#overcome the dictator and avenge his death

[bonefall]

longtime dc fan and i think a lot of people are angry because alex is obviously one of the most culturally relevant instances of misogyny in media. that being said being more culturally relevant doesn’t mean it’s the worst instance of misogyny and i think bumble definitely experiences more profound misogyny in the way the actual content is presented, if that makes sense

I get you, and that's a charitable way of looking at it.

I think what's rustling my jimmies is that like, there was a couple of WC fans being mildly dismissive of Alex in that note minefield, after dozens of comments of "fuck you how could you let the fridge woman lose" and "Bumble didn't deserve to win ANY rounds" and "how could A CAT experience misogyny." But then WE get blamed for the toxicity because THEY were butthurt that the Funny Cat People have the 'audacity' to win something they feel entitled to.

Like, we've gotta be endlessly charitable as we get openly insulted because they're upset about Alex losing, a very well-known and culturally relevant character with a legacy so massive we have a whole term named after her. But condemnations of "She's just a cat, letting WC into this poll was a mistake, Bumble can't even be a victim of misogyny" only started coming around once I started talking about it.

as if it's OUR fault people got passive-aggressive or even OPENLY aggressive towards us, and that we're "just as bad" for retaliating

But like you said, it's not a "Most Culturally Relevant Misogyny" tournament, it's a "Canon Misogyny Victims" tournament. And you're not even supposed to give a shit that Bumble died. The fat, woman abuse victim is beaten to death by a dictator, and your takeaway is meant to be, "It's so sad that Clear Sky is being blamed for murdering her, now they're all preparing for self-defense against a homicidal maniac, oh nooo :("

And I think that DOES make her deserve the win here! Alex is a MARTYR. Everyone with a brain agrees what happens to her is bad. It happened in her canon because it was bad. We talk about her and keep her memory alive. Bumble gets dismissed entirely out of hand because she's "just a cat in a kid's book" as if that doesn't make it worse, and as if the kid's book didn't treat a domestic abuse survivor like a moron for even asking for help.

Anyway, just to reiterate, I love DC fans. It's not all of you guys. Alex was done dirty and deserves justice-- and it's even kind of a shame that all she became is "The Fridge Woman." I haven't even heard people talk about how she was a wary, responsible person who was still ready to rock with Kyle's new weird glowstick powers, or that she was a journalist, or that she just got brought back in another edition as a Green Lantern only to be revealed as an illusion and re-absorbed back into Kyle's mind. Nope. Even her fans just remember her as The Fridge Woman.

[anubianwrites]

6. Lover's Moon

The darkness of night crept across the Dark Plains, slithering over the ghostly white grass and blackened earth.  Brok looked over the lands from the tall rock face that hides their surface encampment.  The young werewolf warrior contemplated his coming responsibilities.  Just one month ago his father was murdered in the Contest of Marr.  A melee between clan alphas to gain the blessing of their goddess, the hag goddess of werebeasts, Marr that takes place beneath the blood moon.  The ghostclaw clan cheated by coating their claws in debilitating poison and used it to overcome Brok’s father Kurr’s superior strength and speed.  They dishonored the clan and disabled them.  The clan retreated to their lands.  Brok would never allow it to be seen but he felt entirely lost  without his father’s wisdom and leadership.  He was only 18, too young to ascend to the throne of the Crescent Moon Clan.  Yet here we were, being primed to be seated on the Crescent Throne.  The shamaness Charlotte has secluded herself to commune with the clan ancestors, so Brok can be issued his challenge of manhood to ascend his fathers position.  Normally his father would issue the challenge and demand a boon be performed for the clan, or a direct battle to the death.  Brok was unprepared, he’d only just completed his first hunt and felled a strong beast to feed the clan, proving he’s a worthy hunter and deserving of the elders respect, and earn the right to claim a female.  Claim he did.  A proud and mighty woman his own age, Kara.  

The mulatto skinned female climbed up the rock face to the young male.  She came up behind him and rubbed her hands over his broad, strong bare chest.  Her sweet, firm voice broke the silence.  “Tell me what troubles you, lover.”  Brok looked over his shoulder, to catch her beautiful amber eyes.  

“The worries a man faces when he has to prove himself to his clan.  I’m nowhere near my fathers equal.  How can I become alpha, when I lack his wisdom, his strength and cunning.  My education is incomplete.  A man needs his father in these times, Kara and I am robbed of mine.”  The woman slid in front of him to look him in the eye.

“Wisdom takes time, but you are strong, your fathers son.  You have his strength, I see it in you.  A strong and powerful male who can lead.  No one is better to lead us.  His spirit is in you.  Charlotte and the other elders can provide you wisdom for now.  I accepted your claim because I see your fathers power and more in you.  You can do this my love.”  She rubbed his chest.  He looked down into her eyes and smiled.

“You give me strength and your words I know to be true for you have no malice or deceit in you.  You have great honor.  I am glad you agreed to be mine.  I need you more than ever.”  He kissed her lips.

“You have me, always.  One day your father will be avenged and put to rest proper.  For now your clan needs you.”  She smiles gazing into his brown eyes, like an owl's wing.  They’d been mated less then six months, but they were both eager to consummate their pairing.  Clan law dictates this cannot be until the new alpha has ascended.

The moon slowly crept over the horizon.  The only time the sky was clear.  They gazed at it together.  A massive muscled mocha skinned man with four scars over his chest and stomach approached at the base of the rock.  “Brok.  The elders are ready for you.”  He was Brute, their best and most brutal warrior.  His father’s right hand, now he’d be his.  Brute nodded to him in acknowledgement.  

Brok and Kara descended the rock together and headed into the clan holdings, the subterranean cave system that protected and nurtured their clan for millena.  Brute led them down into the dark caverns.  These caves were their workshops, their pantries, homes, and best protection.  Brok followed the massive mountain of a man, feeling a bit intimidated by him.  Brok felt lucky to have him as an ally.  They entered into the grand cavern, their largest area and clan hall.  Their clans trophies filled the chamber, and a great stone throne made of stalagmites, covered in furs, most from werewolves conquered and powerful beasts slain by past alphas and mighty warriors.  In front of the throne stood the four elders and the shaman, Charlotte.  The pale old woman smiled as they entered and Brok stood before them.

“Brok.  Son of Kurr, we have communed with the ancestors and sought their guidance.  We have discussed among ourselves and reached consensus.  Your trial of manhood and ascension has been chosen.”  Brok stiffened and puffed out his thick chest, taking a stance of bravery despite the terror pounding in his heart.  “We charge you with restoring the clan's honor.  The festival of Marr is not over and the clans still dwell at the festival grounds.  You will go there and take part in the Rite of Blood.  Challenge the son of the Ghostclaws, Stag, the eldest, by Marr’s witness beneath the second blood moon.  He cannot refuse without shaming his father and clan.  Kill him.  Avenge us and your blood and you prove yourself a man in the eyes of the clan and rightful alpha to lead us.  Brute and the warriors will escort you and ensure your safety.  You go to this challenge a boy, come back to us a man.  Come back to us strong and proud.  Prepare yourself.  You leave for the festival at midnight.  Char and Grot hold the clan’s place there, they will expect you.”  Brok thumped his fist to his chest with a meaty thud.  

“For the Crescent Moon!  For Blood and Clan!”  Brok proclaims loudly and pumps his fist into the air.  An uproarious cacophony joined in unison with him.  Brok was led from the hall.  He returned to his cave, his abode where his father and mother raised him.  He sat on his fathers fur bed.  He softly prayed there.  

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help father…I let you down, letting them kill you like that.  I won’t fail you again.  I won’t.  I’ll make you proud, old man.”  

“You always made him proud.”  Charlotte stood at the cave entrance.  Brok jumped to his feet respectfully.

“Shaman.  I bid you welcome to my home.”  he said ceremoniously.

“Oh enough of that young man.  May I sit with you?”  she asked.

“Of course, you are always welcome.”  he said, helping her down onto the furs.

“Thank you, dear.  I’m sorry to eavesdrop.  But you need to know how proud he was of you.  You’rre always so hard on yourself, wanting to measure up to your father.  A powerful man, thick biceps, strong heart.  A wise man.  I loved and respected him deeply.  He always demanded the best from you, but only because he saw the man you are becoming.  He could see the man you will be.  You never failed him, never.  Don’t ever doubt yourself like that Brok.”  she patted his knee.  “You will be victorious and return our new alpha, of this I am certain.  Just remember your training and listen to your instincts.  You have your fathers heart and strength.  You have unquestionable honor.  You will win.”  She pushed herself up, Brok assisted the elder.  She smiled and rubbed his chest over his heart.  “You’re his son, and he never doubted you.  He loved you with everything.”  Brok couldn’t help but smile and puff out his chest proudly at the encouragement.  His heart told him all of this, but hearing it from his grandmother affirmed it.  “I will leave you to prepare my boy.”  

“Thank you, Shaman... Grandmother. Your words always clarify my doubts.  Your wisdom is always welcomed.”  He nodded respectfully to her.  The shaman smiled at her grandson, beaming with pride.

Brok meditated on his father, the former favored of Marr.  His pelt a midnight black, eyes like the silver moon.  The blessing of the goddess kept the chosen in their hybrid form.  He knew this to be his father his whole life.  The strong scent, the soft fur.  He was like a massive boulder of muscle and claws and fur.  To see him fight was like watching titans battle.  Brok was proud to be Kurr’s son.  His father was harsh and stern but never cruel or dispassionate.  Brok labored to be as strong, as fast, as clever as the old wolf.  A few hours later he received another visitor.  His mate.  

“There is still some time before you must leave.  I wanted to be with you if that is ok.”  Kara said.  Brok smiled and held a hand out to welcome her.

“You are always wanted.”  He responded.  She sat down on his lap facing him, straddling him.  Wrapping her arms around his neck and gazing into his eyes.  She traced his strong stubbled jaw with her hand.  Her intentions were clear.  Brok agreed and they kissed.  She giggled as he lifted her up  and rolled onto her back.  Frantically they tore what little clothing they wore off and turned to ravenous congress.

By clan law they could not produce offspring until Brok ascended, but the act of congress was not forbidden.  A loophole the two lovers exploited constantly.

They woke up wrapped in furs some hours later.  The time was approaching.  Kara ran her hand over his chest and abs, his arm wrapped around her, holding her close.  “I want to come with you.  I want to see you fight and win.”  Kara pleads.

“I expect the honorless Ghostclaws will try something dishonorable.  I can’t deny you to come with me.  But I will say I want you safe, we’re the clans future.”  Brok stated plainly and honest.  Kara pushed herself up and looked him in the eyes.

“I want to witness with my own eyes, when my male becomes the alpha he is destined to be.  When my male claims his manhood.” Brok could see the hunger in her eyes for this, how her pride for him swelled in her.  Brok couldn’t bring himself to question her desire again.  He smiled and nodded.

“Then I will reclaim our clans pride with my woman by my side.”  He stated.

“As it should be, we do it together.”  Kara added.  They kissed again, Kar climbed on him as he kissed and growled.  She broke the kiss as they began to fall back into their animalistic desires.  “We must prepare to leave, my love.  I will reward you after, when you’re bathed in our enemies blood.”  Brok huffed at such a thought, arousing and intense.  Kara knew how to focus her wild wolf.

They dressed and gathered their weapons.  Kara proudly carried his sword clung to her chest.  Brok, armed with his spear.  They assembled outside the clan caverns outside.  The clan was assembled in a row, to see them off.  Brute and four other heavily scarred and muscled males flanked the two of them protectively.  As they began to walk down the row the clan in unison thumped their fists to their chests in honor of their future alpha departing for his challenge.  Brok admitted to himself he was scared to face Stag, but his pride stifled that fear quickly.  He needed to do this, avenge his father, reclaim his clan's honor.

The travel was swift, they ran much of the way, it took them a day to reach the festival grounds.  The clans were still assembled, festivals, games, celebrations and the like raged.  Brok and his warriors met their clan mates holding the clan's place.  A broad and muscled woman held her fist to her chest as they approached, it was Char.  “Welcome brothers and sister to the clan encampment.”  Char nodded to Brok.  “It is good to see you Brok.  You come at a good time.  The blood moon will rise in nine hours.  The Ghostclaws have been gloating and staying drunk.  Be good to see them bloodied.”  Char said with malicious glee.  Brok also desired this.  He’d thought of nothing else besides finally being able to put his pups in Kara.  A thought Kara too thought of, constantly.

A male voice loudly yelled “Oh looks more sheep fucker crescents arrived!  Watch you’re livestock!”  the drunkard taunted, “You might lose more weak pups if you don’t keep your eyes open!”  Char was livid.

“Fuck you and fuck off before i tear out your eyes and fuck your sockets, mange-back!”  she screamed.  The drunkard only laughed.  He was a wild red haired youth, no more than 15, mulatto skin and skinny as a rail.  He was Sturr, the youngest son of the Ghostclaw alpha.  A raucous and cowardly braggart.  Brok stepped up, huffing with rage.

“Get your gutless pup out of my clan space before I strap him to a stake and use him as a flag!”  Brok bellowed, shoving Sturr and knocking him into the mud.  Two older ghostclaw males stormed over to defend the shrinking coward scrambling backwards, whimpering.  Brok glared them all down, ready to strike.  He was eager to kill them.  An older male shoved the ghostclaws away hollering at them for being idiots.  He was Gruk, the alphas right hand, and far more diplomatic.

“They are young and foolish, they mean no harm.  They won’t violate your space again.”  he stated.  Brok was seething.

“See that they do and keep them in line.”  Brok spat.  

Brute patted his back as Brok returned to the clan tent.  “Your chance will come, boy.  You’ll show them real balls.”  Brute tried to comfort him.  Brok nodded with a grunt.

The blood moon began to rise and the clans were gathering in the communal space for the announcement.  Brok’s chance had come.  Before the alpha of Clan Mooncrest could speak Brok bellowed.

“Clans of the wolf!  I am Brok!  Of Clan Crescent Moon!  Son of Kurr.  The honorless shits of Ghostclaw, broke clan rules before Marr and slew my father with poisons.  They robbed my clan of it’s leader and pride.  Beneath the blood moon this night, by rite I claim the Rite of Blood.  By witness of Marr, Stag of Ghostclaw Clan I call you out to combat.  To settle my grievance.  Bring your honorless skin to the field and face me!”  There is much uproar, the Ghostclaw Gruk spoke.

“You are no alpha, pup, you have no claim here.  Your alpha fell in honorable combat, these baseless claims are sad and show your clans weakness.  You dishonor us all with your whimpering!  This is a weak willed attempt to spitefully strike at us like a malicious drow!”  he laughed.  The ghostclaws laughed loudly.

Alpha Crispryne of Clan Mooncrest, a strong older woman bellowed.  “Silence!  He has the right to call this challenge!  By common clan law, he can invoke the rite of blood!  By witness of Marr, this cannot be refused.  Stag must honor the duel and present himself now.”  the voices calmed.  The entirety of Ghostclaw clan glared daggers at their rival, wolves growled.

Brok stalked the field huffing, his sword and spear in hand.  Freshly sharpened.  He paced eagerly.  He turned to his clan and bellowed “Haroo!”  they returned the bellow proudly.  Broks heart was pounding.  He was ready, his chest was heaving with anticipation.  His eyes fixed on the task.  They waited for nearly an hour before the alpha of Ghostclaw, proudly displaying the blessing he won, his two sons driven before him.  Stag and Sturr.  Stag was not muscular at all, he had a swimmer’s build, but only just.  Armed with a spear, the boy did not want to do this, clearly drunk.  Brok wanted to humiliate them for what they did.  The alpha said something to Stag, Brok couldn’t hear.  But the boy stalked out into the field with his spear in hand.  They stared down at each other.  Stag sneered.

“Ready to die like your daddy, pup.”  Stag was easily four years his elder and already had three pups of his own.  

“I’m going to win this, Stag, and I’m going to mount your head in my clans trophy room like the shameful dead mutt you are.”  Brok seethed.  Alpha Crispyne bellowed.

“Only one will emerge alive.  Begin!”  she commanded.

Stag swung his spear at Brok, he deflected with his sword, sliding down the haft delivering a slash to Stag’s thigh before moving out of range.  Stag stabbed with the spear wildly, catching Brok’s forearm and leaving a deep gouge.  He blocked with his own spear, grunting with pain.  He could tell they poisoned the spear tip, like cowards.  He was not going to die.  Brok used his strength and charged, catching Stag off guard and knocking him to the ground in rage.  Brok snapped Stag’s spear and ran it deep into the pale man's side as he tried to roll away.  Stag screamed in pain as the barbed spear sank into his liver.  

Brok stalked the field as Stag was down and crawling pitifully, his own poison causing his body to start losing feeling.  Brok kicked him, sending the male flying across the field, the spear snapping out of his side with the landing.  Brok ran with a howl of fury as he dropped his weapons and started beating the pitiful runt in the face.  Sitting on the chest as Brok, a much larger male beat him, howling with fury.  Memories of his fathers death just one week prior raging through his mind.  

Kurr was down, he couldn’t move.  Brok was screaming, held back by his clanmates as he tried to rush to his fathers aid.  Time slowed as he saw the fear, the worry in his father’s eyes.  Not for himself, not for his own life.  But for his son, his clan, his family.  Tears streamed from Brok’s eyes as he watched, restrained from helping as the ghostclaw alpha brutally chopped off his head.  His father closing his eyes in acceptance.  Brok couldn’t control his sorrow, his wrath.  He beat Stag until his face was just swollen pummeled flesh.  Brok had won but he wasn’t done.  Covered in blood he got up and grabbed his sword as the Ghostclaw clan screamed, hollered and bellowed.  It was all noise.  Brok couldn’t hear it.  Their alpha stood unmoving.  Still and calm.

Brok was panting heavily with anger, his face twisted in a craze of fury, he took his sword, lifted the barely alive Stag up by his hair and made the clan watch as he slowly sawed Stag’s throat.  Reveling in their clan’s pain and anger as he cowed them with his brutality and cruelty.  His clan was dishonored.  He wouldn’t let the cowardly Ghosts keep it.  The body fell to the ground, flesh tearing as he broke through bones with the sword.  He held the head aloft in victory and roared with primal savage rage.  Brok had it.  His honor.  His family’s honor.  His father’s honor back.  He conquered the rival and robbed them of their future alpha.  He gloated and paraded the severed head before them.  His prize.  Brok was ascended.  He stalked off the field with the head as Alpha Cyspryne proclaimed the rite over and Brok the victor.  Officially the grievance was settled.  “Brok of Crescent Moon Clan!  You are the winner of the Blood Rite.  By law the grievance is settled before Marr!”  The Gostclaws howled and screamed in protest.  Hollering this was unfair, that it was rigged, that it was cowardly.  But their master silenced them all.

“The Son of Kurr bested my son Stag.  This was honorable.  Clan Ghostclaw has no grievance with this outcome.  Before Marr let this matter be settled between the clans!”  The great wolf proclaimed and gave a deep howl.  His clan remained silent.

Brok returned to the clan tent lauded and celebrated by his warriors.  His mate waited for him in his private tent.  Brok didn’t celebrate long, he drank a mug of beer and stalked off to have his other prize.  The severed head displayed on a stake before the clans tent.  He threw the tent flap aside and stormed in, huffing.  His woman waited eagerly for him. She stood up, naked before him and lunged at him, he caught her and they kissed wildly.  She growled like a beast.  Brok took her like a beast, for hours they loudly and brutally mated, grunting, howling, moaning.  They fell silent just before dawn.  Brok left his mate sleeping as he emerged from the tent.  Brute was on watch, he turned to Brok and grinned broadly.  “Going like that, you’ll breed a whole new clan in a fortnight!”  Brute chuckled.  

“Gotta provide the clan with plenty of fresh blood.  My woman is insatiable!”  Brok chuckled as he got himself some water and took in the cresting day.  “What news.”  Brute nodded towards the Ghostclaw camp.

“Been quiet since you showed them what a real man with balls looks like!  Sulking like depressed milk maids.”  Brute chortled.  Brok grinned proudly.  “You did good.  Kurr would be damned proud…Alpha.”  Brute added, bowing his head in respect and acknowledgement.  Brok couldn’t help but puff up his chest and beam with swollen pride at earning the title.  It felt alien, but good…right. 

“I had too…”  Brok said resolutely. Brute nodded.

“Aye, you did.  The clan has its honor and pride back.  It’s all administration and keeping your balls emptied in your woman now!”  Brute chortled.

“Did a good job of that all night, Kara was determined.”  Brok added as he chugged the crisp water, letting some dribble down his chest.

“Sounded like it, ahh the joy of youth.”  Brute mused.  Brok chuckled.

Something skittered by.  Brok’s attention snapped.  Something was moving.  

“Wake the others quick.  We’re being attacked!” Brok called.  An explosion went off as something shattered, throwing Brok and Brute to the ground.  Screams erupted.  And the sounds of struggle.  Brok rushed in the tent, they were under assault by young teens with knives.  Char was dead, her throat slit.  He delivered punches to faces and skinny guts as he ran through his thoughts on Kara.  He rushed to where she slept to a grisly sight.  Sturr was sitting on her, his knife bloody.   He slit her throat so deeply it cut her windpipe.  Brok felt such rage.  But Sturr was quick and jumped as Brok lunged.  

“I KILLED YOUR BITCH!  I KILLED YOUR BITCH!  I KILLED YOUR BITCH!  “  he screamed like a victory cry as he ran.  Brok was faster, he tackled the arrogant lout into the dirt screaming enraged as he tried to retreat to the ghostclaw camp.  Brok beat the pups face in horrified rage and pain, all over again.  All over again his loved ones were stolen from him.  Brute caught up and restrained Brok.

“Back down, you gotta back down!”  Brute yelled, holding Brok captive in his massive arms.  Grot took custody of Sturr.  

 Clan Mooncrest was on scene immediately.  Broks clan easily captured the other youths, five of them.  Brok disarmed Sturr and made sure the arm was broken.  The pup whimpered pitifully.

The elder alpha Cysprine held a hand to silence the ruckus.  “This will be addressed before the clans in one hour.  The captives stay with their captors for now.”  The ghostclaw alpha was calm, watching from afar.  Calculating, cold and detached.

The captives were tied to stakes in the Crescent Moon clan camp.  Brok went to his murdered mate and wept.  He wept, he howled, he held her close.  The clan howled in mourning outside.  Brok howled loudly, his young heart broken.  He closed her eyes and just sat there.  He felt renewed rage and pain…and hate.  He performed the rites over her.  Washed her body.  Wrapped her in cloth with her sword in hand.  He said the prayers.  Brute entered the tent.

“Brok.  It’s time, Cysprine calls for the clans to assemble.  Your first test as Alpha.”  Brute said sadly.  Brok gathered himself and grunted, stroking Kara’s cheek.  Grot approached as Brok exited the tent.  

“I’ll look after them, Alpha.”  he said mournfully.  Brok grabbed and embraced the older male tightly, showing him his support and love.  Grot embraced him back and patted his back nodding in understanding.

The young ghostclaws were dragged to the clan center.  The alpha Cysprine stood in judgment.  Brok stomped forward.  Brok knew the law.  He yelled, “They snuck into my camp!  They attacked my clan!  By right their lives are mine!”  Brok hollered.  “They broke faith in the early hours and murdered my clanmates…my mate…my love.  By the common laws of the clans they broke the sacred rite of Marr in this sacred place.  They spilled blood they had no right to spill!  I claim their lives as recompense!”  Brok wrathfully proclaimed, thumping his chest in dominance.

The Ghostclaw alpha stalked forward tall and proud.  He bellowed.  “The pups acted out of place, they committed honorless acts and shame their clan and me!  But they are ignorant wild pups!  I call on you, respected Alpha of clans.  Let them be spared, they are young, stupid, and need to be cowed by their elders.  On behalf of Ghostclaw Clan, I ask you to intercede!”  

Alpha Cysprine closes her eyes in heavy contemplation.  She looks at Brok.  “Brok, son of Kurr, Alpha of Crescent Moon Clan.  Can you be convinced by some other recompense to spare the lives of these pups?  Will you accept an alternative?”  Brok was outraged.

“They murdered my father and keep his pelt and skull.  Only in exchange for those would I consider.  But that is unreasonable.  The only alternative I can claim is Sturr’s life.  I will spare the rest, for him.”  Sturr panicked.

“Father!  Help!  You can kill him!  Save me!  Father please!”  Sturr wept pitifully.  The great wolf snapped.

“Silence, Sturr.”  before he turned to the elder.  “He is my last son.  My only other child.  Surely Alpha Brok can show some act of mercy.  By law he has the right to his life.  But I will argue for his life.  We will offer to leave this place and accept an exile from gathering among the clans if he will spare Sturr’s life!”  The great wolf looked coldly at Brok, not even a flicker of hate, or love.  Just cold steely emptiness.  Brok, considered as the elder alpha, gestured to Brok.

He looked at the pathetic whelp.  The spineless child who murdered his mate.  His words screaming in his mind “I killed your bitch”  he hollered with glee.  Brok’s rage surged.  His broken heart and pride would not rob him of the chance to cow the rival clan.  He wanted another wound to put in their pride.  He gestured to his clanmates to release the others.  And they do, sending the four other cowardly pups whimpering back to their families, where their fathers smack them in fury.

“I will not relent Sturr’s life.”  Brok said as he stormed over and dragged Sturr before the great wolf.  Lifting the smaller male by his wild red hair before his father.  “This is my mercy.”  he spits seethingly.  Brok shifted in form, he became a silver streaked hybrid with hateful brown eyes.  He snarled.  

“FATHER PLEASE HELP ME!  HELP ME!”  Sturr screamed, crying in fear and horror.  Brok locked eyes with the great wolf as he tore his jaws into Sturrs throat.  Shredding it with a dramatic snap, sending a spray of blood as he bit the entire trachea out of the young male.  Sturr gasped, his eyes wide, gurgling as he bled profusely.  The massive wolf didn’t move a muscle.  He didn’t even flinch.  He turned and calmly walked away back to his clan.  The silence was deafening.  Brok held him there to stare at his clan as the last bit of life fled from Sturr’s body.  Then he tore the head off with a sickening crunch.  He looked up to Alpha Cysprine.  

“Brok, Alpha of Crescent Moon Clan.  By right and law is your grievance settled?  Are you satisfied?”  she asked.  Brok hissed through bloody fangs, his face drenched in blood.  

“We are.  The grievance is now settled.”  He said spitefully and stalked back to his clan.  The clan left that day.  Brok carried the heads of Sturr and Stag on his hip and refused to let anyone else carry Kara’s body.  A few days later they reached the clan territory.  They all gathered to welcome their Alpha home.  The reunion was bitter.  Brok’s expression was darkened.  Charlotte met them at the edge of the camp.  

“Brok!  Our alpha returns!  Tell us the news, Alpha!”  she greeted him happily.  Then she saw the body.  “What happened?!”  she gasped.

“The Ghostclaws are honorless cockwarts!  I beat Stag in combat, by law!”  he said louder so the clan can hear.  I took his head as my right!  His whelp of a brother and others stole into our camp in the night!  They attacked us in our sleep!  They killed my mate, Kara!  They robbed us of Char, Grot’s mate!  They broke honor and could not control their idiot pups!”  Brok said hatefully.  “So I took my vengeance for our dead!  I took Sturr’s life before the clans, as by right!”  Brok hollered.  “I accept responsibility for Kara and Char’s deaths!  I foolishly thought the Ghosts could honor a single pact for a single moment!  They showed me I was wrong…”  

Charlotte interjected, “He defeated his enemies, avenged our alpha Kurr!  Reclaimed and defended our clan’s honor!  Brok has ascended to Alpha!  Hail Alpha Brok!  Haroo!”  Charlotte yelled.  The entire clan in unison howled in joy to Brok’s ascension.  But Brok only sat with Kara’s body in his arms.  His victories tainted, his mate stolen from him.  They laid their dead to rest in the clan burial grounds.  Brok took his place on the Crescent Throne.  He achieved his destiny, and it filled him with hate.

[tomorrow-and-tomorrows]

Narrative perspective and how cursed techniques become worlds: Gojou Satoru

In a key moment when theorizing about the nature of soul and body, the Brain speculates that “techniques dictate our worlds”. One of the other ways in which technique = world becomes literalized is through the narrative perspective from which we see characters.

Perspective, or point of view, determines our angle of vision through which to perceive character and story. It shapes representation and determines both how and what we are allowed to see.

Gojou

Gojou’s default technique is Limitless, which brings forth the distance that makes it impossible for objects in the world to reach him; neutral Limitless puts an uncrossable distance between himself and the world.

In the one-year timeskip after Riko Amanai’s death, it’s precisely as he’s learning to have his Limitless activated at all times that he and Geto become unable to reach each other. As Gojou’s power increases to sustain this invisible space, an uncrossable distance opens up between the person who was closest to him.

But I think there’s an additional distance that opens up as Gojou’s technique strengthens: The narrative distance preventing access to Gojou’s direct perspective and interiority after the Hidden Inventory Arc.

In contrast to how we were plunged into Geto’s intense introspection, there is nothing of Gojou’s internal thoughts from the immensely important turning point of the Premature Death chapters to ch.79 when he approaches Megumi. During these chapters, his Limitless technique defines his “world” both within the story (physically and interpersonally/emotionally), and on this meta-level of narration.

From then on, Geto and the readers can only observe Gojou from the outside: his inner mind becomes inaccessible and unreachable. So much so that, as readers, we might feel the absence distinctly as if part of the story after the Hidden Inventory arc and during Premature Death arc is altogether missing or incomplete.

In order to understand his words and expressions here, we are required to interpret, to try to bridge that impenetrable space that never lets us get any closer to Gojou. These two moments in particular illustrate this narrative distance, again as the most defining moments of his life, yet we are left looking on from the outside, ever held at a distance from his actual mind.

These two moments are the most defining moments of his life - dealing with losing Geto, and the first step he takes to dedicating his life to raising young allies through education. These moments are angled very similarly; our angle of vision is to look at Gojou, not through Gojou’s perspective.

We get physically close to Gojou’s eyes as possible, but that is the limit: there is a silence, an uncrossable space between us and his interiority. We never get so close as to access his inner thoughts when it is most important. It feels almost impersonal, alienating as readers to not be privy to these turning points in his worldview.

And it’s not just the case in these two singular moments, but the entire situation after the Hidden Inventory arc. How did Gojou emotionally process Riko’s death? What was on his mind during the time he was sent on solo missions no longer accompanied by Geto? How did he feel about Haibara’s death? How much of Geto’s psychological state was he really aware of? How did his reflections on Toji’s last words lead to him reaching out to Megumi?

It’s also the narrative method after he kills Geto in the prequel: we are shut out from his private emotions, only able to see what he chooses to reveal to the external world - nothing more than an inscrutable smile and a brief expression of affection for the person he had just killed. Does he feel guilt? Acceptance? What were his emotions in the moments after Geto’s death? We are denied access to these answers.

Similarly, many of those above questions about the post-Inventory arc situation will never be definitively answered in the way of internal monologue. However, many of them are implicitly answered, just not in a conventional, straightforward way. Rather than understanding him by being able to access his interiority, we are required to construct an understanding of him based on his external actions.

“Narrative says less than it knows, but it often makes known more than it says.” - Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse

His response to failing to save Riko, to killing Toji, to Geto leaving, and so on -- we see how nearly all his subsequent actions are haunted by and in response to all these events. We don’t get internal monologue recounting what he feels, but we can try to discern how he feels in everything that he does, every decision that he makes throughout the rest of the story. Becoming an educator, finding meaning through raising allies to connect with, saving Megumi from the Zen’in clan, saving Yuta and Yuji from execution, endorsing Maki’s ambition to transform the Zen’in family, seeking change through education rather than violence, shouldering the balance of the both the jujutsu and human world--

In all of these decisions, we get as close to answer as possible of what he feels in response to the personal catastrophes of his youth that he had silently endured: above all, a deep sense of responsibility and a profound internalization of the experiences and painful lessons that come to define his entire life.

It is also no coincidence that, in Shibuya Arc, it is at the same moment the Prison Realm is able to physically overcome the distance of his Limitless technique, that this narrative distance established in chapters 76-79 is crossed for the first time in a meaningful way.

Throughout his fight with Jogo and Hanamai, we do get a some of his internal thoughts, but it’s for the practical purpose of knowing what his strategical deductions are; they tell us nothing substantial about his emotions, hence not what I consider a ‘meaningful’ overcoming of distance.

But as his Limitless utterly fails to prevent the Prison Realm from seizing him, suddenly that object in the world is able to reach him, and the narrative is simultaneously able to ‘reach’ his mind to a greater extent than before. Whilst he had previously successfully shut everything out, now he is suddenly permeable both in body and mind.

More precisely, what I’ve been calling this ‘narrative distance’ is crossed immediately before the physical distance is eliminated. The emotional distance is actually breached before the physical, but ultimately these two results are inseparable from each other.

Finally, we begin to understand directly, through just a momentary glimpse into his interiority, how strongly he feels the loss of his best friend, how present and alive those years of his youth are constantly in his mind. Seeing Suguru’s face after being emotionally and physically drained by his fight is what exposes his vulnerability, a weakness of the heart that we wouldn’t even be sure was still there until this moment.

It’s the delayed emotional insight into Gojou that makes it all the more poignant; we’re well past his Past arc, but it’s only now that we become privy to how heavily those events weigh on his mind. On a first reading, it would require us to slightly re-write what we would’ve understood of Gojou solely based on the previously distant, impersonal feeling we got from those past chapters.

The final major implication of what I’ve been suggesting is how, in light of all this, how to think about the effect of the last real substantial access to his inner thoughts/emotions.

The last meaningful unmediated access we get to Gojou’s inner thoughts/emotions during his Past Arc is this moment when he renounces human emotion and apologizes to Riko for feeling like he’s no longer fighting for her sake.

Even though this is a powerful, lasting impression of his inner mind for readers, it is not the case that this moment of egoism, self-centredness, and renunciation of compassion is completely who Gojou Satoru remains even as an adult. Gojou definitely retains some of those traits in his personality - I don’t want to overlook the extent of his individualistic mentality, self-involvement, and difficulty emotionally considering others. However, his actions in the aftermath of this spiritual transcendence demonstrate that this moment and those characteristics do not define his entire person at the expense of all others.

Again: the narrative distance that deliberately denies readers access to his inner mind after the Hidden Inventory Arc requires us to evaluate his character based on his subsequent actions that demonstrate his movement away from this emotionless, compassionless state, towards motivations that are highly emotionally driven.

Although this renunciation of human emotion and obligation towards Riko is the last substantial thought we receive from Gojou’s direct point of view, his character has not remained static since that temporary moment. On the contrary, he develops drastically from that, though we witness this change from the outside: the Gojou Satoru we see after the one-year timeskip and ten years later in the present day is a largely different Gojou Satoru than the one who feels no anger on behalf of a child he’d failed to protect - and the only way we can understand this when his mind is largely closed off to us is through looking at his external actions.

For example, in stark juxtaposition to his apology to Riko for not feeling anger or vengefulness, not only does Gojou immediately after think of killing the cult members to avenge her death, a large part of his philosophy as a teacher is founded on anger on behalf of children whose youth are threatened to be cut short. We get this primarily through external speech and action.

We do not experience his anger, realization of the value of working together with allies rather than exclusively as an individual, or decision to save children like Yuta and Yuji through a step-by-step psychological progression: we only see the end results of all that development that certainly occurs, but is hidden from us.

For such a major character, I find this a fascinating method that might run contrary to our expectations of how to portray and understand character development. It requires a greater degree of interpretation about the internal thought and emotional processes that, though not brought to the surface of the narrative, are at the foundation of his external actions, speech, and expressions throughout the story.

“Narrative 'representation', or, more exactly, narrative information, has its degrees: the narrative can furnish the reader with more or fewer details, and in a more or less direct way, and can thus seem to keep a greater or lesser distance from what it tells." - Gérard Genette

[khentkawes]

"You ridiculous bureaucrats will not dictate how my story ends!"

"It's not your story, Mr. Laufeyson. It never was."

OMG. That line was...perfect!

I've been feeling nervous about how this stupid TVA bullshit would play out. Even thinking about how they would use the TVA and its “sacred timeline” to  justify Thanos doing what he did, to justify the Avengers use of time travel, and to justify a timeline in which all of my favorite characters have died...that they were going to use the TVA to say that all of that was “supposed to happen” while things like Loki surviving to become more than a foil for Thor or Tony surviving and putting aside his guilt or Natasha learning to be the leader the Avengers need and to know that her worth isn’t defined by her past...all of those things are not “supposed to happen” no matter how much the fans want those things or how much the characters deserve them... well, it's dampened my enthusiasm for the this show. Until this. I should have trusted Tom not to do this if it wasn't true to Loki's character. Because this! This right here! This is the core of Loki's story. It's what I've wanted to see Marvel tackle for so long.

Who says that it's Thor's story and not Loki's? Who says that Thanos gets to kill half the universe? Who says that Tony's death was "the only way we win"? Who says who gets to be called a hero and who is just the sidekick or the antihero or the villain? Who says that only certain types of people get to be leaders or heroes? Who gets to decide?

Loki's rage at that resonates so strongly with me. It always has. It's what Loki raged against in the very first Thor movie. He was enraged that his story and his identity was a lie, that he'd been cast in a role he never consented to as "Thor's shadow" and then as "Odin's stolen Jotun." And then in Avengers, it happened again. He was cast as the villain, in a film that never explained his motives at all. Of course, fandom has decided, reading between the lines, that it was because Thanos was manipulating Loki. But that just adds to the overall point: Thanos cast Loki as in the role as his minion. Loki tried to re-cast himself as the villain--and then the Avengers took him down.

And we see it again and again. In TDW, Loki is cast as the criminal until he chooses to cast himself as the protector, the one who saves Jane and saves Thor. And then he picks a new role for himself... until Thor comes to take it away. Because someone else is always trying to rewrite Loki's story and defining him in relation to other people.

I want to help Loki burn the TVA as much as I want to slap the Russos for what they did in IW and Endgame. People don't get to decide that there is "only one way" or "one sacred timeline." Free will has to exist and there has to be more than one way to win... otherwise what is the point of superhero stories? What is the point of this modern mythology if it tells us that only certain people are allowed to win and that certain people are destined to die? What’s the point of superheroes if their actions don’t matter? Why would we tell stories about heroes if we don’t actually believe that the actions of everyday people can matter? If it’s all just determined by what’s “supposed to happen” or the “correct timeline” or the “one destined way to win,” then our choices never matter, and then there are no heroes. Because we can never win. We can never overcome destiny then. We’re just trapped by some set of nebulous forces and predetermined circumstances that dictate our status and our potential and our lives.

Nah, screw that bullshit. Screw the TVA. Screw the sacred timeline. Screw the "only way we win" out of 14 million futures. We get to write out own stories.

Fandom certainly has. And we'll continue to do so.

I hope that's where this show is going too. I hope that's what Loki learns: that he gets to write his own story. He gets to decide what part he plays. No more being forced into someone else's shadow. No more being forced to play the villain to someone else's hero.

We get to choose.

Come on, Loki. Let's burn the TVA to the ground!

[veenaspakistanlitblog]

Ten Interesting Pakistani Novels

Under the Persimmon Tree by Suzanne Staples (Summary by Amazon)

Najmah, a young Afghan girl whose name means "star," suddenly finds herself alone when her father and older brother are conscripted by the Taliban and her mother and newborn brother are killed in an air raid. An American woman, Elaine, whose Islamic name is Nusrat, is also on her own. She waits out the war in Peshawar, Pakistan, teaching refugee children under the persimmon tree in her garden while her Afghan doctor husband runs a clinic in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. Najmah's father had always assured her that the stars would take care of her, just as Nusrat's husband had promised that they would tell Nusrat where he was and that he was safe. As the two look to the skies for answers, their fates entwine. Najmah, seeking refuge and hoping to find her father and brother, begins the perilous journey through the mountains to cross the border into Pakistan. And Nusrat's persimmon-tree school awaits Najmah's arrival. Together, they both seek their way home.

2.) The Diary of a Social Butterfly by Moni Mohsin (Summary by Amazon)

This is the hugely entertaining journal of a socialite in Lahore. Pakistan may be making headlines - but Butterfly is set to conquer the world. 'Everyone knows me. All of Lahore, all of Karachi, all of Isloo - oho, baba, Islamabad - half of Dubai, half of London and all of Khan Market and all the nice, nice bearers in Imperial Hotel also...No ball, no party, no dinner, no coffee morning, no funeral, no GT - Get-Together, baba - is complete without me.' Meet Butterfly, Pakistan's most lovable, silly, socialite. An avid party-goer-inspired misspeller, and unwittingly acute observer of Pakistani high society, Butterfly is a woman like no other. In her world, SMS becomes S & M and people eat 'three tiara cakes' while shunning 'do number ka manual. 'What cheeks!' as she would say. As her country faces tribulations - from 9/11 to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto - Butterfly glides through her world, unfazed, untouched, and stopped short only by the chip in her manicure. Wicked, irreverent, and hugely entertaining, "The Diary of a Social Butterfly" gives you a delicious glimpse into the parallel universe of the have-musts.

3.) Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam (Summary by Amazon)

If Gabriel García Márquez had chosen to write about Pakistani immigrants in England, he might have produced a novel as beautiful and devastating as Maps for Lost Lovers. Jugnu and Chanda have disappeared. Like thousands of people all over England, they were lovers and living together out of wedlock. To Chanda’s family, however, the disgrace was unforgivable.  Perhaps enough so as to warrant murder. As he explores the disappearance and its aftermath through the eyes of Jugnu’s worldly older brother, Shamas, and his devout wife, Kaukab, Nadeem Aslam creates a closely observed and affecting portrait of people whose traditions threaten to bury them alive. The result is a tour de force, intimate, affecting, tragic and suspenseful.

4.) A Season for Martyrs by Bina Shah (Summary by Amazon)

October 2007. Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returns home after eight years of exile to seek political office once more. Assigned to cover her controversial arrival is TV journalist Ali Sikandar, the estranged son of a wealthy landowner from the interior region of Sindh. While her presence ignites fierce protests and assassination attempts, Ali finds himself irrevocably drawn to the pro-democracy People’s Resistance Movement, a secret that sweeps him into the many contradictions of a country still struggling to embrace modernity. As Shah weaves together the centuries-old history of Ali’s feudal family and its connection to the Bhuttos, she brilliantly reveals a story at the crossroads of the personal and the political, a chronicle of one man’s desire to overcome extremity to find love, forgiveness, and even identity itself.

5.) Karachi, You’re Killing Me! by Saba Imtiaz (Summary by Amazon)

Ayesha is a twenty-something reporter in one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Her assignments range from showing up at bomb sites and picking her way through scattered body parts to interviewing her boss’s niece, the couture-cupcake designer. In between dicing with death and absurdity, Ayesha despairs over the likelihood of ever meeting a nice guy, someone like her old friend Saad, whose shoulder she cries on after every romantic misadventure. Her choices seem limited to narcissistic, adrenaline-chasing reporters who’ll do anything to get their next story—to the spoilt offspring of the Karachi elite who’ll do anything to cure their boredom. Her most pressing problem, however, is how to straighten her hair during chronic power outages. Karachi, You’re Killing Me! is Bridget Jones’s Diary meets The Diary of a Social Butterfly—a comedy of manners in a city with none.

6.) How It Happened by Shazaf Fatima Haider (Summary by Amazon)

Dadi, the imperious matriarch of the Bandian family in Karachi, swears by the virtues of arranged marriage. All her ancestors including a dentally and optically challenged aunt have been perfectly well-served by such arrangements. But her grandchildren are harder to please. Haroon, the apple of her eye, has to suffer half a dozen candidates until he finds the perfect Shia-Syed girl of his dreams. But it is Zeba, his sister, who has the tougher time, as she is accosted by a bevy of suitors, including a potbellied cousin and a banker who reeks of sesame oil. Told by the witty, hawk-eyed Saleha, the precocious youngest sibling, this is a romantic, amusing and utterly delightful story about how marriages are made and unmade---not in heaven, but in the drawing room and over the phone.

7.) A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Shazaf Fatima Haider (Summary by Amazon)

Intrigue and subterfuge combine with bad luck and good in this darkly comic debut about love, betrayal, tyranny, family, and a conspiracy trying its damnedest to happen. Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the government calls a suicide.Ali's target is none other than General Zia ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistani. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators, including his cologne-bathed roommate, a hash-smoking American lieutenant, and a mango-besotted crow, Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion. There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than he could have possibly known.

8.) Home Fire: A Novel by Kamila Shamise (Summary by Amazon)

Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she’s accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma’s worst fears are confirmed. Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to—or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation? Suddenly, two families’ fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined, in this searing novel that asks: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

9.) She Loves Me, He Loves Me Not by Zeenat Mahal (Summary by Amazon)

Zoella didn’t know whether she was devastatingly happy or happily devastated. Zoella has been in love with Fardeen Malik, her best friend’s gorgeous older brother, since she was ten, but he’s always seen her as a ‘good girl’—not his type—and he can barely remember her name. Besides, he’s engaged to a gorgeous leggy socialite, someone from the same rarefied social strata as the imposing Malik family. In short, Zoella has no chance with him. Until a brutal accident leaves Fardeen scarred and disfigured, that is. Suddenly bereft of a fiancée, Fardeen is bitterly caustic, a shell of the man he used to be, a beast that has broken out of the fairy tale world he once lived in. And a twist of fate lands him his very own beauty—Zoella. This man, however, is a far cry from the Fardeen of her dreams. Stripped of her illusions, Zoella creates her own twist in the fairy tale, beating him at his own game. Order now and read this modern, unusual interpretation of the old-age fairy tale, in which Zeenat explores the themes of love, longing, and arranged marriages.

10.) Undying Affinity by Sara Naveed (Summary by Amazon)

Twenty-two-year-old, Zarish Munawwar, has everything in life she could ever ask for; an elite family, a high profile status, a bunch of good friends and a childhood sweetheart. Being childish, stubborn, imperious, extravagant and a bit impulsive at making important decisions pertaining to her life, is what perfectly describes her overall personality. She takes life easily and can get anything she desires. To her, life is a bed of roses. It is only when she meets, Ahmar Muraad, her mentor and finance professor at university, her perspective towards life completely changes. He looks quite young for his age as every girl at the university thinks he is attractive, seductive, intellectual and rather intimidating. This charming man is every girl's fantasy and Zarish also finds it hard to resist him. But is he fascinated by her? Little did Zarish know how one little interaction could bring about so many twists and turns in her life. After continuous unsuccessful attempts to avoid him, she feels that she is gradually falling for his charm. Ahmar, however, remains oblivious to her feelings. She is ready to abandon her childhood sweetheart for him. Eventually, there comes a time when only he matters to her and nobody else. Awestruck by the sudden revelation, she is dazed to find out that he feels exactly the same for her. Before their love blossoms, a slight tragedy falls into their lives. Zia Munawwar, her father, has some other plans for his daughter. Will Ahmar fight against the world for his lady love or step back? Do not miss this romantic tragedy as it will encapsulate you totally and will stay in your heart forever

[scarlet--wiccan]

(1/?) The MCU is going on a specific direction and might touch Wanda's history of mental illness. Maybe talk about that when you have the time? Wanda was going on a nice direction before all that happened.

Whew! Sorry it’s taken me so long to answer this— I have several super-long message chains like this one in my inbox and they’re hard to parse through and harder still to write a real answer for. I’m gonna try through a couple of these today.

Well, I think you hit all the important points here-- the optics of a mixed-raced family of first- and second- gen Holocaust survivors committing mass acts of terrorism, becoming rulers of a fascist, supremacist regime, and then, finally, committing pseudo-genocide, are, you know, not great. These are complicated characters whose representation can easily swing in either really positive or really, really negative directions, but this goes beyond the pale for me, especially given the proximity to 9/11.

The portrayal of Wanda's mental illness during this time, while not wholly unsympathetic, is wildly inaccurate and generally played as a horror motif. I'm not an expert on schizophrenia, but I think we can all agree that it's high time we moved past exploiting sick and disabled people's experiences for cheap scares. It's especially frustrating because Wanda, as a character, does have ground for poignant stories about mental illness-- she's had numerous traumatic experiences, starting with generational trauma and a lifetime of violent discrimination, and ending, at that point, with the deaths of her young children and the abrupt dissolution of her marriage. Her mental health should be addressed, but not in a way that demonizes illness or characterizes sick people as villains. One thing I appreciate about Robinson's Scarlet Witch is that it represents her mental illness in a very human, matter of fact manner and gives her the power to take control of her own wellness. She has realistic symptoms and pursues realistic treatments, instead of, you know, making hallucination constructs and getting mind-probed by Charles fucking Xavier.

Wanda is simultaneously infantilized and vilified in these stories-- she's denied agency at every turn, and yet, Wolverine and the other "heroes" of this saga view her with unbridled contempt, and most of them are immediately ready to murder her in the name of justice, even before the "no more mutants" spell was cast. You wondered how Bendis was able to inspire such a long lasting hatred of Wanda, and I think the simple answer is that almost every character in House of M hates Wanda. The characters you root for, the characters whose perspectives dictate the tone of the story, direct palpable fury towards her, and even those who aren't out for her blood don't extend any actual empathy towards her-- most are ambivalent to her wellbeing, while Xavier and Strange are incredibly paternalistic.

The final spell, "no more mutants", has baffled me for years. You're spot-on in saying that Wanda here represents a self-hating minority, but it's really hard for me to understand how she could have reached that point. It's not consistent with her previous characterization, nor is it thematically connected to the factors which led to her breakdown. Bendis places the onus of her condition on Erik, alleging that he abandoned and abused his children in his fanatic commitment to the mutant cause, which, besides being a willful misinterpretation of canon, has nothing to do with Wanda's current circumstance-- she's like this because Agatha Harkness altered her memories, because the Avengers continuously gaslit her, and becaue Mephisto killed her kids in the first place. It has nothing to do with Magneto, and Wanda's breakdown has nothing to do with mutant politics. She and Pietro were raised in a loving family until their adoptive parents were killed by racists. Erik didn't knowingly abandon them, and while he did mistreat them during the Brotherhood days, it wasn't parental abuse because he wasn't a father figure to them-- neither party had any idea they were related. Bendis is evoking specific forms of trauma that never actually happened, while ignoring the ones that did, and the effects of the spell itself are vague and seemingly random.

~~~~~

Young Avengers does call back to Wanda's circumstances in Disassembled and HoM, but it doesn't execute the concept of reality-warping in the same way. The driving force in YA is the spell which Billy casts, and Loki tampers with, in the first issue. It is a spell which distorts reality, but it has specific parameters, and neither party is characterized as "crazy" the way Wanda was. The spell was intended to bend space and time so that Billy could pull Teddy's mom from the past, before she was killed, into the present-- it's not dissimilar from how Wanda "retroactively reincarnated" her kids. Due to Loki's interference, however, the spell was hijacked by an interdimensional parasite called Mother. The Mother virus appears primarily as a construct of Teddy's mom, but as her influence over the Earth-616 dimension grows, she's able to create constructs of other dead parents, and even mind-control living adults. All of the ways in which reality is being warped hinge on the specific conditions under which Mother was summoned, and while it is Billy's magic that's fueling these constructs and distortions, they aren't symptoms of psychosis-- Billy doesn't lose control of his magic because he's losing his mind, he loses control because he's too young and inexperienced to protect himself from predatory forces. Those forces do take advantage of his depression and anxiety, but his condition is never the cause.

Loki's magic is wrapped up in the spell, too, but rather than conjuring dead parents, it emerges as a construct of their former best friend, Leah. Loki, in Young Avengers, is a mashup of two personae-- the reincarnated child Loki, and Ikol, a phantom of their past life who is carrying out the previous Loki's evil will even though their heart isn't in it. Ikol has mostly overshadowed Loki, who has been reduced to a ghost that torments Ikol by acting as a constant reminder of their guilt. Ikol is haunted by their past, but it's important that this haunting is a nuanced metaphor and not literal hallucination, as Wanda's condition was in HoM. Because Loki's power is part of the spell, Kid Loki's ghost is able to hijack the reality distortions to summon the construct of Leah, who, in turn, is able to summon the Young Avengers' other exes, the same way that Mother, in the form of Teddy's dead mom, can summon other dead parents.

Loki does raise the question of whether or not Billy might be subconsciously influencing Teddy with his powers, but this is clearly illustrated as a manipulation tactic and disproven several times. Loki's original goal in summoning Mother was to draw out Billy's full magical potential so that they could steal his power for themselves. Driving a wedge between Billy and Teddy, and causing Billy to question his own sanity, were devices to make Billy more susceptible to having his power stolen, and they worked-- Billy is not able to divest his magic from the spell and banish Mother from Earth-616 until he overcomes his self-doubt and start exercising mindfulness. Loki, in turn, is not able to divest their power from the spell and banish Leah and the other exes until they own up to their guilt and admit everything they've done. Both characters are experiencing symptoms of exacerbated mental illness-- Billy's depression and suicidal ideation, Loki's disassociation-- but their mental illness is not the source of their magic, but a challenge which makes it harder for them to live as their fully realized selves... just as it would be for any normal person.

I know that was a long-winded explanation, but I wanted to illustrate what sets Gillen's take on "reality warping" apart from Bendis's. It's based on clearly though-out ideas of how magic works and what defines "reality" in a world populated by parallel universes and living myth-forms. Gillen affords Loki and Billy a degree of sympathy without denying them agency, and Loki is held accountable for their decisions without being painted as a total monster. Bendis, meanwhile, characterizes Wanda's magic as delusion made real, and completely vilifies her for her illness in spite of the fact that she's given no control over her actions.

[darthkvznblogs]

Saiyan Creation Myth

WARNING: This is meant as background info to my MCU-based AU, as seen in “You and Me, and the Woman that is We”. I’ve never watched Dragon Ball or its spin-off/sequel series, and this bears little to no resemblance to the divine hierarchy found in canon. (Really, I was just disappointed to do research for the fic and find little to no information on what Saiyan mythology might be like.)

I hope you enjoy!

“In the beginning, there was only the Void. Then, Infinite Shenron tore a hole through the Void, in his endless voyage through the multiverse. The wounded Void fought back, but the immortal serpent ignored the attacks, though they tore scales, whiskers, and hair from its body.”

“Mortally wounded, the Void pooled its power, in a desperate final attempt to eradicate the serpent. The attack was successful, obliterating the dragon’s body, but immortal as it was, it merely continued onward as a spirit. The Void perished, as new life emerged from the serpent’s remains.

From the dragon’s skull, the gods splintered. From the rendered flesh, limitless matter. And from the dragon’s blood, boundless energy. Shin, First of the Kai, gave order to it all. From Shenron’s glittering scales, she made stars. From Shenron’s bones, she made planets. From Shenron’s heart, she made the Other World. From Shenron’s veins, she made pathways between it all.

Chronoa grew bored of the beautiful but static universe, growing to titanic size and kicking it into motion, starting the passage of time. At first, Shin was angered, but as time changed her Creation in ways she never envisioned, she judged it good and allowed time to flow.

Many of the other gods followed her example, taking the rest of Shenron’s flesh and sculpting mortals to populate Shin’s Creation. For a time, all was peaceful. But the gods grew jealous of each other’s little mortals, and they pitted them against one another. And when one species proved victorious, the god who’d lost would eradicate them. So it went until all was lost.

Saddened, Shin asked Chronoa to restart the passage of time, and Chronoa obeyed. But events played out the same way, over and over. Six times, the gods’ petty conflicts resulted in oblivion.

On the seventh try, Shin decided on a failsafe. She tasked Beerus with irreparably obliterating the universe should the war between the gods happen again. She entrusted Whis with staying Beerus’ hand until she deemed the universe unsalvageable. And she warned the gods of what would happen, should their conflict arise again.

Even with the warning, the gods prepared for the same old war. But before they could get started, one among them decided to let mortals choose their own fate. Oozaru, Father of the Saiyajin, unleashed his wrath on his fellow, unsuspecting gods, and slew them all, one by one, staining his crimson fur with their golden blood. Every Kai fell to the Great Ape, save for Shin, Beerus, Whis, and Chronoa – the only gods who hadn’t spawned mortals of their own. His bloodlust sated, Golden Oozaru issued a challenge to his people: prove their might against the other races on their own merits, or fade into obscurity. Become as gods, or die trying. He took away their massive size, and gave them humanoid bodies, that they might only regain their Great Ape forms once the challenge was overcome. With that, Golden Oozaru shed his divine form, and vanished among the bereft Saiyajin.

Sobered by the massacre of their divine siblings, the surviving gods sought to discover the cause of this madness. No sooner had Oozaru disappeared, did the culprit appear – the consciousness of the Void itself had, in the chaos of Creation, possessed one of the Kai. The corrupted Kai, named Zamasu, had whispered in the other gods’ ears, in every iteration, and turned them on each other, hoping to return the universe to emptiness. Oozaru having ruined his usual plans, however, he vowed to eradicate the universe himself.

With Zamasu’s identity discovered, Shin asked Chronoa to reverse time until the moment immediately after Oozaru’s disappearance, and bound Zamasu to the role of God of Death – he could take mortal lives, yes, but only when their time came, as dictated by Chronoa. Robbed of his freedom, Zamasu was forced to serve Shin for eternity – or until the gods judge the universe wanting...”

If you enjoyed, consider checking out “You and Me, and the Woman that is We”, a fic based in the “There Was Once an Avenger from Krypton” series that follows Caulifla and Kale accidentally fusing into a fourteen-foot tall, four-armed woman and trying to unfuse before the other realizes the extent of their crush on them.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24630583

And the series itself:

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1316201

I also have a Ko-fi! If you have a coffee’s worth of cash to spare, please consider checking it out at: https://ko-fi.com/darthkvzn

[polly-chan]

V for Vendetta and The Anarchy

V for Vendetta is a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. I really love this comic and that’s why I want to share with You an analysis about it. 

“Remember, Remember! The fifth of November, the Gunpowder treason and plot; there is no reason why the Gunpowder treason should ever be forgot”: in 1605 Guy Fawkse tried to blow up the British Parliament, performing the first revolutionary act in his country to end the English monarchy. His plot, however, is discovered and he is sentenced to death. As the graphic novel (and movie too) teaches History is written by the winners while losers become the bad guys and for this reason they teach us to remember ideas and not men: men can fail, but ideas are immortal. V for Vendetta takes place in a post apocalyptic world upset by a nuclear war, the united kingdom has sunk into chaos until the emergence of the Norsefire party intimating positions and promising to making England great again, ending up creating a police state. Norsefire is the fictional Nordic supremacist and neo-fascist political party in which people are indoctrinated through the media and five organs rule the dictatorship: the Finger (the hitting police), the Eye (controls everything with the cameras), the Ear (which intercepts and spies over the citizens), the Nose (the scientific police) and the Voice (i.e. the television, led by Prothero). Strength through Unity, Unity through faith: Good win, Bad forgiveness and as always England dominates.  All minorities are oppressed: Muslims, homosexuals, dissidents, in all totalitarianisms there is always a target. Moreover, it’s a strongly male-dominated dictatorship. Totalitarism places control of the lower classes by the higher classes, which in fact are the minority. The goal of totalitarianism is to create a scapegoat on which to vent popular anger and justify ethically questionable actions. 

Evey is a sixteen year old forced into prostitution who is about to be raped by the Finger, but V saves her. When Evey asks him who he is V answers that “Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask” (as Pirandello would have said), the identity is a consequence of the showing of the Ego and therefore it makes no sense to ask a masked man who he is since the function is hidden. Here we can see how the mask plays an important role in this story, becoming an important symbol of freedom and we’ll see why soon.

V presents himself with a very long, poetic and dramatic speech, in which he declares himself the protector of the Vox populi: he is an avenger of people. A shakesperian hero who seems to see all London as its stage. A musician, ready to give a show. He turns to the statue of justice saying he loves her, but she is a woman of easy virtue and has betrayed him:

She has prostituted herself with a uniform, this because the extreme search for justice leads to the loss of freedom. This is why V found his new lover, the Anarchy: philosophy separated from Marxism because of Bakunin’s inspiration, according to which it is necessary to overcome the capitalist system and abolish the State, but without going through a phase of socialist transition and immediately abolishing the state, because even socialism is an oppression. 

The music that V leads at the feet of Old Bailey turns out to be the prelude to a gigantic explosion, a demonstration of violence that arises from classical music. Then government begins media manipulation showing how mass media should not be trusted. Adam Satler is a clear reference to Adolf Hitler, but also to Margaret Tatcher: as a matter of fact, the comic is born as a criticism of her ultra-conservative and liberal government that ignored the needs of the poorest in favor of large companies. Satler says they have to remind people why they need them (like the metaphor of Hegel’s servant): in the comic strip he is clearly fascist, but he is not a monster: He is obsessed with Faith (the super computer that analyzes the situation), he prays and he is also a fragile figure. Moore shows that even fascists know how to be human, there are no absolute bad guys. 

TV is intercepted and V’s long speech begins, He wants to remind England of what he has forgotten:

The government is already trying to shut it down “Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?”.  Communication is the alliance among men, while the truncheon is the short way to impose a vision without the other can accept it. 

It is the people who elected Hitler, but he understands why: there were so many problems, war, terrorism and disease. All dictatorships, we always start with a  crisis. A Man promised to bring back the truth, but in exchange for silent consent. The destruction of Old Bailey serves as a reminder that justice and equity are perspective and not words. 

V begins to kill several senior members of the party who command different organs of the dictatorship. But who the real terrorist is? Who decides the difference between those who fight for or against the freedom? We can consider totalitarianism as a closed system where not all ideas are allowed, therefore those who repress ideas and freedoms are the real bombers of democracy.  Evey is the anti-revolutionary one who wants to change totalitarianism from within without realizing that great freedoms and constitutional values ​​we owe to them thanks to violent revolutions and no dictator voluntarily surrenders their privileges. Moreover, for V there are no certainties, only opportunities and “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people”. The revolutionary act is the necessary means to reach the end, the lesser evil. 

V is a Shakespearian hero and he often mentions it, also obviously inspired by the Count of Montecristo. Wearing a mask V is no longer a man, but an idea and so he can be free to say what he truely thinks. to be human without limitations.  V explains to Evey that “Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators then can build another world. Rubble, once achieved, makes further ruins’ means irrelevant”: 

The destructive face is the active and superhuman nihilism that destroys power, to return to the terrible state of nature of Hobbes. The creator one wants an order without the head, not without rules. This is what anarchy dreams about: a society without a head, where people cooperate on a solidarity basis and are able to determine themselves.

By the way, V forced the people to break free as he forced Evey through the prison deception, but he ends to realize that the choice of what the new world will be is not up to him. In full anarchist style he dies for not becoming the next leader, but leaving to the people the possibility to decide for themselves:

[wesleyhill]

Division and Reunion

A homily on Luke 12:49-56 and Hebrews 11:29–12:2 preached at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Pittsburgh, on August 18, 2019

I would speak to you in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our Gospel for today could have been ripped directly from current headlines. Jesus speaks of division in stark, unblinking terms:

From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Haven’t we experienced something like what Jesus is describing? How many of us are already looking ahead to Thanksgiving dinner and beginning to dread the political conversations that will pit us against one another?

It’s become a cliché by now to talk about and bemoan the divisions in our country. Books with titles like The Fractured Republic are bestsellers. One of our sitting U.S. Senators just published a book with the phrase “Why We Hate Each Other” in the subtitle. A social psychologist’s recent book promises to tell us “Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” African-American voices regularly insist, with each new instance of police brutality and injustice, that the racial divide remains unrectified.

There was a recent article in the Washington Post that poignantly brought to mind my own family and our divisions. Journalist Elizabeth Bruenig interviewed Joe and Daniel Aguilar, a father and son, both evangelical Christians. Joe, the father, is a supporter of President Trump and plans to vote for him in next year’s election. Daniel, the son, is not and does not. “To see Joe and Daniel sitting together side by side, as I did, in a Fort Worth taco restaurant, you might guess they’re related; you might also guess that there’s some tension between them, at least where it comes to politics,” Bruenig writes. “They eyed each other warily as I broached the subject of Trump.” As I read those words, I thought about the last time my father and I got into a shouting match about politics.

Jesus’s words seem like an acute diagnosis at this moment in our national life: “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother.”

Jesus’s words, however, aren’t original to him. When he speaks about division in this way, he is drawing on imagery and wording found in the Scriptures of Israel, what we call the Old Testament. The prophet Micah supplies the words that Jesus later takes up and uses in his time. Micah first zeroes in on the people of Israel and highlights their sins of greed and violence:

The faithful have disappeared from the land, and there is no one left who is upright; they all lie in wait for blood, and they hunt each other with nets. Their hands are skilled to do evil; the official and the judge ask for a bribe, and the powerful dictate what they desire; thus they pervert justice. (7:2-3)

In response to this injustice, Micah declares that the Lord of Israel will bring judgment upon the people. When we hear the word “judgment,” we may be tempted to think of Dante’s Inferno or the worldwide catastrophe that a villain like Thanos in The Avengers movie unleashes. But for Micah, the judgment shows up in a less flashy way. It is already here in the present, Micah insists, long before any apocalypse brings the world to an end. It is demonstrated in the present fraying of the social fabric:

Put no trust in a friend, have no confidence in a loved one; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your embrace; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; your enemies are members of your own household. (7:5-7)

When Jesus quotes these words from the Old Testament prophet Micah, he is saying that Micah’s prophecy is reaching its fulfillment in his own day and time. As Jesus goes around Judea proclaiming the arrival of God’s reign and healing the sick and denouncing the hypocritical religious leaders, he brings about division in families, just as Micah wrote about. Some people choose to follow him, and their relatives look at them as if they’re crazy. Some people choose to believe that he is the long-awaited Messiah, while their family members shake their heads in dismayed disbelief. No one sees eye to eye, and mutual trust and fellowship is impossible.

But what is intriguing about Jesus’s words is that he seems to view all of this division as having a trajectory to it, so to speak. The division between families and neighbors is going somewhere. Jesus doesn’t succumb to the despair that so many of our current political commentators seem to nurse. He doesn’t throw up his hands and say there’s no way to heal this fractured society. Instead, he points to the culminating moment of his ministry—the moment that has not yet arrived but that Jesus is journeying towards: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

We know that Jesus isn’t referring here to his baptism in the waters of the Jordan River by John the Baptist. That baptism has already happened. Jesus is referring instead to his death, using baptism as a metaphor. He is going to go under the water, figuratively speaking, and drown. The fire that he comes to bring is going to consume him. He is going to die in Jerusalem on a Roman cross. There, he is going to take all the judgments against God’s people into his own body, and he will bear them, and bear them away. This is what Dr. King meant when he spoke about the arc of the universe: the history of God with God’s people is a trajectory with an eventual endpoint. The judgment that Jesus went around announcing is going to reach its terminus—and it will terminate on him.

The Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his book Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”?, observed that all the imagery of judgment in the Gospels—the places where Jesus pronounces “woes” against wrongdoers, where he announces that God will punish evil and call everyone to account, where he speaks of the sky growing dark and the earth quaking, where he (as in our Gospel for today) predicts division and a sword and a fiery baptism—all of that judgment imagery comes to head at the end of the Gospels. It reaches a crescendo and comes crashing down on Jesus himself as he hangs on the cross. And he bears that judgment in the place of and on behalf of sinners like you and me.

The division that Jesus speaks of actually happens to him: Jesus, the Son, is abandoned by his Father to die; he is not rescued. He, the Son, loses his mother as he dies; he watches her retreat into the arms of his beloved disciple. He suffers the fate of having all his friends desert him. He is singled out from among his fellow Jews. He is corralled away from them, secreted into holding cells and paraded in front of tribunals to receive his sentence of death. Jesus is the one who suffers the judgment that he predicts.

And what happens on the other side? The Father who abandoned him to die raises him from the dead. Jesus regathers around himself the friends who deserted him, and he forgives and commissions them to be his ambassadors. The mother whom he lost he makes the prime symbol of his family comprised of reconciled fathers and sons, forgiven mothers and daughters, rescued Jews and Gentiles, redeemed slaves and free persons. Our divisions are overcome because of the salvation that Jesus achieved through his death.

Our epistle for today says it this way:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Notice: “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” Not “they.” Not “us.” We. We can now say we, because Jesus has overthrown our divisions.

The epistle says, “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” Not “theirs.” Not “ours” as opposed to “theirs.” But ours, together. Jesus has drawn us all into the same family, the same body—his body, the church—so that we can now say ours.

Jesus has relativized the divisions that used to seem like the most important thing about us. Through his death, Jesus has overcome the mistrust and hostility we used to experience towards one another. He has opened to us another way to live.

So, friends, as we ponder the harsh reality of division that our Gospel reading for today puts in front of us, let us also see how Jesus has taken all the ways we are arrayed against each other and has taken them all the way into his own body on the cross. As we come forward now to Jesus’s table, to eat his body and drink his blood, as we kneel here together and hold out our open hands alongside each other, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law, let us look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, and rejoice in the way he has made us one. And let us give thanks that instead of awaiting a baptism of fire, we await instead the crown of life and everlasting fellowship with the One who gave himself for us. Amen.

[theinquisitivej]

‘Avengers: Endgame’ – A Movie Review, and a Reflection on Endings

Endings are rarely the definitive final word.

A person’s story can come to an end, but the stories of the people around them and the world they live in carry on, even if that one person isn’t there anymore. That realisation conjures up a whole tangled mess of emotions, but it is the natural way of things. It’s not right to want everything to end with you. In life, we make the most of the time and energy we’re given, and if you make enough right decisions, get lucky, and dedicate enough of yourself, you’ll hopefully get to go with the sense that you did okay, and that those you leave behind are going to be alright. Endings in fiction are as infinitely variable as any other feature of artistic expression, but in narratives with expansive casts or fleshed out worlds, they often leave us with the feeling that we’d only have to stay a little longer and there would be more stories to explore. Just as the real world is bigger than any one lifetime, successfully-established fictional worlds feel much larger than any one set of characters and their narrative.

         For the last eleven years, audiences have enjoyed a series of blockbusters featuring an impressively varied range of stylistic approaches. At their best, these films are deeply satisfying and affecting, delivering poignant moments about characters coming to terms with their own flaws and trying their best to do the right thing. But when considered together, these films have never entirely felt resolved, with each one going out on a lingering note of “just wait for what comes next”. The story was never over for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because another film was never far away. And now that the grand conclusion has finally come and $2.5 billion worth of us have watched and re-watched it, things are just the same as ever, and yet we’re at a moment that we’ve never seen before and are unlikely to see again for a long time. We’ve reached an ending of the story that begun with Tony Stark and his box of scraps in that cave in 2008. The story is over. But there are more stories to come.

Yes, there will be spoilers ahead. But I say again: this film has crossed over the two and a half billion dollar mark. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ll have contributed your drop or two to Marvel’s bucket. So let’s talk about the movie.

         I appreciate the efforts of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely as screenwriters, Joe and Anthony Russo as directors, and the input of every person involved in deciding the final shape of Endgame’s story to make its structure noticeably different to that of Infinity War. The previous Avengers film is a constant juggling act, relying on the viewer taking to Thanos as a central thread around which the rest of the film is hung. We’re either seeing the various steps Thanos is taking along his journey, hearing about what kind of man he is and what he intends to do, or seeing characters who are consistently on the back foot as they frantically scramble to strategically and mentally prepare for an opponent they’re not ready for. By this point in the series, we’ve been conditioned to expect to see things primarily from the point of view of the dozens of characters aligned with the Avengers, but Infinity War is messy and fractured when you look at it from the perspective of the heroes. And that’s the point – our heroes are fractured, and so there’s no unified effort against the villain as he single-mindedly pursues his goal with continuous success. The Avengers are a mess, and they lose. Thanos is the one who seizes control of the narrative, undoing the decisions and sacrifices made by the heroes as he dictates what his ambitions are and why they are so noble… and because viewers are susceptible to sympathising with the person who names themselves the hero and takes the reins of the narrative, far too many people bought Thanos’ rhetoric. For a year there, we really were seeing think-pieces that said “maybe the genocidal zealot who emotionally manipulates people is right”!

         But Endgame’s structure deliberately contrasts against Infinity War’s. Whereas Infinity War is about heroes being separated and the catastrophe that follows in the wake of this disunity, Endgame presents its heroes as a group of grieving people who are unified through their shared regrets and resolve to overcome their despair together and work towards a singular objective to try and fix everything. The Avengers are disassembled in Infinity War and reassembled in Endgame. As a result, the structure is comparatively more uniform. You can clearly differentiate the film into three distinct thirds – the five-year time skip that shows life on a mournful Earth still coming to terms with half of life being eradicated, the Back to the Future Part II time-travel mission as characters revisit scenarios from previous films, and the big blowout battle where every surviving main superpowered character in the entire franchise is dumped into one battle for your viewing pleasure. Each third offers something different, meaning you cover all of the ground that you’d want to in a dramatic, energetic, and emotional close to a blockbuster saga with literally dozens of characters who are all key players. Each third is impressively balanced, and they all act as strong supporting columns for the film as a result.

         However, because these thirds are as distinct as they are, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll come away saying “I preferred these two parts over that third part, which felt okay but a little unnecessary”. Personally, I think there are plenty of themes (grief and a desire to revisit the past, putting guilt and trauma to rest, and of course, the strength of unity) and character arcs (Nebula finally choosing to integrate herself into a group of people who value her and literally killing the old version of herself who wanted only to please her abusive father-figure being the stand-out one) which help gel each of the film’s three segments together without much resistance. But I have encountered multiple people who have expressed the sentiment that they really liked two thirds but they could take or leave another third – inevitably, which third is which always varies. I can imagine that, if you’re not getting a lot out of one of the segments, Endgame will certainly make you antsy for the film to return to what you felt it was pulling off more successfully. The three distinct thirds can result in a fragmented viewing experience for some audience members. On the other hand, I felt that the clearer, more focused structure not only made the film seem less jumbled than its predecessor, but also made it a suitable companion-piece to Infinity War and its Thanos-centric structure.

         The emotional response I have to Endgame is not the same electric glee I had from seeing the first Avengers, though moments like Cap picking up the hammer, the cinematic equivalent of a double-page spread of every single MCU hero charging towards Thanos’ army in one image, and “she’s got help” all sparked that feeling off inside me with more intensity than I’ve felt for a long time. No, what I feel more than anything about the MCU right now is a paradoxical sense of melancholic yet nevertheless delighted satisfaction. A part of that comes from the strengths of that first third, which, despite my sincere claims that all three sections gel together successfully, is nevertheless my favourite segment of the film (with the possible exception of the epilogue, but we’ll get to that). In this review’s opening paragraphs, I talked about endings not being the definitive final word as life and the world must always carry on. My reflection on that was primarily positive, but in this opening hour, we see the sad alternative form that this concept can take. Thanos killed half the universe and was killed in retaliation – the conflict ends, as does the hope of repairing the damage done by this tragedy. But the universe doesn’t end even with half of its inhabitants being gone. As Steve succinctly says, the survivors have to keep moving forward, “otherwise Thanos should have killed all of us”. It’s an outlook that Steve encourages, even if he can’t fully believe it himself, because he thinks it’s the best way for people to regain control over their unthinkable circumstances. The setup for Endgame presents us with a universe that died a half-death – everything ended for half its population five years ago, while life for the other half of the population persists, and they are trying their best to make sense of that.

         That struggle with grief, both on a colossal and a personal scale, is what unifies every single character, but the difference lies in how they respond to that grief. Black Widow throws herself into her work to try and keep the good that superheroes can do going, but her efforts feel as if they aren’t enough, being told by Okoye that the natural tectonic shifts she’s reporting on aren’t something you actively address with a strike squad and that you have to “handle it by not handling it”. Hawkeye was always the simple guy involved in the Avengers who was kept grounded by his family. Without them, he has nothing to keep him rooted, no home to return to, so he goes in the complete opposite direction and becomes a dedicated avenger in a literal sense, dolling out punishment fuelled by his frustration without any of the purpose and direction that he gained from his connections to friends and family. Hulk / Banner actually come out of this having made some progress, deciding to meditate on what they learned from their losses and literally come together in their grief to become one being, Professor Hulk. Tony and Pepper make the most of the luck they managed to find together, but are both keenly aware of all those who weren’t so lucky, wanting to get back what they lost but keep what they’ve found, which is remarkably human and understandable. Thor… hm. Okay, yes, Thor is a mixed bag. In all honesty, I loved Thor in this film and was empathetic towards his depression and anxiety attacks. I also love that Thor gets to stay as he is and still be shown that he is indeed worthy to wield Mjolnir and fight in the battle alongside all these other heroes without having to change who he is. But I do acknowledge the issues that numerous viewers have raised about some of the jokes made by the other characters being at the expense of Thor’s weight, and how they found it uncomfortable, and, in instances, meanspirited and harmful. I love the current version of Thor and feel Chris Hemsworth injected even more bubbly charm and infectious spirit to his character while blending it with the genuine pathos Thor was going through with remarkable talent. But the film’s tendency to use the character’s weight as an opportunity to make jokes about him being fat is not ideal. I’m glad to see Thor continue as he is into further movies (though it is possible that they’ll say he lost weight between Endgame and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3), but I sincerely hope we DON’T see the fat-jokes continue as they are. The lighting, music, and performances of everyone in the cast all contribute to this palpable sensation of immense loss, which communicates not only what’s at stake in this epic conclusion, but also how each character involved has been changed by what they’ve had to go through since Infinity War.

         But that only touches on the melancholic side of things; why do I also feel delighted and satisfied as I take in these sombre themes? Well, to put it simply, this one sticks the landing by closing the right doors in the most appropriate way while keeping other doors open in a balanced approach that seems so right. Tony Stark sacrifices his life after declaring “I am Iron Man” one last time, putting everything of himself into doing the right thing when so long ago he enjoyed a life of zero-accountability and kept his work on weapons technology at a safe distance. The image of his first arc-reactor in its memento case reading “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart” floating on the water at his funeral destroyed me at both viewings, because not only have his actions proved this fact as well, but we see numerous people all around this site as they pay their respects, showing the hearts of so many characters we care about who were connected to his. And Steve Rogers, the soldier who could never sit down if he saw a situation pointed south, after standing up against a galactic tyrant and his army, first alone and then with the support of countless men and women rallying to him, finally lets himself rest. Not many people have talked about the new horizons Steve takes in in this film; when the surviving heroes take Rocket’s ship to the Garden Planet, the camera makes a point of focusing on an extreme close-up of Steve’s eye as they travel through hyperspace. Even after nearly a decade of familiarity with this new era, the man out of time, a kid from 1940s Brooklyn, is seeing things that he could’ve never imagined. He’s come so, so far. I can think of no better conclusion than for him to return back home.

          But the film’s epilogue isn’t just concerned with closing the curtain on these heroes as they sit down to rest. Just as these stories end, we see hints of what stories are yet to come for other heroes. In the sequence where the camera pans over the countless faces attending Tony’s funeral, it’s fitting that the last hero we see (before Nick Fury steps into frame under the veranda, concealed in the shadows at the very end, much like his very first entrance as a post-credits tease at the end of Iron Man) is Carol Danvers. Having made her debut just months ago, she is the most recent addition to this universe, so her position at the back of the line reflects that. Her placement halfway up the steps she’s standing on suggests that she’s acting as an embodiment for the road to the future – she is literally on the next step for the series of films Marvel will make as they move forward. And she’s not alone, because other heroes will continue to thrive and flourish as their stories continue. Sam is handed the mantle of Captain America, and what’s achingly beautiful about this exchange is the attitude of the two men involved. Sam views Steve as his friend first and foremost, so he is sincere when he says he’s happy for him. But Sam also respects Steve so much as the man who deserves to be Captain America. Much like how Mjolnir can only be wielded by those who are worthy, Cap’s shield becomes a sacred relic that should only be worn by the right man for the job. And when Steve gently encourages Sam to try the shield on, knowing full well what it means to the world and to both of them, he does so as both Captain America finding the right man to fill his position, and as Sam’s friend Steve, telling him with assurance that he really is one of the best people he knows. When Sam confesses that he feels like the shield belongs to someone else, Steve responds with elegant purity “it doesn’t”. Everything at the core of Captain America, the bravery, the conviction to always stand back up and fight no matter how much it pains them to do so, and the responsibility to always look out for the little guy, are all qualities which never belonged to Steve and Steve alone; those virtues can belong to anyone, and Steve tells his friend that he recognises them in Sam. I cannot wait to see the good that Sam will do as he follows his promise to do his best.  

         Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has been developing a mentee / mentor relationship with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man since Civil War, and here it culminates in a bittersweet arc that lays the groundwork for what I expect will be some fascinating and impactful characterisation in Far From Home in a few months’ time. Tony mourns for Peter most of all, viewing him as a surrogate son who has much of the same inventive genius and drive that he has, with the addition of some compassionate heart and level of responsibility that is far beyond his years. Peter has it in him to be better than Tony, and Tony knows this. So it’s understandable why the loss of that kind, youthful spirit and his limitless potential would hurt Tony so much. In Tony’s dying moments, we share Peter’s tears as we see how much this connection means to them both and realise what is being lost. But we know this is exactly what Tony fought for – the chance for the next generation to live and grow. Holland’s performance when we see Peter return to school hints at his sense of disconnection, as his expression creates the impression that he feels like a stranger in a place with which he once felt so familiar. With the support of his friends, especially Ned, he will find his way in the next step of his journey.

          Endgame provides definitive endings for the journeys of characters we’ve been following for more films than we see most actors get to play Bond, but it also manages to cast a hopeful eye towards the future without compromising its position as a neat conclusion to everything up to this point. In fact, its simultaneous handling of reflective closure and moving forward with renewed purpose makes for a remarkably poignant milestone. Stories rarely strike such a balance between meaningful finality and the uplifting excitement of wanting more stories and knowing you’re going to get them. And that probably sounds shallow and frivolous because, at the end of the day, we’re talking about a successful studio delivering a hyped-up film that promises to be a finale but also serves the financially driven purpose of pitching you a dozen other films and TV series. But through the efforts of over a decade’s worth of dedicated storytellers and creative artists, this series has come to mean more than just another substantial drop in Disney’s bucket. It’s become a fictional world that a massive audience has fallen in love with in the same way that people did with Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, Mass Effect, and a hundred other worlds. We’ve rooted for these characters and cried at some of their most emotional moments, and we’ve grown to care so much about the MCU that it represents a living, breathing world for us. And this kind of ending just makes that proximity to reality that much closer. Stories end and lives come to a close, but they often do so in the middle of other people’s lives and stories. After all, Yinsen’s sacrifice in the MCU’s first film, Iron Man is the end of his story, but his death acts as a foundational moment for the man that Tony would grow to be – his ending is a part of Iron Man’s beginning. In Endgame, heroes pass away, lay down arms, or choose to step down from a position they no longer feel a need to hold onto. At the same time, other heroes move onto the next step of their journey, accept new responsibilities, and accept the titles passed onto them from those who know they will do a fine job. It’s a beautiful encapsulation of the natural balance between life and death, between the end of the old and the beginning of something new. It’s the balance that Thanos strived for but never fully understood, as he wanted to cultivate life but in his obsessive crusade ended up sewing nothing but death. It is only right that the heroes are the ones to achieve that balance through their actions and connections with one another.

Final Score: Gold.

Avengers: Endgame is overflowing and self-indulgent, but it has every right to be and more than earned it. There are missteps, and there’s room for disappointment over the direction that certain characters are taken in, most notably the original version of Gamora ultimately staying dead and staying the victim of an abusive father-figure who seizes all agency away from her, or Thor arguably continuing to veer away from where he was at the end of Thor: Ragnarok and his new weight being an excuse to make cheap jokes that feel uncomfortable. But it is also a well-structured film that offers three distinct tones that are all equally engaging, and its delightful moments of humour and momentous action strikes a grand and immensely satisfying chord with its examination of grief and the natural interrelationship of the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. It is as significant a landmark for this fictional series as any invested viewer could hope for. It’s a hell of a thing to have come this far, and I can’t wait for whatever comes next.

[danganronpawritings]

Hi there! I'm sure you've probably gotten tons of other requests, but can you possibly do some NDRV3 guys x reader headcanons, but the guys are yanderes? Any type of prompt for the headcanons after that is up to you, wherever it be something romantic or odd. I'm sorry if that's kinda confusing, I kinda just mean write whatever you want for the headcanons as long as they're yandere. I just want to see some of the guys as yanderes. Thank you, and have the best day you possibly can!

Muahaha you gave me too much power, now prepare for angst. Here are the V3 guys as Yanderes… with a Vengeful Reader, who will get revenge for their loved ones.

Kaito- He had this dream, a dream he wanted even more than going into space, and that dream was for you and him to be together. For you to only have to rely on him… to only smile at him… only look at him… just him. No one else. So, he did what he could to achieve that, but you didn’t see the same dream he did. You had a dream of vengeance. To avenge your parents, your friends, your loved ones, your life that he has taken from you, you dream of running into his arms, giving him the illusion of love, he had so desperately dreamed of, before crushing it all with a knife to the heart. Of the dreams you both had, yours was the only dream that became reality.

Ouma- You were still stuck on the pathetic lives of those who thought they could get close to you without repercussion. He was the ultimate dictator after all, you were to do as he said, you were his queen, and anyone else who tried to get close to you well, he’d just add another name to his list of people to have eliminated. You just couldn’t get over them, and he tried to lock you up to teach you a lesson, but when you came up behind him, and started to strangle him with the chain on your handcuffs, he didn’t fight you back. He knew you were in the right, he deserved this, he had been living in delusions, and you deserved to be free from his lies.

Hoshi- As someone who has taken out a whole mafia before, taking out your entire family, boyfriend, and friends was quite an easy job, to say the least. He did end up getting caught though, he was blinded by his love, and got lazy covering up the crime. However, the last thing he expected, was for you to visit him before his trial. The look in your eyes, once bright and full of life, were now dead, and dull, but not empty. No, they were filled with immeasurable loathing, pure and raw hatred. You said very little, only that not even the death penalty was a good enough punishment for his sins, and to rot in the afterlife. Those words stabbed him harder than a knife. The one he loved more than anything on this earth, wished his worse than death, well, the most he could do for his love would be to grant your wish, he thought as he began to tie his shirt into a noose. He never made it to trial.

Gonta- Gonta didn’t understand as you stood in front of him with a gun pointed to his head. You were giving a speech about avenging the loved ones he had killed, but he didn’t understand. Your boyfriend, your parents, your sibling, and friends, they were all getting in between the two of you, there were stopping the two of you from being happy together. That’s why Gonta got rid of them, so you two could finally be together. So why? Why were you so angry? Why do you look at him with such a cold and hateful expression? Why? Why would you want to avenge those who only brought the two of you pain? He never did get his answer as you pulled the trigger, finally freeing yourself of the large shadow of sick love and death that had been following you for far to long.

Kiibo- You couldn’t let this go on. This must be some sort of malfunction, right? Kiibo wasn’t programmed to kill, but he did- he killed everyone you had even made eye contact with. You had to stop this. He was stuck to you like glue in the name of ‘love’, but this wasn’t love, but of course Kiibo couldn’t understand that. You lured him to Iruma’s lab to have him ‘upgraded’. You told him goodbye before shutting him down, never to boot him back up.

Saihara- He was on the side of the law, so it was easy for him to detour police and investigators away from him for the murders he committed. He had a perfect system set up: for your friends and family he didn’t kill, he framed and convicted for the murders of those he did kill. It was perfect, he had everyone fooled. All but you. You saw through the lies and deceit. You knew exactly who had torn your life apart, loved one by loved one. You eventually confronted him, showing up to a place he was supposed to meet (and kill) your last living friend. With no words spoken you put a bullet in his head. No words were needed, he knew his sins, and since if the law system wouldn’t bring him to justice, you did.

Korekiyo-He was determined to make you his, so much that at this point, he disregarded your own happiness. All you needed was him, and only him, everyone else was a distraction, so he swiftly got rid of them. When confronted by you, he didn’t even deny it. He knew what was best for you, and said you should just trust him, they were nothing but distractions, let go of them, they were no-… He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before you pulled to trigger.

Amami- You were precious. Far more precious than any of his sisters, he wasn’t going to lose you. So when he found out that you and your parents were going on a trip overseas, he quickly put an end to those plans. You can’t go on a trip with no parents to pay for it right. You were going to stay here, where he couldn’t lose you. So, when you came to confront him, a gun in hand, pointed at him, he was completely unphased. You were so overcome with emotion, hand shaking, tears streaming down your face, demanding an answer, why? He said nothing more than “Because I love you” before you pulled the trigger.

~Mod Anju

[bibleteachingbyolga]

The book of Revelation confuses many Christians. Filled with beasts, angels, living creatures, wars, lightning, thunder, prophecies, and visions, its story can be a bit overwhelming for any of us. Something like a Marvel movie on steroids.

Not surprisingly, scholars differ widely on what it all means. Some try to tie it to actual people and events in history. Others assign most of Revelation to the future. Still others believe God is giving us repeated descriptions of what is taking place now in the church age.

Wherever we land on the bigger picture, Revelation gives us a series of windows into reality that are both hard to miss and easier to understand: its songs. Woven into the fabric of the book are around a dozen choruses, both spoken and sung. That shouldn’t surprise us given how often in Scripture drawing near to God is expressed and encouraged through singing.

But these songs of heaven are unique. They’re written by God himself, and they show us what singing in God’s presence will really be like. And we may be singing some form of these particular choruses forever. Even now, though, they have much to teach us.

Songs of Exuberance

Let’s admit it. The descriptions of the singing of heaven put the sound of any rock concert or sports stadium to shame, not to mention most churches.

Myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice . . . (Revelation 5:11–12)

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea . . . (Revelation 5:13)

And all the angels . . . fell on their faces before the throne. (Revelation 7:11)

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder . . . (Revelation 19:6)

Both audibly and visually, we’re confronted with the fact that those who truly grasp God’s nature and what he’s accomplished will be moved to sing. As Dennis Johnson writes, Revelation shows us that “those who dwell with God in heaven constantly break forth in song, overwhelmed with joy and adoration by his perfections in himself and by his awesome achievements in creation and redemption” (Triumph of the Lamb, 330).

The example of heaven challenges the assumption that congregational worship should be reserved and subdued. While we cite proof texts, claim to honor tradition, and avoid looking too fanatical, might it be that we’re actually just failing to see how great God’s glory in Christ really is?

Songs of Explanation

Heaven’s songs give us insight into the character of God, the works of his hands, and why he does what he does. We don’t hear any of the simple, repetitious 7-11 songs (7 words repeated 11 times — or more!) that are so popular today. Rather, the lyrics shed real light on what’s happening in the world and in the heavenly throne room.

Illuminating Holiness

For instance, at the beginning of Revelation 4, John is shown an open door in heaven. He paints a moving picture of what he sees and hears. A throne. An emerald-like rainbow. Flashes of lightning. Peals of thunder. But what does it all mean? Revelation 4:8 tells us:

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,      who was and is and is to come!

God is thrice holy — righteous, omnipotent, eternal, set apart. The song of verse 11 further explains that God created all things and sustains all things for his pleasure:

Worthy are you, our Lord and God,      to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things,      and by your will they existed and were created. (Revelation 4:11)

Unfolding Redemption

At the beginning of chapter 5, John hears a new song, sung to the Lamb:

Worthy are you to take the scroll      and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God      from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,      and they shall reign on the earth. (Revelation 5:9–10)

The Lamb could open the scroll because he was slain, a reference to his substitutionary death on the cross. His death ransomed people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation, a reference to the international scope of the gospel invitation.

The ransomed will be a kingdom and priests to God who will reign forever on earth, a statement showing that God’s promise to make Israel “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) was fulfilled in the church, made up of both Jews and Gentiles. In short, despite the turmoil and tests of the present age, God will surely have a diverse people for his glory with whom he will live forever.

After an outpouring of praise for the Lamb’s attributes (Revelation 5:12), we hear another song, declaring Jesus’s divinity as clearly as any passage in Scripture: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13). In a similar way, our songs should be filled with the character, nature, purposes, actions, and heart of God. Words don’t get in the way of worship. They give substance and meaning to it.

Songs of Encouragement

When God gave John the prophecy of Revelation, Christians were already facing varying degrees of persecution, and it was expected to increase. Pressures to conform to a pagan culture, and even to participate in the idolatry of emperor worship, came at Christians from every direction.

What would give John’s readers faith to endure and courage to stand against opposition? What would strengthen their resolve as they saw friends and family members taken from their homes and martyred for their allegiance to King Jesus? The knowledge that God’s throne is immovable, sovereign, and eternal.

The saints needed to be reminded that, in the heavenly realms, God’s authority and rule are not only affirmed, but celebrated:

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. (Revelation 11:15)

We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,      who is and who was, for you have taken your great power      and begun to reign. (Revelation 11:17)

Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,      for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute      who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants. (Revelation 19:1–2)

How often do our songs both detail the forces of evil arrayed against us and point us clearly to the God who has triumphed over them in Christ? David Peterson asks,

Do our hymns and acclamations . . . challenge us to take a firm stand against every manifestation of Satan’s power and to bear faithful witness to the truth of the gospel in our society? It is not good enough to sing certain items merely because they make the congregation feel good! (Engaging with God, 278)

When we sing together, our strength comes not from aiming to feel and emote, but to see and hear. We want to see God reigning on his throne with absolute justice, wisdom, and power over every terrorist, virus, dictator, and manifestation of evil in our day. And we want to hear and join in the cries of jubilation that are already ascending to the God who can do all things and whose purposes cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2).

Songs of Expectation

Endurance is one thing. Expectation is another. It’s possible to sing through dark seasons, discouraging outcomes, heart-wrenching losses, relentless opposition, and dwindling resources with grit, resolve, and stoicism. But that doesn’t describe the songs of heaven. Not even close. They’re marked by joy.

And that joy stems from a confident expectation that God will accomplish everything he has promised. The final songs of Revelation describe God overcoming all evil, the nations bowing down in worship, and the bride of Christ finally beholding her groom, King Jesus, at a never-ending royal celebration of grace.

     All nations will come      and worship you,      for your righteous acts have been revealed. (Revelation 15:4)

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God      the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult      and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come,      and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself      with fine linen, bright and pure. (Revelation 19:6–8)

Do our songs help people clearly understand that what’s yet to come is not only certain but worth celebrating now? Do we fill them with anticipation for our glorious future in Christ, when “all the waiting will be over, every sorrow will be healed, all the dreams it seemed could never be will all be real”? Our songs help bring into sharper focus the things hoped for and unseen that God has promised to us.

Transformed Through Singing

Will our earthly songs look and sound exactly like the songs of heaven? No. But can the songs of heaven motivate us to sing with greater passion, understanding, confidence, and anticipation now? Absolutely. G.K. Beale writes,

Is it possible . . . that, as we declared the same truths about God as the heavenly beings do, the same Holy Spirit who is pictured as being before the throne would deepen and transform our understanding of God and his glory in a way that touches our whole being, in its spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and even physical components? (Revelation: A Shorter Commentary, 108)

It’s not only possible. It’s God’s intention. So, may we joyfully model our singing after the songs of heaven until, by the grace of God, they are no longer just a worthy goal, but the sound of present reality.

[multiverseforger]

The Dragon was found in a burning field by Lt. Frank Darling. At the time, Chicago was being terrorized by villainous "superfreaks" (Larsen's collective term for superpowered characters), namely the criminal gang called the Vicious Circle, led by the mysterious Overlord. Realizing that the Dragon's superhuman powers would be a terrific boon to the police in battling the Vicious Circle, Darling asks the Dragon to join the police. At first, the Dragon refuses and takes a job in the warehouse of Darling's cousin. After a number of serious incidents, including the murder of the superhero Mighty Man and the brutal mauling of SuperPatriot, Darling takes drastic action. He pays Vicious Circle members to threaten his cousin in the hope that it will prompt Dragon to reconsider his offer. Although this achieves Darling's desired result, the two criminals, Skullface and Hardware, kill Darling's cousin and detonate a bomb in his warehouse. The Dragon joins the police, but Darling is now under the thumb of the Vicious Circle, causing him to steer the Dragon away from Vicious Circle activities.

Later, the Dragon gains a girlfriend, Debbie Harris, only to see her shot dead in his apartment by her jealous ex-boyfriend Arnold Dimple. The Dragon falls into a deep depression as a result. Dimple returns to plague the Dragon on several occasions as the Fiend, who makes a deal with the devil to gain supernatural powers.

Chicago PDEdit

As well as being kept away from Vicious Circle activities, the Dragon was loaned out to other police forces across the country to help them in dealing with superpowered criminals. While on loan to the NYPD, he first met the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, whom he assisted multiple times in later comics. Also during his time in New York, a large prison break occurred and a number of powerful and dangerous criminals were killed. This is the first time the Chicago PD lost a star witness against the Overlord; Hardware, who intended to give evidence against the criminal, was shot dead.

Though Captain Darling's Freak Force program failed, the Dragon carried on a lasting relationship with one of its former members: Rapture, a former prostitute with electrical powers, who would later have his child. Meanwhile, the Overlord's second-in-command Cyberface broke away from the Vicious Circle to form a rival organization. Cyberface was later arrested but, like Hardware before him, he was killed before he was able to testify. Ultimately, Cyberface was resurrected and later led the Vicious Circle under the control of the Horde, another recurring villain.

Later, the Dragon made his first attempt to arrest the Overlord, who easily defeated him and left him impaled upon a church spire. The Dragon was believed to be dead, but regenerated from his wounds afterwards. This is not the only time the Dragon was missing and presumed dead; it becomes both a recurring theme and running joke in the series. During his recovery, the Dragon was attacked by a person under the mental control of a strange worm. Under the domination of this creature, the Dragon went on a rampage during which many innocent bystanders are injured or killed. He was finally stopped by the vigilante Mace, and the worms were traced to the Horde. The rampage resulted in a massive negative backlash against the Chicago Police Department, and the Dragon's biggest naysayer, R. Richard Richards, took this opportunity to attack the Dragon with a robotic weapon dubbed the "Dragon Slayer". Later, the Dragon encountered the She-Dragon, a young superpowered woman who modeled herself after him.

Following an attack on the police station and the murder of Cyberface (who is later resurrected), the Dragon led a SWAT team to finally take down the Overlord. The battle was harsh, and every member of the SWAT team perished except for the Dragon, who was skinned alive. Even in his weakened state, the Dragon finally unmasked the Overlord as Mafia boss Antonio Seghetti, who subsequently falls to his death.

After aiding the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for a second time, the Dragon narrowly survived another attack by the Fiend, which left him nearly crippled after his bones healed incorrectly. To make matters worse, Chicago was in the midst of a brutal gang war that arose as a result of the Overlord's death. The Vicious Circle, once kept tightly organized by the Overlord, had since separated into several factions that were battling for criminal supremacy. The Dragon was found by a friendly cabbie and Mighty Man, who used his super-strength to re-set the Dragon's bones. After recuperating from this ordeal, the Dragon fought another prison break, this time in a maximum security facility torn open by a newly-resurrected Cyberface. This battle marked the end of the gang war, and Cyberface assumed command of the Vicious Circle.

This victory was followed by difficult times for the Dragon. After a number of crossovers with other Image Comics characters including WildStar and The Maxx, the Dragon encountered Spawn and ultimately was sent to Hell by the Fiend. The Fiend can possess living bodies, and his powers are fueled by the capacity for hate of those possessed. His last victim was Debbie Harris' mother, who was unaware that the demon possessing her was the spirit of her daughter's murderer. While in Hell, a fist-fight occurred between God and the devil. As God finally overcomes the devil, he warned his defeated opponent: "Don't fuck with God." Just as the amnesiac Dragon begins to ask about his origins, God returned him to Earth.

Afterward, things grow steadily worse for the Dragon. He was unable to save ill fellow officer Phil Dirt with a blood transfusion. Meanwhile, Rapture (pregnant with the Dragon's child) suffered internal damage when the baby kicked—the unborn child having inherited its father's strength—and Rapture entered premature labour. The Dragon was not able to reach the hospital in time, and the baby appeared to have died. However, in truth, the infant was taken by the Covenant of the Sword, a shadowy organization bent on world takeover.

After a crossover with Hellboy, the Dragon was caught up in the Mars Attacks (Image) and Mars Attacks/Savage Dragon event, in which he was responsible for destroying the Martians' bases on Mars using a Martian growth ray. This resulted in their retreat and possible extinction. While he was gone, the Vicious Circle had taken control of the city. Returning home to a devastated Chicago, the Dragon was captured and publicly crucified by the Circle. The Dragon survived and defeated most of the villains, but the Dragon's new superior, Captain Mendoza, suspended him for having been missing for so long. During his suspension, the Dragon spent a few months as a bounty hunter and helped rebuild the city after the Martian invasion.

S.O.S. yearsEdit

Behind the scenes during this period, Rob Liefeld departed from Image Comics. The Mars Attacks Image event and the Shattered Image crossover were used as a way to phase out characters created by Liefeld from the collective "Image Universe", including Youngblood. In the pages of Savage Dragon, Larsen has the Dragon approached by the United States government to form a superhuman task-force to replace Youngblood. After negotiations, the team is dubbed the Special Operations Strikeforce, or S.O.S. This team includes much of the super-powered supporting cast of the book, including Jennifer Murphy, a super-strong, invulnerable single mother first introduced in The Savage Dragon: Sex & Violence miniseries. Despite being the founding member of the team, the Dragon spends little time as a member.

Later, on a dying parallel Earth, a murderous despot named Darklord begins to swap parts of his Earth with parts from the Dragon's. The Dragon leads a team of S.O.S. members, including Jennifer Murphy and his former girlfriend Rapture, to this world to stop Darklord. Rapture is killed by Darklord, and the Dragon and Jennifer are separated from the rest of the team. While the remaining members of S.O.S. manage to stop the transfer and escape back to their own Earth, the Dragon and Jennifer are forced to find their own way off of the dying planet. While they make their escape, Dragon attempts to find this Earth's Rapture, only to find that world's Debbie Harris instead.

The threesome is lost in space for some months, and the Dragon is once again presumed dead, eventually landing on Godworld, where Debbie dies but is revived as an angel. The Dragon and Jennifer are caught in a battle between Thor and Hercules, and then sent back to Earth by All-God; Debbie does not return with them. Following this, the Dragon fights a Dr. Doom-like armored dictator before returning to Chicago on leave and striking up a casual sexual relationship with his former partner Alex Wilde.

In the giant-sized issue #50, many of the series subplots are resolved, and in a climactic battle among most of the series cast, the Dragon is killed by the mystic Abner Cadaver; however, the wizard is murdered midway through this by William Jonson, and the Dragon is bonded with him.

William Jonson and the new OverlordEdit

Main article: She-Dragon

The series changed its title to Savage She-Dragon for five issues, featuring her as the main character during an attack by the God Squad to retrieve the various super-freaks that were descendants of gods. This led to the S.O.S. returning to Godworld and its accidental destruction by S.O.S. member and former Deadly Duo member Kid Avenger. During this time, William Jonson realizes he and the Dragon are sharing bodies, and shortly thereafter the Dragon finds he has the ability to take over Jonson's body, so they become a masked superhero. While he is helping the She-Dragon, Jonson's fiancé, Rita Medermade, is kidnapped by Jonson's brother Ralph and they both encounter an individual wearing the Overlord armor. While rescuing her, Jonson is shot, Ralph is killed by the Overlord, and the Dragon is given full possession of his body.

Abner Cadaver returns—made up of parts of dead God Squad characters, Darklord, and the Dragon's arm—and engages in battle with Fon~Ti, the mystical being who was once the Horde. After Fon~Ti's victory, he separates the Dragon from Jonson and returns the Dragon to his normal body. Having admitted their love, Jennifer and the Dragon begin to date. After a fight with Impostor, posing as Rapture, the Dragon proposes to Jennifer, and their wedding follows in the next issue, in which Jennifer is apparently killed by the new Overlord. In truth, she was replaced with Impostor beforehand by the Covenant of the Sword. Though he had only been semi-active before, the Dragon officially resigns from the S.O.S. and became the legal guardian of Jennifer's daughter Angel. In the following issue, the Overlord subplot is tied up after the Dragon defeats his new team. The Dragon kills the Overlord, and he is revealed as supporting character Vic Nixon, who had worn the armor to spy on Rita; the armor then corrupted him. After this, the Overlord armor is destroyed.

Single parent and Damian DarklordEdit

Following the resolution of the new Overlord plot, the series spent most of its issues wrapping up all the remaining subplots. This was preparation for the eventual revamp in issue #75, with the Dragon as a single parent looking after Angel and eventually losing a custody battle for her because of his dangerous lifestyle. The Dragon dated a television producer named Marcy Howard, resumed his casual affair with Alex Wilde, and dated Ann Stevens before she is murdered, while a number of super-powered children and adults were kidnapped by the Covenant of the Sword.

After losing custody of Angel and Ann's murder, the Dragon and Mighty Man (now former Freak Force member Dart) began searching for the missing SuperPatriot. This led them to the Covenant of the Sword, which had in its possession the SuperPatriot, Jennifer, and the Dragon's child. The Dragon and Mighty Man are captured, but eventually rescued in a large battle similar to the one in issue #50 in which a number of characters are killed.

It was revealed that the Covenant was formed by Damian Darklord, a time traveler who was the enemy of a vigilante named Super-Tough. This man became Darklord and started life as Damian, the son of Liberty, SuperPatriot's daughter who was raped during the Mars Attacks event. Damian also built and detonated the "Nega Bomb" made up of super-powered individuals that de-powered every non-natural "freak" in the world. The Dragon then kills him.

This Savage WorldEdit

With issue #76, the series changed into a Jack Kirby-inspired post-apocalyptic/dystopian story. The Dragon is stuck in a new reality he created by killing the infant Damian Darklord, which prevented him from going back in time, and with most of the mutated and monstrous populace of this world trying to kill him. The Dragon finds his house to be a crater and believes Jennifer and Angel are dead. The Dragon has encounters with WildStar (Image Comics) and Madman and finds out that during his time possessed, without Mace to stop him, he went on a much longer rampage, killing Alex Wilde. The Dragon also discovers that Cyberface is now President of America and has the SuperPatriot under his control. The Dragon organizes a group of old enemies and allies to defeat Cyberface. After fulfilling a commitment to Rex Dexter—who helped him overthrow Cyberface—by saving his daughter, the Dragon returns a hero and finds his way back to Chicago and is reunited with Jennifer and Angel, who had in fact survived.

The Dragon then finds his old world had survived as well as the Savage World. His counterpart from Darkworld, this Dragon, was defeated, but the Dragon's old Earth was destroyed by a world-devouring Galactus-like being named Universo, despite the best efforts of the Dragon and his son, Malcolm, who are left floating in space after its destruction. The Dragon is able to save Alex Wilde from that world. After this, the Dragon marries Jennifer and lives with her, Angel, and Angel's new "pet", Mr. Glum, who is secretly plotting to kill the Dragon.

To coincide with the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Larsen created a corrupt politician Ronald Winston Urass, who engineers a successful write-in campaign to elect the Dragon President of the United States. However, once his criminal intents and relationship to the criminal Dread Knight are exposed, the Supreme Court disallows these votes. This leads a vengeful Urass to attack the Dragon using the armor of his father, the Dread Knight, who was an old foe of the SuperPatriot's.

Behind the scenes, Erik Larsen was made publisher of Image Comics, causing a nearly year-long publishing gap between issues #121 and #122 of the series. The title resumed regular publication in January 2006, with the first story involving a vengeful scientist from Iraq sending an almost unstoppable robot to kill the President.

Mr. Glum's plans for world domination were realized using the power of the God Gun (a weapon able to grant three wishes to its user). Glum fires the gun and asserts his control of the planet while the Dragon is incapacitated in a hospital, having lost his rapid healing abilities. Glum was, at the time, on the run with the Dragon's stepdaughter Angel after he caused her to grow to more than 100 feet tall, and she accidentally destroyed her house and crippled her mother. The two become partners and Angel adopts a murderous, merciless personality, while Glum set the people of Earth to work with the impossible task of making the planet look like his face (as his old world did).

The Dragon is revived with his healing abilities restored and is able to defy Glum's control because of a loophole in his wish that means he cannot control extraterrestrials. The Dragon is unable to get close enough to Glum due to the various robots and villains Glum has under his control. However, the intervention of a number of characters from the comic series Wanted, who had come to steal the God Gun, allows the Dragon to destroy the weapon, negating Glum's wish.

During the story, Vanguard's spaceship is destroyed, freeing Universo who was imprisoned on it. He begins to suck the energy from Earth once more. Universo and its herald are killed by Solar Man, a Superman-like hero who became murderous and was wished out of existence using the God Gun, a wish undone by the Dragon's destruction of the weapon. The She-Dragon also returns from Dimension X with the Angel from the Dragon's original world of origin. They are being pursued by the Darkworld Dragon and a new villainess, Battleaxe.

Back to BasicsEdit

After Angel and Malcolm's return to the new world, the Savage Dragon is left to face a new array of troubles. With Jennifer having disappeared and presumed dead, two superstrong kids ill-equipped to face the return to normalcy after months spent in isolation (Angel has learning deficits and Malcolm is nearly illiterate), and no income to care for his family, the Savage Dragon returns to the police force.

Meanwhile, a new Overlord takes over the Vicious Circle, resuming his attacks over the city, and the Savage Dragon, hospitalized after a fight, is ambushed and killed by a new freak with the power to steal the memories and the life force of his enemies. Due to the huge amount of lifeforce held by the Dragon and his powerful immune system, the freak absorbs all of his memories and physical characteristic, becoming essentially a new iteration of the Dragon. The Impostor Dragon has the remains of his former body packed in a preservative solution by Rex, and resumes his normal life.

Even this new lease at life appears to be short-lived, as the new Overlord, after trying to bargain with the Savage Dragon for his allegiance, literally blows his head and torso away: the Impostor Dragon, brought in the Vicious Circle laboratories for analysis, revives himself as a crazed, unstoppable, deformed powerhouse with conflicting memories, bent on nourishing himself on the superpowered Angel and Malcolm.

Still knowing nothing about the actions of the Impostor Dragon, Angel and Malcolm seek a way to revive the body of the Savage Dragon, despite being faced by Rex with the prospect of creating nothing more than a soulless being or a mind-addled monstrosity, due to the brain matter lost during the attack. They set off to ask Nurse Stevens for the last blood sample of the Dragon, hoping to use its regenerative abilities to speed up the recovery and the resurrection of the Savage Dragon corpse. The Vicious Circle, however, overpowers them, stealing the blood sample to create an army of Dragon clones.

As a last resort, after being faced by the Impostor Dragon who attacks Rex and is frozen in the preservative solution, Rex and Malcolm agree to transfuse part of Malcolm's blood into the Dragon's corpse. The Dragon revives, but has no memories of his former life.

Dragon WarsEdit

Concerned about the new, harder attitude of the Dragon, the new Overlord sends the Dark Dragon after the Savage Dragon. Showing a callous disregard for human life, the Savage Dragon ultimately reveals to have regained every shred of his past memory as Kurr the Emperor (see above), and after beating up the Dark Dragon, he eats his brains, killing him for his defiance.

He then proceeds to alienate from himself Malcolm, planning vengeance over the Vicious Circle, now using the Dragon's blood to empower his members. The new Overlord decides to strike a truce with the police department as seen in #159.[7] He lends the help of all the superfreaks in his command to stop Kurr. As the last attempt fails,[8] Kurr sheds his facade, proclaiming his identity and retelling his origins (see below), for the first time in-universe speaking, to Malcolm and Angel. Battling his way through several enemies, including Vanguard, an unnamed Shapeshifter taking the She-Dragon's appearance, Glum, the original Angel, and other friends and foes from his past, Kurr cleanses Earth of human life using a special venom.

After he battles and kills Malcolm, the Impostor Dragon wakes up, this time with the Savage Dragon's personality fully in charge, and avenges his offspring and world by killing the Kurr-Dragon. Damian Overlord proceeds to restore his original look and body, giving the Savage Dragon the opportunity to greet his species and leave the cleansed Earth in their care.

Distraught by the consequences of Kurr's actions, he pleads with Damian Overlord for the power to travel back in time and kill Kurr before he unleashes the potion, thus creating another divergent timeline where his family is still alive. Damian grants his wish, mercilessly killing him shortly thereafter as "Savage Dragon is a dangerous wildcard for the world". Despite a red herring implying Damian transplanted Savage's personality into WildStar's body, in the "restored" timeline Kurr's alien son, along with a "mysterious gentleman", takes away Virus' corpse (as he is now calling the Impostor Dragon), taking it on to his spaceship, where Virus and Kurr are used to return the Savage Dragon to life. The Savage Dragon decides to keep his resurrection hidden to Earthlings, and to make amends with his species, offers to help them to find a suitable planet.

After the Dragon Wars, Malcolm Dragon has taken the Savage Dragon's role, along with his sister Angel, acting as protectors of the city. A schism in the superfreaks has brought the Overlord working with the police department, with a part of the freaks still engaging in villainy, and Malcolm to keep them in check.[

[augeeks]

Chris Hemsworth on ‘Extraction’: It’s the most exhausting ride I’ve ever been on

When the exhilarating action film “Extraction” begins streaming on Netflix on Friday, you’ll see a side of Chris Hemsworth you don’t often see.

But there’s no need to take our word for it because “Extraction” director Sam Hargrave swears by it. In our recent video chat with the debuting filmmaker and his dashing lead star, Sam extolled this “side of Chris that people haven’t seen—at least, not on this level.”

Make no mistake, this may be Sam’s directorial debut, but he’s really no newcomer on the filmmaking block.

Before this directing gig landed on his lap, Sam was one of Hollywood’s most accomplished stunt coordinators, having cut his teeth into projects like “The Hunger Games,” “Atomic Blonde” and those crowd-pleasing superhero films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he served as Chris’ stunt double and “Endgame’s” stunt coordinator.

Justifying Sam’s hiring, screenwriter Joe Russo (“Avengers: Endgame”) explained, “The best action films are those where the action is used to illuminate character and their choices. A character’s emotional life is told through action—and Sam does that brilliantly.”

As it turns out, Sam wasn’t just paying lip service after breathing palpable cinematic life into Joe’s original script, inspired by his graphic novel “Ciudad.”

Even Chris’ reaction to the aforementioned flattering statement is in seeming synchronicity with his director’s.

“Doing ‘Extraction’ was the most exhausting ride I’ve ever been on,” the actor admitted. “The shoot was very challenging. But there was such a sense of accomplishment after every sequence at the end of each day.”

Having found Chris fun, open and accessible in our previous interview with him, we weren’t really surprised by Sam’s “testimony” because, in our experience as a theater director, we’ve always known that the most “open” actors are the type whose portrayals end up resonating instantly and deeply with audiences.

“They’ve seen Chris as Thor swinging a hammer and punching people in the face, but [his participation in this project] drives the action genre to the next level,” Sam explained. “Truthfully, we are just scratching the surface of this guy. Where his potential and work ethic are concerned, the sky’s the limit with Chris. So, all I wanted to do was to keep pushing that limitless potential.”

To film enthusiasts familiar with Chris’ body of work, he’s certainly no stranger to characters tasked with a do-or-die mission. He may have been mostly seen in actioners where characterization over spectacle is the norm, notably in high-profile projects where performances are often made to take the backseat.

But the 36-year-old actor has always managed to show how high the stakes are for any role he essays onscreen—from the splashy “dramedic” antics of Thor in the blockbuster “Avengers” flicks and the sleek true-to-life car-racing drama “Rush,” to the horror-comedy “Cabin in the Woods” and the twisted fairy tale “Snow White and the Huntsman.”

He even knows how to poke fun at himself, most memorably for his winkingly naughty turn in Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s “Vacation” and as the affable eye-candy in the estrogen-fueled reboot of “Ghosbusters” four years ago.

“Extraction” delivers the heady mix of hard action and compelling drama when grief-stricken Australian mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris) gets his “death wish” answered.

Tyler and his team are called in for a financially lucrative mission to rescue Ovi Mahajan Jr. (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the 14-year-old son of an imprisoned Indian drug lord (Pankaj Tripathi), who has been kidnapped by Ovi Sr.’s fierce Bangladeshi rival in Dhaka, Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli).

Tyler is tasked to turn Ovi over to Saju (Randeep Hooda), Ovi Sr.’s right-hand man, after he “extracts” Ovi from Amir’s lair. But just as he’s about to wrap up his mission, Tyler learns that he’s been tricked into it with not enough funds for his deadly feat! This is when Tyler must make a Solomonic choice. What to do?

The urgently paced film follows the cat-and-mouse chase that ensues from India to Bangladesh, using exotic, “nonmainstream” locations handpicked by Sam and his creative teams in India and Thailand.

In fact, for “Extraction’s” crucial and final action sequence, which culminates with an epic gun battle on a bridge, the production had to sift through so many bridges—all 72 of them—just to capture the claustrophobic feel needed for the movie’s bullet-ridden penultimate set piece, which required more than 300 security men during the difficult shoot!

Read also: 'Capone': Tom Hardy as Al Capone in a first trailer

Our Q&A with Chris (C) and Sam (S):

Chris, you have a created a character that isn’t hard to root for. Did you research on a particular mercenary to understand Tyler Rake? And how did you relate to his grief and recklessness?

C: We had a beautiful building block, which is the script that Sam and I responded to. [It’s also the reason why we] jumped on board. With this character, there’s something I can immediately relate to, having children myself.

The idea that any of that being jeopardized or threatened adds an extra layer of truth in your performance that you can use. In my early discussions with Sam about Tyler, it was important to not have this guy be one-dimensional—that [overused] idea that the hero of a film is simply indestructible or “Terminator-esque.” It was about having someone flawed and vulnerable … and someone who has demons. The guy has to be emotionally complicated.

It is this complexity that then dictates his fighting style, and the way he was kamikaze-like suicidal, that would push his movement and the way he would approach a mission, with very little regard for his own safety.

So, I was constantly tracking that and his emotional arc as he meets this young boy and how his interaction with Ovi changes him.

Sam, how has the transition been, from stunt director to film director, so far?

S: It’s a dream come true! I always knew that I was destined for it. But I worked so hard to get here—a path similar to a few former stunt coordinators who have come before me, like Chad Stahelski (“John Wick”) and David Leitch (“Atomic Blonde”).

Much of my path has informed my style and approach to filmmaking. Every time I was designing my action sequences, I was already practicing directing because it was always telling the story through action—it was never just action for the sake of action. It was never meant to make someone look cool. It always had to move the story forward and reveal something about character. So, those wonderful opportunities I’ve had through the years were the building blocks for becoming a director. Then, getting the opportunity, which I will forever be grateful for, was Joe Russo trusting me with a script that both Chris and I connected with.

What’s the most important part of the film that you want the audience to see?

C: In particular, there’s what we call a “oner,” a 12-minute action sequence where there’s a series of single shots that are then seamlessly pieced and cut together to look like it’s one continuous take. It took about two weeks to shoot!

That was incredibly challenging (laughs) because with the wide shots, we couldn’t have stunt guys come in and switch. If we made a mistake, we couldn’t cut to another angle. So, it had to be all-in and I had to be me right in the thick of it—with Sam right there moving with the camera in front of the car, diving across buildings and during the fight sequences.

But once we pulled it off, it felt like we’ve really done something special and pretty unique. I’m excited for people to see it.

S: Yes. That’ll probably be what most people will talk about and gravitate toward. But for me, what I found most challenging and satisfying was building the relationship between Tyler and Ovi. And I hope people end up relating to that relationship.

The action in the movie is pretty intense, but it’s motivated by what Tyler is going through.

What did you find fulfilling about the shoot?

C: Doing something unique or something that hasn’t been seen before is the biggest challenge. And I’m very proud of what we’ve done here, especially if you know how Sam shoots and how he’s there behind the camera right throughout all of these sequences. It instantly gives the scenes an energy and more buzz that you can’t fake.

S: I would have to turn the love right back on Chris because I can design this with all the crazy action sequences that you want, but if you don’t have the talent to get it done and perform it to the level that you need, all that would just be bad theater.

We rehearsed a lot, and Chris put in many hours and hard work into the rehearsal process

How did you keep the elements of action and drama from overwhelming each other?

S: It’s all about balance. In action scenes, the action has to help tell a story and reveal things about character. With emotional scenes, you try to show motivations that will lead to these actions being performed. It’s all about all weaving the threads through.

If you lay the foundation early enough about what this character is going through, then you can put obstacles his way that become satisfying for him to overcome. So, part of the fun was weaving these elements in and trying to highlight our incredible set pieces in the places we shot—from India and Thailand.

The exotic locations and those confined spaces during chase scenes set “Extraction” apart from other action films. What kind of preparation was required, logistically, for a film that looks this big and busy?

S: Oh, it required a lot of preparation! It was big and busy—and was written that way. Joe did a very smart thing by setting the story in that side of the world. You know, there’s a rich history of cinema over in India, but western audiences haven’t really seen a lot of that side of the world. So, that made the shoot there pretty cool.

We found a great space in India to call our home base, which allowed us to get the kind of look we wanted and have as much control as we could have. There were certain days that we would be doing part of those “oner” sequences where we’re racing cars down the street and we’d have over 300 security personal, just to make sure that everyone was safe, because there’s so much vibrant life and energy in that city.

Another challenge presented itself when we got to Thailand: We went through 72 different bridges until we found one that we ended up using [for the finale]. Hopefully, “Extraction” is worth all the effort and thought we put into it.