#the promo got me hyped but it just didn’t land for me

[holypowell]

ready for my mugshot

[itsallyscorner]

Can you write a little mix member x avengers cast?? Maybe?

Hello love! Thank you for the request, I apologize for taking so long to work on it! I’ve written this as a headcanon, since I haven’t done any of those in a while. I hope you like it❤️

💌.

The Marvel Cast Finds Out You’re In Little Mix

Why is this lowkey a crack fic/headcanon😭💀

Alrighty so, I feel like they probably wouldn’t know you’re part of a band or who Little Mix is.

Since SADLY, the girls aren’t as big in the States as we’d like them to be:(

The people who definitely might know you are ✨The Brits✨ and Scarlett because she has a young daughter who probably listened to Wings or something—kids find everything on the internet these days.

Working with Marvel was your first acting gig; so none of them knew anything about you or if you’ve been in other films, etc.

Except for Tom Holland, who was lowkey fangirling at the fact he gets to work with one of the Little Mix members.

Side note: he’ll be deeply offended when he figures out the others don’t know about Little Mix or that you can sing.

The rest of the cast (RDJ, Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, Seb, Lizzie, etc.) had a hunch that you were some kind of writer.

You were always humming to yourself and writing in your notebook or typing down notes in your phone when something came to mind.

Though they didn’t pry at your business because—well, it wasn’t their business.

They could find out about your other job through many ways. Maybe you guys are doing promo and some interviewers mention the band and things about a new album, to which most of them were confused about.

“So (Y/n), I know this is your first time acting. How different was it from performing on stage and acting on camera?”

Everyone’s attention would be on you (this is a panel btw) Mackie’s looking at the back of your head in confusion, Robert fully turns in his seat to look at you, Lizzie is also curious, Evans is looking between you and the reporter—everyone is just confused.

“Performing on stage? Did you do Broadway (y/n/n)?” Evans asked. Tom (Holland) scoffed shaking his head, disgusted to be part of this group of uncultured swines.

You chuckled and shook your head, “No, I’m a singer. I’m part of a girlband.”

The whole cast gasped in shock. Mackie let out a loud “WHAT?!”. Robert leaned even closer to you trying to see if you were lying. Others whispered amongst themselves asking each other if they knew.

Tom (Holland) just sat back watching everyone’s reactions along with you. Amused at the amount of questions that were suddenly being thrown your way.

He’d also be quick to add, “NOT just ANY girlband, but the biggest girlband on the planet.”

For clarification, Tom’s a very proud Mixer.

Scarlett finally recognized you, knowing that she’s seen you somewhere before, but could never put her finger onto it. “Wait you’re from Little Mix!”

“THANK YOU! FINALLY SOMEONE WITH SOME TASTE!” Tom yelled, dramatically turning to Scarlett.

After the initial shock, everyone was very curious. They wanted to hear your music, wanted to know the other members, when your next tour was—they were very ecstatic.

When you guys finally reached London for the press tour, there was a lot of hype for Little Mix because you guys were going to finally reunite after months of being apart.

The girls were allowed to visit set, but since you guys were working on your new album, they were stuck in London. You were relocated to Atlanta, filming an Avengers movie and working on the album via FaceTime/Zoom.

You and the girls reunite the same night you land in London! As tired as you were, the five of you hung out in your hotel room.

You were all excited for the days to come. Not only were you doing promo for the movie but you and the girls were going to be performing again on night time talk shows and were having a Live Lounge session with BBC Radio 1.

The panel of the cast discovering you were part of a band went viral. Many of the fans couldn’t believe they didn’t know about your other job.

There were even edits going around social media of the cast looking clueless and or reacting to your ‘secret’.

Then there were ones like “Tom Holland being a Mixer for 10 minutes and 57 seconds straight”.

Your favorite one was where they zoomed in on everyone’s confused expression while that one Nicki Minaj song played in the background.

It was mentioned in almost every interview after it went viral.

“So none of you had a clue that (y/n) was also a singer? Like at all?”

“I didn’t even know homegirl could sing, matter of fact I never imagined her to be in a girlband.” — Anthony Mackie

“I had a hunch that she was a musician or artist, but no one ever listens to me.” — Chris Evans

“(Y/n)’s in a girlband? Since when?” — Paul Rudd

“After we found out, I listened to all six of their albums on the flight here.” — Elizabeth Olsen

“Of course I knew, my music taste is immaculate compared to the others.” — Tom Holland

“Shut the fuck up, Tom.” — Anthony Mackie

“I really enjoy Black Magic, it reminds me of Wanda.” — Paul Bettany

The cast was so eager to hear you sing and watch you perform with the girls.

They finally got to do that when you invited them to the Live Lounge session. They also got to meet the girls.

You were very happy at that moment; seeing the two groups of people you love meeting each other and getting along meant a lot to you. It gave you a lil warm tingle in your heart.

Since there were no fans in the studio, it was only you and the girls, the band, and a bunch of the Avengers.

While the cameras rolled and you guys were performing, they were crowded together behind the scenes. Some of them were sitting on the carpeted floors or standing against the walls.

They were absolutely stunned when they heard you sing. You had a powerful voice that ranged from high to low, something they never expected of you.

When they heard you and the girls sing or harmonize with each other, it was like they were all in heaven.

“They sound like angels.”

“My ears are tingling, but like in a good way.”

“Seriously, how did we not know she can sing like this?”

“Hear me out—this is a perfect reason as to why we should have an Avengers musical.”

“Chris if we hear you bring up a damn musical one more time I swear.”

“Their voices go so well together, how do they even do that?”

Scarlett would secretly film videos to show her daughter. I have a feeling that Evans, Tom, RDJ, Sebby, and Mark would record some parts as well and would post it onto their Insta stories.

When fans found out they were at the Live Lounge they freaked out.

Ever since they found out you were in a band, they’ve been the biggest fans and supporters of the group.

They’re always promoting your albums on their social media accounts without you even asking.

Privately and publicly praising you guys for performances or achievements.

Your two main groups clashed and now everyone was friends. It was definitely the most weirdest collision— Little Mix and the cast of the Avengers. But it worked out perfectly.

Everyone got along with each other and the girls would always visit you on set.

They’re always playing the band’s song in the background on set.

Most of them won’t admit, but they definitely memorized the lyrics to almost every song.

*cough cough* Mackie and Hemsworth

I feel like Samuel L. Jackson would join in on the action too, one way or another. Somehow he got looped in.

ANOTHER THING OMG, they would definitely stand up for you and the girls whenever Piers Morgan or some asshole hates on you guys or pulls a jab on you all.

Best beileve Evans will be calling him out publicly on Twitter.

“Why are you so worried about a bunch of talented women who are doing their job and bringing happiness to others? They’ve done nothing to you, you’re always the one making jabs at them. Leave them alone you fucking British meatball.”

I feel like Robert helped you and the girls find a better management company after learning about the unfair treatment you all faced under Simon’s care.

In conclusion: The Marvel cast would be ecstatic to learn about you being a singer and they’d become your biggest fans. They truly adore you and the girls for your amazing talent :’)

[starryevermore]

showmance: and...action! (1) ✧ a chris evans anthology

showmance ✧ a chris evans anthology | ao3

pairing: chris evans x actress!reader

summary: even before your relationship with chris is known to the public, it’s under constant scrutiny. 

word count: 1,695

warnings?: this is mostly an introduction to the universe this exists in so it’s just a lot of explaining whoops, it’s not that great, not proofread

note: this is more of an anthology than a series, meaning there is not really an overarching plot. all of the one shots exist in the same universe, but can be read in any particular order. there is no update schedule to this; new parts come whenever they come.

You’d known Chris for almost as long as you’d been in the industry. You started out with on a much smaller scale than you are now. Commercials and local plays evolved into being an extra in TV shows evolved into a few period pieces and rom-coms evolved into finally landing your big break as Sue Storm in The Fantastic Four. There, you met Chris Evans, who played your brother, Johnny Storm. The two of you got on well enough. He was kind and charming, but the two of you fell out of touch as you moved onto different projects. 

Then, you landed yet another superhero role. You’d been cast in Captain America: The First Avenger, as a character who worked with Dr. Erskine to create the super soldier serum and later worked with Howard Stark to research the Cube. Your character’s fate had been left unknown near the end of the movie, with Howard Stark only mentioning that no one had heard from you since Steve crashed the plane into the ice. But, as was going to be revealed in The Winter Soldier, which you were currently filming, your character had been kidnapped, injected with a version of the serum, tortured, and brainwashed in a manner similar to Bucky. 

It was filming the first movie, though, that your friendship with Chris really took off. You both were anxious about being in another superhero film, this one being a much larger commitment compared to The Fantastic Four. You talked a lot about these nerves, finding ways to hype the other up wherever possible. When it eventually came time for the press tour, you two were practically joined at the hip and, when you were paired together in press junkets, you spent more time goofing off than actually answering questions. 

Your friendship continued after that. Granted, you couldn’t see each other much anymore. You both had your own busy schedules, but you always made time for each other. Long phone calls, frequent texting, checking in on each other. It was sweet. By the time filming for Captain America: The Winter Soldier rolled around, you were closer with Chris than perhaps you’d been with anyone in your life before. 

Which, you supposed, was why you weren’t surprised when, after drinks with the cast and crew one weekend, Chris walked you back to your hotel room before leaning in, his soft lips meeting yours. He didn’t go back to his own room that night. A romance began to bloom, Chris soon asking if you would be his girlfriend. You were more than happy to agree, and you both set your ground rules. You were private people, and you wanted to keep this away from the press for as long as possible. Once things got out there, it was impossible to real it back in. And, as your relationship developed, you eventually allowed your coworkers to know. 

Except, they weren’t all as excited as you thought they might have been.

“So...you and Chris,” Sebastian said one morning, looking over as Claire put the finishing touches on your hair. 

You looked at him from the corner of your eye. “What about me and Chris?”

“Are you two actually together, or...”

You rolled your eyes. “Are you seriously trying to ask if Chris and I are just doing a PR relationship?”

“Well, you guys have the same agency representing you—”

You held a hand up, cutting him off. “Trust me, this isn’t for PR. Do you really think we would’ve gone to the lengths we have if we were just trying to promo the movie?”

Sebastian shrugged. “Guess not. But, people have done stranger things for PR.”

“This is a fucking Marvel movie, Seb. We don’t really need cheap PR tricks to get people to the theatre. People will watch just about anything Marvel slaps its name on.” You watched Claire in the mirror as she began spraying hairspray over your hair. “Shit, I mean, Marvel could probably make bank in a few years over the What If comics if they wanted to. They got all the source material in the world to bleed this genre dry.”

“Alright, alright, you made your point,” Sebastian said, putting his hands up in the air in defeat. “But, you’re gonna get a lot worse questions than mine. You know that, right?”

“Baby, I’m a woman in the entertainment industry. I know worse a helluva lot better than you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s whatever. Listen, I get how it looks to you guys. I know it’s a new relationship, and we’re coworkers, and it just looks a certain way, but Chris and I genuinely care for each other. This isn’t fake. Not to us.”

Claire finished your hair, and you hopped out of your chair, bidding them both goodbye as you went to wardrobe. You had hoped that Sebastian’s conversation with you had been a fluke, but it seemed that luck was not in your favor. Nearly everyone you spoke to as you were getting ready had something or other to say about you and Chris. And it was getting on your goddamn nerves. 

By the time you finally got back to your hotel room, sinking into the mattress as you tried to decide what you were going to order from room service, you were almost convinced that it would’ve been better if no one knew. 

But those kind of thoughts melted away when you heard a knock at the door. 

You got up, opening the door, revealing a sleepy Chris Evans with a bag of takeout from your favorite restaurant. “Hey baby,” you said, leaning up to kiss him.

“Hey, I got your favorite,” he said, pulling away and raising up the bag to show you. “Heard you had a rough day.”

“Yeah, the stunts were fucking brutal today,” you said, letting him in. 

He set the bag down on the desk by the TV, opening it up and setting out the containers of food. You came up next to him, helping him out by opening the little plastic wrap that had the plastic cutlery in them. “You know that’s not what I meant,” he said, handing you your food while you handed him a plastic fork and knife. 

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” you dismissed, returning to your stop on the bed, sitting with your legs crossed so that you could balance the container on your lap.

“You know, for an actress, you’re a shit liar.”

“Oh, like you’re one to talk! I swear, you’ve got practically every tell there could possibly be.” You paused, looking over at him as he sat next to you. “I’m just sick of the judgment. Every time someone says something, I just think, if our friends are saying this, what would the world think? And it just makes me wanna ensure no one else ever finds out. Like it would just be easier if we had to put on the performance of a lifetime, act like we didn’t care for each other the way we do, if it meant that people would keep their mouths shut for a little while longer.”

Chris nodded slowly, poking at his food. “No, no, I understand. Scarlett asked me if this is a PR relationship this morning, and I just wanted to jump in a time machine to stop us from ever telling them.”

“Seb asked me the same thing,” you said. “Literally it takes everything in me to not just yell and scream and tell them that, even if it was, why does it matter so much, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it,” he said, shuffling closer to you so that he could press a kiss to your forehead. “But, just think of it this way, filming’s nearly done, then we just have to deal with everyone through the press tour and premieres and all that bullshit, then we don’t have to listen to them anymore.”

“But then it’ll be even harder to keep this private,” you pouted. “People don’t question it now because we’re filming. We’re bound to be around each other. But, once this ends, people will have more to say if they see us out at dinner or on a walk or something.” You leaned your head against his shoulder. “I don’t wanna think about that, though. I just wanna enjoy you while I still got you all to myself.”

“I was gonna say the same thing,” he smiled. “So, what cringe reality show do you wanna watch until we can’t take it anymore?”

You laughed quietly, shaking your head. “God, no more reality TV. Let’s see if there’s, like, a rerun of Friends or Parks and Rec or something.”

“What? You mean you don’t want to see whatever bullshit the Kardashians are doing?” Chris fake gasped. “Sorry, but I don’t think I can be with you if you don’t wanna watch Kim cry about losing an earring in the ocean.”

“You’re such a fucking meatball! Gimme the remote, I’ll find us something—”

“Nah, you got work for it. ”He held the remote out to the side and over his head, grinning as you struggled to reach it. You narrowed your eyes at him, before grabbing his container of food, as wells as yours, and setting them on the nightstand. Then, before he could question it, you climbed into his lap, surprising him just enough that you were able to wrench the remote from his grasp. “Well, shit,” he said, his hands resting on your hips, holding you in place, “I don’t think I wanna watch TV anymore.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Trust me, I’m trying.”

“We can fuck after we eat, kay? I’m starving.”

“Oh, I can feed you—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence!” you laughed. “We’ll find something to watch, eat, and then you can seduce me however the hell you want.”

“That a promise?”

“Damn right it is.”

And, as you sat together, eating and watching Friends, you decided that you didn’t care whatever bullshit your castmates thought about the two of you. When you by yourself, just enjoying each other’s company, there was no other place you’d rather be. 

[deadmunds-ghostbee]

I truly don’t know what to expect with Kanthony in S3, concerning possible sex scenes or generally. There’s no precedent with a former lead couple now being put on the back burner.

I do think the show views Polin as a “it couple” and it’s not wrong — their book is probably tied with TVWLM as the favorite of the series. With the general viewers, though, I don’t think it’s unfair to say they’re not beloved (yet - everyone did a 180 on Anthony, but I also think JB as an actor was a *huge* difference maker there; plus Anthony’s sympathetic backstory. At any rate…) Like, the day they announced Polin as S3, the Twitter reaction was pretty negative, and I mean casuals, not the fandom. So I do think they’ll be careful to make sure Kanthony won’t pull focus from them too much as they make Polin a credible couple to regular viewers. And imo that means little if any K/A sex scenes, which would possibly highlight the difference in chemistry between the couples. Also I wonder if they’ll return to form with the gratuitous sex of S1 after all the complaining about S2’s relative chastity. Even if they do, they’ll probably show Benedict fucking around, until halfway thru when the main couple do. I know it’s been a thing that Anthony’s ass has been out in the first few minutes of both seasons and it could be fun to do that with him and Kate. Tbh Kanthony (and especially JB/Anthony) ultimately won in S2 in that they didn’t have to have Regé’s shadow immediately looming. But that’s not the case now, and there will be more direct comparisons between subsequent couples and prior ones.

I agree that I hope the kanthony storyline is mostly divorced from the main romance one. I dunno how realistic this is considering it seems likely they’ll be living at the main house. And they keep reiterating they’re the “head of the household” - so the problem solvers. The idea of K/A having to conspire to solve the LW thing and spare the family their umpteenth scandal gives me second hand embarrassment idk. I love how Kate somehow never spoke to a Featherington in S2 and wish it could stay that way lol. I hope it’s mostly Anthony supporting Kate’s emotional arc, her being Viscountess, and the baby that’s been hinted at a lot. But I have a feeling with how they qued up a Kate/Eloise friendship, they’ll inevitably get drawn into the romance plot, probably with Eloise tattling on Penelope.

God this got so so long pls dont mind me. There are a lot of s3 thoughts in here I've been keeping in me for a long time and i probably wont care much to talk it a whole lot more. But here they are! (its a lot of polin talk which is very unlike me tbh)

Agree with a lot of things you said here! I think the only thing I don't really see is production viewing Kathony chemistry potentially being a detriment to polin. I def think they're focused on polin and don't want to harp on past couples too much bc of screen time/focused narrative purposes, but I think it would be cynical of the show's creators to view their next love story as something that can be so easily overshadowed. As a shipper, i understand that perspective but in productions eyes Kathony should be nothing more than an added bonus to lure in viewers!

That being said, i do think they are aware that they really have to stick the landing with this one since a lot of people are kinda hesitant to like either character. They’ve def been hyping them, but some of the methods of hype (like posturing colin as a hero) have been odd to me. So like as an example (I haven't been paying too close of attention so someone please correct me if I'm wrong) but any talk of Luke's glo up feels a little weird to me. As friends/coworkers of luke ppl like nicola are just hyping him and colin and I totally get/support that! but if production or promo or interviewers lean into colins glo up, then the insinuation that he needs one in the first place feels a little? insulting? Thats just what luke looks like. It wasnt like with Jonny and those silly sideburns that everyone has opinions about!

I'm interested to see how they intend to deal with polin and their lasting power on the show! Someone like nicola has the most steady career trajectory of any actor on this show in my eyes. People like Rege and Simone broke out big and need to ride that wave so fame and opportunity don't fizzle, but Nicola has steady buzz as an actress and I actually think a lot more likely to get attention from critics/awards because of her recognizability and being a long-time face of the show! (im sure shell do a great job anyway, but that's just how I've been told awards work, a good performance coinciding with a rise to fame. not just the former)

What I mean by all of this is, I know nicola loves the show and the role but will she be famous and busy enough to walk away? Will she be so so expensive that they dont totally have the budget to keep her? Do they have a post LW plot after this season, does it involve her, and does it make her more important to the show than ever? Who knows. Colin and Pen as members of the family dont have a narrative ~necessity~ to be around the way viscount and viscountess do. (Altho all this featherington heir stuff...is their baby becoming the next lord featherington? probably).

Now uhh getting into the sex stuff. Their approach has been kinda head scratcher. If i were a polin stan id want the quality of the kathony one with a little more of the frequency of saphne. Its hard to say whether production will stick to their guns on the "only necessary sex scenes" or if they'll take heed of some of the criticism and go back for more raunch. Who knows but i really feel like they'll just do whatever fits their "vision" of the season. CVDs monologue on only wanting the scenes to be "necessary" was imo only that. He wanted the broken up wedding and sex didn't fit into it easily. I think its as simple as that. So how much sex polin has I think depends on how they plan to structure it. Which is anyones guess really.

Benedict will for sure be a whore. and Kathony, if anything, would have something short. Its not like side characters in s1 had drawn out sex scenes! That was only the main couple!

Now rounding back to what we both actually care about, Kathonys future: I really think Kate and Anthony as problem solvers being involved with polin would be a bad move for both couples! Colin, as someone "lacking in purpose" doesn't grow if Anthony is still cleaning up his messes for him. It was a bad move in the book (sorry JQ) and it would be a bad move in the show. I don't think they'll do it imo but they've made worse writing decisions lol.

I also don't think that Kate or Anthony will care (?) that much about Polin? I do think its wrong to say that they will react horribly to the LW reveal (if they even find out). Anthony would be mad at first, and Kate maybe too but they forgive and are ultimately loyal to family. If colin forgives pen, if they get engaged before its resolved like they do in the book, Kathony is sticking with family for no other reason than that's simply what they do. I don't foresee kate having any affinity for Pen, or caring about the featheringtons in any real way. I don't think Anthony gives a single fuck about that family at all tbh. But fam is fam and they'll come around to the match eventually even if there's initial resistance. But like i said i don't think that's something to worry about to much.

Taking your point about Eloise and Kate's relationship at a new angle--her duties as viscountess could coincide w the relationship with El (and hopefully helping with fran's debut with Violet too). Esp Els insecurities with a new sister out on the market, her BFF betraying her and also getting married herself, she will need someone in her corner. If bens being a depressive mess then she'll need someone like kate by her side. This could also def tie into the main plot tho, who knows!

Ultimately how they distribute non polin time will be interesting! A big question mark for me is the portia featherington of it all. She basically had her OWN large and detailed plot with jack. Violet basically got no time independent of her fam first 2 seasons--will portia now get the same treatment or still get her own again? (actually don't answer this. I'll get too bitter and negative when i don't wanna be). And will adding in fran content take up a lot of time? They need to build up the younger bridgertons, after all.

So...our Kathony content is contingent on a lot. We're probably all overestimating how much they can actually do with them, but the speculation is fun :)

[malethirsty]

Beach Body Ready - Kevin Owens (Body Worship) / Kinktober 2020

Summary: When Lana accosts your boyfriend Kevin about his weight, you set about to make it right, in ring and out of the ring. 

Warnings: Smut M/M (21+), Bareback (Wrap Before You Tap!), Exhibitionist, Fatshaming, Homophobia, Daddy Kink

Inspired by: https://twitter.com/MaleThirst/status/1211597784073113602 & a request on AO3 from Cam.

A nude beach. You had moved in with your boyfriend Kevin Owens next to a nude beach! After seeing a massive load of people heading down to the beach the morning after you’d moved in, you of course went down the road to find out what all the ruckus was about, soon coming upon a vacated changing room, with it connecting to the beach, filled with individuals frolicking around naked. For someone whom hadn’t had their first time yet, seeing nude bodies not only there but appearing in your window after that every morning, afternoon and evening, with everything all exposed was quite daunting. It wasn’t that you were prudish, far from it. You were waiting for the right time with Kevin, and you didn’t want the beach getting to him and arousing him, so that if you didn’t fuck him, he’d go out and fuck someone else. Thankfully Kevin was the gentleman you first knew when your friend Sami had introduced you both, and nothing between you was ever spoke of the beach… Until this evening.

You’d shown up to RAW to support Kevin as he had a match on tonight, so following hyping him up in his dressing room, he made his way up to the ring, and you stayed behind in gorilla, watching on the monitors. Whilst watching Kevin hype up, Bobby & Lana passed by to make their way to the ring, which wasn’t unusual given the two were together, what was unusual was Lana giving you a skank look on her face, like she smelt shit or something. Bobby stayed at the entrance whilst she made her way out to promo for him, you had groaned and turned away from the screen to block her out as she’d become so agitating as of late, but the moment she had referred to Kevin as a quote ‘Pizza eating, basic, basic, man, who couldn’t get with a woman, so ended up with a pathetic fag’ that your button was not only pushed by the Russian wrestler, but SLAMMED down. Kevin was equally as angered on screen and made his way forwards aggressively, but at that moment, Bobby’s music sounded, sending him back toward the ring, you however were not so sated. Alongside your insecurities with sex, Kevin also carried a level of baggage with him as well was the perception of disapproving passers by, like how some gaze at you both hand in hand walking down a street (sometimes even coupled with a homophobic shot under their breath), the way some who’d flirted with you in public couldn’t believe you were wasting your time dating Kevin, or some who went into the comment sections of various websites and commented various things about Kevin’s weight and your relationship. Whilst you were often quick to anger, Kevin had a built up verbal strength he had attained through years of wrestling work, and would often deal away with detractors, but you knew it had to affect him as much as you, a badass he might be, but badasses have hearts as well. 

The thought of Kevin being broken alongside you, being paired with Lana’s venom swirling around however had pushed you over the edge. Lana had life so easy, people weren’t going to be racist on the street for fear of being knocked out, online commenters probably slid into her DMs, hoping her jungle fever would benefit them ‘Maybe she would understand if she pulled her head out of her ass’ you thought bitterly, she more than anyone should know about prejudice, but clearly not. You would have quite liked to have rushed Bobby in that moment and show Lana her man wasn’t all that, but he was bigger than you and would likely knock you into next week, so you tried to calm your breathing and instead focused your energy on the screens. This worked for a while but soon got ruined, as the camera crew, for reasons best known to them, continued to cut to Lana standing on the stage, shouting random things, clearly trying to coax Bobby to a victory. Having had about enough of her antics, an idea hit you, one where you could get her back while helping Kevin get one over on Lashley, so you made your way out of gorilla and down the hallway, soon spotting whom you were looking for. You made your way towards Asuka who was sitting alongside Kairi atop some boxes, titles on their shoulder as they strategised in Japanese on how to outsmart their weekly opponents. You got behind Asuka and tapped her on her shoulder to gain her attention, she quickly turned and the humorous look she had on her face soon vanished, you must have looked in a really angry mood “Hey Asuka, mind if I have one of your Green Mist pills? It’s for Lana.” You said rather pointedly gesticulating to the screen where Lana was now grabbing rolls of her skin with a gormless expression on her face. Everyone knew about you & Kevin’s relationship, knew how nice you were, and how nice you made Kevin when he was around you, so much so that it didn’t cross Asuka’s thoughts to disobey, she removed her title and rummaged in a bag on the back of it, pulling out one oval shaped pill, placing it into your hand “Pop it in now, it dissolves when you get to the stage, remember to spit clear into her face.” She advised, and thanking her for her advice, you popped the pill into your mouth, letting the liquidly wasabi concoction fill your mouth and made your way tight jawed to the stage. By this point, the gorilla was next to empty, most people casually waiting around, uninterested in the match going on. Pushing the curtains aside, you made your way out onto the stage amidst a ambivalent crowd whom were getting tired of the direction the match was taking, which soon turned to cheers as they realised that you had made your way out. Lana thankfully figured it was for her, and so continued to shout louder, not noticing you were right behind her. 

Adrenaline met blurriness in the next few moments as you grabbed Lana and spun her to you. Taking a deep breath, you spat forth the green mist into her face, landing a considerable lot in her eyes, causing her to shriek as the burn started to take affect. Looking up, you noticed Bobby had noticed and had furiously attempted to exit the ring, but Kevin had caught him with a roll up and hit the three count to pull off a victory to the cheering delight of the crowd. Kevin’s music filled the arena and you stood and watched with pride as Kevin roared his approval and soaked up the energy of the crowd, even pointing to you with a massive grin on his face. You exited shortly after, a rush of confidence from both the crowds response, your vengeance being sated and Kevin’s grin, completely bypassing the officials in the back with towels for Lana, whom surprisingly did not admonish you ‘Probably tired of Lana’s crap as well’ you thought, as you made your way to Kevin’s dressing room to wash the remaining mist from your face and rinse your mouth out. You’d only finished rinsing when the door opened and Kevin walked in “Hey Kevin” you said, in a cheery manner as if you hadn’t just ferociously sprayed wasabi chunks over Lana’s face and likely incurred the wrath of an angry Lashley, ‘The right move’ you thought as Kevin strode over to you and gave you a deep kiss “Hey Babe, thanks for what you did out there, I really needed a push and you spiked my adrenaline.” You suddenly felt bold and looked down at his shorts and responded “Not the only thing I’ve seemed to have spiked”. Kevin blushed bright red, the usually cocky wrestler at a loss for words, it was as if something had clicked, now was the time, but you wanted to do it on your own terms “Y/N. You sure you want to do this?” “Fuck yeah I’m sure.” You said boldly, launching yourself onto Kevin and kissing him again, this time wrapping your legs around his frame, holding yourself up, moaning into the kiss as Kevin grabbed your ass. You pouted as Kevin made to move you from him “Y/N, can we do this somewhere else? You’ve got Lashley on your tail, and if we do this here, they’ll probably catch us.” Nodding at his suggestion, you grabbed his hand and together made your way through the backstage area and across to your car, piling in and shutting the door.

No sooner had the doors been shut, Kevin’s lips were back on yours. “Come and ride me in this car” Kevin groaned out whilst cocking his fingers towards him in a ‘come here' but you shook your head “Not here, but I know a place, and tonight we need to go there.” Kevin sunk into his seat, whilst obviously upset that he didn’t get you to ride him in the car, he was still excited to see what you had planned, so you made your way to your intended destination, trying your best not to speed, but with a horny Kevin next to you, desperately wanting you, coupled with your own nerves about how the night would play out, it was difficult to adhere to the rules of the road. Somehow, someway, a while later, you stopped, it took Kevin one look out the window to notice where you were, as if the nudists walking across the road towards the beach was any indication “Y/N, you sure we can’t do it at home? I really don’t want to fuck you on the beach, I know everyone else there is naked, but it’s not a good idea when your me, everyone will stare and-.” You got out of the car and crossed over to Kevin’s side, opening the door and leaning on it to shield him from view of any passers by to not make him more uncomfortable “No Kevin, I’m not gonna fuck you on the beach, it’s close by, but not where anyone can see us, come on, follow me.” You extended your hand and after a few seconds of deliberation, grabbed your hand and pulled himself out “Lead the way baby.” He said, giving you a kiss to the cheek, and taking this as a sign of confidence, you led Kevin down the road. You passed a few people on their way to the beach, but rather than stopping and staring in a negative way, their eyes were alit, some looking at you and some looking longingly at Kevin, the idea of being adored by the beach patrons was exciting and also a good prelude to what you intended. 

You soon made your way with Kevin into the vacated changing rooms, and once he had made his way in, you shoved him against the door and kissed him feverishly “This is where I was thinking, no one comes in here and on top of that, you can make as much noise as you want and no one will notice, the walls are soundproof.” Clearly wanting to test this out, Kevin stretched your legs so they wrapped around his form again, covered your head and tossed you both against the wall, continuing the passionate kissing, only breaking it to remove your shirt and resuming as he tugged your pants off, leaving you bare for him. “Goddamn, you look fucking beautiful Y/N. I’m so damn lucky.” As he made to surge forwards, you gripped onto his shirt and tore it right down the middle, his torso now exposed “Same here, fuck you’re hot, knew you would be a fucking stud.” “That’s not how I pictured that shirt breaking but fuck I’ll take that over ripping it myself.” The self depreciating shot Kevin made caused you to remember in that moment why you’d picked the changing rooms, so you grabbed his hand and dragged him further in “Y/N, what the hell? I thought we were fucking there against the wall!” But you took no notice and finally got him where you wanted him, in front of the sinks, where a mirror stood overlooking them, encompassing a landscape view, you and Kevin clear as crystal in the reflection “Kevin, I know it’s my first time, but I want this to be about you as much as it’s about me. I know more than anyone that you have some level of insecurity about yourself, having been wrestling for years against hard asses, you’d have heard comments about yourself a lot, it’s why you grip my hand tight if someone gives us a look walking the street, why you’ll wear baggy clothes to bed, you didn’t want me to see you naked.” “Y/N, I wore them so you didn’t get the impression I was trying to rush you.” Kevin tried to wave away, but you knew he was trying to deflect cause you had worked out his intention with his choice of bed wear “Kevin. Fucking. Owens. I’m literally about to fuck your brains out and your trying to deflect shit, let me get this out please!” Kevin fell silent as you continued, “The point is, you have a heart and each shot at your weight stings it, well I’m gonna try and do my best to fix that tonight, as you fuck me, as much as you want to watch me fall apart on your cock, I want you to look into this mirror and appreciate the man staring back, the man who deserves everything in this world and more, cause that’s who you are Kevin Owens.” 

You finished your explanation, chest rising and falling, as if you’d been pent up trying to say this for a long time. Kevin also looked stunned “I don’t know what I did to deserve you Y/N, but I’m so fucking lucky I have you in my life.” You smiled back, he hadn’t rejected your offer of a sentimental fuck, so you could go ahead “It’s not luck Kevin, you are who you are, that’s why you got me, and I appreciate the gift I’ve gotten in you, from your sweet lips” You kissed him yet again, slipping in some tongue work before dragging your tongue down him “your facial hair” you flicked your tongue over his moustache in a teasing manner, causing his breath to catch, you dragged it down his beard “your pretty neck” you made sure to nip at him as you trailed your mouth down, leaving a hickey behind, 'those beautiful rosy nipples” you moved your hand to one whilst biting down on the other “Oh God!” Kevin groaned, throwing his head back at the treatment you were giving his sensitive buds 'your stomach” you mimicked the ministrations from his facial hair on his stomach, pressing your hand to the hot skin, Kevin’s heat radiating onto you. Anticipation was ripe in the air as you moved your hands down to each side of Kevin’s sports shorts, the moment stilling as excitement coursed through you, as you pulled his shorts down, his hard cock sprang up, catching you in the face, it was long but very thick, you knew it was going to be a task taking it all in, but you’d come this far, hadn’t you? “Your ass” you continued, one hand gripping onto his fat cheeks, "but the important things I’m focusing on this evening, are your balls” you licked a line right up them to the loud cries of the man above you, all leading up to “and your cock” tension finally tackled, you took his cock into your mouth.

Kevin’s hand flew to the wall to hold himself up as you began to suck his cock, first focusing on tracing his veins, before focusing on the head, giving it kitten licks, making his cock pulsate and drawing moans from Kevin “Oh fuck! Yeah, take it in your mouth, oh! So damn good” Drawing from the confidence Kevin was imbuing into you, you began to get sharper with your attention, now paying extra attention to his head and swiping your tongue across his slit, which proved too much for the wrestler, who gripped your head and started to push you along the length of his cock, causing you to make slobbering gaggy noises amidst his cries of utter pleasure “That’s right, take it, such a good fucking slut for me, Goddamn you know how to suck dick Y/N!” You lapped up the salty taste of his precum, looking up as you did so to see he was doing as you had asked him to do, he was staring at himself in the mirror, moaning as he admired the sight before him of you on your knees, sucking him off. Determined to not let him cum in your mouth, rather your ass, you moved your hands up to tug at his nipples causing him to divert his attention back down to you. You pulled off his cock and stared up at Kevin “Fuck me, please.” Kevin acknowledged your request “Spread out, hands on the sinks, ass facing me.” You obeyed, getting up and leaning down, letting Kevin get a good view of your asshole. Kevin hummed in appreciation, before placing his dick onto your ass crack “Gonna give you it slow alright. It’s not gonna be like how I finger you, it’ll be big, so relax as much as you can for me.” Taking his advice you drew steady breaths in and out of your nose, bracing yourself for the inevitable pain that would give it’s way through to utter pleasure.

Kevin pushed the tip of his cock in, and you gasped at how much it was different from how his fingers were, wider and thicker, it sent a burning sensation through you “Relax baby, it’s gonna be alright once I get it all in.” You listened to Kevin and relaxed your muscles as he pushed more and more of his length in, it was already a massive cock, so even as the burn ebbed away, you wondered how much more he had in him. Soon after this, Kevin let out a groan as he finally got all of his cock inside you, his balls resting comfortably on the bottom of your ass. “Fuck, you’re so damn tight.” Kevin moaned into your ear “I’m gonna have to make sure not to damage your walls cause fuck, I want you to grip my cock like this every single time!” As he nibbled on your ear, you smirked at his compliments, everything was working out, you needed only a couple of things left for him to do “Remember, eyes up and above all, move, fuck me already KO” That seemed to be the spark that ignited Kevin as he moved away from your ear and started to move, slowly at first, so you continued to get used to his massive length inside you “Fuck Y/N, you feel so good for me, clenching round my cock so good, you want me to go faster babe?” You nodded your head quickly, and suddenly felt his strong hand gripping your neck as he pulled out, aligning the crown of his dick with your asshole and began to thrust back in, his ass wobbling as he slapped back into you, moaning erupting from you as your walls stretched back around him and withdrew as began to fuck you roughly, more possessively. 

“Kevin, oh fuck yes! Fuck me! Fuck me harder!” You cried out, and Kevin did exactly as you asked him, going deeper and harder than he had done before, colliding full on with your prostate, making you cry out so loud, you were certain that if the walls were not soundproof, the entire nude beach would have heard by now. “Yeah, scream for me Y/N, tell me who owns this pretty ass I’m fucking with this big dick.” “You are Kevin, you are daddy!” Your face suddenly blanched, that was supposed to be private, something you only uttered when you stroked yourself in privacy “So I’m your daddy am I Y/N?” Kevin asked, stilling himself to stare down and ask you “I-I don’t know what came over me, I’m” the rest of your words were lost as Kevin pulled out and yanked you up so he was staring at you deep in the eyes “I know what came over you, you knew who owned you, body and soul, more importantly, who owned your ass. You knew who was giving it to you good, probably the best you’ll ever have, and you wanted to show appreciation to the man who was fucking you to heaven, so I’ll ask you Y/N, who’s your daddy?” You were quite shocked at his words that you stood stunned for a moment, it was only when Kevin said “Tell me, if you don’t this stops right now, I won’t put my dick back in.” That you let your submission fall from your mouth “You’re my daddy Kevin, you know how to dick me down the right way.” “Good boy” Kevin responded back, before grabbing onto your neck and bringing your lips together for a searing kiss, slipping his tongue in for good measure, tangling it up with yours. You soon broke it to groan “Fuck Owens Fuck” cleverly twisting his tagline to fit your moment, Kevin smirked and chuckled at your wit “Get up onto the sinks then” he demanded, and you placed your hands up onto the bench and pulled yourself up. As soon as you finished that, Kevin grabbed onto your legs and pulled them to the sides to slide up into your ass again, both of you crying out in sheer satisfaction, cries of “Fuck Kevin!” And “Fuck Y/N!” Wrent the air as Kevin began to pound into you again “Oh yeah! You love daddy so much, fuck you’re so amazing!” He let out as he battered against your G-Spot. This time you were able to see how Kevin looked above you, so strong and yet so blissed out as he fucked into your tight ass, you also got to see him glance into the mirror as he admired himself. You smiled beneath him, you knew that the thought you gave into your first time payed off, that he was loving himself as he bucked into you.

“Kevin, Daddy, I’m so fucking close” you cried out after a while, as a familiar hot coil began to grow in your stomach, signifying you were ready to burst “Yeah, it that right?” Kevin grinned “YES!” You cried desperately, you couldn’t be held back, not tonight, and so when Kevin pulled out again, you whined in desperation, you wanted him inside you as he came, but your complaints were for nothing, as Kevin grabbed you and spun you round so now you could see yourself in the mirror as well, flushed red and utterly spent from how he had fucked you deep. You barely registered how you looked before Kevin slammed back in, hitting your prostate and making you cry out of a mixture of desperation and lust “I want you to look at how pretty you are while I make you come from my dick.” With each pound he gave to your ass, you saw his raw dominating power on his face, and seeing that level of passion as he fucked you was your undoing. You yelled out your erotic release as you came, shots of your cum decorating your torso as Kevin stuck his hand out, catching the several shots that had missed, catching them in his hand and slurping it up into his mouth. He kissed you once again, your salty taste filling both of your mouths as Kevin’s tongue danced around your mouth, sharing your cum. Kevin soon broke the kiss as he neared his own release “Y/N, I’m gonna cum, right in your ass!” He cried out “Do it daddy, fucking come for me” you returned, this was exactly the push Kevin needed to fall over the edge and with one massive “OH FUCK YEAH! He emptied himself into you, his warm load coating your ass, as he growled and moaned in pure ecstasy as he came down from his high. 

You stayed like that for a while, taking in each other, your scents, how both of you looked above and below each other, sharing light kisses between each other as well. “Y/N, you were amazing.” Kevin finally breathed out, you were too breathless to respond, you nodded your head as acknowledgement. When you’d finally caught your breath back, Kevin pulled out and you made to stand up, only to wobble “Woah babe, I really put a number on you huh?” He said, staring at you with his hand under his chin as he admired the work he had done “Kevin, this isn’t a laughing matter, my legs are fucking mush!” You cried out exasperated, the words settling between you as you both burst out laughing at the situation. “Kevin, seriously, I’m gonna need some help back to the car.” You finally said, after you’d gotten your breath back “We’re not going back to the car baby.” Kevin said as he pulled you to him with one hand and supported you as he made his way out of the changing rooms “I’m ready to spend some time on this beach.” “What? Seriously? After we’ve fucked!” You said, shocked at Kevin’s level of daring “You were the one who dragged me to the changing rooms to fuck you!” He countered “and besides, we don’t have to mingle, we can rest of the sand, have our afterglow in the sunset, all that magic shit you wanted, after all, you deserve it, especially for making it about us both.” This was such a beautiful gesture from Kevin that you simply nodded as he lead you out of the changing rooms and onto the nude beach, which was packed as onlookers basked in the sunset, none more content however as you & Kevin Owens. 

[brianc521]

Nap Date | Nap Date 8

He’s feeling grumpy after a meeting about the potential promo tour they want him to do to hype up a new single that's going to be released soon.

Shawn loves to perform, it’s more than a job to him. It’s his dream and passion. He used to say that it was his only form of happiness, except that that’s changed now. He’s really in love with Ember. More in love than he’s ever been in his life. He’s more in love with her than he is with music. 

He never thought the day would come that he would actually rather stay home than tour. The thought of touring again, so soon, makes him a little queasy. He’s only been home for like three months and his teams already got him revving to go again. 

In the past the three month mark of waiting to talk about touring would be concerning. He’s a busy body, can’t sit down for longer than two minutes without feeling like he could be doing something. He’s realizing though, with the more he grows, the older he gets, that it’s okay to sit for awhile.

In all honesty, he just wants to stay home for a while. He wants to stay at home and make a life with Ember. He wants to ingrain himself into her routine, he wants to learn to live with her. Most importantly he wants to set himself up for the rest of his life with her. 

“Hey.” She answers on the second ring of his phone call.

“Hey, do you know how we always talk about building a fort in the living room and watching movies all night?” 

“Yeah.”

“Build a fort, I’m 20 minutes from home and I need a nap date.” 

“Did the meeting not go well?” She ponders, squishing the phone between her ear and shoulder while she works on some dishes that have been in the sink since last night. 

“No it didn’t. I’m tired of people telling me what to do and how I need to live my life. I know what I want and need.” 

“What do you want and need Babe?”

“I need you, and I want a nap date with you. Can you set it up?” 

“Of course honey.” 

“Good, you’re in for a shitload of cuddles. Be ready by the time I pull in.” 

**

She’s running a bit behind. He’s gonna have to finish help with the set up. It took her longer than she expected to build the stupid thing. It’s hard to hold up both ends of the sheet by yourself. She jumps a little when she hears him bust through the front door. She wasn’t ready, and she doesn’t know what to expect.

“Baby!” He whines from the kitchen, slowly making his way to her in the hallway past the living room. “I told you to be ready.” 

“I know I’m sorry! I had trouble with the sheets, my arms are very short and sheets are very long.” 

He smiles sadly at her, head tilting to the side when she finally looks over at him. 

“Hi.” He whispers. 

“Hi Baby Boy.” She grins, turning and walking towards him. He opens his arms, letting her fall into his embrace as he buries his face into the crook of her neck. 

“Missed you.” He mumbles, placing small kisses to her skin.

“What happened at the meeting?” She asks, wanting some answers so she can understand his mood better. 

“Mmm, no. Just cuddles right now.” He groans, letting go and allowing her to grab the rest of the blankets from the hall closet. 

Once they’re in her hands he races forward, laughing as she squeals, picking her up and hauling her over his shoulder. 

“Shawn!” She yelps, holding onto his waist for leverage, that way she doesn’t go head first into the ground. 

He drops her on the mound of blankets in the fort, laughing at the fact that the blankets she was holding are now covering her completely, burying her in the blankets. He drops on top of her, clicking through Netflix as she struggles underneath. 

She finally frees her head, huffing as she looks up at him. 

“Hey Blanket Monster.” He grins, leaning down to place a peck to her lips. She pushes his face away, glaring at him.

“Shawn. Get off.” 

“I’m rather comfy.” He giggles.

She raises an eyebrow, going unnoticed by him. So she ups her game. 

“Shawn!” She whines. “You’re hurting me.” 

That catches his attention, his head whipping over to look at her with wide eyes. He scrambles off of her and lands on the floor. 

“Baby are you okay?” He reaches his hands out to touch her. 

“Yeah.” She giggles, loving how concerned he gets when he thinks she’s hurt.

“I wasn’t actually hurting you was I?” 

“No, I just wanted you off.”

“Don’t do that to me!” He whines, flopping back against the floor. “You stress me out that way. I get so nervous.”

“Why?” She crawls over, planting herself on him, lying chest to chest.

“Because I always forget how big I am to you. I don’t want to hurt you ever.” He pouts. “But I always wanna cuddle and lay on you. You make me feel safe when you let me lay in your lap.” 

She blushes, reaching up to card her fingers through his hair. “You’re really cute. Did you know that?”

“You tell me at least three times a day, so yes.” He nods, turning his head towards her. 

She smiles, pulling him closer with her hand on the back of his head. He gets the hint and softly presses his lips to hers, sucking on her bottom lip. 

**

It’s not till their through the second Star Wars movie that he starts to talk. 

She loves that about him. How he always says he doesn’t want to talk, but after a few hours of processing he just starts rambling. It’s where they differ in personalities. He holds things in for a moment. Let’s his brain and thoughts wrap around an issue or idea before he acts on anything. Most times he only processes for a few hours, other times it’s days. 

Ember though? She’s a spitfire. So when she has an issue or an idea she just needs to get it out. Especially when she’s upset over something. If she doesn’t have a chance to vent to a safe zone, like her mom or Shawn, then she’ll say what she’s thinking and feeling to the actual person which can lead to some nasty fights. 

“They want me to do a small promo tour in the states.” He hums.

“What?” She tears her attention away from Luke and Darth Vader, looking down to where he’s laying across her lap. 

He turns his head to look up at her, sighing, “They want me to do a promo tour for the new single.” 

“Oh.” She pulls back a little, swallowing what she wants to say and nods. “Okay.” 

He reaches up and caresses her face, pushing her chin down so she’ll actually look in his eyes. 

“When would you leave?”

“A month?” He says it like a question. “They’re still figuring out dates, and I haven’t given the green light yet. They’re banking on the fact that I will be ready to get on the road again.”

“Are you?” She asks. “Ready?”

“Honestly.” His eyes tear up a little, “I’m not.”

She gasps at his words, eyes going wide when she realizes he’s being 100% truthful with her. 

“I’m not even remotely ready to even start thinking of leaving you again.” He whispers. 

She reaches over, clicking a button on the remote to pause the wailing of Luke as he finds out who his real Father is. 

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like I’ve just got you. I know we’ve been together for two years now, but that was long distance for most of it. I feel like I’m finally getting to live the life I was longing for during the past two years. I just wanted you, all the time. I wanted you to be the first thing I saw when I wake up, and the last thing I see before I go to bed. You finally are.”

“But Shawn, I’m not going anywhere.” 

He sighs, sitting up slightly. “I know that. That’s not what I mean though.”

“What do you mean then?” She asks softly, knowing he’s starting to get frustrated again. 

“I mean I want to enjoy it. I just got it and it feels like I already have to give it up. You know that feeling, the feeling like,” He thinks for a moment to come up with a good comparison. He snaps and points at her. “You know when we go to your brothers and they hand you Aiden.” 

She nods, trying to follow Shawn’s comparison about her nephew. 

“You know that feeling you get when they go to take him back? The feeling of longing. Like you just got to hold him, you just got him settled, he’s no longer fussy and just chilling and then suddenly their like ‘it’s time for a diaper change’ or ‘it’s time for a bath’ or ‘it’s time for someone else to hold him’.”

“Yeah, the slight pang of jealousy and the frustration of never feeling you get to hold him long enough.” 

“Exactly. That’s what I’m feeling. I just got you, I just got us settled, we’re no longer fussy, we’re chilling and now suddenly it’s time for something else.” 

She pouts at him, leaning closer with both her hands reaching around to the back of his head. She rubs her thumbs behind his ears and just stares at him.

“I love you.” She starts. “I know it feels like whenever we finally get settled we’re suddenly disturbed but we’re not. I know you feel like you never get more than five minutes of a break, but I want you to sit back and look at the whole situation. This is what you love. This is what you’re dreams have been since you were 13. Since baby Shawn got his first guitar and taught himself how to play Ed Sheeran. This is what that Shawn was dreaming about. I know your dreams have changed, they will always change the more you succeed them, but I don’t want you to give something up because you feel like it’s always time for something else. At the end of the day, I always end up being the one to hold Aiden the longest. I feel sad to have to pass him over and share him with others, but then I set him in your hands and I get to feel the joy of watching him make others happy too.” 

He stares at her, really taking all her words to heart.

“So while you might feel like you’re not getting enough of what you want right now, look around and realize that not only do you get to come home to me but that you also get to go out to them. To your fans who love you almost as much as I do.” 

He sighs, a tear dropping from his bottom lash. “You always make everything better.” He whispers, leaning his forehead against hers.

She smiles and kisses his nose, “I don’t know why you’re so worried about going. I’m still gonna be here when you get back.” 

“I just had some other plans in mind, and this would push that back.” He mumbles.

“What other plans?” She asks, pulling back to wipe his tears away.

“Plans for our future.” 

“You’re thinking about our future?” She asks, appalled.

“You’re not?” He clenches his jaw, heart rate picking up, nervous that maybe she doesn’t want a future with him.

“No I am, I just didn’t know you were.”

“I am.” He nods. “Do you think you could handle this? Having this talk every time a new tour rolls around?”

“Yeah I think I can.” She grins, shaking her head at him.

“I’m serious, would you ever get tired of the fact that touring is my job? That I’ll be gone for long periods of time.”

“Shawn we’ve been together for two years now. We met while you were on tour, and managed just fine through the next one. I know what I signed up for when I told you we were official. That’s not gonna change, I’m not gonna change. I’m proud of you, of who you are, that I get you call you mine.” 

“I’m proud to call you mine too.” He sighs, leaning up to kiss her lips. “Okay,” He hums. “I’ll go on tour, it’s a short one. 10 shows I think?”

“See, you were all worked up for nothing.” 

“Wanna come with me?” He grins. 

**

He watches her from the end of the bed while she changes. She’s slipping into one of his shirts, sporting a new pair of panties he’s never seen. They’ve caught his eye and he can’t stop staring.

“What are you looking at?” She asks over her shoulder while she takes her hair out of the messy bun she put it in.

“I’m looking at your new panties. Why have you never worn ones like these before?”

“Boyshorts?” She looks down, smoothing over the hem on her lower stomach. “I wanted to try something new. You like them?”

“I love them.”

“Good then I’ll get more.” 

“Please do. Come here.” He holds out his hand for her. She places her in his, yelping as he tugs her into him. “I love you.” 

“I love you too.” 

“I’ve been thinking about what we talked about today.” 

“Okay.” She plants her hands on his shoulders, standing between his legs. “What about it?”

“About our future.” He looks up with his puppy dog eyes.

“Yeah?”

“I’m ready for it. I’m really ready for it.” 

“Me too.” She smiles.

“I want to spend forever with you. You’re all my dreams come true. Everything I’ve ever wanted and more.” He traces shapes on the back of her bare thigh. 

“I want you too.” 

“If I asked you to marry me tonight what would you say?” He bites his lip, staring straight ahead at the shirt she’s wearing instead of making eye contact. 

Her jaw drops, eyes going wide at his words. This was the last thing she ever thought he would say to her tonight, but all she can do is smile. She wants forever with him. It’s all she’s ever wanted after that first night they met. She wants to go hug and kiss Doris for giving him such good advice about not breaking her heart, and she wants to thank Juniper for the rest of her days for getting together with Raul and bringing Shawn into her life. 

She tips his chin up with her index finger, clicking her tongue. “You’ll just have to ask to find out.” She answers. 

He takes her hands off his shoulders, holding them in his as he breathes deeply. 

“I love you. With my whole entire heart. I mean it, you’re all I’ve ever wanted. You’re all I’ll ever want. I can not, will not, imagine a life without you in it. You complete me in a way I never knew I needed but now can’t live without. Ember Mills.” He tucks his right hand under his leg retrieving the diamond ring he hid while she was changing into his fingers. “Will you marry me?” 

She’s crying. Tears dropping onto her flushed pink cheeks, holding her right hand up to her mouth in shock that he’s actually asking. That her dreams are actually coming true. 

“Yes.” She chokes out, letting him slide the ring onto her finger. 

He goes to stand while she wraps her arms around his neck, their lips meeting in the most passionate kiss they’ve ever shared, clinging to the other for dear life.

Tears of joy and happiness flow down both of their cheeks as they hold the other, repeatedly saying ‘I love you’.

“Can’t wait to be your wife.” 

“Can’t wait to be your husband.”

[sortasirius]

Some knee-jerk thoughts on the 15x07 preview

Yeah I sighed.  Yeah I eye-rolled.  And then I rolled it back and watched it again.

Dean’s bored, clearly still in his depressive funk about Cas breaking up with him and their post breakup phonecall Chuck still controlling them, so he’s looking for something, a hunt, to relieve the angst and boredom he’s feeling, probably bc Sam and Eileen are on their honeymoon thanks

Crop circles.  Body without a heart.  And he lands on “My Friend was Raptured While I was Drunk.”  Interesting that he’d fall on a case about being raptured, but anyway.

So we can assume Dean goes off on his own to go hunt, leaving Sam and Eileen to go find Cas (thank u so much writers)

“What are you doing here?!”

Leo is like hyped af to see Dean, because you can assume it’s been literal years, if Dean met Leo without Sam especially, but I’m super interested in the way Dean reacts to Leo, because he’s like...nervous.  He looks around, shifts his weight, does those little avoidant looks he does when he’s nervous.  Oh yeah, this is gonna be good my friends.

“Working a case” is said offscreen, so I’m assuming that that line isn’t concurrent with Leo asking him why he’s there.

Cut to Dean opening the trunk of another car (not the Impala) but I think it is a mid-2000s Impala which is interesting.

Someone gets thrown out a window at Swayze’s Bar.

And then, the big moment.

“Looking for someone.”

“Oh but I think you found her.”

Ok.

Dean’s surprised but smiley, and I’m really reminded of that episode Sin City in season 4, where that bartender was a demon and hit on Dean? Anyway, Dean gets his ass smacked by thus girl but he doesn’t seem all that interested?  I could just be reading into it but he’s probably looking for Leo, not this girl, and he doesn’t do the immediate turnaround when she smacks his ass, just seems surprised and like he’s going to keep moving?

Listen, a 30 second promo does not an episode make, even the last one had that one shot of Eileen and that was about all we got plotwise, nothing about the angst divorce call or anything like that, they aren’t going to spoil the plot of one of the more anticipated episodes the week before.

I’m not saying what I want to happen Dean coming out as the chaotic bi he is is going to happen in this episode, maybe he sleeps with that girl, who knows, but I don’t think this is what the final season is about, and hell, every single episode has been so damn good (even Bucklemming’s had its moments) and they are not fucking around here, they are doing their damndest to make this final season as perfect as they can get it, and honestly?  It’s working for me rn.

So I just want everyone to read this and maybe not get up in arms about Dean potentially banging some chick, because he wasn’t looking to get laid, he didn’t even look all that interested, and I think this episode has bigger fish to fry than a one night stand with a girl in a bar who’s named for the guy that “always gets a pass.”

I’m so so so excited about the next episode!

[anxiety-trademark]

The week in review:

Raw 09/21 NXT 09/23 NXT UK 09/24 Smackdown 09/25 Clash of Champions 09/27 + Main Event 09/24

Raw:

Billie’s not wrong. None of these people are wrong. That title has fallen so fucking far since Becky held it, Jesus.

Interesting to see Billie Kay be somewhat (?) supportive of Peyton. Manager?

I implore women to stop using red eyeliner unless you’re trying to look possessed.

Oh at least Mickie’s gonna have her last match with her snazzy pants on.

God that theme music is so outdated.

If there was one person on the roster that could convince me they wrestled in the Diva’s era, it’d be Mickie James.

Beautiful Octopus, dare I say best in the division. Look at those crossed legs. Just beautiful, Zelina.

Man it was cool watching Zelina reverse the powerbomb attempt into a rollup, but Mickie couldn’t be bothered to get her shoulders down for a 2 count before the reversal. Shame.

Zelina needs an increase to her speed to pull off the style she’s going for, but it’s a fun style.

oof I think Mickie actually caught Zelina’s forehead with that high kick.

Seated Senton off the top rope is garbage and I hate it.

Lmfao Zelina won with a backstabber. She’s literally Sasha-lite. Okay.

Word was Bianca was the star of the pc combine, right? So if you wanna showcase her strength, do it against someone I fucking know lmao. Who was this bro? Of course she’s stronger than a nobody in the pc. Friggin Alexa Bliss can effortlessly give piggy back rides to Sheamus. That’s impressive, because I know how strong and big he is. This could’ve been done better is all I’m saying. Maybe do a sitdown interview with her pc peeps hyping her up, or show footage of her blowing everyone in the combine out the park. Idk.

Ruby stop hyping up Nia and Shayna individually, individually they suck lol lesbireal.

So did Ruby just give Liv her shirt? …You know what, it works, I’m not gonna dig into this.

I feel like all women use the same starting moves against Nia and it’s a little tired ngl. They do this headscissors into a standing crucifix hold, and then slide down to try and roll her up. Then she picks them up and headbutts them. Come on peeps.

Mk just throw Lana through another table, she’s as useless in the ring (kf wise) as Liv is on commentary (non-kf wise)

Let me rewind, how did Nattie get taken out this time? A punch again. COOL. Nattie confirmed worst tag partner in the history of the division.

Lmfao rip Lana. Bye.

Wow we just said fuck entrances huh? Ugh God. Imagine Becky not getting an entrance as a damn champion.

So Peyton forgoes jumping for the German suplex, which could’ve resulted in her landing on Asuka’s head, and her reaction is to laugh. Consummate professional. Becky Lynch’s optic cranial nerve injury (caused by a failed German suplex) called, it can’t seem to find the humor.

Idk what that double underhooked move was by Peyton, but it was nice.

What bothers me about Peyton’s spinning heel kick, is as high as she gets it, she only hits people with her calf. Awkward to see.

That attempted transition into the Asuka Lock was... something.

Highlight: Lana going through the table

---

NXT:

Did Tegan say “why me” to Candice fucking her knee up with a metal pipe? Somebody get this girl some tissues.

Haha watching Tegan writhe in pain is funny. Candice gets points. And I do not like giving Candice points.

Really appreciate Rhea’s theme after hearing so much generic garbage lately. She’s so done with nxt as a performer, she has passed literally all of them by.

Not to be that person, but seeing so many people in the ring together bothers me. If one person was sick, literally all of them are sick now. It’s just kinda yikes.

Did they forego having a crowd? If so, wise. There’s enough ppl in the ring and at ringside.

Rhea fucking yeeted that girl into the barrier lmaooo.

“...Marina Shafir who’s done some great things on Raw Underground recently,” lmao sure.

The absolute half-assed attempt by that girl to pull herself up before Rhea booted her down to the floor was questionable.

So adding all these random peeps from the pc to this battle royal was done solely to have Raquel and Rhea flex for their feud in 4 months, huh.

Kacy does cool shit, wbk lmao. Gets kicked out, lands on her back, rolls into a handstand, rotates, pulls herself up into the ring using her feet on the ropes; gets kicked out, lands on the side of the guardrail, pulls herself up, uses the plexiglass to help balance herself, jumps onto the stairs; gets kicked out, lands on the side of the guardrail, stands on Kayden’s shoulders and gets chauffeured back to the ring. Brilliant. Would be overkill in a Royal Rumble, but it works here.

R&R eliminate each other/themselves together. Fitting. Dakota “help me I’m useless on my own” Kai is shook.

Why is Indi in the top 5? Or top 7? How is this girl so damn prestigious??

Kacy really just slung herself around the ringpost. I’m becoming a fan of her antics/performances in multiwomen matches.

I see Shotzi’s character is, “I come so close yet cannot manage to touch the gold.” I feel for her... cuz I can’t stand Candice.

Boooo

I love how Io carries herself. She’s a shining example of not allowing her heritage to hold her back or make her feel unimportant. She responds in Japanese, and without missing a beat, translates in perfectly spoken and quick English. Never dances, never smiles, never looks like a chump. Serious and answers the damn question. She gets points.

Highlight: Kacy shenanigans

---

NXT UK:

Lol I love KLR so much. Just ducks out of the ring the first time she’s bested.

“KLR is well versed in mental manipulation,” that she is. She’s honestly a top competitor in that sense; equal to the likes of Sasha and Charlotte when it comes to psychology.

Piper’s got power. Ragdolling KLR here.

That’s right, performing with Charlotte Flair at wm is an accolade one can only hope to achieve (I’m annoying I know) no but seriously, KLR vs Becky Lynch? Take my money.

Nice Superkick, nice Tornado ddt.

Dear ref, stop yelling at her and restart the count. Dweeb.

Lmao self inflicted wreckage of her knee. 

This ref is a walking headache. We’re now getting into the autumn of overbooked women’s matches. And UK’s first title match back. Yikes.

That senton was awkward and looked painful af for KLR’s neck. If you’re gonna risk that move while selling a leg injury, make sure you have more space to correct your landing.

I almost wish that turnbuckle came undone naturally because KLR is already such a good seller, but I’m gonna assume this is a worked move since it’s been left exposed.

Yeah see there are issues with that spot. Positives: KLR didn’t purposefully undo the turnbuckle, so it’s not on her to give another title match; the spot has potential, as I’m guessing that would be genuinely painful. Negatives: Piper is too big of a woman to hit the lower turnbuckle doing the cannonball, so she ended up hitting the middle... which was padded. Good ending on paper if you don’t do the equations, but poor execution. Not Piper nor KLR’s fault though.

Slow pacing and I hate overbooked garbage, but this obviously isn’t the only match they’re having so *shrug*

Highlight: Clean tornado ddt, and I do love KLR’s selling

---

Smackdown:

Lol Bayley has her chair. She automatically gets a point every time I see it.

Top of the ramp this time? Okay, sure.

Stop cutting to the fancams, production. I don’t care about their reactions.

A fine enough promo to move along both of her angles, but production sucks. Wbk though.

“...one of the most complex personalities,” which personality of Alexa’s are we referring to, though?

Their timing on her pyro was off and now I’m sad. The pops during the breakdown leading into the fountains are fucking amazing and honestly cannot be topped by any of the other women.

When did Alexa stop wearing her gloves to the ring? Probably when she turned face. Shame.

She just called Lacey bitter, southern tea, and you know what? What a fucking drag. Imagine bitter southern tea. As someone who was raised in the south, that is a disgrace to southern tea. Sweet sun tea or pass.

Look at Alexa: selling Lacey’s strength, full of agile speed, and yet here’s Lacey not even bothering to put her shoulders down for her pin attempt. SAD.

A problem I consistently have with SD in particular is how they set up commercial breaks. They always do something dramatic, cut to commercial, come back and shit’s always completely different. How you gonna cut from Alexa leading and hearing the Fiend’s laugh, to return to Lacey in charge ???

Dear Cole, why are you calling her Alexis lol. Like I know that’s her real name but, hello??

oof Alexa’s midsection is beet red.

Lacey has not been putting on a “clinic” stop tossing that term around, Cole. Good bump by Alexa though.

Love how Lacey doesn’t mind landing flat when her moonsault misses. Respect. Her and Charlotte both eat that so perfectly.

LOVE how the monitors of people turned into Fiend’s face. POINTS.

It’s like she’s reverted back to her heel persona. This is literally 2016 Bliss, right? Right??

Roman is a large, strong, intimidating guy... but holy shit the visual of 5′1 Alexa staring daggers into the back of his head is intense af. I almost complained that he cut off her exit, but well done with the continuity.

Highlight: I’m really digging the Alexa/Fiend story

---

Clash of Champions:

Loving the red roots, hate the eyeshadow.

See, if Asuka wants to fuck around in the ring, you won’t hear me complain. I just wish she took her non-wrestling segments more seriously.

The patience Asuka gave Zelina to set up the arm kick was dumb.

“A hard arm bar by Asuka,” he says, even though her legs were completely bent. Easy on the credit given plz.

Zelina telegraphs too much. None of the bumps she takes ever catch me by surprise.

In the spirit of being fair, put your fucking shoulders down and let her attempt a pinfall, Asuka.

Haha Sasha-lite did meteora in the corner.

Nice roll into a kick, half point for Zelina.

No you don’t get to sell frustration or disbelief yet, that’s not buyable.

I don’t know wtf Zelina was going for with that counter before the Asuka Lock, but honestly idc. Could’ve been a kickoff match indeed. State of Becky’s title btw.

Every week it’s the same shit with Asuka. She gets on the mic, speaks Japanese, barely accomplishes anything, then gets interrupted/slapped/attacked... with dancing and smiling inbetween. I really wish she was more like Io.

Nikki isn’t “medically cleared to compete”, and the tag team titles aren’t being defended. My memory is fuzzy but wasn’t there some covid concerns going around back then? Was that just baseless speculation?

Love that Bayley turned this into an opportunity to be a bigger douche than she already was lol.

IS SHE DOING A VICTORY LAP LMAO

I want to hate this from a smarky “give other women a chance” perspective, but Bayley is an ass and this is great for Asuka to build credit as a face, and after being made to look foolish yet again. Lesgo.

Lol sounded like Bayley said, “you think you can cuck me?” I’m sure she didn’t. I’m choosing to believe she did though.

I never know exactly who to blame when Asuka’s Codebreaker looks ugly, but I swear Charlotte is the only one it looks impactful with. Sell job isn’t the problem, but taking that actual move is always dicey af.

Great kick by Asuka. Rekt.

Bayley says nah fuck this rofl. Fair ending; a fun little sprint of meaningless jabs.

“Chairwoman of SD” I like that too, Graves. Points to you.

LMAOOO Bayley set that shit up perfectly kekekek what’s up Sasha.

She be looking fucking incredible, but that neckbrace is a mega bummer.

Character wise, I’m surprised Bayley’s choosing to dole out punishment rather than taking her title and bolting.

Welp maybe she should have, Sasha going to town lmao.

oof peep that red line going down Bayley’s arm. eesh. Welts all over her back.

Highlight: Sasha beating the shit out of Bayley with a kendo stick

---

*BONUS*

Main Event:

You don’t pan the camera over to fucking commentary during Bianca’s entrance. Do better @ production.

Ruby puts her confidence in Liv even though everybody knows Bianca is winning this match lmao.

LOVE Liv’s boots.

like 20 seconds into the match and it’s already 10x better than the Bianca vs Billie Kay one. Don’t even waste a spot on Main Event for Billie Kay. No, I’m not not sorry for saying that.

It’s not that I hold issue with Bianca’s showboating or mannerisms, but it’s all so much more fitting for a heel.

Beautiful stalling suplex, but Liv is rather small.

Beautiful distance on that dropkick to Liv. Liv gets points for throwing herself so far.

We have enough women who rip their shirts off deep into matches, me thinks. Don’t need it from Liv as well.

Momentum could’ve been split better, but that was a decent match.

---

*Clash of Champions would be my highlighted event mostly thanks to Bayley, but if that’s a cop out, I’ll give a slight nod to Smackdown’s handling of Alexa.

[vecna]

For fandom meme-swtor?

Send me a fandom!

This one isn’t as spicy as the Dragon Age one, but I still got Wordy.

Also there’s lots of KOTFE/KOTET/etc spoilers in here, so don’t read if you don’t want to see em. (Looking at you, Chignon.)

The character(s) I first fell in love with:

My own OCs haha.

But more seriously: It was actually Darth Malgus! I was always going to play a Star Wars MMO, let’s be real. But when they started posting promo videos and cinematics for the game, my Sith-loving ass immediately gravitated to that guy haha. And then, it turned out he had the same VA as The Architect from Dragon Age, and that was it for me.

If we’re talking about companions, then it was probably Malavai Quinn. Sith Warrior was the first class I got to 50, and Quinn was the first companion that I really got overly attached to haha.

The character(s) I never expected to love as much as I do now:

Most (not all, but most) of the “new” companions that came in with KOTFE and beyond. I was initially really sour when I realized we were losing all our class storyline companions, and they were being replaced with a new crew of Lana, Theron, Koth, my mother-in-law Senya, etc. Especially when they – at the time – said we’d eventually get our class companions back, but it would be a while. So I started KOTFE sure that I would hate the new crew because I would rather have the old one…. and ended up liking them quite a lot! Mostly, lol.

The character(s) everyone else loves that I don’t:

Doc is the main one, jesus christ. If you didn’t read my last post, I just really really really do not mesh well with overly sexual and Adult Humor-y characters who scold you with a “You’re no fun.” if your OC isn’t into it. Doc is the worst example of it that I’ve ever encountered. I always play a male JK, and the fact nearly all of his convos amount to, “Boy, you and me are going to be up to our eyeballs in vagina when this war ends, amirite?” “You don’t want that? Come on, the Jedi Code doesn’t say you can’t FUCK, live a little.” “You’re no fun. Well, more for me.” drives me NUTS. This combined with how he interacts with Kira just does me in. Shoves him out an airlock.

Dark Side Jaesa is another big one, albeit mainly for OOC reasons. I just hate the fact that she even exists, really. I get the appeal of a story where a Sith corrupts a Jedi to the Dark Side, but the way she does a total 180 into gross hedonism while Serving You always just makes me cringe. Plus there’s the fact that straight dudebro gamers are really nasty with her, and she’s the main companion I always see men put into the slave bikini outfit, and just yikes.

Also just a lot of one-off NPCs that everyone goes crazy for and ships their OCs with, but I  constantly forget who they even are lol. Attros Finn comes to mind. I don’t hate them! Just don’t get the appeal I guess.

The character(s) I love that everyone else hates:

Lord Scourge, although I’m not sure he’s really hated as much anymore. I just remember at launch, when all of the overly invested Revan stans absolutely HATED him because of what he did in the Revan novel, and then flooded the tags with vitriol over being “stuck” with him as a Knight, and having to hear about Revan in his companion convos. It was really, really tiresome! Maybe it’s because I never really cared that deeply about Revan as my personal character, but I could not understand the backlash.

Anyway, Lord Scourge is my favorite companion in the game by a long shot. I love the conversations you can have with him about the Jedi vs Sith, and I love the mutually respectful tone those conversations take. (Where other Bioware companions who disagree with you have a tendency to just go, “You’re wrong.” and shut you down.) The fact that he’s so tied in with the plot just makes me love him more, really.

The character(s) I used to love but don’t any longer:

Cytharat, Koth and Theron mostly. Although this takes a bit of explaining, and is a bit Discourse-y – because I really appreciate them as characters, but their role and Bioware’s decisions with them is what made me no longer love them.Here’s the thing: Bioware has a bad habit of introducing male characters that are bisexual, and then having them betray you, leading to situations where they either get murdered or vanish from the narrative entirely. Meanwhile, bisexual women like Lana are untouched and around forever.

I was overjoyed when I first saw Cytharat. Y'all know I’m a ho for purebloods, and the fact that he was Malgus’ apprentice was fascinating to me – and then he turned out to be a bi romance. I got very hyped for him, only to find out he dies like 5 minutes later – or if you save him, he’s never seen again. Huge letdown.

Koth was the first character I fell in love with of the new KOTFE crew – I even initiated a romance with him! – but it quickly became obvious there’s no way to play the expansion without him turning on you judgementally at some point or another. And then, hey big surprise, you can kill him or else he’s never seen again.

Theron I’ve loved since we first got to know him in the Forged Alliances content, but that whole storyline where he seemingly betrays you out of nowhere, only to later reveal he didn’t actually, idk. And then, once again, you either kill him or he disappears from the story. It felt like a weirdly shoehorned in plot for shock value, and robbed us of a second bi MOC character.

You see the trend here? I want to love these characters, but Bioware continually electing to do this shit with bi dudes is tiresome and makes me unwilling to invest any interest in the characters anymore.

The character(s) I would totally smooch:

None.

The character(s) I’d want to be like:

None really come to mind? I just want to be a Jedi, come on.

The character(s) I’d slap:

Hunter all day every day.

The pairing(s) that I love:

Haha, this question is hard, because most of the SWTOR ships I’m invested in are between my OCs and my friends’ OCs.

However.

SCOURGE / KNIGHT IS THE BIG ONE, THE ULTIMATE, THE ALL-TIME FAVORITE. It’s really hard to describe just how much I love this ship, and just how much time and energy I’ve invested into it over the past… 8 years wow……….. To the point of being almost territorial. And it’s also near impossible for me to talk about why I love it, because the version I ship is so personalized with my specific Jedi Knight, especially since it had to live exclusively in headcanon land for so long. Scourge is, more or less, my Knight’s support pillar and the thing that grounds him and keeps him humble, in a world where my Knight is surrounded by people who expect him to be a pure flawless messiah. But, I mean. How can you have a man look at your character and say, “I’ve waited 300 years to see your face.” and not immediately ship it. And then I finally got vindicated after all these years when it was made canon!

I really love Arcann / Knight for a lot of the same reasons as the above, but I just really adore his one (1) romance convo haha. Granted, yes he did a lot of fucked up things, but I was so grateful when he had like… a Zuko-esque redemption. Where he comes to your character and firmly believes he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and especially doesn’t deserve affection, and is instead met with acceptance and a chance to grow and heal. That’s the good shit.

Others:

Lana / Warrior and Lana / Inquisitor are my particular jam. I endlessly enjoy the mutual respect between Lana and those particular PCs.

Malavai Quinn / Sith Warrior is a longtime fave, and although I DO love him with a female Warrior, I really do with he’d been an option for dudes as well. And I feel the same in reverse about Vette / Warrior – I do like her with a male Warrior, and it’s so sweet and wholesome and endearing, but man I wish she’d been an option for female Warriors.

I ship Risha with every woman – especially Vette and Sumalee – and will be salty until my grave that Risha / f!Smuggler isn’t possible, because I love Risha with the Smuggler but she gives me powerful WLW vibes.

Agent / Watcher Two is also a lowkey favorite, but I ALSO wish it could be done with a female Agent instead. Same with Agent / Raina Temple.

Agent / Vector is very sweet, but again, I will be salty until my grave that it couldn’t be done with a male Agent.

Can you guys sense a running theme here?

Finally: NGL I love Valkorion / Senya, even though that ended in pure disaster.

And people around here used to ship Keeper / Lokin, and tbh, I still kinda love it lol.

The pairing(s) that I despise:

In general terms, I fucking hate every single romance that involves the male PC romancing his padawan or underling, especially since most of them seem like very young girls. I don’t know why this is so pervasive in the game, but yikes Bioware. Consular/Nadia is the worst offender, but they’re all just cringe central for me.

But the big one is Agent / Hunter. This would have gotten me run off Tumblr back in the day, but god I hate this pairing. I mentioned in the last post that I just will never enjoy ships where the two characters actively want to murder each other, but. This just gets magnified for me with Agent/Hunter, where all the mind control and blatant abuse comes into play – and people have a tendency to write noncon rape fic of the two and present it as ~sexy rivalmance~, which is awful. Add to this the “no homo” reveal where Hunter turns out to be a woman, after getting everyone hyped about a dude flirting with their male character the whole game, and it’s just a huge No Thanks from me all around.

And for largely personal reasons I just don’t like seeing female Knights with Scourge. Listen, for YEARS  I was treated like a pariah for shipping Scourge with my male Knight, while being unable to find Scourge content that didn’t have a female Knight plastered all over him. Even though he wasn’t even a romance option one way or another, the way the fandom treated m!Knight/Scourge with disdain while ardently shipping f!Knight/Scourge was offputting as shit. And then, after years, he was made a romance option for women AND men, and all these awful people acted like they were robbed, the way people reacted when Kaidan and Jaal were made bi in Mass Effect. I’m so tired. I never want to see Scourge with a female Knight again.

[find-the-eyes]

just 2014-2015 franzdom things

- franz fridays

- franzyfrenzy

- just really good straight up content blogs

- fyeahnickmccarthy

- there were so many Nick stans... where did you all go

- nightspams (literally just post spams at night, equivalent to shitposting or nightblogging)

- pizza gets personal

- smolchol2k15

- “if you’re going to spam please use the proper tag”

- franzyfighters

- trilo-bilo. trilo freaking bilo

- “says the trilobite”

- “please don’t ship band members it’s not nice!! ship oc/alex instead” (death glares ensue)

- trilo-bilo’s trip to the eye doctor

- the narwhal video. I can still hear the THWACK in the back of my mind sometimes

- the death of trilo-bilo

- everyone’s obsession with fighting Alex, which totally definitely wasn’t the reason he hated us so much that year

- “meet me in the pit”

- why didn’t he hit that block button on all of us

- the life of a franz ferdinand reference (lffr)

- music video screenshot photosets

- waiting for new vines and never getting them

- chatting on kik because no social media platform had a proper DM system yet

- matching kik names and photos to make the band

- making your kik color orange for franz shshjsjhssjh what were we ON

- memeing FFS and getting yelled at by the half of the fandom that liked FFS

- the word stan wasn’t a thing yet i think we just said ‘favs...’ like “i fav Paul” etc

- Nick, Bob, and Paul stans supporting each other through FFS

- when Nick crowd surfed at that one FFS gig in France and we all thought he wasn’t allowed back onstage for some reason

- wanting a blue flannel

- not understanding the farmhouse fics

- idolizing the slacken_ties writers

- that weird nilex fic on ao3 where they got absolutely smashed on the set of the dywt video and then... they absolutely smashed

- “we topped the tag again”

- the wattpad fics

- Alex’s twitter hiatus that lasted for literally six days

- the fight for the tag or whatever that was

- the franzdom clique vs the franz fandom

- literally all of the fights

- kaprandczar

- calling Alex ‘kaprand’ in general and how the franzyfighters morphed it into just ‘kapran’

- whykaprandissad

- the franz ferdinand spoofs... I remember exactly where I was when ‘franz ferdinand direct’ was posted

- discovering m****c*** for the first time... where were YOU? i was at the pool with my friends

- that one girl who dressed up as franz in her videos omg she had talent

- franzferdinandphilosophiles

- everyone literally seemed so smart but we were all just a bunch of boo boo the fools fighting over nearly-middle aged british men

- everyone’s name was katherine or lindsey of eleanor i genuinely thought they were the girls from the franz songs

- the fake Paul twitter

- the fake Bob instagram

- the hype around Nick’s keysmash tweet... why

- that one rtrwra promo where they were sleeping and everyone was like “OHOHOHO”

- the rtrwra promo where they were recording somewhere and Nick and Paul were cuddling?????

- and Alex was wearing a blue flannel... slacken_ties propaganda

- actually ALL of the RTRWRA promos

- “bring back the blerp”

- “smol puppy”

- ‘trash lemon & teeny beany & poptart & bobe’ shirts

- the domino theory and how much Alex hated it, which just fueled it even more

- being called out by Alex’s finsta 

- pizza, kissy (our kissy!), sparkles, punchy, and swirly, aka the pup squad

- “THIS IS A CODE STRAWBERRY”

- scarlet and blue

- fuking-bob’s profile photo

- all of the awkward Bob photos actually

- Bob going from thicque to thinne

- everyone’s obsession with the erdbeer mund video

- not the archduke lol!!!!!!!

- nilex rhett and link aus... you heard me... why did that get so many notes

- crying over ‘old franz...’ girl it WAS old franz

- having to watch nick be depressed onstage

- the music note shirt

- 1-800-CALLGIRL and other hotline bling vs call girl memes

- dropping fake franz collabs to celebrate ffs GFGGHBJGF

- when someone said Alex looks like Pepe the frog

- “I knew Bob was thick, but damn...”

- tour de franz screenshot photosets

- discovering the tonight commentary for the first time...

- those 2007 video compilation things

- that one photo of alex with alex turner and julian casablancas and everyone was like “aaaahhh holy trinity”

ok that’s it for now going back to franz nostalgia land

[hazyheel]

WWE Monday Night Raw 8/12/19 Review

Seth Rollins Promo: He came out in normal clothes, which immediately worried me. He talked about how he wasn’t sure if he would win at summerslam, and he put Lesnar over a bit. He talked about how the crowd fueled him through the match. He only won with the love from the crowd, which sounds corny but it was a pretty good line in my opinion. AJ Styles then came out to interrupt, with the OC in tow. They congratulated Rollins on winning his match, and threw his hat in the ring for title contention. He challenged Rollins to a match tonight, to prove that he is a better champion. Rollins told him that all his respect for Styles is gone. He then accepted the challenge. Styles then extended a hand for a shake. Rollins refused, and Styles called him scared as he let the ring. Tensions were high.

Grade: C+. Started out pretty good, but I felt that Styles didn’t really make sense to throw his hat in the ring. He has his own thing in the midcard. If you want him to go in the main event, then give him a real reason. He should be allowed to compete in the midcard. If you want him to move up, then he can win a multi man match for #1 contendership while still being the champion, and then lose the belt. There are better ways to emphasize your top stars that to screw over the midcard. 

Street Profits Backstage: They put the show over, but Dawkins was tired and dehydrated. Sami Zayn then came up to give advice. He told them that the crowd will suck the soul right out of them. He said that everyone flames out, and the fans don’t care anymore. He started to talk about Samoa Joe as an example, but Joe was behind him. Joe then challenged him to a match, and I think Joe turned face. He shoved Zayn into the crates and walked away. 

Before we came back, they talked about how the King of the Ring is back for 2019. That’s actually pretty exciting, but I don’t know what the stakes are. I will make a separate post for predictions and my thoughts on the tournament at large, so watch out for that. 

Sami Zayn vs. Samoa Joe: I am pretty confused about Joe’s character at the moment, but maybe this match will help me with that. Zayn attacked before the bell, and Joe totally destroyed him after that. He put him on the mat with some power moves and strikes before choking him out for the win. 

Then he got on the mic. He talked about how he was still pissed about how people accused him of attacking Roman. He said that he won’t forgive anyone in the crowd for all the hate. 

Grade: B-. Inoffensive squash, and they clarified that he is still a heel. Double wammy.

Dolph Ziggler vs. the Miz: Miz was wearing a new shirt, saying Toronto is Awesome, which is a nice babyface touch. Ziggler came out in normal clothes. I think he had a Kabuki Warriors shirt on, but I don’t really know. Ziggler then got on the mic and called Miz a coward. He complained about how wasn’t cleared to compete. He said that Miz screwed Miz. After saying that it was too bad that he wouldn’t have the match, he beat the crap out of him. He beat him down as they cut to commercial. 

When we came back, they were in the middle of the match. Ziggler was competing in jeans, so there was that. Right when we came back, Miz started to take the advantage. As Miz was delivering Yes Kicks to Ziggler, Graves compared him to a man who can walk away from a horrific car accident, which was so weird. Ziggler then nailed a Zig Zag, but Miz somehow kicked out. It seems like they are moving that down to a signature rather than a finisher. Ziggler then went for a superkick, but Miz caught his leg and put Ziggler in the figure four and won the match. 

Afterwards, Ziggler got on the mic and said that he was a coward. He told Miz to finish him off, and as he was talking, Miz nailed a Skull Crushing Finale.

Grade: C+. A watered down and less awesome version of what happened at Summerslam with Goldberg. Ziggler’s new “I have more pride than is good for me” gimmick is going to get old, unless it was legends kicking his ass on pay per view. But the match was okay, although I know they can do much better. 

Becky Lynch Interview: Becky immediately grabbed the mic and talked about how she wanted her next challenger. She said that she just beat Nattie, but she isn’t going to rest. She wants to kick the next person’s ass. 

Elias Concert: He talked about how he knows someone will interrupt him, and he wants them to come out right now. That way it is right out of the way. He counted down a couple times, but no one came out. “I’m begging you, please don’t change the channel,”- Corey Graves. Nice call. Then Ricochet came out with a mic right as he was about to start. They both called each other lame, and Elias challenged Ricochet to a match. 

We went right from that into Ricochet vs. Elias, where they started out with a quick pace. They delivered a lot of high impact moves right away, but then they went back into rest holds. At one point, the two botched some sort of move, and the crowd seemed to turn against it quick. Ricochet then threw Elias out of the ring, but when he went for a suicide dive, Elias dodged and Ricochet landed right on his back. The two then battled in the ring, and Ricochet won with a sunset flip into a pinning predicament. Elias had his shoulder up, but the ref called for the bell anyway. 

Grade: D+. Jeez this was rough. Two botches and a horrific bump. This was a very unpolished match that did not showcase the strengths of either guy. They are much better than this. 

Andrade vs. Rey Mysterio, 2 out of 3 falls: the match started right away, with a stiff shot from Andrade. He went for a powerbomb, but Mysterio countered to set up the 619, but Zelina Vega tripped him up on the outside. Andrade then rolled him up, and Vega held his feet on the ropes to win the first fall. 

They started the second fall, and Mysterio quickly gave Andrade a rana to the outside, which looked pretty rough. Mysterio then continued the offense, hitting a slingshot powerbomb which looked like he planted Andrade on his head. Once again when Mysterio went for a 619, Vega distracted him and he didn’t get it. But after a third set up, he nailed the 619. Still, Andrade got his knees up and hit the hammerlock DDT for the win. 

Grade: C+. Another fine match. I liked that Andrade got a 2-0 victory, way to put over new talent. I don’t know what they will do with that, but it was a huge victory. Good on them, but not their best match. 

Steve Austin interview: Austin talked about how Rollins had a whole bunch of heart to get his win at Summerslam. He put Rollins over. Then he put over his own show. Shameless plug here. 

Rey Mysterio Interview: He talked about how frustrated he was losing two falls in a row. He seemed like he was about to cry, and muttered about his family. Interesting, not sure where this is going at all. 

Street Profits Backstage Again: Montez Ford told Mysterio to keep his head up, and gave him some encouragement. Ford then woke Dawkins up, and hyped up the Women’s Tag Team Championship match, and Cedric Alexander vs. Drew McIntyre. But Dawkins was too thirsty to help him, so Ford walked away. Funny, but they need to do something soon. 

Drew McIntyre interview: he talked about how he was going to end Alexander, and their rivalry in the match. He called Alexander’s run a fairytale. He said that he was going to cave his skull in and end the rivalry once and for all. 

Cedric Alexander vs. Drew McIntyre: the two started right away with some nice striking, and Alexander flying right away. He nailed McIntyre with a tope con hilo, but McIntyre fought back into it. While Alexander was up on the top rope, McIntyre grabbed him in a crucifix, and then gave him a high angle buckle bomb that looked hard to take. McIntyre took control from there, absolutely tossing Cedric all around the ring. At one point, the two were on the top rope, and McIntyre nailed Alexander with a sidewalk slam off the top for a near fall. The two started to fight on the outside, where Alexander pushed Mcintyre into the post, and then hit the lumbar check on the outside. The two were nearly counted out, but Alexander slid back in and attempted a suicide dive. But McIntyre caught him out of the dive and gave him a rough belly to belly onto the ring steps. The two then fought back into the ring, again on the top rope, but this time Alexander delivered a top rope spanish fly for a near fall. That brought the crowd alive, Mcintyre went for the inverted Alabama Slam, but Cedric countered into a rollup. McIntyre kicked out, and the two ran the ropes, only for McIntyre to decimate Alexander with a Claymore for the win. 

Grade: B+. Really good stuff between these two. They showcased a great clash of styles match, as well as showing McIntyre’s agility as they did so. Cedric sold just as well as he always does, and was a really good underdog here. He was smart enough to get the advantage several times, and he knew what he had to do to win. Any of those rollups could have been it, and Cedric knew that. McIntyre was a great bully here, and actually seemed to respect Alexander a bit. Really good stuff between these guys, I knew that they could put something like this together. Match of the night. 

The OC Backstage: the group were talking about how Rollins beat the odds when he beat Brock Lesnar at Summerslam. Gallows and Anderson then said that not even Styles could do that, to which Styles responded that he only had one chance to beat him. Then he just talked about how he would win the champion vs. champion match later on. 

No Way Jose vs. Robert Roode: a bit of an odd match. I’m not really sure why they are having it. The two started with a lock up, before Roode pushed Jose back into the corner and wailed on him with strikes and kicks. Jose was being beaten for most of the match, before Roode won with a Glorious DDT.

Grade: B-. Inoffensive squash. Cool to see some underutilized stars get TV time.

Paul Heyman Interview: Heyman talked about how Lesnar is not allowed any rematches against Rollins. He was so pissed off that he couldn’t even get the words out. Then he walked back into Lesnar’s locker room. Interesting.

The Lucha House Party vs. The Revival: This was an incredibly fast paced match right from the start. The Revival gained the advantage after forcing Lince Durado to the mat, but as they were fighting, R-Truth and the 24/7 guys ran down to the ring. The bell rang, and the Lucha House Party started to dive onto everyone around ringside. The Revival hit Truth with a Hart Attack, and pinned him together to become co-champions. However, Kalisto then ran in and hit a Salida del Sol on Dawson, only for Wilder to break it up. Carmella then pulled a half conscious Truth onto Dawson to win the belt back, and the two ran away. Backstage, Carmella and Truth were celebrating when Elias walked up and smashed Truth in the back with his guitar, and stole the championship in the process. 

Grade: C+. I was actually into having co-champions for a while, but it is clear that Truth is their guy for this belt. Anyway, this was fine. Nothing too exciting.

Natalya promo: Nattie came out with her arm in a sling, which was a nice touch. Still selling a beating from a night ago is pretty smart.  The crowd was chanting “you tapped out.” She said that although she lost, she won’t take back anything that she said. She wants to fight Becky Lynch again, but she will earn it before she does. Then she talked about her dad, Jim Neidhart, but as she started to talk, Sasha fucking Banks returned to interrupt. She seemed pretty genuinely happy to be back, and she gave Nattie a hug, but then sucker punched her and tore off a purple wig that she had on. She started to beat the crap out of Natalya, even tearing off her sling. The crowd was absolutely loving it, and everyone remembered how great of a heel Banks is. She even grabbed a chair, but as she was about to use it, Becky Lynch ran out for the save. The two brawled in the middle of the ring, with Banks coming out on top. She wailed on Lynch with the chair, and it looked incredibly painful. Eventually, some refs came by and broke everything up, but the damage was done. Looks like we have a challenger for the Raw Women’s Championship, and someone who can actually win it at that. 

Grade: B+. What a return! I have wanted heel Sasha for years, although I always wanted her to turn on Bayley. This is perfect though. A brutal assault to bring back one of the best heels in the women’s division. Welcome back Banks, thank you for saving the women’s division and keeping things interesting. 

Viking Raiders Squash: before the match, the Viking Raiders cut a promo about how they will destroy anyone in their way, and the tag division will kneel before them. Naturally, the Raiders messed up the poor jobbers. At one point, Erik gave one jobber a huge uranagi onto the back of the other. The two were about to win at one point, but Erik pulled his shoulders off the mat, and they gave him the Viking Experience for the win. 

Grade: B-. Always entertaining squash. 

Nikki Cross and Alexa Bliss Interview: The two talked about their upcoming title defense against The Kabuki Warriors. They were actually being really nice to each other, so I guess Bliss has turned face. I don’t know where this is going, but they better hate each other eventually. 

Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross vs. the Kabuki Warriors for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships: So, then during this match, Corey Graves was talking about how much he loves Bliss and Cross now, so I have no idea if they are face or heel. The Kabuki warriors had the advantage early on, running roughshod over the champions and completely annihilating them. The heels didn’t really get the advantage back until Bliss got a blind tag on Cross. At one point, Nikki was about to be hit by the Insane Elbow, but Cross rolled to the outside. Sane nailed her with a crossbody to the outside. Sane then rolled her back in for the Insane elbow, but Bliss broke it up. Asuka then tried to take out Bliss, but Bliss ducked a kick that landed on the ringpost, taking Asuka out. In the finish, Cross nailed Sane with a swinging neckbreaker and then Bliss finished it off with Twisted Bliss. 

Grade: B-. This was a fine match, nothing too special. I hope that the Kabuki Warriors actually get some TV time, because they are a great team that deserve some more time. Bliss and Cross look strong, so that is good. These titles will need a lot of help to be built back up to the level they were once at, but they can do it with some time and patience. 

AJ Styles vs. Seth Rollins: Rollins still had heavily taped ribs, but Rollins actually assaulted Styles’ ribs to start the match off. Early on in the match, Rollins opted to take out the rest of the OC on the outside, but that distraction only allowed Styles to attack the ribs more. At one point, Styles even went for the Styles clash on the apron, but Rollins slipped out and swept Style’s leg out from under him. When the two got back in the ring, they started to transition into heavy hitting strikes. At one point, Rollins tried for a reverse superplex, but AJ pushed him off. He then tried for a phenomenal forearm, but Rollins ducked it and nailed a superkick. He then went for the frog splash, but Anderson distracted the ref while Gallows pushed Rollins off the top rope. The two were then banned from ringside, but they just ran in and caused a disqualification instead. Ricochet then ran out to Rollins’ aid, but it didn’t help him much. The OC was about to give Rollins a Styles Clash from the middle rope when Braun Strowman ran out and decimated all of the heels, giving Styles a spinning powerslam, followed by a running powerslam. After the OC retreated, Strowman grabbed Rollins’ Universal Championship and handed it to him, but not before eyeing it a bit. The faces then stood tall together to close out the show. 

Grade: B. A pretty good match with a fun brawl to close everything out, plus Braun Strowman looked pretty strong in the process. This was a good look at what the top of the card on Raw should be. Get the US championship out of the mix, and these four guys could easily carry the show a bit. Give some lower down guys the US Championship, like maybe Cedric Alexander. Throw Bray Wyatt and Drew McIntyre in towards the top, and you have yourself a strong main event scene. This final stretch gives me some hope that maybe we will have some improvements on WWE going forward. Things seem to be looking up. 

Overall Grade: B-

Pros: Alexander vs. McIntyre; banks return; main event

Cons: ricochet vs. elias

[wolfthebard]

Top 10 Sorcery cards in Core Set 2020 that I’d like to see reprinted -within reason-

Back at it again with the “reasonable reprints” I’d like to see in Core Set 2020. This time, we have two honorable mention. Disclaimer!!!!!!!!!!! I’d really like to see hard to get, sought after cards as reprints. Alas, I am aiming for cards Wizards of the Cost could reprint. That wouldn’t do harm to Standard as a whole, and could use a reprint as to avoid price spikes. Many of these cards are “build around me”, and honestly that’s what makes Standard a fun format. Let’s start with the honorable mentions.

Honorable Mention 

This card is insanely priced at $35. Mostly for Commander players, and the odd Legacy deck. We have very few Enchantments we’re looking for, so this doesn’t break Standard. What this does is help consistency, control and enchantress decks can grab their one of copy, or make this a fifth copy. As long as we don’t have game breaking enchantments, this is fine.

This has seen two Standard printings. Overall great for rack style decks, given Davriel’s printing. This would make for a lovely addition to shake up control decks, and heck, any Black/X decks could use this. Only reason I don’t have this in the top 10, I have more important cards I want reprinted.

Number 10

Ok, I have this low for a variety of reasons. This Standard, we saw a deck that could take infinite turns. While Time Warp could cause something similar, this requires a multi-card set up, and at the very least...reach the graveyard. Turn style decks should exist, and should have access to a mid game card. That said, players playing against the card should have the ability to get rid of it, as to avoid having to deal with an opponent doing infinite turns. It’s low, because I think Wizards wants to step away from taking turns dot deck, because of the backlash with Nexus of Fate. At $10, it could use a little reprint.

Number 9

Another dream. It’s a low price at $12- $17 at this time, but it could stand for a reprint. Yes, another great control card, but a card that can be used in Black/ X mid range decks, rack style decks. We need solid hand disruption. We’re at a Standard with a high power level. This answers troublesome Planeswalkers, before they even become a problem. Give this some sick art of Bolas doing something. 

Number 8 

Ok, at the highest this is $5. It’s 10 mana that screams “Build around me”. Fun Standard brews incoming! Ok, yes, this hits Planeswalkers, but at turn 10...you should have already won. There’s just so many fun cards to add to this. No control deck is playing this, and mid-range decks have better things to do. Let me surge into something big...for Standard...you know...science.

Number 7

Less than $1, but allows red decks to keep token, aggro, and midrange decks in check. Red could use this solid side-board card. Against low-curve aggro decks, this can hurt, but most people will play around board wipes.

Number 6

It’s a shame this is less than $0.50. Listen, this card is just amazing. It can really only be played in Mono Black decks, and hey, that’s ok. Let Mono black be a thing again. Also, this helps keep aggro in check.

Number 5 

Another Uncommon that you can get by handing a quarter over. This let’s green have a go wide strategy, and when you’re just drawing lands for a few turns, this is a great top deck. Yes, this helps Tolsmir and Arlinn. That’s needed, if we want those cards to be playable at all in Standard. Also, I like wolves...give me more.

Number 4

I always love cards that exile cards from decks. Perfect against control decks, planeswalker heavy decks, annoying combo decks...like if Time Warp got a reprint. This is a $1 rare, and in Standard it’s a great check to balance the format.

Number 3 

Hey, a blue draw spell. This card was great in Worldwake Standard.This at worst draws one card, and worrisome levels...ten or more. It’s a common, that doesn’t cost a ton. I’d just like the IDW promo art to be on this and available to all. This isn’t broken for control decks, and heck combo decks could use a cheap and affordable draw spell.

Number 2

Another blue spell that costs less than $0.50. Listen, I just want to hear “Bamboozle you” at FNM. It’s a reverse Fact-or-fiction. It’s mindless fun, and control decks won’t play this. They’re playing counter spells. Number 1

I swear, I didn’t plan to have three blue spells in a row. This card costs at most $3...which is too much. I love cards that steal from my opponent, and this has a built in Mill bonus. A great control finisher that isn’t “Teferi” and at worst we get a creature like Llanowar Elf, if we can mill like 2-3 cards off the opponent, it’s a great bonus. Well, we’re at the end dear reader. What would you like to see get reprinted? Tell me down bellow. I know that aside from two cards, most of these aren’t “Hype”, but I think they might add some fun to Standard, or just do nothing...minus Thoughtseize. Next part will be Instants! Remember, you can follow me here. Twitter @ WolftheBard Twitch: WolftheBard. Till next time, thank you. -WolftheBard

[zpetra]

ROI in Malaga 2018 Journal

To be able to tell the whole story of how I actually got to go to ROI, we have to go back a little to May. I was sitting home due to a public holiday and somehow a promo popped up on Instagram about ROI and I just checked out the dates / information. For the end of the year I had some holidays planned at least in days. No exact details yet as in October I wanted to see a concert (didn’t get tickets but went for a small Spain trip - Barcelona, Seville, Madrid) and the fact about GP assignments was still in the air. 

For some reason I just checked the dates and settled on the 17th of November in Malaga. I had one of those “fuck it” moments and bought my ticket. Got a flight for a good price, hotel stay for a night close to the stadium was also quickly found. So in a mere few hours of planning, it was settled.

I would see Javier Fernandez in Malaga. I was excited and so happy about it.

Fast-forward a little bit to GP assignments as I have to mention it. When it was known Yuzuru Hanyu would be going to Helsinki and Moscow I was in a slight dilemma as ROI was the same weekend as that. Unfortunately any other date or location was impossible for me regarding ROI, as I had other plans. I aimed for Helsinki (which we know happened and my journal about it can be found 1 - 2 - 3 here). In the end I am also happy that I wasn’t in Russia... it was hard enough already. I stayed with my plan and bookings for Malaga and I have no regrets in that case.

Saturday - 17th of November

Saturday morning I set off to the airport bright (cold) and early as public transportation sucks for me at the moment and I have to take quite some detours. Anyhow I arrived, got myself some hot chocolate with coffee...only to hear the news falling in. While I am not happy to mention Yuzuru in this Journal, it was part of my weekend and it influenced my overall mood as well. So please forgive me for doing the bad thing and speaking about Javi but for this particular case for me they were intertwined with each other.

Start my day with a delayed flight while my arrival time was already conflicting with the free skate and given the info before my flight about Yuzu fall my anxiety was peaking. Lufthansa sucks with arriving on time especially in Spain it seems and we barely landed and I got out of the plane when it was Yuzus turn. I didn’t even had the time to process I am in Malaga and going to see Javi in a few hours. I watched in the middle of the airport, not even making it to my friend on time who was waiting for me near the exit. It was probably the worst 4 minutes of my life... I do not want to go into detail but it was hard. Once the scores were calculated I hurried to my friend so we can watch the rest together and wait for the final results. Happiness flooded me that Yuzuru won regardless of a not so perfect skate but impressive for a completely changed layout and obvious struggle... little did we know.

We found our bus to the city and we joked about the whole thing, giddy and happy. Nearly missing our bus-stop to the hotel XD but someone wanted to get off at the same station and my fried spotted the hotel, so we managed to do some involuntarily sightseeing. We got to our hotel, checked in and said to meet after a quick shower... I barely got out when the information flooded my Twitter. Yuzuru Hanyu is injured, he skated on painkillers. All my happiness was gone and it was difficult for me because in about 5 hours I was meant to participate in one of the most amazing shows of my life but I felt gloomy.

Cue us going to Burger King and stuffing ourselves with junk food, unable to talk about anything else. I felt so guilty, still do because none of our moods were really in for Revolution on Ice and that was wrong. So damn wrong. Javi deserved better from us, not us thinking of Yuzu or me going on a rant about this but it is the truth. I have failed him in that sense. I am sorry.

Somehow we fixed ourselves enough to leave and after some confusion at the venue we found our seats, or knew were to go. Spent some time together until it was best to take our seats. My friend and I, we didn’t sit together so yeah. I had a second row seat on the long side. 

I WAS SO CLOSE!

Revolution on Ice - the show

There was a bit of a delay with the start due to people not getting to their places on time and waiting, which I found really nice of the organization to do as others would just start and not care. One issue I had was that literally everything was said in Spanish and “No abla espanol” here, or very little...so I was struggling. XD

I will get this out there right from the start... I found it a bit weird that during any kind of group number, Plush was never part of it, he had his two individual performances and joined the finale once the performance itself was finished, only fooling around on the ice happened. Additionally I had a feeling that at the end he kind of took the spotlight from Javier, maybe because the audience knew him better but in that sense I felt a lack of appreciation for Javier, both from the audience and maybe a bit of Plush, lingering center ice while Javier already retreated. Maybe it was also because Javier himself left the others have their moment of shine, I will never know but somewhat I felt Plush was hyped more and I didn’t like that considering it was Javiers show. The overall impression left me a bit negative in that sense.

Anyway back to the beginning... I had my seat in the second row, quite in the middle of the long side, opposite to the where the DJ was. The seat was incredible and luckily someone short sat in front of me and I could actually see XD. YAY.

There was a really nice opening with most cast to start with the show, I really like it as everyone had their individual moment to shine as well as skate in choreo together. I truly appreciated too that generally most of the songs were Spanish, barely anything else, I think overall 4 songs were in English? And some jamming music at the end but rest was Spanish. We also had the live performance of Eva Ruiz ( 2 songs, one with the synchronous group and one with Yuka Sato ), we had also Diana Navarro who had two songs as well, one was with the Annette Dyrty/Jannick Bonheur the other with Anna Cappelini/Luca Lanotte. Diana sings amazing, I swear to god it sounded like playback music and it wasn’t. During Anna/Luca performance I didn’t even realize she was on the small stage on my left because it sounded like playback music. She is good. I really enjoyed it. And the performances matched the music as well. Anna is gorgeous, I saw her so close and she is beautiful. I think I will just make comments for everyone I saw otherwise I get confused and I am not that good at recalling what happened after each other LOL.

Evgeni Plushenko: He had two performances, one song I didn’t recognize actually, I was also happy not to see Nijinsky due to what happened a few hours before and I probably wouldn’t have been able to watch it and Sex Bomb... God, was it awkward for me. He literally did push-ups in that muscle suit in front of my eyes, I have it on video and god, I was red as a tomato, unsure if I should watch or not, be embarrassed or whatever. I think I had some mix of it with hysterical laughter. Still it was nice XD

Elladj Balde: He is incredible. The way he hyped up everyone and he had a performance with the DJ, kind of a sound battle, it was really good and his back-flip is to die for. I may have, managed to catch one of them on camera and wow. He also had kind of a flamenco?ish duet with Jeffrey and was part of all group numbers. I really really enjoyed his performances and he is damn handsome too XD Elladj is a true entertainer and I can really see why the Japanese shows tend to have him, he puts the place on fire with his performance and aura.

Jeffrey Buttle: He had one serious performance where I was a bit irritated by his facial expressions but otherwise he is incredible, his spins are to die for and a back-counter 3A may have slayed me too. As I said he had a duet kind of thing with Elladj before Javi joined them to take over with his bullfighter program, nice crossover tbh, they kind of teased and mock fought each other. Loved it. I certainly could see bits and peaces he had shown Yuzu in the programs he choreographed and it was somewhat bittersweet but incredibly lovely. Jeff looks also really good and that (peach) is to die for XD. I am sorry but I can’t help it when they literally skate in front of me with their backside, he also wore rather tight suit pants during one performance.

Anna Cappelini/Luca Lanotte: They had I believe one Spanish song with Diana Navarro, don’t know the title but it was really emotional and while I did not understand the lyrics I could still see what they tried to convey with the way they skated. Definitely enjoyed their lifts. They also did a Chaplin program with the girl group, later got joined by Javi who took over the ice to perform himself with the group, the way they incorporated the flow over to a different program was great. There was barely any awkward pause. As I said Anna is gorgeous, all of them were and damn, I couldn’t stop staring, especially what make up she used... anyone? Insider? Please? I need that ice-shadow she had one while they did the black for guys, red for girls group choreo. XD Overall, these two are incredible. 

Annette Dyrty/Jannick Bonheur: Okay, these two? If you all remember at FAOI how one pair skater swung around their partner and Yuzu said “Yabai” THAT WAS MY OVERALL MOOD. They did the scariest but most incredible things I didn’t know existed ( or were allowed, I guess with show skating it is ), they fired up the crowd! I swear they got one of the loudest cheers out there that night and for reasons. I was so impressed by them, really. Overall - wow factor.

Celia Benayas/Marco Covela: The acrobatic duo was great too, they performed to Never Enough from the Greatest Showman and it gave me Pyeongchang feels and oh god... I was close to cry. They were really good! Good addition, different than they had nothing to do with the skating.

Yuka Sato: HOW DO I NOT KNOW OF HER? SHE IS SO PRETTY AND GRACEFUL! She didn’t have many jumps in her performances but had some beautiful spins and spirals and I really enjoyed it, she was also as everyone else basically in the cast ridiculously pretty. She could rival with her beauty about anyone under 30 and she is 45!!! Can I have her genes? She performed to two Spanish songs, one with Eva Ruiz and also was part of all group numbers.

And we arrived to the main of the whole show for me - Javier Fernandez

For each of his greetings / announcing him in the beginning and taking over the ice he slid from the back in the front, silently without disturbing the attention from those currently bowing or still performing, unless it was meant to him doing so. He joined Anna/Luca on the ice to perform a Chaplin program, which was really entertaining and got lifted at the end by the girl group - as we have seen pictures of it XD Truly performances where he can play a character suit him a lot.

During Chaplin he was going all out on the dorky and I loved it, one time he laid on the ice and the girls skated above him, then he rolled on his side like he was showing off, even the way he got up was comical. So fun!

Next he did the bullfighter which was really funny too, he did one part right in front of me and his expressions are to die for. Of course it is also one of his more funnier ones in my opinion and the costume is gorgeous, the amount of detail is crazy.

I am not sure during which number anymore but he actually messed a 3S, A SALCHOW!! JAVI!!! I know you gave your 4S to Yuzu as a parting gift but OMG. And it happened on my side of the ice too like a bit further to the right, still in full view XD I have felt that Javi gave room for others to get some spotlight as well, which is so typical Javi in my eyes, still he could have basked in the attention a bit more, he deserved it and I am happy the crowd was so interactive too and gave it to him!

Now onto the one performance I truly, truly wanted to see and actually was the reason why I bought a ticket to ROI

Prometo

I am actually listening to the song as I am writing this...and I will start with a bit backstory here. As we all, I myself have seen a fancam of Prometo during the Shows he did in Canada and I instantly fell in love. I had to search for the song and ended up buying the whole album of Pablo Alboran listening to all the songs for weeks... the impact it had on me was I can’t describe it with words. Sometimes you are just so drawn to something at the first tunes, you will always remember it. I remember where I sat and how I found out about Prometo, the amount of hours I have listened to it on repeat, searched for the lyrics, backstory... everything I could get my hands on. It is a true masterpiece and not just the song itself but the program too.

There are actually 3 different versions of the song and he is using the Amazon Music, live version which is much slower than even the piano version. As for the versions I prefer the original or piano version, on the other hand I understand why he used the third version. It just fits so much more.

I have seen people calling it bland because Javier is not wearing any flashy costume but just simple pants and a sweater but if you look at the lyrics it does make sense and I think he sells it. The beige fits the melancholy it should show and how he does some movements to fit the text, like “dancing in the salon” and he kind of does a tango. I appreciate the lack of big jumps, beautiful spins instead and just single ones or more like leaping through the air, the knee slides and that one gorgeous Ina Bauer (he did that right in front of me and I was dead). It drew some tears from me, both for how the song generally gets me emotional but also due the whole afternoon already. This year literally two performances made me cry and this was one of them. I am so happy I could record it to keep with me forever.

I posted it on my Instagram in pieces, if you want to watch - HERE. I have also a Story Highlight for ROI only.

I found the audience in this particular instance annoying as some people kept screaming “Vamos” in between, I am sorry but Prometo is not something where it fits and I felt it disturbed the magic it was casting on everyone. Oh well, I concentrated on Javi instead, singling along a little bit.

I think by now after this long paragraph you can tell I am in love with Prometo and I am so thankful for being granted the privilege to watch it. It’s a beauty.

After that basically the finale was on and we had a happy Javi shimmy around the ice the music in the Prometo outfit. It was so nice to see him this happy, dancing around, giving people more time to shine as they introduced everyone again. Javier looked so happy and I was too. 

ROI is an incredible show and if you have the possibility just go, you are not going to regret it. I know the cast is different from some locations but I was so happy to have seen these performances. And the fact he nearly sold out a 11K stadium in Spain is so amazing too! Javier deserves this, truly.

I have no pictures or videos in this post as I have mostly taken videos and I have them in the insta stories or not yet really posted it. Some are quite short. I think I have only really filmed Javis programs in full and the opening. Oh and the acrobats. The rest just bits and pieces for memory.

After the show - 18th November - Sunday

Feeling so much better about my day thanks to Javi and the cast we returned late to our hotel. I chatted with my best friend for a bit before settling for bed. I slept really bad, waking up every hour and being confused about where I am, the time and it was a long night. I promised my friend to leave with her to the airport tho her plane left a few hours before mine but really I had nothing better to do and it was raining cats and dogs. Sightseeing got cancelled. At the airport the gloomy mood returned though I tried my best to be more positive, waiting for the medal ceremony which I could watch before my own flight went off. My friend left and I stayed alone at the airport. Did some shopping to lift my mood but otherwise sat at the Starbucks.

The moment the medal ceremony started I probably had the lowest moment of my entire weekend. I was sporting a headache due to the weather being horrible, my irritation level was high, been fighting the emotional situation... The moment I saw Yuzu with crutches I cried. I cried in a public coffee at an airport after one of the best evenings of my entire year (along with Helsinki weekend).  I just... it was hard and still is, will be for a while and yet again I felt bad because Javi should have been my priority for this weekend. I am sorry... again and again.

Once I fixed myself emotionally, I had to go to the gate. Cue Lufthansa being their usual self... delay with the flight, roller-coaster ride included in the price and when we landed and finally could get off the plane. I was more irritated than ever, my whole head was throbbing. Had to wait 20 minutes for a fucking train to take me to the city but yet again due to blocked routes, follow it up with a solid 20 minute walk in the cold ass weather. I barely get home and am in front of my building a guy starts to hit on me after I helped him with the same issue I had - public transportation. God, I was so not having it but trying to stay polite. When I rejected him he tried to pull the “is it because I am black” card and I was like... OMG REALLY? You wanna pull that shit just because someone you just met and is literally standing at the door of her building refuses to give you her number or expect yours? You are a fucking stranger I just met and I am sorry but hell no. Somehow I managed to actually get into my apartment and I was done. I was done with the whole day and the weekend and just nope.

While I did have one of the best weekends of my entire life it was also one of the worst ones. Even now I am conflicted how I feel. One moment I am happy the next I am sad and I really don’t know. Regardless of it all there is one thing I will say:

Javier Fernandez, thank you for organizing ROI and thank you for giving us the privilege to enjoy your skating, putting on a show that left me shaking and crying (literally... Prometo was emotional for me). Thank you, truly. The whole show and cast, including you were incredible. Gracias. See you next at Europeans! ♥

[skelltan]

MLW Fusion 159 Review/Recap

Hey all, another week, another MLW Fusion recap. Let’s get right into it. We start with Richard Holliday, showing us his morning routine. Oh, it’s an ad for health food. I… didn’t expect that, but alright. We then get another recap, this time on Hammerstone vs Nduka.

We can hear the crowd over the commentary. I sure hope that doesn’t persist. We have Cosmos from Mucha Lucha Atlanta. Haven’t heard of this one, but alright. his opponent is Star Rogers, also from MLA. Alright, so this is another indie match, similar to the wildcat stuff on NWA. If you read my NWA reviews, you know I’m not a huge fan of having a purely indie match when you have other people on your roster to showcase, but hopefully these guys entertain.

They trade submissions, and then some more athletic moves such as dropkicks. They then do more athletics and do some smaller mat pinning type stuff but it feels quite slow. Their strikes also don’t feel that strong. Cosmos hits a decent looking sunset flip type deal, though. He then hits a tope. Star hits one that looks better imo. He then hits some chops on Cosmos on the outside. Apparently these guys are also from IWA Puerto Rico? I dunno why they mentioned MLA, but alright.

Ad break, and when we’re back they do more counter wrestling stuff. Cosmos gets a two count. He takes the lead and hits some chops in the corner. Star also gets a two count. Cosmos gets hit with a gorebuster I think they say? He lads a bit scary, almost looked like he landed on his head. They’re both down.

Cosmos hits some lariats and a tiltawhirl esque ddt for another two. Star hits a jump up neckbreaker for a two. They trade some chops on their knees. Cosmos hits a standing spanish fly for a two. Star hits a top rope spanish fly for the win.

This was bad. Not because of these two guys, I get it. They’re guys from the indies who probably haven’t had a lot of work or opportunities most guys we see on this show, or at all do. They were probably cheap to book. It was probably a breather match in the middle of tapings. But they decided to put two unsigned indie guys in a match and take up nearly half of the episode. That’s not good use of your airtime.

If they just cut this match short, or booked one of these guys with a name with more experience, it would’ve been acceptable, but these guys got way too much time for what should’ve been a filler match. If this was my first experience with MLW, I wouldn’t be hyped – they’re lucky me, and I assume most of their other fans, have seen good stuff from them in the past to want to stick with them.

--

Anyhow, we see a pic of Hammerstone at the hospital and see his injury from last week, and ouch, it looks gnarly. We see EJ in the same parking lot from last episode. “How you tackle me but you knock your damn self out?”. Considering EJ is a former footballer, that’s a pretty good burn in my opinion. He still tries to get the himmy neutron thing over, though, which is not as good, but hey! I’ll take that entertaining line.

The Samoan SWAT Team chatter a bit. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling a bit adhd but I didn’t quite understand much of what they said. There’s a fucking ad for a Blumhouse movie? It’s about an evil baby or something. Everytime I see ads on MLW, it’s for wrestling related stuff. That’s weird. Anyways. Mads cuts a promo. He wants to face Hammerstone, but Mance fucked with him, so first he’s gonna take out Mance.

We then see Mance in the woods. He’s continuing the Doc Gallows joke, and it’s starting to get a bit old now. Microman is here, though, with a butterfly net. We see a flashback to the number 1 contender’s women match. Flammer cuts a promo. That’ll happen next week. We also have mance vs mads in a tables match. We see Bomaye Fight Club cut a promo on the Opera Cup. It’s now the Bomaye Cup of the gods.

--

We got the main, SB Kento vs Davey Richards. The two lock up, trading holds. Davey takes him to the corner, but Kento kicks him in the chest, then wails on him in the corner. Davey whips him out and then run around a bit, but Davey dropkicks him out of the ring. Kento takes off his shirt and strangles Davey with it. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen a spot like that before.

They now brawl on the outside. Kento slams him on the ring apron. After ads, Kento is in control. He stomps Davey in the corner and hits a running dropkick, going for a two count. He goes for some sort of submission on the ropes. Davey hits some strikes. They fight for position, but Davey hits a double stomp. Kento tried to hit a sunset flip on him but Davey fought it, so he was just standing there pretending to try not to fall down. It looked stupid.

Anyways, they exchange strikes. Davey hits a dragon screw on Kento. He gestures to the crowd, for a bit too long imo, prior. He then goes to the top rope and goes for a stomp, but SB dodges. Davey then gets him in the trailer hitch, but Kento gets the ropes.

They then trade some holds some more – Davey hits a handspring but gets caught, and they then trade kicks, and Kento hits a german for a two. Kento goes to the top ropes, but Davey climbs with him. He hits a big superplex for a two count. He grabs an ankle lock for a second, but runs to the ropes to hit Kento. They then exchange strikes. Kento hits the ropes, but gets a kick to the head and a german. Davey then hits a lariat and a brainbuster for a two. Davey instantly gets the ankle lock and wraps around the leg with his body. SB taps out.

Rich interviews Davey, and he says he’s coming after Alex Kane. I thought he’d get ambushed, but nope.

--

Well, that was my least favourite episode of MLW so far. The first match was a huge waste of time in my opinion. Kento and Davey was alright and I didn’t make a big deal out of it, but that sunset flip spot looked quite stupid and took me out of the match which I wasn’t super into to begin with. I didn’t care for any of the promos other than the end of Mance’s and EJ’s. Also I just realized, at the start of the show they told us Cesar was fired from being a matchmaker and they’d tell us more, but they never did.

I’m still interested in the two main feuds to keep watching as well as MLW proving to be entertaining before, but like I said, if this was the first MLW show I saw, I wouldn’t wanna tune in for more. To be honest, I’m not super hyped about next week’s episode, either. I’m not a huge Taya fan and Flammer didn’t impress me. I just hope Mance and Mads deliver, as well as what other matches or promos they have. Either way, I’ll be there, and as always, the next post I’ll do will be a NWA recap. See you next time.

[cypher2]

alright alright alright story time. 

I went down to FL for the weekend to hang with @in-solo-we-trust and we drove to orlando for the seattle game. she tried to warn me about the city and stadium and fans, I will admit lmao. but nah dude you gotta witness it in person. 

All I’m gonna say is orlando’s stadium is in the middle of a fucking dump and looks like it was just picked up and placed right in the middle of the most random shittiest piece of land in the city but sadly they purposely built that bitch there thinking it would be appealing. also, seeing the amount of hype and promo they put into making ashlyn one of the faces of the team given her performances that deadass hinder their progress year after year is really actually sad to see. embarrassing. but I will say the stadium and field are nice. seeing kop and lydia in goal made me miss hope and I wanted to die. kop should be the starting keeper dont try to argue it bitch there is no argument. but kop didn’t stop to sign. not a lot of players did, it was so fucking nasty hot and humid out, understandable. and syd’s baby tater tot is super cute. but syd saw seattle gear in the stands and walked the other way down the line lmao. and carson was really sweet, I told her we miss her in Seattle, she smiled and said thank you. I don’t understand how all these players are so photogenic after sweating their asses off in that heat for that long but here we are. beautiful fishes. also orlando fans are exactly like I thought they’d be lmao. but I will say it was a decent size crowd and though annoying they were loud and it’s obvious ppl there really support their team and players so that’s important. except 3rd string stans. also nwsl officiating is even worse in person than I’d imagined. tragic. enough there. 

most of seattle players dipped after huddling after the game bc they looked beat. the heat really fucking drains you. but we got jess’ attention as she was walking off and I waved my tiny dragon jersey. she came over like the bad ass she is. shirt up slightly to wipe her face thank you @god. she looked so over the heat but she was nice and signed and spoke briefly. she’s bigger than I thought in person and I want her to choke me w her nice tatted arms thanks. she signed for alexis and me then we got a selfie and she left. tiny dragon of my heart forever. I brought my naho 36 jersey too and she saw it and came over smiling big. my sun and stars. she was so cute she asked me where she should sign and if I wanted her to write a 9 or 36. delicate assassin, I stan forever. rumi smiled and waved a little to ppl but she was limping a lil bit and looked in pain :( and bev was barely walking on her own and crying as she was helped off the field at halftime. but she saw us and smiled through it and looked happy to see seattle fans right there. then after the game betos gave her a piggyback to the tunnel and she saw us again and waved and said sorry as she was going bc she’s a gigantic sweetheart who is genuinely concerned she did not get to stop and talk to/sign for ppl and I’ll fucking fight you on this. I didn’t actually meet her but I can tell she’s the sweetest one on the team from the way she was that’s all. luuuu came over to this girl next to us and talked forever and a fucking day. then syd came over w baby tater tot and they all chatted for awhile. syd’s baby emanates the biggest mood faces ever. alexis has the picture that proves it. lu is so fucking pretty hello. glowing skin whats your technique. and she’s really relaxed and sweet too. took time to talk and asked if alexis was from seattle bc she had an old school program. nice laugh, gracious. 

the highlighter kits really do blind your fucking eyes out and they really do have a curse. but I called a tie. we always tie those hoes. and apparently I have reversed alexis’ bathroom curse. ugh my presence. I made the mistake of sticking my hand out when taylor was jogging by like she does with all her missed goal scoring opportunities and I touched her hand. my bad. I don’t want these vibes. yeah she scored for us blah blah, jess should’ve blasted that one shot she had. one day I will witness a tiny dragon goal and I will be compete once again. queen of assists naho came through so can’t complain. when seattle scored we jumped up and alexis shoved me and made me spill my beer. pissed of orlando fans everywhere. that’s a mood. some good saves from both posts. assistant ref runs a lot. tall beautiful gazelle. front row seats are what’s up. but florida weather is literally satan’s sauna all the time. I’m still recovering from an internal heat stroke. anyways I’m so happy I got to see the goobers play in person and I got to hang with the chillest beach bum all weekend. 

[goprandall]

DC MASTERPOST >3

It’s no secret the DC universe is something of a DCpointment. There’s no cohesion in sotrylines, films are released at odd and illogical times and I decided to rewatch and give proper reviews.

MAN OF STEEL 2013 7/10

This film is something of an outlier on the DCEU, because it is not terrible.

The strengths of this film are defiantly the first act, I feel it was a clear and concise way to create backstory without the stereotypes of following him through childhood into adulthood, they did a great job of creating krypton and establishing an antagonist with a clear motive. I liked the jump straight into adult with flashbacks when confronted with items from his past, it allowed us to understand his past without saturating his journey all at once. Arguably the first arc of this film is completed here with Clark/kal discovering who he is and why he is here. The second arc of General Zod trying to bring back his people is still very well done, providing us more relevant backstory and shows logical actions from both sides of the fight nearing the end of the film. The biggest weakness of the film in my opinion is that it is 20 minutes too long. When superman destroys Zods ship killing the artificial children of krypton, I feel this arc was complete, although the after fight solely fought between SM and Zod does show us the struggle superman goes through becoming the last kryptonite in exaistance, this does not outweigh the pointless mass destruction this causes, on top of a already destroyed city. In my cut this would be disregarded.

Final thoughts of the film; my favourite part was the shot of ‘ALERT’ that slowly turns to ‘Toner empty’, a good transition and piece of direction. I’m giving this film 7/10, in my classification would make it a good Netflix film, one I’d be happy to watch but not pay money to solely see. It was a hard choice to not make it a 6 however, I rank wonder women as a 7, and this is more than equally as good, the only things preventing me from giving it a higher rank is it’s rewatchability. Personally I rarely would due to its lack of joy and humour, and overall darkness, not just in plot but also in cinematography and colour grading.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN 2016 6/10

Batman v superman had all the the ingredients to be the summer blockbuster, but as predicted it followed every DC film and tanked.

Their are some aspects of this film that are genuinely good, giving it a 6, one of those things is the first act of the film where we are introduced to Batman, although I didn’t personally feel the need for another origin story, the way this scene is directed especially with the earl sequence is fantastic, adding depth and differing from older versions of the same story. The other good thing about this film is the Batman fight scene, it is so well articulated and choreographed, i struggle to see how it fits within the wider film which is strangely badly directed, edited and in-cohesive.

Continuing from this idea, I feel the dream sequences are one of the leading problems for the in-cohesion of the film, the issue with these sequences is, if they are not well done it stops the audience trusting more daring scenes, ultimately taking you out of the story. Next, I feel another reason this doesn’t live up to its hype is, again, DCs continuous frenzy of oversaturating it’s film with characters. Here I argue Wonder women is not needed in the end fight, the fight could just have easily gone on sitbout her, or, if they had released wonder women before this film so we felt more engrossed in the character it wouldn’t been fine. However her and all the other justice league promo clips, should not have been in the film in the context they were as they’re a corporate shoehorn, promoting further projects. The other character I feel is unneeded is ‘Doomsday’, he’s quickly thrown in at the end of the film, and honesty an antigunist shown to us at the end of the film will never give the depth and fear of a hero fight, as a villain shown throughout the movie.

To me, Batman V Superman is a movie. Not a film, crafted and worked on to create a narrative for the audience, but a summer movie to get the kids out the house. The idea of having two meta humans as important as Batman and superman battling each other should boggle the mind, as the first avengers did for me or civil war for a closer comparison. But the difference with the MCU spectaculars is, they earned their right to blow people’s minds, DC is playing catch up and trying to get praise and awe without the hard work.

SUICIDE SQUAD 2016 3/10

Wow. This review has been hard to create and will most likely feature ideas from other reviews via podcasts and YouTube due to the fact this movie boggled my head in the sheer awfullness that ensued.

As always, I begin with the strengths of the film. In this instance it’s slight. I loved the aesthetics of the branding for the film, the colours, the neon animations, I loved it all. The mini descriptions in the film were funny and added to the VeRy little personalities of the characters. It is important to point out this clearly wasn’t present in the first edits of the film, but due to good feedback of later trailers that were released they were added, which is why this element of humour is the only of its kind that lands in the film.

Next I normally look into the storyline and the character arcs of the film, arguably my second favourite aspect to look for in a film. In suicide squad there is none, and there aren’t any. That sounds harsh, but the reality is there is no cohesive storyline, it follows no one character individually and the film darts back and fourth between every character, no matter the timeframe. Dean Dobbs (from adventures with dean and Bertie’s podcast) best describes this as ‘like playing a video game where someone is skipping every cutscene’ and this is absolutly true, especially when looking at the relationship of the joker and Harley Quinn. This film is so badly edited, As jack Howard describes, this film contains no scenes, it is obvious the whole film was rehashed and re-edited after the release of BVS (which crashed at the box office) and the final trailer was released, which was very different from the first few as it showed humour and action, and it is evident they cut out almost everything apart from these things. I would best describe it as many GoPrandall videos I have scrapped as I tend to forget to film opening sequencers and filler clips to show the progression of the story told apart from the action, and this is exactly how I felt about the editing of this film, they did the best with what they got but it wasn’t enough.

Although there was a lack of character arcs, this film had an ABUNDANT amount of characters to fill its shoes. This film crams as many famous faces in as many characters

As it can, because for some reason DC refuses to create stand alone films due to the catch up to the MCU that’s going on. We’ll start with the joker, or more exactly the 10 minuets of joker we got. Many scenes with the joker were so heavily edited, and deleted, it is hard to judge Jared Letos performance, because he didn’t have chance to give one. But, as a side note the hand on the mouth laugh is one of the WORST cinema moments I’ve experienced only closely beaten by ‘were bad guys it’s what we do’. Yuck. But we’ll finally look at the ‘suicide squad’, although looking at them it’s hard to identify why they are in this squad. We’ll start with reason no one on the team seems to have a reason to be there, aprt from deadshot, who had his daughters arc to think about. All the others just seem to around and don’t want to die and get out of prison. VERY good motives DC, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Next we can look at the abilities of this so called ‘meta human’ squad and how under utilised they really are, which could show why this film failed so badly. Firstly deadshot- ‘never misses a bullet- amazing at trick shots.’ Who in the film performs close quarter headshots, the same as the Seal team next to him, and in the film performs 1 trick shot. 1. That was in establishing scene right at the beginning, but he isn’t the only victim, we can look at Boomerang, my favourite character by far, with one the coolest abilities, who throws a total of:5 boomerangs and catches: 2. Let’s be honest Harely is there as the jokers Love Interest and to keep him in the film. We can also look at el deablo, the man that can shoot fire but refuses until he’s bullied for a whole minute. The worlds worst archaeologist who starts the entire battle, after BREAKING AN ANTIQUE immediatly after finding it (bravo) who if wasn’t attempted to be weaponised, would’ve skipped this whole mess. Slipknot, a man who could climb any wall or anything, who immediatly dies after climbing a wall, but don’t worry because they don’t even want you to worry about this due to the fact they don’t even intro him before he magically appears on the squad, hoping the audience will react ‘oh he’s going to be important!!! What a mystery man!!’. This is almost as bad as Katana, who adds nothing the story apart from a short intro and when she cries to her dead husband, at which point I began to cut my toenails, something I gave more of a shit about.

But, it is obvious I’m a teenage marvel fanboy just shitting on DC,and I hate when people complain without offering another viewpoint, therefore, to fix this, I would dedicate this film to the viewpoint of deadshot, giving him the character arc of changing with the goal of seeing his daughter- eliminate the extra characters- slipknot/katana and either dedicate more time to the joker and harley sub plot or eliminate entirely, NOT BOTH. With this, better editing around these eliminated plot points could make a more coherent story with more empathetic story arcs. I have a full idea for a plot but this is too long as it is.

WONDER WOMEN 2017 7/10

Wonder women is a refreshing instalment into the DCEU, showing they seem to e learning, but are still falling behind on some of the most basic hurdles.

Firstly, as always we’ll start off with the strengths of his film, firstly it is vividly important to recognise that this is the first major Superhero film to be directed, and sustain a heavy female cast. It does so fantastically and leaves me more excited for the next instalment now knowing female directors and stars now have evidence for an accomplished superhero movie, which arguably has outdone the past 2 major films. With this we see a brilliantly refreshing opening act with a subtle and bright, vibrant origin story.

However, this film slowly returns to madness throughout the film when major plot holes appear, and the film making quality slowly deteriorates. Firstly, the iggest plot hole that has been so easily overlooked is the WW1 aspect. Given a World War Two film, having the Germans be the sole enemy is obvious and logical, however WW1 is not as simple as this and the use of Germans as the enemies is vaguely lazy. Also, as DC loves to do, it adds in extra characters and neglects to give them logical and coherent backstory and arcs. We only need to look at the ‘best marksman in the war’ who doesn’t fire a single shot, and continues not too all the way to the end of the film, showing no growth. The final plot hole is what draws it into the wider EU. The entirety of this film is showing Diana that the human race is bad and should be left alone, although when she defeats arias, this is meant to break this curse and peace seems to be restored. But, in BVS she claims to have stopped helping mankind because of their evils, neglecting Stalin, WW2 and the Vietnam war to name a few, but making a reappearance for- lex Luther. Wow.

Although in almost most of its entirety this was a pleasant watch, my personal issue stopped this at the third act when the final fight begins. To me the film returns to DCs favourite colour scheme of dark and clouded, and uses quite frankly some of the worst CGI I’ve seen recently, making me wonder why they didn’t at least try to incorporate real elements, such as Marvel, but this is still the best DC film after man of steel and I’m excited to see more female led and directed films come to screen.

JUSTICE LEAUGE 2016 5/10

This will be the shortest of the DC reviews, this is the film I’ve seen least of the lot and I feel I’ll need at least another viewing to get a full understanding. To premise this I fully understand Zack Snyder had personal issues leading him to leave and Joss take over, and this is in no way mocking him.

But I’ll dive in, maybe the fact I’m struggling to write this review tells me a lot about the movie. Wonder women was one of the only saving graces of this move, she was well understood and I feel her likeness as a character was well transferred from WW to JL. Contrary to this, I’m struggling to write about cyborg and flash, we were given next to no backstorys, although the flash’s was hinted at at least twice that I recall and what we were given were quite chaotic. Batman was a major letdown for me, coming down from BVS where he was a certified badass taking on superman, he turns into a wimp and hides for a majority of the film, quite evidently showing Ben affleck Clearly does not want to be there. I feel the overall plot of the film was almost underatsnvle, but had the taken the time to set up this storyline in previous films it would’ve been much better, this movie lacked the right to have all these characters on screen together. The characters had adequate screen time each, but contrary to its biggest rival ‘the avengers’ this really wasn’t that special, most of the characters had the same abilities, barring the flash, and the way the avengers films have shown all the characters working together simultaneously in cinematic mastery, you can see hints of Joss attempting this, but with a bad set up it’s an impossible task.

I conclude, not going into the issue with the CGi because I don’t have that much time.