#she's a villain but nowhere near reasonable to be a supervillain | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

britishassistant · 3 years

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I accept your adopted reporter!Yuu au, but what if they ran away from the families and got adopted by Crewel's sister. Like, Yuu just gets overwhelmed with being starved and abused by Miss Rosehearts, always being pitied for not having magic like the rest of the Kingschoolar family, having to basically be bellow the Asim all the time, or be prepared to die in order to protec Malleus Draconia. So they just run away. It was such a cold night when they left their "home". They were shivering, trembeling, maybe from the cold or fear they didn't know. In the midlle of nowhere they heard a loud bark, then the sound became higher and for some reason it multiplied, the fragille child just gave up after hearring it, laying on the ground accepting their fate, when the dogs got near the kid they closed their eyes, only to be licked multiple times in the face, confused they made a decision to open their eyes. The dogs were just puppies, they signed in relief, the adorable fluffy balls started guiding the to a house, where there was a woman and her husband frantically looking for their dalmatians, when they look at the entrace of their house and see their small angels with a shivering child they immediatly take them in. Since the previous family didn't even bother to search for them, the lovely couple just adopt the child.

(Sorry for the long ask and bad grammar, English is not my first language)

-Lz

Thank you for the ask, dear anon!

(And don’t worry about it! Your English is fine! I love long asks anyways!!)

And oooh, there’s so much potential here!

Especially for Divus coming to visit one weekend and just spiderman pointing at experiment #Y26 sitting in the center of the living room in a puppy pile, like “how did you get here?!?”

While little Yuu is just bug-eyed at being pointed at by a stranger, hugging a puppy close.

Heartslaybul:

Yuu tries to get Riddle to come with them when running away from the Rosehearts household. Riddle refuses point blank. Running away would be against the rules. He can’t break the rules. Yuu breaks so many rules and gets so hurt...and Mother was so angry when she realized they’d broken the rules together on Riddle’s birthday. They have a fight about it, with Riddle screaming that Yuu should just go if they’re going, or he’ll tell Mother! That’s the last conversation they have as Rosehearts siblings.

Yuu sends back letters, constantly coaxing Riddle to join them, telling him he’d love the puppies, that he could eat all the strawberry tart he wanted, that there’s always room for one more in the Radcliffe family. Mrs. Rosehearts found the tenth one while Riddle was reading it. She tore it up, confiscated all his others, and destroyed any new ones that came in, telling Riddle to forget them, that he had no sibling. It’s telling that when kidnapped by Royal Flush, Yuu recognizes Trey first before figuring out who the supervillain now holding them hostage is. Riddle for his part is hardly able to keep his masquerade together when he realizes who was the one involved in the destruction of his precious fertilizer.

It’s a very awkward reunion, not helped by Chen’ya deciding to ‘save’ them at the most inopportune moment and dropping them off a balcony. Yuu makes an effort to stick their nose into Royal Flush’s schemes and get kidnapped by his minions more on purpose. They refuse to leave him behind again. Riddle won’t say he’s grateful for the clumsy attempts to make up lost time, but he’s more irritated when other supervillains keep kidnapping his sibling and putting them in danger, especially when none of them are suitable for Yuu!

Savannaclaw:

It doesn’t help when everyone tells Yuu that they’re not cut out to be a Kingscholar. Yuu tries their best, tries so hard, but it always feels like it’s not enough, never enough, when even Leona-nii tells them it’d be better if they weren’t in this family, if a powerless human like them just disappeared. So they follow his advice. It hurts them badly when no one even comes looking, when their ex-parents send them a letter later in life forbidding them from attending the celebration of Farena-nii’s first child, their nephew, saying they’ll have them arrested for trespasssing if they don’t turn down their oldest brother’s invitation.

They try to stay away from news of the Kingscholars, only exchanging brief letters and emails with Farena-nii, Leona hasn’t even replied to the first letter they sent him. They do well, becoming a fine reporter and shining on their own merits and hard work. They get embroiled with Royal Flush, becoming far more entangled with a supervillain than their common sense says is wise. And then they get kidnapped from Royal Flush’s lair by a rival, have a selfie taken with this new villain’s minions.

They recognize Leona-nii’s drawl as they’re set down in a cheap chair. He at least looks as rudely surprised as they do when the bag is pulled off of their head again. A very tense reunion, with accusations about abandonment and cowardice and not replying to letters being thrown back and forth. Ruggie, Jack and the other minions very much wish they weren’t in the room for this. Then Royal Flush and his Card Guards show up to rescue Yuu, and Leona decides now is the best time to play the overprotective big brother, much to Yuu’s exasperation.

Scarabia:

Yuu wouldn’t run from the Vipers just because they were constantly being told they were lesser. They could endure that, even as it slowly broke them. But if they failed to protect the Asim they were supposed to guard with their life? If they couldn’t stop him from getting hurt, and were deemed a failure as a bodyguard, not as naturally clever and cautious as Jamil and his sister? Then they would run, for fear of what the Asim would do to a failure of a servant who couldn’t fulfill their duty.

Jamil’s the one who tells them to, and has Kalim create a diversion so they can get out. He burns every letter they send back without reading them—they’re proof his sibling is alive, but also a potential way for them to be tracked down and cause problems. Yuu recognizes Snake Charmer within a minute of being kidnapped, because who else would do that tongue thing he always did when he was winning at mancala when they were kids? And then they realize to their horror who that means Water Boy is. Cue furious muffled whispering between the pair about why he would rope Kalim into becoming a supervillain, he can’t keep a secret to save his life, that it wasn’t his idea, Kalim just invited himself along for the ride, you know how hard it is to get him to quit when he’s set on something!

Kalim is just really happy to see Yuu-chan again! They’re alive! And okay! And look good! And not dead! He’s really, really glad they’re not dead! And feel so nice to hug now! Jamil, don’t they feel nice to hug now! Jamil feels many, many alarm bells going off in his head, and it’s not just because of all the other supervillains who are sniffing around his sibling.

Diasomnia:

The one family that lets Yuu go willingly and stays in touch with them after they end up with the Radcliffes. Lilia is upset when comforting Yuu about their persistent nightmares about being incapable of protecting Malleus, cleaning them up when the stress makes them physically ill and strains their previously excellent relationship with the young master and the other guards nearly to the breaking point. It’s breaking Malleus’ young heart to see his ‘younger sibling’ push themselves like this, only to hate themselves when they fall short. He wishes they could go back to before, when he’d walk around with them as a chubby little baby in his arms and all they worried about was whether he was mispronouncing the gargoyle terms in his architecture books.

Maleficent is also sad when Lilia reports that he doesn’t think Yuu’s cut out for the type of work the Silver and Sebek have taken to with such ease. She’s fond of the child, so she personally searches out the best family she thinks will take care of Yuu while being safe enough for Malleus to visit if he wants to. The Radcliffes are an unexpected gem, relatives of an old acquaintance who already has a vested interest in Yuu’s survival and who knows better than to cross her. Plus Malleus and Yuu both seemed very taken by the puppies, which scored major points.

Malleus, Silver, Lilia, and Sebek will often visit Yuu on weekends and certain holidays when they’re growing up. Anita and Roger need to stop Maleficent trying to pay for everything when Yuu’s growing up. Yuu is initially concerned when Malleus becomes a supervillain, especially when he takes the childhood nickname they gave him as his supervillain name, but does their best to support him. Malleus, for his part, is having the time of his life, enjoying his late night walks and tea parties with his sibling now they’ve both grown up. But his colleagues’ interest in the little reporter make him and his closest lieutenants worry about Yuu, especially when the love potion and marriage contracts come into play...

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traincat · 3 years

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I’ve been trying to piece together a few things from your Twitter and Tumblr posts alike and still can’t make heads or tales of things, so would you mind helping out a FF & spideytorch noob? 1) what is currently happening with Johnny in the comics? (I’ve fallen head over heels for this guy, largely all your doing) 2) when’s the last time he and Peter have interacted, canon wise? (And do you think upcoming interactions are likely?) 3) your thoughts on if they’ll have him come out in the near future? (has that ‘biggest change to the fantastic four’ teaser come to pass yet?) Love all your content, thank you!

I'd say no problem but then I started thinking about this current run again and got a headache. But yes, I can do that to save you from reading it, because it is very largely not good.

So I don't think it's unfair to just flat out say the current Fantastic Four run is not very good, largely due to writer Dan Slott's efforts. Slott was previously on Amazing Spider-Man for 10 years, to mixed opinions, but a large portion of Spider-Man fandom, myself included, blames him near singlehandedly for the decline in quality of Spider-Man books over those ten years. I will say, in the interest of fairness, that Slott as a writer has an incredible fondness for the Spider-Man/Human Torch relationship, and that a lot of the recent teamups and interactions between them have been written or co-written by him. So it's all not all negative here. But in general, I personally find Slott's more recent comics (the last seven-ish years especially) to be badly plotted out, messily characterized disasters that feature characters written with all the emotion of a cardboard cutout. That's me putting it nicely.

To explain this fully, you have to understand the position Fantastic Four comics were in from the years 2015 through 2018, both in the fictional 616 universe and in the real publishing world. Following the 2015 Secret Wars event (great if you want some Johnny angst in the background of your plot), the Fantastic Four were disbanded -- Reed, Sue, and their many biological and found family children were presumed dead but in reality were remaking the multiverse, unable, for a reason that was never clearly defined, to reach home. Ben and Johnny were left on Earth. They had an unspecified falling out, likely due to Reed and Sue's absence, and went their separate ways -- Ben joined the Guardians of the Galaxy and went to space. Johnny was featured on both Inhumans and Avengers books. What's notable about this period is that it's the first time since 1961 that there was no Fantastic Four book being published by Marvel. Now the real world reason behind this is both complicated and extremely petty: Marvel really wanted the Fantastic Four film rights. Marvel denied this explanation at the time, stating that the reason was sales motivated, but it was a thoroughly flimsy excuse and Jonathan Hickman, writer of 2015's Secret Wars and overseer of the current X-Men plot, gave an interview saying the decision was film rights motivated. This decision kept the Fantastic Four books off the shelves for three years, up until the Disney-Fox merger, which secured the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights for Disney's Marvel Studios. Marvel then announced that the Fantastic Four book would be returning. So that's a little bit of background as to the precarious place the Fantastic Four currently occupy in the Marvel universe -- it's worth noting that this year is their 60th anniversary, and Marvel has done very little for it. Compare this to the X-Men, whose film rights Marvel also obtained during the Disney-Fox merger, and whose books are currently dominating the publishing lineup. The Fantastic Four definitely occupy an unpopular position, one Marvel themselves is at least partially responsible for forcing them into.

But to move back into the actual content of the book -- the readjustment period Slott wrote reintroducing the Fantastic Four into the Marvel universe can be described as clumsy, at best. It's never fully explained why Reed, Sue, and the kids couldn't return to Earth, something that was explored in Chip Zdarsky's 2017 Marvel Two-in-One, which featured Ben, Johnny, and Doom on a multiversal roadtrip to try and find their family and which I on the whole recommend, despite it having an awkward ending due to being cut short by Slott's announced Fantastic Four main title.

(Marvel Two-in-One 2017 #4)

Instead, the Fantastic Four return to a Marvel universe a little different than how they left it, with the Baxter Building -- formerly the offices of Parker Industries, the company Doc Ock started in Peter's body during Superior Spider-Man that Peter inherited after his defeat and then lost spectacularly when he trashed his own company to fight nazis (good for him) -- occupied by a different fantastic foursome in a plot that goes nowhere and does nothing. This is somewhat emblematic of the early days of Slott's run -- he introduces ideas that fail to go anywhere, including Johnny's rekindled relationship with his other best friend and former college roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot, who he was seen being very cuddly with in the early issues.

(FF 2018 #1) A small group of Fantastic Four fans have argued for a while that if Marvel was to have Johnny come out, a relationship with Wyatt would feel very natural -- they're already close, with Wyatt being an important Fantastic Four supporting character since the '60s. I have some further analysis here on the conspiracy theory that Johnny and Wyatt were supposed to be in relationship at the beginning of this run but that that plot was, for whatever reason, nixed. I don't know that I entirely believe this theory, for the record -- but I do think the pieces line up remarkably well.

Anyway, that didn't/hasn't yet happened, obviously. Slott instead for the most part put Johnny on the back burner for the beginning of his run, up until the Spyre arc, which I have reason to believe is the main story he pitched that he credits with securing him the Fantastic Four title. The Spyre arc suggests that the Fantastic Four's failed space exploration during which they got their powers wasn't just to beat the commies to the moon, as Lee and Kirby envisioned (simpler days), but to reach a specific planet outside of our galaxy. When the team sets out to conquer this mission, they arrive at the planet, but are quickly captured. The planet, they find out, operates like a soulmate AU -- everyone has a fated person that they are matched to via a gold armband. Reed and Sue are soulmates (and Ben is confined to an underground subterranean with the other monsters, because this is a Fantastic Four comic) while it's discovered! Shocker! That Johnny is actually the soulmate of the one the planet's inhabitants, a winged woman named Sky, with the suggestion that this is both why Johnny's previous relationships have never worked and why he loves space exploration -- he was just trying to get to his Soulmate TM.

(FF 2018 #15) "What's going on here? Where are my clothes?" As you can see, this didn't start off super great, with Johnny being separated from his family, stripped naked, and put in Sky's bed with a soulmate armband slapped on him. Did I mention they're only removable if your soulmate takes it off for you? And that Sky has consistently refused despite Johnny asking her to? Yeah. It's bad. (I think it's important to note Johnny's long history as a victim of assault plays into this narrative, whether or not Slott is personally holding that in mind while writing, which I don't believe he is. cw in the linked post for discussions of sexual assault.) There's an additional issue here in that Slott has a history of problematic writing regarding women of color, featuring characters he's created to act as love interests being oversexualized, infantilized, villainized, or some mix of all three, with two examples of this phenomena being Cindy Moon and Lian Tang, both of whom he introduced in quick succession in Amazing Spider-Man. Slott certainly didn't have to write Sky as manipulative or controlling towards Johnny, but that's what he chose to do, and that factors into the bigger picture of unfortunate themes in his writing.

Sky returns to Earth with the Fantastic Four despite Johnny appearing unenthused about the idea and initially generally reluctant to interact with her. Apparently they went on a few dates after this and kind of made up. I don't know because I stopped reading for about ten issues in there but I feel confident I missed very little. It's hard to talk about the Sky plot without referencing Johnny's previous interactions with a character named Lyja, a Skrull whose relationship to Johnny I have a long breakdown of here. It's doubly hard, because Lyja actually showed back up in Fantastic Four during this plot. Lyja's modus operandi has remained consistent throughout almost all of her appearances, which I guess makes sense, because she literally has no storylines that do not involve her being obsessed with Johnny, and this recent story isn't any different: Lyja shows up, Lyja disguises herself as another woman in Johnny's life to get close to Johnny, Lyja gets caught and claims it was all fine because she did it for love. This time she disguised herself as Sky.

(FF 2018 #32) Not gonna lie, kind of proud of him for this one. That's one of my problems with Slott -- very occasionally, he busts out good moments, only to undermine them with the rest of his narrative.

In the same issue, Alicia Masters, the first woman Lyja impersonated in order to get close to Johnny, uses her supervillain stepfather's radioactive clay to control Lyja's mind and send her back to space, and I do think she utilized girl power when she did this. Johnny, left reeling after Lyja's latest attempts to trick him into a relationship, ends this issue by sleeping with Victorious, Dr. Doom's right hand woman.

I know she pegged him. I know it. This scene was a little controversial in Johnny fandom, because a lot of people viewed it as Johnny cheating on Sky and thought that that action was out of character for Johnny. I'm personally of a little different opinion, which is that regardless of whether or not you view Johnny and Sky in a committed enough relationship that Johnny's tryst would count as infidelity when all Johnny and Sky are bound by are magic plot soulmate bracelets, I think Lyja's involvement changes things significantly when it comes to Johnny's characterization. All of Johnny's "playboy" periods, if we can call them that, coincide directly with Lyja having been in and then left his life again, which I think makes a certain amount of sense -- it's Johnny trying to wrest control back after a situation where he had none. None of this is explicitly canon, I have to note, but sometimes in comics you have to do the work yourself. So I think this is a case of something being accidentally extremely in character that Slott accidentally stumbled into because he had these love triangles in mind, not because he put a lot of thought into it.

Speaking of love triangles! Johnny sleeping with Victorious gets more complicated when Dr. Doom announces his intent to marry Victorious -- not because he has any romantic interest in her (this engagement caused a lot of uproar in Fantastic Four because Victorious had been previously referred to as being like Doom's adopted daughter) but in order to install her as Latverian regent in his absence. I'm not going to lie, I love a political wedding. Victorious, for some reason, thinks Doom will be deeply upset that she slept with some closeted blond twink and the member of the Fantastic Four he views least as an enemy and more as an annoyance. Johnny, who Sky is currently not talking to because she "felt" him sleeping with Victorious through their magic plot soulmate bracelets, also feels nervous about Doom finding out about this, which I guess is slightly more valid. Anyway, for some completely ridiculous reason, Victorious decides the best time to tell Doom about this little indiscretion is when they're standing at the altar, which coincidentally the Fantastic Four are also standing at, because Doom asked Reed to be his best man in a not at all homoerotic little setup involving midnight swordfighting and Reed slipping Doom's emerald ring onto his own finger. Sorry to sidetrack into DoomReed territory here but it's just like. It's just a lot.

(FF 2018 #33) Also, Ben walked the bride down the aisle. :,) Look at his gigantic hand.

Anyway then Doom decides he's going to kill everyone in a completely reasonable and not at all overblown reaction to Johnny and Zora having what was most likely both disappointing for Zora and weepy for Johnny sex. And that brings us up to where Fantastic Four comics left us yesterday -- in answer to your "big change" question, that's most likely coming up in the next issue, so it hasn't come to pass yet.

Having gotten all that out of the way -- the last time Johnny and Peter interacted canon-wise was in the recent Empyre Fallout Fantastic Four, at the end of the Empyre event:

It was cute! Slott does right good interactions between them. This is possibly the Stockholm Syndrome talking. I don't know if more interactions are likely imminent -- the Empyre event was fairly recent. On the other hand, Slott does like writing interactions between them. So I'd give it about a 50/50 shot. I was skimming the letter page in the latest issue and someone wrote in asking if Peter was likely to appear in the pages of Fantastic Four again any time soon, so there is definitely a demand.

As for Johnny coming out -- I don't know. It's not a call I feel comfortable making at this moment, which I guess means I wouldn't bet money on it. I'd like to say yes, especially because I think Slott set up, whether that was his intention or more likely not, several good places in his run where Johnny could have come out. The beginning, when he's implied to be living with Wyatt again and where he and Wyatt are paralleled against Ben and Alicia. Ben's bachelor party, where Johnny laments not finding the right person -- specifically person and not woman -- and where Ben tells him to "be brave, Johnny Storm." And the soulmate planet plot, where I think could have had a very different and much better ending if Johnny had told Sky that she couldn't be his romantic soulmate, because he knows he wants to be with a man. But those are just places that I think would have made good opportunities for a coming out story. Instead, Johnny's been involved (dubiously) with three different women over the space of the last 10 issues, which is more heterosexuality at one time than he's been confronted with in the last 60 years. So my thoughts are still that it's going to happen eventually, but quite possibly not anytime soon.

Hope that helps! And that my incredibly long answer about what's currently going on with Johnny in comics sheds some light on things!

#johnny storm #traincat talks comics #*replies #long post/#wednesday spoilers

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freudensteins-monster · 3 years

Text

You Say “Mad Scientist” Like It’s A Bad Thing

Based on my own tumblr post: 3am thoughts… Has anyone written Jane Foster as a mad scientist, I mean like a villain?

Chaotic neutral Darcy and Jane featuring modern/human SHIELD Agent Bucky.

Available on AO3.

Content Warnings: Implied/Referenced Torture, Aftermath of Torture, Amnesia, Memory Suppressing Machine | The Chair (Marvel), Dark, Sort Of, Ambiguous/Open Ending...

In a world full of megalomaniacs, straight up supervillains, and fricking aliens, mad scientists were a dime a dozen. Dr Foster was one such scientist who was quickly moving from mildly irritating to SHIELD’s Most Wanted.

Dr Foster’s gimmick was portals. She first gained international attention when she claimed responsibility (via an untraceable Instagram account, @dr-mthrfckng-foster) for diverting LA’s 405 to a dirt road in rural Australia. Then came a string of impossible robberies – bank vaults and the private collections of the world's richest assholes stripped bare in seconds. Then she created a portal that caused an Indonesian typhoon to bear down on Wall Street, flooding the trading floor. And then she robbed a top secret government black site of some classified technology.

And that’s when Director Nick Fury made finding and stopping Dr Foster SHIELD’s number one priority.

Agent James Barnes had been stuck on suspension for two weeks, with two more to go, and was itching to get back into the field. He had way too much free time on his hands: he’d caught up on his sleep and everything in his Netflix queue. He’d cleaned out his refrigerator, done laundry and enough meal prep to last him until next month. He’d caught up with his family, cleaned his whole goddamn apartment twice, and now he was well and truly bored.

He was out for his fifth run of the week (and it wasn’t even Wednesday) when his work phone rang.

“Thank Christ,” he muttered before answering.

“Barnes.”

“It’s Hill. How’s the arm?”

“Fine,” Barnes grunted, rotating his metal shoulder irritably. “You got something for me?”

“Are you up for a recon mission?”

Usually he would have protested. He headed tactical units. He was an elite ‘first through the door’ kind of field agent. Not that he couldn’t be stealthy and patient - he’d been a sniper in the army for christ's sake - but going unnoticed in public was kind of a problem for him these days; he’d have to wear jackets and gloves in the middle of August to hide his prosthetic for starters.

On the other hand, his mother had been calling him every second day to feed him carb-heavy meals in exchange for help around the house, all while dropping not-so-subtle hints that he should start dating again. Requests for more grandchildren couldn’t be far behind.

“I’ll be there in thirty.”

Thirty-five minutes later Agent Barnes was back at his desk at SHIELD HQ perusing through the increasingly large file of one Dr Jane Foster.

She had been a brilliant student and had earned a PhD in Astrophysics from Culver University by the age of 25. By all accounts she should have been one of the leading researchers in her field, and if doctoral programs handed out superlatives Dr Foster’s would have been “Most Likely To Win a Nobel Prize By 30”.

Unfortunately for Dr Foster, and the rest of the world, she had been forced from that path by a sexist tenured professor who publicly denounced her theories, and the woman herself, as crazy, discredited her published work, and used his influence to ensure she was denied all of the more lucrative research grants.

When federal agents went to interview him after the 405 incident they found his office looking like a tornado had gone through it and the professor himself was nowhere to be found. A few weeks later he stumbled into a US Embassy in Russia after being found wandering in from the forests outside Vladivostok, half mad and still decrying the evils of allowing women into scientific fields.

He had been placed into witness protection and promptly admitted into a psychiatric facility under his new name, and was being monitored by several undercover agents in case Dr Foster felt like punishing him some more.

Anyone else who had a part in ruining Dr Foster’s legitimate career was also under surveillance, as was her mother in London, a terrified ex-boyfriend in Boston, and a handful of known associates, though Dr Foster hadn’t been in contact with any of them in years.

SHIELD and other federal agencies had tried the usual methods of tracking down a rogue mad scientist. They tried to find out where her base of operations was, firstly by looking for any properties in her name, but Dr Foster had been a broke student with an impressive amount of debt (until the day she decided to wipe it, and the rest of Culver’s student debt, out). So if she had property it would definitely not be in her legal name and all but impossible to trace back to her. Then they tried to look for drains on the powergrid. However she managed to generate her portals - SHIELD scientists still hadn’t figured that out - it surely had to be using huge amounts of electricity. So far they’d found six grow labs and two server rooms running illegal god-knows-what, but no Dr Foster.

Agent Barnes read the file twice, reviewed all the transcripts of the interviews with her known associates, and came to one very important conclusion: she had an accomplice.

As smart as Dr Foster was there was nothing in her academic history to suggest that she had a background in computer science that would account for the notable hacks and the untraceable nature of her activities. To add to that several interviewees had made passing remarks about her not having a cell phone for most of her academic career, and how she had zero interest in social media.

Two days later, after getting the okay for a field trip from Hill, Agent Barnes made his way to Culver University to speak to anyone who had even the vaguest recollection of Dr Foster. And that’s how he learnt about the intern.

He’d started by dropping by one of the physics labs where Dr Foster had spent most of her time, and by pure chance met a doctoral candidate who remembered her, and her intern.

“I think her name was Darlene. Glasses. Always on her phone.”

…which led him to the academic advisor who put the two of them together...

“Darcy. Darcy Lewis. She was actually a PoliSci major but left it too late and Dr Foster’s internship was the only one available. She had only been working with her for a few weeks before… before Dr Foster’s funding was revoked and she was asked to leave.”

...who pointed him to one of Darcy’s former professors…

“Average student. Good debater. Often late, and always had a coffee in her hand.”

...who gave him a few names of some former classmates who might remember her…

“Not the worst person to be stuck with on a group assignment. Pulled her weight. Obsessed with her stupid iPod.”

“I swear she lived off pop tarts and coffee. And not Starbucks either. Some stupid hipster chain.”

“Deja Brew. Serious problem. Went through one of those loyalty punch cards every week. Always complained about having to go home for the holidays and resort to big chain coffee shops.”

...which had him driving out to Darcy Lewis’ hometown, located a few hours south of Roanoke, Virginia, stopping first at the local high school to speak to the school principal…

“She’d always been good with computers but wasn’t allowed to use them at home for some reason so she spent a lot of time at the local library using theirs. We had to suspend her once. One of her classmates accused her of accepting payment from other students to hack the school’s records and alter their grades. Their grades were definitely getting altered, but we couldn’t get any concrete proof it was her.”

...who was able to find a photo of 16 year old Darcy in an old yearbook and told him what bar he could find Darcy’s mother in.

“She knows not to come to me if she’s in the shit, because I would call the cops in a heartbeat. Especially after that stunt she pulled before she went off to college…”

“What stunt was that, Ms Bennett?” Agent Barnes asked patiently, hoping he wouldn’t have to enable her alcoholism to get some useful information.

“I made some mistakes, okay,” she slurred defensively. “I was having an affair with my boss. Don’t know how Darcy knew. She told her stepfather but he didn’t believe her. Then a few weeks later we went out to dinner for my boss’s birthday... all the tv’s in the bar start showing security camera footage of us falling into offices and motel rooms. Took her all of a minute to ruin two marriages and a law firm.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied diplomatically. “Is there anyone she could turn to for help? Her father, perhaps.”

“He died when she was about twelve. They were as thick as thieves,” she recalled with a tinge of bitterness.

“Was there any place that was special to them? Someone she might go to ground?”

She shook her head. “He used to rent this old cabin near the Catskills off a buddy of his every other year. Winter or summer, Darcy loved it. But it's long gone. Forest fire, I think, the year before his accident.”

Back in his car Agent Barnes reviewed the data points.

Dr Foster had a base of operations somewhere. Had to be private, and as best SHIELD could guess it must be off the grid and Dr Foster must be generating her own power.

Dr Foster was a space nut at heart, and while an abandoned observatory might be too much to ask for, she’d probably want somewhere with minimal light pollution.

And while they could portal anywhere, neither of them spoke any other languages and had no familiarity with any international locations, so they were most likely still State-side. (Dr Foster’s mother had moved to London when Jane was twenty-three, but she’d never found the time to visit.)

Miss Lewis was familiar with the Catskills area. A base of operations there could be very isolated.

Dr Foster was most likely building and modifying her own own equipment so she had to be able to access materials. Sure, she could portal to her local hardware store, but having Darcy drive into the nearest town for supplies would attract less attention.

Miss Lewis had an addiction to coffee procured from Deja Brew, a small hipster chain with only a handful of locations along on the east coast. While she could have found another way to get her caffeine fix, people were creatures of habit.

Miss Lewis was also known for stocking up on poptarts. In one of the only images of the other side of one of Dr Foster’s portals there was what appeared to be, if one squinted, a box of limited edition pop tarts on a counter.

He plugged it all into SHIELD fancy search engines and got a few results back. The most promising was an abandoned ski chalet turned abandoned research station halfway up a mountain, an hour drive away from an up and coming tourist town, whose main street hosted a Deja Brew cafe. They also had a small mom and pop hardware store, as well as a post office, and a grocery store that had still been selling pumpkin pie pop tarts around the time Dr Foster’s portal had been caught on camera.

Agent Barnes came to with a groan. The flesh of his shoulder where it met his prosthetic felt like it was on fire, and he was pretty sure he could smell fried wiring.

The research station had come up in SHIELD’s initial search for a potential mad scientist's lair, but had been dismissed for not using any power and for not sending back any heat signature readings. Perhaps they’d found a way to fool the scanners. Or maybe they just weren’t in the day the readings were taken. Whatever the reason, Agent Barnes had a good feeling about it. He filled his tank up at the nearest gas station and got on the highway, forgoing checking in at the Triskelion on his way past in favour of driving all night. He’d call Hill when he had something solid.

** *** **

“Fuck…”

He willed his eyes open and came face to face with Darth Vader.

Barnes reeled back at the sound of the synthesized voice. “Who sent you? Who do you work for?! The Rebellion?”

“What the fuck!”

It took him until his eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lighting to realise that Darth Vader was wearing a grey knit dress and black tights. Darth Vader laughed and ripped off his mask to reveal a smiling bespectacled brunette underneath. The accomplice. Darcy Lewis.

“Sorry, I was just messing with you, dude,” she teased, tossing the mask over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do that. But seriously, who do you work for? Who knows you’re here?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he lied. “I was just camping in the woods, man. I saw the lights and decided to check it out,” he rambled in a lazy Canadian accent. “How the hell did I get here? Did you electrocute me?”

He used his not-quite fake panic to test the limits of his restraints. He’d been strapped into some sort of junkstore barber chair, with thick metal shackles locked around his wrists, ankles, and chest. His metal arm could probably make quick work of them but the damn thing was not responding. His panic became a little less fake.

“Just camping, huh?” she echoed back with a raised eyebrow, leaning forward to the point where Barnes couldn’t avoid getting a good look down her top and the 15-carat pink diamond (worth about 40mil and reported stolen in one of Dr Foster’s vault heists two months ago) hanging around her neck. “So that wasn’t you poking around town this morning?” she asked pointedly, drawing his attention to the wall of monitors he hadn’t noticed showing various street cameras around the town. “I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, dude. You got into town bright and early in a beat up looking truck with plates that didn’t exist two weeks ago and started flashing my yearbook photo around. So, who do you work for?”

He levelled his best steely-eyed agent stare at her and switched back to his native pissed-off Brooklynite accent. “I ain’t tellin you shit, sweetheart.”

“C’mon now,” she cooed, taking a seat on his lap. “Who do you work for? FBI? Interpol? SHIELD? Crawford County Library Services? Listen, I was totally going to return Eat Pray Love, but we had to skip town in a hurry and it got lost in the move. I will totally pay to replace it.”

Years of training (and regular poker games with the Black Widow) had taught him to school his features, even if that last one threw him for a loop.

“Nothing? You sure you don’t want to talk to me? Fine,” she whined. “Jane!”

It was only then that Barnes switched his focus from his captor to his surroundings and realised that there was another occupant puttering about on the other side of the large telescope that took pride of place on a hydraulic platform underneath the research station's retractable roof. The infamous Dr Foster.

“Jane!”

“What?” came the irritated reply.

“Come over here and practise your monologue. Look! You’ve got a captive audience and everything!” she announced, laughing at her own joke.

“I don’t have time, Darcy,” the disgruntled voice argued.

“Hey! I spent two days writing up that monologue, the least you can do is spend twenty-five minutes reading it out loud so I can make sure it doesn’t make you sound too much like a cartoon villain.”

“Twenty-five minutes?! Are you kidding me?” Dr Foster stormed out from behind the telescope to wave a wrench at her assistant. She looked less put together than her ID photo, appearing to be long overdue for both a shower and a nap. “I’m in the middle of something. I’ve almost figured the problem with the mobile portal generator, and… Darcy, why is there a man tied to a chair in my lab?”

“This man?” Darcy snorted, taking Barnes’s chin in her hands and wiggling it about. “This is the intruder. You remember the intruder alert, like fifteen minutes ago? Lots of flashing lights and alarms? Well, I found this guy passed out on the lawn. For most people, hitting my force field would be like getting lightly tased, but this bad boy,” she continued, tapping a fingernail against his dead metal arm, “meant you ended up getting the full 50,000 volts to your heart. Thanks for letting me practice my CPR by the way,” she added with a wink.

“It’s not a force field, Darcy. It’s a glorified invisible pet fence, upsized and modified so it reacts to the electrical impulses in the human body.”

“It keeps people out; I’m calling it a force field.”

This was definitely the weirdest interrogation he had endured by a large margin, Barnes mused as he followed their bickering like a pingpong game.

“Who is he, Darcy?” Jane sighed wearily. “What is he doing here?”

“Fiiiine. Janey, meet Agent James Barnes of SHIELD.”

“What?! SHIELD?!!”Jane screeched. “Why did you bring him here?”

“He found us, Jane. What was I supposed to do?”

“Something other than bringing him inside our secret hideout.”

“I am not killing him and burying him in the woods; I just did my nails.”

Jane scowled, turning the full force of her overtired fury on James. “Why can’t you SHIELD issue jackbooted thugs just leave me alone? Can’t you understand how important my work is? I am challenging the very foundations of modern science - of the laws of the universe! I am on the verge of a breakthrough! And if you or Nick Fury think you can stop me, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Before his mouth could betray him and ask how the hell they knew his boss Darcy spoke up.

“A little off script, but I like the energy, Jane. Very much the mad scientist vibe we’re going for. But next time, try not to make it so personal – we’ve got to hide the target of our frustrations, remember? Instead of saying “SHIELD” say “government”, instead of saying “Nick Fury” say “president”.”

“Right, right,” Jane nodded absently, tapping the side of her head with the wrench she had just been waving around like a weapon.

“Now, go back to work. I’ll handle this.”

“Okay, thanks Darce. Oh, have you seen my soldering iron around?”

“It’s in the locked cabinet because you’re not allowed to use it unsupervised, you know that. Gimme ten minutes, I’ll bring it to you.”

Jane wandered back to her side of the observatory, muttering under her breath, leaving Barnes at Darcy’s mercy.

“She’s not the criminal mastermind here, is she?” he wondered, his eyes roaming over the strange cupcake of a woman in his lap.

“Not exactly,” Darcy admitted. “I mean, it’s not like she set out to be a mad scientist. I kind of rebranded her after that little freeway incident.”

“Rebranded?”

“Yeah. She was in a bad way after New Mexico and then when the first live test of her portal engine went a little sideways I didn’t want dudebros on the internet coming after her, so I changed the narrative. Instead of ‘girl scientist makes mistake, should stick to making sandwiches’ I changed it to ‘Dr Foster, genius astrophysicist, causes chaos, totally on purpose.’”

“And all those robberies?”

“I may have encouraged that. I’m all for sticking it to the one percenters, and Jane needed to fund her experiments somehow,” she added with a shrug.

“So Jane’s the absent-minded professor and you’re the brains behind this operation, huh?”

Darcy laughed and slid out of his lap causing a distracting amount of friction. “I’m really not. So you, Coulson, and Fury should be really, really scared.”

“How do you know those names?” he had to know, cover be damned.

“You don’t know? Of course you don’t,” she huffed. “Fury and his clearance levels. I’d tell you to ask him about New Mexico sometime, but you’re not going to be able to.”

“Why not? What are you going to do to me?” Barnes fretted, unable to ignore the sinking feeling that he was in big trouble; she wouldn’t have told him anything if she intended on letting him walk out of here.

“Oh, relax. I’m not going to kill you. I’m just gonna scramble your brain a little.”

She circled his chair, flipping switches as she went, and something behind him started humming ominously.

“So, admittedly I didn’t major in hard sciences. I had an ex who did, but he also fancied himself something of a cat burglar, so when he went to jail I liberated all his college textbooks and gave myself a crash course in electrical engineering. And it helped that those HYDRA designs were really easy to follow.”

“HYDRA?” Barnes cursed.

HYDRA had been the scientific branch of the Nazi regime and believed that discovery required (human) experimentation. They were supposedly eradicated at the end of WWII but Project Paperclip saved some of HYDRA’s greatest minds, giving them immunity in exchange for their genius. If Foster or, more worryingly, Darcy had aligned themselves with some surviving HYDRA faction the results could be catastrophic.

“Yeah, I found them in that SHIELD warehouse when we recovered Jane’s stolen research.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They just call it ‘The Chair’, which is totally not creepy at all,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And this is the Halo,” she added, drawing Barnes’s attention to the whirring circle of metal that was lowering itself over his head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, renewing his efforts to break free of his restraints. “Get that piece of scrap metal the fuck away from me!”

“Hey! Don’t mock my work. It may look like I raided a junkyard for the components - and I did - but my welding game is on point. It’s totally safe. Mostly safe. It’s just going to send focused electrical pulses to your…” she paused to consult some smudged writing on her hand, “hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.”

The Halo stopped moving and two metal plates extended, pressing against the sides of his head, holding it like a vice.

“Please… don’t do this,” he begged as she approached him with a rubber mouthguard.

“C’mon, open wide. You don’t want to end up braindead and unable to chew your food,” she jested, waving the thing in front of him. “Oh, just one question before I fry your brain,” she added just when he was about to give in. “How did you find us? I was so careful,” she whined.

Agent Barnes, terrified as he was, still managed to look smug at his small, short lived success. “Deja Brew coffee.”

“Curses!” she wailed theatrically. “Betrayed by my one true love!”

Darcy huffed and quickly returned her attention to the matter at hand.

“Thanks for that,” she said with a smile as she forced him to bite down on the mouthguard. “I’ll know better for next time. Start making my own coffee at home… but it never tastes as good,” she muttered to herself.

She stepped away from him and bent down to pick up a similarly frankensteined industrial remote with long wires snaking back to the chair and a clichéd big red button at its centre. He began struggling anew, screaming around the foul tasting rubber, begging for mercy.

She took great delight in his terrified expression and put on her best supervillain voice, “Give my regards to Nick Fury.”

Nick Fury observed his agent from behind a two way mirror as he sat behind a table in an interrogation room. Barnes had been sitting there for the past hour as still as a statue, except for his unfocused eyes which flitted about the room.

In true horror movie fashion, Agent Barnes’ screams echoed down the mountainside like an avalanche, sending animals fleeing in terror for miles around.

** *** **

Local LEO’s had found him wandering aimlessly down a stretch of highway just outside the ruins of what had previously been Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, and ten minutes after they ran his prints Agent Romanoff had been on a quinjet to collect him. She’d been directed to the nearest hospital and found him sitting up on a bed but not responding or reacting to any of the medical staff as they buzzed around him. Agent Romanoff took a cautious step forward and held her breath as his unfocused eyes settled on her.

“Hello James...”

An excruciating minute later the veil lifted and he attempted a smile.

“Hey Tasha.”

She’d brought him back to base and dragged him to SHIELD’s medical bay for more tests - not that Barnes put up much of a fight, in fact he was terrifyingly compliant. The SHIELD doctors confirmed what the New Mexico doctors suspected: the bruising and electrical burns around his temples and his memory loss were indicative of some back alley version of electroshock therapy. His memories should come back in time - how long was anybody’s guess - but for the moment Agent James Barnes had no memory of the last four weeks.

Fury picked up a tablet with depressingly little information on its screen and stepped into the room, waiting for Barnes eyes to focus on him before taking a seat.

“Agent Barnes.”

“Director.”

“I know you’re probably sick of questions by now, but I have a few more for you, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah, sure…”

It rankled Fury to no end how meak and passive Barnes seemed. Heaven help him, he missed the argumentative sonofabitch.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being called into your office.”

“What for?”

“I punched Rumlow.”

“Why?”

“He was bragging about taking advantage of a drunk woman at a club when he was last on leave. He didn’t like me calling out his shitty behaviour. He punched me, I punched him back.”

Fury sighed. He hadn't gotten a straight answer out of Barnes at the time of the incident and he couldn’t feel happy about getting one now.

“Do you remember what happened once I called you into my office?”

His brow creased and his eyes zipped back and forth like the carriage of a printer as his mind searched for the elusive memory.

“You suspended me?”

“I did,” Fury confirmed. “For a whole month. But two weeks into it I pulled you in for a special assignment.”

Barnes tensed, shrinking in on himself. The confusion about his lost time seemed to be the only thing that got under his skin, but only when someone brought it up. Once the moment passed he forgot to be concerned about it.

Fury took pity on him. “For the past two weeks I had you running down leads on the whereabouts of Dr Jane Foster.”

“The scientist with the portals? Did she do this to me?”

“It’s not exactly her MO, but then again no law enforcement agency’s ever managed to have a confrontation with her. Never had the chance. Those portals of hers let her keep at a distance. You might have been the first person to have a face to face with her, but I can’t confirm it because I don’t know where the hell you were when this happened,” he grumbled, letting a little more of his usual exasperated tone filter through. “You missed check in by two days. The last we heard from you, you were at Culver running down leads on what you said was a potential accomplice. We found your car in Tromso, Norway, a day after you were found on the side of a road in New Mexico. You don’t appear on any security footage or speed cameras in the area. There’s no activity on your work or personal credit cards. Your activity logs on our highly secure system for the last two weeks are nonexistent, as are your call logs on your work phone. Even the messages you sent Romanoff from your personal phone complaining about your assignment have since been deleted - from her phone too. She’s real pissed about it. As far as your digital footprint is concerned you disappeared from a gas station outside Roanoke, Virginia, last week - do you know how weird it is to know you were headed out towards a place called Roanoke only to up and vanish?” He sighed at Barnes’ painful silence. “Is there anything you can remember, anything at all about Dr Foster or her accomplice? Anything that will help us catch up to you without talking to everyone on campus to figure out what you discovered?”

Barnes’ brow creased in painful confusion.

“I think… I think I saw Darth Vadar.”

Director Fury blinked. “Right…” He took a deep breath to stop himself from venting his frustrations at Barnes, the sorry bastard looked like a kicked puppy as it was. Instead he got up and tapped the tablet against the metal tabletop harder than strictly necessary. “Well, I’ll just go put out a BOLO out for Darth Vadar then.”

“Okay,” Barnes murmured, and promptly zoned out again.

Agent Romanoff exited the viewing room looking uncharacteristically unsettled.

“I want a full detail on him at all times,” Fury ordered as he stormed off towards the elevators. Hill had just stepped off and was looking even more grim than usual. “Until his memories come back he’s vulnerable, and once they do he’ll be a target.”

“I’ll get a STRIKE team on it. Not Rumlow’s.”

“Get another one along with any assets currently not on assignment. Flood that campus, interrogate everybody. I wanna know who the hell Dr Foster’s accomplice is, and I wanna know yesterday. Understood?”

“I think we might have more pressing concerns, sir,” Hill reported, tapping at her tablet as it beeped erratically. “Coulson’s said there’s an issue with the Tesseract. Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from it fifteen minutes ago.”

“NASA didn't authorise Selvig to test phase,” he grunted, taking the tablet from Hill.

“He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous advancement.”

“Motherfucker.”

#you say mad scientist like it's a bad thing #freudensteins-fics #mad scientist jane foster #competent assistant darcy lewis #shield agent bucky barnes #torture #aftermath of torture #amnesia #winter soldier memory wipe chair #darcy lewis #jane foster #bucky barnes #natasha romanoff #nick fury #maria hill

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Your Top Five Pulp Heroes that you wish were better known? By Pulp Hero fans, I mean. Since pretty much all of them except Conan and Tarzan are fairly unknown.

It’s actually quite hard for me to narrow it down to just five, because I’m having to choose between characters that are my favorites that I wish were more well-known and appreciated (which is all of them), and characters that aren’t quite my favorites but I very much think should have achieved great popularity for a myriad of reasons. So instead I’m going to pick some of each. These are not necessarily ranked by their importance or my personal taste, just 5 characters I felt like highlighting in particular.

Honorable mentions goes to characters I already talked about prior and don’t want to repeat myself on. These aren’t “lesser” picks, just ones that I already talked about: Imaro (who in particular definitely feels like he could, and should be, a pop culture superstar if he was only more well-known), Kapitan Mors (who’s got a lot in common with one of my favorite fictional characters, Captain Nemo, but also has a lot of interesting things going on for him as his own character). Sar Dubnotal (a character that appeals a lot to me and I think should be included much more often in pulp hero team-ups). The Golden Amazon (again, definitely a character that feels like it’s just begging to have a pop culture breakout, even comic books rarely if ever have female supervillains this ruthless and over-the-top), The Mexican Fantomas (who absolutely deserves a better name than what I’m calling him here, because he’s incredibly awesome and leagues ahead of just being a knock-off). And of course my homeboy, The Grey Claw, whom I would consider Number One of the list if it wasn’t for the fact that his obscurity has left him untouched by copyright and I got plans of my own for the character that wouldn’t be possible if he was more well-known, so I guess I’m ultimately glad he’s obscure (even if I’m still bothered by how little he’s known).

Allright let’s go:

Number 5: Sheridan Doome

Sheridan Doome appeared in fifty-four stories and three novels from 1935 to 1943. As chief detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome’s job was a grim one. Whenever an extraordinary mystery or crime occurred in the fleet, on a naval base, or anywhere the navy worked to protect American interests, Doome was immediately dispatched to investigate it. Fear and dread would always precede Doome’s arrival in his special black airplane. For, in an explosion during WWI, he had been monstrously disfigured.

He was six feet two inches tall; had a chalk-white face and head. It appeared as though it had once been seared or burned. For eyes, he had only black blotches; glittering optics, that looked like small chunks of coal. His nose was long, the end of it squared off rudely. He had no lips, just a slit that was his mouth. His neck was long, as white and as bony as his face…. Sheridan Doome looked more like a robot than a human being. He was tall and ghastly; his uniform fitted him in a loose manner. Long arms hung at his sides; his face was a perfect blank. He had no control of his facial muscles; consequently, his countenance was always without expression, chalky and bony.

But behind the ugliness was a brilliant mind. Sheridan Doome always got his man. Before Sheridan Doome became a staple in the pages of The Shadow magazine, two Doome hardcover mysteries were written in the mid-1930’s by acclaimed hard-boiled author Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) and edited by his wife Edythe Seims (Dime Detective, G-8 and His Battle Aces). Age of Aces now brings you both books in one huge double novel, presented in a retro “flip book” style. This book is currently Out of Print.

I sadly don’t have any more information on the character other than this. The book is unavailable for me to acquire in any capacity, and the text above is taken from the Age of Aces website as well as Jess Nevins’s personal profile for the character. I’m not even sure if any of those 54 stories even exist anymore, since although he was published as a backup in Shadow Magazine, there doesn’t seem to be reprints of them anywhere, at least as far as I can find, and the original Shadow magazines have largely turned to dust by now.

A character who combines aspects of The Phantom of the Opera and The Shadow, whose adventures are set in a backdrop that can easily lead to ocean adventures? That’s like, what, three of my favorite things in the world combined. I really, really wish I could at least read the stories this character stars in, but as is, this description is all I can provide. Again, time really has been cruel to the pulp heroes.

Number 4: Harlan Dyce

This is another character I’ve only been able to learn about through Jess Nevins’s archives and have not been able to attain any further information on, which is sadly the case with a lot of pulp heroes that nowadays only seem to exist as footnotes in his Encyclopedia or records in libraries. I don’t post more about these characters because I really would just be copying the stuff he wrote without much to justify me quoting him verbatim, and I hate the idea of doing that.

I especially hate that in Harlan Dyce’s case though. Here’s his description

“Dyce had brains, taste, money, ambition, and a total lack of physical or spiritual fear. But—

“Dyce was thirty-three inches tall and weighed sixty pounds.

“That was all the world could ever hold against him. That was what had made the world, most of it, in all the countries of the world, stare at Harlan Dyce, billed in the big show as “General Midge.””

Harlan Dyce is a misanthropic and venomous private detective. He has an “amazingly handsome face,” and the aforementioned brains. But all anyone sees is his stature, and he hates that and turns his cold eyes and acid tongue on them.

The only person Dyce likes and gets along with (besides his dwarf wife, a former client) is his assistant, Nick Melchem, a six-foot tall former p.i.’s assistant with bleak eyes and a strong body. Melchem ignores Dyce’s stature and treats Dyce normally, which Dyce responds warmly to.

Dwarfs may be the single most maligned group of people depicted in pulp magazines, even more so than the Japanese in the war years or the Chinese during the peak of the Yellow Peril’s popularity. Evil dwarfs, murderous dwarfs, sexually depraved dwarfs, they are all loathsome, ugly cliches that are, sadly, the only instances you see of dwarf characters being represented at all, with the only ones who are awarded any measure of sympathy are doomed henchmen or tragic villains. Even outside of the pulps, the only other examples of heroic, protagonist dwarfs I can think off the top of my head are Puck from Marvel Comics and Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

I’m not gonna say Harlan Dyce is great representation because I’m not a little person and can never make that kind of claim for a group I’m not a part of, but Harlan Dyce may be the first time I’ve ever seen a dwarf character in pulp fiction who was not a villain or a murderous goon or a victim, but an actual person and a heroic protagonist, and that definitely counts for something. I’m not sure how popular this character was or could be if someone picked up the concept and ran with it (and I’m pretty sure he’s public domain), but I definitely think this is a character that should exist and should be popular.

Hell, this character has Peter Dinklage written all over it, give it to him. Maybe then he will get to play a smart, fearless, cynical, misanthropic but good-natured and heroic character in something where he actually gets to keep these traits until the show ends.

Number 3: Audaz, O Demolidor

Audaz is a Brazilian character who was created and published by Gazetinha, the same publishers of Grey Claw as well as properties exported from elsewhere like Superman and Popeye, and much like The Grey Claw, he is also completely unknown even here. I’ll get to Audaz more in-depth sometime but here I’m going to provide a quick summary:

Audaz, The Demolisher is a gigantic crime-fighting robot controlled and piloted by the brilliant scientist Dr. Blum, his close friend Gregor and the child prodigy Jacques Ennes, who pilot the giant robot from a massive laboratory inside it's head rather than a cockpit. He takes on a variety of ordinary human criminals, mad scientists, supervillains and invading armies, towering over skyscrapers and grappling with jets.

Audaz was created in 1939 by illustrator Messias de Melo, a year before Quality Comics's Bozo the Iron Man and 5 years before Ryuichi Yokoyama's Kagaku Senshi, and decades before the debut of Mazinger Z. Although he is not the first giant robot of science fiction, he is the first heroic giant robot piloted by human pilots, and thus the first true example of "mecha" fiction.

Number 2: Emilia the Ragdoll

This is another Brazilian character, although nowhere near as obscure as Audaz as even a cursory Google search can show. Although Brazil did not have a “pulp era” in the same way the US had, we’ve long gotten past the point of sticking to it as a definitive rule, and I’m including Emilia as a pulp hero because she’s a 1920s fantasy literature character who was created under a publishing company that released pulp stories, because she doesn’t quite belong in the mold of fantasy literature characters she takes after, and because I like her and if I was putting a bunch of pulp heroes together in the same story, I would definitely include Emilia in it. It’s not like she really has anywhere else to go, now that she’s public domain and she’s outlasted her franchise.

As you can tell by the above image, Emilia’s had a lot of variations over the years and that’s because the work she was created for, Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Ranch/Farm), has become a major bedrock of Brazilian fantasy literature, one of the only works created here that you can find substantial information about in English if you go looking for it. Here’s some descriptions of Emilia’s character:

Emília is a rag doll described as "clumsy" or "ugly", resembling a "witch" that was handmade by Aunt Nastácia, the ranch's cook, for the little girl Lúcia, out of an old skirt. After Lucia takes her on an adventure and the doll is given a dose of magic pills, Emília suddenly started talking, and would never stop henceforth.

Emilia has a rough, antagonistic personality, and an independent, free-spirited and anarchist behaviour. She is rogue, rebellious, stubborn, rough and intensely determined at anything she sets her mind on, eager to take off on just about any adventure. She is often immature and behaves like a curious and arrogant child, always wanting to be the center of attention.

She is extremely opinionated even when she constantly and confidently mispronounces words and expressions. Her attitude often gets her into trouble, and she very often has to fight against the villains who attack her home on the Yellow Woodpecker Farm and mistreat her friends.

In the stories, Emilia often takes the role of a heroine who travels through different realms and dimensions, as the books include not only figures from Brazilian and worldwide folklore, but also several characters both real and fictional, such as Hercules, King Arthur, Don Quixote, Thumbelina, Da Vinci, Shirley Temple, Captain Hook, Santos Dumont and Baron von Munchausen.

She's fought scorpions and martians and nymph hordes, her arch-enemy is an alligator witch, she rescued an angel from the Milky Way and tried to teach it how to become a human, and once shrunk the entire population of Earth to try and talk the president of the United States into ending war forever.

To little surprise, she has become the most popular character and the series’s mascot.

It’s a little strange to consider Emilia underrated considering she is one of the most famous original characters of Brazilian literature, but hardly anyone outside of Brazil even knows who she is, and regardless of the quality of the original stories (and Monteiro Lobato’s views on race that tar much of his reputation), Emilia definitely feels to me like a character that should be a lot more popular globally.

She is the only character from Yellow Woodpecker Ranch that has transcended the original stories, since she was always the most popular character and there’s been a couple of stories written about her that usually separate her from the ranch and just set her out on the world by herself. The latest story about this character has been a series called The Return of Emilia, that’s about her stepping out of the books in 2050 and discovering a Brazil that’s been ruined by social and ecological devastation, and traveling back in time via a flying scooter in order to try and prevent this calamity.

Now that she’s public domain, I definitely think there’s some great stories that can be told with the character that just about anyone could get to, and I definitely think she’s a character that deserves more appreciation. Anything goes in stories starring her and it’s that kind of free-for-all freedom that I think can benefit future takes on pulp heroes. I would be very happy to place Emilia among them.

Oh yeah, and there was one time she kicked Popeye's ass by tricking him with a can of mouldy cabbage instead of spinach, making him sick and then beating him, which possibly puts her as one of the all-time badasses of fiction, except she would be pissed at not being number one and likely embark on a quest to beat everyone else just to prove she could, because that’s how Emilia rolls.

Number 1: Luna Bartendale, from The Undying Monster (1922)

Not necessarily my favorite of the bunch, but one who sort of epitomizes what you asked, a character who is both incredibly obscure and incredibly underrated in every sense. Despite the book being somewhat known, mainly thanks to the movie, the character is so obscure that I don’t even have an illustration of her to display here, not even fan art, just one of the book’s covers that I think best conveys it. Luckily, the book is also available freely online, so you can all go check it out here. The movie adaptation does not feature the character of Luna Bartendale which makes it pointless to talk about.

To not spoil it too much, The Undying Monster is a very fascinating book, ahead of it’s time in quite a few ways. You expect it to just be a detective story centered around a werewolf cursed, except the subtitle of the book is “The Fifth Dimension” and then it goes to talk about dimensions of thought and post-WWI trauma and love and hypnotic regression that travels through time and ancient runes and Norse mythology. It’s not exactly an easy book to get through in one setting, but I’d recommend it much the same if only because it’s got supersensitive psychic sleuth Luna Bartendale, literature’s first female occult detective, and she’s an incredible character who absolutely feels like she should have become a literary icon.

She lives in London but is world-renowned for her many good deeds. She is a small, pretty woman, with curly blonde hair, dark eyebrows and a high-bridged nose, and a slight build. She has a voice described as a light soprano that "does not make much noise but carries a long way".

Petite, bedimpled and golden curled, Luna is completely in charge of events, dominating every scene that she appears in with her welcoming disposition and cleverness.

Bartendale has various psychic powers, including mind reading. She is well-versed in psychic and occult lore, is a “supersensitive” psychic, and has a “Sixth Sense” which allows her to trace things and people through both the Fourth and the Fifth Dimension. (The Fifth Dimension is “the Dimension that surrounds and pervades the Fourth–known as the Supernatural”).

Her extensive knowledge of occult rites and practices puts John Silence, Carnacki and Miles Pennoyer to shame, and she beats them all with her "super-sensitive" gift of being able to psychically connect with troubled souls and hypnotize them.

She uses a divining rod for various tasks, including psychic detection and tracking, and distinguishing between benevolent and malevolent forces. She has various (undefined) powerful psychic defenses, can carry on seances, and can even cure a person of “wehrwolfism.” And she can always rely on her massive, intelligent dog Roska for help.

Luna sadly doesn’t show up in the book as often as I’d hoped, but everything about this character is so delightful. In a lot od ways she hardly feels like a pulp hero, at least the ones I usually talk about. She feels like a lost protagonist from an incredibly successful kid’s adventure series where a kind and eccentric detective witch and her giant dog go around solving occult mysteries and encountering all sorts of weird supernatural beings while counseling and helping people, like Ms Frizzle meets Hilda. Like this character is just waiting for Cartoon Saloon to make a film about her.

Its not so much “this character should/could be popular but it’s clear why that didn’t pan out”, it’s more me being confused as “why the hell isn’t she super popular? This character should have had a franchise ages ago, holy shit put her in everything””

#pulp heroes #pulp fiction #answer tag #sheridan doome #harlan dyce #audaz #boneca emilia #luna bartendale

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leonineus · 2 years

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The Rise & Grind Coffee Shop AU, Part 3

This is the last of the actual ideas I had that stemmed from the original inspiration, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

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So Rise & Grind has now been open for a year, and its reputation as neutral ground is as set in stone as I can get it at this point, and both heroes and villains alike respect it. I’ve even had a couple of villains intercept another as they were moving to cause trouble in the last couple of months. Not sure whether they were protecting him from getting tased (I’ve become a lot quicker on the draw in recent months) or just worried I might throw them out with him, but they did it.

There’s obviously tension between the two factions - that’s to be expected - but there’s definitely something remarkable about seeing Harley Quinn and Black Canary get bored of their skirmish out in the street and come inside to settle their differences over a coffee each and a lively game of Scrabble from the games chest I keep tucked away in a corner.

On the topic of Harley Quinn, I never thought I would be grateful to a supervillain for something, or speaking up in their defence beyond warning a hero off from starting trouble.

The reason for my gratitude is simple; Joker eventually came back for me, as I’d been warned was likely.

Let me set the scene. I’m prepping a coffee for a customer. Near the fireplace at the back of the room is Robin, drinking a milkshake and keeping a weather eye on my less-than-legal customers; six assorted ne’er-do-wells and Harley, who is sitting in a window booth by the door hand-feeding one of her hyenas.

Note: I do not have a no-pets policy, and as long as she makes sure to keep them under control, I have no problems with her bringing them in. As I’ve discovered, Harley’s hyenas are much like Harley herself; strangely friendly, but still capable of doing severe injury to you if you make the wrong move.

Now, I’m so wrapped up in what I’m doing that I fail to notice a purple car pulling up outside, and Joker getting out of it. Harley does, shunts her hyena under the table and grabs hold of a chair.

The door opens, setting off the jingling bell over it. I turn automatically to greet the new customer, and find Joker looking back at me with a pistol already levelled at my head. As far as I’m concerned, time stops.

Then Harley comes out of nowhere, swings the chair by its back and smashes Joker directly in the face with it, knocking him backwards. The gun goes off, but thanks to Harley’s actions it merely punches a hole into the wall behind my head instead of my face. It’s at this point I lost sight of what was going on with Joker and Harley, because Robin launched himself out of his chair and tackled me onto the floor behind the counter.

I’ve only heard what happened next second-hand, on account of Robin not letting me up from behind the counter until Batman arrived. As I understand it, the chair broke apart when Harley hit Joker with it the first time, so instead she laid into him with one of its legs. She got maybe six more hits in on a progressively-more-and-more-unconscious Joker before two other of my less-than-legal customers reached the door from where they’d been sitting, pulled her away and made a passable effort at a citizen’s arrest.

I can only guess at what Batman thought when he showed up and took in the scene; Joker lying on the floor beaten into unconsciousness and being held down by two henchmen that he’s probably beaten up himself at some point, Harley Quinn sitting on a chair with one hand scratching her hyena’s ears and the other holding a bloody chair leg and Robin behind the counter keeping me down and behind cover.

Needless to say Robin and Harley drink free for the rest of our lives, whichever of us dies first.

It’s concerning that I can’t figure out whether it’s going to be those two, a villain and a hero, or me, a humble shop owner.

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So as said in the header, this is the last idea I had. Maybe something will come to me, maybe not, but I welcome any suggestions anybody reading this might see fit to give.

#dc #rise & grind #coffee shop au #batfamily #joker getting pwned #only in gotham

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moviewarfare · 3 years

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A Review of “Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)”

Wonder Woman 1984 was one of my most anticipated DCEU movie for 2020. Due to the Coronavirus, the movie kept getting delayed but is finally here in theatres and HBO Max streaming service at the same time. The DCEU is such a frustrating cinematic universe in the early days due to how poor the movies were but then Wonder Woman came. The first Wonder Woman movie was a breath of fresh air in the DCEU because it was good and I would give it 4/5 stars. The sequels premise is "Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) lives quietly among mortals in the vibrant, sleek 1980s -- an era of excess driven by the pursuit of having it all. Though she's come into her full powers, she maintains a low profile by curating ancient artifacts, and only performing heroic acts incognito. But soon, Diana will have to muster all of her strength, wisdom and courage as she finds herself squaring off against Maxwell Lord and the Cheetah, a villainess who possesses superhuman strength and agility". Does the sequel manage to surpass the magic of the first movie or fails miserably?

Firstly, I like the direction the movie goes in. Patty Jenkins, the director, has the movie set in the 80s which isn't a setting that's common in superhero movies. They utilise this setting by having more vibrant colors compared to the grey, dim colors of the first movie. Also, the set and costumes designers do a phenomenal job in bringing the 80s to life.I also like the idea that it is kind of a reverse situation to the first movie for Wonder Woman. In the first movie, she was the fish out of water learning about the world outside Themyscira but here it's Steve Trevor instead. Due to this, we get to see a completely different Wonder Woman from the first movie and a slightly flustered Steve which was entertaining. The action scenes are also pretty fun to watch but they are nowhere near as good as the first movie to be fair. Also, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) was a surprising villain as he was more emotional and less stoic than I expected. Most supervillains in comic book movies, even the first Wonder Woman movie, are bad because they are bad and just stone-cold but Maxwell is more energetic than that which is different.

On that note, I think the actors all do a really good job. Gal Gadot feels better than previous movies now as it feels like she has got the ropes. Chris Pine is still charming and charismatic as Steve Trevor. The chemistry between the two is still there and the best moments in the movie are the scenes where Wonder Woman and Steve are together. There are some emotional moments in this movie and Gal Gadots performance is incredibly convincing. Pedro Pascal is so good as the main villain and his performance throughout the movie as Maxwell Lord becomes more insane is very convincing and enjoyable to watch. Kristen Wiig as Babara/Cheetah, the secondary villain, was a controversial casting but I think she does a great job with what is given. Kristen is great as the weird and awkward Babara in the first part of the movie but is also great as the more confident Babara in the second half of the movie.

On the other hand, the story is kind of disjointed and messy. It doesn't flow well and due to that causes some pacing issues. The movie is a whopping 151 minutes but this is fine if the movie was constantly engaging which this movie isn't. There are a fair amount of moments where the movie drags. Additionally, Wonder Woman's character arc in the movie is kind of weak. I feel like Wonder Woman from the beginning of this movie is still the same at the end of the movie. It doesn't feel like this movie was an important story to tell for her character and she even feels like a supporting character in her movie. The villains are shallow and cliche as well. Maxwell Lord has a son he loves which adds some humanity to his character but for the most part, he wants power because he just does. Babara/Cheetah motives are just so generic as she becomes villain just because she is jealous and that's it. I also disagree with the way Steve was utilised in the movie and felt the emotional moment with him could've been stronger.

I think my biggest complaint is how cheesy this movie is. I don't know if the director intended to devolve the superhero movie back to the 80s but it sure feels like it. I cringe so much in this movie even when it's meant to be serious. The movie is just laughably dumb at times and that is just kind of disappointing when compared to the serious nature of the first movie. For example, the mall action scene is just so cheesy with bad supporting actors, silly choreography and terrible lines. The movie also ends with a very cheesy message that they try to shove down the audience's throat. Instead of pushing the movie to new heights, the movie decides to embody all the cliches you can think of.

The action scenes are fun, except for the mall scene, but there are some very noticeable and shoddy CGI. You think with all the delays this movie went through that they would fix the CGI but nope it's quite bad. An example would be the truck scene with Wonder Woman running along with the car and it's so green screen or the Cheetah CGI looking like it's from Cats (2019). On that note, one of my complaints about the first Wonder Woman movie was the dumb fight near the end against a dark-coloured CGI thing at night and Wonder Woman 1984 kind of does the same thing. It's not as dark and bad but it is just her fighting some terrible CGI Cheetah. Hans Zimmer who is a legendary composer does the score for the movie but it feels phoned in. Also, severe lack of 80s music for some reason. The score is just okay and that's not what I expect from Hans which is a shame. My last point is a nitpick but this movie is still set in the DC extended universe yet this global scale threat is barely mentioned. It just feels so weird that such a large scale event doesn't seem to be of that much importance in this universe. Honestly, I don't even understand why the director made this a global threat because it didn't need to be. Also, the movie ends with no repercussions for some reason.

Overall, this movie was kind of a disappointment. It is nowhere near as good as the first movie. The story and characters are one of the most important aspects of a movie but they are incredibly weak in this movie. It attempts to cram in too many things and not all of them land plus the movie is way too cheesy than it needs to be. It does have great Wonder Woman and Steve moments with great performances, especially from Pedro Pascal. However, it is not enough to elevate this movie to greatness. It's a shame because there are some great things in the movie but they don't quite shine through.

#movies #movie review #comic books #dc #dceu #dc comics #wonder woman #wonder woman 1984 #diana prince #steve trevor #gal gadot #chris pine #pedro pascal #the mandalorian

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jcmorrigan · 4 years

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Just popping by and asking because I'm curious about your self ship with Giovanni. How did you both meet? :3

Ooh, I love this story! Though I had it only bare-bones before...this ask inspired me to sit on it and think through more of the details! So now I have a little more of that.

First of all, it doesn’t exactly follow the storyline of this song, but I just discovered it last night and I was STRUCK by how fitting it was for this whole ship, so give it a listen while reading this. Also, this got LONGER THAN I EXPECTED I’M SO SORRY

So. Here’s me: Rachel Scribere. Absolute mundie. Wants to be Inscribed, but that’s just not my life. Also wants to move up in the publishing industry, since she loves writing (mostly fanfiction, but let’s not tell the world that). And good news! A suburb outside Sweet Jazz City is hiring for a small local paper! Better than nothing, right? So I move from my small town into the heart of the city, scraping up for a cheap apartment so I can get started at work.

And it’s Hell.

My boss? Racist, homophobic, Lexist, and thinks I’m annoying. This job is slowly killing me, but I think it’s my only shot. If I lose it, I lose the apartment, I have to move back in with my parents, I have to let everyone down. Not to mention I haven’t made any friends yet in this city...surely my co-workers can’t be as bad as I think, right? They’ll be my pals eventually, right?

In the throes of depression, feeling absolutely no worth, I’m left to watch the office one day while the others are out. At a “business lunch” without me. Because I’m not in their inner circle yet, and probably will never be. I’m just trying to do some menial task they haven’t trained me how to do properly, nearly crying because it’s just not working and I know they’re gonna come back and be mad with how little I got done.

When the wall blows open.

“THERE’S NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN, [SUBURB] HERITAGE MUSEUM! FOR YOU HAVE BECOME THE NEXT TARGET OF THE BANZAI BLASTERS, AND THEIR PEERLESS LEADER, GIOVANNI POTAGE!”

When the dust clears, we’re trying to work out what, exactly, just happened.

He tried to rob a heritage museum in this suburb...and showed up at the wrong fucking building.

So he’s just all “Oh. So that’s why I’m the only one who showed up. Caaaan we just forget this ever happened? OKAYTHANKSBYE” and peaces out.

Well, I’m just about done, because our office got blown up and I still haven’t done my job and this is gonna be on my head and I just kinda fall on the floor and start crying. (Look, I know this isn’t the most headstrong start, but it’s my fantasy and I wanna be rescued from despair!)

When Giovanni WALKS RIGHT BACK IN to ASK ME FOR DIRECTIONS TO THE ACTUAL MUSEUM -

And witnesses me having a breakdown. “Hey...you, uh...you okay there?”

Well, now I’m mad at him for fucking up my life, because I am SO fired, so I get up and start sobbing and screaming at him how this is gonna be seen as my fault, and how this was already so horrible and it’s just so much worse now, but I launch into how little I was valued and Giovanni interrupts to express disbelief that my bosses didn’t take the time to help me catch up and feel welcome. After all, aren’t bosses supposed to treat their minions with love and respect?

Well, that’s when said bosses come back to the office. And they let me HAVE it.

Giovanni is miffed for two reasons. One, that they’re ragging on their precious minion (me) when that’s not something anyone should ever do, not ever! Two, that by going all “SCRIBERE. WHAT...DID...YOU...DO?”, they are totally stripping him of the cred of having made that bombastic entrance. He’s supposed to be the villain here, okay? Know his name! Fear it!

A great big argument ensues, with Giovanni defending this poor “newspaper minion” he just met and me not knowing what to say and my bosses trying to chase this crazy supervillain wannabe out of their office. And as Giovanni starts rattling off how much I deserve better and I’d be better off just quitting and being a villain...I get the impulsive idea. Hey, why not? At least I might feel alive.

So I stand up and make the decision for myself. I’m quitting. Effective now. And becoming an actual villain because I’m tired of adulting. SEE YA!

And I walk out.

Only to realize, a couple blocks away, that I have just thrown out my only financial lifeline.

Cue breakdown #2.

Now, Giovanni, he hasn’t gone love-at-first-sight for me or anything. But he does know a sad minion when he sees one, and he sort of has it in his head this is kiiiiiinda his fault, so he tails me to make sure I’m okay (which I’m not). And, I mean, a professional villain isn’t who I expected to be venting to, but he’s all I’ve got, so when he says he’ll listen, I just let it all out.

Giovanni has a great idea: I could join the Banzai Blasters with him! To which I utterly refuse. I mean, everyone knows it’s a pyramid scheme at this point, right? No one would join without being fully aware of that. (Gio: ”Heheh...yeah...I mean, I definitely knew that when I signed on, but that just means they’re legit bad guys...”)

But then he gets a BETTER idea! What if I’m an independent contractor villain? I keep the spoils of my own heists! He even thinks he remembers the name of some appraiser in the Blaster handbook that could help me get a foothold in the black market! I just need to steal some stuff to get startup capital, and hey, no one said I couldn’t tag along with the Blaster squad and take some of the spoils, like the awesome cursed swords we’re gonna find at the museum! (Me: “...What do you think the heritage museum is actually for?”) After all, the Blasters’ success is more based on clout and rank than the actual things they walk away with. No one will notice if one or two nice things goes missing! Not to mention, if I’m not an official Blaster, I get to pick my OWN uniform!

I’m desperate. And you know what? This...sounds like fun. What if I just said “fuck it”? So I agree. (And mentally plan out a potential blue-and-black aesthetic for my villain career.)

I also agree to give Giovanni a ride over there, since he is seriously NOWHERE NEAR THE MUSEUM.

En route, since it’s my car, he gets to hear one of my car mixes (IRL I make killer car mixes that make riding in my car like playing Russian Roulette - you could get rock, you could get emo, you could get trashy pop, you could get video game music, or you could just get a meme). And so he learns about my music taste. He also starts grilling me on my life - what do I do for fun? Well, I...write. They’re not really publishable stories, but...

Giovanni: “It’s fanfiction, isn’t it?” Me: “GOD DAMMIT”

He also asks my name. Which he hates, because he graduated with seven Rachels, and I can’t blame him, because I graduated with four others.

We finally get to the museum and the rest of the squad has been waiting for like an hour. They know he got lost but aren’t about to bring it up. Giovanni announces that he’s bringing a friend today and I get to help out.

Now, it’s worth noting at this point that I noticed he was QUITE A HANDSOME FELLA from the moment he walked into the room through the hole he blew in the wall, and his quirks are exactly My Type. So I’m already starting to crush on him. But I am well aware that should NOT be ANY sort of priority right now. As for me? He just sees me as a new villain buddy! (He develops feelings for me later, at which point he’s horrified because “I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAVE A FAVORITE MINION!”.)

The other Blasters are just like “Okay, cool” because it’s really not strange at this point for Giovanni to pick up a stray (”How do you think we got Flamethrower?”). Ben is excited because now he’s not the only one who doesn’t have a cool minion name, but now Giovanni wants to give me one to spite Ben. “Hmm...let’s see...you’re a writer, so...Storyteller? Chronicler? No...oh, wait! You also like all that weird music! What about COMPOSER? See, it’s a double meaning, because it’s a music thing, but also, you COMPOSE stories...you...you get it? It’s wordplay.”

Composer. I like it. In return, even though Giovanni’s technically not my boss, I agree to call him Boss. (”And really, I may not be your boss legally, but I want you to think of me as a boss in your heart.”)

And we have FUN clearing out the museum. It’s a Sunday, so it’s closed and no one’s actually there, so we just have the run of the place. I get to take back a couple artifacts that Sweet Jazz history buffs on the black market will love.

At the end of the day, Giovanni is all excited for this new partnership, and he’s talking up how he’s going to meet up with me tomorrow to get my stuff appraised - can he have my number? Just to keep in touch? - and I have to discreetly drop him back off at the newspaper office so he can collect his Vespa and drive home. (Look. I know he does not, in canon, drive a Vespa. But he gives me the exact energy of someone who drives a Vespa, so in this ‘verse, he has one. Just rollin’ down the road like he’s on a motorcycle when it’s a fuckin’ scooter that just goes very fast)

Before I drop him off, though, he asks me if they’re gonna kick me out of my place due to me not having a paycheck that day. See, he doesn’t exactly understand how rent works. I assure him I have a due date. He tells me that I can totally crash at his and his mom’s place if I want; he’ll bug his mom into making up the guest room. Apparently she’ll be happy that he’s made more actual friends.

I joke that she would probably be fazed that he brought a girl home. He says that’s never been a concern. “Oh. Not into girls?” “No, I am. And guys. And a couple who weren’t either. The thing is, if my mom was gonna ban everyone I COULD end up being attracted to, she’d have to ban...EVERYONE. And then I wouldn’t be allowed to have ANY friends over.”

I drop him off, go back home...and hit breakdown #3.

What was I fucking thinking? I can’t be a supervillain. Especially not an independent contractor. I’m on the wrong side of the law for a living. This isn’t going to turn a profit...and that’s not even taking into account the trouble I’ll get in with the heat. I’m having anxiety, shakes, nausea, the whole works. Starting to think this isn’t worth it. Maybe starting to feel a little suicidal.

Crawl into bed. Barely sleep. Drag myself out of bed the next day to rendez-vous with Giovanni.

Just seeing him makes me feel...slightly better. He and I head off to a hidden locale to briefly confer with Ramsey Murdoch over my finds. (”Just don’t look him directly in the gross rat face.”)

Ramsey informs me I actually have some valuable stuff on my hands, recommends some buyers, makes an offhand joke about us being a “cute couple” that goes right over Giovanni’s head.

This doesn’t do much to reassure me. I still feel empty. Hollow. Afraid. But Giovanni, he SENSES this on the drive home. He can also tell I put in one of my most upbeat dance mixes to cover the sadness. So he pesters me until I tell him how I really feel...

And he refuses to leave me alone all day because a good boss doesn’t leave a minion who’s feeling that down on herself.

We end up back at his place. Start out by watching movies. I have to put up with him and his mom yelling at each other, but Ms. P. switches on a dime around me - “So glad you’re here, Sweetie. Giovanni could use more good friends like you. Good influences who will tell him NOT TO PUT HIS FEET ON THE LIVING ROOM TABLE GOD DAMMIT HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO GO OVER THIS WITH YOU GIOVANNI anyway, Rachel, can I get you anything? A drink? Some popcorn? Since MY RUDE SON DIDN’T ASK WHAT HIS GUEST WANTED WHEN SHE CAME OVER but you name it and I’ll get it for you.”

I’m still depressed. I cuddle up in a blanket. It’s hand-knitted. I mention that it’s super comfy. Giovanni takes it as a compliment, revealing that he made it himself. This leads to him parading a bunch of things he’s knitted in front of me - scarves, hats, etc. And I love every one of them. Oh, no, I am falling for this man and am also still depressed.

We end the day by plotting out my new villain attire. He’s good at sketching out patterns for clothes, so I give him an aesthetic to go for - blue, corset lacing, asymmetrical skirt, off-the-shoulder, is this too Disney villain?, you know what I don’t care, hey, that looks great! (Eventually he actually helps me put that monstrosity together)

He sticks around. I gradually become more confident in my element, making sales, stealing more things, getting comfortable with THE VILLAIN LIFE, actually turning up a profit because Ramsey knows where the market is and is glad to show me, and hanging out with the Blasters on a regular basis in an abandoned library we’ve taken over as our lair (Giovanni says the word “Lair-brary” once and immediately regrets it and asks us all to forget he ever combined those syllables).

And I’m happy. Finally.

Then one day, in the library lair that is not a Lair-brary, there’s some shenanigan and a bookshelf almost falls on me and crushes me and Giovanni tackles me out of the way because THAT’S WHAT ANY DECENT VILLAIN BOSS WOULD DO FOR HIS PRECIOUS MINIONS and oh. Oh my God. If I didn’t have a crush on this man before, I LOVE him now. Oh, no. Oh, no... ;-)

That’s pretty much the origin story. I’m still kind of nursing the idea of doing an AU version of this in TBTC, and I would probably still wanna use “busts into WRONG PLACE, sees Rachel being mistreated, takes her to rob a place to feel better,” and I hope it’s not tacky to copy the same device. But yeah, I hope that wasn’t the 15 minutes of your life you’ll never get back

#selfship #i'm at soup!

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worddevdealswithml · 5 years

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Side Effects Include: Empathy

Chapter 34 (End):

Three plates of leftovers, a couple best-of-three mechastrike duels, and two completely unexpected kisses later (what could she say, he turned really red, and it was too adorable to pass up), Adrien finally ran out of excuses to stay. Not to say that she wanted him to leave; it was just that according to all stated logic, he had come here to make sure she was okay, and the longer he stayed, the more awkward questions there might be all round.

So, when his ride finally arrived, she’d made no bones about him needing to leave promptly.

She’d said it honestly, but he’d leaned in, and wrapped his arms around her, and she’d had a hard time holding onto that commitment.

“See you tomorrow night?” he whispered.

She tried to maintain her composure, an effort that was made all the harder by the fact that she knew he was entirely aware of exactly how she felt, and laughed.

“I’ll leave the skylight open.”

His arms tightened for a second, and then…

He pulled away, took a deep breath.

“I’m glad that you’re feeling better after your nightmare, Marinette,” he said, a trifle too cleanly, and winked at her.

She giggled. “Well, I’m certainly glad you stopped by to make sure I was okay, and for no other reason.”

He started walking away.

It had been over a month since Ladybug had done, that, to Destruction Worker, and Hawkmoth was rapidly losing his mind.

He was nowhere near giving up yet, but it seemed like every villain he sent out… Grandshake, defeated in 4 minutes, Zillionaire, just over 2, and the 42nd rendition (43rd? He was losing track) of Mr. Pidgeon… Of course, he never really amounted to much, but under ten seconds of not amounting to much?

Ladybug had been bad enough before, when she just had a knack for planning around his supervillains, but now the balance had shifted, and unless he focused on strength, she could usually win in a straight-up fight. And if he did focus on making them strong, they were usually animalistic, and she just planned around them like it was nothing, to say nothing of the fact that Chat Noir was still a completely viable threat in his own right, and the other Miraculouses she could call on…

Nathalie had visibly deteriorated since she’d started working with him, and if he kept this up, he’d lose the only asset that was keeping him from being completely outgunned…

And… And also Nathalie. It wasn’t like he’d enjoy that, either.

He could try turning her into Catalyst again, but that would require engineering another mass event like he’d done on heroes’ day, and he didn’t even know where Lila Rossi had gone. He didn’t have Volpina, and he could barely afford to have Mayura.

Still. He’d keep trying, and eventually, he’d hit on something that could get him a victory, or, if nothing else, at least another Miraculous that wouldn’t put his assistant into a coma.

But for now, who knew when that would happen.

A particularly astute observer would likely have noticed that something was going on, starting shortly after a nightmare-inducing villain had attacked.

And now, two months hence…

Ladybug stood there, a bored expression on her face, finger wrapped up in the cord of her yo-yo.

“I told you I would,” she said, sounding almost annoyed, “so I don’t think you have anyone to blame but yourself.”

Chat Noir laughed. “And I told you that I’d welcome it, and I certainly do.”

“I remember you saying that, certainly,” agreed Ladybug, “but I don’t see any of the reporters you were hoping for, which I think leaves the advantage with me.”

From the way Ladybug rolled it her eyes, it was safe to say that Chat Noir had winked at her.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to entice you into doing this again at a better time. In the meantime, I’m not complaining. You already had me wrapped up in your charms.”

Ladybug sighed, and Chat Noir rose slightly higher above the ground as she put her face in the hand that was holding onto her yo-yo’s string.

She muttered something under her breath that an astute listener would have parsed to be something about regretting that his Miraculous was keeping him from being affected by his position.

“I get plenty of practice with the blood rushing to my head anyway,” he said, “after all, I spend plenty of time with-

“You already used that line!” cut in Ladybug.

“And it worked so well that time!”

“Well, maybe I don’t want it to be that simple for you,” said Ladybug.

The clip went viral almost the instant Alya posted it, but deep down, she knew that if they hadn’t prevailed on her to cut it off there, it would have been even more popular.

“Alright then,” said Chat Noir, craning his neck so his face was a bit closer to her. “Then how about this one…”

He said something, not quite audible, and Ladybug went pale, the string she’d been holding onto almost popping off of her finger.

“Ah—” said Chat Noir, now in a pile on the floor, “too… Too soon? I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, if you want me to wait until some other time, or—

His rapid backtracking was suddenly cut off, as Ladybug, who seemed to have pulled back into white so that she could slingshot directly into a bright red, wrapped him in what must have been a bonecrushing hug.

Most viewers would have agreed that Ladybug didn’t say a word, but Chat Noir, apparently would have disagreed with them.

“Oh,” he said, after a second, “I see. I really do mean it, you know.”

Ladybug let out a weak giggle.

“I know you do, you silly kitty.”

Alya of course, told them all about what she’d seen, in person, the next day at school.

“I’m serious,” she said, leaning forward onto the table they’d co-opted to eat on, grinning wide, “I swear to you, after everything, they’ve got to be together. Like, I don’t know what he said, but from the way she just dropped him, it must have been something serious.”

“Or it was just like, ‘I’m covered in mud, and you’ll get your yo-yo’ dirty,” said Nino, shrugging.

“Hush, you,” said Alya, “I’m not kidding. They asked me to cut the footage, seemed really serious about it. I’m pretty sure it was something personal.”

Adrien idly reached out a hand, and rested it lightly on Marinette’s back, low enough that nobody else at the table would see it.

Relief, presumably that Alya actually did cut the footage, sparks lightly into shock, and settles back down, as she almost casually accepts the contact.

“Well,” she says, “I think it’s great that you at least respected their wishes.”

Alya laughs, a trifle ruefully. “Yeah, I mean… I’m just imagining how popular the clip would have been if I’d gotten the whole thing, but… I guess it’s for the best, right? I’m fairly certain that at least a few Akumas were caused by a lack of privacy, and… just imagine Ladybug and Chat Noir turned against the city.”

“Well, I mean,” says Nino, as there’s a twist of distaste from Marinette, “he’s after their Miraculouses, right? He’d probably just have them hand them over, and untransform them.”

“Well, I don’t want to find out what he’d do with them anyway,” says Alya.

“Probably something big and villain-y” says Nino. “Hey, maybe that could be your next article. Top 5 things Hawkmoth would do if he did get Ladybug and Chat Noir’s Miraculouses.”

Adrien rolls his eyes, and as Alya and Nino continue their discussion, he looks over at Marinette.

She catches the movement and looks back at him.

Her expression is even, and more questioning than anything.

She feels… Honest, and open, more than anything, and right now, that is exactly the thing calibrated to set his heart racing.

Alya and Nino are busy with something else, so it’s not like anything stopping him from…

No.

As much as he’d love to even the score between them, vis-à-vis who catches the other off-guard with a kiss, right now, what he really wants…

He wraps his arm the rest of the way around her waist, and slides her closer, until she bumps up against him.

And there, the sun shining through the window, his friends hammering out the details of a new article, and Marinette beside him, lighting up his heart from the inside out, Adrien is happy to sit, and he knows, knows for a fact, that she’s happy, too.

And that’s all he needs to know.

-The End

#ML #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous Fanfic #ML Fanfic #Adrien Agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #alya cesaire #Nino lahiffe #Hawkmoth #Good grief this story took a long time #Probably way easier to read on AO3 so like if you want to read it from the beginning...#https://archiveofourown.org/works/18985999/chapters/45082516 #Will take you to the beginning #Many thanks to #Yunyin #Whose art inspired this story

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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alarawriting · 5 years

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Inktober #14: Overgrown

Not sure what I’m doing with 13: Ash yet, so here, have 14. This features a character from the Cold Light universe but not part of that book. He’s a Proxima, like Meg, but instead of becoming a hero or villain with his powers... he does something else.

Max looked over the yard. “Yikes.”

The executor nodded. “It looks like they didn’t do anything to take care of the yard for the past 10 years. When Walter died, the paramedics had to borrow a weed clipper from the wife to get the walkway wide enough that they could get the stretcher through.”

“My God,” Max said. “Is – was there any chance they could have saved his life otherwise?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure there wasn’t,” the executor said. “He was pronounced DOA. But Helen wants to sell the place and move to an assisted living community. Apparently Walter’d been telling her for ten years that he was having things taken care of – either he was doing the chores, or he was having a landscaper come by, or something – and with her being mostly bed-ridden, she took his word for it.”

“That poor woman. She really hasn’t left her house in ten years?”

“Aside from going outside to bring in grocery and package delivery, neither did Walter. We’ve found a few paths he made through the underbrush to get to the gate where they’d leave the packages, but they weren’t big enough to bring the stretcher through.” The executor shook his head. “The best we can figure, either he was a hoarder of garden vegetation, or he had the worst cast of procrastination anyone’s ever seen.” He gave the suburban jungle one last eyeing-over before turning to Max. “What can you do with this?”

“A lot,” Max said, “but too much of that growth is woody for me to just make it all disappear. When green-stem plants die, like flowers and tomatoes, they just collapse to the ground, but woody plants like trees and shrubs and some kinds of vine will still be there when they die… they won’t continue to grow, their roots will shrink and they’ll dry out and be easier to dig out or cut down, but it’s still going to take some work to remove them.” He pulled at a woody vine that had completely swallowed the white picket fence… at least he thought it was probably a white picket fence from the tiny bits of picket that showed through the vines.

“Well, any cost from landscapers coming in and cutting down whatever’s left after you do your job will be more than made up for by what Helen can get from selling the house, and it would cost a lot more to have them cut it all down while it’s alive.”

“Not to mention the rats.” Max looked at the executor. “You did know about the rats, didn’t you?”

“Uh… no. Helen didn’t mention rats.”

“Just for due diligence, she doesn’t have a family of pet possums or a colony of feral cats living on the property, does she?”

“She has two cats, they’re indoor cats and fixed.”

“And they’re not on the property anymore? It’s important that nothing she wants alive should be on the property at the moment.”

“I get that.” The executor’s smile was nervous. Max took a step away from the man, casually, as if he was inspecting the vines, and saw out of the corner of his eye the executor relax slightly. “She’s got her cats with her, I believe.”

“Staying with kids or something?”

“No, a friend’s house. Walter and Helen never had any kids.” The executor snorted. “If they had, I’d be having words with those kids now. Walter was obviously mentally ill or something, and Helen wasn’t physically capable of enforcing him dealing with the yard even if she knew there was a problem, but if they had kids, there would be no excuse for anyone letting their parents live like this.”

“There’s some smallish creatures in the house. Can we confirm she doesn’t have fish, or other terrarium pets she might have left behind?”

“Huh. She did go to her friend’s in a hurry; it’s not like she’s moved out yet. I’ll check.”

While the executor called the widow to confirm whether or not the lives Max was sensing in the house were wanted or not, Max walked along the fence. Most of the life he was going to have to deal with was deep inside, nowhere near the fence. It was a large property, and he wasn’t going to be able to do it by radiating an area of effect, since there were neighbors. He sighed. Dammit, he was going to have to get the hedge clippers himself, or a machete or something, just to get deep enough into the yard to be able to do his job.

“I don’t get paid to be a gardener,” he muttered.

Well, he didn’t get paid to be a plumber either, but there’d been that colony of mutant amphibious mice that he’d had to track through the pipes in that one house. And at least the homeowner was willing to make a clean sweep, none of “don’t touch my prize rosebushes but get everything else”.

Still, he made a mental note to quote the executor a 20% increase in his usual fee.

“Good news,” the executor said. “Nothing in the house is supposed to be alive.” A little nervously, he asked, “How do you know there’s living things in there? Can you tell what they are?”

“I can tell their approximate size, and, vaguely, about how high off the ground they are,” Max said. “What I’m seeing could be consistent with pet fish, or animals in terrariums… or it could be a few colonies of mice living in the walls. There’s also a lot of insect life, all over. Uh. I think maybe you’re gonna want to check for termite damage after I’m done.”

“Wait, there are termites?”

“Some kind of insect living in parts of the wall that I think might be studs,” Max said. “Could be something like powder post beetles if there’s wooden furniture up against the walls.”

“But you can take care of them?”

“Sure can, but I can’t fix the damage they might have done, so get the place inspected thoroughly before you put it on the market. I can certify that I treated the place for you, once I’m done; I’m licensed to certify state-approved no-toxin extermination was performed. There’s bedbugs, too. That’s weird for people who never leave the house.”

“I’ll just… have the mattresses burned.”

“No need, I can deal with those little suckers too, including the eggs. But the mattresses should be thrown out; there’s gonna be tiny little bloodstains all over them. Nothing bio-active, but people looking at it won’t be able to tell it’s been sanitized. Don’t burn them, the chemicals mattresses are made of turn toxic when you set them on fire.”

“Anything else?”

“Major flea infestation. Those poor cats. Let the friend know and get the homeowner have them professionally treated right away.”

“Is that something you could do?”

“Not without making the cats sick. I don’t do parasites on living creatures; I’m an exterminator. I kill stuff. People aren’t a big fan of exposing their pets to things that kill stuff.” It wasn’t impossible; he’d killed skin cancer once, and the person who’d had the melanoma was still alive, but it was delicate work and dangerous and he’d only done it because his friend hadn’t had insurance and he’d been terrified the thing would metastatize before his friend could raise the money for chemo. Also because chemo was probably worse for people overall than one exposure to a pinpoint death touch. Cats were more fragile than people anyway.

“Okay, I’ll let Helen and her friend know. If Helen’s cats infest her friend’s house with fleas, you’d be able to help with that, right?”

“Yep, with all the usual caveats. Get your pets out of the house for the day, that includes any fish, prized houseplants, and if you want me working on your garden you show me every plant you don’t want dead when I’m done, yadda yadda.”

“Sounds good. So when do you want to get started on Walter and Helen’s yard here?”

Max pulled out his phone, did some quick calculations, and presented the executor with the total. “You can give me a check now, or you can call my secretary and give her the credit card number over the phone.”

“We’ll do a check, that’s simplest.” The executor didn’t even blink at the price. Silently Max kicked himself for not raising the price even higher.

“And I’m gonna need those hedge clippers.”

“I figured as much.”

***

Half an hour later the executor was gone, driven off to get lunch or something, far more than a safe distance away. Max could sense as far as a city block, but he had no idea if he could actually drain life that far away, because he’d never tried.

Numerous supervillains had tried to recruit him since he’d discovered his powers around the age of 14, but Max thought that capes were, in general, ridiculous people. Well, the Peace Force were all right, as heroes went, and his doctor was great despite being a supervillain in her spare time, but why the hell would he ever want to work a job where the entire reason he was on board was to threaten to kill people, or actually do it? He still had nightmares about his grandfather’s death, and the man had been in his 60’s, old enough to die of a heart attack even if Max had had nothing to do with it. Max felt bad when he accidentally killed someone’s pet goldfish – which had happened, in the beginning of his career, because idiots heard “get your pets out of the house” and for some reason mentally tacked on “except for your fish, they aren’t really alive.” Why would he ever want to kill anything another person cared about, let alone a person themselves? Hell, the only mammals he was cool with killing were the rats and mice, and that was mainly because they carried disease and ate people’s food. He wouldn’t take on rural assignments, they kept wanting him to dispose of bunny rabbits and gophers. No thanks. And he didn’t do birds. Pigeons were beautiful creatures and geese were shitheads but mostly just because they weren’t scared of humans, and Max respected that.

His extermination business was certified by the state to be wholly organic and no-toxin, which was good for the environment and for the health of the people he helped. From Max’s perspective, he’d taken a power that terrified most people and kind of screamed “supervillain” to anyone who paid attention to capes, and used it to improve the life and health of people and their pets.

He started at the gate, where the paramedics had hacked a pathway to the house wide enough to get the stretcher through. The pathway was partly the actual original walkway, partly ground that had once been occupied by tall pokeweed plants. As Max walked along the path, he cast his awareness out as far as he could see, to the limit of the yard edge or his eyes’ vision, whichever came first. Life everywhere, from the bacteria and the worms in the dirt to the weedy jungle overrunning every square inch of the yard.

They’d have to replace the worms, when he was done. If Max was going to get all the seeds, he’d have to get everything within the top six inches of the soil. He could leave the bacteria alone – they were small enough that they couldn’t be anything else, and soil needed bacteria to rot the things he was going to kill – but worms were, unfortunately, indistinguishable from small plant shoots, and the garden wouldn’t do well once the worms were all dead.

He stood in the middle of the area he’d mentally bounded, and pulled life energy from it.

Most of the plants slumped immediately. The pokeweed, which wasn’t exactly woody but was easily the thickest non-woody stem Max was familiar with, stood up for a while even as its leaves shriveled, but eventually collapsed on itself. The woody vines and the overgrown shrubs lost their leaves, pulling the water out of any extremity they had in a doomed effort to save themselves. Plants interpreted the pulling of their life force as dehydration, probably because they weren’t evolved to experience this kind of death from any other force.

When he was done… there were still woody sticks and vines and leafless shrubbery everywhere, but everything green was gone, slumped to the ground.

With the clippers, he began cutting himself a path through some raspberry plants that had gotten way out of control, moving toward the side of the house. Once he was far in enough that he could see an area of the yard he hadn’t been able to see before, he did the same thing. Set the range, then pull the life.

It was very important to Max that he could physically see the area he was killing. He could sense life, and its approximate size, so things like the time some absolute shithead had left a child playing in the basement weren’t a real danger for him. He’d notice something as large as a child right away, and had, that time. (He couldn’t prove that said shithead had wanted him to kill the kid so they could sue his insurance for wrongful death, but at the very least the act had been neglectful enough that he’d seen the kid taken away and given to a foster family, and he’d testified at the hearing that had terminated the asshole’s custody. The kid had deserved better.) But kittens, puppies, songbirds, other creatures like that… life came in sizes, for him, and he couldn’t tell the difference between a mouse and a hummingbird, aside from the fact that hummingbirds didn’t stay still as often as mice did and were usually found higher than mice (not always, though… mice climbed on things.) So outside, where most living things were just minding their own business and not bothering the humans, he wanted to be able to see what he was killing.

Back out of where he was, head up to the porch, over to its side where he could see the other side of the yard. Set the range, pull the life. He included part of the house itself in his sweep this time, killing infestations of insects and an absurdly high number of rats and mice. What the hell had been wrong with that guy, that he’d let his disabled wife live in this shithole without doing anything to maintain it or keep the pests under control? Max got the concept of procrastination – the dishes in his own sink hadn’t been done for a week, he just kept killing the fruit flies and mold rather than actually washing them because he hadn’t run out of dishes yet – but this was appalling. He really didn’t want to go in the house, and from what he could see through the windows of the piles of clutter everywhere, the house plainly didn’t want him to go in, either. Hopefully he’d be able to get the place fully sterilized without having to enter.

The whole job took two hours. It was easily the longest a yard this size had ever taken him. By the time he was done, he was twitching with restless energy. The life went somewhere when he took it – it went into him. Max was in his thirties, but physically looked and felt like a man barely out of college; he grew facial hair just so people would take him seriously as a business owner. He’d been sick exactly once since he’d developed his power, mainly because he’d been binge drinking a lot at the time, and apparently that suppressed his immune system no matter how much life force he was brimming with. Max used to know a guy whose power allowed him to siphon off the excess life energy, which he used to pay Max for since he could use it to help sick people for cash, but someone had shot the dude last year and Max hadn’t found anyone else with a similar power set yet.

So here was the part where he wound up the job and went to the gym, because he had to do something to get rid of the energy, and neither of the exactly two girlfriends he’d had in his life had been able to keep up with him in bed when he was like this, so he needed other outlets.

As he left the place, Max looked back at the disaster of a yard. It actually looked significantly worse now – instead of green overgrowth covering everything, now it was sparser, but winter-brown and dry, nothing but lifeless shrubs and the tracery of woody vines still twined around everything despite being leafless and dead. But at least now, the landscapers would have an easier time of it; there’d be no difficulty telling the difference between legitimate, desired plants and weeds when all of them were dead, and dead plants were significantly easier to cut or remove.

He pulled out his cell phone as he headed for his car. “Hey there,” he said to the executor’s voice mail. “I finished the job. Go ahead and send the landscapers in before rats move into the vacuum I just left.”

Max really needed to find someone else who could siphon his excess energy, he thought. The money he’d just made was good, but it’d be better if he could do two or three jobs this size in a day without having to have a few hours in the gym to burn it off before draining anything else. Although, on the plus side, at least now he was really, really buff. Too bad that didn’t help much on the dating scene after he told girls about his power, but it wasn’t like he was going to lie.

#inktober 2019 #proximas (alara rogers)#super powers

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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years

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Fic: We’ll All Go Together When We Go (ao3) - chapter 4 Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Barry Allen/Mick Rory, Leonard Snart & Mick Rory

Summary: Doomworld takes some time to fix. Barry and Mick use that time to find each other.

(written for @flashwaveweek 2017 for Day 6: Domestic)

——————————————————————————

"Beep! It's six forty five! Time to wake up!"

"Noooooo," Barry moans.

"Beep! Six forty six! Time to wake up!"

"Miiiiick," Barry says, burying his face in his boyfriend's arm. "Make him stop."

Mick huffs into semi-awareness. "Lenny," he says groggily. "Stop harassing my boyfriend."

That gives Barry a happy feeling in his stomach. Mick isn't always one to give a name to what they have, much less one as undignified as boyfriend.

That happy feeling makes him crack his eyes open, hoping maybe to see his boyfriend (now official!) and possibly reward his heroic gesture with a kiss.

This is a tactical error.

A fully dressed Snart stands by the bed, grinning a positively wicked smile.

They're not even in Mick's apartment, where Snart at least lives right upstairs and had a spare key. They're in Barry's apartment, which is in a totally different neighborhood, in a walk-up, and had been locked up for the night.

Not that little things like locked doors ever stopped Leonard goddamn Snart.

"Scarlet, you told me to make sure you were late," he says, grin getting even wider. "The words 'whatever it takes' were used."

"I take it back," Barry says, even though he vaguely recalls some reason he needed to be at work early this week. He does not trust that expression on the face of Leonard Snart, former world-controlling dictator, current supervillain, thief and all-around havoc on everybody's nerves. "I retract."

"Too late," Snart says, and pulls out the cold gun.

"I hate yooooooooou!"

But Barry's up and at 'em soon enough, and Snart is nice enough to give him a ride into work while Barry chomps on his breakfast (leftovers from breakfast-for-dinner they had last night - god, Mick's such a good cook), which Barry only realizes is weird when they walk into the CCPD still side-by-side.

"Bear," Joe says. "What is he doing here?"

Barry blinks, then turns to squint at Snart, whose smirk is positively cheery. "I'm not actually sure," he admits. "I think he followed me here. I'm not sure why."

"I thought you were dating the other one," Joe grumbles.

"I am," Barry says. "They're just, y'know, kind of a package deal. Hey, Snart? What're you doing here?"

"I'm taking Iris out for breakfast," Snart responds with a beaming smile. "She's meeting me here - ah, there she is!"

He sweeps away.

Joe's expression looks like a cat being strangled.

Barry munches on his last piece of French toast.

"Bear," Joe says.

"She's married to Eddie," Barry reminds him.

"Barry."

"She wouldn't cheat on him at all, and even if she did, she wouldn't be so obvious about it."

"Barry!"

"Besides, Snart doesn't do romantic relationships," Barry says. Or sex, which is what Joe really cares about, but Barry's not going to malign Snart's scary reputation by pointing it out. People are weird.

He goes to work, wondering what it is he's forgetting.

Mick comes around noon with a box of lunch that smells so good it has half the precinct eyeing them like hungry hawks, as opposed to how they usually look when Mick or Snart's around - angry, bitter, cheated.

Not that they can do anything - with their state records wiped and a federal pardon in hand for helping fight the aliens, even with their occasional acts of supervillainy, both of them are clean enough to run for mayor.

Not that that says much, in Central.

"How's your day going?" Mick asks, pulling out lunch.

"Busy," Barry admits. Ever since he's been making an effort not to super-speed through his work - one terrible evening feverishly trying to re-learn all the work he did in preparation for a trial is more than enough for him - his days have gone back to being pleasantly full.

And, hey, if he sometimes speeds through the boring stuff, no one can blame him.

"Do you remember why I asked Snart to wake me up this morning?" Barry asks, remembering. "I've totally forgotten."

"No clue," Mick says.

"Do you know why he's meeting with Iris?"

"Something about her newspaper," Mick says. "And, uh, y'know."

That 'y'know' meant Doomworld.

"I don't want to know," Barry decides.

"We still on for movies this afternoon?" Mick asks. "Cisco said he was covering for your, uh, run."

"Oh, yeah!" Barry says, brightening. "Definitely. I've been wanting to see this one for a while."

"Good," Mick says, and then he lapses quiet while Barry talks about his day so far. Mick prefers listening, generally, to talking; his words don't always come easy, as he puts it, and he's learned to pick them carefully as a result.

It's a very nice lunch. Afterwards, Barry auctions off the rest of the cupcakes Mick brought to the department - highest bidder among the science department takes a boring assignment off Barry's plate, highest among the detectives promises to pick Barry for the next interesting crime scene, and two cupcakes reserved special for Captain Singh for looking the other way, because, well, this is Central ("Triple chocolate caramel?" Singh groans. "Is he trying to make us all fat? Is that the latest supervillain scheme? You’d tell me if it was, right, Allen?") - and goes back to work.

"Planning on making out with your arsonist in public this afternoon?" Julian snipes.

Barry rolls his eyes at him.

He's just jealous that Barry's love life is infinitely more interesting that his own.

It's a good day, and Barry even manages to finish up all his open projects before heading out to meet Mick at the movies. He's only a little late, like twenty minutes, but they're still doing previews, so it's practically like he wasn't late at all.

Also, Mick got him three extra-large buckets of popcorn.

Best boyfriend ever.

They do end up making out in the back row, but only through the boring bits. Barry feels qualified to discuss it tomorrow. Loudly, and with specific references to scenes. Take that, Julian.

And then he gets home and his apartment's empty.

"What," Barry says.

"Who took all your stuff?" Mick asks, alarmed. "Should I -"

"Wait," Barry says.

"Wait?"

"I asked Snart to wake me up early so that I wouldn't be here when the movers arrived," Barry says. He stares at the empty apartment. "I didn't realize they'd be so - thorough."

Though, really, he should've. Snart had said something about supervising personally.

"Movers?" Mick asks.

"Yeah," Barry says. "We're moving in together."

"We are?"

"...Snart said it was your idea?" Barry suggests, throwing Snart under the bus right off the bat.

Mick considers it for a moment, then shrugs. "Good."

Barry can't help but hide a smile. Mick had been not-so-subtly stressing about asking Barry to move in for weeks, now, to the point where he was starting noticeably more fires than normal, so Barry had taken matters into his own hands, including maligning a (entirely willing) Snart for suggesting it.

Mick really did prefer major life events to have already happened, rather than looking forward to them.

Barry fully expects to be informed of his own wedding when he gets the first RSVP card back, honestly.

Barry rather likes it. Speedsters love surprises.

Joe had expressed some concern about it - he'd never quite approved of Mick or let go of his hopes that Barry and Iris would marry to live in platonic bliss like they'd planned when they were five, but he'd mostly let it go. He had, however, commented that it was 'weird' that they were planning on letting Snart room with them.

Barry pointed out that it was a common living arrangement in most of the globe, albeit usually with unattached family, and God knows that Snart is Mick's family as much as anyone still living.

Joe had asked if he was worried that any kids they adopted would get teased about it.

Barry told Joe he was way overthinking things, given that they were nowhere near the kids discussion, much less the practical issues involved with having a kid who would have a supervillain dad and a superhero dad - honestly, having a supervillain (anti-hero?) uncle living upstairs would hardly register on the kid's weird spectrum. Besides, having Snart around meant Mick still had his support system and someone to discuss his villainous outings with. And Barry likes Snart. He's funny and hilariously sneaky.

Though speaking of which -

"What was Snart doing with Iris earlier?" he asks, trailing Mick back to the car to head over to Mick's place (also Snart's, now also Barry's). "Now that we're not surrounded by cops."

"They're thinking of opening a PR firm."

"What?"

"Hero and villain image management."

"You're joking."

"Just as a part time thing. You know Snart's still got those spymaster itches from Doomworld."

"You give a man a worldwide network of informers, he doesn't give it up easy," Barry agrees, bemused. "Really? Is there enough of a market for that?"

"They're branching out. Kara and her cousin have expressed some interest in figuring out how to separate their brands some."

"Their first clients are in another universe?"

Mick shrugs.

"Well, if it makes them happy," Barry says after a moment. "Are they coming for dinner?"

Iris has been by practically every day, often along with Eddie, often not when he's working late. They live just down the street in a building Snart may or may not own through a number of shell companies.

Barry's trying to figure out when exactly to tell Iris that the 'once in a lifetime scoop' apartment was priced that way for a reason, and that reason being Snart's inability to let go of anyone he liked, ever.

Eventually.

He’ll tell them eventually.

(He’s pretty sure Eddie already suspects.)

Man, if Snart goes evil again next Doomworld, Barry's expecting to be collared and leashed to Mick with Iris and Eddie in the next opulent luxurious room next door. Possibly locked into a Jacuzzi and not allowed to come out for hours and hours.

...that doesn't sound so bad, actually. Barry will have to suggest it.

"Yeah," Mick says. "I was thinking of making chicken."

"Which chicken, the breaded-with-aromatics or the divine-sauce-from-heaven?"

"...sauced."

"Lemon, tomato, or other?"

"Lemon," Mick says, starting to sound suspicious. "You getting bored, Red?"

"No, just making menu plans for your eventual restaurant."

"I'm not gonna own a restaurant. No matter what you and Snart say."

Barry grins and heads inside to drop off his stuff. Everything he owns fits in just right alongside Mick's, it's like he was always there.

Just right.

#flashwave #flashwaveweek2017 #mick rory #barry allen #the flash #heatwave #leonard snart #joe west #iris west #eddie thawne #my fic

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randomrichards · 6 years

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HONOURABLE MENTION: Gru and Dru Impersonate Each Other from DESPICABLE ME 3 After a period of bonding, former Supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) and his bumbling estranged brother Dru (also Carell) decide to make a family dinner a little fun by dressing up as each other. Sure, this scene might be a little random, but it’s so enjoyable to watch these two try to imitate each other. I included this scene thanks to Carell’s impressive voice acting. Rarely do you hear a voice actor portray one character impersonating another character they also voice. To pull this off, they can’t sound like the later character, they must sound like former character trying to impersonate the later character. One perfect example is the scene in the Looney Toons Cartoon Rabbit Fire, when Bugs Bunny (Mel Blanc) and Daffy Duck (also Blanc) pretend to be each other to trick Elmer Fudd (Arthur Q. Bryan). When Bugs impersonates Daffy, you don’t hear Daffy’s voice. You hear Bugs doing his best Daffy impersonation. The same goes the other way. Carell pulls off the same affect with the characters. When Dru imitates Gru, it’s more innocent compared to Gru’s snarkier imitation of Dru. Such is a challenging task for a voice actor, and Carell pulls it off with graces. The Aging Montage from A QUIET PASSION This brilliant montage starts with each member of the Dickenson clan sitting in front of the camera like they’re posing for a portrait. When the camera closes in on Emily Dickenson (Emma Bell as a teen, Cynthia Nixon as an adult) and her family, they age right in front of our eyes. Director Terrence Davies is not known for using special effects, but the way this film flawlessly ages up the characters from one actor to another is breathtaking. 10) Wonder Woman Enters No Man’s Land from WONDER WOMAN As if I need further explanation. It’s Wonder Woman strutting in the middle of a battle field! And she’s dodging bullets with her shield and bracelets! And she’s kicking German soldier’s asses! All to the tune of her awesome theme song (courtesy of composer Rupert Gregson-Williams). Of course, it wouldn’t have worked without Gal Gadot’s performance as Wonder Woman. Not only does she give off the presence of a true warrior, but you can feel the conviction as DC’s greatest heroine steps into battle, ready to defend the greater good. 9) The NASCAR Heist from LOGAN LUCKY Steven Soderbergh is a maestro when it comes to filming a heist scene. Watching a Heist unfold in Ocean’s Eleven and the sequels were always a blast to watch. He proves he still has the moves with Logan Lucky, where he brings a blue-collar spin to the tropes. This time, the masterminds are the unlucky Logan brothers (Channing Tatum and Adam Driver) who plot a heist on NASCAR with the help of demolitions expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig). Of course, they must break Joe out of prison to accomplish this goal. And it must be done quickly so Jimmy (Tatum) can be on time for his little girl’s beauty pageant. So not only do we see a heist unfold, but also a prison break, and a riot to boot. It’s just as glorious as the Heists in the Ocean’s movies. There are also a lot of funny moments surrounding this sequence, from Clyde’s (Driver) prosthetic arm getting stuck in a tub to Joe stopping a heist to explain the science of using gummy bears to make a bomb. 8) That Plot Twist from SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING To me, what made Spider-Man so special was Peter Parker’s struggles to balance his personal life with his superhero life. He had enough problems being bullied at school and having money troubles at home, but getting super powers only added complications to his life. Sure, Peter earns the glory of beating up bad guys as Spider-Man, but it comes at the expense of letting people down in his personal life. It made matters worst when those dangers found their way to his doorstep. Case in point: this plot twist. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) second life as Spider-Man has taken its toll on his social life, making it near impossible to socialize with Liz (Laura Harrier). Despite missing multiple events, Liz finally gives him a chance when she becomes his date for the homecoming dance. Just when everything’s coming up Parker, his joy comes crashing down when he finds out Liz’s father is Adrian Toombs, aka the Vulture (Michael Keaton). Now Parker’s faced with a dilemma; go through with his date and let Toombs get away with his heist or stop Toombs and ruin Liz’s life. When Marvel movies were criticized for being too predictable, this plot twist took everyone by surprise. I was at a preview night for this movie, and never have I heard an audience sound more shocked by a twist in my life. 7) The Opening Bank Robbery from BABY DRIVER Of course, we can’t talk about the best scenes from 2017 without mentioning the years’ best car chase. From the opening scene, we witness the precision Baby (Ansel Elgort) puts into his driving as he helps bank robbers (Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm and Eliza Gonzalez) evade police while listening to John Spencer Blue Explosions’ Bellbottoms. It’s always fun to watch a heist unfold in movies, but this car chase is a sight to behold. This scene plays more like a musical number the way the car sways gracefully in tune to the song. And the way that car swerves around that tight alleyway is a beauty. 6) All the Bomb Disarming Scenes from LAND OF MINE These are among the most intense scenes of the year. You can’t help but be on the edge of your seat while young German POWs try to diffuse millions of landmines on a beach. Yes, they’re Nazis, but they’re also frightened kids. They all dream of going home, yet they are stuck in a village that despises them. You sit there with dread knowing that one wrong move and Kaboom! These kids have to maintain a steady hand, but many of them are fidgety from terror. You are always anticipating an explosion, yet every Boom comes as a shock in this movie. 5) Run Rabbit Run from GET OUT Is it just me or does easy listening Rock N’ Roll music make horror films more unsettling? Notice how creepy Robert & Johnny’s We Belong Together sounds in Christine, as if it’s emphasizing the car’s obsession with its owner. And then there’s the infamous X-Files episode “Home”, when the sound of Johnny Mathis’ Wonderful Wonderful warned of the mutant monster’s oncoming attack. What makes these innocent sounding songs work so well in moments of terror? One reason is how the director plays on the irony of the upbeat music playing over a terrifying scene, as if to taunt the heroes. Another reason is how the lyrics an unintentionally further the tone of the film, as indicated by the former. A most recent example is how director Jordan Peele uses Flanagan & Allen’s Run, Rabbit, run in the opening scene of Get Out. First, the chorus is almost warning innocent bystander Dre (Keith Stanfield) of oncoming danger. Second, the uppity tune is as unassuming as the suburban environment, adding more suspicion to the world around Dre. Finally, it introduces the reoccurring theme of running which includes the creepy scene of the Armitage’s groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) randomly running around at night. And I haven’t even started on the brilliance of how the film was shot. Shot in one take, Peele has the camera circle around Stanfield as he walks alone at night (never a good idea in horror movies). And then we see a white car U-turn right behind him and follow him and you know the shit’s about to hit the fan. Then the camera circles around him, we realize the car’s door opens and out of nowhere, a man in night’s armor knocks him out and drags him into the car. This scene is a lesson on how to build suspense. There’s also a satirical element in how it takes the stereotype of white people’s fear of black neighborhoods and turns it on its head. 4) The Opening Fight Scene from THE VILLAINESS and the Stairway Fight Scene from ATOMIC BLONDE The reason I put these two together is they share a theme of female assassins fighting multiple killers within a confined area. And they are both shot in one take. What separates them is how they are filmed; one done with stylized glamour and the other with gritty realism. Let’s start with the Korean action film and learn how to start an action movie. This Korean action film hits the ground running with our anti-heroine Sook-Hee (Ok-bin Kim) going John Wick on a group of gangsters. Facing off armed and sword-wielding assassins, She shots and slices across a seedy alleyway through a hallway. All shot from Sook-Hee’s point of view. That’s nothing compared to when they take the fight to the gym. In an environment surrounded by mirrors, cinematographer Jung-hun Park deserves credit for keeping the camera out of sight. Then in a moment of master filmmaking, we see Sook-Hee’s POV as her head smashes into a mirror and then the camera switches to a third person perspective. How they managed to pull this off is a miracle. While director Byung-gil Jung was looking to impress through camera work, Director David Leitch was looking to impress through choreography with Atomic Blonde. While trying to transport key witness Spyglass (Eddie Marsan), MI6 Agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) finds herself ambushed by two KGB agents. And so, commences a brawl that leave all battered, bloody and exhausted. But just when it seems like Broughton is done, along comes more Agents to open fire on her. The camera follows Theron and the villains as they try to shoot at each other, throw each other down the stair and pummel each other to bloody pulps. It offers a more realistic portrayal of brawls. In most action films, the hero takes down thugs with ease. But like the Hallway scene from Daredevil, when henchmen get knocked down, they get back up and deliver their own hard blows. This not only humanizes the protagonist, but makes the action more gripping. 3) Remember Me from COCO Okay, it’s more of a song than a scene. But this song is special in how its meaning changes throughout the film. Remember Me is the most famous song of Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez)’s late idol Ernesto De La Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). Trapped in a family with a draconian “no-music” rule, the song embodies Miguel’s passion for music and his longing for escape. But as the spirit realm reveals the downsides of a music career, the song’s meaning changes in Miguel’s mind. By the end of the film, the song showcases music’s power to connect loved ones. It also serves the film’s theme of the importance of remembering loved ones after they’re gone. On the lighter side, the song was also used to make fun of overplayed songs like Disney’s own Let it go.[1] 2) The First Rehearsal from A LONG TIME RUNNING In the first day of rehearsal for the Tragically Hip’s final concert, late singer Gord Downie returns from cancer treatment bearded and frail. From the recorded footage, you can see the rest of the band unsure of what to do. And then guitarist Paul Langlois begins the first notes of Escape is At Hand for the Travelling Man, and the band follows suit. In this moment, we watch Downie in suspense, waiting to see if he’ll have the strength to go on. But then he sings the first lyrics, he slowly reveals the charismatic front man Canada has grown to love. While we already know the Tragically Hip final concert goes off across Canada without a hitch, this documentary still has us in suspense in this moment. This moment feels like a moment of triumph for Downie, who is using his last ounce of strength for his last hurrah. With the recent passing of this extraordinary front man, this scene has more weight to it. 1) The Ending from Dunkirk No film ending has left more of an impact than this haunting, beautiful conclusion to the year’s best war movie, Dunkirk. SPOILERS AHEAD: After spending nearly two hours on the edge of our seats, we are finally relieved to see the 300,000 soldiers finally rescued from Dunkirk. In this moment, Zimmer finally breaks the cycle of intensity to deliver a beautiful melody of triumph. To the soundtrack of a Winston Churchill speech, we are treated to a series of haunting images, from Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) staying behind while his fellow men leave to a newspaper article declaring George (Barry Keoghan) a hero. But none compare to the conclusion of Farrier’s (Tom Hardy) storyline. There’s something awe inspiring about the image of an airplane slowly landing on a beach during sunset. Add Zimmer’s music and it almost brings a tear to your eyes. There’s also the image of the heroic pilot standing alone as he sets his plane on fire. Add the fact that not only does he have no way to get home, but he ends up captured by German soldiers and this scene stays with you forever. [1] Which was written by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who also wrote Remember Me.

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