#when i get home next week i am going to draw SO MUCH knight arthur

[no-tengo-ojos]

S5 Arthur Lester

[teamxdark]

Mirror, Mirror

Based off of this little interaction between @damnitd and @silvermun a long time ago. It’s basically unedited, but the story I’ll end up putting on AO3/FFnet another day won’t be much different from this one here.

What can one do, when the heart is split in two? Where does one end, and the other begin? Where is the line drawn? 

Or should it be drawn at all…?

Sonic stared at the twisted heap of metal on the kitchen counter, bisected by a sword, and tried his hardest not to scream.

“Lancelot,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even, “that was a toaster.”

The knight in question wrenched his sword from the mess, causing sparks to fly and little bits and bobs, both mechanical and breadlike, to scatter across the counter and fall to the floor. “It was burning up,” he explained gravely, “achieving heats far too intense for today’s weather. I could not trust it, and when it let out a scream, I had to act.”

“That ‘scream’ was an alarm,” Sonic snapped, too tired and hungry to deal with this nonsense. “That means that the toast is done and we can eat. Which we can’t now. Because you attacked the toaster.”

The dark hedgehog turned his sword over in his hands, and Sonic braced himself for his rebuttal, and then they would argue over who was in the right, but the knight uttered a soft, “I simply wished to protect you. I am still getting used to the complex machines of this era, and I cannot bring myself to trust them. I realize that this is… unbecoming of me, and an irritation to you. I apologize, and I will try my best to keep my impulses under control.”

Sonic let out his breath in a loud exhale. It was so easy to forget, still, that this wasn’t Shadow in front of him.

No one could quite explain how the switch had come to pass; one day, Shadow and he had parted ways, the sensation that there were still words left unspoken between them that would be better saved for another time, and the next day, Lancelot had been found in his place. 

The knight was having trouble adjusting, to put it lightly. It had been weeks, but the advanced technology of contemporary times drove him to paranoia, and Sonic had seen many a monitor, vehicle, and appliance fall victim to Arondight’s wrath, much to Tails’ chagrin.

Worse, still, was that Lancelot refused to stay anywhere aside from Sonic’s home. The knight graciously declined Shadow’s place, leaving Rouge and Omega down one roommate, staying instead in any spare room he could find, so long as it was where Sonic was staying as well. Rouge had laughed it off, waving the knight away with a taunt that he was ‘Sonic’s problem now’, but the hero had seen the flash of hurt and worry in her eyes.

No one knew where Shadow was, or if he was ever coming back.

And now incidents such as these, with another appliance in pieces, were commonplace.

Sonic rubbed at his forehead, trying to put his buzzing thoughts together in his head before he spoke. “Lance, I get that you’re trying to protect me from my evil cookware and all that, but I don’t get why.”

The knight started, one ear tilting to the side in confusion. “Why would I not? I swore to do so, did I not?”

“No,” Sonic deadpanned. “You didn’t.”

That seemed to offend Lancelot, who let go of his sword for a moment to cross his arms. “I do not wish to speak out of line,” he said, sounding like he was struggling to remain calm, “but you are mistaken. A knight is loyal to the sovereign who knights him, until the last of his days.”

“But I didn’t knight you!” Sonic protested, at the end of his rope. “I’m not your king!”

In response, Lancelot pushed up his visor, and Sonic took in the set jaw, the way his pointed white teeth bared themselves in a snarl, by all means, the spitting image of Shadow, with just the smallest thing here and there that harshly reminded Sonic that the one standing before him was not the one he had spent so many years with. He saw it in the same set jaw, as it trembled with the effort to keep everything held back. He saw it in the snarl, which was more dismayed than hostile. Most of all, he saw it in Lancelot’s eyes, red and wide and so very expressive without the visor to shield them away.

Sonic was so used to seeing those eyes guarded, cut off from him, with only the smallest of opportunities to peek inside before they closed him out again.

Lancelot reached out, holding one of Sonic’s hands in both of his, delicately, like he was something infinitely valuable and the knight was afraid of sullying him with his hands. Sonic had only blinked when Lancelot dropped to his knees, his head bowed forward, and he heard him clear his throat before he spoke.

“You are him. You may not believe me, but I know it to be true. You are Arthur, my king, in this life and all others.”

Sonic sighed, unwilling to let this go but also not wanting to keep on this path of conversation, especially on an empty stomach. He tried to wrench away his hand, but Lancelot held tight, lifting his head, eyes ablaze with passionate certainty that made Sonic freeze in place.

He had never been looked at like that before…

"Every piece of you is the same,” Lancelot declared, his eyes unwavering, drawing in the hero and refusing to release him. “It is not only in image, either. I see it, I hear it, I feel it... It's more than just the body, the vision I see before me. You have his soul, free and unbound and hungry for adventure. You have his heart, strong and kind and noble. I see it in your eyes, you are him, you are who he would be if he were not burdened by his destiny! Don't you understand, Sonic? The only difference between you and Arthur are the memories you keep! You are him! You are him, and that's why I will follow you and protect you with my life. I gave you my vow, and I will not break it. No matter the time, no matter the life... I will stand by you until any and every version of us ceases to exist. That is my promise to you, as your knight!"

He said it so resolutely, so earnestly, that Sonic couldn’t find the words, nor the will to argue against him. In all his life, in all his wildest fantasies, Sonic could never have imagined those words, coming from that mouth, spoken in that voice… It was enough to get his heart pounding, that was for sure.

Sonic closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, but Lancelot’s hands clasped around his kept him anchored in this strange reality he was in. He didn’t like it; it had taken so long to get to where he had gotten with Shadow, so much time and effort and tenacity to get every last crumb from him, but Sonic had been adamant. He had wanted to break Shadow’s walls, to reach through, to understand him and be someone trusted and cared for. He had tried so hard, made so much progress… and now Shadow was gone, and in his place, Lancelot knelt before him, eagerly baring his soul for him without so much as a command.

Sonic would have been a liar if he said he didn’t like what he saw in Lancelot, either, but after all he had done for Shadow… it felt… wrong? Bad? In poor taste? Off, to be feeling similar flutters in the chest for a man who shared his face but not his past, nor his experiences.

Yet, as he opened his eyes and saw Lancelot still staring resolutely at him, as though desperate for him to understand, Sonic had to wonder if the knight had a point; Shadow had had amnesia twice, now. His memories had reset, but he had still been Shadow at his core. Sonic had never doubted that.

Did memories truly make a person who they were? And if so… were Lancelot and Shadow truly two different people?

Are you him? Sonic wanted to ask as he was burned alive by those eyes, crimson and intense, focused on him and him alone. Are you who he could have been if things had been different?

He wasn’t sure, but at least he could kind of understand where Lancelot was coming from.

Sonic heaved out an exhale, using both hands to pull Lancelot to his feet. “Okay,” he conceded. “Okay… but no more protecting me from my house or my friends. I’ll let you know when we’re in danger, okay?”

And Lancelot beamed, overjoyed, his teeth poking out through his lips and his eyes crinkling with happiness, and Sonic would be an even bigger liar if he denied that it was one of the most gorgeous sights he had ever seen.

Lancelot… I think I want to know you, too.

...

The sound of his pen scratching along the page was the only sound in the room. King Arthur sat back in his chair, stretching out his fingers, his eyes seeking out the room’s only other occupant, who was standing by with his back against the wall, looking displeased.

Shadow was silent, as always.

Arthur let out a breath, drumming a couple of fingers against his desk. “I cannot solve anything if you do not speak,” he finally remarked, much to the displeasure of the other.

“I don’t want to be out there with the others. This is the only room where no one barges in. That’s all.”

“Hm. Quite.”

It was mostly true, he supposed. Sometimes an advisor would poke their head in, but usually those weren’t the people Shadow was hiding from.

Arthur had started hearing the rumors a while ago; Sir Lancelot, his greatest and closest knight, and his longtime friend, was deeply in love with him. The rumors had followed him every day, and plagued him by night, as he wondered if they could be real, and wondered what he would do if they were real.

He had started to see and feel it, too. Lancelot’s habit of looking his way, his gaze, hidden behind his visor, lingering just a moment too long before he looked away again. The way his knight’s hand would remain on his person, his touch still warming him even after he drew his hand away. These moments had grown in number in the latest months, though their time together had remained fleeting, as the life of a king and the life of a knight were wrought with busy schedules and hardly enough time for a ‘hello’ to be exchanged.

For a while, Arthur had felt that something unsaid but reciprocated was between them, but Lancelot was gone, now, and Shadow had taken his place, and now the knights and the maids and the servants all looked at Shadow in the same way they had done to Lancelot, and the whispers and giggles followed the dark hedgehog until he ran into Arthur’s study and shut them all out behind him.

He made for some rather unsettling company, this sullen, tense man who shared his face with that of his closest friend.

Arthur missed him. Arthur missed him so much it hurt, and every day that passed he wished for the man who had stood by him from the very beginning to still be there, by his side, in a world that demanded the most he would be able to give as the bare minimum, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to take it out on Shadow. Nor was he about to dismiss the fact that Shadow was in a strange new world, and likely every bit as confused, disturbed, and frightened as he was.

“Would you like me to speak with them?” Arthur offered, figuring it was worth a try.

Yet Shadow huffed in response, the proposal seeming to offend him, and Arthur wondered why. “Don’t bother, I can handle my own problems.”

That was the other thing about Shadow: he had never, at any point, treated Arthur like he was royalty.

“It’s considered bad form to refuse the offer of a king,” Arthur pointed out, partly as a piece of advice; though he didn’t mind it himself, he knew Sir Gawain would throw a fit upon hearing that Shadow had shown such dismissal.

And the other part of him wanted to push Shadow just a little more. To get more of that strangely satisfying feeling of being treated like a man instead of a crown.

“I don’t care,” came the instant reply, and Arthur had to fight back a smile. “There are no kings where I come from, so your title means nothing to me, and even if it did, I won’t bow to you, or to anyone.”

The ‘not again’ went unsaid, but Arthur could hear it in Shadow’s voice, could read it in his body language. Arthur was always rather adept at deciphering Lancelot’s small cues and gestures, though Lancelot kept many of them hidden behind a wall of steel, but with Shadow, who bared his face and his body for the world to see, nothing could be hidden from Arthur’s discerning gaze. It was fascinating, truly, to be able to read someone new so well and so easily. Shadow was a puzzle with clear edges, but with many, many pieces that Arthur still had to search for.

All in all… a refreshing individual, despite the circumstances.

“Okay,” Arthur relented, and the sight of Shadow’s eyes narrowing in confusion only served to make fighting back his smile impossible. “In that case, I shall leave it to you.”

With that, he picked back up his pen, continuing to draft the latest ordinance on adjusting the limits of imported goods past Avalonian borders. The work was tedious, boring, dull, and even though he had just taken a break, Arthur felt his hand start to cramp with just a few words jotted down. The king sighed, rolling his wrist a few times, before getting back to work.

Just grin and bear it, he thought to himself as an involuntary noise of discomfort escaped him as his hand twinged again. You’ve done it before and you will always be able to do it. A king cannot show weakness. A king may not make excuses for poor judgement. Everyone is counting on me to do the best I can.

The thoughts only served to worsen the sense of anxiety that always seemed to cloud his mind, and Arthur grimaced, dropping his pen, holding his head in his hands and wishing for comfort for a man who was no longer with him.

His ears perked up as he heard a noise, something akin to a footstep taken in his direction, and when the king lifted his head, he noticed that Shadow no longer had his back flush against the wall. The dark hedgehog was doing his best to mask his emotions, but Arthur could still peel back every layer he put up, seeing the concern and the discomfort in the smallest things, from the slight narrowing of his eyes to the light raising of his spines. Shadow’s body language was silently screaming in empathy, something Arthur wasn’t used to receiving from others, and it intrigued him more than it should have.

“I’ll be fine,” he assured Shadow, not waiting to be prompted; he doubted the other would have asked, anyhow. “It’s simply sobering, sometimes, to remember that I have a kingdom’s worth of expectations to meet.” The king looked back down at the piles of papers on his desk; it was the same work, day in and day out, with decisions ranging from laughably easy to crushingly difficult. Yet, he had to make them all. Without thinking, he murmured aloud, “A single mistake could cost me everything I’ve done up to this moment. All the good I’ve done, all the efforts I’ve made, all the reputation that I’ve struggled to build up… it could all go up in smoke in a second, and I would be back at the beginning, needing to prove myself over and over again to people who expect everything from me.”

It was a moment of weakness, of cowardice, wherein Arthur was so tired from years of work and the loss of his most precious ally, for whom he still had almost no time to mourn. His eyes flicked back up to Shadow, and he prepared to apologize and ask that he forget all that he had just divulged 一 it was hardly fair on his guest, after all 一 but then he saw Shadow’s face, stunned and amazed, his red eyes wide and fixed on him, welling with a look that Arthur almost never saw on another person; understanding.

Shadow was looking at him with such mind-blowingly clear understanding and empathy that Arthur’s breath was taken away.

For a few more charged, heart-pounding moments, all they could do was stare, the sensation of something new connecting them becoming stronger and stronger with every passing second.

Then Shadow tore his gaze away and flung open the door, stepping outside and closing it behind him, leaving Arthur alone in his study.

As the king sat back in his chair, he stared into space as he tried to make sense of what had just happened, and what that might have meant for Shadow.

He was certain that, even though his dear friend’s face was too often hidden from view, that Lancelot had never once looked at him like that.

Shadow… what is your story, I wonder?

…

Just when Lancelot thought he couldn’t hate the odd technology of Sonic’s world any more, it came to a sudden and violent peak as the blue hero was called into action as a swarm of machines called ‘robots’ began invading Station Square. To make matters worse, they were created by some sort of mad doctor, and upon seeing an image of the man in question, Lancelot had to restrain himself from running the monitor through with his sword.

This mad doctor held a horrible resemblance to a certain ‘emperor’ that had caused Arthur far too much trouble, back at home in Avalon, and it made Lancelot desire nothing less than for this man’s complete and utter demise at his hands.

According to Sonic, these attacks weren’t anything new to him and his team, and though he knew it was a distraction or a trap, they didn’t have any options aside from stopping them quickly and efficiently, for the sake of everyone who lived in the city. He rallied his team effortlessly, leading the chase down to the battle, not bothering to bark orders because of the trust he carried in his followers…

Lancelot’s heart swam with affection. Sonic truly was Arthur, whether he believed it or not, and it showed in everything he did. He was a leader who cared not for the title, a man who cared for even the smallest life under his protection, and his bravery was unmatched, inspiring, and absolute. Someone of such immeasurable importance that needed to be protected at all costs.

So what else could Lancelot do but run to shield him when, during the battle, he saw a robot take aim at Sonic’s back?

His ears registered the sound of Sonic moving, then stumbling, but he only paid attention to the blast that came his way, soaking up the impact with his legendary strength, but he was not indestructible. Blood began dripping from a wound on his arm, and the scent of singed hair prickled in his nose in the most unpleasant way. Lancelot hissed in pain, his mind threatening to cloud with this new kind of pain, like fire but so much more unnatural, but he took pride in knowing that he had done his job. Sonic was safe. Sonic was safe and…

And he was dragging Lancelot to the side?

“What the hell was that, Lance?” Sonic demanded, panic and fury coloring his tone, and Lancelot’s feet almost froze in shock. Why was Sonic so frightened? Why did he sound so angry?

Had he done something wrong?

In a space several yards away from the battle zone, Sonic sat Lancelot down, and swore under his breath when he saw his battle wound. “Damn it Lance, I knew that robot was there! Why didn’t you just let me dodge? Oh Chaos, you’re bleeding, why did you run in like that?!”

Lancelot only gaped at him, his mind struggling to make sense of his leader’s words as Sonic inspected his arm and fretted over how it wasn’t healing.

Was he supposed to heal quicker than the average being? Lancelot supposed that maybe, with the help of his mother or Merlina, that could be possible, but the young girl who appeared to be his mother’s counterpart appeared more of a fighter than a healer, and he had not yet seen a counterpart to the royal wizard.

Lancelot wanted to ask these questions, to get some answers, but the near furious look on Sonic’s face made him hold his tongue. Such a look on someone he admired and loved so strongly… it was enough to make him feel like the scum of the earth.

The knight sat out the rest of the battle, staying in place even as Sonic left to finish the job, and the humiliating feeling of utter shame managed to overpower even his need to ensure his leader’s safety. Every time he felt the urge to stand up regardless, to charge into the battle even while wounded, and fight by his leader’s side as his sword and shield, the image of Sonic’s distraught face would flash before his eyes again, and he would remember his words, sharper and more painful than any sword, demanding why he had interfered.

Why had he failed his job as a knight?

What good was he, if he couldn’t even fulfil his one objective?

Lancelot’s head remained bowed in shame, even as he heard rapid footsteps coming his way. It remained bowed, even as he felt steady hands clean his wound and wrap a bandage around it.

It was only when Sonic lifted his chin and forced his visor up did Lancelot finally manage to look him in the eye.

“Why did you step in front of me like that?” Sonic asked, his voice calm again, though it did nothing to soothe Lancelot’s inner turmoil. The knight wanted nothing more than to no longer speak, to be swallowed by the ground and forgotten, the pathetic knight who couldn’t do his job when it mattered.

But he couldn’t refuse his leader, and so he forced himself to talk.

“It was the promise I made to you,” he said, and he struggled to keep his dismay in check as Sonic immediately looked displeased at his answer. “I am… protective by nature, and even moreso as a knight. I swore to protect Arthur, and I must protect you, too, even if that comes with my own life as a cost. That is something I must do, for I--”

“Oh stop it!” Sonic interrupted, once again looking angry and upset, and Lancelot bit back his speech, both ashamed and relieved. Had he gone even further, he might have lost control of his emotions and revealed just how deeply his affections for the blue hedgehog lied.

And then, Sonic asked something very, very strange.

“Isn’t there more to being a knight than serving a king?”

Lancelot, who up to that point had felt so certain of his standing, of his mission, of who Sonic was and what he represented, felt his heart break in two as cold reality settled over him.

“No,” he whispered in response, having never felt further away from the other than he did in that moment.

Sonic was not his king. Sonic was Arthur, but he was not his king. Sonic had no want for a knight, no desire to act as a king.

But if that were the case, what was Lancelot to do?

“Lancelot.”

Sonic’s voice was firm, and Lancelot braced himself for some hard truths.

“I’m not a king, Lance. I’m a hero, I guess. That’s what people call me, anyways. But the point is, I’m a free hedgehog. I’m not here to give orders or have people die for me, I’m just around to have a good time, to go where the wind takes me, and if I have to save a few people from some robots in the meantime, I will. I just gotta do what I gotta do… and I can’t do that if all you can do is try to protect me.”

Even with his face raised, chin still supported by his leader-- no, by Sonic’s hand, Lancelot tried his best to look away. His eyes watered treacherously, threatening to spill over. Being a knight was Lancelot’s life, his identity, the air that he breathed, the reality he lived in. It was everything he knew, but… but now it was…

The hand disappeared from his face, and then Sonic was reaching for his own hand on his uninjured arm, and Lancelot was pulled to his feet. Sonic looked him full in the eyes, their pull hypnotic, and even as Lancelot tried to choke back his tears, he felt his breath catch in his lungs.

“Hey… I need you to trust me with my own life, okay?”

Lancelot blinked, and the smallest of tears managed to escape him. Sonic didn’t think he trusted him.

In a sense, Lancelot supposed that he didn’t.

Yet when he reopened his eyes, he saw the look the other hedgehog was sending him, a look he had seen in Arthur’s eyes many times, mixed with a sense of sad resignation. Lancelot had never been able to read it perfectly, a fact which had always frustrated him to no end, for all he wanted was to be Arthur’s closest, to be the one who knew him at a level that no one else could hope to achieve.

But in Sonic’s eyes, the message was plain and clear.

He wanted to be seen as an equal, not someone above him, unattainable, on a pedestal. No, it wasn’t just that… Sonic looked determined to pull them both onto equal ground, to the same level, and the thought made Lancelot’s head spin.

“Lance… I know it’s scary, but you can choose how you want to live your life now, and trust me, it’s a good thing.”

And Lancelot, who knew nothing aside from being a knight, felt the crushing weight of the world in front of him, dark and untamed, when before he had Arthur’s light to follow. Paths were branching in front of him, too many to count and too many to walk down individually and explore. His head spun with possibility, and fright gripped at him, tempting him to deny, to refuse, to hide his face, or perhaps, to die as a knight in a world that refused to house him as he was.

Then he felt Sonic’s hand, still holding his, warm and comforting and safe, and somehow, in the midst of his existential turmoil, Lancelot felt a warm glimmer of hope.

“Okay,” he murmured in response, and Sonic’s brilliant grin soothed and delighted him more than he could properly understand.

Sonic… I shall do my best. For you… and for me, as well.

…

It hit too close to home, in this place that was about as far from home as Shadow could get.

Every day, whether he looked for him or not, Shadow saw King Arthur struggle silently. He saw him work day in and day out, endlessly trying to prove that he was worthy of being king, of being in everyone’s good graces and that he wasn’t just entitled to be there, but that he was supposed to be in his position. Even while all around him there sat obstacles and red tape and tough decisions and divides and people who were just never satisfied and…

And…

Shadow closed his eyes, recalling every debriefing he had had in G.U.N.’s headquarters. He remembered feeling as though he was on a leash, that every mission, every move he made had to be executed perfectly, otherwise he would lose his right to exist as a free being.

No… Shadow had never been free. Not since the day he was created, with the power to hurt and to heal, and every day he had to face the consequences of actions he had committed years prior. Shadow remembered the feeling of the imaginary leash shortening, tightening around his throat, reminding him that no matter what he did, it would never be enough.

Shadow would never be considered a true person by the people who saw him as a weapon.

And Arthur… Arthur seemed to be considered in the same way by the people who saw him as a king.

Shadow’s heart ached, and the dark hedgehog grit his teeth as he recalled all the times he had caught the other wincing and massaging his hand while drafting laws and messages, how he plastered a smile on his face as he met people and made addresses when he clearly would rather be anywhere else, and how he kept his voice even as he ordered his knights around, even though he obviously didn’t want to be giving orders, he just wanted to be looked at as an equal, but he was so ingrained in this life that he felt resigned, and so he stopped trying to fight where the fight could not be won. Shadow knew all these feelings, all the sensations of being worked to the bone, of putting on an act to protect himself, of accepting that there were some things that, like it or not, would simply never change…

But Arthur, unlike him, was not the Ultimate Lifeform. This man was not made of infinite power and energy, was not capable of rapid healing or boosting himself in body and mind with his own energies whenever it suited him. Arthur was a remarkable but regular hedgehog, who had been working off of nothing but his own willpower and strength of mind, and that knowledge hurt perhaps the most of all.

Arthur and himself… they both pulled a painfully similar weight, a weight that, even on his worst days, Shadow had never wished upon another person.

So what else could Shadow do but grab Arthur’s hand and run him out of there, out of the castle, yelling vague excuses at anyone who tried to stop them?

Arthur followed easily behind him, not asking a single question as Shadow ran, ran away from suffocating walls and legal obligations and the knowledge that it was never, ever enough.

Shadow was used to Sonic keeping up with him. They had always been on equal grounds, and Shadow knew it, even at the beginning stages of their rivalry when they both had asserted that they were the stronger, the faster, the more incredible hedgehog. With time, that knowledge became easier to swallow, as their rivalry held a friendlier edge to it, and especially so when their friendship and partnership had become more undeniable, and when those dumb, weird feelings started springing forward and…

And…

But with Arthur and his frightfully similar situation, Shadow’s empathy had hit him like a truck, and seeing him in so much concealed pain every day had turned into something too much to bear, and so, just for this one, Shadow decided he would be the man’s savior, even for just one evening.

They stopped in a meadow, far beyond the castle and away from the treeline where the forests began, and Shadow avoided looking at the exhausted king, unsure how to express what was in his head, in his heart, in his soul.

How was he supposed to tell him that watching him take all this weight, all this responsibility, was too much for him?

How was he supposed to say that he had similar issues, with G.U.N. and the people of the United Federation breathing down his neck and observing his every move, and that perfection was the bare minimum?

How could he express that they both deserved to live their lives without earning the right to exist without constant scrutiny, where one slip up meant everything falling apart, absolute ruin, the end of the world…

Shadow took in a deep breath, his mind spinning with thoughts and feelings he wasn’t sure he could put into words, but when he finally looked over to Arthur, the breath left him and wouldn’t return.

Arthur didn’t look angry or annoyed or anxious, even though Shadow had ripped him from his work that he couldn’t afford to fall behind on. Arthur didn’t look upset at all.

He looked grateful.

He looked serene.

Arthur looked directly into Shadow’s eyes, his own green ones reflecting the stars up above, and Shadow wanted to tell him everything, even though his body refused to breathe and his tongue refused to move.

The hand in his hold shifted, and Shadow felt Arthur squeeze his hand softly, just once.

He understood.

Chaos above, Arthur understood, and Shadow didn’t even need to say it.

Shadow swallowed, feeling overwhelmed, and Arthur seemed to understand that, too. Wordlessly, the blue hedgehog moved closer, his hand never leaving Shadow’s, and he leaned his body against Shadow’s, answering an unspoken need for comfort without smothering him, without trapping him in place with a hug or an embrace.

Shadow closed his eyes, hating how the gesture reminded him of one time Sonic had done something similar, a small shoulder check that had lingered a moment too long, and at his side, he felt Arthur breathe in deeply and hold it in, as though he were resisting the urge to sigh.

Shadow knew he was probably thinking about Lancelot.

Their hands both squeezed at the same time, and they both knew.

It was a strange feeling, as though both of them had lost a large piece of their lives, only to gain another to take its place. It was something that felt like infidelity, even though nothing warranting such a thing had been established with the other person on their minds.

Yet this closeness… this was something that Shadow had wanted for a long time, but had never been able to truly obtain. Shadow didn’t always know how to use his words, how to explain what he wanted or what he needed or what he was going through, and now here he was, with Arthur, a man who understood him without words. A man who he understood, who brought out his empathy to an almost painful degree, and Shadow wanted in that moment for nothing more than for them both to be happy.

As he felt the warmth of Arthur’s body and the beautiful comfort of being understood, even in a world that wasn’t his own, Shadow figured he might be on the right track.

Arthur… I don’t know how to thank you.

…

When Sonic first kissed Lancelot, it was after another battle, in which neither escaped without injury. Sonic could see Lancelot try his hardest to hold back his instinctive reactions, struggling to trust him and not place the blame on his shoulders, and Sonic looked out the window, knowing that life was short and uncertain and that any day might be his last.

He also did it knowing that waiting for Shadow was not going to help either of them at all.

He felt Lancelot tense up in shock, then relax, lifting his hands up to his head and burying them in his spines. Lancelot was pilant, willing, eager to receive whatever Sonic wanted to give him, and Sonic responded with his best efforts to make the kiss special, the sort of kiss that Lancelot deserved, after so many years of putting himself second. Whenever Lancelot made a noise that suggested he enjoyed what Sonic was doing, Sonic resolved himself to keep going, to deliver the indulgence that Lancelot had always been denied of.

It was completely different to how he always imagined kissing Shadow would be like. He had always imagined a competition, with both of them trying to one-up each other like they always did, but Lancelot’s sweet eagerness as their lips met again and again pushed all thoughts of Shadow from Sonic’s mind, and as they finally parted for air, it was Sonic’s name that escaped from Lancelot’s mouth.

…

When Arthur first kissed Shadow, it felt like a long time coming. The king knew he would need to take the initiative, with Shadow struggling to come to terms with his own feelings, and he felt the striped hedgehog become rigid in shock when Arthur’s hands landed lightly on his arms and he pressed their lips together.

He also did it with the knowledge that he might never see Lancelot again, and if that were the case, that Shadow was someone he couldn’t bear to let slip through his fingers as well.

When Shadow recovered from the shock, he kissed back, roughly and intensely, and Arthur found himself being pushed to keep up. It was like a battle, fueled by unspoken, deeply internalized feelings, finally being let loose until their heads swam with a lack of air and an overflow of emotion and the immeasurable feeling of connection without words.

Kissing Shadow lit a fire in Arthur’s soul, even as he felt Shadow start to calm down, finding enjoyment at being able to be vulnerable without pain for once in his life. Arthur could feel the heat flush off of the other’s face in waves, and when they finally parted, gasping for air, he was so, so glad that there was no visor or helmet to create a barrier between him and those eyes, softer than he had ever seen them, that he could read like a book.

[aion-rsa]

Zack Snyder’s Justice League vs. the Whedon Cut: What are the Differences?

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This article contains Zack Snyder’s Justice League spoilers.

Whether you love or hate his style, there is no denying Zack Snyder is an original. From 300 to Watchmen, and Man of Steel to Justice League, his characters often hover above the screen as much as occupy it. They’re mythic figures who’ve stepped off a Botticelli canvas, or at least Frank Miller comic book panels, and they’re imbued with such a sense of scale from their director that the aesthetic is nigh impossible to duplicate. That is only clearer now thanks to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a restored four-hour edit of Snyder’s original vision for the DC superhero movie team-up and their universe at large.

Admittedly, you’ve seen the movie’s tale before, back when Warner Bros. released a truncated, heavily reshot version into theaters in 2017. But that two-hour theatrical cut of Justice League, assembled by director Joss Whedon, really is a night and day different film. It shares many of the same scenes and story beats, but it lacks Snyder’s singular grandiosity and tonal consistency.

Comparing all the significant changes between the two versions—which we’ll hereby distinguish as the “Snyder Cut” and “Whedon Cut”—creates a fascinating juxtaposition of the different choices filmmakers can make with similar material, as well as the drastically disparate visions the directors had for these six superheroes and the larger DC Extended Universe. So join us as we contrast all the major changes (and by and large improvements) made by Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

The Opening

One of the most surprising changes made by the Snyder Cut comes immediately. Back when the ostensible Whedon Cut of Justice League opened in theaters, one thing many assumed was unchanged from Snyder’s vision was the opening credits. With imagery clearly filmed by the director—including unused footage from the Superman funeral sequence in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—the downbeat credits were edited to Singrid’s rendition of “Everybody Knows,” a cover of a song from one of Snyder’s favorite musicians, Lenoard Cohen. I’m also fairly certain only Snyder would film a homeless man with a cardboard sign saying “I tried” in a superhero movie (the destitute figure may still appear in the Snyder Cut in an overhead shot when Cyborg is later surveying the bleakness of the world).

Indeed, quite a bit of the Whedon Cut’s opening credits scenes are used elsewhere in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, including breathtaking imagery of the Superman symbol draped in black over London’s Tower Bridge. But the new edit foregoes a traditional opening credits sequence for a more restrained montage that returns to the climax of Batman v Superman, and to the moment when Henry Cavill‘s Superman dies. In pained slow-motion, we again experience the moment of Doomsday’s spike piercing Superman’s heart and see how his scream reverberates throughout the world.

The Snyder Cut is more directly linked to the previous movie with Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, complete with hair, hearing Superman’s cries from deep in the bowels of the Kryptonian ship. Meanwhile the echoes of Clark’s anguish reverberate all the way past Zeus’ magical cloak to Themyscira where the Amazons (rather impressively) have an entire army guarding the Mother Box they obtained 5,000 years ago. When the Mother Box hears Kal-El’s death rattle, it begins to crack, drawing a terrified Amazonian closer to its new glowing light.

And finally, we end with the cries being heard by Cyborg. It is on the image of a hunched over Ray Fisher that Snyder chooses to include his “directed by” title card, indicating a strong sense of solidarity with the character and the actor who plays him after Cyborg was largely sidelined in the Whedon Cut. Clearly this is going to be a different movie.

Batman

Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne remains the focal point, at least in terms of leadership, of both the Snyder and Whedon cuts of the film. But right down to how they’re introduced, these are subtly diverging interpretations of the character. In the Whedon Cut, Batman has the first scene of the movie that isn’t shot on an iPhone. It gets Affleck in costume immediately and features archetypal Gotham City imagery as Batman uses a criminal as bait for a Parademon, an alien from the planet Apokolips that Batman is already familiar with. He’s so aware of these creatures that Batman ignores the thief spelling out the subtext of Justice League’s first act: With Superman dead, where does that leave us?

By contrast, you intrinsically feel that absence in the Snyder Cut. Whereas Whedon and WB got Batman in the costume faster for a tongue-in-cheek action sequence with screaming crooks and flying aliens, Zack Snyder’s Justice League ignores the Batsuit for a clean two hours. Instead, it opens with Bruce Wayne already “north” in a remote part of Europe near the arctic. We get the impression he’s been traveling for weeks on a horse and over mountains, sporting a bushy beard as he reaches the fishing village Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) has provided supplies to.

The scene where Batman meets Aquaman is more or less the same, but tonally Snyder evokes a funereal quality by letting the scene breathe in Bruce’s desperation instead of Arthur’s flippancy. And rather than Bruce noticing an inserted mural of Mother Boxes being what upsets Arthur, it’s Bruce pulling a trick from Momoa’s on screen wife on Game of Thrones which sets Aquaman off: he reveals after his hosts have made fools of themselves that he too can speak Icelandic. (There is also no longer a joke where Bruce says, “I hear you can talk to fish.”)

This somber opening is strikingly different and a vast improvement (see the Aquaman section for more). After Arthur rebuffs Bruce’s request to team-up, Bruce’s defeated return trip home is also subtly changed. For starters, we see his journey to his private jet where Alfred is waiting. In the Whedon Cut, the pair’s conversation after Bruce has shaved is a reshot sequence with some admittedly amusing character-building dialogue, like Alfred saying, “I miss the days when one’s biggest concern was exploding wind-up penguins.” The Snyder Cut’s version is more expository and ominous. As neither has seen a Parademon yet in this version, Alfred doubts whether Bruce needs to build a team based on the ravings of a now incarcerated and visibly insane Lex Luthor. Batman says he isn’t just doing this based on Luthor.

“I made a promise to him on his grave,” Bruce broods about the Kryptonian alien he hounded to near death in the last movie.

The next time we see Bruce Wayne is in a scene that appeared in the Whedon Cut, if slightly different. It’s when Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince breaks into his “building” with million-dollar security. However, the Whedon Cut led viewers to believe this airplane hangar-like space was the Batcave (even though it visually looks quite different). The Snyder Cut confirms it is a decrepit warehouse near the docks in Gotham harbor. Gone also is the cheeky line, “Yeah, it looked expensive,” from Diana when Bruce mentions the cost of his security equipment.

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In this off-site Batcave area, it’s also established by Alfred that he and Bruce Wayne have built new gauntlets that absorb energy (they come in especially handy later when they save Bruce from Superman’s heat ray vision).

The first time the gauntlets are used occurs when Batman leads a nascent Justice League beneath the tunnels of Striker Island in Gotham harbor. Up until that point, most of Affleck’s scenes remain the same, even if they breathe or are edited slightly differently. Batman recruits Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) to join the Justice League while talking about competitive ice dancing, and looks positively exhausted when Barry sees the Bat-Signal. The early Commissioner Gordon scenes are also the same, albeit now without composer Danny Elfman’s Batman theme from 1989.

In the tunnels, Batman’s scenes diverge again though. There is more of the misterioso act when Victor Stone (Cyborg) says, “I heard about you. Didn’t think you were real.” The Dark Knight answers, “I’m real when it’s useful.” Additionally, Batman doesn’t really mentor the Flash in this sequence or in any other going forward. Gone is the Flash admitting he’s terrified at seeing Steppenwolf and Bruce advising he “save one” person and will then know what he needs to do.

Instead, the Flash says, “I guess that’s the bad guy” in the Snyder Cut, and Batman stoically responds, “Good guess.” Bruce also drops his sense of humor, losing some solid bits like “Sorry guys, I didn’t bring a sword” when the Knightcrawler starts shooting up Parademons. Now he simply says, “My turn.”

However, Bruce remains the stoic team leader, harnessing a steadier team dynamic. There are no insert shots of Commissioner Gordon telling Batman it’s good to see he’s playing well with others after the Striker Island fight, and rather than berate Wonder Woman and his team members into bringing Superman back from the dead, Bruce and the rest come to the same conclusion, silently.

During the sequence where Cyborg reveals the Mother Box can bring Superman back from the dead, no one says Kal-El’s name out loud. The Flash even asks, “Is everyone thinking it or am I going to have to say it?” The camera pans around the table and lands on Bruce, who is watching Cyborg’s projected image of Superman’s cape. It’s a nice moment for Affleck, who looks much more alert in this version than the Whedon Cut. The dialogue in the Snyder Cut can often be perfunctory and expository, but the vast four-hour running time leaves room for the actors to indulge in quiet moments. The only person who doubts the idea is Alfred who in another scene warns Bruce, “If you can’t bring down a charging bull, then don’t wave the red flag.”

Batman counters, “I’m operating on complete faith now.” Quite the about face from the last movie.

The team otherwise staying on the same page, even after the Superman fiasco (more on that below), is a stark difference with the Whedon Cut. Here Bruce invites the team into the Batcave proper after they lose all three Mother Boxes, with teammates regrouping; in the Whedon Cut there is a strained attempt to create tension. Particularly between Bruce and Diana….

Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot has spoken in the past about how she was unhappy with the Justice League reshoots. While still not knowing the full details of what occurred behind the scenes, Zack Snyder’s Justice League makes apparent why she’d be disappointed with the direction of her added scenes.

To be fair, Wonder Woman is still objectified to a certain degree in the Snyder Cut. Her non-warrior attire still revolves around several low-cut dresses, and there is still a (much more understated) flirtation between Diana and Bruce. In an early scene of her and Bruce discussing their prospective teammates in front of a computer—with an awkward stab at humor where she coaxes out of Bruce that Arthur said no—there’s a moment where their hands trip over the mouse at the same time, like they’re in a teenage rom-com. Similarly, when Barry and Victor are digging up Clark Kent’s grave, Barry asks Victor if he thinks Wonder Woman would “be into younger guys.” Victor dismisses the thirstiness by saying, “Barry, she’s 5,000 years old. Every guy’s a younger guy.”

But these moments are few and far between. In the Whedon Cut, they’re constant with Alfred teasing Bruce about Batman inviting Wonder Woman to a candlelit team-up dinner, and a gross gag where Flash saves Wonder Woman during the Striker Island fight but then awkwardly lands on top of her body and gets flustered. Perhaps most frustratingly though, her character arc is reduced to a lot of flirting with Bruce, and coming to see he is right when he chastises her for “still being hung up” on Steve Trevor. She then helps him undress from his armor and shares a drink with him, like co-workers with a forced “will they or won’t they” chemistry.

All of that is gone in the Snyder Cut, which instead focuses on presenting Wonder Woman as the most ferocious and noble of the film’s six superheroes.

Her first scene is much the same as in the Whedon Cut, although it’s another film school-ready example for what a difference post-production makes. We see a group of eco-terrorists take a school group hostage, and Wonder Woman stops them. But in the Whedon Cut, the scene is nimble and brightly colored with a tongue-in-cheek quality, right down to the way Elfman uses an orchestra to play Hans Zimmer’s previously electric “Wonder Woman” theme. In the Snyder Cut, the sequence lasts nearly eight minutes in a desaturated, gray color scheme. The sadism with which the terrorists want to kill their hostages is belabored, and Junkie XL uses a fearsome version of Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme while introducing one of his own, which relies on a haunting choral harmony.

In the new cut, Wonder Woman not only throws the bomb through the roof but jumps with it to make sure it explodes faar above the skyline. And when she returns, her power move to stop the head terrorist from killing the school children is to obliterate him into dust, with his hat blowing out the window and before the faces of shocked and unnerved London police officers. Meanwhile Wonder Woman then turns around after slaughtering this man (plus another terrorist who’s head she smashes into a wall) to rather jarringly smile at the school children. She leans down before one girl to say, “You can be whatever you want to be.” It’s actually sweeter than her saying “[I’m] a believer,” but I’m not sure it works given the new tone of the scene.

The next time we see Diana is a longer version of the scene where she discovers her mother has fired a burning arrow into the Temple of the Amazons in Greece. Snyder actually uses an impressive long one-take shot where Diana remains in focus, cleaning a statue at the Louvre, while her co-workers stay out of focus and needle her with questions. It’s a genuinely dryly funny, restrained moment, unique for this genre.

There is also an all-new scene of Diana going to Greece and retrieving the arrow from the temple. It’s one of the better additions that feels like a pseudo-Indiana Jones scene of Diana using the arrow to unlock a hidden chamber beneath the ruins, and then descending with a torch. Below she discovers a spooky room filled with spooky murals containing even spookier images of Mother Boxes and war… and a godlike monster DC fans will recognize as Darkseid.

Diana’s narration of what these images tell her is also different (more on that in the Darkseid section), with no lakeside chat with Bruce. Rather than using romantic imagery, Snyder favors to-the-point storytelling between colleagues as Diana tells Bruce in his new Batplane that the Age of Heroes defeated Darkseid. That age is over.

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While Bruce is recruiting Barry, Diana has a nice scene with Alfred about making tea before Victor Stone summons her by hacking the Bat-computer. She has no idea who he is in this scene (as opposed to having seen him earlier in the Whedon Cut), and there is no conversation where she convinces him to meet her. Instead, he designates location, summoning her. Their next scene together is more or less the same as in the Whedon Cut.

Overall, Diana has few added scenes and is honestly one of the less developed characters in the Snyder Cut despite being one-half of the team’s leadership. So the inclination of giving her more to do than discover Darkseid/Steppenwolf’s backstory was a prudent one, but all it left her with was smiling longingly as Batman drives off in the Batmobile during the third act. Ugh.

The Amazons on the other hand…

The Amazons

While Wonder Woman’s scenes in the Snyder Cut largely remain the same, the Amazons are given subtle but fierce new texture in their few added moments.

The movie opens with the Amazons tirelessly on guard when the Mother Box awakens. The next time we see them, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) is arriving to inspect the phenomenon for a prolonged build-up to Steppenwolf’s attack. When one soldier tells their Queen maybe the box will go back to sleep, Hippolyta remarks, “Evil doesn’t sleep. It waits.”

Steppenwolf eventually attacks, leading to one of the best moments in the Snyder Cut. When he says his Parademons will feed off their fear, Hippolyta calls to her Amazons, “Daughters of Themyscira, show him your fear!” In a tribal yell matched by Junkie XL’s score, they chant back, “We have no fear!” Slaughter commences.

The battle is much bigger and more reliant on slow-motion, including shots of Hippolyta flipping off walls and hesitating to bury the other Amazonians alive. Yep, when she tells her sisters to seal the cave, it’s a death trap. The door collapses, and then the whole structure also falls into the sea. There is then A. Long. Beat. of Hippolyta thinking she’s killed Steppenwolf before he and his Parademons ascend from the sea to slaughter more of the Amazons.

The Amazonians’ defeat is largely the same, although there is now a long denouement, with the Amazons having a musical prayer that grieves their dead and brings magic to the arrow they’ll fire to warn Diana. The Amazons and Wonder Woman iconography are also much more heavily featured in flashbacks to Darkseid’s first attack on Earth 5,000 years ago. We get better shots of Zeus and Ares (David Thewlis from Wonder Woman), and Amazonian Venelia (Doutzen Kroes) being filmed like she’s one of Snyder’s 300 Spartans in the ancient war. But all of that is just background for…

Steppenwolf and Darkseid

Steppenwolf is one of the most dramatically improved characters in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Beyond more spikes being added to his armor (and his chin being slightly shrunken from its ridiculous size), the Ciarán Hinds-voiced baddie’s motivations are wholly different. In the Whedon Cut, he was a generic “conquer the world” supervillain who was defeated thousands of years ago on Earth by an alliance of men, Amazonians, and Atlanteans. He then returns and refers to his Mother Boxes as “mother.”

While he still chases magic boxes he wants to use to conquer the world in the Snyder Cut, he’s at least a little more nuanced and a lot more despairing toward the whole endeavor. Steppenwolf is revealed to be a meek middle management malcontent with dreams of coming home. As we eventually learn in dialogue exchanges over BvS’ weird molten metal intergalactic telecommunication technology, Steppenwolf is a pariah back home on the planet Apokolips. Long ago, he was party to a failed coup against comic book creator Jack Kirby’s ultimate space fascist, Darkseid (Ray Porter). Think Thanos before there was a Thanos.

“I fall before you,” Steppenwolf moans during his first conversation with Darkseid’s minion DeSaad (Peter Guinness). “Let me make a plea that I may come home after I take this world in [Darkseid’s] name.” But DeSaad will not hear it, saying Steppenwolf is basically on probation for helping an attempted coup against Darkseid millennia ago, even if Steppenwolf then changed sides and killed Darkseid’s other betrayers. Now Steppenwolf has a debt of a 150,000 worlds he must conquer in Darkseid’s name if he wishes to return home.

Basically, Steppenwolf is a putz. Hence he can be both menacing and pathetic when he first attacks the Amazons and remarks of them, with a hint of resigned boredom, “Defenders? Defenders have failed a hundred thousand worlds. They always fail.” And it’s with exhaustion he decides to create his home base on an irradiated scrap of Russian land because it’s toxic.

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Darkseid, by contrast, is introduced to be Emperor Palpatine meets Sauron. Aye, there’s a real Lord of the Rings level of ambition to Diana’s flashback to the Age of Heroes. Rather than Steppenwolf, it’s Darkseid who first steps foot on Earth, turning some of the soil into the scorched cursive hellscape that Kirby fans will be intimately familiar with. We also get a better look of his foes, including an alien Green Lantern whom Darkseid personally kills by cutting off his hand. The green ring flies away before the fiend can grab it.

The sequence is filmed to mirror the opening moments of The Fellowship of the Ring, with Darkseid’s defeat harkening back to the glorious day the people of Middle-earth were victorious. However, personally speaking, it doesn’t reach that height, with Darkseid coming off like more of an overpowered Orc who’s out-flexed by Ares. Yep, David Thewlis’ villain from Wonder Woman is revealed to be the guy who whoops Darkseid’s ass in the end, planting an axe in his shoulder blade and leading the Greatest Evil to be carried from the battlefield, screaming.

Much later in the movie, Darkseid is introduced properly when Steppenwolf reveals he’s learned Earth is home to the Anti-Life Equation. It’s a pretty vague secondary MacGuffin in the context of the Snyder Cut, although Steppenwolf says it would give Darkseid power over the multiverse—it’s unclear why Darkseid did not know it was on Earth when he lost to Ares and the band of heroes, or why he never could come back for it.

However, Darkseid then appears on the telecom with Steppenwolf, causing the Spiked One to take off his armor for the first time and show his bare flesh in fealty to his space dictator. Darkseid promises Steppenwolf he can come home once he’s taken Earth and brings Darkseid the Anti-Life Equation.

We also get a glimpse of how Darkseid plans to use it. Elsewhere in the movie, Cyborg has an inexplicable vision the moment right before a Mother Box is used to bring Superman back from the dead: It’s of an Armageddon much darker than the Knightmare scene in Batman v Superman. The sequence begins with the Amazons finally off Themyscira. They’re burning Wonder Woman in a funeral pyre after putting two coins on her eyes for the boatmen. Hippolyta cries.

Elsewhere in a montage, Superman grieves over the scorched body that can only be Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Darkseid appears to place a not-so-comforting hand on his shoulder. Later we see the ruins of the Hall of Justice that diehard Superfriends fans will recognize, with an evil Superman flying over it with heat ray eyes. Finally, we see Darkseid himself murder Aquaman with his own trident…

This appears to be an inevitable future of “the Snyder Verse.”

Aquaman

But that is not the destination of the current film. The Snyder Cut, after all, has to lay a lot of groundwork that’ll make us care about these characters in the here and now.

Aquaman is the first to get that treatment in his early scene with Bruce Wayne (detailed more above). The Whedon Cut includes Arthur Curry saying, “You’re out of your mind, Bruce Wayne” as he gets into freezing cold water to swim away. In the Snyder Cut, we don’t see him shoot off. Rather Arthur disappears quietly beneath bubbles between shots. Snyder’s desire to emphasize the godlike wonder of these characters is then underlined in neon when several villagers see him off by singing a worshipful Icelandic hymn in Aquaman’s honor.

If the point is missed, after several minutes of crooning, one woman walks up to caress the sweater Aquaman took off and sniff it, savoring his undoubtedly godlike musk.

The sequence of Aquaman saving a crew from a shipwreck is almost exactly the same in the Snyder Cut, although there are no added jokes about him calling the captain “Ahab” in the bar. Additionally, there’s a really nice grace note of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “There is a Kingdom” playing when Aquaman goes to brood stoically before a raging storm. It’s exactly the same as in the Whedon Cut, but Whedon makes it generic blockbuster filler with a White Stripes song playing in the background. Snyder goes for a mournful, reflective tone that resembles the better elements of his version of Justice League.

Afterward Aquaman makes his first of two trips to Atlantis in the film—meeting Vulko (Willem Dafoe) in a scene that was entirely deleted. It turns out the effect of Atlalnteans only talking in air bubbles was always a Snyder affectation, although what was lost in the Whedon Cut (and eventual Aquaman movie) is that all the properly born Atlanteans speak with English accents. Dafoe’s Vulko is a bit hammier, seeming adjacent to Dafoe’s wonderful turn in The Lighthouse. But Amber Heard’s Mera speaking her lines in a purely Posh London accent after a whole movie of her using an American one in Aquaman is a real trip.

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What brings Arthur back the second time is Steppenwolf diving below the waves for the Mother Box. He learns of its location (which is unexplained in the Whedon Cut) by torturing Atlanteans whom Parademons have dragged from the ocean, reading the water dwellers’ minds with some gruesome sci-fi spider robot.

Steppenwolf’s actual attack on Atlantis is much more coherent in the Snyder Cut. With action beats given time to pause, and Steppenwolf’s surprise appearance underwater less hilariously cringe-inducing. Mera also gets a cool moment where the villain has her pushed against the wall and says she can’t run away, “I wasn’t trying to,” she responds. Previously, we saw her use superpowers to suck water out of air pockets; now she uses it to suck the blood out of Steppenwolf’s face. He of course throws her back into the water and almost kills her if not for Arthur’s chivalrous, splash-page rescue of his future love interest.

Most of Aquaman’s subsequent scenes play out the same, although he is much less brutish and frat bro-y. There are at least three fewer “yeahs” and “alrights!,” and there is no scene of him sitting on Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, blurting out he’s scared and horny at the same time.

The Flash

Interestingly, the Flash is both the least developed of the superheroes in the Snyder Cut and also the most unchanged by Whedon. It appears that Ezra Miller’s seemingly improvised humor was the element of least importance to Snyder, and the most useful thing Snyder filmed for Whedon’s purposes.

Maybe that’s why the Flash’s first scene in the Snyder Cut does not occur until nearly 70 minutes into the film. It’s also a wholly different introduction scene to what we saw in the theatrical cut. In the restored sequence, Barry Allen is applying for a job as a dog groomer at a pet shop when the unnamed woman who just left—or as fans know her, Iris West (Kiersey Clemons)—is almost pancaked by a semi-truck. The driver, in a rather crude cliché, is a simpleton reaching for his food on the cab’s floor when he slams into Iris’ convertible.

Luckily, Barry sees it coming and slows things down for another somber needle drop on the soundtrack. The whole thing plays like a more wistful, alternative rock version to one of Quicksilver’s big scenes in the X-Men movies. In extreme slow-motion, Barry catches a hot dog from an exploding hot dog vendor, placing it in his pocket, and then catches Iris out of her shattered car. When time returns to normal, Iris realizes she was saved by this cute dork, who then rushes back in time for the pet shop owner to be unsure who broke her window in the blink of an eye. Barry’s feeding the hot dog to her canines.

Otherwise, by and large, the Flash’s scenes remain the same until near the end. Snyder has removed Whedon’s unfunny addition of Barry drawing glasses on the eyes of someone in line while waiting to see his dad at prison, but the Miller/Billy Crudup scene remains the same but longer. Bruce Wayne still breaks into Barry’s loft and tells Barry his superpower is that “I’m rich.”

In the Striker Island action sequence, rather than “save one,” the Flash leads an exodus of civilians to the surface. And when debris nearly falls on them, he creates a shield by running so fast he looks like lightning in the sky blocking the falling rubble. He also is wounded by a Parademon laser blast so sharp it leaves him bleeding from the side of his leg, temporarily hobbled.

The one significant change before the climax is Barry and Victor digging up Clark Kent’s grave. It’s a sincerely quiet moment that (Wonder Woman leering aside) is refreshingly earnest and hushed for a superhero movie.

“I could do this in a second,” Barry says. Victor responds, “Yeah.” The implication is they should take their time and give Superman the honor he deserves. After his body is exhumed and wrapped up, Barry says, “He was my hero.”

Cyborg

Of the main five heroes in Justice League, Cyborg turned out to be the most important by far. Whatever occurred behind the scenes between Whedon, the producers, and Fisher, the actor had reason to be frustrated simply because his character arc was removed. In its place, he was forced to say, “Booyah.”

The Snyder Cut restores Victor Stone/Cyborg’s importance from the opening credits onward. It begins by basking in what isn’t sad between Victor and his father Dr. Silas Stone (Joe Morton). Initially, we spend more time with Silas, as the father throws himself into his work at STAR Labs to better understand the Mother Boxes.

Eventually, Cyborg gets his own flashback to a time when he was more man than machine. Under an aching musical theme written by Junkie XL, it’s revealed Victor was a gifted genius (his dean even says so!) at Gotham University. Victor is so intelligent, while also being a football star, that he can get away with hacking into the school’s database and changing a friend’s grades.

We also meet his mother who defends her son’s kind heart from the dean in a sequence that’s intercut with his slow-motion football glory, plus a side of melancholy because daddy wasn’t there. Only mom shows up for the game. Afterward they argue in the car about whether Dad really cares about Victor. A car is then seen rushing (unsurprisingly) into frame, T-Boning their car.

The process of Victor becoming Cyborg is only hinted at in scenes through various other flashbacks. But we do see Silas being told his wife is dead and that he’ll soon have to let his son go, too. Hence the bad blood between the two nearly throughout the Snyder Cut’s whole four hours. When we see Silas come home to Victor at their apartment, the son will not even speak to his father. Instead he reluctantly agrees to listen to a recording his father left for him. On the tape, Silas tells his son that the fate of the entire world is now “in your hands, Vic.”

Thanks to the alien technology of the Mother Box used to resurrect Cyborg, Victor has superpowers, which we see him fumblingly try out by flying on his father’s Gotham rooftop. But that’s “just the tip of the tip” of the iceberg, according to Silas’ voiceover. Victor’s high-end computer body now gives him the ability to control the world’s nuclear arsenals and the world’s economy.

This is visualized in a CGI mind palace created in Cybrog’s digital brain. There Fisher gets to play Victor as whole, and without a red eye. Some of it is effective, like floating missiles above his head. Other bits are just ludicrous, like financial markets being personified by a CGI bear slapping a CGI bull. It’s… weird.

But there are nice elements too, like Victor choosing to use his superpowers to see folks suffering, and giving a struggling single mother $150,000 out of an ATM machine. Through it all, he remains hooded and lonely, catching glimpses of people staring at his glowing countenance. It’s why he destroys his father’s recording when Dad tries to stop talking about Cyborg’s powers and instead address Vic as a loving father.

What draws Victor out of his proverbial cave is of course his father being kidnapped by Parademons. He seeks Diana Prince’s counsel but ignores her when she says his powers are a gift—I did miss the line, “If these are gifts why am I always the one paying for them?” Still, as in the Whedon Cut, he shows up on GCPD’s rooftop to join the team.

The one big addition during all the fighting is that when Cyborg flies now, his famous comic book face armor that protects everything but his red eye is finally used on screen. Plus he gets to save his father. Silas is shocked his son came for him, but Victor only says, “You’re my father.” Nothing more needs to be said.

After the Striker Island fight, however, Victor again takes center stage when Aquaman accuses him of possibly being compromised by his alien tech body. Cyborg reveals in a visual flashback, which Victor walks through in his mind palace, that the Mother Box was acquired by the Allies during World War II, taken from the Nazis’ collection of occult goodies in 1944. For nearly a century, it sat undisturbed in the Department of Defense until his father Silas realized it was similar to the technology used by the Kryptonian ship in downtown Metropolis.

That’s how Silas discovered its power, and in a horrifying flashback, he uses it when he looks at his son’s body on a slab, Vic’s lower torso gone. When Silas uses the magic box on Victor, the son screams bloody murder.

It is Victor Stone who puts the pieces together for the nascent Justice League and gets the heroes to begin acting like a real team. He puts together for the others that the Mother Box can be used to bring Superman back from the dead, and projects an image of Big Boy Blue for everyone to see.

Vic leads the team into STAR Labs to do the deed. And when Silas sees his son, still not talking to him, walk by with Batman and other weirdos, Dad doesn’t call it in. In fact, Vic and Silas are why the heroes win in this version, because after the Superman resurrection is bolloxed up, and Steppenwolf arrives to retrieve the third Mother Box, rather than run away, Silas sacrifices himself by heating the box with a laser so hot, that Batman can conveniently track wherever it goes in the world.

One could argue Cyborg was the most crucial of the heroes in organizing a true team team. Well, him and the legacy of another…

Superman

One imagines Superman’s treatment by Snyder and screenwriter Chris Terrio in what we now call the Snyder Cut, and Batman v Superman before it, played a major role in Warners’ eventual lack of confidence in the filmmakers. The beginning of the Whedon Cut even starts by course correcting where Whedon might’ve thought Snyder went wrong. Hence the awkward smartphone video of Superman talking to some children with a big smile on his face (and mustache unconvincingly erased from it).

Honestly, though? The depiction of Superman in the Snyder Cut is at times quite heroic and sweet. Certainly sweeter than the abysmal “no one stays good forever in this world” line of dialogue from BvS. However, there are major caveats.

Someone who unequivocally benefits from the new version is Amy Adams’ Lois Lane. While she again has relatively little to do, the rare moments where she is on screen in the Snyder Cut count a hell of a lot more. For starters, there is a genuinely heartfelt sequence about grief—one that it’s fair to wonder if Snyder has added special emphasis to. We follow Lois as she begins her morning routine by getting out of bed, buying a cup of coffee, and going to spend an hour or so at Superman’s memorial in downtown Metropolis.

The soundtrack plays Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Distant Sky,” and the scene bleeds a dignified sorrow as Lois unfurls her umbrella in the rain and walks up to Superman’s memorial to lay flowers. The cop she gives her morning coffee to asks Miss Lane if she ever skips a day, and she says there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. This is the transition to the Superman flag in London.

Afterward Lois goes nearly two hours before appearing again in the film, while Diane Lane’s Ma Kent (who is seen early in the picture leaving home) vanishes for well over that amount of time. It makes their reunion scene in Lois’ apartment feel awkward and obligatory after such a long pause, but the restored scene is still better than the “Clark told me you were the thirstiest girl he ever met” in the Whedon Cut. At least until the Ma Kent of this scene is pointlessly revealed to be Martian Manhunter. (Sigh.) It’s almost as bad a bit of forced world-building as future Barry Allen warning Batman about Lois Lane in BvS.

Meanwhile the League all comes to the idea of resurrecting Superman at the same time, and there are no second guesses other than Alfred’s skepticism. Thus begins a resurrection sequence where it’s genuinely affecting to hear Zimmer’s Superman theme again as Kal-El’s body is placed into the Kryptonian ships goo-room. Similarly, Snyder achieves another grace moment when Lois sees Superman flying in the sky right after his resurrection. Before this moment, Lois made the decision in bed that morning for this to be the last time she’d visit and grieve Superman’s death at the memorial. We’re also teased to the fact she keeps a pregnancy test on the nightstand. So she made her final trip to his memorial.

And on the same day, Superman came back.

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Unfortunately, his return is much the same as it was in the Whedon Cut, with the gloomy gray cinematography and the outright sinister version of Superman who’s apparently forgotten his identity. In fact, he’s more menacing than the familiar footage of him smacking down Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Now he takes time to study his monument before still coldly attacking the other superheroes and using his heat ray vision to try and murder U.S. soldiers stationed by his memorial.

If not for the interference of Batman, Superman would’ve killed servicemen. For what it’s worth though, he tries to kill Batman too. Gone is the “do you bleed?” callback to the previou cut. Instead Superman uses his heat ray vision to try and cook Batman inside his own cowl—which is only stopped by Bruce’s special “energy absorption” gauntlets.

As with the Whedon Cut, Bruce’s death is prevented when Lois shows up, but now of her own volition, and she and Clark fly away to Smallville. And once there, Superman’s soul returns and we get nice Americana scenes of Clark Kent watching a butterfly land on his hand, and Lois joining him in the wheat field.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says of the engagement ring he planned to give her before his death, and which she keeps on her hand. Soon Ma Kent joins them and it’s a lovely moment of reconciliation with the women in his life. It’s also far more emotionally effective than the version of Lois apologizing to Clark for “not being strong” after he died in the Whedon Cut.

And yet… it’s compromised by the constant foreshadowing of another heel turn in Superman’s future. The Kryptonian ship keeps warning, pleading even, with Cyborg that there is “no turning back from this action” as he prepares to resurrect Superman. Only then does he have a vision of an evil Kal-El drifting over a smoldering Metropolis. This muddle created by these conflicting sensibilities—folksy domesticity versus foreboding doom—do not mesh. At all.

At the very least, Clark returns to the Kryptonian ship to find there was a black Superman suit hidden all along in the corner. Additionally, he hears both of his dads’ voices, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Pa Kent (Kevin Costner). Some of it is old audio about “they’ll join you in the sun” from Man of Steel. Some of it is new recordings, which don’t really make sense as both men are dead. But we hear Pa repeat, “Fly son” and Jor-El intone, “Love them as we loved you.”

Black-suited Superman then flies into the orbit, taking the same Christ pose he had in Man of Steel, visually suggesting the Lord is risen, hallelujah. Superman then flies to the Batcave and meets Alfred, who tells him where to go… for the end of things.

The Ending

It is the ending, when everyone comes together, where the Whedon Cut and Snyder Cut perhaps most definitively diverge. It’s still technically the same ending: the five main members of the League show up in a nondescript Russian town to fight Parademons. Superman returns at a desperate moment and they all prevent the Mother Boxes from becoming one ungodly MacGuffin that would destroy Earth, knocking Steppenwolf on his CG ass.

Yet how these elements are incorporated, and where they leave the DC Extended Universe, are like on different planes of existence. From the top, the gore level (as with the Striker Island fight) is just more extreme in the Snyder Cut. Batman shoots Parademons with his Batmobile and then later uses the aliens’ own plasma guns against them; Wonder Woman beheads and cripples more computer generated baddies than all the armies of Gondor combined. Even Aquaman’s trident tastes blood.

There is also a much stronger sense of teamwork in the Snyder Cut. Batman’s suicide play of driving headlong into carnage makes more sense in this version as he crashes his plane into one of Steppenwolf’s magical machines, which brings down a force field and lets the team enter beneath the villain’s dome. And instead of Wonder Woman coming alone to Batman’s rescue, the whole team fights alongside his Batmobile for a freeze frame worthy of a splash page. It really is bizarre that Whedon, who was so good at these kinds of images in his Avengers movies, took this one out.

Once inside Steppenwolf’s evil lair, things are also far more exciting. There are no civilians (or randomly shoehorned in Russian family) to save. But there are enormous stakes as Cyborg has to stop the Boxes by merging with them. In the process, he enters his proverbial mind palace to face the three boxes in the flesh, as they’ve turned into literal witch crones. At first they appear as his dead parents, promising mom is ready to be reunited with her “broken boy,” but it’s a ruse that torments Victor to an even greater degree.

Meanwhile Steppenwolf has opened a Boom Tube portal to Apokolips where Darkseid, DeSaad, and Granny Goodness are waiting to take over Earth and claim the Anti-Life Equation. It was always “save the world” stakes in both versions, but you actually feel them in the Snyder Cut, particularly since… the heroes fail.

In a development that maybe would’ve left a Flash solo movie with nowhere to go, Darkseid and Steppenwolf briefly win, the three Mother Boxes merging despite Cyborg’s best efforts. The world instantly begins being ripped apart by a CG blur which presumably will turn Earth into a hellscape. The Flash, who is further afield from the action and bleeding from a gruesome wound in the side of his stomach, knows he has only one choice: to run backwards in time fast enough to reverse the flow of time.

It’s a trick that is expected to play heavily in DC Films’ upcoming Flashpoint inspired film, and Barry executes it here to undo the heroes’ defeat. Running into a seeming tornado of blue computer generated lightning, Barry undoes the damage and gives Cyborg a little more time, with Superman’s help, to stop the boxes from combining.

The action prevents the world’s end and allows Aquaman to skewer Steppenwolf like a fish on a hook. In the Whedon Cut, Steppenwolf is slashed by Wonder Woman and unsatisfyingly undone by becoming so fearful that he triggers his Parademons’ scent, and they eat him alive. Essentially, it’s a dippy retread of The Lion King where Scar is devoured by his own hyenas.

While certainly more bloodthirsty, there’s no denying there’s a satisfaction in Aquaman stabbing Steppenwolf, Superman punching him, and finally Wonder Woman beheading him. That is justice for her fallen Amazonian sisters.

Afterward, the whole direction of the DCEU still pivots toward darkness in Snyder’s vision. The Boom Tube to Apokolips stays open long enough for Steppenwolf’s head to return home. Darkseid crushes it beneath his foot. He also accepts that, for whatever reason, they cannot reach Earth through the Boom Tubes due to this defeat. “We will do things the old way,” Darkseid hisses. He summons the armada to head to Earth, setting up a very different future for the DCEU.

Epilogue

Continuing on the divergent paths between the Whedon and Snyder Cuts, the epilogue of the latter (complete with a title card) essentially presents the road not taken in the DCEU. Many of the elements we saw in the Whedon Cut remain, such as Bruce and Diana opening up Wayne Manor to become the headquarters for the Justice League by building a table “with room for more;” we also see Barry tell his incarcerated Dad he got a job at the Central City crime lab; and of course there’s Superman’s beloved shirt rip.

However, there’s so much more added on by Snyder. Some of it is very intriguing, such as Diana taking the arrow from her mother and looking out at the horizon of the Aegean Sea by the Temple of the Amazons. The implication is she’s begun yearning to return home. Could this have once been the plot thread of Wonder Woman 2? Could it still become the plot thread of Wonder Woman 3?

The most effective element is, again, Cyborg as he reconstructs his father’s broken audio recording and hears Silas’ love as a “father twice over.” It’s bittersweet Victor never got to verbally reconcile with his papa, but just saying, “You’re my father” might’ve been enough.

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Yet the epilogue ultimately becomes a teaser for what Snyder’s original vision for a Justice League trilogy might’ve looked like. In the Whedon Cut, the sequence of Lex Luthor on a yacht with Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) comes as a post-credit sequence. In the Snyder Cut, it’s part of the body of the story. The build-up to Lex’s escape is longer, and once on the yacht he has no quippy joke about “forming a league of our own.” But he does tell Deathstroke that Batman’s secret identity is Bruce Wayne.

That captures Deathstroke’s attention and seems to set up potentially catastrophic events for Bruce’s future in Affleck’s now defunct The Batman movie. It also would appear to further set up the Legion of Doom Justice League sequel with Deathstroke and Luthor.

But that’s pittance compared to the far bigger stinger for the future. In one more “Knightmare,” and another vision of a future where Darkseid has turned Earth into a Mad Max apocalypse, we once more see Affleck’s Batman as a road warrior in a desert, this time with Amber Heard’s Mera, the Flash, Deathstroke, and Cyborg as his road trip buddies. Clearly Cyborg’s vision earlier in the film came to pass, with Mera swearing she’ll kill Darkseid in order to avenge Arthur.

The biggest bombshell here though is that this is where Jared Leto reprises his performance as the Joker. I wish I could say it was better than this grubby, grinning, awkward reshoot moment where he talks about giving the Batman a reach around. Bruce’s dialogue isn’t much better as he mumbles, “When I held Harley Quinn, and she was bleeding and dying, she begged me with her last breath that when I killed you—and make no mistake I will fucking kill you—that I do it slow.”

We’re a long way from Adam West, eh? The sequence ends with Evil Superman appearing with heat ray vision, coming to kill all of them. This clearly stands as a trailer for Justice League sequels that almost certainly will never be. It’s also a vision for the Justice League trilogy Snyder originally planned with Terrio that’s making its rounds across the internet. Part III was meant to be about Batman and the Flash in the ruins of a destroyed Earth traveling back in time so Batman could make sure that Lois Lane never died—sacrificing his life so Superman never turned to evil. Again.

I can’t say this scene adds a lot to this movie, any more than the final, final tease of Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter showing up one more random time to give Bruce Wayne a pat on the shoulder. He says your parents would be proud of you and that he wants to join his team. Affleck’s Bruce is strangely not perplexed by any of this and gives off a general “Cool story, bro” vibe.

Martian Manhunter travels into a future we will never see, setting up a sequel that has been abandoned. It’s a shame, but it is so brazenly, defiantly Snyder’s vision—and so far removed from the Whedon Cut’s goofy ending on Superman and Flash having a happy go lucky race to the Pacific—that one can at least give this to to the director: He did it his way. There’s something to be said about that.

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[kitaychan]

White Flame

Chapter 4

Rating: M

Warnings: Blood, Psychological Horror

General Summary:  Royal/ Magical AU. As their two Kingdoms get closer to a war, the past keeps on hovering around their choices. Prince Ivan has a hard time controlling his magical powers while being tormented by a mysterious ghost and Prince Alfred embarcs in seeking a revenge that might cost more than it’s worth it.

Preview:  Arthur tried to delay the crowning ceremony, he didn’t want to go through it, it was a horrid setting, the black dresses and the long and exhausted faces of the attendants made it worse. When he walked through the crowd of people, his heartbeat quickened, the silence that engulfed the scene was broken horribly by his footsteps and instead of feeling like the soon to be king in his crowning ceremony, he felt like walking the corridor to his execution.

A crown and a clock.

Arthur was accustomed to his life in the palace.

Tutoring the twins and keeping them company while the king was away was quite easy. He had been bitter at the beginning, deeming the task as a babysitting activity but the peacefulness when Alfred behaved and Madeline played the piano was something he didn’t have back home with all his brothers’ fuss and fights.

In the gardens, he heard the hem of Madeline's dress rustling against the bench while Alfred ran around them claiming to be a knight, the current obsession the young prince had. Arthur smiled at the sight of the fourteen year old liveliness, he hoped that this time Alfred would stick to it instead of abandoning his classes as he had done before, the boy didn’t seem to have a long- lasting vocation. Arthur was disappointed, Alfred showed more interest in the fencing practices than the magic lessons he offered him, after all the magic ran in the family but it was futile to teach the prince if he refused.  Madelaine on the other hand, was so diligent that Arthur was delighted, she’d be able to chant complex spells in no time, her attentiveness and carefulness were compatible with her curiosity and kindness.  

The warm and cozy scene was broken by the galloping of several horses and Alfred’s shouts, the boy ran excitedly to the palace as he heard the clicking of metal and hard footsteps. All that noise could only be due the King’s return.

He followed Madelaine to the entrance, a bitter taste crawling in his mouth when he observed the knights surrounding the entrance, one of them stopping Alfred in his tracks, telling him to stay away. Arthur stepped up to them, a single glance outside confirmed his fears, the horses had returned but there were few men left, the king was nowhere to be seen.

The twins were taken away by a maid, while Arthur was surrounded by courtsmen and the few soldiers that returned. An emergency meeting was held, taking the rest of the day as well as some part of the night, the King’s death was confirmed and the details for the following transition into the next monarch and the current defeat were arranged. Arthur had to sign a poorly done treaty, giving out territories to the enemy in order to assure peace. The only detail missing was that Arthur had to be crowned for the truce to be legitimate.  

The ceremony was going to be quick and solemn, after all, they had to save their respectful duel for the deceased king. Arthur stood still while some servants dressed him, not daring to glance at at them. He’d never admit it, but he was secretly scared and ashamed of his recent promotion if one could call it like that. He tried to not to worry too much about the situation but being told out of the blue that he was to take on the King’s duties until the prince was old enough to do so, were the kind of news that one had to take a week to overcome. All he was given were thirty minutes of breakfast and the resounding cries of two children when they got the news of their father’s death.  

Arthur tried to delay the crowning ceremony, he didn’t want to go through it, it was a horrid setting, the black dresses and the long and exhausted faces of the attendants made it worse. When he walked through the crowd of people, his heartbeat quickened, the silence that engulfed the scene was broken horribly by his footsteps and instead of feeling like the soon to be king in his crowning ceremony, he felt like walking the corridor to his execution.

The smell of incense made him dizzy and the feathery cape they put on him made him sweat. When the crown was placed in his head, he felt chills running down his spine. It was heavy and cold, he wondered if the late king had passed through something similar or if it was just him over analyzing the scene. Arthur tried not not think about it as it reminded him of the fate of the later king. They said it was a coincidence but it took a bit of curiosity and some questions to the soldiers to figure that it wasn’t only an unfortunate conflagration. Fire and ice at the same time were strangely rare and the dimensions of both were suspicious. Arthur was sure magic had to be involved, the question was what kind of it.

The only certain thought that Arthur had at the moment was that everything would change from now on. The predicament that tormented him was if it would change for the better or not.

---

Arriving to his homeland seemed like a fairytale to Ivan, seeing the outlines of the palace from the city entrance was surreal after such a long trip, the sight filled him with ecstasy.

They were received by a cheering crowd, they had returned victorious from a foreign land and for a moment, Ivan let himself be rejoiced by the sudden glory of it; staying back in the city instead of going straight into the palace alongside his father.

The evening went smoothly, the tired soldiers reunited with their families, the citizens offered a feast, unknowingly sharing it with their prince and for what seemed like a short span of time, Ivan felt himself at ease, not caring about his royal duties, his lessons or his father. What would he do? stand up from his illness and drag him back into the palace?

The soldiers seemed to forget about his title, treating him as they would treat any other comrade, offering him the same warmth as they did to their fellow friends. Ivan found himself integrated within the group, they sat alongside, devoured the meals and shared the wine until one of them started to sing.

It was only at that moment that Ivan understood he wasn’t supposed to be there, everybody joined the song while he just stayed there, drinking the awful beverage they called wine. The situation bothered him for a while but a couple of women served him another of those fermented liquors that made the whine seem like the greatest delicacy of the world. He pondered on throwing it away but the warm feeling it gave him made him change his mind.

The night came before Ivan could realize, the people arranged a campfire and some musicians started a simple tune, some gathered around the fire and started a festive dance. He was dragged into the crowd, not bothering much to follow them as the dizziness made him clumsy, not that it mattered as most of the soldiers were worse than him.

The dance was abruptly broken with the arrival of a carriage, Ivan trying to return to his sitting spot without tripping didn’t seem to register the scene until he was forcefully dragged into the carriage. Panic overtook him as he tried to ask for the help of the silent observers, reminding them that he was their prince.

He kept struggling until he met the face of her sister, growing embarrassed of his foolishness.

She crossed her arms glaring at him.  “I can’t believe what you did.”

He looked down, the situation was stupid, he couldn't help but laugh at the display of strictness from his sister. “Katya, what are you doing here? why did they drag me into the carriage?”

“You are drunk!” she exclaimed, furrowing her eyebrows and frowning.

“I am not… that drunk.”

She shook her head. “I won’t talk to you like this. You will go to sleep and we´ll talk tomorrow at first hour.”

“Fine.” Ivan wasn't stupid enough to talk back to Katya when she was displeased, but seeing her frown and give him such disapproving glance made him realize how similar she was to their father.

The silence was bothering him but he was too mortified to keep on talking with her, leaning against the carriage’s window and feeling his eyelids heavier with each second, he let himself drift out to sleep accompanied by the galloping of the horses.

The next day, Ivan woke up with a horrible headache and an overwhelming sense of dread. He had to force himself to be present at breakfast.

At the table, Katya sat with her brows furrowed. “What were you thinking?”

Ivan sighed, taking a seat. “Good morning sister, I am happy to see you too.”

She set aside her fork and scolded. “What is wrong with you? Everyone knows it was you, you stated it quite loudly last night, everyone is talking about it. What do you think Natalya and her family are going to think?”

A plate was arranged for him to eat, alongside some water. Ivan took a sip and  dismissed with his hand. “They’ll think that I got drunk with the rest of the soldiers, which is not wrong. That wasn’t the worst thing I could have done last night, Katya. Anyway, is not like they are going to draw back from the compromise, they did not care when I explained that I was disgusted by it.”

Katya gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. “What has happened to you? you spend some time with father and return like a completely different person.”

“How is our father doing?” Ivan glanced at her sister before picking at his food.

Her behavior softened considerably. She moved away her food and looked away from him. “Not well, he keeps saying that the conquest is not over, that we must not sign or accept any peace offering”

“Well, in that he is right. why should we negotiate if we won? I don’t think that’s how a war works.”

She shook her head and raised her voice, her eyes pleading. “Vanya, you have to listen to me, while you arrived, there was a crowning ceremony in the west. The new king has sent a request, to end the conflict. It’s a good deal, convince father of accepting it. It’s enough bloodshed for now.”

Ivan glanced up to see her sister looking intently at him. The idea of talking with their father wasn’t attractive but he’d do as she wanted. After all, going back to another battle wasn’t something he wished to do. He nodded at her.  “I'll try.”

---

Ivan entered the room in silence, trying not to upset the figure resting on the bed.

He sat carefully in the chair that he supposed Katya had moved, meeting those familiar cold eyes that always glared at him, before he could talk, the king started.  “I heard you spent some time with the soldiers.”

“Father, I'm here to talk about something else. My doings in the city are not of importance.”

His father scoffed. “Of course they are. I know what happened, Katya told me everything.”

Ivan frowned, how cruel could Katya be, sending him right into the beast’s fangs.

“Ivan you are old enough to understand that your actions have consequences. What will people think when they see the next king, not only with the peasants but drunk?”

“If this is about Natalya and her family, I assure you they won't care.” Ivan said crossing his arms.

“Of course they won't Ivan,” the king laughed. “My sister will see that you marry her daughter no matter what. I couldn't care less. What I am talking about is the people that matter, like the other princes we've just barely defeated or those from the western kingdom whose king you killed.”

Ivan straightened his posture, fidgeting with his fingers. “Father-”

“Do not interrupt me. You have to get this through, you have a reputation to maintain, you can't show weakness because the moment you do so, they'll attack you. You think you'll win the respect of the one's left in the firebird by sharing a feast? What we'll do from now on is to feed their fear. You saw what happened back there, that Ivan will be the key  to maintain the order or to lose it. If they fear us, they won't fight back.”

Ivan leaned forward, looking down. “About that... they already surrendered, father. We have to rearrange administration and gain back the resources we spent. Signing the peace is the most sensible choice.”

The king sat up, raising his voice. “No, we won't I have to finish this, it is necessary. You are not capable of doing such thing.”

Ivan pushed him down again, not hiding the annoyance of his tone. “Father, you have to rest.”

“No, I can't. I will rest when I die,” he said, prying off Ivan’s hands from him. “This has to finish before you take over the throne. I won't die peacefully knowing that it'll be you doing it. Your mother will kill me.”

Ivan sighed, lowering his voice. “Father… I am sure that mother would have agreed to the treat, she disliked conflict. She'd like me to have a peaceful reign.”

“You Idiot, how dare you use your mother's memory like that,” the king fumed. “that's exactly what I am trying. Why do I have to bear with your useless rambling. Don't waste my time. I… Ivan, what time is it?”

“It’s four past five.”

His father glanced around and questioned. “Where is it? What have you done with it? I won't pass that clock to you, give it back.”

Ivan rolled his eyes and stood up. “I don't know father. It's clear to me that you deem me unworthy of the family relic.”

“Where is it? What have you done?” the king cursed, his tone grew desperate, some servants entered and Ivan stepped back, frowning at his angered father and shrugging.

“Idiot! Where is it? What have you done? Why, why does this have to happen? Not again, this can't happen again. Ivan, what have you done? Where’s Katya?”

His father's shouts were appeased when Katya entered the room and retrieved the clock from the nightstand. The scene made Ivan glare, no matter what, his father would always blame him for everything, even stupid things like this.

Once outside, Katya was scolding him for torturing their father.

Ivan walked hurriedly through the corridor. "It isn't my fault that he has gone mad."

Katya followed his pace, lifting her dress to take longer strides. “You should have told him it was there.”

“How could I if he doesn't let me talk?” he argued.

“Did you manage to convince him?” She whispered.

Ivan stopped, shaking his head. “Katya, just sign the treaty yourself or I will. Father won't last long anyways.”

She gasped, fear crossing her face. “How can you say that?”

“Katya, at this point we are better off without him.” He admitted, looking down after the words left his mouth.

“Ivan!” She warned looking around the hall.

“He won't know unless you tell him,”Ivan murmured. “Sign with his name, you have his seal. If he somehow gets the news blame me for it. What will he do? Execute his successor? The rest of the kingdom approves your plan.”

Katya gasped but stayed silent probably pondering on the idea.

Ivan walked away, trying to evade the blue eyes judging him from above, perhaps he could convince Katya to finally burry that haunting gray wolf.

[imagines-for-the-fangirls-soul]

Lost in the Woods - Sir Gwaine

On the fifth day of Christmas . . .

Pairing: Sir Gwaine x Reader Word Count: 2,227 Synopsis: Gwaine is sent on a rescue mission of a visiting lady to Camelot on Christmas.

Gwaine was standing at attention, awaiting whatever royal was coming to visit Arthur this time. For the last few months, every other week a new royal would come from far away and try to win Arthur’s affection. Of course, none ever did because he was so deeply in love with Guinevere that he never saw anyone else.

After standing there for fifteen minutes, Arthur descended from the throne, grumbling to himself. Gwaine and the rest of the knights relaxed, exchanging looks. A few moments later, Arthur walked back in with Gaius and Merlin.

“Lady Y/N should have been here already.”

“Something’s wrong,” Arthur said, looking to his knights. “I know it’s the Christmas celebration but someone needs to go see if she’s alright.”

“You want us to ride all the way to her kingdom in this snow?” Gwaine asked, cocking his eyebrow.

“Actually, yes, Gwaine, and since you brought it up, why don’t you go?” Arthur asked with a smile. Gwaine’s face fella st eh rest of the knights started laughing.

“By myself?”

“Are you scared?” Gwaine blew air out of his nose and forced a smile.

“No.”

“Then you’ll leave now. If we don’t hear back from you in the next few hours, we’ll send Percival. He looks much too happy that he’s not the one going.” Gwaine turned back and saw Percival failing to hide a smile on his face.

“Yes, my king.”

“Damned lady can’t even get through this little snow,” Gwaine said as he struggled through the thick snow in the forest surrounding Camelot. At first, he tried to be hopeful, but now freezing, he was less than excited about finding you stuck in the forest somewhere.

It was another hour until he finally spotted you. The entire forest was coated in white, but your blue dress stood out.  You were struggling to get your horse moving through the snow, and as he watched, the horse took off back towards home.

“Damned creature!” you cursed, kicking the snow. Gwaine laughed at your language, drawing your attention. “I may not look like it, but I am a formidable woman, so if you plan on attacking me, be warned!” Again, Gwaine laughed, moving closer to you.

“I hear you loud and clear, my lady, but I came to help you, not attack you.” You looked him up and down, trying to see if he was being truthful or not.

“You don’t look like one of my father’s men,” you said.

“And I’m not. I am a knight of Camelot.”

“Oh, Arthur sent you,” you said, flopping down on a stump.

“Yes, King Arthur sent me,” he corrected, walking in front of you. “He grew worried when you didn’t arrive on time.”

“Taking time out of his plans with his maid?” you asked, taking off your boot and shaking some of the snow out of it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Sure you don’t.” You stood up and smiled at him.

“Alright, lead the way-”

“Sir Gwaine.”

“Lead the way, Sir Gwaine.” He started walking in the direction of the castle, you following after him. “So, how did you get this wonderful task?” you asked, coming to stand next to him. He grumbled something at you, clearly not wanting to talk. “You know, if we’re going to be stuck in the woods for a few hours, we might get to know each other.”

“The only person you need to get to know is Arthur.” You rolled your eyes and stalked through the snow in silence for a while. Gwaine was the first one to speak next. “Where is your escort?”

“What escort?”

“You didn’t have a group of men leading you through the woods?”

“No,” you said with a laugh, picking up your dress to get over a large fallen tree. Gwaine got over first and held out a hand. You took it and let him help you over the tricky terrain. “Thanks. Like I was saying, I don’t need an escort. I would have been in Camelot on time if my horse hadn’t gotten scared.”

“What was she scared by?”

“Something I couldn’t see,” you said with a shrug. “So, how did you get the short end of the stick?”

“My loud mouth,” Gwaine said with a sigh.

“A Merry Christmas to you.” He laughed softly and nodded.

“When we get back, you can’t let Arthur know you know about Guinevere.”

“Oh so now a name to go along with the rumor.” Gwaine groaned. “Don’t worry, Sir, I won’t do anything stupid.”

“Stupid like coming out into the woods by yourself?”

“I didn’t ask you to come out here. I was plenty comfortable walking through the snow by myself.”

“Then I’ll happily leave you to it,” Gwaine said, storming off to the right. You tutted, not believing that he was abandoning you. 

“The castle is this way!” you called.

“I’m not going to the castle,” he hollered back, continuing to walk. You rolled your eyes and stomped off your own way.

Night was beginning to fall, and you weren’t any closer to the castle. You didn’t know how long Gwaine had been gone, but you were starting to wish that you weren’t alone. A sound cracked from behind you and you spun around. 

“Finally come back? I suppose I can forgive you!” you said, laughing. Someone was coming up, but the closer they got, the more nervous you became. “Gwaine?” 

Strong hands pushed you and suddenly you were fallling down a ravine.You must have blacked out, because next thing you knew you were sitting up, drenched in snow. Your neck ached as you tried to stand.

“Fuck,” you said, falling back on your knees. 

“My sentiments exactly.” A hand was offered to you, and you looked up at Gwaine. 

“Where have you been?” you asked, taking his hand. Once you stood, you took a step back. “Oh, you reak of booze.” Gwaine laughed, frowning.

“I’m sorry I left.”

“Don’t be. By the way it looks, you’re just as screwed as I am.”

“Did you see who pushed you?”

“No.”

“Me either.” He looked up the steep hills, trying to figure out how you would climb out of there.

“Not the best Christmas I’ve ever had,” you said, looking up the hill, too. Gwaine laughed and looked over at you. And he kept looking until you looked back at him. “What?”

“Nothing. Do you think you can climb?”

“Do you think you can keep up?” you asked wth a smirk. 

“In that dress? You’ll fall.”

“Are you offering to carry me?” you asked, beginning to climb. Gwaine smiled to himself and followed after you. It took a few times, and you ended up kicking Gwaine in the chest twice, but you finally got to the top of the ravine.

“Oh, I’m going to kill Percival.”

“Who?” you asked, looking up at his panting chest.

“One of the knights who didn’t get this lucky assignment.” You laughed and stood up. You held out a hand to Gwaine, and he took it with a smile.

“I know there’s no point in me trying to meet your king, but I don’t want to be in this forest for another minute.”

“If he passes on you, my lady, it’s his loss,” he said, leading the way out of the woods. You smiled, running to catch up. You had no idea what else resided in these woods, but you weren’t going to stray far away from Gwaine to find out.

Eventually, you were within the city limits of Camelot. You could see the shining castle, and craved for the warmth it would bring. However, looking over at Gwaine, you wished slightly that the forest trip had lasted for longer.

“We’re almost there, my lady,” Gwaine said, looking back at you. “The fire will be warm and the party will have incredible food.”

“And then three days from now I’ll have to traipse back through the woods.”

“Maybe it’ll be a love match.”

“That I doubt.” He smiled at you as you walked through the castle walls. Gwaine brought you to the doors leading into the dining hall, stopping in front of them. 

“I’ll let them know you’re here.” He opened the door, but you quickly shut it.

“Thank you, for everything. I owe you. I don’t know if I could have found my way out without you.”

“You would have, remember? You’re formidable.” You laughed and watched as he disappeared inside the room.

“Are you sure everything is alright, my lady?” your chambermaid asked, dousing most of the lights in your bedroom. 

“Yes.” She went towards the door, but you stopped her quickly. “Oh, there is one more thing. I was hoping to thank the knight who helped me in the woods, tomorrow morning,” you clarified. “Where do they stay?”

“Well,” she said with a smile, “Gwaine stays in the far right tower. Can’t miss it.”

“Thank you-”

“Guinevere,” she said with a kind smile.

“Guinevere, thank you.” You waited ten minutes until after she left before gathering the skirt of your nightgown in your hands and making your way down the hall.

You got to the far right tower, peeking around the corners before climbing the stairs up to Gwaine’s bedroom. There was a light coming from the door as you knocked softly. 

“Yeah?” Gwaine called.

“It’s Y/N.” He ripped open the door and looked at you in disbelief.

“My lady, what are you doing here?”

“It’s Y/N,” you said, walking into his room, “And I told you, I wanted to thank you.” He raised an eyebrow at you and you laughed. “I brought you wine.” He looked down at the doorway and saw the bottle you stole from the kitchen.

“You are full of surprises,” he said, taking the bottle and grabbing two cups from his bedside table. You sat down on the edge of his bed and took the cup from him.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, raising his glass.

“Merry Christmas,” you said, clinking yours against his. 

“How did the connection with Arthur go?”

“He’s very nice, and so is Guinevere. I can see why he loves her.” Gwaine nodded, taking another drink. 

“You didn’t have to do this, Y/N.”

“I thought you liked drinking.”

“I shouldn’t have left you.”

“Where did you even end up going?”

“There’s a stash of beer and wine in a cavern in the woods for when-” he stopped, smiling.

“For when you don’t want to do your job?” you asked. 

“Maybe,” he said, making you laugh. “I ended up there. After a couple of drinks, I realized that it was wrong to leave you.”

“I can take care of myself, I told you.”

“Oh, I know you can,” he said, “I was just worried about getting in trouble with Arthur.” You laughed, knocking your shoulder against his. “You’re . . . not what I expected.”

“Oh, and what did you expect?” He looked at you with a smirk, making your pulse quicken.

“Someone a little less abrasive.”

“I am not abrasive,” you said as he poured you both another drink.

“You are, but I like it.” You smiled, drinking. “I also didn’t expect you to be so . . .”

“So what?”

“Beautiful.” 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you wine in the middle of the night.”

“Maybe,” he said with a laugh, “But I’m glad you did.”

“Me too.” 

You spent the rest of the night drinking and talking about your favorite Christmas stories. Gwaine challenged you to an arm wrestling, and still acted surprised when you won. Once the bottle was finally gone, you decided to stumble back to your room.

“Hold on, Y/N, I’ll go with you,” Gwaine said, following after you. You smiled at him as he led you back down the stairs, a hand on your back protectively. He led you down the hall, pulling you into a corridor opening when another guard passed. He grumbled something about Percival again and you laughed.

“Is it safe now? Gwaine?” You had been looking out the hallway, but looking over at Gwaine you saw him looking up. “What?” A strand of mistletoe hung over your heads.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s safe now.”

“Wait, where are you going?” you asked, pulling him back to the archway. He looked at you in impressed shock.

“You’re here to court Arthur.”

“That’s not going to work out,” you said, taking his hand. He smiled as you pulled him into his lips and kissed him. He smiled into the kiss, putting a hand on the back of your head to deepen it. You stood there tangled together for quite some time until another guard walked down.

“I should get you back,” he said, pulling away.

“I found your room all by myself.”

“And you could get back by yourself, too, but I’m still gonna walk you.”

“Gwaine-”

“I can be as stubborn as you,” he said, grabbing your hand and leading you down the hall. You reached your room by the time the sun had begun to rise. Neither of you could believe you were up this late. 

“Well, Gwaine,” you said, stopping in front of your door, “Thank you for a night I will never forget.”

“Thank you for getting lost in the woods.” He kissed you again gently.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, my lady.”

[smokeybrandreviews]

Rotten

If you can’t tell by this blog or the many reviews I write or the entire sub-blog full of my reviews, I genuinely enjoy cinema. I enjoy a good movie. I enjoy a trip to the theater. I have since i was little. All of the pomp and circumstance of it; Getting a terribly overpriced hot dog, standing in line for hours to see the new cape flick or summer blockbuster, laughing with an entire auditorium of cats over the most foolish of turns, and bonding over ridiculous scenes with the stranger next to me - ll of that is just too dope. I love going to the theater. That’s why, when I read that this summer was the worst summer for film since 1999, I was flabbergasted. But it’s true. I’ve been to the theater every weekend this year, with the exception of twice, and no one’s there. No one is coming out to see film anymore. The occasional tent poles like It and anything Marvel drops, packed to the gills, everything else? nah. No one wants that experience and it got me wondering why. This is my analysis of that quandary, as a creator of content but more as a fan, first.

Streaming services are supplying box office quality but you don’t have to put on pants

Like literally every other industry that Millennials are killing, we’re apparently choking the life out of the Hollywood but why Why should we go out and spend 15 dollars on a flick that may or may not be terrible, when we can watch new sh*t on Netflix? Better sh*t on Crackle. Original sh*t all over the place. Netflix has the draw to pull huge stars and their productions are often ridiculously high in quality. Okja was dope. Beasts Of No Nation was an Oscar contender. Will Smith, and his hefty ass paycheck, have a movie coming out for them in December, i believe. And it doesn’t stop there. Netflix dropped A Series Of Unfortunate Events as a series and it KILLED the film. Their Marvel properties are spectacular. Daredevil is sh*tting on the majority of what Hollywood crapped out this year by itself! I had more anticipation for Defenders than I did for probably 90 percent of the theatrical releases in 2017! And don’t get me started on Amazon Prime. Seriously, I saw two films this year that are in my top 20 and neither were released wide, stateside. Raw was f*cking incredible and Lure was just as fantastic. They’re foreign, true, but none of them played anywhere near my home in theaters. Not even in the niche, hipster ass theaters! I had to watch them on Prime! But I got a goddamn 8th Fast sequel, though! Ingrid Goes West is a film I’ve been DYING to see but I can’t because it was only out here for a week and now it’s gone. But Wry tho??

Studios are creatively bankrupt

I get sh*t for watching anime. I love that stuff. Love it. Most people think it’s because I like cartoon tiddies and I do, tiddies are awesome, but that’s not why I enjoy anime. My favorites tend to be creatively vibrant and defiantly unique. They tend to be steeped in originality and that makes for an interesting watch. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, Ghost In The Shell (which I will get to in a minute) are all beautifully animated, poignant stories that really engage the viewer and challenges us to actively think about what we’re watching. The last two films to make me engage like that was Ex Machina and The VVitch. Split, too, to a lesser extent, did that as well. The only film that even remotely accomplished that this year was Get Out and people were up at arms about THAT film being racist! Really? You’re missing the f*cking point! It’s like, cats who have a voice, a story to tell, get the backseat, underfunded or outright ignored but the Hollywood machine but those are the people you need to take a chance on. Those are the directors and creators who you need to develop. Josh Trank made one of the dopest cape films not backed by a major studio in Chronicle and Fox wouldn’t let him do what he needed  to in order to properly craft his for Fan4stic narrative. I don’t think that team is very cinematic to begin with but Trank had a unique vision for that property and if Fox felt uncomfortable with it, they shouldn’t have let him cook to begin with. Marvel took Ant-Man away from Edgar Wright for this specific reason and he rebounded by giving us Baby Driver instead; a brilliant heist film that, at its heart, is just a wonderful love story. Great storytellers tell great stories, if you f*cking let them. The Japanese understand the f*ck out of this concept and let their directors and studio houses run wild. Hollywood does not.

Sequels, adaptions, and reboots! Oh My!

Look, I love a good sequel. They add to the lore and build the world created even further. Sometimes those additions are dope as sh*t. The Dark Knight, Aliens, John Wick: Chapter II, T2: Judgment Day, The Godfather Part 2, Winter Soldier, and Split all come to mind. And, yes, Split. It’s a sequel to Unbreakable. These films were all spectacular and embellished an already rich cinema universe. Hell, even the retread of cape films surprised me. Guardians was amazing, Homecoming is easily my favorite of the year but I am a legit Spider-Man fanboy so take that with a grain of salt, and Logan might be nominated for a f*cking Oscar, it was so good: all are basically sequels, adaptions, and reboots! It’s not hard to make a dope retread, particularly when there’s a story to be told. Sh*t like The Last Knight, though? THAT nonsense was unnecessary. An eighth Fast film? Really? Who wants a third XXX and why? Ghost In The Shell was doomed from the beginning. There’s no way an American audience can digest the content of that, even given to them in the brilliantly repackaging of Ex Machina last year. The Mummy was the worst thing I’d seen all year, bar none! Hollywood has become wildly risk averse and have been banking on stupid f*cking reboots no one asked for to hedge their bets and that sh*t is terrible for the industry. I still got a Flatliners reboot, a sequel to Blade, Runner, and another Star Wars film coming out this year. I’ll go see them but I’m not expecting much.  Hollywood’s current track record with this sh*t is atrocious.

Star System

I went and saw The Mummy because I am a fan or the original and the Brendan Frasier duology. The first two were dope but that third one though? Terrible. Just like this reboot! I don’t care that Tom Cruise is in this film. I don’t even LIKE Tom Cruise as an actor. He hasn’t made a film I’ve actually enjoyed since probably A Few Good Men. I saw the Mission Impossible flicks. They’re okay. I don’t remember anything from them except Cruise gets blown up a lot and Philip Seymour Hoffman was a pretty good villain in one of them. No one has got anything on Jaiver Bardem’s Raoul Silva but that cat was Ledger Joker caliber so, you know, high bar. My point is, this ain’t the 80s. Baby Boomers aren’t going to movie like they used to. No one cares WHO is in a film rather than WHAT the film is about. Ids there a plot? Is it shot creatively? How well is it directed? What’s the goddamn point? Why is this flick even a thing? Pirates had a sequel this year banking on star power and it flopped. GITS didn’t even take a chance and cast ScarJo In the lead role of a character named Motoko Kusanagi, only to cop out and make her a Japanese teenage brain, in her cybernetic Scarlett Johansson “shell”, the whole time. That flick also bombed. I didn’t give a sh*t that Jennifer Lawrence was in Mother!, I went to go see that because the plot seemed f*cked up. I adore the rock but I’m not going to go see Jumanji and I flat out REFUSED to take in Baywatch. Both of those premises are f*cking retard. I didn’t go see John Wick or Atomic Blonde because Keanu and Charlize were in them, I went because they looked dope as f*ck! And they were. And they were also beautiful. And they also told a coherent story. And I bought into those universes. And I want a f*cking crossover! No one goes to the theater anymore because of billing. I don’t give a sh*t about celebrities or that star mentality. F*ck off with that nonsense. Do your jobs and make great sh*t. Yall make enough money for it.

Television is making better sh*t

I touched on this earlier with the whole Series of Unfortunate events thing but it’s not just Netflix sh*tting on Tinseltown, regular ass s TV is doing a pretty good job of it as well. Atlanta is the best goddamn show on television and Man Seeking Woman is easily one of the best adaptions of a book I have ever seen put to film. The first two seasons of Fargo are as good as the film they’re based on, and, even though I haven’t seen the third, I hear it shine just as bright. Hannibal was just and OUTSTANDING interpretation of that Lecter series and I was devastated to see it go. Legion was a better X-Men Film than HALF of their franchise! FX is out here making quality sh*t! Starz ain’t no slouch either with its American Gods and AMC is releasing that firer with Better Call Saul and the excellent Breaking Bad. The Walking Dead petered out after the second season but, I guess it’s still good. I guess. I’m not even going to get into the quality of Westworld or its HBO brethren. Showtits is doing well with Ray Donovan or whatever, too. If I can literally get sh*t of this quality on my big ass, 4K, 7.1 surround sound, home media set up, why the f*ck do I want to go to the theater and drop 15 dollars for f*cking Bayformers 5? A sub-par Apocalypse sequel? A terribly adapted anime devoid of the existential questions driving it’s original?

Sh*t costs too much to make

When you’re dropping upwards of a country’s GDP on a goddamn Car chase movie sequel, you don’t want to take risks. I get that. But that’s the f*cking problem. Films use to have something to say, they use to be art. They use to convey emotion and present an actual plot. Now, most movies are bloated special effect spectacles that think more is better and storytelling is ridiculous. Why did King Arthur need a 175 million dollar budget? You could have make that move for a third of that, tightened up the narrative, and created a better, far more profitable film. NOPE! Why did Transformers 5 get a 125 million dollar budget when market research will tell you each of these sh*tty films has had diminishing returns? Cats have been telling you to drop Michael Bay since the second one and you refused, just to watch your budgets bloat and profits wane. Wonder Woman cost 150 mil, a great deal, yes, but modest for a Cape flick. It’s counterpart, BvS, cost 300 million, literally twice as much. Guess which one is a better film overall? Guess which one was better received? Guess which one SAVED the DCEU? Some of the best films of the year had shoestring budgets, Split was made on 9 million, took in 275. Logan was made on 97 and took in 620. Deadpool was made on 58, looks like it was produced for much more, and brought back 785. Baby Driver dropped for 24 mil and hauled in 220. Why are you throwing 230 million at Pirates  when the first only cost 140 mil and brought back 655. That’s 4 and a half times its budget! Number 5 raked in 795 mil, a little over 2 and a half times its budget. Hell, XXX-3 LOST 70 million! Valerian LOST 70 – 100 million! LOST. The Fifth Element, another Luc Besson film, one that did much better in the box office, one that was directly influenced by the Valerian comics, MADE 263 Million of a 90 mil budget. Why did Valerian NEED so much f*cking money? Why did Transformers or Fats 8 or BvS or Kingsman 2 when John Wick Chapter II, Atomic Blonde, Split, and Logan did MUCH better for a fraction of those investments? Hell, f*cking Get Out, one of the most popular films so far this year, cost 9 million to make. It made 250 million dollars, man! Films don’t need 100, 200, 300 goddamn million dollar budgets to be good! More often than not, that kind of money bodes terrible for the movie, unless you’re Marvel, Disney, or Star Wars. If you’re not part of the Disney Zeitgeist, your ass better keep them sh*t’s around 50- 80 million if you want to make any money from now on.

Rotten Tomatoes is doing its job too well

I love Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews are poignant and they tend to be relatively accurate. I tend to air more toward Critics than I do Audience but that’s because I expect more from film than the average American. Out of my consumable media, period. I hate sh*t that doesn’t have substances. My reviews usually reflect that. I can’t stand Zack Snyder or Michael Bay. All their films are is cool looking sh*t and explosions. Neither one of those assholes can tell a story. I use to really like Ridley Scott, but he’ so far up his own ass right now, I don’t even think he could recognize his own masterpiece, Alien, even if he were to sit and watch it. Rotten Tomatoes does a fantastic job of exposing what’s sh*t and Studios HATE it. Movie executives and stars, alike, have gone on tirades about  how that joint is tanking their films before they even release. No, your movie is sh*t and people don’t want to see sh*t, sir. When BvS got torpedoes, cats claimed Marvel paid reviewers. They didn’t. Then they claimed critics didn’t get it because it was too heady. It wasn’t. Then they said it was for the fans. Yo, if your fans look at BvS and see a masterpiece, they’re drunk. Same goes for Suicide Squad, every Transformers film except for the first, and the majority of Adam Sandler’s library. All Rotten Tomatoes does is let you see that “Thumbs Down” before you pay your cash as opposed to having to wait for a reviews in the paper or a magazine. No one is doing that. By the time Ebert got his two cents in, you had already seen that trash or not. Now, thanks to the intrerwebs and RT, you can get an idea about how sh*t a film might be BEFORE you spend your hard earned cash. Lesson to be learned? Hollywood should stop making sh*ta and RT won’t have to sh*t all over them.

Ultimately, Hollywood needs to evolve and fast. We live in an age where information is at our fingertips. Where we can speak to someone on the other side of the country through facetime or skype. Finding a review of a film is as easy as google. Hell, finding the film, itself, is as easy as a torrent site. Yo want to make money in this new age? Stop patronizing your audience. Make sh*t that is both engaging, accessible, and challenging. It’ not hard. Netflix does that sh*t regularly. FX, too. A24 also has a fantastic track record as a distributor. It’s not hard to make a great film, with a great director, on a modest budget. Stop meddling with your talent and them craft their narrative. If the investment is small, you can just shelve the thing and write it off. Split was one of the best films I’ve seen all year and it was a cheap, beautiful, great, f*cking story that added to an established universe, and gave me one of the most brilliant performances I have ever seen. Make more films like that. Stop making bloated, explosion packed excuses to load a bunch of computer effects on film. Scaling back does wonders for perspective.

In the 60s when the Baby Boomers started coming of age, we got Spielberg, Scorsese, and Coppola. Look what they created. It happened again in the 80s. We got Cameron, Hughes, and Cronenberg. The Nineties gave us Tarantino and the aughts gifted us Edgar Wright and Christopher Nolan. These cats started their careers making small films and grew into the powerhouses that they are today. No one is pocket checking James Cameron or Steven Spielberg. No one is telling Tarantino or Coppola or Scorsese to re-shoot a scene. Why is it okay for Trank or Wright to have their vision torpedoed by a bunch of glorified bean counters? Hollywood’s biggest problem I that it’s become too much of an industry, There’s too much money at stake so risk has gone out the window. But that’s not what movies were supposed to be. We movie goers are called Patrons because we’re supporting artists. Let these artists paint, man. Stop trying to stifle creativity for the almighty dollar. Doing so is just going to make you lose more than if you let an up and coming talent, make the movie they want.

[smokeybrand]

Rotten

If you can’t tell by this blog or the many reviews I write or the entire sub-blog full of my reviews, I genuinely enjoy cinema. I enjoy a good movie. I enjoy a trip to the theater. I have since i was little. All of the pomp and circumstance of it; Getting a terribly overpriced hot dog, standing in line for hours to see the new cape flick or summer blockbuster, laughing with an entire auditorium of cats over the most foolish of turns, and bonding over ridiculous scenes with the stranger next to me - ll of that is just too dope. I love going to the theater. That’s why, when I read that this summer was the worst summer for film since 1999, I was flabbergasted. But it’s true. I’ve been to the theater every weekend this year, with the exception of twice, and no one’s there. No one is coming out to see film anymore. The occasional tent poles like It and anything Marvel drops, packed to the gills, everything else? nah. No one wants that experience and it got me wondering why. This is my analysis of that quandary, as a creator of content but more as a fan, first.

Streaming services are giving supplying box office quality but you don’t have to put on pants

Like literally every other industry that Millennials are killing, we’re apparently choking the life out of the Hollywood but why Why should we go out and spend 15 dollars on a flick that may or may not be terrible, when we can watch new sh*t on Netflix? Better sh*t on Crackle. Original sh*t all over the place. Netflix has the draw to pull huge stars and their productions are often ridiculously high in quality. Okja was dope. Beasts Of No Nation was an Oscar contender. Will Smith, and his hefty ass paycheck, have a movie coming out for them in December, i believe. And it doesn’t stop there. Netflix dropped A Series Of Unfortunate Events as a series and it KILLED the film. Their Marvel properties are spectacular. Daredevil is sh*tting on the majority of what Hollywood crapped out this year by itself! I had more anticipation for Defenders than I did for probably 90 percent of the theatrical releases in 2017! And don’t get me started on Amazon Prime. Seriously, I saw two films this year that are in my top 20 and neither were released wide, stateside. Raw was f*cking incredible and Lure was just as fantastic. They’re foreign, true, but none of them played anywhere near my home in theaters. Not even in the niche, hipster ass theaters! I had to watch them on Prime! But I got a goddamn 8th Fast sequel, though! Ingrid Goes West is a film I’ve been DYING to see but I can’t because it was only out here for a week and now it’s gone. But Wry tho??

Studios are creatively bankrupt

I get sh*t for watching anime. I love that stuff. Love it. Most people think it’s because I like cartoon tiddies and I do, tiddies are awesome, but that’s not why I enjoy anime. My favorites tend to be creatively vibrant and defiantly unique. They tend to be steeped in originality and that makes for an interesting watch. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, Ghost In The Shell (which I will get to in a minute) are all beautifully animated, poignant stories that really engage the viewer and challenges us to actively think about what we’re watching. The last two films to make me engage like that was Ex Machina and The VVitch. Split, too, to a lesser extent, did that as well. The only film that even remotely accomplished that this year was Get Out and people were up at arms about THAT film being racist! Really? You’re missing the f*cking point! It’s like, cats who have a voice, a story to tell, get the backseat, underfunded or outright ignored but the Hollywood machine but those are the people you need to take a chance on. Those are the directors and creators who you need to develop. Josh Trank made one of the dopest cape films not backed by a major studio in Chronicle and Fox wouldn’t let him do what he needed  to in order to properly craft his for Fan4stic narrative. I don’t think that team is very cinematic to begin with but Trank had a unique vision for that property and if Fox felt uncomfortable with it, they shouldn’t have let him cook to begin with. Marvel took Ant-Man away from Edgar Wright for this specific reason and he rebounded by giving us Baby Driver instead; a brilliant heist film that, at its heart, is just a wonderful love story. Great storytellers tell great stories, if you f*cking let them. The Japanese understand the f*ck out of this concept and let their directors and studio houses run wild. Hollywood does not.

Sequels, adaptions, and reboots! Oh My!

Look, I love a good sequel. They add to the lore and build the world created even further. Sometimes those additions are dope as sh*t. The Dark Knight, Aliens, John Wick: Chapter II, T2: Judgment Day, The Godfather Part 2, Winter Soldier, and Split all come to mind. And, yes, Split. It’s a sequel to Unbreakable. These films were all spectacular and embellished an already rich cinema universe. Hell, even the retread of cape films surprised me. Guardians was amazing, Homecoming is easily my favorite of the year but I am a legit Spider-Man fanboy so take that with a grain of salt, and Logan might be nominated for a f*cking Oscar, it was so good: all are basically sequels, adaptions, and reboots! It’s not hard to make a dope retread, particularly when there’s a story to be told. Sh*t like The Last Knight, though? THAT nonsense was unnecessary. An eighth Fast film? Really? Who wants a third XXX and why? Ghost In The Shell was doomed from the beginning. There’s no way an American audience can digest the content of that, even given to them in the brilliantly repackaging of Ex Machina last year. The Mummy was the worst thing I’d seen all year, bar none! Hollywood has become wildly risk averse and have been banking on stupid f*cking reboots no one asked for to hedge their bets and that sh*t is terrible for the industry. I still got a Flatliners reboot, a sequel to Blade, Runner, and another Star Wars film coming out this year. I’ll go see them but I’m not expecting much.  Hollywood’s current track record with this sh*t is atrocious.

Star System

I went and saw The Mummy because I am a fan or the original and the Brendan Frasier duology. The first two were dope but that third one though? Terrible. Just like this reboot! I don’t care that Tom Cruise is in this film. I don’t even LIKE Tom Cruise as an actor. He hasn’t made a film I’ve actually enjoyed since probably A Few Good Men. I saw the Mission Impossible flicks. They’re okay. I don’t remember anything from them except Cruise gets blown up a lot and Philip Seymour Hoffman was a pretty good villain in one of them. No one has got anything on Jaiver Bardem’s Raoul Silva but that cat was Ledger Joker caliber so, you know, high bar. My point is, this ain’t the 80s. Baby Boomers aren’t going to movie like they used to. No one cares WHO is in a film rather than WHAT the film is about. Ids there a plot? Is it shot creatively? How well is it directed? What’s the goddamn point? Why is this flick even a thing? Pirates had a sequel this year banking on star power and it flopped. GITS didn’t even take a chance and cast ScarJo In the lead role of a character named Motoko Kusanagi, only to cop out and make her a Japanese teenage brain, in her cybernetic Scarlett Johansson “shell”, the whole time. That flick also bombed. I didn’t give a sh*t that Jennifer Lawrence was in Mother!, I went to go see that because the plot seemed f*cked up. I adore the rock but I’m not going to go see Jumanji and I flat out REFUSED to take in Baywatch. Both of those premises are f*cking retard. I didn’t go see John Wick or Atomic Blonde because Keanu and Charlize were in them, I went because they looked dope as f*ck! And they were. And they were also beautiful. And they also told a coherent story. And I bought into those universes. And I want a f*cking crossover! No one goes to the theater anymore because of billing. I don’t give a sh*t about celebrities or that star mentality. F*ck off with that nonsense. Do your jobs and make great sh*t. Yall make enough money for it.

Television is making better sh*t

I touched on this earlier with the whole Series of Unfortunate events thing but it’s not just Netflix sh*tting on Tinseltown, regular ass s TV is doing a pretty good job of it as well. Atlanta is the best goddamn show on television and Man Seeking Woman is easily one of the best adaptions of a book I have ever seen put to film. The first two seasons of Fargo are as good as the film they’re based on, and, even though I haven’t seen the third, I hear it shine just as bright. Hannibal was just and OUTSTANDING interpretation of that Lecter series and I was devastated to see it go. Legion was a better X-Men Film than HALF of their franchise! FX is out here making quality sh*t! Starz ain’t no slouch either with its American Gods and AMC is releasing that firer with Better Call Saul and the excellent Breaking Bad. The Walking Dead petered out after the second season but, I guess it’s still good. I guess. I’m not even going to get into the quality of Westworld or its HBO brethren. Showtits is doing well with Ray Donovan or whatever, too. If I can literally get sh*t of this quality on my big ass, 4K, 7.1 surround sound, home media set up, why the f*ck do I want to go to the theater and drop 15 dollars for f*cking Bayformers 5? A sub-par Apocalypse sequel? A terribly adapted anime devoid of the existential questions driving it’s original?

Sh*t costs too much to make

When you’re dropping upwards of a country’s GDP on a goddamn Car chase movie sequel, you don’t want to take risks. I get that. But that’s the f*cking problem. Films use to have something to say, they use to be art. They use to convey emotion and present an actual plot. Now, most movies are bloated special effect spectacles that think more is better and storytelling is ridiculous. Why did King Arthur need a 175 million dollar budget? You could have make that move for a third of that, tightened up the narrative, and created a better, far more profitable film. NOPE! Why did Transformers 5 get a 125 million dollar budget when market research will tell you each of these sh*tty films has had diminishing returns? Cats have been telling you to drop Michael Bay since the second one and you refused, just to watch your budgets bloat and profits wane. Wonder Woman cost 150 mil, a great deal, yes, but modest for a Cape flick. It’s counterpart, BvS, cost 300 million, literally twice as much. Guess which one is a better film overall? Guess which one was better received? Guess which one SAVED the DCEU? Some of the best films of the year had shoestring budgets, Split was made on 9 million, took in 275. Logan was made on 97 and took in 620. Deadpool was made on 58, looks like it was produced for much more, and brought back 785. Baby Driver dropped for 24 mil and hauled in 220. Why are you throwing 230 million at Pirates  when the first only cost 140 mil and brought back 655. That’s 4 and a half times its budget! Number 5 raked in 795 mil, a little over 2 and a half times its budget. Hell, XXX-3 LOST 70 million! Valerian LOST 70 – 100 million! LOST. The Fifth Element, another Luc Besson film, one that did much better in the box office, one that was directly influenced by the Valerian comics, MADE 263 Million of a 90 mil budget. Why did Valerian NEED so much f*cking money? Why did Transformers or Fats 8 or BvS or Kingsman 2 when John Wick Chapter II, Atomic Blonde, Split, and Logan did MUCH better for a fraction of those investments? Hell, f*cking Get Out, one of the most popular films so far this year, cost 9 million to make. It made 250 million dollars, man! Films don’t need 100, 200, 300 goddamn million dollar budgets to be good! More often than not, that kind of money bodes terrible for the movie, unless you’re Marvel, Disney, or Star Wars. If you’re not part of the Disney Zeitgeist, your ass better keep them sh*t’s around 50- 80 million if you want to make any money from now on.

Rotten Tomatoes is doing its job too well

I love Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews are poignant and they tend to be relatively accurate. I tend to air more toward Critics than I do Audience but that’s because I expect more from film than the average American. Out of my consumable media, period. I hate sh*t that doesn’t have substances. My reviews usually reflect that. I can’t stand Zack Snyder or Michael Bay. All their films are is cool looking sh*t and explosions. Neither one of those assholes can tell a story. I use to really like Ridley Scott, but he’ so far up his own ass right now, I don’t even think he could recognize his own masterpiece, Alien, even if he were to sit and watch it. Rotten Tomatoes does a fantastic job of exposing what’s sh*t and Studios HATE it. Movie executives and stars, alike, have gone on tirades about  how that joint is tanking their films before they even release. No, your movie is sh*t and people don’t want to see sh*t, sir. When BvS got torpedoes, cats claimed Marvel paid reviewers. They didn’t. Then they claimed critics didn’t get it because it was too heady. It wasn’t. Then they said it was for the fans. Yo, if your fans look at BvS and see a masterpiece, they’re drunk. Same goes for Suicide Squad, every Transformers film except for the first, and the majority of Adam Sandler’s library. All Rotten Tomatoes does is let you see that “Thumbs Down” before you pay your cash as opposed to having to wait for a reviews in the paper or a magazine. No one is doing that. By the time Ebert got his two cents in, you had already seen that trash or not. Now, thanks to the intrerwebs and RT, you can get an idea about how sh*t a film might be BEFORE you spend your hard earned cash. Lesson to be learned? Hollywood should stop making sh*ta and RT won’t have to sh*t all over them.

Ultimately, Hollywood needs to evolve and fast. We live in an age where information is at our fingertips. Where we can speak to someone on the other side of the country through facetime or skype. Finding a review of a film is as easy as google. Hell, finding the film, itself, is as easy as a torrent site. Yo want to make money in this new age? Stop patronizing your audience. Make sh*t that is both engaging, accessible, and challenging. It’ not hard. Netflix does that sh*t regularly. FX, too. A24 also has a fantastic track record as a distributor. It’s not hard to make a great film, with a great director, on a modest budget. Stop meddling with your talent and them craft their narrative. If the investment is small, you can just shelve the thing and write it off. Split was one of the best films I’ve seen all year and it was a cheap, beautiful, great, f*cking story that added to an established universe, and gave me one of the most brilliant performances I have ever seen. Make more films like that. Stop making bloated, explosion packed excuses to load a bunch of computer effects on film. Scaling back does wonders for perspective.

In the 60s when the Baby Boomers started coming of age, we got Spielberg, Scorsese, and Coppola. Look what they created. It happened again in the 80s. We got Cameron, Hughes, and Cronenberg. The Nineties gave us Tarantino and the aughts gifted us Edgar Wright and Christopher Nolan. These cats started their careers making small films and grew into the powerhouses that they are today. No one is pocket checking James Cameron or Steven Spielberg. No one is telling Tarantino or Coppola or Scorsese to re-shoot a scene. Why is it okay for Trank or Wright to have their vision torpedoed by a bunch of glorified bean counters? Hollywood’s biggest problem I that it’s become too much of an industry, There’s too much money at stake so risk has gone out the window. But that’s not what movies were supposed to be. We movie goers are called Patrons because we’re supporting artists. Let these artists paint, man. Stop trying to stifle creativity for the almighty dollar. Doing so is just going to make you lose more than if you let an up and coming talent, make the movie they want.

[teamxdark]

A WIP of the beginning of Mirror, Mirror, since it’s taking me longer than I’d hoped.

Sonic stared at the twisted heap of metal on the kitchen counter, bisected by a sword, and tried his hardest not to scream.

“Lancelot,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even, “that was a toaster.”

The knight in question wrenched his sword from the mess, causing sparks to fly and little bits and bobs, both mechanical and breadlike, to scatter across the counter and fall to the floor. “It was burning up,” he explained gravely, “achieving heats far too intense for today’s weather. I could not trust it, and when it let out a scream, I had to act.”

“That ‘scream’ was an alarm,” Sonic snapped, too tired and hungry to deal with this right then. “That means that the toast is done and we can eat. Which we can’t now. Because you attacked the toaster.”

The dark hedgehog turned his sword over in his hands, and Sonic braced himself for his rebuttal, and then they would argue over who was in the right, but the knight uttered a soft, “I simply wished to protect you. I am still getting used to the complex machines of this era, and I cannot bring myself to trust them. I realize that this is… unbecoming of me, and an irritation to you. I apologize, and I will try my best to keep my impulses under control.”

Sonic let out his breath in a loud exhale. It was so easy to forget, still, that this wasn’t Shadow in front of him.

No one could quite explain how the switch had come to pass; one day, Shadow and he had parted ways, the sensation that there were still words left unspoken between them that would be better saved for another time, and the next day, Lancelot had been found in his place. 

The knight was having trouble adjusting, to put it lightly. It had been weeks, but the advanced technology of contemporary times drove him to paranoia, and Sonic had seen many a monitor, vehicle, and appliance fall victim to Arondight’s wrath, much to Tails’ chagrin.

Worse, still, was that Lancelot refused to stay anywhere aside from Sonic’s home. The knight graciously declined Shadow’s place, leaving Rouge and Omega down one roommate, staying instead in any spare room he could find, so long as it was where Sonic was staying as well. Rouge had laughed it off, waving the knight away with a taunt that he was ‘Sonic’s problem now’, but the hero had seen the flash of hurt and worry in her eyes.

No one knew where Shadow was, or if he was ever coming back.

And now incidents such as these, with another appliance in pieces, were commonplace.

Sonic rubbed at his forehead, trying to put his buzzing thoughts together in his head before he spoke. “Lance, I get that you’re trying to protect me from my evil cookware and all that, but I don’t get why.”

The knight started, one ear tilting to the side in confusion. “Why would I not? I swore to do so, did I not?”

“No,” Sonic deadpanned. “You didn’t.”

That seemed to offend Lancelot, who let go of his sword for a moment to cross his arms. “I do not wish to speak out of line,” he said, sounding like he was struggling to remain calm, “but you are mistaken. A knight is loyal to the sovereign who knights him, until the last of his days.”

“But I didn’t knight you!” Sonic protested, at the end of his rope. “I’m not your king!”

In response, Lancelot pushed up his visor, and Sonic took in the set jaw, the way his pointed white teeth bared themselves in a snarl, by all means, the spitting image of Shadow, with just the smallest thing here and there that harshly reminded Sonic that the one standing before him was not the one he had spent so many years with.

He saw it in the same set jaw, as it trembled with the effort to keep everything held back. He saw it in the snarl, which was more dismayed than hostile. Most of all, he saw it in Lancelot’s eyes, red and wide and so very expressive without the visor to shield them away.

Sonic was so used to seeing those eyes guarded, cut off from him, with only the smallest of opportunities to peek inside before they closed him out again.

Lancelot reached out, holding one of Sonic’s hands in both of his, delicately, like he was something infinitely valuable and the knight was afraid of sullying him with his hands. Sonic had only blinked when Lancelot dropped to his knees, his head bowed forward, and he heard him clear his throat before he spoke.

“You are him. You may not believe me, but I know it to be true. You are Arthur, my king, in this life and all others.”

Sonic sighed, unwilling to let this go but also not wanting to keep on this path of conversation, especially on an empty stomach. He tried to wrench away his hand, but Lancelot held tight, lifting his head, eyes ablaze with passionate certainty that made Sonic freeze in place.

He had never been looked at like that before…

"Every piece of you is the same,” Lancelot declared, his eyes unwavering, drawing in the hero and refusing to release him. “It is not only in image, either. I see it, I hear it, I feel it... It's more than just the body, the vision I see before me. You have his soul, free and unbound and hungry for adventure. You have his heart, strong and kind and noble. I see it in your eyes, you are him, you are who he would be if he were not burdened by his destiny! Don't you understand, Sonic? The only difference between you and Arthur are the memories you keep! You are him! You are him, and that's why I will follow you and protect you with my life. I gave you my vow, and I will not break it. No matter the time, no matter the life... I will stand by you until any and every version of us ceases to exist. That is my promise to you, as your knight!"

He said it so resolutely, so earnestly, that Sonic couldn’t find the words, nor the will to argue against him. In all his life, in all his wildest fantasies, Sonic could never have imagined those words, coming from that mouth, spoken in that voice… It was enough to get his heart pounding, that was for sure.

Sonic closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, but Lancelot’s hands clasped around his kept him anchored in this strange reality he was in. He didn’t like it; it had taken so long to get to where he had gotten with Shadow, so much time and effort and tenacity to get every last crumb from him, but Sonic had been adamant. He had wanted to break Shadow’s walls, to reach through, to understand him and be someone trusted and cared for. He had tried so hard, made so much progress… and now Shadow was gone, and in his place, Lancelot knelt before him, eagerly baring his soul for him without so much as a command.

Sonic would have been a liar if he said he didn’t like what he saw in Lancelot, either, but after all he had done for Shadow… it felt… wrong? Bad? In poor taste? Off, to be feeling similar flutters in the chest for a man who shared his face but not his past, nor his experiences.

Yet, as he opened his eyes and saw Lancelot still staring resolutely at him, as though desperate for him to understand, Sonic had to wonder if the knight had a point; Shadow had had amnesia twice, now. His memories had reset, but he had still been Shadow at his core. Sonic had never doubted that.

Did memories truly make a person who they were? And if so… were Lancelot and Shadow truly two different people?

Are you him? Sonic wanted to ask as he was burned alive by those eyes, crimson and intense, focused on him and him alone. Are you who he could have been if things had been different?

He wasn’t sure, but at least he could kind of understand where Lancelot was coming from.

Sonic heaved out an exhale, using both hands to pull Lancelot to his feet. “Okay,” he conceded. “Okay… but no more protecting me from my house or my friends. I’ll let you know when we’re in danger, okay?”

And Lancelot beamed, overjoyed, his teeth poking out through his lips and his eyes crinkling with happiness, and Sonic would be an even bigger liar if he denied that it was one of the most gorgeous sights he had ever seen.

Lancelot… I think I want to know you, too.

[annabelaplit]

What I did this weekend

I meant to write a blog post about living death in A Tale of Two Cities, but instead I have spent my time writing numerous essays for scholarship competitions, working a memoir for my creative writing class, and calling Bingo with some very lovely old people at a nursing home. I love AP Lit but I only have so much time to analyze Charles Dickens so it seems I must throw of my 2 to 1 literature focused to personal posting ratio. So here is all the stuff I wrote the weekend. 

We the Students Scholarship Essay Contest:

Civil disobedience is the act of opposing a law one considers unjust and peacefully disobeying it while accepting the consequences. Does peaceful resistance to laws positively or negatively impact a free society? In your answer, incorporate the principles and specific examples (including current events) that support your conclusion.  500-800 words

Philosopher John Locke once wrote that, “No man ...has a power to hand over their preservation...to the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of someone else”. He meant that the inviolable rights of a people are greater than the demands of a government and his words ring true today. In the modern era people can fight “arbitrary dominion” through democratic election, vocal condemnation, and most controversially civil disobedience. The practice of deliberate defiance has netted much criticism for its seeming disregard for a country’s rule of law. Yet, a free society is one in which people have the power to exercise their rights, and in choosing not to follow unjust laws, they only strengthen society’s institutions.

Injustice in legislation is an unfortunate side-effect of government; the constantly shifting boundaries of morality mean it can never perfectly align with the law. Examples of this abound throughout history, whether it be the Fugitive Slave Acts of the United States which demanded runaway slaves be returned to their masters without trial, or the Criminal Tribes Act passed in India under the British Empire which branded large swaths of the population of “hereditary criminals�� and forced them to relocate. Members of a free society ought not to have their right to justice forcibly forfeited or their right to liberty declared non-essential. Yet these breaches of moral conduct can happen in the most progressive of nations. The controversy lies in how people ought to respond to attacks on their inviolable rights.

In his famous Second Treatise of Civil Government, philosopher John Locke described the social contract of government as “giv[ing] up the equality, liberty, and executive power [men have] in the state of nature. . .with the intention of better preserving himself, his liberty and property”. Individuals relinquish their absolute freedom and agree to follow laws because a government can protect one’s liberties far better than individuals. Thus, a free society is one in which its government ensures the basic rights of its citizens while maximizing their right to liberty. But what happens if a government neglects its purpose and passes laws that curtail both autonomy and natural rights? Locke writes, “All power that is given with trust for attaining a certain end is limited by that purpose; when the purpose is obviously neglected or opposed by the legislature·, the trust is automatically forfeited and the power returns into the hands of those who gave it”. When governmental power is used incorrectly, the social contract is broken and people no longer have an obligation to obey unjust laws. Defending freedom requires exercising a right to disobey.

The past is rich with examples of people utilizing civil disobedience to affect positive change in their society. Mahatma Gandhi employed a campaign of peaceful resistance in the first half of the twentieth to receive so that India could be independent from Great Britain and possess institutions that protected the rights of its people. Just a few years later, American civil rights organizations continued this approach, organizing sit-ins and marches to force governments to change their unequal policies. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that civil disobedience, “ seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue”. It uses the power of the people to force institutional action. Civil disobedience tactics can be just as effective today, just look at Cedric Herrou a French farmer who illegally transported African migrants into France for humanitarian reasons. Put on trial in January for his open lawbreaking and refusal to stop, he was given a lenient sentence, the New York Times reports, because, “of widespread discomfort with the law”. Even as I write this civil disobedience is pushing boundaries, forcing free societies to uphold their sacred principles.

To summarize, refusing to follow an unjust law affirms the basic tenets of a free society. History and morality both serve to show that governments are always prone to enact policies which restrict liberties instead of protecting them. But such rules do not align with the sole purpose of government and obeying them forces one to turn their back on what it means to value freedom. When one resists through civil disobedience they work to draw attention and force the change of injustice, continuing the legacy of some of history’s most venerated figures. Furthermore, civil disobedience is nonviolent and harms almost no one; it uses moral means to achieve a moral end, Those who fight injustice through peaceful resistance prove themselves to be better than the people they resist. A free society must have liberty in more than just action, one’s morality must be unimpeded, one’s conscience free from inflicting unintentional injustice. Thus, civil disobedience can incur little but positive benefit.

Creative Writing Memoir

Jamie, I don’t think they like me. They aren’t mean, the rest of the world, there have been no insults, cruel laughter in my face, disgusted sneers when I move past. It’s more of an apathy, a quiet tolerance that will never morph into something more. It’s as if I am wearing a suit of armour, heavy metal shielding my true self and weighing me down as I move through the hall. There are a few chinks in chainmail, certain people have caught glimpses of what lies underneath, but even they remain clueless about my actual thoughts and feelings. Nobody knows me and nobody sees me. Nobody Jamie, except you.

You Jamie, you were my bravest act. Striding across that fourth grade playground strewn with woodchips and castles of swing and slide, every thought in my head screamed at me to turn back. Yet I climbed onto one of the plastic fortresses, stared level into your chestnut colored eyes, asked if maybe I could play with you. A piece of the armour came loose that day, and as our friendship developed more and more fell off until you could see just about all of me. Jamie you were the first person to discover who I really was, and Jamie you stayed.

You stayed my friend all through  fourth grade, and through fifth grade when you were popular and sat on the playground holding court. You stayed my friend through middle school, even though I sported purple tracksuits and refused to wash my hair. In the sixth grade your absence at a health club meeting drove me to claw the back of my right hand until it bled and left a permanent scar. The next day when you saw the wound you didn’t ask any questions, you just sat down beside me and offered me a scone from McDonald’s. You did more than stay my friend, you were my sister at the medieval festival, my roommate at ecology camp. You showed me your secret voice, the one that was deeper, less sweet, sounded like it was for a corny cartoon with a single viewer. I was sharp and dangerous, the pointed tip at the end of a lance, but year after year you risked getting cut just to be my friend.

Jamie, you kept me tethered when I changed schools just before freshman year and I would lurch through the halls of TA in armour so heavy that it rendered me almost immobile.

Whole weeks would pass before anyone offered a word in my direction, and the only thing that quelled the ache of loneliness was opening my laptop and seeing a spotify message from you. Jamie, we engaged in all caps arguments about anagrams and stick-throwing witches, chronicled every moment of our disparate school days, but it was the causal messages, the “hey bestfriend” that kept me on my quest. Last summer I woke up every day across the room from you in our cozy red cabin, and I danced with you in the orange moonlight on that abandoned beach, more alive than I had ever been in my life. Jamie, that night when I was trapped in a labyrinthine dungeon of hopelessness and misery, you tracked me to those steps facing the marsh, and refused to leave my side until I was ready to go to bed. Gallantry and chivalry don’t touch your actions; the debt I owe you is feudal, a lifetime in the labor of friendship can never repay it.

Jamie, we will return to that cozy cabin in this first year of the rest of our lives. We will lock ourselves in dormitory bathrooms and call each other daily. We will rent that crappy Boston apartment as we struggle  through grad school. We will buy those neighboring suburban houses, and our kids will fall in love and get married. Jamie with you in my life, this armour can never weigh me down. Bring on the armies, bring on the joust, I have my squire and steward and shield. Let the world ignore me, let it pass me by, all I need is a friend whose eyes are like the dark brown jagged edged, wood chips strewn on the playground where we first met.

Jamie this is your ode, your epic poem, your legend in the style of King Arthur. For the world may not have named you a knight, but trust me when I say that you have slain dragons. For a thousand days you have rescued the damsel in distress, been the only one who could pull Excalibur out of the rock. Jamie Delaney, you are the only person who has ever truly known me, and every day I work to be worthy of the honor of knowing you.