#they’re the spider-men pointing at each other meme

[thatmexisaurusrex]

Just Sam and Bucky, finding out that they both planned surprise dates for each other on Valentine’s Day.

[leviathxn]

“Too Distracting”

Okay so I’m writing this on my iPad first with a keyboard so the formatting might be weird and everything but I’m gonna go back and fix it on my phone and stuff too. But backstory for this, if you’ve gotten Spider-Man memes and couple stuff then you probably know about the Silk-Spider and Spider-Man. If you don’t, in short they both got bitten by the same exact spider and now whenever they’re with each other they have the primal instinct to mate, meaning there is a major sexual attraction and tension between the two. So here we gooo. (Also I’m gonna be writing a Dads best friend AU with Miguel of course so be ready for that!)

Miguel O’ Hara x Spidey!Fem!Reader

Warnings : Smut! Breeding Kink, Begging, Creampie, Size Kink, Fangs, Age play (Miguel is 30 in this short, the reader is 18!), It won’t fit, praise (on both ends). Masturbation (mentioned)

Summary : You and Miguel were bit by the same spider in the same universe. (I know he wasn’t originally bit by a spider but just for our pleasure!)

I had joined the Spider-Society only a few months after I became a Spider-Man. I had known about Miguel for the longest time, but afraid of getting in his way, I watched from afar. I was sure he already knew of my existence but I didn’t see a point in introducing myself. He was way ahead in his Spider-Man career by the time I became one. He was built for seemingly an older man. I was just freshly 18, but I knew what my body felt whenever I looked at Miguel. It wanted to be with him, on top of him, to have him. But I knew that was nothing but a fantasy that occured at the moment.

That was until I realized just how much I would be seeing Miguel around the HQ. When I first formally met him in base we both tensed up at each other’s presence. God was he a gorgeous man. His perfectly sculpted face and body, lined tightly against his suit. I clenched my thighs together as he slowly descended, his red eyes quickly analyzing me, a flash of lust glazed his eyes when our eyes met. What was he was feeling? I wondered if he felt the same as I did, the unnatural connection I felt to him. After that encounter I saw him everywhere. We would always make eye contact, closer than we ever were before but still so far apart. My body could feel when he was close, every glance I met. I’m sure his body reacted the same way. I’m sure he could smell the desire pouring out of my body, my heat becoming wet every time I heard him speak.

But again this was nothing but presence alone. I didn’t actually have to interact or be within 6 feet of him. That was until almost every mission I went on, he was there. It confused me. Some of them were small and easy, maybe only needing 2 spider men. Luckily there was always at least a 3rd Spider-Person, meaning me and Miguel were never alone. Again, we haven’t spoken directly to each other, both of us so focused on the missions that everything went perfectly fine, no need to communicate. The other people on the missions with us were confused, although we thought we were hiding it, they saw us pretty much ignoring each other and the air felt thick between us.

Until finally, we were put on a mission alone. It was simple, capture the anomaly terrorizing earth-823 and leave. We met up in HQ, as Miguel opened the portal to the world. We were still both quiet, our body’s urges becoming hard to suppress. Before we left I looked at him, noticing our size difference. He was huge, in every aspect. His broud shoulders could easily trap me beneath him, his tall frame leaving you barely at eye level with his chest. My body trembled, wanting nothing more than to be one with him. I would be so small on top of him, struggling to take in all of him.

“I-“, I tried to talk but he made eye contact with me and I felt my body grow weak.

“Don’t.” He growled out, stepping into the portal. I tried to collect myself, before stepping into the portal behind him.

We landed in a very grassy and deserted version of New York. Miguel and I looked around confused. Afraid to speak, I continued to look around, despite my body begging to take Miguel. He jumped off the building beginning to swing and search. He sent me a message on my watch ‘we’ll split up, send your location if you find something’. I sighed happily, I would be able to focus. Although I was a bit nervous to be completely alone, I started to swing in the opposite direction. I kept my eyes open, about 30 minutes have passed and neither of us had found anything. I checked my watch and tried calling Miguel. The phone rang until he finally picked up.

“I’m guessing you haven’t found anything either?” He grumbled, sounding annoyed.

“No... should we meet up and go back? I haven’t seen anybody here... and I mean no one”. He sighed and agreed. He said when we met up he would contact Lyla, not wanting to leave if the anomaly was still here. I waited patiently for him, sitting down on the ledge of the original building. The sun was setting and although it was eerily quiet and empty, it was relaxing. I heard him land on the building, talking with Lyla.

“So the anomaly left when we got here? Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place!” He shouted at her, she shrugged and said they ended up catching it in a different universe.

“How about instead of being angry you use this alone time to you’re advantage? You’re with the girl you’ve been stalking ever since she got here-“ He quickly disabled Lyla, flustered. I felt the heat rise to my face after hearing that. I didn’t know what to think. Sure I watched him from afar but if he had watched me through screens that means he saw all of me... when I had touched myself thinking about him. My body tightened. Thinking about him watching me set my body on fire. I turned around to see him standing there. He stared at the ground, arms crossed.

“I- uhm.... What she said... was it true?” He grunted, looking at me. He nodded his head and took a seat next to me. Miguel knew what he was doing by being so close to me.

“I don’t know why you make me this way... but whenever you’re in the room with me I felt like... Fuck you’re too young for me to be telling you about this”. Miguel had a scan done on him and I, knowing long before that we were bit by the same spider. This led him to watch me constantly, seeing me fuck myself in my room, moaning out his name as I used whatever toy or pillow to please myself. The thought of it made him sick of himself, knowing that he touched himself to your masturbation, cumming whenever you did. He went to stand up but I grabbed his arm, I looked up at him pleadingly.

“You watched me right? I deserve to know... you saw what I did to myself right?” His face flushed and he looked away. He sighed and sat back down. He hesitated, the image of me in the various positions, pushing a toy into myself. He always said to himself how he would be able to hit every spot, not the flimsy toys. He sighed before looking back at me.

“I’ve been wanting to fuck you since the day you came into HQ”. He grabbed my waist and easily pulled me onto his laps, my back to the beautiful sunset. I yelped as his grip tightened. He picked me up so effortlessly, as if I was nothing but a feather. “And I know you’ve clearly felt the same”. My pussy throbbed as I wrapped my arms around his neck, bringing my lips to his ear.

“I’ve wanted more than just you”. One of his hands moved to grab my face and force me to look at him. He pulled me into a deep kiss, sliding his tongue past my lips and fighting. I moaned into the kiss as I brought my hands up to his hair and curled my fingers through his locks. I ground my hips into his, arching my back to press all of my self into him. My legs straddled his as one of his hands moved from my waist to my wrist. He pushed a few buttons on my wrist watch and disabled my suit, leaving me in my undergarments. He broke our kiss and disabled his suit as well. As his fangs grazed over my collarbone I marveled at his size through his boxers. “I-it won’t fit.” He chuckled, kissing my shoulder.

“We’ll make it fit, mi amor”. I swallowed until he sunk his fangs into my shoulder. I moaned out at the feeling. I didn’t even feel the blood leave my body, I felt my heat tighten and clench on air. Although I was worried about the size that doesn’t mean I didn’t want it at all. His hands went to rip my bra off, not caring about the clasp or straps, he sliced them with his claws, letting it fly off. I whined as I liked that bra. He chuckled as he removed his fangs. Finally he moved his hands to cusp my breasts. He latched onto my right boob, his fingers toying with the other. My mounds were sensitive to his touch. I panted and continued to grind into him. “So young and perky querida... so full of milk for a baby”

“M-Miguel please don’t make me wait any longer, please put a baby in me~”. He moved us onto the building floor so I wasn’t hanging over the edge. He laid me on my back and continued to play with my breasts.

“You can wait mi amor”. I whined again as his lips went lower and closer to my hear. He grabbed my underwear at the seam and ripped it off of me. The cold air finally hit all of my nude body and I shivered. I put my hands on his shoulder, wanting to hold onto something. He kissed my hips and brought himself up. He slid two of his fingers into my mouth. I sucked on them and slid my tongue around them. “Such a pretty mouth hmm? I’ll figure out what it does another time.” He chuckled and his coated fingers slid to my heat. He teased me a bit, sliding his fingers up and down my entrance before plunging then in. I moaned and clenched around his fingers. My body shook as he pumped me with his fingers, before adding a third. Just from his fingers I felt stuffed as my body trembled. He continued to play with my breast, overstimulating me.

He watched my expression as he kissed my breast again. “I have to prep you... you’re taking in my fingers so well. So needy for my cum”. I panted and moaned at his words, a ray of curses and yesses leaving my mouth. I bucked my hips into his fingers, wanting him to feel my walls. He started to curl his fingers, pressing into the nerves inside of me. I bit my my lip, trying to suppress some of my moans. He moved his other hand to my face, opening my mouth. “Don’t hide those moans. No one but me will hear them, I promise you that”.

I felt a knot in my lower stomach, “Miguel please- I’m gonna cum”. I grunted out, he kept his pace as he felt my body convulse around his fingers.

“Go on.. cum on my fingers.” My body trembled as my fluids poured out of my body as I moaned out, arching my back. Miguel chuckled watching me pant. I already looked so pleased to him, he couldn’t wait to be inside of me, how I would look fucked and cock crazed. As I came down from my high, Miguel positioned his tip at my entrance and kissed my lips before sliding in. I was already so wet that he slid in with relative ease. We both grunted as he stretched out every bit of me. I could almost hear m body strain as his girth pushed into me. I felt the drool fall out of my mouth as he bottomed out. I felt so full as he put his hand on my back. He helped me arch by keeping his hand and applying pressure on my back, then pressed his other hand on my stomach. I felt him more than before as he applied pressure with his hands. (I heard from many people that this felt really good for women but idk)

He started to pull out, before quickly slamming back into me. As he pumped into me I felt his balls slap into my ass, hitting hard enough to leave bruises. I chanted praises and curses as he continued to slam into me. Every part of my body had been begging for this, needing this for so long and I finally had it. Finally having him fuck me and slut me out. “Please, please, please Miguel~ please keep going!” I moaned out, wanting him to pour all of himself into me.

“Can’t wait to fill you up... so round and plump with my baby”. He moved his hand and rubbed my clit with his thumb. “Does it make you feel good knowing only an older man like me can fuck you like this? I needed someone like you to fuck, so young and fertile, so ready for my baby”. His cock hit deep, hitting my G-spot over and over again

“Yes Miguel please~. You feel so good... you’re so good! Please put a baby in me~” He grunted as he stuffed his face into the crook of my neck, he bit down again, muffling his grunts as he continued to fuck me. My body shook under him as my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I saw stars and my body convulsed around his cock. The knot in my stomach formed again as he continued to pound into me mercilessly.

“Cum (Y/N), cum all over my cock, hmm? You’ve wanted it for so long”. I threw my head back as I orgasmed. After a few more pump Miguel finished too. His hot seed coating my walls. I choked out, feeling the stinky substance fill me up. As he pulled out of me he used his finger to cover up the hole, preventing any cum from leaking out. “Don’t want it to go to waste, right?” I nodded my head and he chuckled. He stared at my face, drool pooling out of my mouth and I still try to recover, panting with half lidded eyes. He felt himself twitch again.

He grabbed my watch and reactivated my suit. With the suit on it was visible that I wasn’t wearing a bra but luckily Miguel would be carrying me. He put on his boxers and reactivated his suit. He picked me up bridal style and opened a portal to Nuevo York, HQ. But before he stepped through the portal he made sure it would teleport him home and not HQ. He chuckled, ‘why give her that long of a break’ he said to himself. I looked up at him confused on why he laughed. “Rest now querida, we’re doing this again when I get you in my bed”.

ANYWAYS GUYS, excuse my weird language in this, I genuinely haven’t written smut in so long so I was trying to pace it but I didn’t know how to word it without being weird. I hope you guys enjoyed and let me know if I should write more smut, I will be writing the Dad’s best friend trope tomorrow after work because I’ve already written 2 today and I’m a little burnt lol. There’s probably gonna be two parts to it but I don’t really know how to link it and put it in the part one for people to find, and I also don’t want people forgetting about it so if somebody can help me out with that it would be greatly appreciated! Anyways have a good night (or day) everybody!

[nothingunrealistic]

review roundup: billions 6x11 “succession”

still the funniest episode title possible! thank god they went with that instead of mike money! what did critics think of the episode?

New York Times: ‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 11: I Like Mike

obvious choice of subtitle!

“Michael [expletive] Prince is running for president.”

There you have it, as summed up by Chuck with all his usual verbal panache.

these recaps really lose something to the nyt’s No Profanity rules.

Then there’s Taylor and Philip, the characters who theoretically give this episode, “Succession,” its title. (I’m inclined to believe it’s a cheeky reference to television’s other tale of the lifestyles of the rich and shameless; it’s a bit like that meme of the two Spider-Men pointing at each other.)

it absolutely is.

Taylor’s pitch involves the proverbial “move fast and break things” approach. Philip’s approach is more methodical. But when the dust settles, both of these wunderkinds realize they’re better off presenting themselves as a team of two, in which the strengths of one complement those of the other. This seems to free up space in their brains to finally puzzle out the why of Prince’s maneuver, and that why comes emblazoned with the presidential seal.

and that’s why their dynamic duality is so sexy and i will be so sad if it falls apart in the finale and they’re at odds all next season. (but i must still demand financial compensation for “wunderkinds” being dropped yet again.)

Running parallel to all of this is the surprise story line to which we were introduced last week: Wendy Rhoades’s book. Turns out it’s a nonfiction effort of sorts: “Rewards of the Ruthless: How I Make Wall Street Killers,” a chronicle of her tenure as Axe/Prince Cap’s performance coach. The book includes very thinly disguised versions of all your favorite traders, from the timid Tom (a Tuk analogue) to the hard-charging Lance (Victor all the way).

my problem is that it doesn’t — to our knowledge — include a thinly disguised version of taylor, which is the most compelling thing that could be in that book given wendy & taylor’s history, though their relationship's been out of focus lately. make it happen, finale!

But Wendy ultimately puts the kibosh on the book herself, burning it up with her Buddhist priest by her side.

still not convinced that’s the end of the book, given all the copies she left floating around among the prince cappers.

“In the end,” she says, “it’s a ride that only leads to needing more, which is exactly what I don’t need.” If only any other character on this show would realize the same.

god i wish! and i wonder if wendy will quit her job by season’s end. (not that i’d expect that to take her off the board forever…)

Am I the only person who wonders why Victor, Prince Cap’s most intimidating trader, is not in line for successor alongside Taylor and Philip? It’s weird to see him grouped alongside the likes of Ben Kim and Tuk instead of with the alphas.

because “most intimidating” does not equal “best suited to run the company,” maybe? did you even watch season 2, in which taylor proved themself most worthy of being handed the reins of axe cap despite not being One Of The Alphas, which was the entire point?

Vulture: Billions Recap: I Like Mike

jinx!

After last week’s sinister buildup, where audacious terms like “eating the dragon’s heart” were tossed around, finding out that Mike Prince is just running for president seemed like a giant letdown.

i wouldn’t call it a letdown exactly, but my reaction was basically “oh come ON,” so i guess i’m with you here.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that this is Billions’ take on the nightmare that was the Trump administration, and it did cross my mind once or twice that the presidency would be Prince’s endgame.

…no??? billions’ take on the trump administration was to strongly imply throughout seasons 3-5 that trump was busy being the president just out of frame and populating his administration with people like todd krakow and jock jeffcoat. the first half of season 6 made several even more obvious references to trump having been president, though the timeline (confused as it is) suggests he’s left office by now. and prince doesn’t resemble trump in any meaningful way beyond “rich white guy running for president.” there are lots of those! michael bloomberg would be a more apt comparison!

But I feel like we are just too burnt out to watch this storyline play out on screen again for two reasons: One, a power-hungry character making a White House grab is an overused TV trope. Two, we’ve already seen what happens when a megalomaniac does become president, IRL. And that was enough, wasn’t it?

i don’t disagree exactly, but if you’re looking at this through the lens of “prince is a trump analogue,” you’ll miss things. (and i doubt prince will actually reach the white house. as with the olympics, the point is to see what moves he makes and what he breaks along the way. it’s the journey, not the destination.)

While we’re still on the subject of giant letdowns, let’s talk about Wendy’s tell-all. I know her book about MPC needed to be a red herring so Chuck could emerge as the white knight self-tasked with taking down Mike Prince. And I know it was part of Wendy’s season-long Buddhist journey, where she needed to prove she could rein in her ego, but this whole storyline made me roll my eyes. Besides, burning a book in a Buddhist temple in 2022 doesn’t have much effect unless we see Wendy delete the manuscript from her hard drive.

wait until next episode to make this call! the book could come back for exactly the reasons you specify!

“Succession,” unfortunately, is one of those episodes where all the characters come off as uncharacteristically clueless until the final few minutes, making Prince’s big reveal all the more disappointing. It just didn’t make sense to me that Philip and Taylor took the entire episode to stop and wonder, “Hey, why is a guy at the top of his game forming a succession committee now?”

All the clues were there; it’s just that everyone on Billions is too self-absorbed to notice the details until the time is right.

you’ve answered your own question! philip & taylor in particular were too absorbed in the pitches they were making to their coworkers, and their feud with each other, to consider the bigger picture. only after they agreed to share power could they ask why this power was being handed down. (and in fairness to all the characters, most of them aren’t privy to prince’s vague conversations about Grand Plans and Doing The Thing like we, the audience, are — especially philip & taylor, who are miles away from prince’s inner circle. and they figured it out with less information than wags or chuck & dave had!)

That is, until a mysterious truck parks itself in front of Stately Prince Manor, switching on to reveal an upwardly ticking wealth clock of Mike Prince’s Net Worth (approximately $17 billion). As soon as the viral tweets and memes hit, New York City officials — and Andrew Yang — reverse course in their decision to partner with a guy who could easily fund the UBI plan by himself. Sure, the wealth clock is embarrassing, but how was Prince’s net worth not already public knowledge at this point?

someone’s net worth being public knowledge is not the same as someone’s net worth being displayed on a constantly updating billboard outside their house for anyone to see and for the internet to gleefully mock. just because you know a public figure is a billionaire doesn’t mean you know exactly how wealthy they are off the top of your head.

Oh, and did we ever figure out who was behind this prank in the first place? It has Chuck’s fingerprints all over it, but he doesn’t ever take responsibility.

it’s very obviously chuck. when we the audience 1) hear a ticking clock, the sound that accompanied chuck’s revelatory yoga session last episode, over all the shots of the truck heading to its destination 2) see chuck’s former lackey allerd give the signal to unveil the billboard 3) hear chuck tell scooter that his job is “exposing mike prince, dollar by dollar, for the scourge that he is” after the billboard’s gone up, it shouldn’t be necessary for chuck to say “i put up that billboard” any more clearly than he already has.

Around the same time, Chuck informs Scooter he’s turning down Prince’s offer.

turning down prince’s offer was simultaneous with admitting to having put up the billboard! scooter even described it as chuck telling on himself! remind me who’s clueless again?

And how poetic that just as Prince’s two potential successors reach a détente after fighting over literally everything, even alternative milk, Philip (Team Oat) and Taylor (Team Soy) put two and two together as well.

Philip reveals to Taylor that Prince has suspiciously never formed a succession committee at any of his dozens of companies before now.

is that poetic, or just sensible? taylor wasn’t going to ask philip what he knows of prince’s motivations while they were still fighting.

Likening Prince to Martin Sheen’s demagogue character from The Dead Zone, Chuck is about to enter the righteous fight he’s been preparing for his whole life: He’s going to save his beloved country from the king “who ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.”

thank you for properly acknowledging the closing song.

The “Succession” episode title feels like one big troll, doesn’t it?

it does! especially given that brian has never watched succession and has said he won’t watch it until billions is over!

Now that she’s put her congressional run indefinitely on hold, is Kate Sacker destined to do nothing more now than haunt her former employers’ offices with tired intimidation tactics?

now that’s just not true. next week she’ll accompany prince to some kind of meeting with dave and chuck and ira that will end in someone being arrested and indicted! much more exciting.

Entertainment Weekly: Billions recap: All is fair in love, politics, and war

someone didn’t get the memo!

While Taylor and Philip pitch their respective visions for MPC to their colleagues, Taylor taking a clinical, data-driven approach while Philip tries to woo them with a night out, Prince once again finds himself in Chuck's (Paul Giamatti) crosshairs.

that’s not an accurate description of their pitches. maybe it’s true of the settings they chose for those pitches — taylor’s catered lunch at the office versus philip’s night out at the bar — but taylor’s stated approach is event-driven and aggressive, while philip wants to play it safe by sticking to data and research. the first point taylor makes is that they’re no longer the numbers-focused data-cruncher they were when they came to axe cap!

This move by Chuck is meant to derail one of Prince's next moves, which is instituting a universal basic income (he wants to call it Mike's Money) throughout New York.

no ’s. just Mike Money. it’s cleaner.

Billions is clearly going bigger and bolder with the season finale around the corner, and Chuck and Prince are far from being done with each other.

assuming chuck doesn’t end the season in prison and get written out forever, of course.

[dakotafinely]

AAAAA I loved it!!!!! Thank you so much!!!!! Mama O’Neil is so awesome I love her!!

Raph: I bit a guys finger off?

He’s a chomping boi

Spider-Man meme with Mama O’Neil and Splinter let’s go

April: well now I know where I get the magnet to weirdness trait

Mama O’Neil after the initial shock and story: sweet Jesus you got big

Oh my goddddd PLEASE continue this!!!!! I desire the turtles to meet April’s other mom!!!

I-

Thank yooooooooooooooooou!!! And I will because you're SO FREAKIN NICE AND DESERVE THE WORLD LSKDJDOSNDHFOSNDHDIDND-

Also, I finally gave her mom’s names!

(Uh, here’s part one and part two for anyone who hasn’t seen ‘em!)

--

"My goodness! You're only fifteen? You're so big now!" Mama had commented. The conversation of the evening seeming to be like catching up with old friends. The smell of fresh food and the warmth of laughter put April at ease. This was better then even the best outcome she'd thought of initially.

"Granted, you were barely the size of my arm the last I saw you!" She said with a bit of laughter before passing the green bean casserole of to Leo. Who was probably having thirds by now.

Raph shrugged awkwardly, still a smile graced his face. Equally as relieved as April was that this was going well.

"Ah, well Red had many growth spurts when he was a tot. At one point I thought he just wouldn't stop growing!" Splinter said with a laugh of his own.

“I’m glad you’re mom likes Pops,” Mikey whispered as he leaned in next to April. Who nodded in agreement. The two sharing a chipper grin.

“I’m still surprised Raph ate someone’s finger!”

“Hey! I only bit it off okay!” Raph says with a small cringe of disgust “No way I’d actually eat it,” he sticks his tongue out as if to emphasis the point.

“Yeah, well,” Mama had waved a hand dismissively at Leo, the one who’d made the comment. Taking a small sigh “he should’ve known better to be harassing animal’s like that. Mutant or otherwise. It’s like asking for trouble.” she says as if scolding the hunter.

“Hey, now we know why you’re a weirdness magnet,” Donnie point’s out to April, gesturing to her mama “it’s in your genes!” he says with a grin. April playfully glares and rolls her eyes at him. He’d probably been holding that one in for a bit April thinks with the shake of her head.

Meanwhile, a woman ran through the streets of New York City. Rushing through the crowd with a couple of suitcases behind her. A large grin on her face. She’d made back home within the day. Maybe they were still eating. She chuckled to herself.

With as much as Maya makes, probably she thought to herself. Making her way up a familiar apartment steps.

“Oh, hi Deloris!” The woman spoke startled, but didn’t miss a step as she continued up the stairs.

“Kairi? You’re back early!” The elderly woman shouted up to her.

“Yeah, figured I’d surprise the girls!” Kairi shouted back, out of view of the old woman. Still prancing up the steps with gusto. Deloris shook her head with a chuckle, that girl had to much energy to spend.

She’d made it to her home barely breathless. Still, tiny pants came from her as she quickly made a search for her keys. Eagerly opening the door and bursting through with joy.

“GUESS WHO MADE IT!?” She slid into the dining room only to freeze at the sight.

Four large green men, one furry rat-looking man. Eating with her daughter and her wife. She blinked rapidly, as if something was wrong with her eyesight. Trying to change them into human’s with each blink she did.

Maya gave a tiny awkward chuckle “Hi honey!” she chirped with a tense shrug. As the rest of the group stared back. Frozen in surprise and horror. Awaiting April’s mother’s reaction.

Kairi was Japanese. Looking more like a bean pole. Dressed in nice pants and a dress shirt. Rolled up sleeves and unbutton by a few, clearly meant to unwind for the day. Glasses slid a bit down her face as she didn’t move, staring at the boy’s and their father. Her hair was in a nice pixie cut, only partially messy from the wind outside.

“April, Maya, Bedroom, now.” She spoke, slowly making her way to the master bedroom with her suitcases. Eyes never leaving the group at the table until she was out of view. April and Maya were quick to follow. Looking at each other with nervous glances.

April looked back to the boys with an obvious nervous look. Mouthing the word sorry before closing the door behind her.

The boys just sat and waited.

--

“Anyone gonna explain to me why April’s friends are creepy green boy’s and a rat thing??” Kairi practically hissed as April closed the door behind her. She didn’t seem angry, more of worried and confused.

“They’re turtle’s Kairi,” Maya corrects “and don’t make fun of April’s friends! They’re good people,” she defends, placing a hand around April’s shoulder. April nods in agreement with her mama.

“I-” Kairi’s argument dies in her mouth when she sees the look of worry on April’s face. And she sighs “I didn’t mean to make fun of them,” she rolls her head, trying to find the words “but a little forewarning that your friends are a little... a lot different would be nice,” Kairi says with small gestures.

“To be fair we didn’t know you’d be home,” Maya and April speak in unison.

“It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise!” Kairi whines throwing her hands up in the air with playful exasperation. Unable to stop the smile from returning to her face.

“Well,” April says with a small chuckle “it was a surprise for sure,” and that makes her mothers laugh. Kairi kisses her wife on the cheek and her daughter on her forehead.

“Alright,” she says with a sigh “best go out there and make a proper impression then huh?” to which the two nod.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure those boy’s think your gonna kick ‘em out,” Maya comments, grinning at her lover.

“What!?” Kairi says, slightly offended “I wouldn’t do that!”

“Well how are they supposed to know if we never get out there?” April says slowly making her way to the door. Looking at her mother with a sassy smile.

“Alright, alright I get it!” Kairi retorts playfully, sticking her tongue out as she walked over. Putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Shoulda known I’d be getting something crazy, I fell in love with you after all,” Kairi says to Maya as she walks over. Maya just grinning dorkily as she shrugs.

“You had every chance to back out and you didn’t,” she shrugs as April opens the door “not my fault.” and with that. The small trio of family walks out.

The boys all resisted the urge to stand up. Afraid of startling April’s mother even more if they did so. Still, they all perked up to some degree as the family walked out. Kairi with a grin on her face.

“Hello everyone,” She says hands clasped together with mischief in her eyes “I’m Kairi! April’s other mom!”

--

Sorry it took so long to get out! I would’ve gotten it out yesterday, but it was best friends birthday and we were vibin’ and I lost track of time. Ya know how it be sometimes. I hope you like it! Honestly I loved writing this! It was an unexpected, but a happily made, short story!

And again, thank you so much for the asks! It was so much fun to receive them! And you’ve been so kind throughout it all! You’re so lovely and I hope you loved this piece as much as I did writing it!

[ad1thi]

2020 fic recs!! [Part 1]

this idea was stolen from @iam93percentstardust cuz i just,,,thought that this year was absolute shit and it would be nice to make a fic rec list of fics from this year that helped me through it. this will be over a range of fandoms and ships, but all fics were written this year. 

fics are ordered by the month they were published. ive tried to keep to five fics per month, but this is not obviously all the fics ive read that month - i just didn’t want to make this insanely long. 

im releasing the first half of this on the 1st of December, and the second half on the 1st of January 2021 - because otherwise it would just get so long (and also so i will actually have fics for December)

happy reading!! hopefully you find fics on this you haven’t read yet

***

January

The cat is mighty dignified (until the dog comes by): @five-wow

Steve and Danny find them on the pillow in the corner of the dining area, where Eddie is on his side, ass half on the floor because the pillow is more cat-sized than lab-sized, and Pickles is nestled between Eddie’s front legs, essentially being spooned and looking very I-got-the-cream about it. Pickles’ head is tucked into the crook of Eddie’s neck and Eddie’s head slots perfectly on top of Mr. Pickles’, like a furry jigsaw puzzle.

“They’re cuddling,” Steve points out, unnecessarily.

Or: There is a love story unfolding under the McGarrett roof.

Captain ‘Socialist Rage Muffin’ America: @baffledkingcomposinghallelujah

It takes three months of dating Steve Rogers for Tony to understand why Aunt Peggy once shot at him in sheer frustration.

Alternately titled, Honey, I committed treason again.

The Best Laid Plans (Of Mice and Men): @arboreal-elm-ash-oak

His Dark Materials AU

It was Annalise who noticed their small visitor first.

“Tony,” the spider daemon said softly, skittering up the collar of his dress shirt, two of her eight legs resting delicately against his cheek, “Don’t startle them, but I believe we have a guest. Look, by the coffee table.”

Fourteen Million to One: @tunastorks

Six months after Thanos, six months after Tony’s death, six months after Steve returns to his own timeline, Tony Stark turns up on their doorstep.

Brewed Awakening: @iam93percentstardust

Two years after he comes out of the ice, Steve is drifting through life. On his teammate's recommendation, he decides to go back to school where he meets the grandson of an old friend. He finds happiness with Tony but Steve won't be in Boston forever and someone is out to hurt the Starks. Will Steve and Tony be able to reach their happily ever after?

February

the young, the reckless and the foolish: @bruciewayne

In most universes, they don't know each other, not in the slightest, or they hate each other, in a way that's perfectly logical for anyone who were to find themselves in a similar situation.

In this one, they've known each other since they were four years old and naively idealistic.

This is them over the years, against the odds.

a giant sign: @areiton

“Think you can get him to open the weapons division up again?” his CO asks, his voice hungry and Rhodey laughs because this--

“No. Tony hung up his weapons.”

“That’s not what the suit says,” his CO objects, and Rhodey shrugs.

Tony has always had rules, rules he expects the entire world to live by.

And then there was Rhodey, slipping under them.

my heart is driftwood, floating down your coast: @nethandrake

Tonight, there’s a stranger in his backseat. That’s not unusual.

He’s also sad. That’s not unusual either.

What is unusual is that the stranger is silent.

(One night, a stranger enters Steve's taxi. Nothing is the same again.)

Just A Cold: @/delighted 

There’s a new text waiting for him. It’s from Steve of course, and it’s vaguely threatening as most messages from Steve are these days. Still Danny ignores it, and now he’s really playing with fire. Maybe it’ll burn the cold out of him.

Or, Danny’s sick, and Steve can’t stay away. The usual comfort fluff. With a little cameo from a gently meddling Grace.

An Unexpected Guide: @/Rachel500

Danny Williams has hidden his Guide status to keep being a detective, but his time of hiding is up when he unexpectedly finds his Sentinel, Steve McGarrett in the midst of a tragedy.

March

Why don’t we (Collide the spaces that divide us): @five-wow

When they finally catch sight of each other again through the milling crowds, they’re both a little worse for wear. Danny’s left side is covered in glitter and every time he brushes a hand over his hair, more blue and purple confetti rains down. Steve is- Well, Steve is randomly shirtless, which is all things considered not excessively remarkable, but he’s also covered in smudges of colorful paint and has a very nicely printed bloodred lipstick kiss mark on his cheek.

“What did you do?” Danny asks, because it looks like Steve had a lot more fun than he did.

Or: Steve and Danny accidentally end up in the middle of something entirely new.

A Little Unsteady: @finduilasclln 

Written for the Tumblr prompt meme : "Hey! I was gonna eat that!"

Tony lashes out at Bucky for eating his dessert. Only, it really isn't about the dessert.

a national treasure: @starklysteve

Steve isn't looking for an apple and Tony decides his passion is to inspire young souls. -x- OR: the AU where Tony is a Youtuber and Steve is Captain America and somehow they still save the world together.

April

cycle through: @ambivalentmarvel

Twenty-five years ago, Tony Stark disappeared from his family home a month after the tragic deaths of his parents, Howard and Maria Stark, leaving a billion-dollar tech conglomerate without an heir and the world wondering what happened.

Twenty-three years ago, HYDRA gained another super soldier.

Ten years ago, Peter Parker’s parents died in what is ruled as a home invasion gone wrong but he knows was murder, plain and simple, because he spoke to the killer.

And in the present, Project Insight fails, and the Iron Soldier pays the price.

FOREVER-LOVE YOU-I: @/Eudoxia

Tony Stark is twenty-one when he loses his voice. It shouldn't matter, but in a world where the first words your Soulmate says to you are marked on your skin, it can be pretty damn annoying.

Especially for Tony's soulmate.

--

Companion piece to my fic Thumb, Index, and Pinky Extended. This is Steve's POV, with a few extra scenes, as a treat.

(Edit: Sorry if you guys get multiple notifications for this. I just realized (about two hours after posting it) that I fucked up the grammar in the title and I HAD to fix it. YOLO, I guess.)

come build a home out of me: @maguna-stxrk

Steve clears his throat.

“What if I went with you?” he asks nonchalantly, like his heart isn’t threatening to beat out of his ribcage.

Tony blinks a few times, looking at Steve, his mouth ajar. “As a— As my date?”

“Yeah.” Steve nods, feeling a little breathless.

“You don’t mind?” Tony furrows his eyebrows.

“I don’t. In fact, you can just tell them I’m your boyfriend. I’m sure they’ll back off, wouldn’t they?”

What.

“I— Huh?” Tony stares at him, brown eyes blown wide open.

What. What. What.

“Huh? Uh, I mean— You know, that way people will see that you have definitely moved on. Monica will see that you have moved on. Right?” Steve smiles, hoping that it masks his inner panic, because what?

Steve Rogers, what have you done?

i don’t have a choice (but i’d still choose you): @nethandrake

There’s a name inked onto his chest, a name written in an all-too familiar scrawl. And it’s— It’s—

Steve doesn’t realize his body is quaking until he’s tracing the tattoo with a shaky finger.

Because of course that is the name etched into the skin. Like a brand, a reminder for everything he has done. An appropriate retribution.

Anthony Edward Stark.

(When Thanos snaps half of the universe away, he unknowingly leaves the other half with soulmarks.)

ua haʻalele ʻoe iaʻu (a ua hoʻomālamalama ʻoe iaʻu): @just-fandomthings

"The truth is, I was shot in the chest and nearly died, and not even three days after I was released from the hospital, you up and left-- and of those two, I'm not sure which one hurt me worse!"

(Coda to 10x22 because come on, we all need a better ending than the one given to us.)

Title loosely translates to: "You left me in the dark (you lit me up)" -- inspired by the brilliant song "Say You Won't Let Go" by James Arthur

May

A Piece Of The Past: @hddnone

It had been so many years since Bucky had gone undercover in the Stark family's mob, he thought he'd gotten away clean.

Then Tony Stark slid into the seat across from him at his breakfast diner, and Bucky's boss has a new case for him.

the privilege of loving you: @starklysteve

“Why won’t you let me touch you?”

It’s a desperate plea, half-shouted and half-whispered, Steve’s voice cracking at the end. Tony stops in his tracks, halfway to the stairs. He doesn’t dare to turn back, and he really doesn’t want to fight, or to leave, to spend the last month of his life away from his husband and their son. But Steve can’t know, can he?

-x-

Or: Tony has palladium poisoning, but he doesn't tell Steve and Peter

your pillow feels so soft now (but still you must advance): @firebrands

When Bruce is 13, he decides to go to boarding school. It's an opportunity for him to learn about other people, and how to interact with them.

Bruce has the misfortune of meeting Tony Stark upon his arrival in Roxbury. Bruce is moving into his room, and Tony opens the door of his room to watch. He looks a bit younger than Bruce, hair wild and eyes bright. Bruce has never seen a boy like him before—handsome and confident.

Bruce doesn’t like it.

IMPORTANT: This fic has them meeting at 14, then progresses slowly until they’re 17. Includes underage drinking and kissing.

This is set before Bruce becomes Batman and Tony becomes Iron Man and I have no explanation as to how or why they just DO Canonically, Bruce is 17 when he finishes school and goes around the world to train, so we're sticking with that

The Real MVP: @sword-and-stars (part of a series)

[“I have saved this Tuesday!” Sokka announces, rattling the bag upon reentry.

Zuko doesn’t even look up from his phone as he deadpans, “It’s Thursday.”

Okay, so Sokka is still having trouble getting his days right without checking. At least he’s gone back to sleeping at night! Going to bed at night is way easier when you have a cute, cuddly boyfriend who starts falling asleep around eleven o’clock. It also helps that he and Zuko are on solid gold butt-touching terms.

It’s been a while since Sokka has been on butt-touching terms with someone and it’s amazing.]

Or,

Sokka knows a guy, gets laid, and introduces Zuko to the merits of an afternoon delight.

When is a bed not a bed? (When you’re not in it): @riotwritesthings

There’s a tiny safe house, with one tiny window and one tiny couch.

And one tiny little bed.

June

Nice Fingers: @anthonyed

A single compliment given by Tony stirs Bucky restless until he caves in and asks him out on a date.

With Steve’s help of course (whether he likes it or not).

The Darkest Touch: @starkrogerrs

This is the story of how Steve finds that it has been ordained that he is to marry a monster he cannot resist aka the God of Love himself, Tony.

It's Cupid x Psyche retold, but with thrice the amount of porn.

The Night Shift:  @weethreequarter

Welcome to the Emergency Department of San Antonio General where Dr. Tony Stark joins the team fresh from his most recent tour in Afghanistan and - much to the consternation of the other staff - strikes up an instant rapport with Nurse Steve Rogers. Meanwhile, new resident Bruce Banner refuses to give up on his patient, and Dr. Sharon Carter learns something from her own patients. Throw in a pissed off hospital administrator, Clint using the coffee pot as a mug again, and a major car crash and you have, well, just another night shift.

Wind Beneath My Wings: @iam93percentstardust

Sam first meets Tony Stark in 2005 when he joins the EXO-7 Falcon program.

In jest: @/apathyinreverie

“No, babe,” Danny shakes his head with a grin. “If the apocalypse were to go down while I’m elsewhere for some godforsaken reason, then you stay put and I’m coming to wherever you are.” His grin widens. “And I expect you to have cleared any aliens or zombies or whatever else might be messing with us off the island and to have set up a nice, comfortable military dictatorship for us to rule over by the time I get back.”

It’s a joke.

Of course it’s a joke.

Until it isn’t.

(A the-day-after-tomorrow-style apocalypse AU, where the world decides to end right when Danny is visiting one of the other islands with Grace. Because, of course, it does.)

[cannibalcreepers]

cherri but ends up fucking my oc who also plans on making him into Sunday lunch. It’s just the Spider-Man pointing meme but with two slutty cannibal men.

They plan on making each other Sunday Lunch but it's seems they're gonna be eating each other in a different way 😏

[citrineghost]

100 Humans on Netflix

So there’s this neat Netflix Original show called 100 Humans. I immediately got interested in it because they take this group of various humans from different backgrounds, age groups, and so on, and they use them to conduct experiments to get answers to interesting questions.

So, right away I had concerns about this show because

If you know anything about data and statistical research, you know 100 people is a very small sample size and does not breed accurate results

However, I’m very curious and wanted to see what they came up with anyway. I watched all 8 episodes and, honestly, I enjoyed watching it for the most part. However, I have a LOT of issues with the show and how it was conducted and I want to list them out here.

If you’re interested in watching 100 Humans or have already watched it, please consider the following before taking any of the show’s data as fact.

100 people is a very small sample size. This is because, the more people you have, the more weight each increment in your percentages has. With 100 people, each person represents 1 entire percent. That’s a lot. That means even a few people giving incorrect answers, having off-days, or giving ridiculous results (such as you can see in the spiders georg meme), can sway the entire result of an experiment into unreasonable territory. This is why most scientific studies attempt to get data from many hundreds or even thousands of people. The bigger the sample size, the more accurate it is to the entirety of the world.

I’ll put the rest under the cut because it gets long

The 3 hosts, who I’ll refer to as the scientists (regardless of if they actually are, because I’m not sure and don’t feel like googling it) repeatedly make false statements. For example, in one episode, they told their humans to “raise your hand if you believe you’re less bigoted than the average person here,” to which 94 people raised their hands. One of the scientists then made the statement, “If that were true, it would mean only 6% of Americans are bigoted.” This statement is entirely false. The only way to actually determine a true meaning to that would be to determine at what percentage of bigotry you are considered a real bigot. You also must consider that believing you’re more bigoted than other people in a small group, who you already have an impression of, is not necessarily indicative of how you feel you measure up to America as a whole. Anyway, I could go on and on. The only way to accurately summarize the results of that question would be to say that 44% of the humans had an inflated sense of righteousness or something of the sort.

The 3 scientists, both in person and in narration, for the sake of entertainment (if that’s what you call it) continually made “jokes” that poked fun at different groups, implied men are shit, etc. Maybe that’s fun for some people, but the kind of jokes they were making to amp up the hilarity of their host personas was genuinely just uncomfortable and made me feel even more like they couldn’t be trusted to go about unbiased research.

The scientists continually drew conclusions where the results should have been labeled inconclusive

The scientists made blanket statements about certain groups based on 1 element of research that would not stand up to further evaluation. For example, when explaining that ~93% (i think it was about that number) of Americans have access to clean, drinkable, tap water and yet some large number of single use bottled waters are sold every year, one scientist said it was because people believe bottled water is safer and cleaner than tap water. I am going to do my next survey on this to see if my own perception is flawed, but I simply don’t believe that all of the people who buy bottled water do so because they think its cleaner than “tap” (as if all tap is the same.) I know there have been studies about people drinking unlabeled bottled water and tap water and not being able to tell the difference, but this neglects to account for the fact that different houses pipes can affect the taste of the tap water running through them, people can use disposable bottles of water for certain activities or events too far away from tap for people to refill their reusable bottles easily, and so so so much more. Anyway, it just really bothers me to see “scientists” making these kinds of generalizations when they’re the ones whose results we’re supposed to trust.

The show was incredibly cisnormative. There was an entire episode based on comparing men and women that made me extremely uncomfortable with its division of people by men and women. There was the implication that all men have penises and all women have vaginas. There were implications that reproduction is a necessity in picking a partner. It was just a shitshow. There was one comment by one subject who asked, when being told to separate by men and women, “What if I’m transgender?” Obviously I can’t say for sure, but this person didn’t appear to be transgender and the sort of tone it was asked in makes me think it was literally something they asked him to say in order to get inclusivity points with the viewers and to “prove” that they’re not transphobic by having them divide up, because they said to go to the side you identify with. This whole thing is a) harmful to nb folks who would not have had a side to go to and b) completely negating the fact that the way we were socialized can have an effect on our social responses. That means that for a social experiment, a trans person could sway the results of one side due to their upbringing and the pressures society put on them before/if they don’t pass. This is all assuming they had any trans people there, which is potentially debatable.  I also take issue with this entire fucking episode because just, the amount of toxicity in proving one sex is better than the others is really gross and actually counterproductive to everything feminist and progressive. Not to mention, them implying that they’re trying to support trans people only to reinforce the notion that a trans man is inherently lesser for being a man when even prior to hatching, he would have also been force fed propaganda and societal pressure implying he’s less than for supposedly being a woman is really gross and makes me angry. The point of what I’m saying is that it’s actually not woke to hate men as a way of bringing women up because there are men who are minorities who are being hurt by the rise of aggression being directed at them for their gender. Anyway enough about that.

The tests drew false conclusions because they did not account for how minorities adapt to a world that’s not made for them. This is specifically directed at the episode where subjects were asked to match up 6 people into couples. There were 3 women and 3 men and the humans were asked to put them together into pairs. they could ask the people 1 question each but then had to match them up with only that information. The truth is, the people brought in were 3 real life couples already, which the humans didn’t know until after they matched them. The couples were m/f, m/m, and f/f. I think that’s great, but the problem is, literally none of the humans asked any of them their sexuality as their question and most people didn’t even consider they could match up same-sex people. One girl even thought that they had told her to make m/f pairings, even though they didn’t.  The scientists concluded from the experiment that the humans have a societal bias toward people, and assume they’re all straight, even if they, themselves, are not straight. I personally believe that was the wrong conclusion to draw. You could see some of the queer humans were shocked that they hadn’t considered some of the pairings might be gay. But, I don’t think it’s because they believe everyone they meet is straight, I believe this says more about what they expected from the scientists themselves. If someone is in a minority and they go to do something organized, like a set of experiments, they are going to be judging the quality and setup of the experiments by those designing them. I feel that the lack of consideration that the couples might be gay has a lot more to do with queer people having adapted to a world where queers are rarely involved or included in equal volume to the cishets. The queer humans taking part in the experiment and failing to guess gay couples shows that they have adapted to a world where they are excluded rather than a belief that every random person that they meet is straight. My point is further supported by an expert they had on the show who explained that, statistically, it was entirely likely that they were all straight and that even queers will account for being minorities by going with what’s most likely. The truth is, we are surrounded by a whole lot of straight people. It makes sense to assume only 6 people are all straight and that, if any aren’t, they may be bi.

The scientists frequently broke an already small sample size into even smaller groups. The group was very frequently broken in half, in thirds, or into sets of 10 people. These sample sizes tell us almost nothing actually conclusive. 

The experiments/tests frequently were affected by peoples abilities, unrelated to what was being tested. For example, one test that was broken down into 6 people and 6 control people competing at jenga was meant to show whether needing to pee helps or hurts your focus. first of all, sample sizes of 6 are a fucking joke. Second, this completely ignores these 6 people’s actual ability to play Jenga. If someone sucks at jenga with or without needing to pee, them losing Jenga when they need to pee says exactly fuck all about whether needing to pee affected their focus. They should have tested people’s Jenga skills beforehand, counted the amount of moves they made before the tower fell, and then did it again after hours of not peeing to compare their results. This test made no logical sense at all.

The scientists ignored the social effect of subjects knowing each other as well as duration of events during their last experiment. They were testing to see if people with last names near the end of the alphabet get a shittier deal because they go last in everything where things are done by name order. They tested this by doing a fake awards ceremony where they gave out some 30 awards to people, gauging the applause to see whether the people at the end got less hype and therefore felt worse about themselves than those in the beginning who got the fresh enthusiasm of the audience. the results showed that the applause remained fairly consistent throughout the awards. The issues with this test are numerous, but here are the three I take most issue with. 1) the people here all got to know each other very well over the week it took to make the show. People who know each other and have become friends are much more likely to cheer for each other with enthusiasm, regardless of how long it’s been. On the other hand, polite applause from a crowd at, say, a graduation, where you are applauding people you don’t know, WILL start off more raucous and grow very quiet except for individual families near the end. 2) the duration of the test was a half hour, which is not very long at all and doesn’t say much to test the limits of enthusiasm. Try testing the audience at a graduation with a couple hundred graduates that also involves the time it takes to walk all the way up to a stage a hundred feet away, accept a diploma, and then wait for the next person. These kinds of events take hours and nobody keeps up their enthusiasm that long unless they’re rooting for someone in particular. 3) this study tested only one of many many ways name order affects a person. Cheering and applause is only one factor. It does not take into account people having their resumes looked at in alphabetical order and therefore people at the beginning of the alphabet being picked before anyone ever looks at a W name’s resume. It doesn’t take into account a small child’s show and tell day being at the very end of the school year, after 6 other people have brought in the same thing they planned to. No one cares about their really cool trinket because they’ve seen a bunch like it already. This test doesn’t take into account how many end-of-the-alphabet people just get straight up told, “we ran out of time. maybe next time,” when next time doesn’t really exist. I feel genuinely bad for the girl who suggested this experiment because the scientists straight up said something akin to, “lmao her theory was bs ig /shrug” even though it was their own shitty research abilities that led to their results.

They did one experiment intending to see how many people have what it takes to be a “hero.” The request for this test was made by someone curious about the effect of adrenaline and if it really works how some people say. The scientists thought it an adequate method to determine an answer by testing their reflexes with a weird crying baby sound and then dropping a doll from above while they were distracted with answering questions. The scientists looked up before the doll dropped to indicate a direction of attention. While this does give some answers about peoples intuition, reflexes, and ability to use context clues, its entirely an unusual situation, makes no sense in reality, fails to take adrenaline into consideration literally at all, and has a lot more to do with chance. The person dropping the doll literally couldn’t even drop it in the same place from person to person. Some got it dropped into their lap and others almost out of arm’s reach. This, like a few of the other mentioned experiments, was during the last episode, which felt lazy and thrown together last minute, with very little scientific basis to any of the results. The last episode was weak and disappointing overall. 

One of the big issues I have with this show is actually their repeated use of the same group. They said at the end that they had done over 40 tests. Part of doing studies is getting varied samples of people in order to get more widespread results. Using the same 100 or less people (already a tiny sample) repeatedly is a terrible research method. You’re no longer studying humans at large. You’re studying these specific humans. You can’t take the same group with the same set of inadequacies, the same set of skills, and the same set of biases and then study them extensively and in many different ways like this. Your results are inherently skewed toward these specific people and their abilities. I expected them to at least get a new group each episode - every 5 or so studies - but no. They keep the same group all week, which makes the entire season. This is inexcusable in research imo.

The next issue is contestant familiarity. The humans all getting to know each other is great, socially, but it also destroys the legitimacy of many of the studies that involve working together or comparing yourselves and your beliefs

Many tests had issues with subject dependency. One study, meant to compare age groups and their ability to work together to complete the task of putting together a piece of ready to assemble furniture had each group with members they relied on entirely. A few people built the furniture while one person sat across the room, looking at instructions with their back to the others. They had to relay the instructions through a walkie talkie to another contestant and that other contestant had to relay it to the people they’re watching build the chair. You cannot study a group’s ability to build something with instructions by the ability of one single person to communicate. You’re testing that individual and the rest of them on two completely different capabilities. One person fails at being able to communicate and everyone else becomes unable to build the furniture. Even if everyone else in the group is more effective than all the other groups at building ready to assemble furniture, they might end up falling in last because of their shitty communicator who is literally not able to convey simple instructions. (yes, this actually happened in the test)

One test judged the subjects at their speed of getting ready, to see if men or women are faster at getting ready. While most elements of this test were just fine, the part I took issue with was that they did this test without regard to social convention. They told the subjects they were going on a field trip and to get ready by a certain time. Then, they gave them many things to get distracted by, like refreshments to pack with them, a menu to preorder lunch from, and so on.  The part that upsets me about this test is that they ignored social convention entirely, to the point that subjects were judged based on their conventional actions and expectations more than their actual speed at getting ready. The buses promptly shut their doors and left at the time they were supposed to but there was no final call to get on the buses. In general, when a group is to be taken somewhere by bus, there will be an announcement to load up and leave. You could clearly see many of the subjects were ready to go and were just standing around talking while they waited for fellow subjects to finish getting ready. I have no doubt that, if given a final call, most of them would have loaded up within a couple minutes. However, they were relying on the social convention of announcing departure and were therefore, left behind entirely (for a nonexistent field trip). These people who were left behind were counted as being late and not making the time cutoff. If one were to look at the social element of this situation, if everyone there believed there would be a warning before departure, the fact that 24 to 14 women to men were loaded onto the buses at departure doesn’t necessarily indicate the women were faster to get ready. It seems to me that it’s more likely to indicate anxiety at being late and a belief that they need not impede on anything lest they be reprimanded or have social consequences for taking too long - something women are frequently bullied for. There’s also the chance that many who boarded without final call are more introverted or antisocial. Plus, we can’t forget to include the people who have anxiety about seating. If someone is overweight, has joint pain, or has social anxiety, they will be more likely to board early to get a seat they feel comfortable in. If they had counted up all of the people socializing and waiting on the sidewalks nearby, they may have found that there were more men who were ready to board up at a moment’s notice. I’m not saying I think men are faster to get ready, I’m just saying that we can’t know based on who boarded without a final call. If people believe they will have a last minute chance to board, a large number of them will take the last few minutes to socialize with their new friends until they’re told they have to board. Therefore, this test cannot be considered conclusive without counting and including the people who were ready and not boarded as a third subset.

Honestly, I could go on and on about how sensationalist and unscientific this show is, but I just don’t have 6 more hours to contribute to digging up every single flaw with it. There’s A Lot.

My point is, if you feel like watching this show, which I don’t necessarily discourage inherently, I just beg you to go into it with a critical eye. Enjoy the fun of it and the social aspects, but please don’t rely on the information provided and please don’t spread it as fact, because it’s not.

It’s entertainment, not science.

[traincat]

Fic Author Tag Game

AO3 Name: Traincat

Fandoms: Currently it’s fairly exclusively Fantastic Four and Spider-Man comics, particularly the 616-verse, with some works for related fandoms.

Number of fics: 102 posted on Ao3. 

Tagging @bipeteparker @moonwolfhowl @mishatheberry

1) Fic you spent the most time on: The Boy From New York City, my The Amazing Spider-Man/Fant4stic Spideytorch movieverse fic, definitely. I started it in 2015 and posted it in late 2018. A lot of that wasn’t active writing time -- I wrote about 50k of its 80k wordcount in 2018. But it was a fic that I spent a lot of time on and a lot of energy devoted to, trying to figure out what the best way to tell the story was, playing with different point of views, what the actual plot was going to be, what I wanted it to say, and that’s not counting the amount of times I watched TASM/2 and Fant4stic to try and nail down everything just how I wanted it. Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker speech patterns are SUPER specific and I wanted to get them DOWN. I also wanted things to play out in a very cinematic way, like a third installment of The Amazing Spider-Man movies. So a lot of time went into that fic. 

2) Fic you spent the least time on: To Have and to Hold, an Into the Spider-Verse fic about May Parker and Olivia Octavius getting married, much to Peter’s distress. I think I wrote it in like a day. 

3) Longest fic: The Boy From New York City, at 84,500 words. 

4) Shortest fic: wrap yourself around me, a really short Spideytorch clothes sharing fic. It’s under 500 words.

5) Most hits: The Masked Man (Who Has Everything), an X-Men: First Class Erik/Charles fic I wrote back in 2011 to answer a very important question on the old LJ kink meme: what if Magneto was Batman? It has like, almost 75,000 hits, so. That was an easy one lol.

6) Most kudos: It’s also The Masked Man (Who Has Everything), so my second most kudosed fic is Keep Throwing Things and Slamming the Door, one of my first Spideytorch fics. 

7) Most comment threads: To Have and to Hold again! Which is kind of nice since it’s relatively new. It did get some pretty big recs though so I’m not all that surprised. 

8) Fave fic you wrote: Oh that’s a tough one. I have a couple of favorites -- I really like the fics in my Tales From the Back Pages series, which is a Spideytorch soulmates AU that plays with the very early days of canon and reimagines it within a world where soulmates are a known phenomenon and Peter and Johnny are each other’s. It’s fun to take canon events that are really familiar and go, what do they look like in this world where everything is the same but also there’s this one really big difference? The Boy From New York City again because I worked on it for so long and at the end I pushed myself really hard to make it exactly what I wanted it to be and I’m really proud of the end result. It’s also one of those fics where I feel like writing it made me a better writer ultimately because I was pushing myself so hard to be like, worthy of what it was in my head. Work Song, which is a Spideytorch canon rewrite of the aftermath of Superior Spider-Man. Another one where I feel like I learned a lot by writing it and where I’m really proud of the end result, even if I did have to read all of Superior Spider-Man to write it. Cat's Cradle, a Spider-Man PS4 Peter/Felicia fic about their maybe-baby from the DLC, because I really loved writing that fic. Night Blooms, a Victor Von Doom/Reed Richards fic based around Reed’s connection to the alternate universe Victor from Marvel Two-In-One (2017) #11, because canon gave me so much to work with there and because it was a Yuletide fic for @portwinestains where I knew I could give her exactly what she wanted and I just went for it. Writing that one was a blast and I got to dig into such a rich canon relationship. It was fantastic, even if while I had to like, try and subtly find out how much infidelity Aysha was cool with without letting her know what I was doing. 

And then there’s Hands On where I like, REALLY wanted to be the first person to write Spideytorch smut featuring six arm Spider-Man. And I was. And weirdly that genre of fic hasn’t taken off? Look, you just need to keep very detailed notes for yourself about where all eight hands involved are. 

9) Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: There are a couple! They’re expansions, not rewrites. I don’t think I have anything finished that I feel I would want to rewrite from scratch. I have a third installment of my fairy tale series, The Spider Prince and the Morning Star, where the idea is like very fresh in my head right now so I’ve been playing with that a lot. The first two fics in the series are Spideytorch, but this one is a MYSTERY pairing. (It’s not that big of a mystery. It’s pretty easy to guess what it’s going to be based on the end of the second fic.) And there’s a lot of stuff from The Boy From New York City where it was like, I had ideas about where I COULD go with things, if I wanted to. The Boy From New York City is very much Peter’s story, very much The Amazing Spider-Man 3, so I think there is a lot of space to go forward that would be more focused on Johnny. But on the other hand I do think a lot about a fic that takes The Amazing Spider-Man 2′s deleted alternate ending and asks the question, what if instead of meeting his father in the graveyard, Peter met the sixteen-year-old sister he never knew he had? And I don’t know how many people want TASM fic about what Teresa Parker would be like in that universe but you know. I kind of do. 

10) Share a bit of your WIP or share a story idea that you’re planning: PeterFlash 2020! I’m working on it. It got long and I wanted to play with canon, what else is new.

“You were always stuck up,” Flash grunted, lying down on a flat stretch of rock. It was freezing cold, leaching the heat through Flash’s jacket and jeans, but it felt good at the same time. “And you made Liz cry.”

“I didn’t make Liz Allan cry,” Peter snorted, rolling his eyes.

“You did, though,” Flash said, closing his eyes. He probably shouldn’t have said that, he knew. Liz wouldn’t have liked it. But Peter had made her sob until the cuffs of her pink sweater had been wet with her tears and Flash had just had to stand there and take it, unable to make it better as badly as he had wanted to, all because stupid Peter Parker was too thick to see that Liz was the best thing in their entire school. “She really liked you and you just ignored her.”

“I was busy,” Peter said. Flash cracked open an eye; Peter was standing over him, staring down at him with a quizzical expression on his face, like Flash was one of his fancy complicated math problems, only Peter had never had a hard time solving those.

Warmth spread from Flash’s stomach right down to his toes with the idea that he was the kind of problem even Peter Parker might have trouble solving.

“We were all busy,” Flash said, shrugging. “We all had stuff. Doesn’t mean you had to ignore everybody else.” 

“I wanted to be liked,” Peter admitted, sitting down crosslegged next to Flash. He had a funny kind of look on his face, his brows knit together fiercely. He was going to have a wrinkle there in a couple of years, probably. Butterflies lit up in Flash’s stomach, trying to imagine it.

“You had a funny way of showing it,” Flash said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter grumbled, stretching out next to him. He put his arms behind his head, looking for all the world like he was sunning himself even though it was November and practically freezing already. “What are you gonna do now?”

“I don’t know,” Flash admitted, trying not to stare down at him. It wasn’t like Peter would ever know, though – his eyes were closed. “Get a job, I guess.”

“Flash Thompson, working man,” Peter whistled.

“Don’t strain something not being a jackass, Parker, you’ve gone a whole five minutes,” Flash said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like I’ve got a choice. Can’t stay in school without that scholarship and it’s not like I can go home.”

Peter cracked one eye open. Something about his eyes had always made Flash’s stomach go funny; they were the warmest brown he’d ever seen, flecked with gold, and they shone on those rare occasions when Peter laughed. But usually they looked how they looked now: filled with suspicion, and just a touch of scorn.

“You can’t go home?” he asked.

[laughingmagi]

@youhavemyrespect prompted: 💘 + Ollie/Johnny ( pretty sure we're literally the only two people in the world who got here )

note: In reference to a discord RP with John and Oliver Sampson, a character from an extremely obscure sci-fi television show from 90s called VR5. 

HEADCANONS MEME: DATING EDITION!!

send me 💘 + A SHIP and i’ll tell you— // accepting

where they first met and how

At a bar, Oliver was having a bad time over a lost love, John just saw a gorgeous bloke that her wanted to keep company.

how long their ‘flirting’ phase was before feelings got involved

It’s...complicated. John was definitely smitten and caught feelings long before Ollie was ready to even process it.

who fell for who first ( if applicable )

John for Ollie

where their first date was and what it was like

Lunch date to play it safe after many, many months of extremely casual sex.

who asks who out and how ( with a sign? spelled out on a cake? just a simple ‘will you go out with me’? )

John, but Oliver named the terms.

who proposes first

lmao...not sure it’s going to get to that point just yet. Check back later.

if they keep / kept their relationship secret or let everyone know right away

Sssssort of? It’s just that for long while, it wasn’t really a relationship outside of a sexual arrangement. Ollie called, John came round, they had sex, and they part ways. Oliver has his reasons of course, he works for a secretive organization, and previously had his heart broken by the death of a former lover and it’s not something he’s interested in repeating, however...a man has needs.

where the proposal happens and how ( kiss cam at a baseball game? on a hillside surrounded by ducks? at a disney park? )

n/a

if they adopt any pets together

they’re not living together. (yet)

who’s more dominant

Oh lord, definitely Ollie. There’s an element of traditional dom/sub to the sexual aspect of their affair.

where their first kiss was and what it was like

Unfortunately forgotten because they were quite drunk when it happened. However, they quite enjoy kissing so I suppose it just felt like a natural instinct.

if they have any matching couples stuff ( mugs? sweaters? pillowcases? )

nope

how into pda they are

They’re somewhat conservative, but not so much so that they’re not open about who they are.

who holds the umbrella when it rains

Ollie, because he’s tol and a gentleman.

where their usual ‘date spot’ is ( if applicable )

n/a

who’s more protective

HMMM. To be decided, tho prolly Ollie, because he’s used to taking on that role.

how long it is before they sleep together ( can be as in ‘had sex’ or as in ‘shared a bed’ )

Hmm, however long between the time they passed out in Ollie’s hotel suite and woke up, got coffee, showered, and washed up. Sooooo...between 8-12 hours for the sex part, and quite a bit longer before they stayed an entire night together.

if they argue about anything

Oliver being a secretive bastard and his emotional constipation.

who leaves more marks ( lipstick, hickeys, scratchmarks etc. )

Whew, definitely Oliver. 

who steals whose clothes and how often

Nobody.

how they cuddle ( spooning? facing each other? )

Cuddling? Hmmm, I feel like it would involve Oliver wrapping himself around John.

what their favourite nonsexual activity is

Coffee and conversation. Look, they’re just barely into negotiating a relationship beyond really intense booty calls.

how long they stay mad at each other

They’re both men that can keep grudges, so I feel like their first big argument would be one of those, don’t talk or see each other for weeks before they talk it out.

what their usual coffee / tea orders are

Black, black, and more black

what their names are in each other’s phones

Oliver calls John from unknown numbers, so he really doesn’t have a fixed contact for him. In Oliver’s mobile however, he has John’s, initially his full name, eventually upgraded to just John.

who falls asleep first and who wakes up first

John falls asleep first, Ollie wakes up first.

who’s the big spoon / little spoon

Ollie would be the big spoon.

who hogs the bathroom

John hogs the bathroom, Oliver’s a very efficiant bloke.

who kills the spiders / takes them outside

Ollie kills em, John catch and releases

[paracosmic-lemon-15]

Murderer Prompt[Spider-man Prompt]

You know that spider-man meme where it’s two spider-men pointing at each other? you know, this,

Well this writing prompt is like that, but with murder *cackles maniacally*

Imagine dumping your latest kill into the river, and you look over and see someone else, doing the exact same thing. What do you do? 

Well here’s my version:

Just as I finished dumping the guy into the river, I stood up and flexed my sore shoulders. I glanced downriver, my eyes searching for the moon’s glow to calm my nerves about the exam tomorrow. And that’s when I saw ‘em. A tallish man was heaving an easily-recognizable body shape into the fast-flowing river. 

He saw me as soon as I saw him, and we just stared for a minute before I raised my hand in a greeting. What he didn’t see was that I was reaching for the handle of my knife under the cover of darkness. I began to make my way through the reeds and ferns towards him, the man with the dark eyes. 

“Hey man. Nice weather, ain’t it?” I chimed, and my fingers curled around the sturdy handle of my dagger. “Yes, and the moon is very lovely tonight,” he agreed with a nod. He flashed a toothy grin as I was at an arms’ length away from him. Neither of us made any movements closer. “Awk-ward,” I chuckled nervously. He smiled, and I heard his knife slide back into his waistband. 

The man raised both hands in a show of peace, and I thrust out my hand to shake. “Truce?” I offered. 

“Yeah, truce. I think we’ve ended enough lives for today.” He conceded, and I slid my knife back into the sheath. He took my hand, and with the contact of our palms, I decided I wouldn’t kill him. 

“So, if I may, can I ask why they’re dead?” the man said, gesturing with his eyes to the now-fading figure of the body down the river. 

“He thought I was easy, picking me up at a bar like that. I got him out to the back alley. No cameras, you know,” I shrugged, and ran a hand through my hair. He nodded knowingly. 

“-and you?” It was his turn to run a hand through his hair, feigning the casualty of conversation.

“Ah, she was an ex of mine. Cheated on me with my brother. The usual.” 

“Yeah, I get that. Gonna get your brother next?” I reflected.

“No, I don’t think so. His wife is gonna poison him anyways, I wouldn’t get the chance.” The man lamented. I tossed my head back and laughed, and took a moment to stare at the moon. 

“Well if she chickens out, you can always call me, I’ll help clean the scene, as they say.”

The man laughed as well and spoke, “Strangely enough, I don’t think anyone says that.”

“Ha! You’re probably right.” I paused, and before I could say anything, the man spoke. 

“Well, you’ve probably got to go, finish cleaning up and whatnot,” 

“You’re probably right. Nice to meet you…” My words ended in an unspoken question.

“Just call me James. My alias, with the police and all that.” I nodded agreeingly.

“I’m Kaela, Kae for short. No one calls me Kaela.” I set an emphasis on ‘no one’ with a loaded stare. I offered my hand to shake one last time, and he took it. And with that, the dark-eyed man was gone, leaving only the swish of undergrowth behind him.  

[mst3kproject]

820: Space Mutiny

Well, I did one of MST3k’s John Phillip Law movies, so I might as well do the other.  Ladies, Gentlemen, etc, I give you: Mother.  Fucking. Space.  Mutiny.

The Southern Sun is a generation starship on its way to colonize a new planet.  Most of the people on board are okay with this, but there’s a faction, led by Commander Kalgan, who want to abandon the mission and land somewhere. Kalgan and his cronies are willing to do anything to get their way, including sabotage the ship and make a deal with some space pirates.  Lucky the Southern Sun has Dave Ryder, a big dumb beefalo of a man who will roll, shoot, and scream the rebels into submission!  Oh, yeah, and there’s some Yoga Witches in the cargo hold, I dunno what’s up with that, but the movie assures me they contributed.

MUZ has been called the Manos of the Sci-Fi Channel era, in that it’s incoherent and badly-photographed.  This is a compelling argument, but for my own part I consider Space Mutiny the Manos of the Sci-Fi Channel era, in that it’s absolutely iconic.  It’s the episode that comes to mind when people think of that period in the show.  It gave rise to memes. It’s also very much the Starcrash of the Sci-Fi Channel era, in that it is absolute comedy gold in ways the film-makers never intended.

You could write a book on the many sparkling facets of this movie's sucktitude.  As Mike and the bots repeatedly observed, Cisse Cameron is ten years older than the character she’s playing, and the ‘engine room’ shots are all in a factory somewhere with sunlight shining through the windows.  As they famously never observed even once, all the spacecraft shots are stolen from Battlestar Galactica.  The bridge is made of cardboard.  Nobody’s costume fits – Ryder’s in particular sags at the ass, which is a shame because I bet his ass is terrific.  The women wear outfits so tiny that one with extra-long hair looks like Lady Godiva from behind.  The end credits song takes the best bits of every 80’s power ballad ever written and assembles them into something far less than the sum of its parts. You can hear the singer’s mullet.

The writing is nothing short of stunning in its badness.  Battle sequences are a mess, with no idea what’s at stake in each area the mutineers are trying to capture.  There are whole scenes in which nothing much is actually said – the most glaring example is probably the bit where Commander Santa tells Captain Sting ‘it would have to be somebody on this ship with something to gain from this’.  The exchange tells us nothing we didn’t already know. MacPherson only shows up in the room where Miss Santa is being interrogated so that he can expose himself as a traitor.  Kalgan uses ‘space-bitch’ as an insult, unironically, twice, and calls Ryder a ‘meddling fool’.

There are at least three places where something is set up and then disposed of without ever being paid off.  Commander Santa’s daughter tells Ryder that they can call for help against the pirates and mutineers, but he says he figures Kalgan has already installed scramblers – so they don’t even try.  That seems to me like a situation where can’t hurt, might help would be a good philosophy.  There’s also the ‘countermeasures’ subplot, where we learn that MacPherson will have revealed all their defense plans to the mutineers… and then the whole subject is just dropped.  The biggest dangling plot thread, however, is the Bellerians.

These are the Yoga Witches I mentioned.  They show up wearing bathing suits and veils, rub themselves all over the walls and some of those plasma globes that were popular in the 80s and 90s, and I think they seduce some of the security personnel.  One of them visits Commander Santa and tells him it’s time for action, and they murmur things about time being up for one or other of the mutiny leaders, but they never actually do anything.  The first time I watched this, as the MST3K episode, years and years ago, I remember waiting and waiting for the Bellerians to do something cool and they never did. They are entirely decorative.

(They also made it impossible for me to take Avatar seriously. The exchange a superintelligent dandelion seed! – Man, they'll worship anything! will not leave my head the entire damn movie.)

I also have to ask: if Kalgan and his followers are not satisfied living on the Southern Sun, why don’t they just… leave?  The ship is clearly still in an inhabited part of the galaxy.  There are the pirates, there’s the idea of calling for help, and people do come and go.  Professor Spooner was on board the ship at some point to be Miss Santa’s mentor, then he left, and now he’s coming back.  The Bellerians arrive and are given a place to stay, and it’s implied that they will be on board for some time but not permanently.  Ryder is new to the Southern Sun, and I think the nonsensical does that mean you won’t marry me? at the end is supposed to tell us that he’s leaving again and hoping to take Miss Santa with him.  If Kalgan wants to go, he can… but the writers completely ignore this.

Yet for all that, Space Mutiny is actually quite engaging.  It’s structured like a proper movie, alternating between action, mystery, and romance.  Reb Brown as Ryder and Cisse Cameron as Miss Santa have decent chemistry – they actually met on this movie, fell in love, got married, and are still married to this day.  Sometimes you can’t follow what’s going on in an individual scene, but you always know where you are in the story as a whole.

Miss Santa appears to be an attempt at a Strong Female Character(tm). She’s supposed to be a PhD, and she gets involved with the shooting and punching right alongside Ryder.  I think the did you see my butt? scene is supposed to tell us that she’s in charge of her own sexuality (this might work better if the camera didn’t leer like a miserly tipper at a strip club), and when she’s taken hostage she’s able to almost rescue herself by the time Ryder comes for her.  She also has a few hints of actual personality, in that she’s shown using her work in the greenhouse as a way to blow off steam, and she sulks a bit when she doesn’t get her way (well, that’s gratitude for you!).

Ryder is a much larger presence in the movie, both physically and in terms of screen time, but he has far less to him as a person.  He’s brave and heroic and likes to yell and shoot at things, and that’s about it.  I suppose, like Duke Barnum in Last of the Wild Horses, he’s supposed to be a man-shaped hole that the audience members can place themselves in.  It works a bit better here, because Ryder is a handsome, muscular space pilot, which seems, at least to me, like a better fantasy life than ‘broke cowboy who interferes in other people’s problems’.  There’s also the fact that Ryder has a reason to be involved in these events, since he, too, is trapped on the Southern Sun with the mutineers.

I guess Space Mutiny is probably trying to be about long-term versus short-term goals. The Southern Sun was built with a long-term goal in mind – find and colonize a new planet.  The people on board mostly accept that they are just a stage in this process, and that the end result will benefit descendants they will never meet.  The mutineers are focused on a short-term goal, settling on a planet somewhere and becoming rich and powerful.  The movie doesn’t really delve into the consequences for everybody else on the ship if Kalgan wins, but we’re clearly meant to assume that the long-term goal entails more benefit to more people. That’s a good enough theme, I guess.

One thing the movie does go into, although probably by accident, is the nature of male versus female power.  The men in this movie – Captain Santa, Ryder, and Kalgan – are proactive, giving orders, firing guns, and throwing punches.  The women largely sit at desks and serve drinks, and those who attempt to take action are punished for it.  Lieutenant Lamont tries to investigate the theft of explosives, and gets shot (we’re supposed to ignore the fact that she’s back at her console ten minutes later).  Leah goes to help Ryder in the battle and is lectured for it.  These are unacceptable forms of power for women to wield.

Acceptable female power is embodied in the Bellerians, who manipulate events subtly from behind the scenes. Unfortunately, they do it so subtly that I have no idea what, if anything, they actually contribute – which just makes it look like women can tell themselves they’re in charge but they’re not. They’re just hanging out while the men do all the real work.

I guess I should mention that there’s only one guy in this movie who isn’t white, and he’s hanging up in a freezer in his underpants.  I could complain, but I’m tired.

What makes some bad movies entertaining and others insufferable? What is the difference between, say, Teenagers from Outer Space and Invasion of the Neptune Men, or The Giant Spider Invasion versus The Starfighters?  Looking back across the gulf of around two hundred bad movies I’ve written about in the past three and a half years, I’m going to say it involves weaving your failures into a structure that might otherwise work.  Fun bad movies have characters we can follow and a plot that makes some kind of sense – we know who Ryder and Miss Santa are, and we have some idea what they’re doing, so we’re not sitting and trying to puzzle that out instead of enjoying the floor polisher chase scenes.  Once the movie has us in a place where we want to pay attention, it doesn’t really matter if the technicalities are up to snuff.  This is where movies like Radar Secret Service fail, and where Space Mutiny almost succeeds.

[thezolblade]

tma meme

tagged by @sazandorable​ ~

Top 10 episodes

101: Another Twist 118: The Masquerade 119: Stranger and Stranger 81: A Guest For Mr. Spider 80: The Librarian 79: Hide and Seek 92: Nothing Beside Remains 39: Infestation 34: Anatomy Class 100: I Guess You Had To Be There

tend to enjoy the ones where we get a lot about the overarching plot; i’ve only listened to most of them once at work and i get the feeling i’m missing a lot of the connections that i’d get if i relistened to everything, though some pieces fall into place just browsing the wiki and transcripts a little. jon is so... ;.; i don’t think anything’s likely to displace another twist as fave.

(oh, and did you see my message on twitter the other day? had more feels about ep22 after talking about it on discord, but after the group chat moved on i felt i maybe shouldn’t go on and on about it in other people’s space, but if you’re interested in any more rambling then, guess i wouldn’t be derailing anything posting here... since the other people who lived in the same building as martin’s flat probably couldn’t see jane prentiss, same as most entities that are invisible to most people, would martin have been able to infer that, from hearing people walk past in the hallway outside his front door without screaming or attracting jane’s attention? would martin have been worried that the worms might have gotten people anyway? he went so far as to seal the cracks round his windows in case the worms got round the outside walls, but then when he got to the archives we didn’t hear him worrying about his neighbors. while he was trapped for those two weeks, do you think he heard his neighbors walking past, and had to avoid calling out to them for help, in case drawing their attention was enough to get them hurt?)

5 Episodes that scared you the most

mostly they’re effective as horror in that i feel horrified for the characters, to some degree, but not scared as if there was a real life danger - generally find it a bit weird that people talk about ‘horror’ genre and ‘scary’ things as if they were the same when they’re so different.

still, 94: Dead Woman Walking and 70: Book of the Dead had lines that were maybe a bit too unsettling, the inscription 'Life is a current that cannot be fought. It is a march with one destination. You cannot cease your step, nor move your course, to one that skirts the journey's destination. You have already read too much.' and "The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one." - left me thinking about how death is real enough. we’re bodies that are only very temporarily alive. and sure a story is only a reminder, but it can leave one feeling down anyway, kinda flat and nauseous. but georgie is a good symbol of one way of getting on with things anyway - accept reality as it is and let fear burn itself out, then live for the sake of it, even we don’t all have our fear completely cauterized.

Top TMA ship(s)

well jon and martin are interesting in canon and there are some very funny plays on that in the fanart here on tumblr, and feels for the episodes where they get protective of each other... but i guess i’m about as ace as jon, bc i didn’t interpret martin’s friendliness as a crush until elias explicitly described it that way and the actors confirmed it in the Q&A. even looking back now, i can see how having a crush could lead martin to act the way he does (...or if s4 is as bad as it looks, the way he used to...) but it’s not the only plausible explanation for that behaviour. i mean people can be fond of each other and determinedly nice without necessarily feeling romantic attraction. and i honestly just want to see them get more fond and protective of each other, to have each other’s backs more effectively and appreciate each other’s efforts, whether or not the ‘crush’ is ever ‘reciprocated’ in romantic terms - tho if romance was the form that all of that came in, i’d be just as happy as if it was platonic, especially as that’d make physical comfort more likely, since it’s a lot more common than cuddly queerplatonic stuff - tho i’m not really expecting the ship to sail far in canon since we already know that ‘nobody’s going to be okay’...

(i’m getting really worried about what martin meant by ‘goodbye jon’ in the s4 trailer; that guess someone made on the discord about how maybe martin gave up his own ability to connect with people seems horribly likely. if he had to sacrifice something once he was convinced that peter ‘was right’, would he be ready to give up unreciprocated feelings for someone who wasn’t going to wake up, and wouldn’t want him even if he ever did somehow recover, someone who thought too little of him to return his feelings even if he wasn’t completely disinterested in relationships anyway? would he be ready to stop feeling so attached to a parent that hates him and always will no matter what he does, and to coworkers who were caught on tape saying that he has to accept that not everyone likes him? at that point in time, could he even believe that anyone left alive actually cared about him?)

for other ships... daisy and basira sounded interesting, again mostly because elias said one of them cares deeply about the other even though i didn’t catch anything directly between them that felt necessarily shippy beforehand.

Favorite Monster(s)/Avatars

jon

michael shelley

helen richardson

Ex Altiora, it definitely counts

Favorite Entity/Entities

the descriptions of the vast whale-like creature underwater, the vast space entity, and jon’s dreams of a vast entity watching everything, have me wondering whether they’re one and the same - whether ‘the eye’ and ‘the vast’ are two aspects of it, like leitner’s metaphor about the eye, hand and foot appearing unconnected to an ant, and like that old story about blind men feeling different parts of an elephant and giving contradictory descriptions of ‘an elephant’ as a result, which i heard in the context of ‘a metaphor for god described by different religions’. considering the lonely’s effect on one of the astronaughts was kinda maybe triggered by another of them having an experience with the vast (the spacesuit floating away, and passing the window), maybe ‘the lonely’ is another aspect of that creature, the way it makes people feel...? it’ll be interesting to see canon delve further into all of this.

Any Entities that Don’t Scare You?

well mostly they’re not scary as mentioned above, though i often feel sad for the characters. the flesh often gets weird enough to just leave me kinda puzzled sometimes, like ‘where is this going?’, though on a meta level i like that it’s because it’s some kind of embodiment of animal fears, not human ones.

[freddiefcknmercury]

Spell

Pairing/Characters: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Peter Parker, Wanda Maximoff

Word count: 900+

Warnings/disclaimer: none; general audience read.

A/N: This is work 2/5 for my personal Inktober challenge. I’m coupling this challenge with another from my dear friend @joeyisanolive @joioliviapolaroid who gave me the Character: Steve Rogers and the Quote: “We’re officially big pimpin.”

Summary: Sam and Steve think they’ve been cursed. There’s no such thing as curses, but what about Spells?

As always be nice to me I’m delicate

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

It started off small. Nothing too terrible or dangerous. First they got stuck outside in a storm. Then Sam lost his phone. Steve got a bad burn on his tongue eating. But then things started to escalate. Sam's gear stopped working mid flight. The ear piece Steve was using on a particularly risky mission malfunctioned, only for there to be no problems with either back at the compound. They thought it was just a string of bad luck.

"It's just a coincidence. There's no such thing as a curse." Sam sipped his coffee brushing off Steve's concerns.

"Just a week's worth of tremendous bad luck? I dunno man... your flight gear has never just shut off before." They both raise an eyebrow at each other.

"You think it was intentional? Who could even..?"

They had just started pondering their options on sabotage when you and Wanda walk in from showing the new recruit around, Peter. Spider kid in tow.

"OR maybe it's just some... bad Karma." She interjected, flicking her fingers causing a small dusting of her powers to become visible for a moment.

Steve looked up at the three of you decidedly worried.

"Did you...? Have you been doing all this?"

Wanda smiled.

"I don't know... there was a homemade box of cookies here last week for me." She points to the empty space on the counter between the men.

"Did you eat them?"

You and Peter giggle quietly to yourselves behind her. Steve and Sam glance at each other amused for a moment. You're not sure if they're actually the guilty party but you're certainly worried if they are or know who is. There's no way she could be serious about the cookies, but with powers like that... who else would it be? Unless they really are cursed.

"Oh! And you're right there's no such thing as a curse... but I certainly did cast a spell on you."

"A spell?" Sam seems unconvinced.

"A spell." She parroted back, matter of factually.

Peter leans into you whispering softly.

"Like, a spell spell?" You shrug. Not quite sure if you believe her yet either.

She continues.

"And I think you've had enough of fear for one week. How about some... humiliation maybe?" She turns on her heels quickly and points at you and Peter.

"You two. They're only allowed to say what you tell them to, got that? Peter? Y/n?"

You both nod hesitantly in unison. She turns back to give Sam and Steve a long dragged stare coupled with a few small hand motions before moving to leave.

"The two of you get some lunch, take a break. I'm gonna go freshen up." She gives the very tip of your nose a light boop. Once she's out of sight the four of you stare at each other in silence for a long moment.

"Soooo? Did you eat those cookies or nah?" You laugh nervously, just trying to break the silence but something seems off when neither of them answer you.

"Hullo? Package for the Avengers?" Sam and Steve shoot each other nervous glances.

Peter catches on quicker than you."Wait... can you really not speak?" They both shake their heads.

"Real funny." Still silence.

"Sam! Cut it out. He shrugs his shoulders at you, frustrated. They really are under a spell...

"Steve?" He gives you a soft but stern "Cap look." The kind that clearly reads: No we're not joking.

"Oh... my gods..." you look over at Peter to make sure he's on the same train that you are. Your faces light up. The obvious first choice coming to each of you simultaneously. You pick your fighters and whisper into their ears.

"I'm so sorry Steve but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Peter cautiously places a hand on Sam's back.

"Sorry man but if you were me you'd do the same thing."

Steve's shoulders sink and he yells.

"This bitch empty!"

Sam rolls his eyes.

"Yeet!"

The two of you erupt in laughter. Peter actually falls on the floor. You've been blessed. This is a blessing. One day the two of them will learn to appreciate the sense of humor you've been given. Wanda peeks around the corner to see what all the commotion is about.

"I got one I got one!" You deliberate with your partner in this crime against humanity before arming your weapons.

Steve clears his throat.

"We don't download films illegally. Because we're honest and hardworking people-"

Sam immediately interjects.

"And we don't know how."

"HILARIOUS! Oh my, you guys I've done a lot of things for cookies but this tops all of that."

"Yeah I'm definitely gonna like it here."

Peter is actually holding his side.

"Okay Sam here." He whispers again.

He gives both of you an amused but sour look.

"Cut the check!"

"Steve! Steve please okay, hahaha! Say, say..." you lean into him again.

He looks at you disapprovingly.

"We're officially big pimpin."

You snort and burry your face in his shoulder.

"Sam..." Peter wipes away a single tear.

"I MISS VINE!"

"VINE! Yes that's perfect! I'm looking up compilation videos right now. Omg what else can they say?! Get your phone out and pull up tumblr." You and Peter open every web browser known to man to find any and every meme in existence.

Wanda, finally catching on to whats happening saunters over to your puppets.

"I didn’t actually cast a spell on you... you know that right?"

Steve leans in to whisper.

"Yeah but they're having fun so we're gonna give this a bit longer, if you wanna play along."

[nega-aria]

Normal Drakepad For The New Meme

Got several requests for Drakepad but gonna answer this one just because the “normal” part made me giggle. (Negadrakepad I’d totally give you a better name if there was something less confusing)

Who said “I love you” first

Launchpad did in total accidental fashion as he was trying to keep it a secret from Drake. For good reason since Drake was not happy about it at first, and he had a really hard time dragging himself out of the closest. After about a week of completely refusing to speak to Launchpad, Drake finally just accepted it, but that didn’t stop him from being a bit of a brat about it at first despite constantly wanting affection and reassurance from LP.

Who would have the other’s picture as their phone background

Launchpad, because we all know that Drake has Darkwing’s picture as his background. He just can’t help himself.

Who leaves notes written in fog on the bathroom mirror

Both actually. Launchpad started it, but eventually they started writing notes back and forth because deep down they are both cheesy dorks who feel the need to leave each other love notes on the rare occasion that they don’t shower together.

Who buys the other cheesy gifts

I refer you to aforementioned cheesiness. Launchpad is much more aware of how cheesy his gifts are though. Drake genuinely thinks his are the coolest thing ever. This is reinforced by the fact that Launchpad acts like they are.

Who initiated the first kiss

Drake did (and no we’re not counting the one where he was asleep). Launchpad was genuinely afraid to try kissing him as he was terrified of rejection and ruining their friendship, but after way too many not-so-subtle attempts to “sneakily” kiss him, Drake finally just took things into his own hands… or beak.

Who kisses the other awake in the morning

Heh, I think Drake would if he was actually capable of waking up before two in the afternoon on his own volition. Launchpad doesn’t mind though. He likes kissing his man awake. Or rather kissing him until he gets a vaguely profane grumble in response and then shoving coffee under his nose to actually wake him up.

Who starts tickle fights

Oh, this one is definitely LP. Drake used to hate it, but at some point he started to view it as a sort of “training exercise” where the goal was to escape his boyfriend’s giant hands. He still doesn’t have a good answer as to when he would actually need to liberate himself from a tickle attack, but that doesn’t stop him from insisting that it’s a valid way to hone his skills.

Gosalyn calls BS.

Who asks who if they can join the other in the shower

Originally, Launchpad would super shyly ask, but eventually it just became implied. Showering after a night of patrol is usually a must especially by Drake’s uptight standards, but it’s not uncommon for him to be dead on his feet so LP tends to actually carry him there. Washing his sleepy boyfriend quickly became one of Launchpad’s favorite things especially because it makes Drake vulnerable in an unusually voluntary way.

Who surprises the other in the middle of the day at work with lunch

Launchpad if you count him sharing one of his four lunches with Drake. Although, that’s rarely a surprise anymore. Launchpad is constantly worried about Drake’s many attempts at dieting especially with the insanely oppressive way he tends to do it, so he often packs things that he knows Drake can’t resist.

Drake is rarely interested in sharing the weird and often spicy stuff that Launchpad actually eats.

Who was nervous and shy on the first date

Both, but Drake was way worse. He spent most of the night worrying about other people judging him for being out with another dude. He’s not used to accepting his own attraction to men so most of that first date was Launchpad trying to get him to be okay with it. Turns out getting him tipsy at a gay bar helped a lot.

Who kills/takes out the spiders

Drake tries to kill them, but LP usually rescues them before he gets the chance. Drake complains incessantly about his contemptuous compassion for the creepy critters.

Who loudly proclaims their love when they’re drunk

Definitely Drake. He is a confirmed sloppy drunk, and he gets extremely affectionate even from small amounts of liquor. Launchpad still finds it super sweet even if all his declarations of love are barely intelligible and reeking of alcohol.

[majingojira]

120 Years, 120 Monsters Finale! Days 30-31

Here it is, the most recent 10 monsters I felt were memorable and impactful!

111) Attack the Block (2011) - "Attacker"

This is one of those great independent monster movies that crop up every now and then which also adds a unique British flavor to it.  This is no Doctor Who adventures despite there being aliens about, this is ghetto living in England with gangsters and prejudice occasionally being more dangerous than the carnivores from outer space.

But those alien carnivores have an absolutely amazing design. Practical effects enhanced visually by CG creates an iconic, engaging visual that is realistic while being fantastic at the same time.  They were originally meant as a metaphor for poverty and I can see it working quite well.  An all-devouring darkness that moves relentlessly after disenfranchised youths.  They give the Dementors a run for their money in my opinion.  

Plus, who doesn’t love a neon glow in their critters?

112) Grabbers (2012) - Grabbers

Another monster from the British Isles, and another mildly comedic monster.  The Grabbers are tentacle monsters from the stars, arriving in a classic Panspermia seeding event, but what makes them really fun for me is their biology.  

The beings are extraordinarily simple, which makes them so dangerous.  Almost as durable as hibernating tardigrades, they need only water and blood to survive.  If they can find that, they can live.  It’s got life cycles, with infant, male, and female forms of varying levels of danger menacing an island off the coast of Ireland in the middle of a rainstorm, so what can our heroes do to survive?

Get Drunk.

Aside from dehydration, the main weakness of this species is alcohol.  This is no kryptonite, however.  Just dousing them in alcohol is not enough to do it.  The Grabbers have to ingest the stuff in order to be properly poisoned.  So, the heroes have to get the town drunk to survive the storm of tentacles about to descend on them.

Like, really drunk.  

It’s a creative conceit that covers so much.  Need the characters to do something stupid?  Well, they’re drunk!  Want to make somore sog harder than it should be?  Remember: Everyone’s drunk!  Want to have scenes of characters bearing their heart to each other?  Again, everyone’s drunk!  

Isn’t it great when the story is scripted in a way that things happen for logical reasons?

113) Cabin in the Woods (2012) - The Ancient Ones

It’d be really easy to just say that the “Ancient Ones” who demand the formulaic ‘sacrifices’ are a metaphor for the audience of horror movies and call it a day.  But, I’m with SF Debris on this one, it’s the world and its layers that gets me. It implies that every movie before this was part of their ritual to keep the Ancient Ones at bay. And in the end, they grew bored with their appeasement.  To me, it’s not so much that humans failed to keep them down, more so than the ‘audience’ for the sacrifices grew bored with the whole thing.  The cascading failures?  All part of their plan.  The monsters tearing up the only people who could complete the ceremony?  All part of their plan.  

Who knows how many little coincidences could be put on their influence.  

114)  Pacific Rim (2013) - Otachi

Pacific Rim had to be on the list, as a grand love letter to all things Kaiju.  Of the creatures featured, I found it tough to pick between the crab Onibaba and the pterodactyl Otachi.  On one hand, Onibaba’s main scene basically encapsulates what a Kaiju is metaphorically.  On the other, Otachi has the most screen time.  

Plus, his wing-reveal got audiences to gasp at pretty much every screening I saw.  

Otachi is emblematic of later Kaiju designs in Japan.  While the first wave were rather simple in concept, revived prehistoric life, giant animals, and other natural things, by the mid to late 60s, they became more elaborate and experimental, or even outright psychedelic.  

Otachi keeps surprising the viewer with what she’s packing.  First, she’s just a big reptilian creature.  Then her tail is revealed as a deadly grasping limb.  Then she spits acid.  Then she reveals a probing tongue.  Then the wings come out.  And even after she died, she revealed to have a little Otachi inside her as well!  

An escalation of threat indeed.  

115) The Babadook (2014) - Babadook

I literally can’t really talk about this one to the degree that it deserves.  Mostly because I have committed the sin of not having seen it yet!  Still, I want to!  And before Halloween is over, I plan to! But for now, I can only comment on what tiny bits I have seen, and the impact it has had.  

A monster can be measured in part by the impact it has had, and even without the Netflix Gay Culture meme (which I love), a creature that embodies grief and the negative effects it has is well worth having.  It is similar to a Dementor in that regard, but where the Dementor can be warded off and driven away, the Babadook has no overriding charm. It simply has to be dealt with, and it doesn’t just go away. It remains.

Just as Grief tends to do in reality.

116) Krampus (2015) - Krampus

In the menagerie of Christmas Horrors, there are killer Santas, your average human psychotics, and, of course, gremlins.  But over, above, and before all of those, there was the Krampus.  It wasn’t until the turn of the 21st century that it went from little more than a cultural footnote in wider society when it appeared as a gag in The Venture Brothers.  But then some insane genius realized the monstrous potential of a Santa Claus Demon and out popped this little treat.

Because while the Krampus is the focus, half the fun comes from a mixture of the twisting of the icons of the nicest holiday of the year into tools of murder and mayhem.  And that happens thanks to the Krampus’ minions.  Be they killer gingerbread men or demonic toys, each one offers a unique challenge for the family under siege by the demon of Christmas.

And, like any good Christmas movie, it’s about family togetherness.  In that, if you don’t have the Christmas spirit of family togetherness, the Krampus will come and drag you to the underworld!  

Merry Christmas, Kids!

117) Shin Godzilla (2016) - Shin Godzilla

I told you there would be hair-splitting, and this is part of the reason why.  I knew I had to include the original Godzilla, but this one is just so GOOD! Looking at the incident through the lense of a government bureaucratic crisis brings to light new incites and scenes, allowing for some great unexpected comedy as well as pointed social commentary.  

Godzilla is also just so different from any prior incarnation. It changes more about him than the ‘98 American film, yet still remains true to the core of what Godzilla is, and that is quite an accomplishment. 

118) Beware the Slender Man (2016) - Slender Man

This is SUCH a cheat.  See, the Slender Man hasn’t really had a movie.  And because he is a copyrighted character, he is unlikely to.  Instead, we get knockoffs and homages.  I’m all for those, but without a proper spring, it gets annoying.

The Slender Man is to a point the culmination of various boogeymen over the last 40 years.  Men in Black, The Tall Man, Alien Abductors, the nebulous “Stranger” evoked on children.  Now it’s coalesced into this form, and people have been aping it since its inception. The Silence from Doctor Who being one of the most prominent examples, but I’m sure you can think of tall, gaunt men in dark outfits who lack distinct facial features who’ve terrorized any number of series, books, and movies.  They all spawn from this source.  

The Slender Man is a fascinating example of being able to watch folklore emerge, as well as a grand warning about why children should not be exposed to certain things before they learn to differentiate real from unreal.  It’s that later that this documentary really focuses on.  And that’s what makes it truly unnerving.  

That and the fact that the inability to tell the difference between reality and fiction is disappearing in many adults these days.

119) Kong: Skull Island (2017) - Skullcrawler

In a way, the Skullcrawler is representative of the Godzilla foe Megaguirus, in that he is a minor adversary from an older film boosted in power and given second bill status to be an adversary of the main monster of the series.  First appearing as the only surviving monster from the lost Spider Pit sequence of the original King Kong, it became his main adversary in this film and it worked out rather well.

Presented as rapacious, insatiable predators, and so many aspects of their design and biology play into that.  THe grasping tongue, the narrow skull, the layers of teeth, the fact that they vomit up bones . . . it’s all visceral, and designed to eat people.

Plus they continue the sprawlling pose of most American monsters that Cloverfield helped popularize. 

120) IT (2017) – Pennywise the Dancing Clown

What hasn’t been said about IT at this point?  Well, I don’t feel there is much I can add to it, so I want to re-affirm a plot some saw as a failing.  (also, this makes so much fun punning!)

For as evil as Pennywise is, his fear and terror is that of children. ITs monsters coming to gobble them up.  The things done by adults and through their inaction is worse than most of his actions (ya know, short of the eating children thing). It may be an aspect of a larger cosmic horror, but that simplicity and twisted innocence are why he works so well, IMO.

Also, he should totally fight Gamera. Because you KNOW how thematically appropriate that is.

[banjodanger]

X-Men 3:The Last Stand(2006). This Is The Worst One, Right?

Wow.

Like, this was bad. I knew it was going to be bad, like over the years when I revisited this movie it got worse. It was never as good as it was seeing it in the theatre, I knew that. I told myself this. But I was not prepared for how much my opinion would change.

I’m going to tear this movie apart pretty hard, but I’m going to be mature and admit that there were parts of this movie I liked, and that I thought worked, because there were things I enjoyed. I’m examining movies and not just shitting on them.

First off, Beast really struck a nostalgia chord with me. I’m not saying Kelsey Grammar turns in an Oscar-worthy performance, but man it touched that little kid part of my brain that used to light up when I watched the nineties cartoon. If you told me they ripped his character off of old episodes of Cheers, I’d believe you. The speech patterns, his mannerisms, every time he was on screen I was enjoying it. Nicholas Hoult is a great actor and he really made the character his own, but this Beast is ripped straight from the comics and it was a delight.

You know, in a dumb way, I enjoyed Vinnie Jones too, but in a different way. I don’t think he was a good Juggernaut, but he’s a specific actor who plays a specific role and I don’t think he tries to stretch beyond that. So this is basically Bullet-Tooth Tony running around smashing shit up. If it sounds like I’m struggling to find things to compliment, well, I am. But I’m nothing if not a raging masochist so let’s try for one more.

This film is called The Last Stand, and I don’t think this film lives up to that title, even a little. However, it does a pretty fair job of changing the team. Xavier and Cyclops are dead, Magneto, Rogue, and Mystique are all depowered, so in chronological order it sure looks like, whatever happens in the next movie, it’s going to be a different team and a different villain.

I guess if this post has a theme, it’s that time makes fools of us all.

There’s a lot wrong with this movie. That Juggernaut meme line, the way this movie introduces characters just to forget about them(go ahead, tell me how this movie would be any different without Angel.), the lab on Alcatraz. The X-men defend people that tried to cure them and then...nothing? There’s never a teaching moment, unless you count Angel saving his dad which...no. That’s not a teaching moment, the film practically treats this cure as a good thing. They’re keeping a mutant child under lock and key, distilling his power through god knows what means, and somehow they’re not the villains of this film. We’re just supposed to assume they stopped processing it, because now Leech is smiling next to Kitty instead of locked in what’s arguably a kinda rad room. Where the fuck did they get him? Is he an employee’s kid? They’re cool turning their kid out into a lab rat? I guess it doesn’t matter if they want that employee-sponsored health insurance.

Quick side-note, capitalism is destroying us all.

But what’s taking me so long to get at is I was struggling with this blog post for a while. I know this movie hates women. I’m not holding myself up as a paragon of feminism, not even close. I have a lot to learn and unlearn. But I think it is painfully clear that this movie treats just about every woman in this flick poorly. Take a gander.

Rogue: Despite that very emotional speech from Wolverine, Rogue takes that cure for a boy. She leaves after watching Bobby skate with Kitty, and he’s the first person she sees after she’s cured.

Kitty: Jesus, this movie might as well put a red A on everything she wears. She openly flirts with Bobby in front of Rogue, she argues for mutants being above morality with Xavier. Kitty Pryde in this movie is never anything more than a romantic rival. Oh, and I guess she gets called a bitch by Juggernaut. So there’s that.

Mystique: Here is a character that believes in mutant supremacy one hundred percent, she might even believe it more than Magneto. Her own family hated her so much they tried to kill her. She is a mutant and that is a huge part of her identity. It’s why she’s followed Magneto for years. She even takes a bullet(dart?) for the guy, and he thanks her by tossing her aside like garbage. He leves her naked and alone on a hijacked prison convoy and at least ten dead cops. So she wants revenge, and you know what? That’s absolutely in character, Mystique is not one to turn the other cheek, of course she’d go over and help the X-Men, they preach working with humans and surely they’d have sympathy-oh, she decides to work with the people that locked her up? The ones that arguably hold heavy responsibility for her current predicament? Well, that’s a decision too.

So this all leads us to Jean Grey. The Phoenix. They’ve been building up this transformation since the first movie. This is a plot that has been building up for six years. And this movie almost completely disregards it.

After Jean destroys her childhood home, a weird decision that I think only appears in this movie as a callback to the comics, or maybe because someone didn’t have enough confidence in that opening scene. She basically disappears until the movie is done cramming the cure plot down our throats. She threatens Magneto with a cure gun and Wolverine pays her a visit while apparently traveling across the entire contiguous United States in thirty minutes. Which is weird, because if the Phoenix is all “Pain and rage” like Xavier, then the wholesale slaughter that occurs directly in front of her should be driving her nuts. Hundreds of people are killed or depowered in front of her and her reaction is like watching paint dry. Just for the record, her reaction to making out with Cyclops is to evaporate all the water in a lake and disintegrate a human being. Her reaction to the collective agony of hundreds of humans and mutants and ripping up a major landmark is to wonder what is taking McDonalds so long to make a Big Mac. Her meltdown is literally timed to happen directly after Magneto is out of the way and Leech is safe.

But while all that is bad, and shows some definite plot holes, unfamiliarity with the source material, and maybe a knowledge that this movie was going to hit number one at the box office if they just filmed Hugh Jackman reading Wolverine fanfiction. But after giving this movie some thought, I realized what was really bothering me about this movie as a whole, but Jean Grey in particular.

Ok, so the whole thing about these X-Men movies up to this point is that they’re grounded in reality. They don’t wear colorful costumes and they call each other by their real names. They don’t have superhero names, they have nicknames. And, unlike the X-Men of the comic books, they don’t go to outer space. So it makes sense that they’re not going to make the Phoenix an immortal space bird from beyond the stars. Phoenix doesn’t eat planets in this movie, and honestly that’s a good decision. After two movies that more or less take place in our reality, why would you introduce a bunch of fantastical elements all of a sudden(Asking you, Spider-Man 3)? The answer is, you don’t. You make the Phoenix another, higher manifestation of Jean’s powers. The next step in her evolutionary process.

But, by doing that, isn’t the Phoenix a mental illness?

Follow my logic, Jean is losing control of her powers. Her powers are mind-related. Jean Grey is losing her grip on her abilities and her grip on reality, and as a result is a danger to herself, her friends and family, and others. Jean needs help.

Or she needs a guy that has an unrequited crush on her to stab her in the abdomen.

That’s how this movie solves mental illness. Violence. No real attempt to help their friend, just Wolverine saying a line that wouldn’t be out of place in bad romantic poetry and then stabbing her. Because she asked him to. In the comics, she kills herself as a heroic sacrifice. In the movie, a man has to do it, because even though she might be the most powerful mutant on the planet, she’s still got two xx chromosomes and according to Brett Ratner that means she’s weak.

I could talk about all the ways this movie fails its characters but honestly I feel like I’ve typed enough. Fuck this movie. Bring on X-Men Origins because I refuse to believe it is any worse than this.

(For the record, if you or a friend is suffering from a mental illness, please get them help. Don’t call the cops, call a doctor or a trained mental health professional.)