#now many of those complaints are for general comic books

[dw-flagler]

genuinely though my main complaints with ward at its worst is that it has no coherent theme, awful worldbuilding, throws aside all its interesting plot points, and bends over backwards for a villain that sucks ass and isn't interesting. that's like half of comic books.

[jellyfishdoodler]

I know I dont post fanfics here but I'd like to try? If yall arent into it I can move them to my general shitpoat blog 💛

Drummer Boy

Requested by @vanessasepticeye who wanted a oneshot of Jackie playing the drums to get his emotions/ anger out, similar to Gwen Stacy.

TWs: Angry Jackie, mentions of his dad, mistreatment of drumkit

Word Count: 1,226

A small thought in the back of Jackie's head wants to kick himself for leaving his window unlocked, but right in this exact moment he could not give any less of a shit. Vaulting into his bedroom from the fire escape, Jackie pulls back just enough of his strength to not hurl his patched backpack through the drywall.

A small thought in the back of Jackie's head wants to kick himself for leaving his window unlocked, but right in this exact moment he could not give any less of a shit. Vaulting into his bedroom from the fire escape, Jackie pulls back just enough of his strength to not hurl his patched backpack through the drywall. He tears the blue mask off his face so the elastic no longer digs into his skin, crushing the soft material in his hand as he stalks around the room. He finds his drumsticks on the cluttered desk and trades them for the mask with a pathetic and unsatisfying throw. The piece of fabric flops from the wall to the table without a sound and Jackie can feel a scream burning in his throat, so instead, he stomps towards his lovingly beat-to-shit drum kit. It was half duct tape at this point but it still worked, and it's not like Jackie could afford a new set anyway.

Patrol was an absolute fucking nightmare today. First he had to skip breakfast due to an early call for help across town, then he got chewed out by an old woman for breaking her potted plant and was harassed into buying her a new one- which he then had to stop the plant shop from being robbed by some jackass who thought he was hot shit with a switchblade. He lost the comic book he was saving to read on his lunch break to the sewer drain, got completely soaked by a burst fire hydrant, was sent on a wild goose chase to track down a missing dog in the park where he literally got chased by geese. And to top it all off, when he saved the day and rescued two teenagers from a burning apartment building, he was the one who was blamed for the girl's broken leg, even though it was literally trapped under a solid wood bookshelf before he got there. But the girl's parents just wanted someone to sue so they could make some fucking money back like all of this was a huge inconvenience and not like they almost lost their fucking kids to a fire. 

Jackie worked really hard to keep his composure until he got home. He has many years of customer service under his belt before he got powers and managed to smooth talk his way out of a lawsuit. But that encounter was the final straw for him. Jackie knew being a hero was a thankless job most of the time, hell he understood that those people were just scared for their kids, but everything throughout the day stacked on top of each other and he was left with a gross itchy feeling under his skin. He had to get it out.

Slamming himself down onto the spinning stool, the young man wasted no time taking his frustration out on the drums. Using the double petals on the bass kick to set a fast beat as he practically wailed on the set. He loved the feeling of the vibrations of contact traveling up his arms, it felt like clapping mosquitoes mid-air and off your skin so they dont drink more of your blood.

That same voice in the back of his mind reminded him he's gonna get another noise complaint from Mr. Smith upstairs, but right now Jackie doesn't care. The rapid beats of the snare matched the buzzing feeling rolling from Jackie's core down his arms and to his drumsticks, the crash of the cymbals almost dents the brassy metal as it covers his urge to yell in frustration. 

He focuses on the patterns of his rapid fire set, picking up more pace and forcing himself to go faster.

Faster.

Faster-

Everything abruptly stops when his right stick snaps in half. 

"FUCK!!!"

Panting heavily, Jackie just stares at the now uneven sticks in his white knuckled hands. Everything in the apartment is still and quiet aside from his heavy breathing. In the distance he can hear the neighbor's dog- Patty- barking up a storm down the hallway. 

Jackie finally allows his shoulders to slump down as he unceremoniously lets the drum sticks drop to the floor with a deafening clatter in the now silent room. 

He always hates getting this angry, he knows it's not good for his public image or for his own mental health. Fighting bad guys helps with most of it, but it still sneaks up on him sometimes when he's not paying attention. It scares him.

The hero gently rolls his neck and shoulders, letting air escape from his nose in a silent laugh at a memory flowing into his head.

 If his overall deadbeat dad was good for one thing in his damn life, it was teaching Jackie how to funnel his emotions, primarily anger, through playing the drums. His dad said he was part of a shitty rock band when he was in school and that's where he learned to play. 

One day, Jackie's teacher called his dad and told him about an incident on the playground. Jackie stood up for another kid getting picked on but broke another kid's nose in the process of defending them. That afternoon when he got home, instead of yelling at him like Jackie thought, the man sat Jackie behind the drum kit that sat in front of him today and taught him how to keep a steady rhythm.  

"I had a similar problem to ya, kid." He started when Jackie was getting the hang of it. "Always letting my anger get ahead of me." Neither of them say that he still does sometimes, and he continues, "If you use these to just, yaknow, get what you're feeling out of your system, this way nobody around you gets hurt. You don't… go punching anybody you don't like 'cause you kept it in for so long." Jackie wanted to protest that he was protecting a friend but let his dad keep talking. 

"You exhaust yourself playing these so you don't have the energy to let it boil in your stomach for later. On top of all that, the world gets to hear your heartbeat. It might not be pretty, but they get to hear it go strong and loud even if you can't say what you're feeling in your chest. Even if it's hurting. You use this as a way to help you let shit go. Because at the end of the day, if you let it be, if you let it fester, that pointless rage will rot you from the inside out." 

Jackie does not know what to really say to all that. His dad isn't the best at pep talks but he thinks he gets his meaning. Even if the man is a hypocrite. He just counts the beats in his head.

It's one of, if not the only kind-ish memory Jackie keeps of his father. The man was a dick his entire childhood, but he did give Jackie this one thing that was good.

With that memory of a good Tuesday afternoon nearly 10 years ago gently floating in his chest instead of what was there before, Jackie picks up the busted drumstick and tosses it in the trash. Heading to the bathroom to finally shower away the long day's grime.

Tomorrow is a new day.

[fizzingwizard]

Went to see Across the Spiderverse so I can fiiinally join in the hype hahahaha.

It was fantastic. The whole time I kept thinking how much I wished there had been a movie like this when I was a teen. I loved it as an adult, but as a teen I'd have been like next level obsessed.

Spoilers in between general squee

So Miles Morales is officially the coolest Spiderman. Well, at least he has the coolest movies, haha. Take your pick what Spiderman you like but seriously, I can't get over how this movie is conceptualized. Of course I felt the same with the first one, but this one lit up even further. It's artistic, it's musical, it's action-packed, it's comedic, it's full of heart, and somehow it balances all of that - never seeming too sentimental or too callous or too rushed or too cliche. It could have been any of those things, but instead of running from it, the movie embraces weakness and takes advantage of it. Heck, the core concept of the movie - that there's a "canon," a destiny, which must be fulfilled - could be a metaphor for how a story doesn't feel cliche no matter how many times it's been told if the characters have individuality and agency of their own.

The whole thing was good but the art and music, THE ART AND MUSIC. As for the art, it's so creative, such an innovative marriage of comic book style and computer animation. It doesn't say "This is too much, we won't be believable." Because it's not afraid of itself, neither is the audience. I think what makes it great is that it's got a clear idea tying all the different styles together, that idea being that this is a celebration of art styles throughout the decades, the same way the story is a celebration of our shared human experience.

The music is very Now. It's interesting and fits really well with each character and each scene. When Hobie appeared and it got all awesomely punk rock I could barely resist banging my head hahaha.

Also Hobie is THE BEST. From his character design to his personality to his role in the story, he's just so, so memorable and cool. He's got a small role, but he takes full advantage of it.

Loved Pavitr too, adorable, charming, annoying sweetheart. Really hope we haven't seen the last of him. "This is your daughter who I do not know" x'DDD My one complaint about this movie: I wanted more of Hobie of Pavitr so badly!!

Also Jess!! Pregnant, riding a motobike, and fighting evil. This movie pulled zero punches.

My favorite was Gwen. Gwen was everything. I was so super into her. Anecdote time: When I was growing up, I loved action and adventure stories. My favorite characters and ships almost exclusively involved boys and not girls. I felt bad because I wasn't supporting female characters - but I couldn't help that I didn't like them, or at least not as much as the boys. And I hated any time it seemed someone treated me like a "fan girl" who's just "in it for cute boys." But here's the thing. I did like female characters... in shows made for girls. Like Sailor Moon, CardCaptor Sakura, Utena - in all those shows my favorites were girls, and my ships were het or FxF. But the shows for girls weren't as popular as the shows for boys, because girls would watch both but boys mainly wouldn't. So the boy shows had bigger fandoms and more content and lasted longer.

What I'm trying in a roundabout way to get at is: Gwen Stacy is the proof that I, and many other unfairly labeled "fan girl" types, were really just desperate for great female characters in action shows that were popular with boys too. Your choices back then were: the love interest who is mainly a cheerleader, the love interest who does have some cool skills but never as cool as the boys, the love interest who is really cool and interesting but the story is only told from the boy's perspective, or the strong independent woman who doesn't need a man (aka a horrible, one-dimensional, token example of a "strong female character"). But Gwen. Gwen is none of that. She's strong, she's vulnerable, she needs help, but she's independent, she's fierce but also soft, and she's so far very much got her own natural, organic role in the story. She's hands down my favorite. And if there had been more female characters like her when I was a kid, I'd have loved them as well. So there. Fuck everyone who says otherwise, lol. And I know that there is a theory that Gwen is trans, and if so I will support it for all the same reasons. Just make characters who are fleshed out and real, whether they are boys or girls or trans or nonbinary. Just make them all like that and we won't have to have silly arguments about it! :P

Anedcote over. So, I love that Gwen got her own mini-movie in the first bit. I love the storm clouds in her relationship with Miles. It's not the usual stuff - I mean it is, but it's done in a way that feels really fresh. Her story almost predicts Miles's, or what Miles's could be. She's already lost a Spiderman, and when her father, a cop just like Miles's, discovers her identity, he isn't supportive. So when she hears that part of her canon as a Spiderman may mean her father dies, she's so heartbroken and depressed that she accepts it must be. When she tells Miles that in every universe a relationship between Gwen and Spiderman ends badly, and he responds something like "Then let's make this the first which doesn't," omg. My heart. I love them so much.

And more on Gwen. When it was clear that she was more or less betraying Miles, "for the greater good," I was a little disappointed at first. I loved her bit in the beginning so much and felt sad that she was then degraded to "girl from the wrong side of the tracks who needs to be saved by the hero." But that doesn't happen! Of course she's inspired by Miles, he's a big part of why she's able to stand up again. But he's not all of it. When Miguel throws her into the machine to send her back to her reality, I was so afraid she was going to cry and plead for another chance. But again, she doesn't. She just fights, and when she can't fight anymore, she says "We're supposed to be the good guys." And when she gets sent back, the thing she most feared, she discovers what can change when you take a risk on a second chance. And I think she realizes that her resignation was really fear. A false sense of control felt safer than accepting that our world is really chaos. That's where Miguel, I assume, is still... interesting to see what will go down with him in the future.

And last, Miles. He's just the perfect hero for this movie. He feels deeply. He's got conviction. I never believed The Spot was his real nemesis, so when it turned out to be his doppelganger in the other reality, I was like, omg so fitting. Yeah, it's overdone, but it doesn't feel like it is! Because it fits so well with what the story is trying to do. Miles was able to resist Miguel's rationale in a way the others couldn't because he has those deep convictions and that raw human hope in the future. But for that same reason, if things go wrong, if he fails when he's staked his whole heart on succeeding, the danger is losing his sense of self and turning into Miles the Prowler. It's such a great analogy for grief and suffering and why we struggle through our hard lives.

Just every moment was good. I kept waiting for one that I'd think well this could have been done better, but it didn't come. Maybe Gwen's dad was a little too quick to be ok with the whole portal jumping thing, lol. I really don't care. Such a fun movie and incredibly well made. I know the music and art made a huge difference for me - one reason why I feel like I could stand to watch it again, when I really haven't bothered to rewatch any other superhero movies. (Except the first Avengers, I think I'd still enjoy that if I watched it again.) It just never got stale and held my interest the whole time. And I gotta say: MilesxGwen 5 ever. Hahaha. Idk what the future holds for them (I mean Margo is also a sweetheart and nothing lasts forever...) but anyway I SHIP IT!!!

[spacedewey]

That was at least partial hyperbole, but I thought about it. Narrowing it down to Amazing Spider-Man, because if you included all the other titles, it would be harder, and also, it would be just 3 separate runs on Spectacular Spider-Man by Bill Mantlo (RIP, but...).

For those of you just joining us, I've read nearly every Spider-Man comic ever made, most of them in the last 4 years. Let's put this long-ass answer under a cut.

#3: JM DeMatteis. Now, I know he has his boosters among Spider-Man fans, Kraven's Last Hunt, etc, etc. I'm not here to debate his relative merits, but I will say, generally speaking: Not a fan. But his run on ASM specifically, issues 389-406, takes Peter Parker into the first half of one of DeMatteis' most frequent story structures, and then just leaves him there. On Spectacular Spider-Man, DeMatteis loved to do stories where Peter was driven to the brink, seething with rage, wallowing in darkness, usually drugged and hallucinating (So many drugs!), in order to confront some terrible truth about himself and emerge stronger for it. Sometimes DeMatteis would do this bit in back-to-back stories. If you read it all close together, it becomes incredibly tedious and predictable. In his time on ASM, Peter sinks in to a depression and an endless rage over the death of his fake robot parents (THE NINETIES!) and just stays there. He declares that he is "The Spider," gives up on Peter Parker's life, refuses to take his mask off, come home, acknowledge Mary Jane in anyway, and ignores Aunt May until she up and dies (You know, "dies"). Then Ben Reilly shows up, and Peter goes even more insane. It's 15 issues of wallowing in pointless misery with no payoff and it is a chore to read. All of this, ostensibly, was to make Ben Reilly seem far more appealing by comparison and sell the idea that him being revealed as the real Peter is a good thing, which is fuckin' insane, but by the time any of that goes anywhere, DeMatteis is gone. There's no redemption at the end of the vision quest this time, just a painful, boring slog.

#2: Len Wein. Len wrote ASM from #151-180, and the book was just in a holding pattern. Nothing particularly noteworthy happened, unless it was something bad. Really terrible new villains like Rocket Racer and Big Wheel are introduced. Spider-Man, already kind of a jerk under previous writer Gerry Conway, is a full-blown asshole, just a completely unlikable character. Len wrote the 5-parter wherein Harry Osborn's psychiatrist puts him under hypnosis, finds out about the Green Goblin, and just... gives it a try. A middle aged man with no superpowers just starts flying around on a glider, throwing bombs at people and trying to take over the underworld, and is about as successful as the previous Goblins were. Then he accidentally blows himself up with a bomb that looks like an ink pen. Most of the run is just forgettable, and its most memorable moments are all really bad. Nothing of interest happens in Peter Parker's life. He was going to college, he keeps going to college. He was dating MJ, he keeps dating MJ. Just spinning the wheels until Len's good pal Marv Wolfman comes on board and really shakes things up in an underrated run.

#1: Nick Spencer. I wasn't originally thinking Nick was #1, per se, but... he really is. Chief amongst the complaints: Nick Spencer's ASM, Vol. 6, #1-74, begins with Peter Parker losing his job, and for the next 3 years, with the exception of 3 issues in the middle, Peter is unemployed and not worried about it, living in Manhattan in an apartment with 2 roommates, who are also not worried about it. All these characters are open to interpretation, but if your Peter Parker is broke and unbothered, you have fundamentally misunderstood the comic, and it can't be saved. But that makes sense, because this run isn't about Peter at all, and that's the other reason it deserves the #1 spot. It's about Spider-Man. In the 3 issues where Peter has a job, Spider-Man gets a job, not Peter. If any non-super characters appear, they appear as part of the Spider-Man plot, as MJ is kidnapped by villains, or Randy Robertson is dating a supervillain, etc. There is no personal life for what they used to call the "everyman" of Marvel Comics. It's an unmitigated, irredeemable disaster, and that's before the stupid zombie villain he spends 3 years teasing but not really doing anything with turns out to be nothing but an awkward retcon for Sins Past. I mean, yeah, that story sucked, but the culmination of 3 years of bullshit foreshadowing turning out to be a continuity patch to a story from 18 years prior that everyone else was content to just ignore is insane. Along the way, you also get Peter living with the villain Boomerang and just rolling with it, everyone being totally cool with Randy dating a supervillain, and pathetic remakes of famous stories like Kraven's Last Hunt and The Death of Jean DeWolff, "now much longer and much worse!" At least some of the blame lies with editor Nick Lowe, who approved all this, and also promoted literally every storyline as "the worst thing that ever happened to Spider-Man!" "The worst day of Peter Parker's life!" "The most shocking issue ever!" and then nothing happened in any of them. No one died, no relationships were changed, nothing. All sizzle, no steak, for 74 issues. Nick Lowe has been implying that the next issue of Spider-Man will kill Mary Jane for 5 years, he rolled it right into the current run after Spencer left. He should not be running this book. But, yeah, Nick Spencer. In addition to being a genuinely miserable human being in real life, terrible Spider-Man writer.

And that is my entirely-too-long answer.

(I want to go on record as not having purchased the Nick Spencer run. I have never bought a comic with his name on it. But I did read them all. To my detriment)

more people need to consume media how dedicated comics fans consume their media of choice

[kirbydots]

🔥

regarding continuity and looking at cape characters as mythologies

Unpopular opinion asks

Part of what draws me to comic universes is the extensive continuity and just how long these stories have been going on. It amazes me that my grandfather might have read about these same characters as a kid, that generation after generation has grown up with these characters the same way I have! Because I very much did grow up with comics and superheroes— my dad introduced me to X-Men as a kid, and I’ve been watching Batman cartoons and other DC shows since I was a baby. I literally cannot remember a time where I didn’t know and love these characters.

A lot of the times — especially by people who aren’t into comics — I see continuity treated as a bad thing or a hamper on the stories. While it can be, such as when an otherwise good run has to reckon with a godawful writing decision made by the previous writer, or a character has a history of being portrayed very poorly, I find that for me it’s a benefit.

I like characters with a rich history, and I especially love seeing how they’ve changed over the decades! Whether it be a character or a mantle, what draws me to it is the meaning and history behind it. With characters, I love to see how they’ve changed as a person, what they’ve been through, who they’ve known.

Take Batgirl, for example— the mantle means nothing to me in current comics. Not Cass being Batgirl, not Steph, none of it. There’s none of the history the mantle had, none of the meaning that came with it being passed down. The exchange of the suit from Helena to Cass, how it was created to represent the Bat, to give Gotham hope during No Man’s Land is so impactful, especially when you take into account Cass’ loyalty to the bat itself. That suit, created to represent not Batgirl, but the bat itself, being the suit Cass wears! The passing of the torch from one disabled woman to another! It’s incredibly powerful, and reading those books is what made the Batgirls my favorite part of the Batfamily.

Now that both Cass and Steph are Batgirl (except when they aren’t) and that Babs is Batgirl again (except when she… possibly isn’t?) there’s none of that history. It isn’t a mantle passed through generations, it’s “when girl is bat” and I’d argue that the mantle no longer works. Robin certainly doesn’t work when there’s two of them, and Batgirl doesn’t either! These titles mean nothing to the characters, and they mean nothing to me, either.

To use another example that nobody except me and four other people care about, Garth. He’s here in the current continuity, and I, a dedicated fan of him, actively want him to stop appearing! Because the writers cut out everything that made him, well, him! The kingdom he comes from is gone, cutting out the heritage he struggled with. He’s got magic, but the person who mentored him and the role it played in his development and understanding of himself is gone.

The romantic relationship that he defined so much of his life by is gone, cutting out so much character development regarding his acceptance of her death and moving on from it that was the crux of his arc in his solo. Also, said character is now his cousin, permanently removing any possibility that this could be restored.

He doesn’t act like himself whatsoever, and how could he? The new continuity removed everything that defined and shaped his character! His suit change, while a minor detail with most characters, really shows how little they cared for Garth’s character when rebooting him. While there are many in-universe details that make it a bad idea, my main complaint is that his original Tempest suit was a tribute to Neal Pozner’s Aquaman design. Phil Jimenez, the writer of said solo, had been in a relationship with Pozner prior to his passing from AIDS, and dedicated the solo to Pozner. This disregard of prior continuity and history cuts out so much meaning, and I’d argue is rather disrespectful to the creator of the Tempest mantle.

While no comic continuity is perfect, I think disregarding the history of characters is not a solution whatsoever, and by doing so you often gut them of meaning. It’s irritating when fan spaces are full of nothing but disregard for the source material, and it’s unbearable when comic writers totally disregard what came before. I can’t stand most modern Fourth World content, despite it being my favorite part of DC, because of a total disrespect for Kirby’s original saga and what it meant. Darkseid is stripped of context, Orion is erased from his own story, it pisses me off!

You lose so much when you disregard a character’s history, and they end up being a hollow shell of what they used to be. Why should I care about this character and their story when the story itself doesn’t? I’m not saying comics need to be dense and full of citations, but when they stop caring about their own history and refuse to engage with the past of the characters they’re writing, I check out. I love Cassandra Cain because she’s Cassandra Cain, not because she’s some random girl in a bat suit!

In regards to comics as modern mythology, I’d say I’m not well-versed on the discussion enough to have an opinion.

[kohakuarisaka]

Untamed (chapter 3 of 5)

Takami Keigo x (fem!)Reader

[ SUMMARY ] Every year, without fail, Hawks went into a rut: when autumn began, and then again in early spring. He would honker down up north in a secluded cabin. For the first time, he brought you with him.

[ WARNINGS ] R18+ for graphic sexual content and language. Non-canon compliant: Hawks’ quirk does not work like this. Reader is a hero that works at Hawks agency. Pre-existing relationship. Reader is a female with female genitalia. Feral behavior. Rutting. Biting. Spanking. Slight BDSM. Consensual sex. Wing kink. Oral sex. Romantic relationship.

Chapter 1 • Chapter 2 • Chapter 3 • Chapter 4 • Chapter 5

[ My BNHA Fanfic Masterlist ] ~ [ Also on my AO3 ]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Baby," a voice cooed at you while hands gently shook your shoulders, stirring you from sleep.

"Come on. Get up. The sun's gonna be rising soon," he continued, speaking to you softly.

You groaned like a wounded animal and tried to resist the pull to consciousness, hoping you could slip back away and he would cease this assault.

Of course, that didn't happen, and the murmuring and shaking didn't come to an end. You found yourself turning around and groggily taking in the sight of Hawks. He already looked wide awake, gold eyes beaming, skin glowing, handsome face as immaculate as ever.

It made you want to punch him.

"Get up," he said, more so telling than asking, albeit politely.

He had warned you last night that he intended to wake you early; but, that didn't stop you from groaning tiredly, rolling over, as if in protest, before complying with his request, removing the blanket slowly, afraid to expose yourself to the cold.

He had stoked the fireplace before waking you; that much was clear, seeing as it wasn't blistering cold when you wiggled out of bed. It was chilly, of course, but not enough to leave you trembling helplessly.

You realized that Hawks had already dressed himself, boots thumping quietly on the floor as he stepped around the bed. He had slipped on a grey T-shirt, and didn't seem to be feeling cold at all, judging by the lax way he rolled his shoulders, wings jutting out from his back gracefully.

He gave you a sideways glance, an almost untrusting look written across his face.

"I'm getting up!" you hissed at him.

Hawks wasn't expecting that sudden outburst and flinched a little, eyes widening slightly and feathers shuddering behind him. It was a comical sight, if you were being honest. It wasn't like him to be so high strung.

Before you could assume you had upset him, Hawks blew raspberries and turned away, heading for the stairs.

When he walked away, you most certainly did not admire the way his cargo pants hugged his ass, nor the way his shirt was pulled tight across the plains of his muscular back, nor how his crimson feathers looked so beautiful draped behind him.

Hawks didn't laugh when you met him downstairs; but, he sure looked like he wanted to. Here he was wearing some loose, comfortable clothes like it hadn't snowed all night, while you were dressed up in thick pants and a heavy coat with multiple layers underneath, ready to weather the elements.

As soon as you stepped downstairs, you were hit with the familiar smell of coffee lofting about the cabin. You recognized the aroma as his favorite, the one he stockpiled at the agency, that was almost always coming from his office.

He had taken the time to pour you some, as well, evident by the mug he was trying to hand to you with a suspiciously innocent look on his face.

"Seriously?" you laughed when you eyed the receptacle he was offering.

It was his merch, clearly. The mug was black with sparkly gold trim, the pattern matching the chest on his jumpsuit . It was covered in comic book style quotation marks containing, what you were guessing, was supposed to be his quotes.

Hawks watched you admire the cup, looking a little too smug for his own good, and returned to sipping from the very plain mug in his other hand.

"Do you really say these things?" you laughed, not expecting an answer because there was no way such nonsense flew from his mouth in the middle of a fight.

"Aheh. 'I am speed'," you read aloud with a scoff. "More like, 'I do speed'," you teased with a grin, catching the way he almost choked on his coffee, shoulders trembling with laughter.

"Who the hell approved these?" you added on.

"The hero commission, I think," Hawks replied, shrugging his shoulders a little.

The coffee, of course, tasted great. He bought the expensive, high-class stuff, after all. Hawks was the only person you knew who could sleep in the dirt with his visor skewed across his face, without a complaint to be had, but refused to drink anything but imported, specially grown coffee beans.

He was ushering you out the door the second you were finished with your coffee, pushing you out into the snowy forestscape, hands grabby and wings fluttering anxiously.

Before you could shudder and complain about the cold, Hawks scooped you up into his arms, kicked the door shut with the heel of his boot, and took to the sky.

You couldn't believe he was out here without a jacket on. Your fully covered arms clung to him for dear life, shivering and trembling in the cold. He wasn't flying particularly fast; but, the winds felt punishing, ice cold biting at your cheeks and seeping in through your clothes.

You were too cold to really appreciate the beauty of the forest covered in freshly poured snow. The glistening, white peaks sparkled like something out of a fairytale in the dimly lit morning light.

"Come on, babe," Hawks cooed, turning his head to blow hot air right on your ear.

Well, no wonder he wasn't cold. It seemed to make sense to you, then, why he went into his rut during these times of the year. He was generating enough heat to be a transportable furnace.

"If you keep clinging to me like that, you're gonna miss the view," Hawks uttered, so close that his lips moved against your skin as he spoke.

You peeled back from him, away from the warmth you were desperately trying to steal. He hadn't stopped flying yet, but slowed down a bit.

"O-oh..." you whispered, taking in the snowy wilderness.

A few miles past the cabin's backyard was a cliff that dipped down into rolling mountains. He had flown overhead, granting a wonderful view of the many acres of untouched wilderness, towering trees and lush forest landscape over rolling hills and mountains.

But, Hawks hadn't dragged you out here at the crack of dawn just to see the snowy landscape. He wanted you out here right at sunrise for a very specific reason.

He had made it just in time for the sun to peak out from the horizon line, like a giant glimpsing through the trees on the mountain top.

The sun was shining a mystical light across the mountains. The overcast clouds were dark purple gliding across crystal clear, blue skies. Rays of red sunlight glided through the trees while gold laid out across the piles of snow like a glistening blanket.

"See?" Hawks murmured, his flight coming to a halt.

He hovered, fairly high up, wings flapping gently, arms still wound tight around you, holding you close. There was a gentle breeze brushing through his hair, causing the feathery strands to tickle at your cheeks.

While you were looking at the landscape in awe, he was staring at you. The sunlight lit up your face and reflected heavily on your eyes, making them glow like crystal orbs. You had finally stopped shivering, too in awe at the sight to notice the chilling bite of the wind.

He didn't say it aloud; but, the most beautiful thing in the sunrise was you.

He liked to tell himself that the rut was making him mushy, emotional. Surely, powerful pro-hero Hawks couldn't be this soft? But, he knew his rut was only amplifying what he already felt so strongly.

His rut made him less inhibited, surfaced darker, feral desires that lay in waiting under layers of discipline he had spent most of his life building.

Even without his rut, you had a power over him he couldn't deny, the power to break him, to peel back the masks he wore, to melt away his self-control, until he was reduced to a desperate animal.

Oh, but the beauty of it all was that you loved that side of him. You had proved to him that you loved every side of him, even the parts that he tried so desperately hard to ensure would never see the light of day.

Even if he could blame his desires on his mutation, that didn't change that he was an assassin, for heroes, yes, but a murderer none the less.

You-

-you knew that, and yet, still, those soft hands held him as if he was untainted. You purred beneath his touch as if those weren't the same hands he had used to kill.

"Keigo?" you hummed.

Just like that, there you were again, freeing him from the torment of his own mind, a lifeline to free him from drowning in the ocean.

"Thank you for this," you uttered, turning your head to look at him.

God, he was beautiful. His gold irises were amplified by the sunlight, like shiny coins in a wishing well, taking in the sight of you shamelessly.

The bird-like curve of his eyelids already gave him a mystical appearance, now further illuminated by the rays of light shining down from above. The wind was blowing, tossing his already frazzled hair in a senseless dance.

The bright red plumes that made up the shape of his wings looked like something out of a dream. In the sunlight, the feathers glowed magnificent crimson, glowing in sharp contrast to the pale white, wintery landscape.

Your hands, that had been gripping his shoulders during the flight, wove up the back of his neck, fingertips touching the trimmed hairs there. You felt his hands tighten where they were holding you, his arms weaving tighter, as if he could get you closer.

"Do you like it here?" Hawks uttered softly.

His tone concerned you a little, as if he was sincerely worried that you were a prisoner here.

You smiled, replying, "it's the first time we've gotten to truly be alone. I'm enjoying myself more than you think."

His gaze softened at your words. A couple of your fingers played with the soft, short hairs at the top of his neck. He felt unbearably warm there, skin slightly damp with sweat. It was startling, considering how cold it was outside.

You felt the soft brush of his lips and let your eyes flutter shut. He was slow, careful, like he was tasting something new and delicious for the first time.

When he pulled back and tilted his head, you felt the faintest drag of his chin across your cheek, felt the fine hairs of his beard tickle your skin.

He hadn't shaved in a couple weeks, leaving you to see him in a mess than most didn't get the honor of. The normally neatly trimmed hairs he shaved down to a fine patch on his chin were now covering most of his jawline, the same beautiful, pale blonde as the hair on his head.

Tantalized, you leaned in, nuzzling your cheek against his jaw, before tilting your head back and feeling the drag of his soft beard against your skin. It felt good, maybe a little too good, and you failed to suppress a quiet gasp.

When you had pulled back far enough to catch his gaze, you immediately realized his eyes had changed. The calm was gone; now, something akin to a storm was brewing underneath.

It was a look you were very familiar with.

He let out a low exhale, as if he had been holding his breath. Your name fell from his lips, low and sultry, a warning, or a curse, and it made you shudder.

Hawks tilted back suddenly and started a sharp decent downward. Having flown together many times, you weren't afraid. The arms around his shoulders tightened and you let out a soft gasp, but more so out of surprise than fear.

His wings fanned out and took him sharply soaring through the trees at a speed much faster than he had brought you here. His grip on you was almost painfully tight, as if his fingers were trying to dig past the fabric of your clothes to get to your skin.

Excitement made you forget about the biting cold, the forest around you distorted almost violently. Suddenly, the cabin door was creaking and then being slammed shut. You hadn't even seen the cabin come into view. Everything felt like a daze.

He flew up to the loft and dropped you unceremoniously at the edge of the bed. The tumble had resulted in you facing away from him; but, you could feel his eyes burning through you.

"Take off your clothes," Hawks commanded, his voice oddly polite despite the nature of his request.

Just as soon as you started working your jacket off, he was kneeling to pull at the laces on your boots. He was strangely gentle when he pulled your shoes off, less so when he tossed them aside. As you worked your shirt off, he pulled your pants and underwear down in one fell swoop, leaving you mostly bare and cold.

You rotated around and leaned up on your elbows, catching his cold stare, indicating that you were not done yet. You peeled your socks off, feeling a rush of excitement at the look he was giving you.

Hawks usually wore a kind, harmless face, not that it was unnatural, for he truly was a good person. However, most could easily forget or be blind to how powerful he was.

Now, in his gold eyes, that was what you saw, the reality that he could take whatever he wanted, when he wanted. You didn't have to be reminded, for every sparring and training session did just that: you couldn't best him if your life depended on it.

Still, Hawks wasn't that kind of person. He was the kind of loved, often times so passionately that you feared you couldn't keep up.

Even now, when his hands took hold of your waist, his body language dominating, wings spread wide behind him, you felt loved.

An amused sound, like a hum, rumbled out of his chest as he carefully maneuvered you around.

You were compliant, letting him roll you around and push your chest down into the bed. The hand on your back was gentle, but commanding, fingers splayed wide in the space between your shoulder blades.

Instead of nudging your thighs with his hands, a boot-clad toe poked between your ankles, commanding you to spread your legs, which you did with a low moan. You leaned up on your toes, presenting to him like an animal.

The sight threatened to send him into a spiral, and you felt his clothed body fall over you, pushing you down into the bed.

His wings flapped once, sending a sharp gust of wind spiraling around the room. There was a painfully obvious contrast between the soft texture of his shirt and the rough texture of his pants.

He made it very clear, with a roll of his hips, that he was ready to take you. The feeling of his clothed erection against your sex, combined with the knowledge that he could just slip right in without preamble, had you mewling.

"You like this," Hawks observed, the words like thunder as they rolled off his tongue.

He retreated, suddenly reeling back and standing behind you, warmth leaving along with him.

"You like when I just take?" he asked, accentuating 'take' with a smack to the back of your thigh. It wasn't hard enough to hurt, but it did manage to startle a yelp out of you.

"Yeah," he uttered lowly, agreeing with his own observations. "You like being Hawks' little plaything," he continued, almost purring the words.

Your delirious brain didn't really know what to expect next. When you heard a thump, you had no idea what to make of it, until you felt breath on your skin and realized that was the sound of Hawks' falling onto his knees behind you.

He didn't waste any time diving in, lapping a heavy tongue across your slit, from top to bottom. His hands gripped your thighs, keeping you still while his tongue breached your entrance.

If his enthusiasm and lack of grace wasn't enough, the rumbling sound he made was enough to make it obvious he liked it.

You couldn't fathom that your taste could possibly be that good; however, you didn't dare comment, especially not when he was doing things with his tongue that shouldn't be humanly possible.

A rough smack to your behind startled you from a delirious daze of pleasure. You yelped quietly, but otherwise remained compliant. When he smacked you again, this time growling faintly into your sex, it was clear he wanted something that you weren't delivering; but, you didn't know what.

"K-Keigo, what-" you whined, breaking off into a howl when he smacked you again.

Normally, such a touch would have you instinctively shriveling away; however, his grip on you was tight, and it kept you still.

Hawks smacked you again, you helplessly cried out, again, and the sound faded into moans that you couldn't possibly contain with what he was doing. You started to wonder, when another smack was delivered, if he was just doing that for his own amusement.

Eventually, he stopped and leaned back, rising to his feet. His hand slid over yours, large palm practically swallowing yours, and guided it back to your sex. You rotated a little, angling your body to follow his movement.

"Feel that," he gently commanded. "How wet and warm you are for me."

You heard the floorboard creak as he leaned back, clearly to get a good view. You did as he requested, immediately driving two fingers into yourself. Sure enough, you were slippery, walls compliant and squishy, and unbelievably warm inside.

Being ready for him with little provocation wasn't exactly a new thing. You were both very busy heroes and keeping your relationship on the downlow. That meant quickies more often than proper time together.

Yet, Hawks sounded immensely pleased; with himself or with you, you couldn't quite tell.

He returned to the floor, hand brushing your knuckles to push your fingers in as deep as they could go.

"Keigo, what are you-" you began, cutting off when his tongue returned to your heat, right alongside your fingers.

"Finger yourself," he told you, sounding oddly blissful despite the fact that you hadn't touched him at all. His cock was still trapped inside his pants, throbbing against the rough material.

You complied with his request, lacking in any grace or proper friction considering the awkward angle. However, Hawks groaned in approval at the view before leaning back in.

His tongue dipped in right alongside your digits. Immediately, he forced the pace and you were desperate to try and keep up, fingers squelching in and out of your core alongside the slobbery mess of his tongue.

Your fingers couldn't compare, lacking in the length, thickness and dexterity of his digits. But, it seemed that Hawks was less focused on getting you off and more focused on playing with you; or, maybe, you had severely underestimated what the taste of your essence was doing to him.

At some point, he pulled back, grabbed your wrist to remove your fingers from your core, and sucked them into his own mouth. You weren't expecting the teeth, and let out a low hiss when his fangs threatened to pierce the skin, holding you firmly in place while his tongue sucked your fingers clean.

He didn't release your hand when he was done. You heard the floorboards creak as he stood up, felt him tug your hand down, until your knuckles brushed his clothed cock.

"You want that?" Hawks breathed.

His free hand gently spread over the space between your shoulder blades, pushing you down before you could dare think to lean up. Your cheek was resting against the sheets, hair spewed about in a mess. His hand wandered, pushing hair out of the way until your neck and shoulders were properly exposed.

From where you laid on the bed, you couldn't make out the sight of him; but, you could see one of his wings, stretched out, looming predatorily.

"Yes," you replied hoarsely.

His hand glided over the prominent bump where your first vertebrae jutted from the top of your spine, and lowered, setting between your shoulder blades once more, where he held you still.

"Then, take it," Hawks uttered, his other hand releasing your wrist.

You let out a low hiss, wanting to curse him for making such a ridiculous request. You couldn't see his face; but, you sure as hell could feel the smirk he was wearing as he stared at you, watching your handle fumble with his belt.

You doubted it was mercy; but, Hawks leaned in closer, the tops of his thighs sliding over the backs of yours, making it a little easier to undo his belt buckle.

The button on his pants followed, but not with ease, before you tugged his zipper down. You couldn't tug his pants down like this, leaving you to fumble around with his boxers, trying to fish his cock out.

"Keigo, you fucking ass-" you growled, not bothering to hide your frustration.

Hawks laughed softly, sounding a little more out of it than he did amused. "'m sorry," he cooed. "-like seein' you struggle."

The slur in his voice should have given it away, his patience had depleted; however, it still surprised you when he suddenly swatted your hand away. He hooked his thumb on the hem of his boxers and pulled them down just enough for his cock to bob free.

You felt the smooth tip nudge at your entrance, the faintest warning, before he pushed forward and entered your moist heat.

"Ohhhh fuck," Hawks howled.

He gave you no time to become accustomed to the sudden intrusion, immediately pistoning his hips back and forth, driving his cock in and out of you.

One hand pinned your torso, while his thighs pinned your legs, and his other hand gripped your hip for leverage. You shifted your feet, trying to lift up on your toes to better the angle, and bumped against his boots.

He was still fully clothed; and, really, that shouldn't have mattered so much. After all, how many times had he freed his cock from his jumpsuit to take you quick and hard before tucking it back in and immediately looking as if nothing nefarious had occurred. Yet, still, the realization had you feeling dizzy.

Before you could nudge a hand between your thighs, something beat you to it. You recognized that bizarre texture. It was soft, sure, but a tad bit pricklier than a normal feather, with an unnatural, firm touch. The little heathen knew exactly how you liked to be touched there, too.

The wet, lewd noises of your union, skin slapping together, was drowned out by the litany of moans pouring from his mouth. If he wasn't crying out in ecstasy, he was huffing and puffing like he had just ran a marathon.

If you were being honest, he was being just a little too rough, a little too fast, offering you no reprieve. You didn't doubt that he would stop if you asked him to; but, you sure as hell didn't want him to. The intensity of it all had you on a plain of existence you rarely got to experience, where pleasure became blinding and mind-numbing.

His hand slid off your back and onto the bed, grabbing a fistful of the sheets as he set a brutal pace, the kind that threatened to unravel your sanity.

"Fuck! You feel so fucking good," he growled, sounding so out of breath and lost. "Gonna fill you up. Yeah, I am. Want my seed dripping out of you all fucking week."

High off the pleasure, and maybe a little influenced by his own state, you moaned approvingly at the suggestion.

"Baby," he whined, suddenly sounding like he was in pain. The feather fluttering against your pearl intensified, practically vibrating against you with how fast it was moving.

"Need you come, need you to come," Hawks pleaded, the words hissing out from his lips between desperate pants.

You didn't think you could come in that moment. Everything felt so good, from his cock rearranging your insides to his feather flicking at your clit. The pleasure was tingling down your thighs and crawling up your spine. You could barely breathe, let along process a coherent thought beyond Keigo.

The hand that had been holding your hip let go and joined the other in gripping the bed. He arched over you, forehead meeting your back.

"Come for me, come for me," Hawks sobbed.

You realized then, as he trembled behind you, that he had reached his own completion, and he didn't slow down until his orgasm waned. You could feel his seed, like molten lava as it filled your insides.

Hawks was still panting when he growled, "again."

He flipped you over, winding your legs over his waist and somehow managing to keep his cock seated inside of you during the transition. Your arms flopped uselessly above your head. You felt weak, laying there like a doll while he turned you over. Still, it felt good: his cock, his hands, his warmth.

One of his arms looped beneath your lower back and tugged you properly onto the bed. He climbed onto the sheets and followed, dragging you beneath him.

He was prepared to continue thrusting into you wildly and blindly chase another orgasm when your eyes met and he froze up. You could practically see him blink away delirious arousal, the sight of your debauched face bringing him back to his senses.

"B-baby, do you need me to stop?" Hawks offered, the words falling from his lips so weakly.

You huffed out a weak breath and reached for him. He leaned down, letting you wind your arms across his shoulders. Your fingers dipped across his clothed back until you reached his wings.

Hawks literally shouted when your fingers dipped into the exposed seams on the shirt and touched the baby feathers growing fresh from his back. The sound rattled your bones and made you jerk from the startle.

He didn't have to be told twice, obviously, for Hawks continued his thrusting immediately. The slippery, wet sounds of his claim over your body was downright disgusting, and you loved it. Your legs clung desperately to his hips, heels digging into the backs of his thighs.

One of his feathers was still pressed against your clit, now trapped between your bodies. It had stopped moving; but, every time he thrust back into you, it created delicious friction.

Your assault on his wings rendered Hawks incapable of speech. The pleasured sounds he made was almost unnatural. If you didn't know any better, you would have thought he was in pain between the broken, blabbering moans and choked, sharp gasping.

His arms were still wound beneath you, holding onto you for leverage and clinging to you so closely, so tightly, it was almost crushing. His wings were arched up high, flapping occasionally as if to increase the momentum behind his thrusts.

His face fell into your throat, forcing your head back into the sheets. He was burning hot, practically oozing sweat. In the corner of your eye, you could see the red tint staining his ears. You could practically feel his frustration gnawing its way through his body and into yours.

Without warning, you felt what couldn't be mistaken for anything other than Hawks' teeth piercing the skin of your neck. Sure, he had bit you before, even left faint hickies on occasion; however, this was something else entirely, and forced a scream from your throat.

You had no doubt he had pierced the skin, judging by how it burned. He was growling into the skin, holding onto you with his teeth as if you were attempting to flee. You didn't dare release his wings, fingers woven through the fine plumes, caressing the sensitive skin of his shoulder blades, where crimson feathers grew.

The bite hurt, without a doubt, but there was no denying the electrical shocks of pleasure it sent through your body. If it wasn't that, then it was the growls vibrating from his mouth onto your skin.

Suddenly, your orgasm hit, and left you screaming and gasping with a sort of ferocity you didn't think you were capable of. Something that sounded almost like his name fell from your lips at some point. Your back arched and your legs trembled where they rested around his hips.

You failed to realize he was following closely behind you. Your grip on his feathers had gone limp and you didn't notice the way his wings arched up, the tips of the longest quills nearly touching the ceiling. He kept going and going, until he was spent and your cries of ecstasy came to a halt.

Hawks let go of your throat and leaned up, removing his arms from beneath you to set his palms on the sheets. He should have felt embarrassed or ashamed or something. But, looking down at the bleeding bite wound on your shoulder, watching the way your chest heaved with heavy breaths, seeing the tint of red along your cheeks and neck, he felt blissfully proud.

Hawks scooped you into an embrace and carefully rolled onto his side, bringing you in with him and cradling you against his chest. One of his wings fell over you, the plumes stretched wide to hide you from the outside world. All you could see was him, his handsome face, the crimson feathers of his wings.

You were acutely aware that he was still inside you, still somewhat hard; but, his temperature was lowering and his breathing was steadily returning to normal. Your fingers untangled from his plumes and came around to rest limply on his chest.

He lapped his tongue softly against the bite wound until it stopped bleeding before peppering it with kisses. It stung a little and you squirmed in his grasp.

"I'm not sorry about the bite," Hawks confessed lowly, leaning back to look at your face.

"Me either," you replied, offering him a weak smile.

He looked blissfully unaware until you leaned in and sucked some of the skin of his neck into your mouth. Hawks groaned approvingly, laying still until you were satisfied and let go, leaving behind a faint, purple bruise.

You stared at his handsome face, watching the vibrant, red blush slowly leave his features as he calmed down. Blonde locks were clinging to his sweat soaked forehead and everything between the two of you reeked of sex. Yet, you couldn't bring yourself to complain when he looked so damn happy.

Hawks leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss against yours lips. Before he could retreat, you tilted your head and leaned in, not letting him escape. He hummed into the kiss, letting you lead until you were content and departed with a wet smack.

"Just a little bit longer," he promised, fingers gently digging into your back.

"Tell me what you're thinking," you requested, nuzzling your nose against his.

Something uncertain flickered in his gold eyes and his lids narrowed slightly.

"It's not sensical," he uttered lowly, and you felt one of his hands slide around to your front. His thumb lovingly brushed along the dip of your tummy, beneath your belly button. His gold eyes shifted down, staring at the expansion of your naval with dedication.

You both had implants. It wasn't going to happen. He knew that. Of course he did. But, he couldn't help but feel dedicated to commit to the effort, as if it would.

Your hand followed his, spreading over his fingers to press him down gently over your lower abdomen, as if this would be successful, as if there was a chance he would take. The encouragement to put him ease.

Hawks wanted to believe it was the rut talking. Some of it was, his body deliriously driven to mate, to the point that he overheated and arousal pained his core. But, his motivation wasn't purely biological. It was because it was you, whom he trusted with every fiber of his being.

But, he couldn't bring himself to tell you that. You loved being a hero, and he wasn't going to take that from you.

It felt special, being hidden with him like this, beneath his wing, whispering such depravities to one and other, that the rest of the world would never know. You felt safe, in a way that felt impossible. Here, as irrational as it sounded, you felt like Hawks could protect you from the world.

[hakasims]

Shitty Luca Movie Recap, Episode 6

Ok, so I’m not sure how many of you will even be interested in this post because this movie is obscure and not a lot of people have seen it, but here goes nothing. Today’s episode of SLMR is about

The Old Guard

Guys, where do I even start with this one? First of all, it’s based on a comic book... that claims it isn’t a superhero story. Who does that? And yet it’s about this group of people who are immortal. See, they pretend it’s not a superhero comic but these guys literally never die and can heal any wound. Show me a character who can heal but isn’t a superhero. You literally can’t because they don’t exist.

What’s extra weird about The Old Guard is that it has, like, faces you might recognize. Besides Luca’s, of course. Though that dude who looked like Putin in The Danish Girl I actually didn’t recognize because he doesn’t look like Putin in this movie. The Hot Jafar from the Aladdin remake also looks different here. Still hot, though.

I didn’t bother with the character names for this one because they’re mostly pretty generic, so I picked very accurate nicknames for everybody:

Sadgirl

Mood

Cinnamon Roll

Luca

Luca’s Hot Husband (Hot Hubby for short)

COPley (I know he’s a spy not a cop but I don’t care and also sorry his name isn’t James Spyder or whatever it’s called subtlety look it up)

Drugley (’cause he’s Dudley but also a pharma dude, get it?)

Manmeat

Dr. Evil

So what’s the story? Well, these immortals are all warriors from different time periods. You can tell because they use old-school weapons: Sadgirl has her lesbian axe, and The Hubbies are sword bros. In more ways than one if you know what I’m saying ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Oh, and Mood is from the time period after gunpowder was invented, so he just uses modern firearms. They all use modern firearms, but those three are also gays, so blades, drama, aesthetics - you get it. And they use their weapons and superpowers to fight the good fight. What is the good fight? Whatever they decide it is.

Sadgirl is sad because she thinks they’re wasting their efforts, and also her wifey was drowned by the Inquisition. (Whatever, it’s not like that plot point is coming back.) Sadgirl is so sad she even loses her immortality at some point, but by the end of the movie she starts to believe again! And while she’s having her character arc, Mood is just being mood:

Another plotline is about Cinnamon Roll learning she’s immortal after getting killed and coming back to life. The immortals can all see each other in a dream, which is convenient because it allows Sadgirl to go fetch Cinnamon Roll and add her to the team.

Meanwhile, Drugley learns about The Squad’s immortality from COPley, who’s like a history buff and a fanboy, apparently, and orders him and his boyfriend Manmeat to get him The Squad because he wants Dr. Evil to extract immortality from them so he could sell it or whatever.

None of that is important. What’s important is Luca and his Hot Hubby. They’re so cute, you guys. Like, disgustingly cute. They spoon:

They touch:

They kiss:

They kill homophobes together:

They headbutt:

They have this annoying eye contact:

Their only role in the movie is to be #RelationshipGoals and get kidnapped by Drugley’s Manmeat while Sadgirl and Cinnamon Roll are out. Mood is left behind though because Manmeat’s people decide he’ll be too much of a bummer on the way back. Poor bastards, they didn’t know he would have been the least of their problems.

So anyway, The Hubbies kill everyone in the van, give COPley a stinkeye and finally get to meet Drugley, who decides to show off his sick Shakespeare knowledge unaware that soliloquies are Hot Hubby’s thing:

This hurts Drugley’s feelings, so he orders Dr. Evil to torture The Hubbies, which she does. But that’s okay, you might think, the rest of The Squad are gonna burst in and save them, right? Think again.

Did I mention Mood was the one who ratted them out to COPley? It’s true. And he confesses, what a sucker! He’s now in deep shit.

Don’t worry about Mood, though. He’s saved by the plot.

Seriously, how did they survive before without Cinnamon Roll? Oh, right, they can’t die. Though clearly not for the lack of trying. Thankfully, she’s here to save everybody.

Cinnamon Roll? More like What Would You Do Without Me-nnamon Roll. Nailed it.

So she strolls into Drugley’s lair, stirs some shit, gets everyone out, and Kite’s Drugley off this plane of existence. She’s now officially part of The Squad, but here’s a problem: because The Squad has consisted of four people for so long, all their safehouses only have three beds (The Hubbies share one, obviously), and also, like, five people with all that bulky weapon in the same sedan... so uncomfortable. Ask any sword lover, it’s like a whole thing. Long story short, they kick Mood out. He was too much of a bummer anyway and also yeah, he’s a traitor. Hot Hubby will never stop judging:

So that’s The Old Guard. Do I recommend it? I don’t know, guys, I guess? It’s definitely not as bad as the other movies I’ve reviewed, though it should have been a lot gayer. That’s my main complaint. But sure, check it out if you have two hours to kill.

And let me know which movie I should do next!

[ladyyatexel]

I Went On A Manga Binge

So you don't have to

For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.

I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.

Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.

Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.

I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.

Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)

I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.

That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha

Ryou Bakura.

Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself

On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.

Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.

Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.

Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.

Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.

Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.

Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"

Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.

Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes

Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.

I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.

Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow

Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media

[salarta]

What do you value most about comic book characters and do you think the characters go far beyond being powerful or not? Specifically talking about mutants and the omega classification.

I don't really understand the question too well, so my answer may not be what you were looking for.

I'm not really a comic book fan. I'm a Polaris fan, and Polaris just happens to be a comic book character. I found out about Lorna back before Gifted though; I randomly stumbled on her wikia entry one day and what I saw of her in it drew my interest.

Also before Lorna, I didn't care much about anything Marvel. Closest I came to caring pre-Lorna was watching X-Men Evolution, and seeing the first Iron Man movie. Nothing Marvel made caught my fancy much before her.

I'm reasonably sure that if I never found out about Lorna, my interest would've been limited to the MCU films, and I would've gradually lost interest in them from getting annoyed about MCU being so dominant and pervasive. I say that based on how I originally didn't want anything to do with the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon cause Wolverine coming before X-Men annoyed me, but I eventually watched (and enjoyed) the cartoon because I wanted to see Lorna in it.

Of everything comic book wise, I'd have to say DC characters were much more dominant for me and were my go-to perception of comic books pre-Lorna. Batman and Superman were everywhere. Because of that, my general concept of comic book characters is one of representational ideals. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, they're all icons that stand for something more than a person in a costume. The heroism of those characters was quite inspiring. And that's where the very, very limited interest in X-Men Evolution showed up too: in what mutantdom and their struggles represented.

And from that topic, I have to say what drew me to Lorna most was what she represents as a survivor, both from overcoming all the shit she's been through and specifically her experience of Genosha and how she grew afterward. With Batman, you have a bad thing that happened to him, you have what he decided to do because of it, but all you really have is going from point A to point B. With Lorna, you have a journey. And her journey isn't over. In fact, it's only barely begun, because Marvel's avoided it for so many decades.

About powerful or not. I may not understand what you mean but I'll try.

I do think there's something deeper to these character (or at least, there could be) than just "Are they Omega." Just because you have a sledgehammer doesn't mean you know how to use it, or that you can find clever uses for it not typically expected. In the realm of proper writing, I think it's entirely possible for a character who's weak to beat an Omega character under the right circumstances. I also think that a character isn't inherently a "better character" just because they're Omega. All characters have value and potential. It's just a matter of a writer recognizing it and tapping into it the right way. You can have a character better than every Omega out there and they don't even have any powers, in the hands of good writing.

In the past, though, I've raised complaints about Lorna not being considered Omega while Magneto is. That doesn't come from a place of "My fave can beat up your fave" or "Only Omega characters matter." For me, it comes from a place of Marvel displaying double standards against Lorna, and being concerned about that undermining Lorna's options.

Past comics from Marvel have stated that Lorna either has the potential to surpass Magneto, is at the time his equal, or (albeit at a time when Magneto was weakened) had already surpassed him. The rules for what counts as Omega don't say there can be only one, or that only the one with the most experience or seniority gets the title, or even that it goes to whoever's had the most impressive feat. The rules put forth for Omega right now essentially mean that if Magneto's Omega, then Lorna should be too, based on past comics. Her not being considered Omega, to me, indicates a lack of respect for Lorna where they think she doesn't "deserve" to be Omega due to people at the company thinking she's a bad character. It's not the title that's at issue. It's what not having that title means. It means underestimating her worth, and artificially limiting her potential for stories based on faulty perceptions of her. I wouldn't mind Lorna not being Omega if the definition for Omega were different.

I haven't spoken much on the Omega stuff lately for a couple reasons. One, because she's getting treated better by Marvel lately. I particularly liked her treatment in Devil's Reign this week. Two, because frankly, I've been going through a lot of shit this past half year. Just. A lot. I'm still going through some of it right now. A lot of my energy has been directed toward resolving that shit. Otherwise I think I'd be posting a lot more than I have been on Lorna matters.

If I didn't really answer what you were hoping for, please send a new ask to give me a better idea. Bout to watch an episode of Goosebumps and go to bed.

[thevindicativevordan]

Any thoughts on Grant Morrison's Action Comics run? Beyond T shirt-and-jeans Superman being great.

That whole run reinvigorated my love of the character.

There have been numerous thoughtpieces about New 52 Superman, how he worked and how he didn't but these two entries really do a great job of summing up why Morrison's take on Superman was great. Morrison laid the foundation for a new generational Superman that DC completely fucked up and ran into the ground. I'll always be bitter about that, even if I had tapped out of reading the New 52 Superman books by the end due to how bad they got. Editorial and their idiotic mandates were what screwed over the potential of this take in my eyes.

Now I get that it wasn't to everyone's taste, but I cannot fathom how anyone could ever claim that Pre-Flashpoint Superman was better. If you liked Byrne's reboot better, your guy already got rebooted after Infinite Crisis. For someone like me who really enjoyed the Johns/Busiek era, that era's potential got spoiled after Johns & Busiek left, with New Krypton imploding and the awful Grounded taking it's place. When you get to the point where the best Superman book is the one starring Lex Luthor, it's time to reassess the franchise and figure out where the hell it went wrong.

Which is exactly what Morrison did. For this new Superman, Morrison mined all the best ideas of every Superman era to really give what I consider the ideal "base" for Superman. They also took pains to address common criticisms about Superman, working to correct his pop culture image. People have been complaining that Superman is "too perfect", "too unrelatable" for a long time, so Morrison addressed that. They gave Superman his balls back, and let him reacquire that Golden Age edge he had originally.

There are a lot of complaints you can make about Morrison's Superman, but I don't see how you could accuse this guy of being "flawless" or "bland". He definitely had a personality that you could describe, love him or hate him. Compassionate, but not a pushover. Clearly holding himself back, but unafraid to occasionally let loose. Flaws that were patently obvious, Clark had a temper here that could get him into trouble. There was a real showcase of anger here, of Superman being furious at the way people were treated by the rich and powerful, then doing something about it that I ate up.

I read this run just as I was coming into my teens and it hit perfectly for where I was in life. Did not want a Superman who would smile and tell me it gets better, I wanted a Superman who looked you in the eye and told you he felt that same anger, and then encouraged you to go out and do something about how you felt. That was what this run delivered in spades, and it expanded what I believed could be done with Superman.

While it totally blew my mind to see Superman acting this way the first time I read Morrison's Action Comics run, in retrospect it really isn't that different from how Superman has acted even under Byrne. One of the few traits I've seen carry across Superman incarnations in the comics is that he has a temper underneath that affable nature. "Don't tug on Superman's cape" as the old song goes. This run simply elevated that to the forefront of the character again, for the better in my eyes given I believe "Wrath" is Superman's Deadly Sin.

In fact, one of the strongest features of this run is that Superman gets actual character development over the course of the run, analogous to what Batman underwent in Morrison's Bat-Epic. While the Bat-Epic was merely Morrison re-canonizing Batman's entire history, and applying a retroactive character development storyline that culminated in Morrison's current Batman work, their Action Comics run had them attempt to craft something similar for Superman from scratch. What that meant was Morrison attempting to draw on the most important traits of every Superman era and incorporate those into this new take. So Superman had the Golden Age temper, compassion for the oppressed, and cockiness. The Silver Age supergenuis, proud scion of Krypton who cherished his Kryptonian nature, member of the Legion of Superheroes, and participant in stories that weren't afraid to get weird. Superman's wrestling with his place in the world, the importance of Clark Kent, and making journalism a key part of the character strike me as all being hallmarks of the Bronze Age. From Post-Crisis we got that Clark views himself as human and loves his adopted parents, considering them as equal to his birth ones.

One of the big frustrations for me with the endless origin stories for Superman, is that so many of them follow a predictable and stale formula where Clark puts on the suit and is essentially ready to go. Doesn't interfere with human affairs, is modest and humble, restrained in usage of his powers, it's like Clark has meta knowledge of what he "should" be, despite that he shouldn't have any foreknowledge of what a "superhero" should look like. He operates the same way at the start as he does in the modern day, and that's really boring to me. This Superman, because of the difference in powers and attitude, operated extremely different from his "present day" incarnation. Dangling Glenmorgan over the edge of a building isn't something a fully powered and mature Superman should do, but it works great to make his early days different and exciting to read about, it makes returning to that era something you can do different storytelling with. This run is the only time where I really cared that Superman is "supposed" to be the first superhero, because figuring out what that means here is a big part of how he develops.

We all know the common complaint that Superman is "too powerful" and that "nothing can hurt him" (funny how Thor never gets hit with those accusations), so Morrison made sure to show that this take on Superman could be beaten even if he could never be defeated. Events conspired to force Clark to use his brains as well as his powers to overcome the challenges in front of him.

Examples include him using his heat vision to fry Lex's equipment and escape the military, using his rocket ship to defeat Brainiac, and rallying the population of Metropolis to banish Vyndktvx. Not to say that Clark never used his brains before to win, but this run was very upfront and in your face about how important Clark's intellect is to triumphing over his foes. Can't take seriously the complaint that Superman is too overpowered when Morrison constantly showcased how even a very powerful Superman could get his shit wrecked by his Rogues.

Another example of Morrison addressing criticisms is Kryptonite. A lot of people poke fun at how convenient it is that pieces of Superman's homeworld follow him all the way to Earth. Isn't that a bit of an asspull? So Morrison made Kryptonite the power source of Superman's rocket, giving it a perfectly natural and believable reason both for it to end up on Earth, and for Lex & the military to get a hold of it since Pa Kent gave the military the rocket. That's still my preferred explanation for how Kryptonite ended up on Earth.

It also provides a better explanation for all the different Kryptonite variants. DC can handwave away the different types as a result of Lex experimenting or the different "forces" on Earth such as magic or the Speed Force or whatever creating the different variants. That to me is much more believable than Kryptonite travelling all across the galaxy yet still ending up on Earth somehow.

There have also been a lot of complaints about Superman's villains, and Morrison diligently set about reworking them. By far one of my favorite aspects of the run, was the villain revamps. Nimrod felt like a clean revamp of Terra-Man, making him into Superman's Kraven the Hunter struck me as a patently obvious route to go, wild no one has followed up on that or used him since. Metallo felt like a good synthesis of Johns take of him as an Anti-Superman weapon, and the sympathetic aspects of Corben's origin that are always there, I liked that Morrison didn't make him a total bastard before his transformation like Johns did. Brainiac got some sympathy added to him in that the collected worlds that were already marked for damnation, thus he was "saving" them in a fashion. Clay Ramses embodied toxicity as a wife-beater even before becoming Kryptonite Man, and I thought his backstory was a great way for Clark to still deal with "real" issues via a manner he could punch. Ramses is still the best take on Kryptonite Man. Vyndktvx felt like the greatest realization of the threat Mr. Mxyzptlk could pose should he decide to get serious since Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, plus I'm a sucker for stories where superheroes fight the Devil. Drekken and Superdoom took the only interesting aspects of Doomsday (his ability to evolve and that he can kill Superman respectively), and were much more interesting characters.

And oh my God, speaking of Superdoom, that part of Morrison's Action run has aged like fine wine. I don't know if they caught wind of DC's plans for the character, or if they were just prescient, but everything that Superdoom is playing on is still sadly all too present. What Superdoom is as a character is a condemnation of what DC keeps doing with Superman: killing him off or making him evil.

When you realize what Superdoom (demand for a more violent and "realistic" Superman) and Vyn (WB/DC) stand in for, it makes the frustration Morrison is channeling much more palpable. Those two plotlines are all DC can think of to do with the character, returning to those again and again. Endlessly attempting to recapture the high of Batman and Doomsday beating the shit out of Supes in The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman. Overcoming these two obstacles is Superman's greatest challenge as conceived by Morrison, because both are out to corrupt and ruin the very idea of him. It's not just a physical death he faces, but a metaphysical one as well. Sadly it's a threat Superman just can't seem to lick in the real world, with more and more takes on "Evil Superman" coming.

Lois and Jimmy are great here, because Morrison actually made the investigative journalism aspect of Superman important. Lois is an active participant in the story, trying to break in to the base where Clark is being held by her father, competing with Clark for stories (I love how Morrison writes the banter between the two of them), and generally being classic Lois. Jimmy though benefitted from being positioned as a peer rather than as a kid in comparison to the two, something I wish the comics had carried forward. It looks like My Adventures With Superman is going with that interpretation at least, so I hope others do as well. Jimmy being Clark's roommate really adds to their bond, and I wish we had gotten more stories with that status quo.

Investigative reporter Clark Kent was so actively used here that it feels jarring reading other Superman runs where they tend to downplay and ignore it. Following Clark as he travels to different areas of Metropolis and actually interacts with people, instead of hovering above them as Superman, makes him feel human. Watching Clark actively pursue stories aimed at bettering peoples livelihoods, and seeing how those stories crossed with the superheroics, was one of my favorite aspects of the run. It's one unfortunately few other writers seem all that interested in, especially the New 52 writers who followed Morrison (I know editorial probably bears a lot of blame for that though).

Besides all that, this run was a lot of fun! The Legion of Superheroes showed up, their connection to Clark restored, and they got to play a big role in Clark's adventures! Krypto the Superdog! Martian colonies! Memorizing all of medicine, Superman performs a lifesaving operation! Lex using a "bullet train" to knock Clark out! 5-D imps! Rampaging robots from beyond! A Phantom Zone Halloween story! John Henry Irons suits up as Steel and kicks ass alongside Clark! Every Superman Rogue teams up to try to kill him, but Lex Luthor saves his life because that's a privilege he reserves for himself! Showcasing their trademark love for the Supermythos, Morrison took us on a tour of Superlore that demonstrated the depth and width of what could be done with Superman. Meanwhile the backups by Sholly Fisch excelled at giving us smaller, more human stories about Superman (the one where Clark meets Pa again via time travel "after" Pa has died always gives me a lump in my throat to read).

Ultimately this didn't get to be the foundation for the next generation of Superman stories as it deserved. Johns made New 52 Superman the scapegoat in Doomsday Clock for a lot of storytelling choices he did over in Justice League, something that pisses me off to no end. You want to tell me that this guy "didn't relate" to people, didn't inspire "hope"?

Like hell he didn't. This guy was Superman in every way that mattered and he deserved better than to be framed as the scapegoat for all the stupid decisions DC made about what to do with him. Greg Pak was able to do some great work with this version after Morrison, and just like how Gene Yang got a redemption work starring Superman, I hope to one day see Pak return to the character. Would love to read a Black Label Superman story by Pak that follows his take on young Superman.

All wasn't lost however. Against all odds, and Rebirth trying it's damndest to sweep everything under the rug, it looks like parts of this era have actually survived to the current Infinite Frontier era. With Morrison being heavily involved no less, both as an ideas guy and as an actual writer.

Superman & the Authority is explicitly Superman coming full circle back to the attitude displayed by his young counterpart under Morrison. Janin has outright said that the costume Clark wears here is reminiscent of the t-shirt and jeans era of Superman, and this book so far feels saturated with an energy level from Morrison I haven't seen in their work for hire since they left Action. Reaching old age and realizing he never really delivered on the high ideals of his beginnings, it's Superman putting together a team to hopefully succeed where he couldn't alone. Scathing in how it criticizes the superhero status quo, this has been extremely entertaining to read. Wish Morrison was writing 12 issues with this team, and that ultimately it will be up to PKJ to deliver on the potential is a drawback (although I've loved PKJ's Action run so far), but I'm glad to see DC finally treating Morrison and their ideas with more respect than was shown during Rebirth.

Jon meanwhile feels like an even more explicit attempt at redoing New 52 Superman. There's the updated new suit, designed to appeal to a new generation with it's streamlined look. Positioning Jon as a Superman who wants to tackle the "real" issues, with Taylor explicitly comparing him to Golden Age Superman which as I mentioned was an era Morrison tried to reincorporate into their reboot. There's the Legion of Superheroes connection which played an important role in Morrison's reboot. The rumors about Jon's sexuality are interesting, hinting that DC is willing to go outside the box with him in a way they never would with Clark. I'm excited to see what kind of Superman Jon ends up becoming, if he can deliver on the promise of the New 52 Superman all the better.

This run deserves to be remembered and to have the lessons it tried to teach respected. Probably my favorite mainline run on Superman, I hope more people come around to liking it as time goes on.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Why I (Want to) Love Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure

Salutations random people on the internet who most likely won’t read this. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

When I heard Disney was making an animated series based on Tangled, acting as a continuation from the original movie, my initial thought was, "Why?"

Sure, Disney is infamous for its unnecessary sequels of the story after happily ever after, with the many, many, many failures that follow suit. Even then, though, most of these continuations were movies that kind of have the potential to tell more of a story. But what more could be said about Tangled? Sorry to spoil a movie that's over ten years old at this point, but by the end of it: Rapunzel lost her golden hair, was reunited with her parents, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. Her losing the golden hair is the most essential part of that list because how can you do a series based on a Disney princess when her most iconic feature is gone? Then I found out that the series forced a way for her hair to come back, and my new initial thought became, "Oh man. This is gonna suck, isn't it?"

Despite the hesitation, I decided to give it a chance anyway. After all, I've been pleasantly surprised before. Things like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and even The Owl House (yes, really), were shows (and a movie) that I didn't think would be that special. Only to find myself enjoying nearly every minute. So after watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, I can certainly say I was surprised...but it was entirely for the wrong reasons.

And to explain how requires spoilers. So if you haven't checked the series out yet, I highly suggest you do it to form your own opinion. Just keep in mind that it's a bit of a mess, but it can be an enjoyable mess...sometimes...let me explain.

WHAT I LIKED

The Animation/Art Style: The series swapping from 3D to 2D might have been the most brilliant decision anyone could have ever made with this series. Usually, when an animated movie gets turned into a show, the most noticeable downgrade is always the animation. Whether it’s not as detailed or not as fluid, it's always subjective that the movie is better animated than the series. But by switching up the styles, the contrast becomes objective instead. 2D and 3D animation each have their pros and cons, so deciding which one is better is nothing more than a matter of opinion. So by changing the style, Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure avoids getting complaints of being a downgrade from the original movie. It also helps that the art style of the series is really unique.

The best way to describe how the show looks is that it's like a coloring book brought to life. At times, everything looks like it was drawn and colored in with crayons, which sounds like an insult, but in actuality, it's one of the best features of the series. As much as I love most animated shows nowadays, I will admit, they all look a little too similar at times. Then here comes Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, which tries to incorporate a whole new style that successfully sets it apart from most shows.

As for the animation itself, it's really well-made! It's remarkably expressive when required, while the movements are really fluid during the correct scenes. Sure the fighting can be a little floaty during some action set pieces (yes, those exist here), but the dialogue and comedic moments are really where the series shines with its animation. I may have problems with the series as a whole, but I give credit where credit is due for the perfectly executed effort that I see in every episode in terms of animation.

Rapunzel and Eugene’s relationship: This was not something I was expecting to enjoy from the series. In the movie, Rapunzel and Eugene were fine. They were the typical Disney couple that worked off of each other enough that it was always entertaining, even if it was unbelievable that they fell deeply in love with each other after, like, two days. They weren't bad, but they weren't anything to go crazy over.

But the writers for the series said, "You know what, let's make these two adorable in nearly every scene they're in." And they are!

Even though I don't believe in their relationship in the movie, I fully believe it here. Both characters have a large amount of faith in one another on top of having endless love for their partner. Like how Eugene knew Rapunzel would be fine when taking out an airship or how Rapunzel couldn't bring herself to say a bad thing about Eugene when making Cassandra a sparring dummy of him. It's legitimately pleasant to watch, to the point where I put Rapunzel and Eugene in my top ten list of favorite fictional couples. They're that good to me, and it's one of the reasons why I don't jump on the bandwagon of shipping the two main female characters together. I'm all for LGBTQA+ representation, but give Cassandra her own girlfriend. Rapunzel's taken, and most of my enjoyment of this show comes from her and her man. So, you know, keep things as they are.

Cassandra (Seasons One and Two): Seeing how I've already mentioned her, let's talk about Cassandra, shall we? Because when making a series based on a movie that had only four prominent characters, with two of them being comedic animal sidekicks, you're going to need to introduce more members to the main cast to write more potential stories. And Cassandra, in Seasons One and Two (I'll get to Season Three), is a worthy addition. She acts as a strict straight man (I know the irony) who interacts well with Rapunzel and clashes perfectly with Eugene on occasion. She was passably entertaining in Season One and developed amazingly in Season Two. Her growing frustrations with Rapunzel's actions lead to a slow build-up that made her betrayal heartbreaking but somewhat understandable. And as for the results in that betrayal...yeah, I'll get into that later. For now, I'll just say that Cassandra was a pleasant addition to the main cast, especially when she was a part of the main trio, and she's yet another good surprise that the writers supplied for the series.

The Songs: The songs are...not going to be for everyone. Most of them are passable yet kind of generic, while others sound like they belong on Disney Junior (Looking at you, "Bigger Than That"). But when Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure makes a hit, MAN, it is a home run. Numbers like "Ready As I'll Ever Be" and "Nothing Left to Lose" are sung phenomenally, orchestrated well, and are songs I can listen to on repeat multiple times. And "Waiting in the Wings" is not only something I consider to be the best song in the series, but it's also something I'd place as high up on Disney's best due to how f**king incredible it is. "Waiting in the Wings" is a powerful ballad that manages to be both tragic yet inspiring on top of how well it sums up Cassandra as a character. The writers may not always be on top of their game when it comes to music, but songs like these prove that they know how to earn that Disney name.

And that’s all I have for the likes...Oh boy. That’s not a good thing is it?

WHAT I DISLIKED

It Peaked at Season One: It did. It really did.

Season One felt like the writers had a grip on what type of show they wanted: A slice-of-life series with Rapunzel dealing with the issues of her kingdom with a meager threat of these black rocks growing in the background. It was all cute and well-balanced for the most part, but that all disappears in Season Two. Because now it's sort of about this adventure, but because Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure set itself as a slice-of-life series, there need to be these small-scale stories that intertwine the grand narrative being told. The issue is that the story comes to a grinding halt one too many times as fans are forced to sit through these filler episodes that, while not all of them are bad, still feel like a distraction. And by Season Three, the series does feel more focused while having some slice-of-life episodes added to the ongoing story instead of distracting us from it. But the writing isn't as strong, there are several plot holes in the narrative (how did Rapunzel's sunstone get into her dress?), and there is way too much time going back and forth on Cassandra's morality. They claim that she's a villain while arguing that there might still be some good in her, and they continue this train of thought for nine episodes when it really could have been settled in two. For me, it's a bad sign for a series when the first season is the best one. Because if it's all downhill from there, what's the point of even watching?

It Tries to be Epic: This might have been the worst decision the writers could have made.

Now, here's the thing: I don't mind grand epic tales of adventure and battles against demons. If anything, I'm all for them...when it's appropriate and fits with the tone of the series.

Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure suffers a similar problem Frozen II has, in which the writers felt like a big, life-threatening adventure was the perfect continuation of a meager, personal story about the relationships of characters. It isn't. If anything, it's completely missing the mark about what the original story was about. And sure, sometimes writers can succeed in telling personal stories through grand adventures. Just look at The Owl House and parts of Amphibia. But with those shows, it's established within the first few episodes that action and peril will be a series staple. With Tangled, while there was some action and peril, it's all very subdued compared to how high the stakes got raised in later episodes in the show. Especially in the series finale.

And, I mean, c'mon. You're making Rapunzel an action hero?

Judy Hopps? Yes.

Moana? Maybe.

Raya? Most definitely.

But Rapunzel? The character who’s all about optimism and seeing the best of others. That's the character you're going to morph into a hero that fights against an evil demon laid dormant for years? Did you even watch the original movie? Yeah, sorry, but I just don't buy it.

If you want to tell an epic story that gets the blood pumping for fans addicted to adventure, go for it! See where the wind takes you. But make sure to set that tone as early as possible while also making sure that it fits with the characters. If not, the end result is a series that feels like it's trying to be something it’s not.

Eugene is Kind of an Idiot at Times: It should be noted that Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene are practically two different characters. In the film, Eugene was more or less the straight man, as he often questions the wackiness in the world around him and keeping Rapunzel grounded in reality. For the series, most of that personality got transferred to Cassandra. Thus making Eugene's new role in the series act as the egotistical imbecile. Sure, he had those moments in the film, but not as frequently, and it really pains me when the writers really lean hard into a minor aspect of his personality. Sometimes there are moments when Eugene acts like his original self. But it's all small scenes that are spread apart with entire episodes where he has half a brain cell. I'm sure some people didn't mind this change to the character, but as someone who adores the movie version of Eugene, I can't help but feel disappointed.

The Villains are the Worst: Now, I don't mean the one-off villains that show up, cause some chaos for a bit, and disappear at the end of the episode. Those are characters with fun personalities, occasionally cool designs, and do their job as villains of the week. It doesn't matter if their motivations are laughably simple, as their purpose is to be enjoyable characters above anything else. So I actually enjoy those villains...it's the ones that act as season-long antagonists that really grind my gears.

The purpose behind these types of foes is to build up how evil they are throughout the season. The issue is that the writers try to give these characters, or at least two of them, a point. To be fair, this can work. Just look at Killmonger from Black Panther and sometimes Karli Morgenthau from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You understand and probably even sympathize with the logic and reasoning these characters have. It's just that their actions couldn't be farther from what you would do. The problem with Varian and Cassandra is that they have the motivation, but it's not written suitably for the story.

Cassandra is a whole can of worms I'll get to in a minute, but Varian is someone I can easily discuss for a brief time. Because while I can comprehend his pain for having his father frozen in yellow rock, I don't think turning evil is the best decision to go with that character. Because A. Everything is his fault. He blames Rapunzel for not helping him, but even if she didn't have a crisis to deal with, there was nothing she could have done to stop it. His frustrations are not only unjustified, but given the fact that this wouldn't have happened if he listened to his father in the first place, it feels like him becoming evil is too drastic of a turn. And B. Varian worked much better as a supporting character rather than a primary antagonist. He was just this hopeful, if not a clumsy scientist who wanted to prove himself, who causes minor catastrophes due to not thinking ahead. Turning a character like Varian into a villain is a bit of a misstep because if the guy acts hilariously incompetent as a good guy, it makes little sense to have him be intelligent and ten steps ahead of Rapunzel when being evil. If he were to become more serious and careful when helping the rest of the main cast, I'd consider that character progression done properly. But becoming a villain is just an overreaction.

However, none of that compares with my issues with the main antagonist of the series: Zhan Tiri. This goes back to my problems with the series making itself too epic. Because if Zhan Tiri existed in any other show, I probably wouldn't have any problem with her. She's built up well throughout all three seasons and is kind of threatening at times. But she doesn't belong in a series based on a movie that dealt with a small, personal issue where it wasn't even the character who killed the villain in the end. It was her love interest and animal sidekick. Even if Zhan Tiri works well as a character, the fact that it doesn't feel like she belongs in the show makes her too distracting to enjoy. And that's why these villains suck. If not poorly written, they don't belong in a series that should focus on small-scale issues. And if you can functionally write an antagonist that appears for only one episode but flounder with ones that show up in several, well, that's just embarrassing.

Cassandra (Season 3): OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH BOY, do I have some words to express with this character. Like with Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene, Cassandra from Seasons One and Two is frustratingly different from the psychotic IDIOT from Season Three. Basically, just take the issues I have with Varian, multiply them by ten, add them with some bafflingly stupid decisions, and you still wouldn't get how much Season Three-Cassandra frustrates me!

First off, her motivation...what the f**k were the writers thinking? The big reason why Cassandra betrays Rapunzel and motivates all of her misdeeds was that Cassandra's mother was Mother Gothal...EXPLAIN THAT LOGIC TO ME?! Because Cassandra should know what type of woman Mother Gothal was. She should know what Mother Gothal did to Rapunzel in the first eighteen years of her life. So how is Cassandra being abandoned by Gothal the central motivator to cut ties with Rapunzel, who is probably an even bigger victim in this scenario!? Seriously, Rapunzel was cut off from the rest of the world and treated as an unknowing prisoner because she was beneficial to Gothal. Cassandra was adopted into a household with mutual love and got to actually live her life. In no way does it make sense for her to be angry at Rapunzel.

Nor does it make sense that the writers try to play it off as a good thing in the song "Crossing the Line!" Sure, it sounds nice, but thematically, it gives across the opposite feelings that the audience should have. Because if Cassandra cutting ties with Rapunzel is meant to be tragic and awful, why is the music suggesting it's the best possible thing that's ever happened for the character? If you like the song, fine, but even you have to admit that it's thematic nonsense.

But, sure. Cassandra's evil now, and she considers it a good thing. Whatever. I'll take it as long as it leads to good stories...but here's the thing: In the penultimate episode before the three-part series finale, Cassandra asks a question. A question I would have never expected her to ask, despite everything that has happened in the last season. A question that was so baffling, I had to legitimately pause the episode to process the fact that she asked something so stupid. Because Cassandra, the character who is intelligent and grounded in reality, asked, "Am I the bad guy?"

I was honestly shocked to find out she was shocked! How, in the flying, everlasting, cock-a-doodle-doodling F**K does a person like her not pick up that maybe, just maybe, she isn't the hero in this story!? Call me crazy, but endangering the lives of people you once called friends and family, dressing in black, AND HAVING A GIANT EVIL-LOOKING TOWER MADE OUT OF F**KING SPIKES aren't qualities I would give to a hero!

If Cassandra was like Thanos, a character so wrapped up in his ego that he can't even notice how evil he is, I would understand. But she doesn't have an ego. Anger, yes. But for the most part, her personality is based on having logic and reasoning. So turning her into a villain and having her unaware that she's a villain is an act of lunacy that I am incapable of understanding. I don't know who's idea this was, but whoever is to blame...you've got issues.

>Sighs<...This series isn't good, is it?

IN CONCLUSION

I like the animation and some of the characters...but that's not enough. Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure is a mess of a show that tries to do too much for a story that should have so little. Meaning that it's a D+ for me. I want to enjoy it and give it a higher grade, especially with how much I hear people praise this series. And if you do enjoy it, all the power to you. Your opinions are valid, even if I highly disagree with them. Because for me, this is a show that I won't get myself tangled up in again in the future.

[liliaeth]

Fix it’s for Teen Wolf

I can think of a few things that would have made Teen Wolf better.

1.  I wanted more focus on Scott’s emotional response to what happened to him.  I don’t mind that Scott isn’t the type who complains about getting hurt. The problem for me was that the show rarely dealt with the consequences of Scott’s pain, and thus to the casual viewer often made it look like he simply didn’t mind, that being hurt didn’t bother him at all. Or worse, that nothing all that bad had happened in the first place.

 Doing this undermined many of the hallucination scenes.  For example, in Season 2’s Party Guessed, we get hallucinations for Stiles, Jackson, and Allison which give us a view into psychology, letting us know their issues without spelling them out.  For Scott, we got Allison making out with kanima Jackson.   Compared to the others, it felt shallow and confusing.  The writers couldn’t even bother to give us dialog.  He received the same treatment in Season 5, when they read the book designed to trigger their memories about the Dread Doctors. Stiles gets yet another scene about his dead mother who has been crucial to his story since Season 1.  Lydia sees her grandmother and her connection to both Lydia’s powers and Eichen House, as well as foreshadowing her treatment at the hands of Valack.   Malia about her Mom and sister’s death at the hands of the Desert Wolf, which is her entire arc.  And Scott?  He gets a nightmare about a dog that was never mentioned before and would not be mentioned after.

 2. I wanted more focus on Scott’s trauma in general. In Season 1, Scott was repeatedly mentally and physically violated by Peter, terrorized and abused by Derek, and hunted by the Argents, and it was taken as a given.   Even the recaps at the beginning episodes in other seasons barely show any of that.  For example, Gerard attacking Scott in clear view at the hospital, stabbing him, and threatening his mother, never appeared in any of the recaps, even in episodes where it would have been important to remind the viewers about it.

While the show had no issue showing us over and over again how Stiles or Derek or Isaac or Allison or any white character really was hurt, they did not focus on the pain Scott was put through, and thus let the viewers conclude that those events didn’t matter.

The show literally had Scott try and kill himself, twice in less than two days, first in Frayed, by refusing to let himself heal, and then again in Motel California, yet neither of those suicide attempts are mentioned even once afterwards. And this while it would have been a good call back in s5b, when Scott is once again not letting himself heal after Theo killed him. and yet again, no mention whatsoever.

 3. I wanted more consequences for certain characters.   I liked that Scott and to a lesser extent Derek were confronted with the consequences of their actions. When they screwed up, they got called out on it. When they did something wrong, it wasn’t excused.  Then they made up for it.

In contrast, certain characters, especially Stiles, got to do whatever they wanted and it was either dismissed as funny or used to make them look sympathetic.  Stiles got to be mean and cruel, and the narrative still treated him as if he were the best friend ever.  He got to assault people, hurt them, and it was treated as if somehow he was the victim. 

For example, I would have liked Stiles a lot better, if when he tortured Scott with lacrosse balls, punishing him for who-knows-what, if someone else had called him out on it or if Scott had got to defend himself, instead of just taking it because Stiles was angry.  Scott allowing Stiles to hurt him to maintain their friendship was a pattern between them, just as much as Scott taking responsibility for things that aren’t his fault.  He keeps on doing it over the course of the show, but it would have been nice if the show at the very least had made it clear that that didn’t make Stiles behavior acceptable.

Just like I wish that Peter had actually faced consequences for his actions – and/or shown some kind of true remorse for his misdeeds--instead of the others just letting him hang around after all the horrible things he’d done or reduce it pettiness.

 4. I would have liked more time spent on Melissa and the McCall family in general, especially on Melissa’s initial reaction to Scott being a werewolf. In the show, they barely spent two minutes total on Melissa’s reaction to finding out her son has been turned into a werewolf.  By the end of s6b, she was barely even behaving like a mother anymore. Even to the point where we don’t even get a conversation between her and Chris about his attacks on her son before the two of them start dating.  Now don’t get me wrong, I liked Chris and Melissa in a relationship, but it was missed opportunity to humanize both her and Scott that they didn’t bother to show her finding out about that and her reaction to it.

Instead we got the whole horror reaction, of her being horrified at seeing her son’s other face, the reaction that any LGBT kid fears when they come out to their parent. Which could have been a great metaphor, especially if they had then made it clear that Scott was bisexual.

 5. I would have liked more focus on Boyd.   The production time spent on Isaac and Erica, while Boyd’s arc was treated as almost an afterthought. We barely even got any hint on his past, in the episode before they killed him off.    They started out with Boyd as the one who wanted to be like Scott, and then never explained it.  Why not focus more on that, and their relationship?

(similar complaints go about Mason, and how little we knew about Mason, outside of him being Liam’s friend. Like... what was his relationship like with his parents? What is Mason interested in, what does he want to do with his life... how did he deal with the after effects of the Beast...

 6. I would have liked more focus on Alan Deaton. The show had such huge potential with this character’s backstory, not just with the Hales but as an emissary in general.  There was this whole mythology about druids that they barely even delved into.

To not even start on how little we knew about his personal life? Why did he and his sister have different last names? What was their relationship like?

Does he have any romantic relationships? Friendships, relationships in general?

Or how about more time spent on his role as a father figure to Scott, we got so few crumbs of their relationship when we should have gotten so much more

 7. I would have liked more focus on Scott and Theo’s interaction in Season 6.   I get that in 6a, they had Scott primarily focused on getting Stiles back, but I’ll never understand why they then didn’t use 6b, to deal with the fact that Theo had tried to murder Scott and was trying to make it up to him and the pack for what he’d done to Scott and the others.

I don’t mind Theo interacting with Liam.  Those scenes were great, but they should have at least one scene with Scott and Theo dealing with the issues between them.  For Theo’s sake, as much as Scott’s.

 8. I would have liked a complete rework of Season 6A in its entirety.  If you’re going to focus a season on an actor who isn’t available, then you have to make it about his impact on the others. Show us what difference this character made, by showing us the effects of his absence, rather than just try and make it about a romantic ship. (I’ve written a post about this already in greater detail, so limiting it to that, but seriously, that season was such a huge wasted opportunity.)

 9.  Actual character growth for Stiles. For a character who had as much screentime as Stiles did, it’s shocking just how little character growth Stiles had over the course of the entire show. This contrasts in a really bad way, when you look at how much every single other character grew and changed over the course of the show.

Just look at the last four episodes of 5b, to give an example. After almost an entire season of watching Stiles at his worst, focusing on emotional scene after emotional scene with him, he suddenly got relegated to comic relief. Why? Because they didn’t want Stiles to grow, because unless he grew, there was no way for him to go but down. If Stiles had taken responsibility for his actions, then they’d have had to admit that he did wrong in the first place. And they couldn’t have that happen.

 10. And last but not least. More moments of the kids being kids. Even if it’s just proms and beach parties. Moments where we see the characters spend time together, when they aren’t trying to stop some bad guy. Where we can see them be friends, hang out with kids their own age. Even just to remind the audience just how young these children are. And where the viewers along with the characters can rest in between the horror, because doing so makes the horror hit far more strongly in contrast to the light.

 11. Also, a better lighting budget, pretty please Davies, were a few more light bulbs that much to ask for?

[hellyeahheroes]

Harvey Richards and Lateef Ade "L.A." Williams have a lot in common. They both grew up reading comics with aspirations to work in the industry one day. They both ultimately nabbed roles on the editorial staff of DC Comics in the 1990s.

And they are both Black men who say they never achieved their full potential at DC Comics because of their race.

There are differences in their stories — notably, the time periods. Williams exited his role as an assistant editor in 2000 after six years without a promotion, while Richards spent 22 years at the comics giant with just one promotion before he was fired in December 2019.

But the similarities that cut across those two decades are striking and speak to how little has changed for Black editorial staffers at DC Comics and in the comics industry at large.

Richards was the only Black staffer in the main DC editorial department at the time of his exit in 2019, which included about 15 people, he said. He added that DC had since hired a Black assistant editor. DC declined to comment on personnel matters.

DC, which is home to Batman, Superman, and other iconic characters, is much larger than its comics editorial department, with around 200 employees on the publishing side. But the small team of editors shape the comics and characters that inspire lucrative movies, video games, TV shows, and merchandise.

"You need [Black] editors to help nurture talent to foster diverse characters," Richards said.

Besides being the only Black editorial staffer at the time of his exit, Richards felt stymied in his own career, he said. In his 22 years at the company, he was only promoted once. He began as an assistant editor and 12 years later, in 2009, he was promoted to associate editor.

L.A. Williams can relate.

"My personality and work style is different than Harvey's, who is different from every other name I could rattle off," Williams said. "But no matter how different our work styles or personalities are, the reality is that every one of our stories ended up the same. When it keeps happening year after year, person after person, you have to ask yourself what all of these people have in common."

A Latinx former assistant editor, who exited in 1999 after five years without a promotion, shared similar concerns with Business Insider about a lack of a career path forward at DC and a sense that her work was undervalued.

The stories of these three former DC editors are also similar to that of Charles Beacham, a former Marvel editor who spoke with Business Insider in July. Beacham was one of two Black editorial staffers Marvel had employed in the last five years and quit in 2017 because he felt his voice wasn't heard.

For Richards, there were many instances during his time at DC when he felt he was treated unfairly. He recalled specific instances with Paul Levitz, the DC publisher at the time, like when Levitz told Richards he had "grammar problems," and when Levitz told him "some people think you deserve this" when Richards won an award. Richards was never promoted while Levitz was publisher and president.

Williams also described a confrontation with Levitz, in which Levitz told Williams that he would never be promoted as long as he was publisher.

In response to a request for comment, Levitz said: "I'm not going to comment on decades old incidents. I'm proud of the increasing diversity at DC in my time as an executive there, and while we didn't achieve an ideal balance, I think much changed for the better."

Since Richards' departure, DC has taken some steps to promote diversity and inclusion.

Two women — Marie Javins and Michele Wells — were named interim editors-in-chief after recent layoffs. DC recently hired former Activision Blizzard exec Daniel Cherry, who is Black, as its new senior vice president and general manager, overseeing marketing, sales, and more for the company.

DC is also reviving Milestone, a division of DC that focused on Black characters like Static Shock and was founded in 1993 by four Black men. It ceased operations in 1997 but will return in February.

But for Richards and Williams, it's essential to have Black voices on the editorial front to help inspire change and champion a diverse set of voices and characters.

For Williams, comics were his life. He had written his senior thesis in Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts on the history of Black characters in superhero comics.

So when he got a job at DC Comics in 1994, it was a dream come true. But he faced roadblocks that previewed Richards' own experiences in the coming years.

Williams, 51, recalled an instance in 2000 when some assistant editors were given a monthly comic to edit on their own by then-executive-editor Mike Carlin, who is now a DC Entertainment creative director. Williams said the assistant editors of color were set up to fail and given comics that were doomed from the start.

But Williams turned his assigned book, "Impulse," starring a Flash sidekick that had been hurting in sales, into a success.

Carlin wasn't happy. Williams said Carlin cursed him out for getting veteran comics creator Walt Simonson to draw two issues of the comic, and "wasting his time on Impulse when he should be drawing other characters like Superman."

Carlin did not return a request for comment. DC declined to provide a comment on his behalf.

That sense of not being valued even when he succeeded was a hallmark of Williams' time at DC, he said.

After a white associate editor was fired, Carlin offered Williams to take over that editor's books, which included one of DC's best-selling comics at the time, "Wonder Woman."

Williams remembered vividly what Carlin told him: "I've had my doubts about you, but you've delivered. Everything is always on time, it sells, and critics like it."

"I thanked him for my promotion," Williams said. "And he interrupted me and said it didn't come with a promotion. I feel so stupid now, but at the time I was so confused and asked why it wouldn't come with a promotion."

More than two decades later, Williams said the answer was obvious to him.

Williams' DC career ended just as Richards' was just getting started.

Richards, 48, moved from Akron, Ohio, to New York City in 1995 and began his comics career with an internship at the original Milestone, which then shut down in 1997. His Milestone connections eventually led him to DC, where he started in the mailroom and then became an assistant editor.

"I was living my dream at this point," Richards said.

In 2001, after four years as an assistant editor, Richards was offered the chance to work on the Superman titles. It wouldn't have been a promotion, but a chance to prove himself (the chain generally went like this: assistant editor, associate editor, editor, group editor, and executive editor).

But Richards was given what he said was the "unusual" task to write about what he "could bring to the Superman books." Paul Levitz, then the EVP and publisher of DC, told Richards he had "grammar problems" after he completed the assignment, Richards said.

"After that, Levitz made up his mind about me," Richards said. "I felt he already had because most people are promoted after four years. But after that, it was over, even if I got a good review or worked on good projects or got company awards for going above and beyond."

Richards won two such awards, called "Carrots," which were given by DC's parent company, Warner Bros. After he won the second time, Levitz handed it to him and said "some people think you deserve this," Richards said.

Richards was finally promoted to associate editor in 2009, 12 years after he was hired, when Diane Nelson took over as president of DC Entertainment.

Richards' time at DC came to an end in December.

He had been put on zero-tolerance probation in August of last year. The document Richards provided Business Insider outlined "poor time management skills and an inability to meet deadlines." Richards said he was being overworked.

The day after he returned to the office from Thanksgiving break last year, he was let go with a six-month severance and told he "no longer fit company standards."

He's still looking for work while honing his digital art skills. He said a potential employer asked him why he was only promoted once in all that time at DC.

"It wasn't because of my work performance," Richards said. "I feel like they blacklisted me."

19 years earlier, Williams had left DC with similar sentiments.

After a confrontation over Williams using the likeness of the Alabama governor in an issue of "Impulse," Williams said Levitz told him: "As long as I am publisher of DC Comics, you will never be promoted. You're welcome to stay here in the role of assistant editor for as long as you like."

Williams thought the timing of the dispute — shortly after he had filed a racial-discrimination complaint with human resources against Carlin — was suspect. He quit shortly after.

"I naively thought that as long as I do good work, the comics sell, and the critics like them, I'm going to do well," he said. "As a Black man in America, I knew I wouldn't be able to make as many mistakes as others. But I thought the solution was, work harder and do better."

Their experiences highlight why editors of color are so important, Richards said. They can help "realize a creator's vision" and promote more diversity in comics. He lamented that he never got that opportunity. And Black editors in senior positions could provide a source of support for ones in assistant or associate roles, he said.

"Ideas came down, they didn't go up," he said. "And I didn't have anyone above me advocating for me."

He hopes the recent shakeup at DC affords marginalized groups more opportunities and he sees more women in comics than ever before. Jessica Chen, who is Asian American, was promoted from associate editor to editor last year, for example. But Richards also noted there is still a lack of Black women in the industry.

"Change is going to come," he said. "It has to."

A harrowing look into DC’s history of racism which, among other things, made Lateef Williams, an editor who helped Impulse book avoid cancellation, to quit.

-Admin

[davidmann95]

now that it's over, thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole?

pretenderoftheeast said: So, thoughts on Bendis' Superman and Action Comics' tenure altogether and separately now that it's over?

Anonymous said: Best and Worst things about Bendis' Superman run

Anonymous said: Now that it is over, what are your thoughts on Bendis' runs on Superman and Action Comics as a whole?

Anonymous said: Retrospective thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole now that it's, I guess, done?

Anonymous said: Hey so since Bendis’ Superman stuff seems to be done, what did you think of the run as a whole?

I decided to hold off a bit on writing on this one, if only so that I could reread the Action Comics side of it since Superman stood out in my memory a lot more. But now I have, and as we’re heading into a bold new era of Superman (and it’s coming in fast - just since I made my Superman in 2021 predictions we’ve gotten Ed Pinsent finally reprinting his legendary bootleg Silver Age Superman, Steve Orlando announcing his Superman analogue book Project Patron, an official shonen Superman redesign for RWBY/Justice League, PKJ’s Super-debut turning out far better than I ever expected, Superman & Lois’s first proper trailer largely taking people pleasantly by surprise, and my learning that there’s a Sylvester Stallone Old Man Superman analogue movie titled Samaritan coming out this summer) we’re ready to take a look back with at least a touch of perspective. I’ll lead with complaints, so everybody who’s been waiting for me to say that Bendis on Superman was Bad, Actually, savor this because it’s as close as you’ll get.

The Bad

* I hate to say it, but rereading that side of the run there’s no two ways about it: the structure of Action Comics as a whole is a mess. It baffled me from day one that it was the more acclaimed of the two books for so long - I guess people are hardwired at this point to think of ‘street’ stuff as where Bendis is supposed to be - because it was immediately clear that Superman had a well-defined story he wanted to tell, while Action was the usual Bendis off-the-cuff improvisation. It’s barely even a story in the same way, and it’s certainly not the ‘Metropolis crime book’ people took it as: it’s 28 issues of Superman and his supporting cast stuffed a pinball machine with the Red Cloud pinging off of each other as we wait to see who falls in the hole at the bottom, and partway through Leviathan and the Legion of Doom and 90s Superboy are tossed into the mix to keep it going a little longer. On an issue-to-issue basis it’s frequently really good, but the core plot of the book is *maybe* six issues stretched out over two and a half years.

* I’ve gone into this some before, but structure-wise Unity Saga also has problems: Phantom Planet rules but either it needed to be cut or the back half needed to be a year all its own in order to accommodate the scale of what it’s attempting. It’s got an interstellar civil war leading into the formation of the United Planets, family drama, Rogol Zaar’s whole deal, and Jon’s coming of age, and I’d say only that last one is really properly served. Even Jon forming the United Planets, while contextually somewhat justified in terms of 1. The situation being so far gone he’s the only one who’d even think in those terms, 2. Things being bad enough that these assorted galactic powers would be willing to try it, and 3. Him having the S on his chest to sell it, isn’t at all built up to within the run itself.

* Rogol Zaar sucks. He’s made up of nothing but interesting ideas - he’s an ersatz warrior ‘superman’ of a bygone age of empires up against the new model, he’s the sins of Krypton as a conservative superpower come home to roost, he’s while not outright said to be definitely Superman’s tragic half-brother and the culmination of everything this run does with Jor-El - but none of them manifest on the page, he’s just a big punchy dude with a dumb design who screams about how you should take him seriously because he’s totally the one who blew up Krypton. Even a killer redesign by Ryan Sook for Legion of Superheroes can’t fix that. There are lots of bad villains with good ideas who are redeemed with time and further effort, but I can’t imagine Zaar getting that TLC to become a fraction of whatever Bendis envisioned him as.

* The second year of Action Comics, after establishing itself in its first as one of the most consistently gorgeous books on the stands, leads with Szymon Kudranski’s weak output and then concludes with John Romita Jr. turning in some career-worst work. The latter is particularly egregious because for that first year Bendis writes a really collected, gentle Superman so him getting pushed into being more aggressive should have an impact, but Romita draws such a craggy rough-looking Superman in the first place that it mutes any sort of shock value.

 * WE NEVER LEARN WHAT’S UP WITH LEONE’S CAR, WHAT THE HELL. You don’t just DROP THAT IN THERE and then NEVER FOLLOW UP.

The Good

* Superman got his real clothes back after 7 truly ridiculous years.

* Bendis fundamentally gets Clark’s voice in a way unlike almost any other writer - even all-around better writers of the character almost never approach how spot-on he is with having Superman speak and act exactly how Superman should.

* Supporting cast front and center! He writes a dynamite Lois, Perry, and Jimmy (even if many of Lois’s more out-there decisions in the run don’t end up retroactively justified the way you’d hope), Ma and Pa are more fun than they’ve been in decades in their brief appearances, he manages to turn having Jor-El in the mix into a positive, and the Daily Planet as a whole has an incredibly distinctive vibe to it like never before that I hope is taken as a baseline going forward.

* The non-Rogol Zaar baddies? All ruled. Invisible Mafia and Red Cloud are both brilliant ideas executed solidly if overextended. Zod as Kryptonian Vegeta, Mongul as a generational perpetual bastard engine primed to be incapable of self-reflection, and Ultraman as “what if Irredeemable but he’d never been a good guy and also he was a Jersey mobster” are the best versions of those characters by numberless light-eons. Lex is on-point in his sparse appearances. Xanadoth as a mystical cosmic monster older than time who still talks like a Bendis character is however unintentionally a hoot. The alt-universe Parasite is a more intimidating Doomsday than Doomsday ever was. And Synmar as an alien culture’s attempt at creating their own Superman and messing up the formula when they make him a soldier can and should be a legitimate major ongoing villain coming out of this run.

* Pretty much all the art other than what I mentioned already. Fabok does a good job bookending The Man of Steel and Ivan Reis does the work of his career anchoring Superman (special props to Reis as well for drawing the first ever non-Steve Rude interesting-looking take on Metropolis), and meanwhile you’ve got Jim Lee, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Doc Shaner, Steve Rude, Kevin Maguire, Adam Hughes, Patrick Gleason, Yanick Paquette, Ryan Sook, Brandon Peterson, and David Lafuente doing their own parts.

* Closely related to the art, all the little flourishes with the powers. Super-speed having a consistent visual with the background coloring changing, Clark internally putting numbers to the degrees of force behind his punches and what situations which numbers are appropriate for, ‘skidding to a halt’ mid-flight before crashing through a window, the shonen-ass major throwdowns as portrayed by Reis, how his super-hearing is handled as a prevalent element. Lots of clever bits that added flavor to what he does.

* While Unity Saga has problems, the whole of what Bendis does in Superman as a means of forward momentum for Clark and his world is excellent. The sort of three-act structure of: 

** Clark is led to question his place in things over the course of a few adventures

** Involvement in the larger cosmos and the impact it has had through and on his family makes him realize the answer to his questions is that he needs to step up in a bigger way because there’s no benevolent larger universe to welcome Earth with open arms, nor a cosmic precedent for everything turning out for the best without some help

** As a consequence of the lessons learned by this change in the status quo Clark is inspired to make his own personal change in revealing his identity (with Mythological basically being an epilogue showcasing a ‘standard’ standalone Superman adventure while simultaneously highlighting his new status quo and how it fits in as a summing-up of Bendis’s take)

…does a great job of shepherding through ideas that lend a lot of forward momentum to Superman of the kind he hasn’t seen in a long time. Not perfect, but far lesser stories with far lesser ambitions have made huge impacts, so I’d certainly hope at least some of this sticks around even if, say, regardless of any retcons to the main line there are always going to be stories with Clark as a disguise and Jon as a kid. Oh, speaking of whom,

* KISS MY ASS, EVERYTHING WITH JON KENT RULED

Ahem. Probably a less confrontational way of putting that.

Do I think there was more gas in the tank for Jon as a kid? Totally, making him likeable and viable was the one really good thing the Rebirth era accomplished for Superman and I expect we’ll continue seeing more of it in the future one way or another. But whether or not him being aged up was Bendis’s decision, or working with marching orders to set up the eventually-(kinda-)discarded 5G, the coming of age narrative here is fire. He keeps the essential Clark Kent kindness and bit of Lois Lane cheekiness that reminds you he’s still their kid, which is a combination Bendis is basically precision-crafted to write, but his trials by fire give him a background entirely unlike the by-the-numbers “and here’s how Superman’s great kid grew up to be a great superhero too” narrative you’d expect while still arriving at that endpoint. If superheroes live and die by metaphors then Jon in here is what it means to grow up written as large as possible: leaving home for the first time (and seeming to shoot up overnight!), getting into the muck of how the real world works, being beaten down by authority wearing faces you’ve been taught to trust, scrambling to get through with the whole world against you, and in the end getting through by learning to rely on your own strength while keeping your soul intact and your head held high, and even managing to speak some truth to power. It gives him a well-defined life story with room to go back to and explore the intricacies of each leg of for decades to come in a way Superman hasn’t had since the original Crisis - someone someday is going to write a The Life & Times Of The Son Of Superman miniseries and it’s going to be one of the greats - and negates any question that he’s earned his stature as the heir apparent.

* Coming out of this, Superman’s world is fascinating. He’s out but rather than giving up his day-to-day life he’s openly spending part of his life as CLARK KENT: SUPER-REPORTER and part of his job on the cape-and-tights side of things is now KAL-EL: SUPER-SPACE-DIPLOMAT, Lois Lane coruns a foundation helping people whose personal continuities have been fucked over by Crisis shenanigans, Jimmy Olsen owns the Daily Planet but is still doing Jimmy Olsen stuff because that’s how he gets his kicks, and Jon Kent is going to college in the future. I’m not anywhere near naïve enough to think that’s how things are going to be forever, or shortsighted enough to think there’s no value left in the traditional setups, but god I hope these developments stick around for a long, long time to come and potentially become the new ‘normal’ as far as the ongoing shared universe stuff goes, because it all feels like the right and promising next steps to take for the lives of these characters. However it got here, for all the pluses and minuses along the way even if I maintain the former very much outweighed the latter as a reading experience, Bendis has a lot to be proud of if that’s the legacy he leaves on these titles.

* The recap pages at the desks!

[olderthannetfic]

Hey, sorry to ask this, but a few days ago I saw a post/discussion about the history of original work on ao3 (i.e. how and when it was allowed). I thought it was in my likes, but it's not, and I thought you had reblogged it recently, but I didn't find it. I was wondering if you have seen this discussion around? Or where I can find more about it? This specific post talked abt how who defended original work on ao3 were not the BNFs, if that helps.

That was me running my mouth in the reblogs of something or other. It’s just the one comment.

But what’s that you say? Some tl;dr about a pet topic? Don’t mind if I do! ;) (To be honest, most of this debate happened years ago, and a lot of the long meta was by me back then too, so…)

Okay, so, the situation with Original Works is actually super interesting and a microcosm of early years OTW wank.

This is going to be even more tl;dr than my usual. To try to summarize very briefly:

There were two big cultural factions. One thought “original” was the opposite of “fan”. That one was in charge of OTW. It was hard to get voices from the other side into the debate because they already felt excluded from OTW.

This divide broke down more or less into Ye Olde Slash Fandom on the “it’s the opposite” side and anime fandom on the “WTF?” side. Americans on one side and a lot of non-US, non-English language fandom on the other.

I. Media Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Early OTW

I went to that first fundraising party that astolat threw in New York City back in… god… 2007? 2008? I wasn’t on the Board or any official position until the committees got started later, but I was around right from the very beginning.

Whether you’re looking at volunteers or at people who commented on astolat’s original post, there were always a variety of fans from a variety of fannish backgrounds. People aren’t absolutely in one camp or another, and fannish interests change over time. If you go dig through Dreamwidth posts to find who was actually participating in this debate at the time, half of them are probably in the other camp now.

If you think like that sounds like a preamble to me making a bunch of offensively sweeping generalizations and divvying fans up into little groups, you’d be right! Haha.

I.a. Ye Olde Media Fandom

There are a lot of camps of people who like fanfic. One of the biggest divisions has been Ye Olde Media Fandom vs. anime fandom. Astolat’s social circle–my LJ social circle–was filled with people with decades of fannish experience and a deep knowledge of the Media Fandom side of things.

Those fandom history treatises that start with K/S zines in Star Trek fandom in the 70s and move on through the mainstream buddy cops like Starsky & Hutch to the more niche, sff buddy cops like Fraser and Ray or Jim and Blair are talking about Media Fandom. I try to always capitalize it because the name is lulzy and bizarre to me unless it’s a proper noun for a specific historical thing. It was coined as a rude term for “mass media” fandom aka dumb people who like, ughhhh, Star Trek, ughhh, instead of books. This is a very ancient slapfight from the type of fandom you find at Worldcon, often called “SF fandom” or plain “fandom”.

(Yes, this leads to mega confusion on the part of some old dudes when they find Fanlore and fail to understand that “fandom” there refers to what these people would call “Media Fandom”. They think only they get the unmarked form. But I digress…)

Media Fandom is a specific flavor of fandom. It’s where the slash zines were. It’s where the fans of live action US TV shows were. It’s the history that acafans have laid out well and that tends to get used to defend the idea of a female subculture writing transgressive and transformative fanfic. On the video side, Media Fandom is where Kandy Fong invented vidding by making Star Trek slideshows.

(Kandy’s still around, BTW. She’s usually at Escapade in L.A. Ask her to tell you about the dancing penises sketch in person. She’s hilarious.)

Astolat and friends had been going to slash cons for years. They founded Vividcon. And Yuletide. That meant that when astolat said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” we all jumped to help. This is a lady who gets things done.

From a Worldcon perspective, or even from an older Media Fandom perspective, this group was comparatively young, hip, and welcoming. Their fandom interests were comparatively broad. Just look at Yuletide!

In fact, yes, let us look at Yuletide… [ominous music]

I.b. Yuletide sucks at anime

From the very first year (2003), Yuletide mods have asked for help with anime fandoms, been confused about anime fandoms, or made bad judgment calls about anime fandoms. They’ve fucked up on Superhero comics and plenty of other things over the years, but anime has been the most consistent (well, and JRPGs, but there’s so much overlap in those fic fandoms).

There was already bad feeling about this. There were years of bad feeling about this.

I.c. Where are the historians?

Academic study of fanficcy things pretty much got started with Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women. Other acafans who are well known to LJ and later Tumblr are people like Francesca Coppa who wrote a very nice summary of the history of Media Fandom. These are not the only academics who exist, these academics themselves have written about many other things, and by now, OTW’s own journal has covered a lot of other territory, but to this day I see complaints on Tumblr that “acafans” only care about K/S and oldschool slash fandom.

There were years of bad feeling about this as well.

I.d. What kind of fan was I?

Now, by the time OTW got started, I’d moseyed over to not only a lot of live action US TV but a lot of old-as-fuck US TV that is squarely in the Media Fandom camp. But once upon a time, I was a weeaboo hanging out with my weeaboo friends in college. I learned Japanese (sort of). I moved to Japan. Livin’ the weeaboo dream!

More importantly, I used to be a member of a lot of anime mailing lists back in the Yahoo Groups days. I didn’t realize what a cultural gap that would cause until the original works issue came up on AO3.

I.e. Anime Fandom, German-language Fandom, Original M/M

Once upon a time–namely in that Yahoo Groups era–there was an archive called Boys in Chains. It was where you found The Good Stuff™. Heavy kink and power exchange galore! It was extremely well known in the parts of fandom I was in, even if you weren’t on the associated mailing list. It contained lots of fic, but it also had lots of original work.

Around that same era, I was on a critique list called Crimson Ink, which was mixed fic and original. The “original slash” and “original yaoi” crowds mixed freely and were in fanfic spaces. Remember, this is like 2003. You’re never going to get your gay fantasy novel published in English in the US. A couple of fangirl presses started around then, but they died an ignominious death after their first print run.

Fanfiction.net used to allow original work before it spun that off into FictionPress. We forget this today, but if you were an early FFN person, the separation wasn’t so great either.

Meanwhile, German-language fandom was hanging out on sites like Animexx.de, a big-ass fic archive that prominently mentions also including original work. I have the impression that Spanish-language fandom was similar too.

Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded in 2005. It was a webzine for original m/m, but it was entirely populated by fanfic fandom types.

In all of those kinds of spaces, there was a lot of “original” work that was kind of slash or BL-ish and seen as fannish if it was posted in the fannish space. These weren’t anime-only spaces. They were multifandom spaces where it was seen as obvious and normal that a couple of huge fandoms like Harry Potter would dominate but that everything else big would naturally be anime.

While fans from every background are everywhere, I found that the concentration of EFL fans living in Continental Europe, South America, and Asia was much higher in this kind of space, even the exclusively English language part of it, than in my US TV fandoms.

II. AO3 Early Adopters

AO3 went into closed beta in 2009. In 2010, it was open to the general public (albeit with the invitation queue it still has). But not everyone was interested yet. Just like fandom is loath to leave the dying, shambling mess of Tumblr, fandom was loath to leave dwindling LJ/DW circles or was happy enough on Fanfiction.net. I used to see a lot of posts like “Why are you guys trying to STEAL fanfic from the original! FFN is enough!”

I literally could not give away the invitations I had. No one wanted them.

So who was on AO3? Obviously enough, it was all of us who built it and our friends. So that means a bunch of oldschool Livejournal slashers coming from fandoms like Due South or Stargate Atlantis.

The queue was open. Anyone could make an account. Everyone was welcome. In theory…

But more and more, there started to be these posts about how “AO3 Hates Anime Fandom” and “FFN is for anime. AO3 is for Western fandoms.” and “If you guys actually wanted anime fandom on there, you’d invite us better and make us more welcome.”

At the time, I found these posts obnoxious. People aren’t purely in one sort of fandom or the other. No one was stopping anime fandom from making accounts. No one was banning anime fandom. If there wasn’t much from old fandoms, that was because old fandoms seldom move.

Things began to change. Trolls on FFN forced the Twilight porn writers out, creating enough fuss and brouhaha to mobilize people who would rather have stayed put. AO3 got big enough that randos found it by accident. Original work started to pop up, posted by people who’d never looked at the rules and had no idea it was not allowed.

III. History of AO3’s Policy

I had argued for allowing “original work” during the initial discussions about the ToS. On one side of this issue was me. On the other, everyone else on the committee.

I was overruled.

Open Door started importing old archives to save them. Boys in Chains was hugely important to fandom history from my point of view. It was slated to be imported… maybe. Except that Boys in Chains is half original. AO3 was happy to grandfather in those stories, but the final archive owner felt, quite rightly, that it would be unfair to tell half of the authors they were welcome in the new space while spitting on the other half.

I was pissed. I had been pissed since being overruled the first time. To me, the fact that it should be allowed was so blatantly obvious that it was hard to even explain why.

(To be honest, this difficulty in explaining why and the even greater difficulty in figuring out the source of that difficulty is what held the discussion back for so long. When every assumption on either side is completely opposite, it’s hard to communicate.)

I felt betrayed. It would be like if you helped build something, and everyone was suddenly like “Well, obviously, we can’t allow m/m. It’s not normal fanfic.”

So we discussed it again and, again, it was me vs. literally everyone else. And still the “AO3 is only for Western slash fandom” bitching rose in volume and more and more people complained of feeling excluded from the new fandom hub. Finally, the committee agreed to open the issue up for public comment and get some more input. I was a fool and neither wrote nor proofread the post. It went out phrasing the question as allowing “non fannish” work or something of that sort.

I was furious. The entire point of the whole debate was that I saw some original work, the original work that belongs on AO3, as inherently fannish. And now this had been presented to the AO3 audience as something completely different. Think pieces were popping up in the journals of everyone I knew about diluting AO3’s mission and how we needed to save AO3 from encroachment. Public opinion was very negative. That’s both because of how the post was phrased and because OTW die hards at the time were mostly from the same fannish background. This tidal wave of negativity meant that there was virtually no chance of changing this poisonous rule. And if the rule didn’t change, the people who wanted the rule change were never going to show up to explain why it mattered.

If you’ve been reading my tumblr, I think you can guess what happened next.

I posted a long post to my Dreamwidth. It was a masterwork of passive aggression. In it, I wrung my hands about how simply tragic it would be if AO3 had to delete all of the original work… like anthropomorfic.

Now, I think anthropomorfic counts as fanfic as much as anything else, but I also knew that it fails most rigorous “based on a canon” type definitions of fic and, more importantly, it’s a favorite Yuletide fandom of many of the people on the side that wanted to ban original work.

That’s a nice fandom of yours. It would be a pity if something happened to it. 

Yup. Passive aggressive blackmail. Go me. Suddenly, there was a lot of awkward backtracking and confused running in circles in various journals. The committee agreed to table the idea for a while but not rule out the idea of allowing original works in the future. We agreed to halt all deletions of original work. If a fan posted it, the Abuse Committee (which I was also head of at the time) would not delete that work even though it was technically against the rules.

Time passed. The people on the negative side got tired. I wanted off that committee and had wanted off for ages, but I was damned if I was going to leave before ramming through this piece of policy. Grudgematch till I die! (Look, I never said I wasn’t a wanker.)

After a while, some other fans came forward with more types of “original work” as evidence that it should be allowed. These were from parts of fandom none of us on the committee knew a damn thing about.

This new evidence combined with the gradual accretion of original stuff on AO3 without the sky falling eventually led us to quietly rule Original Work a valid fandom. There was never even a big announcement post. I slipped a word to the Boys in Chains mod myself.

IV. What Were They So Afraid Of Anyway?

So why were people so resistant? Seems like a dick move, right?

Not exactly.

I mean, I was enraged and waged a one-woman war to change the rules, but the other side wasn’t nuts. The objections were usually the following:

I just don’t get why it would be allowed. It never was in my fannish spaces.

Most of our members don’t want this.

Most of the examples of things that ought to be included are m/m. We are privileging m/m if we allow it, and AO3 already has a m/m-centric reputation that can feel exclusionary to some fans.

AO3 is a young, shaky platform that can barely handle the load and content we already have. If we open to original work, we’ll be opening the floodgates. The volume of posting will be so high, it will drown out the fic we’re actually here to protect.

Protecting stuff that doesn’t need protection because it’s not an IP issue would dilute OTW’s mission.

If we allow it, idiots will try to turn AO3 into advertising space, posting only the first chapter and a link to where you can pay to read the rest.

If we add another category of text before we add fan art, that’s a slap in the face of the fan artists we are already failing.

These arguments all make perfect sense in context.

Obvously, the issue with the first two is that different fannish communities have different norms. I knew that a very large community disagreed with the then current AO3 policy, but since so few of them were around to comment, it seemed like a tiny fringe minority.

The m/m thing is… complex. M/M content with zero IP issues is at risk. It is always at risk in a way that even f/f is not (though f/f is also always at risk). Asking for m/m to be exactly equivalent to f/f or m/f in numbers, tropes, whatever is ignoring the historical realities. In our current moment of queer activism in the West, we treat all types of queerness as part of one community with one set of goals, but once you get to culture and art or even more specific activism, this forced homogenization is neither useful nor healthy.

OTOH, AO3 really did have PR problems related to the perception that we gave m/m fandom the kid glove treatment. That objection wasn’t coming from nowhere.

AO3 was shaky. It was tiny when I first brought up this argument. Hell, it wasn’t even in closed beta the first time we discussed this. Part of what made the quiet rules change possible was AO3 organically getting much bigger and OTW having to buy many more servers for unrelated reasons.

The “floodgates” thing was put to rest by tacitly allowing original work before the rules change. We had a period to study how fans actually behaved, and as I predicted, only a small amount of original work got posted. It was indeed mostly things like original BL-ish stories or original work that had been part of a mixed original/fic fest, exchange, zine, etc. Currently, the “Original Work” fandom on AO3 only has 76,348 works. That’s pretty big compared to individual fandoms but tiny compared to AO3’s current size.

The commercial argument was spurious because commercial spam had been against the rules from the very beginning. OH THE IRONY that nowadays AO3 has all these idiots trying to post the first chapter of their fanfic and then direct you to where you can buy the rest.

AO3 has plenty of fanfic of public domain works. One of the problems with gatekeeping original work is that any way you try to distinguish it (not based on a specific canon, not an IP issue, etc.) will apply to some set of obviously allowable fandoms.

As for fan art… OTW has failed fan artists. They needed protection as much as or even more than fic writers. Just look at Tumblr! If we had succeeded at making DeviantArt but allowing boners, fan art fandom could have been safe all these years. Or when Tumblr inevitably shat the bed, we could have scooped up all those people instead of them scattering to twitter and god knows where.

OTW has failed vidders too, at least in terms of preservation. I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Other major people from like the first Board and shit have discussed this with me offline. Doing some kind of vidding project, possibly outside of OTW is on a lot of our to-do lists. But at least one of OTW’s biggest victories has been that copyright exemption. OTW has demonstrably done really positive things for vidders that other organizations and sites have not. As a vidder, I never expected to see good hosting for the actual video files, and I’m quite content.

But fan artists… yeah. That argument makes sense at least from a place of frustration.

BTW, for the love of god, if you’re a n00b to OTW stuff, please do not reblog this post excitedly telling me that hosting fan art is on OTW’s road map, so yay, good news. Someone always does that, and it’s so irritating. I haven’t been involved in OTW in years, but I used to be, and I know what is on the roadmap. The couple of you who do heavy lifting on sysadmin and coding and policy things are welcome to weigh in as usual. I know none of us like that we can’t host fan art. It’s not what we intended.

Nonetheless, I found this argument to be the perfect being the enemy of the good. If we can save more text now without losing much of anything, we should do it. The fact that we’re fucking up on the fan art front is not a reason to spread the misery around.

V. Is “Original” the Opposite of “Fanfic”?

Okay, so that tl;dr above is why “BNFs” were on one side and “nobodies” were on the other. BNFs from one cultural background founded OTW. BNFs from the other cultural background weren’t even aware that the debate was going on.

But what was the underlying philosophical problem in even having the conversation?

It took me a long time, but I finally worked it out: We had two completely different ways of categorizing writing, and they were so baked into how we phrased questions that everything ended up being unanswerable to the other side. Here is what I came up with:

Schema 1

Fanfic - based on someone else’s IP

Original Work - the opposite

Schema 2

Non-Fannish Work - School essays, stories you are writing to try to sell to a mainstream publisher

Fannish Work Type 1 - based on other people’s characters directly (i.e. fanfic) Type 2 - based on tropes or whatever (“original slash” and the like)

Now, in the current moment when half of Tumblr just got into Chinese webnovels and the m/m ebook industry is thriving in English, original, tropey, BL-ish work is no longer different from “things I am trying to sell”. But this is how the divide was circa 2005 on fannish websites, and it’s the divide that was driving this internal OTW debate.

VI. Let’s Summarize the Camps One More Time

So, again, the debate makes perfect sense if you understand who was involved.

On the mainstream “But that’s not fanfic? I’m confused?” side:

Big US TV fandoms in English

Fandom historians of K/S–>buddy cop slash–>SGA, etc.

Americans

On the other side:

Anime fandom

“Original slash” fandom that had already been chased off of everywhere

People upset that AO3 wasn’t farther on translating the interface and supporting non-English language fandom.

People upset about US-centrism in fandom

Yes, I am very white, very American, and by now very into old buddy cop shows, but this was basically how the breakdown worked. It meant that something that looked like a minor quibble to one side was really, really not.

[notallthosewho-wanderarelost]

Real quick scattering of thoughts on Loki 1x02 and x03 before I watch the newest episode. I watched them pretty much at the same time so it’s a two-for-one post. Here be spoilers for episode 3! On mobile so no cut again, sorry.

Spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

Okay. In no particular order but attempting to start with ep 2 first:

Loki trying to get info on the Timekeepers and the TVA in ep 2 and being blocked by the most bored archive librarian ever was hilarious. The whole sequence of him trying to get her attention only for her to completely ignore him until he rang the bell was creepy but so funny.

Loki’s reaction to getting the details on Ragnarok made me so sad. :( Same, Loki. SAME. I’m also still gutted Asgard was destroyed and I refuse to even watch the movie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But him going to look at that in the first place made me wonder if maybe in the back of his mind Loki’s coming up with a plan to save Asgard? (Or at least, one version of Asgard in the multiverse.) I would love that. I want Asgard back in general and was hoping for Thor 4, but having Loki be the one to save Asgard would be SO fitting. He may be adopted but he’s still an Asgardian at heart, truly. Having Loki be the one to save Asgard would be a great way to show him finally acknowledging that and have all the Asgardians acknowledge it too.

We have an official population for MCU Asgard! 9719 people. That fits. It’s about twice the size of a pretty small suburban town. Asgard is SMALL. It just doesn’t have the space for a lot of people. It’s still a city, but Asgard the Realm has other things on it besides just the city, so it can’t have a huge population.

I wonder what the official population of New Asgard is when we see it in Endgame? And how many Asgardians come back post-Blip? This would really all depend on how many people made it through Hela’s rule and onto the ship during Ragnarok- and then half of them would’ve been killed by Thanos in the beginning of Infinity War. Would half of the remainder have been Snapped away at the end of IW, or would Thanos leave them out since he already halved their population? File under questions Marvel will probably never answer. Also file under “Thanos continues to be really bad at math.” (Should probably go look at the New Asgard sign again to check, but I don’t think it listed population.)

Loki annoying Mobius by messing with his salad was great. Loki annoying Mobius in general was great.

Loki letting the goats free in Pompeii made me think he might have a liking for goats, which means I now have a headcanon that Loki was friends with Thor’s goats as a kid and would sometimes let them loose to get their assistance with pranks. Thank you show, for cute kid Loki headcanons.

Tom Hiddleston probably had a BLAST yelling at people in Latin in character as Loki, and good for him!

Sylvie’s entrance sequence at the beginning of the episode with the fight scene vs the TVA set to “I Need a Hero” was amazing. I haven’t seen Shrek in a while but this might just reach the same levels of A+ “I Need A Hero” song usage as the Shrek sequence.

Speaking of the beginning of the episode, the Ren Faire setting was SO good. Great way to get laughs, and it made me want to go to a Ren Faire again.

The Roxxcart setting for the big encounter later in the episode made me flash back on all the times Roxxon’s appeared in the MCU. Two main thoughts: 1. I so want a Jane!Thor movie where the main villain is Dario Agger, evil Roxxon CEO and Minotaur. Preferably working with a better version of Malekith (from another universe probably) like in comics, because as much as I love Thor 2 my one complaint is that their version of Malekith was SO LAME. Especially compared to comics!Malekith. Plus an Agger + Malekith teamup would mean both the Nine Realms AND Earth are in danger, by definition. Thor 5 please, Marvel. 2. I really, really miss Cloak and Dagger and that show deserved so much better.

(Our) Loki’s perpetual insistence that he’s better and that the plot (pun intended) is about him is both funny and also a little sad- because he knows, or at least thinks, that if he stops insisting those things, everyone will stop paying any attention to him whatsoever. And he needs attention.

Poor Mobius probably felt so betrayed at the end of this episode. :(

Onward to episode 3!

This was by far my favorite episode so far. I LOVE Sylvie. I love her and Loki’s dynamic. I love that we get Loki talking to someone he considers an equal about some very personal things, and that Sylvie does the same thing with him. They understand each other in a way nobody else has. Because they’re the same person, sort of. I’ve taken to calling them “alternate reality twins” and that’s what I’ll keep calling them unless told otherwise.

They also annoy each other in a way nobody else can. And it’s hilarious. They look equally annoyed at the other not falling for their tricks and equally annoyed at needing the other’s help before they really start to bond and I LOVE ALL OF IT. I also feel like they adopt each other a lot quicker than either would be willing to admit, and then they’re annoyed at that! Loki yelling “you’re so weird!” at Sylvie made me go “OH they’re bickering like siblings!!!” and that was pretty early on! I’m an only child but that had peak sibling energy to me. Even them trying to trick and outdo each other had sibling energy most of the time.

Their earlier fight when they first get to Lamentis, before they realize where they are, had some VERY quality quips and also really had me wondering who would win in a fight between the two of them. Sylvie seems to have more physical strength, and she’s got a sword instead of daggers so longer reach, but Loki has skill and he has tricks. I think with his skill at magic (he can TELEPORT?! Probably only a few feet and probably limited by where he can see but that’s SO COOL!!! I don’t think we knew he could do that?!) Loki would likely run rings around Sylvie IF there were no people around for her to enchant. And assuming that she wasn’t able to set any traps beforehand, because Sylvie has proven well able to set traps to take down people who should be at a major advantage against her. Otherwise, I think Sylvie would win. She seems to have better physical training than our Loki, and if there were any people around for her to enchant he’d have to contend with them too. And if Sylvie could lay traps ahead of time, then it could go either way (you never can tell with a Loki, much less two) but I think Loki would probably lose. Loki is just as tricky as she is but that seems to be something she’s had a lot of practice in. Loki is more about confusing opponents with illusions and duplicates and talking his way around people. Sylvie sets traps instead, and is more comfortable/better at using brute physical force.

Speaking of enchanting, me while watching episode 2: “Hey, these mind controlling powers remind me of Enchantress’ powers!”

Sylvie in episode 3: calls her powers “enchanting”

Me: “OH.”

So Sylvie seems to be a composite of 3 characters. 1. Lady Loki, as in Loki when identifying as female. (There’s also that time from before they said Loki was genderfluid and a shapeshifter and back when Loki was still evil when he possessed Sif’s body and went by Lady Loki, but we don’t talk about that.) 2. Amora the Enchantress, a major Thor character/villain who uses magic to “enchant” people into doing what she wants-yes this is definitely a cringey “magically enchants people into loving her, consent-issues-out-the-wazoo” evil seductress stereotype in old comics, but it’s gotten better recently. And 3. Sylvie Lushton, the much lesser-known second Enchantress, who was a regular teenage human girl when after a Ragnarok (don’t remember which one, there have been multiple but this would’ve been early 2000s) Loki for shits and giggles decided to make her think she was Amora and give her the powers to match. She was on the Dark Reign-era (aka when Norman Osborn was in charge of SHIELD and the Avengers) version of the Young Avengers, the Young Masters of Evil, and that’s where I know her from. She’s a great character- she genuinely wants to do good and help people, but her brain is a bit messed up by the number Loki did on it, so she gets confused. I believe she’s currently in comic book limbo after Amora found out about her a while back, got pissed at her for stealing her name and her whole Thing, and tossed her somewhere dangerous on the World Tree while saying something about how if she can survive it then she’ll prove she deserves the name Enchantress. She sadly hasn’t been seen since as far as I know.

So each of those characters have similar characteristics with Loki’s Sylvie. Sylvie 1. Is a Loki who is female (Lady Loki), 2. Was presumably raised on Asgard and uses her magic to “enchant” people via a form of mind control into doing what she wants (Amora the Enchantress), 3. Is named Sylvie (Sylvie Lushton, Encanhtress II). Also worth noting that both Amora and Sylvie Lushton have blond hair, and so does the MCU’s Sylvie. All three characters also have green colored magic!

May turn the above bullets into their own post just for informational purposes. Also, when we said we wanted Enchantress in the MCU, this is not what we meant. Stop with the Monkey’s Paw-style wish granting, Marvel! (Looking at you, X-Men comics’ response to us wanting more Wanda.)

Anyway. Will round off with my favorite thing: everything on the train. Everything on the train was WONDERFUL.

Loki telling Sylvie about Frigga and how she taught him magic and then demonstrating the fireworks made me tear up. 🥺 Right in the feels. I miss Frigga a lot. I miss Asgard/the old Thor franchise in general a lot, but this is about Frigga. She was AMAZING and I miss her. Forever love the detail that Tom and Rene came up with the idea on the set of Thor 1 that Frigga is the one who taught Loki magic and fighting and how that informed their characters’ dynamic to the point of it being canonically discussed later. There’s a great Thor 2 deleted scene where Frigga talks to Thor about this exact thing. Frigga is such a fave of mine.

Sylvie telling Loki about her own past in turn made me very curious what her life was like and what the differences are. She seemed to have had a really hard time of it as a kid and I just want to hug her. (I also want to hug Loki, but that isn’t news.) Loki has had a very tough time, but really only after finding out he was adopted. He doesn’t appear to have had many friends on Asgard before (though I headcanon that he was friends with Lorelai before her exile, and since it’s my headcanon I imagine a similar situation with Amora, if not quite as close a friendship because comics Loki gets along better with Lorelai than her sister) but he at least had a family who loved him and who he loved, and a status as a prince that would’ve given him a good life and protection. Sylvie doesn’t seem to have had any of that as a kid. :(

“Surely there were some would-be princesses? Or perhaps a prince?” CANONICALLY BISEXUAL LOKI YES! YES.

Comics Loki is canonically both bisexual and genderfluid! Explicitly discussed on page, multiple times, and expounded on by writers too. (One of the most heartwarming Odin moments for me- yes, Odin does have heartwarming moments!- is when he’s telling his kids he loves them and he says something to the effect of “my son, my daughter, my child who is both.” The latter is Loki, the former are Thor and Angela. I might still be bitter over MCU Hela taking Angela’s place in the family sorry not sorry. This was in Original Sin: Thor and Loki, for anyone wondering.) I tend to default to he/him pronouns when talking about Loki because Loki tends to be male more in appearances, and also partly because it’s what I’m used to, but when Loki is clearly female I’ll of course switch to she/her. I have seen people use they/them pronouns for Loki too. I don’t think Marvel has ever said what pronouns Loki prefers though.

Speaking of which: I realize the “Sex: fluid” on Loki’s info card in episode 1 was probably foreshadowing Sylvie, but I kind of want to also read it as a nod to Loki being genderfluid. (Loki is also a shapeshifter, so gender would = sex in this case.) Whether it would be a nod to specifically comics Loki or also to MCU Loki is anyone’s guess as of now. We’ll find out I guess, or if it turns out to be strictly headcanon than it’s whatever floats your boat. :)

Back to the train scene!! Sylvie loudly protesting that she can’t sleep near people she doesn’t trust and then promptly falling asleep across from Loki a few minutes later made me emotional. ALTERNATE REALITY TWINS. Also VERY much a parallel to Loki falling asleep across from Mobius last episode.

Loki realizing that Asgard was really his home and his family really was his family only to also realize that he’ll never see either again and deciding to handle this by getting ABSOLUTELY DRUNK is SO ASGARDIAN OF HIM. I cannot. He even did the “Another!” *smashes glass* thing just to bring the point home.

Oh gosh, LOKI SINGING IN ASGARDIAN. FEEEEEEELS. I know, it’s actually Norwegian. I wonder a bit why they didn’t use Icelandic instead? Anyway, this was lovely and I love that going by the translation it’s a song of longing to go home, and it mentions Idunn’s apples of immortality. Apparently the full version of the song is going to be on the soundtrack and I’m so excited for that.

Loki’s metaphor of “love is a dagger” was actually quite good, he and Sylvie just lost the thread of it right at the end there. I wrote about this in tags somewhere, I’ll copy it in here later.

Edit: here’s an edited version of what I wrote on this post: This was a great metaphor until it got away from him. So close to the point (heh) and then they veered right away. Let me finish this for them: “Love is a dagger. It’s a weapon for far away and up close. You can see yourself in it. It’s beautiful. You have to give it to the right person.” So what this scene tells us about Loki is that he’s been hurt by love because it hasn’t been real. Or hasn’t felt real to him. Maybe he’s given it to the wrong people, or maybe he couldn’t tell who the right people were. (And if this is in reference to his family then I think he’s still too close to the revelation of his identity to be able to think clearly about the situation. Because his family DID love him! Even Odin. He just lost sight of that with everything happening.) Love is also about trust. And Loki doesn’t trust easily.

I really love this quote and this scene. Kinda want to do a “Love is a dagger” graphic of i ever have time.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Loki and Sylvie come back to this conversation and come to a more satisfying conclusion. I hope that happens actually.

Sylvie using her headpiece against an opponent in the train fight instantly made me think of Wonder Woman. A+. Also, I haven’t mentioned yet but I love the fact that Sylvie’s headpiece looks exactly like God(dess) of Stories Loki’s from Agent of Asgard. Loki’s Ragnarok headpiece definitely had big AoA Loki vibes, but Sylvie’s headpiece is much closer- mostly it’s smaller, which is very Agent of Asgard Loki in general, but the one horn being cut off is specifically a God(dess) of Stories Loki thing and I love that they pulled from that.

Loki throwing the dagger and missing because he’s drunk was hilarious. Not good for Sylvie, but hilarious to watch. Don’t fight while drunk, Loki. Also, he threw “love” at Sylvie and I laughed when I realized that.

I didn’t realize until I saw a parallel gifset of it why Loki carefully going up to Sylvie after her scream felt so familiar- it’s just like how he went up to Thor after Thor overturned the table in Thor 1. The CONTINUINTY!! Absolutely amazing.

While trying to save the Ark Loki was probably thinking a lot about what he saw in the TVA clips of his own people trying to escape Asgard during Ragnarok and that hits kind of hard.

Loki apparently using telekinesis to stop the column from falling on him and Sylvie threw me off a lot until I saw another gifset that included the moment in Thor 2 (trailers only, I think) when he finds out Frigga is dead and all the furniture close to him breaks and flies away from him. The pose was even the same as when he stopped the column. I think he can sort of... push things away from him? (Almost like a Force Push 🤔) He seems to need to stop and tense up his arms while he does it though. And it doesn’t have the green effect the rest of his magic does, which is odd.

Speaking of Loki’s powers, I’ve said this in tags for sure but I’m so happy they’re FINALLY letting Loki hit people with green magic bolts. He does tend to prefer more subtle uses of magic, but I still can’t believe it took over 4 movies for that to happen. It’s kind of a no-brainer magic attack- probably exactly why Loki prefers other things- but you’d think he would’ve done it at least once after 4 movies.

I saw a post point out that by the end of the episode, Sylvie has lost both her headpiece and her cloak/robe thing, which makes me wonder if she’s going to get a new outfit by the end of the show. Or at least different accessories. I’m also curious if she’s going to take up the Enchantress moniker by the end of the show.

Finishing this with theme analysis and theory time:

The revelation that TVA agents used to be variants and were somehow reprogrammed makes so much sense. There’s something immediately shifty about the idea of 3 Time Keepers dictating the fate of everyone in infinite multiverses, and this just solidifies the hint that the Time Keepers are going to be the overall Big Bads. Which makes sense, narratively! But this shifts the TVA agents from villains to victims. Mobius gets to stay sympathetic and so does Sylvie, AND once the TVA agents find out about their origins it puts the same choice onto them that Loki has. They all have a choice now about who they’re going to be. They’re not who they thought they were, but are they going to let themselves be defined by what other people (here, the Time Keepers) think they should be, or are they going to be who they want to be.

This is exactly what Loki: Agent of Asgard is about, by the way. And I know I said in the last post that Loki’s greatest villain is himself, but I’m going to amend that because I didn’t say it quite right. Loki’s greatest villain is his evil self. Loki the god of evil, the Loki that is the villain. Loki (and all the other Asgardians) in Agent of Asgard is genuinely a god, and AoA tells us that gods are defined by belief- they are what people believe them to be. That’s how they exist. So because so many people believe Loki is an evil villain, the universe tries to twist him to fit that role. The plot of AoA is Loki trying to avoid that fate, to be better, be who he wants to be. It’s a meta story. It’s Loki trying to break free of the narrative he’s been part of up until that point. And eventually he manages to break the fourth wall itself and take control of his own narrative by becoming the god of stories. He controls his own story and it no longer matters what other people think he is, only what he thinks of himself. Nobody else gets to change or define him.

AoA’s villain is a future version of Loki that does go back to being evil. He’s basically the cosmic force- destiny, the narrative itself, etc- that’s trying to fit Loki into the “evil” box personified. Loki is seemingly taking that idea and subbing in a different personification for that same idea of lack of choice: the Time Keepers. We know from the Miss Minutes short in episode 1 that the Time Keepers want one timeline. We don’t know if that’s actually to prevent a multiversal war like the short suggests or if that’s just propaganda. When Loki tries to find out more about the war or about the beginning or end of time in episode 2, he can’t access those documents. Something doesn’t seem right there.

Edit: Also, in episode 2 Loki compares the TVA to Asgard by saying both the TVA agents and Asgardians are equally stupid. The reveal of who the TVA agents are adds a new dimension to that comparison. They both see themselves as guardians of the world around them, special, but really they’re no more special than the people they’re fighting to protect. Or in other words, they’re only as “special” (“heroic,” really) as they make themselves.

Also an edit: damn I just realized the continued stupidity of R*gnarok having Fenris and Odin in the same movie and Odin dies but get killed by Fenris. Asgardians have a saying about watching for wolves’ teeth.

I’ve seen the theory around that Sylvie might be a former TVA agent (which seems to be backed up by the midseason trailer I very belatedly saw, oh my GOD TINY SYLVIE!!!!! But also oh no tiny Sylvie at the TVA :() and I really like that. It makes sense. Maybe she went rogue because she realized the TVA is preventing people from choosing for themselves. Maybe she even knows what it is the Time Keepers actually want. Or maybe she’s doing this just for herself because she didn’t enjoy being brainwashed by the TVA and she doesn’t like being told who to be! That is after all part of “what makes a Loki a Loki,” even if she doesn’t use that name anymore.

I’m also wondering (hoping?) if maybe her being a former TVA agent could explain why she’s a mashup of different characters, instead of it just being Marvel mashing characters together because they can. This is mostly wild speculation, but could the TVA possibly have put multiple people’s timelines/memories inside her head? What if she’s in universe an amalgamation of a Loki, an Amora, and/or a Sylvie?

We’ve had some clips of what looks like a Thor 1 era Loki in front of the throne on Asgard- which looks different to me; maybe Loki redecorated? We’ve also gotten a shot of Loki in front of a ruined NYC skyline, including Avengers Tower. Maybe we’ll get an episode where Loki wins and we’ll see different timelines where he wins in different ways, until he realizes that this isn’t actually what he wants?

Whoops this got long??? Thanks for reading if you read this far!