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thesquiddlesquad · 5 years

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OC-tober day 4/5: Nature/Lost

This is late because it ended up being way longer than I intended. Also it’s a combo of two prompts.

@oc-growth-and-development

“There used to be trees here.” Miranda looked over to see that Titania had paused, looking out across what seemed to be a cluster of abandoned, derelict buildings.

“Here?” Miranda surveyed the scene from Titania’s side. It was difficult for her to imagine this place ever being anything but a decaying urban wasteland.

“Yes, a long time ago. They cut them down before you were born, to make room for all of this.” Then, to Miranda’s surprise, Titania smiled. It was a small, slight smile, a shadow of the one she wore in photographs, but it was a natural one. That alone made it worth more than a thousand signed pictures. “I used to come here with my brother, when we were kids.”

“Jetstream?” Miranda let slip without thinking, looking up in excitement.

“Sebastian.” Titania nodded, despite the correction. Well, Miranda reasoned, that had been before either of them were superheroes. But unlike her brother, Titania had only ever had one name. Like Miranda, she had only ever wanted one thing.

It was late in the summer, and the city was enjoying one of its last warm days before the cold weather crept back in. Beneath the shade of the trees, two children were spending a different sort of last day.

Titania looked down from the high branch where she had perched herself, scanning the forest floor for any sign of her brother. It had taken only one gravity-defying leap and a subsequent bit of monkey-like scrambling to reach the top of the tallest tree, and from here she had a choice view of both the wide blue sky above and the woods underneath. It would still be a challenge to spot Sebastian, at least while he was moving.

She turned her head towards the sound of rustling leaves and cracking twigs and saw a blurry shape racing over the ground towards the tree where she sat. He knew this was her favourite one. Grinning broadly, Titania pushed off the branch and let herself fall.

It didn’t matter that she hit a few branches on the way down, or that she slammed into the ground hard enough to leave a dent. Titania sat up, still smiling, and looked into the deep blue eyes of her favourite person in the world.

“Boo!” she shouted, even though he had already seen her.

“I heard you battering all those branches – you’ll have to work harder to surprise me.” He grinned down at her. “Anyway, we’d better finish up what we’re doing. Mom’s gonna want us back in an hour.”

“What? We only just got here!” That wasn’t strictly true – it had been light when they left and the sun was beginning to sink lower in the sky – but time always seemed to run away while they were there.

“I know, but I’ve got somewhere important to go tomorrow.”

“Superhero school,” Titania said reverently. She knew if she were a character in one of her comic books, she would have stars drawn in her eyes. It was where she and Sebastian had longed to go for as long as she could remember. And it was where Sebastian was about to be the very next day. She slumped onto a nearby log, pouting. “I can’t believe you’re going tomorrow and I still have to wait five whole years.” It felt like a lifetime – and in all fairness it was more than half as long as her life had been so far.

“Well that’s what you get for being born second.” Sebastian teased. When she showed no sign of cheering up, he sat down beside her. “Hey, come on. You’ll get your chance, and it’ll come sooner than you think.” He paused, then added in a quieter voice. “I know it did for me.”

“It’s not just that.” The shady forest seemed suddenly colder; Titania felt goose bumps rising on her arms and folded them close to her chest. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“You know I’d take you with me if I could,” said Sebastian, “But unfortunately you’re too big to fit in my suitcase.” She didn’t laugh. “Come on.” Sebastian tugged one of her pigtails, setting the curls bouncing. “This is the last day I get with my little sister for weeks and we’re wasting it moping around? Is that what heroes do?”

“No,” Titania admitted.

“Of course not. We keep our chins up.” To illustrate his words he reached over and lifted Titania’s chin. She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling – the way he was grinning at her was infectious. Without warning, Sebastian’s fingers moved down to tickle her neck. Titania shrieked and fell sideways off the log to land, giggling, in the damp grass.

“Hey!” She sat up, unable to fight off a smile. “I’m gonna throw you in the river.”

“Like you could catch me.” Sebastian ran a circle around her and the log within a second, as if to prove his point. “Speaking of the river, weren’t we gonna build a bridge across it?”

“Oh yeah!” Titania scrambled to her feet. “We can use this.” She reached down and hefted up the log, which swung in a wide arc as she lifted it effortlessly onto her shoulder. It came close to hitting Sebastian, but he was quick enough to dodge with ease.

“Watch out!” He grabbed hold of one end. “Okay, you hold it, I��ll steer.” Titania followed him towards the river.

She would have followed him anywhere.

---***---

It was the end of the summer again, almost fifteen years after their last day in the woods. Though Titania hadn’t set foot in that particular forest since she had left school, the place had never been far from her mind. Being under the trees had always been a comfort to her. Their thick trunks stood tall and strong like sentinels, still and silent through the years. Those trees had sprouted long before she was born, and would go on living long after she was gone. At least, that was what she had thought.

Her plans had taken her out of England as soon as her final year was over. Like every summer during her schooling, she had flown out to New York City to work under Liberty, her hero mentor. But unlike those other times, she did not return when September came. She had spent a busy few years in America. There was no shortage of crime in New York City alone, but once Liberty’s severe standards had finally been satisfied, Titania had been set free to roam the rest of the states, helping out wherever the need arose. Among the dazzling sights she had seen on her travels were some of the most magnificent trees she had ever witnessed – hundreds of feet tall, and so immense in girth that an arch could be cut into the trunk large enough for a car to drive through. Yet despite all the wonders on her journey, Titania soon felt something calling her back to her old home. And so she packed up her things and bought a ticket to Heathrow airport. That was how it came to be that a few weeks later, during a brief gap in her busy schedule, she stood at the edge of her and Sebastian’s favourite playing ground.

At least, that was where she should be. Titania looked from the multi-storey car park, down to her map, back to the car park again. This couldn’t be the right street. Had they changed the names? Had she forgotten the address while she’d been busy in the United States? Then her eyes landed on the sign above the supermarket: Red Oak Outlet. This was the place, all right. But the red oaks themselves were nowhere to be seen. Titania felt her heart sink into her stomach. They were just trees, she tried to tell herself, old trees she hadn’t seen in years. But somehow it felt like more than just the forest had been erased from this place. Something else had been kept alive, preserved beneath that canopy of green leaves, within the walls of those sturdy tree trunks. Inside the forest it would always be that last day of summer she had spent with Sebastian.

Now that too had been lost.

---***---

“How long has it been like this?” Miranda’s voice ripped Titania out of her memories and back into reality. The girl was staring out over the derelict buildings, her lips pressed together. “Empty, I mean.”

“A few years now, I think.” Titania had avoided the place since that first time. Until recently.

“Huh. I thought they would have built something else here.”

“It’s been up for sale for a long time, but no one wanted to buy it,” Titania explained, “Too much work to be done for not enough profit, or something like that.”

“Do you think anyone will buy it?” Miranda wondered out loud. “Someone should. It’s depressing, how it’s just sitting here empty.”

“I agree. Most of all, I’d want someone to plant trees here again.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Miranda paused. Then she looked up at Titania with wide eyes. “We’re someone.” For the second time that day, Titania smiled without even thinking about it.

“That’s right.” It was exactly the thing she would expect Miranda to say. She was that kind of person – the one whose first answer to ‘someone should’ was ‘why not me?’. It was something Titania understood all too well. Which was why she had bought the old forest land when she had found the opportunity. She didn’t have the money left for demolition, or clearing the land, or re-seeding, but she had a different plan for that. Titania placed a hand on Miranda’s shoulder. “Want to learn how to knock down a concrete wall?”

“Yes!” Miranda looked like she might explode from excitement. “I’ve wanted to try that before, but obviously I didn’t have anything to practice on because it would get broken, and I don’t know if copying your power would be easier if you were actually there, because I think that helped when I used it that other time even though I didn’t actually know it was going to work, so maybe I did it because it was an emergency? I don’t know.” Titania nodded, in no hurry to interrupt.

It would be a long time before the trees were fully grown. Even if she wasn’t already dying, Titania doubted she would have lived to see that day. But the point of planting a tree was not to see it grow yourself. It was something you did for others, after you were gone.

#oc tober #oc-tober #writing #ocs #original characters #oc titania #oc miranda #oc sebastian #secret identity

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vermalreikcablepool · 7 years

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Where are the X-Men? No more Mutants explained

Due to severe financial problems Marvel faced in the 90’s, the company sought to steady themselves by working together with other film studios to make movies, rather than attempt them themselves (attempts up to that point were disastrous at best). In 1993, Marvel penned a deal with Fox.

Marvel sold the live action rights to many of their characters and groups of characters to studios like Sony, 20th Century Fox, and more. Each studio with a Marvel property keeps it jealously guarded, knowing full well the moneymaking potential each respective franchise represents.

The Walt Disney Company bought Marvel in 2009, the actual comic books aren’t all that important in the business of money-making these days for Marvel — who, thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now have a multi-billion-dollar film franchise. Movies make a loooooOOOT more money than comics

So, since Marvel/Disney no longer has the rights of the X-Men (and Fantastic Four) they are trying to erase them and and replaced them for other characters of which they have full rights like the Avengers (they are now are everywhere)

The more you look, the more you'll see just how much Disney is burying the mutants, even while continuing to publish several X-titles, because Marvel couldn't cancel the X-books, there are so many, and they are some of the industry's top sellers (also to keep fans from freaking out) but they’re killing X-Men and Fantastic Four Merchandising.

Cover to Secret Wars #1 by Mike Zeck:

here is the Secret Wars cover, on a T-shirt on sale at Wal-Mart:

Marvel poster Line Up 2015 (No X-Men):

According to Comic Book Resources, the studio based out of Singapore posted a message on its Facebook page stating it had been “asked to put a hard stop to all X-Men characters” indefinitely.

"Folks, it's been a sad day for us... due to reasons we aren't at liberty to disclose, we have been asked to put a hard stop to all X-Men characters for now," said XM studios. "That means Cable can't be released, and neither can the awesome Sentinel Diorama which we've all been so looking forward to."

Games like Marvel's "Mighty Heroes" apparently don't have any X-Men:

Marvel vs. Capcom 4 May Exclude X-Men Characters (and Deadpool):

- Marvel's shop page includes only three X-Men items in a list of 60 featured-product popular picks. - Marvel's subscriptions page features more than 50 titles, and only four of them star characters from the X-Men.

The disappearance of the X-Men is astonishing given how big they used to be.

Even "Avengers" director Joss Whedon has acknowledged that the X-Men are Marvel's best characters (and he's written a great X-Men series himself). As he told "In Focus" in 2005 — with comments that would later seem ironic — "The thing about the X-Men is they have a coherent core. The Avengers to me is tough. I wouldn't approach the Avengers, I wouldn't approach the Fantastic Four. The X-Men are all born of pain, and pain is where I hang my hat."

Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort responded to a question on Tumblr about the lack of X-Men toys:

“If you had two things, and on one you earned 100% of the revenues from the efforts that you put into making it, and the other you earned a much smaller percentage for the same amount of time and effort, you’d be more likely to concentrate more heavily on the first, wouldn’t you?”

Chris Claremont (notable X-Men writer) told website Bleeding Cool that Marvel writers were not allowed to create new X-Men characters because Fox could conceivably use them in a future film.

Claremont: I have to say, quite honestly as I understand it, now the X department is forbidden to create new characters. (SHOCK RESPONSE) Nerdist: Well… who owns them? Claremont: All because all new characters become the film property of Fox. There will be no X-Men merchandising for the foreseeable future because, why promote Fox material?"

Disney is supposedly promoting the Inhumans — humanoid alien characters whose film rights it owns — as replacements for the X-Men, with an Inhumans movie scheduled for 2019. But it will take a lot more than that to get fans to forget some of the best characters Marvel ever created.

source: 1 2 3 4 5

#X-Men #mutants #Nathan Summers #cable text #s Cable

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