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sunflowerspectre · 4 years ago

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Hellfire and Ectoblasts

For @cleanlenins

Title: Hellfire and Ectoblasts Fandom: Danny Phantom x Lucifer Summary: The devil works hard, but Vladimir Masters works harder. When Vladimir Master dabbles in dealing favors to others to get his way - much easier than constantly possessing everyone - Lucifer Morningstar has a few choice words for the business tycoon. Rating: T for cursing (multiple uses of the F word, mentions of drug abuse) Final Word Count: 5005 Ft. Uncle/Redeemed Vlad AU

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Los Angeles is new territory, despite all the places Vladimir Masters has traveled. He has drunk martinis in the sands of Bahamas, made deals in Cancun, and has a passport larger than most politicians. He has even traveled further into the Ghost Zone than most of the fully ghosts there.

Yet the city of angels has always eluded him, or rather he eluded it. It never quite appealed to him, with the oddities and gaudy casinos. It felt almost beneath him and it has, honestly, never been on his priority list - at least, not until now.

Business is business and Vlad Masters will always go where business is; even if it is in a city like Los Angeles. Even if it is with an admittedly annoying sixteen year old teenager for a long extended amount of time.

Honestly, what was he thinking when he wanted Daniel as a son? He should have gone after Jasmine, he begrudges. At least she knew when to be quiet.

“Are we there yet?”

Vlad feels his eyebrow twitch, a vein throbbing in his neck. Daniel Fenton has the nerve to look at him with large innocent, doe eyes as if that is not the hundredth time he has asked that question in the past hour.

His somewhat nephew had jumped on the chance to go to LA with him; he would have been more suspicious of Daniel’s intention if not for the fact that the space shuttle endeavor will be within one quick bus ride from their hotel. As challenging, and even powerful, as Daniel can be - he is very much an open book that has been quite easy to read.

Danny opens his mouth, as if to ask that infuriating question again, but is stopped short by a small ecto blast. The ectoplasm effectively sticks against his mouth and despite the way he claws it, it refuses to budge. He settles for crossing his arms in a huff with a narrow glare. He idly considers it for a moment before a middle finger raises in contempt.

“Curse at me all you want, Daniel, but I refuse to listen to that infernal question the entire trip.”

Danny’s body language makes it clear that he is mocking him. Vlad waits until his fit is over before removing the ecto blast. Danny, huffing about being cut-off, leans back into the seat of the private jet. When he glances out the window, catching glimpses of clouds, he can not help but think wistfully how much better it would be to be flying Airline Danny. Jets, private or otherwise, are too confining now that he knows what it feels like to touch clouds.

He bets that the skies of Los Angeles is beautiful up close. He absently wonders if he gets far away enough to the nearby desert if he will be able to get a good view of the stars. The Orion constellation, not to mention a few planets like Venus and even Saturn, should be more visible here than it would be in Amity Park. He wonders if he flies high enough if he can get a good picture with a smartphone.

“Why are you going to LA anyway? Don’t you have enough money that you don’t need to be blowing it at casinos? Or is that the whole point?”

He barely even spares Vlad a glance through the corner of his eyes, arms crossed lazily against his chest as his cheek presses against the cool glass of the window. While being with Vlad is not the worst thing in the world - at least not anymore - he can not help but wish he would’ve been able to bring Sam and Tucker along. He imagines that they would be thrilled to go somewhere that’s not the Nasty Burger. At the very least, they would be better conversationalists.

Well, I guess it’s at least fun to mess with him, Danny thinks wistfully, a more devious smile on his face. If anything, it is a great way to pass the time. Messing with Vlad has always been a treasure, but now with little repercussions, at least nothing that compares to the way he used to threaten to kill his dad, it is like the entire world is his oyster.

“You can never have enough money, young badger.”

Danny coughs something into his elbow that sounds suspiciously like ‘ eat the rich’. His eyes watch Vlad carefully with feign innocence, as if he never said anything at all. His elbow hides the large shit-eating grin threatening to break on his face.

Vlad makes a point to ignore the comment, continuing easily, “Since our - my -”

He struggles to find the right word, fumbling a bit with a strained look on his face. Mentions of the past have always been hard to bring up when he is, honestly, doing his best to move forward from it. He feels strained at the mere mention of how he behaved beforehand, somewhat even embarrassed by the things he tried to pull. He cannot be thankful enough that the Fentons, including even Daniel, have even given him this second chance. The young badger’s trust is not an easy thing to earn.

“ Your redemption arc,” Danny offers somewhat helpfully.

While not fond of the term, Vlad has to admit that he cannot think of a better phrase.

“-Yes.”

He accepts the term Danny offers with clenched teeth, “-and as such, possession has become quite unfavorable . I have taken up doing business the old-fashioned way.”

Danny turns to face him. His innocently blinking eyes do not fool anyone with the gleam of mischief shining brightly in them.

“-Legal suits and proper paperwork?”

Vlad snaps at him suddenly, a vein throbbing in his forehead as he regrets taking off the ecto-gag.

“Oh will you - stop that?”

The outburst sends Danny reeling into a laughing fit, clenching his sides tightly.

__________________________________

Danny’s smartass comments cost him; though, in his opinion, it was absolutely worth it. To his dismay, Vlad drags him along through the city of angels instead of leaving him at the hotel. He claimed he needed to meet a new potential business partner. He gave an entire speech of how it would be good for him to learn how the business world works, but Danny can only recall maybe the first few sentences of said speech. Vlad even went as far as stuffing Danny into the most uncomfortable expensive clothes that he could find. Honestly, couldn’t the man at least get comfy expensive clothes? Gucci makes sweat suits. He makes a mental note to send some links to Gucci sweat suits to Vlad later.

Comfy or not, he still would have preferred to have just headed straight to the space shuttle endeavor. At least then, he would be in ghost form most of the time anyway. It would have been a ten - maybe fifteen - minute flight himself from their hotel room; he even promised Vlad that he would stay invisible the whole time and not touch anything he was not supposed to. A promise that was hard to give since oh man did he want to touch the shuttle just to say he touched something that was in space. He even begged his uncle. Slipped in a few mentions of how his mom would be so happy if he was able to go and get pictures.

He almost got him too, but alas, his efforts were in vain. Instead, he is stuck in a limo. It is not a bad thing in and of itself, but even a luxurious car feels suffocating when you want to be somewhere else.

He eyes the protesters lining up on certain streets. Sam would have loved it here. He keeps track of all of the ‘trendy’ vegan cafes he spots along the way for future reference; he even spots a few goth-centric stores. He snaps a few pictures, sending them over their group chat. He follows them up with pictures of pictures of every BBQ stand he finds for Tucker’s sake.

Sam: Still with the ex-villain?

Danny snorts, scooting away from Vlad as much as he could before snapping a picture of his unsuspecting ex-arch nemesis. Vlad visibly sighs, the exhaustion showing on his face as he does not even bother to look at Danny anymore.

Tucker: Someone looks like he’s having a great time

Danny: He’s with me, of course he’s having a great time. I’m a joy to be around. An absolute blast.

Tucker: Isn’t every party you’ve gone to nowadays a bit - dead?

Danny audibly groans at the bad attempt at puns, sending a quick message of how puns are his thing; it’s his whole shtick. But like all group chats do, the conversation grows dead pretty fast.

He is already growing bored again after having sent all the memes he could find ( and how dare they not laugh react at them) . He settles for rolling the window up and down obsessively, occasionally even sticking his head through it. When that adrenaline rush is short-lived, he ends up leaning against the door while obnoxiously clicking the window button repeatedly until Vlad is forced to ask the limo driver to put on the child lock. He considers the idea of just phasing his head through the window, but as weird as LA is, he thinks even that would be a stretch.

He could just phase away entirely. After all, the limo is not ghost proof. Vlad even got rid of most of his more outrageous contraptions and traps so he knows that the seat will not suddenly grow restraints if he tries to get up from it. He wonders if the oddity shop that they passed is still open? He did promise everyone souvenirs and the weirder the better (as is the whole point with souvenirs).

But he also promised his mom that he would get along.

Besides, Vlad said he would pay for lunch when they are done and they passed the most delicious looking burger place.

After what feels like forever, watching all the places he wants to go but can’t right now like a sad puppy begging for the window to be let down, the limo finally pulls up in front of a nightclub. LUX. Danny raises a brow. He may not be the smartest out of his family, but dead languages are his specialty. He glances to Vlad, wondering if he should be more concerned about his pseudo-uncle doing business here. Any nightclub named after light that looks this shady can not be good.

He is also pretty sure that he just saw a drug deal around the corner and some of the people in line already look under the influence of something .

“Am I even allowed here,” Danny questions, pausing a moment to count on his fingers, as they exit the limo. “I’m only like - sixteen? I am a literal child. ”

Vlad continues walking as if he does not hear Danny’s voice grating on behind him. Somehow, the teenager has a voice that seems to stick out like a sore thumb against the boom of the music coming out from the club’s doors.

“You are not a child, Daniel,” Vlad finally acknowledges.

“Uh the law would disagree, sir,” Danny waves a finger after him, “I am a minor.”

The sun is already starting to set, which means the club is steadily filling up; a majority of people are still out in long lines outside of the club’s door. He glances at them briefly, if in a bit of curiosity at the club wear. He blushes wildly at some of the more out-there club wear and focuses quickly on the fact that Vlad is steadily getting ahead of him.

“We are not here for drinking, Daniel,” Vlad’s voice comes out a bit exasperated as he fixes his tie. He eyes the people in line with a bit of disdain, but otherwise ignores them.

Vlad continues on past the lines, not acknowledging the way that some of them call after him. He keeps his hands in his pockets as he gets closer to the crowd; Danny realizes that it likely has something to do with the high possibility of getting pick-pocketed. After all, Vlad does not exactly blend in, but neither does Danny in the suit that Vlad forced him in.

Danny is close in tow as they head straight for the bouncer at the door.

If Vlad was not so used to the way that Maddie could ( has and absolutely will) beat him, he would have been more surprised at the woman at the club’s door. The choice being a bit abnormal in the job. Her intimidating presence is enough to make most of the more pushy people at the front second-guess themselves. A few of the people who dare to test the boundary of the velvet rope quickly change their mind as she just glances at them. Danny’s first thought is how much Sam would like the bouncer. The entire leather outfit is just something that feels like she would like, compared with how tough the woman seems to be. If the woman didn’t scare him so much, he would have tried to take a picture.

His second thought, however, is how off she feels. The closer he gets to her, the more his core vibrates deeply in his chest. As if it is trying to transform and get him out of there, like an animal’s instincts to a predator. Run. RUN. RUN. He digs his heels into the ground and refuses to listen to his gut. He refuses to let his gut determine what he thinks about someone, or how he acts on them. He learned the hard way to control that impulse.

Besides, she does not seem that dangerous - he thinks? He glances to the knives strapped to her thigh and the mean look in her eyes. Mostly. But his ghost sense has never gone off. That means that possession is off the table - so is her being a ghost. But he has never felt his core vibrate this way, in such a paralyzing instinctual fear. The only thing that comes close is when he faced Pariah.

Danny is sure that Vlad notices it too, he is way too smart not to. Vlad’s expressionless face does not give a single thing away, staring straight on even as the woman looks him over closely, a sneer on her face. Something about the way she bares her teeth feels more like a threat, as if she is prepared to rip your throat out herself at any given moment. The worst part is that it feels like that is something she is very much capable of doing. She gets startlingly close to Vlad’s face, sniffing him. He refuses to flinch and let this woman know how much she intimidates him.

He seems to pass whatever test she was giving him. Finally she just snorts, taking the card that he offers her. Danny only catches a glimpse of the red and gold lining against black with some sort of name written on it. He barely sees the flash of some sort of horned symbol on the edge. Just who is Vlad doing business with anyway?

Whatever the card is, it works. She backs off, crossing her arms against her chest as she moves out of the way of the door to let them through. The glare she gives some of the people at the front of the line scares them out of even thinking about shoving their way in through the open door.

Danny sticks close to Vlad’s side this time, feeling the urge to get as far away as he can from the woman. He is not sure if she will stop him. He would love to get out of this situation with Vlad, but he would hate that it meant staying anywhere near the woman. The wild beating of his core is getting worse and it feels like he can’t breath.

He is unsure if he can handle being around her much longer with his core acting up like this. He feels like he is this close to a heart attack.

“You smell weird, but whatever. He’s inside.”

He smells weird, Danny wonders how she can smell anything especially when all he can smell is all the people around them not wearing deodorant. He tries his best to brush it off as some sort of intimidating tactic. But when Danny passes by the woman, she leans forward, visibly sniffing him as well.

“Sorry it’s my - uh - aftershave,” Danny’s panicked lie confuses even him as he just waves at the woman as he enters the club, finally taking a deep breath in as the door shuts behind him.

Still thoroughly weirded out by whatever that was, something that does not improve when he’s suddenly surrounded by drunks and loud blaring music, he sticks abnormally close to Vlad. The people surrounding them are too drunk to notice when he phases through the elbows that are just too close to him or the shoulders that almost bump into him. Vlad looks back at him briefly, a ghost of a smile on his face, before he turns attention to the crowd.

“Whatcha looking for? The bar? Drugs? A confessional?” Danny asks as they finally reach a section that gives them some elbow room. He brushes off imaginary dirt, and not so imaginary something , off of his shoulders.

“My business partner,” Vlad answers curtly, eyes still scanning the crowd. He knows what he’s looking for, despite not having met the man before.

When Lucifer Morningstar reached out to him, insisting that they meet in person to discuss business, Vlad almost brushed him off. However, a combination of the man’s obsession with the devil and the fact that Lucifer Morningstar’s very identity doesn’t go back any further than a few years intrigued him. How does a man who legally has only been around for a few years get so ahead in the business world? More importantly, who is he really?

“What does he look like, maybe I can help.” Danny offers, looking over the crowd as if he would suddenly be able to who they are looking for.

“It is our first business meeting, I’m afraid, but if he looks anything like his photos, you can’t miss him.”

That gets Danny’s attention. He swerves suddenly on Vlad, jutting his hands out to form a T, his fingers press against his palm, “Whoa, time out! You brought me to a business meeting with someone you never met before? How do you even know the guy’s like, I don’t know, a ghost hunter?”

“You're a paranoid teenager, young badger.” Vlad’s voice is dry with a lack of amusement, “I’ll have you know that I reach all my partners quite well. Lucifer Morningstar is nothing more than a lunatic, however he is quite popular with our mutual partners.”

“ Lucifer,” Danny harshly whispers, his voice only half-way kidding, “Don’t tell me you actually made a deal with the devil?”

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise him if Vlad did - if such a thing is really possible - but it would put a strain on their now alliance. Vlad’s about to retort, likely something along the lines of you’re being ridiculous Daniel, but he gets cut off prematurely by another voice.

“Well not yet, but let’s see if that changes today, shall we?”

A particularly British voice gets their attention as a man in a well fitted suit, looking vastly more comfortable in it than Danny is, struts their way. Despite looking like every other business man he’s seen, the man doesn’t feel like the usual stuffy suit type. He feels dangerously charismatic, with an easy smile on his face and a magnetic pull that makes it difficult to turn their attention away from him. He has a few beautiful women, and at least one man, at his side. He whispers something that Danny wishes he didn’t hear, to each of them before they regretfully leave his side.

“You must be Vladimir Masters.” The tone of voice is not a compliment, coming off more mocking, “Look at you, a bit older than I expected, but ultimately age is never an issue. Provided you’re at least an adult.”

The sultry look that the apparent Lucifer Morningstar has as he looks Vlad up and down appreciatively reminds Danny too much of how Vlad used to look at his mom. He starts to feel sick to his stomach, gagging exaggeratingly in the background as he tries his best to ignore the way his core has returned to vibrating, thumping hard against his chest.

Whatever the woman at the door was, Lucifer Morningstar must be at least the same thing - or something close to it - to make his core react the same way. He should be more concerned over it, but he glances toward Vlad. He looks stony as ever, the only sign of discomfort being a vein beginning to throb on his neck. Ah, so he does notice.

He doesn’t seem surprised either. Danny wonders if this is some sort of test again, to see what he will do and how he will react. Especially in front of an unknown factor. Shit. Danny curses when he realizes that’s why Vlad brought him along in the first place and then curses again - more directed at Vlad himself this time - for Vlad being as cryptic and vague as Clockwork.

I just wanted to see the endeavor, Danny bemoans as the man ushers Vlad (and by extension, Danny) to a clear booth. Taking Vlad’s lead, Danny acts more confident this time around, trying his best to act like every inch of his being isn’t screaming to run.

“Drinks,” Lucifer offers, seeming comfortable in the booth with his arms stretched out wide against the edge of the seat across from Danny and Vlad. While Vlad accepts the offer, ordering a simple old fashion, Danny speaks up with a cheeky grin.

“I’ll have a coke on the rocks,” Danny orders, showing a lot of teeth in his grin as he gives finger guns, of all things. After a pause, he adds on, “Not shaken nor stirred, please.”

Vlad’s exasperated sigh is barely audible as he breathes out through his nose. At the very least, he should be glad that Danny is acting normal - as awkward and tiring as normal is.

“I must admit Mr. Morningstar, I was a bit surprised to receive your invitation,” Vlad speaks easily. He politely sips at his drink, but otherwise leaves it untouched, more focused on the conversation. He tries to not let his eye twitch when he hears Danny suck up his coke through a straw.

Lucifer looks at Danny in amusement, seemingly unoffended by the teenager’s manners (a small blessing). Unlike Vlad, Lucifer doesn’t shy away from his own drink, downing it easily. He orders a few more at one of the ladies passing by, followed by flirtatious compliments that make her giggle and once again, makes Danny wish that he couldn’t hear what was being said.

“Well how could I not invite a man such as yourself, Vladimir,” Lucifer’s voice is exaggerated, almost strained, “Or is it Vlad? Vladdy?”

Vlad does twitch at that and Lucifer grins, “Vladdy it is. Better than douchebag, I suppose.”

Danny snorts at the sudden word, laughing hard enough that he barely stops the coke from pouring out of his nose. He takes in a deep breath, wiping at his face with a cocktail napkin as his nose burns from the soda.

“I prefer to use the term fruit loop,” Danny speaks up helpfully.

Lucifer seems delighted at this information, his eyes lighting up in glee as Vlad visibly sinks into the seat.

“ Fruit loop,” Lucifer repeats gleefully, “Lacks a bit in curse words for my liking but fruit loop it is!”

“You can always say fucking fruit loop,” Danny offers as if he is still being helpful, the grin on his face more genuine, “Or fruit by the fucking loop?”

Lucifer’s laugh is infectious, his eyes gleaming as Danny joins him in laughter at Vlad’s expense. For a moment, the two continue back and forth before Vlad is forced to intervene; the vein is his neck is more noticeably throbbing at this point.

“Mr. Morningstar,” Vlad cuts in, his voice stern, “What exactly was the point of the invitation, if I may? I hope it wasn’t to just call me outrageous names.”

Lucifer nonchalantly waves off Vlad’s growing ire, “Oh no, I invited you over for much more than just that. Favors, you will find, are my specialty. One could say it’s my whole business. I grant favors and I do not take kindly to others who sneak up on my business and steal it away.”

There’s a flash of something in Lucifer’s eyes. Something dangerous. As brief as it is, it’s enough to make Danny’s core hum against his chest, his hand grips his knee tightly. His eyes flicker to Vlad and as much as the older man is trying to hide it, Danny can tell that he’s just as suddenly bothered by whatever that was.

“It’s the point of the matter, you know,” Lucifer continues, “Steal my business, shame on me, steal my shtick, shame on you.”

He downs another glass and grabs something off a platter as someone passes by. It looks suspiciously like a joint. He lights it up without a second thought; Danny tries his best to act like he doesn’t know what it is as Vlad eyes him through the corner of his eyes.

“Word is that you, Vladimir Masters, have been sneaking around granting favors to a chosen few. I don’t know how you grant said favors, I don’t particularly care. But I do wish you would stop.”

The dangerous aura that’s thick in the air is heavy, but the realization that Vlad has still been up to shady business is heavier. Danny slumps into the seat, leaning forward with a heavy sigh.

“So you have been up to shady shit,” Danny mumbles under his breath as he absently stirs the straw in what has to be his third glass of coke.

“If you don’t stop,” Lucifer continues, “I’m afraid I’ll have to make you stop. If Mazikeen does not get to you first.”

He gestures his thumb toward the woman that was outside the door; she hovers nearby as if she knows exactly what they’re talking about. The grin on her face is malicious, bordering on feral as she twirls a knife across her knuckles without breaking eye contact. That woman is intimidating, Danny swallows thickly, but grins wildly at Lucifer.

“Oh he’ll stop,” Danny reassures the man before Vlad can even get a word in. There’s an edge to his words; a very clear message underlying his words. “Otherwise I’ll make him stop myself.”

A flash of ectoplasmic green swirls across his eyes. Vlad, not quite intimidated by a sixteen year old still going through puberty, simply mumbles under his breath, oh stop with the ‘scary’ eyes, Daniel, honestly. Lucifer catches the moment, eying them both with interest as he relaxes into the chair. He makes a motion with his hand and suddenly the woman - Mazikeen - isn’t there anymore; Danny isn’t sure where she went, if he should be worried about it, or if it was a sign of good faith.

“ You are a very interesting child,” Lucifer says, “At first I thought you two may have been one of mine, but that’s not really the case is it?”

Danny isn’t sure what one of mine really means; he doesn’t really want to know either. The way Lucifer says it feels off, as if he’s not concerned by it or that they would have been in worse trouble if they had in fact been one of his (whatever that means). Vlad recovers fast, eying Lucifer with narrowed eyes.

“Just what is it that you’re inferring, Mr. Morningstar?”

“Why, that you’re not human, of course!”

He says it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, a large grin stretched on his face as he finishes off the suspicious joint, making a point to blow the smoke away from them. It may have been a trick of the light, or even just a magic trick, but Danny swears that the smoke formed some sort of devilish face. Complete with the horns and all.

Danny’s grin falters as he watches Lucifer closely.

F-uck-ing typical. At this rate, he will never get to see the endeavor or any other of California’s space museums. Why can’t he have just one normal road trip for once? No circus ringleader, no reality altering devices, no ghosts, and no ghost hunters. He just wants to get a selfie with a space shuttle, order as much hotel food as he can off of Vlad’s card, and then crash. Maybe even go to the Griffith Observatory. Fly to the Hollywood sign. Sneak into a Disney park and take a selfie on top of Cinderella’s castle. Just a normal trip (with a few added advantages to being a half-ghost boy). Now, he has to instead worry about some devil-obsessed (but definitely weird and maybe not human at all) club owner finding out his secret.

This is exactly what Danny told Vlad; meeting someone you don’t know is just a risk. At the very least, Lucifer doesn’t look like a ghost hunter. He definitely doesn’t fit the M.O. of a Guys In White agent. There could be other agencies out there though, other people who want to hunt them down. Who knows, maybe whatever this guy really is likes to eat ghosts or hunt them for sport. This is exactly what he was concerned about. Now, his secret, and Vlad’s secret too he supposes, could be blown all because Vlad had to go make a shady business deal.

Danny turns to Vlad, not even bothering to whisper as his voice cuts through the loud music.

“I told you so.”

#danny phantom #lucifer #crossover #fanfic #fic #fanfiction #x-over #uncle vlad #vlad masters #au

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cipheress-to-k-pop · 4 years ago

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Being Doc Ock’s daughter and Dating Peter Parker

It wasn’t a coincidence that the two of you met.

Being the illegitimate daughter of one of the worst villains in NYC definitely had you on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar.

Ofc you had no idea that your dad was some deranged villain who’s only goal is terrorizing Spiderman, you didn’t even know he was your dad

But that didn’t mean that Doc Ock had no idea abt you cuz he definitely was keeping tabs on you as well

Once S.H.I.E.L.D. figured out that Doc Ock was planning to contact you, the immediately sent Peter out for a protection detail

Undercover ofc

“Doc Ock?! The mad octopus?! Who has tried to kill me multiple times has a daughter?!?!”

The first time Fury tells him Peter flat out said nope

Then Fury had to threaten him and he said no again

Finally, Fury had to promise that he would cut back on his training and he only then agreed

But he still complained about it

He stepped into the restaurant that you worked at harshly whispering into his communicator

‘I bet you she’s some kind of recluse like her dad—’

And there you were

the most beautiful girl Peter had ever laid his eyes on, smiling brightly at him when he entered the place

“Hi! Welcome to The Bistro! I’m (Y/N) and I’ll be your server for today! What can I get you?”

How the heck did Doc Ock have a child that was a literal goddess?

He was left absolutely speechless

“I’m Peter Packer, um Parker, Peter Parker.”

“Okay, Peter Parker, would you like to hear the specials?”

A few awkward meetings later and he’s pining after you like a 4th grader

But it’s cool cuz he has a plan to win you over

Until Sam comes in one day and yells so loudly that you hear

“Hey Parker isn’t she that girl you like?!”

He asks you out after that public humiliation and you accept

He has absolutely no idea why you said yes

You think he’s cute and just your type

Sam thinks differently but for once keeps his mouth shut

The two of you are literally couple goals

You being the most easy-going and understanding

Being cool when Peter runs off in the middle of dates and accepting his poor excuses when he has to save NYC

Being so cool about it that Pete actually feels guilty about it

Cuz the last thing he wants to do is take your kindness for granted

So, the time that you two do spend together, you are SHOWERED in affection

You kissing him for the first time when he thought he wasn’t good enough

“I like you. Peter. For you.”

Him thinking that you could be the one

Aunt May absolutely adores you, sometimes the two of you like to cook together

You find out about Pete’s identity in the worst way possible

Doc Ock finally managed to locate you, even with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s interference

Peter’s heart drops when he comes over to your place and sees everything trashed

The picture of the two of you was shattered on the ground

Doc Ock wanted you to come to his side, something about unconditional filial love

You obviously said absolutely not

Along with plenty of curses and insults

Regardless of him being your father or not, his temper was unforgiving

Peter found you bleeding out on the floor of his underwater lab

Them wheeling you through S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical wing with Peter running alongside you

His tears were easily concealed under his mask

“(Y/N) come on! You can’t leave me like this.”

Your eyes weren’t open, you were just listening to his broken voice cry for you

“Pete….” You murmured, cupping his face before losing consciousness

The hours of surgery were absolute hell on him

Luckily, you pulled through

He thought you wouldn’t remember but you always managed to surprise him

“Pete, are you Spiderman?”

“Uh…”

The two of you totally doing the Spiderman kiss, but it wasn’t as romantic and goofier than you thought it would be

Late night talks about the most random things

“Do you know about Hercules’ trials?”

“No?”

“Well Let Me Tell You!”

The team loving you as well

You’re just a very lovable person

Peter not liking the fact that your attention is divided now

Sometimes he feels embarrassed about it but he loves you and hence wants to spend a lot of time with you

“(Y/N) please stop talking to Danny about the Ethereal Plane, we were gonna go watch a movie.”

Speaking of love

He worried himself about how to tell you for like a week

But you beat him to it

It was late at night and you had run all the way to his house because you saw on the news how Spiderman had nearly died

“Please be careful, Pete, I love you.”

All in all, the two of you are just the sweetest, purest, goofiest couple anyone ever had the pleasure of being in the presence of

“Hey, you wanna know something?”

“What?”

“I kinda have a crush on you.”

“……Pete, it’s our second-year anniversary.”

#ultimate spider-man #ultimate spiderman x reader #ultimate spider man #ultimate spider man x reader #ultimate spiderman #peter parker #peter parker x reader #usm #usm x reader #marvel #marvel x reader #headcanon #peter parker headcanon #doc ock #otto octavius

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phantomphangphucker · 4 years ago

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Ectober Day 30: Disguise - The Guise Of Change

When Danny died he really didn’t change much at all, and that was a problem. But ghosts only resembled their living selves rather than looking the same as they once did.

Danny’s well aware his disguise is flimsy at best, borderline non-existent at worst. The divide between his two halves was practically reliant on the fact that being half-dead was illogical and should be impossible. Like, literally and explicitly impossible; even in the opinion of ghost experts. Slapping on a jumpsuit and some colour changes does not a good identity-hiding costume make. He had felt a little jealous of Vlad in that regard. Put Masters and Plasmius next to each other and almost no one is going to think they’re even related. The face shape was pretty much the only similarity, but the shadows a ghosts glowing eyes could throw across their faces really changed the way their faces looked. Ancients, that’s probably the only reason his parents’ hadn’t recognised Danny Phantom’s face as being identical to their son's face. Same for the rest of his body honestly, his jumpsuit didn’t exactly hide his figure. If he lost his glow he would have probably be screwed. Utterly screwed.

Problem was, he couldn’t change his ghost form. That was literally just his body, his suit was basically a second skin. Hair couldn’t be dyed and if he wanted to wear a mask it would get constantly destroyed, and he’d have to carry it with him constantly. The chances of someone finding said mask on human Danny Fenton was too great a risk and absolutely would get him revealed in a heartbeat. And he wasn’t about to ask Vlad how the heck his ghost form looked so different from his human one. Even the guy's physique changed. Masters was a skinny man, Plasmius had a comically broad chest. But Danny’s not about to let that man think he’s learned anything from him. Vlad is not going to be his mentor in any shape, way, or form. Fuck that guy and his villainous ulterior motives.

So that had kinda left him in a bit of a pickle. So what did he do? Eh, what he usually does. Ignored the problem and hoped it went away, while also making his paranoia just that much worse. Did that usually work out for him? Hell no. It usually bit him squarely and directly in the ass soon rather than later. So whole ass, he expected to get bit; and probably by some stupid mistake or something ridiculously simple. Like someone taking a photo of him and accidentally turning on their phone’s colour invert. His parents’ tech messing up was always a possibility and had almost shattered his disguise more than once. To this day he is supremely glad that Dash is a bloody moron and that his dad is stupidly easily distracted. But standing in front of his mirror changing between his forms, he thinks he might just avoid that ass bite for once in his half-life.

Watching the muscle on his arm change, shrinking down in human form to the point where he’s borderline scrawny then bulking up in ghost form to the point where he thinks he’s got a more muscular look than Dash does. Even his bone structure seemed to be changing now. His ghost form had a muscular broadness that his human form simply didn’t. Even his hands got bigger in that strong man muscular way. It weirded him out a little actually. But his running theory was that all the fighting and his increasing ecto-level was all going to his ghost half, rather than his human one.

Sure he knows now that some of the other changes -like his fangs, claws, and tapered ears- were just him starting to develop into an adult ghost. His jumpsuit was going through its own changes naturally too, but that really doesn’t help him disguise himself at all. Plus the similarities to Dan’s jumpsuit, that he was starting to notice, was hard to feel happy about. At least he hasn’t started forming a cape or anything yet; even if that actually would help make his body look different between forms. Well okay, the pointiness did frame his muscles in a way that made them a little more noticeable. So he guesses it does help a little.

The wavy smoky look his hair was taking definitely hid its shape, he just seriously hoped it stays wavy thick smoke and doesn’t transition into full-on flames. Sure that would make his forms look even more different, but he’d rather his forms look similar than look like Dan. But... sighing and shaking his head at the mirror, Dan was his future self, that’s probably what he’s going to look like no matter what he does. Well, excluding the red eyes. ClockWork had told him how the eye colour change had been due to Core damage that the whole ‘tearing out his humanity’ thing caused. He used to tell himself that he wouldn’t wind up looking like Dan since future Vlad said Dan was a combination of Phantom and Plasmius. But nope, according to the much more trustable resource that is ClockWork, Phantom had cannibalised Plasmius in pretty much a psychotic bout of madness. Since apparently completely cannibalising another ghost can make you stronger and even steal their powers. Danny is never making use of that information.

Changing back human, another good thing was that none of the injuries he got ever scarred. Because no way could he explain all the kinds of scars he would have otherwise. Running a hand over his jaw, even his face was leaner in human form; and his cheekbones and eyes were a little shadowed/sunken like he didn’t quite eat or sleep enough, which he didn’t. He was starting to get facial hair in both forms though, at least it was kinda smoky in ghost form though. Running his thumb over the stubble, it annoyed the heck out of him how it was growing in as a pointy goatee and literally nothing he did seemed to change that. He’s pretty much resigned himself to the look at this point because he is not just shaving it off. He’s also resigned himself to Vlad making ‘approving’ and ‘mocking’ comments about it. Whatever, the guy can shove it.

Now, the only thing he didn’t like about the differences between his forms was that it wasn’t just his appearance. He actually was physically weaker in human form. He didn’t just look scrawny, he was scrawny. It was annoying as Hell and very often he forgot that he couldn’t lift something in human form that he could in ghost form. It almost annoyed him enough to make a damn point to workout in human form. Problem was, that would run the risk of his human form developing in the same way as his ghost one. He didn’t want to make his forms look even more similar. And Ancients, both Fenton and Phantom bulking up? Talk about suspicious. That would be just another thing for anyone suspicious of him to add to their lists of suspicious shit. So he’d rather put up with the annoyance and inconvenience of a weak human form. Hell, he wore baggy clothing to accentuate his skinniness.

Moving to flop down face-first in bed, changing between forms a bit just to feel his feet dangle off the bed slightly and then not at all. The height difference was something else getting annoying. He’s blaming that on him not eating enough, his ghost forms height had nothing to do with a good diet, unlike his human form. He honestly expects that as an adult there’s going to be a solid foot difference between his forms. Maybe more. Honestly? He’s just gonna have to get used to the differences. Even something as simple as rolling his shoulders or taking a deep breath felt so different between forms. But hey, it was worth his secret identity not being nearly as see-threw as glass. Now it was more like very foggy glass.

The personality differences he made a damn point to emphasis between his forms probably helped too, which used to be hard to do but now it just felt natural to be meek and timid while human then bold and carefree while ghost. Which Jazz worries wasn’t exactly healthy, for him to effectively be juggling two personalities, that he genuinely might have forcibly developed two personalities. Even his friends have pointed out how he’d act a little differently based on form even when it was just with them. But needs be musts. If he had a level of a split personality then so be it. Besides, being stronger made him feel bolder, being smaller made him feel like more of a pushover. That just seemed right and natural. Being tiny just makes people feel tiny. Being large in a muscular way just makes people feel imposing. That’s normal, right? Eh oh well, if it’s not then it’s not. He’s not normal in the first place anyway. And yeah, he wasn’t doing the whole superhero disguise thing even remotely normal or according to the movies and comic books. But fuck it, it seemed like it was going to work out for him, and he doesn’t have to carry around a suit or disguise crap. There will be no changing in phone-booths for him or wearing a jumpsuit under his clothing (which honestly? Talk about an easy way to get caught).

Hell, maybe those fictional heroes should be jealous of him. All he had to do was alter his molecular/genetic structure and the substance his body was made out of, not cart around a whole ass disguise and perpetually speed change. And now that his body was changing, well maybe he actually was lucky.

End.

#ectober #ectober2020 #ectober 2020 #danny phantom #phandom #introspection #secret identity #disguise #the quirks of being a halfa #fan fic #phan phic #my writing #have a fic suck my dick #phantomphangphucker #gothmoth #short

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andythane · 3 years ago

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HOLY WATER CANNOT HELP YOU NOW I’VE COME TO BURN YOUR KINGDOM DOWN

MAY 19TH, 2021. OUTSIDE OF LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA. notes & tw: this is literally all just bloody, brutal violence of every kind. andy, along side wes and wyatt, gets revenge on the rogue’s responsible for attacking rowan in february. italics are flashbacks, ps. tw for very graphic murder, lots of blood, violence, gore (eye, specifically), stabbing, decapitation/dismemberment, tc ahead. please read at your own discretion, it’s a lot.

The first time he kills someone, he’s twenty years old. Four months after he’d been officially patched into the club, reconciled with Rowan, and started this new chapter of his life. He knew what the patch sewn to his cut meant -- He had grown up next to it, had seen his father come home at all hours of the night covered in blood with a smile on his face as he slapped his gun onto the kitchen table and happily declared he needed a beer. That being said, doing it yourself and hearing stories were so comically different it made his head spin.

Most of the ride, he’s quiet, staring out the window of the Wyatt’s jeep as they drive through the backroads. There’s not much conversation to be had once they’ve gone over the plan, all three men knowing exactly what they’re going to this warehouse for. It’s roughly a two hour car ride, giving Andy enough time to go mentally go over the weapons he’s brought with him -- The gun tucked into his cut, one tucked into the waistband of his pants, one strapped to his ankle; The knife tucked in his boot strap, the other in the sheath of his belt. He’s nothing if not prepared. Andy goes over their placement for the thousandth, unneeded time, thinking through every what if scenario he could find himself in. It’s not often that his paranoid nature actually becomes a benefit.

They know the layout of the building, where each of them will cover, and the amount of people that will be there -- But he likes to prepare for the worst and the best, knowing from experience that they’re likely going to meet a mixture of both. Andy’s planned and executed this kind of thing enough times to know how to go about it blindfolded. At this point, it’s just like riding a bike.

He wonders what Wes is thinking, if his mind drifts back to Jace asleep at home, unaware of the violence going on around him; If Wyatt is imagining Iris in her hospital bed three months ago, scared of the oxygen mask strapped to her face. All Andy can think of is Rowan, sobbing in his arms while struggling not to move and potentially injure herself further, tearfully telling him why she hadn’t shown up to dinner.

It’s been a while since he’s found himself in this kind of mindset, having hung up his metaphoric hat when it comes to hitman jobs in the last few years. After his time in prison, Andy knew he had to lay low -- Being on parole, and having a daughter to raise changed his priorities. While the money from his ‘freelancing’ had been nice, he and Rowan had enough saved to last them a lifetime, especially with his cut of the guns the club sold, and her salary. There was no need for it now, not like when they were struggling to pay rent and put Rowan through school. Though, he couldn’t deny the high that came with planning a job was one Andy didn’t know he desperately missed. It used to scare him, how exciting he found this -- The rush that came from a stake out, figuring out each detail all the way down to the small possibility, the thrill of actually pulling his gun and breaking through the door. Now he welcomes it like an old friend.

He always imagined it would be a fair fight -- Or at least, not like this. Whenever the thought came to mind, he pictured himself wrestling some bond villain looking guy, the two diving for the gun that had been cast aside. It was naive, childish even -- But he didn’t expect that he’d be pointing his gun at someone who couldn’t be much older than him, one who was sobbing through swollen eyes, pleading for his life. His father kept his hand’s firmly planted on the kid’s shoulder’s to keep him from squirming out of the rickety chair, acting like this was a prize for a job well done. This could easily have been me, Andy thinks. Had this job gone wrong, he has no doubt Cronus wouldn’t hesitate to put him into that chair, make an example out of his son. Only, it didn’t. It was nothing short of an absolute success.

His father says something, but Andy doesn’t hear it. Jason is somewhere in the background cheering him on. Andy’s heart is pounding in his ears, both hands holding tightly to his gun, fighting to conceal the fact that they’re shaking. The gun is pointed directly at the poor kid’s head, Cronus’ steady hands keeping him from getting away from his obvious fate. Andy glances to his father for a moment, the wild look in the man’s surely meant to be read as adrenaline fueled pride. This is Andy’s first job after being patched in, and he had proved himself thus far. Now he just needed to finish this. Andy wishes he had the strength to lift his arms just that much higher, and put a bullet in his father’s head.

In that moment, he thinks of Rowan; Part of him wishes he hadn’t, based on the way his jaw clenches and his chest constricts -- He doesn’t want her to ever know about the horrible things he’s going to do, the horrible thing he’s about to do. Rowan shouldn’t have to see him for what he really is, what he’ll grow up to be: A monster. The rational part of himself reminds him that she already knows, and she’s still waiting for him at home, ready to pull him into open arms once he passes through the front door.

He pulls the trigger.

The kid’s blood splatters across Andy’s face.

They move quietly, each taking different sections of the warehouse. Wes covers the open space where the guns lie, Wyatt takes the small offices turned into ‘bedrooms’, while Andy takes the conference turned war room. He knows this is only a piece of the Rogues puzzle, but it’s a step in the right direction. They don’t plan on leaving anyone behind to tell the others what happened -- The grizzly scene and blood splattered across the walls will paint the picture for them.

His back remains against the wall, pulling his gun from his cut as he moves quietly, the three men in the conference room too distracted by their own conversation to notice Andy slipped into the dimly lit room. He makes presence known by firing a bullet into one man’s -- His name is Sam, based on the conversation Andy heard before entering -- knee, which creates a flurry of action as everyone tries to dive for the guns on the table. It’s the obvious move, one that Andy had anticipated. His hand reaches for the underside of the table between the four men seconds after his gun first fires, sending the flimsy plastic table over, their guns scattered and out of reach.

Sam fits one of the descriptions Will gave him, of a shorter, stocky man, blacked out ink covering him aside from a poorly done mermaid tattoo covering his throat. The man across from Sam fits the bill, as well -- Blonde, long hair, scar across his cheek, entire right arm covered in blacked out tattoos. Jack, Andy’s memory recalls. The man in question tries to make a run for one of the guns, but Andy stops him with a bullet to the stomach. Enough to knock him down, but not enough to immediately kill him. He wants them alive for this, to feel the same terror and pain Rowan did that night. They’re not going to be lucky enough to get a bullet to the head first.

The third and final man is one Andy recognizes now that he’s face to face. His name is Danny, but he’d been called Tex during his time in the club. (The nickname was stupid then, and it’s stupid now, Andy thinks.) He had his ink blacked out and left town roughly ten years ago after screwing the club over. The surprise reunion is enough to catch Tex off guard, enough that he hesitates, eyes narrowing as he takes in the scene in front of them. Both Sam and Jack bleeding on the floor, the former clutching his leg and screaming to the third to Do something, you fucking idiot. So, he does. The man charges forward, managing to knock Andy to the ground given the fact that he’s got about a hundred pounds on him.

They struggle as Tex tries to wrestle the gun away from Andy, before it gets thrown to the side in the fight. Punches are thrown on both ends, a ringing settling in Andy’s ears after a particular blow to the side of his head, though it doesn’t deter him. Andy manages to roll them over, holding the other man down with knee pressing down on his throat. Tex claws, scratches, and hits Andy in an attempt to get out from under him, but the cut off of oxygen makes it more difficult. He gets a few good blows in, though -- There’s blood dribbling down Andy’s arms from scratches, bruises that have already begun to form. He doesn’t notice, too focused on keeping the man under him from getting out of his grip. His hands move to hold Tex’s head, Andy’s thumbs digging into the inner corners of his eyes, gouging them as deeply as he can manage.

He can’t help but wonder if the three men have realized this isn’t about killing them; It’s about watching them suffer.

The fact that Tyson is still breathing is enough to send Andy into a tailspin. He had hoped the spineless piece of shit had fucked off somewhere, given that he hadn’t made an appearance in his and Rowan’s life in quite some time. Andy’s attempts at optimism always seem to be met with harsh reality, though, one that consistently proves the obvious: It’s childish to try and see the best out of a situation like this. He knows this as he throws the man off his front porch, knowing he has to take care of this problem himself -- Restraining orders and the local cops just aren’t going to cut it. Not when he and Rowan have a fragile six month old daughter sleeping in a crib down the hall.

His downfall is the fact that he reacts, he doesn’t plan. Andy knows better. The reason he’s been so successful with the club is his commitment to discretion, detail, and planning. He analyzes that night over and over for the next three years from the comfort of his prison cell, imagining how he would have killed Tyson if he had taken the time to do it properly -- Instead of grabbing his baseball bat, and kicking the front door in. He would have made it last longer, Andy decided. Prolong his suffering, before letting him gain a shred of hope that he’d make it out alive — Before finally putting him in the ground. That being said, the satisfaction that comes from the look of pure fear on Tyson’s face the moment he sees Andy come through the door? Unmatched.

The mental image is one that never fails to bring him a swell of pride. He can still hear the sound of his bat crushing bone, feel the way his heart skipped a beat with each and every hit. It didn’t matter if there was blood flying, covering him in the evidence; The fact that he hadn’t been quiet in his entrance; The sound of distant sirens headed their way, after a loud, shrill scream rang out. All that mattered was crushing Tyson’s skull, ending the iron grip he’s had on Rowan’s life for the better half of a decade. He didn’t care what happened next, as long as his wife and daughter were able to live in a world where Tyson Grant didn’t.

He only regrets not being able to finish the job that night.

It occurs to him, as his foot comes stomping down on Sam’s already shot knee, that he hasn’t done anything like this since prison. He’s gone on runs, jobs, the works -- Hell, he even threatened to brain Will in his own home. Everything pales in comparison, though. In prison, they had to be more creative; Breaking bones, cutting off fingers, slitting throats before the guards showed up. It was all quick and dirty, done by hand. There was no choice in the matter -- If he wanted to finish out his sentence, see his wife and daughter, even have a chance of making it to the end of the week at all, Andy had to get rid of the other guy. The protection that came with being a Primordial didn’t go as far as one would hope. There’s a reason they used to refer to him as the Grim Reaper. Years later, and he’s made it clear that he hasn’t lost his touch.

This man doesn’t want to fucking die, though. The way he keeps clawing at Andy, yelling obscenities between each scream of pain. He makes proclamations about how he’s going to kill Andy, calling him every name in the book as he tries and fails to fight for his life. A hard kick to the head shuts him up for a moment, disorienting him enough before Sam musters up enough energy to stab Andy in the calf, almost successful in knocking him to the floor. Clearly, the man got a last surge of something, accompanied by a knife he hadn’t realized Sam had on him. This only provokes an annoyed grunt and eye roll from Andy. He stumbles down onto one knee from the surprise of the movement, a stab to the man’s arm with the knife from his boot strap gets Sam to let go. He does, going limp as his knife is stuck in Andy’s calf. It doesn’t stop him from continuing the effort though, within a moment Andy’s on top of his unconscious victim, stabbing him in the chest over and over again like he’s in a cheap horror movie.

In that moment, he loses himself -- Something snaps, taking him back to the night he’d gotten a call that Rowan was in the hospital, the way he so desperately pushed down all of the anger and rage that came with knowing she’d been hurt at the hands of these assholes. Everything he’s fought to hold at bay for the sake of his wife, the kids, his sobriety, the club -- It all bubbles to the surface now, when he’s not worrying about keeping the kids safe and Rowan above water. When all there is is this room, and him, and the people that have to pay for the crimes they’ve committed.

Every emotion he’s expertly avoided, every ounce of it boils over as he stabs the Rogue over and over until they’re both covered in blood. The need for vengeance for what they did, the way they turned Rowan’s life upside down and left her afraid to look over her shoulder; Guilt over the fact that Andy, yet again, couldn’t protect the person he holds so dearly; The power that comes with knowing these men are at his mercy, ready to beg for their lives in a last ditch effort to survive what’s coming next. It all hits him like a freight train, leaving him a little dizzy. Though, that may be from the hits he’s taken himself, blood he’s lost -- Andy doesn’t take the time to find out. Instead, he comes to once he realizes the man under him is long dead, having succumbed to the injuries inflicted after the first few stabs.

The revelation stuns Andy momentarily, as he tries to catch his breath. If there was any witness to this, they’d see how frenzied the moment had become, that there was far more pent of emotion attached to this than Andy initially realized. Eyes glance to the two men left -- Tex, having passed out, and Jack slumped against a wall trying to stay conscious, a string of profanities passing his lips in a hoarse voice. His attention turns to his hands after that, steady but covered in a mixture of Sam’s blood and his own. A blood soaked piece of hair falls forward and onto his cheek as Andy wipes his hands off on his shirt, a wave of frustration running through him. Of fucking course he’d get blood in his hair, and now -- More on his face. He makes a mental note to book an appointment for a haircut.

They cut the man’s fingers off one by one, moving slowly and deliberately. The man in question, Gerald, is tied to a chair in the kitchen of the prison, thanks to a guard that’s on the MC’s payroll. No one is going to give a second thought to the sound of muffled screams or a hacksaw from the locked up tool shed going missing for the night. Andy’s only been out of the hospital for a day at this point -- The guy he’s torturing, having been responsible for his brush with near-death. Gerald felt bold enough to go after Andy with a homemade shank, trying to get even for some issue he held with Cronus. It was laughable to him, considering Andy hated his father just as much as this sorry bastard.

Andy had hoped to make it through his sentence by keeping his head down (for the most part, at least) doing what he needed, sticking with the right crowd -- Club members who were serving life sentences. His name gained him respect, plenty of other inmates happy to keep an eye on Cronus’ boy, but the revenge he’s getting tonight is what gains him his reputation. He becomes the go-to for these kinds of things, the one his fellow club members call on to take care of problems they have behind bars. Rowan’s words ring in his head -- Do what you have to do to stay alive. Come back to me. Playing executioner for the club wasn’t his first choice, but if it’s what kept him safe and gets him home, so fucking be it. Plus, killing the man who had tried to murder him in the showers brought Andy plenty of satisfaction. What kind of person would he be if he let some jaded idiot get away with almost killing him, right?

First the fingers, then his hands, and so on and so forth -- Dismemberment isn’t something new, Andy himself has had to cut up a few bodies so they can get rid of the evidence before. Though, typically speaking, the person isn’t still alive as they do it. Watching this guy suffer was just icing on the cake. Each time Gerald passes out, they cauterize the wound and pull out the smelling salts to give him a fake sense of safety -- That now they’re done, eye for an eye, the message is sent. Only each time he’s lulled into a half-dazed security, they stuff the rag back in his mouth and cut off another limb. It was going to be a long night.

He finds himself with a moment where he can tend to the wound he’s gotten — It's not a particularly deep stab, but it hurts like a bitch and that stupid knife looks fucking dull once he pulls it out and can actually get a good look at it. Not wasting anytime, and to make sure he doesn’t lose too much blood, Andy works quickly. The last thing he needs is to pass out and run the risk of getting himself killed, or having to have Wes haul him out over his shoulder. He has to get creative for now, knowing they can’t exactly make a pit stop at the ER on the way back and he doesn’t want to call Rowan after, given the fact that they’re bringing one of the Rogues back with them to get information out of -- So he moves to rip off part of Sam’s torn pant leg so that he can get pressure on the wound. Using a piece of folded up denim, he holds it against his injury, tying a piece tightly around his calf to keep it in place. It’s not great, but it’ll do for now, until he can get to a proper first aid kit. Andy can practically hear Rowan in the back of his head, scolding him for getting hurt in the first place. Once she knows the context, he’d imagine she probably wouldn’t think much of the injury after.

The sound of Tex’s screams pulled his attention, the man having regained consciousness and begun to panic -- The knee jerk reaction from Andy is to pull his gun back out, silencing Tex with a bullet to the chest. Andy unloads the rest of his clip into the man as he approaches, finding himself feeling lighter and lighter with each shot, despite the fact that he’s now limping. An unbearable amount of helplessness has weighed on him the last six months — Like all he can do is watch these terrible things happen from the sidelines, only able to help tend to the aftermath rather than keep his loved ones safe. What has left him lying awake at night as been the feeling that he’s constantly one step behind, always a minute too late — Whether it’s the shipment getting hijacked and Blake getting to him hours later, homes being burned down while he’s shooting up a warehouse, his own wife lying beaten and bloody in the middle of the street while he sits at a restaurant waiting for her. One thing after the other.

It’s unclear what kind of man it makes him to take such pleasure in revenge -- That he isn’t haunted at night by the people he’s killed or the homes he’s wrecked for the right amount of cash. Maybe it’s proof that he really is his father’s son, or that he’s just as heartless as people believe him to be. Andy’s not sure if it matters much at this point. The idea of knowing he is sending these assholes to an early grave gives him a sense of peace he hasn’t felt in a long time, one he wasn’t sure he’d ever know again after Valentine’s Day. This isn’t the end of the Rogues, but it’s retribution for what they’ve done, bringing him more clarity than ever before. Anyone who hurts the people he loves deserves to die screaming.

Confusion finds him when the sound of a gun firing fills his ears with a familiar ringing, a bullet hitting the dead man on the ground in front of him rather than its intended target. Andy follows the direction it came from to find a wild eyed Jack, having managed to pull himself across the floor in a bloody heap, far enough to get to a gun, clearly struggling to hold himself up right even while propped against the turned over table. He had the element of surprise on his side, but Andy has the benefit of not having been shot in the stomach -- So he moves quickly across the small room, easily smacking the gun out of the man’s hand. It’s clear Jack is running on pure adrenaline and spite, though now that he got his one shot in, it’s running out. Fists colliding with the man’s jaw only speed up the process, though before he finally gives up and slumps over to side and lands on the floor -- He spits blood back at Andy, clearly trying to get in one last fuck you before he dies. Jack doesn’t get much of a reaction out of Andy, instead he stands up fully, giving the half-conscious man a good look before the heel of his boot meets his head over and over until he is long dead and unrecognizable.

#blood tw #murder tw #violence tw #gore tw #death tw #eye gore tw #stabbing tw #decapitation tw #overkill tw #gun tw #dismemberment tw #gun violence tw #stalking tw #prison tw #if i missed any sort of tw or tag for a tw please give me a shout!!!!#self 02.#it's been a long long time since i've been able to write andy going feral.............................. i need a drink <3

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Psycho Analysis: Roman Sionis

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Birds of Prey is a fun, silly movie. So you’d expect a fun, silly villain for such a film, right? Well, we sort of get that… but this is an R-rated fun, silly movie, so the villain is going to cuss a lot and peel people’s faces off and be a raging psychopathic manchild. Roman Sionis, everybody!

Good old Roman Sionis, known to comic fans as Black Mask (he isn’t ever called that by anyone except Harley during his introduction, and he doesn’t even wear his mask until the end), is just an absolute raging lunatic. He gets mad at the drop of a hat, is creepily posessive of Dinah Lance, has a very close relationship with his murderous second-in-command Zsasz, and is just generally unpleasant to every single person who crosses his path.

But that’s par for the course for Roman Sionis, who is never really EVER portrayed as a charming, likable guy. The real question here is, is he an entertaining villain? Well he’s played by Ewan McGregor, what do YOU think?

Motivation/Goals: Roman is a relatively simple villain, but I think this works in his favor. You see, a big issue with Harley’s previous outing, Suicide Squad, is that the mission was way too high stakes despite the cast featuring a group of people who didn’t really have any powers beyond “fighting really good.” or “has weapon skills.” You’re telling me you’re gonna put Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang up against Enchantress and her army of ancient Aztec super-zombies? WHAT? Here, we have a street-level threat much more suited to Harley’s capabilities: Roman is just a very powerful gangster, and his goal in this movie is the simple “get this diamond that was stolen back to me so I can make fat stacks of cash.” That’s really all their needs to be here, a simple MacGuffin to drive along the plot to its various setpieces.

Performance: I love Ewan McGregor, so, really, he didn’t have to do much with the role of Roman Sionis to make him great. Still, this man went above and beyond despite having comparatively little screentime to Harley. Roman seems incapable of going a single sentence without cursing up a storm and is the epitome of a psychopathic manchild, tormenting people for the slightest of reasons. He forces a woman to strip and dance on one of his tables because she was laughing too loud when he was upset, and decides not to spare a girl’s life because she had a gross snot bubble on her face from sobbing while he had his crony Zsasz peel off her parents’ faces. As funny and hammy as he gets, the dude is a stone-cold ruthless bastard who has no line he won’t cross to get what he wants.

Final Fate: Cass hides a grenade on him and steals the ring, and then Harley kicks him off the pier while he panics. Before he even hits the water, BOOM! Never would I have expected to laugh out loud at the sight of Ewan McGregor being blown into bits, but this movie was just full of surprises.

Best Scene: I think that the honor has to go to his establishing character moment with Zsasz, as they cut off the faces of a family who crossed Roman, and then when Roman decides to spare the daughter, he notices snot on her face, says “Ew” like a petulant child, and has Zsasz cut her face off anyway. It’s a great way to establish that Roman is an awful human being no matter how you slice it, and firmly establishes that while, yes, he is a misogynist villain in a female-led blockbuster, his misogyny is just a tiny facet of how unabashedly terrible Roman is.

Final Thoughts & Score: So, this is gonna sound weird, but… Roman kinda reminded me of Justin Hammer. Hammer is a villain who I have greatly warmed to over time (mostly thanks to Nando V Movies on YouTube), to the point where I think he’s actually pretty funny but is held back from true greatness by the sloppy nature of Iron Man 2. The film was big, bloated, and didn’t know what to do with itself. And this film is KIND OF like that… but it knows what to do with Roman.

The movie has an undercurrent of female empowerment, so why not make the villain emblematic of things women have to overcome? Roman is creepy, misogynistic, and even a bit racist especially with his condescending actions towards Dinah. And he even throws a fit when she “betrays” him and decides to murder her. But the movie is smart so as to not make this hamfisted; the movie makes it entirely clear that even if you take away his misogynistic elements, Roman Sionis is just an utterly disgusting human being. Everything about him is just so hilariously vulgar and repulsive, but the way he’s performed helps lighten it and help keep him within the tone of the movie. He’s just dark enough and just hammy enough to work.

My big issues with Roman are mostly due to his utilization and the wasted potential, which is a problem that really hits a lot of stuff in Birds of Prey. He is great every time he’s onscreen, but his screentime is fairly limited, and then he dies at the end which robs him of any chance of coming back in the future as an antagonist. He actually functions great as a more grounded threat rather than some larger-than-life end of the world threat, but the fact he dies horribly – before even having his mask burned onto his face, even! - just kind of feels like a waste of a character. To be fair, Black Mask is not the best or most interesting Batman villain crime lord; we have the Penguin for that. But when you cast someone like Ewan McGregor and he’s clearly having a blast, it’s hard not to feel at least slightly bitter when he gets hilariously gibbed at the end.

Still, I can’t let Justin Hammer’s sacrifice go in vain; he walked so Roman could run, and Roman ran so that perhaps someday Hammer could sprint. Roman gets a nice, fat 8/10, which he definitely earns with the heaping helpings of ham he brings to the table, though he is held back at least a little by the wasted potential of his character.

But hey, if you want to talk about wasted potential…

Psycho Analysis: Victor Zsasz

I really like Victor Zsasz in this film. I really do. The angle they went with, the implied homosexuality, the actor… it’s all good stuff that helps make a disturbing character like Zsasz easier to swallow. But he gets hit with wasted potential harder than even Roman does.

Motivation/Goals: He’s Roman’s right-hand man, so basically his motivation is to do whatever Roman wants him to do. However, there is a bit of an implied thing between his boss and him; Zsasz seems undeniably irritated with the attention he lavishes on Dinah, and is very hands-on and affectionate with his boss. A lot of his later actions in the film and his cruelty towards Dinah does seem to stem from some place of anger towards her for taking Roman’s attention away from him.

Performance: I have to say, Chris Messina does a stellar job at portraying Zsasz as creepy and obsessive, and certainly showcases the fanatical loyalty he has towards Roman, making him something of a dark mirror to Harley’s former relationship with the Joker. I also appreciate that, despite not going with Zsasz’s original psychotic serial killer angle, they still made him a bloodthirsty psycho with a sort of nihilistic edge to him. Frankly, this might be the best possible take on a live-action Zsasz without things getting intensely uncomfortable.

Final Fate: This is probably the worst element of Zsasz: his death. Right before the climax he gets shot out of the blue by Huntress and then Harley just repeatedly stabs him with the arrow. And I have to make it clear here – Zsasz barely got to do anything. He never really poses any sort of physical threats to the heroines, never gets into a fight, and is never mentioned again after his death despite being very close to Roman (to the point where the two may have been lovers).

Final Thoughts & Score: As far as henchmen go, Zsasz is pretty solid conceptually. He’s established early on as a psychopathic enforcer of Roman’s gang, he has an eerie air to him, and he has a lot of elements from the comics you rarely see on Zsasz in other media, such as being blonde. Messina does a fantastic job at making the character seem like a competent killer in the employ of Roman.

But the key word is “seem,” because Zsasz frankly never lives up to his hype. Despite being introduced peeling the faces off of a family, he is just never utilized to his fullest extent. He’s kind of just there in a lot of scenes, and while he isn’t unmemorable or anything he never really does anything that makes him into a worthwhile addition to the franchise. He’s honestly just a glorified mook with a few interesting gimmicks to help set him apart.

I’ve gotta give him a 6/10. While he’s definitely a step above average, he’s really not anything amazing, mostly because the movie refuses to allow him to reach his full potential. He doesn’t have any great quotes, his most memorable scene really serves more to establish Roman than anything, and he is dumped and quickly forgotten right before the climax. He would easily be a 7 or 8 if the story treated him with a little more weight or respect, but he just ends up underwhelming despite having so much going for him, and it’s frankly a bit depressing. It’s just a very sad state of affairs for the character, especially when he managed to be more intimidating in the Arkham games despite the fact that he posed even less of a physical threat than he does here.

Well, while we’re here, let’s go over THAT Zsasz briefly.

Portrayed in the games by Danny Jacobs (who you may know as Sacha Baron Cohen's stand in on The Penguins of Madagascar. Yes, Zsasz and King Julien had the same voice actor.), Zsasz is never really a major antagonist and is, in all honesty, a pretty weak fighter; you can always take him down in one punch. The thing with Zsasz in the games, though, is that it’s always tricky to get to him, because he usually has hostages of some kind. In Arkham Asylum, he appears twice, and you need to use stealth to take him out before he kills his hostages. In City, he gets a much longer sidequest where he requires you to pick up ringing telephones and then glide to another one across the city within a time limit. Once you’ve listened to all of his messages, Batman finds out where his lair is, sneaks through it, and whoops his ass.

I certainly can’t say he’s the best villain in either game he appears in, but he’s definitely scary. His messages and game over screens are really freaky and unnerving, and the Riddler even requires you to find some of Zsasz’s work as parts of riddles… and by “work” I am of course referring to corpses posed in life-like positions. There’s also the horrifying little tidbit that in City, Zsasz actually does kill one of his hostages and there’s nothing that can be done about it; if you switch to detective mode in his lair, you can see a corpse at the bottom of the water in the room.

I think how creepy and intense he is really helps make him stand out among the more colorful characters in those games like Joker, Clayface, and Riddler, so I think giving him a nice 8/10 for his appearances is well-earned. I feel like Birds of Prey could have learned a few lessons from this portrayal; if they wanted to make him more creepy than physically intimidating, that could have worked well and it would have made his anti-climactic defeat a bit more plausible. Instead, they kind of tried this middle ground where he’s creepy enough and intimidating enough physically that it just feels like a letdown when he’s offed.

Oh yeah, did you know he appeared in Batman Begins? He had a brief cameo and didn’t do anything significant and looked like this:

Pretty sure he’d get a low score if he wasn’t just a quick little reference.

#Psycho Analysis #Roman Sionis #Birds of Prey #birds of prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn)#Ewan McGregor #victor zsasz #Chris Messina #Danny Jacobs #Arkham series #Batman

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Justice for Icebox and other memorable women in classic football movies

Becky “Icebox” O’Shea (Shawna Waldron) takes the field with her cheerleading skirt still on in Little Giants. | Little Giants/Warner Bros.

Unfortunately, in this case life still imitates art.

The first time you meet Icebox, arguably the protagonist of the 1994 classic Little Giants, is at pee-wee football tryouts. “Gentlemen, suck it up!” the coach shouts at the group of disheveled 10-year-olds, until one finally lays out the ball-carrier with a satisfying thud. “Oh baby, now we’re talking,” he says with a grin, running over to the group. “Nice pop, Icebox.”

“Thanks, Uncle Kev,” she replies, her long brown hair tumbling down as she pulls off her helmet. It’s intended to be a shock. “Can you BELIEVE a GIRL is playing FOOTBALL?!” the director practically screams at the viewer. But that shorthand — the reveal that beneath the comfortable anonymity of the helmet lies a girl — and its close relative, the ponytail sticking out from beneath the helmet, have become ubiquitous to the point of cliché throughout both popular culture and coverage of girls and women playing sports society still doesn’t expect girls and women to play.

Little Giants/Warner Bros.

The viewer sees Becky “Icebox” O’Shea (Shawna Waldron) for the first time — just after she takes off her football helmet — in Little Giants.

Yet for some reason, the helmet hair phenomenon still works despite the fact the movie is almost 30 years old. It’s enough of a twist to get your attention, in the same way that girls and women playing football still garner coverage based on nothing more than their decision to suit up — though they’re just the newest of more than a century’s worth of “girl gridders.” The seemingly immutable expectation that girls don’t play football, won’t play football and aren’t interested in football, though, has been repeatedly contradicted on the silver screen just as it is in reality. In fact, some of football’s most iconic films have featured girls and women who subvert that exact expectation, even as they reinforce a whole slew of other sexist stereotypes.

The central conflict of Little Giants — ostensibly a film about the (spoiler alert) triumph of dweeby male underdogs — is sexism. (It’s currently streaming for free on IMDBTV.) Becky “Icebox” O’Shea is introduced as one of the better football players her age, more than hanging with the boys at tryouts and putting one in a headlock when he gives her guff. Yet, of course, it’s not enough to make the team, a reality that is presented to the viewer as immediately, unequivocally unfair. “What about Becky?” her father Danny asks the coach, Kevin, who is his brother and a retired football star. “She’s better than half of those boys.”

“Danny, I hate to break it to you but Icebox is a girl,” Kevin replies. “Maybe if you started treating her like a girl, she’d start acting like one.” His response clarifies that he is the central villain; soon after, his own wife calls him “pigheaded and chauvinistic” for not letting Becky on the team. Becky, disappointed but unfazed, bands together with the other rejects to form a new team (after single-handedly running off their bullies), and the Little Giants are born.

One of the more compelling aspects of the movie is that the few characters who are skeptical about Becky’s ability — mainly Kevin and a late recruit named Spike — are unsympathetic. All the other kids and adults readily accept her passion and talent for the game. Her gender is never mentioned as a potential hindrance, and when she opts out of playing, the rest of the team is not just sad but afraid to compete without her. “Without Becky, we’re cream of wheat!” laments the kicker.

The same can’t be said of 2000’s Remember The Titans, the Disneyfied version of a true story where football is presented as a foolproof way to solve racism — and the directors make a halfhearted attempt to shoehorn sexism and homophobia cures in, too (intersectionality … question mark?). In Titans (currently streaming on Disney+), Sheryl Yoast, the nine-and-a-half-year-old daughter of the assistant coach Bill Yoast, is a football fiend to the point of practically being a savant. Like Becky, she’s depicted as the only child of a single father, a similarity that was far from coincidental: the real Sheryl had three sisters, lived with her mother, and didn’t care about football at all.

The heavily-fictionalized Sheryl (played by a young Hayden Panettiere) taps into a few different clichés. She’s extremely precocious, and precocious children are one convenient way to diffuse tense scenes (of which there are plenty in Titans). Her constant presence (explained by the passion for football and the single-parent family) makes Yoast more sympathetic, when he might otherwise seem uncomfortably similar to all the other racists in town. Mostly, her presence reiterates the idea that girls who like football must be explained. Without the feminizing influence of a mother, these films argue, it’s only logical girls will deviate from heteronormative expectation and dive into sports, which are still ultimately gendered male.

Remember The Titans/Walt Disney Pictures

Sheryl Yoast (Hayden Panettiere) and Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) watch film together — with Yoast offering some harsh words for his offense — in Remember The Titans.

“Why don’t you get this little girl some pretty dolls or something?” the otherwise undeniably great Coach Boone asks Yoast at one point, as Sheryl scowls. “I tried — she loves football,” Yoast replies. By the middle of the movie Sheryl and Boone are grinding tape together.

That brief moment of acceptance is about as good as it gets for Sheryl, despite the fact she’s the one who, at the movie’s most pivotal moment, compels her father to finally collaborate with Boone to win the state title. “Mama, are all white girls that crazy?” Boone’s own daughter asks at one point — a memorable line that unfortunately once again reinforces Sheryl’s difference, which is repeatedly shrugged off until it is ultimately ignored. Her interest in the game, convincingly depicted throughout the film, is nothing more than a means to an end.

Becky’s bugaboo, in contrast, isn’t that people don’t take her interest in the game seriously. Instead, it’s the other side of the double-edged sword that women in sports have to confront: the idea that sports are inherently anti-feminine, that it is impossible to play them wholeheartedly without implicitly rejecting all the things (white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal) society deems valuable about being a woman.

Little Giants/Warner Bros.

Icebox tries on lipstick as she debates quitting football and becoming a cheerleader in Little Giants.

It’s wrapped up in her nickname, Icebox: When “hunk” Junior Floyd joins the team (keep in mind they’re all supposed to be around 10, which makes it a little weird), Becky’s instantly conflicted. “I’m the Icebox, the Icebox doesn’t like boys … I don’t get crushes,” she says as she eats powdered donuts straight from the box (the film’s proof positive of her lack of self-conscious femininity). Even at that early age, it’s presented as a given that girls will understand playing sports is perceived as antagonistic to heterosexual romantic relationships.

That internal conflict ties her to one of the least sympathetic women in football cinema, Any Given Sunday’s owner/general manager Christina Pagniacci (played by Cameron Diaz). For how nuanced a picture the Oliver Stone classic (currently streaming on Netflix) paints of life in professional football, the portrayals of women throughout the film are two-dimensional to the point of being confusing. (Why on Earth does Cap’s wife hit him when he says he wants to retire? Even the most stereotypical gold digger presumably has a little heart.) But Christina gets the most screen time out of any of them, enough to depict her character as Icebox ... if all Icebox’s worst fears were realized.

Pagniacci’s behavior throughout the film doesn’t seem much worse than how billionaire sports team owners are prone to acting (that is to say, very badly). She wants to move the Miami Sharks to Los Angeles to take advantage of tax incentives (where have we heard that one before?). She argues with the head coach constantly, which is presented as excessively combative even when she’s right — as in her insistence that the team should invest in the passing game and stop running the ball so much (how is this movie 20 years old?). She pushes to keep players on the field even when they’re not healthy, and her involvement in the team is centered on growing profits (which, obviously — that’s how ownership thinks).

Any Given Sunday/Warner Bros.

One of many disputes between Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) and Coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino) in Any Given Sunday.

But it’s a lot easier to make ownership the villain when ownership is a woman. Christina was modeled after late Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, who moved the team to St. Louis and had already inspired several money-grubbing, ice-queen lady-owner characters. Pagniacci’s greed and calculation are repeatedly lamented by the other characters on gendered terms: Instead of being savvy and pragmatic she’s hard-edged and heartless, characterized as such by a bunch of people who themselves could easily be described that way.

“He wanted a son more than anything else in the world, and when you really think about it, what Christina is is just such a tragedy,” her own mother tells Coach D’Amato (Al Pacino) within earshot of Christina, who cries silently in the next room (another confusing scene). “I honestly believe that woman would eat her young,” mutters the league commissioner towards the end of the film. It’s not enough for her to merely be the bad billionaire boss, which would be easy enough to make convincing. Pagniacci has to be presented as cold and distant — intrinsically undesirable, despite the fact she’s conventionally attractive — to make her villainy irrevocable. For women, there’s no redemption from men not liking you.

That’s what Becky realizes by the midpoint of Giants. In a patently strange scene, she sits down with her sexist uncle, torn up about why Junior doesn’t seem to like like her. “He’s probably gonna want some cute girl, not some teammate,” the fully-grown man tells his 10-year-old niece. “But I don’t know about being a cute girl — I’m good at sports,” Becky replies (again, being a girl and playing sports are shown as intrinsically at odds). “You have a lot more to offer than football,” her uncle says very creepily, in another classic deflection: sports are too bad or dumb or boring for a nice girl like you. “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asks. The strings swell, and Kevin replies, “I don’t think you’re pretty … I think you’re beautiful.”

The scene is so, so odd, and deeply out of sync with the rest of the movie to that point. Kevin was an unrepentant misogynist and then, suddenly, his “guidance” (telling Becky to be a cheerleader) is shown as positive. Becky takes his advice, quits the team before the big game and only comes back late in the game with her cheerleading skirt still on. It’s visual evidence of the compromise she’s already made: it won’t be possible for her to have both of the things she wants — the attention of boys and the chance to play sports — so something’s gotta give. It would be less depressing if it weren’t so often a reality: girls drop out of sports at remarkably high rates after puberty.

Becky’s star turn and unsatisfying conclusion probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Of course a girl was the center of an underdog story: Who’s more of an underdog in sports than a girl? Little Giants ends with the Annexation of Puerto Rico, a problematically-titled, game-winning play that holds a beloved place in sports lore. The play begins with Becky charging down the field, drawing all the defenders to her — after all, she’s one of the best players on the team. Once the opposing players are concentrated around her, she opens her arms: no ball. It was all just one, long fake.

Little Giants/Warner Bros.

Icebox reveals the fake during one of Little Giants’ most memorable moments, the Annexation of Puerto Rico.

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 5 years ago

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Fanon characterization of the Calypso twins between me and The Wild West Pyro:

We both have the strong sinking feeling that the twins are slowly going to lose it as the game goes on, so here’s our collaborated analysis of the two:

I’ll be in non-cool text, while The Wild West Pyro will be in italics, for easier distinction between us. [There will be slight edits and changes for cohesion]

“It would be pretty interesting if we found out the Calypsos/the cult started out with 'good intentions'.”

“Hell, you can see the populism kicking in there.What did the writers say? Ah. "Your poor bandits! You're kicked around and nobody likes you, but we can give you a purpose in life! We can make you feel appreciated and loved!" [This is a reference to the Danny Homan interview] Something of that line.”

“oh yeah! the twins are also providing them with food and weaponry. i mean i can see why a bandit desperate for something better would follow them.”

“I'm guessing how this goes: The Twins start off by winning people over by talking about how they want Pandora to be finally at peace after endless war and giving the bandits a new life where they're treated like actual people. Then once they've got enough people, they say that the Raiders have to go, the corporations have to go, with the Vaults seized the universe will see no more war. Actually, I'm predicting rn that they have a very, very cult-like end goal in terms of IRL parallels.What if they choose to "cleanse" the universe with whatever power Tyreen possesses? And once everything standing in their way is gone, they can create this ideal utopian peaceful universe where there's no corporations and no more fighting. Meanwhile the Eridians are panicking because they know it's a doomed plan and the Vaults do not work like that.”

“[this is very much a] large scale Opportunity situation. literally reverse uno card as to what jack was attempting”

“Yep. Paradise for the common man bandit. OTL parallels to what usually sparks communist revolutions or popular revolutions in general. So yeah, Tyreen could very easily justify herself in that she genuinely wants to bring peace to the universe, with all means necessary. Of course, internally, the Twins just want to be gods and play at being them and hold onto their power as absolute rulers presiding over an eternally-grateful populace.”

“definitely sounds like two teenage cult leaders to me ngl. i could see them not being too secure in themselves (behind the vvv confident personas they put on) and constantly second guessing themselves and reassuring that they're doing this for everyone's own good even as things just keep getting worse and worse. could [have] a tie-in to whatever tragic backstory they might have”

“Yep and yep. And there's this internal fear that they don't know what being a god entails, if they'll lose sense of who they are or not... but put that aside. All for the greater good! I'm actually thinking about this. People note that the Twins are basically streamer critiques, which is a yes. But if you want to take them to serious universe-spanning villain territory, I think that they'll absorb the knowledge from Elpis at one point. And they start to become more detached and more frightening, and a lot more eloquent as they really start becoming gods in the BL sense. While still being narcissistic attention whores who actually like killing people off with their powers but pretend to act benevolent. Essentially, you have the Greek Gods except there's two Zeuses, one is a girl and they've both got all of Zeus's worst traits cranked up to eleven.”

“oh god are they gonna dick everything that moves? oh no... cover ava's eyes! joking aside, that sounds accurate. especially given the borderlands universe loves to tie in its greek mythology. also also i am glad someone else agrees the twins are going to elpis. i refuse to believe they'd destroy it/blow it up before going there for the info. that shit is valuable! especially if you want to convince people you're gods?? accurately predicting the future is insanely good for doing that! plus all the other cool shit you can do by knowing exactly what's going to happen.”

“It also makes the Twins much more dangerous if they can see every outcome...unfortunately, Lilith is very good at playing 4D Chess by now.”

“lilith, putting on her sunglasses and cracking her knuckles: it's time to show them what a real military organization can do. ellie is her hype woman with the drink and a towel. also also lilith is probably kicking herself for not being fast enough this time to punch the vault symbol into tyreen's face.”

“Honestly, I'd love Lilith to turn out to be this really crafty, really charismatic guerrilla warfare commander. Like an Innie leader but they're hypercompetent, not a terrorist and also have Keyes's sheer talent for analyzing battles and tactics and adapting accordingly. Lilith sitting up in Sanc-III being BL!Keyes except a lady and specializing in ground warfare would be sick.”

“yes. fucking. please. gearbox please give lily all the character development, your girl deserves it. im glad because it does seem like she's getting there when you crash land on Promethea. and even the way she handles herself on the bridge is very smooth and confident.”

“tfw you can see the future and, yet, the lady you robbed of her siren powers is outsmarting you 24/7, 365 days a year despite you being able to see the future. also you're trying to fight fate and desperate to change reality so that you can't lose like the future said you would. joke's on you, you cannot fight it.”

“There is no changing it. bonus points if ty only saw the very end, so she is utterly clueless on how the middle bits play out. so lilith is kicking her ass across elpis and she's like ‘this is NOT how i saw this going’.”

“I'd seriously imagine that life in BL corporate society really is like life in Rapture or Columbia. The upper class profits immensely and reaps all the best goods, but they refuse to do the dirty work themselves so they rely on this huge workforce who they constantly cheat, lie and exploit. The few achieve huge power and stuff at the expense of the many. Looking at the Twins in the parallels of how revolutions go, they'll basically go from recruiting the bandits to recruiting the huge lower class of every planet. Looking at records from all the planets, we've got people being screwed over again and again, corruption and other nasties. The Twins claim that they want all corporations to go, to bring some form of unified government back to the galaxy. And it works- their army size quadruples overnight and goes from there. By the time we get to Promethea, the COV are already recruiting everyone dissatisfied with corporate life. If they successfully seize control of Maliwan like I predict, they'll be a force to be reckoned with. The Twins will use the masses to achieve some sort of theocratic revolution, [they] claim that it's all for everyone's good. But in reality, they want to be absolute rulers of the universe, gods worshipped and feared by all.”

“Oh yeah, the twins are definitely feeding (maybe literally) off the huge numbers of dissatisfied people across the universe- the mega corporations are evil, no doubt there are millions of people waiting for something better. tbh, if gaige wasn't booted from the main game, I could see a whole side story of her having started a revolution somewhere, and then joining up with the Crimson Raiders once her entire party just up and joined the CoV. And [I would] 100% bet the twins started a campaign against DAHL and Atlas and suddenly nearly every bandit on pandora joined up with them. (also Athena was sitting in a chair clutching at the armrests and janey was like "don't you fuckin dare, hon" and athena is like "but... Atlas...")”

[We talk more about Gaige’s anarchist revolution and trying to topple the mega corporations in a less cult-y fashion here]

“... Bonus points 2: The COV fire up the memories of Jack to rally everyone into opposing Hyperion and suddenly Athena is like "OK I'm not going, mobilize the army." And Janey is like ‘Here we go...’.”

[we joke around a little bit more about Athena and Janey here]

“I can imagine Rhys's internal conflict, knowing that he has to make the galaxy a better place but at the same time, maintain his corporate power and control because without it, he's doomed. Then again, Rhys is no stranger to doing shady stuff. I think a lot of the Twins's evil will be in how they treat their followers.There's all the smooth-talking and promises of the future. And then when you actually get there, you're brainwashed into being another unthinking, 100% loyal attack dog for them. And you follow everything they ask you to do for 100%, even if they use you for power experiments or cannon fodder. And the game will remind us that these people weren't all bandits - over the course of the story, the COV includes people like former corporate execs, entire families, people who were just trying to get by day to day. And now we as Vault Hunters have to kill all these ordinary people to save the universe. Tough choices, eh?“

“Oh geez, you know that's a really fair point. i know borderlands likes to push the 'morally gray' aspect of things, but holy shit that's dark. (not saying i don't love it though, i totally do lol) You’re probably 100% right that rhys is struggling internally. especially after being so closely tied up with hyperion and even fiona and sasha, seeing exactly what hyperion did to people not just on helios but the people trying to live their daily lives and survive on pandora. im sure he has a similar reasoning to himself as the twins: im doing this for the better of the people. i can help so many more people with this money and power. somewhat similar to handsome jack, but hopefully lorelei (if she's not evil) helps ground him and keep him from jumping into the middle-to-deep end.”

“I'm still betting that Rhys will remain on the good side, if a teensy bit unscrupulous. I mean, the whole thing about the Twins is that they're social commentary of livestreamers and influencers and the incredibly toxic influence they can have. There are countless aspects of that to explore. If streamers can mobilize their entire loyal fanbases to bully the crap outta some poor chump or buy things or let their fans believe that they know the streamer 100% as a person and not a persona, the Twins can convince people to go to war.”

“Oooh yeah, it's not hard to imagine they probably don't even need the brainwashing for a majority of their cult, just the select few who are either on the fence or against it, but are [still] 'available'. irl streamers can be seriously fuckin scary, man, im not surprised this is the route gearbox is going for. now, it would be severely fucked up if there was a scene where tyreen demands someone kill themselves on the spot and they do without hesitation. if you watch the moze gameplay there seems to be a hint of something like that going on over the radio/TVs, she mentions something about their sacrifice or something, then you hear a dude screaming/gurgling.”

“Everyone's thinking that Tyreen will be this laughable, entertaining villain. But I'm constantly seeing hints and estimating that she is going to be far, far more scarier than we give her credit for. For one, Jack was a presence largely relegated to audio. We only physically saw him in BL2 twice. The Twins run a cult, which itself is frightening already. And it looks like we'll be seeing them in person very often.”

“Oh yes, tyreen is fucking terrifying. i mean even that she can steal siren powers is already a huge "whoa what the fuck" in my book. that one line at the end of the HBC where she's like "you're my most loyal follower vault thief, you just don't know it yet"? fucking scary, how her voice drops and gets all serious for a split second and then the hologram just cuts out. i was like "wh- wait hang on-???" i definitely think she is putting up a persona and as the game goes on we're slowly going to watch her lose it. troy will probably grow a bit distant from her as well if he doesn't lose it, too. definitely think ty is going to try and kill him once he's of no use to her, because he's just been a pain in her side because she had to keep him alive as the brains of the operation. but once the operation is done... whoops. sorry pal. don't need you anymore. they're the main villains, i can't see her holding the bonds of family in high regard at all. she could totally write off his death as like ‘he sacrificed himself for the Great Vault, now we pray to him every day and sacrifice ourselves in his name’ or smth”

“She puts up this fun-loving persona as a streamer, but she then decides the Vault Hunters get to see her true self. It is not pretty. It makes Jack look like a kitten-cuddling fluffball, that's how bad the real Tyreen is. It makes Piston and Vasquez sound like friendly guys you'd take out for lunch after work. It makes Hector's goals look very reasonable and sane. Also, perhaps she kills him and we never see how she did it, which ups the scare factor. It's like Troy disappeared and we have no idea how she killed him and how long it took for him to die. We just find a lot of irreconcilable proof that Troy is dead now and we don't know how. That is the amount of horror I'm estimating.”

“Oh man I love this. That's so horrible (in a good way), I can 100% see it happening. Jack swore revenge for us killing the person he 'loved'. Tyreen herself kills the person she 'loved' and we start to realize holy shit this is the real deal. She can't even pretend to care like Jack pretended to care (he didn't actually care about Angel as a person, but he did say things to try and make Angel think he did, just putting that out there cuz I don't wanna sound like I support him lol). There's just a complete contrast between her and Jack during the final levels of the game. Jack stops joking around "you feel that, child killer?", he's dead serious and ready to kill vs Tyreen laughing or just being off the rails bubbly for her 'streamer persona' while looking utterly unhinged”

so yeah, the convo teetered off after this a bit, but the general gist is that Tyreen is going to go absolutely off-the-wall by the end of the main story. this is somewhat supported by the Danny Homan interview that states the twins are going to have their relationship warp and twist.Tyreen is going to start going crazy with all the powers she absorbs and realize once the plan is over she won’t need Troy’s expertise anymore, and Troy is going to get sick of being relegated to the side when he’s the one with the master plan. We both have the deep feelings the twins aren’t going to stay as charismatic as they are in the little bit of promo material we’ve gotten of them. which i get, because in a lot of the official trailers, Troy looks pissed. Tyreen is always super smug no matter what shot she’s in, but Troy... he looks very angry in some shots we get. even when Ty is holding his forearm in that one shot, he rips his arm out of her grip. For example: “How many IRL streamer "friends" get into ridiculous drama and feuds with each other? Answer: a lot. Could be mirroring that with the twins. A lot of people are saying that the new villains will never match up to Jack. This is our take, and we're proud of it, and very confident in Gearbox's new writing team. ”

EDIT: some edits made by The Wild West Pyro

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3 #the calypso twins

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myhahnestopinion · 5 years ago

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THE AARONS 2019 - Worst Film

The idea of a Worst Films list has been getting a lot of pushback recently, with the argument being it is hard work to make any movie and unproductive to take cheap shots at unsuccessful ones. I’d like to counter that films like The Rise of Skywalker are soulless and cowardly, and so Hahn’s shooting first this time, baby! That film actually just barely missed the cut for this list, begging the question of what exactly could be worse. Here are the Aarons for Worst Film:

#10. Ma

There’s something very wrong with Ma and it’s not hard to determine what. Ma isn’t nurturing: its clumsy pacing forgets to ratchet up any tension, revealing her motivations far too early while waiting far too long for her to act on them. Ma isn’t wise: its numerous references to vaping are an unsuccessful smoke and mirrors act to hide how little it comprehends the teenage mindset. Ma isn’t understanding: it makes victim into villain with reckless abandon. Ma isn’t worth a visit; despite her protestations, Ma will undoubtedly make you want to drink alone.

#9. The Curse of La Llorona

La Llorona has nothing but crocodile tears. There’s no sincerity to director Michael Chavez’s interpretation of the pervasive Mexican folklore; the legend just checks off enough of the right boxes to easily fill in a mad-libs supernatural horror screenplay. Each shot is mechanically chosen, displaying plenty of competence of how horror filmmaking functions, but lacking any personality of their own. The Curse of La Llorona is just a wide release audition tape of perplexing fortune, worming its way into the Conjuring Universe like a wolf in sheep’s clothing and drowning in clichés.

#8. The Curse of Buckout Road

This year’s list, much more than previous years, has been cursed by many late-night viewings with a friend, driving down the quality of films featured here with drivel like The Curse of Buckout Road. The movie follows a group of friends making a student-film on the supposedly haunted titular location; the amateur filmmaking on display suggest this student-film conceit is metatextual. Danny Glover briefly passes by in pursuit of a paycheck; he’s wise enough to buck out before the plot barrels towards a dead end.

#7. Can You Keep A Secret?

Can You Keep A Secret? has very little to hide but a lot to be ashamed of. The quirky indie rom-com wears its influences on its sleeve but can’t crack the code as to what makes them work. As soon as the film establishes its premise, it quickly buttons up; the humor oddly gets progressively less outlandish as the plot drags on. Co-stars Alexandra Daddario and Tyler Hoechlin are not without their charms, but even with all their secrets laid bare, consistent character motivations remain elusive for the two. Can You Keep a Secret? has nothing worth hearing; you can keep it.

#6. Godzilla: The Planet Eater

Not to be confused with the live-action monster disaster movie released this summer, Godzilla: The Planet Eater is simply a monstrous disaster. Capping off a trilogy of anime installments for Netflix, the action in the film is stiffer than rubber suits ever were, which is to say nothing of the repetitive exposition. The film’s treatment of its characters is even worse: of the three women present in the entire trilogy, one is murdered, one becomes braindead and later involuntarily taken on a suicide run, and the third speaks only enough English to state her only purpose in life is to have sex. It’s enough to make viewers leave The Planet Eater sick to their stomach.

#5. Serenity

Serenity is surreal; the movie ends with a plot twist so baffling it really must be seen to be believed, making it the rare recommended film from this category. Even before that development, something smells fishy about the film’s overcooked noir stylings. Matthew McConaughey flounders as a troubled fishing boat captain desperate to catch a tuna unsubtly called Justice; Anne Hathaway uncomfortably flops around with him for a while. The dialogue is laughable enough, but the aforementioned twist is a different kettle of fish altogether.

#4. After

The first film from Wattpad Studios takes after the likes of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, but the toxicity of its central romance makes even those ones sparkle in comparison. Based on former One Direction fan fiction, After takes every wrong turn it can. Lead character Tessa Young ignores numerous showing of physical and emotional abuse and destroys all her personal relationships in pursuit of Harry-Styles-stand-in Hardin Scott. The film targeted at teenagers might have had some merit as a twisted warning… had there been any regard for After’s aftermath. The film abruptly ends with no resolution; you’re better off walking away before it even starts.

#3. Jacob’s Ladder

Even among soulless remakes, the 2019 version of Jacob’s Ladder is several steps down. Lacking both the immediacy and surreality of the original movie, the titular character’s descent into hell is more of a passive perusal of unenthused low-budget scares. Perhaps the uncanny events that veteran Jacob Singer experiences are all a dream; that would explain why Michael Ealy is sleepwalking through the role. Devils, angels, or one and the same, viewers won’t end up caring as long as something frees them from this unimaginative agony.

#2. Replicas

Replicas rip-offs decades of sci-fi movies about scientists playing god, but what it couldn’t copy was the soul… or any narrative cohesiveness, convincing performances, watchable cinematography, professional visual effects, or general purpose. The most confusing element it chooses to not replicate though is the moral that typically accompanies such tales. Replicas sees Keanu Reeves messing with natural laws of life and death, circumventing grief, manipulating his loved ones’ memories, selling-out to greedy business interests, and drawing a name from a mixing-bowl to decide which of his children stays dead… and then gives him a consequence-free happy ending. It’s an ineptitude impossible to ever fully duplicate.

AND THE WORST FILM OF 2019 IS...

#1. The Gallows Act II

Judging by the lazy prop design, the haunted stage-play The Gallows is only one act long; the film would have been wise to remain the same. Four years after their low-budget film was picked up by a major studio and grossed $40 million, directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing make a play at turning it into another horror franchise. Yet despite that success story, The Gallows Act II would be amateurish even for a high-school production. Ditching the original’s found-footage conceit for footage that looks even more lost, the sequel follows young Ana Rue acting out of fear that she will never achieve her showbiz dreams; the film doesn’t seem to see the irony. The inexcusably lazy film adds nothing interesting to the series’ mythology; ideas of a franchise are unlikely to hang around for long.

NEXT UP: THE 2019 AARON FOR BEST DIRECTOR!

#film #TheAarons #TheAarons2019 #TheAaronsFilm #worst of #worst of 2019 #bad movies #worst film #ma #the curse of la llorona #the curse of Buckout road #can you keep a secret #godzilla the planet eater #serenity #after #jacobs ladder #replicas #the gallows act II

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ouchmaster6000 · 5 years ago

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RE that zim/anpanman post - while Anpanman doesn't get as dark in tone, Baikinman regularly tries to kill people and has done things like tear pages out of an anthropomorphic book and make food-based characters spoil and rot. Not as gruesome as doing it to "real people" characters but that's not the point really; the idea behind it is still there, so Japanese kids are just very accustomed to an alien being that sadistic within the context of their series

First of all, I should point out I agree that Japanese kids are probably used to seeing more intense stuff on TV than american ones. Alot of shows like Yu-Gi-Oh, One Piece, Digimon and even Pokemon occasionally are known for having stuff edited out of the english dub. A pretty decent number of shonen series just flat out get marketed to an older audience in the states (stuff for kids in japan being aimed at middle schoolers here, stuff for teens being aimed at adults etc.)

Hell, I’m fairly certain Dragon Ball Z and Tenchi Muyo probably would have been marketed to adults in the US if it came out today too (Former for the violence, latter for the sexual stuff) and only got away with as much they did because they were on cable, and the idea that kids anime could appeal to adults simply hadn’t occurred to most western producers at that point.

I just…. Dont really think Anpanman is a good example of this? I also dont agree with the original poster’s Zim comparison. Granted, I suppose I probably should watch the show, but from everything I have seen of it, such as discussions on Bogleech’s website, it doesn’t seem that much edgier than standard kids show? Definitely a bit weirder and more violent than most preschool shows in the states, but overall, I doesn’t sound like Baikinman is much worse the your average kids cartoon villain.

I mean for starters, its pretty standard in kids media for killing and mutilating for non-human characters to be allowed, especially if said characters don’t have blood or flesh.

The obvious example is robots. Star Wars, Transformers, Doctor Who, Superman, Green Lantern, Teen Titans, Xiaolin Showdown, Age of Ultron, - There are way too many shows, comics and movies to list that eithor aimed at kids or families, that have robots and cyborgs being torn apart in ways that would be pretty graphic if it happened to humans or animals.

Digimon is a related example - The only reason the franchise is allowed to have as much death as it does is because 99% of the fatalities happen to digital lifeforms that dissolve into pixels upon death.

Hell one of my favorite movies as a child was the original Toy Story, and all the scenes where Sid was mutilating and blowing up his toys would have gotten a hard R rating if he was doing it to people. I’ve heard a lot of people compare Sid to Dr. Frankenstein, but with toys, but at least Dr. Frankenstein used parts that were already dead (as opposed to tearing/cutting apart still living people) and put them together in a shape roughly resembling a human. Really, Sid’s toys are less Frankenstein and more human centipede.

I also remember Fosters Home for Imaginary friends having a similar reoccuring theme of “food friends” meeting a worse fate than Anpanman. This included half eaten, traumatized anthropomorphic food dreamed up by kids in stuck in fat camp, or a talking pizza dreamed up by the bully character and eaten and killed just seconds after being “born”

So, although obviously dark comedy, Baikinman doing those things isn’t really anything new for childrens media. Neither, is trying to kill someone, since a lot of cartoon villains have made serious attempts to kill people, they just never succeed.

But Zim successfully mutilating and removing the organs and body parts of human children is definitely not normal for a kids show.

Another issue I took with Revretch’s post was that she wasn’t just talking about Zim the character, she seemed to me to be claiming that “Invader Zim” the TV series wouldn’t be seen as edgy just because the main character is similar to Baikenman… but thats not really how it works? You can’t necessarily tell the tone of a show, just from the nature of its protagnist.

Like, by that logic, Courage the Cowardly Dog should be one of the most light hearted and kid friendly shows out there, but in actuality the world he inhabits is much, much darker, scarier and more surreal than Courage himself is.

Its true that, though the writers/network let Zim do much worse stuff on screen, there are plenty of other childrens cartoon characters whose personality is pretty similar to Zim, or whom are a lot creepier and more threatening. Mojo Jojo and HIM from the powerpuff girls are good examples of both of these, respectively.

In fact, Powerpuff Girls, Xiaolin Showdown, Codename: Kids Next Door, Danny Phantom and plenty of other childrens cartoons all have both villains that are similar to Zim, and villains that are considerably more evil, creepy or serious than Zim ever was, but the tone of these shows, overall, is a relatively more optimistic one, where the main protagonists have more or less happy lives and good always triumphs over evil in the end.

Hell, even Gravity Falls, with its use of creepy horror imagery, occasional forays into adult humor, and having one of the most infamous big bads in childrens animation (and easily my favorite from the last 10 years) remains a fairly optimistic show at its core, about family and summer adventures.

This is not the case with Invader Zim, which is a show where humans as a species are portrayed as so comically stupid and mean spirited that, even if Zim somehow successfully killed or enslaved them all, it probably wouldn’t come across as a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

A show where the Irkens are depicted both commiting genocide, and electrocuting a disobedient slave on screen, and whose society is such a dystopia they are forced to udergo intense military training from birth and generally assigned roles for life based on genetics.

A show where the elementary skool is portrayed as a collection of all the absolute worst aspects of public school, both in terms of how its run, and how the kids treat each other, exaggerated to an absurd degree.

A show where a reoccurring joke character is a homeless man, who got taken advantage by a fast food chain, paid in free pizza and a room in the back of a resturant, became morbidly obese (Yes, this is Bloaty’s canon origin story) and was last seen in the original show sobbing uncontrollably because he hates his life.

Also, although this was obviously changed significantly in the comics and the Enter the Florpus special, in regards to what was portrayed in the original show, its really not difficult to make the argument Dib’s own dad and sister don’t give a shit whether or not he lives or dies.

Of course, this was all done for very dark laughs, as well as to create a setting that was just the right balance of humor and nihilism that the viewer could choose to either root for, laugh at or sympathize with either Zim or Dib without really worrying about the actual moral implications of either sides goals.

I’m not saying Zim is the edgiest show out there, comedic or otherwise. With stuff like Warhammer, Berserk, Venture Bros, Metalocalypse and all manner of gritty 90s anihero comics, Zims pretty light hearted and goofy in comparison.

But for childrens animation? Aside from some of the 90’s “grossout” cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and Cow & Chicken (which varied a lot in quality, imo) I can’t really think of any others that come close (Maaaaybe Billy & Mandy, but I think its too tonally inconsistant, with a lot of episodes being pretty standard cartoon slapstick.)

Wow, I sure did type a lot. Sorry about that. But Invader Zim is one of my all time favorite shows, and fictional villains one of my favorite topics, so I feel like I have a lot to say about them.

#invader zim #anpanman #baikenman #cartoons #anime #children's media #villains #cartoon villains #iz

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thalia-amongst-the-thorns · 6 years ago

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Angsty Q & A

Oh boy kids, strap in because this is a loooong one since @all-made-of-stardust asked for all of my main characters with all of the odd numbers from this post.

Answers under the cut because this got a teeny bit away from me.

Mae Niwot

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? Pretty much the majority of her life from age twelve to sixteen while her mom was stationed overseas. Mae put up a good front for her dad but every call at home scared the bejeezus out of her because she feared it’d be the one telling them her mom died in combat. That and a few instances with farm life (riding a horse that went out of her control, shooting a shotgun for the first time, etc.) that she got over relatively quickly.

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? Her grandfather on her father’s side from old age/heart issues; it helped bridge some of the issues her dad has with his family and by extension, Mae. She’s now closer with her father’s family and regrets that she didn’t know her grandfather that well before his passing but has learned a lot about him from the rest of her dad’s family.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? Nope, never. It goes against Mae’s core principle of defending those who can’t defend themselves and trying to solve conflict with non-violent solutions first.

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? See answer to previous question.

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? No; Mae has a lot going on, especially with some emotional strain from her family and self-expectations, but not abuse.

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? After her mom came back home and showed signs of PTSD, Mae spent a lot of time reading up on the subject and talking with her school’s counselor, who thankfully had good insights that Mae was able to use to help her family, along with talking to people from the National Center for PTSD to help her mom. Now a days Mae applies some of these methods for her own mental well-being; mindfulness meditation, communicating her feelings clearly, along with physical stuff like kick boxing and gardening.

13. What does it take to make your character cry? Mae’s not afraid to show her emotions but doesn’t like making people uncomfortable with overemotional displays. If she feels comfortable, she’ll cry about anything that pulls at her heart strings; people suffering, injustice, sunrises, the goodness of people.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Her family getting hurt, being unable to protect someone, hurting someone needlessly, her leadership leading to one of her friends getting hurt. In general Mae’s one of those people less scared of physical things which are easily punch-able or can be talked down as opposed to nebulous feelings like Failure and Disappointment which you just have to grit your teeth and suffer through. However, there’s a good reason Mae’s the leader; even scared she can compartmentalize and plan a path of action, only giving in to fear and tears when she has reassured herself that the danger has passed and it is now safe to do so.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? Not afraid, but she certainly doesn’t want to. Given that she’s taken up superhero-ing she’s had to make peace with the fact that this is a very real possibility for her. She thinks the good she’s doing outweighs the risks though and would willingly lay her life down to save another’s. She’s one of those Self-Sacrifice Heroes.

19. What is your character insecure about? Mae’s pretty good emotionally, honestly; like all kids she went through phases of being insecure with her body but has come to terms with that and kicks ass with her thick arms. Again, worries about leading her rag-tag group of super friends, but their trust in her boosters her own confidence. She is a bit insecure about her self-identity sometimes; she’s biracial, mom’s white, dad’s Arapaho, and their marriage led to some…complications with his family. While trying to reconnect with her extended family Mae sometimes felt like an outsider on both sides, not fully included in either group, not white or Arapaho, just lost.

21. Does your character have anyone that they really care about, to the point that they would give their life for them? If so, who are they and what is your character’s relation to them? If not, do they wish they did? Is there anyone they wish they could build such a relationship with? Have I mentioned Mae would basically lay her life down to save anyone in her care? Literally anyone? If you made Mae do the Trolley Problem she’d pull an Option C and throw herself on the tracks so that everyone else lives. There is no hierarchy to Mae’s devotion for everyone’s wellbeing; she’d save a friend as likely as a stranger.

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? Mae is easily the most emotionally stable of the group and actively seeks passing on coping mechanisms/emotional balance to others. She’s also the Oklahoma State Girls’ Kickboxing and Boxing Championship winner five years running and bench presses 200lbs. She believes in nurturing both a strong body and mind, plus farm life favors the strong.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? Eh, Mae cares a bit, especially when she hurts someone or if a friend is upset with her, but for the most part she’s fine leaving people to their opinions.

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? Seeing no way out besides killing yourself.

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? Mae’s very accomplished with her powers of plant and earth manipulation (lot of practice out on the farm) and with her fists from years of boxing and kickboxing, combining both in very effective use against villains. She’s also made a point of studying up and practicing basic weapons skills with various guns and knives to better combat foes using them, though she’s not very fond of any alien tech since it usually throws her off because she most definitely did not study up on laser beams.

Daniel Tarson

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? There have been a few villains who have had the powers or technology to cut Daniel off from his own powers completely. Since Daniel’s been in constant communication with animals from birth and views his shapeshifting as an intrinsic part of himself as valuable as a sense of morality or sight, this is…very bad. Daniel’s sense of self and his powers are one and the same. Without them he is adrift. His head is unnerving quiet without the constant thoughts of his animal brethren. Senses dulled to a human’s pitiful capabilities. Without them Daniel is disoriented, lost, panicked, almost to the point of a mental breakdown, unsure of his own being and dissociative.

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? A bit odd by human standards, but Daniel truly views all animals as his brothers and sisters and mourns any of there passing as deeply as a human friend. There have been multiple instances of this over his life considering he grew up on his aunt’s wildlife preservation which often took in injured animals with the hope of rehabilitation that didn’t always end happily; each was painful but helped Daniel gain a unique appreciation for the naturalness of death.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? Nah, Danny boy’s not big on leaving behind potential new members of his pack.

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? There’re some poachers he would take particular pleasure in taking down The Most Dangerous Game style…

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? Abuse, no. Neglect? Maybe. His parents took on a bit of a hands-off approach, leaving a gap his aunt tried to fill.

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? Animal thoughts are less complex than humans. Less rules. Animals are more straight forward in their wants and needs, lacking the stupidly complex hang-ups that come with human like guilt, shame, avarice. When things get bad, when Daniel doesn’t want to feel human anymore with all the baggage that comes with it, he’ll slip into a different skin and let his humanity slide sideways in favor of the comforting simplicity of animal nature…

13. What does it take to make your character cry? Daniel is a pretty chill dude; it takes a lot to upset him and usually that just results in anger rather than sadness. That said, hurting him emotionally with no means for him to take it out physically brings on tears.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Losing his connection to his (animal) family is up there, but losing any member of his (super friends) pack is unimaginable. When scared Daniel falls back on animalistic tendencies, puffing up, baring teeth, probably some minor shape shifting to get actual fangs and claws, trying to show the scary thing that he’s the most terrifying thing in the room.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? Nah, death is a natural part of the animal kingdom and life in general, how you live is what’s important. Daniel is very much a “live in the moment” chill dude.

19. What is your character insecure about? Listen; Daniel has no shame. Shame is a human construct that confuses him since no one has been able to adequately explain it beyond “It’s just something you feel, you naked weirdo!”. Frankly, this whole thing sounds like an elaborate hoax and you should stop buying into it.

21. Does your character have anyone that they really care about, to the point that they would give their life for them? If so, who are they and what is your character’s relation to them? If not, do they wish they did? Is there anyone they wish they could build such a relationship with? His aunt who basically raised him and any member of his team, but especially Mae once they start dating though he recognizes that she can take care of herself.

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? Even if he’s a bit “off” by human standards, Daniel’s very confident, self-assure, and happy with his emotional state. That said, he’s one of the heavy hitters on the team for good reason, so we’ll go with physically strong.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? Daniel is just super happy with himself and wants everyone to feel the same way about themselves. Jury’s still out if he’s intentionally ignoring complaints or just really dense or just really confidant.

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? After watching his friends die.

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? Good old fisticuffs combined with whatever creature he changes into, though Daniel’s particularly fond of grizzly bears and gray wolf as they give him power and finesse. He doesn’t have a lot of experience in armed combat, but the only weapon he “dislikes” is guns due to some unfortunate mix ups on the preservation that led to him getting hunted down and shot.

Sasha Hile

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? She didn’t understand what was going on at the time, but when she was like four Sasha ate something that didn’t react well to her half-alien physiology and went into anaphylactic shock which was already horrifying enough, but what really got to her was seeing her dads panic over what to do. It was a rather abrupt moment to realize that her parents might not actually be all powerful.

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? …You know what, she hasn’t. Her Daddy’s a secret alien refugee whose extended family are light years away and her Pop’s got a loving and supportive extended family that she cherishes; Sasha’s only been to one funeral for one of her Daddy’s work colleagues she never met.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? No, all strangers are friends you haven’t met yet! And you don’t abandon friends!

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? The villain that killed Ed.

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? Their dads have made sure to provide Sasha and Jacklyn with a loving and supportive household, and the two have had an excellent home and social life.

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? Compilation videos of cute animals in boxes, putting Ariana Grande on blast and dancing out negative emotions, ice cream even if it’ll kill her, baking shows, talking things out and expressing her emotions.

13. What does it take to make your character cry? Girl will cry about not being able to handle a kitten being too small and cute. All emotions are felt and expressed 110%.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Rejection and that people secretly hate her, that her dads will be disappointed in her. Also, not very fond of enclosed spaces, but not to the point of phobia. Due to her alien physiology Sasha’s skin glows a different color based on her emotions, with a deep shale grey for fear making it quite obvious when she’s scared. She tends to curl in on herself, mind screaming, mouth mumbling, and latches on to the closest person for moral support/comfort, probably some tears.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? No, but in that way were teenagers aren’t scared because death happens to other people, not them. She’s a bit careless and reckless when she starts off as a superhero, especially with her own safety, but quickly gets shaken out of that mindset for the most part.

19. What is your character insecure about? As a gymnast Sasha gets a lot of pressure about her body and appearance from all sides; she tries to ignore the noise, but it gets to her in terms of clothes and self-importance. She also can’t help comparing herself to her twin, Jacklyn, who applies herself to academics rigorously while Sasha’s not the greatest student. Sasha also struggles with her identity; being half alien’s hard enough without your dad refusing to tell you anything about it.

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? A good fighter, Sasha’s a lot more in touch with her emotions given her powers literally color code them for her and is naturally very empathetic and likes to talk with and listen to people’s problems and provide solutions.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? She tries to be confident and self-assured and all smiles on the outside, but deep-down Sasha cares and wants people to like and need her.

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? Buried alive; slow, painful, sends shivers down her spine.

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? Sasha’s got a good handle on her powers, energy blasts that give her range and a lot of punch, with her acrobatic skills providing her support if someone fights her in close quarters. That said, she’s not fond of knives, bit messy and too personal for her tastes.

Ed Washio

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? Two years of being kidnapped and experimented on for unknown purposes, unsure if his parents were still searching for him, shuttled between being strapped down on a table with tubes shoved in his throat and a stark cage, mind so addled by drugs he was only dimly aware of the other failed children subjects being wheeled past him in body bags. The fear that his parents didn’t want him. That this pain was his life now.

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? Ed’s lost both his grandparents on his father’s side, both to heart complications. He wasn’t especially close to them, and his parents weren’t very effected by it either, so it didn’t seem like a big deal.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? Oh, hell yeah, if you can’t handle it then sucks to be you buddy.

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? One would be hard to pick, but Dr. Rajinder is high on the list…

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? Both physical and emotional. Even once he escaped captivity and returned home things weren’t great. One of the reasons why he’s so shut off from others, bit of a self-preservation thing.

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? Emotionally closed off from others, distances himself by belittling and acting indifferent to other’s needs, putting on a mask of over confidence to hide his deep running insecurities of inadequacy.

13. What does it take to make your character cry? Ed doesn’t do expressing emotions besides derision and self-loathing.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Hospitals and doctors; unless he prepares himself for it, he’ll go into a full-on panic attack, yelling and unable to process anything but the burning desire to leave right now. More generally he’s got a bit of stage fright.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? Not a bit; his power of invulnerability is so complete he’s a bit arrogant about his inability to get hurt, let alone die.

19. What is your character insecure about? …heheHAHAHAHAHA— His relationship with his parents, disappointing his family, that his brother’s right about him, that something’s broken inside him, he’s a failure and will never succeed at anything, he’d be better off dead from the experimentation--

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? Boy is an emotional train wreck and actually not that great a fighter until his secondary mutation kicks in and he can bench press a bus, so physically. Eventually.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? He likes to act like he doesn’t give a shit, but the boy gives many, many shits, especially about what his parents think.

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? He can’t so it doesn’t matter. On an operating table after waking up mid surgery

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? Being a stubborn prick sometimes, Ed didn’t put a lot of stock in actually learning how to fight since his powers meant he could never be hurt. Over time he’s learned that even if he’ll be okay, he needs to be able to defend other people and is pretty decent at hand to hand combat. Not great with guns, his aim’s pretty shitty and Marcus teases him mercilessly about it.

Marcos Powell

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? The first time he was left in charge of looking after his sister and promptly lost her while at the mall; there were a lot of tears, yelling, and panicking about his looming death via chancla. Three hours and an amber alert later, he wasn’t even sure if he was happy to see her again after she was fished out of the kid center ball pit.

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? His dad when he was around fifteen from skin cancer. It was a slow process and rocked the family emotionally and financially. Since his passing Marcos has tried to step up as the “man of the house” as it were, treating his five siblings more like his kids than his brothers and sisters, picking up as many part time gigs as he can to help take pressure off his mom, and kind of letting his personal life go on the wayside.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? No way man, and he’s got a pretty good out for you with teleportation.

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? He’d make some joke about going back in time to kill M. Night Shyamalan before he made The Happening, but this boy isn’t killing anyone.

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? Nope!

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? Jokes: if you’re laughing, you can’t cry!

13. What does it take to make your character cry? A good rom-com or the beauty of a Mike Mignola original sketch.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Letting down the memory of his dad or failing his family, his mom dying. More generally he’s a bit squicked out by things with unnecessary multiple eyes or mouths. Marcos is the kind to nervous talk when scared, so a lot of rambling in an increasingly high voice.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? Yeah; it was painful watching his dad waste away and he wouldn’t want to put his family through that emotional trauma again. It runs at odds with the whole superhero gig; originally it was about doing something fun that connected him with his dad, but the gravity of the whole things starts to weigh on him when Marcos realizes death is a very real possibility when fighting crime.

19. What is your character insecure about? Good healthy body image and financial insecurities.

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? Emotionally; jokes aside, Marcos is genuinely caring and nurturing and wants to make people feel better. Boy’s also about as strong as overcooked spaghetti.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? Generally, Marcos doesn’t care and enjoys doing his own thing, but if you’re someone close to him (family and friends) he cares deeply what you think about him.

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? …Cancer.

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? His cutting wit and charm! Aka, annoying villains with taunts and teleporting away so other people can land blows. Hates swords because all films ever lied and they’re a bitch to use properly.

Raiqah Damji

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? The first (and only) time she tried to take down a supervillain solo, led to a lot of tears, panicking, and ultimately failure. Fighting scares the bejeezus out of her and she feels tremendous pressure to make sure everyone gets out okay and that big guy with flaming fists is trying to hit her oh god oh god she could die--!

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? An aunt and cousin in a car accident; it was a sober moment that brought Raiqah closer to her uncle and strengthened her faith.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? No and I am insulted you would ask.

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? How dare you.

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? Nope no no.

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? Getting quiet and internalizing everything, trying to make herself as small as possible, writing her thoughts out, playing the piano, panicking and doing whatever is asked of her.

13. What does it take to make your character cry? Raising your voice around her.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Disappointing her parents, snakes, spiders, public speaking, fighting, almost everything to some degree. When scared Raiqah gets tongue tied and has trouble breathing, usually curls in on herself and covers her ears/eyes to block out the object of fear.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? Yes; death is scary and full of unknown variables, but she takes comfort in the guidance of Allah when she eventually passes.

19. What is your character insecure about? Everything; expressing her opinions, talking, what people think about her, being overeager, not doing enough to help people, being selfish, not performing well in school, disappointing her parents—

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? Oh, emotionally; she may be timid and worried, but Raiqah’s emotionally mature and wise beyond her years and provides excellent advice and insights when you ask for them.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? She cares. So much.

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? Any way, why are you talking about this????

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? Raiqah doesn’t really do “fighting”; she’s more about defense, providing energy shields and using psychokinesis to disarm or restrain opponents and very much hates violence and using any weapon.

Angie Hua

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? The first time Palivāńkum overcame her mind and nearly made her destroyed her father’s psyche.

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? No, but there have been a few close calls with older relatives, not to mention the whole “god taking over my mind and trying to destroy my father and brother” thing.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? Not intentionally, but sometimes it’s not up to her.

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? Do gods count?

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? Emotional abuse and manipulation from Palivāńkum as they try to assert dominance over her mind and body, and later from her father. Only one of these relationships improves…

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? Internalize all issues for later. Loud music, coffee, and throwing herself into menial tasks. Since Palivāńkum knows everything that goes on inside her head, Angie has to be careful about getting to wrapped up in negative emotions that Pali can take advantage of to get a foothold in Angie’s mind, but when she has a quiet moment to herself Angie will give her emotions due consideration.

13. What does it take to make your character cry? Not exactly a “crier”, but Angie’ll cry from emotional stress and fear if pushed to her breaking point.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Being over taken mind and soul by a forgotten god of revenge who will use her to twist and warp the psyche of those it deems deserving of punishment, which turns out to be basically everyone. Possessing someone and killing in their body. Not returning to her own body in time while possessing someone. Hurting her family. When scared Angie freezes up, deer in the headlights style, trying to grapple with whatever is scaring her.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? Yes. Death is an unknown that could be worse than her current situation, something Palivāńkum takes advantage of.

19. What is your character insecure about? Over time Angie took it upon herself to cultivate a sense of self confidence to combat society bullshit and just, yah know, to feel better about herself. Thus, her metamorphosis into a rocking goth punk goddess with multicolored hair and blasts the Sex Pistols who wears what she likes. She’s up there with Daniel in terms of having no shame for insecurities to exploit. That said; there’s a god in her head that wants to fully take over her mind and fucking take vengeance upon all sinful humans who she has to constantly restrain and placate and if she slips up once then everyone’s doomed. Just that tiny little thing…

21. Does your character have anyone that they really care about, to the point that they would give their life for them? If so, who are they and what is your character’s relation to them? If not, do they wish they did? Is there anyone they wish they could build such a relationship with? In a way Angie views her relationship as Palivāńkum’s keeper a bit like giving up her life for the sake of her family and later on everyone else. Any chance of a normal life was forfeit when Palivāńkum marked her and for a time all Angie saw in her future was forever wrestling with a petulant god for humanity’s sake.

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? Angie relies on the vast mental powers Palivāńkum grants her instead of physical confrontation; at the same time, much as she tries not to intrude on people’s inner thoughts without permission, Angie also gets baseline telepathic link with anyone near her that she uses to provide emotional insights and help people work through whatever is troubling their minds. She’s also very sure of her own emotions and who she is, which provides stability amongst all the other craziness in her life.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? Angie doesn’t give a shit about any aesthetic issues people take with her. Palivāńkum’s presence though makes her sensitive to people thinking she’s a monster, that she agrees with Palivāńkum and wants to carry out their wishes, that she enjoys the tremendous power granted to her and mentally torturing people…

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? Having your memories wiped away, so that your final moments are a wave of confusion and fear with no thoughts you can draw upon to comfort you as you’re killed.

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? When possessing someone Angie has full access to their memories and abilities, including their experience with weapons. Supervillain fighting means that she has experienced battle as a variety of skilled opponents wielding from machine guns to laser blasters, but she’s especially fond of possessing anyone with swordsmanship skills, rather taken with the grace and ferocity of the technique. She least likes having to use novelty weapons (think like batarangs or star bolts) which just seem so needlessly extra.

Nobody

1. What’s one experience your character had that made them very afraid? Her parents being killed in front of her, powerless to stop it and being snatched away by those same killers. Locked away for five years, her body cut open, studied, cut again, knowing that there was no one left alive to come for her and stop it.

3. Have they ever lost a loved one? What happened to them, and are they the same as they were before they lost them? Ever member of her family is dead; three of her grandparents died before she was born and the last around when she was a year old, so not a lot of emotional attachment. Her parents were beaten and shot in front of her. A bit of her was lost that day, a her that wasn’t consumed by revenge.

5. Would they ever turn on someone they just met in order to save themselves? Yes, routinely.

7. If your character was allowed to murder one person without any consequences, who would it be and why? Dr. Rajinder. Slowly, since it’s personal…

9. Is the character a victim of abuse? Both physical and mental due to Dr. H. Forsberg.

11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms? Shoving people away, not making personal attachments, hurting them before they can hurt her, putting her well-being and wants before others’, picking fights just to feel better about herself when she wins, never showing emotions beyond rage and annoyance.

13. What does it take to make your character cry? For the first few months of her imprisonment and experimentation Nobody cried constantly until she realized that her tears did nothing to stop her suffering and only made the doctors hurt her more. A quiet patient was treated with leniency, so she was silent. She hasn’t cried since. No one will hurt her again.

15. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared? Hospitals, doctors, and enclosed spaces. Mind readers and anyone who can influence thoughts. Emotions and failing in her mission. Nobody doesn’t just get scared, she gets angry that she’s scared and tends to lash out, punching whatever the thing is to get it to stop.

17. Is your character afraid of death? Why/why not? Not really; death didn’t come to her when she wanted it and she made peace with it. Plus, she’s a lot harder to kill now.

19. What is your character insecure about? Nobody doesn’t give fuck what anybody thinks about her and will be sure to tell you about it with her fists. She is 100% confident in all her decisions, as they all verve her ultimate goal to kill the Doc.

23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong? Why is this? Girl is an emotional garbage bag but will fight anyone and usually wins; physically strong given her time living homeless on the streets and having to defend herself.

25. Do they find that they care what others think of them? Or do they not really mind how others view them? She really, really doesn’t care. One cannot fathom the depths her uncaring sinks.

27. What would be the worst way to die, in your character’s opinion? With Dr. Rajinder smiling, alive and well, as he cut her open for the last time.

29. What is their weapon of choice, and what weapon do they dislike using the most? Fists primarily, but over time Nobody’s collected a goody bag of weapons for her disposal; a Jericho 941, an array of switchblades and knives, and a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. She’s a good shot and her ability to regenerate make her an unpredictable and reckless fighter, willing to take a hit if it means she gets the chance to stab you in the back. She dislikes the impersonal nature of poisons; she’s very much about getting her hands dirty, otherwise where’s the fun.in the fight?

#oc squad #ask game #everyone has super powers and angst #i apologise in advance #and congratulate anyone who actually finished reading this whole monster

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After Birds of Prey, a definitive ranking of the DC Extended Universe films - hollywood

It is unclear what is more dramatic: the tragic derailment of the DCEU, or the manner in which Warner Bros has attempted to bring the superhero franchise back on track. What began as a hungry move to replicate the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has turned into a textbook example of crisis resolution in the film industry. No other film franchise in this current era - not even Universal’s laughably bad Dark Universe - has been scrutinised with such passion, and passionate hate. It is almost as if a certain section of fandom - and not necessarily Marvel fandom; there are detractors even in the DC camp - is willing the DCEU to crash and burn. A couple of years ago, Warner Bros made the excuse that while the DC films had received a critical drubbing, the studio gauged success on the basis of how the audience received the movies - and the solid box office performance of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad was proof that critics were out of touch with the general public. The release of Wonder Woman seemed to reassert this notion. The film became the first in the series to receive a ‘fresh’ rating on the review aggregator site, Rotten Tomatoes, and for a brief moment in time, everything was OK in the DC universe. But around the same time as Wonder Woman was having a game changing theatrical run, news about a massively troubled Justice League began brewing. Justice League went into production a few weeks after BvS’ release - far too late in the day for any sort of major change to be made in the same dour tone that director Zack Snyder had set for his answer to Marvel’s Avengers. When Snyder turned in an assembly cut - not a director’s cut, but merely an ‘assembly’ of usable footage - it was the final straw. Warner Bros set up a committee to oversee the film, and to provide feedback. One of the members of this committee was Joss Whedon, director of Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, who’d had his own, very public falling out with Marvel Studios. In May 2017, Snyder stepped down from the film - the reason given at the time was personal, but it has since been rumoured that he was made to leave - and Whedon was hired to finish work on the movie. Justice League is essentially a film that was shot twice, inflating its budget like venom inflates Bane’s muscles. The final result was a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas and tones, a feeble attempt at putting together a team movie, lacking any sort of personality. Say what you will about BvS, at least it looked and felt like a Zack Snyder movie. All this context was crucial to the story of Aquaman - the most successful DC film, and perhaps one of the last to retain the core stars, who were all cast by the long-gone Snyder. Aquaman can serve as a bridge between the DCEU’s misguided past, and its refreshing future. This march continued with Shazam!, which is perhaps as far removed from the dour Snyder movies as can be possible. Suddenly, the DCEU finds itself on a winning streak, a streak that it will want to continue with this week’s Birds of Prey, the first R-rated film of the franchise. Here’s a ranking of the films, from worst to best. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Batman v Superman is not so much a superhero movie as it is a story about two mamma’s boys measuring the length of their capes, finding that they disagree, and proceeding to poke each other with threats of ‘you wanna go first?’ for a solid two-and-a-half hours. This obsession with moms is a running theme in the DCEU, and forms the emotional core of Aquaman and Shazam!. BvS was clearly a compromised vision - the ‘ultimate edition’ that was released a few months later is an infinitely better film, and were it to be ranked on this list instead, it would find itself at a much higher position. Justice League

Justice League is the sort of movie that can be excruciatingly dumb at any given moment; with forced jokes that have the hit rate of a drunk stormtrooper, jaw-droppingly inane plotting that often pales in comparison to the original DC animated series, but it can also make a houseful crowd of excited fans positively palpitate with pure joy. It continued the DC Extended Universe’s bizarre trend of producing films that are direct reactions to their immediate predecessors. And for all its faults – an ugly third-act show down that looks like a mid-2000s PlayStation 2 video game, Danny Elfman’s instantly forgettable (and shamelessly rehashed) musical score, one of the most unimaginative (and cheap-looking) main villains in recent memory – Justice League wasn’t as terrible as it could so easily have been. Suicide Squad

All it took was one scene. One scene transformed Suicide Squad. It wasn’t necessarily the best scene – in fact, in any other movie, it would barely merit a second glance. But for Suicide Squad it was a godsend. It came nestled in the heart of the film - following an hour or so of jarring, time-hopping, clumsy storytelling – and preceding another hour of more of the same. Not only was it the first time our characters resembled real, relatable human beings, it also proved, however briefly and despite what we’d seen so far, that Suicide Squad has a heart. It sent our characters, all dressed in their ridiculous costumes, drenched in water and blood, to a bar. No explosions, no fistfights, no Joker - just the quietest member of the Squad, El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), telling a story. It’s the scene that cemented the gruffly sentimental relationship between these characters and saved the film. Aquaman

James Wan’s Aquaman actively distanced itself from the heavy metal take on the character that Snyder had originally envisioned. And with more time on his hands, Jason Momoa took Arthur Curry in surprising new directions. It was quite a wonderful big screen experience - Atlantis looked stunning, as did the creatures and Wan’s affectionate world-building - but it was the earnestness with which the film treated its characters that is its most endearing quality. Man of Steel

Without any doubt, my favourite single moment of any DCEU movie comes in Man of Steel. Snyder is clearly someone who understands the iconography of superheroes better than anyone else - that teaser trailer alone was a work of art; the one in which a child put his hands on his hips and the whole world suddenly realised what they were watching. But for a brief second in Man of Steel, Snyder accomplished - in my opinion - what he was going for all this while, a deconstruction of myths, a grounding of gods. Alone and misunderstood, Clark Kent goes from town to town, taking up odd jobs, convinced that his father - Pa Kent - was right; to reveal his powers to this cruel world would only bring trouble. And so he drifts, between dive bars and oil rigs, unsure of himself. We see him walk on a highway, his back to us, the evening sky slowly welcoming darkness. Clark turns around, sees an incoming truck, and sticks out his thumb, hoping for a stranger to show kindness. The truck doesn’t stop. And Clark keeps walking to wherever the road will take him. I think about this moment very often. This is Superman. So vulnerable, so alone. No one to help him. And yet, he dedicates his life to helping others. This one moment perfectly captures the flawed brilliance of Snyder’s DCEU. Birds of Prey

Birds of Prey is essentially the story of Harley Quinn emerging from under the Joker’s shadow, and the DCEU distancing itself from its past. It has virtually no bearing on the larger series, but as a standalone adventure, it’s a terrific showcase for Robbie’s talents as an actor. It’s interesting to note how, in the span of just over a decade, the pendulum has swung from Joel Schumacher’s lurid Batman films to the gritty realism of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and back again. Shazam!

Shazam! was an altogether different experience - both in tone and in scope - from previous DCEU entries, and this includes the largely beloved Wonder Woman and the box office smash Aquaman. It was, at the risk of invoking the wrath of fans on both sides, to the DCEU what Thor: Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Homecoming were to the Marvel Cinematic Universe - lighter, less angry, and positively delightful. Under the unlikely direction of Swedish filmmaker David F Sandberg, Shazam! was as magical as its title suggested; heartfelt, humorous and burdened by none of the hubris of Batman v Superman and Man of Steel. Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman is the sort of movie that makes you forgive things it got wrong solely on the strength of everything it got right. And it got a lot of things right. It was the first film in the DC Extended Universe that was worthy of its iconic character, and it did what both Batman and Superman couldn’t do: It gave us hope for what’s to come. It was still crippled by the influence of Zack Snyder in its CGI slugfest of a final act - an annoying trend that for some reason James Wan chose to honour in Aquaman - but it was so much more than just a great film. Wonder Woman was perhaps the defining superhero movie of a post-Trump era - what Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy was to a post-9/11 world. It’s an earnest film, which often feels too pure for this horrid world. And that no man’s land sequence is right up there with The Master’s ‘don’t blink’ scene as one of the greatest of the decade. Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar Read the full article

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