#okay. going to try again to write this scene. might stick it in fighter's block just to get words down even if they're bad

[allsassnoclass]

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[kcwcommentary]

VLD3x03 – “The Hunted”

3x03 – “The Hunted”

The Paladins have piloted their Lions to where Lotor’s ship is at some planet (which actually looks like a planet). Allura’s having trouble piloting Blue, and accidentally slams into Yellow. Lance gives a quick comment about Keith’s “hot headed” leadership before asking Allura about Blue (it makes me feel like the bond between Lance and Blue isn’t severed, but I know that’s just me wanting it to be that way). Allura says she’s just having to get used to piloting Blue. I still don’t like the switch or how the show has made Keith lose his intelligence just so that they can make some kind of bit about him not being good at leadership.

Lotor’s just sitting on his ship; he actually looks bored. He takes otu his personal fighter to engage the Lions. Lance/Red accidentally slams into Black. Keith is frustrated with how slow Black is compared to Red. Allura continues with her piloting difficulties.

Pidge, Lance, and Hunk all have a conversation about Allura’s difficulties piloting Blue, all while forgetting that she can hear them. That the three of them would forget how their communications work and that Allura would hear them is absurd. I think the show thinks that this is a funny bit, but it comes across more like a combination of Pidge, Lance, and Hunk’s incompetence and pure disrespect for Allura.

They ask Keith what to do, and he responds, “How about this: Everyone stay out of my way.” Lance responds, “Great leadership.” Keith might not have led this team before, but he’s been a part of this team for a good while now. The idea that he thinks the problem is the rest of them being in his way is not believable. He’s fought with them around him before and not felt they were in his way. This show wanted to do a story of Keith having trouble behaving like a leader, but this isn’t telling such a story. This is suddenly diminishing Keith’s already proven abilities in order to pretend to be a story about him not being good at leadership.

Keith calls for them to form Voltron, but they can’t. Lotor heads away, planning to lure them somewhere. He recognizes that there’s been some change to Team Voltron, that whatever is up with them now, they’re not the same as they were when they defeated Zarkon. Axca and Ezor do a bit of an exposition about the planet Lotor’s going to lure Voltron to, and I don’t find Axca and Ezor interesting in the least.

Planet Thayserix is mostly round like an actual planet, but the absurd spikes sticking up off it would have to be hundreds and hundreds of miles long, so no. There’s a lot of cloud cover on this planet, and Voltron enters it. The planet’s environment messes with the Lions’ systems. Pidge suggests they fall back, but Keith says they have to keep going. The planet is affecting their communications. Allura falls behind a bit, but in trying to keep up slams into rock and hurtles off course. Hunk goes after her.

Keith becomes fixated, obsessively so, on pursuing Lotor. It gives the show the chance to have Lance yell at Keith, and eventually Keith breaks off and they return to where Allura crashed. Lance brings up sticking together and being a team, but Keith says, “It’s not about the team. We have a mission that is more important than any one of us.” What this show is doing to Keith’s character is infuriating. It feels like such a distortion of who he was in the previous two seasons. In the past, he might not have had the skills to be a leader, but he still recognized the importance of a team. To change his character now to make him not care about the team is a retcon, at best. That this show couldn’t think of a way to write Keith having difficulty with leadership that didn’t require writing him out of character is a major failure of the show’s writing.

Keith then decides to attack Lotor alone, but the rest of the team won’t let him go alone, so they follow.

We get some more exposition from Axca. This whole little scene of the generals on the main ship is unnecessary and uninteresting.

When the Lions try to shoot at Lotor, the gas of the atmosphere ignites around them. Allura/Blue gets hurled off into the distance again. Lotor follows after her but can’t find her.

The episode now has Keith confess his fault to Lance. The problem with that is that the specifics of what just happened isn’t a problem with having followed Lotor, it’s a problem with not having someone examine the content of the planet’s atmosphere. Pidge had been gathering some information on the planet such that she made her comment earlier about the planet’s unusual magnetic field, so why didn’t she also check out what the atmosphere was made of?

Pidge tells Hunk she can’t do anything to compensate for the planet’s interference.

In hiding, Allura asks herself, “What would Lance do,” and then she flirts with the Blue Lion. She’s not wrong, the show would have Lance do that, especially since he did just that last episode. This shows that the writers know Lance’s flirtatious behavior is absurd, they just think that it’s okay, interesting, or funny for him to behave the way he does. I do not agree. He could be flirtatious yet not offensive, but the writers don’t know how.

Allura gets sad and asks Blue for help, and she seems to bond a bit with Blue in the process. Lotor’s found her, she flees, and he pursues. Blue suggests the sonic canon, which Allura uses to create a map. I’ve never understood why it takes the Lions in this show so much time to suggest useful options to their pilots. Allura uses the ice blaster and hits Lotor’s fighter, causing Lotor to retreat.

Hunk is chatting with Pidge about food when Allura turns up with the other Paladins because of course he is. Pidge asks how Allura was able to connect with her Lion. Allura says, “I just had to get into a Lance-like mindset and stop thinking so much.” Lance responds, “Are you calling me dumb?” She says, “No, I’m calling you a natural.” She is actually complimenting him. There is something to the idea that a person can get stuck in their thoughts when trying to do something and that it inhibits them in doing it. Also, the better a person gets at something the less they have to think about it when they do it. That’s why practice is so beneficial. Annoyingly, the show writes Hunk to then say, “Yeah, naturally dumb.” Pidge joins in, and then so does Keith briefly. For supposedly being Lance’s friends, they really treat him badly sometimes. It would be nice if the show wasn’t, through Hunk’s and the other’s taunts against Lance here, teaching the idea that it’s okay and supposedly funny to make negative comments about a person’s intelligence. What these supposed friends are doing to Lance is bullying him. Not that the show ever shows us this, but if other people previously in Lance’s life have treated him the way these supposed friends are treating him now, no wonder he has severe insecurities.

Keith gives some kind of generic believe-in-ourselves speech and they form Voltron. Since at the beginning of the episode, the story made a point that they couldn’t form Voltron, it at least fits the narrative structure that they would be able to do so by the end of the episode. It just would have been nice if this moment that supposed to mark the team coming together did not come out of most of the team being mean to Lance.

I really like Allura joyously yelling out, “Hunk, I’m a leg!” That’s a nice callback.

Voltron’s inconsistent power pops up again. This time, they’re able to use their shield to not just block a Galra cruiser’s blast, but reflect it, destroying dozens, if not hundreds of ships. Lotor heads off in one direction, Keith says they shouldn’t pursue and instead regroup and recover.

There is very little that I like in this episode. I like Allura’s Voltron-leg comment, and I like some of her scene when Allura gets quiet in talking to Blue. But that’s about it. I don’t like how the writers have diminished and distorted Keith in order to manufacture leadership problems. None of it fits with what the show has shown of Keith before. I don’t like that the show makes the others picking on Lance seem okay. Lotor and his generals were thoroughly uninteresting in this episode. His generals could have literally been any other Galra characters; there was no reason to include them.

Oh, and during all this, where is the Castle Ship? Was Coran just hanging out off somewhere having tea? Sure, the Lions might have blasted off following Keith from the end of last episode to pursue Lotor, but why was the Castle Ship not involved? The show gave no reason whatsoever to explain Coran’s and the Castle Ship’s absence from this episode.

So, not a good episode, but at least it didn’t take me as long as last episode did to get through it.

[hillywooddestiel]

Low Swings

Characters: Peter Parker x reader (platonic), Tony (briefly)

Warnings: there aren’t really any, just Peter feeling a little down I guess and lots of sarcasm

Word count: 1.6k

Description: When you work with a partner, it’s hard to prevent things from getting competitive. Things are no different in the world of superheroes. It may start as a silly race to see who is the best for the purposes of bragging rights but sometimes, the race can overtake your judgement.

A/N: Hello again! This is for two different challenges (@until-theend-oftheline Kari’s 1k MCU writing challenge and @hollandroos Soph’s 12k writing challenge). Congratulations to you both on the milestones and my prompts are in bold below. Little disclaimer, I wrote a Peter Parker fic a while ago and stole the reader character from that for her powers and personality. You can read it as a prequel, sequel whatever but the two stories are not linked. Enjoy xx Marvel Masterlist

Story:

“I got him!” Y/N speaks seemingly to no one while keeping her eyes locked on the man in the balaclava sprinting below her in the alley. She jumps gracefully from building to building with practiced ease, managing the large gaps like a child hopping across a small puddle. Her movement is reminiscent of a cat leaping from one climbing post to another.

“I thought you said I could get this one! I have to be able to tell Mr Stark I’m doing my job!” Peter whines into her earpiece, swinging from his webs a few blocks away. He was busy chasing down yet another bike thief across town when Karen informed him of a man armed with a gun escaping the scene of a robbery and that Y/N was on her way. No way was he going to let her get the guy first.

“And so do I! I can’t help it that I’m better than you.” She rolls her eyes, not that he can see but he should be used to it by now, before glancing back to see the red and blue clad hero getting closer. Immediately she picks up the pace in response, increasing the strain on her muscles and lungs. The pain she’ll feel tomorrow is worth it though, to get a ‘well done kiddo’ from Stark and rights to rub it in Parker’s smug face until the next time. The conviction tally currently stands 27:26 to Y/N. Not that anyone’s counting or anything like that.

“Please! I’ll do your homework for a week.” He pleads, the thwip of his web shooters audible in the background through the earpiece.

“Sure, cos I want lower grades than I’m currently getting.” Y/N taunts. Spotting a chance to get closer, she leaps down to a rusty fire escape and swiftly descends the ladder. Upon hearing her footsteps clanging on the metal, the criminal’s eyes widen in fear and he speeds up. Somebody wasn’t expecting super heroes to be in the area.

“I’ll buy you a pizza!”

“Tempting but no.”

“I’ll stop calling you Frazzles!”

“No! You’re not having this one!”

“Aw come on Frazzles!” Peter takes a break on top of a satellite tower to watch the chase and plan his next move. Y/N is quickly gaining on the guy despite not having the same enhanced capabilities as Peter (such as his stamina and speed) and she hasn’t even had to zap him yet with one of her self-produced lasers- show off! Amazingly, this thief is still going after running from the scene of the robbery nearly twenty minutes ago (most people get tired after five or make a mistake with a wrong turn that lands them in the arms of the police or a sticky web). Perhaps they’re one of the various people with powers emerging across the city.

Peter spies an opportunity coming up ahead on the next turn to land him the capture and immediately swings in it’s direction. Y/N notices his change of course straight away in her peripheral vision.

“Spidey, what are you doing?” she asks, mentally kicking herself for not being suspicious of the radio silence. Silence often- scratch that- always means he’s up to something.

“My job!” He grunts with the effort, swinging feet first into Y/N and knocking her flying sideways. She lands inside an open locker unceremoniously on her ass with a crash. Only Peter misjudged the strength needed to sabotage his partner and flies in after her, landing on top of her in fact, with the metal door hinges whining shut. The lock clicks, trapping them inside.

“Ah my ankle!” He hisses into the pitch black.

“Oh boo hoo! At least you didn’t have a 200 pound spider kick you in the chest and land on top of you!” Y/N huffs aggressively, smacking him over the head to get him to move.

“I can’t see.”

“Great detective work genius! Hang on…” Y/N scowls, producing light from her hands as easy and taking a breath. The locker is very small leaving little to no room for personal space and it stinks like an unattended public toilet.

“Mr Stark is not gonna be happy with us…”

“Us? I’m sorry, how did we end up locked in here? Oh that’s right; you attacked me!”

“I was just trying to get you out of the way so I could get the guy first. I didn’t think-”

“Yeah, you didn’t think. You didn’t focus on the mission, you focused on beating me. Not everything is a contest Parker.” Y/N’s voice softens. She looks to Peter noticing his downtrodden attitude.

“I just… I really want to impress Mr Stark. If I do really well, he might actually make me an Avenger for real.”

“Peter…” she starts, feeling guilty for snapping at him earlier.

Peter always says he wants to be an Avenger, ever since he came back from Germany, it’s a constant thing. Y/N was offered the chance to go as well but she was so close to busting a drug ring in the city that she had to turn it down (she also didn’t want to join in the fight for Tony’s sake since she actually sided with Steve). Once they returned home, Stark introduced her to Peter as someone to work with but also as someone to keep a close eye on. Things soon inevitably became competitive between the pair.

“Okay, I can’t believe I’m about to say this… you can get the next one.” Peter’s head perks up from where it was rested in his hands.

“Wait really?”

“Really. Now let’s get out of here.” Y/N turns to face the door again. She takes a deep breath, focusing her energy on her outstretched palm and feeling the warmth concentrating in the center. The soft light becomes a streamlined beam and slices through the metal door like a hot knife through butter. Her line is shaky but eventually she cuts out a small doorway allowing herself and Peter to escape their dank prison.

Avoiding the burning white melted metal, the duo step out into the alley again, the criminal they were chasing nowhere to be seen. Typical- they never stick around for their local crime fighters and wait to be caught. The only life in the shady corner is a stray black and white kitten.

“Where do you think he went?” Peter asks, scanning the nearby area for heat signatures with the help of his suit.

“I dunno! I’ll interrogate the cat.” Y/N kneels down and coaxes the kitty over by clicking her tongue, stroking it’s fluffy fur gingerly with her outstretched hand, “Hey buddy, are you lost? Can we help you find your home?”

“It’s a stray Frazzles. Keep stroking it and it’ll follow us home.” Peter rolls his eyes behind his mask.

“Do you need a home? You can come with me if you want.” She smiles as the kitten purrs in her hand, her voice becoming increasingly more babyish.

“Y/N! Let’s go!”

“Hold on!” She scoops up the ball of fur, “Consider this mission a success, we saved Catasha Meowmanoff from a life on the streets.”

“Your mom isn’t going to let you keep it ya know?”

“That’s why she’s not going to find out. And you’re not going to tell her!” Y/N warns Peter, a threatening tone detectable in her voice as she lowers the kitten to the floor. She prowls around the bedroom floor and sniffs the hanging bed sheets with uncertainty, tiny claws catching on the soft carpet. A flash of red catches her eye and she pounces on it, swatting at the light with her little paws in the hopes of capturing it. The said light originates from Peter’s suit and he grins like a child as Catasha almost climbs the wall to get at the laser.

“Ok, I’ll admit she’s pretty cute.”

“See!” Y/N grins victorious, ”… But it goes without saying, no one is to find out about the name. Especially Natasha. I’d like to keep my head attached to my shoulders.” Y/N absentmindedly rubs her hand over the back of her head, right over the spot when Nat last swatted her with a magazine (she set Nat’s ringtone to ‘Black Widow’ by Rita Ora and the world class assassin heard it go off when they both happened to be at the compound at the same time).

“I think she’d probably kill me too so yeah, deal.” Peter scratches Catasha behind her ears, knowing very well of Natasha’s capabilities. But, as much as he would love to play with a ball of fur, there are people to save and crimes to stop so he has to leave. Mask on, Peter steps out onto the fire escape outside Y/N’s bedroom window just as he gets an incoming call alert for Tony Stark.

“Peter! I trust you and Sunshine are playing nicely. I have a new job for you two, organised gang fights in condemned buildings near you. You are still interested in helping out the ‘neighborhood’ as a ‘friendly’ crime fighter, right?” He can tell there were some air quotes made on Tony’s end of the line.

“Yeah yeah y-yeah I’m-I- we’ll get on it right away Mr Stark, sir.”

“Mrrow!”

“What was that?”

“A cat. Stray cat. Not a house cat, a stray cat. Stray, not a pet.” Peter fumbles with his words while Y/N glares at him with eyes begging him to shut up.

“Right… keep up the good work kid.” Tony hangs up; he’s a busy man after all. Looking to Y/N through the mask, his white spider eyes widen.

“We’ve got another job to do.”