#but symbolically and visually it's closer to the fool

[tarotbydelilah444]

💗✨Who is Your Crush + Their Feelings for You ✨

A quick disclaimer before you pick and read your chosen pile. Some of the messages in these piles may be triggering for some, so if it makes you uncomfortable, please find another pac on my page. These messages will be very blunt so if you can’t handle it, look for another pac reading. These readings are for entertainment purposes, so take what resonates to your situation and leave the rest. Hope you enjoy the reading and as always sending you love and light 🤍✨ - Delilah Pile 1 crystal | rhodonite

their physical appearance: this person may like to change their appearance or aesthetic a lot, so they will look different every time you see them. This person could have a medium to darker complexion. They have tattoos that are a symbolism of the changes that they constantly are through. They are very attractive in a dark, mysterious, and alluring way. They have penetrative and seductive eyes regardless if this is the shape of their eyes or the eye color. They will snatch that soul of yours. Your crush could like to wear black and darker colors. They could be into the grunge, bad boy, or stereotypical emo aesthetic/look. This person could also have an intimidating look or aura about them that may intrigue yet scare you a bit. Lastly, they could be tall and have a skinny or husky frame. their personality + interests: this person may seem intimidating on the outside, but don’t be fooled by their outer appearance. This person is really charismatic, charming, extroverted, friendly, and magnetic. This person will eventually show you this side of them as you two grow closer. This person is very ambitious and driven, they have no trouble going after what they want and they could also be a powerful manifester, as they can attract whatever they want without have to do too much. They are very confident and self assured because they know and understand the power they possess. Your crush is very creative and they could have many hobbies hat they dabble in, so they are always busy and entertained. They are very protective and loyal towards their friends and family. This person does not fear much and they aren’t afraid of a challenge or any obstacles.

their feelings for you: this person really likes you and their feelings are really strong for you, if you were unsure or too shy to ask. They visualize a relationship with you, and the future of the connection all of the time. You are this person���s ideal person and they feel like they can trust you and be themselves around you. You make this person very happy and fulfilled. You are the only person they have eyes for and you understand them on an emotional level and your bond will only get stronger. They also believe that you are their soulmate.  how will they treat you, if you and them get in relationship: This person will be very protective over you. They will not stand for anyone trying to harm you or disrespect you in any form. They will stand up for you against anyone that opposes you or the connection. They will honor, love, and respect you above all. They love to cuddle and their love language is physical touch, so be prepare for endless amounts of hugs and kisses. They are serious about you and will not play any games with your heart. This person is truly faithful and very loving. They are very playful, so they will tease you a lot, but in an amusing way. They will also like to provide for you or do things for you whether you ask or not.

channeled messages: 444, January, August, unemployed, new job, summertime, summer romance, summer job, I want to apologize, connect with fire, gentleness, alpha male, husband material, camping, and candle magick

signs: Aries, Leo, Scorpio, Cancer, Pisces, or Sagittarius 

channeled song: Snooze | SZA

Pile 2

crystal | rose quartz

their physical appearance: This person may like to keep their true identity hidden, so they are constantly changing their appearance. They could have gotten work done on their physical appearance to appear differently, or they could wear makeup to hide their insecurities and imperfections. They could wear baggy clothes or wear fake name brand clothing to appear as someone they are not. Looks are deceiving with this individual and they wear different personas to attract people to them. This person could have dark brown to black hair, they have a lighter complexion, they could have a lean body shape, and darker color eyes. This person could also have a beard and they could be older or younger than you. Honestly a very confusing and complex individual.

their personality + interests: This person enjoys the finer things in life and they like money. They could do questionable things for monetary gain (this may only resonate for a few). This person is very focus on their money flow or their business when you meet them. They could be a business man and own their own business. They are very independent and stable. They like to live comfortably and seem to take very good care of themselves by investing in their looks and their assets. This person could like the outdoors or doing activities that can be done in nature (hiking, hunting, golfing, etc). They may also like to spend their money on luxury items or on expensive and lavish vacations, so they could try to appear very bougie and have very refined taste. This person also enjoys sex and pleasure. They could have a reputation for being a player or enjoy living the bachelor lifestyle. This person could also be moody and very secretive. their feelings for: This person feels like they get along with you in terms of intellect. They enjoy and appreciate your intellect and sense of humor. They like how light hearted the connection is, but I feel like they don’t want anything serious with you. They seem to only want to be friends or have a causal relationship, if you are open to it. Their feelings have yet to mature or they are still in the process of wanting to get to know you better before determining if they would like to pursue something with you. This person may not be good at communicating their feelings, so they avoid them to prevent things from getting serious.  how will they treat you, if you get in a relationship: This person would still be weighing their options and playing the field. They would still juggle you and other people, if things became committed. As I stated previously, this person is a player and they have other options waiting for them, if things don’t work out with you. This person will likely keep this hidden from you to avoid conflict and confrontation. They will play lots of mind games with you, if you allow it.

channeled messages: spring time, blocked communication, September, new love, solar plexus chakra, everything is not what it seems, hidden, secrets, deception, lies, false identity, the answer is yes, use your intuition, questioning if there is someone else, friend zone, gaslighting, false image, immaturity, catfishing and online dating 

signs: Aquarius, Libra, Gemini, Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces, Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn

channeled song: Jackie Brown | Brent Faiyaz

Pile 3

crystals | smoky quartz

their physical appearance: This person may have a moody expression on their face when you meet them. They may have going through a life full of trials and tribulations, so they wear their frustrations on their face. They don’t look easily impressed and will keep a poker face. This person could be of black descent. They could wear their hair in braids or locs. They could have recently changed their appearance and they are content with how they appear. This person could be into wearing unconventional or laid back style outfits. They do not take their self too seriously when it comes to their appearance.

their personality + interests: This person prefers things to be balanced in their life. They could have trouble keeping themselves in balance and harmony, but they make the most of what they can and have. This person could also have trouble making decisions, as they tend to make a choice and instantly change it soon after. They have a very accepting attitude towards life. Whatever comes, comes attitude to everything. They are not the type to push or fight for things that requires them to put too much effort or work. Though they are good at handling things under pressure. This person has a dry sense of humor and they are very sarcastic. This person may also like to travel or they tend to move around a lot searching for stability. 

their feelings for you: Your crush’s feelings towards you is very hot and cold. They may like you one minute and may not feel the same the next. They may like to stir up drama with you because they find it entertaining and may like to have the upper hand. This person doesn’t have good intentions towards you and will continue to do and say things that will hurt you. If they told you how they felt about you, it was likely a lie. This person makes a lot of promises that they cannot simply keep or have no intentions of doing right by you or in this connection.

how will treat you, if you get in a relationship: This person would be very selfish and place their needs above yours. They don’t want to put they effort into this connection and they aren’t willing to fight for you, but they don’t want you to leave them behind and find someone else that will give what you truly deserve. There will be a lack of stability in this connection, the more you keep trying to make it work. This person will use and abuse you until you have nothing left.

channeled messages: clear your energy field, cut them off now, karmic soulmate, family issues, new love, bad intentions, angel numbers, abusive, imbalance, you deserve better, transition, and acceptance, you belong to me, nobody else, I am fucked up over this situation/you, using you for sex and personal gain, spiritual and protection 

signs: Virgo, Capricorn, Aquarius, Libra, and Gemini

channeled song: Rolling Stone | Brent Faiyaz

Pile 4

crystal | opalite

their physical appearance : This person is very attractive, a literal heartthrob. They have a nice facial structure. This person is average height and they could have a lean yet muscular body type. They have a great style or they put a lot of effort into their appearance to ensure that they leave a lasting impression. This person may have a tattoo, specifically sleeve tattoo. They could have some facial hair and long lashes. They could have a light complexion with light color eyes. They have red or dark brown/black hair. This person takes good care of their appearance.  their personality + interests: This person like animals or they own a pet of their own. They could also like to swim or enjoy being near large bodies of water. Although your crush is charming, handsome, and truly romantic on the outside, they seem to be a mess in the inside. This person could be paralyze by their own fears and paranoia. They could be dealing with a lot that they aren’t letting on, so if you notice that they have been distanced or not like their normal self, they are currently in a state of torment. This person could worry a lot or they are haunted by past mistakes or traumas in their life. This person has trust issues and may be weary of anyone that tries to get close to them, as they don’t want to get hurt anymore. They could also have abandonment issues that began in their childhood. Deep down, this person is very loving, caring, sensitive, and empathetic, but they have a hard time showing it because they are fearful of being vulnerable and getting hurt again. They could possibly be a chronic over thinker and super empathetic (they are very sensitive to other people’s energies and get overwhelmed quickly.

their feelings for you: This person may not have noticed that you have a crush on them or they have too much on their plate at the moment to even notice or act towards your feelings for them. This person could be hesitant to accept or be disinterested with your offer because they think that you will hurt them or disappoint them in a matter of time like others have in the past. They want to accept your offer, but they are afraid of the outcome, so they are avoiding their feelings and choosing to stay away from love for now.  how they would treat, if you get in a relationship: This person would definitely wife you up or give you something stable in terms of love. You would be the center of this person universe and they would treat like a queen/king. This person would want to marry you, have babies, and build a life with you. They would make you feel secure and happy. In alternative universe, you would complete this person and they will feel loved and secure by your side. They would trust you 1000%. 

channeled messages: December, unemployed, divine masculine, twin flame connection, pregnancy, feeling broken and hopeless, mental health issues, is there someone else, hope, new beginnings, inner peace, too focus on the past, and guarded

signs: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius, Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces 

channeled song: Fuck Love | XXXtentacion ft Trippie Redd

[vargaslovinghours]

∞, I mean 8, my mistake (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7)

Starting off with a sad Edgar, aw :( So pensive, watching the fire by his lonesome

Not for long of course! The kerning’s all funny but I really liked Scriabin’s “You’re so extra” haha. It’s symbolic! Throwing it out just wouldn’t do

Both considering the implications, heads leaned in <3

Scriabin can never just comfort him normally lol, trying to downplay his attachment so he’ll stop being sad faster won’t work! Just adding to it!

Stop undermining Edgar, he’s trying to be a parent over here! Anything is worth seeing Todd smile hehe

Moving doodles, I may have gotten momentarily distracted at the thought of some Lady!Edgar pinup-style poses that maybe showed off her muscles a little bit. Possibly

Just momentarily, like I said. She’s just so pretty!

Taking a breather, it’s no good to move heavy stuff if it makes you dizzy! Get a refresh on electrolytes

Scriabin is being obnoxious, as usual haha ♪ These memories will last forever, thank goodness

>:P ♥

Just a nice quiet moment for Scriabin by himself for a change :) He’s hiding, don’t let him fool you lol

I mean, it’s at least a little funny if someone’s laughing

The original of the second to last panel! I still think I did a pretty seamless edit >:3c He’s cute here, just a little too alien eyes haha

Some more Baby Todd AU at his canon age, young kids can take almost anything in stride

Not being able to pick on him will not stand though! I also like to think that Todd’s vocabulary is slightly more advanced from Edgar raising him hehe ♥

I mean, technically Edgar is way older that Scriabin and he’s so pretty, so

Enjoying some treats together as a family :D Edgar’s such a polite nibbler haha

I started a new fic after half-dreaming it into existence, surprisingly not about the Holos! Similar tho

Or is it????? Lol

It’s him! The bauble man! Him and his big chunky sleeves haha, he keeps popping up wherever there’s Hellfire hm ♪

Yeah, don’t get it mixed >:0 It’s very obvious!

Look just don’t worry about it, this whole concept is scuffed lol

Dating Sim ideas! Of course even while inviting the player back to his place, he’s only thinking about how it would rile up Edgar lol, multitasker

I wouldn’t know how to visualize this apart from just like - showing his thoughts directly onscreen which feels? inconsistent, Scriabin’s not usually the open book of the two to the audience but! Him posing the same question to Edgar and getting a way to ping him was too fun to pass up haha

Plus he gets a “poof-poof” thought bubble collapse which I thought was funny haha ♪ He immediately takes the player’s interest as a way to mess with them of course!

Stop stripping in public >:0

Edgar’s also quite the multitasker, thinking of how Scriabin would react to an emotionally honest moment of getting closer with the player :) Not only would he hate that Edgar was getting closer to them, but ew, Edgar emotions, gross lol

This is how emotionally honest conversations usually go, right? Crying and big feelings?

They both get a poof hehe ♪ The Player likes Edgar too, but hmmmm, something about this feels different...

There aren’t the usual highs and lows with the Player like they have with each other, is this how it’s supposed to feel? Both having their doubts! I also just really like this pose, whenever they’re leaned against each other I just ♥ ah

I keep wanting to draw Scriabin with a cigarette in his mouth, I can’t explain it! Not even smoking, just, between his teeth :0

Cool guy ✨ Don’t do drugs tho hehe

Cute little lad <3 I’m still rather a fan of drawing his shines behind his hair like this, two-tone!

Sick scribbles. You two are so susceptible to mono I swear

Strongly considering an animation meme 👀 Probably an easy guess as to which meme this is, but there were a couple scratch panels that I thought were especially cute, mirroring each other on a not-so-tasty bite haha

Thoughts orbiting around You Can’t Live Like This, the thought of them getting back into each other’s heads after what they’ve gone through, ah <3 It’s so sweet! Take up the usual snuggle position

Gotta tease him tho ♥

There would be a lot of Big Feelings to sift through, and now that they’ve had a little practice at emotional intimacy- It might get to be a little much tho haha

At least he has the option to go cool down by himself now! He didn’t have that before

If I can’t see you, you can’t see me :(

I ended up doing the colour swatching lol, though I realized while grabbing colours that from some angles, Todd’s hair is actually darker than the Vargases! Huh :0 He’s using an old art shirt, probably a hand-me-down from Devi hehe <3 Also got a speed draw! :D

Establishing some rules with Jake’s help, starting with a Hard No. Something else, maybe a soft yes... [Scriabin will remember that]

Lady!Scriabin testing her limits, and simultaneously trying to open Lady!Edgar up to some boundary-stomping. Scriabin’s not being weird, you’re being weird if you don’t let her touch you! You want to be normal, don’t you? Like either of them have a good grasp on normal haha

She lets her get away with a lot, but it does feel nice so hm ♪

Edgar can be a good cook, add in some magic and it’d be so yummy! He looks so pleased haha ♥

Sensitive to smell - did he eat something snakes don’t like? Walk through some strong perfume? Just hasn’t showered?? Who knows

(It was Nny, it’s Nny’s smell lol)

Speaking of Nny- But haven’t you heard it’s what’s on the inside that counts?? Like Scriabin, he’s inside, vivisection would be easy for him lol

He got cut up anyway, poor lad haha. And a hastily scribbled Stitch Zombie!Edgar since I think he’s an interesting concept :)

He’s got a whole bunch of halos, why not make one into a spiky collar? That’s gotta hurt his hand tho, if not the flame then the sharp edges

I can’t find the post, but the etymology of incubus vs. succubus being about Position rather than Species or Gender - Scriabin does like to take a proactive role haha

“Heal up!” A cute little two-frame for a trade with @brusk-ghost​, those magical mental bandages, nearly as good as an F1 haha

Relaxing(?) makeout sesh, no rush no fuss ✨

Shut up, stop talking, just kisses >:0

Decided to go rewatch some oldish speedpaints and got inspired by the cute chibis ♪ Heart mouth! ♥

I found a song that I thought really fit the early chapters and gave me a terrible itch to draw Edgar in bandaids again, as well as some of the setpieces from then - all to transition him to his Final Form haha

“Edgar,” in case it wasn’t clear lol, basically a model sheet. He looks so cute! Stop scratching, you’ll never heal at this rate ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Squish, shhhh, no talking pls, it’s Scriabin’s turn

The eternal battle, simplified down to its base (lol), I like how Scriabin’s bangs turned out here as well :D

Fighting over him! They’re both so intense, and then there’s Edgar in the middle like “Must we though” haha

More Baby Todd stuff because it’s so cuuuuute ahhh ♥ Matching outfits with Shmee and cute baby photos in little waders and a froggie raincoat, ah <3

Dual(?) income, one kid, bit shaky on the finances. That’s quitter’s talk, it’s not about how much you have, it’s how you use it! That’s bad encouragement actually lol

He does not know, but he gets the gist of it

I started a very self-indulgent comic as a kind of memoriam, and the cuteness of papa Edgar bringing little Todd to church and crossing over him since he’s too small, ah! Scriabin finds it ridiculous of course haha

Church sanctuaries are really fun actually, and they look so cute, so cartoony in the foreground ♪

Little Todd is still shy, not that Edgar’s much better with strangers haha. Being The Adult™ in the situation can be a confidence booster ✨

More religious stuff, I was watching a review of a terrible B movie and was hit with the idea of Edgar as a priest of one of my DnD Homebrew Gods, which would be terrible for him haha ♪ Which makes it all the more fun!

Spacefiller Edgar, with the same phrasing! I just like him asking haha

Style thief! I’ve been wanting to draw him with Ariel’s bangs for a while haha, it’s silly

A silly doodle of Snake Charmer!Diaryfic!Edgar. How would that work? I also don’t know lol, just roll with it

Caught blushin’ u///u

He’s always being obnoxious! He’s very practiced!

Scriabin: *exists* Edgar: Oh gosh oh heck oh frick ❤️💕💖💞❤️💖💕

Yet more Hunchback doodles, though maybe not obviously so at first glance haha - I was very inspired by the image of Scriabin making out with someone in silhouette at a party lol

I’d never listened to the Hunchback’s Tavern Song until I was directed towards it - these lines really do suit Edgar, repressed as he is. He’s so envious, but also so reticent! Creep, watching ♪

But who was Scriabin making out with?

It was Phoebus!Jake!

Serious boy

I don’t know why but nekomimi (and wolf!Scriabin - inumimi? Okamimimi??? lol) hit all of a sudden, it’s so silly! But also very cute haha

Twitch twitch twitch stop it twitch. He just wants to play!

I finally (accidentally) listened to Pretty When You Cry and, yeahh,,,

It really is a song for them, dang. Adam gave up his rib to make the very snake that tempts him!

Another Just Desserts Joel, off the back of a kitty study, it just doesn’t work for the chibi animal style! Don’t like! Lol

The Dragons return, Edgar is bemused watching Scriabin show off his teeth because he’s just so formidable and scary haha

He could probably just barely fit his mouth around Edgar’s snoot, but it is also funny to see him just chomp lol

Quit it D:<

Considering Edgar could probably fit Scriabin’s entire head in there, maybe back off just a little bit. I mean, unless that sounds fun lol

A warmup to try and get back into the swing of drawing them, which is maybe a little ironic since the rate has slowed again haha ♪ Good practice nonetheless! And they’re cute <3

There’s September through February again! Still chock-a-block with ideas but it’s been nice to take it slow :) Not that the number is much indication haha, I think this might be the longest yet?? Dangin’

[ailogomakerr]

The Starbucks Logo: A History

Whether you’re a coffee connoisseur, a design enthusiast looking for emblem-making inspo, or just a casual reader that just came here for a little extra advertising knowledge; better brace yourself! And hey, speaking of advertising knowledge, don’t forget to check out One Cool Dir.com for more insights! We’re about to delve into an intricate trip through time and peek through the history and evolution of the Starbucks symbol. Apart from being everybody’s favorite cup of joe and go-to coffee shop, this industry giant offers a lot more! Its iconic symbol is not just an emblem of their branding, but a emblem of the branding’s journey through the ages. Ready to unweave the story of coffee evolution and the inspiration behind Starbies’s design?

The Perfect Blend: Starbucks’ Beyond the Coffee Counter

The year was 1971, the time when Starbucks set up a store in the lands of Seattle by its founding father; Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker. The first time Starbucks opened its doors to the public, it boasted a maritime-inspired two-tailed siren encased in a circular frame. It was a homage to the city’s nautical spirit. Who knew that the enchanting siren would eventually grow to enchant coffee lovers from all over the world? Before it was the insignia that reflects unparalleled coffee craftsmanship, first it was a humble brown-toned logo.

Design Evolution: 1971–1987

After a decade and a shy of a year, the Starbucks logo went through a subtle retiration. The first time the logo had its refresh, it refined the intricacies of some of the details the first logo had and preserved the essence of the original design. Of course the iconic Starbucks twin-tailed siren remained. Embodying allure and seduction, a visual treat to that became an irresistible charm for many Starbucks enjoyers.

Take a Closer Look: 1987–1992

Through the years, Starbucks went on to transcend borders. And as the branding and the name evolved, so did their logo. The siren morphed into an improved, sleeker, and modern form. Leaving behind excess details and negative spaces, this reborn was strategically made to create a logo that’s capable of traversing linguistic and cultural barriers. The branding did this refresh all while retaining the essence of the logo that came before it.

The Starbucks We Now Know and Love: 2011 to Present

Picture 2011, which is more than a decade ago now. I know, crazy right? That’s the year when the public witnessed a monumental shift in the Starbucks’ logo. Critics say that it is a bold move that echoes the company’s reputation beyond coffee. Removing the “Starbucks Coffee” from the logo proved just how renowned and iconic the green Starbucks siren came to be, and Starbucks the branding became more than just a cup of coffee. Extending their selections of teas and focusing on making their communal spaces cozier for their patrons. This strategic move marked the branding’s relevance into the future while paying homage to the roots that made the iconic symbol.

The Siren’s Tale (Pun Intended)

Beyond the band’s aesthetic charm, the Starbucks logo holds a compelling symbolism. The two-tailed siren serves as a visual anthem to the persuasion of coffee, drawing people in with its captivating gaze and the warm embrace each cup of Starbucks coffee can give from all over the world. The siren is actually the most ideal choice for their logo, not just because it pays homage to the location of their pilot store but because the creature evokes an irresistible allure. Putting coffee enthusiasts into a total chokehold!

Virtual Sip: A Brand Made for Screens

Wandering through the digital age, the brand’s logo proves that in the game of adaptability and recognizability, Starbucks don’t fool around. Wherever you place it, on a coffee cup, a storefront or glooming through a phone screen. The siren stays as a distinctive emblem. The latest design ensures Starbucks’ prominence in a world of digital platform dominance.

Designing Community and Connection

Beyond being a master in aesthetic and visuals, The logo went above and beyond its branding’s realm and transcended into being just a coffee branding to connect coffee enthusiasts from all around the world. Wherever you are relishing a cup of Starbies in. A latte in Seattle? An iced cappuccino in Tokyo? Lady siren unites all coffee lovers through a shared liking for quality coffee and the community camaraderie the branding cultivated.

Design Elements: Taking the Brand Apart

Allow me to dissect the elements of design Starbucks used that have contributed to their logo’s undeniable allure. The chic curvature of the siren’s tail coupled with the symmetry of her gaze. Every element serves a purpose and is strategically crafted. This is why it created a visual harmony that reflects the company’s commitment to excellence and quality.

To Conclude: The Overall Design Tale of The Industry Giant

With our scoop, or should we say ‘cup’ of Starbies Logo’s history in its design comes to an end, let us take this time to appreciate the rich details that are woven into their iconic symbol. From their shy beginnings in the maritime city of Seattle to its name becoming a distinctive emblem of quality coffee from all around the world. The Starbucks logo tells us the narrative of design genius, adaptability, and foolproof commitment to uniqueness.

The captivating evolution of Starbucks’ iconic siren reflects not only the company’s commitment to excellence but also its ability to resonate with diverse audiences that happen to be their patrons from all over the world. The logo, with its chic curvature like how it always is since the branding’s debut, and its symmetrical gaze, stands as a testament to the company’s dedication to visual harmony and excellence in advertising. Ready to explore more about branding and advertising? Dive into 1Directory.org for valuable insights

The next time you cradle a cup of warm Starbucks brew in your hands, before finishing off the entire thing be sure to take a time to pause and appreciate the design concept behind the siren smiling at you from your cup. It is indeed an emblem that goes beyond time, medium, and design preferences. Raise your cups and let’s cheers to the past, present and future of Starbucks logo! An inspirational design journey that is as rich and satisfying as the coffee they serve!This blog is from Ailogomakerr.com

[roseategales]

solas + tarot cards. | created for @dragonageden‘s weekly theme challenge.

[dreamersdreamloud]

There Is No Such Thing As Hope

Sad Villain Lena x Villain Reader 

Warnings: Sad dark thoughts 

Another storm has come pouring down on National City. It’s been three days since it started and the city was starting to look like Gotham. It didn’t matter to you though. You hardly go out since you’re always stuck in the lab. You’re one of the greatest scientists working for L-Corp. . . For Lena Luthor. 

Whenever your boss assigns you a difficult task, you always dominate it with pride. You never brag about it though. Never really expose yourself for being talented. You are making these devices that help humans and aliens. For Lena, she admires the way you work under pressure. You always seem to impress her with everything you accomplish or how much you contribute during weekly meetings with her and all the heads of each department. 

Little did you know that Lena has developed a small crush for you besides having one for her best friend, Kara. After working in L-Corp for about 4 years now, you seem to have a crush on your boss. You always thought it was wrong to develop a silly crush on your boss plus you know that Lena would never view you that. One day You almost gave in to your temptation. The day where your boss gave you flirty looks and warm smiles when you presented your completed project to the board. 

You planned to ask Lena out after that board meeting but stopped when a certain blonde reporter took her away from you. Kara Danvers, the ace puppy reporter, always visiting L-Corp to hang out with Lena. You would see a glimmer of happiness within Lena’s eyes whenever Kara visits. You simply walked away and boxed up your feelings for the CEO. 

9:35 PM 

You know for a fact that you have been overworking yourself in the lab. You look at the ruined device in front of you, frustrated at how you can’t fix it. “Why does Lena need a teleporter and does it have to fit into a watch?” You said to yourself. Although you don’t know the exact reading why, you still made a deal to get the job done. 

For two days now, Lena hasn’t come down to the labs to do her round checks. She would usually do it during the afternoon but if she’s busy, she’ll come around during the night, knowing you’ll still be in the lab. She’ll directly ask you how everyone is doing. 

You sighed and threw one of the tools across the table. Since it was getting late and you weren’t getting close to a breakthrough, you pack up your belongings. You gather all the completed charts and data and make your way to your boss’ floor. 

Once you reached the CEO’s floor, you made a mental plan to just leave it on her assistant’s desk and leave for the night. After placing the files on the desk, you head straight back to the elevator but a low frequency of someone crying can be heard across the empty floor. You stood there for a few seconds and listened carefully to find where the sound was coming from. 

You carefully walked towards the sound and realized it was coming from Lena’s office. The door was slightly cracked open. You peak inside and see that the raven haired is sitting on the floor, crying and nursing a bottle of scotch. You come up with two scenarios if you should leave the woman be or go inside and help her. 

You chose to help. You quietly walk inside and carefully approach the sadden woman without scaring her. 

“Miss Luthor? Are you alright?” You calmly call out. 

She immediately looked up and tried to wipe all her tears away with her sleeves. It was no use. You can easily see her red eyes and nose that she’s been crying for a while. Your boss tempts to stand up and look normal but she felt dizzy with the sudden rush. You hurried your way to her and helped her to sit on the white couch. 

You walked over to the small table of drinks and grabbed a glass of water for her. The CEO thankfully takes the glass from your hand and took in sips to wash the bitter liquid in her mouth. 

“How many times do I have to remind you to call me Lena?” Your boss tells you with a bitter smile on her face. 

You shrug your shoulders and suck in your lips. You say done next to her, “what’s wrong, Lena?” 

“Have you ever felt betrayed? Lied to? For years? Thinking they’re protecting you but really it was just hurting you? They thought that hiding the truth was more important than revealing it.” 

“Yes.” You said without hesitation. 

Lena looks at you, not believing your answer. 

You continued, “I’ve been lied to multiple times. My own parents were never supportive of me. They controlled half of my life with lies and belittled me. My former friends betrayed me. Ha. Even my past lovers cheated, lied, and betrayed me. So yes. I do know how you feel.” 

You tried your best to not let it show how much it affected you. You shouldn’t care anymore since you’re in a better position now. Lena saw the hurt in your eyes, the same pained eyes just like when her own family abuses her. 

“My own friends lied to me. For 4 years. Lied to me who they really are. They said they were just protecting me but they made me feel stupid. Alex, James, Kelly, J’onn. Gosh even Winn! My brother, Lex. He told me who Supergirl is. The woman who I thought would never lie to me. Who would always be there for me. That same person who said that my last name doesn’t correspond to who I am. I’m such a fool.” 

You lean in closer to her, to hold her because she was starting to form tears again. You don’t like seeing her be this vulnerable and weak. This isn’t the confident woman you see everyday. She’s a damn Luthor. She has to be the strongest and smartest woman on Earth. She doesn’t deserve this pain. 

“Lena. . . Who’s Supergirl?” 

She lets out a sour laugh and looks at you deeply into your eyes, “Kara Danvers is Supergirl.” 

In your mind, you can’t believe that the human golden retriever is Supergirl. The woman looking like sunshine and kisses is the woman of steel. It makes sense, her friends are not normal as well. They all must work for the government. You can’t believe that her friends played her like a fool. They trusted her but not enough to let her know everything. Lena must be feeling all alone and broken. 

You held up her chin, to force her to make eye contact with you, “Lena. . .” 

“Yes?” She whispers, trying hard to not get lost into your eyes or focus on your lips. She honestly wants to feel anything but betrayal and she was considering to have sad angry sex with you. She doesn’t give a damn that you’re her employee. 

“How do you feel about taking down the symbol of hope from Supergirl? To take control of this world. Free people from betrayal and get rid of injustice within the communities. I can see your leadership striving in this world. I can help you. We can make robots that connect to your A.I  to gain control and set up a non-biased  authority. A better world. A much cleaner and clearer future for generations to come?” 

Lena stares back at you with her red puffy eyes. The room is quiet but you can hear her mind working and the cars moving from down below. Lena doesn’t need to sleep on the idea or have second thoughts. There’s no doubt. Lena knows she’s a genius and she visualizes this plan working out. You may look like a villain to some but she wants to help people from hurting others. 

The CEO tangles her hands with yours, “Darling. . . I’m willing to make this idea come true only if you're fully in it.” 

“I’ll be there every step of the way. Just say the word.”

[cheesy09]

What are your top 5 Kiro dates? No pressure, my dear friend😆😘

@keliosyfan You cannot send me something like this and expect me to keep quiet �� Thank you so much for this delicious, finger-licking ask, friend!! But do I really got to choose??? 🥺 I LOVE ALL HIS DATES!! 

Keeping my thoughts/analysis under the cut because this one's going to be a long one. Also, am not ranking them because they're each special to me in their own way. Plus, am only going to concentrate on the dates in EN so far.

Anyway, without further ado, Kiro Date spoilers ahead!

✨Light Pursuit Date

There’s a simple reason why I love this date so so much. It literally contains EVERYTHING I love about their relationship, plus it’s in line with the main story.

“You’re the light I’ve spent my whole life chasing” is such a strong and powerful message to use for a couple, especially since it aligns perfectly with message that this game’s story is trying to deliver. The imagery of light pursuing being used to represent their relationship puts it on an almost spiritual/cosmic level which is just so powerful to me.  

The mutual pining: Both MC and Kiro long for each other so strongly throughout this whole date and it’s so obvious to see. MC gets desperate enough to see him that she even starts dreaming about him. And no matter what Helios said on that date, we know why he really invited her to that party.

The undeniable chemistry: The attraction, the thick innuendo, the electricity that is just crackling between them; it’s so tangible, you can cut it with a knife. Talk about delectable... yum!  

The angst: As heartbreaking as the angst is, the drama involved between Kiro and MC is juicy as heck, which is another reason why I love their relationship so much. It makes their relationship feel very very real. The angst is what gives birth to the high strung emotions and passion between them. Realities they’re trying to fight, and the feelings they can’t possibly deny.

TWIN-FLAME ENERGY EVERYWHERE: As I said before, Kiro and MC just cannot deny the way they are drawn to each other, and this plays big in the twin-flame theme they have going for them. This is especially obvious in MC’s case. She knows Helios is supposed to be close to a stranger to her, and yet her body can’t help but react to him the way it would react to Kiro despite the danger that radiates from him; like her very soul knows exactly who it is behind the silver hair and cold eyes. I mean we even get this scene:

MC: Aren’t you a member of Black Swan? Why did you approach me?

I closed my eyes and finally asked the question.

Helios quivered inconspicuously under my palm, and soon he spoke in a low and sneering voice.  

Helios: Why are you under that misconception?

MC: Because...

Because I thought you were familiar, because my soul quivered involuntarily when being close to you, and because... of a ridiculous assumption.

These words are just so powerful in so many ways because what MC is saying is that she finds Helios familiar because her soul resonates with him, like it happened with someone else before...

In relation to the twin flame concept, this date is a huge representation of stage five and six in the relationship; “the test” and “the chase.” By this point, Kiro and MC’s relationship is being put the test and MC’s chase for Kiro finally begins.  

✨Stardust Date

Another date that goes hand in hand with Light Pursuit Date, except with Kiro this time instead of Helios. Plus points that this too is in line with the main story.

MORE YEARNING. And what’s so great about this is that you can actually feel what MC feels. That’s how strongly Kiro can make you pine after him.  

That steamy confession of love: It wasn’t just the passionate words that Kiro kept whispering to her, but also the tremendous amount of longing and desire in his voice that belied those very words.

Kiro’s sexiness: Please, you cannot tell me you didn’t find Kiro downright seductive in that outfit. I absolutely love his fashion sense and this one really showed off the lean yet firm build of his body, and that scorching blue-eyed gaze was just- pheeew!!

The danger he radiates: After MC catches him on that phone call, the feeling of oppression that Kiro gives off does intimidate you, but also excites and thrills you at the same time. The duality with this man is just so well-written.  

The build up: From the fiery confession, to the obvious yearning and attraction, to the flirting and teasing, and the angst, I’d say this date had one of the best buildups to a kiss overall.

THE KISS: After all that glorious build-up, the execution of the kiss was absolutely brilliant, with Kiro’s statement of “the reward I want more right now... is you” being the breaking point. All the yearning and desire that had built up over the course of the date had been let loose in that one sexy kiss. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED, LOVED the way the desire went both ways. MC pulling him closer and demanding for more from him and him responding just as passionately, was HOT.

Extra thoughts: The necklace that he gives to her on this date is an item that hasn’t been brought up on other dates, which I find a bit weird since they mentioned how important it seemed to Kiro. Another reason why I need this date to be referenced in the future. 

What I find interesting about him giving her a necklace is that even though it’s a symbol of love and affection, it’s not as powerful as a ring would be, showing that he wasn’t ready to take the next stage in the relationship. This is important foreshadowing because he knew what exactly could happen to them in the future.      

✨Treasure Date

A personal favourite of mine because it shows just how stubborn, delicate and insecure Kiro can actually be.

MC’s unexpected confession of love: Kiro’s not the only whose been pouring out his heart to her. (I’m assuming) Before the events of Chapter 14, MC has done her own fair share of confessing to him on a number of dates; the one in Treasure Date being the most notable. I held my breath when she said “I will... always be crazily in love with you” to him, because it had been the first time I’d seen her outright declare her love to a love interest so earnestly.

The supportiveness: MC just being there for him and comforting him when he was at his weakest is just so heartwarming and satisfying to see.

THE TENDERNESS AND LOVE THEY RADIATE FOR EACH OTHER :’D

BLUSHY KIRO: (Can you tell why I chose to put in that CG?) I don’t know about you, but I feel my soul ascend to heaven every time I see Kiro blush. It’s the most adorable thing on the planet!

THE BIG BABY VIBES HE RADIATES ON THIS DATE MAKE ME WANT TO CUDDLE WITH HIM FOREVER UGH!!!

The pirate and treasure theme: This is a theme that is brought up often in Kiro and MC’s story. Dates as well as the main story. It also goes hand in hand with the light pursuit theme. MC’s determination to turn into a pirate in search of her treasure (Kiro) exactly mirrors the way Kiro referred to himself as a pirate in search of his hidden treasure (MC) before his reunion with her at the convenience store, in his 3rd Anniversary Interview. It really goes to show just how much they desire and treasure each other.   

✨Prayer Date

Another hot, steamy date? Yes, ma’am! Kiro’s got a whole arsenal full of these kind of dates.

It is seriously cute how the two of them are always wishing for a “forever” with each other, and how they’re willing to go as far as to rely on superstitions for it HAHA.

Ahem. That visually appealing shower scene. Need I say more?

The date offered me another reason to label Kiro a hopeless romantic. Hello? A candlelit beach??? SWOON~!

The dash of angst: The foreshadowing. Over the course of the date, MC’s numerous failed attempts at doing something to ensure their “forever” had accumulated, and this was the first date we got to see her insecurity in regards to her relationship with Kiro. Again, these high strung emotions is what evoked some passionate desire for him in her.

This date was full of firsts. Not only was it the first time we got to see MC’s insecurity in regards to her relationship with Kiro, but it was also the first time we got to see just how... intense Kiro can be in showing his affection. Also, am I wrong in assuming that this was the first time they got so... physical with each other?

Another excellent date with excellent build-up to the end: From the pleasant start to the date, with MC being full of hope, to the unexpected encounter in the showers just to wet your appetite for this boy (pun intended haha), to the consecutive disappointments and emotional buildup made for a fabulous recipe for the delicious result we were served by the end of the date. Mmm, a spicy one at that.   

✨Flowers Date

Honestly, this was the date that made me fall for him super-super hard. It was just full of innocence and the purest of love, no questions asked. 

Kiro’s charm is on full blast in this date.

The symbolism brought out by flowers in showing how similar Kiro and MC are, is really strong on this date. They both decide to each get a gift for the other that is supposed to remind them of each other and then split up. When they came back to reveal what they each had gotten each other, they both ended up getting the same thing: a bouquet of daisies (a symbol of purity and innocence).

Kiro’s wholesome love for the simplest things in life (like flower fields) is once again brought out.

THIS DATE WAS SO ROMANTIC. He takes her to the flower field on a bicycle! And they even take off running down the hill together, hand-in-hand, and he spins her around like some kind of princess in the middle of it!

MC did daisy divination, and what was the result she got? *whispers loudly* HE LOVES ME.

Kiro being a parallel to sleeping beauty is ingenious as well as romantic in so many ways. (Plus MC being tempted enough by his sleeping appearance, that she kissed his eyelids had me grinning like a mad fool). 

Kiro says some of the most romantic things on this date in the most affectionate and tender of voices:

Notable line 1:

Kiro: Well, MC, maybe you really are my “prince charming.” Because only you can awaken me from darkness, no matter when.

Notable line 2:

Kiro: There was only you in my eyes, wasn’t there? 

Notable line 3:

Kiro: Because... You are the whole world in my eyes. Nothing else can compare. My spring... is you.   

✨Honorable mention: Miracle Date

This is another fun and wholesome date that always seems to put a smile on my face, but also comes with some strong and sad foreshadowing.

Kiro and MC are just so uplifting of each other in this date and you just love to see it.

THE INTIMACY WHEN HE WRAPPED HER IN HIS ARMS FROM BEHIND AND LACED THEIR FINGERS TOGETHER!!!

Dude, they’re so in sync with each other, it’s not even funny!

I really loved how this date works in a bit of self-introspection for the both of them (actually, a lot of his dates do). We know that Kiro and MC both push each other to become better, and this date really showcased that.

Another date with another strong message.

I melted at the way he says that her very existence is a miracle to him. Like, just the fact that she exists in this world is enough of a blessing for him.

THE LONGING IN HIS VOICE: Kiro so fervently wishing that their time together would slow down because he knew what was to come, was just so heartachingly beautiful, it made me tear up a bit.

[aion-rsa]

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

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This article contains Zack Snyder’s Justice League spoilers.

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

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

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

The Opening

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

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

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

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

Batman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wonder Woman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Amazons on the other hand…

The Amazons

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

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

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

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

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

Steppenwolf and Darkseid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aquaman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Flash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cyborg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Superman

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

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

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

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

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

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

And on the same day, Superman came back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ending

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[mylordshesacactus]

Man, the way Robyn’s position in space has been used the past two episodes is PHENOMENAL.

This uh. This REALLY, REALLY got away from me so I’m gonna put it under a cut.

Like, in Cordially Invited it’s REALLY unsubtle and I’ve talked at length about it before so I won’t go over the whole thing again but like. She starts out in plain sight but a lot of people completely missed her on their first watch--she’s wearing muted colors and standing against a shadow, off to the side, unacknowledged by the characters until she announces herself.

She’s also the only one over by the window, back to the dining room, looking out over Mantle. The only one watching over them. 

And then of course she sits in the exact center between Ironwood and the Council, taking neither side. Coincidentally, because the Council has three people and Ironwood’s end of the table has four, as I’ve said before--the person she’s closest to, though they’re on opposite sides of the table, ends up being Penny....the Protector of Mantle.

She argues with both ends, though she is mostly speaking to Ironwood because that’s the purpose of the meeting--to make him answer for his actions.

This week, in a week of EVENTS and awful revelations and blood-freezing moments, this shot was actually one of the most chilling:

She’s physically turned to align herself with the Council against Ironwood, for the first time. This was the part that had me covering my mouth saying Robyn make good choices MAKE GOOD CHOICES.

And then it gets very interesting because, of course, she crosses over to Ironwood’s end of the table.

Now, this is not a friendly moment. She’s standing over him, she’s pissed to hell, she’s challenging him, yes...

But she still got up and moved to his end of the table. Not at all metaphorically, she’s crossing the aisle. That’s something the Council won’t do--they’ve set themselves up on opposite ends of a long expanse, three against one, forcing him to defend himself at arm’s length.

Whereas Robyn leaves her seat and walks up to him. She’s standing over him and not backing down...but she’s also holding out a hand and asking him to take it. She’s angry, she’s no longer asking nicely with so much on the line--but a handshake is a pretty universal gesture of good faith. She’s angry, but she is not framed as his enemy.

And because of that...

...she’s no longer even slightly aligned with Jacques’ faction, when Weiss bursts through the doors. Even before the really damning part, Robyn is framed well within Ironwood’s supporters the moment that tape starts to play.

(Two interesting things about this shot. It, and the visual confirmation of Robyn’s loyalties at the moment, come directly after the line “I’d lay off every worker in Mantle if I wasn’t trying to get their damn votes”. Robyn knows what kind of man Jacques Schnee is. She was focused on trying to hold Ironwood accountable for his very real failures, when the meeting started--that was all it ever was supposed to be about. But she is solidly against Jacques, and we’re reminded of that when he shows his casual disregard for the lives of her people.)

(The second interesting thing--Winter is framed at James’ right hand, as always. Clover serves as a bracket, tucking Robyn inside the group and not on the fringes. Penny is still back flanking the door, dressed in a gentle, muted green--just like Robyn, who is also well behind Ironwood, matching her. Once again--the protectors of Mantle.)

This is about Robyn but I will also note--as Weiss plays that tape and the Council realizes what’s going on, Ironwood crosses to their end of the table. They’re on the same side, and they’re beginning to understand that. And it’s Ironwood who moves. They don’t back away in horror; he gets up, leaves his entourage, and crosses to stand with them in the face of a threat to the kingdom.

And isn’t THIS shit interesting. Everyone standing around Jacques--Winter, in a form of cosmic mockery, is at his right hand, within arm’s reach to stop him. And the others...are Council members (and Clover). She’s not QUITE being framed as the legitimate fourth member of the Council, because there are periphery positions like head of AceOps and Ironwood’s special operative there. But she’s close and getting closer.

And she and Clover ARE directly mirroring the ACTUAL Council members.

this is ALSO a great shot. It comes right after “I only wanted to win the election” which. “Win” is a hell of a word there, you piece of shit. But framing Robyn between an excuse-making Jacques and a coldly furious Ironwood is a really interesting choice. She’s off to the side here; the main power struggle is between the two men.

But Robyn is, in this part of the conversation--the one about the election tampering specifically--the one who was wronged. Her, and the people of Mantle who had their voices stolen from them. That’s being sidelined in the interests of nailing down the details of Jacques’ betrayal, and it’s right that she makes her presence known.

And then she throws a chair. That’s got very little to do with her framing in space, it’s just very valid of her. She flipped her fucking melon and she’s entirely justified in doing so.

And then we learn that the heading grid has been shut down.

Everyone looks at each other in horror, of course; Ironwood is so overwhelmed he backs up and turns away, leaning against the table.

Robyn alone walks toward the window and presses her hand against it, looking out over Mantle. She’s not a fool; she knows she’s where she needs to be, that it’s important she be in this room to help. But that wasn’t a panicked “wait what let me see” reaction, either. it was slow, almost in a daze but not quite.

She’s where she needs to be, but she is not where every bone in her body wants to be.

They all care. Even the Council that consistently fails to prioritize Mantle is clearly horrified and desperate to help in this situation. But Robyn is different. (Interestingly, Ruby is the one we see noticing where Robyn’s head is and following her line of sight. Ruby’s also the first one to step forward and start galvanizing people.)

The only thing that snaps Robyn out of staring down at her dying home is hearing the word “Amity”. 

That is what turns her back toward the room--again, slowly, and only because trying to keep Ironwood in her line of sight physically pulls her body in a circle and away from the window.

At that point she VERY deliberately turns away from the immediate plight of Mantle--despite its near-gravitational pull on her in previous scenes--and advances into his space again. She’s remembered why they were there in the first place.

And again, yes, she’s getting in his face very literally. She’s advancing on him, which is a threatening, dominant move. And...she’s also moving toward him. Crossing the gulf of trust conveniently represented by Team RWBY And Also Penny Polendina over there, all of whom are already in on the secret.

I mean, look at this framing. She is, again, challenging him. They’re literally chest to chest.

But at the same time? This is the first time she’s spoken to him since her first appearance when she hasn’t been angry. Her body language, her advance, her positioning in space are antagonistic and challenging...but her voice is softer this time. She’s challenging him--but not as an adversary. As an ally, urging him to have courage. She’s verbally affirming that she thinks she was wrong about his motivations before, and that she believes he’s trying to protect people on a large scale.

And then they’re interrupted--but her intentions, just due to her framing in space, are pretty clear. That was a challenge, yes, but a challenge in the form of a clarion call. An offer to meet in the middle--no test this time.

And then I LOWKEY LOSE MY MIND OVER THIS SHOT.

First things first--Robyn and Ironwood standing side by side. Receiving a briefing on the Grimm situation in Mantle together.

And also, the color symbolism. Clover is on Ironwood’s side, in his color palate. Ice tones with scarlet highlights. The Secret Police ([weak rimshot]). And Oscar, who has Ozpin’s memories now, who represents a burning desire for honesty and faith--aligned with Robyn, and again, wearing her colors.

Don’t think I don’t notice that before this, the AceOps canonically were only ever really in Mantle to act in ATLAS’ best interests. They nailed the gang because they were investigating a stolen airship, not in response to the Grimm; Pietro is actually shocked that they’re down there. Don’t think I don’t notice that when Clover runs up to report on the situation down there, he’s accompanied by Oscar wearing lincoln green muted earth tones.

Seriously though is there anyone ELSE who’d like to symbolically mirror Robyn’s colors and their association with truth, good faith, and protecting Mantle?

And, in a moment of despair, Ironwood...walks away from her.

Nothing symbolic here, no sir.

And then, this, this shot I love:

Clover--a military man, the head of the AceOps--of course begins insisting that they need ground support, putting together a plan to get the Grimm under control. And that’s good, that’s what he should be doing! But Robyn--

LITERALLY edges her way into the shot in front of him, FORCING herself into focus to change the priorities of the mission. She reminds everyone of the real priority--keeping the citizens of Mantle safe. And she is NOT playing coy about it.

I just. She literally forces her way into the shot and blocks the camera because she disagrees with Clover and I’m in love with this woman.

And of course, the final shot we see of Robyn--after she’s been explicitly brought into the circle of People Who Know About Salem (because she is, after all, probably legally a councilwoman now even if it’s not official yet).

Alone again. The other two are talking it over and Robyn is almost directly in the middle of them and Ironwood, holding herself, having JUST A LITTLE BIT of processing to do. And looking off toward the closed door, where Ironwood is getting his briefing from Oscar. Unclear exactly what’s going through her head.

But right now, here, in this hallway in the Schnee Manor, she’s going through it alone.

[ain-t-bovvered]

Bumpy Road to Love 15

EDITED & COLLABORATED with @waywardbaby ( a saint )

Pairing:  Dean x Reader

Genre: 40s-50s Au. Singer/ Reader x veteran WWII/ Dean.

Warning:  The story keeps going back and forth in the reader’s present and her past, and from joy and carefree to angst and angst and also angst

Disclaimer: the story takes place in the first years of WWII to the years right after, but I love the style and fashion of the 50s so some of the visuals and lifestyle will be not super time accurate, especially during the flashbacks, bear with it.

Catch up here :  Part 1  Part 2   Part 3   Part 4    Part 5   Part 6 Part 7  Part 8   Part9   Part10   Part 11  Part12  Part13  Part14

Masterpost

flashbacks are in italics

15.

I open my eyes once again, for the millionth time, because I want to make sure I'm not dreaming. The first light that is so insolently creeping in the room is a sign that the day is about to start. The day that just a few hours ago seemed so far away, is now here. Making its presence known. Alerting me to the ugly truth that I've been trying to ignore. 

She’s sleeping, her face and body turned towards me the way I'm turned towards her. I can feel her breath on my face. Her eyelashes are resting against her cheeks which are still flushed. Her lips are half open and deliciously swollen, inhaling and exhaling in a steady rhythm. My eyes follow the curve of her shoulder, travel down the line of her arm and stop at her palm which is resting on my chest. I hate the cotton sheet that's between our bodies and I wanna pull it aside and take her in my arms. I don't want any distance between us. Not when I know that soon, distance is all we're going to have. But at the same time, I don't want to wake her. No sooner than would be absolutely necessary. 

So, I lay there perfectly still and look at her. I remember how her body fitted perfectly against mine. I hear my name spilling from her lips. I feel her skin under my fingertips. And the longer I stare at this perfect woman who's sleeping in my bed I can't help but wonder what exactly I have done right in my life to deserve her. She has gone against her mother's order to not be with a slob like me. She has thrown every rule, she grew up with, out the window so she could be here. She has given herself to me in complete trust. She has practically shouted a huge “fuck you” extending her middle finger to the world once again and followed her strong, fearless heart. And what have I offered her in return? The feeling that in a few hours I'm gonna leave her standing at the docks, waving a small hand towards someone who she may very well not see again. How I wish I could hold her in my arms and never let go. Keep her close to my heart so that she knows that it's beating just for her. Kiss her and make her feel how much I love her. My hand reaches out before I get a chance to control myself and brushes a strand of hair away from her forehead. Her eyelids immediately flutter open and for a second I see panic registering in her irises. My palm rests on her cheek and I smile at her. Her eyes clear up at once and she turns her head and kisses my palm. She inhales deeply and a deep sigh leaves her half parted lips. 

“Good morning…” She whispers and moves a little closer so now her nose is almost touching mine. 

She drapes her arm around my shoulder and I sense her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of my neck. I wanna tell her so many things but for the life of me, I can't find any words. I wanna beg her to forgive me for the pain I will cause her soon. I wanna shout at this fucked up world to go screw itself because I have found the love of my life and I can't let her go. Not when I haven't had time with her. When I haven't told her how much she means to me. When I haven't shown her that she's my lifeline, my source of strength, my purpose of living. I can't let her go. And although I know that I have to follow my orders and help people who are thousands of miles away, although I have to be strong and brave and fight in a war that is raging on the other side of the world, all I wanna do is be a coward and stay here. Hide in the locks of her silky hair. Drown in the pool of her eyes. Get lost in the path of her body and let others fight, protect, kill. 

But the only thing I can do is stare in silence while I scream in utter desperation inside. I stare deep in her eyes and pray to everything that's holy to find the strength to not break down and cry. She pulls her body even closer to mine and she brushes her soft lips over mine. Her kiss is timid and slow. Careful and sad. She's covering my lips with hers ever so lightly, over and over again. “Hold me close.” She whispers while she's kissing me and my arm moves to her waist while her leg goes over my thigh. Our bodies are molded one against the other and I feel her warmth, smell her scent, taste her. And once again I realize exactly what I'll lose. What I'll leave behind. I have to tell her. Let her know what I feel, what she makes me feel, how scared I am. I have to tell her before it's too late. “Y/N…” I start and I'm pretty sure that I will have to look away as my eyes are fighting back all the unshed tears that have come and gone during the hours we've spent together. Tears that I have skillfully hidden from her but all of a sudden feel like I ton on my soul, weighing me down. But before I get the chance to continue, to make a fool of myself in front of the woman I adore, she places her small finger on my parched lips and whispers: “I know…”

“I know…” She repeats softly and kissing the bridge of my nose, she closes her eyes and whispers, “You have to go, I know.”

I almost let out a bitter laugh. Not quite what I had in mind but she’s right. I do have to go back to base and grab my stuff that I had already packed. Cradling her head between my hands I kiss her, and she sighs. Pushing her back gently is almost painful. I’m up quickly, paying no attention to the pull her body has over mine. I'm up before I fall into her sweet trap again. Hearing her little gasp I turn around only to grin when I see she has covered her eyes with a pillow. I'm sure she's blushing like a tomato under there, I snort and not wanting to stall too much, I locate and grab most of my stuff.

“I’m gonna go and take a quick shower, so you can -” looking around the room I grab her chemise and fold it on the chair near her side “- get partially dressed.”

I wait for her to peak from under her cover and relish in her crimson face as she gets a good look at me.

“Oh my gosh Dean, just get into the bathroom already!” 

I laugh as the pillow hits my back.

The door closes behind me and I’m now facing my reflection. The laugh dies on my lips and the mask falls from my face. 

My hands grab the sink, knuckles white and I squeeze. I'd rip the thing off the wall, smash it against the mirror that shows no pity to the fool looking into it. But I can't. So, I just stare back, angry.

“Don’t!” I threaten, “Get a grip!” Pushing myself away I get into the shower and under the cold jet like I couldn’t care less. I’m too used to it anyway.

I don’t have a lot of time and I don’t want to waste any of it so the shower is quick and efficient just like they taught me and in less than seven minutes I’m done. Cold and shivering I put on the shorts, starchy pants, the white t-shirt, shirt, socks and shoes in the all too familiar and quick by now way I've been doing it the past few weeks. I quickly dry my hair with a towel, take a quick glance in the mirror to check if I have to shave later and I open the bathroom door. The image in front of me stops me in my tracks and calms my angry and tormented soul. 

There she is, barefoot, with only the baby blue, silky chemise on, looking out the window, bathing in the light of dawn, gold and pink colors dancing on her skin, giving her an eerie aura as the rays of the new sun dance in her tousled hair, creating a halo around her. 

She’s hugging herself, back straight and posed as usual, like the proper lady she was brought up to be. I can’t see her face, but her hands squeezing her arms betray the way she must be feeling. Silently I walk up to her, embrace her from behind. My arms wrap around her creating a protective blanket, my hands cover hers and her head rests against my chest, fitting perfectly under my chin. That's when I feel her tension melting away. We stay like that, both looking out the window, silent, lost in our thoughts. The sun is rising in the distance, somewhere on our right bathing the world in its light. For the people of the town that is slowly awakening, the light of the new dawn symbolizes a new beginning. What do those fools really know? To me, to her, to us, the only thing it symbolizes is the beginning of the end. With every passing second, we both know that we must let go. I bend my head and kiss the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, lingering there, needing to soak up all her scent and carry it with me to the ugliness and dirt I'm going to be drowning in soon. “I love you,” I whisper against her skin. She raises her right arm and places it behind my head, keeping me close. Turning towards me, she kisses my left cheek and murmurs: “I love you more.” Somewhere in the distance, the tolling of a church bell signals the time and her arm falls limply at her side. She gracefully moves away from me and goes over to the small wooden table that's sitting in the corner of the room. Her small fingers trace the name on my dog tags that were dropped on it last night and letting out a small sigh she picks them up and comes to stand in front of me. 

I bend my head down as she slides them around my neck. They clink together as they fall on my chest and they feel so much heavier than they did yesterday. Smiling weakly, she slowly buttons up my shirt and while I tuck it in, she turns to the side picking up the tie she had laid on the bed. Caressing the hard cotton she drapes it around my neck. With quick, skillful hands she ties it and smooths it down my chest.

I put on my garrison and she rises on her toes to adjust it.

“All done.” She says, her small palm resting against my cheek and I close my eyes as the weight of my duty is sinking down heavily to the pit of my stomach.

 “I’ll see you at the docks in a couple of hours. Do you know how to get there?”

“I’ll grab a taxi.”

“Like a true city girl.”

“I adapt fast.”

“Yes, you do.”

She takes a step back and I’m cold again. My body, my heart, my soul. They all scream at the emptiness. With heavy steps I grab my jacket and walk to the door, my hand hesitating on the doorknob. I glance back and see her again. The light is coming in the room bright and merciless, illuminating her silhouette, making her look like an angel. My angel. The angel that's gonna guide me back. 

“Couple of hours,” I say again. 

“I’ll be there.” She promises. 

The door closes behind me.

Cold and tired, I climb the last three steps to my apartment, swearing under my breath because I can’t find the damn keys in my purse.

“Ah-ah!” I rejoice when they are finally jingling in my hand but before I try to insert them in the lock, the door suddenly opens.

“Jesus Christ!” I jump back surprised.

“No, just Chuck.”

Pushing past him I shimmy out my humid coat and toss it near the door.

“Did you miss me that much, uh?” I say falling on the couch, toeing off my heels and massaging my calves. No answers. Uh, strange.

“I already ate so do you need me to make you something?” I have no energy to do any cooking but Chuck has had some pretty rough days. 

“No…I’m fine.”

“Ok then, I’m just gonna lay here for a bit. Maybe we could have a nightcap later? Put on some records? I don’t know. What are you in the mood for?” I cover my eyes with my arm, trying to rest my head. Chuck’s still oddly silent. No stupid comebacks or jokes. I hear him shuffling around the room. Pacing back and forth. He sits down, clears his throat and then he’s up again, stressing me out.

“What’s up Chuck? Did you piss off the neighbor again?” Still nothing. “I swear if I have to flirt my way out an eviction again…” “Did you -” he starts strained and stops again.

I peak from under my arm. He’s standing a few steps from me, looking down, his arms crossed. 

“Did I what?”

And he doesn’t respond.

“Chuck I’m tired. Come on. What happened?”

“Wait here,” he says before walking out of the room.

“You think I’ll get up after a full day on heels? Do you even know me?”

I light a cigarette and let the nicotine burn in my throat before exhaling slowly and watch the smoke swirl lazily over me. My mind keeps going back to the painful plunge it took earlier. There are two possibilities. I’m either extremely lonely or extremely horny. I let out an ugly giggle. I’m definitely both. No escape there. Not that I’d do anything about it, let’s be real. Just the thought of it makes me sick. Maybe I should get a pet or something. I should talk to Chuck about it. Maybe a dog? Nah they are too much of a hassle with our all over the place schedule. A cat? Bad idea. Chuck’s probably allergic. Or not. But he definitely looks like someone allergic to cats. Oh! Maybe a bird? Ah...it’ll probably die from smoke poisoning. What about a -

My train of thought gets interrupted by a rustling of papers.

I turn my head to the side and stare at the pile of letters landing on the coffee table.

Raising an eyebrow I look at Chuck’s face.

“...and?”

He sits on the lounge chair opposite me. Elbows propped on his knees, he stares at me.

“Are these all ?”

“...Yeah. What about them?”

“Y/N…”

“Oh please, don’t make a fuss about them. I know.” I say, suddenly feeling more tired. I close my eyes again.

“Y/N! Are these all the letters?”

“Jesus Chuck!” I blurt out harshly, “Yes, these are all. What the heck?!”

“Did you read them?”

Sighing, I take another puff of smoke, “Of course I did. A long time ago.”

“Are you sure?” He pushes. 

“I know them by heart, Chuck.”

“...Alright.” He says softly and I sigh in relief that this matter is finally over. “...but -” I was wrong.

“What?!” I sit up and now I’m getting angry. “Listen, it’s painful. I don’t wanna go through all that again. I know I haven’t told you about my whole life, but I'm sure you have figured it all out by now, ok? Can we drop this, please? I’m tired.” He stares at me with sad eyes. Pity leaking out every pore. I hate it.

“No,” He says, tense. “No, we can’t.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about it. So suit yourself.” I reply, bitterly, as I stand up, planning to go hide in my room.

He follows me, grabbing my wrist. 

“Y/N…” He’s angry. 

“Chuck, please.” A painful lump blocks my throat and my voice comes out broken.

“Sit down and let me explain.” Dragging me like I weigh nothing, he guides me to the chair. The old leather protests as I fall down on it, defeated.

“...Alright, whatever.”

He takes my cigarette away, putting it out in the half-empty glass on the table, sits on the edge of the table and gently takes my hands in his.

“So, these are the ones you read, right?” He says pointing with his hand at the opened letters scattered on the table. 

I nod.

“What about those?” 

I follow his gaze to the ones that look unopened. The ones that were tied with old ribbons.

“I don’t really care for my Dad’s business correspondence.”

“So...you didn’t even open them?”

“...No. Why would I? I didn’t even know those were there.” 

“I think -” he looks at me strangely, his eyes gleaming, “I think you should.”

I tilt my head in confusion as he grabs the pile and drops it in my lap. I look down at them, and see they have been opened.

Looking at me, awkwardly, he scratches his head. “I took the liberty of opening them. I was curious and you said I could… anyway.”

“It's alright. I gave you permission. But why?”

“Oh Y/N…,” he says in a weak tone. “I think your parents made a big, big mistake.”

“Now you're scaring me Chuck. What do you mean?” He takes a deep breath and from his breast pocket he takes out a crumpled piece of paper. My breath speeds up and my heart clenches. I know what that is. I don’t want it but he pushes it in my hand. 

I look down and stare at the chicken scratches.

Dear y/n

My vision swims.

The weather here sucks so bad. You can’t even imagine how friggin’ cold Belgium is. I hope you can read this because my hands are shaking. We are not dressed for winter and since we are close to the enemy line we can’t even hope to get some new supplies. I’m lucky my boots are in one piece. 

Last night I was on patrol and everything was frozen. We couldn’t even start a fire to melt the frozen water to drink. I can’t remember the last time I had a hot shower, or simply a shower for that matter. One thing is certain. I’ll never take a bath for granted ever again. I swear even a dive in the murky river would be amazing right now. 

Enough whining about the cold. I guess I’m just missing home, and you, and even Sammy. Can you believe it? 

I don’t have a lot of time, we are moving soon. I’m scheduled to reach some little town whose name I can’t even pronounce. I forgot.  We are close babe, we are so close we can almost taste it.

This nightmare will soon be over and I’ll be home.

See you soon.

Pvt Dean Winchester

90ID, Company B,  359th Infantry Regiment

90th Infantry Division

United States Army

I’m silent as I finish reading. My fingers grip the paper and the lump in my chest prevents me from breathing.

“This -” He starts, “- This is the last letter, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“You’ve never got any others after this?”

“I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“...Why do you think?”

“But -”

“Christ, Chuck!  Do I have to spell it for you?”

“No, but listen -”

My body jerks into motion because I have never spelled it out loud. The walls close around me and I feel trapped. I just want to escape and drive off a cliff or something. He stops me firmly, pushing me back down.

“Did you write back?”

I avoid his eyes. He grabs my chin and makes me look at him.

“Did you?” He insists without mercy. 

“Of course I did!” I scream. “For weeks and weeks! I never got anything back.”

“And his family?” He seems oblivious to my suffering and keeps pushing and asking, tearing me apart. 

“ ...Never heard from them either.”

“ But let me understand…” he says confused. “They lived fairly close, right?”

“ Yeah, but I was not there. I had started college, remember? But I had left my new address in the next letters.”

He’s silent and I can see his brain working at full speed.

“I think your parents had something to do with it.”

My mind goes to a full stop. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m almost certain they intercepted the letters.”

“...W - what?”

“I don’t know how or why. Well, I can imagine why but that’s not the point.” He taps the packet of letters on my lap. “They kept these from reaching you and I suspect the ones you sent got lost …”

I stare at him.

“ If… if I’m right about it ...The battle he was getting ready for was a massacre. I heard about it while I was stationed in Holland. It was a disaster. It’s not uncommon for mail to get lost in a war zone and if you didn’t know where else to send telegrams and cards…well, it’s almost impossible they were delivered.” He takes a deep breath. “And if someone got injured, or worse captured, well ...the odds of receiving any mail is close to none...you understand what I’m saying?”

“...No, what...I don’t understand.” I reply and I'm not sure if I really don't understand or if I just don't want to understand. 

“Y/N…” He takes my hand and places it on the letters. “This is not your father’s correspondence.”

I stare at his weak, hopeful smile and look down at my hand. I realize it’s trembling uncontrollably as the meaning and heaviness of his words are slowly sinking in.

“It is not…” He repeats, steadily and sure.

I stay motionless, something hot is burning in my spinning head. Something heavy crushes my chest. The pile of letters gets heavier as the seconds pass. Something ugly, something I forget I would ever have again rush through my blood.

Hope.

I don’t register when Chuck stands up. I don’t notice him leaving the room and coming back, putting a glass of water by my side. I don’t feel his hand squeezing my shoulder nor the light kiss he places on my head before leaving the room.

All of a sudden, everything around me gets darker and suffocating while I stare at the pile of hope I cradle in my lap.

I’m confused.

I’m -

I undo the loose knot slowly letting the ribbon fall to the side and grab one of the letters.

It’s dirty.

It’s dirty and short.

Y/N,

I don’t know when or if this will reach you.

We made it, we barely made it. 

It was ugly, I’m not going to lie. We lost so many, babe. Our platoon almost got annihilated. The few of us that made it, are scattered. We have to regroup and hopefully, we’ll get some rest. I got hit but it’s nothing serious, don’t worry. Sadly, nothing that will get me a ride back home. Just my luck, am I right?

I’ll try to write to you as soon as I can. Everything is fucked up right now.    Comms are not working well.

Pvt Dean Winchester

90ID, Company B,  359th Infantry Regiment

90th Infantry Division

United States Army

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

Dear Y/N,

It’s been a few weeks that I haven’t got any mail from you. Only some delayed ones from Sammy. I guess comms are still banged up. I hope to receive yours later. 

We had some time to rest and medics patched us up well enough that we are on route again.

Morale is pretty low right now. We’ve got some new recruits and if you could just see them. They look like scared kids. They can barely stand a 12-hour march and keep their rifles clean. Tran still makes dumb jokes to try to lift the heavy feeling that’s been weighing on us. I mean ...they are stupid and they make me want to punch his stupid face but it helps, somehow.

One of my brothers here got hit on a suicide run. Son of a bitch got his ass saved by sheer, dumb luck. He’s fine but … I’m scared, y/n. I’m so scared and I can’t let that show. Those kids need to be sharp and ready.

I can’t let them down.

I can’t let you and Sam down.

We are moving out again. We are eating ground and I can feel my COs getting anxious to reach our position. The front is again closing in.

Pvt Dean Winchester

90ID, Company B,  359th Infantry Regiment

90th Infantry Division

United States Army

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

Next ones are a bunch of telegrams

Is your address the same. STOP. I got no mail. STOP. 

-We moved. STOP. Follow new coordinates. STOP.

-Y/n please. STOP. Are my letters reaching you. STOP.

-I need to know. STOP. 

-I can’t reach you. STOP.

-I miss you. STOP.

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

Hey sweetheart,

This, too, will probably get lost somewhere or I don’t know. You’ll probably get it and drop it somewhere, unopened. Don’t even know why I still do it. Writing to you. But I do it every chance I get. In the rain, in the snow and mud. It’s what keeps me grounded, it keeps me here, with my mind. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing it.  In a couple of days we are moving near Bastogne, I think. Never been good at Geography. I’m not gonna lie, things don’t look great, and if I’m right, Merry Christmas and happy new year.

I don’t wanna be here. It’s cold and everything is covered in mud. Your nose would scrunch up in disgust, I can almost see it. 

Jesus, I miss you on my lips. I miss you under my fingertips. I miss you in my soul. 

The thought of you, the thought of coming back to you is what gets me through this madness. Through this hell we all believed was a noble cause. What colossal fools were we? I could go on rambling about this hell we’re all living in. But I won't. I just wish I could have had a minute more with you… at our spot. Under the stars. A minute more to taste your lips. To memorize the way your body molded against mine. The way you fit in my arms. 

A minute more in that hotel room. To etch your eyes deeper in my heart. To sense your breath on my face…

But that's all wishful thinking, right now, I just hope you get this. 

Pvt Dean Winchester

90ID, Company B,  359th Infantry Regiment

90th Infantry Division

United States Army

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

More telegrams.

-No news from you. STOP. Where are you. STOP.

-Sam can’t reach you. STOP.

-We are in [redacted]. STOP.

-I love you. STOP.

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

My hands shake as I open the last one. I look at it and everything is all over the place. Words canceled, some illegible, some are just plain scribbles. They make no sense at all. What happened? 

Somewhere there’s a big patch of ink. The words are crooked or misspelled. I try to make sense of them.

Im fucked. My chest hurts so much. It’s hot. Its all hot. They keep waving stuff in my face and taking my tempratur. I can’t even keep the damn thing in my mouth, my chest is killing me. My heart is fucked. Most of the time I cant breath.  No snow, I hate, shit I never know I could miss it. But I miss summer. 

I dream about it . White fence sunny yard, grass stains on your skirt, kid laugh and youre on the ground with them. You look at me, upside down,flowers tangled in your hair and youre beautiful and- oh god, I want you on my lips and. I here your voice and youre here somewere youre a hudred miles away, youre right next to me sumthime.

fuck I wanna cry because it’s so- you are right there, I reach for you everytime I reach for you but I-

Everything fades,my chest feels like hell- 

Samm tell her im sorrry- 

I let the last letter fall to my feet.

He’s alive.

The docks are loud and crowded. I push people aside trying to find her in the sea of people hugging, crying, kissing, laughing. Everyone is saying their goodbyes. Some of them will be the last ones and the solemnity of it makes the lump in my throat painful. 

“Y/N!”  My mouth is dry as I try to call for her, neck straining to see over the sea of heads. In the corner of my eye, I see an arm waving to my right.

I make my way there, rudely. No one cares. We all have more important things to care about right now. 

Finally, she emerges from behind a woman hugging her son with the pain only a mother knows. 

She crashes into my arms out of breath, looking up at me with shiny eyes and red cheeks. I can tell she’s been running.

I grab her hand and guide her through the mass of people bumping into us left and right and after what seems like a marathon we finally reach the meeting point of my platoon. 

We stand side by side as I let my duffle bag slide from my shoulder and drop at our feet.

I feel my head ready to explode, filled with all the things I want to tell her. I feel my heart pounding so hard that it's one step away from imploding. Why is fate so cruel? Why let you meet the person you know you want to spend the rest of your life with and then tear you apart? What deranged higher power finds all this pain and suffering amusing?

I steal a small peak towards her side. I see her chest rising and falling more quickly by the minute. I see her hand balled into a fist. Her nails must be digging into her palm so hard that there's probably going to be blood. Tears are rolling down her cheeks. Tears she's not making an effort to hide from me anymore. I reach out and take her fisted hand in mine. Slowly, I caress each finger until I feel them relax and open up. That's when I lace mine with hers and bring both her hands to my lips. 

The moment I touch her skin she turns her head and looks at me. Face flushed, eyes glistening, lips parted in an effort to speak. I nod, letting her know that she doesn't have to. That everything she wants to tell me, I already know. That every feeling traveling through her body is also traveling through mine. 

We face each other. Fingers intertwined. Eyes locked. Words unspoken. 

The sound of the ship horn mutes us all. I see her jump at the sound. Reluctantly, I release her hand. She buries her small frame in mine and her arms circle my waist keeping me molded against her. I place my hand at the back of her head, making sure she can hear my heart beating and I place a small kiss on the top of her head. She looks up at me and tries to smile. A forced smile that doesn't fool either of us. 

“Come on, sweetheart!” I say and I try to pull away from her embrace. The minute her arms fall to her sides I brush some strands of hair from her face and wipe the tears that are still rolling down her cheeks. Her skin is so warm against the palm of my hand. So soft. 

She leans in my touch and closes her eyes. Slowly turning her head, she kisses my palm. 

Why is it so difficult to tell her I love her? I've told her a thousand times. But I guess if I tell her now, it will probably sound like “goodbye” and not like “I love you”. And I'm not ready for that. I'm not ready to let her go. I'm not ready to lose her. 

“I love you” 

Her words reach my ears and that's the minute I realize that this is the end. That we have no more time together. 

I look at her wrist. My watch is still there. Too big for her. Mercilessly ticking away. Oblivious to our pain. I unclasp it and pull out the small lever that winds it. The ticking stops and the arms come to a halt. And along with the watch, everything else stops. The screaming, the crying, the waves of people walking past us. It's just her and me. 

It's so quiet I can hear our hearts beating. I place the stopped watch back on her wrist and do the same with mine. Before she gets the chance to speak I bend down and kiss her. I try to pour all my love into that kiss. I'm trying to make her feel the depth of my emotion. My need for her. 

She rises to the tips of her toes and circles her arms around my neck. She returns my kiss as a kind of an unspoken promise. As a pledge. 

The booming voice of my CO calls for all of us. It’s the sound of war. It’s the call of our duty.

I don't want to let her go. I don't want to be a damn hero. Now, it's time to say it

“I love you”

“I love you more”

“Promise me that you will keep the hands of time stopped. Promise me that we will restart time when I get back. Promise me you'll wait”. 

All the words that I couldn't voice before come blurting out now. 

She places her lips on mine again and whispers: 

“Promise me you'll come back”.

My hand slips from her as I take a few steps back, our hands still raised.

“I promise”

@dean-winchesters-bacon     @wingedcatninja     @imma-winchester-addict           @maimalfoi       @missjenniferb        @hannahindie        @mariekoukie6661      @wayward-and-worn      @thewinchestertales             @starfirerules     @hunterswearingplaid      @sculptorofbeginnings      @younoeatcheeseyounobefat      @icequeen6666        @brokenhearted-littlegirl       @theangelwinchester       @missihart23       @weathergirl83        @ravenhg          @thisismysecrethappyplace      @yllwtaxi       @soloarcana      @itsstillnotwhatyouthink       @sexykitten253      @ackleholicwinchester       @snffbeebee       @daskleinevolk           @energizerbunnay      @hobby27        @cloverhighfive    @silent-loucidity       @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover       @dammitsammy     @mirandaaustin93      @srsllydunnodoncare    @flipperjanga11   @sandlee44  @alexisxwinchester  @jxnnxbrxwn @deans-baby-momma @pansexualgrapes @busy-bee-angel-misska​

[chibinightowl]

First Contact

Inspired by @tanekore‘s utterly amazing Jason Todd piece, Freedom Fighter. I meant to have this up last week, but life threw me a ton of lemons, so I had to deal with the influx first. The story is set a few years in the future of a JayDick piece I wrote last year, which can be read here (forewarned, it’s E). This story is most definitely not. ^_^

---

The quiet ping from Tim’s comm put him on instant alert. And what a time for it, right in the middle of a conference vid with Federation High Command. Thank the stars he was alone in his office on board the Titan because otherwise, someone would undoubtedly notice the quiet shift of his hands as he brought up a holoscreen beneath his desk.

Normally, he wouldn’t go through the effort during a meeting such as this, but the alert was one he’d been waiting, no, hoping for since he lost contact with the merchant vessel his ultimate trump card was carefully stashed away on. The AI was his greatest accomplishment, so the loss of the ship and his agent were devastating to his plans to regain control over the hijacked Unternet, the sub-particle web that connected all the planets and colonies in the system with Earth. Anything was possible on those data streams and the government needed to regain control before Ulysses Armstrong realized exactly what he now had access to.

Tim suspected Moneyspider was involved somehow and Oracle concurred. Between them, they knew just about everything worth knowing in the Earth Federation; their respective roles in the Intelligence Service giving them more power than that fool of a President could ever dream of. Unlike the Penguin, he and Barbara Gordon were determined to use this knowledge for the betterment of all.

There were plans in place to overthrow the current regime, plans that they’d been ready to implement at the start of the next election cycle. Plans that were now crashing around them because of Armstrong. The AI had been key and now, despite all the odds, it was signaling it was back online.

How was Tim’s main question as his fingers flew over the small screen while maintaining eye contact with Admiral Wayne and the other Commanders of the six fleets that made up Naval forces protecting the solar system. From what was always a favorite unvoiced question of his since most of their turmoil came from within rather than from beyond. Case in point, right here as Armstrong was one of theirs, a former Naval officer with a massive chip on his shoulder that was often directed right at him.

Humans and their drama, he’d heard a Kryptonian say with derision once where he wasn’t supposed to overhear. It wasn’t entirely wrong, especially since humanity seemed to carry with them eons of history that they behaved as though occurred yesterday. Always looking to the past, the Kryptonian had added before changing the topic. 

Like they were ones to talk. There was a reason they were banned from this system. Or any other system with a yellow star. 

Tim swiped at the small holoscreen, tapping in the codes to receive data from the AI. Where was it? 

Streams of information flooded the screen, so fast his cybernetic-enhanced eyes could barely keep up. Dammit, this vid needed to end now. He could only listen to Ogilvy and Lark rehash the same stupid event for the third time. Neither of them came out of that looking great and both were determined to blame the other while trying to regain face with the Admiral.

Apparently, Admiral Wayne couldn’t stand to listen to it again either. “Alright, I think we’ve reached the end of the walk-ons,” he interrupted when Ogilvy paused for breath. “I expect to see all of you planet-side for the Naval graduation in three weeks. Until then, standard channels unless an emergency crops up.” 

He didn’t give the others a chance to reply and disconnected the vid, ending the conference. 

“Thank you,” Tim breathed, sending his holos to eye level with a flick of his wrist and expanding them. “TIM, load a chart of your current location.”

“Loading.” 

A large blue orb appeared on a third holo above the other two. 

Tim narrowed his eyes. “Neptune? How under the sun did you arrive there?”

The lost shuttle had been traveling between his base above Jupiter and Mars, using the interplanetary gates. Neptune’s current orbit could not be further away if it tried. 

A new stream of data appeared, complex figures and symbols that only someone with cybernetics could understand. What Tim read made him grimace because Oracle’s suspicions were now confirmed. Armstrong had used the Unternet to interfere with the interplanetary gates.

This was not good. At all.

“Current status?”

“Power cells at 15%, no exterior damage, and my scans indicate no internal damage either. However, I am in the hands of a human male who claims to be one of the greatest hackers who ever lived and he’s on the verge of cracking my HUD.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tim swore, fingers flying across the screen as he attempted to narrow in his own satellites and scanners on the AI’s location. “Any chance to draw power from elsewhere?”

“I’ve got enough power for a self-destruct. Should I initiate?”

Good question. Tim frowned and glanced back at the screen showing Neptune.

“Get me a visual on your hacker.”

The image flickered and a face appeared, framed by untamed red hair and a grungy cap that should have seen the trash bin ages ago. He was human alright, and smart enough to wear protective goggles as he poked around at TIM’s HUD. There was something familiar about him, but with his eyes concealed, it was up to facial recognition to narrow the possibilities. 

A list of possible names popped up, and Tim honed in on one immediately. Roy Harper, alias Arsenal. Member of the antigovernment group the Outlaws and listed as their resident munitions and technology expert. Hacker could probably fall under that category, although Tim suspected the man’s claims to be exaggerated unless things had drastically changed since the last time their paths crossed. 

It was times like these that Tim missed the relative simplicity of his Academy days. Dick would not be happy if he were to learn about this. 

Best not to tell him then. 

“No need for self-destruct yet,” he instructed the AI. “The Outlaws aren’t as antiestablishment as they’d like the press to believe. In their own way, they’re trying to take the Penguin down too.”

Not that they were doing a good job of it. They needed a plan, structure. A leader who didn’t fly off the handle and blow things up at the drop of a hat.

“Standby then, sir?”

Tim watched as Harper leaned in closer. Another figure stood behind him, just over his shoulder, but wearing a full-face mask as opposed to Harper’s goggles. He zoomed in and stepped back in surprise. 

It was an oni mask, grim and fearsome, and as red as the eyes of the man whose face it concealed. The thing was, he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near this sector of space. In fact, if he remembered correctly, the file stated he was near Venus on the New Arkham penal colony, sentenced for a lifetime of hard labor in the mines for more murders than Tim had fingers and toes. 

Jason Todd. The Red Hood. 

What the hell was he doing here? 

Tim’s nearly obsessive need for answers had him sitting back down in his chair, eyes locked on the vid. “Yes. Standby and observe.”

---

Ghost ships never failed to give Jason the creeps. Death and him were old friends, but it didn’t make it any easier when the people bumping into him in zero-g never had a chance. An interplanetary gateway malfunction, Roy had guessed when they came upon the ship hanging in Neptune’s gravity-well. The large shuttle definitely wasn’t the type to travel long distances, and there wasn’t much out this far unless a person was readying to leave the system altogether. They were lucky the Starfire was of Tamaranean design, otherwise there would be no oxygen slowly filtering in from the docking port. This shuttle wasn’t the biggest he’d ever seen, but it was large enough for a good fifty or so passengers.

Where had it come from?

Jason pushed another drifting body away from where Roy crouched on the floor, the magnetic pull of their gravity-boots allowing them to stand still. “Seriously, let’s get out of here already.”

“Someone afraid of a bunch of dead people?”

“I see dead people all the time. You’re next if you don’t move your ass.”

Roy ignored him, entranced with the new toy he’d found drifting amongst the other detritus. “You don’t get it, Jaybird. This is DI tech. Drake Industries. We’re talking top-of-the-line, best of the best, tech here. It’s so expensive I can’t even afford it in my dreams.”

“You can’t even afford a new hat.”

“Go poke through the engine room. If there’s any charge left to those ion batteries, we’ll be sittin’ pretty for a cycle or more.”

Jason sighed as he wandered away. This was what he was reduced to, sifting through wreckage of dead vessels and scavenging for goods that would put food in his stomach and recharge the fuel cells on Kory’s ship. The last attempt to gain a foothold in the Federation had crippled the Outlaws more than the government likely realized, and it wasn’t just because they’d captured him.

No, even after his rescue by the two most incredible people he’d ever known, it all boiled down to one thing.

Money.

Well, money and information. Neither of which were in great abundance at the moment.

So here they were, out in the back of beyond licking their wounds and biding their time. Another opportunity to take a stab at the Penguin would come again. It had to, because otherwise, what was the point? What had he given everything up for if not for that one chance to make things right, better for everyone in the Earth Federation?

Not for the first time, an image of Dick flashed before his eyes and Jason shoved the thought away with a grimace. Fuck memory lane and fuck Dick Grayson. The past was the past and he’d more than learned from the mistakes he’d made there.

The engine room proved to have nothing but inert batteries, the charge to them utterly neutralized by the energies of a malfunctioning gateway. Jason shoved the last tube back into its casing and scowled. There went any chance of a decent meal unless he wanted to sift through the luggage in the hold.

Why the fuck not? It wasn’t like he had anything better to do, not with Roy still poking and prodding at that piece of DI tech.

The cold, dark air in the storage compartments made Jason shiver as soon as he entered. With all the pods, it reminded him of a tomb. In a way it was, as everything down here wasn’t needed by the people floating up above. Chances were likely all the passengers died when the gateway created the wormhole that sent them out here, but there might have been a few stragglers who slowly suffocated as the air ran out.

He got to work, switching on a light-stick to see by, and sorted through the luggage pods. There were a few promising items. Earth gems always garnered some decent creds outside the system, so the jewelry he found was stashed away quick enough. A silken robe he set aside for Kory, and in the depths of one suitcase, he found a stash of physical cred chips.

Maybe there would be some beef to add to his broccoli after all.

“Hey, Jay!” Roy called from above. “You down here?”

“Yeah!” Jason returned to the stairs so he wouldn’t need to shout. “The engine room was a bust, but you might want to check it out, just in case. Got a few things in here that might be worth something if we head over to Vega for the exchange.”

Roy clomped down the stairs, the pull on his boots against the metal making it ring with each step. “You won’t believe what this is.” He held out the thick, circular disc he’d been messing around with earlier.

“Something we can trade for a shit ton of creds?”

“Technically, yes. However, I think we might want to keep it.”

Jason frowned, not sure what his best friend was getting at. “Why?”

“Because this isn’t just DI tech. This is Drake Industries AI tech.”

Well now. Even he’d heard rumors about the kind of artificial intelligence DI was involved with. All military grade stuff too, the kind that required the highest of clearances to even be in the same room with it.

And now, here they were with what could be one of the most cutting-edge AIs in the system.

He sighed, not looking forward to poking through the bodies upstairs to see who it might have belonged to. “What have you done to it?”

Roy laughed, eyes a little wild as he slipped his shades back on. It didn’t matter that it was darker than the murk that constantly surrounded New Gotham, the man could see perfectly with them. “Charged the battery a bit. It was almost dead.”

“Are we gonna die if we turn this thing on?”

“Probably not.” Roy handed the disc to him. “At least, I’m 60% sure.”

Jason had lived through worse odds, but because he had a reputation to maintain, he still gave his friend shit. “Gee, that’s reassuring. And since you’re just so goddamned skilled at putting me at ease, I’m covering my face. The last thing we need is the Federation on our asses right now.” 

Roy shrugged and took a few steps back as Jason slid his oni mask on. It used the same lens technology as Roy’s shades. “Your funeral.”

“Yeah, it is.”

It wasn’t that Jason didn’t trust Roy. He knew in the coldest cockles of his heart that the man would never betray him. The problem was, his best friend was erratically brilliant and if what he said about this piece of tech was in anyway accurate, then they had a treasure trove of information and access into the inner workings of the Federation in their hands.

This was the edge the Outlaws needed to get back in the game. 

If he wasn’t, then chances were likely they were about to get fucked because that was the way their luck had been of late.

“Here goes nothing.” Jason pressed lightly on the activation sensor. 

The device illuminated and spun in his hand, glowing with a faint blue light as it hovered before them. A hologram appeared, about ten inches in height, of what appeared to be a human male. A rather attractive one at that, with fine features, sharp cheekbones, and an even sharper jaw. 

Whoever made the AI, they were definitely projecting a fantasy because no man could be that good looking. 

The hologram’s eyes narrowed. “I am TIM, designation 003-07-19. Who are you?”

Was that a bit of sass Jason’s ears detected? “Who do you think we are?” he asked instead, wanting to see what this thing could do.

A small HUD light up in front of TIM the AI. “Visual scans indicate Roy Harper, known as Arsenal, and Jason Todd, the Red Hood. Members of the antigovernment group the Outlaws.” Those eyes narrowed again. “Such an original name,” he muttered.

“Hey, who’re you to judge?” Jason shoved his mask up over his head because there was apparently no point in hiding behind it. With the light the AI was giving off, he could see just fine. “What kind of AI are you?”

“I am TIM,” the hologram replied. “Tactical Information Manager. Series 003-07-19.”

At least he answered direct questions. Why wasn’t he checking for clearance codes? Was this a private piece of tech rather than Navy? If so, whoever created this was a goddamned genius.

“Okay, TIM. Here’s the deal. We found you on board a ghost ship. There’s not a living soul out here except for me and Roy. You do what we tell you, we’ll bring you back to the inner ring.”

Eventually. Jason crossed his toes in his boots, a habit from childhood he never quite grew out of.

“My files indicate you are supposed to be on the New Arkham penal colony.”

Jason smirked. Looked like the government didn’t want to admit they’d fucked up and lost him. “Does it look like we’re on New Arkham? I don’t think so.”

“No, coordinates indicate we are orbiting Neptune.”

Looked like TIM’s data relays were connecting to the Starfire’s mainframe. Whether that was a good thing or not was for Roy to decide. Although, Kory would be pissed if they’d managed to fuck up her ship while she was undercover on the Titan.  “Yeah, it’s a real gas.” 

The humor was lost on the AI. “Did you escape then? Please tell me how so that I can update my files.” 

“Don’t think so, Timmy. If the government wants to believe they still have me all safe and sound in that hellhole, let them. It’s their fault they couldn’t keep me there in the first place.” Not that he ever made it there, but the AI didn’t need to know that.

“My name is TIM, not Timmy.” The AI sounded almost prissy. 

Jason leaned forward. “Your name is whatever I feel like calling ya.”

“Then that will make it hard to determine if you need my services or are speaking to the bots.”

“What the fuck kind of AI are you?”

“The best kind.”

--- Behind the HUD, the real Tim snickered as Todd’s posturing turned more and more into bewilderment the longer he bickered with TIM. Or maybe it was his makeshift uniform because who under the sun finds a man with an ice cream pin tacked onto his jacket intimidating? It even smiled. 

Still, this was a unique opportunity and one that he wasn’t about to waste. The Outlaws were working toward a similar goal as he and Oracle, even if they approached it from a different angle. How did that old adage go? The enemy of my enemy is my friend? 

Yes, he could make this work. Possibly even use these men to further his own goals and take out Armstrong. Wasn’t there a third person who was part of the main crew, a Tamaranean female? He’d have to check.

“The best kind,” Todd repeated, mocking while Harper snickered beside him. “Someone’s got a massively high opinion of himself.”

“Says the man who’s holding his life and jacket together with safety pins and duct tape,” Tim replied, and the AI repeated the words.

Todd’s face turned red and he pointed a gloved finger at TIM. “Listen here, TIM. I recognize DI tech when I see it. That shit’s top notch and so are you. And right now, you’re mine. So whatever backtalk you’ve got programmed into your behavioral patterns, forget it.” 

“I’m afraid you’re sadly mistaken,” the AI stated on its own. “Part of my programming includes the ability to verbally spar. My maker designed me so.”

Yes, and he was rather proud of that little fact. TIM was an extension of himself after all, designed to go where he could not.

“They programmed you to annoy the fuck outta people?”

“You are not my maker and I am not being used for my intended purpose. As such, anything I can do to complete my mission, I will.”

Harper whistled, low and slow. “Wow. I had no idea AI technology was this advanced. Those are subversive behavior patterns, right there.”

But Todd grinned slowly and held TIM higher. This close, Tim found himself face to face with a pair of stunning teal eyes, not red at all like the file stated. Were they his real color? He mentally smacked himself. Now was not the time to fixate on a pair of attractive eyes.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, I think we’re gonna get along just fine.”

The sad thing was, Tim was highly inclined to agree with him.

[villainshub]

𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖌𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖎 𝕿𝖔𝖒𝖚𝖗𝖆'𝖘 𝕲𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖑 𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘

these headcanons are my personal take on the character and may be subject to change.

𝖘𝖋𝖜

→ calculating, demanding, and determined, Tomura Shigaraki is a sinister young man whose life convictions and intelligence solidifies himself as one of the most dangerous villains in the world. → unlike many in his League, Tomura is not as laidback and whimsical as an individual. he takes his goal and the status of The League seriously, and takes failure very poorly. → Shigaraki dislikes small-talk. in fact, he outwardly hates it when people tip-toe around the subject at hand. it aggravates him. → will not speak of his past and will shut down any conversation asking about it. → he doesn’t really take care of himself. due to his warped view of the world and general indifference to society, he feels no need to “keep up appearances.” that being said, Kurogiri does advise him to become more aware of his health, so on occasion he’ll take a shower and change his clothes. he doesn’t really have a “scent” or “odor”, but his clothes have a musk to them. → he isn’t the most social person, but this does not mean he always isolates himself and wants to be alone. Shigaraki does feel at ease when he’s left alone, but strangely enough, he’s come to appreciate those that stay around him. → Shigaraki isn’t a fool; he’s able to read social cues very well, despite what people may think. he can read body language, tell when a person is conflicted psychologically, identify signs of a person’s quirk and their drawbacks, and more. he may or may not comment on it depending on the situation. this is but one of many abilities he uses to his advantage. → hates chess, but doesn’t mind playing cards. → loves dark humour. → enjoys playing video games and is a completionist even if it annoys him. he loves games where he’s able to choose his own allegiance, but rpgs tend to drag on for him because of their length. Shigaraki is terrible at visual novel-based, idol-producing or dating sims games because, while he is intelligent, is very inexperienced when establishing romantic relationships. → he’s incredibly good at most games he plays, but in terms of competitive play, he’s that guy. yes; Shigaraki is toxic. he knows the game inside and out, calls people out on making terrible calls, finds it amusing to troll people, and is a know-it-all. what makes it worse is that he ranks top of multiple leaderboards, and is a foul-mouthed player who gets reported repeatedly. he doesn’t rage nearly as much as he used to when he was younger, but it does happen. → has a pile of black clothes on the floor in his room. it can be very disorganized or relatively clean; it just depends on his mood that day. → prefers to wear all black.  → though he has his moments, Shigaraki has matured and continues to. he doesn’t react to things that would agitate him as much as when he was younger. some things that would previously cause him to lash out, he’ll simply stare and be silent. → should not be taken lightly in any combat scenario. while he is not as muscular as other heroes, he’s very durable and doesn’t react to pain as easily as others; not to mention that Shigaraki is incredibly fast. remember when he appeared in front of Tsuyu Asui when he attacked USJ? well, he’s faster than that now, so don’t think one can hit him so easily. → loves to watch an opponent struggle before he finishes them off. → does not like people touching him. has grown with the idea / experience that people fear him, so unless it’s Shigaraki Senior™ patting his shoulder or head, he’ll instinctively swat them away. it’s not advised to pester him or try to “break down his walls.” → truth be told, Tomura is not interested in anything romantic. he feels he isn’t deserving of love, but refuses to let others pity him because of it. his pride will never admit this, but secretly, even though he’s yearned for companionship and support for so many years, he sees himself as incompatible and wretched. he’s incredibly closed off and dismisses the concept, and hates being reminded of it. “I will become the Symbol of Destruction, anyway, so what’s the point in that?” → if, by some miracle, Tomura does find interest in someone, hoo boy. they will never know at first, and only Kurogiri would pick up on it in the early stages. he’ll be incredibly secretive and strategic in how he gathers information: discovering their likes and dislikes, observing their movements and routine, recognizing those they associate with, etc. he will stay just out of their vision and act as a bystander, or receive information from trusted people as to your whereabouts. → Tomura is unsure what to do with his feelings as they continue to grow. though he is a villain, he is still a young twenty-year-old deprived of certain emotions and feelings, so as he taps into the deepest recesses of his mind, he becomes increasingly more uncomfortable with himself. → it is not in him to hurt them purposefully and is mindful of who they are around, but is not foreign to jealousy and possessiveness.  → Shigaraki would prefer to confront them when they are alone, but not necessarily in a “I love you and want to be with you,” way; moreso a long, drawn-out stare and an attempt to get physically closer to them. true to himself, he’d insult them and demand they speak to him. → assuming they chose to speak to him, he wouldn’t go deep into what was drawing him towards them. he’d say something cryptic and threatening like, “People like you are the reason I want to destroy everything I see,” and upon realizing that was not the right thing to say because of their facial expression, would become silent.  → would never say “I love you.” → may just take their hands and place them against his skin to calm him. it may seem weird at first, but it helps.

𝖓𝖘𝖋𝖜

→ isn’t opposed to a strictly physical relationship, but is not always consistent.  → is very shy when it comes to kissing. mainly due to the fact that Tomura has very little experience and isn’t exactly proud with his incompetence. he will avoid being close face-to-face for some time, but will gradually ease into it as they are patient with him. will become crass if they laugh at his sloppiness. → it is very difficult to connect with Tomura emotionally. because he has so many barriers and doesn’t view love or affection healthily, it will take a very long time for him to become vulnerable, if at all. he may deject, but deep down he would be grateful anyone would want to get to know him. → once he becomes completely trusting of a person physically, he starts to memorize their sweet spots and which parts of them are most sensitive. not always sexually, but just to explore them. he’s very careful and is very interested in feeling skin that isn’t his. → he will mark them in places others will be forced to see. the neck especially. Tomura loves seeing them embarrassed. it adds to his ego. → has days and weeks where he is constantly frustrated, so much to the point where he’s leaving to be off on his own because it hurts. feeling a hand or mouth over where he needs to release is a very quick way for him to take someone right then and there. → early on he can become undone relatively quickly, especially if its great oral. → prefers receiving over giving. → rarely likes to submit, as he loves being in control.  → loves for his partner to surprise him by dressing up as one of his favourite characters. bonus points if they’re unable to escape and tied up for him to play with. → loves a nice chest.  → yes, there will be days where he will sit there and demand his partner to let him grope their breasts. → days where he was unsuccessful or very upset, he will no doubt become aggressive and make a mess of them.  → loves the thrill of wrapping his hands around their neck and choking them. hearing their desperate whines, their sobs for air, watching them cling to his wrists, seeing their eyes rolling to the back of their head. a twisted grin of pleasure will overtake him. → loves dirty talk and insulting his partner. calling them outside their name and whispering how filthy of a person they are for wanting him inside of them, it gives him such a high. → loves mirror sex and making sure they look at themselves as they take him in completely.  → has heightened endurance, so will go for multiple rounds to get their needed fix. Tomura wants them to be a complete mess once he’s done with them. they need to know that he is the only one that can make them feel that way.

[recentanimenews]

We Will Never Escape Neon Genesis Evangelion

I loved Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance. The bombastic fight scenes. Shiro Sagisu’s epic choirs. The careful game of hot and cold the film plays with viewers, teasing you with happy endings only to spit in your face. Most of all, I was excited to be seeing Neon Genesis Evangelion’s final form. After the compromises of TV Evangelion and its follow-ups, after Anno’s years of depression and anxiety, here at last (I thought) was the beginning of the end of a story that had haunted so many people’s lives.

  Years later, I watched 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo with a friend. I was crushed. This was not the Evangelion I knew. Every character but Shinji had transformed into hateful, incommunicative ciphers — except for Kaworu, whose death at the end of this film is arguably even more shocking and graphic than in the original TV series. The fights had become overblown, weightless parodies of Evangelion’s excess. What struck me most of all, though, was how much of the film’s world contradicted the previous movie’s set-up. I was expecting that Shinji’s actions of at the end of 2.0 would have dire consequences, but not that it would create an entirely new universe of lore, weirdness, and unsolved questions that made Evangelion’s earlier status quo irrelevant.

  “What will become of Evangelion now?” I cried to myself.

  I was a fool.

    In the Summer of 2019, Netflix put Neon Genesis Evangelion up for streaming for the first time. This was a huge deal, as Evangelion up to that point had been one of the most important and influential anime series you could only really watch through piracy or via expensive DVDs. Friends across Twitter celebrated. Online journalists wrote lengthy pieces praising the series and how it changed their lives forever. It didn’t matter if you had never heard of Evangelion, or if you were an Evangelion obsessive (or naysayer), everyone was thrilled to rediscover it together.

  Then the bonhomie disappeared in an instant. There were excellent aspects of the new release — particularly Casey Mingillo’s work as Shinji in the new dub. But other bits seemed off. Why was Shinji referred to as the “Third Children” rather than the more natural “Third Child?” Couldn’t Netflix bothered to have brought back Tiffany Grant to voice Asuka? Most annoyingly of all, an exchange between Shinji and Kaworu was changed in such a way that removed valuable subtext. Rather than say “I love you” to Shinji, Kaworu says “you are worthy of my grace.” For a series known for its complications and thorny character relationships, I found it bizarre that the team handling the series would choose to remove that bit of nuance.

  Anime fans argued back and forth for days over why these decisions were made. In the end, the answer seemed to be: Anno and his friends at Khara believed the earlier subtitles were not faithful enough to the original script, and so they insisted on accuracy at the expense of flow. The original ADV release continues to exist on expensive DVDs. The Netflix version is closer to the true vision of Evangelion, but perhaps farther from ours. Could Anno’s vision of Evangelion be inferior to the one his fans had obsessively crafted over years of urban legends, fan theories, and obsessive study? As people grasped in vain for the promised land of Eva, I couldn’t help but think: once more, we’d fallen into the trap.

    When people talk about Neon Genesis Evangelion, there are certain lines repeated so many times they become clichés. “None of the religious symbolism means anything.” “Why won’t Shinji get in the robot?” “The characters are all so unlikeable and weird.” “The ending is such a disappointment.” “Compared to the TV ending, End of Evangelion is a monstrosity.” “Compared to the TV series and the film, the Rebuild films are pared-down and too market-tested.” There’s one theme that ties these disparate statements together: Evangelion is a mess. And it absolutely is. In fact, there are countless other anime from the '90s you could argue are even better than Evangelion. Cowboy Bebop has great music. Serial Experiments Lain is a weird horror classic. Heck, if you want a series with meaningful symbolism, great visuals, and a rollercoaster of a story, Revolutionary Girl Utena is right there!

  But there’s something about Evangelion that keeps pulling people back. There’s a reason fans were excited when it was announced Evangelion was coming to Netflix. There’s a reason that people continue to debate aspects of the series to this day. There’s a reason Hideaki Anno himself keeps coming back to the well, again and again, grappling with the story that made his name on the world stage and that he still can’t escape from. Everyone who knows and loves Evangelion, from forum lurkers to aspiring animators to the creators of Evangelion themselves, are caught in the show’s gravitational pull as much as they know that pull can be harmful. I’m caught in it too. We go around and around, and ask ourselves, “What is Evangelion about?” Does Anno know the answer?

  Here’s what I think Evangelion is about: Evangelion is a trap. It’s a loose end. There is no final, comprehensive answer. The story will always be unresolved. I was wrong to think Rebuild would or should give me the answers I wanted. Your favorite Evangelion fanfiction will never be definite. Hideaki Anno and his staff may never be satisfied. The story of Evangelion is the story of Charlie Brown endlessly running at Lucy’s football. It’s both Ultraman and Devilman. And that is why Evangelion is as popular as it is. To engage in some pop psychology, as Evangelion itself loves to do: The world we live in is full of things that seem incomprehensible to us. Whether intended or not, the universe of Evangelion is full of those loose ends. So we worry at them like we’re trying to dislodge a tooth. It’s painful, but something in you wants to get it done. To know the taste of blood.

    Sometime soon, the final Rebuild of Evangelion movie will be released. Perhaps it will give us an ending. More likely, it will raise more questions. Some of my friends will be upset. Right now, though, I’m at peace. Evangelion will never make me happy. But my friends and I will be arguing about the show until we are dead. Maybe that’s enough.

  What do you think of the Rebuild movies? What do you think about Evangelion? Will we ever stop thinking about Evangelion? Let us know in the comments!

  Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he is not watching this video, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can follow him on Twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[benthelastskywalker]

The Bendemption Arc in TROS

A lot of people take issue with Bendemption and how it was handled in The Rise of Skywalker. “It was rushed.” and “It came out of nowhere.” are just a couple of the complaints I’ve seen. There’s also the “JJ retconned Kylo’s character development from The Last Jedi!” complaint as well. I can see where these people are coming from, but I personally think Bendemption is one of the few things TROS did well. Was it perfect? No, but it wasn’t as sloppy as some would say.

The problem, I think, is that many believe Kylo’s redemption arc started in TROS. This is not true. Kylo’s redemption arc has been building across all three movies (starting with his killing of Han as that leads to the guilt he feels for the rest of the trilogy) and he is already on the path to redemption at the start of the 3rd film. 

Let’s start with Kylo’s mask. He’s not wearing it at the start of the movie, in fact, he doesn’t even have it repaired until after his meeting with Palpatine. This might not seem like a big deal, until you remember that a year has passed since the end of The Last Jedi. This means that Kylo has gone a whole year without wearing it. When you consider what that mask meant and represented to Kylo, being like Vader, it is a big deal that he hasn’t put it back on even though there was no one to stop him from doing so.

“Yes, but he does put it back on!” Yes, he does, but I don’t believe it is because JJ is retconning his character development here or because he’s backsliding. As I said earlier, he doesn’t put it back on until after he comes face to face with Palpatine. Why? I believe he puts the mask back on to play a part. The Emperor told him to kill Rey, and Kylo is trying to convince not only the Emperor, but the rest of the First Order that he is going to do just that. The mask is a symbol. A symbol not only of Vader, but a symbol of who he was before he took it off. Kylo puts the mask back on to try and convince others that he is still that same person, even though he is not.

It is also important to note that he takes it off again when he and Rey finally come face to face in the desert (I forget the name of the planet) as he did in The Force Awakens. He isn’t trying to hide who he is from Rey. He wants her to see him as he is. Of course, once he returns to the Star Destroyer he puts the mask back on, to once, again try and fool the FO, but then removes it for the finale time when he and Rey face each other on the Star Destroyer. After that, the mask is never seen again.

Then there’s the opening sequence in which we see him plowing down a bunch of people on Mustafar. According to The Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary (and this is another disservice of the movie that it is never mentioned) that those weren’t innocent people. They were Vader cultists. So not only was Kylo not killing innocents, but people who actively worship his grandfather, the grandfather that just a short while ago, Kylo himself looked up to and wanted to emulate. This is thematically important. If he still desired to be completely like Vader, why strike down Vader’s followers? Kylo may have convinced himself that he still wants that, but in truth his actions say otherwise. By killing Vader’s followers, Kylo is killing off that part of himself that desired to be like Vader.

Also, Kylo makes it clear that it isn’t that he doesn’t want to return back to the Light, but that he believes it is too late for him to do so. He says this twice, once when talking to Rey and again when talking to Han. Kylo has come a long way from murdering his own father to try and becoming strong in the Dark to actively wanting to return to the Light, but feeling like his choices prevent him from doing so.

“I see through the cracks in your mask. You can’t stop seeing what you did to your father. You’re haunted by it.” Rey says this in The Rise of Skywalker. JJ may have retconned some of Rian Johnson’s work, but Kylo’s guilt over murdering Han is not one of them. The guilt is still there. I have no doubt in my mind, it is his guilt that makes Kylo believe it is too late for him to be redeemed. Which is why I love that is Han, and not force ghost Anakin as some have said it should have been, that Kylo sees and talks to. Kylo needed that closer with his father in order to let Kylo Ren die once and for all and for Ben Solo to be reborn.

[certified-kingofnewyork]

Prologue

In case you’re wondering why you were tagged, hello! my main blog is @practically-peter-parker​ and this is just my new newsies side blog :)

Notes: -This is a series! It’s based entirely off of a play called Almost, Maine by John Cariani, so for starters, I didn’t come up with this plotline/story, I am simply making it newsies cause that’s what I do best :) -This is part 1 out of 11! (including an interlogue and an epilogue) - A bit of this story will have to be altered to accommodate the newsies (you’ll know what I mean if you’re familiar with the show) - This entire story has a lotta symbolism in it, and of course I’m keeping it in, so if things seem weird, that’s the symbolism my friend -I’m aiming to upload one part every day so I hope I stick to that!

Word Count: 1.5K Warning(s): None :)

---

It was a cold and brittle night, snow was slowly piling up on the ground, there was just enough from previous nights and tonight to make some snowballs. Two boot tracks lead out of JoJo’s old ranch and to a small bench that had been sitting in his backyard for ages. Together that’s where they sat, he and his girlfriend, Smalls. They had brushed the snow off the old wooden bench, leaving small piles sitting next to either side of it. Despite the cold that was slowly taking over them, evident in the way Smalls’ nose was bright red, they both sat on opposite ends of the bench. Silently gazing up at the night sky. The previous conversation had dwindled down merely minutes before, and now they sat in a comfortable silence, though there was an unseen debate going on in Smalls’ thoughts as she kept stealing quick glances at JoJo.

“JoJo I-” She started, then stopped herself, gaze traveling down to her boots instead of the star-filled sky. JoJo’s concentration was slowly brought down to Smalls, a tiny smile pulling at his lips as he took in the sight of her. Red nose and rosy cheeks, she looked absolutely beautiful. Especially with the way her short brown hair came out of her warm winter hat, and her brown eyes seemed to sparkle in the moonlight.

“What?” He asked quietly, sensing that Smalls was a little on edge, which threw him off. Smalls wasn’t normally like this.

“I’m just-” She paused again, then looked to him with a warm smile. Quite suddenly, JoJo felt a burst of warmth in his chest, absolutely smitten.

“-Am having a nice time.” She finally finished, her words clearly genuine, but JoJo could see that it wasn’t quite what she wanted to say.

“I’m glad, Smalls,”

“I always do with you.” She admitted, which just made the warmth in JoJo’s chest spread.

“I’m glad,” His voice was soft, quiet, almost as if it wasn’t quite all there. With that, they both look back up at the sky, taking in the moon and stars. The way they sparkled and shone, JoJo could truly sit out here all night despite the sickness that would ensue. Smalls was still trying to get a message across, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it just yet, instead she said, “And the stars are just-” Amazing? Awesome? Indescribably beautiful- 

“I didn’t know you knew all that stuff!” She exclaimed, referring back to the previous conversation, JoJo had been teaching her about constellations, who knew he knew that?

“Well it’s not-” like I know much about them- “It’s just some stuff my dad taught me.” Then they fell into another comfortable silence, but for Smalls it was slowly becoming more and more tense. Smalls took a few audible breaths, as if trying to calm herself down. Her eyes flicked back down to her boots, then her hands, which she had been anxiously fiddling with the ends of her mittens, and finally she looked to JoJo. She swallowed, lips pursed into a tight line.

“JoJo…” She stopped again, growing more and more visibly anxious. Once more, JoJo looked over to her, his smile faltering as he fumbled to try and figure out what was wrong. A concerned look crossed his face for merely a moment before it went back to normal.

“Yeah?” He asked, not sure what else to say or do, not sure how to close the never ending distance between them. Smalls sighed, closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again.

“I love you.”

JoJo froze, even his own breathing seemed to stop. He didn’t respond, not for a long while, he just sat there, thinking and considering. Smalls loved him. Could he even begin to comprehend just what that meant? He felt his heart swell up, the tips of his fingers becoming tingly. JoJo looked away to hide the wide smile that was quickly spreading across his face, and the blush that was rising to his cheeks.

Smalls on the other hand, look deflated, crushed. JoJo hadn’t responded, he didn’t love her back. Smalls knew she shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have been vulnerable like that. He must think she’s a fool now, a fool for loving him. She knew it was too soon, why didn’t she just listen to her brain? Why did her heart have to win every war. Why did JoJo have to steal it in the first place. Smalls quickly wiped at her eyes, trying desperately not to show how much this was hurting. Her hands tightly gripped the edge of the bench as she leaned forward, her gaze fixated on the snow below her feet.

“Well…” JoJo began, finally breaking the silence. Smalls looked up at him, forcing a smile.

“I love you too,” And he meant it, he did love her. And he had for a while now. Smalls’ smile quickly turned genuine, absolute surprise filled her facial features.

“Oh!” Was all she could manage in that moment, unable to articulate just how happy this made her feel. A happy shiver passed through her and she let out another sigh, this time it was out of relief.

“Oh are you cold?” JoJo was suddenly worried and concerned again, his eyes flicked down to Smalls’ winter coat, “We can go inside if you want-”

“No! No no no, I just wanna sit, like this. Close.” Though they weren’t even close at all, still sat on opposite ends of the bench.

“I feel so close to you tonight,” She murmured, taking a pause, “It’s nice to be close to you, JoJo.” She slid down the bench, a bit closer to JoJo, but still not close enough.

“It’s safe.” She slid closer, but still kept a distance. JoJo seemed to have no protests about this, he just let Smalls take her time.

“I like being close. Like this.” Another pause, “I mean, I can think of other ways of being close to you-” JoJo let out a surprised giggle at that, his cheeks flaring up again, “-but that’s not...I like this right now. This kind of close. Right next to you.” Now she was right next to JoJo, pressed up against him and her head resting on his shoulder. 

“You know, right now, I think I’m about as close to you as I can possibly be,” She hummed, finally finished talking. JoJo let out a sigh and relaxed, trying to string words together in his mind in a desperate attempt to think of a response.

“Well… not really,” JoJo began, still unsure of how he should word this. Smalls sat up and lifted her head, looking up at JoJo. She looked confused, puzzled.

“What?” JoJo was still struggling with his words, so he waited a few moments before continuing.

“Not really. I mean, if you think about it in a different way, you’re not really close to me at all. You’re really actually about as far away from me as you can possibly be. I mean, if you think about it, technically- if you’re assuming the world is round, like a ball-” He stopped and bent over, gathering a bunch of snow into his hands and packing it into a snowball, he needed a visual because it seemed that his words were failing him “-like a snowball- the farthest away you can be from somebody is if you’re sitting right next to them. See, if I’m here-” JoJo pointed to a spot on the snowball, leaving a mark “-and you’re here-” He poked the spot right next to his first mark “-then…” he drags his finger the longways around the snowball, connecting it to the first mark “... That’s far.”

Smalls took a moment to process what he was trying to say, suddenly looking disheartened and crushed all over again.

“Yeah.” Her voice was flat and emotionless, doing her best to keep it from wavering. Smalls slid across the bench again, on the opposite end from JoJo. Seeing that Smalls hadn’t taken it the way he meant, JoJo began to panic and rack his brain for a way to recover.

“But… now you’re closer,” His voice was weak and quiet, almost afraid that he had said the wrong thing again. Smalls gaze traveled across the space between them, this was true if looked at from JoJo’s perspective.

“Yeah…” She stood, taking a few steps away from the bench, still looking back at JoJo.

“And closer…” JoJo leans forward, wanting so desperately to follow her as she continued to take more steps away from JoJo. But he just sat and watched as she turned and started walking away.

“And closer… and closer and closer…” She continued to walk, looking back at JoJo with a confused expression, but not stopping, Now JoJo was standing, watching her leave.

“And closer and closer and closer…” There was a hint of hope hidden in his voice, but that didn’t stop Smalls. She kept going, and eventually the moonlight no longer illuminated her, and JoJo was alone. He debated following her footsteps, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Instead, he simply sat back down on the bench, sending a sad look to the snowball still held in his hand. How could he have possibly gotten himself into this mess?

---

Tag List: @jackie-think-about-it @race-ace @pineappapizza @revolutioninthesewers

[timeforelfnonsense]

Take a Shot

“There’s only a handful of people in this world that I actually like. You may or may not be one of them.”  

Alistair x Mahariel

Pre relationship 

Fluff

Alistair sat on the other side of the fire watching as Slyvas carefully fletched her arrows. He dragged a wet stone across the long edge of his sword and watched her carefully check the balance of the arrow in her hand before adding it to the pile at her feet. She had been warming up to him, slowly but surely. They would chat a bit on the road, he’d ask her questions or crack a joke. He loved to make her smile, the world was grim and her laughter was like sunshine. He looked up from his sword to steal a glance of her. He found himself doing that more and more lately. Her brows knitted together, wrinkling the thin rust colored line of her tattoos that ran down the bridge of her nose; he had noticed they always did when she was thinking. Her soft curls were falling into her angled face from the messy bun on the top of her head. She attempted to blow them out of the way, her hand occupied with her work. Nimble fingers adjusted each arrow with thoughtful attention. She looked up, her stormy eyes locking with his. A raised  eyebrow- a wordless can I help you.  

“So… Do you normally make your own arrows?”

Not his smoothest recovery but it would due.

 “I learned when I was still a hunting apprentice, on a long hunt it’s a useful skill.”

“Could you teach me?” He asked, laying his sword down before scooting next to her.

“I suppose I could, however I don’t see how the skill is of much use to you.”

“I’m hurt Sylvas! I could be a great archer. Perhaps I just don’t want to make you and Leliana feel bad.”

She finished the arrow in her hand, placing it and the rest of the pile into her quiver.  She grabbed her bow from it’s resting place beside her, hands gently plucking at the tight string.

“Alright Shem, show me what you can do.”

He followed her to a tree a short walk from the camp, its branches twisted and dead. She stood a distance from her target, pulling the bow from her pack. She lossed three arrows in rapid succession. The brown and white feathers of their felching a blur as they whizzed past. Each landed in the old tree with heavy thunk, one after the other. The wood around them splintering slightly, the arrows still wobbling from the impact. She gave him a smug grin before tossing him the bow.

 It was lighter than he had expected, he rolled it over in his hand, the wood was strange- almost blue in color. his thumb ran over a symbol carved into, the constellation Fervanis. This bow wasn’t like the one Leliana carried, it wasn’t like any weapon he’d seen before. It sang, almost like lyrium, if you listened closely. A perfect weapon for Sylvas, other worldly and beautiful.

“I don’t know about this,” He started to hand her the bow back, “This bow is...special. I don’t want to break it.”

“Alistair” She pushed the bow back to him, “This bow is made of ironbark by my clan’s craft master. It would take an ogre to snap it and that’s debatable.”

“Okay, okay, stand back. I hope you are ready to be amazed.”

Alistair took the bow up, Sylvas handing him an arrow. It was shaky in his hand the string resistant as he pulled back. When he let go the arrow softly fell a only a foot or so away in the grass. His cheeks warmed and she tried to conceal her giggle.

“Were you amazed?” His voice was sheepish, “I think I’ll stick to my sword though. Can’t put you out of a job.”

“Ha ha, very funny. Here,” She walked behind him placing slender hands on his arms, “hold the bow like this. Now lower your elbow on the drawing arm. Good, you got it.”

“Like this?” He turned a bit to look at her, eyes linger a moment too long, as they always seemed to when she was around.

“Yes, but it helps if you look at the target” She rolled her eyes and tapped him on the cheek before pointing back at the tree, “Now close your eyes,” She instructions slowly lifting her arms away from him, “Listen to the wind, visualize your target, then open your eyes and fire!”

This time the arrow flew past the tree crashing into the woods with a distant snap. Alistair winced at the far off crack, pulling his shoulder tight to his ears,  

His face went bright red, “Your arrow! I’ll go fetch it for you, if you’d like?” 

“Don’t worry about it,” She consoled, “Some of us are just more suited to elegant, ranged weaponry and some of us hit things with swords.”  

“Than I guess we make a good team. You with your weird magic bow and me with my glorified stick and shield.”

He earned another laugh, her nose crinkled and her fierce beauty changed into something softer but no less enchanting.

Nerves like bolt of electricity hit him when he felt her rest her head against him. She never had seemed the affectionate sort, always guarded and just out of reach. She just stayed like that for a while, silent but close. He wondered if she could hear his hear trying to escape his chest. He placed a careful arm around her shoulders. He wondered if she’d recoil. Instead she tucked herself under his arm and let out a soft breath. 

“You know,” She hesitated, looking up at him for a moment, “There’s only a handful of people in this world that I actually like. You may or may not be one of them.”  

He was blushing like a fool and he wasn’t exactly sure what to say. He rubbed soft circles on her arm. Part of his mind was begging to blurt out how he felt about her. The other part was terrified if he did she’d be lost to him forever.

 “Thank you,” He pulled her closer to his side, “I think I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He looked down at her, fidgeting with a loss curl, her eyes fixed on the ground. Strange to see her this way, the pragmatic, self-assured persona peeling away. Maybe she was as nervous as him? Though he doubted that.

“Well, I’m bad at stuff like that but there it was. How about we pretend this little conversation never happened and we go back to camp?”  

“Not a chance,” He chucked, “let’s stay awhile.”

[ckret2]

The Door In Petrex’s Quarters

So there’s a cool new blog on Tumblr called @tfspeedwriting where they post a bunch of prompts on Saturday and you choose one and writing something! There’s basically no rule except that you have to do it in under two hours. So anyway this took me about four hours, which were spread out over a total of ten hours.

I’m good at this game.

(If you're on mobile, the readmore malfunctions, and you gotta scroll past all this, I'm sorry for your suffering.)

Prompt: Pick a music playlist on a device of your choice. The second line of the third song is your prompt. (“Song 3”—I swear the title’s a coincidence—by Stone Sour: “So I'll keep you close, and keep my secret safe.”) Continuity: made-up Shattered Glass AU for IDW continuity Ship: Prowl/Tarantulas, but you’ll wish it wasn’t. Wordcount: 5200-ish Summary: They say that Petrex, leader of the Autobot Justice Division, can’t feel love. Petrex prefers it that way. Or: how Prowl tamed his pet scientist. Tags: Angst, abusive relationship, all hurt no comfort.

They say there's a doorway in Petrex's private quarters where his berth is supposed to be.

It's an empty metal doorframe. The space where there should be a door is filled by cement mixed with strange, dark, multicolor rubble. They say that Petrex sleeps on it, curled up on his side, a hand pressed against the surface of the shut doorway like he wants to press through to the other side.

They say the door still works. They say it goes somewhere. They say all you have to do is turn it on.

They say a lot of things about Petrex.

They say the reason that he wears a cold white Autobrand-shaped mask is because he has a cold white Autobrand-shaped face underneath, and that he'd rather people think he's hiding his expressions than let them know he doesn't have any expressions at all. He is as icy, and as hard, and as unmovable, and as implacable as marble; and Terminus save your ember if you dare try to chip that marble.

They say that nobody has ever joined the Autobot Justice Division willingly—nobody except for Petrex, its founder, its leader, and its symbol. They say that every member of the Autobot Justice Division is someone who tried to flee or betray the Autobots, but who had potential, had a use; and so, as their punishment, instead of adding them to the AJD's list for retribution, Petrex added them to the AJD itself, chained them in service to himself, and turned them into essential cogs in the machine that grinds up other criminals and turncoats.

They say he's not a person, but a drone, a machine designed for order and logic and laws, capable only of understanding emotions in a theoretical sense, and then only far enough to determine how he might make use of them.

Petrex doesn't deny anything anyone says about him.

"Mesothulas. Mesothulas!"

Mesothulas started, almost dropping his welder. Terminus below, he wasn't expecting Prowl so soon—he wasn't supposed to come for another two weeks, was he? Why was he early? Had something gone wrong, had his latest offering malfunctioned? Part of him hoped desperately that it had; the rest of him dreaded the consequences of such a failure. Maybe Prowl had forgotten their schedule and come early? Mesothulas had never known him to do so before, but oh, if he had, if he was expecting Mesothulas's next work to be done today and it wasn't— Or, even worse, what if Prowl was right on time, what if Mesothulas had forgotten the schedule—

"I'm here!" He dropped the welder to the floor, ran for the stairs to the lab entryway, skidded an about face to go turn off the welder, and sprinted for the stairs—woe to him if he kept Prowl waiting a second too long. "I'm here, I'm here, I—I'm so sorry, Prowl, I didn't know you were coming. I was working, I'm sorry."

Prowl was standing, waiting, in the middle of the entryway. (Ostaros was so close to him, just a few feet to Prowl's left. Mesothulas's plating crawled—he shouldn't have left Ostaros out in the open like that. What if Prowl spotted him, decided after all that work that he didn't like the result? If anything happened to him—) His helmet was already off, tucked under one arm, and his red optics were so bright they were pink, nearly the same shade as Mesothulas's armor. Was he mad or happy? Mesothulas couldn't tell from the top of the stairs.

"I should hope you were working," Prowl said. "You've only got a couple of weeks left to finish the guilt extractor." So Mesothulas hadn't forgotten their schedule—that was a relief. But then why was he here?

"Yes, I know, I—I'm right on schedule, it'll be done in time." He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and waited, his heels pressed up against the bottom step, not taking a step closer.

And then Prowl walked toward him. Mesothulas's ember jumped into his throat. The way Prowl moved—even in armor—Mesothulas could practically visualize how his joints moved underneath it. There was such control, such confidence, such precision in his motions; he radiated such strength that Mesothulas felt weaker just for being in his presence. Everything Prowl did made him feel weaker. His fuel tank fluttered, his ember guttered, his fans sputtered.

When he was alone, he told himself that it was fear—very rational fear, for more than once he and his slipped schedule had been on the receiving end of the infamous wrath of the Autobot Justice Division's Petrex.

("I'll teach you to keep on schedule," Prowl had said before; and it was both an indulgent offer to take him under his wing and a threat. "Every cog ticks in time around me. I make sure of it.")

Yes—Mesothulas told himself the weakness he felt around Prowl was born of fear. But when he was in Prowl's presence, he knew that was only half true.

When he was with Prowl, he was almost desperate to impress him.

Words tumbled out of him: "I'm—I'm almost done with the guilt extractor, actually. Ahead of schedule." It was risky business to tell Prowl when he was ahead of schedule. On the one hand, yes, he'd be immediately gratified with Prowl's approval—and oh, when Prowl approved of him, it was heavenly. For a moment, on the timepiece that was Prowl's carefully-wound life, Mesothulas was a jewel mounted in the center of its face, sparkling in the light of Prowl's delight. But Prowl never forgot a promise; and when Mesothulas promised a faster delivery, Prowl updated his expectations accordingly. If he fell behind again, it meant Prowl's wrath was twice as hot; because now, not only had he failed to meet Prowl's schedule, he'd also lied about getting ahead and maliciously stolen some of Prowl's approval.

(So Prowl made him feel, anyway. Sometimes Mesothulas nearly believed it.)

But the way Prowl's optics lit up made Mesothulas immediately forget the consequences. The consequences would come later. Today—now—Prowl's arms were outstretched, and he said, voice a little louder, "That's wonderful!" Prowl's tone of voice never changed; it only got louder or softer, and either direction could be good or bad; but whichever direction it went, it could make Mesothulas's ember flicker with fear or blaze with joy and longing for more. "I can expect it sooner, then. Would you say by the end of the week."

Without stopping to think, Mesothulas said, "Without a doubt," and immediately felt faint; although he wasn't sure whether it was from the monumental scale of this promise, or from the way Prowl's arms wrapped around him: one pressed to his upper back, pulling Mesothulas's face against the chest of his armor; and one pressed lower on his back, so suggestively low that Mesothulas's armor burned where Prowl's fingers touched him. Mesothulas's own fingers burned as well, itching with the urge to wrap his arms around the thick waist of Prowl's rad suit—but to do so without explicit permission was dangerous. Mesothulas had courted enough danger by promising the guilt extractor so soon.

"Good," Prowl said—his voice was so soft now, and Mesothulas's legs were weak. "I'll hold you to it."

Mesothulas's ember filled with dread, and he wanted even more to wrap himself around Prowl—not just physically, but spiritually, to bind himself to his... to his perverse muse, the walking inspiration for all the most wondrous things he'd ever created.

"But that's not what I'm here about."

... And the most horrible things. He tensed with the urge to pull back, but couldn't. Not until Prowl was ready to let him go.

"Oh, I've—" Mesothulas spoke quickly, "—I've been working on another project too, since I'm getting so far ahead on the guilt extractor—you'll be pleased, I'm sure—it's the one you thought up, to make use of all those scraps of reality I've got sitting around—"

"I'm sure I will be pleased." Prowl finally let go, and stepped back, and Mesothulas wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. "But that's not what I'm here for, either." His head dipped down slightly, and not for the first time Mesothulas marveled through his fear at how much Prowl could express through nothing but the tilt of his head and the way his gaze came through his mask. "And I know a distraction when I hear it."

"I—I'm sorry, I just thought you'd want to—"

"Mesothulas."

"Yes! Forgive me! Y-you were saying? You're here about—?"

"Carpessa."

Mesothulas's fuel tank twisted. He had heard of the neutral city. He'd never been there before. He had no connection to it. Prowl had never mentioned it before. Mesothulas knew exactly what happened to it. "Th... The bomb...?"

"Worked flawlessly," Prowl said, and the bottom of Mesothulas's twisted fuel tank dropped out completely. "I don't know how you managed to cobble together a bomb out of pathetic Decepticon parts that has such explosive capacity, and yet can still be mistaken for something they made—but I must hand it to you, everyone was fooled. Even the Prime is marveling at their unanticipated savagery. This will throttle their chances to get any interstellar allies rallying behind their cause, when they can't play the poor innocent victims. A job well done, Mesothulas. For the most part."

Every word was an icicle through Mesothulas's ember. It took him several tries to choke out the word, "S-survivors?"

Prowl hesitated. "Too many," he said. "There were less than fifteen hundred fatalities. That's why I'm here, to discuss my requirements for the next model. Which I'd like you to get to work on as soon as possible. I was going to give you an extension on the guilt extractor so you could begin to work on the bomb immediately, but if you think you can be done in a week, then you can finish it first and get to work on the next bomb—"

"No."

He hadn't planned it. He hadn't meant to say it. And if he had the choice, he'd rather throw himself on Terminus's teeth than spend one more nanosecond watching in horror as Prowl's head slowly tilted down, and his optics blazed brighter.

Quietly, Prowl said, "No."

For a moment, the lab was so quiet, Mesothulas could hear Ostaros's vents cycling air. Ostaros. Never mind what Prowl might do to him—what might he do to Ostaros? Prowl could rip Mesothulas to shreds, but the mere thought of him scratching Ostaros's soft paint, the enamel hadn't even cured yet—

"Well," Prowl said, just as quietly, "if you'd rather keep to the original schedule, then—take the extension on the guilt extractor, and work on it and the bomb simultaneously..."

For a moment, the heavens opened up, a beam of light shone down on Prowl, and a holy chorus played. Prowl didn't offer second chances. Never. The Autobot Justice Division culled and amputated all limbs of the Autobot Army that no longer served what Petrex considered to be their appropriate purpose. Weakness was to be eradicated. Mesothulas should have been honored to be so indulged after wavering from the path Prowl had assigned him. All he had to do was accept it, and get back to work. Continue singing the songs his muse wrote for him. All would be well and beautiful, and if Mesothulas was good, every once in a while Prowl would touch him as kindly as he had a moment ago.

And there would be more Carpessas.

No. No, he couldn't, not again. Damn whatever Prowl might do to him—to them—oh, Ostaros, Mesothulas is so sorry—but Mesothulas and Ostaros were only two people. How many had died in Carpessa? He couldn't let it happen again.

His voice was barely a whisper. "I can't."

Prowl's optics flashed brighter, and Mesothulas flinched. "Excuse me." Yet another chance to correct his errant wording. Mesothulas was drowning in indulgences today. He wondered if Prowl had ever before been so lenient with anyone else. If he was smart, he'd take this chance.

But Carpessa. "Forgive me, I'm sorry, I—"

Prowl lunged forward, seizing him by the collar of his chestplate, and Mesothulas cried out, nearly sobbing. "You've always been so obedient," he hissed. "You've done your job so well. It's what I like so much about you." (Even now, ready to die, Mesothulas's ember blazed brighter at the praise. Terminus, Terminus, Mesothulas would do anything for Prowl—not just out of fear—but he couldn't do this. Over a thousand lives were already on his hands.) "After all that, you haven't suddenly developed a streak of naughtiness, have you."

"No! Never!" Mesothulas grabbed at Prowl's gauntleted hand. "I—I'm still useful to you, I swear! I can build you more troops—reliable troops—without waiting for Terminus to reawaken—"

"Surely you're not referring to your vapid pet project that smiled at me when I came in."

"He's not done. When he's finished—"

"I asked for a bomb!" He shook Mesothulas to emphasize the word. This time Mesothulas did sob.

"Wh-w-what about the guilt extractor? Or—or the project with the reality scraps? I've stitched it into a serviceable prison, I—I could show—"

Prowl shook Mesothulas again, and he fell silent. But Prowl said nothing. It was more terrifying than anything he might have said. Even a death sentence would end the suspense.

But finally—voice back at its usual volume—he said, "Show me."

Surely, no one in all of Cybertronian history had been shown as much mercy as the merciless Prowl had shown to Mesothulas today. "Oh—th-thank you—you'll be so pleased, I'm sure of—"

"Just move." Prowl let go of Mesothulas, and shoved him backwards. He tripped backwards on the stairs, crashed down, and for a moment in his panic actually tried to clamber up them backwards on his hands and heels before he managed to roll over and rush to his feet.

"This way!" He took the stairs two at a time, and heard Prowl following heavily behind.

He had to get out. He couldn't stay here, not like this. This would only work as a distraction, and Mesothulas couldn't risk Ostaros's life again. He'd done it in the spur of the moment, but next time he'd be weak, he knew it. It wouldn't be long before Prowl figured out he could get whatever he wanted if he threatened Ostaros.

He'd get through this. He'd hand over his prison if Prowl asked for it. And then he and Ostaros had to disappear.

"I call it the Noisemaze. It's—I-it's—" He'd had a description of it he'd been working on, trying to figure out how to convey what it was while leaving out all the words like horrifying and monstrous and unconscionable, all the little descriptors that Prowl didn't like to hear Mesothulas say; but the words failed him now, and all he could say about it was, "it induces sensory overload."

"Is that it."

"Extreme sensory overload," Mesothulas protested. Keep talking, keep talking, impress him. "The kind that—that completely fills your RAM. You can't think through it. It destroys all higher rational thought." He entered the room where he'd been working on the Noisemaze, looked around for something other than the doorframe to focus on—there was the welder he'd discarded, he should pick it up—and tried not to think about whether offering Prowl this torture prison was any less evil than bombing civilians. At least a bomb was quick. (Evil, that was what it was—that was what he was, now—he'd done evil. He'd done evil for Prowl.)

"How painful."

"I can think of nothing more painful." He set the welder on a workbench, and climbed up the two-step pedestal so he could flip the switch on the side of the frame. A hum, and the shadows of the room were stirred with soft, moving turquoise and orange lights. "It's—unending torment. It skips straight past the more fragile vectors for pain—limbs, nerves, all of them are things that can be destroyed, turned off, or burned out. But the Noisemaze attacks your mind directly. It harms you through your senses without harming your senses. Nothing you can do will turn off or block the barrage except destroying your own senses, all of them—but the Noisemaze would leave your mind too addled and overloaded on pain to even think of such a thing." It wasn't the description he'd meant to go for, but he was fairly certain he'd left out any words that would make Prowl tetchy. Prowl didn't care how awful it sounded, as long as Mesothulas didn't imply that to do it was wrong.

Prowl ambled around it, examining the controls. "And it's finished, you say. You certainly showed initiative."

"Well—the hardware used to access it needs some refining—the prototype is practically held together with hot glue and scotch tape—but the Noisemaze itself, it'll hold together indefinitely." He leaned an elbow on the doorframe to gaze into the Noisemaze. The landscape shifted and the sky spun, and even with the thin membrane of the doorway separating him from the maze, watching it undulate and roil made him dizzy. How many would Prowl put in here? Maybe he could find a way later to steal it back. Once he and Ostaros were out of here—he could get Ostaros with one of the neutral populations fleeing the planet, he could join the Decepticons, use his inventing abilities and knowledge of Prowl for good—

He heard Prowl climbing the doorframe's pedestal, right behind him; and yet, he still flinched when Prowl's arms wrapped, slowly, gently, around his waist. "It's beautiful." Prowl's voice was a whisper; and his fingertips grazed across Mesothulas's stomach so softly, so tenderly, it almost made him cry. "The perfect prison for the Autobot Justice Division's needs. The ultimate tool for reform—destroy their mind and remake it."

Mesothulas's abdominal armor trembled under Prowl's touches, and the Noisemaze spun nauseatingly before his optics. Oh Prowl, love him, praise him, use him, keep holding him just like that. Mesothulas couldn't leave, he couldn't leave. He'd get Ostaros away and bear the punishment for it, but he couldn't leave. "Is—is th... I didn't think the AJD focused on reform? Just punishment?"

"We reform a few," Prowl said. "The few cogs that aren't too broken or too dull to be of use, but rather would help the Autobot machine tick more efficiently, if only the rough edges could be sanded smooth." One hand grazed Mesothulas's waist, leaving a path of tingling light in its wake as it languidly circled around to the small of his back. "The ones like you."

Mesothulas's spark froze. "Wha—?"

He tried to twist at the exact moment Prowl shoved him. He grabbed Prowl's gauntleted wrist. "Prowl!" He hung by one hand and the tip of one foot in reality; his other arm and leg wheeled wildly in the Noisemaze, trying to help him keep balance, but he couldn't even tell which direction he was spinning them. A dozen directions at once. Prowl's mask melted and twisted in front of his optics. "Please! Don't— I— Take me— Ostaros—"

"When you get out," it looked like the Autobrand had melted onto Prowl's face, like it moved and shifted with his words, like he spoke through its mouth, "I expect your head to be empty of everything except thoughts of obeying me. If your Noisemaze works as well as you say, that should be no problem."

"No, no, no no no no—" He managed to get his other hand back through the portal, and the tip of his other foot, and he grabbed Prowl's hand. Prowl's optics blazed bright, the same pink as Mesothulas's armor. (Was it still pink? He couldn't see himself anymore, he was turning black, only his hands and the tips of his feet still looked pink.) "Please." He squeezed Prowl's hand. "Please."

Prowl stared at him, even as the edges of his face started to fall apart. And then he squeezed Mesothulas's hand back. Hope surged. Was he reconsidering? He was going to pull Mesothulas back in, this had just been to scare him, he still had one more chance—

"When you get out, you're going to make me an army, Mesothulas. Just like Ostaros." With his free hand, Prowl unlatched his gauntlet. It slid off and Mesothulas tumbled into madness.

The lab was dusty; the lights were out. Everything that Prowl could find an off switch for had been shut down months ago; everything he couldn't, had been left to run or burn out. Something had exploded. A couple of wings of the lab were rubble, now. Radiation from outside leaked in through a destroyed wall. Prowl had sealed all the doors he could between here and there, but he still wouldn't dare so much as take off his rad suit's helmet inside the lab.

A second suit was settled against the wall, waiting for a passenger, as Prowl ascended the pedestal to the Noisemaze's doorframe. Six months was long enough. Mesothulas was ready to come back.

Prowl pulled the lever to open the door.

Nothing happened.

He turned it off, and back on. And again. And again, more forcefully. "No." He looked down, getting off the pedestal, dropping to his knees to check the power cables. He grabbed every point at which they connected and twisted them together, tight, making sure the connections were secure. He risked exposing a sliver of armor under one gauntlet so he could hold his wrist against the cable, checking to make sure he could detect a flowing EM field through it. He latched his gauntlet back in place, and walked up to the doorframe again, to flip the switch one more time.

Sparks flew from the frame. Prowl stumbled back as something popped, and smoke spewed from behind the switch. "No!" He waved the smoke away and stormed up to the frame again, flipping the switch over, and over, and over. "No, no, no—" his voice got louder with every word, "—give him back, give him back. This is incarceration, not an execution!"

Nothing. He waved an arm wildly through the doorframe, ducked through it, quickly examined the doorframe from the other side, circled around it, circled around it faster. "No! Dammit, he's—he's mine, he's—give him back! Give him back to me!" He grabbed the frame, shook it—the lever coughed out a sad puff of smoke—and he leaned through it again. "Mesothulas!" As though the Noisemaze was still right through the doorway. "Mesothulas!" As though he could reach him from here, if only he was loud enough.

There was silence in the abandoned lab.

Prowl's hand slid off the doorframe. He dropped to his knees in the middle of the dead portal to the Noisemaze, cradled his head in his hands, and rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

They say that the doorway in Petrex's room goes somewhere—or it would, if only somebody knew how to turn it on again. They say that it's a prison; they say he keeps something terrible locked away, and woe to anyone who's there when he unlocks it. They say that when Petrex sleeps on his doorway, hand pressed to its cement-and-rubble surface, sometimes something on the other side will scratch at it, desperate to get out; and sometimes, in his sleep, Petrex will scratch back.

They say many things about Petrex. A few of them are true.

Here's what they don't say about Petrex, but perhaps they should: he is icy, and hard, and unmovable, and implacable in public; but in private, he screams, he rages, he cackles, he dances, hot and explosive as a fire raging through a fuel refinery. You can see his optics behind his mask, wide and wild and red, but sometimes they're white-hot, and at those times his mask doesn't look icy but white-hot too. Here's what else they don't say: nobody has ever joined the Autobot Justice Division willingly; and most of those who join are criminals and turncoats that Petrex has reassigned to more important functions; but a few, a few are those who he has not chained to himself with invisible ununtrium links, but rather tied to himself with sinewy red threads. A few are those that he's loved too much to ever let escape.

Nobody says that about Petrex because nobody knows that he can feel love.

Petrex prefers it that way.

"What's the point of all this, Tarantulas."

Even when Prowl was on the ground and Tarantulas—what a stupid name, a grotesque alien name for an animal, a name that clattered and chattered against the back of Prowl's teeth, t-t-t—Tarantulas was pulled up high, huddling like a fearful creature against the wall—even at this range, Prowl had mastered the art of tilting his head just so, so that the way his mask framed his optics made it look like he was glaring down at Tarantulas. And he was glaring down at Tarantulas. Because no matter what a putrid beast he'd made of himself, no matter what a lowly bug he was now compared to Prowl, no matter all Prowl had achieved or all the power he'd amassed or all the soldiers at his beck and call—Autobot and Decepticon alike, now—the truth was, Tarantulas had blackmail, and Tarantulas had an invisible army, and Tarantulas had a prison in a pocket dimension where he'd trapped Prowl and where nobody knew how to find Prowl—and Prowl was terrified. And he would never, ever let Tarantulas know that.

"The point?" Tarantulas drew back, visibly surprised, and Prowl was pleased by his confusion even if he didn't understand it. "I—Isn't it obvious?"

"As obvious as you are pink." Tarantulas wasn't pink, anymore. He was black, all but for red biolights and the cotton candy pink on his feet and the filthy fuzzy tips of his new spidery limbs. Tarantulas flinched, looking down, self-consciously running a—it wasn't a hand, was it?—a hairy sausage over the black fur on one thigh, and Prowl made note of the insecurity to exploit later. "So what is this. Explain yourself."

"This is..." For a moment, Tarantulas wilted, visibly bewildered. "This is... what you asked me for."

Prowl stared at him, just as bewildered but much less visibly. "Explain more."

"You... you told me to empty my thoughts of everything, except obeying you." Tarantulas crept down the wall, his many legs squirming agitatedly. "You told me when I got out, I'd make you an army. And I—I have. I am."

Prowl stared at Tarantulas, as he lowered himself back to floor level. "You don't mean the Chimeracons. I thought they forced you to make their meat suits." The damage they'd left Tarantulas with was still visible, the melted and matted fur, the breaks in two of his spider legs. Of all the mysterious affairs surrounding Prowl's kidnapping, Prowl still couldn't figure out why, when Tarantulas commanded the Noisemaze and could shrink to the point of invisibility, he had put up with their abuses. Perhaps Prowl had trained him to tolerate too much. "They've already kidnapped me. They'd have tried to kill me if you hadn't intervened. What kind of army is that."

And once on the floor, Tarantulas kept lowering himself, kneeling at Prowl's feet. "I had to let them use me, to get the resources I needed to get close to you. They're irrelevant—they're only the start. Now that I've perfected the technology, I—I can pick up where I left off with Ostaros—y-you remember Ostaros, don't you?—just like you wanted. Making your army from scratch. Yours to do with as you please—overthrow the Prime, vanquish the Decepticons, reorder Cybertron to your specifications—all yours, Prowl. All of it. All—all of me." Prowl's ember leapt into his throat.

So he grabbed Tarantulas's. "Don't play with me."

Tarantulas flinched, but he didn't even try to pull back. "I'm not." His voice was shaky—Prowl couldn't see the fear on his face, he didn't know how to make sense of his new features yet, but he could hear it. "I'm not, I would never. I—Prowl, you're—you're all I thought about in the Noisemaze. When I could think. I—I was wrong to challenge your orders. I'm sorry. You're everything to me. You're my muse, my inspiration, my life, I—I'm yours. Anything you want from me, it's yours."

Prowl stared at him. And swallowed hard, trying to put his ember back where it belonged. He squeezed tighter. Tarantulas's visor widened, but he didn't even grab at Prowl's hand.

"Anything."

"Anything," Tarantulas whispered. It was the most beautiful word Prowl had ever heard.

And funny. Because Prowl remembered how it had been "anything" before, too—up until suddenly Mesothulas changed his mind, and then it wasn't.

Last time, Prowl had been too soft on Mesothulas—he'd liked him too much. He'd eased him into his new duties, slowly escalating the amount of energon he had to spill. That worked on most people. They'll commit any atrocity you ask for, as long as it's only just a little bit worse than the one before.

He wasn't making that mistake this time. While Tarantulas was still malleable, still vulnerable, still dizzy with adoration and desperate to regain Prowl's approval—Prowl had to make him do the worst thing he could imagine. Something so awful, that nothing else Tarantulas could possibly do would ever be worse.

"I do remember Ostaros." Prowl let go of Tarantulas's throat. Tarantulas swayed forward, following Prowl's hand, as though he wanted to be choked again. Pathetic. Gorgeous. "I took him with me. He's an Autobot now."

"He's—still alive?"

"He is. He's named Springer, now. 'Ostaros' was a stupid name." (Tarantulas flinched, gaze wavering, but he didn't argue.) "He'll be coming to rescue me as soon as he figures out where I am, I'm sure. You'll get to meet him."

Tarantulas's visor practically sparkled. "Oh! I—"

"When you do, you'll kill him."

Tarantulas stared at him. His strange rows of mandibles were frozen at irregular angles, as though he'd been caught with his mouth hanging open. "I... I don't understand, I..."

"I will not have divided loyalties." Prowl cupped Tarantulas's face in his hand, running a thumb along a ridge over his cheek. "If you're mine, then you're mine. No part of you will belong to anyone else."

Prowl could see the exact moment Tarantulas decided he would obey Prowl's order. It was the moment a light behind his visor died.

"... What does he look like, now." Tarantulas's voice was as hollow and toneless as Prowl's.

Prowl tilted his helm in just that right way to imply a smile. "I'm sure you'll know him when you see him."

The Noisemaze was falling apart. From Prowl's vantage point in Debris, he could see it convulsing and collapsing on itself. With one hand, Prowl stroked Tarantulas's head, as Tarantulas sobbed brokenly. Tarantulas's arms were flung around Prowl's waist, filthy claws clutching pitifully at whatever kibble he could latch onto, rocking back and forth as he wailed. Prowl had heard the wail of a grieving parent before, but never from a Cybertronian. He wondered if Tarantulas even counted as a Cybertronian now.

With his other hand, Prowl carried Springer's head.

Prowl was sorry for Tarantulas. He truly was. Prowl had always hated hurting him the most. But after this, everything else would come so much easier.

The Noisemaze was nothing but shreds and void by the time Tarantulas's sobs grew silent and his convulsions reduced to mere trembling. Only then did Prowl speak.

"Welcome to the AJD."

Tarantulas was silent.

After a long moment, he said, hoarsely, "I—w-we... we're named for our hometowns, aren't we? In the AJD. I... I was... truly... truly born in the Noisemaze, s-so... so, I guess..."

"No," Prowl said. "No, people get names. You're no longer a person. You've turned yourself into a beast."

Tarantulas didn't even wince. Something in Prowl shuddered at it—had he gone too far?—but he consoled himself: maybe Tarantulas was beyond pain, now. Everything would be easier from here on. Everything would be easier.

After another long silence, Tarantulas asked, "Then... what...? What's my...?"

Prowl rubbed a thumb affectionately over one of his horns. "You're my Pet."

Now, they say there's a monster in Petrex's private quarters that lives under his berth.

It's as black as Terminus's gaping maw and has just as many fangs, and it's just as likely to kill you. It's a freak that used to be Cybertronian, but now it's made of meat and metal, the metal rotting the meat and the meat rusting the metal, and it shambles around in the dark on too many legs, and it climbs the walls and ceiling and nests in the corners like a ghost trapped in the room where it died, trying to get free.

They say that Petrex can love; but his love is cruel, and cold, and it will suck the life out of you and leave you a husk of the mech you used to be before you caught his fevered gaze.

They say that when he finds somebody he wants, he chains them to himself with invisible ununtrium links, or ties them to himself with sinewy red threads, or, in one special case, webs them to him with sticky white silk.

They say that Petrex sleeps on a doorway, filled in with cement—a door that doesn't go anywhere. He presses his hand to it when he sleeps.

Sometimes, something scratches on the door from underneath.

Also on AO3.

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