#suns fucked up cinematic universe

[bereft-of-frogs]

Spoilers for Into the Night/Yakamoz S-245 if that’s something anyone’s concerned about?

I’m not sure the writer of the Yakamoz S-245 subtitles conferred with the Into the Night subtitler lol, but also getting the same scene in two different shows, from two perspectives, is a kind of cool illustration of how the subtitles can change the tone of a scene. “Everyone pays the price” vs. “You’ll pay for this”.

Like, part of this is also context. For the scene on the left, Ayaz is the protagonist. We have the full context of his confrontation with Markus, 12 episodes worth of characterization that show he is a flawed but ultimately just man, the line itself is a reference to an earlier conversation about justice and revenge. On the right, this person is a complete stranger, introduced as he’s trying to kill an unarmed person on their knees.

(Not that I really think anyone has only watched Yakamoz S-245. I mean, I guess it’s possible? It’s definitely written to be independent enough that you could in theory watch it first, I don’t think you’d miss out on any plot explanation. But I think most people will be watching it in release order. I’d personally recommend that, it’s a lot more fun when you have the Into the Night context, especially episode 5 and onwards.)

But it is the interpretation as well. The line as translated in Yakamoz S-245 is much more sinister. The personal, direct ‘you’ instead of the more general ‘everyone’. The left is really more a commentary on like, balancing the scales of justice, and the right is a pointed act of intentional violence. It’s really interesting how much more malevolent that one line shift colors the tone of this interaction, even aside from the larger narrative context.

[reinedeslys-central]

when it's been so long since you've read a fic that you forget about it and you find it in the search tags and start reading it again

and it's great, if a little familiar, but you've read a lot of these sorts of fics bc you like this tag a lot, so you assume it's nothing

but then the deja vu starts adding up and you start to wonder

and then moments before the great big Plot Twist Reveal happens you're suddenly like ah hell this is the bloody sundial fic again isn't it

smh this has to be the fourth time yet

[highonmarvel]

Can’t even trust yourself

Loki: Strange nights affect your days.

An entry for Day 6 of the exciting @sintember challenge!

Warnings: NON-CON, nightmares, severe anxiety and paranoia, possible psychosis, 18+!

Prompt: Cant’t even trust yourself, ft Loki of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

For the 11th night in a row you startle awake with a gasp, heart hammering, body sweating so much you can’t go back to sleep without taking a shower. You had been having these strange dreams for nearly a year now, but the last month or two they had been so vivid they felt more real than life itself.

You drag yourself out of bed, trying to slow your breathing as you make your way to the bathroom. The worst part is you don’t even really remember these dreams, just that they leave you panicked and weak and sore all over, but particularly your breasts, between your thighs, and your neck; blame it on your lack of sex.

You flick on the light in the bathroom and turn to the mirror. You shriek and nearly jump back in shock at your reflection. Where your neck feels tender, there’s a purple bruise spreading across your skin. You try to smudge it off, hoping it was fucking paint or something, who cares, you were just hoping it wasn’t really a bruise… not a bruise like that. No matter how hard you wipe it, it doesn’t come off. It’s just a random bruise, you tell yourself, some people bruise easily, maybe you hurt yourself and didn’t notice. Yeah. Though, still, as you stand under the flow of boiling water, so hot you wonder how it hasn’t burnt your skin off, you scrub violently at the mark. It’s still there when you take another look in the mirror.

After barely getting any sleep last night, you’re exhausted in the morning as you made your way to the office. Whether or not you usually get coffee, you know you’d physically need it today, and so you take a quick detour to the café across the street. You’re happy to see the cheerful blue-eyed barista is working this morning, and happy the place is near empty; only a tall figure in front of you in the line and a pair of scattered young people bent over laptops with papers and highlighters cluttering the table. Finals, you think, noting the 10+ empty coffee cups littering their feet.

You wait patiently (though you’re exhausted) behind the man as he gives his order, and Roger the barista nods and hurries to make it. Was that even his name? You didn’t really know, he wasn’t in too often, you just spotted him by those bright blue eyes. Maybe it was Riley or Ringo or something.

The man in front of you is handed his drink, and when you turns around, your blood runs cold. You take a deep gasp and step backwards. You don’t even get a good look at him before his back is towards you and all you can do is stare at his disappearing silhouette. You’re shaking, and you don’t know why; you can’t at all recall his appearance besides pale skin and long, black hair, but still it’s like he flipped some kind of switch and adrenaline started pumping through every vein in your body.

“Ma’am?”

You turn at the voice back to the counter. It’s not the blue-eyed barista you’re met with: you see the same face, but with eyes pure black.

You stumble out of the coffee shop without getting the caffeine you need, because you can not stay in there a second longer. Maybe you don’t need the coffee; now you feel fully alert. You jump as strangers passes by as you make your way across the street and up to your desk, trembling so much you wonder if you’ll ever stop. Once you’re at your desk, though, you do feel a little better; you’re no longer shaking, but still, anyone that comes up to you scares the fuck out of you, you have many close calls with an entire fucking heart attack, you can swear it. A few people ask you throughout the day if you’re okay, if you need to go home, but you assure them you’re fine, and when you finally get off, you feel kind of good about yourself for sticking it through the day, but that feeling fades as the sun does.

It’s dark out when you hop out of your car and make your way up to your apartment, and it doesn’t help your anxiety that the lights have been flickering in the corridor of your floor for about a week now, and no one had bothered to fix it.

The lift opens and you step out into the passage with the lights having a seizure of their own, it seems. Dark, light, dark, light, you’re at least glad it’s consistent, but while on any other day this would have been an annoyance, today, it’s panic-inducing.

Your place is near the end of the corridor, quite far down, and while you want to run, something tells you your body can’t take having to increase your heart rate any further or you’ll drop dead in the middle of your sprint. And why should you run? You’re a little angry with yourself—it was just a weird dream, and it had you fucked up all day. Pathetic. Your irritation does little to drown out your fear, however. On and off the lights flick at rhythm, like they’re singing a song on a steady beat.

You’re a few steps in when the lights go out for one, two seconds too long, barely enough time for feat to build, but it does; you know you can’t trust yourself to discern reality from fiction, but you do. You start walking faster. You throw a look over your shoulder; in front of the elevator stands a tall silhouette, but breathing; an alive shadow. You gasp and spin around to face it. There’s nothing there. You turn back, walking faster and faster now, but still trying to refrain from running.

The lights flick off, flick on, there’s a shadow. Flick off, flick on, there’s a shadow. What can you do except run straight towards it? Your door is in that direction, you just need to get inside. Maybe it would have seemed insane to anyone on the outside—it felt insane to you—but you start running, full speed towards what you’re trying to escape. On and off the lights flick and the silhouette comes in and out of sight, unmoving, and deeply unsettling.

You don’t know how you get your door open so fast, but you do, not fumbling once with your keys despite your wrecked state. You slam the door closed behind you and lock it, firmly pressing your back against it as you begin to hyperventilate.

What the fuck.

Tears are streaming down your face and you swear your chest is caving in on itself. You grasp at the kitchen counter and heave yourself forwards, breaths coming in and out at lightning speed, yet you still don’t feel you’re getting enough oxygen, you don’t feel you’re getting any oxygen, for that matter. It feels like a hand is wrapped around your throat, asphyxiating you as you stumble around your living area.

A hand? And pulling?

You’re being led towards your bedroom by your neck, and though you want to say it’s the miracle of getting your feet to move again, no, there’s definitely something pulling, dragging you towards your room.

You claw at the doorway and dig your heels into the ground, but that barely deters whatever is acting upon you. You’re flung onto the bed, and hit the mattress with a force that feels way too familiar, though obviously this has never happened before; you’d never had a ghost drag you through your home, or maybe it was psychosis, but you’d never had a psychotic episode like this.

You prop yourself up onto your forearms and scan the room for a sign of anything. At this point, you’re hoping someone will pop out, to confirm you haven’t completely lost it. And you immediately regret that hope.

Out of seemingly thin air, a figure steps forward. You know it. Tall, every tall, and long black hair, pale skin, you saw him at the café, but that’s not where you know him from, you know him from something much more personal, something deeper; you barely know him in your conscious mind, but your subconscious recognises it all.

This is a dream! it strikes you, and you slightly calm down, knowing you’re going to wake up at any second now. Why aren’t you waking up? A man you’ve never seen before is still stalking towards you.

You scream and kick your feet as he reaches the foot of the bed, even though he hasn’t touched you yet. In a literal flash he grips your ankles and twists, prying your legs apart and pinning your feet on the bed. Still, you struggle against him. He removes his hands, and now in their place are glowing virescent ropes tying you down, your hands have been restrained too, each limb reaching towards a corner of the bed. You writhe, twisting and thrusting your hips, crying the whole time. Why aren’t you waking up? What the fuck is even happening?

But you know exactly what it is happening.

The dark-haired man snaps his fingers and you’re naked and exposed. Maintaining direct eye contact with you, calmly, despite your conniption, he slowly pushes two long fingers into his mouth and drags them out with a pop.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, you will yourself, wishing more than anything ever, and more than anyone ever could to just wake up!

He unbuckles his belt, still quiet (why hasn’t he said anything?) and staring you down. And suddenly, he pounces on you, diving to harshly suck on your neck, the spot that had been sore. You try to bring your hand down to push him away but are met with the unfriendly reminder you’re restrained. You cry out at the assault, his sucking and biting is near animalistic.

And someone, you call out a name, his name, “Loki!”

For the 11th night in a row you startle awake with a gasp, heart hammering, body sweating so much you can’t go back to sleep without taking a shower. You had been having these strange dreams for nearly a year now, but the last month or two they had been so vivid they felt more real than life itself.

You drag yourself out of bed, trying to slow your breathing as you make your way to the bathroom. The worst part is you don’t even really remember these dreams, just that they leave you panicked and weak and sore all over, but particularly your breasts, between your thighs, and your neck; blame it on your lack of sex.

You flick on the light in the bathroom and turn to the mirror. You shriek and nearly jump back in shock at your reflection. Where your neck feels tender, there’s a purple bruise spreading across your skin. You try to smudge it off, hoping it was fucking paint or something, who cares, you were just hoping it wasn’t really a bruise… not a bruise like that. No matter how hard you wipe it, it doesn’t come off. It’s just a random bruise, you tell yourself, some people bruise easily, maybe you hurt yourself and didn’t notice. Yeah. Though, still, as you stand under the flow of boiling water, so hot you wonder how it hasn’t burnt your skin off, you scrub violently at the mark. It’s still there when you take another look in the mirror.

४

[coconutcordiale]

wasted + rooster please! congratulations 💝

golden hour

pairing- rooster x afab reader

warnings- 18+, unprotected piv, slight dumbification/degradation, light d/s, dom bradley, mention of oral (f receiving), completely unedited

length- 1.2k

an- thank you so much love!!! for the prompt "i know baby, i know" & many apologies for the wait on these celly requests. this was written in like....20 minutes. i have no idea if it's good or not

edit- realizing the next morning whatever took over my brain to write this was clearly inspired by @gretagerwigsmuse and the bradley & smart aleck cinematic universe (pls go read that it’s way better than this)

You don’t know how you ended up here. Mere hours ago, you were seconds away from killing Abby for making you go to the Hard Deck. Military bars all have the same kind of guy.

Now, your brain is melting out of your ears as you attempt to take in the gorgeous man above you, his sharp features glowing in the setting sun that filters through his salt-stained windows.

“Fuck,” Bradley groans from where he’s doing his best to bend you in half. “Feel so good, like you were made for me.”

That’s hot, your brain supplies as your eyes catch his biceps bulging where they bracket your head laid out on his pillow.

Shut up, you tell it, trying to keep some semblance of dignity in the face of having gone home with the exact kind of guy you swore you wouldn’t give the time of day.

You were excited when he first set down a fresh Jack and Coke for you at the bar, thinking this mustached man’s worn Hawaiian shirt equaled local instead of infantry. Unfortunately, his friends in khaki who kept trying to get Rooster’s attention quickly proved your instincts wrong.

It would’ve been easier not to end up in his bed if he didn’t look the way he does, brown puppy dog eyes so earnest and kind. If he hadn’t mentioned how much he loves to play Wordle, if his friends hadn't tried to coax him to the piano at least three times while you were there.

(If his arms weren’t threatening to break out of that old Hawaiian shirt.)

Your self-respect is getting shot to hell the longer you babble incoherent nonsense, breaking your gaze from his tan skin as your head lolls to the side, eyes going hazy and unfocused. He pulls all the way out to thrust back in again, slow and teasing, enough to bring you towards the edge again but not tip you over.

You know you’re whining, high-pitched and reedy, but you can’t find the wherewithal the stop any noises from tearing their way out of your throat.

It takes a Herculean effort to move your hands to his neck, tangling in those brown curls, wrapping your legs tight around his hips in an effort to ask for more, something your lips just can’t form right now.

Bradley grins, the edges a little sharp, a little mean as your pathetic whines must have gotten the message across. “Greedy little thing, aren’t you? Made you cum on my tongue and now you want more? Clench that tight cunt around my cock?”

Nodding desperately, you're feeling unhinged, your head bobbing up and down like a bobblehead. When you finally make yourself form actual words, your voice is wrecked. “Please – I need – ”

He catches your lips in a filthy kiss as those skillful fingers make their way down to your clit, stroking in strong, decisive circles. “I know baby, I know.”

Bradley speeds up and you get even louder, throat straining with the mewls leaving your lips.

“Cum for me,” he murmurs against your lips, cock hitting you just right on every thrust.

Your climax snaps through you almost immediately at his command, your back arching up into him and bringing him over the edge with you.

+

You leave the next morning before he wakes up. You can’t help it.

Sure, he’s hot, but you’re not actually going to date this guy. You just had a momentary lapse in judgment after seeing his deft fingers fly over piano keys, singing his heart out and so fully into the performance you thought the vein in his neck might burst. It was oddly endearing.

Every girl is a sucker for a guy who can sing. Serenades make logic and reasoning fly out the window. It’s totally not your fault.

So, it stands to reason that you nearly knock him down walking into the grocery store later that day. Because that’s the kind of fuck you the universe always has in mind for you.

“Hey,” Roos—no, Bradley, smiles, easy like you didn’t sneak out of his house without a second glance mere hours ago. He takes a look at the cold water bottle you have resting against your forehead, barely holding back his amusement. “Rough night?”

You want to glower at him but it’s hard to be mad at someone that looks like that under fluorescent lighting, turning away instead so you don’t have to stare at his unfairly beautiful face and remember what that ridiculous mustache feels like between your thighs. “Shut up.”

“I think you’re limping a little bit,” Bradley mock whispers as he follows you down the chips aisle.

He sounds way too proud of himself. You flip him off and he laughs, musical and happy despite the awkward circumstances. You can’t decide if you want to punch him or kiss him.

You and Bradley start talking at the same time, words rushed and overlapping.

“You snuck out before I got a chance to ask – ”

“Bradley, you seem like a nice guy, but I – ”

A tan arm reaches across you for a bag of salt and vinegar Lays and tossing them into his basket on the floor after you both fall silent. “You don’t like military guys.”

You freeze, mouth gaping open like a fish.

He shrugs. “It was pretty obvious last night.”

“I – yeah, I don’t – ” you stutter before pausing for a deep breath. “Not sure we’re a good fit, is all.”

Bradley nods. “I get it. I had fun with you though, and not just at my house. If you're willing to reconsider, I’d like to think I’m much more than my job.”

You purse your lips, wondering if your brain is actually broken as you consider taking him up his offer. He must catch on to your deliberation because he takes a step closer to you, big hand settling against your waist slow and gentle, giving you plenty of time to step away. Your feet are glued to the floor as you try not to sway into him and get lost in the spicy scent lingering on his tan skin.

“Breakfast,” he suggests when a few moments pass without you answering.

“It’s four p.m.,” you say warily.

He scrunches his nose like that’s inconsequential. “I’ll cook.”

“You know how to cook?”

He shoots you a withering glare and you smirk, pleased to have made him feel as wrong-footed as you’ve felt since he sat down across from you yesterday.

“Do you remember where my house is, or did you sprint out too quickly to notice?”

“I don’t remember saying yes.”

“You strike me as the kind of girl that isn’t afraid to tell me to fuck off.”

“So?”

He gestures at the lack of space between you with his free hand, where your body has betrayed you by leaning into his warmth. “This doesn’t feel like you telling me to go to hell.”

“It’s not,” you sigh, mouth twitching up at the corners despite your best efforts as you shove your basket into his hands. “Put my groceries on Uncle Sam’s bill.”

Bradley practically beams at that. “Of course. But you’ll have to come over to my place to get them, can’t have you sneaking off before I get a chance to play some Righteous Brothers for you.”

The picture that paints for you makes you want to melt. You’re fucked.

[mar3ggiata]

professional help, c10. Kidnapped

simon riley x original character.

trigger warnings: violence, sexual assault, mentions of rape, trauma, sexual themes, swearing, use of alcohol and drugs.

song to listen to when reading this: Come a little closer, Cage the elephant.

abstract: hey this is Jude. you doing alright? you'd never guess who I saw! anyways, I'm almost content in this chapter and then I'm angry again. I've been angry my whole life guys I swear. also, had a special someone with me that night, can you guess who my passenger princess was?

She chuckled when he left the room. Skeleton mask, skeleton gloves, hell he probably had skeleton fucking underwear on. It seemed so out of character for him to be this nice to come all the way to her office and talk to her. He did seem a tiny bit uncomfortable, maybe he wasn't the best at social interactions. He had woke up happy and decided to be a decent human being for once. She didn't trust that his intentions were pure. Maybe he wanted her to speak about it cause he already heard from his friends and wanted the full version. You really want to know Simon, I'll send you the security cameras footage via email, that'll hunt you for a lifetime.

She had a busy day and had to stop thinking about their interaction for a few hours. She was in such a good mood she even had lunch, alone in her office, but still. Her thoughts kept wondering to the Lieutenant, his blue jacket and his thick arms, she had to compose herself when Sergeant Raul, her last patient of the day, had a panic attack in front of her. She got home late, exhausted. She went on a night walk with Jinx, cooked dinner and sat down at her table, her violent grinder and little jar with weed in front of her. She had some reports to finish, she had another two Nutcracker songs to choreograph. Her eyes lingered on 'The Pilgrimage' which she kept as a souvenir from her Sherlock CIA experience with the Arash case. She fished out a lighter from her bag and opened the book in front of her. She liked reading it, she enjoyed it. She had never been much of a religious person, though she was raised catholic. She respected the idea of faith, how it guided people, how it made them feel less alone. She had a thought. A tiny one. A sneaky suspicion. The little urge to lurk. It was a little lightbulb moment, a cinematic sequence in which the music stopped and then violins started playing as she began to think. Her rollie in one hand, the book in the other, she looked at her dog, smell of weed all around her. The poor thing was asleep on the couch, blissfully unaware. When she reached for her laptop to do some research, she knew she was gonna find something.

Two days later she was still debating on telling Price. She really didn't want to bother Laswell, poor woman didn't need more work. They were going to leave in 4 days. She decided she'd tell the first person she would see. It would be the universe to decide. Her office was at the opposite area from Price's so she had slim chances of telling anyone. It wasn't her mission, it wasn't her job, it wasn't her place. She was overstepping.

'Fuck', she said to herself, when she saw the Lieutenant in the parking lot. She froze, foot on the brakes. That's it, it's the universe's choice, you have to tell him. He's gonna kill you. He was smoking. His mask was slightly raised on his nose, exposing his mouth. Not that she could see anything, he was way too far and she was short sighted. Did he ever leave that mask home? He had a vest on, a light blue sherpa jacket that looked extremely comfortable. She looked at his cigarette, he had less than half of it left. Four drags maximum. Just tell him for fuck's sake, it's for the greater good and it’s a fucking good theory. He was almost finished. She slowly came to a stop in front of him and rolled down her window.

The world was silent around them. The sun was setting, the air was crisp. He had noticed the car, he remember it was the same model as hers. He didn't think she would stop. What she said next made his heart skip a beat. 'Hop in? I need to talk to you'. Her eyes were even a prettier colour in this light. They looked translucent. Her skin was shining and golden under the sunlight. 'Can it wait?' He tried to avoid getting in the car with her. Deeply unprofessional. Where did she want to take him anyway, couldn't they talk in his office? What was it she wanted to tell him? 'I'll take you back here when we're done, just a little ride’. She wasn't giving up. Am I being fucking kidnapped by you, Jude? Most guys wouldn't really complain to be honest, but still… He reluctantly sat in the passenger seat, having to adjust his seat to accommodate for his size. The lack of control he had in the situation made him uncomfortable, his fingers tingling with excitement and a slight bit of panic. But this girl… this girl, her presence was just weirdly irresistible. He wanted to know what she wanted to say, every little detail, every hint to who she truly was. He craved that. She slowly took off. She seemed a good driver, she kept her speed stable. 'What is it?' he asked impatient to know why he was being kidnapped. 'So, I kept thinking about what you said about Khorram, that he's hidden somewhere.' She glanced at him while she talked, maintaining her eyes on the road ahead. 'I thought about The Pilgrimage, the book. It's the three stages that I thought about, you know, the Jordan River was the first. Then the middle of the desert, then the Persian Gulf.'

He had to know she was coming up with another theory of hers. He started to get tense. He was getting tired to ear about this, she really had to let this go, it wasn't her place to be talking about it, all these speculations... This was war, people were getting killed everyday by this man and she was here playing detectives. 'I don't think you should keep working on this Jude. It's not your job', he said in the most assertive tone he could manage. She licked her lips, they were entering the city. She sighed, 'I know, I'm just suggesting', she insisted, but he cut her off. 'It's not your place.' He stated. He wasn't afraid to be rough with her or sound disrespectful. She was driving through a bit of traffic, she change gears swiftly and still managed to wave her hand in the air while she talked. 'I know! Since you guys didn't have a clue what you were doing the last time…' he interrupted her again, 'Doesn't mean you're right this time'. She scoffed and slightly raised her tone, visibly annoyed. 'You didn't even fucking let me finish, you don't know what I was about to say!' He caught a glimpse of her eyes, they looked darker. She had the same expression she always had. She looked like she was going to cast a spell on him and turn him into a chair. She must have always won every single argument in her life. Not with him, not with that attitude. 'I don't want to hear it, I can't make my soldiers do things and go places because you read a fucking book, Jude.' If she thought she could win this, she was seriously delusional. 'I read the fucking book that made you not die last week, Simon!' She raised her voice again, turning to face him. Hearing his name escape her lips made him feel weird. It was unusual to hear his name. Ghost, L.t, he had a few nicknames. Only Price called him Simon. He thought about whether she even knew he was Ghost to the others. Simon. It sounded different. It sounded warmer, it sounded pretty. She sang his name. It sounded like it belonged in the phrase Do you want to try that new restaurant with me, Simon, or There's a song I want you to listen, Simon, or Want to take a walk with me, Simon? It sounded like it belonged to a nice, handsome and normal guy, which he wasn't.

'Merda. Oh, merda.' He didn't realise she wasn't looking at him anymore. She had stopped the car, was she going to abandon him on the side of the road? They had stopped in front of a closed building, a few cars parked in the front. The woman next to him had a confused look on her face, which quickly shifted to panic. There was a girl in front of one of the cars. She was alone and she had a bag on her shoulder. Jude pulled the handbrake and got out of the car, walking towards the girl. She must have been 14. He got out of the car, but didn't approach them. He looked at Jude take the girl's hands in her own and talk to her. He couldn't really hear what they were saying, but the little girl was sniffling. She had been crying. 'Oh god', whispered Jude as she hugged the girl, scrunching down. He watcher her hand caress the girl's hair. Why was everything so complicated and bloody mysterious when it came to this girl? He looked at Jude taking the little girl's hand and taking her to the car. He probably looked scary with his skull printed balaclava on. 'Get in Gemma, I'll drive you home okay?' She said, seating down. 'Gemma this is my friend, Simon. Simon this is one of my students, Gemma.'

Jude was perfectly calm now, the little girl sitting in the back of the car. Her eyes were dark, she was driving much slower now, more carefully. She was mad. For what? What do you mean students? He had so many questions he couldn't process to say hi to the girl. Jude kept glancing in the review mirror to make sure Gemma was okay in the back. 'You like the choreography so far?' she asked. She danced? 'Yes, really much' Gemma answered 'I like when we do the circle. With the tour jetés' she said. Jude smiled 'Yeah I like that part too'. She was driving in a residential area more far away from the city centre, but they were getting closer to the road that would take them into the desert. 'Was it this one or the next Gemma?' she was slowing down. 'The next one' said the girl quietly. 'I'll talk to your mom okay?' She said while getting out of the car. She quickly turned towards him, her look apologetic 'I'm sorry, I'll explain. Just a second.' She felt bad for making him wait, it was very unprofessional of her, but it was an emergency and he just happened to be there. At least they stopped fighting. She explained to Gemma's mother that she was driving past the school when she saw her standing outside. The school was open when they arrived, it had closed 5 minutes after she had left. The girls had told Gemma about an extra lesson just for the 5 top students of the class and Gemma had asked her mom to take her. She said she was furious with the others and would talk to them and possibly even prevent some to dance at the final performance. She apologised to Gemma for having to wait outside because of that stupid joke and hugged her one more time, before making her way to the car. Furious was an understatement. How could they be so fucking mean? So so so stupid... She sighed while getting back into the car.

'I'm sorry, I'll take you back. Sorry. Sorry.' She quickly reversed and took off in the direction of the desert. 'Everything okay?' He decided to speak since she was gripping the steering wheel with her knuckles turning white. She waited a second before replying. 'I teach ballet. The other girls told her we had lesson when we didn't, she was the only one who showed up. The school is closed, it's dark out she could have been kidnapped', she said all in one breath. She was shaking her head, how fucking horrifying and dangerous was it to be left alone in the middle of nowhere as a 14 year old girl. Thank God she saw her, poor Gemma. She wasn't blaming her mom, the school was probably still open when they arrived and closed soon after. They were approaching the base in silence, she stopped near the entrance to let him go inside. She kept muttering words in Italian, she was biting her nails nervously. 'Che stronze. Come si fa…assurdo. Troppe poche botte da piccole.' She turned towards him before he had a chance to open the door. 'I'm very sorry you had to witness that, I truly am.' She blinked a few times trying to hide her embarrassment. She messed up all her chances to get him to listen to what she had found now. 'It's fine' he said. His voice was soft. He probably understood that she really couldn't leave the girl there alone, but still. His hand was on the door handle but he wouldn't open the door yet. 'Okay… I'm sorry either way I shouldn't have… done all this.' She was panicking a little at this point. 'Jude it's fine, seriously.' He finally opened the door and got out of the car 'Go home.' He stated before turning away and entering the base.

She went home. She facetimed Salvo and told him about the situation to rant a little bit. She didn't mentioned who she was with, cause it embarrassed her. Cause picking him up was the stupidest idea of her life. She was so fucking mad at the girls she thought about a million fucking different ways to find out who was responsible and make them pay. God, I sound like my mother. Which is very bad, considering what she does for a living…

notes: oh god, what does her mother do then? translation: 'those bitches. how is this possible… incredible. didn't get hit hard enough as kids.' don't hit your kids, violence is bad. also is bullying. I am getting really good results at uni guys!! I'm gonna post the next preview as well cause I'm gonna be studying a lot again, and working and you know. figuring out how to be happy with my life I guess.

love, mare.

taglist:

@ghostlythots @sweetfemmefatal @natxpat @chavarriakeren647 @ravenmoore14 @farther-than-pleiades @internallyscreamings @hwromi @atoxicrat @cuti3maddi3 @deafeningkittenblaze @its-celeste @serene-hills @lexidoll12 @poohkie90 @lunatiquess

@warmedbythebody @katzykat @iristhemuse @azkza @keiraslayz @abbyandermine @jennyjencakes @dest-nai @corset-briefs @nutze-kekse @ilytsukiw @b3anspr0ut

@pondsblog @missyouzoe @fallenkitten @bigauthorrascalturkey @bethtay @angelynn-nicole @starluv @stargirlisworld @giyuuslittleslut @impossiblecupcakelight

@rkrivees-blog @ghosts-hoe @kam1snotverysmart @gauky76 @freyjaaasstuff @spicyspicyliving @scottpilgrimvsmyfists @courtney0-0 @shinchanboi @darling006 @my-therapist-hates-me

[darthbloodorange]

They said Steve should get a hobby to aid him in adjusting to the 21st century. Well, it seems he's made something of a hobby of adopting strays.

For the: ✦ Stucky Bingo - Pets [I3] (Card: 5054)

Word count: N/a - Moodboard Title: A Warm Heart to Call Home Rating: Gen Universe: Marvel Cinematic Universe Pairings: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Justice the Cat, Liberty the Cat, Peace the Dog Warnings: None Major Tags: Alternate Universe, Shrunkyclunks, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Pets, Assassin Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century ~ Summery: They said Steve should get a hobby to aid him in adjusting to the 21st century. Well, it seems he's made something of a hobby of adopting strays.

[Concept below the cut]

A moodboard for an AU of mine (that I'll hopefully create for some time down the line). 

Basically, the story is: Steve is still adjusting to the 21st century and living alone in his own apartment. He works with SHIELD and the Avengers but spends most of his time alone. 

He finds a stray cat in a park during a morning run and adopts her (Liberty). He has to look after this opinionated and very independent cat used to being a stray while also handling all his other duties... which takes some learning. Setting him further in the path of his rival, The Winter Soldier (Modern Assassin Bucky). They end up bonding over his cat as Steve ends up having to call in Bucky's help (as everyone else is busy with their own stuff). Captain America calling in a villain to cat-sit probably WON'T look good in the press, he knows.

Disaster strikes (A fire), and Liberty goes missing. Bucky is there to help. And Steve ends up with another stray (Justice the cat). Then he rescues another stray (Peace the Dog). Then Bucky and Steve get together (forget the cat-sitting, what would the would make of Captain America getting fucked by a world-wanted assassin). Then possibly Alpine joins the mix???

[IMAGE ID: A 3x3 grid of images. 1- Justice the Cat. A large, fluffy ginger cat with a white chest and chin, and golden eyes. 2- A window wet with rain, looking up at a stormy grey skyline. 3- Steve in the Commander Rogers uniform from the Winter Soldier movie. 4- A store full of pet furniture. 5- Liberty the cat. A stripy grey cat with green eyes lying in the sun. 6- An old light brown leather couch that looks dry and cracked. 7- Bucky with long hair wearing his winter soldier outfit without the mask. 8- A brown leaf stuck to a rainy window looking out on nature. 9- Peace the dog. A white dog with upright ears and a wide smiley mouth with her tongue hanging out.]

[avianreptiles]

I realized i actually dont know much about kenny, so if you want you can take this as a prompt to talk about him cuz he intrigues me....

This is not a place of honor

Okay so this is the general summary of his bullshit. I have a lore doc on the way. The lore doc goes soooo much into more detail on particular events and especially more on the reasoning and psychology of the actions in the story. The whole story itself is insane and gruesome and horrible, but i singled out on Kendrick cuz he's the most interesting in my opinion and I don't like him.

If you are waiting for the lore doc, I applaud your patience. It's coming, I swear.

Tw for talks of death, brief mentions of gore, suicide, main character deaths, politics, drugs, alcoholism, whatever. There is no happy endings in the shay/avian cinematic universe yadda yadda yadda okay

OKAY so Kendrick Poste was a transgender man born in 2098 in the right-winged, one-party dominant "democracy", the United States of Albany, to his parents, Mac and Haisley Poste. Mac and Haisley were both left-leaning and tried to raise him away from being rightwinged, but Kendrick ended up growing up not caring that much for politics. Anyways important bit, THEY WERE GOOD PARENTS. Haisley was a wonderful woman. Mac cared deeply for his son. Kendrick was When Kendrick was 12, the three of them got into a car wreck by a drunk driver, with Haisley passing away rather gruesomely, with the nature of the direction that the car hit. Namely, a good chunk of Haisley's lower and mid face had been ripped off by the carnage of the passenger door. Kendrick saw this in full view. It is very important to know that Kendrick saw this.

Kendrick and Mac are neverrrrrr the same after this. Like at all. Kendrick ends up recovering enough mentally after a couple of years and graduates high school early, applying for and getting into college at 16. The first half of the year goes by without a breeze. The second half of the year rolls by, and Kendrick falls like Icarus, got a little too close to the sun, a little too confident. After he lost all the drive to finish school, he started taking up smoking and ended up becoming "friends" with the guy that deals him weed, Percival. I can write so much on how Percival sucks but instead, I'm gonna write about how Kendrick is worse. So this guy manipulated and threatened anyone and everyone to his benefit, including his ex-girlfriend and his father. He was just some egotistical, jackass kid who got caught up gang violence and drug deals who took advantage of the people around him to make a name for himself in almost every circle of the city he lived in. He was known for just about one thing, though: Percival's big scary personal guard dog. He was a violent and often times cruel kid, cementing himself as one of the morr dangerous people to butt heads with AT FUCKING 16.

Anyways I am skipping a lot of important info but the day he turned 17, he got drafted into the war that Albany was in at the time, the Massachusetts/Albany war. The draft was basically a death sentence, as kids who got shipped off to war tended to not come back at all. For what he thought was going to be his last three weeks on earth until he had to go to the selective service office, he proceeded to let himself go almost entirely. Specific events? Threatened to kill Percival a couple times, did cocaine off of a hooker's leg at a party he went to, broke someone's wrist, and drank almost every other night. Mac at that point had given up on him, but their last conversation was when he was dropping him off at the service office, where Kendrick told him to go to hell. Anyways that was fucked up. What's up next is worse

Being drafted sucked dick. He was already pretty damn fit, and the government determined he didn't really need any physical training, but he was still a rebellious, jackass kid, and that needed fixing. Recently in the war, more draftees were going awoll, so the govs solution? Deadend. Deadend was a compound/training facility that I once described as "not supposed to make you love your country, but to fear it." At Deadend, it was basically physical torture under the guise of "if you dissent from the army/go awoll, you will have wished that the enemy had flayed you alive, with the shit we're going to do to you". It was about 2 months of that. This compound is also the reason why a lot of Albany soldiers, especially in the later years of the war, were reported to have looked "empty" or "souless" in the eyes. You had to drop your morals at the door, cuz if you didn't do everything your superior told you to, you were getting shoved into the drywall.

After 2 months, he got put into a special little group called Great Lakes Special Forces. Now I'm going to summarize some of the shit that happened in GLSF in some sort of timeline, because so much happened in the period of about a year:

-Late July 2115, placed into group with four other members.

-Late August, 2115, first kill, a girl about his age

-December 2115, Kendrick (Huron 01) is ordered to kill Ontario 01, to which he complies out of fear.

-Later in December, Ontario 02 is assigned to the group, a reminder that anyone is replaceable.

-December 2115 to about July 2116, Kendrick, distraught about having to carry out Ontario 01's execution becomes more reserved and West (Superior 01), starts to place him on more solo missions. In a combination of unsupervised warfare, cruelty, bloodlust, guilt over Ontario's death, and what not, becomes the most dangerous man on the Eastern Seaboard. His existence becomes a boogeyman tale, with titles such as "Deerhead" and "the devil with white eyes" become tossed around while describing assassinations, killings, and what not that happen within his domain. West (technically his commanding officer) around this point realized that this would be her fatal flaw, letting Kendrick get too cocky.

-In late July 2116, he is sent on more cooperation missions, and actually talks to Ontario 02, the replacement for Ontario.

HEY THIS IS NOT DONE BTW. I POSTED IT TOO EARLY. IM JUST GONNA WORK ON THE LORE DOC FOR NOW

[ao3feed-sambucky]

all flowers in time bend towards the sun

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/6o9QEPG by napricot “Buck, where did that baby come from?” “I have no idea!” says Bucky. “I—I opened the door, and she was there, and there’s a bunch of other stuff—shh, shh honey, it’s alright, it’s okay—” Sam goes to the still-open door, keeping the shield up and covering his center mass just in case anyone’s about to attack. He peers carefully up and down the hallway, but it’s empty save for a baby’s car seat or carrier sitting on the floor, along with two huge mint-green diaper bags and…a bouquet? With balloons? The balloons, Sam notes with confusion and dawning alarm, say CONGRATS! IT’S A GIRL! “Who the fuck left us a baby?” asks Sam. Sam and Bucky never planned on becoming dads. It turns out that life, and Zemo, have other plans for them. Words: 16889, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 7 of best laid plans Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Sam Wilson (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Helmut Zemo Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Kid Fic read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/6o9QEPG

[tr4umaborn]

** IMPORTANT INFO RE: TJ HAMMOND

a study in. drug abuse / addiction,  self harm,  suicidal ideation / attempts,  over dosing,    bipolar I disorder  (  which includes mania episodes,  heavy depressive episodes,  anxiety,  and minor psychosis breaks  ),  bdsm / submissive behaviors,  sex as a coping mechanism,  in being the bad twin,  the nature of growing up addicted,  undiagnosed mental illness, the golden gay, an opposite role model, making music until your fingers bleed, the minor chord, living fast dying young

full name. thomas james hammond also known as. tj, teej, golden boy date of birth. 02 / 19 / 1984 age. 38 zodiac. pisces sun / libra moon / leo rising gender. male (ish) pronouns. he / they romantic orientation. homoromantic sexual orientation. homosexual occupation. pianist / influencer / model species. human birthplace. raleigh, north carolina, united states current home. new york city, ny, us nationality. he's never asked beyond being american ethnicity. just another dumbass white boy language(s). english parents. president elain barrish, former president bud hammond siblings. twin brother - douglas hammond other family members. lydia martin - basically a sister thanks significant other + children.  canon: mieczyslaw stilinski-hammond (husband) @mieczlw jason stilinski-hammond (son) @jasnstilnski the bee and jenna cinematic universe: antonio dominico marcus rizzotti marvel au: bucky barnes @whtwclf faceclaim. thomas doherty hair. brown + short eyes. baby blues height. 6 ft build. as an addict: too skinny for his own good when sober: muscular from getting addicted to the gym dominant hand. left scars. one of his left arm from the singular time he shot up, plenty of scars on his chest and back for boys who were too rough both in the bedroom and in the bar tattoo. many small pieces in easily coverable places piercings. one on his right ear, many on his left ear, had an eyebrow piercing decided against it, nose stud and septum vurrent positive traits. sensitive, whimsical, romantic, charming, artistic, gentle, love of beauty and harmony negative traits. gullible, gregarious, dependent, cagey likes. giving and receiving gifts, sweets, coffee, massages, cocaine (unfortunately), fuck boys (even more unfortunately) dislike. being wrong, being proven wrong, fears & phobias. disappointment, drowning wishes & dreams. to not be in the spotlight because of his family, but instead because of himself. mbit. ESFP - The Entertainer moral alignment. neutral evil enneagram type. type 3 - the achiever

biography.

 THE GOLDEN SON  𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠. now imagine the feeling of floating away into the nether reaches of space. imagine the way slipping up into the air would make you feel – do you feel the air around you at all? is there enough oxygen to make the trip sliding up through the sky and into the unknown worth it? or will the whole experience just leave you clawing at your own skin because it’s burning from the inside out without the attentive oxygen filling up your pores?

the headline read : 𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚'𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐨𝐲 but there’s nothing golden about the downward decent into enveloping madness. he was not born mad ( and really is anyone? ) but had the madness set upon him by the events that took place. born ninety seconds before his twin brother douglas, thomas james hammond was smiling when he came out into the world. it may be hard to tell now, but from that first moment he has always known that he wanted to experience all that life had to offer. the happiness didn’t end much at all in the first ten years of his life ( except for when it did, but according to doctors he was simply a growing boy with a growing mind ). even through the first campaign and moving into the white house ( seven year olds still in awe that they have this much space to play in ) his smile stayed so strong. there were things that made it even brighter : his brother, his mama, telling stories with a flashlight under the blanket long past their bedtime. but there was one thing that kept him happy, kept the madness at bay when it threatened to show its burning head.

music never wanted to kill him. while it may be an artist’s curse to feel everything so fucking fully, it isn’t the art form that grabbed him with sharp jaws. he picked up his first piece of sheet music at three years old, and everyone in the family broke out the camcorders. 𝐨𝐡 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐠𝐨 𝐟𝐚𝐫 they’d say as he banged tiny fingers on keys. those tiny fingers grew into the keys. passion and music weaved together, only those within his most inner circle allowed to see what really showed. books upon books begin to get filled through the years. music notes that look like water as they swim across the pages of score sheets. his happiness isn’t dependent on his music, but his music has always and will always provide him with natural serotonin that he chases after in the powder of small bags.

fear and loathing keep him from doing well in school. doug is the favorite twin with grades and extra curriculars that fill out the resume how every college wishes it would. he’ll go to princeton or yale or harvard or wherever the fuck he wants and tj instead knows exactly where he’s headed ( 𝐬𝐢𝐱 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 ) but his steps to get there are the difficult part. first he must survive high school : where his best friends are snow and addie. they provide the blanket of protection he needs when he finds himself on the wrong side of his first tmz article.

the first son is a fag? it didn’t say that, but when he read it it really may as well have. the world plucked him from the closet just before y2k ; a fifteen year old boy with a life sentence. first came tmz, then the times article, and then before he knew it he’s suddenly the country’s most famous gaybie. to america that makes him their sweetheart, but the world never knows what sweethearts do when they’re craving sweet tarts.

the same year he found himself on the wrong side of a conversation. while the world doesn’t know it, having your father be the 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚 really makes these trying times much easier to keep undisclosed, he knows the truth of it all. the good ole boy’s private school couldn’t have a drug addicted slut making a bad name for their school, so they banished him to the other realm. or you know. . . expelled him. he finds himself in the countryside of france for the next two years where catholicism is the ruling decree and drug addicts rule the halls. it’s here he rules the school with charlotte arnold by his side, and cross my heart and hope to die those two are a dangerous duo.

college isn’t for everyone, but for a hammond it is an expectation. he’ll start his education one place, and eventually end it in another. the location doesn’t matter : after all there are phones on cameras and street corners now. his antics can destroy his life no matter what he ends up. wherever he is, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬.

 COCAINE DREAMS  and what about the snow? playing in the white confection as the world keeps spinning around you. it’s comfortable, holding you and keeping you warm when the world outside is desperately freezing. why wouldn’t you jump into it’s open arms that widen more for you? it doesn’t feel good to leave it’s grasp so you stay there. where you are wanted. where you are needed. 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝.

he feels everything so fully that even empathy doesn’t cover it. with elders describing his symptoms as a side effect of drug abuse, tj knows the symptoms came first. 𝐢𝐟 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐝 ( and if only when he screamed it was outside of his mind ) they wouldn’t feel the pain of every time he runs. snow opens her beautiful arms for him and through out his twenties he jumped too far into her arms. some moments were easy – someone at a party helped him sleep it off or his few friends gave him the space to grieve the loss of his sanity. other moments hurt more – nearly dying in a crackhouse in canada just over the border line from buffalo. or the time he thought a bottle of downers was a bottle of uppers and sent himself spiraling more when trying to fix his own problems. he’ll hurt those he loves with every gram that goes up his nose.

after tj and doug turned 24, elaine barrish hammond began her first campaign for president. in a never shocking turn of events, people seemed more interested in a third term of bud ( even though they knew the scandals he locked in his closet ) instead of elaine. he doesn’t care ; after all, a tour de usa means he can find a fuck in all 50 states. they want to use him as a puppet like always? not a person, not a son, but a 𝐭𝐨𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞.

she ends up secretary of state, and tj ends up with a forced residency in dc once again. at 25 years old he is beginning to 𝐬𝐰𝐢𝐦 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠. no one notices when republican senator sean reeves of ohio begins to steal glances at the ex first son. what’s worse is the reciprocation. tj on the wrong end of those glances turns into allowing someone to devour him whole while knowing he’ll spit him up and throw him out. the details of his sobriety, and his happiness, are unfortunately unimportant ( after all, they come at the hands of a false idol ) and instead the focus shifts to the inevitable ending. our sweetheart feels the false love ooze from every pore ; it leaves him as the tears spill from his red rimmed eyes. there’s a car, and a garage, and it’s all he can think to do in a split second. how might a mother, who loves her children with all of her heart despite how she hurts them so, feel when she finds her son no longer inhaling fumes because he’s passed out? ask elaine barrish.

no one knows for over a year, names and pseudonyms being confused and dispersed. forced sobriety normally didn’t work for tj, but this time rehab seemed to get through to him. he can maintain a sense of sobriety, nothing that’s considered illegal or prescribed to others, until 𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤. the puppet is now a pawn, an article being published on the suicide attempt of america’s sweetheart. he watches the story unfold on the news while sharing a straw to soak up snow on his dealer’s couch.

the rest of his life will never look the same. he realizes that sobriety is a privilege he has to work for. feeling everything makes the lows lower and the highs higher. when no one will name it ( maybe one day a doctor will say the word bipolar to him outloud ) how can you treat it? mania gives him excitement, but with it comes his chest being ripped to shreds by his own mind. 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐭, 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭?

[threebooksoneplot]

y’all I just KNOW it’s gonna be a good day when I open my little device and see an episode timestamp that’s almost three hours long

There’s a special sort of belligerent joy reserved exclusively for every other monday, and it’s because of you!!!

(PS: this also counts as a write-in vote toward Lilia’s flight data gofundme for episode MVP)

i'll always be so relieved and delighted when I see that y'all are stoked over the insanely long episodes we churn out. I still can't believe that when we first started recording back in 2022 we were like "yeah the episodes will probably end up being like an hourish at most!" 💀 what fools we were—shannon

awww yay thank you!! it's sheer fucking coincidence that we're making this podcast just as longform video essay deep dives featuring some twink in front of a wall of photos and string talking about the Scringleton Falls Cinematic Universe for 7 hours are in their heyday. thank you stephenie meyer for taking eons to release midnight sun or we wouldve been releasing 3-hour episodes on itunes circa 2013 —G

[ordinaryschmuck]

The Mess of the DCEU-Chapter One: Rough Beginnings

Salutations. I’m an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories, reviews, and all that other yada-yada.

*Sighs* You know, say what you want about the MCU, but it at least started with an innovative idea. They wanted to make an interconnected universe of movies and TV shows that brought Marvel’s characters to life and tell an ongoing story that would lead to all these characters working together to stop a great evil. It wasn’t good ALL the time, but MOST of the time, it was. It told great stories, had cool action scenes, and introduced general audiences to superheroes they never heard of before. It might be a shadow of its former self NOWADAYS, but within those first ten years, the MCU accomplished something other studios could only DREAM to do. Unfortunately, innovation often breeds IMITATION, with the MCU’s success leading to people thinking “Oh, in order to make bank, we need to make cinematic universes too!” This led to several attempts to make interconnected universes and franchises, with studios desperately trying to copy the MCU’s homework without understanding how it did everything right. And there was no mess that tried way too hard and failed even harder than the DC Extended Universe. DCEU, for short.

Where the MCU succeeded in its ten years, the DCEU fumbled and grasped at any straw they could because they wanted to make something not out of innovation but competition…Well, for the most part. You COULD argue there were creators that wanted to make something that will help the DCEU stand out from the MCU, telling stories with a different tone and style that made the universe more unique. But the STUDIO wanted the MCU killer, which led to constant interference with creators and their visions, dozens of reshoots and rewrites, and so many bad decisions that killed the DCEU as soon as it started. How? Well, let’s go over it through phases, starting with the rough beginnings of this mess of a universe. 

In this period, Warner Bros wanted the DCEU to be a BIG hit with general audiences so they can catch up with Disney/Marvel. The problem is that they weren’t patient enough to lay out the groundwork of a cinematic universe and allow a clear, concrete story to be SLOWLY told over time. It’s like they bought this LEGO set and wanted to make it look exactly as it did on the box, but decided to toss the instruction guide away and start building at random. The results, as you’d imagine, weren’t pretty. And, to  be fair, it wasn’t HORRIBLE right away…depending on who you ask.

Spoilers down below

Man of Steel

DC’s first movie in this cinematic catastrophe was divisive among fans, general audiences, and critics. Some LOVED it, stating that it’s the best Superman movie, to this day. Others say they hated it, saying it ruined Superman as a character and it should be TOSSED into the sun. And while I wouldn’t say it’s THAT bad, it’s not…AMAZING either.

It should be worth noting that I’m not a particular fan of Zack Snyder’s style. He has his fans (Who act more like a fucking CULT), but it’s clear that his style doesn’t reach out for everyone and it doesn’t for me. Not…ALL of the time, anyways. For one, I don’t like the colors he uses. The rusty oranges, the stormy blues, the DARK BLACKS. It all just makes his movies look ugly to me, with people justifying it by saying these colors set the tone for a dark, edgy universe. And I don’t care what justification there is, if I don’t want to look at your movie, you’ve already failed the visual medium.

Then there’s his glorification of death and violence. Like, yeah, the neanderthal in the back of my brain can’t help but think of how cool it looks when Superman is throwing Zod and his goons into buildings and making shockwaves as they trade blows, but I can’t help but think of the people in those buildings and how wrong it feels watching our HERO drag the villain’s face across a skyscraper that collapses. You can say that it’s realistic for a Superman starting out to cause this much destruction, but it doesn’t stop how weird it feels watching him actively cause more of it instead of trying harder to steer Zod AWAY from the city they’re destroying. Just keep throwing him into space! You did it once, just keep doing it!

And this leads me to my last, BIGGEST problem with Zack’s style: He’s motivated more by what looks COOL. Why does the camera constantly zoom into one shot? Because it looks cool. Why does Superman destroy a city he’s trying to save? Because it looks cool. Why does Krypton look like an amalgamation of other sci-fi stuff, including birds from Avatar, genesis pods from The Matrix, and probably some secret third thing? Because those movies looked cool and they would make HIS movie look cool. And yeah. It IS cool. But after a while, when you catch onto it and THINK on it, it makes you wonder if any of it is really necessary.

Now, to be fair to Zack, there ARE some good stuff. I think Jor-El is handled well as an anti-thesis for Zod. The action, while unnecessarily violent, DOES look awesome and I do like the detail that Superman leaves soundwaves when he hits something that can take as much as he gives. It helps show the POWER of this character, and I think Zack understands well just how powerful Superman is. As for how Superman’s portrayed, I think he’s…mostly good. I love that our introduction to Clark Kent is him saving lives. That’s the best possible way to introduce us to him, and Henry Cavil does well enough sometimes in portraying the character. He looks the part, his voice matches how I hear Superman’s when reading comics, and there’s the occasional twinkle in his eye when speaking…Occasional. Not all the time. 

This brings me to the main issue with this movie: This is not the best portrayal of Superman. Zack Snyder went about  making a more realistic version of the character. One that’s more messy, is less of a boy scout, and can’t find an easy solution because it’s how Superman would exist in real life. And I am sick to DEATH of superheroes movies that try to go the realistic route. SOMETIMES it works, and you get something amazing like the Daredevil TV Series or The Dark Knight. Heck, you could argue that the first Iron Man movie is realistic, having Tony slowly build a suit and testing out each function while negating the suit’s more comic accurate craziness. I mean, the thing doesn’t even have roller blades, for crying out loud…Yeah, that’s a thing. Look it up.

But while a realistic superhero story works for SOME characters, it shouldn’t work for ALL of them, with Superman being the one you want to steer clear from being realistic.The guy shaves his face with his own heat vision because normal razors can’t even cut his beard. That’s a character that works best at being the most fantastical as possible. But if you WANT to make the character more realistic, then fine. Do it. Just as long as the character’s spirit is intact. Because superheroes change a lot, going through different phases and personalities due to the current writer at the helm. The best changes are the ones that offer different perspectives to the character, breathing new life into them, while still keeping their spirit alive. For example, the MCU may have made changes to Tony Stark’s origins and made him famous as the hero who revealed his identity to the world in an INSTANT, but the spirit of the tortured, cocky genius is alive in every appearance. Making Superman act more direct, having him actively break stuff for justice, and wearing a suit that lacks all forms of color is just…not Superman. He’s this bright, happy guy who you can go up and strike up a conversation with. A beacon of hope that shows the best side of humanity even if he’s not exactly human. Yes, there are days when he’s angry and destructive, but that’s only when he’s pushed past his limits and has no other choice but to go against how Ma and Pa Kent raised him to be. To go against that in his FIRST appearance feels like Zack’s shooting his shot too soon. We don’t get that much of an insight into the joyful boy scout Superman has been for decades, so by starting out with him being…not that leaves the impression that this is just how this version of Superman acts. There was never a chance for this character to be hopeful, which would be tragic if that was intentional. But for all I know, Zack did it because he thought it’d be cooler.

For all it’s worth, Man of Steel isn’t the WORST Superman movie, but it fails to grasp just what makes Superman the greatest superhero ever conceived. Zack still made a cool looking action movie that was entertaining if you don’t think about how many people died when Superman saved the day. Anything other than that? Let’s just say I hope James Gunn understands the character better.

However, as bad as this movie got, it had an audience. People loved it and were willing to see more. So, in a way, it’s not the worst start to a franchise.

No…That would be the NEXT movie.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

…We all have that one movie that makes us angry. A movie that we could all rip apart because of how much it does wrong and personally pisses us off. A movie that clearly wasn’t made for us in mind, but doesn’t change the fact that, no matter what people will say, we’ll NEVER like it. THIS? This is MY movie…

POSITIVES FIRST: I like Wonder Woman’s entrance. The badass guitar riff never fails to get me pumped up and it instantly sold me on this version of the character. I like Batman’s suit. The small pointy ears, the beefy bat symbol, and the bulkiness of it all makes for a suit that screams BATMAN. And I really like that warehouse fight. You know, if I pretend that Batman ISN’T killing people in that, it’s a pretty awesome fight scene that shows how badass Batman is…And that’s it. Yeah, I can count on ONE HAND the things that I like about this movie. As for the things I don’t like? Let’s just say I’m genuinely trying to hold myself back from ripping this film a new one for the sake of time.

Remember how I said that Henry Cavil showed moments of that glimmer in Superman’s eye and the nice guy that he is? Yeah, that’s completely erased in this one. This Superman is damn near detached from any sense of joy and optimism, where if he isn’t feeling anger, he’s as emotionless as a plank of wood. The man will stand in the middle of a room that was blown to hell, and his reaction looked like he farted in church. There’s no shock, fear, or even sadness over the lives that died around him. He’s just standing there with an expression of “Oh, that sucks.” And when he DOES feel  sad AFTER THE FACT, it feels like he’s holding back what he should be feeling. Superman, as a character, is one who wears his emotions on his sleeve, yet he can’t even cry in front of his girlfriend, his true love, the woman he shares everything with. Don’t just show me a Superman that’s all powerful and can’t be broken easily. Show me a Superman that’s HUMAN!

As for the rest of his cast of supporting characters, let’s just say that Zack Snyder doesn’t seem to care much about Superman’s mythos other than Superman being the most powerful being in DC’s universe. Jimmy Olson, Superman’s best pal that’s his confidant and as important to him as Robin is to Batman? He gets a bullet in his brain upon being introduced. Martha Kent, Clark’s mother who made him the man he is? She’s relegated to a plot device that’s used to make Clark feel better and bring peace to Batman and Superman (Oh, we’ll get to THAT later…). At least Lois Lane has some plot importance. Yeah, she gets a whole subplot where she discovers that–LE GASP–Lex Luthor is the bad guy! Good job, Lois! You did something the other two meatheads could have done if they weren’t too busy planning on how to kill each other! But at least it’s something semi-important. Goodness knows you couldn’t do anything else like give this information to Clark to help investigate instead of focussing on Batman or getting a fucking STICK out of some water! But, hey, at least you figured out Lex Luthor was the bad guy…just in time for him to throw you off the roof so Superman can save you and learn that information for himself. Not from you. Because YOU’VE DONE NOTHING! NOTHING! You are as useless as a semicolon! Any purpose you bring doesn’t mean shit when there are two more important things to use, you worthless–I’m getting mad…I’m getting mad…Let’s just move on…

Lex Luthor. He sucks too. It goes without saying that Jesse Eisenberg doesn’t really nail the cold, captivating, and easily threatening villain that is modern Lex Luthor. Even the campiness of early Golden Age Lex Luthor felt like more of a threat than this skinny little man-child who likes sticking Jolly Ranchers into the mouth of one government official and sending a jar full of piss to another. I have no idea how ANYONE could be threatened by this “villain,” who acts more pathetic than intimidating. As for his intelligence? Pfft. I used to think that his plans were stupidly complicated, now I realize that they’re complicatedly stupid. He wants to either frame Superman for murder or kill him. Except that when it comes to framing Superman, Lex Luthor leaves behind so much evidence that someone as pointless as Lois Lane could have picked up on it. As for killing him? He plans to bring out Doomsday, a creature too powerful and stupid to control that even IF it killed Superman…what happens next? What could stop this monster from going on a rampage and causing more destruction than Superman ever could? And the crazy part is that Doomsday is Plan B! Plan A was having Superman and Batman fight, something that Lex considers a win-win situation. Because if Superman wins, he’s framed as murdering a man in cold blood. And if Batman wins, then Superman is dead. It SOUNDS smart…until you realize that Batman is a crazed vigilante who branded criminals so they could die in jail. There should have been NO CHANCE for Batman to successfully kill Superman. Even if he had Kryptonite handy, there was no guarantee that Batman would win. And if and when Superman won, he would have killed a crazed maniac that some people would have been happy to see gotten rid of. I mean, if they already hate Superman killing innocent people, why would they hate him for killing someone insane? To quote a hero from the RIVAL COMPANY, Lex, “Not a great plan.”

And SPEAKING OF Batman…Zack Snyder screwed up. This isn’t the great detective who values life because of the ones he lost, to the point he would NEVER kill the Joker, not even on a bad day. No, no, no, this is a meathead who would sooner punch first, think later, and kill anybody who gets in his way. “But those people aren’t innocent–” Doesn’t matter! Okay?! It doesn’t matter what screwed up shit these people have done, Batman’s not the one to pull the trigger. He’s not even one to use a GUN! Guns killed his parents and it is a weapon he is so venomously against, large in part that he doesn’t trust himself to use one nonlethally! To have a Batman that kills goes against the core of the character. So why does Zack have Batman kill people in his movie? Because it looks cool. Wasn’t it cool seeing Batman blow up that car? Wasn’t it cool seeing Batman whip another car like a yo-yo? Wasn’t it cool to see Batman ready to stab Superman with a fucking STICK?! And yes, this is meant to be a Batman that was pushed to his limits due to a long life of fighting crime and the lives lost from it. The tribute to a dead Robin hints at that. But if you START OUT with that Batman, without showing us what he was like BEFORE reaching this point, it tells me that he was ALWAYS like this because there’s barely any evidence to the contrary. And the thing is that I would have actually liked this Batman more if we actually DID spend time getting to know him and seeing what broke him, but we don’t. Why? Because we needed to rush out a cinematic universe and start out with two of DC’s iconic superheroes fighting each other.

This movie came out around the same time as Captain America: Civil War. And to this day, I will forever say that movie did the superhero vs superhero movie better. Say what you want about its quality, but we at least got to KNOW Captain America and Iron Man. We got to KNOW why they’d pick one side and the other, with Iron Man motivated by guilt and Captain America motivated by a selfish desire to save the last connection to his past. And when they fight, it’s heartbreaking because it’s watching two characters you love going against each other. I feel none of that with this Batman and Superman. I barely know either of them, and their reasons for hating each other are vague and hypocritical. They’re not men with opposing viewpoints and morals. They’re both brooding, violent idiots who kill people, and hate the other for being the exact same person.

Plus, most of this movie isn’t focussed on that final showdown! Too much of it is setting up the Justice League and Darksied and all this other stuff that would have worked better if the studio took time to introduce these story threads! Civil War may have introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man into the MCU, but Black Panther went on such a powerful emotional journey that made his character a worthy addition to the story, Spider-Man has a long enough presence to feel like a character even if he’s an over glorified cameo, AND neither of them distract too much from the main conflict. The story is still about Iron Man and Captain America going against each other, showing so many scenes of them at each other’s throats before that final battle. Batman and Superman share ONE scene together, and it’s all we get before their big fight.

And when they DO fight each other, I can’t even appreciate how cool it is because of all these distracting questions in my mind. Like, why doesn’t Superman just hold Batman down and explain the situation? He clearly wants to try and convince him to help Martha and can easily hold him down. There’s even this moment when Superman holds up Batman and has the perfect opportunity to tell him what’s going on…but instead throws him through a building because it looks cool. And if Batman has this kryptonite, why did he waste it on stinkbombs and a FUCKING STICK when he could have used it to make bullets into the turret? There’s this argument that because the Waynes started out as hunters, Batman makes a hunting weapon to better prove himself. Fair argument, but you would think a hunter would have laid out better traps than sonic canons and bullets that do NOTHING!

But oh…we’re not at the worst part yet. All that other stuff…is frustrating, but it’s nowhere near as bad as what happens next. The worst part of this movie is something that’s been made fun of by everyone and their grandma. And that is the fact that the whole reason Batman stops wanting to kill Superman…is that their moms have the same names.

“IT’S NOT–” SHUT UP…Shut up…YES, it is. That IS the exact reason why he stops. People have argued that it’s because this finally proves to Batman that there’s humanity in Superman. It’s proof that he HAS a mom that he cares deeply for, just like Batman does…Except that doesn’t mean shit. Batman already assumed Superman had a mom–EVERYONE had a mom, literally speaking. YOU would not exist if not for some woman giving birth to you. And Batman knows this. He even says that Superman’s parents must have told him that he was meant for great things while swinging him around like a yo-yo! He KNOWS Superman has a mom…It’s just the fact that Superman’s mom is named MARTHA, reminding Batman of HIS mother who died that causes him to stop. The man who says that if there’s even a small percent chance that Superman’s his enemy, he has the moral responsibility to PUT HIM DOWN, gives up the second Superman says “Martha.” A name that 1 out of 4,575 girls, to this day, has. So, guess what, Snyder fans. The reason why Batman doesn’t kill Superman really is because their moms have the same name…GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Ugh…This movie sucks. IT SUCKS! I’m sorry, it does! It’s not the WORST movie ever made–Fucking Freddy Got Fingered exists. THIS is not the worst movie in existence. But so  much of it makes me so angry due to plotholes, disservice to the characters and their mythos, and so much of it oozes with self-importance that it makes me sick. And just me ignoring the little things that tick me off (Why does Jonathon Kent have a different accent from the first movie). It’s a mess of a film that frustrates me to no end, and I really don’t want to see it again. You can’t make me.

But, regardless of how I felt, this movie made BANK. How? Well, either because superhero movies were REALLY big at the time this one came out, some wanted to see if it was as bad as their friend said it was, others wanted to see a bad movie to make fun of it, or were part of the select few who actually liked the movie. Regardless, it WAS a financial hit, so it still sort of justified that the DCEU needed to exist. And they already shoved in that weird Knightmare stuff and introduced the Justice League into a film that already had too much going on, so there was no backing down now. DC was desperate to catch up to Marvel, and they hoped that a movie containing DC’s two biggest characters to help advertise their big, cinematic universe would help. Unfortunately, critics' responses left DC a little scared, and they needed both critics AND general audiences to like their films to keep their money consistent. After all, audiences can eventually get bored rooting for a universe that’s too dark and grim. So, they needed to make some changes…But instead of improving on their mistakes made to set them apart from Marvel…

Suicide Squad

They tried to make a “Soulful Drama” funny so it could be like Guardians of the Galaxy. “Because people loved Guardians of the Galaxy! The talking tree and raccoon were funny! Surely making our movie funny would work too, right?” And trust me when I say that the end result was NOT worth it.

The crazy thing is that I can see BITS AND PIECES of what David Ayer intended. There are moments that seem like they could have worked and were ALMOST good if this movie held onto the same vision that Ayer wanted. There was this nice moment in the staircase between Deadshot and Harley Quinn that makes you think it’s meant to go SOMEWHERE or the backstory with Diablo that makes me think, “Man. If this movie took itself seriously, it might have been good.” Unfortunately, the studio didn’t want a serious movie. They tried that twice, and because Zack Snyder ruined the second try, it led to DC thinking they needed to be funny and exciting, just like Marvel. The end result is taking David Ayer’s movie and trying to make it mimic James Gunn’s style.

Did you know James Gunn likes to use licensed songs in his superhero blockbusters? Because he does. Except when he does it, it’s done with the intent of already having a song in mind and writing the scene around it. He doesn’t just pick a song from an iPod shuffle and insert it into the scene for no reason. Because that’s what I feel like the executives did here. They’re just a bunch of out of touch losers who still had an iPod shuffle in 2016 for some reason, picked random songs, and thought, “Yeah, that makes this scene cool.” It’s the only excuse I can think of for why the movie plays “Fortunate Son,” a song about Vietnam, to introduce Killer Croc. Yeah, the song SOUNDS cool, but it doesn’t match. And that’s the worst case. The best case is that you get “Super Freak” playing for Harley Quinn’s second introduction, taking a song that works surface level but isn’t strong enough to make it feel necessary to the scene. If anything, it makes it feel like a joke.

Speaking of, James Gunn LOVES making jokes in his movies. Part of what made Guardians of the Galaxy a hit was how hilarious it was with general audiences. Except he has a very specific sense of humor that works best through his vision and style of direction. Just look at the scene where Peter is trying to rally the Guardians to work together before fighting Ronan. It starts off with a ton of jokes, jokes that shouldn’t be funny but work because of the actors’ deliveries and the comedic timing of when they should say or do certain things. In Suicide Squad, all the jokes feel like they were jammed in with actors struggling to make them work because David Ayer wasn’t sure how to make them funny either. That’s because he wanted to make this a DRAMA, so when forcing jokes, there’s this fight to make it work without hurting the dramatic aspect of the film. Except that they do, every time. Going back to that scene with the Guardians, James Gunn at least knew to slow down when Peter Quill was getting exasperated and allowed a serious moment to build up as each Guardian decides they’re willing to fight…and ending on a joke about Rocket saying they’re all jackasses standing in a circle. It doesn’t sound balanced, but seeing it in action gives this sense that Gunn wanted to make a scene equal parts funny and dramatic, something that remains consistent throughout the whole film. David wanted a stronger lean towards drama, so when forcing in comedy it makes a lot of scenes feel awkward. Honestly, the only time I laughed was when Captain Boomerang cut and ran the second he was told he was free. That’s because he’s clearly meant to be the comedy relief character out of all of them and his action is consistent with his personality.

Then there’s the way this movie is cut. Scenes will just end shortly, randomly jump to characters doing something or NOTHING, and move on making the whole story feel incoherent. There’s this line about how something happened THREE DAYS AGO, but as I was watching the movie it all felt like everything was happening on the same day. And with how cut down this movie is, a lot of the characters don’t feel like real characters. The worst offender of this is Katana, who has this interesting backstory and could have worked well as the straight man to the insane criminals, but falls short because she barely has presence in the movie and her backstory is brought up in the last thirty minutes…and they do NOTHING with it, making you wonder why she was here. I’m sure David Ayer had SOME idea with her, but the studio’s interference caused Katana and others to fall to the wayside and cause the film to be a mess. And that’s just the stuff that’s the studio’s fault.

There’s other stuff that bothers me about this movie, and it’s hard to tell if David Ayer’s the problem or the studio. But some things feel like they were problems from the beginning, such as the premise. The whole reason behind this Suicide Squad is that the government wanted a team to take down the next evil Superman…So they got in people like Slipknot, a guy who’s special skill is climbing things really well. I’m sorry, I can NOT take this idea behind this team seriously, because nothing about it makes sense. What’s Slipknot going to do against evil Superman? Better question, what’s Harley Quinn and Captain Boomerang, the people who quickly lost to both Batman and The Flash, going to do against evil Superman? If the idea was that they were to fight “threats” to US territory and take care of things in a lethal manner because they’re SUPERVILLAINS and the government can always wipe their hands clean of them, it would have worked better. Having them fight The Enchantress, a cosmic witch who can turn people into silly putty with one kiss? It feels like too much for people whose main gimmicks are guns, boomerangs, and bat. A fucking BAT!

While we’re on the topic of Enchantress, she might be the most boring villain in the DCEU. Probably the most boring villain in any superhero movie. Her goal is world domination…like every other supervillain. Except that there’s no unique personality or interesting motivation behind it. Just…weird belly dancing and kissing soldiers into submission. But you know what? I’ll take her over Jared Leto’s Joker. You could not have a WORSE version of the character. His acting is awkward, his charisma is nonexistent, and his laugh–HIS FUCKING LAUGH! The Joker’s laugh is the most important thing to get right no matter what version of the character. It needs to feel haunting and maniac. Here, he sounds like one of those cow in a tin things having a stroke. The Enchantress is too OP and boring to be a Suicide Squad villain, but at least she’s serviceable compared to Leto’s Joker. And don’t even get me STARTED on what that fucker did behind the scenes to “get into the mind of a mad man!” Fuck Jared Leto and any other superhero movie he’s in! I don’t care if he’s better in the Ayer Cut, nothing justified the gross shit he did to the cast and crew!

Suicide Squad is an incredibly flawed film that I would HOPE is better in Ayer’s original version, but I have no way of proving that because it doesn’t exist. It’s a sad thing too, because there ARE parts of this film that could have been improved with time. The characters could have been stronger, the story could have been coherent, and the tone would have been consistent. The premise is weird and the villains are weak, but you don't know what kind of improvements can be made to a film if it meets the director’s expectations. It’s all unfortunately hypotheticals for now, but it doesn’t change how Suicide Squad is the third film in a row within the DCEU’s lineup that fails to genuinely be good. It got fans hoping, PRAYING that DC could finally have a good movie again. A movie that proves what makes these characters and their universe interesting while distinct from Marvel’s.

And in 2017, they…ALMOST got it.

Wonder Woman

According to general audiences, Wonder Woman was truly the first GOOD DCEU movie. It was inspirational, powerful, hopeful, and showed what makes DC and its characters amazing…and I fucking fall asleep almost everytime I watch it…*HITS DESK*

Although, what I just described is how people felt in 2017. I have NO idea what the reception towards this movie is like now in 2024 due to Gal Gadot’s current political beliefs. But to be fair to the film, no one could have expected that in 2017. This isn’t an Ezra Miller situation where they still released a movie despite it starring a literal maniac. So, let’s give the film the benefit of the doubt and judge it without the current political climate of the present day. And in that regard…I think this movie is boring…but not in the way you think.

I have this belief that a movie could be so good that it is dull. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, the story and characters are all fine and serviceable, to the point where you can absolutely see how someone could like it. The issue is that it doesn't offer an energy that grabs you. I feel this way with a handful of movies that, yeah, have nothing truly wrong with them, but don’t keep my interest as well as other films. And it’s the same with Wonder Woman. For the most part, I do say it’s a nearly perfect film that’s exactly as people described it…For the most part. We’ll get to that.

Positives first, the characters are all well-done. Professor Poison and that German General aren’t the best supervillains in media, but they offer some campy fun that makes them work. The group of men that teams up with Diana and Trevor are a tad bit underdeveloped, but have great chemistry and identifiable personalities that makes them a joy to watch. Then there’s my personal favorite, Steve Trevor, who acts as a great straight man to the wackiness around Diana, trying his best to be understanding and patient but constantly getting frustrated in a way that’s alway funny. And finally you’ve got Diana, whose fish out of water nonsense hits that right spot where it’s charming without overstaying its welcome, making you appreciate the naivety of a character who’s seeing the world for the first time and is filled with WONDER (Haha). As for her moments with Steve Trevor, I like it. Things get a little rom-commy at times, but it’s the right amount of cheese that makes these two adorable together. I genuinely love seeing their love.

But by far, the best thing about this movie is the No Man’s Land scene. This is the scene most people talk about when bringing up how great this movie is, and for good reason. Diana is seeing death and destruction everywhere she turns, with people telling her there’s nothing she can do and that she can’t save anyone. Only for Diana to go, “No,” and goes out to save everyone. This scene is everything that makes superheroes amazing. When a situation feels hopeless and there’s nothing a normal human can do, a hero is there to rise and be a beacon of hope to those who felt hopeless. It’s everything we as people wish we could be, to make a stand and save lives that need help the most. The No Man’s Land scene captures all of it, being inspirational, beautiful, and one of my favorite superhero scenes from any movie, not just DC…It’s also a bit muddled by Gal Gadot’s current political beliefs, but again, 2017. No one could have expected that.

One thing that people should have expected, though, is what REALLY ruined the movie: It’s ending. You see, the movie tricks you. It makes you think it’s building up to this message about how there’s no one bad person to beat to fix everything. There’s no divine intervention that leads humans to who they are, they’re just…like that, and to stop them means doing more than killing the big bad guy. It takes years of dedication and working hard to make the change you believe is right…Only for the movie to go, “Nope. There’s the REAL bad guy. Kill him and everything’s fine.” AND THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS! Ares shows up, going on and on, spouting nonsense like, “I don’t make people evil…I just give them the things they need to do bad things and further kill people. It’s HUMANITY that’s the death of everything, not ME!” Except that when Wonder Woman kills him, everything is fine. The war ends and people stop killing each other…But then what happened in WWII? And the Vietnam War? And every single war that happened after WWI?! The film tries to give this message across that love is the true end to all wars with Diana staying in Man’s world to help end corruption. But if that were true, then I would like to point out that Diana didn’t really beat Ares with a hug, she killed him with a fucking lightning bolt through the CHEST! And again, EVERYTHING WENT FINE! You could make the argument that things still took time to end peacefully, but the movie doesn’t present it as such. Diana’s friends and German soldiers were hugging one another after Ares died, as if it really was his influence that drove them to want to kill each other. Almost as if the real problem was Ares all along and every war humanity experienced afterwards…must not have happened in this universe, I guess–It’s stupid.

Everything up to those last forty minutes is great. I can see why people would love this movie, even if it’s something that doesn’t reach me specifically. It’s not bad, it’s perfectly serviceable. But the second Ares shows up, it all goes to hell in a SPECTACULAR fashion, taking what could have been a solid A movie and making it a B-. Now, as for whether or not I’d recommend watching it despite Gal Gadot’s current opinions…let me put it this way: Mark Hammil is in the exact same boat as her, and if you were to tell Star Wars fans to stop watching the original trilogy because of it, you’d have better luck telling the moon to stop rotating. There are a ton of movies, shows, and even books that are made by or feature bad people with pisspoor political standings that leaves an icky feeling in one’s tummy when they consume their favorite media. If you want me to tell you that you're the best person in the world for avoiding that media or a piece of shit for still consuming it…I’m not doing either. My advice is do whatever YOU think is the right thing to do.

But that’s enough controversy. We’re almost done with this fucking thing, so let’s keep going with the movie that ruined the DCEU. A movie that, after its release, things would never be the same for this cinematic universe.

Justice League

And I don’t mean Zack Snyder’s version of the movie. No, no, no. That’s the GOOD version.

*Gasps in Snyder Cult*

Yeah, yeah, I know. I clowned on his other two DC movies, but the truth is that I not only find his version of Justice League to be superior, it’s genuinely of the best superhero movies out there. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an hour too long, everything’s too dark to barely make out the characters in dark and gray costumes, and Stephenwolf still sucks…but there’s this sort of epicness to it. It’s one of the few movies where Zack Snyder’s style and interpretation of these characters work, making a movie where even if the good guys lose at first they still win through hope and perseverance. It shows what makes DC characters work, where despite the darkness in their lives and the darkness in their future, they’ll always be there to save the world and all the little people in it. If THIS was the movie DC put out, then I genuinely believe it would have been enough to save the DCEU…But it isn’t. Because due to a tragic event in Zack’s life that I couldn’t begin to comprehend, he stepped away from the movie and put DC in a position: They could have shelved the project and allowed Zack to return after he processed his grief…or they could have done what they did and got in a different director to finish the movie.

And did they get someone similar to Zack’s style? Someone Zack trusted to finish the movie he wanted to make? Nope…Because DC and WB wanted to be like Marvel, so they got in the guy who made the MCU big.

This? This right here? This is the face that killed the DCEU.

Yes, Joss Whedon made the box office SMASH that is The Avengers. But the reason why THAT movie works goes beyond the man who directed it. HIs style and vision for what makes superheroes cool works for the MCU because it mixes well with the tone set in Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. Those were movies that had their serious moments and epic action, but still featured jokes and quips that made them fun movies to go out and see. By the time we got to The Avengers, it was all that but brought to a grander scale and having the joy of seeing all these characters you got to know join up and save the world as a team. It worked because it fits with the rest of the MCU. Joss Whedon’s Justice League, on the other hand, fails because his style INSANELY clashes with Snyder’s. Snyder has this sort of poetic self-importance to each project he makes. It’s what we got in Man of Steel and Batman V Superman and…yeah, those movies sucked, especially the latter, but Snyder at least had a strong sense of faith in his projects and saw the grandness of these characters, even if it was in a way that I particularly didn’t like. Whedon saw superheroes as silly and made jokes. He’s not entirely WRONG, there is this goofiness to every superhero, all in their costume, powers, and names. Just think of your favorite superhero for more than ten seconds, and you’ll see all the ways that they’re silly. But while that works for The Avengers, it fails here because it goes against everything Snyder set up with this world and its characters. To go from having these big, super serious films to this goofy two-hour long popcorn flick feels like a step backwards. These are the biggest heroes in DC’s library, coming together to stop the generic evil bad guy. And instead of feeling like this epic grand adventure, it’s a mediocre film that almost put me to sleep due to a cast of characters with dull personalities and bad jokes about brunch.

That last bit is another problem with Whedon’s version of this movie: He adds too many jokes. Now, I’m not against superhero movies having jokes and quips in them. Far from it, in fact. Comedy and quips have been a part of superhero bread and butter since the very first Superman comic. Lose that, and you lose the charm of superheroes. The issue is that Whedon seems to forget the most important rule when telling a story: Everything depends on the characters. Whether it’s a fight scene, an emotional moment, or a JOKE, you need to keep in mind the character who says and does everything you write. For example, when Batman’s asked what his power was and he goes, “I’m rich,” that’s perfect. It’s quick, it’s dry, it’s BATMAN. Him going, “Yup, something is definitely bleeding” after Superman threw him like a sack of potatoes doesn’t work. It’s slow, it’s awkward, and it undercuts this big tense scene about Superman losing his sense of self after being brought back to life. And keep in mind that this isn’t just an issue with this movie. It’s an issue that Joss has with all of his superhero movies, both Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Just look at how Joss Whedon directs Captain America and how the Russo Brothers direct the character. Under Whedon’s direction, Cap noticeably makes a lot more jokes, acting as a sort of sassy grandpa to the team.  With the Russos, Captain America feels more like a straight man, making jokes on occasion but has more of a dignity to his personality. All sense of dignity is lost under Whedon’s direction and you feel that in Justice League. None of the actors feel like they’re having fun in this movie. For example, Ben Affleck. The poor man looks like he’s dying inside with every quip he’s forced to spit out or for every interview he had to do for the film. You can tell he was waiting for it all to be over so he could finally wash his hands from the whole thing. And then you hear stories about how Joss Whedon threatened to end Gal Gadot’s career because she didn’t want Ezra Miller’s face on her boobs for the sake of a joke. Regardless of how you feel about that actress, that’s a pretty scummy move and it was all for a lame gag that makes the audience feel more uncomfortable than entertained. But that’s just the stuff that Joss added. It’s the stuff he takes away that really kills the film.

Zack’s original vision for the film was for it to be four hours long and, to be honest, you can cut it down to at least three. After three bad films in a row plus one decent intermission, I don’t think general audiences would be willing to see a four hour long DC movie. Still, by cutting things down to be HALF of what Zack planned, Whedon takes away too much. Four hours was too long, but it allowed every character to breathe and come out onto their own. Take Cyborg as an example. In Whedon’s cut, Cyborg feels like a non-character whose personality is non-existent as he goes through no arc. But in Snyder’s cut? Victor is the heart of the film, going through a powerful journey of accepting his new self and the father who loved him. Even Victor’s father is a fully fleshed out character with an emotional end to his arc. That’s all cut out of Whedon’s version, and it’s a little suspicious that he felt as though the story arcs and personalities of the BLACK characters were deemed as unimportant. And the same treatment happens to Superman, DC’s greatest superhero, who’s inclusion to the story feels so unimportant that you could almost cut him out of the film entirely. SUPERMAN is POINTLESS in a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie. Read that out loud and tell me that it doesn’t feel right. You can’t. But in the Snyder Cut? We spend a lot more time with him learning to be alive again and coming to grips as a Superman reborn. You can remove him from Whedon’s cut, but you’ll be missing too much in Snyder’s.

As for the stuff that Whedon kept in, not only can you see that in the Snyder Cut, but every GOOD moment in this movie is BETTER in Snyder’s. Action scenes aren’t cut to pieces, intense dialogues aren’t put on fast forward, and dramatic moments aren’t ruined by dumb jokes. Honestly, I can count TWO improvements that this movie has compared to Snyder. For one, I actually like that the color grading is turned up. I don’t give a fuck how serious your story is, if Invincible can tell one of the darkest origin stories I’ve ever seen all for a character in bright PINK…you can make Superman’s suit more blue and Flash’s suit more red. Tone is not a good enough justification to make a film look ugly. Another improvement…is a single scene. A post credit scene that you could miss if you leave the movie the second the credits come on. And that scene is Flash and Superman having their race. It’s the one thing that Whedon’s style does best, and that’s making superheroes entertaining even when doing something dull. Just look at the hammer scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s fun watching characters you love have a friendly competition and joke around with each other. To the point where people would watch entire movies of just that if they could. But one good scene that happens when the movie’s over is NOT enough to save this mess.

Joss Whedon’s Justice League is what finally killed the DCEU. Oh, they still made more movies after this, but the franchise would NEVER recover from the damage that this movie did to its reputation. In trying to compete with Marvel, DC put out what feels like a C-Tier MCU movie in the same year general audiences got a Guardians of the Galaxy sequel, Spider-Man in the MCU, and Thor finally having a FUN movie. Why would people waste time with a franchise offering C-Tier superhero schlock when they can save their money for stuff they actually love.

As for me? I have this rule when it comes to watching TV (This is related, trust me). I call it the “Five Episode Rule.” A TV show has five episodes to win me over, five chances to tell me that the rest of the series is worth watching. If it fails, then I drop the show unless someone I trust tells me it’s worth sticking out or I hear good things about it online. Now, let’s picture the DCEU as a TV show and each movie an episode. If that were the case, we’d get a mediocre beginning, an infuriating second entry, an incoherent third, a decent fourth with a bad ending, and a dull finale. If we follow my rule, then it goes without saying that the DCEU definitely didn’t win me over. It didn’t win ANYONE over. The DCEU became a bigger punching bag on the internet than Marvel currently is. It took the MCU ten years before it began to lose general audience appeal, but with the DCEU? It failed almost immediately, leaving DC and Warner Bros with this dying franchise. General audiences lost faith in it, Zack Snyder didn’t want to return due to how the studio treated his vision, and even the actors for Batman AND Superman refused to work for DC for the longest time. By the time Justice League came out, the DCEU was at rock bottom. The question is, could they climb their way back out?

Well…They ALMOST did. And we’ll get to that next time as we see what happens when a dead franchise decides to do whatever the hell they want.

[bereft-of-frogs]

apocalyptic appellations | MCU / Into the Night | 6.9k

Damage to a communications relay sends a pair of survivors out from the bunker and into the mountains, where they encounter a stranger.

Sylvie, once she’d shed the name of ‘Loki’ for good, had to get her name from somewhere.

Like everything else about her, it came from an apocalypse.

(aka the fic that resulted from this post)

[read on ao3]

What’s this? An MCU fic? And an ‘Into the Night’ fic? What year is it?

But really, we’ve got some 2020 vibes in the house tonight. Honestly, I both can’t and can believe that this is what I would return to both of these fandoms with. Can’t believe that it’s been so long, I have no idea where the last year and a half has gone, but also I can believe that I would return with this extremely niche crossover. Perfection. Not gonna lie or be humble though, I’m pretty proud of this one. I would certainly appreciate anyone checking it out, even though I totally understand that it’s pretty niche. XD No worries if not. ;-)

If you do end up reading and even halfway enjoying it, drop a like/comment/reblog/frog!

[astralscrivener]

im curious about #20 for the Ao3 wrapped questions. I'm an avid re-reader of my own work so i'm curious to see what your answer is hehe also curious about #3 if u feel so inclined <33

OOH THANK U FOR THE QUESTIONS these are great!!!

3. what work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

stars go down, hands down. there's a lot i would rewrite and do differently and maybe i'm currently doing that. teehee about the entire deceit so natural trilogy, but i improved so much over the course of writing it. SGD was also a fucking MONSTER. i wrote it in the span of like ? 10 months? and it clocks in at JUST under 200k words...and mind you i was writing another fanfic at the same time that clocks in at 327k words and they finished on the same day. i was a powerhouse and i miss that energy.

i also just had FUN writing it. the twists! the turns! the betrayals! everything in-between chapters 19 and 34! it was a fucking BLAST and some of my most cinematic-feeling writing and i just. it was a great time.

another more recent one that i'm proud of is specifically chapters 18 and 19 of stealing our own place in the sun, aka season 6 episodes 6 and 7. SOOPITS is my major rewrite of vld seasons 4-8 (that i started after s7 pissed me off so bad i went "fuck it i'll do it myself") and while i used the main points of the show as a framework there is a LOT that is drastically different. if SGD had some of my most cinematic writing then this is what i consider The Most cinematic writing. it was exhilarating and gave me so much grief to write but i was rereading it the other night and it was SOOO fucking worth it. the entire fight scene. god.

20. which work of yours have you reread the most?

honestly? the same two fics above. SOOPITS i reread because it's some of my most recent work set in the paladins universe (i honestly regret writing so much modern au fic when i had the time and energy to write while the show is airing bc i vastly prefer the paladins universe), and also to keep up continuity bc it is my main wip at the moment. i just really love the character dynamics that it has going and the way the plot is progressing, but i also need to remember what information readers have and what info is still sitting in my notes docs. and also i am my own audience first and foremost!!!! therefore of course i reread my stuff!!!

and of course. i reread bits and pieces of all of DSN quite frequently but i return to SGD the most because it feels the most well-plotted. that series also helped me really begin honing my writing after several years of drought and stagnation (i was writing for a dead fandom and getting no feedback, and then suddenly i was in the kl fandom getting tons of feedback...i was spoiled in 2017 and 2018 honestly), and so SGD is also the most pleasing on a technical level to get through.

ao3 wrapped: writers' edition!

[ironstrangeao3]

During the darkness (you were my sun)

by itsmaneskinbitch

In 2016, the Avengers broke up and everyone went their own way, leaving a handful of heroes to protect the world. In 2017, their names are being cleared and the fugitives were allowed to come home.

Wanda Maximoff is trying to get adjusted to life with people she used to loathe while Natasha Romanoff is trying to have a new beginning with her teammates while teaching her sister how it is to be a hero. When a few midnight coffee meetings start developing into something more, the young women come face to face with feelings they've never had before and the challenge of allowing themselves to be happy for once without pushing their needs aside.

Words: 2633, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Black Widow (Movie 2021)

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: F/F

Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff, Avengers Team, Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Stephen Strange, Clint Barton, Thor, Bruce Banner, James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Pietro Maximoff, Yelena Belova, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Vision (Marvel), Michelle Jones, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Kate Bishop

Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Natasha Romanov, Avengers Team & Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton & Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff, Avengers Team & Avengers Team, Yelena Belova & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov, Wanda Maximoff & Peter Parker, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Wanda Maximoff/Peter Parker/Natasha Romanov, Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff, Natasha Romanov & Thor, Wanda Maximoff and Tony Stark, Wanda Maximoff and Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner/Clint Barton/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark/Thor, Avengers Team & Peter Parker, Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson

Additional Tags: slowburn, gayest story I have ever read, natasha is 32 and wanda is 26, There's smut, a lot of smut so you've been warned, there's nothing dark and there will be warnings at top of each chapters, civil war happened but everything after this is not canon, also slowburn friendships because mcu didn't repair all the friendships they broke, half of the couples are gay if you don't like it go, natasha and wanda adopt peter at some point, and bucky and steve have their little apartment in brooklyn and are happy, now warnings, anxiety and ptsd, ADHD, natasha gets the life she deserves and wanda doesnt become a villain because she's finally happy, pietro does not fucking die he deserved better, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Protective Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Protective Wanda Maximoff, yelena nat and wanda become an unstoppable trio, there's some fight scenes but not really graphic, me investing my gay needs into a fic, Found Family, wanda still becomes the scarlet witch, nat and wanda are also the best gay mothers no other opinion allowed, both team cap and iron man friendly, i am also projecting my daddy issues on pietro so

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/46037407

[attonitos-gloria]

lovely @palominojacoby tagged me <3 thank you my dear

3 ships: tyrion/sansa (asoiaf; in a sad depressing way), peggy/don draper (mad men; in a platonic aromantic and asexual way. ruined me for life), eugenides/the magus (the thief series; in a toxic fucked up way. underappreciated ship)

first ever ship: hmm ... i grew up without a clear concept of lgbt characters and i remember, watching high school musical as a kid, i really, really enjoyed ryan and gabriella in the second movie? i never really warmed up to troy (sorry bisexual king) and i knew implicitly that ryan was gay, even without the vocabulary to utter it, so i really didn’t ship ryan/gabriella romantically but i just loved their easy intimacy and friendship. anyway that was the beginning of me being obsessed with relationships about partnership and kindness that are not romantic or erotic by nature, i guess. i also was very invested in ryan and chad since hsm 2. which was totally innapropriate and erotic and as charged as a thunderstorm. what is your problem disney. this movie is for CHILDREN

last song: krystal, by matt maltese. come and be sad with me!

last movie: aftersun (5 stars)

currently reading: a good man is hard to find and other stories by flannery o’connor, the death of vivek oji by akwaeke emezi, and just started lolita by vladimir nabokov (thanks to @roadsidegrave!! tag yourself if you’d like, king)

currently watching: better call saul! i would watch a thousand shows from the vince gilligan cinematic fucked up universe

currently consuming: coffee and chocolate panettone. a great breakfast.

currently craving: beach house. dinner at 5 pm, that delicious bodily exhaustion that the ocean gives you after struggling with the waves under the sun all day, starlit night sky over the water, the scent and sound of the breeze from the sea.

i am NOT tagging @thistle-and-thorn because she gets anxious. thistle consider yourself NOT tagged (please answer this). also @coffeeandorange and @foxyhunter99 and @queen0fthenorth and @buginateacup and @somebody-already-took-this-url and anyone else wants to tag themselves <3 

[rcsplendent]

☼☾  (  logan  lerman  ,  26  ,  he/him  ,  cis  man  ,  lukin  5  )  -  have  you  seen  mikhail alexander  "sasha"  lukin ?    we’ve  heard  through  the  grapevine  that  they’re  shrewd  but  also  conniving. when  you  think  of  them  ,  you  think  of  a  stash  of  mismatched  objects  stolen  from  unwitting  pockets,  tattoos  peeking  out  from  disheveled  shirtsleeves,  the  hypnotism  of  a  dark  and  unwavering  gaze.

parallels  :  westley  (  the princess bride  )  ;  the son  (  bullet train  )  ;  deadpool / wade wilson  (  marvel comics / marvel cinematic universe  )  ;   alyssa  (  the end of the fucking world  )

BASIC  INFO

FULL  NAME:  mikhail alexander " sasha " lukin

NICKNAMES:  ' sasha, ' which is a diminutive of his middle name, alexander. he has never been called anything other than sasha; only his family knows that his first name is mikhail.

AGE:  twenty-six

GENDER & PRONOUNS:  cis man, he/him

ORIENTATION:  absolutely unconcerned; but if we had to put a label on it, bisexual & biromantic.

LANGUAGE(S)  SPOKEN:  primary  — russian;  conversational  —  french, english, spanish, italian, turkish

VOICE / ACCENT:  russian ; thickly accented, but surprisingly soft in tonality & volume. same as lo's role in ' bullet train ' ( click for example ).

TEMPERAMENT:  melancholic

ALIGNMENT:  chaotic neutral ( leaning evil, sometimes )

ZODIAC:  gemini sun, aries moon, scorpio rising

LABEL:  the miscreant ;  one who is drawn to crime or delinquency ; one who enjoys, or even revels, in the experience of misbehaving.

APPEARANCE  &  PERSONALITY

FACE  CLAIM:  logan lerman

HEIGHT:  five feet, ten inches

HAIR:  mostly mousy brown and curly, with white-blonde strands streaking throughout the front sections. these streaks are natural & are void of pigment rather than bleached. well-kept & soft. a smattering of stubble on his face. 

EYES:  icy blue, with pools of green towards the pupil. outlined by long lashes that, in some places, are nearly white in colour.

USUAL  EXPRESSION:  dark and mischievous, with an uncanny ability to play coy; an assessing gaze, looking for his next target. 

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES:  the white bits of hair mottled through his locks & eyelashes ; certain patches of skin on his body being just slightly paler than the rest of him ( such as the space in & around his eye sockets, his knuckles & fingers, his chest, & his shins ), barely noticeable but evident enough if you're looking closely ; tattoos scattered across his body, mostly concentrated on his torso & thighs — but the most noticeable ones are a tiny cross on his left cheekbone, a rose on the back of his right hand, and the small symbols ( vines, moons, dots, and rings ) that occupy his fingers.

POSITIVE  TRAITS:  shrewd,  cunning,  intelligent,  quick-witted,  fearless

NEGATIVE  TRAITS:  arrogant,  self-important,  maleficent,  moody,  snooty,  petulant, devious, mischievous, impetuous, irresponsible

THINGS  TO  KNOW

you were never supposed to be born, & from the way you've wreaked havoc on the lives of everyone around you ever since, you wonder how many times it's been wished that you never were.

that's dramatic. you know your family loves you. but with the way they sigh in exasperation every time they get a letter requesting your presence in court ( the court where you're put in handcuffs & convicted of a crime, to clarify ; not the pompous kind with dancing & drinking & political chatter ), you know you're probably ninety-percent of the reason the lukin name is usually met with sneers of contempt & suspicion.

and, well, that's also dramatic. ( you have a penchant for that, it seems. ) you haven't ruined your family's reputation that badly. not yet, at least. but the whispers that move through the political arena about your family being a pack of troublemakers, deliquents, liars & miscreants ... it's not all your fault, but you're certainly the only one not desperately trying to cover it up, aren't you?

 you think it's silly, is all ;the money exchanged under tables to expunge records, wipe the slate, & keep the lukin name clean. why try so hard to maintain a sparkling reputation if everyone in your family is so bad at it naturally? you'd never ask that question aloud, though. hell, you've asked it in the past and been met with the same lecture, over & over again: your bloodline has been noble for centuries, and you won't be allowed to jeopardize that for the sake of a good time. 

so you did your best to keep up the image. ever since childhood, you've been wedged into the mould of a perfectly polite nobleman, hair combed back ( all brunette at the time ) and posture pin-straight. it wasn't so hard once you got to boarding school at the age of eleven — a military school, the kind where you get up at the ass-crack of dawn, crawl around in the mud for eight hours to ' build character, ' get yelled at for making stupid mistakes, and go to bed with your tail between your legs. at least, that was your experience of it. you hated it, but you did learn a lot there — how to make your bed with perfect corners; how to get out of a headlock and have a knife at your attacker's throat in half a second flat; and, most importantly to your story, how to steal.

that wasn't an intentional lesson. it's not like the boarding school was holding classes on how to rob someone blind by just bumping into them on the street. but you learned anyways — mostly motivated by envy as you watched the other students get showered with rewards for this & that, while you were scolded for your various shortcomings. one time another boy was gifted a gorgeous fountain pen for climbing the flagpole faster than everybody else; you stole it out of his bookbag and laughed when he bursted into tears upon realizing its absence. it was fun — the thrill of taking was what sparked your penchant for misbehavior.

by the age of fifteen you were stealing shit just for the fun of it. you'd get caught, sometimes, reprimanded by the headmaster and whacked across the knuckles with a ruler. but the rush you felt when you'd snatch something particularly valuable, your victim none the wiser ... it made it worth it. pickpocketing became your favorite pastime.

upon turning eighteen, everyone at the boarding school graduated straight into the russian imperial army. the summer after your final year was a hellscape: bootcamp where they started training you for real, actual war, this time — not just playing with unloaded rifles and goofing off on obstacle courses like you did at school. you were, surprisingly, a fairly good soldier. an excellent fighter, at the very least, but you also weren't afraid to play dirty in just the right ways to take down your enemies. you could've risen in the ranks if you had made it far enough along to do so, but alas ... caught red-handed, literally, stealing your commanding officer's wallet out of his back pocket. you were dishonorably discharged just before your twentieth birthday.

that's all fine and good, in your opinion. you never wanted to be a soldier anyways. your father had instilled a military state of mind in you & each of your siblings from a young age, so it was just sort of the natural way of things in the lukin family, to serve in the army for at least some time. and you did, you insist — two whole years ! — but the circumstances of your dismissal from the forces overshadows any accomplishments you might've made during your time there.

ever since then, you've fallen into a self-fulfilling prophecy. your family sees you as their rat-faced little brother who can't stay out of trouble, so what is there to do other than get into as much trouble as possible? you ended up in the underground club scene, somehow — tailing after some other miscreant friends of yours — and from there, you ' accidentally ' weaseled your way into the outer rings of a group of pickpocketers who steal from the wealthy and split the profits. you're a small fish in that crowd, mostly because you're only there for fun, but that doesn't spare your full, government name from being displayed loud-and-proud whenever your little band of robbers gets raided by the very army you used to march with.

the fact that nobody knows your name is ' mikhail ' probably helps to conceal the fact that you're the son of a duke and protect your family's reputation ... well, that and the exorbidant amounts of money your family has shelled out to get you off the hook and keep your record clean.

so that's the pattern. you get into trouble, usually related to stealing; you land in jail and write home as fast as you can; your family gets you out and threatens to lock you in a tower if you don't clean up your act. you promise you will, but you never do. being bad is just so much fun.

and as long as they continue to bail you out, you'll continue to wreak havoc.

HEADCANONS

tl;dr: sasha is a pickpocket ! he's a bit of a kleptomaniac and steals things compulsively. he's gotten into a lot of trouble in the past and honestly can't even be bothered to stop despite gravely endangering his family's reputation every single time he gets caught.

he went to a military boarding school from the ages of eleven to eighteen, as is customary for most children in the lukin family considering the tradition of the eldest of each generation being a military advisor.

he served in the russian imperial army for two years after boarding school, but he hated it, and was dishonorably discharged after being caught stealing his commanding officer's wallet ( he could've gotten away with it, but lowkey he hated it so much there that he wanted to get caught and kicked out ). 

sasha has focal vitiligo, which causes him to have pieces of hair that are void of pigment, appearing white-blonde, as well as patches of pigmentless skin in the places mentioned above in the ' distinguishing features ' section. he even has patches of white eyelashes. this adds absolutely nothing to his character arc. just a fun fact about him.

he has a fuck ton of tattoos. 60 in total. mostly on his torso, arms, and legs, though he has some on his hands and a small cross on his left cheekbone.

he's a shit disturber, and loves to be involved in chaos. chaotic neutral for sure. 

he's also quite ... easily influenced, and terribly impulsive. it's how he ended up falling into that pickpocketing circuit back in russia. would follow pretty much anyone if they so much as promised he'd have a good time.

he has a dog ! a black mutt named blini ( meaning ' pancake ' ), who he adores. he got her as a puppy for christmas a few years ago & she's almost always at his side. ( inspo: one, two, three ! )

WANTED CONNECTIONS

marks: sasha do b stealing ... he'll rob anyone who looks away from him for even half a second. these people would probably be more on the kind / soft-hearted side, which he will absolutely take advantage of. bonus points if they catch him and make him feel bad about it by being kind to him anyways.

delinquent friends: people he can get into trouble with ! 

a good influence: ok listen .. this could be really cute ??? platonic or romantic. somebody who makes him want to behave for once. someone he just can't bring himself to pickpocket. someone who sees the good in him, & can tell he's hiding a lot of sadness & dejection underneath his chaotic exterior.

others: lichrally anything else u can think of ! i am down for whatever ! hit me !