#// he does in fact need an outlet that's not being a superhero

[ssanovak]

Would the Same Pressure Pull You Under?

TRIGGER WARNINGS; Depression, self destructive behaviour, self harm, blood, drug abuse mention, child abuse mention, usual BAU heavy topic cases. 

3596 words.

@skievers​‘ request; Reid sees readers scars and starts to pester her about it and gets concerned because he sees it’s fresh. She does it because the trauma of what they see at the BAU on cases (especially ones with kids) and she thinks no one cares about her. Spencer soon tells her she does. Ensue fluff 🥹

You took a deep breath as you sat in your car outside the office. You weren’t having a good day, in fact it was one of the worst days you’d had in a long time, but you couldn’t or wouldn’t call in sick to work. You didn’t want anyone to know you were struggling with your mental health. You wouldn’t ever shame anyone else for needing mental health support, your adopted brother was on antidepressants and had a regular therapist ever since you could remember, so shame wasn’t the reason you didn’t want anyone to know.

You didn’t want anyone to know because you didn’t want to bother them.

They all had their own issues going on, and you saw yourself as the official mom friend of the BAU and if anything even appeared to bother you then you knew they would stop coming to you with their issues and you didn’t want to cut off the only outlet most of them had. It took a lot for them to trust anyone to confide in and you didn’t want to shut that trust down again. But it was a lot of pressure on you to keep yourself from being pulled under with the weight of it all. Another tear slipped down your face and you wiped it away furiously. You pulled the sun visor down in front of you and slid open the mirror compartment. You fiddled with your hair, trying to get the shoulder length curls to sit properly and then looked yourself straight in the eye and took another deep breath. Your eyes weren’t bloodshot or red, you just needed to hold it together long enough to walk into work and you knew it would be easier to push your issues back under the rock you felt in your heart when you saw your friends.

You closed the mirror slider once more and pushed the visor back up. Another deep breath later and you took your keys out of the ignition slot, pulled on the door handle and then pushed the door open next to you. You reached over and grabbed your bag from the passenger seat and got out, adjusting your clothes slightly as you checked that your sleeves were pulled down completely. It was a bit warmer out than you’d have liked it to be, and you ran like a broken boiler year round so you knew you didn’t need the cardigan, but you didn’t have a long sleeved shirt and had to keep your arms covered for the foreseeable future. Once the cuts were healed it might be a different story, but for now the wounds on your skin were far too fresh for comfort, and you knew it wouldn’t take a profiler to put two and two together once anyone saw the marks, unfortunately your colleagues were all profilers, so it would take even less time for them to connect the dots.

You swung your backpack around your shoulders and winced as the strap ran over your wrist but quickly forced your face into a neutral posture before locking your car, putting your keys into your pocket and making your way into the building. You walked over to the elevator and pressed the button for your floor and waited as the numbers across the top of the doors indicated the elevator was at the top of the building.

“Doctor Strange, nice choice! Did you know that Doctor Strange was introduced as a Marvel Comics Superhero in…”

“July 1963, as a backup strip in Strange Tales no. 110” You turned beaming to Spencer Reid as he looked at you with awe.

“You read comics too?”

“Of course! I’ll read anything I can get a hold of, especially if it happens to be the source material for one of my favourite Marvel Cinematic Universe characters, who is played by one of my favourite actors!” You found yourself relaxing talking about one of your biggest combination of interests, books, films and actors. You stepped into the elevator and Spencer joined you, smiling as he listened to you. Spencer liked telling people things, statistics and facts mainly, it was one of the times he felt most comfortable, and with anyone else he might be thrown off by the fact that you seemed to know more than him, but he stood listening intently hanging onto your every word.

When the two of you walked through the glass doors that lead to your office you went to go straight to your desk until you were stopped by Emily, “Hey you two, stop flirting and come join us in the conference room!”

“Uh we weren’t… I don’t… We have a case?” You stammered and felt yourself blush crimson.

“I’m teasing you Y/N, no need to be embarrassed!” You looked up and Emily put her hand on your arm, intended to be a kind gesture but it caused the fresh cuts on your skin to burn under the pressure.

You forced yourself to smile through slightly gritted teeth, “I knew that”.

“Sure you did, you coming?”

“I’ll be there in a second, want to dump my bag first” You nodded towards your colleague and watched as she walked back towards the stairs.

You turned to put your bag down in your chair only to find the space occupied.

“What was that about?”

“What?”

“When Emily touched your arm, you flinched. I don’t think she noticed but I did, now you want to tell me what’s going on?” Spencer had one of your pencils in his hands and you watched mesmerised for a moment as he twirled it between his fingers effortlessly.

“Uh, not really, come on Spence, get out of my chair, we’re gonna be the last two in there at this rate” You mumbled as you caught glimpse of Hotch on his way out of his office.

“Okay, but will you talk to me afterwards?” He bargained, still sat at your desk.

“Okay, okay, just scram will you!” You laughed, hoping it didn’t sound as fake as it felt.

He moved quickly and dumped his own belongings at his desk, other than the bag that he seemed to never be anywhere without. You put your backpack on your chair and pulled out your water bottle taking it and a pen with you up to the conference room.

JJ got on with explaining the case you were about to be jetting off to, but your head was elsewhere. You absent mindedly doodled on a blank piece of paper that you’d found at the back of the folder she had handed you when you walked into the room.

“Y/N, you listening?” Hotch asked after a couple of minutes.

“Huh…? Yeah, of course, sorry doodling helps me think.” You said, and tried to concentrate on the rest of the briefing, but the concern about your impending conversation with Spencer was eating at your insides and you quickly found yourself zoning out again.

When everyone else got up to leave the room you were still drawing and staring off absently, you only moved when the opening of the door made you jump. You stood up abruptly only for a hand on your shoulder to sit you back down again.

As everyone else left Hotch gave a look at the two of you still sat at the table and nodded to Spencer, trusting that he’d be able to get you to talk about whatever it was that was bothering you.

When the door shut again Spencer turned to look at you and said “Spill, what’s upsetting you?”

“Honestly nothing, I’m sorry I’ve been so distracted, please can we just go and get ready to leave?” you said, looking towards the door.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on! You look after everyone else without ever really telling us how you are, and I don’t know why you do that but I want you to know that people care.” He rested a hand on your shoulder and turned you back to look at him, his deep hazel eyes filled with concern.

“Oh shush Spencer, nobody really cares about me, I’m insignificant. If I wasn’t here nobody would bat an eyelid, you’d just replace me with the next person to be suggested for the job and never look back.” You looked down into your lap, feeling tears threatening to burst the dam that your eyelids created.

“Then I must be nobody.”

“What?” you looked up anger rising, you weren’t one to get angry often but you didn’t like how he was speaking about himself.

“You said nobody cares about you, but I do, so I must be nobody.” He explained, his hands talking as much as his mouth.

“That sounds awful, please don’t say that about yourself” Your face creased into a frown and you looked down into your hands, fiddling with a loose thread off the end of your sleeve.

“Then will you do the same?” he pleaded.

“Huh?” you tilted your head to one side but you didn’t look back up this time.

“You want me to speak better of myself, so will you do the same?” he explained gently.

“If you want me to” you answered flatly.

“No, not because I want you to, for yourself.”

“I’m not sure I can do that Spence”, you said looking back up at his face.

“Then can I?”

You nod, pulling a little at your sleeves as he leant closer to you, in barely more than a whisper he spoke, “Y/N, you’re one of the most amazing people I have ever met, you’re kind courteous even when people don’t deserve the respect, considerate of everyone else’s feelings and always want everyone to know that they’re safe to talk to you about whatever they’re going through,” he paused, looking down at his own hands and smiled softly before continuing, “I don’t know what’s going on in your head right now but I do know for a fact that you don’t have to do it alone. Whether you want to talk to me, Penny, JJ, Emily, Derek or Dave, hell even Hotch would be there for you if you needed him to be. You’re wrong, thinking we’d just be able to replace you if you left. If you left there would be a Y/N shaped piece missing from our team, because you have made us all better people by simply existing, and I hope you know that, truly.”

A tear rolled down your cheek, and then another, and another, until you were sobbing wiping your face with your sleeves and you turned away embarrassed about crying so hard at work.

“Don’t turn away, would you like a hug?” Spencer turned you back towards him and held his arms out for you. You nodded and he pulled you towards him awkwardly as the arms of the chair got in the way, but if he was uncomfortable he didn’t say anything as he held you and let you cry onto his shoulder.

When you felt like you’d cried as much as you would ever cry again you lifted your head. You went to wipe your face with your sleeves when Spencer stopped you and handed you a tissue from the box on the centre of the table.

“Now, would you like to talk about why you, the woman who boils hotter than the sun at the equator, is wearing a cardigan inside in the summer?”

“Not really”

“Y/N, there is no judgement coming from me, please explain to me what’s going on.”

You sighed and went to remove your cardigan, your right arm first and were a lot more tentative when it came to your left. You tried to pull it off only to feel the fabric was stuck to your wounds and you winced. As you pulled it slowly away from your arm and took your hand out of the sleeve you looked away as you put the clothing down on the table.

“Why?”

“Why did I do it? Honestly a few different reasons…”

“No, why didn’t you clean them up, dress the wounds, why aren’t you taking care of yourself?”

“I.. Uh, what?”

“I’ve known for a while that this is one of your vices, we can talk about the reasons why if you want to, but can we at least get them cleaned up first?”

“Wait, so you’re not going to give me the lecture about how ‘this isn’t a good way to deal with your feelings’ and try and talk me through a million different scenarios and possibilities like elastic bands and red pen?” You asked, incredulously.

“Would that help?” He looked up from where he’d been examining the cuts with care.

“Not really, it’s just what people usually do. I think you’re the only person not to freak out.”

“When you get to this point, when it all gets too overbearing and you feel like there’s nothing else you can possibly do to quiet whatever’s going on in your head, or you feel like you deserve it, whether it’s punishment or just to feel something because everything inside of you feels numb does it feel like you have a choice?” his voice was barely audible above the chatter outside and you wondered whether this was something he’s researched or whether this was more personal.

“No”

“Me neither. I mean, different vices but they’re an addiction at the end of the day, right? Only my addiction was something I was injecting into my own veins, and yours is something about the blade, or the blood or the pain, the tangible feeling of having something you can do to avoid or punish whatever is going on in your head.”

You grabbed one of Spencer’s hands and held it in yours, squeezing it quickly before letting go, a stray tear leaving your eyes once more. He reached up with his other hand and wiped your cheek, before wiping his own tear away and clearing his throat.

“Are you okay if I leave to get the first aid kit or should I ask Emily to bring it in? And before you freak out, Emily is the one I went to when I was at my worst, she listens and won’t ever judge or talk about it if you don’t want her to.”

“Ask Emily.” You mumbled in response.

“Okay, I’ll call her quickly.” Spencer got his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number waiting for Emily to pick up before asking her to bring the first aid kid and then briefly explaining that you both were okay.

When she opened the door to the conference room Emily was greeted by a scene she wasn’t sure she knew what to do with, until she saw your arm. She came in and shut the door behind her, kneeling down in front of you opening the first aid kit and resting her hands on her legs.

“You want to hold Spencer’s hand whilst I clean it up, or you want Spencer to clean it up whilst I hold your hand? No I won’t be offended if you pick his hand” She added, with a wink.

You laughed, a true laugh this time, “Uh, Spencer’s hand, if that’s okay with you Spence?”

“Of course” he replied, moving to the right hand side of you and taking your hand in his as Emily held your left wrist up to get a better look at the cuts.

“Okay, this will sting,” she said, getting out a bottle of saline after she put some blue gloves on. She grabbed some gauze and soaked it with saline and slowly wiped over your arm, checking your face for a reaction. When you didn’t flinch she focused on the cut highest up your arm and you grit your teeth as she cleaned it out more thoroughly. You gripped Spencer’s hand tightly and he put his other hand on your back and rubbed soothing circles. Once Emily had finished cleaning your wounds and had wrapped a bandage around your arm she looked up to you and said, “What’s your favourite colour?”

“Sorry?” you asked tilting your head to one side with confusion.

“I bought some colourful plasters, no more of the boring ‘skin tone’ ones that don’t match anyone’s actual skin tone” She explained using her hands to indicate quotation marks around ‘skin tone’, “So what’s your favourite?”

Before you could answer Spencer spoke up from beside you, “It’s purple.”

You looked at him and smiled, you were starting to believe that maybe people did really care about you.

“Purple coming right up!” Emily beamed and stuck the end of the bandage down with a deep purple plaster. “Okay, I’ll leave you two now, if you need anything else let me know, I’ll let the team know that you just need some time but you’ll be ready by 9am, it’s currently 8:45, you think that’ll be enough time?”

You nodded and said “Thank you, so much.”

“No need to thank me silly, I’m here for my friends, whatever they need” Emily smiled and stood up, taking the first aid kit with her and leaving.

Only once she was gone did you realise you were still holding onto Spencer’s hand. You let go quickly and felt your cheeks blush bright red again, “Sorry.”

“For what?” Spencer turned his head to look at you and it was his turn to be confused.

“Never mind” You said, smiling at him.

“You want to talk about anything else?”

“I have a question, but it might be too personal, and I don’t want to upset you”

“Fire away” he said and you turned your chair towards him.

“When you were listing all the reasons that someone might use one of their vices, which one fit you?” you looked down at your lap and picked at one of your fingernails where the nail polish was chipping slightly.

“Multiple reasons, mainly to forget, to get out of my own head, and then when we had difficult cases it became a release of tension. If you want to, you can tell me which of them fit you.” He added after his answer.

“Punishment, and when things got too much.”

“What were you punishing yourself for?” he asked quietly.

“Jesse.”

“La Plata, Colorado?”

“That’s the one” you nod and clasp your hands together, twisting a ring around your middle finger.

“That wasn’t your fault, that wasn’t anyone’s fault but Benjamin Cyrus’ who brainwashed her into believing he truly loved her. Nothing anyone could have said would have stopped her from pressing that button once she got hold of the switch” Spencer explained, quickly.

“I should’ve at least tried to talk her down,” you felt tears prickling your eyes again as you thought of the young girl’s situation.

“In staying behind you would’ve put yourself in imminent danger.”

“If I could have changed her mind, there wouldn’t have been any danger, we could’ve both walked out of there alive.

“Or you could have died.” Spencer’s voice gave away little hint of the despair he felt at the way you seemed to wish to throw your life away so flippantly.

“At least I would’ve tried.”

“I wish there was something I could say to reassure you that we did everything we could in going to that ranch in the first place. From the minute Emily and I spoke to her she was so wrapped up in her perceived love for him that I doubt anything you could’ve said would’ve changed her mind.”

“Really?”

“Y/N, if I’d thought there was a chance to change her mind I wouldn’t have shouted for you and Morgan to run. But I do wish it could have been different.” He said, looking down at his hands.

“You do?” you ask, barely audibly.

“Every time we lose an innocent life it takes it’s toll. We just have to believe that we do everything within our power to help or the ‘what if’s’ would eat us alive.”

“Thank you Spence.”

“For what?” he asked, looking back up at you.

“For being honest with me, for telling me that these things affect you too, for letting me know that I’m not alone with these feelings.”

“Thank you for staying here to listen, you could’ve easily stood up and walked out, I wouldn’t have tried to stop you, to me you staying here and being vulnerable with me was the biggest show of strength and willingness to let others in, and you should be proud of yourself for being open to knowing you’re not alone”.

“You’re one of a kind Spencer Reid, you always know just what to say.”

“Oh not always, but fortunately, when it matters.”

You smiled at him as the both of you stood up. You went to throw your cardigan back on when you realised it wasn’t clean any more.

“You have a spare in your go bag?” Spencer asked, nodding to the clothing in your hands.

You nodded and he signalled for you to wait there and he ran to your desk where you kept your go bag in the bottom drawer. He came back a minute later and handed you the spare cardigan and you thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. Now it was his turn to blush and he ran his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck laughing. The pair of you walked out of the conference room together and Rossi and Prentiss shared a knowing look as you wrapped your arm in Spencer’s as you all headed to the plane.

[dairy-farmer]

One of your earliest asks was about an erotes-variation where Bruce intentionally spiked them with the sex pollen because he realized everyone’s secret feelings for Tim were causing strife in the family, and he wanted to prevent any of them from going evil, etc.

Im just in love with this idea.

The batfam are all secretly madly in love and lust with Tim, and their various guilt complexes and frustrations over this are the reason they all kind of treat him like varying shades of shit.

But post erotes, when they all realize they are into Tim and nobody has any higher ground to stand on with regards to fucked up possessive incestuous tendencies, they quickly decide that Tim is now their shared sub 💕💕

Tim knows he should be concerned or angry that they made that choice without really consulting him, but he’s mostly just all warm and soft inside because everyone’s paying attention to him and being nice and they *want* him. It’s like he’s glowing.

Tim is still Red Robin, at least at first. However, everyone keeps steering him from the most dangerous missions, and during fights, he keeps getting picked up and whirled away because ‘he needed a rescue’. In this way, they sort of herd him out of active field work— after all, they reason, in the nicest way possible, Red Robin is kind of a filler figure anyway. Tim is at his best behind comms. Besides, they’d all get too worried if their baby was out their in danger— they need to know their sweet little sub is waiting safe and sound for them when they get back.

And again, Tim knows he should be upset, but he’s always kind of hated being Robin— it was a necessity, like a grueling job one needed to pay the bills. He only fought for it near the end because it was proof he was part of the family in some way.

But now he’s part of the family no matter whether he’s a superhero or not. They’ve made that very clear. (Bruce, in fact, put three new tiny trackers into Tim, and he was smiling all soft the whole time as he numbed the area and inserted them, like he thought it was very romantic. It kind of was.)

The batfam is so much more functional now that they can express their true feelings regarding Tim, and that they can openly be a little dark/morally dubious with it— this outlet prevents any of them from going off the rails or otherwise morally decaying.

And honestly, Tim *loves* being their adored free-use sub. None of them are ever *mean*, though he was scared of that in the beginning. It takes some time for him to learn to trust easily, to close his eyes and kneel or roll over without question, especially with Jason and Damian, but once he does— it’s so freeing, so safe.

Damian likes to mark out certain blocks in the calendar, usually a few days a month, where Tim can just be his full-time puppy. No comms, no outside work, just his adorable puppy sleeping in his big cage with all his blankies and happily rutting against Damian’s shoes, all eager to please.

Bruce likes being Tim’s daddy. He feels bad that he wasn’t really a father figure for Tim like he was for Jason and Dick, so in his eyes, this is how he makes up for it. He gets to act on all those urges and fantasies he repressed behind a stoic facade. Tim sitting on his lap, watching cartoons, cuddling close to him at night. His little breathy moans as Bruce hovers over him, blocking out anything but his daddy, protecting him from the world, gently working his cock into that tight little hole. Tim all pink as he rides his daddy’s face, thick hands gripping his thighs and forcing him to grind *down*.

to dick, Tim is his permanent adorable little brother. He’s huge into brocon— here, Timmy, I can help you. Let me carry you around, Timmy. I’ll make you feel good, I promise. He’s always showing off to try and impress him.

Honestly cass is a slightly rougher, quieter version of

To Jason, Tim is his adorable little wifey. He’s super domestic— he likes to cook for Tim, to have sweet, sappy vanilla sex, to have sweet, sappy, kinky sex— the list goes on. He loves ‘providing’ for his little wife, gently dominating him— he’s a total simp honestly. He’s the one who most gets off the idea of him having a long, bloody night as the red hood and coming home to his pretty little Tim waiting for him.

They have a nice collar made with all of their names carved on the inside, so that he never forgets who he belongs to 💕

Him just walking down the halls of the manor until Dick comes out of a hallway and just grabs his wrist, leading him along without a word. Turns out him and Bruce and Damian are watching a movie, and they need Tim to sit at their feet and be a pretty warm little thing. It’s not even always sex, a lot of the time Tim is just used like a teddy bear, snatched for snuggles and hair pets and all the like. It’s not uncommon to walk into somebody busy at work on a laptop while absentmindedly petting the hair of Tim, who is snuggled into their side.

🥺🥺🥺🥺 tim getting the love he's craved and needed from his family- each of them caring for him, loving, and fucking him in their own ways. tim being so happy to be this small, adored, little kept thing.

he was not made for hard life, he never wanted it to begin with! but someone had to do it. but now? now he can be sweet and soft and owned!

he can be this adored, kissed, and lovingly handled little thing.

he's wonderfully fucked by his family who loves him so dearly and he's treasured by them as well.

he's so utterly theirs and tim has never been happier!!!!

[jesuis-melodrama]

Regarding Akumas –

I don't think it's fair to claim that Marinette holds just as much responsibility as Chloé and Lila in terms of causing them.

The big difference is attitude.

In the events of Miraculous, the two years they're experiencing are apparently the first time Paris has faced any kind of supernatural, magical threat, with Ladybug and Chat Noir being their first superheroes.

While Chloé is definitely aware that her bullying could cause enough emotional disarray in her victims, enough that they'll attract Le Papillon's attention and manifest into Akumas, I can't really recall a single episode where Chloé has done this intentionally (although, please feel free to correct me).

In Le Dislocoeur, she deliberately humiliates Kim for believing he could even be worthy of bagging Chloé as a Valentine's date, and she used Sabrina as an outlet for her own humiliation in Antibug, but she evidently does not intend for them to become Akumas. It is simply what she has already always done, even before being aware that Le Papillon's dark presence over the city could be used as a form of weapon.

This notion is proved by how many of the Akumas she 'caused': Le Dislocoeur,  L'Invisible, Coeur de Pierre, and Le Dessinateur ends up hunting her down, much to Chloé physical and verbal displeasure, and she often mocks them for becoming Akumas afterwards, renewing her vengeance towards those victims, calling them 'monsters' (S1E26).

I can even make the argument that for the first time, Chloé is experiencing consequences of her bullying, although it is a lesson she has consistently failed to learn.

But even so, although the intent of creation is not there, Chloé's attitude is obvious. She neither cares that she has 'caused' Akumas, nor does she feel any empathy or remorse.

Lila is partially of the same calibre.

In one of Season 3's most intense moments, Caméléon shows Marinette, Ladybug, Heroine of the City herself, nearly Akumatised 2 times as a direct cause of Lila's conduct.

While Lila is not aware of this (Marinette herself isn't even aware of the first attempted Akumatisation), there is no doubt that she would not feel regret, nor empathy, nor make any attempts of correcting her behaviour if she does learn of this fact.

Like Chloé with her victims, Marinette becoming an Akuma would only be a source of detriment to Lila, provide no benefit, unless she could turn the tide on Marinette, marking her as an unreasonable aggressor, painting herself as a saintly, undeserving victim (which, I cannot predict if possible, as Lila is a very skilled manipulator, but Princesse Justice's power should be centralised on revealing the truth, which will be difficult for Lila to overcome if affected, but then again, she doesn't need to challenge what she'll be forced to reveal, she just need to convince her classmates that the 'truth' is not what it seems), but only when she puts herself in danger first.

And, as shown in Oni-Chan, Lila is deathly afraid of vengeful Akumas, and overtly concerned with her own wellbeing. She'll back out of the situation if it is beyond her control.

Marinette does feel regret, she does feel remorse, and she is negatively impacted, not only because most of her 'caused' Akumas come after her, but because she has to be the one to risk her life and health to Purify them. Like to Chloé and Lila, unless she is the Akuma herself, she experience no benefits.

The argument of 'acting as she always did', similar to Chloé, could also be applied to Marinette.

This argument needs to be adjusted for two points: 1) Marinette has become more confident in the visible Miraculous timeline compared to her past self, and; 2) Marinette never had the intention of slighting others, she is focused on what she can be achieving.

In assertion of Point 1, in Season 1, Episode 25: Marinette and Sabine exchanges this conversation:

Marinette: I bet you anything Chloé will be in my class again.  Sabine: Four years in a row, is that possible?  Marinette: Definitely. Lucky me! Sabine: Oh, don't say that! It's the start of a new year - I'm sure everything will be just fine!

Which implies that if Marinette and Chloé did not know each other out of school, then Chloé has been bullying Marinette in class for at least four years.

And – seeing that Chloé has never expressively received any consequences for her tyranny at school at this point, this kind of relentless abuse would be a blow to any child's self-esteem and confidence.

Marinette is introduced as a passionate, quirky, and positive girl, but the audience can almost immediately see her defensiveness, resignation, and exasperation when dealing with Chloé in regards to her tone, speech, and body language.

Marinette has difficulty challenging Chloé, and although she does not give up immediately, most of her bravado is for show, she does not win many of her fights against her bully. In Ladybug et Chat Noir (Origines - Partie 1), the earliest episode in the timeline, Marinette makes sure that Chloé is at least aware of her indignation and stance if she is not going to respect it. And in Le Bulleur, Chloé's first chronicled appearance in the episodes listing, Marinette does not relent speaking to Adrien, even though Chloé made her impatience evident, Chloé had to physically shove Marinette away to have her turn.

But Ladybug et Chat Noir (Origines - Partie 1) also introduced two new elements that Marinette never had the advantage of before: the Ladybug Miraculous in her grasp, and the new student Alya Césaire as her unchallengeable best friend.

Both the Ladybug Earrings and Alya awards Marinette something she is in lack of: confidence.

Seeing a dear friend in trouble, and having the power to do something about it (the car that crushes Alya in Cœur de Pierre (Origines - Partie 2)) shocks Marinette into action, and fills her with an unprecedented determination and steely demeanour.

This event is what introduces Ladybug's stern, confident, no-nonsense image.

It makes one wonder what would happen to Marinette's story, would she always remain the timid, passive girl of her former self if she had never come into contact with Tikki or Alya? And how different would she be if she only have possession of one party and not the other?

But that's an analysis for another day.

The success of Point 1 is ultimately proven in Maledikteur in how Marinette reacts to Chloé's flimsy machismo and insults.

Chloé: Ugh, you're all a bunch of losers! (looks at Adrien) Except you, Adrikins. None of you deserve to see the rest of my documentary! Marinette: (rolls her eyes) Oh, what a shame. (eyes widens when she realises what she said, covering her mouth)

Apart from the astonishing fact that Madame Bustier's class has grown immune to Chloé's sharp tongue and self-appointed superiority, Marinette seems to have completely lost all her fear of Chloé.

She seems to find her former bully as an irritation and bother now, rather than an intimidating and threatening figure.

When she covers her mouth in shock at procession of her own words, Marinette does not seem afraid of Chloé, how Chloé might react and retaliate towards her. More so, it appears that Marinette is just embarrassed and alarmed at how she accidentally vocalised one of her inside thoughts.

Which, apart from representing how little she thinks of Chloé now, demonstrates the incredible notion that Chloé is only insulting Marinette now because Marinette allows it, and is not bothered to correct Chloé, simply letting her former bully run around and mouths off because she knows that Chloé will not listen to her, and reprimanding her each time is only going to bring her more work than achievement.

It's an inspiration, how far Marinette has come.

She was always a treasured and core part of her friends-group and class, but I don't think it'll be an exaggeration to claim that Marinette is the true Queen Bee of Madame Bustier's homeroom network now, not only the actual déléguée de classe, but an unofficial leader everyone looks up to.

It's not mentioned in canon, but I imagine Marinette will be the girl everyone wants at their informal gatherings, to the extremes that they'll change the date if she could not make it, the top name on the list when sending invitations for movie dates or picnics, and the connoisseur everyone turns to when they need advice and help regarding everything from fashion to school projects to romance (Marinette is actually quite good at romantic insight and orchestrating getaways and dates, when it doesn't involve Adrien, she helped Mylène and Ivan get together, fixed misunderstandings between Nathaniel and Marc, and inadvertently jumpstarted Alya and Nino's relationship).

In regards to Point 2, Chloé and Lila are as 'cruel' as always (in dubious state concerning Lila, because there is no information on the personality she had before coming to Paris), and Marinette is simply a little too self-focused and single-minded at times.

I'll like to bring forth to the table, Episode 15 of Season 1: Le Gamer.

The contention regarding not only Marinette's but other character's behaviour in the episode is some of the strangest I've seen out of any Miraculous discourse.

There isn't a specific idea that I'm challenging, as my memory is rather hazy regarding this discussion, but I do not believe that Max is sexist. It seems to be a very unprompted and rather self-projected idea, from the theorists' own experiences with misogyny in the video-game community.

I always believed that Max was simply devastatingly crushed, not only to be defeated so easily, but by someone he has always dismissed as inexperienced and awkward in video games, so it is not only a blow to his confidence in his abilities, but to his intelligence as well, that he had let such a genius go unnoticed even when he hangs around her almost every day in class.

And Marinette's own actions – I don't think it's fair to call her malicious for wiping the floor with Max simply because she had the intention of getting closer with Adrien rather than competing in the Ultimate Mecha Strike III tournament as a serious player.

It could be a little disrespectful to the sport, but competitive gaming doesn't admit players based on passion, it tests based on skill, and Marinette did not cheat, she was simply better than Max.

Unlike Chloé and Lila, when facing many of their victims, even though they did not intend for the outcome to be Akumatisation, they did mean to deliberately antagonise them. Chloé means to make her classmates feel small and humiliated, and Lila did mean for Marinette to feel inadequate and ostracised.

But when Marinette defeated Max, she wasn't thinking about how the situation could ruin him, she was thinking about what she could gain if she wins.

Turning Max into an Akuma was not anywhere near her list of goals. Canonically, getting into a team with Adrien was her primary objective.

In Audimatrix, Ladybug reacted calmly and with dignity, elegantly removing herself from the presence of a relentless and impolite journalist, whose sensationalising manner not only makes Ladybug uncomfortable, but serves to intimidate the heroine for her own benefit. Turning into an Akuma is only a result of Nadja Chamack's own high expectations and demanding behaviour.

In Papa Garou, that situation was out of everyone's control but Tom's. Sabine could see he was going too far and is unsuccessful in reining him down, Chat Noir was told a untruth that he awkwardly tried to overcome, having never been in such a situation before, and Marinette, although she did lie to Chat Noir, she never said anything of the sort to Tom, who simply overheard and jumped to conclusions.

In Antibug, Ladybug bears a little more responsibility as a hero. She did treat Chloé with animosity, strange enough from her usual attitude, that even Chat Noir noticed the difference. If Chloé is a regular overbearing fan (which I'm sure Ladybug had plenty of contact with), Ladybug would not be as annoyed and dismissive as she was of her. She would've heeded Chloé's words a little more, taken her histrionic advice instead of completely disregarding her. But even when Ladybug knows Chloé, actively feels disgust of having to tolerate and endure the affections of her bully, Ladybug is still professional and appropriately distant, reprimanding her several times for interfering in dangerous situations, and it is ultimately Chloé's own disappointment in not being adored by her hero (and, also eavesdropping on her conversations) that spurred her Akumatization.

Even without the comparison to Chloé and Lila, our villains of the Miraculous storyline, Marinette, independently, cannot be reasonably accused of causing ire.

Many of her actions only caused devastation because it is Le Papillon taking advantage of emotional Parisians, and not because Marinette intends to cause harm, or intends to antagonise her 'victims'.

If simply defending herself or acting for her own benefits or being in the temperamental deportment of a normal teenager is enough to discredit Marinette to the point of challenging her status as a hero, or colour her as a villain, then there is not much hope for any Miraculous character when the same logic is utilised on them.

There is nothing wrong with Marinette being focused on her own goals, or disregarding others especially if she dislikes them, or if they have deliberate intentions of causing harm to her person and reputation for their own benefits.

And at the end of it all, unlike any other Miraculous character, Marinette does not only suffer consequences, she is tasked with the primary burden of fixing the situation, usually to her own detriment, because she has to make space in her life for these constant, life-threatening events, lose career and social opportunities for the responsibility, and even worse, lie, the thing she hates to do most of all, to her beloved friends and family, digging a personal reprimand worse than any wound she could've gained.

Marinette doesn't cause Akumas, they may have inadvertently stemmed from her actions, but she is simply living her life, and should not have to endure responsibility when the man making the Akumas takes advantage of the simplest emotions of anger and sadness and regret, for his own perverted, selfish purposes.

Even Chloé and Lila could not be blamed, because neither of them holds to power to create Akuma, and the full-grown man who can is not compelled by them to do so.

He chooses to, and that's the worst evil of all.

[taiblogcomics]

Slap-Happy Fun!

Hey there, paisanos. Well, we came to the end of Rainbow Brite way too early, but we sure enjoyed what we got, huh? A little bittersweet. However, it's left me in a bit of a cartoon mood. As such, I got a theme thing I wanna run through for a while. I got two different series, each six issues long, that both use toon physics as a major story feature, in somewhat different ways. And to start with, let's talk a little about the protagonis for our first series~

So, probably the comic would introduce the backstory itself, but why don't we go into detail here, then we won't have to during the comic review! To that end, here's our hero: Steve Harmon, AKA the awesome Slapstick. Steve was the class clown and loved pranks and tasteless jokes. He'd do very well on modern Youtube, but his original series came out in 1992. When he got caught before a prank could go off, he dressed up as a clown to sneak into a nearby carnival for revenge. However, before his plan could come about, he ends up pulled into Dimension X by the evil clowns runing the carnival, and is transformed into a living cartoon!

Now he's Slapstick, a being made of a mysterious substance called electroplasm. Slapstick can be stretched and beaten and suffer any number of horrible torments, but not actually hurt. He also has a pair of gloves that act as a pocket dimension he can pull objects out of, particularly his signature mallet. Slapstick eventually defeats the evil clowns, rescues his kidnapped classmates, and realises he just had a full-on superhero origin. Now he can go and fight crime! Pretty good for a new character in a four-issue miniseries in 1992!

Slapstick had relatively few appearances since then. He became a member of the New Warriors, and despite his cartoony personality, he was particularly loyal to his teammates, as seen in Avengers: The Initiative, which was his next major appearance. This was following Civil War in Marvel, just to put you on the timeline. It was about this time that Steve spent more and more time as Slapstick, and eventually lost the ability to turn back into his human self. Problem is, he's your average high school teenager swimming in hormones, and his cartoon self doesn't have, shall we say, "an outlet" for that. This is a plot point, believe it or not!

So, being frustrated in such a way, conscripted by the military, and all the bullshit he went through in said military, Slapstick became a little bitter and cynical. Not unpleasantly so, he's not dark and gritty or anything, he's just a bit grouchy. This is what leads to his next major appearance: Deadpool and the Mercs for Money. This team included, aside from Deadpool himself, Foolkiller, Solo, Stingray, Terror Inc., Masacre, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and Hit-Monkey. Not a cheerful group! It was goofy, but they were also shooting people for money. In fact, most of them being unlikeable assholes is why Steve left the group and moved back in with his parents, which is where we find him now~

And after all that, here's the cover:

This cover (which is also the cover of the trade paperback I'm reading from) basically tells you everything you need to know. Here's Slapstick, living cartoon clown, who inhabits an otherwise realistic world. Well, as realistic as the Marvel Universe can be. But that's the best part. Slapstick is drawn with thick black outlines and minimal shading, standing out against all the other characters, who are rendered in a more realistically-drawn and properly shaded style. He really does look like a cartoon interacting with the real world. It's very good! Also, he commits unspeakable violence, as seen here. Like, this book is actually pretty violent and gory, and I will do my best to warn you when that's about to go down.

So we open in Bayonne, New Jersey, where a group of generic thugs are doing a crime down at the docks. It's not even past the first page before Slapstick appears, doing a cartoony violence on them to thwart their intended crimes. And I do mean a violence. You know, they shoot him, he plays like he's dead, then springs right back up and spits the bullets back at them. And he can spit the bullets at a machinegun speed. Or he knocks the teeth out of one guy's mouth, then hits the teeth with his mallet into another guy's eyes. Painful! Like, these first three pages are pretty violent. Use them as a litmus test!

These opening pages have just been a tale Steve (still in his Slapstick guise) has been telling at the dinner table, back in his hometown of Plainfield. His young niece and nephew are super into it, but the adults don't much care for his boasting. His parents don't much care for his non-traditional job, his brother Richard is only interested in his own IT work, and Richard's wife Portia thinks Steve ought to just give up being a mercenary and start a family. Mrs. Harmon tells her to downplay the idea, since Steve's "inability to perform his husbandly duties" is a sore point for him.

Steve leaves the table in disgust, which I think anybody would if their mom started talking about their "downstairs" problems at the dinner table. He storms outside and uses his phone to look for any ongoing merc jobs. Deadpool still hasn't figured out Steve's been using his log-in on MERK (the Uber for mercs!), so Slapstick's been swiping jobs off the system to spite his old boss. And he's found a listing for group of thieves breaking into the Edison Museum in West Orange, which is right nearby! Like, it gives a highway exit number and everything. If you learn nothing else from this comic, at least you'll learn some New Jersey geography!

Upon reaching the museum, Slapstick already finds himself on the right track: there's a sneaky shadow a-sneaking about on the roof! Upon jumping up to take a look, he encounters… the spectacular Spider-Man! Well, West Orange is pretty close to Manhattan, it's not out of the question. This was late 2016, so Spidey had just gotten his body back from Doc Ock and Parker Industries had not yet crashed and burned. He also notes it's been a while since he last teamed up with Slapstick, but Slapstick somehow doesn't recognise him at all. J. Jonah Jameson wishes he could be so lucky~

There's a brief fight, but Spidey easily dodges Slapstick's mallet swings, then trips him with a web-line. Slapstick recognises the move as one a buddy of his named Scarlet Spider used to do. Well, his debut was in the early '90s. Spidey's miffed to be compared to his clone, but both of them hunker down and clam up as the real thieves turn up. Slapstick slips off, pulls one of the goons away, and slips into his uniform, which looks ridiculous on his cartoon body. He then leads the rest of the goons into a nearby warehouse. A well-pulled ruse!

Slapstick begins beating up the goons, using their own gunfire to take out several of them. Spider-Man also soon enters, having heard the sound effects of "GUN GUN GUN GUN". No, I'm dead serious. Spidey's kind of appalled at all the blood, wondering what kind of superhero Slapstick is, acting like that. Slapstick is offended as well, being a "superhero" is a childish concept. Their argument doesn't keep up for much longer, as the goons resume shooting. Spidey goes back to non-lethally restraining them, like a loser non-mercenary, and Slapstick peels off to find the stolen loot he was hired to recover.

Down below, he encounters Quasimodo, a low-rent D-list Fantastic Four villain. Picture MODOK, but instead of a giant floating head, he's a hunchback man with He-Man action figure proportions. Ram-Man. Picture Ram-Man with a monocle, if he was in Tron. He also speaks in an incredibly robotic way, doing both the Elcor thing of stating intention before the sentence and using BASIC syntax. Actual dialogue: "10 DECLARE Soon none will dare mock Quasimodo--instead they will think he is hot stuff! 20 DECLARE Many of the Tinder dates will be mine! 30 LOOP Ha ha ha ha ha."

Slapstick leaps in to fight him, mostly to get him to shut up. He has the upperhand for a bit, but Quasimodo does a molecular scan and determines that Slapstick is made of electroplasm. And with that, he determines a particular frequency, firing a laser at Slapstick. He's at first skeptical, because nothing in this dimension has been able to hurt him thusfar. But then his arm actually begins to destabilise and melt. If he wasn't so cartoony, it'd probably be horrific. As it is, it looks mostly like a paint smear. Disturbing, certainly, but not graphic.

However, his arm doesn't totally slough off and dissolve, and Slapstick realises it can't be destabilised any further than it already is. So he uses his messed-up arm as a shield to get in close, then whacks Quasimodo big over the head with his mallet. Soon enough, Spider-Man comes in, having mopped up all the goons. Everything's good down here, too. Spidey reclaims the equipment for Parker Industries, and he splits, glad the team-up is over. Once he's gone, Slapstick lets the other shoe drop: he kept Quasimodo's involvement secret, stashing the villain before Spidey's arrival.

See, Slapstick's reasoned that if Quas here can find a frequency that destabilises his form a bit, perhaps he can find a way to undo it altogether. He's a little tired of being stuck in this form without access to his privates--plus, he still needs his arm restored anyway. But of course, why should a villain like Quasimodo help him? Why should he help any human? That's easy: since the accident, he ain't human. And besides, he doesn't want to imprison or coerce or trap Quas. No, in fact, what he wants is to hire him…

Next day, in New Brunswick, Slapstick does in fact have his arm back in working condition. No cure yet, but I'm sure he's working on it. This also confirms that Slapstick is indeed in his early 20s or 19 at the earliest--he and his buddy Mike are stated to be out of high school. In fact, they're here for a college football game! It's a fictional "New Jersey University", but given that they're in New Brunswick, it's likely a stand-in for Rutgers. Mike's glad things are looking up for Steve. He's hoping to pitch Slapstick's adventures as a graphic novel, and humorously the brief page he shows is in the style of the original 1992 series. Slapstick isn't impressed~

Mike, Slapstick, and his niece and nephew take a seat to watch the game, and the ref calls for mascots to clear the field. However, the brawny figure marching across the field ignores him, instead loudly declaring himself to be Bro-Man, Master of the Multiverse, and here to fight the Princess' champion. Mike muses that the guy looks kind of like Steve, and indeed, he's drawn in a similar flat-coloured thick-outlined style. The comic ends with the other team's mascot comes to clear the guy out, Bro-Man merely pulls out his sword, and gruesomely cleaves the guy in two. He's just another 3D sack of meat, not the champion he seeks…

Well, this is off to a pretty fun start. It's not like we're doing a gritty, dark reimagining or anything here, like I said. We're just contrasting a very silly character with the more realistic world around him--and frankly, he's a little sick of being the silly character, too. Basically it's Who Framed Roger Rabbit if Eddie Valiant was in Roger's body. Really, you can't blame poor Steve for his surly attitude. He got goofy-ass powers that eventually stopped turning off, got drafted into superhero boot camp where his former teammates' names were dragged through the mud (it was a whole thing), joined a mercenary group and then got kicked out of said group, had to move back in with his judgmental parents, and can't satisfy one of his basic needs as a human being--which he doesn't even resemble anymore. He's frustrated, it's understandable! Relatable, even. The violence and blood are a little high, but again, it's just to contrast him with the real world. Any cartoon would survive those injuries! So we'll see just how well he does against Bro-Man next time~

[theparadiseproject]

Trying to get all esoteric like 'well what is a feminist?" He did believe women should vote and was connected to suffragettes and other women empowerment movements that were also NOT called feminist so he obviously would support this entirely different movement that got popular decades later. You can totally say a dead person believes in things he never heard.

He was also a normal guy that believed plenty of ideas that would be at odds with most, if not all, of this movement he was not around to learn about and disagree with but that's not important, in fact, all those opinions and things he supported that go against the movements, especially MY specific variation of this movement, should be erased because he was "wrong" about it being the way to achieve the politics he never gave an inkling of belief that he'd support. In fact all his own interests and what not that were integral to the character are bad and not inline with my specific politics, that he would not only also seemingly develop but even if he didn't he should have, so we should get rid of everything this character about except this aforementioned specific part that was clearly just general progressive and purposefully outlandish, overstated character goals for support for women rights and empowerment that again only exist per a suggestion for people in his life that he cared about and it should be warped into being about my niche political ideology and everything,

Oh she was just meant to be an average representation of an attractive career woman with very specific thematic goals and imagery that are unique to her character and an outlet for her creators interests like most fiction is? no that cant be.

She was meant to just be an average career woman who had mostly progressive american politics surrounded around women doing well in the work force, workers right, democracy, free speech, anti totalitarianism, etc. that was typical for other comic characters at the time? No she's definitely a radical feminist that was meant to represent this entire movement.

She was meant to just be white american woman with a nice figure that appealed to an american audience and modeled after one of her creators lovers that in any other instance I would bring up to boast about how pro my side she is and meant to be a very specific reinvention of a ancient greek myth to fit in the outlandish sci fi world of pulp fiction? No she was actual meant to be a greek woman with bulging muscles and as tall as a tall man that represets the Amazons of myth not whatever her creator made up besides that woman empowerment part that I like because she is a feminist.

She was made to be a normal superhero with a secret id and a love interest and friends and supporting cast? No she is a warrior that does not have a love interest, unless they give her a girlfriend because she cant date men. Her supporting cast is actually these group of characters made for outside comic groups that dont fit her at all and this specific abominable version of the Amazons that are just like the myths but they are feminists now.

What Im not a fan of her? No I am a fan of her, her creator was just too stupid to write her correctly. I know better than him actually, but I'm such a fan of him because he was so quirky but only in a novelty way because he was a perverted weirdo who didn't know how to write a character that represented my specific political interests that he clearly was trying to do decades before they were even made.

No a regular progressive female character is too much to believe in. She cant be that. Just modernizing her for some modern sensibilities that are reflective of the original idea is not enough she needs to represent the most niche of my political movement and look like the most statistically implausible woman to ever exist. No I would never have these expectations of a similar character despite them all somehow being less developed than Wonder Woman was when there creators were around. No I don't think her creators deeply held interest and ideas are integral to the character. Yes obviously she should be about all this stuff I like instead but its because he would have obviously supported it and all the other stuff that goes against what I believe is a mistake he made because he was an evil pervert.

I would never make a new character or attempt to advocate to have characters support my niche politics and interests instead. Its much better and more ethical for me to just take this character that this man made and attempted to protect until he was on his death bed and change it to fit my interest and advocate against anything that would have her be written as intended. Yes I am against corporations perverting art and believe we should respect human work and creation but this time is different because I have a political agenda. So all the good will and fame and the name this man created should be something I get to use to push my own personal politics and desires. No I will not try to make my own art or advocate for other artist to create things I'm interested in instead.

This very progressive character dared to be a bunch of identities that I deem problematic and is only progressive. She should instead be this completely different race of people instead that would still have nothing to do with the US identarian racial political dynamics im applying to the character. She should also represent all these super niche demographics because women are never represented in this most extremely fathomable body types for a woman because the "patriarchy" and not because the likelihood of woman even being this extremely tall with this amount of muscle is just completely unheard of even among the most athletic groups of women on earth.

I do support corporations disrespecting art and artistic integrity and everything the creator put his blood, sweat, and tears in, if it means I get what i want but thats because my politics are right and he was an evil pervert but so quirky i love him for creating this character that I do not like at all in anyway. Yes I should be prioritized over her actual fans and yes you are being unreasonable for finding me unreasonable and extreme and offputting.

[shellheadtm-a]

PRIVATE LIVES OF SUPERHEROES - TONY STARK’S NETFLIX EDITION FEAT. @shieldslinger [TEMPLATE]

[spiltscribbles]

Prompt: Pro Athlete Sirius because that my and Remus' kink

~Notes: OMFG VICTOrIA!!!! I FUCKING SCREECHED!!!! lkadfjlaksdgjoiaejfalskdgjioeugisfkldshg Yes tis my kink as well!!! And then I saw this from Nonny and worlds collided and BOOM! I hope you like this my love<3<3 You incredibly talented sugarplum!!! TBH I want to write a thousand more things in this AU XD

.-

FROM THIS LIST  |  Send Me A Prompt!💜 | A REBLOG MEANS THE GALAXY!!💜

.-

When Remus was young— surrounded by the light breeze of the Welsh coast and the harmony of birds chirping in the distance— he would follow his mother to their small garden behind their cottage  at the cusp of twilight as his father cooked their supper, and he’d watch as she laid flat all sorts of newspapers written in French and Arabic and English, watch as she brought her red pen against the ink and marked the articles with underlines and shorthand he wouldn’t understand for years still.

He asked her once, when he was barely eight years old, why she bothered to keep up with so many different publications, why she read the same story penned by countless perspectives when all the facts stayed the same at the end of the day. And he remembers how she had let out a quick, shrill of a laugh, tossing back her golden head while sucking in a puff from the bubbling hookah she had set up besides her— a habit she acquired from her Algerian, refugee parents, and one that became synonymous to those late nights in Remus’s eyes.

“Facts can be wielded to someone’s personal vendettas, Remus John,” she had crooned in that adoring way of hers whenever she spoke to him— honey eyes that were the same color and shape to Remus’s own flashing alight and their matching smiles going crooked in her stunningly beautiful face. 

“Oh.” Remus had replied, still confused as all get out but was perfectly fine with just holding his small vigil, watching her beneath moonlight and the soft glow of their outdoors lamps, as he listened to the shuffling of papers while she commenced this odd quirk. 

It’s a decade and a half later—  as his editor for the Phoenix, a small, but bustling online editorial that plans on dethroning the likes of Politico and Vox in only a matter of years, scans his latest findings on the corrupt boosters linked to MP Avery from Leeds— when Remus thinks he suddenly understands what his mother, with her keen eyes and pixelated air, had meant by facts in how they can be colored differently simply by the words surrounding them. And he wonders if one day soon, one of his bylines will join her little stack of stories, if she’ll be proud of him even if she says as much even now, when he’s a lost twenty-something stumbling through life in the capitol and barely making it as is, between his actual job and the gig he has at the coffee shop nearest his dingy flat he shares with three other blokes.

“Mmm, this is good, Lupin,” Dorcas declares after what feels like an eon, dropping her long, dark legs from where they were lounging leisurely on her desk and scuffs out her cigarette in a pretty, glass ashtray. “Send it over to Flores to look into deeper, maybe it’ll corroborate the info she’s already gotten from her sources.”

Remus feels himself bristle, hopes that it doesn’t show, that his face stays passive as he contends, “I think I should at least help her write the expose, I’m the one who got this bombshell.”

“That’s not how it works, sweets,” Dorcas toots, tossing back her dark head of curls as she rises, perching on the corner of her desk delicately and looking down, straight into his gaze. “I know it’s frustrating, but you’re fresh blood. barely six months here, but Alice has been with us for years. This is her baby, and we’re just here to nurture it.”

“So I’ll have to wait another ten months, at least,  to get the same treatment?” He argues in an admittedly petulant way, making Dorcas laugh endearingly, and Remus is suddenly,  searingly reminded of his age, and how he’s the youngest staffer that this London based news outlet has on hand. 

“C’mon, love, it won’t be that long for someone as sharp as you, just be patient, and don’t try to pull a Zoe Barnes on us, yeah? You’re far too pretty to clean up on the rails of  the tube.” Dorcas tousles a hand into his dark tawny curls, and Remus holds back the roll to his eyes that he feels willing up inside of him as he stands fully.

“Thanks Cas.”

She smiles beatifically, and throws him a wink. “You’re joining Emmy for the report tomorrow on those United footballers and their fundraiser for the hospital, yeah?”

“Bright and early,” Remus replies, still feels a bit miffed that he was chosen to write up the charity function, considering he doesn’t know a lick about football and doesn’t really get on with anyone who does. But Caradoc— their typical sports reporter— is out sick with the flew, so it’s on him. “I’ll have it on your desk early enough so it’ll be published by tea time.”

“Good man,” Dorcas says in thanks, picking up her crowing cellphone before waving him off.

Remus isn’t all that surprised when he strides out of the office only to find Benjy Fenwick sitting against the opposite wall, knees pressed to his chest and quickly scrambling up when he catches sight of Remus. Sometimes it’s impossible to believe that the bespectacled man in front of him is one of the top editors for the Phoenix, that he’s a regular corespondent for places like the BBC or CNN— that his rebukes against the piss poor inquiries waged during PMQs have become more anticipated than the sessions themselves. Remus tends to forget all of that when he sees him like this, messy haired and wearing a graphic T-shirt with some marvel superhero embossed on the front. “Wotcher Remus.”

“Hiya Remus says, smiling softly and rocking back on his heels. “You wanted to talk to the sergeant then?”

“Huh? Oh, no, no. I didn’t want to talk to Dorcas, I just— Erm, I know you were showing her that stuff you got from that intern, Pettigrew, and i know you were chafed about not getting any opportunity here so—“ He trails off, scratching the back of his head and studying a point over Remus’s shoulder, and it’s all too endearing, and Remus is so beyond thankful he’s made such a good friend here.

“No cigar,” he says in answer to the unspoken question, shrugging noncommittally even if he feels like shit over it.

Benjy nods, face contrite in a way that tells Remus he never thought it would’ve went otherwise. “I’m sorry, that’s bollocks.”

“’S whatever,” Remus shrugs off the apology, begins walking down the hall and straightening his report to hand over to Alice. 

“Ah,, erm. We can get a drink, yeah? In commiseration,” Benjy offers, and Remus stilts only for a beat before continuing the twisting trail to where Alice is set up with the more senior members on staff. And he feels only sorta bad about wanting to refuse. He knows that if he says yes, it’ll mean something different to Benjy than it does him, that he’ll probably take it as Remus finally giving into his pestering and deciding to actually go out with him, even if he’s refuted the other four times he’s asked as much. Remus’s simply just too busy trying to get a footing in this city, and trying to figure out where he’s suppose to go from here, and what he’s suppose to do. And yes, Benjy is cute— a complete Seth Cohen archetype. And he’s sweet and smart and funny enough. But Remus is really not in the mood for doing the whole flowers and wine and candle lit dinners shtick, had gotten enough of that while still with his university boyfriend. And yeah, he’s only just turned 24, but he already feels too old and too jaded for that sort of puppy love— even if Benjy’s got a good decade and some change on him.

Probably sensing his hesitation, Benjy is quick to rectify the offer. “I’ll ask Mary, and Fabian too, and a few others. We can make a night of it, just some drinks on a Friday after work.”

Stalling by the last turn to Alice’s desk, Remus looks at him from over his shoulder, and sort of hates himself for being such a soft hearted fuck sometimes. “Yeah Benj, sounds nice. Just let me know on the group chat, yeah?”

Benjy grins, much more genuine than his awkward quirk of the lips from earlier. “Yeah, good call, I’ll let the others know pronto.”

“Aces,” Remus says, tosses him a obligatory thumbs-up before finding an expectant looking Alice who’s tapping her foot impatiently.

Yeah, today is so bloody shit.

.-

Surprisingly, the round of drinks turns to another and then a third and fourth and Remus is currently nursing his fifth mango margarita on Benjy’s tab, and he actually feels lighter than he has since taking the job at Phoenix, feels bright and bubbling and like absolutely nothing could be wrong as long as he’s got this drink in his grasp and he’s sitting with the handful of reporters and photographers from the office that don’t all have sticks up their asses. It’s fun, it’s good. So obviously it couldn’t have lasted.

Mary is currently cackling about her Uber driver from last night who asked her all sorts of well meaning, but incredibly dense questions about her hijab— a freshly poured glass of coke in one hand, while the other is tangled into her girlfriend Emmy’s. And From his left Remus can hear Fabian ribbing Frank on his crush on Alice, while Benjy scoots intermittently closer as they watch Kingsley and Marlene sparring over something to do with a Kardashian or TikTok trend or whatever the fuck else— The guy has resilience, Remus has to give Benjy that.

“Right, who’s buying next?” Marlene asks, abrasive as ever while scrolling through her phone, ostensively finding something to prove her point against the managing editor.

“Reckon it’s my turn,” Benjy crows, standing up smoothly and glancing down at Remus with a nervous sort of half grin.

“Just a water for me, ta. I need to sober up,” Remus tells him, feels proud that he didn’t even slur slightly. Benjy bobs his head understandingly, and Remus turns to ask Marlene about her latest tinder hookup which always is a good laugh, but then he catches on it. On the sound of the pub’s doors flinging open, followed by a raucous crowd of athletic looking guys probably only a bit older than he is, clambering indoors. 

They’re all so very sixth-form, broad grins and slapping each other’s shoulders with jeers, topped off with loud, bark like laughter that makes it obvious to Remus that these wankers think that they’re some sort of group of gods amongst men, roaming around like everyone should fall to their feet and offer everything they have. It makes Remus roll his eyes so far back that it feels like he might’ve sprained them. They just give off this exhausting aura that reminds him of a past boyfriend in tenth year who was on the footie team and who’s favorite activity was either making Remus feel lucky enough to go out with someone so popular, or dragging him around like some sort of bloody trophy.

To put it nicely, Remus sorta hates them on sight. So when he sees one of the tossers— regrettably the brightest of the lot who’s all pearly teeth, and glittering eyes and incredibly impressive shoulders that tape off to a narrow waste in an objectively infuriating matter— swivels up to the barkeep and jostles Benjy on his way, well Remus doesn’t hesitate to dart forwards to tell him off.

“Oi, watch where you’re going, yeah?”

Benjy and the bloke who looks like he might moonlight as a model for Calvin briefs for when he’s not lounging in a yacht off the Tuscany coast, both turn to him at the same time. Benjy looking abashed, and the aforementioned tosser preening like the cat who’s just caught a canary.

“Sorry, love. Didn’t see you there,” he says in a delightfully deep tenner, giving Remus an appreciative once over, and Remus absolutely despises how the action makes him feel both thrilled and irritated. “Trust and believe, I wouldn’t have looked away if I saw you.”

“Not me, arse.” Remus spits back, refuses to pay any credence to how his cheeks have begun to flush. “You bumped into my mate right there, the one with the tray of loggers.”

The tosser darts his almost molten gray eyes over to Benjy for a sparing second before he laser focusses back onto Remus, the most phony expression of contrition all over his face. “Sorry to your friend,” he says the descriptor like a joke that no one else is in on. “Let me buy you a drink in sorry for the one I made slim here spill.”

Remus is officially unimpressed, hopes that his flat tone gets it across. “You’re an arse.”

“You’re mouthy,” he retorts, looks like it’s something he greatly appreciates— delights over even. 

“Ah, ’s fine Remus, really. I’ll just bring these back and get us a new glass.”

“Listen to slim, Remus, he’s got the right idea.” The tosser hurriedly interjects, strutting close enough to him that he makes it so Remus has to tip his head back just slightly so not to drop his gaze. “I’m Black, Sirius Black, just to get the pleasantries out of the way.” His leer tells Remus that the name should probably evoke some response of aw into Remus, but all it does is make him sound so egregiously pretentious that Remus wants to smack his own bloody head against a dry wall and stay in the hole until this ruddy Sirius bloke leaves him the hell alone.

“Good for you,” he says instead of all of that, and spots Sirius’s friends from behind Sirius chuckling and elbowing one another. Evidently this is a line the tosser uses frequently, and Remus is pleased that he might be one of the first who aren’t at all impressed by the grandiose way he introduced himself.

“Hah, you know I’m use to the pretty ones playing hard to get, but I’m really feeling here that you’re not exactly liking my company, love.”

Remus sucks in a frustrated breath through his nose, shouldering past Sirius and taking the tray of drinks from Benjy before storming back to their table where the others have begun openly gawping at the scene— Marlene outright squawking with Fabian just as Remus takes his seat.

“Don’t,” Remus warns them all as he silently says fuck off to the water and instead gargles down one of the loggers. And if he has to steadfastly not turn around for the rest of the night towards where he can feel Sirius’s gaze burning into his back— well then so be it.

.-

The next morning, Remus has to puke twice into the toilet, and gulps down three aspirins just to stave off his bloody hangover from the night before where he decided that getting properly sloshed would prove as a good technique to not end up making out with Sirius in some dark corner— or regrettably the backseat of his car. And if he does still remember flashes of ranting to him about how insufferable preppy, rich boys actually are while Sirius gazed at him endeared— well Remus just decides to purge it out along with the stomach acid. It’s not like he’ll ever see the douche again.

.-

He meets Arthur— one of the accountants who also helps out by taking photos for more low key news stories— outside the hospital where the conference will be taking place with the Manchester United team. There was a scrimmage that they all played with some of the kids in the cancer ward that occurred at around eight in the ruddy morning, but thankfully Remus didn’t have to show up until an hour later when the team presented their big shiny check, to the big, shiny hospital. 

However, Arthur has been here for hours, so he’s beyond chirpy and looks like he’s downed three cups of espresso as he chatters on about his son Percy starting secondary school, and his eldest, Bill, getting an award for his reading prowess, and all the strange craving his wife has been having throughout her pregnancy with the twins they’re expecting any week now. And Remus loves Arthur, he does— one of the sweetest folks he’s ever met— but God, his head is still thrumming from those misguided tequila shots and he really just wants to get his three quotes, and write up the story so he can find refuge back in his sheets.

While Arthur has moved to talking about his wife, Molly’s, plans to open up a daycare in their refurnished garage, Remus scans his eyes over the familiar face of reporters from other outlets who look just as bored as him, and then to the stage where a woman in a sharply pressed suit is ushering for the group of football stars to join her, so that the conference can finally fucking begin. 

And Remus thinks that their faces are sorta familiar, probably from all the publicity they get on the telly— but then he freezes as he stops at one of them with dark brown skin, and thick rimmed spectacles— and he suddenly can hear him chatting about his redheaded girlfriend and drunkenly declaring that she’ll be the mother of his children some day soon. So he completely expects it when his stomach drops as he moves his glance just a bit to the right, being struck by pearly teeth, and glittering eyes and incredibly impressive shoulders that tape off to a narrow waste, made all the more infuriating by the tight kit he’s got on and the blazing number twelve splayed against his chest.

And fuck.

Remus runs through about a dozen scenarios in which he can make a discrete, or not so discrete exit before he notices him, but in tandem to his spiraling thoughts, the wanker actually looks forwards, and like a creepy metal detector, his quick silver gaze pinpoints onto Remus.

They stare at one another for a beat before his smirk goes wolfish, and he runs a hand through his artfully tousled hair in a way that practically screams, fancy meeting you here. And holy fuck he looks so mouth watteringly attractive with that faint film of sweat running down his neck, and how his smile pulls slightly more to the left, and how he’s looking at Remus like he’s his birthday and Christmas presents all rolled into one.

Remus suddenly hates everything— but most of all hates Sirius, and how bloody fit he is.

“Oh, you’re a fan then?” 

Starting, Remus shifts around slightly so that he’s facing Arthur completely. “Pardon?”

“Sirius Black I mean, you’re a fan?” Arthur asks in that abrasively congenial and intensely scrutinizing way that he treats everything. “I mean he’s a great player, but I know you don’t really watch. So I bet it’s all that charity work he does, yeah?”

“Charity work?” Remus echos, feeling like a floundering fish.

“Truly some amazing stuff.” Arthur pontificates, rubbing a hand against his jaw as he tips his head back. “I mean obviously I’m partial to the fundraising for Reporters Without Borders, but of course the things he does with the more impoverished kids is great. And I know Molly likes his very outspoken posts about being anti war and his annual live streams to earn money for refugees in those war torn nations, like the last one he did for Syria?”

“Oh—“ Remus says, feeling like his head is being overrun by a fountain of new information.

“Yes well, you don’t usually see athletes get into the thick of it with political issues, but I reckon he never really minded. I mean the fact he’s the first football star from United to have come out without any fanfare really proved that. Oh, I think they’re starting, I should probably get some photos before Dorcas gives me a tongue lashing.”

And as quick as the flash of his camera’s lends, Arthur is using his considerable height to get to a more advantageous spot towards the front, and leaves Remus in the dust, as if he hasn’t just obliterated his every assumption of Sirius from after that initial meeting.

And unbidden, the words his mother had told him so many years ago, about facts and how they can color a situation just simply based off the person who’s speaking them— flood to the forefront of his mind.

“Fucking hell,” Remus mutters lowly, gets jostled by Greengrass, a hawkish reporter from a rivaling publication who always has on the most wickedly sharp acrylic nails, and perfectly quaffed curls— as she waves around her certification to speak her inquiry.

“My question is for Potter,” she announces when the woman leading the event, McGonagall, points her way. “And I was wondering how early you boys have to rise for training during the season? And how intense the sessions are that Coach Hooch puts you guys through?”

Potter, the one with the redheaded girlfriend that Remus heard so much about last night between his ranting at Sirius, parts his lips, but it’s not his voice that ends up reverberating through the outdoors space. Instead, it’s Sirius, who’s shouldering him with a goading air, obviously expecting his comment to have only ended up in Potter’s ear and not caught by the mike.

“I wonder if Lupin will let me wake up with’m so he can let me get some real training done before practices, eh?”

And just as soon as his words pitter off, the entire crowd drops to a hush— quiet enough so that they could probably hear it if a pen dropped. 

Sirius’s handsome face— strong jawline, and broad but sharp cheekbones, and a long, narrow nose— goes suddenly ashen, and he flashes over to Remus as if he’s terrified that he’ll bite his face off.

God, what an idiot.

With a long suffering sigh, Remus plucks out the microphone from a slack faced Greengrass’s hand. “We can discuss the regimen afterwards, Black. Just meet me by the front doors and let your mate answer the bloody question.”

Everyone around them falls into laughter that’s caught between uncomfortable chuckles and amazingly amused cackling, but the only person Remus is paying any mind is Sirius, and how he seems to have gone absolutely incandescent, nodding electrically before miming the zip of his lips and gesturing for Potter to carry on.

Jesus help him, Remus has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.

.-

~My Wolfstar FIC Masterlist

~Buy Me A Coffee 

[maxwell-grant]

Is it weird that your article on the Grand Guignol (sp?) made me think of that Peter Chushing quote about how, he doesn't think of the films he's famous for as horror, but rather as fantasy, and that he tends to see crime and war movies as more deserving of the moniker?

Strangely, I wasn't aware of this before, so I'm pasting some of the quotes he's had to say on this below so others can read them in full as well:

“It isn’t that I object to it. I just feel it’s the wrong adjective as applied to the films I do. Because horror to me is, say, a film like The Godfather. Or anything to do with war, which is real and can happen, and unfortunately, no doubt, will happen again some time. But the films that dear Christopher Lee and I do are really fantasy. And I think fantasy is a better adjective to use. I don’t object to the term horror, it’s just the wrong adjective!”

“I don’t really care for the adjective “horror”. I think the films are fantasy as much as anything. Horror is concentration camps, war, murder, real things. It’s car accidents and plane crashes.”

[regarding the fan mail he was getting] “What they say in their letters is that the horror films of today, they repel you and you’re sickened. And the Hammer ones that we did make you shiver and shake and cuddle each other to feel comforted, but they never repelled.

And that is, I think, frightfully interesting coming from young people who must be so immune now to seeing these terrible things on the news – football fights and Ireland and South Africa – it’s just dreadful, isn’t it. One has become so used to that as part of everyday life that I think watching a Dracula picture made 25 years ago must be rather like watching Noddy in Toyland.”

I think this is an interesting example of how sometimes opposite truths can exist at the same time. I have questioned myself quite a bit on just how much "horror" does a fantasy narrative need to have before it changes it's genre label from "fantasy" to "horror". And I've come to learn a lot recently just how fluid, ambiguous and debatable the very concept of "genre" is and how it's hardly even consistent within itself globally or historically.

On one hand, obviously the films Mr Cushing's been a part of are called horror films because they are part of the horror genre as it's been defined, and I don't think anyone's going to stop calling Dracula a horror story anytime soon, and of course horror and fantasy are not mutually exclusives. A horror story doesn't stop being a horror story just because you are not affected by what it's depicting, just as a comedy doesn't stop being a comedy because you don't find it funny. Mary and Max and Texas Chainsaw Massacre are two incredibly different movies that both shook me deeply on a first watch, and Mary and Max's material affected me much more deeply, but that doesn't mean I'm going to call it a horror film even if it did horrify me much more than Texas Chainsaw (Mary and Max is a genuinely incredible film, to be clear, but I never want to see it again)

But on the other hand, horror is a catch-all label that frays and tears at the seams the more you look at it, and he's right that the label in itself is just an adjective often tacked to pretty straightforward fantasy stories that happen to revolve around monsters and murderers and whatnot. And he's absolutely right that there's a world of difference between horror in fiction through fantasy, and horror in fiction through depictions of real, stark things we can call "horrors", and that this separation is incredibly important.

I'm thinking back to Bogleech's review of It: Chapter Two where he briefly touched on why the film's usage of homophobia for a scare was crude and misguided and tonally at odds with what the rest of the film, and the horror genre, strives for:

Some people with innocent enough intention will say that the shock and horror of the sequence is a good thing; that the audience should be disgusted by what they see happen here, which is certainly true. They might also point out that being horrified is exactly what you pay for when you go to see a horror movie, and that the scene gives context to the nature of a town possessed by pure evil.

There is, however, a very big difference between a spooky, imaginary boogiemonster and a regular, realistic hate crime. The boogiemonster is an entertaining, exciting kind of horror because it isn't real. The hate crime is something that could really happen to someone walking in and out of that same movie theater that same night, which is not the fun, entertaining or cool kind of scary. Killing off gay people is also nothing new to the horror genre at all, and there's a point at which it stops feeling like a social message and starts feeling more like a cheap prop, like the dog or cat you know is only present so we'll get to see how mean the villain really is.

Don't get me wrong, there have been horror narratives that explored the subject of hatred quite well, but it ISN'T ever explored any further here. In fact, it's never mentioned again and leaves no impact on the storyline other than the fact that it is how Mike discovers that IT has returned. Almost anything could have served this purpose, and the scene is even stripped of additional context and relevance it had in the novel. Ultimately, it just feels poorly handled, overshadows the rest of the film's horror, and didn't do much to really move the narrative forward.

And I can speak from experience that I've definitely seen and met way too often people who don't quite know how to tell the difference and it shows, it really shows in a way that doesn't just cheapens the works they are making but also makes them more, I guess the word I'd use is "childish", like it's coming from a deep lack of understanding or reference point or even a desire to further understand what exactly the things being depicted are or why they are terrible or why they affect people so deeply, the kind of stuff that, if you've lived through or seen or bonded with people who've been through them, kinda bleeds through your art even when you don't intentionally set out to portray them.

And to an extent I think that's where Peter Cushing's coming from, as someone who did indeed experience great horror and tragedy, who lived through the Great Depression and both World Wars and the Korean War and lost the love of his life when he was 48, and made a career playing villains, of course he's gonna look at the word "horror" applied to what he's doing and think that it's not at all horror, that's not what horror looks like to him.

But, to an extent, that's also a big part of what horror is supposed to do in the first place, as a distraction from the horrors of reality, a mirror upon said horrors, and an outlet for the experiencing of emotions attached to tragedy and horror, but nobody's getting hurt and you can get something out of it without having to live through it. It's a deeply, deeply important thing regardless of what you call it.

And I'm starting to wonder if, in the future, labels like "horror", "fantasy", "pulp" and "superhero" aren't going to fray and lose meaning further and further until we have to start coming up with new ones to retroactively define history through, something we already do, and even myself am guilty of.

So I guess it's not impossible that Cushing's going to have been ultimately right in his assessment.

[flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash]

Suit Up

Summary: Tony wearing the suit just really does it for ya...and he’s noticed.

Characters: Tony Stark x female reader

Words: 3,154

Author’s Note: Yea, that’s right, I fell down the Marvel hole. I tried to avoid it as long as I could, but in the end, I had to admit defeat.

Warnings: explicit smut, explicit language, uh...is suit porn a warning?

The coffee machine gurgled as you stood at the mansion’s vast kitchen counter, eyes glued on the wall-mounted TV screen. The newscaster was debriefing viewers on Iron Man’s latest victory, how he had saved dozens from an armed-robbery hostage situation at one of the largest banks in the city. Everyone had gotten out safely, the bad guys were all in cuffs, and the news outlets had a breaking story to keep them busy for the day. Adoring fans took turns gushing into the journalist’s mic about the famed superhero, making the side of your lips quirk up a bit in pride. 

The moment was then ruined by a high-pitched whooshing sound overhead, signaling Tony’s return. You winced at the chaotic bang of him crashing through walls and falling down into the lab, followed by muffled yelling and cursing. 

“Every single time,” you muttered with a shake of your head, not even wanting to know what expensive piece of equipment he had probably just destroyed with his graceful landing.

Grabbing two mugs out of the cupboard, you took your time filling them with the freshly brewed coffee and adding the appropriate amounts of cream and sugar to each one. Taking a deep breath, you picked up the cups and reluctantly headed downstairs to assess the damage. 

Sure enough, the debris was still settling, clouds of freshly-startled dust particles floating through the air as you descended the steps. Tony was currently out of view, but you could hear the heavy metal footsteps of the suit as he strode around while barking orders to FRIDAY. 

You and Tony had been dating for a while now, and the past few months had found you spending more nights here with him, rather than at your own apartment. No one had been more shocked by the relationship than you, especially since your initial assessment of the older and richer man was that he was well-aware of, and confident in, his place in the world. A man who knew his own worth and...oh, to heck with sugar coating it. You had initially thought he was a prime asshole, with a capital A. 

It wasn’t until your social circles kept throwing you into each other’s paths that you started to learn about the man beyond the narcissistic exterior. Sure, he was eccentric and an arrogant jerk at times, but he was also attentive and caring when he wanted to be. Once he realized you weren’t sticking around for his money or to grace his bed for a night or two, he showcased a loving side of himself behind closed doors that the rest of the world wouldn’t guess existed. 

And the sex. Dear god, the sex! Your breath sped up a bit just thinking about last night’s escapades, at how he had edged you until you were a begging, writhing mess beneath him, before sending you over the cliff and making you come again and again...and again. 

He had quickly awakened a side of you that had previously lain dormant, making it his personal mission to discover all your secret fantasies and make them a glorious reality. Tony was a kinky motherfucker, and as it turned out, so were you. And yet, there was still one fantasy that you had hidden from him, one you tried to keep buried way down deep and struggled not to let show. 

At the bottom of the stairs, you passed through his extensive security measures and stepped into the gigantic lab, rounding a corner towards the sound of grumbling. Tony turned around at the sound of your approach, still fully encased in the suit. The coffee cups almost fell out of your hand when the aforementioned hidden fantasy locked glowing eyes on you from across the room. Legs now quivering, you continued into the lab and shakily set the mugs down onto a nearby workstation. 

Oh, had you forgotten to mention? Yea, the suit was your fantasy. 

More precisely, Tony in the suit was your fantasy. You weren’t sure when exactly this kink had started, but you had been strangely attracted to him wearing the Iron Man suit for a while now, and didn’t know how to make it go away. 

Part of the appeal was the psychological symbol of all it stood for: peace and safety for those who hadn’t previously known such luxuries. There was so much power in that symbol, not to mention the physical prowess Tony had while wearing it. The virtually-indestructible superhero strength alone was enough to make your panties wet. 

Then there was the design of the suit itself. Sleek, strong lines of metal that were shaped into the form of a man, yet also...it was just not human enough to make you shiver in a way that had utterly shocked you the first time it happened. The robotic mask with its stern-set mouth and glowing eyes sent a tingle of fear down your spine whenever they focused in your direction, but the fact that you knew it was Tony under there also gave that fear and intimidation an edge of desire. And it wasn’t just the aesthetic of the suit that attracted you, but how Tony acted when buried within its grasp. He strode with arrogant claim into whatever arena he wore it, the power and confidence he exuded plain for all to see. And whether from the suit itself or the result of the authority he claimed while wearing it, the glistening gold mask also projected a slightly deeper, grittier version of his typical voice, one that could have you flat on your back and begging within seconds.

That same voice was now speaking in your direction, causing sweat to form on the back of your neck...and was followed by the snap of metal fingers inches from your face, jolting you out of the daydream you had been slipping into. Shit! You realized that he had been trying to get your attention for God knows how long, while you stood there practically drooling on yourself while fantasizing about him. 

Real smooth, you have the ‘keep this fantasy to yourself’ routine down so well, you internally admonished. 

Clearing your throat and wiping sweaty palms down denim-clad hips, you asked, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Trying to act unaffected, you gave Tony what was hopefully a calm smile.

“I asked if that was coffee,” he said, the suit staring at you so intensely that it almost made your brain go offline again. 

“Yep, sure is!” you responded with an unnecessary amount of exuberance, mentally kicking your ass all over the lab for acting like a fool. 

He stalked over to the workstation to pick up a mug, and you couldn’t prevent the loud inhale, body frozen to attention, as he strode closer until he was well within your personal space. The mask fell away long enough for him to lift the coffee cup and take a sip, and in that moment, he locked eyes onto you with a knowing gleam, before the mask closed back up and he returned the mug to the table.

He knew.

Needing to get out of there, to get far enough away to calm your racing heart and panting breaths, you turned and started speed walking towards the staircase. You barely made it two steps before an unyielding metal hand wrapped around your bicep and twirled you back into the suit’s massive form. Pushing your free hand against the sleek chest of alloy was futile, as Tony herded you backwards until your lower back bumped up against the workstation. 

Goosebumps broke out along your arms when he leaned down, that glowing gaze inches from your face. Unable to stand their intensity, you closed your own eyes tight, a whimper escaping parted lips when a thick metal thigh pushed between your legs, effectively pinning you in place. Then that voice came from right above you, offering the choice of ecstasy or escape.

“Do you want me to stop?”

The logical part of your brain screamed at you to say yes, to get the hell out of there before this went too far down a path from which you couldn’t retreat. But the other part...the one that had touched yourself to the fantasy of this very scenario more times than you cared to admit...that part was begging you to give in.

Suddenly, strong fingers gripped your chin and jerked it upwards, startling your eyes into flying open and locking onto that captivating gaze. 

“I asked a question, sweetheart. Now, use your words and give me an answer.”

Licking dry lips, you stared up at him in fascinated arousal and whispered, “No.”

Head tilting slightly to the side, the grip on your chin didn’t let up. “Sorry, I don’t think I heard you properly. Try again.” 

“N-no,” you said, voice louder but still shaky. “Don’t stop.”

As if that was all he needed to let loose, the hand at your chin fell down to join the other at your hips, fingers bunching into the hem of your shirt and jerking it up over your head. He didn’t even bother to unhook your bra, just used the suit’s strength to rip it right down the front and toss it to the side. You moaned at the sensation of your nipples pebbling into tight points against the smooth red and gold chest, his unyielding thigh still pressing up against the crotch of your jeans. 

You yelped in surprise when one of his large arms swept out behind you, knocking both the coffee cups and assorted bits of lab equipment off the workstation. You barely registered the sound of breaking glass, head spinning when he lifted you up on the edge of the flat surface as if you weighed less than a feather. Leaning back onto slightly unsteady hands, you watched as he flicked the button of your jeans open and jerked them down your thighs, followed quickly by your panties being torn off, leaving you naked before him.

There were so many unique sensations, coupled with the knowledge that one of your wettest fantasies was about to come true, that your body felt overloaded to the point where you were already squirming restlessly and on the verge of begging. He groaned at the sight, powerful fingers gliding down your waist and suddenly squeezing into your hip so tightly that you gasped at the pain. “Careful,” you whispered.

The fingers lessened, but only by a hair. “I wouldn’t hurt you, sweetheart. At least-” He cocked his head consideringly, “-not more than you’d enjoy.” 

At that, the cool metal fingers drifted down so that both hands grabbed your ass roughly, making you groan and jolt forward as he stepped fully between your thighs and pulled you in against him. The length of him towered above you, both overwhelming and arousing in its reminder of how helpless you were against him...of how much you wanted to be taken.

The fingers of one hand glided up the front of your stomach, their surface so smooth compared to Tony’s rough, work-calloused hands. They circled your breast lovingly for a few moments before changing pace and pinching your nipple hard enough to make you whine. The entire time those slitted, glowing eyes fixed intently on your face, measuring your reaction to each touch.

A sudden cry broke from your throat at the shocking feel of cool metal between your thighs, his other hand palming your cunt before dipping a finger inside and giving a few experimental strokes. Your head fell back between your shoulders at the deliciously taboo feel of him adding a second thick finger, thighs widening and hips arching upwards with invitation. He fucked you steadily, obscene noises emerging from both your mouth and cunt as his fingers scissored to stretch you out in preparation for his cock.

You groaned in disappointment when the fingers slipped away just as your orgasm was building to a peak. Your head lifted to voice a protest that quickly died, eyes widening when you caught sight of the large metal erection that was now hanging between the suit’s legs. Licking suddenly dry lips, you stared at the thick appendage in awe and said, “I don’t remember that being a feature of the suit.” 

He pulled you down the table until your ass hung off the edge, supported only by his hands. “It’s a new edition I added, just for you.”

Your face must’ve showcased your thoughts, because he gave a dark chuckle that caused an answering pulse in your cunt. “Oh honey, did you really think I haven’t noticed how wet you get for Iron Man?”

You should’ve felt embarrassed, should’ve given some sassy retort. Instead, you gave an undignified whimper and arched instinctively into him when the stiff tip of his metal cock bumped into your clit before lining up at your dripping entrance. 

Your mesmerized gaze was transfixed on the sight of him entering you, hands coming up to grip at the unyielding shoulders for stability as he opened you up with slow, steady thrusts. Gasping at the initial contrast of cool metal invading wet heat, your flesh quickly warmed him up and adjusted to the unyielding shape. He was buried so deep that you almost couldn’t breathe, making you feel utterly dominated by his large form. 

Clenching your hip with one hand, he braced the other one flat on the table before drawing his hips back, cock sliding slowly out before a quick snap of his hips slammed it back in. The movement was unexpectedly intense, Tony having underestimated the suit’s thrusting power, and you cried out at the burst of pain-edged pleasure. He immediately froze, so attuned to your body after months of learning what each noise and response meant to know that he had pushed a bit close to your limits.

“Shit, sorry,” he whispered huskily. 

It took a few seconds to catch your breath, but then you let out a breathy giggle to let him know it was okay. 

“Guess there’s a learning curve to fucking in this thing,” you teased, rolling your hips to let him know it was okay to continue.

“Guess it’s a good thing that I’m a genius,” he grunted with another thrust on the last word, this one less harsh but still deep enough to make you hiss and dig your nails against the inflexible crimson shoulders. 

He continued that way for a few minutes, driving into you with just enough force to tinge the building pleasure with a tiny bite of pain. You reveled in it, in the way it made you feel claimed and his. 

He suddenly straightened to his full height, causing your hands to slip back to the table for balance. His hands slid up to grab your ankles, anchoring your weight on them and spreading your thighs wide as he powered his hips in a deep, steady rhythm. That stern face stared down at you, and his strong grip left you powerless to do anything other than lay there and accept his unrelenting thrusts. Looking down, you gave a guttural moan at the sight of your juicing glistening along his metal cock, at how your pussy wrapped around his girth and accepted him over and over. 

“You love this, don’t you?” he taunted. “Next time you see Iron Man on TV saving someone, all you’re gonna be able to think about is how it feels to fuck him.”

The words ramped up your pleasure, sweat dripping down your temples as you lowered to your back on the workstation and moaned underneath that glowing gaze. And just when you didn’t think the situation could get more intense, another little attachment popped out of an unidentified portion of the suit. It was a small, smooth cylinder, and you watched with curiosity as it drifted down between your legs and...landed directly on your clit...and started vibrating. Hard. 

Keening at the sudden stimulation, you unsuccessfully tried to squirm away from the intense vibrations of the device. But the hands at your ankles and cock in your cunt kept you locked in place, forcing you to accept the overwhelming sensations. The pressure between your legs became almost unbearable, warmth suffusing your body as muscles tightened with impending climax.

“Yes, that’s it. Come all over this cock. It was made for you, now use that pretty pussy to make it yours.”

That was the final push you needed, the combination of the powerful thrusts, vibrations, and filthy words igniting the match of your orgasm, and the sparks crackled out from between your legs to engulf your entire body in flames. 

He didn’t stop, riding you through the pleasure until your legs were shaking so hard it was a wonder he didn’t lose his grip. Nails clawed at the smooth surface of the workstation as you cried out his name over and over, until the orgasm died down to simmering embers and your voice lowered to a whimper. 

Only then did he slow his movements, decreasing the pace until he came to a stop deep inside you, the clit vibe retreating into the suit as your walls continued to clench with aftershocks around the thick metal cock. When your thighs had stopped quivering and your eyes went from glazed to able to focus on him, he slowly pulled out, drawing one last full-body shudder out of you, as if your body couldn’t help but protest the loss.

He pushed you up the table so that your hips could rest on the edge, legs dangling lifelessly over the side as you laid there panting, unable to summon the energy to move. Leaning over you, the front part of the mask parted and Tony’s face came into view for the first time since he’d taken that single sip of coffee. His pupils were dilated and mouth slightly parted with his heavy breathing. When he leaned down to kiss you, your arms found the strength to lift and wrap around his neck, a spark of renewed desire igniting in your belly at the hungry way he laid claim to your mouth using lips, teeth, and tongue. 

You gave a little squeal of surprise when you were suddenly lifted off the table and into the suit’s arms. Striding through the lab, he beelined for the staircase. You looked up at him in question, and he curled up the sides of his lips in that trademark Stark smirk. 

“Iron Man had his turn fucking you in the lab. Now, it’s my turn to fuck you in our bed.” 

Suddenly losing patience with the boringly human method of walking, he used the suit to lift off the ground and fly up the stairs to the bedroom. When there, he proceeded to remind you that, while the suit was a fantastic sexual fantasy, it could never compare to the love of the man who wore it.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Forever tag list (if y’all want off just let me know): 

@hannibalssweaters @strangersangel9 @bamby0304 @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan  @wheresthekillswitch @ericuhlorain @foofyschmoofer @magpiegirl80 @efeysa @peachtickler69 @supernaturally-lucky @favs-imagines @multireality @twdncgan @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @yuuki1000may-blog @crzcorgi @sunriserose1023 @breakfast-of-a-teenage-killer @winchesterswoonathon @is-this-you-manning-up-sammy @vizhi0n @kellyn1604 @embracetheapocalypsewithme @backseat-negan @opheliadawnwalker3 @superprincesspea @beltz2016 @amethyst-dreams-and-candy-canes @letsby @jobean12-blog @readsalot73 @reclusive-cat-lady @girlwiththepapatattoo @nerdstackular @thatprettymvthafvcka @sarcasm-is-my-native-tounge 

Others who showed interest in this: @opheliadawnwalker3 @risingphoenix761 @megmeg-chan @eleanor-gillespie @retroxvailles @trinittyy​

[nobodyfamousposts]

Mominette AU: The Superhero Ban

TRIGGER WARNING!

TRIGGER WARNING!

TRIGGER WARNING!

___________________________________________

It was an indisputable fact that Paris had been the first city to institute the infamous “Supers Ban”. The Justice League knew it. Heroes knew it. Villains knew it. The whole world knew it.

What nobody knew was “why”.

Sure, there had been comments in political circles. Some minor news outlets had mentioned Paris as the latest place where the idea was being considered. But nobody had thought they were serious.

Not until it had been made into law and the Mayor of Paris held a press conference to announce it.

Those who didn’t take it seriously certainly did when Superman himself attempted to go to the Mayor to discuss the matter. And was promptly arrested the instant he set foot in the city.

Outrage was immediate. Cries of discrimination rang out across the world and even at the UN. Various politicians decried the act. Many celebrities admonished it. A good number of people threatened to boycott Paris (which turned out to be for the best as far as Andre and most of Paris was concerned, given that a decrease in tourism meant less people for Hawk Moth to target or the heroes to have to pull out of the fray due to gawking).

Yet a year passed and the ban remained. Even the League would not cross it. Eventually, it just became an accepted fact of the world. Everyone knew to stay out of Paris.

And yet it was still unknown as to why.

Well, people suspected, of course. There were other things happening around the time that seemed to be involved.

It possibly started with the 12 hour timeframe where all of Paris had been closed off. Its citizens had been forced to evacuate. All communication lines were down, and no one from outside of the city had been able to contact anyone from within it. It was news stations in nearby cities that picked up on the fighting and tried to report it, but only several hours after it had started and they seemed to play it off as some sort of freak lighting storm.

Afterwards, things had been strange, but also easily overlooked. The Ladyblogger had gone dark for a several day period. Similarly, the regular correspondent for Paris News, Nadja Chamack had taken a leave of absence. Resident hero Chat Noir had suddenly gotten involved in matters with City Hall, resulting in talk of the hero going into a career in politics. “Chat Noir for President” became a short-lived meme.

It all appeared to come down to a specific “incident”. An akuma fight worse than any other before it. But no one would speak of it. And no information about it was available.

Except for one thing.

There were reports of the existence of video footage of the fight. The Ladyblog had supposedly crashed during a livestream of the mess due to the number of people watching it. Plenty of news reports during that time referenced it. It was rumored to have been played before the city council, resulting in unanimous support of the ban. But what was on the video remained a mystery and any remnant of the video itself couldn’t be found.

Which shouldn’t be possible with the internet. Conspiracy theories abound on the matter—some saying there was no footage in the first place and others saying it was so horrible as to have been erased by time traveling aliens.

In truth, it was the work of a hacker. One of considerable skill to wipe out any trace of this video and not be discovered. There were people willing to pay millions just for a segment of the footage. Plenty of hackers across the world had tested their skills to find even a trace of the original video to no avail.

These other hackers were not Robin.

“I got the footage.” He announced as he held up the USB drive.

Superbly started in surprise, staring at the item in the Boy Wonder’s hand. “This is it?”

“Supposedly.” Robin replied with a shrug.

The Holy Grail of hidden data. A hacker’s ultimate prize. Every journalist and tabloid reporter’s wet dream.

“I haven’t watched it myself,” as he felt it wasn’t his right to intrude on this when it was an issue of his friend’s family, “so I don’t know what’s on there. But whatever’s in this, it’s safe to say it isn’t going to be pretty.”

That was putting it lightly. The video had been so deeply hidden that it was its own urban legend at this point. The incident it showed was bad enough to not only warrant it being hidden from the world, but to set off the “Paris Supers Ban” and arrest of Superman.

The death of a hero was always big news. Even if it’s only barely avoided.

The fact that anyone could HIDE it spoke volumes. Both in regards to the original censor’s ability as well as the importance of the data itself.

Conner nodded, resolute.

“I need to know.”

Robin handed over the device. He probably should have taken it to Batman…probably. But this was Conner’s case. His family. It was his right to decide what to do with the information.

Ladybug and Chat Noir were…accepting of Conner to say the least. They allowed him to enter Paris despite the ban. They let him help. They were kind and accommodating and quite frankly everything that Conner needed.

But…they weren’t exactly open. Not about certain things.

This was one of those things, and Conner had been wanting answers about the “Incident” that cut Paris off from the Superhero world. What made them finally say “enough”? He would ask, but nobody knew. The few who did know refused to speak of it.

Conner wanted to know why. What had they experienced that was so horrible?

Maybe it was a way of feeling closer to them?

Maybe it was a way to understand them better?

Maybe it was just wanting to see the harder things they had faced?

“We’ll be right here with you, Conner.” Wally reassured him when his hands started to shake.

“Remember, you’ll have full access of the gym and training grounds, but you won’t be allowed to leave the Mountain for 24 hours after this.” Kaldur gently stated. Partly to remind Conner of the agreement, lest he attempt to run off to Paris in anger or fear and risk an akuma. Partly to subtly prompt everyone else to ensure that Conner does not accomplish the former.

Still…the choice was already clear.

Conner put the drive into the computer and pressed play.

The video only lasted a few minutes.

A few minutes was more than enough.

_______________________

“Oh…oh my god.” Came the words of the person recording, her voice as shaky as her hands that held the camera.

The damage was…extensive. Rubble, broken glass, and downed buildings littered the background. There was a sad mix of gray and brown as far as the eye could see. Of the destroyed roads and pavement. Of steel beams littering the ground. Of rock and dirt and what may very well have been ash.

Amidst the ruined landscape, there was one spot of color. A bright red standing out amidst the muted neutral around her. Normally a source of bravery and inspiration, it took a few seconds for the camera to get her properly in focus, and a few more for it to register that there was significantly more red in the scene than there should have been.

Ladybug wasn’t standing so much as she was leaning backwards in a half-upright position. Forced to stay on her legs despite her clear lack of strength. The only thing holding her up were the very things responsible for her current state…three steel spikes that extended from the ground beneath her.

They were exiting her torso. One piercing the upper left part of her body, right close to her shoulder. One through her naval. And the third on the right side, for all purposes appearing to have hit a lung.

She was breathing, though it was clearly labored. She was constantly torn between some variation of taking a gasping breath in and crying it out. Her suit could protect her—it was supposed to protect her from anything, but even this was too much.

It was clear she couldn’t move. She had to remain there, impaled on steel. Both to limit her injuries as much as possible and just due to inability from the sheer pain she was in.

The camera was focused on her, though it was shaky at best. The person recording it could be heard muttering unintelligibly with some mention of a hospital and frequent repetition of “oh god” thrown in. Some noise could be heard in the background of someone sounding quite ill, which was understandable given the sight of their hero impaled and choking on her own blood.

Within a minute of the video starting, the crunching sound of boots running on glass and stones could be heard coming closer. The sound of panting grew louder as Chat Noir cleared a hill and entered into view, rushing and stumbling towards Ladybug while holding something in front of him.

The camera zoomed on him, bringing him into focus as he cleared the last hurdle.

“I’ve got it!” Chat exclaimed, racing back to her side with her yoyo in hand. “I’ve got it! It’s okay. It’s over. It’s over now. It’s finished. He’s done.”

“Sh…Ch…” Her head hung limply and her eyes were barely able to focus on him as he tried to get her to look at him without moving her too much.

“It—It’s okay! It’s going to be okay!” He whispered to her, so softly that the camera barely caught it. He was clearly panicked and trying desperately not to let it show. “We just need the Cure. If you cast the Cure, everything will be better, okay?”

She didn’t appear to be listening, though. And barely seemed aware of anything. “Ch-ck…Chaaa…”

The video zoomed in on them both. Ladybug dazed and bleeding out. Chat crying and trying not to break down completely.

“Please! I just need you to say the words! Say the words and you’ll be okay! Can you do that?”

“Huurrr…s…” She slurred, begging him without words for help.

“I know! I know! But you can fix it. C’mon, M’lady, please!”

“I…I cn…”

“Say the words. Just two words, okay?” He begged desperately, patting her cheek in an attempt to both soothe her and keep her attention on him. “Two words and then you can go to sleep, I promise.”

“Ch…a…”

“Just…just two words, that’s it! I’ll…I’ll even say them with you, okay?”

She winced. “Nn…”

She clearly wasn’t listening, but he was desperate and so started to try. “Miraculous—”

She sobbed.

“No, no. Listen to me, okay? Say it with me!” He ordered, forcing her to look at him. “Mi. Say it with me! Mi!”

“M…mi…”

“Racu!”

“ra…” Her gaze started to waver.

He shook her. “Cu!”

“…cu…lous…”

He gave a weak laugh. Even now she was ahead of him. “Ladybug.”

“La…laa-deee…”

He shook her again. “LADYBUG!”

“……b…u—gahck-ugh—" She was cut off by harsh coughing.

But it was enough.

Thank every god out there it was enough.

The Cure spilled out from the object she was holding, transforming into magical ladybugs that covered everything in their wake. Unfortunately, the casting of the Cure and incoming loveliness caused the person holding the camera to drop it, losing sight of the video and cutting the feed.

_______________________

The ringing of her phone got Marinette’s attention, drawing her away from the movie she was watching with Adrien and the Dolls.

“Hello?”

“Miss Ladybug.” Came the voice on the end. “This is Aqualad.”

She blinked in surprise. “Aqualad? Is everything okay?”

“Yes…just…” The sound of angry whispers could be heard on the other end. “Would you be able to come speak with Conner today?”

Marinette frowned at that. While she certainly enjoyed seeing Conner, that…didn’t sound like a good thing. If anything, it sounded like a plea. And the voices that sounded like an argument in the background only made it sound worse.

“Is everything okay?”

Adrien seemed to notice the concern in her voice as he had stopped paying attention to the movie to focus on her. In turn, Chaton was peeking over the couch at her, curious as to what was going on.

“No. We found a recording of something…personal to you. Conner saw it and now he’s rather upset. We think it might help if you were here.”

“WHAT?!” She exclaimed. This definitely got the attention of the other dolls, all of whom had abandoned the movie in favor of checking on their Mama.

Her eyes narrowed. Suddenly full Mom mode was on.

“Aqualad. Tell me right now what happened.”

And Kaldur caved immediately with only a small sigh.

“Robin found the video of the akumatized hero who attacked you and instigated the events leading to the Paris Ban.” He explained. “I apologize. We should have checked with you first, but at Conner’s request, we all watched it.”

Marinette sighed. “I thought that was buried.”

“We’re rather good at digging.” Robin’s voice could be heard on the other side of the line.

“Hang on. I’ll be right over.” She told them before hanging up.

“Marinette? What happened?” She turned to see Adrien standing before her, looking rather concerned. Picking up on her tension, he had stopped the movie. And sure enough, four little dolls stared up at her in worry.

She sighed. There was nothing else for it.

“Who wants to go on a trip?”

The Dolls perked up at that.

Adrien, however, noticed how tense she was.

“Mari?”

“They saw the tape.”

His eyes widened. “Oh.” He reached out to her, and without even thinking, she moved into his arms. He clutched her tightly, soothing her and himself. It was…not a pleasant thing to have to relive. That so-called “hero” had caused more damage than just that one day. And more than any of them had truly recovered from.

The dolls seemed to catch on to the atmosphere, because their excitement died down.

“It’ll be okay, Mari. Let’s just be there for him. And I’ll be here for you.”

She held him back just as tight.

“Together then?”

“Always.”

[davidmann95]

*sighs* Modern times are weird. Thoughts on *that* Morrison announcement today?

Anonymous said: Thoughts on Superman and The Authority by Morrison, Janin and Bellaire? Its in the Penguin Random House catalogue as a hardcover coming in November this year

Anonymous said: Thoughts on the news about Morrison doing Superman and the Authority?

Anonymous said: So uhhh, Morrison is doing a surprise Superman & Authority book?

Anonymous said: how do you feel about the upcoming Grant Morrison-penned Superman and the Authority

Anonymous said: Morrison writing Superman & The Authority?!?!? MORRISON WRITING MANCHESTER BLACK?!?!?! Fuck yes, now you’ll have to admit Manchester Black is awesome.

Anonymous said: Superman and the Authority???

Anonymous said: Authority/Superman book being written by Morrison?

jcogginsa said: So Grant Morrison's not done with Superman it seems.

Anonymous said: So, Superman and the Authority? Thoughts on Morrison staying at DC?

Anonymous said: You’ve probably already been asked by thoughts on the Superman and The Authority announcement?

adudewholikescomicsandotherstuff said: So, there’s a new grant Morrison Superman comic. Thoughts?

oh look someone took a video of me this morning

...actually not really, because I was tipped off a couple weeks ago as to this being a rumor in certain non-public circles, so I was left to mull on the notion in private for awhile. I had in fact assumed that it wasn’t real, and that while Superman & The Authority was in fact happening it had probably only been offered to Morrison as a courtesy and really someone else would be doing it.

Lots of thoughts between what I had on my own and from talking with Ritesh Babu/seeing his own responses, let’s get to it. Obviously the main reason this is happening is because Jim Lee wants it to be happening - he can’t let his baby die on the vine with Ellis, and he needs a BIG name to wash the taste out of everyone’s mouth. The question then is why Morrison would go for it when The Green Lantern and Wonder Woman: Earth One were such pointed goodbyes to Big Two comics, Klaus remains as an outlet for any cape stories they want to tell, and they’re making TV money now. I’d say the answer is that while Wonder Woman is a tale about clearing away the old ways of things to make room for the new, and Green Lantern is about what’s cleared away getting one last bow...Clark Kent can’t gracefully exit stage left the way Hal Jordan can. Even if most of the rest of pop culture will be supplanted by the tide of time we’re not going to stop getting Superman stories anytime soon. But while in Batman and The Just the big question was “What son could ever live up to the eternal, glorious father who will never fade?”, now the question is “Oh shit, wait, Jon Kent is on the CW and probably taking over the Superman book proper, and that Coates/Abrams movie might not even be about Clark one way or another. What’s the *old* guy supposed to do if he’s gonna keep hanging around?” That’s why it has to be a ‘proper’ DC book - it asks whether the old things we won’t shake can ever truly be new again, or at least find a new role for themselves. And that role involves the team from the last moment mainstream superhero comics really felt like the future to Morrison, the team that represented the next step past their own breakout work in JLA and that their onetime protege’s career would later springboard off of, that was the template for 21st century superhero aesthetics in general. I want the first words of the first interview for this to be “I swear to god this time I’m really done afterwards”, but however crassly commercial the origins, I can see how Morrison would be convinced to do this as a trilogy-capper conclusion to their post-Multiversity DC work (especially with how Pax Americana and Wonder Woman were both in conversation with that whole Mills/Ellis/Ennis/Millar mode of superhero comics). What role can the old archetypes serve in a brave new world?

Additional thoughts:

* According to the Penguin listing this while filling out a 139 page trade will only be two issues, so it seems they’ll both be massively oversized (wonder if there’ll be backups?) and released as a whole pretty much immediately. In line with the Klaus format, and pretty close to the original plan for Superman Beyond.

* Guess Morrison was consulting on the Superman stuff in Future State as more than a gesture of goodwill. This does seem to potentially be set in that period given Clark’s graying at the temples, and since Superman & The Authority was a 5G rumor from way back (notably the same month as the Ellis allegations coming out) there’s an additional question of how long ago this was written. Not long enough ago or standalone enough that they put it in Future State itself, but even so.

* Really glad Janin’s here - not only is he a perfect choice and tied into Superman right now, he’s the guy who drew Midnighter in Grayson, out of which we got Orlando and ACO’s Midnighter, so he’s at the root of the Wildstorm resurgence. Also curious to see how far Morrison can push him.

* Ritesh pointed this out: Clark’s fully Tom Strong. The hair, the short sleeves, the gloves, the science hero vibe. And a thread of PKJ’s run is Superman’s power is beginning to fade, so he’ll probably be in that territory physically too and therefore needing to rely on help from other heavy-hitters.

* The roster mostly makes sense: Midnighter and Apollo are the givens, a new speedster (Lightray?), they like Steel so Natasha Irons being here isn’t surprising, and of course they’d include OMAC. But Manchester? And a Manchester who looks like Peter Capaldi? A Manchester who as you note I’ll be forced to like now? Wild. And...Enchantress? Okay?

* As far as cameos go I’m curious if we’ll see Jon, since he’s the guy who needs to have replaced Superman for the story to make thematic sense as I’m assuming it is, or the Superman Squad for similar reasons + then this can be an avenue for Morrison to tell that big Squad story they had in mind.

* It’s curious that the cover isn’t on a surface level aggressively provocative, because there’s so much about this that is. Not even the obvious fact of a Superman & The Authority book with Manchester Black on it (itself a hilarious fuck you to What’s So Funny), but that it’s the Superman shield from Kingdom Come - the iconography of that version of that guy hanging out with the 90s ass-kicker team in excelsis isn’t inconsequential. And while Action Comics and its socialist strongman was playing as nice as it could with its New 52 surroundings, this as a Grant Morrison future for Superman that isn’t All-Star is itself a pretty plain statement of intent that hey, THIS is what they think about what Superman's potential now, not what they did 15 years ago. Will that be a condemnation alongside Blackstars and the Hyperman story in TGL, or a testament to Superman’s ability to change with the times and continue serving as the man of tomorrow? If this is being collected in November, I imagine we’ll see this summer.

[ellz9800]

A Spideypool Drabble

An excerpt from an unpublished spideypool/avengers family fanfic and wondering if I should get around to finishing it and posting on AO3

“Why do you kill people?” Peter asked suddenly, feet dangling over the edge of the building and Wade’s body slowly healed back into its proper shape. At first, he didn’t notice the young Spider; didn’t expect anyone to wait with him while he healed. The decapitation was bloody and stomach churning to say the least.

“Why do you kill people?” Peter repeated. “You saved that guy tonight. We both know he didn’t deserve it. Why didn’t you kill him?” Wade sighed as he cracked his bones back into place.

“Yeah he was a bag guy, Spidey, but he isn’t the worst. I only kill the worst.” Wade said as if it were his duty.

Peter sighed and stood up, not saying a word.

[He’s mad now. This has to be a record for fastest fuck up since dying.]

‘Oh great,’ Wade thought, ‘you’re back already.’

[Bingo bitch]

Wade watched Peter get up and walk the edge of the building, too deep in thought to even look at Wade.

“What if we made a deal?” Peter asked suddenly. Wade looked at him.

“As nice as that ass is, Webs, friends with benefits isn’t really my style.” Wade couldn’t help but joke. He watched Peter trip over his own foot before bouncing off the ledge and in front of Wade.

“No,” Peter sighed, shaking his head. “I mean, a... hero deal.” He amended.

“You want to patrol with me, right?” Peter asked. Wade nodded slowly. God, patrolling with Spider-Man sounded like a dream.

{Imagine the places we could have sex!}

[yeah, like he’d go for that.]

“What if I let you patrol with me but only if you stop killing?” Peter asked. Wade looked at him as if he was more spider than man.

[Fuck that. He’s pretty but not that pretty.]

{Meh, I’m still down for it.}

“Hot Cakes, I don’t know how new to this you are, but mercenaries kill. It’s what we are literally paid to do.” Wade said. He watched Peter nod.

“Yeah but why are you a Mercenary?” He asked Wade shrugged.

“Someone’s gotta get those fuckers off the streets.” He said. Peter nodded.

“We aren’t that different, you know.” Peter commented as if he was letting Wade in on a secret. The older man scoffed loudly.

[Oh really? Ask him to show us his scars! Or better yet, have him jump off the building and go splat to prove his healing abilities!!]

{Calm down, White. Asking him to strip for a full body inspection is perfectly fine.}

“How so?” Wade asked. He watched Peter shrug.

“We’re both doing what we can with what we got to make the world at least a little bit of a better place?” He phrased it more like a question than Wade suspected he meant to.

“Look,” he backtracked, “I know you don’t like killing people. You do it because you have to because you think it’s all you’re good at. But that’s not true. You saved someone’s life today. And you didn’t even kill the bad guy! Let me help you keep doing good. I know you liked it.” Peter finished. Wade didn’t really know what to say. Help him? Nobody has ever helped him in his life.

[Stopping us from killing isn’t helping.]

{Neither is pointing out all the depressing shit. Shut the fuck up, White.}

“Spidey, as fun as that sounds, I’m kind of a lost cause.” Wade said. Peter shook his head violently.

“No, you’re not! You think you are but you’re not. Everyone thinks you’re this horrible killing machine, but you aren’t. Let’s show them that you can be a hero. That you are one.” Peter said earnestly. His and Tony’s argument about Deadpool being too dangerous started floating back into his mind and all that did was push Peter harder to convince Wade that he wants to help.

“What’s in it for you?” Wade asked suddenly. Peter shrugged.

“You mean besides stopping you from killing people and helping to add another hero to New York City?” He joked.

“Yeah,” Wade said seriously, “why are you so hell bent on me not killing people?” Wade asked. Peter shot him a clear look of ‘are you kidding me’ and even through the mask, the eye roll was loud and clear.

“I’m not going to lie and say stopping you from killing isn’t a driving force in this,” Peter paused. “But you aren’t like the Avengers. You make your own rules and do your own thing. You make a difference even if I don’t approve of your methods.” Peter shrugged.

{There’s more to it than that. Get him to tell us.}

“So you admire what I do but not how I do it?” Wade summarizes. He saw the Spider shrug.

“I started this whole superhero thing when I was young. Probably too young. Sometimes I feel like all the Avengers see is that kid who just got his powers last week and can’t make his own decisions. You don’t treat me like that. With you I’m an equal, not just some kid.” Wade was silent. He didn’t really know how to respond to that. It was pretty low on the severity scale of self-depreciation—

[You wrote the fucking book on self-depreciation.]

—but that didn’t mean Wade was impartial to the feeling of inadequacy. In fact, it was probably his best friend.

“Sorry,” Peter said suddenly, as if snapping out of his daze of self pity. “I just dumped that on you when I probably shouldn’t have. I mean, I don’t know what you’ve been through but I heard it wasn’t by any means easy. You probably think I’m pathetic; complaining about how the Avengers don’t like me. As if that’s as bad as the end of the world.” Wade shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I think the Avengers are the pathetic ones here.” Peter scoffed.

“I want to help you, Wade.” Peter whispered, looking back out over the nightlife of the city. “I know you’re a good guy and I want others to see it too.” He said. Wade looked at Spider-Man. It was the first time he ever said Wade’s actual name.

[Don’t do it.]

{Do it.}

[No!]

{Yes!}

“Alright, Baby Boy. Let’s say I agree to your little deal—“

[Fuck you, Wade.]

{Yes!}

“—what does it entail, exactly?” Peter shrugged.

“We patrol together, basically. And you don’t kill anyone.”

“That’s it?” Wade asked. Where’s the catch?

“Yeah, pretty much?” Peter shrugged. “When word gets out you’re teaming up with Spider-Man, maybe people will start realizing you’re not such a bad person.” Peter shrugged. Wade nodded.

“And when the news outlets start reporting their pure innocent Spider-Man is getting corrupted and brainwashed by the evil Merc Deadpool?” Wade asked. He heard Peter snort.

“Have you read the Daily Buggle? Jameson wants my head on a stick. He’d probably spin it so you’re the hero the city needs and I’m so horrible for stopping you.” Wade snorted.

They were silent.

Streets were still bustling below despite it being nearly dawn. People weren’t joking about New York being the city that never sleeps.

“So what do you think?” Peter asked suddenly. Wade leaned back on his heels and clicked his tongue.

[Wade think about this. No more killing means no more money. No more money means no more fun expensive toys to blow shit up with.]

{Idiot, he’s already got millions in the bank. Quitting now isn’t going to make that shit disappear.}

[Its a bad idea.]

“You got a deal, Webs. Don’t make me regret it.”

Wade suddenly felt the pressure of a hand in his. He looked up at Peter who kept his head down and squeezed the fabric covered palm. Peter squeezed back. And for the first time since Vanessa, Wade felt content and the voices didn’t speak.

Lots of love <3

[taliaquinn]

Why Me!? Chapter 17

Authors Note:

Hiya guys. Here is Chapter 17. Sorry I posted late it’s just that I've been trying to catch up on all of my assignments. So I had to unfortunately leave my writing to focus on that. Also guess what!!! My Infinity war Au will be receiving an update AND I will post another AU very soon. So look out for that guys.

Standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, Ladybug was slightly shaking with anxiety. She wasn’t sure if she could go through with what she was planning. Her plan might have to be put on hold though. A certain mangy Chat was missing. Rolling her eyes she decided to jump off and start heading to her parent's bakery.  Cravings were being a complete pain in the a-

From the corner of her eye, she spotted Chloe who was frantically waving from her Fathers hotel rooftop. Chloe had to resort to more primitive methods of summoning ladybug, ever since her Queen Bee spotlight “unfortunately” suffered some irreparable damage. Truly Tragic. She quickly made a detour to the hotel's rooftop. Please don’t be any weird requests.

Chloe quickly ran over. “OhMYGosh LADYBUGGGG” she squealed jumping in joy.

“Listen, I need your help” Yep. It was definitely a weird request. “My bestie Marinette was unfairly forced to leave school, Mostly cause of false accusations. She left the Country and more importantly, she abandoned me” Chloe ranted. “Utterly ridiculous”. Pulling out her tablet she immediately started explaining her plan for vengeance to Ladybug.

On her quest for vengeance she hit a few roadbumps. She needed Ladybugs help. Regardless of the fact that she was the daughter of the Mayor even she had to obey Privacy Laws. Huh. Who would’ve thought? 

“Pretty please with chocolate fondue on top?” Chloe begged with the biggest quiver on her lips. She’s been building her case with Ladybug for what felt like the longest time, even though it's only been 5 minutes before finally explaining her plan.

“Chloe breathe, I’ll see what I can do for your friend” This caused Chloe to immediately squeal and envelope Ladybug in a hug. Ladybug reluctantly hugged back. Marinette would never admit it but she was getting slightly sappy at the fact that Chloe was willing to go so far in order to help her.  

“Excuse me now I got to go now, but I’ll get back to ya” with a hop she made her way towards the bakery unbeknownst to her, piercing green eyes have been witnessing the whole interaction.

“Have a nice night Ms. Cheng” she yelled over her shoulder struggling to hold the box of patries. Yum.

She quickly sat on top of a building and fed Kaalki some of the pastries. Suddenly there was a presence beside her. “You’re late, ridiculously late”

“I still needed some time to cool off” Chat answered with a charming smile spread across his face. He hoped that Ladybug will be back to normal. What a foolish hope.

“Understood” she replied trying to avoid his eyes. This was tougher than she thought.

“So all is forgiven?” He stepped forward and spread his arms out. Utterly ridiculous. He expected a hug. Shaking her head she gently took his outstretched right hand 

Taking a deep breath she started. “Chat you were my best friend, right when we started you were the one who I could show a part of myself I always kept hidden in my civilian life. You supported me when I was at my lowest. You used to support me” taking a pause she tried  to continue in a gentle manner “But lately you’ve started slacking off slowly but surely becoming more immature, more entitled, you’ve acted more like a celebrity than a superhero”

Chat continued to stare at ladybug holding his hand, A sense of dread growing at the pit of his stomach. “I saw Nino Lahiffe breakup with Cesaire, even though he knew the consequences would be uh severe” Ladybug did a quick squeeze of Chats hand before releasing it and staring into his eyes “If a Civilian is brave enough to leave a toxic relationship, why not Me?” she said in a quiet voice. Leaning over and taking Chats hand she yanked off his ring. Both of them were enveloped in a green flash.

When she opened her eyes she was staring into familiar green eyes. Adrien Agreste.

“L-Ladybug why” he lunged to take back his ring. She quickly sidestepped him and placed the ring into her yo-yo.

“Because, I’ve reached the point where I just can't take it anymore” She responded, still struggling to get over her shock. How-HOW did she not see it. Seriously, how blind can she be?  Wait a second then who was “Adrien'' during the Gorrillaz situation? Who was she protecting during the whole Simon Says fiasco? OH MY GOD HER EX-CRUSH WAS HER NOW EX-BESTFRIEND!!!

“P-please give me another chance, Ladybug please” He was nothing without Chat Noir. He couldn't go back to being constantly restricted and constantly confined to the mansion. Chat Noir was his only outlet and Ladybug was going to take it away. “Give me another chance to change, to be better” 

“I’ve already given you enough chances Chat, or should I say Adrien”

“Please Ladybug, you don’t understand” Adrien was desperate. He’ll do anything to get his ring back. “Being a superhero is my only escape”

“You mean was” she reminded “You weren’t much of a superhero these days anyways”

“I'm sorry Adrien. My decision is final” She quickly got her yoyo and was about to jump off the building before hearing a plea “Ladybug, please I'm sorry, please let me say goodbye to plagg”

A part of Marinette wanted to just flat out say no, but she couldn’t deny him the chance to say goodbye to his kwami. She wasn't cruel enough to do so. With a sigh, she turned around and took the Ring from her yoyo Plagg immediately sprung out

Ladybug turned around to give them the semblance of a normal goodbye. However, that didn’t do anything to block out Adrien's watery voice and eventual sobs.

It was far too long before Plagg flew up to her. “Let's go Ladybug” he murmured softly. God, why did Master Fu make her do it? She didn't have the guts for this type of stuff.

With a final look towards a miserable looking Adrien, she picked up the boxed pastries and swung off with Plagg closely following behind her. She finally swung towards a nicely tucked away alley. Dropping her transformation she quickly opened her purse to allow Tikki and Plagg to swoop in while Kaalki flew out.

“Where to?” Kaalki asked in her British tone. 

“My room please but quietly I was gone for a while” Kaalki quickly opened a portal and Marinette took a final glance of her surroundings before jumping through. 

To her surprise, her blanket was taken off exposing the bundle of pillows she using as fake Marinette.

“Hiya Mari, first off where were you? And second off what the fuck was that” a voice asked from the darkness, causing Marinette heart to skip a beat. What the heck? Quickly fumbling for a light switch. Flicking it on her room was lit up revealing a Stunned Jason who was busy staring at the area where the portal was and a shell shocked Dick who was staring at her from where he was laying on her couch. Uh-Oh.

“You guys want a pastry?”

Man I just love leaving my readers on a Cliffhanger :) Don’t you guys love it as well? Cuz I do. 

Also I want to address something. I want to make it clear that I want my stories to be enjoyed by everyone. That I want this to be a safe place for Everyone. As a writer it is my job to make sure my readers feel included and safe regardless of Gender, Sexuality and Race. That is what a Good writer does. So I think it is safe to say that there might not be any Harry Potter AU’s in the foreseeable future, unless something changes.

Stay Safe and Healthy ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Taglist:

@silvergold-swirl @k-poplunardreams @pepelachanel @laurcad123 @maribat-is-lifeblood @kass-is-weird @another-fan-of-anotherplan @damianette-is-life @amayakans @parallelparabox @miukiiu @valeks-princess @toodaloo-kangaroo @vixen-uchiha @thezestywalru @dreamykitty25 @pirats-pizzacanninibles @mochinek0 @shamefullove @mochegato @souleateralicestein @thestressmademedoit @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @aestheticnpoetic @mysupporthyperfixations @itsmeevie01

[aion-rsa]

Invincible Episode 7 Improves Upon Its Already Great Source Material

https://ift.tt/3dGH4U1

This article contains spoilers for Invincible episode 7.

Amazon’s animated adaptation of Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker’s comic Invincible was always a great idea. The property has just about everything that streaming services and their audiences are looking for currently: superheroes, ultraviolence, and jaw-dropping twists. 

One big question facing the series, however, was how could one show possibly fit in all the story of the comic’s lengthy 144-issue run? Invincible episode 7, “We Need to Talk,” is the first season’s penultimate installment and it reveals how the show is set to approach this logistical challenge. With so many comic book issues of plot to get through, Invincible seems perfectly happy to accelerate through that plot as efficiently as possible. To that end, “We Need to Talk” features a truly staggering number of climactic moments.

This might actually be the most charmingly chaotic and jam-packed episode of TV this year (at least before next week’s finale). So much happens in “We Need to Talk” that it runs the risk of overwhelming the viewer. With that in mind, let’s break down the important plot points of this hour and examine the major ways in which they differ from (and even improve upon) the comic.

Robot’s True Identity

The reveal that the entity known as “Robot” isn’t who he claims to be might be the most shocking Invincible twist thus far. And that’s saying a lot for a show whose first episode concludes with the story’s Superman equivalent straight up murdering the rest of his Justice League.

That Robot (Zachary Quinto) is really a malformed genius named Rudolph Conners isn’t a surprise to comic book readers, but its positioning this early in Invincible’s story is a surprise. Robot’s work with the Mauler Twins to create a new body for himself doesn’t happen until after the events of Omni-Man’s confrontation with Mark in the comics (more on that later). The show, however, shrewdly decides to present this moment in the same episode as Omni-Man’s fall – just so there’s never really a moment for viewers to catch their breath. 

But now the truth has finally arrived. Robot, the orange hunk of metal with a fixedly bemused expression, is actually a machine being operated remotely by Rudolph Conners. Rudolph, or Rudy, is a small, damaged man whose body isn’t capable of surviving Earth’s environment. For many years Rudy was content to exist in his own life-giving tank of fluids while operating his superheroic “Robot” remotely. Everything changed, however, when he met the hero known as Monster Girl.

Rudy couldn’t help but identify with Monster Girl (Grey Griffin), a fellow soul who has made the best of a flawed body. Everytime Monster Girl transforms into a monster, her human form de-ages several more weeks. Theoretically at some point Monster Girl will become an infant and then waste away into nothingness. Before any of that happens, Rudy wants to fix her…and he wants to fix his own broken body so that the pair can be together.

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To that end, Rudy sprung the mad genius villain team The Mauler Twins from prison to create a cloned body for him to transfer his consciousness into. What makes this whole thing even stranger is that the genetic material Rudy chose for his new body belongs to his Teen Team and Guardians of the Globe colleague Rex Splode. The new Rudy appears to be played by Rex Splode actor Jason Mantzoukas with his voice altered to sound younger. 

Does that mean Zachary Quinto is no longer a part of the series? Let’s certainly hope not as he may have been the best performer of the entire cast. And why did Rudy choose Rex’s DNA (and without Rex’s consent, it must be said)? Because Rex is hot, basically. Rudy chose a human form that Monster Girl was already comfortable flirting with. 

This is…a lot. And the fact that Rudy has to introduce himself to his teammates while they’ve all gathered for an “apocalyptic event” just adds to the madness. But what of The Mauler Twins? The disappointment of Rudy’s double-crossing doesn’t last long. For, after Rudy is forced to abandon his efforts to reincarcerate the Mauler Twins to return to the Guardians home base, the twins get back to their important task at hand. And that leads to the return of another important Invincible character…

The Immortal is Immortal After All

Back in Invincible episode 1, Mark Grayson’s dad Nolan a.k.a. Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) made short work of the Guardians of the Globe. Darkwing? Dead. War Woman? Dead. The Immortal? De….wait a minute. How can someone called “The Immortal” die? 

Well, it turns out that death for The Immortal (still voiced by Ross Marquand) is only temporary. Omni-Man removed The Immortal’s head, which is pretty much universally lethal across all genre stories. But The Mauler Twins theorized that if The Immortal’s head were returned to his body, he would spring back to life. 

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened once The Immortal’s noggin was reattached. Unfortunately for The Mauler Twins, their dreams of forming any sort of alliance with the resurrected hero are quickly dashed as he immediately flies off to confront the man who killed him. 

Omni-Man v. Cecil Stedman

And that takes us to Omni-Man. In the comic, Omni-Man’s confrontation with The Immortal is what leads Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) to discover that he’s got a Darth Vader situation on his hands. The show borrows that moment from the comic because any time you have the opportunity to make a character watch his father tear a Wolverine-looking dude in half, you’ve got to take it. That comic book moment is surprisingly abrupt though. In one panel Omni-Man is doing his usual Omni-Man thing and saving a group of citizens from a faulty roller coaster and in the next panel, The Immortal is all over his ass.

The Amazon Prime series dramatically improves on what is already a pretty great moment simply by drawing it out and building serious tension. Nolan’s wife Debbie (Sandra Oh) and the entire Global Defense Agency led by Cecil Stedman (Walton Goggins) are already well aware of Nolan’s treachery and have decided to finally take action. In speaking to Den of Geek and other outlets prior to Invincible’s premiere, Kirkman (who’s onboard as a writer and producer for this adaptation) revealed that Cecil Stedman would be getting an expanded role earlier on in Invincible’s story. 

“Cecil Stedman is a character that we get to know a little earlier in the show and definitely we get to do more with him,” he said. “I think that’s a lot of fun. There’s definitely some differences to his character and working with Walton Goggins on him has been great.”

Cecil really is a fascinating tool for Invincible. Many superhero stories have a Jim Gordon-style government liaison for its heroes to interact with. This person usually represents the interests of the planet’s “normal” citizen and is particularly impressive for being able to cut it in the world of the super-powered. By having Debbie and the GDA uncover Nolan’s guilt first, Invincible creates a wonderful opportunity to display both Cecil’s competence and depict the absolute horror of we puny humans trying to keep a super-powered god in check. 

Many times throughout Invincible episode 7, Cecil admits that there is nothing they can do to stop Nolan. The best they can do is slow him down for a bit until Mark is able to intervene. The first roadblock that Cecil presents is the explosion of an entire suburban city block with Nolan at its epicenter (R.I.P. Donald). 

“Best it will do is maybe knock him on his ass for an hour or two,” Cecil says. Then when the smoke clears to reveal an unharmed Omni-Man, Cecil grimly adds “Or maybe not hurt him at all.”

Cecil then throws the “hammer” at Nolan, which is a powerful blast from a weaponized satellite.

“$400 billion for the world’s most expensive nosebleed,” Cecil quips when Nolan takes the weapon out with ease. 

Then we get a sense of how many moral shortcuts Cecil is willing to take to keep the Earth safe. Mad scientist D.A. Sinclair’s (Ezra Miller) wounds from his confrontation with Invincible haven’t even healed yet but Cecil already has him using his evil technology for noble purposes. Sinclair’s “Reanimen” technology is now being used to reanimate recently dead U.S. soldiers, who are sent in to slow down Omni-Man. Unfortunately, that is also unsuccessful.

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Finally, Cecil is forced to head out into the field armed with nothing but a teleporter to confront Omni-Man himself. When that inevitably fails to slow Nolan down, the GDA sends a monster that Nolan already conquered, only this time it’s been robbed of its weaknesses and fear. And that’s where Mark finds his father, just in time for The Immortal to arrive and deliver one hell of a surprise. 

There’s something to be said for the suddenness of the comic’s Omni-Man moment with Mark. Mark witnessing his dad’s evil act truly comes out of nowhere even though we know it’s inevitable as Nolan has been practicing this conversation all issue. 

What the show does with the moment is a masterstroke, however. By centering the focus on the human characters of Invincible’s world, we get a chilling sense of just how terrifying this all is. Omni-Man’s heel turn doesn’t just have personal implications for Mark, it means that Earth’s unbeatable protector now seems to hate Earth. More terrifying than that is that the only person we think can defeat him is Mark Grayson…who, it must be said, has done nothing but had his ass absolutely handed to him by lesser enemies over and over again for the past three episodes.

Amber and Mark

It probably feels anticlimactic to address Mark and Amber’s lover’s spat after breaking down Omni-Man’s reign of terror. But it’s necessary to see how far-reaching the changes (and in this case improvements) are in episode 7 in comparison to its original text. 

Mark and Amber’s relationship thus far has been all about frustration. Mark is facing an annoying problem with a seemingly easy solution. Amber (Zazie Beetz) is upset with him because he is absent in their burgeoning relationship. He’s absent in their burgeoning relationship because he’s a superhero. Therefore, the quickest, easiest solution to this dilemma is to tell her that he’s a superhero. 

So in this episode, that’s exactly what Mark does. He gets suited up and flies right through Amber’s window to deliver the exciting news. The problem is – she’s not that excited.

“Ugh, I know you’re a superhero,” Amber says. “I’m not an idiot, I figured it out weeks ago.”

This is not how things go down in the comic. That version of Amber is a bit more…let’s say “bubbly” and when confronted with the fact that Mark has lied to her for weeks she responds with an excited “My boyfriend is a superhero?!?!?”

The show, however, is smart to not let Mark off the hook so easily. Of course Amber knew that Mark is Invincible. Because, like she says, she’s not an idiot. Anyone who spends an inordinate amount of time with him is bound to figure it out sooner than later. So what Mark thought was a problem with an easy solution becomes yet another difficult lesson on his path to maturation. 

“I think that Amber is important in terms of holding Mark accountable,” Beetz told reporters prior to the show’s premiere. “Mark is still struggling with what his identity as a super person is. And she shows him that (powers) are not what make you good or special ultimately, it’s what’s in your character.”

It turns out that the people close to you don’t appreciate being lied to. Though human beings all look like particularly vulnerable ants from Mark’s perspective high up in the sky, we certainly don’t appreciate being treated like insects to be protected and manipulated by the powerful among us. 

Mark and Amber’s relationship is an excellent indication that nothing will come easy for Mark Grayson on this show. Every decision has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s important that he learns that lesson before he enters into what is sure to be the most stressful and morally confusing moment of his life next week.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Invincible’s season finale will be available to stream Friday, April 30 on Amazon Prime.

The post Invincible Episode 7 Improves Upon Its Already Great Source Material appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3aBaalL

[loving-jack-kelly]

i think its so weird how people are highkey mean to matt?? like in the fandom??? people will deadass see matt isolating himself due to self hatred and be like "what a bitch". like both matt and frank pretended to be dead and then showed back up into peoples (specifically karens) lives but people will shit talk matt for it and say shit like "frank would never do that to karen" like frank didnt do the exact same thing and matt was in a fucking coma for half the time he was gone!! and he just survived what was basically a suicide attempt!! jesus christ!!

I think the tone we all need to take with Matt is the same as Foggy snapping “You’re my best friend, asshole!” like yeah. he can be an asshole. he’s done some shitty things to his friends, he’s a nightmare to try and help because he really hates accepting help or love of any kind, and if you take what he says at face value, he comes off as a total dick.

but like....there’s so much more to him than face value? like not only is he one incredibly traumatized individual like the things he went through between the ages of nine and like fifteen alone explain so much about him but also. how many people has he felt die? how many people does he hear in pain every second of every day? how many times has he had it hammered into him, through experience or shitty people around him, that when he shows up, so does suffering. that he brings horrible things into the lives of anybody he lets get close.

when he pushes people away, it isn't because he thinks he’s some saint who works best alone. like he isn’t Mr. incredible up in here saying “I work alone” because of pride or whatever, he knows that what he’s doing is dangerous, and the more people know the worse it gets for them. 

and like....he didn’t choose a lot of his life, you know? he didn’t choose to be able to hear every bit of suffering in hell’s kitchen at all times. he didn’t choose to lose his dad, he didn’t choose to be trained (and indoctrinated) by Stick, he’s just had shitty things happen to him all the time, and that’s gonna leave a mark on him.

so like...yeah. hold him accountable. he owes people in his life an apology, he needs to get better at healthy relationships, but the thing is, he knows it? he doesn't expect them to just accept it and move on without addressing it. he lets Foggy walk away because he knows it’s what’s best for them at the time. he lets Karen be mad at him, he lets her make the choice to not have him in her life when she needs that, because he knows that what he did was shitty. he knows he broke their trust, and he doesn’t expect them to just be fine with him after they find out. like it’s not like he’s some manipulative asshole who’s intentionally causing them pain or trying to excuse everything he’s done, he’s well aware that he’s hurt them and that they deserve to be able to say “no, I’m done, this has to stop.” he lets them do that, because he hates himself as much as he thinks they do. more than they actually do, in fact, because they can at least see the good in him and all he sees is something twisted and evil and uncontrollable that he can barely control.

and yeah! he was unconscious for weeks, and then not only was he so crazy depressed because he’d just lost. everything. Elektra for the second time, and as far as he knows when he wakes up he’s lost his hearing in one ear and practically in the other, which is debilitating because that’s how he navigates his world, and his entire purpose was Daredevil and trying to make a difference and how is he supposed to do that when he can’t walk twenty feet without tripping and falling? and how is he supposed to do anything good when he’s realized he’ll never be content just being Matt Murdock the Lawyer because he needs to be doing something more and yet in the same moment he also thinks that he’ll never get back on his feet well enough to do anything at all. and he’s suicidal, which is terrifying both because he’s never felt this terrible before and because he barely has the tools to comprehend what he’s feeling, and just when he’s starting to feel like maybe, maybe he’s getting there and even if the comfort isn’t enough to make him feel better, at least thinking that he might get Daredevil back is something, that’s when he finds out Fisk is out and that means that so much of what he’s worked for, suffered for, is being undone.

he’s been through so, so much, and every layer of him is some kind of scar, some lingering fear or trauma from something he has no control over, and calling him an asshole without taking any of that into account is just straight up ignoring a pretty big chunk of his character. he doesn’t pretend to be some infallible Jesus figure who’s the savior of hell’s kitchen and can do no wrong. if he did, he would be a total asshole and a much less interesting and likable character, but he doesn’t. he thinks he’s a terrible man trying his best to do something good with what he has, and he hates that he hurts the people he cares about and he hates that he doesn’t ever feel good enough and he hates that he can’t seem to catch a break and he hates himself. he really does hate himself for everything he’s become, because he can’t see the good he’s doing.

also like....Karen and Foggy call him on it constantly. all the time. they don’t let Matt get away with being an asshole or let him use anything as an excuse, you know? they help him, and they love him and try to be there for him and support him, but they also tell him when he’s being an asshole. when he’s hurting them. when he needs to do better. they don’t let him get away with his own self-destructive tendencies and pretend the problems aren’t there, they point them out. they yell at him. they tell him how he’s hurt them with his actions, and not just the suffering he thinks he drags with him wherever he goes. it isn’t like he’s never held accountable by his friends. they don’t enable him, and the narrative really doesn’t ever try to make it seem like “oh foggy is such a terrible person for walking out on Matt” it’s very clear that they both needed to take a step back to heal that relationship, and when they come back together in Defenders and then again in the latter half of season three, it’s obvious that taking some time apart has only let them both realize how much they need each other, and their relationship becomes much healthier. Matt tells Foggy things, Foggy trusts Matt more, and they’re able to work together all the more effectively because of it, and that positive shift wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been allowed to fight. if Foggy hadn’t been allowed to get angry and need to take time to process away from Matt.

in conclusion yeah, Matt’s an asshole, but who isn’t? especially somebody who’s been through as much as Matt has without ever really having a healthy outlet or a good way to process any of it, because everything has been passed through this filter he has of him being something horrible and evil and irredeemable. like he shouldn’t just be let off the hook for hurting people, but he also isn’t just an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. he’s not some superhero who thinks he’s too good for everyone, so he doesn’t think twice about pushing them away or how his actions will hurt them, he’s pretty much the exact opposite.

[popculturebuffet]

Top 13 Venture Bros Episodes!

In honor of it’s recent passing I take a look at the best episodes of easily one of the best adult animated, or animated period, shows ever and one of my faviorites. Join me as I look back on Grand Galactic High  Inquistors, Venturestiens, ninja filled first dates, Noir, super science garage sales and much more under the cut, and GO TEAM VENTURE!

As I said in the teaser.. the Venture Bros is one of my favorite shows of all time. Starting way back in 2003, the show created by Jackson “Christopher Mculloch” Publick and from mid season 1 onwards cowritten, plotted and what have you by his best friend and creative soulmate Doc Hammer, the show enjoyed a healthy 17 year run on adult swim, making it the longest standing show and despite the years of hiatuses between episodes it’s most popular till Rick and Morty came around. The show endured through changing trends in animation, network shifts and scabies until it’s recently announced, though apparently having happened months ago, cancellation.  I watched the show from the start, sneaking it as a boy and by my teen years watching it every week online through Adult Swim’s website and lapping up every episode, becoming a huge fan in the process and continuing my huge love of the series through the rest of it’s life, breifly forgetting to watch season 6 but getting back to it weekly for the 7th, and currently unless adult swim does indeed find a way to bring it back, final season. This show has been a part of my life since it started, and a part of me for slightly less long: it informed my sense of humor, probably informed my comics taste in ragtag groups consiting of lesser known characters, and informed me david bowie existed for which my life will ever be better.  It was a part of me and while I gave it a breif memorial earlier I felt after my long content hiatus due to my moven to another room, and for the 1 of you reading this who reads my amphibia weekly coverage it’ll be back shortly, that honoring a show that gave me so much and made me who I am, in a good way I know i’m kind of a mess so that statment could be seen as a threat in some states, by diving into my faviorite episodes of it and the ones I honeslty consider i’ts finest half hours.. or hours in two cases but we’ll get to that. 

For now it’s time to have your ro-bo pour you a red mocho cooler, slap on your vintage batman mask, and eat some pennies quizboys, this is my top 13 venture bros episodes. Pitter Patter!

13. It Happening One Night (Season 6, Episode 6) 

Season 6 had a huge burst of fresh energy and ideas: Doc and Jackson moved the show to New York for a number of reasons: To shake things up, because they lived there and thus could inject the energy of a city they loved in and because one of the series biggets inspriations is marvel comics, as seen by the sheer number of marvel parodies and homages in comparison to dc or other superhero outlets, so having New York be the big hub for superhero and villian activity in the ventureverse was a no brainer. This also moved the ventures from an isolated corner of the Ventureverse on their old compound, which burned down in the gargantua 2 special, right into the heart of it, bringing in tons of new characters to the already large cast. Not only that but it thrust our heroes and villian protaganists both into new and intresting situations: Doctor Venture was suddenly rich and running his own think tank with white and billy. Dean was going to college, Hank found a love intrest in Serena, more on that obviously in a second, Brock returned to the team proper as bodyguard once more, while the Monarch grappled with both his father being a hero and his wife being promoted and their marraige hitting choppy waters. It had great new characters like warina and serena, brought fan faviorite brown widow in if not as much as i’d like frankly, but there’s always room for nathan fillion, and freshened things up a bit.  Granted one of Venture Bros biggest strengths was it didn’t have the rigid status quo, or entire lack of any continuity a lot of animated shows at the time and even now have, that things changed and evolved and the universe was dense as it was wonderful. But here instead of just moving the pieces around the board and maybe slapping on some new coats of pait, they threw the board up and put the pieces on an enitrley new one. However all this experimentation did nick the show a little: while it was a step up from the rather standard outside of Dean’s plot Season 5 (which not concendtially is the only season not represented here), it also felt like the plots were a bit looser and some characters like Dermott and Dr. Orpheous, one of whom had a huge untouched subplot and the other who was a beloved fan faviorite and fixture of the show since season 1, got left out all together. It was a decent season it just felt lacking at times, and the Monarch and Shielda’s relationship disolving wasn’t at all fun to watch and thankfully got resolved next season. And that was the other problem: Due to wanting to give their big epic finale the room it needed and only having 8 episodes to work with due to the special, they had to move it to next season which meant it just sorta.. ended with most things left unresolved till season 7. Thankfully for me I didn’t get around to watching this season till close to 7, but for everyone else they had to wait YEARS for a proper resolution. It was  a mixed bag of a season, the mass changes leading to growing pains, but it had it’s moments. And naturally our one season 6 representivie here is it’s finest. 

It Happening One Night juggles two diffrent but equally awesome plots. In the first Hank goes on his first date with Serena, their new next door neighbor and daughter of big villain in town, new councilman and combination of kingpin and tobias whale, Wide Whale. Serena was one of the best additions to the series, voiced by a game Cristini Miloti, she’s a no nonsense girl with a sharp tounge, an annoyance with her father and his number 2 rocko’s overprotectivness of her and gills and meshes well with hank: Her no nonsense and more down to earth attitude compliments his up int he clouds weirdness and lack of reality really well and the two were cute together. Were... while they’d do.. things I did not like.. with her character next season, for this one she’s great and a fine addition and it was nice to give one of the boys a proper love interest, while also having her be her own person. Sure all her plots centered around hank.. but she still felt like a fully realized addition to the cast and given this was over a decade in with so many great members it wasn’t an easy task.  The date is paticuarlly hank as he has a carraige (his air car) ready, has dean chauffer them, has Billy and White show up as street toughs to challenge him to a dance off and dinner is at a ninja themed restraunt Dean’s friend Jared, aka brown widow, works at. It’s really adorable and charming stuff, and the two genuinely bond, and Hank gets some good character stuff. He genuinely worries Serena is only intrested to piss off her dad.. but fins she likes him for who he is: his charm, his lack of fear, and the fact he went so far for a romantic gesture he had his friends dress up as street toughs, or the hank venture idea of one anyway, and get into a dance off just to impress. her. it’s really good stuff. The Ninja themed restraunt is also both hilarious and apparently a very real thing the creators actually toned down. I’m unsuprised by all of this. The two also dodge their bodyguards, Brock and Rocco and share a romantic kiss underwater leading to the above. It’s a really good plot and the easy reason why I put it on here and defintely a review cantidate.  The other plot however is just pure comedy and invention. While the Monarch works on his plan to use his dad’s blue morpho guise to take out the other arches on his way to venture, Venture is plauged by the utterly bizzare and utterly delightful Doom Factory: A combination of Andy Warhol and his hangers on and the legion of doom... yes this actually happened. While I know nothing of Warhol and thus a lot of it flew over my head, it’s made up for by the sheer joyous lunacy of having the art school version of the legion of doom arch rusty by invading his house, throwing a party and taking various pictures of him in his underwear. The one mistep of the episode is them getting blown up at the end despite being great, but their one apperance was a treat, and it was such a great and bizzarely speific parody I couldn’t help but love it. It was a good night indeed. 

12. Tag Sale, You’re It! (Season 1, Episode 6 (10 in airing order) Season 1 of The Venture Bros is a bit rocky. It’s not unusual for season 1′s but it’s understandable, espcesially now i’ve read Go Team Venture!: The Art of the Venture Bros, the art book for the series as well as a full on making of for seasons 1-6, and know the team was under immense crunch to get the season done and is likely the reason every season after had a few years between them. But yeah at the start the series was more of a broad comedy, with the characters being the simiplest versions of their characters, the boys in paticular only having “jock and nerd” as things that defined them as seperate people early on and it took a bit for things to come together. However things really started to crystalize into what the show would truly be with two episodes. One we’ll get to later but the other is this one: Tag Sale Your It.  Tag Sale started one of my faviorite recurring themes for the series: Venture Compound Episodes. Basically their episodes where a huge pile of the shows cast get together at the venture compound for whatever reason and chaos, great jokes and great worldbuilding inveitbly insues. It’s good stuff. And it’s usually centerted around a great concept.  In this case all the villians and heroes of the world are gathering at the Venture Compound for of all things, a Garage Sale. Or Tag Sale as it’s called in the title or Yard Sale as Venutre himself calls it. In order to make a quick buck and get rid of some of his dad’s excess scientific wonders, Rusty’s sellling them off to whatever weirdo wants em. it’s an utterly hilarious concept, with Brock complaning about the security risk and the fact Doc is entirely convinced this won’t go horribly wrong despite the fact he has a bargin bin for death rays, one of my faviorite gags of the episode. But there’s still plenty of sense here too: There’s what i’m presuming are OSI agents on standbye, who also screen the various villians to have them check their weapons. 

The episode also opens the cast up considerably introducing Phantom Limb, and fleshing out Billy and Pete, as well as being the episode where two of the casts standouts came into their own as 21 and 24 go off on their own misadventur where 21 uses the monarchs money to buy what turns out ot bea non working lightsaber and tries to fight brock in one of the best scenes of the episode.  Speaking of the Monarch, . The Monarch himself is there to cause miscihief, as usual, as well as have his minons buy him some stuff because he’s not going to miss a bargin, and finds himself struggling to get his hate boner up in a neat subplot, eventually acheiving it even if it gets him stuck to the celing However the other two subplots really shine. Orpheous in a micro plot, and after yelling at Dr. Venture for trying to sell the weed wacker he borrowed from Oprheous, tries to get his own nemisis, a thread that would continue at the end of the season and into the next, having a ghost slap the monarch ot try and get him to become Orpheous arch and telling various villians he’s blasting who they can blame if they want to swear vegnance. It’s short but really funny.  The other however is my faviorite and the plot that really set up hank’s bizzarely and uniquely him personality, which would be expanded on more as the show went on. Annoyed that their dad is selling their old things and getting the money, Hank decides to get him and Dean a piece of the action and sets up his own grinder and lemonade stand, Hank Co, starting the sparkling runner of his bizzare personal buisness, and while the lemonade stand is standard kids stuff, the added oddly specific addition of grinders is what makes it hank as is his oddly agreesive managment style. Dean ends up working for him alongside HELPEr, while Dean awkwardly talks up Orpheous daughter triana. More on that whole thing in a later entry, with Triana joining in. It’s just a fun side bit that ends hilariously as, when the sale cascades into an orgy of violence as it was always destined to, the rest of the team book it while Hank definatly refuses to get knocked down before a shoe hits him. 

IT’s a damn fun time that sets up the backbone of the show’s universe. Nuff Said. 

11. Pinstripes and Poltergeists (Season 4, Episode 8)  Season 4 is easily my faviorite season hands down, and in my opinion the best, in part helped by the fact it’s the longest and thus had the most time to work on it. Like season 6, if on a smaller scale, it threw up the table. While Season 2 and 3 had status quo changes, the Monarch being on his own without the guild or dr girlfriend and then the newly married couple being forced to arch eleswhere this one had probably the biggets shakeups: Brock Sampson left team venture, and was MIA for all but two episodes of the first half, Sgt. Hatred took over as boydguard a move that wasn’t one of there best as while Hatred could be funny at times.. replacing one of the show’s most beloved and most iconic characters with a reformed pedophile who fans already didn’t like all that much in season 3 wasn’t one of Jackson and Doc’s smarter moves let’s be honest. Again he has his moments, but he just wasn’t as compelling or well fleshed out as the rest of hte main cast, helper included.  The other big swing, one admitted in the making of art book that was an intentional risk, was killing off 24, half of the beloved buddy duo of 21  and 24. However this one paid off way better, as 21, while still a husky dork who loves his crappy job, reinvented himself in the wake of hte tragedy, turning a lot of his blubber into muscle (And I say that as a chub myself, so relax), and becoming the badass drill seargent of the cocoon.  But both big changes expertly dovetailed into this episode which explains where brock was after the premiere. The ball gets rolling when the Monarch goes to see Monstroso, a great addition to the series and the sum of all evil lawyer jokes, a lawyer in a pinstripe suit and small devil hood who makes deals with other supervillians, in this case to buy up part of the venture compound to take it from Rusty.   Naturally making a deal with a lawyer super villian who dresses like the devil, every bit of that sentence a red flag, goes poorly. As Shiela points out in one of the series best lines as she berates her husband’s terrible decision making “Monstro’s a lawyer that’s also a super villian. That’s like a shark with a rocket launcher strapped to his head, and the monstroso plans to take the monarch’s stuff as well. It falls to 21 to stop him and 21 is on the venture compound to find our missiing sampson and get answers on who killed his best friend, whose also following him around possibly as a ghost/hallucination.  Speaking of Brock, when exploring a shack on the edge of the property to use it for stuff, Rusty finds instead the base for SPHINX, consiting of Hunter Gathers (Who I hope gets to retransition someday), gay icon Shore Leave, and Brock Himself. Turns out Brocks literally been right there, SPHINX Just needed to stay secret and the pain of not being able to see the boys has seriously hurt brock. And naturally this deal will impact spinix, so they send brock to deal with it.  This leads to the best part of the episode as the above episode gets a callback as 21 challenges brock to a fight.. and to show how far he’s come, instead of becoming a bloody pile on the lawn, fights EVENELY with brock freaking sampson. After it’s confirmed brock has nothing to do with it and 21 and him have wiggle room to operate, the two go after monstroso who next we see needs heart surgery so mission acomplished. This episode is light on jokes, apart from a great one where rusty tells the boys everything before mindwiping them, but good on character stuffs as we find out where Brocks been, meet some good new supporting cast and see just how far 21′s come, and close out the first half of a stellar season iwth a great scene of Brock eating cereal, finally allowed to be part of his family again.

10. Viva Los Muertos! (Season 2, Episode 11)  Season 2 was easily where the show hit it’s stride. While Season 1 is going through growing pains Season 2 has all the setup, half planned ideas and what not mostly out of the way to just focus on building up the world, and characters as well as playing around with things and having the first instance of the show’s refusal to have a set status quo by having the Monarch’s breakup iwth Shiela stick until the end of the season. More on that later. However some experimentation still happened as something that would likely NEVER happen from this point on happened.  See the Venture Bros is very much Jackson and Doc’s baby. While Jackson created it, Doc because just as important and the two share one giant geeky brain. WHile they may argue on some things, the two still agree on most stuff and thus the project has their unified vision of this weirdly specific superhero universe that’s mainly focused on what would be prehriay characters leftover from a one time genre experiment and supervillians. While the staff on the show clearly enjoyed working on it far as I can tell an dare celebrated in the making of when credit’s do, the writing and worldbuilding is on two guy’s shoulders, an absolute rarity in animation let alone of a project with this gorgeous and detailed animation. But for three episodes the two did let someone in.. it’s just someone who not only got exactly what htey were going for but was their friend and mentor who helped nurture their talents on the tick. Ben Edlund. If you haven’t heard of Ben first off shame on you and second, he’s the creator of the Tick, writing the original comics series and having a major hand in all three series, all of which are unsuprisingly stellar, and having brought jackson and doc on board for 2/3 of them, likely only not bringing them to the Amazon one because by this point they’d far outgrown being writters on someone elses show.  He also created supernatural and left long before it became a tire fire so there’s that. I need to watch that sometime. Point is he’s a big deal and helped write two episodes and wrote this one Solo. And this one is easily the best of the three and given it’s on this list one of the series best.  The episode has Doc have another great idea in the Zack Morris with mad scientest abilities veign he always have: Take the parts of one of hte monarch’s dead henchman, as brock tends to leave piles around, into a “Venturestein’ and sell it to the goverment. While the simple man bonds with the boys, he cowers in fear of brock, who is forced to grapple with his violent nature and deeds and goes to Orpheous spirtial gathering fors some perspective. It’s a nice subplot that has some character development before a spirit vision of hunter gathers convinces him he can’t get caught up in killing people when it’s hwat he goods at. Brock meets him halfway, deciding he can’t feel entirely guilty but he can help the guy and gets Venturestein some “prostitoots!” he’s been wanting since apparnelty the henchman he was made out of really liked htem.  The concept of venturestein himself is neat, from the idea of reusing old henchman to him using the boys learning beds to learn about the third world and be indocrinated for third world labor, as was Doc’s orginal plan.  The other plot which dovetalls into venture steins is another great one as The Groovy Gang, the show’s answer to mystery inc arrives. And in a great idea by Edlund.. their all based on various serial killers, with leader ted being baised on ted bundy and being unerviing as he speaks cherfully while threanting the rest of hte gang, the shaggy stand in being a stand in for the son of sam and the only one that can hear groovy talk who rather than be an adorable dog, talks like a nightmarish german man, the daphne standin is clearly kidnapped and the velma one valries acts like valrie solanis. It’s creepy stuff but it’s also funny because theys till include hannah barbara sound effects, including when Venturestein in a ptsd fueld rage kills ted, not-shaggy and groovy> It’s a horrible but great scene and a great concept that just works. They also tie in the boys being clones by having it revealed one of their deaths was caused by Sonny, finalylr emembered his name, and Ted wanting to kill them. The boys end up finding their clones too, but Doc spins them a yarn to get by and is kept from kiling them. Not much to say, outside of brocks bit this isn’t huge on character but the sheer balls of the scooby doo parody and the sheer amount of jokes and creativity here make Edlund’s sole solo outing a true highlight. 

9. The Inamorata Consequence (Season 7, Episode 5) 

The likely final compound episode and a welcome return after season 6 lacked theme entirely, and as I established earlier the compound isn’t required it’s just where most of these take place.  Season 7 was a good note to go out on. While I still want closure, after the forgetable Season 5 and the  fresh but messy Season 6, 7 was almost pure goodness, with most of the episodes being standouts and the premire trilogy wrapping up the dangling threads from season 6 being a highlight, if not enough to make this list but it was a tight list as is. It had it’s flaws: The “Serena Cheats on Hank with Dean thing” was not only horribly underdeveloped but basically wrote off one of their best new characters. Her and hank breaking up and her dating dean is fine, relationships end and stuff, it was just done poorly. Even if Hank found out because a scary man in a bear costume literally carried him to a convience store and then to Dean which was great as was the button on that plot of, after Dean and Serena naturally react to the guy “Oh good you see him too. “ The Unicorn in Captivity is also a series low point despite having mark freaking hamil guest star, for a number of reasons i’ll probably get into one of these days either on a worst of list for this show or it’s own review. But those blemishes don’t overide a great season that makes up for Oprehous and Dermott’s absensces by bringing both back for an episode, has some true classics, some great character stuff and in general is just really good and it was hard to cut a lot of it from this list, but two made it. And it was nice to see the show go out on top if nothing else. 

So onto this episode which has a brilliant complex: Every exty years the Guild and the OSI meet to hash out the details of their mututal treaty with a Venture prociding and with Jonas now well and truly dead, and missing before that, it falls on Rusty. and since it was made before the compound burned down, our heroes returned to the charred remains of their home to hash things out.  The episode then nicely settles into 3 really excellent plots. The first is the obvious, the peace treaty which has the Council of 13, who in a delebrate move by the creators went from a bunch of faceless nobodies who were killed off to characters we all knew, versus our standard stable of OSI recureerers as the two bicker over terms and we find out one of the conflict settlers is a pool fight, done without a pool since that’s gone now. It’s just pure comedy goodness, but it ends with the rare unequivoocable VICTORY for Rusty. Fed up with both sides acting like children, and even calling them such, as well as both threatning war, he gives one hell of a speech to both to shut them up and for once in his life does BETTER than his father. 

It’s easily James Urbanik’s finest hour as the character and one of the series best moments which, 17 years in, is a high achievement.  The other two plots aren’t too shabby themselves. The second is an overlap as Hank gets lured away from the confrence by an old friend: IT’S DERMOTT! The dynamic duo rides again and their old dynamic of two dumbasses, one a normal teen but entirely full of himself the other being a cloudcuckoolander with little self awarness but more empathy and sometimes sense, is one I really missed and it shines here. Dermott’s joined the OSI, with Rusty giving him a recomendation as long as he didn’t tell anyone else he was his son, or at least it’s implied as much, finally buttoning up that bit while leaving it open for hank to find out later, and a bit that also was never resolved and hopefully will be by a follow up, especially since Dean revealed in the series finale he found out from his dad a while back while rusty was hammered. They follow kimberly mcmanus and one of the strangers, the guilds soldiers who are engaging in a clandestine affair.. which also reveals that the stranger is the peril partnerships mole in the guild, a nice twist. The two have fun chemistry and it’s great ot see them again just like it’s great to see hank and dermott pal around again with the highlight being hanks utterly bizzare and utterly hank fantasy sequence.  Rounding out the three is a more emotional tale as Dean sneaks off to see an old friend, Ben the genetisct who worked with his father and grandfather at various points and revealed to dean he was a clone. Ben is gone, either due to Doc and Jackson not wanting to use him, or because JK simmons was unvaliable and unlike dr. impossible and steven colbert, they didn’t want to recast. But we do get a great substitute as we meet H.E.L.P.er 2, a household model voiced by Rhys Darby who Ben left behind on his trip.  As it turns out Jonas tried mass marketing H.E.L.P.er units (With the equally unsurprisingly sexist tag line of “Get a H.E.L.P.er to Help Her!”), but a  baby choked on a stray bolt and a the ensuing backlash lead to mass burnings and most being destroyed and the one we meat being a nervous wreck that Ben took in. Dean naturally sees himself in the scared bot and while he fails to get his new friend to be able to leave, H2 is too nervous about possibly being destroyed and given the uncaring nature of the venture world sometimes yeah probably a good point, he does bond with dean.. and reveal that Rusty himself is a clone by accident. IT’s a nice twist that makes perfect since: While we don’t know if Rusty knows the tech was used on him most of his stuff , with few exceptions is old equipment of his dad’s. It’s not a stretch that his greatest invention was actually Jonas’. It also leads to a nice moment as dean hugs his dad, understanding him a bit better. It’s a funny, well done episode that lets doc and sons really shine. Truly a great way fo ra great theme to go out.

8. The Buddy System (Season 3, Episode 5) Time for a sentimental favorite. See while I watched bits of seasons 1 and 2 when they aired, and more of 2 then I realized, I didn’t get really hooked on the show till season 3.. and this was the episode that did it. The ones before are far from bad, Shadowman 9 was a contender for this list after all, this is just the one that really got me into the show, showing off it’s varied supporting cast, bringing in one or two more, and really getting me into dean.. and Dean and Triana shipping but I can get into that, again, more on that later. Given this and Fallen Arches were early faviorites it’s no suprise compound episodes became my faviorites and this one is easily the second best of em, with one more coming up topping it handily.  But enough showing my hand, let’s talk about Season 3. Season 3 is a slight mixed bag, as some episodes don’t land, but overall is a really good season, it’s just sandwitched between the shows too best. But it did have good ideas, great world building and a hell of a cliffhanger. Some decisions, like Sgt. Hatred, weren’t the best, but overall a solid season, just like 3 it only managed to squeak out one entry, though TONS of possible cantidates.  This episode has a great premise from the get go: Rusty, for once, has a decent idea. Yes it still results in a child dying and being replaced by a clone, but this is rusty. If something didn’t go terribly wrong on some level it wouldn’t be him. But the idea is simple: Since the cartoon based on his nightmarish childhood, which made him a minor celebrity and is why billy likes Rusty so much and looks up to him despite being.. Rusty, is a hit with the kids again, Rusty launches a day camp on the grounds, using his boys as counslers and having his various friends and aquantinces set up booths. From Orpheous and the order of the triad doing an anti drug presentation to the sea captain talking about the benefits of being a scooby doo villian, to Action Johnny, the series version of Johnny Quest renamed to avoid copyrights but very obviously Johnny Quest, whose strung out on drugs and can’t go a few minutes without going into a breakdown about his father or past. All good stuff. It actuallyg oes pretty well till rusty makes the mistake of going into an old thing of his d ad’s without checking and a gorilla monster attacks and gets the one child left behind, thankfully off screen, but it leads to the darkly hilarious bit of him rushing a clone out for his parents to avoid a justified law suit. 

Meanwhile the boys and brock deal with a new figure in their lives: Dermott Fictel. As the creators put it they basically desgined him as that one kid everyone knows who talks shit, thinks he’s way more capable than he is, and way more knowledgble than he is and is kinda dopey. I had one of those, i’m sure you did too, and that’s probably part of why I really liked Dermott as I knew a guy just like him. Hank naturally, not having had any friends other than dean and H.E.L.P.er, bonds with the prick and the two become best friends right away. Dean however hates the little asshole for both constantly shit talking him and just being obnoxious. Brock soon joins the hate train as Dermott invades his karate demonstration to talk about how much of a badass he thinks he is and learned from the internet. Brock soon finds himself asking the age old question. 

But since his code avoids women and children, he tries to find ways around it but Orpheous obviously isn’t having it. His other option is to go to the Monarch’s minons the Pupa Twins, aka the Moppets, Shiela’s old minons who the monarch’s basically stuck with and no one really liked in or out of universe. Their just assholes who treat 21 and 24 and the monarch himself like crap and are thankfully downplayed in Season 4, and only appear in Season 5 to die off and close up a plot thread. But credit where it’s due they did get one good bit, creepy as it may be and it’s this. 

With the Monarch not allowed to arch venture at the time due to plot stuff, the monarch’s mostly spying and sending the pupa twins in as spies which as you can see dosen’t really go well. Everything converges on the finale, as Rusty, again being rusty even when he’s mildly ahead child aside he still screws up, brings in Johnny’s old enemy Dr. Z, who like dermott is important but it’d take till the end of Season 5 for that. Johnny breaks down, Venture’s current nemisis arrives and finds there was a scheduling error and hten we get the crowning moment of the episode that makes it all come together magically: Dean gets to sit with Triana, whose actually being receptive to his crush for once, but also has to put up with Dermott..  who being Dermott, especially early dermott is an obnoxious jackass who makes creepy coments abotu Trianna and eventually sets Dean off

Dermott doesn’t even get two seconds into telling Triana to wait naked for him, because of course he does before dean utterly destroys him. This being Dean, it’s with tears and snot running and coming off like an angry 8 year old, but he still deserves points for utterly decimating the asshole after a full day of taking his self indulgant bullcrap and having the guy be creepy to his crush. And to be fair Triana was dealing with him fine, but still Dean beat up someone twice his size and while lacking any actual fighting skill with at least enough bulk to beat him up and gave the fucker a black eye. Until season 7 with him just paying off the monarch to save his teacher from making a huge mistake, and to show how fed up he was, this was easily Dean’s best moment. Just a great capper to a great episode. Also Dermott turns out to be, possibly brocks son but.. more on that later. 

7. Mid-Life Chrysalis (Season 1, Episode 3 (8 in Airing Order)  As I said earlier Season 1 was a bit rough, though as all of you probably know most 1st seasons are, especially in animation. It takes time to iron out what really works for a show and get it going right. Bojack Horseman, while still excellent, took the first few episodes to really become what it was born to be, Steven Universe season 1a lacks the deep characterization of the main cast that and has loosey goosey animation,  Ducktales had trouble character ballancing and ballancing adventure with deconstruction of adventure.. every show has growing pains.  And while season 1 does have too much of the show basically trying to scream

Like some adult cartoons do, and not even it’s contepraries like sealab and harvey birdman did as much, both excellent excellent shows by the way. But even with my criticsims of it: Flat characters, a try hard tone, clumsy worldbulding in places.. it’s still a good show even this early and even as early as episode 3, with the first two being good.. but this one being an utter classic. It dosen’t QUITE have the emotoinal or character depth of later episodes but damn if it isn’t one of the funniest things the crew ever wrote. 

Mid-Life’s two main plots are simple and start from the cold open: The Ventures get pulled over while on the way to an adventure by the air force, and Doc and Brock both encounter problems: Rusty being Rusty, his is petty and self loathing based as he gets called old or something like that by one of the air force people. Brock’s is a bit more serious: In a funny bit Brock LITERALLY has a legal lisence to kill, but given the burarcaey of the venture world, it’s expired.  So we get our two main plots out of that: Rusty wants to prove he’s not old and still got it by dragging a sad Brock to a strip club. Brock is miserable as the owner mocks him, and he can’t kill him so there’s that and his attempt to have a quickie with a stripper fails because it’s just not the same without his murder boner apparently. Look as I said the show was a wee bit immature early on.. it never stopped being mind you it just became more goofily immature than screaming i’m an adult. Brock leaves in a huff which leaves Rusty open for the oldest trick in the book as the Monarch sends Shiela in in disguise to seduce him, go back to his place, and then stick him with a syringe full of science that turns him into a caterpillar because this is the monarch. Subtly is not even a suite of his let alone his strong suite. Though this also being the Monarch we only get a bit where he watches as the two make out, which is creepy as that sounds until a minon randomly turns out the lights and apolgoizes. He was getting juice. The episode also nicely parodies the trope of a female spy or whatever turning for the hero because of his dick as The Monarch assumes that happen when Shiela has doubts about the scheme, that he “turend her with his oily sex” which is an objectively horrible and paranoid statment but also incredibly hilarious.  Thus the plots split and we get two really hilarious one: On Brocks end he with the boys encouragment, decides to retake his secret agent exam. And both boys really come into their own with this one: Dean’s adorably nerdy and sweet sides come out as he both encourages his second dad and helps him on the written portions, while hanks gung ho hankness emerges in full as he helps train brock, having him drink eggs that he probably spat in and in one of the best bits of the episode going a bit too far with the drill sgt routine till Brock helpfully points out he’ll legally be able to kill after this. The solution is also great as Brock not only avoids using his fire arm during one of the tests, instead uttelry decismating the target cutouts with just his kinfe and whatever he can rig up, and just scribbling icarus from the led zepplin albums on his test.. only for his proctor to pass him anyway as his dad and osi boss general treister, who we meet later, described brock as a living legend, and he did not dissapoint. And we get a great closer, after the main plto finsihes, where Brock shows the strip club asshole his fresh lisence before maiming him.. though even better, he DOSEN’T kill the guy as the asshole does show up again later, just missing an eye now. 

Back on our main plot we get plenty of hilarious and messed up stuff as the boys barely react to their dad’s horrible state, their numb at this point, and doc gives out the classic line and easily the best of the episode “I pissed in god’s eye, and he blinked”. Doc tries to cure himself and fails both due to caterpillar hands and due to helper eating the chemicals, and tries to get helper to help him reinact the end of the fly. All good stuff. It’s just a good, solid comedy episode that both solidifies the character and makes you laugh near constantly. 

6. The Terminus Mandate (Season 7, Episode 8) One of the best parts of the post Garantua shakeup of the show was the new council. After years of the council of 13 just being guys behind silouttes, mantle and dragoon nonwishtanding, Jackson and Doc replaced most of them with familiar charcters and gave a ton of them chances to shine while bringing in new ones like wide whale and easily their best later creation Red Death, more on him in a minute. It gave us a nice workplace dynamic and really made the guild pop more than ever. And this episode showcases this marvelously by giving the new council the spotlight.  In this one the Council find that there’s an old mandate that means they must stop active arching in order to retain their spots, something they all agree to and thus leads to an episode of each of the council having one last ride as each are given an envelope of who their last arch is. And each is hilaroius, some even heartfelt, creative and fleshes out some of them. Going down the list, leaving out Shiela and Red death who has a more involved subplot for hers and has some other buisness entirely we’ll get to: Phantom Limb: Has, in a great gag, a literal dick measuring contest with Hunter Gathers. Just a simple effective gag.  Radical Left: Is merged with his old arch enemy Right Wing so they simply play clue.  Wide Whale: Has the least funny or enteratining but still entresting as he and his old arch are now friends and the guy even plays cards with Rocco, so rather than poision the well he just sends Rocco to rough him up a bit for old times sake, then take him to dinner.  Dr. Z: Reminces with Action Johnny, the two considering each other family at this point and the two have a really nice moment with Johnny in rehab finally getting help that’s actually really touching and really nice to see.. though we also get an utterly fantastic bit where they recreate an actual scene from Johnny Quest but with Z lampshading how stupid everyone’s being. 

And finally we get Mantle and Dragoon, who spend the night binging tv and eating a ton, my mood and general schedule, afraid to open their envelope only to celebrate when they do and find their arches are all dead.  Red Death meanwhile has buisness to take care of. Since I dind’t include Red Means stop on here I’d just like to talk about how much I love the guy. Voiced by clancy brown death is an old school legend in the guild whose great at arching, has a great gimmick.,. but can switch from horribly threatning monster to aflrable nice and loving family man, having a younger wife and a daughter whose utterly adorable and shares his face. He even wanted the guild spot simply so he could basically retire, get the nice pension plan and salary that comes with the guild without the rigors of regular arching having long settled things with his own arch by murdering him> he’s an utterly inspired edition and the crew, and fans, loved him enough he became a recurrer this season. 

And his bit is both awesome and utterly terrifying: earlier the guild tried to parlay with rivals the peril partnership in order to stop the bleeding on their end, but their represntive, Blind Rage, a hilariously broey version of Daredevil, instead mocks and direspects them and is in general a pissant. So rather than do an arch, since he’s done with that anyway, Death evens the score in one of the shows best scenes, which like the rusty one above is an acomplishment years in and is an utterly terrifying and awesome villian scene. 

Clancy Brown is a fucking master at this. and it showss.  As for Shiela her bit ends up tying into the Venture Family’s plot for the evening: Rusty courts a black widow, Teresa Diade because getting laid outweighs the possibility of death and we get a a great bit of dean pretending to be her as the family preps him. Naturally he bungles it because he takes too much anti venom, but Teresa turns out to be a former superhero, probably what actually happened to her husbands, and Shielias arch during her breif solo career. Though instead of an arching, though she try, Shiela instead breaks down over the stress of this, over possibly giving up arching with her husband for her career, and the two share a nice moment. I mean she still takes Diade’s wallet because she’s a villian after all but it’s a nice one and an emotoinal moment. She takes the job as revealed later of course, because even of this probably hurts the Monarch’s feelings a bit he wants what’s best for her. Because they have a damn good marriage again. overally a really inventive, hilarious episode and one fo the show’s finest hurrahs as it approached an untimley end.

5. Everybody Comes to Hanks (Season 4, Episode 12) 

Season 4 as I said was my faviorite and one of it’s highlights was the duo of Bright Lights Dean City, which BARELY didn’t make this list, and Everbody Comes to Hanks. The two episodes followed the same period of time from the perspectives of each brother: Dean has an internship in new york city and Rusty’s bumming along, though being a dick he wants hank to have a job by the time he gets back.  Hank, in a classic hank move, expands Hank Co from an ocasional name for his buisnesses to a full on department store with a restraunt and detective agency because of course he has those. It honestly reminds me of me: Even as a teen I was the kind of goofus who’d do this sort of elaborate stuff. But at the same time it shows hank’s best trait and the one that most people underestimate: his ingniuity and imagination. Sure the guy’s off in his own world, as am I, and it’s his charm, but when push comes to shove he can bust out a wacky scheme, save his family from danger or as seen earlier this list pull out a 3 point romantic gesture. The guy may be kinda dumb, int he best way, but he’s got the natural talent for the superhero/supervillian game and clearly wants to be his own bizzare version of batman, which I hope he gets to be and I prefer over the theroy he’ll be a villian. Sure it makes SOME sense.. but frankly hank’s good heart and love of theatrics and lack of care about the jackasses meancing his dad make him a way better superhero. 

Anyways naturally said detective agency leads to both a noir homage, complete with lack of color and a case: Dermott, who at this point’s a bit more symapthetic, wants to know if brock’s really his dad or not and hires his best bud to do it. Hank also gets a partner in one fo the show’s best recurrers, the Alchemist, ba dah!, Orpheous’ best friend, teammate, sarcasm machine and out and proud magic guy voiced perfectly by Dana Snyder. He’s a good counterpart to Orpheous, sarcastic down to earth and fun loving to the more serious and full of himself Orhpeous and since Triana moving out in our next entry, has been Orpheous’ roomate and bored since he’s now in the middle of nowhere, so he’s eager to jump into Hank’s nonsense.  What follows is a compelling detective story as Hank finds out Brock never slept with Dermott’s mom, and tries to find the real one.. and ends up stumbling upon the solution upon hooking up with Dermott’s older sister Nikki... which quickly goes sideways as he finds out not only is she twice his age, and even without that he’s still a minor and this is still creepy.. but she’s Dermott’s mom.. and RUSTY’S his father, with Dermott’s mom who raised him being his grandma. It’s a hell of a reveal that throws up the table both on Dermott’s relationship with Hank and the chraracter as a whole and has a great flashback where we find out how something this effed up happened and it’s incredibly well acted. It’s good stuff.  Hank uses SPHYNX”s mindwipe machine on himself, since getting laid or not, which being hank he dosen’t see the problems with how it happened as long as he dosen’t know, sends a total recall esque message to himself on his watch so he knwos he got laid, jut not the horirble, horrible details. And I like that , unlike say Phineas and Ferb Across the Second dimension’s bullshit reset ending, this dosen’t erase the impact of things. Not hank loosing his virgnity that’s meaningless I mean Dermott. He’s still there, it jsut left at ticking time bomb of when that reveal’s going to go off, and added an intresting new dynamic that I hope if the show continues somehow gets explored. A masterful, fun and suprisingly disturbing episode, everybody should come to hanks. Also as one last post note i’d be remiss if I forgot the great bit of Hatred saying they only serve eggs at hanks cafe. 

4. The Better Man (Season 4, Episode 7) 

Now we get to Dr. Orpheous, who unsuprisingly is a faviorite of mine. While I wasn’t a big Dr. Strange fan till reading the old lee and ditko stuff, I was always a fan of Orpheous, a hammy divorced dad who will give fighting the hordes of hell the same gravitas as getting junk mail, putting some punks souls in a homies figurine, and venture stealing his weedwacker. He’s a truly loveable character, a silver age pompus style hero in a world he dosen’t quite fit, with more power and competence than most venture bros protaganists, but still having things thta hold him back: while he’s good at his job his own drive and self importance drove away his ex wife and leaves him with not much in his life other than his daughter.  And for the first time in the series he’s forced to face his wife leaving him for another man when said man shows up : The Outrider, a seemingly cooler mystic hero whose better at both being a husband and being a sorecer and stops some creature The Order of the Triad fights after their arch torrid sumons him. Orpheous stews over this a bit and after failing to make hisown doorway to hell t  one up his non-arch nemisis, visits another classic character for the series: the Master. Voiced by Voice Acting Maestro John Benjamin, pre his biggest roles with archer and bob’s burgers but post his breakout with home movies. The Master is a no nonsense mystic entity who loves taking the piss out of orpheous and loves his student even if Orpheous agrviates him. He also has a neat visual habit of showing up in a diffrent shapeshifted form each time to teach his pupil a lesson.. and to do weird sex stuff because he can multi task and we see Trainai’s mom for the first time, though with the master just using the form to taunt Orpheous on his personal failings as usual but has a good point.  Soon however the group returns to the portal from hell and find Torrid and Outrider.. and torid explodes and sends the rider to hell, forcing Orpheous and co to rescue him, with Orpheous finding out via a clue from the master that the outrider embeded an artifact in his head to travel between worlds, the one thing orpheous could never master, as a shortcut.. and said thing gets al and orpheous stuck with the outrider. There we see the contrast: Orpheous is indeed the better sorcerer.. but the outrider’s the better husband and while if his wife cheated on him that’s fucking terrible, it’s clear he didn’t STEAL Tatiana so much as she left Orpheous for someone that geniuinely appricated her. The hatched it buried and it’s godo character work.  Speaking of which we get to Jefferson Twilight, a blade parody who hunts Blackulas (his words and leads to a great moment in his debut where a supervillian tries to find a more pc term for it but Jefferson poitns out since he primarly hutns oversea “African americian” dosen’t really work), and the guy on the team reguarly compalning about having no magic ability.. but who finds he CAN move between worlds and astral project, to his delight and Al’s annoyance. It’s an adorable and well won moment as he finaly finds SOMETHING magic he can do.  The other plot, which dovetails nicely into Orpheous concerns Dean’s longstanding crush on Triana, another pin to pull from earlier this list. I shipped them when I was younger but this episode, and one coming up on this list, pointed out how it jsut didn’t work: Dean’s naivite combined with his lack of making a move just didn’t mesh with her. IT’s something the creators agreed on realizing they just had no use for Triana, but both hating the cliche of a character just vanishing and thus giving her a proper sendoff instead.  Dean tries to move on after another unsucessful attempt to talk her up, with Hank and Dermott playing his wingmen, unsucessfully but Dean actually hits it off with a girl.. a girl we never see again but still and Dermott actually offers sound advice for once.. which given events before and after this prompts Dean to quip “better check the temprature in hell”. He just says to take things slow and just call the girl, maybe ask her out, don’t overblow it again or try too hard. It’s good stuff and like our last entry deepens the character a bit by showing that he’s not always a dumbass. Just  mostly. On Triana’s end she enters her dad’s closet, again having done so before and as shown in previous episodes Orpheous always mindwiped her, and it turns out it’s not the first time as the Master sees great talent, but sees she needs to be taught by her mother and step dad, where she can find other witches and learn at her own pace.. maybe befriend an older witch and a demon, find her own personl lesbian. We’ll see how it goes. He TRIES scaring her out fo a future with dean, but fails because.. she had no intrest in dean whatsoever and there was nothing to scare her away from. The Master is confident this will lead to nothing.. but as we see in the stinger.. this isn’t the case.  Byron for once grew, and rather than wipe his daughter’s brain to keep the last family he has outside of his buddies close, as he likely did before out of fear of loosing her... lets her go. He grows letting his daughter grow up and take the long path he did and hopefully better than either of her parents, while Dean “let’s her down gently’. Triana was a godo character, a downt o earht presence in theboys life and wiry, but it was time for her to fly and it’s a good note to send her off on and overall pure magic. 

3. All This and Gargantua 2! (Special between Seasons 5 and 6) 

ONto another charcter’s sendoff we have JJ, Doc’s brother he absorbed in the womb who came back somehow and then became way more sucessful and spent all of seasons 4 and 5 building a space Station. And this episode pays that and MANY other threads off in a giant sized epic that’s one of the series finest moments.  it’s the Gargantua 2′s grand opening, with Doc and the boys going up. Hank goes to gamble and adventure, with Hank bucks obvoiusly, while Doc and Dean are called to Visit JJ.. whose dying, his body shutting down shortly after he finalyg ot life and wanting this satilite to be his final work. but soon the three, along with col treister who we’ll get to in another entry, have ot save the world with JJ touchingly sacirficing himself just as both brothers finally reconciled and Doc finally accepted him. It’s  a powerful subplot.  Said calamity comes in the form or another loose end, the revenge socieyt, Phantom Limb’s splinter group who are attacking and are unknowing pawns in the soverign, who turns out not tbe bowie which is good becaue he dies here and that would’ve been eerie, and his mad plans to try and outwit the investors, msyterous beings. Yeah i’m going to have to try and summarize a lot here as htis is a big, continuity drive spectacle and it works well if wonkily. TO mak ea long story short our heroes fight on a satlite, and dr. henry killinger, marry poppins meets kissinger with a magical murder bag, fights his brethern and reforges the guild with the various villians tryign to stop the soverign or leftover from the society. The special is one big bit of fanserice that ties up loose ends and launches a bold new era. I don’t have as much to say as other entires but it’s this high up because few episodes match it in sheer importance, scale, humor and timing, it’s just harder to dig into because again, it’s an hour long special with lots of stuff from the series up to that point. it’s what makes it work but it’s harder to dig into in this short a space. Maybe someday soon. either way i’ts a garganguan achivment that feels like a huge pot of payoff after 5 seasons of effort and is utterly worth the ride. 

2. Showdown at Cremation Creek, Parts 1 and 2 (Season 2) Yes this is a two parter. Yes i’m giving it one spot but it’s my list and this is basically a special like the two entires it’s sandwitched between just sliced in half. So pitter patter, let’s talk about this one. 

Showdown was the finale to the stellar season 2, a step up from season 1 that refined the good raw matieral there into something truly stupdencous and it all comes to a head here in a wonderful epic in the might venture maner in that it manages to feel epic while still being hiilarious, characer driven and self parodying.  After a season apart the Monarch and Shielia have reonciled and are having an affair behind Phantom Limb’s back.. though given LImb is a sexist piece of shit who dosen’t value Shielia as a parter or part of his orignization while the Monarch has come around to doing so and did even with his crazy jealousy, it’s forgivable. Shelia wants more form him and the Monarch takes hte painful step of agreeing to stop arching venture. This dosen’t last obviously, but still. HOwever it does lead to pure hilarity when his henchman for the bachelor party, after the monarch went home, kidnapping the ventures, having gottne brock while he was drunk and distracted. Still with fatalities but still.. it’d be the best day of their lives anyo ther day. But to avoid pissing off his fiance who likely woudln’t belivie the truth, he makes up a story of inviting them to a wedding as an olive branch and does so> The whole situation also leads to my faviorite venture line: 24: Holy shit I thought we dreamnt that part! Anyways our gang are soon split up, Brock attends awkardly, Dr. Venture tries to hit on the bride over mid life chriaslys earlier, and we get the dawn of one of the show’s best buddy duos: 21 and Hank. The two being huge nerds quickly bond, and 21 helps hank sneak into the wedding as “Igor Badguyovich via an old henchman uniform, cleverly one of the ones from the pilot. Dean ends up getting stuck in the engine room and ends up spending the two parter hallucinating and going on a patichse version of never ending story while also letting loose his hatred of his boy advenutering lifestyle. It’s prue fun and good stuff.  David Bowie, or someone impersnating him, aka the soverign arrives along with Klaus Nomo and Iggy Pop for the wedding as an old frirend of shelias giving her away. But soon things go as bad as a superhero wedding does, becuase supervillians apparently aren’t immune to that as Phantom Limb attacks, deciding to throw a cou because he can’t kill the guy his ex actually likes or get promtoed and with bowie’s enorage as his moles attacks and tries to take shiela by force. The result is great as brock moblizies the minons, and unbenwonst to him, hank to fight, dean has his epic adventure and rusty and monarch try to do.. something. It’s all great stuff while Bowie fights limb in an epic battle we sadly barely see but what we do is glorious. It’s all good stuff. An donly one episode tops it in scope, humor and spectacle and in my heart. 

1. Operation P.R.O.M. (Season 4, Episode 16)  The show’s best season goes out with it’s best episode. I could close it out there but given i’ve rambled about every other episode why stop now? It’s Homeschool Prom Night! Doc’s gathered their various allies, the order of the triad, pete and billy , shoreleave and brock, along with Hatred who has replaced his hatred tats with a big v.. excpet the d over his junk which is unfortunate. 21 joins in genuinley and because he’s having a crisis while monarch and sheila crash with hatred’s ex as a baragning chip to see wha’ts up and end up joining in. 

The boys are as sucessful getting their own dates as you’d expect: no one will return Hank’s calls but since he runs into best buddy Dermott on the way brings him along as long as their band can play, which is easily the highlight of the episode as their glorious and terrible garage band Shallow Gravy makes it’s debut. Figures I can’t put video in right as the article’s almost done.. but back on point.. Dean brings Triana who has a boyfriend now who resembles Edward Cullen, because tha’ts aged really well, which bugs the crap out of him even though he moved on and casues him to act like a pissant and get a corsage thrown in his face as he should. Dean ends up following Dermott and Hank’s advice to go try and “win her back” with a big romantic gesture... which listneing to dermott on a romantic gesture should be grounds for being delcared legally braindead.. it goes terribly with the big plan instead burning a t on her lawn, and the ghost robes making Dean look like the kkk. The outrider tells him to be happy after beating him up over the mixup, a mixup that REALLLLY hasn’t aged well, and Dean tells him to fuck off. End of their time but it’s good stuff and caps a great season of hank. And while I don’t LIKE dean’s behavior here, it’s nice to see him not act like a good person for a second, and to be as human and faliable as the rest of htem, even if it means beeing deeply unlikable and his next relationship which sadly just.. never got picked up again, would go better. And the one after that.. not getting into that mess. What the hell guys. It’s really good stuff. 

Naturally given all these cast members ther’es a lot else going on: Rusty hires prostitues for the evening because of course he does and fails with his because of course he does.. and because it turns out his name is a sex act which leads toi a long and inspried bit of bleeping as everyone has their own version and we see tons of recurrers way in to Rusty’s horror. Rusty being inscensed tires using an aprohdeiasc , specially spanish fly taken from an actual fly, one of my faviorite bits mostly for this bit after billy gapes in horro at the giant monster fly.  Doc: Don’t scream you’ll just piss it off and it screams acid when it’s pissed off. And I alredy dids that when I ripped it’s wings off.  His scheme is of course utterly terrible but it’s Rusty, and i’m unsuprised and he dosen’t benifit from it as we’ll get into. Al and Shore Leave bond while 21, in a pogniant subplot, realizes he’s had enough and quits his job and through Orpheous realizes his firend isn’t a ghost, but a guilt induced hallucinaiton and lets him go, joining the team implicitly. It’s really good character stuff.  Finally we have the espionge portion. WHile Shore leave is at the party Gathers leaves Brock, once he’s finished chauffering the boys, to watch Monstroso, who they recently captured and gathers wants to use as a barganing chip. But gathers soon finds previously introduced Agents Doe and Cardholder wanting to topple agency head Hunter Gathers, one of my faviorite recurring characters mostly due to being performed by the increidble Toby Huss, a batshit general whose basically nick fury with a kentucky accent and no real filter or fucks to give and he’s utterly hilarious any time he shows up.  He’s been claming his cancer treatments have turned him into a Hulk, and why yes that is their exact terminology. Turns out agents doe and cardholder have been playing along with this seeming delusion to try and outst treister.. and take the OSI over for the guild, being the traitors Gathers suspected were there. However in a brilliant turn, this sub plots resolves as all should: on the bridge of hteir hellicarrier, with Treister draped only in the american flag with a post it note saying fix it on his chest. He reveals that while the cancer is real, the “hulkking” out was just playing them: he knew they were the double agents, and was using Gather’s to ferit them out. However that’s not the only reason: Treister knows his odds of beating cancer are slim so he’s come up with a resonable solution: Shoot himself up into space, as seen in the image for this entry, and see if aliens can cure it. They don’t but space radiation does as he returns later and not only that while he’s lost in the special, after brilliantly ACTUALLY having become a hulk, Doc and Jackson revealed in the making of book they had plans to possibly have him come back as their version of GALACTUS at one point, only holding back on it because their not sure if they want to go full cosmic or not. We’ll see if the show comes back in longform but god I hope so. If not i’m sure as hell doing it. But Treister hands the wheel over to gathers literally and metaphorically, passsing the reigns of the ship and the OSI over to him so Gathers can run it right, and then well.. shoots himself up into space, ending up as the last image of the hour long masterwork. But befroe that theres one last plot that leads into what I consider to be the show’s best scene. Brock finds out the hard way that the other Sphinx agent on duty is actually his ex molotov cocktease, who skirts monstroso away because she’s fallen for him, to brock’s rage. While Brock catches up to them, Mol reveales she has a trump card: The prostitues venture hired are actually her mercinary crew the blackhearts, and if she dosen’t give the signal everyone dies.. and being an utter dick Mol lets the car brock’s holding up off a cliff drop with her and monstroso inside.. though they come back eventually because universe that’s basically a comic book. So we get THIS SEQUENCE THAT’S IN CAPS BECAUSE THEY STOPPED LETTING ME PUT VIDEOS IN THIS ONE FOR SOME REASON AND IT’S ALMOST DONE. It’s easily the show’s best as Pulp’s amazing “Like a Friend” plays as brock rushes to save everyone, finds everyone having a good time thanks to rusty’s spanish fly, and Shore Leave and Al doing the v-day sailor kiss which is amazing, and then all the blackhearts turn into fly monsters because Rusty. It’s a great, tense gorgeously animated sequence that ends showing just how far brock’s come: From an angry asshole who hates everyone to these guys genuine friend.. and still a badass. overall just a great, spectacular finale and the best of one fo the best animated shows period. And with that the list concludes. This took me 2 days worth of adruous work so I hope you enjoyed it. Follow me for more including regular coverage of Amphibia, Ducktales starting back up later this month.. and as of tommorow possibly the loud house! Expect more venture bros including reviewcaps coming soon and if you want to comission your own reviewcap for 5 bucks, just hit up my personal messages or ask box, or just hit it up iwth a casual suggestion i’m bound to listen. Either way until next time, Go Team Venture. And I can think of only one way to properly close this. Play us off sea captain.