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wornoutmouse · 3 years ago

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Fun fact: demon slayer starts in 1912 and ends in 1927(or at least that's when the Tashio era ends). Using that math Tanjiro (as long as he kept his health good) would very well be alive today at the ripe age of like 78 if my math is correct since he started as 13 in the series. (My math probably wrong asf)

Power imbalance, power bottom reader, knife play, blood but not blood play...

He hated you.

Your very being irked him more than anything he'd ever experienced in all his centuries of living. You were clumsy, boisterous, and played that arrogant music all throughout your home while walking around half naked. Well in Muzan's opinion you were half naked, he couldn't even begin to describe his disbelief at the trend of exposing skin.

It didn't help that you had that insignificant filth running through your veins. At first he was unsure, after all this was a completely different country than Japan, not to mention your darker skin and coiled hair. But no, he could smell and recognise the Kamado blood running through your veins just as strongly as it had run through all your ancestors.

Completely undiluted.

At the very beginning when you first moved in, you came to his home. Knocking aggressively on his front door already getting off to the wrong start. When he opened it, you slipped past him and walked into his living room barely even saying hello as you put poorly decorated sugar cookies on his obsidian coffee table. "This is a nice place you got here Mj."

Muzan's eyes twitched, that joke had long since gotten old since he moved to America.

Now that you were closer he could definitely smell, the century old stench of rivaling bloodlust simmered just below your onyx skin. At any moment he expected you to attack him in some way or form. "Anyways I'm here to say hello neighbor, my name is Y/n and I'm your new best friend!"

Your happy attitude also agitated him to no end. Even though the knowledge of demons had dwindled down to only a few select families, even basic humans were wary of him as their baser instincts made them aware of his dangerous origins. This fact had long since forced Muzan to only prey on the elderly to survive. You had stayed a bit longer babbling about some nonsense that Muzan never acknowledged as he watched you from a good distance.

"You know you really got to add more to your wardrobe than 1963 suits." You walked from the back of his home, an area that he didn't even notice you wandered to. Finally getting bored, you open his door bidding your farewells.

Just before leaving you stop and with a cheeky grin say, "If you ever need anything just come on over. We Kamado's are known for our kindness."

Since then he'd been on edge around you. The point of relocating was for him to keep a low profile but now it seems he'd have to come face to face with an old nemesis reborn.

Muzan snapped out of his thoughts with a flinch as he pierced his hand with his nail. He watches the dark blood well up from the wound and drip down his wrist. In the end this world had long since lost its hostility dwindling the average human incapable of basic combat. Giving you were no doubt a great descendant, Muzan failed to see you as a true threat.

But one can never be too sure

🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢

You heard a knock on your door, soft and hesitant. "I don't think I'm expecting company." You checked your watch and peered out of a nearby window. It was at least 8 at night, you were braless wearing sweats with a red T-Shirt and on your way to bed. In the back of your mind you visualize your two grand-uncles Inosuke and Zenitsu coming over to make you spectate their fights. For two old dudes they still had enough strength in them to do hip breaking nonsense.

You open the door shocked to see your next door neighbor standing before you. For once he wasn't wearing a suit that cost more than your house. His attire was still expensively dressed but in a more casual sense, that being a black dress shirt and slacks. His sleeves were rolled up displaying his pale skin. "Can I come in?" A dazzling smile you had never seen before practically blinds you as he walks past you into your home.

When Muzan walks in his eyes immediately dart to the clear as day Nichirin Blade sword displayed recklessly on your living room wall above your couch. "You like it?" A hand on his shoulder makes him jump, "Got it from my grandpa, he says it's really special but I feel like he's exaggerating. You know how old people are." Muzan shakes out of his stupor. "I don't quite understand what you mean by that, however I do know that it's much more wise to listen to your elders than ignoring…..It could save your life."

Muzan replicates you and puts a hand on your shoulder gently squeezing. This was it, he'd go in for the kill and it would be over, the amount of blood he'd pump into you would be enough to watch you meet a satisfying end of combustion completely untraceable if the police were to get involved. How he wishes he'd be there when your poor grandfather walks along your remains splattered on every surface in your living room. Unable to do a thing as he's finally in his last stretch of life.

The beauty.

Muzan's finger only twitches in the slightest before pain sparks from his own neck. "The thought of you coming into my own home unprovoked and at night no less, was the most obvious sign one could ask more." You had his hand gripped so tight your veins popped while your other hand held a small pocket knife that burned brighter than any Nichirin sword he'd ever encountered. He didn't understand, he was quick enough to kill even the best of the ancient Hiroshima. So how did a little foreign girl like you get the upper hand?

It was embarrassing and almost laughable if any of his pillars were alive to tell the tale.

You press the blade harder before bringing your other hand to caress Muzan's cheek, "Did you think I'd be just an ignorant descendant of an infamous hero?" You clicked your teeth disappointingly. "How naive, you've really become lazy after all these millennia huh?" You walk forward, pushing Muzan back with seductive strength. He allows you to push him into your couch, I say allow because at any time he could have stopped you.

Muzan is most definitely not holding me at gunpoint right now.

The knife never wavers even as you climb into Muzan's lap, pressing it even closer against his jugular. "You do know getting beheaded will not kill me, and I doubt this petty little kitchen knife will get the job done in the first place." Your lips draw into a smirk and you press the knife closer as you trail it down his chest, "That may be true but it's gonna take one hell of a time for you to grow back." Your hand jerks down, popping his shirt buttons open.

Muzan watches with interest, your eyes light up as more skin becomes exposed. The tones of your dark skin contrast strikingly as you caress his pectoral with the tips of your fingers. "For a 1,000 year old grandpa you look decent." Still threatening his life with your blade, you kiss him. It's deep and carnal. Your lustful desires being made known as you grind in his lap. The flesh of your ass snuggly hotdogs the forming outline of his cock. "I've always wanted to be with a demon. You've had to of become a real freak after living this long!"

When you pull away Muzan's thin lips are pink and a bit swollen. He is out of breath despite needing none, "You have a lot of nerve for a mere human." With your free hand you loosen the belt of his slacks, only standing to pull them off, pleased when Muzan voluntarily raises his hips to aid you.

Don't get him wrong, he was still planning on killing you and ending your wretched bloodline once and for all, he just needed his mind to clear itself. Your scent, your confidence, strung him along like a puppet. His hands grip onto your ass cheeks like a lifeline. Molding them between his fingers, even giving them a shake through your sweats. His nails elongate and puncture the thick fabric as if it was nothing more than a spider web.

Your sweats are tugged off completely leaving your lower half nude. Muzan moves his hands to hold your ass again but your blade politely makes itself known. You are out of breath and clearly flustered. "Watch yourself, demon, I'm the one calling the shots, don't forget that." Muzan bites his tongue with sharp glare. He raises his hands in surrender, "Of course."

Muzan can feel your wetness against his leg and it's driving him insane. "Hey…" red eyes refocus on yours, "You ain't got any diseases do you? And you can't get me pregnant right?" Muzan smirks hands enclosing around your ass despite your protest. "I can, however it will cost a lot more than doing it once." The odds didn't seem in your favor but you were in no position to stand down and grab a condom and Muzan knew it.

You curve the blade towards his chin, "If you are lying and give me some ancient unknown disease or I find out you have superman sperm, I will kill you." Muzan links his lips, "Wasn't that the plan from the beginning or have you had a moment of level headedness?" Your wrist is quick and precise, cutting a thin slash along his jawline., not enough to scar and it barely even bled, but the threat was clear.

You grab Muzan's dick and use your thumb to attack the underside with fast strokes. Said man doesn't react outwardly, the only sign being his eyelids lowering by a fraction. "Were you always this well endowed or did you adjust this part too?" Muzan was not amused by your insinuation. Deciding to once again display the true power imbalance this situation had, he loops his arms underneath your large thighs and lifts you just enough to thrust his cock against your hole.

From there he let's go, making you plop down on his length, making you yelp and allowing him to lean back with a relaxed sigh. You were so warm and tight. Now even though I explained what had happened with great detail, keep in mind that in reality it all happened within a fraction of a second.

Your large and in charge persona was cracking. You gripped Muzan's sides tightly as your pussy spasmed around his girth. "F-Fuck it's too….." you trail off not wanting to give Muzan the credit he was truly due.

It takes a few moments for you to get your bearings all the while Muzan and his dangerous jaw swayed in the crevice of your neck. A viper playing with its prey. The blade is back against his neck once again making his cock twitch. If he were human this would be a dangerous feat. Your grip never slacked nor lessened against his neck, slicing into a growing wound that dropped dark blood down his chest and to his abdomen.

His dick stretched your pussy and made it weap on each downstroke. Muzan's hands grip onto the cheeks of your ass with gritted teeth. Your insides gripped him ever so slightly. Sucking him back in as if he belonged there. He felt used and it felt good. His black ringlets stuck to his face from sweat and his red eyes grew in intensity.

He couldn't see much of your body, hell he could barely even touch. In the back of his mind humorous thoughts such as how he knew Tanjiro would lose his sanity if he knew his granddaughter was being bedded by the man he despised. But the more you bounced, the more you squeezed, the deeper you cut into his neck proved that you were truly the one in charge.

"Oh God you're so deep!" Your deep almond eyes shut themselves with pleasure. Muzan could feel your legs shaking with exertion at the same rhythm your pussy twitched. His balls felt tight after having no action in over a dozen years. "F-Faster." He has no care for your blade, only wanting to cum and feel the sweet ecstasy he knew your creamed pussy would provide. "Come on human, go faster." Muzan locks lips with you, gaze hardened and intent on proving some sort of point.

Tossing the knife you wrap your arms around his neck pulling his head closer. Red eyes target brown ones as his hands take a stronger grip on your ass. He uses his strength to bounce you. The sound of his balls slapping against the curve of your ass is just as disgusting as it is sexy. Your nipples rub against his through your tank-top making you both moan. The feeling blood stains your shirt making you shiver from the cool wetness

The couch you rest on bangs against the wall behind you the faster you both go. Muzan's feet are planted firmly in the ground, his fangs further elongated. He looks feral and it is in this moment where you get a glimpse of the horror many people felt when he took their lives. "Focus little Kamado, you wouldn't want to disappoint me now would you?"

Muzan's hips meet yours, spreading the tempo. Your juices coat his lap before finally you tense up completely into a cramp inducing stance as Muzan impaled you on his cock one last time. "Ahh.." Muzan empties himself within you with a relieved sigh.

Maybe the Kamado bloodline could go on.

#blackreader #black y/n #demon slayer smut #muzan x reader #anime smut #muzan smut #muzan x black reader #demon slayer x black reader

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sineala · 3 years ago

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Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good.

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference.

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

#posts i actually wrote

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steve0discusses · 3 years ago

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Yugioh S5 Ep 20: Pharaoh’s Cool New Trick

Digging my way through quite a pile of commission work (funny how these things only come all at once or not at all), nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, was looking forward to some free time to catch up on my many little side projects when I was asked to take off for a weekend to do some cat-sitting to which I would NEVER say no to a cat, so like...Rip this blog I guess, we only update like once a week nowadays, but what do you do?

That’s right, play Puzzles and Dragons! The only phone game worth paying any attention to! Where they just released Pegasus on their Yugioh Collab and he looks pretty great!

So I’m just gonna take a second for some art appreciation, because the Puzzles and Dragons art team is just A++++ honestly, and yes, I did pull 13 times to get a Pegasus in my monster box, and yes, he is a completely insane team leader that is absolutely broken when paired with Yugi (the numbers are so satisfying) but...look at him. He looks so good!

(also I finally got Joey Wheeler, and so now my gatcha cravings are settled. And, don’t worry, I play this game so much that I was there during Christmas when they offered like a bajillion stones for free so I didn’t actually use real money on this.)

Now PAD also released a Weevil and Rex, and I don’t know why, and neither does the art team because they still look pretty good but in comparison to all the mains, they sure do looks like just some shorty guys in some casuals.

though I gotta admit, I want to learn how the hell this art team does swooshy effects, because man, that would make my art so much better to just have flames violently exploding out of all my art. Why am I not doing that more often? I have the technology.

anyway, I didn’t bother trying to pull them. Maybe I’ll accidentally pull them when they eventually release a Duke Devlin. (also, RIP to the fact that Roland will probably never be in Puzzles and Dragons but like...I can only send them so many polite letters covered in stickers pretending I’m some 10 year old child and writing in my broken Hiragana “Roland in PAD?”. Thems the breaks. (They also might not remember who Roland is.))

Shoutouts to the card that Weevil is holding that is censoring this nipple on the booby spider, PS.

So because this is not actually a Puzzles and Dragons blog, and it’s been ten eons since I regularly updated so I could remember episode to episode...where the hell were we?

That’s right, we’re on an island now. This show’s wonderful obsession with evil islands (and spoiler, this is one of the few Yugioh Islands that doesn’t explode at the end. Mostly because Kaiba isn’t here to do it or this place would be cinder)

(read more island stuff under the cut)

Anyway, after announcing “hey guys! Screw islands!” Yugi immediately collapses and without any warning.

Apparently the armor is a big ol parasite, which is something that Yugi is so used to at this point that he refuses to admit that this is a problem. Just normal Muto stuff, refusing to tell anyone that he has a serious illness going on underneath that giant mass of hair.

(the sailor moon vibes coming off this weird orb energy)

Sort of feels like a call back to S1 when Yugi was clearly possessed and everyone else was like “He acting weird to you?” except it’s S5 and everyone has learned to never trust Yugi when he says he’s fine and they are responding like he is about to die. Which is correct.

Outside of the cave falls this scroll that is...glowing, I guess. So they open it up and get a bunch of hieroglyphs that give them the “riddle of light” and like youknow...it’s riddle stuff.

They’re doing this riddle for “wings.” And it’s like...everyone’s monster here has a set of wings or an ability to fly. Every single monster except for I dunno, flaming swordsman? Hell, Yugi himself had two sets of wings when he fused with Dark Magician (which was weird, and I still don’t like to think about what technically was going on there.) But we have to go and get ourselves even more wings.

Weirdly, Joey turns to Tea and does something that in any other show would be completely normal. He was like “you want to stay here with Yugi, don’t you?” and it was the first time Joey has ever actually addressed the fact that Tea and Yugi are close. Uncharted territory. I was amazed at the amount of casual shipping that is happening here. It’s almost like a normal ass relationship.

So the boys decide to go off, and be boys and tackle this themselves. And they shouldn’t have, because Tea is smart for this group, and also has the only healing spell.

Like if you’re playing D+D you wouldn’t typically leave your only healer behind. Just saying.

Also like...Grandpa Muto went with them? I guess he’d have to since he’s the translator but also...kind of weird to leave your grandson dying in a cave, but maybe that’s just the Muto lifestyle.

Do not be fooled by my caps, no one has addressed the Bakura in the puzzle for 3 seasons. I’m starting to think this show will never address the Bakura in the puzzle. Which honestly, that would be hilarious if they made a big deal out of that plot point and then couldn’t use it in the end.

And speaking of plot points that kind of come out of nowhere and don’t make full sense with the continuity of the show--Joey has regressed back to the 4th grade.

Hey show? What?

So like if you love Joey, this is not the arc for you, because this arc he is reduced to a Himbo and nothing else. Straight up didn’t know what an echo is, but is very strong and pretty, I guess.

This inevitably happens with any TV show becuase different people make different parts, and I’ve brought up before that sometimes it feels like some teams only have loose post-it notes of what any character should be like at any given point (ESPECIALLY with Seto Kaiba’s timeline) but like...

...Personally I’m mot so fond of this interpretation of Joey, kind of ignores Joey’s best traits, and makes Tristan look way too smart in comparison (and like I always pinned Tristan to be the Himbo of the group, but maybe it’s because they give Tristan so little else to do?)

And like don’t get me wrong, Joey’s a dumbass a lot of the time and needs to get corrected by his pals...but...to the point he doesn’t know what an echo is? He’s a dumbass in a High School student sort of way, youknow?

Anyway, they get down to this big ravine, and they have to destroy this stone while the light passes over it. Kind of feels like a Breath of the Wild shrine quest, actually. In fact, I think Breath of the Wild recycled the shadow/sunlight pathing quest like 4 or 5 times. (I love Breath of the Wild to death but boy did they run out of ideas at the end there.)

They have to fight a glass monster and it’s kind of like...do you know the game Balls 3D? probably not, but it looked like a bunch of random shapes stuck together like a 90′s animation. They basically went to war with shapes.

Pure Himbo energy, has several pokemon, but punches for his pokemon instead of using them. A power move if I ever saw one.

Youknow that would make pokemon a lot more interesting if you could like throw out your pikachu, and then choose to just physically run up to your opponents Eevee and sock it in the jaw. Raise of hands--I know you all would love a version of pokemon like that. Let Ash Ketchum punch a Ratata.

Bro has informed me that Ash does do something like this in the anime. But I’m not talking about the anime, I’m talking about the video game. Give me the option to physically combat my rival. This is what I want, Pokemon.

They discover a way to break the monolith, and the show thinks we’re like actually 7 years old (because the show is Y7, although I forget because it deals with so many dark themes) so the show is going to hold on to this puzzle for a while...just to fill time. And it’s fine because we gotta switch over to Pharaoh anyway.

Yami has this dream again. He attempts to fuse with Dark magician to overcome the dream, but alas, he is still not strong enough.

Yugi wakes up in this murky cave while Tea is out washing out like...some rag? (he’s also still got a rag, so I guess multiple rags were required for how sweaty Yugi is.)

Yugi says “I feel like I’m a new man!” a lot in this episode, and every time he calls himself a man like he’s some sort of adult it’s very funny to me.

And then this plot lore dropped.

I mean I guess inevitably it had to happen...

But man, end of an era. It was freakin hilarious while it lasted: that Pharaoh refused to read ancient Egyptian because it’s like 2002 and he is a High Schooler living in Japan and he actually doesn’t WANT to resolve the mystery of the puzzle. Maybe the people who made this arc don’t know about how in S2 and S3, the fact Pharaoh couldn’t read Marik’s back tatt was like...a really big issue. He couldn’t read the God card, he couldn’t even read that massive tablet that read “HEY PHARAOH THIS IS LITERALLY YOU”. KAIBA had to tell him how to read the God card for him. Freakin Seto “Magic is a lie” Kaiba had to tell him how to use the God Card because Pharaoh couldn’t read it.

But like...Pharaoh finally gave in at some point after the world was devoured by the Leviathan, and before Kaiba finished building Kaibaland (which was already built in S1 but wtv)

The timelines on this show have always been a mishmash...but this one is just like...

...show are you trying to convince me that at any point in this show after season Zero, Pharaoh had any idea what he was doing? Did he sap that brain energy straight out of Joey Wheeler so he could do this?

Wow.

(secretly hoping he forgets how to read Egyptian after this arc is over and the show goes back to the other development team)

Pharaohs reasoning is that, if this is the riddle of the light.....

....then where is the riddle of darkness????????????

and when Tea was like “Pharaoh that is not even remotely logic. Omg it’s so bright outside, lets go back to gross cave.” and Pharaoh was like “Tea! You got it!” and she was like “What the hell are you talking about?”

Not gonna lie, I saw the Orichalcos green, and I got concerned.

Anyway, Yugi gets very frustrated and was like “ugh, lets go save em. They’re gonna die (again.)” and marches down there as if he didn’t pass out an hour ago.

And he fuses with Dark Magician again while everyone else (including his grandpa) was like “Yugi are you freakin kidding me? The suit freakin kills you omg! Tea you had one freakin job!”

And then we get the plot twist that...I mean it makes sense but it was choreographed in a confusing way.

And out of no where this guy shows up again:

So this mysterious man shows up and says “If you don’t succeed you have to live here forever” which...nice...that would probably save the world a lot of problems if Yami got locked away and took his OP puzzle with him. And then this man also says “if you do succeed you become VERY POWERFUL” and Yami was like. “...”

This whole episode had a theme to it, where Tristan and Joey were trying to prove that they could do things on their own and without Yugi’s help. And honestly...felt a little bit misplaced. Yami’s the same guy who murdered Yugi last season with the Orichalcos so like...

...I mean he is probably more reliable than Tristan who once died and turned into a robot monkey for 10ish episodes.

and then they flew into a glowing door.

Folks, this was wild to look at.

This is wild.

And at this point I closed Photoshop and thought I was done. But then I looked at my timeline on the video and was like...wait...there’s more?

and I’m really glad I kept watching because it went back to Alex, who...is apparently just still at those steps in this haunted ass Pyramid.

Now we’re watching Yugioh.

I forgot for a second when they turned Joey into a Himbo and made Pharaoh literate, but we’re back. I mean...

...look at the liner art on this adult man.

So...I posit the question...has Alex spent the last 2-3 episodes doing nothing but applying eyeliner to his face in the dark? Because he absolutely has. And honestly, the vibe of being in a spooky haunted pyramid with barely any light, just applying eyeliner down the edge of your face...that’s a Yugioh vibe, if I ever saw one.

This arc is wild. Anyway, next episode we do even more fetch quests and riddles? Just going to guess now that we probably will.

(and for those new here, this is a link so you can read them from the top. Which, since we’re in S5, means you got like...hours of Yugioh content to read through. Enjoy the rewards of my weird hobby.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#Yugioh #Yu-Gi-Oh #yami yugi #S5 #Ep20 #It's actually Ep 20 now I was wrong last time #Yugi muto #Grandpa Muto #Alexander the Great #Joey Wheeler #Tristan Taylor #Tea Gardner #TeaxYugi #never thought I would ever use that tag #in this show where they are canonically dating but sometimes it happens #Puzzles and Dragons #Because yes I had to talk about it. This collab is great

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thevindicativevordan · 4 years ago

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Why I Like Superman

This is a post I’ve been going over and over in my head, trying to suss out my feelings. The simple fact is I love Superman, and I have for as long as I can remember. I wore Superman pajamas as a kid. I watched cartoons like Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, Legion of Superheroes, and was hyped as hell when he showed up on The Batman cartoon. I drew variations of the S-shield all over the sides of my school notebooks, and I tied a towel around my neck and pretended I could fly.

One of my favorite Xbox games to play was the Superman Returns tie-in game (remember those?), because it was the only game I could play that let me fly around, shooting off heat vision and freezing people with arctic breath. I still remember the opening that had you destroy asteroids, and being absolutely wowed as a kid by the big finale which had you slam into the largest asteroid at supersonic speed to destroy it. Took me forever to beat the Warworld arena level though because I didn’t know how to block.

Because there were no local comic shops near my home for me to go buy issues at (not that I even knew what a local comic shop was at the time), I kept up with his, and the rest of my favorite DC heroes adventures, via reading the DC wiki. I spent so much of my time waiting for my mom to get off the computer so I could go online and catch up that my parents installed parental blocks because they were worried about what I was doing.

In short he’s been a constant favorite of mine throughout childhood, through my teenage years, and straight on into adulthood. I never developed the dislike or distaste for him that some people did, and he never dropped out of the top spot for me like he did for others. There were times when he shared the top spot for me with Batman and Spider-Man, until One More Day wrecked my relationship with Spidey and I grew bored of the endless cycles of Batman being a dick to the Batfamily and then learning he needs them. But even throughout his lowest points (and God have there been so many of those in the last decade), he’s remained the top guy for me.

But why? I think it’s in part because of the type of genre he embodies. He is of course The Superhero, and he lives in the genre he founded, but he also lives in a type of optimistic science fiction genre that’s downright extinct nowadays. As a kid I was a massive science fiction fan, and my dad was friends with a guy who was also hugely into science fiction. This guy had a basement full of science fiction books written from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, up until the cyberpunk era kicked off in the 1980s. He was happy to hand novels off to me, and his private library beat the hell out of our public one. I devoured stories of fearless heroes in space exploring new worlds, first contact with alien races, mindbending new technologies that seemed like magic, about transcending our mortal flesh and becoming part of a universal, transcendental whole, stories that didn’t just talk about technology but about the human condition. Stories that while sometimes bleak, painted a positive picture of the human ability to overcome our inherent flaws and be a powerful force for good. And ultimately Superman speaks from the same source.

It’s not just about the powers, although those who completely dismiss their appeal are making a mistake I believe. It’s about humanity, about our ability to transcend our base natures, reflected in this Strange Visitor from Another Planet, who embodies our virtues and our vices, who is torn between the fear of doing too much and the fear of doing too little. Who hides his true self behind a pair of glasses because he craves the fellowship of humanity more than any amount of glory or riches. His no-kill rule a firm affirmation of the value of life, all life everywhere no matter it’s form. His greatest love, Lois Lane, is his co-worker and greatest rival as a reporter, who has everyone’s number in her phone, be they crime lord or living saint. His greatest friend, Jimmy Olsen, is the guy everyone else ignores or bosses around, but is a rich kid weirdo who gets up to all sorts of bizarre adventures that keep the Daily Planet afloat. His childhood friends are superheroes from the future, his home City of Metropolis is 10 years ahead of everyone else in terms of technology, his dog can shatter concrete via barking at it, his home den is a ice crystal castle situated at the North Pole, like Santa’s Workshop. In short his life is one where even the mundane corners hide fantastical attributes. By living among us, he helps to elevate us, to make our daily grind interesting by seeing through the lens of his life. As others have said, we walk our dogs around the block, he walks his around the solar system.

But it would be a mistake to assume that Superman doesn’t tackle the darker sides of life too. Even the most optimistic sci-fi novels that I read as a kid had dystopic elements in them, intended or not. His home planet of Krypton was our technological superior, yet ignored the warnings of it’s chief scientist, and died a victim of it’s own greed and arrogance with Kal-El as the Last Son. His birth parents died in the fires of self-perpetuated genocide, his adopted parents the Kents often fall to mundane heart diseases or accidents, which even his power can not save them from. His greatest enemy Lex Luthor, is the one person who can understand his loneliness, his need for the public’s approval and acceptance, and yet the shared enmity between the two has ruined any chance of them forming a friendship that could have been. The shining City of Metropolis venerates Luthor as well as Clark, reflecting the greed, selfishness, and callousness of it’s other favorite child. Suicide Slum stands as a testament to the limits of how much Superman can improve life. The Phantom Zone is a spinechilling example of the inhumane treatment of prisoners. His foes ran the gauntlet from greedy businessmen out for money at any cost, to victims who have suffered at humanity’s hands and seek revenge, to sociopaths who treat other peoples pain and lives as a source of amusement, to murderers who care not from where the blood flows, only that it does, to tyrants who seek to crush all resistance underneath their heel, to gods who wish the elimination of free will itself. Each of them force Superman to confront the fallibility of human nature and wrestle with whether or not his faith in both them and himself is justified.

In a sentence? I love Superman because he’s a character you can do almost anything with, from comedic hijinks, to serious dramas, to distributing horror stories, to exciting adventure stories. He reminds me of the best type of science fiction stories, ones that explore people and existence from all sorts of angles, that never lose sight of the emotional human core at the heart of all the high concept existential concepts. He’s made me laugh, cry, think, get motivated, get angry, and sometimes just get writing. He brings the big ideas and the human emotions that keep me reading comics throughout all the Big 2′s bullshit. He still believes in the human capacity for good, in spite of our flaws, in spite of how few of us seem to believe in that capacity ourselves, and he shows us that it’s still there by touching our hearts through his stories. That’s why I like Superman, and why he’s my favorite superhero.

#superman #dc comics #lex luthor #lois lane #me

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amairauthor · 4 years ago

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Powerful does not necessarily mean strong!

Scarlet Witch is one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel universe. In the movie Infinity War, the final battle began to turn toward the heroes when she joined the fight. And she had enough power to destroy a mind stone, and if not for the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet with all of the stones, she would have given Thanos a run for his money. Only Captain Marvel on the heroes’ side rivals the power of Wanda Maximoff. But having great power does not necessarily imbue you with great strength, which is the theme explored in the new Disney+ offering of WandaVision.

Wanda Maximoff and Vision are living an idyllic suburban life trying to conceal their true natures. Neither seems to remember anything from their past, how they got to Westview, how they received their powers when they were married, and it doesn’t seem like they recall the Infinity War events at all.

But then the world begins to evolve around them, and with it, the ideal suburban life they are experiencing is not exactly what it seems.

As the episodes progress, the world around them changes from a 1950’s I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke Show type sitcom to more of a 1960’s era, Bewitched type sitcom.

With each adjustment to the world around them, more and more of the outside world (and likely influences we are not yet aware of) begin to creep in.

And with these infiltrations, we begin to see that even though Wanda may not have remembered the outside world at the beginning, she begins to remember (or at least understand enough not to allow herself to remember). And we realize she is in control of the world in which they live, at least partially.

Jump ahead to the most recent week's episode, and we find that Wanda is not only creating the world around them but has captured innocent people who now live in Westview. And not only captured them but is controlling their minds.

Has this Hero become a villain? I truly hope not, but she is a very young person and has experienced so much tragedy. These are the classic makings of a villain, but also great heroes. And sometimes heroes act like villains, and villains like heroes.

Having and using great power is a central theme to Marvel's IronMan, Captain America, and other Avengers movies.

Ant-Man began the movie by stealing Hank Pym's suit. Tony Stark created Vision, but only after accidentally creating Ultron. Spider-Man caided a Ferry accident that was only fixed with the help from Iron-Man. Hawkeye grieved his family's loss so powerfully, after Thanos’ snap, that he turned into the murderous Ronin. The Black Panther was so enraged by his father's death that he sought revenge and to kill Bucky. So heroes are not saints, and neither is Wanda.

These powerful individuals would do wise to heed the advice given to Peter Parker from his uncle Ben om Spiderman 2002:

"With great power comes great responsibility. "

The origins of the phrase pre-date its use in Spider-Man. It bears a close resemblance to the Christian bible verse in Luke 12:48:

"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. "

In 1906, Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, Winston Churchill said,

"Where there is great power, there is great responsibility."

And Superman Comes to Earth, the first episode of the 1948 Superman serial, Clark Kent is told by his foster father, Eben Kent:

"Because of these great powers—your speed and strength, your x-ray vision and super-sensitive hearing—you have a great responsibility."

All of these characters are powerful and physically strong, yet they are also weak-willed humans. In each case, their strength is developed over time and consists of continually choosing to adhere to their responsibility with the power they hold.

It is not unlike any of us. We are blessed with talents that make each of us unique and valuable. Some people are blessed with musical ability, others with intelligence, and some with physical agility.

There are a vast amount of talents and combinations of talents, the only end to which rival the sands on the worlds beaches. Some of us are blessed with a better life situation than others, but all of us are blessed with gifts that make us powerful.

That is the story we are telling by living.

We are continually deciding if we will accept the responsibility of our talents or squander them, or even worse, use them for evil. As we watch Wanda explore how she will respond to the power she has, let us each do the same. That is why I love these stories because they are our stories—even my story.

https://swhrecord.com/blog-spoiler-alert-1/f/test-post

#wandavision #wanda maximoff #bucky barnes #steve rogers #mcu #television

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cutie1365 · 5 years ago

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A Kid from Queens Part 14

Pairing: Peter Parker x Stark!Reader

Info: CA: Civil War Era. Tony Stark enlists his daughter to find the web slinging spider in Queens.

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: n/a

A/N: Hopefully another chapter coming soon, let's keep the quarantine going strong before online classes start.

Masterlist linked in my bio. Taglist in the reblog.

- - - - - 🕷 - - - - -

To say you were keeping busy would be an understatement. If Linda wasn’t dragging you from photoshoot to photoshoot, you were in your lab in your apartment, dissecting the data you’d collected from Thomas’ servers.

The first thing you noticed was an incredible level of encryption. Seriously, the firewalls at their residence rivaled what you used at Stark Industries. That wasn’t a good sign, they were definitely hiding something.

It took you days to follow the money trail, finally finding their private account. They’d been careful, using bitcoin and other nearly untraceable cryptocurrency. Nearly untraceable, but you’d cracked the code. It looked like over the past few months the mayor has been funneling in larger and larger amounts, but you noticed a bimonthly withdrawal to the same anonymous source. It was the only movement of funds outside of the account, all other transactions had been moving money in. Your brain hurt from staring at your screen so long. You knew it would take a few more hours for Friday to track the transaction, and you were overdue for a break.

“F.R.I., trace these transactions, get me an IP address, see who it’s registered to and if we have files on them. I want to know what he’s buying.” You instructed, slipping your coat on, and heading out of your apartment.

“You got it boss.” The AI responded.

As you made your way into the park below to clear your head, you noticed a bodega at the entrance. Maybe coffee would be a good idea, you needed the energy, you could sense it was going to be a long night.

As you ordered, you glanced down to the magazines below, and came face to face with yourself. Your Vogue cover had come out, surely just as Linda wanted it. You knew it wasn’t worth it to waste mental energy on the fact that they’d edited the hell out of your face and body. You swore they had shrunk your waist two sizes.

“This you?” The owner asked in a thick Russian accent, pointing towards the magazine.

“Oh, yeah.” You smiled, humbly.

“You sign?” He asked, holding up a sharpie to you.

“Sure.” You took the pen from him, scribbling your name across the cover. This was odd. You were used to signing large checks for charity, sure, but never autographs.

“My daughter, she like you very much. She want to be engineer now.” He smiled proudly, handing you your coffee.

“That’s wonderful.” You smiled brightly, you never expected to be a role model, but if it was for anything you were happy to encourage young women into STEM fields. It was truly heartwarming. You thanked the man, and left him a large tip.

You strolled through the park, going through your mental checklist and schedule for the week. You were leaving in a few days to go to Boston, Linda had gotten you an invitation from MIT to judge their annual robotics competition.

As you journeyed back to your apartment and opened the door, you heard loud beeping coming from your lab.

Rushing around the corner, hundreds of pictures of black market weapons were flooding your desktop.

“What am I looking at here F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” You asked, pulling the display out into holograms to get a better look.

“Wire payments tracked to a man named Adrian Toomes. Uncertain what the payments were for, but several other black market transactions and evidence seems to point to these weapons being circulated.” She explained, enlarging the clearest photograph in front of me.

“Maybe the mayor was looking to dip into the business, wanted a chunk. Maybe he wanted the monopoly on the mafia accounts, expanding the business to the most powerful underground families in the city.” You guessed.

“Something’s not right,” You grabbed the rendered blueprint hologram of one of the weapons, enlarging it then spinning it, “Are these man made?”

You began to deconstruct the hologram, removing the outer metal layers, landing at its core power source, your eyes growing wide.

“Is that... a Chitauri energy core? How could they possibly have this much volume? Even if they hoarded some after the incident, it wouldn’t be enough to sustain the operation they seem to be running now. The only other stores this large are locked away in the Department of Damage Control, and I don’t know of any authorizations to remove them.” You thought out loud. They must have been stealing them, turning them into weapons and selling them on the black market. This is more than just a mafia turf war, this is terrorism. Shit.

You knew whatever the mayor had gotten wrapped up in was bad, but you never expected it to be this bad. You were way out of your depth here, you knew you couldn’t just sit on this information.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., is dad upstate?” You asked.

“Yes, his plane landed an hour ago.”

“Good, tell him to stay put, I’m on my way.”

- - - - - 🕷 - - - - -

An hour into your drive you were thanking god for the decision to get coffee earlier. Although your car could technically self-drive, you liked to be in control.

As you pulled into the compound, you saw your father waiting for you at the door. You pulled open the door to your car, making your way towards him.

“You’re gonna give your old man a heart attack if you keep showing up like this.” He raised a brow, curious to what you were up to.

“We both need a vacation.” You scoffed lightheartedly, pushing past him, and into the compound.

You led him into his office, you knew you needed a secure location to safeguard the information you were about to present to him.

“You gonna tell me what all this is about?” Your father took a seat, wearily.

“You’re not going to like this.” You nervously held your hands behind your back, unsure of where to begin.

“Do I ever?” He crossed his arms over his chest, he assumed this would be about Peter again, he never could have expected why you were really here.

“At the gala, as we were going in, a man tried to warn me, he said there was something I should know about the mayor. Thomas pulled me away before he could finish.” You began, your father shaking his head at the mention of Thomas.

“He knew what was going to happen?” Your father asked, sitting up straight in his chair, leaning towards you.

“I don’t think so.” You shook your head. “But I never forgot what he said, I knew he knew more, and after what happened at the gala... I had to know. I knew it wasn’t a random attack. I tracked him down, he said the mayor’s in deep. Deeper than mafia, he thought maybe they were dealing some sort of weapons.”

“Why did he try and warn you?” He asked, you could tell his protective side was coming out.

“He thought they might try to target me to hurt them, hurt their image.” You tried to put as delicately as possible without outright saying they were using you, but your father understood, and it did nothing but fuel his anger.

“And you went back to this asshole because...?” He asked, patronizingly.

“Will you let me finish please.” You pleaded, and he sat back slightly, not understanding how this could get worse. “After the... article came out, I knew I could use him as an alibi, to shift the focus, discredit the story. We made an agreement. He needed to get back in his father’s good graces, and I was the key to that, and a boost in his polling numbers. It also gave me the opportunity I needed to look into the family, see if there was any credibility to the warning.”

“What did you find?” He raised a brow, it must have been bad enough to bring you here at this hour of night.

“Dad, It’s bad.” You shook your head, “F.R.I.D.A.Y.” You asked, and the AI displayed all the evidence you’d recently uncovered around the room for the two of you to examine. Tony stood and made his way around the room, taking it all in, in shock. And just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, once more, it wasn’t just illegal offshore accounts and weapons, you grabbed the hologram and deconstructed it just as you’d done in the lab.

“Is that...” Tony asked in shock, picking up the rendered core in his hands.

“Chitauri, I think they’re stealing them from Damage Control.” You nodded, Tony exhaled.

Part of him was relieved this meeting didn’t have to do with Peter, but this was much worse, and potentially extremely dangerous for you.

“What do I do?” You asked, shaking your head. This was new territory for you, you weren’t an Avenger, you weren’t the hero type.

“You take this to the FBI, this isn’t exactly Avenger territory. If they’re stealing from Damage Control, it’s federal property, their jurisdiction. They’ll know what to do.” Tony nodded, crossing his arms over his chest and placing a hand under his chin, still deep in thought.

“You did the right thing here kid. Next time, maybe give me some heads up if you decide to go hacking into people’s servers, criminal records, and the black market.” He smirked, he feigned an authoritative tone, but was really quite proud of what you’d done. He knew the potential you had, but was worried you’d be swayed and deceived by emotions, but he was wrong. You knew exactly what you were doing, and you weren’t doing it for revenge or personal gain, but for public safety and welfare.

“But where’s the fun in that?” You smirked, you really were your father’s daughter.

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edelwoodsouls · 4 years ago

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maybe in another universe - ch. 2 [fic]

Jon isn’t expecting anything good when he’s evacuated to the countryside. Living with his crush rival he can just about handle. The secret magical world in the upstairs wardrobe, on the other hand, might just break him.

AKA: Narnia AU

Word Count: 3,570 | Also on Ao3 | Chapters: 1,

chapter two: in the land of the watcher

It's raining.

No, that's not really a good word for it. The skies have split open and are casting down an ocean, and usually Martin would thrive, curl up with a collection of Keats or Wordsworth and have melancholy thoughts as he stares at the grey clouds above.

But no such luck. He's been forced out of his room by Ms Perry, the iron-fisted housekeeper - all four of the teenagers have been relegated to the library, where they can supposedly do as little harm as possible.

It's a tense affair. Basira is curled on one of the sofas with an Ancient Greek to English dictionary and a battered book that looks like it's been set on fire several times. Melanie has managed to pry one of the ceremonial swords off the wall, and is practicing swinging it at precarious angles.

Jon is most definitely not reading the crumbling tome clutched in his hands, though he's trying very hard to pretend. Martin can feel the eyes boring into him, sat where he is in the middle of the room, legs crossed in front of a large, malfunctioning radio.

He's been trying to get it fixed for what feels like hours now, to cling to the pulse of information that has been snatched away in this remote and antiquated house. He can feel Jon getting closer and closer to the end of his very thin patience with every jump of static.

After what feels like the millionth time of almost, when he can feel Jon's irritation about to froth at his lips, Martin finally throws his screwdriver on the ground. The silence in the room is overbearing. "Let's play a game."

"Yes," Melanie says immediately, accentuating the word with an alarming jab of her sword in his direction. "What're you thinking?"

"Hide and seek," Basira chimes in, looking up from her book with a smirk. "This house looks brilliant for it."

"I second that," Melanie nods. "Martin?"

"Yeah," he nods. "Sounds like fun."

"Three votes for hide and seek. It's decided then."

"Don't I get a vote?" Jon mutters, not looking up from where he's gripping his book very tightly.

"No, Jon, you don't, because you're a spoilsport and you'll suggest something like re-alphabetising the library or being good little so and sos. And even if you did, majority rules. So-" Melanie thrusts her sword an inch from Jon's face, "buck up and join in, or fuck off."

Jon looks about ready to attempt murder with his bare hands, but before he can get a word out, Melanie throws her sword dramatically onto the floor with a loud clatter, and closes her eyes. "ONE... TWO... THREE..."

Martin grins as he pulls himself off the floor and flees for the door. It's been a long time since he's felt young enough to play games, let alone had the friends to play them with. There's something so childish, so delightful, about running in a place not meant for running, folding himself into somewhere hidden and waiting with baited breath to be found.

Being hunted, without the consequence of failure.

Jon barrels past him, arms flailing. Martin's never seen him run but god, he's fast. He shoots down the corridor and vanishes behind a flurry of curtains.

Martin continues on until he reaches a closed door. Behind him he can hear Melanie's counting, yelled at the top of her lungs - no doubt the housekeeper will kill them later for disturbing the professor. She's nearly finished, and the adrenaline pounding in Martin's veins is reaching heights it hasn't in weeks, and he needs a hiding place now.

There's a spider's web strung in the corner of the doorway, a tiny house spider nestled at it's centre. Almost invisible, if not for Martin's keen eyes, his bone-deep expectation that he'll find at least one no matter where he goes.

It's just a spider, he tells himself, and the thought sounds hollow even to him.

But he throws open the bolt of the door anyway and tumbles into the room, slamming it haphazardly closed.

It takes him a moment to catch his breath, leaning against the door, and that's why it takes him so long to notice the ornate wardrobe at the other end of the room. There's nothing else here, as if this space was designed solely to house a single piece of furniture.

And it's beautiful, deep maroon wood carved with all sorts of imagery Martin can't make sense of - eyes staring out unblinking from one door, webs strung across the other, both surrounded and wreathed in flames.

Some nameless thing in his gut calls him forward.

The click of those carved doors opening sounds too loud, like the snap of fingers right beside his ear. A breeze dances across his cheeks, though the doors and windows are closed, and the collection of coats inside are still.

Without thinking, he delves in.

He should be surprised by the winter wonderland at the back of the wardrobe.

Somehow, he isn't.

The world in the wardrobe seems to go on forever. He's been wandering for miles, he's certain of it - the chill is beginning to set into his fingers, kept at bay only by the adrenaline still humming through his body at the sheer magic of it all.

Suddenly, ever pretending that magic wasn't real seems like such a childish thing to do. It's right here, in front of him. The snow soaks through his shoes, collects in his hair. His breath puffs in little clouds before his face.

Just an hour ago, he was staring at a dreary English afternoon.

He's definitely not in England anymore.

Still, even with all this magical strangeness, he's not expecting the lamp post. Stood proudly alone in a clearing, as if the other trees have shrunk away from its alien material. It's lit, casting a faint glow on the snow, and he can hear the burn of gas inside the glass.

He stops short. "What."

He hovers at the edge of the clearing, unwilling to disturb the perfect snow circling this strange spectacle. It feels reverent, deferential - something that shouldn't be here, even with all its magic. It feels wrong.

"You're not from around here."

Martin yelps, attempting to spin around too fast to look behind him. Instead he trips over his own feet and goes tumbling into the snow, sending eruptions of white powder up into air.

The voice that startled him laughs, a low and dry sound. "Sorry, friend. Didn't mean to startle you."

Martin's view is obscured by his damp curls and the snow beginning to drip into his eyes, but he just about makes out the hand gloved in fingerless black leather thrust into his face. Each joint is marked with ink, and Martin could swear every symbol is a wide, unblinking eye.

He accepts the proffered hand instinctively, hauled up with surprising strength into standing on his feet.

"Thanks," Martin says, cheeks bright pink not just from the cold.

The figure laughs again, shifts into the pool of light under the lamp post - and Martin gets his first real look at the man. Long, inky hair falling into his eyes. His clothes are a mismatch of leather and dark-dyed fabric that look old, in a way that defies a specific era of fashion but gives a distinctly archaic feel.

The guy brushes his hair behind his ear, revealing his face - five o'clock shadow curving along his sharp jawline, and the longest eyelashes Martin's ever seen, and bright, dark eyes.

For a moment, Martin short-circuits.

"Do you have a habit of falling head over heels for strangers?" the man grins. From deep in his pockets he procurs a metal lighter and a pipe. He leans easily against the lamp post, as if it's totally meant to be there, and takes a drag. The smoke that reaches Martin is strangely sweet and spiced, like cinnamon and cloves.

"Uh, no," Martin says, brushing the snow off his clothes distractedly. "You just startled me."

"I'm very sorry," the guy says. He sounds more amused than anything. "Where are my manners? I'm Gerry."

"Martin."

"Nice to meet you, Martin. You're not from around here, are you?"

"No," Martin frowns. "How did you know?"

"Well, for one thing, you're human."

"I'm- sorry?"

"Human. Homosapien. Son of Adam. Take your pic, really, there are so very many labels."

"I guess? Are you-"

Martin cuts himself off as Gerry shifts his weight and the folds of his clothes settle differently, revealing his legs. Unlike the rest of his ensemble, they're clothed in fur that looks like it was originally some ochre shade, and has been dyed rather shoddily black.

Except they're not clothed...

"You're a goat," Martin blurts out, nonplussed, the filter between mouth and brain paper thin.

"I'm a satyr," Gerry frowns in mock admonishment. "Hint two that you're not from around here - that's incredibly rude of you."

"Oh! Uh, sorry."

"I'm messing with you, Martin," Gery grins, a glint-toothed expression that makes Martin slightly dizzy. "But yes, I'm not human. No one born under the eye of the Ceaseless Watcher is."

"I'm sorry, the...?"

"Ceaseless Watcher." Gerry's easy grin flickers, his eyes darting towards the trees. Martin follows him instinctively, but sees nothing except the vanishing darkness of the trees. "The god of Magnus."

"And Magnus is...?" Martin feels very far behind in this conversation.

"This land. Everything you can see in this winter world, from sea to mountains to sky- that's Magnus."

"Right... so I got here how?"

Gerry shrugs. "Who can say, really. The magic here is- unpredictable. Has a mind of its own."

"Magic," Martin repeats. Unsure how to feel about this word being thrown out like they're talking about gravity, or the alphabet - institutional. Factual.

"Magic," Gerry agrees, smirking at Martin's bemused expression.

He should really be getting back. The thought appears distantly, lethargically. He's getting cold, and the others will no doubt be getting worried about him. Or Melanie will, at least. He can imagine Jon rolling his eyes. He's probably gotten stuck somewhere and can't get out. He'll come wandering in eventually.

But Martin doesn't really want to leave. He wants to continue on this adventure, explore this world that believes in magic like it believes in the sunrise each morning.

He wants to keep talking to this mysterious, incredibly pretty man. Goat. Satyr.

"You look cold," Gerry notes, offering Martin a drag of his pipe. Martin accepts more out of instinct than anything, cringeing as the fumes make him choke. "Come back to mine for tea? I just got some amazing jasmin tea from a dryad who owed me a favour, and I promise it's worth the walk."

Martin hesitates, for just a moment. Considers the risks of wandering off with a strange man he met in the woods.

"Just as long as it's not oolong," he says eventually, with a shudder. "I'd love to."

Gerry loops their arms together and begins leading him into the woods. "No oolong, I promise."

Gerry, as it turns out, lives in a cave.

It's a very nice cave, Martin has to admit. The walls are lined with bookshelves packed to bursting - tomes titled in some language he can't read that, as he stares at the letters, suddenly begin to make sense. The floor is covered up by rugs, vibrantly coloured and filled with detail. He feels almost guilty stepping onto them with his wet shoes, walking over intricately stitched faces and landscapes.

He turns to see Gerry tapping the snow off his hooves with a cute little dance, before shrugging off his long leather coat, revealing a waistcoat - and nothing else - beneath. Martin can see now, without a doubt, the thickly haired legs beneath his long grey skirt. There are burn scars crawling across his bare arms - across most available skin.

There are more eye tattoos, too, starkly black against his pale skin. When Martin stares for too long, he's convinced he can see some of them blink.

"Take a seat," Gerry says, nodding towards a pair of invitingly soft arm chairs positioned next to a fireplace.

As Martin sinks thankfully into the chair - he hasn't had to walk that far, possible ever - he watches, transfixed, as Gerry flicks his hand in the direction of the fireplace.

It bursts to life instantly.

"How did you do that?" he asks, eyes wide.

"What?" Gerry blinks momentarily. "Oh, that- magic. A gift from the Lightless Flame."

"The Lightless Flame?"

"One of the gods of Magnus."

"I thought you said the- the Ceaseless Watcher was the god of Magnus?"

Gerry lets out a laugh, low and bitter. "The only one that matters. All the others have... not faded, exactly. Retreated, you could say. Bowed down. The Ceaseless Watcher rules these lands. All others pay subservience."

"Right." The dark tone in Gerry's voice is beginning to unnerve him.

"Doesn't mean there aren't those of us who don't give a shit," Gerry shrugs, that easy demeanour plastering over the top of whatever just slipped out - though now Martin has seen it, the mask doesn't quite seem to fit. "We pay what we have to, to stay alive."

Martin nods wordlessly. He can understand that.

"I'll just make some tea," Gerry continues, darting up some steps towards what Martin assumes must be a kitchen. "Make yourself comfortable!"

Martin adjusts in his seat. Breathes in the quiet, broken only by the steady crackling of the fire beside him. He can feel it, already, beginning to scare the chill from his fingers, beginning to lull any of his hesitations.

A strange rush of adrenaline floods him suddenly at the thought. He sits up, threads his fingers together, eyes darting around the space.

He's forgotten what it is to be comfortable, he realises. This feeling lowering him gently into calm is unnatural, alien - and not to be trusted.

Before he can begin to think about that too deeply, Gerry reappears, two steaming cups in hand. Martin accepts it gratefully, trying to shelve his discomfort for another day's mental spiral.

He'd hate to ruin the first nice thing to happen to him in a while.

"Is it always so cold here?" he asks, taking a careful sip and sighing as it warms him almost instantly. "Where I came from, it was summer. I mean, it was a horribly rainy summer, but still."

Gerry lets out a small laugh. "It's always winter here."

"Always? Like, never anything else?"

"That is the definition of always. But yes, that's the general idea. Summer is too- positive, for Magnus. Winter is hopeless and dreary and lonely. There is far more to fear in a winter's night."

"That's not at all ominous."

"The lack of change is terrible, too," Gerry continues. His eyes are fixed on the fire, the flames casting strange shadows across his skin. "We don't even get Christmas to look forward to."

"You have Christmas?" Martin frowns. "In Magnus? As a concept, at least? I thought that was a particular religious holiday in my world."

Gerry shrugs noncommittally. "There are many winter traditions that overlap. Some things bleed from one world to another. Maybe it started here, for all you know."

Martin opens his mouth to argue about the improbability of all this, but quickly shuts it again. He's only just been introduced to magic and other worlds - and he's pretty sure logic isn't going to enter the equation any time soon.

"What's it like in your world?" Gerry asks suddenly, fixing Martin with a curious, almost hungry look. "Much better than here, I'd suppose."

"I wouldn't count on it," Martin laughs sharply. "There's a huge war going on. Thousands die on the battlefield. Thousands more die back home as the world sets itself on fire. It's- a nightmare."

Martin curls his hands close around his cup, letting the heat burn his hands. The pain sharpens his senses, grounds him in this moment, before memories of smoke and flame can consume him.

"I'm sorrry," Gerry says softly. "That sounds awful."

"Heh," Martin tries for a weak, concillatory smile, though he's sure it falls short. He covers it up with another sip of tea.

Gerry starts talking again, but Martin can barely hear the words. There's a sudden distance to the world, for all that he clings harder to his scalding mug, for all he tries to keep his eyes wide. The sound is muffled, and his vision of the room is beginning to blur.

He has just enough time to look at his cup of tea, at the earthy sediment he can just about make out swirling at the bottom, before understanding, and horror, and a hundred other things crash into him.

But he's asleep before his cup hits the floor.

He wakes slumped in the armchair, and for a moment can't remember where he is. The fire has been snuffed out, leaving only smoking remains, and the chill is beginning to leach back into Martin's bones.

The cave is dark. Martin shifts, groggy- and regains his senses with a suddenly sharpness as he catches movement on the other side of the room.

Gerry is hunched on the stairs towards the kitchen, staring vacantly at his hands, at the eyes on his knuckles. He doesn't seem to notice Martin at all.

"Gerry?" Martin says softly, standing up carefully. His cup lies in shards on the floor, a pool of stone-cold tea leaking from the ruins. He can't remember dropping it.

He can't remember falling asleep.

"I'm sorry," Gerry whispers, so quietly it's barely more than a snatch of air.

"Why?" A chill trickles down Martin's spine; it's nothing to do with the cold of the room. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "I didn't- I don't want-"

"Gerry," Martin says, and there's an edge of steel in his voice that doesn't leave room for debate. "Tell me what's happening."

The satyr looks up finally, and somehow Martin isn't surprised that his eyes are glowing bright green, like lanterns in the dark.

"We pay what we have to, to stay alive."

The chill in Martin's veins solidifies to ice. "What did you pay? What do you have to do?"

He already knows the answer, in the hummingbird beat of his heart, in the shortness of his own breath. And still, it feels like a hammer blow, like the slam of a coffin lid, when Gerry speaks.

"You."

"Me?"

"Humans," Gerry says, voice rough and shaking, like he's barely holding himself together. "They aren't native to these lands. They don't exist here. If they ever come, if there's enough of them, they say the end of the Ceaseless Watcher will be near. The world will finally change."

"I'm just one person, though."

"Not for long," Gerry shakes his head emphatically. "Where there's one, more will always follow. So- he kills them."

"Who kills them?" Martin demands. "Stop being so fucking cryptic and explain things to me."

"The pupil of the eye."

Martin is just about ready to hit this guy.

"We're supposed to give him any humans we find," Gerry rushes to explain. "I'm supposed to send you to him."

"But you're not going to, right?" Martin says slowly, inching towards the poker by the fire. It's an impromptu weapon, but it just might buy him a few seconds. "Because I dazzled you so much with my company that you've decided to have a change of heart?"

For a moment, the silence stretches, and Martin is certain he's about to have to fight for his life.

Even with all the unexplained magic in his life, he doesn't like his chances.

Something changes in Gerry's face. He sets his jaw, balls his fists. He blinks, and his eyes return to their normal, unfathomably dark shade.

"No," he says. "I'm not going to. Come on."

Before Martin has a chance to register anything, Gerry seizes his hand and drags him out into the snow.

They run. For what feels like hours, rushing past a blur of trees and ice and rock so fast Martin is sure it must be some type of magic. Gerry's grip is vice-like, but Martin only clings harder.

He imagines bombs falling behind him. A world of darkness and debris, too hot for the season as fires burn through its skyline.

Has he really just traded one daydream-turned-nightmare for another?

When they reach the lamp post's clearing, Gerry skids to a sudden stop, kicking up snow in a shower. He turns to Martin, wild-eyed with a feverish adrenaline.

"You know your way frrom here?" he demands, gripping Martin's arms and searching his face for the answer before he has a chance to speak.

"Uh- yeah- I think so," Martin stutters.

"Good. You need to run. Don't stop, don't talk to anyone - or anything, not even yourself. The trees might hear you."

"The trees?"

"There are eyes everywhere."

Somehow, Martin gets the feeling Gerry isn't being figurative.

"What about you?" he asks. "If the- pupil of the eye, what if he finds out you didn't turn me over?"

Gerry gives him a pained smile. "Run, Martin. While you still have the chance."

"But-"

"I'm so glad to have met you." The way Gerry says this, so softly, so sincerely, brings Martin up short. "Now go."

He doesn't need telling again. With one final, memorising glance at Gerry, a dark figure among a landscape of snow-

Martin flees into the dying night.

#the magnus archives #fanfiction #narnia au #martin blackwood #gerard keay #own work #morgan writes

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mst3kproject · 5 years ago

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The Strange World of Planet X

The Strange World of Planet X, also known as Cosmic Monsters, was released on a double bill with The Crawling Eye and stars Forrest Tucker of the same. It’s got a giant spider and a deep-voiced 50’s narrator droning about the terrors of the atomic age, in a film so dry all my plants shriveled up and my contact lenses adhered to my eyeballs.

Mad Dr. Laird, with the help of his assistants Gil and Michele, is baking things in intense magnetic fields in order to rearrange the molecules and turn metal into putty – the general idea is that someday this will allow them to melt enemy planes right out from under their pilots. Would that melt the pilots, too? Gross. At the same time and perhaps related, flying saucers are being sighted over Britain and a mysterious man named Mr. Smith is wandering around in the woods and getting worryingly chummy with local children. After a lot of standing around and talking, Smith reveals that he is from outer space and has come to warn us that Laird’s magnetic fields are tearing apart the Earth’s ionosphere, letting in cosmic rays that will mutate humans into murderers and insects into giants!

Since my last ETNW was fairly well-paced and entertaining, the law of averages tells us that this one’s gonna be a real turd, and sure enough… remember all my griping about how Radar Secret Service was literally unwatchable, as in I could not force myself to keep looking at it? The Strange World of Planet X is like that but with a British accent. Most of it is just ugly gray people in ugly gray rooms, droning on about whatever at far greater length than necessary. Everybody sounds like they’re reading their lines off cue cards, the photography was awful to begin with and the degraded print makes it really hard to tell what the hell is going on. Fuck this movie.

The film’s general insufferability is made all the worse because normally giant bug movies are among my favourite types of crappy old sci fi. What could possibly be more fun than giant grasshoppers crawling all over postcards of Chicago? If the bug bits were fun, that would go a long way towards saving this one, but of course, they’re terrible. It’s mostly too dark to even see the giant insects, and when we do see them, they’re nothing but close-ups of live (and sometimes dead) roaches and grasshoppers. Only a couple of shots even attempt to composite them in with live actors and those are so dark and blurry that it frankly wasn’t worth the effort.

The other main ‘effect’ in the movie is a couple of flying saucers. These are unidentifiable white blobs when far away, and ridiculous tinfoil models dangling from strings up close. The pie pans in Plan 9 from Outer Space are worse… but not by much.

What should be the most exciting part of the film is the battle in the woods between the soldiers and the giant bugs, but it’s mishandled in the same sort of way as the supposedly climactic fight in Invasion of the Neptune Men. There’s no narrative or any characters we care about – just soldiers running around shooting at things. Where are they? How close are they to the town? Are there civilians in peril? We don’t know. To be effective on screen, a battle needs a story. The battle in Army of Darkness is about the need to protect the Necronomicon. We can see the Deadites getting closer to the tower, as Ash pulls out more and more ridiculous secret weapons to keep them back. The Strange World of Planet X is just random people and bugs, not even in the same shot.

There is some half-decent magnetosphere science in the movie, I guess. The Earth’s magnetic field does protect us from the harsh radiation of outer space, although all the most harmful components of that come from the sun rather than from further afield, and such radiation can damage DNA. This is why the ozone layer was such a big deal in the 80’s. This space radiation is much more likely to give bugs cancer than to make them grow huge, but in a movie I can handle that. The really weird thing here is that, because they say it screens out the heaviest of the cosmic rays, they call the ionosphere the ‘heavyside layer’. I would not have thought it possible that Cats could make less sense and yet here we are.

If you want some proper Crap Movie Science, there’s their explanation of how the monsters grew so big – mutations for size were able to pile up quickly because insects breed fast and therefore evolve fast. I guess this makes more sense than individuals growing out of control as a result of whatever… but they appear to have applied it to a whole range of creatures regardless of their actual life cycles. Some insects do breed quickly, but quite a few of them have specific seasons and conditions for it. This feels like a nitpick, though… I mean, by watching a giant bug movie I’ve already accepted that they can become huge so I should probably just shut up.

As an interesting note, Smith mentions that on his home planet there are giant dragonflies. He doesn’t say how giant, though he implies they’re big enough to ride on. Firstly, man, I wanna ride a giant dragonfly! Second, this tells us that Smith’s home planet has more oxygen in its atmosphere than Earth, because the reason insects can’t get bigger than they do is because they don’t actively breathe, but have to let oxygen diffuse into their tissues on its own (this is why there were six foot millipedes during the Carboniferous era — more oxygen in the air). The writers, sadly, do not seem to have known or cared about this, since Smith himself shows no signs of having to adjust to our atmosphere. Missed opportunity there.

Since this is me, of course I’m gonna talk about how the movie treats women. Click the back button now. There are several female characters in The Strange World of Planet X, and while they're pretty bland they do manage to have conversations with each other about things besides men, and the honest impression I get is that the writers are trying really hard not to be assholes. The first woman we meet is Michele, who has been assigned as Dr. Laird’s new computer operator after the previous one was electrocuted in a lab accident. When he learns that the replacement is a woman, Laird complains about it loudly, protesting that ‘this is skilled work!’, and Gil gripes that female scientists are dour and unattractive. Michele, of course, proves them both wrong – she is both brilliant and pretty, the latter mostly so that she can be Gil’s love interest but also at least in part to shatter the stereotype. It's thanks to movies like this setting the precedent that modern films are up to their eyeballs in hot but useless science women… but like I said, they tried.

The script is actually at great pains to emphasize that Michele is intelligent, educated, and the equal of any of the men, at least where science is concerned. Unfortunately, its way of going about it is to have them praise her for every little thing she says and does, to the point where it starts to sound awfully patronizing. They call her ‘clever girl’ like she’s six years old and it frequently comes across as their complimenting her intelligence in order to deflect when she asks awkward questions.

Naturally there’s a love triangle in this movie. It appears only to be immediately and peacefully resolved, and Gil’s rival for Michele’s affections is dead shortly thereafter. Why fucking bother?

A tad better-treated is Jane, the little girl fascinated by arthropods (she describes them as ‘bugs’, saying all insects are bugs, but not all bugs are insects. While entomologically incorrect, this same definition of bug was used by David Attenborough in Micro Monsters, so I’m okay with it). One of the reasons I think the writers were earnestly trying to be feminist is because they place a girl in this role rather than a boy. Susan Redway isn’t any better than any of the other actors, but the character was definitely written by somebody who knew what appeals to children. I love the bit where Jane promises to show her new teacher her favourite type of beetle, delightedly informing her, “they’re horrid-looking!”

The teacher, Miss Forsyth, is another attempt to buck a stereotype. Jane complains that she hated her previous teacher, who was appalled by her interest in crawly things. Miss Forsythe makes a good first impression by encouraging her instead. Again, this feels like the writers really were trying. They want to say that the right thing to do here is to support Jane’s interests and ambitions, and someday perhaps she’ll be a talented entomologist, just as Michele is a computer whiz.

From a twenty-first century point of view, this makes for an odd contrast with one of the other notable features of how women are portrayed in this movie – they don’t come alone. Adult women in The Strange World of Planet X must have a male partner, and if they don’t start out with one they will be assigned one! Michele pairs up with Gil, and Miss Forsythe accepts a date with the man who saved her from one of the mutants. This second budding relationship has no effect on the story and indeed is never referenced again, it’s just there. All the other women we meet are either dating or married… although now that I think of it this may be less sexist than it is a way to make a point of Dr. Laird’s single-minded obsession with his work. Everybody else, even scientists, has time to be a human being – but not him.

I should also discuss one more interesting tidbit offered by Smith. He says his people have been watching humanity and studying us basically since we invented ourselves, and they have never interfered before now. Why now? Out of ‘enlightened self-interest’, he says – this is the closest humans have yet come to destroying ourselves, but it’s also the closest we’ve come to being a threat to our extraterrestrial observers. One of Dr. Laird’s experiments, intended to destroy enemy planes, brought down a flying saucer instead! The fact that Smith is willing to admit this suggests that he is extremely confident about the aliens’ ability to strike back if humanity should decided to start shooting down saucers on purpose. The finale then bears this out… although it also left me thinking that the film could have ended very differently if only hacking had been a thing in the fifties!

So yet another instance of good ideas, unexplored and badly executed. Also yet another black and white movie… what is that, six in a row? Yikes. See you in ten days, when I promise I will have something for you in colour. It’ll be like slogging through the beginning of Season Eight and then finally arriving at The Giant Spider Invasion!

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the strange world of planet x #cosmic monsters #fuck this movie #50s #tw: spiders #giant arthropod hours

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years ago

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ASM v5 #33/834 Thoughts

I er...I kind of hated this actually...

Let me get the positives out of the way. The art is nice, in fact it’s an improvement over the last issue.

The moment of Teresa blowing apart Silver Sable’s head was suitably shocking.

The future predicting software is intriguing in general and as a plot element building towards the 2099 event.

Seeing Spencer again mine old continuity by bringing in the obscure and generic villain Hitman in an organic way was nice.

Seeing Betty rise to foreign correspondent and in particular in connection to Latveria (whom she has history with) was also nice.

Everything else...sigh.

Okay, let me start off with some of the more petty gripes with this story.

On principle, seeing Zdarsky and Slott era continuity come into play irks me. Teresa’s mere existence in fact irks me as I’ve been vocal about before. Calling back to the shitfests that were the Osborn Identity and Ends of the Earth was maybe even worse. Not to mention the story encouraging me to actually read Slott’s current stuff on F4, which MAYBE I will do if I need context for this story but frankly I’m not paying for the displeasure.

Also, these are nitpicks, but I noticed not one but two spelling mistakes along with a questionable editorial box. It advises readers to check out ASM Worlwide volume 6, the trade that I presume is relevant to the plot elements referenced. Wouldn’t it have just been more accurate for future customers to have listed the individual issues? That trade won’t be available forever.

Let’s move onto the more serious stuff.

So Spider-Man’s sister might be a straight up killer and he isn’t concerned about this? At least with Kaine he presumed he was on a redemption tour, Kaine was trying to STOP killing people. Spider-Man isn’t sure if his SISTER meant to blast a hole in a woman’s head or not, and it’s treated as incidental and nonchalant.

The Foreigner’s characterization is seriously, seriously questionable.

The Foreigner is a really, really, really bad dude and there is really bad blood between him and Spider-Man. This guy was not only (knowingly) having an affair with Black Cat when she was also dating Peter, not only working with Felicia to frame him and ruin his life so Spidey would become one of his agents, but was also directly responsible for murdering his friend Ned Leeds! Not to mention he’s an assassin and a mercenary and Spider-Man has typically held such people in notable disdain.

Spider-Man’s nonchalance towards him and letting him go are extremely questionable to say the least.

But that wasn’t even what raised my eyebrow the most about him. It was the fact that he’s practically cooing over his ‘love’ Silver Sable. Frankly as originally depicted the Foreigner was implied as far from the romantic type. He was essentially an evil James Bond, except in charge of his own particular organization. The notion he felt deep feelings of romance towards women is again very questionable, especially given how he’s tried to MURDER his ex-wife Silver Sable at least once or twice.

It’s not IMPOSSIBLE for him to have transitioned into who he is in this story, but Spencer doesn’t depict that transition, it’s played as though he’d always be like that. Maybe I’m just missing developments from Coates’ Captain America run and people need to inform me, but that’s no the Foreigner of the 1980s-1990s.

In fact ‘maybe I’m missing something from these stories’ sums up a lot of my attitude towards this book.

I skimmed at best the Osborn Identity arc because fuck that shit is why. So to see in come back in full force, to see this story about Spider-Man illegally invading a foreign nation with his G.I. Joe Spider Army is just bad and I thought we’d moved past this shit.

As I didn’t pay close attention to that run and paid 0 attention to the Silver Sable ongoing series it set up I can’t speak to whether or not revealing the Silver Sable of both was an LMD hold up to scrutiny. My gut tells me it doesn’t.

It’s also kind of just...lame.

I love Silver Sable. I think most readers at worst are indifferent to her, so bringing her down like this and making her reliant upon the kindness and care of her ex husband who’s tried to kill her plays as very insulting to her character in my eyes.

I also don’t see the point of it narratively. From what I understood Latveria is making aggressive moves into Symkaria’s territory. Okay. And Silver Sable’s rival for the sovereignty of Symkaria (who’s under house arrest) is growing in power and so Sable needed the LMD to fool her people into thinking she was fit to rule. Ummm...And now the Countess is hiring Chameleon to assassinate Doctor Doom...Um....

Why does any of this demand Sable be disabled (if you pardon the pun)?

Couldn’t you just have Symkarian extremists decide to take out Doom for the sake of their country against Silver Sable’s wishes?

Why retcon Slott’s retcon of Slott’s own story to say Silver Sable didn’t die but when she showed back up all healthy that was just an LMD?

I get Spencer might dislike Slott’s run and wish to subtly tear it down, but we don’t need to tear down all of it just for the sake of it.

I also simply don’t care for seeing so much international intrigue in Spider-Man stories. It worked in Assassin Nation Plot back in the 1980s because back then such things hadn’t been done all that much in Spider-Man stories in recent years. In 2019 though Globe Trotting Parker Industries crap is a very recent raw wound and it WAS the status quo for a very long time, a toxic one at that.*

It doesn’t help when there are scenes of Peter at ESU side by side with the former mentioned scenes. The juxtaposition brings home how this is atypical for Spider-Man and best avoided.

Speaking of which let’s talk about the ESU stuff. I said the technology to see into the future was intriguing, and it is, but I do very much question the relative realism of it. It’s not that I can’t believe that someone in the Marvel Universe could invent such a thing. I just question some random grad student using university resources and a busted Apple Watch from over a year ago could tap into the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, even on a small scale.

By the way, have you noticed anything about this post?

Oh yeah? I’ve barely mentioned the guy on the goddam cover!

And that’s mainly because he’s only in three pages!

In fact between these two issues (that’s 44 pages total btw) Spider-Man 2099 is only in them for seven!

7/44 pages for the character reintroduced 8-9 issues ago, who’s a centrepiece of the event this is all leading to, who’s referenced and featured on the covers and solicits of this whole story?

That’s pathetic.

They’re not even 7 good pages either.

Miguel shows up disorientated and weak and just kind of flails around in an attempt to escape.

That’s it!?

*shakes head*

Pathetic.

Maybe these last two issues will be super duper important, but frankly I’d recommend reading them for free or even reading summaries rather than actually picking them up yourself.

*Not to mention I question in the Marvel Universe if Chameleon could just walk into the UN in disguise, especially considering he’s been caught out at this before in Ends of the Earth.

#Amazing Spider-Man #Spider-Man #Spider-Man 2099 #Nick Spencer #patrick gleason #Miguel O'Hara #Peter Parker #Marvel 2099 #Doctor Doom #Victor Von Doom #Silver Sable #silver sablinova #the foreigner #Chip Zdarsky #Dan Slott #Chameleon #The Hitman

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