#idk much about the whole thing where everyone thought bruce was dead but i feel like this applies there too

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

there's something that I really love about characters who choose to do things that are inherently dangerous, because they're Good things and they love them and they know the risks, they know that those risks are a given, and anything could happen to any of them and they KNOW it.... but they're still shocked and shaken to their absolute core when it does. the line snaps and they knew it was always an option but they never thought it could truly become reality. they've weighed the risks and made their choices but they don't know what to do when those risks turn real.

[rendevousz]

mum?

mother figure!nat x fem!teen!reader

avengers x reader

req by @teenwonder ; i absolutely love the entire teams adoration for reader skfksngnsf its so cute! could i please request one a little more nat based? maybe r treats and loves nat like a mom but nat hadn’t noticed that before, and the whole team is like listing examples of how and why 🥺🥺🥺

summary: the four times you needed nat and the one time she admits that she needed you too.

warnings: blood, a random attack out of nowhere because i'm not creative, inaccurate writing of medical situations because i have no idea how those things work, also let's just pretend bruce was around during iron man 2 when tony still had palladium in his arc reactor, also inaccurate descriptions of palladium effects bcs i just...don't know much about palladium pls forgive me thanks, and idk any hospitals in new york/manhattan or even the states LMAO so uh bear with this, and last but not least, my inability to write good endings

word count: 5426

notes: that's a long ass warning nevertheless pls do enjoy this fic <3

"i'm going now, bye!" you bid the team who were having breakfast together, walking out of the common area.

"bye, cupcake! don't get into trouble, don't do what i'd do and definitely don't do what i wouldn't do." tony advised and you rolled your eyes because tony says that to you every morning before you leave for school.

"wait, don't forget your lunch!" nat stands up from her seat and grabs your lunch that she had packed, from the kitchen island, bringing it over to you. "thanks, nat!" you grabbed it, giving her a quick peck on the cheek before leaving.

nat smiles at the action, turning around to walk back to her spot on the table, only to find the team staring back at her with knowing looks.

"what?"

"you know, you only need to sign a couple papers and the kid's all yours." tony states matter-of-factly. nat snaps her head towards the man, an incredulous look on her face. "what are you talking about?"

"we all see the longing looks on both your faces. she's dying for you to call her your daughter and you, her mother." clint explains and the others nodded in agreement.

"that's nonsense. she has wanda too," nat reasons, sitting back down. "i'm pretty sure she sees wanda as a sister considering how much she drags wanda with her whenever she's causing trouble around the tower." steve raises his brows at the redhead who was in denial.

"she sees you as her mother, nat. just accept it," wanda tells her, taking a sip from her glass. "really? name me one time she showed it." nat challenges them, not knowing that they've been watching your interactions with her for the longest time.

"you have no idea what you just got yourself into, romanoff," clint chuckles, cracking his neck and knuckles as if preparing for a fight.

"remember new mexico?" he smirks and nat only frowns, trying to remember.

i.

"no!" you screamed, dropping down to the ground. you didn't care that you scraped your knees doing that, the only thing that mattered was the overwhelming feeling of grief engulfing your whole being. tears streamed down your face as you looked at the debris on the ground, the remainder of what used to be standing in front of you; a building. blown up, now in ruins.

clint, bucky and steve watched you break down in front of them, their hearts breaking at the sight in front of them as well as the fact that their teammate had been caught up in the middle of the explosion.

"y/n/n? come on, tony's team called for back up. we gotta go," steve tried to get you to stand up, failing when you kept your ground. you screamed when he tried again and their hearts clenched at the heartbreaking sound.

"we can't just leave her! please, we have to find her," you cried, clinging onto steve's body as he ran his hand up and down your suit-cladded back to soothe you. "y/n/n, we can't. the whole place is in ruins now," he didn't want to say it but he had to. he had to in order to get you to leave. "she's gone."

"she can't be gone! she can't just leave us! we need her! i need her, stevie.." you cried into his chest and he had to control himself so he didn't cry right then and there too.

he looked up to see bucky looking at the two of you guiltily, tapping his wrist to indicate that they were running out of time. steve had no choice but to carry you in his arms, getting you to leave the site against your will. but you were too weak to fight back now. "what am i gonna do without her now, stevie?" you asked quietly.

"we're gonna be okay, y/n/n," he tells you, sitting you down on a chair and settling down next to you as clint flew the jet to your next location. the atmosphere was tense and you could tell everyone, too, was sad about this.

"what if we're not? what if we're not gonna be okay, stevie? i know i won't be." you wiped the tears streaming down your face despite the fact that your face still wasn't drying up any time soon.

"because nat wouldn't want to see us like this. she'll be angry if she sees that we're risking people's lives just because of her." he says truthfully.

"we're landing, guys." clint announces and the team prepared for another round of fighting. steve turns to you, wiping the tears on your face as he made you look up at him. "now let's save some people and make nat proud, yeah?"

you nod at him sadly, preparing your weapons. all of you got out the jet and the second battle of the day begun. boy, were these people unlucky because they were on the receiving end of your fury.

you were busy taking down a group of guards alone when you heard a familiar voice. "y/n, behind you!" and you turned just in time to take down a guard who was aiming at you.

you didn't even have time to register your shock of seeing the redhead because more guards came at you two. you guys fought alongside each other until all the men were taken down.

"nat?" you breathed out. "yes, bub?" she answers as you both carefully walked over the knocked out men. she was taken aback when you slammed into her, hugging her the tightest you ever did since you met her.

"please don't ever do that again." you mumbled into her chest. she was about to ask you what you meant when she heard you sniffling. figuring out it wasn't the appropriate moment to ask, she continued to just hug and comfort you in silence.

"wait, that was why she cried that day? because she thought i was in that building when it blew up?" nat asks after steve finished the story. "i never found out why because she never told me."

"yeah, you should've seen her when the building exploded. completely shattered my heart, dude." clint states, remembering the broken down state you were in that day.

"wait, did you guys not grief over my supposed death then?" nat glares at clint, bucky and steve. "in our defense, they were about to blow up about a hundred people, we didn't have much time to process the whole situation." clint tries to convince his best friend, only to receive a glare again from her.

"alright but just because she cried when she thought i was dead, doesn't mean she sees me as her mum. i'd cry too if any one of you guys died," she states, still in denial.

she did love you like how a mother would love her child. but she didn't want you to feel that she was forcing the title onto you. after all, you had so many other adults around you, who's to say that you saw someone else as a parent figure instead of her? she didn't want to make you uncomfortable.

"woman, are you serious?" sam exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air dramatically. "need i remind you that the girl sacrificed her life for you?"

ii.

"nat, watch out!" you stood right behind her where the man was about to attack her. you gave him a harsh kick to the head and that was all it took for the man to go unconscious.

the redhead turned around, not having enough time to comprehend what had happened before you dropped into her arms. you two were lucky the last of the men had already been taken out.

"bub? what's wrong?"

at this point, you were fully leaning against her. she was holding up your whole weight, hands wrapped around your middle to support you. that was when she felt it. the familiar thick substance on her fingers, leaking from the back of your suit.

her eyes widened, pulling one hand away from you to look at it. red. her breathing picked up as one of her hands felt around your back, finally feeling the handle of a knife sticking out from your back.

your eyes were already drooping by now and she lightly shook you awake, careful to not hurt you. she lowered you down and you were both sat on the floor now.

she presses a finger to her ear and you could hear her voice echo in your ear from your own comms. "can someone come please," she paused, exhaling shakily. "y/n's down."

if it had been any other person, she probably would be bringing them to the jet by now but it was you. she didn't know what came over her but when she saw that you were injured, it was like her whole body shut down. her knees felt weak and she couldn't bring herself to move.

"hey, hey, keep your eyes open. can you do that?" she asked gently and you nodded weakly. "bub, why did you do that?" she cried softly, moving your hair away from your face as you leaned sideways against her. the action caused your face to be smudged by your own blood from her hands but she didn't care as she caressed your cheek.

"he–he was gonna hurt you. i–i couldn't..." you paused a while, the pain getting too much for you to bear. "y/n, don't strain yourself. you need to stay awake," she tells you as tears streamed down her face.

"rather me than you," you whispered. nat's eyes widened at this. "don't say that, bub." she scolds gently.

you smiled weakly at her. "i've grown too dependent on you, nat. it's to the point that i," you coughed and nat worried that you were straining yourself but you continued. "that i'd rather die than live without you. you probably can go on with life without me but i can't without you. i need you, nat." your eyes closed and nat panics, shaking your body.

"y/n?! bub?! stay awake, please, they're coming!" nat cries out loud, holding onto your limp body.

"did we not agree to not mention that to me anymore?" nat glares at sam for bringing that up.

the night of that incident had been one of the worst nights for nat. she sat by your bed all night after you had been treated. she had been the first one you saw after you woke up. she had been the one you broke down in front of after you admitted the full reasoning behind your actions. she had been the one who opened her arms for you to make yourself at home in.

"i'm sorry but you must be blind if you can't see how really she sees you for the past years," bucky states. nat turns to him with a glare. "you don't know what you're talking about."

"oh really? who does she call whenever she has a really bad nightmare?" bucky questions rhetorically with his eyebrows raised.

iii.

"no, please, don't!" you begged, asleep and thrashing around in your bed. quiet whimpers turned into heavy breathing as you plead for your life in your nightmare. "please," you whispered, inhaling and exhaling harshly.

FRIDAY, noticing the amount of distress you were in, alerted the closest person to your room, that being bucky who was returning from a late night trip to the kitchen for some water.

he quickly went into your room, only to see you shivering and thrashing around in your bed. "doll?" he approaches slowly, finding you still asleep, though sweating a lot. nightmare, he realised.

"doll? wake up," he gently shakes you and you immediately jolt awake, breathing heavily as you register what was going on. "it's okay, it was just a nightmare," he soothes you, holding you close as one hand rubbed up and down your back while the other held your head to his chest.

none of that helped as you were still in the same state as you were when you woke up. "are you okay?" he asks, worried. "nat... i need nat.. please i need her," you whimpered, shaking in his hold. you were having trouble breathing.

"FRIDAY, get romanoff."

within minutes, nat arrived, looking panicked and disheveled like she had just woken up, which she just did. "what's wrong?" she asks bucky, approaching you two.

"she was having a nightmare and woke up and i think she's having a panic attack. she asked for you," he informs her and immediately moves away when she approaches, so that she could take his place.

"bub? it's me," you look up to meet natasha's pretty green eyes. "you're okay, bub. can you tell me five thing you can see?"

you looked away from her eyes, looking around your room. "i–i see my book on my nightstand, my lamp, my jacket on the chair, my laptop and the painting on the wall." you told her after some difficulties.

"good, that's good. four things you can feel?"

"i feel the socks on my feet, my fluffy blanket, the pillow i'm leaning on and your hands around me."

she smiles softly at you. "three things you can hear?"

"i hear your voice. a–and the faint noise from the ac and i can also hear bucky's breathing." you look up at the man and he smiles sheepishly at you, standing around awkwardly. you gave him a small smile back.

"two things you can smell?"

"i can smell my own shampoo..and my room's air freshener." you told her more calmly now, feeling the panic attack already going away.

"one thing you want to taste?"

"i wanna taste wanda's blueberry pancakes." you pout and the two adults couldn't help but chuckle. "you can have them in the morning. right now you need to sleep so you can have the energy to devour them tomorrow, okay?" you nod at the woman as she tucks you in.

not long after, you fell asleep. she then presses a kiss to your forehead before leaving with a less worried bucky now. and sure enough, the next morning, wanda made you blueberry pancakes.

"okay, so what? we all need someone to help us through panic attacks?" nat rolls her eyes. "did you miss the part where i came in and tried to help but she specifically asked for you? she needed you, nat."

"guys, i... i love her with my whole heart but she has all of us. i don't wanna make her feel like she's restricted to only one of us. you all love her too," nat reasons.

"yes but she doesn't have anyone to call her mum and frankly, i think you'd be perfect for it." wanda encourages the older woman.

"i—" before she could continue, her phone rang loudly and she thanked whoever it was that called her because now she didn't have to make up excuses about her doubt of becoming your official mother.

iv.

she looks down at the caller id, sighing when it was you, meaning the team had more against her now. of course she didn't mind you calling her, you could call her when she'd be asleep after a mission and she'd still pick up with a smile on her face. but it was the fact that the whole team could see how she softened when she realised it was you who called that bothered her. she really didn't want them to let her have hopes that you'd accept her as your mother.

"bub?" she said into the phone and half the team smirked at her while the other half gave her knowing smiles. "aren't you supposed to be on your way to school?"

"yeah but uh are you busy right now? i um, i need you."

nat immediately stands up, worry etched onto her face and the team frowned at this. "what happened? are you okay?"

"you know how i told happy i wanted to walk to school today? yeah, i just remembered why i don't walk to school anymore."

"what do you mean? what happened? are you hurt? did someone hurt you?" she bombards you with questions out of worry. at this point, the team had also stopped their chatter and teasing looks, equally worried for your well-being.

"yeah, i am. wait, maybe not. i mean, i was just being dramatic but uh, i tripped on who-knows-what and now i have a sprained ankle. i can't walk now so i'm standing in an alley right now so i'm not in the way of people. can you come get me?"

nat sighs in relief, thankful that it wasn't anything that she was thinking of. "you are unbelievable, y/n." she chuckles in disbelief at your clumsiness. "can you tell me where you are? i'll come get you now. i'll have the school know you're not coming today." you told her your location and she immediately leaves after telling the team what happened to you.

you were expecting nat to call again, to tell you she was around the corner but instead you heard a whoosh of air beside your head, followed by a crack sound. your head followed the sound, eyes widening when you saw that a dart had struck the wall beside your head. you looked ahead, trying to see where that came from.

if it hadn't been for your fast reflexes being an avenger for the past few years, you probably wouldn't have ducked in time when another dart came flying right for your head. "what the hell?" you grunted, staying low but still looking around for the source. you squinted when you looked up, the sun blazing but you managed to catch a glimpse of a man on a rooftop nearby. he had blonde hair and was dressed in all black, donning a same coloured mask that covered the bottom half of his face.

"you had one job! how could you miss her twice?!" the blonde hears his colleague hiss in his ear through the earpiece. "i'm sorry! i'm no hawkeye, how was i supposed to get her in one try?!" he scolds back.

"you didn't even get her in two!"

"shut up and just let me work! you're distracting me!"

"hurry because i see the redheaded one nearing the alley. boss'll kill us if he finds out we didn't get her in her vulnerable state."

"i'm trying, i'm trying!" the blonde closes one eye, his sight now locked on your crouched state. he saw you move once you saw him and he cursed under his breath, his weapon following your movements. "she's moving!"

"just take the shot and be done with it! you have to go now!"

and shoot he did. after he shot the dart gun, he immediately fled but it wasn't like you were going to be able to chase him down or anything. a scream left your lips as a dart pierced through your skin, right under your shoulder.

you dropped down to the ground, right in the middle of the alleyway. you cried when you felt the burn in your flesh. you had been stabbed multiple times before with much bigger objects so why did this feel different?

"y/n?! is that you?!" you heard nat's voice yell from a small distance away. "i'm here," you croaked out, feeling your body grow weaker at an alarming rate.

"oh my god, bub, why are you on the ground? it's dirty, c'mon let's get you up. which foot did you sprain?" she places both her hands under your arms, pulling you up on your feet before accidentally dropping you back when you let out a shriek, crying out in pain.

"oh my god, did i hit your ankle? are you okay?" nat assumed that your tear-stained face was because of your sprained ankle but then you wheezed, your eyes drooping the longer she stood there.

your right hand slowly reached across your left shoulder, the butt of the dart sticking out of your skin now in between your shaking fingers. nat's eyes followed your hand movement's, a gasp leaving her lips.

"y/n, what happened?!" she panicked but before she could even get an answer from you, you had already blacked out. her eyes widened, knowing it was the dart because why else would you pass out that quick from a simple penetration in the shoulder. you had dealt with much worse than that and she knew your tolerance level.

she took off your bag, careful to not move the dart. she then placed her hands under your knees and behind your back, easily picking your unconscious body up and rushing back to the tower.

when she arrived, she was met with many confused yet concerned looks from the tower staff, seeing the black widow, rushing in with the youngest avenger unconscious in her arms. they had seen you leave the tower for school about half an hour ago so they knew something must've happened on the way.

"get bruce in the hospital wing. tell him it's urgent." she tells the woman working the front desk, hurrying into the elevator and telling FRIDAY to get her to the floor she so desperately wanted to arrive at quicker. black lines appeared on the left side of your neck, slowly spreading to the right side and she assumed it was from that damned dart in your left shoulder.

"natasha! what's wrong? they said it was an emergency," the doctor spoke in a panicked voice when nat entered, immediately going quiet when he saw you in her arms, neck lined with seemingly black veins.

nat laid you down on the surgery table, frown growing when black lines steadily spread to your arms now. though she was too worried to think, she managed to at least tell bruce what was outwardly wrong with you.

"dart. left shoulder." she blurted, incapable of forming proper sentences now that she had seen more of you. the black lining your skin got her speechless and anxious. bruce got ready with medical gloves, removing the dart from your flesh before analysing the pattern of your skin. it looked familiar.

"FRIDAY, get tony down here. it's urgent."

"bruce, please, what's wrong with her?" she cried, tears now freely streaming down her face. she didn't cry much in front of anyone but when it came to you, you always managed to get her to do just that.

"hey, what's going on? FRIDAY said there was an emergency here, who's hurt?" nat heard tony's panicked voice but she didn't make an effort to reply. her gaze was fixed on only you.

tony's jaw dropped, frowning when he saw you on the bed, upper body covered in black lines. "what the hell happened?!"

tony stepped beside bruce, taking a closer look at your skin. his frown deepened. "wait, it looks like.."

"yeah, looks exactly like when you had palladium instead of vibranium in your arc reactor."

"does that mean—"

"palladium's been running through her veins for about twenty minutes now. FRIDAY, how high is her blood toxicity level?" bruce asks, sampling a drop of your blood from when he took out the dart.

"53% and it is still steadily increasing."

"tony, at the rate it's going, if she's not treated in the next fifteen minutes or so, she'll.." bruce pauses, not wanting to say it out loud.

"no, she just needs lithium dioxide. that's how fury and i cured your palladium poisoning, tony." nat finally speaks.

"SHIELD probably has them but they're all the way in dc. they're not gonna reach here in time," tony states solemnly, reaching over to move your hair out of your face, looking down at you sadly.

but he was immediately pulled aside, nat grabbing his collar and looking him straight in the eyes. "you have your stupid iron suits that can probably travel faster than the speed of sound if you try. you can go down there yourself and get the damn thing. i swear to god, tony, i'm literally going to destroy those stupid suits myself if you don't put them to good use." nat threatens, glaring at the billionaire.

tony's eyes widened, the genius having not thought about nat's idea yet. "yeah, yeah, you're right, i'll go now."

he left immediately and nat approached your bed hesitantly, not wanting to see the black lines making home on the skin on your upper body. "do you think tony'll make it back in time?" she sniffles and bruce's worried frown on his face softened. "of course he will. he won't let anything happen to y/n. we won't let anything happen to y/n." he assured her.

there was nothing they could do now but wait for tony to come back with the lithium dioxide. nat sat beside your bed, hands gingerly grasping one of your own. despite the black staining it, nat held it to her face and her tears rolled past the back of your hand.

bruce decided to give her some privacy, opting to inform the whole team of the situation instead of standing around idly.

nat pulled your hand away from her face, rubbing her thumb over the back of it, crying even more at the sight in front of her. "y/n, please. i've never told you this but i need you." she pauses, breathing in shakily. "i've always needed you and i'll always need you. you can't leave me, please. you said i could go on with life without you but you're so wrong, y/n. you're the reason i'm still here and you're the reason i still want to be here. if you're not here then it's as if i have no reason, no purpose. i need you, y/n. so much more than i'd like to admit. heck, probably much more than you need me. so please, don't leave me. i can't do this without you." nat sobs out, watching the patterns on your skin spreading and growing bolder.

at this point, the whole team had now gathered outside of the room, watching nat cry over you. they wanted so bad to get a closer look at their beloved baby avenger but they respected nat and instead, waited for her to finish talking to you. once she stood up and looked around, bruce knew she was done so he entered, followed by the team.

"status, FRIDAY?" bruce asks, sampling a bit of your blood again. "blood toxicity at 96% now."

the team looked your unconscious body in apprehension, some crying and some worried out of their minds.

"goddamnit! where the hell is stark?!" nat growled. her eyes were now puffy after having spent the last half an hour crying. the team had never seen her lose her cool like this but they figured why.

as if on cue, tony's iron man suit crashed through the windows of the room but he couldn't care less. his main priority was to get to you quickly. in his hand was a silver briefcase that he passed to bruce.

bruce opened the case before wasting no time in plunging the syringe containing lithium dioxide, your supposed cure, into you. immediately, the black patterns on your skin started disappearing. it was slow but noticeable. it started from the tips of your fingers, going up towards your neck.

everyone sighed in relief, and to tony's surprise, nat hugged him tightly. "thank you. you have no idea how much this means to me." she whispers. tony pats her back gently. "hey, i care about her too, okay? of course i'd do this for her. any one of us would."

nat smiles at him when she let him go, turning back to you and almost crying out in joy when your skin had finally turned back to normal. she let the medical assistants set your bed up and handle your sprained ankle before going back to sit by you. the team left her alone with you once again.

it was only about an hour later did you wake up, squinting when bright lights shone down on you. you moved around but you felt hands around your left and you heard a familiar voice.

"and remember when you dragged wanda to pull that prank on me with you and after you did, i grounded you like i was your mum or something?" you hear her chuckle, still not noticing that you've woken up.

"i didn't mind, though. frankly, i don't think i would ever mind if you continued acting like my mother or something," you spoke and she immediately tore her gaze from your hands, looking at you, now wide awake.

"bub!" she hugs you so tightly you didn't think you could breathe. you still returned the hug though, laughing. "i was worried you might still have some palladium in your bloodstream."

"wait, palladium?" you asked her in shock. "yeah, the dart that got you in that alley, it contained palladium. it's highly toxic so we used lithium dioxide to counter it. speaking of the dart, i'm going to find out who did this to you and they're never going to see the light of day for putting us through all of this." nat says, disturbingly calm.

"yeah...you do that," you tell her, slightly scared. "but palladium? in my blood? how cool is that? i had literal metal in my blood! i could've become like tony but like...palladium woman or something." you said excitedly.

"you do know we already have metal in our blood, right bub?" nat questions in amusement. "oh." you say dumbly. "and palladium don't belong in our body and you literally almost died because of it." your mouth opened but no words came out.

"speaking of, can you please not do that again? i really thought i was gonna lose you." she whispers, stroking your hair. "oh yeah, of course. i'll just announce to the whole world to not target the youngest avenger," you joke, smile dropping when nat gave you a stern look.

"nat, being part of the avengers at my age undoubtedly means i'll be a target for the bad people out there, but i don't care because while i get to kick ass, i know all of you have my back when it's my ass that's kicked. and i think that's the best part of being an avenger; the sense of security i get having you amazing people as my teammates." you tell her honestly and she smiles softly.

"oh come here you," she pulls you in for another hug but this time it's better because you could still breathe. you make yourself comfortable, snuggling into her.

"did you mean it?" she asked and you look up at her in confusion. "mean what?"

"when you said you wouldn't mind me acting like your mother."

"of course i do, you're like the mother i never had. i wouldn't even mind you being my actual mother." you say without a second thought, eyes widening when you realised what you had said. you swore under your breath, knowing you've just made it awkward between you two.

"i– really?" despite the teams efforts to make her see the truth, it was much more meaningful when she heard you say it yourself. "y–yeah.." you admit sheepishly.

"then you wouldn't mind if i actually adopted you?" she asks carefully, gauging your reaction. your jaw dropped, eyes going wide once again. "are you serious?!"

"yeah." she smiles at you fondly. "no! of course i won't mind!" you hug her tightly, tears forming in your eyes. you had gone all your life without parents so this was a huge thing for you. not only were you going to finally have a mother, but the most amazing woman you knew was going to be your mother.

"mum?" you tested the title, smiling when she acknowledged it. you were now crying in joy.

"hey, don't cry." she soothes you, running a hand up and down your back. "no, no, i'm just so happy. this is the best day of my life." you tell her. "me too, bub."

you stayed in her arms until you fell back asleep, nat tucking you in before going back to sit down on the chair. she looked down at you fondly.

sure, she was scared of the big step she was about to take with you but she had you with her and she knew that was enough. "i love you, y/n." she whispers, planting a kiss on the side of your head.

taglist <3

@amourtentiaa @rqmanoff @abitofeverythinggg @andreasworlsboring101 @cay-writes-fan-fiction514 @teenwonder @sevenmorningstars @fleurlovesbucky

[legends-live-in-memories]

For The Love of a Father (Idea)

AYO it me! this was inspired by an idea by @1rosebyanyothername in the MGI server. (i copied this directly from the server so rip my punctuation)

“What if somehow Thomas Wayne managed to live but lost his memory, so he moved to Paris, taking on the name Thomas Dupain?

What if he then married Sabine Cheng, and then eventually had Marinette?

So Bruce would be Marinette’s half brother, around 8 years older than her.”

So this is what I came up with as a part of brainstorming for it. (again not a fic but an idea that i should not be allowed to have)

without further ado:

Okay so imagine they, Thomas and Martha, were pronounced dead on scene but when they get to the coroner's office Thomas wakes up but since this has already made big public scandal the coroner tries to be discrete and ships his unconscious body off to like Strange or someone who then confirms the memory loss or gasp does it himself and ships him off to who knows where cuz the underbelly of Gotham has plans and a living Wayne ruins that but he didnt kill him cuz the Wayne foundation funded Blackgate and Arkham so out of mercy he doesnt kill him but ships him off to Italy in the care of one (1) ☝ Gina Dupain who was all new son and rolled tf with it

now he is being careened off to Paris cuz his 'father' Roland lives there but since Thomas was already a grown man at this point he just tries to live on his own and this is where he meets Sabine and they have a lovely daughter named Marinette Martha Dupain-Cheng

he doesnt know why he chose Martha but the name comes with an intense feeling of love so of course he would name his first daughter after that name

now either this is set in like fox series Gotham where we have young pre!batman Bruce or whenever but if you choose that route then maybe immediately after the series during his sabbatical he finds himself in Paris and would you look at that his dad his sweeping floors while a girl no older than 6 is calling him papa and Bruce just fucking breaks and he doesnt know what to do cuz he thought this man was dead but no he has a new family a new wife a new kid and Bruce has spent all this time grieving this man so he walks in trying to figure out wtf is going on but then Thomas looks up at this now 18??? yr old Bruce and there's a pleasant smile and 'welcome to Tom and Sabines how can i help you' and no recognition and Bruce then realises he has truly lost his father and now when he becomes batman its not with the grief of losing his parents but with the pain of losing his father twice

so then fast forward and cue to 13 yr old Marinette and being ladybug and wonder woman tells the league of a problem in Paris and Bruce just like freezes cuz wtf and internally he's spiralling cuz he never recovered from his discovery of his father's new simple life but the mission comes first and the grieving 12 yr old inside has to take a backseat for now so he sends someone (maybe midnighter but idk much bout him so someone else like wonder woman) to find out more and get in contact with those dealing with the situation so they schedule a meeting with ladybug and chat noir and Bruce nearly swallows his tongue cuz he doesnt give a f bout magic and magic cant hide those eyes cuz he sees them every morning in the mirror the same shade of blue (idk if it was Thomas or Martha that had blue eyes and i dont think canon knows either) and Bruce just knows this is his father's daughter his sister and she's caught in the same life as he but not because she condemned herself to this life but cuz some ras al ghul wannabe forced her and now he's seeing red but he cant lose his cool cuz batman doesnt lose his cool

so they work together but this little girl no taller than his ribs is hesitant and cautious and she's cracking under the pressure cuz her partner has other responsibilities and she has to pick up the slack and she doesnt know what to do and now Bruce is this close to revealing himself to her and explaining everything so that she has a bigger shoulder to lean on but he cant cuz hawkmoth and magic and secret identities and its a whole mess

(he is absolutely ready to go apeshit during weredad but he doesnt but its a damn near thing)

NOW we cut to when Mari is like 16 and theyre closing in on hawkmoth but he cant focus too much on that cuz 38 yr old Bruce just picked up a child and holy shit how does one parent and his sister?? can he even call her that?? is handling the situation so he takes a bigger backseat on Paris and focuses more on cleaning up Gotham and training/raising robin

and now things are kinda mellowing out and everyone falls into their new routines and roles in life Bruce almost forgets that his dad is not dead and during an investigation he finds out that Hugo Strange was responsible for shipping his father off like cheap export and now he's torn because he knows Strange can undo it,,, the bastards done worse and more complicated shit over the years undoing memory loss that he caused should be piece of cake but he doesnt want to take away a father from his child cuz Bruce knows how that can absolutely ruin someone and he's grown fond of his sister even if the relationship is severely one-sided she's family and Bruce couldnt do that to family but ,,,, but he misses his father he loves Alfred truly but nothing replace the Thomas and Martha shape gape in his heart so he does nothing

NOW he does however want to bridge the gap between himself and Marinette cuz he wants to know his father's new family even if the thought of his father loving someone other than his mother and calling someone else his child makes him viscerally ill he is nothing if not addicted to self-inflicted punishment after all

so he invites her whole class over to metropolis as some scholarship trip (he'll be damned if he brings his tiny sister to gotham of all places) and tries to get to know her there but he cant do so under much professional settings so he lets it slip casually in a presentation about his parents and includes a picture of his parents and he sees the looks the girl’s classmates throw around cuz they know that man as her father not his but no one can deny the resemblance so after the presentation she discretely goes off to talk with him in private but everyone sees them and knows whats happening so there is no time for pretense but they go into a back room and they talk and talk and talk and cry a little bit maybe a lot and they make promises to get to know each other

[ectonurites]

do u have any thoughts on the whole “tim is zapped to time prison” storyline? bc i feel like it could have been pretty interesting and a good way to bring back young justice/tim’s memories more immediately if it hadn’t been such a blatant attempt to just get tim out of storylines bc they had no ideas for his character

sorry lol u don’t have to respond i just kind of wish people talked about this storyline more? and the fact that tim lowkey became one of the only people in dc with knowledge of the other timelines (i think so at least) and nobody really addressed it?? like going into the next phase where people learn about other timelines after death metal.... tim should already know some of this stuff right?

YES YES YES OKAY LETS TALK ABOUT THIS this got incredibly long because I just have a lot to say (and i included screenshots) and i prob got a little off topic but. but lets get started anyways:

i haven’t read that particular storyline in a few months so i might be missing/misremembering some details here, but that whole ‘time prison + future tim’ thing was like. a really really interesting concept and the implications/impacts it has are a big part of why i liked tynion’s detective comics run as much as i did even with it’s flaws in characterization (such as treating tim like he was jimmy neutron boy genius and making steph..... be all ready to quit/breakaway from the team like that. the steph quitting characterization really started i think in batgirl convergence and unfortunately has haunted her since, even though pre reboot never giving up was like...... one of her defining traits. dc i hate you sometimes) 

i think that one of the biggest things that bothers me about the situation is how little we saw most of the other characters in the batfamily grieve (aside from steph and some with bruce, but again the way steph was portrayed just... hhhhhh. it very much reduced her to ‘tims girlfriend’ more than i’d have preferred) but otherwise like...as far as I can remember there was maybe one line in that monsters crossover thing where dick mentioned tim was gone, jason had a single line about avoiding the funeral in rhato, i dont think they showed any reaction from babs at all until after he was back, and the most for damian I recall is at the end of the 2014 teen titans run (#24) where he looks at... a case with the old red robin uniform Tim wasn’t even wearing anymore when he died? and that just bugs me. Instead of getting to see the actual funeral we get one flashback to it way after the fact once Bruce already knows Tim’s not actually dead

But at the time when they all DID think he was dead? the closest thing we see was in that same teen titans issue (#24) there’s a memorial-type ‘sharing stories’ thing after the funeral with tim’s titans friends but.... we don’t see something like that with his family. tim is a major presence in these peoples’ lives, they are his family, when he gets sent into time prison its even SAID how loved he apparently is

its just... idk. they all thought he was dead, and if they had put more emphasis on showing not just telling how that effected EVERYONE (not just steph) in the batfam, it might have felt a lot less like they were just putting tim away until there was a story idea for him. (like obviously I know they can’t make everyone’s stories revolve around Tim, but I’d have way preferred a detective comics issue of the funeral/memorial with the family than having there only be a teen titans one, I think it would have... held more relevance & meaning... but instead they just went right into that monster crossover story instead of lingering on this)

but then the Tim story itself once it does pick up way later, with titans tomorrow/future tim coming along having that whole “tell conner you’re sorry” “who’s conner?” exchange with current tim... that opens up A LOT of things to think about, and I think was pretty interestingly done if i’m remembering correctly. future tim recognizes the timelines are different, and ya know goes off to try to change things further ("whaddaya got there?” “a gun to kill batwoman” “NO!!!!”), theres lots of fighting etc etc the good guys win as we expect, but once that’s all settled tim’s left there with this whole. thought process

which ya know is the big indicator there’s weird timeline/reality fuckery going on (or also the read here can be that tim and kon are so connected across all space and time that their bond can transcend anything even timelines and realities and reboots... “and they were soulmates” “oh my god they were soulmates”) 

ANYWAYS lets not forget that tim isnt the only one who learns about this other timeline stuff during this whole situation!

Brother Eye has records of future tim’s timeline, and cass & steph see who they used to be! and as soon as steph finds out ‘holy shit i was ROBIN and BATGIRL?’ she also desperately wants to know more! which then a bit later leads into young justice 2019 where instead of going off to college like they told Bruce they were gonna, Steph and Tim go get the help of Zatanna to see what might be going on in their brains with these timelines and weird feelings (as we see in flashback form in yj 2019 #5)

and HOO BOY DOES SHE FIND THINGS! she gets in there and finds out that oh yeah, their brains had very much so been tampered with, and with her magic she undoes some of it, by unlocking memories, and Tim finally remembers Conner! (also in case u were wondering, that panel is specifically a callback to this one from yj 1998 #17 when Cissie quit the team)

one thing that I think is weird/interesting/idk if it gets... properly addressed even, was that Zatanna also poked around Steph’s brain too and she didn’t remember everything? Might have something to do even with how Tim had been in time prison, might have taken less work from Z to open things up because of that? Who knows

additionally i wanna call attention to how he said “That entire chapter of my life” which... leading into my next point a bit... strongly leads me to believe even though he’s remembering some things he definitely does not have ALL of his memories back (because theres a lot more than just the young justice ‘chapter’ of tim’s life that was drastically changed by the new 52 & rebirth) 

BUT moving on, i wanna bring up this part from later on (after they figured out that there was a crisis that caused things in the world to change, which is why their memories/brains were messed with) in issue #16

so yeah, I think it’s indicated even though Zatanna brought back some memories and opened up his brain a bit, there’s still many holes, and some things seem more like dreams rather than memories and he’s probably unable to tell which are which on his own to some extent. (also for reference the real thing that Tim thought was just a dream is... likely yj 1998 issue #1)

So based on the things i’ve brought up here (which are the things I remember off the top of my head, I could easily be accidentally leaving shit out LMAO i haven’t fully read through any of these books in at least 3 or more months now) I think it’s safe to assume that Tim definitely has a head start on getting back his memories before Death Metal happens, but that it was by no means a complete thing. So the after effects of Death Metal are probably just gonna... be a little less drastic for him vs most other people because it was already happening, but it’ll be kinda filling in the remaining gaps? 

And like you said he is absolutely one of the few people that already knew about about the timelines/the fact that these crises have happened and changed things, but pretty much all the other young justice characters are also aware that there was meddling in the timeline/that multiple timelines and alternate universes like this exist since they were all together as a group when it got explained (in like. yj 2019 #15 i believe is where most of the explaining happens) (and cass as well is aware of things to some extent because of her and steph’s interaction with Brother Eye) but the difference is that Zatanna didn’t go into everyone’s brains, so they aren’t dealing with the same memory things as Tim (and possibly Steph? because again Z DID go in her brain, she just wasn’t able to unlock all the same things as she did with Tim) 

but yeah in general i SO wish this was explored more, both in canon and in fanworks (fanworks tho... that can still happen >:3c). Memories hazily coming in for Tim while Kon and Bart are able to confirm or deny things, him dealing with conflicting memories and feelings about his past as they trickle in... like I think we’ll start to see these types of things moving forward across a lot of titles with Infinite Frontier (i BELIEVE dont quote me on this but I BELIEVE the person writing Damian’s upcoming solo had mentioned in an interview that the memories coming back of the other timeline aren’t going to be an all at once thing but will be more gradual for most characters) but the fact that it theoretically had already been happening for Tim for MONTHS and we only got that one crumb indicating it in #16 of it instead of any actual exploration makes me SAAAAAAD 

[whetstonefires]

mcu ethics bad

The thing is that, while I was angry at Tony during Age of Ultron, particularly when he rode over Bruce’s compunctions about building a giant combat super-robot and pressured him into the project like a very very bad friend who happened to also be wrong...

...and when he equipped Hulkbuster armor and fought the Hulk in the middle of a city rather than attempting de-escalation or attempting to haul the Hulk out into the giant adjacent desert....

(And my suspension of disbelief snapped like a frayed cable when he brought down a skyscraper that had had no time to be evacuated on a street full of fleeing people and the only reason we were given to believe he hadn’t just cold-bloodedly created massive civilian casualties was that he told his AI to find the impossible magic angle where doing this wouldn’t kill anyone...)

While I was angry with him then, and unspeakably relieved that he recognized his own damage and retired at the end, haha psych, I was revolted by him during Civil War.

It’s supposed to make us sympathize with a character more, spending so much time with them, getting into their heads, being shown their emotional drives and reactions to things, and we spent so much time with Tony during that film, understanding his point of view. And...I did understand him. He’s not complicated. I even sympathized with his emotional state.

But in the context of his actions, throughout the film, I gazed into that understanding the way I did into Kylo Ren’s face in the seconds after he first unmasked. I see you, I know you, everything you are is written here, and the lines of your shame and self-revulsion are so thick upon you, and you should be ashamed but your self-destruction does not expiate or justify one jot of the harm you do.

Because everything Tony did in Civil War came from a place of selfishness. He was selfish all throughout that movie down to his very spine.

And selfishness isn’t itself necessarily bad--you need a little, to get through life, you have the right to your own portion of it. Your boundaries and your needs. But the type of selfishness that is forcing other people pay dearly for your emotional comfort and sense of control: no.

That is tyranny. That is not acceptable.

And you know how I know he was being selfish? Because his motive for pushing the Sokovia Accords was his personal guilt for the destruction of Sokovia.

But the Accords didn’t address that at all! They were tangential to the issue! None of the terms of the Accords would have saved Sokovia--in fact, the existence of them could easily have prevented the evacuation and harm-reduction the Avengers managed there, without saving a single soul.

The Ultron crisis was something Tony did, not as Iron Man but as Tony Stark, with Bruce Banner’s help, and which Wanda as criminal fugitive later helped exacerbate, and which all the other Avengers were involved in only to mitigate harm.

Legislation, or...treaties, idk, the UN isn’t actually empowered to pass laws so who knows what this thing was...aimed at preventing another Sokovia would mandate constant ethical oversight of billionaire science man’s mad science. At the very least! He never has to run things by ethics boards because he’s self-funded, at the very least let’s invent a mechanism to make up for that.

That would address the actual Sokovia issue, both in terms of risks and in terms of Tony’s personal guilt feelings.

But no one suggests that! It’s not even on the table! Because no one, certainly not any government, can tell Tony Stark what to do unless he lets them, that’s been a clear matter of record since Iron Man 2.

And because no one writing this legal instrument of whatever description was actually motivated by wanting to avoid another Sokovia, or even another ‘Wanda tries to neutralize a suicide bomber but merely gives him a different, smaller victim pool’ incident.

They didn’t care! They blatantly didn’t care! The entire thing was a ghoulish use of the dead to gain enough political leverage over the Avengers to put a leash on them!

(Which might not be a bad thing in principle, everything needs its checks, but when the last quasi-governmental organization you worked for turned out to be Nazis who were only prevented from staging a mass slaughter of undesireables by the skin of your teeth, I think you’re well within your rights to be very choosy about who you agree to obey, and to be firmly against pledging your honor to follow people whose first move was dishonest coercive tactics.

Actually you’re well within your rights to demand to negotiate the terms of even a much less sweeping contract, even without the Nazis. The whole approach to this thing stank to high heaven.

The fact that it was written by the UN like a treaty, expected to be signed by private individuals like a contract, and then enforced like a law except not because 1) laws are for everyone 2) if you break a law you get a trial not extrajudicial incarceration and 3) being pressured to consent to a restriction and then punished for refusing consent is hypocritical circular logic and in fact police corruption at its finest, all continues to show it was a bullshit nonsense franken-document.)

The whole movie is people ghoulishly using the dead to manipulate Tony into making bad decisions in response to his emotional pain. That’s. The plot of the film.

Then Zemo staged T’Chaka’s assassination and framed Bucky for it to raise the tension, ramp up the pressure, and prevent any sitting-down and talking reasonably through this, which might have allowed for the recognition of how extremely bullshit the entire concept was.

Tony was being used. Tony was a tool of bad people for most of that movie, and while Zemo banked on using his wrath for it, the politicos were leaning on his guilt.

And there’s honestly little I hold in deeper scorn than going out and hurting other people to assuage your own guilt and treating this as having the moral high ground. No. You don’t have the moral high ground on account of your guilt motivation. You have it if the actions you took were just, or at least could reasonably be assumed to have been so at the time.

And Tony fucking knew they weren’t. He didn’t even last to the end of the movie before recognizing that he’d been manipulated and fucked up, and doubling back.

That he then walked into a different manipulation, turned on a dime, and had to be stopped from doing a murder doesn’t unwrite that.

And it drives me nuts that people will say Tony was acting out of principle while Steve was acting out of personal attachment. Because sure, the Bucky thing was important, was the reason he was walking forward against all opposition instead of standing still to argue, but it wasn’t the reason Steve said no, while...

Tony wasn’t acting out of principle. Tony isn’t...very good at having principles. That’s not even a criticism or condemnation, it’s just how he functions. Since Iron Man he’s been substituting good intentions and emotional investment, which has worked out to varying degrees. It works best for huge, difficult, very straightforward decisions like ‘ride the nuke through the portal and save my hometown.’ It works less well for nuanced situations.

Tony was, as usual, acting out of emotion. And some awful shitheads who’d figured out where his levers were had calculated how to jiggle his emotion switches in the right places to make him do exactly what they wanted.

And you can tell he wasn’t acting out of principle because, for example, someone who was trying to get the superhero community under outside control for the sake of harm mitigation...

...well, firstly wouldn’t have chosen to stage a massive battle? But it’s possible someone in the UN specifically told him to do that, and in theory they at the very least signed off on it, presumably for its PR value of making Captain America look deranged and violent since it’s a deranged decision from every other angle, so yay, he can pass that responsibility up the chain and not have to angst about it, as promised.

But I was going to say would not have approached a minor who (this timeline takes pains to show us) had no prior experience of battle or even, somehow, serious violent crime, to recruit him to go be a government child soldier on another continent, without his guardian’s knowledge or consent. There were overtones of blackmail in Tony’s approach, before it turned out Peter was such a big fan he didn’t need that. What the fuck frankly.

That is not the action of someone who wants to start doing things by the letter, scaling the violence down, keeping within the law and putting the power of decisionmaking in other people’s hands because he’s realized he can’t trust his own.

And frankly even if he did act like that I wouldn’t necessarily support his choices, in particular his snap decision to behave coercively toward other Avengers with vastly less social power and security than he has.

And that’s the other thing! Everything about ‘Tony + Accords BFFs’ rings so hollow because he has never thought rules applied to him, and he knows perfectly well the entire time he’s fighting to force this surrender of agency down other people’s throats that he is going to be practically immune.

This man was technically a terrorist, proabably the most prolific single terrorist in world history until his rogue android exceeded his body count, but he was immune to prosecution because he was in tight with the United States military-industrial complex and basically untouchable due to his status within capitalism, and pursuing their international goals anyway. In the time between Iron Man and Iron Man II he was basically a one-man upgrade of the US drone program, and so good at it that the crest of blood he carved through the Middle East allowed him to announce he had ‘privatized world peace.’

(You are never going to get a world peace worth anything on the basis of a giant flying gun, okay.)

He went to war as a private individual, against non-state actors who were not directly threatening him, which is very much defined as ‘mass murder’ in all domestic and international law, and the US army in response sued him for control of his weapon. And lost! Lost.

No one attempted to press charges. No one. Because Tony Stark is above all that. And he knows it.

And like. I’m willing to accept the mass murder under the heading of ‘superheroing’ within the terms of this setting! Even if, after his vengeance rampage on his specific kidnappers, this violence was kept strictly off-screen for a reason. I did that! I bent that far! Genre convention!

But this history is kind of vitally important to any analysis of what he thought he was doing, and what he actually was doing, when he decided to become the iron gauntlet of the Sokovia Accords.

The currently active member of the Avengers who needed muzzling most was very manifestly Iron Man, and he knew even as he jammed the muzzle on all his comrades to make himself feel better that it would affect him the least, even if he didn’t finally retire for real this time. You don’t force Tony Stark. Not if you want anything out of it but blown up. You persuade him.

And once you have...oh, look at what he can do.

[herecomesnaya]

Does canon Jason suffer from depression? i know there are as many versions of him as there are writers who wrote him, but if you think of the most common or agreed upon version of him in canon, is he?

hmmm... I’d say yeah, he probably has some depression he’s dealing with. PTSD for sure, and depression often comes with that. he may hide it pretty well sometimes (as people with depression often do), but a lot of his internal dialogue, stretching across versions of canon, seems to indicate this (at least to me)

the thing that immediately comes to mind is the issue of RHATO Rebirth where he hallucinates his younger self getting beaten to death by the Joker. he’s SO self-deprecating, though it’s hidden under this guise of being “liberated” from his past, or realizing what he did “wrong.”

of note:

so he clearly dwells on his death INCREDIBLY frequently, and idk about you, but if that were me, I wouldn’t be thinking back on it with a sound mind and stable emotions.

and there he is blaming himself for his misery, which is incredibly common with depressed people. it’s also telling that he thinks of himself as a loner even when he was Robin -- probably because he was still dealing with his parents’ deaths, and isolated himself from Bruce and Alfred. this is consistent with his original death in the 80′s, where he drew away from the two of them, which led to him finding his birth certificate and going to Qurac Ethiopia in the first place.

and I know everyone hates his reaction to Roy’s death, but hear me out: one of the main symptoms of depression is a dulled emotional response, one that makes you lose interest in the things you used to like, or react in out of character ways to the things that happen around/to you. it’s entirely possible that Jason’s existing depression contributed heavily to his response -- sort of an “I’ve already cried myself out so often about so much, everything is numb, I’ll just pretend to be okay with it on the outside to hide that I can’t even bring myself to cry and I hate myself for it” thing.

I mean, consider the mental state he was already in. it was right after he lost Artemis and Bizarro, and Bruce beat the fuck out of him. now that same person is telling him one of his best friends is dead. what’s he supposed to do? break down in front of the guy who incapacitated him over a not even real murder attempt, show that vulnerability to him? let himself crumble when there’s so much he has to do? he makes a good point:

he knows, perhaps better than anyone, that this is a dangerous business. that anyone could die at any time. that breaking down and letting it ruin you won’t do any good, that Roy wouldn’t want him to, anyway. now, is this the most productive or honest way to deal with his grief? maybe not. but it checks out when you consider he’s already dealing with major depression.

and speaking of that whole thing with Bruce, let’s take a look at more of the aftermath of that:

that’s a depressed reaction if I ever saw one! no anger, no outrage, no crying, just... blankness.

another common symptom of depression? thinking everyone hates you. now, Jason has a pretty fair reason to think this after #25, but I’d bet those feelings started long before that.

from annual #2: more self-deprecation in the aftermath of Bruce’s beating (there’s even more, but I haven’t capped it, because I think you get the picture).

and this is really Rebirth-focused, I know, but this aspect of Jason’s character is relatively consistent. he thinks of himself as a “bad guy,” one who can’t be saved, one who would really love to be accepted back into the fold, but believes he never will be. every new conflict he has with the batfam only serves to solidify it in his mind. from Lost Days and Under the Red Hood, all the way to current canon, he’s distanced himself from them to try and protect his emotions, because he doesn’t believe he’s good enough for them.

he’s also struggled with suicidal ideation, in the vein of “I wish I’d just stayed dead/being dead was so much easier.” it’s not too well-known, but thoughts like “I don’t necessarily want to die or kill myself, I just don’t want to be alive right now” count as suicidal thoughts -- and those are DEFINITELY a sign of major depression.

so yeah, he may have his moments of levity and genuine happiness, and it may be hard or impossible for others around him to tell, but that’s also incredibly common with depression. just look at cases like Robin Williams -- super nice, super happy, super funny, but still fatally suicidal. hell, I mean, I’m depressed, I have been for years, but I still act like... well, you all know how I project myself online, LMAO

tl;dr: this boy is absolutely depressed, someone get him some therapy and cymbalta

[fuckingdeadbutroyal]

Jasonette July- Soulmate AU- Part 2

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 -

“How long has this been going on?”, Damians voice was flat. An outsider would maybe even perceive it as bored, but his brothers heard him. Damian Wayne was horrified. “Five and a half days now, to be precise. We have heard of the earthquake but we didn’t know about the metas. That’s why we’re here, save the citizens and catch the-” “How did we not know of any metas in Paris? Why are we only coming to help them now? Look at this place!”, Nightwing interrupted his father, in Jasons opinion rightfully so. Paris was not what he remembered from the posters and booklets he had seen. The city could have lost WW2 and even then it would probably look better than it currently did. “That’s international matters, we’re not even meant to be here but it got out of control so I asked Red Robin to investigate. Now stop complaining and start working.”, Bruce scolded his adoptives and, leaving no room for further interruption, began giving out orders. Dick, Jason, Stephanie and Damian were on citizen-saving duty, while Tim stayed at the manor and guided them per earpiece. Bruce, Cass, Duke and Barbara were on metawatch™, meant to collect more information on the cause of destruction, aswell as the heroes Tim had mentioned in his report. One final tech-check later the formerly crowded rooftop was deserted and Paris had a new crew of support in form of bat-themed vigilantes.

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

Jason felt...sad. Deeply, desperatly heartbroken. He remembers feeling that way when he first discovered his fathers lack of avenging the death of his second son. But now? Of course, the sight he was currently enduring was horrific. He was sorry it had to come to this, frustrated his hands just weren’t enough to help every Parisian in pain. But that desperation? His inhumane tiredness? The way his whole body just felt numb, as if he were in so much pain his senses just wouldn’t- no couldn’t keep up? He knew it was out of place, his brothers were okay after all. Even Dick, the most emotional one out of his siblings, was much more focused than Jason. He knew it had to do with his soulmate, at least he guessed as much. The thought of them being somewhere in this city, hiding in one of those hyper-secure shelters he had seen while rummaging through the collapsed buildings and pulling out everyone he could find...it was unnerving. Though somehow he knew that that wasn’t the case. 

Upon first taking in the sight of Paris’ ruins Red Hood just knew where he was and what streets he was aiming for. He knew where the shelters were, could guide the civilians towards them and even recognized some of the buidings, even though there was nothing left but dust and dirt. Jason had a gut feeling telling him that all those things weren’t actually his knowledge. It had to be his soulmates. They knew everything he needed to know about the city, they recognized it from above. But one piece of information, which now that Timmy has properly updated them about Paris’ situation should have been absolutely unavoidable, was missing. What do those shelters look like from the inside? 

Why doesn’t his soulmate know?

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

Marinette was on autopilot. It has been four days since her parents death. She hasn’t slept, hasn’t eaten and hasn’t stopped moving. Chat has already collapsed twice, which ended up with her carrying him to one of their recharging-shelters in the water and spending ungodly amounts of time trying to find food and water for him aswell as holding him in place while he slept, hoping to avoid his otherwise certain death by drowning. “What a sad end it would be”, the girl thought to herself, “all that effort, all that pain, and we could just loose it all to a petty accident. Not that there is much left to save...”

She wasn’t going to admit it out loud, but Ladybug, the hero and saviour of Paris, did no longer care about winning. She didn’t think of saving those people who were praying in her name, praying to her. She didn’t believe in god and oh Kwami did she not believe in herself. What she did believe in, though, was revenge. She wanted to kill that dusty bitch, even if it was the last thing she would do. Ladybug didn’t care about the victim. She knew for herself that if she were the one who did this to her beloved City of Love, she could no longer live with herself. She wanted to kill the akuma and even though a voice deep inside her was telling her otherwise, trying to stop her and arguing that this was not what her parents would have wanted, Marinette did not care. She was going to free the petite akuma and then tear it apart with her very own teeth. And guess who’s next? “That’s right, I’m coming for your ass, Shitmoth.”

Her voice woke the boy next to her. She hasn’t even realised how her train of thought has surfaced into the real world until Plagg, who was sleeping on the blondes stomach, started grumbling in despleasure about how his pillow shouldn’t be moving. Adrien sat up, not meeting Ladybugs eyes as he took the cheese she was handing him and giving it to the suddenly awake and alert Kwami who, as always, swallowed it whole. It was kind of nice, reassuring, watching him do something Adrien has formerly perceived as highly annoying. Back then, before “The End of the World”, as he now called it, has fallen from the sky. Or rather dug it’s way out from six feet under, since the main cause of destruction were the earthquakes. Destruction. Thinking of it made Adriens gag-reflexes act up. He hated this akuma. Not only for the obvious reasons. No, Adrien hated how useless he himself felt because of it. Why should he cataclysm something while he’s trying to stop Dirtface from doing so? It was highly contraproductive and Chat could not stand it. It was like watching the person you hate most, fan-girl about something you love. Kind of ruins the experience. Adrien didn’t know if he could use his power the way he did before, ever again. The only upside to it was, that he didn’t have to recharge as often and was therefore capable of protecting his partner whenever she had to hide. 

As long as he didn’t fucking collapse from exhaustion, of course.

“I fainted again, didn’t I?”, he asked, shame crawling into his every pore. He was hoping to avoid that. The first time already came at the price of his identity, though luckily Ladybug has been quick enough to hide him before anyone else could catch a glimpse. Adrien wasn’t aware of it, but once Mari managed to securely position him on one of the upside-down-boats benches, she fell into a hysterical fit of laughter. She cried, she felt as if she were about to choke, as if she were about to finally explode into all those shattered pieces her heart now consisted of. Her laughter, though, showed none of these emotions. An outsider would be afraid to come near her, her parents would not be able to recognize her, she herself would have been disturbed by that sight. If the Joker were there to see it, he would have had to give his crown to her, for her laugh was scarier than any Jokers could ever be. 

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

Marinette just nodded and waited for Chat to suit back up. She didn’t think of his collapses as embarassing. Instead, Ladybug was highly impressed by his skill and endurance. She knew he didn’t have the luxury of someone taking the hit for her, sleeping and eating instead of her. For so long Mari has been trying to convice herself that she realy was, just like Adrien, just like Chat, alone. She wanted to believe that her soulmate was dead, wanted to live and not give a damn about that extra source of pain, which is the only thing she has ever thought of, when it came to feeling any kind of relationship towards her bonded. How could she love what brings her torture? How could she want to love the pain? Now though, with death being all around her, no-one she could turn to and time playing against her...Marinette was relying on them. She would not be able to surive this without her soulmate sleeping instead of her, would have probably fallen to the hands of malnutrition, if it weren’t for them feeding her through that inexplicable bond between their souls. 

Adrien did not have that. He was born without a soulmate, which wasn’t anything unusual. After all, more than half of the worlds population were either born without a soulmate or simply existed during a different century than their significant others. 

Just like Nino, just like Chloe, just like Nathaniel, Kagami and Luka: Adrien isn’t going to stay by Ladybugs side forever. She knew that now. That was okay, though. Because now she was certain of one thing. Her soulmate was alive and, according to her intensifying tiredness as well as that energizing tingling keeping her body up and working, they were on their way to save her.

That carries a tiny problem though.

She had to avoid getting help. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

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

HI! First of: Thank you so much for the amazing feedback, I am so fucking grateful you have no idea (or you do? idk. THANK YOU ILY)

This story has gotten much longer than I had planned but tbh I love it. There’s a part 3 and probably a part 4 coming, Though I’ll post it tomorrow ‘cause I gotta write it and like, live life a bit.

Critique and any kind of feedback is very welcome!

I will most probably continue Jasonette July, this is so much more fun than I expected. So see you tomorrow \o/

Thanks for reading^^

P.S.: There's finally some proper Jasonette on the horizon☄

[hollabackholmes]

THINGS IN ENDGAME (SPOILERS!!!)

-Jesus Christ that first scene with Clint punched me in the throat

-how aggressive nebula was playing games with tony

- The way nebula helped tony up into his seat :,)

- “only a little bit sadistic”

- the cinematography in the moment where Tony lays down and the galaxy is behind him my god

- “I lost the kid” STOP IT RIGHT NOW

- rocket?? Or Build a bear???

- did rdj lose weight for that first section of the film or am I just tripping?

-anyone else find it funny that thanos suddenly became a cook with a nice little home and garden????

- the rest of this list will definitely be all over the place because I can’t remember the order of things happening #soz

-I really liked how they included that LGBTQ+ relationship in that support group that Steve was in.

-Steve saying something really sweet (can’t remember the exact words but it was something along the lines of ‘you took the jump not knowing how far you’d fall’??? Or something??? Sorry I’m awful)

-Clint really does own my ass

-That scene where he was in Tokyo holy shit I would die for him

-“don’t give me hope” “I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you sooner”

-Natasha crying after cutting a peanut butter sandwich is a MOOD

-NATASHA DOESNT GIVE UP STEVE OFCOURSE IT NEEDS TO BE DONE

- !!make that rat president 2020!!

-Scott is a cutie until you realise how much those past five years (hours for him) must’ve screwed with his mind.

-The way he searches the plaques 😥😥😥😥

- Time machine jokes

-Back to the future jokes

-Scott rushing to eat Nats sandwich

-CLINT LEANING AGAINST THE DOOR, FUCK ME WITH A RAKE

-HIS TATTOOS. I WANT THAT SHOT TO BE TATTOOED ON MY FACE

- Bruce the celeb

-“SAY GREEN! GREEN! Did you get that?” MY FUCKING GOD I LOVE HIM

-Scott feeling embarrassed that the kids don’t know who he is

- “look he’s even shaking his head” SCOTT

-I love this so much

-THOR🤯PLAYS🤯FORTNITE🤯

-ngl I’m Thor. I love beer. But shit...that belly.

-props to the prosthetics team for making that body suit look so realistic

-The way he walks into the avengers headquarters with his sunglasses on hahahaha

-HULK EATING BEN AND JERRIES IS ALSO A MOOD

-Scott being the test run for the whole time travelling stuff was such a good scene

-and then when Scott’s taco gets blown away:( but then Bruce gives him another one :,)

-“is he asleep?” “No, he’s dead” HAHA

-That scene with them all walking together big oof vibe

-Oh I forgot to say how amazing both Carols and Natasha’s hair is like damn ladies

-SEEING THE FIRST AVENGERS ASSEMBLE SEQUENCE OH MY GOD I SOBBED

-hulk being embarrassed

-hulk trying to get angry

-nebula and Rhodes watching Quill dance

-“this is the part where blades come out with skeletons on the end”

-nebula sacrificing her hand to get the stone :,) character development

-Thanos has a small dick for hurting nebula in both versions of her

-Felt weird seeing Gamora from before she became good??

-Bruce and the ancient one talking, I just really like that whole dynamic

-Tony as the security guard omfg

-LOKI BABY

-HAIL FUCKING HYDRA BABY

-STEVE VS STEVE BABYYYYY

-AMERICAS ASS BABYYYYYYYYY 😏😏😏

-Steve And tony going back in time again

-Tony and his dad. So sweet. Him talking about Morgan with him

-OH MY GODNI MISSED OUT A POINT ABOUT MORGAN

-SO BASICALLY IM IN LOVE WITH DAD!TONY AND I LOOOOVEEE YOUUUU 3000 IS THE CUTEST SHIT IVE EVER HEARD

-Steve seeing Peggy :((

-I’m here for the whole ‘Judging-Tony’s-Beard’ thing

-Clint and Natasha.... I don’t wanna talk about this yet :(

-Thor and his mums interaction. Cute. The whole thing about being a failure and feeling like you need to be more is super super relatable idk I just felt very much like Thor in that scene

-okay I’m ready to talk about Clint and Natasha now. So basically I think Natasha died a heroes death. She was so ready to sacrifice herself for the greater good. What made it fuckin hurt though was the fact that Clint was ready to die because he didn’t want to see Natasha go through that death. He wanted to protect her. He even says later on ‘it should have been me’. So I think Natasha would be proud, but Clints gonna have to live with the memory of seeing his best friend die without being able to do anything about it.

- That whole thing about making sure her death was worth it uGH

-also Thor’s denial.... yeah. Same here bud.

-Thor begging Tony to let him do this one good thing :( I was sad :( super sad yall

-genuinely thought Bruce was about to die when he put the glove on

-THANOS IS A GIANT TWAT

-HULK ROCKET AND RHODES ALL HELPING EACHOTHER OUT

-Scott being the real hero out here again

-the fight

-holy shit the fight

-StEVE BEING ABLE TO USE THORS HAMMER

-“I knew it!!!”

-That whole sequence of him using the shield and the hammer. My thighs were trembling bitch.

-THEN WHEN YOU HEAR SAM AND THEN THE YELLOW RING AND EVERYONE FUCKING ARRIVES

-PETER MY BABY BOY YOU DID SO GOOD SWOOPING IN THEN

-DOCTOR STRANGE U HOT STUFF

-PEPPER HOLY SHIT

-EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO FAST

-BUCKY

-THE WASP

-VALKYRIE

-EVERYONEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

-OMG WANDA WAS SUCH A BADASS

-THE TRANSFER OF THE GLOVE WAS SO GOOD AND THE WAY PETERS INSTANT KILL THING HAPPENED UGH SO GOOD

-DOCTOR STRANGE CONTROLLING THAT WATER DAMNNN

-THE FUCKING HUG BETWEEN PETER AND TONY DESTROYED ME. I LEGIT SOBBED OUT LOUD.

-“Hey Peter Parker. You got something for me?”

-THE GIRLS LINING UP SENT CHILLS DOWN MY SPINE

-and now for the sad part my dudes

-doctor strange pointing one finger up. Tony knew. He just knew what he had to do.

-“I am iron man” YES YOU ARE.

-Peter sobbing “we won. Mr stark. We won. I’m sorry”

-Pepper coming to comfort Tony oh fuck i cried

-THE TAPE

-“I LOVE YOU 3000” IS WHAT IM GONNA GET TATTOOED ON ME OK

-“proof that Tony Stark has a heart” wow okay. Hit me deep then why don’t u

-the one shot of everyone at the funeral was so beautiful I loved it

-“your dad used to love cheeseburgers.... I’m gonna buy you all the cheeseburgers in the world” oh my god

-the goodbye between Steve and Bucky was perfect. I don’t care what you say. Bucky knew what was going to happen. And he allowed it because he knew Steve would be happy for a very long time.

-HOWEVER I felt like Bucky had so little screen time and the entire history between Steve and him felt so dead throughout the movie compared to how strong it has been over the past 11 years :(

-Sams panic because he thought he wouldn’t see Steve again :(

-Sam being given the shield :D

-Damn the CGI is so good in this film. Like Steve looked old but you could still see it was him. Which sounds dumb but so often, movies make it way too unrealistic to prove someone has aged. This did it just right.

-The ending scene wow. Beautiful.

-THE CREDITS WITH THE ORIGINALS AND THEIR SIGNATURES OOF!!!

-we all waited til the end of the credits just to be hit in the heart with the sound of Tony building his iron man suit.

-well thanks for going through this list :))

[bigskydreaming]

You said the other day that you don't really like Talon stories. Do you mind saying why?

LOL they’re just not really what I’m here for? Idk, I think people tend to make a bigger deal out of this than it actually is even in my head, maybe because Talon stories have so quickly become such a staple of fics that it just seems weird not to like them? And its not like I’ve never liked one or been intrigued by a premise, I have, though specific recs elude me at the moment, there’s one I was reading on ff.net I really enjoyed, it was YJ verse.....

But honestly its really just that a recurring theme of Dick’s stories in canon - and one of the things I turn to fanfic for in the first place, to get away from, to read something ELSE about him - is dehumanization. Reducing his sense of self, brainwashing or controlling him, making him other than he usually is, even just in temporary ways....it gets old. I come to fanfic hoping to read and write stuff beyond that, and Talon fics are so often even heavier on the dehumanizing him aspect of things, like making him even more mindless than most Talons in canon are ever portrayed, and don’t get me started on how often they just flat out refer to Talon Dick as ‘it’.....its just a no thanks from me. Just not what I’m looking for.

Add to that other incidentals, like, its completely understandable in context of these narratives that the Batfam feel they have to restrain Dick while he’s a Talon and in the Batcave, but again, its just not something I’m looking to read? Because for example, another big theme of mine is how uncomfortable and unwelcome I think Dick’s come to feel in Wayne Manor over the years, given the many times Bruce has essentially kicked him out and how little effort he’s made to make it into a home for him again (like I think there are more reasons than just grief that Dick lived in the penthouse rather than the Manor when Bruce was believed dead and Dick was in charge of his estate)....so when you look at things from that angle, which I’m just kinda predisposed towards doing, the imprisonment angle of Talon fics (and the attitudes of a lot of the Batcharacters as they go about it, like they’re just being pragmatic, Dick will understand - yeah he might understand but that doesn’t mean there won’t be mental and emotional undercurrents of resentment and hurt to that understanding)....like, its just one more way/reason for Dick’s childhood home to be turned against him and made a place where he feels or will remember feeling explicitly unwelcome. I’m not saying its WRONG to take that angle in fics, lol, I’m just saying....its not for me. Its just not what I’m looking for.

Also its a bit of a pet peeve to see Talon abilities viewed as an upgrade rather than something inflicted on him by his tormentors and at BEST somethting Dick would have very conflicting views on - and tbh this isn’t limited to just him, I have similar thoughts about how Cass might feel about her own abilities and how even now that she can communicate well with others, she still feels somewhat different or removed from most people because of this ‘superpower’ that had to be ABUSED into her and that she would have traded for her father’s actual love any day - but I mean, there’s a thing in a lot of Talon fics where alongside the dehumanization angle, which Dick isn’t even just expected to just ‘get over’ once he’s back to his regular mental awareness, because its usually never even delved into, how he feels about the fact that for awhile there, he was nothing more than an ‘it’ even in his family’s eyes, and IMO he’s like, funny, I’m pretty sure I’m still the only person in this body all along, so if it was just an it to you, where exactly did you think I was? But aside from the angst I feel he SHOULD have from thinking about how easily he was viewed as just a mindless tool and pawn and thing by people, there’s a tendency to hop, skip and jump to him being okay with his Talon ‘upgrades’ because they make him so much more effective....and there’s just a WAY this is usually gone about that like, for me, glosses over how effective he was without them, and the fact that none of his family members seem to need or think they need them themselves to be effective....and somewhere in all that, it seems to get lost that the whole reason the Court even WANTS Dick so badly is because of how effective he is even already.

Plus - there’s my personal annoyance with how characters with super-fast healing are treated in narratives across the board. In comics, books, movies, shows, fics, everywhere - I ranted about this a TON in Teen Wolf fandom, its a complaint I have with Wolverine and his family in Marvel comics, etc....I vastly dislike how often its just treated as assumed that just because a character heals rapidly, like....the actual trauma and pain of injuries inflicted might as well not even matter. Like, that’s not how it works IMO? When I think about a time I broke an arm, I’m not thinking about ‘oh it barely matters because it only took a couple months to heal and when I view that in the context of my whole lifespan that’s barely anything, it was so fast’....like no, I’m thinking about what it felt like when I actually BROKE it. There’s a tendency, I feel, when characters get an ability to make an injury disappear out of sight out of mind rapidly, to just view the emotional and mental consequences of injury being inflicted as negligible, and not really mattering anymore, and I heavily disagree with that logic. IMO, these characters throwing themselves headfirst in front of everyone else as a human shield, while practical in one sense of the word, is also like, begging to be examined as oh I see, so basically you’re saying that now that you no longer need to be treated with care because you’re invulnerable, you’re worthless and the pain that goes along with all those injuries you get 100x more of now, that’s like...meaningless and fake news.

I mean, even if you make an argument for Dick no longer having pain receptors (which I’d also be heavily against because uh, if you go that route you’re also inadvertently suggesting things about his sensory input and ability to feel varying degrees of touch across the board and again its more the lack of examination of that as much as anything else that’s things that make me go mmmm no thanks)....the injuries are still being inflicted and there’s still gonna be psychological damage inflicted from processing that no one seems significantly bothered by him being ‘family niche - human pincushion for the prevention of others saying oww’ without so much as commentary.

And lastly, did I mention, I just really really reeeeeeally dislike the dehumanization angle that tends to go hand in hand with these fics.

But for the record, like, I honestly do like the Court of Owls and what they bring to Dick’s stories because all of this, ironically is precisely why they DO play so well into his core themes of autonomy and independence and self-determinism. Its just, I’m here for fics where Dick triumphs over them and their attempts to hijack him and his life for their own agendas, and I feel like a lot of the time we see a Pyrrhic victory at best, when going the Talon route, and a lot of THAT time its not even regarded or treated as such, but rather a full victory with no real examination of how Dick’s life is different now, how he’s changed not just by what was done to him but by how he was treated by BOTH sides WHILE it was done to him? 

And the other element here is like....the Court and their presence in his fics doesn’t HAVE to equal making him a full on Talon along the way, just like it never has in canon. I don’t view the fulfillment of what’s inherently a THREAT to his character as an improvement UPON his character. *shrugs* But also there’s just so many avenues for angst or emotional tangles when it comes to the Court even without making Dick a Talon himself.....just have him picturing or having nightmares of imagining his parents turned into Talons and how horrifying he’d find that, or worry in the wake of revelations about the Court that his family is now looking at him differently, imagining the threat HE could be when he hasn’t even done anything. Or there’s the angle of Bruce knowing but not telling him to try and protect him but that causing conflict OR you could go a route I’ve never seen done before, and like, have Dick and Bruce come into conflict with the Court before any of the others come along and like, save Dick from ever being made a full Talon but the point is years later the Court resurfaces and they and their plans for Dick are a complete revelation to his siblings and there’s perfectly understandable conflict because of that even if the reason is as simple and equally as understandable as Bruce didn’t feel it was his to share if Dick didn’t want to, as long as they honestly thought the Court had been neutralized, and he respected that its a painful topic to Dick that he wasn’t trying to hide, he just flat out didn’t want to talk about so it never came up.

There’s a lot that can be done with the Court, but usually they’re just utilized as a prelude to Talon Dick Grayson and bottom line is that’s just not somewhere I’m usually looking to go, personally.

BUT in the spirit of me being completely contradictory as always, again its like I said, there are some here and there that I really get into, there’s a YJ one that really delves deep into Dick’s emotions on all of this and has a prequel set during Jason’s Robin days, when they first encounter the Court, I forget the title but someone feel free to drop it in the notes if you know what I’m talking about, and @dustorange always does interesting things with the Court and Talons that’s different each time and I’m sure I’m forgetting more, so its not like.....a blanket across the board nope thing. Its just I have particular reservations about HOW a lot of Talon and Court fics play out that I’m just....not the right audience for simply because its not what I’m looking for in fics, personally.

[tempestaurora]

Your tags under the Peggy post. I’m shaking!!! Please punch marvel in the face and let us have that movie!!! That’s the most perfect fix it idea ever!!!!

can i actually just run through my avengers movie idea for a sec? because it’s been one of my repeated day dreams since april 2019.

alright: so it’s set maybe six months, maybe a year after avengers: endgame. unfortunately, tony and nat are dead. this cannot change, unless we get some kind of magic going, and i’m not knowledgeable about marvel magic enough to get a fix. so.

we start on an avengers: age of ultron-like fight scene, where the remaining avengers - literally whoever is left, plus spider-man, maybe bucky if he’s feeling it - are kicking some butt. maybe aim or modok or something, its irrelevant. they clean up, head home, and perhaps swing by the new compound. it’s smaller than the last one, still in the same kind of location. there’s clearly work still being done to fix it up. 

steve is perhaps out on the grass, reading a book. maybe he’s in a wheelchair, because he’s old now. they say hello, head inside, maybe someone stays out to talk to him. now, a new character/avenger could totally bring it up - in my head, i like to imagine jessica drew or riri williams, or one of the young avengers maybe. alternatively, perhaps there’s just boxes all over the foyer.

“what the hell is this?” sam might ask, after tripping over one. he had not been looking where he was going.

“oh! my delivery!” perhaps bruce replies, as he is the last remaining Science Guy (not including rhodey, who is Weapon Science Guy) in the avengers. “after shield-gate and the decryption of those files, a lot of old shield stuff got declassified.”

“and it’s here?”

“well shield’s still kind of... gone, i guess. where’s a safer place for it than here? ooh, the report on who killed jfk!”

bucky, across the room: “want a spoiler?”

the plot goes on; perhaps there are more aim or modok or something bases to be taken down. or a criminal gang. idk. they’re a side plot, who will perhaps become important in the final act, but for now, bruce starts reading through his files, until:

“barnes! you might be interested in this. it’s the original ssr paperwork about dr. erskine’s serum.”

“the one steve’s got?”

“the very same.” they flip through a few pages, and bruce slows. “this doesn’t make sense.”

“hm?”

“the serum. it’s self-sustaining. self-vitalising.”

“in english?”

“steve’s cells are reproductive. when they die, more take their place. it’s how he combats illness; his cells flip over so fast that the sick ones don’t have a chance to catch on. but...”

“but what?”

“if this is accurate--which, it is. i’ve looked at his bloodwork myself! if this is right, it means that steve’s ageing should be slower than a regular human’s. perhaps by three times, even.”

“and what does that mean?” bucky is frowning now.

bruce looks from him, and then moves to the window, where steve is out on the grass, reading a book. “it means that he shouldn’t look like that.”

“banner?”

bruce turns around. “he lived one life in the other timeline, right? lived his life with peggy carter and then came right home.”

“yeah? yes.”

“then... that’s not steve. it can’t be.”

there’s dramatic music, bruce and bucky’s worried faces. steve takes a sip of a fruity drink from a straw.

they bring in some kind of scientist they know; maybe cho, idk, and they go over his bloodwork in secret. slowly, more people are let in on the secret, like sam, who bucky tells because he’s on the team, he guesses, but he’s only got like one friend. perhaps there’s still that other danger going on, but they really need to get to the bottom of this - 

if that’s not steve, who the hell is it? and if that’s someone else, then where the hell is steve rogers?

scott lang and hope van dyne get called in to help build another quantum machine - they don’t have one anymore after steve returned the stones. a time machine is a bit too dangerous, even for them. old steve is around quite often - he likes the quiet, he has a room in the compound, no friends his own (new) age.

but something slips. he’s watching. he may look old, but his hearing’s still good. his vision’s still spectacular. he’s not steve rogers. he’s something else. they cannot comprehend his knowledge.

for much of the plot, we aren’t sure if they’re right, that he’s not steve. he’s acting like steve. he has steve’s memories, his voice, his mannerisms. maybe some people are sceptical - like peter, perhaps, on a weekend visit to train, psyched about the quantum realm idea, but really guys? because old steve has called me queens since the funeral. he can even recite those dumb psas he made. maybe peter talks too much, too loud, and the fake steve rogers knows the jig is up. they’re going to access the quantum realm and find the original steve - this is his final chance.

“you know,” old steve says, heaving himself to his feet, “your friends are right. i’m not steve rogers.” he starts growing bigger, and possibility gelatinous. i imagine it like the young avengers’ mother - some inter-dimensional being, who becomes sinewy, creeping tendrils of flesh and matter; massive in size with a harpy kind of roar. everyone rushes out to see this gigantic mound of flesh--

“what the hell is that, parker??!!”

“uhhh that’s not-steve. he’s acting very not steve today.”

the fight begins, and it becomes clear that whatever this is took steve’s place. stole him, kept him hidden somewhere, and now they’ve gotta get him back. they separate into teams; fighting the monster and racing to the quantum realm. at first, no one has their suits - perhaps they tag team it, or get new suits, or maybe peter has edith on him, and he calls down another iron spider, and she informs him that there’s a falcon x/captain america suit or something; a nanobot suit for sam. something very cool for the suit up, you know?

meanwhile, bucky and bruce are at the quantum machine; perhaps parts of the monster have detached themselves and fight them, too. perhaps the monster calls down its brethren and glowing green lights appear, monsters crawling out from other worlds. bucky gets suited up, and bruce sends him back--

there’s a battle--and bucky flying through time--and fighting--and bucky getting smaller and smaller--and chaos--and bucky landing in the night on a street in 1949.

he gets it pretty fast. it understands why steve might want to stay here. it’s the kind of life they dreamed for themselves after the war. a quiet suburban street; the city off in the distance. the lights are on in plenty of houses, bright yellow. he knows almost automatically which one to look at. 

he peers through the front window, and there they are: peggy carter and steve rogers. he looks exactly as he did the last time bucky saw him young. they’re smiling. they’re dancing. perhaps not well - bucky was always the better dancer of the two. he’s about to raise his fist and knock on the window, but then peggy and steve stop, look around, and two small children, one blonde, one brunette, come rushing in. they laugh, picking them up and spinning them around, part of the dance. bucky stares.

there’s a massive fight in the compound, maybe doctor strange is there? idk. maybe he could feel the walls of the dimension cracking open to let these monsters through. thor is there, he deserves to be. captain marvel perhaps, too. but the more they knock down, the more grow back.

perhaps bucky walks through the neighbourhood, visits his family. he knows that no matter how long he spends in this place, it will only be a minute in the real world. so he goes home. he gets on a bus, then a train, hops the turnstile and finds his old house. he’s come home from war. his family cries. he cries. he holds his mother. his father calls his sisters and they rush through the night to greet him. he can’t leave in the night, he can’t. so he sleeps there until morning. returns to steve’s house and watches from a distance as they do the school run.

peggy kisses him goodbye and leaves for work. steve watches her go. but he is still perceptive as ever; he sees bucky, heads over. they hug. they talk. bucky breaks the news to him: this isn’t real. this is made up. a simulation, specifically to keep you here. something else has taken over your life.

steve doesn’t believe it - maybe they fight, i’m not sure. maybe bucky gets angry and even spits out the words “are they even searching for me yet? have you even told them what i’m going through right now? it’s 1949 - i remember this year as the year my handler got pretty trigger happy with waterboarding.”

we go between the fight at the compound and the 40s a few times, as bucky spends the day stewing and steve spends the day looking thoughtful and sending meaningful looks out the window to where bucky had been standing, but no longer was. as it grows dark again, early evening, the children return home from school, peggy comes back from work, steve starts cooking dinner.

he looks out the window and sees bucky out on the front path, watching the yellow-lit kitchen. he goes outside, asks if he wants to come in.

“no,” bucky replies. “if i go in, i’ll never leave.”

“is that such a bad thing?” steve asks.

“it is when it’s not real.”

“buck--”

“i wanted a life back then. i wanted this. some nice house in some nice neighbourhood. fall in love, settle down - the whole nine yards. but i got captured, steve. i got tortured, and brainwashed, and now i live in the twenty-first century, and i fight bad guys with ridiculous powers, and i have a computer that i can carry around in my pocket, and--things are good there! even the skinny, angry version of you could’ve lived better there. might’ve even got a cure or two for your sicknesses.”

“bucky--”

“this, though. this isn’t real, steve. i want it to be, so badly. you deserve this. deserve the peace and quiet. deserve the life, and the happiness and the--the girl. but right now, in the time you left, there’s a monster tearing up your friends. our friends. and they need help.”

“they’ve got captain america.”

“they don’t need captain america. they need steve rogers.”

steve can’t help but look back through the window, to where peggy and his kids are talking, serving up dinner. he sighs. “i can’t leave this behind, buck. i can’t.”

bucky sighs, perhaps this argument goes on longer, but he resigns himself to it. “i thought you might say that. i’ll be out here for another hour, and then i’m going back.”

bucky waits outside on the front path for an hour. steve eats his dinner and laughs with his family. when the time comes, bucky gets up, and looks back at the front door, hopeful. but--steve doesn’t show. he heads back.

the fight continues on, bucky breaks the news to bruce, and there are some bad injuries, maybe. i’d say that someone might die, but the real emotional climax of this film is steve-centred, so we probably don’t need a death. fighting goes on for an avengers-appropriate amount of time, and the tide turns against the avengers. then... just as all hope seems lost:

a second captain america shield slices through a monster, pinning down sam. its that holographic one (photon?) from the comics; just something tony had worked up before he died. the camera pans over to steve in his captain america get up; the same one he left in; catching the shield.

more fighting, then steve: “are you using my shield?” 

sam: “the other, fake you gave it to me.”

steve shrugs. “it looks good on you. keep it.”

also during/near the end of the fight, bucky and steve reunite, and hug, because i’m a sucker for hugs. 

bucky: “i thought you weren’t coming back”

steve: “i wasn’t. but--i couldn’t leave you behind again. not after you showed up like that.”

“but how’d you get back?”

“i still had my pim particles and suits stored in the attic. i think the monster stole my shield when he stuck me there, but he left everything else behind.”

“... i’m glad you’re back.”

“i’m glad to be back. really.”

they win the fight. i dont care how. maybe aim or modok or something shows up or maybe good old fashioned teamwork gets the job done. but they’re happy, and they’re together, and inter-dimensional travel has now been introduced. *cough* spiderverse *cough* 

steve still gives up captain america - he’d spent four years in the past as a stay-at-home dad and husband, only using the old suit for press stuff, so he doesn’t really want it back. he liked settling down. that’s what he wants. perhaps he moves to brooklyn or harlem or wherever, to whatever apartment bucky and sam set up for themselves. he cooks and paints (a little girl with blonde hair and a small boy with eyes like peggy carter’s) and punches his fist halfheartedly in the air, droning “go team” whenever they head out on their missions.

he really did mean it when he said sam looked good with the shield.

there would probably be a b plot of another character Doing Things, like thor and captain marvel and whatever their adventure is. but i don’t know what it is yet. there’s a happy ending. then, the first credits scene is some inter-dimensional shenanigans and a villain being introduced. i personally imagine that kang is going to be the next big villain, but he’s time travel, not dimensional travel, so i don’t know.

then, your optional after credits scene: bucky and steve standing by the kitchen counter, talking and whatnot. i don’t know what about. maybe bucky’s getting ready for a mission, maybe steve’s just in a white tshirt and sweats and he’s just having a nice day, making himself some coffee, reading a good book. they talk, and steve nods bucky over.

“what?” bucky asks.

“thank you,” steve replies.

“... ‘til the end of the line, remember? i’ve got your back, rogers.”

“and i’ve got yours. you know that?”

“course i do.”

they smile. they’re happy. they’re at home. the screen goes black as soon as steve leans in and kisses bucky. 

(or: your platonic ending: the screen goes black as soon as steve and bucky bump fists in a friendly non-gay way)

then: STEVE ROGERS WILL RETURN IN THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

it’s a reoccurring role. he’s largely in the background, cheering them on, and occasionally waiting up in bed when bucky gets home from a late-night mission. he trains sam with the shield on weekends.

the end

[tonystarkbingo]

Presenting, for your entertainment and amusement, a Titles Game from the TSB Discord!

Aim of the game: a title is suggested, and everyone pitches in their idea of what kind of fic they would write for that title.

“Hot Chocolate Kisses” - suggested by @rebelmeg

@lbibliophile-mcu - Tony and Bruce are undertaking a very serious series of experiments to determine the optimal ratio of hershey kisses to milk in hot chocolate. And taste-testing the results. (actually, that would be fun to do as Tony and Morgan)

@summerpipedream - Natasha/Pepper - Natasha hates hot chocolate. It's always been too sweet, too sticky and if she could drink any other winter holiday drink, she would. Figuring out how to tell her girlfriend Pepper that, the biggest chocoholic in the world (Tony literally bought her a chocolate fountain for her birthday one year), well...it was a problem.

@rebelmeg - Iron Family winter tradition that comes about the first day they get a big snow. everyone wears their coziest sweaters, fuzziest socks, and wooliest winter hats, and they all drink hot chocolate out on the porch swing as they watch snow fall

@somesortofitalianroast - Hot chocolate kisses: Bucky teaches Russian History at Appalachian State University. Steve Rogers is the new World War II teacher. It always amuses Bucky that the UNC System decided that they needed an entire 3-credit hour class on World War II, and why AppState was chosen as the university, since Fayetteville is, like, right next to Fort Bragg. Or something. At least Steve’s easy on the eyes. Even if he’s not into guys. Except he is. Into guys that is. They’ve just started dating, Steve’s coming over to Bucky’s house for the first time, and a snowstorm hits. Featuring hot chocolate, declarations of love, only one bed, and enough pining to repopulate the pine barrens.

@darthbloodorange - Captain America is meant to be the paragon of virtue, the pinnacle of perfection. Or so Tony thought until catches Steve stuffing his face full of chocolate in the middle of the night. He demands Steve share the chocolate, but he's eaten it all ready. The only way Tony's get some, it seems it, is to kiss it from Steve's hot, chocolate covered lips.

(Keep reading for more amazing ideas!)

“to love and only love” - suggested by @somesortofitalianroast

@rebelmeg - giving me tony and maria vibes for some reason. can't decide if it's angsty, about how maria loves her son more from a distance, or if it's fluffy, and she loves him more than enough to make up for the ways howard doesn't.

@summerpipedream - Tony/Bucky - "To love and only love" is what the world always said about soulmates. His mother always said that when he'd meet his soulmate, he'd know. But what did that say about him when his soulmate kept running away?

@somesortofitalianroast - To love and only love: Cap!Steve/oblivious mechanic, Tony. Snarky identity porn. (changed it because, now that i think about it, it's tony/steve, that fic. lol)

@jamesbuckystark - to love and only love - Angst - Tony falls in love way too easily and quickly. Even when the ones he loves hurt him time and time again, he cannot find it in his heart to hate them

@jacarandabanyan - To love and only love: Tony hates soulmates and destiny deciding who he’s supposed to love and all the cultural adoration around the whole concept of soulmate marks. But nothing beats how much he hates that he loves his soulmate, despite himself. Steve clearly hasn’t seen their matching marks, and even more clearly doesn’t like, let alone love Tony. Tony can’t stop himself from living Steve- another thing to add to the list of things he hates, his stupid, insuppressible love for Steve- but he can avoid letting Steve know about their matching marks. He can love Steve and do nothing about it.

@lbibliophile-mcu - The vibe I'm getting from this title is subverted love triangle. The set-up is all there for angst and jealousy, but the characters all decide to focus on the positives instead. Whether this is one character deciding that (close) friendship is enough, or some degree of poly. Just everyone deciding that the important thing is that everyone is happy and together.

@trashcanakin - I get arranged marriage, enemies to real lovers vibes from it. Winteriron of course if I wrote it xD

To love and only love: Why does Tony have to marry him of all people. It's bad enough he's being forced into marriage because it's what the "kingdom" needs, what about what he needs? Or wants for that matter. And Bucky doesn't even like him, always silently glaring at him. It will never work, they just can't pretend to love each other when it takes all their strength just to like each other. But things change with the seasons. Could one terrible accident move the tide and show the true feelings hidden below?

@darthbloodorange - To love and only love (Stony): It's been years since anyone one has come by Tony's lair, leaving the dragon alone to tinker and work with his tech hoard. That's how he likes it: no knights, no paladins, no trouble. Just him and his bots. One day a werewolf (Steve) makes his way into his lair. He does everything he can to get rid of him, but the werewolf always returns. Before long Tony realises he likes having Steve around, likes how happy Steve is when he returns to Tony. Before long any frustration Tony feels for the werewolf is worn away, and all there is left is for him to love him. But would it ever work out between a dragon and a werewolf?

“Falling off the edge of the world with you” - @summerpipedream

@rebelmeg - pepperony, tony is teaching pepper how to work the rescue armor. they've been at it long enough that she's got the hang of it, and they celebrate by taking a thrilling flight together, far enough up that there's nothing but them, the edge of the world, and the stars

@summerpipedream - Tony & Rhodey - Whenever he got angry or tired at the world, Rhodey always used to drive him to their favourite lookout. Told him to yell and scream when things got too much and the world would fade away. Through the years, this never changed.

@jamesbuckystark - falling off the edge of the world with you - Rhodey knows it's unhealthy, following Tony to the ends of the earth. He also knows that Tony would understand if he said no. But there's something about the rush he gets when he's with Tony

@lronhusbands - falling off the edge of the world with you - ironhusbands. Idk like soft and fluffy boys who are just flying in their suits just to fly and playing games with each other and like total au where Rhodey doesn’t fall like he does so like they’re total idiots who cut their jets and plummet to earth and laugh bc they think they're invincible

@somesortofitalianroast - Falling off the edge of the world with you: 70 years ago, Steve Fell. Capital “F” Fell. There’s only one term for it, anyway. He might have survived, barely, yes, but he survived. But the thing about a Fall is that you never fly again. Even if you recover. Steve had resigned himself to never see the world from the air again. Until Tony.

@lbibliophile-mcu - Something different: Extremis!Tony (technopath version). Jarvis has been helping him get used to his new skills and senses. Because as much as Tony prefers to run rather than walk, he can also feel the very real risk of losing himself in this world of information and connections. The climax has Jarvis 'standing' beside him (acting as his guide and tether) as he takes his first dive into the internet.

@darthbloodorange - Falling off the edge of the world with you (Stony): Tony thought he would be the last person Steve would turn to for flying lessons. He didn't even have real wings anymore, not since Afghanistan. He doesn't fly like he used to. He didn't even think that Steve wouldn't know how to fly. With the broad, strong wings the serum had given him, Steve should be the best flier out. But as Steve stands before him, shyly stammering out his request for help, Tony could only find in him to say "yes" Tony schedules in time every week to help teach Steve how to fly. It soon becomes their thing.

@jacarandabanyan - Falling off the edge of the world with you: Space AU- Tony has always dreamed of exploring out beyond the edge of the known universe, and Rhodey has always known that he would follow Tony anywhere, no matter where. Even if current mathematical models of the edges of the known universe indicate that the two of them are more likely to end up falling into the void of nothingness than discover another universe or whatever it is Tony thinks he’s going to find.

“My heart beets for you (Mint to be)” - @darthbloodorange

@rebelmeg - the avengers have transformed the roof of the tower into a garden. and it's going pretty well. they've all got their own spots for their own stuff, and a section they do together, it's a good team bonding activity. at least... it is until tony's mint ("it's peppermint, get it?!") starts taking over clint's beets ("they're purple!"). then it's all-out war, and the one with the greenest thumb wins (pun not intended, hulk.)

@trashcanakin - My Heart Beets For You (Mint to Be): (No powers AU) Bucky runs a little cafe in a nice quiet town. They specialize in pastries, some say that their mint pies are the best around. Then some loud, rowdy, asshole buys the lot across the street and puts in a music store. Oh, it is on! This Tony guy wants a war, he's got one. And toss in soulmate AU on top because it would be funny xD

@jamesbuckystark - My heart beets for you (Mint to be) - Bucky is a garden sprite. No one sees him, and he bestows his loving touch to those who deserve it. Tony tries to be a plant dad... but fails miserably, due to the lack of sun and his forgetting to tend to his plants. Bucky takes one look at the man and falls in love. Imagine Tony's surprise when his dead plants are now alive and blooming!

(addition by @trashcanakin ) Tony's apartment is full of plants, flowers, and greenery because every time Bucky looks at him and blushes it makes more plants grow xD

And he's like "IDK WHAT'S HAPPENING!"

@summerpipedream - My heart beets for you (Mint to be) - Tony/Sam - Maria's last instructions in her will to Tony, along with the keys to her old family manor, were "Be Happy". It didn't take long for Tony to decide to quit his job, pack up his things and move out in the middle of nowhere to turn his mother's old home into a bed and breakfast. Of course, he never expected to run into Farmer Sam, who insists on sharing his extra fresh produce with him, dropping by 'just to see him smile'.

@darthbloodorange - My heart beets for you (Mint to be) (Stony) Steve and Tony retire from saving the world after the defeat of Thanos. Steve takes up gardening, wanting somewhere calming to do his art, somewhere he can relax. He needed something sedate, something peaceful that he could manage. He starts small, only a handful of flower beds, and learns as he goes. Slowly he starts expanding his garden, growing new sorts of flowers, and food. Herbs for Bruce. Flowers for Nat. A mediation/sensory garden for Sam. Pumpkins for Clint and his kids. A coffee tree for Tony. Soon he has a huge garden at the Compound with something for all of the Avengers. With a little work he manages to convince Tony to help him out in his garden (even if it is mainly to ogle Steve).

“If You Only Knew” - @jamesbuckystark

@rebelmeg - welp. okay. angst. tony ruminating about all the ways the people he loves don't understand the way he loves them. the way he shows them, tells them with different words. all he wants is to be loved back, and he can't understand why he's so unlovable.

@trashcanakin - Bucky would do anything for Tony, anything. Tony's the reason he's free, has a roof over his head, food, has his life back... Tony and Shuri even gave him his mind back, too. But Tony thinks Bucky hates him... Of course, why wouldn't he. Bucky keeps tryin' to show Tony how much he actually cares, but things keep gettin' in the damn way! A story full of misunderstandings, hurt/comfort, and eventual romance. Ayye. Could easily turn that into humor and crack as well, 'cause it's my brand xD

@summerpipedream - If You Only Knew - Steve/Tony "Do you know how long it took me to get home?" scowled Tony, "Every werewolf I ran into on the street told me congratulations, or took him long enough. Did you have something to tell me Steve?" Werewolf Steve is a little too enthusiastic with scenting his human mate. Whoops.

@jamesbuckystark - If You Only Knew - Tony talks in his sleep... a lot. Rhodey has experienced hearing some weird-ass stuff that he's said ever since college. Now Bucky gets woken up by Tony shaking him then saying something like "I farted by a hairy man yesterday" or "who grabbed my cheese in the ocean?" before zonking back out. Tony knows he talks in his sleep and often asks what he said when he wakes up. Bucky can't tell him due to laughing so hard so he ends up wheezing out "oh if you only knew what you said."

@jacarandabanyan - If only you knew: Tony loses his memories after a magical head injury. Nothing should be more important than getting his memories back so he can get back into the field and fight the good fight with these hero-types that claim to be his teammates. But one teammate in particular keeps distracting him from this vital work. For some reason, Bucky Barnes is both eager to help him in any way he can and totally unwilling to be alone with him. If only Tony knew why.

@celtic7irish - It would be a story of one-upmanship of the craziest stunts the Avengers have ever pulled. "If Only You Knew" the TRUE story behind some of those missions. If Only You Knew what really happened in Budapest. If Only You Knew what really happened during that one summer at MIT. Lol.

@jamesbuckystark - Also, angst version. If You Only Knew: Tony Stark, the control freak. Tony Stark, who thinks he knows best and screws stuff up. Tony Stark, the creator of Ultron. All these things, Tony has heard and will agree with. Rhodey does not. The others don't know what he does to keep shady government agencies off their backs. They don't realize what Tony sees at night. He wants to tell them, but Tony won't let him

@darthbloodorange - If You Only Knew: (Stony) Steve locks himself away in his room as Tony brings back another Omega to the tower, not wanting the Alpha to see the tears it brings to his eyes. It wasn't fair, he had no right to be hurt or jealous, Tony wasn't his Alpha. Tony would never be interested in him. Tony was only interested in soft, pretty Omegas. As far as the world cared he was an Alpha. But he wasn't. He was an Omega. If only Tony knew... maybe he would pick him. ...Maybe he would love him.

[dumbkiri]

Fate Changes Four

Parts: [ 1, 2, 3, Here, 5 ]

Summary: When all is about to end, the Knight stops his damsel in distress from taking her life once again. But this time was different. She wasn’t going to stop unless he gave her a good reason not to. Telling her he wasn’t dead this whole entire time might be the way.

Pairing: Jason Todd x Female! Reader

Genre: Slight Angst

Word Count: Idk, it’s short

Warnings: Blood, Suicide, Death, Guns

Stop!"

"Don't listen to him." Jason said.

"You don't want to do this, [Name]." 

[Name]'s smile was wiped off her face and she turned her head at the source of the speaker. Her eyes landed on the Arkham Knight. He stood at the entrance of the cell with his hands up, showing her that he meant no harm. 

Her hands began shaking and she looked away from him. Her eyes focused on the wall in front of her. It was discolored and blank. Unlike her who was decorated in various colors due to her injuries. "I'm going to do this, Knight. I'm finally going to be able to be free and this heavy weight that's been on my shoulders will be lifted off." 

The Arkham Knight took a step into the cell and she jumped to her feet. She didn't hesitate to point the gun at him, "Take one more step and I'll shoot you." 

He stopped moving and let his hands rest by his sides. "Put the gun down," The Knight warned and gesture for her to listen to him. Yet she wasn't cooperating. "Listen to me, you don't want to go down this route. Death is not- There are some people who-" 

"Batgirl, stand down," Batman ordered the woman suddenly appearing behind her. If the bulletproof glass wasn't between them then the Bat would probably have taken her down. 

The Arkham Knight froze in his spot as he stared at the caped crusader. 

"Pull the trigger," Jason coated her.

On the other hand, [Name] bit her lip. The fear toxin was still working in her system, but for some reason she didn't see any monsters or scary images. Then she looked at the gun gripped tightly in her hands, "I'm going to take my life. I don't care if you disagree, Batman. And Knight, you have no right to care for me." 

She lifted her eyes to the Arkham Knight and glared at him, "You barge into my home. Destroyed it. Took my first chance of taking my life."

"He doesn't want us together," Jason sighed. 

[Name] took a deep breath in, "Forced me into a car. Fought me while I suffered from two bullet wounds. Ended up in a car accident and you saved me." 

She aimed at his suit again, "Watched me suffer with the fear toxin taking over. Now you want to save me for a third time. I want to know who you are before I do anything drastic." 

The Arkham Knight sighed and shook his head, "All those hints I gave you. All those Romeo and Juliet phrases going back and forth. I thought those would jog your memory." 

"Everyone knows about Romeo and Juliet," She countered. 

"Not like us, we remember it differently. I thought I was your home," The Knight said and if it wasn't for the robotic voice, she would have assumed his voice cracked a bit. She was shaken by his sentence. 

"You'll always be my home, Romeo." 

She shook her head and backed up into the wall. He couldn't be him. All this time, he was right here in front of her. All this time, he was watching her get beaten down and even used force on her. 

"You are not my Romeo," She began with an attitude, "he would have never laid hands on me or let alone watch anyone beat me." 

"That's right! I would never harm you, [Name]." Jason said desperately.

The Arkham Knight stayed quiet and she wished for him to give her a reason why he did what he did. He let Barbara die. 

Meanwhile, Batman laid his hands on the cell desperately wanting to hold the girl in his arms. He needed to take her away from the cell and to Alfred where he can keep a watchful eye on her. But for right now,he watched [Name] uncover the truth behind the Arkham Knight. 

"You expect me to believe you are him!" She yelled at the Knight. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. The grip on her gun was locked and her knuckles turned white. "Well I don't believe you!" 

"You don't have to believe my words, you have to trust them," The Knight said with a softer tone. His hands reaching for her slowly and his legs moving toward her. "Please, [Name], put the goddamn gun down." 

[Name] shook her head, "Stop! I said don't move!" She pulled the trigger giving him a warning shot. The Arkham Knight stopped and raised his hands up again. His feet standing firm on the ground, not moving an inch. 

She was breathing heavy and she didn't know what the cause of it was from; the fear toxin or the sudden shock of Jason being alive. Either way, her heart was pounding and her head was in a swirl. Unbeknownst to her and the rest, one more shot of fear toxin entered her system and her hand flew to the collar. 

"Ugh," [Name] groaned, "I'm going to kill him!" She yelled and dropped the gun to the floor. She needed two hands to take the collar off and holding a weapon wasn't going to help her. 

The Knight saw this as a chance to render her unconscious. He ran at her and slammed her body against the cell wall to which she cried out, "What in God's name is wrong with you!" 

"I need you to calm down!" The Knight yelled at her and ended up getting punched in the face. 

"Get away from me!" [Name] yelled and kicked at him. Her vision showing her a monster trying to take advantage of her. 

"It's the fear toxin," Batman spoke up to the Knight, "it's taking over her body." 

The Knight scoffed and dodged a kick from [Name], "Yeah? Why didn't it affect her earlier? She had about seven doses already." 

"She saw someone important to her in the visions early on, that's who she's afraid of," Batman reasoned and worked on getting inside the cell. He could use his explosive gel, although he could harm [Name] in the process. 

The Knight blocked [Name]'s right hook and swiped his leg under her feet. Her back collided with the cell floor and she let out a strangled gasp. "Old man, you got any bright ideas to get her out without me damaging her so much?" 

"Talk to her," Batman simply responded. 

[Name] grabbed the Knight's foot and yanked on it causing him to lose his balance in the process. She crawled on top of him and started delivering punches left and right. She showed him no mercy. 

"She'll listen to you," Batman explained to the Knight watching his student unleash her wrath, "Show her that you're her Romeo." 

The Knight gritted his teeth and pressed a button on the right side of his helmet. 

[Name] raised her left arm to give the Knight another cruel punch, but a hissing sound made her stop. She watched as his helmet came off. 

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw those gunmetal eyes once again. Those stormy blue eyes she saw a long time ago. His black hair barely peeking out from the helmet. And that scar, that scar that made her blood run cold. 

"It really is you," [Name] admitted putting her hand down at her side. 

Jason nodded, "Yeah, I told you." 

"Batgirl, get down!" Batman warned and gunshots rang in the cell. 

Jason hovered over [Name]'s body and shielded her as much as he could. Once it stopped raining bullets, Batman blew up the wall of a cell and walked into it. He handled the men that wreaked havoc in the cell. After that was done, he checked up on his family. 

"No, no, no," He heard the Knight say over and over and when the smoke dispersed, Batman saw [Name] bleeding out in the Knight's arms. A bullet wound in her abdomen. 

"We have to get her out of here," Batman placed his hand on Jason's shoulders. 

……

"She's in stable condition, sir," Alfred said confirming the vitals on the screen were stable. "But she's going to be out of commission for at least a week. I've found three bullets, one that broke into shards." 

"I assume you took all the pieces out," Batman spoke over the phone. He was busy tracking down Scarecrow. 

"To the best of my abilities. Not only that, she broken at least four of her ribs, sprained her ankle and has multiple contusions. It's a miracle she's alive considering the bruises and damage that's been done to her body." 

"Not helping, Alfred," Jason called out to the butler from his sulking corner. His voice firm and broken at the same time. Those injuries were caused by him. He was the one that caused her so much pain. 

Alfred looked over at Jason. It was just an hour ago that he found out the boy he lost long ago was alive. "Well, yes, Master Todd, it seems that you are feeling guilty for what happened to Miss [L.Name]." 

"Guilty?" Jason scoffed, "I should feel more than guilty. She almost died, she could have died." He corrected himself. 

"But you saved her," Alfred dressed [Name] in new bandages, "I recall you saving her on multiple occasions, Robin or not." 

"That's not the point," Jason argued. 

"Then what is?" Alfred shot back laying [Name] gently back on her bed. "Sulking about what happened? It won't help her. The only thing- No, the only person that has ever helped her was you, Master Todd." 

Jason still stood in the corner of the room with his arms over his chest. 

"When you died, nothing was ever the same. Master Bruce would stay in the batcave with little to no sleep and [Name]," 

Jason looked over at the woman in the bed. 

"She was alone again. She lost the love of her life in the most cruel way; at Joker's hands." Alfred finished while setting a wet cloth on her forehead. 

"She replaced me." 

"She did no such thing," Alfred defended [Name], "and neither did Master Bruce. They both loved you in their own ways." 

Jason pushed himself off the wall and glared at Alfred, "Then why did Joker tell me there was a new Robin? I wasn't even dead, yet they found someone else. Someone else to call Robin." 

Alfred looked sadly at Jason, "Master Drake found out who they were, their real identities. Master Bruce could not just allow this boy to run around knowing who Batman really was." 

Jason turned away, "While they were out there, I was being tortured by a psychotic villain. I thought that Bruce would have killed him already, but turns out the Joker died differently. I wanted him to suffer. To feel the pain he dealt me." 

"Batman almost killed the Joker," Alfred confessed. "He was nearly there until [Name] stopped him. She stopped him from crossing the line." 

……

"Batman, stop!" Batgirl landed on the roof, standing behind the caped crusader. 

"Oh, Batgirl!" Joker laughed, his legs dangling in the air, "Thank goodness, you're here! I was starting to worry you weren't going to show!" 

"Let Joker go," [Name] advised while gripping a batarang in between her fingers. 

Batman didn't say anything and kept his hands around Joker's neck. 

"Uh-oh, Bats, seems like you got another rogue birdie," Blood was dripping down his chin, "we all know what happened to the last bird that left his nest too soon." 

"Shut up!" Batman demanded and squeezed Joker's neck even harder. If he did it any more stronger, the psycho's neck would snap. 

Batgirl spoke up, "You'll regret your actions later, Batman. You have a code. A code you made yourself and the others follow because if we broke it,…" 

……

"We're no better than them," Jason finished off Alfred's recount of that night. 

"Yes, even I wanted the bastard dead. I was so set on the Joker dying that I didn't care for the consequences at the time. But [Name] stopped us from crossing that line." 

Jason walked over to [Name]'s bedside and sat down at the edge. Her hands were cut up and bandaged. Her face adorned with bruises and cuts. One of her eyes covered up in ice to stop the black eye from swelling so much. 

"I thought she wanted the Joker dead too," Jason questioned reaching out for her hand. 

Alfred hummed, "Of course, she did. That's all she ever wanted after your death. She wanted him to die so badly that she said she was going to be the one that kills him." 

Jason intertwined his fingers with hers. 

"And when she found out the Joker was sick, she rejoiced. Finally, the clown was getting what he deserved." 

[risingmoonyue]

Batman/P5 Crossover

-Sometime before Akechi but after Futaba or Haru

-Damian is sent to Tokyo to check it out for whatever reason (maybe they had a fight, or he’s going stir crazy, or he’s just the only one they can send at the time and didn't bother with all that "you're not old enough" business)

-Dami is younger than Futaba by a year or three or four

-He is baby

-He is transferred to Shujin as a child prodigy where he also immediately joins the "outcast" community because of his attitude and intelligence

-Talia goes too, manages to cut off all his communications with the Batfam, and is planning to take him home in a month whether he likes it or not

-For whatever reason, Batfam doesn't realize this??? (Like, either she's faking reports or they're too busy (think fight or chaos in Gotham scenario maybe???))

-Anyways, obviously Dami doesn't want this

-Somehow the Phantom Thieves hear about the situation

-Maybe he was assigned to shadow Makoto for a while, and they managed to overhear a phone conversation either to Talia or Dami trying to get in touch with the Batfam and nothing really working

-And eventually they outright see him fighting with his mother with him at some point (either in person or over a phone call) mentioning that she already disowned him, he's happy with his Father's family, and that he will head her family business over his dead body—and oh would you look at that, you already managed that, care to try again Mother?

-The PT's are understandably alarmed

-And learn her name from Damian (from Makoto maybe or someone else he bonded a little with) (MORGANA) (THEY GAVE HIM MONA FOR A DAY AND NOW THEY KNOW EVERYTHING FROM HIS MANY PETS TO HIS LEAST TO MOST FAVORITE SIBLINGS STARTING FROM TIM TO DICK TO HIS FAVORITE FOODS TO EVERYONE IN HIS FAMILY’S NAMES TO HOW STUPID HE FINDS EVERYONE AND WHY THEY'RE STUPID TO HIS FAVORITE MUSIC TO WHY ANIMALS ARE SUPERIOR TO HUMANS AND MONA’S LIKE OMG TMI BUT LOVED IT THERE BECAUSE HE WAS PAMPERED LIKE NO TOMORROW GOT ONLY THE BEST FOOD AND THE BEST BEDS AND TOYS THAT HE GOT TO TAKE WITH HIM BACK TO LEBLANC AND NOW AKIRA AND SOJIRO ARE LIKE DUDE WHY AND MONA’S LIKE IM KEEPING HIM THIS HUMAN IS GOOD SORRY AKIRA YOU’RE DEMOTED)

-The palace is basically a fortress full of assasin ninjas and clones

-Dunno what her keywords are tho

-Or her what her palace actually is

-Help?????????

-Cognitive Bruce, Ra's, Damian, Dami clones, and Jason (maybe rest of batfam??? Idk)

-Long story short, the traps are so assassin-y that they need someone who knows the actual Talia because egads, this is the closest they have all come to actually dying

-And they didn't really want to do it and were just gonna power through

-But Dami manages to find out and get in and of course uses his background to help out whether they like it or not

(-he's slightly off put by Joker's name, but then decides to just solely call Gotham!Joker "The Clown")

-At some point they are captured by the Shadow Talia who is decked out in super fancy traditional Arab clothing and probably every conceivable hidden weapon known to man

-Talia says Damian won't and can't ever change from who he "is meant to be", referring to him as her Alexander and basically brutally addresses all of his insecurities concerning the batfam and people and society in general

-And all this is kinda killing him cause he still loves Talia despite the fact that she killed him and had a violent citywide custody battle with Batman but he also loves the batfam too even if he would absolutely never admit it (except to maybe Grayson)

-Joker does his emotional kick-start thing and/or Dami is like Makoto and just gets so mad he triggers it himself, but either way, lo and behold, Damian is now a persona user, usurping Futaba's place as the baby of the team

-The outfit is kinda inspired by his future adult league outfit with the top and bottom and gold jewelry, but has a raggedy cloak with dull gold edges, a Robin mask and gauntlets, and his main weapons are batarang-sword hybrids

---acknowledging his past and moving on with his present

-Persona: Aladdin, Tsun Zu, Ali Baba, somone else???? Need ideas plz help

-Probably the fastest member of the group

-His small body makes his hits not as strong, but hoo boy can that kid move around

-Hits a lot and dodges most

-Most of his Persona abilities are physical and have high crit and/or are status affects

-Downside is he has not a lot of SP (compared to the rest of the group)

-And he has pretty good HP

-Those good ol' “superior genetics” have to be good for something after all

-Anyways they escape to find the treasure another day

-And Dami is all smug because HA you definitely can't stop me now

-And the PTs are just resigned to keeping an eye on the extremely competent snotty assassin/vigilante child

-They do like him though so it's not too bad (comes with learning all his darkest secrets via his mother and thought processes that tends to accompany watching someone at their lowest get a persona)

(-They do manage to temper him a bit and help him adjust better to actual society too that's nice)

-As such, they also know about Batman and Robin and his whoooole family. Both sides.

-Damian decided not to tell batfam because he does agree with the whole "most adults suck" mentality that the Phantom Thieves have; despite his deep, deep respect for his father and mother and Grayson, they all do kinda suck

-And he’s rather not get pulled out as he surely would if he told them

(-On a side note, he likes Sojiro

-The man gives him coffee, curry, and leaves him mostly to his own devices

-Instant win)

-He is dubbed "Mockingbird" apon return to the metaverse because of his freaky talented vocal skills in mimicking anyone and everyone's voice

-Eventually, they beat Talia

-She doesn't publicly confess to all her sins unlike everyone else

-PTs don't realize it worked until Damian came into school with a genuine smile on his face, and more relaxed than he'd been since he got there

-PTs are confused until Damian's like, this works out because hey, don't want to have several people assassinated and draw the entire freaking league to Tokyo

(-Which was probably why Talia didn't)

-They agree

-But she does break down to tears in Dami's arms and promise to ACTUALLY TALK CIVILLY with Bruce to try and make up for everything and try to fix up the league

-He stays for the rest of p5

-But steers all his reports very much away from the Phantom Thieves

-If anything, he downplays absolutely everything, and makes it seem like it's nothing super big but he's gonna stay a while to keep and eye out because y'alls are busy and I like it here and I haven't gotten expelled so there

-The PTs like to add funny stuff on there just to see if they’ll notice

-Like, Akira likes to have Dami describe his day in excruciating detail. Like, recounting the entirety of his nine or so months to Sae during police interrogation, excruciating

-Mona is pushing for the shiny stuff

-Yusuke just likes to put in bursts of randomness (Dami once mentioned that an acquaintance made another acquaintance T-pose in a church for art lol)

-Ann loves to rant about food

-Haru is always insisting on about feelings

-Ryuji likes to complain about everything and puts in ridiculous requests

-Futaba is just putting in every gen-z thing ever

-Makoto is actually responsible and tries to get him to talk about his progress in school and his social life

-And Akechi is absolutely nowhere near any of this and doesn’t know it exists

-When they have the Tokyo/Japan-wide calling card, Batfam sees it too because let's face it, that's totally the sorta thing that they would keep an eye out for even if he didn't look at the news in the entirety of the time Dami was in Tokyo

-And they send a message to Damian (the first actual communication they've had since before Talia) saying "WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON OVER THERE????"

-And with the entirety of the Phantom Thieves looking over his shoulder, Damian's just like "Chill dudes, everything's fiiiiiiiiiine"

-And they're like "UH WHAT PART OF THIS IS FINE????" because they've dug around a bit and found every news report, and oh hey, this isn't anywhere near as calm as Damian described and he’s being super OOC and what’s going on?!?!?!?!?!

-And Damian, being egged on by the most of the PTs, just sends a winky face

-Just

-😉

-And he's smug, because it's still chaos over there so they can't actually come get him and try to pull him out because he's being super ooc

-Which means he's free to do what he wants/needs in the meantime

-Cue the end of the game

-And Dami is going with them on their summer road trip and cackling because the batfam is scrambling to find him in Tokyo but lol nope he's in a van the Japanese government tried and fail to follow

-And he found all the trackers like, a year ago

-Every

-Single

-One

-They eventually track him down to Akira's house where they're calmly eating dinner (and they've been expecting this for the past week so Mona was keeping watch just so they could pull this off) and talking about how uneventful the school year was

-Cue mass confusion in the batfam

-As the PTs enjoy just confusing them so much

-By talking to Mona

-Talking normal then crazy then normal again

-And just generally being their normal selves lol

-They explain absolutely nothing beyond gushing about how much progress socially and academically he’s made (gotta embarrass the baby of the group somehow) and making sure that if Dami absolutely has to go home that he's able to stay in touch

(-Later, Damian forms his own hero persona outside of Batman and Robin)

(-He names it Mockingbird)

(-Batfam proceeds to have a brain aneurysm while the PTs dab their happy proud tears out of their eyes on their regularly scheduled tea time at the Wayne Manor)

(-Damian sends a private plane every week or two lol)

(Bonus: ARTTTTTTT)

(Psst if you guys have ideas for art, outfits, interactions or scenarios, let me know)

[myriahkamm]

I live-blogged watching BvS and Justice League on FB earlier; here are my unedited thoughts. :P

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I'm watching Batman V. Superman (because bad movie night I guess idk), and during the opening scene rehashing the Waynes' deaths (for what feels like the millionth time in cinematic history--seriously, y'all, we can be done with that for a while and definitely don't need a 5 minute slow-motion scene about it), when Thomas says Martha's name as they're dying, I burst out laughing because (i) I didn't remember that he said her name during this scene and (ii) is this supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing for the really dumb crux of the movie where Batman and Superman stop fighting because omg their moms have the same name? I literally can't stop laughing. This movie is such a joke. 🤣

Having the Robin costume in this film with absolutely no context is just stupidly pointless fanboy pandering. Anyone who actually gives a crap about Batman lore should realistically hate that.

Lex Luthor, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, bitching about not having power is definitely on brand, but I am just super *not* a fan of the quirky, kind-of-nerdy-and-awkward Lex Luthor this film decided to go with. The hardcore businessman Lex Luthor from the 90s and 00s will always be the Lithor I like best. Y'know, the one based at least in part on Donald Trump. That one.

This Jesse Eisenberg version is way too much of a Mary Sue. Businessman *and* scientist *and* awkward nerd? Yeah, Jesse Eisenberg played Mark Zuckerberg, but I'm not sure Lex Luthor should be Mark Zuckerberg.

Ugh, I totally forgot about the Darkseid-foreshadowing dream that's never going to go anywhere because, let's be real, DC is never going to do a live-action film with Darkseid (and it would be awful even if they did). Also, Batman using guns in that dream is a thing I'll never be cool with. I don't care what kind of world he thinks he's living in in that dream; Batman has established principles and pretty much only goes against them in alternate universes.

Jesus, I forgot about the whole Flash-from-the-future scene, too. DC wrote a lot of checks we're never going to be able to cash in this film. Promising an Injustice-esque Superman-is-evil kind of storyline that they're never going to do anything with...why would they do that?

So in the dream, Darkseid-related stuff is going on (which, in Justice League, does sort of happen with Steppenwolf) and Superman says "she was everything to me, and you took her away from me." Then future-Flash says that "Lois is the key". Are they implying Batman has premonitions? Are they giving him a superpower? 🤣

Oh, that's right, they blew up the U.S. Capitol in this movie. 🤣 These scenes that are supposed to be really serious and filled with tension just keep making me laugh.

Why did they decide Batman needed to make a kryptonite spear? I mean, other than plot reasons so they could use it later against Doomsday. Batman uses projectiles and his fists; he rarely uses swords or spears or whatever.

Why did they decide Doomsday had to be created using a mixture of Kryptonian and Luthor's DNA? In the comics, Doomsday is an experimental clone based on ancient Kryptonian DNA. Why (in my opinion) make Doomsday so much more pathetic by adding human DNA into the mix? Freaking weird decision.

"Mm." What a weird quirk to add to Luthor's character. "Mm" every other sentence. What's that all about?

Luthor manipulating Batman into fighting Superman is...so unbelievable. Luthor manipulating Superman to hate Batman, waaaaay more believable. But no, that's not what they went with. They went with Luthor manipulating Batman for two years into wanting to fight Superman. Superman just randomly came to hate Batman on his own and only got manipulated into fighting him at the end. They could have just gone with hey, Batman's suspicious of everyone and would naturally be suspicious of a superpowered alien, especially with the whole setup they did at the beginning that coincided with stuff from Man of Steel. But nope. Nope, they went with the dumber plot.

Doesn't Luthor have way too much info about all these heroes' secret identities? Are we just pretending secret identities don't matter anymore? That's too 90s or something?

Why does the kryptonite spear make an "omg I'm a glowy thing" sound? 🤣

And now we're at the stupid Martha part that makes no sense because if you were about to die, you wouldn't say "save [mom's name]"; you would just say "save my mom!" 🤣

Batman would totally save Superman's mom even if their moms didn't have the same name. It's just such a stupid, stupid plot point and lends itself to endless mockery. 🤣

I *do* like this fight scene where Batman is making his way through the goons to get to Martha. The choreography is really good. Reminds me a lot of the Arkham video games.

Man, this Doomsday just...doesn't really work on a fundamental level. What makes comic Doomsday so powerful and terrifying is (i) it's not just a mindless monster, but is actually intelligent and can plan and strategize; (ii) iwas created through such extreme experimentation that it was repeatedly destroyed and then remade again over and over and over to give it endurance and formidably; (iii) and it's pretty much unstoppable from all that experimentation and uncontrollable because of its intelligence.

Also, what's with this explody thing Doomsday does in this film? A monster can be terrifying without being able to blow up a bunch of stuff. I'm not sure what the point of explody Doomsday is other than lazy writing.

The military hit it once and came to the conclusion that not only does it get more powerful "every time we hit it," but also that it's unkillable? Okay. More lazy writing.

And we're back to one of my biggest issues with Man of Steel: Superman just not giving a shit about collateral damage. Even if the island they're on is uninhabited, that doesn't exactly mean he should just be fine with blowing a bunch of shit up in the course of this fight. Sheesh.

How did Lois know they needed the spear again? She had no reason to go underwater to try to get it. This whole "let's make Lois useless time and again so Superman can save her" thing is really annoying.

Superman's "death" scene carries so little weight if you know (like pretty much everyone should have known, let's be real) that he's not really dead. Like, sure, for the characters it means something because they don't know he'll be back, but for the audience? At least for me, it doesn't make me feel a whole lot.

So all the soldiers at Superman's funeral--do they know they're carrying an empty casket? Just curious.

The dirt rising off the casket at the end for a split second is soooooo dumb. For anyone naive enough to think he *is* really dead, just let them think it. Just let that be a thing. Come on. (Also considering that he doesn’t just come back on his own; it takes a charge from a Mother Box in Justice League for him to come back. That makes this end scene a lie, too.)

Ok, BvS is done. Need another drink and a snack, then I'll move on to Justice League. 😅

Justice League:

Haha, obvious Superman facial CGI right off the bat, omg, I forgot how horribly obvious it is. 🤣

Also forgot that we're starting off with parademons right away. Sheesh.

Do all of Snyder's films have to have gratuitous slow-motion scenes at the beginning? Ugh, dude.

Everyone just throwing Bruce Wayne's name around in relation to Batman all the time. Secret identities are dead, y'all. No superhero can have a real life, I guess.

Ugh, I forgot this film pushes Batman/Wonder Woman pretty hard. 🙄

"It's cool if I show a bunch of Amazons with their midriffs showing as long as they have visible ab muscles, right?" Idk, Snyder, is that how armor realistically works? 🙄 Also, is it necessary for them to have lipstick on? That doesn't even exist on Themyscira, ffs.

The multiple (as I remember; only one so far) innuendo-based jokes really bring this film down, imo. "Clark said you were the thirstier woman he'd ever met." Really? Ugh. 🙄

The plot of this film is so LOTR. Amazons, Atlanteans, and Men all get Mother Boxes, sort of like the various rings of power. There's plenty you can pull from comics, y'all. You don't need to pull from other stuff.

Flash as comic relief I'm okay with. I'm not sure how I feel about *this* Flash's comic relief. I'm not a huge fan of the writing.

Break time because Je'von wants to go out on the balcony lol. 😅

And we're back. So can Steppenwolf breathe underwater? Is that a thing? 

I guess it's supposed to be super funny that everyone disappears except the fastest one of them? Sigh. The writing in this film is just so awful.

Cyborg's CGI also isn't great. I really wanted more for Cyborg because he's awesome. Sigh.

Snyder must have loved being able to do stuff with Flash. All the slo-mo he could want.

I'm not a fan of neurotic Flash, afraid of pretty much everything. He can be funny in so many better ways, but instead let's just have him be afraid of everything and make sexual jokes every now and then. 🙄

"Let's keep having Cyborg wear sweatpants and a hoodie so we don't have to spend so much on CGI. It totally won't look ridiculous." 🤣

Batman making the argument to use technology he doesn't understand to try to bring Superman back from the dead is just so out of character it's not even funny. First of all, Superman didn't need technology to come back in the comics (whether or not his "resurrection" was silly is irrelevant). Secondly, Batman literally has an enemy (Ra's al Ghul) who resurrects himself on the regular, and Batman (i) knows it's a bad idea because it messes with Ra's's sanity and (b) would never consider using the Lazarus Pit even though he has a relative understanding of how it works. This film just literally disregards established character traits in favor of it's stupid-as-hell plot. Ugh.

Superman is vulnerable to magic, idiot writers. He shouldn't be able to fight Wonder Woman's lasso. Uuughhh. Have any of the writers of this movie ever actually read any Justice League comics? 🤦‍♀️

Well, those cops definitely know Superman's name now. Since you all keep saying it in front of them.

Superman hasn't even been gone for that long (seemingly; I mean, it's hard to tell, but S.T.A.R. Labs is still doing research on the Kryptonian ship in the same genersl area as in BvS, so idk), so all this talk about what he does or doesn't remember seems...weird.

Why not wait until you defeat Steppenwolf to let your mom know you're back, Superman? For all you know, you could die again. Wouldn't that just be harder on her after seeing you back?

Why was the lasso just sitting on the Batmobile instead of with Wonder Woman? Plot so that Aquaman could say some *super funny things*. 🙄 That's not even how the lasso works, you dumb writers. Someone has to direct another bound by it to speak the truth. Seriously, do some research. Ugh. It's not that hard.

"So your plan is dying? You really are out of your mind." "I'm not the one who brought a pitchfork." See, the writers prove that they can be actually funny if they try. *If* they try.

The "everyone trying their best to hold off the big bad until Goku gets there" vibe is super strong in this movie. 😑

Part of the reason the Justice League is a thing is because no one hero can do it alone. That means it all shouldn't be riding on Superman's shoulders. If you actually know how to write the Justice League, that is.

Don't know how I feel about everyone getting perks due to nepotism now that they know Bruce Wayne...must be nice to be buddies with the richest man in the world. 😒

The Flash vs Superman race at the end is more pandering. Ugh. It would be better if Flash was less pathetic as a character in this film. Super awkward is just not very funny, y'all. Write actual jokes instead.

Okay, that's over. What a trip. Both those movies are still pretty much garbage. 🤣 The question is, will I ever watch Man of Steel again? Probably not; I hated Man of Steel more than both those movies, actually. Wrote a 3-page rant about how awful it was after seeing it in theaters originally. $3 was still way too much money to spend on that crap. 😅

Oh, side note for the after credits scene: will they ever actually go anywhere with that? They might do an okay job with a Justice League vs. Legion of Doom (or Injustice Society or whatever villain team incarnation they would decide to go with) film. That might not suck.

[dksartz]

616 warrior cats au thoughts stuff under the readmore

I decided the 616 au should kind of be different from the mcu au. Idk, just, Tony finds Steve in 616. But I wanted them to be friends first/for Steve to be the reason Tony joins the clan. But then it doesnt work, bc who is gonna vouch for Tony joining?

Why did Steve and bucky cat actually disappear, like what happened in the cat au that leads to them not returning/disappearing??? I dont know! And Tony is supposed to be friends with Jan and thor and hank etc before they find Steve, okay, I can still do that...

Tony came to the clan because he didnt have a home anymore and because he needed to at least try to find out what happened to Steve. They want him to leave at first but he explains why hes there, asks them about Steve cat, they dont know, he might be dead.

He says that he doesnt have a home anymore and Steve cat kept trying to convince him to join the clan so he knows about the code and starclan and he wants to be a part of their clan. They take him to the clan and he explains and they're divided but since they're down 2 cats and dont have a lot of cats, they accept him as an apprentice.

Tony is grieving Steve cat, but part of him doesn't believe hes dead, somehow. He ends up befriending the others his age etc fairly quickly... Uhh it's much later that they find Steve after star clan gets involved in Tony cat's dreams, and the leader/med cat as well, decide to send a small group to investigate what the dream was pointing towards, and its Jan, thor, Tony, and hank.

Bruce is med cat maybe so idk if he should come. Also rhodey, let's throw him in? Anyway they go on an Adventure and they do find Steve...idk what happened to him or bucky, why he didnt return, what happened at all, why he and bucky left/what they were doing.

Did they get caught by twolegs? Did they get attacked by the equivalent of bloodclan? Why were they near the twolegplace? Investigating something??? Maybe star clan meddling again, dreams, idk. Or, Bucky (younger than Steve like in 616 canon, Steve cat has just recently been made a warrior, bucky has only been an apprentice for a few moons) had tracked Steve bc his friend kept disappearing on him, on the way back from visiting Tony, bucky, who is following Steve, gets atta led by a cat or dog, Steve leaps to his defense, they have to flee, but get turned around/lost in twolegplace.

Maybe they find another cat in need and try to protect them and then get separated by accident. Steve cant find bucky, hes not sure how to get out of the maze of thunderpaths and twoleg paths and fenced in yards, etc. And he gets grabbed by some twolegs.

Meanwhile bucky has been captured by the bloodclan equivalent and forced to join them, he's afraid. hes afraid to disobey or try to run because he doesnt know how to get out of fhe twolegplace, he doesnt know what happened to Steve and he cant fight them and hes not ready to die all on his own, this is not a battle he can win. But he will hate himself later. I guess. Cats dont really have brainwashing. Maybe he hits his head and forgets things, or maybe he was only just made apprentice and is manipulated. Idk.

Anyway so Steve is caught by twolegs and ends up in a shelter? He was caught for tnr lol but then hes scared theyll kill him if he fights so he acts friendly, so they think hes adoptable maybe, and theres a mix up with paperwork so they think he was fixed but he wasnt actually. But hes not friendly enough to adopt out, but acts friendly towards the people who work there sort of, so hes just trapped in the shelter for months??

Long enough for Tony cat to get his warrior name. Maybe Steve cat does get adopted, and that's how he is found. He's not sure how long it's been since he was captured and he still has no idea what happened to bucky cat, and he feels guilty.

The twolegs who adopted him have a yard but they dont let him out into it, they have a screened in porch where he spends his time staring out at the forest over the fence. And then one day a group of cats leap over the fence into the yard away from yipping dogs one yard over, and Steve cat scrambles to his paws. The scent... could it be?

He isnt sure, he doesnt recognize them (they've changed and so has he!) And they dont quite recognize him at first, but as they approach theres recognition. Its Steve cat! And Steve realizes its Tony catches hes actually a warrior! Hes birdclan now! And those are Steve cat's classmates! That is birdclan scent! They're separated by the screen but they greet each other joyfully and have a million questions.

They work out a plan to get Steve out of the screened in porch (he was feeling too depressed/unhappy/guilty to try, before, and it is a strong material) and it works eventually. They do the cat equivalent of hugging and then get a move on. They got help from a kittypet on how to get out or maybe Tony knows because he found his way out to the forest and this is his area of the twolegplace (more residential area than the area where Steve and bucky were separated)

anyway so they make their way out of the twolegplace, though Steve has been trying to look for bucky the whole time and becomes more and more disheartened as they go. Those cats were vicious, moreso than their battles with snakeclan usually, and Steve cat fears bucky cat is lost to them.... and uhh.

Anyway so they go back to the clan together and things are good and fairly peaceful and they do fight snakeclan for or over territory, etc normal warriors stuff. (But their little group of warriors becomes known as the avengers). Some normal cross clan romance drama in the background probably. And uh Steve and Tony are falling in love and pining for each other. That's a major thing!

They're dumbos for all the usual reasons basically. They probably eventually become mates and later adopt orphaned kits or something. They definitely both mentor apprentices. Steve eventually becomes leader and Tony his deputy of course.

Uhh at some pt Steve falls into a sinkhole during a battle and everyone thinks he died and Tony doesmt believe it and wont go to get 9 lives but he does make Carol his temporary deputy and act as stand in leader. Some of the clan who never liked him think he's behind what happened to Steve this time.

Eventually Steve claws his way back out and is like im not dead! And also dont blame Tony it was that redclaw, he tried to kill him and then Steve fell. snakeclan need to do something about that cat. Idk. Stuff!! Drama!! Okay!!

[zenosanalytic]

People What Aint From Round Here Is The Problem...

So I just watched Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood and I have THOUGHTS:

Ive read a few reviews&ruminations on this film at this point and I can’t believe that none of them got(or at least, mentioned explicitly) the primary thesis of this movie, spcl given that Tarentino flatly states it out the mouth of his primary protagonist within, like, the first 15-20mins of the film: “...most important thing in this town is when you’re making money you buy a house in town. You don’t rent... Hollywood real estate means you live here. You’re not just visiting, not just passing through. You fuckin live here.” i.e., the most important thing in Hollywood, to Hollywood, is the people FROM Hollywood; Everyone else is just a filthy, trouble-making tourist or profiteer who is “Passing Through” and “Doesnt Get It” and  “Is Fucking It Up”(It being the film industry), and probably “Secretly Hates Movies”. There are places and aspects of this movie that are basically a Nativist Angeleno rant, written by a life-long Angeleno film-nerd-turned-film-maker, against Hollywood’s critics(and his critics which he just totally conflates with the former), and probably non-Angelenos(and non-Californians?) in general.

There are two ways to read this thesis: Straight and Subverted/Satirized.

The evidence for reading it straight is pretty plentiful. Lots of reviews have puzzled at where the line connecting the constant hippie-bashing, the weird focus on knocking Polanski’s Polishness & preference for shooting in London, and the inexplicable pot-shot at Bruce Lee is, and I think this is it. “The Hippies” are repeatedly presented as a corrupting force: digging through trash, living in squalourous filth at the Spahn Ranch dragging members of “Old Hollywood” like its owner into it with them, selling drugs, and using sex to “control” men. And attached to this is presenting “The Hippies” as foreign; not only from another place, but refusing to assimilate with the LA way of life and hostile to it. The Manson family are the only explicitly identified “Hippies” in the film(other than, possibly, the one who sells Cliff an acid cig). The only “positive” portrayals of Bruce Lee in the film are silent ones of him teaching anglos kung fu, which has some fairly obvs and well-understood Implications.

But there’s also good evidence for reading it as subverted and satirized. Both Tate and Dalton are NOT from California, let alone LA, and Booth’s origins are left unclear. Dalton’s the only one of them explicitly id’d as being from elsewhere(Missouri), but Tate’s easy to google and she was a military kid who grew up all over the place. When Dalton returns from Italy, that sequence and his look in it are VERY reminiscent of the scenes introducing Polanski at the beginning of the film. The side-characters around Tate, perennially shown in a positive light, are also non-Angelenos. Doing Spaghetti Westerns revitalizes Dalton’s career, despite his disdain for Italian cinema. Tate and her crew, while not explicitly ID’d as “Hippies” and often shown in Mod and other fashion styles, are also presented in “Hippie” fashion, shown listening to “Hippie” music, smoking the “Hippie” Reefer(Im sorry, but Comedy Demanded this phrasing and I am Devout u_u), and implied to be living a polyamorous “Hippie” life.

It really is difficult for me to say which predominates. On the one entirely metaphorical hand, the ways in which Dalton’s Angeleno chauvinism are subverted and mocked are fairly obvs, but on the other emh, the film is FILLED with LITERALLY GLOWING nostalgia for this pre-Hippy, pre-Lefty, pre-70s, Conservative and Republican California&Los Angeles. Dalton’s focus on property-ownership&the film industry in the opening thesis could easily be seen as resolving these subversive contradictions to allow for a straight read(ie: Tate, Booth, and Dalton are “Hollywood People” who’ve both bought real-estate in LA, and who’ve grown up in film or film-adjacent fields and choose to center their adult lives in the film industry). So much, in fact, that I kinda started to wonder abt QT’s politics while watching it. And, if it WAS satirical, then what’s the point of the knock to Bruce Lee and focusing criticisms of Polanski on his Polishness and shooting in London? Is that just meant to characterize Dalton and Booth as nativists and racists?

It really cannot be said enough that there are REALLY MORE APPROPRIATE CRITICISMS to make of Polanski than 1)begin Polish, 2)possessing boyish effeminacy, and 3)preferring to shoot movies in London instead of LA. Which are this movie’s only problems with him(though it also takes the time to show him bitchily smoking a cigarette in an evening gown while being rude to a dog). Obvsl I dont object to villainizing an ACTUAL REAL LIFE VILLAIN like this shitstain, but I DO object to being asked(albeit gently) to participate in this film’s understated nationalist bigotry.

It’s possible that Cliff’s turning Pussycat down during the drive to the ranch was intended to be this but I highly doubt it. And if it was it’d be misrepresenting Polanski’s misdeeds enormously, considering that Pussycat, the too-young girl, is the sexual instigator in this film. Polanski liked to manipulate, drug, and rape underaged girls(he pulled the same shit with models in Europe before getting busted for it in LA, btw, then continued doing it after fleeing back to Europe); really not the same situation.

There’s another irony in that, while the film goes out of its way to call Polanski “boyish” and imply that makes him feminine and that this is Bad, there’s also a subtle under-current that... Tarentino sees himself in his youth the same way? He’s certainly never been short like Polanski and Jay Sebring are/were, QT’s 6 1, but the actors he cast to play them and the description made of the pair in-film are more than a bit reminiscent of how Tarentino looked&was discussed in the press back in the 90s when he was starting out. AAAaaand the film explicitly calls that Tate’s “Type”; leaving me with the question: would Tarentino be able to stop himself from implying a dead starlet would have been attracted to him? I leave the answer to your imaginations, Dear Readers u_u

Having said all that it IS a really good film, which I liked, I dont think it’d be very hard to set aside this political stuff while watching, the driving sequences are especially emotive&exhilarating, and there’s some seriously great acting in it. IDK if I’d say I liked it more than the recent Emma movie, tho.

I feel like each of the trio, Tate, Dalton, and Booth, were meant to symbolically Embody LA/Hollywood/California? Like Pitt especially seemed to be channeling movie characters and CJ from GTA: San Andreas throughout his performance, while I couldnt help but think of Ronald Reagan watching DiCaprio(spcl given the character’s likely politics). So there’s this sense in which the film is a fantasy of “Old Hollywood”, embodied by these three, Vanquishing its “Enemies”, represented by The Hippies(moralizing, pretentious, gross leftist) and potentially Polanski&Lee(foreign film ppl who refuse to integrate into the LA scene). Again, given the political history of Cali after this era, this embodiment raises some questions for me abt the film and QT’s politics(particularly in re: misogyny and feminism).

Also DiCaprio is totally going to get pitched a Reagan biopic off of this role and I sincerely hope he has the good sense to turn that shit the fuck down.

Circling back to the ranting at his critics, this movie was definitely and consciously a response to them. Like: up until the last 5-15 minutes of the film, and aside from a handful of too-lingering too fetishistic too on-the-nose creep shots of the female cast that Tarentino simply could not stop himself from making, OUATiH is precisely the sort of “Serious” film Tarentino’s critics have been saying he should make for decades now(of course he did Jackie Brown, which was that and which he blew Completely out of the park). And then there’s that bloody, gross-out, exploitation-movie ending. I dont actually think it was as bad as many critics were saying it was? For some reason I was thinking there was gonna be a massacre of the ENTIRE Manson family, which would have been totally out of left-field. But it WAS clearly a stinger of a major tone-shift thrown in as a Fuck You to the ppl who’ve called out his violent and exploitative preferences throughout the years. As for me I generally like his movies and think he’s a great filmmaker but he absolutely does go too far sometimes.

Rick Dalton, in an evening-gown, with a mixer full of iced-margarita in one hand, getting all up in the face of the driver of a loud exhaust-spewing jalope in his PRIVATE STREET was TOTALLY Tarentino himself :| By which I mean NOT ONLY that That’s ABSOLUTELY the sort of cameo he would have given himself 30 years ago and if it made any sort of sense at all in the film(which here it wouldnt have, obvsl), BUT ALSO that I feel 94% confident that Tarentino has actually done that at least once in his lifetime :| :|

I think the monologue&interactions T gives Bruce Lee leading up to the fight were probably more insulting to him than the fight itself. Contrary to popular discussion, it isn’t Pitt’s character totally trashing Lee, he gets in one good throw after Lee repeats a successful attack at his request(which I doubt Lee would have ever done from what little I know about him; not being predictable in a fight was his whole Deal), but rather an even duel between them(most of the fight is just the two blocking each others’ attacks). I dont think the film was trying to say “Lee was full of hot-air”, if it wanted to say that it’d have shown him getting trounced instead of showing him knock Booth down then trade him blow for blow, but more “Lee was pretty arrogant and a bit pretentious”.

OK, that’s abt all that I can think of right now: thanks for reading ^v^