#loved the tension this show managed to build with countdowns and numbers

[ren-144p]

something about the first few episodes of the terror having so many numbers. the men, the provisions, the inventory; but also the tension of counting. the scene where goodsir takes a picture of john franklin and his men and he's counting down the seconds. the lashes being counted down during hickey's punishment. and something about how in later episodes, numbers get lost. dates get forgotten. counting just stops. all of it becomes insignificant. like it was a countdown at first but now the time is just running out instead

[kominum]

semoto (corpse x fem!reader)

4 times you think tuxedo mask!corpse could be yours + 1 time you learn to stop feeding your own delusions 

pt. 1 + background info can be found here! please read for context. 

basic rundown of classic!sailor moon (anime) lore ‘creatively’ used in this two-part:

sailor moon and tuxedo mask are star-crossed lovers/soulmates that faced tragedy in a previous life. 

sailor mars (aka you/reader) had a crush on tuxedo mask’s non-hero persona, darien/mamoru, for a while 

sailor moon is the moon princess and tuxedo mask is the earth prince.  

sailor moon’s non-hero persona, usagi/serena, bickered a lot with darien/mamoru.

fem!reader // tw: death mentions, bodily injury, unrequited love to the very end, some unresolved tension. 

1. “Whaddup, baby?” 

Without much reason, you and Corpse trade off calling each other whenever a new monster is defeated. You’re figuring out all of this as much as he is, but he doesn’t have much guidance besides some supernatural force within him. He’s not taking instructions from a black cat and white cat like you and the other girls are who can help fill you in on the gaps -- all he knows is that he’s pivotal to maintaining Earth’s existence, and he’s not exactly thrilled about it.

But the calls are never about the fights, never about your secret identities. In fact, you’d be willing to bet half your grocery funds that he still hasn’t made the connection between you and your Sailor Mars persona and part of you wants to keep it that way. Sometimes you’re mentally exhausted and just want to forget about the events for the day or night, which is why you usually end up calling him soon after everyone disperses or vice versa. It’s almost instinctual these days, and you wonder how long it’ll be before you accidentally crack. 

Right now, the rule of thumb seems to be, “Never trust new flashy shops that open with no warning and have too-good-to-be-true grand opening offers.” This time, some luxurious salon opened up by a famous local hairdresser had been the said attraction. All of you weren’t ignorant enough to believe the sham, but the star of the show had taken the chance to say, “Let’s go scope it out!” when really, she wanted that free haircut. You had called her out on it, but she argued that if anything happened, then perfect, you all could take care of it right then and there. Needless to say, you do not want to be attacked by a monstrous version of Edward Scissorhands ever again. Corpse had made a dark, humorous entrance, a style he’s really adapted to because he knows it pisses Sailor Moon off, 

About an hour later, you’re home and bandaging up some cuts and rubbing salve on bruises, phone on speaker and dial tone blaring through the bathroom. You’re addressing the scrape on your knee when he picks up, a low drawl of, “Whaddup, baby?” comes through and your heart stutters.

The girls call you a number of terms of endearment: sweetie, honey, love, dear, babe, queen, but the last person to address you as ‘baby’ with any amount of affection was your ex-boyfriend.

You scoff to hide how flustered you actually are, quietly hissing as you attempt to put some Neosporin on the scrape and catch onto some stray skin. “Are you drunk?” You ask jokingly, knowing full well he wasn’t. 

“Drunk? Nah. Tired? Yeah. But that’s always.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s old news. But uh, what’s up? Been a while since we last talked.”

“We talked like...three days ago. You called me, remember?”

“Feels like forever. I like talking to you.” 

You wonder if it’s irony or plain, cruel fate that this man will probably be the death of you.

2. “Don’t lay a fucking hand on her.”

It’d been a bad day overall. Lack of sleep compiled on by a growing pile of assignments in addition to having to get your tires checked out for an air leak because your car said, “Not today, honey,” -- everything came together in torrential hurricane and the last thing you needed was to be caught fighting another force of evil.

You’re so tired.

Sailor Moon seems to have all the energy in the world as she dodges attacks left and right, but your muscles are screaming in agony. You’re constantly hunched over and panting, but looking for the right openings to weaken the monster. Luckily, the creature has its back towards you when it dashes over to Venus and you muster everything you have to summon a bow and arrow made of fire, pulling back and making sure your arms don’t quiver. 

But at the last second, your lack of oxygen gets the best of you and your flame sniper barely manages to graze the monster’s side and narrowly avoid Jupiter. It’s enough to cause a distraction, but the anger in its glare as it’s directed at you elicits surrender in your heart. There’s nothing left in your bones to help you run or hide, and your knees buckle painfully onto the concrete. Everything else hurts so bad that you’re not bothered by the sediments digging through your skin. Venus is running towards you but she’s not quick enough, and you feel your eyes begin to slip. If this is what death feels like, then so be it. You hope that the girls’ mourning will be short, that they can still complete the ultimate mission, and--

“Don’t lay a fucking hand on her,” an angered, frustrated baritone spits out and you’re torn between laughing or crying. In a separate romantic context, you’d like the idea of wholeheartedly leaving your life in his hands. But in this reality when either of you could die at any moment and the world be consumed in darkness, it’s something you would never wish upon anyone. It’s a different situation than your bonds with the girls. 

The pain is enough to send you in and out of consciousness for the next few minutes. But strong, warm arms sit you up, though they’re slightly trembling and keeping you awake. “Hey, you okay? What happened to you? You’re stronger than this.” 

“G-great way of telling me, fuckthathurts, that I was...shit today,” you joke, but hiss when you try to move your legs and the deep scrapes scream in agony. 

“Take it easy, ‘kay? Or your princess is gonna have my head--”

“Thanks man, but we got it from here,” said princess interjects, hoisting you up with the help of the other girls. “You can go.”

“Speak of the devil,” Corpse chuckles and helps make the transfer less painful, a lot less awkward jostling around. “Look, I saved her--”

“And I said thank you. We’ll see you around,” your stubborn friend dismisses. 

“You’re welcome, baby.”

“Not your baby, piss off!”

3. “I’m always gonna be there for you, no matter what.”

It’s soft yet sonorous, deep yet light. Twilight hours are cast high above you both, separated by walls and buildings connected over wires and unseen forces. Technology is the sharpest, double-edged sword you’ve seen and used on this planet, because Corpse has never felt so close yet so far than in this moment. Your mind deludes you further by indulging in believing he’s right there next to you, strong arms holding you much like he did when you were on the brink of unconsciousness just two weeks ago.

Wishing, hoping, wanting. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.

The one year anniversary of your ex-lover’s death looms over you on another sleepless, caffeine-fueled night. It’s no surprise when his custom ringtone chimes softly throughout your room during these graveyard hours, but it certainly raises your eyebrows when after a minute or two, he asks tentatively, “Are you gonna go visit him?”

There’s no question as to who or where “him” is. You haven’t been since the funeral, if you’re honest, swept up by work, classes, and your new side job. But Corpse doesn’t know that, and you know it’d be the right thing to do. Maybe it’d help settle the storm of anxiety (or guilt?) that swirls in your gut on a daily basis. 

“I think so,” you reply quietly after a moment of silent contemplation, already thinking ahead to what the drive might be like. “He deserves better.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Charming, compassionate, thoughtful, absolutely too good for this world -- the three-letter affirmation nearly slips off your tongue without a second thought. You can’t risk him seeing you, putting two and two together, and potentially forever losing him to his long-lost princess. Selfish delusion creeps through your veins and you fight back the shiver of guilt that runs down your spine. 

“I think I’ll be okay. Might be a visit made best alone, but I really appreciate you even asking.”

“Let me know if you change your mind. You know I’m always gonna be there for you, no matter what. Right?”

Warmth. Strength. Oblivion. 

“I know. Thank you.”

4. “I don’t have anyone else but you.”

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Because we can’t sleep and have nothing better to do.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” you chuckle into your phone, free hand swirling a pot of instant ramen. “I have better things to do at 3 in the morning than watch The Poltergeist with you.” 

“Then go fucking do it,” Corpse laughs teasingly. 

“And leave you high and dry? I don’t have the heart.”

“I mean, you really don’t have to--”

“Seriously, I was awake anyways. Just giving you shit.”

“One of these days, you’re gonna fucking regret it.”

Ramen done and lamp on, you snuggle beneath your blanket and start the traditional countdown to pressing ‘play’ on the movie. Neither of you really had the technology to screen share on this Discord call (your laptop is almost on its last leg and your apartment WiFi can be spotty at times), so it seemed better this way. 

The next roughly 2 hours are filled with laughter, small jump scare yelps, and quiet yelling at the ignorance and twisted logic of horror movie characters. But towards the end of the movie (and arguably the climax), your eyelids start to droop, body succumbing to the warmth of your bed. The screaming and cheesy, orchestrated music are all background noise as your breathing evens out, shifting in and out of consciousness. Ending credits roll on screen before you know it, and the only think that rips you awake is Corpse’s gentle calling of your name. 

“Sorry, fell asleep,” you murmur tiredly and squint at your screen, languidly closing out the window and letting the Discord window take precedence. “Tells you how riveting I found this movie.”

“Should’ve just let you sleep, my bad,” he chuckles. “Thanks for staying up with me.” 

“Yeah of course -- I wanted to, just got a little sleepy. Wanna watch another one?”

“ ‘m actually gonna try to sleep. Don’t wanna bother you too much. You got work tomorrow?”

“Not ‘til noon so it’s okay. You sure?” 

“Yeah...yeah. I’ve only had like...3 hours of sleep lately. Fucking awful.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“You do enough by just letting me call at the fucking crack of dawn, seriously.”

“I’m your only option, let’s be real,” and your voice is a mix of fatigue, humor, and some bitter sardonicism. There’s no malice intended, and you really hope it’s conveyed accurately. 

“...I don’t have anyone else but you,” he all but murmurs. Your heart clenches painfully, anxiety and fear and love surging through your lungs. Those words don’t hold the connotation you desperately wish for, but what matters most is that he knows he’s not alone and you’re not the only one he’s got. You verbalize as such and he only hums back in a façade of agreement before wishing you a good night. 

And sometimes, while you do know that your girls have your back and that you love them to death and would take a bullet for them any day, there are nights where you really do feel the same.

That you have no one else but Corpse. 

5. “He was never yours.”

There’s nothing you hate more than psychological monsters. You’d probably take physical pain over mind games any day because at least, it’d heal faster to some degree, or there would be a more surefire way of minimizing symptoms. But sometimes, there are days when the egotistical chess players of hell come to wreck havoc on the world, and you get lost in their trap. It’s annoying, a pain in the ass, and affects you a lot more than it should at times. 

This particular instance makes you want to quit. It makes you, Sailor fucking Mars, guardian of the planet of fire and passion and perseverance, leave all of this behind right here and now. You’ve never hated yourself more for feeling so weak. 

You’re not sure what to call it -- altered dimension, distorted reality -- but all you know is that you and the princess are kept in separate cages hanging from an endless ceiling, labelled as baits for tuxedo mask/Corpse to come. The enemy lets you both stew in the confines of the metal, watching with glee as your partner attempts to cut through the rails with her tiara and ultimately fail. It seems they’ve thought of everything because you’re not their #1 enemy today. Or maybe you are. You’re not sure anymore, even as they launch into villainous speech. 

“Nothing brings me more joy than watching you lose all your energy to fight, both physically and mentally. I’ve seen all your dreams and wishes. Nothing’s more fickle and double-edged than love, no? We shall see who the prince really belongs to.”

Mention of the prince has you snapping your head to meet the enemy’s eyes, slowing squinting as they catch yours and begin cackling like your demise is racing at the speed of an oncoming train. Your princess looks confused, but dread is heavy mercury filling your veins because you know, you know, your best held secret is coming to fruition. 

“What the fuck are they talking about?” She hisses across the void. 

“I don’t know,” you lie through your teeth, eyes flicking toward every corner of the cage now to find a way out. This isn’t how you wanted it to happen, much less happen at all. 

“Are they talking about Corpse?”

“Is there any other prince they’re referring to?”

“Do you always have to be a smartass with me?”

“Somebody’s got to,” you allow yourself a slight reprieve of laughter. It’d be dumb to try to set fire to this thing, knowing you’d only burn yourself in the process. Your exorcism tags also have no use and you can hear the clock ticking down in your mind. 

“Think it’s pretty fucking rude to keep a couple of girls in cages, not gonna lie,” a baritone voice cuts through. It sends temporary sparks of relieve down your spine. Perhaps you’ll have a fighting chance to get out of here. 

“Welcome, welcome! I’d like to get straight to the point, but maybe we’ll up the stakes a little bit before you answer my question,” they tease cartoonishly and you want to roll your eyes.

“Is this a fucking test--”

Both you and sailor moon yelp as the cages drop into a miraculously (or not) appearing large body of water, but still hanging just above the surface so you have enough air to breathe. You look out and down to see how deep this pit is, and though it might be some elaborate illusion seemingly defying all laws of physics, you see nothing but descending darkness. You don’t even have to hear the question to know what the enemy is going for, to know that they’re trying to hit you where it hurts the most, and you loathe how cliché and goddamn unfair this whole situation has turned out to be. 

“So, dear prince. Pretend that the fate of the world depends on the princess. Before you are just two girls you know and care for, stuck, captured, and on the brink of drowning. You may only save one. Who would it be?”

It’s fucked up. Corpse seems stunned, perplexed by the question. “What the absolute fuck is this? Just let them go if you had an issue with me.”

“Quite frankly, I have an issue with allof you, so this is only fair. Now, what’s your answer?”

Corpse catches your eyes first. Is it from the water that your eyes seem to be brimming with unshed tears? Is it stubbornness or defeat in the way your hands clench around the cage bars?

And this is why, once again, you hate enemies who strictly play mind games. Confirmation that Corpse would never love you the way you do him, knowledge to the princess that she’s the source of your deepest unhappiness despite the bickering friendship, realization to Corpse that the girl he’s treasured so dearly and maybe unknowingly kept as a bit of a placeholder was doomed to love him -- pain on all of you, lashes and scars on what was once believed to be unbreakable bonds, as soon as the villain explains it all with sick glee. 

“Do I have to give you an answer?”

“If you don’t, I’ll really consider drowning them since I honestly wasn’t before.”

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

“Ah, just to make things a little more interesting -- I’m aware you and the princess speak regularly outside of all this.”

They what? This was certainly news to you. 

“And?” Corpse asks somewhat defensively. 

Don’t say it. Don’t tell him. Please don’t--

“Say Mars, don’t you enjoy those late night calls with him, too? Though I must say, meeting in a hospital while your ex-boyfriend is having life-altering emergency surgery seems rather morbid in its own respect.”

You don’t have to look at him to know and hear the gears turning in his brain, the villain allowing this brief silence to let everything sink in. There’s a disbelieving whisper of your name, your real name, but he’s cut off from saying anything more. 

“You have 10 seconds.” 

You know the stories. You know the couple’s tragic end in their previous lifetime. You know that as much as the princess denies feeling anything but annoyance towards Corpse, she looks forward to seeing him. There’s a certain softness that he treats her with, different from the platonic affection that he showers you in. You’ve lied to yourself for too long. 

The countdown has no chance to finish when Corpse spits out a name that’s not yours, your eyes squeezing shut to fight back the tears that threaten to flood over. Everything disappears and you land on your butt -- a quick sweep of your surroundings registers two things: Corpse running over to your princess and the villain standing proudly at the chaos they’ve created. It’s instinct that has brings your powers to surface, arms and fingers quickly notching a fiery arrow with pinpoint aim at the imaginary target on their head. “Move!” You yell at the two and they scramble to gather their bearings and avoid your rage. 

They don’t run or cower. The maniacal grin only grows wider and more sinister and you’re this close to screaming expletives. 

“Hurts, doesn’t it, to know that he was never yours?”

It’s the last thing they say before you release the arrow, watching with no remorse as they burn and disintegrate. When the dust disappears and the dimension shifts back to some abandoned building with an exit, you run. 

You run until your lungs burst, until they scream over the aching of your heart, until your costume dissolves and you’re finally buried under the blankets. You turn on ‘Do Not Disturb’ and only allow notifications from a select few important numbers.

And maybe you’ll keep running. Maybe you’ll go off the grid. Maybe you’ll let your voicemail inbox fill up with unheard messages, apologies that you don’t and never will deserve. 

But the love you feel and cherish will never fade. It’ll run alongside you; a bright, burning star, forever bittersweet--

Forever out of reach. 

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Alabasta (Part Two)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

crocodile is one of my favorite villains in one piece for a number of reasons, and one of them is because he’s such a threat, the first real one faced in the grand line and one of the toughest in all of paradise. the villains from the arcs before this, like wapol or the agents from little garden, could barely even land a hit on luffy in actual combat. so crocodile is introduced here as an absolute force of nature, a complete contrast to recent villains and a very tangible threat. 

it’s an impression he very much lives up to later in the arc by crushing luffy not once but twice, which only makes luffy’s ultimate hard-won triumph feel all the better. luffy closes a huge gap over the course of alabasta in order to be able to beat crocodile, and giving us a sense of just how strong he is from the very start gives luffy clawing his way up to that level a lot more weight. 

the successive reveals of luffy’s family never fail to absolutely delight me, because in any other series they would almost certainly feel contrived, but knowing luffy, it is absolutely unsurprising he just never happened to mention his relatives. nobody asked! luffy’s unique brand of honesty is one of my favorite character quirks, because he’s very straightforward and in fact can’t lie for shit, but his priorities are so completely off the wall that he winds up omitting highly relevant information completely by accident. 

ace’s scene in alabasta really does impress me. oda’s said in an sbs that he knew ace’s fate from his introduction, which i find absolutely unsurprising given the intricacy of his story planning. that means he needed ace’s introduction to make him both likable and memorable enough in the space of just a couple chapters that the audience would be engaged when he became the focus of the story a couple hundred chapters on despite barely appearing at all in the intervening time, and he really succeeded. 

kohza is one of my favorite minor characters in the whole series, and i think he’s a big part of why alabasta’s civil war plotline works so well and feels so real. nobody on either side of the war actually wants to fight, but everyone has been driven to such desperation that they feel they have no other choice in order to save their country; and kohza exemplifies that. he's a good person who loves his country a lot, and who genuinely likes and cares about the royal family and vivi especially, and the only option he can see to save alabasta is terrible, but there’s nothing else he can do. 

it’s just fun for me to think about the fact that if crocodile was literally anything other than a very skilled logia, vivi would have ended the whole entire arc right here. 

i really like civil war storylines when they’re well-done, and i think alabasta is one of the best ones i’ve seen in media. most of it is down to what i mentioned earlier, about how nobody on either side actually wants to fight but feels like they have no choice but to. nobody here is actually in the wrong except for crocodile, and so until crocodile is defeated, nothing can be fixed- which is what luffy, of all people, is the one to realize. 

sanji’s mr. prince gambit is probably my single favorite part of alabasta, and i think one of the reasons i like it so much is because he basically beats crocodile at his own game. crocodile is terrifying in battle, but before anything else he’s a manipulator. he’s always working from the shadows, always deceiving people doing what he wants, and sanji manages to turn the tables on him and do the exact same back to him, twice. 

also sanji looks great in glasses

smoker and tashigi both get kind of unfortunately sidelined after this saga, but they’re both really great characters in alabasta. (tashigi especially; i’ll get to her later.) much like the rebel army, they’re good people trying to do the right thing in the tangled mess of tension and politics and resentment that is alabasta- and when that means working with pirates, they’ll buckle down and do it, despite how much it might contradict their worldviews. 

i love when events align in one piece so that people who don’t particularly like the strawhats wind up working with them for some common goal (as seen most prominently in impel down), and smoker and tashigi in alabasta are the first and still one of the best examples of that. 

the entirety of luffy versus crocodile round one is so well done. we’re a hundred and fifty chapters in, and although luffy has struggled in fights before now and then, we get the sense he hasn’t ever really been pushed to the brink, and he’s certainly never lost.

and then he does, completely and absolutely, without ever even landing a hit on his opponent, and it hits like a punch. 

oda seems to be a fan of characters just barely missing each other- the similar panel of robin and olvia running past each other from robin’s flashback comes to mind.

i’ve always liked that of all the strawhats, it’s usopp who gets the first “luffy is going to be king of the pirates” moment. they’ve all said it by the current chapters in wano (with the sole exception of robin, i believe), but usopp said it first, and that feels significant to me. he’s always been the one who feels the least secure in his place on the crew, but even so, he has so much faith in luffy. 

nami’s fight with miss doublefinger is pretty silly in places and i think it gets frequently (understandably, it must be said) overshadowed by zoro’s fight with mr. 1 directly afterwards, but i really like it nonetheless. it’s nami’s first real solo fight in the whole series, and once she finds her feet she kicks ass, and i really like that. it feels like a very satisfying development for her, to stand up and risk her life in direct combat for vivi’s sake. 

we’re now almost a thousand chapters in and its my firm belief that zoro versus mr. 1 is still one of the best fights in the entire series. i definitely think it’s probably zoro’s best fight- only his match with kaku compares. the narrative build over the course of the fight, from zoro struggling just to match mr. 1 (and getting shredded to pieces in the process) to cutting him down in one final stroke, is incredibly cool and satisfying to watch. it feels like a very tangible step forward for zoro in terms of ability, like a massive obstacle has been surmounted and, as he himself says, he’s now stronger for it. 

its also very cool that this is, i believe, the first appearance of what is probably observation haki, though it isn’t named or recognized as such. i’m always endlessly impressed by all the little moments of internal consistency that oda manages to sprinkle into his story. 

there’s barely any dialogue on these entire two pages, from crocodile dropping vivi to luffy and pell swooping in- the story is briefly told entirely through visuals- and i love that. it gives the impression of a single tense, frozen moment as vivi falls, which is then broken in spectacular fashion when luffy catches her. 

i really, really like the progression that runs through all three of luffy’s fights with crocodile. the gap between them goes from being impossible, with luffy unable to even land a hit and crocodile basically toying with him; to surmountable but still huge, with luffy able to land some hits but still outclassed; to finally putting them on basically even ground. and every inch of that growth on luffy’s part is hard-fought and hard-won and well-deserved. 

crocodile’s confidence in his abilities isn’t misplaced- he genuinely is that powerful. but if there’s anything we know about luffy by now, it’s that he doesn’t ever give up. it’s very fun to watch crocodile’s dismissiveness turn into disbelief turn into rage and frustration when luffy just won’t die. 

luffy is, additionally, pretty clearly a better brawler than crocodile (which makes sense, crocodile is clearly used to devastating long-range attacks with his powers while luffy grew up fighting giant wildlife with his bare hands), which means that by the time of their last fight, where they’re just whaling on each other in the catacombs and crocodile is starting to get sloppy and desperate and lose control, if anything it’s luffy who has the upper hand. 

zoro and sanji’s dynamic is always a favorite of mine, and one of the things i like best about them is how perfectly in sync they always manage to be when it comes to things that actually matter, despite fighting like cats and dogs pretty much every other time. i’ll never understand people who think they genuinely aren’t friends. 

tashigi is really good in alabasta, okay. she essentially has her own entire character growth arc. she goes from her stance in loguetown, where she isn’t even tolerant of (fully legal!) bounty hunters, to here, where she’s forced to confront that the world isn’t nearly as black and white as she’s always believed it to be, that sometimes pirates are good and allies of the government are bad, and ultimately makes the right choice to help the strawhats even though it clearly pains and frustrates her that she can’t do anything more herself. 

i’ll be forever mad that her only really significant appearance after this in punk hazard didn’t really live up to what her character deserved. 

i really like how the countdown sequence is done. the tension is ratcheting up and up and up as the clock ticks down in the final seconds, panels cutting all over the city to show all the different characters, everyone who’s caught up in this conflict and everyone who’ll die if the cannon fires-

and then the clock hits zero, and we get this panel that’s just... quiet, after all the madness, as we see how vivi stopped the detonation. i think oda is very good at setting up his pages so they have a flow to them, so no matter how quickly you actually read sometimes things feel like they’re going very fast and all happening at once and then it slows down and gives the reader a chance to breathe, if only to speed up again later. i think oda is really good at pacing in general, really, both on a micro level like this and on a larger scale. 

luffy’s greatest strength isn’t really his strength. he’s strong, absolutely, but that’s not really why he wins the fights he shouldn’t win. he wins because he just doesn’t fucking stay down. his fight with katakuri is probably the best example of this, because katakuri has him beat in pretty much every category except sheer endurance, and there as here, it’s that endurance that winds up getting luffy the win in the end. 

i do love that it’s the rain that ends the war. not the explosion and pell’s sacrifice, not vivi’s pleading, not even luffy kicking crocodile into the stratosphere, but the rain, the thing alabasta’s been missing for too long, the thing crocodile stole, the only thing all these people are fighting over. 

it’s crocodile’s symbolic defeat- at the same moment his power is broken by luffy, the stranglehold of dehydration he’s been using to foment war and rebellion is all at once gone, and he’s left with nothing at all, and alabasta can finally find peace and start to heal again. 

i always love the little moments that show, usually without words, just how much the strawhats love each other, and all of them unanimously waiting until vivi is out of sight to collapse so that she won’t worry, won’t see how ragged they ran themselves for their sake, is definitely one of them. 

i adore vivi’s sendoff, because while its sad she has to go, the certainty that someday they’ll meet again and that even if not they’ll always be crew manages to make this scene endlessly hopeful instead (which, i think, is also a good summary of one piece’s tone as a whole, at least in its more serious moments). luffy never says goodbye, after all, and nobody ever really leaves the strawhat pirates. 

i’m really looking forward to vivi’s re-entry to the story. i really, really want to see her reunion with the strawhats. 

hey look, it’s the panel my profile picture is from! 

the mystery surrounding robin and her past is built up in little ways long before enies lobby, from her harsh reaction when confronted with by tashigi to her aversion to being called by her given name to this flashback, of her talking to cobra about her dream. of them, the latter is my favorite, because i think it’s probably the most sincere she is until enies lobby- which makes sense, given she thinks she’s about to die. 

like many things about robin in alabasta, this gets cast in a new light by her backstory. if she dies here, so too does the entire legacy of ohara- but she’s so beaten down and hopeless that she really doesn’t see any light ahead to strive for. there’s no hope left, for her, and the whole world against her. 

and then there’s luffy, who creates hope everywhere he goes, who makes her live anyways. 

this is a hell of a spread to hook us very effectively right into the sky island saga. it’s a perfect reminder of just how much we still don’t know about all the endless mysteries of the grand line, and just how many adventures are still yet to be had.

[aion-rsa]

Infinity Train Season 4 Struggles To Communicate the Importance of Communication

https://ift.tt/32DtSc4

This article contains spoilers for Infinity Train season 4.

Infinity Train has a short, but complex history. After a somewhat neglected run on Cartoon Network, the show received new life on HBO Max for a third season. Following that, however, it seemed unclear whether the show could nab another renewal. But enough online attention was garnered to achieve that fourth and final year. (HBO Max also seems to have a much more energetic desire for animated content than other similar networks and streaming outlets). 

The first three seasons of Infinity Train are raw, honest, and stark. Its first season follows a young girl coming to terms with her parents divorce and the fleeting, ephemeral nature of memory. The second is a curveball, in which a “reflection” of the girl from the first season comes to life and fights for her own freedom–a wild meta-tale about autonomy, identity, and independence. The third season, which focuses on two chaotic, long-term train passengers, is about abuse, manipulation, (male) toxicity, and violence unchecked.

The expectations for this fourth season, which features two Asian-American kids who find themselves trapped on the train’s bizarre universe, were pretty high. But the thriving potential and expectations laid out for this final season never come to bare. Infinity Train’s “Book Four” (which is how the show brands its seasons) fizzles, with a sort of epilogue feel to its proceedings that never quite reaches the dark, raw highs of its predecessors. The fourth season is ostensibly about the importance of clear, honest communication. But the irony is that the show fails to communicate itself clearly.

Infinity Train season 4 follows Ryan and Min-Gi who are stuck in different places in life, post high-school. Once close friends, connected by their love of music, the two saw life in different ways: Ryan is an idealist and an adventurous, “think before he acts” sort, while Min-Gi is more grounded, level-headed, and cautious, to the point of freezing up. This literally happens when Min-Gi runs from Ryan right before a big high school talent show, a moment which buttresses the unspoken rift between them. 

Min-Gi stays home, studies, gets accepted into college. Ryan takes to the road, doing various shows anywhere he can, and seems to make some modest success, despite losing several girlfriends along the way. Ryan returns home to see Min-Gi working at his parents’ restaurant, and the two catch up, with low-key tension surging between them. Impudently, Ryan rushes off with the restaurant’s keys, and Min-Gi chases him. The two rush onto a train, then somehow find the doorway into the Infinity Train. This is how our protagonist duo finds themselves onboard the mystical, mysterious caboose.

What makes Infinity Train’s previous seasons work so well was how they start out somewhat basic but quickly leap into unexpected places with depth and nuance. Its highs are immensely high; its lows are dark, sparse, and painful. Its protagonists are self-assured but deeply lost, and in their quest to find themselves, they both open up new layers about themselves, as well as the nature of the very quixotic train itself. This fourth season doesn’t quite do this. 

There’s a unique wrinkle in this venture, in that Ryan and Min-Gi are paired with the exact same “number” (the mysterious number that appears on passengers’ hands that “countdown” positive character improvements that leads to their freedom), an occurrence that is clocked by the show as particularly strange. But there’s no real internal, or external, revelation into why the train decided to pair them together like that. (To be fair, I think the train conductor did have a reason, but the bold choice to have this season take place prior to the other three muddles things; in the midst of Ryan and Min-Gi’s journey, Ameila’s takeover of the train happens.) But unlike the protagonists of the previous seasons, Ryan and Min-Gi never venture off to examine the train as a whole. In effect, Ryan and Min-Gi’s journey is surprisingly straight-forward, a kind of winking idea to what essentially any person’s journey on the train would look like.

It’s a bold move to portray a “regular” journey for a final season, but it’s disappointing in that it never takes this (non-train) time to really explore its characters in new ways. The contrasts between Ryan and Min-Gi are pretty boilerplate–the free spirited, snap-decision maker vs. the grounded, level-headed thinker is as common a duo as it comes. But the more concrete revelations of these characters never quite make an impact. 

Min-Gi mentions that his parents never paid any attention to him and ignored him and his dreams. There’s hints of a darker sense of parental neglect here, but it never gets laid out. Likewise with Ryan, who speaks often of the pressure his parents put on him to study, work, and go to school. With no other info about the way he and his parents specifically conflicted over this, it feels abstract. The first episode, “The Twin Tapes,” sporadically has the emotional heft of these interpersonal dilemmas, but never really examines them in the characters themselves, not in the way that Infinity Train often allowed its characters to feel. 

In effect, these characters are talking around each other but not really communicating; neither seems to react or (try to) understand the others’ perspective. They aren’t introspective about each other, and the frustrations and issues that Ryan and Min-Gi vocalize during their journey feel more like soliloquies than conversations. They talk but they don’t communicate; as a result, their potential characterizations aren’t communicating, and therefore not connecting, to the audience.

This is disappointing because perhaps the one thing that seems to be the gel of this season–Ryan and Min-Gi’s relationship–never elevates itself to the level a final season should. The two fight a lot, and those fights are valid, emotional, honest, clunky, anodyne, awkward, tedious, immature, silly, and fraught–the multi-emotional ways interpersonal spats tend to be. But they’re never revealing.

I don’t think I’m overstepping here to say that there is at least some queer subtext between the two; an early moment in the first episode has Min-Gi blush profusely when Ryan gives him a hug of appreciation. But in that same episode, Ryan’s rotation of failed girlfriends suggest that the queer angle is merely one-sided; fair, but Infinity Train never addresses that either. If Infinity Train was mandated to play down that angle (a common reality due to the pressures and demands of studios and networks), then there’s always the nature of two friends of wildly different personalities clashing before coming to an understanding. 

It’s basic, but it can work. As mentioned earlier though, there’s little revealed about the history of these characters at an individual level, so their interpersonal tension never goes anywhere meaningful. The previous three seasons used various sci-fi/magic/fantastical methods to delve deep into the particular pasts and truths of its protagonists, presenting multiple sides to their current problems. Book Four never does that beyond the first episode, and it feels like we’re missing something. Ryan and Min-Gi just cycle through bouts of random verbal fights and endearing truces–right to the very end.

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The catty nature of this conflict could work though, if the storytelling here wasn’t so clunky, something that Infinity Train is usually very good at managing. There’s moments where the show struggles to engage in conflicts organically, and is forced to make its characters act dumber than necessary. I don’t know how even the most impulsive characters would decide to “dig underground” to try to sneak into the building (weird train logic not understanding). When Ryan’s number goes down, Min-Gi, who is usually reserved and low-key, spends an uncomfortable amount of time belittling Ryan as the one who needed to learn a lesson, not him. 

Season four’s most dramatic moment is centered around a museum that hosts an malevolent force which compels its victims to act and say terrible things, but the force is not particularly well explored. It’s stunningly, beautifully horrifying: a series of hands contorted into a grotesque monster. The hands have numbers on them, too, an horrific implication that comes close to fruition with Min-Gi in its grasp. But the rhythms of the scene are somewhat shoddy; Ryan escapes by accident, and has no idea how to get back to Min-Gi to save him. Ryan’s desire to save him causes his number to go down and his path home opens up; he thinks about leaving, and his number goes back up, closing off the path. 

It’s a moment worth exploring, sure, but it never gets its due because Min-Gi eventually escapes the hands monster, but blames Ryan for leaving him. He didn’t, but the season puts so much dramatic emphasis here that it sort of represents the most significant tension of the characters. But it just comes off awkward, especially since that (misunderstood) anger is barely present in the next episode.

But that’s on purpose, I think, to try and get at the deeper, more complex issue of the lack of clear communication between these two. And it’s definitely worthy of a topic. But it never quite wraps its head around that point, and that’s partly because the season never gets into why they don’t talk. The queer subtext is out. They never get too much into their pasts, only hints. The estrangement angle and abandonment issues are under-explored. Their connection is over their shared love of music, but that feels like a singular weak connection, in comparison to the stakes. They’re friends, but Infinity Train fails to explore the full extent of their friendship and the nature of the understated conflicts between them. There’s certainly a lot of emotional drama between them, and it’s played as earnest and honest as possible, but there’s little information about them to heft up that drama. By the end, these characters are still ciphers.

Kez, the floating, talking bell that “guides” Ryan and Min-Gi, feels more well-rounded. Her wonky, circuitous way of talking feels like a quirky character trait at first but is revealed to be a purposeful method of ignoring the problems she causes and not taking accountability of them. The enemies she made chase after her (and by proxy, Ryan and Min-Gi). She’s ridiculed by “other” friends for her unreliability, then is called out by the humans when it’s revealed she was only stringing them along to satisfy Morgan, a talking castle. And that’s happening because a passenger, Jeremy, bonded with Morgan and Kez for five years in the midst of deep, deep grief and self-blame for an accident that killed Jeremy’s wife and sister. 

Kez’s style of talking inadvertently spurred Jeremy to accept and move on from the accident, sending him home. But that triggered an assortment of resentment between Kez and Morgan, as well as the ire of the other train denizens on their heels. Kez’s final admission, saying sorry, eases all those tensions, which feels a little simple for past grievances, but at the core there’s depth and history there, even implied, which provides a richness to those characters that Ryan and Min-Gi lack.

That’s the thing: Kez’s dilemma, in that lack of communication, forgiveness, and atonement, is the thematic parallel of the tension between Ryan and Min-Gi. But while Kez’s story has enough implications around the edges to feel interesting, Ryan and Min-Gi, the season’s protagonists, don’t have enough of it to match the powerful moments of seasons one through three. 

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Season four is certainly fine as is, and has plenty of funny moments, as well as quietly honest ones. But it never quite provides the impactful revelation or scenes that Infinity Train usually provides to transcend Ryan and Min-Gi into something singularly clear and open. Communication and clarity is the key to any relationship, but Book Four mumbles its story straight to the end–not as clear as the bell on Kez’s head.

Infinity Train season 4 is available to be streamed on HBO Max now.

The post Infinity Train Season 4 Struggles To Communicate the Importance of Communication appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3eAcI55

[mixlyra-blog]

a little insight into the past;;

Premise: Before Lyra was Lyra--she was Krystal Bae Joo-eun, one of the youngest children in her rich family, and a waitress just for fun at LUMIN8. At least, until something sinister set her eyes onto the sweet, bubbly young girl for a talent she never knew she had.

Word Count:

Character Appearances: The mysterious figure, her boyfriend, her older sister

Scenario: Krystal Bae has just finished her last night shift at LUMIN8, when 8 stocky and buff men, armed with metal bats and knives attempt to pull her into a van. She tries fighting back, but eventually succumbs, and thus begins the INFAMOUS COLD CASE OF THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF KRYSTAL BAE JOO-EUN

Trigger Warning: Blood, Gore etc.

NOTE: There are some details for her case within this self-para, so police officers, detectives, please take note! Some of these things like the crime scene will be open knowledge, due to her disappearance having been made a case at the MPD, as well as being broadcast in an attempt to find the lost girl. Most of the gangs would have known that someone had disappeared on their turfs, without knowledge, without any prior warning, and that the people that did this had NO AFFILIATION to any of the other gangs. 

Things that are OPEN KNOWLEDGE will be BOLD AND ITALICIZED, things that only the POLICE know will be BOLD.

....

It all begins with an typical end of a night shift at LUMIN8. Krystal, otherwise and more familiarly known as Joo-eun, never understood why people didn’t like being waitresses. Everyone was just so sociable, so--fun to be around. The cheerful, bubbly and extremely social but tall butterfly chuckled to herself lightly as she waves cheerily at LUMIN8′s manager, a butterfly clip holding up her ponytailed hair, and a bag loosely slung over her shoulder. 

Her phone rings, and a beaming smile spreads across her pretty face at the sight of the familiar number as she begins her familiar walk down the street and back to her home. 

“Unnie, I’m already on the way home, and no--I don’t need you to come down and chauffeur me back home! I’m eighteen, not five, and I can take care of myself just fine. I brought a pepper spray just like you told me to.”  There was a beat of a pause, before a loud huff came from her lips. “ And no of course not, I didn’t take the gun. Wasn’t me. Mhm. Mhm.” The familiar glaze of someone who has heard things repeated one too many times casts over her pretty eyes, the phone lazily pressed against her ear as the buzz of phone chatter from the other end flickered through occasionally as she rummaged her bag. “ Yeah, okay, I got it. Unnie, I’ve got another phone call coming in, I’ll call you back later! And don’t worry, I love you too--” She peppered kisses at the end of the phone with a giggle, before hanging up, her fingers flying over the touch screen of the phone, sending a sweet message to her boyfriend quickly.

{text to »»—♡ the love of my life} hey--i just got off work! wanna come over to my place? i promise that my unnie won’t kill you.

The message flickered for a moment, before a sent sign showed up at the bottom of the i-message, a sweet but satisfied smile flickering gently over Joo-eun’s face. 

“Come on, come on. Read the message!” She pouted, almost glaring at the unread status on her phone, before visibly deflating. 

Guess she held her hopes tonight just a little too high, huh? Nothing much that was really fun or exciting. A grumbly huff escapes from her lips as she stashes the phone into the pocket of her blue jeans, half of her grey sweater hanging out of the red leather backpack she had slung carelessly in the most inappropriate way of carrying a backpack. Her white converse sneakers squeaked against the ground just as she turned around the corner to take a shortcut through a dark alley back to her house just a few blocks down. Krystal bit down nervously on her lip, scuffling her shoes together as she considered her options. Her Unnie had always warned her about taking shortcuts through the darkness of a small alleyway, especially after her night shifts at 12AM and in the middle of the night. Night visibility wasn’t always good at 1AM , and tonight, for some odd enough reason, it was much worse than usual. A sense of dread crept up on her as she nibbled her lower lip, making the foolish decision to dash right through the dark alley and get the shortcut over and done with. 

She shifted her feet, squirming slightly as she prepared herself, counting silently, mouthing the numbers to the countdown for the dash into the dark alley.

Five..Four..Three..Two...One--

“Oi.” Her head whipped around violently at the sound of a male’s voice, alarm ricocheting through her lithe body as she broke into a dash, her breathing rising at an alarming rate as she heard the shouts of the males to stop her, the clatter of metal poles and the blocking of her exit by another three sets of male bodies from the other end of the alley.

She should have asked her Unnie to come pick her up. Terror made her eyes wet slightly with tears, blinking rapidly as she took in the metal bats that they held in their hands, and the imposing, buff sizes of the four males that surrounded her in a circle.

“You’re coming with us. Whether you like it or not.” The male’s voice was low and gravelly, grating, but suppressed as he hefted the bat, all four of the men enclosing all around her like a venus fly trap, leering eyes and jeering faces. 

Phone. Yes. Her phone.

Trembling fingers attempted to press the speed dial on her phone, the line immediately connecting her older sister--the only mistake that she made in her nervousness was the fact that she had pressed the loudspeaker button on the phone.

“Hello?” The sound of her sister’s voice would usually be calm and reassuring, but never before and Krystal cursed her sister for talking. She barely manages a squeak before one of the males wrench the phone from her hands, the metal bat lifting and brutally smashing the phone into pieces on the ground. For once, Krystal realises how dire the situation truly is. Here she is--backed into a wall, struggling to think of a possible way of escaping from her attackers to little or no avail.

“Just come with us, little girl.” Her eyes widen as one of the men softens at her frightened look, the raised position of his metal bat dropping slightly as he shifted uncomfortably towards her.

The metal bat was just within arms reach, and even better still--the male wasn’t aware that he had dropped his guard. Krystal didn’t even spare a thought to think of why she instinctively knew all of this. It simply came to her as swiftly as everything else of her senses did--the spotting of the weakness in the male’s left knee as he favoured his weight against his right foot, the uncomfortable adjusting of his hips that told of his weight leaning to one side more than the other, and the lack of tension in his arm muscles that told of his slowly loosening guard.

“Hey. Remember what that guy said? She’s dangerous.”

“She’s just a kid! And he hired us, we’re nothing but muscle men that he flew in for the job--to think that he’d go to such great lengths to kidnap a kid in the midst of a gang filled territory.” 

Him? A man? Was this kidnapping because of her family? They were rich--yes, but as of what Krystal remember, none of her siblings nor parents had done anything to deserve anyone's ire. Or maybe that was just what she thought all by herself only. Krystal’s mind whirred at an unprecedented speed as her eyes shifted, breathing gently slowing as she tried to still herself as much as possible--to eliminate the very idea of her own presence being as her fingers crept towards the lowered metal bat. Her fingers curled around the cold frame of it her breath trembling lightly but silently.

Yank it down and out. Down and out. Krystal blinked, thinking if she should do so immediately to surprise the other male, or if she should wait till another thing distracted the male before doing so.

"Oi! She's touching your bat!" The sudden alarm in one of the males opposite the man that had turned his back to her was just the distraction that she needed. The moment the man's hands loosened around his bat in shock, Krystal gave the bat a hard yank, before screaming as she swung the weapon in a sheer amount of desperation and strength right into the man's face. The metal bat whirled a 180 degrees as she swung it from her back right to the front, the metal bat smashing into the face of the man before her with a sickening crunch, blood splattering all over the wall as Krystal raised the bat with sickening vengeance, smashing the weapon down on the males head with an extreme amount of violence repeatedly, the bat violently bludgeoning into the male's skull again and again as brain matter splattered against the wall with every squish of the now deformed bat. Sweat dripped from her forehead as she panted silently, adrenaline pumping in her veins and blood splattered all over her front and face as she turned to face the other two males with a violent grin on her face.

Murder was bad, Killing, even worse--but what was this vengeful tremor that grew in her veins? Self defense, Krystal coaxed herself as she took a deliberate step forth, bat swun over her shoulder and muscles screaming in agony. The remaining two men stumbled back, clearly rattled by the turn of events.

"Hey." Krystal tilted her head lightly to one side, blinking as she contemplated what to say next. "You're next." She wet her lips for a second, before rushing forward, hands gripped tightly on the bent metal bat and forward into further depravity.

....

"She's good." The remaining four men that had followed the hooligans they'd employed and flew over stood silently at the roof of one of buildings close by.

"Good? She's more than good. Fantastic, even. She instantly saw the male's weaknesses in a time of dire need. That needs a lot of training. But her talent makes up for it. Even when I first got brought in I wasn't that fantastic."

"Just the right amount of violence and brutality in her veins. And also, he was right to place her in such a dangerous situation instead of asking us to simply take her away, right from the start. Look, now even she knows the terrifying potential that she has--" The wet sound of the blunt bat against bloodied flesh filled the night air, before the clang of the metal bat being thrown aside rang through the air for a moment, and Krystal collapsed to her knees in exhaustion.

Her fingers trembled, muscles screaming in agony as the adrenaline receded from her body, and the pain from her wounds set in.

The men had been equipped with bats and knives. Whilst she may have had the element of surprise, the two men had their bulk and knives. They were equally as dangerous, perhaps even more than when they had first converged upon Krystal.

But she'd done it. Killed them. Krystal retched onto the wet ground, slick with ruby blood, the mess of carnage and flesh on the walls all of the three men shed blungeoned to death and none of her own. The blood seeped beneath her nails as she faintly sniffed, wiping the back of her mouth as she curled into the corner of a wall, trying to come to terms with the terrible thing she'd done.

She'd killed three men. Humans. Live blood, veins and flesh. The enormity of the whole situation only descended upon her like a hammer to a nail after she sucked in a breath into her lungs, the air tinged with the metallic smell of blood.

Oh god, she was so going to jail, wasn't she? The police would come for her. There would be a trial, a funeral--no, three funerals for the men she'd killed, and a whole lot of fuckery that her family would have to deal with, all because of what she'd done.

Tears seeped from her eyes, the soft sounds of her cries blending into the starry night as the other four men silently descended from their perch in the skies.

"Hello." The inky darkness of the male's mask was cold, the leathered hand clamped around her mouth thick and smelly, tinged with the metallic smell of iron and blood and chemicals. "You're still coming with us." The realization that these men of a different calibre were in cahoots with the others that she'd just killed dawned in her a little too belatedly, her body twisting frantically to rid herself of their grasp.

"Up you go." The taller and the more cheerful of the two hoisted her up to his shoulder. "Stop wriggling like a fish--AH! You stupid bitch!" The male threw Krystal violently to the ground, a hand clutching his ear. Krystal grinned, spitting the fleshy ear to the ground by the wall, the metallic red of the man's blood staining her teeth and lips as she coughed slightly, pulling herself up on shaky hands to stand wobblingly on her own two feet. 

“At least--I got a part of you.” The words were nothing but a faint whisper as the man slammed her head against the wall, and a sharp pain burst within Krystal’s head, before a chilling, cold darkness washed over her.

[wonderer-ru]

#11 with Jungkook

#11 “If I die, I’m going to haunt your ass.”

sapper!Jungkook ; undercover agent!Y/N

You didn’t mean to lose your composure like that. You really really didn’t. But the time was running out, and your excessive training seemed to hold less and lees importance as the seconds flew by. Your skills suddenly didn’t matter, because those bastards tied you up with knots you weren’t even familiar with. The struggle to break free exhausted you to the point of shading involuntary tears, making the skin of your wrists burn and itch painfully. A strange feeling of respect for your targets coursed through you as it created a lump of bitter laughter in your throat. The numbers were bright red and electronic, but you still heard the ticking of the clock in your head: and it was a cruel sound that told the tale of how you might not get out of this one.

Quick heavy steps echoed through the empty space, and it was hard to determine if their owner reached your floor yet. The abandoned building smelled of crude whitewash and sweat, and your nostrils would not be able to breathe in much more of it. You wanted to cry for help and make them hurry, but the tape on your lips wouldn’t let a sound louder than a muffled grunt to get out. Your eyes bore into the doorway, pleading for that someone to show up, and he did.

Jungkook’s eyes widened as yours did too, and you wanted to shout his name in premature relief. He dropped his weapon, sprinting towards the chair you were tied to. You will scold the man for it later: he shouldn’t have left his machine gun so far behind. Though, understandably, he needed his hands to be free in order to defuse the bomb and save your sorry ass.

“Sh, shhh. It’s okay now. I’m here,” Jungkook whispered, panting heavily, and you didn’t even realize that more tears escaped your eyes at the sight of his face. The boy grazed your cheek with his thumb soothingly, trying to unstick the tape of your mouth without applying any additional pain. It gave you some time to pull yourself together, because the look on his face made you want to weep louder. After going through your memory catalogue and all the years he’s been your friend, the conclusion was - you’ve never seen the boy so distressed. Although, to his credit, Jungkook tried very hard to keep his head clear; but just because your life depended on it.

“Oh God, I am so happy to see your stupid face,” you said, gulping for air, and Jungkook even managed to smile at that. Not wasting more time, the man started to examine the bomb and all the wires that were wrapped around you.

“I come to save my friend, and you insult me. I will not be treated like this, Y/N,” he mumbled, focusing on the work at hand. Jungkook tried to ease the tension, but you saw the way his fingers trembled and wanted to wipe away those beads of sweat that ran down his temples. “I know you want to ask, and yes, we got them. Those fuckers didn’t get far after you blew your cover-”

“I had to-”

“I know. You did great. Another interesting piece of information: it’s a good thing that you didn’t know how to untie this knot, because if you did…well- BOOM!” Jungkook showcased the explosion with his hands and-

“Wow, Kookie, thank you for the sound effects. It was brilliant, truly. Can you get me out of here now, you dork?” you mocked him, using your ‘sugary sweet talk’ mode, but that just told Jungkook that you were distracted enough to tease. Which was a good thing, because if you panicked, he would panic too.

“Your wish is the law, princess,” Jungkook moved behind you to continue the rescue mission, adding as an afterthought - “I know how to untie this knot, by the way.” Of course he does, you thought, rolling your eyes. Jungkook was always one of the best in the program.

“If I die, I’m going to haunt your ass,” after shaking your head with a breathless laugh, you looked down. Tears still filled your eyes, and you swallowed shakily, trying not to lose it again. You always said that you would trust Jungkook with your life, and now - you had to. Yet, it didn’t release you from being scared out of your mind. A couple of minutes passed in silence, but then the boy moved, now kneeling before you and inspecting the mechanism.

“Well, you die - I die,” -so we will hunt someone else’s ass together, Jungkook wanted to add, but you cut him off.

“No, you don’t. If that countdown reaches 1:00, you are so out of here. You throw yourself out of this window, you hear me?” your voice sounded broken and powerful at the same time, making Jungkook’s heart clench painfully. This needed to be said, because the only thing worse than dying would be taking him with you. But-

“Don’t even think about. I am not leaving you,” - of course he wouldn’t listen. What a stubborn piece of human excellency.

“Jungkook, that’s beyond stupid. You realize that, right?” he did, and you saw his lips stretch into a thin line, and there was no doubt that his jaw was flexed harder than necessary.

“Not any more stupid than you agreeing to go on this suicide mission,” Jungkook answered quietly, but sternly; his movements harsher than a second before. This is dangerous. He never lost focus during work - Jungkook is a professional - but you must’ve struck a chord. Was he angry at you for doing your job?

“Well, I won’t admit that you were right, so just concentrate, and we’ll go have lunch after this, k?” as much as you enjoyed bickering with him, right now wasn’t the time. Your eyes drifted towards the clock for the first time since Jungkook got here, and the numbers that you saw made your blood run cold. 3:48. “Oh God,” you exhaled, glancing at the man as he glanced at the clock. Something didn’t feel right. He was frowning, puzzled and lost; his breathing shallow and fast, his eyes restless.

“Jungkook, do you know what you are doing?” you asked, fearing to hear a dreadful answer. His lips were red from stressful biting as if it was the first bomb he ever defused.

“I am 55% certain-”

“Just 55?!”

“That’s more than a half!”

“Okay, then we will be 55% alive! I hope you picked your window, Jungkook, because it will soon be time to jump!” your raised voice bounced off naked walls, followed by complete silence, and you saw Jungkook tugging at his hair desperately. God, you fucked up. He was in as much stress as you, if not more. You shouldn’t scream, adding to the weight on his shoulders. This shouldn’t end like this. You felt your eyes burning with tears again, your lips trembling. “Jungkook, listen to me,” in any other situation - you’d be so much better at motivating him, but your wavering voice and your enormous faith in him was all you had. “You know this. Those assholes can’t be smarter than you. It’s not possible. You got this.”

Jungkook’s eyes were so wide, you saw your own reflection in them. The boy chewed on his bottom lip, brewing a possible course of action. Eventually, he sighed, seemingly at peace with the decision.

“I am just going to cut one.”

“Wait, cut what?”

“One of the wires.”

Did he just-? He fucking shrugged! He just brushed your lives off!

“No, Jungkook, don’t you da-”

“You like blue, right?”

“No, no. Stop-,” you shut your eyes tightly as his hand reached for the wire. 1:17. The beeping was getting louder and faster by the second. This was it.

Cut.

Seconds still flew by, but the numbers were frozen, and the annoying beeping has stopped.

You opened one eye, peeking at the surroundings. Did heaven look like an abandoned building? Was Jungkook there with you? Kissing your face like a mad man, without even untying you first. And you were crying again - relieved and in love with your best friend - soon falling into his tight embrace. The boy spun you around like the two of you just got married, not escaped nearing death. But maybe you did both…in the long run.

“Will you go out with me?”

“I can’t believe this is what it took for you to finally ask.”

.

.

[“i love you.”“wow, first date and already confessing.”“why waste time?”“that mission really messed you up, huh?”“it did not mess me up. it just made me…reevaluate things. if it was up to me, i wouldn’t let you go on a mission again-”“but it’s not.”“that’s right. but, at least, i can keep an eye on you.”…“i love you, too.”]

[multiverseofmiracleshq]

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME !!

STAGE I | PART VI ( bring scott back ) → time travel is complicated. especially when you don’t know what you’re doing. still, scott lang was a willing guinea pig and bruce banner had a big brain so it seemed like they at least had to try and see if they could crack the quantum code.

THIS IS THE OFFICIAL COMPLETE CHAT LOG COVERAGE OF THE IC

BRUCE: “Okay, here we go! Time travel test number one!” Bruce stood behind the panels of the machine, checking everything over, making sure they were ready. “Scott-- fire up the uh, the van, thing--” He motioned to the mentioned vehicle in front of them.

SCOTT: Scott approached the set of double doors on Bruce’s orders and popped them open. To say he was nervous was an understatement, but hey, whatever he could do to help, right?

STEVE: Steve came around from the periphery, determination aiding his walk. This was going to work, it had to. “Breakers are set, emergency generators are on standby.” He took his place behind Natasha and Bruce, hands pressed against his hips. He would be lying if he said he didn’t have tension building in his shoulders at the very sight of this experiment.

BRUCE: “Good, because if we blow the grid I don’t wanna lose uh-- tiny here-- in the 1950’s.” Bruce poked a thumb over at Scott, glancing over to see if he was listening while he spoke through gritted teeth.

SCOTT: “Excuse me?” Scott looked up from the helmet he was readjusting, blinking a few times at Bruce incredulously.  

NATASHA:  “He’s kidding.” Natasha didn’t miss a beat, eyes still trained down on the device she was fiddling with. The smile was supposed to soothe Scott, show him that it was okay. Glancing up at Bruce, her smile stayed in place. “You can’t say things like that.” her tone was light and pseudo chiding. 

BRUCE: Bruce turned around, feeling a bit guilty and panicked. “Just-- it was, it was a bad joke--” He did his best to pull it off. But he failed. He hadn’t been joking.

SCOTT: Joke or not, Scott felt the weight of his words as he turned towards the quantum machine, helmet in hand, his life completely out of them.

NATASHA: The smile fell. “You were kidding, right?” Her voice was hushed but urgent.

BRUCE: He leaned down to Nat, his voice as a loud whisper. “I have no idea! We’re talking about time travel here! Either it’s all a joke, or none of it is.” Then without a moment’s hesitation, Bruce turned back to Scott with an all-too-big smile on his face and a thumbs up reassuringly in the air. “We’re good! Get your helmet on!” In theory, this should work. But the truth was that he had no clue what he was doing. “Scott, we’re gonna send you back a week, let you walk around an hour and then bring you back in ten seconds. Make sense?”

SCOTT: Helmet on, his waved Bruce’s words off. “Perfectly non-confusing.” Because in a time life this, when wasn’t humor necessary? Especially when your body was about to be pulled apart by time itself and flung around like a pin ball machine.

STEVE: He gave a curt nod to Scott, “Good luck.” His voice was clear despite the adrenaline pumping through his veins. “You got this.” Because there wasn’t another option. He knew the moment Scott disappeared his demeanor would fall away, revealing the curiosity --- and fear --- that Steve Rogers felt.

SCOTT: “You’re right.” He gave the cheesiest grin his smile could muster. “I do, Captain America.” And before he could lose his grin, he was snatched back through time.

BRUCE:  Scott when in to the portal-- that was the easy part. Bruce leaned over the control panel, eyes glancing between the van and the switches at his hands, and began a countdown. “Alright in three-- two-- one--” And after a few clicks from the panel, Scott was back. Only, there was something off--

SCOTT: Scott could feel the prepubescence coursing through him. All he could think about was the original Pokémon on Gameboy color and girls. “Uh, guys? --- What’s going on? This—this doesn’t feel right.” 

NATASHA: Oh, hell. Bruce was saying to hold on, Steve was asking questions. Natasha had looked hopeful but now confusion painted her features. “What -- is that -- is that Scott?”

SCOTT: He felt the teen mood swing jilt him as he snapped at Natasha. “Yes it’s Scott!” And then he was pulled back in, forced through time..

BRUCE: Yeah, Scott was a kid. That wasn’t supposed to happen. “W-What’s happening--?” In a panic, Bruce began searching over the controls, trying to figure out what to do. He leaned down, flipping a bunch of switches almost as if he had no idea which one would work, and then sent Scott back in the portal and out again.

STEVE: “What is this?” the normal bravado to his voice had shriveled up. Scott had returned a teen, then an old man. What were they doing? He took off to circle behind Bruce.

SCOTT: “Oh, my back.” He sounded like his old man Georgio on his mother’s side as he clutched behind him, suddenly finding it harder and harder for him to remain standing. What was that warm trickle down his leg?

STEVE: “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he rushed through Bruce’s explanations and excuses. “Can you bring him back?” He stopped when he was next to Natasha; it wasn’t as if approaching the van would solve anything.

BRUCE: And repeat-- lots of switches flipped, buttons clicked. “I’m working on it!” This was definitely not going according to plan. Bruce took one of the screens and gave it a frustrated smack before sucking Scott back in again. He came out as a baby.

NATASHA: Once again the machine moved, once again something that wasn’t right came out. Under normal circumstances the baby would have been cute. Not when it was in Scott’s suit sitting there staring at them.

STEVE: “It’s a baby.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so ridiculous.

BRUCE: “It’s Scott!” Bruce was obviously frazzled. At least the guy they were sending through time wasn’t dead, and it was still him. Some credit was still due.

STEVE: “As a baby!”

BRUCE: "He'll grow!"

STEVE: He turned towards Bruce, “Bring Scott back.”

BRUCE:  Feeling his tension grow, Bruce turned to Nat, motioning her to go. “When I say kill the power-- kill the power!” He waited as long as he could to let her get into place, flipping more switches yet again, and then he was ready. 

NATASHA: “Oh my god.” Natasha was barely breathing as she quickly moved over to the machine and acted on Bruce’s command.

BRUCE: “And-- kill it!” One last time, Scott was out of the portal and as it powered down, they were able to see that the current Scott was finally back.

SCOTT: Scott shot out of the quantum generator on shaky knees, his eyes as wide as his stance.  “Somebody peed my pants,” he exclaimed. 

NATASHA: “Thank god.” Natasha grabbed her chest, fear subsiding.

SCOTT: “But I don’t know if it was baby me or old me.” There was a long pause, Scott still felt pretty shaken up. “Or just me me.”

BRUCE: “Time travel!” Bruce threw his arms up in celebration, finally able to relax since Scott was back alive and well, and they managed to actually accomplish anything at all. The rest of the room was not as enthusiastic, but he didn’t care. 

STEVE: Steve just shook his head, walking away from Scott and Bruce. What an embarrassing failure. Tony had been right.

BRUCE: He continued to be joyful even as they all walked away. “What? I see this as an absolute win!”

STEVE: Steve exited the Avenger’s Institute, both the realization of their failure and the loss of what they could’ve had weighing him down. He stopped just at the edge of the walk before it broke off into the road and let the sunlight bear down on him. They had to find another way.All of his brooding came to a halt as he heard the familiar squeal of an Audi and a stretch of curiosity piqued his interest. The car soared past him, eased onto its brakes, and then inched its way back to where Steve stood. Yup, it was definitely Tony.

TONY:  A dramatic entrance was overdue. Very, very much overdue. Not that Tony kept his cars locked up to collect dust, even now that he lived next to a beautiful lake, because he certainly didn’t. He liked taking them for a drive when he could, and Morgan loved when he drove the two of them along the water when it was nice out. But this was a special occasion. He hadn’t been in this building for years, and part of his still couldn’t believe he was actually back. So, a dramatic entrance was needed. His brakes screeched as he slowed down, just a little too late, and then had to back up to be next to Steve. After rolling down the window, Tony glanced up and did his best not to be smug. “Why the long face? Wait, let me guess-- he turned into a baby.”

STEVE: He let out a hard exhale. “Among other things yeah. What are you doing here?”

TONY: There was a hint of a smirk on his lips as Tony opened the door and exited the car. “It’s the EPR paradox-- instead of pushing Lang through time, you might have pushed time through Lang. It’s tricky. Dangerous.” Tony closed the door, taking a step closer to the other man. “Someone could have cautioned you against it. Or turned you against it.”

STEVE: “You did.”

TONY: “Oh, did I?” Tony feigned surprise, his hidden smirk not so hidden anymore. “Well thank god I’m here. Regardless, I fixed it.” He lifted his hand to show off a device wrapped around his knuckles. “A fully functioning time-space GPS.” He watched Steve’s reaction-- that soft smile enter his features-- and felt himself become both more relaxed and tense at the same time. Pepper was right. He wouldn’t have been able to rest if he hadn’t come here. But being here made him nervous. “I just want peace.” He held up two fingers for a brief moment and then let his hand fall back to his side.

STEVE: He really couldn’t have expressed how much they had needed this, and both the words and the sight of what could have fixed their problem brought a smile to Steve’s face. Also, Tony’s smug attitude was a familiar sight.

TONY: “Turns out-- resentment is corrosive, and I hate it.”

STEVE: “Me too.”

TONY: Tony inhaled and gave Steve a nod. Time to be serious. “We have a shot at getting the stones, but I gotta tell you what my priority is. Bring back what we lost? I hope, yes. But keep what I found? I have to. At all costs.” After everything, there was no way Tony was jeopardizing his family. He pushed himself off of his car where he had been leaning against it and made his way over to Steve. “And-- maybe not die trying. That would be nice.”

STEVE: Steve held is hand out. “Sounds like a deal.”

TONY: There was no hesitation after Steve offered his hand. Tony shook it, feeling a bit more at ease and grateful that even after all this time, the two of them could be standing here together. He smiled, knowing that he had made the right choice in bringing a specific something back for his friend, and motioned for Steve to follow him as he moved to the trunk of his car. After he opened it, he picked up something large covered in loose linens and then dumped the fabric off to reveal the shield. The exact one Steve had dumped at his feet in Siberia. The exact one that had been sitting in his garage for years on end, haunting him. Reminding him of things that had gone wrong. But now it was home. Tony flipped it so the colors were facing Steve and presented it to him.

STEVE: Steve looked at the shield Tony held before him. A lot of memories came with that, a lot of loss and destruction. “Tony, I don’t know.”

TONY: “Why?” It seemed like a no brainer to him. Tony was wrong-- it didn’t belong to Howard. And it sure as hell didn’t belong to him. Besides, they needed a bit of that Cap spirit going forward. “He made it for you. And honestly--” He flipped it again, moving to the slide the bracers on the back onto Steve’s arm. “I have to get it out of the garage before Moran takes it sledding.” And when it was sat right where it should be, Tony let it go.

STEVE: He fit his forearm through the straps, his arm immediately taking the weight of it as if it were merely a memory come to life. He didn’t know what it meant to wield it again, but he knew it felt right. “Thank you Tony.”

TONY:  “Will you keep that a little quiet? Didn’t bring one for the whole team.” Tony teased, grabbing one last thing out of his trunk before closing it.” “We are.. getting the whole team, yeah?”

STEVE: “We’re working on that right now.”

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Happy 70th Birthday Stephen King: The 10 Best Horror Adaptations

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Happy 70th Birthday Stephen King: The 10 Best Horror Adaptations

Today our father who art in horror Stephen King turns 70! And I for one thank Maturin, that great big turtle in the sky, every single day that Stephen was born. Just ask yourself “Where would we be without him?” In fact, what would horror be without him?

Stephen King was born in 1947 in Portland Maine. He sold his first professional short story “The Glass Floor” In 1967 while working in an industrial laundry. In 1971, King started teaching high school English, while at nights he continued to write short stories and work on his novels. In 1974 Doubleday published Carrie.  The resulting income allowed him to leave his teaching job to write full-time. Over the next 40 plus years King went on to shape the horror landscape by releasing many genre defining novels including The Shining, Cujo, IT, Salem’s Lot and many more. King has amassed sales of over 350 million books to date, and thankfully isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

Stephen King is also responsible for some of the most horrifying and nightmare inducing movies ever made. Many of his novels have been adapted into some truly iconic and recognisable horror movies in modern cinema; The Shining, It, Carrie, Christine, and countless others. To celebrate his birthday, a sacred day on my horror calendar, lets countdown my our 10 Stephen King horror movie adaptations.

Selection Criteria

a) Only Horror Movies: – I will only be selecting Stephen’s scary sh*t, so there will be no Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me. We’re a horror site.

b) The rankings are mine, and are based on how much I liked the film- Not the scope of the cinematography or the maturity of the score blah blah bah. My list. My criteria.

c) I have only ranked movies I have seen. For all I know, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror could be the greatest movie ever based within the King-verse, but I haven’t seen it so it’s not on the list!

And without further ado, The List!

  10 – Carrie (1976)

Hi Carrie, rough night?

Carrie White is a shy and sheltered girl, who after a particularly cruel prank unleashes her deadly telekinetic powers to get vengeance at her high school prom.

Let’s face it. This film is bleak. Sissy Spacek plays awkward so well that you grimace at her every interaction. Add to this the fact that she has clearly been systematically domineered and abused by her religious mother whom I’m pretty sure is the most evil character since Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. In fact the most uplifting moment in Carrie is when Mrs. White gets graphically and ironically killed; impaled on her own symbolism.

Anyway, Carrie kills everyone and lives happily ever after or something.

For me this film boils down to three scenes ranked by how much they terrified me as an 8-year-old boy.

3. The prom scene = mildly freaking out.

2. The hand out of the grave scene = big jump scare made me close my little eyes.

1. The pig murder scene = didn’t sleep for a week. Every time I closed my eyes i heard that poor piggy crying.

  9 – Secret Window (2004)

Wait, what?

Uh oh, early controversy! This probably won’t be a popular choice, but I loved this movie, and remember: My criteria.

Secret window is a psychological thriller about an author named Mort. Recently divorced, he moves to his upstate New York cabin to work on his writing. While there he meets John Shooter, who accuses him of plagiarism and proceeds to torment him seeking justice.

Johnny Depp and John Turturro are easily two of my favourite actors named John. I will eat anything these two dish up and probably ask for more. Their chemistry really carries this film and Turturro’s accent is just plain fun. The mystery aspect of this movie however is the weak point and by the time the twist is revealed, you’ve probably already guessed it. But the way it’s handled is so entertaining that I didn’t begrudge it at all.

  8 – The Dead Zone (1983)

Whoa Chris, Your sex is on fire!

5 years after a car accident leaves him in a coma, Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) discovers he has the ability to see people’s secrets through any physical contact. With some deeply unsettling visualizations of his premonitions, we follow Johnny as he attempts to navigate his “Dead Zone” and prevent the untimely deaths of those around him.

If you need more incentive? (ahem, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN) it is also directed by David ‘freaking’ Cronenberg! Don’t even bother with the rest of this list, if you haven’t seen The Dead Zone. Cancel your plans for the evening and watch it now.

  7 – 1408 (2007)

Should’ve got the suite upgrade.

*This movie has two endings and while both versions are good, I only have eyes for the darker ending.

Mike Enslin (John Cusack), a paranormal debunker decides to stay in the Dolphin Hotel’s infamous room 1408.  Not long after checking in Mike learns that the stories surrounding room 1408 may not be as embellished as he first believed.

SPOILER ALERT! this hotel room is really f**king haunted! After he ignores the hotel manager’s (Samuel L Jackson) extremely convincing and rational speech, it doesn’t take Mike very long to realize his monumental error. This movie is tense and unnerving from start to finish. 

  6 – Christine (1983)

Dope ride bro!

A nerdy teenager (Arnie) buys a vintage car (Christine) that has supernatural abilities and a sinister, violent nature. As Arnie’s obsession with Christine develops, his friends notice that the car’s not so pleasant nature is starting to influence its owner.

John Carpenter directs a movie about a kick ass red car, that actually seems possessed by a demon, but don’t let this seemingly campy premise put you off. This movie is awesome as Christine is evil. The badass Red Plymouth Fury owns every scene it’s in with its larger than life presence, deep rumbling voice and inherent menace.

  5 – Pet Sematary (1989)

I’m never making waffles again.

Behind a family home, in Maine, there is an old cemetery that holds the secret to life and death. When Tragedy strikes the Creed family, the lure of this power becomes too tempting to ignore.

Pet Sematary (spelt wrong on purpose) is a movie about a family who move into a new house that’s on a surprising busy road. Soon after they lose their small child in a tragic accident. Louis (Dale Mikiff) learns of the old pet cemetery and it’s apparent ability to bring the dead back to life (yay!) but they also seem to come back a little evil (boo!). This movie is full of fantastic nightmare fuel. I still cringe every time I think of sweet little, creepy AF child, slicing open poor old Jud’s Achilles tendon.

  4 – IT (2017)

So much happiness in one place…

The newest film on the list, and it was only through sheer force of will it wasn’t number 1. For those of you who live under a rock, IT is about a group of kids called ‘The Losers Club’ who are taunted by a monster in the form of an extremely disturbing turn-of-the-century era clown.

This movie is so much fun. Sure, its full of terror. Sure, I haven’t slept in a week. But, it captures the innocence and humour of being a kid so perfectly, it almost made me wish I grew up in Derry….except, of course- for the evil clown trying to eat everyone.

  3 – The Mist (2007)

Oh God, no!

You guessed it- This one is about a strange Mist that descends on a small town (probably in, Oh I don’t know- Maine). Along with the unexplained weather pattern come terrible monsters that pick off the town folk one-by-one. No one knows where it came from or how to get rid of it.

We spend the majority of this film in a grocery store, where the monsters outside are not necessarily the biggest threat. A great creature feature, The Mist is fun, action packed and dramatic (especially that ending!). Actually, maybe you should just press stop once they drive into the mist near the end, because the last 5 minutes is so dark,  it will definitely break your heart.

  2 – Creepshow 2 (1987)

UNCONFIRMED photo of Miley Cyrus at the kids choice awards.

I’m sure this one needs no description, but Creepshow 2 is a horror anthology of tales based on Stephen King stories. The first segment follows a cigar-store Native American statue coming to life to avenge the death of the shop owner and his wife. The Raft features a group of sexy teens travel to a secluded lake to swim and have fun. Problem is there is an evil organism living in the lake that is hungry for some nubile flesh. The final installment follows a woman who hits a hitchhiker with her car and decides to flee the scene, but the victim isn’t inclined to remain dead.

This was my favourite movie growing up! A brilliant collection of twisted, and timeless vignettes. The wrap around animation is a lot of fun too, telling the story of little Billy and his bullies.

  1 – The Shining (1980)

You could’ve just knocked, Jack.

There is no other number one.

In The Shining, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer’s block. Psychic premonitions plague his son Danny. As Jack’s writing goes nowhere, young Danny’s visions become more intense. Jack discovers the hotel has dark secrets and he begins to unravel, terrorizing his family as he spirals downward into madness.

The pamphlet for the Overlook Hotel should just read: Overlook Hotel, where a bunch of jerk ghosts live. Poor Danny, his “Shining” ability along with a childish love of exploration, open him up to some serious spectral harassment. This movie builds tension to perfection. In fact one of my favourite characters in the film is Dick Halloran. When Dick is on-screen there is usually a slight respite from the heavy tension. 

This movie is a classic that every horror fan needs to see at least once.. no, twice.

  Honorable Mentions

Misery, Creepshow, Silver Bullet and Cujo

  Thanks for making my life more entertaining Stephen! And please, keep the nightmares coming! Let us know in the comments below your top Horror Adaptations from Stephen King!