#and she blows all the shit up and he also rescues ghost rider and all the heroes stuck is hell come back to life

[doctorstrangeaskblog]

Have you met Zelma Stanton?

No. Why? Do I know her in other realities?

[serendipitioussurvival]

Of Rain and Confessions - Steter

When she pulled out of the parking garage Derek had converted the basement floor too the pitter-patter of rain greeted him. It wasn’t a full-on storm, no wind was blowing the trees in wild abandon and no thunder was rocking the heavens. No, the clouds in the sky were a dull grey and the rain came down in fat dollops with the briefest flicker of lightning glistening off the raindrops like diamonds. It reflected her calm fury so well he faintly wondered if she were responsible for it

“That’s it.” came the cold, calm exclamation from the young woman brewing in her own fury. Peter was surprised that the pack had let her last as long as she had been without anyone asking her what was wrong - then again her gaze had centered mostly on him so of course they didn’t ask. “Derek, postpone the rest of the meeting.” bold little thing she was, though she was allowed such a reaction. Being a pack’s Emissary had special privileges, the fact that she had come back to Beacon Hills before she could be an official FBI Agent had also granted her certain privileges. 

No longer was she an ADD spaz kid wonder with too bright brains and a loyalty that defied death for those she loved and cared for. No, Stiles Stilinski had gone away a teenager and had come back a weapon. She was toned muscle hidden deceptively with her plaids - though they were now women's plaids and fit her better, not men's as she had once worn - and had a grace in her movements that only came from someone who knew they could hold their own, no matter the threat they came across. 

She had always been his favorite human, now she was even more of a wonder he wanted to explore. 

He just wasn’t expecting the tart to march up to his spot on the staircase and drag him from it with a strength he had not been expecting. “You’re coming with me,” was the only explanation he was granted as he was led out of the apartment complex. Truthfully he wanted to snap at her and belittle her so she’d leave him alone, more than that he didn’t want to be around his nephew and the pack he was part of/not part of. “Get in.” 

He didn’t snark her as he normally would, didn’t remark that he sure as shit did not want to be trapped in the tiny confines of her jeep with her burning cinnamon fury that was mounting by the moment. No, all Peter Hale did was get in the passenger seat out of mild curiosity and wry contempt. 

When she pulled out of the parking garage Derek had converted the basement floor too the pitter-patter of rain greeted him. It wasn’t a full-on storm, no wind was blowing the trees in wild abandon and no thunder was rocking the heavens. No, the clouds in the sky were a dull grey and the rain came down in fat dollops with the briefest flicker of lightning glistening off the raindrops like diamonds. It reflected her calm fury so well he faintly wondered if she were responsible for it. 

He had thought she were a witchling or Spark so long ago only to be wrong, Stiles Stilinski was completely human. The weather, nature, hell magic even responded to her in ways that made it seem like she had an affinity for them. She drew him in too, just as effortlessly as the rest of the world was drawn to her. 

The only reassurance he had was that she seemed just as attuned to him as he was to her. The relationship that had sprouted between them had been strange and completely uncommon, relying on mostly snark and defensive barriers consisting of disappointment that neither was what they desired the other to be. Then the Ghost Riders had happened and something had changed. The strained bond he had with her grew stronger than any of the others he had, she saw in him something that had urged her camaraderie. 

He had made her push him through the portal, knowing full well it would be painful and would most likely result in his death, but she had surprised him more when she sent him through with a chaste kiss. He had known that Stiles was important to the pack even if they themselves didn’t, it still amazed him how much of a difference she actually made. 

Not only was she Malia’s Anchor, but she was the anchor for Erica, Boyd, she was the driving force of plan-making and willingness to look at every aspect - ‘Your plan is to rescue Stiles so she can come up with a plan?’. Perhaps the most heartbreaking was seeing her father, the one she loved so unconditionally, be so inherently happy without her and the fake specter that was his wife. He had been forgotten too, but her being forgotten infuriated him like no other. 

When she graduated he had her Jeep repaired without ever telling her who was responsible, that way she could have her beloved companion and have absolutely no reason to stay. He kept tabs on her, of course, and felt a strange sense of pride every time he saw her accomplishments. 

Then Scott, True Alpha McCall called every former pack member and told them they needed to reform, that the Ghost riders were back. Of course everyone returned, the Ghost Riders were too great a threat to ignore. 

He has a video somewhere in his suite of Stiles absolutely fucking wrecking Scott when he admitted that he had jumped the gun and it wasn’t the Ghost Riders but instead a Headless Horseman. That was when he had first noticed how different she was, hard not to when she’s literally shoulder tossing a werewolf that’s at least six inches taller than her. Stiles was no longer the skinny teen who had brains she couldn’t put into thought, she was now a twenty-something young woman with a body trained for confrontation.

The fact that everyone ended up staying in Beacon Hills is part of the reason why he was so frustrated and annoyed lately. Everyone was changed and yet they were pretty much the same. All aside from himself, Lydia Martin, and Stiles. 

He was brought out of his reverie by Stiles opening her door and sliding out of the jeep without a word. They were at the Preserve and heading for a popular hiking path but…

He followed after her, curious and annoyed. She was going to get sick, walking about in the rain - refreshing though it was - and he couldn’t stand the smell of a sick human. 

“Shift.” and now he was side-eyeing her, curious how much she truly knew and unwilling to give an inch if she didn’t already know everything. “Peter,” his defenses broke down with the compassion in her tone, with the way her scent - even in this downpour - was steady in its vanilla and honey. “I can run with you like this, but your wolf is anxious. Just shift, please.” 

“You going to watch me undress then, sweetheart?” not that he wouldn’t mind, definitely not, but that would be heading in a direction their current relationship hadn’t gone in. To his delight she simply raised her brow at him and began putting her hair up in a ponytail. 

“Since when have you ever been shy, Peter? Get naked or shred your clothes.” and then she burst forward, charging through the brush with a wicked gleam in her eye that challenged and enticed him all at the same time. Gods, but he did adore her, especially when she knew just what he and his wolf were needing. He barely shucked his pants off in time before his full shit hit him and he was chasing after her in a flurry of soaked leaves and wet underbrush. 

He howled the moment he caught sight of her, ethereal white fair skin flickering through the soaked dark material of her shirt and hair, then howled once more when she threw her head back and let out a loud laugh he felt in his bones. They ran together, side by side, slowing down and pushing forward, teasing and relaxing in ways that only made sense to them. Stiles had always been an important member to the wolves, if not the pack itself, but it was moments like these that made her impossibly invaluable to him. 

They ran for an hour until she could run no more and collapsed against a tree trunk, pants soaking into the muddy ground. 

“You know, Peter,” he tried not to think of how breathless and relaxed she sounded as he zipped his pants back up from behind a tree a little ways away. “I never did get to thank you for repairing Roscoe instead of just buying a completely similar car.” there she was, shocking him still again. 

“You knew it was me?” he tried to distract himself with re-buckling his belt instead of the hummingbird heartbeat. 

“Of course I did, just like how I knew you were the one telling me to get out of Beacon Hills.” she sighed and when he turned had her head tilted back against the tree trunk with her eyes closed, letting some of the raindrops filters in from the canopy above them drop onto her face. “Some,” he was not paying acute attention to the way her throat looked wet with the rain, slick strands of hair and the beautiful kisses of moles decorating her flesh. No, Peter was paying attention to how kissable she looked, how in tune with her surroundings and how… how at peace she seemed with him being near her, like this. “Some would say that it was a courting gift, if people still did such a thing.” 

“You’re worth more than the repair bill I got for it.” it was this murmur of admission that had her lashes parting to strike him with her champagne eyes. In truth, it startled him how well and sincere it had come out, yet when he found himself looking at the woman before him he found he didn’t care. “Using money as a courting gift is cheap anyway.” a test then, to see if she was as sincere about furthering this as he was. 

“It wasn’t the money you spent,” it didn’t seem possible that the forest could become so quiet, “it was the sentiment behind it. You didn’t just give me a car back, you gave me back something I loved.” he watched as she lowered one bent leg to the forest floor, still assessing him the way he was assessing her. “If you were to give me a courting gift I’d tell you to not bother.” before he could be hurt, before he could get infuriated she floored him. “ ‘cause I’ve been yours since I was seventeen.” 

“What?” she rolled her eyes and stood, approaching him much like she had earlier. 

“I’ve waited years for you, Peter Hale.” his heart soared, his gut hardened and rolled, he was pretty sure he was both freezing and having a hot flash, and then his nerves sang the moment her cold, plush lips pressed firm against his. It didn’t require thought when he wound his arms around her waist and pulled her against his chest, nor when he kissed her back and let go of every reason why they shouldn’t. She had just admitted interest in him, interest in something serious and long-lasting - and gods if that didn’t make him love her more. 

“That wasn’t exactly a declaration of love,” he sniffed dramatically, watching in admiration as a drop of rain fell down the bridge of her nose and trail down her jaw. “But it’ll do, I suppose.” her smile was like watching a sunrise after a stormy night, slow and beautiful and breathtaking. Their next kiss was slow and sweet and everything he’d rarely gotten in life, most importantly of all it was a memory he’d hold close to his heart for years to come. 

Who would’ve thought that rain could bring such clarity?

[daphenomenal-1]

Last Words on “Iceman” and My Hatred for the Marvel Fandom

Just the other day, Marvel Comics have cancelled many series, including “Generation X”, Heather Antos’ “Gwenpool”, Gabby Rivera’s “America” and - the topic of this post - “Iceman”, written by Sina Grace. This has been met with both rousing applause and deep scorn. And everything involving Iceman has proved one thing to me: I fucking hate the Marvel fandom.

Where to begin? Well, let’s start with the catalyst for my hatred, and that of course is the slew of comics coming out post “Civil War II”. CWII was something I was looking forward to. I loved the first one and I believe it’s one of Marvel’s best events ever. And with the movie just coming out when the first issue hit, it seemed primed to blow us all out the water. But…it didn’t. What ended up happening was the genesis of what some people call “SJW Marvel”. Now what does that mean?

A little while before CWII, Marvel started churning out comics with a more diverse-heavy cast of heroes. Kamala Khan, Miles Morales, America Chavez and the like all made appearances before the aforementioned Civil War. However, the term “SJW Marvel” didn’t seem to hit its stride until post Civil War and during the lead in to “Secret Empire” - Marvel’s second failed attempt at an epic event. At its core, the term is used to show how Marvel has moved past telling engaging stories and instead focused on what a character was, not who.

How does this relate to Iceman? In “All New X-Men” #40, Jean Grey basically outs Bobby Drake as gay. Then, later, the young Bobby tells the older one and Old Bobby admits indirectly that he is in fact homosexual. This caused a massive uproar, as many saw this as completely out of Bobby’s character. But the hatred for the new Iceman came to a head in 2017, when Marvel hired Sina Grace to write a solo Iceman series after the nonsense with Secret Empire. But long time comic fans hated this new Iceman comic for one sole reason: because it was bad. Many fans complained about the character designs, The inking, the writing and the characters themselves. However, fans of Iceman saw it differently. They didn’t see comic fans critiquing a series; they saw the outcry about Iceman as being “homophobic”. And it happened again, after “Iceman” was promptly cancelled, odds are by new Marvel EIC C.B. Cebulski.

To preface this: I did not like “Iceman”. Not at all. Call me homophobic if you want to, but my issue with Bobby was not because he was gay. My issue was that being gay was the only thing Bobby had going for him. Think about it: what else has Bobby done to make him a likable hero in his solo? All it did was make him look like a whole asshole. Take for instance in “Iceman” #1, when after he went to the hospital and his father told him that he missed his own mother’s birthday, Bobby says, “I think that was when I was literally saving a friend from apocalypse. I can have an edible arrangement here in no time” (p. 10). Any normal person would never say anything like that, especially not to their parents. The way it’s written shows a lack of genuine concern for missing his mother’s birthday and throws a haphazard “edible arrangement” to try to make it all better. We see this happen again in “Iceman” #2, where both him and Kitty put the safety of this mutant to the side - albeit momentarily- to talk about how him now being gay has affected them both. Even the mutant kid addresses it in what’s suppose to be a comedic line: “You’re gay, she’s emo…can you fools get back to rescuing me?!” (p. 16).

But the most egregious one of all has to be the entirety of Iceman #6. In #6, Iceman and his Champions buddies - Hercules, Angel, Ghost Rider and Darkstar - are mourning the death of Black Widow, their former teammate. However, things take a surprising turn when, in just 4 or 5 pages after some drinks, we see another non-superhero act: he destroys a woman’s Sentinel movie prop because it’s a “hate symbol”. This time, we don’t even need context clues to figure out he doesn’t care. He says it himself that he doesn’t care what it was (p. 9).

Immediately after that, it goes into Iceman meeting Judah, his soon-to-be lover. They talk, Judah asks Bobby on a date to a gay bar, Bobby has his first “gay kiss” (which are not me trying to sound homophobic; they refer to it in the comic [see “Iceman” #6 p. 16 & 17]) and then *boom* Sentinels. End.

The issue with Bobby now is that he went from being a “charming, but cocky guy” to being a complete and utter asshole. Disregarding things with “I’m sorry I had better shit to do” lines, destroying people’s property, and hooking up/dating someone he JUST met that very same day. These aren’t the marks of a superhero; these are traits of a dickhead who cares about nobody but himself. Even going so fast as to coerce his friends with a “pls don’t say no” (p. 12)

Which leads into my hatred for the Marvel fandom. I have been very vocal about my disdain for Iceman and his book, but what I’m hit with isn’t a rational discussion on what the book did right/did wrong. It was “You’re homophobic” or “You’re an MCU stan” (whatever that means) or my favorite: “Iceman is a great story, next argument” without any reasons as to why it’s a great story. This is why I hate the Marvel fandom: because the moment you don’t like something, you’re immediately racist, sexist or homophobic. Hate Ms. Marvel? Racist. Hate Captain Marvel? Sexist. Hate Iceman? Homophobic. You hate America? You’re all three of them! This doesn’t do anything to help your cause. If anything, it makes it worse. Nobody will read a book if you say “if you don’t read it, you hate gay characters and you hate gay people.”

Another reason the series has had poor reception is it’s competition. This is the same year Tom King released “Mister Miracle”, a true modern-day masterpiece that everyone should read. This is also the same year that Sean Gordon Murphy flipped the Bat-script with “Batman: White Knight”. Compared to those two alone, Iceman looks like the worst fanfic you can find. Take some time and read “Mister Miracle” and “White Knight”. They are actually brilliant comics and should be talked about more.

In the end of the day, my problem with Iceman isn’t that he’s gay. My problem is that being gay is all he is. He has no other character traits that makes him likable. He needs to be rebuilt, and the cancellation of the book is a great first step. However, being called homophobic because you don’t like Iceman? That’s wrong and it doesn’t do anything to make people read Iceman. And sales proved it. It consistently produced under 20,000 copies, and if people really cared, they would have read it.

Later on, I’m going to pitch my Iceman story. Where Iceman could have gone to save it’s comic arc. But I hate the Marvel fandom and I’m glad Iceman is cancelled. It needs a change. As always, I invite all to have a conversation about Iceman.

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

So Attilan has less than 2,000 people living in it?  Like when Black Bolt and Max Bolt are teenagers, it’s 1,400 people, so this is being generous.  This is a lot of people having babies and no old people dying generous. 

This is so tiny!  So unbelievably tiny.  Like, this makes it so much more egregious that Medusa didn’t realize Auran could just regenerate?  How do you not know that?  She’s one of forty people in the entire fucking dome in your age cohort, you’ve known each other since you were kids, and she’s been your bodyguard for years.

Also, how do you wind up with downtrodden masses when you’re the size of a high school?  What the fuck are they even mining?  I just went with it before, but now that they’ve established that the twenty or thirty royal guards who staged the coup with Max represent something like 2% of the population, I suddenly have so many questions about what the fuck the underclass could possibly be mining that’s of enough value to Attilan that it’s a continuous activity.  I mean, you can’t mine for food?  I think NASA would have noticed a lot of offgassing if they were mining fuel?  It kind of looks like a coal mine, but that would require a natural history of the MCU’s moon to be so radically different from anything sane that I don’t even know how to begin addressing it.

Speaking of which, the guys helping Gorgon because he’s fighting for his king, and they had a king until Congress declared them a state?  Dear writers: There has actually been a recent goddamned film about this.  The Hawai’ian monarch deposed after we sent in the Marines was a queen.  It would have taken ten seconds to look it up and fix the line.  Also, I think those guys are pot farmers, which means that two separate Inhumans have gotten lost and blundered into two separate pot farms full of twitchy guys with guns willing to adopt weird strangers for no apparent reason.  I mean, Hawaii could give a shit about pot, but Oahu’s 600 square miles.  This seems statistically unlikely.

Though the teeny tiny size of the Inhuman homeland/city-state/postage stamp does cut them a little slack in terms of being ineffective.

“You’ve never seen anything like these elite warriors coming to fight me,” says Gorgon, to a bunch of guys who live in the same world as Ghost Rider, watched aliens fall out of a wormhole and fly around New York City on live tv, and ignored C-SPAN when a Congressman yelled at a dude with a super-public drinking problem for not letting the military also play with his robot rocket-armor.

The elite warriors coming to fight Gorgon: get distracted by the very existence of a forest. 

The most effective members of the elite squad--which Gorgon trained himself, he’s quick to say--turn out to be Auran, because she seems to actually like hitting people or at least to really not like Gorgon personally, and Mordis, who’s basically Cyclops in a gimp suit instead of glasses and who doesn’t want to be on this stupid mission.

Also, I’d like to take a fucking second and talk about how Inhumans really doesn’t feel like part of the shared universe?  And I mean that way beyond the basic problems of a lot of other stand-alone shows/movies, where you get awkward references to “the Incident” or the Avengers but you know Robert Downey Jr.’s never going to fucking fly in and blow up the bad guy with a cigar-sized rocket fired from his wrist launcher.  Daredevil’s never going to turn around and find himself face to face with Loki, the Punisher’s not going to try to kill Spider-Man, Agents of SHIELD aren’t going to arrest Robert Redford.  But they all go out of their way to assure us, the viewer, that they’re aware of these things, these people, these events.  However clunkily they’re handled, there are ripples from one property into the next. 

The closest we get here is a native Hawaiian with Inhuman ancestry and now-active powers asking if Black Bolt got bit by a radioactive bug, which sounds more like Deadpool making a Batman joke than universe texture, because it’s not like Spider-Man’s origin story is public knowledge.  The guy makes it clear he was just some dude before his transformation, so it’s not like a government agent cracking jokes about how super-beings get their powers.

Basically, Inhumans shows us the royal family watching the news on their little in-pool monitor.  Medusa knows what cars are, what traffic sounds like, in spite of never having been to earth.  Black Bolt’s been sending special ops missions to rescue earth-bound Inhumans whose transformations have put them in danger from human governments.  Everything seems to be taking place now--people are running around with smartphones and modern cars--meaning the royal family should all be aware that superpowered jackasses and weird science-magic gods and helicarriers are things. 

But when Gorgon spouts off about the soldiers he’s with having no idea what’s coming, it doesn’t feel like arrogance--it feels like he’s talking about a world where he hasn’t watched the Hulk trash a skyscraper live on CNN, where he didn’t see replay after replay after replay of a flying dude with a magic hammer fight a levitating space-grub the size of a whale on the news, where an army of repulsor-powered malevolent super-robots didn’t fly off with an entire fucking city.  It feels like the show’s taking place on a version of earth where Inhumans are more or less the weirdest things going on.  Given how careful showrunners have otherwise been about keeping properties tangibly within the bounds of the shared universe, and the fact that Marvel gave the first two eps a theatrical release, it’s weird and vaguely offputting.

Bonus round: Karnak is captured by pot farmers, one of whom wants to kill him to keep from being discovered, and he ineffectively kicks a table over.  The guy who wants to kill him looks at him and goes “What the fuck, dude, why’d you do that?” and one of the other pot farmers looks at the dude and goes “I don’t know, Chad, maybe he’s mad you just decided to murder him?” and there is nothing you can say to convince me that line wasn’t ad-libbed.

For those of you keeping score at home, the show’s three episodes in and has featured one of the three prominent female characters getting depowered, and both Asian actors’ characters being either killed or depowered.  So, you know, not great, Bob.

So far the most realistic thing in the whole 2.5 hours of show has been the cops not fucking bothering to hand the guy who can’t speak a notepad and a pencil instead of carrying on like him not telling them his name is a goddamned affront to their authority.  Like, it’s stupid, but also completely believable.