isn't it?”

“It’s never to late for villainy, Prince!” The figure shouted back but didn't take any steps closer. Waiting for the prince to come to him.

“Easy there, that could be seen as uh a bit incriminating?” Roman was completely off guard. He didn't want to arrest the guy! He wanted to offer him his jacket and escort him home. But clearly he had done this... vandalism? But... real villains would use spray paint and break things.... cause actual damage. “I’m guessing you did all this then?”

“This city has had it easy for too long! It’s time Sanders got a better... Moral Compass!” The man now jumped forward. Roman could finally get a better look at him and every single first impression he had proved right. He had bouncy beautiful blond curls, partnered with a freckled face and him being a good few inches smaller than him all added up to the idea of this ‘villain’ being adorable.

“I dunno… I feel like even on a good day that Fear Eater guy can give me the run around. I think Sanders has enough villains for the mean time.”

“Oh, you poor fool, Prince! You haven’t even asked what my grand plan is,” Moral Compass chuckled before slowly pulling out a weapon. It clearly wasn’t a normal gun. It glowed that same light blue as the chalk and he could hear it whirring away from where he was standing. “Meet my friend here, the death spot ray!”

Roman frowned, he really didn’t want to fight this guy. He looked so unprepared for this. All Roman would have to do is throw that orb of water he still held and the man would be pushed back and soaked and even colder. Frozen cold water plus the October night would be quick to end to the fight.

But even the title of death spot ray clearly screamed danger... he couldn’t afford to risk anything.

“I don’t want to fight! What are your demands?” Roman concentrated and prayed that Moral Compass wouldn’t see his new summon. It was more rushed than he’d like to admit but the last thing he’d want is his first impression to genuinely put people in danger. His summoned owl quickly appeared from his hands and he threw it behind him. Smiling when he finally heard it flap away into the night, he didn’t dare lift his eyes away from Moral Compass.

“Demands? Oh um... Wait!” Moral Compass suddenly straightened before fumbling through the hoodie’s pockets, withdrawing a crumpled cluster of paper. “Oh yeah, Sanders City surrenders to me!” Roman waited a few moments to see if this was a list but no other response came.

“Well. I can’t allow that Moral.”

“Then I demand you laugh!”

Moral Compass thrusted the weapon upwards as he pulled the trigger. A sound went off and a cylinder of cyan blue quickly emptied but nothing was released. Roman had summoned a shield but frowned when nothing hit it. He waited a few more moments before peeking his head out the shield.

Moral Compass stood there proudly with a wide smile.

“Uh... hate to spoil the fun, but did it hit me?” Roman asked as he brushed down his costume. He wasn’t too panicked, he could hear the police sirens from the other side of the town. Good timing!

“Oh you’ll see! You’ll become a laughing stock of the city Prince!”

Well that wasn’t helpful but Roman brushed down his costume again, feeling a strange sensation run through him. Now, he wasn’t that much of an idiot, he knew what he was feeling was surely a result of the weapon. But for such a scarily named weapon, he expected more. He just kinda felt itchy. But he was also aware that the sensation was increasing slowly.

From a faint sensation to a definite presence poking around his stomach.

He huffed a sigh of relief once Logan finally got his act together and ran over. The summoned owl following after him. It wasn’t often that Roman wanted to drag police officers into his messes but he also knew better than to deal out his own punishments. And maybe also he liked the idea of someone having his back in case things went south.

“Prince! Any injuries?” Logan called before sliding to sit under Roman’s shield where he was also kneeling until he could gain a sense of what’s happening.

“Uh, don’t thihink so...” He trailed off when he felt a stab of ticklishness shoot through him. Oh no... Death spot ray... Uh oh. “Um okay I know what he dhihihi heh did!”

“Prince?” Logan asked, now lifting his arms so he could at least double check the Prince’s abdomen since that’s what he was clutching.

“No!” Roman cried out before feeling the laughter being punched from him. He was never good at hiding his laugh when people got his death spot. “HahahaHAAHAAHA!”

Moral Compass smiled upon hearing that laughter. The laughter born from chaos and helplessness. He placed the weapon back in its holster and casually skipped over to the shield.

“Okay? Right. Well, we need to get you out of here. There’s been reports of-” Logan started, pulling the Prince’s flailing arms around his neck but now this new bad guy was standing behind them. An excited, almost evil, grin started back at him.

“Oh hello there officer! I just want to make a point here. Leave him be!”

“Not a chance,” Logan snarled back and reached to grab his radio. Admittedly a tickle gun wasn’t dangerous but it was more if he had a tickle gun then what else could he have. But he didn't think about what that would look like from the villain’s perspective.

He was shot with the bizarre weapon before he could even blink.

Logan trusted his instinct and simply grabbed a hysterical Prince and ran for the car. But what started as confident running soon turned into dragging his feet like he had an itch. Before long, Logan was forced to a stop just right beside the police vehicle. “Heh! Uh, c’mon hah um Princeheheee!”

“LOHOHAHAHAHAAA! MAHAKE IT STOHOHIAHAHA STOP!” Roman squealed, unable to focus on literally anything but the tickles digging into his ticklish tummy. Now that Logan was now hunching over, he slipped from his grip and fell on to the floor. Kicking his feet wildly like that would stop the frantic scribbling on his stomach. His face was a tomato at this point.

“I cahahaaaaaaaa aAHAHAHAAHAAAHAHA! I CAN’T! HAHAHAA!” Logan finally gave in, there felt like they’re were fluffy brushes, light but firm tickles, swamping his feet. He leaned against the police car, hoping that he would at least stay on his feet.

They were both laughing too hard to see the silhouette standing on a building overlooking the wrecked town square. A very familiar and dangerous silhouette...

“Now what’s going on h-”

“AH!” Moral Compass shrieked before firing blindly at the voice.

Fear Eater stood there with an incredulous look on his face. “What was that for?”

“Oh! Fear Eater! Sorry! I uh just panicked?” Moral Compass now lowered the weapon. Finally sounding like how he looked.

“You dare challenge me? You think you’re cut out for all this villainy stuff huh?” Fear Eater was clearly fuming but his hands were shaking and he was nervously looking away, “You wanna have an honest go at making a meaningful change to this city then you’re going to have to actually just try and steel your nerves. What a... what ar- What do you thihink you’re heh doing waving thahat thiihihihih hehahahahaahaaa!”

Now, if Prince was under the influence of the all powerful death spot ray himself then this day would be the best day of his entire existence!

The all powerful Fear Eater, with his stupid edgy name and emo style, was curled up on the floor giggling away like a maniac!

Now, if Fear Eater wasn’t currently laughing his ass off, he would have treasured this day for the rest of his life.

The all powerful Prince, with his fake title and pompous style, was collapsed on the floor snorting away.

But at the end of the day, all of them were being tickle tortured on their absolute death spots and it was only Moral Compass left standing. It was with way more people than he first intended, and his vandalism had kinda been forgotten, but he had achieved what he wanted.

The heroes and villains of Sanders City now looked as ridiculous as they all acted.

#ts patton #ts logan #ts roman #ts virgil #Tickling #fanfic #Turtle writing #tickletober 2020 #hero au

33 notes · View notes

amtrax · 4 years

Note

What was the inspiration behind the idea of Megaton Girl and the characters?

There was no single inspiration. I love superheroes and saturday morning cartoons, and I wanted to do something like that but aimed at an older audience.

Connie/Megaton Girl is inspired by a lot of my friends, some of my favorite heroes, and even some of my own aspirations. I really look up to her.

Laurel is inspired by several of my friends, my own self doubt and desire to overcome them, and also my love of comic artistry.

Kirby is inspired by Old Bruce from Batman Beyond, Filoctetes and famous fictional boxing coaches. And also he’s based on the king himself, Jack Kirby.

Doctor Menace is basically everything I love about supervillains. Maniacal, bumbling, does evil because it’s fun. He thinks that what he really wants is to fight the greatest hero, but what he really wants is to have fun with a hero that he respects enough to fight.

I think that everybody knows a Chuck. He’s a powerful bastard who uses his power for his own gratification and advancement. He’s the kind of bastard who is thriving right now, and I think the kind of bastard that we ALL want to see fail.

17 notes · View notes

wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years

Text

Psycho Analysis: Christmas Special Villains

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Much like I did for Halloween, I wanted to do a bunch of one-shot or at the very least minor Christmas villains, which presented me with an interesting problem – most Christmas specials don’t really have villains. Usually the main obstacle to overcome in any holiday special is some sort of emotional fault of the main character, a lack of belief in the spirit of the holiday, or something to that effect, and when there is an actual villain, it tends to just be ones from the show at large with a Christmas-related scheme. Like I’m not doing Princess Morbucks or the Kanker sisters for this.

Luckily, There were a few I was sure on, and I managed to scrounge up a few more to deliver five lovingly-wrapped holiday villains. We have:

Mrs. Claus from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

Ghost Writer from Danny Phantom

Robot Santa from Futurama

Edna Jucation and the Faculty Four from Codename: Kids Next Door

The Woodland Critters from South Park

Here’s the most interesting thing: Despite Christmas stories tending to lean more towards internal conflict and self-reflection, when they do have actual, tangible threats like these, they tend to be honestly and genuinely great. This is in stark contrast to A lot of the villains from the Halloween specials, who tended to just be big scary baddies without much oomph to them.

Actor: Mrs. Claus is portrayed by Carol Kane, an incredibly prolific actress who you may know best as Valerie, the wife of Miracle Max from The Princess Bride. And much like in that film, she manages to be as enjoyable and funny as the guy playing her husband, which is a tall order indeed – in that film it was Billy Crystal, and in the special it’s Gilbert Gottfried.

Ghost Writer is portrayed by Will Arnett of all people. This was post-Gob Bluth but pre-Batman and BoJack, so while not unknown by any stretch it’s definitely weird to go back and see him in a Butch Hartman action cartoon of all places. He does a great job, as to be expected; when has he ever done poorly?

In his first appearance, Robot Santa was voiced by none other than John Goodman. Normally I’d say Goodman would be perfect for the role of Santa, but… this one’s a maniacal robotic serial killer. It’s a wonderfully jarring juxtaposition. After that, John DiMaggio gave Robot Santa a voice for his other appearances, and he does a good job for sure. Obviously he’s no John Goodman, but really, who is?

Edna Jucation is voiced by Candi Milo, and the Faculty Four are played by Dee Bradley Baker and Darran Norris; Baker is the Unintelligible Tutor and Thesaurus Rex, while Norris is Mr. Physically Fitastic and the Human Text. These are all top-tier veteran voice actors, and they do a fine job, but I can’t particularly say they really make any of these characters stand out or be memorable, which is a shame.

As to be expected, the Woodland Critters are voiced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Big shock there. Even less shocking is that they are perfectly funny as these depraved animals.

Motivation/Goals: Out of all of these, I think it’s really fitting that Mrs. Claus is the one with the best motivation. As the HEAD head vampire in the North Pole, she has turned Santa into a vampire and put a halt on Christmas because she is overworked and exhausted, having to do all the household chores all year while Santa only works one night. It is absolutely, perfectly understandable that she snapped… but apparently this isn’t even the first time, as Santa mentions at the end this has happened on multiple prior occasions. You think he’d treat her better after the second or third time, but then we wouldn’t have a plot.

I’d say that Ghost Writer and the Woodland Critters are tied for the next spot; both of them have solid reasons for doing what they’re doing. Ghost Writer was just a humble author trying to finish a Christmas story in time for Christmas, but unfortunately this caught the eye of the extremely Scroogey Danny Phantom, who absolutely hates Christmas due to traumatic events caused by his family fighting on Christmas in the past. Danny, in a moment of incredible callousness, blasts the poor ghost’s manuscript to bits and then proceeds to rub it in, which drives GW to breaking the annual truce and using his powers to torment Danny by trapping him in a Christmas story where he and everyone else can only speak in rhyme. It’s honestly hard to feel sympathy for Danny here, but GW does take it a bit too far.

The Woodland Critters, on the other hand, are just utterly depraved… but that’s to be expected seeing as they are the creations of Eric Cartman, inhabiting a Christmas story whose sole reason for existing is to make Kyle look like a tool. In the story, they get Kyle knocked up with the Antichrist. You see, there master is Satan, and they want nothing more than for his spawn to be born into the world. They really just exist as a reason for Cartman to rip on Kyle for being a Jew at Christmastime, as Kyle himself points out in their debut episode.

Edna and the Faculty Four are a bit simple and amusing, as is befitting of a gimmicky villain from The world of the KND. They team up with the Delightful Children because Substitute Teacher’s Day is virtually unknown compared to Christmas, the kind of absurd, wacky reason for villainy you’d expect from a world where some of the most feared supervillains include an evil dentist and a vampire who spanks people. Robot Santa is likewise extremely simple, yet effective: every Christmas he flies down to Earth to punish the naughty – which is everyone except Zoidberg. This is due to a programming oversight that left his standards set way too high, so no one can ever measure up. Except Zoidberg. There’s really not much more to him than that, but really, does their need to be?

Final Fate: Mrs. Claus is redeemed at the end of the special thanks to Billy, who helps her understand the true meaning of Christmas and who heals her husband so that he can apologize. Things seem like they might work out for real this time because now Malcolm McDowell’s vampire is around to help with tidying up, so hooray! Happy ending here!

Ghost Writer gets thwarted because Danny picks up an orange; as Ghost Writer never watched Drake & Josh and thus didn’t realize that “door hinge” is an acceptable rhyme, he was unable to continue writing his story and got beat up by Danny and his rogues gallery and then thrown into Walker’s prison for breaking the yearly truce in the Ghost Zone. At least he got to complete his book?

The Woodland Critters go out when Santa comes in and blasts them away with a shotgun… but since they are technically fictional characters, they show up in Imaginationland to cause problems. Still, it’s reassuring to know they can be taken out with simple firearms.

Edna Jucation, the Faculty Four, and Robot Santa really don’t have any canonical final fate; they just get defeated and then go on their merry way. In Robot Santa’s case, he actually showed up quite a few more times after his initial appearance to wreak havoc, but the Faculty Four and Edna were entirely oneshot antagonists.

Final Thoughts & Score: Christmas honestly fares a lot better than Halloween does as far as I can see. The villains tend to be a lot more thematic, or at the very least they have more personality and thematic function. Halloween doesn’t really have any sort of core themes to work off of as opposed to Christmas, which has a lot of reoccurring themes in works based around it. Still, most of these characters just settle on being funny.

Mrs. Claus and the Woodland Critters are the best of the bunch here, and both earn themselves a spot on the Nice List with a 9/10 each. Mrs. Claus is just a lot of fun, mostly because of the fact she has legitimate grievances on top of being a unique twist on the character. Mrs. Claus as a vampire overlord who commands hordes of vampire elves? That’s the sort of creative wackiness that Billy & Mandy delivered on. The Woodland Critters are just funny, plain and simple, acting as the sort of amusing subversion that could be expected of from South Park in its glory days as well as being totally in line with Cartman’s personality. These are the exact sort of original characters I’d expect from a guy who ground up a kid’s parents and made them into chili, what with their blood orgies and ultraviolence. Amusingly enough, they score a point higher than Cartman did in his own Psycho Analysis, which is mostly due to their limited appearances meaning that they stay remarkably consistent, where Cartman tends to be whatever an episode needs to be, be that hero, anti-hero, or villain.

Next up are Ghost Writer and Robot Santa, who both get 7/10. Ghost Writer is a very amusing oneshot, but it’s honestly weird that out of all the Villains from Danny Phantom, he’s the first one I talked about. You’d think it would be Ember or Vlad or something… at any rate, he’s an amusing antagonist, but he’s also one who it’s hard not to view as being in the right, especially since Danny was just a jerk to him completely unprovoked due to his own personal hangups with the holidays. As usual with fun ideas on the show though he was only ever used once, which is a real shame but at the same time understandable; his gimmick really only works with Christmas, so it would have been weird shoehorning him into another episode’s plot. For what he is, he’s fun.

Robot Santa has a similar problem, not really being able to function outside of Christmas specials, but his few appearances leave him as an amusing antagonist who never really overstays his welcome. He’s not as entertaining or engaging as, say, Mom, but he definitely offers some laughs with his hilarious concept and his ridiculous levels of bloodlust. Points t him for helping out the heroes in the first Futurama movie too.

That just leaves us with Edna and the Faculty Four, and the Faculty Four just manage to scrape onto the bottom of the Nice List with a collective 5/10. They don’t really have much character or personality, especially when compared to the heroic Marvel pastiche that is Elfa Strike, but as brief amusing gag villains meant to pay loving tribute to the Fantastic Four, I think they’re decent. Edna is not so lucky; she’s a bit obnoxious, shrill, and doesn’t really correlate to any sort of Marvel character, which is baffling since the entire episode is one big love letter to Marvel comics. Sad to say, but she’s landing smack dab on the Naughty List with a 2/10. She doesn’t even have a cool gimmick!

I suppose that wraps it up for Christmas special villains. Doing something like this is tough, because it really makes you sit back and wonder what sort of Christmas villains you should put on. Obviously I avoided any theatrical film villains, but that did leave one particularly glaring omission of a villain from a holiday special… a big, green, unpleasant omission. He’s a mean one, for sure...

47 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Stargirl: What is Eclipso?

https://ift.tt/2ZMmxp2

This article contains Stargirl spoilers.

“I know you’re in there, Eclipso.”

With these words burgeoning supervillain Cindy Burman has introduced a whole new world and threat to Stargirl. After killing her father and attempting to defeat Courtney and co. it’s clear that the Dragon King’s daughter is keen on getting revenge, which is lucky as she’s just invoked the name of a deep cut character who could be a way of introducing an entirely new supernatural layer to the series.

Get ready to meet Eclipso.

1963 was a massive year for comics. At the House of Ideas, the X-Men, the Avengers, and Iron Man were bursting from the pages, changing the future of comic books and ultimately Hollywood forever. Meanwhile, their Distinguished Competition saw the Silver Age as a time for reinvention, taking classic characters like Green Lantern and The Flash and turning them into legacy characters. That doesn’t mean that new characters weren’t being created, though, and in sci-fi horror anthology House of Secrets #61 Bob Haney and Lee Elias imagined a new type of archetype for the publisher. It was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde style creation who was both hero and villain and first appeared in the story “Eclipso: The Genius Who Fought Himself.”

After a trip to Diablo Island to take a photo of a solar eclipse, Dr. Bruce Gordon ignores the warnings of the indigenous population and ends up offending a god, Morphir, and then killing him. So basically your average colonizer shenanigans. It’s a surprisingly nuanced take on what could have been some classic comic book racism where instead the blame is solely on Dr. Gordon and his ignorant and arrogant actions.

After killing the god by tripping him over a cliff, he heads back to his homeland to complete his work on the Solar City, a futuristic utopia fueled entirely by the sun. Alas, he is nearly thwarted by the god he apparently killed when an eclipse struck during the ceremony… but the big reveal comes in the in media res opening page when it’s revealed that the villain is none other than Gordon himself, becoming his own literal worst enemy. The split is explained by Morphir cutting Gordon with his black diamond before he falls to his death, and in a humorous twist the villainous side of Gordon always hides his costume and the black diamond he took from Morphir before his good side wakes up.

Though Eclipso’s early adventures are incredibly fun to read, the version of Eclipso that we’re more likely to see came to the DC Universe many years later. From his debut in 1963, Eclispo evolved in the pages of House of Secrets, his powers becoming less directly connected to solar eclipses and expanding to more general light phenomena.

But it was in 1992 when Eclipso was reintroduced in the gem-heavy Eclipso: The Darkness Within event (there’s literally a plastic gem on the cover of the first issue… I know, I own it!) that we get to know the new version of the character who was revealed to in fact be a villainous spirit who had possessed Gordon rather than Gordon himself. That is clearly the version that we’re dealing with in Stargirl, so if you want some idea of where the story might be going in season two then keep reading.

In this iteration Eclipso is discovered by a maniacal and murderous treasure hunter who once again goes against the wishes of the native population, this time in “The Upper Congo.” His quest for riches leads him to a black gem which he kills his partner to possess and then has chopped into thousands of pieces in a London jeweler in the 1800s. Stealing from indigenous people and trying to get rich has bad consequences (shock!), and 100 years later Lar Gand discovers a strange planet where the demon Eclipso has been collecting the pieces of his shard and hiding. We then meet modern day Bruce Gordon who still believes he is to blame for the creation of Eclipso. He soon learns that isn’t the case when he discovers other shards of the black diamond which the spirit is using to possess and control super powered earthlings.

Stargirl Season Finale Ending Explained and Unanswered Questions

By Rosie Knight

This concept of Eclipso as a sentient being that lives in or is connected to the black gem known from here on out as the Heart of Darkness is a consistent part of the villain’s modern lore. That’s why when you saw Cindy pick up the black diamond shape gem in The Wizard’s basement, she referenced the rogue who we could then hear laughing in his shiny prison.

In Eclipso: The Darkness Within, they build on the connection and struggle between the villain and Gordon by adding a motivation that Eclipso wants to destroy Gordon’s solar research as solar power and light are what defeats the villain and keeps him trapped in his jewel shards. We know that Blue Valley and the project for New America was keen on clean energy and there is a likelihood that Eclipso was trapped after trying to stop the Injustice Society and their plan to keep his power. But there’s a different theory that I am far more inclined to believe, and it’s one that would introduce a new teen hero.

It’s likely that Cindy will probably try to harness the power of Eclipso, likely becoming its host like many DC characters before. One of his most formidable vessels was Jean Loring who readers will remember is the ex-wife of Ray Palmer and the superhero murderer in the controversial comic event Identity Crisis. All of that is to say that there is a precedent for Eclipso being a woman, though honestly Stargirl hasn’t been too worried about following conventions in the past.

But whatever route the creative team decides to go with Cindy and Eclipso, there’s a chance that they’ll decide to explore his origins and stray from the somewhat problematic aspect of colonial explorers and the theft of native artifacts to use a story and vision for the character that was introduced during the New 52 era of DC Comics. Excitingly, it’s an arc that ties Eclipso to one of DC’s strangest and most fantastical fantasy spaces: Gemworld.

Stargirl Episode 13 Review: Stars & S.T.R.I.P.E. Part Two

By Lacy Baugher

During DC’s New 52 era, Eclipso was reimagined as Lord Kalaa, an ancient inhabitant of Gemworld who’d turned on his own people and become a tyrannical leader after his powers were sparked by a… you guessed it… eclipse. If this doesn’t sound familiar, don’t worry as it took place in lesser known series like Team 7 and Swords of Sorcery: Amethyst.

The important part to note is that here Eclipso is part of the Gemworld royalty born from the House of Onyx and the House of Diamond who, after enslaving and oppressing the House of Amethyst, was imprisoned in a gem by the then Princess of House Amethyst, Lady Chandra. But he returns and is defeated by Princess Amethyst, but not before he kills her family. Now that Cindy has the Heart of Darkness, there is a large chance that we could see DC finally bring Amethyst Princess of Gemworld to the small screen.

If Cindy unleashes Eclipso it could be an easy way to introduce Amethyst to the DC TV universe. The young Princess could head to Blue Valley in order to get revenge on the creature who killed her parents or simply to trap him back inside the gem for the good of the universe. Either way it seems like a far more interesting route rather than trying to tie it to his early origins, especially as DC Universe played with some similar aesthetics and themes with their recent representation of Rita Farr and the origin of her powers in Doom Patrol.

Whichever route Stargirl goes, this is a very interesting twist into the supernatural for the series. The first season has leaned into an Americana nostalgia that despite featuring giant mechs, superpowered teens, and numerous supervillains felt very grounded. It’ll be really exciting to see what happens now that a totally cosmic and creative new threat has been introduced, especially in the hands of someone as maniacally messed up as the iconic Cindy Burman.

The post Stargirl: What is Eclipso? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3kLn30e

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

4 notes · View notes

howtohero · 5 years

Text

#239 Spooky Skeletons

October, specifically the period of time around Halloween is a time where the many spooky spirits and monsters who populate the world become more powerful, and therefore more active. Superheroes will find themselves responding to more hauntings, werewolf attacks and break-outs at the Egyptian exhibit at the local museum than they usually do. Even regular well-to-do monsters will find themselves to be much stronger and more active than they usually are. For monsters, Halloween is like New Years in that they all decide it’s time to get really fit or that they can take on more hobbies. Anyway, I digress, today we’re going to talk about a very specific type of spooky creature that find this time of year very auspicious for them. Today we’re going to talk about spooky skeletons.

The thing about spooky skeletons is that they are literally everywhere. Each and every one of us, even you my dear reader, has the potential to become a spooky skeleton inside of you. All you have to do is believe (and decompose). If you look inside yourself, if you truly take a moment to self-reflect, I’m sure you’ll find that you’ve got some spooky skeleton in you right this very moment. Spooky skeletons are different from other undead spirits, like ghosts or shades, because they are fully physical creatures. Spooky skeletons can run through the streets, they can dance, they can jive, they can play on their own ribcages like xylophones. They are completely separated from the soul that once inhabited them. This means that, for all intents and purposes, they will often have very little to do with the person they were when they were alive. These animated bones will be free to follow their own path in unlife, and that’s beautiful. They also do not have brains. So they are very very stupid.

Now I know what you’re going to ask, because you’ve been vocalizing your thoughts out loud, and it’s very distracting: How can a loose collection of bones do anything. Well, they’d probably say the same thing about you, so how about you shut up. But if you must know, spooky skeletons are in possession of a special and specific kind of magic that we here at How To Hero Inc. have dubbed “spooky skeleton magic” because it was late in the day when we got up to naming this kind of magic, and we wanted to go home. Spooky skeleton magic is literally just the force that holds these skeletons together and allows them not only to walk and talk, (and chug milk by the gallon in a misguided attempt to make themselves stronger) but also to detach parts of themselves without feeling any kind of pain. This magic does have its limits though, for example, it does not give these spooky skeletons the ability to think critically at all. You will often find spooky skeletons just stumbling around, asking children to pull their fingers and then laughing maniacally when said finger pops off. Which, sure, is objectively hilarious, but it isn’t exactly a productive use of their time.

Though these creatures are usually just around to have a good time and be wily and whimsical, there are a few instances where you actually need to watch out for them. The first time is the annual skeleton war, in which all of the spooky skeletons around the world spend a couple of days in October hacking at each other with cobbled together, and poorly constructed, weapons. (I’m talking like a squirrel taped to a stick or a foam finger with forks stuck through it. Again, they do not have any brains.) While superheroes need not interfere in these battles, as the skeletons are skeletons and thus, cannot die, (It is hard to skewer someone with a spear when they’re 75% empty space and completely devoid of any vital organs.) you should try to make sure that the skeletons remember to fight one another and not living people. People can still be hurt by water bottle slingshots or marker swords and skeletons are too stupid to know the difference between a dead skeleton and a live one wearing a skin suit. They are also too dumb to secure the proper permits to reserve private venues for their skeleton wars. So you either need to cordon off the skeleton war to a relatively empty space, (which you should have no problem since you often need to redirect supervillains or monsters to empty spaces and thus are aware of several that can be used as a skeletal battle ground!) or rent out a park or a wedding hall or something where they can battle in peace.

The second instance when you need to be wary of spooky skeletons is when they’re being controlled by some nefarious figure for villainous purposes. Since spooky skeletons are technically magical creatures, and just the dumbest beings in the known universe, (I once lived with a spooky skeleton named Skullk and I once woke up in the middle of the night to find him making a stew made from turnips, a salt shaker and an entire throw pillow. He was making enough for both of us which I guess was very considerate of him but let me tell you, that stew would have tasted much better if there had at least been salt in the salt shaker.) they are very easily to manipulate by dark mages or demons or other evil occult forces. When under the control of someone with a working brain, spooky skeletons can actually prove to be formidable foes. They’re usually given real weapons for one thing, and they are no longer easily distracted by their own reflections. When fighting a spooky skeleton it is wise to aim your attacks at their joints. If you can cause them to fall apart, and then separate their limbs before they can reform, you’re good to go. Just remember that spooky skeleton magic causes all of their body parts to become animated, bones don’t need to be attached to the skull in order to attack you. So don’t leave fingers attached to hands (they can choke you to death) or hands attached to arms (skeleton hands can be surprisingly ambulatory). Really dismember those guys until you can break the control or spell that they’ve been placed under. Once the real threat has been taken care of, you should reassemble the spooky skeletons and let them go on living their lives, playing limbo, desperately trying to get to the moon, and sitting at chairs in the barber shop because they don’t understand what barber shops are for.

Spooky skeletons are a natural part of life, and there is no need to fear them. These fun loving bone piles are just trying to have a good time and occasionally hack at each other with ducks or three whisks taped together or anything else they can get their hands on. So go out today and befriend a spooky skeleton, just make sure they’re actually skeletons and not just a people with face tattoos of skulls. Those guys are definitely evil.

#superhero #superheroes #comics #comedy #humor #funny #spooky skeleton #spooky skeletons #skeletons #skeleton war #Skullk #Halloween #advice #hilarious

5 notes · View notes

katie-the-writer · 5 years

Text

Manic Mayhem and The Golden Comet Short Story

I had been looking forward to this night for weeks; it was my version of date night. I had been scoping out the bank for the last month; taking note of guard shifts, pick ups and drop offs, and seeing when the bank was least busy.

Timing was everything, I had to hit during a slow period, but also when she had a free night. And tonight was it! I pulled out my phone to update my status. Totally robbing the bank on 3rd ave!

I hit send and waited a few minutes. Someone had to have alerted her by now. Focusing, I summoned a psychic field and blasted the front doors out and towards me. I blew a gentle wind around myself, tossing my hair around my face, and strode into the building. I loved the pageantry of being a supervillain.

"Hello everyone! This is a robbery! Please, no one move. I wouldn't want to have to hurt anyone." I smiled at the tellers behind their counter. They all had shocked faces. I loved it! I had never actually hurt anyone during one of these little things, I wasn't evil after all. Just a little villainous.

Without being asked, all of the tellers started emptying their drawers and putting the cash on the counter. This was really too easy. Not to toot my own horn, but I was definitely the most powerful villain I had ever heard of. It did have it’s down sides though; the Villain League kept trying to recruit me and other heroes try to stop me sometimes.

None of them get it. This isn’t about the infamy or the money, I only started villainy because I was bored. Working a nine to five job was never for me. Then I met her, and it added a whole new level of excitement to this. I decided that having an archnemesis was really fun! Our little back and forths and fights were a total joy. And she was so good, I tried to fight it for a while, but it was hard not to fall for her. I had even tried to find out her secret identity once, but decided against it. They do say never meet your hero, and I decided to take that to heart, at least for now.

I slid the money into my bag, quickly scanning the stacks for hidden dye packs. It was all clean. This would make for a nice shopping spree later. Just on time, I heard a thud as she landed in the doorway.

“Step away from the civilians!” She called out. The Golden Comet had come to stop me. It was a ridiculous name, really. Whichever journalist came up with that one should be fired. I had at least been able to name myself. I quite liked it, Manic Mayhem.

Turning towards her, I gave her a brilliant smile, “Now why would I do that, Goldie?”

She clenched her jaw as she ground her teeth, “Don’t call me that.”

“But it fits so nicely, what with your golden locks and all,” She did have absolutely gorgeous hair, it was naturally curly and so bouncy. The kind of hair that you want to poof up in your hands. It was nothing at all like my long, dark, and pin straight hair.

“Put the bag on the ground and come out here,” That’s when I saw the pair of cuffs dangling from her hand. Like those could ever hold me, but to be fair, I had never shown anyone the extent of my powers. Why would I, it would only be an invitation for a more powerful hero to try to take me down. As far as I could tell, The Golden Comet was a second tier hero. If I was being honest, she was better suited to be part of a team and not a solo hero.

I put my hands up, dropping the bag, “Fine, fine.” I walked back out into the dying light. Three cop cars were in the street, officers out and guns drawn. “I’ll play nice.”

I let her cuff me. She nudged me towards one of the cars. She was strong, I’d give her that.

A swift wind swept up around us. But it wasn’t mine. Within a second the two of us were standing in the center of a tornado. Laughter, that I could only describe as maniacal, filled the air around us.

I turned to Goldie, she didn’t seem to know what was going on either. “Hold on!” I yelled to her over the sound of chaos filling my ears. As soon as I felt her arms around my shoulders, I leapt us up and into the air. I flew us above the swirling wind that had surrounded us.

Standing in the street, black cape billowing around him, was a villain I had never seen before. He was dressed head to toe in black. Traditional villain garb. Some people had no sense of fashion.

“Do you know him?” Goldie asked. She had let me go and was flying on her own next to me. She looked scared.

“Nope.”

He turned his head up to look at us. “Golden Comet!”

“What do you want?” I demanded sharply.

“Leave us, Manic Mayhem, my fight isn’t with you!” He snarled up at me.

“Considering none of us have met you before, and you’re on my turf, I think your fight is with me!” I shot myself down at him. Dammit, I missed. How did he move so fast?

I turned frantically looking for him. Up, he had somehow gotten up. His hand was around Goldie’s throat, even from here I could see the white of his knuckles. She was scratching frantically at his hand. She wasn’t strong enough to fight him.

I launched myself back up and the three of us crashed onto the rooftop of the bank. Shit! Too hard, the roof crumbled beneath us and we crashed through to the next floor.

I heard Goldie groaning. Hurt, but still alive. I bounced back to my feet to face him. He scowled down at Goldie lying in a heap on the floor.

“You’ve made a powerful enemy tonight,” He snarled at me.

“You have no idea,” I pulled energy towards me as a burning sphere of light filled my hands. But before I could throw anything at him, he was gone.

Goldie groaned again as she sat up holding her head, “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know. But I’m guessing we’ll be seeing more of him later,” I sat next to Goldie, “You ok?”

“Yeah, just a little banged up. Damn it. I’ve haven’t been hit that hard in a while.”

“Sorry. I just saw him on you...and I panicked. Forgot to reign it in.”

“I always knew you were more powerful than me. I’ve taken you into custody, what, a dozen times? And you always escaped after you were out of my sight.” She shrugged like it was nothing.

“Fourteen. It was fourteen times,” I gave her a sly smile. “Why did you play along with it then? You could have called someone in to help with me.”

“Because I have a crush on you. And I liked our little games,” She gave me a sly smile in return.

“Do you want to grab a drink?”

#short story #writing

1 note · View note

ty-talks-comics · 5 years

Text

Best of Marvel: Week of August 21st, 2019

Best of this Week: Tony Stark: Iron Man #15 (Legacy #615) - Dan Slott, Jim Zub, Juanan Ramirez, Francesco Manna, Edgar Delgado and Joe Caramagna

Tony Stark may not be the man he says he is anymore.

Since the landmark 600th issue of Iron Man, Tony Stark hasn’t been entirely sure that he is actually himself and not just a strange collection of nanobots and machines strung together in the form of the billionaire tech wizard. After the horrible incident surrounding eScape, Tony Stark’s virtual reality world, leads to the deaths of a few people and millions or more in property damage, Tony has to take the stand and address what exactly happened.

He’s grilled pretty thoroughly on what an AI is and how much was his responsibility vs. how much can be blamed on Controller, the supervillain who hacked into the supposedly secure network and caused all of this damage. Overseeing the hearing is a surprising character from another mechanical superheroes past. Senator Miles Brickman, a character that originally appeared as something of an anti-machine/anti-AI character in the pages of Machine Man’s original series, it livid and irate at Tony Stark. Showing a bit of prejudice in his questioning, he asks has Tony Stark ever made any changes to his body using technology, then follows by asking “Can you prove that you’re not some form of artificial intelligence?”

Tony initially tries to dance around the question, but upon being reminded that he’s under oath, reveals that it is actually quite possible as his body was put back together cell by cell while he was in his coma. This shocks everyone, from Rhodey to Bethany Cabe, his head of security at Stark Unlimited, and even his brother Arno Stark who is watching the hearing from his office at Baintronics, the rival technology company.

AI Tony calls for a recess after a few snarky lines as we cut to Vision and Wonder Man arriving at Avengers mansion, thinking they’ve been called to assist in Tony’s hearing. Immediately some red flags might want to be set off with the characters involved, especially when Jarvis lets them in and soon after betrays them with a large piece of metal embedded in the back of his head with a familiar design.

Things start to heat up as Brickman produces the Tony Stark AI that was used by Riri Williams while Tony was in a coma and asks does this fully functioning, autonomous copy have legal rights and responsibilities. What makes me so uncomfortable about this scene is that it plays on the fear of the unknown.

Brickman has tried to have Machine Man destroyed in the past and even knowing that Tony Stark has saved the world in the past, he’s not willing to consider that he still has right once it’s admitted that he may not be fully human anymore. In a way it mirrors some of our own discussions as it pertains to AI and whether or not we’ll allow them autonomy once they become advanced enough for it. There’s a whole discussion for sex robots that no one is qute ready for just yet.

The Wasp, Janet van Dyne, flies through a robot protest on her way to meet Tony for lunch and catches him talking to Tony AI. Tony AI agrees to be loaded into the Iron Man suit and they all fly off when suddenly they’re met with a gross amalgamation of Vision and Wonder Man fused together. Ramirez’s art makes him look so horrifying with only half of Wonder Man’s luxurious hair and cracking skin that’s as red as Vision’s. He rushes at Tony in a rage and promises to rip the human and AI halves of him apart, displaying an anger that neither character has ever presented.

In the middle of their fight, Jarvis appears and zaps Janet, who was knocked out of the fight during the initial rush. He places her in his pocket and leaves thereafter. Tony and WonderVision continue their fight, destroying the robot protestors in the process. Tony realizes that they only way to stop them is to use a localized EMP which will also kill Tony AI. The technological Tony isn’t fazed and just tells Tony to kiss Jan a bunch and feel vaguely bad about it later.

Unfortunately, this leaves Tony in the middle of the carnage. He’s surrounded by broken robots, likely to take the blame for all of it and realizes that Jocasta was right, he only sees everything as data. He breathes a small sigh that he’s still alive and that WonderVision didn’t take Janet… until he can’t find her. We then cut to the surprising return of The Avengers greatest enemy as his new gambit to destroy Tony Stark and spark a new machine age is in full effect.

What I liked most about this issue is that Tony’s mistakes really catch up to him in a bad way. He’s always managed to skate by the skin of his teeth when his machines have gone haywire. While Brickman was being an asshole for the trial, he made a good point in that we don’t quite know if we can trust this Tony. Given what we as the audience know thus far, he’s falling hard. Almost going back to the drink, questioning his own existence, not even having the trust of the brother that’s been by his side since his appearance in the mid 2000s (in this universe).

And that ending, finally seeing the seeds of what’s been sewn for months now starting to take form, is always fun. I had wondered what happened to this character since Infinity Wars (2018) and I can’t wait to see where exactly this story is going to go and what the repercussions of that event will be. I also can’t wait to see how exactly he’ll scar Tony and his extended family now that he’s returned. High recommend!

---------------------------------------------------

Things were looking up for Otto Octavius. He had found a nice woman and was slowly falling in love, he had mended fences with Anna-Maria in a way. After the events of War of the Realms, he was a respected and loved hero in San Francisco and then it all came crashing down.

Runner Up: The Superior Spider-Man #10 (Legacy #43) - Christos Gage, Mike Hawthorne, Wade von Grawbadger, Jordie Bellaire and Clayton Cowles

After taking the lovely Emma on a swing through the city, The Spider-Man of San Francisco goes on to visit the child he saved all the way back in issue #4 and help his new adoptive parents get custody of him. These small moments of warmness are a far cry from the maniacal nature that we were once accustomed to from Octavius. Bellaire colors most these scenes in a nice, warm orange. Giving us this feeling of joy and some happiness for Otto… at least until he’s discussing having a child with Emma and she alerts him to the news report that asks if the SF Spider-Man is really Otto Octavius.

Things start to spiral even further as Spider-Man is interviewed and dances around the question and the Brothers Grimm acknowledge that he hired them for some temp work if they went straight, alluding to the first arc of the book. Otto is furious, Anna-Maria gives him snark and Emma tells him that he needs to face things head on, getting in front of it all. He can prove that he’s changed. Unfortunately, Anna-Maria brings up the kid as an example of someone who he’s helped and he swings to the apartment to find the foster parents angry and the child sad that he lied. Normally Otto wouldn't think twice about lying to someone or omitting information, but looking into that child's eyes as he began to cry, Otto reveals that he lied because he wanted the kid to like him and they hug.

Soon after, Otto is called back to Horizon University where he is known as Professor Tolliver. Max Modell is waiting for him as he's received an email telling him that Tolliver is actually Otto Octavius. Surprisingly to Otto, Max already knew. Max Modell may act like a goof, but he's not considered one of the brightest minds in Marvel for no reason. He ran a DNA test to confirm soon after his emergence and gave "Tolliver" a chance to prove himself a changed man and given that he has, he's been trying to help clear his name.

With Max's security footage and his own enhanced suit, Otto is able to determine that it was actually Spiders-Man that sent all of the incriminating data to everyone. Once Spiders-Man realizes he's caught, the thousands of spiders that make up his form reconstitute until Ock defeats him and compresses the former Peter Parker's consciousness into one Spider-Body. After some pushing, Spiders-Man reveals that it was Norman Osborn's idea. This Norman Osborn, however, is from another dimension where he's the Spider Totem and his main enemy was a Green Goblin Peter Parker, if I remember right.

Spiders-Man also tells Otto that Norman is in his own dimension, safe from harm. During the events of Spider-Geddon, the Web of Fate was destroyed, making dimensional travel much harder for Spider people. Octavius hits a wall until Anna-Maria comes out that she's saved a bit of Terrax's energy from the first arc in the Living Brain robot, in case Otto ever reverted. This makes him sink even lower, but ultimately he understands and tries to use the power to make a portal...only Norman planned for this and over loads the machine, causing it to destroy the building almost killing everyone inside if not for Otto.

Otto manages to save Max and Anna-Maria, but is swiftly defeated and left for dead by Norman who was there the entire time. When Otto asks why Norman is doing this, he responds in the most Norman Osborn way possible by saying, "You insulted me."

Just when Otto Octavius was finding his place in the world as a hero, forces mostly belong his control have made their move in an effort to derail him. Otto finally seems happy, even helping out a young child that he absolutely has no obligation to and starting a budding new relationship with an older woman that's just as smart as he. Things were going well, he even got a key to the city for crying out loud!

But, as fate befalls all Spiders, his terrible actions in the past are coming back to haunt him. Who's to say that Mephisto doesn't have a little bit of a hand in this as well? We can only hope things turn out well for Otto in the end, but not before Norman makes things much, much worse.

#comics #marvel #marvel comics #iron man #tony stark #janet van dyne #machine man #dan slott #jim zub #juanan ramirez #francesco manna #superior spider man #otto octavius #norman osborn #spiders man #christos gage #mike hawthorne

5 notes · View notes

frasier-crane-style · 6 years

Text

Elseworlds

Well, Tumblr isn’t dead yet and the CW-DC just did a big crossover, so I think it’s time to make fun of the CW........ for the last time.

Did you know Tim Allen actually ended Home Improvement after season 8 because he knew the show couldn’t maintain its level of quality and was on the way downhill? Tim Allen has more creative integrity than anyone involved in the making of Supernatural. Think about that.

Anyhoo, lots to digest! Largely, this crossover felt to me weirdly lackluster and obligatory, like the whole thing was just a trailer for the oncoming Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. It just felt unambitious, which is the last thing an ‘event’ like this should feel like. In fact, it felt a little like I imagine the result would be of filming a bunch of people playing DC Universe Online. We visit Smallville and see Lois Lane! We go to Gotham and meet Batman...’s cousin, and fight a breakout at Arkham Asylum, complete with Mr. Freeze...’s gun and the Scarecrow...’s fear gas. Then, we wrap the whole thing up with an Evil Superman, because God knows, DC never gets bored of that.

-Petty nitpick department: Batwoman just standing around on rooftops looks weird. Not only does it give the odd impression that she’s spent the entire time between episodes just, uh, standing, but c’mon--you’re supposed to crouch. Or at least hunch. Everybody knows that!

-Weirdly missed opportunity to have Ollie do the Flash narration, considering all the other opening narrations are futzed with.

-The whole thing is pretty much a glorified body swap--Stephen Amell is playing Barry Allen and vice versa. I can see how TPTB would be too pressed for time to explain a whole ‘nother continuity where Barry Allen became Green Arrow and Oliver Queen became the Flash, but still, it’s not as much fun.

-They also wholeheartedly borrow the thing of Ollie having to be happy to use Barry’s powers and Barry having to be mad to use Ollie’s ‘powers’ from the episode of Teen Titans where Raven and Starfire switched bodies. So, I guess, congratulations on making the central plot point of your crossover the same as a half-hour episode of a children’s cartoon.

-Remember that time Barry was too happy and too confident in his abilities, so his dad died?

-They got a good actress to play the Lois Lane to this Clark Kent, considering they both just look kinda awkward? His chin looks like he had a face transplant done and her nose looks like someone is constantly Photoshopping it.

NHHHA, He-Man!!

-Don’t do a callback to Smallville, show. Oliver Queen has now spent more time in costume as the Flash than Tom Welling did as Superman.

-Direct fucking hit when Oliver said that Barry couldn’t take a crap without getting a peptalk from his team, but on the other hand, Oliver can’t take a crap without Felicity wondering what it means for their relationship. “Oliver didn’t tell me he needed to go to the bathroom! Why wouldn’t he trust me?”

-I’m just saying, last season on Agents of SHIELD, pretty much every character was in a relationship--there was not so much damn drama. It’s a fucking body-swap plotline, guys. You don’t need to treat it like it could lead to someone’s divorce! Really, at this point, if you’re in a relationship with a crazy superhero, you should be used to it.

-(Although I suppose I’m a little hard to please here, since over on Legends of Tomorrow they suddenly expect us to care about Constantine rescuing the love of his life when we’ve seen their relationship for all of four seconds. But hey, like I said, Agents of SHIELD manages a happy medium and finds time for Ghost Rider to show up.)

-For the post-apocalyptic hellscape they make Gotham out to be, the police respond awfully fast to disturbances.

-”We’re on the corner of Burton and Nolan!” Groooooan.

-Ruby Rose, everyone: the Less Convincing Michelle Rodriguez. It’d probably a bad sign for how compelling Kate Kane is as a character that everyone would rather talk about where Batman is and why Batman would leave. And, speaking as someone who both watched Birds of Prey and The Dark Knight Rises--Rocky, that ‘Batman Retires’ plot point never works!

-(Is Batwoman even that popular a character to get her own spin-off? I suppose she’s ‘TV show’ popular, but still--I think she’s one of those Batfamily members that is somewhere behind Alfred but ahead of Ace, right next to Azrael. And I do think it’s hilarious that TPTB were insistent on casting a real, authentic lesbian!!!--and then immediately got complaints that they didn’t cast a Jew. Oh, Ziggy, will you ever win?)

-I don’t want to be too hard on Ruby Rose here. Yes, she doesn’t showcase anything other than one mode: Snide And Slightly Pouty (Stephen Amell ain’t winning no Oscars, but he can differentiate between Ollie As A Civilian and Ollie In A Halloween Costume). But the writing does her no favors in making a case for this character as being deserving of any amount of screentime, besides the fact that she dresses like Batman, the guy we really care about. She’s a heroine, as are featured variously in every Arrowverse show. She’s queer, as is Alex Danvers, Sara Lance, John Constantine, et al. She’s rich to the point of having unlimited resources, as are (sometimes) Oliver Queen, Barry Allen, Kara through her billionaire friends. She lives in a crime-ridden hellhole, as Ollie has done for several seasons. What makes any of this compelling? The Gotham setting? Arrow has already turned itself into an effective facsimile of that, to the point of having Ra’s al Ghul show up to make Queen into his son-in-law. Arkham Asylum seems completely generic, as does Wayne Tower. It’s all just a different part of Vancouver; who cares?

-Likewise, Supergirl, speaking to you as a TV show--you really should either be adamant that Kara is heterosexual or give her a weirdly flirtatious scene with Batwoman, but not both. I know you need, need, need to let the audience know Batwoman is a lesbian...

Pictured: The CW subtly letting you know about a character’s minority status.

But c’mon. We’ve been over this.

-Speaking of minority status, maybe it’s not the best idea to let slip that John Diggle is an AU John Stewart. Yes, there’s ten brothas in the DC Universe, and four of them are actually the other six. There are so few Negros on Earth-1 that they had to make Barack Obama into a superhero. The Batfamily has two black folks and they’re both related to Lucius Fox. There’s so few black people in Metropolis that Black Lightning knows who his father is!

Folks, the DC Universe is so white, the Black Lanterns are all dead. The DC Universe is so white, they don’t even have black Kryptonite. The DC Universe is so white, even Black Condor is a honky. The DC Universe is so white, they don’t even need a Justice League of Africa, they just have a Batman of Africa! The DC Universe is so white, the blackest guy on the Justice League is a refrigerator with one-half of a brother’s face on top of it. The DC Universe is so white, they named the black woman on the Teen Titans after a bug that’s half yellow! Now Milestone, the Milestone Universe is black. It’s so black, Aquaman is the most powerful superhero there, because he’s the only one who can swim!

(-I’m planning on being chased off of Tumblr like Indiana Jones after he snags an ancient artifact.)

-Would it be that hard for them to go to Arkham and run into the Ventriloquist or Orca or someone memorable, so long as they have access to the Batman toy chest? We got, uhh, Lady Who Can Pick Up Gun and Psycho Pirate I Guess? Like I said, unambitious. Wouldn’t it be so much cooler if they got someone from Gotham to film just one little cameo?

-Also, considering the sex scandal these shows have had, maybe it’s not the best idea to joke about their EPs being depraved maniacs? (Was Guggenheim the one who actually got MeToo’d? Because if so, Dude--Not Funny)

-The show had to character-shill Batwoman so hard that Ollie and Barry stopped being fear-gassed just to reiterate that she is too an interesting character in her own right! (If the characters have all heard of Batman, wouldn’t they have heard of Batwoman too if she’s been an active vigilante more recently?)

-But who cares about four unstoppable superheroes teaming up when we can find out how Felicity feels about her relationship? Just a thought--if you fight with your SO all the time about nearly everything, maybe you shouldn’t be in a relationship.

-Long story short, Doctor Destiny rewrites reality again to make Barry, Oliver, and Kara into supervillains in a world where he’s the hero. He also makes the other characters into pointless cameos, and weirdly gets criticized by Kara for... not giving himself a sex-change operation by becoming Superman instead of Supergirl? He doesn’t have gender dysphoria, Supergirl. I thought she was all about trans issues this season?

-Like, I don’t know, if a woman used a magic lamp to wish herself President, would anyone criticize her making herself a lady President instead of a man President?

-I guess it wouldn’t be Supergirl unless they crowbarred in an extremely awkward girlpower message where Superman and Lois agree that Supergirl/women in general are more useful than men, despite the fact that all Supergirl did was the exact same thing as Barry, while Superman and Oliver fought Dr. Destiny, and all Lois did was call in a bunch of men as reinforcements and then need to be rescued.

-But like I said about being unambitious--wouldn’t it be fun to see our heroes be forced to team up with a few supervillains to save the day? Instead, we just have Cisco playing a villain (something he’s done numerous times before). They get his help, have a weirdly poor showing in a fight against Jimmy Olsen, get Superman’s help again, yadda yadda.

-We also get Superman proposing to Lois Lane. Yeah, considering they’ve been in a relationship at least since Supergirl Season 1, she’s carrying his child, and they’re planning to move to an alien world together, yeah, I should think so? I know Superman probably isn’t a Republican, but does anyone think he’d be so blase about putting a ring on it? Hell, if nothing else, he should want to tie the knot before Ma or Pa bite it. Couldn’t they have just made it that he wants to renew his vows with Lois in a Kryptonian ceremony or some such?

#dc comics #arrow #supergirl #the flash #elseworlds

11 notes · View notes

my-makeshift-masquerade · 6 years

Text

Maxwell Carter and the Duality of Man

Maxwell is an interesting character, like a really interesting character. The fandom adores him, and who can blame them? He's charming, mysterious, and almost relatable! However, do you ever wonder why?

Maxwell uses duality as an asset of his character moreso than most characters I've seen. He actually has a lot of competition in that area, as there have been many characters created to represent this idea. (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Creature in Frankenstein, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and that's if you wanna go with only classic literature!)

The reason Maxwell differs so strikingly from most depictions of duality is in how he represents it so literally. Carl Jung, a psychologist known for his input on the duality of man, calls the "shadow" the part of a person that they don't want to see in themselves. It's also called the "id" or "dark side" of a person. The part that doesn't hold up to the higher moral standings one may consciously hold.

What could this possibly have to do with Maxwell? Read this quote from Jung:

"Beneath the surface a person is suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaningless and empty ... as if the initial encounter with the self casts a dark shadow ahead of time.. the more consciousness gains in clarity, the more monarchic becomes its content ... the king constantly needs the renewal that begins with a descent into his own darkness"

Sound familiar?

Maxwell is king of the shadows, both literally and figuratively here. He has encountered the darker side of himself, and he clearly doesn't like what it has done to him. However, his awareness of its existence keeps him bound to the throne. Now that he knows of this other side, he can never truly be ignorant of it again. Eventually when he's freed, he doesn't become the same man he was before discovering this: William.

That leads me to Jung's other assertion about the shadow: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but instead by making the darkness conscious." Essentially, this is a call to acknowledge the existence of ones own "shadow", and utilize that information for the sake of ones own enlightenment. Jung suggested that the "shadow" has valuable things to teach us, and it should be listened to rather than totally resisted ignored or obeyed.

This is exactly what Maxwell does. That dark side we see never truly leaves him even when he is dethroned. He has finally accepted it as an inevitable part of himself, rather than something to be fought. Thus, he is on the path to redemption, as he now has control over both halves of his consciousness. Both his good and bad side are working in a sort of harmony, making Maxwell a man truly free of either side overwhelming him.

I believe this is why so many people like this character. He is essentially the embodiment of a conflict we all are caught in as human beings against our own shadows. Every time we play as him in game, we may resist the urge to laugh maniacally like a supervillain. His once evil powers become fun game mechanics, and his rude comments turn oddly humorous. Despite the fact he says and does many horrible things, we can't help but love him for it.

In a world where purity perfection and innocence are held on a pedestal by most stories told... Maxwell encourages us all to recognize and embrace our own shadows. When you think about it, it's actually pretty damn awesome!

#shut up becca #my ramblings #don't starve maxwell

10 notes · View notes

karama9 · 7 years

Text

A Core Belief Crushed

Reblogging for the morning people, and added convenience: you can now read it right here under the break.

A Core Belief Crushed

A Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir fanfic.

Two birds with one stone with this story: it is essentially a possible start of a redemption for Chloe, and more importantly to me, it allowed me to to put a head canon that is very dear to me out there: Nat being transgender.

Summary: Everyone adores Chloe Bourgeois… or so she sincerely believes. When she finally discovers otherwise, Cat Noir and Ladybug attempt to nudge her towards being a better person. No shipping, but no anti shipping either… just no romance depicted.

Read under the break or if you prefer, on fanfiction.net or a03. Username karama9 and story title A Core Belief Crushed.

Notes:

I wanted to get this our for pride month, because although there is a fair amount of fan work, for Ladybug and other shows, featuring same sex pairing, you don't often see much more representation in fan work than in canon for transgender people.

So this story features my head canon that one of the secondary characters in Ladybug is in fact transgender. I'll explain what gives me the impression in the end notes.

The story also features another head canon of mine, although this one will only be hinted at. See if you can spot it! Probably not. I might tell you about it in the end notes too.

Just the same, this is a story about Chloe. I don't like her much, but I do like redemption stories, so I'm opened to the idea of her becoming a better person. This is one potential first step towards that.

A Core Belief Crushed

Chloe Bourgeois checked the time on her phone for what must have been the hundredth time in twenty minutes and scowled. They had been trapped in this classroom so long, prevented from leaving by Kaepora Gaebora, the giant human-owl hybrid their principal had turned into, that she would end up missing her mani-pedi appointment.

Even with Adrikins by her side and Marinette Dupain-Cheng on the other side of the room, pacing and pulling at her ears like some kind of maniac but blissfully quiet, the whole situation was unacceptable. Being trapped by an akuma was bad enough; the fact that her father would refuse to punish the akumatized person because he was protected by the Akuma Victim Forgiveness Act was bad enough; but the worst part, the insulting part, was that the Parisian duo of super heroes were not coming. She, the Mayor's own daughter and Ladybug's most prestigious fan, was being held as bait and the heroine was nowhere to be found.

She groaned in frustration. "Where are those useless Ladybug and Cat Noir?" She demanded out loud, glaring at nobody in particular.

Adrien inexplicably winced before putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure Ladybug is on the way," he said with his trademarked gentle smile.

It nearly mollified her.

"He's right, Chloe," Sabrina stammered encouragingly. "She'd never abandon us. Especially you!"

"She better not!" Chloe snapped. She turned her glare towards the window, through which Ladybug was still failing to come crashing through, and spotted a downright miraculous distraction: Nathanael was sitting by the window and doodling.

She smirked and sauntered over. This was perfect: she'd grab whatever version of Marinette the poor lovestruck idiot was drawing this time, make a joke, and not only would it be fun but everyone would thank her for lightening up the mood.

Their resident artist was so absorbed that he never noticed her until her hand slapped down on his page. Chloe grinned as his eyes widened in horror, and she yanked the sheet away from him. It was another comic, so more likely than not, Nat had drawn himself as some super hero again, rescuing damsel in distress Dupain-Cheng. She skimmed the page to confirm, ready to deliver her witty remark about how rescuing that girl was a waste of super powers even when those powers didn't actually exist.

The clever joke died in her throat as her eyes widened. Both Nathanael and Marinette were drawn as heroes this time, and they were fighting a blond supervillain that was unmistakably her self. She dropped the sheet as though it burnt her hands and looked at Nathan in shock.

"You drew ME as the villain?" she asked angrily.

Nathan's face was nearly as red as his hair. He shook his head without meeting her eyes.

Chloe barked a laugh and willed her frown away. Anger was an acceptable reaction when faced with an insult, but amusement was better: it established that the insult and whoever was guilty of it were beneath her. "That's just stupid; I'm the opposite of a villain! And besides, everyone adores me."

Adrien, who had materialized next to her, put his hand on her shoulder again, but this time, there was an ever so slight pull to the gesture. "Forget it Chloe," he said. "Come on…"

She shook him off. "Almost done, Adrikins," she said in as pleasant a voice as she could manage. She shouldn't be angry. She should be amused. This was FUNNY because it was SO ridiculous.

Adrien sighed and slumped. She ignored him and focused on Nathanael, who seemed to have recovered a little and had stowed the offending comic away. He was avoiding her eyes.

"I'm NOT a villain," she repeated, her voice far less composed than she would have liked it. Amused. Be amused at the inconsequential people and their nonsensical little jokes. Nat's opinion didn't even matter. "Why would you draw that? Ivan threw me from the top of the Eiffel tower," she added, gesticulating at all their classmates. Forget amusement: anger was still acceptable. "Max and Alix zapped a bunch of people for energy, including ME, Alya wanted to reveal her precious Ladybug's identity live, Juleka forced me, and everyone else, to wear that horrible outfit and makeup, Rose made me stink in front of Prince Ali, and I'm the villain?" She was aware that her voice had risen as she talked and that she was now nearly yelling, but she was past the point of caring. "You just don't like me because I'm the Mayor's daughter and you're jealous! That's it, isn't it?"

"Let it go, Chloe," Marinette called out from the other side of the room. "We don't need this right now!"

"You kiddin'?" Alya asked with a laugh. "Let her humiliate herself if she wants to, it could be fun to watch. We're with you Nat!" she added louder, cupping her hand around her mouth in a makeshift amplifier and raising her fist in the air.

Chloe dismissed the two of them from her mind and focused her attention on Nathan again. "You of all people," she said venomously. "And here I am ALWAYS being nice and acting like you're a boy!"

There were a few audible gasps. Thanks in no small part to Alya, everyone was watching them by now, even Kaepora Gaebora, so everyone had heard. It's not that it was news to anyone – Nathanael had been Amélie until halfway through the fifth grade and so, pretty much the whole school knew he had been assigned female at birth. The gasps, Chloe knew, were because it wasn't too often that anyone bothered to remind him that he owed them at least a bit of gratitude.

Nathanael, for his part, was staring at his desk. He opened his mouth, but another voice cut in from behind Chloe.

"Logically, Chloe, pointing out that you act as though a particular statement is true actually means that you believe that same statement to be false."

Chloe turned to stare Max down. She had no idea whatever he had just said actually meant, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't like it if she did.

"Forget it Max," came Nathanael's voice. "It's okay."

Chloe dismissed Max and his undecipherable babbling from her mind and turned back to Nat. After all, she knew for sure that he had definitely insulted her, and badly. Chances were her words had knocked some sense back into him and he was ready to apologize.

Nathan was looking straight back at her, and, astonishingly, FROWNING. It wasn't particularly fierce, but it was most certainly not apologetic.

"You don't get to be angry right now, Nathanael Kurtzberg," she said with a snarl. "YOU just called ME a bad person through your art! You owe me an…"

"I drew you as the villain because you're always mean to everyone," he cut her off. He took a deep breath. "You're the reason I got akumatized. Apparently, I FORCED Marinette to go on a date with me, because of YOU. It's got nothing to do with my gender."

"You got Rose akumatized too," Juleka muttered from a few steps away.

"And Juleka," Rose added. "You and Sabrina."

"And me," Alya pointed out.

"Mylene, too," Ivan rumbled.

"And Kim," Max joined in.

Mylene nodded timidly. Kim fidgeted.

"Even him," Nino said, pointing his thumb at Kaepora Gaebora, who had actually given up watching the door to make sure nobody escaped in favour of watching the scene. "And seriously Chloe, you think Nat owes you? Like… you figure people owe you whenever you're not the absolute worst or something? And that it also makes you a nice person?"

"Yeah," Alix piped in. "There's kind of a lot of room between total monster and decent human being, ya know?"

Chloe was shaking her head in disbelief. She was about to come up with a comeback to simultaneously prove them all wrong and humiliate them – really, she was - when Ladybug and Cat Noir FINALLY kicked the door in, irritatingly not even giving her the satisfaction of coming in through the window like she had envisioned.

Ladybug and Cat Noir did come through Chloe's bedroom window later that evening. Chloe glared at them, obviously still angry over the day's events. Marinette felt the tension lift from her shoulders, replaced with the familiar annoyance Chloe never failed to elicit: the blond brat was still looking like herself and was not on an actual rampage.

"Hawkmoth one, Francoise-Dupont two," Cat Noir joked.

The light tone failed to hide that he was just as relieved as Ladybug. They had just checked on Nat, and although saying he was fine might have been pushing it a little bit considering he had been drawing a comic where bee themed villains with blond ponytails were getting fumigated, the artistic vengeance had obviously served its purpose: he had been in fairly good spirits and in no danger of getting akumatized.

Chloe being fine as well was icing on the cake. To Marinette, it felt like a victory of her class over Hawkmoth… just like Cat had said. It almost made up for the fact she was having to be in Chloe's presence again.

"Yep!" she said cheerfully in answer to Cat Noir. She winked at him. "Fuming a bit, but no akuma."

He snorted, but any reply he might have come up with was interrupted by Chloe.

"What do YOU want?" she asked. "Look, I don't know WHY Mr. Damocles got all mad like that. Everyone automatically blames me whenever someone gets akumatized anywhere near me! Seriously, like it's my fault Kim had a crush on me? What was I supposed to do, go with it even if I didn't want to?"

Ladybug blinked, thrown off track. As surprising as it was, Chloe kind of had a point on that one. But then, Kim might not have reacted as badly had he not been publicly humiliated and that was one, possibly maybe unavoidable akumatized victim out of Chloe's record setting tally.

Cat Noir cleared his throat. "We heard about what happened today," he said. "We thought we should check on you."

Chloe tackled Ladybug in a hug, her frown evaporating. "I'm so glad SOMEONE understands!" she sobbed. "They treated me like… like…"

"They were being honest, Chloe," Ladybug cut her off, disengaging herself from the hug. She sighed, her forehead in her hand. "Look, here's what I heard. You were about to make fun of one your classmates, the one that turned into Evillustrator. Nathan, right?"

"I was just going to tease him to break the tension," Chloe corrected. "He's always drawing Marinette Dupain-Cheng, he's madly in love with her, and I was going to rib him a bit. Nothing mean. Sheesh."

"Right. Okay, let's go with that, it's not the issue anyway," Ladybug said.

"You got upset because he drew you as a villain. Right?" Cat Noir asked.

"Wouldn't you?" Chloe asked, rolling her eyes at Ladybug's partner. She turned to the heroine again. "Can you believe him? I'm NICE to him. See? He was actually a girl first, but I say him! I'm SUPER accepting. And he draws me as a villain for him and Marinette Dupain-Cheng to beat up!"

Ladybug groaned and palmed her forehead again.

Cat Noir sidestepped her and put his hand on Chloe's shoulder. She brushed him off with a pointed frown.

"Sorry," the super hero stammered, stepping back with an apologetic grin, his hand on the back of his neck. "No touch. Got it. Anyway... err…"

"Okay, first," Ladybug cut in, one finger up. "If you make a big deal out of how accepting you are, it's kind of obvious that you're actually not, because you're making it sound like it's an effort you're making, like you should get a medal or something. It's like bragging that you're modest."

"Why should I have to be modest?" Chloe asked with a sneer.

"Think of it this way," Cat Noir piped in. "How would you feel if someone pointed out to you that they always act like you're important?"

Chloe immediately flustered. "What kind of comparison is that?" She pointed at herself. "I'm the Mayor's daughter! I AM important! Nat is…"

"Nat's a boy just like you're important," Ladybug cut her off. The words left a bitter taste in her mouth but she soldiered on. Everyone was important, that's all she was saying. She wasn't calling Chloe a VIP, even if that was precisely what the blond believed. "If you say you ACT like he's a boy," she continued, "it sounds the exact same way as someone saying they ACT like you're important."

Chloe paused for a moment, then rolled her eyes. "FINE," she said. "Okay, that was poorly worded."

Ladybug kept her face as neutral as she could: that was as close to an admission of being wrong they were going to get out of the Mayor's junior politician of a daughter. She didn't reply, expecting Chloe to start talking again, and was not disappointed.

"That's no reason for all of them to gang up against me!" Chloe said, lifting her nose. "They basically called me a monster!" She let out an exaggerated sob and threw herself in Ladybug's arms again, sniffling.

Ladybug felt her eye twitch but, as agreed with Cat Noir on the way here, did her best to remain friendly and merely slipped away from Chloe rather than push her away.

"Chloe, we're here because they told us you were upset," Cat Noir said. His arm lifted slightly as he walked towards the blond girl, but he put it back down again.

Chloe scoffed, crossing her arms. "So you were only worried I'd get akumatized and cause trouble."

"We'd have left by now if that was the case," Ladybug pointed out.

It was true: checking that Chloe had not fallen for Hawkmoth's promises again had been one of the reasons for coming here, and arguably the most pressing one, but Cat Noir had insisted on a secondary objective. By staying here, Marinette was fighting against her own desires to leave Chloe's company, but if Cat Noir was right, it could be more than worth it.

Cat Noir was nodding at her statement. "We also wanted to talk to you, because you wouldn't be upset at everyone saying those things if you didn't care at all."

Ladybug was not as convinced of that as Cat Noir was but she couldn't exactly correct him without revealing she knew Chloe well, and even she had to admit there was a small chance he was right.

Chloe was glaring daggers at the floor. "I'm fine. So some people in my class don't like me. Who cares? I don't."

Ladybug swallowed back a loud grunt and almost managed not to roll her eyes. Chloe had just switched from dramatically heart broken and begging for sympathy to uncaring and blasée, and was obviously under the impression her audience would just buy it.

Cat Noir leaned on the wall, arms crossed and head tilted as though he were puzzled. "Weren't you saying they ALL ganged up on you?"

Chloe turned her glare on him. "So? I. Don't. CARE!"

"You know I don't like lies, Chloe," Ladybug said. She was just about out of patience. If Chloe was going to be like this, there was no point in their staying here.

"I'M NOT…"

"Okay, fine, you don't care and you're not lying," Cat Noir interrupted, standing up straight from his leaning position and crossing his arms. He was obviously just about done with the Mayor's daughter as well. "Just be quiet and listen, ok? There's something I want to say to you, and then we'll be out of your hair. Okay?"

Chloe huffed. "If it means an end to this conversation, fine."

"You spent most of your life so far completely confident that everyone loved you. You're pretty, you can be funny, you can be generous and YOU certainly feel like you're loveable."

He raised his hand in a surprisingly authoritative stop gesture: Chloe had opened her mouth. She shut it back and contented herself with narrowing her eyes at him.

"And today," Cat Noir continued, "you found out that most of your classmates don't actually like you much. They think you're mean. They blame you for their getting akumatized. And you're trying not to care, you're trying to just dismiss it as their being stupid for not loving someone as perfect as you, but you can't because you know that a lot of what they're saying is true. You DID cause several of them to be akumatized. You can say it wasn't your fault, you can say they overreacted, but you're not stupid: you know you had a part. And that means they have actual reasons to dislike you. It means they're NOT just being stupid and they're NOT going to wake up tomorrow feeling silly for it all and adoring you again."

Chloe was clearly not appreciating the amateur psychoanalysis. She had turned her back to the both of them, arms crossed again and staring out of the window as though the same view she'd had for years was suddenly completely engrossing.

Cat Noir continued undeterred. Ladybug had to admire his dedication: he was really doing his absolute best to help a girl who was after all a stranger to him become a better person.

"You keep hurting people, Chloe. If that's not what you're trying to do, you need to start being more careful. And if it IS what you want, get used to people not liking you." He sighed and uncrossed his arms, holding out his hands palms forward in a surrendering gesture. "Okay, I'm done," he said, shaking his head slightly. "We can go, my Lady."

Marinette nodded, looking at Chloe. The blond had not moved, still standing straight as a board, arms crossed and looking out the window. Ladybug threw her yoyo out of the same opened window Cat Noir and herself had gotten in through and when it caught on something outside, she swung away.

Cat Noir followed his lady into the night. She kept going for a short while, using her yoyo to swing from building to building. When she stopped, stowing her yoyo away after landing on a convenient flat roof, he landed next to her.

"Do you think I got through?" he asked. It was technically a bit of a risk to show he cared for the bratty blond, but he couldn't bring himself to worry too much about that risk. Despite Ladybug's and Plagg's warnings, he just didn't see the point in keeping their identities secret from each other. He only did it out of respect for his partner's wishes.

She smirked briefly, and he could tell she was thinking of teasing him, but her face grew serious again. "I don't know," she admitted. "Time will tell. You did your best."

He nodded and sighed. "Thanks for going along with this. I know it's a long shot."

"A long shot? Hoping Chloe Bourgeois, after being told nobody likes her, would be more receptive to criticism of her general behaviour and would turn a corner and start becoming a good person?"

"…yeah."

"I think "long shot" might be a little bit of an understatement there, kitty."

Chat Noir shrugged. He knew that even better than Ladybug herself. "I think it was worth a try."

Ladybug shrugged back. "Oh, definitely. Just think," she added with a wink, "if it works, we're probably going to see a 50% drop in akuma attacks."

He chuckled in spite of himself. Chloe had been his first friend and he wanted to think she was redeemable. She hadn't always been this bad, had she? But then, how would he have known either way? He had only ever seen how she was around him until he had started going to her school. He had already known she was no saint, but he'd still been unpleasantly surprised that day. And things had not exactly improved since.

Ladybug excused herself and he bid her goodbye with as much of his usual good humour as he could fake.

He sighed and started back home himself, resisting the urge to go check on Chloe again, either as Cat Noir or Adrien. It was no good torturing himself: his lady had been right. Time would tell, and he had done his best.

The rest was up to Chloe.

End

Author's Notes

Thanks for reading! Please comment/review/let me know what you think.

So, the headcanons…

First: Nat is transgender. I want it to be true for representation, but I honestly think it is possible because of a few in-show details. His body shape, particularly visible when he's the Evillustrator, is kind of hourglass like in that his chest his wider than his waist. The only other male student with that kind of shape is Kim and in his case, it's because he's very athletic and muscled. I think we can safely assume that's not the case with Nat. To me, he looks like he's got a female body shape and compresses. He is also one of only two boys wearing an open layer. I think that Adrien has one because his design needs to look more stylish than average, and that Nat has one because it is a fairly well known trick to camouflage your chest for trans boys and men. Finally, he reacts very strongly to the idea of people looking in his bag, much like Marinette. I theorize body dysphoria causes him to be uncomfortable with the thought of anyone seeing feminine hygiene products. That one is admittedly a stretch – he could just not like the idea of all of his drawings being looked at, but hey, it just solidifies it for me.

So, you heard it here first, people, and I hope some of you will like the idea enough to spread it because representation matters: NAT IS TRANSGENDER.

Second, the subtle one. I said I might tell you but I think I won't… or at least not outright. Just a hint then… it's about Alya and how she behaves. And it's a major plot point in my next story.

#miraculous ladybug #fanfic #transgender #transgender Nat #Chloe Bourgeois

4 notes · View notes

i-am-gaylocked · 8 years

Text

You know what makes me really pissed right now?

On platforms other than tumblr there are loads of people joking about how the fandom is going crazy now because The Kiss™ didn’t happen.

NO.

Fuck you. That’s not why we’re angry.

Of course a kiss would have been awesome, but personally I never believed it to happen anyway, and I would have even lived happily ever after with less Johnlock scenes than we got in the end, even though I ship them like crazy - if only the rest of the plot would have made some sort of sense.

You wanna know what’s bothering me about the (supposedly) final problem?

1. Moriarty was hyped up as the ultimate villain for three seasons and frankly, almost everyone loved him. The creators themselves made such a big fuss about him - only to have him replaced by another supervillain out of nowhere. Moriarty was the ultimate mystery and his reveal was basically “actually he’s just a maniac sidekick executing Eurus’ plans who was kinda bored with living anyway so he killed himself just for the fun of it”. I know they made it hard for themselves to have a truly mind-blowing plot twist with Moriarty since they’ve been stirring his story up for more than two years and expectations were high, but this was anticlimactic and disappointing on a new level.

2. I don’t know much about storytelling, but I do sense that this was bad. For the last three seasons, there have always been subtle and not-so-subtle hints as towards what is going to happen next. Everything was connected and logical to follow and quite frankly, this unique way of building up a plot was one of the things that made me fall in love with this show. Compared to what we have experienced in former episodes, this whole fourth season was utter bullshit. Sure, the basic storyline was connected with the other seasons, but only superficially; most of the “"plot twists”“ happened out of nowhere and made the whole series feel very estranged all of a sudden. E.g., in TRF Moriarty said “Have you worked out what it is yet? The final problem? I did tell you… But did you listen?” - Typical Mofftiss style would have been that some very inconspicious Moriarty line somehow hinted at him pairing up with Sherlock’s unknown sister to “play a game” or destroy Sherlock or seek revenge or whatever. But nothing, NOTHING prepared us for this, although this subtle preparation was what made the show so amazing, which is why this season feels like total nonsense.

3. Eurus’ hyper intelligence was over the top. At the beginning, Sherlock was introduced to us as the ultimate mastermind and we all admired his genius. Then Moriarty entered with a similar, though very psychotic level of genius and we were like “ah, two masterminds battling each other, that’s cool”. Then it turned out that Mycroft is actually even smarter and quicker than Sherlock and everyone was like “well… He’s the older brother, there’s rivalry, he’s gotta feel superior in some way, that’s fine, still kinda fun” and it showed us the borders of Sherlock’s intelligence and made him appear more human, all fine and good. I also get that Eurus kind of reflected that even Mycroft is not the all-knowing, stone-faced, flawless, mature older brother and the ultimate version of smart. But continuously adding more characters to the “flawed mastermind” stack where every new one outsmarts the others feels very cheap and uninnovative. First Moriarty was said to be one of those minds that happens once every few centuries, then Mycroft supposedly straight up Fucked Him Over™ (although he actually didn’t in the end, i know), and then there’s suddenly Eurus out of nowhere and wait she’s even smarter than the rest of them?? Sorry sirs, I’m not buying this.

4. In S3, everything was hinting at Mary having some sort of connection with Moriarty (and we still don’t know how she got into Magnussen’s office that easily because I don’t think she proposed to Janine as well). When Mary’s A.G.R.A background was revealed, I thought it was kinda fucky and far-fetched; I’ve been waiting for the big Mary reveal in TFP. Instead, her conflict apparently counted as solved in T6T and she was turned into a lovable goofball who just so happens to posthumously send old DVD recordings of herself over to Baker Street to whisper sweet nothings to both John an Sherlock so that everyone forgets that she shot Sherlock with the intention to kill him, then drugged him again and overall just manipulated John an Sherlock all the time? Mary is a great, twisted character and I do believe that she’s able to feel love for both boys, but that ending was not her. They were trying to find poetic final words and they didn’t have anyone to give them to but the ex-assassin who murdered her husband’s best friend and lied and lied to her oh-so-beloved John? I don’t think so fuckers.

5. Normally, at the end of a movie (/episode) the viewer should be able to distinguish between such things as imagined/hallucinated locations, events and conversations and what happened in the ‘real world’ of that world. Now, this might have something to do with the fact that English isn’t my first language, but after TFP I’m still a bit clueless about how some scenes were connected and what was actually happening and what wasn’t. (I never had problems like that during the old episodes though, including TAB, which was also really fucky and inception-y.)

6. The Molly scene was hurtful as fuck, and not in a movie-typical, good way. There’s a grown woman who just can’t and can’t get over her crush: Mofftiss’ level of extending this idea always appeared a bit forced to me anyway, but that is neither here nor there now. This scene was emotional abuse, heartbreaking and humiliating and most of all, it was so, so useless. Wow, Sherlock was a dick to Molly once again and this time it broke her completely. This doesn’t help us understand Sherlock’s troubled mind any further nor does it advance the plot in any way, it just crashes another character straight into a brick wall because why the fuck not. (Loo did a great job in this scene tho, probz for that.)

7. I’m still not over how fucking cheap Eurus’ little horror game was. “Let’s lock a few people in one room and make them shoot each other, nonono listen to me this has never been done before because in our show the villain and his victims are related isn’t this awesome?” Wow yeah, truly groundbreaking. What a witty, unique idea. The only good thing about this was that Sian truly was great at pulling of four different roles in a very convincing fashion, credit where credit is due.

8. You don’t say stuff like “It’s making a funny face… I think I’ll put a hole in it” and then reveal that the so-called hole was nothing but a tranquilizer, seriously, where’s the classic Mofftiss genius style in that?

9. The plot and the plot twists of this episode (and the whole season 4 for that matter) were lazy and mainstream compared to BBC Sherlock’s usual standards. I used to love this series for its many-layered stories and characters, but here we have classic Hollywood horror and classic Hollywood psycho villain well beyond any boundaries of normality. Of course I’m not opposed to this kind of stories, but it’s common, you can find stuff like that everywhere. BBC Sherlock used to have a really special, unique way of storytelling and most of it got killed for the sake of cheap ass mistery overload and mainstream horror games.

10. Personally, I can begrudgingly accept the ending that we got, aka “open for interpretation”. If you still want to ignore the gayness that is screaming you in the face, go ahead and call it bro!parentlock, I don’t care. But what I do care about is the line “It doesn’t matter who you are”. I believe that it was never meant to be offensive or hurtful, but this version of Sherlock was introduced to us as gay (or bi or pan or whatever, but at least in some way sexually interested in the same sex). If Mofftiss were too scared to actually pull through with it or simply didn’t want to, that’s fine, I understand. But then don’t just go ahead and tell us that it doesn’t matter anyway. Because it does matter. I feel like these men fail to grasp the power they have over us and therefore didn’t see how hurtful this line was, but it did hurt people. Lots of people. Many of us had actual mental breakdowns because of this line. I know it was never meant to mean that much (or it wasn’t meant to be understood differently), but if you have a general understanding of the concept of fandom (Mofftiss sure have it), then you usually understand that there are sensitive topics that can be triggering and should be expressed with caution.

11. Where’s the big Mycroft reveal? All these adressings towards his physical health. How the hell were they implying that he fucked up in dealing with his psychotic sister?

12. I still don’t get the point of Irene if they were neither letting them meet again nor cutting her out permanently. She’s been a recurring thought of Sherlock since ASIB, but in TFP it was just like “Nah it’s not her she’s married idgaf about her anymore anyway bye” Like?? Dramatic flow? is where exactly here??

13. We still don’t know how Sherlock survived the fall. Just sayin’.

14. Yeah john totally cut his metal chains that forced him onto the bottom of the well with a fucking rope and he didn’t even need help for that matter he just pulled himself out of the water by his own hair Munchhausen style I THINK THE FUCK NOT FOLKS

15. No one will ever convince me that they actually jumped out of an upstairs window to escape an explosion and got away without a single scratch. That’s just bullshit.

16. An umbrella that’s also a sword that’s also a gun that’s also not functioning? Yeah, kinda funny, but also really stupid and not at all up to the standards of the usual witty humour of BBC Sherlock.

17. “Sherlock’s in love but who with?” in combination with the “i love you” scene were used to bait us all to start another war between straight!Sherlock and gay!Sherlock supporters in order to make sure as many people as possible would turn in, but the reveal behind this line was utterly disappointing. This was a humiliating and just not cool™ move.

18. They’re not seriously trying to tell us that Eurus, while having an extreme mental and emotional breakdown, built a fake cell in the garden of her old childhood house because Drama™?

19. General conclusion: This whole story of everything being connected and leading back to Moriarty and Sherlock’s childhood just deflated like a big gay balloon full of anticipation. They’ve been talking about this story forever, but the great opportunities it offered were not only ignored, but stuffed into a fucking meat grinder and mashed up into cheap boring mainstream moviemaking.

Also, I still think everything about this season is shady as fuck and I don’t accept a word of it and from now on I’m just gonna mark it down as another victim of 2016. Thank and bye

153 notes · View notes