#fuck you Schwarzenegger

[theactioneer]

The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)

[x-heesy]

The body always fails first, not the mind. The trick is to make the mind work for you, not against you. -Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger from Austria 🇦🇹

#autosuggestion #pointofview #codingyourself #programyourself #endlessness #creatingyourself #neverstoplearning #fantasy #empathy #equality #respect #love #basics

Dorma by Corpo-Mente 😭🕺🏼🎧🎻

[63dollarsusd]

Im gonna be mean and say that half the sprite mods for stardew valley look terrible. More power to you if you like it its just that they somehow manage to make every character look like a supermodel even though there just some guys in a fuckass village

[kelpiemomma]

"if people can pronounce x and y they can pronounce x"

People can't even pronounce my name and it's one (1) letter off the regular spelling

[lockwoods-coat-and-reids-vests]

Okay, this isn’t Lockwood related, but I need someone to vent to.

FUBAR.

I swear I was not even really looking at the screen when “Carter” started talking. I just said: “Hiccup?”. His voice is so recognisable, that the first sentence - no the first word - and I just KNEW.

By the way. The show was fun and great, but if they give this show a season two (which I do hope (even tho the greatest adaptation (Lockwood supremacy) to date didn’t. Still fuming btw)) it is purely because of the Terminator, Phoenix and Hiccup.

Sorry.

FUBAR was fun. And I truly hope they get the second season. I definitely need more Aldon Reese

[glngrbred]

There is something wrong with gamers. They made a new quiet place game, and the main character is pregnant and has asthma. Now, Any reasonable person should be able to think about A QUIET PLACE and realize that having asthma is a GAMEPLAY FEATURE they designed FOR GAMEPLAY!!! Like, remember the Amnesia series?

(tangent) Amnesia Rebirth is an entire game where all of the horror is built around that concept from bloodborne where a woman is impregnated (against her will) and is giving birth to a demon basically. also the demon is in her body so shes like possessed and shit. COOL! Pregnancy is amazing for horror!!!!

Asthma? AMAZING for horror where you have to be quiet. it is game design MAGIC and is so cool! they managed to turn their difficulty feature into a diagetic and logical system. like, needing to find refuels for your inhaler is just automatically going to succeed in making scrambling stressful scenarios that will have you shitting the bed.

Remember Amnesia: the bunker? the famously increadable design forces you to put yourself in time scrambles where you know you'll run out of light, you know you need more rations, and you know you're almost out of fuel. Just to EMULATE that franticness and the FLUIDITY and rapid pace of gameplay is an acheivment.

Especially with the rigidity of A quiet place's near parallel world, you can't add too many fantasy elements outside of the apocolypse and the monsters (shreikers?) so turning corruption/insanity/fuel/ammo into Inhalers turns those fantastical, hard to explain systems into something so Inherently realistic and basic, that anyone who picks up the game will be able to understand the objective. V VV You have to breathe -> rasping will get you killed -> use your inhaler-> Uh oh ur out of charges -> you have to go on an adventure and find more -> that means you have to go on a crazy mad dash avoiding making sound and a single error will get you killed -> your getting closed in on OH FUCK THER IT IS -> take your inhaler -> you survived! NOW YOU HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN What did every youtube comentary slop farm say? OMG? a PREGNAT WOMAN WITH ASTHMA?? thats so UNREALISTIC. SHe would die IMMIDIATELY. Fucking forced diversity! I want to have microphone integration and play as a white guy WAHHHHHHHH!!! I can't critically think for 2 seconds and realise that this game is designed to be realistic, and be a similar experience for all players and alsot to avoid metagaming by just fucking MUTING your mikE. Like they solved a fundamental flaw with an Audio based horror game in such an elegant and story driven way. They aren't even trying to get diversity points. its purely for story and gameplay.

[thedeadman-2023]

Wake up

Wake up

time to workout!!!

[bugbuoyx]

i hate when i tell someone im working out and they give me advice to lose weight like NO!!! thats not my fucking goal!!! my goal is to get beefy as fuck if i lose weight i will be ANGRY

[brewed-pangolin]

MDNI 18+

Captain MacTavish doesn't play music when he fucks you anymore. Instead, he'll find some classic 90s action flick and set the volume to 11. Then proceed to bend you over every flat surface within sight as the distinctive baritone of Arnold Schwarzenegger echoes around your apartment.

You question him after a few times. Asking why he doesn't choose his usual playlist. He answers with a nonchalant, 'wanted to change things up a bit'. You don't question him any further.

And he breathes a sigh of relief. Because God forbid you ever know that he nearly blew his cover to Don Henley's 'Dirty Laundry'.

The memory of your supple lips around his cock invading behind his eyes as he took position behind some dilapidated hotel. The beat muffled and distorted through the broken speakers, yet still he recalled the way your tongue flattened so perfectly around him, nearly causing him to bust in his pants as he momentarily lost all focus on his main objective.

Once they RTB, he decides not to join the rest of the team as they watch Terminator 2. The echo of your screams while he railed into you doggy style still too fresh in his mind. He'd rather take care of business in the privacy of his own quarters. And to the subtle and enigmatic nuances of Enya's 'Sail Away'.

Captain MacTavish Masterlist

[victoriadallonfan]

Let's Talk About the Alien vs Predator Films

Talk about wasted potential, am I right?

I'm struggling to format this in an interesting way, since so much has been covered over the past 20 years since the first film was released. You can read my thoughts on Aliens Franchise and the Predator Franchise as well.

Note that it doesn't include Alien: Romulus, but suffice to say it was a good movie!

I think the best place to start is with covering the themes of Alien and Predator, and the history before these films were created (and the failure of Fox).

My fellow AvP enjoyer @agendergorgon has already posted some thoughts on the topic, giving me a lot to think about, so check out their blog too!

For the purposes of this review, I am not going to include Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, nor Alien: Covenant.... mostly. The AvP films really don't take much of anything beyond the first two films, though I will touch on Prometheus when it comes to religion.

Ditto for the Predator films, but that's because Predator wouldn't get a third film until 2010, 3 years after the AvP duo.

The themes of Alien Franchise:

I'm sure the first thing to come to mind is that the Alien series is about sexual assault, and you'd be correct. The xenomorph is designed to be extremely phallic, the facehuggers quite literally rape their victims, Burke locks his victims (including a child) in a room to be raped, Ash tries to murder Ripley by thrusting a rolled up porn magazine down her throat etc etc.

Some of you might also remember how Aliens was noted by James Cameron to be a criticism of the Vietnam War, Corporate Greed, and the callous arrogance of the US Military. The xenomorphs represented the innumerable "faceless" soldiers that could overwhelm more advanced enemies with ambush tactics and numbers, Burke thinks only in "goddamn percentages" and how this could benefit himself and the company, and the Colonial Marines are not only woefully mismanaged a newly brought on commander but also completely delusional with their own sense of invulnerability, only to break and panic under pressure once they meet a foe who is determined to fight to the death.

(I will NOT be tackling the fucked-upness of comparing people fighting for their independence vs a fucking Xenomorph, because holy fucking shit, it is literally the opposite AND worse counterpart to having the Predators be colonizers)

But, in the broader scope of the series, Alien - and the xenomorph - represent the uncontrollable, unfathomable, unknown. What are they? Why were they there? What are their motives? How did they end up in that ship? Were they built? How do they 'see'? Why did the xenomorph spare Jonesy the Cat? Are they intelligent life? How on earth do they function with their bizarre biology?

We don't get any real answers to these questions in the original films. The whole point of these movies is that there are things that mankind does not understand, and the horrors of space are vast. And equally terrifying is the arrogance of man (and synth kind) to think they can harness this horror for profit at the expense of human lives.

The themes of the Predator Franchise:

There's been tons of articles on how Predator is either a reconstruction or deconstruction (depending on who you ask) of the 80's action hero flick. A team of muscle laden, big gun toting, sweaty men spouting off one-liners as they mow down their enemies in a secret CIA led operation during the Cold War, interrupted by the presence of an intergalactic hunter than treats these badasses like mere toys. The massive Arnold Schwarzenegger is smacked out like a mouse facing off against a particularly cruel cat, needing to rely on tricks - not his brawns or guns - to stay alive and eventually defeat the Predator.

Others might point to its related take down of machismo. The opening scene is rife with characters testing each other's physical strength against each other such as with Dillon and Dutch, Ventura and Dutch have a small face-off in the helicopter as they try to make a pecking order, Ventura makes a whole speech about being a "sexual tyrannosaurus" and then mocked about sticking a gun up his "sore-ass", Hawkins repeatedly tries to make pussy and sex jokes, and they end up with a single woman in the group who is treated more like an object and baggage than a person for much of the movie. All of these men are emasculated by the Predator, some of them not even lasting a single second to its predations (both in tech and physicality), all of them losing any sense of quips and confidence, and the sole woman of the group survives because she didn't fit the movie's (and Predator's) mold of "tough as nails". When Arnold/Dutch is rescued by helicopter, it's not a cheerful one; he's haunted by what he endured and remains silent as the film pans into his thousand-yard stare.

All of this applies to Predator 2 as well, amping up the violence, dick measuring, and rules of the Predator targeting anyone who thinks they are tough shit for carrying a gun or knife. Even Danny Glover's victory is bittersweet, because he is now left in the middle of dozens of officer deaths, and entire subway car filled with corpses, and an antique flintlock pistol that promises the return of the Predators to Earth.

In a much broader sense, the Predator films are about the oversaturation of violence and lack of care for human life. Predator 1's main plot before he arrives is the CIA using Green Berets and then Dutch's special ops team to clean up their dirty work, giving them false information and not even reporting the Berets being MIA in furtherance of their Cold War goals (slaughtering guerrillas who were working with Soviet Russia). In Predator 2, the police are seen as being ineffective because they trample on each other's jurisdiction, with the Federal task force being willing to kill their own cops to keep the Predator existence a secret and letting it hunt people down for a better chance at capture and experimentation.

The Predator creatures are the epitome of such greed and arrogance. They are the General Zaroffs of The Most Dangerous Game, taken to a new height by showing that human lives literally mean nothing to them beyond a trophy hunt. They care nothing about our social lives, our politics, our loved ones, because for them this is nothing more than the equivalent of posh British Elite going on a Fox Hunt: cruel and sadistic, just to placate their egos. They will violate the corpses of the dead and taunt those in mourning, for the thrill of the game. And in that sense, the Predators are very human antagonists: they are not unfathomable nor are their goals beyond our understanding. The horror of the Predators is that they are creatures we can understand, communicate with, and even see similarities in their culture to ours... and that culture is putting us on a trophy rack alongside other skulls of creatures they felt a thrill to hunt.

So, did the Alien vs Predator films cover even half of these topics?

Well... kinda? Just... not well.

Not well at all.

The Build Up

Alien and Predator have a connected history dating back to the creation of the Predator itself. Stan Winston was on a flight with James Cameron some time after the famous director had finished with Aliens, and the director made a comment about wanting to see a monster with mandibles, which eventually led to the creature we know and love today.

Predator's debut on screen was also often compared to Aliens due to the superficially similar premise of a team of commandos going on a mission and fighting an unknown alien threat.

Despite what some people think, the AvP series wasn't started by the films.

Yes, there was a particularly memorable scene in Predator 2, where the City Hunter is admiring his trophy room and a xenomorph skull can be seen mounted on the wall (though, fun fact, it's actually an inaccurate depiction as xenomorph skulls look more humanoid facing), but that wasn't the first time the duo met in media.

And I'm not referring to the 1993 Arcade Game either (since that only came out a year after Predator 2).

The Alien vs Predator comic first appeared in 1989. And there were publications continuing ever since.

Think about that going forward. There was 25 years of content to choose from, storylines they could adapt, interesting forays into the cosmology and interactions between Yaujta, Xenomorphs, and Humanity.

The movies used exactly none of it (barring 1 thing: the Predalien).

Alien vs Predator (2004)

The plot of this movie is that Weyland-Yutani corporation detects a heat bloom under the ice in Antartica that reveals an underground pyramid, and in a race against his competitors, Weyland rounds up a team of elite experts led by Lex Woods to investigate the ruins (and find that the Predators have left them a convenient tunnel to enter the deep ice). Only to find out that this was a trap, as the pyramid comes to life activates a Xenomorph Queen, unleashing a brood of facehuggers on the helpless crew, all the while the Predators hunt them down. After a spectacular shitshow and release of the Xenomorph Queen, Lex and the last Predator (Scar) have to reluctantly team up to escape the pyramid and blow up the xenomorphs, ending in a final battle with the Xenomorph Queen. Scar perishes in the fight, but Lex manages to send the Queen into the depth of the artic ocean, and is rewarded by the watching Eldar Predator with a spear for her troubles. A post-credit scene reveals that Scar had a chest-burster inside of him, birthing the Predalien!

Rewatching this movie, I'm surprised at how good it looks. The opening scene of the satellite in space, several shots of the ship (and spaceship), the frozen tundra, the set pieces like the Xenomorph Queen Prison, and the CGI!

The CGI! Of 2004! I was shocked that they looked so good for something that is 20 years old now, but they did really well for themselves.

But it was the practical effects that blew me away the most. The shifting Pyramid is absolutely iconic and the abandoned whaling station is suitably creepy. The face-huggers look amazing and the xenomorphs are just *chefs kiss*. It's so funny seeing these Xenomorph effects compared to that of Alien:Covenant, and seeing how much work bodysuit and puppetry can do to make a monster look so much more terrifying than a CGI creature.

I know a lot of people didn't like the Predator's bulky appearance in this movie, but honestly... I dig it? It makes sense that not all Predators are literally built the same, and that the ones who would choose to go hunting in the artic would be the bigger ones who could hold more body heat. And the movie does a really great fucking job of making these Predators look badass and distinct from each other, with Celtic having the coolest mask of the whole group.

And the way the movie is shot is really fantastic! There are a lot of wide and tracking shots where the movie lets the atmosphere do the work instead of badgering us with words, taking its time to build up tension and soak up the visuals. One of my favorites shots they did was slow roam through the Predator ship as the systems come to life and we get to see holograms come on-line, feeding information directly into their masks. Equally good was when the Xenomorph Queen is awakened to cackling electricity and ominous lighting, showing us how vast this chamber is and how huge this Queen is in comparison to the one Ripley faces.

The same goes for most of the actions scenes, with a decent amount of cool slow-mo shots for things like Face-huggles launching themselves, Predators leaping across chasms, and showing Scar's impressive athleticism when he leaps 10 meters into the air and stabs a spear through the Queens skull.

And I can always rewatch the first time Alien Meets Predator Fight. God, that score! The music is just so damn good!!! You really feel like you are watching two massive horrors from space finally finding themselves sharing a space together.

Honestly, the Predators using the Xenomorphs as some kind of fucked up exotic pet for hunting trials and training fits the lore PERFECTLY. It’s actually a literal fox hunt not just metaphorical (and of course, in typical Alien fashion, it all went to shit).

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

"Wait, Ridtom/VictoriaDallonFan, are you about to say something nice about AvP:R?!"

Well, after turning up the brightness and hanging blankets over my windows and then watching the movie underneath more blankets... yes!

For one thing, the Alien and Predator effects are spectacular! Some of the best work I've seen in the franchises! The fight scenes are creative and use really cool set-pieces like the sewer and power plant, where we get to see Wolf (the name of the Predator of this movie) absolutely kick ass and slaughter his way through hordes of Xenomorphs. Not that the xenos are left in the dust, as they get plenty of murders on screen and even outsmart Wolf on occasion.

I actually like the Predalien design and the idea that it’s more intelligent than the average Xeno, including holding personal grudges and understanding Predator behavior.

And the Predator tech is really cool too! We got laser grids, land mines, power fists, converting the plasma caster into a plasma pistol And I love the moment where Wolf kidnaps one of the human protags to use as live bait. Such a dick thing to do but so in-character.

Even the bits we get of Wolf mourning his fellow dead hunters was a neat addition.

And to be honest, I didn’t mind the idea of seeing an actual xenomorph infestation in real time, in a small town. I think that sort of setting would be really fun for a one-shot story.

And… that’s it. That’s all the good stuff.

What Went Wrong?

I compiled a list of sources where I got a lot of information on the AvP production: Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4

Note that a lot of these are 20 years old so I apologize for the outdated and honestly abhorrent word use that some articles and videos may use. And another apology for using the Xenopedia wiki, it was just a good shorthand for other information.

In short: Fox fucking sucks. They will absolutely self-sabotage themselves in order to make a (perceived) profit. Tom Rothman is the most well known (and he’s gone to Sony as of now), but Fox has had a looong history of being stingy and terrified of any risks for their films.

The sheer amount of drama involving Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection is an insane rollercoaster.

AvP removed pretty much any sense of horror and purposely had the design of the Predators to be more “human” and “heroic” (hence the weird human eyes and bulky physique), with a PG-13 rating for more audience numbers. While the human characters aren’t bad, they are not unique or even memorable (barring the fandom romantic tension between Lexi and the final Predator). Also, it was very weird that the Predators couldn’t kill a single Xenomorph, meanwhile the Colonial Marines couldn’t trip without blasting apart swarms of them. It felt like they really wanted to save money on the film in that regard.

AvP:R was even worse, with it being filmed with such a lack of lighting that people could not actually see any of the movie, and even modern advancements in color grading make it a strain. The human characters are awful, just absolutely boring and unremarkable beyond being veiled callbacks to characters from Alien, and we get a bunch of stupid Dawson’s Creek drama involving teenagers who look like they are 30 years old fighting over a girl who has no personality because she was written to just be “hot girl”.

If the story had focused entirely on the wife coming home from the war and dealing with the fact that her own daughter doesn’t feel close or comfortable with her after years of being gone, there could have been focus and themes and yadda yadda yadda.

Also, while this movie at least has horror aspects, did we REALLY need to see the Xenomorphs eating the fetuses and belly bursting out of still screaming mothers? Like, there is horror and then there is just being gross.

Final Thoughts

I often wonder if AvP took the wind out of the sails of Prometheus. Both play with the idea of humans worshiping aliens as gods, because Ancient Aliens is fucking everywhere, but it’s really hard to take Prometheus seriously when you remember AvP did basically the same setup (with arguably smarter characters).

And these movies have really soiled the idea of the AvP franchise barring the video games and comics. There’s apparently an AvP anime locked up in Disney Vaults and so far, both franchises have kept their respectful distances from each other.

However, with the recent successes of Alien: Romulus and Prey, there’s been a bit of a stir with some comments hinting at a potential AvP future.

Who knows. It’s been 17 years, perhaps 3rd time is the charm.

[mysharona1987]

This is literally what the evil dystopian government in the opening of The Running Man does.

“Fuck you, I won’t fire on hungry civilians!”

And Arnold Schwarzenegger is presented fully as a hero for opposing it.

[frasier-crane-style]

I get the feeling that most people’s impression of toxic masculinity--and this is quite possibly deliberate--is men hunting deer and eating red meat and reading books about WW2 and watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

While the opposite of toxic masculinity is men wearing skirts and dancing to pop music and reading Maya Angelou.

So if there’s one thing I hope people take away from this Ezra Miller shittery--besides don’t watch The Flash if you have an ounce of integrity about all that MeToo stuff--is that men can be as effeminate and gay and look as much like Tom Holland as it gets, and still be abusive assholes.

The guy who looks like this and enjoys outdoorsy shit and doing stuff with his hands can still treat the people around him with respect and compassion... why wouldn’t he?

While the guy who looks like this can be a fucking terrorist.

So, y’know, maybe we shouldn’t treat femininity like a virtue and masculinity like a vice. They’re not. They’re just two ways people can express themselves.

[foone]

Robots in temporary bodies. You agree.

Their gorgeous humanoid chasis, packed full of the latest noctua servos and the Samsung sensor package, is sitting on a bench somewhere at the repair shop. The whole damn main bus got completely fried by that EMP they got off the exploding transformer (not the Optimus Prime kind), so it's going to be at least a week before it can get rebuilt.

So now they're in the body of some toy you had gotten for your birthday a couple years ago. They barely come up to your knees and their hands don't have thumbs. They keep complaining that they only have visual and audio sensors, so they feel half-blind (once you have radar you never get over losing it) and they're constantly worried about crushing anything they pick up. You get a phone call at 2am and have to go rescue them from the bathroom. They accidentally closed the door behind them and that's the one door in the apartment you haven't replaced, so it's big and heavy and made of thick wood. Their little hands couldn't reach the doorknob.

You ask why they were in the bathroom with a smile, and they explain they needed to clean off their treads because they spilled coffee creamer on the floor. These damn hands can't grab anything.

Their job offers them a loaner body but they decide to stay on medical leave for now. Body swaps are a big hassle and no fun to go through, so they don't want to do any more than absolutely necessary. Besides, they'd just barely be getting up to speed in the loaner body by the time they were ready to switch back out. Plus they know all the loaners are those budget model combat drones. They don't want to wear a body like that. I'm sure someone wants to look like "draw Arnold Schwarzenegger from memory", but it's sure as fuck not them.

They'd tried on one of those early in their career, and it's not just the dysphoria of looking so completely different from your mental image of yourself, it's also the change in how people treat you. Yeah, if you're a cop, maybe having people flinch when you walk in the room is a good thing, and maybe it's good that most people instinctively don't want to even try attack you. But they're not a cop, and even if they were, they couldn't handle looking like that during downtime. Maybe some people like making everyone in their life scared of them. Everyone from their partner to the guy handing them their coffee... But people who like that aren't the kind of people you want to be or hang out with.

Besides, metal and motors and servos has a distinct strength advantage over muscles anyway. If you want to be able to lift a car over your head with ease, you don't need to look like a bodybuilder to do it. So it's even more obvious that the only reason you would look like that is because you either really like that aesthetic, or you want to intimidate people. And you know they are in neither camp.

They ask to cuddle one night. They don't need to sleep and they don't have the sensors to enjoy it in this body, but they want it anyway. It's not about the sensor experience anyway, it's about the intimacy and the closeness. You put up with getting poked in the chest by their square edges, and if they their current form could cry, they'd be at serious risk of rusting.

You get it. You fortunately don't have to worry about how it'd feel to spend a week without your body, but you can't imagine it'd be fun.

A few days later, you wake up to the smell of maple syrup. You start to get out of bed when they burst in the room, wearing only a cute "fdisk the cook" apron. They've got pancakes and waffles and coffee for you! Breakfast in bed, to celebrate getting their body back.

While you're sitting in bed with them finishing up your breakfast, you ask what happened to the plan for you to drive them to the repair place, since their previous body couldn't exactly work the controls of your old car, even with the wireless link? They took a cab, they say. Their body's repairs finished up at 5am and they didn't want to wait around until you got up, they were just too excited.

You ask about their previous body, the temp one? Oh, there was a minor accident. See, they were still getting used to having all their main body's senses and strength back, so it accidentally fell of the trunk. At 15,000 feet. While doing Mach 1.3 over Arizona Bay.

They promise to buy you a new robot toy. Maybe one a little... More adult? It'd be just as annoying to be stuck inside when their main body is out for repairs, but at least they could have SOME fun with you while on medical leave. You're firm on the "no creepy sex dolls" front, though. FINE! but they want at least opposable thumbs for the next temp body. You make the obvious crude joke at why they need hands that can grip, and their cheeks go gallium-arsenide-red with embarrassment. You ask if they're having cooling problems again, their face feels warm. They push you over onto the bed, laughing and telling you not to tease them.

The maple syrup goes everywhere. Somewhere downstairs your laundrybot wakes up in annoyance, already annoyed at all the extra work they're going to have to do.

[cranberrymoons]

show me the stars

prompt: ruby (discord drabble) word count: 1,009 rated: t tags: doctor who au, eddie is the doctor, first meetings notes: this prompt only actually fits if you've watched the most recent doctor who lmao but whatevs, enjoy! (you don't have to have seen the ep for this to make sense though)

It's not like he goes looking for trouble. He never has – he’s never had to. It just finds him, whether he wants it to or not.

It’s so much a part of his life that it actually never even really occurred to him that he’s exceptionally accident-prone until he met Robin and she started complaining about the week from hell she’d been having lately. 

“Like what?” he’d asked, only half paying attention as he fiddled with the button on his ice cream scoop. It snapped back then jerked forward, sending the scoop ricocheting out of his hand and into a vat of dirty dishwater. “Fuck.”

“Like, I stubbed my toe this morning,” Robin had said. “Knocked my head getting out of the car, slipped on the floor on my way in and almost had a total wipe-out, bit my tongue during my lunch break earlier.”

And as she went on, describing a thing that basically sounded like Steve’s typical Tuesday afternoon, it started to sink in that – okay, so maybe he actually does have a few more accidents than the average guy. But what was he supposed to do? Walk around in a suit made out of bubble wrap every day? 

Impractical.

It’s a year or two later and two or three more fights lost when it finally fully smacks him in the face that he’s basically a walking disaster waiting to happen. Or rather – doesn’t smack him in the face, in the way that falling objects always seem to. 

It happens all at once, when he’s walking down the street on his way home from work one afternoon in early January. He hears a crack from overhead and looks up, just in time to see a branch falling with startling speed directly at his face. 

He gives a shout, arms coming up to cover his head as he braces for impact, but then it just – doesn’t come. He cracks open an eye and then another, and then he slowly lowers his arms. 

“Nearly got yourself killed,” says a voice from his left. He jumps. “That happen a lot?”

There’s a man leaning against the fence at the edge of the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. His hair is long and dark, and there’s a battered leather jacket wrapped around his shoulders. He pushes off and takes a step toward Steve, and Steve takes one back.

“Where did the branch go?” he asks, glancing up. Because it’s not attached to the tree anymore, but it’s also not embedded in his skull. “And where did you even come from? You weren’t there a second ago.”

The man hums. “Funny you should say that.”

Steve frowns. He doesn’t like the way the guy’s looking at him, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to figure him out. 

“Say what?”

“A second ago,” the man says under his breath. He reaches out and pokes a finger into Steve’s chin, and Steve flinches away on instinct. “You really do have perfect bone structure, don’t you? All square-jawed movie star mystique.”

“Okay,” Steve says, taking another step back. “Look, I don’t want any trouble, man. Just – thanks for… whatever you did. I’m just going to go on my way.”

He gets a few paces away before he hears the man’s voice from behind him again. 

“I was here a second ago,” he calls. “You’re the one who wasn’t.”

And that makes just enough not-sense that he falters in his steps and turns back. The man’s leaning again, this time against the side of a big blue box that Steve hadn’t noticed until now.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means ,” the guy says, grin flashing. He kicks his heel against the base of the box, and the door creaks open. “Come with me if you want to live.”

Steve makes a face. “Isn’t that a line from The Terminator?”

The guy frowns like he’s thinking, then he nods slowly. “Maybe,” he admits. “Even better if it is, though, because whatever’s after you is about as dangerous as Arnold Schwarzenegger was in that movie.” 

“Wasn’t he the good guy in the end?”

“No, are you serious?” the guy asks. “Have you even seen the movie?”

“Of course I’ve seen –”

“Stop,” the guy says, holding up his hands. He takes a step closer to Steve. “Do you hear that?”

And Steve… does. Actually.

It’s quiet – so quiet he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been pointed out to him, but it’s there, a quiet scuttling sound like when you hear a mouse in the middle of the night but can’t tell exactly where it’s coming from. But they’re outside, standing on the street in broad daylight. 

The man’s hand wraps slowly around his wrist and grips tight, and Steve jerks in alarm. He hadn’t noticed how close they’d drawn together as they listened until now, and before he has a chance to wrench himself away, he’s being dragged in the direction of the weird box on the curb. He considers yelling for help – anti-kidnapping support? something? – but before he can get his lungs together, he finds himself being shoved through the open door, stumbling over his feet and screwing up his face as he braces again for impact, expecting to smash into the opposite wall of the tiny space.

But that doesn’t come either, and when he opens his eyes this time, he sucks in a breath so sharp he nearly chokes on his own throat. 

The guy slams the door and surges past him up the walkway – there’s a walkway – toward the middle of the open, cavernous room, where there’s some sort of circular control panel covered in lights and buttons and something that looks weirdly like a toaster? And he’s muttering to himself, saying nonsense under his breath as he starts poking buttons and flipping levers, and then the whole room gives a jolt, and Steve grabs onto the railing for balance. 

The guy looks up. “Pretty cool, huh?”

And Steve, breathless, has nothing to say other than, 

“What the fuck?”

[also on ao3]

[brainrot-hq]

So there's a lot of wild shit that happens in Future Man so I wanna ask people who haven't seen it

When the poll ends, I will reveal which one is fake AND I will provide evidence of the real ones.

(Reblog if you want too!! It helps get the poll more visible :])

Also, watch Future Man it's off the fucking walls!!