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immaturityofthomasastruc · 1 year

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IOTA Reviews: Jubilation

So far, Season 5 has been pretty decent for the most part. Sure, there have already been a handful of plotholes and retcons (to the point where I'm honestly thinking of starting a retcon counter in the future), but at the very worse, the first three episodes were below average at worst. But now we have to see how the Akuma of the day formula will play out now. Can it bring new life to this show, or is that nothing more than a pipe dream?

Let's get into the fourth (chronologically the fourth) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fifth season: Jubilation

The episode starts off with Marinette going for a jog, and shockingly, it isn't in her pajamas, but rather, clothing appropriate for running. She stops to see an advertisement for the Alliance rings, and reminds the audience that she's totally not in love with Adrien anymore because it cost her most of the Miraculous. Marinette is about to continue running, when she sees her principal, Mr. Damocles, dressing up at the superhero, the Owl, while attempting to save a cat from a billboard... even though he learned his lesson all the way back in his spotlight episode, “The Dark Owl”. Before Marinette has the chance to save him from his incompetence, another girl dressed as Ladybug saves Mr. Damocles, though Marinette recognizes her as an old friend. Both “heroes” run off, but Marinette has an idea of who the fake Ladybug is.

Marinette: That fake Ladybug from this morning, I think it was Socqueline, a school friend from last year. Knowing her, I’m sure she means well. But I have to convince her to stop putting herself in danger like that.

So basically, we're repeating the civilian plotline of “The Dark Owl”, but this time, with two different heroes. I'm also confused as to why we've never heard of Socqueline until Season 5, especially if Marinette already knows her. It's not as egregious or forced as Zoe's introduction, but it's weird that Marinette has never brought her up, not even to Tikki or Alya.

Also, why the hell does she look like Marinette? It was at least understandable to reuse Adrien's character model for Felix because they were related, but these two are just friends, and Socqueline doesn’t even have the same name most fans use for the PV Ladybug, Bridgette. What, did you think changing her name would make the reference more subtle? Oh yeah, and even though we already have two Asian characters with the same surname, Socqueline’s last name is also Wang. Because just like the mayor and ice cream man sharing the same first name, this isn’t confusing in the slightest.

Socqueline works at a local arts and crafts store, and before Marinette can ask her for why she's pretending to be Ladybug, she pretends to be buying paint first... even though she could just transform into Ladybug, walk in and say “Hey, I heard you've been impersonating me, so stop it before you get yourself killed, idiot”. But then I guess we wouldn't get an explanation as to what Alliance can do. Like we saw in “Multiplication”, it's basically an Alexa in ring form that totally isn't a front for supervillain activity. Marinette and Socqueline talk about Adrien, and Socqueline assumes the two are a couple after Marinette talks about how close they are, when all Marinette does is recap the whole thing about his mother “disappearing” and that he doesn't want to be a model. Wow, you really know him, don't you?

Eventually, the conversation goes back to Socqueline dressing up as Ladybug.

Marinette: Well, it’s a good thing you’re not trying to be a superhero, because it’s very dangerous to do the same thing they do when you don’t have magical powers and supersuits!

Socqueline: Yeah… Well, what if it’s a relief for Ladybug to have people help her?

Marinette: No way would she want that. It’s too risky!

Socqueline: Yes, but you gotta know when to step in. That’s the only way you can change things in life!

Marinette: I know. You told me that last year, but in this circumstance, it’s Ladybug’s job to take risks, and no one else’s! Because if everyone takes risks, then Ladybug may have to take more risks in order to deal with their risks, which is even riskier!

Mr. Damocles: Sounds like someone’s jealous because she wants to be a superhero.

Marinette: I do not! I’m Marinette! I’m very happy to be a normal girl, with a normal life, AND SO SHOULD EVERYONE ELSE!

Admittedly, this is a decent argument for Marinette and Socqueline to have, but I feel like they're kind of oversimplifying it. Yes, it's obvious that Socqueline and Mr. Damocles can't do much to help Ladybug without any powers, but that doesn't rule out Ladybug getting other allies in the form of local law enforcement or even other heroes with high-tech gadgets like Batman. It's also strange that the whole deal with Marinette last season was that she wasn't willing to trust anyone like Cat Noir, so wouldn't it make sense to call back to that, and consider getting help from people in other ways, like moral support?

While Socqueline tries to console Mr. Damocles, some of the dinosaurs from “Rocketear” break out, so Marinette quickly transforms into Ladybug to catch them again, but while she does so, she accidentally brings Socqueline's Alliance ring with her. Turns out that, shock of all shocks, Gabriel is secretly monitoring the Alliance rings, and the data gathered from the step counter app registers the user as moving around far beyond human capabilities. Gabriel obviously assumes that Socqueline is Ladybug, and transforms into Monarch, where we see how the new Akuma routine will go for the season. Sensing Mr. Damocles' negative emotions from believing he can't be a superhero, Monarch uses Kaalki's Voyage to send his Akuma towards one of his masks. When it reaches Mr. Damocles, Monarch uses his Alliance ring to grant him Daizzi's Gift, turning him into Darker Owl.

Darker Owl is basically just the same as Dark Owl, but with some shinier parts, and instead of the campier Batman he was originally themed after, he has a sightly deeper voice, not unlike Christian Bale's interpretation of the character. Nothing special, but compared to reusing past Akuma designs, at least an effort was made to make him look different.

Darker Owl breaks into the paint shop, believing Monarch's claim that Socqueline is Ladybug. Using one of his gadgets with the Pig Miraculous' gift, he traps Socqueline in her fantasy to be recognized as a hero by the real Ladybug and Cat Noir. Before she was trapped however, she secretly used her Alliance ring to trick Darker Owl into revealing where the Akuma is.

Of course, like a concerning amount of episodes before it, we finally get Adrien's first scene, where he's just playing video games until he learns about the Akuma, transforming into Cat Noir. Both heroes arrive to stop Darker Owl, who has taken Socqueline as a hostage, and while Cat Noir saves Socqueline, Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm, an old fashioned alarm clock.

After Cat Noir saves Socqueline, both him and Ladybug are hit by Gift, where their shared fantasy is beating Darker Owl and finding Monarch's business card in Mr. Damocles' jacket. After the two defeat Monarch and get the Miraculous back, they grow closer together, and eventually... get married... even though they're still teenagers.

Okay, that's very concerning, especially since Cat Noir's “suit” is just the Cat Blanc model with green eyes, but it's not like they're going to become parents too, right?

Oh.

Ohhhhhh....

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh nooooooo.....

youtube

Yep. The writers REALLY didn't think this through. I get that it didn't really happen, but I don't get why they had to make the fantasy of Ladybug and Cat Noir being all about them starting a family when they can't even afford new models to show that they're older so they could avoid these implications.

Putting that aside, the fantasy is decently put together, but it's nothing special compared to something like “Perchance to Dream” from Batman: The Animated Series. I like the recurring surreal imagery with the alarm clocks, and the babies looking like dolls could be seen as a way to show how fake this all is. On the other hand, I don't get whose fantasy this is exactly. Yeah, it's implied that since the same Gift bullet was fired at both Ladybug and Cat Noir, they're sharing an amalgamation of their fantasies (Ladybug defeating Monarch and getting the Miraculous back and Cat Noir starting a family with Ladybug), but it feels like more focus is given to Cat Noir's fantasy even though he didn't even get to do anything before the Akuma showed up. They even have the scene with him hesitating to leave the fantasy when it should have been Ladybug struggling to reject it. In fact, I think the reason this fantasy sequence rings hollow for me is because it doesn't really connect to the idea that Marinette wants a normal life. Wouldn't it make more sense for Marinette's fantasy to be a world where Socqueline or Alya is Ladybug instead of her? You could easily alternate between Marinette's fantasy where she lives a mundane life and alternate it with Cat Noir's fantasy where he embraces the superhero lifestyle. It would have made more sense given that this was a Marinette-centric episode,

Even after the two heroes break out, it's Cat Noir who snaps at Darker Owl, not Ladybug. You could have easily had a scene where Cat Noir is the one who has to restrain Ladybug from getting too aggressive while fighting Darker Owl to show how reliable of a partner he is. Instead, well... remember how last episode, Cat Noir felt a lot of guilt for accidentally Cataclysming Monarch when Monarch let himself take the hit? Yeah, he almost Cataclysms Darker Owl out of anger. Yeah, he’s not thinking straight, and he stops at the last minute, but it makes him look like a real hypocrite. It also doesn’t really reassure the audience that he's now the only ally Ladybug has at the moment. This moment would have made more sense if the roles were reversed, with Cat Noir begging Ladybug to not hurt Darker Owl because Monarch was the one who taunted them with their ideal lives.

Ladybug purifies the Akuma, gives Mr. Damocles a useless Magical Charm, fixes the minor damage Darker Owl caused, Daizzi is sent back to Monarch's lair, and nobody ever acknowledges that Cat Noir almost killed a man.

After Socqueline apologizes to Ladybug, and Ladybug gives a vague statement of wanting Socqueline to find another way to help, she goes back home as Marinette. Sabine offers her an Alliance ring, but Marinette decides against it, mostly because of what happened earlier.

The episode then ends to Ladybug talking with Cat Noir about what happened with Darker Owl, how he got the power of the Pig Miraculous, and what happened in their fantasy.

Cat Noir: Ladybug, that power of Jubilation... it’s supposed to show us our deepest desires, isn’t it?

Ladybug: Yes.

Cat Noir: But that was... that wasn’t real, right?

Ladybug: Tell me about it. The wedding, babies, totally… fake.

Cat Noir: Are you sure?

Ladybug: Monarch… must’ve altered it somehow, to trick us. Yeah, that’s got to be it.

Cat Noir: Of course, otherwise, it would be totally super weird, wouldn’t it?

Ladybug: Right. Totally… super… weird.

Yeah, calling what you two lived through “weird” is an understatement.

Overall, this episode was just mediocre, and other than the climax, there wasn't much for me to talk about.

Socqueline as a character confuses me. Do we really need another member of Marinette's friend group, especially when you could have easily replaced Socqueline with another character? Seriously, someone like Alya, Mylene, Kagami, Zoe, or even Chloe would have worked better, as their personalities and motivations would fit a story like this. She's just an unnecessary addition to an already bloated cast of characters.

I will say I liked how the villain side of things was handled. In a world where the use of technology in our daily lives is more common, the idea of the Alliance rings being a way for Gabriel to monitor the public is pretty clever. I’m still confused as to why he even needs to use a Miraculous to give Akumas more powers when he can already do that with Akumas in the first place, but I like how the conflict seems to be ramping up.

I also don't get the point of this conflict, especially since we already did it three seasons ago. Back in “The Dark Owl”, it was unnecessary because Ladybug and Cat Noir were already doing a good job at fighting Hawkmoth's Akumas, but now, he's stronger than ever, and they need all the help they can get. Yeah, Mr. Damocles and Socqueline were endangering themselves by trying to help others, but at least they're doing something after everyone just gave up preparing for Monarch's new wave of Akumas in “Multiplication”. But then again, at least Ladybug didn't call either of them entitled for actually wanting to help people instead of focusing on their own selfish desires like the “hero” in Kamen Rider Geats.

Even the resolution feels tacked on. In “The Dark Owl”, the ending was similar, with Mr. Damocles choosing to stop trying to be a hero, but instead focusing on doing community service, helping people in his own way. Here? Ladybug tells Socqueline to help someone without endangering herself, and we don't get any follow-up on that, not even with Mr. Damocles. It feels more tacked on than anything else.

It doesn't help that despite the episode hinting at Marinette wanting a normal life, the actual highlight of the episode, the fantasy sequence, doesn't really connect to those wishes, as Marinette stays transformed the whole time. From an out of universe perspective, it's obviously because Cat Noir and Monarch can't find out who Ladybug is, but it's not clear why her fantasy is like that. You could have easily thrown in something like that rule they established last episode of Miraculous magic not being able to interfere with other Miraculous, so Monarch and Darker Owl have to make up their own ideal fantasy for Ladybug and Cat Noir to live in because they can't completely read their minds. Well that, and also, DON'T SHOW TWO TEENAGERS BECOMING PARENTS WITHOUT EVEN AGING, BECAUSE IT GIVES OFF THE VIBE THAT THEY HAD SEX.

This episode wasn't really terrible, more boring than anything else. At least I had something to talk about with the past three episodes, but here? Outside of the fantasy, there's not much else to say.

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... MR. DAMOCLES

Even though he already learned his lesson three seasons ago, he still didn't get that a man of his age and physique wasn't fit to be a superhero. At least Socqueline was established to be in good shape for her age. On top of that, he easily gave away his cover (even if it was obvious, the joke before was that everyone else pretended to not know who he is) at the drop of a hat, and when he was supposedly confronted with Ladybug's civilian identity, he didn't think to just rip her earrings off, and spent way too much time talking before he zapped her with a Gift bullet.

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug salt #ml salt #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #cat noir #chat noir #gabriel agreste #hawkmoth #hawk moth #monarch #monarch miraculous #mr damocles #dark owl #darker owl #socqueline wang

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brown-little-robin · 3 years

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9: That Was Abuse

part one | previous | next | ao3

The day after the storm, Wally drops off a black file containing a list of options and questions from Batman. Max skims it, then calls Thaddeus to the kitchen.

Thad reads the list, puts it back on the table, and rests his chin on his arms.

“We need to decide on your legal name.”

“Why not just Thaddeus Thawne?”

“That might draw unwanted attention,” Max says. “Safer not to have that on any legal papers.”

“Mm.”

“You could keep Thaddeus, especially if we make it your legal middle name,” Max suggests.

Thad shrugs.

Strange. Max expected him to be passionate about his name. He seems… lost.

“Thad,” he says. “The choice is yours, but I want you to know that I would be honored if you took Crandall as your surname.”

Thad stares at him.

At last, he says, “I… I don’t… I can’t do this today… Sorry.”

And he gets up and trudges back to his room and lays back down.

Max struggles not to be hurt. Thad is depressed. His whole life is changing around him. Let him have the dignity of putting off his decisions for a day. What did he expect? For Thad to jump up and down in excitement at being offered Max’s last name?

But the hurt does fade when Max sees Thad struggling. Max has to order him to eat lunch, leftovers of the cinnamon rolls that he enjoyed so much yesterday. After lunch, Max cleans out Thad’s closet, putting Bart’s old clothes in boxes under his bed. A while later, he finds Thad standing in front of his closet with a shirt hanging from his hand and a thousand-yard stare. It takes him two hours to put away half of his clothes.

Max and Helen exchange concerned looks at dinner. Thad eats his garlic bread joylessly, mechanically. He’s barely touched the speed force all day.

After dinner, Helen invites Thad to watch a movie with her. Max feels a little left out, today, but he doesn't object. Helen and Thad should have some bonding time. He lingers in the kitchen, observing, as they pick out their movie. Thad doesn't give any preferences except “nothing superhero-related” and “nothing serious”. Helen offers Thad a choice between Star Trek and Planet Earth; they settle on Star Trek. Helen gets the movie set up, spreads a blanket over the couch, and sits in the middle, giving Thad the corner spot he prefers. He pushes the blanket towards Helen and sits carefully in the clear space. Helen says “No no no. We’re watching a movie; we have to cuddle under a blanket.” And Thad smiles, tired but genuine, and gets under the blanket and leans on Helen’s shoulder.

Max swallows his jealousy at their easy intimacy and goes to commune with the speed force. Johnny Quick laughs at him, sensing his wounded pride. Barry Allen says wistfully, at least he talks to you. All seven years, whenever I tried to approach him, he ran away.

Next morning, Max tempts Thad awake with a promise of fresh butter-pecan cookies with breakfast. Thad grumbles wordlessly, but gets up and follows Max to the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. He’s still in his pajamas, the blue ones covered in silhouettes of cats. He seems completely unselfconscious about them. Does he not know that cat pajamas are considered childish, or does he not care? Max hopes it’s the latter.

Thad eats dutifully, then just… sits at the table, staring at the wall. Looks like it’s another tired day. Max is washing the cookie sheet when he hears Thad’s rough voice behind him.

“Good cookies.”

“Why thank you,” Max says, touched. Has Thad ever complimented him before? Max thinks not.

He turns to the table. Thad is still staring at the wall.

“What sort of backstory would you like for the paperwork?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“It’ll be easier to maintain your secret identity if you have a story that’s easy to remember,” Max coaxes. “We can incorporate some truth into it, you know.”

“Mm.”

“For example, we could say your studies were largely self-directed.”

Thad shrugs.

Max says, “Thad, pay attention for a minute.”

Thad looks at him. There’s no life in his eyes.

“You’ve been so passionate about making a new start… I’m worried about you. What’s making you reluctant to work on this?”

Thad doesn't answer.

“Are you… afraid of something?”

“…no. It’s just not worth it.”

“Not worth it?” Max repeats, puzzled but listening.

“I… I think I’m… decaying.”

Is this future slang? An Interlac word that doesn't translate well?

“Decaying?”

“I’m a clone, Max,” Thad snaps, with something of his old fire. “It happens. I think… something’s wrong with my brain.”

Oh. Decay as in genetic deterioration.

Max thinks of the poor misshapen Kryptonian clones, of the Inertia who died choking on his own lungs. He never told Bart about that one, just gave the child a proper burial out in the desert.

This can’t be happening.

Max phones Helen, makes Thad explain all his symptoms. Max gets more alarmed with each one: the loss of control of his powers two days ago, exhaustion, feeling cold all the time, and most alarmingly, spacing out for significant periods of time and having no memory of what happened. Helen shouts “FAMILY EMERGENCY, CANCEL EVERYTHING, hang on, Max, tell Thad I’ll be right there,” and hangs up. Max barely knows what he’s doing; he says, “Helen’s coming. We’re taking you to a doctor.” Thad, looking startled, answers, “What doctor? The Watchtower again? You know they don’t have real doctors, just magic people, right?” Max says, “A real doctor.” Thad says, “What—how? I don’t have paperwork! And anyway, it’s not like flawed genetics is curable.” Max says, “Doctor Morlo. He’s a genius with biology. If there’s even a chance—” and can’t finish. Helen arrives a few minutes later and they set out for Morlo’s house in Hanover. She’s speeding. Max doesn't say anything about it. It’ll still take about an hour by car.

Thad stares out the window, dry-eyed. He hasn’t cried since leaving the speed force. Max would have sensed the unmistakable motion of a heaving torso.

“How are you doing?” Max asks gently.

Thad snorts. “Apart from dying?”

“We don’t know that,” Max says.

“It’s a distinct possibility,” Thad retorts. “I’m not an idiot.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Thad scoffs, turns back to the window.

Helen says, “You’re going to go to college.”

Thad’s nonchalant expression cracks.

They drive in silence for a while. Max is unable to promise what he doesn't know. He’s seen too many tragedies for that.

“I love you so much,” Helen says, and her voice cracks. “If I could… If I could take this disease… or whatever it is, for you, I would. I’d—”

She sniffs. The car wobbles a little.

“I’d die for you.”

Thad says, “Don’t do that. That’s the worst trade I’ve ever heard of.”

Helen says, “Well, you’re not allowed to die, so there. My house, my rules.”

Thad laughs. He sounds slightly hysterical.

Doctor Morlo greets Max at the door and raises his bushy eyebrows at Thad.

“Got empty-nest syndrome, Mercury?” he asks.

Max explains Thad’s presence succinctly, barely conscious of what he’s saying. He says, “We think he might be genetically deteriorating.”

Morlo says, “Tell me everything.”

Max explains the symptoms and apologizes for asking Morlo to do something so out of his area.

“I know quite a bit about clone biology, actually,” Morlo says, and doesn't explain any further, which is probably for the best. He leads them down to the lab. The lab’s better-stocked all the time now that his Doctor Morlo Fan Club is funding his research; Thad looks around, silent.

Max takes Helen’s hand. She gives it a squeeze.

Morlo brusquely gestures Thad into the center of the room and tells him to take off his shirt so he can examine his body for signs of deterioration like bloating, cracking skin, or bruises. Thad obeys. He looks healthy as far as Max can tell. But is he slightly thinner, his ribs more pronounced, muscles more wiry? Max can’t tell if he’s imagining it; Impulse and Inertia were always built lean, even for speedsters.

Doctor Morlo takes Thad’s arm in his hands; the boy tenses up, and his pupils grow so wide the brilliant yellow is just a thin ring.

Max hates the Thawnes a little more every day. What a senseless waste, to treat Thad as a weapon, leaving him so starved for affection that a single touch undoes him.

Morlo inspects Thad’s hand closely. “Your hands seem fine,” he says. “Deteriorating clones sometimes get cracked fingernails and swollen knuckles. Any vomiting or diarrhea?” No. “Nausea?” A little. “Joint pain?” No. “Aching in your whole body?” …yes. “Hallucinations or delusions?” No. “Other discomfort?” …sometimes the light feels too bright.

“Put your shirt back on. Roll up your sleeve and go put your arm in the restraints on the bed.”

Thad snaps, “Don’t treat me like a prisoner. I’m not Inertia anymore.”

Morlo growls, “You have no idea how I treat prisoners. Luckily for you, I am treating you like a speedster. I need to take your blood and I don’t want you vibrating away from the needle.”

“I’m not Impulse,” Thad says indignantly.

Morlo says, “I’m aware, m’boy, but speedsters flinch fast. This equipment will match your vibrations long enough for you to realize you’re vibrating and stop before you get blood on my floor.”

Thad huffs, sits on the bed, and straps his arm into the restraints on the armrest; Morlo checks the bindings and tightens them a bit, then swings two metal arms up to grasp Thad’s arm just below the elbow and just above the wrist. Thad’s eyes flick back and forth from the restraints to Morlo; he’s pulling subtly at both the restraints and the speed force, not fully speeding up but giving himself an edge. It’s a casually impressive display of his precise control of his powers; most speedsters only go normal speed or fast.

Morlo turns away, grabbing a syringe and needle. Thad takes a deep breath, slows down, and asks, “What’re the biological differences between speedsters and normal humans?”

Morlo looks surprised, but explains with good grace that the main differences are the heat-shield aura, electricity tolerance, and hypermetabolism. The information blurs. Max is focusing on watching Thad, feeling the stutter of his heartbeat as the needle slides into his arm. His attention keeps morbidly fixating on Thad’s heartbeat.

Thad says, “What about hyper-acceleration?”

“Ah,” Morlo says, “That’s an interesting one. Hyper-acceleration, where the body ages quickly, is an unusual secondary effect…” Max stops paying attention to the words until Thad says, “My original was hyper-accelerated until Wally West fixed him. I’m hyper-decelerated. I age slowly.”

“You’re still hyper-decelerated?” Morlo asks.

“Yes. The Thawnes considered my long lifespan an asset.”

“Well, if you ever want to change that, you know where to find me.”

“Morlo!” Max snaps. For heaven’s sake! The man has no tact!

Thad laughs at him.

Morlo removes the needle, unstraps Thad and opens his refrigerator, a bright green box festooned with tubes. He tosses a small box over his shoulder, and Thad catches it; it’s apple juice. Morlo separates the little tube of blood into three parts and sets his machines working on them.

Morlo tells Thad to run. Thad refuses. Morlo says, I have to test your powers. Thad says, test ‘em without me running. Morlo tells Thad to vibrate a metal plate instead, which seems to work.

The machines start beeping. Morlo flips through the bloodwork results.

He looks up.

Max squeezes Helen’s hand. She leans on him.

Doctor Morlo says to Thad, “You’re not decaying. Come back in a week and I’ll test you again, but I expect the same results.”

He isn’t dying?

Morlo says, “Speak with me alone, Mercury.”

Max follows Morlo up to his living room.

Morlo says, “This is trauma response, not genetic disease. All this emotion stuff is way out of my area… You know this means he feels safe with you, though, right, old friend? You seem to have a way with retired villains.”

Max shrugs.

“So do you, apparently. I’ve never seen him warm up to someone so fast.”

Morlo says, “I’m not scared of him and he knows it.”

“True. So post-traumatic stress can cause this? All of it, even the spacing out?”

“Six hundred years’ worth? Probably.”

“Ah.”

It hits Max suddenly that Thad is going to live. He’s going to live and grow and go to college and eat pecan desserts and watch Star Trek with Helen and Max is lucky enough to get to see it.

“Buck up, Mercury,” Morlo says gruffly. “He’ll be fine. Come on.”

“Thank you, old friend,” Max says dryly.

They go back to the lab.

“You’re not decaying,” Morlo restates bluntly. “Your genetics are fine. Your body is processing the effects of long-term trauma. You might have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or depression, but that’s not my area of science.”

Thad says, “PTSD? But I’m not traumatized.”

Every time Max thinks he understands Thad, he’s blindsided by something like this.

Morlo says, “Your training alone must have been traumatic child abuse, let alone the mission you were brainwashed into.”

“But…” Thad says, frowning. “The training was different… that was for a mission, I had to prepare… and I wasn’t a child, I’m over six hundred years old… I was the one doing everything, me and CRAYDL… I hardly ever even saw Thaddeus Thawne the First…”

He shakes his head hard, sending his hair whipping around his face.

He says, “Abuse?”

“They may never have hit you, but they still deprived you of a healthy childhood,” Max says. “That’s child abuse.”

Thad’s eyes are wide.

Dear old Morlo. He allows Thad a moment to recover by monologuing. “As far as I understand—and note that I’m not by any definition a feelings doctor—when a person is being abused, their bodies protect them from it. To cope with stress, like an injury, human bodies enter a ‘survival mode’ where they’re functioning well. They might even develop heightened senses or other physical advantages. But functioning under stress forces the body to use up its reserves, functioning at more than full capacity. This can be resolved in two ways: either burning out or processing the trauma and recovering from it. Once a person gets to a safe place, their body will allow themselves to experience the burn-out in order to recover. It’s like how adrenaline delays the pain response.”

Thad’s still staring at nothing. Max gestures continue at Morlo. Morlo makes a face at him, but continues.

“So… Your body now senses that it’s safe to rest and recover… It’s allocating most of your energy to recovery, which is why you’re tired and cold. I’d guess your mind is resting by entering ‘sleep mode’ even while you’re awake, leading to your ‘missing time’. You’re processing emotional trauma, so you’re emotionally exhausted… you’re too keyed-up to control your instincts, thus your heightened fight-or-flight responses.”

Thad says, “They abused me?”

He stands up and starts to pace around the lab.

“I read about PTSD and child abuse in the Psychology 101 textbook. I have enough symptoms to be diagnosable. The Thawnes abused me! Max, they abused me!”

“They did,” Max says.

“I hate them!”

“You have every right to.”

Thad’s lips pull back from his teeth. He seems not to notice crushing the empty apple juice box in his fist. He’s pacing the room with quick angry strides.

“They stole my childhood!”

“Yes.”

“I HATE them! I hate them, I hate them, I hate them, I want to rip their hearts out, I want to wring their necks, I want to beat them to death with their own STUPID VR GOGGLES! I’LL IMPALE THEIR KIDNEYS ON THEIR HOLOCRON ANTENNAE! I’LL FILL THEIR LUNGS WITH TECHNOPLASM AND WATCH THEM CHOKE! I’LL SEE HOW THEY LIKE BEING HIT BY LIGHTNING!”

Helen squeezes Max’s hand urgently. Ah—she’s never seen Thad like this before, worked up to the point of violent, screaming rage. It is… alarming, but despite all his noise, he’s not even touching the speed force.

“It’s okay,” Max murmurs, squeezing back. “He’s just getting it out of his system.”

“A bit more of a challenge than Impulse, is he?” Morlo asks dryly.

“Not really. Just different.”

A growl echoes around the lab.

The inhuman sound of it startles Max; it sounds like a tiger. But Max feels Thad’s connection to the speed force, and he’s not fooled. Thad is actually slowing himself down to achieve that rolling pulse, pulling himself in and out of real time in a precise rhythm. He’s play-acting, expressing his emotion in a non-destructive way.

But Helen is uncomfortable. It’s time to talk him down.

“Enough,” he orders.

The growl cuts off abruptly. Thad looks at Max, panting, eyes wide. He looks insane. He looks completely, gloriously alive.

“Do you really want to take revenge?”

“No. You know that.”

“Helen doesn't,” Max points out.

Thad looks at Helen and winces.

“Sorry. I don’t… I was just…”

“I forgive you,” Helen says. “I hate the Thawnes, too.”

Thad falls silent, paces in a tight circle around the bed and then a wide loop around the edges of the lab. His arms are wrapped around his torso, his fingers digging into his sides; he’s shivering. Max is willing to bet that Thad will fall asleep on the way home.

Thad’s face screws up like he’s in pain.

“This won’t last forever, Thad,” Max tells him. “The sadness… the tiredness… the hate… it’s okay to feel them. Those feelings get better in time. I know. I’ve felt it.”

“It gets better?” Thad asks, like he can’t quite believe it.

“Yes,” Max says firmly.

“So… I might still be able to go to college?”

“If I have anything to say about it, yes.”

Helen says, “What are we waiting for, then? Let’s go fill out the paperwork!”

Thad says, “I think… we’re gonna have to wait on that…”

“Why?”

“I’m gonna fall asleep as soon as I stop walking,” he says, and gives a shaky little laugh.

“Eat something first. You don’t want to burn more energy than you replace.”

Morlo orders Thad to sit down and gives him a large handful of granola bars. True to his word, Thad dozes off halfway through the fourth one. Max picks him up carefully, strokes his soft hair, presses a kiss to the side of his head. Finally, finally, Max’s heart starts to calm down.

“My word, what a scare,” he says.

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multifandomrandomgirl · 3 years

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Remus Lupin!parent x reader!daughter fic

Y/N Cohen had always wondered why she had her mother's maiden surname as opposed to her father's, but her mum refused to tell her. She also refused to tell Y/N the whereabouts of her absent father either for that matter.

All she knew was that her father had disappeared before she had even been born, a "one-night stand", as her mother had put it one night when Y/N had asked just before her tenth birthday. Y/N had since dropped the subject and gave up asking questions about her father.

According to her mother, Y/N had the same green eyes and light brown hair that her father has. The attributes that she got from her mum included her nose and her horrible eyesight.

On her eleventh birthday, Y/N received a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, it informed her that she was a witch and that she had a place at the school for the coming September. Her mother was more than happy to let her go to the school ("I don't have to wake up early to take you to school, it'll be great.").

Her first two years were interesting, to say the least, she'd been sorted into Gryffindor in her first year and made a plethora of friends including Harry Potter, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan and Ernie Macmillian.

In the first year, her Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher turned out to be some creepy pyscho with He-who-must-not-be-named's face on the back of his head, covered in a purple turban. In the second year, Harry came face-to-face with a basilisk after Ron Weasley's younger sister, Ginny got possessed by some guy's soul, Tom Riddle, weird name right?

Oh, and the DADA teacher had accidentally obliviated himself, what a tosser eh?

Y/N was currently sat in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, she had situated herself next to Neville and Seamus, across from Ginny and Dean.

"Who do you think we'll have for Defence this year?" Neville asked as he watched out the window as the train rolled out of Kings Cross. "Dunno, better help us defend ourselves if that raging lunatic, Black, comes anywhere near us." Seamus laughed. "Not a laughing matter Finnigan." Ginny rolled her eyes at the boy.

A few hours along the journey to the school, the train halted and bumped. It suddenly went all cold and dark, depressing almost.

"Anyone want to come and investigate with me?" Y/N stood up, pocketing her wand just in case. "I'll come with." Both Neville and Ginny stood up and followed Y/N down the corridor. They end up in Harry's compartment. Tripping over a few feet, Y/N made her way into the compartment. Harry, Ron, Hermione and a middle-aged man who was asleep were all in there. Y/N sat down next to Harry.

"Any clue as to what is happening?" She whispered, trying not to wake the sleeping man up. "No clue." Hermione mumbled.

A large floating binbag-like creature came into the compartment, it suddenly felt colder, Harry collapsed and Y/N grabbed him before he could hit the floor, she leant him across the seats that the pair had previously occupied.

The sleeping man arose, a ball of fire in his hand, he used wandless magic to ward off the floating binbag.

They all stood in silence as Harry began to wake up. "What were those things?" He asked, looking at the middle-aged man.

"Dementors" Now the lights had flickered back on, Y/N could see the mans' appearance, green eyes, brown hair. "No." She thought. "Is he my? Nah, don't be daft."

"Y/N, Y/N. What's up?" Ron poked Y/N in the shoulder after the man leaves the compartment.

"Is it me or does he look like me?" She whispered, glancing at her friends.

"Do you think he may be your-?" Hermione cut herself short uncertain as to whether or not she should continue her sentence.

"Maybe. I mean, mum did say I looked exactly like him, except for the nose." Y/N stared at the floor, nervously. "Maybe you should ask him?"

"What am I supposed to say? Hi Professor, I think you might be my dad?" Y/N groaned, looking at Neville. "I mean, maybe more subtlety than that." Hermione sighed. "Yeah, good idea."

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

"Today, we will be looking at boggarts." Professor Lupin said. Y/N gulped nervously and fiddled with her red tie.

"Miss Cohen, would you be so kind as to go first?" The brown-haired professor asked her after teaching them the spell needed to protect them. "Uh, sure." Y/N stepped forward, the Professor unleashes the creature from the cupboard.

The boggart turned into a merperson, it wriggled its way towards her, reaching out for her arm. Y/N cowered back slightly, the class minus her friends sniggered at the merperson in front of them.

Y/N pulled her wand out, and aimed it at the boggart. "Riddikulus!" Y/N shouted, the merperson shrivelled up and turned into a muggle superhero figurine, random.

Harry's boggart cut the class off, Professor Lupin held him back to talk to him. Y/N hung around outside the classroom after as she wanted to speak to the Professor. It was the end of the day so it didn't matter if she had to wait for hours, she just wanted to ask him some stuff.

"Miss Cohen?" A voice had broken Lola's trail of thought. "Yes, Professor?"

"Are you okay?" He looked down at her. "Please may I talk to you about something?" Y/N took a deep breath, it was now or never. "Of course, come back into the room." He let her back into the class.

"Is this about your boggart? Merpeople, was interesting." Lupin sat at his desk. Lola shook her head. "That was uh, fun. I fell into the lake in my first year and a merperson grabbed me. But that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about."

"What is it then?"

"Did you, around thirteen- fourteen years ago, know a woman called Trina Cohen?" Y/N noticed the mans' face go pale. "Uh, yeah, I did. Why?" He squeaked out. "Just wondering, that's my mum. Is all." Y/N said, she regretted bringing the subject up, to begin with.

"Ah, um. Okay. Why were you asking? Bit random." He nervously laughed. "Mum said that I got my dad's eyes and hair, and you fit that description. I may have also stolen a photo from my mum's collection without telling her. This is it, actually." Y/N pulled a photo from a pocket inside of her school robes and handed it to Lupin.

"That's, that's me." Professor Lupin's face pulled a funny expression, a mix of upset and a few other emotions that Y/N was unable to pick out. "Here." He handed her the photo back. "You need to leave, now." He escorted her out of the room and locked the door.

"Hey, Y/N! What's up?" Ron looked at the girl, studying her face as she scrunched it up in an attempt not to cry. "I told Lupin that I think he may be my father." Y/N sniffled. "And?"

"He just told me to leave, that's about it." She whispered. "I'm sorry." Ron pulled the girl into his arms, and hugged her tightly. "Shall we head back to the common room?" He asked, Y/N nodded.

"What did he say to you?" Ron asked as the pair sit down. "Why are you asking, bit random. Then he said that's me when I showed him the photo and then told me to leave." Y/N wiped her robe sleeve over her eyes, wiping away a few stray tears.

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

"Y/N, please may I speak to you at the end of the lesson?" Professor Lupin stopped at Y/N's desk on his way into the classroom. "Of course Professor." Y/N mumbled.

The lesson flew by, they were learning about Redcaps and Hinkypunks that lesson. At the end of the lesson, everyone packed up, Ron and Hermione turned to Y/N and told her that they'd keep a seat for her at the lunch table.

"Miss Cohen, I need to talk to you about the subject you brought up the other day." Professor Lupin resumed his seat. Y/N's face went pale. "I apologies for that Professor, it was random to bring up."

"I owled your mother and had a little chat with her. You're right, I am your father." The greying man looked up at her. "You, you are?" Y/N's eyes widened, he nodded.

"I am. I apologise for not being around ever. Your mum wanted you to grow up without magic, she's a muggle as you know. I also am a monster, I'm dangerous. I'm a-"

"Werewolf?" She asked. "Yeah, how did you know?" Lupin ran his hand through his hair. "Snape taught us about werewolves that one lesson you were off last month, mentioned something about them being "too close for comfort"." The brown-haired girl imitated the evil Professor. "I also noticed how your scars looked and how ill you looked the days either side of the full moon."

"That's why I didn't want to be around, I was scared I'd hurt you. Scared I'd make you a monster."

"You aren't a monster, you're such a nice person. How can people see any different? Seriously, what is wrong with those people?" Y/N made a face. "Not everyone thinks like you, sadly. Anyway, I meant to ask, you're not a werewolf too, are you?" She shook her head, he sighed in relief.

"I know I'm an awful person for leaving, but I'd like to try and make it up to you, if that's alright with you?" Professor Lupin studied her face. "Don't speak like that, you aren't an awful person. I understand why you did it. Of course, it's alright with me. I've always wanted to meet you." Y/N gave the Professor a small smile.

"Can I, can I hug you?" The werewolf asked cautiously, he didn't know if he even had the right to hug her. He didn't get an answer, the teenage girl ran forward, she launched herself at him. "I'll take that as a yes then." Lupin laughed.

"I'm so glad I found you. Dad."

#HarryPotter #RemusLupin #sirius black #hermionegranger #ron weasley #hogwarts #x reader #dean thomas #seamus finnigan #neville longbottom #ginny weasley #professor lupin #lupin #remus lupin!parent #remus lupin x daugher reader #albusdumbledore #MinervaMcGonagall #snape

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commentaryvorg · 3 years

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Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 8 - The Singer’s Secret

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

Hitoshi “Neon” Hanamura ~ Neon

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Since the dub constantly varies which character reads out the title card for each episode, I have to side-eye the fact that it’s Marcus and not Yoshi reading out the title card for Yoshi’s episode.

Marcus: “And now it’s eatin’ time!”

I am amused by the variation on Marcus’s “it’s fightin’ time” catchphrase. Gotta find something to replace the very-Japanese itadakimasu, and this sounds less awkward than a lot of things would in a very dorkily Marcus way.

Reporter: “We won’t name names, but only because we haven’t discovered who she is… *yet*.”

The dub appears to be leaning into the seediness of this whole gossip thing even more than the original, which I guess is fair, since it was already pretty seedy to begin with.

Megumi: “What’s the meaning of this?”

Miki: “How did you, the meekest of us all among DATS members…”

Megumi: “…Manage to snag Hanamura Neon?”

~~~~~

Megumi: “You’re dating Neon?!”

Miki: “That ring a bell, Miss Keep-Secrets-From-Her-Friends?”

Megumi: “We read all about it in the newspaper!”

I actually somewhat prefer Megumi and Miki’s angle in the dub. Instead of being jealous and putting her down as if she doesn’t deserve to date a celebrity because she’s too “meek” or whatever, they only appear to be upset that she didn’t tell them this because they consider themselves someone she’d share this sort of thing with. (Whether they actually are that is another matter; Yoshi never seems especially close with these two. But at least that is a less tiresomely misogynistic thing for them to be being unreasonable about.)

Megumi: “We’ve been getting phone calls one after another since morning!”

Miki: “We’re also getting loads of hate mail from Neon’s fans!”

Megumi: “They’re demanding to know who Fujieda Yoshino thinks she is!”

~~~~~

Megumi: “We’ve been getting phone calls all morning long asking for Yoshi to give interviews!”

Miki: “Not to mention the mail from Neon’s fans. My papercuts have papercuts!”

Megumi: “Everyone wants to know who ‘Yoshi’ is!”

Neon’s other fans are also apparently being a little more reasonable in the dub. Rather than being jealous and hateful (“who she thinks she is” very much carries connotations of them acting like she’s too ordinary to deserve to date a celebrity), they instead seem to be suddenly treating Yoshi like a celebrity as well. Even though jealousy and hate is definitely the way a fanbase would be likely to act to something like this in real life, I do not mind at all that the dub is toning this part down.

Yoshi: “…and I wore a hat. That’s a foolproof disguise!”

Apparently Yoshi subscribes to superhero universe logic if she believed that that was ever going to work. She had a hat and sunglasses; totally couldn’t have possibly been recognised.

Thomas then pulls up the photo that was taken of Yoshi after she took her hat and sunglasses off, amusingly implying that that’s the only reason she got busted and she totally would have been fine otherwise.

Thomas: “Your name, phone number, even your favourite music… Hmm, showtunes.”

Based on his tone, Thomas appears to be judging Yoshi for her taste in music, which doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing he would do. The dub just threw in that quick gag without thinking about if it fit the character.

Also, if, according to the dub, the information published about her included her phone number, why isn’t Yoshi herself the one getting all the phone calls and not her workplace? The dub does not mention her workplace being one of the details that was made public about her, so why Miki and Megumi have been swamped with letters and phone calls about this is a mystery.

Agumon: “What’s an undercover investigation?”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Under what cover?”

Oh hey, dub, remember how Agumon shouldn’t know a whole bunch of human terms because he only recently came into the human world? And hey, look, you can make jokes with that, too, rather than making jokes with things that it doesn’t make any sense for Agumon to be saying!

Tohma: “So if we carelessly break in, we’ll be kicked out before we know it.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “So if we rush in, the Digimon will know that we’re after him.”

Gaomon: “And he’ll run.”

The dub actually gives a much better excuse for why the building’s hi-tech security system means they can’t just rush in: not because the security guards will kick them out, since they should be able to pull DATS authority on that, but rather because it’ll alert Keramon than they’re coming. Good job, dub, fixing a plot hole!

Unfortunately, despite the dub’s attempts to remove Miki and Megumi’s jealousy of Yoshi and turn it into them just having wanted the gossip, which I appreciated, the dub can’t really change the part where they jealously complain that they weren’t the ones to get to (fake) date Neon. Their animations for that are too extreme to really be interpreted as anything else.

Yoshino: “Neon is my childhood friend.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “I knew Neon when we were children.”

Yoshi doesn’t mention the fact that he was specifically her friend. Their conversation later in the episode is still going to clearly establish that they were indeed on friendly terms back then, but I feel it’s a bit of a shame that their friendship isn’t something Yoshi outright mentions here. Her friendship with him is obviously quite important to her and to how she approaches investigating him; it makes sense that she’d want to bring it up.

Yoshino: “He’s completely different than before. He was shorter than me, and he was fat. When he debuted, I didn’t recognise him at all.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “He’s so different than he used to be. He was just a shy little boy back then. I would never have guessed that he’d become such a success story.”

I am very disappointed at the dub leaving out the part where he used to be fat, because that’s an important detail that makes it significantly easier to imagine that he was probably bullied back then. Yoshi doesn’t mention that she literally didn’t even recognise him as a singer, either. The dub’s take on this is focused more on his personality and less on his image.

Under normal circumstances, that shift in focus might be a good thing, but in this particular context, image is an even more relevant thing in the celebrity world than personality is. And image also tends to be more important in terms of how likely a kid is to be bullied. This is watering down the interesting parts of Neon’s character and it makes me sad.

Yoshino: “Hitoshi!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Hi, Neon!”

Another very significant change: apparently, Neon just is his real name in the dub? Or, if it’s a stage name, Yoshi doesn’t care and is happy to call him by that rather than by whatever name she knew him by as a kid. Neon having an ordinary real name and Yoshino insisting on using it (and him not liking her doing so in public) was a neat aspect of the original that helped showcase the vast contrast between who he used to be and who he is today – again, kind of the whole point of Neon’s character – so I’m very sad that the dub loses this, too.

(The dub also hasn’t mentioned his surname and just calls him “Neon” at all times. Which really doesn’t actually matter at all, because the connotations of the surname Hanamura that I talked about in the original post would obviously be lost on a Western audience (unless they changed his surname to a Western one with similar connotations – now there’d be an actual reason to give a Japanese character a Western name, for once!). But I am disappointed about it for a very silly reason anyway, because Neon’s English voice actor happens to also voice one of those other Hanamuras that I mentioned in that post (who incidentally happens to be one of my favourite fictional characters, which is probably the only reason I care about this), and it would have been a hilarious coincidence for him to have voiced two Hanamuras. He still sort of did anyway, but only sort of.)

Neon: “I told you not to call me by my real name.”

Yoshino: “What does it matter?”

Neon: “You haven’t changed at all.”

~~~~~

Neon: “Hey, wanna blow off work and come to the beach with me?”

Yoshi: “Sorry, I can’t. Too much to do.”

Neon: “Oh well, I guess it’s your loss then.”

Because Neon doesn’t have an ordinary real name in the dub, we also lose the exchange that told us some interesting things about Yoshino and Neon’s characters and how they see each other and their relationship, replaced with completely meaningless fluff. (Inviting her to blow off work and come to the beach with him is a significantly more usually-romantically-coded thing than anything else they actually do in the episode.)

Masaru: “Is this really a mission?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You do know this guy’s a criminal.”

Miki & Megumi: “Alleged criminal!”

Marcus: “Gimme a break!”

Instead of being exasperated by relationship nonsense, Marcus is instead really sure already that Neon’s a criminal and writing him off as not worthy of respect as a result. Miki and Megumi are being totally reasonable to point out that it’s only allegedly for now.

Masaru: “But Yoshino…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Yoshi, he’s hiding a Digimon.”

Marcus is way more sure and making a much bigger point of this than Masaru.

(Masaru may have already basically decided as well that Neon’s probably the culprit, but even if he had, I don’t think he’d really have cared. He’s not here for the crime-solving and human-focused side of things – so long as he gets to fight that Digimon, that’s all that matters to him!)

Yoshi and Neon have basically the same conversation about carrots as in the original, but it doesn’t have quite the same meaning without the detail that Neon used to be fat, implying that Yoshino was probably encouraging him to eat them to try and help him lose weight.

Yoshino: “I was exercising parental love because I wanted you to eat healthy and get bigger.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Hey, I was just making sure you grew up big and strong by eating your veggies!”

The one real difference here is the lack of her mentioning parental love, which is a shame because I liked it emphasising the idea of Yoshino the mom friend. Perhaps they removed that because they’re trying to make this relationship seem more actually romantic. I also liked the idea that it really wasn’t that romantic in the original, at least on Yoshino’s end.

Yoshino: “I remember you were never able to do anything on your own…”

Neon: “Thanks for the meal.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “This has been so much fun. It’s really a shame that you have to work tonight.”

Neon: “Wish I didn’t.”

Another really meaningful and interesting line about Neon’s kid self (and his subtly telling reaction to it) gets removed and replaced with more fluff. This isn’t even the dub accidentally losing meaningful bits because they’re missing the point; this is clearly them removing these interesting parts on purpose. Why. Neon’s character was one of the most compelling things about the original episode. All they’re doing is deliberately making this episode significantly less good.

Chika: “Neon is so cool!”

Masaru: “What part of him?”

~~~~~

Kristy: “Oh man, that Neon is so cool!”

Marcus: “Yeah, right.”

Marcus sounds so weirdly bitter here, like he really has firmly decided that Neon sucks and doesn’t deserve anyone’s admiration because he’s A Criminal. Why the hell does he care so much? Masaru was just bewildered as to what the big deal about him was in a way that had nothing to do with the suspected Digimon-harbouring.

Chika: “Obviously, the part where he tries so hard to protect his girlfriend!”

~~~~~

Kristy: “Do you think I’ll ever date someone who’s as cool and sweet as Neon?”

Kristy also does not specify that she admires Neon for trying to keep his girlfriend out of the limelight, which I appreciated Chika doing.

Kristy: “Just have him make it out to ‘Superfan Kristy the Most Beautiful Girl in the Whole World’.”

Geez. Kristy: still noticeably more of a brat than Chika.

Masaru: “Look, Chika, you wouldn’t like it if other people were prying about who you like or date, right? It’s the same with Yoshino. That’s to say nothing of the fact that you’re demanding his autograph just because he’s a celebrity…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Look, you wouldn’t like it if people kept prying into the private details of your life – I mean, if you had any. Well, Yoshi’s the same. Besides, Neon is probably sick of signing autographs for annoying fans.”

Marcus is technically giving the same sort of advice here, but my god, he is being way more of a dick about it than is necessary. The dub is ruining Masaru’s adorable fatherly-advice moment and turning it into a Marcus Is A Jerk™ moment instead and I don’t like it one bit.

Kristy: “You think I’m annoying, Marcus…?”

And so in this version, Kristy is actually pretty within reason to get upset, because her brother was being a dick. (Though she was also being slightly more annoying and bratty about the autograph thing than Chika was in the first place.)

Promotional video: “Hey everybody! Have you heard the new song by pop sensation Neon? Download it today, and tell all your friends, too!”

The dub version of the “promotional video” actually has a voiceover and therefore is vaguely more believable as an actual promotion than just a weird silent two second loop. Fixing another minor plot hole, dub, well done.

The dub completely cuts out the security guard who confronts Masaru at the door, probably because they didn’t want to include the part where Masaru assaults the guy. This is despite the fact that in the original episode, Masaru implicitly gets in trouble for this later when the guy wakes up, and otherwise generally comes across as having acted very rashly and unreasonably for this whole situation. But nah, apparently we can’t have our kids’ show protagonist do a bad thing, not even when the story presents it like it was kind of a bad thing to do.

Marcus: “Open the door, I’m here to protect you!”

Masaru never actually mentioned that he’s here to protect Yoshino, even though the possibility that she was in trouble is most of the reason why he came. Marcus making an explicit point of this is him making things a lot more about himself than Masaru did, like him coming here is mostly him wanting to seem like the Big Hero, rather than him genuinely just being worried about his friend.

Yoshino: “Masaru! What are you…?”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Marcus, what are you doing?! You’ll blow it; Neon’s here! Go away!”

Yoshi gets a longer line here – they’re probably filling in time lost from cutting the security guard – but in the process I can’t help but think that Neon should have heard the “you’ll blow it” part, since he shows up at the door just a second later. Which in fact would have been Yoshi blowing it and not Marcus.

Masaru: “Don’t play dumb! This was all part of your scheme!”

Neon: “Wh-What are you doing? Who are you?!”

Masaru: “What are you plotting, using that Digimon?!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Don’t play dumb; I know what you’re up to!”

Neon: “What do you mean? Who are you?!”

Marcus: “Just confess and tell me what you have planned in that mind of yours!”

So, despite Marcus having been significantly more convinced than Masaru ever was that Neon is definitely hiding a Digimon, he’s… not bringing up the Digimon for some reason now that he’s actually confronting Neon, even though Masaru did. What the hell.

The dub cuts the moment of Yoshino slapping Masaru, albeit not very convincingly, since there’s still a shot of him briefly looking like he’s just been slapped, and then a visible mark on his face a shot later.

Yoshino: “How dare you suddenly intrude into other people’s houses! How about you consider *not* being a nuisance to others for a change!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Who do you think you are, barging into somebody’s house just for a measly autograph?! I don’t care how big a fan you are, you better learn some manners, kid!”

I do enjoy Yoshi putting on even more of an act here, trying to make it look like Marcus is some crazed fan desperate for an autograph. Though I’m not sure that angle entirely matches with Marcus’s behaviour of grabbing Neon and demanding that he confesses what he’s up to. Then again, Neon is going to figure out people are onto him from this either way, so I guess it doesn’t matter how convincing Yoshi is or isn’t.

Masaru: “Hey, wait! I said wait! What was that for?”

Yoshino: “You’re ruining my undercover investigation.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “What was all that for, Yoshi?”

Yoshi: “To stop *you* from blowing my cover and all of my hard work.”

I enjoy Yoshi being more pointedly annoyed about this with her emphasis that he’s ruining her hard work. She has a right to be.

Masaru: “What the hell, I was just worried about her.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Well, I’m so sorry for trying to save you!”

Marcus! This is not about you! Masaru wasn’t trying to make this about himself; he was just worried about his friend – but Marcus is making this all about him Being The Hero and him being the one to save her.

It’s not that I don’t hypothetically enjoy characters who have issues along those lines, but that should not be the point with Marcus here. The dub isn’t going to go anywhere interesting with this because it wasn’t a thing in the original, so instead this just sticks out as another thing making Marcus more self-absorbed.

The security guard showing up here now is still there in the dub, even though they cut Masaru knocking him out earlier.

Sampson: “Keramon’s making it seem like Neon’s selling more songs than he is.”

[…]

Kudamon: “The more popular people think he is, the more albums they buy.”

They have an interesting point here not brought up in the original, that even if Keramon is only making Neon look more popular by messing with the figures, that’s going to result in actually making him more popular. In the original, it was unclear exactly what kind of manipulation Keramon had been doing (until the obvious stunt last night) and I sort of vaguely got the impression that it’d been actually making people download his songs even if they never wanted to. Then again, that might be obvious enough that people would have reported it, so perhaps things were always meant to be how the dub is explaining them to be here. Good job to the dub again for making that clearer. (…Or so I thought; hold this thought.)

Thomas: “Clearly, Neon’s making a fortune through fraud.”

I don’t especially like the dub adding this, though, because Neon should not be doing this for the money. He’s doing this for the popularity. Admittedly Thomas is only speculating and wouldn’t know better, but him stating it like this makes it seem like this is the correct conclusion to make about Neon’s motives.

Neon: “To think that you were one of them…”

Yoshino: “It’s prohibited to give a Digimon refuge!”

~~~~~

Neon: “I just can’t believe you were a part of this. I trusted you!”

Yoshi: “Yeah, that’s why you told me all about your illegal Digimon!”

I enjoy Yoshi actually somewhat responding to the accusation of betrayal by pointing out that he was hiding something from her as well. Though I also do think Yoshino’s response of completely avoiding the topic says something interesting in and of itself.

Neon: “Don’t order me around!”

~~~~~

Neon: “Don’t you judge me!”

While the “don’t order me around” perhaps touched on Neon’s past of not being able to do much on his own, “don’t judge me” would also potentially touch on his past of being bullied. However, I can’t help but think that’s more by luck than judgement on the dub’s part, since they went and deliberately removed so many of the other hints of Neon’s past even being like that in the first place.

Neon: “He distributes my songs around the world and manipulates music charts…”

Wait, so Keramon actually does forcibly distribute the songs even to people who don’t want them, and not just fake the figures so that people will be more likely to check out what the fuss is about?

Yeah, actually, this line is basically exactly what Neon said here originally, so I guess that is what was meant to have been going on after all. Sampson and Kudamon must have missed that part when they were discussing things earlier.

Yoshino: “Hitoshi, stop this!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You have to stop this. Fraud is a criminal offence!”

Though the lack of her being able to call him Hitoshi is a bad thing again, I do appreciate Yoshi pointing out that fraud is a crime. Even aside from DATS’s rules that nobody’s allowed to have a Digimon unless they’re a DATS member, Neon has still been breaking the regular law anyway, and the original didn’t really emphasise that very much.

They cut out the moment of Keramon grabbing Yoshi by the neck, but they do still show her being held like that in a shot a second later.

Neon: “No way! Keramon is my partner!”

~~~~~

Neon: “Keramon is my partner just like your Digimon! I wouldn’t betray him any more than you’d betray them!”

Dub-Neon is very deliberately making the parallel to DATS’s Digimon rather than only accidentally invoking it by happening to use the same word – but it really isn’t a parallel he should be making deliberately. Keramon is not a person. It hasn’t spoken or expressed its own desires or sense of self at all; it’s just giggled creepily and done as he’s ordered it to. There is no actual meaningful bond of friendship here for Neon to care about not wanting to betray.

I think the dub added this in because the dubbers actually think that it’s basically the same deal going on with Neon and Keramon as with DATS and their partners. But it really, really isn’t.

Neon: “Thanks to him, my songs are played throughout the world! He’s making me famous!”

~~~~~

Neon: “He made me rich and famous!”

Famous, yes, but the money is not the point, dub. Neon in the original never mentioned money as being part of why he’s doing this.

Also, the past tense implies that it’s only because of Keramon that Neon became famous at all. Which I really doubt is supposed to be the case, because there’s no sense given at any point that Neon just burst into the public eye out of nowhere within the past month since he’s had Keramon. He must have been already doing reasonably well on his own merit before he started using fraud.

Masaru: “What’s this crap about him making you famous?! It’s not through your own efforts! If you wanted to change yourself through your music, then do it using your own merit!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Your whole career is a giant lie! You haven’t actually achieved anything! That Digimon of yours did everything for you; you’re nothing but a phony!”

…But it seems the dub really wants us to think that it’s only because of Keramon that Neon got anywhere at all and he was never genuinely good enough to deserve any amount of success whatsoever. I think the dubbers might have missed the point of this as well and believed that that was actually what was going on in the original episode.

And of course, because of this, we lose the interesting nuanced moment of Masaru being really good and pointing out that Neon should have kept working at this using his own merit. Instead we just get Marcus boringly shooting him down completely.

Yoshino: “Stop!”

Lalamon: “Stop!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “No pictures!”

Lalamon: “Give me that camera!”

Lalamon demanding the camera further emphasises the point of Yoshi choosing to do this instead of fight, and it gives more of a vague impression that maybe she really does take the camera and wipe the pictures offscreen, even though we won’t be seeing it. I approve.

Neon: “Everyone needs to quit making fun of me!”

~~~~~

Neon: “My career’s ruined now, and you’re gonna pay!”

Unsurprisingly, after everything the dub has already removed about Neon’s interesting aspects, they also remove probably the most interesting line – the one that very strongly hints he used to be bullied and that this has all been about him breaking away from that in a way that gradually became more and more desperate and obsessive to the point of illegality.

Instead, dub-Neon is somebody who wanted to be rich and famous just because, apparently had genuinely no actual talent or merit to base that on whatsoever, and just faked his entire success story (which the dub expects us to think he could have believably done within a month) using Digimon-driven fraud. That’s just… boring.

It also makes it significantly less interesting and meaningful why Keramon evolves in response to these words, though I suppose a burst of vengeful anger at them for ruining his fraudulent career is still reasonable enough to do it.

Masaru: “Change places! Let’s go, Agumon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “We’ll take ‘im! It’s fightin’ time!”

I am mildly sad at the loss of the sense that Masaru sees this as him tagging in for Tohma and being equal teammates with him, rather than trying to grab all the glory himself.

Neon: “Even the memory of when we met again?”

~~~~~

Neon: “Even the stuff about you and me?”

In the dub, Neon makes this just about losing what their relationship is now and nothing else. I liked the sense that, after all the fraud had been uncovered and he’d basically given up, original-Neon was mostly sad to lose the memory of seeing her again, his childhood friend who was there for him during that tough time and could be proud of how far he’d come.

Overall differences

This episode has quite a few significant differences, with a lot of them being bad, but at least there’s a small handful of good ones too, for once.

Let’s start with the good ones. This episode’s dub actually has a couple of small fixes to some minor logic issues the original had. They explained that they can’t break into Neon’s building because the high security meant that Neon/Keramon would see them coming and run, which made a lot more sense. Then they gave the promo video a voiceover, making it a lot more believable as a promo video than some weird silent two-second loop.

Yoshi also has a few minor good bits: leaning more into the story that Marcus is a crazed fan when he shows up at the door, pointing out that fraud is a crime. I also appreciate that they attempted to tone down Miki and Megumi’s harshness towards her at least a little.

But onto the bad stuff: the really huge glaring problem with the dub of this episode is Neon. Neon’s character was the big saving grace of this otherwise not especially interesting episode to me in the original, and none of what makes him that way is present in the dub. All of the hints of him being weak and helpless and probably-bullied as a kid are watered down into him simply having been kind of shy, there’s no hints of him remaking his image (no mention that Neon is a stage name; for all we know in the dub, that’s somehow his real name), and way too much emphasis put on him doing this for money, not just fame. If Marcus is to be believed, he had absolutely zero talent and got where he was entirely through Keramon’s meddling, which is extremely unrealistic to have happened in a single month without anyone questioning it and is also way, way less interesting. Dub-Neon is just some boring flat villain greedy for fame and fortune, rather than an interestingly messed-up character.

And it’s really strange to me that this character assassination is so complete and consistent that it must have been deliberate? The dub writers consciously decided to remove everything that made this episode’s focus character interesting. Why in the world would they choose to do that.

Then there’s this episode’s treatment of Marcus, which is standard fare at this point but still frustrating enough that I am always going to talk about it when it happens in any significant amount.

He’s more insistent that Neon’s harbouring a Digimon from the start despite the lack of proof, but then, bizarrely, doesn’t bring up Digimon when he breaks in even though Masaru did. He makes the breaking-in part a lot more About Himself by making a point that he’s here to save Yoshi, which is a very different thing than Masaru coming there in case Yoshino needed saving but not actually caring whether she knows it or not. Marcus is also more of an unnecessary dick to his sister in the bit where she’s asking him for Neon’s autograph. And the interesting nuance that Masaru had in his speech to Neon, about putting in effort and changing yourself through your own merits, is lost in favour of this new boring narrative where Neon apparently had zero talent and deserved none of his fame in the first place.

Oh, and the bit where Masaru attacked the security guard was cut, because I guess your kids’ show protagonist isn’t allowed to attack a responsible adult, even when the narrative presents this as a bad thing that he shouldn’t have done and implicitly gets in trouble for.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

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cornholio4 · 4 years

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Terms of En-Rampagement II

I honestly don’t like the fics subset of another character being the biological father of Marinette but I thought fo this idea on Twitter, thinking I may treated it as crack not to be taken seriously. There is some influence here from Supervillain Backstabber by quicksilversquared.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng always knew that her dad wasn't her biological father, but it didn't matter to her as Tom Dupain was the best dad that she could ever ask for. However when the subject of her biological father was brought up, her mother never had anything positive to say about him.

Sabine Cheng had only said that between her and Marinette's biological father was a fling when she and Tom had temporarily split up while dating. Just before they got back together and through her life Marinette never sees her mother as angry as she was whenever she was ranting about what happened between her and Marinette's biological father after their one night fling. Marinette could never get the full details but she was sure she didn't want to get the full details since they involved her father turning out to be a complete jerk (the nicest way that Sabine had put it), Sabine being knocked out after an accident and waking up to almost being buried alive!

Marinette could never blame her mother for not wanting to bring him back, especially after hearing that detail.

Plus her mother would really be tense whenever she apparently reminded her of him, if she lost track of a joke she was going to make and muttered "wait, I had something for this..." Whenever there was Top Gun airing on the TV and when she started getting into the song Highway to the Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins after Nino played it for one of his parties.

She admitted that at night she would overhear rants Sabine would give to Tom whenever someone asked about Marinette's biological father (mostly by Tom's mother and Marinette's grandmother Gina) she managed to get the name 'Sterling Archer'.

Any desire for details about her biological father had been left aside as she had bigger problems, like having to stop Hawk Moth's Akumas as Ladybug and balancing her Superhero life with her normal one.

One night after taking care of an Akuma she found masked people tailoring them and managed to take them down when they found her going to her home. She had then tied up with her yoyo and interrogated them. It turned out they were CIA agents from the US, sent in undercover to try and retrieve the source of the French Superhero powers for the US government. She shook her head as the two agents were embarrassed about being defeated by a teenage girl. She made them promise to not to come back and keep any secrets they found out secret plus to tell their superiors to never try that again or else she will make it known that the CIA were here in France.

What an international incident that would become.

The man grunted and the woman was being embarrassed about backing down to threats from a teenage superhero. Marinette warned them to make themselves scarce before anyone comes out especially since her family the Dupain-Chengs owned this bakery. Then the man called Archer by the woman grunted about knowing a woman with the surname Cheng 14 years ago when he had an assignment there, what they had between them one night and the woman Lana shouted at him not to say this in front of the girl.

Marinette was shocked and open mouthed at this and did not move as she was transformed back into civilian with Tikki next to her, the two agents jumping at the floating red and black spotted bug but otherwise concerned about what was wrong with Marinette. "My name is Marinette and my Mum knew a Sterling Archer..." Marinette told them with Archer's mouth open in shock and Lana shaking her head as they had obviously realised where this was going.

"I think I'm your daughter." Marinette told them and Archer was open mouthed. Marinette told them by as she transformed again to sneak into her room but before the agents left Lana gave Marinette an email if she wants to contact them.

She mostly went back to normal but the thought of having a way to contact her biological father made her wonder and deciding wanting to know about him was what she wanted to do. She would keep this from her parents especially since she didn't know how her mother would react as well as having to explain how she came across them in the first place.

She contacted Archer by emails and as it turned out he was a tough secret agent which she thought was cool (though apparently terrible at most parts of his job, especially the 'secret' part) and currently she was working under the remnants of the spy agency run by his mother Mallory (from the descriptions even her grandfather Roland would find Mallory unpleasant) and was now part of the CIA under the supervision of Agent Slater. They were not pleased that the mission was a failure and was thwarted by a teenager.

Archer told her about his adventures and Marinette thought that she was sure that most had to be made up or embellished. Plus he did sound kind of unpleasant but it felt nice getting to know her biological father (like trying to say that he helped cover up the death of the Prime Minister of Italy?). He told her about how the agency his mother set up was never actually sanctioned by the US Government so they had to spend a year as a cartel (which apparently they were even worse at than even spying) before joining up with the CIA.

Plus she was told about her half-sister Abbiejean along with a photo sent to her, she was already thinking if she can meet up when they were older then she can make some designs for her.

She talked about her friends, helping out with designing for celebrities like Jagged Stone and a band featuring her classmates called Kitty Section. Plus with help from advice that he had gotten Lana (apparently he knew that any love advice that he would come up for her would be terrible) she managed to ask out her friend Juleka's brother Luka (who she had wanted to try pursuing after given up on her crush on Adrien) and they were now dating.

She didn't know why she decided to go as far as she did but she admitted problems with bullying from classmates; her lifelong bully Chloe Bourgeois who she trusted as a Superhero ally and seemed like she was trying to be nicer only to decide that she preferred being selfish and that the idea of not being Queen Bee anymore being worth joining with Hawk Moth. Then there was Lila Rossi who had her classmates enthralled with ridiculous lies that were easily disproven and made her out to be jealous for pointing them out.

Then she got the response saying that Lana would kill him if she knew what he was going to suggest to her. She was told about how he was a breast cancer survivor before it went into remission (freaking her out and causing her to send messages making sure he was alright) and how he was sold phony cancer drugs and made a home movie of his revenge rampage against those responsible.

He suggested that she made a sequel.

Against all common sense and advice from Tikki, she thought she would try it, using cameras she got footage of both Lila and Chloe jumping to catch Akumas with audio of them taking the deals. Especially with Lila being excited about taking down Ladybug and Chat Noir and Chloe making Hawk Moth promise they can retrieve her Bee Miraculous. She would go down and fight the Akumas along with Chat Noir.

Once she had enough evidence, she contacted Max, Nino and Alya wanting their help with them jumping for chance.

She had Nino filming with his camera and Alya filming love for the Ladyblog as came into their hiding location were two smug looking Chloe and Lila who looked confused when they noticed and recognised eachother. She had gave them separate messages in person with her lying to Chloe about wanting to negotiate giving her back the Bee Miraculous this time full time and Lila about wanting to make peace with her about before and giving her the Fox Miraculous.

They were both put into the cage traps that Marinette set up for them as she as Ladybug greeted the cameras "Hello Paris, I hope that you can join me today as this will be the day that Hawk Moth will be defeated for good and we will start with his two civilian accomplices!"

She then had both cameras playing the footage collected with her two friends shocked and stunned by what she had done. Lila snapped and shouted "you stupid false Superhero! I can't believe that i wasted my time convincing people that we were best friends, you were too much of a goody good and I wish that Hawk Moth beat you on Heroes Day! To use Volpina to play everyone for saps!"

"You lied to me! You told me that I was your best partner... this is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!" Chloe ranted as Marinette made sure to include the news footage of her not even bothering to deny that she purposefully set a train to fail on her Superhero debut.

"Marinette was right all along, if only she knew how bad Lila really was..." Alya was close to crying as Nino comforted her. Marinette told them that they needed to bring Hawk Moth down at his lair.

She had a plan for it too, Archer had told her about how Cyril got a Pirate Virus stuck into the agency's computers in a stupid attempt to solve it and redeem his reputation as a loser. She asked if he had a copy of the virus to send to her.

At the Agreste Mansion she had them sneak to the side as she had Max use Markov to hack into the computer systems at the top and insert the Virus. There was Chat Noir appearing asking what they were doing when they heard missiles going off at the top. The two Heroes (along with Markov who had a camera to record live for the Ladyblog) at the top as in the lair up there was Hawk Moth and Mayura trying to fight the out of control missiles and lair. They were unprepared for the Heroes taking them down and taking the Miraculous away reveal Gabriel Agreste (seems that the Collector was a trick) and Nathalie Sancoeur much to Adrien Agreste's shock.

The police came after seeing the Ladybug feed and the sound of the missiles and were there to arrest Gabriel and Nathalie. Ladybug went to the camera and shouted "Booyakasha!"

Chloe and Lila were taken in to be investigated as well due to the footage as well as look into what they had been doing at Francois Dupont. Marinette's class were in hysterics to hear that Lila's mother had denied pretty much every story and trip that Lila had told her and so her claims of disabilities plus trips were being investigated. Also were Chloe's bullying going on at the school and this was causing trouble for her father the Mayor. The school was closed for the foreseeable future.

The classmates were contacting Adrien to make sure he was alright after finding out his father was Hawk Moth.

Marinette had the filmed footage made into a movie called Terms of En-Rampagement II and now as Ladybug she had Chat Noir, all the Kwamis besides (Tikki & Plagg) and all their former temporary Miraculous allies (besides Chloe of course) come by at a screen in a remote location every Friday to watch it since then. That was months ago it started.

Ladybug had the ending rewinded and everyone assembled simultaneously and unenthusiastically shouted "Booyakasha!" along with Ladybug in the footage. "My Lady, when can we stop as I didn't think I would get sick of watching Hawk Moth's downfall when it happens but after all this time, I have gotten sick of watching it!" Chat Noir complained with everyone else there in agreement.

"I worked so hard to make Terms of En-Rampagement II so we are going to watch it and celebrate the downfall of Paris' Supervillain." Marinette told them firmly with her arms crossed.

"Please Ladybug, I have a girlfriend and I had been wanting to have a Friday night date with her for the longest time and you making us watch this has dampened this song I want to sing." Pleaded Luka as Marinette was tempted but remained firm.

"Seriously, we should get Marinette over here. She is a brilliant friend and I think she would be a great positive influence for you." Kagami spoke up with mutterings of agreement from the others. Marinette was silent as the Kwamis watched wanting to see how Marinette spoke her way out of this.

"Yes My Lady, bring in Marinette. Why haven't you brought her in before anyway, she was Multimouse." Chat Noir spoke up causing questions about that and Marinette was silent.

There was another camera there sending the feed back to the office where Sterling Archer, Lana Kane and their co-workers were watching having been informed that one of Archer's illegimate daughters was the French Superheroine they failed to capture the power source of. Archer was beaming with fatherly pride as Mallory muttered "as if the first movie wasn't bad enough..."

#ml salt #ml salt fic #ml salt oneshot #miraculous ladybug #luka x marinette #lukanette #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #archer #sterling archer #bio dad au #oneshot #also on ao3 #also on fanfiction.net #also on fanfiction #also on fanfiction and ao3 #also on ao3 and fanfiction #chloe salt #lila salt #ml oneshot

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gt-fluffy-vore · 4 years

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SandersSides: Into the Spiderverse — Chapter one: Greetings

Hey everyone! New SandersSides fanfic and this one’s a crossover(I’m pretty sure all you marvel fans out there can tell exactly with what)! For those of you who don’t know about or haven’t watched the movie this is a crossover with Marvel’s animated movie Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. Which is one of my absolute favorites! I rewatched said movie recently and this is what came out of the new rush of inspiration! Hope you all enjoy, and please let me know if you’d like to see more of this one in the future!

Sandersides au crossover fanfiction

2476 words

“Okay, let’s do this one last time. My name is Virgil Sanders. I was bitten by a radioactive spider and for the past week, I have been struggling to keep the pieces left of my life together. I guess I should tell you the rest. I… lost my family three years ago. Started living on the streets. Finally had it all figured out when I applied for some one-in-a-million chance for a free scholarship to some boarding school and… actually won. So I moved into my new room, which thank-goodness they let me have to myself for now, and failed miserably at half the classes. But I had a good enough grade they let me stay. And eight days ago this… thing found it’s way onto my desk. It looked like a spider, but it was covered in this smokey, shadowy, black stuff I couldn’t make sense of. And it bit me. And since then I haven’t been able to control… anything. So to avoid causing any more trouble than I already do I’ve been spending all my free time on the roof. Alone. Trying to figure out what the hell any of this means... Man, sometimes I hate being me. Of all the people to get stuck as… why do I have to be me?”

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Virgil sighed, turning to the stairs to head back inside. It was starting to get too cold at night to stay on the roof too long. He was halfway to his dorm when he was stopped by one of his teachers, Mr. Everling. “Ah, Virgil! Er, Mr. Sanders. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

“My grades?”

“Sort of. Come with me to my office and I can explain to you what I mean.” So Virgil followed him to his office and sat down in front of his desk. “I’m sure you are aware that your grades are beginning to present quite an issue. If you can’t improve them soon, I’m afraid to say you may be expelled from school.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m working on it.”

“And that’s exactly what I want to talk about. I’ve noticed you’ve been acting… very tired lately, and I can tell the extra work you’re putting into this is not doing you well. You’ve been acting more stressed than usual. So I wanted to propose a way for you to get your grades up without having to push yourself so much. Would you consider doing a personal essay for me? I have been talking to the other teachers about this and to the principle and we have agreed that if you get full grades on this essay it will count towards twenty-percent of your grades. But that means if you don’t do very well… it will almost definitely lower your grades enough to have to be expelled… so there is a huge risk…”

“And if I don’t do the essay at all?”

“Then you can simply move on as you are now. Which is a very slow decline in your grades, likely caused by physical inability due to how you’ve been pushing yourself so hard. It’s completely your choice, but I just want you to know if you decide not to do this essay you will have to work even harder if you want to continue attending this school…”

Virgil hung his head. If he got kicked out, he’d be back on the streets again. He knew this fix would be temporary, but… he wasn’t ready for it to end yet. So he couldn’t not take the essay, because if he didn’t take it at all then his grades would just keep going down faster the worse he got. But with all these new powers to figure out, to learn to control, there was no way he could do the essay and be able to concentrate enough to even remotely get a good grade on it. So if he didn’t do the essay, he’d be too stressed and get kicked out, but if he did do the essay, he’d be too distracted and still get kicked out! “Uh, what’s the essay about?”

“Well, I noticed you’ve never written anything about fiction in any of your creative writing essays, so… I wanted to challenge you to write a short story about the everyday life of a superhero.”

“A… a superhero?”

“Yes. A superhero. I chose this particular theme because I’m pretty sure it’s not something you’ve ever written about before.”

“It’s not.”

“Good! Then it’s perfect. It’s perfect because that means it will be a concept entirely new to you. It will be a challenge. Something you have to learn from scratch.”

“Oh.” Virgil didn’t know what else to say to that. The very idea of writing in a style he’s completely unfamiliar with made him feel sick.

“So, Mr. Sanders. Will you do the essay?”

“Um…”

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Virgil looked up at the clock. Eleven-twenty-six. It had been an hour and a half since he’d started brainstorming and he had gotten nowhere. Maybe he should take a break. He stood up from his chair and tried to pull back from it, but found it dragging along with him. He looked down to see his hand stuck to it. Of course. Great. He balanced his foot against it and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Crash! He picked himself up off the floor and stormed straight up to the roof. This was useless! He was getting nowhere whatsoever with this story, and he wasn’t getting anywhere in the way of controlling these powers, or whatever they are. He was halfway to the edge when he noticed a figure staring blankly over the city. Before he could backtrack the figure heard him and turned around. He froze. They locked eyes. And they both shuddered at once. He was frozen silent, but the other man spoke. “Ah. You are genetically altered as well.”

“Uh, genetically altered?” He shook his head and blinked out of his daze. “Is that what this is? A genetic alteration?”

“I believe so, yes.”

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“Let me begin for the last time. My name is Logan Sanders. Exactly eight days, nineteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes ago I was bitten by a radioactive bio-technological arachnid. I am from the year twenty-four-sixty-seven. Bio-technological humanoids are heavily discriminated against. Because of this, I was excused from my relatives, or family if you prefer a looser term, when the arachnid’s bite changed my species from entirely human to a bio-technological humanoid. As I had no other place of residence I was forced to move into a Homeless Shelter. On the morning of my eighth day in the aforementioned shelter, I awoke to a dimensional rift presenting itself in place of the wall beside my bed. Of course, it was stupid of me to attempt to touch it… Ridiculously stupid of me. But there is no way to change the past, so it is useless to dwell on the matter. After touching the dimension rift I found myself deposited onto a rooftop in an alternate dimension.”

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He blinked at the young man standing before him. Oh. He didn’t know there were any others like him. Of course, the chance of him being the only one in all of existence that had experienced such a phenomenon was microscopic. Still, somehow he was surprised to meet another going through a similar dilemma. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t expected to find any others, but he simply… hadn’t. “Ah. You are genetically altered as well.”

“Uh, genetically altered?” The boy shook his head and blinked a few times, then finally seemed to process the information. “Is that what this is? A genetic alteration?”

He had thought it was obvious. “Yes, I believe so.” Unless… “Have you not experienced alterations in your body’s abilities?”

“Uh, yeah, I have, but... “ The boy shrugged. “Just hadn’t thought of like, genetic modifications. Are you saying someone did this to us on purpose?”

“Of course not. I am stating simply that our bodies have experienced genetic alterations.”

“So you’re just saying we were both bitten by freaky spiders and now we’re different and you don’t actually know why.”

“Precisely, yes.”

The boy groaned. “Ooookay, great. Just great. Well then if you can’t actually help me I’m going back to my room and I suggest you do the same if you don’t wanna sleep through classes tomorrow.”

“Ah, no, you misunderstand. I do not attend this school. I am from an alternate dimension.”

The boy glared. “Sure you are. Goodnight.”

“Sir, wait!” The boy stopped and turned to look back at him. “What year are we currently in?”

“Seriously? Wait year are you in?” He muttered something about crazy people under his breath.

“If you are inquiring as to my home dimension I had been residing in the year twenty-four-sixty-seven. What year are we currently in, in this dimension?”

The boy sighed. “Twenty-nineteen. Now if you’re done playing games with me, can I go back to bed?”

“I was not indulging in any sort of entertainment, I was simply conversing with you. But if you wish so, then consider the conversation finished.”

“Finally.” The boy left immediately.

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Virgil was heading back to his room after his day’s classes the next day when he was once again stopped by the same teacher as the day before. “Mr. Sanders! I have good news for you!”

“Oh?”

“We’ve found you a roommate!”

“A… a roommate?”

“Yes, isn’t that exciting?! Funny thing is the two of you have the same surname. Weird, huh? I actually just directed him to your dorm a minute ago.”

“Okay. Uh, thanks I guess? I-I gotta go.” He raced back to his dorm and threw the door open. Just like he had said, there was a teenage boy standing in the middle of the room, who turned around to look at him. He was wearing a long-sleeved jacket with a large hood that hid his face from view.

“Roman Sanders. Nice to meet you.”

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“Listen up everyone, I’m gonna do this one more time from the beginning. My name is Roman Sanders, and last week my parents sold me off to government testing, where they infused a tarantula with radiation and tried to mash my DNA with that spider’s. I’m sure you know the rest. The experiment went wrong, so they locked me up. I broke out of the facility. Couldn’t bring myself to go back home… So I tried to find other ways to survive on my own. And then this… portal-ish thing showed up, and before I knew it, I’d been dropped into an entirely different world! I’m not sure how to describe it, but I had a really strong feeling I should be going to this school, so now here we are.”

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Virgil froze as he stared at the boy in front of him. That same feeling as last night overwhelmed him. “You’re like me.”

“And you’re like me. Ha! This is incredible! You look entirely normal!”

“Yeah? Why wouldn’t I look normal?”

He flipped off his hood and pulled off his jacket and the pair of gloves he had been wearing, revealing skin covered entirely in thick brown fur. Then he took off the beanie hat he’d been wearing under his jacket hood and revealed a second pair of eyes right above the first. “Because you’re like me, and I’m…” He threw his arms up. “I’m this. So what’d the testing do to you?”

“Testing?”

“Yeah? The testing? That made you… like what you are?”

“I didn’t go through any testing! I was just bitten by some freaky smoke-spider!”

“Oh. Well… that’s awkward. Uh, did I introduce myself yet? My name is Roman.”

“Yeah. You did.”

“Aaaaalright. I didn’t catch what your name was, actually.”

“Good. I didn’t throw it.”

Roman held back a groan. “Okay, fine! Which bed is yours?”

“Bottom. You get the top bunk.” Virgil took a deep breath and sat at the desk, directing his gaze back to his essay.

“So…” He glared at Roman, who was perched on the top bunk swinging his legs off the front. “What would I have to do to get that name?”

Virgil sighed. “If I tell you, will you shut up?” He nodded. “Fine. It’s Virgil. Ya happy?” Roman grinned and nodded, and Virgil sighed in response and looked back at his work.

Ten minutes later Virgil heard a voice. “What are you workin’ on?” He spun around and glared. “Oh, right, sorry. Shutting up…” The next time Virgil looked back his new roommate was asleep.

Virgil woke to a pair of hands roughly shaking him. “Hey, you’re gonna be late. Virgil, right? Virgil?”

Virgil groaned and smacked his hands away. “Leave me alone, I’m going.”

“Alright, alright. Next time I’ll let you miss class.”

“Whatever.” His new roommate grumbled something under his breath and left, and he finally pulled himself off his desk and trudged over to his dresser.

On his way to his first class, he thought he saw a dog out of the corner of his eye running through the hallway. Well, actually it was a puppy — it looked really young. But when he looked back again it was gone. Funny, he’d felt really weird for a second. The same kinda twisting,. He’d thought he’d been seeing things. But then he could have sworn he saw it again during his second class, curled up in the corner behind the door. And he knew he saw it in the cafeteria because it was under his own table sniffing for scraps and had bumped into his leg. Had no one else noticed it? It was still young, but it looked like a golden retriever, so it wasn’t exactly a toy breed. It was a fairly big dog. And he was sure pets weren’t allowed in the building… He had slipped the dog a scrap from his tray then, and it turned out to be a terrible decision because the puppy followed him like a shadow the entire rest of the day. Once his last class was over he and the dog went back to his dorm room, where he he flopped down in his desk chair and looked down at the fluffy creature angrily. “Why are you still here?! Go away!”

The puppy cocked its head to one side and suddenly it was covered in a small cloud of light blue glitter. Next thing he knew, standing before him was a teenage boy with curly, golden-brown hair, freckles spotting only his cheeks, and a pair of rectangle frames. “I can leave if ya want, but I’m here because… I’m from another dimension, and when I saw you… I got this weird kinda feeling that… maybe you’re… like me?”

“Y-You just… you were… and then… oh, forget it. So you’re from another dimension too?”

“Too? There’re others?”

Virgil sighed dramatically. “Yeah, there are others…”

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #thomas sanders fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #into the spiderverse #spiderverse #sanders sides into the spiderverse #virgil #roman #logan #patton #ts patton #ts logan #ts roman #ts virgil #crossover fanfiction #sanders sides crossover #fanfiction #sanders sides au

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occasionalfics · 5 years

Text

worth my while // p. 2

main masterlist | thor masterlist | ko-fi | p. 1 | p. 3

Summary: After being banished from his home, Thor Odinson has stopped at nothing to prove himself worthy of his throne, title, and power.

After losing the love of your life, you turned to a power you didn’t understand.You know you shouldn’t get involved.

But how could you not?

Pairing: Thor x Reader (Hercules au…kind of…)

A/N: Me: *uses the same gif two chapters in a row*

also me: *sees a new pretty one* OOH YES LET’S CHANGE THINGS UP A BIT

Aaaaand here I go, stealing whole ideas straight outta Hercules. Oops ;) Let me know what y’all think, as usual 💖💖💖

Warnings: Violence, lots of angst, borderline abuse and definite manipulation, eventual smut, way too many feels, major character death (eventually). A little more harassment on Hades’ part this time around.

Words: 3,641

“You do understand how powerful Von Doom is, don’t you?” Hades asks the next day.

Just like you had at Captain America, you roll your eyes. “Listen, it’s not my fault, okay?” You watch as he paces the room, and think about the night before. “The Avengers showed up to bust the place for...God only knows what. Captain America gave me an ultimatum, I couldn’t refuse, so I walked out.”

Hades sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Babe,” he says, using the nickname you absolutely hate, “our hostile takeover isn’t proving to be very...ya know, hostile.” When he looks at you, you can see the flames behind his navy irises.

You’re in trouble.

You sit back against the couch and cross your arms. “We can use this,” you offer. You try not to imagine the lighting-laced eyes of the other Avenger as you go over your exact process from the night before. “You want to take out the Avengers. The Avengers attack Victor Von Doom, who you want to help take out the Avengers. Now he has a personal reason to do it.”

Hades pauses. He faces you, fingers on his chin as he scratches his stubble. And he stares long enough that you know you’re not totally off the hook - Hades isn’t known for his patience, after all - but he’s at least considering what you’ve said.

Then he chuckles once and shakes his head. “Oh, you sweet summer child,” he mutters, giving off gruff and insulting sounds as his brows raise. “You’ve got so much to learn. But you’re not wrong - we can use this.”

Just as Cerberus - one of them, anyway - comes marching into the room, straight to your lap, Hades picks up a remote from the table that serves as the only thing separating your bodies. He turns around and powers up the mounted television, and just like magic, there’s a news segment on discussing an upcoming Avengers celebration.

Celebration? You think. They destroy everything they touch. What are we supposed to be celebrating, exactly?

You’re one of those who had once sided with the U.N. and Tony Stark. You didn’t care for the billionaire - after working for Hades, you more or less hated every billionaire - but you did think that the so-called heroes needed to be held accountable for the destruction they left wherever they went.

This party, though, seems to be a celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Battle in Manhattan, which seems...so ridiculous to you. Why would you - or anyone - want to celebrate that? So what if six people saved the world from imminent danger? They’d still nearly let millions of people die or be injured in their messy attempt to kick alien ass.

Also, wasn’t the man behind that plan that Thunder Guy’s cousin or something?

More personally, however, the drunk driver that had killed Rick was drunk because his wife had perished in that battle. He’d been drunk every night since her funeral. The jury had taken his grief into account when they sentenced him to prison, giving him a light sentence instead of life behind bars.

You’re so busy letting your cold heart grow colder that you miss the point of the segment. Stark is interviewed, but you don’t listen. You almost know what’s going to happen anyway, so why bother giving it your attention now?

Hades waits until the segment ends, then puts the television on mute. He turns to you, puts the remote down, and actually comes around to sit on the table.

You lean even further back against the couch. Hades never gets this close unless he’s got a mission for you. Cerberus watches you both, head lifted from your lap as he whines.

A second Cerberus pads into the room, sitting politely on the floor between you.

“Sending me to that thing isn’t gonna get us Von Doom,” you tell Hades. You’ve gotten quite good at reading him since he’d cashed in his price for Rick’s life. You had to - the only other alternative was to let the formidable Lord of the Dead control your every move. Which he kind of did anyway, but at least you could keep up with him this way.

He shrugs, like that’s part of his plan. “Maybe not. But we can stir up some trouble.” His smirk is undeniably mischievous. But you know that’s the only way he operates.

You stare at him like a frustrated parent might at an indignant child. “And what good will that do us?”

Us you think, like I have any say in the matter. Like he’ll actually listen to me.

“If we can scatter them, cause a real scene at their own event, we might be able to attract more than just Von Doom. Better than Von Doom.” Hades nods at his own assumption, but you don’t like where this is going. Not one bit.

“Like who?” you counter. Von Doom is another billionaire. He has money, technology, and apparently, superhuman abilities of his own.

“Norman Osborn,” he replies without hesitation. “Otto Octavius. Wilson Fisk. The list goes on.”

You don’t even know who the last guy is. Still, you groan. “Osborn is an actual goblin, and Octavius is just a scientist. Plus, they can’t even handle themselves against that Spider-kid. You think they’ll be a match for the Avengers?”

You know you’re right, but either Hades doesn’t care or has deluded himself beyond the point of return.

Or, you dare think, that he can see beyond what you can. He is immortal, after all. He has to be right at least some of the time, you figure.

Maybe he sees this as a calculated risk he’s willing to take for the endgame.

Hades stands and starts to leave the room. He only stops to tell you, “United we stand…”

The event is really lovely, actually. Central Park is full of festivities from one corner to the next. There’s no way to do all of this in a day, you think, but as you watch people actually enjoy their existences again, you know no one cares.

So you stop caring about that, too.

You hear, about midday, that the Avengers will make an appearance in Sheep Meadow at some point later, so you decide to stick around that area for the day.

There are food vendors everywhere. All kinds of different food, too. Smells and sounds rule over the lawn, and for once, New York doesn’t feel like a death sentence. It feels like a place where people live - real people, civilians that have normal, superhero-free lives. It’s not really a place where aliens fall out of portals in the sky and threaten the status quo.

But sometime around 3, the Avengers show up, and suddenly New York is that place. Lightning Guy is living proof of that.

Your eyes find him just as easily as if you actually knew his name. You remember hearing...something about him, a few years back. Before the Manhattan attack.

He’d shown up somewhere West, claiming to be a Space Prince while he paraded around after an astrophysicist and her little team. Something had attacked there, too, but he’d defeated it. He had to, otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing across the lawn from you with his dangerous friends surrounding him.

Why he hadn’t gone home then, you couldn’t say. But he’s still here, on Earth, causing more and more damage to buildings and people and a way of life he only just acquainted himself with.

Tony Stark signs autographs. You only notice because you force yourself to stop looking at Lightning Guy. You watch Captain America, now without his stupid winged helmet, pose for a Charlie’s Angels picture with two women he probably doesn’t know. But they fawn over him once the picture is taken, and you roll your eyes.

Falcon and...the other birdman stand off behind the more well-known members of the team. You decide to go in for them, first.

“Some crowd,” you say as you sidle up next to Falcon.

He smiles down at you - a playful look, clearly intrigued by your approach - and nods. The other birdman doesn’t seem to care much, which works just as well for you.

“One of the bigger ones, believe it or not,” Falcon says to you, shrugging like it’s no big deal.

“And yet, you’re unattended to,” you say, attempting polite banter like you know Hades is expecting out of you. “‘S a shame. You’re one of my favorites.”

To be fair, he kind of is. He wasn’t around for the Battle of Manhattan. He did help take out that government facility in D.C. a while back, but you’d heard it’d been infiltrated by Nazis. So, for that, you forgive him.

Generally, he’s one of the lesser-known, newer members of the team. He seems much more approachable, much more amenable. And when he asks, his smirk growing by the second, “Oh, am I, now?” you can’t help but laugh a little at his enthusiasm.

It’s genuine laughter you’re feeling, for the first time since...everything. You know it because your stomach already hurts from just this little muscle contraction. The feeling is foreign and that is...somehow unfair.

But you manage to nod. “Those other guys are overstated,” you say with a shrug. “I like the ones that feel more like...us, you know?”

And he nods, too. “I do,” he says, and you believe him. You appreciate the gap in between his front teeth - it’s kind of adorable, truthfully - as he holds his hand out to you. “Sam Wilson.”

You place your hand in his, and he lifts it to his lips to place a chaste kiss on your knuckles. He’s quite the charmer.

“(Y/N),” you say back, forgoing the your surname because, really, does an Avenger need to know that? Even if he is one of the only ones you like? “And thank you for your service.” You’d read somewhere that he used to be in some branch of the military, so you let him take the compliment however he wants.

“‘Course,” he says. And then, after a beat, “I hope you’re enjoying such a lovely day.”

You know Hades would say to lay it on thick, here, to distract at least some part of the team. You try not to be too thick as you respond, “It’s much better now.”

But, of course, that’s when another person joins your group. You might be okay if it was just another fan asking Sam for an autograph or a picture or something, but no. You don’t have that kind of luck.

Lightning Guy steps up, clad in a plain shirt beneath an open plaid button-down and a pair of light jeans. Sans-armor, the guy is still huge and still looks like he’d be an absolute boulder in a fight. Formidable - that’s the best word you can come up with.

But there is something...a little more personable about his smile. You don’t let yourself fall for it, but you at least acknowledge it.

“Ah, (Y/N),” Sam says, “you know Thor, of course.”

Right you think. He’s the Norse God. You used to think he just borrowed the name, but then you’d seen an interview on the Today show one morning where he’d confirmed that he and the legend are one and the same. Now you remember.

“We’ve met, haven’t we?” Thor says, giving you a curious glance.

You wonder if you should tell him. You don’t really blame him for not recognizing you immediately - you’d only met the once, only for a few minutes, and under very different circumstances. You are now sans golden dress, sans glowing skin, and sans uncomfortable sandals.

But he is unforgettable. For more than one reason, more than just the fact that he’s an Avenger and a Space Prince.

It’s those eyes. Lightning Eyes, to match his power.

Working with Hades for so long has left the impression that you can tell a lot about people by their eyes. And Thor’s are...a dreamy, warm shade of blue that reminds of you storms.

“We have,” is all you say. You think giving too much away right now might cause problems down the line, and you have a distraction to be the cause of.

He holds his hand out, just like Sam did. You shake it, but he doesn’t kiss your knuckles like Sam did. His kind of charm is different - not showy in the same way, but still a little over the top. Everything about him is over the top, though.

Thor sizes you up as you pull your hand back. You ignore the pang of something that crawls up your fingers, passes your elbow, and stings your shoulder at the lack of contact.

“Oh, you have?” Sam asks, his smirk turning cocky as he raises a brow and turns to Thor.

It takes him a moment, but he must find something remarkably memorable in your face. His eyes widen and he almost takes a step closer before stopping himself. Then his brows drop and his expression turns colder, clouds filling his blue eyes with gray.

“You were the woman with Doom the other night,” he says.

Sam turns back to you, the glee on his face slowly fading. He was there that night - you saw him, briefly, on your way out, but he hadn’t thought to look in your direction then.

“I was.” You cross your arms and lean back a bit. “And I’ve been wondering why you and your friends burst in on my business.” You say it seriously, but not without tipping your head a little flirtatiously. You’re not angry - just curious, and, again, a distraction.

Briefly, you wonder when Hades is gonna put whatever his plan is into action.

“Saving the city, as we do,” Thor answers. He’s still a little put off, but now he’s just as coy as you are. You ignore the fact that you kind of like going toe-to-toe with someone that looks as intimidating as he does. “We were wondering what a lady, such as yourself, was doing with him.”

“I’m sure you were,” you say.

And now neither of you have given anything away. You almost know what the Avengers were called in for - it’s not like Victor Von Doom is known for being a safe man. But you’ve been trying to figure out exactly what was going on at that party that would require Captain America’s presence.

You’ve almost forgotten Sam is still beside you. Sam Wilson, Falcon, an actual hero and celebrity, and you’ve more or less pushed his existence into the back of your mind.

That is, until he clears his throat and steps between you and Thor, muttering, “I’m gonna let y’all have your moment I guess,” before moving on to stand with the rest of the team.

Thor won’t take his eyes off you, and you won’t take yours off him. You can feel your chest and neck heat up, but you don’t do anything to signify it’s happening to Thor. He can’t know. You won’t even admit to yourself that he’s the cause of the flush.

“You could’ve been hurt,” he says, unaffected. Not like someone that would actually care if you had been hurt, but just as a matter of fact.

You shrug. “I wasn’t. Like I said, I knew what I was doing.”

You can see in his eyes that he doesn’t believe you. They never do you think. But that’s why you’ve sworn off men.

Well, that and the whole Rick situation. But now’s not the time to dig that mess out of its grave.

Thor gives you a not-at-all-inconspicuous once-over, but his eyes settle on yours again. That’s new you think.

“You’re not quite like many Midgardian women I’ve met, I must admit.”

You lean on one hip, absolutely hating that kind of line. But because he’s still looking you in the eyes, and because you’re now too enthralled in this tête-à-tête, you let him explain himself.

One more thought for you to ignore: you’re breaking every single rule you’ve given yourself over the last few years in regards to attractive men.

“Most are far more forthcoming.”

At that, you laugh. Not because Thor’s wrong, but because he’s probably right. You can’t speak for everyone, but you know you’ve become a secretive, manipulative person. It’s not like you’ve had much of a choice, post-Rick’s Resurrection.

“Good for them,” you respond.

Something in his face changes - his expression flattens into confusion, but it doesn’t seem to be pointed at you anymore. It’s like he can hear something far off, that he knows something isn’t right.

You know it, too. And, truth be told, you’re glad Hades is finally barging in.

But just like your body craved Thor’s touch after he shook your hand, you need him to look at you again. The second his lightning eyes are focused on the shaking ground, on the direction from which the vibrations are coming from, you want to pull him back to you. Not as a distraction, but for you.

Instead, he lifts an arm and holds his palm outstretched, as if he’s waiting for something. The sky darkens, and the distant vibrations get closer as screams are heard from blocks away.

A blast of air shoots past you, cut off only when Thor’s meaty fist wraps around the handle of a large, heavy-looking hammer. It’s edges are slanted and the markings look Scandinavian if you have to guess.

A flash of lightning, and Thor is no longer in civilian clothes. Scaled armor shines down his arms. His chest is covered in a dark chestplate that match dark pants that do nothing to hide the curves of his calves. Not that you’re looking or anything. A long red cape billows as the wind picks up around the park and the skies fill with heavy, burdened clouds.

You don’t even have time to move. Thor is off, flying through the air toward whatever Monster Hades has conjured. You don’t want to see the fight - not really - but you can’t force yourself to turn away.

Sam shoots you a look as you stand, stoic and observant, but ultimately chooses his team over some weird chick he only met moments ago.

People all around you are running. A huge purple beast peaks through the park, shaking everything in its wake that it does not automatically destroy. It’s claws are as long as your body, it’s teeth as sharp as broken glass. It yells in a terrible, metallic noise that rings in your ears.

The Avengers go after it. Most of them do, anyway. War Machine, to your surprise, stays on the ground and helps corral people away. Black Widow does, too, especially when she gets a look at War Machine falling behind.

You take in the running, the screaming, the looks of utter terror. For a second only, you let yourself feel guilt.

Because in the next second, you back up. You turn around and walk right into a black suit with a silk navy pocket square sticking out of the blazer. Your thoughts automatically shut off as Hades put his arm around your shoulders, despite you having told him time and time again how much you hate him touching you.

He steps lightly but quickly, zooming past the crowd, around screaming people that you have to block out. You need to.

Hades lives for the Dead. He loves the sound of screaming humans. Loves the idea of disaster, because disaster almost always means more bodies to fill up his dark, twisted world.

But you are not a God of the Underworld. You are not a being of the Underworld at all - not in theory or practice. Even if the God of the Underworld owns your soul, even if he’s tethered you to his kingdom, you are still a human, and you cannot live with yourself if you idly watch people die, knowing it’s your fault.

You’re just about to head into another section of the park when Hades stops. He looks over his shoulder as you try to regain your footing - transporting via God isn’t always the easiest thing to put a human body through.

A crash of thunder. A roar louder than the rest - much more easily recognizable as a person, rather than a monster. Raindrops pelt at you, slowly but heavily.

Then, silence.

It lasts a beat before the murmuring. You turn around, too, and realize that Thor is no longer around. Every human being has stopped moving - even the purple Monster has stopped moving, though it looks much more satisfied than anyone else around you.

A woman screams. A child cries. Hades chuckles.

His favorite kind of soul is the immortal kind. You still have trouble grappling with that idea.

Lightning breaks out across the sky. The storm is suddenly furious, the wind coming so fast it could knock you down if you weren’t being held up by Hades.

And then the lightning springs from inside the Monster. Its yelling is cut off, as is its elongated neck from its head.

You step away from Hades to get a better look.

Thor stands on the decapitated corpse, hammer raised, innards hanging off of his limbs and armor. Even from your distance, you can see he’s breathing is labored.

The crowd cheers. You take another step forward, unable to help the smile that comes over you. There’s a warmth in your chest that you can only deny because you’re wearing a jacket over your t-shirt.

But before you can rush over to the Avengers, before you can celebrate with the other humans around you, Hades catches up to you. His hot hand rests on your shoulder, and just as quickly, he brings you back to the Underworld.

#thor x reader #thor odinson x reader #hercules au #thor odinson #thor au #worth my while fic

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marvellous-fangirl · 5 years

Text

Misunderstanding

You join Midtown Tech and Flash attempts to hit on you, giving Peter the wrong impression

Promises Chapter 2 Prev // Next

Word Count: 2,359

Pairings: Peter x Reader, Dad!Tony x Reader

Warnings: Fluff, fluff, fluff

A/N: Flash is a bit of a douche in this series

You walked with Peter into school, your bag weighing down your back and a couple of your books clutched tightly to your chest. “Y/N I promise everyone’s gonna love you.” He smiled, bumping into you playfully. You looked up at him, nibbling your lip anxiously. You seemed to try and shrink into yourself. “Plus you’re in all of my classes so I never have to leave your side.” He smiled and you looked slightly relieved, but still stressed. “Hey look there are my friends!” He said, pointing down the street towards the school gates, where two people were waving. Peter waved back as they approached and you wanted to bolt. “Guys this is Y/N. Y/N L/N.” Peter introduced you. You had told him that you didn’t want to be known as Tony Stark’s kid at school so you both came up with a fake surname for you to use. “Y/N this is Ned and MJ.” Said Peter and you smiled shyly. Ned gave Peter an amazed look and MJ grinned. “Are you in our class?” MJ asked, tilting her head like she was analysing you. “Unfortunately.” You half-grinned, feeling instantly comfortable around them and making an attempt at humour, which MJ appreciated. She clapped a hand on your shoulder. “I can tell we’re going to get along just fine.” She said and you chuckled, glad that it was going well.

You and MJ got talking as you walked to class behind Ned and Peter. MJ hesitated part way through your conversation and gestured for you to listen to what the others were saying. “Seriously though dude they’re so cute?! Where did you meet them? Did you meet them at the internship? Are they a superhero too? Do you like them? Are you gonna ask them out?!” Ned asked, questions streaming out of his mouth. “Ned be quiet!” Peter hissed, looking over his shoulder at you two behind him, who had realised he was going to do this so you had continued talking. “I know they’re really pretty.” He said sheepishly. “And yeah I did meet them at the internship. I don’t know if they’re an Avenger or anything but they’re really nice and they like Star Wars too-“ ”tHeY lIkE sTaR WaRs tOo?!” Ned freaked out, flapping his arms, which earned him a glare from Peter. “Yes they do now be quiEt.” Peter hissed and Ned looked upset. “Hey wait you did answer my final question.” Ned said after a couple of seconds, a smile beginning to grow on his face. Peter punched him on the arm. “OW!” Ned said, looking offended. “Look Ned I really like them but I don’t want to ask them out in case it ruins things between us because not only do I see them at the internship I see them at school and they’re in all of my classes and it would be really awkward if it didn’t work out.” “Or it could be perfect?” Ned replied and Peter didn’t respond, he just looked at his feet. “Peter just be careful. Y/N’s really attractive and you don’t want someone to scoop them up, least of all Flash.” Peter looked at Ned. “I don’t know. Just please don’t. Say. Anything.” “Got it. If I can keep the secret that you’re Spiderman then I can keep this one.” “SHHH.” Peter hissed. “You couldn’t say it any louder?!”

You sat down at the lunch table, next to Peter and opposite MJ, who was next to Ned. The morning hadn’t gone too badly, you’d received friendly smiles from people in your class and some of them agreed to send you notes of the things you’d missed already. Just as you were tucking into your lunch, a guy appeared out of nowhere. “Woah how the hell did Penis Parker meet someone as beautiful as you?” He said. You looked up, eyebrows furrowing immediately. “Wow haha Flash very funny.” Peter said flatly. You were sizing him up and seeing whether you could take him in a fight without using your powers. “Seriously though beautiful, are you sure you’d rather sit with these losers as opposed to me?” You were about to stand up but Peter placed a hand on your leg. You looked at him, jaw tight but it softened at the sight of the imploring look on his face. You sighed and went back to eating your food. “Did you hear me?” Flash said, irritation entering his tone at being ignored. You looked up and, with a completely flat and uninterested face, flicked a large lump of mashed potato onto his face with your fork, your aim perfect. Ned��s mouth dropped open and Peter tried to suppress a laugh as you casually went back to eating. Flash grunted angrily, wiping the potato off his face, before turning on his heel and walking away, the entire cafeteria dissolving into laughter. Once he was gone, you looked up, grinning. Ned was shocked beyond words and MJ was laughing maniacally and gave you a high five. Peter was laughing too. “Y/N that was the best shot I’ve ever seen.” MJ laughed, gasping for air. “Thanks Y/N. You know you didn’t have to do that.” Peter said, smiling widely. “No I didn’t but it felt great.” You laughed.

After school, you were at your locker, when Peter appeared next to you. “Hey Y/N I was wondering if you wanted to come back to my place and we can do our homework together?” He asked. “Sure! If May won’t mind.” You smiled and Peter grinned. “She’s just glad I have another friend to add to my long list of two.” You chuckled. “Hey I know I great place we can eat.” He added and you nodded.

Peter pushed open the front door of his apartment with his foot, arms full of food. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take anything? I could’ve done the door you know.” You said, trying not to smile. “I’m Spiderman I can handle it.” Peter grinned and you chuckled. “And I’m a Stark, I’m pretty sure I can handle a door.” You winked, taking the bags out of his hand and going to put them on a kitchen counter.

The next morning, you were walking to school from the compound, so Peter walked in alone. Maybe he should make a move? But what if it all went to shit? He couldn’t risk that. Especially since you guys were getting so close. And he’d see you all the time right? That would just be awkward. But then.. what if Ned was right? It would be so great. Mr Stark could become his actual dad. In law. May would love it. You were just so.. perfect? Peter crashed into a nice looking lady and he apologised profusely as he scrambled to the floor to pick up his books. The lady bent down to help. “It’s not your fault sweetie don’t worry. Got a girl on your mind? Or a boy? I’m not one to judge.” She said with a knowing smile on her face. Peter tried to form words, but he was too flustered to say anything. The lady just laughed and let him continue on his way to school.

Peter was walking down the hall to where his and your lockers were conveniently placed next to each other. He looked up from his hands to see you digging into yours. With Flash leaning against his locker.

Peter stepped closer to you, face falling, eyebrows knitting together, trying to listen to what you were saying without letting you become aware of his presence. “So how about I forget that little mashed potato incident if you agree to come out on a date me with me huh?” Flash said, cocky as ever. Peter couldn’t bear to listen to any more, so he turned on his heel and walked away, your voice distantly calling his name.

“So how about I forget that little mashed potato incident if you agree to come out on a date with me huh?” Flash said, arrogant in your ear. You finished grabbing your books out of your locker then slammed it shut, causing people nearby to turn in their direction. You turned to look at him, tilting your head, jaw stiffening. “I don’t want anything to do with you or your horny self centred ass.” You spat through gritted teeth. You were about to turn and leave, when you saw Peter, already walking away, clearly having seen it all. “Peter!” You called. “Peter wait!” You yelled. Flash chuckled beside you. You turned to him. “I’d literally rather drown in a pool of horse shit than ever go on a date with you.” You snapped, before running after your friend.

Peter didn’t speak to you during their lessons. Well as much as possible. You managed to grab him just as he was walking home. “Peter wait.” You said, desperately. He turned to look at you without a verbal response. “Peter why aren’t you talking to me?” “Look I don’t want to get in the way of you and Flash. He hates me and I wouldn’t want to get under his feet cause it could ruin things for you.” Your eyes widened in shock. You mimed gagging. Peter hesitated. “Peter I would literally rather drown in a pool of horse shit than go out with him. I said that to his face too.” Peter looked up from where he was looking at his feet. “What?” “Yeah Flash was just trying to make a move and I rejected it.” Relief flooded Peter’s face. “So I can talk to you again?” He said and you laughed. “You can always talk to me Pete.” You replied, lightly bumping into him playfully and he smiled at you gratefully.

You and Peter walked into school again together the next day and Flash cornered you at your lockers. “Y/N there must be something wrong in your head. I mean who the hell wants to spend time with fucking Penis Parker.” He leered. Your knuckles grew white on your folder. Peter was watching you carefully. “You could be popular and have about thirty times more friends than you do with him. And look at me! I’m so much more attractive than him.” You were trying to control your breathing. “Jesus Christ I can’t believe you actually like Penis Parker.” You slammed your locker shut and turned on your heel. Your breathing was calm but your heart was pounding furiously in your chest. Your jaw was tight but you closed your eyes and relaxed your muscles. You opened them and your fist collided with his nose, sending him stumbling backwards. He tripped and crashed to the floor. Everyone had gone silent in the hallway, Ned and MJ were standing frozen a few feet away from you and Peter, looking shell-shocked and Peter’s eyes were wide. You folded your arms and stepped closer to where he was clutching at his bloody nose on the floor. “Call him that one more time. I dare you.” You growled and Flash almost whimpered as he stood and scurried away from you as fast as physically possible. The hallway was still silent and everyone was looking at you with slight fear but also admiration.

“Y/N I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST DID THAT.” Ned yelled, losing control of the volume of his voice. MJ looked fully impressed and gave you a validating nod. Peter couldn’t help but smile and Flash would be keeping his distance from the lot of you from now on. You laughed at the look on Ned’s face. “YOU JUST. PUNCHED. FLASH.” Everyone laughed. “Man Y/N, that was impressive.” MJ grinned and you bathed in the glory of your recent encounter with the devil himself. Peter looked at you with a new fondness and you felt heat creep into your cheeks when you met his gaze.

That evening, you were walking back to Peter’s apartment with him when you decided to interrupt the small pause in conversation. “Hey uh Pete.” You said quietly. He looked over to you and hummed. “Can I uh ask your advice about something?” “Of course.” Peter smiled, concern lacing his tone. “I uh kinda like this guy and I’m not sure how to deal with it.” Peter’s heart sank. His chest hurt as he nodded for you to go on, trying not to seem upset. “Well there’s this guy... um he’s this really sweet guy and he’s so kind and soft and we have so much in common.” Peter’s heart kept sinking. You sounded serious about this guy. “I uh see him every day. He’s in all of my classes and he comes to the compound a lot too.” Peter’s train of thought hesitated and shot a side glance at you and you were twiddling your fingers nervously. “My dad really likes him, he thinks of him as a son.” His heart began to race. “It’s great because he gets on with my family and I get on with his too. And I don’t think he’s fully realised that I’m talking about him right now which is kinda adorable.” You said, smiling softly now. “But I really like him and I’m not sure about what to do about it. Because if it did happen then what if it doesn’t work out? I mean then everything would be so awkward. But then if it did.. it would be-“ “Perfect.” Peter interrupted, looking at you earnestly. You looked up surprised, then looked down at your hands again. “I mean I could never make the first move.” You said quietly a few seconds after Peter cut in. “Well maybe he will.” Peter smiled, his heart pounding so loudly in his chest, he was surprised that you couldn’t hear it. You walked in silence for the next block. “Hey uh Y/N.” Peter said and you looked up at him. “I was wondering if you might want to go on a date with me sometime.” He grinned and you couldn’t help but beam at him. “I’d love to.” You smiled and you slipped your hand through Peter’s, shuffling closer to him and resting your head on his shoulder.

#marvel #avengers #marvel fanfic #avengers fanfic #peter parker #spiderman #tom holland #peter parker fanfic #peter parker imagine #spiderman fanfic #spiderman imagine #tony stark #iron man #tony starks daughter #marvellousfanfics #tony starks son

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that-shamrock-vibe · 5 years

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Movie Review: Shazam! (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: This is my spoiler review for Shazam! released the weekend after the movie’s initial release on April 5 so if you haven’t yet seen the movie, go and see it and then come back and read on.

Characters:

Billy Batson/Shazam:

So let’s start with our main character(s) and I will start with Asher Angel’s Billy Batson because I can’t really talk about Zachary Levi’s Shazam without first talking about the origin of how he came to be.

As I said in my non-spoiler review, I thought Asher Angel got off to a very rocky start. I am guessing “Holy Moley” is Billy’s catchphrase because both he and Shazam said it quite a lot in this movie. However when the first words you hear the movie’s hero say are “Holy moley! It’s the boys in blue!” you do question what kind of movie this is.

I did like his actions of tricking the cops into that shop and locking them in so he could try and find a woman with the surname Batson in their car...but I just how it was executed from the dialogue to that very childish waving played a little bit too kid-like than Billy or Shazam are supposed to be.

Although the fact he is a kid in the foster system was very tastefully handled and didn’t detour away from the hard-hitting reality of what growing up in the system is like.

Similar to the 2009 movie Hotel for Dogs starring Emma Roberts and Jake T. Austin as brother and sister in the system and wanting to remain together no matter where they end up. Don Cheadle plays one of his better roles there as the social worker who like Andi Osho here is very realistic in saying “If you keep running away, eventually it will become impossible to place you”. Very well handled and I am impressed a movie this comedic and light goes there.

Now when Billy moves in with the foster family that houses the other kids of the Shazam! family, something about Asher’s performance really makes Billy fade away and the attention is focused on literally everyone else. I think the main problem for this movie will be Asher Angel because even in promotions it’s Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer doing the rounds.

I did like the growth of him accepting the foster family as his new family. He started off very cagey, was fixated on the idea he wasn’t going to stay there so didn’t want Darla to get attached which made her feel sad and how he didn’t join in with the family dinner tradition of “all hands in”.

But then when he finally tracked down his mother, which by the way I found interesting that Billy had gone I think from state to state or city to city yet somehow ended up in the same state or city as his mother all those years later, that realization that his mother is a waste of space and accepting that the foster family are his true family was touching.

This is, by a mile, my favourite performance of Zachary Levi’s. Shazam as a character in live-action was every bit as funny and child-like as I have seen him in animation.

That child-like wonder of discovering he had superpowers and learning how to deal with them was very good, the fact he appeared as an adult so could buy beer but still being a child not having a taste for it so swapped it out for candy and sugary drinks was very funny.

But then of course you have the line of “With great power comes great responsibility” which yes isn’t a Shazam or DC line but does come into effect as Shazam is using his lightning powers mainly to charge phones and put on a show, but when it comes to saving people he does go through that ordeal of not knowing what to do and simply succeeding by luck.

I thought the Shazam suit was very well realized despite what we have seen in promotions, I’m still not a fan of the cape and I like the comments about it in the movie. I think it’s either one of those things that works better in animation or the choice in design they went with for the movie just made it look like a bath towel but something didn’t translate well for me.

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not believe Shazam was ever called Shazam in this movie. I mean yes there was that great line in the climax of the film when Billy’s foster siblings became the Shazam family and Shazam himself instructed them on how to become them but rather than saying Shazam originally they said “Billy!” and so he said “No not my name, the name that turns me into this guy” it was funny.

Obviously they can’t use the character’s original name of Captain Marvel because 1) There is a small independent movie that just passed $1 Billion at the box office with the same name and of course the name is literally the name of DC’s rival studio.

I had fun with the character and I genuinely look forward to seeing where this character goes next.

Dr. Sivana:

Mark Strong finally comes good as a supervillain and I could not be happier for him. I really like this actor, I think he is an incredible working actor just trying to have that one breakthrough role that grabs audience attention and I believe Dr. Sivana is that role.

I enjoyed the movie starting with his origin, because of course behind every great superhero is a great supervillain, and Mark Strong as Dr. Sivana is a fantastic supervillain.

His father being John Glover was a very nice surprise for me both as a Smallville fan and just a John Glover fan in general. Yes he played a kind of Frankenstein-esk villain in Batman and Robin but his turn as Lionel Luthor in Smallville and even Sylar’s father in Heroes were two great roles for the character. Also he is the voice of The Riddler in Batman: The Animated Series so he clearly has a lot of weight at DC.

When young Thad goes to Shazam’s lair and is tempted by the seven deadly sins before being banished by Shazam, I thought it was a great precursor for what is to come.

I loved how from being a child he dedicated his life to finding his way back to the lair to obtain the power and that took I think 44/45 years, if we’re talking “present day” when it’s clearly Christmas in April, was dedication and I loved how in this instance it wasn’t the villain created because of the hero.

Being empowered by the Seven Deadly Sins, who by the way the promotional trail kept really secret. I mean I didn’t know about the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man from the comics but obviously even atheists know about the seven deadly sins and portraying them in these rather creative demon styles was a lot of fun.

I also found it brilliant that he never released the seventh deadly sin Envy until he had no choice because if all seven left him he would simply be mortal and vulnerable, I thought at one point he was going to mutate into Envy because of how he was envious he wasn’t worthy of the power of Shazam yet a child was but I was wrong.

Dr. Sivana, as I said in my non-spoiler review, is the best supervillain portrayal since Heath Ledger’s Joker. This guy was dark, brutal and was not afraid to kill or threaten anybody - Man, woman, child, elderly, infant...anybody!

Mark Strong could have very easily gone down the Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor in Superman Returns route particularly when he had the foster siblings hostage at their house but he was still scary and threatening.

He never broke character either, there was never one moment where he was a goofy villain or let himself play to the goofiness of the hero. The best laugh he got was in the Deadpool-like scene where he and Shazam were in the air...very far away from each other and Sivana was threatening Shazam but Shazam couldn’t hear him yet he was still talking. Yet it was never played as Sivana being incompetent or goofy as he was still menacing.

Foster Family/Shazam! Family:

Alright so I am going to go through the foster kids in order of my favourites still but just to talk about them as a whole, I thought once again this was a great example of diversity within a comic-book movie. To play up the fact that a foster family can be made up of different ethnicities was another realistic touch in portraying how the foster system works.

Darla Dudley:

Darla was my favourite out of the kids and Faithe Herman is the breakout star of this movie. She was cute for a start, this girl was adorable, you could easily see why she was picked for fostering/adoption because she is that cute.

However, she is a great example of looks being deceiving because this girl may be cute but she is sassy and she knows how to work a room. From keeping the secret that Billy is Shazam to playing up the little sister angle. Her reaction when the other kids found out that Billy was Shazam was great because she was so giddy that she didn’t spill the secret it was just so adorable.

When she was gifted her superpowers and became an adult, I thought Meegan Good kept up Faithe Herman’s cuteness but plussed it into the vision of what Darla sees herself being as an adult. She had the same kind of look and had a side-ponytail curl rather than bunches, her power, because each kid was granted one of Shazam’s powers while he as Billy has all of them, was the Speed of Mercury and it was great to see a female speedster in the movies, because at the moment they’re all on the small screen and mainly on The Flash with the Flash Family.

I look forward to seeing how Darla progresses as a character and, to be honest, care about her more than Billy at this point.

Freddy Freeman:

Jack Dylan Grazer was basically as good here as he was as Ritchie in It but the difference is the genre because while in a horror setting it is all very intense and, as someone who isn’t a horror fan myself, I am always on the edge of my seat that there isn’t really time to convey a lighter performance, here Freddy was simply a comic-book geek and I found that very relatable.

I loved the fact that it was either every day or every other scene that Freddy had a different logo t-shirt from the Justice League members and the main heroes so far established in the DCEU, even Wonder Woman which I found to be very forward-thinking of the director to have a guy wear a Wonder Woman t-shirt.

The only thing I didn’t like about Freddy was the fact he became almost a user and exploiter when it came to Billy’s newfound powers and apparent celebrity status.

I get Freddy uses a crutch and gets bullied for it, but I don’t see why that means he automatically say “I know the superhero” without at least asking Billy if it was okay first.

To then make a fool of both him and Shazam while he’s putting on that lightning show was stupid and selfish both because it makes it hard for Shazam to present himself as a reliable superhero but also how exactly do you explain Freddy having such a relationship with Shazam that he feels confident in just calling him out like that.

My funniest moment from Freddy was in that, now overplayed, convenience store scene where you had those thugs come in and Freddy convince Shazam to stand up to them while he’s recording it and, after the discovery that his suit is at least bulletproof, Freddy saying “We need to try the head”...the fact Freddy is essentially directing a robbery is quite funny.

When Freddy became Adam Brody, admittedly I at first did not recognize him. I know Adam Brody TV guest appearances from over 10 years ago so I guess puberty hit or something but he both looked and sounded completely different.

Other Three:

The other three kids really blend into the background for me with maybe one or two moments to shine yet they never do.

Eugene had a funny introduction of being a gamer nerd who, when his dad tells him it’s night said “When did it become night?”. Again I can relate to that.

Pedro had an interesting line of dialogue when the kids came out of the strip club after Shazam teleports them all there and he says “It’s not really for me”, which is either just Pedro not being a meatheaded hetero and trying to be more mature but also could be a sign the character will be an LGBT character.

Mary, was bland as bran flakes. She had one interesting scene, surprisingly in the trailer, where Shazam saves her and she mentions something about college but that is never mentioned again.

Overall I do like this group of kids for what they represent, but I hope the sequel does develop them further and give them something more to do.

Worlds of DC:

Alright so because the Worlds of DC has seemingly been taken literal here, as I do not see Shazam! as a movie really fitting in with the likes of Wonder Woman or Aquaman and rather in it’s own world within the DC Movies. Having said that, I am open for the movies going forward to prove me wrong.

Post-Credits Scenes:

This is where I get completely lost and had to do further research because the mid-credits scene saw a now depowered Dr. Sivana...so glad they didn’t kill him off...incarcerated. But then we have this weird caterpillar thing somehow talking to him through a voice box about conquering the seven realms.

It did lead to intruge for me, as I said was curious who the bug was and knew he had been in the movie at the start in the Rock of Eternity but then broke out later.

Apparently his name is Mister Mind and he is a Venusian worm with powerful mental abilities including mind control and hypnosis.

It’s a little bit of a hard-sell when the rest of the movie was so dark, particularly to have Dr. Sivana go from such a brilliant villain to possibly just a puppet, but we shall see.

The very end-credits scene is again a bit of a throwaway but it is Freddy and Shazam testing more of Shazam’s powers, this time seeing if he could control fish which Shazam says is a stupid and useless power but Freddy makes a brilliant in-universe joke to the fact Aquaman did that with style in his movie. Maybe alluding to the fact that this world is separate to the rest...I don’t know.

Overall I rate this movie a solid 8/10, I had a lot of fun with it, I thought Mark Strong and Faithe Herman were definitely my MVPs of the movie and I thought Zachary Levi did a great job at being him but also trying to level up as he was in a mainstream superhero movie.

So that’s my spoiler review of Shazam! What did you guys think? Share your comments and check out more DC Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

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an-ambivalent · 6 years

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Lies & Deceptions [Yandere! Chat Noir] [Reader-Insert]

As Ladybug travelled from one roof to another to get to her destination, she bit her lip in thought. Her mind was racing with countless of thoughts per second, and anxiety was causing her stomach to churn. She felt sick, and she felt as if she was going to throw up at any moment. This was because she was starting to feel overwhelmed by her emotions and thoughts.

Normally, as an infamous superhero duo, there were some people, and media channels who started all sorts of scandalous rumours and fake news about Ladybug and Chat Noir. Obviously, they knew better than to believe those silly rumours and let fake news cloud their judgement of each other. It was for this very reason that Ladybug ignored the article which was published to address the rumours of Chat Noir murdering akuma victims. For the most part, it seemed as if the author of the article tried to maintain a neutral perspective while writing the entire article. However, no published piece ever portrays a neutral perspective on a subject; it will always leans towards a certain bias. In this case, the article had solid evidence with people anonymously confessing that Chat Noir was a threat to be recognized.

It was a very convincing article and it had gained decent amount of attention. However, just like Ladybug, Chat had been a respected superhero for years now, and had found a place in the heart of every Parisian. There was simply no way the beloved Chat Noir could murder someone. That is what the majority, and Ladybug believed, despite her gut constantly signalling her that that was not the case.

She should have listened to her instinct. After all, instincts were born from fear, that engulfed one’s self for a reason. And the ugly truth she had continually denied, was revealing itself to her.

Now, Ladybug needed to embrace the fact that her long-time partner, was nothing but a possibly psychotic stranger, who would not think twice before getting rid off her. So, she needed to be completely wary of Chat, and treat him like an enemy. She could not afford to make any miscalculations, or any mistakes, because this time, it was not just their miraculous at stakes.

It was their lives.

A battle of cunning lies and unknown truths was beginning, and in this battle, there would only be one winner.

Ladybug needed to make her victory certain. Not only so she would not die, but also to protect the innocent individual who had unknowingly become Chat’s victim, all because Ladybug had rejected him.

It was her fault that this mess had begun because she failed to support Chat when he needed her the most.

So, Ladybug swore, it was going to be her who would protect [Name] [Surname] from any further harm.

***

It was a bit past midday when Ladybug had reached her destination. The skies which were grey before, had just seemed to become duller. Suddenly, the skies had darkened so much, that it felt like it was nighttime.

Ladybug blinked owlishly as she landed on the window’s sill out of [Name]’s room. Grey curtains were withdrawn over the windows from the inside so Ladybug could not see inside the room.

Out of nowhere, a shiver ran down Ladybug’s back as she felt a deep gaze digging holes in it. Sweat begin to form on the back of her neck, and shaking slightly in fear, she glanced around her surroundings warily.

Chat hasn’t followed me, has he? She asked herself, and suddenly, that thought manifested her fear. Wanting to get this done and over with, she loudly knocked on [Name]’s window.

“[Name] [Surname]?! This is Ladybug! I got your text and I came over as soon as I could! Please let me in,” Ladybug exclaimed, as she continued to knock on her window.

Right away, the curtains in front of Ladybug’s vision were drawn back, and Ladybug’s eyes widen when she saw a timid [e/c] girl staring back at her with wide eyes. [Name]’s shoulders were tensed, before she quickly opened the window, and ushered Ladybug inside. As she did so, [Name] glanced around her surroundings to make sure they were not being watched. As she looked around her surroundings, she stopped, and gazed at a certain spot for a few seconds. She narrowed her eyes at the spot. Her lips seemed to twitch upwards momentarily.

She stepped back, as she shut the window, and withdrew the curtains. She turned towards Ladybug, her eyes filled with panic, and evident anxiety radiated off of her.

“You weren’t followed right? You didn’t let him pick up on any hints that I contacted you right?” [Name] asked, her words bluttered out in a rush--a sign, that conveyed her uneasiness.

Ladybug’s shoulders tensed because yes. Yes, that she had given it away, and maybe she was followed. She was too busy being lost in her thoughts of what she had to do in the future, that she had forgotten to focus on the present, and pay attention to the sound of footsteps and other noises to make sure she was not followed.

She had already made so many mistakes.

Observing the fidgety girl of nervousness before her, Ladybug decided the truth would do nothing but scare the poor girl before her into a panic attack. She decided she was going to lie.

Another mistake.

Ladybug gave her a reassuring smile.

“Nope! I was s-super discreet about it,” Ladybug answered, stammering ever so slightly. Inwardly, she cursed at herself and hoped that [Name] would not notice her not-so-discreet lie. Momentarily, she felt fear shoot through her when [Name] stared at her dead in the eyes, with an expressionless face. However, as soon as that blank expression appeared on [Name]’s face, it disappeared, and Ladybug wondered; was she imagining things?

She shook off her worry, as [Name] breathed out in relief. Then, she gave her a small, soft smile.

“Thank goodness,” [Name] began, as her shoulders finally relaxed, and she ran a hand through her hair strands. Then, she frowned and looked at Ladybug with utter seriousness.

“I’m sorry for suddenly giving you such a strange message, but I really need your help. At the very least, please hear me out. I know that as the main heroine, and of course your own personal life, you don’t have much time. If I’m not worth your time, then please by no means, feel obligated to help me. I am surprised that you even came here for someone as worthless as me, so thank you,” [Name] said, smiling awkwardly at her.

Ladybug’s eyes widened and she narrowed her eyes at [Name]. She did not miss how [Name] continued to refer to herself as ‘worthless.’

Why would she talk like that? Ladybug wondered, but decided to not comment on it.

She shook her head, and smiled at her.

“It’s no problem. It’s my duty as a superheroine to help those in need,” Ladybug answered, and [Name] hummed in response.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” [Name] suggested, motioning her head towards her bed. Ladybug nodded, as she robotically walked to her bed, and gently sat down.

“Refreshments?” [Name] asked, as she picked up a tray, that had two glasses of orange juice on it, and some chips.

Due to patrolling, Ladybug was really hungry. It seemed as if she had not realized that until this very moment, when her stomach growled, very loudly.

Ladybug blushed, and she smiled in embarrassment.

“Yes please,” She said, as [Name] giggled, and handed her a glass.

Mindlessly, Ladybug accepted it, and took a sip from it.

She did not question why [Name] had two glasses of orange juice, and not one, when there was obviously no one else but her at home. She also did not notice the small ladybug sticker that was at the bottom of her glass, which indicated that the glass Ladybug drank from, was specifically for her.

[Name] smiled as she saw Ladybug drinking more orange juice.

She openly eyed her earrings.

“So,” [Name] began, as she narrowed her eyes at Ladybug.

“What is it like being Ladybug? Is it your earrings that give you the power?” [Name] asked, her voice laced with curiosity.

Ladybug furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, as she consumed more contents of her beverage which was awfully a bit too sweet.

“Why are you asking me that? Shouldn’t we be discussing Chat?” Ladybug asked, and suspicion filled her eyes.

“Oh, Chat? Yes, we should definitely discuss him,” [Name] started, and she gave Ladybug a sickeningly sweet smile.

Speaking of sick, Ladybug suddenly began experiencing an extremely painful pounding in her head.

She yelped out in pain, as she clutched her head.

“W-What’s h-happening?” She stammered, as her voice became rasped, and her breath shortened.

[Name]’s eyes widen in delightment.

“You’re dying,” [Name] began nonchalantly, as her grin widened.

Ladybug’s eyes widen.

“And back to discussing Chat, he spends WAY too much of his precious time with a bug like you. It was about time you got squashed,” [Name] said, smirking.

“Y-You won’t g-get away with t-this,” Ladybug stammered, before she gasped loudly, and fell back on [Name]’s bed.

The [h/c] female grinned, as she reached for Ladybug's earrings.

“Oh honey, I already have,” [Name] stated, smiling.

As she took the Ladybug Miraculous, a red glow occurred throughout the room, which meant that the previous Ladybug’s transformation had been released. It revealed to be a black-haired female--Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

[Name] did not spare her a glance. Instead, she became focused on the new red Kwami--Tikki--who was floating in front of her.

With her eyes widened in fear, Tikki watched in horror as [Name] put in the Ladybug earrings, and then turned towards her.

She smiled sweetly at the ladybug Kwami. It was a reassuring smile, which had danger hidden behind it, if Tikki did not cooperate.

“So, little bug,” [Name] called, and Tikki shivered.

“I-I’m Tikki,” She muttered, and in response, [Name] squealed.

“You sound so cute! I hope we can be best friends,” She exclaimed in excitement.

Tikki opened her mouth to reply, and her eyes flickered to an unconscious Marinette.

She felt her lip quiver, and tears prickling the corner of her eyes. She wanted to scream and curse at [Name], but she knew that she could not. She diverted her attention back to [Name], whom’s eyes were now slitted in concentration, and she was fully focused on Tikki.

The seriousness of her gaze caused a shiver to run down Tikki’s spine, and [Name] gave her a cheshire smile that Tikki thought befitted a black cat more appropriately, than a bug to be.

“So tell me,” [Name] began, as Tikki glanced down on the floor, and clutched her hand tightly, in fear of knowing the horrors that awaited her.

“How do I become Ladybug?” [Name] asked, excitement emitting from her.

Just like the Butterfly Miraculous, and the Chat Noir Miraculous, The Ladybug Miraculous, had now fallen into the wrong hands. As [Name] was her new chosen, Tikki had no choice but to submit to her demands.

———

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willandlyra · 6 years

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against the dying of the light

a strange AU in which will is very sick and nico is sad. nico’s step-mother might be a witch and words are hard.

word count: 4046

warning: terminal illness, discussion of death

ao3

“I know it isn’t fair,” his step-mother says. She brushes her fringe from her eyes and her bangles jangle against the thin bones of her wrist. The paper of her skin reminds him of Will. It’s the opposite of nostalgia. “But you know what, Nico? Life isn’t fair.”

He’d known she was going to say that. He’d known it from the moment she’d opened her mouth. From the moment he’d opened his.

He’d known that this was pointless.

“Fine,” Nico says. He doesn’t say it really. He more spits the words out. As if his gums are made up of firewood and old shirts and the twists of his tongue are fireworks. He marches quite dramatically, deliberately, to the door, and hopes Persephone turns to watch them explode.

“Where are you going?” she demands. Hands on hips. Less reminiscent of Will, with red lipstick, with long hair. The perfect cliché. All she’s missing is the black cat. Nico supposes a black Labrador will make a decent replacement.

“To see Will.”

Will looks better than the last time Nico saw him.

It always feels like it’s been ages. Even when it hasn’t. Even when it’s been two days it feels like it’s been over a week – the clichés of a first teenage love. It never lasts but it feels like it’ll last forever and a day. It’s never actually as great as it feels in the moment. Nico plans to discourage both arguments, but the latter is easier to dispute. The former will need more time.

It’s as great as it actually feels. It must be, because Nico’s feeling it and nothing has ever felt so sharp and effervescent and real. It’s like putting on glasses. He notices the outlining colour of the leaves properly. He’d never noticed before that there were different shades of green and lines and layers, like palm maps on human hands. The colours feel more vivid and the birds sing louder. When his step-mom scowls he notices the wrinkles that span out from her red-matted lips, the chalky way in which the lipstick stretches over skin she refuses to allow to age.

Will gives Nico a smile like warm milk.

“Hey,” he says.

He looks better this time.

The last time Nico saw him, he had a nose bleed.

“Hey,” Nico replies, shyly. He shouldn’t be shy. You can’t look at a guy you spent an hour making out with on his parent’s couch a week ago and be shy.

Will makes him feel like a half-finished sentence.

They played a game on the phone once. Will wasn’t allowed to see anyone and Nico was bored, because he hadn’t wanted to see anyone who wasn’t Will. His dad and step-mom hated him spending all of his time up in his room, wilting like a sad old plant. Persephone’s words.

“I’m not a plant,” Nico told her. He hated old people and their insatiable desire to compare him to nature; his grandma always called him ‘petal’. His dad told him, when Nico was nervous about public speaking, that he was a mountain. Sometimes its almost better that he’s not around so much these days.

“All young boys are plants,” his step-mom said absent-mindedly. She rearranged the flower display on her windowsill. Persephone was very into the ornamental influence of nature. Then, she stepped over to the table, and crushed up some herbs, right on the pretty, lace-white table cloth.

“Fine,” Nico grumbled. “I’m a freaking cactus then.”

He’d told Will this once.

It might have been the same night that they played a game on the phone.

Nico isn’t sure what lead to the game, because memory is quite subjective. Nobody remembers the minute details. He probably didn’t smell the fresh, sharp sting of Colgate toothpaste when he’d first kissed Will. The brain likes to embellish; he’d probably smelled stale coffee. Whatever. It was still good. It was probably to do with English homework. Nico was usually complaining about English homework.

Will never had any homework. But he chuckled, and helped Nico with his anyway.

It was probably over English homework. Probably poetry. Fucking poets. Nico wouldn’t be surprised if Persephone took it up as a hobby, concocted up a potion to travel back in time and write bullshit ballads with the best of them, with Keats and Shelley, and old Wordsworth himself. It was the Romantic poets, who spurted out bullshit lines.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” Nico remembers himself saying. Voice high and mocking, and Will laughed. He didn’t point out that this was probably Nico’s exact vocal tone three years ago. Sixteen really isn’t that old.

“True art,” Will might have said. “Lonely as a cloud. God.”

“Clouds aren’t even lonely. They’re up there. With all the other clouds. Having a massive cloud party. How is that lonely?”

“No clue,” Will said. “Unless they’re all the same cloud, and it’s just one lonely cloud entity.”

“In which case,” Nico said, “he needs to get some major limb re-attachment surgery.”

Will laughed. Nico loved, loves, will always love the sound of Will’s laugh: the sharpness of raised breath, the surprised way in which it spurts from his lips. Like candlelight. And his mouth curls into a smile. Melting candlewax.

Will looks like a chess piece.

One of the white ones, because he’s become very pale. He’s always pale now. Even paler, like the time his mom accidentally set the fridge temperature too low, and their carton of milk froze up. White lumps of ice. That was what Will looked like on a really bad day.

Not today. Today he looks like a chess piece. Probably because Nico can’t really remember their shape. But he knows their solid figures curve and so does Will’s body. Probably not in all of the same places, but it’s not an up and down statue, at least. Will isn’t stoic; he’s human, he’s not a chess piece. Not really at all.

“My head hurts,” Nico tells him.

Will smiles, because he always smiles. Patches of blonde curls fall into his face. Nico pushes his fringe away so that he can see his eyes, because Nico fucking loves his eyes.

Will’s head probably hurts a lot more.

Will has never chastised him for his selfishness. He’s never stood up like a conservative Church boy and told Nico that caring too much about himself is a sin. Nico would have responded that caring so little about himself in comparison to the way he felt about Will was probably a sin too.

Will would have blushed. Nico would have kissed him underneath the blue sky church light that seeped in through the stain glass windows.

But that’s a daydream. They’ve never been in a church together.

They’re in Will’s front room.

Will reaches out his hand. Church boy hands. White as gloves. Fingers bent and curved and jagged, a squiggled line. A straight line drawn without a ruler –

A smaller chess piece.

Nico takes his hand and he feels the kind of warmth magic can’t create.

“Will rhymes with ill,” Will said once.

They were lying on the grass outside of Will’s house, pretending they were camping. They weren’t, because Mr and Mrs Solace were more neurotic than Jimmy Neutron – who probably wasn’t neurotic at all actually. But he had the appropriate surname. Maybe the Solaces should adopt it, as it was much more fitting to their way of thinking.

Will Neutron.

But the grass was damp beneath their skin and they held hands beneath the cream twinkle of moonlight and the soft sweep of stars. A few blocks away the swingset in the park creaked. A cat mewed in an alley way. A homeless person croaked out a few soft words.

They held hands and Nico could feel the tickly, wet stroke of green blades blushing against his neck. But the cool press of Will’s fingers was warmer than a fucking radiator. God.

“Will, ill,” Nico repeated. “It does. God.”

“I know,” Will said. “My parents were tempting fate when they named me. Why couldn’t they call me Alistair? Nothing rhymes with Alistair.”

“Alistair is an ugly name,” Nico told him. “Alistair Neutron.”

“What?” Will laughed, and Nico squeezed his hand.

“I mean, technically, they named you William,” Nico said. His heart was beating fast. They never talk about Will being sick. Just like they don’t talk about Nico’s dad never being around, or his step-mom being a witch. Or being crazy. Whichever one she actually is.

But now, but now maybe Will was going to talk. And Nico’s heart could burst through his skin like a dinosaur risen from the dead. Or a zombie. Or. Or a fucking vampire out of a coffin or a superhero out of a comic book or a sword out of a stone. If Will wanted to talk then Nico would listen. He would literally listen forever, until his hair turned grey, until the grass grew over his skin like weird fur and he became one with nature, like his damned family were so obsessed with.

He’d listen forever.

“Illiam,” Will mused. “Sounds like a Shakespeare character. I like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything else.

When they did, it was about Star Wars, and not being ill, and not the reasons why they were in Will’s back garden, and not camping, even though both of them hated the Great Outdoors and would die without Wi-Fi, probably. It was the sentiment.

But Nico was still listening. Just in case. He’d opened up his ears now, no point in closing them.

Sometimes Nico is disconcerted by the fact that Will seems to feel so little.

That’s not entirely true of course because Will feels all the array of emotions of the world, and Nico watches them form and flicker and fade over his face, because he’s there often enough to see the colours of all the different ones. Will feels so much, but he rarely ever breaks.

This is the difference between them.

Nico would break.

Nico would break like car tyres and morning. Nico would break like the crisp glow of starlight when interceded by a roof with dodgy, loose tiles that threaten to fall in the rain. When the light falls and it stops and it does nothing but light up the darkness that nobody sees anyway. Nico would break like a fingernail. Nico would break like a cheap McDonald’s happy meal toy on the second time it’s played with. Nico would break like a fast.

He’d break like the first line of a song, if it were him. And the music would keep playing, and he’d break over and over and over.

Will doesn’t break. At least not visibly.

Nico, for all that he maps the lines of his body and details the freckles on his skin in hidden places, and kisses his cheek, can’t actually see inside of Will’s body. Maybe his skeleton is shattered like a stained glass window in a fallen down church. It’d have to be a stained glass window though: vivacious colours dying the insides of his organs. Nothing could bleed into the cracks in Will’s body that was translucent.

So maybe he breaks. Quietly. Like car headlights.

Nico wants to hear him. He wants Will to shout. So that he can listen.

“I hope Persephone is a real witch,” Nico says.

“Really?”

Will is sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor. He’s wearing beach shorts, like he’s about to go surfing, and a Spiderman t-shirt. Something about this combination makes Nico want to kiss him. Maybe he’ll go to the beach first and inhale some sea spray to breathe away.

He’d already kissed him at the front door. He should probably stop being greedy.

“Kind of?”

Will looks up, blinking bleary blue eyes. Nico wants to compare them to gemstones or the sea. Truthfully they’re watery and pale. Pallid. Fuck it. He’s not a fucking Romantic poet, and Will’s no lyrical ballad. Nico doesn’t love him because he has fifteen metaphors for eyes. He loves him because he has eyes and ears and a mouth that makes bad jokes.

Some days Will doesn’t look his best.

Some days Will’s skinny arms and bloated fingers and beady little eyes like goldfish swimming really really fast remind him of –

Not songs, or pencil quotes written on the backs of school books.

They remind him of boys who are sick.

“If she’s a real witch,” Nico says, slowly. “She could make you all better,” beat, pause. Little drummer boy. A high note. A knock on the door. “She could make you stop feeling sick,” rat-a-tat-tat. “She could make you stop hurting.”

Will looks up.

He reaches out his hand. Touches it to Nico’s. His fingers open up like cage doors and Will’s thread through his own. Like a key in a lock. Not all metaphors have to be fucking weird. They hold hands (they’re always holding hands: Nico likes the rush of blood he feels in the back of his neck whenever they do, and Will’s just a sap), and Nico is still sitting on Will’s soft duvet covers.

He lowers himself down to the floor.

Will kisses his cheek.

“Thanks, witch boy,” he whispers. His eyes are pallid and worn and framed by shadows and bags, like someone has left a bottle of beer over his face overnight.

Nico loves his eyes because Will looks at him with them and decides he likes the person that he’s looking at.

“And, of course, that means I’m a witch too,” Nico says.

“A witch boyfriend,” Will muses. “I see no faults in this. Great plan.”

“I know,” Nico says. “Get us a pen, will you? And can I write in your notebook?”

“That’s my space notepad. It better be good,” Will says. He passes Nico a pen. It’s green. It’ll do. “What are you doing?”

“I’m writing a list of people we need to curse when I develop my witchly powers, of course.”

Will laughs a little too hard and it makes Nico’s smile grow like his Grandma’s dreams have all come true and he really is a damned buttercup.

Sometimes Nico gets angry. Sometimes these feelings, toxic and poisonous and full of blue rage and hate, sometimes they fill him. They overtake him and spill through his thoughts and head and heart like lava.

Except he isn’t a volcano. Because he isn’t supposed to be feeling this, this anger that sinks upon him like black sludge isn’t normal and it shouldn’t be here. It should stick to his skin like tar. It shouldn’t follow him around like smog waiting to fill up his nose and throat and lungs again.

Until it’s all he can feel.

Until it’s all he can hear – the beat of anger, the drummer boy, stamping on his heart with sharp black boots. And he’s so angry. He feels like he’ll be angry forever.

They played a game on the phone.

“Describe me like a poet then,” Nico had said. “Like a Romantic poet. Come out with the best bullshit you can.”

“Er, oh God,” Will blustered. “Your hair, erm, curls like a smile?”

“Until I flatten it with straighteners, anyway,” Nico laughed, and Will did too.

“The real emo agenda.”

“That was gross, though,” Nico told him.

“I know, thanks,” Will was probably beaming on the other end of the phone line. “You do me next.”

“Your eyes are like – uh, Southern lights. Because you’re from the deep South,” Nico had said in his most solemn of voices.

Will had laughed for ten minutes and then told him to piss off.

“Think you mean the Northern lights,” he said.

He hung-up the phone – but he rang back two minutes later.

“He’s getting worse,” Nico says. His fingers shake around the rim of the coffee cup handle. If he was a poet he’d make a comparison, a shit one, about the bones of Will’s body, the life under his skin and the thump of the drum in his blood being as fragile as this little china mug. The worst part is he wouldn’t really be lying.

Except if he’s careful with the mug it won’t break. He can put it away in a cupboard for safe keeping. He can pack it away in a box. Label it with all sorts of things to keep people away.

Will is a person. Will lives and breathes and dreams. He beats and feels. He can’t be packaged away with extra care, he’s not a fucking mug and nobody can put him away to keep him safe. That’s not how it works because people aren’t possessions. People aren’t pretty, ordained pieces of kitchenware.

“I’m sorry,” his step-mom says. Her nails are long and painted and thump, thump, thrum, as she taps them listlessly against the table. The tablecloth is white. And new. The dirt from the herbs is washed away and Nico knows she can’t help them, whatever she says, whatever she believes, whatever he believes. “I’m sorry, Nico. I wish we could help him.”

“But you can’t,” he says. He doesn’t look her in the eye. He looks at the tablecloth and searches for smears of dirt.

Persephone is probably not a witch.

But she probably isn’t lying when she says that she is.

She can fix up china with super glue and careful handiwork when cups smash against the floor. She can buy a carpet so that it won’t happen again. She can make Nico hot meals and wash away the grime from his skin with a soapy sponge. But she can’t make Will better.

“I can’t,” his step-mom says. “Will is a nice boy.”

He deserves to live forever.

Nico is still listening.

“He is,” Nico says. “I love him.”

Things his step-mom does not say:

- You’re too young to know what love is.

- There are plenty of fish in the sea.

- All teenagers say that about their first relationship.

Things his step-mom does say:

- Okay.

“You’re like a tunnel?”

“Please not again, Will.”

“No, no, listen, this works,” Will laughed and Nico couldn’t see the way that his eyes crinkled but he smiled at the thought. “You’re, erm, dark and… long? And – and you always get through!”

“I’m literally breaking up with you, just for that,” Nico told him. “That was horrific. If I’m a tunnel, you’re a bulldozer. Just going around. Destroying tunnels and shit. No respect for other people.”

“True enough,” Will probably shrugged then. He was probably grinning too. “Hey, no, you’re a hole instead.”

“…Why?”

“Because you’re deep. Get it?”

This time, Nico hung up the phone.

Will goes back to the hospital for a few days.

Nico paces until his toes curl and hurt. Until he stops walking and realises he can’t remember which floor he’s on until he stops to look around and realises he’s downstairs. And that it’s the last place that he wants to be, because it’s Downstairs Without Will.

Nico likes to kiss Will until he’s certain he’s not going to disappear.

On his cheeks and on his lips and on his forehead and on his nose.

“Gross,” Will says, pushing him off. “What’s up with you and all the affection today? It doesn’t really work with your whole teen angst vibe, you know that?”

“I know,” Nico says. “That’s true.” He plays with his fingers and wishes he didn’t feel as strongly as he did. He’s like a really excellent oven with a high glare blue glow. Sometimes he wants to be a cheap, shitty hob in a university hall that barely works and doesn’t really burn. He wishes he was as bad an oven as he was a poet.

He feels things so strongly but the words to describe them don’t work.

“So?” Will blinks expectantly.

His eyelashes are the colour of spilled ink, of a dodgy fountain pen that blots and spills all over your essay, right before it’s due to hand in, and Nico tucks this away to use on the phone one day. The next time they play that game.

“So sometimes I just really love you okay,” Nico mumbles.

And Will says, “okay, oh,” and kisses Nico’s cheek and his lips are soft and wet and warm. Nico thinks about the winter.

Later Will says ‘I love you too’, but he forgets to in that moment.

His hand finds Nico’s again.

Will is a chess piece.

Nico is the other chess piece that moves forward and disrupts the game plan of the other player.

Nico hasn’t the slightest idea of how to play chess.

Will is a piano key and Nico is the pair of hands that slap down and ruin a simple melody with a crash of noise and offkey focus and mess and chaos and.

“Why aren’t you angry?”

Will looks up.

Weak cheeks. Nico thinks of his shit rhymes, and his shit comparisons to Romantic poets. And his shit metaphors.

“Why aren’t I angry about what?” he asks. Voice calm and cool. Like –

Glass being melted to form shapes. Little models of tigers and monkeys and dinky heart-shaped presents for that special someone.

Like sand, slipping in between somebody’s toes on the beach. The lightest, palest sand in the world.

Nico’s step-mom very slowly and carefully painting her fingernails red. Careful not to smudge.

“Angry at this,” Nico finishes his sentence. Quiet. Like a stain of dirt on the crisp white linen. “Angry at everything. Angry because you’re ill, because you’re dying.”

The word: sharp and loud and poignant. Breaks the silence of the room.

Persephone breaks a nail. Somewhere, she casts a spell.

Nico taps his foot against the floor and feels every ounce of blood that rushes through his body.

Will’s eyes are pallid and gentle and they look like the eyes of a boy who has known he’s going to die for a really long time.

“Because what’s the point,” Will says. His voice doesn’t quake. Nico trembles a lot more than he does.

His eyelashes don’t look like spilled ink after all. More like ash. In the wake of a volcanic explosion in the wrong vessel. The leftover tangents of Nico’s anger whirring away. Ash, and dust, and boys with dark eyelashes who tell him they love him.

“What’s the point in getting angry, Nico?” Will asks. “Who does it help?” he asks again. “What does it solve?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

Nico answers after minutes of silence and clicking ticking moving tocking clocks. That move in motion to the ocean wave. The drumming boy beat. The blood that rushes under veins. That fish swim through at an alarming speed.

“But it’s ok to be angry. If you want.”

He stands up.

“You don’t have to be angry. But if you want to be, you can. If you wanna scream and shout and break stuff, you can. I’m not saying that’s right. Or that’s how it should be. But if you want to, it’s ok.”

Because sometimes Will makes a bad joke and his knuckles are yellowing. Because Nico erupts and feels molten lava trickle down his cheeks, but Will is a dormant volcano and his body heaves with the sighs of unfairness and he never says a fucking word.

While Nico’s chest bursts with the rip of a pioneer heart and Will’s mom cries and Will’s dad cries, Will stands, smiling. Pallid-eyed, poetry-reading, bullshit-speaking Will. Sits, stands, lies. Sighs. Says nothing. Breaks and never says a word and he will die and he will never say a fucking word.

“Don’t let it consume you,” Nico says.

His step-mother tried to practice witchcraft this morning.

There was a smear of dirt on the table at lunch time and it made Nico smile.

“But don’t think you have to shut it all out, either,” he finishes. He pictures the bowl of mixed herbs and strange smelling salts and liquids spilling, heaving, tilting. His father swearing. Will looks at him with volcanic eyes and maybe there’s the tiniest glimpse of smoke on the landscape horizon.

“Thank you,” Will says, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“If you want to talk about it, I’ll be listening,” Nico says. He clears his throat. Washes away the rain. Brushes away the dust. “I’ll listen forever.”

#solangelo #solangelo fanfic #solangelo fanfiction #fic

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f4liveblogarchives · 6 years

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Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #9

Session Start (Wackd:#Wack’d): Fri Oct 21 08:31:33 2016 -0400 [22:42:50] <Wackd> Iiiiiii am going to read more Fantastic Four [22:43:01] <maxwellelvis> Where did you leave off? [22:43:24] <Wackd> Issue 8 [22:43:27] <maxwellelvis> Ah. [22:43:32] <maxwellelvis> Go forth then [22:43:39] <Wackd> Alicia Masters and her father, Puppet [22:44:07] <Bocaj> eeesh [22:44:08] <Bocaj> thats [22:44:12] <Bocaj> that was not a great time [22:44:19] <MousaThe14> Ah, yes, the Puppet Master [22:44:36] <Wackd> Puppet J. Masters [22:44:45] <Wackd> I too would turn to villainy with a name like that, probably [22:45:01] <maxwellelvis> At least your name isn't Telford Porter. [22:45:10] <MousaThe14> Also, apparantly Alicia didn't have a surname at this time [22:45:22] <MousaThe14> And wouldn't until a fan wrote one in many many issues later [22:45:47] <MousaThe14> @Max, You joke but I have a character with a similarly cruddy name [22:45:58] <Wackd> Okay so I get why the Four is selling shit to cover their debts [22:46:09] <Wackd> But, uh, why are they splitting up [22:46:16] <Wackd> That seems unnecessary [22:46:55] <Wackd> Also, I love that they lost all this money because Reed bought stocks [22:47:07] <Wackd> Even the smartest man alive is no match for Wall Street [22:47:24] <maxwellelvis> I told you, Reed Richards is a master of many arts and sciences; finance is not one of them. [22:48:53] <Wackd> CAB DRIVER: "Hey you really shouldn't take a cab being broke and all" [22:49:03] <Wackd> THING: *puts the cab through a streetlight* [22:49:23] <MousaThe14> I wonder if Wack'd should read Strange Tales to get the full experience by going through the awful saga of The Human Torch's brief solo series [22:49:35] <Bocaj> noooo [22:50:05] <MousaThe14> But quite a few iconic FF villains get their start there, strangely enough [22:50:23] <maxwellelvis> The only thing noteworthy about that run was the issue that did the test run to see if people wanted Captain America back, [22:50:25] <Wackd> "If only we could be like the superheroes in some of these comic magazines, Sue! They never seem to worry about money! Life is a breeze for them!" [22:50:29] <Wackd> Wonk wonk [22:50:32] <maxwellelvis> and the first appearance of Paste Pot Pete. [22:50:47] <MousaThe14> I mean, who'da thunk freaking The Wizard and Paste Pot Pete were introduced as Strange Tales baddies [22:50:49] <Bocaj> I'd laugh at Paste Pot Pete but he is canonically better than Baron Zemo [22:51:11] <MousaThe14> @Wack'd, yeah, Stan is not subtle. [22:51:26] <MousaThe14> Really trying to sell his heroes on the "They have REAL problems" front. A little too hard [22:51:43] <maxwellelvis> It's a new concept, gotta get it over for Summerslam [22:51:54] <Bocaj> I think he did it better with Spider-man [22:52:05] <Wackd> "We can make money if we go to Hollywood and make a movie! But we're broke, how do we get there?" *two pages earlier establishes they've not sold the Fantasticar yet* [22:52:46] <maxwellelvis> Well, he had Steve Ditko for that. [22:53:00] <maxwellelvis> And the good sense to give Ditko free reign in terms of plotting. [22:53:22] <maxwellelvis> Well, not to the extent of free reign Ditko got with The Question [22:53:22] <Wackd> They've taken a film deal from SM Studios. I...er...hrm [22:53:34] <maxwellelvis> Keep going. [22:53:48] <Wackd> ...oh goddammit SM stands for Sub-Mariner, doesn't it [22:53:59] <MousaThe14> Oh right, ths was a Namor story [22:54:35] <Wackd> I was gonna say I'm surprised they got away with that in 1961 but [22:54:36] <MousaThe14> .... That's exactly who he'd sound like [22:55:04] <MousaThe14> While the Fantastic Four would have powers appropriate to be in some BDSM material.... this is still the 60s [22:55:08] <Bocaj> Listening to the first couple episodes of the Fantasticast it struck me how heavily the early Avengers borrowed from Fantastic Four. [22:55:12] <maxwellelvis> because when I think of a haughty prince from another world whose strength is eclipsed only by the chip on his shoulder, I think of that guy. [22:55:26] <Wackd> The presence of Alfred Hitchcock makes me suspect there are a lot of celeb cameos I'm not catching [22:55:36] <MousaThe14> @Wack'd, there are. [22:55:38] <Bocaj> They fought a shape changing alien in their second issue. They fought Namor. They fought Dr Doom. They fought Kang who was actually Rama-Tut [22:55:59] <MousaThe14> I think Bing Crosby is supposed to be in there. But of course it's all dated so we won't truly know unless we research [22:56:04] <maxwellelvis> To be fair, the Four WERE the faces of Marvel at the time. [22:56:19] <MousaThe14> And apparantly sold well [22:56:46] <MousaThe14> And apparantly the connective tissue of the beginning of the whole danged universe as it was being born as a universe as we know it today [22:57:06] <MousaThe14> Spider-man may have been the crossover bicycle, but the FF got all the first rides [22:57:23] <Wackd> I love that the Sub-Mariner is doing this because hes BORED [22:57:39] <Wackd> "Eh, I've got all this money, figured why not buy a film studio. Why not" [22:57:41] <MousaThe14> I mean, after searching for your people for a while you gotta acquire a few hobbies [22:58:22] <maxwellelvis> He's waiting for Giganto to recuperate and then he's coming back to lay waste to the surface once more. [22:58:55] <Wackd> Oh hey no his ACTUAL plan is to...get the Fantastic Four killed doing stunt work [22:59:05] <Bocaj> Namor is such a petty little shit [23:00:02] <Wackd> Including...making the Human Torch fight magical "savages" [23:00:06] <Wackd> Uuuugh [23:00:15] <maxwellelvis> Then he can capitalize on the infamy his movie will garner for years [23:00:36] <Mukora> Cooooooooooooooooooool [23:02:45] <Wackd> Namor decides to fight the Thing himself, and only wins because--I shit you not--the Thing randomly gets struck by lightning and turned human again [23:02:47] <MousaThe14> Oh cool, my Ben and Johnny picture is actually spreading relatively quickly [23:03:00] <MousaThe14> @Wack'd, that's gonna happen a lot [23:03:02] <Wackd> The only thing pettier than Namor is fate, it seems [23:03:21] <MousaThe14> Convenient becoming Ben Grimm again is a well they return to early and often [23:04:22] <Wackd> "HEY SUE I KICKED ALL YOUR FRIENDS ASSES, MARRY ME" "I would've said yes if you hadn't KICKED ALL MY FRIEND'S ASSES" [23:05:33] <Wackd> And so the 4 return from their traps and they don't even bother to explain why Ben's the Thing again [23:06:43] <Wackd> Sue, stopping the guys from whaling on Namor: "It's 3-on-1! You've never teamed up against anyone before! Except, y'know, Doom. And Mole Man. And Puppet Master. And...uh...basically everyone, thinking about it" [23:07:16] <Wackd> Of course the more compelling argument turns out to be "he still hasn't paid us" [23:08:31] <Wackd> WELP THAT'S OVER [23:08:42] <MousaThe14> @Wack'd, It's different this time, she has will-she-won't-she feelings for the man in the tight shorts and swimmer's build [23:08:52] <MousaThe14> Which will persist for.... quite a bit of time [23:09:18] <maxwellelvis> You know it's funny how in this universe, a movie HELPS the Fantastic Four deal with their financial woes. [23:09:20] <Wackd> Yeah, I know [23:09:24] <Wackd> I joked about it further up

#1961 and 1962 #Stan Lee #Jack Kirby #The Main Book

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all-the-love-harold · 4 years

Text

Chapter 8 - Double Trouble?

Master Post

Chapter 7

Previously:

Three minutes was a long time. Harry and Poppy stood together in their tiny bathroom that sat next to the garage, staring intently at the pregnancy test that sat on the sink, hoping for even the slightest sign of confirmation.

“Put a song on,” Poppy said without taking her eyes away from the test.

“What?” Harry asked, looking down at her, a confused expression glued to his face

She hit him gently on the chest,“Distract me, put a song on, any song, just distract me!”

“Oh”, he nodded in understanding, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

“Tastes like strawberries….” The lyrics to one of Harry’s songs echoed out of his phone.

Poppy finally took her eyes of the test, “really, Harry?”

He let out a cheeky giggle, “What? Is this not how we found ourselves in this predicament?”

“You know it would have been the night we found out Emily was pregnant right?” Poppy said, matter-of-factly .

“I’m okay with that,” Harry nodded. “We had a lot of fun that night.

Poppy sighed, “Why are we talking about this as if it’s real”

“Because it is” Harry pointed at the test which now read ‘Pregnant 3+’ and kissed her on the forehead.

“Holy fuck! Poppy breathed in disbelief, ”What if this is the one H? What if this is our baby?” All Harry could do was sniffle in reply, the tears coming thick and fast. Tears of hope. Tears of shock. Tears for Violet and all the little ones they’d never got to hold.

“Looks like we’ll be having a busy few months then,” he finally said, wiping his eyes.

“Busy life H, it doesn’t stop once they’re not babies anymore.”

“Speaking of,” he sighed heavily “How the fuck are we going to explain this to Oli?”

“OK, one thing at a time, Oli doesn’t even know about Baby #1 yet, so we’ll figure that out but I think the first person we need to tell is Emily.”

“You’re right, should we call her?” Harry asked.

“I feel like this is the kind of conversation we should have in person, and she’s in class at the moment anyway,” Poppy sighed, running a hand through her hair, a nervous habit she’d picked up from Harry.

“Maybe a text then?” Harry suggested

“And say what?” Poppy asked sarcastically, “We need to talk? We’re not breaking up with her! Would it be creepy if we picked her up from class or met her on campus? Or should I take another test first, wait a few days?” Poppy’s mind began to race in a million directions at once and she could feel her breathing getting shallow and fast.

“Hey, hey, hey” Harry cooed, wrapping his arms around her, “We’ll work this all out Pop, whatever it takes. It will be OK, this is good news, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Poppy nodded against his chest, feeling her heart rate slow at the sound of his. “Just makes everything so complicated.”

“When has it ever not been complicated?” Harry asked, rubbing her back gently

She pulled away and stared at the pregnancy test again, “That’s true,” she sighed.

Harry placed a kiss on her forehead, “first thing’s first, I’m going to make us an appointment with Dr Marshall, we don’t have to tell anyone until we know more.”

Poppy nodded, “OK, yeah” she sighed, “Yeah, good idea.”

The tiny bathroom was starting to feel cramped, so before Harry pulled his phone out of his pocket, he turned to leave the room, followed closely by Poppy. The phone rang for what felt like a long time and when someone finally picked up,Harry was a little surprised, half expecting it to ring out.

“Hi,” he cleared his throat, “My wife just found out she’s pregnant and I wanted to book an appointment with Dr Marshall.”

“OK,” Poppy heard through the phone “Has the pregnancy been confirmed by a GP?”

“No,” Harry shook his head, “We’ve had a few complicated pregnancies, Dr Marshall has asked to see us when we fall.”

“What’s your surname?” the girl on the phone said abruptly.

“Styles.”

“And your wife's name?”

“Poppy.”

“OK, there’s a note in the system saying you don’t need a referral, how soon did you want the appointment?”

“As soon as possible,” Harry nodded

“There’s one appointment today, we’ve had a cancellation, at 4pm. Would that work?”

Harry made eye contact with Poppy, using a thumbs up, thumbs down motion to see if that was OK. She nodded and returned his thumbs up .

“That’s perfect, thank you”, he said into the phone before he hung up. “Do you know what Gemma’s up to today?” Poppy asked, since 4:00 was when they usually picked Oli up from daycare.

“She’s at a thing, we can pick Oli up early and take him with us, it might make it easier to explain it to him.”

“Harry we could still lose this baby. I don’t know that telling Oli this early is a good idea..”

“You’re right, will we just get him after then? They’re open until 6 aren’t they?” Poppy nodded. “Maybe we could take him out for dinner and tell him about Em.”

***

Dr Marshall’s waiting room felt like a second home to Poppy and Harry. They’d been here a lot in the last few months, and it felt strange to them both to be back here so soon. She didn’t know why, but Poppy had a good feeling about this pregnancy, nothing was different, there was no reason that she should be feeling like this and she almost felt guilty about it, but there was something in her gut telling her this was good

For Harry, the whole thing felt surreal, just this morning they’d been sitting with Emily having her first ultrasound, and now here they are, in a different doctor’s office, waiting to find out if they really are pregnant again.

They were called in before they really had the chance to dwell on the complexity of the situation.

“So we’ve taken a test and it’s come back positive?” Dr Marshall said once they were seated in her office with the door closed.

Poppy nodded, “I think I’m further along than the last few times, we weren’t exactly trying and it took me two weeks to realise I hadn’t had a period.

Dr Marshall let out a small giggle, “So when was your last period?”

“It started on January 23rd, I think...”

The doctor counted on her fingers, “That’s eight weeks, we could probably do a scan today if that’s the case then.”

“That would be amazing” Harry said

“When did you take the test?”

“This morning.”

Dr Marshall nodded “And there’s been no symptoms? Morning sickness?

Poppy shook her head, “I’ve probably been more tired than normal but other than that,not really...”

“OK, well that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, some pregnancies are horrible, others are smooth sailing.”

“That’s good to know”, Harry chimed in, a silent prayer going through every cell of his body that they’d get good news.

“So let’s do a blood test today, check your HGH levels are where they should be and if the machine isn’t in use we’ll do a scan too, give you some more peace of mind”. Dr Marshall stood up and left the room to find her things.

Harry rested his hand on Poppy’s thigh, “eight weeks,” he sighed, “That’s not far from the end of the first trimester!”

“I don’t know how it took me this long to notice,” Poppy shrugged.

“Maybe it’s for the best, less stress and all that”, he said simply.

“After everything H, this one might be the fluke we’ve been waiting for...”

“I hope so,” he kissed her forehead softly. “Don’t know if I’m ready to have two newborns though”

“You’ve got seven months to get ready Styles,” Poppy giggled.

The doctor walked back into the room and they returned to silence, waiting to hear what she would say next.

“We can do a scan in about five minutes” she smiled “in the meantime, let’s take some blood”

This was the worst part. Poppy hated needles, and the sight of blood. Harry grabbed onto her hand and squeezed it tight, a sign of reassurance. To avoid fainting, Poppy buried her head in Harry’s shoulder while the doctor took her blood and when it was over, she sat up looking very pale.

“All done Pop” Dr marshall smiled, “Are you ready to see your baby?”

They both nodded. Poppy didn’t feel how she did this morning before Emily’s scan, the sense of dread was back and she could almost feel her heart in her throat. The good feeling had passed and all she could think about now was violet. How not too long ago they’d been here in this room about to meet violet for the first time, only to lose her twelve weeks later. And there was the other five babies, two of which didn’t even make it this far, all of whom never got a name, but had a place just as big in both Poppy and Harry’s hearts. Numbing herself to feeling, Poppy climbed onto the bed and lifted her shirt to expose her belly, which she noticed now had a tiny swell to it. The doctor remained silent while she used the probe to locate the baby, with the shape of Poppy’s uterus being so abnormal, it often took doctors a while to find the baby at first, given that it could be on either the right or the left side.

“There they are” Dr Marshall finally said “implanted on the right side this time, which from memory is where your little boy was”

“That’s good then?” Harry questioned, squeezing Poppy’s hand

“It’s hard to tell exactly this early on, but it looks like this one will have plenty of room to grow”

“What about the heartbeat?” Poppy asked “I can’t hear it”

“Oh” dr marsh said “That’s because the sound is off” she fiddled around with a few buttons and eventually they heard the sound a tiny beating heart.

A wide smile stretched across Harry’s face as the sound entered his ears. It was a melody that brought him both hope and dread.

“That’s your little one, and just quietly,...” the doctor smiled “I think we might get to meet this one”

Without being too hopeful, a sense of relief rushed over Poppy, maybe this time, everything will be alright.

***

“Sorry Mummy and Daddy are late buddy,'' Harry said as he strapped Oli into his car seat. “But we’re going to take you out for dinner AND you get to choose where we go!”

“PIZZA!!!” Oli shouted

“I should have guessed,” Harry laughed. “Buckled up?”

“Buckled up,” Oli smiled back at his dad.

“Did you have a good day at nursery Ol?” Poppy asked as Harry pulled the car out of the car park.

“I got to play superheroes Mum and and and Tommy was Spiderman and I was Batman. It was so cool!”

“That sounds like the best day ever” Poppy said, overenthusiastically. She didn’t realise how nervous she was to tell Oli about the baby she also realised she didn’t know what to say. How do you explain surrogacy to a 3 year old? Logically, you tell them that Mummy’s body can’t make babies, but that wasn’t entirely true, because in a few weeks they might have to explain to Oli that Poppy is pregnant, and that’s a lot for a three year old to process.

The pizza restaurant that Oli loved was only around the corner from the daycare and their house and before Poppy really had a chance to think about what she was going to say to Oli, Harry parked the car and they were seated at their usual table, in the back corner, where, with any luck, no one would spot Harry.

“Oli” Harry said once they had ordered “Mummy and Daddy have some very exciting news to tell you”

Poppy’s stomach dropped, at this rate, she wouldn’t be eating any pizza, she was too nervous about how Oli would react.

Oli simply nodded, looking at Harry curiously.

“Do you remember a few weeks ago when you got to go to the Zoo with Aunty Gemma and Aunty Addie”

“Yeah” Oli nodded “I saw a giraffe”

“You did” Harry laughed “and while you were there, Mummy and Daddy found out that we’re going to have a baby”

Oli’s face lit up “is there a baby in mummy’s tummy?!”

Harry turned to Poppy for assistance, he couldn’t exactly say no to that.

“Well sometimes Ol, mummies can’t always have babies the normal way so a very very kind lady named Emily is going to help us. The baby is made of Mummy and Daddy, just like you’re made of Mummy and your dad, but this little baby has to grow in Emily’s tummy until it’s time for us to meet them”

“Why can’t the baby be in Mummy’s tummy?” Oli asked quizzically

“Because Mummy’s tummy doesn’t always work like it’s supposed to” Harry added, grabbing onto Poppy’s knee as he spoke.

Oli didn’t say anything for a second, taking in what he’d just been told.

“Is Emily’s tummy a nice home for the baby?”

“The nicest” Harry smiled, heart swelling with pride for a son that thought about others before himself.

“Am I going to be a brother or a sister?” he asked

Harry and Poppy couldn’t help but giggle “You’re going to be a brother, because you’re a boy Ol, but we don’t know yet if the baby will be your brother or your sister”

“I think I’d like a sister” he nodded “But I like brothers too”

***

March 27th 2021, 1pm

Addie felt a little strange about taking an afternoon off from her Nannying job, but when Poppy had called her this morning there was a sense of urgency in her voice. They’d chosen a quiet cafe to sit in and when they sat down, Addie felt like she was about to get bad news, like Poppy was about to tell her something she didn’t want to hear.

“What’s going on Pop” Addie asked, almost as soon as she sat down “is everything ok?”

“Everything’s Great Addie” Poppy took a sip of her coffee, calmly, as if she didn’t have a care in the world

“Are you sure? Because on the phone this morning it sounded like somebody had died”

“No,” Poppy giggled “Quite the opposite actually”

Addie furrowed her brow “What do you mean?”

“Harry and I are having a Baby”

“You’re pregnant?” Addie exclaimed, her voice filled with excitement and maybe a little bit of dread

Poppy didn’t want to say no, but she wasn’t ready to tell Addie about that yet “We’ve got a surrogate”

“Oh wow” Addie said, “I had no idea you were struggling that much”

Poppy nodded somberly, “after Violet we had to start thinking of our other options, we didn’t want to have to experience that again… ever”

Addie nodded sympathetically, not really sure what to say. Surrogacy felt like one of those things that you only ever heard about, it wasn’t something she ever thought she’d know anyone who needed it.

“So have you found a surrogate yet?” she asked

“Yeah, she’s 12 weeks along, baby’s healthy and growing well, strong heartbeat” Poppy pulled image from the scan out and put it on the table for Addie to see

Addie reached out and grabbed it, a tear building up in her eye “This is such great news Pop, I’m so excited to meet them”

“Me too” Poppy laughed

“And I’d love to meet the surrogate too”

“Oh she ‘s great” Poppy added “I think you’ll really get along with her”

“It’s such a massive thing she’s doing for you, so I hope she’s great or getting paid a lot”

“We’re not allowed to pay her in the UK, we pay all the medical bills that aren’t covered by the NHS, and any travel expenses, but other than that, it’s all out of the goodness of her own heart”

“That’s massive” Addie sighed “wow… shit Pop this is the best news, I’m so happy for you!”

“There’s even better news”

“Is that possible?” Addie said, taking a sip of her coffee and a deep breathe

“I’m pregnant too”

“WHAT?!” she almost spat out her drink

“8 weeks, baby’s in a good spot, strong heartbeat, the doctors are as confident as they can be at this stage”

“So you’re going to have two babies, four weeks apart?”

“Potentially, yeah”

“I’ll be your Nanny” Addie shrugged, thinking about the looming end of her current contract and lack of motivation to go out looking for another family to work for.

“We’re going to need you” Poppy laughed nervously “you can have your room back”

“And Harry’s not going on tour anytime soon, I hope”

“If he even thinks about it, he might be divorced”

“He wouldn’t be, you’d just take the babies with you around the world”

Poppy giggled “That’s how Oli spent the first year of his life”

“And he turned out ok” Addie said

“Don’t know that I could do it with three kids, one was easy” Poppy laughed “Oli got cuddled by the whole crew and I got a break when I needed it, three kids would be too many to take around the world”

“That’s what I’m for” she flicked her hair behind her shoulders.

Poppy felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, she didn’t think that conversation was going to go as smoothly as it did. She hadn’t even been that ok with the idea of surrogacy, but Addie’s support meant the world to her and with that she could do anything. The next step was to tell Anne and then Emily and at some point, they’d tell her mother.

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amorremanet · 7 years

Note

10 facts about Sara Grace?

“ten facts about my characters” meme

1. Her birthday is March 20th, 1993 — she was born on the Pisces side of the Pisces/Aries cusp (the Cusp of Renewal), on the day that The Secret Language of Birthdays (Gary Goldschneider & Joost Elffers) calls, “The Day of the Labyrinth.”

Unlike most of the other characters (whose opinions on astrology differ but largely boil down to, “It’s silly, but it’s harmless”), Sara Grace actually cares about it and kind of does believe in it. She can’t decide if she agrees with the, “It’s silly” crowd, if she genuinely believes, or if she wants to believe in it so much that she’s made herself feel like she genuinely believes.

2. She and Lucy have been dating for a little over two years by the time they get introduced about midway through the first book, and Sara Grace…… she doesn’t NOT care about their anniversary? But she puts more effort into their matching Halloween costumes.

Their first Halloween together (2013), she was the fem!Mulder and Lucy was Scully.

Last year (2014), Sara Grace was Ariel and Lucy was her “kinda experimenting with butch but really unsure of herself in it and also trying not to be too obviously gay because her parents are on Facebook and privacy settings are a crapshoot” fem!Eric.

This year, they’re planning to go as Lady and Lady Macbeth — i.e., Sara Grace will be the Lady Macbeth we all know as Lady Macbeth, and Lucy will be her “still unsure about this butch thing but curious and trying it out” fem!Macbeth.

Mulder and Scully was a joint idea, inspired by one of the sororities on their campus holding a, “dress as your favorite 90’s TV characters”-themed Halloween party, but the other two Halloween costumes were all Sara Grace’s idea.

3. Her full given name is Sara Grace Nichelle Kelley — with “Sara Grace” being a double-name like “Mary Ellen” or, “Seung Gil” or so on. Her mother picked all of it out, Nichelle for Nichelle Nichols (…because Amanda is an old school Trekkie), and “Sara Grace” because she always wanted to name her first daughter, “Sara Grace,” and then thought it was extra amusing after she married Bryce Kelley, because the spelling might be different, but it made her name sound like the better-known maiden name of Princess Grace of Monaco.

Sara Grace herself has mixed feelings about this. Like, on one hand, it made using her full given first name hard to successfully do when she was in trouble because Amanda and Bryce never stopped kind of finding the, “Grace Kelley” part of their first daughter’s name hilarious (and “Sara Grace Nichelle Kelley” is admittedly kind of a mouthful, so it also wasn’t ideal for when she was in trouble).

But on the other hand, it’s made Sara Grace kind of hate things like going to the DMV or filling out forms, because other people will notice the, “Grace Kelley” thing and find it funny or cool, and yeah, it was pretty cool for a while when she was younger — especially because she totally wanted to be a princess when she grew up and still kind of has a Thing for princesses, and hey, her Mom named her after a real life princess, kind of — but now, it’s just tedious.

Like, please, she’s either “Sara Grace” or, “Ms. Kelley,” not the full thing, if it can be avoided, please, please, please.

(And this isn’t an in-universe fact, but OOCly, Sara Grace was named for my older goddaughter, and her surname came from my aunt [who is the mother of both of my goddaughters], I just added the ‘E’ because I’ve always seen, “Kelley” more often for when it’s a surname, and then I read the whole thing and saw the “Grace Kelly” business and went, “lmao, I’m keeping it”)

4. Sara Grace’s mutant superpowers are primarily based in either speed and, well, grace (as in: balance, equilibrium, steadiness, etc), OR in sound.

She’s not quite a potentially game-breaking speedster on the level of the Flash or XMCU!Quicksilver, but a big reason for this is that she hasn’t ventured out into mutant superheroics. Up until she makes the choice to do that in the story, she’s been one of the mutants who just want to go to school or work, hang out with their friends, watch The Daily Show or whatever they like, and live their lives without all of the crime-fighting stuff — so, she hasn’t trained everything up as much as she could do.

What this means is that…… yeah, she’s still fast, and it still falls outside three standard deviations of the human mean, even though she’s not a trained sprinter or anything (which is the most common test for, “is this thing a mutant superpower or is someone just really good at whatever they’re doing”), but she’s not as fast as she could be and doesn’t always have the hang of things like stopping, maneuvering at high speeds, not getting hit in the face by insects, etc.

Her biggest reason why she initially didn’t want to run headlong into superheroics came down to protecting and taking care of herself, because her abilities have serious downsides that can be difficult for her to manage and that can be really stress-inducing. But they’re also going to be under the read-more because they involve why it sucks to be a speedster who’s struggled with eating disorders.

Her sonic powers are a bit more trained up, partly because it’s easier to do that without getting on the wrong side of what she is and isn’t allowed to do with her class of superpower license — and partly because, although she’s primarily a dancer, she does love to sing and she’s usually pretty vocally expressive.

For the most part, she tends to limit her use of these powers to the ones that have cool potential uses but are a lot less awesome than, say, debilitating super-screams (which she can do, but would usually prefer not to, not least because she’s not trained up in it so she can’t really control it).

Like, one of her favorite party tricks and “getting to know you” ice-breakers is admitting she’s a mutant just enough to do a perfect imitation of different celebrity voices (as in, “you could have experts compare a legit recording of any given celebrity to Sara Grace’s superpowered recreation of their voice, and the experts would almost definitely NOT be able to tell the difference, because superpowers”)

Lucy first noticed her because Sara Grace was at a party being hosted by mutual friends, and during some game that Lucy wasn’t actually participating in, one of the other players asked Sara Grace to do a William Shatner voice and read some selection for a purple prose-y bodice ripper…… and she did, and it was awesome, and Lucy had to go find out who that girl was, holy shit

But yeah. All up, Sara Grace has the potential to be a serious power-house — she’s not going to get quite to Flash-levels of game-breaking speedster, but that’s on the world-building, not her, because there are some things that super-speedsters can do that I’m just not letting anybody do — but when she’s first introduced, she lacks training.

Even without training, she shouldn’t be dismissed as a possible threat (which Conrad is going to do, but in fairness, the only team members he sees as potential threats are Seb and Josie, because Josie is a telepath like Conrad and ruling Josie out as a threat might require Conrad to admit that maybe he’s not that great, and if you ask Conrad, Seb can’t overpower him or get any kind of jump on him, not least since he’s proven himself to be incredibly vulnerable to telepathy, but he might ruin things with his insistence on refusing all of Conrad’s offers to team up as proper nemeses in the name of the Greater Good and by being all concerned about other people and shit)

Like, seriously. If you ask Conrad: Todd, Stephen, Margot, and Pete are in no way threats to him because none of them is a mutant, and the only reason that he deigns to acknowledge them at all is that Sebastian insists on being a bleeding heart weirdo and won’t let Conrad ignore them

Lucy isn’t a threat to him because she’s inexperienced and confused and more likely to hurt herself than anyone else because she tries to run headlong into things like she lives in a Silver Age comic book and then gets in over her head and reality kicks her in the shins and takes her lunch money

Alexandra isn’t a threat because her ability to resist any telepathic attacks isn’t as strong as Conrad assumed it was at first, and she tries harder to stick to the rules than any of the other major cast members, save Holmes, who kinda has to respect the rules because he’s the resident boss man

(—this is not actually true of Alex, and the fact is that she favors her own personally determined code of ethics over externally imposed rules, but Conrad is wrong about a lot of things, so…… his opinions are just bad in general, so it’s not exactly weird that he’s wrong about Alex)

Julian, Annie, and Dylan aren’t threats because they’re on the same team as Conrad, despite all of them having some major disagreements and differences of opinion with him, and even when S.T.R.O.M.A. gets Dylan (which they would not have done if not for Conrad tipping Julian and Annie off about a bust that S.T.R.O.M.A. and the DEA are collaborating on, but completely forgetting Dylan as more than, “Julian’s sidekick who constantly looks like he’s only two seconds off from crying, whatever, Julian will handle it”), Conrad doesn’t think it’s any kind of problem because he assumes that these three are his minions and that, all disagreements aside, their loyalty is absolute

This………… really doesn’t work out so well

And you’d think that Conrad might get a reality check after getting arrested before Julian does and before Annie is even properly on the radar as more than, “one of the daughters of that one douchebag who’s trying to get the Republican nomination; she’s the party girl to her eldest sister’s Responsible Adult With A Cool Head and her twin’s, ‘well she wants to think she’s a serious journalist but lbr she just has a webshow where she yells at people and throws a lot of conservative buzzwords around like she knows what she’s talking about’”

—and you would be wrong. Like, yeah, you would be completely wrong.

But Conrad’s refusal to get a reality check is a totally different story

and Sara Grace isn’t a threat to him because she’s nothing but a pretty face with an anxiety disorder, who’s too scared of her true, untapped power to use it, even in the name of the Greater Good, and too scared of her own potential to accomplish anything, and probably just pretending to be a lesbian because she wants to piss off her parents or she thinks it makes her more interesting to guys or something

………Actually, Amanda and Bryce have never been anything but completely supportive, and Sara Grace has no interest in making men find her interesting because (and this gets complicated, Conrad, so you might want to sit down) she is not attracted to men

But, again, Conrad’s opinions are usually fifty shades of wrong and gross, so him dismissing Sara Grace as a potential threat because she’s untrained and has an anxiety disorder is just another example of him being completely full of shit

5. Okay, so. I want to try to keep this one brief, because I’m doing it last and this post is already long enough that it’s starting to make Firefox lag on me while I’m typing and there’s a lot of potential angst in this post already. But one of the things that a lot of people don’t acknowledge about a lot of superpowers, especially speedy powers, is that it’d take a LOT of calories to fuel those. Even in some works where they do deal with it, they underestimate just how much energy it would actually take.

To be fair, I’m not going to manage this perfectly either because at a certain point, you have to suspend some parts of real-world physics and biology to make superpowers work, and it’s just not feasible to have almost all of your mutant heroes and villains constantly hooked up to IV lines so that they don’t die of malnutrition by simply existing while having superpowers

But I am going to deal with it more than a lot of superhero stuff tends to do, and Sara Grace is one of the characters who has more problems with it than average.

The big reason why she has more problems than average is that before her mutant abilities fully manifested (which was when she was about 17), she dealt with an eating disorder. This is also a big reason why she wound up not going into dance professionally, because one of her biggest triggers was how much pressure she felt to force her body to fit certain ideals and standards — and dude, she’s 5’10” and has been really tall for her entire life, so it was even harder to do this, because she was basically trying to restrict her diet and starve herself down to a weight that would’ve been on the low side for someone with her build who was six inches shorter

—but by the time her mutant superpowers started to manifest in full, Sara Grace had actually done really well in her therapy and treatment (and unlike some of the other characters who’ve dealt with similar kinds of struggles, whether ED’s or the more general, “problem where there’s some very obvious unhealthy manifestation that needs to get dealt with, but there are a lot of underlying emotional issues you need to address too”), and she had gotten to a place where she felt more or less okay…… and suddenly, superpowers everywhere

Like, it was hard enough for her to adjust her diet and her routines to accommodate the most basic-level, “existing with superpowers even if you don’t really use them that often” stuff, and then she knew she’d have to be adjusting to college in the near future — and she really, really didn’t want to end up in a hardcore relapse

So, from her perspective, the choices here kind of boiled down to, “You can get more training and a license that lets you be what is basically a superhero and help people, but do it at the expense of your own health,” and, “You can pass on that and take care of yourself” — and she picked taking care of herself

By the time she gets another choice to get involved in mutant superheroics or not, Sara Grace is at a more secure place than she was at 17/18, and she’s going to acknowledge that this is a potential risk but it’s one that she feels up to handling.

She’s not going to be wrong, but it’s going to be a mixed bag for her, mostly because…… well. She’s a human being and this means that she can’t perfectly predict anything, so there are some things that she’s prepared to deal with, some that she knew might happen and wasn’t entirely prepared for but she’s better equipped to handle them than she would’ve been back at 17/18, and some that totally blindside her

But she’s going to grow and deal with things because…… well, that’s what fictional characters do

6. Her top three favorite songs for karaoke night are “I Will Survive,” “Baby One More Time,” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” (if she can get Lauryn Hill’s version of it, then awesome, but if not, then any version of it will work just fine)

She has learned, however, that she should not try to sing “Freakum Dress” at karaoke while tipsy.

Honestly, the conclusion that Sara Grace should’ve drawn from the incident that led to that lesson? Was, “don’t try to do some complicated dance moves in hella high heels while so drunk that most other people would be flat on their asses, which for you means that you’re too drunk to pay attention to where your feet are, so you get tangled in the wires and fall over in the middle of your song”

But she was singing “Freakum Dress” at the time, and while she doesn’t generally do karaoke night while drunk most of the time anyway, she primarily took it to, “Don’t do drunk karaoke with ‘Freakum Dress’ as your song” because if you ask her, she only tried to do such complicated dance moves because she was singing “Freakum Dress”

That…… isn’t necessarily true, but it’s also not entirely untrue, either? It felt true to her at the time, at least.

She has also learned that making Lucy do a duet of, “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” won’t work exactly how she imagined that it would, because Lucy isn’t quite tone-deaf? But she can’t really sing that well, either, and in Sara Grace’s daydream that led to her doing this, they sounded great and had perfect harmonies and it was totally awesome…… but in reality, Lucy was off-beat and off-key, her tone wasn’t that great, and it was still pretty fun, but okay, her girlfriend can’t sing, lesson learned

7. She wouldn’t call herself the, “selfie queen,” exactly…… but literally only because she would prefer to be the, “selfie princess,” because yeah, okay, she has adult goals and dreams now (she’s working toward becoming a therapist with a specialty in art therapy), but she still kinda wants to be a princess when she grows up

8. As far as superpowers licenses go, Sara Grace has one that has more allowance for power incontinence and for using her abilities in to help out in emergency situations, but that is closer to the, “I’m seriously not going to do more than use heat vision to reheat my coffee, I don’t want this and would prefer to ignore it”

Power incontinence is like… okay, example: if Superman were minding his own business but one of his Kryptonian allergies got aggravated and he sneezed out ice breath or something? That would be power incontinence.

The term, in-universe, is usually used to cover things that might happen when someone can’t fully control their powers (e.g., Seb has to work to figure out what makes La Bête tick and get control over his beast-mode shifts)

or things that might happen in highly stressful situations (e.g., Josie usually has their telepathic and empathic abilities pretty well-controlled but can start slipping when they’re dealing with a lot of shit if they aren’t properly taking care of themself emotionally; and Yael might be in her eighties and one of the most respected mutants on the planet, but she still has a tendency to make electronics with magnetic parts start malfunctioning when she gets really angry)

This comes in handy because it covers things like all the times when Sara Grace doesn’t mean to rely on her super-attuned send of balance but she also can’t really turn it off

Like, if she were ever in the position to do so (which she doesn’t plan to be, but that’s another story), she could pass the physical parts of field sobriety test while totally drunk, but she’d stumble on anything that involves any talking to the officer

Because her body might be way more stable than it should be but that won’t rein in how easily distracted she gets when she’s drunk (like… no, honey, the officer did not ask for you to do your dramatic reenactment of Det. Olivia Benson’s entire personal history through wherever you are in watching SVU if you aren’t up to date on it, complete with doing Mariska Hargitay’s voice, and this really isn’t helpful)

…and being able to walk in a straight line while her head is reeling and her perception is distorted doesn’t mean that she won’t be slurring her words

—And if she had a more restrictive license, she could get in trouble for relying on her super-balance in this situation because in most places, “using superpowers to pass a field sobriety test, even if you don’t actually pass it” would count as more than, “I just want to go home and use heat vision to reheat my coffee”

Not that this means that having coverage in her license type is a guarantee for her or anybody, because unfortunately, as we already know, way too many cops in the U.S. are complete fuck-wads against anyone who isn’t a straight, non-disabled, gender-conforming white guy

And since Sara Grace is a black femme lesbian who has mutant superpowers and no arrest record but some past involvement in protests and social activism, she would personally rather not test whether or not any given cops would be deterred from trying to charge her for violating the terms of her superpowers license by the fact that hers covers her super-balance because she cannot turn it off

Her introductory scene is actually going to address these fears, somewhat. See, Sara Grace and Lucy are brought into the story’s narrative on October 15th, 2015 — a Thursday evening, which they had planned to spend at an open-air concert at a park in Baltimore, and then they wanted to go back to Lucy’s together because she’s lived at home after their graduation in May, but her parents are out of town and the only other member of the Murphy family who might come around is Damien, who already knows that Lucy and Sara Grace are together.

Incidentally, that Thursday evening was also going to be date-night for Seb and Stephen, who were going to the symphony because Seb’s parents had tickets that they couldn’t use and eldest brother Max would need a third for his daughter (and for the show to not be at 8PM on a school night), sister Addie doesn’t have anyone she’d actually want to take, and middle brother Ambrose moved to Vermont when he got a job teaching at a private school up there. Much like Lucy and Sara Grace, Seb and Stephen really just wanted to have a nice time together.

Sucks for them, though, because there was a supervillain attack at the concert.

I’m still hammering out the exact details of what actually happens in said attack, but the really important point, plot-wise, is that the perp (who wound up apprehended pretty quickly) wasn’t acting of his own free will, but had gotten telepathically taken over and forced to do it by everyone’s least favorite douchebag, Conrad.

That’s not immediately apparent, though, and for the time being, Sara Grace is more concerned with the shit that’s going on right now — a list that includes:

how she used her powers to try and get some of the other civilians out of harm’s way

how the supervillain of the day tried to stop her and wound up with damaged eardrums because Sara Grace screamed and couldn’t control how powerful it was

(it’s frankly a miracle that it only hurt the supervillain, since one of the potential risks of sonic abilities is how they can affect people other than the intended target and Sara Grace wasn’t consciously targeting anyone)

how she and Lucy wound up incapacitating the villain long enough for cops to get him in cuffs so they could eventually hand him off to S.T.R.O.M.A. officials (which is a GOOD thing, yes, and this kind of situation should fall under the emergency provisions that Sara Grace’s license has, but she’s incredibly wary and also kind of an anxious mess following all of this, so that wariness gets magnified by a power of ten)

and how Lucy did so with powers she didn’t even know she had, got injured in the process, and then passed out while her healing factor kicked in, but was still injured enough to get stitches after getting taken to the hospital

So, suffice it to say, Sara Grace is not exactly in the best and calmest state of mind when a beautiful dark-skinned woman (who kind of looks like she’d gotten home, taken off her work clothes, gotten relaxed, and then abruptly had to throw them back on…… largely because that is exactly what happened to Alex tonight) asks her to please leave her girlfriend’s bedside for a couple minutes, then brings her into the hallway, where she introduces Sara Grace to a really tall white guy in a nice suit and another white person who’s only slightly taller than Sara Grace, looks more like a guy than not, and has barely-noticeable lace on the trim of their collar, and all three of them pull out S.T.R.O.M.A. identification

Like, her immediate fear here is, “Oh, shit, are you going to arrest me, I didn’t do anything wrong, did I, hey, I can cite all the rules that say what I did was okay, I keep up on all of this…… did I do anything wrong? Did my screaming hurt someone else or something? What’s going on?”

……Actually, based on all the witnesses they’ve already heard from, Alex, Josie, and Seb are not even thinking of bringing Sara Grace into custody for anything. They more or less get why she’s scared (given that Alex and Josie have both dealt with S.T.R.O.M.A. officials being seriously unethical about recruitment and making it seem like they had to accept recruitment or get slapped with charges for violating their licenses, they’re REALLY not interested in doing that to someone else, especially not a terrified girl who’s trying really, really hard to talk tough and not doing as well as she could if she weren’t currently an anxious mess)

They’re literally just here to (loosely in order, but it’s really not official): 1. see if Sara Grace and Lucy are alright, or as alright as they can be after this horrible experience (which, frankly, most people aren’t prepared for because most supervillains don’t do this kind of out-in-the-open, Silver Age bullshit);

2. thank both of them for their assistance in saving lives and preventing more injuries and destruction;

3. collect their statements about the evening’s events, which neither of them is not obligated to give but they’d appreciate it anyway (and Sara Grace in particular has Alex’s promise that, whatever Sara Grace decides, Alex will do everything that she can to make sure that no one twists that choice to use it against her when she acted like a heroine tonight and should be praised, not punished);

and 4. offer them some information on counseling services, if they want it.

Like, the reason why Seb heads in to see Lucy alone is that Sara Grace does decide to share her recollection of what happened, but she’s still pretty tense as she tells it, so Josie asks if she’d feel more comfortable going to a different room, rather than a sofa in a visitors’ lounge, but her response is that she’d feel more comfortable if it was one-on-one or two-on-one, instead of three-on-one

Since Seb is standing, and more so because he’s the tall white guy, who Sara Grace can’t get a read on right away, so she’s not sure how she feels about him right now and, at the moment, that makes her feel uneasiest about him being around, Josie asks him to go see if the evening’s other heroine is alright and up for a talk

And Seb doesn’t mind because…… hey, if it makes Sara Grace feel a little less ill-at-ease after what she just went through? Then it’s not a big deal. He might mind a little more if he knew exactly who he’s going to see, but he literally only heard that Sara Grace’s girlfriend is named Lucy (which is a common enough name that he doesn’t even think, “Oh, she could be the Lucy who I used to know”)

—But this is only about four months after he went through his own episode of, “suddenly, superpowers everywhere, then S.T.R.O.M.A. gets involved and oh holy shit,” so while he’s definitely not in the same boat as Sara Grace, he appreciates that her comfort > his, right now

So, yeah.

Sara Grace is going to spend her introductory scene being an anxious mess and trying to keep it together, only to probably succeed for a while and then end up crying on either Alex or Josie, because she’s 22 and even after being reassured that she is absolutely not in trouble, she’s just had a very stressful evening when it was supposed to be a relaxing night with her girlfriend without Lucy’s Mom and Dad there to be homophobic and force the two of them to act like they’re Just Gals Being Pals, Totally Not Lesbians Or Dating Each Other, Nope, and she’s scared for herself and scared for her girlfriend and now that she’s thought about the idea that her scream could’ve hurt an innocent person, she’s scared that it might’ve happened, and jesus fucking christ, she’s a champ for making it all the way through her statement to Josie and Alex before she cries, I’d like to see any hypothetical naysayers do better in her position

9. Although she didn’t go into dancing professionally, like she wanted to when she was younger, dancing is still one of her favorite forms of stress-relief. Much like how Lucy sometimes hits a wall where she needs to tap out and go play Tetris until she can handle things like an adult again, Sara Grace hits walls where she needs to tap out and go work out her feelings and clear her head, and she prefers to do so with dancing, when she can.

Oddly enough, her love for dance made people think that she might be autistic when she was younger, even though she isn’t, while Lucy, who actually is autistic, went completely unnoticed

See, one of the more common and easily noticeable stims that kids on the spectrum engage in sometimes? Is walking on your toes for no reason that makes itself readily apparent to allistic adults.

Sara Grace, as a kid, wasn’t actually trying to walk on her toes. She was just in love with her kiddie ballet lessons, to the point that she turned every moment when no one stopped her into an excuse to practice something that she’d learned in class, and it sometimes looked like she was walking on her toes to the adults who had no idea what was going on.

Which led to her parents getting her tested, and granted, those tests are by no means 100% reliable…… but in this case, when the psychologist who talked to Sara Grace went, “Yeah, she isn’t autistic, she’s just really into her dancing and invested in giving it her all,” Dr. So-and-So happened to be right

10. She’s a cat person. If she could have a hundred cats without it becoming an issue for some reason, she would totally have a hundred cats, and then probably try to have more.

As it stands, she already has two of them — a tabby shorthair named Valerie (whether she named Val after the Zutons’ song or Valerie Brown of Josie and the Pussycats will depend on when you ask her, because Sara Grace has said both things before, as well as, “I don’t know, I just thought she felt like a Valerie, y’know?”) and a fluffy black longhair named Peppermint Patty (who doesn’t look like the Peanuts character and the resemblance between them is only apparent to Sara Grace, but when she found Patty at the shelter, she went, “You remind me of Peppermint Patty, that’s your name now”)

—and about the only reason she doesn’t have more babies is that it would cost money, and her current internship may not be unpaid but it still doesn’t pay very well. (Strictly speaking, the cousins she lives with would prefer it if she didn’t try to bring another cat home because of space concerns, but Sara Grace insists that she could find a way to make it work.)

Like, seriously? Much like Seb isn’t usually allowed to go to an ASPCA shelter alone because he might try to adopt yet another dog (even though he already has six and would have seven if his Chewie hadn’t passed away in March 2015), Sara Grace is not allowed near a shelter without a chaperone because she might try to do the same with kitties. When they get to know each other, they won’t be allowed to act as chaperones either, because Margot, Lucy, and Pete correctly assume that they’d enable each other, rather than act as impulse control.

Stephen is sorta kinda allowed to act as chaperone, but only for one of them at a time. It could be either one (though he’d have an easier time telling Sebastian that he doesn’t need another dog, simply because…… dude. six. it’s enough, you’re good.)

(Also, while Stephen likes all of his boyfriend’s dogs, he’s somewhat less fond of things like, “accidentally startling a nine-pound Yorkie because Achilles decided to take a nap on top of Stephen while he was taking a nap and Stephen didn’t notice”

or, “being woken up by a corgi-husky crossbreed trying, maybe succeeding but maybe not, to jump up into bed with Seb and Stephen, and trying to make Stephen come play with him, because Oscar has decided that Stephen is the new non-Seb favorite (at least, he’s tied with Seb’s Mom) and no, no, no, it’s not time for sleeping, it’s time for playing”

or, “eventually, trying to have an ~intimate moment~ — whether that means sex or not — with his boyfriend, only to get interrupted by Oscar waddling into Seb’s bedroom like he was invited by virtue of his Dad and New Favorite both being there, or by pit-mix Lola sticking her head in like, ‘Do you guys need anything? Snacks? A condom? Let me know!,’ or by Achilles whining at them for attention because he feels ignored”

—but that’s sort of beside the point, which was just that…… Yeah, no, Stephen would have a way easier time telling his boyfriend not to adopt another dog than he would, if he tried to tell Sara Grace that she doesn’t need another cat)

Anyway, Stephen won’t be allowed to chaperone both of them to the ASPCA shelter at once, because his reason will get overridden by how cute both of them are when they start looking at cute animals, and Sara Grace started getting teary about this one cat who’d been rescued off the streets after going through some vaguely defined Hell that Stephen didn’t hear all the details about, and Seb got making heart eyes at a little Jack Russell mix because they reminded him of his first dog (Toby), and Stephen tried to tell them not to, okay, he really tried, but they were being so cute and the animals’ stories were so sad and that’s why the team has two new animal companions???

—Fortunately, that’s never going to happen for realskis, because the rest of the team will veto the idea before it even gets off the ground, but…… yeah.

All three of these characters are actual facts adults, I swear

They just can’t act like it very well around cute things and especially not if the cute things involve animals

Sara Grace is also going to be low-key jealous that Seb can kind of talk to animals (…it’s not quite that simple, but that’s how this ability of his looks to her), and at some point, she’s probably going to ask him to translate her cats for her because she really wants to know that Peppermint Patty and Valerie know that she loves them, and then, she will be told that it doesn’t really work that way, but okay, he can try to do his best for her, if it makes her feel better? :/

And it does make her feel better, Seb. Thank you.

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 7 years

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Episode 50*: Full Disclosure

“I want to be a part of your universe.”

Steven Universe is a hero, but is he a superhero? Sure, his powers are magical, and his enemies tend to be more monstrous than villainous, but the same could be said of fellow Steve-with-unusual-surname Stephen Strange. Steven certainly evokes your typical sidekick, and the Crystal Gems have a cool team name that sounds more like the Justice League than the Jedi Order or the Fellowship of the Ring. Most importantly, Steven lives in contemporary times despite his sci-fi/fantasy adventures, and lives a dual life between the weird and the mundane.

He doesn’t fill quite enough tropes for me to firmly put him in that category, but I bring it up because Full Disclosure uses a plot straight out of superhero lore: keeping a secret to keep a loved one safe. This secret tends to be the character’s identity as a hero, which has frankly been done to death; great shows like The Flash (well, its first season is great at least) grind to a halt as our lead continually lies for no actual reason (why would your friend let villains know that they’re prime kidnapping material?), and the plot point has been brilliantly deconstructed by the likes of Brian Michael Bendis’s Ultimate Spider-Man and Mark Waid’s Irredeemable. Steven Universe similarly subverts this story, thankfully in the span of a single episode, to show us just how childish this self-distancing really is.

Not that Steven’s reticence isn’t understandable: Greg, who we’ve seen worry about his son plenty of times before, has a massive freakout after hearing what Steven went through in The Return and Jailbreak, and any kid could make the logical leap that their friend might have a similar reaction. Greg’s message of support through his hyperventilation is everything to this scene; Tom Scharpling really can dad with the best of ‘em.

From here, we have a rare stretch of Steven alone and introspective. This isn’t Samurai Jack we’re talking about, so Zach Callison is either talking to a hypothetical Connie or singing about his feelings. Regardless, we have poignant moments of silence as his rambling falters to the physical aftermath of Homeworld’s attack.

Ronaldo makes his way into the plot, and does exactly what Ronaldo should do: act pompous and give lousy advice. Scenes like his are why I can never be too hard on the guy, because he has a role to play that no other character can, and he plays it well. His speech is a nice dose of comedy in what could be a bleak sequence, but nonetheless captures Steven’s internal struggle. Most importantly, he doesn’t overstay his welcome!

It’s unfortunate that the song that follows has to come on the heels of Stronger Than You, because it’s one of the show’s finest but it sorta gets lost in the fray:

youtube

Integrating the ringtone we’ve been hearing since the end of Jailbreak into an actual song is unspeakably clever. While the workmanlike lyrics aren’t too special compared to other Steven Universe numbers, it’s a welcome return to Steven singing; we may have gotten a taste in On the Run and The Message, but he hasn’t gotten a full-length solo song since all the way back in Island Adventure. Steven may just be singing what he’s obviously thinking, but between Zach Callison, the visuals, and the instrumentation, I’m good.

The sequence has two flashback montages of sorts: Steven looking through past pictures of hanging out with Connie to reestablish their history, and actual events we’ve seen in the past two episodes. Even if these episodes are fresh in our minds, Steven’s specific memories highlight just how much he’s witnessed: Garnet’s destruction, Lapis’s imprisonment, the menace of Peridot and Jasper, the crash, and the formation of Malachite. Note that the headbutt that gave him his black eye is omitted, because Steven is most upset about bad things happening to other people, which fits right into his concern about Connie and his dad.

After some fun with the Gems, we immediately see how childish Steven’s behavior is, first using exaggerated vocabulary and then sloppily avoiding Connie rather than confront his feelings. Episodes like this are the reason Connie is so surprised to learn that Steven is older than her in Steven’s Birthday, because her maturity saves their friendship; Grace Rolek even incorporates a little Doctor Maheswaran as she admonishes Steven for making her worry. But not before this perfect little moment:

Full Disclosure’s insistence on letting destruction speak for itself is wonderful, considering we just got a song that spells out Steven’s exact thoughts. After seeing Steven shocked into silence a few times earlier in the episode, Connie’s wordless run through the hall of the ship as she chases Steven hammers in just how big of a deal Jailbreak was. Moreover, the visual storytelling reinforces her character: this alien stuff is confusing and a little scary, but she’s more focused on her friend than sating her curiosity.

The staging of their confrontation builds enough suspense that it made me a little worried in my first watch, which is pretty impressive considering Steven and Connie obviously aren’t going to stop being friends. I love that we don’t see Steven explain what happened, not only because we saw it and got his summary already when he told Greg about it, but because it allows for one of Full Disclosure’s departure from the show’s signature style. Beyond the reverse star wipe opening, we get not one but two fade-out transitions—one after Steven’s song, and the other during this implied conversation—and both enhance the pensive tone of this aftermath episode.

All this worry makes the conclusion that much more satisfying. On the micro level we see that Greg has calmed down, and on the macro we see the whole town coming back together. It’s not Ocean Gem’s three-cheers-for-Steven ending, but what he needs after such a life-changing finale is a little relief.

And yet.

Act I of Steven Universe is over, with Steven having a major victory that marks a turning point in his growth. Considering the shape of things to come, it’s fascinating that his first adventure post-Jailbreak involves him keeping the truth from loved ones in the exact way his mother did. And it’s fascinating that he’s so concerned about others that he's willing to put his own happiness on the line for their sake, because that’s the self-destructive martyr complex that drives his actions after the story of Rose shattering Pink is revealed. And it’s fascinating that Connie debunks both of these notions well before they become major themes in the show’s third and final act (not counting the movie and epilogue series). We’re playing the long game, and the seeds of the angst that consumes Steven after Back to the Moon are planted right here, but Connie has already revealed the solution to Steven’s eventual problems: trust is the antidote to Rose’s legacy of secrecy, and love is the antidote to Steven’s sacrificial mindset.

Future Vision

Steven gets a taste of his own medicine in the aftermath of Wanted, where Connie ignores his calls and texts. Both incidents are sparked by Steven going to space without her, but her differing reactions speak volumes about her character development: here she’s worried because she’s out of the loop, but by the time he goes to Homeworld she’s furious and hurt that he let her go through it again. Ignoring how far their partnership has come to take on danger by himself betrays how hard Connie’s worked to be a part of his universe, and I’m thrilled that the show addresses this.

See below.

I guess you could read it that way…

If you watch Full Disclosure first, the knowledge of the Temple’s fence is foreshadowing. If you watch Story for Steven first, it’s a callback. I gotta go with the foreshadowing on this one.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

As the unofficial third act of a two-parter, Full Disclosure suffers a bit compared to individual episodes. But tone is still king for me, and I welcome any portrayal of the immediate aftermath of major episodes. Characters in serials tend to be unrealistically resilient when it comes to episode after episode of drama and trauma, and a big part of Steven Universe’s second season is establishing just how much these past events we’ve seen (versus the first season’s focus on past events in a character’s history) affect our leads.

While Full Disclosure itself doesn’t make the cut, now that we’re fifty episodes in I’m expanding the Top Ten to a Top Fifteen. Congratulations to On the Run, Warp Tour, Maximum Capacity, The Test, and Ocean Gem for getting out of the runners-up slot!

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

On the Run

Warp Tour

Maximum Capacity

The Test

Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Future Vision

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

No Thanks!

4. Horror Club 3. Fusion Cuisine 2. House Guest 1. Island Adventure

#full disclosure #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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