#peter finds his dads ex boyfriend

[ezzuhme]

they're discussing erik

I couldn’t think of a caption so what do you think they’re talking about?

[eastons-creations]

My ultimate fic recs

Made a poll and a lot of people said they would want this sooo here we are! These are the best fics I’ve read (: The og post

Top 3

1- To Be Alone With You By Shay_Fae

In the summer of their sixth year, Remus Lupin tried to kill himself.

2- Something Just Like This By shadow_prince

a fake dating modern AU where Sirius has been telling Mrs. Potter he's dating someone for 9 months and she demands his "boyfriend" comes on their family vacation. Queue: shenanigans between wolfstar and jily as they lie their asses off.

3- Text Talk By merlywhirls

Sirius is in boarding school, Remus is in hospital, and they don't know each other until Sirius texts the wrong number.

Other recs bellow break (in no order)

Wading in waist high water By colgatebluemintygel

Remus is a PhD student and hobbyist baker who finds himself adrift following his father’s death. On a whim, he enters the Great British Bake Off and is swept up in a flurry of curdled custard, shrunken souffle, and under-proved dough. Remus expects to be challenged and to embarrass himself on public television. What he doesn’t account for are the friendships he develops with the other contestants and the deep connection he forms with his teenage crush, Sirius Black: charming ex-boy band member and Bake Off host

Beneath a big blue sky by @eyra

The four-by-four heaves its way down long, twisting lanes, little more than dirt tracks scuffed into the surrounding fields and hemmed in by serpentine walls of flat, grey stone. They truly are in the middle of nowhere: the countryside rushes past, all rolling green hills and vast, endless skies, and it's odious. Sirius wants to murder James with his bare hands. Sirius and James accidentally find themselves on a Yorkshire farm during lambing season. The farmer’s son thinks that’s a bit annoying, actually.

A brief history of dragons by @eyra

It's lovely up here; all meadows dotted with wildflowers, wind-beaten tracks criss-crossing this way and that through the fields, weaving inland to the pinewoods. The sun's hot on his back as he passes ramshackle stone walls, long since crumbled to piles of ancient rubble and scree, and then the path winds downwards, still following the line of the coast until Sirius finds himself outside an old white cottage, tucked away behind the hill with a rose garden that faces out to the sea. Sirius moves to Cornwall for the summer and meets a rude, beautiful boy who is writing a book that may or may not be about dragons

Let’s play pretend by MsAlexWP

After James and Lily died, Sirius Black's therapist told him not to date for a year. And that's just as well. He's got a 13-month-old baby now and quite enough to deal with, thanks. But the nosy neighbors in his building keep trying to set him up and won't take no for an answer. Enter Remus Lupin, another single dad who pretends to be Sirius's boyfriend, just to get the old lady brigade off his back and nothing more. Nothing more at all.

Forever in a state of mind by orphan_account

Deaf Dance Choreographer, Remus Lupin, has a simple life. Working, taking care of his son, and running his YouTube sign channel. When he unwittingly becomes involved with Deaf Pride Activist, Fleamont Potter, he doesn't realise how much his life will change. Especially after he meets YouTube star and makeup artist, Sirius Black.

Sugar rush by Stricklymarauders

James, Sirius, Peter, and Dorcas have been best friends for years and are starting their senior year of highschool. To Sirius' dismay he doesn't have any friends in his history class, but after eventually showing up, he finds he sits next to a tall curly hair boy who takes his breath away, Remus Lupin. He decided right then and there that he must make this boy fall in love with him and recruits James to be his wingman, until James is distracted by Remus' best friend with a personality as fiery has her hair, Lily Evans.

Dating Remus lupin by Children_of_the_Shadow

Remus Lupin is a mystery to the whole school; the boy who's quiet, aloof, and cold. He also happens to be queer, which is enough to gain Sirius's interest. What Sirius never realised that dating Remus Lupin wasn't quite as easy as it looked.

Blends by rvltn909

Words got in the way sometimes, but Remus got the sense Sirius knew what he was trying to say. Another coffee shop au.

Camp Casanova by Farquad

All lonely 11 years old Remus Lupin wants is a friend. But when he arrives at Slughorn's summer camp for teenage boys his world turns upside down since he finds himself sharing a cabin with three other boys; James Potter, Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black. As the years pass by Remus finds himself birthing friendships, fighting bullies, but above all battling his own feelings which soon gets out of control. He struggles to keep his biggest secret, and he wonders how he could've fallen so deeply in love.

Turn on my charm by Bethanlovescoffee

Sirius Black is a YouTube phenomenon. A YouTube phenomenon who develops a crush on his video editor.

[wolves-and-stars]

FAMOUS WOLFSTAR AU FIC RECS

(A list of the the best famous AU fics, including youtube, musician/band, and acting)

1. Sex Pistols by ArtificialAorta (ffnet) 86k

MUSICIAN/BAND AU!

I love this fic, it was on my last list too, remus is the lead singer and gutarist for the punk rock band belladonna, and he meets the lead singer of the pop band maraders, sirius black, at a press tour.

The music the author mentions in the fic is so good, it really helps you get immeresed in the scene they mention the song for.

2. Stalking Sirius by remuslives23 (ao3) 36k

MUSICIAN SIRIUS BLACK

Journalist remus lupin finds out a secret about sirius black, the lead singer of the band marauders, and uses it as leverage to gain an interview with the ever mysterious and elusive singer.

3. Whatever Words I Say by orphan_account (ao3) 23k

MUSICIAN SIRIUS BLACK

Remus Lupin is hired by lily evans and her PR company to babysit sirius black, the lead singer of her husband's band, the marauders, after the latest media frenzy cause by Sirius' cavalier attitude. Remus realises maybe sirius doesn't act out because of any of the expected reasons.

4. Never Above You, Never Below by orphan_account (ao3) 5k

ACTOR SIRIUS BLACK

Sirius just wants to shop at tesco in peace when a young boy recongnises him and drags out his father, remus lupin. It would annoy sirius, except the guy is kind of cute. (Actor! Sirius, Single dad! Remus) starring baby teddy.

5. Addicted To The Magic by orphan_account (ao3) 14k

ACTOR SIRIUS BLACK

Remus runs into a stranger on the tube and gets swept up in a whirlwind romance, except he doesnt know what the starnger does or really anything about him. Maybe he'll find out at the party sirius' invites him to?

Side pairing of james and lily, but isn't boring like all the other ones, they actually have personalities other than being the boring hetero couple.

6. Forever Is a State of Mind by orphan_account (ao3) 25k

YOUTUBER AU!

Remus lupin is runs a dance youtube channel, where he posts choreographies with his son teddy. He's also deaf and people find it hard to understand how someone who can't hear music could love to dance so much, people like rita skeeter who hires snape as a terp for a new paper article she wants to write about him. Except sanpe is the kind of terp that only signs SLS, remus runs into james, CODA, who helps him out. He also happens to introduce him to sirius black his best mate who is a MUA youtuber, with a decent amount of followers.

With a side pairing of polyamorous james/lily/regulus raising harry together. (Y'all dont understand this fic made me jump in the jegulus train way back in 2016, and ive been patiently waiting for all of you to catch up)

7. real life has no appeal by orphan_account (ao3) 7k

YOUTUBER AU!

Sirius, james and peter have a channel where they break into places overnight, trying to escape getting caught. James starts dating lily, who happens to be remus' roomate. Remus has his own channel, less break-in, more artsy. Sirius happens to text remus. They happen to fall for each other.

8. Wizard beat by eprime

MUSICIAN REMUS LUPIN

Sirius black is remus lupins biggest fan, their new roomate john finds his passion for the singer very annoying. Sirius finds his new roomate annoying, or does he?

9. The Prom Date by xivz (ao3) 48k

MUSICIAN SIRIUS BLACK

Remus Lupin does something very out of character, he sends a promposal video to Sirius Black, the very famous singer/actor/model who hes had a crush on for wuite some time.

Siruius Black happes to accept his request. And is determined to break the rules of their contract by relentlessly pursuing him.

10. The tell-all end-all with Sirius Black by wolvesandstars 1.5k

MUSICIAN SIRIUS BLACK

This one is by me, sorry about the shameless plus, i really wanted the list to have 10 in them.

Give it a try, its about how the paps speculate about sirius blacks mystery boyfriend and all the conspiracies surrounding him and his ex-best friend and ex-roomate remus lupin.

[wheredidhiseyebrowsgo]

Any fic recs where Stiles is like a badass Navy SEAL or ex-Marine or some kind of sniper. I'm craving badass military/Stiles. Preferably Sterek but doesn't have to be. Thanks!

Yeah!

I'll make an alpha out of you by ElisAttack

(2/3 I 6,873 I Mature I Sterek)

"Did they send me omegas, when I asked for men!" Peter Hale shouts.

Stiles clenches his fists in anger. The scar tissue along his side where he burnt away his omega mark itches. Stiles may be pretending to be an alpha, but he knows deep down what he really is. Once an omega, always an omega.

Or the one where Stiles takes his father's place in a war he doesn't believe in.

they never tell you that bullets bite back by snickiebear

(1/1 I 7,442 I Mature)

When he’s pinned down and the light at the end of the tunnel flickers, he thinks about his Dad, about Derek, and about his goddaughter he’ll probably never get to meet.

He survives every time. Still hasn’t met her. She’s seven now.

or, stiles leaves and finds a new war to fight

bone deep by localsharkbait (nemonight)

(1/1 I 9,153 I Not Rated)

Stiles really could not have known that joining the military would have lead to him meeting Iron Man and getting a boyfriend.

Staring into the muzzle blast by ElisAttack

(2/3 I 13,586 I Mature)

"The hairs rise on the back of Stiles' neck when he glances out the porthole and gets a real close look at the asteroid’s surface. It’s covered in cable lines and electronics, too small and sparse to be seen from anywhere but the surface. They flow towards a series of boulders and what appears to be a heavyweight airlock. Someone built a base here and nobody knew about it. Not Earth, not Mars, not the Belt.

Stiles grips his rifle tighter."

Or the one where Stiles is an Earther marine, sent to the Belt to help investigate a distress beacon. What he finds brings to light a conspiracy that has the power to shake the Solar System to its very core, and change everything he’s ever known.

Specialized Technical Intelligence and Logistics for Earth and Space (S.T.I.L.E.S) by Yiichi

(10/10 I 73,419 I Not Rated I Sterek)

“What the hell kind of a name is Stiles?” he asked.

“You know, a series of sounds spoken in a particular sequence that represent my identity, primarily, referring to me?“ the AI – Stiles – answered cheekily, crossing his own arms in front of his chest, mirroring Derek’s position.

“Ooh, this one’s feisty,” Peter smirked.

[pumpkinstrawbrew]

🆃🅷🅴 🆆🅸⨢.🅲🅷🅸🅽🅶 🅷△🆄🆁.

>>> the grim adventures of jon n' jack. feat batman n' spiderman. <<<

...

it was only a matter of time, before i would have made another crossover with those two. i can't deny, that they are very 1:1 for me, when it comes to comics supervillains. so why not to mix one awesome n' beloved thing with another? esp since funny enough, they do have quite a few similar plot-points. well, the halloween themed costume aside. i mean it goes as far as jack once having the bat-themed boyfriend pal, which reminds me of someone else, i know.

anyho'...

i've tried to make my notes more or less readable here, but they still might be a bit scattered. i attempted to keep them as short as possible, but i just cannot talk 'small'.

1. the first art is low-key based on underdeveloped AU, that i have about the early comic scarecrow n' modern jack meeting n' hitting it off serial killiar style. considering, that both of them possess killing methods, which have a noticable tradmark to it, i imagine that they will leave one hell of a mess behind, while traveling across the country. in that timeline, batman is dead. n' jack's shitty foster dad was killed off earlier on. neither of them knows what to do with themselves, since the people who they had *twisted* emotional conection with are gone. without any direction, they meet in the middle, n' decide that they can as well team-up n' try to make being a villain fun again. jon might experiment on their victims *or torture them if its his ex bullies* n' then give them to jack, who would scoop their brains out and put candle inside their skull. n' uh yeah, he literally did it in the comic. i was honestly surpised that marvel come up with smth that creepy. it really sounds more alined with dc, if anything. but either way, here they are. two *grieving* psychos going downtown. they will make one another so much worse, i imagine. n' they will totally kill that npc dude btw.

2. dark magic n' the drip. or jon n' jack at their corniest. like, jonathan looks like he watched too much the nightmare before christmas n' jack dress up like count dracula for no reason. it's so random-ish n' cheesy. but with this being said, i love both of those designs, n' think, that they really suit the vibe of comic issues in which they were featured. jack always came off as a he-witch to me, but it was nice to see it being played on in a different way. n' then, crane really rocks his own outfit as well. i totally need to draw him in it more often, haha. they dress up for a halloween party for real this time. n' well, i added batman n' spiderman into the mix here, bc i kinda wish that they got to fight / interact with those versions of jon n' jack. it would have been fun for a few reasons. also this can be technically counted as shipping art, but can be viewed as your typical gloating bad guy n' helpless hero thing too. n' to clear any possible questions, i only create stuff with adult peter parker. like cartoon era/late early comics, 20 smth one. i love my spiderman being of age, where he can legally mingle with his villains, not be detained at school lol.

3. the classic four from the timeline, when the comic plots were a bit more ligthearted. aka during the times, when the deadly mercenary n' crazy scientist were robbing banks, instead of harming *torturing* people. i love dark stuff, but there is charm to how 'simple' the scarecrow's and jack's goals once were. n' i love how the scarecrow used to do the lil, dorky dances. it really suits him. n' since at least 2 or maybe, most of jack o' lanterns are southernish in their roots like jon, i had an idea of them having a country dance *in the middle of graveyard* kinda just makes sense to me, haha. batman and spiderman merely happen to find them like that. n' well, it's kinda awkward. esp bc they technically don't do anything bad. i also imagine spiderman being like 'oh, so you have one of those too'. which is mostly a ref to how both the scarecrow n' jack were called 'the reject from land of oz' by other characters. they can rejoice here.

4. the develish & undead duo!! my friend once told me to try n' watch older superhero cartoons, and at first i was like 'welp, they prob be hella boring'. but then i caved in, n' watched a couple of superfriends episodes. as result, i fell in love with their scarecrow's desingh! it was unexpected tbh. usually, i prefer jon's older, classic scarecrow look. so no straw hair, less features exposed, just a hat n' a sack on his head, but their version of him actually did it for me. i find their crane both creepy n' cute. n' i also read on wiki, that he might be undead. so that bit interested me as well. non-human jonathan crane, what a concept! him returning from the grave just to be a menace to batman. n' to accompany him, there is an undead jack o' lantern from the ghost rider comic. his corpse literally got possessed by satan. anyways, both of them raised army of zombies. both of them undead n' prob won't ever get out of their spooky suits, since i don't think that they can. n' funny enough, jack's hometown was called sleepy hollows, if i remember correctly. so they can haunt people there, make it into a truly cursed land.

5. the last one was kinda spontaneous on my part. the other day, i was looking at what kind of action figures the scarecrow n' jack have. saw one, where jon was looking kinda strange, all black n' yellow. which is how i find out that he *apparently* got yellow lantern powers in newer comics, even if it was like for 10 seconds or smth. i didn't read the issue itself, but i found the idea kinda fun, n' his design was decent enough for me to get interested n' wonder what i can do with it. then, a bit later, i saw that jack had a venom-funko figure. i don't think, that he was ever canonically venomized in any of the actual comic issues, but once again, the mere idea of it happening was enough for me to consider doing smth with it. i mean, a venom-like tongue, but its made out of fire? dang. that's kinda cool. so yeah. the yellow lantern scarecrow n' symbiote jack o' lantern being the double trouble. if they weren't enough of a mean goblin-man before, now they surely will be.

[rikis-girl]

Spiderman

Warnings: Harsh words and angst Pairing: Spiderman!Jake x fem!reader Synopsis: You loved Jake and you always will. But is it worth dating Spiderman though?

"Gwen Stacy!!!!!" your mother called for you from downstairs. You almost dropped your polaroid of your beloved boyfriend Jake Parker; brother of the late Peter Parker. Jake had just joined the army of spider people under Miguel and was not too familiar with the spiders but Gwen Stacy, aka ghost spider or spiderwoman.

You rush downstairs to see your mother holding up her phone to take your picture as you twirl in your dress.

"How do I look mom?" "Like a successful science experiment" she replied taking a picture casually and flicking her tears.

The doorbell rings and your super cute golden retriever of a boyfriend stood there with the biggest most excited and nervous smile you've seen anyone sport. "May I come in Mrs.Stacy?"

He notices you standing and posing for the camera and his jaw drops to the ground. "You look....... whoa" he sputters in disbelief as he takes in your fit. "Do I look good Jakey?" you ask. "You look so pretty I'm upset that there are only 3 dimensions I can view you from." His sparkling eyes make your heart stutter.

He gently takes your hand in his as your mom calls you two to take pictures together. He slips his hand around your waist and pulls you closer. "Don't be shy baby." He says before smiling for the picture.

Soon you both are in his second hand car and are making your way to prom. A scream pulls through the school cafeteria and Jake gets into his spider get up instantly.

"Please be safe out there." You tell him; worried that you'll have to face the same Jake who was impaled by the great Doc Oc who he accidentally, indirectly murdered.

"Have I ever not been safe?" He jokes, you give him a stern and worried look conveying how upsetting it is to see the love of your life coming home with all those scratches and wounds.

"Fine, I will stay out of too much trouble" He gives you a chaste kiss before slipping his mask on and swinging into the cafeteria.

Loud clanging sounds are heard from the cafeteria and you hear Jake throwing a few playful quips here and there as you try to guide everyone to safety. "I'M NOT A MONSTER!!!!" a scream echoes through the building. "I know you're not." Jake whispers, trying to calm down the broken soul in front of him. "THEN WHY IS IT THAT NO ONE LOVES ME? NOT MY MOM, NOT MY DAD, NOT MY EX! WHEN WILL I FIND LOVE?? Will you help me?" The girl sobs, breaking down in front of your boyfriend. "Wait what? I mean, you will find love eventually..... But for now you need to love yourself." He reaches his hand out to pull her up from the wall of plants she pulled up with her powers.

Jake suddenly gets himself pulled in by said girl as she traps him in her plant. "Knew you would fall for a poor, unfortunate soul." She says, chuckling darkly. "I TRUSTED YOU FLO!" your betrayed boyfriend shrieks.

"Too bad spidey, now you're all mine" she says and starts walking to him and Jake starts to expect the worst lashing he's had in weeks and closes his eyes for the impact which never came.

In front of his eyes stood his strong and brave girlfriend yanking the hair of Flo; a teen who magically started having super powers related to her favorite superhero: poison Ivy.

"STACY NO GET OUT OF HERE" Jake yells as he tries to free himself off the binds.

"THIS BITCH TRIED TO TAKE MY MAN I AIN'T BACKING DOWN SUPERPOWER OR NOT!!!" You scream vigorously pulling the hair of the deranged female in front of you.

Jake frees himself and brings you to safety and removes his mask.

"WHAT WAS THAT FOR?" He whisper-shouts, mad. "The bitch wanted MY man.... I will have a problem with that" you explained.

Jake just shook his head and pulled his mask on. "STAY. PUT. HERE." He warns sternly as he swings off, leaving you sitting on a rooftop with your feet dangling in the air.

A good 20 minutes pass by when you feel something wrap around your neck. Before you can respond, you loose your vision and consciousness.

The first thing you see after the incident is the ground at least 80 feet below you and a gag around your mouth. Your boyfriend is fighting the crazy plant girl Flo as he keeps checking on you, dangling right above a vat of weird chemicals.

"WELCOME TO MY HOME GWEN STACY, AKA SPIDEY'S WHORE!" Flo screams from some random floor in the building which you were dangling from. You notice plants holding your arms and neck, keeping you from plunging to your death. You look frantically for a way to escape when one of the plants holding your right hand lets go, leaving you dangling by your left hand and your throat.

"THE CHILDREN OR THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE SPIDEY!" Flo yells as a bus of children are dropped along with you from either sides of the building. "SAVE THE KIDS!" You scream before plunging to your inevitable death. You see you boyfriend rushing to save the kids at your word and you close your eyes accepting fate when you feel something sticking onto your chest as you open your eyes to see your boyfriend's web attached to you. "I can do both, Spider-man always does both."

You were only a few feet above the ground and it was almost too late and you look at your boyfriend one last time with his mask on as a plant attacks him, leaving you to hit the ground as a shooting pain surges through your body and you breathe no more.

You have a dream with Jake and you smiling and holding your grandkids, but you knew all too well that you were gone.

On the other side of the battle field, Jake's watch glows. The words 'Canon intact' flash the screen as he sees Miguel from his peripheral vison. The words Gwen from 65 rung in his head as he fought Flo with tears streaming down his face.

"In every other universe, Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-man.... and in every other universe, it doesn't end well."

A/N; I finally figured how to make this thing work so, made some changes! Hope you like it!!

[wildglitch]

Heres 25 fics I really wanna write but havent gotten around to yet

For those that wanna know before reading the list, the fandoms include are

Marvel, Spider-Man, Loki, DCU, Batman, Justice League, Pokemon, Shazam/Captain Marvel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtels (The Last Ronin), Danny Phantom, Sonic the Hedgehog, Voltron, Gravity Falls, Over The Garden Wall, RWBY, Camp Camp, Rise Of The Guardiens, Star Wars (Rebels), Miraculos Ladybug and Chat Nori, Ninjago, How to Train Your Dragon, Final Space, My Hero Academia.

Thats one long list of fandoms-

I swear its not a big ass crossover fic with all these fandoms.

The rest of the Wiz! Fics. Though one of them is almost done

Winter dad fic. Peter is dealing, Bucky dosent remember him, but the solder definetly does.

Parksborn fic post NWH. Peter and Harry meet at collage and become roommates (this was canon for like a day lol) Harry has issues, Peter has more.

Parent Loki and Son Jack frost. I love the concept and already have some plot planned out

Billy Batson has somehow been the child host of Whiz radio for about 70 years

The Last Ronin Time Travel fic

Dadow time travel fic. A few fics continuing my first dadow fic starting with Silver in the future and present, and later on future shadow goes to the past. Its a lit if feels

Sonic was raised by egg man. No one knows this

5 times Sonic confused people by acting like tails dad, and the the on time tails suprised them by acting like his son

Babysitter James. Basically, the geovani is Ash's dad theory + What if team rocket are juat there to look after Ash theory. He takes him in, James becomes one of the best in team rocket, and as a sign of trust, he makes him be his newborns babysitter.

Back to Jack Frost, A fic following his time alone and time people he meet

Dead On Main fic were Jason despretly tries to keep his ghost boyfriend away from his family

Rosegarden Fic where Ruby and Oscar are childhood summer friends who lost contact.

Ezra time travel fic because Im obssesed with them

Skybridge fic taking place during Twin Suns because Im also obsesed with those fics

Dadvid fic. David Adopts Max and the 2 of them are trying to find a new normal

Pinecone lost in the woods fic.

MLB fix-It. Cat becomes a night time vigilante as a way to deal with the stress, lower class people become more fond of him.

Klance fic. Congratulations, you got through 15 fics before Klance appeared. Ex's au, Lance dose hate Keith foe a reason, they used to date. No one knows about this and think their just being stupid

Httyd fic where toothless wasnt discoverd in the first movie.

Final Space fic were Little Cato deals with the trauma if spending so many years alone.

Ninjago Kai fic for the Time he spent alone. I have talked about this before I think

RodyDeku reunion fic.

Nightguard Denki au. A Fnaf x Mha fic

Rai: The Phantom Theif of hero society. My TodoKami fic I have been trying to write since 2022

Thats the List. If your curiouse about any of these or just wanna bug me into finally writing them, let me know in my ask box.

[timeforbedwolfstar]

Immortality

Just a little snippet of a DPS x Marauders fic I’m working on.

Let me know what you all think!

Ships: Wolfstar, Anderperry, Jegulus, Jily

Todd Anderson inhaled deeply, sitting on the dying grass as snow gathered in his hair. The name on the gravestone, usually gleaming dimly, seemed to be taking light from the world, instead of giving it. He choked back tears as, once again, he taped a small piece of paper on the headstone. Thirteen, he thought.

He wiped the tears furiously from his face before walking away from the dead poet's grave.

He hated this. This feeling.

Never again would he lay on his bed, looking across his room to Neil's face, smiling back at him as he recited old poetry to send the pair to sleep.

Never again would he throw a desk set over the ledge with his friend - no, not friend, boyfriend - by his side.

Was it even real? Todd thought. Or was it all just a dream?

James let out a low growl, staring at the last note from Regulus he had.

A note he could not bring himself to read. It still sat there, unopened, the seal perfect.

How fucking pathetic he was.

Can’t even read a god-damned letter from my ex-boyfriend, James thought to himself. Who do I think I am?

There was a knock on his door, and his brother, Peter, opened it slowly. "James?"

James nodded. "Yeah?"

Peter looked nervous. Scared. "D'you think Mom and Dad are mad at us? Because of what happened?"

James stood, leaving the unopened letter on his bed along with everything else he had yet to pack, and embraced his brother with both arms. "No, Pete," he said softly. "They're not mad." He inhaled softly, slowly. "What happened at school wasn't anyone's fault. But Hogwarts is trying to investigate what happened, and it's closed down, for now. So we're going to a different school, just for now. We'll go back there, one day. You'll see."

Peter nodded against his older brother's chest. "Okay. I believe you."

James let him go. "Okay. Go finish packing. We've got a long drive ahead of us."

Peter nodded and turned, but before he left, he looked back at his brother. "Who's that letter from?"

James cast it a glance before looking back at his brother with a smile. "No one. It's fine."

Something in his voice must have resonated with Peter, because he dropped the subject. He left, and James watched him enter his room and close the door behind him.

He inhaled. Let it sit. Exhaled. Turned slowly, back to the letter.

Now or never.

He had to know what it said.

He crossed the room in two long strides, then, before he could second-guess himself, he ripped the seal and pulled out the parchment.

There were three pieces of paper, instead of just one. The first was a letter. James ignored the other two, sitting down to read his boyfriend's final words.

James,

If you're reading this, then something must have happened to me. I only wish I could tell you what it was.

There's just one thing I never came around to telling you. I love you, James. I've always loved you. And if you're reading this, I'm in a better place now. Don't grieve for me for too long. Find a pretty girl, settle down with her, and have a family. For me.

I wish I could put into words just how much you've meant to me, but I'm afraid that if I did, this letter would be too long.

I'm afraid that I do not know what will happen to me, or even if I'll be standing once it's all over. I'm sorry it had to be like this, James. I wish it could have been better.

I wish we could have had more time.

R.A.B.

James had lowered his body, slowly, to the floor as he read. And now here he was, grieving, sad, alone, on the floor of his room.

He wanted to break something. To run away and never return. To simply vanish, like Regulus had done.

You should have taken me with you, he whispered brokenly into the silence.

Feeling like his body was made of lead, he unfolded the second paper.

And there was a poem, in Regulus' handwriting. Unfinished. Only two lines were written on the page.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there. I do not sleep.

James stood, lashing out with his leg. It never made contact with its target.

He wanted to scream. To break something. Because it wasn't true. Regulus was gone, had vanished like the wind.

He would never be found.

For those of you who read this far, thank you for reading. Please let me know if you'd like to read more.

There wasn't as much Todd as I would like, so I think the next part will have more of him. I wanted to set the mood of the story.

Trying out a new writing style, so lemme know what you think!

Inspired by the following poem -- Immortality, by Clare Harner.

Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die.

[straying-further-from-gods-grace]

Human AU! Picrew

Alastor! He's a serial killer and cannibal in every AU I make unless otherwise stated. Some AU will include Al being trans, having epilepsy, or severe scarring and sometimes migraines. Eating disorder in the fact he mainly eats humans and starves a lot of the time

Nifty in every AU will be Alastors little sister, be it through found family or actual adoption. She is also a cannibal and a nurse unless otherwise stated. Every AU she lost her eye while being sex trafficked.

Rosie and Husk are Always going to be Exes, be it married or dating, but exes. Rosie is a cannibal, Husk isn't he just helps his family hide evidence. In certain AU they're Nifty and or Al's adoptive parents/found family parent's in others they are just older friends who are protective and the mom/dad friend. Rosie is a psychologist and Husk a bartender, most AU they're gonna be ex military

Angel Dust (Anthony) Husks twink boyfriend he gets after divorcing or breaking up with Rosie. Still a hooker but he and Val have a healthy relationship. Unless I need Val to be nasty for my plot. Ex addict, makes music sometimes, recovering eating disorder

The Vees! Vox with his heterochromia and I like making him sweaty either an actual problem or he's just sweaty. I also like to give him a stutter in certain AUs. He's German.

Valentino is as always, half blind, and he's a nasty weird tall man with a connective tissue disorder in most AU, he's also Latin and a pretty good friend he's very supportive just bad at it.

Velvet is a weird little chaotic rat but her boys worship her. For some reason I see her as a Floridian military brat idk, fashion designer and influencer in every AU. I ship her with Rosie.

In some AU they're adoptive siblings

Charlie and Vaggie! Twinning UwU! Vaggie is an ex Catholic cause I think it makes sense and Charlie definitely practices Wicca or something. Charlie actually does own a hotel, it's a rehab her father funded for her because she wants to help nd she has whateva sort of degree would help with that, something with therapy. Vaggie works as a security guard there.

Vaggie twin sister Lute, she's having a near constant mental breakdown, she's a psycho deep down and is FILLED with religious guilt idk what to tell ya. Killed someone. Her arm is amputated too. She teaches self defense, specialising in helping people with disabilities learn to work around them.

Charlie cousin Peter. Everyone think he's the "gay" cousin but he's actually straight and VERY comfy in his masculinity, nondenominational. Isn't technically allowed to visit the Morningstar house alone because they're "evil" but they're just spiritual. Broadway!!

Lute boyfriend, Adam. I could NOT resist making him adorable and precious because you see him and go awww but then he fucking opens his mouth and calls you a slur. Lmao. Questioning his faith. Rock star wanna be, studies music theory or something

Adams cousins! Big sis Sera is constantly worrying and lil sis Emily is heavily sheltered. Sera is a Sunday School teacher, idk, maybe religious studies? Emily if the AU has her college aged will want to be a nurse (I've been seeing Emily ships everywhere but what if she falls for her fellow nurse who's secretly a psychopath?? Nifty, I mean)

Cherri! Angels BFF! She's deffo an artist and also a demolition expert or something, and does monster trucking too! She's the best most supportive person, Penti adores her and she's secretly in love too but she's scared of it. Angel keeps mocking her that he's got two guys (Val and Husk) and she won't even take a chance on the dude who would find a way to blow up the sun for her.

Penti is trans, hjs family is also Muslim but he was disowned when he came out. He has triplet little siblings! Is studying to be or is a physicist. Idk minor speech impediment/lisp!

Frank is the embodiment of chaos and when he meets Alastor is obsessed with him (crushing on a guy your older brother doesn't like is a right if passage) Chandler and Leslie are his siblings. They we're disowned for supporting Penti and Chandler has refused to wear her veil since. Leslie still upholds their faith but is very supportive.

Usually Vark will be a dog. But occasionally an AU will call for him to be Vox little brother so here's a design for him!

[goldenretriever-nicknelson]

Story of Us [P.P]

A/n: I don't know how I wrote this but I actually managed to before I went back to Uni and I'm so proud of myself! This is very angsty and lets just say I'm sorry. Yes it's based off of one of my favourite Taylor Swift songs.

Peter and reader are older but nwh didn't happen.

Pairing: MCU!Peter Parker x Stark!reader

WC: 2.2k

Warnings: angst, lots of angst, mentions of grief, implied mental health issues, (brief) detail and mention of SA (drunk guy tries to hook up with reader who doesn’t want to), breakup, some violence (punching), implied sexual themes, underage drinking - if there's anything I've forgotten let me know!

“You and Peter are so lucky.”

“Imagine finding your soulmate so early on.” 

“You two will have beautiful kids.” 

The words that others had spoken about you over the past year echoed in your ear. Compliments about you and Peter being the best couple, that you were going to save the universe together one day. Yet here you were alone, travelling to the annual Avengers New Years party. 

And it was all your fault. 

You had almost chickened out of going at all, wanting to spend another day in your sweatpants eating through leftover Christmas food. The Avengers and Peter’s aunt May hadn’t wanted you to spend Christmas alone so they had invited you over, sent food and facetimed you trying to encourage you to participate in the holiday spirit. Usually Peter was enough to bring you joy even when you were just friends but even he wasn’t there anymore. 

How could you enjoy any festivities without the one man who had been there through everything, supported you and protected you? Tony was gone and now Peter was too. You were fed up with losing everyone so you’d stayed well out of everyone’s way. If you weren’t close to anyone, you couldn’t lose them. 

May had scheduled sessions for you with a therapist in the New Year, the same one she had seen after the blip and after her husband had passed. She had offered to drive you herself too. Most people might find it awkward to stay in contact with your ex’s family but May had always treated you like her own especially after Tony died and you had always been grateful to her as she had been to you for looking after Peter. 

The driver of your taxi announced you had arrived and you were pulled out of your trance, your eyes drawn to the Avengers compound that was decorated in bright lights and Christmas decorations. At least they had still continued with tradition. 

You took a deep breath as you exited the car, ironing down your dress once more with your hands and putting a smile on your face, however fake it may be. The music was playing loudly as you came closer to the building joined with the chorus of laughter and cheer. 

Your heart sank as you spotted the statute of Tony and Natasha they had built. Engraved below read “The real heroes, forever remembered”. You fought back your tears and shook your head, walking in and putting your smile back on. 

All you had to do was stay until midnight and then you could make a swift exit. That had been the plan anyway and then you had seen him. 

Peter Parker. Your ex boyfriend and love of your life, laughing away with Sam and Bucky and smiling wide. His brown curls looked messy as if his hair had been ruffled several times and no doubt by the duo that was standing in front of him. He was wearing his usual party shirt, the same one you had drunkenly cried on many times and the one he had kissed you in when the clock struck midnight this time last year. 

The room was crowded and yet his eyes still managed to find yours across the sea of drunken people. His smile fell ever so slightly but there was a kindness in his eyes as he looked at you and you could tell he was as nervous as you. 

You quickly looked away and went to the kitchen to make yourself a drink. Even though you were underage, no thanks to the blip, a little alcohol wouldn’t hurt. Dutch courage, as your Dad would say. 

The first shot of alcohol had just gone down when someone was pulling the empty shot glass away from you. “Hey! Hey!” 

You sighed and turned around to see no one other than Doctor Strange himself chastising you for underage drinking. 

“This is reserved for the adults.” Strange sighed and vanished the bottle of alcohol through a portal to another room. 

“Do you ever stop being a killjoy?” You crossed your arms and glared at him in true Stark fashion, noticing Peter walking over from the corner of your eye and getting nervous again. 

“With you and Peter drinking underage, I might just celebrate the new year in another universe. Less stressful when you’re made of paint.” Strange gave an amused smile at his own joke and started to walk away, leaving Peter headed straight for you. 

Your heart picked up its pace, threatening to explode as Peter’s eyes met yours. His honey brown eyes almost drew you in but you couldn’t give in. You quickly pretended that someone else had caught your attention and darted out of the kitchen, heading for your old room. 

“Hey pretty girl.” 

A stranger, a little bit older than you, stopped you in your path and grabbed your arm. He was tall with dark hair, eyes the same colour as Peter’s but nowhere near as intoxicating or warm. You recognised him from when he would sometimes work with the Avengers. His jacket had the classic SHIELD logo and you scoffed. 

“Either you’re in fancy dress or you’re really bad at being a covert agent.” You pushed him off of you and laughed but the agent guy wasn’t having any of it. He cornered you near the bathroom and placed his hand on the wall by the side of your face, trapping you as he inched closer. You smelt alcohol on his breath and the way he was looking at you sickened you to your stomach. 

“The famous Y/n Stark, complete with the wit to match the name.” He smirked and went to touch your face but you moved your head away, ready to put your fighting skills to the test. Natasha had taught you some things during your initial training to become an Avenger before the world went to shit and half the population disappeared. 

“Yeah well I better get back-” You tried to push past him but he kept you trapped, cutting you off from speaking. You froze as his free hand wrapped around your waist, trying to pull you into him. You knew you should have fought back but you couldn’t. 

You told him to stop, pushing him away and threatening him but nothing seemed to deter him. That was until someone ran and tackled him to the floor, punching him with fast reflexes and super strength. You recognised that head of curls from anywhere. 

Peter got up after making sure the other guy wasn’t getting up anytime soon and quickly came over to you. A worried expression on his face as he reached out to held you before hesitating and withdrawing back. 

“A-are you okay?” 

You nodded and took a deep breath, noticing that some of the partygoers had now noticed what was going on. Sam and Bucky made sure the guy was thrown out and reported whilst insisting you go with Peter to get a drink and sit down. 

Peter made you a hot cocoa and sat down with you in a room on the other end of the compound, wrapping a blanket around you which you soon realised looked familiar. On the wall were Star Wars and Sci-Fi posters along with some selfies taken by Peter. This was his old room when he had first joined the Avengers. Tony kept it for him even when he declined his offer so that Peter would always have a place to stay if he needed it. 

You didn’t even notice you were crying until Peter handed you a tissue and rested a hand on your arm. You appreciated the gesture and wiped your eyes, not even caring if it smeared your makeup. You knew what Peter must have been thinking and honestly it was still what you were questioning yourself. 

“I couldn’t fight back.”

Peter looked at you and raised a brow but he didn’t say anything he just listened. You told him what had happened and how terrified you had been. You felt like you had let Tony down, he always told you to fight back and you couldn’t even do that when you needed to. 

“Hey. You didn’t let anyone down. It’s okay to be scared.” Peter tried to reassure you, taking your hand into his and squeezing. A technique he had learnt over time that made you feel safe and calm. 

You sighed and swallowed the lump that had formed in your throat. The moment you had been dreading since you had arrived had dawned on you without any warning. You were unprepared and scared again but you knew Peter, he would never hurt you. 

Silence filled the room, the only sound was the music from the party and the laughter from people who were having fun. You sighed and looked down at your hands, remembering that cold September night when everything finally caught up to you, the loss and the heartbreak,  and Peter had been the one to suffer. 

“I’m sorry.” 

The words that had been on your tongue for so long, threatening to spill every time you saw him or May and yet never being able to speak them into existence. It was only two words but the meaning held so much more. 

Peter didn’t reply for a moment and instead wrapped his arms around you, just holding you as you let yourself cry onto his shoulder. He rubbed your back and played with your hair, humming the song you and him shared a love for. You could smell his cologne and feel the softness of his shirt, noticing that he had a cut by his shoulder that he had evidently tried to heal himself. It was almost as if nothing had changed. 

“I’m sorry too.” 

His words caused you to look up at him in surprise, your heart once again racing as you met his gaze. His eyes were watering and he looked sad, more broken than you had ever seen him. 

“I shouldn’t have let go. I should have held onto you and helped you even when you pushed me away but I-I couldn’t do it. I was hurting too.” Peter’s words were full of pain and sorrow, your heart breaking as you heard them. You had spent so much time wrapped up in your own pain and pity that you hadn’t even seen Peter’s. 

You realised you didn’t have to go through it alone after all and that Peter was just as afraid of losing you as you were of losing him. 

Your lips met Peter’s before he could ramble anymore, the small bit of dutch courage you had that pushed you to make an impulsive decision. His lips tasted just as you remembered them, sweet and like home but with a tint of alcohol mixed onto them. 

Peter hummed in surprise, his eyes widening before kissing you back. Both of you settled into a familiar rhythm of lips moving against each other as the rest of the world faded away. You were reminded of the times you had spent sneaking in here as a teenager after Peter had come back from a mission and healing him with your touch. You had thought you had been smart but your Dad had always known even the things you didn’t want him to know, thanks to Peter being loud in the bedroom. 

“Y/n,” Peter pulled back and cupped your face in his hands, worry still evident on his face. “You just went through an ordeal, we don’t have to-” 

“Peter.” You smiled kindly at him, the first real smile you had felt in a while as you held him close and nuzzled your nose against his. “I want to because I love you and I wasted all this time trying to push you away when all I needed was to have you here, with me.” 

The smile that lit up Peter’s face was enough to make your heart race from pure joy as he held you close and kissed you one more time. In the background the sound of a countdown had begun, counting down the seconds till the new year would begin. 

“I love you too by the way.” Peter interrupted, his cheeks burning scarlet as you kissed over his face and neck. You giggled and shook your head at how dorky Peter could be. 

“I never stopped.” Your eyes met his again as he spoke and the sincerity in his gaze made you pause. You had never met anybody quite like Peter and you were sure you never would. 

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6!” 

“Neither did I.” 

Both of you smiled as you cuddled close, enjoying every moment that you had and determined not to waste another. You remembered fondly all the times that the Avengers team and your friends had tried to set you and Peter up, placing you together on missions and being the only two left when the study group or team briefing got cancelled. 

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1!” 

“Happy new year!” You chimed in with the rest of the party but only as a shared whisper between you and Peter. He returned the sentiment with a new years kiss just like the year before but this time there was more love and passion behind it, behind the closed doors of Peter’s old room. 

The polaroid picture that May had snapped of you both asleep in each other's arms that night soon took pride and place in Peter’s room. That was until you moved in together and had a whole canvas filled with photos of the both of you including your wedding photos.

Taglist (join here): @farfrombarnes @marvel-lock @parkerpeter24

Moots: @the-girl-in-the-chair @glowunderthemoon @spideyspeaches @seolaseoul

[mystical-cryptid]

I must ramble about an AU idea I had in my head.

[SPOILER WARNING FOR MY FRIEND!! They haven't seen the movies yet.]

Also warning for canon divergence/serious piece of media turning unserious for the sake of self indulgence OOC ideas.

Basically, Mark Hoffman, Amanda Young, and Lawrence Gordon never became apprentices for John Kramer. He never recruited them after their designated traps. (Zepp most likely takes Amanda's place in being the loyal apprentice in this AU.)

The three are just survivors of the Jigsaw Killer's games that won their tests. This AU is mainly centered towards Mark Hoffman and his colleagues in the police department. If any one you have seen "Dexter", this AU is basically like that.

Tapp is the Department Dad figure, and Sing's his favorite child /HJJJ. Hoffman and Rigg are best friends, and have been since the academy. Mark is the quiet guy that the rest of the group besides Fisk and Tapp get weirded out by, but they invite him to the group events since he is Rigg's friend.

But Mark has a secret. He wouldn't have been tested by the Jigsaw Killer if he didn't have it.

In this AU, Angelina is alive. That night, Mark had a bad feeling, so he went over to Angie's apartment. That's when Seth Baxter was in the middle of attacking Angie, and was about to murder her, but Mark intervened when he kicked the door open.

Mark nearly plummeted Seth to death, but he was stopped by Angie. Seth got arrested and was on trial. Seth got a hefty sentence, but Angie wasn't quite the same again. Five years later, Seth is released from prison on a technicality.

Mark, not wanting Seth to get near Angie, decided to take matters into his own hands. Seth dies in the Pendulum Trap he constructed, then he gets tested by Kramer, who was not pleased to receive credit for a work he didn't make.

This area in the AU gets kinda murky. I don't know if Mark gets tested by a modified version of the shotgun trap, or the bear trap. And I'm not sure how Kramer just lets Mark go. Closet thing I got is Kramer was like "If you can free yourself this trap before the timer runs out, I will leave you again."

So Mark survives the trap, and lives to not tell the tale. He bears a secret he can never tell anyone, not even his own sister. Speaking of Angie, she's doing sort of alright in this AU, but the trauma from her ex boyfriend has scarred her, and his death wasn't any consolation. The guilt eats away at Mark once a while, but he doesn't regret putting Seth down.

But the antics of the department cops (need a nickname for them) softens the blow of the angst. This AU is not as dark and grisly as the actual SAW franchise, I just wanted a funny lil AU with Mark and his coworkers that never really get talked about. Like "Dexter", I like the dynamic of a secret killer surrounded by coworkers in law enforcement, and those coworkers don't really find out because of the antics.

Now I just had the thought of Matt Gibson in a role like Doakes in "Dexter".

Oh, Mark Hoffman and Peter Strahm still get together! Idk how, but they do find each other!

Anyway, yee, that's it! I plan on making content for this AU, idk when, but soon! See ya!

[ao3feed-peterstiles]

Wolfridge Ranch

Read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/59797051 by Baby_Sweetpea Witness protection was a fickle thing, and a tight network. He couldn’t reach out to his dad, or to Scott and his wife Kira, or to Lydia or Jackson or Danny. He was completely alone, in a new state, with a new name, date of birth and backstory. Gone was Stiles Stilinski, 24 from Beacon Hills, California. Son of the Sheriff Noah Stilinski, best friend of Scott McCall, former lacrosse benchwarmer. Hello Ellis Kit, 23, from Kensington, Minnesota, quiet kid of a small time farmer. _____ After Stiles witnesses the brutal murder of a man by his Ex Boyfriend, Theo Raeken, he’s put into witness protection half way across the country, away from all he’s ever known. He gains a job as a ranch-hand under hot as hell co-owners Peter Hale and Chris Argent, a temporary safe haven known for taking in strays. Happily, he finds himself gaining a family, but quickly realises he could lose so much more. Words: 1710, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: M/M, Multi Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale, Chris Argent, Derek Hale, Isaac Lahey, Cora Hale, Erica Reyes, Vernon Boyd, Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Jackson Whittemore, Kira Yukimura, Lydia Martin, Danny Māhealani, Aiden (Teen Wolf) Relationships: Chris Argent/Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Chris Argent/Peter Hale, Chris Argent/Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall/Kira Yukimura, Derek Hale/Isaac Lahey, Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes, Danny Māhealani/Jackson Whittemore Additional Tags: Past Theo Raeken/Stiles Stilinski, Violence, Blood and Violence, Minor Character Death, but it’s none of the good ones don’t worry, Scott McCall Being an Idiot (Teen Wolf), But still a good friend, Author is australian sorry for american inaccuracies, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, Threesome - M/M/M, Good Peter Hale, Good Chris Argent, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Human, Smut, Allison and Malia don’t exist sorry, Ages adjusted for Peter and Chris and Stiles, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is Noah (Teen Wolf), Undercover, Witness Protection, Bad Person Theo Raeken, Murder, Other Additional Tags to Be Added Read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/59797051

[hnknafan2016]

Night of the Living Doll AU where Peter is Alice’s normal stuffed rabbit when she’s a child, but when she’s older and really going through it, she finds him buried at the bottom of her closet and starts crying, wishing he could make her feel better the way he used to, so through the magic of childhood wonder, unbeknownst to her, he’s brought to life, and being Peter, his answer to many of her problems is murder. Her ex-boyfriend? Gone without a trace. Her dad? On thin fucking ice if he doesn’t get his shit together and start treating his middle daughter with the love and attention she deserves. Anyone crosses her? Lord help them.

To be fair, he’s also looking out for her in more comforting ways. She’s feeling down and suddenly oh look, there’s Peter, how’d he get there? Oh well, he’s so cute, I’ll give him a squeeze! She falls asleep studying and wakes up with a blanket wrapped around her. Sometimes there are crude bunches of wildflowers on her windowsill. Sometimes there is freshly cut fruit in the mornings when she wakes up, or when she gets home. Her stuff stays clean and neat. They are nice things, but things she can also easily dismiss as coincidence, or being done by someone else.

Btw, he’s not trying to date her or something in this universe. Her happiness is still literally the only thing he cares about, but platonically. She’s not his wife, she’s his mission. She could get married, her spouse just better behave. Bastard would be watching them like an even worse elf on the shelf. Get ready for Rabbit Knows Your Habits, all day every day. Alice’s poor partner would be like hey honey the doll creeps me out, can we at least put it in the closet? No, she answers absentmindedly, he likes it up there. Peter is now staring directly into this poor person’s soul.

He could have been a gift from Lorina, and came to life after she passed away, but he’s not possessed by Lorina.

[oldfangirl81]

My brain really is always trying to connect Marvel to my other fandoms. But when you bring Gods, magic and the multiverse then anything becomes possible.

Fandoms: The Sentinel, Due South, Young Justice, Torchwood, Nimona, Warehouse 13, Lucifer, Stranger Things, 911 Lone Star, Hawaii 50, 911, Eureka

• Sentinel: Clint is sentinel whose strength is sight. But his abusive father still cost him a good chunk of hearing. Other events have left Clint completely deaf in one ear and partially in the other. In a world where ableism exists this makes it hard to find a guide. Until he meets Coulson/Natasha/Bobbi/Bucky/Darcy/Laura.

• Due South: Teenage Clint has been betrayed by Barney and Trickshot. The circus happened to be in Chicago at the time. Clint ends up homeless after being released/sneaking out from the hospital. He meets Diefenbaker on one of his adventures. This leads to Ray and Benton fostering Clint. Hawkeye still becomes an Avenger but he was SHIELDS best track in both urban and wilderness settings.

• DC: Young Justice Connor Kent tries to protect his team from an angry magic user. Instead of dying he is transported to the Barton farm a week before the snap. How would Clint's arc change if he had a superpowered teenager following him like a duckling.

• Torchwood: During Captain Jack's absence the rift gets odd again. Ianto and Toshiko get pulled in and spit back out in the sanctum sanctorum. Wong and Ianto bond over properly brewed hot drinks. Toshiko makes friends with a hacker online by the name of Skye.

• Nimona: What if Nimona brought a guest back with them in the form of a shape shifting Asgardian Loki. The God flirts heavily with Ballister to the annoyance of Ambrosius.

• Warehouse 13: Somehow Steve's shield becomes an artifact. Steve, Bucky and Sam take a trip to the warehouse in hopes of fixing it.

• Warehouse 13: During a new experiment to bring back her daughter HG Wells is sent to Tony Stark's lab while the man was explaining something to Peter Parker. To Clint's amusement HG flirts heavily with Natasha.

• Lucifer: Clint follows a suspect into Lux and stops her from taking a shot at Lucifer. When the cops arrive Clint has the awkward moment of seeing his ex-boyfriend, Detective Dan Espinoza.

• Stranger Things: Instead of exiting the upside down they end up in the sanctum. Much to Dr Stranger's annoyance but he does assist in helping them get back eventually. It takes effort because once the kids discover they are in a comic universe they want to explore.

• 911 Lone Star: When Steve was on his bike tour he met a Texas Ranger who he struck up a friendship with. Bucky, Steve and Sam were in town for the wedding incognito as "work friends". Because of this the gun shot wasn't fatal. Carlos doesn't know how to react to his Dad being friends with Avengers. And ones that weren't straight. I love a Jewish Bucky so he bonds with TK on several levels.

• Hawaii 50: Clint is taking a forced vacation in Hawaii. As luck would have it he's in a museum that Charlie's school was visiting when it was taken hostage. The bad guys are specifically looking for Charlie as revenge for something related to his stepdad. Clint stops them before the task force arrives. He quickly becomes family.

• 911: Bucky and Clint are trying a normal date at the Santa Monica Pier. They befriend a kid and the guy they assume is his stepdad. Then the Tsunami hits. Because of the extra trained adults Chris doesn't get lost. The school gets in hot water for calling Chris a liar for saying an Avenger saved him. The lawsuit goes down very differently, either because they get him a better lawyer who works with the union or offer Buck a job with Avengers HQ in New York.

• Eureka: Clint drops in on an old friend, Sheriff Jack Carter. Given all the shenanigans he's used to the town barely phases Clint. However Nathan Stark is not happy to have a member of his cousin's boyband hanging around Jack. His headache increases when several assassins, Bucky and Natasha, arrive to bug Clint.

[grigori77]

2023 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30.  SICK – the year’s first real horror cinema surprise was also one of its VERY FIRST standouts period, a brilliant little streaming sleeper from Peacock which snuck in under the radar but EFFORTLESSLY captured my attention AND the darker parts of my imagination.  Best of all, though, it was SO COOL to see legendary revisionist horror screenwriter Kevin Williamson return to the “big screen” again after spending so long plying his trade on TV – I was VERY MUCH the target audience for Scream when it came out, I just ATE UP his delicious post-modern deconstruction of the slasher genre and its subsequent follow-ups (although Robert Rodriguez’ The Faculty, his fantastic take on alien invasion movie tropes, remains my very favourite of Willaimson’s creations to date), even if it did lead to a fresh sub-genre which, paradoxically, became increasingly tired and toothless as the years progressed.  In the end, I think it’s probably A GOOD THING he took a step back – he just needed a chance to rethink things and find a fresh angle to come at the genre … and BY THE GODS has he ever found one with THIS.  Interestingly, for Williamson at least, the Pandemic couldn’t have come along at a better time, giving him fertile ground indeed in which to grow a particularly potent darkly comic slasher which EASILY lives up to his masterworks.  Taking place in the early days of the original outbreak, when the first Lockdown was just starting, infection alerts and self-isolation were only just becoming a major thing and everybody was PANICKING over how much they really DIDN’T yet know about what was REALLY going on, the setting was already ripe for some pretty intense, chaotic storytelling … so adding a brutal serial killer with a penchant for killing off the idiots who flagrantly flaunted the COVID safety restrictions and purposefully went out of their way to pretend things were the same as normal was a slick move.  The main bulk of the narrative revolves around three college kids in some nondescript part of the US – Parker (Blockers and The Society’s Gideon Adlon), a well-off party girl who’s looking to make some major changes in her life, and her best friend Miri (up-and coming R&B artist Beth Million), who go to Parker’s family’s expansive country home to quarantine in comfort, and Parker’s newly-EX boyfriend DJ (Man of Steel and Teen Wolf’s Dylan Sprayberry), who turns up ostensibly to try and patch things up between them but may simply have come for an opportunistic hook-up – who are targeted by a killer who subsequently hunts them during a night of fraught tension, smartly staged stalk-and-slash set-pieces and a hefty dose of Williamson’s characteristic jet black-but-enjoyably geeky sense of humour, which is this time pitched to a particularly sharp edge of biting finger-on-the-pulse satire given the rich socio-political real-life material he’s able to mine here.  The small but extremely potent cast are all BRILLIANT, although the film really is DOMINATED by Adlon, who once again shows that she’s destined for GREAT THINGS INDEED in the future with a brilliant turn that runs an impressive gamut from irresponsibly entitled brat to vitally determined survivor once circumstances have fully driven her to take proper responsibility for her childish behaviour, making for a compellingly sympathetic young heroine we find easy enough to root for.  It probably helps the man behind the camera is John Hyams (All Square, Alone), son of legendary genre-hopping director Peter Hyams, who shows he’s definitely inherited his dad’s impressive skill by crafting a lean, tight and precise slice of thrilling cinema which takes full advantage of a tight budget and (mostly) a single location, which results in a brilliant little comedy horror gem that I’d heartily recommend folk hunt down on streaming, or at the very least keep in mind for Halloween …

29.  HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE – it’s always nice when a sharp little indie banger sneaks in under the radar to place on one of my lists for the year, and this impressive critically acclaimed underdog thriller definitely shaped up as one of the year’s most memorable examples.  It’s a very low-fi, gritty down-and-dirty procedural slice-of-life thriller about a motley collection of eco-terrorists banding together to sabotage an oil pipeline in West Texas, focusing almost entirely on this core group of disillusioned youths played by eight uniformly EXCEPTIONAL actors each handing in genuine (ahem) dynamite performances.  Ariele Barer (Marvel’s Runaways), The Revenant’s Forrest Goodluck, American Honey’s Sasha Lane and Marcus Scribner (probably best known as the voice of She-Ra & the Princesses of Power’s Bow) are the undeniable stand-outs here, but all of these kids are ON FIRE throughout, showing they’ve got truly BRIGHT futures ahead of them indeed, while Irene Bedard (Smoke Signals) also impresses in a supporting turn as Joanna, an FBI agent who may be onto their plans … the film bounces between the varying points of view amongst the characters, gradually unveiling their motivations to commit a morally complex terrorist act through a series of scattered flashbacks punctuating the planning, execution and aftermath of the bombing itself, with writer-director Daniel Goldhaber (Cam, here co-adapting Andreas Maim’s incendiary non-fiction novel with Ariele Barer herself and Cam’s co-writer Jordan Sjol) weaving a suitably taut and atmospheric slowburn path throughout the flawlessly executed narrative, the film brilliantly building its wire-taut tension to a rewardingly cathartic climax which is as provocative as the challenging subject matter.  This is a film that asks some VERY BIG QUESTIONS and delivers some suitably complicated and rightfully TROUBLING answers, a razor sharp piece of indie cinema which definitely deserves the critical acclaim and cult hit status it’s earned …

28.  COCAINE BEAR – gods, if EVER there was a true story that seemed TAILOR MADE for cinema, it’s the bizarre tale of Cokey the Bear, AKA Pablo Eskobear, an American black bear that died after ingesting 34 keys of cocaine that were dumped out of a smuggler’s cargo plane over the Tennessee wilderness in 1985.  That being said, it’s not a huge surprise it’s taken Hollywood SO LONG to actually get it made, perhaps it’s just TOO CRAZY a concept for it to have been made before now.  Ultimately, the film takes A LOT of liberties with the truth to instead craft an entertaining story, but in the end that’s definitely the smart move, simply using the concept as a springboard to craft a gloriously batshit horror comedy with a JET BLACK sense of humour populated by an offbeat collection of quirky characters.  Keri Russell stars as Sari, a nurse and single mother who has to brave the woods in order to find her young daughter Dee Dee (The Florida Project’s Brooklyn Prince), who’s playing hooky in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest with her best friend Henry (Sweet Tooth’s Christian Convery) right when Cokey goes on her drug-fuelled homicidal rampage; meanwhile, recently bereaved widower Eddie (Solo’s Alden Ehrenreich) and his best friend Daveed (Straight Outta Compton’s O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are two drug cartel enforcers reluctantly scouring the area in search of their lost product at the behest of Eddie’s overbearing St Louis drug kingpin father Syd White (the late, great Ray Liotta, to whom the film is dedicated); and then there’s hapless but dogged Knoxville detective Bob (the venerable Isaiah Whitlock Jr.), who knows he can bust White if he can just get his hands on the evidence.  All three parties converge in the park while the bear wreaks merry havoc in Elizabeth Banks’ third film as a director (after Pitch Perfect 2 and the CRIMINALLY mistreated and overlooked Charlie’s Angels reboot), which looks like it might FINALLY get people to start taking her serious BEHIND the camera as well as IN FRONT of it – this is a proper laugh-riot of a film which is also delightfully non-PC, and it’s liberally peppered with impressively blood-soaked effects to thrill the gore-hounds as well as an impressively well-realised digital animal character in the eponymous drug-addled beastie.  The cast are brilliant too, Russell and Ehrenreich both particularly impressing in their respective nominal lead roles while the kids are EXCEPTIONAL (particularly Convery, getting to gleefully overact as one of the most hyperactive-yet-not-irritating kids I’ve ever seen on screen), and it’s both enriching and a little heartbreaking to watch Liotta once again act his socks off in one of his very last film roles; that being said, several of the scenes are thoroughly STOLEN by the irrepressible Margo Martindale, who’s clearly having the time of her life in one of her most gloriously OTT roles as foul-mouthed, much put-upon park Ranger Liz.  Ultimately this is a horror comedy where the balance is definitely tipped very much in favour of the laughs over the scares, but that’s fine, because with a concept this batshit bonkers we were always gonna find it too funny to ever be remotely scary, so the end result is one of THE FUNNIEST MOVIES I ran across in the cinema all year, rightfully revelling in its own inherent irreverence.  It’s just about the most fun you could ever expect it to be, which is just what you want from a movie about a cocaine bear, really …

27.  THE FLASH – oh boy … yeah, this one is gonna be a COMPLICATED talk.  This was one TROUBLED project from day one, from the major shake-ups surrounding the Joss Whedon-compromised Justice League film and the subsequent mess THAT unleashed, through the whole conflicting debate over Zack Snyder’s original vision for the DCEU, and then the eventual collapse of the Cinematic Universe itself, this film, originally entitled Flashpoint (which personally I like A WHOLE LOT more, actually, since it really does pay DIRECT reference to the actually storyline they went with) went through a whole collection of incarnations and reiterations and, for a while, it was starting to look like we might NEVER see it hit our cinema screens at all … and that’s without even mentioning star Ezra Miller’s ongoing legal troubles and essential CANCELLING after their continued outrageous, unacceptable off-set behaviour, which looked set to torpedo the film all on its own.  Honestly, I have to admit I was MYSELF a little wary going in, not because of these particular problems but more just the prospect of what I would actually do if, in spite of all this, I actually still LIKED IT … unfortunately for me, that was VERY MUCH the case, which is why we’re here in the first place. 

But I must forge on, and so I’m gonna just take this film on ITS OWN face value and ignore the external problems … at least until THE END of the review … because The Flash is, actually, pretty fucking GREAT.  Barry Allen (Miller) is finally coming into his own as a fully-fledged member of the Justic League, even if this does frequently mean he’s essentially cleaning up the extreme messes left behind when Batman/Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) gets involved in particularly BIG potential world-shattering events, as brilliantly illustrated in the film’s suitably SPECTACULAR opening set-piece, which does a BEAUTIFUL job of not only letting us know EXACTLY what this incarnation of the Flash is actually capable of, but also revealing Barry’s own distinctly unique, offbeat and, frankly, really rather ADORABLE personal style of superheroism.  Then the plot itself kicks off when Barry’s father Henry (Ron Livingstone), serving life in prison for the wrongfully-convicted murder of Barry’s mother Nora (Pan’s Labyrinth’s wonderful Maribel Verdu), sees his latest (and, it looks like, FINAL) appeal fall flat due to a crucial new piece of evidence turning out to be useless, and Barry decides he's had enough of ignoring a particularly potent aspect of his superpowers –

the ability to run SO FAST that he can actually GO BACK IN TIME!!!  So he races back to the day of his mother’s death and tweaks circumstances so that she survives, only for Barry to then get punted off track before he can return to the present by an unknown entity within “the Speedforce” which then lands him in 2013, just days before Earth’s invasion by the hostile Kryptonian forces of General Zod (Michael Shannon), as seen in Man of Steel.  Still with us so far?  Yeah, well it gets EVEN MORE complicated, cuz it turns out that, while his mum is now STILL ALIVE, Barry hasn’t got his powers in this universe, which means that he has to reform the Justice League himself in THIS timeline in order to defeat Zod.  Except that there are FAR MORE consequences to messing with time than Barry ever took into account set to make things all but insurmountably complicated for him to succeed … beyond this we’re getting into DANGEROUS spoiler territory, beyond the fact that these new developments give rise to whole fresh and very complicated ideas of alternative universes somewhat akin to what the MCU’s already started experimenting with (which is also, actually, something that the DC comics universe does ALL THE BLOODY TIME), which gives rise to whole new incarnations of beloved characters from the established DCEU, some of which HAVE already been revealed in the trailers and beyond, but others not so much, so … yeah, anyway, it’s a glorious MESS of a narrative, but somehow this film does a REALLY IMPRESSIVE job of navigating this jumble in an impressively coherent and breezy way that ultimately makes this a whole lot of fun to watch, actually.  Of course, the lion’s share of the praise for this HAS TO go to screenwriter Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey & the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) for wrangling the UNHOLY MESS of development done for the previous incarnations into an actual WORKING script, which was then brought to life with suitably brave and adventurous SKILL by director Andy Muschietti (Mama and It Chapter One and Two), but the uniformly EXCEPTIONAL cast shoulder a good deal of that responsibility too –

Miller may be problematic in real life, but there can be no denying that he is FUCKING BRILLIANT in his signature role, crafting a hyperactive, ultra-awkward social misfit of a superhero that us various underdog kids just can’t help rooting for, while it is a MASSIVE pleasure to get to see MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE Batman return as this AU’s altered version of Bruce Wayne, the legendary Michael Keaton himself again proving why he really is THE VERY BEST VERSION of the character out there (and I will accept NO ARGUMENT AT ALL about that, I swear you can all FIGHT ME on this particular hill upon which I am determined to DIE if I must), and Livingstone and Verdu bring an IMMENSE amount of pathos to their characters throughout which makes it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR why Barry tries SO HARD to save them both, and it’s also great fun getting to see Michael Shannon back as the Big Bad here again, I always really liked this spectacular scenery-chewing version of Zod.  For me, though, the biggest win here has to be The Young & the Restless’ Sasha Calle, making her big screen debut as the most impressive and DCEU-consistent incarnation of Kara Zor-El, aka SUPERGIRL, that we could ever have hoped for, she’s a truly AWESOME creation, EASILY as badass as Henry Cavill’s Supes but also a good deal more complex as a character too.  Ultimately it’s a shame that circumstances mean that we likely won’t get to see more of her in future projects, much like Keaton’s returning Batman, as they’re definitely the unexpected heart and soul of the film, easily delivering in the most impressively iconic set-pieces and memorable character beats.  Indeed, this is SO BLOODY BRILLIANT all round as a film – from its spectacular action sequences, through its frequent gleefully anarchic screwball humour, to a variety of impressive jaw-dropping game-changer twists in the narrative – that the fact that the DCEU itself is officially over and all of this means PRECISELY ZERO in the face of where it’s all going in James Gunn’s incoming Cinematic Universe reboot makes this feel all the more ultimately pointless, which lends any viewing a bittersweet aftertaste no matter HOW enjoyable it all is.  I mean granted, it’s NOT perfect (there is, famously, some pretty clunky CGI that ALMOST takes you out of the experience, especially in the climactic sequence when we see the timelines start to collide), but then very few of the DCEU movies HAVE BEEN anyway, and this one still works just fine for what it is.  So it may not have any actual VALUE for the series moving forward, but it’s still a really great movie that MORE THAN deserves to be seen for its own merits, and I highly recommend you give it a chance anyway.  At least Gunn and co have seen the sense to keep Muschietti onboard for their reboot (namely helming the new DCU’s Batman reboot The Brave & the Bold), and if they’ve any more sense they’ll bring Christina Hodson back for more too …

26.  THE EQUALIZER 3 – Director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have had a long and extremely fruitful working relationship, from their earliest collaboration on his best-known film, Training Day (which finally landed Washington his long-overdue best actor Oscar, although many of us agree that it SHOULD have gone to him a few years prior for The Hurricane), through the EXTREMELY impressive remake of the classic western The Magnificent Seven, to their most lucrative and long-running collab to date, a series of feature adaptations of a cult classic TV thriller show from the 80s which has now reached its THIRD instalment and STILL seems to be running at full steam with no sign of flagging.  Indeed, this just might be THE BEST ONE YET … Washington once again effortlessly delivers a coolly sophisticated, often understated but still typically deeply nuanced turn as Robert McCall, the former special-forces soldier turned SOCOM operative who reemerged from self-imposed faked-death-retirement in the first film in order to deliver bloody retribution for the brutal assault of a young girl, only to subsequently find a new calling as a freelance guardian angel for the weak and powerless who have nowhere else to turn with a dangerous problem.  This time round his antiheroic adventures has brought him to Italy, where the ill-fated end of his latest operation sees him near death from a bullet in his back, being nursed back to health in the remote coastal town of Altamonte.  It’s here that he finally finds that true peace that’s so long eluded him as he recovers from his injuries, but he finds himself ultimately dragged back into the fray when a

Camorra crime outfit from Naples, looking to expand their operation to new territories, starts trying to exploit the townsfolk that Robert has grown so close to beyond their breaking point … ultimately this is a more slowburn, understated affair than the previous two films, but that actually proves to be this instalment’s greatest strength, allowing us to get closer to our Equalizer than ever before, as well as the people he’s driven to help, which makes this BY FAR the most emotionally investing film in the trilogy, and makes us root for Robert like never before as we wait for him to FINALLY bring the pain to these Mafioso thugs.  That dam-break, when they finally come, is as viscerally intense as we’ve come to expect from the series, but thanks to the additional groundwork this time round the kills and cathartic payback delivered feel more satisfyingly substantial, while the film’s greatest pleasures ultimately lie more in the anticipation as Fuqua cranks the tension tighter and we edge further forward in our seats.  Once again, the supporting cast all shine through, with Andrea Scarduzio (Colour On the Cross) giving great bad guy as subtly reptilian Mob boss Vincent Quaranta, ably backed up by Andrea Dodero (Thou Shalt Not Hate) as Vincent’s vicious, jumped up thug of a little brother Marco, while Gaia Scodellaro (CentroVetrine) and Eugenio Mastrandeo (From Scratch) deftly show us what’s so worth fighting for in this town as effervescently friendly local café owner Aminah and Altamonte’s principled but pragmatically fair sole Carabinieri Gio Bonucci; the biggest standout, however, is Dakota Fanning as Emma Collins, the smart and dogged FBI agent who ends up tracking Robert down following his involvement in the opening showdown and uncovers a whole nest of previous overlooked criminal chaos.  At the end of the day though, this is ONCE AGAIN every inch Washington’s film, the erstwhile star clearly enjoying himself immensely in one of the best and most iconic

roles of his career, although this third instalment looks like it might be the last Equalizer with him in the lead since it becomes abundantly clear that it’s looking to wind things up for Robet’s final adventure in a suitably satisfying way.  That being said, there’s definitely room, interest and clear demand for more from both the fanbase AND the creatives here, with the pervading theory being that we may be going back to the early days of McCall’s time with the CIA, in which case the obvious choice moving forward would be to let John David Washington step into his dad’s shoes as young Robert.  In truth it’s the only smart choice …

25.  ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA – coming off the back of 2022’s decidedly hit-and-miss big screen slate for Disney and Marvel’s current flagship property, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, THIS past year’s first MCU release had A LOT of eyes on it.  Gods know, I definitely had TWO OF ‘EM … and it probably wasn’t the best title to be laying all this weight on, either – the Ant-Man movies in particular have always been a bit of a marmite property within the larger universe, with as many detractors as fans, which definitely didn’t help things here.  If this turned out to be third time unlucky for Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang and the rest, it could spell much larger disaster for the MCU overall, or at the very least signify that the cracks are definitely growing beyond the studios’ capacity to patch ‘em up on the run.  So I’ll admit, I went into this one with a whole lot of trepidation … was it unwarranted?  Well, being completely honest … not ENTIRELY.  Tried-and-tested comedy director Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man films have always been a pretty mad collection anyway, as much a full-blown comedy sub-franchise as the Guardians of the Galaxy movies or Thor under Taika Waititi, but even so they still managed to keep ONE FOOT on the ground even while the rest was set EXTENSIVELY in the Quantum Realm, but this one has somewhat jumped the shark.  Granted, part of this film’s particular OTT outlandishness and unabashed WACKINESS is down to narrative necessity – giving too much away plot-wise unfortunately runs the risk of dropping some MASSIVE spoilers, but it’s at least safe to say that the lion’s share of the story takes place ENTIRELY in the Quantum Realm this time, and it’s a place which is A WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT from anything we might have imagined from our very brief visits in Ant-Man & the Wasp and Avengers: Endgame.  For a start, it’s A WHOLE LOT BIGGER than we thought it was, and MUCH more heavily populated by some truly WEIRD SHIT … the film also has some major heavy-lifting to do with regards to setting up the Big Bad for Phase 5 and 6 both – Kang the Conqueror (The Last Black Man In San Francisco and Creed III’s Jonathan Majors), a Multiverse-based Thanos level threat we first encountered (sort of) in 2021’s runaway hit first season of Loki.  This at least is one of the areas in which the movie definitely SUCCEEDED – ultimately problematic as he may have become since the film’s release, Majors at least did a commendable job of establishing one of the franchise’s most interesting and effective supervillains, a near God Tier Bad Guy who’s clearly gonna give the whole Avengers roster a run for their money when they finally come face to face with him (in whatever recast form he ultimately takes).  The plot, such as it is, is pure scrambled bananas, a heavyweight mindfuck it’s best to just DISENGAGE the brain to go with in order to get proper enjoyment

out of – this is definitely a cinematic GUILTY PLEASURE, and trying to take it even remotely seriously immediately draws the eye to a thousand gaping plot-holes and glaring narrative stumbles.  At least the patented stunning, primary coloured visuals, winning sense of humour and cavalcade of delightfully wacky set-pieces (the clone-spawning “probability explosion” sequence is a particularly overblown, super-trippy highlight with an unexpected tear-jerk factor built in) are all fully functional and behaving correctly, and the thoroughly endearing cast all deliver admirably with nary an off-note hint of miscasting – Rudd and Evangeline Lilly (returning as Hope van Dyne AKA the titular Wasp) are both still pitch perfect, while it’s nice to see Michael Douglas and PARTICULARLY Michelle Pfeiffer getting to do a whole lot more this time round as Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, and the glaring Michael Pena-shaped hole is ALMOST filled by a few other quality comedic turns from the likes of deadpan laugh-MASTER Bill Murray and David Dastmalchian (here returning in a VERY interesting but also very DIFFERENT role to what we’ve seen from him here before), as well as a surprise returning face (ahem) from this trilogy’s past.  Meanwhile, alongside Majors there are other similarly noteworthy series newcomers who make BIG IMPRESSIONS, from Z Nation and The Mandalorian’s Katy O’Brien (who’s been a growing favourite of mine for a little while now), who’s a completely EPIC badass I wanna see A LOT more of in the future as hard-nosed Quantum freedom fighter Jentorra, to Kathryn Newton (Supernatural, Freaky), making the role of Scott’s now (pretty much) full-grown daughter Cassie ENTIRELY her own, and she’s clearly got a MAJOR future ahead of her in the MCU herself now she’s started carving out her own super-powered secret identity (roll on Young Avengers, I say!).  The movie may be another flawed, somewhat unwieldy and occasionally downright CLUNKY beast, but the franchise is still managing to stand up where it counts, and compared to the likes of Thor: Love & Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever it definitely holds up a good deal better in its own right.  Most of all, though, it’s A WHOLE LOT of pure, unadulterated FUN, which is ultimately exactly what you want from a big primary-coloured superhero blockbuster.  In the end, it still remains to be seen if the MCU can be clawed back from the brink it’s still teetering perilously on the edge of, but despite all that’s still wrong with it, this is at least a VERY SMALL step back in the right direction …

24.  THE PALE BLUE EYE – largely sneaking in under the radar on Netflix to start the New Year off, the latest offering from highly acclaimed indie writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass, Antlers) is, much as we’d likely expect from such a consistently varied, genre-hopping filmmaker, a strange, unique and deeply intriguing beast of a film.  Adapted from Louis Bayard’s well-received speculative fiction novel about a young Edgar Allan Poe aiding the investigation of a bafflingly macabre murder in the US Military Academy at West Point in the early 1830s.  Christian Bale returns with typical stoic, intense and magnificently brooding megawatt presence for his THIRD leading man tour of duty for Cooper (after Out of the Furnace and Hostiles) as Augustus Landor, a former West Point graduate-turned misanthropic former detective brought in to lead the investigation into the brutal hanging and evisceration (with additional heart-removal) of a young cadet that’s baffling the faculty and local police, which is soon compounded when additional bodies start piling up.  He’s aided in his endeavours by another cadet, the young Poe himself (played to PERFECTION by Harry Potter’s own Harry Melling, continuing his meteoric and deeply impressive rise to prominence with another TOUR-DE-FORCE performance here), while the clues lead to a variety of deeply troubling twists and revelations as well as an intriguing collection of suitably odd and often highly charismatic characters played by the sterling likes of Lucy Boynton, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney and a fascinatingly unusual turn from Robert Duvall, although the real standout here is a truly MAGNIFICENT career-best performance from Gillian Anderson.  Cooper piles on the story’s doom-laden gothic atmosphere to great effect throughout while cranking up the slowburn and deeply uncomfortable suspenseful tension throughout, while the plot is nothing short of MACHIAVELLIAN in its levels of ingenious labyrinthine intelligence, dropping an ultimate denouement that you really have to be paying SERIOUS ATTENTION to see coming, and the production design, costumes, period detail and, most of all, the thoroughly MOODY bleak-midwinter cinematography make for a freezing cold but thoroughly rewarding feast for the eyes for the most discerning film-fanatic.  Altogether Cooper’s delivered another winner, and I hope he continues to make films this good well into the future.

23.  DOOR MOUSE – Avan Jogia may be best known as an actor in fare like Caprica, Zombieland: Double Tap and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, but his debut feature as a writer-director definitely shows he’s got a lot of potential as a genuine filmmaking talent moving forward.  This is an edgy, offbeat and enjoyably quirky little indie oddity that CLEARLY doesn’t care to play by anyone’s conventional rules, telling its unapologetically DARK and dirty little story the way IT WANTS TO without ever trying to spell its message out for the viewer.  Riverdale’s Hayley Law is, as ever, simply MESMERISING as Mouse, a tough, hard-bitten burlesque dancer looking to make a better life for herself as a comic book creator, only for fate to throw a wrench in the works for her when girls at her club start disappearing under mysterious circumstances.  Her resulting investigation leads to the shocking realisation that they’re being kidnapped into a life of sexual slavery, and it looks like she’s going to have to make a bold and very dangerous choice in order to effect a rescue … as always, Law simply OWNS the screen, powering the story along with equal parts guarded bravado and well-hidden wounded vulnerability, and she’s ably supported by the likes of Keith Powers (Straight Outta Compton) as Mouse’s best friend Ugly, the club’s unassuming but VERY capable bouncer, the great Famke Janssen as Mama, the club’s owner and Mouse’s laconic mother figure, and Jogia himself as her ex-boyfriend, local drug-dealing hood Mooney.  The plot twists and turns with suitably pulpy skill while Mouse’s comic book bleeds into the narrative through striking imagery and quirky little animated episodes, while the film tackles big, dark themes with an unflinching eye and refuses to deliver easy answers, particularly in the cathartic but suitably JET BLACK ending.  This is a hell of a debut for a promising new filmmaking talent, then, and I’d LOVE to spend some more time with Mouse herself if Jogia and Law are willing …

22.  SHAZAM: FURY OF THE GODS – it’s interesting that, at least on here, the DC Cinematic Universe (AKA the DCEU) has managed to stand up so well this past year, especially given the recent MAJOR upheavals that have rocked the franchise as a whole.  Not least because said Universe is essentially about to get hit with a Hard Reset under the guidance of new DC Studios CEO James Gunn, so none of this even MATTERS any more going forward … certainly this fact has NOT been lost on cinemagoers, who were already starting to pull away when Black Adam came out in late 2022 and subsequently seemed content to STAY away IN DROVES for this one, likely waiting to give it a go in the privacy and safety of their own homes once it hit streaming.  In a way this sounded a pre-emptive death knell for the DCEU which I was genuinely sceptical about it recovering from … which is a shame, because 2019’s Shazam! was one of the franchise’s BEST FEATURES, a gleefully anarchic post-modern deconstruction of the overblown superhero antics the franchise largely glorified before while never taking itself particularly seriously but simply playing itself with just the right amount of knowing wink-and-nod.  Even more of a shame, then, that this follow-up has proven to be SUCH a performance TURKEY, because it’s JUST AS GOOD as the first one, taking all the lessons learned from the first movie to heart and delivering more of everything that really WORKED once again while trying something new and fresh to expand on this little corner of the Universe with impressive aplomb and consummate skill. 

Returning director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) once again delivers in HIGH STYLE and customary spooky flair as he and returning screenwriter Henry Gayden (Earth To Echo, There’s Someone In Your House), along with Fast & Furious franchise lynchpin scribe Chris Morgan, expand on the adventures of coming-of-age young hero Billy Batson (Andi Mack’s Asher Angel) and his (still unnamed) superpowered alter ego (Zachary Levi), alongside his now similarly gifted teenaged foster siblings, as the Daughters of Atlas – Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Anthea (Rachel Zegler), a trio of immensely powerful but (somewhat) morally dubious classical Greek goddesses – come to claim their powers for their own in order to rejuvenate the Tree of Life and punish Mankind for its wickedness.  The usual existential high stakes, then.  Angel and Levi are, once again, ON FIRE here, the former star of Chuck in particular once again proving what an undisputable comedic MASTER he is while they both deliver MAGNIFICENTLY in the dramatic moments too, while their returning co-stars and sterling veteran support are once again just as great as before, It’s Jack Dylan Grazer particularly getting to really SHINE this time round in a particularly WEIGHTY role that nonetheless once again manages to utilise his own impressive comedic talents to full effect too, while it’s also GREAT to see This Is Us’ Faith Herman get a much more expanded role this time round as the irrepressible Darla; Djimon Hounsou, meanwhile, also gets a lot more to do as he returns as the enjoyably crabby and pompous Wizard Shazam, who’s none too happy with Billy for breaking the staff last time round and setting this all off in the first place.  The Daughters, meanwhile, are FANTASTIC antagonists, Liu and Mirren clearly enjoying the opportunity to be flamboyant, majestic and over-the-top in proper Shakespearean

style, while Zegler invests “Anne” with a good deal more moral fibre and complexity as the most sympathetic (and ultimately conflicted) of the trio.  Sandberg and co again deliver IN SPADES on the action, atmospherics, gorgeously exotic design and sheer creativity which made the first movie such an unexpected treat, while also delivering more of that winning, sometimes downright SCREWBALL BONKERS humour to keep it entertaining and let you know that, just like its predecessor, this film knows FULL WELL how ridiculous it is and is fully prepared to just OWN IT.  The end result is, ultimately, one of the best of the closing slate of DCEU films, which just makes it even sadder to think that they probably won’t continue the story once the franchise reboots.

21.  GODZILLA MINUS ONE – as much as I LOVE the new efforts of Warner Bros’ impressively robust Monsterverse Expanded Universe to bring the greatest big screen kaiju of them all to life, I am not even REMOTELY surprised that it took a Japanese writer-director to truly get right down to the heart of the character with what feels like the truest, most respectful and, quite simply, VERY BEST big screen reworking of the classic original to date.  Mostly I just count myself lucky I was able to find a showing at my local cinema that I could actually get to – this is definitely one of those features that really does DESERVE to be seen on the BIG screen.  Writer-director Takashi Yamazaki certainly has an impressive track record, having helmed the likes of Space Battleship Yamato, The Great War of Archimedes and Lupin III: The First, but even so, this came somewhat out of the blue to not only become a MASSIVE, runaway hit in Japan but also in foreign markets, particularly blowing away western audiences who are universally praising it as one of THE greatest movies of this decade so far.  All right … from a purely critical point of view, I may not quite think THAT about this, but this IS an EXTREMELY GOOD FILM, Yamazaki guiding an impressively game cast and clearly deeply committed crew to create a work of rare emotional power and uplifting intensity that tells a breathless tale of the unbreakable power of the human spirit even in the face of HORRIFIC cataclysmic events … a theme which has, of course, remained close to the hearts of the Japanese ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which famously directly informed Ishiro Honda’s beloved original.  This time round, Godzilla is a pure, monstrous and thoroughly TERRIFYING force of nature throughout the film, a devastating and unstoppable mutated aberration created by the fallout of America’s H-bombs, which is unleashing unfathomable chaos across post-World War II Japan, leading a band of desperate civilians to take matters into their own hands and attempt a desperate stand to stop the horror before all is lost.  Ryunosuke Kamiki (probably best known for his years of work as one of Studio Ghibli’s key voice actors) proves a compellingly fallible hero as deeply traumatised failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima, who finds himself battling internal demons even worse than the monster he’s up against in the real world, ably supported by Minami Hanabe (The Great War of Archimedes) as Noriko, the spirited young adoptive mother that Koichi takes in after returning from the war and forms a tight bond with, Hidetaka Yoshiaki (Always: Sunset On Third Street) as Professor Kenji Noda, the former Naval weapons engineer who becomes Koichi’s mentor, and Munetaka Aoki (Rurouni Kenshin) as Sosaku Tachibana, a former Naval fighter mechanic suffering from his own deep-seated traumas after the War.  This is an interesting departure from the classic Kaiju cinema recipe, because while the Big G is definitely a powerful and potent threat that casts a very BIG shadow over events here, Minus One is ultimately less of a monster movie than a movie with a monster IN IT, Yamazaki preferring to focus on the human story and concentrate our attention on the horrors these people have to endure at the unfathomably massive claws of this terrible creature, certainly physical but predominantly mental and emotional.  That’s not to say it ain’t suitably potent in the action stakes, EASILY delivering some suitably THRILLING set-pieces while the creature himself and the chaos he unleashes is portrayed with impressively executed visual effects flair … it’s just that, ultimately, this is a film which is much more of a triumph of GREAT WRITING, peerless direction and awards-worthy performances from an astonishing cast.  In other words, it’s just a really GREAT FILM, period.  Which makes this something TRULY SPECIAL after all, I guess …

[dkehoe]

Daphne moved to Waning Bay, Michigan, without knowing anyone but her fiancé Peter and when he leaves her for his best friend Petra the week before their wedding she is left only with her dream job as a children’s librarian and a new roommate, Petra’s ex-boyfriend Miles. Miles is the exact opposite of buttoned up Daphne and for the most part they ignore each other. Until one night after they’ve both had a bit to drink they decide to post a picture that makes it look like they are together. That moment becomes the start of a blossoming friendship where Miles shows Daphne the charms of Waning Bay, Michigan and she posts a few photos of their adventures. Every year I look forward to the summer because I know Emily Henry has a new book release. I relish the fact I’m going to have a few laughs, shed a couple tears, and emotionally involve myself with the main characters in her books. Funny Story was certainly all that. Along with those tension filled moments with Miles were side stories about Daphne making friends with her fellow librarians, Miles’s younger sister coming for a visit and taking Waning Bay by storm, as well as a visit from Daphne’s absentee dad. All things that helped move the story forward, providing insight into our two main characters and enabling us to become wrapped up in the storytelling and drama. This time one of these subplots struck kind of close to home, which made the story more impactful and at times kind of hard to read. Despite this I loved the story and these characters and didn’t find it hard to root for them at all. This might be Daphne and Miles’s story but I loved all of these side characters just as much as our two protagonists. Ashley was a great budding best friend, teaching Daphne all sorts of lessons about friendship that totally resonated, her Dad whom everyone loved and loved everyone but made Daphne feel second best, and Miles’s sister who loved her big brother more than anyone in the world and just wanted to stand by and support him. These side plots added so much depth to the story , not all of it was rainbows and sunshine but there were funny moments to lighten the mood. Just what I expect from a novel by this author. I do have one request though- maybe just a tiny bit more happy moments? Our protagonists were put through the wringer! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❣️ Click this link to purchase this book!* Funny Story Copyright 2024 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved *Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.