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#the entire point of the film is that he is an awful man and. predator. and. y’all are out here writing smut and romantic imagines about him

showrunnerihardlyknowher · 3 years

Note

Cat vs mouse prompt! >:3

Oh no my favorite g/t trope :0

Stupid, stupid, stupid, god, he was so stupid!

Actually, he was stupid long before this incident, considering he thought it was a positively brilliant idea to hole up in the walls of an apartment rented out by a fucking cat of all people. This was fine, he had convinced himself, he totally wouldn’t get captured and toyed with and eaten any time soon, how hard could it be to outsmart a feline who’s mixed up their sugar and salt bowls on more than one occasion?

As it turns out, it was pretty god damn hard.

In retrospect, maybe he should have looked into one of the other apartments after the first (or third) time he was nearly caught by the homeowner. But aside from the cat’s random schedule of when he would nap or come home or not be entirely absorbed in whatever cringeworthy made for TV rom-com was on, he had too good of a setup to want to put in the effort of finding a new place. It was almost like he had the perfect assortment of odds and ends lying around for the borrower to snatch up and fashion into something, not to mention the guy was some sort of culinary genius. All the leftovers and produce he could get his tiny hands on were fresh, easily spoiling him into never wanting another stale crumb on the floor again.

Unfortunately, that was the beginning of his downfall. He was starting to get greedy, assuming the cat was too daft to have the wherewithal of knowing what was going on right under his nose, and as a result his runs were becoming more and more sloppy. The first time nearly gave him a heart attack, running and skidding all over the kitchen in an effort to avoid the pouncing feline until he was able to slip into the living room and behind the couch to the safety of one of the baseboard cracks. The third time he realized just how much of a game it was to the cat who was laughing all the while as they ran around the kitchen once again, always so close to snatching him up by his tail only to lose him behind the furniture. The sixth time felt like nothing more than a routine. Go out, get some supplies, almost make it home, spend the next ten to fifteen minutes running for his life, actually make it home.

Strangely enough, the cat seemed...unbothered by his presence once it was known. Maybe unbothered wasn’t the right word seeing as he definitely did have strong opinions on the matter every time he saw the mouse. But he wasn’t necessarily angered or annoyed at the thought of this tiny creature running around his apartment and (technically) stealing his things. No, every time his blue eyes would light up and he would grin, just having a grand ol’ time hunting down the poor borrower and yet never once being a sore loser when he would escape back into the walls.

“You’re good at this!” He had called out once, snickering breathlessly after the mouse disappeared behind the bookcase, “I think I might have to start investing in mousetraps just to stand a chance, huh?”

He never gave him an answer and the cat never did put down any actual traps to make capturing him any easier. It could have just been an empty threat in an effort to finally scare him away from the property, but the next day a little bowl of freshly candied strawberries were left out on the kitchen table. They obviously weren’t intended for him, yet he couldn’t help but notice that even though the cat was home a majority of the day, he made it a point not to go into the kitchen. Whatever. Easier borrowing for him.

Now, this was their, what, fifteenth? twentieth? round of chase and he really fucked up this time. Once again, he had gotten too comfortable in the flow of things, underestimated the cat more than he should have. He had been napping on the couch after drifting off during one of those disgustingly sappy movies and the borrower had the brilliant idea that now was the perfect time to snag a few those decorative stones in one of the floor plant’s pots. Could this task have waited until literally any other time, such as when the homeowner wasn’t five feet away from him? Sure. But he was feeling bold, and now he was feeling pretty dead.

One minute he peeked over his shoulder to see bleary eyes blinking at him from over the armrest, the next he was pinned to the floor under two hands mere inches from the safety of the underside of the couch. Probably shouldn’t have ran towards the cover the cat was currently on top of, but he was running on pure instincts in the moment. It seemed as if the cat was just as stunned at finally catching the fellow hybrid, silent and unmoving for an impossibly long beat. He was definitely wide awake, though, crouched over his prize and carefully moving his hands to keep them cupped around the mouse but allowing him to look down at his trembling form.

“Holy shit,” he finally said, a smile spreading across his face as soon as the words left his mouth, “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to catch you. You’re so fast!”

The borrower didn’t respond with anything other than a whimper, curling up tighter with his tail tucked between his legs and his arms protectively braced over his head. He was shaking like a leaf and felt just as breakable as one within the confines of such massive hands. Hands that knew how to chop and sauté and sear, that would most certainly be doing to him next as a midday snack.

He flinched when the cat huffed a quiet laugh, “It’s okay, dude. You can’t win them all, this is, like, one to thirty-seven, or something, right? You’re definitely going to win more in the future.”

He had absolutely no idea what the cat was going on about, but he didn’t dare ask. He wasn’t even sure if he could given how choked up he was with tears that now freely spilled down his cheeks. This was what he got for getting too comfortable. It was always a game to the cat, he was a natural predator after all, the consequences of losing never involving life or death. Not like for him. It was a cold dose of reality of the situation. He wasn’t a playmate, he was the treat.

“Hey,” The voice called again to him, softer, closer, yet he couldn’t bring himself to meet his captor’s eyes. He didn’t want to see the end, much less hear anything else about it as his ears flattened against his head, but the cat wasn’t deterred. “I didn’t...hurt you or anything, did I?”

What?

Watery eyes hesitantly peeked open to look up only to be met with...concern. The usual smile and teasing lilt the cat had during their previous exchanges was gone, replaced with a soft worry stemming from whether or not he’d actually manage to injure the mouse. Was he disappointed that he didn’t actually cause him any pain? No, why would he ask about it if he thought he was already hurt? As much as he was loathe to answer, he couldn’t help but fear what retributions would be in store if he continued to ignore him and so he shook his head as best he could given how tightly wound up he was. He almost couldn’t tell if the movement could be seen with how violently he was trembling, but the cat must have seen given how he visibly relaxed.

“Oh, good, it’s just...the way you’re holding yourself, I thought maybe I landed a little too hard on you.” Come to think of it, when the cat had pounced he hardly felt a thing. The hands had curled over him, but they didn’t actually press down with any of his body weight which most certainly would have crushed him into a paste. Said hands removed themselves entirely from the borrower’s personal space in favor of crossing over the man’s arms to provide a bit more support from how he was leaning against the floor. He tilted his head, raising an eyebrow with a gentle smile. “Guess you’re probably not up for another game right now.”

Fuck no. No more games. He shook his head again. Even if he wasn’t terrified out of his mind right now, he wasn’t sure his body would physically be able to handle a round of chase right now, his heart already feeling as weak as his knees. The homeowner snorted, but the smile was still as genuine as before. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Maybe we should go take a break for a little bit.”

Before he could question the we, hands were moving again to brace against either side of him on the floor. He should have been looking up, however, as his cowering form gave the perfect opportunity for the cat to lean down those remaining couple of inches and pinch the back of his tunic between his teeth and heft him into the air as he pushed himself up. The poor thing didn’t even have the chance to scream before the cat was on the move. If anything, at least the trip in this ungodly hold was a short one as his intentions were only to return to the couch where he had been lounging before. After he situated himself into a comfortable position sprawled across the cushions, he released his newfound friend against the crook of his arm, the little mouse perfectly caged between the curled limb and his chest.

Though his shaking had noticeably lessened, it didn’t stop the tremors that still ran through his tiny body, nervously looking at every inch of his strange surroundings for some type of oncoming danger or potential exit. He could see neither, which he supposed was a both a good and bad thing depending on what he was searching for. The mouse looked back up at his odd captor who was in turn looking right back at him. It was mildly impressive just how long he was able to hold eye contact with the massive predator, but the moment itself only lasted a second before the cat gave him another warm smile. He leaned down to softly bump his nose against the top of his head, his attention then shifting back to the television which had moved onto the beginnings of another awful romance flick. The only reason he knew he hadn’t been forgotten in that instance was the fact the being around him started to vibrate with hushed purrs, nothing more than a white noise on top of whatever the actors were confessing to each other during the film.

He was definitely moving tomorrow.

#g/t #g/t fluff #g/t writing #my writing #ask #hiddendreamer67 #giant/tiny #gianttiny #macro/micro #oh i fucking love cat/mouse tropes hhhhhnnnnnggggg #also yes i specifically didnt give either of them names because i made them up on the fly and didn't want to get attached to them lmaoooo #sorry it got kinda smushed towards the end #i started eating dinner and was like aw fuck cmon brain juice dont leave me yet

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Text

The Bachelor

A birthday gift for @bellafarallones. Part 3 of the TAZ Amnesty Bachelor AU (sternclay and indruck were the first two) AKA what Vincent was up to. Apollo is from my Amnesty Super Hero fic

The entire United States to choose from and this is the best the producers could find? He’s going to win this thing with his eyes closed. Then it’s a hop, skip, and jump to some endorsement deals, his own spin-off, and then a prime time hosting slot.

Oh, and a marriage. But that should be easy; any guy would count themselves lucky to have him.

God, that pool will be great for Instagram shots. Luckily the producers knew their biggest draw when they saw him and agreed to let Indrid continue his work as Apollo’s personal photographer and assistant. He may be a disappointment to the Cold name, but he’s good with a camera and has no interest in being recorded for the show. And if, god forbid, Apollo comes down with a cold during filming, someone will be there to bring him Day-Quil. After all, if he lets anyone see Apollo in a vulnerable state, Apollo will just have to send their father an email about Indrid’s latest failure.

“It’s times like this we should be grateful for our genes. I know I am.” He glances at his twin, pausing his gaze on his silver hair and tattoos.

“You dye yours too. And I think there are more than a few handsome men here, so don’t get cocky.” His attention shifts for a moment as a man dressed like Smokey the Bear passes them.

“Oh come on, even with those pretentious glasses you can see I’m a cut above.”

“If you say so. And if you want to do shots of you in your suit, we need to start soon, so kindly find your room so we can get on with it.”

--------------------------------------------------

Not only is this easy, it’s fun. The cameras love him, and most of his fellow contestants yield to him after one remark. He’s been watching Vincent, the bachelor for this season, closely during group interactions, and it’s clear he’s already developing favorites. Annoyingly, two in particular--Joseph and Duck--are more inclined to push back at him. But it doesn’t matter; everyone has weaknesses. He’ll find theirs soon.

Tonight is his first formal date with Vincent. They’re at an Italian place with good lighting, and Vincent is perfectly nice to look at in his lavender dress shirt and silver tie. Apollo’s done his research; Vincent is ten years his senior, took an early retirement from a position in the department of defense and now runs two consulting businesses; one for banks and museums and one for domestic violence shelters, health clinics, and other places where doing good draws enemies. The first business subsidizes the second. Vincent enjoys tennis and running, has no Instagram presence, and is an only child.

Apollo has his plan of attack; the trouble is, Vincent isn’t interested in sitting there and being flattered (though he does blush when Apollo says the tie makes the grey in his hair look all the more distinguished). He wants to know about Apollo.

“When you’re not taking photos, what do you like to do?”

He doesn’t correct him about who takes the pictures, smiles, “I, ah, I go to the gym.”

“I have to say it shows.” Vincent winks. It’s so corny, but Apollo can’t find it in him to hate it, “any sports, or just things like weights and cardio?”

‘

“No, but I played football in high school. I was star running back.”

“I played my freshman year, but baseball suited me better. So when you're not ‘pumping iron’, what do you do for fun?”

There is no answer that won’t make him look too shallow or too...no, he can’t even think about that option. Damn it, he must have a normal hobby. He hedges with the truth and hopes the editors cut it for time.

“I like movies. I, ah, I’ve been working my way through the Criterion Collection of the birth of cinema and it’s fascinating. Did you know there was a silent film heartthrob who predates Valentino?”

“Sessue Hayakawa?”

“You know about him?” He leans forward.

“I read a biography of him last year that was riveting. I still have it if you’d like to borrow it.”

“Yes, yes absolutely. We, we could even watch some of his films together, and the ones they inspired, you know they, they…”

Fuck, he’s acting like Indrid, bumping the table and yammering about things that will get him nowhere. He sits back, grabs his wine and sips to cover his error.

“I’d like that.” Is all Vincent says as they’re entrees arrive.

“Enough about me. I was reading about your business and, ah, well, how do you even do something like that?”

Vincent describes his process, how he picks clients and what he considers when evaluating a space. Apollo fully intends to zone out with a smile.

He hangs on every word. All too soon, Vincent is asking for dessert.

“Is your meal okay?”

Apollo looks at the plate of spaghetti carbonara he’s been poking at, not wanting to be caught in an ugly expression while eating, “Yes, it’s delicious.”

Dessert arrives in the shape of a chocolate lava cake with sparklers, a detail which delights Vincent. It’s such a ridiculous thing to smile over. Apollo smiles back, and let’s his date feed him a bite of cake.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Was the beach trip self-serving on Vincent’s part? Indeed. Has it also given him valuable intel? Yes, yes it has.

He now knows who’s going home next; Nico is such a fraternity-bred asshole that he should have sent him packing weeks ago. Honestly, all his comments about Barclay this morning were awful. Barclay is masculine and sweet in a way Vincent adores. He even helped Joseph during the cliff dive, which bumps him even higher in Vincent’s eyes.

Joseph stealthily knocking Nico’s hat from his head with a frisbee was also a high point; goodness, Joseph reminds him of men he used to work with who he never, ever, admitted his feelings for (they were often his subordinates, and he prided himself on keeping a safe department).

Then there’s Duck. Vincent would like an award for not spending the morning asking to rub sunblock on those arms. He’s been treated to a closer view of them the last half-hour, Duck sitting next to him in a Hawaiin shirt that shows off his biceps. The ranger just now excused himself (“gotta give the other fellas a chance to impress”) to go keep Indrid company during dinner. Polite and friendly to the core, that’s his favorite bear.

And then there’s-

“Hiiii Vincent.” Apollo slides into the spot closest to him on the restaurant deck.

Were Vincent choosing for an evening, Apollo would edge out even Duck. He suspects getting the younger man under some comfortable sheets to praise and fuss over him would be very nice indeed. Apollo may posture and insist to the others that he’s the dominant one in the bedroom, but this isn’t Vincent’s first go around; he knows someone who longs to be spoiled and submissive when he sees one.

But he’s here to choose his husband, not a hook-up.

He initially assumed he’d send Apollo home after their first formal date. He knows these shows sometimes attract people who want their fifteen minutes of fame, and Apollo is one of them. But then his meticulously built image cracked, just a little, as they talked, and Vincent is so taken by what he saw that he can’t bring himself to send him home yet.

The older man slides the younger one an oyster, “try one, they’re local.”

There’s no appealing way to eat an oyster on camera, but Apollo lifts a shell and downs one. He does an excellent job masking his grimace.

“Another? Or would you like one of the grilled scallops instead?”

He watches him run a calculus. Then he slides his sunglasses down, “Scallop, please.”

Maybe there’s hope for him yet.

-------------------------

“Indrid, Vincent hates me!”

Indrid blinks at him.

“One of the other contestants got them to show him a bunch of footage of me putting the other men in their place and now he hates me.” Genuine panic rises in his chest as Indrid gives him absolutely no expression to work from.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Talk to him, tell him that I’m not-”

“What you actually are? Vincent is here to choose a spouse; he has a right to not choose you.”

“Fix. It.” Apollo snarls.

His twin stands, regarding him from across the rug, “I will speak to Vincent, on one condition; you do not go after Duck ever again.”

“Traitor, you should be on my side, not his.”

Indrid shrugs, sits back down and picks up his book.

“I’ll, I’ll tell father you’re sabotaging me.”

“You think he’ll like to hear you’re being out done by his inferior son?”

“....Damn it. Fine, fine. I’ll leave Newton alone. Now go.”

His brother has the audacity to grin at him, “I will, right after I finish this chapter.”

---------------------------------------------

He’s sitting with Duck and Joseph, asking their opinion, when Indrid enters the living room.

“Did Apollo send you?” Vincent picks lint from his cardigan.

“Yes. He’s asking me to intercede on his behalf since he thinks you hate him.”

“Oh dear, I don’t hate him. I just said I was disappointed in him.”

“Ah” Indrid perches on the arm of Duck’s chair, “That’s our father’s code for ‘I hate you.”

“Jesus.” Duck mutters.

“I suspected he was exaggerating. That’s why I agreed to talk to you; I’ve learned it’s best to verify anything he tells me. In truth, I can’t do much for him. If it’s not obvious, he takes after our father and our father is...not a good man. We each survive him in our own way; Apollo chose to mold himself into what he demanded we be. That does not excuse him. But perhaps it puts him into perspective.”

Vincent knows he’s not sending Apollo home this week; it’s still Nico’s turn. And his heart that taps his chest to ask, “Do you think he could change?”

Indrid says nothing. Duck is keeping his mouth shut, but his frown suggests his answer.

“This is not to defend him but” Joseph looks at Indrid, “you grew up under the same conditions and chose not to replicate them. That suggests it’s possible.”

“I just didn’t want to end up like him.” Indrid murmurs.

“And ‘possible’ don’t mean probable.” Duck adds.

Vincent rubs his temples, “You’re right. All of you. I...I think I need some time to decide how many chances to be the person I think he can be I ought to give him.”

---------------------------------------

Apollo isn’t sure what to expect. The last time Vincent asked to see him, it was to scold him. Three guys have gone home since then, and he’s been fighting back his impulses to torment and gloat, focusing instead on making Vincent like him instead of undermining the competition.

The door opens on a room with a bed, lots of candles, and…

“Is that whale song?”

“Yes. I picked a ‘soothing’ playlist to fit the mood.” Vincent is in linen pants and a button up short sleeve, pats the bed with a smile, “I thought a nice massage might do you good. Non-sexual, of course” he tips his head at the camera.

Apollo isn’t shy. His thirst traps are legendary. But he lays on his stomach the instant he’s down to his underwear. Vincent hums as he starts on his shoulders, checking in now and then about pressure. It would be nice if Apollo’s skin weren’t starving for gentle touches. He keeps letting out pathetic sounds, almost like chirps, as Vincent rubs him down.

Then the worst thing happens; he gets hard. At first he tries just keeping his hips still but no, just Vincent’s touch is enough. So he tenses in hopes of not giving it away.

“Is it too hard?”

“No, I’m fine.”

The hands leave his skin and he whines like a kicked dog.

“Would you gentlemen let us do the rest in private? I’m sure the viewers get the point.”

There’s shuffling feet and shutting doors, and then a gentle hand rolling him onto his back.

“Apollo, what’s really--oh. That explains it.”

He scrambles to sit up, tucking his knees to his chest, “I’m sorry, you said you didn’t want it to be sexual, I didn’t do this on purpose, I swear-”

The bed squeaks along with him as Vincent sits, “Sweetheart, I’m not going to get angry with you for this. If, um, if it helps to know, the feeling is very much mutual.”

It should feel like a triumph, but his cheeks burn and he hides his face against his knees.

“Does that bother you?”

“No! No, not at all. I wouldn’t be wooing you on T.V if I didn’t think you were attractive. Blech, I sound like one of Indrid’s romance novels. Not, not that there’s anything wrong with Indrid...liking...silly things.”

Vincent cups his face and he leans into it, wants to glue his cheek there, “Apollo, I’ve noticed you’re trying to be less...unkind since our little talk.”

“I’m trying. It’s just so very, very hard.”

“I’ve also noticed you’re letting your persona go now and then. That means a lot to me. I’m not interested in the man you think you should be; I’m interested in the man you might become, the man you are when you stop trying to be better than everyone. I like that man, I’d like to get to know him more.”

Apollo shivers as Vincent kisses his forehead, “I’ll do my best.”

-----------------------

“The nerve of Joseph to say things like that to me!”

Indrid doesn’t look up, “It’s a genuine concern; Vincent is older, there will likely come a time when you’ll be the one caring for him. Are you certain you’ll have the patience for that? Be willing to put your needs and wants on hold for the sake of someone else?”

That’s really what would happen? He, he could do it for Vincent, he’s certain. But could he? What if it’s hard, without glory or gain, does that make it foolish?

He chases those thoughts in dizzying circles for fifteen minutes until they crash into the solution.

“I solved it! I don't have to worry about taking care of Vincent as he ages because he'll divorce me once I reach thirty-two.”

“That is the bleakest possible conclusion.” Indrid flips his sketchbook closed.

“Just let me have this!”

“I hate that I even have to say this but Vincent is not our father.”

“Father said he was doing what any sensible man would do.”

Indrid levels him with an unusually firm stare, “Do you not want Vincent just because he’s over thirty-two?”

“Of course not! He’s great! I, brother for goodness sake just tell me how to care for him.”

“I literally cannot do that. You have to figure it out for yourself what care looks like for you.”

He’s about to repeat his demand when his phone rings.

“Hi, Vincent.”

“I'm so sorry, but I have to break our date tonight. I was out for a run and twisted my ankle. I just got back from the doctor; he says I sprained it, so I might be on bed rest a few days.”

Perfect.

“Oh no, I’m glad it’s not too serious. Would, ah, would it be alright if I came to see you?”

They agree on a time. Then he remembers the problem that preceded the phone call.

“What do I do?”

“What do you want to do for him? Or, if your positions were reversed, him to do for you?” Indrid asks flatly.

“Call you so he doesn’t see me looking frail.”

“assume I am dead and thus no longer dealing with your nonsense”

“That’s not fair.”

Indrid flops on the bed, “I'm dead, Vincent is the only one who is coming to take care of you, what do you want him to do?”

“Tell me it’s okay and spend time with me and…”

Indrid grins, “And?”

“And watch PBS in bed.”

“It’s a start. Now please get out of my room.”

An hour later he pokes his head into Vincent’s bedroom; the older man is reclining, reading a John Grisham paperback in a robe that makes him look very suave

“How are you feeling?” He sits next to him, rubs his knee. .

“Oh, I'm fine, just feel a little silly. It used to be I could twist an ankle and come up fine. Aging is quite the adventure.”

“I, um, I'm glad it wasn't too bad. I, I don't like the thought of you getting hurt. Bot that you'd be bad if you did! I accept that we are all very fragile beings trying not to die.

(Too dark, Cold, pull it back).

“I mean, um, is there anything I can do to help?”

“I'd be happy to have you stay awhile.” Vincent takes his hand, let’s him lean on his shoulder as they talk. They’re midway through a discussion of famous film disasters when a small burst of black and red lands on the windowsill. He doesn’t catch his excitement in time and Vincent asks him what made him perk up.

With a courage he did not know he possessed, he points to the bird.

“Oh! How beautiful. What kind is it?”

“Scarlet Tanager” he mumbles, “they’re not common here.”

“Do you know a lot about birds?”

He nods.

“There are some feeders just on that balcony. And I think the binoculars a friend gave me last Christmas are still in the closet, if you’d like to use them.”

“I would” he stands, heart bubbling with terrifying warmth, “thank you, da--ah, dear.”

Mischief sweeps across Vincent’s face, “Is this where you tell me you’ve had lots of older boyfriends?”

“No. I, ah, I’ve made out some but I never dated.”

“Not even a highschool sweetheart?”

“My father made it so no teenager wanted to go near our house. Or us.” The binoculars are magnificent, the best money can buy, “I always wished I had a date to homecoming. It looked so fun, asking someone or getting asked and then having matching outfits and going out to dinner and taking pictures together. I even picked out an outfit just in case someone asked. I think Indrid snuck out to meet his burnout--, um, meet his friends. I just sat in my room.”

“You could have asked someone yourself, couldn’t you?” Vincent makes room for him on the bed once more.

“And risk getting rejected in front of the whole school? No thank you.” He stares at the binoculars, afraid of what he might see if he turns, “I'm sorry, you don't need to hear all this. I’m supposed to be here taking care of you.”

Vincent opens his arms, pulling Apollo into a hug, “You know care can go two ways at once, right?”

“Not really” he mumbles into silver silk.

“Oh, sweetheart.” A kiss on his cheek, hands running soothingly up his sides, and those weak, silly noises slipping from his mouth.

“I want it to be, I’ll be so good, I’ll take care of you, just please...please say you’d do the same?”

“Of course. That’s what love is.”

He tucks his face against Vincent’s neck, “Will you make fun of me if I say I’m frightened?”

“Never.”

“I don’t know how to do so much of this. I don’t know how much of me can change.”

“Are you willing to try?” Vincent kisses the shell of his ear.

“For you? Yes.”

-------------------------------------------

“I choose…” Vincent looks between Apollo and Jonathan. Apollo cannot wait to spring into his arms.

“I choose neither.”

“What!” Ned yells off camera.

“I’m sorry to both of you but I simply can’t. Jonathan, you’re a very nice man, but our connection is ultimately lacking. Apollo” Vincent meets his eyes and he forces his gaze to stay placid, “I care for you more than words can say. I know you’ve worked so very hard to change. I also know that people can easily revert to their old, cruel ways under pressure or difficulty. Marriage often involves those things, and I’m not sure you can be the man I need you to be. With those misgivings, it wouldn’t be fair to propose to either of you. I hope you understand.”

They both say the do, shake hands, give hugs. And he does, he truly does understand. He understands that Vincent made the choice he had to, that even though he got better he is still a rotten, cruel creature who doesn’t deserve him. He was taught he deserved the world; some good that did him. It lost him the only person who might make the world a less miserable place.

“Apollo!” Vincent jogs after him, catches up to him in an empty hall, “Apollo I-”

His heart is breaking; his old ways twine like vipers around it, “I, I’m glad you didn’t choose me you, you boring, pathetic man. No wonder you have to pay people to go on dates with you! I don’t need anyone, least of all you!”

Vincent steps back, face falling as Apollo storms off. The last thing he hears is, “And here I thought I made the wrong choice.”

---------------------

He deletes his Instagram. Gets a job as a personal shopper. Goes to therapy because he will not let Indrid outshine him when it comes to unlearning how they were raised.

It helps. Three months after the disastrous finale (for him, not for the network) he’s feeling, if not better, like he might actually try dating someone soon. He also writes two apology letters; one to Indrid and one to Vincent. Then he tears them both up and just tells Indrid that he’s trying to be less of an asshole and that he’s sorry for all the time he was one. He leaves Vincent alone; if he doesn’t want to see him, the least he can do is respect that.

It’s migration season, so he’s hiding in his favorite, super-secret birdwatching spot. It’s near a pond, so lots of birds come to drink and bathe, and he’s seen several on his list.

Branches crack, sending nearby jays into a flap. Damn it, he’s never seen someone else here; the only person he ever told about it was-

“Hi, Apollo.”

“Vincent!” He almost falls off his stump, “how, why?”

“I’d been meaning to explore this spot ever since you spoke about it. But I, um, was also hoping I might see you in the process. Pathetic, as you might say.”

“I did, didn’t I.” Apollo stares up at him, clutching his binoculars so hard they might become disparate spyglasses, “Vincent, I am so, so, so very sorry for how I acted when we last saw each other. I was hurt, all I want is to make someone else hurt more so I stop feeling so vulnerable and powerless. I, I’ve been working on it in, in” he winces “therapy. You said once that you wanted to meet the man I might be. I realized I wanted to meet him to, to be him, not to win some show or even to get you to like me but just because I don’t want to be the other Apollo anymore.”

Vincent sits next to him, “You don’t give up, do you?”

“I, I just want to un-fuck what I can. I, how have you been?”

“Doing lots of thinking. I still know I made the right call not proposing during the finale. And that I’m ready to start dating again.”

“I hope whoever you go out with knows how lucky they are.” He says without any motive but the truth.

Vincent plucks a late-blooming wildflower and offers it to him, “It’s not a rose, but then again, this isn’t a proposal. It’s just a date, if you still want one.”

“So badly.”

The older man leans in, kissing him softly as his spine turns to soup, “I’m looking forward to meeting the, um, latest version of you.” He snickers at his own phrasing.

Apollo pulls him into a second kiss, “Me too.”

#bachelor au

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 4 years

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Hellraiser Fandom and the Invisibility of Women’s Abuse

I’m starting to come to terms with why the Last Drive In interviews stuck with me in a bad way.

It kind of eluded me for a while, but to give you guys the emotional lead-up to what was underlying my sense of discomfort and irritation, let me explain a few things. When I heard the interview was going to happen, I watched some portions of a different Last Drive In episode to get a sense of what the whole thing was about. It’s your standard hosted horror movie show.

It’s also awkwardly sexist. They have a character on it, Darcy The Mail Girl, who as far as I could tell in my first viewing, basically exists on the show to be ogled and be the butt of sexual humor. The men filming would even break the fourth wall to snicker and whistle when she would say something sexual. In 2020, it was extraordinarily cringe-worthy to watch, and I’m at a loss that we’re still living in a world where this is normalized. It was like watching something from the 80′s. She is extremely objectified on the show.

I don’t blame her for this. Apparently, she was the victim of some awful bullying and body-shaming fairly recently, and I don’t want to put more suffering on that girl’s shoulders. I respect her. I think she respects herself. The circumstances surrounding a woman being in a position like this are complicated, and I do not pretend to understand her situation. She’s also allowed her own feelings about what she can and cannot handle, and what is and is not okay with her.

Nevertheless, the segment I saw in that other episode with Darcy was alienating and even rather upsetting. I felt a second-hand humiliation and pain. I didn’t feel like Darcy was put in a position where she was in control of her own sexual expression. Perhaps Darcy’s actress disagrees with me, and that’s fine. But as a female audience member, I was already feeling a sense of unease and unwelcome.

So I was obviously primed for discomfort before the interviews even started.

Joe Bob Briggs (the host) said a few things that did not sit quite right with me. Quite frankly, he repeated some more annoying fanboy statements that tend to stick in my craw. His rather basic interpretation of the film, juxtaposed against the awkward, stifling feeling of watching Doug and Ashley try to explain the deeper concepts that eluded him reminded my of my own frustrations listening to the male fans of these films’ constant comprehension failure.

How many times does Doug have to repeat the words he’s basically memorized by heart regarding the tragedy and complex nature of Pinhead? Why does this get forgotten, glossed over, even retconned so much?

Why does it always feel like Ashley gets disregarded? Every time we see an interview with her (which is comparatively rare), nobody really speaks to the deeper thoughts she expresses on her character or the narrative, but every man in the comments has something to say about her hotness level.

When we got to the point that Ashley tried to explain to Briggs that she thought Pinhead was fair in a certain scene, and that Pinhead was speaking to Kirsty’s accountability for her own desires, Briggs responds incredulously; “You think Kirsty OWES Pinhead?!”

Ashley had spent a portion of the interview having to dismiss the relevance of characters like Steve and Kyle in Kirsty’s life, and was now suggesting a deeper subtext in her interactions with Pinhead that both A) did not cast Kirsty as pure and sexless and without culpability, and B) did not cast Pinhead as her aggressor but as her psychological mirror.

This is the subtext that is most often disregarded by casual fans and some hardcore fans alike, that Kirsty may not be the innocent and sexless Final Girl, and that Pinhead may not be the predatory Slasher monster intent on using a sharp weapon to penetrate her violently for his own gratification, and that dynamic may not be the be-all-end all of their relationship for the rest of time.

I’ve been turning Brigg’s incredulous response around in my brain for a while. And it’s made me realize something about how men experience Hellraiser’s narrative, and why it differs so greatly for many women.

Doug has more than once spoken to the fact that women react to Pinhead very differently than men. He was of course speaking of the sexual interest he would get, but he has remarked upon the fact at least once that he’s not entirely sure why that is, exactly.

It’s...not that strange to me that women desire rather than fear the character, or that Ashley would have a more positive response to Kirsty’s relationship with him rather than her relationships with the seemingly benign boys of the films.

There is an order to which women first learn about sex. For some it’s a little different but I believe this is a fairly common experience: The very first thing we learn is that it’s going to hurt (but maybe also feel good after). The second thing we learn is that boys will want to take it from us and will manipulate and lie to us to get it, but that it’s supposed to happen in a loving relationship. The third thing we learn is that we want it too, but we aren’t supposed to because it’s dirty and wrong for us to want it.

Women grow up with an inherent anxiety around sex, an anxiety that is complicated by our own desires.

Everything in Hellraiser is perfectly reflective of a reality that men clearly do not have the context to fully comprehend, because women’s real experiences of desire, and of male violence, are a blind spot.

The men who hurt women don’t have pins in their head and wax gothic poetry about suffering. They don’t wear dark capes and turn into bats and hypnotize women from their windows to drink their blood.

The men who hurt women look like Frank, or J.P. Monroe, or Trevor, or Channard, or every bumbling aggressive fool Julia seduced home.

They look like Larry and Steve.

Larry let his wife scream “no” and “stop” several times before he responded, regardless of the true reasons she was screaming those words. And when he finally did stop, it was out of anger rather than concern. This is, as far as I’m aware, the most common form of sexual violence a woman can experience - a man they give their trust to suddenly doesn’t respect a “no.”

So, so many times, I have heard men say how badly they felt for Larry, how innocent poor Larry was.

Men live in a fantasy world where it’s more comfortable for them to imagine characters like Larry as good man, a victim of Julia’s callousness who isn’t in Hell not because he never touched the box, but because he is inherently innocent. They live in a fantasy world where it’s odd that Steve abandoned Kirsty the minute something deeply traumatic happened to her (Briggs remarked upon this). Raise your hand if a man has done the same to you when the cards where down.

Steve’s response to Kirsty getting too drunk to stand properly was to “jokingly” tell her to lie down in this sleazeball way that indicated he was insinuating taking advantage of her intoxicated state. Also one of the most common forms of sexual violence a woman can experience.

The men who Julia took home would respond aggressively when she chickened out of sex, either blindly or in an attempt to shame and guilt her into proceeding.

Should we talk about the fact that Kyle is a psychiatrist who shouldn’t be romancing a traumatized patient in his care who’s parent was just fucking brutally murdered? Or does that feel too petty in comparison?

The men who hurt women are more typically their friends, their fathers, their uncles, their boyfriends, their husbands.

What’s so funny about all of this is that Pinhead somehow does better at consent than these men, at least in a manner of speaking. He’s the only man who legitimately listens to Kirsty, and responds to her “no.” No matter what he threatens, he always stops to hear her out, lets her do what she wants, is always talking about her desires and pleasure, and in the end always ends up destroying the men abusing her rather than going through with ever harming her.

Briggs seemed keen on viewing Pinhead as a Satanic figure. Historically, what is the role of women who are in a position to encounter the devil? Usually, they are witches, wanton women who gain magical power through sexual communion with the devil. A framework of propaganda that men have historically used to persecute women.

The men who hurt and oppress women in real life don’t look or act like Satan, but they sure as hell are ready to write narrative after narrative of Satanic figures menacing women while they save the day, and they sure as hell like to blame women for preferring “bad boys” and “assholes” over the “nice guy.”

It’s more comfortable for men to imagine Pinhead as this cool figure of pure evil with no feelings or capacity for mercy, because they can live vicariously through his violence (particularly when they’re writing him doing it to half-naked women, looking at you H3) and yet simultaneously distance their moral identities from him.

It’s more comfortable to compartmentalize what good vs. predatory masculinity looks like in a way that benefits their self-image and the status quo. This is a lie men tell themselves.

It’s safer for men to point to Pinhead and say, “this is what a predator looks like,” while curiously never speaking of the callous, scummy and predatory behavior of every single other man in the films, even to the point of occasionally discussing the perceived tragedy of fucking Frank’s spiral into darkness long before they can feel entirely comfy imagining Pinhead as having a past where he was a good man with sad feelings, or regard his act of self-sacrifice for Kirsty as anything but a moment of weakness that was “bad writing” and therefore should never have happened.

There is an extraordinary irony in a man arguing with Pinhead’s own actor over the nature of his evil, while running a show where a female character’s fuckability is her main characteristic and it’s okay to behave as if she doesn’t even have real feelings.

All this nonsense in the spaces I go to have fun, while we’re dealing with the background radiation of a President who’s sexual abuses are swept under the rug, his masculinity praised regularly and his violence against our people gaslighted. While we’re dealing with the mass-recorded aggressive violence of police - white men in positions of authority whom we are supposed to trust to keep us safe. While men make other men laugh about the violation of girls so they don’t have to deal with the reality of one of the “nice” funny guys being a predator.

Fuck you. I’d rather burn.

#Hellraiser #rape cw #abuse cw

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 4 years

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Why Mary Jane sucks!

The awful character has been praised and protected and given special treatment by the fans, and especially Marvel, for far, far too long. It’s time we all woke up and saw this dreadful character for who she is! As such here are just a few (of a potential 500 I assure you) reasons Mary Jane sucks!

1. She’s a readhead

Famously Mary Jane has red hair.

You know what else is red?

Fire.

Fire HURTS people!

What’s Marvel trying to say huh?

That kids should play with fire!

2. Her entire character is about drugs

Mary Jane is slang for marijuana. In presenting a sexy character called Mary Jane in the 1960s the deviants that were Stan Lee and John Romita Senior OBVIOUSLY were trying to encourage people to use weed, the most dangerous drug of all time!

3. She was clearly the main villain of Into the Spider-Verse

Some months ago a sharp eyed viewer put forward a daring theory.

It stated that Mary Jane betrayed Peter Parker to the Kingpin in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Whilst I hold the utmost respect for that poster’s clinical film analysis skills, I have to disagree.

Mary Jane didn’t betray Peter to the Kingpin.

Because the Kingpin was clearly working for her the whole time!

Once you spot the clues it’s incredibly obvious. A subtle but really big example is the Kingpin’s body language throughout the movie. Kids and dumber viewers might not have noticed it but that’s the body language of someone in fear of his superiors, someone who is subservient in absolutely every way.

But WHO could he be working under? Who else but Mary Jane...from Peter B. Parker’s universe.

That’s what makes his ending so tragic. He rings that doorbell at the end of the movie and doesn’t realize he’s delivered himself into the hands of the true evil of the multiverse!

4. She made Peter quit being Spider-Man

Whenever I bring this point up people seem to presume I’m talking about the groan inducing years she was married to Spider-Man. Not true. Mary Jane’s toxic influence upon our hero predates that. She didn’t just make him quit during the Spider-Marriage but in fact EVERY time he ever quit.

Spider-Man No More? That was her?

Amazing Spider-Man #17? That was her too! I know Peter hadn’t actually met her back then but facts are facts those 5 minutes he retired were all down to her!

5. Marrying Spider-Man made Spider-Man comics bad for 20 years!

It’s been well documented by astute and respected creators like Joe Quesada, Dan Slott and Tom Brevoort many times before, but when Mary Jane married Spider-Man the Spider-Man books tanked big time.

In fact EVERY comic sunk to a new low. Rob Liefeld drew X-Force. Iron Man became a teenager. Superman got a mullet.

This can all be very directly traced back to Mary Jane marrying Spider-Man, a fact I blame the character for first and foremost not the writers. I mean when you have a character like that in your comic books it’s essentially inevitable that good writing isn’t an option.

Thank God for Joe Quesada’s Magmum Opus. Without it we’d have been denied all time classics like Amazing Spider-Man #553, an issue so memorable I don’t even need to reference anything from it. Y’all KNOW what I’m talking about!

6. She was RACIST!

Now okay TECHNICALLY Mary Jane was never really been racist.

But subtext is a thing and MJ famously hated Spidey’s black costume and his ex girlfriend Black Cat, both of which were always intended to subtextually represent the African American community.

Thus MJ’s dislike of them was unsubtle as it was bigoted.

Mary Jane hates black people.

7. She encourages sadomasochism

Not only is MJ’s name slang for a drug but think about what her name rhymes with?

Pain.

Through her Marvel sought to encourage impressionable readers to harm themselves through subtle subconscious rhyming. Kids aren’t dumb they’d obviously make the connection!

8. She ruined lingerie and other underwear

Throughout the Spider Marriage Marvel put Mary Jane in all manner of lingerie and sexy underwear to presumably titillate the readers.

But having such a repugnant character wear such clothing had the adverse effect of making readers repulsed by such items of clothing whenever they saw them.

Think of all the poor souls who read such comics and must have had what amounted to PTSD flashbacks upon walking into clothing stores. Think of the money that must’ve been lost for those businesses as a result.

Think of all the relationships that must’ve wrecked!

For. Shame!!!!!

9. She’s totally bland and one note

Let’s review the all time great love interests of Spider-Man’s life shall we?

Cissy Ironwood. Marcy Kane. Deb Whitman. Aprile Maye. Carlie Cooper. Liaeean Taeeang. Gwen Stacy (well once Stan got rolling on her around issue #100 or so).

All brilliant characters who need no introduction. Characters who’s names alone conjur up vivid memories of vital moments they contributed to Spider-Man history for fans far and wide.

Why is that you may ask?

Simple.

Unlike Mary Jane they had personalities!

They had character development!

I mean Marcy Kane’s progression from grad student and teaching assistant into being revealed as an alien is if we’re being honest the greatest character arc of anyone in Spider-Man history. It was so great they had to make the big reveal in the all time classic 1984 Jack of Hearts mini-series! Now you can’t say THAT about Mary Plain!

10. Marvel have always preferred her over Gwen Stacy

It’s no secret that the higher ups at Marvel, and this was especially true from the late 1990s onwards, have over idealized, over romanticized and engaged in outright revisionist history when it comes to Mary Jane, building her up as an unattainable level of greatness.

This is especially true of Joe Quesada but credit where credit is due, he was professional enough to divorce his personal feelings towards the character when crafting his opus One More Day and his almost as good sequel One Moment in Time.

But raising up Mary Jane was always at the expense of poor Gwen, surely the most underrated of all Spider-Man love interest, nay, Marvel characters of all time.

When was the last time you EVER saw Gwen get ANY appreciation huh?

Certainly not when they killed her off. Much like ITSV this story is a case of people missing the subtle clues as if you pay close attention, you can see Mary Jane literally pushing Gwen off the bridge and snapping her neck too.

Gwen deserved better of course but alas from then on we could only turn to the oh so occasional flashback to see her again. Because of this red headed devil we were denied such great scenes like that one time Gwen Stacy said she was in love with Peter or that time she cried to her Dad.

Instead we are subjected to garbage like this!

#Spider-Man #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Gwen Stacy #Peter Parker #Joe Quesada

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years

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Psycho Analysis: Liev Schreiber Birthday Special - Sabretooth, Kingpin, and The Storm King

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Liev Schreiber is quite an actor, one that I think it is sadly easy to overlook despite his talent at portraying villains or other morally dubious characters. From his integral role in the Scream movies to his later numerous villainous roles, he manages to show himself as a rather skilled and versatile actor, particularly in regards to the latter; Schreiber is easily able to slip into playing a villain and deliver a fantastic performance… most of the time anyway.

The date I’m posting this on (October 4, 2019) is his birthday, so we’re going to take a look at three of his biggest villain roles to date:

Sabretooth from X-Men Origins

The Storm King from My Little Pony: The Movie

Kingpin from Into the Spider-Verse

The first is a great villain trapped in an awful movie; the second is an awful villain inside a fun and enjoyable movie; and the third is a great villain in an outstanding movie.

Motivation/Goals: Sabretooth is, in short, a psychopath. The guy lives for the thrill of battle, and is never satisfied unless he has someone to kill. He’s a predator, using the numerous wars he and his half-brother Logan fought in throughout history to sate his appetite, but it was never enough. Vietnam is when he really lost it, and soon after that his relationship with Logan became tarnished, leading to their numerous conflicts throughout the film. It’s rather simple, yet it’s effective. This is what we want from Sabretooth after all, a bloodthirsty, murderous psychopath who crosses every line imaginable and who just really wants to make Logan as miserable as possible.

The Storm King is kind of approaching dominating Equestria as if it were a business venture, complete with merchandise. Beyond that, he’s a bit of a one-note evil overlord, with none of the complex motivations and characterizations of the other antagonist of the film, Tempest Shadow. He’s just here for some quick laughs and to be the final boss in the third act.

Kingpin has my favorite motivation out of the entire lot: once when he was battling with Spider-Man, his wife and child walked in, and in fear and horror they fled, driving off only to be struck by a truck and killed. Kingpin then shoveled as much money as he could and hired the likes of Doc Ock and Green Goblin to help create a giant dimensional portal all so he could be reunited with his family. It’s such a tragic motive that adds layers of depth to Kingpin, and ultimately makes him an interesting foil for Miles, who decides to continue fighting so he can live up to those he loses (Peter and his uncle) while Kingpin cannot accept his loss or his responsibility and so decides to damn everyone else in his desperate struggle to undo the damage he himself caused.

Personality: Sabretooth is easily the most simple of the villains, in that he is just a completely unrepentant monster who revels in the fact he is a vicious, remorseless killer. Normally a villain like that would be boring and generic… but this is Sabretooth. This is what we want out of him. Add in his brotherly banter with Wolverine and his single-minded desire to ruin Logan’s life at every turn, and he just ends up being a really fun and engaging take on the character, with Schreiber injecting just the right amount of soft-spoken sadism and menace to make Victor Creed pants-crappingly terrifying.

Kingpin is a sleazy, scummy mob boss. He’s another seemingly simple character, but his design really helps show what kind of guy he is without telling us. This iteration of Wilson Fisk really plays up him being a mountain of a man, with him being a hulking behemoth with a very bulky design. Despite being a normal human, he looks like the kind of guy who could kill a superhuman with his bare hands. Despite all this, he does have sympathetic (but, and this can’t be stressed enough, not redeeming) qualities, such as his love for his family and his single-minded desire to be reunited with them. Of course, this desire is what leads to most of the troubles in the film, so he does show the dangers of that sort of careless and reckless pursuit of a goal is a bad thing, no matter how noble it seems.

Final Fate: The Storm King is the only character out of these three with a clear-cut fate, and it goes a long way to redeeming how bland the character is due to how out-of-place and dark it seems in the world of Friendship is Magic. In short, he is turned to stone, and his statue is allowed to drop to the ground, where he shatters into pieces. By all accounts, he is dead, a fate that seems to befall all terrible Friendship is Magic villains (cough Sombra cough).

Kingpin is the most open-ended, as after Miles stops him and in true Spider-Man fashion strings him up for the police. This does open up the door for Kingpin to appear again, which is a plus. The final showdown beforehand is a lot more interesting. The beatdown he gets from Miles, where Miles gets up from the pummeling that killed Peter and delivering a confident “Hey” like his uncle taught him right on Kingpin’s shoulder, sending him flying back to shut down his dimensional portal really is an awesome moment for the film and Miles in general.

Sabretooth… it really is impossible to say. He apparently makes it out of this film alive, but Schreiber’s Sabretooth is so disconnected from the one who appears later in the timeline (mostly on the token that Schreiber’s take is actually good and memorable) that it’s impossible what to say happened to him. Further muddying the waters is the numerous canon retcons to the timeline as shown in films like Days of Future Past, which altered the timeline in baffling ways such as causing people to be born earlier than they would have been, and then there’s the deleted idea for his cameo in Logan… Really, there’s no telling what exactly Happened to Victor Creed, as the X-Men series is such an utter mess.

Best Scene: Sabretooth has a few, such as the awesome opening montage where he and his brother fight through multiple wars, but perhaps the best part is when he and Wolverine team up to kill that awful thing pretending to be Deadpool. The real Deadpool would beat them to the punch much later in Deadpool 2, but hey, at least he knew what had to be done when he had the chance.

Kingpin’s is almost definitely the scene where he kills Peter, which shows him going through a shocking amount of emotion, but there’s also the flashback to his family’s demise or even that moment on the train where he becomes a lifetime achiever in the Pontoffel Pock Awards by screwing up in every conceivable reality imaginable and disturbing an entire multiverse worth of his family in his quest to murder Miles. Few people screw up on that epic of a scale.

The Storm King… I don’t know. He’s kinda scary in his final battle? Maybe when he plays with the sun and the moon? Nothing really stands out for him super well, because quite frankly he is massively overshadowed by Tempest Shadow, who has the honor of getting the villain song of the movie. And let me be completely frank: if you are a villain in a musical, and you don’t get a song, you suck. Period.

Best Quote: For Sabretooth, it has to be this quote that really sums up who he is: “I'm not your friend. I'm an animal, who dreamed he was a man. But the dream is over. And the beast is awake. And I will come for you without mercy, because it's my nature.”

Kingpin is a little trickier, because Wilson Fisk is a man of actions, rather than words; I feel like he doesn’t have too many great quips, but he has a plethora of awesome actions. However, I DO enjoy his intro, where Schreiber just kills it with the delivery and establishes Fisk right off the bat as one hell of a crime boss: “Doo-be do. Doo-be do. Yub-yub, doo-bee do, doo-bee-do. Watch out! Here comes the Spider-Man! You like my new toy? Cost me a fortune, but hey, can't take it with you, right? You came all this way. Watch the test. It's a hell of a frickin' light show, you're gonna love this.”

For Storm King… well, this is kind of a funny line: “Here's the deal. I'm in the middle of a big rebrand here. "The Storm King" is tracking, well, as "intensely intimidating", but you know what? I need to back it up. You know what I need to back it up with? A STORM! THAT WOULD BE GREAT! You promised me magic that could control the elements, and right now, I'm holding a what? A branch. A twig. Bleh!” Kind of a reach, but I think he does have some decent comedic moments here and there, and his initial, er, phone call with Tempest is charming enough.

Final Thoughts & Score: These guys are really all over the place, but I think they really showcase Schreiber’s talents very well, as well as how to use him effectively.

Sabretooth is easily the best villain out of this bunch. While X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a terrible, bloated mess of a film, Sabretooth is one of the few redeeming factors, with Schreiber turning in a wonderfully terrifying performance as Logan’s arch-enemy. It’s frankly insulting they never had him come back to the franchise, because he was certainly far more deserving of a comeback than someone like Jennifer Lawrence. At least with Schreiber it was clear he cared about the character, which is more than can be said for whoever played the original Sabretooth (a character who is not even worth a Psycho Analysis; there’s just nothing to talk about there).

Really, the only major issues with Sabretooth are the fact that he’s in the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the X-Men franchise and the writing doesn’t do him many favors, but Schreiber is just acting his butt off to the point where it doesn’t matter, he’s selling it, he’s giving us the Sabretooth even the “better” first X-Men movie couldn’t deliver, and he seriously earns that 9/10. It should come as no shock that his take on Victor Creed is the one thing besides Ryan Reynolds fans truly love about the film.

Contrast the Storm King, who is just a depressing waste of potential. The prequel comics set him up to be something far more fascinating than what we get in the movie; he goes from a silly yet cunning overlord to a comical goober who barely gets any screentime, accomplishes half of his evil actions offscreen, and just leaves very little impression on the audience. Not helping is that he is by and large one of the biggest idiots ever seen in the Friendship is Magic franchise, backstabbing his own loyal followers for no good reason and basically playing with his hand revealed. It’s pretty telling that his henchwoman Tempest Shadow is the one who gets the villain song of the film (which, as I’ve pointed out, is a sign that he really, really sucks as a villain) and who is far more memorable, enjoyable, and interesting.

All that being said, I do appreciate the sentiment of the character, and I do like that Schreiber did it so his kids could watch something with him in it that wouldn’t make them scared out of their minds, and I don’t necessarily think Storm King is one of the most horrible villains ever or anything – he’s just boring and a waste of potential. I’d say he just barely makes it to a 3/10, and that’s mostly because he does have some amusing moments and how bad he is is offset by Tempest Shadow being such a fantastic antagonist; if she wasn’t in the movie, he’d easily be a low 2 and a lot less forgivable. That does seem kind of weird, but I think with a villain like Storm King where he’s just a simple goofball being played by a talented actor isn’t so bad as long as there’s an actual, serious antagonist. It doesn’t exactly make him any better but it keeps him from sinking to the rating of soomeone like Jared Leto’s Joker.

Kingpin is, quite simply, fantastic. I love his design, I love his motivation, I love how he just commands the scene when he walks into the room. This guy is just peak villain design, story-wise and design-wise. Some have taken umbrage with the fact that Kingpin is the one who got to kill Peter rather than a more personal foe like Norman Osborn, but frankly I like that they took a unique approach and decided to utilize a more unexpected foe of Spidey’s.

I think what’s best about Kingpin is just how they manage to make him a rather tragic and pitiable figure despite all the evil he does. Normally it would be a tall order to make the man who murders Peter Parker a tragic figure, but somehow the film manages, showing him to be a bitter, broken man desperately clinging to the tiny hope he could ever see his family again by destroying the dimensional barriers, no matter the cost. And if someone tries to tell him otherwise? Kill ‘em. Obviously this doesn’t excuse his actions, and the movie thankfully never pretends to, but I like that they made this Kingpin such a rich character in his own right, continuing the trend of Kingpin always being given a fantastic performance. Much like Sabretooth, Schreiber really earns the 9/10 with this fantastic vocal performance and just how impactful and even proactive Kingpin is in the story. He gets two major deaths to his name after all.

Liev Schreiber is such a fascinating actor, one who I think is so often overlooked and ignored. While he certainly is typecast as villains fairly often, I think it’s safe to say he excels at those kinds of roles, and he always manages to inject something unique into his roles. You wouldn’t confuse any of these three villains for each other after all.

#Psycho Analysis #Liev Schreiber #Sabretooth #X-Men #X-Men Origins: Wolverine #My Little Pony #Friendship is Magic #The Storm King #Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse #Kingpin

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smartbutuncertified · 5 years

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Movie Review: NoBody’s Perfect (2008)

I watched the movie noBody’s Perfect, filmed in 2008, by Niko Von Glasow. The main stars are Fred Dove, Kim Morton, and Bianca Vogel. It’s about a man who has a major birth defect due to Thalidomide trying to find others who have a Thalomide birth defect to make a nude calendar. The film largely concerns body image issues, but also touches on the idea of disabled people being whole and how abled people often disregard disabled people’s privacy and dignity for their comfort and curiosity. The act of participating in the calendar seems to be a large step forward for many of them, to seeing their bodies more kindly. It also has a large section devoted to discussing how little responsibility was taken in Germany by the company who distributed the drug, and continued to do so even after they knew what it did to fetuses.

It talks a lot about acceptance of your body and your differences, a subject that is very topical in our airbrushed world. Having a major birth defect is about as far from classical beauty as can be, and yet they find beauty and joy in themselves. So as a member of the general population living in the same cultural climate of our bodies never being good enough, it connects on that level. “My (short) arms are a part of me, they’re a part of my life, and that’s all right. But I am not ‘short arms’.” Sofia declares.

It hits home in a closer way as well. I also had a birth defect. Like a terrible country song, I was born with a broken heart. It was entirely internal, but saving my life left me with a distinctive scar on my chest nearly a foot long, distinctive enough that people who work in cardiology sometimes ask what I had fixed. I don’t think about it too much, but sometimes people mention it when I wear a top that shows where it starts. Perhaps I should be prouder of it. I survived.

Then there’s the abled people feeling like disabled people have some sort of duty to disclose their disability, another personal sore spot. Fred Dove, while being interviewed on a radio show, had his disability disclosed to all the listeners by the interviewer as a bit of - color commentary. I cannot politely express how livid that made me, but I wholly understand why Fred only spoke about it for a few seconds before changing the topic.

Sofia, an actress, recounted a disturbing event from her childhood where she was often forced to strip naked in front of a number of doctors, usually male, for inspection. “It was awful. I was surrounded by about 20 white coats” This reinforced my belief that it’s incredibly important to preserve the privacy and dignity of disabled people, children, and disabled children. There is no reason why a child not having an immediate medical emergency needs to be stripped naked in front of so many adults at once.

It’s stunning that Kim’s mother up and left her religion entirely when the minister refused to have Kim in church due to her visible disabled status. That shows remarkable integrity. It also illustrates a much larger dynamic present throughout the film, the importance of the individual over the system. Systems are useful, but if they no longer serve their intended purpose, for example, a holy place turning away an innocent child for looking odd, they need to be abandoned for the sake of those they should have helped, and didn’t. This aligns wholly with my view of how our relationships with institutions should work.

It’s notable and painful how differently the Vogel siblings were treated by their families, with the one not affected getting much more attention and praise from their grandparents. However, this doesn’t seem to have affected their relationship, they seem quite close. This defied the general narrative of the spoiled child becoming cruel to the maltreated one, and makes me wonder how much truth there is to that idea.

About forty percent of the way through, they reveal a horrifying fact. The company that made the drug knew what it did in 1961, and still kept selling it. Even worse, the pioneer of the drug knew that one of the ingredients was of a group often referred to as “monster makers”. The company compounded the error by having no female trials before releasing it to the public. The company has also never even apologized to the victims, let alone settled with them. One interviewee puts it best when he says “[…] let’s call them criminals, who committed their crimes in the greedy pursuit of profit.” I absolutely agree with that, the film is not the only thing making me want justice for the models.

I’m not sure how I feel about the constant presence of smoking in the film. Since it’s reality, it’s important to represent honestly, but I wonder what this says about addiction among the disabled. Either that, or smoking rates are much higher in Europe. That would have to be a whole other paper, honestly. I don’t agree with smoking, but vulnerable people pick their pleasures where they can get them.

I take exception to one interview where they talk about how when they talk about their issues in a public forum, the issues become detached from them. The interviewee seems to feel that in order to express oneself clearly, detaching yourself is the only way to do it. I would argue that this in fact muddies the issue, making it less about what is important: the people.

I was surprised by the interview with the gardener, which talked about another of the disabled models sexually assaulting women, and about him beating up kids his own age and older in school. It’s generally not considered that the physically disabled are also capable of assault, but they are whole people in every way, not just the positive ones.

I have very mixed feelings about the astrophysicist who reportedly grabbed women’s chests being presented sympathetically. I’m aware that this was a single report from another person, and that that isn’t the whole of who he is, but it still discomforts me that the film seems to brush over what it’s reported that he did. The film mentions that Thalidomide disabled about 7,000 children, surely there weren’t exactly twelve that were willing to pose nude?

It must be mentioned that nobody from the drug company was present in the film for any significant part, but that was not for want of trying on the director’s part. He did his best to loop them into the film for their side of things, and they refused to participate.

It addressed the whole topic of body issues incredibly, letting people speak for themselves about what made them uncomfortable and what didn’t. As one interviewee put it, “[My insecurity] is in my mind, it’s not in your perception, is it? It’s like, you look fine to me, but you’re probably unhappy about something that I don’t care about.”

The presence of ableism is felt throughout the film in many of the conversations and in how several of the models think and behave in regards to themselves. All of the models have varying levels of comfort with themselves and their disability. The director, Niko, is one of the least comfortable. It was interesting to hear that for Doris and Niko, they stayed away from other Thalidomide children for quite a while because they didn’t want to see themselves in them. They didn’t want to relate to others who were clearly different and know that they were just as different. It’s also mentioned that several of the models have had difficulty with romantic relationships because of their disability. But there are only two shown incidents. A child making fun of a wheelchair using model and a man and the end who is being interviewed on the street about the art installation saying that it’s “tasteless” for a disabled person’s naked body to be shown in public. Thankfully, both of these are framed with an immediate counterpoint by people who weren’t hired by the producers, showing that times are changing. These scenes were handled with care.

There was an interesting conversation where an interviewee that uses a powered wheelchair admits casually that he’s considered killing himself. It’s moved past quickly, but there’s something about the framing that makes it feel less like they did it to dismiss it, and more like they don’t want to dwell over it and overshadow the other complex facets that this person has. As someone who has struggled with suicidal impulses, I loved that.

The inclusion of the lesbian art teacher served as a pointed reminder of the intersectionality of disabled issues. Past the obvious, she also mentions founding a group working to protect disabled women and girls from sexual violence, something that’s not often thought of as an issue concerning the disabled specifically. But they are a uniquely vulnerable population to predation.

It passed the “who cares?” test with flying colors, framing the issue as one of pain and justice that crossed communities. I would say that it said that “who cares?” ought to be everyone who wants the world to be a safe place, for companies to be held accountable for their mistakes and “mistakes”, for people to be able to not fear what others think of them for things that are out of their control. Of course, the film may not hit like that for everyone who watches it, but it was good enough to win the German Film Award of 2009, so it’s clearly not just me.

The film opens on a scene of a man talking candidly to his daughter about being afraid to be naked in front of anyone because of his malformed arms. It was a good tone setter for the film, encapsulating the main issue, the joking, yet honest air, and how these people are not curiosities or strange creatures, but humans with lives and families. It was a beautiful way to ease into the film, and it flows well from there.

The theme of showing these people as complex and whole is possibly the strongest one in the film, arguably the film’s thesis. It was hard to hear that some of these people, as babies, were taken away from their mothers by the doctors with no explanation for days. One for two, one for six, and we don’t know about the others. I would understand wanting to monitor babies with a severe birth defect for further issues, but it isn’t that hard to keep the parents in the loop. They chose not to.

The film was art, but not art that is intended to make the viewer feel good. The art is put into making you understand, as much as you can, what happened to these people, and how they have continued on with what they have. You are allowed to have whatever feelings you like, but you must understand that they are whole human beings. They look incomplete to people who don’t know them, but they are anything but. You don’t need a certain amount of body mass to be human.

I must disclose that I personally watched the film largely in 20 minute increments, but that was largely because I kept stopping to note things down so that I could write this as well as possible, with plenty of accurate examples. If I was watching this for pleasure, I would absolutely have gone through it twice over without pause. I may very well do that at a later date.

Add to that that this film launched a successful campaign to increase German benefits for Thalidomide victims, and it’s done the thing all art sets out to do- made a notable mark on the world. I hope that all of the models benefited from this, as it’s hard to find out what happened to people whose last names you mostly don’t know. However, it was easy to find out that Niko is still thriving as a film director.

I thought that this film was stunning. I would view something by these people again in the future, because I love how things were addressed. I loved how they presented everything, how compassionate and thoughtful their framing of delicate issues was. But I would only recommend this to individuals above the age of fifteen who were okay with artistic nudity. There is explicit nudity, which may make some individuals uncomfortable, but it isn’t pornographic, just beautiful people being brave and naked. If you’re at all interested in disability issues, body issues, corporate accountability, or even all three, I would highly recommend this film.

#long post #my writing #nobody's perfect #writing #thalidomide #disabilities #disabled

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5am-raining · 5 years

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An interesting article about the Gloria films my classmate found! (in reference to the Gloria therapy films with Fritz Perls, just Google it if you’re interested in watching). All of this is taken from https://www.psychotherapy.net/blog/title/the-gloria-films-candid-answers-to-questions-therapists-ask-most.

“ When I penned an article and a book chapter on the classic Gloria Films some years ago I never dreamed these pieces would continue to bring me a seemingly endless string of correspondence. Indeed, this classic video influenced the psychotherapy training and subsequent practice strategies for thousands and thousands of helpers. To this day the battle rages on about whether this work of art was the savior of psychotherapy, or psychotherapy’s worst nightmare. Recently a graduate student contacted me with a string of seriously good questions. In this blog I shall share those questions with my answers to shed a tad more light on this major artifact of the 20th century counseling and psychotherapy movement. Okay, let’s do this! Question: Is the Gloria Film the actual name of the training video? I couldn't find an official reference for it? Answer: No, the actual title was Three Approaches to Psychotherapy I, II, and III, but folks dubbed it the Gloria Films.

Question: Is the work really as old as it looks? I mean it comes across as ancient. Answer: That’s because it is ancient. The actual filming took place in 1964 and the movie was released in 1965. In 1964 the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and in 1965, "The Sound of Music" was a big hit at the box office, and the mini-skirt was just released. Question: Who came up with the idea for the project? Answer: The mastermind (aka the producer and director) behind the flick was a California psychologist and psychotherapist of note, Everett.L. Shostrom. He created some self-actualization inventories and two years after the Gloria films he authored a successful book, Man the Manipulator. Question: Why do you think Dr. Shostrum got involved in this project? Answer: At that time a shroud of secrecy had permeated professional psychotherapeutic helping. The books gave mountains of information about theories, but there was very little literature about what therapists actually said to clients. In 1950 Shostrom recorded the late, great Carl Ransom Rogers with a client on a magnetic wire (yes, go ahead and laugh, this predated digital, cassettes, reel to reel, and eight-track recordings). But: It was not to be. The recording was lost forever when the head of the history department recorded his own presentation of Adam and Eve on the wire recorder! I mean seriously, could I make that up? Question: Why did Dr. Shostrom choose Albert Ellis, Carl Rogers, and Frederick (Fritz) Perls as the therapists? Answer: Well, quite frankly, it was an all-star line-up. A lot of folks in the field felt these three helpers were the dream team . . . the best in the world, if you will. Perls created gestalt therapy; Ellis pioneered RET or rational emotive therapy (abbreviated RT at the time of the filming); while Rogers was the father of nondirective counseling which in today’s world is often called person-centered counseling. Question: Why do my professors always call the approach by Ellis REBT? Is that the same thing as RET? Answer: Late in his career Ellis added the “B” to stand for behavior based on the longstanding recommendation of a well-known psychologist and psychotherapy book author Raymond J. Corsini. Question: Had Gloria met Perls, Rogers, and Ellis prior to the filming and what did she know about them? Answer: No. She just knew they were prominent therapists and would each have approximately 15 or 20 minutes to cure her of what ailed her. Question: Was Gloria a real client or merely an actress pretending to be a client? Answer: Oh definitely, a real client. In 1963 Shostrom put together a film titled "Introduction to Psychotherapy." The film featured an actress who was pretending to be a real client. Shostrom was not happy with the movie, nor the acting, hence a real client, Gloria, was cast for 1965 project. Question: I thought Perls acted like a jerk during his session. Do you have any evidence that Perls was aware of how he was coming across? I am totally sure my current internship supervisor would never allow me to treat a client in such a mean manner. Answer: I can say with great certainty that Perls was aware of his actions. At one point in the session he quips, "Well, Gloria, can you sense one thing? We had a good fight?" Question: So how do experts who practice gestalt therapy defend the practice of this theory? Answer: Well, generally speaking, they say something like, "You don't need to do therapy exactly like Perls to be a gestalt therapist." To be fair, I have heard top practitioners say precisely the same thing about Ellis, though to be sure they are not talking the way Ellis came across in this movie. If you ever witnessed a therapy session or workshop conducted by Ellis he was often prone to use a little off color language, and that's putting it mildly! Question: Okay, well here is my biggest question and the one I really want to know the answer to. In the movie, Rogers comes across in a very warm moving way. Ellis, is seemingly a tad less empathic, but not bad, while Perls is flat out mean to her. After Gloria experiences therapy sessions with all of them she is asked which therapist she would most like to continue therapy with and she chooses Dr. Perls. I was shocked. I mean, I just thought Rogers was the hands down winner. What in the world was going on here? Answer: You were surprised, I was surprised, my entire graduate class at the time we viewed the films was surprised, and seemingly countless others who viewed the sessions were in shock and awe. There was just something not quite right about her choice of Perls. I didn’t buy into it then and I sure don’t buy it now. In fact, it was her strange choice of Perls which piqued my interest in researching the movie. Personally, I thought it was the strangest response (from a client who was not psychotic) I had come across in the entire field of psychotherapy, and that's saying a lot! Question: Did you find it difficult to research this film? Answer: Do birds fly? Absolutely. Lots of people were trying to piece this puzzle together with very little success. Perhaps the most remarkable was a fellow I corresponded with in another country who was actually offering small rewards for information. Seemingly folks with connections to the film just were not talking. On one occasion a person who actually knew Shostrom told me he insisted I share anything I came up with him before I had it published! He wanted to approve or disapprove of what I was going to write. What? (Excuse me, but when did America stop being a free country? Just asking.) He also refused to give me any information and told me it wasn't relevant why Gloria chose Perls. This made me even more suspicious and made me want to research this even more! Question: Did Gloria ever see Perls after the interview and if so what transpired? I hope the transaction was more cordial than the therapy session. Answer: Yes they saw each other, but no it wasn't pleasant! According to Gloria, after the cameras stopped rolling and the experts and movie crew were preparing to depart, Perls used Gloria as a human ash tray (not a misprint). He motioned for her to hold her hands cupped with her palms facing up. He then flicked his cigarette ashes into her hand. Question: Geez, that's downright abusive, wouldn't you agree? Answer: Yeah! At the very, very least I could safely say it is behavior that was unbecoming of the father of a major psychotherapy modality. Question: Lots of folks on the web accuse Gloria of having an affair with Rogers or Ellis. Some even suggest she married one of them. Any truth to the rumors? Answer: Totally false. Junk science. Not a shred of evidence to support these claims. In fact, to the contrary, Gloria became very close to Rogers and his wife. Question: Okay, so I can't wait another moment. Why did Gloria pick Perls as her favorite? Rogers came across so empathic. Wasn't he surprised when Gloria did not choose him? I have heard therapists say that Perls was chosen because she realized she needed a tough helper and he would not allow her to remain disturbed. Answer: Rogers did admit he was baffled. In my mind Rogers gave a flawless performance. I'd give him five stars. Six if I could. As the session began to wind down Gloria says, "Gee, I'd like you for my father." Rogers replies, "You look to me like a pretty nice daughter." As you remarked earlier, it was very moving and Rogers came across as an ideal billboard advertisement for his own theory. Moments after the session with Rogers Gloria announced that, "All in all I feel good about this interview." Three years before he passed away, Ellis told me that Gloria hated Perls for the rest of her life. Ellis revealed that the movie was "a fake" in the sense that, prior to the filming Gloria had seen Shostrom for four years of psychotherapy. When the film was produced Rogers didn't know this either. At the time, Shostrom was a supporter of Perls. To quote Ellis, "He [Shostrom] got her to say it was Perls who helped her, when he actually didn't." Was Gloria experiencing positive transference toward Shostrom? Was it just that she didn't want to disappoint her therapist? Could it have been that she was petrified of Perls? I don't have the definitive answer, but I think all of the aforementioned issues most likely entered into this. Just for the record Ellis felt he tried to cover too much in his own session with Gloria, and thus while his intervention was not horrific, he was clearly not at the top of his own psychotherapeutic game. Question: So what is the take-away message you think counselors and therapists need to know? Answer: Well, first let me be 100% crystal clear that there are occasions when a helper must be direct and use confrontation. No argument about that. Not now, not ever. However, after watching the movie, countless generations of therapists came away with the false notion that a sarcastic, up in your face, card carrying mental judo therapist (in this instance Perls) will walk away with the grand prize. Over the years I routinely heard therapists, supervisors, and my own students brag, "I got right up in the client's face and came across like Perls in the movie," thinking that was the best approach. According to Gloria's daughter (referred to as Pammy, just a fifth-grader at the time of the film), who authored Living with the 'Gloria Films': A daughter's memory in 2013, these Perls wannabes got it oh so wrong. After perusing her book it is safe to say the brief session with Perls negatively impacted her for the rest of her life. Question: Is Gloria still alive? Answer: Sadly, Gloria passed away in her mid-forties after a battle with cancer. I believe Gloria said it best herself as she was fond of saying, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear." Every aspiring and practicing therapist who wants to complete the emerging gestalt should see this film. “

(Via https://www.psychotherapy.net/blog/title/the-gloria-films-candid-answers-to-questions-therapists-ask-most)

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mannatea · 6 years

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The latest chapter is bugging me and I was hoping to vent. I feel like the message of “war is bad, killing people is bad” is being handled in such a ham fisted way by isayama. I understand what he’s trying to do but it just feels so forced. For example Zootopia did an amazing job of taking a complex subject and making it clear enough for children to understand but weaving it into a good story too. SNK seems to be making that attempt for young adults, but it’s failing. Do you have any thoughts?

I always have thoughts! Sorry this took so long.

Zootopia has flaws! Glaring flaws! In fact, Zootopia has one of the same flaws that SnK has: the oppressed are feared because they used to have power over their oppressors. Right at the beginning of the film, they say: predators used to eat prey. So predators like Nick really did used to eat prey like Judy. This isn’t contestable, it isn’t arguable. It’s the backstory right there in the canon.

SnK has a little more wiggle room here, because our information comes from characters, not the narrative (or even an accepted historical perspective): we’re meant to believe that, more or less, the Eldians once had power over the rest of the world, and now, regardless of how they used that power and because of it, they are oppressed themselves.

What’s changed? Nothing, it’s just that the originally oppressed (Prey, Marley/rest-of-the-world) have gathered together the resources and means necessary to oppress, thus flipping the script.

And like, no matter how you look at it, the flipped script is both awful and understandable. This holds up better in SnK than it does in Zootopia, but SnK has been dragging on for years and Zootopia is a children’s movie that had a two hour block of time. So okay, in Zootopia, again, the predators ate the prey, but then they all developed Intelligence and stopped eating each other, but the predators didn’t develop blunt teeth or lack of claws, so the prey still feel like there’s something to be feared, there. In SnK, the Eldians can turn into mindless gigantic monsters that literally crush, stomp, kick, and eat everyone in their path, and to the average human being are invincible. Fear? Understandable. Oppressing them because they’re different? Awful, not to mention wrong…but not like…hard to understand.

Again, Zootopia ran into the SAME problem that SnK did with its comparisons. Both, brought into the real world to use with real world comparisons, would sound like this:

The Jewish people oppressed their German neighbors and the Germans retaliated and put them in Camps and killed them off by the thousands so that they wouldn’t have to fear being oppressed again themselves. This is, like, weird revenge for stuff that happened in the Bible, like when the Jews took the Canaan Land.

(HI IT’S ME, there’s some kind of essay comparison thing betweeen SnK and the walls of Jericho I’m sure.)

Black men and women were in a position of power over white men and women so the white men and women shackled them and dragged them across the ocean out of fear for their own lives, and like, let them live and stuff, but only as slaves (who were treated as less valuable than cattle). Oh, and I guess you can keep aspects of your culture but only the parts that aren’t scary to us. And also become Christian so you’re less terrifying!!

Women were once the oppressors of men. We’ve been put in our place.

Do you see how legitimately gross this is? The idea that an oppressed people did something to terrify other nations into doing the oppressing? There is always a reason for everything that happens, and by that I’m not quoting bullshit Christianity rhetoric that is intended to make your grandma feel better when Aunt Susie dies; I mean CAUSE AND EFFECT. It’s easy to stir up hatred, okay? It’s not hard. You see it now. “Those brown people are stealing our jobs!!!” We all know someone, or ten someones, or a hundred, who believe that shit–who believe that Hispanic men and women are illegally in the USA stealing “American” jobs. And for a much quieter, less overt version of this, we have the white vegans who get mad if you try and explain to them that their lifestyle is understandable up to the point where they’re fine with brown men and women working as slaves to produce their food all in the name of “lol protecting animals.” Racism and misogyny aren’t always overt, and in fact…usually are not. Nobody who has been oppressed deserved it; nobody who has been oppressed was once the big bad oppressor, either.

All right, so moving on.

Zootopia’s comparisons are more clearly across the board. Judy, a prey animal, becomes a cop, a predator position, and is deterred by her parents/friends/new coworkers for various reasons that are clearly an allusion to misogyny. It’s commenting on anti-women attitudes. “That’s a man’s job.” “I’m going to give you my shit work because you’re a woman.” “I’m going to give you unreasonable parameters to work within because it’s funny to do that to women working in a man’s field.” Oh, and my favorite: “You work here but we’re going to give you the job here that we reserve for women.” And it’s not just the obvious people either, like Judy’s supervisor or her direct coworkers. Clawhauser doesn’t exactly come to Judy’s defense even though he’s kind to her, and Nick mocks Judy openly multiple times.

But wait, there’s more: Nick as a little boy wanted to join the Junior Ranger Scouts! It’s a prey-only group, mostly, where you’re taught how to protect yourself (it seems to be the idea, since prey is generally less capable of this). But when Nick was finally able to enroll, he wasn’t welcome and was bullied instantly (in a manner meant to discourage him from ever coming back). The situation is generally black and white: predators bully prey, prey bully predators. We don’t see a lot of instances of like bullying like (even though it probably happens in certain circumstances).

Nick’s joining the scouts also brings up poverty, as Nick’s family seems to have been very poor and his mother had to scrape the money together just to buy the uniform (probably contributing to feelings of guilt and shame when it ended up being obvious to Nick later that he wasn’t welcome there). And also something-something single parent.

SnK jumped face-first into “like bullying like” but only because Isayama stacked the deck that way from the start (and had time to do it): Oppressed Eldians vs. Walldians is what I mean, here. So we see Eldians who hate Marleyans, Marleyans (and the rest of the world) who hate Eldians, and then we see Eldians hurting each other, too (because they’ve been brainwashed into doing so and/or to protect themselves). We even get half-Marleyan Reiner, who isn’t wanted by his Marleyan father, but that seems to be more out of fear of getting hung (and/or hatred of Reiner’s manipulative mother) than anything.

Those are just a couple of examples. Both Zootopia and SnK deal with a similar type of issue and try to comment on things like racism, but only Zootopia openly comments on misogyny and poverty (which are both things very clearly related when you’re talking about racism parallels), not to mention internalized racism (which is still racism but exists more quietly, even in good people like Judy).

Where Zootopia excelled isn’t the broken-down simplified version of racism. It’s the story. It’s engaging. It’s fun. SnK started out that way! But now, as a whole, it feels disjointed and incomplete. There are long lulls of SnK where I feel bored and the characters/events transpiring feel meaningless.

I’m definitely not going to say that Zootopia is an objectively a better piece of media than SnK, because it isn’t. As I said earlier, it has its issues. They fell into the same pitfall that SnK did with “the oppressed were once themselves oppressors.” And if you look really hard at it and squint a lot, there are things to critique that you probably hadn’t considered before: like Gazelle’s dancers being shirtless predator men

And we can’t really say it’s fair to compare a two hour simplified metaphor for racism/misogyny/“they’re different than I am” intended for an audience of about eight years old to a teen+ rated manga that has been going on for literal years and has been published monthly that entire time.

(Try updating a story once a month for years and see how good the whole thing ends up being. Get back to me with a laundry list of embarrassing mistakes you made and massive regrets. You’ll have them. Trust me.)

Zootopia pretty much did “racism and misogyny are bad” and succeeded. It was a fairly successful film that was way, way better than anyone expected it to be (considering we mostly knew it as “the furry movie” due to the trailers being wildly stupid), but again: 2 hours and aimed at children. You can’t really simplify racism and misogyny and poverty into a two hour film and you definitely can’t do it flawlessly. They get points for trying, though, and for creating a piece of media that I personally related to and enjoyed (particularly from the angle of a woman working in fields dominated by men).

SnK is doing a lot of…something. I think “racism is bad” is an intention but it’s very long and drawn out and plastered onto the backdrop of a war and brainwashing and, what, centuries of oppression? Shit’s convoluted as hell and there’s no room left to talk about misogyny and poverty, even though they’re part of the series in many ways, and even though IMO these things are impossible to fully separate from the topic of racism. Add to this the attempt to write a narrative commentary on war and grey morality with a fantasy/gore aspect and you’ve kind of accidentally ruined the intention of the racism message far more than Zootopia ever did. Zootopia’s kind of like, “so hey thousands of years ago predators and prey weren’t intelligent so in our pre-caveman days we were enemies but once we developed brains we were like WTF? and stopped doing that.” SnK’s like, “well so it wasn’t really that long ago BUT the eldians oppressed everyone and we’re scared of being killed by them so we keep them in internment camps lol.”

SnK could yet surprise us by telling us that anyone can turn into a titan, and IMO that’s the ONLY way to save the racism metaphor that the series seems to be going for. LITERALLY the only way. It won’t make it perfect, but it’ll save it from being a colossal failure. “They’re oppressed now because they used to oppress us” is disgusting and vile and honestly kind of scary; that’s not a thing and a wildly successful series like SnK putting that message out into the world is terrifying. “They’re oppressed because we’re greedy fucks who lied and covered it up with a reason” not only makes a LOT of sense (see: only Marley deals with Eldia, nobody else does, it’d be easy to lie about it), but it’s a clear real-world parallel.

Right now, though…SnK has basically failed to fully address “racism is bad”—at least in a satisfying and inoffensive way.

And then of course, as Anon said, we have the war to talk about. Greed is a huge part of this and not very discussed. (Greed being about monetary greed, power, land, resources, et cetera.) I don’t know if SnK is actively trying to say war is bad or not; the narrative seems to be painting Eren in a bad light, but if I were (general) you, I wouldn’t take that very seriously. Isayama is notorious at this point for manipulating the narrative to fit what he wants you to see/take away from things. Otherwise, his idea of a plot twist wouldn’t work. ;P

Anyway, the latest chapter’s “killing people is bad” thing would come across a lot better, in my opinion, if there wasn’t already so much going on. Zootopia could condense its subject easily due to its 2 hour block, smallish cast, and simplified world. 111 chapters into SnK and there’s just no way anything is capable of being simple anymore. Is 111 trying to talk about “war is bad and killing is bad” or is it talking about revenge or the folly of anger? The Count of Monte Cristo did revenge so well nobody else will ever top it (so it might be unfair to expect SnK to), and even a GBA Fire Emblem game did anger better in a few lines of text.

I’m always down for picking apart something large like SnK but it is my opinion that the series is just too big, the cast too large, and the story too convoluted and folded over on itself, to make anything satisfyingly simple. There just aren’t enough panels to let Mikasa talk about why she protected Gabi, or to get into Kaya’s head so that we understand how she felt right before she tried to stab Gabi, or even what Mr. and Mrs. Braus were thinking when they found out this little girl killed Sasha.

It has to be simplified for space and time constraints, just like Zootopia did, but on a scale Zootopia didn’t have to deal with–and probably wouldn’t hold up under, if I had to guess.

So that leaves us with Zootopia handling things nicely because it only had to hold up for two hours of non-critical thought/viewership with just a handful of characters (in possession of the added bonus of being planned and edited before publication), and SnK flailing around a bit in some areas, and badly in others, because it’s trying to hold up over 111 chapters of content and well over 100 characters while being written pretty much on the fly.

I mean, it sucks! But it makes sense. Themes are going to have to be ham-fisted if they’re going to fit into SnK. At this point the series doesn’t have the luxury of time to spread it out.

#snk #snk critical #zootopia #long post #cute anons #answered mail #snk meta

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majorxmaggiexboy · 5 years

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i recently remembered a film my brother and i watched several times as children, and that got me thinking about the other stuff we would watch. most of which seems kind of weird on reflection. we don’t actually have any of these anymore, so just for funsicles i’m trying to think of the films and see if i can remember any of the details before actually googling them.

Live Action

Two Brothers - a couple of tiger cubs are captured by poachers or something and separated from each other. one is trained to perform in the circus and is also fed candy by some guy, the circusmaster is an absolute [censored]. the tiger learns to jump through fire which is important later. the other cub is given to a little boy (TERRIBLE IDEA) and is a pet for a while until he’s sold to someone else. the tigers are eventually reunited but then they’re chased by people with guns who try to trap them by setting things on fire BUT because the first tiger learned not to be scared of fire he shows his brother how to jump through it and they escape and are reunited with this other tiger that has a hole in her ear from a really close call with poachers. i think she’s their mom.

Gunther and the Paper Brigade - idk if it was knock-off Newsies or what but like there’s this kid named Gunther whose brother keeps an ant farm and said the line “did you know that all the ants in the world would weigh as much as all the people in the world?” and i think they’d just moved to a new house but Gunther joins some kind of newspaper group and at first he is AWFUL at delivering papers like he just slings em any ol’ place but then he gets into a sort of war with a bully and i think somebody orally siphoned some gasoline at one point and the brother’s ants definitely came into play and in the end Gunther was really good at delivering papers. He rode a bike. at one point he’s hanging out at the mall pretty often for some reason and his brother teases him about it.

Ben Wagner - Uhhh family moves to new town, kid has an older sister and a younger sister, there’s a freaky adult at the school who said the line “Wagner. Waaaagner. I’ve got it. The name is now set. in my. brain....,,..” Benny’s miserable for some reason but he meets a kind of mysterious girl who takes him to visit her elderly relative but to get there they have to walk across a log that’s across a river/waterfall type of situation. the elderly relative says something to the effect that if they all stand on one side of the house it’ll tip over. Ben regularly visits these people. His dad gives him some chores but he half-arses all of them and the dad walks him around to each thing (like the car that was supposed to be washed, the garage that was supposed to be tidied, w/e) and goes “you did a lousy job”. The older sister wants money for something but hasn’t saved up her allowance so she demands money from Ben and says the line “I bet you have tons of money squirreled away”. He goes to visit the mysterious girl and her relative but his little sister follows him and falls off the log bridge so he jumps in the water to save her and he manages it but then they’re both in the hospital.

No More Baths - Guy runs a club for kids and has some rules in place specifically to keep the kids safe but one kid breaks the rules and winds up getting himself hurt so the guy who just wanted to do nice things for the community kids gets straight up ARRESTED and his dog is put in the pound and the whole thing was some racially-motivated bull and the kids aren’t having it so they protest by refusing to bathe and i think they get to testify at the guy’s hearing too and anyway he wins so then the kids go play in some water bc they haven’t washed in weeks.

Goosebumps: Night in Terror Tower: Some dude is a little too enthusiastic about explaining to two children how the Rack works “It stretched, annnd streeettched, unTIL HIS BOOOOOOOOONES, WERE PUUULLLLLLLLED...poP. Right Out Of Their Sockets. :) “ and then those kids get chased around by some dude who wants to kill them or something. they try to buy a bus pass but they have medieval currency and the girl’s like “Our parents wouldn’t give us play money” but then they wind up in like actual medieval England. I think the girl’s name was Sidney.

Bunch of Assorted Wildlife Documentaries: idk there was a thing about an elephant painting and a lot to do with dolphins idk i think there was a bit of Steve Irwin in there too

Cartoons

The Gallivants - like Divergent but with very Orange ants who are assigned a career? or pick out a career? but when they reach adulthood they’re all supposed to develop something called a “kabump” which is like an extra segment for their creepy insect bodies. They wear shoes and their limbs can have either pink stripes or blue stripes. they might wear gloves? anyway the protagonist is named something like “Shando” and he doesn’t develop his “kabump” on time so it’s scandalous. His friends desert him or something. I think he wanted to be a musician and so makes himself a fake kabump but he plays the saxophone a little too vigorously or something and makes it come off, at which point he’s shamed and rejected by literally everyone but at some point he also tries to work in construction but accidentally breaks stuff and is told “You’re not a Con-struct. You’re a DE-STRUCT.” then he wanders around in a labyrinthine cave fighting a two-headed creature called something like, The VanterViper that wants to kill all the baby ants or something at i think in the end he’s appointed like official Mom of all the babies or something of that nature

The Ugly Duckling - Standard retelling of the classic tale, this one was created almost exclusively to sell Crayola products i’m pretty sure. This version has a baby swan just trying to live his best life but then a bunch of [redacted] sing at his adoptive mom about how “one bad apple spoils the batch” and he either runs away or gets kicked out. then he runs into a mouse who wears boots and has red hair and she proceeds to call him “Ugly” as if that’s his name, for the entire rest of the movie. He winds up inside a house at one point and two freaky looking cats sing at him about the importance of having “a high IQ” i think a church burns down and he saves the mouse? over the course of the film he gets more and more swan-like in appearance and maybe works for a theater for a little while and then everyone loves him.

Scamper - a bunch of penguins are trying to hatch their eggs but then they’re attacked by...something....and one penguin feels bad about losing some eggs so he takes someone else’s but then admits what he did and returns the egg to its real parents and everyone mourns the loss of their children while being grateful for the survivors. when the eggs hatch there’s like a little pink penguin and a little bluish penguin and they’re friends, they’re learning to slide during Penguin School but then they get captured and wind up on a boat and there’s a dog. They eat really tasty-looking crackers out of bags and are terrorized by the ship’s crew until they manage to escape and find their way back home to their grieving parents.

Willy the Sparrow - a sick (literally and figuratively) young boy has fun bullying a cat and being a [redacted] to birds but then an elderly woman turns him into a sparrow to teach him a lesson. He meets other birds, all of whom have decidedly human heads of hair, including an old man sparrow who teaches him to fly. he winds up challenging the former child-leader-of-the-sparrows for power using his human smarts to amaze them all and eventually leads an attack on the cat who rightfully holds a massive grudge against him. idk he like helps them find food or something and then gets turned back into a human maybe

The Seventh Brother - a young child is moving to a new place and brings her puppy, but somehow his carrier is knocked out of the car??? or something?? and he winds up lost in the forest but is rescued by a large family of rabbits who teach him how to act like a rabbit. He saves one of them from being carried off by a bird but then begins to die of malnutrition as dogs can’t live on the same diet as rabbits for any length of time. also, he rescues a former tormentor from a creepy-as-hell predator and is badly wounded in the process, prompting the rabbits to band together to get him home to his owner. they succeed and he’s pretty much cured by one (1) bowl of puppy food.

Some Blue’s Clues Special: idk whatever’s the one with the treble-clef and the treasure hunt where the ‘treasure’ turned out to be Steve’s grandma’s cookies that you can tell the exact taste and smell of just by looking at them and also the grandma made an appearance too

That Weird Puppet Cat in the Hat Thing with the grouchy bird who had to be taught how to play pretend but then was pushed into a panic attack when the group was playing pirates and he imagined it too vividly so then they explained that he could change the story at any time and also at one point they played a game called “pass the yawn” and the bird just went OFF more than once

Some cartoon, i think it was Anastasia, where at one point someone’s taking some stuff away and the girl says what on reflection i think might have been “My luggage!” but at the time i thought was “my lungs!” and i spent the whole movie thinking they done straight up confiscated the girl’s lungs.

The Swan Princess - and i remember nothing except the way Odette would say “Darren!” and the fact that she spent a lot of time as a bird and there was a puffin. also Darren was one of my early crushes purely because i liked his name.

The Secrets of NIHM 2: main character’s name was Timothy and was one of the first characters i mentally fanfic’d about. there was some song that was like “Just! say! Yes!” where i think he was being pressured to do drugs or be experimented on or something but mostly i remember him singing “I am my father’s son” and me being so confused thinking “well yeah?? Who else’s son could you be???”

idk some Thumbalina thing all i remember is “Deary! Marry the Mole!”

Friggin’ Barbie Rapunzel there was a purple(?) dragon and Rapunzel liked to paint and that movie was where i learned the word “adequate” and i’m still mad at that woman for being so rude like lady. who raised you. where are your manners. i think the dad dragon wanted the purple dragon to hate humans or something idk

some other film where there was a very definitely purple dragon but i can’t remember any details so it’s just going to haunt me forever but it was like a small-ish purple dragon.

#personal #movies #some of these didn't seem Weird until i started really thinking about them #turning the memory over a few times #in which i remember every movie child!me ever watched apparently #seventh brother was my great-grandad's favorite okay he and my great-grandma loved that one #willy the sparrow was also a frequent flier oh my nO #i have to actually google all these now and i'm gonna yell

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kariachi · 6 years

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Another commission! This time over 11k of Martin Mystery/Ben 10 crossover for @thenixkat.

A young man walks calmly through the forest. It’s been a nice afternoon, so far- hot and muggy with little cloud cover to prevent the summer sun from streaming through the trees. There’s a notable lack of birdsong, and just a quarter mile down the path he’d found a crow lying on the concrete, but he’s not worried. It’d winged off as soon as he nudged it with his shoe. Anyway, birds were supposed to call when predators were around, and if something was wrong in the park surely an alert would’ve been put out by now. It’s too nice of a day to waste time worrying over nothing.

Something glints in the sunlight, off to the side of a curve in the path near a large outcropping of rock and the man’s curiosity gets the better of him. A glass bottle maybe? Some loser littering out here, ruining things for the wildlife and the guests? He comes closer, hand resting on the stone, focused on the shining object. Yes, definitely a loser, but not as much a loser as him. After all, anyone littering here probably has a job, an education, a lover, isn’t living in their parents’ basement like he is. They’ve never ruined everything for everybody, but he has, hasn’t he? Just one failure after another starting with being born at all, such a waste….

He’s so caught in his own head, he doesn’t even see the teeth.

“-but of course the police don’t believe them, because what civilian cop is going to believe the person in the house you were breaking into was murdered by donuts-”

“Hey guys!”

“Oh thank God.” Diana just about collapsed with relief right on the moving walkway at their alien friend’s timely arrival. Martin had been talking about this movie for two days and now that he’d realized she wasn’t going to watch it with him he’d decided to just recap the entire fucking thing. “Hi Billy.”

“Hi Billy.”

“Hey Billy!” The grin on Martin’s face could not be removed, only turned to new victims. “I was just telling Diana about this new movie that came out- Attack of the Killer Donuts.”

“Ooo,” Billy grinned back, “sounds interesting.”

“It is! It’s got almost all the classic B-horror tropes! I’ll stream it for you after we get back from this mission.”

“Speaking of which,” Diana interrupted before her only shot at a moment without breakfast foods as a main topic vanished into the ether (Java wasn’t helping, he’d given up and watched the film within the first two hours and was now on Martin’s side, the traitor), “any idea what we’re getting into?”

“MOM’s got the details,” the alien said, “but I do know Osmosians are involved, so I printed off these pamphlets.” As he spoke he distributed the pieces of paper. The whole team’s brows raised as one at the first item listed. ‘Bring food.’ “Security Chief Jones was involved in their original production, so you can trust the information to be accurate.”

“Uh, thanks, Billy.” They were all still focused on the pamphlets, reading through the surprisingly short list of safety tips. They mostly seemed to boil down to ‘don’t let them get hungry’ and ‘don’t piss them off’.

“Don’t worry, Eva says they’re really nice people.”

For once MOM didn’t appear to have some experiment going, no guests hanging around, and Martin was visibly thrown off by it. Instead she was checking three backpacks stuffed to the brim with gear, from water canteens hanging off the sides to what were probably area maps and what looked like way too much food.

“Jones not kidding,” Java said as they watched her shift things in one of the packs so another Ziploc of trail mix could be fit inside.

“Hi MOM,” Martin then said, coming forward with a grin and snatching up one of the packs, hefting it over his shoulder. “What sort’ve mission have we got today? Saharan zombies? Jungle werewolves?” MOM just raised a brow, zipping the pack she’d been fiddling with shut and circling her desk to take a seat.

“Not quite, Martin.” She picked a folder up off the desk and handed it to Diana as she and Java joined them. “You’ll be investigating a series of missing persons cases at Star Ridge State Park in the eastern United States.” The boys peered over Diana’s shoulders as she flipped through the folder, grabbing packs for herself and Java with her tail. Inside were numerous police reports describing the disappearances of nine people, including photos of the missing. A pair of girls no older than her and Martin. A man in his mid-twenties. Middle-aged, elderly, children, there didn’t seem to be any pattern to the missing.

Only one particularly stood out, and the team all glanced at each other when they got to them. The photo showed an adult, they supposed, with short antlers, a muzzle, and tufted tail. Their skin was thick and tawny brown, covered in scutes, and they had teeth like something out of the Ice Age. One eye, the left, was marred with scarring and left a milky pink.

“I take it this is why Billy was talking about Osmosians?” Diana asked, and MOM nodded.

“The park contains a large pack,” she said, “and a good portion of it is their territory. You’ll have to be careful and respectful when inside, Martin.”

“Hey!”

“Osmosians do not suffer disrespect well, especially not established packs. They and the local tribe have happily agreed to work with us, so don’t make either one regret it.” Her tone turned sharp on the last portion, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Of course,” Diana said, and Java nodded beside her. MOM just hummed back at them.

“The pack has called in a team themselves,” she continued, “you’ll be meeting them at the Greenwich Entrance.”

“Wait,” Martin said as she opened the door out, “why would they call in someone else if we’re already coming?”

“It’s an Ossy thing.”

“Is even in pamphlet,” Java said, holding his own copy up, and he was right.

#9. It’s an Ossy thing, roll with it.

The trip in was uneventful, and mostly consisted of Martin trying to work out what sort’ve paranormal mess they were walking into and Diana- who at this point wasn’t even going to argue about the paranormal with him, he was right over half the time and she just ended up listening to him gloat about it- trying to make him drive like a person who knew how. Meanwhile Java appeared to have tuned them both out about an hour ago, pulling out a novel and burying himself in that for most of the drive.

Entering the park revealed a lovely sight. Everything was in full bloom- green vines with trumpet-shaped pink-orange flowers creeping high on the red brick archway that marked the entrance, native flowers a mass of color beneath the entrance sign. Trees all various shades of rich greens. Bees buzzed, butterflies fluttered, and in pride of place sat a large fountain topped with a sculpture of a doe and fawns.

Two people who were probably human stood at the base of the fountain, a distinction made because most of the people they were watching off to the side very much weren’t. One was, an elderly man with dark skin, but out of the other three one was clearly an Osmosian, like the victim they had the photo of, while another’s blue fur blatantly marked him as alien, and the last had teeth they could see flash when they talked even as they came to a stop several yards away. At their feet was a large blue, dog? thing? maybe? There wasn’t that much time to dwell on it, because one of the humans was a girl their age and so as soon as the keys were out of the ignition Martin practically teleported to her side. The redhead looked both surprised and unimpressed by his sudden appearance.

“Hey there, I don’t think we’ve been introduced. My name’s Martin-” True to form he didn’t seem to notice how the girl and the brunet beside her were side eyeing him. He also didn’t notice his sister storming over until she had him by the ear and was yanking him away from them.

“I’m sorry about him, he’s a moron,” she said, holding out her free hand to shake. “I take it you’re the other team that got called in?”

“More like Kevin got called in and we came along for the ride, but yeah,” the girl replied with a firm handshake. “Gwen Tennyson, this is my cousin Ben- also a moron-”

“Hey!”

“-and over there are Rook, Kevin, and the dog is Zed.” Diana nodded, gesturing to her own team.

“I’m Diana Lombard, this is my brother, Martin Mystery, and that’s Java.” Java waved with a smile and Ben waved back.

“Wait, ‘Martin Mystery’?” Kevin and Rook were returning to the group, a map clenched in Rook’s hands and Zed at their heels. There was a toothy and slightly sinister grin on Kevin’s face. “The Martin Mystery and company?” Java and Diana shared a wary look as Martin puffed up like a rooster and held out a hand, gaze lingering briefly on the tight shirt and monstrous teeth.

“The one and only.” Kevin’s toothy grin only got more worrying, even as he accepted the handshake.

“I’m Eva Jones’s son.” And Martin deflated like a popped balloon, which was always amusing for the others. There was no way the Chief of Security’s son was going to be in awe. Something that was all but confirmed when he continued talking. “Mom has told me so many stories about you.”

“What kind of stories?” Martin asked, eyes narrowing slightly, and Kevin shrugged.

“Varies. Sometimes I stop by for dinner and get to hear about ‘Agent Lombard beat a slug-fucker with brains and a saltwater fish tank’, others I get a text in the middle of the night thanking me for having enough sense to not let a werewolf wound go untreated.” And there it was, Martin was on the edge of pouting. Fortunately- or unfortunately, if you were Diana and loved watching your brother wallow in his own dangerous stupid- Gwen was merciful.

“So, what have we got to go on?” Rook seemed as happy to get to work as Martin and smiled at all of them, immediately going and laying the map he held out on the fountain wall.

“Aaron and John were good enough to provide us a map showing the general area of each disappearance,” he said, pointing out a series of red spots on the map. They were all clustered over a large area with no discernible pattern. “If we make our way onto the Aspen Trail, then cut onto the Blackcap Trail, we should be able to do a partial circuit of the area.” Stepping back, Martin stretched and grinned.

“Sounds like a plan.”

They’d been walking an hour and Diana was in hell.

“I wouldn’t call Attack of the Killer Donuts the best B-horror of our time, I mean have you seen Ice Spiders?”

“Really, Benji? If you’re going with Syfy-style you could at least go for Attack of the Killer Lampreys or something.”

“Ooo, that one was awesome! I’ve watched it four times!”

“Java big fan of Lake Placid sequels.”

“Hold up- Two? Or three and four?”

“Three and four.”

“Good man.”

It was a nightmare.

“I was really hoping Martin would leave this discussion behind.” Gwen patted Diana on the shoulder, joining her in sighing.

“Men, can’t live with them and if you kill them you have to deal with their mothers.” Diana almost joked about having a shot then, then remembered that much like she was, despite all attempts, clearly their father’s favorite, Martin and their mother had bonded like no other, and it was entirely likely that if she killed him Mom would disown her and start again with new children.

She sighed once more.

“So,” she said, pulling her eyes off the boys walking ahead of them to look at Gwen, “the pack brought you guys in?” Gwen nodded.

“Kevin’s Top Ossy on the planet right now, and the missing Ossy is his brother-in-law’s cousin, so when the pack couldn’t figure out what was happening he’s where they turned. The rest of us didn’t want him running into who knows what kind of trouble without back-up.” She could understand that. Apparently, nobody knew what they were dealing with, other than that it probably wasn’t a natural phenomenon (score- one Martin, yay). There weren’t any sinkholes found or anything, and Diana couldn’t imagine large predators had much space to come in with a whole pack of them already living there. But then, why was it…

“Does it seem eerily quiet to you?” Diana asked after a moment. There was still the boys’ conversation, but under it was, nothing.

“Oh thank god, it’s not just me. Shouldn’t there be birds or bugs or something?”

“Yeah…”

Up ahead, Zed sudden froze and began to growl.

Nothing appeared off about the area they were heading into, but still the group stopped where they were and carefully took stock of what was ahead. It was a small valley, not particularly deep but still notable. The path went in, followed the edge of the river, heavily laden with plant-life, then went back up the cliffside a few acres along. At first look, purely innocuous, but as they closed in on each other protectively experience told them they weren’t so lucky.

“Prime ambush territory,” Ben said, and the others all nodded.

“I say we risk it,” Martin added, and Diana sighed.

“Of course you do.”

“What are we going to learn if we don’t go in? Nothing, so we go.”

“It makes sense.”

“If we die, the Center’s paying for the funerals.”

“Deal.”

Which was about the point where a massive head came out of the undergrowth, straight at them, at speed.

“Shit!” Nearly as one mind they scattered, Gwen instinctively hurling a mass of pink energy at the creature as they dodged its fangs. The damn things were easily the length of Diana’s arm! The girls, Kevin, and Rook scrambled away from the creature as more of it emerged, Kevin’s hand tight on Zed’s collar.

It was a massive serpent, with a head easily as wide as Java. The scales along it’s body were a deep, deep black with dark blue banding and shone with a rainbow of iridescence, its head crested with a rack of long, tined antlers. High on the head, between its eyes- one a deep brown and the other a milky beige- sat a diamond crystal that blazed in the mid-afternoon sun. It was beautiful, so beautiful. Surely this would be the best way to die, here to something lovely, rather than later to some slime creature, or ghost, or whatever horrible thing she would be made to face next. A miracle, the fact she’d survived this long, how much longer could luck last before something else ate her, possessed her, best for them not to have the chance-

A flash of pain as she hit concrete and Diana was knocked from her daze, looking up to see Rook laid overtop of her on the trail as the serpent surged forward above them. It turned on itself, clearly drawing back for another attempt and giving Kevin and Gwen just enough of an opening to rush back in and haul them to their feet. The two bolted back up the path, Zed just ahead of them and Kevin behind, as Gwen blasted the beast again, sending it reeling long enough for Martin and Java to come running back out from where they’d tumbled into the valley, Ben over the caveman’s shoulder.

“There’s two of them,” Martin yelled as they ran passed, grabbing Gwen by the arm and shoving her ahead of them. “Two!”

True to word another of the beasts slithered behind them, whole and hearty and quickly joining with the first in chasing them down. All they could do was keep running, running despite the realization these things were fast, and large enough that they all knew any distance they might gain would be lost if they tried to head into the trees. These things could probably eat the trees. Relief only came when Ben finally came back to himself, vanishing in a flash of green light that had Java dropping him in the path, only to appear again as a plantperson.

“Time to bring the heat,” he said, shooting seeds from his hands into the earth along the path. Almost instantly they sprouted, bursting forth as thick vines that joined together to form a wall blocking the way. He then lit the vines on fire, just in case. “Hah! Let’s see ya get through that!”

“Don’t tempt the dragons!” Swampfire squeaked as Kevin got him by the back of the neck, having doubled back once he realized what was happening, and dragged him along with the others.

They may or may not have been being chased anymore, but they sure as fuck weren’t stopping.

“I can’t believe we almost got eaten by an Uktena!”

“Two Uktena.”

“Even better!”

For the most part they were all collapsed at one of the outlook spots on the trail. Martin, though, was pacing back and forth with a grin because who else did Diana know who would think nearly dying via giant snake monster was cool?

“Okay, Martin,” Gwen said, “glad you’re happy, but if you could fill the rest of us in.” He stopped and turned his grin on the group.

“Uktena are horned serpents from Cherokee myth, formed out of people unhappy with their lives,” he said. “The crystal on the head? It’s called an Ulun'suti- I probably butchered that… Anyway, it’s mildly hypnotic and eventually creatures who stare into it just give themselves up to be eaten!” A look of mild confusion came over his face. “They don’t normally hunt humans though, that’s weird…” Off the side, where he was lying in the grass, Kevin shook his head.

“A dragon made out of people, with a blind left eye, that’s just suddenly showed up?” He lifted his head enough to look at the others. “That was Dalen.” His head thudded back down. “Also explains why she’s hunting humans, we aren’t picky eaters.”

“Alright,” Diana said, “that explains the one then. What about the other?” Everybody shrugged.

“Who knows,” Martin said, “could be another one of the missing people, could be one that just showed up around now. Maybe having the other one here attracted it.”

“Knowing our luck it heard we were coming and decided to join in.” Ben heaved a sigh. “Why is it always things with scales? We have not met anyone decent with scales!”

Diana was happy to see everyone except Ben sit up and give him the stink eye. Kevin doubly so.

“Excepting present company.” She continued to glare, tail twitching in aggravation. Was it cool to smack one of somebody else’s boys?

“Uh-huh, yeah..”

“And all of my siblings? Just not a thing now?” Kevin asked with a sneer, before falling back to the ground. Zed whined and curled up against his side. “Just, will somebody kill him and save me the trouble?”

“No killing my cousin,” Gwen said, flopping back down herself.

“And you all see why we broke up.” While Kevin huffed, Ben turned a pleading gaze on Martin, in clear hopes of back-up. Instead Martin gave him a sharp look and went to collapse beside his sister and Gwen.

“Not cool, man.”

They decided, in the end, to turn in for the night and pick the mission back up in the morning. The reasoning being that it was getting late and since so far all known attacks and attempted attacks had happened during the day odds were good the Uktena were at least primarily diurnal. An unoccupied cabin was found along the trail, outside of what Martin and Kevin had deemed the ‘Dinner Zone’ as well as the pack territories. That second bit was important because once everyone was inside Kevin had gone out and rubbed his scent all over the trees surrounding the building, just in case that helped.

It was an Ossy thing. They rolled with it.

Dinner options were slim. The Center had provided trail food- mixes, jerky, dried fruit- and a few tins of canned meat and fish for each agent. The Tennyson team turned out to be at least a little more prepared, mostly because Kevin had managed to fit a corned beef into his pack (“We just don’t ask anymore, last time it ended with a two-hour explanation of space-time and dimensional rigging that went over everybody’s head”) and Rook had brought a collapsible pot and portable range (“You would think the park would stock these, but apparently no”). Most of the corned beef went to Kevin and Zed, something the Tennysons and Rook didn’t begrudge them and Martin, Diana, and Java- keeping in mind the pamphlets- decided to follow their lead on. They weren’t certain what happened if an Osmosian got hungry, but they didn’t want to find out.

Eventually, the group split into two, with Java, Rook, and Kevin taking over the kitchen while the others hung out the whole ten feet away in the living room. If nothing else the cooks seemed to be enjoying themselves, laughing and chatting and exchanging tips and tricks and recipes. And at some point Kevin’d put his hair up, the end result of which was Martin watching them over the back of one of the couches, eyes narrowed, mouth open, and head tilted to one side as Ben patted him consolingly on the shoulder.

“I swear,” Diana said quietly as she watched this, leaning in close to Gwen, “I can feel his heterosexuality combusting from here.” Gwen nodded.

“Yeah, that happens sometimes.”

“You know, I never thought I’d enjoy canned sardines.”

“It is amazing what you can make work by cannibalizing the right packs.”

“And working with a guy who’s used to making a single ingredient into a million distinct recipes.”

“You are welcome.”

“Ooo, spellbook!” It was a testament to the sort’ve thing she was used to that Gwen didn’t jump when Martin unceremoniously dumped himself into the seat beside her. She’d figured getting some studying done couldn’t hurt, not when they were trying to deal with a pair of giant, magical snakes, but as soon as she’d pulled out the book and cracked it open there he’d been.

“Into magic?” she asked, looking at him critically, eyes narrowed. Martin puffed up proudly.

“Runs in the family,” he said, “I can’t even remember when my Gran and aunts started teaching me spellwork.” Gwen snorted a quick laugh.

“Lucky. I had to teach myself. It’s only in the last few years I’ve gotten any actual teaching, or access to new books.” She raised the one in her lap slightly for emphasis and watched Martin light right up.

“Wait here! Java!” Leaping to his feet he crossed the space between himself and the caveman, immediately digging into the front of his shirt and pulling out a large book before practically diving back for the couch. “Check this out.”

The book wasn’t as grand as the one Gwen held, and it was certainly in worse shape. There was water damage, scorch marks, and places where dirt had clearly been ground into the parchment. As Martin flipped through it Gwen was fairly certain she saw evidence that it had been rebound at least once. But it was stuffed to the brim with spells and notes in what she had to assume was his own handwriting. Half of the spells weren’t even in the same languages, she counted at least six. Three of which she didn’t recognize.

“Okay,” she said after about the third spell in what she would later learn was Etruscan, leaning over to dig through her pack for some pens and paper, “you can copy from mine if I can copy from yours. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Okay,” Rook said the next morning while they all gathered over a breakfast of cereal bars, jerky, and dried apples, plus plenty of instant coffee for Martin and Gwen (“It’s your own fault for staying up till four am”), “let us review- what do we know?”

“That we’re dealing with two Uktena,” Diana said, “one of whom used to be an Osmosian.”

“Because of course Ossys aren’t scary enough,” Ben added and got swatted for it because she and Kevin were both too tired for him to start.

“Hunting here,” Java said, pointing at the map laid on the table between them, “in valleys.”

“They’re ambush predators,” Martin said around a bite of cheerio bar. “Plus, their breath is poisonous.”

“Oh joy.” Sarcasm was just dripping from Kevin’s voice. “Hypnotic and poisonous.” He sighed, snatching up a handful of jerky and chewing it with open aggravation. “Roy can never hear about that, for his own sake.” Gwen patted his shoulder and passed an apple ring to Zed before leaning forward to inspect the map.

“So, what do we do then? Are we catching them or-?”

“The Center can move them somewhere they won’t be a threat to any people,” Diana said. “They’ve done it before with larger creatures. We just have to subdue them first so they can come in and get them.”

“It’s safer than trying to kill them anyway,” Martin added. “They’ve only got one vulnerable spot, on the seventh stripe, and it’s tough to hit without being in eating range.”

“Okay,” Ben said, “so all we have to do is catch them.”

“Easier said than done,” Diana replied, leaning back against the couch. “How do we catch them?”

“If you guys can get them to stay still,” Gwen said, “Martin and I both have sleep spells we can cast on them. I don’t know for sure if they’d work on these things, but it’s worth a shot.”

“I don’t know, Gwen,” Martin said, rubbing the back of his head. “Supposedly seeing these things asleep causes your family to die.”

“At this point,” Kevin tossed in, “I would be impressed if something managed to kill the family I’ve still got.” The table went quiet, everyone rolling the risk around in their heads, blindly watching Zed sneak food.

“Alright,” Rook eventually said, “how about this- Ben, do you think you could use Diamondhead or Swampfire to subdue them?” Ben hummed, leaning back in his seat as he considered the idea.

“Diamondhead, Swampfire, Wildvine, all could lock them in place from a distance. Maybe Gravattack? And if need be I could always possess them one at a time with Ghostfreak…”

“How about we avoid possession?” Diana asked, shivering. She’d seen and experienced enough possessions in her life, thank you, she didn’t want to play witness to any more than she had to. Java laid a supportive hand on her shoulder. The Tennyson team gave her a questioning look, but Kevin soon nodded, and the rest followed suit.

“Yeah, that’s a trauma I think we can all forgo reliving if we have the chance.”

“So,” Rook continued, “we draw them out into the open and Ben subdues them. If that does not work, then Martin and Gwen put them to sleep. Agreed?” Everyone looked at each other, then slowly began to shrug.

“It’s the best plan we’ve got so far,” Ben said. “So, Martin, you’re our expert, where should we look for these things?”

“Well…” Martin leaned forward, looking over the map. “They’re ambush predators, so they should probably hang out in places where they can jump out at people… Caves, valleys, deep water, dense foliage, large rocks…” Again, the table went silent as everyone considered the information.

“So,” Kevin finally said, “the entire Dinner Zone, basically?”

“I wish you guys wouldn’t call it that…”

“Pretty much,” Martin answered. He hummed contemplatively, tapping his fingers on the table as he considered the map and their options. “They are snakes though, maybe we can catch them sunning. Then they’d already be out in the open.”

“Good idea,” Java said, and the others nodded.

“We’d still have to find out where they sun,” Rook noted, but Kevin was already on his feet.

“Leave that to me,” he said, pulling out his phone and stepping off to the side, “the local pack should know every decent sunning spot in the park.”

“Okay then. Everyone,” Ben said with a grin, also rising to his feet, “get your shit together, we’ve got some snakes to catch.”

The cabin became a buzz of activity, as everyone scrambled to get their things back in order and clean up after themselves. Trash was shoveled into bins, counters were given a final wipe down, books and writing supplies were carefully tucked away into packs. Dinner and breakfast had cleared enough room for extra things to be stowed inside them, such as Martin’s spellbook and some of the canteens, which the group took the time to refill at the sink. It was the height of summer, even in a temperate region you didn’t want to run out of water if you didn’t have to. At some point Kevin returned to the couch, snatching a pencil from Martin so he could mark various areas on the map, chattering away with who they had to assume was Aaron in languages nobody understood. Occasionally the Omnitrix would pick up something in Imperial Osmosian, but other than that…

“We have sunning spots!” he finally called out, as everyone was finishing up packing, snatching up the map triumphantly and rocketing to his feet. “The hunt is on!”

The journey wasn’t exactly arduous, but it sure wasn’t easy. For one thing they had to move at a steady clip, as fast as they possibly could. Nobody knew how long it took for reptiles that size to get up to temperature, but they didn’t want to miss them and have to search the entire area. Even still, that wouldn’t have been so much to ask if there hadn’t been five different sunning spots recommended in and around the Dinner Zone, each of which was only accessible by narrow paths through the trees, half of which were overgrown with foliage. These were places the pack occasionally used, but which were far enough out of the way so as to not see regular visitors. Perfect places for monster serpents to catch the morning sun.

“I have a question,” Ben asked as they made their way down from a tall outcropping. It had been the third stop, to no avail, and while all of them were athletic and well hydrated they also were soaked with sweat. “How does someone even become a snake monster?” All eyes turned to Martin who was, as usual, glad to share his obscure knowledge.

“Well, according to Cherokee myth a guy turned himself into one while spending the night alone in an asi with a pair of deer antlers, but I’ve never seen anything detailing exactly how that worked. She probably didn’t need the antlers though, having her own.”

“Honestly I’d be pissed to have lost a pair,” Kevin said, grasping onto trees to slow his descent down a particularly steep area. “A lot of packs are really tied closely to neighboring communities, especially ones native to the particular region. Tribal land’s close enough, if there’s a trick to the transformation Dalen probably learned it from a Cherokee parent or cousin.”

“Or grandparent.”

“Same diff.” The group went quiet again, mostly to focus on not slipping and falling, something only Diana was immune to. Turned out the tail was useful for balance and for catching herself on branches and the blackcap bushes that had clearly given the trail its name, the scales even protecting her from the thorns. She kept throwing Ben smug looks over it, and Rook, Kevin, and Martin kept giving her thumbs up when the hero wasn’t looking. None of them had forgotten or forgiven his ‘no decent people with scales’ comment yet.

It wasn’t until they found the path again that they returned to talking.

“So, she probably did it to herself,” Gwen said. “That’s sad, and worrying.”

“In her defense,” Rook replied, “I am sure she did not expect to start eating passersby. Right?” Eyes went to Kevin, who shrugged.

“Don’t look at me, I met Dalen once and we didn’t exactly get close. If she was anything like Roy probably not?”

“Still not know about other snake,” Java pointed out. He was right too, they had no clue what was going on with that one. The best case scenario was that it was another of the missing people, bringing the Presumed Dead count down to seven, but they just couldn’t know. For all the information they had it could be a male attracted by Dalen’s presence, or a newcomer that prompted her own transformation. The worst possibility was that somebody had made them against their wills, but since so far Martin had said nothing about that being an option everyone was setting it aside. He and Gwen were the magic users around, after all, and surely they would’ve let the others know if that was something that might have happened.

“Hopefully,” Diana said, “the Center can figure out who they are.” If they could give some sort’ve closure to the families, tell even one mother that their child was alive even if they’d never come home, then that would make the effort of learning, of catching them alive, worth it. Idly she wondered if the pack had already been told of Dalen’s fate.

“Sure they can.” Martin’s grin was bright, though behind it was dead seriousness. He may have been a goofball, but his job was important and he treated it as such when the chips came down. “With all the stuff we’ve got access to? There’s no way they can’t.” Up ahead on the path, Rook nodded.

“Or at least no reason we cannot find somebody who can.”

Four turned out to be their lucky number. Both the Uktena were there, their bulk coating the surface of a massive stone jutting out over one of the area’s many streams. Their scales shone in the sunlight, dark and rainbowed and beautiful, while their Ulun'suti glinted and seemed to almost glow in the light. Under better circumstances it would have been a wonderful sight, two great dragons warming themselves. A sight for life long memories. One for photos.

Thankfully they didn’t seem to hear the click of a phone.

“Kevin!” Half the group hissed as one, careful to keep their voices down. They were gathered in the shrubbery near the bottom of the stone, just far enough away to avoid being immediately noticed.

“What?” he whispered, replacing the phone in his pack, “Her mom will want this.” With a round of sighs the others shook their heads, turning their attention back to the Uktena pair.

“Is this normal?”

“Maybe? Who knows, I’ve only read about these things and one of them is an Ossy.”

“Okay, do we all remember the plan?” Rook looked around at the group as best he could- Java had been forced to hide further back due to his size, and Kevin would’ve been too if he and the girls hadn’t been first to the spot, which meant he had to somehow check around that bulk on top of all the foliage everywhere- and was glad to see nodding and thumbs up all around. “Alright. Spread out, make sure they cannot slip away if they get loose. And be careful.”

They all were as quiet as they could be as they acted, avoiding loose stones and twigs, taking their time now that they could confirm that the snakes weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Gwen and Ben headed one direction, while Martin, Diana, and Rook headed in the other. Kevin and Java stayed more central, a solid foundation behind the targets. As soon as everyone appeared to be in position, Ben dialed the Omnitrix and slammed down his selection, erupting again in a blaze of bright green light that faded away to reveal Wildvine already digging his roots into the stony shores.

At the sudden flash the Uktena both leapt into action, rearing straight up as their heads swung to see the source. A hiss left the one that was Dalen, body tensing as her companion tilted their head. The action caused the gem between their eyes to glint and gleam, and the group all were careful to avoid looking at it, keeping their eyes on the antlers, the jaws, anywhere else on them. Except for Wildvine, who simply laughed at the attempt as the reflection off the crystal played across his face.

“Got you there,” he said with a wide grin, “Wildvine can’t be hypnotized!”

The pair seemed to be surprised by the new development, though with snake faces who could tell. Still, they didn’t surge forward in vicious strikes like before, but instead stayed in place, eyeing the young hero with caution. Wildvine took the opening. He reached over his shoulders, tearing seed pods from his back and hurling them towards the snakes. As soon as the first few hit the serpents took action, moving to put distance between themselves and this strange foe they couldn’t bring to heel, but it was too late. The moment they began to move the seedpods sprouted, issuing forth thick, knobby green vines that wove themselves around Uktena and rock both.

“See? Easy!” The rest of the group crept out of hiding carefully, eyes locked on the captured serpents.

“I’d feel a lot better if that hold was tighter…” The grip didn’t look secure. Dalen was held mostly to the stone as she struggled, but the other one, not so much. It strained upward, and though it didn’t get far one could imagine the sound of vines creaking and straining against its strength.

When they finally failed it was one after the other down the creature’s back, like watching a zipper come undone.

“Shit!” Everyone scrambled back again as the vines on the Uktena fell away and it surprised them all by turning not towards its attackers but towards Dalen. In two massive bites it tore through the vines holding her head and neck, leaving her free to repeat its earlier vine bursting maneuver. That job done, it finally tuned back to Wildvine, lunging forward in an attack he was just barely able to dodge, and twisting back on itself to trap the Tennysons in the coil of its body. Dalen, meanwhile, surged in the opposite direction, throwing herself among the rest of the team with a loud hiss and a brandishing of fangs and antlers. Everyone who could scattered, trying to avoid being victim to either the weapons or bulk of the beast.

She lashed out with tail and fang, swung her antlers in wide arcs when too close to lunge, thrashing like she wanted to get at all of them at once. Probably she did. It was impossible to get a bead on her, not when she was moving about so wildly, not when she was staying in such close proximity to them, not when they were trying so hard not to be caught in the shine of the Ulun'suti in the sun. Java caught Martin as a swinging tail launched him into the air. Rook’s call to fall back was almost lost in the sound of heavy scales on stone and the splashing of all these creatures in the water.

“A little help here?!”

“We’ve kinda got our own problems!” Zed at least was able to come to the Tennyson’s aid, charging forward to drive her teeth into the tail of the other Uktena while the others were too caught up in not being eaten by Dalen, and keeping a tight grip even as it tried to fling her off and into the woods. If nothing else, it gave the cousins an opening- for Gwen to distract it with blasts to the face and belly and for Ben to dial up an option that would hopefully have an easier time subduing the creature. In another flash the roots and greenery of Wildvine disappeared and were replaced with the shining form of Diamondhead.

“If somebody could get them on the ground, this time it should work!”

“It better!” Martin dodged another swing of Dalen’s antlers as he and Rook bolted for the other serpent’s tail, leaping up to try to drag it down with sheer weight. Diana and Kevin ran to try to do the same with the head, the hybrid reaching out to get a thick coating of the stone as they cut under it on their way to where Gwen was using her magic to drag the thing into their range. Java, meanwhile, was taking on the dangerous job of trying to keep Dalen from going after the rest of them.

It wasn’t working.

As soon as she realized her companion was being dogpiled she surged back over the top of the stone, mouth gaping wide to snap up somebody, anybody, in front of her. Java clung to her middle, digging in his heels as best he could, Gwen throwing up a quick shield to prevent her from managing the foot of distance more she needed to reach the rest of the team. Quickly she was in on the battle between caveman and serpent, Java doing his best to slowly drag Dalen backwards away from the group while Gwen used her magic to keep her from doubling back and tearing into Java like a ripe fruit. It was a vicious game of tug-of-war, where a slip by either of the heroes could easily get all of them killed.

On the other side of things, Operation Dogpile was working. Kevin and Diana had distracted the snake long enough for Martin, Rook, and Zed to get his tail to the ground, and together their own weight was enough to keep its head on the ground as well. Diamondhead, through this, solidified each little victory with a barrage of crystal, a preliminary cage as the massive shards briefly cut off movement away from him. This wasn’t a solid solution though. The crystals were stronger than vines, yes, but here and now was not the place to take half-measures. Once the snake was under some degree of control he began phase two, calling up huge, thick sheets of crystal from the ground. Five locking the head in place, with one before the snout, while hordes of others ran down the serpent’s length, with gaps between them only large enough for those clinging to it to slip free.

At which point Dalen went ‘fuck this’. Where before she had been struggling to pull herself free of Gwen’s magic long enough to tear Java off her midsection, now she instead suddenly surged forward towards the girl, shocking her into breaking her hold and Java into loosening his grip. She almost soared over Diamondhead’s head, curling herself around her companion’s and trying to bite through the crystal holding them. Inside the crystal cage, Kevin and Diana were beginning to lose the breath they’d been holding in an attempt to not be poisoned and Diana, much like Dalen, immediately decided to take action.

That action was punching the Uktena in her dead eye.

With a violent hiss the beast pulled back, giving her head a brief shake and what could only be a glare to those assembled before disappearing into the forest as suddenly as she had first appeared the day before.

They were alone again. Sort’ve.

“Everyone in one piece?” Ben asked in unison with Java’s “Martin and Diana alright?”

“Fine over here,” Martin said as he, Rook, and the dog all slid free of the cage. “Sis?”

“We’re okay,” Diana responded.

“Nice jab.” Kevin gave her a grin as she helped him squeeze free of the crystal and she gladly returned it.

“Thanks, my mom taught me.”

“Awesome.”

“So,” Gwen said, heaving a sigh as everyone gathered on and around the rock to check their injuries- only scrapes and bruises, thank god, though Kevin and Diana worried everyone with some coughing they insisted was nothing major- and look out over their catch, “what do we do now?”

“We call the Center,” Diana said, she, Martin, and Java lumping together protectively as the Tennyson team did the same, “then we go find the other one.” As one the group looked at the Uktena they’d already caught. It wasn’t struggling anymore, having seemingly accepted that there was no escape from it’s current predicament, and instead was staring them down with it’s dark, dark eyes. Ben took a deep breath as, in a flash of green, he turned back into himself, and fixed the team with a self-assured smile.

“We’ve totally got this.”

The team split up. Not for long, just so somebody was there to wait for the Center’s monster transport squad to show up while the others made sure they had a trail they could follow. In theory it wasn’t difficult, she was a sixty-foot snake for fuck’s sake, but she was a sixty-foot snake that had been an Osmosian, which was the universe’s way of challenging a hunter.

“How did she make the trees here hold her?”

“I don’t know. I saw Kay do that sort’ve thing once, but he’s never taught me.” Humming under his breath, Java stepped away from Kevin and Rook and began scaling one of the trees that appeared to have greatly suffered under the weight of what they were assuming was Dalen. At least, the damage appeared fresh enough for that. He was careful with his steps, even as the other boys gathered at the base of the trunk to break his fall should he do so, and stayed mindful of the damage already done. When he reached as far as he felt he safely could, the caveman cast his gaze at the trees around them.

“Trail go,” he said slowly, pointing, “that way.”

“Alright.” Rook nodded, gesturing Kevin forward. They had Zed with them, and hopefully soon they would find a spot where Dalen had returned to the ground and the Baskurr could pick her scent back up. “Are you staying in the trees, or rejoining us down here?” Java took a moment to think about it, looking over the path through the trees. It seemed solid enough. Hopefully.

“Java stay in trees, keep others on track.” Another nod from the alien and a smile.

“Lead the way then.”

Everyone was back on the ground when the others found them again, having tracked them with Gwen’s magic, as planned, and made a beeline rather than following the Uktena’s path. Zed was back on the scent and tense at Kevin’s side as they all reconnected.

“The other one taken care of?” he asked, trying to keep the dog calm with long strokes down her neck. Gwen nodded.

“They’re going to find a space for them in the jungle,” she said, “and for Dalen once we get her.”

“Good.”

“Okay everybody,” Martin said, smiling and stretching, “get ready for Round Two.”

“Electric Boogaloo.”

“Rook, please don’t.”

The moment Zed started growling was déjà vu all over again. It wasn’t the same little valley, not the same river, and there was no concrete path leading ominously down into the shade, but it certainly felt the same. There were no trees down there, only dense underbrush. Thick masses of green bushes, grasses, vines, waist high and more, coated the bank on both sides. The river itself was deep, dark, and fast moving. No birds or insects sang.

In the center of the water, one could just make out the tips of antlers sticking out into the open air.

“So, Diamondhead again?” Ben asked, careful to keep his voice down. They were all fairly certain they were out of striking range, but that didn’t mean they wanted for her to notice them before she absolutely had to. Gwen shook her head.

“I’m not sure that would work,” she said. “I mean, they’ve already proved they’re smarter than your average snakes.”

“Or at least more social,” Martin added.

“It might be easier this time,” Rook said, “with only one for us to dogpile on.”

“And then we can worry about getting poisoned and maybe drowning,” Diana pointed out. “The last plan worked, but if we can avoid anyone having to lie over this thing’s nose I think we should go for it.”

“I’m with Diana,” Kevin chimed in, “holding the head down by hand is too risky.” Martin was the first to nod, followed by the rest.

“You’ve got a point,” he said, then held up the U-Watch. “U-Watch has a grappling hook, I might be able to hold her in place so Gwen can put her to sleep.”

“My proto-tool also has one,” Rook added, “we can each go for an antler.”

“Okay,” Ben said, “but can you two hold her on your own?”

“Java help,” the caveman said, and Kevin piped up along with him.

“With the four of us, it’d be, well not easy but not impossible. Then you and Diana can hold the back end while Gwen works her magic.” Nobody looked entirely comfortable with the idea, but then that wasn’t something that had ever stopped any of them from doing their jobs before. Ben gave a short, empty laugh.

“Probably be easier to just kill her.” Kevin huffed.

“As long you’re the one to tell her mother.” The team went quiet for a beat, two beats.

“Let’s go with the grappling hook plan.”

“Good idea.”

Zed was sent down into the valley first, as bait, despite Kevin’s vehement protests. The thinking here was that 1) she was small and fast and more likely to outspeed Dalen than any of the rest of them were, and 2) out of them she had the most experience with this sort’ve thing thanks to her old owner. They hoped she would lure the serpent out of the river and into the open, so they could have an easier time getting hold of her without running such a high risk of getting pulled under and drowned.

The plan worked. Dalen surged out of the river as soon as Zed was in range, just barely missing the Baskurr on the first strike (and the clenching of Kevin’s jaw was nearly audible at that). In an instant Zed was twisting on her heels and charging back up the snake-made trail towards Gwen with what felt in the moment an endless mass of magical serpent close behind. As soon as the alien dog had reached Gwen’s side Phase Two of Operation: Rescue Dalen From Herself went into action. In a flash of light Ben was replaced with Four Arms and he leapt down from where he and Diana had lain in wait at the top of the near cliff acting as the valley wall, landing heavily by the tail of the beast and grabbing hold. Dalen, of course, couldn’t be having with that and began to turn on herself to strike at him, only for the rest of the boys to jump into action.

From their positions hidden in the brush on either side of the trail Martin and Rook sprang forward, each taking quick aim and launching their grappling hooks at the nearest antlers to themselves. The response was vicious, with Dalen immediately trying to rear back and take them off their feet, only to be stopped by Kevin and Java’s intervention, grabbing hold of the other boys and the lines tethering her and digging in their considerably heftier and stronger heels. Between the pairs- Martin and Kevin on her right, Rook and Java on her left- she soon found herself struggling to move her head more than a half-foot in any direction, each attempt causing the opposing pair to yank back as hard as they could to keep her in place.

That was Diana’s cue. It had been decided, just before the plan went into action, that using Four Arms meant Ben wouldn’t need the help keeping Dalen’s back end under control, which freed her to help in other ways. Such as making sure nobody was sunken into despair by the gem on the Uktena’s head. Leaping down from the top of the cliff, she landed squarely on the serpent’s back, using the extra balance her tail gave her to scramble up to her head. Once there, she wrapped legs and tail around Dalen’s throat as well as she could before hefting Gwen’s now empty pack across her face, quickly stretching to catch the second strap and hold it tight so the Ulun'suti was suitably covered. Now, truly, the creature was as subdued as the non-magic-users could safely get her, and it was up to the only magic-user let unoccupied to finish the job.

Backing up to get a better view, Gwen opened her spellbook to the appropriate page. Thankfully it was a simple one, requiring her to trace what to a novice would’ve seemed an intricate pattern in front of her, one that rested in the air in a series of glowing pink lines, and pushing it gently towards the serpent alongside a single word incantation.

“Quiescis.”

It was like the entire valley went still, silent seconds stretching into something that felt like hours. The others kept their tight holds as the Uktena just, sat there, unmoving. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she slowly began to lower her head to the ground. They let her, each carefully releasing the breathes they’d held in anticipation as they loosened their grips and she curled in around herself, settling into a quietly coiled form in the brush. Nobody said a word for several moments. Diana slid from her back. Everyone watched the creature as if she may leap back up at any moment.

She didn’t.

“Yes!” With a series of whoops the whole team burst into massive grins. Java lifted Rook straight off his feet in a hug. Gwen burst into laughter, doubly so as Zed jumped up to lick at her face. A flash of light turned Ben back to himself in time to share a high five with Diana. Kevin threw an arm around Martin’s shoulder in a tight side-hug, a gesture Martin returned for about five seconds before realizing ‘proximity’ and ‘Kevin’ and trying to carefully edge away (it didn’t work) (“Have your crises on your own time, Mystery”). The relief that flooded the small valley was palpable as they crowed their victory, relishing in their safety, the Uktenas’ safety, and the public’s safety.

Everything was going to be fine.

“Good job, everyone,” MOM said as behind her Center employees carefully moved Dalen into a transport container, “thanks to you both Uktena will be moved to a reserve in South America where they won’t be any further threat to the public.”

“I’m sure Dalen’s family will be happy to know she’ll be safe, at least,” Diana said. Ben then chimed in.

“And, the other one, you’re going to find out who they are, right?”

“We’re going to try,” MOM said. “We can’t promise we’ll succeed, but we’re going to try.” The Tennysons didn’t look convinced, but before they could say anything Kevin tossed in a quick

“It’s better than the Plumbers have ever managed.” -and there really wasn’t a way for them to counter that.

“You should all be very proud of yourselves.” And with that MOM simply turned away, a final compliment before she gave her attention back to the people doing the transporting, leaving the team to their own selves once again.

“About that,” Martin said, grinning and holding out a hand for a professional shake, “great spellwork, Gwen. A resting spell rather than a sleeping spell, nice last-minute switch.” She laughed and accepted the shake.

“Thanks,” she said. “Kevin’s family may be tough enough for him not to worry about, but I really didn’t want to risk mine. And since you were so happy to see it in the book last night it was pretty close to the front of my mind.” Somehow Martin’s grin got wider.

“Awesome!”

“You guys all were great,” Ben said, stepping forward with Rook right behind him in action and word.

“We would love working with you again.”

“Hopefully with something involving less hypnotic snakes,” Gwen made sure to add. With a grin of her own Diana laughed.

“Tell me about it,” she said, “if I never see another one in my life it’ll be too soon.”

“And what about Osmosians who aren’t snakes?” Kevin asked, “‘cause I still gotta go fill in Dalen’s family, if you all wanna join me?”

They kind of did.

Turned out to find the pack you had to go down a well-hidden back road into an area of the park you could hardly even see from the main roads. Eventually you came to a dirt parking lot, half full of pick-ups and SUVs, and from there followed a trail down into one of the park’s biggest valleys. There were plenty of impressed whistles as Kevin pointed out things like the likely primary sunning spots for the pack, or explained how this massive cliff was likely run through with miles of tunnels and dens given the size of it and the age of the pack who lived there. At the base of the cliff, at the end of the trail, they found a large clearing with buildings built against the stone and so, many, people.

It wasn’t the whole pack by any stretch of the imagination, but it was still more than most of the group had been expecting. They’d figured Aaron and John- who were there, so at least they had those familiar faces- maybe the poor woman’s parents, mates perhaps, but it seemed that whole family branch was waiting on them. Everyone, from fluff covered children to the elderly, and in a variety of combinations from ‘totally all Ossy’ to ‘what are humans doing here?’ Most of the latter turned out to be relatives from the tribe, joined with their family to catch the news about their missing cousin.

The mood hadn’t been good when they arrived, everyone already knowing the news wasn’t likely to be happy. In fact, it’d improved slightly when they’d explained that Dalen wasn’t dead or kidnapped, just, well, turned into a giant snake and gone to live in the wilds and eat people. This was, apparently, considered at least semi-reasonable by the Osmosian side of things, even if the humans involved were very concerned and needed to be reassured that she and the other Uktena were being moved somewhere they couldn’t cause any problems. At which point they’d then had to reassure everybody that the Center could be trusted to move an Ossy, giant horned serpent or no.

Half an hour they were, just on “no, really, it’s cool, she’s gonna be fine, and we’re keeping an eye on it just in case anyway”. Paranoia apparently didn’t just run through the blood, it galloped.

The group found themselves invited to an early dinner, which quickly proved itself to also be a sort’ve wake. It seemed everybody had a story to tell about Dalen as they clustered at the edge of the clearing, drinking homebrew and eating a meal featuring heavily salted meat. A good meal, to the point Java and Kevin were both clamoring for some of the recipes (Martin and Diana had resigned themselves to a lifetime with regular bean bread from the caveman’s first bite), though it would’ve been better if they hadn’t all been served enough bear to kill a man. Apparently, it was the highest calorie food there and they were ‘all still growing’.

By the end of things more of the pack had come out to join them and the stories stopped being just about Dalen. Everyone had some tale to tell, whether they were traditional stories, tales of strange happenings, or the group telling story after story of their adventures. About wars, about hauntings, about survival in desolate landscapes and mad science gone horribly wrong. And when the stories got too scary for the little ones there were Java and Rook, off to the side telling them Revonnahan fairy tales and reciting Shakespeare comedies.

Half of the kids refused to go to bed until Java promised to come back sometime with his sock puppets and tell the stories properly. Another quarter had to be reminded that no, they could not go to Canada or Revonnah immediately, their families would miss them.

Again, the group stayed the night in the park, this time set up in a guest house that pointedly did not open into any of the tunnels or dens. Nobody even considered being offended, not with the (apparently reasonable?) paranoia, and their hosts made sure they had plenty of good food and water to keep them into morning. Many thanks followed them when they left the next day- for their stories, for coming to help, for not turning immediately to killing one of their own like so many outsiders would’ve done. (“I’m still not sure about that, I mean an Uktena-” “Pack.” “…...why do I even try?”) It was a great service they’d done both pack and tribe and there was no way they could leave without their gratitude having been made blindingly clear.

Still, nearly all of them agreed that the whole smoked turkey each was given was maybe going a bit overboard.

According to Kevin it was another Ossy thing.

So, they rolled with it.

Everything always seemed boring after a mission. Didn’t matter if the team was settling back in at Torrington, or at home over the holidays, that juxtaposition between being off in amazing places experiencing new things and fighting monsters and magic and returning to normal life was always jarring. Like stepping off a boat only for your body to suddenly realize that the ground was stable. But if he had to come back to anywhere, he was always glad when it was home, where he could retreat into his own little haven of weirdness.

His room at the Lombard-Mystery house made the one at Torrington look like Diana’s.

Their parents had long given up on being able to see the floor and now just accepted that it would always be ankle deep in everything from dirty underwear to magical talismans to rogue Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Though not food, not since the day their mom had actually brought out a flamethrower and brandished it in the direction of his door. Every square inch of wall space was covered in posters from various B-movies and sports events, and one massive mural of Hedorah he’d painted when he was twelve and was still way too proud of. The shelves strained under the weight of comic books, reference books, horror stories by everyone from Lovecraft to Ravenheart, and figurines of Digimon nobody would’ve ever expected to be able to find figurines for. Truly the only mostly-clear surfaces in the room were his bed, which was only half storage, and his desk, which held only a lamp flanked by figures of PlatinumNumemon and Raremon.

That gave him just enough space to continue his various studies into the weird and unusual and, most importantly, the magical, as he was doing at the moment. He’d come home, greeted his parents, regaled them with the story of he, Diana, and Java’s adventure (while Diana stood to the side, butting in every time he was explaining how awesome he was, the spoilsport), and ever since had been buried in his spellbook. There were so many new spells in it thanks to Gwen and he was absolutely enraptured. There was nothing quite the same as learning new magic and it would’ve taken a miracle to drag him away.

Or his phone going off, as the case may be.

Honestly even that didn’t really work. He didn’t even put down the turkey sandwich he’d made himself (they had too much turkey, somebody had to get rid of it), just pulled his phone out of his pocket blind, eyes still locked on the book.

“Hello, Martin Mystery speaking.”

“Hey Martin.” Finally, his attention was got. He didn’t look away from the book, but at least he stopped hunching over it.

“Tonio! Hey, how’s it going man?”

“Boring, for the most part. I might actually be starting to miss your antics.”

“Ouch. Terminal boring then.”

“Yep. If I don’t make it to the end of summer I’ve asked Mom to send you my comic collection.”

“Truly you’re the best friend.”

“I know.” There was a pause and Martin could’ve sworn he could hear the creak as Tonio leaned his chair back. He steeled himself, that always came with added teasing. “So, Diana said you guys went out of town.” Wait, since when did Diana have Tonio’s number? Since when did they talk? Exactly what sort’ve stories were they exchanging behind his back, and he knew if they were talking they were.

“Yeah,” Martin said, not letting on the sudden wariness he was feeling, “was pretty cool. Food was great, Java’s probably gonna be serving it in the cafeteria for half of next year.”

“Nice, nice,” he could almost see his friend nodding along in his mind’s eye, “she also said you met a cute guy.” No. Nope. Nada.

“I did not.” He was going to kill her.

“Really? She said you practically drooled.”

“That’s because she’s a liar. I know you don’t know this, but it’s a chronic thing with sisters.” She could forget college, she wasn’t even going to last to fall.

“It’s cool, man, there’s nothing wrong with you finding a guy you like. I was happy having a straight friend, but I can deal.” Scratch that, Martin was going to die, of embarrassment, right there at his desk. “Just don’t start flirting with me or anything.” He scoffed, huffed, and tore into his sandwich with feeling.

“Oh please, you couldn’t handle this much man.”

There was a loud thud on the other end of the line as Tonio fell to the ground laughing.

~*~

In the mid-afternoon a young Osmosian wanders the game trails that crisscross his pack’s territory. His dark and striped skin blends him in well with the mottled sunlight coming through the leaves and fragrant berries and flowers help to cover his scent from the prey he stalks. The goal is a deer, a plump young buck at best, to present as a gift to the object of his affections. A fresh kill, his own lone work, to show his attraction and dedication.

He can taste the remnants of one as easily as he can smell it. Somewhere in the area, he’s certain, is a spot where they sleep, and if he can find it and hide himself properly there then the kill will be easy.

What he doesn’t expect is to catch the scent of something else, something familiar yet unknown, running across the trail. Despite every warning his family has drilled into his head- about other packs, about poachers, about being seen without a disguise- curiosity wins out and pulls him off the trail and into the underbrush as surely as a hook through his nose. The tracks are old, the trail cold, but there’s still enough for a talented youth to follow. Enough to lead him onward, and onward, until nearly an hour has passed.

There’s a cave at the end of the trail. Not suitable for starting a new denning site, the roots of nearby trees are too thick and too close, there’s no room to expand. But still, inside he can taste life. Familiar life. Strange life. It’s with great caution he inches forward to see what there is to find.

The sight is one he knows well from checking on his relatives, on his sisters. A good dozen spheres of speckled grey rest in a depression in the dirt. Each is the size of a basketball, easily the largest he’s ever seen. There may even be more in the darkness, though he doubts it to look at them. Space there may be, but nothing else. Still, more or no, this is something for which he’ll need help, that the older members of the pack should know about, and so he turns and runs back down the faint trail with all the speed he can gather.

Several of the eggs are still glowing.

#fanfic #martin mystery #ben 10 #commissionwork #achi does commissionwork #like hell i'm tagging all the characters in this #i tried to be as respectful and accurate in my use of the uktena as i could so hopefully it came out right

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adamwatchesmovies · 6 years

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Predator 2 (1990)

If you’ve seen Predator 12 times this year, still want more but think 13 times may be too much, then Predator 2 is a decent solution. It’s not in the same league as the first film, not even close, but key moments make it worth your time if you’re a hardcore fan.

This time, the story is set in an entirely different jungle; the concrete kind. It’s Los Angeles, 1997 (the future at the time the film was made) and the place has gone to hell. There is a literal war on between the police and the city's numerous gangs. Hot-headed Lieutenant Michael Harrigan (Danny Glover) finds himself in the middle of a strange investigation when several high-profile gang members are brutally murdered by an opponent that vanishes before the police can arrive. While he searches for clues, a government agency led by Special Agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) observes.

Let's get it out of the way immediately: the film is a disappointment, and not only because it's following up the 1987 original, a-must-see sci-fi action film. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to like, even if it’s things that work more in theory than in practice. For example, the idea of a Predator in an urban environment. It’s completely different from what we've seen before but just as dangerous and filled with as many worthy trophies for the alien big-game hunter. The characters are also suitable substitutes. It's refreshing to see a black man as the lead and Danny Glover is a strong enough actor that he doesn't have to imitate Schwarzenegger. In the four-officer squad he's a part of, you get a number of characters whose fates add tension as they are put in danger: Ruben Blades as Detective Danny Archuleta, Maria Conchita Alonso as Detective Leona Cantrell and Bill Paxton as the new guy, Detective Jerry Lambert. As for the titular character, we get to see a bit more into the aliens' society and learn more about the technology they use.

While the combat is nice and varied, there are multiple, significant problems with Predator 2. Despite the change of location, this film isn't different enough from the first one - or from the multitude of Predator imitators - to stand out. Harrigan's likable, but he’s essentially every cop who plays by his own rules; the kind of role that was perfected by Clint Eastwood and that Arnold lampooned in The Last Action Hero. The alien uses different weapons but is otherwise the same being we saw in 1987. Ultimately, the city doesn’t add very much to the Predator’s hunt.

Then, we get to the humor, or at least what I think is supposed to be comical. Gary Busey as Special Agent Peter Keyes has one line of dialogue so awful I think it dropped the movie a whole half star. At numerous points, it becomes very silly or so violent/gory/wannabee edgy you chuckle. Even if they had worked, I'm not convinced it would be enough to make up for a film in which the audience is waiting for its hero to catch up to what we already know. Other than a few moments towards the end (which lasts too long) there’s no payoff to waiting for the ugly motherfu... to show its face.

With Predator 2, you were hoping for Aliens and instead, got Robocop 2. Despite its flaws, I have enough affection for it to give the film a mild recommendation for those who are fans. It’s mindless fun, with a few good scenes here and there. It’ll do until something better comes along, particularly if the later installments in the series are strong. (On Blu-ray, May 29, 2015)

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jamest-kirk · 7 years

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Could you write about a Mckirk + Spuhura camping trip?

It’s Uhura’s idea. Jim immediately agrees. Spock takes a little convincing, but the promise of having plenty of research samples in the woods is enough. That, and the way Uhura looks at him and talks about spending time with him socially definitely contributes to Spock’s agreeing to it. Bones, though, is a cold hard “no”. “Please,” Jim says, reaching out to hold both Bones’ hands, and he squeezes them lightly, “I’m asking nicely.” “Hmm,” Bones replies, “no.” “Why not?” Jim asks. “Camping. In the woods,” Bones says, “that’s why. It’s awful. There’s flies everywhere, no bathroom, no bedroom-” “It’s just for a weekend,” Jim says, “can you try to not be the grumpy old man? It’ll be good for you to get some fresh air. The fumes of med bay are wearing you down.” “Resorting to flattery, I hear,” Bones replies, “there’s not a thing in the world you can do to convince me to come.”

“So what did it take you to convince him?” Uhura asks Jim quietly. The two of them walk ahead of Spock and Bones, following the small mountain path that leads down to a lake clearing, where Uhura arranged everything to be, apparently. “Sex,” Jim admits sheepishly, and Uhura rolls her eyes. “Classy. I shouldn’t have expected anything else.” “Oh, like you were any different convincing Spock. Engaging ’socially’, you’re not fooling anyone,” Jim counters, nudging her arm and matching her grin with one of his own.

Okay, Jim can tell Bones is trying. He’s trying not to curse so much when they struggle pitching their tent. He cusses under his breath a lot, and Jim’s pretty sure his name is muttered out multiple times in less than flattering manners, but Bones is trying. And Jim shows his appreciation of that by pressing him up against the closest tree, lips chasing his in a heated kiss - something that brightens Bones’ mood considerably, at least.

Uhura isn’t an idiot. Their camp site isn’t entirely excluded. There are other campers not too far away. There’s even an outhouse with a functioning toilet and a shower a few hundred feet away, and a campsite shop with a very limited amount of food that looks locally caught, cooked, or brewed. They’re camping, but they’re not really as stuck in the wilderness as it looks. When she tells Bones about it, he lightens up to the point that he actually enjoys himself.

He teaches Spock fishing at the lake - something that would’ve been relaxing had it not been for Jim cannonballing into the water right in front of them. “Fuck sake, Jim,” Bones curses at him when Jim climbs back out of the water. "You’re scaring all the fish away.“ “I think you and your grumpy face do that, too,” Jim counters, which is answered with Bones pushing him right off the pier and back into the water.

While Bones and Jim stay at the lake to swim, Spock and Uhura venture out on a hike. Besides the fresh air and a change of scenery from their usual recreational spaces in the Enterprise, it’s nice to spend some time solely in each other’s company. They can gossip about crew members shamelessly, while simultaneously enjoying the views of the lake and the lush green of the trees. They take a break at a river bed to watch the fish and other wildlife around them.

The night is spent surrounding a camp fire, roasting food over the open fire and sharing ridiculous dating stories. It’s nice to gossip and share secrets. Jim and Bones sit next to each other, bickering over whether or not Jim did or did not get hurt on their last away mission. Spock and Uhura listen to them rather fondly, though they’re more fond of each other’s company - Uhura’s resting her head on his shoulder while Spock’s fingers run absentmindedly over her arm. “Hey,” Jim interrupts them, “I know what Vulcan kisses look like. Get a room.”

Spock gets hurt on a hike the next day. Rather, it’s an allergic reaction to a sting from a bug. Luckily, Bones is there with a med kid to stop the reaction from getting too bad. He advices Spock to take it slow, though, and so that’s a good excuse to spend the afternoon with Uhura lazing around in the hammock near their tent. Bones is reading a book on the pier, feet in the water, and Jim’s next to him playing a game on his PADD. And, probably, because he’s still a Captain, checking up on the Enterprise crew.

A night hike is made terrifying by Jim filming everything and telling fake horror stories about the woods until Uhura tells him to shut the hell up. Bones scoffs about Jim’s immaturity, but it’s definitely Bones who lies awake at night terrified of every unfamiliar sound around them. Which, in the woods, is every sound. He rolls over in their sleeping bag, shaking the other awake. “What?” “There’s someone outside,” Bones says, and Jim huffs, turning back around. “There’s other campers, Bones.” “No, Jim, seriously, you should check.” “You go check.” “Jim.” “I’m sleeping!” “Jim-!” “Fine,” Jim says, turning around to face Bones, and he hovers over him for a few seconds, “if this is nothing, I swear I’m going to make sure you’re not falling back asleep any time soon.”

He doesn’t catch a predator, or a wild animal. He catches Spock and Uhura making out - and he’s not sure which is worse. True to his word, though, Jim finds a distraction by keeping Bones awake now that he is, too.

All of them are tired, come morning, but pleasantly so. They have breakfast quietly, and then clean up their tents, making sure there's no mess left behind that would disrupt the local wildlife more than them being there. "Did you enjoy it?" Uhura asks when they head for their shuttle back. "I always enjoy spending time with you," Spock says. "It was great," Jim says. "It was okay," Bones replies, and Uhura smiles. "Same time next year?" She asks, and Bones smiles, too. "Wouldn't miss it."

#anonymous #mckirk #spuhura #otp: damn it jim #jim kirk #leonard mccoy #bones #spock #nyota uhura #mckirkenterprise #enterprise au #other au #other enterprise au

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amytisofmedia · 7 years

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On Harvey Weinstein and the Visibility of Abusers

One of the things I’m struggling with the post in these post-Weinstein days (incepted within a Post-Trump world in which every hour feels like a day and I’m aging faster than a Millennial Avocado™) are the dubious levels of sincerity + timing of all the celebrity statements rolling out. To be clear, I mean the blanket condemnations of his actions and not the contributions to stories of abuse. The dozens upon dozens of Twitter statements, online editorial submissions and assistant-typed PR approved submissions of solidarity with the victims and call for change. In short, they are the Hollywood scandal equivalent to tweeting “Thoughts and Prayers (prayer hands emoji)” on twitter after a mass shooting du jour if you’re a politician. While I feel it runs a little hollow would be an understatement, I’m concerned about the wide cast of ignorance so many of our beloved A-listers are attempting to hide under between these statements.

There have been a few celebrities in particular that have been soundly twitter-checked back into the past a few times so far on their alleged knowledge of Weinsteinian behaviour (we all see you, Batfleck). A few haven’t been publicly confronted because the megawatt of their shine is still too bright to get near. But with the allegations of abuse, cover ups, and just the nature of the business do not lend much weight to their claims. They knew, many more knew and colluded to keep it quiet or even benefited from it and it’s likely we will never know for sure or get their names and full crimes. Because here is the thing: it is outright career suicide right now to be honest and bottom line is these are the kinds of people who will do anything to protect their own skin. It’s what kept Weinstein in orbit for decades despite his victims now racking up into the double digits days after the news broke. He knew the power he had over people’s careers surpassed any moral quibbles they may have had and he manipulated as such.

All the women’s stories as they come forward are starting to paint a picture of how he operated and the similarities, while disturbing and distressing, are clear: he wasn’t conducting his misgivings in the shadows. People knew. Not just other celebrities, producers, journalists but his own company, colleagues and subordinates. The ones still at the top distancing themselves from him only now that they recognize it is a dead horse far too big to bury? They knew. People were culpable to his crimes and did nothing for years, so how are we supposed to believe anyone now? When you only do the right thing because it has become a financial liability for the company and associates it strikes little confidence in the general public.

Perhaps most distressing of all is the timeline in which the statements have all happened in the overall toppling of Harvey Weinstein’s career. As if everyone waited on tenterhooks for the Hollywood heavy hitters to take their first swing as to allow everyone else to follow en masse. It feels opportunistic to polish their own images as they waited for confirmation it was The Right Thing To Do now, versus before, when many had “suspicions” but knew it would tarnish their reputation to speak out. It especially irks to hear male stars reminisce about what they didn’t do to help with assorted regrets. It’s been mentioned to death but actresses, established and upcoming, had much more to lose. If Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s piss poor attempts at wading into this story have shown anything it is that many men benefited from the aura of power Weinstein had over women, if not outright participated as well.

Weinstein, then, is a bit like a fat little sacrificial lamb to slaughter that will take the symbolical fall while other predators and guilty parties become more savvy and better protected. Many of the celebrities who have released statements of disgust and vehemence for Weinstein’s crimes have also (recently!) enjoyed a working relationship with the likes of Polanski and Woody (and I’m talking post-Dylan’s damning open letter just in case you can argue they were just okay with whole marrying your daughter schtick). The problem is and will always be that Hollywood, the great gurgling machine of glitz, entertainment and distraction, is just too incestuous for most people to risk their entire livelihoods on speaking out against someone who may be their next meal ticket. And it becomes easier to turn a blind eye to someone’s past transgressions - as despicable as they may be - when you spend a couple months working with them on said meal ticket and meet them in a relationship where you’re not that their victim.

Harvey Weinstein didn’t exist in a vacuum and neither did his crimes. His time, reputation and money didn’t just go into keeping his own assaults under cover but there are many men who have come in contact with him that will continue to wait this whole ordeal out silently at risk of bringing the floodlights closer to their own skeletons. In Harvey’s hey-day he brought a Tarantino film to the Oscars and launched the career of a now A-lister as a result. Shortly before, said actor was embroiled in a controversy involving intoxicated domestic abuse against a former girlfriend, the police report details of which were pretty violent. His new trajectory to stardom meant that story got buried and is seldom brought up now that he’s achieved greatness as a heavily sought after dramatic actor. I’m not going to name him because mentioning his abusive past makes his fans so itchy but it rather proves my point.

David O Russell is another in question that has had his films time and again courted to awards season by Weinstein despite allegations by his own niece of inappropriate touching (in addition, O Russell has a painfully fraught past of being a nutcase to crew and stars alike but I digress). I can go on -- both about those with PR-smoothed pasts adjacent to Weinstein’s orbit and those in the general past and contemporary history of Hollywood who got away with assault, rape, coercion, etc but this brings me back to my original suspicion of authenticity in celebrity contempt. Weinstein was a powerful man who got off on abusing that power frequently with the vulnerable women of the industry. But shit, he pulled some awful repugnant men into his orbit along the way who followed suit.

Was Harvey Weinstein just easier to sacrifice because he wasn’t as visible or beloved as the others guilty of similar crimes? The public knows his name, for sure, and thanks to comedic jabs over the years, knew a little of his dogged reputation if only by the surface level. But his dough-faced, balding visage wasn’t one that endeared the public of that most folks would be able to identify. His position as producer afforded him almost God-like power within the industry, but outside it, to the casual moviegoer or gossip aficionado there wasn’t much stock in the perseverance of his reputation. That’s because we identify with the creative works we love and hold dear and associate them with those most visibly aligned with them (actors, directors, writers, usually in that order) and are encouraged to see parts of ourselves in their carefully constructed brands.

It becomes very personal when someone you feel you know so well yet so distantly is accused of something so unspeakable. And the Hollywood spin machine is a 24/7 running beast that will quickly give you the talking points you need for denial. After all, the accusers are usually nobodies; anonymous entities on par with the audience’s own status of powerlessness where as the accused is beloved actor of That Franchise You Grew Up With or Hunkiest Non-Threatening TV Star of The Year. They couldn’t have done it. They’re good guys. The scripted, tiresome material of every sexual assault trial but played to the perfect pitch of the world’s most uneven power imbalance. I’ve been reading every statement released on the Weinstein drama and the line that keeps popping up to sit fuzzily in my head is the call to arms for change. The impassioned, if a little scripted, imploring for steps to take in order to prevent this happening again.

I suppose I’m still waiting for the follow up statements condemning all the blockbuster heavyhitters, the beloved directors and all anonymous and powerful producers in the shadows as well. Show me you’re serious about it when all the other “open secrets” are dumped in spotlight and the countless powerful men with multiple rape and abuse histories are taken down with Weinstein. One thing that’s become evident is the life cycle of a predator in Hollywood is as historically engrained as the star system of the silver screen days. It involves the culture enabling the abuse and unchecked power imbalances. Cover up with PR and lawyers if it becomes too obvious. If outed and press won’t let go and audience are not quick to forgive from attempts of previous step, lay low for an indeterminable amount of time and await your glorious return. I can name about 20-30 big, beloved actors, directors and producers that all fit the bill for that formula past and present. It’s going to take a bit more than an emotional statement to fix this.

#harvey weinstein #the new antichrist #but don't forget the industry is full of them!#in all fairness I have been waiting for years for Weinstein to get the axe #if the industry would stop honouring rapists at the oscars and shit I would feel more confident in their condemnations tho

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pirirps · 7 years

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Piri’s Ultimate List Of Horror Recs (2017 Version)

my go-to compilation of ever single horror/horror-related media i’ve ever enjoyed, including slashers, paranormal, thrillers, creature features, and much, much more 🎃

note: this list has trigger warnings but i am operating under the assumption that you are okay with the standard level of explicit sexuality, vulgarity, violence, and gore present in mainstream horror

horror

original nightmare on elm street series, but especially 1, 3, 4, 6, and freddy vs. jason (tw for implied pedophilia and explicit child murder, tw for rape in #6)

friday the 13th (original and remake)

honestly all the friday the 13th sequels are A Treasure but if you want The Core Canon watch 1-3

my bloody valentine (original)

psycho (original) and tbh all its sequels (tw for sort-of-kind-of incest vibes)

psycho ii and psycho iv are my favorites because (1) meg tilly is adorable in psycho ii and (2) psycho iv has a harley quinn/norman bates cameo and nobody can convince me otherwise

child’s play, child’s play 2, bride of chucky, maybe some sequels after that idk i haven’t seen them yet :(

scream franchise

not the mtv scream series

i mean s1 is decent but there are definitely other horror shows that i would recommend more (will show up later in this post)

1-3 are the best, 4 is worth watching if you really like the characters but as a concept the series has p much run its course by then

tw for rape mentions in scream 1 and 3

predator

peeping tom

kenneth branagh’s frankenstein (tw for a graphic depiction of death in childbirth)

james whale’s frankenstein

bride of frankenstein

the phantom of the opera (1925)

the phantom of the opera (1989) (tw for mild body/surgical horror, general grossness; personally speaking, this is one of my all-time favorite phantom adaptations, because 1. robert englund as the phantom hello oh my god, 2. although it’s much more of a slasher movie than a gothic romance, it does an amazing job of portraying the tragedy in erik’s backstory and his attraction to christine, without implying that he is entitled to christine’s affection and that her love will magically fix him, as some phantom adaptations do)

the phantom of the opera (1943)

alien franchise

the wolfman (2010)

darling (tw for rape)

house on haunted hill (original and remake)

final destination franchise

medium raw: night of the wolf (tw for pedophilia and child murder)

the babadook

the final girls [horror comedy]

the shining (tw for implied child abuse)

the cabin in the woods

hellraiser (tw for incest-y vibes for very brief periods of time)

heathers (tw for eating disorders, suicide, everything high school kids are insensitive assholes about)

from dusk til dawn

an american werewolf in london

the guest

it follows (tw for dubious consent)

nightwatch (tw for implied necrophilia/descriptions of necrophilia, self-mutilation)

re-animator (tw for rape, pedophilia mentions)

carrie (original) (tw for child abuse, religious iconography)

the remake had some interesting like... subtext/imagery but other than that it was pretty *wet fart noise*

the awakening

the craft

the blair witch project

honestly i loved the book of shadows: blair witch 2 bc it kind of parallels the crucible but i can admit that objectively it is Terrible

elvira, mistress of the dark [spooky comedy]*

american mary (tw for rape, (consensual surgical) genital mutilation)

fright night (original and remake)

jaws

listen. this is a horror movie. it was a horror book before that. it was specifically written and later adapted for the purpose of scaring and entertaining people. real life is nothing like this. real sharks are nothing like this. there’s nothing wrong with this movie scaring you but there is everything wrong with using this movie as an excuse to advocate for the wholesale slaughter of animals. sharks are quite possibly the most graceful and beautiful creatures on this earth and i will personally fight anyone who says otherwise

halloween franchise

1-5 are the best imo but no matter what skip #3 because it literally has nothing to do with any of the other movies

not the rob zombie remakes, those are awful

let the right one in [swedish (?) film, watch with subtitles]

rosemary’s baby (original)

night of the living dead (original)

28 days later

suspiria

silent hill (tw for child molestation)

crimson peak (tw for incest)

the lost boys

interview with the vampire

the ring

one missed call

the raven (2012)

repo! the genetic opera

teeth (tw for rape, incest, it’s??????? about a girl who literally has razor-sharp teeth in her vagina and it’s a very tongue-in-cheek commentary on religious repression???? so idk like it’s a wild ride and i love it but watch at your own discretion)

american psycho (tw for rape, general misogyny)

sweeney todd

speaking from experience, this is much better live, the movie sucked out all the fun and humor that wasn’t literally written into the lyrics, so i recommend watching the original broadway cast on youtube or something

there’s also a 1936 movie which i haven’t seen so i can’t speak to its quality BUT i would recommend it on the basis of it being made before the musical was created and thus being based more directly on “the string of pearls” novel which is where the sweeney todd urban legend was originally documented

abott and costello meet [insert universal horror monster here] [spooky comedy]

little shop of horrors (original and remake) [spooky comedy]

the last man on earth (1964)

adapted from the same book i am legend (2007) was adapted from but the last man on earth stays much closer to the original book imo

c. h. u. d.

ghostbusters (1984 and 2016 versions)*

ghost ship

sick girl (tw for bugs, pregnancy horror)

misery (tw for torture)

puppet master series (tw for rape, nazism)

the haunting in connecticut

zombieland**

jurassic park series

lizzie borden took an axe

wolf creek (tw for rape)

it (1990, 2017)

i have........ some nitpicky issues about putting it on this list, because neither movie adaptation really did justice to the whole concept of “derry itself is an extension of an eldritch horror and the real scary part of the story isn’t the clown, it’s the horrible violent tragedies that have repeatedly occurred and then been dismissed throughout derry’s history, leaving the entire town in a large-scale sort of cycle of abuse” so ????????????? idk like i truly do recommend reading the book as well as seeing the movies for The Whole It Experience(TM), but i totally get that not everyone is gonna do that

the 1990 version tells more or less the complete story, but because of that it didn’t have time to include a lot of fun details

the 2017 version only tells the childhood portion of the story, which leaves it time to include fun details. i was really hoping to see more of derry’s backstory or more development on mike and stan as members of marginalized groups -> how that influences their life in derry, but we didn’t get much of that? mike’s importance to the losers (researcher, somewhat of a skeptic/hardass at times to keep the others together) was removed, his healthy family dynamic was removed (mike, richie, and possibly stan are the only characters in the book with healthy family dynamics, somewhat underscoring the concept that derry itself is trapped in a cycle of abuse), and derry’s history of racism is never touched on aside from the kids mentioning “the fire at the black spot” a couple times in passing. overall it was a fun movie and you can tell everyone making it had a blast but compared to the book it’s like. mmmmmmmmmmmmm

BASICALLY what i’m saying here is that the book is really deep wrt social issues, and while neither movie really touches on those concepts in-depth, they are still good horror movies on their own and ofc a part of american pop culture

house of wax (1953)

marnie (tw for rape, abuse and coercion in a marriage dynamic, animal/pet death, graphic depictions of psychological abuse, graphic depiction of a violent death involving a child)

cabin fever (tw for sickness horror/body function horror/unsanitary horror, occasional slurs)

mega shark vs. giant octopus

i don’t even have a real reason for listing this i just can’t believe it exists and i want the whole world to know

texas chainsaw massacre (1974), texas chainsaw massacre 2, texas chainsaw 3d

ju-on: the grudge

phantoms

the plot is pretty ehhh imo but the effects are great; rose mcgowan is gorgeous as always, peter o’toole’s character is great, and ben affleck’s character lowkey has some batman circa arkham knight vibes going on. also, liev schrieber becomes a tentacle monster. i couldn’t make this shit up if i tried y’all

vamps*

this movie. this movie

krysten ritter and alicia silverstone are a couple of vampires, sigourney weaver is their hot mess of a vampire mom, dan stevens is krysten ritter’s boyfriend, wallace shawn is van helsing but he’s basically just vizzini: vampire hunter au and it’s GOLD

it’s literally the cutest and funniest vampire media i’ve ever seen in my life as well as one of the most detailed when it comes to vampire lore i cannot recommend it enough

bram stoker’s dracula

death becomes her**

what we do in the shadows**

disturbia

frankenstein (2004 miniseries, more like a 2-part movie than a tv show)

flatliners (1990) (tw for drug use, uncensored depictions of cadaver dissection)

the cabinet of dr. caligari

the limehouse golem (tw for sexual assault and csa)

repulsion (tw for sexual assault)

the trial (1962)

*spooky comedy: a comedy movie with a spooky premise that i am categorizing with horror movies due to the genre overlap, but that lacks the intense violence, gore, etc. of a horror movie

**horror comedy: a spooky comedy that does not lower the level of violence, gore, etc. that is standard in a horror movie

thrillers

stoker (tw for incest, has a scene in which the protag’s mother verbally abuses her)

m [german film, watch with subtitles] (tw for themes of pedophilia/child molestation/child murder, but it’s worth noting that the whole point of the movie is to condemn and demonize pedophilia)

also one of if not the very first detective movies

nightcrawler (tw for rape)

the vvitch/the witch/however the fuck it’s spelled

rear window (1954)

zodiac

hannibal lecter franchise (tw for cannibalism, obviously)-- the silence of the lambs, hannibal, red dragon, manhunter

manhunter is adapted from the same book red dragon is (red dragon) except manhunter was made before anthony hopkins became The Iconic Hannibal Lecter(TM) so it focuses much more on will graham and francis dolarhyde

hannibal rising is worth watching for gaspard ulliel’s performance but the book was much better

the hannibal movie adaptation changed the ending of the hannibal book while still maintaining a really good and really compelling storyline so the book and movie are definitely both highly recommended by me

gone girl

shutter island (tw for asylum horror)

pan’s labyrinth

tiger house

the champagne murders

the plot and pacing are a little ehhh; in my opinion there was too much tension buildup between characters and not enough actual plot development. BUT, anthony perkins is in it so it’s worth watching if you love him like i do

documentaries

cropsey (documentary on child murders)

urban legends (another documentary, by the same people, talks about how real-life crime affects the american psyche and lives on as urban legends/horror tropes)

the poisoner’s handbook

h. h. holmes

nightmares in red, white, and blue

his name was jason

never sleep again: the elm street legacy

american ripper [currently ongoing tv series]

television/youtube

bates motel

ahs s1 (tw for... literally everything)

slasher

similar basic premise as ahs, but imo ahs is v exploitative and builds the plot on violence and vice, whereas slasher builds the violence and vice on the plot

supernatural (LISTEN........ LISTEN....................... conceptually it’s the bees knees okay)

penny dreadful (tw for constant explicit sexuality, religious iconography/sacrilege, asylum horror)

criminal minds

bbc broadchurch

bbc river

bbc sherlock but literally only ep. 3.4 “the abominable bride”

rosemary’s baby (2-part made-for-tv movie)

unedited footage of a bear

marblehornets

true detective

frankenstein (2004 miniseries, more like a 2-part movie than a tv show)

tbs’ search party

podcasts

the black tapes podcast

small town horror

alice isn’t dead

king falls am [spooky comedy, more sci-fi than horror but there is One Episode that positively screams “love letter to 80s horror movies” so i can’t leave it out with good conscience]

limetown

welcome to night vale [spooky comedy]

the dark tome

video games

until dawn

outlast series

five nights at freddy’s

dead by daylight

bioshock

#recs #horror #*mine #masterlist

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snakebitcat · 5 years

Text

All Good Things Must Come To An Endgame (Avengers: Endgame)

“A man of vision, you say? Yeah. A hell of a vision.”

-Woodrow Call, Lonesome Dove

Hi there. It’s been awhile.

Firstly, here’s the State of the Manchild: The 2016 election took a lot of wind out of my sails, and then finding out that the guy who encouraged me to start writing reviews was a sexual predator (and the resultant end of the review site I was writing for) didn’t help my morale any, either. Also, I had some personal setbacks that I’d rather not go into that sent me into a long spiral of depression, so that didn’t help either. But I’ve missed this, and I’ve been wanting to come back to it, and when I saw Avengers: Endgame I felt the same inspiration that I felt when I watched Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, so here we are. Time to kick off Grumpy Old Manchild 2.0, so without further ado, a review:

Avengers: Endgame was amazing, and that makes me fucking furious.

Why, you ask? Let me tell you about my friend John. I met him in 1987, back when I was just a grumpy young manchild. I was in a bookstore at my local mall, reading a sourcebook for the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, and some random stranger came up to me and started talking about the superhero game he was running at his college. We had a great time nerding the hell out over how much we loved superheroes and gaming, and because this was the era before anybody had cell phones and we were oblivious nerd boys, neither one of us thought that exchanging contact information would be a good idea. It was just a nice talk, and I’d figured that would be that.

Then that fall, when I went to go register for classes at the college I was attending at the time, we spotted each other in the halls, and I thought “Hey, it’s that guy; I should go say hi,” and we started hanging out and gaming together, and co-GM’d a superhero RPG from 1989 to 2006. I ran the first session the same night we went to go see the Michael Keaton Batman movie. And n 2008 we went to go see Iron Man together, and both lost our fucking minds when Nick Fury showed up at the end. And then we saw Incredible Hulk together, and when Tony Stark showed up at the end we lost of goddamned minds again.

And then in May of 2009, he died. He only got to see two of the twenty-two MCU movies, and nobody’s ever going to convince me that’s even remotely close to fair. But it seems somehow appropriate that when I’m thinking about him while I’m writing about a movie about superheroes and loss.

But I digress.

How was the movie, you ask? I absolutely loved it. Best installment in the MCU, bar none, because they accomplished something that no other American movie studio ever has: They perfectly reproduced the experience of being a comic book reader following multiple titles by multiple creative teams working on a single storyline while also moving their individual storylines forward, and they absolutely stuck the landing.

And from here, there be spoilers, so I’ll put the rest under a cut.

OK, then. Other reviewers have already covered the plot, and if you’re still reading then chances are good you’ve already seen it, so rather than hit on that, I’m going to start by discussing how the movie deals with the original six Avengers.

First, we have Hawkeye. Most of the Avengers have fit the standard superhero mold of unmarried people with no kids, but Clint Barton is a husband and father, and his commitment to that kept him out of Infinity War. So because we didn’t get to see him in that (and because, unlike Scott Lang, he didn’t get a solo movie), the Russo’s decision to start with a scene of him with his family was a good one. It sparks Clint’s descent into darkness as Ronin, and it really drives home what it would be like to be there during the Snap.

Bruce Banner finally reconciles the two warring halves of his personality, and we get the Smart Hulk that I never expected to see in the movies, but was delighted to. How many PhDs does Hulk have? Same as you now, buddy.

When the Avengers finally locate Thanos, Thor goes for the head (as Thanos told him he should have done) only to discover that the vengeance he was desperate to take upon the Mad Titan means nothing. While the fat jokes at his expense were unnecessary, even disappointing, it makes sense that he would sink into the depressed haze of alcohol, food, and resignation we find him stewing in five years later.

Captain America has taken over Sam’s job, and is helping the Snap survivors learn to live with their tragedy, because he’s still trying to figure out how to live with his own. He hasn’t quite managed to move on, but then again that’s been his defining trait ever since he woke up in the modern world at the end of his first movie.

Iron Man has become the sort of dad he always wished his own father had been. It was great to see how he has, over the eleven years and 22 movies that the MCU has given us, gone from being someone who put himself and his own desires above everything and everyone else to someone whose first priority is the well-being of his friends and family.

And then we have Black Widow. Survivor’s guilt has been her defining trait ever since we got her hints about “red in her ledger” in Avengers, and it’s become the entirety of her being when we see what she’s up to after the jump forward in time. She’s so dedicated to coordinating the missions the surviving Avengers and Guardians are carrying out to the exclusion of letting herself have a life that her friends and colleagues are starting to worry about her.

So we have two Avengers who have collapsed in on themselves (Clint and Thor), two who are, while functional, too consumed by their pasts to move forward (Steve and Natasha), and two who are living the sort of post-heroic lives that their pre-Snap selves could only dream of (Bruce and Tony). Thus their situations are perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

As good as the movie is, it’s not entirely without its weak points. When Tony and Steve first meet each other, Tony lashes out at Steve for not being there when Thanos attacked. But because the reason Steve wasn’t there was because Tony never managed to swallow his pride enough to call Steve, that’s all on you, Stank. There are two others, both of them dialogue choices. The first is them not having Steve say “I can do this all day” when he gets up after Thanos has broken his shield and beaten him down, because that would have taken us full circle to when Steve was fighting the bully in Captain America: the First Avenger. And speaking of taking things full circle, when Tony says “I am Iron Man” just before he Snaps, he should have said “I am Tony Stark.” It wasn’t Iron Man, Avenger who stops Thanos and saves the universe, but rather Tony Stark, friend and father who will do whatever it takes to ensure that his little girl and the other people he loves will be safe from Thanos’ evil.

And now for some of the highlights from the plot – the things that pleasantly surprised me, or just made me grin. We finally got to hear Steve say “Avengers assemble!” I was hoping for that in Avengers, and then in Age of Ultron they blueballed us by cutting away before he could finish saying it, and there was never a point in Infinity War when it would have been appropriate. So finally, after almost a full decade of waiting, having it at long last be paid off felt especially sweet. Tony and Steve finally putting their bad blood aside and becoming friends again was exactly the sort of sweet moment we needed. The scene with Bruce and the Ancient One was an absolute delight, because he was one of the only members of the team who could talk multiversal theory and timeline integrity with her at her level. Tony meeting his father helped him realize that for all of Howard’s many faults, his father did the best he was capable of, in a heartfelt callback to Star-Lord having the same realization about Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. The moment when all of the Avengers and Guardians whom Thanos had Snapped portaled in along with all of the sorcerers, Ravagers, and all of Wakanda’s warriors was an absolutely beautiful “Fuck yeah” moment. Star-Lord got to see Gamora again, but when he tried to resume where they had left off their relationship, he got a knee to the pills for his trouble because this was the Gamora that hadn’t met him yet, rather than the one who had gotten the chance to see the real him yet. And Steve finally proved that we he worthy to wield Mjolnir, and Thor was even happier about it than anyone in the audience!

And with that I’ll move on to how each of the original team’s individual stories ended up.

Clint got to be back with the family that he had lost all hope of seeing again.

Bruce got to leave the violence and anger that had defined his life for years behind him, and retire with the recognition as a hero and a genius that he deserved.

Thor has left the weight of all the expectations – both his own, and of all the other Asgardians and Avengers – behind him, and can start to discover what sort of person he is and what sort he wants to be.

Steve has finally moved on, by moving back. He returns to the past, and becomes the husband that Peggy had mentioned in past movies but whom we never saw. As a fan of the character and someone who is hopelessly sentimental, seeing him finally get that dance she promised him had me weeping with joy.

Tony’s story started the MCU, and he has, appropriately enough, grown the most of any of the characters in it. He proved that he was capable of self-sacrifice in Avengers, and in Endgame he knows what he’s sacrificing himself for, and that it’s worth the cost he pays.

And Natasha … it hurt so much to see her sacrifice herself. But it also made perfect sense. Clint was too blinded by the loss of his family to realize that if they won, his family would be back. But Natasha knew that, and she wanted Clint to have the chance at a life with his wife and children that Thanos had taken away from him. And with that act of supreme love for her best and truest friend, the last of the red was finally gone from her ledger.

Their situations are no longer perfectly balanced, but obsession with balance was what drove Thanos to attempt to commit omnicide. We don’t need for all of the Avengers to be equally well off, as long as their storylines have reached their logical conclusions, and for good or ill, whether in joy or in mourning, they all have.

We will miss the ones we lost in Endgame, as I miss John. But we will continue on, and although I’m sure they would have preferred to have gotten to continue along with us, we can keep living our lives and do our best to make things a little better, a little kinder, and a little more just for those who will continue along after we are gone.

Speaking of which, please join me next Wednesday, when I’ll be reviewing a movie whose title was too weird for me to ignore: The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot.

#grumpy old manchild #reviews #avengers #avengers endgame #mcu #it felt good to write reviews again #i hope people read this

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