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howtohero · 3 years

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#300.1: Saving the World Part 1

Prologue

The Haberdashery

“Hi, my name is Murk. I am a mud monster and a product of mad science, but I am also an accountant and a lover of classical music. For most of my existence I have tried to simply live a regular life in an increasingly strange world.”

The conference room in Hatman’s Haberdashery was filled with all manner of colorfully clad, or just plain colorful, superheroes, super-trainees, monsters, vampires, werewolves, sewer-mutants, Da Vincis and even a smattering of regular civilians who looked tired, angry, but overall fearless. According to Leonardo Da Vinci II, an android duplicate of the original from the far future, there had never been such an eclectic gathering of people in all of history. They had gathered — or been gathered — because the world, and life as they all knew it, hung in the balance. The world’s supervillains, led by a formerly low rate smuggler named Smuggles, had managed to do the unthinkable, they’d taken over the world, and in doing so they’d imprisoned most of the world’s heroes, world leaders, and superhero bloggers, in a secret prison. The oddball assembly was the Resistance, and at the moment each of them had their eyes on Murk. Some looked at him with confusion, he was by far the most eloquent mud monster they’d ever heard. Some looked at him in awe, over the past several weeks, Murk had rescued many of them from danger and had inspired them to join him in his fight. A few looked at him with pride, they knew him from before you see, and as far as they were concerned, that made his heroics their heroics.

(“I know that guy from before,”) Parenthetical Guy whispered to the warthog-mask wearing man sitting to his left. (“And as far as I’m concerned, that makes his heroics my heroics.)

{“I work with that guy, he does my taxes,”} Curly whispered, nudging Hatman who was looking forlornly toward the room’s exit. There were far too many people between him and it, and it was causing him no shortage of distress.

“When the heroes fell,” Murk continued. “It immediately became apparent that I, and many others like me, could no longer afford the luxury of standing to the side. For a long time I, and many of my ‘monstrous’ ilk have been more than happy to allow superheroes to handle the world’s problems for us. Whenever our homes, our lives, our world came under threat we all said to one another, ‘well, that looks like a job for superheroes,’ and we declined to act. When the heroes fell I saw how selfish I had been. And so I would like to be the first to extend my heartfelt thanks, and my sincerest apologies to the brave heroes who have gathered here today. I, along with my partner and friend, Lawyer Guy have gathered as many civilians as we could. Regular monsters and people who have cowered from or turned a blind eye to the acts of the villains who have dared to subjugate us, and we have come here to offer our assistance. If you’ll have us, we would like to help in any way we can.”

His speech concluded, Murk quickly sat down next to Lawyer Guy who smiled warmly at him. A few people sitting near him muttered polite words of affirmation toward the hulking mud man but everyone quickly became silent once more as somebody else strode to the head of the table.

Everybody in the room, everybody in the world, recognized the gold and white costume, the chiseled, stony features, and the piercing blue eyes of Ultiman. He was the superhero par excellence and when he clapped Murk on the shoulder and smiled widely, Murk’s ragtag civilian crew let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Thank you Murk,” Ultiman said. “Thank you everyone. As I’m sure you can see, our numbers are small but our members are dedicated and we are thrilled to be able to count each of you among us. I’m confident that, working together, we can depose Smuggles and his entire Consortium of Crime.”

***

Smuggles’s Secret Prison

My name is Zachary Schechter and I’d been locked up for a while by the time anybody had made any noise about breaking out. You may know me as the creator, author, and only functioning brain behind How To Hero. Actually you definitely know me as that. It’s a very popular blog. Just take my word on this ok? I was in a secret prison because I allowed my subordinates to talk me into hiring a known supervillain to, let’s see, live in our basement and interject unwanted comments into my blog. As it would happen, this supervillain, Smuggles, took the job as part of some kind of protracted and complicated plan to take over the world. I should have seen that coming of course. That’s basically the only reason any supervillain does anything. For a few weeks I was alone there. Just sitting in a cell twiddling my thumbs. Trying to make conversation with the drones they had guarding the place. The only thing they’d given me to eat is fish. I imagine Chuck the Fish Whisperer had something to do with that. Frikkin supervillains and their sycophantic dedication to their own themes. But then a ton of superheroes ended up there with me, and I knew things on the outside had taken a decisive turn for the worse. The heroes were all stripped of their costumes and gear, and were given supervillain costumes instead. It’s all spikes, horns, and red contact lenses now. It’s a bit silly, but I think the idea is that if the heroes are dressed like villains and forced to do things like play evil charades and watch movies about heroes turning bad, then some of them might actually turn evil. Actually, I know that’s the idea, but I’ll get to that later. Eventually Cowboy Rockstar, the coolest hero of all time, decided to stage some kind of jailbreak. Which was great. And he wanted me to help him plan it, probably because of my proven expertise in all manner of superhero related topics. I bet it was my treatise on the many superheroic uses of drills that got his attention. There was just one teeny tiny problem though...

“So what do you think?” Cowboy Rockstar whispered.

“I think… I think that I designed this prison,” I whispered dejectedly.

“I beg your pardon?”

It was recreation time once again, and Giorgio the Evil Mime had selected an assortment of clips of superheroes becoming evil from various films and TV shows. It’s really shocking how many times Hollywood has returned to the well of “a superhero clad in red, white, and blue murders a person.” We must’ve watched like thirty different clips already.

“Look, Mr. Rockstar, I appreciate you coming to me and all. It’s an honor to meet you and plot in hushed voices with you and everything. But I’m like 90% certain that I designed this prison. And I don’t know about you but Iitalics certainly wouldn’t have designed a prison that people could break outitalics of.”

Cowboy Rockstar furrowed his brow, “Ah, you’re saying this prison is… from your blog?”

I held up my hands defensively. “Hey, I know how it sounds but look around you. The costumes, the robots, the charades. It’s literally ripped straight from my post about running your own unsanctioned prison.”

“You wrote a guide to running an off the books blacksite for housing criminals?” Cowboy Rockstar arched an immaculate eyebrow. “That’s not really a very superheroic activity.”

“Huh. When you put it like that it’s really no wonder that the only person who seems to have implemented any of it is a supervillain who seems to have taken over the world.”

“He had help,” I heard somebody grumble from Cowboy Rockstar’s other side.

Helm Lady was one of the only Hatman proteges to both survive to adulthood and continue her career as a superhero, so it was hardly surprising that she’d been able to sneak up on us.

“Helm Lady, good of you to join us!” Cowboy Rockstar said. “Zach over here was just telling me about how he designed this prison to be unescapable! Isn’t that exciting.”

“Hardly,” Helm Lady said glumly.

“I gotta agree with her on this one,” I said.

“Are you kidding me? You’ve been given a rare opportunity to outdo yourself in a grandiose and practical way! You’ve been here longer than anybody. It seems like Smuggles has some kind of vendetta against you specifically, and so he’s used your own tactics against you! Now, with our help of course, you can show everybody that you’re smarter than you!” Cowboy Rockstar was gesticulating wildly at this point drawing a sharp and reproachful glare from warden Giorgio.

“Hm,” I said, I had already written a guide to escapology. Maybe I’d already unwittingly outwitted myself. Besides, Smuggles’s prison wasn’t actually an exact copy of the one I’d designed on the blog. He’d had to make some changes to prevent it from having any real rehabilitative value. Dressing the prisoners like villains instead of heroes for instance. And villain costumes are very different from hero costumes. They’re like eighty percent sharp edges. I looked Cowboy Rockstar up and down. The costume they had him in had spikes up and down his arms. Maybe we could use them to pick the locks on our cell? We’d still have to deal with the robot guards and who knows what else. But maybe that was a place to start.

“Ok,” I said after a moment. “I’m sure we can come up with something, after all, as I say

on my blog, when you’re in a locked room, anything can be a key.”

Cowboy Rockstar grinned and gestured around the room at the assorted superheroes that were locked in with us, “And we’ve certainly got an eclectic bunch of keys here haven’t we.”

I smiled and looked around the room, maybe this could actually work.

***

“If I had an iPod and a busted time machine we could do this in a snappy montage and be out in no time,” I grumbled to Cowboy Rockstar.

It was the next day, and our recreation activity was something called “evil baseball.” There’s no batters, no outfield, and the only umpire was a deranged mime. The only real resemblance it had to regular “non-evil” baseball, was the fact that there were four bases, and players could steal bases. In fact, the game was pretty much just stealing bases. Because stealing is a crime get it? Ugh, the sooner we got out of there and stopped Smuggles the better. Cowboy Rockstar was manning first base for his team, and I’d just stolen first. I suspected it was because Helm Lady, the “pitcher” for Cowboy Rockstar’s team, had allowed me to get to first so we could chat. It might have been because I’m really athletic though. It’s hard to say.

“I don’t think that’s how anything works,” Cowboy Rockstar said.

“Oh what do you know?”

“A lot, I’ve unknotted several time paradoxes you know. Some experts even say that I ‘invented’ the current iteration of this timeline.”

“Ah, so this is all your fault.”

“Nice try, I didn’t give Smuggles access to an interdimensional warp gate so he could free his fish whispering friend from his prison.”

“Touche.”

“What have you got?”

“I was thinking, we know that Smuggles has everybody’s powers neutralized inside this prison right?”

“Yes.”

“Well not every hero has powers to begin with,” I started. “And there are few people here with relevant talents that Smuggles can’t turn off.”

“Talents such as?”

Giorgio blew his whistle. Apparently I’d spent too long dawdling at first base without even trying to steal second.

“I guess whistling doesn’t go against the mime code of silence,” I grumbled as I started to edge off of first base.

“Talents such as?” Cowboy Rockstar repeated before I took off.

I nodded towards his team’s second baseman.

“Being a giant rock monster with seven hands,” I said before racing off toward Rockblock.

***

The next night I laid awake, staring up at the ceiling of my cell, going over what was slowly starting to look like a plan again and again. If Cowboy Rockstar could use the many razor sharp spikes on his villain costume to pick the locks on his cell, — and he’d assured me that he could, upside down, in his sleep — and then get to the others, Rockblock could probably serve as our muscle until we got out and the other heroes got their powers back. He’d need to fight off dozens of battle drones though. No, that wasn’t much of a plan. Muscle was great, but we’d need some other way to guarantee the drones would stay off of us until we got outside. I consulted the scrap of paper I had hidden in the palm of my hand, directed away from any prying eyes or cameras. The scrap had been discretely slipped into the pocket of my hoodie by Helm Lady. She’d managed to steal a pencil during Evil Mad Libs, and had taken the liberty of jotting down everybody who we knew was imprisoned here. “Our list of keys,” as Cowboy Rockstar had called it. We needed to keep the circle of people who knew that we were planning a breakout small for now. That way there’d be less of a chance of any villains or drones getting wind of it. So Cowboy Rockstar wanted me to identify anybody who might be especially useful in the actual breakout, whereupon we’d obviously free the rest of the prisoners. I consulted the list again, mentally sorting the manifest into those who had powers, and thus were less likely to be especially useful without the use of them, and those who didn’t have powers, and therefore were pretty much operating at 100% effectiveness. There’s another thing I didn’t account for in my own designs, sucks to be you Smuggles. That’s what happens when you build your top secret superhero prison based on the musings of a comedy blog instead of doing your own work you frikkin goon. I circled a couple of names on my illicit scrap of paper and was just about ready to smugly smile myself to sleep when I noticed a faint buzzing. My first thought was wall bees. You wouldn’t believe how often strange buzzing sounds in the How To Hero office ended up being bees in the wall. But this buzzing was more mechanical and well, I guess it must have been there since I was first thrown into this dump. I had managed to sublimate it into the background noise of my time here but now in the dead of the night I was able to really listen to it finally. I tentatively got off of my threadbare cot and walked the length of my small cell. The buzzing was, as I’d feared, strongest by the door. Which could only mean one thing. Door bees! No, I’m kidding, it meant that the old fashioned deadbolt lock was either just for show, or just one part of the cell doors’ security systems. There was some kind of electronic component as well. One that probably wouldn’t be able to be thwarted with some evil-looking spikes. I looked at my scrap once more, I’d have to have a conversation with one of the other prisoners tomorrow.

***

“Professor Flay,” I whispered as I took a seat next to a glasses-wearing black man decked out in a purple jumpsuit with a skull belt buckle.

“Yes?” the man said, clearly startled, “I’m sorry I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“My name’s Zach, and I’m a fan of your Big Book of Fake Science.”

“Um, are you referring to my Complete Compendium of Improbable Science,” Professor Lucius Flay replied.

“Shoot, is that what it’s called? I knew it was something like that, only my buddy lost the cover and title page in a bet with a supervillain we knew who needed them to power his cover and title page powered doomsday device,” I explained quickly.

Professor Flay flared his nostrils, “And you have the nerve to insinuate that my science is fake. Is there a point to this, I don’t want to miss this performance.”

Our villainous rehabilitation activity for the day was “evil karaoke” only songs with the word “bad” in the title were allowed to be performed. Cowboy Rockstar was currently belting out an honestly breathtaking rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”. It was an especially loud and especially drawn out version of the song, so that Professor Flay and I could converse in relative peace.

“What kind of scientist would you say you are Professor?”

“If you must know, I consider myself to be more or less omnidisciplinary,” Professor Flay said.

“That means you dabble in a little bit of everything right?”

“Everything scientific.”

“And that’s not a superpower thing right? You came by all that knowledge on your own?”

Professor Flay waved a dismissive hand at me, “Of course I did. I studied for years to get to where I am today. Sure I may have had to break a few time travel regulations to do it, but otherwise, I come by my intellect fair and square.”

“Excellent!” I shouted a little too loudly. “This is the best version of ‘Bad Romance’ I’ve ever heard!” I quickly added, to cover myself.

“Yeah it’s so good that they should call it ‘Good Romance!’” Rockblock shouted, no doubt trying to help me out.

Unfortunately though, that was the wrong thing to say. Giorgio the Mime certainly couldn’t allow anything gooditalics to happen in this evil facility, so he quickly put the kibosh on Cowboy Rockstar’s performance, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the room. I thought I even saw a drone flash a frowny face. The drones then started ferrying us out of the room and back to our individual cells.

“How much do you know about electronic locks?” I quickly asked as I pressed my scrap of paper in between Professor Flay’s belt and jumpsuit.

Realization flashed across Professor Flay’s face.

“Ah,” he said. “Enough.”

I hoped he was right.

***

The next day our recreational activity was evil baking. There were several different stations set up in the auditorium, each with ingredients set up to make different evil foods. I ambled past “exploding pies”, “sentient food that will actively beg for its life as you eat it”, and “kale cookies” before taking a seat next to Cowboy Rockstar at the “general poisons” table. Helm Lady and Rockblock were already there, and I noticed Helm Lady was taking special care not to touch any of the ingredients on the table. Rockblock, being made entirely out of stone and cando spirit, began handling the various herbs and toxins and following the recipe. I guess they’d decided that somebody at our table had to be doing something to avoid attracting any unwanted attention.

“Where’s Professor Flay?” I asked.

“He just walked in,” Cowboy Rockstar said, nodding toward the door, where a contingent of drones were herding in another batch of prisoners.

“Over here!” Rockblock bellowed, waving three of his giant hands while the other four mixed and mashed various ingredients.

“Quiet,” Helm Lady snarled. I was beginning to regret bringing Rockblock in on our plans so early.

Still, Professor Flay managed to get the message and made his way over to our table.

“Hello everybody,” he said as he sat down next to Helm Lady. He wrinkled his nose as he caught a whiff of what Rockblock was mixing in his bowl. “What are we making?”

“Sulfide sausages,” Rockblock replied.

“Lovely.”

“So?” I asked, raising my eyebrow inquisitively at the professor.

Professor Flay glanced around and, confident that there were no drones within listening distance, leaned in conspiratorially.

“I can build the device you described but-”

“Hey guys, sorry I didn’t come right away. I wanted to do a lap to see if there were any other cooler tables,” a pale skinned man clad in black chainmail and sporting thick rimmed glasses said as he sat down at our table.

“Er… what?” I asked.

“I know Rockblock called me over, but I’m not just going to sit down at the first table that offers me a spot, am I?” the other man replied as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say.

“Uh, I was actually talking to Professor Flay,” Rockblock said.

The bespectacled man laughed, “Oh Rockblock, I’d heard your sense of humor was legendary.”

Rockblock looked confused but Helm Lady put a hand on one of his arms.

“What do you want Glassesman?”

“Helm Lady! Great to see you. How’s the old man?”

“We don’t talk.”

“Oh, is that right? Poor Hats never could keep a protege.”

“Glassesman.” I said, interjecting before things escalated. “You weren’t on the list. When did you get here?”

“Oh, just recently. I wasn’t captured with the rest of you in the first wave.”

Cowboy Rockstar ignored the jab and leaned forward. “Are you saying that Smuggles has found whatever resistance there is? Where’s Ultiman?”

“Keep your ten-gallon hat on buckaroo, the resistance is fine such as it is. I was deep undercover in Smuggles’ operation, but I got found out.”

“No surprise there. You probably started handing out promotional sunglasses to all the villains as soon as you got in there,” Helm Lady muttered.

“Hey, supervillains are a market I have yet to break into. This was a rare networking opportunity for me!”

What a tool.

“Enough,” Cowboy Rockstar said, making sure to keep his voice even.

“What’s with all the hushed tones,” Glassesman said, looking us all up and down.

“Ah,” he said when he’d completed his appraisal. “You’re planning a break out.”

“No we’re n-” Helm Lady started but Glassesman held up his hand.

“Oh please, you’ve got a scientist, a jack-of-all-trades, a bruiser, a non-powered combatant and a…” he faltered when he got to me.

“Blogger,” I said curtly.

Glassesman raised an eyebrow but kept going, “So don’t try to keep me out of this, I’m non-powered too, and I can fight better than a Hatb- sorry exitalics-Hatboy any day of the week.”

Cowboy Rockstar looked as though he was going to say something to get rid of Glassesman but he just sighed and gestured to Professor Flay.

“Fine, sure. Professor you were saying?”

“Um, well, yes. I can build the… device, you asked for but I can’t do it from thin air. I need something to work from.”

We all sat in silence for a moment. I guess it was too much to ask for an omni-disciplinaryitalics super-scientist to be able to whip up an EMP device out of whatever he could find in his prison cell. I’d be sure to inform whatever board certifies omni-disciplinary scientists to amend an asterisk to Professor Flay’s credentials when we got out of here.

“Could you build it out of whatever those things are made of?” Glassesman said, jerking a thumb towards one of the drones.

Professor Flay appraised it, “It appears to run on a lithioplasmic core with a carbon-electrum chassis. Assuming there’s a terrakon multispacial chip rattling around in or near its processor… Yes, I wouldn’t even need too much of it. Just a chunk from the chest if I had to guess.”

“Excellent,” Glassesman said before he stood up and flipped over our table. “And you can tell that cap clad crank that I’m twice the hero he ever was!”

Helm Lady smirked and wordlessly lunged at him, wrapping her long fingers around his neck. Professor Flay and I quickly took cover behind the table. Flay because he was a nerd and wasn’t about to get involved in a fist fight between two highly trained combatants. And me to protect Flay naturally. We needed him fit enough to build us the EMP, I couldn’t exactly leave him. Cowboy Rockstar jumped on Glassesman’s back and tried to pull him away while Rockblock scrambled to gather up the ingredients from his poison. A stray pellet of congealed arsenic bounced over to me and I scooped it up into my hoodie. You never know, right?

In a minute several drones were trundling over to our little group trying to break up the fight. They’d just about managed to pry Cowboy Rockstar, Glassesman and Helm Lady apart when Rockblock let out a deafening roar and joined the fray, sending a handful of drones flying as he growled something incoherent about how hard he’d been working on perfecting his recipe. By this time the other assembled heroes were all looking toward us, but before anybody else could get any ideas about joining the riot, more drones than I’d even realized were in the prison poured into the auditorium and surrounded my friends. Finally managing to pull them apart.

The rest of the heroes, myself and Professor Flay included, were now being rounded up by some of the drones while most of them were being engaged by six of Rockblock’s giant fists. As we walked by though, I noticed his seventh appendage experly flick a chunk of metal in our direction. I stumbled slightly, bending over quickly to grab the robot chunk. And then discretely passed it to Professor Flay before we were split off to return to our own cells.

“I’ll have it done before tonight,” he said to me as he palmed the misshapen blob of metal and wiring.

I nodded and smiled, by that time tomorrow we’d be out of that forsaken prison and saving the world.

***

Night fell, and I paced anxiously around the length of my cell. Assuming Professor Flay was able to work as quickly as he claimed he was able to. And assuming Rockblock had gotten him exactly what he needed. And assuming Cowboy Rockstar and Glassesman and Helm Lady were able to pick the locks on their cells when the time came. And assuming Rockblock could keep any guards off of us. And assuming- Well, there were a lot of assumptions before I’d be tasting fresh air. Our plan was hardly fool proof, and we had at least two or three fools on our team, depending on who you asked. We were making a few too many assumptions for my liking. But it was the best we had, so I guess that was that. There was nothing I could do except wait for something to happen.

And when something happened, everything happened.

First there was a deafening boom, followed by a shockwave that traveled quickly throughout the cell block. If I hadn’t been deafened by the explosion, I would have noticed that the electronic buzzing I’d heard had gone silent. Professor Flay’s homebrewed EMP had worked. I ran to the door and saw several guard drones collapsed on the ground. Their cybernetic features were blank.

Seconds later three cell doors swung open and Cowboy Rockstar, Helm Lady, and Glassesman strode out. Glassesman looked especially smug, even though he was the last one out. The other two were such pros, they decided to let it slide. They quickly started working on picking the locks on the other cells. Helm Lady sprung Rockblock first, just in case there were any drones outside the EMP’s radius that might’ve been trundling our way. Professor Flay’s EMP was a one-shot kind of deal so we’d have to fight or evade any other drones we encountered.

“So far so good eh?” Cowboy Rockstar grinned as he unlocked the door to my cell.

“So far, yeah,” I said anxiously. “We’re pretty much flying blind from here on out th- Woah!”

I took a step back into my cell as Cowboy Rockstar became enveloped in a brilliant white light. I stood agape as he began hovering a few inches off the ground and the light faded into his body.

“What was that?” I asked.

Cowboy Rockstar landed adroitly on the ground and checked his pulse with two of his fingers.

“It’s… I think the EMP must have shorted out whatever device was neutralizing our powers in here,” Cowboy Rockstar said. His fists began crackling with energy.

I looked up and down the hall of cells. Powerful glows or crumpled cell doors told me that many of the other heroes were starting to regain access to their powers.

“Well that certainly changes the game,” I said as I began taking stock of all of the new keys we’d just acquired.

***

We quickly divided into a few teams:

Team One: Nightron, Foresight P. Jones, and Intangi-Bill. None of us had been outside since we’d arrived in the prison and so none of us actually knew where the exit was. Team one would use their respective speed, supervision and intangibility in concert to find a way out.

Team Two: Cowboy Rockstar, Rockblock, and Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons. Our heavy hitters. If anybody could break straight through the walls that surrounded us to the outside it was them.

Team Three: Professor Flay, Electrobug, Digitalized, Psionica. They set about trying to cobble together weapons and gear from the broken husks of the drones that we had at our disposal.

Team Four: Captain Patriot, Brad the Radioactive Man, Amphin, Glassesman, Helm Lady and the Human Wall. The best offense is a strong defense, and if any of our other teams were going to have any hope of doing what they needed to do, they’d need somebody keeping Giorgio and whatever drones he could scrounge together off of their backs.

Team Five: Dr. Hemer, Knife Knurse, and Super Surgeon. A lot of heroes were suffering painful side-effects either from the sudden reemergence of their superpowers or the power-deprivation they’d been suffering since they’d gotten here. Anybody who had any sort of medical knowledge would tend to them until we get help on the outside.

Team Six: Just me. My job was to come up with the team names and I’m not ashamed to admit that I totally phoned it in.

I was sitting back and taking stock of the other teams’ progress when a gust of wind informed me of Nightron’s return.

“We’re not the only prisoners here,” he said panting, parts of his supervillain costume were singed, he must have encountered other guards elsewhere in the facility.

“You’re sure?” I asked frantically. I’m not sure why it had never occurred to me that there might be other prisoners somewhere in this facility. But I had only ever seen the heroes that were in that corridor at communal recreational events.

“Positive, there are maybe five or six other cell blocks just like this one. They’ve got dozens of other superheroes here. But that’s not all. World leaders, para-folk, some civilians. I think I even saw some sort of zoo,” Nightron said.

“Probably for animal sidekicks and the like,” I mused aloud. “Were you followed back here?”

“No, but they saw who I was. I’m sure they know where I’m supposed to be. It won’t be long before we have company here.”

“You’re right. Professor, how are those weapons coming!” I shouted towards where Team Three was working.

“My EMP seems to have worked a little too well, there’s no resteoring powers to these machines, but Psionica has managed to use her telekinetic abilities to reform some chunks of metal into clubs.”

“That’ll have to do,” I said. “Nightron, grab a few of those clubs, if anybody comes you’ll join Team Four. Hit them hard and hit them fast.”

“But what about the other prisoners?” Nightron protested.

“We need to break ourselves out before we can worry about anybody else,” Glassesman said.

“I hate to admit it but he’s right,” Helm Lady agreed.

“Yeah but-” and then, in a whoosh he was gone, because it was at that moment that a platoon of drones filed into our hallway. Two of them hit the ground, their CPUs bashed in by Nightron, before the rest of us even registered what was happening but once we did, the rest of Team Four, sprung into action.

“Zach, over here,” Professor Flay called.

I ran over to him, he passed me a makeshift club and we formed a defensive ring around our medics and the wounded along with the rest of Team Three.

“We are through!” Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons cried.

We helped Team Five get to the large gap in the wall that Team Two had formed as Rockblock and Cowboy Rockstar went to join the fray in the corridor.

“We may have problem,” Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons muttered to us as we joined her outside.

Problem was an understatement. For one thing, the sky was a murky blend of purples, oranges, and reds, and I know I haven’t been doing a ton of “world-building” in this dramatic account of my escape from a supervillain run supermax, but the sky we were all used to seeing was definitely blue. The ground we were standing on was somehow both dusty and crumbly. Every step we took sent a cloud of dust and ground flakes into the air. And we couldn’t see any other signs of life or civilization anywhere at all. I had always assumed that we would be somewhere inconspicuous but local, so that Smuggles could keep an eye on us, but it appeared as though we were in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting to the middle of anywhere.

“What… What is this place?” Professor Flay said.

“Beats me,” I said with a shrug. When I designed this prison for How To Hero I recommended finding a large unused building with reinforced walls that was situated in a place that no cops would ever be caught dead anywhere near. There are literally four or five places like that within a twenty block radius of How To Hero headquarters so where the hell were we. Unless… crap.

“Atomspace,” I said. “We’ve been shrunken down and sent to a prison in Atomspace.”

“Well,” Professor Flay said, taking in our otherworldly surroundings. “That creates a wrinkle in our plans doesn’t it.”

“It certainly does,” I agreed.

And that’s when everything went black.

***

I awoke, chained to a chair, in what may very well have been the most garishly decorated room I had ever seen. And Parenthetical Guy once painted our office neon green and creamsicle orange so that was saying something. The walls were all a deep blood red and there were various supervillainous accoutrements mounted all over the walls. Scary looking masks, futuristic blasters, esoteric looking staffs. A giant serpent’s head wearing oversized sunglasses was mounted on the wall directly opposite me. Below the serpent head sat an ornate, obsidian desk with a high backed leather chair behind it. The carpet was the color of rotting bones, which made a lot of sense when I realized that it wasn’t really a carpet at all, but rather a mat made entirely of very thin bone fragments. Bone fragments that were incredibly sharp at the ends.

“Ouch!” I yelped as I lifted my feet slightly off of the ground.

“Well look who’s finally awake,” a snide voice to my left said.

I turned my head and my heart dropped. Joining me in this chilling chamber were the rest of my friends: Cowboy Rockstar, Helm Lady, Professor Flay and Glassesman were chained to chairs like mine while Rockblock’s hulking form was chained to the wall on the far side of the room. The humans in the chairs also had their feet up in various positions. Rockblock was stuck standing on the bone floor, but at least he didn’t seem to mind.

“What happened?” I asked groggily.

“We were all knocked unconscious after we broke through the prison walls,” Professor Flay explained. “Cerebral implants I’d guess.”

“You’re saying we were all chipped?” I said, bewildered. “That’s crazy. Why weren’t we all knocked out as soon as we broke out of our cells?”

“Because I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized you were in Atomspace.”

All of our heads snapped towards the door where a man wearing a dark gray catsuit, a bright orange domino mask, and heavy metal boots strode into the room. “Do you like how I’ve decorated? Greg the Skeleton King referred me to his interior design guy.”

“That explains the bones,” Helm Lady muttered.

“And the hellfire!” Cowboy Rockstar proclaimed. “From right before we were captured, I’d been wondering about that.”

“Smuggles,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Zachary,” he said curtly. “Mr. How To Hero himself, how does it feel to be so utterly defeated by someone you’ve spent years ridiculing on your infantile blog?”

“I’ll let you know when it happens,” I said.

“Always with the clever little jokes,” Smuggles said as he took a seat in the leather chair and steepled his fingers. “You have been utterly defeated though. I’ve been following your little escape attempt from the very beginning. My people are not idiots you know. We’ve been listening to every conversation, watching your every move. The riot in the cafeteria was especially amusing.” He nodded at Rockblock who just grunted in response. “Quite frankly, you got further than I expected you to. But I’m glad you did, because now you have to admit that I’ve completely bested you. You’ve been thoroughly trounced Zachary. Who’s the laughingstock now?”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to think of a way out of this for myself and my friends, when Glassesman burst out laughing. Smuggles’s eye flashed with rage and he slammed a hand down on his desk.

“I’m sorry, is something amusing here?”

“No no… Well yeah, sorry, it’s just… You got every supervillain to band together, captured most of the superheroes, and basically took over the entire world just to get back at some low rate blogger?”

“Hey, uncalled for!” I shouted.

“I’m sorry it’s just a bit ridiculous don’t you think?”

“Honestly, I kind of agree with him,” Helm Lady said sheepishly.

“I legitimately thought this whole thing was about me,” Cowboy Rockstar admitted. “I’m kind of a big deal you know, being a semigod and all that.”

“Don’t you mean demigod?” Professor Flay asked, doing a little wiggle shake to get his chair facing Cowboy Rockstar.

“Oh, I’m that too. But I’m talking about the cult I inadvertently inspired that has deified me,” Cowboy Rockstar explained.

Smuggles banged his fist down on his desk again.

“Enough!” he shouted, before cradling his fist in his other hand. “Now that your merry band has been epically thwarted and humiliated, I must decide on your punishment. I’m not about to risk you lot plotting another breakout.”

My mind started racing for a way out. This was the first time I had come face to face with Smuggles since he’d unleashed Chuck the Fish Whisperer in the How To Hero basement. Until now I hadn’t realized just how much of what was happening revolved around me. I didn’t even realize Smuggles had been familiar with my blog before we hired him. Maybe I could work with that.

“Do your worst Smuggles. I guarantee you it won’t be anything worse than what actual villains have done to me,” I said, affixing my most smug expression on my features.

“What are you talking about?” Smuggles said, clearly thrown.

“I mean come on. I lived with a real supervillain before. Remember Dr. Brainwave?”

“Wait, what?” Helm Lady said. “You lived with Dr. Brainwave? We’ve been looking for him for years!”

“Yeah well I don’t know what to tell you,” I said.

“Brainwave was a sentimental hack. Killing him was child’s play.” Smuggles said through mounting anger.

I faltered for a moment. So Smuggles had been the one who had mailed that bomb to our office? He was the reason Dr. Brainwave was dead? Sure the guy was a supervillain, but at the end of the day he had been my… my friend. And he’d sacrificed his life to save mine and my friends’. The fact that I was sitting less than three feet away from his murderer was almost too much to bear. Still, there’d be plenty of time to deal with him later. Assuming my plan worked.

“Still before you killed him he made my life miserable. You’ve read my blog, I’m sure you know all about it. So I honestly doubt that anything you plan to do can compare.”

Smuggles literally shook with rage, “I can… I can killitalics you! You ever think about that?”

Cowboy Rockstar grinned, “Good luck with that.”

Ok, honestly I’m not sure what thatitalics was about. Is Cowboy Rockstar immortal? Has anybody ever checked that? Regardless, I decided to just roll with it.

“Do your worst.” I said.

“Guys!” Glassesman shouted exasperated. “I love taunting a bad guy as much as the next guy, but maybe we should all ease up a bit!”

“Oh relax,” I said. “Smuggles is a Z-lister trying to kick it with the big kids. He can’t just shoot us or something. If he wants to be a world-dominating evil monster he’s going to have to come up with a suitably ostentatious way to kill us and honestly, he doesn’t have the imagination. Just look at his face, this is clearly eating at him.”

It was as though a lightbulb went off over Smuggles’s head. His face warped from grimace to grin and he strode around to the other side of his desk.

“I’ve already succeeded in taking over the world and routing your beloved superheroes. I hardly need to prove myself to the likes of you. You can expect to be executed in a ‘suitable ostentatious manner’ shortly.”

I was all read to shoot back a witty retort when everything went black again.

***

I awoke to the sound of cheering, which made me feel pretty good. I don’t often get cheered for waking up. I’m sure Cowboy Rockstar was feeling pretty regular though, people cheer for everything that guy does. I was in the center of a gladiatorial arena, the stands were packed with guard drones and more than a few supervillains. The presence of so many of them here sent a shiver down my spine. Had Smuggles really been able to recruit and control so many supervillains? Next to me, my friends laid in a rumpled heap, all of them still unconscious with the exception of…

“Now look what you’ve done,” Professor Flay said sternly.

I turned to look at him and saw the abject fear sketched across his features.

“Relax Prof, everything’s going to be ok.”

“How can you say that! Look at us! We’re in an arena surrounded by bloodthirsty supervillains for god’s sake!”

“It’s not the supervillains you should be worrying about, it’s whatever’s going to come out of that gate,” I said, pointing to a massive (well, massive relative to our shrunken selves) gate directly opposite us.

Professor Flay shuddered, “I imagine the others are still unconscious to prevent them from being able to do anything against whatever that might be.”

I nodded, “It makes sense, Smuggles doesn’t want to risk anything going wrong.”

“But I still want the satisfaction of watching at least some of you soil yourselves in fear,” Smuggles said as his smug visage appeared on a floating jumbotron that was hovering over the arena.

“You’ll never get away with this you knave!” Professor Flay shouted.

“Oh Professor, I already have. I think I’ll make today an international holiday going forward,” Smuggles said as he leaned back from the camera so we could see his entire upper body on the screen. He was sitting on a golden throne and his fingers were hovering above a big red button. I assumed whatever was waiting behind the gate would be released at the press of that button. And why prolong the inevitable.

“Why don’t you come down here so I can wipe that smug expression off of your face, you absolute goober!” I called up to Smuggles.

Smuggles frowned, “Goodbye Zach, you will not be missed.”

His finger pressed the button. The gate started to ascend. Professor Flay sighed and rolled up his sleeves. I had to admire him, he wasn’t planning on going down without some sort of fight. As the gate rose the cheers of the crowd grew even more fevered. I think I even saw a sign that said “Cowboy Suckstar.” Rude. After what seemed like an eternity the gate was finally fully open and a ferocious roar shook the stadium as a massive beast lumbered into the arena. The ginormous monster truly had it all. Dozens of eyes, face tentacles, spikes, a flaming tail. I had to admit this would certainly be a suitably ostentatious way to die. Of course, I wasn’t about to let Smuggles get his way was I?

“Good god what is that thing?” Professor Flay said as he backed away from the giant monster.

“It’s our way out,” I said calmly as I climbed on top of Rockblock’s comatose body, put two fingers in my mouth and whistled sharply.

“What are you doing?” Professor Flay shouted at me as the monster began galloping towards us on all fours.

I looked down at Professor Flay and smiled, “See you on the other side Prof.”

And then the monster ate me.

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yhchanwoo · 4 years

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hi! i’m very happy to be joining yangcheon (even if it was an impulse decision) & i look forward to learning about all of the characters here! i’ll be writing for kang chanwoo, the kang family’s youngest child and (former?) cello prodigy. i have his stats here, a few plot ideas here (will add more eventually) and a collection of info below the cut. like this post if you’re interested in plotting with us!

TW INSECTS! chanwoo has always been the typical ~weird~ kid. obsessed with horror and unsettling history, comfortable with picking giant bugs up in his bare hands, brave enough to go explore that haunted place you always hear of......... having said that, he’s one of the biggest sweethearts you’ll ever meet. END TW!

didn’t think he was going to go into classical music because it was just........ really boring to him, but then he discovered how eerie and dark the cello can sound and he was like yo...... maybe classical music is cool. as you could expect, he was awful at first, had to endure a lot of criticism & doubt, especially from his teachers who wanted him to focus on school and leave music to his parents bc he was genuinely quite smart. but he kept at it, worked really hard to be on par with his family musically.

known for performing really intense, moody pieces at recitals. he’s..... still quite intense off the stage, but he’s a lot more light-hearted and bright than strangers would assume! has always struggled to fit in with others, but he never stops trying!!!! will be kind to absolutely anyone, no matter how you treat him. might catch a lil attitude every now and then, but honestly, who doesn’t?

as the youngest in the kang family, you could say that he feels a bit obligated to be the bright and happy one. of course, before the accident, this happiness was usually genuine anyway so all he had to do was show it! he was never the elegant musician he was expected to be, always really clumsy, loud, painfully honest. wanted to live a fulfilling life and make tons of people happy in the process. has a huge heart and will love anyone who will let him. even loved his mom a TON in the past despite her constant attitude and strict parenting. thought life was so much better than what others made it out to be. rly naive, gullible, would believe anything (still will tbh). of course, it’s not like he’s had the ~best~ life and his view of the world has become quite dark in the past year but u know. he’s still capable of being that hopeful kid again, he’s just struggling a lil rn.

was accepted into yangcheon university as a musical performance major, but then he lost his dad (see kang family’s history) & kinda......... lost all confidence he had in music, began to break down when he even thought of LOOKING at his cello again. it’s currently hidden under a bunch of old blankets. anyway! now he’s an undecided major who skips class more often than not. doesn’t even skip to be rebellious bc he’s a Good Kid(tm), just does it bc school is exhausting nowadays. obviously he’s real impressive.

the rumor about him practicing (dark) magic...... does he know his way around a tarot deck? yes. does he collect rocks/stones? yes. is he obsessed with the phases of the moon? yes. does he have candles that COULD be used for spells? yes. does he make odd trips into the woods/secluded places with suspicious bags? yes. is he sometimes seen with strange books? yes...... but! he does NOT practice dark magic!!!! probably has no idea that that’s going around since he hardly talks to anyone these days. would explain his behavior if anyone asked (maybe).

like i mentioned before, he likes the cello for how dark and creepy it can be,,,,,,,, but make no mistake. this mf used to be obsessed with the cello. he definitely knows a bunch of taylor swift covers. every time he heard a song he liked, he’d start thinking about how to play it on the cello. probably embarrassed his parents sometimes.

TW INSECTS! really likes bugs. i mean........ he LOVES them. all of ‘em. has kept various kinds of bugs as pets in the past, would probably have some rn if he was capable of taking care of them but with where he’s at mentally, he’s not even properly taking care of himself, so....... maybe later. anyway, he also really likes the simpsons and used to make everyone call him bart as a joke. some of his nicknames are bart, buglord bart, bart the bug boy and just buglord/bug boy. END TW!

also likes photography a lot. he’s not that good at it, but he likes to fuck around with old film cameras or just those cheap disposable cameras. he collects a bunch of pics that don’t have any real subject/meaning, he just thinks they look cool. let him look at your/your family’s photo albums/photo bins/whatever and he’ll be SO happy.

really into history in general. all kinds of history. the story of how u got that one scar, what used to be where that strip mall is now, what a certain area was like five hundred years ago. has briefly considered being a historian but idk he’s still kinda holding onto hope that maybe one day his cello won’t seem so threatening.

thinks overalls are super cool and anyone who disagrees is just a hater. 60% of his wardrobe is overalls + oversized sweaters, 10% is dad hats + bucket hats, 15% is colorful high-top sneakers and the other 15% is things he bought bc of trends or suits for recitals.

likes cold weather and halloween, so this time of the year is usually ~heaven~ for him but he’s really sad rn so he’ll probably just be chillin in his room wearing some too-expensive costume that he ordered online for the lols.

edit bc i wrote this before the event was posted: perhaps he’ll be out and about, grooving around town for the first time in months. match costumes with him........ go trick-or-treating even tho u’re adults..... get a sugar high...... he’ll appreciate it so much. u have no idea.

plays acnh for the serotonin (and the cool bugs).

#yhintro #most of this is info that u don't really need but i felt like sharing #lmao

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yuthoe · 4 years

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PENTAGON Shinwon x Ballroom Dancing

Hello, bebs! I’m not dead! I’ve just been busy with work and getting sick, but I am working on a few things. (BTW I might cave in and write for ONEUS one of these days; they got me hooked during the “TBONTB” era and I’ve been cooking up a oneshot since two weeks ago lol, also I want to write a ballroom AU for them as well HAHAHA.) For now, I’m distracting myself (and hopefully you too) from inactivity by posting this.

Honestly, I had the idea for this one from @incorrect-pentagon‘s post. It’s just so funny and so Shinwon that I had to make it his ballroom background.

As always, thank you for supporting me and my work. I love you and I miss you all!

Master List

---

Became a ballroom dancer purely on accident.

Saw a flyer for a salsa class on the notice board at his college, and immediately took a stub for it. Didn’t even question why the person in the poster was wearing a ruffly dress and assumed it was just an aesthetic.

Went to the class, bag of tortilla chips in hand, only to find out that it was a salsa dancing class. He made an excuse to leave, but he’d already paid the small registration fee, so it would’ve been a waste, even it was just 5,000 Won.

So he joined the class, tried to have fun with it, but realized the salsa just wasn’t for him. But the instructor noticed he had good rhythm and musicality, and said that if he was up for it, he could try joining a free beginners’ waltz class later that day.

And Shinwon didn’t really have any other plans (apart from munching on his chips and would-have-been salsa dip), and he’s always had trouble saying no to nice people anyway, so he said yes.

And that’s the story of how Shinwon accidentally attended a salsa class and became a Standard dancer. Cannot for the life of him dance Latin, no matter how hard he tries. Like, he understands the movement, but it’s like his body doesn’t want anything to do with it.

Took a long time to find a partner because of his height coupled with his amazingly broad shoulders, but at some point he found you (a close friend from college that he didn’t know danced) and went like, “Hey, you wanna be my partner?” And you replied, “Only if we can play Mario Kart after,” and that basically sealed the deal. #PartnersForLife

Great lead and A+ partner. His shoulders posed a challenge at first because it gave you less mobility, but overtime you figured out how to work through it. He now knows how to use his shoulders for harder and snappier dances like the tango, for maximum sharpness.

If you invite him to work out, he would always decline, saying he was busy or something, but he never skips conditioning days. Working out is his least favorite thing to do, but he knows it’s necessary to keep his physique up, so he sucks it up and screams out the pain during training.

Comes to training wearing tracksuits. No matter how hot the day gets, even when the A/C in the studio broke that one time, he refused to unzip his jacket. Wants to keep up the aesthetic no matter what, so it looks kind of funny when he’s bouncing around in dress shoes, while also wearing an obnoxiously neon orange tracksuit set.

Has Twitter, Facebook, and IG. His posting schedule is sporadic; he’d post 5 times a week for two weeks, and then crickets for the next month. Mostly it’s daily affirmations, puns, and greeting his small fanbase.

His fans really appreciate him because, even though there isn’t many of them, they know that Shinwon has a golden heart and a very kind soul, not to mention a great dancer and overall wonderful person. It helps that he loves interacting with his fans

Likes to post selfies a lot, and sometimes food pictures whenever he goes out with his group of friends. Lots of basic captions for those.

He very rarely posts videos but when he does, it’s just clips of the videos you post on your YouTube channel. Those are short choreography videos, once-in-a-blue-moon NG/funny compilations, and competition videos your friends film when they watch.

He has a soft sport for the quickstep. It’s just such a fun dance that he can’t help but smile and laugh and occasionally let out a yell while you hop, skip, and jump around the dance floor. Yeah the steps are tricky to get right purely because they all look the same and it would look weird if you make a misstep, but he loves it too much to care.

Also love the Viennese waltz in particular. It’s the only dance he can really use his arms for something other than framing, and he makes the most of it. Shinwon sees the Viennese waltz as his cool-off dance because it’s slow and smooth. He also likes watching you dance it because you just look so beautiful.

Some of his fans who watched a Viennese waltz choreography video and couldn’t stop crying on Twitter about how lovingly Shinwon looked at you in that 5-second snippet.

Isn’t really one to show off his dancing, but he does like making choreography. He never uses it for competitions, but when he does make choreo, you would often film a video for it, and all his stuff just comes out so beautiful and elegant, his fans (and you) would always wonder why he isn’t a pro/guest in a dance program yet.

Extremely funny he could be in a variety show. His comedy and humor is super downplayed because of his good looks, but everyone he’s met at his side gig of being a model all said he always gets them rolling on the floor laughing within 10 minutes.

He did get invited for a comedy/variety program (think Itte-Q) once as a guest, to dance there, and the hosts/cast loved him so much they invited him to guest for a special, where he would do an adrenaline-raising activity.

Shinwon is unfortunately a scaredy-cat, and just couldn’t stomach the thought of bungee jumping or shooting out from a cannon (this is all in his imagination, by the way) without looking sick and feeling faint.

He told them about it and the producers said they understood. They’ve kept in touch, and Shinwon often gets invited for other segments like traveling or music segments.

As for modeling, every fashion designer he’s met fawned over his wide shoulders, often putting him in either bulkier stuff or skin-tight ones. A photographer once asked him what his full-time job was and when he said he was a dancer, the photographer immediately hooked him up with a fashion designer who specializes in dancesports wear.

Eventually, you both appeared in magazines posing for the designer’s newest collection for Standard Division costumes, and are her favorite pair to work with. Both your fandom sizes doubled when the spread came out, and Shinwon was even invited to do a runway show at some point.

You’ll always be the dancesports wear line’s models, though. Shinwon himself has even bout a tux she designed.

#pentagon #pentagon shinwon #shinwon #ko shinwon #go shinwon #pentagon shinwon scenario #pentagon scenario #pentagon imagines #universe net #uninet #theme: ballroom au #hc: shinwon #hc: mine #hc: not spicy

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nerdinreview · 3 years

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“WandaVision In Review”

The first of many Marvel Disney+ shows has just recently concluded. With fan theories running rampant, and twists and turns during almost every episode, it isn’t surprising that WandaVision was so successful. However, the show is not without its own issues as nothing can ever be quite perfect. Below is our spoiler-filled review of WandaVision.

My first impression when watching the early (first two) episodes of WandaVision was confusion. I had a hard time trying to determine why Disney and Marvel would take us on a nostalgia tour through classic television series featuring two underserved and underutilized Avengers. I have to admit, I wasn’t overly invested in the project in the beginning. I enjoyed the references to The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched, but I honestly didn’t care much for it past that point. Despite this, I kept watching for curiosity’s sake, and it certainly paid off.

When it becomes clear that Wanda is more in control of this reality than was initially assumed, I was hooked. I’m a big fan of Wanda Maximoff as a character. In the comics she has been a force to be reckoned with and the Marvel Cinematic Universe hadn’t seized the opportunity to really utilize her until this point. It was exciting to see Wanda use her powers in a way we hadn’t gotten to see on screen before, and the ending definitely implies that this is just the tip of the iceberg for her.

As someone who has been critical of Vision in both comics and film, I have to say that this did wonders for his character as well. We finally get to see a more “human” side of the synthezoid. That said, it’s hard to determine how real this side of him was, as he’s technically a manifestation of Wanda’s grief. At the very least, we get to see Vision as Wanda saw him, which is almost beautiful in its own right.

As mentioned above, some of the best content to come out of WandaVision is the character development. While the two titular characters had the most development, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the other characters who stuck out. The first of which is Monica Rambeau. The last time we saw this character she was a child in Captain Marvel, and while she may have been dreaming for the stars, she had a lot of growing up to do before she became the version of her we see in the show.

Monica was another bright spot in the show, she was fearless, and certainly didn’t back away from a challenge. She, similarly to Wanda, is dealing with grief. Losing her mother in addition to the last five years of her life, would be maddening to anyone, yet Monica jumps right back in to work at SWORD, and is often the voice of reason throughout the series. It was also incredibly exciting to see Monica get her powers after being exposed to the boundaries of Wanda’s “hex” three separate times. We even got to see her powers in action, first being able to withstand Wanda’s attack to get her to leave the neighborhood again, and then being literally bulletproof in the finale. I don’t think I need to go too deeply into the significance of the MCU literally giving us a bulletproof black female superhero! It was amazing, seeing her protect Billy and Tommy, while also being impervious to Hayward’s attack. It was a powerful scene that only highlighted Monica’s character even more.

However, what impressed me most about this character was her empathy to Wanda. No one would have been overly critical of Monica if she had taken Hayward’s side. After all, she too was held hostage by Wanda and forced to play a role in Wanda’s show. The experience was even described as “excruciating,” in Hayward’s retelling of Monica’s experience, and yet Monica is unyielding in her opinion that Wanda is not doing this maliciously. In fact, she willingly exposes herself back into the “hex” despite knowing that it is quite literally altering her DNA, with unknown side effects. This was something that Jimmy Woo wasn’t even willing to expose himself to once. During his first scene in the show, he says he doesn’t enter the town because he can “feel” that they’re not supposed to go inside. He stays true to that throughout the series, only entering Westview when Wanda breaks down the “hex” during the final episode.

As mentioned previously, Jimmy Woo was another character we got to see develop a bit since his Ant-Man and the Wasp appearance. He and Thor’s Darcy Lewis, were oftentimes the comic relief in the show when things got heavier. However, we got to see a side of Jimmy Woo’s character that we hadn’t seen before. While he was appreciated in Ant-Man and the Wasp, he was often at odds with Scott Lang as he was assigned to make sure that Scott was following his house arrest. It was refreshing to see Jimmy defy Hayward and fight back, being a key role in thwarting his escape.

It was nice to see Darcy Lewis get in on the action as well. In the Thor franchise she was often comic relief but rarely in the spotlight during action scenes. While she still didn’t do much fighting in WandaVision it was refreshing to see her stop Hayward with her stolen truck, and have her be the leading expert during SWORD’s investigation of Wanda. It was particularly exciting to see that she has earned her doctorate, so she is no longer Jane’s intern, and isn’t playing second fiddle to Jane Foster or Erik Selvig.

Finally, Kathryn Han’s Agatha Harkness is also deserving of praise. With the exception of a few of the films, Marvel has had a bit of an issue with giving fans villains that were worthy adversaries to their favorite heroes. This was not the case with Agatha Harkness. Seeing her toy with Wanda throughout the series was a highlight of the show and seeing her be a full fledged witch was equally as exciting. While Wanda defeated her in the finale, they certainly left the door open for Agatha to return, and I certainly hope they find a way to incorporate her in the future.

While I have mostly praised WandaVision, I have to mention some of the negatives as well. Overall, I greatly enjoyed the show, there are still a few points that I took issue with. The first of which is Maria Rambeau. Maria Rambeau was last seen in the Captain Marvel film and had become a bit of a fan favorite. She was a pilot, similar to Carol Danvers before gaining powers from the Space Stone, single mother, and according to WandaVision the eventual director of SWORD, yet she is killed off-screen from cancer.

While this is frustrating for a number of reasons, I was particularly miffed because Marvel still has a long way to go in terms of diversity in their films, and to kill off one of your few female black characters off screen left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. That’s without getting too deep into the fact that many fans were hopeful that Maria and Carol might have a romantic relationship in the sequel, and this all but confirms that won’t be the case. This adds another layer to the fact that Marvel has yet to have an LGBTQ+ hero in the films.

Additionally, the Marvel films have always handled Wanda and Pietro’s Romani roots poorly. Not only are the actors not of Romani descent, the culture of their characters is often used as a prop or a joke. Specifically, Wanda’s costume in the Halloween episode being referred to as a “fortune teller.”

Additionally, having the twins willing join Hydra--a Nazi organization while having Romani and Jewish roots, through their father Erik Lehnsherr, in the comics has always rubbed me the wrong way. WandaVision had an opportunity to remedy that when Wanda is reliving her past. They could have easily given us a one off line about Wanda and Pietro not knowing that it was Hydra when they signed up to be experimented on and didn’t find out until later. Unfortunately, all we get is a line about the twins wanting to “change the world.”

One of the other issues that I took was the presence of Evan Peters’s Quicksilver. Initially, I was very excited to see him show up on the show and hoped that this meant we’d be seeing more of Fox’s X-Men in future Marvel films. Not only was he not the real Quicksilver, but he was instead just a long running “boner” joke, as he was Ralph Bohner, Wanda and Vision’s next door neighbor that Agatha was controlling. While I wasn’t expecting him to be a huge character, I was hoping for something a bit more significant than Ralph Bohner.

Finally, something that has been sticking out in my head for a while is Jimmy Woo’s missing person. Jimmy Woo mentions in his first scene that Quantico had sent him to investigate a missing person in witness protection, who lived in Westview. Initially, this was who I believed Evan Peters’s character to truly be, yet when Jimmy sees him on screen in the All New Halloween Spectacular episode, he just makes a note that Pietro has “the wrong face,” and doesn’t indicate that he recognizes him. In fact, Jimmy’s missing person is never mentioned again later in the season and it seems as though that was just a plot device used to include him in the show.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed WandaVision. It was refreshing to have Marvel be able to spend six hours to devote to character development and plot rather than it just being action-centric. I think the show was an excellent first step in setting up a post-Iron Man Cinematic Universe. After Avengers: Endgame, so many characters were lost, and it felt like a finale of sorts. I think this was a great way to continue the story with a whisper rather than a bang, and I look forward to their upcoming Disney+ content.

WandaVision is currently streaming on Disney+.

#wandavision #wandavision review #marvel #review #wandavisionreview

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bettycooperoutfitwatch · 4 years

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3x01 Chapter Thirty-Six: Labor Day

I’m so hype for this episode’s p e a k summer vibes, I cannot even tell you. These outfits were perhaps the ones I was most excited about diving into, not necessarily for any thematic work they do, but just because I love them. It’s that simple. Summer is ~my season. And from this ep it would also appear to be Betty Cooper’s.

She has so many different looks here! It’s the most caps I’ve made for an episode so far, topping out at 631 (don’t look at me like that). She wears A Lot of clothing in this episode, in a lot of different iterations—and this post is lengthy as a result. As such, I’m deigning to try out a read more cut on this one, which is a thing I go back and forth on for this blog—but I’ll save that chat for later.

It wounds me how briefly we get to appreciate this adorable look. The denim shorts?? With the rolled cuff? The gingham?? My god.

I think this dress is incredibly cute (I’ll probably say that a lot this post). Sometimes I think of it randomly and wonder if I can find it for sale on the internet somewhere. I’m just very fond of it.

There’s a moment here where Archie, Jug, and Betty reminisce about Sweetwater Swimming Hole—Betty doesn’t remember an incident involving some leeches (a la Stand By Me—and not even the most overt allusion to that film this season), but Jug and Archie do. This isn’t the only moment Betty will seemingly fail to recall a childhood memory throughout this season. Put a pin in it.

Her envelope purse, introduced near the end of season 2.

It’s quick, but we see her pop an adderall in the courthouse.

Murder me, please, because this is really too cute to be dealing with.

We saw Betty wear (her first!) white v-neck tee in 220. This might be the same one, it might be new, who knows. The short overalls are defo new tho.

Please note she wears her hammer necklace to do some work on Archie’s jalopy, which in the comics is called...Betsy. Which is potentially confusing.

Let’s appresh that Betty has consistently been down to get dirty, as exhibited again and again and again in season 2.

I am a sucker for a floral Reformation dress! I’m weak. Purple was certainly a season 2 color for Betty, and that carries on here—if in a softer, more lavender-leaning fashion.

It looks like the wardrobe team have made some alterations to the back, too, unless this is an earlier iteration of Refo’s Rosehip dress.

(Okay, I’m an avid journalist, but damn girl. What’s the date range we’re talking here?)

Betty’s actual bathing suit (as opposed to her daydream suit—but we’ll get to that later) very much falls under the purview of her brand. Am I crazy, or do bathing suits just work for Ms. Reinhart?

(She also dons a pair of on-brand flip flops I could not capture).

Baby’s first Serpent jacket! Right on top of her pretty purple floral dress, bless.

And yes, indeed, it has the standard patch.

Now this purpley pink is indeed a very season 2 color for Betty, worn with her B pendant necklace, another s2 staple. The shirt has a very subtle ribbing to it, too.

This is a romper, and Betty wears it to both be confronted by her family about what she’s been up to, and to camp out with her friends.

The points that Alice and Polly make to Betty in this episode—that Betty should not be avoiding the trauma of having a serial killer for a father, that she should not be forging prescriptions for adderall, she should not be faking having a therapist—are not so crazy. That said—the Farm’s anti-medication stance, its burn-your-diaries-and-forget-your-past methods are also not the way to go. No one’s fully in the right here. There’s middle ground to be found.

As an aside, I’ll say that I’m near positive that at this point Alice is fully on board with the Farm, and is not yet an FBI informant. People join cults because they find personal benefits, and community, and because it can better their lives. They don’t join cults knowing it’s a cult. There’s a fine but very identifiable line.

Anyway.

We last saw this bra in the pilot! Betty’s very first scene! Can u believe? She wears it with a lacy high-rise brief in a sea foam or light blue color. As a firm proponent of a mixed set, I can only approve.

Her post-swim hair is truly fab. Floral Keds!

Betty self-soothes by building some very nice cairns. She talks about quitting adderall, about getting a non-fake therapist.

Hat: model’s boyfriend’s own.

Short-sleeve floral sundresses appear to be Betty’s summer courtroom go-tos. Love the mustard.

Towards the beginning of season 2, Betty began to wear a lot of sporty stripes, and these pajamas certainly fit within that space. We’ve also seen her in athletic shorts with piping before.

Maybe she did quit her adderall? Maybe she quit cold turkey and she’s having a reaction because of this. (Guys, never stop a medication cold turkey, t a p e r, with the help of a professional.) Please recall Betty was forging her prescriptions—a criminal offense, but let’s not get into it. She doesn’t have the medical advice to do this the right way. But hallucinations are a not symptom of adderall withdrawal (per the internet.) Hallucinations can occur in a seizure, however.

In addition to...whatever’s going on here, we have two moments in which Betty appears in the subconscious of others in this episode: in seemingly both Archie and Jughead’s daydreams, and later in Archie’s nightmares. Fittingly, one outfit is imagined out of whole cloth (pun); the other, we’ve already seen Betty wear.

How do we know Jughead and Archie are daydreaming? Well, they’re each given a moment of perspective, and Jughead is wearing a different outfit in each scene.

Jug’s POV.

Arch’s POV.

It’s hard to get a read on Betty’s suit—but I’m almost positive it is a bathing suit, unlike the skivvies-swim that happens elsewhere in the episode. This trip out to Sweetwater Swimming Hole was preplanned (...in Jug’s daydream), the Labor Day trip was spur-of-the-moment (per Archie’s ‘livin’ his last weekend as a free man’ vibe). It’s a teal color, which we really have not seen her wear at all. It could be a two piece, it could be a one-piece of a similar backless design like her pink polka dot suit, who knows.

In Archie’s version of the dream, his friends go off to live their lives without him. Betty’s wearing the pink denim skirt we last saw in 216, and what looks like a sleeveless denim top (we’ve seen her in two of those before).

Betty and Veronica are indeed wearing the same bathing suits in each day dream, most evident by Veronica’s suit—but you can also see Betty’s straps. This is probably for practical reasons; two costume changes for a wet scene is probably enough to deal with, three is asking a bit much, especially if it can be easily fudged.

The moods of these scenes are totally disparate, as are their lighting schemes. Jug’s is full of possibility (peep how Betty gives him the eye); Archie is literally being left behind in his. Archie and Jughead are on two separate paths, and here’s your metaphor.

In Archie’s nightmare, we see the gang in their Shadow Lake get-ups from 214. Betty wears her wool moto jacket (a season two outwear staple) and her plaid knit crewneck from that ep.

Summary: Eight outfits in real life: she changes out of her purple dress to put on her bathing suit, so we’ll count those separately; but she wears the underwear she swims in underneath that romper, so that counts as one. In addition there are two dream outfits, bringing this episode’s total to 10. Whew.

I Own This: Yeah, you know this, I own quite a few of those Natori bras (but have never swum in one. Yet.)

Key necklace appearances: Key necklace maybe not be as supreme as it once was. We might have to retire this count.

Best outfit: Excuse u hdu. How am I supposed to pick? I will take one of each.

Please also enjoy this wonderful piece of fanart depicting Betty’s myriad lewks this ep!

#3x01 #s3 #betty cooper outfit watch #riverdale #betty cooper #long post #e x t r e m e l y long post

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juniper-is-in-the-house · 5 years

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Oh my God I just watched Rocketman!!!

Okay, before I begin this review I have to come clean about one thing: I didn't know anything about Elton John before watching this movie. Zero. Nada. All I knew is that he did a collab with Eminem, and that he wrote 'Tiny Dancer.' That's it. Therefore, I can't judge the film on its accuracy, because I know nothing about the guy. However, I can talk about things I liked, and things I wasn't a fan of.

Things I really liked:

THE AMOUNT OF SYMBOLISM! Christ almighty there is so much symbolism in this movie, I could write a book just about that. It feels more like a musical/dream sequence because of it, which I really like. It makes the whole movie feel more artistic and less like a product, which a lot of these biopics can seem like. The scene where Elton jumps into the pool and sees his younger self playing the piano in a submarine suit is the cutest fucking thing, and also heavily symbolic.

Taron Egerton's performance!!! Sweet baby Jesus, it was so good! He channeled Elton's spirit, and he got the smile just right. There was so much care and emotion behind it, I loved it! Not as good as Rami's though

The costumes!!! Oh my God they were all stunning! Massive props to Julian Day for his fantastic work in this film!

Just the set design and props in general: really great stuff. You feel like you've stepped into a time machine watching this movie, it's really incredible

Pretty much all the problems people had with BoRap were fixed: Not enough showcasing homosexuality? Fixed! Not enough drugs and heartache? Fixed! Not a compelling story? don't really agree with this argument but... Fixed! It's very clear that Fletcher learned from his past mistakes with BoRap and did his best to fix them in this film.

The fact that it draws your attention to the lyrics: it really gives them a context and makes you appreciate them for the poetic masterpieces that they are.

However, it wasn't all perfect...

Stuff I wasn't a fan of:

How obscenely fast it was. I mean, I get that Elton's life got increasingly crazy with all the drugs and stuff, but I felt like someone was fast forwarding the movie at x64 at one point. It was too quick.

Loose threads: there are a lot of things in the movie that are set up and then don't go anywhere. In the beginning, Elton mentions that he's bulimic but we never see him have to deal with that in the movie. He throws up into a toilet once, but that's really it... it's not developed at all, and I'm sad that it isn't. Eating disorders are life-changing for a person, you'd think something like that would've made the cut. Also Elton's marriage takes up about three minutes of screentime despite it lasting three years in real life (yes, I googled that). He just sees a nice woman, sings with her, marries her, and then cries as they have breakfast... it makes very little sense. That moment completely took me out of the movie because I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand why Elton was apologizing. It was just too quick.��

Some of the same mistakes BoRap had, repeated: Like WAY too many. The fact that he has his first gig at a pub and five seconds later he gets a record deal, the 'evil manager' who 'manipulates him' into doing all the bad stuff, there's even some blood on a handkerchief to show that he's sick, which is kind of cliché... I mean, it's uncanny. Also kinda took me out of the movie.

NO RAMI MALEK AS FREDDIE MERCURY CAMEO!!!!: Dexter, listen to me... you had the opportunity, right in the first scene. It was staring directly in your face. You could've just had Freddie sitting in one of the chairs, silently nodding as Elton spoke. You could've had him in the background of ANY of the party scenes, literally any of them. When Elton talks about collabing with other people, you could've had him there. I mean, c'mon, man... it really would've been SO EASY!

So yeah, that's all I can think of right now. Might edit this post later with more things I liked/didn't like. Overall, I thought it was a good movie. Not as life changing as BoRap, but still very good. Really liked it, would give it a B. (would've been a B+ if there'd been a Freddie cameo, Dexter)

#rocketman #elton john #elton hercules john #taron egerton #movie review

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wittypenguin · 4 years

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War and Peace (Война и мир or ‘Voyna i mir’) [1965–67] (Post 1 of 5)

I am officially insane.

After resisting for some time, I finally caved and bought this because its price dropped by $4 on Amazon. While it really is one film in four parts, the running time of the entire thing is just under 6 hours, exclusive of intermissions. I’m watching it all in one single day.

It’s entirely in Russian and French, with English subtitles for the Russian parts only. The Russian Court of the Czars spoke French, as it was still the Lingua Franca of Aristocracy. The novel by Leon Tolstoy even reflects this reality, with the original Russian language printings apparently having the dialogue in French for those conversations, so the film adaptation honours that source material. After all, a bound copy of War & Peace is so huge that if it is correctly thrown, it can kill a man at 20 paces, so the film is (the films are) almost 7 hours in total length; so why should a simple matter of a foreign language get in the way of things?

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK AM I DOING…‽

Sorry… that sort of talk isn’t going to get us both through this experience, is it?

Let’s try this getting this underway one more time, shall we?

What I’m going to do is talk about each of the four parts on their own, then do a quick ‘overview’ thing at the end about… [:: very weary sigh ::] the work as a whole.

I might edit a bit, I may not, I may give up the will to live altogether and leap off my balcony to the sweet relief from the Russian Epic Film provided by the concrete below.

Read on to find out what happens… won’t you?

Part I: Andrei Bolkonsky

3:06pm — it begins.

I’m drinking fizzy water with a shot of lemonade and eating nachos with salsa. FIGHT ME, PURISTS!

We start with growing thing, then trees, with music that sounds like 1950s SF film. Odd.

Now we’re flying over fields, which cross-cut to other fields using a dissolve effect that looks like a bunch of birds blocking the camera as they pass through the frame. Also odd.

Sound of horses and battle, other sounds, then VO of unity of good men bringing strength. Okaaaay…

Leo Tolstoy gets above the title

Bolkonsky below.

There’s a Pyrotechnitian credit.

More aerial shots of clouds and fields with titles

There are no subtitles for the French but I’m sort of getting this.

Napoleon is described as the Antichrist, so John Roderick’s mom would love this part.

Much of the important French dialogue is repeated in VO as Russian, so we get subtitles!! 🎉

Pierre: “What are you going to war for?” #######: “I don’t know. War is necessary.”

During a party, there is much disorienting handheld camera work, reflecting the drunken debauchery.

Oh, and there’s a live bear there. He’s being given bottles to drink. Obviously.

War has been declared with France. Austria has been defeated, now Russia is taking him on. The old Hussars say that this is a good thing and no one should debate it.

The young woman ######### is so full of joy and energy, she’s wondrous to behold.

Pierre is illegitimate, but if the Tzar recognizes him as his father’s son (as has been asked), then he will inherit the title of Count Bezukhov. Pierre seems to be indicative of the upper-class populace at the time: torn between support of the war and entering the military, or entering the Diplomatic Corp.

We see the Father lying on his death bed, the Church Officials attending to him in some of the most ornate costumes ever presented. They put the Papal vestments to shame.

Meanwhile we cut to people dancing and making merry, either in the same vast mansion, or somewhere else; it isn’t clear. Pierre is amongst the merry-makers. His father calls for him. Not taking his father’s hand, he watches him breathing his last.

I am stunned at how opulent the rooms and clothing are. Periwigged servants with tailcoats and high-ceilinged rooms in blue with white woodwork seem more appropriate to the Sun King of France than early-19th Century Russia, but this certainly explains the animosity for the Usurper Emperor Bonaparte.

There is some incredible cinematography here. Given the quality of the sets and costumes, as well as some incredible faces and performances of the actors, it’s greatly helped, but still the lighting and composition is wonderful.

The massive crowd scenes really have to be seen to be appreciated for their epic dimension.

Additionally, the war sequences are a tapestry of different frame rates, odd angles, and rapid changes of POV which brilliantly capture the anarchy and incomprehensible events as they pile upon one another. There are double exposures where one shot panning across a battlefield from left to right is superimposed on a pan moving in the other direction. Images go in and out of focus, sometimes clear in the centre of the frame, sometimes overall obscured as to subject. We see the battlefield both from the ground as well as hundreds of feet above, as though from a cloud or bird’s eye view, the smoke coming up to us, the patterns of troop movement moving in ever-concentric circles, as one side traps the other.

The explosions are hellacious, as flame billows into a mushroom cloud above its point of origin. The fires of any purpose — camp fires, burning bushes, cannon fire, so on — are one of the few times I’ve seen fires look real: they’re orange and light the surroundings without shadows disappearing into impenetrable blacks. It’s beautiful, though sadly showing Hell on Earth.

At 1:36, there’s a moment where ####### imagines himself being belovèd of troops and civilians alike, but the fantasy is revealed by what seems to be a wipe from left to right, but stops in the middle, leaving him looking at the left half of the screen where his dream is taking place. I don’t think I’ve seen a split screen done that way before, or since; barring things like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. or other digitally edited films.

It’s 5:05pm. That was only PART ONE OF THE 1st FILM? Dear God, what have I done to myself?

It’s winter! Horsies pulling a sleigh! A sleigh bearing Nikolenka home to his family, a hand-held camera following him in and around the room as he is embraced in a dance of welcome and love. Then we’re upstairs where his father(?) is still labouring away on his millwork hobby. He almost seems disappointed his son has escaped death and capture. Yet he weeps with joy, as does his daughter.

Or maybe his son did die, those were tears of loss, and the celebration we saw was a fantasy or someone else welcoming him, or maybe someone else’s son…? I’m confused and cannot bear the thought of rewinding to find out which is the case.

There’s a duel with pistols which is possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Its outcome is surprising, but not impossible. It’s shot really well, too, with the viewer left caring deeply about both men, and wishing the results were far from what we see.

Pierre — now Count — Bezukhov seems to be plagued with some sort of mental health issue; possible schizophrenia or merely an internal critical voice, but plagued he is no doubt. He staggers around repeating things in his head about how he is stupid, how others laugh at him about his wife having an affair (we have no idea if she is), and so on.

Ah! It seems the rumour is that his wife is having an affair, but she merely enjoys the other man’s conversation and no more. Upon hearing her husband has fought a duel over the matter, she criticizes him as a fool, chastising him for being inattentive to her and to the world in general. Her taunts echo in his head as he disengages from reality, begging her to give him peace. She has been faithful to him, he suggests they part, which she yells in reply she would welcome only if he gave her a fortune. He screams at her to leave him in peace, raising a huge marble tabletop above his head, threatening to kill her with it. He is entering the part of madness where rage resides.

Okay, so here’s the guy they thought was dead in the war, just in time to see his wife give birth. He’s arrived with the doctor, so maybe he was at someone else’s place before, or that was someone else…? I’m not sure. All of the uniforms make people look the same, and I don’t recognize the settings, so knowing one mansion from another is difficult. Look: half the time I’m looking at the set and thinking about how much I love the lamp or a writing desk, okay?

Mother of God, it’s 6:00pm and I’ve only got to THE END of THE 1st FILM‽

[:: orders pizza ::]

★★★★★

#War and Peace #Война и мир #Voyna i mir #Dear God What Have I Done to Myself?

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crappylineofbestfit · 5 years

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omg please i need ur opinion on mary queen of scots, im gonna see the movie tomorrow 👀

ahhh I hope this isn’t too late!!!

This isn’t completely spoiler free but i hope it’s not too bad

So, full disclosure, I went into it having JUST written an essay on historical films so I watched it very much with a history-student-POV, and idk if you’re looking for that or more of a general filmy response, so I’ll do both. I’m putting this under a read more because I go on for a while

So, normal filmy points first:

- honestly so beautiful - I think it’s just been nominated for costume design and i’m so glad!! They were stunning and the scenery was stunning and a special mention goes to whoever did all of Margot Robbie’s makeup because it was so striking but also so powerful (I’ll say no more bc i think it’s best for you to discover it yourself)

- Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie are both such powerhouses and Saoirse in particular absolutely killed it. I know she’d been attached to the project for ages and she was so comfortable as Mary and balanced all her different facets so well! Josie Rourke was definitely trying to work against the idea of Mary as this tragic woman who made all these emotional choices that led to her downfall, and I was really impressed at how the film did that but still allowed Mary to be emotional (and stubborn and smitten etc etc) and make mistakes and I think a lot of that was down to how awesome and subtle the acting was.

-Shoutout to the number of actors (incl. both the leads) doing a lot of accent work

-The courts of both women were really well developed (particularly Mary’s) and the focus on a queen’s relationship with her gentlewomen is one that I adore and I often think is really underdeveloped in historical dramas, so I was very very very happy to see it here. (In particular, there’s a scene in Elizabeth’s court of her women throwing all the men fencing out that I adored and could talk about in a whole separate post)

-Scotland is its own character, which I love

-David Tennant managed to do a very extreme role very well, like I totally bought it which I can’t always do with figures like that (although that might partly be because I know that Knox actually was kinda Like That)

-Martin Compston does some lovely subtle acting leading to his awful moment (which I assume you know about from my last post)

-Gemma Chan does a lot with a really small role, imo

- haven’t fully developed my thoughts on this, but there’s a couple of queer characters and while I’m not certain of the thinking behind the decision ( I don’t particularly think it was bad, I’m just curious as to where it came from), I think once it was made it’s done pretty well at first and then takes a bad turn?? not just in the plot (i have more mixed opinons on that) but in how it was done. but I’d be totally up for further discussion of this if you (or anyone) disagrees having seen the film

-Controversial, but while i really liked the meeting between the queens that ll the marketing has focused on, I definitely don’t think it was either of their best scenes? Honestly preferred them both at home in their own courts, and Mary in particular was not at her strongest

-Mary’s half brother (whose name I cannot remember) dealt with a lot of development in relatively little time very well

-A lot of time is spent on horseback, and it made me want to go on an adventure

-There was a nod to Scottish Gaelic, and Celtic/British languages that aren’t English will always get me i love them

-I felt like Elizabeth’s scenes were a little underdeveloped??? But she’s not the focus of the film and I know more about her court so I might be projecting I’m not sure

Historical points:

- Like I said, I think having studied Elizabeth so much put me at a disadvantage, because there were a couple of inaccuracies that I completely get and agree with from a film making perspective, but which I couldn’t get past? Most notably, Cecil and Dudley were pretty friendly which worked well to isolate Elizabeth, but I think made her a little more helpless against her council than she actually was - it felt like the film came on a little strong in that regard

-also elizabeth seemd a little young in her earlier scenes???

-I saw someone refer to the reveal of Mary’s petticoats in her opening scene as trying to hard to be dramatic and to those people i say, please read some of the descriptions of the day from people who were there? it was a proper political statement, and I really appreciate the ability of film to create the same impact, even though that often means playing up certain aspects??? it’s an ability unique to historical film and I love it

-Again, I’m not certain about my thoughts on some of the characters that were queer because I appreciate the recognition of queer characters in history but it’s a very interesting choice that I can’t find much historical backing for? and if it was made up idk why it had to play out like it did, and if it wasn’t i..still think it was a bit much in how it was done??? That said, I haven’t looked beyond a bit of light googling, so feel free to correct me on that. I still say it worked overall though

-The only thing I actively wasn’t a fan of was how elizabeth signed the execution order, because it wasn’t a solemn, careful decision irl, it was a sudden one that cecil sort of pushed her into and that she later seemed to be furious about? and i get how that might not work with the tone but it was a pretty drastic change

-apparently someone was playing sir walter mildmay in some of the scenes, and I’m sorry I missed him because he’s kinda My Dude

-john knox really was Like That and credit to david tennant for fully committing to it

-Despite being based off Guy’s book, the film clearly wasn’t obsessing over historical accuracy and i appreciate that

-FWIW, the essay I had just written argued that historical films are essentially just historical arguments about the emotions and motivations behind historical events, with free reign to invent scenes to explore those ideas, and MQoS did that really really well and I appreciated it a lot

-Seriously though, the costumes and the HAIR jesus christ it was amazing (I especially appreciated Mary’s earrings, because they’re the sort of thing a lot of films shy away from because they seem ahistorical even though they’re not)

…I hope that answers your question! These aren’t particularly well structured thoughts, but if anyone wants to discuss any of them further, or fill me in on the bits of Scottish history I’ve missed/completely misunderstood

#molly ssh #mary queen of scots #mqos #Anonymous

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attract-mode-collective · 6 years

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Not An April Fools Gag; That’s A Game Boy Advance With A GameCube Stick Affixed For Reals

What you're seeing is a modded GBA that I spotted on eBay. It's a real thing! Though it doesn't magically grant analogue control to all the digital input only games on the system, which is all of them for the record (sorry). Then again, it could be argued that the controls in WarioWare Twisted is technically analogue...

That aside aside, welcome to yet another recap of stuff posted over at the Attract Mode Twitter! Though this time it's gonna be a bit on the short side, relatively speaking; even I know covering two entire whole weeks has led to hard to handle Tumblr posts, so I'm going to try concentrating on just one week at a time/attempt weekly updates.

Let's see how well that goes...

Hey, it's SF2 IRL thanks to ARKit (via prostheticknowledge)...

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At the time, when I first tweeted about it, there were only three left of Amanda Visell’s Player One Mario; no idea how many there are now...

When you can make a decision regarding lunch (via @Mechazawa)....

If you appreciate both the ease of slip-on sneakers and the taste of ghosts, then Games Glorious has something for you (via miki800.com)...

As a connoisseur of video games on the printed page, it is my goal to one day own a copy of Namco's newsletter that was distributed in game centers during the 80s & 90s, NG (via miki800)...

Remember that time Namco got someone from Yellow Magic Orchestra to hawk their wares (via namcomuseum)...

Both in print and on TV…

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The YMO member in question, Haruomi Hosono, also did a Xevious remix album, which longtime readers of the blog will hopefully recall.

Sticking with Namco CMs, there’s a pair of longtime faves that I could have sworn I’ve already posted as well, yet cannot find. Though as noted, many times already, the search functionality here is broken.

So here’s a boy playing with his Famicom in the middle of the woods...

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And here’s a girl playing with his Famicom in the middle of the woods...

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Back to the subject of print, can’t seem to find any info on the Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series, which (I think) was a line of video game novelizations; this one appears to be written by the creator of Xevious himself (via shmups)...

The focus here is supposed to be the Lawson’s reward card with Kirby on it, but I am all about that Space Invaders whatever the heck it is (via miki800)...

Spent MANY hours at Japanese bookstores during my college years, flipping through Sega Saturn Magazine; seeing these VF Kids ads again makes me feel all warm & fuzzy (via thesegasource)...

This (what I believe to be a) farewell image of the face of the Saturn from the very first issue of Dreamcast Magazine, also gives me the feels (via oldgamemags)...

BTW, everyone knows the identity of Saturn's pitchman (Segata Sanshiro), but what about the Mega Drive's? (via yokosuka87)...

Back to the Saturn; I love how Sega want from Segata Sanshiro to Hidekazu Yukawa for the Dreamcast. This launch edition of the console, btw, was spotted at VideoGamesNewYork...

It's also where they Kira Kira Star Night DX for twice the asking price, as @gamespite)...

Speaking of music, to fully enjoy this animated gif of Eggman running…

… you need to have this song playing (via lunaticobscurity).

And to fully enjoy this image of Eggman on the sax…

... you need to have this song playing (via very-territorial-oak).

@ondoruragitan sez: "whoever designed that clown lady in ace attorney is probably the most horny artist to ever exist" (it's funny cuz it's true)...

So the big news these past few weeks, especially among video game folk my age, has been the end of the Toys R Us. Many have been sharing artifacts from the glory days, with my fave example being these old flyers, with the obvious highlight seeing all the original MSRP prices (via retrogamerblog)...

Oh, and don’t forget the gifs (via nintendroid)...

The following are more appropriate for my way, way overdue batch of game culture snapshots, but since we're on the subject of retail anyway; I recently stumbled across Nintendo's collab with Bloomingdale's that I had no idea even existed...

Took a bunch of pics, but unfortunately, due to the harsh lighting at the SoHo store, it was impossible to capture the women’s section, hence the abundance of men’s wear...

These women's sweatshirts are the best example of the line's overall design sensibilities, or lack thereof; it’s just a bunch of random Nintendo sprites on attire that is available at Bloomingdale's, period. That's all it aspires to be, nothing more...

... And that's a real shame, cuz aside from the quality of the clothing itself being high, some of the ho-hum looking designs could be really engaging with a few minor tweaks, like this b&w women's jacket with a very random assortment of b&w Super Mario World sprites...

In addition to clothing, you had accessories, like iPhone cases...

Plus sunglasses, which revealed Super Mario World playing on what appears to the naked eye to be a blank, white screen....

Speaking of Super Mario World, here's a hamster enjoying the game (via @kousuke_teppei)...

The lil guy also owns an original Famicom, and here we is playing Solomon's Key (thanks to @Topherocious for helping me to identify the game)...

Being that friend who is REALLY into video games means I'm asked a wide variety of questions from folks who are not, like why @beesmygod is "freaking out" over a Sonic & Garfield two pack for the PC...

... I'll be honest, I don't really understand why either.

Here we have a mockup for an ad blocker that replaces banners with GBA screenshots, which I really want to see happen (via @tinycartridge)...

I also really want to see this happen too (via @truongasm)...

Back to Tiny Cart; that's where I found out that you no longer have to play emulated Tiger handheld games sans backgrounds...

Nothing beats a pic of a dimly lit arcade, especially when it's shot on ACTUAL film (via mendelpalace)...

As for this particular arcade show, @kappuru theorizes "it looks like cinestill film, or a filter designed to mimic it." (via parkerwoods)...

"WHO IS THIS NUN?! WHY DOES SHE LOOK SO SINISTER?" is a great KOF related question (via vice-s-assistant)...

And "BOWL BEFORE ME" is a great KOF related gag (via brondeef)...

"this is the best cosplay i’ve ever seen" is a a great costume play related observation made by lunaticobscurity...

"how to get away with playing super mario odyssey in class" is the caption given by retrogamerblog...

"Stardew Valley gave me 500 characters to use as my farm name, so I put down an entire 1-star amazon review for an Independence Day DVD" is the explanation given by @NoahHafford...

Hey, you never know, maybe one day a homebrew dev might make “Shinjuku-Nichome Gay District Serial Murders” a reality? (via mendelpalace)

When you’ve got one copy of Melee with two boxes, and one copy of Air Ride with zero boxes… just gotta improvise (via stellatuna)...

When you’ve got a killer Game Genie code but no paper to write it down on... and then you discover the code does something totally different (via theassortment)...

And when I asked what this 4koma featuring a Dreamcast VMU was all about, @JonahD was kind enough to explain: "VMUs are playing hide and seek, Black is seeking. One VMU thinks hiding in the controller would be good but it makes a bunch of noise and they’re found immediately" (via posthumanwanderings)...

Whereas I have yet to find out what all these Sonics are doing at a German airport (via sonicthehedgeblog)...

I normally don’t let the weather get to me, yet the constant cold weather in NYC over the past few weeks began taking its toll, to the point that I’m starting to resemble an upside down Super Famicom/European SNES (via sixteen-bit)...

I also really wish I could have checked out Sakura-Con, and not just cuz the weather is so much nicer in Seattle, but to pick up @alexisparade's Monster Factory zine...

I stared at gif illustrating the wacky perspective-related behavior of Super Mario 64’s trees for an entire day, no joke (via suppermariobroth)...

Here we have the rarely seen alternate angle of the internet famous "LAN party gamer duct-taped to the ceiling" photo (via reddit.com)...

Turning the clock back even further, here's yet another kind of party, one that doesn’t involve first person shooters but shoot ‘em ups; it’s the 1986 Hudson Caravan (via videogamesdensetsu)...

Recently, a modded NES Max controller showed up on Kotaku, in which the cycloid nub has been replaced with an analogue stick...

youtube

... Which actually appeared the day after I spotted that modded GBA at the very top of this page. I am also willing to admit the disappointment over my tweet not catching on as expected/hoped it would, hence why I'm sharing another pic...

At any rate, I was also reminded of my buddy Nick Santaniello's modded Jaguar controller, which allows for arcade perfect Tempest 2000 controls...

... Which in turned led to me republishing the post from which it hails from originally, my recap of Nick's Shmup Appreciation Night, for Medium (and also sharing additional pics on Twitter)...

BTW, for those wondering, based upon the last round of tweets; the kitchen isn’t just for playing old Mega Drive & PC Engine shmups… you can also play old Naomi fighting games (via internetflexin)...

Guess that's it for now? Sorry, but it finally feels like spring in NYC, and I feel the need to step away from the computer & enjoy weather! Just like Mega Man (via arcadequartermaster)...

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shanedakotamuir · 4 years

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The fight to release the Snyder Cut of Justice League (which may not even exist), explained

A still from Zack Snyder’s alleged directors’ cut | Vero/Snyder

Zack Snyder’s fabled cut of Justice League and the corporate conspiracy theory behind it.

The most anticipated Warner Bros. superhero flick is one that might not even exist: the infamous “Snyder Cut” of the movie Justice League. It’s an alleged version of director Zack Snyder’s Justice League that has become something of a myth among fans.

Diehard DC Comics fans will tell you that the fabled Snyder Cut is exactly the Justice League story fans wanted: a darker, more cohesive, and overall better director’s version that completely changes the movie for the better.

Whispers of a possible Snyder Cut began soon after Justice League hit theaters in November 2017. The movie that we got, according to Snyder’s biggest fans, is a twisted, gnarled, ignorant work that was knee-capped by outside forces that suffocated Snyder’s true vision. And since its release, a hashtag movement has simmered, bubbling up with each Warner Bros. premiere with increasing fervor.

This week, coinciding with the two-year anniversary of the Justice League’s theatrical release, the Snyder Cut — which until now has mostly existed as a myth spread by word of mouth among fans — is the closest it’s ever been to a reality.

On November 15, Snyder posted pictures on the social media platform Vero, which fans quickly believed were from the cut itself: a still of Henry Cavill’s Superman in the hero’s trademark uniform, and another of the character in what appears to be a resurrection scene that differs from the one in the original Justice League:

Zack Snyder/Vero

Henry Cavill in a still that’s allegedly from Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League.

Zack Snyder/Vero

A screenshot of Zack Snyder’s Vero post teasing a potential director’s cut of Justice League.

The shots Snyder posted might seem like typical superhero-movie fare of an actor in costume. But to devoted fans, the stills are evidence that the superior Snyder Cut does exist, and that for some reason, it’s being withheld from the public.

Adding fuel to the fire were tweets from former Batman actor Ben Affleck and Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot on November 17. Affleck, who vacated the Batman post after Justice League, simply tweeted the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut:

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut

— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) November 17, 2019

Gadot tweeted a black-and-white image of her character looking wistful, using the same hashtag:

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut pic.twitter.com/wssMmlPqEK

— Gal Gadot (@GalGadot) November 17, 2019

For the heroes themselves to be spreading the hashtag has given what’s been dubbed the “Release the Snyder Cut” movement more legitimacy than ever before. It’s one thing to have DC Comics enthusiasts get the hashtag trending, but Gadot and Affleck are actual Justice League members.

If even they want the Snyder Cut released, is the fan-driven movement onto something? Could the Snyder Cut really exist?

Warner Bros. Studio hasn’t officially addressed the campaign, which has expanded beyond tweets and hashtags to include real-life demonstrations and events held by wanting fans. But according to the Hollywood Reporter’s sources at Warner Bros., there’s no imminent plan to release any such cut — nor has the studio confirmed it even exists.

That said, DC Comics fans’ interest in an alternate, higher-quality version of the poorly received team-up movie is natural, especially when stars and the film’s own director say one exists. But the “Release the Snyder Cut” campaign has darker motives too, as it galvanizes the fandom’s toxic sect, which has previously clung to conspiracy theories about film criticism and the business of Hollywood that threaten to damage the reputations of all of the above.

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut is a genius marketing push — if that’s all it is

The origin story of the Snyder Cut starts in May 2017, when Snyder left the Justice League project just before reshoots to deal with the death of his daughter. (There are reports that dispute this and claim Snyder was fired much earlier, however.) Avengers director Joss Whedon was called in to handle the movie’s numerous reshoots. The reshoots with which Snyder was reportedly uninvolved, combined with fan theories that Warner Bros. was rushing the film to meet a year-end release date, led fans to believe the finished product had strayed from Snyder’s original vision.

Perhaps “Release the Snyder Cut” wouldn’t have become such a rallying cry if Justice League had been more successful.

After months of anticipation, Justice League turned out to be a critical and box-office disappointment. The more time that passed, the more fans blamed Snyder’s departure and Warner Bros. for its failure. In response, their hopes for some unannounced director’s cut of the film grew. Snyder fans consider his previous directors’ cuts of 2009’s Watchmen and 2016’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice to be improvements upon the theatrical versions, and that fueled a belief that a similar redux of Justice League would also be much more satisfying.

An online petition by one fan in late 2017 that asked for a director’s cut garnered over 179,000 signatures. That kicked off a full-on movement that, among other things, spurred a site called ForSnyderCut.com, which become a centralized hub for all Snyder Cut news. Then there was a January 2018 “march” on Warner Bros.’s Burbank studio to show how serious fans were, along with YouTube videos (in many languages), letters, and phone calls to Warner Bros. itself.

Oh my gosh, look at this loud, crazy protest! Yeah, lame YouTubers & media reporting misinformation, we were just going 2 take a photo! Thanks 2 Leo 4 taking it & EVERYONE who showed up! ❤#ReleaseTheSnyderCut #ReleaseTheSnyderCutPhoto#ILoveZackSnyder #JusticeLeague #DCEU pic.twitter.com/f7qK53oCKz

— Itzmoe (@itzmoe) January 6, 2018

The Ringer has a good breakdown of the various teases Snyder himself has participated in to further fan the flames. Fans sunk their teeth into every one, culminating in a nearly $27,000 GoFundMe campaign to fly a banner at San Diego Comic-Con 2019. It wasn’t until March 2019 (just prior to the GoFundMe campaign) that Snyder confirmed the existence of his director’s cut to a fan while attending a fundraiser for the ArtCenter College of Design’s Ahmanson Auditorium:

It's done. It's up to them. Tried cleaning up the audio a bit to make what he's saying more discernible@wbpictures #ReleaseTheSnyderCut pic.twitter.com/VUuxqWLK8d

— Charlie (@SnyderCutJL) March 26, 2019

Gadot, the flagship actress of Warner Bros.’s superhero universe, tweeting about the Snyder Cut is another sign of how much this movement has grown — and the possibility that the edit may eventually see the light of day.

But despite the star-studded endorsements and Snyder’s crafty hints, only a few people have said they’ve seen the cut. Most of its existence hinges on the word of Snyder himself or secondhand accounts. And others, like director (and early champion of the “Release the Snyder Cut” movement) Kevin Smith, say they’ve heard the cut isn’t in cinematic shape to actually screen.

“There is a Snyder Cut. For sure. That’s not a mythical beast. It exists. Now, it’s not a finished movie by any stretch of the imagination,” Smith told CinemaBlend earlier this year. “The ‘Snyder Cut’ that, again I haven’t seen, but the one I’ve heard everyone speak of was never a finished film. It was a movie that people in production could watch and fill in the blanks. It was certainly not meant for mass consumption.”

The rumors kept moving closer to home throughout 2019. In August, Aquaman actor Jason Momoa posted on Instagram that Snyder let him see the cut and that it was, in Momoa’s words, “ssssiiicccckkkkkk”:

View this post on Instagram

Well let’s be honest if it wasn’t for this man we wouldn’t have Aquaman I love u Zachary synder. Mahalo for showing me the synder cut. Here is a token of my appreciation. Leica Q2 for inspiring me as an artist through and through @leicacamerausa I wish I was a better actor but I can’t lie. The Snyder cut is ssssiiicccckkkkkk #luckymesucksforu #q2 #leicaforlife @cruelfilms aloha j

A post shared by Jason Momoa (@prideofgypsies) on Aug 18, 2019 at 5:41pm PDT

It’s worth keeping in mind that Momoa and Gadot are still playing the heroes they portrayed in Justice League in upcoming standalone sequels. Drumming up interest in Justice League also drums up interest in their upcoming projects; tweeting about the Snyder Cut keeps their names in the news.

Supporting the Snyder Cut shows they also care about what fans want. These actors are essentially saying, without explicitly doing so, that they want the best for their fans. And since Justice League was so universally trashed, Gadot and Momoa aren’t really burning bridges by saying a better version of that movie exists somewhere.

When Wonder Woman 1984 comes out in June 2020, fans will likely remember that Gadot asked for the Snyder Cut to be released. And Gadot will likely be asked about the Snyder Cut again during that press tour.

Even if the Snyder Cut is never released, the Justice League stars who support the movement will have garnered goodwill from fans.

But releasing the Snyder Cut also courts a toxic aspect to this fervent fandom

Gadot and Momoa’s support may be good for them, but it’s not great for those who are less concerned about the Snyder Cut. Despite the motivation or intent behind the Snyder Cut campaign — and regardless of the shape it’s in, if it does exist — it’s worth noting that some of the fans involved have gained a bad reputation. Their demands for the Snyder Cut’s release have grown more intense, and it’s emblematic of how toxic some fandoms have become in the past decade.

The #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement frames the scenario to make it seem like Warner Bros. is keeping fans from the high-quality superhero movie they desire. The movement is not simply about wanting a director’s cut to be made available.

Rather, its supporters actually use the phrase to suggest that Warner Bros. executives like ex-DC Entertainment president Geoff Johns (who takes the brunt of the fans’ blame for Justice League, since it’s theorized he sabotaged Snyder’s vision because it was incongruent with his own); reshoots helmer Joss Whedon; and even Marvel Entertainment, film critics, and many people in between all have it out for Snyder fans. They don’t care whether fans get a good movie out of Justice League, a beloved property many DC Comics fans wanted to see adapted for years. They just care about making money.

This notion continues to send fans on the more paranoid side of the argument into attack mode online:

I really hope Geoff Johns does the right thing and stay far away from #ReleaseTheSnyderCut as he is greatly responsible for what happened with Zack’s departure, Cyborgs story getting cut/redone, hiring the pig that is Joss Whedon. It’s best he stays far far away from this!

— Jason Laboy Photography (@Jason24cf) November 18, 2019

Those motherfuckers Whedon and Johns turned Barry Allen from a badass who was gonna reverse time and stop the motherboxes from destroying planet earth, into a bumbling fucking buffoon who falls on womens tits and pushes a fucking pickup truck. #ReleaseTheSnyderCut

— Dr. Chris Ω VOTE LABOUR! (@vinaldo7) November 12, 2019

The online harassment has grown so fierce that a former DC exec deleted her Twitter in fall 2018 to avoid the rage in her mentions. A year prior, a writer from Pajiba received an avalanche of vitriol for criticizing the campaign online.

The reaction, albeit far more intense than previous Snyder-fan antics, is nothing new. It’s reminiscent of the great conspiracy theory of 2016, when a vocal sect of DC and Warner Bros. fans were convinced that Marvel had paid off critics to trash Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Supplemental to that theory is the narrative pushed by Snyder that his movies are made for fans, not critics.

The Snyder Cut contingent subsist on an “us versus them” mentality, where if you aren’t a fan of these poor movies, you must not be a “real” fan of the heroes themselves. Real fans are the ones who matter, of course. Brushing off negative criticism becomes a lot easier when it’s coming from people who aren’t real fans.

This creates a strange paradox of sorts in that true fans ostensibly should enjoy the Justice League movie no matter what, according to Snyder himself. But Snyder Cut fans will argue that the movie they were served was actually the work of other people — Whedon especially — and that they never got to see Snyder’s vision.

Hating Justice League means hating everything that was tinkered with. The Snyder Cut is what “real” fans should want.

Pitting fans against critics and movie execs reflexively creates an environment in which a silly idea like Marvel paying off the media to trash Warner Bros. takes flight. It also encourages some fans to verbally abuse anyone with a negative opinion of the movie or a Warner Bros. property.

Just prior to the release of October’s Joker, fans sent misogynistic tweets and emails — some that vaguely warned of theater shootings — to critics who saw the movie and gave it a poor review. This behavior continues and, in some ways, is entrenched in modern fandom culture, particularly among fans of DC superhero movies, which have suffered poor reviews over the years.

With stars like Affleck, Gadot, and Momoa urging Warner Bros. to release the Snyder Cut of Justice League, it seems like it would be in Warner Bros.’ best interest to eventually release it — if that edit of the film does exist in some watchable form. There are countless fans who want it and the studio could cash in, especially on the anniversary of the movie. I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing more of Gadot and Momoa superhero-ing.

But there’s also a question of what happens after fans — especially the particularly toxic ones — get what they want. They could very well see the release of a Snyder Cut as something they earned by acting and lashing out, as though Warner Bros. is caving in to their demands or rewarding their bad behavior. And it’s hard to believe that’s the best course of action.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2OqSU74

#Vox - All

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corneliusreignallen · 4 years

Text

The fight to release the Snyder Cut of Justice League (which may not even exist), explained

A still from Zack Snyder’s alleged directors’ cut | Vero/Snyder

Zack Snyder’s fabled cut of Justice League and the corporate conspiracy theory behind it.

Zack Snyder/Vero

Henry Cavill in a still that’s allegedly from Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League.

Zack Snyder/Vero

A screenshot of Zack Snyder’s Vero post teasing a potential director’s cut of Justice League.

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut

— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) November 17, 2019

Gadot tweeted a black-and-white image of her character looking wistful, using the same hashtag:

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut pic.twitter.com/wssMmlPqEK

— Gal Gadot (@GalGadot) November 17, 2019

If even they want the Snyder Cut released, is the fan-driven movement onto something? Could the Snyder Cut really exist?

#ReleaseTheSnyderCut is a genius marketing push — if that’s all it is

Perhaps “Release the Snyder Cut” wouldn’t have become such a rallying cry if Justice League had been more successful.

— Itzmoe (@itzmoe) January 6, 2018

It's done. It's up to them. Tried cleaning up the audio a bit to make what he's saying more discernible@wbpictures #ReleaseTheSnyderCut pic.twitter.com/VUuxqWLK8d

— Charlie (@SnyderCutJL) March 26, 2019

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jason Momoa (@prideofgypsies) on Aug 18, 2019 at 5:41pm PDT

Even if the Snyder Cut is never released, the Justice League stars who support the movement will have garnered goodwill from fans.

But releasing the Snyder Cut also courts a toxic aspect to this fervent fandom

This notion continues to send fans on the more paranoid side of the argument into attack mode online:

— Jason Laboy Photography (@Jason24cf) November 18, 2019

— Dr. Chris Ω VOTE LABOUR! (@vinaldo7) November 12, 2019

Hating Justice League means hating everything that was tinkered with. The Snyder Cut is what “real” fans should want.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2OqSU74

#Vox - All

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