#what are we gonna name this fucking chunk of earth captain

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

Dave: yo how do you think that dude came up with the word "narnia"

Dave: like. "ia". thats a dead ringer for a country ending every country has "ia" at the end of it

Dave: what to put in front of "ia" is the question

Dave: dude in the back drops some shit and goes "darn" just out of earshot

Dave: ...........what did he say? did he say "narn"?

Dave: .......narn.................ia.

Dave: oh my god

Dave: jeffrey. get the fucking printing press

[diddlesanddoodles]

Dumpling ch. 24

The last chapter was a little thinner than I normal post and I left it on a cliffhanger. So I’m releasing the next chapter early. Enjoy the pity chapter, peeps! 

Word spread fast through the castle that the leader of the Hill Tribes, a man named Gregis, had died. Of what, no one seemed to know. However, all through the early morning as breakfast was cooked and readied for the top table, footman and servants were abuzz about the human leader’s demise, murmurs of unease and conspiracy ran amok.

“I wonder who will replace him,” said one footman as he waited for Saen to fill the serving tray with sweetmeats, whole fruits that had been boiled and stirred for hours in honey and sugar and taken on a translucent appearance.

“Who’s to say,” Yale replied from beside him as he sliced portions of cold meat of the left over boar from the previous night’s meal. “I don’t think we have much influence in the Hill Tribe’s politics. King kind of lets them figure out their own affairs.”

“What if the new leader hates Vhasshalans and they start raiding us?”

Yale scowled at the footman, looking as though he were seriously contemplating smashing him over the head with his own serving tray. “Raid us? What would they do that fer? We feed ‘em ya right git!”

The footman had the decency to look ashamed. “Well, yes. But y’know how greedy they are...”

Yale bristled and he glowered. “If ya don’t shut yer gob, I’m gonna smash all yer teeth out and ya can eat soup fer the rest ‘a ya fucking life.”

“Sorry!” The footman left with his tray in a hurry after that.  

“Fucking prat,” Saen muttered after him. “And he runs like a lass.”

For her part, Nenani spent the morning gathering up rocks that were scattered around the camp. Some were smoothed and polished river stones and other were chunks of layered earth that sparkled when the light hit them just right. Anything that looked pretty, she added to her pile. The freedom to wander about as she wished was a somewhat novel thing. Normally the kitchens were so busy in the morning, she had to stay put so as not to get in the way or get stepped on by an unobservant footman. The yard where they had set up the temporary kitchen was wide with plenty of space. To one side, the rampart loomed high above them, stone facing that stretched high into the sky, while the other was the wooden backsides of the guards’ barracks and armory. Just a bit further along was the stables and smithy.  

She had managed to accumulate a respectable collection by the time Farris finally returned. Even from a distance it was clear he was in a particularly fowl mood. Tucked under one arm was a small chest. Yale was the first to greet him.

“Mornin’ boss,” he said tentatively. “Everythin’ go alright?”

“No,” Farris snorted humorlessly, dropping the chest heavily onto a table and making the serving bowls clink and chatter. He stared into it for a moment, scowling and growling. “I suppose ya heard th’news by now.”

“About Gregis? Yeah,” Yale replied. “We heard the horns last night.” Yale watched Farris dig through the chest and when no further elaborations came, he pressed him. “What happened? Farris?”

“Gregis tried to break up a fight between two other humans,” Farris replied and then paused to pull out a small bottle, eyeing the contents inside and giving it a little shake to loosen the material within. He replaced it back into the chest and continued his rummaging. “One of the lil’ fucks stabbed ‘im. Pierced his heart and he bled out right in front of the whole damn tribe.”

There were muted gasps and curses from everyone. Bart grunted and turned to spit, “What a fuckin’ waste.”

Nenani watched from her place next to the hut, noting their reactions. She knew the name Gregis from overhearing Keral and King Warren the time she got lost in the halls and just before getting nabbed by the Ranger Captain. Gregis’s wife had made something for the King. Some sort of talisman to help protect his unborn child. Nenani wondered what kind of man he had been and was aware that she would likely have known him if Farris had not chosen to keep her as his ward.

“Poor man,” Saen said, looking grim. “He was married, wasn’t he?”

Yale nodded. “Aye. Has a young son too, I think.”

“They’ll be holdin’ the funeral tonight,” Farris continued, closing the chest at last with a little more force than was necessary and seemed deeply dissatisfied with the whole thing. “Then they’ll hang the lil’ bastard who did it a few days from now.”

“Any idea what the fight was over?” Avery asked.

“Somethin’ stupid would be my guess,” Farris answered, tucking the small chest under one arm. “Doesn’t matter though. He’s dead. There’s talk of Warrick bein’ nominated to replace him.”

“Warrick?” Bart snorted incredulously. “Ain’t he that skinny twat ya brought back from Dornbey a few summers passed?”

Farris laughed darkly. “That skinny twat grew up, Bart. Got big. Fer as big as a human can get.”

“Will ya be going?” Bart asked, leaning against the table with his arms crossed. “To the funeral.”

“Thought about it,” Farris replied, something hard moving across his face, but in a flash it was gone. “Not certain I much care fer watchin’ a dead human roast. Saw plenty ‘a that durin’ the war and I don’t care to see it ever again.”

“It ain’t the same,” Bart replied, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder and squeezing. “Not at all.”

“Aye,” Farris sighed, looking world wary and tired. Nenani could see the dark circles under his eyes and she wondered if he had slept at all. It did not escape Bart’s eye either and the burly giant, patted Farris’s shoulder.

“Ye look like hell, Farris,” Bart said quietly. “Go take a bit ‘a rest. The boy’s and I know what needs t’be done.”

“No time,” Farris replied shaking his head and making his way towards the larger tent. “Maevis is needin’ some things.”

Farris ducked inside to place the chest on a small table near the front before turning back, a fresh apron in his hands. He was tying it around his waist and moving towards the prep tables.

“Well,” Bart said to him “He ain’t needin’ ‘em right this moment is he?”

The kitchen master stopped and considered it. “Nah. He ain’t.”

The butcher huffed and waved Farris off. “Go on then. We can handle this fine. Maevis has the patience of a saint and won’t care if he has to wait till after lunch fer his order.”

Farris paused, considering and finally he sighed and nodded. “Fine. Come and wake me if it gets too late.”

Bart’s answer came in an affirmative grunt before he returned to his work. Farris warily entered the hut, pulling the apron off. Nenani watched him and there was a nagging feeling in her chest and almost as though it were a compulsory thing, she stood and went to the hut’s open door and peeked in. Farris was sitting on the edge of his cot, wiping one hand down his face and she could more clearly see the toll taken on her guardian. His shoulders slumped as though bowing under the weight of something very heavy and though he was often seen scowling at nothing in particular at any given moment, his frown looked...very sad. Suddenly, green eyes turned to face her and Nenani bristled.

“What is it, Dumplin’?” Farris asked, his voice hoarse. She eased herself into the hut and slowly approached, wringing her hands. She stopped at his boots and looked up. Farris was peering down at her and his green eyes seemed duller. “Hm?”

“Are...” she started, licking her lips. “Are you okay?”

Farris seemed confused and a little taken aback by the question. “...I’ll live.”

She frowned. “That’s not what I asked...”

Farris quirked an eyebrow at her. But when she just continued to frown at him, crossing her arms and waiting for her answer, the forlorn lines of his face broke and he smiled. “I’m fine, lass. Just tired is all. Lot of things happenin’ all at the same time. Beats ya down after a while.” He snorted and wiped something from one eye. “Startin’ t’ pitty the nail...”

She studied his face before asking, “Did you know him? Gregis?”

He nodded. “Aye, I did. Wouldn’t ‘ave called him a ‘friend’, but we worked together gettin’ humans outta Dornbey and settled into the Hill Tribes. Knew ‘im fer a long time. A very long time...”

“Is that where they sell humans?” She asked. “At the market? Where Kent came from? And Sawyer?”

He winced and shook his head. “It ain’t something ya should be hearin’ about, lass,” Farris said, waving his hand. “Not fer a lil’un’s ears.”

She wanted to protest, to say that she wasn’t stupid. She had heard enough of Dornbey market to understand a little of what kinds of nefarious dealings were to be had there. And she also understood Farris and Yale’s trips there were not only purely to acquire produce for the kitchens. They were looking for Vhasshalans violating the King’s creed against eating humans. But seeing the stern warning in his eyes, Nenani dropped it.

She put a hand on the leather of his boot. “But...you’re okay?”

Warmth returned to his eyes and he nodded, a small smile tugging at the edge of his lips. He reached down and ran his finger tips across her head. “Aye.”

The fingers at head her dropped down and he cupped her back with his palm, steering her to face the door and gave her a gentle nudge. “Go on and play, Nenani. Weather’s turnin’ and it won’t be much time at all till the snows taller than ye are and ye’ll be stuck inside fer months. Best enjoy it while it lasts.”

She turned back as the hand retreated and in a sudden, in-the-moment decision, she ran back to grab onto his fingers, squeezing as tightly as she could manage. She released her grip to turn and run out the hut’s door, calling back over her shoulder, “Sleep well!”

Farris was left slack jawed as he watching her run off, a warm feeling spreading through his tired and aching body. As he laid down onto his cot, covering his eyes with his folded apron, he smiled and for the first time in a long while, slept soundly without the faces of the dead to accompany his dreams.

……………………………………………………..

She almost did not recognize him in his fancy clothes. Instead of the well worn slacks and tunic, Jae wore a formal doublet made of green silk with delicate gold embroidery and proper black breeches. His boots had even been polished. For the first time since knowing him, looked to Nenani like a proper King’s ward. Prince like almost. His hair was even combed.

“Not the most comfortable thing to wear,” Jae told her, lifting his arm up and spinning to show off the embroidered trim along the side. “And it makes climbing harder and Lolly will skin me if I rip these pants. But I promised Rosanna I would try to look more the part. She’s still kind of…not all that happy with me, but I guess we’re making progress. Apparently she had some weird idea that Warren wanted me to be in line for the throne and be in competition with her baby. So once we cleared that up, she was a lot more open to me being around. She just doesn’t really talk to me, which is fine. I don’t have much to say to her anyway. But I’m trying to show her I can actually behave and be a good King’s ward. A lot of standing around while someone drones on for an hours about protocols and junk. Ibronians are obsessed with court etiquette. They have rules for everything! Mostly I only need to wear this getup at official functions or when I’m working.”

They had taken up a corner of the camp away from the cook fires and busy staff to quietly chat and catch up. Nenani sat wrapped in her quilt, her collection of river stones in her lap.   

“Working?” she asked. “What are you working on?”

“Oh right!” Jae said, eyes bright. “You wouldn’t have heard. Warren’s made me Assistant Steward.”

“What’s that?” she asked, confused.

“Y’know, I asked him the same thing when he told me,” the boy replied with a smirk. “Basically, I trail along with Donal when he makes his rounds, keeping notes mostly, and delivering messages between the staff. The Steward and the Matron are the head servants, making sure everything runs smoothly between all the different departments.”

“Oh. So who’s the Matron?”

Jae looked at her oddly. “...well, Lolly is of course.”

“She is?” Nenani asked, feeling thrown for a loop.

Jae laughed. “You didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “No one calls her Matron...”

“No, that is true,” he replied conceding the point. “I don’t think she cares for the title to be honest. It does kind of invoke the image of someone much older.”

“Have you apologized to her?” Nenani asked. Jae coughed into his fist, his cheeks reddening in embarrassment.

“Yeah. Yeah I did,” he replied. “She came to see me late after...all that stuff happened.”

“So, does that mean everything’s okay now?” Nenani asked. “You can sleep in your own bed now?”

Jae rolled his eyes, but nodded. He stepped up onto a large boulder sticking up from the ground and eased himself into crouch. “Yup. Lolly even had it cleaned for me.”

“That was nice of her.”

“Yeah, but now I can’t find anything!” he laughed. Careful of his stiff clothing, Jae slowly sank down to sit onto the rock, letting his feet dangle just above the grass, appearing carefree and...content. More than she had ever seen.

“So what about you?” he asked. “Heard that Wyvern messed you up pretty good. These guys were beside themselves. I could heard Farris trying to break down the infirmary doors from Donal’s office.”

“Scariest moment of my life,” she replied. “Even worse than when I thought they were gonna eat me. By far!”

“We could hear it from the great hall. All the BANG and CRASH and WOOSH!,” Jae said, animated as he mimicked the sounds of a wyvern attack. “Everyone just started freaking out and started running around all useless. Thames even fainted!”

“It was so big!” Nenani said, flinging her arms out as far as they would go. “Like, a hundred feet long! It made everyone look small and Quinn said that Dragons are even bigger!”

“I’ve never seen one,” Jae replied with a shudder. “And hope it stays that way. Maevis told me once that Dragons weren’t only dangerous because of their size. They’re smart too. Like proper people smart.”

“I don’t think I wanna meet a dragon either,” Nenani made a face and Jae laughed.

“Oh!” he suddenly said, perking up. “That reminds me. I wanted to asked you about something Yale asked me...”

“Hm?”

“What’s this thing about dead people in the tunnels?”

Her heart gave an odd hiccup and for a moment, she could only stare at Jae. “Oh...yeah. He wasn’t suppose to say anything.”

“So, does that mean it’s true?” Jae asked, leaning down towards her, his eyes alight with curiosity. “You found...bones in there? Where? Why didn’t you anything before?”

She struggled to answer him, but to her relief, Jae did not press her on the fact that she had never told him. Instead, he leap to his feet. “We’re gonna have to find it again.”

“What?” Nenani balked. “No! It was scary!”

“Listen to me Nenani,” he said with a determined expression. “I have lived here for years and thought I knew those tunnels forwards and backwards. Now you’re saying you found a whole new tunnel? I have to see it for myself! Can you remember where it was? Any clue at all?”

“Well,” she began reluctantly. “When I ran away from it I ended up in a hallway and the King was there...it’s where Keral nabbed me...”

“What kind of tapestries did you see? Describe them.”

“Um...there was one with a tree and a horse and some ladies dressed in blue and..”

“I know where that one is!” Jae replied and then looked confused, tapping a finger to lip pursed lips. “But there’s not a door to the tunnels there...”

Nenani shrugged. She half expected him to feel defeated, but instead he looked as though this mystery was rejuvenating him and she was suddenly struck with the notion that he and Keral looked very much alike when they were excited.

“Alright!” He said in finality and turning back to Nenani. “I’m busty this afternoon and most of tomorrow with Donal, but after that I’m free. We’ll go searching for it then.”

“I...I don’t really...”

“Oh, come on! You stared a wyvern down and almost got chomped for real, but you’re too scared to go look for some old bones?”

“T-they’re not the same...”

“Well,” he said with a shrug. “You have two days to get over it. And then we go hunting.”

He turned away and began to walk away. Gaping at the back of Jae’s head, Nenani rose to her feet and yelled after him. “I didn’t agree to any of that!”

“Sorry,” Jae called back, now fully sprinting away. “Can’t hear ya!”

She stomped her feet indignantly. “JAE!”

…………………………………………………

It was well passed the luncheon hour when Farris emerged from the hut and the first thing he did was walk up to Bart and punch him squarely in the back of his right shoulder. “Ya fucker, ye was suppose to wake me if it got late.”

Wincing against the pain, Bart smirked. He rolled his shoulder. “Ah, sorry ‘bout that, Farris. Th’ time must’ve gotten away from me.”

Clearly not believing a word of what Bart had said, Farris just rolled his eyes and tightened his apron while muttering under his breath. Regardless of his protests, he did look very much improved by his rest, Nenani was quick to note. He carried himself in his the familiar way and took no pause before barking out orders and getting updates from everyone on where they were in their tasks.

“The iron one will do for now,” he was telling Gjerk. “We don’t need much ‘a the sauce fer the roast and I don’t want to be wastin’ anythin’ fer no good reason.”

Everyone went to their tasks, performing like a well oiled mechanism despite their heavy impairment with the kitchens still being repaired. Farris swept his gaze across the camp, noting where everyone was and mentally knocking off items from his list. He spotted Nenani under one of the prep tables set up near the cook fire, stacking rocks.  

Nenani glanced up when she heard Farris approach, his boots making light crunching sounds. He crouched down to peer under the table at her, smirking quizzically. “Playin’ with rocks, lass?”

“No,” she replied and held a particular river stone. It was a blushing pink color with a cream stripe down the center. “Just the pretty ones.”

He shook his head. “Well, no one could accuse ya of not bein’ easily amused.”

She stuck her tongue at him.

“I got a job fer ya, lil’ un,” he said as he reached out to lift her up. Once she was secured in the crook of his arm, he then reach back down to grab up her quilt. Her collection tumbled out into the grass.

“Hey!” she protested.

“They’re rocks, lass. I think they’ll be fine.”

He took her into the large tent that was set up beside the hut where he had created a makeshift spice pantry. There were no shelves, but chests and boxes filled with the bottles and jars and crocks that normally stocked the shelves of his pantry in the kitchen. Nenani watched from the work table as Farris dug through one of the boxes. He was muttering something under his breath as he searched until at last he stood upright, something clasped in his hand. “Ah! There it is...”

He took a stool from the other side of the table and pulled it closer, easing into it and lowering his hand close to her, the items still clasped in his fist “Thought this was lost fer good. Surprised me when it showed up again when we cleaned everythin’ out.”

He opened his hand and nestled in his palm was a mortar and pestle made of dark stone. It was small and clearly meant for human use and for a moment, Nenani was very confused. Looking up at the spice master, she tilted her head in bafflement.

“It was Kent’s,” Farris explained. “He’d been gettin’ frustrated about bein’ useless, so I threatened ‘im that if he didn’t quit ‘is gripin’ I’d go ahead and give ‘im something to keep ‘im busy. Little bastard called my bluff. So I had this made fer ‘im.”

Farris plucked the tiny object from his palm and set it in front of Nenani. “Taught ‘im how to mix tinctures for Yaesha and that was ‘is job.”

She grabbed the stone pestle in her hands and lifted. It was heavy and large with her hands barely fitting around it. The inside of the mortar’s bowl and the end of the pestle were both rough surfaced while everything else was a smooth and polished back.

“And now, it’s yours.”

Nenani looked up at Farris, gaping. “Wha...really?”

He nodded. “Yale’s been teachin’ ya well on the all the herbs and yer picking it up quick. I’ll started ye on simple vinegar based recipes and we’ll work from there.”

Looking to the mortar, she ran her hands along the bowl, feeling the cold stone. The gravity of what this meant was not lost on her and inexplicably, she found her eyes were watering. Blinking them away, she craned her neck to look back at Farris who was watching her.

“Thank you,” she said. “I promise I’ll work really hard to learn.”

Farris smiled, chuckling as he stood up. “And don’t be thinkin’ I’m gonna let ya be slackin’ off just ‘cause ye a lil’un.”

“I am not a slacker,” she told him and Farris laughed loudly.

“Ya certainly won’t be when I’m done with ye.”

[occasionalfics]

hi so i haven’t made any real posts in a while bc i haven’t really been writing that much but i wanted to just post SOMETHING for y’all to interact with

anyway, if you don’t know, i have a youtube channel and i’ve been watching (almost) every movie that chris evans is in because i love him and reviewing them for my channel and i thought i’d give a rundown of the movies i’ve seen so far (including ones i haven’t rewatched for the channel yet because i’m not gonna link to the videos - if you really want to watch, message me) so maybe you could decide which ones are worth your time and/or money 😂

for this, i’ll give a brief description, my general thoughts, and a score from 1-10 (1 being unwatchable and 10 being PEAK cinema)

i’m keeping things very light on spoilers, meaning there might be one or two overall but not for every movie.

so here we go:

The Newcomers (2000) - some indie movie with no theatrical release about a family that moves from boston to vermont because of money troubles. chris is in it for like 5 minutes and he’s honestly the second best part (second to a dog only). 3/10, mostly boring but not offensive.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001) - i feel like everyone has seen this. it’s a spoof of 80′s and 90′s teen movies (namely she’s all that and cruel intentions). chris plays the main love interest and he’s definitely funny enough to pull off the part but it’s not really my thing. 4/10.

The Perfect Score (2004) - this is the first time chris and sc*rj* worked together. 6 high school kids fail the SATs so instead of retaking them, they sneak into a government building and steal the answers. it’s an mtv movie and it’s...fine? not great, not special, but...very early aughts mtv for sure. 4/10

Cellular (2004) - an action flick where chris plays a regular dude who gets a call from a woman who’s been kidnapped, and then has to keep communications up with her in order to save her and take down some corrupt cops. surprisingly funny, i had a great time watching, would recommend! 7/10

Fierce People (2005) - i think this was another indie movie without a theatrical release. based on a book that, from the reviews of both, is identical, i think because the author of the book was also the screenplay writer. and that’s probably why this movie sucked. bby anton yelchin (rip) gets caught scoring drugs for his mom, and because she has connections to this super rich dude, they end up going to live in new jersey with his weirdass family instead of bby anton going to jail. chris’s character is not who you think he is. content warnings for drugs, rape, and murder. overall boring, not what it thinks it is, 4/10

Fantastic Four (2005) - okay everyone’s seen these. i actually hate both of these FF movies, but chris as johnny storm is the only shinning light in either. reed is the WORST and sue is treated like eye candy. 4/10 for johnny storm alone.

London (2005) - literally the worst movie i have ever seen. i hate london. also an indie movie, very misogynistic, very pretentious and self-important. lonely emo boy does drugs with random people in a bathroom at a party he was not invited to INTENTIONALLY, in the hopes that he will win over his ex girlfriend, who he repeatedly emotionally abused while they were together, even though the party is literally in honor of her moving across the country. and she didn’t want him there. please never, ever bother watching london and talking about it online - fuckbois will attempt to tell you that you know nothing repeatedly. 1/10, worst film ever made.

TMNT (2007) - does this need an introduction? chris plays casey, but the movie’s really about the turtles. honestly the writing kind of relies on you knowing a lot about the turtle lore and overall it’s a boring but ultimately harmless film. it’s just really not worth your time. 2/10

Sunshine (2007) - ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN, I HAVE NOT  STOPPED THINKING ABOUT SUNSHINE IN OVER A YEAR. 8 astronauts are on a mission to ignite a nuclear bomb into the dying heart of our sun. but it’s a space film so shit goes wrong and, one by one, they start dying. very tense, very sad. the biggest complaint all around is that the first 2/3s of the movie are one genre and the last 3rd is a completely different movie, and yet it’s STILL amazing. please watch (if you can handle a space thriller)! 8/10

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) - a very bad follow up to a very bad origin movie. not even andre braugher could save this one. reed is really mean to johnny for no reason and i hate his guts. 3/10

The Nanny Diaries (2007) - second time appearing alongside sc*rj*. she’s the main character. an anthropology student takes on a nannying job for an upperclass family in new york, but the job ends up being more than she bargained for. chris plays harvard hottie, her upstairs neighbor who is THE BEST BOY. i loved this movie. 8/10

Battle for Terra (2007) - a very weird but very good animated movie about humans attempting to colonize an alien planet because we were stupid enough to destroy earth, venus, and mars. lots of big names on the cast list for a movie that not many people saw, but it goes ham in the “fuck colonizers” theme. overall, a surprising joy. 6.5/10

Street Kings (2008) - well this was directed by david ayer so my friend and i went into this with very low expectations and it didn’t even meet that bar. keanu reeves plays a sad and angry corrupt cop who almost kind of gets framed for killing another cop, and then spends a good chunk of the runtime just hunting down other corrupt cops without doing anything about his own corruption. it’s copaganda, but very bad copaganda. also chris dies. fuck this movie, don’t waste your time. this is another one where the fanboys will come for you if you say a bad thing about it on the internet, 2/10

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008) - another indie that apparently caught the eye of kevin fiege? i don’t really know why because chris’s character is very bland and the movie overall is nothing special. tennessee williams wrote the screenplay before he died in the 80′s and then this was made and nothing about it was changed. it’s basically straight people in the 20′s in the south being weird and rude. a rich girl pays a hot poor boy to escort her to parties after a huge scandal was caused by her father. she loves the poor boy but he doesn’t return the feelings and everyone’s sad, dying, or mean. skip it, honestly. 4/10

Push (2009) - honestly, an underrated movie that so often gets shit on because of x-men. push is so good! a telekinetic man meets a young girl who can see the future, who tells him that if he helps her find her mom, they’ll also come into $6 million. they run into his ex and the government department trying to control people with powers, and shit ensues. chris’s chemistry with dakota fanning as big brother/little sister is adorable and i need more people to talk about it. 8/10, very worth your time.

The Losers (2010) - apparently went up against some other star-studded action flick with a similar plot at the time of release and suffered for it, but other than that, this is a fun romp with lots of character. a team of militiamen are framed for an international scandal and forced to go underground until a mysterious woman helps them exact revenge on the billionaire who framed them so they can go back to their families. chris plays one of the secondary characters and he’s PERFECT. best character in the whole movie! you’ve probably seen the “don’t stop believing”/”lethal killing machine” scene around tumblr before - that’s just how his character is the whole movie and it’s great. definitely recommend! 7/10

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) - we’ve all seen it. lucas lee is the best. there are lots of problems in the word choice and some of the moral quandaries but overall, an enjoyable ode to videogames and comic books. 6.5/10

Puncture (2011) - once again, an indie film with very little theatrical release. WHOOOH though. this movie. SO GOOD! two personal injury lawyers take on a case when a nurse is accidentally pricked on the job and contracts AIDS. they take on a huge pharmaceutical supply company in the hopes of manufacturing and creating a legal standard for using safety needles to protect frontline medical workers, all while chris’s character is dealing with being an addict. based on a true story, honestly   one of chris’s best performances (and that’s across the board). you can  rent it cheap from youtube and it’s totally worth it. 7.5/10

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - i mean. it’s cap. honestly this movie feels a little long even though it’s not. overall it’s a good, enjoyable movie and watching it all the way through reminded me of why bucky was so important. 7/10

What's Your Number? (2011) - okay honestly i love this movie? a woman is slutshamed by her sister’s friends and then embarks on a journey through her past relationships to find her soulmate, only to realize that it doesn’t matter how many men she’s slept with because the right one really won’t give a damn and neither should she. everyone’s seen naked collin around tumblr. he’s a good boy. mostly. 7/10

The Avengers (2012) - so i can appreciate that this was like THE event movie of the summer of 2012 but it is LONG and there’s still so much spy shit i don’t understand. my friends and i also think that j*ss wh*d*n oversimplifies most of the characters, and ultimately the writing isn’t super strong. the performances are, for sure, but it’s still not as great of a movie as i thought it was when i was a senior in high school. 7/10

The Iceman (2012) - also an indie? based on a true story. a man (played by michael shannon) is recruited by the mob to be a hitman, and then something happens where they don’t want to pay him or something, so he starts doing a shady job with another hitman (played by chris) to support his family. overall it’s a boring film but michael and chris were both really good! watch it if you like dark mob movies, michael shannon, or winona ryder. 3/10

Snowpiercer (2013) - this movie, no pun intended, is a RIDE. poor people at the back of a train containing the last living human beings revolt against the bourgeoise. everyone’s dirty and tired and hungry. weird shit happens, but ultimately, this was SO worth the watch (and the money i spent on the blu-ray)!  7/10

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - still my favorite cap movie. excellent characterization, maybe the only time i cared about natasha. the plot should be an avengers movie given that shield is a team concern, but i will stand by the winter soldier aspect of this movie til i die. 8/10

Before We Go (2014) - an indie movie that chris directed (his directorial debut)! it’s...cute, i guess. it’s not harmful in any way, but also not special in any way. flustered woman misses her train, cute musician in the station offers to help her navigate NYC. they talk about feelings and their pasts and what they’re running from and toward. it’s fine. 6/10

Playing It Cool (2014) - indie? i don’t know?? screenplay writer (chris) wants to write action films but keeps getting hired to write romcoms, then he finds himself IN a romcom. it’s okay. some people think it’s terribly misogynistic which i didn’t find it to be, but it’s also just...kinda bland. 4/10

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - my least favorite avengers movie. i genuinely hate how ultron was handled and this movie has never once made me sympathize with the maximoffs. except for when steve defends their choice to allow experimentation to be done so they could defend their country. uh the party at the beginning is the best part, full stop. 3/10

Captain America: Civil War (2016) - this isn’t a cap film. he has no character growth. this is an avengers film at best. i also take issue with how much of this movie is really just two movies forced into one. bucky gets the short end of the deal in the overall mcu and this is really where that starts. 5/10

Gifted (2017) - PLEASE. WATCH. GIFTED. a former philosophy professor gives up his career to raise his niece, but when his mother attempts to gain custody, he has to fight for the person he loves most in the world. one of the most heartfelt, genuine movies ever. chris and mckenna grace have SUCH good chemistry. bonus octavia spencer (also in snowpiercer). 10/10

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) - probably my favorite avengers movie. great stakes. amazing acting. THE BEARD!!! 8/10

Knives Out (2019) - WHOOO BITCH. TOP TIER. ransom drysdale could do whatever he wants to me and normally, i don’t “date” villains. 9/10

Endgame (2019) - the lesser infinity war. i’m not a fan of time jumps and also hate fatphobia. thor was mistreated and i can’t forgive that.

[stories-mostly]

Stark's Bug

Tony Stark x son!reader

I saw endgame on the 24th and all in gonna say is it sure was a movie and my knees hurt afterwards. (Please don't put any spoilers in the replies thanks) This is the last chapter before Iron man 2.

Words: 2188

Warnings: none

Chapter 14

Christmas Eve rolled around and you were too excited to go to sleep. That and the fear of having a nightmare again is what kept you awake. You hadn't had a nightmare in a week and 3 days so you assumed that it might happen again soon.

Repeating the same motions with your Captain Magic figure above you while laying on your bed got boring quickly. And the thirst was calling. Begrudgingly you went out to get yourself water or something.

The house was quiet beside your bare feet making noise as they took another step. The floor was cold for your blanket warm feet so you walked on your toes to avoid the feeling and the weird noise as much as possible.

Walking past one of the clocks you noted dully that it was already 11.27pm. Way past your usual dream land time.

You walked into the kitchen not expecting anyone to be in it. You jumped when you saw a man standing in it before realizing that it was your father.

Sharply you breathed out the shock and moved past him to get you a glass.

"What're you doing awake?" He asked vividly remembering having tucked you in a few hours back. You seemed pretty tuckered out then.

"I'm thirsty."

He hummed seeming concentrated on the drink he was making in your blender. It looked disgusting.

"What's that?" You pointed at the blender with the dark green thick liquid in it.

"A little healthy snack." He grimaced "Wanna try?" Suddenly smirking. He looked exhausted.

You shook your head, downing your tap water in two gulps, placing the glass in the sink after.

Tony followed your example basically inhaling the thing. He didn't look happy after.

"How is it?"

"Could be better."

The two of you just stood there in silence for a second. Tony looked you once over.

"You can't sleep, right?"

You nodded hesitantly. He smiled at that.

"Get dressed in something warm." He told you immediately turning to walk out of the room.

Confused you did as told and stood in the middle of the living room wearing your winter coat, warm pants and some boots over your Pjs.

Your father carrying several things came, took your hand without a word and started leading you through the house. Up some stairs, all familiar so far. He leads you out onto the highest balcony looking over the rought waves.

"Come on." He said waving at you to follow him.

At the point where Balcony and roof met was where he stopped.

"We're gonna climb up here." He explained hoisting you onto the roof and following soon after.

Climbing onto the highest roof of the mansion all the lights in and around the house turned off at once.

Your eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the newfound darkness only to find an incredible view.

There were thousands of tiny specks of light in an array of colours decorating the sky.

"Whoa," was the only thing you could muster to get out of your mouth.

"Right?" Tony was spreading out a blanket and pillows on the roof.

You looked back and saw him holding out a big box wrapped in Captain Magic themed wrapping paper. The box was longer than it was tall. Or taller than it was wide depending on how you propped it up.

"This is for you." Tony said as you just stared at the gift.

"What is it?" You took it and sat down on the blankets ready to tear through the thin paper.

"A gift." He smirked and told you to open it.

You didn't have to be told twice. With little effort the paper fell from the box and revealed the picture of a telescope on the side.

"This is so cool!" You jumped up and engulfed your father in the biggest Bear hug your small body could muster.

"Happy birthday Jesus." He said chuckling a bit at his own joke.

Both of you started to assemble your new telescope. Tony had already taken it out of the box once to get rid of all the unnecessary byproducts of the packaging. He had assembled and taken it apart before as well. Just to get it standing as soon as possible.

Within a minute or two your star looking tool was standing proudly before you already pointing at the sky.

All fatigue was gone as soon as you got a glimpse of the moon through the device. There was so much more detail to the moon than you could've ever imagined.

Tony smiled softly as you continued to steer the tube to the next source of light.

"Dad! Come here look it's a planet!" You waved him over in excitement careful not to move the Telescope.

With a grunt he stood up and waddled over leaning down to observe what you'd found.

"Wow that's amazing, Bug. That must be super far away."

Satisfied with his answer you grabbed your telescope again and continued exploring the universe.

In about half an hour you had found so many cool sights that Tony couldn't keep track of all the wow's and "look at this" he heard. Each time getting back up and looking at the star you wanted to show him. You were so excited he couldn't help smiling with you.

But the half hour was enough for now. Fatigue finally catching up to you.

"Let's go to bed, Bug. You're tired." He said softly when you sat down beside him.

"No I'm not! I wanna look at the stars some more!" You protested loudly, laying down on the thick blankets and staring up at the sky to make your point.

With a chuckle your dad copied your movements, laying his head down on his arm using the other to point out various stars.

"Do you know any constellation?" He asked eyes on the sky.

"Only the small dipper and big dipper."

"And where are they?"

You shrugged.

"I guess we'll just have to make up our own then." The next 15 minutes were spend pointing out various star clusters and assigning them a name. Together you named 6 constellations: Hero, Mermaid, dog, lane, spot and circle. Not very fascinating but easy to find.

"You see that star in the middle of nowhere?" He pointed to his right breaking the silence. You followed his finger up to the sky finding the lonely star.

"That's the one I'm gonna go built my new house on."

You giggled.

"What?"

"You cant do that! Stars arent made of dirt! It's like the sun! You can't build a house there." You said reciting all the things you had read about the sun and the stars.

"You don't know that! You were never there."

"I can check with my Telescope! It's not a planet!"

"Oh yeah? Then how come we can see other planets as stars?"

"Because...." you thought about it. That's sort of true. It could just be a planet or sort of moon from far away.

"You can't build a house there." You mumbled defeated.

"I can, and I will. Just you see Bug, one morning I'll be gone and you'll look through that telescope and see me wandering around on that exact star enjoying my new house. All, by, my,-self." He teased poking your side with his free arm. You laughed.

Silence settled over the two of you like a comfortable blanket. Tony shifted a little placing both hands beneath his head. You put your head on his arm and continued looking up. The universe seemed so much bigger when you directly looked at it like this. Like a thousand fairy lights strung along on the colourful ceiling of a dark room. Or flicks of white paint as finishing pieces of an amazing painting.

With some sweet thoughts about the universe you drifted off content and warm on the thick blankets and your warm winter clothes.

Tony smiled at the scene. His little boy laying content beside him, scooting closer as the cold seeps through his clothes. He wanted to move, it was way too cold out here for sleeping. But he wasn't able to. Frozen in place by his latest thoughts.

Carefully he checked if his son was actually asleep. He was, the little guy was in deep sleep his mouth hanging open and little puffs of air escaping it in regular intervals.

It was probably Christmas day already.

With a sigh he laid his head back down and stared up at the seemingly endless sky.

So this was it, this had been his last Christmas eve and will be his last Christmas. If he doesn't find a cure that is.

Tony was still in denial about the whole thing. He doesn't fully believe it yet, but he knows it's there. Just months after almost getting killed, he's slowly dying. Slowly being poisoned by the very thing meant to keep him alive.

That wasn't the worst part about it though. The worst part was that his mind was constantly telling him that he'll be leaving behind his very reason for fighting on. This fragile little boy full of emotions that he readily expresses. Plagued by nightmares about horrible thing he didn't want to reveal. Who wants to be friends with the world. And who slept in his fathers bed every night for the first 4 years of his life. For over half his life.

He was only 7. And Tony blamed himself for all the shit y/n had to witness in the small amount of time he had spent on earth. Not even a decade old.

With a shuddered sigh he picked up his son and brought him inside, dropping him off in his bed and removing the boy's warm clothes.

He cleaned off the roof and wandered down into the lab. He hadn't checked everything yet. There was still hope that he could survive, he had to. If not for himself then for his son.

The only human being that truly relies on his survival.

Bonus because I needed something lighthearted

Nickolas J. Fury had had a long day. Recently his agents were fucking up more than usual and a good chunk were currently on Christmas leave. So many in fact that he had to go out and deal with a bunch of wannabe villains himself. And now he was walking into the shield headquarters to complete a bunch of paperwork. On early Christmas day.

With an annoyed sigh he entered his office and stopped in his tracks at the sight before him. There was a package on his desk. Brown and unsuspecting. He took in his surroundings. Nothing seemed suspicious.

Fury stepped out of his office to look for someone who could maybe tell him about it. But the halls were empty. It was late at night after all.

He sighed and carefully walked closer seeing something written on top.

It was his name and the buildings address. And there was a return address as well.

"What?" He asked himself quietly. Why would Stark of all people send him a package?

The package looked like it had actually been shipped so it probably was from him. And wasn't just a weird joke.

Fury took his knife and cut through the tape holding it shut. Opening itcwith suspicion.

His face just grew more confused as he found a poorly wrapped box inside, everything was covered in loose silver and gold glitter. He lifted out the gift and found the glitter bomb that was a handmade Christmas card underneath.

When he lifted it wafts of poorly secured glitter fell off the front.

He shook it twice to get as much of that stuff contained in the box as possible.

Fury had a hunch on who sent the gift by the shaky child drawing of a decorated tree on the front.

He decided to sit down and read the card. Wrong move, as soon as he opened the card a spoonful of loosened glitter fell straight into his lap and onto his dark clothing. Fury tried to push the glitter off his lap with his free hand but some still stuck.

A frustrated sigh left his mouth when he gave up and read the card.

Dear Mr. Direk Director Fury,

I want to wish you a good Christmas and a happy new year.

You don't know me a lot but I would like to be your friend because you look really cool so I got you a gift for Christmas. Because we are not friends yet I got you something I like and hope you like it too. I told Phil and he said it was a good gift.

I hope you like it.

Your new friend, full/n-Stark

Ps I like your eye patch

Fury found himself smiling at the message. It was sweet and came from a place of certain innocence. He could forgive the glitter attack. It wasn't intentional.

Carefully he removed the wrapping paper from the box and opened the top.

Inside were several things. He took out a drawing first. It was of him and y/n next to a Christmas tree with the words we are friends written beneath with an arrow pointing at the figures.

The second thing that immediately caught his eyes was a stuffed animal. A tiger with a cape and the typical comic book eye mask thingy. The tag said it was from a children's series. The tiger was named Stripes.

And last but not least was a small, real tiny keychain of a orange tabby also in superhero gear.

Fury wanted to full on laugh while also cursing Coulson internally.

A cat. Of course.

He was gonna have to thank the kid the next time he saw him.

Tags: @shannonr2003 @art-estrange @nicholasbich @tater-thottie @tonystanktheirondad @gaylemonshark @emilaa2001 @kindahadeschild

[xx-autmnlvr-xx]

In this mountain town chapter 1 (reupload)

I posted this on @willthenewkid but I finally got an idea for the name and aldo-crangle confirmed the name for me :) so I decided to reupload it onto here!

Fandom: South park

Genre: drama/romance

----+----------+---------++--------+-----

Life never had much for me. I had that feeling for 7 years. Why I haven't committed suicide, I really don't know. I would like to think it's a sign that someone cares. That a force in the sky has a plan for me; but I know better. He's there, but he doesn't care. Why would he? With despicable wants and violent tendencies.

Then there's me. I always chase something to forget my past, to forget everything. It works most of the time, but when the high is lost I hurt worse than before. So, I keep searching.

As soon as my back hit the couch cushion I looked at my cell and cursed.

"What's up?" A chick asked, taking a hit on her edible.

"I gotta get going, school begins in 4 hours."

"Dude, I thought you was on summer vaca." A lanky guy asked, wiping his nose and sniffing.

I groaned, closing my baggy and putting it in my pocket.

"It was, it ended yesterday."

Pete took a drag of his cigarette.

"I actually forgot about that. Damn, I guess that means I have to go too."

"When you two coming back?" The woman asked.

"Hell if I know, you gotta go to work tonight anyway so why does it matter?" I scoffed, putting on my jacket.

"FUCK!" She screamed, scampering to her phone.

I took the distraction to slip out of the abandoned house we hung out in. I sighed and cleaned off some of the coke from under my nose and began walking toward my house. As I walked I heard Pete walk out of the building and to his house.

"See you later, conformist." He called, joking.

"Bye, goth." I replied, smiling a little.

I felt myself tense as I approached my house. I didn't want to go inside but I needed to change. I opened the door and closed it softly, turning around to find my father sprawled out on the carpet with containers and papers everywhere. I let out a breath of frustration and went to my room. I picked out some clothes for the day and put them on. A pair of skin-tight grey jeans and a black hoodie. I grabbed the coke baggy that was in my pocket and placed it in my nightstand drawer.

My door opened and my father came in, "H-hey, scamp. Where have you been all night? I w-was worried sick!"

"Why do you care?" I rolled my eyes and zipped up my backpack.

"Because I'm your dad? Why shouldn't I worry when my son doesn't come home?"

I feigned innocence, "oh, I thought you wouldn't notice because you was busy puffing your life away."

I saw him get upset, "don't you talk to your dad like that! You're the child, I'm the adult! You're supposed to show me respect!"

My eye twitched, "why should I respect someone that doesn't respect me?"

"You're just like your mother. Judging me but not judging yourself! Just fly away, your highness!" He yelled.

"Don't you EVER talk about mom like that!" I argued back, putting my backpack on and pushing past him,

"She was a hundred times the person you would ever be!"

"Then why did you kill her?" He snapped. The sentence pinched a nerve in my chest. I ran, making my way down the stairs and out the door. With my back on the door I looked at a blade of grass and fought back tears. I sighed and looked to my left when I heard a door open.

I caught sight of butters leaving his house, I noticed a bruise on his cheek.

"Hey, will! How are you this morning?" He called out, smiling like he always does.

"I'm fine." I answered, waving. Kenny came up to butters and started talking to him. I used the opportunity to start walking to school.

It has been six years since I came to this town. A lot of us are in tenth grade now. Some have been held back because of the horrible teachers. Some have moved away from the toxicity of the town. I don't blame them. I would move away too, if it wasn't for....

"Hey! Wait up!" A voice called out to me, I stopped, feeling myself shiver from his voice. The voice that held so much meaning to me. I took in a breath before turning around.

"Scott, how are you?"

He smiled, coming up to me, "I'm fine! I didn't see you any this summer, where were you?"

"Well I've been working." I said, putting my hands in my pocket, playing with the seams.

"That's weird, I've been to every shop and I haven't seen you."

"It's a night shift." I quickly informed him.

"Oh lucky! I still can't go out at night, because my parents think I'll end up getting mugged."

I smiled softly, "yeah, that can happen. They're just keeping you safe."

He huffed, "but I'm 15, I should be able to go out whenever I want!"

I looked at him and turned around, beginning to walk again, "maybe I'll talk to your parents to let you spend the night and we can sneak out."

"You would? Oh thank you, Will!" He got excited, smiling, following me.

When we got to the school, everyone was crowded around the schools bulletin board.

"What's going on?" Scott asked Nelly.

She was beaming with excitement, "we're going to have a fall dance!!!"

I tilted my head, "but isn't it the first day?"

"Yeah!!! The principal said that the best way for us to stay focused is if we let all our socialization and excitement out on a dance floor!" Bebe said, turning to us.

Scott and I sighed at the sound of a dance. But I know we sighed for different reasons. After the doorway cleared, Scott walked to his locker. I followed him.

He looked at me when he got to his locker, "my locker's 156, which ones yours?"

I looked at the slip of paper, "65"

His smile faded, "what?! We're not next to each other?!" He said, distressed.

"Hold on." I calmly assured, I looked at the locker on the other side of him and saw a guy with red hair open it, I walked around Scott and tapped the guys shoulder.

"Hey, here, take my locker." I commanded, holding my number out.

"Why should I do that?" He asked, looking at me firmly.

I made a step toward him, "it's by the teachers lounge so you can stay safe from the assholes. You can either take my locker or have a trash can be your locker." I stated. He made a noise and took the number, taking his books with him. I threw my bag in my new locker and closed it.

"Dang, Will. You didn't have to be so mean to him." Scott said, staring at me, concerned for the guy.

"Well he shouldn't have asked questions." I shrugged but I felt bad. Not because of the ginger, but because Scott didn't like it.

"So, what are your classes?" I quickly changed the subject.

He looked at his schedule he taped to his door, "geography homeroom, gym, trigonometry, English 10, earth and space, and french. You?"

I looked at my phone and let out a puff of air.

"We only have one class together. English."

"Aw that sucks" he said, sighing.

After we talked some more, the bell rang and a wave of teens ran to their classes.

"Well see you later, Will." Scott said, smiling.

I did finger guns, "see you in English, captain diabetes."

He laughed before walking away. I smiled and breathed deeply. I would never admit out loud that I loved him, but I repeat it in my head a lot. Every fiber of my being wants to be with him, but it's hard when I know he's straight. I sighed and walked to first period.

"Good morning, class. My name is Dave and welcome to algebra 2. I will not accept jokes and tardies. So if you're late you'll be sent to the office and if you try any wisecracks, you'll be removed from my class. Understood?"

None of us answered.

He continued, "now let's go around the room and introduce ourselves."

I groaned at that sentence and put my head on my desk at the back of the room.

"Let's start with you." He said. I heard a kid on my right clear his throat.

"My name is Mark and-" he began talking, I couldn't really hear him though, my mind was on the dance and how I could possibly talk Scott into going with me.

After school I went to the back of the school to have a smoke.

"Hey, will." Pete greeted me, sitting beside Michael.

"Hey, Pete. Guys." I acknowledge, nodding to the others as I reached in my backpack for a cigarette. They greeted me back.

"You seriously still attending class?" Henrietta scoffed, looking at my papers and notebooks that's in my bag.

"Well I want to graduate so I can leave this fucking town. Don't you?" I huffed. I was having trouble finding my lighter.

"You got me there. But I could always get my GED over at one of the big cities." She took a drag from her cigarette.

"Here." Firkle said, throwing me his matches. I thanked him and lit my cigarette, passing him his matches back.

"I'll tell you what, these conformists are plaguing this place more and more." Michael brooded, flicking some ashes.

"It makes me wanna implode into meat chunks." Firkle agreed.

I rolled my eyes. They always got to mention something about conformists, "so, you still wanting to be a coroner, Michael?"

He smiled at the thought, "Yeah. Took an internship over the summer. You still selling yourself?"

I flicked my ashes "I gotta earn money somehow. My father sure isn't gonna feed me."

"How does it feel having sex with strangers?" Henrietta asked, smirking.

I shrugged, "it's fine. Most of them just focus on their own need but they pay me good." They nodded

"Well at least they do that." Pete added.

There was silence for a moment. I praised the silence. The subject wasn't on me anymore. I wouldn't tell them if they were anyone else. That's one thing about the goths, they keep quiet about subjects their friends talk about. I respect that.

Firkle received a text and put out his cigarette.

"I have to go. Ike wants me at the second-hand shop."

"Have fun." Henrietta answered. Firkle stood up and walked off, his chained boots clinking with every step.

"I have to go too. Scott wants to discuss plans for the dance." I said, trying to smoke the last of my cigarette in one puff.

"Who are you going with?" Pete asked.

"Hell of I know." I shrugged.

Walking off I thought about Scott walking in the dance with me. Then I would find the nerve to ask him to dance. He'd be embarrassed and mess with his shirt. We would dance and my eyes would lock with his. I daydreamed about it until I got to his door.

I took a couple breaths and rung the doorbell. Scott answered and smiled.

"Will! Come in, mom made snacks do you want any?"

"No, I'm fine. Thank you, though." I replied, smiling.

We went upstairs to his room and he began showing me outfits.

"I was thinking of wearing my purple button up and black dress pants but I don't have a tie that matches."

"Well do you have to wear a tie?" I asked.

"Well I was thinking that maybe a girl will come up and pull me by the tie and I really would like for that to happen." I felt my body tinge with the word 'girl' and feigned a smile.

"Well then does your dad have a tie that matches?"

"I don't know. I'll check. So you think I should wear this?"

"I think it would look great on you." I nodded.

"So who are you gonna ask?" He said, sitting beside me.

"uuh don't know," I replied quickly, shrugging, "you?"

"I don't know, maybe red but I doubt she'll accept. Then there's Nelly. I have no idea. I guess whoever agrees." He thought, looking at his ceiling. I nodded.

"Hey, want to play video games?" He asked suddenly. I smiled.

"Does a dog shit?" I replied. He laughed and went to his video games. We spent the rest of the day playing super smash Bros.

We was on twelve out of sixteen when we heard a female voice.

"Scott, honey! It's time for dinner!" Mrs. Scott said. He looked at the clock; 6:00

"Oh, I didn't realize it was that late," he looked at me, "sorry, will but mother has a problem with people eating dinner with us since Cartman."

I smiled, "it's okay. You enjoy dinner. See you tomorrow?"

He smiled back, "of course! See you at school."

I stood up and went down the stairs, saying goodbye to his parents and leaving the house. It felt like I was filled with hot sauce, I was shaking with the need to tell Scott how I feel. I did some calming breaths and checked my phone.

[tilltheendwilliwrite]

Warrior Daughter

Chapter Thirteen

Previous Chapter

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader  |  Word Count: 5583 Warnings: Smexy and fluff, language (when is there not a language warning?)

Song: My Gospel by Charlie Puth

Steve still couldn’t get over the whole castle thing. No matter how Y/N protested it was a keep, not a castle, he and Bucky would exchange a look and arch a brow.

It was totally a castle.

They dropped Bucky off at his room and walked into their own through a door of solid oak wrapped in heavy bands of steel. The Queen’s Quarters. A space which hadn’t been used or changed since Y/N had last died, and had been preserved by magic which had been lifted when she’d announced her return.

Steve let out a low whistle at the high stone walls and thick beams which spanned the ceiling. Windows which arched and appeared to be made of leaded glass allowed the sun to spill across the floor on either side of the bed.

It was bigger than a king, sitting on a frame of ornately carved wood. Covered in thick pelts, it looked like something out of a medieval movie, not the current century, but damn if it didn’t appear inviting. The walls held tapestries of battles long gone, paintings of places and worlds he’d never seen nor ever imagined could exist. Shelves held unique knick-knacks, and he wondered if they were things Y/N had collected in the past or if all the rooms held such treasures.

He started tugging on the buckles of his armour as he wandered over to take a closer look. A stunning vase of green glass drew his attention when it changed colour all on its own to a pretty navy blue.

“Damn,” Steve murmured amazed.

“Mistral glass. It responds to person closest to it, changing colour to suit their preference,” Y/N said, taking over to tug his buckles open herself.

“How’s it do that?” he asked, lifting his arm out of her way.

“Magic,” she snickered.

Steve rolled his eyes. “What’s this one?” He pointed at what looked like a spearhead of ancient material.

“Eoter’s pike tip. He was a dark God Odin sent the Valkyrie after when he decided to try and take over a neighbouring world. Tove was newly queen then. The story of Eoter’s defeat is one you’ll likely hear while here.”

He lifted the heavy cuirass off over his head and set it on the floor beside his shield. “And this?” He gently touched the chunk of wood with its chips of paint and partially obscured design.

Y/N’s arms went around his waist, and her forehead landed between his shoulder blades. “Shield, what was left of it, after… after the battle with the Sjeletyv.”

“Baby, why would you keep this?” he asked, turning around to take her by the arms.

“To never forget what we lost.” She sighed and stepped into his chest. “So many died. Some were just maidens. Some had barely begun their lives. I vowed never again. Never again would I allow what happened on that world to happen again. Never again would I fail my people. Yet… here we are, looking at genocide if I can't figure out what's happening here.”

“You're gonna figure it out, doll face. You are,” he reiterated when she sighed. “Let's go over what we know,” he said, scooping her up to take to the big as fuck bed where he dropped her and began working on her boots. “Garry's here somewhere. I can practically smell the little shit. I've been thinking about it for a while. What would have happened if he’d succeeded in bringing you back and tricking you into believing he was me? You said a queen couldn't call the Valkyrjur for personal gain, right? What would have happened if you'd summoned them that day on Earth?”

“I wouldn't have,” she said, propped up on her elbows. “Even if Garry convinced me he was my sjelevenn I wouldn't have done it.”

“Hypothetically. Say you'd been desperate and reached out for help. What would have happened?”

“I would have been disgraced if I'd called them out on you. The Avengers are the good guys. Aiding Hydra would have been seen as a traitorous act against Asgard as Asgard is allied with the Avengers. My title would have been stripped from me, and a council of Valkyrie would have decided my fate. Death most likely for my crime.”

“Even after finding out it was a trick?” He could hardly believe it.

“We have strict rules for a reason, Steve. If someone with evil intentions ruled the Valkyrie, there are few forces which could stop them. I know you and Bucky probably look at them with a little scorn right now, but these women are not the ones I fought with a millennium ago. Yes, they're sloppy and under trained, but that won't last long. Eventually, I'll have them in the shape they should be, then they will return to the unstoppable force they were. A force like that with corrupt leadership could be very dangerous.”

“So if you'd called the Valkyrjur to Earth, they would have killed you? Just like that?”

“It would have been a true death. I would have stood trial; then the temple would have made certain my time as Sváfa never returned. Our journey would have ended. Maybe we’d reunite and start again as sjelevenn, but with how fucked up our path has become… I don't know.”

He pulled off her second boot. “Someone's really trying to get rid of you, baby girl.”

“I know. But it's not the high priestess. At least I don't think so. That other one, Kerse, I can't say the same. Something about her is just… fishy.”

“I agree,” Steve said as he unbuckled her faulds.

“So, no sjelevenn besides Gunborg and now me have returned. There should be at least six of us. The other thing I found odd? Gunborg looks exactly the same as she used too. There are usually subtle differences.  Changes to height and build or hair colour depending on the parents we are born too. But she seems no different than when I last saw her. It's weird.”

“I bet.” He lifted her hips with one hand to tug her faulds from beneath her and reached for her metal breasts. Steve smoothed his hands over them which made her laugh.

“You know I can't feel that.”

“So? I can,” he teased. “What about the fellas in Valhalla?” he asked.

“I don't know. Until I can see the Einherjar for myself, that will remain a mystery.”

Steve gave the buckles beneath her arm a tug. “You people need to invent zippers,” he grumbled. “What happens if the men in Valhalla shouldn't be there? I mean, their technically dead right?”

“If those in Valhalla aren't worthy of being there, they never should have made it past Baldi and Balik. They'd be turned away, the gates would have closed to them, and Ekheart would have taken them to Fólkvangr.”

Steve shook his head and smirked at his wife. “That was a whole lot of names I'm not familiar with.”

She smiled as he pulled her first layer of armour over her head. “Baldi and Balik are the wolves who guard Valhalla’s gates. And Ekheart is the eagle who flies above it. Fólkvangr is where those who don't meet Valhalla's standards go having earned their rest.”

“Like heaven’s consolation prize? Thanks for playing but you didn't quite make it?”

“You don't have to make it sound so horrible! It's not Hel,” she scoffed.

Steve froze and looked up at her face. “Really? Do I want to ask?”

“Unlikely. There are serpents and corpse eating involved. Rather ugly business, really.”

The smile on her face made it hard to figure out whether she was joking or not. “I'm not asking.”

“Then I won't tell,” she snickered. “I believe, Captain, you were in the process striping ne naked.”

“Since when does removing your armour amount to me getting you naked?”

“Since… always,” she laughed.

“Brat,” he muttered.

“Don't start. I can't call you Feathers.”

Steve flipped her to her stomach once he peeled off her leather cuirass and threw it on the floor. “Fuck I love these pants,” he groaned, taking handfuls of her ass while he straddled her thighs.

She smirked and wiggled her hips. “Ditto.”

Tony had reworked her corset of chain mail. Swapped out the metal for vibranium and made the closure a seamless set of hooks he only needed to pass his hand down to attach or run a finger up to undo. It was a genius bit of lowtech Stark was ridiculously proud of and rightfully so.

Steve lifted her up, and the chain mail slithered off the bed to the floor with a shove and a small crash while she tugged her bracers off and pulled her tunic over her head.

All that remained was her undershirt and those sexy pants Steve unlaced before dropping her back to the bed. “If,” he murmured as he placed kisses across her shoulders and gently caressed the backs of her arms, “the men somehow got past the wolves into Valhalla and didn’t belong there, what could you do?”

“Purge. It can be done, but it's difficult. I'd need Odin's approval and the backing of both the Valkyrjur and the Einherjar. And if some of those people don't belong here, or where taken from their rightful afterlife, Steve, I don't know what to do. If they don't belong here, they could be sent to Fólkvangr, but to what end? They wouldn't be at peace. They'd never see their loved ones again.” She gave a heavy sigh and turned her face into the fur.

“We’ll figure it out. Maybe you worry for nothing,” he said, nuzzling the nape of her neck, but he doubted his own words.

***

From the foot of the bed, naked still after their afternoon together, Steve watched his girl as she readied for the night ahead. It was, to say the least, highly stimulating. Instead of leather pants, she’d pulled on a skirt of cognac coloured silk which sat low on her hips. Lace and chains wrapped around her pelvis. Tassels swung, coins and bits of bone chimed together. Her midsection was mostly bare, her breasts confined by what was, to his mind, nothing more than a scarf she hung behind her neck, crossed over her chest, wrapped twice around her ribs and tied in a knot at her back. Heavy necklaces of bead, metal, and bone, feathers and ribbon, and precious stones swung low, brushing the bare space above her navel. A glint of gold beneath them made him smile, finding his gift to her, the locket just like his mother’s, still around her neck.

Bangles of solid bronze, shiny gold, and black stones clung to her upper arms. Her gauntlet had been set aside for the night, but she wasn’t without protection. She had hidden daggers strapped to each thigh, visual ones on each hip, and another tucked into the back of her top above the knot. He’d watched her put up her hair, fluffing it up high in the front while braiding the mass of it down her back. She’d tucked metal cuffs and feathers in along the way, eventually finishing with the crown which proclaimed her what she was.

The Valkyrie Queen.

She looked it tonight, but not like he was used too. When she turned to look at him with her eyes covered in kohl, her lips painted red, and three blue streaks along her right cheekbone, Steve shivered. She was a Warrior Queen. A barbarian. A beautiful and deadly creature he was almost afraid to touch.

“I have something for you,” she said gliding toward him.

Steve swallowed thickly, thankful he’d drawn one of the many pelts over his lap to hide the evidence of his arousal.

She only smiled, soft and knowing. “Do you like my outfit, sjelevenn?’

“Yeah,” he squeaked and cleared his throat. “Yeah, baby. You’re gorgeous, but this is all so different.” He couldn’t help but watch her hips as she swayed to a stop in front of him.

“Stevie,” she purred, tilting his chin up with her finger. “I know this is all really different. If you're uncomfortable at all, tell me.”

“Darlin’, the only part of me that’s uncomfortable doesn’t have time to be dealt with.”

She chuckled, ducked her head, and lightly kissed his lips. “If only.” Still, she settled onto his knee and wiggled just enough to make him groan.

“Stop it, woman,” Steve grumbled.

“As I said, I have something for you.”

She held up the hand not wrapped around his neck. From it hung three strands of thin cord. Silver wrapped sections of each in a staggered pattern, but what looked like porcupine quills, blunt at the tip, capped the ends. The second item, a silver chain complete with a small round pendant, a tree upon its face, also dangled from her fingers.

He arched a brow in query, carefully touching both.

“This was yours, from your mother when you brought me home after we first met,” she said of the pendant. “She said it was a reminder that life was a circle. Birth to death to rebirth. Something which would be quite literal for the two of us. But these,” she ran her thumb over the cord, “I made. One for each life we lived together on Asgard. Every time I found you, I made you a new one. Thinned and tanned the leather, wound the cords, and wrapped the silver.”

“You gonna make me one this time?” he asked, touched by her gift.

“If you want me too,” she murmured, blushing a little. “They mean more to the men of Asgard. Handmade gifts are considered powerful for the time and effort put into them. Magical in a way. Like they have protective properties.”

That clinched it for him. Steve took the cords from her fingers, looped the long lengths once around his neck, and pressed his palm against them over his heart. “Were you planning to make one every life? I think if we’d been together twenty or thirty times, I might run out of space.”

She chuckled and gently stroked her fingertips over his mark. The sensation of her touching it was ridiculously pleasurable and Steve hummed his approval. “I thought at nine I might start adding beads or silver cuffs to keep count. The funny thing though?” she murmured, lifting her gaze to his. “You ask me that every life.”

“I do, do I?” Steve chuckled.

“Every time,” she murmured, gently stroking his mark again.

“Are these some kind of quill?” he asked, flicking his finger over the tip.

Y/N nodded. “From a slark.”

“What’s a slark?”

She blinked once. “Ugh… have you ever seen a platypus?”

Steve frowned. “In pictures.”

“They look kind of like that, but they have this crest of quills they can flare out when startled or when a predator tries to bite them. It’s a nasty surprise for sure. They don’t shed, so to get them you have to catch one or throw a piece of leather on them, so the quills stick. It’s not painful for the slark. Maybe a little stressful, but you pull the leather away, and they trample off into the forest.”

While she was explaining, he gently took the silver pendant in his palm. “It would be neat to see one.”

She closed her hand over his. “Steve, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. I kept it for you because it was part of our beginning, and while you share a soul with Helgi, you are not the same person. The beliefs and ways of Asgard aren’t yours. I don’t ever want you to feel like I’m pushing you to be someone your not.”

“But I am,” he said softly. “It’s pretty clear I’m supposed to be here. Hurgid’s sword, the King’s ring, the people of Sváfaland? You.” He looked into her eyes. “As much as you need to be here, I think I do too.”

A quiet sigh slipped from her. “Just… be happy, Steve. Don’t take on the troubles of this world and add them to the burdens you carry at home.”

He chuckled and pulled his hand away to encourage her to help him put on the pendant. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Y/N? That’s just how I roll.”

She snickered, latched the pendant, and cupped his face. Her nails lightly scratched the stubble on his cheeks. “You keep growing this out, and you’re really going to fit in.” Y/N cocked her head to the side. “Any chance I can talk you into lining your eyes?”

It was Steve’s turn to blink at her. “I’m sorry, what?”

“With kohl. It’s pretty common for our men, or did you think Loki wore eyeliner because he wants to look pretty?”

“I thought it was a Goth thing,” he mumbled.

“What would you know about Goth things?” Y/N snickered, rising to head back to the table with the mirror she’d used to do her makeup.

“Hey, I can do the Google.”

She snorted and laughed, giggling as she returned to stand before him with a black pencil. “The fact you said, “Do the Google,” just goes to show you can't.” Holding up the pencil, she arched a challenging brow.

“I dunno, babe.” It wasn’t something he’d ever envisioned on himself.

“The men, both of Asgard and those Vikings of Earth, believed it made them fierce and also highly desirable. It might increase your already potent sex appeal, Stevie.” She twirled it around her fingers.

He could feel it, the excitement the idea of this whole kohl thing was giving her, and waffled a little.

“If you hate it, I’ll take it off.”

Steve rolled his eyes but nodded. “Fine. Just don’t make me look like Bucky.”

Y/N chuckled. “Close your eyes. I promise you won’t look like Bucky. You’ll look super sexy and dangerous.”

He doubted it but didn’t say so, just let her have her fun. It wouldn’t hurt anything to indulge her, and it could be removed when she finished having her way. When the pencil dragged along his upper lid then out toward his temple before she lifted it to repeat the process on his lower lid and down his cheek, he smirked a little. “Having fun?” he asked as she ran her finger over the mark, smudging things he supposed.

“You have no idea,” she murmured, but the hard clench and wave of her desire had his eyes popping open.

“Really?” he asked, but it wasn’t necessary for her to answer. He could feel the heat bloom in her belly. How the desire caused her breasts to tingle and her nipples to harden. Her pupils expanded to fill her irises, and her breath caught.

“I’m… going to need a minute,” she murmured and stepped back, stealing the pelt from his lap as she went. “Ho, wow.”

His body had calmed only to respond to her increase in arousal, and he sat there half hard, getting harder by the second. She gulped a swallow, her eyes running over his whole body. “Even… even if you don’t want to wear it publicly, you need to wear it privately at least once. Could you just…” She motioned to his lap.

Steve wrapped his hand around his cock and stroked. They both hissed loudly.

“Okay, okay. You need to stop. We don’t have time to deal with that right now.” She fanned her face, her cheeks incredibly flushed.

“Then you’d best stop looking at me like that,” Steve growled, rising to his feet to stalk toward her.

“I can’t help it!” she moaned, backing away. “You look fucking hot!”

She backed all the way into the table with the mirror, and Steve glanced at it only to do a double take. “Holy shit…”

“I know right!” Y/N squealed.

The dark liner looked odd on his face, but it made his eyes a vibrant blue, and he could see why the men would wear it to appear fierce in battle. It was basically warpaint. “That’s… crazy.”

“So? You gonna keep it?” she asked, a challenge in her voice.

He grabbed her around the waist and dragged her to his chest, his cock hard between them. “If I do? What do I get out of it?”

She bit her bottom lip, a tempting little tease. “Babe, you can have whatever you want.”

Steve grinned wide. “Anything?”

Her nails traced a path down his chest and scratched over his nipple. “Anything.”

He took a second glance in the mirror. With the thin cords and the silver chain hanging against his bare chest, and the look of her all warrior woman beside him, Steve gave in with a nod. They fit. “When in Rome, right?”

Y/N gave a happy shriek and pulled away. “Come get dressed. You can do the anything later.”

Steve took a couple of deep breaths, counted backward from twenty, and followed after her once his hard-on settled down enough he knew he could get his pants laced.

***

Bucky looked up when the quiet knock came to his door. “Come in.”

“Am I disturbing you?” Eira asked as she stuck her head in the door.

High and braided and full of ornaments, Bucky had to smile when her hair swung forward. Her dark locks looked like soft silk where they hung loosely around her. Two lines of blue paint traversed her face from hairline to chin, stopping at her right eyebrow and continuing beneath her right eye. Her eyes were heavy and dark with kohl, her lips a soft pink which made her mouth look lush.

“Nah, I just finished with this.” He motioned to the clothing which still made him slightly giddy. Black leather pants and a dark grey tunic, v-necked with a black cord to lace it closed. He’d made the mistake of taking off the bangle Freyja made him to change shirts and instantly regretted it.

His arm had gone dead. Not numb. Not jerky. Just dead. Straight down right now. He’d put the bangle back on and given his head a shake, vowing not to do that again.

Eira pushed the door all the way open, and Bucky had to swallow the saliva which pooled swiftly in his mouth. Dark green lace. She wore nothing but dark green lace and strategically placed jewelry. Thick, full necklaces of metal and stone hid her breasts, but the idea she could bend over and show them to the world made him incredibly uncomfortable. So did the streak of possessiveness which raced through him.

Should he be feeling possessive about a woman’s breasts? A woman who wasn’t his?

When she turned to shut the door, he damn near groaned. Her back was bare but for a tale of lace in a triangle worked with bits of gold. Her skirt sat low on her hips in the same green lace, double layered and much less see-through, while a belt of looped gold chains hugged where he had the sudden urge to place his hands.

“What in the hell are you wearing?” was not what he planned on spitting at her.

She pressed her palms to her stomach, one clutching a small box. “This is my favourite dress for my off nights. You… you don’t like it?”

He liked it a little too much if the tightening of his pants was anything to go by. “It’s not that,” Bucky murmured, not wanting to hurt her feelings. “I guess I was expecting something more like what you wore last night.”

“Oh,” she smiled and relaxed, and made her way toward him. “Yes, that was quite different. But Asgard is stuffy like that. Do your Earthly women not dress this way?”

“Nope.” The P popped when his voice rose at her approach. She looked far too confident in her getup for him to be comfortable. It wasn't until she was closer he realized the lace was panelled in the front and not as sheer as he'd thought. Still, her skin looked incredibly soft. Her eyes were big and bright, made all the bluer by the paint on her face.

“What would they wear?” she asked, sinking down to sit next to him.

She smelled fucking incredible. Bucky hadn’t noticed it earlier, or even last night, but she’d clearly bathed because she smelled of something delicate, soft, and inviting. Like flowers in a meadow after a rain.

Bucky wanted to touch her hair, her waist, her mouth. For all his flirting with Magret, he hadn’t had the same reaction to that woman as he was to the gentle one sitting beside him. “Uh, well for one the skirts are a lot shorter.”

Her eyes widened. “That seems… odd. How are you to fight if your dress is so short your ass is exposed when you kick your first opponent?”

“Well, most of our women don’t fight, and the ones who do have figured it out,” he chuckled, thinking of Natasha. “Most of them wouldn’t wander around with such a risky shirt. What happens if you bend over?”

“A little side breast is considered scandalous, but one can just flash their ass and undergarments?” Eira shook her head. “Breasts are for feeding one’s children. Legs are for enticing one’s lover.”

Bucky couldn’t help but smirk at her. “I assure you, darlin’. Breasts work just as well for enticing one’s lover.”

She arched a brow in speculation. “I suppose that is true. Perhaps I’ve lived among women too long.” Eira stood, her skirt split to show off her legs. “Perhaps I should take a lover.”

He nearly swallowed his tongue. “Never had one?”

“I’ve been busy,” she huffed, tapping a finger against her lips. “Thoughts for another day.” Eira turned toward him and held up the box. “It’s commonplace for our men to be painted. I was wondering if you’d be interested?”

Bucky eyed her warily. “Explain what painted means?”

“Eyes darkened with kohl. The God Loki wears it, or he does when he is here, though I believe he had his eyes lightly lined in Asgard as well. It’s considered appealing sexually while also making one look battle hardened and fierce. It would suit you,” she said softly, eyeing him from behind her lashes.

Her pleasure in the idea was evident, but Bucky shook his head. “I really can’t.”

“Why?” Her nose scrunched adorably with her confusion.

He sighed softly. “Too many bad memories. At one point, the Winter Soldier worked for Hydra, and not because I wanted to. They did to me what they did to Y/N, except when they wiped my memory, it worked. I had no knowledge of Steve or my life, only flashes of memories. Snippets. Pieces. Nothing that made sense. They’d point me at a target, and I’d kill it. Until they pointed me at Steve and I… couldn’t. They made me wear a mask, a muzzle really, and always darkened my eyes to prevent glare when I was shooting. The idea of seeing that face again…” He shuddered.

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry.” Her hand landed on his and squeezed. “May I ask how they did it? A single line or all over?”

“All over,” he frowned.

“I see. I won’t pressure you to change your mind. There are some in Valhalla who also don’t wear it. You won’t be the only one.”

“I sincerely doubt Y/N will convince Steve if she even bothers to ask.”

Eira nodded. “You’re probably right. It was only a thought. Though you look very nice as you are, might I make a suggestion?”

“Sure, dollface,” Bucky agreed, knowing it would take a while to get used to their ways and clothing.

“Stand up,” she urged and set her box down.

He obliged her, observing as she loosened the ties on his tunic.

“There is no need to be so laced up here. We are much more… relaxed than Asgard. Eat, drink, and celebrate. That’s what feasting in Valhalla is all about. We are a laid back people. For the Einherjar, this is heaven. They earned their place. We only serve and visit within the sacred walls.” She turned away and picked up the wide belt he hadn’t been able to figure out how to do up.

Eira wrapped it around his waist and began to tie an intricate and beautiful knot with the long leather laces. “It’s against the rules to carry a sword in Valhalla. The Einherjar hang their swords on the walls outside the building as they come in from the fields. But you can bring as many daggers as you wish. You’ll want one at least to eat with.”

“No utensils in Valhalla?” Bucky teased.

“There are, but usually the men are rather… eager,” she snickered. “Using a fork my get you heckled.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She finished the tie and lifted her hands. They hovered for a moment before landing lightly on his chest. “And your knees together?”

She said it with a softness, a hesitation and bit of uncertainty he didn't understand. Was she merely repeating what Y/N teased him about, or was their more to her question that he was currently missing?

Bucky peered down at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. “Yeah, doll.”

A shiver wracked her body. “I’m sorry about yesterday, and this morning,” she whispered. “I was childish and closed minded. There is so much more to the universe than I am aware of. I should not have been so quick to judge what I do not know.”

God! The girl was killing him with how sweet she was. Just gentle and soft. Yet, he’d watched her fight today in awe and a sense of pride. “My opinion shouldn’t matter so much.”

“Your opinion matters most of all,” she said so quietly he almost missed it.

Bucky took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up. “Why?” Something swam in her eyes, an emotion he couldn’t quite decipher. “Eira?”

She went from the something to uncertain to afraid. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“That’s not gonna fly, baby girl. We barely know each other. Why would it matter what I think of you?”

Her eyes closed and she swallowed thickly. “Because… because I think-”

A familiar fist banged on the door. “Buck! Move your ass!”

“Punk! Keep your panties on!” Bucky snarled at the door, then returned his gaze to Eira. “We’re not through talking about this.”

She gave a resigned nod. “I know. I just don’t think you’re going to be happy about it.” She pulled her face away and went to open the door. “Oh… wow,” she breathed once she had, her hand flying to her mouth. “You look… incredible!”

Bucky thought she was speaking to Y/N, but it was Steve who laughed and walked through the door.

“Damn, son!” Bucky laughed. “So that’s what it’s like!” Y/N had convinced him to wear the kohl. “You going native on me?”

“Don’t laugh. You’re next,” Steve smirked.

“Steve,” Bucky instantly sobered. “No.”

Steve’s smile fell away. “Okay, Buck. No pressure.”

“One is better than none,” Y/N snickered as she slipped in beside Steve.

Bucky whistled at the sight of her. “Fuck me sideways. You look amazing!”

“Thanks, Barnes.” She gave the ties on his shirt a tug and forced it open a little more. “Better.”

“She did the same with me,” Steve snickered. “Though with a lot more aggression.”

He motioned to the tunic open nearly to the top of his pants. Sleeves pushed back, Steve’s arm-ring gleamed in the light, his sapphire ring sparkled, and with the addition of the tattoo on his neck and the kohl-lined eyes, Bucky could only shake his head. “Damn. If only the team could see you know. Grow your hair out some, and they really wouldn’t recognize you.”

Steve shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. “It seems I’m going to be a man of two worlds. Get used to it.”

“He can get used to it over dinner. We need to go. There’s the Blessing and the Rite of Nine to see to first, and we can’t be late,” Y/N said, shooing all of them toward the door. “Eira, you look lovely.”

Eira blushed and ducked her chin. “Thank you, my queen. I’m off rotation at the moment.”

“Good. You can sit with us for dinner.” Y/N patted Eira’s arm, linked them together and shot a smirk at Bucky. “You can explain the eccentricities of Valhalla to Bucky.”

Eira giggled softly. “I shall do my best. I’m sure many in Valhalla will be glad to see you.”

“Yes, there are a few I look forward to seeing again.”

Y/N smiled in the way that always reminded Bucky of Loki, causing him to exchange a glance with Steve. Steve just rolled his eyes and smirked, apparently content to go with the flow.

“No swords, huh?” he murmured to Steve.

“No. You packing?”

“More blades than Barton has arrows.”

Steve chuckled. “I may have half that many. Let’s hope we won’t need them.”

“You’d better not have just jinxed us, punk,” Bucky grumbled, lightly touching the twin blades on his thigh.

Next Chapter

[professortennant]

Sam/Jack Rec List, Pt. 1

This is mostly for me in case my bookmarks are lost but yeah! I’ve gone through like 90% of AO3, a good chunk of ff.net, and I just dived into LJ. But since I have 103 fics already bookmarked, I’m just gonna put this list up first and then add to it later. 

Plz read the tags of each fic to avoid stuff you don’t wanna read. If you read something and love it, GO TELL THE AUTHOR SO THEY WRITE MORE.

Absolute Fucking Favorites (aka I have read these more times than I feel comfortable admitting)

We Made It Series: A series of connected episode tags beginning with Forever in a Day. Sam shows up on Jack's doorstep with a six pack of beer, a bottle of cheap wine and a package of chicken breasts. Jack's confused. They cook dinner.

Taking Christmas Off: How Sam and Jack end up spending Christmas alone together every single year, accidentally at first, and then very much on purpose. A fluffy/shippy Christmas fic in eight parts, with spoilers through season 8.

The Dreams We Left Behind: The day Sam Carter marries Pete Shanahan is not the worst day of Jack’s life; he’s already lived that day. But that doesn't make it easy.

Like Kissing a Stranger: There is not one day he spends on this planet, or any other, that his mouth doesn't get him into trouble.(An episode tag for Point Of View.)

Retrospective: Sam doesn’t give it a name, this feeling. She doesn’t even think about it much, preferring to glimpse it obliquely from the corner of her eye. It’s a secret delight that she shares with no one, scarcely even herself.One story in eight parts charting Sam and Jack’s relationship from the start of S1 to the end of S8.

The Short Straw: She hadn't set out to cheat, certainly, but had thought that she'd at least be able to interpret her own work in a way that would lead to victory. (Tag for Shades of Grey)

Post-Eps/Episode Tags (except for Threads, which is its own category)

The Price of Edora: Sam suffers the consequences of pushing herself too hard in order to bring Jack back from Edora. 

For Just One Taste of This: After that, though, things got tricky and dangerous because they pushed a little more and went a little (a lot) further off that deep end, and soon it was the two of them alone in the empty barracks and this wasn’t wrong, was it, just sitting side by side in the darkness? (Post Divide and Conquer)

Let Your Demons Run: (here can't be that many eyes in the building that haven't noticed her. Post-ep for Entity.

Midnight at the Oasis: What if Abydos wasn't destroyed, and Jack and Sam really did go to Skaara's wedding? A short AU based on the wonderful (!) exchange among the three at the beginning of Full Circle.

Thyself, Unknown: And then they were strangers again and their world was brand new with signs of aging. Beneath the Surface 

Unlearn your Stars: Thera turned her eyes toward the ceiling, as if she could see through the miles of earth and snow to the sky beyond. Something about her seemed to yearn, and for reasons he could not fathom Jonah felt like Thera belonged there. Among the stars. (Beneath the Surface)

Transcendental: Alternate Sam and Jack who got stranded in the alternate timeline in Moebius. 

The Fundamental Theorem of Samantha Carter: Samantha Carter knew precisely what she wanted. And then she didn’t. S.8 Full Alert through Threads with references to Gemini.

The Rainy Season: Tag for The Light. Their arguing was beginning to grate on her nerves.

Icarus Ascending: What if Jack and Sam didn't keep it in the room after all? A/U tag to Divide and Conquer. 

The Space Between: There's a little space between them on the bed. Small enough to be close, but enough space to remind them where the line should be. (tag for Death Knell.)

Mimesis: Jack tries to help Carter deal with her time spent with Fifth and the Replicators.

A Rush of Blood to the Head: "You volunteering to come with me, Carter?" Sam and Jack deal (or don't) with the creation of mini!Jack.

The Breaking Point: Daniel’s ‘death’ in Meridian forces Sam Carter to reevaluate her life and what really matters to her.

Window on a Room: The first time around, Sam had found that face the Colonel was making to be endearing, in the increasingly problematic way she found pretty much everything he did to be endearing. The second time, she had found it alarming - not the Colonel specifically, of course, just the fact that she’d already experienced that exact moment not ten hours earlier. She went from being alarmed on the second loop to being frustrated, baffled and discouraged in subsequent loops as their attempts to stop the looping had all failed. And now that they had settled into this routine, with Sam and Teal’c, loop after loop, learning to translate the altar text themselves, well now she was just tired. Not even the Colonel’s problematically endearing face was helping.Another loop, she thought to herself. Here we go again.

black holes and revelations: It’s late and dark and as far as she’s concerned, the world has stopped for them (they’d done the Earth a few favors, it's time one was returned).

Lifelines: Everyone expects her to be so resilient--but beneath her calm exterior seethe emotions beyond her control and understanding. Months post "Beneath the Surface", Sam finally has to face it all, and find a way to accept the way things have to be.

Reflections on a Broken Surface: Episode tag to Beneath the Surface. How Sam and Jack became a couple in the ep. 

Tilting at Windmills: Jack's struggling to deal with the events of Euronda and Alar's people. Angry, depressed, and alone, he needs Sam's help to find his way home, literally, and figuratively.

untitled: Sam/Jack, word prompt- 'never' Episode tag to Death Knell

the art of reincarnation: Detoxing in a Goa’uld palace, Jack struggles with something he can't let go, and Sam struggles with everything.

Cracks in the Glass: Doctor Carter has stepped through the mirror-seeking refuge from her ravaged world. Her presence forces Sam and Jack to question their own decisions. Sam and Jack focused episode enhancement to "Point of View".

Before the Invitation: A chance meeting in the commissary leads to some unintended revelations. (Set just prior to 'Nemesis')

Threads

Full Disclosure: She looks at him with that complex expression that’s punctuated their relationship ever since Pete barged onto the scene. The one that looks like a question, or a plea – the one he’s never really understood and has never dared pursue.

Down to the Bone: She knows now, what’s essential.

Sooner: Some bonus scenes for "Threads," because a lot went on in and around that episode that we just didn't get to see.

an angel came down: The first Christmas after her father dies is rough. The second Christmas after her father dies is better.

Breathe In: It wasn’t an immediate thing, despite what people thought. They didn’t jump each other the second SG1 was on vacation, with her emotionally vulnerable after her father’s death and no longer engaged, or him now free of SG Command and DC-bound.

Sam or Jack are Tortured/Abused (but it ends happily)

Primary Emotion: After seventeen weeks of torture in a Goa'uld prison, Samantha Carter is rescued by SG-1. In the time that follows she must relearn how to relate to her team, reassess her relationships with both herself and others, and decide whether or not she'll continue to step through the Stargate. Luckily she's got the benefit of a good psychologist and the love of a great man.

Character: SG1 is kidnapped by an alien king who needs Sam to perpetuate his bloodline & will do anything to possess her. The team must find a way to escape before she pays the ultimate price for her defiance. 

Compos Mentis: After Colonel O'Neill is stranded on a seemingly friendly planet, it's up to his team to rescue him. Who they find, though, isn't the man they left behind.

Crawl from the Chasm: After Jack's experiences in Ba'al's Abyss, he struggles to find peace. Angsty Jack/Sam Ship.

After All: They’d been trapped for a month. He’d been tortured within an inch of her life. And then their roles had been reversed.

All We Need of Hell: Jack is captured and tortured and when he returns, he just doesn’t see the point in following the regs anymore--Sam is essential. And he convinces her to forget the regs, too. (Dark fic). (chap 2)

Aliens Made Them Do It

Auctions and Consequences: Slavery has been abolished for good reason, but apparently not everyone got the memo… landing Sam and Jack in hot water.

Auction and Reaction (sequel to the above): Jack manages to get himself captured and Sam is sent to negotiate for his freedom. Unfortunately, the matriarch in charge of the male slaves is unconvinced of her claim and threatens to keep Jack as her personal slave.

Relief: How they'd managed to gate to a planet right in the middle of their annual fertility festival was beyond him.

in doorways and dreams i run to you: They had stepped through the gate together. They were looking for something.Light.There had been a blinding light and then nothing. Nothing but the heat and the taste of his skin on her lips. And now he was on his knees and she wasn't stopping him from sliding a hand underneath her.

Beautiful Far Away: While on a routine exploratory mission, Colonel Jack O'Neill and Captain Samantha Carter get caught up in a children's game that turns out to be the beginning of Rorilian marriage rites. When seismic activity starts to rock the village, the local leaders demand the ritual be seen through to its natural conclusion to avoid further angering their gods. Sam's equipment suggests the tremors are caused by an unidentifiable metal, but her science seems to be a point of contention amongst the leaders. She's convinced she needs just a little more time to figure out what is happening on the planet. Unfortunately, that means she's jumping into a ritual marriage with her new commanding officer. What could possibly go wrong?

Xanadu: The team travels offworld to take care of some mining negotiations, only to meet with an unanticipated challenge on P3X-427.

5 Times Fic

Five Times Jack Sees Sam Out of Uniform

The Nature We Leave Behind Us: 5 Times Daniel (and Teal’c) find out or suspect about Sam and Jack

Five Times Jack Came Close to Breaking the Frat Regs with Sam

Desperation: 5 times Jack kisses Sam

Ambient: 3 morning-afters that they miss and 1 they don’t.

5 missing ship scenes from s9/s10

5 times jack asked sam out and 1 time he didn’t have to

Stranded/Retired/Moved Off-World

My Scars Healed (aka the Cottage AU): Abandoned off-world, living is about more than just survival.

In Media Res: When Sam and Jack are taken captive and put to work in a mining camp, that turns out to be the least of their troubles. Forced by circumstance to live in close proximity, their time as captives has consequences neither one foresees.

Compliance: The end comes fast. One moment it’s a normal day with paperwork and bad coffee and the next it’s a scramble for the event horizon as the Mountain comes down around them. The base empties out with surprising efficiency, and by the time Jack hangs up the red phone on the last conversation he’ll ever have with the President, only Carter and Daniel and a couple techs are still in the gate room, the last of the supplies being sent through to their fall back site.

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together: Dear Airline, I was marooned on an alien planet…

And then I dreamt of yes: The universe has really bad timing, but neither Sam or Jack is ready to give it the last word. 

The Final Straw: Sam's injured and trapped off-world. 

Twilight: General O'Neill gets ansty to do some Gate travel, but a natural phenomenon on another world causes problems and changes things

Bird Stealing Bread: Jack had actually imagined being stranded off-world quite a few times. But he really, really, really hadn't counted on being stranded off-world with Sam. And Pete.

Under the Sun: ABANDONED FIC BUT IT’S SO GOOD. When lightning strikes the DHD and strands Sam and Jack alone on a planet, they must rely on one another to get through until help can arrive. Soon, though, they discover they're not alone on the planet and things change. Suddenly they're thrust into local politics and Sam is drafted to help save the locals' lives. Perhaps, if they play their cards right, all of it can help them get home.

Total AU

String Theory: Dr. Samantha Carter joins the SGC and discovers a life she never expected.

Imprimatura: Even in a completely different reality, where a strictly enforced color-based caste system stands between them, some things remain the same.

How to Start a Fire: She denies it's physical attraction. He denies it's anything but. Sam/Jack. Changeling Universe.

Convergence Series: Jack O’Neill is a man waiting to die, and she’s the only one brave enough not to look away.

Right as rain: Jack never went on the Abydos mission. Charlie never died. But when Jack accidentally activates a device that Kawalsky brings by the Academy, he catches the interest of a certain Major Carter. Soon he finds himself in for one hell of a ride, and if aliens and space travel and weird DNA weren't crazy enough, he might actually be falling in love with a theoretical astrophysicist...

The Dating Game: Catherine Langford had been instrumental in getting AU Sam/Jack together in There But For The Grace of God

Defining Family: Set after "Ripple Effect". What happens to Janet and the rest of the alternate SG-1 team after the episode? How does it affect our reality?

Worlds Apart: An Ancient device sends Jack and Sam to a world where everything is just a little bit... wrong. Why? Can they cope with the differences? And, most importantly, can they find their way back?

I don’t know what to categorize these as but they’re amazing

Deep City Lights: He picks her up in a blue convertible. (Road trip fic where they say ‘fuck the regs’ and then remember the regs)

we build then we break (and build up again): Sam’s last mission on SG-1, and the life that follows.

the slow revelation of self: In the beginning there was sex. And it was good.

untitled: on a mission, sam and jack are painting their mark on a wall.

things not dreamed: Daniel doesn't understand their need to fly. 

Cultural Drift: Six days before the shit hit the fan and nothing was ever the same again, Daniel fell over a tablet on P3X-324. That was two years ago.

Concentric Unto Thee: Her attempts at normality have never worked before, and Jack won't stand for any attempts to apply the logic of command to their relationship.

the lesson: Jack and Sam haven’t wasted the three years they’ve been cut off from Earth…and though the price is high, they manage to teach that lesson to another couple who badly needed to learn it. 

Escape Pod: "I just need," shift, "to move," shift, "a little." (Accidental Stimulation fic) Tonight: It's been too many years of it, the death, the resurrection, the sheer and aching loneliness, the hurt that comes from walking away.

Rocket Fuel: Sam and Jack get together after Heroes but also AU + Christmas.

Home Economics:  He would never have imagined that the biggest problem Sam Carter would have with his house would be his toaster.

Atlantis/Continuum

Gravity Always Wins in the End: After Sam is held hostage, Jack takes an impromptu trip to Atlantis.

Backlit:  Carter turns 43 years old on day 6 of a 14-day run to P98-007 aboard the General Hammond. The only events that mark the occasion are the little note Daniel must have stuffed into her pack before she left, a cheerful "Happy Birthday, Ma'am" from her second over a morning cup of coffee, and a long stare at herself in the mirror after she washes her face before bed. It's not like she expected more.

Yesterday’s Life: She feels frayed and faded, like a scrap of fabric accidentally discarded and forced to weather the elements. S/J, spoilers for Stargate: Continuum.

Distance: Sam contemplates the difficulties of a long distance relationship with Jack on Valentine's Day...

Post-Series

Look Again Into Your Heart: It's not that cold, not by the standard of some of the places she's been in the last decade or so of her life, but then again, she's not used to braving the weather in heels and an evening dress.

Follow the Star of the North: When Jack talked about losing himself in Minnesota, Sam never really understood the appeal.

Radio Silence: “It’s Mitchell.”He grabbed the phone out of her hand, smiling at the horrified expression on her face when he flicked it open and held it to his ear.“This is General O’Neill. Is the world ending?”

Rainy Days: Sam and Jack spend a rainy day at the cabin

The Lies You Feed Yourself: They simply aren’t part of each other’s worlds anymore. They haven’t been for years. Jack and Sam three years after they leave the SGC.

Bygones: He's a man of few words. Sam, however, wants to hear a couple of specific ones - at least once. It takes another woman to help her understand just how her husband communicates. 

Twelve Years Two Weeks: She had finally 'switched off'. It had taken her a few days to rid herself of the itch that she was neglecting a to-do list the size of her arm.

DC Series: SG-1 is moving on, but Sam is standing still.

Interlude: Jack turns up unexpectedly, and he and Sam make an important decision.

fly me to the moon: Jack is baffled. What do you do for a woman's 40th birthday when she routinely explores alien planets, has blown up a sun, and raced in the Loop of Kon Garat? Give her the moon of course. 

Folding a Map: Distance makes Jack an unhappy camper.

Taur’i Whispers: "He likes her throaty laugh. He likes that her voice has dropped and softened in the years he's known her." - Sam/Jack, romance and a bit of angst and hurt/comfort

Blue Dark: The sun’s barely peeking above the horizon and already she’s up, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, her index finger circling the rim of her coffee cup.“And we have to go to this?” she asks, taking a sip of the hot beverage.

Un-fish: “Caught any un-fish?” she asked softly.Their lives would never be normal because of little things like fish that were or were not there and sometimes he wondered who had done what exactly to his pond to drive the fish away. He knew better than to ask, unwilling to listen to her explain to him the various possibilities of… whatever.

Real Life: This was what she'd been waiting for, held out for all those years. Someone -- him -- to come home with every night, to sink into after saving the world or spending three days dug in on an alien planet with fifty-odd Jaffa between her team and the 'gate, someone who knew just how she liked to be touched... She rolled onto her back, offering sleepy kisses when his lips crossed hers, sighing when his wandering hands brushed across her belly... 

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Episode 4: Why the DC Extended Universe Failed (DCEU Retrospective)

DISCLAIMER: This is a continuation of the previous installment of Hub’s Kitchen. Please read that episode before reading this one. Or not, it’s your choice. Also, spoilers for: Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, and Justice League.

What’s up guys, my name’s Hub, and welcome to another installment of Hub’s Kitchen. Episode, installment, same difference, this isn’t an academic essay now. In the last episode, I talked about some cinematic universes and what problems they faced or are going to face. At the end, I said I was saving one particular cinematic universe for this episode, and that it needed its own episode dedicated to it. Well, I’m gonna talk about that universe today. Prepare yourselves, as I dive into the horror that is known as: The DC Extended Universe.

If there’s one cinematic universe that can rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of popularity and success besides Star Wars, it’d be DC’s cinematic universe. The Marvel/DC rivalry has been going on since the 1960’s, when a good chunk of Marvel’s heroes were introduced during the Silver Age of comic books. Throughout the past 5+ decades, both have had their major successes and major blunders. DC has always had the advantage in the animation side of things compared to Marvel, but that doesn’t mean Marvel hasn’t had good shows. The Spectacular Spider-Man and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes series are some of my favorite animated shows of all time. I prefer Marvel because of the heroes and how more human they are compared to DC’s catalog, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like DC. My first exposure to superheroes was the Justice League animated series from the widely beloved DC Animated Universe, and I’ve been a superhero fan since. In a perfect world, the Marvel/DC rivalry on film would be a monumental and huge war, both sides unleashing their various heroes onto the screen for audiences to love, and giving more fans more room for debate in the long-fabled who’s better debate: Marvel or DC? Instead, it’s more like Marvel is curb stomping DC into the fucking dirt. I feel a brief history lesson is necessary to really bring this whole thing into context.

HOW THIS ALL FELL INTO PLACE

Several years ago, from the 70’s to the 90’s, DC had the upper hand on film, especially with classics like Superman: The Movie, and Tim Burton’s Batman ‘89. Meanwhile, Marvel struggled to get anything onto the screen, with failures like the 1989 Punisher, the 1990 Captain America, and the cancelled, but only viewable through bootleg 1994 Fantastic Four movie. Then, Marvel went bankrupt in 1996, and to keep them afloat, they sold all the movie rights to all their characters to various movie studios. Sony got Spider-Man, FOX got the X-Men and Fantastic Four, etc. During this period, Superman already fell from grace with the 1987 bomb Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, and Batman would soon follow with 1997’s Batman and Robin, one of the most infamous comic book movies of all time. The genre would see a new beginning with 1998’s Blade. In 2000, FOX launched their first X-Men movie, and in 2002, Spider-Man came out, which is the movie that I believe is what started the comic book movie boom that’s still going on, and would be the template that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would follow. DC, meanwhile, rebooted Batman with 2005’s Batman Begins, which would later follow up with 2008’s The Dark Knight, which is often considered to be the greatest comic book movie of all time. Unfortunately, not everything was working out for both Marvel and DC. Superman Returns, the first Superman movie since Quest For Peace, while a modest hit, wasn’t the hit Warner Bros were expecting it to be, and today, Superman Returns isn’t looked at very fondly. While FOX successfully launched the X-Men onto the world of film, the Fantastic Four wouldn’t get the same level of success with both the 2005 film and it’s 2007 sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer. Sony was also in a pickle with 2007’s Spider-Man 3, which disappointed audiences. Pile that on with Hulk, Daredevil, and Ghost Rider, and Marvel was having some pretty notable failures in their catalog. However, while Universal, FOX, and Sony failed with the aforementioned films, something huge was coming from Marvel Studios when Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk released in 2008. The first Iron Man had the famous end credits sequence with Nick Fury telling Tony Stark that he was a “part of a bigger universe,” and in The Incredible Hulk, we see Tony Stark in a scene of the movie, leading fans to believe that something was coming. 2010 and 2011 marked the releases of Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, and in 2012, the culmination of all 5 movies released: The Avengers. The Avengers was a massive success, being that it was the first movie to make over $200 million in its opening weekend in the United States. The movies from Iron Man to The Avengers would later be known as Phase 1 of the MCU. Knowing where Marvel Studios is today, it’s amazing how huge they’ve become, making Marvel into a global phenomenon, at least in the realm of movies. This left Warner Bros pressured to make a cinematic universe of their own DC superheroes and get a Justice League movie out as soon as possible. However, this wasn’t actually the first time WB tried to set up a DC cinematic universe.

GREEN LANTERN

In 2011, Green Lantern was released in theaters. On the surface level, Green Lantern was following the footsteps of the first Iron Man: Taking a B-list character and making a movie that would set up the foundation of what would later be a cinematic universe. However, that didn’t work out for Warner Bros. Green Lantern was released to mediocre to terrible reviews, and was a flop at the box office, grossing $219 million on a $200 million dollar budget. Thus, all plans for sequels to Green Lantern were cancelled. The movie is often considered to be one of the worst comic book movies of all time, and was subject of a joke in Deadpool, with “Please don’t make the super suit green, or animated!” Good thing Ryan Reynolds got his big break with that movie. In 2013, WB released Man of Steel in theaters. Man of Steel was directed by Zack Snyder, who directed 300 and the live action adaptation of Watchmen in 2009. The head writer was David Goyer, who wrote for the Dark Knight trilogy, and one of the producers was Christopher Nolan, the director of the Dark Knight trilogy. *In Bubsy voice* How could any of this possibly go wrong?

MAN OF STEEL

It could go wrong, but not horribly wrong. Instead of releasing to rave reviews, and making over a billion dollars at the box office, Man of Steel released to mixed reviews, and in WB’s eyes, underperformed at $668 million dollars. To this day, Man of Steel is one of the most divisive comic book movies of all time, with some seeing it as a great reinvention of Superman, and others seeing it as a betrayal at who Superman is. Not exactly the foundation you want to build your cinematic universe on, huh? As for me, I side with the more negative reactions to Man of Steel, but not as much as I did back in 2013. With the benefit of hindsight, I see Man of Steel as a movie that could have been great, but it wasn't. The issue with Man of Steel, and the thing that kills the movie for me, is that they changed Superman to accommodate the world the DC Extended Universe built up, rather than have Superman be the character he’s always been. I’d be fine with a less experienced, more doubtful Superman, if after this movie, he slowly, but gradually becomes the Superman people expect. We’ll talk about that in a bit, but it didn’t help that the movie spent so much time telling us that Superman will be great, instead of just showing us. Given what we see, Supes destroying shit in Smallville and Metropolis, I don’t think he’s going to be great at all. It also didn’t help that the movie was slow as shit. I can take slow-paced stuff, but you need to really have me engrossed in order to deal with it, ‘cause a slow-pace can kill something for me. I could go on further, but we need to move this along. Overall, I think Man of Steel is mediocre, but not terrible. So, given how this movie underperformed, what do you think Warner Bros’ would do for the future? Hit the Batman Emergency button, of course! Because Batman did wonders for Warner Bros with the Dark Knight trilogy, they decided to put Batman in the follow-up to Man of Steel. But they couldn’t stop at just putting a Batman and Superman conflict into this movie. They also needed to add Wonder Woman, ‘cause the DC Trinity needs to be on screen now that The Avengers got their movie. That still wasn’t enough, however. Let’s take elements of The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman storylines and adapt them. Okay, this could still work. Hold on! We need to let the audience know that Justice League is coming, so let’s put in Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg into a scene that literally advertises their films and the Justice League movie. Now we need to double down on the dark and gritty tone people were divided with on Man of Steel, and let’s try to be even more profound and deep, unlike that stupid kiddy Marvel crap that’s successful for some reason. This is for the intellectually elite, motherfuckers! This movie will be a masterpiece! It’ll mop the floor with that stupid Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War! People will love our movie, right?!

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Haha, ha, WB executives are fucking hilarious. Batman v Superman, which I’m just going to refer to as BvS from now on for simplicity’s sake, released to negative reviews and was even more divisive than Man of Steel with audiences and fans. WB wanted this movie to make $1.1 billion, which is what Captain America: Civil War would end up making. Instead, despite a strong opening weekend, BvS had the second largest opening weekend drop off, with 2003’s Hulk still retaining that record. BvS would only end up making $872 million at the box office, which WB labeled as another underperformer. In my humble opinion, BvS is the worst comic book movie I’ve ever seen, and is a good contender for the worst of its genre. “But Hub,” I hear some of you say, “Wasn’t Age of Ultron accused of the same issues BvS had? Why did that film still end up being successful?” A few reasons. Age of Ultron, despite it not receiving rave reviews like the first Avengers movie did, still received fairly positive reviews and word of mouth, and still made $1.4 billion at the box office, which is less than the $1.5 billion the first Avengers made. That’s diminishing returns, but not by a lot. Second, while I’ll agree that AoU isn’t one of Marvel Studios’ best films, as it suffered from studio interference, I can at least say that the movie wasn’t broken at the seams. It got derailed a few times (Hi, Thor pond scene and Hulk X Black Widow relationship), but it the characters still felt like themselves, there were some legitimately great moments (Vision and Ultron in the woods is a good example), and wasn’t trying to be profound and deep. It tried to tell a more grand story than the first Avengers, but it was never pretentious, even if the movie bit off more than it could chew. AoU had to do a lot, too much in fact, and the movie came out as a mess, but not a terrible mess, or even irredeemable one. It’s honestly a miracle that AoU ended up as good as it was, given the circumstances. Heavily flawed, but I can admire what it set out to do. Had to get that unnecessary, but also necessary “Marvel isn’t perfect” thing so I don’t get accused of being a Marvel or Disney shill. Christ.

Back onto the actual subject, BvS is a fucking trainwreck on every possible level if you ask me. Okay, maybe not so much the music, but even then, Wonder Woman’s theme is the only song that I can remember. Then again, I don’t pay attention to music when I watch movies, as I listen to those on my own time. The story was so badly told, and the stand out moments were so horrible, I’m shocked that this movie was approved with the script that it was given. This is one of the few times I think of my theater experience when watching a movie. Man of Steel’s theater experience made me sick with the shitty shaky-cam, but this movie made me angry while watching it, and I never get angry when watching movies, so you have to be really bad in order to make me angry when watching. Two moments in particular, the infamous Martha scene and Superman’s death made me want to walk out on the movie. I’ve never wanted to walk out of a movie before, so that was a first for me. I think the biggest sin BvS makes that isn’t destroying famous comic book stories and having some of the worst versions of Batman AND Superman, is that not only is BvS slow to the point of boring, with very little of actual importance happening, but the movie tries to be so profound in its messages and imagery, like this is some fucking college arthouse film. A lot of people say the worst thing a movie can be is be boring. I respectfully disagree. For me, the worst thing a movie can be is be boring and trying to act like it’s so smart with its themes. The whole god amongst humans thing has been done to death, quite literally in the case of this movie, and the way it’s presented and written, comes off as overly pretentious. I can’t wait for someone to tell me that this movie is for the intellectually elite, while also saying that I need a high IQ in order to understand this movie. It’s why I prefer a movie to be rushed and have little actual meaning, than a movie that’s slow paced and try to be profound. This applies to bad movies only, of course.

There’s two cuts that exist for BvS: The one that was released in theaters, and the 3 hour, rated R extended cut, dubbed the “Ultimate Cut.” Yes, because the first movie about Batman and FUCKING Superman TOTALLY needed a rated R cut. I’ve watched the Ultimate cut, or more like I was forced to watch it because my brother made me sit with him and watch it. There’s a reason why I never trust the man with movies. But, how is the Ultimate cut? Well… it’s better… *sigh* Okay, it’s more complete this time around. It doesn’t feel like a huge chunk was cut out for no reason, and there’s more context surrounding the events of the movie, but does that actually fix the movie? Judging by my statement, no, no it doesn’t. Many of the problems that were in the theatrical cut are still present in this version: Batman and Superman hate each other for their own reasons but do the things they say they hate about the other, making them hypocrites, Lex Luthor’s plan makes no sense and is overly convoluted, Lois Lane is still useless, the action is still poor overall, Wonder Woman is still an afterthought, the title fight that the movie has its entire purpose riding on is still lackluster at best, the Martha scene is still stupid, and the movie essentially destroyed all hopes of a great Superman story by wasting the Death of Superman storyline. What else can I say? I fucking hate this movie, the end. Holy shit, that was a long section. How’s about something shorter?

SUICIDE SQUAD

This is gonna be a very short segment compared to the BvS one, but that’s because in a shocking twist, I haven’t actually sat down and watched Suicide Squad. I’ll still talk about how the movie ended up the way it did and how it was received, but I can’t actually comment on the movie itself. I’m also putting Suicide Squad’s history here because the BvS segment is long enough. Anyway, after BvS underperformed, Warner Bros panicked and decided to make a course correction with Suicide Squad. People liked the trailers, which made the movie appear to be DC’s answer to Guardians of the Galaxy. In fact, the people who made the trailers ended up editing the movie. Yes, really. The concept of the movie sounded awesome. A ragtag group of villains forced to do good things or they die is a really interesting concept and if executed well, could be seen as a new form of comic book movie. The anti-Avengers, you could say. However, that wasn’t meant to be. Suicide Squad was received about as well as BvS was, with some saying it was even worse than BvS. Seeing as how I haven’t seen the movie, I can’t comment on it, but given what I’ve heard, it sounds like a shitty version of Guardians of the Galaxy, both of them, and the sequel wasn’t out when Suicide Squad came out. At the very least, the movie was said to have been more profitable than BvS, even though it made $746 million at the box office on a $175 million budget. So, 3 misfires so far, and the best received one divided audiences and critics. The DCEU was in serious trouble, and there needed to be a miracle in order to save this franchise. Well, unbeknownst to Warner Bros, their savior, to a degree anyway, would come from an underestimated superhero, or should I say, superheroine!

WONDER WOMAN

Remember when I said that Wonder Woman was an afterthought in BvS? Well, she was, but she had a movie coming out. I find it funny that we live in a world where the Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Deadpool, the Suicide Squad, and Doctor Strange got their own movies before Wonder Woman, the third member of the DC Trinity. The world is weird. Diana’s movie came out, and it blew away expectations. Not that they were high to begin with, but let’s not be so cynical here. Wonder Woman released to great reviews and audiences loved it. The movie made over $412 million dollars at the U.S. box office, more than any of the Marvel Studios films at the same box office, and outperformed Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man for the highest grossing superhero origin movie, and Spidey held the record for 15 years. The movie would end up making $821 million dollars at the global box office, making it the second highest grossing movie in the DCEU, with BvS being the highest grossing, but unlike BvS, Wonder Woman didn’t underperform and was a huge hit. So, what did I think of Wonder Woman? Well, gotta give credit where credit is due, but the DCEU has an installment where I can confidently call good. Diana herself was better characterized than she was in BvS. My favorite scene in the movie is when she and Steve Trevor are about to go to No Man’s Land, but before they embark on the train ride there, Diana gets ice cream from an ice cream vendor, and tells the ice cream man that he’s wonderful. This is something that this franchise has been sorely lacking: Little touches. The movie also used the dark and gritty motif of the DCEU correctly. This is because the movie was set during World War 1, which was a shitty time, and we had Themyscira, a bright and colorful place to contrast with the shitty London and battlefields. The first two acts, minus the underwhelming action that relied too much on slow motion for my tastes, were well handled and even great. Despite what I said about the action, that No Man’s Land sequence was awesome. However, and this hurts me to say this, the third act happens. Ooooh, the third act. If there was one movie that was so close to greatness, only to have the ending nearly ruin it, it’s this movie. I know I’m going to be labeled sexist for not saying Wonder Woman is a great movie, but please, bare with me. So, throughout the movie, Diana wants to kill Ares, the god of war. The legend of Ares states that he’s the reason why mankind goes to war with each other. However, Diana kills General Stryker (I’m calling him that because it’s the same actor from X-Men 2), and she believed him to be Ares. I mean, to be fair, he was huffing up some magic powder or something, so I can believe that. After killing General Stryker, Diana sees that the humans are still preparing their assault. Diana is horrified to see this, and she asks Steve Trevor why the humans are still at war now that she killed Ares. Shortly after this, the real Ares comes and then the movie goes into the usual third act climax. Now, I don’t have a problem with third act climaxes. So, why do I have an issue with it here? Ares was mentioned being alive early in the movie, so what’s the big deal? I think it has to do with how the movie was written. The way the movie played out, it seemed like Diana realizing that humans are, in her words, “so much more,” than what they seem. This could have explained why she gave up the Wonder Woman mantle and stayed in the human world for a century. Not having a third act climax in order to develop a character, with the message that humans are much more, even at their worst, would have been amazing. Instead, the movie throws all of that away for a final fight with Ares and Steve Trevor sacrificing himself. It felt tacked on and cheapened the movie. It came off as rewarding Diana for being naive, which is something I hated about the movie. Her entire character arc was rendered meaningless because of that last act. There’s also some questions after the fight that are never answered. Now that Ares is dead, does that mean World War 2 and the Cold War never happened in this universe? If killing Ares ended all conflict in humanity, why is the world so grim when Man of Steel begins? This act single handedly derailed the movie. What could have been a potential masterpiece only ends up being decent in my opinion. I won’t go as far as to say the third act ruined the movie, but it does end up hurting the movie by quite a bit if you ask me. I should reiterate that Wonder Woman is overall, a solid movie, but the third act really holds it back. Now, let’s get to the fifth and final movie in this, I guess you could call it, DCEU Retrospective, the big JL.

JUSTICE LEAGUE

Fun fact: Did you know that there was going to be a Justice League movie long before The Avengers? The movie was called Justice League: Mortal, and was going to release sometime around 2007/2008, if not later than that. However, I guess WB decided “Naaah, we got our golden boyo Christopher Nolan here doing Batman movies for us. The audience will be confused if two live action Batmen were on screen.” Not giving the audience enough credit, I see? I mean, I’m not sure what happened, but I’m pretty sure you can look up a video Justice League: Mortal.

Justice League faced tons of behind the scenes problems. There were talks of Ben Affleck (aka, DCEU Bats) directing which never went through, the movie being completely reworked just mere weeks before shooting began because of BvS’s terrible reception, Joss Whedon (the guy who wrote and directed the first two Avengers movies) taking over as director and reworking the movie after Zack Snyder tragically lost his daughter from suicide, etc, etc, etc. Now, I’m not saying a movie that has behind the scenes problems is doomed to failure. After all, A New Hope had several behind the scenes problems, with George Lucas even writing the film off before it premiered, and look at how well that movie ended up turning out. Although I was livid after BvS and missed Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman gave me some hope that Justice League wouldn’t be that bad. Well… I was sort of right on that.

Let me get one thing straight: Justice League is a terrible movie. The story reeks of “Been there, done that, seen it before, seen it better, and will see it better in the future.” The characters were flat at best, and irritating at worst (looking at you, second-rate MCU Spider-Man aka Flash), and the villain is one of the worst I’ve ever seen (seriously, Steppenwolf is a fucking mid-boss, so why is he the big bad of 4 years?). To top it off, the film is a tonal and visual mess, and what I mean by the latter is that Joss Whedon’s Avengers-esc style clashes heavily with Zack Snyder’s supposed deep and dark vision. Justice League comes off as, to quote one of my favorite YouTube channels, Midnight’s Edge “A Frankensteinian abomination.” That being said, at least the film didn’t try to shove philosophical messages down my throat or try so fucking hard to be deep and meaningful, so JL’s already better than Man of Steel and BvS in that regard. I also liked that we finally got a Superman that actually felt like Superman should instead of what MoS and BvS tried to make him be. I left Justice League feeling… indifferent, I guess? I didn’t like it, but I didn’t hate it either. All I know is that I should have been feeling a lot more positive about this movie than I actually did. The Justice League animated series from the DC Animated Universe was my introduction to superheroes, and I still think holds up wonderfully today. I may have not been a fan of how Season 1 handled Superman in regards to the villains of that show, but I still think it’s a fantastic show. It’s a fucking shame that Warner Bros essentially failed to make a movie worthy of the name: Justice League. To make Justice League look even of a failure, we’re gonna have to talk about box office again.

Wanna know how much Justice League costed to make, including reshoots? $300 million. Justice League is the second most expensive movie ever made, with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides being the most expensive. Want to know how much money it made, or has made so far? $655 million. Yes, only that much. On its opening weekend in America, it made $93 million. It couldn’t even make $100 million! It took the movie a fucking month to make the same amount The Avengers made in its opening weekend. If that’s not a “Get fucked, DC,” I don’t know what is. So, now that I spent this entire time going over each DCEU movie in detail (sorry that this has been so long to begin with), it’s now time to answer the question: Why did the DC Extended Universe fail?

WHY THE DCEU FAILED

If you ask me, the main reason the DC Extended Universe failed was because Warner Bros didn’t have a set plan or a person with a vision to keep the universe in tact. The reason Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been consistently successful is because of one man, and that man is Kevin Feige. Originally being a producer for the early X-Men and Spider-Man movies, along with other Marvel films, he was the brainchild behind the MCU, and has been an executive producer for each movie in the MCU so far. When a movie doesn’t measure up to the rest, which was the case with Thor: The Dark World, the MCU didn’t go into a panic and have the next few movies affected by Thor 2’s failings. Instead, the franchise carried on, and all the problems of The Dark World were addressed and mostly solved with Thor: Ragnorok. DC, meanwhile, doesn’t have a Kevin Feige. Warner Bros made the choice to make the DCEU director-driven, rather than producer-driven. The problem with making a mega-franchise with multiple franchises inside is that you need to have them be producer-driven to have a consistent vision. I know that a common complaint with the MCU is that it tends to revolve around a single formula, often referred to as the “Marvel Formula,” but a consistent vision needs to be in check to keep things in line. Having director-driven movies is good, but can lead to a clash of visions. Maybe I should do a Hub’s Kitchen episode on that. Hmm… Because of BvS’s failings, Suicide Squad and Justice League had to be radically altered during shooting and post-production, rather than before shooting and during pre-production, which was the case of Thor: Ragnorok going in a different direction than the previous Thor films.

I also feel that not sticking to what made the characters so beloved is another reason the DCEU failed. I’ve always been one to say that accuracy doesn’t make a movie good, but even so, I still believe that the main point of the character should be completely in tact. Marvel Studios has done a great job at this, even when they had to slightly rework characters like Spider-Man for example. Despite him having a tech suit made by Tony Stark, Peter still made his original suit, his web shooters, webbing, is still a smart kid, and relatable. Meanwhile, the DCEU decided “Hey, you know Superman? Yeah, let’s make him a complete brooding asshole and have him kill people for no reason other than its cool.” Or “Hey, you know Batman? Yeah, he’s a killer now and then suddenly he’s a third-rate Tony Stark wannabe.” Even better “Hey, you know Flash? Barry Allen Flash? We’re gonna make him Wally West and make him incredibly annoying, because COMEDY!” Thankfully, Wonder Woman got off pretty well. I know nerds like me are the only people who read comic books, but as far as an adaptation is concerned, we want the core basics of the characters to be intact. The DCEU didn’t do that, and a lot of fans jumped ship. Audiences were also alienated, mainly because for Man of Steel and BvS, the heroes weren’t acting like heroes, or people for that matter. I think that covers that whole dilemma, and now, it’s time to wrap everything up.

CONCLUSION

I’m sorry that this episode was as long as it was. I just feel that I needed to go in-depth as to why I felt the way I did and why the DCEU failed. I love superheroes. I’d go as far as to say superhero stories are my favorite kind of stories. I grew up with superheroes, okay, mostly Spider-Man, but still. So I hope you all can understand why I hated the DCEU as much as I did, and why it ultimately failed. I feel like whenever people generalize others who love the MCU and hate the DCEU as them saying “Marvel can do no wrong,” are missing the point. It’s not that we believe Marvel can do no wrong. It’s that we want good representations of the heroes we read and love, so maybe the average Joe can understand why we love these funny books so much. Whatever issues the MCU has can (mostly) be forgiven because the good stuff outweighs the bad. The DCEU, however, has only one good movie to its name and a few droppings of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre DC universe.

Wow, I got really emotional there. I’m sorry for that. It just annoys me when people generalize stuff. I don’t know what the next topic of Hub’s Kitchen will be on, but I can tell you all this: It’s gonna be a hell of a lot shorter than this, that’s for sure. My name’s Hub, and thank you for reading. *Checks Google Drive word count* Over 5,000 words. What the fu-

[itsallavengers]

oh my GOD the Peter & Tony stories! My heart! If you want I have a prompt for you: after The Scene Peter starts to get a bit claustrophobic in simillar situations. So just imagine Peter and Tony getting stuck under a rubble and Peter freaking the fuck out, because it reminds him of before. Tony knows an anxiety attack when he sees one so he calms Peter down and reminds him he's not alone.

Peter gasped as the air was forcibly knocked from his lungs by an overly large fist, hitting him in the sternum and sending him flying across the street.

He tumbled, hitting concrete and rolling a few times before running out of momentum. Getting straight back up to his feet, he looked over apprehensively at his attackers from over the road. “That’s not how we greet people on Earth!” He called out grumpily.

There were at least twenty of them; all probably nearly double Peter’s size, and sporting muscles similar to those of Greek Gods. They were clearly alien- that much was obvious from the massive portal hanging over them all- but seemed…defeatable. He’d already stuck four of them to the wall.

But more kept coming from the hole in the sky, and for every one of them Peter took out, another just took it’s place.

“Tony?” He called out a little breathlessly through the comm.

“Coming as fast as I can, Spidey, just hold tight and try keep out of tr-”

Peter lost connection for a brief second as one of the aliens smashed their staff against the ground and sent huge chunks or rubble flying in Peter’s direction. He yelled, flipping backward and latching on to a nearby wall a second before the space he’d just inhabited was ripped apart by fragments of gravel and concrete.

“-Kid! Spidey! Peter, come the fuck in, are you-”

“I’m fine,” Peter assured, running along the wall and trying to spot an opening. “They have…staff thingies, that seem to be releasing some sort of powerful sonic wave- it’s shattering concrete, so it’s gotta be intense. I could use one of them,” Peter muttered absently, aiming a web at the next creature he saw and then yanking harshly, knocking their aim off-balance before they could fire their weapon at a young man taking cover behind a car.

“Just stick to holding perimeter and getting out civilians, Spidey,” Tony ordered, and Peter heard the brief mutter of FRIDAY saying “if we go any faster, boss, we risk damaging the flight stabilisers.”

“I’m holding it, it’s fine, Tony, there’s no point damaging your suit-”

“Focus on the battle, kid,” Tony ordered loudly, and Peter huffed in frustration, but leaped back down to the ground, somersaulting over a deadly whatever-beam and grabbing the man he’d seen earlier by the collar. “Time to go, Mr Sir,” he said cheerily, before pulling him up over his shoulder and beginning to sprint over to a nearby alley. 

Once they rounded the corner, Peter dropped him. “Run,” was all he said, and the man obeyed; turning tail and scrambling through the thin alley toward safety.

Peter threw a web over to the building on the opposing side and then yanked taught, just in time for two of the weird rock-alien things to tumble over the thin line. Wasting no time on words this time, he simply stuck them to the floor and then leaped away before he was assaulted by more gunfire. 

He heard Tony swearing through the comm. “I’m ten minutes out, kid, but I called backup, okay? You’re gonna be fine.”

Peter frowned. “Who’d you call?”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ll know when you see them. For now, stay on the comm and stay out of the trouble, you understand?”

Peter grimaced, nodding his head before realising Tony couldn’t see that, and so said “yep,” sharply, ducking under another huge chunk of rubble.

God, these things were big.

A few of them began clattering off down the abandoned segment of Park Avenue, and Peter cursed, swinging off his web and hauling himself over to them, landing a few yards ahead. “Hey, fellas, has anyone ever told you violence doesn’t solve everyth-”

The creatures all roared collectively, loud enough that Peter winced in pain. Obviously they weren’t in the mood for talking. If they even could.

Peter glanced over his shoulder, looking at the group of people that were huddled, terrified, in the cafe a few buildings down from them. The aliens were looking too. 

That wasn’t a good sign.

“SitRep, Peter,” Tony ground out down the line, hearing Peter’s muttered curse.

Peter didn’t have time to reply; at that moment three of the ten aliens lifted their staffs, getting into a formation and then looking forward, before banging down with force.

Peter felt the world crumble underneath him, lifted off the ground as concrete shattered underfoot and flew around him, sharp edges slicing across his body, barely kept from cutting through the material of his suit entirely.

His first thought was: cafe.

That was the target. And it was a target that was about to be directly hit in less than three seconds, unless Peter did something.

Righting himself as he flew through the air, he laid eyes on the large piece of debris directly ahead; hurtling through the street and heading toward the window of the building. If it hit, everyone in there would be crushed. Instantly.

His arm flew out and he bit back a cry of pain as it was met with razor-fine rubble, but he didn’t relent. Letting his web fly, he flew through the air as if in slow motion, praying and praying and praying that it would reach its mark in time-

There was a familiar tug of tension as the webbing connected, but Peter had no time for relief. Using everything he had in him, he wrenched it toward him.

The sudden yank as the block of concrete was pulled to a complete standstill was powerful. Too powerful. 

He felt his arm wrench out of its socket, and this time he wasn’t strong enough to hold back the scream of agony.

But he couldn’t stop. The momentum had begun, now, and all Peter could do was twist it, roll it, manoeuvre it until it was arcing back around again, a perfect semi-circle that led right back to those aliens. They could only watch as suddenly 10 tonnes of rock and concrete was thrown in their faces.

Peter was still flying through the air, in between dust and sand and rubble, and his arm felt like it was on fire. He could hear, in the back of his mind, Tony. He was yelling something through the comm, but it didn’t register. All he could think of was the fast-impending wall that his body was about to fall into.

And, as predicted, second later it did.

This time, Peter didn’t cry out. Unconsciousness was immediate.

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A few seconds later, when his vision faded back in, Tony was still screaming down the line.

Wincing, he mumbled something. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but the screaming stopped, replaced with something like a choked-off groan, so Peter considered it a win.

“-Peter, do you understand me, you get away from there, right now, this is too much for you, backup is imminent and so am I, so you need to get the fuck away before you actually get-”

“No,” Peter hissed, rolling on to his hand and knees. He could do this. “I can do this.”

“NO YOU CAN’T, YOU ALMOST FUCKING DIED, I AM TELLING YOU TO-”

“Karen, mute,” Peter whispered, palming a hand over his eye as he sat up.

The last thing he heard was an infuriated “PETER FUCKING PARKER IF YOU DARE-” before the line cut, and silence soothed his banging head once more.

He stopped, taking a deep breath before standing up.

And then choked on yet another scream as something smacked into his dislocated shoulder and sent him hurtling. Again.

It was pain, pain, pain- but he was Spiderman. He could deal with that.

Staggering back to his feet, he threw out another web with his good arm. The alien dodged, just by an inch, but it was enough. 

Peter growled, throwing himself to the side and ignoring the horrible spike of pain at the movement. He lifted his arm to shoot another web, but then paused as he heard a feral roar behind him. Had it not been for his enhanced instincts, he would never have dodged the fatal swing across the back of his head in time.

Lucky for him, all he felt was the wind pass over his head, rather than the uncomfortable feeling decapitation would undoubtedly have brought.

Rolling forward, he sprung back up, trying to figure out which one to face. They were both advancing, heavy metal (was it even metal? Maybe they were just gloved? Who knew??) fists swinging ominously, and Peter didn’t even have both arms in use at this point, if the one on his right got in first, then he wouldn’t have an arm to fight them off-

There was a revving noise, and Peter shot to the side on instinct, thinking deathbeam, rubble, horrible magical instrument of doom-

There was the sound of crunching metal and horribly forceful collisions, and then the monster screamed out in agony. Peter felt the reverberations through his feet as it toppled.

“Duck, Spiderman!” 

Again, instinct and reflex alone made him follow the order. He didn’t know who was speaking, but they sounded like they knew what they were doing, so he dropped to his haunches and raised a hand protectively over his head.

There was a blinding flash of light- identical to the ones that had been fired at Peter minutes previously- and then another alien screamed.

The one on Peter’s left dropped, too.

There was a heavy silence, before Peter’s head shot up, wide-eyed as he stared at the person who’d just taken out two the crazy aliens in less than two seconds.

Steve Rogers– Captain America– stared right back.

“What in the name of fuck?” Peter blurted, as the man shook his head and jogged forward a few steps, until he reached Peter’s side. “What the fuck are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be, like, in the depths of Africa?”

“I was in town,” Rogers muttered, before a hand lifted gingerly toward Peter’s arm. “I need to reset this. It’s gonna hurt. You ready?”

Peter looked warily down at his arm, before jutting out his chin and nodding. “Yeah.”

Rogers grinned a little. “Brave. I like you. Okay, on three. One-”

Peter felt another white hot burst of agony rip through his arm, and he let a choked off cry fall from his mouth as his joint was forcibly shoved back into his socket.

Rogers was running a thumb soothingly across Peter’s shoulder as he attempted to compose himself. “Knew you… weren’t gonna do it on three. No one ever does,” Peter muttered, panting a little. The pain had died down as fast as it had come, and although it was still damn sensitive, Peter knew he could work it. 

He was spiderman. He could do it.

Looking up again, he frowned as he saw the crushed-up remains of a motorcycle sit on top of the first alien. “Did you…did you run that thing over?”

Rogers looked a little defensive. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Peter stopped, shrugging in agreement. Everything felt a little surreal. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Rogers looked a little  vacant for a moment, before getting back to his feet and pulling Peter along with him. “I got a call. I was needed. So I came.”

Peter’s mouth opened in surprise. “Tony called you? Seriously? He said he’d rather cut off his own tongue than-” he stopped when he realised Rogers just seemed to get a little droopier with every word, feeling a little like he’d just kicked a puppy.

“What can I say, kid- you must mean more to him than his pride, because he said all I had to do was keep you safe. No idea how he knew I was even in New York in the first place-” Rogers chuckled a little as he hefted the stolen alien gun over his shoulder, “but I guess that’s just Tony. Now- about you,” he said, turning to Peter and raising an eyebrow. “You need to get out of here. My team have this. You’re inured.”

“No,” Peter said roughly, pulling out of Rogers’ grip and then making his way back toward the main street fight, where he noticed a few extra people had joined the fray, “someone’s gotta stop the portal, and keep the civilians safe, and fight the aliens. You and your team can’t do it alone and you know it.”

Rogers stopped. Pursed his lips, and then looked over to the horrible thick-skinned aliens, currently tearing apart half of Park Avenue. “I…right. You stay in. But you stick with me the entire time, you understand? I’m here to look out for you until Tony can get here and yell at you himself, and so that’s what I’m gonna do. We clear?”

Peter grinned, giving his right shoulder a tentative roll. “Crystal,” was all he said, before shooting out a web and hauling himself back into the main fight.

Rogers would catch up in a few seconds. For now, Peter had to go fight some aliens and save New York.

Flying through the air, he webbed up another two of the creatures who looked like they were giving some of Rogers’ folks hassle, saluting them with a grin on his masked face before attaching himself to a wall and taking stock of the situation.

There were about fifteen creatures, all being desperately herded by the Rogue Avengers, although it was clear they were struggling. They simply didn’t have the sheer strength to go toe-to-toe with creatures like this.

He was about to launch into the middle of the fray and get his hands dirty, when he noticed another alien as it fell through the portal. It somehow managed to go unnoticed by everyone else; all of them too caught up in fighting the other ones- and the so when it dropped, there was no-one there to apprehend it.

Peter noticed, with a growing sense of horror, that there was something glowing ominously in its hand.

Wasting no time, Peter threw himself downward, swinging off a lamppost and feeling the air push against his face as he arced downward, knowing his trajectory would take him-

“Yoink!” He called, snatching whatever it was directly out of the alien’s hands and then flying onward, landing a good 60 yards away when he eventually came back down again.

Rogers turned to him, briefly, nodding in satisfaction when he saw Peter, unharmed at the side of the street.

He was at an angle, though, and it meant he missed the object clutched in Peter’s hand, which had just begun beeping.

Beeping objects were never a good sign.

His mind worked faster than it had all day as he glanced down at the weird beepy cube. 

Okay. Right. Chances were, this thing was a bomb.

And by the rapid rate in which the beeps were quickening, he guessed he had less than fifteen seconds before it detonated.

He was almost certainly going to die.

Question was- how could he do it so that he was the only one? How could he save everyone else- all the Rogue Avengers, all the civilians still hiding in their cafe’s and retail stores and apartments?

He didn’t even know what the blast radius was. He might not be able to do a damn thing.

For a brief, rather amusing moment, he considered trying to swallow it. But he realised he’d never be able to get that down his throat- it was probably three times bigger than the width of his gullet in the first place.

So no swallowing.

Turning his head frantically, he looked for…something. Anything.

There was the portal. He could…he could see if he could throw it through the portal- but there was a big chance he wouldn’t get it in. The portal was facing the ground- the aliens had been jumping in and falling down to the floor below. Peter would never be able to get the angle right. And he was too far away to run any closer to it.

Okay. Two options down, one second passed- what else did he have?

Across the road. An old hotel- all grand stone and gargoyled features- currently waiting to be demolished.

Big. Heavy. Could probably hold a decent-sized explosion.

Peter sprinted forward.

The space between beeps was slowly becoming shorter. Peter guessed at about ten seconds until it went off.

He’d be well into the middle of the building by then.

Leaping up the stairs all at once, he burst through the doors like they weren’t there at all and then stopped, quickly deciding which route would take him further in.

Eight seconds.

The corridor veering just slightly to the left, that was probably the one. Peter shot forward, clutching tightly to the ticking bomb and adamantly refusing to think about the fact he was going to die in 5 seconds.

He kept running. The building really was huge- he wasn’t even sure he was in the middle yet, and he’d been sprinting for almost-

Something grabbed his hand.

He yelled, turning around, spare hand raised and ready to fight, but it paused a fraction away from the Ironman faceplate as the metal grip pulled the bomb from his fingers and hurled. A proper, fearsome hurl that sent the bomb careening forward, further and further and further.

Tony didn’t say a word. As soon as he’d thrown it, his hand grabbed around Peter’s waist and once more, Peter was yanked forward at a truly immense speed.

They were flying through the building, so close, maybe they’d even-

Sound ripped through the air like scissors through paper, and he knew they were too late. They hadn’t made it.

Peter shut his eyes, feeling as Tony whirled them around so his reinforced back was facing the explosion. His whole body curled around Peter in the air, and Peter felt them drop as Tony cut the thrusters, so as not to smash them straight into a wall.

Fire ripped through the walls, and Peter curled further into the embrace on instinct, shielding his face from the flames by tucking it up against a metal shoulder.

Peter wondered if his suit would hold out, or the fire would rip through it.

They hit the floor hard, and both of them rolled across the stone, Tony’s hands never releasing their grip against the back of Peter’s head and waist. Over and over and over; it didn’t feel as if it were ever going to end. like they’d never lose momentum. Peter’s arm was aching, and so was the rest of his body. He was pretty sure they’d rolled just out of the blast radius, but the heat was still searing, and Peter steadfastly kept his eyes shut.

He felt scared. Terrified, even.

After what felt like an age, they stopped moving.

Their entire world was still shaking apart, and Peter could hear the explosion and the fire and the pieces of falling debris as they clattered to the floor, close, too close to his head.

With a heave, Tony grabbed hold of his shoulder and rolled, one last time, so he rested over Peter, rather than the other way around.

Immediately, everything dimmed a little. Bits of rubble bounced off Tony’s armour, clinking rhythmically against the metal, but honestly, Peter was just grateful the boiling chunks of rock were no longer burning through his own suit.

“-Peter, Peter, buddy, listen to me- you gotta get up, we gotta move, that beam is coming down, you gotta move-”

Huh. Was he gonna get crushed again?

…Fuck. 

Was he going to get crushed again?

“Oh no,” Peter whispered, chest constricting almost painfully in memory of the Other Occasion, of what was almost a carbon copy of the scene he was looking at right now, rubble and dust and falling pieces of debris as supporting beams caved in on him-

“MOVE!” Someone was screaming, and Peter felt the hand that yanked his weakened shoulder, pulling him across the floor, sliding him out, over jagged rubble and burning metal.

He watched as Tony scrambled to his feet, arms raised as the suit suddenly found itself bearing the weight of the entire building on top of it.

Peter curled up again as once more, various things were dislodged from the ceiling. 

This felt too similar. This felt like a nightmare. The space was too small. They were trapped. Peter couldn’t bear being trapped, not after-

“-You absolute IDIOT!” He heard the words to his left, “I told you to GET OUT! TO LEAVE! What did you do? You grabbed a god damn shitting bomb and went on a suicide run! How dare you turn off the comms, Parker- do you have any fucking idea how serious this shit is? You do not ever turn off comms- I didn’t know if you were dead or alive! Do you genuinely have a fucking deathwish? Is that what this is? Because we’re stood under what has to be a fifty tonnes of rubble and I can’t move the suit an inch without it all coming down on our asses, so-”

Oh God. Too real. Too real. Too small. He hated small spaces. And it was dark. Inescapable. Tony was here too- fuck, this was it, this was just a nightmare, one of many, he dreamed this all the time, if he could just wake up, it would be okay-

“I cannot believe you’d… wait…Peter?”

Just a nightmare. A nightmare. And he had to wake up before Tony died. Because they always died. Whether the dreams held Ned, or Aunt May or Mj or Tony or all of them, they always died without him, leaving him alive, crushed under the weight of the building he couldn’t lift-

“Peter! Buddy, you need to-”

Oh God. How did you wake up from a nightmare? Did you pinch yourself? Scream? Dying usually worked, didn’t it-

“Peter, hey, hey, look at me. Look up, come on, come on, follow my finger. You can do that for me, right? Can you look at me, Spiderman? Please?”

No. He couldn’t. I he looked, if he saw the rubble or the crushing darkness or Ton’s dead body, then it would mean he was too late, he’d be too late, the building would trap him forever and ever.

Something clicked, twice, in front of his nose, and it was surprise more than anything that made him open his eyes and look. 

“There we go,” Tony said, clicking them again, lifting them out of sight, and Peter followed, because he wanted to see the life in those fingers, wanted to hear the faint pulse through his enhanced ears. That never showed up in his nightmares, that was always the one thing that was absent.

“Hey, Spiderman,” Tony said quietly, when Peter eventually worked up to looking him in the eyes. He wasn’t in the suit; horribly exposed to all the elements, crouched down with one hand clicking occasionally near his face and the other hovering nervously around Peter’s shoulders. “You back in the room?”

Peter gasped. “You… where’s your suit, what’s holding up the building?” He yelled, head turning rapidly in panic, arms immediately coming up to brace for impact-

“The suit! The suit, Peter, I stepped out of it- the suit’s still holding it up, okay, it’s fine, it’s fine. I got you. You’re good,” Tony explained hurriedly, hand moving to compensate for Peter’s jerk, but still refusing to land on his shoulder.

There was silence, and Peter heard his own ragged breathing fill the room. Fuck- what if he breathed in too much oxygen- what if they ran out, what if what if what if-

“Steve’s on his way, Spiderman,” Tony said, fingers still clicking at his side, still grounding Peter to that staccato rhythm, the one thing that seemed not to fit in with the themes of his nightmares, “he saw us both go in, and they’ll be finding a way to dig us out, right now.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Peter shook, voice barely above a whisper, and he realised absently that he’d curled up in a ball on the ground, looking at Tony as he crouched above.

“He will,” Tony assured him, hand ghosting over Peter’s shoulder, “I know he will. He’s Steve. It’s what he does. Insufferable bastard,” he added on at the end, pulling a little face as he glanced over to the thoroughly concaved area around them. It seemed that the beam was the only thing keeping this tiny little pocket empty of rubble.

Peter took a deep breath. This wasn’t a nightmare. This was real. This was what was happening, and Peter had to get through it.

“Can we… can we meet them half-way, do you think?” Peter asked quietly, just desperate to leave, to get out, to see daylight again.

Tony winced, and shook his head. “We have no idea what stones need to stay where in order to keep this whole thing standing. They’ll have equipment for this. We’ll be in here an hour, max.”

Maximum. One hour. One whole hour, stuck here.

“You know, one hour is really just six lots of ten minutes,” Tony began, still clicking as he leaned back so he was sat on his ass, looking up at the ceiling and shrugging, “which is also, like, 12 lots of five minutes. That’s roughly one song and a bit, 12 times over. Not that long, really,” he mused.

Peter nodded, arms curled tightly around his knees. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Tony sighed across from him. “Can I touch? Or will you detach my hand from my wrist if I put it on your shoulder?”

Wordlessly, Peter just nodded, and Tony immediately let the hand drop, until it was running softly along Peter’s shoulder. “You….God, I cannot believe I’m saying this, but you shouldn’t be sorry. You just saved a tonne of people. Not that I’m still not pissed that you disobeyed orders, again, may I add,” Tony said, flicking his shoulder lightly, but his voice didn’t sound harsh- only exasperated, mixed in with a little bit of fondness, “but… you did what a great superhero would do. You put everyone else before you. Objectively, I can’t fault that.”

Peter swallowed, and uncurled, just a fraction. Tony was smiling at him, ash smeared across his face, cuts bleeding down his face, animated and exasperated and alive, not dead, not dead, not dead.

“-of course, from literally  any other point of view ever, it was a horrible, terrible decision, and believe me, I am going to murder you when we get out of here. But not yet. For now, let us bask in the success of your endeavour,” Tony declared, throwing a hand up around him and gesturing to the lightly smouldering room.

Peter raised an eyebrow. And then, incredibly, he found himself laughing. “Yeah. I think I did okay.”

On the other side of the room, a chandelier suddenly fell to the floor, crashing loudly and sending glittering diamonds skittering across the tiles.

Tony sighed. “God, is this what it feels like to be Pepper? I am exhausted. You have exhausted me, boy, I swear to god you’re gonna give me an aneurysm from worry.”

Peter opened his mouth, but at that moment, there was suddenly a shifting in the rocks. Peter jerked and Tony jumped to his feet, hand that had been resting on his shoulder suddenly turning tight as he dragged him back. 

Fuck. Peter had been starting to think they might make it out, as well. This sucked.

“Peter, follow me, right now,” Tony ordered quietly, and Peter did, unable to do anything else. It was either he followed, or he stopped being able to function.

Tony guided him backward, shifting around so that rather than dragging Peter backward, he was pushing against Peter’s chest.

He kept going, blind with terror, until he found himself stumbling over something, into something-

Tony grabbed his forearms, lifting them up and pushing them against something soft, and then there was a soft little “close up, FRIDAY,”

And suddenly he was surrounded by metal.

Peter stared at Tony through the eyes of the suit, stomach dropping further than his shoes, further than the ground- he felt like someone had just poured a pint of lead into his blood- he’d taken Tony’s suit, he’d taken Tony’s defence-

“No,” Peter said quietly, barely even audible. He attempted to move, but the joints were locked in place. “No, Tony, NO- get me out, get me out-”

“Just a precaution, kiddo,” Tony said softly, a hand patting the chestplate as Peter squirmed around helplessly inside, begging to FRIDAY, to God, to anyone who would listen to let him go again, to put Tony in instead, this was his suit, Tony was the vulnerable one here, he wasn’t even fucking enhanced like Peter, he was just a human underneath all the metal- the metal that Peter had just stolen from him.

The rubble shifted again, and he watched Tony brace through his tear-filled eyes, all the while begging uselessly for Tony to take it back, take it back, take it back-

Suddenly, a large chunk of rock shifted, and…

Light.

That was a crack of light.

“Tony?” Someone called, baritone voice a little bit desperate as it ran through the destroyed building.

Tony blinked, and then sighed in relief. “Oh thank fuck- hey Steve,” he said, in between huffs of laughter, “see, Spidey, I told you he was an insufferable bastard who just couldn’t let a thing lie.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say about a person coming to save your ass,” Steve replied blandly as Peter watched fingers curl around another hunk of rock and pull, widening the crack further.

“Okay, okay, I apologise. Hey, FRIDAY, let Spider out, it’s okay,” Tony said, waving over to the suit.

And just like that, Peter was out again.

He looked at Tony, standing next to him like nothing was wrong. Like he hadn’t been about to put Peter in their only chance of survival and leave himself out, despite the fact there was a better chance of both of them surviving if it had been the fucking other way around-

“Spidey, the gap’s probably big enough t- whoah, whoah, oh…uh, okay then,” Tony said, as Peter threw himself into Tony’s arms, grabbing the man’s shoulders and hugging as tight as he could without bruising.

Jesus, fucking….fuck.

Tony made a few more noises, before his hands came up and clutched right back, tight and grounding and warm.

When Peter released, his hands were damp, and he frowned.

“Hey, Spidey?” Tony asked, grabbing the back of his neck and looking into his eyes anxiously, “you okay now, right? You’re good?”

Peter thought about it. He wouldn’t really say he was good- he’d never had a panic attack that bad before. But it seemed the worst had passed. 

He nodded his head.

Tony smiled. “Oh. Good.” He nodded back, and then made a face, “hey, so now that’s sorted, I’m just gonna-”

And then Tony blacked out in Peter’s arms.

Turned out a piece of rubble had managed to lodge itself under Tony’s right shoulderplate and impaled him.

“Oh look, it’s the village idiot,” Tony mumbled, when he woke up on the hospital bed a few hours later.

Peter jerked, turning to look at Tony. from his seat. “Me? I’m the idiot? You were the one who didn’t tell me you were impaled! I could have webbed you up! Stopped the blood! What the hell, Tony?” Peter hissed, leaning forward and pointing an accusatory finger over to Tony’s face.

“Ugh, you sound like Steve,” Tony said sleepily, eyes unfocused. He was pretty knocked up from the meds, and it seemed he wasn’t going to last long before drifting off again.

“He’s waiting outside, by the way,” Peter added grumpily, leaning back in the chair with folded arms.

“Who?”

“Steve.”

“…Oh.”

Peter huffed again, and Tony pulled another exasperated face. “Okay, listen, I’m supposed to be mad at you. You were the one who fucked up here, not me. I was just being the responsible adult-”

“You put me in your suit, Tony,” he whispered.

“Yeah, because You’re Peter Parker and you’re damn nearest thing I got to family, kid, so I wasn’t exactly gonna watch you get crushed to death, okay? Capiche? Do we understand one another?” Tony snapped, leaning forward in his bed a little as he glared up at Peter, before he waved him off, wincing a little when it jarred his shoulder, “doesn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t a cave-in, only Steve Rogers, riding in like a knight in shiny fucking armour. Did you know he grew a beard? What the fuck is that about? That’s unacceptable- I’m not going to be able to focus on anything for weeks after this, fuck him, fuck everything about him, to be honest.”

Peter listened to the ramble, unable to stop the grin from hearing drugged-up Tony talk. “Yeah, okay then. I’m still pissed at you, though.”

“Well so am I” 

“Great.”

“Good.”

“Nice to know.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

There was silence for a while, and then he heard Tony sigh. “Glad you’re not dead, kid.”

His eyes were already closing, but Peter said it anyway. “Yeah. Glad you’re not dead, too. And… you’re the closest thing I got to dad, so…you’re family too, I guess.”

Tony huffed out a tired laugh. “How beautifully put, Mr Parker,” he said sarcastically, before his eyes closed completely and he fell back into sleep.

Peter exhaled, shaking his head a little before getting to his feet and walking out of the room. He didn’t have to go far to find what he was looking for.

“He’s okay,” Peter said, and Steve looked up at him from his chair in the waiting room for a moment before visibly deflating in relief. “Yeah- just spoke to him now. High as anything, but okay.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah- kay. Good.” He replied, smiling slightly as he looked away. “I expected as much, to be honest. Takes more than that to put Tony down.”

Peter huffed. He was still sort of pissed with Rogers, because Tony was and Peter was unequivocally on Tony’s side- but he knew two idiots who were avoiding something important when he saw it. “You should just talk to him. And not when the world is in danger or you’re pulling him out of a collapsed building, either.”

Steve exhaled, before shaking his head. “I don’t think… I’m not sure if either of us are there yet, son.”

Peter sighed. And they said teenagers were angsty? “Say that however much you want, but he trusted you to come. And you waited for him, here. That’s gotta mean something, right?”

Steve looked caught out for a moment, before his whole body did a funny little jerk and he stood up. “I’m gonna…go. I’ll see you around, Spiderman,” he said quietly, like he wasn’t going to come right back tomorrow morning and check up again.

Peter watched him go, shaking his head. People made everything so complicated- honestly, Peter didn’t really get that- he was a simple guy, at the heart of it, he did what he thought was right, and was too mature for all the petty fights-

In his pocket, his phone began to ring. Absently, Peter pulled it out and checked caller ID.

His face went a little green.

“Uh oh,” he whispered to himself, as Aunt May’s face beamed back at him.

Okay.

So he was really going to die this time.

[davidmann95]

wait, marvel's gonna let steve still be cap, even after all that secret empire bs? well, that makes one wonder; after such a horrific character change and assassination, how do you marvel is gonna fix him up to even allow him to touch the shield?

I really was 100% certain the motivation behind Secret Empire was to take Steve Rogers semi-permanently out of the comics (compared to simply killing him, which would be a slap on the wrist at best) to establish Sam Wilson as the One True Captain America in time for Anthony Mackie to take over in the MCU after Avengers 4. Well, this is what you get for trusting in the cockamamie theories of a stranger on the internet kids - sometimes we’re gonna let you down. A shame, given 1. Steve Rogers is obviously going to be toxic in the immediate wake of this no matter what, and 2. I’d kind of gotten attached to my roommate’s theory that Steve was going to shoot himself in the head in the oval office in front of Sam at the end, in an homage to the classic original Secret Empire by Englehart and Buscema. As for how it’ll work, well, we don’t technically know that it’s Steve Rogers in the ad, but of course it is, so…Retroactively Fake Simon/Kirby Steve Rogers turns out to be an equally real product of the quantum cosmic cube bullshit and whatever, and defeats his counterpart mentally with PATRIOTISM? The whole Nazi timeline is itself somehow an illusion (it would be nice to not classify the entirety of the Marvel Universe as a fanfic)? Nazi Cap turns out to be Ultimate Cap the way Kieran Shiach has suggested a couple times? I dunno.

Of course, Cap is only a single component of what’s going on here.

We’re getting Marvel: Rebirth Legacy in the fall, and given it’s going so far as to bring back the letter boxes in the corner of the covers and restore the original numbering, I’m surprised the rumored title of “Make Mine Marvel” didn’t pan out. Maybe it’s because they knew Legacy would be a bigger dick move as a title, given the clear goal of this is sweeping all the diverse legacy characters off the board. Seriously, this is right up there with Spider-Man: Homecoming in terms of utterly shameless titles, except that’s hilarious and this is just either meanspirited, or obtuse to the point of self-delusion. 

This actually goes simultaneously further than I thought and not quite as much: they seem to really be bringing almost all the old characters back, rather than just most of them, but also judging by the second ad most of the major legacy characters seem to be keeping the identities, when I figured only one or two would get to hang on to the big-name titles. For a minute or two I had a theory for all of this that, spinning out of Generations, a whole bunch of ‘classic’ characters were going to be stranded in the present ala the X-Men O5. This would somewhat balance things out: the originals would be there for a last hurrah but as anomalies, while the legacy characters in danger of being overshadowed would be presented as the main and real versions, balancing things out. But I don’t really think they’d do that, both due to the tepid reception of the O5, and because if there’s anything I’m certain this isn’t about, it’s treating the legacy characters as legitimate equals.

The one-shot itself should be nice between Aaron and Ribic, but that too promises both “the Earth-shattering return of a beloved Marvel mainstay,” and “a last-page reveal that’s probably gonna break the Internet” (one has to wonder what credit Axel Alonso could possibly think Marvel has in the bank at the moment that such a statement would be taken as a positive). Assuming those are separate events, the mainstay probably isn’t Logan as Wolverine - there’s been no setup in the X-books that I know of - so between their absence and their status as a part of Classic Marvel, I figure this is where the Fantastic Four are going to make their comeback. I’d like to think that’ll go well, but Marvel steadfastly refuses to give Al Ewing plumb assignments, and if Jason Aaron gets a major book after taking point on this rather than devoting more time to creator-owned it’s probably going to be Avengers, so I’m guessing that Dan Slott is probably the frontrunner for the gig, which is…what it is. As for the shock ending, Miracleman. DC threw down the gauntlet with Watchmen, this is clearly Marvel’s version of Rebirth, and Alonso says what they’re doing here is something they’ve been questioned about for awhile, so.

Well, whatever happens, at least we can be sure Slott is going to continue writing Amazing Spider-Man, through this and until no one can recall a time in living memory that anyone but him ever wrote that book. And I would bet solid money that Nick Spencer is still going to be writing Captain America. In spite of those, a return to meat-and-potatoes storytelling could be a good thing. The problem is that that’s continually framed as being mutually exclusive with a diverse lineup. And again, good god, I cannot imagine a more pointed “fuck you” to a massive chunk of the readership than Marvel titling this Legacy.

EDIT: mott-mordockI said: don’t think we need to worry about the new heroes being sidelined: “The panel stressed during the Q&A that “Marvel Legacy” will not erase the progress made in diversifying the Marvel U in recent years, with Aaron promising that newer characters and characters of color are very much a part of the story he’s telling and the Marvel U moving forward.” 

Aaron didn’t outright say or imply by silence they were going to start sidelining women and minority characters; a statement like that would be suicidal. I’m sure Jane Foster for instance is going to stick around for awhile in his Thor, and that he and a few of his fellow creators will continue making effort in the area. But few if any of these characters had a chance to build up steam as ‘real’ incarnations of the icons rather than substitutes, and now that the classic models are coming back there’s little if any reason to think they’re not going to start getting returned to subsidiary roles and/or killed off one-by-one. Especially since Marvel’s catastrophically-devalued word to the contrary is the only evidence otherwise, a couple weeks after they went out of their way to imply diversity was what was killing their sales rather than a lot of their comics being crap. That they’re asking people not to look behind the curtain doesn’t mean what they’re doing isn’t obvious.