#the only official venom adaptation of the time i can think of is from the ps1 game from 2000

[transrightsjimin]

you know i think marvel really fumbled when it didn't release any venom comics during the height of the nu metal era and then proceeded to make the most disliked series / main characters during the height of the emo days. like. this would've rly hit w the edgy teens

[imthepunchlord]

Adrien’s Best to Least

Marinette, Alya, Nino, Kagami

Alright, officially four seasons in, we got more on Adrien which wound up to be... something. Let’s get this character study going covering his best to least fit. I apologize if this comes out on the side of salty, trying to be as neutral as possible, but be ready for his issues to be addressed.

Adrien is a complicated character in his set up, but Adrien himself is not a complex individual. He is, quite literally, one of the more straight forward characters in this show, and is quite stagnant and unchanging. And that is more the fault of the writers who don’t want to change him at all and deem him to be “perfect” while ignoring any flaws. Looking at him as a character without the narrative to act in his favor, there’s actually quite a struggle for him miraculous wise, but two seem to suit him best. 

His best are Turtle and Peafowl. Turtle meets the core who he is, working off his strengths, where he likes to be in the field, and his instincts. And this miraculous actually offers him the growth he really needs, while keeping true to who he is. Peafowl it turn can best adjust to his style and needs, his want to be flashy and dynamic. 

Adrien at the core is a protector, supporter, and follower. Being an incredibly reckless and active character, he thrives to be in the front lines, and has largely always prioritized his partner’s safety over his own, which has become problematic behavior at this point. But that’s what you want for a Turtle, someone who’s ready to be on the front lines and is being conscious of their allies. And out of the 5, this suits him best in who he is and how he works. 

The growth potential comes from the limits of his protection as Shelter can only be used once, and he has to be conscious about timing and how to use it. And typically, Adrien does have good responsive instincts for when he needs to be a protector. While this won’t stop him from diving in, it can afford him more means to do so while also keeping himself safe and in the fight, and it can shape him up to be smarter in how he protects others. This miraculous also counts for self-protection and ideally can get it into his head that his safety matters to. 

Overall, I do see Adrien and Wayzz getting along as Wayzz is friendly, engaging, and will adapt and adopt quirks of his humans so he can quickly bond with them. This sets up for him to click with his kwami a lot sooner, and with Wayzz being a more serious and responsible kwami than Plagg, this can set up Adrien to respect and listen to Wayzz. So when Wayzz calls him out on anything, Adrien is more likely to listen to him and consider his words. Wayzz is a kwami who doesn’t approve of reckless behavior, and that will address one of Adrien’s biggest issues. 

With Peafowl, in comparison to Fox, would be a lot forgiving of Adrien’s quick, responsive, and straightforward thinking. When Adrien makes his golems, they are made with a clear purpose that they will see to. And they will function as he expects them to. This will match his want to play by his own rules, as whatever he wants can come into existence, and for sure, he’d be quite the attention grabber. This miraculous is quite flexible in battle, able to be settled on the sidelines or join the golem in combat. 

Growth wise, this miraculous can inspire a spark of creativity, as while he makes golems to serve out a purpose, thought is required for them. He will also need to learn to be conscious of his resources as each golem is born from a section of his fan, and if he makes too many, he can end up weaponless. 

For him and Duusu, I see them being a very energetic pair, probably borderline chaotic. Duusu would actually probably add onto his flamboyance and encourage him to really let loose and “show his true colors”. She’d also be a source of affection and support, something that he really wants. She could also have Adrien step up in maturity as she can be a goofball. 

Adrien’s 2nd best is Bee. Bee can work off his energy and allow him to remain a mid-to-close-range fighter, though there are concerns to him using it which keeps this from being apart of his best, though he has enough potential and promise to use it well that keeps this from joining the worst. 

Bee will have a lot of the same appeals as Cat that makes this manageable for Adrien. It is direct, involved, allows him to be a teamplayer, and has an aggressive power. But while it has the same appeals to Cat, it has the same issues as Adrien can be reckless with his power and has activated Cataclysm at the wrong time a few times which has led to issues (Aeon’s death being the most iconic example). Chances are even higher that he’d have similar issues with Venom, and be more reckless with Venom as unlike Cataclysm, this is just a temporary paralysis, not pure destruction. Cataclysm requires some level of control and consideration in use. Venom is not the same in its use, so Adrien can end up more reckless with it as there aren’t so severe consequences with it, in theory. And with his tendency to charge and Venom requires some stealth and calculation in use, chances are good that many are going to see his sting coming and prepare for it. 

Growth wise, Bee can help Adrien grow as a team player, as teamwork is a big part of bee society, and while largely good, Adrien does have moments where he has struggled (like pranking his partner during a Lucky Charm use in the beginning of Refleckta, or Glaciator, rejecting to work with his partner due to her not showing up for the maybe date she said she was uncertain of making it to). And by chance he is reckless with Venom, ideally it would eventually click that he needs to be smarter in how he handles it. 

Adrien and Pollen as a pair could end up very problematic or very interesting. The Bee miraculous seems more designed to be used by girls and so far, we’ve only seen Pollen work off girls, we have yet to see how Pollen would engage with a boy as her user. She could be quite critical. But playing off the assumption that Pollen will engage with Adrien the same as we’ve seen in canon with Chloe, this would not be a good match as Pollen would essentially enable Adrien, and I don’t see him prompting the same sort of growth to her as other characters could. 

Adrien’s least fit are Butterfly and Fox. These two make up his greatest weaknesses: empathy and the capacity to plan before acting. 

Adrien can match Butterfly as he can be very supportive and encouraging (Origins and Mayura), but the issue stems that these instances are limited both in number and in depth. Adrien can be very emotionally deaf to the needs of others, often putting his own needs over them, and has made use of guilt to manipulate people (largely Marinette, seen in Syren and Malediktator). Another big issue with Adrien and Butterfly is that Adrien himself doesn’t make connections, he doesn’t include himself in anything. To use this miraculous well, one has to be or become, quite literally, a social butterfly. This miraculous at the core is about emotion and connection, to be aware of the feelings of others, to make connections, to assist and help raise others up. It requires teamwork and being on the same page. To have the user become a leader or teammate. This is not something Adrien is known for. He in general isn’t good at getting a grasp on emotional issues, as seen in Maledicktator, not getting the happiness everyone was feeling and lectured Marientte about it. Possibilities are good that with his tendency to lecture, who can upset the wrong target and end up championless. And with how passive he can be, can it be certain that he can rein in a champion if they go out of control? 

Growth wise, this does offer the most, but at the price that this is one of two that he’d really struggle with at the start. This miraculous can help him learn to branch out, make connections with others, and open his world more to making friends. But until he gets to that point, he’s going to be limited in diversity in champions and is more likely to stick to who he knows, and unfortunately, that’s not a lot. Chances are good that Chloe and Nino could be the only champions to be seen for a while and Chloe would not be inclined to share. 

With Nooroo, on the surface they can be a sweet pair, but being a very gentle and soft spoken kwami, I don’t see Nooroo as a kwami that Adrien will listen to if Nooroo spoke out or voiced his concerns. Nooroo can help Adrien understand and deal with emotional situations he may not have a grasp on, but that’s not a certainty until Adrien actually listens. 

Adrien can match Fox as a risk taker, someone who likes to be flashy, is playful, and wants to put on a show. But that there is where it ends. Adrien at the core is a very reactive character who likes to be in the thick of things and that’s not where Fox is supposed to be. Fox requires creativity, observation skills, and means of manipulating your audience without ever confronting them. Adrien is more offensive-oriented than a good Fox should be. He shares a similar issue with Alya that he would go with the first thing that comes to mind, whether its good or not, or even if he has all the details down needed for a good illusion. Chances are also good that (like Alya), he also waits to hear what illusion his partner may tell him to do than think of one himself. He tends to go with his gut and responds to the first thing he sees. And out of the 5, this is the one most designed to be background oriented, so him joining any fights makes things risky for him as he’s quite limited in fights. And having a Fox seen, enemies get a sense that there’s going to be an illusion soon. 

This would be the 2nd to address issues of his recklessness, but would be far more punishing. If he’s determined to become a good Fox, this is going to force him to step back, observe, and think. But being so action oriented and responsive, and having this instinctive need to act rather than plan (as we really see him struggle and get frustrated in Refleckdoll), its going to take a while before he gets that patience. 

Trixx and Adrien would be a pair that I see to be quite one sided. Passive as he can be, I see Trixx quite easily manipulating Adrien. And depending on one’s stance, this could be good or bad. Trixx is sharp enough to see what his humans desire, and knows what to say to change how think or change their actions. Trixx maybe the best kwami to pair with Adrien as he will assist Adrien in getting what he wants and needs, but is capable of getting Adrien to reconsider his stance or actions, which can improve Adrien’s character and his relation with others. 

Between Ladybug and Cat... honestly Adrien isn’t the best fit for either of them. But if he HAS to have one... it would technically be Cat as the power is more suited to who he is. It’s up his alley, though certain aspects don’t make it ideal. 

it is the same issue and risk as Bee, Adrien is very reckless and reactive. Canonly he has summoned Cataclysm too soon. And then there’s the issue of kwami. Plagg is not a good kwami match up with Adrien. Plagg isn’t a very involved kwami and he relies on his humans to self-sufficient and figure out issues themselves, largely expects a small mention will be enough. Not so with Adrien who needs a more direct personality to listen to, and by the time Plagg realizes he needs to be more direct, Adrien largely dismisses him as Plagg has set himself up as unreliable at the start. 

Between the two, Tikki would be the better kwami for Adrien. She is very involved and engaging, and makes it clear when she has an issue, to a point she’d be hard for Adrien to dismiss. Though chances are slim that he would as she’d be engaging at the start unlike Plagg. Adrien can even get Tikki herself to grow as he needs clearer answers than just a simple call out, forcing her to offer up solutions and alternatives for his own actions. Tikki also would get Adrien to start involving himself in others, if not outright stepping up as a leader, be more conscious of others and help them with their issues. She would’ve been good to help Adrien branch out. Unfortunately, the Ladybug miraculous is confirmed to not be a good fit and there would be a lot of struggles for Adrien at the start. 

[amazingspiderfield]

do you think they're gonna make TASM3 since everyone is asking on twitter?

Oh, boy. I... honestly don't know. I think a lot of things would have to happen first for it to work. Warning: this is long.

For starters, I don't even know if Andrew Garfield would want to come back for a solo movie. Team ups maybe, but a solo movie is complicated for all the things that come with it, like actually doing promo for it and maybe giving up on other projects because of scheduling conflicts (he dropped a lot of projects between 2010 and 2015 because of these movies, I'm not sure he'd be willing to do that again).

Now, assuming he's actually on board with it, I see three issues here:

1) It can't be the same plot they had planned for TASM3 in 2015 because there's a seven year gap there that would make it look weird. However, since TASM was a retelling of The Night Gwen Stacy died, it's only fair the third movie is also about her somehow and the only story I see working as a part of the trilogy is an adaptation of Spider-Man: Blue.

For those that aren't familiar with it, Spider-Man: Blue is a series of comics in which Peter recounts into a tape recorder how Gwen and he fell in love, in the context of him feeling "blue" during Valentine's Day years after she died.

The problem with this is we already saw how they fell in love in the first TASM movie, but I guess they could change things up a little bit and make it about him updating Gwen on how he’s been since she died. NWH kinda gets in the way of this fitting perfectly within the theme of these movies, but whatever, I’m sure they can work around it. It’s probably not a very cinematic story to tell in the “superhero genre” tbh, but I think they can find a way.

2) Assuming they had the plot and it’s something like this one, the second issue is the actors. I don’t think Emma Stone would want to come back. As far as I know she has a good relationship with Andrew Garfield, but I doubt she wants to be in a movie with him after how some fans have acted since they broke up. I’ve heard some people had left nasty comments on her husband’s social media about her being better off with AG. Also, she just had a baby, she wouldn't want to expose her family like that just for a superhero movie (or any movie for that matter).

Sally Field hated the TASM movies from the beginning, she’s definitely out as well, and I don’t know if they’re planning on bringing back Shailene Woodley and Dane DeHaan, that would depend on what kind of story they want to tell, but it’s here where the seven year gap would be more noticeable because they’d have to explain a shit ton of things there so it doesn’t look like the universe was dead during that time.

3) Finally, the third issue is who’s gonna direct the movie. Marc Webb was really disappointed after TASM2, it’d be a miracle if he accepts doing TASM3. If he doesn’t, they have to find a director with more or less the same style for the trilogy to be cohesive. Maybe if they bring the big checks and guarantee creative freedom, Webb would accept, but that’s completely up to him.

Do I think Sony cares about any of this? Honestly no and neither do the fans on Twitter. As far as I understand it, they only want to see Andrew Garfield kicking Tom Hardy’s ass, in which case it’d make more sense for Andrew to show up in Venom 3 than for Tom Hardy to be the villain in TASM3, but the second means more money so I don’t see them passing up that chance.

The best we can do is to wait for any official announcements because trying to revive a trilogy as conflictive as TASM was is… complicated. Right now I think it's too early to say for sure what’s gonna happen.

[echo-bleu]

take me back to the start (3)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Read on AO3

For @moonlight-breeze-44 Ready for more angst? This was betaed by @jeanboulet who did an amazing job as usual 💙 Chapter warnings for description of depression and canon levels of self-harm.

Alec lowers his center of gravity, wincing when it pulls on his hip, and turns to face the petite form of Helen Blackthorn. She looks back at him steadily, taping the wrapper around her wrist in place.

She was transferred with him from the overflowing Alicante hospital to the New York infirmary after the battle, along with many other wounded Shadowhunters — Catarina probably saved hundreds of people single-handedly that week. Helen stayed in New York to recover and they became good friends, helped along by Aline who, as Alec discovered, followed wherever Helen went. She’d managed to get her mother to assign her as permanent Clave liaison to the New York Institute.

“Ready?” Alec asks.

Helen just nods and slips into a fighting stance. They’ve been training together as she learns to adapt to the loss of her lower left leg. Now eight months in, she’s already back at the level of most fifteen-year-old Shadowhunters, thanks to Izzy’s creative rune work on her prosthesis and her own stubbornness. She’ll be ready for the field soon. Alec sometimes feels pangs of jealousy as he struggles to keep up, knowing that his shattered hip will never let him get back to where he was before.

“I’m slowing you down,” he says as he picks himself up from where she just threw him on the floor. “I should assign you to train with someone else. Maybe Izzy? She’ll understand the readaptation process.”

Helen offers him a hand to stand back up. “You’re not slowing me down,” she says, shaking her head. “Sure, maybe I could keep pace with Izzy, but I think you underestimate the value of what we’re learning together. Being aware at all times of what the other is feeling, what our bodies are telling us. It’s like...parabatai training, but without the rune. I don’t want to stop training with you.”

Alec blinks in surprise. “I hadn’t really thought about it that way,” he says.

“I don’t have a parabatai,” Helen says. “I dreamed about it as a kid, but I figured out pretty quickly that no one would want to be bound to a half-Seelie. But I wanted to know someone so well that I could tell how they were doing at all time and be known in return.”

“It’s not exactly like that,” Alec says, rubbing at his parabatai rune. He hasn’t opened the bond in months, and yet he knows that Jace still feels the pain that leaks through. There’s so much pain, now, for both of them.

It’s a strange kind of irony, that they would both lose their lovers to amnesia, only weeks apart. Clary still remembers nothing, going about her mundane life, and Alec knows that Jace spends too much time watching over her. Alec avoids Magnus, now. It’s not hard, since Lorenzo Rey is still the High Warlock of Brooklyn, and Magnus hasn’t tried to contact him since he healed him.

Clary was forced to leave their world, and Jace hangs onto the hope the angel they summoned gave him, that she will be forgiven eventually.

Magnus made his own choice. Or rather, both Magnus and Alec made choices that led them here – separated and alone. There’s no going back.

“Being parabatai… We feel each other, but that doesn’t mean we know each other”, Alec says. “Jace didn’t know I was gay for the longest time. The bound was made for battle, to make parabatai the best warriors.”

Helen nods. “I’ll never have a parabatai, but I like training with you. I don’t want to stop.”

Alec opens his arms in surrender. “Fine, okay, I like training with you too. I’m getting a feel for your style, finally. And you’re starting to really take advantage of the way your body moves.”

“Seelie flexibility,” Helen winks. “You should try sparring with a full Seelie.”

“Yeah, well, right now I need a break,” Alec says, limping back to the bench at the front of the training room. “How are things with Aline?”

“She’s freaking out,” Helen laughs. “The wedding’s in two months and we’ve barely started planning. I don’t care, I’d elope to Vegas with her, but she wants it to be a symbol.”

“The first official Nephilim gay marriage,” Alec mutters. He swallows, looking down at his hands.

He had all these dreams, once. He wanted to marry Magnus in front of the whole Clave, show the world that relationships like theirs could work. It would have been beautiful. The first gay, inter-species marriage recognized by the Clave.

Now he’ll have to leave those firsts to others. Helen and Aline. Izzy and Simon. Hell, at this pace, even Underhill and Lorenzo Rey. Alec will get to watch them and see through them everything he gave up.

Alec’s dreams went up in smoke the day he made that deal.

Helen lays a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Alec.”

Alec shakes his head. “You don’t have to apologize that things are working out for you.”

“No, but I know how you miss Magnus.”

“I was going to propose to him, you know?” Alec sighs. “I had all these dreams about our wedding. And then I broke up with him the next day.”

They’ve talked about it, a lot. When Alec was in the hospital and his siblings had to handle the Institute, Helen was there with him. They have things in common that Jace and Izzy will always struggle to understand.

“You tried to help him,” Helen says.

“I broke his heart so badly that he couldn’t stand to remember our time together,” Alec murmurs. He nervously runs a hand through his sweaty hair.

Even now, there’s a knot in his throat so large that he can barely breathe. He hasn’t had a chance to heal. For five months, his whole life was reduced to the venom slowly overtaking his body, to the knowledge that he would not see the end of the year.

When he was dying, it was easier, in a way. He could tell himself that it would be better for Magnus not to remember. He could tell himself that his own suffering would soon be over, anyway.

Now he has to learn how to live without Magnus.

“Alec,” Helen says slowly, after a long pause during which she supports him silently, a hand on his arm. “I would understand if it’s too hard for you, but I want to ask you to be my suggenes.”

Alec chokes on his breath and coughs. “Me?”

“Yes. You’ve been...you’ve been my best friend, these last few months. I don’t know how I could have made it through all this without you. And...it seems like a good way to show that we’re both still standing. Together.”

Alec swallows and opens his arms to hug her. “Of course I’ll do it,” he says in her ear. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” Helen says, hugging him tightly.

Just as they pull apart, all hell breaks loose. They hear a commotion coming from the outside, at the back entrance just below the training room, people shouting like there’s a fight going on. Helen jumps to her feet and Alec follows as quickly as he can, grabbing his cane. He takes his bow and quiver from the weapons rack as he goes.

Two Shadowhunters are fighting by the elevator against three people clad in all black, including ski masks, wielding swords. Seraph blades. The intruders are also Shadowhunters. By the time Alec makes it there, Helen has joined the fray, making the match more even.

Alec lets his cane clatter to the floor and nocks an arrow. The closest intruder, the one now fighting Helen, is an easy target, and Alec shoots him in the shoulder, trying to incapacitate rather than kill him. The arrow flies a bit to the side and almost misses, but it gives Helen the time she needs to bring her opponent to the floor.

Underhill is already sitting on his own opponent, roughly pulling his arms behind his back. Alec concentrates on the third man, who is fighting an unarmed Jens. Jens is Alec’s second-in-command who handles the administrative life of the Institute, and he’s an older Shadowhunter who hasn’t been in the field in years. Against a well-trained opponent armed with a sword, he doesn’t stand a chance.

Alec’s shot flies wide. Jens’ opponent throws him to the floor and turns to Alec, rushing toward him blade first. Alec parries with his bow, but he’s quickly forced to let go of his bow and duck another blow. The blade glances off his shoulder, slicing through his shirt and his skin. Alec hisses and swipes at his opponent’s feet, making them both fall to the floor.

Alec cries out in pain as his hip gives out. His vision black around the edges, he struggles to get out from under the other Shadowhunter, who isn’t moving.

“Alec!” Helen calls from somewhere above him. Alec feels the dead weight of his opponent being lifted, and he scoots back hurriedly. Helen’s blade is protruding from the man’s back. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Alec says, though he doesn’t try to stand up. He tries to stop the flow of blood from his shoulder with his hand. “Thank you.”

Helen nods and digs her blade out of the body.

“Alec!” It’s Jace this time, who must have felt the pain. Alec can block the constant hum of pain from the bond, but not sudden bursts – that’s what the bond is for, after all, having each other’s back. Jace kneels in front of him.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Alec repeats. “Remove their masks,” he tells Helen. “We need to find out who they are. And how the hell they got in.”

Jace already has his stele out, and he hitches up Alec’s shirt to draw an iratze. It stems the flow of blood, but the wound is too deep to heal completely. That’s fine. Alec can deal with it.

(Magnus would have healed it with a swipe of his hand.)

“Let’s get you to the infirmary,” Jace says.

He guides Alec’s arm around his shoulders and hauls him up. Alec bites hard on his tongue as his hip seizes violently, and he hops on his good leg for a couple of steps. Jace gives him time to get his bearing. They’re good at this, by now. They’ve done this too many times.

Alec gives out orders all the way to the infirmary, even as he struggles to walk, and only reluctantly lets Izzy take over once she gets to the scene, after she’s fussed over him for a good five minutes. He lets one of the medics bandage his shoulder, as it doesn’t even need stitches after two iratzes.

Once they leave him there, sitting on one of the beds as he waits for someone to bring him his cane, he groans in frustration and runs a hand through his hair, pulling at it.

“Alec, what’s wrong?” Jace asks. Damn. Alec thought he’d left. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Alec shakes his head. His injuries are minor, something he’d usually shake off and go on like nothing happened. But unknown Shadowhunters somehow got into his Institute and attacked his people. “I missed,” he says.

“What?”

“I shot at him, and I missed. And my first shot was way off the mark. I’m not good for anything anymore.”

“You’ve missed hundreds of times,” Jace says. “You’re the one who keeps telling me that. In the middle of the battle, more arrows miss than reach their target. Things move too fast.”

“He wasn’t moving fast,” Alec protests. “I had a decent shot. But my balance was wrong. I shouldn’t have missed.”

Jace sighs. “You’re not back to a hundred percent yet. That’s okay.”

“I’m never going to be, Jace!” Alec snaps. “This,” he points down to his hip, “isn’t going to heal anymore than it already has. I’ll never go back to the field. I’m useless as a Shadowhunter.”

He’s useless, period. He hasn’t had his head in the game in month. Since Alicante. Since Magnus. He’s lucky that nothing major happened to the Institute since Jonathan’s death because he’d probably have messed up everything.

“So you’ll focus on the political stuff. You’re good at that. Practically no other Head does fieldwork anyway, especially in an Institute as large as this one.”

Alec shakes his head. The political stuff, as Jace puts it, has largely consisted in arguing with the new Inquisitor – an old-school homophobic asshole named Goldstream – and desperately missing Magnus at every Downworld Cabinet meeting, unable to focus to the point that the Lorenzo Rey has been threatening to stop coming altogether.

“I can’t, Jace,” he says, hating the unsteadiness of his voice. “I can’t do it. I should step down, let Izzy take over. She’s got the head for it.”

“Alec, you’re the one who created the Downworld Cabinet. You’ve always been the best at this. I know you miss Magnus, I know you’re hurting, but don’t throw away your career.”

“I’m never going to have a career,” Alec sighs. “The whole Shadow World knows me as the Nephilim who fell for a warlock. Most Shadowhunters think I whored myself out and the Downworlders hate me for breaking Magnus’ heart. Not very conducive to good cooperation.”

Jace closes his eyes in dismay. “Alec—”

“Whatever,” Alec waves dismissively as Helen knocks on the door. “Let it go.”

He steps down from the bed. His hip is still more sore than usual, but it will hold. “Any word on who those Shadowhunters are?” he asks Helen.

“We’ve identified them,” she says. “They’re separatists. Not Circle members, but part of this fringe of Nephilim who think we should stop dealing with the Downworld altogether. They swear that the dead one was their leader, but they couldn’t have been working alone. The wards shouldn’t have let them through, for one.”

“After the mess with the Forsaken, Dad had Magnus update them to let in only authorized people, rather than all Shadowhunters,” Alec says. “If they weren’t on the list, they shouldn’t have been able to get inside. Either the wards are weakening for some reason, or they had help from a powerful warlock.”

“Someone more powerful than Magnus?” Jace asks. “There aren’t many.”

“Or someone who knows how he works,” Alec points out. He learned a lot about warlock magic, dating Magnus for over two years. He takes a deep breath. “We need to call him.”

Jace tilts his head. “Are you sure?”

It took Jace and Izzy a long time, after Magnus had healed Alec, to accept Alec’s decision to stay away. They still think they could have convinced Magnus to take his memories back.

Alec doesn’t even know if it’s possible. Magnus is nothing if not thorough. He might have erased the memories completely, just so he wouldn’t be tempted to take them back. To hurt like that again.

Unbidden, Alec thinks of the stack of letters in his desk. Sheets upon sheets of paper detailing each moment of their relationship, the good and the bad, everything Alec can remember. He hasn’t looked at them since he woke up in Magnus’ loft.

He needs to learn how to live without Magnus. It will hurt, maybe until the day he dies, but Alec will do it for his family, for this Institute, for whatever good he can still do.

“He’s the only one who will know how the wards went down. And we need him to pull them up again.”

Seeing Magnus, though… Alec is tempted to hide, to let Izzy or Jens handle it and pretend he’s occupied elsewhere. But he can’t do that. He’ll need to learn how to function around Magnus, too, as long as they live in the same city. Even if it feels like a hundred stab wounds to his heart every time Magnus’ eyes cross his.

There’s a terrible kind of comfort in knowing the pain will never end. Like any grief, it will fade with time, until it doesn’t feel like he’s dying every time he thinks about it, but it will never go away fully. Nephilim only love once.

Alec feels a surge of sympathy for Lydia, who stood with him at the altar and would have married him, with her heart in shambles like Alec feels right now. She hugged him tight, when she came to visit while he was in the hospital, and back then Alec didn’t fully comprehend that she understood him like no other.

But Magnus isn’t dead. Alec still has his number in his phone, their endless thread of loving text messages now another gaping wound. He doesn’t pull out his phone, and instead asks for some pen and paper. He sends Magnus a fire message, formal and distant, and stares after the vanishing flames.

“You gonna be okay?” Jace asks.

Alec nods. Helen squeezes his arm and hands him his cane. His injured arm is thankfully not his cane arm, and his hip seems to be holding up. He hobbles out of the infirmary and down to his office to start dealing with this mess.

*

Magnus doesn’t reply for several hours. Alec figures that he must be with a client, or maybe the Institute has simply dropped to the very bottom of his priorities and he won’t bother coming until tomorrow. But in the early evening, he gets a fire message back. I’m outside.

He painfully drags himself over to the Institute’s entrance. His hip has seized up again, and even mundane painkillers aren’t doing much to help.

Magnus is waiting at the bottom of the steps, his outfit sharp and almost too shiny – armor. Alec can recognize it easily, the way his make up is a bit too pronounced, the unnatural shine in his hair. That’s how he dresses when he’s unsure and scared.

Alec hates that he notices it all, when all Magnus probably sees about him is the cane. He waves at Magnus to come up the stairs – he doesn’t think he could walk down and back up if he tried – and lets him in. He summarizes the events while they walk into the ops center, keeping it business-only.

“Alexander,” Magnus stops him, reaching out to put a hand on his arm. Alec flinches back, because the name feels like a balm and a match to his heart at the same time. He doesn’t know what he’d do with Magnus actually touching him. “How are you doing?”

Alec frowns and leans away from him. “I’m fine,” he says. Right, Magnus wants to know if his healing stuck. “Free of venom and all recovered.”

Magnus’ eyes travel down to his cane. Alec swallows under his gaze. He keeps wondering how it might have been, to have Magnus beside him as he got used to this new reality – that he’s never going to go back to the field. Never going to walk unaided again, to run, to move without pain. He wonders what Magnus – his Magnus – would have said and done.

He doesn’t want to hear what this Magnus, this version of him that Alec doesn’t know, has to say about it. “This has nothing to do with it,” he says curtly, gesturing at his leg. He turns away, waving at Izzy to come over. “Can you check the wards?”

“Of course,” Magnus says. “I will need some time to get through all the layers, if you want me to be thorough.”

Alec nods. “You can give me your bill along with your report when you’re done. I’ll see that it gets expedited. Thank you for coming so fast. Izzy, will you show him around?”

It’s hard, to remain all business like that, but it’s better than any alternative Alec can come up with. He watches Magnus walk away with Izzy and he can’t help noticing the little details, the way Magnus’ longer hair sits on his head, or his blue-painted nails. He aches to holds these hands in his own.

It’s been eight months, and the pain isn’t quite as fresh as the first day, but it’s not gone, either. He’s not at the point where he can fondly remember Magnus and not ache fiercely for what he has lost. The way he misses Magnus is visceral, and he can barely stand it some days, the way his insides feel twisted. He struggles to get up in the morning. He struggles to eat anything, and he knows he’s lost weight, even since his body is free of the demon venom. He sees himself gaunt in the mirror, and he can’t bring himself to care.

The worst is trying to sleep. Alec has never been a sound sleeper, but it’s gotten worse. In the year before their breakup, he and Magnus slept together every night, and any bed without him feels cold and empty. His nightmares feature the break up most nights, or the battle of Alicante, a mix of all the stress and trauma of the last few years – Angel knows he has enough bad memories to fill his nights.

But it’s the good dreams that Alec dreads. The ones where he’s in Magnus’ arms, all warm and soft. Because then he has to wake up to an empty bed and remember what he’s lost all over again.

“Sir?”

Alec starts and almost overbalances, catching himself on the corner of the ops table. “Sir, are you okay?” It’s Underhill, who is frowning in concern.

“I’m fine,” Alec grits through his teeth.

Underhill doesn’t argue. “This came for you from the Consul’s office,” he says, handing Alec an envelope. “I put the rest of your mail in your inbox, but this seemed important.”

Alec takes the envelope and quickly opens it, while Underhill politely takes a step back. He skims through the letter from Jia Penhallow, then frowns and reads it again, more carefully.

It’s a job offer. An entirely unexpected one.

Alec stares for a moment at the letter, a little stunned, then he slowly folds it back into the envelope. It doesn’t call for an immediate answer, and he has a lot to think about – not to mention urgent issues to fix, namely the intrusion, before he can even start to think about it.

“Put this on my desk, I’ll deal with it later,” he give it back to Underhill, who watches him curiously. “If anyone looks for me, I’ll be in the training room.”

“Sir, are you sure you should?” Underhill dares to ask, hesitant.

Alec just glares at him until he backs off. “I want detailed report on the interrogation of the intruders,” he says instead of answering. “Yesterday.”

He’s rarely this stern with his people, but he’s too tired and frustrated to police his tone. Underhill straightens and nods formally. “Yes, sir.”

Alec turns away and makes his way to the training room. He changes into sweats, careful of the new bandage on his arm, and takes out his bow and his quiver.

He tries not to think about Magnus being in the building. The attack on the Institute just showed him that he’s been resting on his laurels far too much in the last few months, since Clary killed Jonathan. They haven’t had any major threat, nothing beyond the usual demon nests sprinkled over the city and Downworlder/Mundane issues to settle, and Alec has lapsed in his duty. He hasn’t asked anyone to take care of the wards, or implanted the exercise routine he was working on before Alicante, before he broke up with Magnus. He’s let his personal life interfere with his duty.

Worse, his performance today was abysmal. Alec has had to adjust his expectations of himself a lot since his injury, but missing his shot like that… It shouldn’t have happened. If he can’t fight enough to defend himself, he has no business running an Institute. He’s a liability.

Jia’s letter comes to his mind again. If he’s to accept her offer...

He empties half his quiver into the fifty yard target. His arrows all hit the target, but some of them are nowhere near the bullseye. Alec groans and tries to focus, taking a painful step to align with the second target, at sixty yards.

In a practiced move, he nocks an arrow, ignoring the way his arm stings. He draws the string up to his chin and settles there, paying attention to his posture. His hip isn’t strong enough to take most of his weight anymore, and too stiff – he has to lean on his left leg, throwing his whole body off balance. He’s started to adjust to that, but his posture is still too unstable.

He lets the arrow go. It hits almost an inch off the bullseye, and Alec sighs in dismay. He empties the rest of his quiver, taking the time with each arrow to adjust his posture, and his aim gets progressively better, but still nowhere near his previous level.

Yet another thing he’ll have to get used to.

The walk up to the target to retrieve his arrows and back is painful and harrowing. Alec leans into the pain almost in spite of himself, letting the burn in his lungs and the throbbing of his hip feel like punishment.

After two repeats of this, he’s holding back tears of frustration and pain. His entire body is sore, his shoulders aching from the undue strain and his hip sending shooting pains down his leg and all the way up to his neck. He powers through until his aim is good enough to satisfy him, even temporarily, then stops caring and keeps shooting for the sake of shooting. He gets a second quiver of unruned arrows just so he won’t have to walk all the way to the targets again and shuts out the outside world, narrowing it to just the tip of his arrow and the target.

It’s easy. It feels good, even if he knows he’s abusing his body in a way he’s going to pay for. He can’t bring himself to care.

He’s almost forgotten that Magnus is even there when he’s interrupted mid-draw.

“Alexander! I’m all done.”

Alec’s arrow flies wide and he curses under his breath. What kind of archer is he if he gets distracted so easily?

“Magnus,” he says, lowering his bow but not looking at his—at him. “Did you find anything?”

“A warlock helped take down the wards, but I could not identify them,” Magnus answers. Alec squirms under his stare. He hates that he both wants nothing more than to be somewhere else and wants to hug Magnus and never let him go. “I pulled them back up and fortified them, so that a similar attack cannot happen again.”

“Thank you,” Alec says. “Is there really no way to know who it was? Wouldn’t they have to be more powerful than you to take down your wards?”

“Or know my patterns,” Magnus agrees. “But in this case, they exploited a flaw that was there because the wards hadn’t been updated in too long.”

Alec grimaces. It’s his fault. He knew the wards needed work, it’s been on his to-do list for months. He put it off because…

Because it required calling Magnus in.

He put the whole Institute in danger because he can’t keep his personal life separate.

“Do you need a little warlock TLC?” Magnus asks.

Alec looks up sharply, the flashback jarring. Magnus must take his shock for confusion, because he gestures to Alec’s arm. “Your sister told me that you were injured in the fight.”

“My sister should mind her own business,” Alec mutters, trying to hide the pit opening in his stomach.

“She was simply recounting the events, as it is,” Magnus defends her. Alec doubts that Izzy lost an occasion to meddle at least a little, but he doesn’t comment.

“I’m fine,” he says instead.

“You don’t look like you’re fine,” Magnus insists. His voice is gentle, though it lacks some of the warmth that Alec has come to associate with him, the familiarity that his heart is weeping for.

Alec stares for a moment, eyes riveted to Magnus’ lips, to the curve of his nose – everything but his eyes, too intense and soulful, unbearable. He’s about to turn him away with something scathing, but he almost wants to—

He wants to hug him, to feel safe like he never has outside of Magnus’ arm, to let go for the first time in months. He wants to cry his heart out and be held.

He wants Magnus.

“I don’t know what to do,” he murmurs.

It’s a bad idea, and he knows it. He’s staying away from Magnus for a reason. He has to respect Magnus’ choice, especially now that Magnus doesn’t even remember making that choice. Anything else is abusing his trust.

But now that the word are out, Alec can’t stop. “It’s like...everything’s been turned upside down. I’m trying to run this Institute, and work with the Downworld Cabinet, and it’s everything that I dreamed of growing up and yet...I can’t do it, Magnus. I can’t be what they expect me to be. I can’t—I can’t live like this.” I can’t live without you.

“Alexander,” Magnus starts, but he trails off. He reaches out, and this time Alec lets him, leaning into his touch. It’s just a hand on his arm, light and unsure, but it feels—

Wrong. They can’t do this. Not now, not like that. Alec would give almost anything to go back in time, to fix this, to stop Magnus before he removed his memories, but – no, he wouldn’t. Magnus is happier with his magic and without his memories. What Alec feels doesn’t matter.

“I don’t know what to do,” he repeats brokenly.

“You can’t change things outside your control, but you can change your own life, Alexander,” Magnus says compassionately. “Do what’s in your heart.”

Alec makes a strangled sound and closes his eyes, stepping away from Magnus. “I can’t,” he chokes out.

He flees. As much as he can when he first has to put back his bow and get his cane. His arrows stay scattered on the targets, and he abandons them and Magnus, limping to his bedroom.

He hops into the shower, cursing at the time it takes him to undress and walk in. He runs water directly over his face and lets it hide the pouring tears. He collapses onto the recently installed shower seat, sobbing.

He can’t breathe. He swallows water and tears, choking, and hits his head hard on the shower wall. He hasn’t broken down like this since Magnus healed him of the venom – maybe since he was in the hospital in Alicante. Since the day Maryse quietly announced that Magnus didn’t remember any of them.

He doesn’t know how long he stays in the shower, but when he finally calms down, there is no light coming from the tiny window in his bathroom and his hip is killing him. He narrowly avoid falling on his ass as he gets out, hopping on his good leg, his head swimming from exhaustion.

He goes through the motions of drying himself and pulling on clean sweat pants, groaning when his body refuses to bend. He hates how hard everything has become, even dressing himself. He re-bandages his arm and runs the towel over his face a few times, trying to erase the redness of his eyes to no avail.

When he comes out of his bathroom, Izzy and Jace are both sitting on his bed. Figures.

“Alec!” Izzy welcomes him with too much brightness for it to be genuine.

Alec doesn’t answer and collapses between his siblings. They scoot over until they’re all lying on the bed, with Alec in the middle. He slips his arm under Izzy’s head, relishing the pressure of her weight on him.

“Magnus was here,” Jace starts in a low voice. Alec wonders how long they’ve discussed what they’re going to tell him. He knows they’re worried. They’ve had a rough year. He wishes he could erase it all, make things easier for them. Erase the concern, the fears, the pain.

Erase himself from their lives.

Alec blinks against the thought and breathes through his mouth.

“Yeah,” he forces out, his voice hoarse.

“How did that go?”

Alec shrugs, his shoulder hitting Jace’s. The wound on his arm stings.

“He was concerned,” Izzy says. “I walked him out. He said you ran away.”

“He—” Alec trails off. He doesn’t know how to express it. “Seeing him, it’s hard. I’m not ready.”

Izzy sighs.

“Look, I know we’ve had this conversation a dozen times, but I still don’t get it,” Jace says. “Why don’t you just tell him everything? Asmodeus is dead. All of Edom is gone. Your deal doesn’t hold anymore.”

“You don’t know that,” Alec sighs, not in any mood to rehash this again with his siblings.

“Come on, that’s a bogus argument and you know it. You only broke up with Magnus because of the deal. Doesn’t he deserve to know that?”

Alec shakes his head. “I need – we need – to respect his decision.”

“But he wouldn’t have made it if he knew about the deal!” Jace exclaims.

“You don’t know that,” Alec repeats.

He doesn’t believe it, not completely. Things would have gone down differently, had Magnus known about the deal. But that’s exactly the issue: he didn’t. They don’t know what could have happened, and they can’t make decisions based on that.

“Alec,” Izzy starts quietly. “What’s the real reason why you won’t tell him?”

“He’s okay,” Alec says in a low tone, almost a whisper.

“What?”

“He’s happy. Or he will be. He has his magic back, and he can go on with his life. All I brought him was pain and heartbreak and danger.” Alec swallows. “Even if we’d managed to be happy together, it would have been just a few years, a blink in his lifespan, before more heartbreak. It’s better that way.”

“But what about you?” Izzy asks. She has that same look on her face, as the first time she asked him that. But she was sad and resigned, then. Now she’s...angry.

Alec shrugs. “I’ll survive,” he says.

“Bullshit,” Izzy says through her teeth. “Surviving isn’t enough, and you’re barely doing that.”

“You think we can’t see how badly you’re doing?” Jace asks, now just as angry. “You’re not sleeping, Alec. Not eating. I can feel your pain, twenty-four seven. You can’t go on like that.”

Alec closes his eyes. He’s just admitted the same thing to Magnus, but hearing it from Jace and Izzy, from the people in his life who actually know what’s happening…

“I have to,” he murmurs. “It will get better, eventually.”

He doesn’t believe it, even as he says it.

“Will it?” Izzy asks doubtfully.

Alec doesn’t answer and buries his face in his pillow.

[softgrungeprophet]

i liked agent venom when i read it, partially because it actually had a discernible plot and a story that wasn’t just half finished and abandoned from constant cancellations, but at the same time i hate it. i hate it so much.

i hate that flash became venom and suddenly, all of his relationships were completely erased except for like, betty and sometimes peter and that was it. mj and harry who? childhood friendship with liz? no she’s just going to... blackmail him for some reason even though they’ve known each other for literally like 15 years

i hate the agent venom origin slott wrote, i hate flash being pissy about peter confiding in MJ, who they are both friends with, because if you’re dan slott you can’t talk to girls unless you plan on fucking them, i hate how gung ho slott is about the military propaganda and the fucking american flag behind flash in superior spider-man, even though superior (a comic i don’t ever plan to read in full) actually had a good moment with flash and “peter” and flash’s tenseness in a domestic argument situation

(i also hate that that one pre-agent venom web of spidey comic could have been good, actually had good assistive devices, but then... the entire villain plot is about some Mysterious Terrorist or whatever who nonetheless congratulates flash for “constructively” letting out his anger on faceless middle-eastern soldiers, and this is played straight--disgusting)

i hate all of it even the things i like because they took a character who actually was fairly complex and flattened him into a football-loving, gun-toting, all-american patriot who loves god and his country, at odds with the previous 30 years of character development, at odds with the flash who when asked if he liked being in the army (after being DRAFTED into fucking vietnam) said that there is no liking the army, only dealing with it, and i hate every bro who thinks agent venom was the coming of the great whatever and acts like flash was completely nothing before then and that only in agent venom did he have any character when the opposite is true and agent venom trampled out every bit of nuance he had to focus on alcohol and football and nothing else (at least bunn finally put him back into a school again, had him working with youth again (andi in this case))

i hate, unrelated to agent venom, the fact that flash the complex character has been further and further stretched and distorted to have been a horribly violent schoolwide bully as a teenager rather than what he actually was--an obnoxious kid with a fucked up home life trying to fuck with one specific kid--to the point that even in the college stuff, even AFTER having “become good,” he’s the only one who gets repeatedly and purposefully excluded from official works and fan works alike because everyone thinks of him as nothing more than a bully, that every movie appearance of flash sucks except TASM (which is still barely a flutter but you can tell thought was actually put into his character by the actor himself), the fact that he’s the only living member of the friend group (because i assume gwen is dead) who doesn’t get more than a single-line mention in the ps4 game (but at least it’s positive, and i like to pretend that MJ was checking on him when she went to the veteran’s center since we know he works with veterans in the game, even if we never see him) (i still want to be able to go to coffee with mj, flash and harry all together)

i don’t like the bullying flashback in the bunn AV run (even though i liked the comic as a whole, especially with andi, and how bunn and shalvey moved away from the military stuff more toward neighborhood protector stuff), i don’t like bunn’s take on high school flash (he also wrote a different spider-man comic with high school flash a little bit before then)

i hate that flash’s growth wrt his disability, which he came to accept as a part of him that he didn’t need to find some miracle cure for, was completely thrown down the toilet so they could do their stupid supersoldier agent venom shit, which flies directly against the SPECIFIC endpoint of the stages of grief comic, which SPECIFICALLY used superserums and bionic military limb testing as the thing he did not need in his life--and then dan slott runs over like teehee here’s some bionic supersoldier military testing shit :3c

hate that he was killed for the stupidest reason by norman fucking osborn, hate that the disabled abuse survivor was killed by the man who killed one of his best friends, who abused another, who manipulated HIM, who drove him into a fucking building after force-feeding him hard alcohol, hate that norman got to “win” against flash one last time, hate that norman is now being treated as this fucking “couldn’t help it” case while harry is Actually Bad, and still, flash is what? a dream symbiote dragon? fucking stupid and i hate it, i don’t want any of it

every new thing i see about new spider-man and venom comics wrt flash makes me wish he would stay dead lmfao

but it’s not like there weren’t already a ton of bad comics about him but at the very least... i would like something that isn’t just about the Patriotic Soldier Boy who never actually fucking existed

the football thing is a really fun one--and i love that the TASM movie made flash play basketball in that movie because if you look at comics from the 60s through to the early-mid 2000s, preceding agent venom... flash stopped playing football after high school and started playing basketball instead. started doing other sports, probably stopped football because, gee i can guess who told him to play football in the first place, but somehow agent venom happened and decided that his entire life was just Football and Guns? when he hadn’t touched a football in literally like... 10 years in-universe

(TASM best live-action spidey adaptation)

there is not purpose to this rant i just needed to get all this shit out of my head

i am very On Edge the past few weeks and idk why, just ADHD brain shit I guess but everything makes me tense lately (probably why i played through 77% of the spidey game in literally four days by virtue of doing absolutely nothing else in my free time) (i’m taking a break for the sake of my hands but maybe i should go keep playing lol)

i know some people like the dragon and i’ve added it to my “flash trans” list but in the context of stories about flash over the past ten years i really am not interested, and this coming from someone who read eragon 9 times in middle school and grew up reading mostly high fantasy and dragon books. i just. don’t want it. not by the writers currently going at least. maybe if it was someone else or if i knew it would be anything more than a future of soldier boy alcohol football crap lmfao

[letterboxd]

Pure Verhoeven.

Writer and director Jeffrey McHale talks to Dominic Corry about his new documentary You Don’t Nomi—an examination of the cult surrounding Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 “masterpiece of shit”, Showgirls—and recommends a few campy sequels to watch afterwards.

Few films have enjoyed as interesting a post-release existence as Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 film Showgirls. A classic “blank check” movie—that is, a film made with unnatural freedom thanks to a director’s prior success—Verhoeven and controversial screenwriter Joe Eszterhas attempted to build on the success of their 1992 smash Basic Instinct by upping the on-screen sauce in a riff on All About Eve, set in the “high-stakes” world of Las Vegas striptease.

Elizabeth Berkley, at the time still defined by her performance as the (mostly) virtuous Jessie in the Saturday-morning teen sitcom Saved By The Bell, led the film as Nomi Malone, a young woman who arrives in Vegas, gets work stripping in a low-rent club, then ascends to the sought-after position of lead showgirl in a big casino’s “classy” choreographed striptease show, replacing the previous star Cristal Conners (Gina Gershon).

Proudly sporting the otherwise box-office-neutering NC17 rating, Showgirls was marketed as a serious adult drama about ambition and the price of success. It was not received as such, instead met with huge amounts of ridicule by audiences and critics alike. Pick a Letterboxd review at random, and you get, for example, “Beautiful direction, so if you put it on mute, it’d probably be great. But nearly every actor is sorely miscast and the script is the hottest garbage.”

Poor Berkley received a lot of the blame, and although she continued to work, the venomous (and often misogynistic) critiques hindered her career as a big-screen leading lady.

Then something funny happened—the film was re-evaluated as a camp classic, driven largely by the queer community, who embraced its over-the-top ridiculousness. The cult has grown considerably over the years, expanding into midnight screenings and even live stage adaptations. Subsequent DVD releases have leaned into the perception by offering commentary tracks that acknowledge the movie’s glorious failings.

Showgirls’ continued presence in the culture has even seen it experience something of an artistic redemption. Its perception is now well beyond that of being simply a camp classic that is so fun because it’s so bad—it’s a genuine cultural touchstone that tells us a lot about how audiences judge films featuring overt sexuality. Indeed, among the many ironies associated with the film is that it was partially designed to highlight American sexual hypocrisy, then failed spectacularly in a manner that effectively highlighted American sexual hypocrisy.

Kyle MacLachlan and Elizabeth Berkley in ‘Showgirls’.

A brief survey of Letterboxd reviews finds plenty of fans. In a half-star review alongside the exhortation to “please for the love of God watch Showgirls”, Letterboxd member Jesse writes: “There shouldn’t be any shame in liking something you know is bad, I don’t have to try and re-codify Showgirls as a secretly good classic just because of how amazing it is. It truly deserves its cult following.” Jesse makes particular mention of the infamous swimming pool sequence, a scene “so unsexy… that it achieves camp euphoria, a pure moment of enlightened cheese that needs to be seen to be believed”.

“‘So bad it’s good’ it may be for some but I happen to be among the camp that thinks Showgirls is genuine good: a misunderstood work brimming with brilliance,” writes Jaime Rebenal, while Matt Lynch argues that it’s often mistaken for “a satire of American greed and attendant dreams of stardom, when its true target is the apparatus that sells those dreams to an endlessly returning audience of narcissistic suckers.”

Or, as Joe puts it, “The Rosetta Stone for understanding this entire movie (if not life itself) is the shot of Elizabeth Berkley angrily slamming a ketchup bottle on the table and causing a bright red stream of ketchup to come flying out.”

Jeffrey McHale’s ridiculously entertaining new documentary You Don’t Nomi looks at the cult of Showgirls from a multitude of angles, including the evolving critical and cultural perception of the film, how Verhoeven’s characterization of his intentions have changed over the years, the significance of the film within the LGBTQIA+ community, and how Berkley eventually emerged from the whole affair as something of a hero.

McHale makes fantastic use of footage from Verhoeven’s killer filmography to emphasize his points, alongside interviews with a variety of cultural critics. He tells the story of April Kidwell, the writer, producer and star of I, Nomi, a one-woman musical comedy about the life of Nomi Malone before and after her adventures in Showgirls. Kidwell is a fascinating presence in the film, and not just because she also played Nomi in the stage show Showgirls: The Musical! and Berkley’s character in the Saved By The Bell-inspired Bayside: The Musical!.

The twentieth-anniversary ‘Showgirls’ screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

The documentary features illuminating footage from the twentieth-anniversary screening of Showgirls at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, an event that Berkley attended, where she received a rapturous response from the thousands of fans present.

McHale attended that screening, and told Letterboxd that that’s where his deeper interest in the film was properly sparked.

Jeffrey McHale: I had seen it already, ten years prior to that, but that was the first time I saw it with an audience. I think that was, officially, the largest screening of Showgirls that has happened. There were 4,000 people there. I’m not from LA, but I’ve lived in LA for the last eight years, and I’ve gone to a couple of those Hollywood Forever screenings and I don’t think anyone in our group anticipated Elizabeth Berkley showing up. It felt epic. It was a historic moment in the afterlife of Showgirls.

I didn’t walk away [from that screening] thinking ‘I should make a documentary’, but I was mostly interested in kind of finding out more. You’re always curious if you can figure anything out about the intentions or what the filmmakers had in mind, so that’s what inspired me to start consuming everything that had been written about Showgirls. I read the Adam Layman book, the book of poems, [lots of] articles, and I was just scouring the internet for reviews. And what I found was this wide range of really interesting opinions, theories and people’s relationships with the film. Everything was just so different. You set out looking for answers, and it’s not about getting the answer for it, it’s about this ever-evolving relationship that we have with this piece of art.

At what point did you come to realize the degree to which the queer community had embraced this film? As a gay man myself, it feels like it’s part of the fabric of our culture, ’90s culture. The poet Jeffrey Conway, when I interviewed him, he said it perfectly: it’s just like in your DNA, you know? It appeals to the queer culture community, you cannot explain it but you’re just kind of drawn to it. I thought that was an interesting way of describing the experience of watching something like that.

This film appears to only be widening the cult of Showgirls. It’s been a really fun project, and I’ve been blown away by the response it’s getting. I didn’t really know what the end result would be when I started. I knew that whatever you make, there will be a very vocal and excited and enthusiastic fan base. I’ve been very surprised by the broad appeal. These are people who have never seen Showgirls and are really drawn to it, and find the message and the story, the culture, and the way that we consume media, the way that we critically talk about things. It’s been a wild ride.

The twentieth-anniversary ‘Showgirls’ screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

You point out the hypocrisy of how audiences are willing to see Verhoeven’s films as satirical when it comes to the violence (as with Robocop and Starship Troopers), but when it comes to the sex, the audience gets prudish. Paul and Joe talked about that on a lot of their press junket interviews: America’s fine with the violence and the violence gets you rated PG13, but then you have something as human as sex, then that’s shunned and discouraged. It was interesting going back and just looking at the way in which Elizabeth was criticized. And the way that Paul was criticized. Just the way she was ripped apart for her physical features and all that, it was disgusting. I think we’ve evolved a little bit further in that sense. I don’t think that you’d see a Gene Siskel review, the way that he describes her face, those details, like comparing which one was hotter, it was like: this is what we’re reviewing? Actresses’ physical attributes? It was disgusting. I think we’ve gotten better in that sense.

How did you encounter April Kidwell? She brought a lot to the film. She was one of the later additions to the project, after we’d started reaching out to people. I knew that she was in the musical. Then I found out that she had also done Saved By The Bell. It was really interesting that she played two Elizabeth Berkley characters, to get her opinion on it. From the very first phone call, she was just so open. I was blown away by her story and how vulnerable she was, just putting herself out there. She’s been very open about her experience and the way that it was therapeutic for her. She’s the heart and soul of Nomi. She’s somebody who went through something awful, disgusting, terrible, and now she’s found power and strength, within—specifically—the character. The act of performing Nomi on stage was therapeutic for her. It was an experience that no other person I spoke with had. She’s amazing.

Gina Gershon in ’Showgirls’.

I loved how you used footage from the other Verhoeven films to provide additional commentary. How did you come to adopt that filmmaking strategy? When I went in, I didn’t how much of that would play into the narrative. I wasn’t familiar with his earlier work. But when I started to go back and watched all of his Dutch films, I was surprised by how all the dots, everything just felt like it was connecting. All these motifs and scenes and shots. And how repetitively these things popped up. So I wanted a visual way, to kind of make it a subplot, where the characters were interacting with Showgirls, where their experience paralleled the contributors, so that was a way to visually tie it back to the argument that people like to think Showgirls sits by itself outside of all of Paul’s other films, like Starship Troopers, Robocop and Total Recall, but tying it into the argument that it’s Verhoeven at his purest, [which is what] I like to think of Showgirls as.

I’m a huge Verhoeven nut and I’d always been disturbed by the dog food subplot in Spetters [in which a takeout van sells croquettes made with jelly-meat], but I had never drawn the connection to Showgirls [in which Cristal and Nomi bond over both having once been so poor that they had to survive on dog food]. I’d also never noticed how much vomiting is a recurring motif for him. Yeah! Women vomiting! It was always women that were throwing up, which is just bizarre. The doggy chow thing I thought was interesting because [initially] I felt like ‘oh this is a Joe Eszterhas bit’, something from his script that’s just bizarre and weird, but then when I saw that thread from Spetters, it was just like ‘oh my god, you’ve done the whole eating doggy chow thing before’.

I’ve always been interested in Verhoeven’s evolving description of the film himself; how he has recast history a bit to say he was in on the joke, but the funniest thing I thought he ever said about it was that he regretted not putting a serial killer plot in Showgirls, because that would’ve distracted the Americans. Had you heard that? I have yes. I think Adam Layman mentioned that. [Verhoeven]’s like: “Basic Instinct was enough of a thriller that people could watch it.” That was something I’d heard a couple of times before. I think he’d actually been considering it, like a death or a murder or something.

Thanks for making your list of Campy Sequels To Watch After Showgirls. Talk us through them. What did you make of Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven? I’ve only seen clips. It’s a film that might be better in small doses, not one whole thing, because I think it’s, like, two and half hours long. I think it took me a couple of viewings to get through the whole thing. But it’s interesting because [filmmaker] Rena Riffel plays Penny/Hope in Showgirls. She wrote it, directed it and starred in it, and it follows her character playing off Nomi’s leaving Vegas to go to Hollywood. [Riffel] was in Mulholland Drive, so part of me thinks she was trying to do a David Lynch thing. Or a John Waters thing. She’s definitely very aware of the afterlife and the over-the-top campiness of it. So there’s all these little Easter eggs where she’s drawing comparisons to Showgirls. But it’s super low budget, and she kind of embraces that. I would recommend it to hard core fans of Showgirls; it’s definitely not a movie for everybody.

‘Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven’, featuring writer-director Rena Riffel (right) as Penny.

Grease 2 ‘Cool Rider’—amazing. Christmas-tree dress. I like that the gender roles were flipped. And it’s a fun movie. It’s a fun movie that I always enjoyed as kid.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch That was another one that I saw late. And I mean, the musical number, Hulk Hogan, just knowing that the director went all out and didn’t hold anything back. I mean—Vegetable Gremlin? There are just so many things it in that are bizarre, and it didn’t follow the traditional 80s/90s sequel formula.

Beyond The Valley of the Dolls Yeah. You know that Roger Ebert wrote that, right? That’s another one that’s probably closer to Showgirls 2 in the Russ Meyer aesthetic of it. But these are all films that had similar [critical trajectories]—it was panned when it came out but got [a] second life. I mean not to the scale that Showgirls has, but I think people revisit it and embrace it for what it

Magic Mike XXL It feels like they’re more in on the joke, and I kind of found it more enjoyable than the first one, just because it didn’t seem like it was taking itself so seriously. And Jada Pinkett Smith is kind of playing the Matthew McConaughey role. It’s The Big Chill meets Chippendales. And as far as the dance numbers go, it feels a lot campier and they’re a little bit more aware of what’s happening. Not as much as like a failed-seriousness kind of camp, but there’s something going on there.

Final question. Showgirls: good or bad? I call it a masterpiece of shit.

‘You Don’t Nomi’ is available to stream or rent on digital and VOD services.

[flutteringphalanges]

                                         Mirabile Visu

Summary: Sister Agatha Van Helsing discovers she’s in over her head when a competitive game of chess ultimately results in her becoming pregnant with the child of her worst enemy, Count Dracula. Now tied by a bond deeper than blood, the two must learn to coexist and adapt in a world that could be potentially hostile towards their offspring. Parenthood has never looked so batty.

Characters: Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing

Chapter: 10 (Part Two)/?

Read on FFN and AO3

A/N: Thank you all for your kind words and ongoing support! It means the world! I hope you enjoy! I don’t want to say too much because this chapter is, well...you’ll see. Feedback is greatly loved and appreciated! -Jen

                                     Chapter Ten (Part Two)

                                     The Jonathan Harker Foundation

                                                    Present Time

Sorina had seen countless action movies throughout her lifetime, yet none had exactly prepared her for the situation she faced now. Within moments, several guards had found their way to their location and the halfling found herself being knocked backwards as Agatha pushed her out of the path of a loaded rifle. She stumbled, catching herself as her eyes fell on her mother, the vampire slamming the armed man into the wall.

"Go!"

It was her mother's voice that pulled the young woman from her haze. Sorina blinked, resembling a deer in the headlights as Agatha shoved two more soldiers aside. It took Jack grabbing her by the wrist and yanking her down the hall to completely snap back into reality. Gunshots sounded, but it was too unclear whether they belonged to Zoe or the Foundation. As they reached one of the doors, they were greeted by another member of the facility's security, this one burlier than the others.

"Jack, watch out!"

She had just enough time to duck as the former graduate student swung the bat, hitting the man's weapon hard. It was a short lived victory, Sorina watching in horror as the guard swung his gun, striking Jack's side as if he had been weilding a baton. There was a crunch and the young man let out a yelp of pain, gripping what she could only assume were cracked ribs.

Sorina had never understood the expression of "seeing red". But now, after witnessing the attack on him, she launched herself towards Jack's assailant. Grasping his shoulders, they crashed onto the ground. It only took a brief struggle before the halfling's foot made contact with his chin. She kicked. Hard. Once. Twice. When the man didn't move, she stepped backwards, breathing heavy and body trembling.

"Sunny?"

"Jack!" Sorina turned to the young man who moved towards her, trying to hide the wince of pain he made with each step. "Jack, I'm so sorry, are-"

"Are you okay?!"

She almost laughed at his question. At his concern as his worried eyes searched her face for any signs of discomfort. He, after all, had been the one injured. Not her. And yet here he was, only caring about her well being.

"I'm okay," she assured him. "I just...didn't think I had that energy in me." Sorina's eyes fell to Jack's hand and the area it so gingerly touched.

"I'll be fine," he said with a weak smile. "I've dealt with worse." Even though she wasn't

convinced, he nodded towards the door. "C'mon," he urged. "Let's go save your dad."

                                                             XXX

Zoe stood with her back facing the direction Jack and Sorina ran from, her gun pointed towards one of the men pinned against the wall. She'd never had official training when it came to firearms, maybe a day's worth of explanation and demonstration on how to use it properly. But she knew well enough how to unlock the safety and pull the trigger.

"Left side of the chest," Agatha grunted, nodding towards the mercenary. "Over the logo, it's a weak point."

She hesitated. The scientist couldn't help but do so. But when she caught the man reaching for his stake, she fired. The figure immediately stopped struggling and slumped forward. Agatha cast him aside as if he were a rag doll. For a nun and someone whose life was dedicated to compassion, to saving others, the vampire was far from showing it now.

"You okay?"

There was concern in the vampire's tone as Agatha knocked another guard out of the way just as they fired a bullet, the missile just missing its target-Zoe. The woman panted, nodding as nausea twisted within her. It wasn't the fact that she most likely killed someone. No. It was more so that it had been ages since her body had used this much energy. Abuse.

"Just need to catch my breath," she nodded, leaning against the wall. Her legs threatened to collapse, but she knew she couldn't allow them. Mind over matter. In the distance, she could hear the pounding of more feet. "Can you handle them alone?"

"Go help Sorina and Jack," the vampire stated as if to answer the question. "You know this place better than me."

Zoe nodded, turning on her heels and running down the hallway. It didn't take long to find the other two, Jack desperately trying to fiddle with the keypad as Sorina watched anxiously. She tried not to look at the body by her feet. Unsure if the man was alive or not. Had Sorina done that?

"I can't bloody get in," the young man sighed, smacking the numbers with his hand.

"Try 1897," the scientist suggested.

1897. If The Foundation was stupid enough to use "Dracula" as the WiFi password, than surely they would use the year that the idea for this place came to be. When Jack typed in the numbers, the square lit up a bright green and the steel doors slid open. Zoe smirked as both Sorina and Jack turned to her, grinning ear to ear.

"The Foundation may be ruthless," Zoe commented. "But when it comes to the simple things, they sure let their guard down."

Jack did his best to stand up straighter, trying to ignore the panging ache in his side. His fingers tightened around his bat and he found himself leaning against it for support. "And to think you insisted on having me hired here," he teased, attempting to light the mood as he met his mentor's stare. "I wonder if that market by my flat is still hiring."

"Oh shove off," the woman said, rolling her eyes. "You and I both know you don't regret a thing." And he followed her gaze to where Sorina stood, momentarily preoccupied with pulling her hair back.

"Yeah," he mumbled. "You're right about that."

                                                          XXX

Dracula had been pacing the length of his confinement for hours now, looking for the smallest weak point that would allow him to break free. To rescue Agatha. To kill each and every person in this facility. To destroy Bloxham. But try as he might, his luck had seemed to bottom. His stare bore into the concert ground as he heard the entrance open, sharp fingernails digging into his palms. He could only assume it was the guards who, for some reason, had hurried left the room to deal with an apparent greater issue.

"You do realize," he growled. "You cannot contain me forever and once you slip up-"

"Dad!"

His previous fumes of anger were extinguished by the familiar sound of his daughter's voice. Dracula looked up so quickly, he nearly gave himself whiplash. Though he noted both Zoe's and Jack's presence in the room, his attention fell on Sorina. Emotions. Confused. Pride. Concern. It was almost comical how fast his expression changed.

"Sorina," he began. "What are you doing here?!"

"We're going to get you out," the halfing said, hurrying over to examine the prison. "Mum's out there handling the guards. We don't have a lot of time."

"Jack," Zoe said, catching the young man's eye. "See if you can find an override switch. Without a keycard, we can't have direct access, but like I said before. The Foundation is known for its unique designs."

"While I applaud your efforts-and really, I most certainly do, I implore you to escape," Dracula insisted, frowning as Sorina's hands danced against the glass like a tree frog's sticky toes. "You and your mother leave. I'll find a way out."

"No," Sorina said, her eyes not even meeting his as she continued her relentless search. "I'm not going to lose you guys. Not again."

"I would listen to your father if I were you." The voice echoed, cold, almost sneering as the clicking sound of heels filled the room. "Well, unfortunately, leaving is no longer an option. Such a terrible situation you've put me in."

Bloxham.

Sorina turned, her back against her father's cage as the doctor entered casually inside. A glint of metal caught her eye, and it didn't take a scientist to know it was a revolver. The woman seemed to notice her gaze and peered down, lips curved into smirk.

"Oh this?" The way she said it, the way the words leaked false innocence like venom, made Sorina's skin crawl. "You can never have too much protection."

"Let them go, Dr. Bloxham."

Zoe stood near Sorina, her grip on her own gun tightening. The woman moved closer to her niece, and the halfling soon realized that she was trying to get between them. A distraction. Bloxham cocked her head a frowned, letting out a long sigh.

"You were such a good scientist, Dr. Van Helsing," the middle aged woman exclaimed. "Even with that freak of a niece you have. To actually think at one point, I respected you," Bloxham pointed the gun at Zoe. "But I guess that cancer got to your brain. What a valuable mind to-"

BAM!

Jack struck the control panel hard with his bat, momentarily distracting Bloxham. Zoe, seizing the moment, knocked the woman backwards. Her disorientation didn't last long, and soon Zoe found herself thrust downwards. The handgun clattered to the ground, and Bloxham kicked it away with her foot. The scientist stood over the other woman, her eyes leering at her in a false sense of a victory. But before even Zoe could react, Sorina threw herself between them, both women hitting the wall hard.

"Why do you have to make things so difficult?" Bloxham hissed, blood dribbling from her temple. "It's not like you even cared in the first place."

There was another bang as Jack struck the device again, only this time, it began to spark. Out of the corner of her eye, Sorina noticed the slightest of slits in the doorway of her father's cage. She needed to keep Bloxham talking. Keep her preoccupied.

"They're my parents," she growled. "I never stopped loving them. I thought they were dead."

"And you came here in some ridiculous, valiant effort with the hopes of saving them?" Bloxham inquired. "I suppose it makes sense. Except," She reached over her head and for the first time, to her horror, Sorina saw the latch that opened the ceiling. "I think you might want to rethink your goal."

"Sorina!"

The halfling couldn't identify who was screaming her name as her eyes fixated on the opening above. It was as if time slowed down, a bright, white light cascading down and engulfing her very person. She wasn't sure what to expect. Pain. Agony. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. And she couldn't help but grin, laugh as she gazed up at the sun for the first time. Her eyes met her father's and Dracula appeared just as mesmerized. How were they not dead?

"Huh," Bloxham muttered. "Not exactly what I was expecting." Her mouth had twitched into a small frown and Sorina, still enamored by the sun, failed to notice the woman's attention on her. "Well, I suppose there's always another way."

Without another word, the woman pointed the gun straight at Sorina and fired.

[missdulcerosea]

king and lionheart

taglist (please ask to be added or removed!): @mordredfuckingpendragon​ @gringolet​ @cukibola​ @kouvei-matarra​

warning(s): mild violence and gore.

i. 

It starts with Gareth. His older brothers have learned to adapt - they blend in in blues, greens and gray. Keep your heads down, listen to Mother’s every word, listen to your king. But Gareth is young and has yet to learn.

And he suffers for it.

Gawaine shields him. He is the sun of their family, setting every night so the moon can rise without struggle. But sometimes he is too late, and comes across Gareth curled up in a corner of the castle, fingers pressing at the faint bruises at his knuckles or hastily scrubbing away the blood so that no one knows that Mother didn’t like him crying too loudly or saying the wrong thing. They all know but they try and hide it - he is still learning how to fade like his brothers, even though he is red.

Gawaine sets too late. He finds Gareth too long after he should, when Gareth is clutching hold of his eye - it is the magic. Gareth said the wrong thing again and Mother didn’t like that, even though he insisted that he was getting along fine with her, that in fact he tired of her coddling him too close this time. Though he’s tied the bandages around where she hit him, they are tattered and clumsy and he can barely hold them in place. He cries, even as Gawaine runs over and throws his arms around him.

They don’t say a word, because they all know Gareth is the red that runs through. And they know that it won’t be the same after this.

“How - how - she said she loved me - that she - that she’d never hurt me - and - and-”

“It’s okay,” Gawaine says, letting Gareth crumble in his arms. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He’s lying. They both know he is. But the lies are all they’ve got.

Gareth is the first of them. He burns brightest, he is the flame that must be extinguished. 

Gawaine knows that Camelot is crumbling away. It is but a gilded kingdom, and they are the walking corpses that populate it - decaying, decaying, decaying. If, perhaps, he’d arrived a little sooner maybe Gareth would at least get a bittersweet ending (they are all dying, so anything more than that is impossible), where Gawaine sees him off before he is gone, and he gets to hear the last words his second youngest brother - the one who he’d failed to keep completely safe - would ever say.

If he’d arrived sooner.

But when he arrives the flames are dying. Corpses are strewn around on the ground, and Gareth lies staring up with an empty eye at the sky. 

Again, he’s too late. The facade begins to crack (if it hadn’t begun already).

ii.

Mother warns them to stay far away from the woods unless they are hunting, but for Gaheris it looks like he doesn’t have to blend in. He fades the most, and thought Gawaine lets him know otherwise he lets himself go invisible. Though the words may leave him bloodied and wounded he keeps his lips sealed shut, like Mother told him. It is different when they are in the woods - he stands out, always racing ahead of his brothers, always the one who runs back saying he’d seen a unicorn there, he really had.

And Gawaine thinks about that a lot. Because if his brother fades away forever, how will he be able to know what goes on - what could be wrong? Though he keeps reaching for Gaheris’ hand, he only grasps at empty air.

“You had a nightmare, didn’t you?” 

Gaheris stares up at his brother. He swallows thickly. 

“You were tossing ‘n turning in your sleep - you weren’t saying a thing, but I could tell.”

“Well, I’m alright now.” Gareth speaks quickly. “Go back to sleep, I don’t want to keep you up-”

“You’re not alright.”

He’s lying through his teeth, even though he tries to frantically rub - no, scratch, because he will hurt himself if it means people don’t end up hurting him - away the tears that stain his face. His eyes are rimmed with dark circles and he shivers beneath the thin blanket in their tent. They’d found a wyrm guarding a tree of golden apple and though they’d managed to take it down it was only after they had several of the knights with them devoured by the flames it spat out.

“I’m staying with you. Gaheris, you have to tell me or Agravaine about these things. You’re hurting. I just want you and everyone else to be happy.”

Gaheris nods. He has nothing. He is the gray of their family - not even a color, because he does not want to be noticed. And again he’s lying, because he will fade farther away from them again till he’s just a phantasm, an afterimage.

Gawaine pulls Gaheris close. “I’ll stay with you till you stop having nightmares. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Gaheris does not go with Gareth, his twin. Gawaine finds him with an arrow poking out through his chest, gulping in one desperate breath after another. He’s dragged himself away from the mess of dust-tinted red on the ground, where he sits against a tree where the woods begin. He’s fading.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Gaheris mumbles. “You have to go. You have to go on.”

“Not without saying goodbye.”

He holds Gaheris’ hand till the warmth begins to fade. Another brother that’s left behind as an afterimage, another brother of his gone.

The part that makes him the most numb, Gawaine realizes, is that Gaheris still told him to leave him be, to let him fade. Even though it was the end.

iii.

They’re sent to Camelot once the truce is made official. They see the envelope sealed with a lump of red wax and are sent on a boat to Camelot. The water laps at the boat, the skies above are a dull gray. Gareth and Gaheris are still so very young, and though they have felt pain no one as young as them should feel they bounce around on the boat, waiting for the stars to poke through the sky and for the high towers of Camelot to appear on the horizon. Gawaine, too, thinks that now that Mother is sending them away they will be different. They will be heroes. They will be free.

Agravaine stays the same.

He squints past the setting sun. The wind presses his hair against his face and distorts his vision, but still he leans over the deck of the rocking boat to stare at home - by now it is but a dot far away on the horizon.

Gawaine is their sun. The other brothers are the planets, and Agravaine doesn’t want to fall out of alignment.

“What’s the matter?”

Agravaine lets out a hushed sigh. “I don’t know. There’s a part of me glad to be so far away from Mother. But at the same time some of the things she said and did - she said she loved us, and now that Father’s gone and this king of England who we barely know’s the only person we have left-”

“I understand.”

“You say that. But do you really understand?”

The gravitational pull shifts. Gawaine falters in his words. “Maybe I don’t.”

“Damn him. Or at least damn Uther for ruining our grandmother’s life and ruining our mother’s. She says she’s happy, especially with the new baby, but I don’t think she is. And at the same time I kind of want her to be unhappy because of the times she beat me, even if she was just angry and I was in trouble.”

“I don’t know what to do or say about any of that. Because for me it is different.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Just having you listen is enough.”

He’s seen Mother rub off on Agravaine. It is how he snaps at his brothers, the cold blue of his eyes (like ice - glittering but with no warmth or life to them), how he says that he can say things because he is angry or sad. But Agravaine is his brother, and Gawaine does not want him to go through the world like this. He will be his brother’s shield, even if his brother spits venom, because he knows that one day the ice will melt and the sun shall shine through.

Agravaine does not go gently. He reaches the end still spitting forth venom, determined to draw blood and infect Lancelot with all that he has been infected with.

And Gawaine goes with him, because Agravaine is one of the only brothers he has left - he tells Agravaine to get out now, better to live in exile than to be killed. There is no convincing Mordred of anything other than tearing the kingdom apart now, only letting Agravaine escapes. If it comes to the sun setting once and for all so that the moon can rise, then Gawaine will let that happen.

“Go.” Gawaine will have no regrets in saying this. He knows that much.

Agravaine stares back at him. “What do you-”

“Go!” Gawaine shouts. “I don’t want you gone. I already lost two brothers. I don’t want to have another one dead and gone, too.”

Lancelot lets him go, and turns to Gawaine. They both knew Agravaine would lose - he does not have what Lancelot and Gawaine do. Lancelot lets him go because then he will get to call him a coward, a snivelling, pathetic coward just like the rest of his brothers.

“I’ll fight you in my brother’s name. Because I know it’s all your fault. It’s all your fault they’re gone.”

iv. 

“Am I good enough?”

Mordred is very, very young. His hair is ash-white, from Mother’s meddling with magic and using him as a test subject. He stares up at Gawaine with drooping brown eyes - Arthur’s eyes, Gawaine knows, the eyes of Mordred’s father. A father who promises to be everything their mother was not. 

“At parrying your blows, I mean,” Mordred adds. “‘Cause I know I’m not as good as you-”

“Don’t say that.” Gawaine shakes his head. “You’ve still got a long way to go. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

“Thanks for teaching me.”

Gawaine smiles. “Of course. It’s what brothers do.”

While Agravaine is cold as ice, Mordred burns bright - if he is not careful, his flames will disintegrate all he comes close to. There’s no monster, just a boy Gawaine needs to keep his eye on. Like he has always done with the rest of the family. It is no different for his newest, youngest brother.

Mordred shatters.

He is wounded and bleeds, and decides to wound Camelot in return for all that he has been through. Gawaine thinks it isn’t right, for though Camelot may be gilded there are still remnants of the true gold glittering underneath. Mordred thinks he needs to break everything, and rebuild from the ashes.

Mordred of Orkney - Mordred Pendragon, whoever he is, a stranger - is not dead.

But with all that has been said and done, he might as well be.

[kittae]

The Last  [ 1 ]

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Yoongi x reader

Genre: Angst, Post-Apocalyptic, Zombie!AU, Adventure, Survival, smut in future chapters

Words: 4k

!Warnings! : extremely anxiety inducing situations, body horror, horror, mentions of death, graphic descriptions of death, mass panic, vomiting, mentions of blood, cauterisation, asphyxiation, strong language, etc. Do not read if very sensitive.

summary: When the world’s gone to shit and you’ve taught yourself to stay alive while danger lurks around every corner, the last thing you need is another mouth to feed and extra “dead” weight. Yet you can’t bring yourself to leave another human being behind, and it might as well have been your worst decision ever… or was it the best?

A/N: The first official chapter! I’m not used to writing this genre so i’m still trying to get familiar with it. I hope i managed to get across what i wanted to get across and I’m sorry in advance jfdhdghks.

Chapters: Prologue   |  one

“Ready?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

As the words leave your mouth, the blade moves before he could object. His flesh simmering against the red hot steel like a seared steak. The piece of wood cracks underneath the force of his teeth, the porcelain touching through the splinters while his eyes roll back in his head. The scorching pain leaves him breathless, his screams stuck in his throat in a strangled noise as he chokes on them. He balls his hands into fists and would hiss at the sting of his nails digging bloody crescents into his palms if he wouldn’t be on the brink of fainting. Every muscle in his body contracts violently before relaxing again when the torture device removes itself after five excruciating seconds, his breath able to leave his lungs in frantic pants and sweat dripping down his neck and forehead.

“You really shouldn’t try to stay conscious right now. Don’t fight it.”

Your unexpected but gently whispered words are convincing enough to let the pain cloak the world in darkness, to stop fighting his body’s urgent need to shut down. He doesn’t have time to assess the level of danger that comes with letting himself be vulnerable at this time and place, entrusting himself in the care of a stranger. His eyes fall shut at the same time he collapses. You catch him in time, your cool fingers like a breeze on his forehead as you lay his head to rest in your lap.

.

.

“Are you fucking crazy?!” His voice cracks as it raises in pitch after spitting out the pulverized wood, saliva dripping down his bottom lip he doesn’t bother to wipe off.

You blink at him blankly. “I prefer the term genius.” Turning the knife around by its long haft, you disinfect the other side of the blade on the stone in the fire. “You were only out for like five minutes or something.”

As you’re talking, he scrambles away from your lap just far enough to get on all fours and start vomiting heavily. You pull a face, making a mental note of how you should clean that up before night falls. You can only imagine how the smell would lure unwelcome visitors.

Yoongi’s weak but visibly seething, the pain never ceasing to attack his every nerve. His vision is still blurry, his eyes repeatedly trying to fall shut again while black spots dance behind them.

“You said you’d count to three, asshole.” He slurs, making a feeble attempt to wipe the spit and vomit still dripping from his chin with the back of his hand.

“I lied.” You shrug.

“Who fucking lies about that?!”

“Oh, I’m sorry? Did you expect a nice massage and some fairy dust to magically heal that gaping hole in your leg?” You tilt your head, eyes squeezed to menacing slits and sarcasm dripping from every word. “Get a fucking grip, Yoongi. You would’ve bled to death or lost your leg with your shitty makeshift tourniquet. Consider yourself lucky i found you and know how to cauterize and maybe be a little more grateful.”

“Counting my fucking blessings.” He bites through gritted teeth, eyeing the ugly singed edges on his thigh, now a mess of painfully throbbing and burnt tissue instead of a bleeding open wound.

You roll your eyes but reach for your first-aid kit anyway. Cauterizing wounds is not an easy task. It’s one thing to stop the bleeding by searing the torn skin, but the danger for infections is almost double as high as before.

“Hey. I never said this was going to be fun or pretty.” You snap as you wetted a sterile cotton pad with disinfecting alcohol. ”You better put that stick back in your mouth, we need to clean this new wound regularly every time it starts staining your bandages— hold on this is gonna sting.”

“No no no no, wai- AHHH!”

His blood-curdling scream makes you grit your teeth in annoyance and leaves you no other choice than to stop trying to clean his wound.

“Stop making so much noise!”

“It’s daytime!” Yoongi spits venomously. “Easy for you to say when you’re not on the receiving end of that fucking cotton pad!”

“No. I’m on the receiving end of a whiny little bitch.”

“Who’s calling who a bi–”

“I am! Me, the idiot who’s wasting her medical facilities on a complete and ungrateful stranger!” You bark, the sarcasm making place for pure and undiluted frustration when you toss the precious with alcohol saturated pad on the ground. A part of the resources you’ve been stashing up carefully since all hell broke loose. You know just dousing the wound in alcohol would go so much faster and would probably be much less torturous, but you really couldn’t afford it.

Yoongi finally shuts his mouth, a guilt-stricken blush creeping up from his ears to his cheeks. He keeps his lips sealed, even for an apology, but the way his eyes avoid yours as they scan the ground for gravel to focus their gaze on says it all.

You said nothing either. You just take his silence as confirmation that you’re right. When you grab another cotton pad, keeping your eyes on him the entire time, he doesn’t object. This time, you remind yourself to wrap the stick in a piece of cloth and shove it in his mouth, to ensure he wouldn’t draw any unwanted attention.

“Try to be quiet this time, alright? I know it hurts, but i’m trying to keep you alive.” You murmur, anger seeping away when you watch his face. He looks scared, hurt, confused. You’ve been taking care of yourself for quite some time now, you forgot there were still people who probably had a hard time adapting to this lifestyle. Even though your new companion had managed to get on every single one of your nerves in the few hours you’d gotten to know him, you obviously take no pleasure in torturing him like this.

Yoongi nods quietly, bracing himself and closing his eyes, knowing you wouldn’t count to give him a heads up anyway. He just lets the pain overwhelm him for the third–and probably not the last–time that day. It’s easier now his teeth don’t collide with bare wood, but instead sink into the fabric of the cloth. Nevertheless, tears keep pouring from the corners of his eyes like a tap that’s been left open, wetting his cheeks as his pained groans and sobs get smothered by the gag in his mouth. He tries listening to your quietly muttered apologies as you scrape the dirt and pus out of the burnt hole in his thigh to distract himself.

He takes it like a champ until you’re done, right up to the ointment you apply at the end after his wound has been made spick and span.

“Bet this feels a lot better already.” You smile as you carefully wrap the bandages around his thigh, proud of your craftsmanship.

“Yeah,” Yoongi admits, the tension on his face ebbing away and softening out for something more timid and thankful while he watches you concentrate on taking care of him. “It does.”

Your lips involuntarily curl up a little upon getting to hear how soft his voice can be. The heat on your cheeks definitely have nothing to do with that, they’re just hot from the fire.

“There’s a creek not far from here, so we can head there tomorrow to wash the bandages and rinse the dirt from your wound again.” You continue as you eye his teared up jeans and dirty clothes. “Maybe you want to wash your clothes, too?”

“You mean what’s left of them?” He hufs, choosing to avert his gaze when you look up to see the expression paired with the soft chuckle that rings as a pleasant bell in your ears. You have a hard time remembering the last time you’d heard anything like it.

“Was that a joke, Min Yoongi? Are we making jokes now?” Your grin widens and you didn’t miss the subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth either.

“Whatever.” He grumbles, still having trouble to keep his irritated façade despite the ever very present pain.

A few minutes of comfortable silence ensues between the two of you as you finish cleaning up and Yoongi puts out the fire when the sun starts to set again. You only just realise you won’t be spending this sunset alone for once, and you can’t deny how relieved it makes you feel.

“It’s like a dream.” You hear from behind you, pulling you out of the momentary trance you’d found yourself in watching the big ball of light disappear again. Did the days start getting shorter or was it just your imagination? It only seemed like an hour or two ago when you’d last sat on your watchpost on the rock.

“What?”

“The sunset. Sunrise.” Yoongi elaborates as he limps over to where you were sitting down. “Sometimes, I feel like all there’s left is darkness, you know? After the sun sets, it’s like I’d imagined it all, day after day. When it rises again, I feel so relieved.”

His words take you a little by surprise. It’s like he knows what you were thinking and plucked those thoughts from your mind to recite them to you.

“Never took you for the sappy type.” Murmuring, you cross your arms as you’re feeling weirdly exposed all of a sudden.

He doesn’t say anything but you catch him smirk from the corner of your eye, even when you try to make it look like your gaze is trained on the colorful sky alone.

“How’s your leg?” You try to change the subject.

Yoongi subconsciously goes to touch the wound, but stops himself halfway.

“Much better, actually. That’s some strong stuff you got.” He says, referring to the heavy-duty painkillers you keep in your first-aid kit and have shared with him. You’d snatched them from a pharmacy some time ago.

“Yeah, they’re super addictive but you’ll be fine. The chance we’ll find them again after I run out is practically non-existent, so...”

There’s another silence following your words where you can feel a strange, tense vibe coming from your black-haired companion. He parts his lips a few times, closes them equally as many, then proceeds to heave a deep sigh.

“Hey, listen,” He starts, somewhat hesitant. “Thank you... I wouldn’t be alive right now if it weren’t for you, I guess.”

It’s a pretty shitty thank you but you’ll take it.

“You’re welcome.” Your voice strains a little, not being used to these kinds of awkward interactions anymore. It’s not that you’re not pleased with the fact he finally thanks you, but it just feels so… weird.

“Yeah.”

You watch the sunset together for a little while longer, until the warm glow barely reaches the edges of the forest as it sinks back underneath the horizon like it does every single day. Every day it disappears, and every day you wonder whether you’ll live to see the next one.

“How did it happen, though?” You suddenly ask him.

“Hm?”

“Your leg. What happened?”

He visibly tenses, mulling over his words for a moment. “It’s a long story.”

“We have time, no?” You scoff, gesturing at your quiet and abandoned surroundings.

Yoongi hesitates, reluctance written all over his face. It looks like it’s not something he wants to talk about.

“Hey, forget it,” you ensure with a smile, “I was just curious but you don’t have to tell me if it’s too hard.”

“Thanks.”

He didn’t really say much after that while you both enjoyed the last minute of warmth and light.

“We should turn in for the night. I think both of us could use some sleep after the last twenty-four hours.” You propose, already standing back on your feet and reaching your hand out to your injured patient to help him up as well.

“Sounds good.” He says as he lets you lift him to his feet. You suddenly realize you still have the habit of brushing the dirt off your pants after you’d sat down, when you see Yoongi doing it as well. A strange habit to keep at this point, you think. You’ve been thinking a lot since your path crossed Yoongi’s.

You hadn’t been thinking about the fact you’d be sharing a tent with him, though. That thought doesn’t hit you until you’re already inside and he makes himself right at home by nestling himself into your sleeping bag.

“Feeling comfortable?” You ask, brows raised and eyes boring vehemently into his skull as you watch the satisfied expression on his face.

He nods, eyes already shutting as he gets ready for a long and hopefully peaceful slumber. Not on your watch.

“Scoot over, parasite.” You grumble, stuffing yourself inside the sleeping back with a total disregard for Yoongi’s condition and bumping him to the side with your hip.

“Ouch! Be careful, I’m injured!” He whines as if you hadn’t been devoting your entire day to nursing him and despite his bad leg being on the opposite side of your merciless hip-bumping.

“You’re a big baby, that’s what you are.”

“Why are you so mean?” His pouted lips form a strong contrast with how he’s menacingly side-eyeing you.

You think about that for a second. He probably wasn’t really serious about it right now but he wasn’t wrong. You silently acknowledge the fact you haven’t been all that friendly to him from the first second of your encounter.

“Because friendliness won’t get you anywhere in this world.” You whisper, painfully aware of the thoughts that come running through your head. “Not anymore, at least.”

Yoongi frowns, rolling himself on his side to look at you staring at the top of the tent. “Who says?”

You snort. “I mean, look around you. Look at what happened. We can all pretend we care about each other until there’s a crisis and we have to survive, then it’s every man for himself.”

“You’re helping me, though.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“But you did anyway.”

You don’t answer that. You feel sadness starting to creep its way into your heart, making you feel things you thought you’d successfully suppressed. This whole conversation is summoning memories, having them play through your mind on loop like a broken movie.

Yoongi waits for you to say something, but gives up when you don’t. Your eyes are closed and your breathing calm as you pretend to have fallen asleep already.

“That’s right, it’s been a rough day.” He mumbles, a faint smile finding his lips before he lies down more comfortably to finally catch some sleep as well.

.

.

“Excited?” You can’t contain your own joy, a big grin spreading across your face seeing the little girl bounce up and down in anticipation.

She smiles up at you and nods frantically before going back to peer at the stage in hopes of catching a glimpse of her idols, despite the fact it’s still half an hour before the concert actually starts. You chuckle and playfully ruffle your little sister’s hair. She’s already taken off her plastic birthday crown, the reason for that undoubtedly the ginormous number ‘10’ written on the front in a curly font. She probably doesn’t want the boys to see her as a child (if they’d even notice her at all so far up the tribunes but you won’t be the mean older sister and burst her bubble).

“How much longer?” She whines when she keeps looking, but still no good-looking twenty-something guys appear on stage.

You look at your watch. “Only twenty more minutes, baby. They’ll be up soon. Are you sure you’re not thirsty?”

Not waiting for her answer, you’re already rummaging through your backpack that’s stuffed with water, nutritious cookies and and juice packs. You’ve gone to many a concert before this one and know that staying hydrated is extremely important, even when you have assigned seats.

“Here, drink thi– Oh!” A push from the side makes you lose your balance and the uncapped bottle of water fallsl to the ground, splashing the fluid everywhere.

When you turn around to scold the person who pushed you, a million things happen at once. People are screaming, pushing, running, tripping over each other. Attendees from the top of the tribunes are scattering down the stairs, even over the chairs and over one another, not caring who they worked to the ground in the process as long as they could escape. Confusion paralyzes you only for a moment until your survival instinct, too, kicked in and you grab your sister by the hand to follow the crowd of screaming, panic-crazed people.

“___, what’s happening?!!” Your sister cries, bewildered as she looks around her and watches more panic unfold before her eyes. “Where are we going?!”

“I don’t know, Mia, keep running! We have to get to the exit!” You yell, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute as you keep your sister’s hand in a vice like grip while you let yourselves get swallowed by the stream of bodies. “Don’t let go of my hand!”

Your head feels light and empty, like there’s nothing useful in there but a red and buzzing alarm. Sound seems to fade to the background, cries and pleads and screams of others just noise while your heartbeat pounds loudly in your ears. You feel bile rising in your throat, the nausea in your stomach threatening to make you throw it all up when you occasionally trip over obstacles lying in your way and you realise they’re the bodies of people who’ve been trampled to death. You can’t bring yourself to care about them, not now, not when you have to bring your sister and yourself to safety. The only thing that matters right now is to get to the exit, to survive. You see the green light of the emergency exit, yet the doors have not yet been opened. The mass of bodies is piling up, people are getting squished to the walls and between each other as more and more men and women try to force their way to the front to get to the exit first, oblivious to the fact the doors are still closed for whatever damn reason.

“Why isn’t it opening?!”

“Open the fucking doors!!!”

“Let us out!! Let us out!!”

“I can’t breathe! Please stop pushing! Please!”

You hear the cries and screams and it hits you, the fact you’re all trapped in here. The doors aren’t opening and there’s no turning back. You can’t see two metres in front of you, but all around you people are suffocating; faces turning red, then purple and blue until they collapse from asphyxiation, never to wake up again.

Mia. You have to save Mia! You could have her sit in your neck so she’s higher up and not squished.

When you want to lift her up, you find to your horror that your hand’s empty and your sister is nowhere to be seen. The world disappears from underneath your feet, time stopping all the same. You can’t believe you lost her. You can’t believe you’ve let that happen. This can’t be real, this can’t be reality. You refuse to accept this!

“Mia!” You scream at the top of your lungs, frantically spinning around as much as the extremely limited space allows you. You start running back, away from the exit and against the current, pushing people to the side and squeezing yourself through every gap you could find. You keep yelling your sister’s name, trying to look for a red sweater and two braids all the while.

You can’t let yourself lose hope. Staying calm and rational will give you the best chance to find her back. Banishing all worst case scenarios from your thoughts as best as you can, you force your brain to get to work. Now you’re standing in a less crowded spot, you allow yourself to breathe again, looking around to find a solution. Your eyes fall on the empty tribunes. You could climb up and have a better overview from higher up.

Purposely turning a blind eye to the corpses littering the stairs and pretending like they aren’t there, you climb up. You can’t afford to get emotional right now, you can’t break down and lose the adrenaline rush that’s the only thing that keeps you functioning..

A sound startles you out of your concentration. It’s something between a hiss and a bubbling gurgle, making you stop in your tracks. Your head turns to the direction of the disturbing sound and what you find paralyzes you with fear. Someone– no, something is crouched over one of the dead bodies on the tribune stairs and staring right at you with milky eyes. It growls, blood dripping out of its mouth and over its chin before leaving the dead body for what it is in favor of something more fresh. You can’t believe what you’re seeing, although you know it’s real and you know exactly what it is. Now you know what made this mass panic break out in the first place.

“Holy shit…” The breath you take shakes as you whisper, your feet still frozen in place even when the thing approaches.

But then Mia reappears in your mind, giving you the push you need to snap out of your fright and choose flight instead. You don’t think fight would be an option in this situation, so you start running again. There seems to be some movement in the crowd now, the force of the suction of people streaming through the exit doors pulling you in and along. The pressure of the mass must’ve made the doors break open by force. You can’t fight it, so you have no choice but to let yourself get sucked in if you don’t want to meet the same fate as the people lying motionlessly on the floor. There’s still no sign of Mia and you’d be lying if you’d say you’re not starting to get desperate. You didn’t even get a chance to check from above.

“Mia!!” You try again, unable to stop the tears that finally pour out of your eyes, your chest clenching painfully where your heart is still working overtime to process the panic. “Mia!!”

.

.

You startle awake with a gasp tearing from your lips, your body drenched in sweat, face wet with tears and a wide-eyed Yoongi sitting up next to you, a hand resting on your shoulder.

“Are you okay?” He asks, and you need a minute to process your surroundings. You’re not in the concert venue, you’re not getting pushed and pulled by hot bodies. There’s no one screaming. Everything is eerily quiet, but the image of your little sister still swims in your mind. She’s still gone. You still lost her. Nothing changed.

“I– I had to wake you because you s-started screaming in your sleep and...” Yoongi starts, but his voice dies when you burst into tears. You do try to keep it down but the pain that rips through your chest is unbearable. Yoongi says nothing, just pulls you into an embrace, muffling your cries and sobs into his shoulder.

After a full hour of unstoppable heartache, you’ve exhausted yourself so much you’re knocked out asleep again. Yoongi’s still wide awake, though. For the rest of the night, he lies peering at the ceiling of the tent, occasionally at you as a tear escapes from the corner of his eye.

“I’m really sorry.”

[dawnblxde]

🔥

@angeledwings - Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

“Remember kids, with great power, comes great triggering opinions!” 

I suppose this counts, but it’s only unpopular for a specific group of people. More are majority for it, but oh well. I am extremely pleased that Sony took Spider-Man out of Disney’s (MCU) Marvel Cinematic Universe, why? Simply put, they were butchering him. Extremely butchering him. Making him ooc, not faithful to the source matieral and the oppisite of authentic. Try to picture Cloud Strife, but he’s singing the campfire song as if he’s Spongebob or Tifa, but she is simply a stripper on a poll. Sounds like a bad butchering of them, right? Well that’s what was going on with Spider-Man. This is coming from someone, who has read all 800+ of Spider-Man’s ongoing issues in the main universe that started in 1962 several times over, I know the character’s story, his morals, his core, what makes Spider-Man = Spider-Man down to a T. I’ll throw in some examples. Disney represented Spider-Man as a figure who idolized Tony Stark aka Iron Man and needed Iron Man to make all his suits and equipment for him? An authentic Spider-Man doesn’t like Tony Stark, makes all of his suits, gadgets and equipment by himself. Also, Spider-Man’s IQ is 250, but while Iron Man’s is 192. Notice the disrespect? Disney had him casually reveal his secret identity to thousands of heroes and villains. Just casually whipping off that mask. It is a strong core part of Spider-Man’s character to want as little people as possible to know who he is behind the mask. Heroes included. He’d go to funerals for heroes with his mask on and he made a deal with the devil to craft a magical contract based spell so that it was now magically impossible for people to learn who he is, unless he wanted them to know for some reason. The official list of those who know who he is in the prime universe is smol. Disney (this is the worst thing, I don’t have tolerance for praise of any of these disrespectful actions, but this is the one that will really put me off) decided it was okay to have him both indirectly and directly kill in the movies Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame. This takes the cake of Spider-Man disrespect. If you know of Spider-Man from his source material (or looking it up on wikipedia, it’s faithful adaptions; = All Spider-Man video games, Spider-Man 1994 TV series, Spectacular Spider-Man 2008 TV series, Tobey’s run with Spider-Man & Spider-Man 2, Andrew’s run with Amazing Spider-Man & Amazing Spider-Man 2 or the best interpretation/adaptation which takes the main Spider-Man with one change to make it different = Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), then you know - as well as I do. Spider-Man is a pure soul, a pacifist, he doesn’t kill anything. Whether it be human or not. He doesn’t cross that line. Spider-Man doesn’t kill. In what if comics where he has. He either shoots himself in the head, unable to bear what he’s done, quits being Spider-Man for good, allows cops to shoot him down intentionally or blows himself up somewhere alone. In the main branch, he only has one kill to his name. A suicidal woman that tricked his Spider-Senses when he was fighting Wolverine and was tense, so he turned around thinking it was Wolverine, set off a full power punch and made her head go splat. That was well over a decade ago and even now the guilt eats him up. He can’t forget what he accidentally did. Killing isn’t Spider-Man and faithful adaptations get that. But Disney who are messing with main branch storylines, have him do it and then shrug it off. Have no guilt or remorse for what he’s done. Brushes and laughs it off and it’s just disgusting. That is far worse then how unfaithfully Disney’s two solo movies have treated him. So yeah, back to the main matter, I am happy about the split. Because Sony never did this! It so clear how much respect and love they have for the character of Spider-Man. They messed up once with Spider-Man 3, but that was it. Made all the on point games and TV shows, while all the bad TV shows has been by, no surprise = Disney (there’s even a comic where main Spider-Man rips their cartoon tv Spidey to shreds in the form of roasting.) Sony’s Tobey Maquire films took an original spin on things, intentionally from the beginning, but remembered what made Spider-Man him, in Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. Then the two with Andrew Garfield, the ones that should of just been crossed into the MCU or continued on their own, were accurate to the source material with miner changes. Capturing the moment that defined Spider-Man as a character and helped him mature and develop beautifully aka below. 

The death of Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man’s first and one true love. 

This is brings me to the beginning, where I said this was unpopular to a specific group of people. That’s right, just people hooked on the MCU like an addictive drug and think it can do no wrong. My in depth research revealed those crying over Sony taking Spider-Man back, which they have the film rights to, were people who’s only knowledge was movies. No knowledge to Spider-Man’s canonical history via reading those comics or going to the Marvel 616 wikipedia. People crying that he will be no longer butchered or treated like a good, when this is actually a good thing. While all the people who have read the source material, Spider-Man’s wiki page, watched or played one of the faithful adaptions sit in the majority of being happy this spit happened. All like myself, looking forward to what Sony will do with Spider-Man in their Sony Marvel Universe. Which kicked off to a great start with the accurate Venom and Into the Spider-Verse. I have no hate for the actor who portrayed the bad Disney Spider-Man, it’s not his fault. I don’t mind him continuing to portray Spider-Man in Sony’s universe. When they wrote him in Civil War, ignoring Disney’s choice to push Stark as a mentor over Uncle Ben, otherwise he was accurate in that one movie. Lastly, I’d like to point out. Another reason why the split is a good thing. Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Dikito, who neither liked what Disney were doing, nor did their families still alive right now. Here’s the good part, you can look up that that Stan Lee’s daughter, other then like the previous posting their thoughts on personal social media. She made a public statement where she sided with Sony in the split over Disney, while stating the ones who have shown the most disrespect and lack of appreciation for her father’s legacy (aka Spider-Man and some other characters) were Disney and Marvel under their thumb. And he was better off without them. So yeah, I am extremely confident Sony made the right choice for Spider-Man. 

[poirott]

any news on Death on the Nile?

Hi! Yep, Kenneth Branagh confirmed Jodie Comer’s casting again yesterday after the article two weeks ago, and it was about time we got some official news because we waited three months for it, not just about Jodie but the production in general. Ken said they’re currently casting other characters, and that a lot of actors are asking him if they can be in the movie! :)

It’s been a long process of news and rumours for Poirot fans since the movie first got announced in 2017. Let’s look at the timeline again because new fans have joined us since the recent casting announcements:

Nov 21 2017 - Death on the Nile, sequel to Murder on the Orient Express, announced to be “in development” by 20th Century Fox, with MOTOE screenwriter Michael Green already on board, Kenneth Branagh expected to return. We’re speculating how the ending of MOTOE - Poirot learning about the murder on the Nile when he exits the train - plays into DOTN since in canon Poirot is already on location in Egypt when the murder happens.

Dec 27 2017 - Ken teases the DOTN ensemble cast could include “old friends”, and loves the idea of a new Poirot/Christie “Cinematic Universe”, starting fan discussion about other Christie characters potentially meeting Poirot, or getting their own movies. I’m curious which actors could fall under the term “old friends”; thinking back on it now, Ken may have meant Tom Bateman returning as Bouc from MOTOE, but perhaps there will be other casting surprises.

Feb 13 2018 - DOTN release date is confirmed to be November 8 2019, but will later change twice. Ken confirmed to return as actor and director.

Feb 24 2018 - A follow-up to the Christie “Cinematic Universe” speculation, Ken again talks about the possibility of Poirot and Miss Marple meeting sometime in the future if the Christie Estate was up for it. He explains he picked DOTN as the sequel to MOTOE because there is “disturbing sexual passion at the centre of it. It’s a dangerous tale of obsessive love and the central characters are very youthful and that produces crimes of passion. And once again, [Christie] does it in extraordinary places with great spectacle.”

June 23 2018 - DOTN changes release date for the first time from November 8 2019 to December 20 2019, now going against STAR WARS: EPISODE IX and Wicked. MOTOE did well in Nov 2017 as “counter programming” next to superhero films like Justice League and Thor: Ragnarok.

Sept 13 2018 - DOTN expected to start filming “early next year”, in spring at the latest, returning to the UK to shoot at Longcross Studios in Surrey, like they did with MOTOE, while there is “automatic assumption they’ll shoot exterior shots overseas.”

Sept 28 2018 - Gal Gadot in talks for the role of Linnet Doyle in DOTN. The movie expected to shoot in “spring 2019″. Scottish Daily Mail writes Armie Hammer and Jodie Comer are rumoured to be in “early talks”, and that Tom Bateman from MOTOE is “likely to join.” The casting of Bateman as Poirot’s assistant again could mean this adaptation of DOTN won’t have to introduce the character of Colonel Race, Poirot’s assistant in the DOTN book, since there is no need for two assistant characters filling the same role.

Oct 3 2018 - Armie Hammer confirmed to play Simon Doyle, the husband of Linnet Doyle, in DOTN. Movie now expected to shoot in “mid-2019″, which starts speculation about the release date being pushed back again.

Oct 15 2018 - DOTN changes release date for the second time, getting pushed back for almost a year from December 20 2019 to October 2 2020. The rumour is not picked up by any major outlets but is later confirmed to be true. We later learn the studio wanted to change the release date quietly, hence no official announcement. Deadline also reports Tom Bateman will indeed be in DOTN. The new release date has DOTN going against Bios starring Tom Hanks, and two untitled superhero films (Fox/Marvel and Sony/Marvel), one of them likely being Venom 2.

Oct 19 2018 - Still no official confirmation about the release date change but ScreenRant posts about it as a done deal. The biggest reason for the move is the “impending Disney-Fox acquisition (which is now expected to be finalized by January 2019).” In anticipation of the deal, Fox has been rearranging its release calendar of late, and DOTN was one of the movies that got hit. The movie is no longer expected to start shooting “in spring”. Tom Bateman’s talent agency confirms he is returning as Bouc in DOTN.

Nov 30 2018 - Deadline posts conflicting info about DOTN starting to shoot in “early in the New Year for Fox”, news that goes against what we’ve heard weeks before. We speculate how much the production of DOTN will overlap with Ken’s other movie in the works, Artemis Fowl, which comes out on August 9 2019. Can Ken work on two movies at the same time or will DOTN only start filming once Artemis Fowl has finished its promo tour in August?

Jan 4 2019 - The Daily Mail reports Jodie Comer will play the character of Jacqueline de Bellefort, Simon Doyle’s ex in DOTN, news they got from Ken during a reception for his film All Is True. They say the movie will start shooting “inthe early autumn“ 2019, which suggests Ken will indeed complete the promo for Artemis Fowl first before DOTN starts filming.

Jan 22 2019 - Ken confirms Jodie Comer is in DOTN, adding he’s very excited about the central trio of Gadot, Comer and Hammer, and that the production is in the “the process of casting the rest.” He compares DOTN with MOTOE in the sense they “want the same sense of event“, and says, “Something I’m pleased about is that I bump into a lot actors I admire and they ask, ‘Can I be in the next one?!’ So I’ll absolutely be taking them up on that.“

And here we are. :) We can expect to get the rest of the casting news over the next few months, and may get reports of scouting teams on location abroad (Egypt? Morocco? We don’t know yet), the crew building sets at the studios, little bits here and there before actual filming begins. The cast going abroad to film will also make local and international news, like it did with MOTOE. We’ll hear about various partnerships DOTN has made with other companies, like MOTOE teaming up with Godiva. And as I’ve said before, Ken may get asked about DOTN during Fowl promo in the summer, sometimes actors drop hints and updates about their projects while promoting some other movie. Same with the rest of the cast who have projects lined up for 2019 and 2020.

Before you know it, we’ll have the first trailer and behind-the-scenes videos. I can’t wait for the next casting announcement! I so wanna know which actors are approaching Ken about the movie! :)

Thank you for your ask and take care!

[darks-ink]

Ectober Week day 6: Unearthed (AO3)(FFN)

Content warning: Suggested character death, descriptions of corpses

In the stress of the events that followed the Accident, as Danny struggled to control his new-found ghost powers and as ghosts started attacking Amity Park, the trio completely forgot about the body that they had buried in the woods.

Until someone found it.

Crime in Amity Park, real actual crime, committed by humans, was exceedingly rare. Robberies and muggings were practically unheard of, never mind murders. And while ghosts attack the city almost constantly, physical injuries are very rare. Sometimes people get injured in the general chaos, hit by debris for a ghost fight, or get threatened, but no one ever gets killed.

So when a corpse is found in the woods near Amity Park, the whole town becomes abuzz with rumors and gossip.

The police are called, the crime scene thoroughly investigated, and the corpse is studied, but the public is told nothing except that a body was found.

But good God, were the police unprepared for this. Working in Amity Park prepared them for a lot of weird things, the job lending itself not to strict, highly experienced police officers but rather the adaptable younger officers, and most of them had never dealt with actual dead bodies like this.

And the investigation wasn’t easy, either. It clearly wasn’t a recent crime, the body partially decayed and burned beyond recognition. They can’t even prove if a ghost was involved or not, because any traces of ectoplasm that might have been left behind would have evaporated a long time ago.

The slight body is brought back, and carefully examined. It was almost impossible to determine the cause of death, but there didn’t seem to be any injuries. They determined it was likely that this person had been killed by the same thing that had scorched them so badly, but they weren’t sure what, exactly, that had been.

It was much easier to determine who this person had been. The corpse was male, a mere teenager at the time of their death. And while he had been burned beyond recognition, there were more ways to identify someone than just by looking at them.

When the results of the DNA comparison came in, every single person on the case was baffled. They decided to verify it by comparing the teeth of their corpse with the dental records of the DNA match.

It was an exact match.

There was only one problem; the person that was a perfect match for the corpse from the woods was still alive.

It was one of the newer officers who suggested that they didn’t actually know if he was, in fact, alive. And while this might normally get a person send off to get their head checked, it actually wasn’t too crazy for Amity Park.

The boy was still in the city, still lived with his parents and still attended school, but he hadn’t been to any medical check-ups in close to two years. It was absolutely possible that the boy was a ghost.

Which led to the next concern: was the ghost that lived among them in the city the teen’s own ghost, or was it a different ghost pretending to be someone he wasn’t?

While the ghosts of Amity Park weren’t known to kill people, they had been known to pretend to be alive. Some could even pull it off so convincingly that no one knew until the ghost blew its own cover, usually in a fight with Danny Phantom.

So the possibility that a ghost had attacked an innocent teenager, killed him, and then replaced him, was rather unnerving. It was made all the more chilling by the knowledge that this boy had died and no one had noticed until they found his corpse.

This opened the way to another horrifying possibility, however. Maybe the boy’s parents never noticed because they were the ones to kill him.

They had always been ghost nuts, even before Amity Park saw its first ghost. And if the boy had died two years ago, as his records implied, then that would have been just before the city had its first spectral visitors. The parents might have found a way to guarantee that the boy would become a ghost, and killed him so they had proof.

But the police weren’t paid to speculate, they were supposed to find evidence and prove what happened to the boy. And so they set out to FentonWorks, where they interviewed every member of the family separately.

They couldn’t diverge too much information during the interviews, of course, and the people they were interviewing weren’t the easiest either. Between the adult Fentons, who would constantly ramble about ghosts and their inventions, the older kid, who seemed to be analyzing every single word the police said (and even what they didn’t say), and the youngest kid, the possible victim, they had their work cut out for them.

The parents seemed genuinely upset by the news that the dead body that had been found was a teenager, and immediately jumped on the possibility that a ghost was responsible. While this would be rather suspicious for most people, it was rather characteristic for the Fentons. Between their responses, and their general behavior towards their family, it was declared unlikely that they were responsible for the death of their own son.

The oldest child, the daughter, also carried no answers. When she was asked if her brother had changed over the last years, she had shrugged them off and told them that “he was a teenager, it would be worrisome if he hadn’t”. Her gaze was sharp and calculating, however, and she was clearly taking in every word they said. They ended up cutting off the interview early, afraid of letting anything slip.

Her younger brother, the ghost, the possible victim, was the most befuddling. When they asked him if he had heard of the body that was found in the woods, he didn’t respond with recognition. No, his eyes lit up with fury that had the officers shaking in their shoes, and clenched his fists as if he would go out and beat up the person responsible right that instant if he had known who it was.

It was clear that this ghost wasn’t the killer of Daniel Fenton, but this just raised more questions. Because if he wasn’t the killer, and he didn’t know that it was his body that they had found (didn’t even seem to consider that possibility), then who was this ghost? Was it the ghost of Daniel who had forgotten about his death when he became a ghost? Or was this just some random ghost who decided to pretend that he was Daniel, and then never stopped?

When the officers met back at the station to discuss everything they had learned (and everything they hadn’t), they could only come to one conclusion; they had to interview the ghost again, but this time with a focus on identifying him.

This proved to be easier said than done, however, because they had to achieve this without the ghost finding out that they had found the body of the boy he pretended to be.

The spirit that may or may not be Daniel Fenton was brought into the police station for further interrogations. He seemed to have gone through a personality shift since the last time, however, and played the act of a stubborn teenager far more than he previously had. He was obstinate and bull-headed, eyeing them with utmost suspicion and constantly questioning why they were asking him this.

When the man leading the interrogation finally reached his wits end and growled out “Dammit boy, we know you’re a ghost” the specter freezes up, eyes blown wide with barely hidden fear.

“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered out. “Me, a ghost? That’s- that’s crazy.”

The interrogator sighed deeply. “Look, we identified the body as Daniel Fenton’s. That means that you,” he poked Danny in the chest with a finger, “are either Daniel’s ghost, or you’re some spirit playing pretend.”

Danny scowled at the officer and swatted away the finger, speaking with venom dripping from his voice, “I’m no pretender.”

“So then why not tell us who killed you? Because I gotta tell you kid, when we asked you about the body last time, you looked ready to murder whoever did it.”

Danny hunched in on himself, blushing, with embarrassment of all things clear on his face. “I… forgot.”

“You what?!”

The boy shrunk in even further, rubbing the back of his neck in what had to be a nervous gesture. “I forgot about the body.”

The officer blinked at him, stunned. “You forgot that you died?”

“Not that I died! Just- just where we left the body.”

The interrogator groaned, sinking his head into his hands. “Can you at least tell us who did it? Who was this ‘we’?”

Danny smiled sheepishly, still rubbing the back of his neck. “Uh, it was an accident. And my friends and I, we just kind of, uh, panicked. So we buried the body and then just kind of forgot about it?”

“Well, we’re gonna need official statements from you and your friends. And then we’ll have to inform your parents.”

“Wait, no, you can’t! They’re ghost hunters! Why do you think we decided not to tell anybody?!” Danny scrambled up, the panicked look back on his face.

“Look, it’s just protocol, alright?” the officer attempted to soothe, but Danny just glared at him.

“Really, you have a protocol for ‘a kid dies in an accident and comes back as a ghost’?”

“Kid, just calm down, okay? I promise you that it’ll be fine, your parents clearly love you.”

Danny huffed, but slumped back into his seat.

“Fine, so what now? Official statements from the three of us, and then? Gonna officially declare me dead? Send me off to the Ghost Zone? Set ghost hunters on me to make sure I don’t turn malevolent?”

The officer glared at him, but Danny ignored him.

“Well, if Phantom hasn’t kicked you out of the city then you’re probably fine to stay.” Danny snorted at this, but the officer didn’t understand why.

“As you guessed, we don’t have protocol for this. Most people outside Amity don’t know ghosts exist. Hell, most people in Amity don’t even know that they could pass for living as well as you apparently can.” Danny muttered something under his breath, but the officer didn’t catch what he said and chose to ignore it.

“So, we’ll take your statements, and then we’ll talk with your parents to figure out the rest.”

And so Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley found themselves at the police station, where they managed to comfort a once-again panicking Daniel Fenton, before all three had their statements taken.

Danny rode in the back of the police car with the same officer that had interrogated him earlier that day, and a female officer he didn’t recognize. He felt like he heading towards the gallows, ice-cold dread pooling inside him.

He also felt somewhat guilty that he hadn’t told the officers the truth, and hoped that it wouldn’t come back to bite him. But the truth was just so ridiculous, they probably wouldn’t have believed him anyway. Better to play along, he thought. Not that that stopped him from feeling guilty.

Instead he tried to focus on calming himself down. He took a deep, if somewhat shaky, breath. Calm down Fenton, he bit at himself. You’ve faced off against ghosts like Pariah Dark, but you’re scared of your own parents? They love you, they’ll accept you, and it’ll be fine. They don’t even know you’re Phantom! They have no reason to hate you!

All too soon, and simultaneously not soon enough, they reached FentonWorks. Danny followed the officers to the front door, still trying to cork up his overworked emotions. He’s so occupied that he doesn’t even listen to the conversation between the police and his parents, just trailed after them and slumped into a chair in the living room.

He heard the male officer clear his throat, and snapped back to attention, cringing slightly at the worried expressions on his parents’ faces.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton. As you know, we found the body of a dead teenager in the woods near Amity Park recently.”

His mom frowned, glancing between the officer and Danny. “Yes. But how is this related to Danny?”

“Well, we successfully identified the body-” Oh no, nope, too brash. They needed to break this to his parents with more care- “and we’ve received statements confirming it,” the man just kept talking, completely oblivious to Danny’s panicking. “The body belongs to your son, Daniel Fenton.”

Danny froze up, fingers digging into the armrests of the chair with almost enough strength to tear them, anxiously gazing at his parents. His mental cursing fell silent, dread washing away all his emotions until he just felt numb.

The expressions on his parents’ faces hardened, and their hands shifted to reach towards the anti-ghost weapons they carried, and yep, this was going exactly as he feared. But he stayed still, frozen in place.

The moment was broken when his mother swung up an ecto-gun, however, which was knocked aside by the female officer, the shot just barely missing Danny. He panicked, went intangible on instinct, and fell through the chair and onto the floor behind it.

“A dirty ghost replaced our son! Some filthy piece of ectoplasm killed our Danny and replaced him!” his dad roared, and Danny remained crouched behind the chair. He could feel adrenaline bubbling up, his core releasing ghostly energy into his body, and he was struggling to stop himself from transforming.

“Please calm down! We assure you that no ghost killed your son-” “And how can you be so sure?! It’s been pretending to be our son for lord know how long, how do you know it didn’t lie about- about killing him?”

Danny forced himself to block out the shouting match, glancing around the chair and catching the eye of the male officer. The man turned slightly towards him, then jerked his head towards the front door almost imperceptibly. Danny frowned at him before understanding dawned on him, and he turned himself invisible but remained in place for another moment to confirm. The man nodded, and Danny took this as a dismissal. He hesitated for another moment before turning intangible as well and launching himself towards the nearest wall, phasing through it.

Once outside, he confirmed that no one could see him, and then retained visibility again, having dropped his intangibility the moment he was through the wall. He stopped for a moment to think, trying to figure out what to do next. He checked that he still had his phone on him (he did, thankfully), and shot a quick text to Sam and Tucker, asking if he can stay over at one of their houses.

He stuffed the phone back into his pocket before they answer, deciding to go on a patrol first, to blow of some steam. He reached out to his ghost core and let the cold power flood over him, transforming him into Danny Phantom.

Turning invisible once again, he launched himself into the air. He retained visibility again somewhere in the clouds, but can’t bring himself to care.

Several hours later, while on patrol with Sam and Tucker, he received a text from Jazz. It simply read “mom and dad think that a ghost killed Danny and replaced him, wtf?” and Danny can’t stop the snort that comes through. God, what a mess.

“Hey guys, I gotta go talk to Jazz. I’ll meet you back at Tucker’s place, okay?” Receiving two nods as answer, he quickly texted Jazz (“omw”) and shot off towards FentonWorks.

He hovered outside her window and knocked, then entered as she nodded at him. He opened his mouth to explain himself, but Jazz was faster.

“So, what on Earth is this about?” she snapped at him, and he rubbed the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly.

“Well! When the accident happened and I became half-ghost, I may or may not have left behind my old, fully-human body. And since we were kind of, you know, panicking, we decided to bury it in the forest so no one would ever find out what happened.”

Jazz stared at him, incredulous. Danny hunched up in response, blushing in embarrassment.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I thought we were past lying to each other, Danny.”

“We are! I just… I just kind of forgot?” he muttered, guilt lacing his voice.

“Oh my God, please tell me you’re joking.” Jazz stared him in the eye, then sighed. “Danny, how on Earth did you forgot about the fact that you buried your own corpse in the fucking woods.”

“Look, the Accident was a really confusing time, and then I had to learn to control my ghost powers, and then ghosts started attacking and we just kind of forgot, okay? Now will you please help me explain this to mom and dad so they’ll stop shooting at me?”

Jazz looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read, but she put her hand on his shoulder and pulled him into a hug. “Of course, little brother. We’ll figure this out, okay?”

Letting go again, she put her hands on her hips and put on a determined expression. “So, first things first. How much are you going to tell them?”

“Uh, everything, I guess. Well, except for the Phantom part, they don’t need more encouragement to shoot at me.”

“You’re not going to tell them about Phantom? Are you sure?”

“Jazz...” He sighed. “If this goes well I’ll tell them, okay?”

She nodded, before cutting back to the original subject. “Alright, so you’re going to tell them that you got into an accident with the Portal, and that you instantly became a ghost, and that you freaked out and decided to bury your body and pretend nothing happened. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You think that that’ll be enough?”

“Of course it will be enough. The only reason they freaked out is because they care about you. Do you have somewhere to stay for tonight?”

“Uh, yeah, Sam and I are sleeping over at Tucker’s place.”

“Good, good. Come by tomorrow after breakfast and we’ll talk this through with mom and dad.” Seeing his hesitation, she spoke again. “Danny, don’t worry about it. Everything will be fine, I promise. Now go and get some sleep, because you need it.”

He smiled at her and disappeared. She shook her head, a fond smile on her face.

The next day, not long after his family would normally have breakfast, Danny found himself hesitating in front of the door of the house. He took a deep, fortifying breath, and then walked in.

He could hear quiet chattering coming from the kitchen, and made his way over. He watched them for a moment from the doorway before his dad spotted him.

“Danny-boy!” he boomed, before remembering their last interaction, face souring instantly. His mother’s face also fell, but Jazz smiled at him and grabbed their parents before they could pull out any of their weapons.

“What are you doing here, ghost?” his mother hissed. “Haven’t you caused us enough pain yet?”

Danny winced, and Jazz glared at their mother before chastising her. “Mom! I asked Danny to come over, not that it should have been necessary since he lives here.”

“Jazz, that’s not your brother. That’s some foul ghost playing a sick game of pretend.”

“No, you listen to me! Danny has been a ghost for two years, but he never told you. And this is exactly why! He came over to tell you what happened, and you won’t even let him!”

“Jazz, you knew? How- how long have you known?” Danny had never heard his dad so quiet, and he hated it. He hated everything about this entire conversation. He could barely stop himself from turning invisible.

“I’ve known for a while now, but he told me about a year ago. And yes, I know the entire story.” She looked over at Danny, hoping that he would take over to tell his story. Seeing that Danny wasn’t about to join the conversation, however, Jazz kept going. “Do you remember when he had an accident in the lab, in freshman year?”

His parents glanced at each other, and loosened up a little. “Was that it? Was it- was it one of our inventions that- that killed our son?”

Danny sighed, drawing the attention back to him. “Yeah. It was the Portal. I uh, I turned it on while I was inside.” He shrugged at them, smiling sheepishly. “You put the on button on the inside, that’s why it didn’t work.”

“Sufferin’ spooks,” Jack swore quietly, eyes locked on Danny.

“But if it was the Portal, then how did your,” her breath caught for a second, “your body end up in the woods?”

“I panicked, okay? We didn’t know what to do and we were all really freaked out so we decided to just bury my body in the woods and pretend it never happened.”

“Oh sweetie,” Maddie mumbled, standing up from her chair and walking over to Danny. She touched his face, gently, before pulling him against herself, hugging him. “Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry.”

A second pair of arms wrapped around the two of them as his dad joined in. “Oh Danny-boy,” he muttered, and Danny was shocked to see tears forming in his dad’s eyes.

“It’s- it’s okay. You didn’t mean it. I don’t blame you for panicking.”

Finally they pulled away again, and he saw his family all smiling at him, and he found that he couldn’t keep the truth to himself any longer.

“Actually,” he glanced over to see Jazz nodding her approval, and steeled his resolve. “Actually, there’s something else that I need to tell you. Uh, promise you won’t freak out?”

“Of course Danny-boy, you can tell us anything!”

He stepped away from them, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. Then he called on his ghostly core, and let its power wash over him.

“I’m, uh, I’m Danny Phantom too. This,” he made some vague hand motions towards himself, “is what I actually look like as a ghost.”

Suddenly he was drowning in warmth as his father hugged him again, ruffling a hand through his hair. “Look at my son the ghost hunter! I knew you would follow my footsteps!”

“Well, I still think that Phantom has done some… questionable things, but I’m guessing that you have an explanation for all of that?”

Seeing that Danny was getting overwhelmed, Jazz cut back in. “He does, trust me. He has told me everything.”

His mom nodded, and then smiled at him. “Then I must say that I’m proud of my ghost-hunting son as well. My own little superhero, huh?”

She re-joined the hug as well, and Danny’s dad grabbed Jazz and pulled her in as well. Danny melted away in the familial love, feeling far happier than he had in a long.

He was in such a state of bliss that his next words slipped out without intending it.

“Also I’m only half-ghost, I’m not actually fully dead.”

“WHAT?!”

Cut intro / Prologue of sorts.

Also available as a 15 chapter fanfic / sort of continuation eventually.

[boywebbed]

                       OH WOW A TIMELINE ! 

hi i’ve been on this blog for a year & a half-ish and i think it’s time that i finally write up a cohesive timeline. i’ve pulled from canon to build my own spider-man & filled in the gaps with headcanons! so ummm… here’s my mash potato spider-man.

CHILDHOOD [ AGES 5-14 ]

at age five peter is left his his aunt may & uncle ben by his parents. it doesn't dawn on him that this is for good until a bit later in life. he’d been left with his aunt & uncle for long periods of time before, so he didn’t quite process what was happening. he still remembers his parents & as he grows he still has specific memories. he can remember his mother’s hair & father’s smile — but he doesn’t know or understand why he was left until much later in life. 

at ages nine to ten he begins seeing tony stark on the TV more often — he begins to love the idea of superhero’s and starts idolize tony stark. this is what starts his fascination with science/inventing things. he finds that he loves to create & is actually pretty good at doing it!

at age twelve he meets skip westcott. please see this post for more details. ( tw. csa ) he learns then what it is to use his voice, and there’s a period of disconnect that he works through with the help of his aunt & uncle. their love & support also make it really dawn on him that these are the people raising him & they people who love him like a son. it’s a concept he hadn’t really grasped prior to what happened to him. 

ages thirteen to fourteen show peter’s awkward/anxious nature blooming. during this time he doesn’t have many friends & really throws himself into his schoolwork rather than going out & making friends. this is when his scientific ability starts to blossom & he finds a new idol - otto octavius. his work fascinates peter & keeps his mind busy, distracting him from peers a general disconnect from his peers. he later learns that the disconnect is caused by his anxiety & doesn’t get help for this until later in life. somewhere in this chunk of life, he also meet harry osborn, who later becomes his first true friend as well as mary-jane watson. he falls for the redhead & falls hard, a crush for her lasting throughout all of high school. 

TEENAGER [ AGES 15-18 ]

age fifteen is when he’s bit by the spider that changes peter’s life. he had been along on a field trip, taking pictures for his school paper when he’s bit. the night where he gets his powers is perhaps the most hellish night of his life - his body tore itself apart from the inside & rebuilt according to whatever the venom of the spider dictated. overwhelmed by his newfound spider-senses, peter parker wonders into the streets of new york & finds out about his heightened abilities when he jumps over a car that nearly hits him. he tries to use his powers to earn money in the wrestling arena, where he is first called spider-man. he isn’t paid in full one night & lets a robber go with the man who had shorted him’s money, only to find out later that the man was to take his uncle ben’s car & shoot him in the street. his uncle dying in his arms is what drives him to use his powers for good & so he does. 

at age fifteen peter starts earning a name for himself as spider-man. he wears a costume made from on sale goodwill items & takes it upon himself to protect new york city. he starts building different gadgets to help him do just that ( goggles that help him focus his vision, web shooters, ect. ) he builds a suit for himself & starts gaining the attention of the public. a video of him goes viral on the internet & spider-man catches the attention of tony stark, who recruits him for a set of events that loosely follow the MCU civil war/homecoming plot lines. i want to make a seperate post about this, but it opens doors that were previously closed. he improves his suit with the help of tony stark & starts to view himself as on the same playing field as the rest of the vigilantes he encountered.

unless we have plotted a ship for our characters, at age fifteen peter also meets the future love of his life…ruby rose ( @combatpetals )!  when she’s sent by S.H.I.E.L.D to keep tabs on the spider-boy.

at age sixteen peter encounters electro for the first time. this is his first really traumatic fight - the first villain he encounters that he feels that he can’t win against. he almost dies during his first fight with the villain & has to adapt. he builds new gadgets, he fights to protect the people of new york & he wins. this is, however, the first time it really sinks in how deadly the path in life he has chosen is. 

at seventeen peter parker spends his summer fighting a list of different villains. they seem to come out in response to someone like spider-man existing.

at ages seventeen to eighteen peter goes into his senior year after a summer of stopping gang wars & putting the smackdwon on crime in new york city. he’s tired but had no intention of stopping - this is when he first encounters the symbiote, which is explained in detail in this post. peter gets rid of the symbiote when he realizes how it affects his mind & that it is living by destroying his body.  

at age eighteen he encounters the green goblin for the first time. this happens near the end of the symbiote arc & the two events overlap. the events of this arc are put into motion when norman osborn becomes obsessed with recreating the serum that gave spider-man his powers. when he believes he has created it, he takes it. he gains enhanced physical abilities, but the serum affects his mind & drives him temporarily crazy. peter apprehends him & he gets out of any trouble by claiming the serum affected his mind & caused him to wreak havoc ( paying off the right officials helped too. ) 

at age eighteen peter hangs up his suit ( temporarily ) he needs time to process all of the things that have happened over the past three years. the end of his senior year is dedicated to trying to fix grades that had slipped & get into college. 

YOUNG ADULT[ AGE 19-24 ]

at age nineteen he begins college, fresh out of highschool. without  the suit he feels lost & throws himself into his studies. he finds comfort in the work of otto octavius once more & gets back in touch with himself & the friends he had drifted away from near the end of his high school career. he begins to explore more of himself & uses this time for self reflection & gets a job at the daily bugle.            ( though this is flexible, this is when he meets gwen stacy & they hit it off pretty quickly! they become study-buddies and begin spending more time with one another & it ends in a budding romance. )

at age twenty peter is forced to put his mask back on when wilson fisk’s grasp on the city becomes too tight. peter knows that he can’t just sit back & watch the crimelord run new york city & that no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, he was still spider-man. he had a responsibility to help those around him & so he would. it’s another hallowing experience to go toe to toe with the crimelord, but he does. it shoots him back into the life of a hero & protecting the city he loves. plus, it helps that the bugle pays a bit more money for pictures of the wall crawler.

at age twenty, shortly after his confrontation with fisk he enters a relationship with gwen stacy! 

at age twenty peter has to deal with the threat of fisk once more, when he get’s out of prison & resumes his place as the kingpin of new york. spider-man becomes a regular pest for the crimelord, but doesn’t get close enough to tear his operation down again for a hot second. 

there’s a spot in between these two events that’s yet to be worked out; i will return to it & update it one day when i’ve had time to really think about it. just know that in this time, gwen & peter split ( maybe gwen’s death will go here, but i’m not sure yet ) & he ends up in a relationship with ruby rose.

at ages twenty-two to twenty-three peter graduates college & applies to work under his idol, otto octavius. this is followed by the events of the insomniac game, where he faces the sinister six & encounters miles morales for the first time. 

between ages twenty-three to twenty-four peter starts unofficially working alongside with the avengers on bigger problems. more & more often. this is about when he starts considering the group his peers rather than his superiors.

past here is a mix of things that have yet to be completely worked out, but the shortest version of it is that peter enters a permanent relationship with ruby rose & continues his life as spider-man. sometime in his early thirties, he has his son:syl. near his mid-thirties a mutant registration act forces peter parker to unmask himself to the public, though he later regrets the decision. this timeline is very flexible & will adapt to that of my partners!

[hellospunkiebrewster]

Dysphoria - Part VII of Duty

Author’s note: As always, thank you, thank you, thank you for reading. You all inspire and excite me. I hope you all enjoy, I am up entirely too late because I couldn’t sleep with this worming inside of me. If you’re new here:

Part I: Déjà Vu - Part II: Hopelessly Cold - Part III: Bitterness - Part IV: Rage - Part V: Promises - Part VI: Oath

These characters aren’t mine, I’m borrowing them for a bit. Thanks Pixelberry. Portions of my ceremony were adapted from the coronation of a King or Queen in the U.K.

Summary: On the day of Ellie’s ceremonial coronation, Riley struggles with the expectations placed on herself and her daughter. She finds solace in an interesting place.

Word count: 3124

Tags: @queencatherynerhys, @theroyalweisme, @mfackenthal, @crayziimaginations, @boneandfur, @hopefulmoonobject, @lizeboredom, @pbchoicesobsessed, @madaraism

After their return to the palace, days turned into weeks and weeks into months as the chaos and bustle of their lives returned. Riley longed for the days spent in Valtoria, taking a hike, playing a game, baking cookies, and fishing. The time away was much needed, but entirely too short. She found herself dreaming of being on that dock once more, her only worry whether or not Ellie was enjoying herself in the quiet. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see the way the sun reflected off the lake. She could almost feel it warming her skin in the crisp mountain air.

Riley allows herself a short moment of this in the middle of the throne room. Her eyes close and she’s suddenly surrounded by the stillness and silence of a couple months before. It isn’t the sort of quiet and stillness that’s unsettling, it’s comforting and relaxing.

A light elbow to her ribs breaks her from it. She glances sideways to Bertrand, clad in his formal wear, a medal hangs around his neck from a ribbon. Riley returns her gaze forward and watches as Liam’s large, heavy crown is lowered onto Eleanor’s tiny head. Her neck bobbles slightly but she quickly rights herself. She stares ahead of herself, directly through the ceremony officiant who has yet to step back from her as he helps adjust her cape and hands her a scepter. Eleanor’s eyes are wide and nervous, shifting momentarily to her mother, out of reach at the front of the audience.

The bishop steps back from Eleanor but remains facing her.

“Be strong and of a good courage, Eleanor Charlotte Rhys, stand firm, and hold fast from henceforth.”

This was the cue for the regents to step forward and pledge their loyalty and counsel to her. Riley leads the committee of regents to the step below Eleanor, where they kneel. Riley looks up at her daughter and throws her a proud smile before launching into the pledge alongside the other regents.

“I do become your liege of life and limb. Faith and truth will I bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks.”

The committee rises and a group and moves to return to their places in the audience. Riley takes a moment to reach out for Ellie’s free hand, catching her from her anxious daze. Eleanor takes a deep breath and smiles at her mother before looking again at the bishop, who is waiting for Riley to return to her spot by the other regents. She bows her head and steps away from the throne.

The bishop leads the rest of the room full of nobles through their pledges before announcing Eleanor to the room. Riley claps along with everyone else, but watches her daughter’s expression, sad and distant from the pomp around her.

Eleanor is helped from the throne by the bishop who follows her as she exits the throne room to the Great Hall where there will be a small reception before the larger Coronation Ball that night. Riley follows closely behind the bishop and shuffles quickly around him once they are out of sight of the other nobility to help her daughter.

“Ellie, sweetheart, you did amazing.”

“Can I take this off now? It’s heavy,” she whines.

“Absolutely, and let’s go see if we can find some of those chocolate cupcakes we ordered special for you.” Riley helps lift the crown from Ellie’s head and feels it’s true weight again. It was rare Liam used this ceremonial crown so she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to truly hold it for long. Liam told her, not long after their wedding, that the crown was thousands of years old, dating back to when Cordonia was first founded. Parts of it had been repaired and modernized over the years. Liam had shown her portraits and pictures of former rulers and what was once a quite simple spiked silver crown, was now jewel encrusted. The crown weighed about five pounds and sparkled from every angle. A steward, flanked by royal guards, steps forward and takes the crown from Riley leaving the room quickly to return it to its vault. Few people knew where exactly in the palace this was located, if it was in the palace at all.

Riley takes Ellie’s hand and helps her navigate the crowd, avoiding the chattier nobles and making their way to the dessert table where a spread of Cordonian sweets and chocolate cupcakes awaited the child queen. Food at these events was often more mature and adult oriented, consisting mainly of fancy and expensive hors d'oeuvres, but Riley insisted that they provide something their new queen would actually enjoy.

Ellie’s eyes light up upon seeing the table, set out mainly for her. Before reaching for anything, she looks at her mother unsure what she’s allowed. Riley smiles at her daughter.

“Today’s a special day Ellie, you can have whatever you like.”

Riley reaches for a small apple tart and takes a bite. After watching her mother, Eleanor immediately grabs a cupcake in each hand, then looks frustrated at the fact that she can’t unwrap them.

“Riley, a word?” Bertrand has approached the two of them and motions for her to follow him as she takes a cupcake from Ellie to unwrap. She unwraps it and hands it back to her, taking her time to unwrap the second one as well.

“Surely there’s someone in the palace who can help Eleanor with her snack that isn’t you.”

“Bertrand, there’s plenty of time to mingle. We’ve got all day, and Ellie won’t be attending the ball.”

“Unwrapping cupcakes hardly seems like a good use of your time.”

Riley takes in a deep breath, pushing down the urge to shout at Bertrand for scolding her for spending time with her daughter, who only just over two months previous, lost her father. She instead takes a bite of the apple tart she had picked from the table with Ellie and chews it thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry Duke Ramsford,” she says, venom in her words, “but I happen to think unwrapping cupcakes for my daughter is a perfectly good use of my time.” Riley turns on her heel back towards her daughter, avoiding any nobles along the way.

--

It had been another late night discussing how the committee planned to divide the various state visits and travel for the coming month. Riley hardly had time to eat lunch, let alone check in with Ellie. She opened the door to their suite quietly, not wanting to wake Ellie since she was most likely already asleep. The residence was darkened, but not entirely dark, the lights were still on in the kitchenette. As she stepped from the foyer into the living room, she carefully placed a few documents and her phone on the kitchen bar. Drake and Ellie sat together on the couch. He was watching a soccer game, the sound low, while Ellie slept next to him, her small arm draped across his wide torso.

Riley approached them from behind the couch and placed her hand on Drake’s shoulder. It was then that she noticed the comically large bowl of popcorn on the table in front of them. She looked at Drake with a questioning look.

“Movie night,” he whispered, looking down to make sure he didn’t rouse Ellie.

“And it required a five gallon bucket of popcorn? Seems legitimate.”

“You should know the palace kitchen never does anything half-assed.”

He shifted slightly, holding Ellie up as he slid from under her. With one quick but surprisingly gentle motion he lifted her from the couch and carries her to her room. Riley plopped to the couch, reaching for the large bowl and placing it beside her. She grabbed a handful of popcorn as Drake returned a minute or so later.

“Another long day hmm?” Drake rounds the couch and sits leaving the large bowl of popcorn in between them.

“Yea,” Riley sighed, looking off into the distance. “I was really hoping I’d be able to have dinner with her or read her a story for the first time in a week.”

“She misses you, didn’t want to go to bed until you got home. So I kind of let her stay up later than usual.”

“That’s sweet of you, you big marshmallow,” she teased.

“Watch it, someone could hear you.”

“Your cover would be blown.”

“I’ve got a reputation to uphold.” Drake chuckled.

“Is that… glitter?” Riley laughed, touching his face. He recoiled slightly at her touch, as if it shocked him. She shifted in her seat, placing her back on the arm of the sofa, the bowl now in front of her and surveys him head to toe. Aside from some glitter under his left ear, he looked perfectly rugged as usual. In the month after returning to the palace, Drake had stopped drinking and seemed to be finding some actual happiness in his couple days a week with Ellie. Riley smiled fondly at him, unable to look away, waiting for his response.

“There may have been princess makeovers involved.”

“Oh please tell me there’s pictures.”

--

Riley takes Eleanor to the royal residence later in the evening while the rest of the nobility and guests are sitting down for dinner. When they arrive, the smell of pizza greets them.

“Ah, Uncle Drake delivered. See, I told you there’d be pizza Ellie. How could this day get any better?”

“If you didn’t have to leave.” Ellie’s words, while harsh, do not come as a surprise to her. Today was probably the most time they’d been able to spend one on one in weeks, and they were in a room full of nobles and distinguished guests all day long. The small talk alone exhausted her.

“You know what? I don’t have to leave.” Riley turns and kicks off her shoes towards the entrance for when she has to leave for the ball.

“Really?” Ellie and Drake say in unison.

Drake enters the room from the hallway, smiling at both of them.

“Really. Now let’s go get a little more comfortable.”

In her room, Riley slips out of her daytime dress and into some leggings and a baggy t-shirt. Her ballgown hangs in her dressing alcove, she had chosen a midnight blue gown, embellished with dark crystals. The illusion skirt is what she loved most about the gown, it allowed her to get away with something a little more her style in a stuffy ballroom.

Ellie meets her in the hallway in her pajamas.

“Kitten PJs, a fantastic choice,” Riley compliments her daughter.

The three of them sit down to the pizza and as Ellie recounts the day and number of cupcakes she’s eaten to Drake, he seems distracted. He watches Riley as she smiles at her daughter, looking relaxed for the first time in weeks. Riley notices and grins at him, her gaze falling down to her plate after she feels like she’s been looking at him for too long.

Thirty minutes later, after Ellie has somehow stuffed herself with three slices of pizza, no crust, Riley notes, like her father, she starts to fade and hard.

“Ellie can you take your plate to the sink and go brush your teeth?”

Wordlessly and in a haze, Ellie does as she’s told and trudges sleepily to her bedroom.

“I’m going to go change and say goodnight,” Riley tells Drake. “A night nanny should be arriving soon, but I really should get back before Bertrand stages a coup.”

“Whatever you need.” Drake shrugs as he clears the plates and boxes from the table.

Riley shuts the door to her room and changes into her ballgown. She can’t seem to get the zipper all the way up on her own and puts on her jewelry instead. Her make-up, slightly worn from the stress of the day, she decides not to waste time touching up and she crosses the hallway into Ellie’s room.

Her daughter is already in bed and smiles when she enters.

“You look pretty mommy.”

“Thank you sweetheart,” Riley says, sitting delicately on the edge of Ellie’s bed. “I’ll see you in the morning okay? Sweet dreams.”

“I love you mama,” Ellie says as Riley places two small kisses on each of her eyelids. Her words are heavy with tiredness.

“I love you the most.”

Riley rises from the bed quietly, moving to the door slowly as she drinks in every inch of her daughter’s sweet face. She pulls the door closed behind her as lightly as possible. She’s lost in images of Ellie’s tired face when she enters the great room, Drake standing in the middle.

“You look… wow.”

Riley is shaken from her thoughts of Ellie and laughs. “You’re very eloquent Drake Walker.”

He lets out a small laugh, it’s barely there and more like an exhale.

“Oh! Could you uh… zip me?” Riley turns her back to him and lifts her hair exposing her back.

“Uh,” he pauses, holding his breath, “sure.” Drake crosses the room to her and places one hand on the side of her ribcage while the other grabs hold of the zipper. She feels the zipper travel up her back and when it meets the top, his other hand lingers, leaving a tingling warmth where it once was.

“I think there’s a… like a tiny hook too.”

“Of course there is.” Drake mumbles as his rough fingers run over the nape of her neck. He fumbles with the hook for a few seconds before finally stepping away. Goosebumps pepper Riley’s back, all her tiny hairs standing on end.

She turns to face him. “Thank you.” She’s looking at him with a different look, like she’s noticed something for the first time.

Drake clears his throat, interrupting the quiet between them.

“I guess I’ve got a ball to get to.”

--

She slips into the ball quietly and she’s positive no one missed her aside from Bertrand who shoots her an exasperated look. Rolling her eyes, Riley reaches for a flute of champagne from a server’s tray. She grabs one, takes a beat, and plucks another from the tray with her free hand. Immediately she sucks down the first, depositing the glass on another server’s tray. Bertrand and Savannah approach her.

Savannah smiles at her and excitedly gushes over Ellie. “Eleanor did amazing today. That was a lot of pressure for her. And she looked adorable.” Savannah’s hand finds her stomach, round and beautiful. She glows.

“You’re too sweet Savannah. My goodness, you look amazing, how long now?”

“Another month or so,” she smiles even more.

“Riley, it seems you missed dinner. Do you want to inform me on where you’ve been? You missed the Cordonian waltz.” Bertrand interrupts.

“You can’t be serious, I guarantee no one actually missed me.”

“You can’t simply skirt events because you’re not feeling up to them anymore. There’s no one to stand in for you any longer. Liam’s gone.”

“I know, but thank you so much for reminding me about my dead husband.” She fights back the urge to cry right then and there when the familiar sting of tears hits the back of her eyes. Savannah stands there, stunned, looking at her husband her mouth agape. “If you must know, I was having dinner with my daughter, who I haven’t seen for longer than fifteen minutes a day for the last week. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Riley pushes her way past Bertrand and towards the exit.

“Seriously Bertrand?” Savannah hisses and stares at him in disbelief. She walks away shaking her head. Savannah finds a seat across the hall and pats her baby bump as she watches Maxwell work the dance floor.

The ballroom, large and grand, is suddenly suffocating and she bursts from the door and into a hallway. She finishes the glass of champagne still in her hand and walks in the direction that will get her to the least travelled part of the palace tonight.

She turns the corner into what she knows should be a deserted hallway. She had to escape them and the whole debacle. Riley leaves the room of nobles and dignitaries behind, unable to tolerate the entire disaster for one more moment. Surely they didn’t expect her to spend all this time away from Eleanor when she had just lost her husband, when Ellie had only just lost her father. Her mind races towards one thing only, her daughter and how much they needed each other right now. Their wounds have only just begun to heal. The committee is asking too much of her right now.

The hallway should’ve been empty, there was no reason for another person to head in this direction unless they were headed to the library. The entrance hall was in another direction entirely and the ball was far from over. But still, there was someone in that hallway. The only person she could see herself welcoming right now stood at a window five meters from her. She didn’t think Drake would’ve remained at the palace after the night nanny showed up.

She knows she looks like a mess right now and she certainly feels like it, but she approaches him, slipping next to him at the window.

He doesn’t say anything when he notices her and she’s relieved. He’s looking at her though and she feels his gaze on the side of her face. When she notices it, her breath hitches in her chest. After weeks of not being heard or taken seriously, after months of having everyone expect the world of her, he was standing here, not wanting anything of her. She didn’t need to speak or smile or do anything and it was enough.

Riley turns to face him and leans against the wall beside the window. She’s itching to reach out to him and her fingers tremble at the sight of him. Her breathing finally returns to normal and stops immediately afterwards.

Somehow the distance between them closes and something is drawing them together in this moment. They collide, her lips on his. She doesn’t know who started it or who ended it but in that same tiny instant, it was over. His eyes roam her face for an answer she doesn’t have but her hand finds his cheek and she’s pulled into him all over again.

--

Part VIII: Toska is here.

[thedeevirus]

Please do a smutty follow up to witch!Oswald and familiar!Ed

Anonymous said:OMG PLEASE DO A CONTUIATION OF FAMILIAR ED AND WITCH OSWALD!!!

You wanted it, you got it!

NSFW: hence the keep reading tag: You have been warned!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 01

**

Oswald cursed Barbara Kean as he ascended the front steps to his manor.

He and Ed had been having such a pleasant evening at the ‘Annual Magician’s Gala’. It was the first time in years that Oswald had accepted the invitation to his alma mater’s night of celebration. It was the first year he had a plus one to accompany him. Unfortunately, Barbara had been there too, her feline familiar Tabby curled around her shoulder and during dinner, she had made no secret that she knew exactly who had stolen her ring of transformation. When Tabby had venomously swiped a paw at Ed, he had leapt up, startled and let loose a loud, compulsive squawk that had drawn the eyes of everyone within the immediate vicinity. Ed had looked down at Oswald, aghast at his mistake, brown eyes momentarily flickering pitch black before he regained his composure. Barbara’s laugh had rung out like a death knell.

‘Is that why you stole it?’ Barbara had jeered, ‘Because there’s no way in Hell you could ever get a ring on a real man’s finger?’

Ed had abruptly left the room as the other guests had begun to laugh. Oswald had followed him immediately but had been too late to catch him. He had just about caught a glimpse of Ed’s outline against the night sky as he had flown away, retreating from the humiliation in his natural shape of a crow. Oswald had called the car and left immediately, unwilling to go back inside. Not without a suitably unpleasant curse prepared at least.

As Oswald opened the front door, he noticed the small window above the door was ajar. Ed’s usual point of entry. Oswald entered and saw dainty, bird footprints on the wooden floor, wet from the rain. Oswald waved the umbrella he had conjured and it vanished. He doffed his black travelling cloak lined with a feathered collar and it flew into the cloakroom, hooking itself on a waiting peg.Oswald could hear the crackling of a fire from the lounge and headed towards the sound. Ed was sitting on the arm of the sofa, gazing into the fire. His back was to Oswald and he was wearing Oswald’s golden house robe. Oswald knew Ed would be naked underneath. Ed had adapted to clothes quickly but Oswald knew he liked nothing better than walking around with nothing but the soft robe draped over his lean frame. He liked the way it glittered and how the texture felt against his skin.Oswald swallowed, trying to think of what to say and also ignore the emotions churning in his system.

‘Ed? Are you alright? You, uh, left in a bit of a hurry’.

A curt nod in response. Oswald licked his dry lips and continued despite his hammering heart.

‘I was worried when you…flew off that they might have upset you. If you want-that is, if it bothers you or you’ve changed your mind, we can-we can just pretend that nothing happened. Get rid of the ring and just go back to the way things were. You are the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t want to lose you. Please?’

Ed laughed softly.

‘We’re not friends’, Ed said, standing up, ‘And I’m not just your familiar. You and I both know we’re more than that’.

Ed turned to face Oswald, eyes downcast.

‘I don’t care what they say about us’, Ed said with a rueful smile, ‘I left because I was worried about embarrassing you further’.

Ed exposed his right arm and Oswald gasped. Ed had a crow’s wing instead of a human limb. Hearing a clicking noise, Oswald looked down to see Ed was barefoot. The claws on the end of his crow like feet clicked against the wooden floor as he approached.  

‘I felt my hand start to tingle during the party’, Ed explained, ‘And it just got worse and worse. I left because I knew I couldn’t hide it for much longer’.

Oswald took hold of Ed’s wingtips, the ring of transformation heavy around one of his primary feathers. Oswald concentrated and muttered a spell of strengthening. Ed exhaled as the feathers began to retreat and thicken back into human fingers. As the change completed, Oswald examined the ring. He was dismayed to see it no longer seemed like a solid object. Instead, the formerly golden band was tarnished and flickering like electronic static.

‘It’s wearing off’, Oswald said and Ed nodded at the assessment.

‘It was fun while it lasted wasn’t it?’ he said resignedly, putting his arm back inside the sleeve of the robe.

‘There must be something we can do’, Oswald said, looking at Ed’s fingers as he flexed them.

‘An act of love to bind the spell as a substitute for the ring’, Ed said, ‘A physical bond’.

Oswald blinked as he realised the implications. Even though he had expected this kind of request for a while it was still jarring to hear it spoken aloud. Ever since Ed had been able to become human, they had often shared a bed (just as they had when Ed was still a bird sleeping on Oswald’s pillow) but always fully clothed and the few kisses they had shared had been bashful and brief. Oswald had been taking it slowly to give Ed time to acclimatise to his new shape but now that he knew time could potentially be painfully short, he felt a stab of regret.

‘I’ve been researching it’, Ed continued, heedless of Oswald’s racing thoughts, ‘But there could be side effects-’

‘Damn the side effects!’ Oswald snapped, ‘I know what we have to do’.

‘You’ve already researched this?’

Oswald nodded.

‘I was worried that…’

Oswald wilted under Ed’s intense stare, feeling foolish. Ed took hold of Oswald’s hand and Oswald noted how warm Ed’s fingers were as they enfolded his.

‘Oswald, please tell me’.

‘You know how I feel about you. The reason we haven’t done…’ Oswald sighed harshly at his inability to explain himself plainly, ‘’That’ already is my fault. I’ve never been with anyone before and I-I didn’t want to ruin things by not doing it right or-’

Ed held up a hand and Oswald stopped talking. His cheeks reddened in embarrassment at his own babbling.

‘It’ll be a new experience for me too’, Ed said seriously, then added with an impish grin, ‘But to be honest, I have done a lot of reading about it’.

Oswald laughed at Ed’s mischievous expression, surprised at how Ed always knew just how to make him feel better.

‘Is that so?’ Oswald asked.

‘If you ever wanted me in that way, I wanted to know what to do’, Ed said simply.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I didn’t want to push you’, Ed said candidly, ‘I still don’t’.

‘Even if it meant you would lose this?’

Ed shrugged offhandedly but his smile was sad.

‘As long as I don’t lose you’, Ed said.

‘Then you’d better have me first’, Oswald said decisively.

‘Are you sure?’ Ed asked, taken aback at Oswald’s willingness.

‘Yes’, Oswald said, pulling Ed into an embrace, ‘And I have some ideas I think you’ll like’.

**

‘When you said ‘love nest’, you meant it didn’t you?’ Ed said appreciatively.

Oswald spread his arms in a ‘ta-daa’ gesture as Ed admired the changes Oswald had made to his bedroom with his magic. Even though Ed knew they were indoors, from the walls and bedroom furniture that remained, they seemed to be standing beneath a forest canopy. A bright moon glinted through the leaves of the trees and golden lights floated through the air lazily like drifting fireflies. Ed felt grass beneath his feet and saw that Oswald had transformed his bed into a large nest composed of wicker and lined with soft, cotton like bedding and silk sheets. Oswald had even hung various glittering pieces from ribbons above the nest. Ed smiled as he saw they were various articles from his scavenged collection of treasures: bottlecaps, jewellery, translucent, bright candy wrappers all danced and twirled in the moonlight.

‘Does our resident nest expert approve?’ Oswald asked.

‘Definitely’, Ed said, taking Oswald’s hands.

As he had previously agreed with Oswald to prevent delays, Ed was wearing nothing but the usual housecoat and the fading ring of transformation. Oswald had done likewise, having selected his velvet travelling cloak as his only garment. They faced each other, both nervous but exhilarated.

‘Is the full moon to increase the power of the spell?’ Ed asked, glancing overhead.

‘It’s also for mood lighting’, Oswald said officiously, ‘Now, birds usually do a mating dance before getting down to business don’t they?’

Ed shook his head fondly at Oswald’s formal posture and ran his hands down his shoulders in a physical plea for his master to relax. This wasn’t about business. It was about pleasure. If their idea didn’t work and Ed did revert back to a crow, he wanted to remember this experience forever.

‘I’ll take care of this part’, Ed said and began to sway back and forth, taking hold of Oswald’s hands.

He began to move Oswald around in concentric circles, gradually closing the distance between them. They hadn’t had a chance to dance at the gala as they had hoped to. Oswald had practiced for days. Oswald let Ed lead, following him with at first halting but then smooth steps, trusting in Ed to keep his knee from failing him. Gratified at Oswald’s trust in him, Ed waited a few more minutes then asked:-

‘May I?’

Oswald nodded without hesitation and Ed slid the cloak from him in one effortless movement. Oswald’s skin almost seemed luminescent as it was gradually exposed beneath the moonlight.

‘How are you feeling?’ Ed asked.

‘Warm’, Oswald sighed, stepping out of his fallen cloak, ‘And kind of…tingly?’

‘Are you feeling as good as I am?’ Ed asked, noting the goosebumps rising on Oswald’s flesh.

Oswald stepped closer and Ed’s breath hitched as Oswald’s erection rubbed against the bulge in his own robe. Oswald reached out with deft fingers and pulled on the knot binding Ed’s robe. It fell open and Oswald reached inside, mimicking how Ed had disrobed him seconds earlier. He noted Ed’s generous length and offered a silent thanks to whatever magic or entity within the ring had granted him such a gift.

‘Does that answer your question?’ Oswald asked as Ed’s robe hit the floor.

Ed pulled Oswald close and began to kiss him. Their cocks rubbed against each other with a delicious friction, a tantalising appetiser for the experience ahead. Neither was in the mood to rush however as they explored each other’s faces and necks with their mouths. Ed traced Oswald’s neck veins with his tongue and as he rose, Oswald nipped Ed’s lips with his pointed teeth.

As they continued exploring each other, Ed felt a flickering movement behind him and realised his tail feathers had grown back. In the same instant he also realised the kind of ‘side effects’ that this ritual would cause and if it was about the bond between he and Oswald then Oswald would likely experience the same transformation. The thought of seeing Oswald transform excited Ed like nothing else. To see Oswald become more like him, to feel his feathers, to see his wings-!Ed moaned into the kiss and gently slid his tongue along Oswald’s closed lips, pleading for entry as he drew Oswald closer to him, their bodies now flush as they continued to make out.

Oswald moaned back as he felt Ed smile against his lips and a ticklish feeling between his ass cheeks. It emboldened him to part his lips and grant Ed full entry at last. Ed was more eager than he had anticipated! Oswald felt his face flush with arousal as Ed’s tongue lashed against his own, twinning and dancing: the dual sensations of the hot kiss mingling with the delicate tickling of Ed’s fingers on his tailbone.

Ed smiled knowingly as he detected a new sensation sliding between his hands as they cupped Oswald’s ass. Peeking over Oswald’s shoulder, he saw Oswald’s emerging tail feathers lengthen and bob in subconscious excitement as they finished growing. Oswald didn’t seem to have noticed, too focused on hungrily sucking Ed’s tongue. Ed drew back, his mind awash with the visual image of Oswald’s mouth around a more intimate part of his human anatomy.

Oswald looked up at him, cheeks ruddy beneath his pale, desirous eyes. Ed stroked Oswald’s cheek and watched his fingers leave white trails against the reddened flesh.

‘You’re so beautiful Oswald’, Ed said tenderly.

Oswald sighed and was startled to feel it catch in his throat, changing into a soft, avian croon. He laughed softly as he felt Ed continue to tickle the skin of his ass.

‘By the way, I think I’ve discovered one of the side effects’, Ed whispered conspiratorially.

Oswald realised Ed’s hands had slipped around and were now both resting on his hips. But then, what was behind him?

Ed smiled at Oswald’s widened eyes and ran his fingers along Oswald’s new tail. The effect was instant. Oswald gasped and his hips bucked, eyelids fluttering. Tilting his head back, he looked over his shoulder into a nearby wall mounted mirror.

‘It’s a good look for you’, Ed commented.

‘It-ah!-looks different to yours’, Oswald gasped, biting his lip as Ed continued to stroke his tail.He wondered hazily if this was payback for all the times he had touched Ed’s. Had it felt like this for him too?!

‘Of course it does’, Ed chuckled, bobbing his own tail feathers in self demonstration, ‘Plain, black plumage could never suit you’.

‘If I’m not a crow, then what am I?’

Ed kissed Oswald on the forehead and nuzzled his hair with his nose. Oswald crooned again instinctively. Ed knew they both knew why. Birds groomed each other’s heads before mating. Oswald’s positive reaction was welcome and intoxicating.

‘Mine’, Ed growled, ‘Get onto the bed’.

Oswald, aroused by Ed’s more dominant demeanour did as he was told. Carefully climbing into the nest, he got on all fours, his rear facing Ed. Placing a pillow beneath his damaged knee, Oswald wiggled his ass invitingly, his tail feathers rippling due to the movement.

‘Lift your tail for me’, Ed commanded, standing at the edge of the nest.

Oswald obeyed and quivered as he felt the cool air ruffle his new appendage and breeze against his waiting entrance. Ed reached down and picked up the lube that had been carefully placed beside the nest. Slathering the fingers of his right hand, he took hold of Oswald’s tail feathers with his left.Oswald gave a compulsive yet pleasurable caw at the rougher treatment as Ed held them out of the way. He began to run his index fingertip along the rim of Oswald’s entrance and Oswald was more than receptive, arching his back to grant Ed better access.

Ed shivered with exhilaration but then noticed a tingling increasing along his arms. Looking down, he saw goosebumps rise against his skin and black dots beginning to materialise. On Oswald’s arms, the same thing was happening. Their wings were beginning to form.

‘Ed’, Oswald said huskily, ‘I-I can feel-my arms are-oh God, it feels so nice!‘

‘I know. I know’, Ed said soothingly, ‘It’s happening to me too. Ah fuck…That feels so good’.

‘Hurry, please!’ Oswald said pleadingly, ‘Before you’re no longer able to-ah!’

The knuckle of Ed’s index finger slid inside the entrance easily. Oswald gritted his teeth at the unfamiliar sensation, grateful that he had stretched himself with magic beforehand to make his first time easier and more seamless. As the tingling on his arms intensified, he barely watched his finger beginning to flatten and lengthen, too focused on Ed’s decision to add another finger.

Ed meticulously pushed his fingers in and out, gradually probing deeper and deeper, carefully searching for just the right spot that would-Oswald gave a sudden, excited chatter and Ed noticed his wings give a sudden surge of growth. Ed gave the spot another experimental nudge and Oswald made the same noise, fingers clenching into the bedding. Ed sped up his ministrations, always being careful to hit the same spot and laughed as Oswald gave a full rendition of a magpie’s chattering call in response. Ed’s wings grew and grew, his human hands remaining but beginning to darken in hue and Ed watched, fascinated, as Oswald’s fingers metamorphosed into black claws, clenching into the velvety bedding beneath them.So, it seemed the spell was allowing them to retain their hands. Intriguing…

Ed began to feel a tingling in his fingers and pulled his hand back. As his fingers emerged, glistening, from Oswald’s entrance with a satisfyingly slick noise, Ed’s nails curved and lengthened into dark claws. It seemed fingering was now off the table.

Oswald gave a tuneful sigh, the exhalation carrying the barest hint of birdsong. As he glanced back over his shoulder at Ed, the sleek, dark feathers that had replaced his spiky hair rose questioningly. Ed, conscious of Oswald’s damaged knee, gently began to turn Oswald over so he was on his back.Ed hissed with relish as the pointed tips of Oswald’s hand claws traced along his back, an erotic contrast to the velvet like feeling of Oswald’s wings against his back.

As Ed lowered Oswald down onto his back, Oswald sensually pread his now fully developed wings wide. Ed admired the erotic sight beneath him.Oswald wasn’t a crow. He was a magpie. Clever, dazzling and magical.Oswald stretched languidly, savouring Ed’s attention and his feathers caught the light. Ed’s covetous eyes lit up at the glimmering undertones of green, purple and blue dancing along the silken surfaces that ended in dazzling white feathers.

Oswald’s cock was hard and twitching as he rolled his hips in invitation, luxuriating in the softness of the nest lining beneath his ass cheeks and tail feathers. Soft was all well and good but now he wanted something hard. He was ready for it. Gazing up into Ed’s eyes, Oswald watched blackness swirl like ink over the brown human irises: a warm, dark hunger swallowing their softness. Their shade matched the black wings that had eclipsed Ed’s arms as he lifted Oswald back up, his clawed hands supporting his back. Oswald spread his legs wide instinctively, knowing and welcoming what was about to happen. As Ed drew Oswald closer, claws entwined in his head feathers, Oswald could see his own reflection rise to the surface in Ed’s pitch black eyes.Ed only had eyes for him.

Ed knelt and trilled as Oswald’s legs rested on either side of his hips and his clawed hands linked behind his neck. He had never seen anything as handsome as the stunning harpy now looking at him with those glass green, lustful eyes. When Oswald tilted his head in an avian display of curiosity, Ed got the message loud and clear: what are you waiting for? Ed delighted in giving the answer.

Oswald screeched in both pleasure and pain as Ed suddenly entered him savagely. The pain of entry erupted into an incredible feeling of being filled completely, his passage accommodating Ed’s generous length, and Oswald threw his head back as Ed began to thrust like a man (or bird) possessed. The feeling of being desired so fiercely fanned Oswald’s own haze filled arousal and he soon found himself raising his hips in tandem with Ed’s frenzied pounding. Oswald ignored the protestations of his aching knee as he drew Ed closer and closer: his cock inside him felt so damn good! A small voice in his head told him this might be wrong: that Oswald was effectively engaging in interspecies sex with his own familiar but Oswald gritted his teeth and mentally shouted the voice down. He and Ed were two predators enjoying each other completely and how could it be wrong when it felt so fucking right?!

Ed, overwhelmed by the instinctive urge to claim the beautiful creature beneath him, didn’t even notice as he began to croon deep in his throat as he pounded into Oswald’s deliciously tight passage again and again. He felt as if he were dreaming. Sex as a bird had never felt this good or lasted this long. He didn’t know if he was truly a bird or a man and he didn’t care. All he cared about was that he was mating Oswald, the love of his life, and it was glorious!

Oswald took hold of his neglected cock, the down that had replaced his pubic hair soft against his knuckles as he began to pump. He swirled his thumb against his head and rubbed hard against the slit as he matched his pumps to Ed’s thrusts. Ed noticed what he was doing and drew back just enough to watch Oswald pleasure himself. Feeling pride at the slick feeling of precum as the head of Oswald’s cock graced his stomach, Ed interlaced his clawed fingers with Oswald’s. Oswald gave a musical cry of sheer erotic overload as he was stimulated from both the front and the back, his body alight with new sensations and overcome with love for his familiar turned mate.

The sight of Oswald wanting him was everything Ed had ever dreamt of and the sounds he was making was like a siren song driving him to the edge. Despite longing for the experience to never end, Ed simultaneously found it impossible to resist! He rammed into Oswald again and again, the walls of Oswald’s passage seeming to draw him in deeper and deeper as if they would never let him go.

Both felt the precipice rise up before them but both felt so weightless, so carried away on the waves of pleasure, they knew they would fly. With one final pump, Oswald came, screeching like the bird of prey he was and Ed joined him in an exultation as he emptied his seed into Oswald and felt Oswald’s cum trickle down over and between his claws.

Ed hunched over Oswald, enveloping him protectively in his wings as they rode out their mutual orgasm, huddled together beneath the moonlight. Ed looked into Oswald’s eyes and smiled deliriously. Even if they only had tonight, he would always remember this.

Oswald, shaking and overwhelmed, gave his lips to Ed’s in a single, gentle, loving kiss.

As if on cue, Ed’s ring burst into golden light and pleasure surged through both men like lightning.They collapsed into the softness of the nest, Ed clasping Oswald to his breast as black feathers rained down around them. As Ed gingerly loosened his hold on Oswald, he saw their avian features were swiftly vanishing and within seconds, they were both fully human once more. Holding up his hand as the last of his feathers vanished, Ed saw the ring had gone. In its place was a dark imprint of a feather encircling his finger. He looked down at Oswald to see Oswald show him his own finger bore an identical brand. A mark of ownership: a sign of their bond.The spell had worked.

‘True love’s kiss’, Oswald whispered, ‘Powerful stuff’.

‘Always does the trick’, Ed replied, kissing his mate on the forehead.

[aion-rsa]

How Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Bryan Adams Conquered the World

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It’s that magic hour right after dawn when Robin Hood and Maid Marian approach the water’s edge. With the sun still low enough to cast both figures in mythic silhouette, the couple is surrounded by a blanket of fog, looking as if they’ve just stepped off a storybook cover. For most of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’ running time, the narrative and its music has built to this moment: A request, a kiss, and a declaration.

When Robin Hood asks the woman he loves to do him a favor—secret a message to her cousin—she doesn’t hesitate to say yes, but not for her King and not for her country. She simply says, “I’ll do it for you.”  That is when composer Michael Kamen’s “Maid Marian” suite swells to operatic heights for the first time in the movie, losing itself in a swoon of its own orchestral making. The strings soar and the harps weep. And as Robin watches Marian vanish, her boat ferrying away into the mist, the heart of the grand and nutty Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is finally revealed to have been on the movie’s sleeve this whole time.

Also, unbeknownst to either actor Kevin Costner or Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, the biggest pop hit of 1991 had just launched with Marian’s boat.

The simple musical melody of Kamen’s “Maid Marian” theme in this scene is almost head-to-toe the same musical composition of Bryan Adams’ “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You.”  Adams and producer R.J. Lange adapted the material into a power ballad inside of 45 minutes. Of course it was common practice at the time to turn elements of a movie’s score into aspiring top 40 hits: Disney started doing it the same year with Beauty and the Beast; and Adams would try again two years later with Sting and Rod Stewart for The Three Musketeers; and of course there was Titanic just a few years after that…

But in ’91? It’s doubtful even Adams and Lange anticipated they were making the biggest hit of the rocker’s career. “Everything I Do” was a single many pop acts initially turned down, but by the end of that year it would spend 16 consecutive weeks at the number one spot on the UK Singles Chart—which is still the longest uninterrupted run ever—and 17 consecutive weeks on the U.S. sales chart (it would also enjoy seven weeks at number one on Billboard’s Hot 100, which combines sales and radio play).

Our own UK editor Rosie Fletcher recalled the delight millions of Brits had each Sunday when the Adams single was revealed again to be the most purchased and listened to pop hit.

“In the UK in 1991 the official top 40 was a Big Deal,” Fletcher says, “and much attention was paid to what was at number one on any given week. So much so, that many of us of a certain age would listen to the charts on the radio on a Sunday night, ideally on a tape deck with a blank C90 in hand. That way you could basically make your own mixtape of the charts that you could listen to throughout the week so you were guaranteed to know all the words to the most popular hits. There was no Spotify. Most people didn’t have MTV. This was the ‘90s equivalent of a download.”

She continues, “For this reason you will find an entire generation of Brits who know, without hesitation or looking it up, that ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’ was at number one in the UK charts for 16 weeks. 16 weeks! That was a MASSIVE deal. So massive, that every week when it was STILL number one, we’d be amazed! How long will this go on? How long can it last?! And we would phone each other up on our landline telephones to discuss how amazed we were and we’d chat about it at school with our friends or on the bus, because there was no Twitter or Facebook or comments section to have an opinion about it on… That song was a legit cultural phenomenon and I still know every word.” 

It cannot be overstated just how popular “Everything I Do” was that year. With its wistful guitar strings and angelic keyboard harmonies, the piece still oozes sweeping sentimentality and unabashed romance. It was so big, in fact, that for the VHS release of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Warner Bros. Pictures placed the single’s original music video over the end credits—a fact which either the studio or Adams might’ve regretted since it is absent on subsequent DVD releases, and the only music video on YouTube is the one without clips of Costner’s well-coiffed hair.

For adults of a certain age—the ones who can remember the early ‘90s from the vantage of being a teenager or a child—Adams’ earnest bridge where he vows, “Yeah, I’d fight for you, I’d lie for you, walk the wire for you, yeah, I’d die for you!” is as entrenched in the memory as a national anthem.

All of which came back to my mind last week when Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves turned 30. Certainly a movie of its time, the film triggered a wave of retrospectives, but none as attention-grabbing or baffling as The Guardian’s latest slice of contrarianism entitled “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves at 30: a joyless hit that should stay in the 90s.” As with many of the paper’s recent anniversary features, it seemed designed to gleefully tear down a pop culture relic from the early 2000s or 1990s that many readers grew up with.

But at least in the case of Prince of Thieves, the venom-laced arrow missed the target by several groves. Yes, there are many problems with Prince of Thieves. You can pick at Costner’s spotty “accent” (or lack thereof) and how filmmakers tried to turn Christian Slater’s Will Scarlet into an angsty heartthrob. Also the less said about the hackneyed revelation that the Sheriff of Nottingham is a Satanist, the better. Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, this ain’t.

And yet, one of the many reasons the film was so successful in 1991 (and thereby unlike Hollywood’s two recent Robin Hood flops from the last decade) is because the movie is joyful. Filmed on location in the United Kingdom, the picture obviously has a grayer color palette than 1930s technicolor. But the newer movie is still imbued with the swashbuckling spirit of a rollicking romp.

That’s most obvious thanks to the oft-praised Alan Rickman performance, whose turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham is an inspired rendition of scenery chewing and arch-villainy. It’s a performance so deliciously evil that it steals the movie from Costner and won Rickman a BAFTA. But it’s not the only thing that works about the ‘90s touchstone. From Nick Brimble’s red-blooded introduction as Little John, which features the best cinematic rendition of that riverside brawl, to Sean Connery’s walk-on as King Richard the Lionheart, which still makes a play for the best movie cameo of all time, the picture is nothing if not mirthful in its swashbuckling gusto. It even ends with a literal wink to the camera.

But outside of Rickman’s dastardly turn, its enduring qualities are most apparent thanks to Kamen’s music. There’s a reason it conquered the world via “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You.”

Intriguingly though, Adams was not the first choice for the piece of music. The composer originally wanted the tie-in song to be written from the point-of-view of Marian, who indeed has the line, “I’ll do it for you” in the movie. Yet this concept was deemed too bland by the likes of Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, and Lisa Stansfield, who all turned the project down.

So Adams was approached and he instantly understood what the music needed—giving it a forlorn, unrequited grandeur. His vocals along with the earnestness of the film melded almost too perfectly, feeding off each other in a year which saw one become the song of the summer and the other the biggest box office smash of the season outside of Terminator 2.

This piece of music also stands as one of several tracks which have outlived its movie. Indeed, production company Morgan Creek quickly turned the high note of Kamen’s “Overture” into their new logo’s theme.

Kamen, who died in 2003 of multiple sclerosis at only age 55, was unapologetic in his lifetime about the sentimentality he strove for in both pieces. Primarily known for hyper masculine ‘80s actioners like Lethal Weapon or Die Hard before Robin Hood, the composer was visibly elated in 1990 while writing for Robin and Marian. You can see for yourself in the otherwise hopelessly dated behind-the-scenes special, “The Myth, The Man, The Movie.” Narrated by a misused Pierce Brosnan in his pre-007 days, the doc nevertheless includes a fairly candid interview with Kamen.

“I’ve carried an idea of who Robin Hood is in my mind since I was six,” Kamen enthused 30 years ago. “So that’s a pretty strong vision to have, musically.” For the composer it meant embracing the rousing heroism of boyhood in his overture’s opening march and to lean into the romance of a lakeside rendezvous.

“The basic theme is really simple,” Kamen said of Marian’s theme. But by the time it comes into the film, “We’ve been building it up for pages and pages and pages of music. And finally she kisses him, and that’s where the score turns black with notes and everybody goes [crazy]. This is a work of love. This comes from the heart. This is something I really, really care about. Music is a real substance. It’s a very powerful substance. It’s got to be taken seriously.”

He visibly did that day, as the camera catches him swooning as the orchestra reaches the crescendo of what became “Everything I Do.”

Said Kamen, “I guess I was in love with Maid Marian. Just looking at Kevin Costner give her a big kiss and thinking, ‘Man, that’s as close as I’ll get to that.’ I love that.”

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In the summer of ’91, so did millions of others.

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